And an ugly attitude is a choice (which is not where I thought this post was going but that’s what happens when you start writing – sometimes you end up in a place you didn’t know you needed to go)

My friend Claudia, whom I met in college, is beautiful.

Unlike Shayna, I don’t know if she knows it.

How could she not know? How could someone who looks like her – tall and slim yet shapely with long curly blonde hair and a killer smile – not know?

But she didn’t and doesn’t act beautiful.

(Wait. What is “acting beautiful?”)

That is, she is kind and sweet and thoughtful.

(WHOA IS THAT PROBLEMATIC.)

(I mean WHOA IS MY ATTITUDE PROBLEMATIC.)

I wanted to dislike her because of her beauty.

(AGAIN WITH MY ATTITUDE WTH IS WRONG WITH ME?)

But how do you dislike someone who is kind and warm and makes it a point to smile at everyone?

(OR – HOW DO YOU DISLIKE SOMEONE WHO HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG TO YOU?)

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In college, Claudia had everything – she was smart and she was beautiful (plus warm and kind and outgoing and interesting) and women aren’t supposed to be both. We’re supposed to have one thing. One. Beautiful women are supposed to be dumb and smart women are supposed to be ugly. I don’t make those rules.

Wait.

Who did? Who made those rules? And why?

Why is it bad for women to be smart and beautiful at the same time?

And why would we women turn on our own? Why would we want to dislike one of our own just because she is beautiful? Why would *I* want to dislike another woman because of her beauty?

Is it because we are competing for scarce resources and beauty is what gives us an edge in the competition?

Holy smoke the internalized misogyny – the idea that we compete with each other for scare men – is so, so strong.

I was just about to edit the sentence above and remove the part “the idea that we compete with each other for scare men” when I noticed I had made a typo: “scare” men should be “scarce” men.

But I am going to leave it in because wow.

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Claudia used to model, which does not surprise me at all. As I said – beautiful.

I would have thought that that sort of work would be a clue to her that she is beautiful, but in Paulina Porizkova’s memoir, she says that when she was dating, men would tell her that they weren’t going to tell her she was beautiful because she heard that at work all day long.

First of all – these men were jerks. Were they trying to make her feel bad? Who does that? Why?

Second – Porizkova says that no, she was not told all day long that she was beautiful. Indeed, it was the opposite. All she heard was that her lips weren’t as good as Cindy’s or her legs weren’t as good as Naomi’s or her eyes weren’t as good as Linda’s. She was compared all day long to other beautiful women and told she was lacking.

We do that to ourselves, but for most of us, it’s not usually part of how we pay our rent.

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When Claudia’s daughter was about five, I commented to Claudia that her little girl was beautiful. Which she was. She still is only now she is drop-dead gorgeous, even more gorgeous than Claudia was. Claudia was a cute teenager – I’ve seen photos, but she was ordinary cute who has grown into beauty. Her daughter is already stunningly beautiful.

Claudia answered that she hoped that her daughter would be kind.

Claudia has the right idea.

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Why do I expect beauty to be intimidating and mean?

Or, better stated, why do I seek reasons to justify my desire to dislike and be intimidated by beautiful women?

As I write this, I am ashamed of this feeling. I hope I am past it. I hope I now recognize it for what it is – deeply internalized misogyny that divides women instead of uniting us – and that if I do feel it again, I will stop it in its tracks and say “NOT TODAY PATRIARCHY. NOT TODAY. NOT TOMORROW. NOT EVER.”

Reader KC commented on the post about Shayna:

I tilted strongly towards concealing clothing when in certain types of co-ed environments after a certain point because otherwise it felt like I was perceived as a Tasty One-Night-Stand Treat by males and a Competitive Threat by females and thanks, I’d rather have female friendships than have skeezy guys trying to get me in bed.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we – if I – could look at a beautiful woman and not need her to be dressed in concealing clothing to consider her a possible friend?

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I leave you with this from Taryn Delanie Smith, who was Miss New York last year.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received? I was intensely bullied growing up. I used to tell my mother how much I wished I were “beautiful.” I’ll never forget, she’d say, “You are beautiful. But it’s important you recognize that it’s the single most uninteresting, thing about you.” Society seeks to condition girls to believe being pretty is a priority, it’s not. Be smart, be strong, be kind. Be you.

Source

How do you fill a cat-shaped hole in your heart and in your life?

When his father died, my husband did not cry.

When his mother died, my husband did not cry.

