Packaging Feminism

One of my favorite books is called Packaging Girlhood, by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown. I don’t have my own copy, but I might as well because I’ve checked it out from the library at least five times. Over all it’s a good book, the main premise being that marketers are selling young girls a very, very limited idea of femininity, and the authors make some good points. But they also present a very limited (liberal, feminist) ideal of how they would like to see girlhood portrayed.

This morning I was reading a chapter that discussed cheerleading. It mentions an article in a popular cheerleading magazine that described the other interests and accomplishments of a few featured cheerleaders. They volunteered, raised money for charities, and got good grades. The authors don’t like this because they think it tells girls that they are only supposed to be nice and help others. They imagine what the magazine would look like if it featured “real” girls with “real” interests. They picture a drummer who starts a “funk/groove band,” a snowmobiling champion, the founder of a gay-straight alliance group, and an author of a one-woman play. They idealize girls who reject traditional femininity and champion liberal causes. Why do they envision the girl drummer playing in an alternative style band? Why couldn't they envision her playing in the worship band at her church, for example?

To be fair, the authors might be trying to appeal to as large an audience as possible by avoiding potentially inflammatory topics such as religion. But they mention the gay-straight alliance, and elsewhere in the book, one of their chief complaints is that girls portrayed in the media are almost always heterosexual. What they want is for girls to reject the media’s “packaged” version of femininity, but, though they don’t say it, they also seem to want girls to reject traditional values and anything that might be remotely conservative or religious. Why don’t they want girls who have strong faith and firm values (which, I would think, would make them better able to resist the onslaught of the media)?

Along with liberal, secular values, the authors also hold math and science up on a pedestal. Girls who play sports do better in science, they say. Could this be because both sports and science teach girls to reject their feminine traits? And one redeeming quality of music (an activity perceived as “girly”) is that it leads to better performance in math. Never mind that music is enjoyable and requires passion and diligence. Music is good for girls because it helps them do better in math so that they can someday have high powered careers and prove that women really are equal to men. Wouldn’t it be better if we encouraged girls (and boys) to pursue careers they are passionate about, instead of telling them to use their occupation to make a statement?

The authors reject and condemn any toy, book, song, movie, magazine, or article of clothing that suggests to girls that they will someday be mothers or promotes an interest in household things such as cooking. But there are girls who enjoy cooking and caring for children. To take a leaf out of the authors’ book, these skills and interests could lead them toward careers as professional chefs or kindergarten teachers. Even if they don’t, what is wrong with wanting girls to grow up to be loving, dedicated mothers who can cook healthy meals for their families instead of feeding them processed junk? What is wrong with wanting girls to be feminine, to be girls?

What bothers me is that they describe everything as an either/or situation. In their world you can be feminine or a feminist, but not both. That doesn’t seem to be what they want, since they’re envisioning cheerleaders who snowmobile and support gay rights. So why can’t they also imagine a world where girls can take calculus and dream about motherhood, where they can sing and play ice hockey with equal passion, where they can be conservative, religious drummers, and where they can reject the media’s version of femininity without rejecting all femininity? To me, that sounds much more equal and balanced than the packaged feminism they want to replace packaged girlhood with.

The authors sum up the chapter on cheerleading (after discussing the expectation that cheerleaders be athletic while still smiling and looking pretty at the same time) by suggesting dance, gymnastics, rap, and track as alternatives that use some of the same skills as cheerleading. One of the perks of these activities: the girls doing them don’t have to smile. All I can ask is why? Why, why, why would the authors not want to encourage the natural, beaming, impossible to hide smile that comes from doing something you honestly and truly love? Surely even the most ardent feminists wouldn’t have a problem with that.

Teenagers Sacre the Living S*** Out Of Me

DISCLAIMER: This post is very antagonistic as I was in a terrible mood when I wrote it. Please don't be offended. I was really just venting.

I’ve been in a very anti-teenager mood these last couple of days.

Partly this is because I’m happy again. I don’t know what it is, but something about the combination of cooler weather, November, the countdown to Magic Wednesday, the Christmas music we’re singing at choir rehearsal makes me happy. I want to skip and sing and clasp my hands together out of pure joy. It’s been a long time since I’ve been consistently happy for more than a couple of days so this is really nice. What does that have to do with teenagers? I’ve never met a less happy bunch than teenagers. It’s hard to be way excited about Magic Wednesday when everyone around you is moaning about how horrible it is that they have to spend Thanksgiving with their families. If one of the most relaxed, stress-free holidays of the year can’t make them happy, I don’t know what will.

Partly my anti-teenager mood is coming from my wish that everyone would follow the rules, just a little bit. What rules? Well, I’d settle for even basic ones like not texting at the table. I was writing a post about the evils of Twitter but I think my computer ate it so that it would have energy to spontaneously restart in the middle of the night. Silly booger. Anyway, whatever your actual person is doing at the moment automatically trumps anything that your cell phone might be doing (unless it is an emergency), particularly if whatever you are doing is a class or involves your family or someone more important than you. If teenagers could get their minds around this and this alone, that would be a great start.

