Hurting ourselves in the name of fairness

Slight of hand: Intersectional feminism

 

I’m a woman, a first generation American, a person of mixed race.

 

I am ticked at how women hurt our own cause.

 

Intersectional feminism is basically a good thing; it means that we need to acknowledge women, but also women of color, women with disabilities, women who have challenges other than being a woman.

 

But.

 

Have you noticed other movements don’t do this?

 

Black lives matter tends to focus on black men. You tend not to see, on a black lives matter FB thread, people furious for not saying black people with disabilities matter, or black women matter. It is OK to say black lives matter. It is at once meant to refer to all people who are black, and justifying only depicting black men in news stories.

 

SLATE had an article about the Google antidiversity manifesto. It said in part that while the language of the manifesto was largely from men’s rights groups (MRAs) some of the philosophy was from an “even worse” standpoint, which was White Supremacists.

 

I don’t know why the author said this, but it illustrates perfectly that men, no matter what color, win the advantage war, the media war, the publicity war.

Without any explanation or documentation, the author of the SLATE article just assumed the reader would agree: racism is worse than sexism.

 

Oh. IS it?

 

In a world where a common MSN headline is “women using this instead of pepper spray!” is understood to show that women can always expect to be in danger, the notion of white supremacists somehow being “worse” than men’s rights groups is insane.

 

Women undermine ourselves by pretending somehow that we don’t have it as bad as black men, when black men had their right to vote guaranteed first, had a president that looked like them first, have cars and tools designed to fit people of their build, the list goes on and on.

 

The list goes on for so long that I quantified it. I am still working on making the chart attractive. In a point by point system, the marginalizations any woman faces are so great that a black, gay man with a mobility disability still has it better.

For one thing, he isn’t expected to carry around pepper spray.

 

But on a feminist thread, there will always be a bunch of people not only pointing out, but very hostile about, women not acknowledging women of color, or with other challenges.

 

I might add that I have reason to know what I am talking about. If a person is stupid enough to make a racist joke in my presence and I say, “Hey, I’m not all white, you know,” apologies flow fast. Any time I call out sexism, I know the response will be to tell me I’m a whiny bitch, taking things too seriously, or can’t take a joke.

 

Intersectional feminism should be encouraged and nurtured, without our bringing other women down when we fail. I don’t know yet how to do this, but am working on it.

The shit we endure for being women is bad enough without our hurting ourselves.

My Low Waste Kitchen

My low waste life: The Julienne Tool

 

I had this kinda stupid vegetable peeler. It didn’t work. It made the peels into little strips, about the width of fettuccini.

 

Well, my mother never made julienne potatoes so I didn’t know what the thing was for.

A few years ago, the fad for making veg into pasta started, and I realized I could work the strips into authentic fettuccini for color and texture for some kinds of veg or to just work in more nutrition for others.

 

Briefly, if it is a pale yellow vegetable, such as summer squash, you can sub it in. If it has color, you won’t fool anyone. If you use zucchini you might fool someone, if you peel it first. But of course the peel is nutritious so that is kind of a bad trade off. Just julienne it and throw it in with the pasta.

 

You can either boil julienned veg, or lightly sautee in good oil. Sautee only until a bit soft, do NOT brown, because if you brown the veg they will no longer resemble pasta.

 

But here’s the low-waste part: You can julienne the woody stubs of broccoli and cauliflower. Julienned, they are not woody. And they are delicious.

 

There’s less going into my composter now than there used to be.

 

My Low-Waste Life: Seek out Silk

My low-waste life: Seek Out Silk.

 

Yeah. It’s an indulgence.

And to have silk, you need either time or money.

 

But if you can make the time, the investment is worth it.

Here are some great things about silk: biodegradable. Strong—the strongest natural fiber there is. Holds color nicely. Can be very soft.

 

The bad part is, yeah, it is expensive. And it can be difficult to care for. Woven silk should be ironed (bleah) and/or dry cleaned (nope, this environmentalist tries to avoid that).

I recognize my privilege here: I own a car and can drive to the many consignment shops near me. There are even a few within walking distance of my house. And the proximity of consignment shops, combined with a little knowledge, means I have a closet full of silk shirts which cost me no more than eight dollars each.

