Some Political Incorrectness

It's widely known that American women worked in factories during World War II, doing big jobs, hard jobs, because the men were off fighting.  Even so, the patriarchy informed hiring decisions, witness the little hiring guide below.  My favorite bit is in point six:  "Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves."  This was the water we swam in a short while ago.  Today, much-reviled "political correctness" prevents employers from putting something like that down in writing.  But old stereotypes die hard.

My second favorite point in the below is that husky women, point no. 3, make better workers than skinny ones. Yes! You may also note that having time to freshen up your lipstick is good for workplace morale.So

Throughout, women are referred to as girls.  Another way of keeping us small.

Growing up in the Fifties

What's wrong with this picture?

I enjoyed Bridge of Spies. It was absorbing and interesting, especially because I was alive at this time but not very conscious in things like the last section of the Berlin Wall falling in place - I was a single mother devastated by a divorce. After I saw the film I cruised around the internet reading the critics. In comments on one site I came across a very angry woman named Mary. She wrote something like this:

This movie made me so mad. It's flat and untrue to its time, some male Hollywoodish view of what life was in the 1950s, husband-wife caricature, family as set decoration, I was ready to throw bricks at the screen by the time it was over.

It struck me that I once was Mary, but hadn't been angry at all watching the film.Why was that? It wasn't untrue to my experience. It showed the world I grew up in.Women existed in support roles in the home and the world of work. We wore slim skirts and sweaters. Men wore overcoats and made important decisions and played important roles in matters of state.
I felt like a real living being then, and all my problems seemed personal, though it turned out they weren't. And I wasn't very adjusted to it all, I just didn't know that. Until I went to college I did not know I lived in a system and people elsewhere lived in different systems. Until the revolutions of the sixties, I did not know I could dislike it. Until feminism I did not know how suppressed we women were as a class, what we could not even desire, which might be to take part in important negotiations in a bad overcoat.
If there are stages of awakening to your position in the culture, the first one is anger at what it's done to you. But anger is a waste of time unless you can calm down and channel it into action. Acceptance of reality may be the last stage of awakening, but it should not keep us from seeing how wrong these social constructs are.

Things Change (Constantly)

"Things change" was a constant theme of Suzuki Roshi, and impermanence is a fundamental understanding in Buddhism.  Phenomena (everything we think of as real) are constantly arising and decaying, so pay attention.  Along that line, isn't it curious how some people stick like velcro to themselves and their beliefs?  Mostly people who are good at distracting themselves from their suffering, I think.  Often people don't adopt meditation seriously until overwhelmed by suffering.  It seems much the same to me as "hitting bottom" in an addiction.  

Among the principles of Assertiveness Training I once taught in the heyday of feminism, was the right to change your mind.  Not that we should enshrine our tendency to ADD and flutterby everything, but we should pay attention to new information, like, the love of your life has been having sex with the babysitter. Things change, new information, you change.  Old age is a stream of things like this.  You start having stress fractures in your feet; throw away high heels, move into well-fitting athletic shoes.  Surprising how difficult it can be when you are attached to some dumb red shoes or husband or other delusion.

Since I put out word that I was offering a course in Zen (see previous post), I've talked to a number of people and decided to offer instead a sitting group for women only.  Someday I might write about what happens in mixed-gender peer groups or discussions, and how radically women's lives differ from men's, but you could google it yourself.

The description of the sitting group follows this pleasing short video in which Sylvia Boorstein introduces lovingkindness meditation, which I plan to introduce in the group.


~ Women’s Meditation Group ~

Contemporary  Zen  strays  by  struggling  to  get  away  from  the  heart's innermost request - to realize the same heart as Buddha. Our problem is not that we aspire too much, but that we aspire too little, and aim for selfcentered wisdom and compassion rather than the full-blown real deal. ~ Dosho Port

Since I announced a course called The Zen Way to a Balanced Life, I’ve learned that only women were interested  (which is interesting), and that almost everyone has schedule conflicts this time of year.

Bowing to reality - which is basic to Zen, when you think about it - I’ve decided to change my offering to an open sitting group for women only. It will meet every Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30.  Come if you can.  No registration is required, and there will be no charge.

Each meeting will include
~ seated meditation in the Zen style (zazen) - in chairs ~ tea and a check-in
~ a talk on the whole-hearted way of Zen
~  time to creatively explore how we can live our own lives more deeply.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to write or call.  Otherwise, just show up.  If you’d like a personal orientation to zazen before you come, call me to set up a time. We will start promptly, so plan to arrive ten minutes early.  The door will be unlocked; if you are late, enter quietly and find a seat.  You may leave your shoes in the front hall.

