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The barista flashed a smile and thanked her when she picked up her coffee. Being one of the first customers of the day, the whole transaction had been quicker than usual, for which she was grateful. She took a large gulp of the heavy caffeine, willing it to seep into the pores and power her forward. She asked when the attached book store would open, to learn that it wouldn’t be for a few hours yet, so she resigned herself to making do with the book she already had.
She took another hot gulp a few minutes later as she left her car in the hospital parking lot and stepped into the icy wind. Ignoring the information desk inside, she walked directly to the GI department. She’d been here before.
My innate optimism and sense of overall goodness in the world was sucker-punched today when I learned of a level of ignorance and immaturity so stunning, I’m in disbelief. Actually, I’m in denial. People like this don’t really exist, do they? Surely, even if they do, they aren’t given large amounts of money and the opportunity to speak to millions of potential viewers and express their stupidity and thoughtlessness without consequence. Surely not. Please, tell me this isn’t the world we live in.
I know. Now who’s being stupid.
Try to watch this video. I say “try”, because it’s kind of like a car crash – it’s hard to believe that what you’re seeing can be real, and your stomach starts to turn.
Fox News mocks the Canadian military
“The Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants,” Gutfeld said with a sneer, adding: “Isn’t this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country? They have no army.”
Another panelist, Doug Benson, said he was unaware Canadian troops were on the ground in Afghanistan. “I didn’t even know they were in the war. I thought that’s where you go if you don’t want to fight — you go chill in Canada,” he said. (Toronto Sun)
If you read here, you know that I’m not a political blogger. And it’s no secret that I ignore and avoid most so-called “news” because I don’t trust it any more than the guy in Nigeria who needs my help moving his bank account. If I didn’t actually watch these people’s lips move and say these amazing things, I would never be posting about this. I’d call bullshit on the idea that anyone could possibly be this dumb.
As if the existence of these people isn’t stunning enough, now they are claiming that it was a joke. That Canadians should “lighten the fuck up.”
In an emailed apology, Greg Gutfeld, the show’s host and leading idiot, wrote:
“However, I realize that my words may have been misunderstood. It was not my intent to disrespect the brave men, women and families of the Canadian military, and for that I apologize. Red Eye is a satirical take on the news, in which all topics are addressed in a lighthearted, humourous and ridiculous manner.”
I can appreciate a good-natured joke with grace and without losing perspective. I am most often offended by people who are way too easily offended by things and think the world owes them coddling (and I’m thinking of the many examples provided in American culture when I say this). But I am STUNNED at this level of outright insult. Only an idiot could expect us to be foolish enough to take that apology sincerely. “Ridiculous” is the only word he got right.
Everybody makes mistakes and says stupid stuff. Presumably not to this amazing degree and quantity of stupidity, and not on national television, but… ya know…
You’ll notice, however, that Gutfeld didn’t say that a mistake had been made by him. Neither did Fox News, as far as I know. An apology is meaningless when not genuine. Gufeld should be fired. Period. That is the only consequence that is reasonable to his actions and his position.
And this Bill guy, who was another panelist? The one who is continuing to slam Canadians on his Twitter account? I like this article’s take on it:
Among other shockingly ignorant comments on the show, [Bill Schulz] derided the Royal Canadian Mounted Police : “We ride heavily armoured cars, they have horses! … This is not a smart culture.”
That’s probably not meant as irony, but that’s how it usually works.
Yes. Yes, it is, isn’t it.
I’d like to see him/them come here and say that.
It may just be the complete lack of sleep (thank god I don’t get hangovers), but this is hilarious to me this morning. Here’s how to do the Social Networking thang the old fashioned way. I would love to meet him/them.
There’s plenty more of these to enjoy HERE.
Our 16 year old son, Cob, loped into the room at a slightly slower pace than usual. I inquired why, and he said that he felt a cold coming on. I advised him to drink lots of liquids.
“What else would I drink?”
—————
Cob has a job at a local Superstore, and they gave all the employees a survey to fill out.
Question: “Is there one thing that would improve your work environment?”
He wrote: “Ponies.”
—————
Cob’s sister has been repainting a large basement suite for their upcoming move, and she posted to Facebook:
J: Ow. It should all be done, with the exception of some touch ups here and there.
C: Hooray! Skill in Painting has increased to 448!
J: You’re a dork.
J: But it’s sad that I understand.
—————
His IM tag: “What part of secret and illegal do you not understand?”
