Irmelin

Hi AGA girls. Please read this post.

A couple of months ago, I got in touch with you all about doing an AGA relaunch. Thank you to those of you who responded and pledged your continuing support (I think 9 total).

Here's the thing: since then, I've been in somewhat of a financial crisis, and my energy has been going in that direction. I've been dealing with an employer who doesn't respect minimum wage laws, and my internet bills were drastically overdue. I hoped that there would be a "round table" effect and that you would all continue to post and recruit while I was AWOL, but it seems we're all dealing with some real life issues?

Here's the thing: I love the message of the AGA and I want it to be successful, and I want it to have the relaunch it deserves. I'm not in a position right now where I can be flag bearer and monitor the site's contribution levels.

We need new bloggers.

A) HAD to share this:

Condom Commercial FTW

B) Yeah, so... Sorry for the MIA... Sitting here with an injured shoulder, which was immediately preceded by an adductor injury... and I've been training through both of them with more than a fair share of stress since I found out that I had to test out to keep the job I just got--again.

I wanted to share this:

"Oh you can't speak to a brotha?"

Even though race plays a big part in this particular narrative, I feel that the basic message is universal. It's what I wish I could say to every guy who--daily--throws comments at me while I walk down the street.

Maybe, individually, they don't mean much by it. "Hey baby", "Ooo nice legs", "Babe you fine", "Mm-mm", "How you doin'", etc. But when just stepping out of my g0dd@mn house means a constant barrage of these things, it adds up.

I wish I could turn to every single one of those guys and say,

Yeah I don't even know. What to say.

Right now I'm sitting in a room full of half-packed boxes, drinking a Mike's hard and trying to consolidate how utterly f-ed up the world is with any shred of optimism I have left in my achy, achy body.

"Sexual harassment" doesn't even begin to cover it. I paid thirteen-thousand dollars for this education. I can name every bone and muscle in the human body. Know what the hypothalamus is? Plantar fasciitis? How about the muscles involved in patellar tracking? You can bet your a** my clients don't, and yet they seem to think that the State of Illinois licensed me to rub their penises.

It's not even a muscle!

I am f***ing terrified right now.

It's funny. I've been reading all these articles and blogs lately about how women are trained by society to be accommodating, and how this often interferes with our safety. I don't even remember where I read it, but someone gave an example of a woman who let a man help her with her groceries all the way into her apartment, despite what her instincts were telling her. She was assaulted.

So I was sitting here, five minutes ago, reading an article about how we need to start making it men's responsibility not to rape women--how it's so off base that the only response to these incidents is to tell women what they should and shouldn't say/wear, where they should and shouldn't walk, etc.

"Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down. And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly - by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates.

Insurance executives don't do this because they are bad people. They do it because it's profitable."

UM.

[Speechless]

Can I... can I gesture madly about the room and ask, "Did anybody else see that?" Am I going crazy? He did NOT just say that. I wasn't watching the speech, I just read it--was there a visible confused flinch from the audience, or did people just dully stare past it?

One of the few feminist arguments that actually gets some validating attention in the "modern western world" is the one that revolves around beauty standards. Mind you, it was bad enough when beauty standards required women to be a slave to "self-maintenance"... but now, even the most expensive products, the most vigorous dietary regime, and the most "fortunate" genetics cannot even begin to approach the beauty demand that is being placed upon our badly photoshopped, surgically altered generation.

"Scientific studies and the most casual viewing yield the same conclusion: Women are shown almost exclusively as housewives or sex objects.

The sex object is a mannequin, a shell. Conventional beauty is her only attribute. She has no lines or wrinkles, no scars or blemishes--indeed, she has no pores.

I seem to have broken through some mysterious membrane on the body image front lately. Part of it is having a new partner who respects the hell out of me in a way that I didn't even know I was missing from my previous lovers. Part of it is a nude photoshoot that was therapeutic in ways I can't even describe. Most of it is just a slow, boiling uprising from the moment the feminist lightbulb went on when I was seventeen.

I've been beach-bumming in a bikini and getting color in places that haven't seen the sun since I was born, and wondering why I went so long without that pleasure. Just a year ago, I bought my first sleeveless top, and almost had a panic attack the first time I went out in public with it. That blows my mind now.

