Recently, I told a friend the truth. We have been very close friends for six years or so, after knowing one another for over a decade. We are the same age, go for walks together, give one another leftovers, text daily, advise one another on whatever the issue of the day or week is, and were once neighbors; she lived down the road from me, and I from her, about half a mile. Another former next-door neighbor of mine, and near neighbor of hers, a man who is an acquaintance of mine more than a friend (let’s call him Bill Earl), has met my close friend Pat (we’ll call her Pat as that’s her name) many times over the years, in at least seven or eight instances, in various venues, and always with me, which makes sense as she’s my friend. When these encounters occur he always, without fail, asks her, or me, her name, and basically says the following, ‘Hi, I’m Bill Earl. Who are you?’, or “What’s your name?’ And every time, after the encounter ends, she turns to me and says something along the lines of, ‘I have met that guy so many times, and he always forgets my face, and my name. He forgets we went through the exact same introduction before. He forgets having met me, period. What is up with that, Mahhhhhj?’
In the past, I have not ‘shot for the pin’, telling Pat in response to her Bill Earl query, ‘Oh gosh, Pat, he’s an asshole, who cares’ (we’ll call him an asshole because he is), or ‘He might be one of those people who never remembers anyone, just fuggedaboudit, move on’ (major truth-y caveat in a moment). These are not lies, they’re obfuscations, foggy half-truth answers. But this time, this latest time they met, and did the dance of his forgetting, which clearly hurt, and hurts, her feelings, I decided to tell Pat the un-foggy, hit the pin truth, or at least my version of the truth as I see it, and as I have experienced it: Pat, you’re not his type, ergo he doesn’t want to fuck you, and he’s one of those guys who can’t and won’t remember any woman he doesn’t want to fuck. You could change that, by being (by his definition) important or rich – but basically, absent that, you’re not his type. It’s not personal, and, quite frankly, lucky you, stupid him, because you are gorgeous, smart, kind, and any guy over fifty who turns his nose up at dating a nurse, a woman who can literally restart his heart, is a fool.
Bill Earl is definitely a fool. I know all this because Bill was my neighbor, and he asked me out, because I’m his ‘type’ (more on that later). Bill E. is about a decade older than Pat and myself and I’m his ‘type’ in part because he was looking for, and was very open about looking for, a younger woman to marry, one who would be able to take care of him as he aged. He shared this with me over a mystery meat and soggy veggie-filled buffet supper at a truly crappy restaurant he took me to called The Colonial, a dinner I paid for because no, just no, I am not letting this guy treat me, not a chance. Not only was I uninterested in Bill Earl, it is actually not possible for me to be less interested in changing the diapers of a Boomer Boy, any Boomer Boy, although I guess he gets snaps for honesty. Maybe?
About two years after this ‘date’, Bill married a wealthy, younger than him by at least a decade divorcee who had once dated his older, richer, more successful brother, an aspect of the situation I’m aware of because he gleefully shared it with me on more than one occasion, which I personally found a bit gross, because why is this dude competing with his brother in this gross way and why, why, why the fuck is he telling me about it?! At one point during his marriage to this woman, he admitted to me that he knows he is a dilettante at heart, a dabbler, who was happiest being taken care of by those who are worker bees, like his new wife. Ouch. She has since – wisely, although I don’t know the details – divorced him, and one supposes he has had to go back to work, at least working to find another busy bee to take care of him. He does have two daughters as back up, I guess. We’ll see.
Bill Earl is what I call a lookist male. Lookist males are those who require beauty, standard issue beauty, in their female partners, and often in their female friends as well. Standard issue beauty is defined as (mostly) young or much younger than said lookist, thin or curvy (not ever fat or fat-adjacent), tall but not taller than he is (short only if very thin, uber-feminine, and entirely unthreatening), with even, open European facial features. Great hair is also a plus, as are big boobs, even if they’re fake. Think Fox News female anchors, with D’Trump as the best/worst example of a lookist. These criteria exist because male lookists see women as, basically, arm candy, as a reflection of themselves, their egos; to them, women are decorative plates on the walls of their lives, not individuals with hopes, dreams, aspirations and desires – and even walls of their own. There are a lot of lookists in every institution and profession, and a whole lot of lookist goons on line, trolling women with regards to their appearance, women who, if they’re smart, grounded, and mentally healthy, do not give one half of one fuck what these assholes think, feel, or say about their looks, or anything else.
