I am rarely ever able to take advice. And, despite what you may be thinking, this isn’t a roundabout way for me to say that I listen to Papa Roach and fasten my pants with a belt buckle shaped like a gun. Instead, it’s a way to express that sometimes I am just a different kind of moron.
When I was in middle school, I made myself look like Eddie Munster’s twin, only with more hair product and eyeliner. My dad, as delicately as could be, suggested I go the more natural route. However, that only caused me to increase the amount of hair spray I used, which curiously seemed to have a direct relationship with the number of people who would be willing to see my boobs.
When I was in high school, my parents pleaded with me to take driver’s ed so I could get my license and have a life outside of watching Shipmates and fashioning dildos out of tampons. I refused, mostly because I was too busy taking Latin online. As a result, I got my license at the age of 21.
When I was in college, I was urged to major in anything other than Art History in order to ensure that my degree would mean more than my ability to offer up the history of the paper it was printed on.
But, I own my mistakes. I would even go so far as to say that I cuddle my mistakes at night and seductively whisper in their ear that they’re not mistakes in my eyes and they’ll be all like ‘You’re just saying that’ and I’ll just kind of smile since they have no idea. Because for me, my mistakes comprise a chain of the happiest accidents I could ever hope for. I was hideous for years, which meant that it didn’t matter that I had no life in high school, which then led to me majoring in Art History because really, the only thing more tailored for losers would’ve been ‘Anime’, and here I am – grateful for all of it.
This is why I think Steven Ward should be hung by his scrotum from a meat hook and forced to drink Clamato while watching re-runs of Night Court. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, I don’t blame you. But, Steven Ward is a self-proclaimed matchmaker who asserts that he is, “on a mission to bring love into peoples’ lives one soul at a time.” Since bringing love into peoples’ lives goes hand in hand with having a reality show on VH1, guess how I know about this poor man’s Matt LeBlanc?
They're totally fucking.
He, along with his mother JoAnn, host Tough Love – a show full of so much bullshit, it makes Dick Cheney look like the kind of guy you’d go out drinking with and trust to drive your car back at the end of the night. The premise is simple – assemble a group of women who can’t find men because of commitment issues, career obsession, body image or all of the above. Then, he fixes them by instructing that they all stop being such sluts. With its assumption that women need to take it upon themselves to keep a relationship or risk being thrown away like an old pair of underwear because the elastic has broken, Tough Love is a feminist’s worst nightmare. Luckily, I’m not a feminist. I’m just kind of irked in a way that makes me uncomfortable. The differences may be negligible, I understand, but I don’t want to harp about slut shame or how this show, along with Tucker Max, hurts society.
My issue is that choice is stripped of these women all so they can find a man with just the right amount of tribal tattoos as to be bad ass, but at the same time employable. They are advised on how to conduct themselves in the company of men (usually this means that they don’t say anything at all) and since most of these women are both dependent on alcohol and estranged from their child’s father, it is not pessimistic of me to assume that they will make mistakes along the way. The biggest one most likely being that they signed up to be on a VH1 reality show. But they’re Steve Ward’s mistakes as delivered to him by the umbilical cord he undoubtedly still shares with his mother.
Point is – never take anyone’s advice seriously. Unless of course it’s coming from a 20-something who just ate a sleeve of Oreos in her Snuggie. Only then does it make sense.
No SILS this week because I have been pissing out of my asshole for eighteen hours but assuming that you’re through vomiting because of what I just said, come back for the details.
I have been pale my whole life, and, despite numerous attempts to combat this disease, I’m still not used to the tone used when people exclaim, “You’re so PALE!” It’s the same one I suspect people use when they find out a sex offender is living in their neighborhood–one of disgust and outrage that ultimately leads to a torch filled witch hunt.
I cringe to think of all the times I tried to voluntarily turn myself into a George Hamilton lookalike, using everything including cheap self tanners, baby oil on a nude beach and tanning beds affixed with industrial strength exhaust fans.
Eventually, I stopped trying once I realized that I didn’t want to look like a cured ham at age 35. For years following my vow to stop trying to trick people into thinking that I was hot because I looked like a photo negative, I still failed to use sunscreen. This is partially because I was lazy and didn’t want to smell like coconut-scented chicken grease, but also because I thought that any sun I unintentionally picked up from being outside was like the free spot on a Bingo card and therefore failed to cause any sort of harm.
I recently wised up and bought Neutrogena’s Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock (SPF 85) and have been using it as my primary moisturizer. I was skeptical about its claim that it won’t clog pores, along with it’s advertised “lightweight clean feel.” However, after one week of using it, I can vouch for both. The scent is nothing special, but not cloying either. In case you’re as sloppy as I am and get it too close to your eyes, and…wait for it because this is revelatory…it will burn. I had to learn the hard way, twice.