The best, as in easiest and most economical, way to buy silk is to look for knitted, not woven, silk.

The modern eye is not trained to recognize a knit, so let me help you. Knits will stretch easily when you pull on them, then regain the original shape. The pattern is one of rows on top of one another, rather than, for a weave, a graph paper pattern.

Oh, and speaking of weaves, satin is a type of weave, not a material, so just because it is satin does not mean it is an investment. Some satins are made of nasty yet unwashable fabric. Be sure it is silk.

You want knitted silk because you don’t have to iron knits. You can just throw them in the washer (cold) (yes, even if the label says dry clean) and dry them on the line or draped over a chair somewhere. (Not over wood, though, make it a metal one. Make sure it is painted metal or it will rust.)

How do you know it is silk? Most articles of clothing, even in consignment shops, will have labels at the collar. If there is not a label at the back of the collar, it may be in the lower left seam, in the inside.

If the label has been cut out, you can still tell silk from rayon, even really good rayon, because silk has a distinctive scent. It takes a while to recognize the smell, so you probably want to buy some labeled silk, get it wet so you detect the smell more easily, and then gradually you will come to recognize it. The scent is vaguely similar to raw clams. But only vaguely, and only VERY noticeable when damp.

Silk also often has a sheen, but these days rayon and fine nylon have a similar sheen, so look for the label and be aware of the scent.

If you get a cotton/silk blend the garment may be a little sturdier than pure silk but it won’t be as soft, and you almost certainly have to iron.

Full woven silk need not be ironed if you hang it when still damp on a good-quality hanger. It won’t look quite as good as if you iron it but will be presentable for work.

Good-to-expensive labels work in silk, so I have L.L. Bean, Anna and Frank, Wintersilks, that sort of thing, all at consignment costs, about 5 to 8 dollars each. Because silk is known to be an investment material the garments are stylistically neutral—at least that’s what I tell myself when I have a fifteen year old silk sweater that looks good as new.

Buy cheap, buy often. Buy silk and you won’t have to replace it for twenty years.

My low-waste kitchen: *&^%! Out of butter

In the 1970s, there was an annoyingly accurate saying, “It takes money to make money.”

It also takes resources to save resources, so while I write about decreasing waste I am highly aware that I am lucky to have a fully equipped kitchen, lots of Tupperware, a good freezer, and cooking theory in my little brain.

When I was a teenager, I remember my mother once lamenting that we were eating leftovers. I said, “It wasn’t too long ago that we couldn’t AFFORD leftovers.”  So at that, we were both grateful.  For a long time we were hungry, then we had JUST ENOUGH food, then we had extra food, and now, as an adult, I have extra food, and usually it is food I actually feel like eating, and more than I need. This still seems miraculous to me, most of the time.

My mother never used margarine. She grew up right after WWII and margarine was, for her, a symbol of food coupons and of rationing and of want. No matter how poor we were, she always made sure we used butter. If she ran out of it, there were substitutes. Just never never the hated margarine.

I am not a nutritionist; how much fat of any kind to consume is between you and your doctor. But if you are out of butter, here’s what you can do:

Baking: Butter provides a luscious kind of moisture, so it can be replaced by something moist—that part is easy to figure out. If you want the luxury of fat, you can sub just about one to one with mayonnaise or sour cream (cream is what butter is made of, in case we forget this). Vegetable oil, being runnier, usually should be in a smaller amount than butter. Olive oil can work but it is costly, so if I were you I’d run out and get some butter.

What about animal fats? If you are the type to save bacon or ham fat, it is usually pretty yummy in baking—especially nowadays when “salted” (chocolate, caramel, whatever) is in vogue. Chicken fat will work but not add as much flavor.

If you are on a low fat diet, you can use a veg or fruit puree for at least part of butter or oil, but it will change the texture. Applesauce, puree of carrot, stewed pumpkin, can all be substituted for butter in baking but it will not fool anyone.