Then there is the fact that I’m sick of all the rejection of families that’s always going on in teenage land. Whether or not you like your family, your first loyalty is to them and unless they’ve, say, committed an actual crime, you’d better keep your mouth shut about how much you don’t like them, especially your parents, and especially around the holidays. It’s not nice to ruin everybody’s holiday just because you think Aunt Jane doesn’t get you and you wish she didn’t have to come over for Thanksgiving. Friends are important, but friends can abandon and betray you in an instant. Your family is there forever. The holidays are nearly upon us. This is the one time of the year when anybody can be happy and no one can accuse them of not living in the real world. I don’t understand why teenagers don’t want to take advantage of that.

And there are the books. Now, relax, because I'm not going to start spouting about book banning and censorship. I don't really believe in those things, at least not where the printed word is concerned. But I'm as tired of futuristic dystopia and teens with huge problems as some people are of vampires. It always seems like those troubled teens and the citizens of the dystopia could have avoided a lot of problems if they had just followed the rules. If you're fifteen and your parents say you can't date, guess what, they know what they're talking about. And governments make laws. Not everybody is going to like those laws. That does not make them evil.

And finally, if I see one more pair of skinny jeans (particularly in acid was or in some obnoxious color) I’m going to poke somebody’s eyes out. Put on some real clothes and dress like an adult. Maybe people wouldn’t look down on you so much if you weren’t dressed like some sort of alien/juvenile delinquent hybrid. Whether you like it or not, first impressions matter.

I’m not trying to be mean to anybody (although I did say I was in a mood). But being polite, participating in family events with a happy face (if you can’t manage a happy heart) trying to look like a respectable citizen isn’t too much to ask, is it?

Fire, Fire

They say weird things happen on Halloween. But yesterday had to be one of the weirdest Halloweens ever, at least for me. Here's what happened while my mom and I were out doing errands:

The smoke detector in my brother's bedroom went off. Now, I burn candles so I've set the smoke detector off dozens of times. Usually it just stops going off once the candle smoke sort of dissipates or whatever. Anyway, the point is, I wouldn't be that freaked out by a smoke detector going off unless there was an actual fire of some sort. But my sister decided to get everybody outside and call the fire department. It's not what I would have done, but there's nothing wrong with that. You can never be too careful. Well, the fire department came and I guess they didn't find anything but a burnt piece of paper (?????) that my brother claims he was burning outside two weeks ago. But no fire. So everything's all good...except that my sister was running a bath when the smoke detector went off and she left the water running while the fire department came. It flooded the basement. This was about the time that my mom and I got home. The fire department must have just left because the door was still open and the dogs had got out, but fortunately they were still right there. My brother and sister did put towels all over the flooded basement so we just dumped all the towels in the washing machine and it was mostly all cleaned up. Stuff happens, you know.

But I was thinking, fire alarms make interesting stories. Think about it for a minute. How many stories have you heard about fire alarms going off when there was no fire? How many times have you actually been there when the fire alarm when off and there was no fire? When I was in junior high, somebody apparently took up pulling the fire alarm as an extracurricular activity. It happened at least once a week for about a month. It was fun if it happened in class because then you got to go stand outside and wait for the fire department to come and make sure there wasn't really a fire and you didn't have to do any work. But once it happened right after school and everybody who hadn't finished collecting their things from their lockers had to wait to go home until after the fire department came. I don't remember if they caught the fire alarm puller or if he just found a new hobby, but after awhile the extraneous fire alarms stopped.

Once the fire alarm went off in church. In the middle of a church service. In the middle of the sermon. I was in choir, and we all stood on the sidewalk in our choir robes and sang songs while we waited for the fire department. That sounds cool, but nobody was listening to us and it's really hard to stay in tune outside on a windy sidewalk. But we all laughed about it. That morning also became the inspiration for the opening scene of my trilogy (which, alas, is most likely going to be replaced by another opening scene that better shows what the story is about).

So that's my story of the crazy thing that happened on Halloween. And remember, fire alarms always make good stories.

Not Better, Just Different

Did you all know that the number one irrigated crop in the United States is grass (as in, front lawn)? Seriously. That’s probably the most interesting thing I’ve learned from my sociology text book so far. The class is called “Social Problems” and is really depressing, actually, because it’s all about, well, problems. But reading the text book has made me realize something: we do not live in a perfect world.

Okay, so I knew that already, but this text book brought it back to the front of my mind. This book can whiz through about five major problems (decline of small towns, pollution from huge farms, unemployment caused by manufacturing moving overseas, automobile dependency caused by commuter culture, overdrawing from aquifers) in just a couple of pages. And this is supposed to be the best possible age to live in? Yeah, right.

One of my favorite things to do is list all the ways that life would have been better in the past (for example, lack of the aforementioned problems). Everybody’s favorite response, of course, is to tell me all the bad things that I would have encountered had I lived long ago: people didn’t live as long, women died in childbirth, nobody knew how to read. Because obviously a history freak like me had absolutely no idea that it used to be common for women to die in childbirth.

I get it, there were problems in the past, too. But the present is most definitely not the rosy, perfect world some of these historical naysayers are making it out to be. We have more than our share of problems, many of them direct results of the “solutions” to problems of yore. And all I’m saying is that if I had the choice (which I don’t, so this is all pretty much a moot point anyway), I would rather deal with the historical problems, thank you very much.

And the thing is, we could have the best of both worlds if we wanted to. We could reclaim some of the good things about the past without giving up any of our lifesaving medicines, overhyped educations, or nifty gadgets. We don’t have to eat crap. We don’t have to let huge corporations rule the world. It’s not like your iPhone is going to stop working if we all tell McDonald’s to shove it. This could be the best possible age to live in, if we wanted it to be.