My former neighbor and good pal Pat is a gorgeous woman, a wonderful friend, a beautiful human being who is constantly extending herself to take care of others. Was it true, what I said about Bill Earl never being able to remember her (maybe, my opinion), was it kind (no, I could see it stung her, as did his continual inability to recall her face or name), was it necessary (not really but after trying to answer without telling the truth for a decade, FTS), was it an improvement on the silence (oh hell, probably not, but honestly fuck that guy)? Anyway, it’s done. And, because we’re close friends, I will follow-up and talk to her about it, apologizing for my tactlessness, no matter how true I believe it may have been.
Yesterday I finished an okay, not great book of fiction that had several pearls of wisdom, one of which was that much of our lives is defined by the consequence of either making what we know is the easier but probably wrong decision, one that is inevitably also easier to identify, or making the difficult, hard, possibly, maybe right decision, but isn’t it all so uncertain – because hey, who can really tell! – a decision that goes against the tide, the tide of easier. Making the right choice, making the right decision, oftentimes requires hard work, and sacrifice, means swallowing our egos, our pride, our desire to be right, or snarky, or clever – it even, sometimes, means giving up the idea we have about being nice (especially true for women), because nice people never hurt anyone else’s feelings, which is ludicrous. It can mean, those harder choices, being unkind, inconveniencing others, calling off the move, the wedding, the promotion, the trip, the need to go along to get along. It can mean change, and blowing up what is because what might be, might be better.
At times, like family weddings, for instance, I have had to eat a lot of shit to get through the fucking event. What’s that British saying about ‘lying back, turning your head into the pillow, and thinking of England’? This saying was coined as a coping mechanism for women, as a way to get through having marital sex with one’s unappealing partner, and that’s pretty much what being human often requires. And, sometimes, facing the pillow or eating shit is simply not possible, and the truth will out, must out. Sometimes, the shit that happens as a result needed to happen, needs to have consequence, be consequential, is long over-due, because burying our truths is too high a price to pay for niceness, for tight smiles, and letting whatever it is go for the hundredth or thousandth time.
In a time when women, and women’s stories, are increasingly more likely to be believed than in the past, a time when men – conservative white men especially – are freaking out because they’re facing a world that is more diverse, more female driven, and much more likely to be consequential for them – as in they are more likely to face consequences for behavior men have been getting away with for a millennia – resisting the pressure to be nice, stepping into the risky space of change, of disruption, of ‘un-likeability’ and into full-personhood is essential for all women and girls, who have been conditioned to be decorative for just as long – a millennia – at the expense of our humanity, and often our lives. Embrace your full-personhood, women, and tell dudes like Bill Earl to his face, ‘Look brotherfucker, we’ve met like nine times, you asshole! Remember this face, because this face, this body, and millions of others just like it, are the future.’
*The photo above was taken by me @ The Women’s March in D.C. in 2017. This essay was originally written in 2011, and has been updated to include the following, post-Dobbs, introduction. And, to reframe – I’ll write more about this at another time – men are 100% responsible for all unwanted pregnancies; Kareen Abdul-Jabbar and his memoir’s claim that he slept with 20,000 women during his NBA career comes to mind. Insert eye-roll here_______.