—————
There’s yet another discussion going on about the tremendous benefits of Social Networking, on an email list that I’m a member of for my business. LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing, Plaxo, Facebook… the list goes on and on.
I’ve tried to ignore these things and not get involved in them, but whenever someone posts that their web site traffic increased tenfold since they joined one (or more) of these popular thingies, I groan. I really don’t want to have anything else that sucks up my time online. That’s my most often used argument, any way.
But if I’m totally honest, that has very little to do with it. Laziness is part of it – I’ve got a ton of other things that I should be applying my mental energy to (like, oh, tax returns, and client projects that are driving me insane.) Just the thought of jumping through web site registration hoops, no matter how quick and simple they may be, is often enough of an excuse for me to put it off. Don’t even get me started on illegible captchas.
As stupid as this is (both in concept and for me to admit publicly), “networking” is one of those words that makes me roll my eyes and make noises of disdain. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think a lot of it stems from my (limited, I’ll admit) experience with groups who like to put “women” and “networking” into every event title. Everyone I’ve known who goes to and loves these things has been a female who I tend to avoid being around. And I have never, ever, been able to wrap my brain around how “women only” groups and events are a positive thing for equality.
I know some really good people, and I get introduced to their friends, and almost my entire client base originated solely through word-of-mouth. So I guess that must mean that I “network”, but it’s an organic thing that just happens naturally and easily, and it isn’t choreographed or contrived.
I hate stuff that’s contrived.
But the biggest reason I groan and resist having all the online networking sites and accounts is that I really, REALLY like my privacy. A LOT. Which may sound quite stupid to say here, where I’ve dumped some very personal stuff for any Bob and his uncle to read, but that’s totally different, for many reasons. Here, it’s pretty much just me standing alone against a wall. You can throw tomatoes, roses, insults, boots… in the end it doesn’t matter, because it only affects me, and not the people in my life. (Knock on wood.)
But social networking sites are, by definition, totally different in that regard. I’ve blogged, here and at previous incarnations, for more than six years, and it’s taken some maneuvering at times but I’ve been mostly successful at keeping this particular world of mine in its own bubble. (Knock on a forest!) That’s the thing – I have different worlds. My life is far from linear or restricted. It kind of goes in a bunch of different directions, and only with rare people/exceptions do they ever overlap. I have my family and close friends. And I have my relatives and acquaintances. And I have people I’ve met through this blog who know a lot more about me than others in my life, and yet a lot less about me as well. And I have my professional life, and within that there are even more bubbles.
Generally speaking, all of those bubbles (and any bubbles within bubbles) are monitored and protected, and that’s the way I like it. Deviation from that norm makes me very uncomfortable. Because not only do I value my privacy very highly, but I try to respect and protect the privacy of others too, and… well… when you start smooshing all those bubbles into one common place, they float and start to bump around, and inevitably something will touch and pop.
It’s a power thing, I’ll admit it. So I guess there’s some trust (and possibly paranoia) issues going on.
I’ve dipped my toes in from time to time — I made a MySpace page years ago, that I promptly chickened out of promoting and let die a slow death. I Twittered. It made no sense to me, so I unTwittered. After a while I Twittered again, and then unTwittered again. I resisted Facebook forever, and even started to feel a bit smug about that, but finally caved in a few months ago, only because in my screwed-up family it’s the only way to have any hope of knowing what the hell is going on.
The thing is, I shoot myself in my own foot with these things, because I have such mixed emotions and hesitancy. Facebook is a good example – I have every privacy setting employed that I can find, so I can keep my contact list down to a very deliberate – and very small – set of people. Okay. Cool. I’m not hyperventilating. I’m not vulnerable. I can do this. All is well.
And then I see my husband’s Facebook account, and the many people who comment regularly on anything that he posts, and I can’t help but feel a… little… left… out. Like, hey? How come… why isn’t… I’d, uh.. kinda like to get Wall posts and poked, too… sometimes…?
Ah, but I don’t want to have to put myself out there, in the open, vulnerable to being ignored or intruded on, in exchange for that. There’s the rub. So I make it difficult to contact me, and then feel sorry for myself when nobody contacts me.
Oh, wait, but I did do *one* of the applications on Facebook. I took the IQ tests (because Doc goaded me). I scored 143 in the Advanced one. Which, given the previous paragraph, just goes to show ya.