If you are out of butter for bread, that is a good time to break out the olive oil. Plain olive oil is dull—that’s what it is prized for, not adding much flavor—so if you don’t have flavored or specialty olive oil that’s when you get to grind in pepper, garlic, or other seasonings and dab your bread, rather than spreading something on it.

 

Frying: You probably shouldn’t be frying things in butter anyway, because it burns too easily, but you knew that, right?  If you are sauteeing and are low on butter, you can actually work in some water after the butter has melted. You must move the food around quickly if you choose to do this, but it is a lower fat way to sautee.

There are times you can cook with mayonnaise; it makes great grilled cheese. I rarely do this, though. It tastes great but it feels odd to me.

 

 

I have to laugh but I just realized: I am out of butter.

 

It’s not their job

They rarely mean to be cruel.

 

I hope, anyway.

 

When I was newly widowed, an old friend traveled across five states to help me with the post funeral stuff.

 

He cleaned, and did yard work, and helped sort through the pity lasagna.

 

I love the phrase “pity lasagna.” I read it in a book. It fits perfectly. Why is it that death attracts pasta, of all the easily frozen foods? No one ever sends meat loaf.

 

And I am in a position to know, because, in a two year period, my mother, husband, favorite sister in law, father in law, and another sister in law all died, of unrelated things.

 

That’s a lot of pity lasagna. And house plants. Lots and lots of house plants.

 

So anyway, my friend, sorting the pasta and putting it in the chest freezer, said, “When the novelty wears off, you will still need help.”

 

Which has proven to be very true, and exponentially sad. Newly widowed, with a five year old, I had lots of pity lasagna. Two months later we had eaten the food but I was still widowed, and had no child care, no more yard help, no support of any kind. (PS Old friend went virtuously home to his wife.  Pass the popcorn.)

 

Two years later, the IRS decided I should have found a husband by now, and said I could no longer claim a tax status of “widowed.” I had to change to “head of household,” which is not much more expensive but still a slap in the face.

 

The overused but accurate phrase “perfect storm” is my social situation. I really don’t know anyone quite as isolated. I of course know some single mothers. But none with no parents or in laws. I know people whose parents died young. But none of them is also widowed.

 

I get left out of a lot of things that only couples get invited to. And I hope and pray that the only reason is that I am not in a couple. I hope that it is only that I am not in a couple, because I don’t want to face that people hate me that much to leave me out, knowingly.

 

My two best friends moved away shortly before the torrent of family deaths happened. And the phone, the internet, are not a substitute when you saw people every day. The perfect storm of isolation continues.

 

When I turned 50 the doctor told me I had to get a colonoscopy and told me to make sure my husband picked me up after.   So I didn’t get one.

 

You’d think I could find the bright spot of isolation—which would be privacy—but society or fate or something laughs at my trying to find that. For example, since I am the only adult in the house, I repeatedly tell doctor’s offices or stores where I have placed orders that they can go ahead and leave a detailed message on the answering machine.

 

They won’t. It is beyond conception that no one else hears the message. I have now told my pharmacist six times to just leave the message when the order is ready, that no bad guy is going to break into my house and play with my answering machine. Nope. They waste my time by saying “call for information.” For fux sake. They keep telling me that “for my privacy” they won’t leave a message.

 

Believe me, assholes, I have privacy.

 

Isolation can be expensive. I was in my therapist’s office complaining of the financial stress. I am lucky enough to have a professional job and that sometimes means business trips. Normally a parent who must travel has the other parent to take care of children. When that is not practical there are usually two sets of grandparents. Because none of those people is available, when I go out of town I have to hire someone to move in to my house to care for my child. I was complaining to my therapist about the extra expense, and how I can’t refuse a business trip because I need that job, being the sole support of two people, and she said, “Oh, that is so sad.”

 

My god. I know it is sad. No one knows how sad it is as I do. But it is also an expensive pain in the ass.

 

The year after my husband died, no one remembered my birthday. Of course they didn’t. There weren’t a lot of people alive to remember, and, in the previously mentioned storm, my two best friends, and my boss, whom I had known half my life, also forgot.   Since my husband had died two weeks after my birthday that previous year I had a good memory of a house full of cards and food—everyone was sad that he had died, but a year later no one was happy I was alive.

