I have been waiting to tell you guys about this until it posted, but, er… It was posted on July 31 and I missed it! I saw it today, and I am telling you about it now. Jezebel ran my story of having been an Early 90s Mary Kay Lady.
1992 was a VERY bad year for me. Ha! My time as a Mary Kay Lady was just a great, big, pink cherry on top.
Ladies, when men like Joe Peacock self-identify as jackholes through their derisive ranting about women who aren’t exactly like what they think women should be like, or who don’t act exactly as they think women should act, don’t be offended. Be thankful. He has weeded himself out of polite society and the dating pool, as have his hangers-on.
What I find really amusing about the Booth Babe rant is that he is angry at good looking women for putting on costumes to get attention at comic conventions. You’re only allowed to wear a costume if you are a Level 24 magic dwarf with the Flaming Sword of Moronico and 1500+ hours of WOW under your belt in the past 2 month period. You may not wear a costume and attend a con if you just happen to like the costume, dressing up, and hanging out with other likeminded cosplayers. No cred? No costume for you! Bless his heart.
It’s the equivalent of saying that if you haven’t played college football and can quote stats from SuperBowl III, you shouldn’t wear a team jersey. It is ridiculous. It is sad. Peacock is clearly afraid that his once underappreciated territory is going to be overrun with with Princesses, Jocks, and Socs. In other words, Peacock is clearly afraid of being stuffed in a locker.
The thing that is supposed to be so fantastic about being an adult is no longer having to conform to the identities forced upon us by adolescence, when our brain chemistry is so awash with growth hormones that few of us can multi-task beyond being either a Goat Roper or a Goth. God forbid you be fifteen, love the Cure and Randy Travis. In Peacock’s world, God forbid you be a grown-up who isn’t fully devoted to the nuance of the Star Fleet uniform. You can’t be a Geek and a Princess at the same time.
Although, there is great potential for Geek/Furry crossover if you’re into Ewoks.
Anyway: Don’t be mad at Mr. Peacock. His name is indicative of his issues. Especially if it’s his joystick he uses for thinking.
I introduced Thor to the music of Don Williams recently, and said something about it to Mom in front of him. Thor nodded and said, “Yes. And he has this song where he says ‘God, make my day good.'” (If it has God in it, Thor is all over it. He has been assimilated by Larry the Cucumber.) The song is actually, “Lord, I hope this day is good.”
I was thinking about that this morning.
Listen, last week was ROTTEN! Car trouble with both cars (fixed, thankfully), landed gentry trouble (that’s going to take some time and money to repair, but that’s what I get for having made slumlord jokes), and assorted semi-serious issues combined to make me feel like wallowing. And I did wallow. But you know what wallowing gets you? Dirty.
This morning, I was humming Don Williams. I stopped to think about the lyrics of the song. “Lord, I hope this day is good. I’m feeling tired and misunderstood. I should be thankful, Lord, I know I should. But Lord I hope this day is good.”
I’m not the kind of girl who waits for things to happen. I am impatient. I’m not wishin’, and hopin’, and prayin’. I’m doing. I’m going. I’m getting. If it is important to me, I am on the move. This does not always work to my favor because every good hunter knows that there is a time to lie in wait and a time to go crashing through the underbrush, but it’s who I am. I do. I go. I get.
I don’t expect God (or anyone else) to give me a good day. I expect that I have been given all the tools with which to command my destiny, and it is up to me to use them. When I feel tired and misunderstood, it is up to me to put it to bed (withholding sleep is a way that I punish myself) and explain the misunderstanding. When I know I should be thankful, you better believe I am thankful. That’s probably the one thing I have down pat. Gratitude.
I will tell you that at the bottom of my heart, I will always be able to be thankful for what I have had. Even if the day comes when I have nothing at all, I will always have what has been, and I have had such love and goodness in my life to date, that I can always be thankful for that. Even the smallest spark makes a light in darkness, and sometimes that’s the best you can do.
I realized that I haven’t been on top of making sure Thor understands that happiness is his choice and his decision. I want him to understand that his attitude is his to command, and his temper does not have to be a reaction to the world. I never want him to wait for someone, or something else to make his day good. So, when we got in the car this morning, I asked him, “What are we going to do to make this day good?”
He wasn’t sure, so I told him what I was going to do.
“I am going to find something good to say about everyone,” I told him. “I am going to tell people nice things. If I think someone looks nice, I will tell them. If I think they do a good job, I will tell them.”
