I don’t mind fighting The Man, but – a nice woman who has cut my hair? – that’s completely different

I finally got my hair done.

Finally.

I found a new hairdresser – vaxxed, close to my house, very very reasonable prices.

Nice.

She’s really nice.

I like her.

I asked for blonde highlights.

I didn’t think I needed to get any more specific than that because – blonde is blonde, right?

We all agree on the definition of “blonde?”

I thought so.

But then she did my foils – and left me in the chair for 30 minutes.

She didn’t put me under a hairdryer.

Which was weird.

Because I have never not been put under the hairdryer after I’ve been foiled.

Perhaps the technology has changed? After all, it’s been a year and a half since the last time I had my hair highlighted.

But then after she washed out the chemicals and cut my hair and dried it, I looked in the mirror.

“It looks – red,” I said.

She nodded. “The lighting is kind of weird in here. I was trying to match the blonde that was left at the ends of your hair.”

But the cut – the cut was great.

Maybe the color would look different at home.

The color did not look different at home.

I thought, I’ll just make another appointment for next month and this time, we will discuss what “blonde” means.

I thought, I don’t want to wait another month.

I thought, I don’t think she knows how to do color.

I thought, But she does a great cut.

I thought, I could just go to SuperCuts tomorrow and get the highlights there.

I thought, But SuperCuts won’t tell me if the stylists are vaxxed.

I thought, But they know how to do highlights.

And this was where Texan faced her moral dilemma.

I thought, But the CDC says as long as I’m vaxxed, it’s OK.

I thought, What if it’s an anti-vaxxer cutting my hair?

I thought, I WANT HIGHLIGHTS.

I thought, But – what if it’s an anti-vaxxer?

Then we got the male perspective.

And then Mr T asked, “Why don’t you tell the stylist who did it wrong that you want your money back?

And I had no answer except that I hadn’t even considered that option.

He said, “When the new stylist I saw accidentally cut too much off, I protested and she evened it out but it was much shorter than I wanted so she told me she would NOT charge me so I tipped her anyhow but a lot more than I would have tipped otherwise.”

He asked, “When you saw it wasn’t what you wanted, why didn’t you just refuse to pay?”

And I thought, “Men and women are so different.”

And I thought, “Or maybe it’s just me – maybe I’m the big chicken here. Maybe I’m the one with the problem. Maybe every other woman in the world would have said, ‘Nope. Nope. No way. I wanted blonde and that’s not blonde. I’m not paying.'”

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe every other woman in the world could tell the stylist who had just spent two hours on her hair – including a really good cut – that the color was bad and she refused to pay.

But I don’t know how to do that.

I am proud to come from a long line of badass women

After I hit my vax date a few weeks ago, I flew out to see my mom, whom I had not seen in over a year.

I arrived to find a house in a state of transition.

My mom has decided she wants to redecorate.

For most people, “redecorate” means a little bit of paint, maybe some new furniture.

Nope.

Not only is my mom painting, but she is also fixing the things that have bugged her since she bought the house.

What you see above is part of the process of her recentering and replacing the door frame at the bottom of the basement stairs. The builders did a crummy job and it’s always bothered my mom, so she decided to fix it.

A neighbor lent her the tools that she didn’t already have (my dad left a decent workshop) and she looked up the process on youtube.

Yes you read that right: My mother taught herself how to remove a door frame, recenter the space, which includes adding some drywall and/or plaster on the side to be extended and accounting for the UNEVEN WALL GOOD LORD DO ANY BUILDERS TAKE PRIDE IN THEIR WORK ANYMORE?, size the new doorjambs, miter the corners, and install them.

I, however, will be spending this holiday weekend reading books, watching movies, and eating bonbons.

I hope you enjoy your holiday as well, either as a productive chingona or as a lazy one.

The trauma of being betrayed by a co-worker

Over a year ago, I lost my job in a re-org.

Now, one of the Evil People from Old Job has turned up at New Job.

And she wants to talk to me.

---

Until the re-org, I was happy at Old Job. I had a great boss and fun work.

Then my company was bought by a German company and the new owners brought in all these GE people (if you know anything about GE, this is where your blood starts to run cold) to run things.

Instead of getting European-style vacation, we got GE madness and meanness.

I was moved away from my great boss into a different group with a new VP, who henceforth shall be known as Regina (although at least Regina George was smart – VP Regina is just mean).

VP Regina, who came from GE, had all kinds of new rules that she did not articulate until after they were broken, like, we couldn’t expense the in-flight wireless on a work trip (even though my Great Boss had always approved that expense) or work from home (even though with Great Boss, I worked from home whenever he traveled, which was about 30% of the time, because he was the only person in my office I worked with – everyone else was in another state or Europe).

---

VP Regina inherited her admin, Gretchen, from the previous VP, Molly, who is nice.

Molly learned on Christmas Eve that the new CEO (from GE) was hiring a new VP.

Yes, the CEO called Molly on Christmas Eve to tell her that he was hiring someone to replace her.

Regina, new VP from GE Regina, would start at the end of January and that Molly would be demoted and be reporting to Regina.

So you see why CEO had to deliver this news to Molly on Christmas Eve.

This is who these people are.

They call people on Christmas Eve to tell them they are being demoted.

---

Gretchen became Regina’s admin.

When Gretchen worked for Molly, she was fine. I would talk to her and had a pleasant relationship with her.

But when she became Regina’s admin, she also became Regina’s spy, reporting on what my co-workers and I said and did.

I know our environment was nothing like East Germany or the Soviet Union, but there were a lot of very hushed conversations and wild wavings of hands to warn of the Presence of Gretchen the Spy.

After a year, Regina eliminated my position.

