beauty, Life in General, men, Nature: Hiking, Wildlife & More

How You Like Me Na-ow?!

 

 

I suppose I must be mellowing in my old age. The other day some woman went off at me for letting a door close on her, though she was ten feet from it and I had no idea she was even going into the same store, and instead of going full bitch back, like I would have a few years ago, by telling her I didn’t need a lesson in manners from a crack addict Cretan like herself, I apologized. She kept it up, mumbling and cursing and glaring through beady, narrowed eyes, until I said, “You are not listening. I sincerely apologize for not noticing you there. I hate it when people do that to me, and I truly did not mean to slight you.”

The muttering dropped an octave and faltered somewhat, then, though she struggled to maintain maximum nastiness, her eyes widened and she backed away. This unpleasant person, intent on drama and nasty confrontation was befuddled, shocked even, and left completely at a loss as to what to do next. “What is happening?” You could almost see her reptilian brain trying to access some reference to this alien behavior. “How will I scratch and claw and maintain feeling terrible all day if someone is going to be nice about it?” She was foiled.

When I got up to the counter, the salesgirl apologized for the woman, telling me that that particular customer was always very unpleasant. I nodded, it was obvious that she lived in the not so far away land of toxicity and, whether because she had been innocently hurled into that particular pit or leapt in herself and piled sewage on her own head, it was always unpleasant there.  She never expected anything else. For her, that was it.

I winked, “Yep, it freaks people out if they are looking for a fight and you are sincere and pleasant. They have no information on how to behave in that situation.”

Because, it’s easier to demand an apology that to accept one. It’s easier to be brash than graceful. It’s simpler to raise our voice than to speak softly enough that we can be heard. And oh, isn’t it so much more like us to complain that to be grateful.

So let’s get to complaining because that brings me to my latest gripe and I am in no mood to be polite about this crap. I call it, ‘The qualifier.’ You know what I’m talking about. The compliment that is given with an immediate take away. “You’re very smart,” sounds nice, until the sentence is completed with, “for a girl.” Suggesting, not just a lessening of your worth or talent, but an overall insult to all women, the suggestion that because I have a vagina, I cannot ever equal the IQ of a penis holder.

I heard that all my life. There was also, “You’re funny,” said with surprise because… wait for it… “pretty people aren’t funny.”  So only pimple-faced, fat kids can develop a sense of humor as a defense mechanism? No one ‘pretty’ could ever have had a painful childhood, or any trauma or loss, or even just have been born quick-witted. And is there some kind of limit on how many qualities a person can have? We’ve all been force-fed these stupid stereotypes. If you’re a good athlete you can’t be smart. If you have a mathematical brain you can’t be artistic. And on and on. Nothing fucked up to see here, folks! Move along!

I was taught to drive by a professional race car driver named Jack. One day after we’d been out practicing emergency techniques, i.e. correcting slides, using acceleration to avoid impacts, that kind of thing, we met my then husband at a friends house. My ex asked him, “How did it go?” Jack answered, “She drives good.” Ex smirked and added, “You mean for a girl.” Jack’s eyes glinted and without blinking he said, “No. She drives good.”

I still like that guy.

But now I have a new despised qualifier. And I doubt there is a woman over forty who won’t relate to it. If you are an aging woman, you probably already know what I’m going to say. Brace yourself, here it is.

“You look great!” beat beat beat, “…for your age.”

Oh, fuck you! Either you like the way I look, or you don’t. Frankly, I don’t really care. I’m a sixty-year-old woman who has lived my life in rain and wind and on adventures, I look like a sixty-year-old woman, because I am. Why the fuck would I want to look like a twenty-year-old woman and why would you think I would want to? Telling me that you think I would look better if I was younger tells me all about you, but it says very little about me.

I like how I look now, love the glow on my face that comes of contentment. I bask in the love in my husband’s eyes when I haven’t even looked in a mirror for days. I am freaking awesome!! Awesome with my frizzy hair and my descending jowls. I have no interest in applying coverup with a spackle knife or styling my hair with products bought by the barrel. I am aging and I am delighted with how it’s going. So are the thousands of women in my age group and older who have made themselves into what they want to be, not what you think they should be. Screw that, oh, and by the way, for you guys who think you can go on social media and criticize any woman who posts a picture of herself- let’s see you naked. How flat is your stomach? How much hair is left on your head? You want to criticize a woman for not being a size six or for aging naturally? Bite me.