I had two abortions at Planned Parenthood in New York City in my mid-twenties. After the first, I still thought I could be a virgin when I got married, which is the kind of cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization women, primarily Evangelical and conservative Catholic women, practice when they get abortions while maintaining their ‘pro-life’ stance as in ‘I need this procedure, other women don’t, and/or aren’t deserving of the same medical care, and respect for their autonomy’. I was raised Catholic by a mother who stressed that my value as a woman was in maintaining virginity until marriage, but there was a problem with that, and with me. I had been sexually abused as a toddler, and was raped at eight by a cousin. How could I be a virgin, and ‘unspoiled’, given those facts? I would, as I did after abortion number one, simply pretend it away, push it down, live in shame and denial, while considering suicide daily, as I had since grade school. I was also sexually assaulted by two trusted high school teachers, men who to this day have the respect of many in my community, men who – when they assaulted me – were married with children, one of whom went to my mother’s – and my childhood – church. It’s hardly surprising that I flailed and failed in my twenties, failed at saying ‘no’, or ‘do you have a condom’, at taking birth control pills (why would I, after all, I wasn’t actually having sex; in my mixed-up mind, that was that other girl, the ruined one) and most of all I failed taking care of myself in any way shape or form. My periods were also very irregular. In many, most ways I tried to ignore my body, and all of its functions; I’m not sure I believed it belonged to me, not really. It belonged to the Church, it belonged to my family, to my mother, my culture, and all those men who’d taken, or tried to take, a bite of me. Morning sickness both times I was pregnant was twenty-four- hour sickness, and when I left Planned Parenthood after both my first and second abortion, I literally skipped down the street, thrilled the nausea was finally gone, and that I had my body back. My Body. Finally, finally after that second procedure I realized that if I didn’t take care of me, of my body, of my Self, no one else would. It still took years – decades – for real healing to take place, but when any one – any institution or government, Judge or priest, person or pundit – tries to tell me or any other woman or girl what we can or can’t do with our bodies, I feel anger in my bone marrow, in my blood, in all the healed and healing places that belonged and belong only to me, and no one else. Abortion is health care, and the Dobbs decision, however they parse it, relegates women and girls in this country to second class citizen status. And, if you don’t agree, you’re a misogynist: fuck you. Remember, 1 out of 4 women in the United States has had an abortion, a statistic I’ll bet is an underrepresentation, and if you think you don’t know one, well you’re wrong, some woman in your life is not telling you her full story – but regardless, now you do know one of those 1 in 4: me.
Yesterday yet another man, a father of four, weighed in on the ‘Abortion Issue’, this time in the conservative op-ed column for the Oneonta Star, a local paper hereabouts in upstate New York. I am completely disinterested in what men have to say on this issue, particularly conservative Republican men who still, in my view, see women as second-class citizens, broody hens or mares, heifers, what you will as long as it’s barefoot or hooved and pregnant, yet it did stir me up, as stupidity on this matter always does. He said, in essence, that ‘abortion is one of our most important issues’; I completely disagree. Abortion has been settled law for thirty plus years and the conservative elements in this country need to get over it. We all, conservative and liberals alike, need to look at what is actually important, issues like generational poverty, gun violence, systemic racism, police reform, immigration, climate change, the income gap between rich and poor, health care, the deficit, and out of control spending by the Pentagon among others. But before I move on let me address the abortion issue from a woman’s perspective, a woman moreover who has had two abortions and knows a lot – a lot – of other women who had them as well, women who are all too often silent when abortion is spoken of, a bad habit I want to encourage my sisters in this to break. First of all, I don’t think my experience is unique or special, but I do know that for me and for all of the women of whom I speak, abortion was a good thing, a necessary thing, not traumatic or violent in any way shape or form; in fact, in all the cases of which I know, abortion was a great blessing and one that must continue to be available to women and girls today. If I had my way, abortion would be – along with all forms of birth control – free and easily accessible, available and given on demand. I was raised, as unfortunately too many young people still are, in a household where sex, sexuality and birth control, in any form, were not ever discussed. My mother was a Catholic (I am not) who believed and often pronounced that the only way to enter marriage was as a virgin, that sex before marriage was wrong, bad and sinful. This is one point of view, a dangerous and stupid one, and I hold it responsible in large part for my own idiocy when it came to dealing with my sexuality as a young woman. Prior to college, I had the usual biology and health classes in high school, lessons that reiterated what my mother said, that sex before marriage was bad, wrong and irresponsible. Again, this lesson was – and is – stupid, stupid, stupid. The health teacher I had skimmed through the reproductive issues pages to get to what really mattered to her (she was and is a teetotaler), which were the evils of alcohol. Very stupid. I went into my early twenties, right after college, as a semi-virgin; I’d had sex but still considered myself sort of, mostly, a virgin. I was, as they say, living in a complete state of denial; I so wanted to live up to my mother’s example, my mother’s ideal, my culture’s ideal. I also had never, at the age of twenty-two, visited a gynecologist or spoken in depth with anyone about sex, birth control or abortion. I was smart, right, so no problem, right? I’d gone to college, graduating with honors; I’d figure it out, right? Figuring it out meant doing nothing, as I felt completely dis-empowered and in conflict when it came to dealing with my body and my sexuality. There is an inherent conflict created when we tell our children what they must do when it is – let’s face it – impossible to do, especially when we also don’t give them the information and means, as I was not given, to behave and act in a responsible manner. To refuse to accept and acknowledge that there is more than one way to be, as in having sex before marriage, as in being sexually active including all that that choice entails, is a huge disservice to our kids. And so I got pregnant, puking my guts out for weeks on end at all hours of the day and night. I was so in denial I thought I had a bug, a very bad bug that I couldn’t shake. And I could live in denial because I believed that only bad, unlucky, low-class or stupid, trashy girls got knocked up; I wasn’t any of those! I remember calling my parents about this endless ‘bug’ I’d caught and hearing a note in my father’s voice that nudged me toward the truth. He knew, he knew, my smart darling father knew what I’d really caught, which was a serious case of pregnancy. Darling man that he was, he also never said a word when my bug, just as suddenly as it came upon me, went away. Imagine – men especially, imagine – if you can (and you can’t) – puking your guts out for six or eight or ten weeks as I did. Imagine feeling nauseous twenty-four/seven. It’s horrible. Brushing your teeth twenty times a day, gurgling mouth-wash to get the stink of vomit out of your mouth? Fun, fun, fun – not.