All of this brought an old memory back to the forefront: my first time.

I'm tagging this "wtf".

Wall Street Journal: Cankles!

The circumference of a woman's ankle is about 11 inches, on average. That's not much to obsess about. But enough Americans are concerned about fat ankles -- or "cankles" -- that gyms are coming up with new ways to tone them; plastic surgeons are pushing $4,000 to $6,000 liposuction procedures to slim them; and shoe companies are offering special models designed to minimize them.

ABC News: Cankles!

I finally applied for health insurance today. It's a bit of a catch-22: I need health insurance so that I can get the help I need to get back in the work force, and I need a job to really afford this insurance. So the hope is just that it will work out: get the insurance, get healthy, get a job, pay for the insurance. Here's to hoping.

Anyway, this post isn't about the evils of capitalist medicine. It's about height and weight. Apparently.

I browsed plans for hours, agonizing over the financial implications of each. I wrote emails to various family members, asking how much if any help they could give, etc. Finally, after nitpicking the details of every eligible plan, I settled for one that costs $158 per month. (So high? It's the perpetual catch, isn't it: if you don't have any money, you can't afford a big deductible. If you can't afford a big deductible, you have to pay almost as much in monthly payments anyway.)

It's summer. The sandals I've worn since I was 17 finally frayed away. Time to buy a new pair.

That is, if the stores still SELL wearable shoes.

I went in to a regular sized Payless and headed over to my section. And stared. And stared.

Aside from the virtual junkyard of flip-flops (which make my feet cramp), I could not find a single pair of sandals that didn't have high heels.

This seriously enrages me.

One: I have two tendon injuries in my left foot which prevent me from wearing high heels. I literally can't--not without a world of pain.

Two: The inevitable jerks who are going to dismiss the next argument, but say, "Ohhh, that's ok then, you have a right to be angry" because of bulletin #1. (Kind of like the jerks who say, "Oh, that's ok then" when I get around to the "farming meat hurts humans too" part of the veggie argument.)

I still have tonsillitis, but I don't feel nearly as ill now. Thanks for the patience.

Being so seriously ill has made me realize how terrifying it is to live without health insurance, though. I completely drained whatever little savings I had going to the doctor, and even then had to ask family and friends for money.

Funny thing is, even though it was terribly dramatic, the whole ordeal was still cheaper than actually having health insurance.

I also didn't have the greatest experiences with my doctors.

First of all, I am very very sick, so sorry if posting is short/lapsed/foggy. Mono ftl.

I got an email from Codepink today, urging President Obama to visit Gaza. This picture was included in the email. It is a picture of a girl, with the headline "I am Gaza", and the subtext, "40% of about 900 Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children."

Personally, I think the intended message in statements like that is, "40% of the people killed aren't even involved in this fight." (That's not 100% true, but that's another debate.) Still, it's just such an uncomfortable statement. "Women and children."

Here's one for you.

As a recent graduate of massage school, I am currently looking for work. And it seems that almost every single ad I see has the words, "Women only."

I'm refreshed by the fact that most of the men I've met in the massage business don't simply complain that the massage trade is "so sexist, buu huu, poor us", which is what one would expect when an otherwise privileged group gets shafted for the very thing that usually awards them privilege. Instead, those I've spoken with seem to have a pretty mature understanding that their disadvantage is the result of unfortunate, overarching societal themes--particularly sexual violence against women.

Abortion is okay!

On the one hand, I'm happy when I see other people being outward about this take: that abortion is plain OKAY. Not a necessary evil, not a sad shame, not something unfortunate that should-be-avoided-at-all-costs-except-that-it-should-of-course-still-be-an-option... but OKAY.

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about how this writer goes about their opinion--both in how they practice it and how they express it. It's a pretty heavy blog entry. The writer--whose gender I cannot determine--works/volunteers at an abortion clinic and a pregnancy clinic. A choice quote:

"To all of those women waiting in the clinic’s nurse station for their pregnancy results, I said ... “If you think abortion is wrong, I’m not going to sign this referral letter.”