Can You Get Jordan Almonds Anytime, or Do You Have to Be Wearing Nylons, Attending a Baby/Wedding Related Function to Qualify for Them?

I’m going to tell you is what it’s like to go to a wedding or baby shower, in case you’ve never had the pleasure. 

Just think of it as beautiful, nice-smelling social anxiety buffet. Traditionally, it features all female guests of bride/mother-to-be. Even if there is a dude involved in this upcoming major life event, he does not have to come. If he is responsible for any of these pre-wedding/baby events, it’s basically beer drinking. So, since these “parties” are mostly women who barely know each other and span all ages and demographics and arenas of the featured female’s life, they’re crazy awkward. Showers are my very least favorite female-related ritual that does not have to do with menses moon dances. (We can’t talk about those. There’s a code.) 

You will see that, while the practice of throwing showers is nice because newlyweds/new parents get a bunch of stuff to outfit their sex pads/nurseries, and while I personally had delightful showers that I am grateful for, showers are generally very terrible and should be abolished. 

It starts when you arrive at the party at 2pm, old lady witching hour. You sit in your car in the driveway for a good 9 minutes, sports psychology-ing yourself to walk inside. ("You can do this! Bitch, get yourself inside, it's what we've been training for! You were made for this! Don't let your teammate down! She is counting on you! Afterwards, yes you can stop for Wendy's on the way home. Stop asking. Sure, yes to the french fries dipped in frosty. Will you please just go inside now.") When you do walk in, the smell of lipstick meets you in the doorway. It’s stretched across all the polite, close-mouthed smiling lips as far as the eye can see. There is small bad food in fancy bowls and coffee, if you’re lucky, and booze-less punch, if you’re not. 

You shuffle in, doubting your cardigan/skirt uniform choice, and put your gift on the big heap of gifts that look exactly the same as yours, like in “Christmas Vacation.” You’re a little sheepish because you know the female person of honor is going to open the gifts they already know they’re getting…because they picked them out…and told you to get them…and watched them come off their online registries, one-by-one. But what YOU as a guest did, see, what YOUR job was, is you paid for the thing and you wrapped it in shiny colored paper and put bows all over it and placed it on the pile. Good on you! 

Next you sit in a folding chair and wait uncomfortably until the bride/pregnant person acts adequately startled opening the gift that they know you know they know they’re getting. 

The gifts are fancy and useless, mostly. We bring baby clothes to baby showers because they’re so cute we might actually explode, leaving whimpering debris everywhere. No one brings plans for how to make the baby a conscientious, functional member of society, or a how-to manual on regaining the pelvic floor of the mom-to-be after she’s dusted it in childbirth. I guess, we’ll worry about that later, but for now, TINY SOCKS BY THE THOUSANDS. For wedding showers, newlyweds don’t NEED a houseful of beautiful museum pieces, but it sure helps get through the weird, harsh parts of early marriage that they can walk pensively through their houses, touching fancy framed wedding pictures and decorative fruit bowls, doesn’t it? 

As you sit up straight in the cardigan you now regret ever having purchased, making the smallest small talk you can make with the stranger next to you, she will tell you her birth story. Oh, yes, she will. Whether this is a wedding or baby shower. And certainly whether or NOT you asked. You were aiming for, like, tepid approval of the inevitable weather changes or maybe some local town gossip, but instead you get all her vaginal gore. 

Baby showers are a bunch of women sitting around, staring at the baby ship, the S.S. Mama, just willing for it to dock. There is much discussion of the ship’s parts and when it might land and how uncomfortable it will be to unload. Then, all the current or former uterus owners in the room will feel compelled to share their own cargo unloading stories. Of course, the longer and more gruesome the better. Birth stories are like fishing tales, they get wilder with each telling. By the time an 85 year-old woman is sharing about the birth of her child who is now herself an AARP member, it was a 9 day labor with a 14 lb kid and the only analgesia was whiskey for the doctor. (Who was also the town mayor and vet). At wedding showers, people might share some tales of their own weddings, but typically only the people who have been married in the past 3 years. Everyone else has already divorced/killed their spouse and don’t want to relive it. But that won’t be you, hahaha, because for you everything will be great. 