This is inspired from We Have Lasers, a site dedicated to the overall failure of the 90s. They wouldn’t post my own laser portrait because I submitted it under Vagina Drum, and there was fear that vagina would be too “R-rated for We Have Lasers.” I guess that’s what I get for daring to imply that the vagina even exists, but I’m optimistic that one day, we’ll all stop clutching our pearls over what sits or flaps between our legs. Whatever, it’s still a cool site and I encourage you to go there–but now I’m in the awkward position of being one of those people who thinks that their photos are really interesting and/or funny.
Sadly, this is probably the best school picture I have. All others involve braces, prison issue eyebrows and a general lack of concern for attempting to look like a human being. For whatever reason, I wanted my hair curled that day. So my mom and I got up really early and she did it for me as I stood there inhaling White Rain hairspray and wishing I had just dyked out like I always did and settled for one of those skull shredding plastic combs they give you at school.
Once I got dropped off, one of my classmates spotted me and made some sort of approving comment about my hair and I hissed at them, ate the skin of a nearby squirrel and hid behind the nearest wall. I’m just kidding about the first two things–but I did hide because I guess I was embarrassed that I had discarded my L.A. Gears to be a girl for the day, and someone noticed. Also, you can’t see it in the photo, but my denim shirt was somehow made better by a series of Looney Tunes characters cleverly peeking out from the pocket, and of course I had to fuck that up by crossing my arms like what now.
I know I’m probably alienating a lot of people here, but this will just make my “America sucks and it’s your fault” post go down a little easier so…count your blessings?
I’m not a feminist, and while we’re at it, I’m clearly not a Christian. I minored in Women’s Studies in college, which is just another thing defensive white people say, along with “Some of my best friends are black” in order to prove to everyone that they’re socially aware and not like all those other white people who are in the KKK. I don’t regret it, since I learned a lot of what I should’ve already known, because while it’s cool that history focuses solely on how George Washington was a fucking badass, it would be nice if Nancy Reagan saying “No” to drugs wasn’t the only example of women making a difference.
I wouldn’t say that I’m scared to write this post, even though I know I’m putting myself at risk of being attacked by droves of 20- something grad students marching to Ani DiFranco’s Not A Pretty Girl as they hold me down and make me wear reusable pads, I just don’t want to be misunderstood. The thing is, choosing to opt out of calling myself a feminist somehow means that I don’t support women’s rights and am part of the “You can’t rape a slut” group, which is not much different than assuming that I would illegally purchase methamphetamines or use an escort service while touting family values because I’m not a Christian.
I actually used to be an avid feminist, because I was in a shitty relationship and I figured that feminists don’t have shitty relationships. So, somehow claiming a label without context meant that I would suddenly stop trying to escape by watching Roots and thinking, “That could be nice.” Of course, I was wrong, and instead of getting myself out of the situation, I just felt ashamed every time I sacrificed my own happiness for convenience because it felt like Lucretia Mott herself was looking down on me with disgust and all I could come back with was, “nice beard.”
Eventually, I packed my suitcase of feminist platitudes and hauled it into my current relationship, only to discover that he didn’t refer to himself as a feminist. From this, a conflict sprouted in which I flew off the handle because although our beliefs paralleled one another, he chose not to assign an innocuous term to the bundle of truths he subscribed to, and that made me uncomfortable. We went through the usual play list–female genital mutilation, Purity Balls, and sex trafficking. We both agreed on their collective ability to provoke both rage and nausea, only difference being that he didn’t find it necessary to refer to this visceral reaction as “feminism” and that pissed me off.
For years, I cultivated my defensiveness–always ready to blame everything on patriarchy and Miss America Pageants, so when he said that these were human issues, not women’s issues, I lost it because it sounded like, once again, women’s issues were being put into an empty room labeled, “People who care.” I fervently tried to defend my position but in doing so, I realized that feminism, like everything else, is composed of numerous pockets of self interest that are ultimately exclusionary and contradictory. While I never would’ve admitted it then, I was having a hard time finding the reasons why feminism should even exist as an entity because when it came down to it, I was only defending a word, and that’s certainly not a business I want to be a part of. Being an R Kelly fan or two-time winner of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest are both interchangeable with “feminist” because ultimately, none of it changes the chemistry of what I believe.
I know that there are people out there who legitimately believe that women are inferior or that equality has been reached so we should all sew up our mouths, open our cunts, and shut the fuck up. But those people also fall into a unique Venn diagram in which “People who will die of Rabies” and “People who own the Fast and the Furious Franchise Collection on DVD” intersect, so I feel safe in knowing that life has punished them enough without me quoting The Feminine Mystique. Sure, those people are assholes, but assholes come in all different shapes and sizes, some of them just happen to wear sweatshop free “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts made of organic cotton.