I like my computer. I like my cell phone. I like my washing machine and my indoor plumbing and my electric lights. I wouldn’t want to give any of those things up. But I like my homemade-from-scratch dinners and my local coffee shop and my medieval music. I wouldn’t want to give any of those up either.

“The past is like a foreign country. They do things differently there.” That’s my favorite quote. I like it because it makes the point I’m always trying to make. No matter what country you live in there are people from other cultures and other countries who live differently. But is any one of them any better or worse? Most people wouldn’t say so. That’s how I like to think of the past. It’s like a foreign country with strange customs and beliefs and ideas. But you know how if you go to a foreign country the people there are still people, and they still have the same basic human traits that everyone has? I think the past is like that, too. People were different, but they were still people, not better or worse than people are today.

The world is different, now, than it used to be. It’s not better, just different.

Another Week in My Life

Okay, so I'm not the best blogger in the world. I don't know what the booger to write about. I read all these blogs where people are going on and on about how they took their kids to the zoo and then got home later than they expected because there was an accident backing up traffic and then they went to the grocery store, where they used their super mom powers to save a zillion dollars. It's boring. I skim through those blogs and look at the pictures, sort of like I do in my Art History textbook.

Every day life is not that interesting. Well, it's interesting when you're living it, but not when you're reading about somebody else's everyday life. I don't even write about everyday life in my diary anymore. I used to, but then I realized how boring it is to go back five years later and read page after page about what's on TV and what happened in English class that day. So why would I want to write about my everyday life on a blog that I actually want other people to read and find interesting?

See, I could write about how I had an Art History test on Wednesday and then on Thrusday I went to choir and dropped my music on the floor, where it promptly slipped under the risers, never to be seen again, and speaking of losing things, on Friday morning my toothpaste fell in the toilet so now I've got to go buy a new one. But see, that's boring. If I'm going to spend time on this, I'd much rather spend it writing about politics and religion and history and education and other interesting things that actually matter. If you really want to know about my adventures in Art History, well, then you can become my friend on Facebook, and you'll get to hear all about it.

This is Why I'm Always in a Bad Mood

I hate driving. I absolutely hate it. I hate driving on quite streets on a nice day in a car with automatic transmission. Driving on busy streets on a 90 degree day in my persnickety old stick-shift makes me want to poke somebody’s eyes out.

I think it should be a law that everybody is required to drive 35 miles per hour on all streets at all times. Period. No exceptions. Ever. Inevitably I get stuck behind an old person or somebody poking along looking for an address or somebody who insists on breaking for every single speed bump or someone who thinks that because they are in residential neighborhood they should only go 20 mph even though the speed limit signs every couple of blocks or so clearly say 25 or somebody who just has no clue what they are doing or all of the above.

Then there are the school zones. There are two school zones on my way home. These are the kind where the speed limit drops to 20 when the flashing yellow lights are on. But one of these school zones is several blocks from the actual school and the light is still on until 4 p.m. even though school ends at 3:15 and even the kids who like to hang around on the playground after school have gone home by 4. I have never once seen a child in this school zone, at any time of day.

But what really gets me going is school zone number two. It’s for a private school that is, admittedly, on a rather busy corner. It would be impossible to drive faster than 20 anyway due to the procession of giant-SUV-driving mothers clogging up traffic. What bothers me about this school zone is the crossing guard. They have an adult crossing guard stationed at an intersection where—this is why it bothers me—there are lights, stop lights and “walk/don’t walk” lights. There are no left turn signals or anything that might be confusing. It’s a busy intersection, but not at terribly dangerous one (for anyone who lives in Boise, it’s 8th and Fort Streets). This crossing guard walks out into the intersection with her stop sign even though the light is red and the cars are already stopped. But here’s the real kicker. I was sitting at this intersection about a week ago and the crossing guard headed out into the intersection to cross two adult women who came from the other direction. No kids were crossing at the same time. These women didn’t have any kids with them. That really makes me angry. If they must have a crossing guard, she should be told to help cross kids only, not random pedestrians who just happen to walk by and are perfectly capable of crossing the street by themselves.

Why do crossing guards and school zones bother me? Well, to put it bluntly (and I’m sure there will be disagreement from any mothers who might be reading this) I think that if your kid is not old enough to cross the street by himself, he’s not old enough to be in school. But on a deeper level, it bothers me because I think it’s representative of the way childhood and adolescence are being continually extended, which I think is a serious problem. If elementary school children can’t be trusted to cross the street by themselves, then society is doing something very, very wrong. I have heard it said that people trust the kids, they don’t trust the drivers. But we trust drivers not to run over all the adults who cross the street downtown every day. And like I’ve said several times already, this intersection has lights. If drivers can’t be trusted to stop when the light is red, that’s also a sign that something is very, very wrong (and honestly, a driver who isn’t going to stop for a red light probably isn’t going to stop because some lady is standing in the crosswalk holding a plastic stop sign either). And finally, I am willing to listen to arguments in favor of the crossing guard being there, but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why she should have gone out in the intersection to cross two adult women. That is where I absolutely draw the line. Period. No exceptions. Ever.