 

I idiotically—I was so sad I had to tell someone—mentioned this to a friend from High School, that I saw at my work. She said, so puzzled, “Oh. You handled all you got with such grace I had no idea you were hurting.”

 

It is not, of course, anyone’s job to fill the voids for me. No one will come and be my mother or father or husband now that they are dead. No one will, and I admit no one should, fill those voids just because the voids exist.

 

I am well aware that if my only problem is loneliness I am streets ahead of those in poverty, or those facing deadly diseases, or gang violence. I maintain that I am allowed to own my feelings: Isolation stings. I hate it. I am allowed to.

(If you are interested in why I don’t have a partner, I have several Match.com entries. Briefly, for some reason it is true: Men seek women twenty or even thirty years younger than themselves. I didn’t believe this until I experienced it. And not only will I not date a man twenty years my senior because it is sexist bullshit, I have already been widowed. Once is quite enough for this.)

 

But you’d think someone would bear in mind, when planning things, that I have no one. Other people who get snubbed at party invitations can weep with their partners or parents or in laws. All of mine are gone. Does anyone ever think that leaving me out hurts many many times more than it would for someone who HAS people?

 

Therapists pretty much tell me it sucks to be me, that there is no way to FORCE the world to give me the support that so many people take for granted. There is no fix to it. I will continue to be alone, because I am alone.

 

It goes the other way, too. I mean, being isolated in joy also has its sting. I received an honor, one I worked for, and received it in front of three hundred people.

 

And I went home realizing I had no one to call.

 

I had no one to call.

Chicken Little, a Cautionary Tale

Chicken Little and Planned Parenthood

Did you know that versions of “Chicken Little” have been around for 25 centuries? That’s a pretty cool fact. I was trying to think of a good Shakespeare example of a lie repeated until a bunch of people believed it when “Chicken Little” popped into my head, and in researching it, found a bunch of cool things.

 

Basically, humans across cultures and for many centuries have instinctively known what today’s psychologists wring their hands over: A repeated lie, no matter how stupid, starts to sound trustworthy.

Chicken Little, you will remember, believed the sky was falling because an acorn fell on her head. She repeated this “news” to everyone she met, and they all believed her until she got to Foxy Loxy, who either ate them all after laughing at their stupidity or was flouted because Turkey Lurky came to his senses.

 

I had hoped, before I looked it up again, that Owly Jowly stopped them and said, “What the HELL are you thinking?” but I have not found that variation. Yet.

 

It’s a kids’ tale, but ethically quite sophisticated: We, the audience, are expected to recognize that the sky is not falling, that the character Chicken Little isn’t a particularly reliable source, and that it is absurd that no one stops to think about whether the sky actually could fall. The audience is also expected to feel sorry for the characters who don’t think about what they are repeating, especially in the versions where their foolishness leads to disaster.

Attacks against Planned Parenthood are very much like the story of Chicken Little. An absurd claim is made and a lot of people believe it, with bad consequences.

I have recently learned that my own congressperson said, in a public event, that she doesn’t support Planned Parenthood because they sell fetal body parts.

Oh for heaven’s sake. What idiocy.

Never mind that the videos used to make the assertions were proved to be fake. The notion just doesn’t make any sense.

 

Acorns falling on your head, as it takes a minute to think about, are not the sky falling. But no one stopped to think.

 

The stupid is great with this one.

 

In order to make us horrified about Planned Parenthood, alarmists have several storylines going. One involves “babies” (because the people telling the story don’t know what fetuses are) being ripped limb from limb. The narrative goes on to talk about parts being sold.

 

Which, DUH, should have been a tip off for anyone who has ever made anything . . . from . . . anything. Or used anything, for anything.

If you want to construct something, the materials must be in good shape. Seriously, people. Crushed, ripped apart, or in any other way damaged materials can’t be used constructively. The same people who talk about fetuses being destroyed go on to say there are lists of parts for sale. It just doesn’t work that way. Anybody who wanted to run a business selling fetal parts would have to make sure that every harvest was done through caesarean section. And, if you don’t personally, have reason to know that c sections are fiendishly expensive and no one is likely to use them to make a profit on anything else, I hope you know how lucky you are.