Let me re-phrase that: After a year,

• Where Regina never gave objectives to anyone on the team
• Where she visited our office only two times (she was in another city)
• Where she called meetings for 7 a.m. the day before
• Where she canceled 7 a.m. meetings at 10 p.m. the night before, which meant that unless you were checking your email that late (I was not – on principle, I refuse to work that late), you didn’t know about the cancellation until you showed up for the meeting. (And then she didn’t even explain why she had cancelled the meeting – I would have accepted a medical or family emergency, but she didn’t even apologize)
• Where she told me the night before the team meeting that she was going to have me report to the person I had helped hire and train – a person who had no management experience. Where she told me the night before only because we happened to be walking back to the hotel together. Where if she hadn’t told me that night, I would have found out the next day when she announced her new org structure in the team meeting. That is, I would have found out in a room full of my co-workers that the VP was making the person I hired and trained – the person who had no experience managing – my boss.
• Where she had even before making this org change considered making the person with only eight years of work experience my boss.

After a year where I was miserable and didn’t know who my boss was or what I was supposed to be working on (so I kept doing what I had been doing),

Regina eliminated my position.

(It was pretty clear to me by then that Regina did not like me, for whatever reason, and I was job hunting.)

Evil Gretchen was her henchman, collecting my computer and credit card and checking to make sure my vacation records were accurate and when she found a mistake in my favor (a mistake she had made), rather than let it slide, she made darn sure she got it corrected so I would not get an extra $1,000.

People I respected at Old Job were horrified and tried to use their power to save my job, but to no avail.

---

I got over it.

I got a new job.

I have PTSD from Old Job – I am still concerned every time my new boss wants to talk to me and I don’t trust compliments.

Regina used to tell me, “I talked to [whomever] and they really like the work you do!”

She always sounded puzzled when she said that, though.

And when she let me go, she was vicious, telling me everything I had done wrong in the past six months.

She had not shared that information with me at the time, when I could actually have done something about it.

But in general, new job is fine and I have moved past the Regina/Gretchen experience.

---

Last week, I saw in a presentation that included photos of new employees.

I thought I saw Evil Gretchen on one of the slides.

But maybe I saw it wrong? Please let it be wrong.

I texted a friend at Old Job immediately.

Turns out Evil Regina had fired Evil Gretchen last summer.

And now Evil Gretchen is an admin in my group.

Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap.

My heart started racing and I started to sweat.

And then I thought, Texan, you are working from home. You haven’t even met your boss in person. And your team is 100% supporting a group that group VP really has nothing to do with.

The chances of running into Gretchen were almost nothing.

How would she even know I work at New Job? I don’t do anything with VP.

---

I calmed down and carried on.

And then on Monday, a Skype message popped up on my screen.

It was from Evil Gretchen.

I hit “ignore” immediately.

DO NOT DO THIS.

Turns out if you hit “ignore,” the sender knows you are ignoring her.

Just leave the message up until it goes away by itself. Then the sender doesn’t know if you aw it or what.

That was a mistake.

She messaged my again.

I hit ignore again.

---

Even if you ignore a Skype message, it will appear in your email under the “conversations” section.

I tried to ignore the messages from Evil Gretchen.

I tried.

Narrator: She failed. She did not ignore the messages.

But like Eve and the apple, I HAD TO KNOW.

I opened the messages. The second one said, “You don’t want to talk to me!”

And I thought, NO I DO NOT! I’M GLAD WE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER!

The first one said something like, “Can you believe it?”

---

You mean, can I believe that drama from my past has come into my present?

Can I believe that karma is nasty enough that I cannot put that old job behind me?

Yeah.

Yeah, I can believe it.

Because it’s the time of covid and everything stinks.

---

I answered her.

“I’m sorry,” I wrote. “I am super busy. I can’t talk. And honestly, I want to leave all that behind me. I still have PTSD.”

I hit send and thought, Well, at least THAT’S over.

She wrote back.

“Let me know when you have time to talk!!!”

And I thought, “Did I not make myself clear?”

We have breasts so that men might have something to fondle and breast cancer is way worse on men than it is on women

I read a great piece by Monica Hesse about Philip Roth, one of the first writers my mom ever tried to stop me from reading. My mom took Portnoy’s Complaint away from me, so I just went back to the library and read it there.

I got no further than the liver scene before I realized I was not interested in the problems of an adolescent boy who was looking for ways to masturbate.

(Related – I am also no longer interested in the problems of rich New Yorkers. It is a bit surprising to me that so many novels with this topic are published. Good thing I get my books from the library instead of buying them. Otherwise, I would feel compelled to finish a book I don’t like or where I don’t care about the people who are distressed because they cannot get their four year old into the $45,000 a year pre-school of their choice or one of the four nannies has quit. OH THE SUFFERING.)

Anyhow, Hesse is talking about some guy – Blake Bailey – who has written a biography of Roth. The title of the piece is Philip Roth and the sympathetic biographer: This is how misogyny gets cemented in our culture. If that doesn’t pique your interest, I don’t know what will.

Bailey is a fanboy who, according to this piece, “reports his delight at overhearing the ‘muffled streams’ of ‘our greatest living novelist’ peeing.”

He has also been accused of rape and the publisher stopped the presses on publishing the book.

ANYHOW.

MY POINT is that Hesse quotes critic Linda Grant, who reviewed one of Roth’s books, in which

a cancer-stricken woman uses her last day before a mastectomy to visit her former professor/lover so that he may fondle her chest and say goodbye.

Grant notes that every woman she discussed this passage with burst out laughing at the preposterousness of this idea.

Monice Hesse

When I had my bad mammogram right before Christmas 2019 and had to wait until early January 2020 to get the second mammogram – the one that would tell me I had cancer or I didn’t have cancer, all I could think of was letting someone else say goodbye to my breasts./sarcasm off

No.

All I – and Mr T – could think of was, What if it’s cancer?

What if it’s cancer?

What if it’s cancer?

What if it’s cancer?

To make things interesting, I had just lost my job and we were going to go on cobra – $1,200 a month thank you very much – for our health insurance.

---

Is there a better name than “cobra” for health insurance? This coiled, hissing threat that terrifies everyone?

---

Neither Mr T nor I were thinking about anyone saying goodbye to my breasts.

Admittedly, my breasts are nothing to get excited about.

My grandmother observed that I didn’t “have much up top” and said I got that from her.

Which I did.

