My One Make-Up Item

I used to use a lot of make-up... back during my first year of high school when I went from trying to become a lesbian (more on that in a later post) to super feminine. Neither worked well for me so even before I knew the Radical Feminism idea of gender as both learned and personal, potentially harmful, I knew that some things just did not work for me.  Makeup felt like it was suffocating me, weighing me down, choking me up and that might have had something to do with the very intense sensitivity of my skin and high number of things I'm allergic to.

Makeup also made me feel like a fake yet the social pressure to wear it was so strong that I kept wearing some of it.  I used some lipstick for dates or special events and even did up my eyes.  If perfume counts, I also used that but only in the winter because I had enough bugs attracted to me, thank you very much. The last time I wore a lot of makeup was at my wedding when I had a professional do it.  I really dislike my wedding photo close-ups now because I think I look like a whore and definitely not at all like myself. I kept the lipstick and the eye shadows for role-playing after that, using them to enhance a character I was playing.

But every time I used any type of makeup on my face that used a color or a scent that wasn't just a perfume, I broke out, I developed rashes, I felt sick. Several years ago I tossed all of that stuff out keeping only the perfumes, the lip balms, and one more item which is really the only thing I consider make-up.

Nail polish!

I've always been a nail chewer, not biter, chewer, when I got stressed and I'm a high-stressed, easily stressed, woman.  The one thing that helps curb that is putting nail polish on.  It tastes yuck but it looks really pretty, doesn't cause an allergic reaction, and so I don't want to damage it.  I use a base coat and a ridge filler first to help protect my nails when I use it.  I don't always use nail polish, my mood for it comes and goes. Right now I'm in a mood for it so I'm doing about two colors a week since even my best polish seems to only last 3-5 days before it looks ratty.

I do have me some nail polish.  Let me show you.

I keep it in two tins and they aren't well organized though writing this post to share has let me organize a bit more. I went out with two of the other butt-kicking women in May and got a few more bottle so these tins are pretty much full now as you saw above.

My favorite polish are in the browns range

But I also like a lot of greens since I wear greens a lot.

As you can see I have quite a few of those but also a fairly large collection of reds. I believe my Daddy got me my first red nail polish, said every woman needed a red nail polish... my daddy was a bit strange.

I wish I had more yellows frankly, I'll need to keep that in mind if I get more.

Then I have some sparkly or neutral colors.  Some of my other polishes also sparkle but these are more sparkle than a specific color.  I should wear one of these to my convention next weekend -- which one?

Finally a few in the black, blue, grays range... which I primarily put on  my part or if I'm playing a goth character. Just last week I gave a very turquoise polish I had just receive to review to a friend because it was too blue for me.

So are nail polishes makeup?  What's your opinion?

Beyond the Hashtags

#YesAllWomen  #NotAllMen

It’s hard to know what to say about the killing spree Randall Elliot engaged in on May 23rd. So much has already been said. And yet it doesn’t quite seem like enough has been said. Or maybe it’s just not what I’ve wanted to hear.

You see, Randall Elliot isn’t the problem. This was just a specific incidence of a broader issue. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 22 year old who is pissed off because he can’t get laid.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a man in Indianapolis who repeatedly drugged his wife and raped her while she was unconscious because she was “snippy”. For that matter, the problem is not the judge in the case who sentenced the rapist to 8 years of home detention (prosecutors asked for 20-60 years in prison) and then told the woman to forgive her husband.

They’re all symptoms of a problem that has shown up with increasing frequency and that is the discounting, disregarding and dismissing of women everywhere.  We used to think that these kinds of atrocities only happened in other countries, in “less civilized” societies (think “honor killings” or “forced genital mutilation”). We believed that the advancements made by the women’s movement of the 1960s and1970s were correcting this problem  We were wrong.  It’s happening here in the USA and it’s complete intolerable.

What to do then? I know my words won’t be popular but we, as women, have to raise our voices and state unequivocally that this is unacceptable.  And we have to do it over and over again until our message gets through.  It’s all well and good to add the Yes All Women hashtag to our tweets and Facebook postings but it’s not enough because in a few months this will fade out and some other phrase will be popular.  We have to look at this behavior and call it out for what it is... bullshit.  

It doesn’t matter when or where. Much has been said lately about the way females are harassed at SciFi/Fantasy/Media/Comic conventions. Yes it’s wrong and yes plenty of people blog about it. Necessary but insufficient. We have to call out the miscreants at the time they’re being jerks. We have to say “Not cool, dude” or “Don’t be a dick” (thank you Wil Wheaton) or just say “Not acceptable!” And we have to do it over and over again.  If someone says a woman is worth less in some capacity just because she is a woman, that person needs to be hauled up short and told this behavior won’t be tolerated.  Do not debate about why we’re worthy.  Just call their bullshit for what it is and move on.