Imagine if you can the fear I felt when I finally figured out that I was pregnant, knowing my work as a waitress, work I did while taking classes and auditioning for shows and commercials, added up to less than a quarter of the kind of income raising a child requires, if that. I had no real relationship with the ‘sperm donor’, a guy I’d met while walking my dog and screwed in the snow under a giant maple on Valentine’s Day in Central Park, a guy who, as it turned out, was married with several children, something he had lied about when we met. And I knew that in my life as it was then, there was no way, no way, that I was ready to have a baby. I had no health insurance, no primary care doc, and how was I going to carry a baby, a stroller too, up the five flights of my walk-up? How was I onto to be able to afford diapers and, everything else, when I was living on 10 bucks a week for groceries for myself? Ready – prepared – willing – happy, all of these were the opposite of what I then was, which was shit-scared, unprepared, and unwilling. But, but – abortion is wrong. I promised myself I’d never do it. Oops. I confided in no one. I was completely alone with this, completely isolated, and in having an abortion I did the right thing. And I’m really proud of myself for that, for making the right choice for me, for taking care of myself although there was room, still, for a lot of improvement in that area. All children should be wanted, must, ideally, be wanted. I exercised – thank you Roe v. Wade, thank you, so, so much – my choice. After the abortion, nausea free for the first time in over eight long, looooong weeks, I literally skipped, danced, down Second Avenue outside Planned Parenthood. I had my body back, and I was glad.
I know there are those who say abortion is ‘unnatural’. I say that is bullshit. Nature is humanity using our natural human brains to find solutions to our natural problems and yes, an unwanted pregnancy is a problem. Texas and Louisiana are two famously “family values” anti-choice states of our union who also happen to share the distinction of having the highest rates of mothers and/or fathers who kill their living children. And just because I can I must mention here that Texas also wins in the thrice married category (as in they have the highest percentage of persons who have been married three times) as well as leading in the number of executions vis-à-vis the death penalty. Pro-life indeed. And what is strictly natural about penile implants for ED, or breast implants, gastric by-pass or face lifts? But you can’t get people riled up about those elective procedures, now can you? But women’s sexuality, women making informed choices about when they become mothers, a minimum eighteen-year commitment – sacre bleu! And let’s not even get started on how freaked out too many idiots get about giving our children the information they need and more than that deserve about sex, sexuality and birth control. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Speaking of stupid: there I was one year almost to the day after my first abortion when it happened again. I was puking my guts out 24/7, only this time I knew what was going on almost immediately – within 48 hours – after once again having unprotected sex. How could this happen!? Oh right, I had unprotected sex. What the what? I had been counseled about going on the pill by the very nice people at Planned Parenthood yet stupidly insisted that I would not ‘fall’ again. I would meet Prince Charming or at least I knew, I hoped, that I would meet a man who respected me enough to work with me as my partner on this, who would have a stake in being ‘safe’, in protecting both of us, even in this, circa 1985, vaguely innocent, nascent AIDS era. As I write this, my former naiveté both pains and amuses me. Men, in my experience, don’t feel particularly responsible for birth control; after all, they don’t get pregnant, they don’t go through morning sickness and they can’t at bottom relate to women’s sexual and reproductive experience in any way, shape or form. Similarly, I can’t relate to the pain of, for example, erectile dysfunction, although I empathize: gosh, that’s gotta suck, not my problem though, and there’s a shitload of meds the expense for which, unlike abortions, almost every single insurance company in these great United States will cover in full. So, sure, I feel for you but I can’t really, truly, feel your pain. How could I? I don’t have a penis and by the way, Mr. Freud, I don’t and never did want one either – although I am almost 100% sure that men, the vast majority, want breasts. This inability to fully know what it means to be a man because I am not one is yet another reason why I wish men, all men, would shut the fuck up about abortion. You cannot relate, you cannot know, boys, so shut up unless you will, without reservation, support abortion, sex education and rational thought on the subject of human sexuality as in a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn from the policies of conservative America.