Music

I don't like current popular music. I just don't. Occasionally I'll turn to a top 40 radio station and it gives me a headache and makes me want to plug my ears and scream. I don't like hip-hop, I don't like rap, I don't like American Idol-esque pop singers, I don't like screamo. I just don't like any of it.

What I do like:

The Clancy Brothers
The Kingston Trio
Early American Folk Music
Irish Dance Music
Ella Fitzgerald
Christian Rock

I do have a few CDs by bands that are actually still alive and making music, but even those aren't exactly what you'd hear on the radio or at your average high school dance.

I don't know how to explain this fascination with obscure music. I really don't. Put on the latest album by some big pop singer (I can't even come up with a name, that's how out of that loop I am) and I want to go wrap up in my fuzzy pink blanket and hide for awhile. But give me the Boston Camerata CD of Revolutionary War era songs, and I'm good. I don't get it. It's just the way I am.

It's Been Awhile

I don't figure anyone is reading this blog, particularly since there hasn't been anything new to read for more than two months. I've been on vacation for almost three weeks now and I'm going back to school next week. But...I am going to try to post more since I have a lot that I want to say. I'm also going to invite my Facebook friends to come read it. So if anyone is actually reading, there will soon be more to read.

Another Invention We Really Didn't Need

I was just watching a 20/20 segment about a seventeen-year-old girl who was raped at a party by several college baseball players. Four college girls witnessed the rape, tried to stop it, and helped the girl. The girl who was raped was never identified and did not appear on the show. The entire story was told mostly by the four girls who found her. What struck me the most was that she was the victim of an awful crime, which probably made her feel quite powerless (and please allow me to say that I am by no means pretending to understand even a tiny portion of what rape victims must go through), yet because she was seventeen and not eighteen, she was given absolutely no control over her life at all. At least that’s how it came across to me.

Now forget all about the rape victim on 20/20. That was really just the catalyst. The point I was trying to make was that a seventeen year old is likely a senior in high school, or possibly a high school graduate, yet society doesn’t trust them to make any decisions for themselves.

I read an article recently that said that adolescence is an invention of the 20th Century. The article gave all sorts of examples of famous historical figures who joined the military when they were thirteen or fourteen and I’m sure child prodigy Mozart was mentioned at some point. But more generally the point was that, say, a hundred years ago a seventeen-year-old could be more or less a functioning adult. Many people finished their education with eighth grade (although there were a lot more high school students/graduates a hundred years ago than most people realize). The average person probably finished school, went to work, saved money, got married, and started a family by the time they were 25, and most certainly by the time they were 30.

Now before everybody starts spouting statistics about how people did everything younger because life expectancies weren’t as high, let me tell you that that’s not as true as you might think. True, life expectancies weren’t as high, but that was because more people died at young ages because of things like diseases and childbirth. It wasn’t like people died of old age at 40 and so they had to hurry up and get married and have a family. People hurried up to get married and have a family because the myth of adolescence hadn’t been invented yet.

There are a lot of books out right now about how the current generation is taking its sweet time to grow up. My favorite (although it is rather depressing) is Generation Me by Jean Twenge. I also like Generation X Goes to College by Peter Sacks. Generation Me is mostly about how the current generation (I hate to call it my generation because I make a conscious effort not to be like this) has almost narcissistic levels of self-esteem and expect to be happy, fulfilled, and (often) famous. Generation X Goes to College is the author’s account of teaching at a community college where the students expect to be babysat to such a degree that one wonders how they ever passed junior high. These books mostly focus on people in their 20’s and even 30’s who haven’t really stopped being teenagers. And after reading that article, I think the real problem is that the entire idea of the teenager is a completely needless invention.

But who invented the teenager? Well, I really don’t know. My first guess would be prosperity. If you don’t need to earn money to help feed the family, you can stay in school longer. But even in the prosperity-coming-out-our-eyeballs ‘50’s the median age of marriage was about twenty years old (lower that it was at the turn of the century, by the way). I suppose even that left people with all of their teenage years to frolic and have fun. So maybe we can generalize and say that prosperity invented the teenager. I’m also going to state what I’m sure is a less popular opinion (as well as an opinion I’m much less qualified to state) and say that I think psychology also had a hand in inventing the teenager. Now, I happen to think psychology is a load of boogers (generally) and that it screwed with a lot of things that didn’t need screwing with, but I’ll save that for another post.

Most people who know me know that I don’t like teenagers very much. I don’t like teenage culture. I don’t like teenage music. I don’t like teenage fashion. I don’t like many teenagers’ attitude that they are the most wonderful, special, unique (and/or misunderstood) creatures on the planet. I just don’t like teenagers (to all my teenage friends: you know I love you, I’m just talking in vast generalizations here). So they idea of a society where teenagers as we know them today didn’t really exist is very appealing. I also think spending thirteen years of your life in school is the biggest waste of time (and that is not counting college and beyond). I would love to see our educational system reformed so that a person could be done with school at fourteen. I am not naïve. I know that will never happen. But I can dream, can’t I? By the way, yes, I am somewhat anti-school and I have many good reasons that I will share in a future post.

I will say that I am sort of a pot calling the kettle black, here. I took a semester off of college, I live with my parents, and I don’t have a job (although, in the case of the latter two, it is more because of my very traditional values than my reluctance to grow up). But I also realize that my semester off has been my “final hurrah” before I have to truly grow up and face the realities of being an adult. I most emphatically do not intend to live like this until I’m 30, or even 25.