What I did not get from her was her 5’7″ willowy frame that even at her 50th wedding anniversary, still fit into her wedding dress.

---

I have to admit that in the movie Ordinary Lives, in the scene of the night before her mastectomy, Lesley Manville’s character and Liam Neeson’s character have a touching love scene, but a man wrote the screenplay. Would a woman write the same thing? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me – even a tight deadline at work has me too stressed for any of that stuff.

(Also, there’s a difference between a pre-mastectomy love scene between longtime partners and making sure that your former professor gets a chance to grope you one more time.)

---

Where was I?

Oh.

Right.

A male writer writing about a woman whose last act before her mastectomy was to make sure that her former professor and perhaps current lover (it’s not clear to me) could fondle her breasts.

Not for her gratification.

For his.

---

I am thinking – and this is a wild guess – that no woman would every write a scene like that.

---

I leave you with this amazing poem I discovered.

He tells her that the Earth is flat –

He knows the facts, and that is that.

In altercations fierce and long

She tries her best to prove him wrong.

But he has learned to argue well.

He calls her arguments unsound

And often asks her not to yell.

She cannot win. He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round.

He Tells Her, Wendy Cope

“We are not statues,” said my college friend H, as she rolled her eyes at my attempt to hide the tampons so any boy in our rooms wouldn’t see them

We are not supposed to say these things out loud

What our bodies do is taboo. Women’s issues are not taken seriously. The things that define us are mocked or disregarded.

MENSTRUATION MENSTRUATION MENSTRUATION

BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD

MENOPAUSE MENOPAUSE MENOPAUSE

How often do you hear people talking about these things in public? At work? Around men?

And when they are talked about, it’s to dismiss us:

We are on the rag.

It’s that time of the month.

Blood coming out of our whatever.

Hence, our feelings, our declarations, are to be ignored. How can the opinion of a woman who is menstruating be valid?

I suggested a friend refer to Fitbit’s period tracker in a speech she is giving at work

She agreed it was an appalling story, then laughed and said, “I CAN’T TALK ABOUT PERIODS AROUND MEN!”

What is “erectile dysfunction?”

We all know what erectile dysfunction is.

How could we not? Orders of magnitude more money is spent on ED research than on PMS, menopause, etc. etc.

BUT ED IS A SERIOUS HEALTH PROBLEM, TEXAN! IT AFFECTS MEN’S LIVES!! HOW CAN YOU NOT BE MORE SYMPATHTIC?

Oh I don’t know. Because ED doesn’t cause physical pain and the lack of getting laid doesn’t affect a man’s everyday life?

Because women are in debilitating pain from endometriosis? Because women still die in childbirth? Because women’s genitals are LITERALLY CUT OFF?

Excuse me that I can’t muster any sympathy for your huge problem of not being able to get laid. Boo hoo for you.

Remember your first period? And maybe that awful belt and pad your mom gave you because that’s what we had back then?

Those pads were so thick that my jeans wouldn’t fit properly. How did I even carry spares in my purse? Even a pocket – if we actually had them in our clothes – wouldn’t have been big enough.

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

Remember the time in junior high your pad leaked or you got your period early and it showed on your pants and you were so embarrassed you wanted to die?

I stupidly wore white pants to school.

Ooops. White pants should be worn only in the week after the end of a period. Silly me.

That was a fun day at school.

So many pants and underwear ruined or, at the best, stained with blood.

So many times when I had to throw my sheets in the sink before I left for work because the pad wasn’t thick enough. So many times I was relieved that I had a rubber pad under the sheets.

This is just part of our life as women. We bleed, and the tools we have to handle the problem are not sufficient.

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

Remember being worried about throwing away the bloody evidence – that someone might see it in the trash?

Do you wrap it in toilet paper? That seems so wasteful. But what if someone saw it? Saw our blood? Isn’t that shameful? Nobody should know we bleed.

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

“My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white,” 

All the blood on our hands! All the menstrual blood on our hands!

Two German men designed a solution to this problem – gloves that we can carry in little pouches in our purses or pockets – the pockets we don’t have or, if we do have them, are not big enough to hold much but I digress.

We carry these gloves. And then put them on when we have to change our bloody products. Because there is no other way to resolve the blood problem and this is certainly the biggest issue facing women these days.

THANK YOU GERMAN MEN FOR SOLVING THIS PROBLEM!

I genuinely may never recover from 3 men deciding women needed pink gloves to remove their tampons (clearly never having bothered to speak to a woman in their entire lives) AND THEN MADE IT TOO BIG FOR PRETTY MUCH EVERY WOMAN’S HAND EVER. I have default male peaked.

Caroline Criado Perez (If you are not subscribing to her newsletter, please start. She is amazing.)

What if this poem about leaking through a tampon had been taught in our high-school English class?

What if any poetry that described our lives had been taught?

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever

closed your legs to a man you loved opened

them for one you didn’t moved against

a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach

seaweed clinging to your ankles paid

good money for a bad haircut backed away

from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled

into the back seat for lack of a tampon

if you swam across a river under rain sang

using a dildo for a microphone stayed up

to watch the moon eat the sun entire

ripped out the stitches in your heart

because why not if you think nothing &

no one can / listen I love you

joy is coming.

To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall, Kim Addonizio

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

Remember when you had cramps so bad you fainted on the bathroom floor?

I had cramps.

I thought they were normal.

But I did ask my doctor about them and she said she could put me on birth control pills.

I couldn’t take BCP! I was a high school girl! I was a Good Girl! Birth control pills were for Girls Who Were Having Sex and I didn’t believe in pre-marital sex.

I did not get the BCP.

I was in pain, bent over on the toilet, with bad diarrhea.

A few years later, I got ibuprofen, which was prescription only at the time. I think I took 800 mg at a time.

But I had to take it before I had the cramps for it to work.

I didn’t always have cramps. Some months yes, some no.

I didn’t want to waste my precious prescription-only ibuprofen on a month where I didn’t have cramps.

I was in pain, lying in bed with my knees to my chest, feeling the pain pass through me in waves, waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in, waiting for the waves to get further apart, which meant that the end of the pain was within view.

