Yes. This.

Exactly.

It is my humble opinion that these two teenagers are not the exception to the rule, rather there are more of them out there than we know about. I found this story particularly inspirational.

Poli-sci-fi

Is there a single soul left in the United States (or, frankly, anywhere on earth) who is not sick unto death of the current US presidential election?  Gah.  And: boooooorrrrrrring.  I'm so over it, and I am a political nut. I started this blog yea those many years ago specifically to write about liberal-lefty-politics and the pro-choice side of the abortion debate.

I have not watched a single one of the debates.  I didn't pay attention to a single second of the conventions over the summer, other than the daily recaps I heard on the morning news as I drove to work.  I can't watch McCain.  I want to throw things at the TV when I do.  DH gets really upset at me hurling things at his flat-screen telly, and I like peace and serenity in my home.  I can't listen to Palin.  I scream obscenities at the radio if she's on.  I am making a good-faith effort (really.  No, seriously!) to clean up my language, so that's not good either.

My issue (abortion) is so decisive for me that I. Will. Not. Ever. vote for someone who is anti-choice.  The McCain/Palin team has made it abundantly clear where they stand on this issue. Truth is, though, that I wouldn't vote for him even if I wasn't such a pro-choice advocate.  He's out of touch with reality, out of step with....well, I was going to type 'the American people' there, but it sounds so pompous that I can't type it with a straight face, so instead I will say that he's out of step with ME.

I usually feel that a presidential election comes down to the choice of a lesser of two evils.  Who of the two candidates is going to do less damage during the 4-8 years they're in office? Yes, yes, there are always more than two, but reality, people, reality.  A third-party candidate has about as much likelihood of getting elected as I do of turning into a pretty pretty fairy princess.  With wings.  

I voted for Hillary in the primaries, because the possibility that there might be a female president in my lifetime is too beautiful to resist.  I didn't think she was going to get the nomination, but I wanted to vote for her.  Then, surprise, surprise, she won Ohio.  I was stunned, I didn't think she had a shot.  

Obviously, then, I will be voting for Barak Obama when it comes time to cast my ballot.  I don't feel bad about that decision in any way, and this time I think it is a choice between hope and evil rather than a choice between the lesser of two evils.  I have a hard time not feeling hopeful when I hear Obama speak.  My local paper (a rag if there ever was one) carries Parade magazine as part of its Sunday inserts, and last week's Parade had a small paragraph about what the tax plans of two candidates would mean for income levels from $10,000-$100,00, broken down in chunks of about 10K.  Under McCain?  My tax liability would stay roughly the same.  Under Obama?  My tax liability would DECREASE by over ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS.  $1,000! How can I say NO to that?  I can't.

It seems surreal to me that there might be a minority in the White House.  I'm excited about that.  So many predictions for the twenty-first century have fallen flat; where are our flying cars?  Our jet-packs?  Our vacations on the moon?  Nowhere, that's where.  But people who have been traditionally disenfranchised gaining more and more political power?  That's here.  Fantastic indeed.

Trouble in Shangri-La

and you, you got in my way
stood between me and my friends
It was my sin, it was my shame
You were unconscious to the pain I was in

~Stevie Nicks, "Trouble in Shangri-La", from the album of the same name, 2001

I just finished reading Storms by Carol Ann Harris, former consort to Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham. Carol Ann and Lindsey were together through the Mac's Rumours tour until 1983/1984.

My parents listened to Fleetwood Mac, and then I spent a lot of time listening to classic rock in my late teens. Fleetwood wasn't quite the same as zoning out to Led Zepplin, but I always loved the way the band harmonized, how Stevie Nicks sounded so different from Christine McVie, and yet their combined voices rival any opera duetta by any great duo of opera singers you care to name.

When Bill Clinton was elected to the presidency in 1992, I was in Sweden, and paying no attention at all to the ruckus surrounding the election. I was not legal to vote. It wasn't that I was apathetic to politics, it was that I was apathetic to anything that was happening in the United States; the world stage was opened to me for the first time, and the nightly news in Sweden was more about the unrest in Yugoslavia than it was about what was going on in America. Which was far more "real" to me, the fact that people were dying in the cities and towns that my host parents grew up in than Gennifer Flowers and poll numbers.

(If I've never mentioned it before: my Swedish Mama and Papa emigrated to Sweden in the 1960s from Croatia. Yes, its a bit confusing.)

So when the band reunited to play Don't Stop at one of his inauguration balls, MTV Europe said *yawn*. When they released The Dance later in the decade, though, I loved it, and played it a lot. The songs didn't hold deep meaning for me as some other artists that I admire, I just loved singing along to it.

Carol Ann's book has an old picture of the band on the dust cover, and I picked it up on one of my periodic ramblings through the bookstore. I will read almost anything, and biographies have held an interest for me since I was about 9. Quickly, I was sucked in to the backstory of the end of the Rumours album recordings and the subsequent world tour. After I finished reading it, I went searching for reviews of the book, and I discovered that many book critics find all sorts of fault with her delivery, her prose, and her side of the story.

I can't agree. This is the story of a woman, like so many of us, with almost no self esteem, fragile, beautiful. Her twist is that she was living in the public eye, and caught up in a vortex of drugs, rock & roll excess and an abusive relationship.

She did a fair degree of foreshadowing that I found annoying, but that is one of my personal kvetches; I don't approve of foreshadowing as a literary device.

I was struck over and over how she was living in such a different era. Lindsey wouldn't "let" her work, something that baffles me. She felt it her obligation to just be there for him, even when he spent weeks at a time during their relationship locked in his home recording studios, that she would subsume all that was Carol so that Lindsey could be Lindsey.

The time period can't explain all of this away this for me, though. Women's lib began in the 60s, and by the mid-70s, there were plenty of women balancing career and family. By the time the two split up in the early 80s, the idea of the career/family superwoman was a part of the dominant culture. Lindsey was not at all supportive of Carol's modeling in the late 70s. When she began acting classes, and then studied costume design with folks who were on the cutting edge of music video production in the 80s, he was nasty, demeaning, sarcastic about her excitement about what she was learning.

The book brought a deeper understanding of many of the Fleetwood Mac songs I've loved over the years, given me insight here and there to the music that I wouldn't have had otherwise, but the end of the book left me hurting, physically aching for this girl who had no idea, at least until the bitter end, that being the muse for this tortured musical genius and class-A asshole was going to be the death of her unless she walked away.