Well, now that I’ve rambled on and gone on about fifty different tangents, I suppose I should try to come to some sort of conclusion. My brother’s elementary school recently did an end-of-the-year program that featured, among other things, stories of children from other countries (this school has recently adopted an “international focus”) who did above average things while they were still children. After I thought about it, I realized they were able to do those things because they lived in cultures (and, I would guess, periods of history) that did not expect them to grow up “happy” and “carefree”. How is it that children in the wealthiest country in the world who have all the modern technology they could ever ask for are being out-shined by children in poorer countries and less advance time periods? There, that’s about all the conclusion I’m going to come to for now.

Fashion Lemming

Sometimes I like to watch “What Not to Wear” on TLC. If you’ve never seen it, it goes something like this: Someone with terrible fashion sense is nominated by friends and/or family. The two stylist hosts ambush them, whisk them off to New York, criticize and throw away their clothes, and give them $5000 to buy new ones. Then they get a new haircut and makeup tips before going home to impress their friends and family with their new look.

I used to like this show a lot more than I do now. Now I sort of love to hate it. Maybe that’s because it used to be a lot better. The stylists tried to give the participants clothes that worked with their lifestyles. The hairstylist and makeup artist listened when they said that they only spent two minutes getting ready in the morning and needed hairstyles/makeup routines that were quick and simple.

They still do some of that. I recently saw an episode where they had a woman who only wore eco-friendly clothes (whatever that means) and the show accommodated that. But most of the time the participants are transformed into modern, put together, fashionable women (occasionally they’ll have a man, but almost all of the participants are women). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the stylists generally give no thought to who these people are, what their lives are like, and what they might have an objection to wearing. Probably about half the participants are told to wear skirts that fall above the knee (although it should be said that many of them were wearing much shorter skirts before going on the show), and I would guess that about nine out of ten wind up with hair shoulder length or shorter. Every single person is taught how to put on a full face of makeup, complete with multi-step eyeliner, shadow, and mascara.

To be fair, most of the participants really could use a little help in the fashion department. But generally their problem is that they don’t know how to buy clothes that fit. But that could be solved with a trip to the local department store. Quality clothing does not have to come from expensive New York boutiques, which about 99% of the population cannot afford if they are not being given $5000 by a TV show. Most of the participants start out with perfectly nice hairstyles and makeup routines.

I think fashion is silly, in case you couldn’t tell. I don’t understand why some unseen force gets to decide what’s in style and the rest of us are supposed to go along with it, however ridiculous it might be. Apparently the ‘70’s are in again, which doesn’t make any sense at all because it’s all a bunch of hideous junk that no one would ever wear if they weren’t just being fashion lemmings. Plus, I value modesty and fashion gives absolutely no thought to modesty whatsoever.

Anyway, I don’t understand why we need a reality show to turn people into fashion lemmings. Of course, I don’t understand why we need most of the reality shows on TV, but I’ll save a discussion of reality TV in general for another time. Right now I’m talking specifically about “What Not to Wear.” The show always ends with the participant talking about how much the experience has changed their life for the better. Occasionally they’ll do a follow-up show where they see how several past participants have kept up with what they “learned.” Usually they’ve become more normal versions of their new fashion lemming selves.

I’m not in style. I put a lot of thought and effort into how I look, but I’m not in style. And I don’t care. Most of the time, I’m perfectly happy with the way I look. I honestly think that if I was ever offered a chance to be on the show I would decline. So, here’s to everyone who takes the road less traveled and refuses to be a fashion lemming.

A Brain That Never Sleeps

I just finished a book. I think it was called The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University. It was about this guy who goes to Brown who decides that instead of spending a semester in Europe he’s going to spend a semester at Liberty University, an evangelical university founded and run by Jerry Falwell.

It was a good book. I read it in little more than twenty-four hours. I just couldn’t put it down. But I’m not sure why. It’s my kind of book. It’s funny. The author is a college student, so he doesn’t sound like your typical PhD author. But it’s not like I wanted to keep reading so I could find out what happened. It’s pretty easy to guess from the beginning how it’s going to end (this book is non-fiction). It was just really interesting stuff.

Liberty University has lots of rules. There is something like a fifty page handbook that lays out all the rules. Most of them are what you would expect from an evangelical university: no drinking, no drugs, men and women not allowed to enter each other’s dorms. In fact, none of the rules the author mentioned seemed unreasonable to me. But then, that’s me.

There seem to be two things that matter more than anything else to the evangelical college students in the book: abortion and gay marriage (and in case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last century, they see both of these things as wrong), gay marriage in particular. One of the author’s roommates rants continuously about how much he hates gay people. The issue seems to come up practically every other page (although this could be because the author has two lesbian aunts and multiple gay friends). And after gay marriage and abortion, they care most about bringing unsaved people to Christ (these are the type of evangelicals who believe that you can’t get to heaven unless you’ve been born again). They ask people about their faith and spend their spring break trying to convert strangers because they are honestly concerned about the state of others’ salvation.

But what the point of the book turns out to be is that just because people have different religious or political beliefs that does not make them horrible people. And that goes for both sides. The author makes friends with people whose stance on gay rights he finds abhorrent, and he even interviews Jerry Falwell at one point and finds him to be very kind and human. And this, this whole point, is what got me thinking.