Guess what happens when you ask a guy to post a picture of themselves in that same pose so that we can all get a chance to critique his ass? They disappear like vapor over Texas asphalt.

And if you are woman criticizing other women, well, I don’t even know what to do with you. Though that sewage pit might be a good place to put you. On second thought, if you are woman who has to criticize other women for their looks, you’re already there. That’s it for you.

So stop checking yourself in the mirror and start using those fabulous eyes to look out at the world with the wonder and joy it deserves. You are enough.

No.

You are everything.

You’ve got it all

You’re stunning.

From the inside out.

 

Shari, July 16th, 2021

acting, Acting & Experiences, America, authors, beauty, creating character, Entertainment, film, Life in General, men

Sexier than Thou. An Effed-up Value.

Mein Herr, chair

Tired of being compared to a barnyard animal for those extra pounds? Sick to death of being ranked against every other woman at your office, school, or neighborhood? Infuriated by the fact that men routinely troll strong women of amazing quality, intelligence, and skill with hateful rhetoric based on physical appearance? Then why, when women are more than half the population, do we put up with it?

Beyond that seemingly simple concept, there’s more. Somebody please explain to me why, as sisters who can only benefit from raising our sex as whole, do women perpetrate this crap? Why are we encouraging our country to stay this adolescent?

I don’t want to sound too harsh, but…a nation where the value of half its population is commonly and frequently ranked according to our ‘fuckability’ by the less enlightened of the other half is clearly a country that should be sent packing from pre-school with a note. “Until Sam can treat his classmates with respect, he needs to stay home.” The things we teach our children should make us hang our sexist heads in shame. It’s like our entire adult population never got out of junior high. Sorry to reduce it so far down, I know that there are many terrific men out there, I know that tens of thousands of women and men are working hard to change this mentality, but this is an essay, not a novel or a dissertation, so I only have so many words to make a point.

I’m not saying that admiring someone’s appearance or appreciating sensuality is bad. It is not bad. It’s human, and feeling lust is in our DNA. Procreation is a powerful engine. I am a big fan of all things sensual, from fun flirtation to up against the wall, sweaty, growling like a bobcat passion. I can look at a gorgeous woman or man and think, “Damn, she/he/she-he/whatever, is hot!” and appreciate the moment. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I am talking about here is being reduced (read that as—demeaned, lessened, lowered, relegated, otherwise ignored, or any other version of being put in a lower place) to existing solely for someone else’s gratification. I’m talking about perpetrating the myth that the most important thing a woman can be, the thing that women envy her for the most, is attractive to men.

Frankly, it pisses me off.

And this isn’t new. From the time I was a very young child, I was taught that being pretty was special, it was valuable. Television, magazines and the people in my life backed this up again and again until I was sure I had absolutely no right to ever be unhappy or feel lonely, even as conventional thought isolated me more and more from what I knew in my heart and soul was the truth. So, I’ve been pissed off for a few decades now.

The truth is that while looks are fun, they are not important. Being handsome doesn’t uplift or sustain you in any way. Being considered attractive can have its place, like making people smile, or showing off this year’s fashions on the runway but as a value it isn’t real and it certainly doesn’t form a foundation for anything worthwhile.

I’m older now but I think I have a reasonable grasp on this subject. Yes, I was on the cover of Playboy several times, yes I made a lot of money modeling lingerie, and then being the actress with the ‘good body’ in many films and TV appearances, but it wasn’t always comfortable for me, I was more than tits and ass and I knew it. A glance at my resume will not tell you how many jobs I refused because I thought they would be degrading, not to me, but to women in general.

We’re guilty too, we girls. Come on ladies, buck up and admit it. We perpetrate this ridiculous shallowness. Not by choosing to dress or act ‘sexy’, that’s our right damn it!, but because we allow men to make us compete with other woman in this very limited arena. And, more insidiously, because we actually buy into it, convincing ourselves that we are better than someone else for something so shallow. Men have been using that weakness to make us fight against each other since the days when man caves were a primary residence—their bad. But when women willingly climb into the ring—our stupidity.

Talk about setting ourselves up for a fall. There is always someone hotter and younger coming along behind you dummy. And no matter what, you will age and no amount of money or plastic surgery will keep you 22 and your butt high. I mean, what the hell ladies? Talk about setting yourselves up for a fall. Not much job security in putting your eggs in that basket.