We have to tell the judge in Indianapolis that his sentence was grossly negligent. We have to tell parents, coaches and teachers in Steubenville, Ohio that when a bunch of jocks use an inebriated girl as the object of a gang bang, they cannot sweep it under the rug. We have to get up in the faces of Department of Corrections officials who don’t tell rape survivors that their attackers have been released from prison, despite the fact that the law requires them to do so (my own personal experience).

And one final thought for those who believe this message is only to those of us with two X chromosomes, listen up fellas.  Every last one of you, especially the #NotAllMen guys, needs to stand up and say the same thing. Psychosocial studies would tell us that this kind of message will have more impact if it comes from men than from women but leaving it to the guys just perpetuates the problem. So while it’s important that everyone speak up, it’s truly a case where we have to heed the call of Aretha Franklin.

“Sisters are doin’ it for themselves!”

The Feminism of Hair Color?

Recently at our face-to-face meeting for the group of women that co-author this site I mentioned that I was looking to start making my hair darker, to bring back the red that I used to love about it.

Everyone looked surprised.

For most of my 44 years I've never entertained the idea of dyeing or coloring my hair, not even for a costume party.  There were many reasons for this stance.

Disgust with the idea that women must be beautiful and that beauty = youth.

A sister who when training as a stylist shared horror stories of the damage done to her and other's hair by the harsh chemical used to perm and dye hair.  I loved my curly, auburn hair (not always but 95% of my life) and was afraid it might be damaged by such treatments.

Feeling that it is an expense that is unnecessary and thus as long as I'm not the primary income earner not really something we need to waste our resource upon.

My mother used to dye her hair as a way to hide her illnesses from us all. When I figured out what was happening this turned into one of our most intense fights of the entire time I lived with her.  How many times did her health get worse because she was hiding things and refusing to see the doctors?  How dare she lie to us this way on top of all the other lies she was telling us and herself?

I recently talked about this in therapy just a bit so if discussion of dead mommy issues distresses you, stop reading now.

One of the factors contributing to my auburn hair was the fact that my mother had strawberry blonde hair (my dad's was black).  In four of their five kids, four of us had auburn hair.  Natural auburn hair isn't common and I grew up feeling like it was a gift I'd been given.  While I never knew what my body should look like and was often told it was fat and ugly or too skinny and ugly, I was always told I had beautiful red hair.

My hair is the one thing I loved about my physical self.

Then it started to go white.

White not gray.  There is nothing in my hair to turn gray. It turns into a golden red, then a blonde, and finally a perfect white.  At first it was only on my bangs and I thought "Cool I can look like Rogue!"  Who wouldn't want to be her?  This image is the one I grew up seeing on TV shows by the way so you can see I was hoping the entire top layer of my hair would go white but not the rest... unrealistic I know but hey, it was a fantasy like the show right?

The whiteness increased as my stress from graduate school increased and then when I couldn't even get a job because none existed in my field right after I finished... don't get me started on that... I felt like it was all for nothing.

Still I didn't dye my hair.

Yet when I saw my friend who is a stylist we talked about dying my hair.  Oh, I asked all about damage and he looked at it and heard what I wanted -- natural, little to no difference from the current red parts of my hair -- but suddenly I was ok with dying it.

I'm not dying it however.  I have too much white now and it simply is unlikely to take but he did recommend this product:


I couldn't find that where he suggested but the good ladies at the shop he recommended suggested this and I am very happy with the results even just after three days!


So what's changed?  As I thought it about it therapy and today I realized what changed is that my mother is dead.

She can't tell me what I should look like anymore.

But more importantly I don't have that strong association of hair coloring = lying to your family.

While I'm not saying that my concerns about beauty and youth are invalid, indeed I think those are very important feminist and humanist concerns. But part of feminism is the idea that women should be able to choose free from pressures that only focus on their biology and attempt to shove them into tiny little boxes that dictate their lives. Now freed from the association between lying to martyr your health I have been empowered to choose and that is very feminist if I do for myself not simply because I feel I should or I must do it to fit into someone else's model of beauty.

So I'm trying it.  I'm using this shampoo and conditioner and I'll see what happens.  After all two days of it my family and therapist said I seemed younger, more vibrant... I think they may mean riveting, huh?

Where are the Boy-Whores in Vegas?

At the beginning of the month I was in Las Vegas with my partner for a full seven days and I thought you might all like to hear about it.  I'll get to the title of my post later on but for now sit back and enjoy my story, please.  I kept a diary while we traveled but I'll try to keep it to the highlights for you all.