When our beloved sister in law died at Thanksgiving, my husband did not cry, although we were both knocked breathless by our shock and grief.

But since our cat died two days ago, my husband has not stopped crying.

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Neither have I.

Admittedly, I am faster to tears than Mr T is. I will cry at sad stories and even at some happy ones. I get misty eyed at weddings.

I got choked up a few months ago when we were with our Bonus Daughters and their families, singing with BD #2’s karaoke machine at her house. The Bonus Grandchildren were laughing and running through the living room while Bonus Son in Law #2 sang Blame It On The Rain badly (intentionally) and Bonus Daughter #1 and Bonus Son in Law #1 were singing along and Mr T was smiling and I was singing and then I was weeping because the moment was happy and perfect like an old AT&T commercial but the moment was also ephemeral and I knew behind it was death – Bonus Daughters had lost their mom six years ago, Bonus SIL #2 had come home from the gym to find his mother dead on the kitchen floor ten years ago and his best friend had died of cancer only a few months ago – and ahead of it was loss and the knowledge of those deaths and that loss to come makes the perfect moments all the more bittersweet.

And I did cry when our sister in law died. I adored her. I absolutely adored her and I love my nieces – her daughters – and I am so, so sad for them. I know what it’s like to lose a beloved parent at that age.

And I cried when my father died. Although in Mr T’s defense, his father was a jerk and mine was not.

But I have not Ugly Cried since my dad died, I don’t think.

I have been Ugly Crying since Laverne died.

Racking can’t catch my breath don’t know if I am ever going to be able to breathe again wait are my lungs working am I dying Ugly Crying.

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Is it like this every time people lose a pet?

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When my dad was dying, we had a going-away party for him in the hospice.

My Aunt Pat brought a pitcher of Old Fashioneds – my dad’s favorites – and we had a bottle of champagne because champagne is what you have at a going-away party.

The champagne and the Old Fashioneds tasted like mud.

We drank and we toasted and we talked about who my dad would see in heaven, including his best friend, Harry S, who died in a ship’s fire in 1972, his own father, who died in 1967, and our cat O’Malley, who died when I was in college.

Of course our pets are in heaven. Of course they are. How can it be heaven if our pets aren’t there?

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The morning I brought her and Shirley home, almost 15 years ago, I put them in the basement and closed the door, as the cat foster lady had recommended, telling me they needed to be in a small room by themselves for a few days to adjust.

Laverne wasn’t having it. She broke out of the basement not once, not twice, but three times, demanding to be where the people were. She stuck her little paw under the kitchen door, the last door I could close between her and me, crying and crying until I finally decided that perhaps the cat foster lady’s advice didn’t apply in Laverne’s case. As soon as I opened the door, Laverne jumped into my lap and started purring loudly.

She was loud and loving. Her personality filled the room.

I could never go to the bathroom alone.

She greeted us at the door every time we came home, even if it was late at night after a long trip, except for the first one. The first long trip we took, both cats turned their backs to us. They were hurt and angry that we had abandoned them, but then I guess they figured out that we came always back and they forgave us. After that, except for her very last few days, Laverne was always waiting for us at the door, saying hello.

The only food we could leave on the kitchen counter was onions. She would hunt everything else, including tomatoes and bananas. Even apple cores in the sink were not safe.

She never met a box or a hat too small to sit in.

She once brought a live baby mouse into the house hidden in her mouth. When she opened her mouth, the baby ran out and it took us ten minutes to catch it and release it outside again. She sat proudly on the stairs, watching her work.

At 5:00 every day, she started to pace and cry for supper. 5:00 exactly. She knew. She was like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment.

When I sat in bed with a book, she would sit between my eyes and the book, purring and kneading my chest.

She wanted to talk to everyone who came to our house and demanded and gave affection. She had never met a stranger.

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I know everyone says this about their pets, but Laverne really was special.

When our friend Ilene met Laverne, we said, “Laverne loves everyone.”

After a few minutes, Ilene corrected us and said, “No. Laverne just loves.”

And she did. That’s what Laverne did. She loved. She just loved.

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Last summer, Laverne was diagnosed with kidney disease.

When she first got sick, we had to leave her at the vet’s for the afternoon while they put her on IV fluids (PSA: Make sure you take your cat to the vet every year and definitely pay for the senior blood panel. We didn’t because of covid and we didn’t like the vets who bought our previous vet’s practice.) When we picked her up, the vet said, “Laverne has – opinions.”