There are very few "unforgivables" when it comes to the relationship between two partners, no matter the sexual preference, in my book. Things that might be able to be overcome, given enough time and counseling, but that are deal-breakers for me. Number one is infidelity. Once a cheater, always a cheater. I think that if someone gets away with cheating the first time, they're only going to do it again and again, a cycle of heartbreak-in-waiting for the person being cheated upon. Number two in my list is abuse, be it psychological, physical, emotional, what ever. When that happens, walk away. Don't look back. Don't make excuses for the abuser. Don't blame yourself. Just walk away.

She did eventually walk away, but not before he'd nearly killed her at least three times, strangling her, and once even punching her in the face in a Los Angeles nightclub.

!!

My parents, over the years, have often pointed out as friends parents got divorced, or other long term relationships crumbled, that there are two sides to every story. Sometimes there are more than two sides. I don't know Buckingham's side of the story. I've never read so much as an interview with him, and so I don't know his twist or take on it. I don't care to, either, but I sincerely hope that he's gotten some therapy.

I also think about how in this age of cel-phone cameras and Perez Hilton, there's a good chance that Buckingham's behavior just might have been noticed by the paparazzi.

Harris paints a fairly unflattering portrait of Stevie Nicks as well, but ultimately, Nicks comes off as far more sympathetic a character than Buckingham.

You know how sometimes we read more into something than is reality? I think that perhaps I'm hearing more into Nicks's Trouble in Shangri-La album after reading the book. Seems to me the title track is about the demise of Buckingham and Harris's relationship, about a lost little girl. The last line of the song, show me the way back, speaks to me of finding yourself again after coming out of a particularly difficult time.

Even though the ending of the book isn't particularly "happy," as the focus of the story is the relationship which ultimately dies, Harris is a survivor. I think it took incredible courage and strength to tell this story. I'm sure she knew when she was writing it that the blame-the-victim mentality of the popular press was going to be excruciatingly painful for her. I admire her grace and restraint; she never denigrates into name-calling or finger-pointing throughout the entire book.

Reticene

I am a gabby girl. Talkative isn't really the word, although it comes close. I'm gabby in my writing, too, notice how often I wander from topic to topic. You don't always see it, as sometimes when I'm editing, I'll realize how far off track I wandered, or that the length of the post is guaranteed to put the casual reader to sleep, so I shorten it up and say less than I originally intended.

Online, sometimes I am more brutally honest than I would be in real life. The perceived anonymity of the 'net leading me to say more than I ought. Outside of the computer, I've learned a few really tough lessons about over-sharing.

Once upon a time, in the Dark Ages, when I worked for Ye Olde Evile Bank, I joined an international women's organization that strives to better each community it exists in. That'd be a no-brainer for someone like me, you would think. One night, at a regular monthly meeting, after an abysmal day at Ye Olde Savings & Trust, I shared a few of the details of my horrible day with the group of "ladies" (I'm using that term as sarcastically as possible here) I sat with at a large round table.

I had been working on an estate with a large funeral bill, and the attorney for the estate had called me with a total number for the dollar amount on the check. The law firm promised to fax an invoice later, and assured me that the dollar amount they gave me verbally was the correct amount for the bill. Accordingly, I cut the check and sent it off through Ye Olde's back office operations.

Of course it was incorrect. And of course, it was too late in the day to get the check back from the processors who were in another city when the law firm called me to say, "oops!" (Ye Olde relied very heavily on a courier service.) And who looks like the asshole in that situation? Me. No one likes to be made to look like an idiot, and I was very upset over the whole situation, and angry with the law firm's lackeys.

From those details above, could you figure out who the stiff was? Who the legal firm was? What city or state the dead person lived in? No. No, you can't. And yet, some 'lady' from that table of women I sat with that evening proceeded to call not my boss, and not his boss, but one step above that, and tell the big honcho that I had broken banking secrecy laws. As you can imagine, working for a department that had the word "Private" in its official name, breaking banking secrecy laws was taken extremely seriously.

What, you thought my old department really called itself the Stiffs Division?

Anyway, I got hauled in to the head honcho's office and read the riot act. For a good hour. The honcho told me that the only reason this meeting was not to announce to me that I was fired was because this sort of behavior was not typical of me.

In my head during this meeting, my inner monologue sounded something like this:

Let me get this straight. You're believing some phone call from some random person about my public behavior over me? I've worked here for seven years. I can't believe that you're taking the word of some yahoo over me.

Or at least, that was part of the inner monologue. The rest of it wasn't as civil as that. Not surprisingly, Ye Olde wouldn't tell me who the caller had been, but as I sat around a table of 8 women the previous evening, and only one had the most tenuous connection to Ye Olde (she was in the financial services industry, and had met the honcho the year before) I wonder who it might have been. Gee. I dunno. Maybe the only one who knew the director? Wow, maybe, possibly, perhaps.

When I got back to my desk, shaken, angry, bitterly disappointed, nearly with smoke pouring out of ears, the first thing I did was draft a letter of resignation from the women's organization. Pounding the keys with all of the frustration I couldn't manifest in a cube farm, (like screaming "MOTHERFUCKER!" at the top of my lungs) the first draft of the letter was a bit less than polite. Eventually, I calmed down enough after I got home that night to hand write a very polite and prosaic letter, simply stating that the time required to belong to the organization presented a conflict with my current employment, and that I hoped at some future point to be able to work with them again. Warm regards, yada yada yada. The only thing that might have betrayed my irritation in that letter was the fact that the fountain pen I use for such missives made a nice FIRM indentation on the paper, so if you had turned the letter over, and you could decipher written words by touch, there was plenty of detail for you to feel. No, I didn't tear the paper, but it came awful darn close.

The truth of the matter was that Ye Olde's honcho who drug me into the office strongly suggested that I resign. An employer can't fire you for belonging to an innocuous charitable organization on your time off, but they sure can (and sometimes do) look for any excuse to let you go if you're doing something they don't approve of with your time off. I suspected at the time, and still suspect, that had I not resigned, my tenure at the bank would ended sooner than I intended, and not by my own personal choice.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me as far as Ye Olde was concerned. I had been hunting for another job, just not with vigor and purpose up to that point. After that day, I focused my efforts on getting the hell out of there before they made me into an old and bitter harpy.

A few months later, I handed in my notice when I got the non-profit job. My direct supervisor, who was a wonderful person, knew that the dust-up with my volunteerism had a lot to do with my quitting, but I was careful to not vocalize it to anyone, lest it bite me in the ass one day. Because it was only one out of literally hundreds of reasons I wanted the hell away from the bank.