The twists and squirms and internal conflicts are only getting worse, because of my business. With Social Networking becoming such an important and significant marketing tool, I would be a huge idiot to ignore or avoid it completely. Not that being a huge idiot is a preclusion for me at all, but I try not to be an idiot on my client’s dime. It’s one thing to choose not to online network to promote my own company, because then any loss is only mine. But more and more I’m finding that, I should really, probably, stop dodging around and shrinking away from even the smallest form of public spotlight, because people understandably want to know more about me – and more about the people I associate with – when I’m contacting them as a representative for a client.
But… but… doing that brings all my bubbles *WAY* too close for my comfort! As much as I sometimes bitch about being overlooked as if I’m invisible, I LIKE flying under the radar! I like the power and control that can afford me. Obviously, or I would’ve poked my head up, dyed it lime green, stuck an arrow-shaped neon sign with my name above, and shouted, “Hey, look at me!” long ago.
I know quite well how to get people noticed – it’s a big part of my job. I also know very well how to avoid being noticed, and I choose that for myself because it’s what I prefer and how I’m comfortable.
But just because something is comfortable and I like it, doesn’t make it healthy for me. (See: cheesecake and Corona)
And I’ve noticed that when people feel uncomfortable, they can learn a lot about who they are.
Dammit.
I feel an uncomfortable evolutionary thump coming on.
Do you know that I was in my late 20s before I ever saw another woman naked? Well, in real life, I mean. I had seen plenty of nude females in film or print – perfectly toned, perfectly sized, perfectly beautiful women. But until that day that I was changing at a public pool and an overweight gal in her fifties stripped down, the only stretch marks, sagging breasts, and cellulite ass I had ever seen were my own, and in medical photos. And for some reason, this never, ever struck me as strange.
MY LATE 20s! Cripes, I already had three kids by then! And a lot of battle scars.
I grew up in a very traditional and conservative household. I never, ever, saw my parents in swim suits, let alone naked. I tried not to judge people who chose to let it all hang out in their own homes in front of their young children, but it sure as hell wasn’t something I was familiar with, or that my husband and I ever adopted.
It just wasn’t done in our families. Now? Hmm. It’s still not a concept I’m comfortable with, but let’s just say that I’d be a lot more willing to at least consider the arguments for it. A grown woman before I ever saw another normal female body… jeezus… no wonder our culture is so screwed up.
When I got married, I had a 24 inch waist. I was healthy and slim and young. Within ten years of that, medications made me fat, I had stretch marks, walked with a cane, grey hair, false teeth and a face I didn’t recognize, and my glasses were hideously out of fashion because we couldn’t afford better. I was far more likely to have a monkey wrench in my hand, than a curling iron. Not because I didn’t want to feel – and be – girly, but because that wasn’t where my life was at the time.
That was all before I was 30 years old. Trust me, I’ve had my fair share of moments in front of a mirror wondering “What the fuck happened, and where am I under all this mess?”
I’m evolving from there, thankfully. It was really hard to find any motivation, and to feel attractive after all that. REALLY hard. And it still is, some days. But I made the effort because I didn’t want my daughter to follow my self-criticizing lead, and because I didn’t want my husband to have the job of trying to reassure me every second that I was worthy of his love and desire. I have zero patience for women who are too lazy to do the grunt work and who try to force the responsibility onto others to make them feel better about themselves, just so they can continue their negative habits, appeased and unburdened. (Although, I admit that it’s a damned sight easier with this stuff to judge and preach, than it is to do.)
My point is, I wish women would make the effort to at least develop a truce with their own body image, and I think TV shows like “How To Look Good Naked” are a HUGE step and an invaluable resource.
I am on a passionate crusade to get people to watch this show. Women and men.
On a typical Sunday morning in our home, our boys will stumble upstairs, bleary-eyed, to get coffee before disappearing back to their caves and their online games/chats/surfing/daydreaming. Along the way, they have to pass their mother watching the TV shows she recorded during the week, and now there’s a good chance that they’ll see a big screen full of naked female breasts.
The first time I saw “How To Look Good Naked” (UK version), it knocked my socks off (heh), and I hastily stopped the PVR and flipped to something benign on live TV whenever my 16 and 20 year old sons came within view. But I’ve changed my mind, and now I leave it playing. I just wish I could figure out some non-creepy-mom way to convince them to watch it, too.
I discovered this British TV show only recently, and I think it should be absolutely fucking MANDATORY for every female over the age of 13 to watch. But not just them — I feel really strongly that every man should watch at least one episode, too, just so they can maybe glean a small useful clue about how self-defeating and illogical the female mind sometimes is, and how damned hard it can be for a woman to recognize that fact and then deal with it.