Yes. She was a talker.

With some bumps in the road, she was more or less fine until a few weeks ago, when she started to decline.

A week ago, we took her to a very experienced vet – a retired woman who works a couple days a week. We had hoped this vet would tell us that we could treat Laverne’s new symptoms easily, but after she examined Laverne and took x-rays, she told us that it was time to say goodbye.

On Laverne’s last day, we let her sleep with us all night. (We had not been doing so because she had been throwing up in the middle of the night.) She woke us up at 5:00 a.m., purring and demanding attention, which we gave her as we wept.

We fed her salmon for breakfast and for breakfast dessert and for mid-morning snack and for pre-lunch snack and for lunch and for post-lunch snack.

We tried to give her peaches, which were her favorite, but couldn’t find any good ones and she rejected the sub-optimal out-of-season peaches, nectarines, and apricots we had found.

We let her in and out as much as she wanted and walked with her up and down the driveway. She sat frequently to rest and we sat with her. As we sat, I wondered why I had not spent more time with her, just sitting. Just enjoying the beauty of the world. Just enjoying the company of my cat. The company of my friend.

When the vet arrived, we laid Laverne on the table in the yard. The vet gave Laverne a shot to sedate her, then gently placed her in my arms.

I held her and Mr T and I stroked her as her head grew heavy and her breathing slowed. Through tears, we told her how much we loved her and that she was a good girl the best girl that she had brought so much joy to our lives that we would see her again that we loved her so so much that we wanted her pain to end that we wanted her to be at peace that we loved her we loved her we loved her.

And then it was over.

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We keep asking ourselves if we did it too soon.

True, her breathing was shallow and rapid.

Her belly was swollen with edema.

Her little feet were cold because her poor little heart was failing.

There was no cure.

There is no cure.

It was only going to get worse.

But she jumped up onto the bed that morning.

She ate eagerly many times that day.

She showered us with affection.

We could have had a few more days.

Maybe even weeks.

Why did we do it so soon?

Why did we deprive ourselves of time with our sweet girl?

And then we remind ourselves that we chose to suffer so she wouldn’t have to.

Will it ever be safe to exist while Black?

My college friend was back on campus yesterday for a track team reunion. He was walking around the college (like a Harry Potter house) where we had lived – he was my next-door neighbor one year – and videoing his journey so he could send it to me and another friend.

A young White woman stopped him and asked, “Excuse me sir, do you go to Rice?”

The first thing you need to know is that there are no fences around the Rice campus.

There are no gates.

It’s across the street from the Texas Medical Center.

It’s in a neighborhood.

People – the public – anyone – is allowed to be on campus in the open spaces.

Anyone.

The second thing you need to know is that my friend – let’s call him Sergio, which is not his name but is one of my favorite names – is a grown man. And he happens to be Black.

Although he has aged very well, there is no way to look at him and think he might be an 18-year-old undergrad.

The third thing you need to know is that – wait. There is no third thing.

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A young White woman thought it was perfectly acceptable to challenge a stranger about his presence in a quasi-public space.

And she kept challenging him, even after she got an answer that should have been more than acceptable.

When he told her that he was an alumnus, she asked what he was doing there.

Because alumni aren’t allowed to walk around campus?

He very patiently (Texas is a concealed carry state, so he was exercising great restraint) explained that he was in town for a reunion of his track team.

“Well the track is over that way!” she told him.

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Was she scared?

Of my sweet, gentle friend? The one who used to sit on the sofa on the porch outside of his room while he did his physics homework? The one who posts photos of himself smiling in delight as he sits in the cockpit of an airplane he helped design? The one who shares videos of himself playing piano with his band?

If she was scared outdoors at 3 p.m. on a Saturday of a man she didn’t know, she could have gone into her room and locked the door.

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My next door by four neighbor, George, is Black. He and his wife, who is White, have lived in their house for 15 years. They and their two gorgeous children are warm and kind.

George has lived here for 15 years. Fifteen.

And yet passers-by have stopped to ask George – when he’s in his own yard of his own house – if he needs directions.

“I’m in my own front yard,” George tells me. “And people driving by stop to ask if I need directions somewhere.”

You don’t belong here

Who decides who belongs where?

Who gets to challenge whom?

What is the reasonable thing to do if you feel threatened?

Although why a Black man working in his own yard would be threatening to anyone is something I don’t know.

Although why a Black man strolling casually on a college campus in the middle of a sunny day would be threatening to anyone is something I don’t know.