Then I got Anaprox, which I just this minute learned is Naproxen, which is also now an OTC drug.

I was starting grad school and getting an individual health insurance policy. The only way I could get the policy was if they excluded diseases of the reproductive organs – which was the only part of my body that gave me problems.

They said – holy smoke I cannot believe this – that if my cramps were that bad that I needed anaprox, WHICH IS NAPROXEN, there must be something really wrong with me.

When I finally started taking BCP, my cramps stopped.

I was so angry that nobody had tried to explain to me that BCP were not just about preventing pregnancy – that they regulated hormones and helped prevent pain.

I was also angry because it took me years to get the right BCP. Among other things, I had pills that gave me the mask of pregnancy, which is big dark blotches on the face. Total strangers would ask what was on my forehead.

When I finally got the right RX for the BCP, I was moving into menopause.

Wow. I never thought about it before, but yeah, that’s the timing.

And I wanted to keep taking them to prevent hot flashes, but my doctor – a new doctor – read my chart and said, “ARE YOU NUTS? YOU’RE A MIGRAINEUR YOU CAN’T TAKE BCP YOU COULD HAVE A STROKE AND DIE!”

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

What if there were a way to integrate tracking our periods with other health indicators?

You all know that Fitbit didn’t add a period tracker until 2018, right? And apparently, the company was a bit apprehensive about it.

Fitbit’s new smartwatch Versa isn’t being overtly marketed at women; doing that might alienate its male customers, who currently make up more than half of Fitbit’s user base

Just wondering if any genius at Fitbit might have seen the connection between men making up more than half of Fitbit’s user base and the fact that there had not been a period tracker.

When I said something to a male co-worker, a 61 year old, highly educated, very smart man married to a nurse – when I said something to him about the Fitbit as an example of bad product design because of a lack of diversity on the design team (I was working for an engineering company where in my office of 250 people, there were 17 women), he answered, “But isn’t a period every 28 days?”

Why would he even think that?

Whey would he think that a period comes every 28 days?

Maybe because that’s the only thing he ever learned about menstruation? That’s what he was told in his class in 6th grade when the boys and girls were separated for a few days of sex education?

And maybe a nod to menstruation in 10th grade biology?

Perhaps things have changed.

Perhaps kids these days are taught that periods do not come every 28 days – that the timing can vary. Perhaps they are taught that cramps do not have to be endured – that there are drugs and treatments to keep us from being in pain.

Maybe now, prescription painkillers for cramps doesn’t mean that you can’t get health insurance that covers diseases of the reproductive organs?

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

Remember buying menstrual supplies, or, How much extra money do I have to spend to keep the clerk at Walgreen’s from seeing what I’m buying?

Remember when we cared what the clerk we had never met and would never see again thought about what we bought?

Remember when we would furtively stack M&Ms, diet Dr Pepper, a bottle of Suave Strawberry Essence shampoo (or maybe “Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific!”), and a few greeting cards on top of the Tampax?

It’s not like it even worked! The clerk eventually got to the bottom of the basket.

And the clerk did not care.

There are so many things that Mr T did and does right, but another indicator was the time I ran out of pads and didn’t want to leave the house and he went to the store for me.

And called me from the store to tell me the options and make sure he got the right one.

I asked if he minded getting menstrual supplies and he was puzzled.

“I bought them for my stepdaughters,” he answered. He didn’t understand why it was an issue or why any man would be bothered.

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

Remember trying to hide the pads you carried to the ladies’ at work?

At my old job, in the Before Times, I kept a box of pads at my desk.

When I needed one, I took it out of the box and tucked it into my pocket.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

NO I DIDN’T PUT IT INTO MY POCKET! WOMEN’S CLOTHES RARELY HAVE POCKETS!

Nope, I tucked it under my sleeve the way little old ladies tuck in their hankies or I rolled it into my hand and then casually walked to the bathroom.

I did not have the guts to let the men I worked with see what I was carrying.

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

Remember being caught in public without a tampon?

I can’t even tell you how many times I searched desperately for a dime or a quarter so I could buy a tampon – only to find that the machine was empty.

I can’t even count the times I sighed as I rolled up a wad of toilet paper and stuck it in my underwear.

The only good thing about this kind of drama is that there is solidarity among women.

I was in the ladies’ room at the Field Museum in Chicago, along with a dozen other women. The machine was – of course it was – empty. As the woman tried to retrieve her quarter, every single one of us in the room with her opened our purses and started digging.

We will give you your tampon.

We will share our abundance.

We will not force you to resort to wadded-up toilet paper. (Which, for any men reading, does not really do the trick. It’s not absorbent enough and it doesn’t have hard edges, so the blood goes onto your underwear and your pants anyhow. It’s just not as much blood.)

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

What if a positive pregnancy test wasn’t considered a bro joke?

Mailchimp wanted to be funny.

…the [MailChimp] team was brainstorming ideas for a 404 page. On the web, a 404 error means “page not found,” so a 404 page is where you’re redirected if you try to click a broken link. They usually say something like, “The page you are looking for does not exist.” But at the time, the team was really focused on developing a funny, unique for MailChimp. So they decided to call it an “oops” moment. Pretty soon, someone had designed a page showing a pregnancy test with a positive sign. Everyone thought it was hilarious.

Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech, Sara Wachter-Boettcher

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

What if you weren’t afraid to mention hot flashes because you are worried people will think you are too old for your job but DAMN IT IS HOT IN HERE?

We do not have a satisfactory solution for hot flashes, a condition that can affect HALF OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION.

HALF OF US.

Half of us who are miserable and don’t know if this is going to last the rest of our lives and who can’t take certain drugs to stop the flashes because if you get migraines, you can’t take HRT so oh well I guess you’re screwed.

Yeah, there is another drug that migraineurs can take – the hot flash part was discovered by accident during research on another issue – but guess what?

That drug has the side effect of flushing.

Which is a fancy way of saying hot flashes.

The drug that I am taking to prevent hot flashes is giving me hot flashes.

But according to the pharmaceutical industry, my problem is not serious enough for research.

