Fraught With Ritual

Once at a pool in the middle of summer on vacation with my then-boyfriend, I saw a group of little girls playing a game. "Let's all go underwater and see if you can understand what I'm trying to say." They'd count to three and one girl would presumbably try to communicate without success in the highly chlorinated hotel pool. It struck me as a perfect metaphor for a lot of female communication -- unnecessarily difficult and fraught with ritual. But it upset me a lot less than when I hear women say, I just don't like other women. I get along so much better with men. Invariably, the speaker will continue on about how women are only concerned with trifling bullshit stuff like hair, looks, gossip, romance. The men they are hanging out with are no doubt talking about Martin Heidegger and the meaning of our place in the universe, the dangers of global warming, shit like that. Not like the men I know who are just as prone to gossip and asking the hard questions like, How do I get my hair not to pouf when I'm just putting the base product in it?

This is the kind of female self-loathing that has been crammed down our throats for years and is perpetuated everywhere. Being hideously sick this week, I looked forward to the end of illness which strangely culminated with my new favorite show, "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew." Before this airs, Brett Michaels of Guns and Roses fame, has his own show which is a low-rent version of "The Bachelor." The premise is that some hard-looking, highly sexualized women compete with each other for the honor of "rocking" Brett's world. These women treat each other something awful, pointing out their flaws, cat-fighting, acting the fool in the way audiences love. There's not enough Brett for everyone! And we are taught that by a society that is not content that a large portion of us are victims of violence and sexual assault -- anyone not taken out that way can take themselves out by wasting tons of time on diets that don't work, mutilations that make things worse. Men need not work to harm women; we've taken on the work much more efficiently than they ever could. What's the old saying -- Anything a man can do, a woman can do better?

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"All creative people want to do the unexpected." Hedy Lamarr

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: The Birds

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!