We will begin with a focus on setting up a daily sitting practice, and on kindness, the first of The Four Boundless Qualities of the Mind.  There is a good introduction to these qualities at this link:  http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/jh_boundless.htm
~~~~~~~~~~
Jeanne Desy began practicing meditation when she had breast cancer in 1997, and has led meditation groups and workshops since.  She has studied with Ama Samy and Daniel Terragno, and is a student of Dosho Port.

Good News Never Hurts

The video - it just puts me in good spirits to see an old guy up there with his grandson, still making music.  In fact, the existence of Pete Seeger cheers me up.

I thought you'd like to know the followup to my last post.  If you're new to this blog, maybe you should scroll down and read that first.

Okay, welcome back.

Not long after I put up the previous post, the Good Doctor did call.  I call him a Good Doctor because -
(a) he did call, and
(b) he started by explaining why it took him this long to call and apologizing.  A doctor who apologizes for your wait.  On Facebook, I'd punctuate that like this.

Here are the notes I typed into my computer as we talked, though it hurts my poor cervical spine (neck) to do things like that.  I need to have Tom find that clunky shoulder rest I used to have on the phone, when I used a landline more.  You can be sure he will have saved it, and be able to stick his hand into a heap and pull it out.  That's the difference between us.  Two differences, actually.
1.  I occasionally throw something out or donate it.
2.  What I didn't get rid of, I can't find.
So, my notes:

he began with apologizing for taking so long, and explaining that he’d been trying to get hold of the radiologist, and finally did
neck pain is from narrowing of neck, like stenosis
there may be some leakage of spinal fluid around T8, but it would cause headaches standing that go away when you lie down (so be aware if that begins).  Or it could be a glitch with the test.  (Idiots would not strap me down, and I moved a couple of times just a little. Plus, do I ever really get still?)
B12 normal
TSA a bit elevated, but thyroid fine
so go ahead and schedule the PT, and they will tell me what I need to use to walk safely
I had a stunning release of anxiety, and did the hokey pokey, holding on to things.

Thus you can see I am downright optimistic, though that is probably temporary.  Still, it is an upside to bipolar disorder that we delightful, fun, creative people need to remember when we don't feel fun or creative, and perhaps are not acting as delightful as usual:  our moods change.  Everything does.

You know, a great many American women describe themselves as depressed.  My crazy friends and I agree, people who have never been disabled by depression have no idea how bad it can be.  My Buddhist friends and I suspect that most of what passes for chronic depression is actually the dissatisfaction that comes with human life, especially in developed countries today, where people have too much time to think:  the craving to Be Somebody you're not, to have More Love than you're getting from your kids, your family, the opposite sex, your boss, etc; to not age, and certainly not die.  And there are the miscellaneous delusions, such as the well-established belief that wine really isn't alcohol because it's made from a plant.  (I had to tell the woman who told me that, so is vodka.  So is bourbon.  Etc. Somehow, we don't get together anymore.)

But life does have its rough spots, and sickness, aging, and death are big ones.  Next thing you know, you're learning to meditate lying on your back in bed with a tiny heated pillow under your neck.  I may well be the world's foremost Zen expert in that particular unconventional posture. 

What Rescue Workers Know and Women Don't

Sundays, I like to go to church.  There isn't an American Zen center in my city, but I wouldn't leave my church if there was; I've been a member there for thirty years, and they've helped me through sickness and loss. I've gotten to know a lot of nice people there. I ran into three (3!) of them at my local library today, perhaps because we were all not at the OSU football game.

Maybe my long tenure there has meant I feel free to misbehave.  Often, the music and the sermon inspire me to write a poem quietly, on paper with a pen, not on my iPad.  If that bothers someone, they should sit with that, as we say in Zen, meaning, they should meditate on, What's my problem, anyway?

But last Sunday I was inspired not to poetry, but to some notes on self-compassion. What, have compassion for yourself?  You're a woman. Who has time?  Exactly.

Who has time to meditate, for example, to name the overall best way of taking care of yourself by reducing your stress.  I once heard a self-styled spiritual person say that.  Really? I thought thoughtfully.  But she worked, and had a family.  And after all, meditation - time to accomplish nothing at all in a certain way - is a luxury for those who don't have to work all their waking hours.

As I thought about self-compassion, and taking better care of This Wun, I remembered the fireman [sic] I once was doomed to work with; we co-edited a manual for fire fighters.  We'd have gotten along better if I'd said to him early on, "Look Ron - you know how to fight fires.  I don't tell you how to fight fires.  I am a language person.  I know how to edit.  Let me do my job."  In part, I kept silence out of a not-unreasonable fear of macho guys with big chips on their big shoulders.

From working with that book I learned the first rule of fire-fighting, whether you're a smoke jumper or a small-town volunteer:
       Save yourself first.
A rescue worker is a very important part of any community, as communities are places where people live in shelters, and shelters are important to animals.  So, you know those adorable pictures of a firefighter streaked with smoke, lovingly holding a tiny kitten?  If he or she* endangered their life to save that kitten, they will get chewed out mercilessly by the captain, and by Ron.  Because a trained rescue worker is more valuable than the idiot who started that fire by smoking in bed.  That's how Ron explained it to me, in more colorful language.  It's expensive to train a rescue worker and it can take years before you tame down their hero fantasies and they become good team players.  So Ron said.   

Women of the world - whether you fight fires or a harassing boss, are a mother or a daughter, a politician or a postal clerk - you are important, too.  Yes, even though you don't have a penis.  This is still news to many people.  Change comes slowly.  The general culture keeps subtly putting women "in their place" even if your parents were liberated and you are, too.  The comic strips are full of jokes about women working two jobs, the paying job, and that second shift they work when they come home and take care of a family.  But it really isn't funny.

When you fail to take care of your own needs - and who am I to suggest daily meditation? I'm not your mom - you are spending the vital chi you were born with.  It is exhaustible. 

I think that the reason most people stop meditation practice is that their truth is threatening to break through the boredom.  It does do that, and when it does it's a good thing to be working with an authentic Teacher.  Be prepared.  As my favorite author, Terry Pratchett, has written, "one edition of the Ankh-Morpork Times says on the masthead, 'The truth will make you fret.' (Other editions assert, 'The truth will make you free,' and 'The truth will make you Fred.')  There is debate about who first added an estimable second clause to that famous sentence, maybe Dead President James Garfield, who is not credited in this pretty poster -

Some prefer Gloria Steinem's version.
~~~~
* Rescue Workers have to wear so much gear, and lift so much weight that few women can qualify or, indeed, have dared to aspire to the job.