A difficult lesson. On many levels. It taught me a bitter truth about working with women; sometimes we work even harder than the boys do at dragging each other down, which is a dammed shame. It also made me more reluctant to trust, and a bit more reserved in social situations for a good long while. Eventually, that wore off, and today I'm just as boisterous in a social situation as I always have been. I'm just usually more circumspect about what I say. I keep my venting about miserable days to a trusted few friends, people who I know would never work behind the scenes to get me fired.

It has also left me with a mystery that I suspect I will never solve, until and unless I ever confront the perpetrator. Which would, in a town this small, be social suicide. What on earth did she hope to gain? Was she after my miserable nineteen thousand dollar a year job? I find that nearly impossible to believe. Did she hope to curry favor with the honcho? I really can't imagine what favor the honcho would ever show her, given the negativity of this event. Even people who thrive on the misery of others don't remember events that were awkward and difficult for them with relish, and lemme tell ya, AWK-WARD isn't even close to the tension that was in the honcho's office that day.

I have made a new friend through my current job, a nice woman who has a wicked sense of humor to match mine, and shares some of my complaints about the place, but I've had to obfuscate and be less than 100% truthful with her in conversations I've had with her, because I'm afraid that she'll run to the employer and tell them how serious my job hunting is.

And isn't it sad that an event that happened more than four years ago still affects me that way? As women, we need to stick together and look out for one another. The powers that be at the top of almost any business are men, and even in this day and age, as a professional woman, I've run into more bozos than I can count who think that women belong at home, barefoot and pregnant, or if they are in the office, they certainly shouldn't be in positions of power, being the fragile and emotional things that we are. If I live to be a thousand, I'll never understand chauvinism, or what makes certain people tick.

On the other hand, what a dull world it would be if we were all 100% alike.

The reason I'm thinking about this today? I've been invited to join the organization again, and I'm wondering if I should jump at the chance, for the major networking benefits it offers, or if I should walk away, seeing as last time around it nearly cost me my job. I'm reluctant on one hand, and excited about the possibilities on the other. A bunch of cliche`s, useless and unhelpful, keep running through my head. Once bitten, twice shy. Everyone deserves a second chance. You don't shit where you live. Make hay while the sun shines. Hard work is its own reward.

None of which is helping me make up my mind. Welcome to the street where I live: Indecisive Way!

C (from a different perspective)

I made a pilgrimage to the eye doctor's recently, because my eyesight is diminishing, and reading "cheater" glasses just aren't doing the trick anymore.

The doc is one that I've seen before; someone I communicate well with. The vision problem that I've been having is that I can't see (well, duh, bright girl, call yourself a writer? Let's try that again.) Unless I really make an effort to focus, everything's gone all blurry. But I've had a hard time explaining that to anyone. I've always had good vision, not a problem seeing anything, near or far. So verbalizing what's wrong has been tough. Fortunately, the doc understood right away, and I've got a fun, funky pair of glasses ordered. In the meantime, he gave me contacts to wear so that I can see on a daily basis.

I hate them.

They're a pain in the ass to put in my eyes, and then I can feel that there's something that doesn't belong in my eye. I can't wait until the glasses get here so I can ditch the damn things. It is nice to see again, though. I'd been unable to spend much time on the computer, especially when I was tired, without the whole world going fuzzy.

On the way home from the doctor's office, I was listening to NPR as usual, and my local NPR affiliate is airing something called "Newslink" which is an English-language program produced in Bonn, Germany by Deutsche Welle Radio. They had a story on about Nicolas Sarkozy (the current French PM, in case you're clueless), or more accurately, the piece was about his current girlfriend, Carla Bruni.

The perspective of the piece was one that just infuriated me; by listing the entirety of Madame Bruni's conquests, the reporter managed to all but come out and say that "the lady is a tramp". I was gnashing my teeth about 3o seconds in to it, and it was made worse by the fact that he was oh-so-careful to point out that the legacy of the male leaders of France have been judged often by their virility or lack thereof; French PM's are just about expected to have a mistress or 3.

Urgh.

How is that just, reasonable? Obviously, unless you don't have more than 3 brain cells to rub together, it is dammed unreasonable. But it seems that it is perfectly acceptable to still bash a woman for the number of her conquests while venerating a man for the same. Are we still in the 1560s?

The really interesting thing, in the end, though, is the vastly different attitude (perspective) that the Europeans have about the whole thing; Sarkozy isn't being bashed for breaking up with his wife, he's being ridiculed mostly for taking up with a woman who has been around. Here, though, on this side of the pond, the problem would be that he had a mistress at all.

Ahh, humanity. Nutbags, the lot of 'em.

Brave New World

What a stunner, Barak winning in Iowa. I'm bowled over. I'm still on the fence for who to vote for in the democratic primary in Oh-hia-ia in March, but by then the point might be moot...with all of the states that have shifted around their primary dates to get more attention (don't get me started) Oh-hia-ia's is kinda late.

I desperately want a female president; ergo, my choice should be Hillary, no? Unfortunately, I just don't think she's electable. The conservatives just hate her, even moderate conservatives like my parents. Which does not bode well for her electability. Barak is so charismatic; he's a new face, with I think near Kennedy-like expectations from those who still have hope for the government in this country. (At the moment, that does not include me.)

I like what he's got to say a whole lot. Wow, is he ever a good speaker! But I like her, too. Quite a lot. For crying out loud, Pakistan, PAKISTAN, had a female leader, as did England, and we have not yet. Isn't it time? She's got the experience; I just don't think he has the experience needed, the foreign policy sensitivity, to be president. If he'd waited 10 years...but then perhaps his moment would have passed.

The closer the date creeps to March 4, the less I can afford to sit on the fence. But watching them both in action...I just don't know. I think it is impossible to watch his victory speech in Iowa and not be filled with hope.



But the fact that she IS a woman, and has fought for women's rights for years, plus her experience mean so much to me. Both of them want to move the perception of America back to where it needs to be around the world. They're not so far apart. For me, then, it is ultimately this: Who is more electable? Who can actually win the White House?

Now if they'd join forces, and one would agree to be vice....that would be interesting.

I just don't know if this country is ready to elect a woman, or an African-American. That makes me so very sad.

Contraception Day

It isn't often that I write more than one post in a day. Something has to happen or catch my attention or really piss me off for me to come back to the computer and finish another post. I start more than one a day, usually, but they sit in my queue for a few days until I get them finished.

Today, it is something that has me pissed and feeling confrontational and like I've been left in the dark. I get news feeds from NOW (National Organization for Women), the ACLU, and NARAL, so I'm surprised that this didn't hit my radar screen before the actual day. I heard it on the BBC's World Today, which my local NPR affiliate carries. I love listening to the Beeb. I love to hear the voices of the Brits...mmmm, those accents. But I digress.