I’m dead serious about this. I can’t remember feeling this strongly about a TV show before, much less one on the freaking Women’s Network! Gah! It’s a complete fluke that I even learned of this show – if it wasn’t for the salacious title I never would’ve given it a look during my cable menu scanning.
Essentially, the host is a talented, charming – and the most stunning of all, an obviously genuinely caring – fellow named Gok Wan who is a designer (and bloody brilliant therapist, in my opinion). Over the course of the episode, Gok works with an average-looking woman who can’t stand the sight of her own body, to help her build self-esteem and confidence. Many of the women on the show have not let anyone, even their partners/husbands, see them nude for years. Years, people! As much as this absolutely stuns me that there are wives living like this, at the same time I don’t doubt it for a second.
All of the women have broken down emotionally when they look at themselves in only underwear in front of mirrors at the start of the show. It’s painful and difficult for me to watch this portion, because their anguish is so damned palpable. As the show continues, Gok advises them about fashion for their body types, but only after he does SO MUCH more than that. One of the first things he does is he gets them to look closely at other women’s unclothed bodies – even touch them and compare sizes and textures of breasts and butts and bellies – and they all discover that what they see when they look at themselves is often *grossly* disproportional to what is real. It demonstrates with stunning results just how fucked up our self-perceptions can get as we females carry on our daily lives, and the dramatic (and painfully cruel) shock tactics that are necessary to zap us into reality.
Shock tactics such as hanging a photo (sometimes 2 or 3 stories high in size!) of the woman as she was at her most vulnerable – in just her underwear – in a highly public place and then asking passersby for comments. Sometimes the woman is standing right there (dying a million deaths), but sometimes she’s not.
Now, I could explain more of the types of stunts that the show does, but I’d really like to focus in on that one, because it’s the most intriguing to me in the big picture sense (no pun intended).
All of the women I’ve seen on the “How To Look Good Naked” shows are, well, I’ll just say it … average. Most are overweight, and they’ve all got some “lumps and bumps” that they abhor. Actually… you know what the women are? They’re invisible. I don’t mean invisible as in unimportant – not at all! I just mean that these are the women who you pass dozens of, every day on the street. They’re your neighbours and friends and relatives. And chances are good that they’re us – you and me. (They’re damned sure me, anyway.)
These are the women who you know and who slot into your lives with ease, but they’re not ones who would ever enter the conscience of a female who is standing naked in front of a mirror, when all she can see are zits, and stretch marks, and flab, and drooping, and that one piece of cheesecake she ate back in the nineties that went directly to her left hip and stuck there permanently and defiantly….
She doesn’t think about these invisible, average, everyday, lumps-and-bumps women then – she thinks about the women who glow. Those bitches, er… lovely females whose beauty pops out of photos and video screens. She thinks of the women who men turn to look at – hell, who SHE turns to look at, involuntarily. The ones who seem to have it all going on, without even trying. They’re much rarer in real life than the average, invisible women, yet isn’t it weird just how much and how often these rare examples pop into our heads – these women who we’ve probably only seen in film or print – and how we never compare ourselves to the other normal women we all know and are surrounded by constantly in real life? The women who we see in all their unphotoshopped, unsurgeried glory.
It fascinates me to watch the faces of the strangers on the show when they’re asked to view the woman’s almost naked body and then comment. Maybe I’m just imagining way too much, or maybe I’m hugely naive and post-production editing explains everything, but you can almost see surprise, and… this sounds goofy but… growing enjoyment in many of their faces as they accept the task before them. They likely agreed either on a lark or hesitantly – hell, there’s a camera pointed at them, so it can go either way depending on the person. But once they hear what they’re supposed to do and set into actually doing it, it’s as if they start seeing these women — these otherwise invisible women — for the first time. Which, of course, they are, but I mean seeing them in a way beyond the obvious.
It is my fervent hope that “How To Look Good Naked” doesn’t just teach a flat-chested wife how to dress sexy for her husband or a chubby girl how to feel confident enough to go out on a date. It’s my hope that it can teach all of us to start noticing individual points of beauty in common lumps-and-bumps bodies more often, and include them in our own mental collection of things we compare ourselves to.