Free Legal High (They haven't outlawed music yet)

I know that many poor souls have to work on this nice Friday before the Labor Day Weekend.  Some can't even leave early for the last drinking-eating-fun weekend of summer here in the United States.  That's not my thing - I don't work anymore, and my idea of fun is watering my hanging basket.  The wave Petunias have been wonderfully sturdy.  But I sympathize.  I get tired and depressed, too, and have to spend time on lots of things I didn't sign up for.

So this morning I consoled myself with this iconic* comic monologue-song.  Here you are, 18 minutes of pure pick-me-up laughing and dancing in your chair.  I was tempted to join the standing ovation at the end.

Those who were not alive and kicking up a fuss in 1967 can read all about this recording on Wikipedia.  Here is  something of a plot spoiler - this song was an incitement to subversion, an instruction on how to beat the draft nonviolently.

Remember 1967?  I do.  Littering was an issue, as it is in this song.  Arlo Guthrie, activist son of Woodie Guthrie, was so famous he would be an act at the Ohio State Fair years later.  (Yes, I saw him.) I was a 25-year-old housewife gone back to finish college now that my daughter was in school full-time.  All around me in the classrooms were weedy, pathetic boys who should have been going into a trade, but were desperately hoping not to fight in Vietnam.  They weren't conscientious objectors; it was pure selfish fear of dying, something veterans of earlier wars would never have owned up to.

Wars.  Some things never change.

But some things do.  Today we have young women that age joining the military of their own free will, fighting sexual harassment at West Point, wanting to be in combat.  I didn't envision this in those feminist anti-establishment days.  But I've come to believe that we have to be prepared to defend ourselves in a broken world, even as we practice nonviolence and pray for peace.