If you find that you’re having trouble keeping down your finger sandwiches, it’s because everything is really, really pretty, and too much pretty induces nausea in most adult mammals. Showers reinforce women’s need to perpetually pretty-up everything. There are fucking. Bows. Everywhere. Everyone babbles about patterns and textures and style. Do you know what parents of a newborn need most to survive infancy? Not style. They need to NOT worry about fabrics because those fabrics are about to be shat on and it’s best not to be too attached to them. Do you know what newlyweds do not need? Fancy dishes. Do you know why? Because the first year of marriage is a lot of work and those lovely 16-piece china sets will make great throwing disks when they really want to take each others’ heads off.  

You sit there stewing about how women aren’t ruling the world because they’re too busy decorating themselves, babies and houses. You’re THINKING, “eww, gross, stop it” but you’re SAYING, “what a lovely diaper cover. I wonder if they have it in the paisley.”

There might be games, and they are pretty sad, usually. Some of them involve diapers and pudding. I shit you not. (Get it?) Or possibly folding or hanging tiny clothing or making wedding dresses out of crepe paper. It's all very 1950's Barbie's Dream House. Most often one game will involve saying/writing down some advice for the lady in the hot seat. The advice everyone gives is abominable. It’s all shallow platitudes because no one wants to scare her off from the huge, scary thing she's about to do. Parents of newborns need to be told that they’re going to fuck things up, a lot, because it’s impossibly hard to build a person, but we all fuck it up and yet still most of us make it out alive. They need baby sitters, they need nipple cream, they need Maxi pads, they need help. They don’t need to be told to “sleep now, who knows the next time you’ll get to sleep through the night!” Newlyweds need the same advice- “you’re going to fuck things up, a lot, because it’s impossibly hard to be/support another person, but we all fuck it up and yet still most of us make it out alive.” Don't tell them not to go to bed mad. Going to bed mad is a better alternative than going to bed dead through murder/suicide.

It's possible I'm cynical. 

My idea of a perfect shower- either baby or wedding- is at a bar or an arcade with lots of skee ball. With girls AND boys. The boys don’t get to NOT care about the baby or home maintenance and the girls don’t have to care too much. Everyone laughs at how insane the whole circus is and nothing is wrapped. There are no bows. There is a ridonc amount of chocolate and warm bread. If you have to give advice, it must start with a story about this one time that you really screwed up badly as a parent/spouse and how you recovered from it. Keep it brief, honest, and in good humor. Each guest should swear a commitment to be the woman/couple's village who will help them survive the hard stuff. Each person should give them a voucher that commits them to saving them when they need saving. 

You can still give little nets full of Jordan Almonds as a shower gift. That shit is delicious. 

I Think It's Probably Time to Get Out of Bed and Start Using the Words Again

It's been hard to write lately. I'm not alone in this. My creative friends are all clogged up, too. My sketch comedy writing class is full of forlorn people trying hard to make jokes, but subconsciously creating nothing but sketches about newscasters announcing the end of the world. My loves trying to do the National November Writing Month challenge of finishing a 50,000 word manuscript in a single month have all written about 11 words toward their goal.

Last night at a restaurant I overheard a woman telling her companion, "I heard that people who voted for Clinton are calling suicide hotlines at such a rate, the hotlines are having to put people on hold!" (A quick Google search proved that rates were up, at least temporarily, a spike like after September 11, but it sounds like no one asked the callers' political persuasions. Frequent phrases used in a similar texting help-line were "scared" and "LGBTQ."). This lady retelling the story and the elderly gentleman she was with (she was about 40, he was about 90, I couldn't get a read on the relationship but I'm choosing to assume it was not nefarious because I'M TRYING TO BE POSITIVE) both couldn't believe that Democrats would be so bummed out about their person not winning an election that they were contemplating suicide.

It's not that. It's not that "our girl" lost. Seriously. You have to be tone deaf to think this national depression is about Republicans and Democrats. I mean, I'm speaking for myself because mine is the only head that I'm in, but the reason I'm feeling stifled and afraid and so, so ashamed is not because my candidate lost. She was barely my candidate. I really hate politics. I think of it as powerful people enhancing power and playing chess with less powerful people. And it's really, really not because a Republican won. I don't care. I normally don't assume anything of anyone if I know they vote one way or another. I know a lot of people who vote Republican or Democrat for one reason or other and just have to, no matter the candidate du jour. I don't care how you vote. Usually.