Day one, a Wednesday, and we did so much even on our first day but primarily we picked up as many of the show tickets that we bought so that we could relax (HA!) the other days.  That was the first day that we saw them - the "Girls! Girls! Girls" folks handing out little cards advertising their "escort" services. Technically prostitution is illegal in Clark County where Las Vegas is located along with a few other counties and cities; in the rest of Nevada brothels are legal and regulated.  We had a feeling these "cards" were a clever and ignored way around the law.  They were being handed out by both men and women, mostly Hispanic it looked like, and they rarely said much other than "Girls?" and offered you the cards.

We saw several shows while in Vegas.  "Tournament of Kings" at Excalibur Resort was dinner and a show.  We were in the Russian section front row and had cool neighbors.  We all agreed that our "king" was a bit evil as he continually cheated but at least he was pretty to look at.

"Jan Rouven" was an illusion/erotic dance show at the Riviera on the northern end of the Strip that was our second evening's highlight, that was a Thursday by the way. Rouven interacted well with his audience that was fairly small though the seating needs to be improved so the seats are angled upward so you can see. A couple of people in a nearby section were stacking chairs on top of each other and this really interfered with a family's enjoyment of it I think as was very rude and unsafe.  It was a lot of fun and in hindsight worth VIP seating I think especially on a more crowded spring/summer/fall weekend night.

Once more the "Girls! Girls! Girls" folks were out and about along with more scam artists, homeless, and performance artists some of which are really good.

Friday night we had VIP seating for the SinCity Comedy and Burlesque show at Planet Hollywood.  The two main comedians we saw were funny and the two burlesque dancers were great -- my partner had a pink boa tossed at him but he was too shy to hand it back to her, just left it on the stage at the end for her to find.

We got there over an hour early (we've been told repeatedly by staff when we picked up the tickets and well as the ticket outlet we bought them from to get their really early.  We showed our tickets and were accidentally taken into an earlier show called The Coop Show that was super fun and funny even more so than the one we bought tickets for. Coop was very talented both as a singer and an impersonator.  We highly recommend you check out his show but neither this nor the SinCity show really require VIP seating so learn from us.

Again the "Girls! Girls! Girls" folks were out and about along with even more scam artists, homeless, and performance artists.  By this night the crowds were starting to build up.  We discovered we were in town at the same time as the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo so that was why a lot of the resorts and stops along the middle of the Strip were being "westernized" in decoration and signage. I hope those folks had a great time but it was a bit trippy to see all the hats and boots.  But then again it was also 10-20 degrees below normal our entire stay... SIGH!

Saturday there were winter storm advisories for Las Vegas (didn't work out) so we decided to sort of take it easy and stay inside to see what was in the Mandalay Bay-Luxor-Excalibur resorts since they are all connected via internal walkways and shopping areas.  We went to the Excalibur Buffet that was above average for our regular hometown buffets then their Fun Dungeon (use your imaginations, I know you have one).  Back at Luxor we did the Titanic Experience (I survived, my partner didn't) that was educational and fun at the same time, two hours were gone like that (snap fingers).

Same for the Shark Reef Exhibit over at Mandalay Bay though one of the exhibit guides was hyper political and talkative and I had to pull my partner away.  There he is, my 14 year partner with his face partly hidden for privacy's sake, checking out fish and sharks both at the glass walkway under a bit part of the exhibit.  The little kids and adults there were so funny, hardly anyone bothered to read the signage and just made up stuff about what they were looking at.

No "Girls! Girls! Girls!" folks inside!  HURRAY because they were starting to annoying -- where were the "Boys! Boys! Boys!" cards?  Are brothels only legal if they have female prostitutes in Nevada? Nope, back at the end of 2009 the laws were changed to require examines of male prostitutes so they are legal. Where was the pushing of them?  If we were going to hire an "escort" it would be male after all... not that we were planning to do so but it is the fairness at all that was annoying me.

Sunday night we had to go off Strip to see the Penn & Teller Show at the Rio.  I liked it but frankly their repeated political comments lessened my enjoyment a great deal.  Do your political stuff once and move on, it wasn't advertised "with political commentary" so I wasn't prepared and ended up annoyed at certain points. I was expecting edgy and snarking performances with jabs at society or other shows but political stuff only takes a bit to annoy me. My partner enjoyed it more because he was more familiar with their work.

Damnit!  Those "Girls! Girls! Girls!" folks had been out there too!  We saw their discarded cards around but not them because we took a taxi back to the hotel room.