The Dalai Lama blessing his armed guards

Photo by Alison Wright, from an interesting interview in the New York Times Lens about her experiences photographing Tibetan nomads.
~~~~~~
*I know, I said I'd never use that word.

Old songs and Strong Men

Above, the man of your dreams?  More about that in a minute.

Below, a sweet song I may have heard when I was six and Vaughan Monroe's version hit the top 10. I loved the narrative - a story in song, a message in persisting through the desert.  Keep a-movin' Dan.   I'm not alone in liking it - a lot of people have recorded it.  I landed on this version first, remembering Johnny Ray, and like it. 


While in that area on YouTube, I saw this and listened to it and looked at it, remembering clearly the movie.  Watching it, many stills from the well-done black-and-white film, I remembered the rigid gender roles in the culture I was born into; the patriarchy - the fundamental culture of the fifties.



I was probably about twelve when "High Noon" came to the Lyn Theatre half a mile from our house.  I was never into "cowboy movies" and thought pretty much nothing happened in it, and it was boring; you could fit about ten of it into one episode of 24 Hours. But I stayed and watched it, of course.  It was a long time until I learned you could walk out on a movie, and then it took me a while to do it.  So there I sat, absorbing the world in which men were interesting and brave and important, and women were . . . pretty. The men did stuff and the women . . . waited. Sigh.

It's been a long, strange trip since then, and most of it hasn't gone as we feminists hoped it would.  Keep a-moving, Jan.  And Susan and Heather and Tiffany, all of us.

I had a second bad fall two weeks ago, and have seen three doctors since then and had an MRI of my brain. Ischemic events happening there, so now I'm scheduled for a neurologist.  I'm tired.  So I'm going to ask you readers to comment, or e-mail me if this strikes any chords with you.  Or reminds you of the stories you grew up with.

There Is No God, and She's Getting Mad

This is a better world for women than the one I was born into.  But not nearly good enough.  A lot of brave women are standing up to systems that abused them, and that have resisted change.  That's not the route for all of us, but we all need to work on ourselves, standing up against the conditioning that tells us that to be feminine is to be nice and while our lives away.

Above, the archtypal scene from the Sistine chapel in which Old Man God creates A Man.  I would have liked to include the scene from the 1988 film Working Girl in which Melanie Griffith asks her best friend to cut her hair, saying a line something like, "If you want a serious job, you have to have serious hair."  Would that the TV weathergirls [sic] would learn that.

But we don't need to work on our hair any more than we already do.  We need to get easy-care cuts, like men, and get to work on our lives.  Our souls.  Our art.  On our work, whatever it is.  On sharing our gifts.  From what I see, a lot of woman-power is being wasted.

I got riled up earlier today reading a blog post by one of the beloved Masters [sic] in the Zen tradition.  It always makes me a little nervous to argue with Daddy.  Really.  I've met Rev. James Ford and followed his writing for years.  He is a deeply kind, generous man.  But I wanted to comment on his review of Brad Warner's new book, and I overcame my (conditioned?) hesitation.  So, here it is.  Dear James -

You write, "I also quibble with his masculine by preference language for God." I'm trying to think of the best verb to describe what I think of that, and how I feel about it.  I don't quibble with this.  Quibbling is mild.  I disagree vehemently. And I am discouraged to think you see it as a minor point.   Language matters.  It matters beyond mere theology.

It matters when we use "man" as if that word means "humankind."  That language grew up in a system men ruled (a time before birth control, may I note), a system that gave us "All men are created equal," which meant what it said: (white, landed) men were human, and had the right to vote; women were not, and did not.

The single thing most supportive of the patriarchal values that allow men with automatic weapons to shoot up our schools and deadlock our legislatures is the mythology of a powerful male God who, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, created a man first.  Then a woman, to serve.  Men rule. This is still true.  It is the single most off-putting thing about the Japanese Zen tradition for women like me - a meticulously drawn lineage of authority passed from one man to another, and thus to Brad Warner.

The choice of "He" to describe God matters.  The male God depicted above is the one who went on to give humans the authority to "fill the earth, and subdue it."  We're paying for that now.  Gaia is not subdued.

I've noticed in Zen and elsewhere, watching from the sidelines the way poets do, how men like the "bad boys," the rule-benders like Brad Warner.  Women need to cultivate that.  Instead of admiring Adele because she lavishes attention on her looks, we need to be admiring real women who are not worried about looking pretty and feeling pretty, but are doing their work.  There are plenty of admirable women on the barricades now, working to raise good kids, working in the arts and in politics, even, amazingly, in the male-dominated religious institutions, some of which offer us, at last, the chance to sit down and get real.
~~~~~~~~~~
Below - a homage to Mother Jones, my personal saint, by two other admirable people, Utah Phillips and Ani diFranco

Morning Coffee With Grandma: What is Zen?