I turned the radio on when leaving Pilates, and caught about 15 minutes of the programme. If you're a regular reader, maybe you've been wondering why I haven't been doing Current Events or politics lately, and the answer is that I'm depressed enough without focusing on the constant stream of bad news. Every time I tune in to NPR or CNN, I hear and see things that make me sad and angry, leave me feeling impotent and powerless in the face of a giant patriarchal Republican conspiracy. Now I know that point of view is both radical and a weee bit unfounded, part of my natural paranoia, but I can't help feeling like the bad news from Iraq combined with radical religious right hysteria and the erosion of our civil rights by things like the USA PATRIOT ACT all weigh me down, make my depression worse. Therefore, I haven't been focusing on that so much lately.

But then I'll hear something that snaps me back to a reality that I'm not happy about. Today was World Contraceptive Day, and I didn't even know it. Contraceptives are a woman's issue, solely because no one has bothered to try to invent a male version of The Pill. Don't get me started on that one.

Being raised Catholic, you know that I was taught from an early age that contraceptives of any type are wrong. It goes without saying that I never agreed with that idea, in fact it mystified me from the very first time I ever heard it. I'm not alone in that; many Catholics use every type of contraception available, because no one really wants 21 children. Who can afford that in this day and age? The Church's stance on contraception began when the Church wanted lots of new followers, and when the infant mortality rate for the entire known world was very, very high. Outdated? Yep, you could say that.

I've written before about the things that Pope John Paul II had to say about "appropriate" roles for women; the duality of motherhood and wife should be enough for them, according to his late Holiness's 1988 letter to women. I don't have much use for Benedictine XVI, his writings before he became pontiff as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger are enough to make me hunt for the nearest vomitorium.

The Beeb had 3 people on the program to talk about Contraception Day; one was a Catholic professor, a woman, who opposes any contraception. One was a scientist who has researched contraceptives extensively in developing nations, and one was a spokesperson for a Brit organization called Marie Stopes. The scientist and the Marie Stopes bloke were both well-reasoned and sane. The professor is a whole 'nother story.

The professor started her comments off by noting that she's opposed to contraception not as a Catholic, but as a woman. Contraceptions are bad for women, y'all. Who knew? I always thought that bringing a child into the world should be a reasoned, measured decision, one not undertaken lightly, one that you should make when you are emotionally, physically and financially able to care for another human being. Wow, guess I really missed the boat there. Apparently, I shouldn't use contraceptions because they're unhealthy. Riiiiight.

Turns out that the Church does support one type of contraception: Natural Family Planning. But then again, the Church doesn't allow for sexual intercourse of any type outside of the marriage bed, for the sole purpose of procreation. What does it say about your sexuality if you allow it to be controlled by people who are (theoretically) abstinent their whole lives?

But anyway. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. Sorry, back to the point.

World Contraception Day is about bringing attention to the fact that many women around the world do not have access to birth control of any sort, even when they want it. Additionally, it calls attention to the fact that by 2050, there will be two billion (that's billion with a B) more people on this planet than there are today. If we don't start paying attention to population control, we're going to out grow the planet before the end of the 21st century. Scary.

I only know that I don't know much.

Even though I usually don't watch any TV during the week of September 11th, while I was at the gym yesterday I saw a commercial for a documentary that CNN aired earlier this summer. I had wanted to watch it, but managed to miss all 3 parts of the documentary.

Called "God's Warriors" and reported by Christiane Amanpour, a woman whom I greatly admire, I was very disappointed when I realized I missed the original airing of it. She examined each of the world's 3 major religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Last night they aired the Islamic portion, and I watched with fascination. I thought from time to time, "This, THIS is when TV is good. Informational, educational...this is what television ought to be."

Do I claim to now understand the Islamic point of view after watching a TV show? No. Of course not. But I learned quite a bit. Enough to know that I still don't understand. One of these days, I am going to read the Koran, in an attempt to further understand this faith, which seems from the outside to be so peaceful.

She spoke to a huge range of people, from extremists to moderates, American Muslims, Iranian Mullahs, Shia, Sunni, women and men. It was fascinating. I was most interested when she was speaking to some women's rights advocates in Iran. A woman who was a judge before the Ayatollahs took over, another woman who is a photographer. I was astonished to learn that 65% of Iran's university students are women. And yet, a woman's testimony in court, and her life, are worth exactly half that of a man's.

I've always wondered why a woman would voluntarily wear a hijab; I've written about this before, and gotten such obnoxious comments that I am turning comments off for this post. I'm writing solely about my opinion, from the perspective of an American woman who believes in gender equality. If you don't agree with me, that's OK, but I'm really not interested in hearing vitriol about my opinion. At least I'm curious about this issue, unlike most Westerners, who write this off as archaic and ignorant behavior. I disagree; and I'd like to understand.

Once, in the past, when I've written about this, one commenter asked me, "Why would you care? How does it impact you? How dare you write about something you have no knowledge of?"

My answer to that is exceedingly simple. I'm curious; I always want to know 'why.' I'm a geek; researching something, reading about it, learning things has always thrilled me. Somewhere out there are the answers to nearly every question.

I doubt I'll ever understand intolerance, racism, sexism, but I do think the answers for 'why' are out there for most questions.

The main reason I wanted to watch this program was because I wanted an answer to the question, "Why do they hate us and our way of life? What has the average Yank done to offend them so horribly?" I don't have an answer yet; but I do now have some other avenues to research to understand better.

Further proof, as if I needed it, of Ohio's Red-Stated-ness.

Many, many, many thanks to Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy for bringing this horrible bit of news to my attention.

I usually spend a lot of time listening to NPR, reading news websites, checking up on NOW and NARAL, but since I've lost my job and it has been summer and I've been fighting the terrible demons of depression, I haven't been plugged in to the news. So it is with stomach-churning disgust that I tell you about a new Ohio law that is a blow to any woman with a brain, pro-choice or not, this has got to be one of the worst bits of ick I've heard in a while.

Ohio legislators, in their divine wisdom, have decided that "there oughta be a law" that requires, REQUIRES, mind you, a woman to GET WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE POTENTIAL FATHER OF HER UNBORN CHILD BEFORE SHE CAN GET AN ABORTION.

I know what you're thinking. "Oh, no, Lucy, you must have misunderstood. The state of Ohio could not be so stupid to think that a woman does not have the right to do with her own body what she chooses without the permission (permission? are you fucking kidding me?) of her 'owner,' oops, I meant her partner."