(Fortunately, we have solved the ED problem.)

(She was not, in fact, vaxxed)

You all remember I’ve been cutting my own hair, right?

I have not been highlighting it myself. Contrary to what history might teach us, I do sometimes learn from history and have left the chemicals alone.

Also, I am lazy.

Also, who was going to see my hair anyhow? I mean, besides Mr T and he is not judgy about my hair.

(However – when we first met, I was unemployed and I was highlighting my own hair. Mr T became quite proficient at pulling my hair through the cap with a crochet hook. He is a man of many talents.)

I have not been to a stylist since January 2020. And that was at SuperCuts because my – our – stylist retired in September 2021.

So more than a year since I have been to a salon.

BUT MY IMMUNE DAY IS IN SIX DAYS AND I WANT TO GET MY HAIR DONE!

Yes, I know I wrote an entire manifesto about no makeup, no clothes that hurt, etc, etc, etc.

But this is different.

I called the SuperCuts by me to see if their stylists were vaxxed.

“That’s private information!” the SuperCuts person said. “I can’t tell you that!”

So I @’d SuperCuts on Twitter.

Same answer – PRIVATE INFORMATION!!!

I asked around on Facebook and everywhere one does and got the name of a hairdresser. I saw some of her work and it was good so I emailed her.

She seemed very nice – she gave me her prices and we set up an appointment.

Then I remembered I had forgotten to ask her if she was vaxxed. I am reading that it’s OK for two vaxxed people to be around each other but it seems that they are still not sure about a vaxxed person with an unvaxxed one.

The last thing I would want to do, after more than a year of being careful, would be to catch covid and then give it to someone else. There are people who cannot get the vax and children can’t get the vax, so we are not out of the woods yet.

“Oh! I forgot to ask you!” I emailed. “Are you vaxxed?”

I thought this was a pro-forma question – that of course she would be vaxxed after all she works putting her hands on people and being right in their faces.

Plus it is very very easy to get the vax where we live.

She wrote back,

I’m surprised you asked as that is personal information…? But since you did ask, I am not. I will cancel your appointment 

Whoa.

Pretty much everyone else in my circles is vaxxed or vaxxing. We talk about. We celebrate it. It is a common topic of conversation.

Even at work, we talk about it. (I mean, online.)

I replied politely that of course I understood – that I would not want to risk infecting her.

Then I wrote to a salon by me. I had written to them before, asking for pricing, and got the reply that I needed to call because each stylist set her own prices. That made me cranky – why would anyone ever call on the phone now that email and messaging exist?

I wrote, “Hi! Are your stylists vaccinated? With the data still not clear on if vaxxed people can give covid to unvaxxed people, I am not taking any chances – I couldn’t live with myself if I gave it to someone. Thanks!”

Within an hour, I had an answer.

Hi! We have 2 hairstylist and they both are fully vaccinated as of this week it has been 2 weeks since their 2nd dose. We have been re opened since May 2020 and all three of us have been taking this virus serious and none of us got Covid! We are very proud of that. We have made many changes to our salon to make it safer. We don’t use a front desk. Was he one of us have our own checkout at our stations. That was a huge change!

I replied that I had asked that question of another stylist, who had cancelled my appointment.

Oh wow. I feel it is every business to answer every persons concerns and questions. Especially over something so important.

I have found my new salon.

I don’t care what they charge.

(OK, I care a little bit, but now that I am cutting Mr T’s hair, I can keep doing that and save the $40 or $50 it would cost every six weeks for his cut.)

And to those who suggested I should ask the question more tactfully – “What are your covid protocols?” – I say nah. I have been doing some completely unscientific testing and the only people who have been offended at this question are unvaxxed people who are choosing to be unvaxxed.

And I don’t want anything to do with them.

I used to be against it but after five years of dealing with BC/BS of Michigan, I now know what Evil is

I really was against socialized medicine.

In my first job out of college, I worked for a health insurance company. This was back in the days when employers would actually offer benefits to employees instead of trying to sell them the BS that true freedom was to be found in driving other people around, even when the cost of operating your car plus the self-employment taxes is more than the money you make.

In those days, employers paid all the premium or most of it. We had a deductible and then we paid 20% and we had a pretty decent idea of what it would cost us to go to the doctor or the ER.

Socialized medicine, as we understood it back then, meant rationing.

As if certain people, for lack of money, do not get the care they need in this country.

As if care were not rationed here.

---

A few years ago, as I was riding to work, I fell off my bike. I found the only spot of hard in an acre of grass – my helmeted head hit a manhole cover. Even so, I managed to lead with my (prescription) sunglasses, which broke and did not stop my eye ridge from hitting the iron.

A kind stranger drove me to an urgent care, where Mr T met me.

Urgent care would not treat me.

We went to my doctor’s office.

My doctor would not treat me.

We surrendered and went to the ER, where I waited a few hours to be treated. That is not unreasonable – I was not about to die – but I later realized that the delay was not because they were triaging me but because they couldn’t reach my insurance company to see if a CT scan would be covered.

While we were waiting, I was asked a series of questions including did I feel safe in my house.

Although I had lost consciousness in the fall and was not feeling too great, I did roll my eyes and answer, “If my husband was beating me, do you think I would tell you while he’s sitting next to me?”

(YES I KNOW IT’S A GOOD IDEA FOR MEDICAL PEOPLE TO ASK THESE QUESTIONS. I HAD JUST HAD A HEAD INJURY, OK? AND I THOUGHT I WAS BEING FUNNY.)

I kept asking them how much a CT scan would cost – we had a $2,500 deductible and had not met a penny of it.

They would not tell me.

The whole point of high-deductible plans is that people will make more rational medical decisions if they are paying for part of those decisions. In the old days, with low deductibles and co-pays, people would go to the doctor – or, more problematically – to the ER – for anything. So yeah – having a financial skin in the game can help reduce ER trips for diaper rash and broken toes.

But how do I make a rational decision about my medical care if I can’t get a price?