7:00 Quietly awakened by morning light.  Roll over, sigh happily - nothing scheduled this morning. close eyes.
8:20  Wake up again. (In Zen this is called gradual awakening.  I've always believed in it.)
8:45  Pulling the compression sleeve on my lymphedemic arm, I accidentally sock my jaw.
9:00  Take vitals. I am alive. I thought so.
9:05  Get on Vine of Obstacles, read Forum, answer another student with a post that includes one of the few things I know for sure - you have to have a semi run into your house before you will start to meditate.  Then, if you're a woman, it's going to take twice the effort, because you've been trained to take care of everyone else, and don't get above yourself.  I don't have to go into a tirade about how Oprah and the other marketers make a lot of money by convincing you that what you need is a $100 haircut and a pedicure.  Most of us eventually figure out that that doesn't work.  Also, an old saying in feminism is "To get anywhere a woman has to be twice as good as a man.  Fortunately, that's not hard."

Actually, on one of my early Zen retreats I was walking down the residence hall when I saw that someone else had left her door open.  There, neatly laid out on her dresser, were four pairs of earrings. I thought, being new to all this, "Are these people Zen?"  Some of the women wore full makeup every day, too.  It turned out that -
(a)  Most were Catholic, drawn to this retreat because it was at Grailville and was led by a Jesuit Priest/Zen Master.  And -
(b)  Zen is not about what you wear.
(c)  Not everyone gets that.  When I went to a "real" Zen retreat, the other students all wore black and did NOT wear earrings or makeup or ever look up at the flowering trees.  Was that Zen? Now I was confused.