He smiled and intoned, because it was an imitation of some vegetable he’s been watching, “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. That’s Proverbs.”
Good old Proverbs. Proverbs and Romans are my stomping grounds. Another Proverb says that you should not only get wisdom, but that you must have understanding of that wisdom. Knowing the square root of pi doesn’t mean you know how to apply it to anything useful, and what good is knowing 1.772453850905516027298167483314 if you don’t know what it means, or how to get there?
So, I said to Thor, “That is the truth.” And I asked him, “How are you going to use that?”
He still wasn’t sure, so I offered some understanding of the wisdom. “You can use your words to make people feel good, and seeing that you have made someone happy will make you happy.
“How about you tell one of your teachers thank you for taking such good care of you? And, how about you tell one of your friends what you like about him? And, if you think someone is good at a game, why don’t you say so? Then, you’ll make someone else’s day good, and that will help make your day good.”
He liked that. I like that.
I’m not telling you I am always on top of this. I’m telling you that I let life get to me last week, and I ignored a lot of opportunities to turn my attitude around because it felt better (or at least easier) to wallow. But I have it back on track this week. I started with apologizing to someone for an overreaction I had. As I explained to Thor, “Sometimes, you realize you were wrong a few days later. You still have to bite that bullet and go say so.”
Summing up:
The goodness of my day=my responsibility
Suddenly, my child who was wearing a 4T, this time last year, is fitting well into a child’s size medium t-shirt. This time last year, he wore an extra-small, and that was roomy. This time last year, he was still wearing some of his old 3T shorts without issue. Those toddler days are long gone. By the time the school year rolls around, he’s going to be 6 feet tall! And speaking of school…
Today, I read something that amounted to this: Boys are better at solving problems/taking on learning challenges than girls because boys are encouraged to “try” whereas girls are encouraged to “be”. That is, girls more often receive encouragement and praise for innate qualities (like prettiness, or goodness, or sweetness), whereas boys more often receive encouragement and praise for qualities that require practice and learning (like thinking, or physical activity). While the crux of my personal experience does not support the article, that has a lot to do with having had a largely non-coed education.
Until 7th grade, I was either in all-girls school, or my classes were segregated by gender. Through 5th grade, the boys and girls at my school were taught in separate classrooms. We might have passed each other in the hallways, but the only time we mixed were for field trips or the class play. Thus and so, I never experienced the grade school phenomenon of being treated differently because of my gender. If there was competition to be had it was strictly based on ability, or potential ability.
Then again, I wasn’t a “good” girl in school. I was a talker, and a balker, and a doodler, daydreamer, eyeball roller. I wasn’t praised for my goodness because it just didn’t exist. I wasn’t praised at school for prettiness–there were plenty of prettier girls in my grade anyway. I wasn’t praised at school for sweetness. Quite the contrary.
When I received praise at school, it was for completing tasks ahead of expectation, for excelling at writing or singing, or for giving it my all even when success wasn’t an option (that was phys ed, and that’s pretty much what one of my phys ed teachers wrote in a grade school yearbook!) But my school and my class were filled with extraordinary girls.
Sarah was an accomplished dancer by the time we were 3rd graders. Lena could draw with amazing talent. Helen was on her way to Junior Wimbledon. Danielle was a violin virtuoso. Laurel, a few grades ahead, hadn’t even started dancing before 7th grade, and ended up a principle dancer in a ballet company. My classmates were all girls who did things. And, I really can’t remember any of my teachers, though 6th grade, who gave us kudos for being quiet*, or nice, or anything other than for being the type of students they thought we should be.
I went to mixed schools for 7th and 8th grades, and 11th and 12th grades. I think I had been well enough insulated from gender discrimination that when it happened, I didn’t recognize it for what it was. When I was passed over, or ignored in favor of boys (and I was), I figured it was because I hadn’t asserted myself well enough, or proved myself–that just made me go into overdrive in the classroom.
Then, I had teachers in those grades tell me to be more ladylike. Teachers in those grades suggested that I was way too assertive, and two of them (both male coaches, one in 7th and one in 11th grade, who were teaching regular classes) told me that I needed to dial it back a notch because I was making a few of the boys feel bad (and in one case it led to a period in the gym, allowing the students to make grade points with free throws, and the coach asking me how it felt to be bad at something. ??? Yeah, my mother had a field day with that one. –Fortunately, I’d already had 6 years of knowing I was pathetic at sports to support me.) I wasn’t the smartest girl, but I was apparently the most obnoxious!