If you’re a woman and you’ve felt unhappy about your body, please try to watch a few of these shows. And if you’re a man, watch them, too, and try to convince your woman to watch with you. I know, I know… hey, I didn’t say it would be easy! But I do promise that, if you let it, it will give you some insight into why men can tell us a million times that they still think we’re sexy, and we never seem to listen.
It won’t *explain* why we’re so dense, mind you — it’s just a TV show, after all, and not a full-out miracle. But it will give some insight into the fact that we’re really just as clueless as you are why we do it, and often even more so.
(But before you feel too superior, bear in mind that we keep telling you that bald is beautiful and you don’t seem to grasp that very well, either!)
My daughter is worth the effort to get a handle on this self image nonsense. My husband is worth the effort. My sons, and their perceptions and expectations about what is healthy behaviour in women, are worth the effort. And ya know what? Dammit, I’m worth the effort. (I think. No, yeah, I am. I am. It’s harder to remember to include that on the list, but I’m trying.)
It’s tough to rewire our female brains and change the crap we’ve let ourselves absorb, and that we subject ourselves to every day. But pigheaded stubbornness and deliberate practice, along with one or two good people in your life, can start to break the old habits and make it easier.
If you don’t currently have someone in your life who helps make it easier, watch the TV show. Let that be your someone, for starters.
~ * ~
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Look_Good_Naked
http://www.wnetwork.com/tv_shows/shows/how_to_look_good_naked/index.asp
http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/H/htlgn/
A friend of ours recently brought up the topic of “living in the now”. He’s a brilliant, educated man who makes great efforts toward self-evolution and realization, and he mentioned that most books toward that goal recommend ego-free immersion in the moment, but he finds that a state that is difficult to maintain.
I’ve let his words roll around in my head for a few days, and an image is starting to appear.
I’m not sure if I’m understanding him properly, but if I am, I think I’m the exact opposite of him on this.
I’m not really clear about the “ego-free” part of the concept, but more and more it appears that my life is very much lived “in the moment”, with only short, periodic states of consciousness outside of “the now”. These periods are almost without exception in the past, and embarrassingly the immersion – although short-lived and temporary – is deeper than is probably healthy.
I’m going to try to explain.
To myself.
You’re welcome to tag along for the ride if you like.
There’s something oddly reassuring about doing the laundry of my adult, moved-away, child.
Jan and her boyfriend live in an apartment complex with commercial machines that eat money and fabrics indiscriminately, so we encourage them to bring a bag of laundry over at the same time as they visit. Last night, the dryer setting was on ‘fluff’, unbeknownst to them, so when it was time for them to leave, their clothes weren’t done.
“I have to be down by your place tomorrow anyway,” I said. “I can finish it and drop them off.”
“Are you sure, Mom?” Jan asked. “You don’t have to. We can come back, or dry them at home.” She’s fiercely independent and is always offering to help me, and never asking for help in return.
“Of course, don’t be silly,” I assured her.
It wasn’t even remotely in my mind or motives, but as I took each article out of the dryer this morning and folded it, I admitted to myself, and now you, how much I miss that intimacy with her.
Now that I think about it, there’s a lot that you can learn from a person’s laundry.
Jan’s boyfriend, Ben, has always been kind of a snob and very label-conscious, buying expensive designer clothes when he was living at home and his parents were footing the bill. Now, mixed in with his Diesel and Abercrombie T shirts, are ones from less expensive, but still reasonable-quality, stores.
Jan, on the other hand, is very unconcerned about status and finds it difficult to wrap her head around paying more than $30 for a shirt or pair of jeans. Like mother like daughter, in that regard. But just as I’ve been trying to adjust my thinking and behaviour, I’ve been encouraging her to skip Walmart and buy better things for herself, too, because she’s worth it. So I love seeing the occasional nice new outfit that she’s “splurged” on.
Seeing a steady, but still controlled and conservative, turnover of new clothes tells me that they’re doing okay financially (something they’re not likely to admit to us, otherwise), but that they’re not being reckless and too indulgent.
Of course, no blood stains or rips are always good signs when your child is cohabiting with a partner.
I’m not sure how I’d handle chocolate sauce and whipped cream stains, but thankfully I haven’t had to.
And no baby diapers, which is a huge relief! (And… a disappointment in some ways. ACK! Who said that? SHUSH! Take that back!!)
Next month, the kids are moving into a basement suite of Ben’s grandmother’s, to save money for college and keep her company, as she’s been very lonely since her husband died a year ago. They’ll have their own laundry machines, and gone will be one of the excuses to see them as often.
Sigh.