9:30  Done with coffee.  Time to put the post-it sign on my study door and do my practice.  Not that sitting down to meditate is the practice.  The practice is . . . umm . . .Well, sit down, shut up, and pay attention is fundamental.  But the "pay attention" part is supposed to keep going.  Pay attention all day long, every moment, every step.  That's the practice, as I understand it now.
~~~~~

In case you didn't recognize her above, here's a more usual view of the beautiful Pema Chodron, who got liberated and then got liberated.

One more thing:  I'm thinking I ought to call this blog The Dally Grandma.  Any opinions?

Caring in a Caveman Society

This is a personal blog, about making my way through life, and I don't often veer into opinion because (a) it attracts trolls, and (b) I've never won an argument yet.  But the whole world affects me, of course. 

I was stirred by reading an article in Tuesday's NY Times, "Low Pay at Weight Watchers Stirs Protest as Stars Rake It In."  This is not so different than the issue of astronomical bonuses for bankers and pathetic wages for the working class, except that it is largely about exploiting women; there are not many male Weight Watcher leaders. (And BTW, not many women CEOs in the largest companies.)  Here's the bit that has me shaking my head:

"It's a female-dominated job, it's in the service industry, and it's caring work," Professor Mastracci said of Weight Watchers.  "Caring work is undervalued..."

Sharon Mastracci is the author of "Breaking Out of the Pink-Collar Ghetto" and teaches at the University of Illinois. Let me repeat that: Caring work is undervalued. Let me change it just a bit:  Compassion is undervalued.

Is it possible to say something sadder about a society?  And it's not just the United States.  It's everywhere  we are not yet freed from the values of patriarchy, which I think of as caveman society, since many of those values grew then, when the strongest men ruled.  These "masculine" values are many, and some are admirable, such as teamwork and courage.  Others run through society like big ugly threads.  They underwrite pornography.  They fire competition for winning, power, wealth, and fame, often with beautiful young women as the prize, and that competition too often leads to ruthlessness.  Over and over someone caught up in it ends up doing ugly things.  Occasionally they get what they deserve.

Lance Armstrong

This is all very personal for me.  I am a woman.  So is my daughter, so are most of my friends, so was my mother and hers before her.  Those in my generation and earlier were taught that we had three career options, if we weren't lucky enough to marry a good provider and have children and be a Happy Homemaker:  teacher, secretary, nurse.  Who knows what many thousands of us might have done if we'd had a chance to see what we could do?  What we wanted to do?

Most of the women I know are in middle-class members of my generation and my daughter's, and most of them  have been involved in caring work, such as child-rearing, homemaking, nursing, support staff, or K-12 teaching.  When caring work is undervalued, it's women that are being undervalued, and women's work: raising children and making homes and caring for the sick - the work that keeps society together while the men make bombs and play political games and decide women can't be priests.

Caring work is the most important work in the world.  Until the men figure that out, we need to be sure we know it for ourselves.  And not be afraid to rock the boat a little in our own lives from time to time, for the good of the world.

Tempus fugit, and Don't Forget It

In my day - I was born in 1942 and grew up in the fifties - a girl couldn't even contemplate a sport like this.  I was 30 before I ever met a woman who could pilot a plane.  I was awestruck. 

A lot has changed since then, thanks to the many cultural revolutions, including feminism.  And my bones have changed, too, and are, oh, brittle, due to a lifetime of scorning milk and kidney failure and also just plain aging.  I know what broken bones are, and there's no way I would try a jet-ski or even surfboard now.   Or anything that might jar me sufficiently to lead to a long, long rehab.

We do age.  And the time keeps coming and coming and you realize that today you can't do something you could do only yesterday.  Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.  So live with no illusions about tomorrow - you don't have forever to get to Paris.



When I picked out the above video and listened to it, it seemed so sweet, so innocent, so sort of Buddhist in its emphasis on this day, and I'd thought John Denver was like the public persona honored in the video.  Just now I read over his bio in Wikipedia and found that his life was not innocent or easy.  He was only 53 when he died crashing his private jet. He'd survived crashing his Porsche two years earlier.  From Wikipedia -

 In 1996, nearly a year before the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration had learned of Denver's failure to abstain entirely from alcohol after his drunk driving arrests, and had previously revoked his medical certification. . . . [Therefore] he was not legally able to fly at the time of the accident. However, there was no trace of alcohol or drugs in Denver's body at autopsy.

I know.  It's sad. I didn't think this post was going to go this way, and I suspect he didn't think that flight was going to end that way, either.  I'd been playing over in my mind all the people I've known who have lost abilities as they aged, including me and, actually, every old person I know.  Actually, that's more real to me, because I've been close to people who didn't see it coming and had nothing else to turn to. 

Time to go to the bottom of the blog, again, and think about The Five Remembrances.  Cheers.

Because I Don't FEEL Like Smiling, So Shut Up

So this morning I of course got something in my inbox on How to Master the Whole Universe from someone who ultimately wants me to buy his book.  He had some good advice on how to step out of your comfort zone, who doesn't? but the last point was - SMILE!

Smile!

He added, If you can smile while being uncomfortable, you can learn to be happy with discomfort.

(Parenthetically, you should not be happy with discomfort.  You should adjust your seat.)

This advice has been given by illustrious people, namely Thich Nhat Hanh, who wants you to "wear a little bud of a smile."  The only thing he has in common with the entrepreneur in my inbox is, they are both men.  Generally, men are not as nice as they should be, and are not trained to keep smiling.  Women are. But is that good?  You should think about it.