Although why a Black man minding his own business would be threatening to anyone is something I don’t know.

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I have held out so much hope for this younger generation. I have hoped that they would not repeat the mistakes of the past or at least not repeat all of them.

But now I am not so sure.

Now I am am not so optimistic.

Sergio said, “Ya never quite get used to it, but this one was a surprise. I was looking forward to having a nice peaceful walk around campus – it was a really nice day out. Gotta admit, the whole thing kinda ruined the rest of my walk. But…what can you do, right?”

All he wanted was to take a walk and take some videos and photos to share with people he’s been friends with for 40 years.

All he wanted to do was something that any white man or any white woman – like the one who challenged him – would be able to do with impunity.

All he wanted to do was exist.

And she decided she couldn’t let that happen.

I have read enough about men, thank you

I never did like Lord of the Rings and after reading these tweets, I’ve figured out why.

Watching Lord of the Rings with my daughter. She’s 5. She has a lot of questions, but the first was “Are there only boys in this movie?”

Joliet4

Rewatched the LOTR trilogy recently and my kid casually says, “this is the only scene where 2 women speak to each other in the whole trilogy.” The exchange? A little girl says to Eowyn, “Where’s Mama?!” Eowyn shushes her. “Shh!” End scene. Ouch.

Gabriella Cázares-Kelly

I can’t remember if we read The Hobbit (I think we did and I hated it) in high school, but I do remember some of the other books we read:

• Lord Jim
• Heart of Darkness
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Great Expectations
• Lord of the Flies
• A Separate Peace
• The Great Gatsby
• Wuthering Heights
• Catcher in the Rye

I also remember some of the authors and books I read in college, where I was an English major:

• Shakespeare stuff
• Moby Dick
• Thoreau
• Whitman
• Dickens
• Far from the Madding Crowd
• The Awakening
• A Room of One’s Own
• The White Hotel
• Women in Love
• The Good Soldier
• Huckleberry Finn

Although some of them were OK – how can you not like Dickens? he’s so plot driven – most of the stories did not speak to me.

They were stories written by men about men. About men’s lives, interior and exterior.

Even when there were women, they were about men about women. Even when the word “women” was in the title, the story was about men. In Women in Love, my professor suggested that it was really the two men who loved each other, referencing a naked wrestling scene, which, yeah, two men wrestling naked with each other would lead me to think that maybe they weren’t so interested in the women, either.

In the books written by women – The Awakening and A Room of One’s Own – the lives of the female characters are awful. The Awakening ends with the character walking into the ocean to drown herself because she can’t bear it anymore.

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Here’s some what I read when I was a girl and had a choice:

• Nancy Drew
• The Ramona books
• A Wrinkle in Time
• Are You There God It’s Me Margaret
• Trixie Belden
• Pippi Longstocking
• Anne of Green Gables
• Caddie Woodlawn
• Little House on the Prairie
• Heidi

Do you notice a theme?

They’re all books about girls.

They’re all books where girls are the heroes.

I loved to read. I loved to read when I was a kid. I loved to read so much when I was a kid that the library would let me check books out on my mom’s ID card without my mom being there. I loved to read so much that my parents had to force me to join a soccer team. I loved to read.

And then I got to high school and college English. I still loved to read, but it suddenly wasn’t as much fun. Some of it was the adult themes – I have only in the past few years really understood Lord Jim, which is all about regret; some of it was the stupid whininess of rich teenaged boys – looking at you, Holden Caufield; but most of it, I think, was because almost none of it was by or about women and girls.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know this is The Canon, but maybe the canon should change? (Maybe it has. I hope so.)

But after high school English and college English, I didn’t read for fun for a long time. I bought the occasional book (which is very much not me – why would I pay for something so ephemeral?) but didn’t get a library card until 12 years after I had graduated from college.

I had forgotten that there were stories by women about women. I had forgotten there were stories where girls and women were the heroes.

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Do I sound crabby? I guess I am.

I’m crabby that women’s stories are dismissed as “chick lit,” especially when women write those stories, but men’s stories are just – stories. Literature. (See Jennifer Weiner’s accurate observations about this issue.)

I’m crabby that we’re in a world where women are being diminished and our rights are being taken away and our stories don’t seem to matter.

I’m crabby that women who are miscarrying are being sent home from ERs rather than being treated because the hospitals are scared.

I don’t know if literature can change the world, but do you think maybe if these legislators had read more women’s stories, they might feel differently?