Zen

I went to a baby shower yesterday, and an aquaintance of mine, who works with my mother and the woman having a baby, came in with his son. Connor was being shy, wrapped tightly around his father's neck. Someone asked what happened to his blonde curly locks, and his father said, "Well, I said that when he was a year and a half he had to get a boy haircut."

"Why?" my mom asked. I was wondering this, too. Why is it vital that this little boy should have short hair?

"Because...he's a boy!" (laughs)

Maybe I'm just really thinking hard about my Sociology class, but I don't know if this is putting the right idea in that little boy's head.

So, I found out a few weeks ago that I am now a member of the Youth Leadership Team of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. I'm pretty excited about it, and suddenly I am being given a powerful voice in my community, one that I get to use to educate and influence my fellow humans with. My first opportunity to save the world is at hand! I know that I have not been an active member recently, but the fall always seems to be the time I pick up old projects as well as start new ones, so I hope you all wil bear with me and what I know will be my randomness in these coming months.

It has been a very long time since I have written here at AGA, and I must say that I am surprised that my blog remains here, and I am thankful that I am still able to write in it. There are many things I have observed/done/heard recently that propel me to write again.

I got a job in February at a grocery store near my house. I have made a solemn vow to never let myself work in fast food, and prior to obtaining a high school diploma, this is really the only other option for me. It isn't a terrible job, although the pay is low and the customers are sometimes... less than happy, to understate the situation. I have a great opportunity as a cashier there however, because this grocery store is the heart of the neighborhood surrounding it, and is probably the reason "the ghetto" doesn't exist in Lincoln.

I feel as though over the last few days I have been inundated with sexist comments and commercials. I sit at a lunch table with a couple of guys, who are all close friends. I am pretty close with half of them, and I've dated two of them. But the other day we were all joking around, and one boy did not seem to think what we said was very funny (had he said it, of course this would be a different story), so he said "Zen, you're such a twat."

I'm not sure why this triggered an ultra-sensitive feminist switch inside me, but since then I have heard so many insults and seen so many diet pill commercials, I'm beginning to wonder if being a woman is as amazing as I thought it was.

My friend and I were walking home from the grocery store, and as usual I was complaining about the male species, and (not as usual) she was beaming about her boyfriend. I dislike myself for my feelings toward adolescent boys, but for the most part, they have it coming. I was complaining about predictability and dominance, and how I have both, at the moment. The first I don't care for and the second I do, but only in a specific way. I want to assert myself, I want to grow to be understood, and to be understanding. This is not possible, however, when the other person gives up and lets you be dominant. There is not assertion necessary!

I am beginning work to become a DONA certified doula, or labour assistant. One of the first steps I have to take is to read five books from a list, on breastfeeding, birth choices, and pregnancy in general. I just started reading a book called The Mother of All Pregnany Books. The author talks about how men should lay off the tobacco, drugs, and alcohol if they wish to have kids. She says "In other words, let him have all the sex and rock 'n roll he wants, just not the drugs!"

I couldn't help feeling betrayed by this woman. I take pregnancy as being quite empowering, if handled well, because woman's wisdom and bodies can do amazing things. But the author's use of the word "let" seems hardly appropriate. As if women lay around and wait for men to impregnate them. Maybe I'm reading into this the wrong way, but it just doesn't feel right to me.

We all see Christmas commercials on t.v., and they have one of two themes:

1: Man surprises woman with diamonds/Woman surprises man with power tools.

2: Little children seeing/writing to/talking to Santa.

Obviously some commercials do not fit into these two choices, but you must admit that most of them do.

So, I was watching a Best Buy commercial, where Santa comes into the room, and the boy and girl are staring at a Best Buy present under the tree, and don't even see him making faces and waving at them. I am not Christian by any means, but I suddenly became quite puzzled at the secularity of Christmas. The traditions of Christmas were adapted from the pagans of Britian, where it was easier to put a new story into the already celebrated holiday (Yule), than to create new ones. But, there was never a time in our history until now that buying presents was more important than giving thanks.

I've began to notice in recent weeks the differences between my female and male friends. I'm not sure what has made me suddenly compare the two, but there is one thing I find a bit odd. Manners. The majority of my guy friends are lacking in social graces and the basic knowledge of how things work. Is this too vague? It might be, and I apologize, but I'm not sure how to explain myself.