Once long long ago in a faraway land where I still had my figure I had a few meetings with one of those social workers who should have been screened out of the program, because she was critical and superior and in it to fix you; you know the type.  But she accidentally said one good thing to me.  I had a very heavy load at the time, a teenage daughter who had gone worse than wild, an alcoholic husband who was worse than I knew, had moved to a new town in redneck belt.  In the midst of expressing myself on this, I said to Mrs. DoGood, "Sometimes I get tired of smiling."

She said in a not unkind voice, "I bet you do." 

Wow.  That stopped me.  She had noticed how hard I tried to keep smiling.  It evidenced a bit of compassion, which I wasn't getting anywhere else.  It helped, though nothing could save me.  I have been reminding myself ever since that I don't have to smile. I try to be kind these days, but that is a million miles from Put on a Happy Face.

So here's what I say to womankind:  Don't keep smiling.  Keep being a person.  Be a real person.  Dance if you want to dance, scowl if you want to scowl.  Take a lesson from your cat, who doesn't give a rat's ass what you think.

Tardar, the Grumpy Cat

Women -  notice I'm not calling you Girls and I'm not calling you Ladies - you are grown up, and I bet you work hard for a living and not in lace cuffs, either - it is not your job to present a pretty face to the world.  You are a person, not a decoration.  It makes me feel like there should be a children's book titled "The Princess Who Scowled Whenever She Felt Like It."  You are welcome to the idea.  If you dedicate it to me, I won't mind.

Love in Many Guises

Pretty Woman is one of my favorite movies.  I understand that you might think that's crazy, but I can explain.

This is a film set in reality.  The poor woman has no way to earn decent money except to sell her body.  The rich man has no intimacy in his life, with himself or anyone else, and is not particularly a nice guy; this describes pretty well the rich men I have been around.

To sell her body, the pretty woman played byJulia Roberts resorts to making herself into a cliche, with a blonde wig and stereotypical clothing of the kind associated with pornography (or, these days, found in high schools and malls).  But she has a natural goodness, a spirit and sense of humor that comes through and enchants the poor little rich guy.  In the scene above, he enjoys wielding power-through-money after the woman has been snubbed in an exclusive shop; she enjoys it too, and gets her own back.  The snooty saleswoman is left to contemplate her bad karma.

The clothes do great things for the girl; that's the Cinderella story exactly:  a great dress and shoes.  BUT she does not get the man (the proper ending of a love story) until she stands up for herself and walks out on him and sets about getting an education.  He has to humble himself and climb up her tower with roses.  And apologize.  What woman wouldn't love this story?

Oh, quite a few, maybe.  I would understand it if this movie made some folks sick, as it traffics in all this skinny youth and beauty and appearances.  But I like it, and I am a feminist.  I mean, I do not believe men ought to be in power because they're men - power in the home or the workplace or political office. I believe these institutions should be run in a democratic spirit.  I do not believe women should be pretty, not smart.  I think we should be paid the same as men for the same work.

Actually, my radicalism goes deeper.  I think we are all intrinsically valuable and equal in the eyes of eternity, and that competition is by and large a bad thing, a feature of patriarchy that creates a few winners and a lot of cheating and a lot of losers.  I don't see why a CEO should ever earn more than a janitor, whose job is dirtier, more dangerous, and less appealing.  I believe all men and women are created equal, so there you are - I'd revise the  Declaration of Independence, that's how bad I am. 

This movie is the kind of fairy tale our culture is built on.  Pretty girl gets prince.  Still, I like the feminist spin of the ending.  The idea here is that a woman can stand up for herself and make her own way without a guy or his money.  So what do we make of that happy ending?  Well, by and large chick lit and chick flicks are about love, intimate love being possible between two people.  I am contrasting this in my mind with another favorite film, The Big Lebowski, a buddy film that shows committed love between friends, the kind of guys who have a hard time attracting women, I guess. Like Pretty Woman, this is a film based on stereotypes that rises above its genre.

Fair warning:  if you are offended by obscenity, you might want to skip this clip, in which the guys are holding an impromptu guy memorial service for their friend.

The Perfect Woman

There once was a bar in Columbus with a sign like this; maybe it's still there.  It hasn't been long ago that I drove past it and wondered why no feminists have ever defaced it.  After all, it means to depict the perfect woman in the context of thinking that women talk too much. 

I don't think that's just a cute joke.  I don't think it's merely about talk, but about a woman's place, a kind of systematic demeaning of women that is fundamental in patriarchal cultures, that is, pretty much all human societies.  Without going into the complex historical reasons for this, I will note that in the animal kingdom, sheer size and strength win.  And we are animals.  But we are also human beings and can do better than that. 

In patriarchy, women are silenced.  Are supposed to quietly serve men.  Are not supposed to have opinions. Can women think?  Should we?  What are we entitled to think about?  Should we have opinions?  Make waves, get equal pay?  Patriarchy knows the answers.

What is the opposite of the silent perfect woman serving a man?  Perhaps it is a gentle, loving man who is in no way aggressive.  What would he look like?  Not a castrati, I don't even want to think about depicting that.  I have never seen a pub sign like the above that would show a man mutilated in such a way as to make him a woman's ideal, and don't want to.  So how would I depict him?

Maybe he would look like this.....

Jesus as the good shepherd.  Maternal, long lovely hair, wearing a dress.  Okay, gown.
Or maybe the perfect man looks like this.....

The Dalai Lama. I could not quickly find a full-length portrait of him, but as you know, he too wears a dress.  Alright, gown.