The reason I'm feeling so despondent right now is because this election was different. It felt like we were holding our breath waiting to see if humanity was actually good or bad. We ascribed a lot of moral value to where we placed our votes this time because the Republican nominee, now president-elect, articulated messages of hate and was so clear that he stood AGAINST so many Americans. The general sense was that your vote demonstrated that you were either on Team Everybody Matters (not voting for Trump) or Team Only a Few Matter, We'll Eliminate the Rest (Team Trump).

I get that that is a gross oversimplification and potential rhetoric, fishing for emotional response. There is much complexity and grayness in choosing a candidate or 'side.' I also don't begin to assume that if another candidate had won from a different team, everything in America would now be groovy for everyone come January...BUT it's very hard not to see a scary future with the person who won in charge.

Making America great again, in how Team Trump defined it, means going back to only the elite privileged few having voices/votes/lives that count. Regarding his plans to start identifying Muslims in some sort of a registry, it's hard not to wonder what the average German was thinking in the late 1930's as the extremists started blaming one group of their population on all their problems. What could they have done (could we do) to stop it? Were they sitting there saying, "it can't be THAT bad" right up until the camps were built? Members of Team Trump have already favorably recollected when America did that to the Japanese during WWII. So...?

There's been progress in identifying the systemic racism still faced by African Americans. Lack of representation and support has been called out. We're woke, right?! There it is! In the job force, police force, justice and educational systems, news and entertainment, housing market, electoral system...the list never stops. So we can fix it right?? Or are we just doubling down now that bigots feel empowered by their government? More empowered. Holy hell.

What about the LGBTQ community? Over the past decade there's been genuine hope and new freedoms FINALLY available to them that may all be retracted now. They may be in even MORE danger and more omitted from society.

I've talked about what it feels like to be a woman right now with the stated views of the new leaders about women and our rights. It's disheartening and very scary.

So. What next? I'm trying to go back to not caring about politics. Stop being franchised, it's not good for me, go back to being disfranchised where I belong. I never trusted the people in charge and knew that they did not have mine, the average bear, or certainly the underdogs' best interests in mind. (The animals are all screwed, too, apparently). I've been groomed since a young age with suspicion of the powerful elite, starting with the multitude of anti-establishment novels we read in high school. Be weary of power, be vigilant to protect those cast aside. So that's what we'll do, I guess.

Don't expect the 'man' (this orange man, or any man) to take care of us. Expect him to feed his ego and his followers, no matter the consequences to everyone else. Speak up when you see people being harassed, threatened, hurt. Lose all the political labels, if possible, because they're just making this murky and trying to keep it highbrow instead of the playground dirt ball that it is.

Fight to protect those who need it. Get out from underneath the comforter on your bed where you've been hiding the past few weeks. (She says, while writing under her comforter, propped up in bed). Be like a hawk looking for people who need your support. Remember we're all trying to human together, we're more alike than different, and even though humanity has proved AGAIN to be kind of a shitty monster, we have to try to protect the good stuff in each other.

I'm for people. I'm going to use whatever voice I have left to speak for them, and if necessary I'll put my body in the way to protect them, too. Don't give up. We need each other. I need you. You don't know what kind of hero you might be for someone, but you have to be here to hero. I get feeling desperate and alone and jaded, but don't do it alone and don't do it forever. There's good work to be done. Out of bed.

That's all I know so far. Have you come up with anything better?

This is Why the Women Are Crying Today.

I had a good friend tell me, about my reaction to Trump being elected president, "It bothers me how upset and frightened you are."

It bothers me, too. I'm trying not to be melodramatic and I'm saying all the vaguely comforting things about checks and balances and branches of government and such. Really, though, it feels like there is an enormous bully army built with the intent of fighting inclusion, other-ing the underdog, and keeping women and minorities in our place. The powerful will gain more power, the weak will be cast off. Like it was, like it always has been, like apparently now, it always will be.

This morning I woke up furious and my plan was to a) find a computer person who could create a secure, hack-free social network we could set up to start rescuing our Muslim neighbors when the government comes for them and b) because I assume crimes against women will go up and I cannot presume they will actually be considered crimes and/or be effectively punished, we need to build an army of vigilantes who can take care of it.

