I Am Woman...

Can I just say what a promising, inspirational time it is to be a woman! Gone are the days of oppressive societal roles, cultural expectations, and crude critiques based solely on physical appearance and compliance with damaging constructions of feminine norms! No longer do women exist only to be perceived as objects to be gazed upon, stifled, and forced into rigid, unfulfilling molds! Oh no, wait a minute. That totally still happens.

I've avoided doing a "screw you, Media, for prioritizing the size of a woman's jeans over her accomplishments" post because, well, it's been done. To death. What hasn't been said about our society's gross fascination with thinness, hotness, youth, and femininity? But recent twitterings in the blog world have forced me to break my own ban and vent some much-pent-up frustrations about the way our little world works.

Exhibit A: Michelle Obama. Harvard Law graduate? Check. Pioneering community service program advocate? Check. Fearless defender of policies supporting families? Check. America's first ever African American First Lady? Check. But really, let's get down to what's important: her body and clothes!


Almost everything I've read about Michelle in the days following Barack's inauguration have focused primarily on her wardrobe and her biceps. Both, in my opinion, are stellar, but are we serious? I understand the long-standing tradition of First Ladies serving as fashion plates, a la Jackie O., but this is beyond ridiculous. The LA Times website asserts, "Some found Michelle Obama's dress breathtaking and sexy. Others said it looked like a chenille bedspread or like it was made of toilet paper." Breaking news, indeed.

But it goes so far beyond the typical "Hot or Not" shallowness we're all used to. Not only is it appropriate for the public to exclusively judge her based on appearance, but it's also perfectly okay to find fault with all possible facets of it. The Black Artists Association is attacking Michelle because she chose inauguration looks by Cuban and Taiwanese designers, but not an African American one. The nerve! Not only did her outfit strike some as a toilet paper art project, but it didn't equally represent every race, nation, and culture on God's green earth! What kind of First Lady are we dealing with here? Then of course there was the uproar that followed when the alleged toilet paper gown's designer, Jason Wu, revealed he'll be doing "a significant fur collection." Aha! Guilty animal murder by association! So now the media has reduced our Harvard Law whiz kid/community leader/family activist to a mink-killing, racist, toilet paper wearer. Awesome.

And don't get me started on the buzz surrounding her exposed and impressively toned arms.



Oh, but it gets better. I haven't even scratched the surface of how high a value our society places on the female sex. Well, except for when they're fat. And by fat, I mean approaching the average height and weight criteria for optimal health. Just yesterday, Jessica Simpson made it on to every blog, entertainment show, news site, and radio program because, (insert gasp - it's quite shocking) she dared to don a body skimming outfit on stage, even though she had no visible bones protruding! Who does she think she is!? The media was up in arms over the fact that Jessica seems to have "let herself go" and no longer resembles the walking masturbatory fantasy she was in Dukes of Hazzard. Of course, Jess has since admitted that getting that body required 2-hour daily workouts and an aversion to all things carby, but hey - what's a little compulsive exercise and malnutrition when you can achieve a headline-worthy ass? She may not be the most talented singer (yes, she sings), but she's built a considerable career and done some admirable charity work - all totally worthless, now that she can't wear size 00 daisy dukes - what a loser!



Joining Jess on the Hollywood fat train are Jennifer Lopez and supermodel Karolina Kurkova. You know, J.Lo - ridiculously beautiful artist, recent mother of twins, and Karolina - insanely hot underwear model who claims to have a thyroid disorder (and who's listed on dnamodels.com as being 5'11" with a 25" waist). Perez "Going Straight to Hell" Hilton wrote, "No one wants to see the rolls, mami!" after Lopez wore a super revealing dress to the Golden Globes and had the audacity to bend in such a fashion as to create a crease in her skin. If all new moms (of TWINS!!) looked as hideously fat as J.Lo, I think the rates of postpartum depression would decrease exponentially.