And unfortunately, I've got to say that yes, dear reader, that is exactly what the state of Ohio thinks. Read the legislation for yourself. And just in case you think you might slide under the radar and get a male friend to sign something for you, that becomes a misdemeanor under the new law. Do it twice, and it is a felony.

As Twisty rightly points out, this is a part of the 'men's right's' movement. I have a lot to say about that, but it boils down to this.... Ha. And: What-the-fuck-ever. As if men need someone to fight for their rights. Fellas, you run the world and by and large control what goes on over the entire planet. Gimme a break. Mostly, until you can give birth, you don't get a choice or much of a say in the matter. Sorry, but them's the breaks, boyos.

Permission. Wow. We've just taken about 45,000 steps backwards in women's rights. Thanks so much to the legislators who are supporting this bill for making 2007 seem more like 1307. If you are one of my Ohio readers, PLEASE, PLEASE take a second to send your local rep an e-mail urging them to not vote for this piece of crap legislation.

I could go on and on about how it seems more and more like we're living in a totalitarian state, or about how the last time I checked, until someone other than me is paying my bills, they don't have the right to boss me around, or about what incredible bullshit this is, but you've heard it all before.

Until women everywhere stand up and say "NO!" to this type of misguided legislating, it is going to continue. Make your voice heard.

Thumbing their noses at the Vatican (and I'm downright gleeful!)

I took a small road trip yesterday to visit a friend and had some time alone in the car. On Saturdays, my local NPR affiliate plays a whole bunch of interesting programs, among them Car Talk, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and Weekend America. I don't get to listen to all of them, usually, but that does not mean that I don't enjoy them.

Weekend America had a story about a movement in the Catholic Church to ordain women. I'm thrilled to my fingertips about this. The fact that the Church does not recognize the ordinations matters little to me.

Change within the Catholic Church could be best categorized as having a glacial pace, so I'm unsurprised that the Vatican excommunicated the first women to be ordained. For heaven's sake, the Church only admitted in 1992 that maybe they ought not to have excommunicated Galileo in 1633. "Glacial" is perhaps too kind a word for the pace of change.

Pope John Paul II had plenty to say about female ordination in letters dated 1988 and 1995. Through all that woman-hating waffle (should you bother to read it, as I did) the basic message is: "Hey, ladies. We hear you. Be patient. Be faithful. Listen to the priests and bishops. Be a nun if you want to serve. Obedience to cannon law is paramount. Barefoot and pregnant is the best condition for you."

Here's a couple of direct quotes from the 1988 letter, offensive in the extreme: We must now focus our meditation on virginity and motherhood as two particular dimensions of the fulfillment of the female personality." How's THAT for a gem? Add it to this piece of nonsense: "In the name of liberation from male "domination", women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine "originality". There is a well-founded fear that if they take this path, women will not "reach fulfilment", but instead will deform and lose what constitutes their essential richness."

The bold emphasis is mine, of course.

Being a feminist, you see, is inherently evil in the eyes of the Church. Women should be wives, fulfilling their 'duty' to be fruitful and multiply, or they should be nuns. It is that whole virgin/whore debate all over again; either you are a virgin, pure, holy, obedient, or you're a whore, plain and simple. What a load of sanctimonious bullshit.

I'm sure that Pope Pious XII will have plenty to say on this issue as well, since women continue to defy Vatican prescriptions for their behavior. Especially since Pious is even more conservative, more of a right-wing nut job than his predecessor was.

By not behaving, being disobedient, the women who have been ordained are taking their place in history as feminists, ground-breakers, and leaders.

I had a conversation with my father about this whole issue; he himself was excommunicated for marrying my mother, a Protestant. The fact that Mum converted to Catholicism and raised the sibs and I Catholic has no bearing whatsoever on Dad's excommunication. And yes, this happened in America in the 1960s, amazing enough in itself. So he's got his own axe to grind with the Church, but by and large he and I disagree about almost the whole religion issue. He still believes in much of his childhood teachings, whereas I do not.

"Why would the Church's stance on this surprise you?" He asked me, in all seriousness.

"Well," I said, "Because I was raised as a red-blooded American woman, who believes that she's got the same rights as any man...remember 'we hold these truths to be self-evident?' and the whole feminist stance I have?"

"But the Church has never played by the same rules as the government," he reminded me, "and the chances of the Church changing anytime soon are slim and none."

This issue for me is more about equality than religion, in the end. So perhaps he's right. But I refuse to accept that just because we don't have penises that we can't be priests.

Ripples in a pond

When you toss a stone into a body of water, ripples of water spread out, touching things that your small stone never did. The big evil bank that I used to work for talked about "spheres of influence" when pushing us to sell bank services to clients. A program that one of my sisters has worked for has a slogan about everything being connected.

Likewise, in the blogosphere, there are many bloggers who have encouraged me, motivated me, whose writing has touched my own even though I've never met them.

One of those bloggers is Abby Lee, Girl With a One Track Mind. An anonymous blogger like me, although her subject matter is a far more interesting than mine will ever be. More entertaining, too. Or at least she was anonymous until a year ago, August 6, 2006, when Abby was outed by the British newspaper, The Sunday Times. What happened next is the stuff of an anon-blogger's nightmares. She lost her job, and suddenly every single person in the UK knew her real name and where she lived.

Since she blogs about her sexual exploits, and is a woman and unashamed of herself, she has spent a lot of the past year dealing with the male establishment verbally beating her up for her liberal views. Abby's brand of feminism is fearless and inspiring. A man writing the same blog would have been venerated, the subject of much "attaboy" back-slapping encouragement. That makes me incredibly sad.

Her writing, combined with one or two others, (notably Dooce and Abbypants) has encouraged me to be more open in my own blogging, given me the courage to write frankly about my battle with major depressive disorder.

When I started Well Behaved Women, it was a cry in the wilderness of the reddest of the red states, a way to protest the Idiot (Bush) Administration, a place where I could freely worry about the state of women's rights in America and talk about the tenuous thread that a woman's right to choose hangs by. It was rare in the beginning that I would talk about my own personal life. Politics, more politics, with a dose of politics tossed in was what I was writing about.

Somewhere along the way, that focus changed, and I began mentioning things in my life from time to time. And then in the last six months, it has been my life with a bit of politics on the side. I get more responses/comments, more hits on the blog when I'm writing about my own life, when I'm being deeply personal and baring things that I wouldn't talk about with a roomful of strangers than I do when I'm ranting about something stupid that President Idiot has done or said, or the Supreme Court further restricting civil rights. Writing about the depression, or trying to analyze something that has happened to me generates more interest than the government trying to look at your library records.