And so yes, it happened again. I became pregnant for a second time. I was young, arrogant, stupid, naïve and I continued to be in denial about who I was and what I hoped to be, which was still – even, unbelievably, post-abortionnumero uno – a young woman who was a virgin when she married. This defies logic, intelligence and reason, but we are unreasonable, insane even, when we cannot be who we are without shame. Ah, now there’s a word: shame. It is shaming to not know how to be who we are, and to be completely ignorant about something as essential as our bodies, our sexuality, ourselves. It is shaming to have false, impossible ideals held up as the only way to be when our own nature calls us to another way. My darling dad was a horny devil, an appreciator of women for his entire life and I am like him, a horny devil who cannot not appreciate a sexy man; I just cannot do it and I love, love, love, love, love sex. That’s a naturally occurring part of who I am. Now my dad was, as per my mom’s pronouncements, also a virgin when they married. Uh, nope. I found this out right after my mother died when talking to him about one of his grandchildren, a wonderful young woman then ‘living in sin’ with her fiancé. Living in sin was my mother’s characterization had she still been alive to say it and say it jokingly but, in that way when our jokes reveal our innermost and truest thoughts and beliefs. So, there you have it, my dad had kept his silence, again, as prior to going overseas with the Army, he’d visited a few ‘ladies of the night’ in NYC and, as he so succinctly put it, ‘Thank God I did, otherwise no one would have known what to do on our wedding night!’ I loved my dad. I wish I had known this when I was twenty, it might have helped me feel less like crap about having sex before marriage. I wish all parents would see that being honest with their kids, educating them realistically about sex, about birth control and their bodies, is the only way to be. I had my second abortion and then avoided men and sex for about three very long, very frustrated as hell years. This was also not a solution for me. I learned how to take care of myself but will forever be grateful that a right, my right, to abortion saved me, saved me from being and becoming a mother at a time when I wasn’t able to yet take care of myself. If you can’t take care of something as basic as birth control, as I couldn’t, please, please, please think twenty times – think a hundred times – before having a child. And let’s empower our young women to be aware of all of their options and teach young men (and old) to realize that the way they treat their partners, girlfriends and wives is a direct reflection of the way they feel about themselves, no matter the gender gap. Respect women and the choices they need to make, boys, because you don’t and can’t understand. And let’s keep abortion legal, safe and accessible to all women, regardless of income. Abortion is good and that’s the truth.
Pictured above is one of my latest Syracuse University themed gear purchases (themed? stamped? branded?), a beany hat I wear that is perfect for cold spring days, with temps hereabouts varying between twenty-eight and seventy degrees. Snowflakes were falling as I began writing this piece last week. Walking the dog that day I had on my SU beanie, my SU stretch side-pocket leggings, and an SU fleece in bright-ass orange. Am I mad for SU or SU sports’ teams? No. Not at all. I did attend SU so my wearing this stuff is an authentic choice, I guess? People who – years after graduating – continue to organize tail gate parties or attend numerous alumni functions baffle me, as I don’t have that particular need, interest, identification or loyalty – whatever it is. I had to laugh as I exited the house because, here I am, decked out like a real fan, derived from the word fanatic. Fanatic. Which I am not, not about SU the institution, as a center of college sports, as my alma mater, or anything else.
People love their tribes. I avoid them like the plague, generally, because belonging to any group, club, organization, what have you, feels like boxing myself in – and why the heck would I ever do that? One of my several recurring nightmares from childhood was that I was being buried alive, thanks largely to the film ‘Premature Burial’ staring Ray Milland, which I saw as a ten-year-old the week before Halloween. So, no, no, no boxes, please, and no tribal affiliations either. The only ‘tribes’ I claim are feminist and Democrat, and both of those are famously diverse, fractious and organized on a scattershot basis, just like the fractious Mueller fan-dam-ly from which I spring. Ah, the Muellers. What a bunch. What characters! What a – family.