Karolina was torn apart in the Brazilian media for her "cellulite and love handles" after Fashion Week in Sao Paulo last year. Well, with a little more heartless prodding and condemnation, she could get down to an enviable 88 pounds like Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston - oh, but wait - she died from complications due to Anorexia.

Thank goodness for that women's lib movement!

I'm a Slave 4 U

Guilty. Pleasure. Two words that have become so ingrained in my vocabulary, so instrumental to my daily life, that I'm often tempted to hyphenate them and pass the new word off as my middle name (as if my name needed any extra syllables). Nothing is as comforting, relaxing, tranquilizing as a walk down mindless entertainment lane. And last night really drove home how much I'd like to build a house, raise a family, and retire on said lane.


After refusing to drink the American Idol Kool-Aid for the post-Kelly Clarkson years, I sheepishly found my way back to Simon's magnificent V-neck t-shirts last season. And now that season 8 (?!) has officially kicked off with a string of tragic auditions, I'm fully invested. As is my Tivo. Fortunately, I opted for the non-bottom-of-the-barrel/non-actually-impressive recorder that can handle two shows at once, because 90210 was also on at 8 PM. Laugh all you want, but when a childhood obsession is reincarnated as an overacted CW mess, you watch it. My trusty Tivo was chugging along, dutifully recording both embarrassing trainwrecks, when I received a text from my forever-loyal BFF: "Nick Cannon just said Leo was coming up on the Inauguration Ball thing on Channel 7." A snag in the plan! An unexpected DiCaprio cameo?! No! Reliable as he is (and yes, he is a he), Tivo can't handle switching channels when he's busy recording two things at once. Beads of sweat began to form, and every muscle tensed, engaged in full fight or flight mode. What the hell could I do?

The story itself is pretty anti-climatic: I waited for a Leo appearance on snowy, non-cable basic TV while Tivo did his jobs (which Erin reacted to with an "Eww. You're like a poor person" text). But it really solidified the fact that guilty pleasures rank high on my Important Things in Life list (somewhere between family and well-Windexed glass surfaces). But I'm not the only one. For years, I faithfully, yet shamefully, clung to my guilty pleasure, while I assumed the rest of the world engaged only in significant and thought-provoking pastimes. Thank god recent events have proven how shallow and easily amused the rest of the population is. Just like me!

What is it about a guilty pleasure that is so long-lasting, so relentless? It's been almost 13 years since Romeo & Juliet came out, and I still can't quit Leo. A very close, very dear kindred spirit of mine hasn't, after all these years, been able to snuff out her Days of our Lives obsession. Does she appreciate the witty dialogue and the cast's true mastery of the acting craft? Um, are you kidding? She's the first one to ridicule the grandma/granddaughter/doctor love triangle, the pregnant-teen baby commissioning, the evil memory-erasing and subsequent disk storage of erased memories. But her awareness of D.O.O.L.'s (it's not really a guilty pleasure until you have an acronym for it) insanity does nothing to quell her addiction. If anything, each delightfully improbable storyline only fans the addictive flames. This is a woman who by day, assumes the role of a smart, successful, hot young professional. But by night, is consumed by thoughts of Stefano and Patch (I couldn't make those names up if I tried).

And she's not alone. My mom - my ridiculously beautiful, wise, talented mom - can't fully unwind until she catches up on her Russian soaps, which are so over-the-top and animated, even I can understand them - which means they must be really rudimentary. I know plenty of respectable adults that can't live without their US Weekly fix. And the perfect icebreaker for practically every awkward meeting is, "Hey, do you watch The Hills?" So, the moral of the story (or what I choose to designate as the moral because this is my blog, and you'll like it) is that everyone has a lame, lowbrow fixation that brings them unparalleled joy, and we should all learn to accept one another's unique guilty pleasures. And if I want to Windex my apartment while dancing to Britney on repeat, then you should probably learn to respect that too. Thank you.