I'm going to refrain from commenting much on how that apathy also makes me sad, and how incredibly strange I think it is that random strangers are interested in the goings-on of a lunatic 30-something Ohioan, and get back to my point.

Without ground breakers like Dooce and Abby Lee, I wouldn't be here in the corner detailing my struggle to stay out of a ward. The ripples that spread out from blogs like theirs reach worldwide. Ideas sparked by a post written halfway around the world fill me with wonder at technology and the incredible age that we're living in. Unless I'm incredibly lucky, I will probably never meet Abby Lee. She has changed my life for the better, and while I'm deeply sorry for the pain that she's been through in the past year, her amazing writing has made me aspire to be a better writer. I am supremely grateful for that. So thanks, Abby. I feel privileged to have witnessed your journey, and can't wait to see what you do next.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

I wouldn't believe the name of this piece of legislation (Adobe required) had I not read it on NOW's website. Just sounds like something a comedian would come up with.

Regardless, turns out that even the Democratically controlled Congress can barely get it right; this legislation passed 225-199, meaning that nearly 200 Congressional Representatives voted AGAINST a woman's right to fair pay. Un-fucking-believable, really.

Ohio voted against it, with 7 yea and 11 nay votes, but I'm pleased and surprised that the rep from my district voted for it. You can check who voted which way from your state here.

Equal pay for equal work has been one of feminism's biggest historical battles. The Equal Rights Amendment has yet to be passed. Women, on average, make about 21% less than men in the same job. If we're all equal under the Constitution, seems to me that when it comes to pay scales, to paraphrase George Orwell, some are more equal than others.

Back to my (blogging) roots.

I have not been writing massive missives on the Idiot Administration lately. Likewise, I've avoided diatribes filled with dire warnings about the dismal state of women's rights in America. Since I have so much time on my hands, what with being unemployed and all, I've been instead looking inward, and amusing myself with writing about things that are fermenting in my head.

And then today I checked out Twisty, on I Blame The Patriarchy, a woman who I admire greatly. Twisty's a far, far better writer than I will ever be, her style is much more scholarly and I envy what I perceive as the incredible ease with which her posts flow. Maybe she agonizes over every sentence as I do, I'll never know. Today her post is about a woman in India whose case is equal parts tragedy and something else....what word do you use for something that makes you so angry you can't see straight? Infuriating? How about equal parts tragedy and resignation, that the state of women's rights all over the world will never improve enough, enough so that it no longer needs to be a battle?

Twisty's last sentence, particularly, "Violence against women is a fucking global humanitarian crisis, yo." made me sit up, scowl at the computer, and say, "Damn!" And "Wow!" Because I never really thought about it on such a large scale. I frame my feminist ideals mostly around what needs to be changed here, things like equal pay for equal work, access for all women to abortion rights, the things that hit my radar because that's MY backyard. I don't often think about women forced into arranged marriages, girls forced into prostitution in Asia, simply because I don't think about them. There's no excuse, just kind of a benign apathy. That apathy is so dangerous. Because until we all pay attention and do something about it, it won't change.

When will it change? To quote another idol, U2's Bono, "How long? How long must we sing this song?"

I am enough of a geek that I will read all the comments people write on blogs like Twisty's. So one of her commenters left a link to an Amnesty International report that I would like to share. I'm also adding another "sticker" on the right hand side of the blog, where people can link directly to Amnesty's campaign.


ACTION!

American citizen held in Iranian jail

NPR had a story this morning about an American woman who is being held in an Iranian jail, accused of being a spy. She's been prevented from leaving Iran for four months.

Considering the fuss that was made over the Brits who were held by Iran earlier this year, I am surprised that this is the first time that I've heard about this.

My disparaging thought is that because this is one woman, female, that they're not going to make a fuss over it, but I honestly think it far more likely that there hasn't been a huge fuss because this woman was born in Iran and became a naturalized American citizen. Which admittedly, isn't all that much less disparaging, really.

Haleh Esfandiari is the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, which without Googling I'm guessing is a Washington DC think-tank. Lemme check. Wow, my own powers of intellect amaze me sometimes. From their own website:

The Center is the living, national memorial to President Wilson established by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, D.C. It is a nonpartisan institution, supported by public and private funds, engaged in the study of national and world affairs. The Center establishes and maintains a lively, neutral forum for free and informed dialogue. (Source)


Living under a totalitarian regime must be terrifying. While I joke quite a bit about President Idiot being a dictator, truth is that even with the erosions of personal freedoms we've endured under his tenure in Washington we still have due process. Ms. Esfandiari's attorneys have yet to be able to speak with her, and the news today was that the Iranian government fully intends to charge her with espionage. Unreal.

Treading into personal opinion here, it seems to me that the religious leaders who make up Iran's de facto government can't handle a successful and well-educated woman, which is why they've arrested her.

I hope sincerely that the Idiot Administration gets involved here to negotiate her release. I'm thinking positive thoughts for her and her family.

Politics at large

I heard with a twinge of relief that Jerry Falwell passed away this week. And then my years of religious training in guilt kicked in, and I felt horrible for not being sorry that the guy is dead. Of course I am sorry for the family that he has left behind, but the Beeb was playing bits and pieces of things that he'd said over the years that were pretty cringe-worthy. Did you know, for example, that feminists caused the Sept 11 attacks? Riiiight.

OT for a sec, I note that the Beeb really enjoys tweaking people's noses. Wonder why that is? Is it a Brit thing? They seem to really enjoy putting people on the spot in interviews, twisting their words or trying to make them uncomfortable. It is either funny or annoying, depending on my mood.

Then the news that brought me crashing down into the dumps, a report from ABC that talked about the abortion debate and places like Alabama, where they are trying for an outright ban. Or the states that are trying to force providers to offer an ultrasound, which will add to the costs of abortion for poor women, and way to pile on the unnecessary hoops to jump through to get one!

Ohio requires biased counseling and a mandatory waiting period. 'Round these parts, you've got to drive an hour to find a provider, so that makes the whole thing even more costly, either find a hotel to spend the 24 hour waiting period in or spend the $3 /gallon for gasoline to get there twice.

Why IS it that the most vocal, strident anti-choice loons are always men? Self-righteous smug folks, who wave their moral indignation around. The guy in the ABC interview is a very staunch anti-choice fella, and wow, I can't help but wonder where he gets off. Yes, yes, I can finally admit that men have a right to have an opinion on the subject. For a very long time I thought that men shouldn't be able to even voice an opinion about it. When you can get pregnant, sir, then you may have an opinion about it. But that's a bit radical, really, and I no longer feel that way. Sure, you can have an opinion. But keep in mind that it is the woman's ultimate and deeply personal decision.