But the anti Planned Parenthood folks, famously squeamish about female anatomy, don’t want to think about how small a cervix is or how unusable “parts” obtained that way would be.

 

The business of selling parts, even if you could obtain them, is just as silly as the parts themselves. Planned Parenthood is a not for profit. A 501 c 3 medical not for profit. If you are a recognized not for profit, you not only are not organized for the purpose of making a profit, you CAN’T make a profit. If you do, you lose your not for profit status, and cease to exist. I am on the board of three not for profits at this writing, and keeping that status is a vital part of what we do, and involves a lot of paperwork.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD IS A MEDICAL NOT FOR PROFIT AND IT CANNOT SELL ANYTHING WITH THE INTENT TO MAKE A PROFIT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood

 

I truly do not understand why PP defenders don’t just say, “Look, folks, we can’t make a profit. We have a 100 year paper trail of not making a profit, so just shut up.” The only reason I can think of that they don’t say this is that maybe they think the American public is too stupid to understand that. I really don’t want to believe that.

 

Third, setting aside that it’s impractical to harvest fetal parts, and against the organizational model to sell them for profit—why would an organization that wanted to sell fetal parts hand out contraceptives? Planned Parenthood does so much of its work in distributing condoms, providing prescription birth control such as the pill or IUDs. It simply wouldn’t work for them to simultaneously be preventing pregnancy and depending on it. Unless of course they were the stupidest business ever run. But then how would they survive 100 years?

 

Oh, right, “Federal Funding.” I really hope you already know this, but Planned Parenthood doesn’t get a check from the government that it distributes whatever way the admins want. Planned Parenthood “funding” means that if you get care there, PP will be reimbursed. Pap smears will be reimbursed. Wellness checks will. (Abortions won’t because of the Hyde Amendment, but that’s another column.)

 

Where I live, there is only one health clinic downtown. It’s Planned Parenthood. There is an Urgent Care center, but that is not the same as a clinic. If PP loses reimbursement for health care, this town of 15,000 is, simply, without a clinic for poor people to get care. This is indefensible.

 

Yes, Planned Parenthood is a health clinic. The name should tip you off that they actually LIKE parenthood. The idea is for it to be on purpose, and healthy. I have been a Planned Parenthood patient for many years, off and on, according to how good my health insurance has been. I have received treatment for strep throat at this clinic. Prenatal care for my child. Antibiotics for infection. Vaccinations. Pap smears. And yes, contraceptives.

 

And, there is one last desperate gasp for Planned Parenthood haters: We can’t support PP because Margaret Sanger was a bad person.

What a weird idea. I won’t even get into what she was accused of, since it is at once complicated and baseless, but so what?

We do many many things that bad people started or championed. Shall we not drive cars because Ford was an anti-Semite? All leave the country because the founders mostly owned slaves?

 

Planned Parenthood opponents, like the animals in “Chicken Little,” take bad information and don’t bother to think about it before passing it on. Are they bad people?

 

Some are. Some are people who want power over women.  Some don’t like the idea of women having sex, and some of those even go so far as to come up with reasons they should have power over with whom and how women they don’t even know run their lives.

But some are not bad people. Some are, like Turkey Lurky and friends, just afraid. They pass on information because they are afraid of what happens if they don’t, and they don’t think hard enough about whether the situation is real.

It is interesting to me that although medieval times have a reputation for being when everyone was obedient to their church or other authorities, many of the most enduring folk tales and songs cautioned against believing things without thinking them through. And many of them encouraged us to laugh at fools who believe baseless things, or acted on them.

 

It is high time we stop being defensive about Planned Parenthood, time we stopped saying how great they are—which they are—and concentrate on the narrative.

 

There are many levels of silly in the opponents of good healthcare that is Planned Parenthood, and it’s time we laughed them way.

Incredulity

When I was a new driver, the speed limit on the highway was 55.

 

But I was a new driver, and enjoyed speed. So I routinely went 20 or so miles over the speed limit. It was fun.

 

One day, happily going 75, I passed a State Trooper.