As for a depiction of a perfect woman, I like the ideal of Kuan Yin, Kanzeon, Green Tara in various branches of Buddhism - the buddha of compassion. We ourselves have a statue of Jizo in our little Zen garden, who I believe is sometimes male, sometimes female, a quiet little patron saint of travelers and lost children.  Here she is, in fall color.  She wears a robe and carries a staff with little rings that jingle quietly as she walks, to let animals know she is coming and means no harm.

This is a personal issue for me, this thing about strict gender definition.  I wish I'd been taught that it was okay for a girl to be smart, to think.  I had to fight my way through a thicket of thorns on that, and to my surprise, sometimes I still do.

Domestic Goddess

Domestic Goddess

This morning the collage group I belong to didn't respond to my idea that we create The Porpoise of Art (watch this space), and I think we settled on the idea of balance.  Then, as usual, I went off-road. (You don't have to do the assignment is one of our principles.)  Looking at the array of magazines from which we can cut out images, I picked up a Women's Day dated September 1953. 

That month and year I turned eleven.  This is a moment when a child is anticipating going through puberty and growing up.  Women's magazines like this were my travel guide back then.  An ad for a sewing machine at the front of this issue evoked memories of being a girl dreaming of grown-up life, and the drawing in that ad became the center of my collage.  Everything in the collage  that's black and white was cut and rearranged from that ad.

As I made this collage, I remembered having seven crinolines for under my circle skirts, and I felt the sweetness of the aspiration for femininity and for a well-ordered home.  The dream was only superficially about having a man love you and owning a house and having nice furniture and cooking and cleaning.  It was also about home and family, a beautiful refuge. 

I could write a book about the harm done to me by the patriarchy, especially as filtered through my parents, who never questioned it.  The idea was that the man was a good breadwinner and the woman took care of  their lifestyle.  There was no room in that dream for loving and marrying people of the same gender, or not marrying at all, or not having children, or the two-career marriage, not for most of us. There was not room for women being smart, though a few plain girls were doomed to be.  Despite this prison of expectations, there was something of value in the idea of a home and a dedicated homemaker.  And also in valuing softness and femininity. 

Anyone could tell you I am so far from being a domestic goddess.  Yet, I found as I made this collage, that that aspect of the dream still held appeal for me, and I was glad I recently bought a pink tee with ruffles around the neckline.

Where Feminism Failed

I consider myself a really good feminist - Not to brag, but I wrote what has been called "a classic feminist fairy tale," The Princess Who Stood on Her Own Two Feet.  I founded a chapter of NOW in my little town in the early '70s.  I spoke to the Kiwanis, on the radio, to a committee in the Ohio House about sexist language, I did seminars on sexist language.  And so on.  And overall, I'm disappointed in what it has led to.

I certainly don't mean I'm disappointed in the expanded opportunities we got for women.  When I was in school, there were no girls' or womens' sports, except gymnastics, an occasional diver. By the time my daughter was in high school, she could be and was on a mixed swim team.  There is talk now of accepting women into training that would let them lead infantry into combat, no different than men.  I think the statistics look good for a lot of things that were once taboo, and there are more women in technical and scientific fields.  Single women can have babies or adopt them, and raise them.  Without being married, ever.

But what I see around me is that in a pervasive general way, women have failed to get it.  It goes like this:  If you are cute and silly and talk with a little lisp and go around the office in 5-inch heels with cleavage showing, people are not going to give you the respect they automatically give a man.  You'll have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.

You could blame Dr. Lisa Cuddy on House for this.  I am a great fan of House and Hugh Laurie, in particular, and I watch it.  But I never fail to shake my head and mutter at Dr. Cuddy's clothes.  Skirts that fit like a snake's skin.  Boobs falling out of her top.  Stiletto heels.  No. I don't believe it. You just don't become Dean of Medicine dressing like that. But then, a doctor can't go around looking like Gregory House, either.  A woman who had ambition would figure that out.  Her mentor would tell her.

Ladies, wake up.  If you present yourself as an eternally young and cute sex object, you will not be admired for your mind or your competency.  You can't do it both ways at once.  You can run around dressed to incite lust on the weekends, maybe, depending on how much you run across your boss.  But in the world of work, dress to be respected.  I deeply believe that women who respect themselves can still find love. I know it.

Below, how a successful doctor looks in real life. 

This is Dr. Nancy Snyderman with some guy (okay, it's Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric).  Notice that she, in fact, looks a little more professional than him, with her pearls. I guess a CEO can get away with not wearing a tie these days.  Dr. Nancy often appears on the NBC nightly news, well-spoken, knowledgeable, attractive, feminine, but not cute or sexy.

Maybe Dr. Nancy once read Dress for Success.  Following on the feminism of the 60s and 70s, there was a vogue for women wearing suits and nice blouses with bows or silk ties. I still have a couple of those ties, too nice to get rid of, though they don't go very well with yoga pants and tennis shoes - I'm old, that's different.

In closing, an illustrative example.  Some time ago a mature woman joined my church.  Right away people started dropping her name as someone who could be on the board, things like that.  As I explored it a little I found that she'd never done anything in the church.  Anything.  Why did people think she was competent?  I'm convinced it's because she always wore a suit or tailored jacket, and they were nice clothes, too.  She looked professional.  As long as she didn't open her mouth, nobody would ever suspect otherwise.

I know, the world shouldn't work that way.  Wouldn't it be nice if nobody judged each other on our looks and how we dress?  Yes.  If I ever find that utopia, I'll be sure to let you know.