I don’t even want to go into the political aspect of this right now. The fact that women vote for men who would dismiss them as worthless and disgusting based on their faces and bodies is a whole other subject that leaves me wanting to bounce from one side of my living to the other smashing my fists through the dry wall, and since I’m living in a rental right now, I’ll reserve that rant for later.

Just because a woman is ‘attractive’ or ‘sexy’ in your opinion does not mean that she does not have other worth, or even that she appreciates or invites your assessment. If you want to feel smug because a woman your boyfriend once leered at has gained weight, go for it. Just remember that it’s a tiny fraction of who she is, but your need to put her down there is a huge part of who you are.

Oh sure, who am I to talk? I did plenty of nudity in films, but I never took a part that was just me taking my shirt off for the titty count. The ‘titty count’ is how I would refer to the fact that, when I was a working actress, a movie had to show tits three times to get a foreign distribution deal. Often with smaller movies that’s where filmmakers made their money, and I didn’t begrudge them that, but I wouldn’t be only that. The role had to be worth it in some way, an acting challenge.

Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s awesome fun when you keep the power of your sexuality, but it’s soul crushing when you are expected to give it away.

In my first starring role there was a huge, fight-slash-attempted-rape scene that was written to be played completely naked. I felt helpless and dirty about it. Not because of the nudity per se, but because of the insinuation and context. I had it out with the producer and director and told them that I would not do that scene naked, they screamed and hollered and threatened to sue me, but I held my ground. A week later, when the mandatory prison shower scene was being filmed, I stripped down to skin, climbed in under that luke-warm water and dutifully lathered up. The producers had been expecting me to refuse to do the scene, they even had a lawyer on the set. I remember the confused, but happy, look on the director’s face when we finished shooting the scene and wardrobe brought me my robe. I said to him, “Do you understand now? I have no problem with nudity or sexuality, but I have a serious problem with using rape as an excuse for nudity and arousal.”

And you should too.

Conversely, there was a moment in ‘Caberet’ when, dressed in very skimpy black lace and thigh high boots, in the middle of the outrageously sexual song ‘Mein Heir’ I would pause, nail the audience with a sly smile, then rise onto my six inch heels leading with my pelvis while raking, no, daring the audience with my eyes. I didn’t even think about it until the choreographer came backstage and said, “Do you have any idea how powerful you are in that moment?” It hadn’t occurred to me to look at it like that, but after that night, it got better. Yes, it was fun to own my character’s sexual prowess, but it was way more fun to belt the songs, to dance with talented dancers, to act the scenes with emotion that wrenched and exhausted me until the show finished with me a depleted heroin addict close to death.

But enough of me justifying and rationalizing, back to the point. Women are wonderful, soft and sexy and strong and ruthless. We are smart and kind and cruel. We are doctors and authors and teachers and politicians and even murderers. But still, any time someone feels the need to be negative about a woman, deserved or not, the default insult is almost unfailingly about her appearance.

Time to rise my darlings. Enough of this BS. I appreciate a gorgeous woman in a sexy setting as much as anyone, because I’m not homophobic and women, all kinds, shapes and sizes of women, are sexy. And while I appreciate a gorgeous man as well, I don’t have the need to reduce them to sex toys either. I get it, my darling romance writer friends, it’s our turn to objectify men the way they have us, but do we need to? Hopefully the answer is no.

If you won’t put your foot down and refuse to enter that bogus arena for yourself, do it for your daughters. If you don’t have any daughters of your own, do it for everyone else’s.

Stand up for us all by refusing to put a woman down for her appearance. If you need to criticize someone’s appearance, check to be sure why you feel compelled to do so, and maybe find a more intelligent thing to say.

Maybe the world deigns that you are ‘attractive’ and maybe it doesn’t. Who gives a shit?

Not me. Not any more. I gave up that competition and started to look for what was worthy inside of people long ago. I not only saved my sanity, my life went from a mirror to a kaleidoscope of light and color and heartfelt connections.

I’m not buying into that bullshit I was fed for one more minute.

Because people are remarkable.

Even the good-looking ones.

But not just them.

Look deeper.

Love more.

Because you’re worth it.

Shari, September 13th, 2017