I have a lot of very liberal friends. Actually, I have mostly very liberal friends. Some of them have said, at one point or another, that they are afraid of what would happen if the evangelical “right-wing nutcases” took over America (I’m not sure how any political or religious faction could take over America but whatever). If they did, what would happen? Abortion and gay marriage would be illegal? Would that be the worst thing that could happen? In the interest of giving attention to both sides, would it be the worst thing that could happen if abortion and gay marriage were legal in all fifty states? No, that wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen, either. But would it be the best thing that could happen?

I go back and forth on how I feel about gay marriage. The truth is, deep within my heart, I think it’s wrong. But I think we have much more important things to be worrying about than who is getting married. Besides, this issue doesn’t really affect me (except in the sense that everything affects everyone). If gay marriage is legal, then gay people will get married. My life isn’t going to change.

I have slightly stronger feelings about abortion. I’m pro-life. Very pro-life. I believe that life begins at conception and abortion ends a life. But (and this is one of my biggest buts) I don’t necessarily think that just making it illegal is going to solve the problem. I think the argument that if it was illegal rich people would just go to another country to get an abortion is a load of boogers. Rich people are always going to have advantages that poor people do not. Keeping abortion legal is hardly contributing to economic equality (and having an abortion costs money anyway). It may be true that if abortion were illegal some women would have back alley abortions, but there are probably just as many who wouldn’t simply because it’s illegal. The problem I see with passing a law against abortion is that just because a bunch of Congress people in Washington make a law doesn’t mean the rest of America is going to agree with it. Making something illegal doesn’t mean that people are going to think it should be illegal (of course, this could be said about virtually every law in existence and that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pass laws). If we really want to stop abortion, we need to convince people not to have abortions. If people decide it’s wrong, then it won’t matter if it’s legal or not.

Okay, I got a little off topic so I could express my views on gay marriage and abortion. So, as long as I’m expressing my views, let me say that I don’t get the whole converting strangers thing and I have absolutely no desire to convince everyone I know (or don’t know) to accept Jesus. I would love it if there were more religious people in the world, but I think trying to convert spring breakers is a little like putting an election bumper sticker on your car. It’s not like anyone is going to decide who to vote for based on a bumper sticker on your car and it seems equally unlikely that anyone is going to adopt a new religion because some weirdoes on the beach suggested it.

I’m not sure what the point of all of this is, really. These are just things that I think about all the time, along with many other similar issues. As I said, I have a lot of very liberal friends, and sometimes it’s hard to be a conservative with a lot of liberal friends. My friends and I don’t agree on a lot of things, but they don’t seem to think I’m a horrible person. But then they talk about politicians or just generalized groups of people (like evangelicals), whose views I often agree with, as though they are evil, evil people who have ulterior motives, usually power or money. I’ll give you an example.

A couple of years ago a senator from Idaho was caught soliciting gay sex (or something like that) in an airport bathroom. I have to say, I don’t really follow what my representatives are up to, but apparently this guy was very anti-gay rights. After he was caught in the bathroom, I believe he said (probably more than once) that he was not gay. Most of my liberal cohorts didn’t believe him and called him a hypocrite for being anti-gay and then soliciting gay sex.

I got so tired of arguing with my family and friends about this guy (and I don’t often get tired of arguing). I think a person has a right to say that they are(n’t) gay and be believed. If we’re going with the theory that gay people are born that way, then it could also be possible that a person could be gay but still believe (for religious reasons) that homosexuality is wrong. It would be awfully strange, but still possible. But mostly, I think a person has a right to be against gay marriage and not be considered a horrible person.

Well, this definitely wasn’t the post I set out to write and I’m having trouble deciding how to finish it. None of these issues have easy answers and it would be impossible to make everybody happy. For now, I think I’ll just leave it at that, although I think there are probably a lot more posts where this one came from.

Just a Thought

Let me be honest. I hate makeup. I hate how expensive it is. I hate the time it takes to put it on. I hate the way it makes my face look after I've been wearing it all day. I don't wear a whole lot of makeup. Sometimes I go all out for such things as Christmas Eve church. But normally, it's a crazy and wild day if I wear eye shadow.

This morning as I traipsed to the bathroom to put on just enough makeup for a trip to the grocery store I had a thought. What if we all just refused to wear makeup? I mean everyone. Not just normal people, but celebrities, supermodels, everyone. And if everybody stopped wearing makeup, then everyone would stop buying makeup. There would be no need to sell makeup, no need to advertise it.

I realize that this is never going to happen. The makeup industry probably makes a zillion dollars a year. Celebrities and supermodels aside, I'm sure there are plenty of normal people out there who feel that makeup gives their self-esteem a boost. But if everybody stopped wearing makeup, if everybody looked natural, we wouldn't have some higher standard to compare ourselves to.

I suppose I do enjoy those crazy and wild days where I break out the purple eyeshadow, but I hate the feeling that I have to put on makeup before I can leave the house. If makeup really is supposed to make us feel better about ourselves, then why can't I wear it if I want and not wear it if I don't want to? I know the answer: I can. Heaven knows I wear enough strange clothes out of the house where everybody can see. I don't know why I care what the world thinks of my face.

I think I'm going to officially make today No Makeup Day in the world of Melissa. I'll still wear my makeup and I'll still hate it. Probably. But maybe not. It's just a thought.