Monday we saw the B-Beatles Show at the Saxe Theater back at Planet Hollywood -- given how often we went there it might have been a better place for us to stay.  It was Awesome!  It was the best show and event we did our entire stay and only a small part of that was the fact that we were 4th row center stage for it!  On these early week day shows don't bother with a VIP pass just get there in line early and you may get amazing seats.  They allowed you to take photos during the show but most of my mind were too bright from the lights it turned out.  Here's one of them taking a bow at the end, the entire cast of the show in fact.

As soon as we left the resort the "Girls! Girls! Girls!" folks were everywhere. Two of them at every corner and often mid-block.  I turned to my partner "I'm think the next one that approaches I'm going to ask if they have boy-whores. Would you be OK with that?" He not only was OK but encouraged me so the next one, a woman, who offered us a card I stopped. I looked at her very seriously and asked "Do you have any boy-whores?" but she just stopped short, opened her mouth, shut her mouth, shook her head, and stepped back.

The "Girls! Girls! Girls!" folks stopped approaching us after that... hhhmmm though we had a good couple of blocks to go.  My partner also started speaking in German to the scammers and hawkers on the street -- real German, he has years of it, and we both have German ancestry and we just didn't want to be bothered on our second to last night.

There you go, a bit of our trip for your education and amusement.  What do you think?  Should there be "Boys! Boys! Boys!" cards handed out on the Strip, too?

Do You Love Your Body?

When most folks think of NOW (National Organization for Women) they generally think of political actions and then a whole bunch of stereotypes that have little reality.  NOW has also maintained a few radical feminist ideas as well even though they are very much a liberal organization.  Don't know the difference between liberal and radical feminism?  I'll talk about that in a bit; I have a minor in women's studies so I've studied the differences.

Official Poster for 2013 Love Your Body

One of the more radical things they do is urge an internal change of major importance.  They urge women to love their bodies with an annual event called "Love Your Body" that I have tried to observe for a few years now even though the campaign has been going on for over a decade now. Part of this campaign this year is a new project called "Let's Talk About It" inspired by the National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.  As a radical feminist, as a survivor of eating disorder, and as a woman this event means a lot to me but as you'll discover below it is also a very huge challenge for me.

I've been losing weight and some might wonder if I can say that I love my body and still be losing as much weight as I have -- currently I'm down 50 pounds for 2013.  The fact is that I've always struggled with my weight and I don't mean that I've always been big but that I've never known what I should weigh, what is healthy.  I saw a nutritionist for several years and she told me to ignore all those charts because they never considered the individual, the ethnic background, the bone structure, and the rest of the physical and emotional health of the person. She took all of that into consideration and told me if I ever got below 145 pounds again she'd put me in the hospital.  But when I started to have troubling walking a few blocks after eating a full meal, I decided I needed to loss a bit... I've just kept going but I am consulting with my doctor and using a very stable and slow approach.

But my post isn't about weight as much as it is about how I've never been able to trust or love my body and I'm struggling to learn to do so.

You see I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and emotional/psychological abuse.  My body was something that was constantly used against me by males larger than I and by females who wanted to feel more powerful themselves by sending me conflicting messages.

My mother was the number one attacker. By the time I was in high school I don't think there was a day that I didn't hear "you are getting too fat" in the morning before I left for school and then hearing "you need to eat, you are getting too thin" at dinner that same night.

Can you imagine how confused that made me?

My body was unknown to me as a positive thing, it was unknowable to me even in terms of the basic idea of what I should look like or weigh.

Instead my body betrayed me constantly.

Getting sick often; too often it seems according to letters I received with my medical records many years back. Did my mother do something to me to make me sick because she got sympathy for being my caregiver?  I know she herself got sick a lot and it is no coincidence that she went into a wheelchair right after I started therapy to recover from my childhood abuse.  I do know that tests have shown doctors and I that I have a very weak immune system not because I'm ill but probably since before I was born.  Of course my mother almost died within a few years of my birth and she (and my father) told me that her doctors had suggested an abortion for her health -- she CHOSE not to do that.  (That is why I am pro-choice so strongly.)

My body was what was molested and raped three times by the age of six.  The memories, both conscious and unconscious damaged my ability to have healthy sex for years and years.  I think that part of my being fat or having eating disorders was an attempt to conquer my body, get control over what seemed utterly out of my control.

My body simply wasn't safe so I invested far more in my mind as a student then scholar and as an author and storyteller.  In my mind I could be in control, I could be free of this shell that tormented me from my earliest memories.

I can't say that I love my body.

I can say I am trying and NOW's campaign reassures me that I am not alone.