I can’t get my doctor’s office – and we really like our doctor – to tell us what an office visit costs. I have emailed the hospital system he works for to ask and they will not give me an answer.

---

Ten days ago, Mr T went to the library to pick up some books for me. It was about 4:30. Our library is in our city hall. That day, they were doing a covid vaccine clinic at city hall. Mr T and I were not eligible yet.

But when Mr T walked into city hall, a man standing in the hall asked if Mr T wanted the vax. They had two doses left over, he explained.

YES I SAID YES! Mr T answered.

Then he called me, only I didn’t hear the phone because I was downstairs working out with the music loud and my phone was upstairs.

Mr T called and called and then he texted.

When I went upstairs ten minutes later, I saw his calls and texts and I tried to call him back but he did not answer so I texted YES I SAID YES.

And I read the rest of his messages, which included the news that he had accidentally taken both sets of car keys, which usually would not be a problem as the library is only half a mile from our house and I always walk anyhow.

But now I had to run because I WANTED THAT SHOT.

And I have not been running but I RAN AND I RAN AND I ARRIVED JUST AS ANOTHER PERSON WAS ASKING FOR THE LAST DOSE AND THE CLERK SAID NO MR T’S WIFE IS COMING

And there I was.

And I gasped, “Oh no! I forgot my insurance card!”

And they said, “Nah it’s free don’t worry.”

(I know it’s not free free, OK? I totally get that. But I also pay and have paid a lot of taxes in my life and dang if my tax money can’t pay for a vaccine that will help keep millions of people from dying, then what’s the damn point?)

I didn’t even have to show an ID. I just told them I am who I say I am.

They wrote it down.

They gave me a shot.

Fifteen minutes later, Mr T and I walked out of there.

---

A few years ago, my sister and I were in Italy at a cooking school. She got sick or injured – I don’t even remember.

She went to the – ER? urgent care? – and they saw her.

She tried to give them her US insurance information and they brushed her off. Charged her like $11 or something.

---

I saw a specialist whose office was in the basement of the hospital. So – specialist visit for $45 copay, right?

Not according to BC/BS of Michigan.

No, according to them, that’s a hospital visit because – you know – it’s in a hospital. Which means hospital deductibles apply – $700, for what it’s worth.

A visit that I thought would cost $45 cost me hundreds of dollars.

When we had United Healthcare, I would visit my neurologist in that same building.

Cost me a $30 co-pay and not a penny more.

BC/BS of Michigan, I hate you so much.

---

When Mr T and I had our colonoscopies, BC/BS kept billing us $800 each we weren’t supposed to have to pay anything at all.

It took eight months of fighting to get it straightened out.

---

In the ER with my head injury.

I don’t know how much a CT scan will cost.

I don’t feel like giving a blank check to the hospital.

My sister the nurse practitioner says yeah, I should get the CT scan.

“Natasha Richardson,” she says. “That’s all I’m going to say to you. Natasha Richardson.”

So I get the scan and fortunately everything was fine but three weeks later, we got a bill for $4,800 because turns out they do know what to charge for a CT scan after all.

---

During our 2020 unemployment, we paid $1,200 a month for health insurance.

And we still didn’t know what actually getting sick would cost.

---

If covid vaccine = socialized medicine

and “Surprise! bill of $4,800” equals Our Great System in the US

Give me socialized medicine. Give it to me now.

I don’t care if my taxes go up. I just want to know what it’s going to cost me to get sick so I can plan for it.

Increase my taxes so I can walk into a vaccine clinic and walk out after doing nothing more than giving my name.

If this be socialized medicine, I am happy to have it.

Join us in The Revolution: We’re not going back to makeup or to clothes that hurt

When I started my new job, I was very worried about this idea of being on camera for zoom meetings. I have used Skype in previous jobs, but we were never on camera – we just talked. Like in the old days, when people talked on the phone and sometimes had no idea what the person on the other end looked like.

AND THAT WAS FINE.

People used to just call people on the phone without warning or an appointment and we thought that was normal

(Also – remember when people would call you and you hadn’t planned for them to call? Or you would call them and they weren’t in the office so you had to leave a message with the receptionist?)

(People used to just call. That seems so bizarre now. If I get an unexpected phone call from a family member now, I expect to hear that someone has died.)

(And even when my uncle died, my cousin texted me.)

---

ANYHOW.

I was worried about being on camera because I hate being on camera, most of all, but also, I was worried I would have to change my 14 months of unemployment habits, which were to shower – eh – whenever.

I mean, it’s not like we were going anywhere.

And it’s not like Mr T was showering any more frequently than I was.

It’s amazing what you can get used to.

Showering – whenever – and wearing gym clothes every day.

Those were the upsides to unemployment.

Oh – and not having to get up to an alarm clock.

However, unemployment also meant not having money and paying $1,200 a month for health insurance, which was not so great.

I thought, I guess I can wash my hair for money and for health insurance.

When I started the job, I took a shower every day. Every day, y’all!

And I dried my hair! With a hairdryer!

And I put on makeup.

I put on makeup after throwing out the old mascara, which I had not used in a year, and had dried out.

And I wore presentable clothes.

And I gritted my teeth and turned on the camera and there you go.

But then I realized something.

Other people were in gym clothes.

Almost every woman I talked to had her hair in a ponytail or bun.

And almost nobody was wearing makeup.

I asked my new work friend, Lyla, what she thought.

“I haven’t shaved my legs in months!” she said. “I asked my husband if it bothered him and he said he hadn’t even noticed!”

And she agreed on the makeup with a comment about screw the patriarchy we should be evaluated on results, not on our appearance, which made me love her even more than I already do.

And we agreed that when we return to the office, we are going to normalize not wearing makeup and not doing our nails and maybe even wearing sleeveless clothes, which is Not Done in the corporate environments where I have worked.

What’s wrong with sleeveless clothes?

I used to be against Sleeveless At Work.

Why? Why is it so bad?

Much of it of course is that it’s usually too darn cold to expose much of my skin.

But the other was The Rules.

The Rules that certain parts of a woman’s body are off limits.

And I helped enforce those rules.

Holy smoke I have been part of The Patriarchy.