And In Other News

I do not live in a small town. I live in a fairly large city. It's not New York or LA, but it's the biggest city in the entire state of Idaho. It's bigger than any city in four other nearby states, although I can't remember which ones off the top of my head. But the local newspaper is the most ridiculous joke of a newspaper in existence.

I can't really blame them. The economy sucks. People probably aren't interested in subscribing to a newspaper that wasn't all that fabulous to begin with. But they keep making it less and less fabulous. The actual small town where I went to my single semester of college (population approximately 20,000, less than one tenth the size of Boise) had a more interesting local newspaper than we do.

Case in point: in today's newspaper there were two letters to the editor about the extremely contentious topic of whether or not the daily crossword puzzle is too hard. And these two letter writers were apparently responding to a previous letter about the crossword puzzle. I have read some pretty silly letters to the editor, but I think these two win the prize. Somewhere out there are three people who feel it is necessary to take the time and effort to write a letter to the editor about the crossword puzzle. And the newspaper apparently had nothing better to print.

People say printed newspapers are going to die out, replaced by the internet. I think that's a shame, because the internet can never really take the place of the real thing (that goes for most everything, not just newspapers). But at the same time, I can understand not wanting to read a newspaper when two out of five letters to the editor are about the crossword puzzle.

Noises, Noises Everywhere

During the one semester that I spent at college I had a mini refrigerator in my dorm. It made noise. I woke up one morning at three a.m. and it was making this horrible rattling noise that I can't even describe. I tried and tried to go back to sleep but the noise was so loud. Finally I got up and unplugged the refrigerator so I could go back to sleep. The next morning I plugged it back in and it was fine. No more noise. For the rest of the semester the noise would periodically start up again, I would unplug it for awhile, and the refrigerator was fine. But I couldn't sleep. It took me ages to fall asleep at night because my room was right next to some sort of furnace or water heater that made a noise similar to the refrigerator noise. So I would be almost asleep and then I would wake up again, sure the refrigerator was making noise. Finally I started sleeping with earplugs so that I was unable to hear the imaginary noises.

Sometimes my old-as-I-am car makes noise. I call it the helicopter noise. It sounds like a really tiny helicopter. I don't know what causes the car noise, but it usually stops if I drive the car around for awhile. It's a persnickety old thing, but I love it.

Now my computer is making noise. It's making a noise that sounds an awful lot like the old refrigerator noise (and the car noise), and it's driving me crazy. I can't stand to even me on the computer without listening to music on my headphones. Even when the computer is shut (it's a laptop and the noise stops when it's shut) and I'm in a different room, I can still hear the noise in my head. I'm going to try to get the computer fixed. I hate hearing noises.

The Story of My Life

I can't believe it's taken me this long to post this story. This is the story. Practically everybody I've ever spoken to knows this story.

In high school, I sang in a church choir that goes on a trip every June to sing at other churches around the country. My junior year one of the places we went to was Victoria, Canada. We got there on a ferry and we came back on a ferry.

On the ferry coming back a friend and I went into the little snack bar where I bought a coffee and a bagel. I assumed the cream cheese would be at the end of the line with the cream and sugar and ketchup and mustard and stuff like that. It wasn't. So my friend and I went to look around the rest of the ferry for the cream cheese. You know, just in case they kept it somewhere else. We ran into our choir director, who is Canadian.

"Oh, hi," I said. "We're just looking for the cream cheese."

With a completely straight face and without even so much as blinking he said, "We don't have cream cheese in Canada."

I believed him. For about five seconds.

But it gets better. The three of us then went back to the snack bar and found the cream cheese, which cost a dollar for about a tablespoon. I gave up and my friend and I went and sat down. I took one bite of my bagel, decided it was no good without cream cheese, and threw it away.

About five seconds later our director appeared again and said, "Here, I got you a cream cheese."

Cream cheese in Canada has since become an inside joke between me and virtually everyone I spend any amount of time with. The other day I was with a group of people, one of whom had never heard the story. When someone made a reference to the "fact" that they don't have cream cheese in Canada she said, "They don't?" and I nearly died laughing.

I thought I was the only one.

The Historical Era That Never Existed

The whole time I was reading Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull, I kept asking myself, do I like this, do I agree with that? Sometimes the answer was yes and sometimes it was no.

As the title suggests, the book is about the Quiverfull religious movement. It’s not a very centralized or uniform movement and it comes in many different flavors, but most followers believe in women being submissive to their husbands (the book calls it patriarchy), homeschooling, and having as many children as God gives them.

The book is a little like the movie “Religulous” in that it’s about the unusual cases more than the everyday people of the movement. It’s also about the leaders, the people who write books and blogs and publish magazines and hold conferences and start their own churches, even their own denominations.

The book is divided into two parts. The first is about patriarchy and the second is about the large families Quiverfullers aspire to have.

The patriarchy movement seems to be a reaction to the feminist revolution of the ‘70’s, which makes sense. After all, isn’t there some law of physics that states: for ever action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think that might have been one of Newton’s laws. Or maybe Einstein. Anyway, the patriarchy movement, according to Joyce, is not a throwback to the ‘50’s, but something far older. That’s why I like it. But. There is a but.

All of the people in this book, all of their theology, their beliefs, their reasoning, their rhetoric, sounds like a 20th and 21st Century version of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century. Some of them even cite laws from Calvin’s Geneva in their books or speeches or whatever. And the appeal to the past has a Reformation-era ring to it as well.