I remember a cute little web photo that I saw on a forum that said, "May the baby you save grow up to be a gay, Wiccan, black, democrat." Wish I'd kept it. And yes, there's some proof right there that the fan forums are not the only ones I participate in!

WOW!

Many, many, many thanks to Mischa at Church Made Me Stupid for writing a post about this, which caught my attention. Rarely if ever do I do more than one blog post in a day, but this is important enough to warrant a dual post.

Please direct your mouse over to Feministe, and read about an attempted bombing at an abortion clinic in Austin, Texas. What, you didn't catch that in the national media? Oh, that's because "terrorism doesn’t count if it’s directed against women and their health care providers"

Dual standards for everything else in the whole wide world, not just male and female public behavior, but even for the safety of providers for women's health. Good Goddess, what is the world coming to?

Hef

NPR's Morning Edition is doing a series called "The Long View" and since I missed the intro to the piece I'm going to talk about, I'm not sure yet if it is specifically about sex and sexuality, but that's part of what Renee Montagne and Hugh Hefner talked about in the interview that aired this morning. Tomorrow they're talking to Dr. Ruth (Westhenimer), so perhaps I'm correct that it is a series about sexuality. Or maybe it is about folks who have reached a certain age. Whichever, I listened with interest as they talked about the bad relationship between the women's movement and Playboy.

Hef said that when the women's movement first started squalling about him and Playboy, he was astonished, that he thought Playboy was all about women's rights. Which is soooooo typical male bewildered behavior that I'm not even going to comment on it. But he went on to say that he thought the women's movement had partially grown out of the sexual revolution that Playboy was a big part of, and guess what, he's not wrong.

Mainstream availability of blue magazines and films allowed women to speak up and speak out about things that had long been taboo. A more open society allows debate of a wider range of issues, leading to public conversations about topics that were once the subject of whispers, out there on the edge.

Pornography has always been a tricky subject for me. On the one hand, you have freedom of speech, of expressing yourself, that everyone has the right to produce whatever they like, say whatever they like. A sacred right, one that I hold very dear. You must protect the speech that you don't like as vociferously, or more so, than the speech that you do like, lest the evil persons unknown censor anything. Censorship is wrong, plain and simple. On the other hand, you have the fact that porn IS degrading to women, most of it catering to ridiculous male fantasies, perpetuating the myth that to be sexy you must be blonde, tall, leggy, white, and have huge, basketball sized breasts.

Please note that when I'm saying pornography, I am referring to what could be called 'mainstream porn', not child pornography, not snuff films. I'm talking about the things that can easily be purchased at any newsstand, or rented from the back room of your neighborhood video store.

I've heard the argument that getting rid of porn would solve many of the world's evils. I don't buy it. If you make it illegal, you simply force it to the further edges of society. Or, rather, out even further than it currently is, which would make it more dangerous. Porn is always going to be there. Even the Greeks and Romans had their own versions of pornography, you can easily find examples of Grecian urns with pornographic imagery. I first heard about that aspect of porn's long history in a college class, where Reign of the Phallus; Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens was required reading. So outlawing it isn't the answer, because there will always be a market for it, and there will always be those that produce it for the pull of the money.

Does pornography offend me? Not really. Am I fan? No. So what do I do about it? I don't purchase it, for one. Remember Salt-n-Pepa? Some of the first female rappers? They had a song in the early 90s called "Let's Talk About Sex" which caused a huge stir when it was released. The song is really about safer sex, talking with your potential partners ahead of time about using protection, keeping the lines of communication about sex open. But there's a line in that song that I'll point to as what I think is a good way to think about pornography.

Those who think its dirty have a choice;

Pick up the needle

Press pause


Or turn the radio off

Will that stop us, Pep?

I doubt it.

If it offends you, don't buy it. Don't look at it. But know that someone, somewhere is going to produce it and someone else is going to buy it. Live and let live, essentially. Lobby to keep it out of your kid's face, absolutely. However, what happens between consenting adults shouldn't be the subject of the debate.

When I posted a diatribe a few weeks ago about rude public behavior, a comment from another blogger got me thinking about the rise of female raunch culture, which is a topic far afield from where I started today. While I agree with the premise that women who star in pornographic publications are objectifying themselves, allowing the objectification of women to continue, I also think that it certainly is within each woman's rights to choose to be in a porn film or racy magazine.

And then turn it around to another angle; women are certainly no less guilty of objectifying men, but that's a much more recent development. Not until long after the sexual revolution did you find PlayGIRL. There's a much, much smaller segment of the porn industry that produces porn for women. I don't purchase that, either. My non-support of the industry extends over the whole of the industry.

I'd like to say that when men are objectified that they ought to be flattered, but realize how incredibly chauvinist that is of me. How horrified I would be if a man suggested that to me. I don't know if men could ever understand why being objectified is such a problem for women. Why we aren't flattered. Being looked at as purely a sexual object can indeed be a thrill, but you can also end up feeling like you're worthless, because no one cares about who you are outside the fantastic body. I think that's the piece that's missing from Hef's brain when he talks about how crazy he thinks the feminists are.

I don't think that Hugh Hefner is the devil incarnate. I think he's a pretty clever fella who figured out how to make millions off of taking pictures of naked people. And I know about 3 million men who wish they were in his shoes. He's going to be 81 soon. Should I live that long (and I'm not at all certain that I wish to), I hope that I'm as healthy and active as he is at that age. He certainly is proof that there's some truth to the saying that growing older is inevitable, growing UP is optional.

Listening to: Anna Molly, Incubus

Action!

I'm still reeling over yesterday's Supreme Court decision. I've been checking the news wires to see where public opinion falls, and I read a statement that has me thinking. I've read about a dozen wire articles and have a few to link, but first, this quote from Ralph Naes is dead on.

"The reaction to this decision could help educate many Americans who, quite frankly, have grown complacent about a constitutional right to reproductive health," said Ralph Neas of People for the American Way. (via ABC)

And he's not wrong. Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, a year and a little more before I was even born. I've grown to adulthood with the right to choose an accepted norm. It is only recently, within the past two years, that I've come to understand just how tenuous a right that is. It has hung by a fraying thread for a long time, and I firmly believe that yesterday's decision will cause that thread to break. Which terrifies the hell out of me, the idea that we could push women's rights back into the stone-age era of back alley abortions performed with coat hangers. Do you know how many women ended up dying from unsanitary conditions, from botched procedures?