But now – after over a year of THERE ARE NO RULES, I think, yeah, whatever. Just wear clothes.

I am not going to be an Agent of the Patriarchy anymore.

If they don’t like it, let them try to fire me for it.

---

However.

And you knew there was a however.

If we do not put time and money into our appearances, we will be putting our incomes at risk.

I read about this in Soraya Chemaly‘s FABULOUS YOU HAVE TO READ IT book, Rage Becomes Her.

(I am even more furious after reading this book. And I was already pretty angry.)

(Ha. “Pretty” and “angry” are mutually exclusive, according to how the world sees women who are expressing their anger.)

Chemaly wrote,

Few women, particularly those living in the United States or other industrialized countries, escape the press to be eternally dewy and lineless. Indeed, they are rewarded for conforming to standards, in other words, being “good.” According to a recent study in the journal of Research in Social Stratifications and Mobility, the more time and money a woman spends on grooming, the higher her salary at work, regardless of how well she rates on job performance. Prior theories have focused on the benefits of being attractive, but this study teased out the difference between attractiveness and investment in appearance. Researchers speculate that women who use makeup signal that they are responsive to social norms, gender stereotypes, and society’s greater propensity to police women’s behavior, “in ways that keep women distracted from really achieving power.”

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility

Here’s the TLDR:

Physically attractive individuals have higher income than average individuals.

This relationship is reduced when controlling for grooming.

Surprisingly, the attractiveness premium does not vary by gender.

Grooming explains all the attractiveness premia for women, but only half for men.

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility

And this, from the Washington Post:

Like past studies, the research showed that attractive people tended to earn higher salaries. But that wasn’t all. Their research suggested that grooming – practices such as applying makeup and styling hair and clothing — was actually what accounted for nearly all of the salary differences for women of varying attractiveness. For men, grooming didn’t make as much of a difference….

However, the researchers did find a big difference between men’s and women’s salaries when it came to grooming. Controlling for factors such as age, race, education and personality traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness, they compared how interviewers rated people on attractiveness, how they rated the same person on grooming, and that person’s salary….

They found that a substantial amount of attractiveness was the result of grooming, and here’s where they found gender differences, Wong says. “For women, most of the attractiveness advantage comes from being well groomed. For men, only about half of the effect of attractiveness is due to grooming.”

In other words, the study suggests that grooming is important for both men and women in the workplace, but particularly for women. Changes in grooming have a substantial effect on whether women are perceived as attractive, and their salaries. In fact, as the charts below show, less attractive but more well-groomed women earned significantly more, on average, than attractive or very attractive women who weren’t considered well-groomed….

One is that these gender differences are the result of a cultural tendency to monitor women’s behavior more than men’s, in ways that keep women distracted from really achieving power. Wong quotes Naomi Wolf, a third-wave feminist who argues that unrealistic standards of beauty that women are encouraged to pursue – an ideal she calls “the beauty myth” – is ultimately a way to control and constrain women’s behavior.

Washington Post

So. We can do as men do and not worry about makeup and elaborate hair and spend our time, as men do, accumulating power.

But if we do, we might sacrifice income.

My house is paid for. I’m in. I don’t judge any woman who decides differently – and of course wear makeup and clothes that hurt if you want to! – but I hope there are enough of us who are at a point in our careers where we don’t care about (we don’t want!) being promoted that we can effect change for those who come after us. So that getting yourself fancy is a choice, not a requirement.

Join me. Cast away your chains of makeup and join me.

Also, we have to kill the new racist voting law in Georgia

Oh for pete’s sake could we please please please get some movies and TV shows that are not about how men view women but are just about women and our stories? This can be done. It has been done. So why would anyone make a show where it’s not like that?

(I know I know I know. But still. Women do have purchasing power. If nothing else, Hollywood, do it for the money. Even my very School That Is Old uncles knew how to sell cars. “Women make 80% of the purchasing decisions for the family,” my uncles, who owned a small car dealership, told me 20 years ago, after I complained about my car-buying experience. “We ALWAYS talk to the woman when a couple comes in.”

The bar is so low. They talked to the women! But it was and is the smart thing to do.)

I have been watching a bunch of old shows – 9 to 5, which sadly, ages very well. Steel Magnolias also ages well, although I identify more with Ouiser than with Shelby these days. Shirley MacLaine is brilliant. I think I will have to watch Terms of Endearment again, too.

Mr T and I watched The Big Chill and man. It hits home now in a way it didn’t when it first came out and we were just college students.

There are TV series I love – series that center women and are about women, not about women who are about men. Rizzoli and Isles is great. I am sad it’s over.

Scott and Bailey. Vera. Veronica Mars. No Offence. Agatha Raisin.

Watch these shows. They are about women doing cool things. They are not about women worrying about men or about men who need a female character to round them out.

And then there are the crap shows.

I AM LOOKING AT YOU, STEPMOM.

Good grief. I had watched Steel Magnolias and thought, Yeah even though Shelby made Very Bad Decisions (and it turns out, sadly, that Steel Magnolias is based on a true story), Julia Roberts is a pretty good actress.

So I watched My Best Friend’s Wedding.

Whoa. Did I hate that movie that much the first time I saw it?

Her character was despicable. I kept watching only to see if there was any redemption and there really wasn’t. The character was awful in the beginning and continues to be awful. Do not watch this movie unless you want a good Hate Watch.

(You know – like in book club in the Before Times when we had more fun talking about the books we hated than the ones we liked.)

(Also, it was made in Chicago and I wanted to see Chicago because I miss traveling so much.)

I had already picked up Stepmom from the library and it was that or PBS’ The March and I wasn’t in the mood to be completely depressed about how our country is going completely backwards on civil rights – YES I MEAN YOU GEORGIA, so I watched it.

A few minutes in, I opened the imdb page and started reading the reviews.

I was looking for other people who might have noticed that Julia Roberts’ character is doing all the work that her boyfriend, Ed Harris, should be doing.

Ed Harris and Susan Sarandon are divorced. Harris has since met Julia and she has moved into his place.