The real motivation behind all that SU gear? It simplifies my life. I don’t and never have cared all that much about clothes, don’t like shopping, therefore going on the SU Bookstore website and browsing among items for useful garments distills shopping down to a couple of clicks. Simple = good. And, orange is a great color, especially when walking on country roads in rural America, and if you’ve never read Stephen Kings account of so doing, I highly recommend it, and link it here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/06/19/on-impact )
Simple is good. ‘Men’s’ pants and shorts – which I have been buying and wearing for over forty years – are also good, mostly because unlike the vast majority of designed and marketed to women’s pants and shorts, they have great pockets. They’re also a lot more durable, literally built to last longer. Women want and need pockets; women want and need and deserve clothing that is durable. I also like to wear men’s boxers in summer as shorts because they’re capacious, 100% cotton for coolness, often in great colors, and they don’t ride up my hips or bum like “Ladies’ panties”, which I gave up in college. I choose comfort over all other concerns, and yes, of course, there are exceptions, although it’s been so long since I wore heels, the last time I did – for a wedding in May of 2022, it was an exercise in the power of mind over matter, and by matter, I mean mind over real live physical discomfort after about 4 hours of standing and walking around, most of it on stone floors. To think I once enjoyed – really enjoyed – those occasional events requiring a slip, pantyhose, and heels. Feh. I noticed one of the groom’s aunties had flats on, flats as in Converse low-rise sneakers, in a fabulous bright color. Genius. File under: Next Time.
I know that two of my more glam adjacent girlfriends think I dress like a slob. They’re both in professions that require a heightened style of dress: high-end NYC real estate, and Southern California business consulting. I do as well, think that I’m a tad slob-o-don-y, but I love my practical, slob-o-don garb. I remember a woman I knew slightly, as a dog owner only, accosting me in Central Park ages ago, saying, “What are you wearing!?!” She was dressed to the nines, with full-on make-up at 6:30 a.m., which I assumed was for work and also, I suspect, because dog walks were famous for bringing about romances between dog owners. But whatever her thing was, I said, “It’s 6:30 in the morning. Why do you care?’ I was wearing, I recall exactly, men’s boxers and my favorite Fire Department tee-shirt – so soft, 100% cotton and nice and loose – in burgundy. And flip flops. Did I have a boob-sling on? Maybe. Maybe not. It was hotter than hot out, and again, comfort first, peeps. My best, best friends, including the glam adjacent, are my friends in part because even if their eyes pop slightly at my lack of sartorial panache, they know better than to comment, or try to fix what ain’t fucking broken.
Clothing – the length or width of a skirt, the height and shape of a collar, neckline or sleeve – has been used to control, distract, hamper, and impoverish women since forever. The fashion industry, long dominated by male designers and owners while enriching mostly male stockholders, reflects our culture as a whole, and is not, in my opinion, very female forward, although that is changing, at a glacial pace, if you think glacial pre-global-warming era slow. Give. Us. Pockets.
Still, I acknowledge that my own sense of ‘fashion’, my penchant for men’s trousers and SU garb, is not only because simple is good, but because my experience of clothes, and shopping, as a girl-child led me to take a route I might otherwise not have taken. Who knows; that winding country road has and continues to be traveled, but it began not far from where I sit today, in the house I lived in with my own special mother dearest. Perennially obese with a penchant for combining sweatshirt tops and pearls over black stretch-pants, she didn’t want to buy me clothes; she didn’t want to spend money on me, period, and, especially after I hit puberty, she just wouldn’t. Like the patriarchal culture we live in, momma used her power in the consumer clothing lane to control and punish me, attempting to make me into someone I was not: a pliable, compliant, super feminine girlie girl. It is worth noting that her definition of feminine meant not speaking unless spoken to, no interest in athletics or boys (unless they were Catholic), and no pursuits that weren’t centered on the home. That I loved being outdoors, and swimming, was a talented athlete in general was considered un-ladylike in the extreme by the woman who gave birth to me. My sisters were much more in her wheelhouse of what was appropriately feminine as they weren’t good at sports (I believe my older sister skipped gym class for all 4 years of high school), spent 99% of their time sequestered in their rooms rather than wandering and playing in the woods, which I did all the time. My eldest sister was given carte blanche when it came to spending money on clothes, which weirdly also included two wigs at one point.