The evolution of the thought actually went, "well, so under this administration, women are just sex playthings and baby makers, so there goes access to affordable birth control and abortion services, so I guess there goes women ever having sex with men again....oh, wait, women don't have a say in it, men can take what's not theirs with impunity as this man in charge of this army has admitted he does....so since we already know that neither police nor judges will support women who have been sexually assaulted, I guess at least they've still left us a bunch of guns, so we can take care of it ourselves....ok, we can work with that."

This morning I was going to shave my head and start doing push-ups and lead the revolution. That was all this morning.

Since then, I just feel silenced.

I'm afraid. I'm disappointed. I'm disillusioned. 

My worries cover the LGBT folks, people with disabilities, immigrants, minorities, the economy, peace...I'm worried this leadership might spread a broad hurt, but today I'm most thinking about women.

Probably because I am a women and I took a baby women with me to proudly vote yesterday.

In my reflections on the significance of the results, I've concluded today that I was misguided in teaching my daughter to expect her voice to matter, to assume she alone has authority over herself. It's untrue. She's just a girl. I'm just a girl. We will continue to be owned, marginalized, thrown away, kept ineffective, quiet, docile. Our only value is our prettiness and appeal to men. So instead of shaving my head, I should color it a more enticing color of yellow. Instead of helping Anna become the nihilistic ninja she naturally wants to be, I'm going to slow her down with dresses and heels and tell her it's time to be quiet.

I'm afraid.

It feels like the Men's Rights' Association president has just expanded his territory. On my run tonight, I had dark, scary thoughts like, "maybe I should just start carrying lube with me, so when I inevitably get attacked because I dared to jog by some entitled man with my vagina, I won't get as much tissue damage. Very practical."

I'm disappointed. 

This isn't even about Hillary Clinton for me. She has some admirable qualities and I gather she'd make a good leader, but I'm not a party person, I just wanted someone who might advance, instead of impede, women's progress. And I know a lot of people don't think she's a good feminist because her husband cheated on her and she stayed with him, keeping her family intact and continuing on their mutual rise to power, but internationally she's already been good for women in her previous roles, it would have been cool to see what could have happened here.

Plus, yeah, it was emotional to see a female Ghostbusters this summer, it would have been bitchin' to see a female president. 

I'm disillusioned.

The past few years have been so promising. We've seen women in civic and corporate leadership and making huge steps in science and business and entertainment. There was a feeling that women not only could do the same things as men, but could excel with the same opportunities and deserved the same reimbursement, respect, and chance for growth, and might actually get it.

And maybe (here's the most shiniest hope nugget I had), maybe some of the qualities traditionally feminine; empathy, caring, skilled listening, ability to discern, reflect, and discuss emotions, weren't actually flaws, but maybe were actually superior qualities that made good leaders?!

But nope. Wrong. That's crazy talk. All we can continue to expect is decisions made based on ego/pride and reactions instead of reflection.

I know, I know. Be still and quiet, keep the mushy stuff home where it belongs.

We'll be mocked and harassed, threatened and intimidated for trying to use our voices. Still. Some more. We had the tiniest sliver of hope that it might be different, that there might be someone fighting our causes with us, but no. The mob chose the person who shows nothing but disdain for women.

It's not just grand scale intimidation and dismissal women face. Many men are just as irate about this result and feeling just as disenfranchised, but in the last week I've been shut down multiple times by the men who love me, when discussing sex inequality. I'm "too into this gender stuff" and  I'm "being too sensitive." My desire to promote and protect women is critical of men and unbecoming to discuss.

I'm sure they're right. I know it's childish to get passionate and have hope and stuff, I get that.

I will make every effort to be silent and keep everyone comfortable.

So, I'm put back in my place. Behind and under angry men. They will lead us and decide what is right for our education, bodies, families, careers, futures. They will lead us but they will never really see us because we are mostly just pretty bobbles. We had gotten too big for our britches. Now we know.

So, I guess that's a lot of words for silence. Now go ahead and tell me all the ways that I'm dumb and wrong. I've sort of beat you to it.

This is why women are crying today. We feel like we have to give up, when very recently we expected to rise.