The opening scene is of Julia trying to get Ed’s kids ready for school.

Ed is not in the picture.

He is not in the scene.

This scenario plays out repeatedly in the story. Julia – who is not married to Ed – she is his live-in girlfriend – is doing all the work of caring for his children on the days they stay with him.

She cares for his children to the extent that her own career is put at risk. Her boss threatens to fire her because she keeps leaving early to pick up the kids.

Why is Julia taking care of Ed’s children? Why is she in charge of doing the laundry and making their breakfast and picking them up from school?

I kept watching, just in case the writer was playing a trick and Julia would realize she was being used as an unpaid nanny.

Nope.

That did not happen.

Reader, do not watch this movie, despite its cast.

(If you want to see Ed Harris and you do, watch Tender Mercies. He’s not in it, but his wife is. It’s a wonderful movie. Ed is in The Right Stuff. Watch that. Don’t watch The Hours. I hated that movie and I don’t even remember why. I think it was super pretentious. Plus, it’s impossible to make Nicole Kidman not beautiful.)

Do not watch this movie.

Actually, don’t watch anything but The March. Because after I watched Stepmom, I was already cranky, so I thought watching a documentary about the march on Washington in 1963 couldn’t make me any angrier than I already was but guess what?

It could and it did.

We are going backwards in this country and we need to do something about it. Write and call your legislators. Boycott products from Georgia (easy for me to say – I kicked the diet Coke habit years ago). Participate in BLM marches in your area. Send money to the people who are doing the work on the ground. We cannot let our country become a haven for white supremacists.

(Or of being thought poor. I am very lucky – I have never worried about having enough food or a roof over my head)

I posted a photo on facebook of Mr T’s Favorite Jeans after I patched them (again) and he was concerned.

“What if people think we are too poor to buy new jeans?” he asked.

At first I laughed, but then I thought, “Why do we even think like this?”

---

I am in the habit of picking up hair ties from the sidewalk. We live by an elementary school and a middle school and I guess the hair elastics either slip out of girls’ hair or their pockets. (When they have pockets. Which we all know is a luxury reserved for Men because Women Have Purses and We Can Carry All The Things In Our Purses.)

Obviously, I don’t pick up the dirty or nasty ones – but one in good shape? Clean? No hair attached?

Of course I am going to pick it up! I don’t want to have to buy them and we all know they last only a short while before the elastic is shot.

So – I pick up and use clean hair ties I find on the sidewalk.

Do you think that’s gross?

Maybe it is. But – it’s not like the girls around here have filthy disgusting hair.

Anyhow.

Mr T and I were visiting friends, Jack and Jill. We were on a walk and he spotted a hair tie.

“Do you want this tie?” he asked.

“What? NO!” I answered.

He was confused. I always want the ties. And he is a practical man. This is the same guy called out to our friend Brandi, who needed us to stop at the drugstore because surprise, her period had shown up unexpectedly, “Texan might have some pads!”

She rolled her eyes at him and shook her head as she walked into the store.

“Maybe that’s not the sort of thing you yell at someone,” I told him.

“But – we could save her the trouble of going into the store!”

“Most women don’t want to talk about their periods in public,” I answered.

“Why not?” he asked. “Women have periods. Is that a secret?”

This is the man who bought menstrual supplies for his stepdaughters and for me, always trying to optimize price with other desired features. To him, it’s an engineering problem to be solved and why don’t we just solve it the most practical way?

He’s so right.

---

Going off topic.

I am helping a VP prepare a presentation about diversity and why it matters. We are looking for examples of times where lack of diversity on a team has led to a bad product and of course, Apple’s failure to include a period tracker in the FitBit is the first thing to come to my mind.

My VP agreed that it was a great example, but laughed and said no way was she going to talk about periods in a speech where men are present.

How are we supposed to normalize a biological function that half the people in the world experience – that EVERY SINGLE WOMAN IN THE WORLD EXPERIENCES – unless we say it out loud?

Deep breath. Baby steps.

But I digress.

---

After we had gone home, Mr T asked why I denied the hair tie.

“I thought you needed those!” he asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t want anyone else to know I do it, especially Jill.”

“Why not?”

Why not?

Why didn’t I?

I am not ashamed that we wash and re-use ziplock bags (although a friend teased me about that once and I was embarrassed, so I guess maybe I am a bit ashamed).

I thought about it.

“Because Jill grew up rich and she has no idea what it’s like not to have money,” I explained.

“So?” Mr T asked.

“Because – because I don’t want her to think I’m poor or tacky.”

Why? Why is it so shameful to be thought poor that we don’t want our friends to know that we pick up hair ties (which – OK – that one is a little weird)?

But – why is it so shameful to be thought poor that we don’t want our friends to know that we patch our jeans?

What kind of BS have we been sold in this country that if you are poor, it is your own fault?

Yes, I know our poverty here is different from poverty in other countries. I talked to a cab driver in Morocco who told me America was different – that we didn’t have poor people.

Yes, we do, I told him.

But – your poor people can work and become not poor. It is a possibility, he answered. But here? No matter how hard we work, we stay poor.

He spoke the truth. I had seen the same thing when I was a Peace Corps volunteer – that no matter how hard some people worked, they would stay poor. They weren’t lazy. They weren’t slackers. They were part of a system that wanted to keep them in their place.

In this country, we are supposed to be able to rise above all that.

That’s a myth.

That’s a lie.

I used to believe the pull yourself up by your bootstraps myth, but then I learned more. I got more information. I discovered that there were aspects of our society that make it very hard for people to leave poverty.

Yet our attitude is still that if someone is poor in our country, it’s her own darn fault.

That she is lazy.

That she doesn’t want to take care of herself.

That there is no need for us to help her because if she really really wanted not to be poor, she could do it.

And that’s what it is, really, right?

This idea that being poor is shameful and it’s shameful because it’s a condition the poor person has chosen.

If it weren’t actually the fault of the poor person – if poverty were actually a result of social and economic and structural conditions that could be changed – then we would have the moral obligation to change them.

And we don’t want to do that.