Thrift shopping, my mommy dearest work around, where I could spend my own, earned money, saved me, but I would never claim I was ever able to deck myself out as a result. I even occasionally have picked up perfectly good SU gear while thrifting. Not to mention a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress, made in Italy, the real thing, a slew of gorgeous cashmere scarves and sweaters, corduroys from L.L. Bean, Ralph Lauren, and Ann Taylor, Peck and Peck sweaters and made in Scotland wool skirts, sweaters and pants, items able to withstand the weather, weather like today, 40 degrees out and rainy.
Clothes. Such fun. Ephemeral. Necessary. If ‘the clothes make the man’ (vestis virum facit), what do clothes do for or to women? Another endless subject, with so many sideroads, alleys and dead-end lanes, providing plenty of fodder for another day or days. Women are not decorative plates on the walls of men’s lives, or in the gaze of our families, culture, institutions and even other women. You don’t have to dress ‘like a girl’, in pink and pale blue or whatever ‘this year’s color’ is. One of my continual frustrations when I do go beyond my narrow on-line shopping lane is looking for the bold colors I love but getting fed a steady diet of ‘heather-ed’ pastels. Make it stop, please!!!! As writer and blogger Erin McKean wrote in 2006, a quote often mistakenly attributed to fashion icon Diana Vreeland, “You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.”
Vestimenta sunt milier, which, translated from the Latin, means clothes are not the woman. My new motto? Perhaps.
“The Dalai Lama say that the world will be saved by Western woman. Not any women, perhaps not all women, but Burning Women. Women who have stepped out of silence and into the fullness of their power. Angry women who love the world and her creatures too much to let it be destroyed so thoughtlessly for a moment longer.
Burning woman is the heart and soul of revolution – inner and outer. She burns for change, she dances in the fire of the old, all while visioning and weaving the new.” ~ Lucy H. Pearce
*the future is female, as is more of the past than I was aware – by which I mean I have been following several spaces that celebrate women in the arts, science, culture and elsewhere, and I am overwhelmed by just how many women historically occupied those spaces yet were never taught, never celebrated, never brought into the light as artists, as composers, as writers, journalists, chemists, engineers.. the list goes on and on…and, I am burning.
In case you live under a rock and were unaware that 81-year-old Martha Stewart is this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover Model, now you know, and – you’re welcome. Or, whatever. Personally, I am a fan of Martha’s, a woman not unlike Hillary Clinton with regard to the outsized hatred she’s engendered in her life, although I’m not a watcher or reader of her shows, her books, her magazine, what have you (in fact, does she even have a show or magazine anymore?) so, basically, I’m not a fan fan. I simply admire her for being a smart, successful business woman with a great sense of humor, one who knows how to use the media in support of her businesses. Martha is also admirable for her resilience, for having survived, and thrived, despite pissing off a lot of tweeny lil men, enough to end up in prison for a pretty slim case of insider trading of a type that is so common in certain circles in NYC, and elsewhere, if the authorities wanted to they could spend all day and night every day prosecuting it. But, they don’t, and for good reason.
As for Sports Illustrated. Who cares? Oh right, a lot of people do. I guess? A lot of men do. First of all, the magazine should be called Men’s Sports Illustrated, because the number of women and girls whose photos and stories inhabit the pages – even a half century after Title IX was passed – are miniscule. Miniscule. Tiny. Itty-bitty. Small. Few and far between. So, let’s be honest and call it like it is: Men’s Sports Illustrated. That a nearly nude 18 – 28-year-old female graces the cover annually, usually, creating that year’s best-selling issue – pardon me, 18 – 28-year old primarily white female – is y’know, not a big deal unless I guess you’re either the female in question ($$ka-ching! $$) or a person who enjoys looking at nearly naked females, and given the ubiquity of naked women and girls on the internet (so I’ve heard), maybe it’s time to move on? Maybe?
For a millennium, men have held the majority of the buying and selling power in the world, but people like Martha Stewart have been changing that for some time now, and – a recommended read – Rebecca Traister’s All the SingleLadies outlines how that rising demographic of successful, experienced, often well-educated, working, middle and upper-class women are changing the overall paradigm, and not a minute too soon. I started The First Time Project because I was sick to death of reading and seeing stories of male sexual initiation. FFS, not another one! And, in the culture at large, women and girls are waking up to the power of having our own: our own money, stock portfolios, businesses, homes, investments, representation, ideas, choices, desires – and our own stories told, respected, believed, and acted upon. Do we still have a long way to go? Fuck yeah, we do.