 

My heart sank. This was it.

 

But I got all the way home. The trooper never left the hiding place.

 

And I thought, “Not that I mind not getting a ticket, but if doing 75 in a 55 isn’t enough, what IS?”

 

Kellyanne Conway made up, totally made up, the Bowling Green Massacre.

 

She didn’t lose her job over it.

 

This is the point at which the Republican Party might say to itself, “Phew! Close one! Not that I mind my spokesperson not losing her job over an outright falsehood, but if lying about a terrorist attack doesn’t get you fired, what does? Better be more careful.”

 

If I had decided that since I didn’t get caught, I should just keep on speeding–no, speed more! Tell all my friends to speed! that would have been the same, ethically, as Last Night in Sweden.

 

Didn’t get caught speeding? Speed more! Speed more locations.

 

Didn’t get fired for imaginary terrorist attacks? Well, then, anybody can make them up.  Domestic terrorist attacks are not sufficiently interesting. Let’s make up one in a whole other country.

 

And if it gets noticed???

The trooper HAD to have seen me. But he didn’t care.

 

Similarly, let’s assume the United States citizenry DOESN’T care about alienating entire countries.

 

Seems legit.

 

 

Asking the right question

 

Asking the right question

 

Did you ever see a study and say to yourself, “Ohmygod! Of COURSE!”

 

It happens.

 

I remember an aha! Moment when reading a study about people who were gay. It was so Aha! That I didn’t write down the author, the journal, or the name of the study. It seemed so obvious to me that once this was public, everyone would agree and the author would be famous forever.

 

You see, normally when scientists go searching for why people are gay, the approach is “What makes this bad thing happen?” What makes this disability, this other-ness, this wrongness, occur?

 

The author of this study took a historical as well as a genetic or abnormality look at it. Knowing that there have been gay people throughout recorded history, and that gay people mostly are offspring of het people, and that the proportion of gay to het people tends to remain the same, what is the advantage to the species of this variation?

He reasoned that there must be a species advantage, since the trait didn’t depend wholly on genetics, nor was it communicable.

 

He found some advantages, too. I would encourage you to read the article but darn it! I can’t find it. It seemed so obvious to me, so it’s-about-time, to me that being gay is a normal variation that I didn’t think I’d have to write the name down.

 

Asking the right question is more likely than asking the common question to yield the right answer.

 

Somebody asked, “Why do we even HAVE fevers when we are sick?” rather than “How can we get this fever to go down?” and in my lifetime the attitude was changed from giving the kid aspirin (a bad idea, anyway) at the first sign of elevated temp to letting it do what it is supposed to do, kill the germs, unless the fever itself becomes life or brain-threatening.

 

 

A similar approach was taken in the book Survival of the Sickest. This author chose to look at diabetes, and similar problems—especially the kind particular to specific populations—and examine when there might be an advantage to something we commonly see as a disease.

 

Please read Survival of the Sickest. It is wonderful

 

I don’t remember the author tackling middle aged spread.

 

I think he should.

 

When, throughout history and across cultures, it is well known that as we reach middle age, both men and women tend to put on weight, it is time we asked: what might the advantage be to the species?

 

I will digress a minute and compare being large sized with levels of literacy.

 

I can accept that sometimes large sized people simply eat too much and exercise too little. But that isn’t everybody, same as not everyone who does not read well is unintelligent.

 

As a culture, we can accept that some people who don’t read well have dyslexia, some were never taught well, some might not enjoy it for a number of reasons, some may even have vision problems.

 

When we meet the person with dyslexia, we probably accept that this person will never read well. When we meet a person who is blind we easily understand that Braille will be a better solution than the printed word.

 

But with large sized people, we tend to assume the person is lazy, and that being smaller would improve his health.

 

We wouldn’t tell a blind person, “You’d do better in school if you would just pick up a book!”

 

But we do tell large people, “You’d be healthier if you lost weight.”

 

This is simply crazy.

 

Studies have shown that being what is thought of as “normal” has no longevity advantage over being “overweight;” it is not until one reaches morbid obesity that it matters.