Being a Writer or Wife or Mother IS a Full-time Job

The following are something things I've been carrying around in my heart for a long, long time now but a recent "offer" because I'm a "respected author" of a particular genre really has annoyed me this past week so I thought, what the heck, why not write about it?

My life didn't turn out the way I planned.  Big surprise to most women, heck most people, huh?  Life generally goes as it does and we can either deny reality or adjust.

I tried to adjust when it was taking too long to get through school and full secure enough for us to have kids... then it was simply too late and we were too happy with our adult only life to want to change things.

I tried to adjust when people I thought would be part of my household long term turned out to be liars or simply made economic choices that left us out of their futures.

I tried to adjust when the brilliance of the USA attitude resulted in less educational spending than our world competition as the economy went south in 2007 just as I was on the job market finally.

I tried to adjust when we realized that I needed more interactions than being a freelance author by volunteering for things that are important to me in education and the arts.

I tried to adjust as my partners went on to more stressful but higher paying jobs by taking on more responsibilities at home without becoming everyone's mom or maid and making sure we all work on domestic matters.

But there is something I simply cannot and will not adjust to: People's belief that I have nothing to do and therefore they can call on me last minute, assume the things I do for or with them are the only things I have to do, and in general acting like I don't need to plan things out.

How do people show me the above?

They refuse or are unwilling to give me the information I need to make plans.

(For the love of... this is probably my biggest pet peeve for not being respected. Want cookies for your event? Tell me how many!  Want me to come and bring my books?  Tell me realistically how many sales I can expect.  Want me to speak to your group?  Given a topic or feedback on my ideas so I am appropriated for the audience!  Want me to come and have fun?  Then let me know the place and time for goodness sakes not this general afternoon or evening crap!)

They call me out of the blue to just talk about nothing, often interrupting something I had planned.

(You know what is great for just shooting the breeze?  Face-to-face chatting and email.  The first is just part of hanging out; the second allows both people to chat when they can.)

They make assumptions that I can just show up with only 24 hours or less notice and act so put out when I have plans or simply want to be with my family.

(I realize that not everyone is a planner or can be a planner.  See comments at the end for how I try to understand that but to be blunt, I often have to plan my freetime so I can do things "spontaneously.")

They can't seem to help put things away after we do something together -- leaving glasses, plates, napkins, etc. just laying around for me to pick up.

(When I visit someone. I always ask "where is your trash can" or "what should I do with this?" when I'm doing using something.  If I'm a repeat visitor I'll learn this and not bother my host any more with these questions but I try to leave the space I've been invited into at least as good as when I left it if at all possible.)

They make comments about my not having a "real job" or that it must be so good to have so much free time.

(This is so easy to do!  I've done it myself but it is still rude and annoying no matter who is doing it.)

They make me "promotional offers" that are really nothing more than an additional person for their event and expect me to do it for free or worse pay all my expenses even though I'm the "expert" they are asking for.

(I don't want to make money at conventions or lectures simply by having the event pay me.  I know there are people out there who charge speaker's fees but I don't not simply because I'm only a tiny fish but because I find it a way to separate yourself from the communities I think you should feel part of, if you don't admit it is only a business for you.  BUT I also am not wealthy, not even slightly, and if you want me to help you at an event because I'm published/smart/fun/whatever then help me cover my basic expenses.)

I consider the above attitudes and beliefs to be beyond rude and indeed downright insulting.

I'm a radical feminist, have been since before I was a teenager, and contrary to what neocons would have you believe, radical feminist has never degraded women who stayed at home to raise a family, take care of their house, did volunteer work, or were themselves engaged in the arts at home.  The entire point of radical feminism was to empower the woman (and by extension her children and future generations of men and women) to have the freedom to make choices about life.

Let's be realistic.  Choices are never completely free, never limitless.  Being able to make a choice involves having information about what is possible and having the support to make the choice and pursue the outcome you hope for.

When you act like you don't need to plan things out, when you walk out of my life suddenly, or when you lie to me, you are denying me the ability to make a choice just as much as if a government agency decided to limit my right to vote or make a medical decision.

In fact when we do this to each other, when we act like we shouldn't care about other people's lives in our private interactions, then why are we surprised by public and government insults to us.

We don't all act the same, not all of us are planners or volunteers or can grasp that time isn't readily available to everyone else.  But if you want to be with others, if you want to have your choices empowered, you better be willing to meet others halfway to how they do things or you may find yourself alone.

I try really hard to go halfway, to accept when plans don't work out, to adjust to life, to be realistic.

Sometimes I just have to say "I'm worth more" and demand the level of respect I try very hard to give to others.

Anyone else ever feel this way?

I'm betting you have, I'm betting you do, so please leave a comment and let me know.