Why do my girl friends have these basic manners? I am beginning to wonder if these things are simply not taught to young boys. Are we still having trouble, giving our boys Hot Wheels and toy guns, and our girls Easy Bake Ovens and drink-and-wet dolls? Or is there some sort of chemical difference? I'd love to think girls are inherently more intuitive, and to some extent, it might be true.

I just finished washing an egg mask off my face, which is horribly unpleasant while it is drying. I smell like home-made bread, but at least my face is soft! I pluck my eyebrows, probably every week, but at least they have good arches! I shave my legs every three days (or more in the winter), but at least I don't have to be embarrassed!

Why do we do all this!? My guy friends roll out of bed, get dressed, and a select few brush their teeth. Hygiene aside, how do they get away with it? People assume a girl is dirty if she doesn't shave, or she's a lesbian tree-hugging hippie feminist. But a guy is just a guy. ...no more to it.

I seem to have aquired a boyfriend, who is not exactly the fairy-tale gentleman, but he is awfully sweet. I began to think, as he said all the right things the other night, that I was falling in love.

One of my more feminist friends told me that love got in the way of the fight. You'd become biased and stop seeing clearly. But I cannot agree with her. I think that I was biased already, and that being in love is simply a daily reminder that men are not inherently bad, they're just inherently ignorant.

With that, I am gaining faith in MANkind as individuals, just not as politicians.

My high school is doing a play our director has been writing for four years, called "The Unsafe star: The Emmett Till Story" I believe that feminism is only one part of a larger push for equality for all, so the civil rights movement is just as important to me as pro-choice rallies. For those of you who do not know the story of Emmett Till, and many people don't, Till was a 14 year-old boy from Chicago, who went to Mississippi to visit family. It is said he whistled at a white woman, and her husband and her husband's half brother beat the boy for five hours before shooting him and tying a cotton-gin fan to his body, before throwing the body in the Tallahassee. Rosa Parks said she did not leave her seat because she was thinking of Emmett.

My theatre director called me a big beautiful woman the other day. I'm 5'4 and a half, and 145 pounds. I don't feel big, but when she said it, I didn't feel beautiful, either.

We were taking measurements for costumes, I'd measure, she'd write it down. She said "perfect" for a few girls measurements, and they were all small, but I wouldn't call them skinny. My friend Catherine had to measure me (because I can't very well measure myself)and when she got to my hips, she said 42". This boy (he's not a friend, exactly, but he's more than an aquaintance) said, 'more like a hundred'. It didn't bother me that much, because I know him, and it's hard to explain.

There is this cycle of thought many of my friends and I share when we talk about dating. You are sure of your morals, and want to find a guy who understands/respects/shares them. You can't find a guy like that, so you complain about being lonely. You think 'maybe I'm too picky', so you lower your standards. You're unhappy with the guys you date, and therefore up your standards again, only to repeat the process.

Boys in high school are coming toward their sexual peak, usually said to be at 19. They are, therefore, insanely horny monsters, who care very little about your feelings. I do not wish this to be true, and it is probably not, but the guys bold enought to walk up and ask for your phone number are usually not shy about asking for other things later on.

Yesterday was fantasic! I just had a great day, an amusing lunch hour (which is always good), and happy classes.

..Today I had the same events. Only I am talking myself of the invisible wall that separates healthy me from self-mutulating 'her'. I have no idea how these things happen! It's killing me to feel this way. There are so many things a girl can blame her mood swings on, but we all know the most famous one:

PMS.

I hate it when my monthly cycle is blamed for the way I act or feel, but I find a bit of truth to it. I am about four or five days from my period, and I can't say this hasn't happened before.

I was at my friend's house watching t.v, when this diet pill commercial came on. The ad was a girl in a tank top and spankies, with rhinestones on her butt with the product name spelled out. She was dancing/stradling a chair. I got this look on my face of confusion, disgust, and nausea put together. I couldn't believe it! It didn't help that she was 'perfect'.

Like you see nerds in movies, the way they're already attractive, well, feminists are portrayed as ugly girls who masturbate too much. I'm mainly speaking of movies marketed towards teenagers.

Back to the commercial, however. I was ready to take a stand, write a letter or something, tell my friends how horrificly sexual everything is becoming and how it scares me. Sex should not be paraded around like a purebred poodle, but it should be talked about in healthy ways, before girls get a body complex. I sat back down and thought about how long this fight would be if I undertook it. Guys would dismiss it, 'she's just a bitter lesbian man-hater'. Girls wouldn't want to disagree, for fear of being labeled that way, too.