I never felt bad when I wasn’t the prettiest or the sweetest. I knew I wasn’t the prettiest! Or the sweetest. I was horrified, though, when I felt I wasn’t smart enough, or able enough. And I was mystified when my ability was confused with my lack of adorability, and I was penalized for not being a darling.
I had the great fortune to be educated by strong women, and educated to be a strong woman. It wasn’t until I was in public school that the question of whether or not I would be a “good” woman came into play.
“Good” women, like the Proverbs 31 woman, literally do it all while their husbands reap all the benefit of praise at the city gates. And “good” women smile beatifically at the fact that their husband is considered rich for their woman’s work. I can’t even type that without my right eyebrow inching higher and my nostrils flaring. BS! I’ll do it all, but ain’t nobody gonna take the credit for it but me!
And if I’m working as hard as that Proverbs 31 woman? My husband better be busting his chops, too. Hanging around at the city wall telling his friends how great my garden grows won’t cut it. I expect an equal partner, who is just as willing to weed and rake as I am**.
I will never be a “good” girl, and I’m proud of that. Pretty fades into oblivion. Sweet is overrated. Praise your girls for being great thinkers, great problem solvers, great challenge over-comers, for having good reasoning abilities, and common sense, AND for being pretty, and kind to others, and respectful, and considerate, AND for being true to themselves, and pursuing their dreams, and for striving to get what they want for themselves–if it’s reaching for the next A, or the newest Barbie–encourage them to dream, then put legs to those dreams and run toward them. They’ll learn to run fast enough that the naysayers and sexist twerps will just be a blur in their peripheral vision.
*By quiet, I mean unassuming. We were encouraged to be assertive, and even a little aggressive. Field Hockey was a big deal, after all.
**And I have that equal partner. I am extremely fortunate.
I want this blog entry to be really special. Because, if you’re a new reader who has come over from the Nickelodeon Parents Connect site and hit the “previous posts” button, it is likely that this will be the blog entry you read, and I want you to enjoy yourself here.
I started blogging with a LiveJournal in December of 2001. I had met this guy I really liked, and I wanted him to like me. He had an LJ, and I hoped that if I started one, I could catch and keep his interest. It worked well enough that he married me, and seems to still like me. He still reads my blog after ten years. That’s something!
I drove all my LJ friends berserk with journaling my wedding (2 out of 4 bridesmaids have confirmed I was bridezilla. The other 2 said I was just fine, but they might just have been afraid of me.) Eleven months after that hoopla died down, I started driving readers further nuts with journaling my pregnancy. My first Mommy Blog was born five months into the pregnancy, and I kept up with Mommie Diarist until just before Thor (the nickname our son has had since his first sonogram) started Kindergarten–he learned to read, and I didn’t want to embarrass him by keeping a totally Thor-centric blog.
I started To The 9s, a fashion/style/etiquette based blog, while I was working for a staffing agency. The impetus for that being the number of job candidates I was seeing, who showed up for interviews wearing dirty, wrinkled, extremely casual attire, including flip-flops, and the coworker who never bothered to dry her hair before coming in to work.
I kept up with that through the chronicles of my Exotic Dance Class, a diet, and the gutting depression that came with having made a very bad decision to change jobs. The Women Worth Knowing project came out of those days as well.
I started thinking about the wonderful women I knew all across this world, and wanted to introduce them to one another. I created a profile Q&A and sent it off to various and sundry, and started posting those as a means of highlighting women who were successful in their endeavours at home, in the workplace, and in the world. You can read the archives here and join the Facebook group here. Eventually, I’ll start updating again. I know some really amazing women.
To the 9s went the way of the Dodo, and when I was ready to start blogging again, it became The Outside Lane. Part mommy-blog, part human interest blog, part fashion/music/movie reviews blog, part soapbox, part therapy, all me. I have no idea how you would market this thing. It’s very…diverse? I hope it’s diverse and not just scattered. I write about what I find interesting. I write the topics of conversation I’d like to have. I like to think the common thread is my personal sense of humor, and I like to think that comes across whether I’m shaking my tiny fist of rage, or shaking my booty.
If you’re here from Nickelodeon’s Parents Connect, then you’ve come by way of the Sexy Mama Bootcamp. If you’re looking for advice on how to be sexy, the best I can give you is to fall in love with yourself.
The Outside Lane 