I want the government to stay the heck out of this issue. Legislating moral issues like this hasn't worked well for us in the past...you need only to look to Prohibition for proof positive of that.

Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, President Idiot and his merry band of zealots will continue to push for a society that is ruled according to their narrow religious beliefs. W has said that he wants people on the federal benches who share his views. Because only people on the right should be allowed to make decisions about women's health. Remember separation of church and state? Anyone? Anyone remember their civics lessons, about a balanced government? Grr, I'm so angry.

Let's move along to some of the news wire articles that piqued my interest this morning before I give myself a heart attack.

Abortion Ruling Emboldens Opponents M live.com

Abortion Fight Coming Newsday.com

Ruling Draws Lawmakers Toward Political Minefield Washington Post.com

Then, of course, there are the wise words of two of my old favorite standbys when it comes to women's issues. NARAL has this article, pointing out the complete lack of regard that the idiot administration has for women. NOW's statement from Kim Gandy is a wonderful bit of language, "Not since Bush v. Gore has the Supreme Court made such a political decision, or one that so completely distorts the law and disregards the U.S. Constitution."

The time is now for action, to get involved. Make your voice heard. Write to your legislators and let them know that you don't support any abortion restrictions. Get involved, get out there, DO SOMETHING so that the right to choose is protected for us, our daughters, our granddaughters.

Listening to: my favorite protest song, "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy

Beginning of the END

A severe blow was dealt to all women in the United States today when the Supreme Court handed down a 5-to-4 ruling, upholding the so-called partial birth abortion ban.

I TOLD YOU SO!

For many years now, this has been one of my greatest fears. That the door would be opened to the anti-choice folks, who are no doubt popping Champagne corks as I type. Any restriction on a woman's right to choose is too much restriction. Any ban on any type of abortion procedure is egregious. It is a slippery slope, which will end in the termination of YOUR right to end any unwanted pregnancy.

I'm not sure if abortion is "right" or "wrong", but what I do know is that I don't want a bunch of old, white men deciding for me if I am allowed to make decisions about my body.

Damn, Sandra Day O'Connor, couldn't you have waited to retire? Damn, Chief Justice Rehnquist, why did you have to die? Those two events were the catalysts that allowed today's decision to happen. President Idiot, who unsurprisingly, praised today's decision, appointed two conservative justices to replace the two who left, and you could hear the religious and fanatical right drooling when he did.

Supreme Court Justices are dangerous people, because they, more than any branch of the government, can have an impact on our lives for a very long time. Supreme Court Justices are appointed for LIFE. So to get a Supreme Court vacancy, someone has to die or retire, and the two vacancies that occurred in 2005 are remarkable for their rarity. Justices can, theoretically, sit for 40 years or more. They are the nine people who review laws passed by Congress, they are the arbiters of what is, and what is not, Constitutional.

In today's decision, the majority opined that the complete lack of any exception whatsoever in the ban for the sake of the mother's health does not preclude a woman's Constitutional right to an abortion. I'd like to know just how the fuck they got to that decision. Because to my understanding, even if a woman's life is at stake, this procedure cannot be performed under any circumstances.

Take note, American Woman. That's how important you are to this administration. That's how much you matter. Your life has that much meaning.

Don't you feel precious?

Empowered. Empowerment. Strength. Brought to you by a Christina Aguilera video.

I was on the treadmill today, as usual, and watching MTV or VH1 without any sound, as I do each morning. It entertains me a great deal to be watching a video for, say, Nellie Furtado while I'm listening to The Beastie Boys. Or listening to The Angel while bubblegum pop is on the TV screen. Disconcerting, and funny as hell. Oh, and the mystery of when does MTV really play music videos? Solved. At 05.30 in the morning, they're playing top 20 stuff.

Christina Aguilera's "Candyman" came on, and I watched the whole video, something I rarely do. I'm usually looking around, or if I'm running, my eyes are unfocused and I'm concentrating on my breathing, trying to keep the asthma monster at bay. But I love this video. Christina looks fabulous. The video makes me think of several things, all tied to female empowerment (I know, if you've seen it you're thinking....WHAT? With the WHAT?) and the inherent strength in femininity.

The song, if you haven't heard it, is reminiscent of that bugle boy song from the 40's, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. I love swing and jazz, and big band sounds too, so every time swing makes a resurgence, I'm happy about it. When I watch this video, I think of the women of my grandmother's generation, who went to work while 'the boys' were overseas in WWII, paving the way for the women's movement of the 60s and 70s. The art director, or costuming folks, did a good job of choosing wardrobe for her, especially when they've got her in a pair of capri-length jeans and button down shirt, with her hair wrapped in a kerchief. Somewhere in my family archives is a pic of my paternal grandmother in a very similar outfit, from about 1940.

So why does something intended to be so incredibly sexy, and overtly sexual, make me think of female empowerment? Because I think that Christina is one very smart lady. Who knows that sex sells, and she's done an amazing job making men want her and women want to be her. Even though each character she plays in the vid is being objectified through what she's got on, or how she's dancing, she's in control. She's in charge. Every single eye in the room is on her. That's power.

A while back, on another feminist's blog, I left a comment talking about 'owning the pink', much like taking back the word 'bitch', I think we ought to take ownership of the pretty pink boxes that the world would like us to fit into. There's a dress that Christina wears in the video that looks like maybe it is made out of pink cashmere, but a cashmere skirt wouldn't flare the way that one does, so I have no idea what it is made of. Anyway, she's got on this cute, very short, very pink dress, and she's rocking it like no one's business. She's also got on one sweet pair of bad-ass Mary-Janes, you know, catholic school girl shoes? These are spiky and high heeled, and I want a pair. A look around the net for them finds me stunned to discover that they're nearly $900 a pair. So much for that. I may spend silly amounts of money on shoes, but that's out of my reach for a single pair.

Sidetracked! That happens with me and shoes. Regardless, I was talking about the contrast between the shoes and the dress. The shoes are like a great "screw you" contrast to the uber-pink dress.

I know that I'm probably attributing much more thought than what actually went into a three minute music video, but I know that Christina knows she's a role model for young girls everywhere, and I think that by being strong, sexual, provocative, and even a lot flirtatious, she's showing that you can be pink & pretty and be powerful at the same time.

I remember an interview with Madonna, years and years ago, when Dick Clark asked her what her ambitions were, where she wanted to go from AT40 fame, what she wanted to do with her career. She chuckled a little bit and said, "To rule the world."

Watching this particular video makes ME feel strong, makes ME feel like I can get out there and rule the world, and that's powerful stuff. Dare I say it? Empowering.