Does Martha Stewart’s appearance on the cover of SI’s breathlessly anticipated swimsuit issue change anything? Maybe, maybe not. But it is a conversation starter, and conversations are good, ain’t dey? Yes, yes dey are. For example, answer this: why the fuck is there a swimsuit issue, at all? And if so, why not a mostly naked man at least every other year, arising from the surf in Hawaii or whatever TF they shoot these things. I could go for that. Would advertisers flee? Would reader-subscribers? We won’t know until it’s tried, now will we? Mix it TF up. And of course we can discuss the male gaze, the taken for granted, assumed male point of view, and gaaaaaaaze. Who is holding the camera, who is editing these magazines with their dearth of female athletes portrayed, who is determining what and who is newsworthy in a world that is – however incrementally – changing; this is a subject for conversation, for discussion, for consciousness raising – the late 1960s equivalent of ‘woke’.
I’ve also seen the response on social media to the cover, which response and conversation has tended to revolve around Martha’s ‘work’, as in Botox, face lifts, filler – as well as the amount of retouching required, retouching the editors do even to the 18-28-year-olds, btw, because no woman, not one, is perfect until she’s been heavily retouched. Interesting word that: re-touched, touched again. Hey, the most beautiful person I have ever known was my grandma, a woman I was named after and adored, a woman who adored me, although in a hands-off way because she and my grandfather believed in treating their grandchildren equally, as in equally hands-off. Sigh. Still, she was pretty special and – she had a face that most closely resembled a horse, or a mule – not, by any means, standard issue pretty. But oh, she was gorgeous, highly intelligent, with a lovely sense of humor. She was also incredibly patient and kind. I never, ever heard a word against anyone, ever, come out of her mouth. I intend to grow old as gracefully and naturally as my grandma, who was a role model extraordinaire – except perhaps for aping the whole not a bad word spoken part, which is probably, mostly not possible, but I’m trying! I might, I just might have a dollop of my to-the-grave grudge-holding paternal grandfather in me. I might. And, once again, other pals of mine are going another route, as they are free to choose for themselves how to age, and hooray for that. One good friend had some kind of Botox-like injection to her upper lip, and was unable to drink through a straw for a week, which made us both laugh, as she so loves her big slurpy iced coffee drinks.
We all have to find our own way, and make our own choices, in a world that is often very cruel, very unforgiving and harsh, toward women as they age. As we raise our personal consciousnesses, as we let go of the ideas we had of ourselves as we once were, as we let go of cultural expectations, of fear, and of our precious egos (William Saroyan on the subject of aging, and death: everybody has to do it, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case), we make our way toward a wrinkled no matter what end. No one gets out of here alive, and no one really wants to get out young, regardless of the beautiful corpse concept. And truthfully, we are the same at age six as we are at age sixty, or ninety; our character, our temperament, our spirit, remains the same.
Robert DeNiro just had another child with his current partner at 79. Seventy-nine. Whatever. What’s sauce for the goose…
And if we must continue these outdated, ridiculous traditions, ones like an annual partly naked person on a sports magazine’s cover, let’s at least change it up, of which this latest gambit is step one. If we must, and – must we? Since Covid, since the weird last several years, can we not upend and alter a number of ancient, creaking, stale and moldy traditions – like inequality and unequal outcomes in healthcare and housing, like crippling student debt, like overpaying CEOs, while underpaying workers, teachers and nurses, like not having universal healthcare in the U.S., like not having paid family leave mandated federally, like paying too much for prescription drugs, like a broken congress, like the filibuster, like having only nine justices on the Supreme Court when we no longer have nine courts of appeals, but thirteen – and don’t you think thirteen is a nice uneven number? Ah! A woman can dream. The tradition of wedding bouquets and father of the bride dances can be toileted as well, in my opinion, as for white lace or satin dresses – puhleeeze – but I won’t get my hopes up, at least not for another decade or so.
Hey, I say go for it, Miss Kostyra (Martha’s maiden name), do whatever floats your boat. She certainly can take the heat she is getting; she has handled it well for decades. Practically my favorite thing about Martha Stewart is that she is, actually, friends with Snoop Dogg, which is perfect. And she did start her career as a model, back in the day. Jersey Girls Rule.
Here’s a link (below) to a survey of how many/often women – sans the swimsuit issue – have been featured on SI’s covers, it’s from 2013 but I figure nothing mich has changed since then, but again – a woman can hope.