 

In addition, we fail to separate the whys. It may be true that a large person who was large because of fast food is healthier when switching to a whole foods diet.

 

It may not be that a large person who is already on a whole foods diet will be healthier when fighting his body and starving it to stay smaller.

 

It turns out that calories in, calories out is bullshit for several reasons, and we have a good example of this folly, right now. The show Biggest Loser has the most successful dieters in history. Guess what: they all have artificially lowered metabolic rates following starving themselves for the show. They can not go back to the way a healthy, normal person would eat if they intend to stay small because their bodies now burn calories so slowly.

Here it is, for all of us to see: there are problems with the calories in, calories out model, because calories burn differently on different people, or even on the same people after different lifestyles.

The calories in, calories out model also stinks because it assumes the only thing to change if you starve yourself is to get smaller. Well, you might get smaller. But it might be that with less energy something else that takes energy will suffer. You may have lower mentation (means your brain is in a fog). You could have your hair fall out.

 

What are the advantages to the species of getting heavier as we age?

 

Nothing comes to mind at the moment.

 

Going grey has advantages to the species. It identifies the older, wiser, and less fertile of us.

 

Humans are unusual in the animal kingdom in that we live far after our fertility is gone.

 

And we tend to get “old and fat.” It is a common phrase.

 

So maybe there is a good reason for middle aged spread. Maybe we just don’t know what it is because we are so focused on the “wrongness.”

 

Anecdotally, everyone knows old timers who said in THEIR day, they had real winters, real cold, not this wimpy stuff. Collectively, we laughed at them, and then scientists confirmed Global Warming (and then renamed it Climate Change.) The old timers were right. The anecdotes told real stories we should have listened to.

 

Everyone knows an old woman who sighs that what she used to do to lose weight doesn’t work. We have laughed at her. She told us, but we laughed. She risked heart disease and decreased mentation and incurred great expenses to lose weight, and society laughed at her even as she tried to explain that, really, her body is as stubborn about holding on to the weight as the world is stubborn about providing warmer winters.

 

What if she is right? What if, not only is she right, but there’s an evolutionary reason for what’s going on?

 

It is high time we asked those questions.

I exist

 

 

I just saw Sing, an animated movie about, you know, aspiring musicians.

 

I am almost in tears with joy.

 

The plot is the usual about will the singers make it and will the impresario be able to keep his theater. (Spoiler: Happy ending.) The characters are all anthropomorphic animals.

 

But I was weepy with what I didn’t have to give up to enjoy this movie: My self respect.

 

You see, I am a woman. And in order to enjoy movies made past the Bette Davis/Katharine Hepburn era, I have to suspend my sense of self-worth.

 

You may have heard, in the theater, of the expression “suspend your disbelief.” In order to enjoy a lot of theater and movies, you have to suspend your disbelief, and believe that problems can be truly solved in an hour and a half, or that no one ever needs to go to the bathroom.

 

But, also. . . in order to enjoy The Princess Bride, I have to be ready to accept that in the entire country of Florin, no two women ever say anything of importance to each other. To enjoy any action film, I have to accept that the hero can be 25 years older than the heroine and ugly but they fall in love just the same.

All the Minions are male. Most of the Muppets are male, and those that are not are mostly blondes. Even Frozen, after you got past the sisters, the main characters were male and most of the dialogue was given to male characters even though the plot was about sisterhood. And their mom didn’t speak at all.

As a young woman, I barely existed. As an old woman, I don’t exist, except maybe as a murder victim or somebody’s mom.

In Sing, however, I EXIST. There’s a middle aged woman—OK, she is a pig—a mother of many, who goes to the audition after having had the problem of finding care for her children.

 

Not only does she get to sing, the movie highlights her skill as an engineer.

 

There is also a porcupine emo teenager, who dumps her boyfriend after he betrays her, and is amazing at playing guitar and writing songs. They make the story about HER, not about her reaction to the boyfriend.

 

And a young woman, an elephant, who has a beautiful voice but crippling stage fright.

 

Here’s the clincher: Not only do all of these characters get to perform, none of them has to undergo a makeover.

 

They stay plump for the whole movie.

 

And no one even mentions it.

MY. GOD.