Before the Reformation, groups of revolting peasants commonly appealed to a time in the past when things weren’t so rough and the lords treated them well. During the Reformation, it became common for them to describe not how things used to be, but how they should be. That’s what the patriarchy people are doing, although not in as many words. When the movement began, in the early ‘80’s, it was about going back to the way things used to be before the feminist ‘70’s. Now the rhetoric is about creating a new world, a Christian population who will rise up and take over. Unsurprisingly, these people find most mainstream Protestant denominations to be too worldly and too feminist. They also criticize evangelical megachurches for essentially being too feel-good and not having enough rules.

The part of the movement that is still talking about going back to the past doesn’t seem to have been paying attention in history class, because they aren’t talking about any past I’ve ever heard of. Some of the patriarchy advocates suggest that a woman give her husband a list of her daily activities and ask him how she might better prioritize her time. When I read this, I tried and tried to come up with a historical period to compare it to. I couldn’t. That’s because there isn’t one. Not even the Biblical role models of the patriarchy movement would have done this.

Then there is the argument against birth control. The anti-birth controllers seem to have one of three main reasons. First are the Bible literalists who believe God will plan their family. Then there are the people who are trying to out-reproduce liberals, atheists, gays, etc, so that fundamentalist Christians will eventually be the majority. Finally there are radical pro-lifers who seem to have come to the somewhat incongruous conclusion that birth control made it okay to not want a baby, which in turn led to cultural acceptance of abortion. They also claim that birth control pills cause abortions by stopping fertilized eggs from implanting. And some of them take on an attitude hilariously reminiscent of the Monty Python song, “Every Sperm is Sacred.”

In the manner of “Religulous,” the book also talks about Orthodox Jews in Israel who are expected to have large families, and Polish radicals worried about underpopulated European countries being taken over by Muslim immigrants. Joyce does a good job of not letting her own opinions take over the book, although in the introduction she describes herself as a secular feminist and occasionally her narrative comes across as snarky or sarcastic.

The movement does have some universally good qualities. Buried under the more controversial goals of patriarchy is a crusade to get fathers to take responsibility for their families and not become deadbeats who don’t pay the child support. Quiverfull families aim to live debt free, a goal many Americans could benefit from. And, like the normal churchgoers you don’t seen in “Religulous,” there are probably hundreds of Quiverfull families who might stand out because of their size but are otherwise relatively normal people.

I started reading about Quiverfull after I stumbled upon an internet message bored about the Duggars, the 18-child family from Arizona with a TLC reality show. Probably the majority of the posters on the message bored were critical of the Quiverfull lifestyle although a sizable minority were part of it themselves or mind-your-own-business types. The critics fell into two camps (and plenty landed in both): environmentalists worried about overpopulation, and people who criticized the lifestyle, claiming that it oppresses women, that the children aren’t being raised properly, that it’s a cult, etc.

Quiverfull really is not a bunch of fat old men trying to control women’s bodies. Many of them aren’t Republicans, but instead support inconsequential third parties. There are also plenty of female “leaders,” most of them writers or speakers at conferences. After I started trying to find out more about Quiverfull I found a website called Ladies Against Feminism, which I read eagerly for awhile until one of the articles rubbed me the wrong way. The site itself is along the lines of the ask your husband how to prioritize your day crowd, but a lot of the articles are links to other sites, which tend to be more moderate. One of the linked articles summed up my frustration with feminism perfectly: feminists don’t just want equal opportunity, they want equal outcome. They don’t just want women to be able to pursue any career they choose, they want there to actually be equal numbers of men and women in all professions.

Truly, anti-feminism, at least my brand of anti-feminism, is not about taking away women’s hard won rights and sending them back to the kitchen. It’s not about some God-ordained plan. I think God understands that times change. It’s not even about my desire to return to a semi-fictional past. It is partly about the fact that men and women are different and no amount of “equality” is ever going to change that. But mostly, it’s about the hypocrisy that I see in feminism. Feminists claim to want women to have choice and opportunity, until a woman wants to get married, stay home, and have lots of babies. When feminists finally decide that’s an acceptable choice for women to make, maybe then I’ll be a feminist.

As I finished reading Quiverfull, I came to the conclusion that they lifestyle appeals to me but the reasons do not. Maybe I don’t quite believe wives should submit to their husbands. But I do believe husbands and wives should have different roles within the marriage. I don’t think I need to give birth to the future Christian majority. But I do want a big family and I want to stay at home and take care of them. I don’t think we need to interpret every word of the Bible literally, especially not when there are so many different versions of the Bible. I think, as they say in the Pirate movies, “they’re more actual guidelines.” Quiverfull also emphasizes self-sufficiency, and many families run their own businesses, which appeals to me. I like the simple, somewhat old fashioned lifestyle. But perhaps most especially, I like the emphasis on close-knit families who are always there for each other. And surely anyone, even the most feminist, liberal, atheist can understand that.

Boogers

Boogers: Part of speech up to you

A lovely all encompassing word that can be used in virtually any context.

Used in a few sentences:
What the booger was that?
That movie was completely boogers.
Where the booger did I leave my coat?
Holy boogers! That was loud.
Booger! I spilled it all over myself.
That new book is a complete load of boogers.

You get the idea.

No Logic, Faith

My sister is an atheist and has been for awhile now. Today she said she doesn't even understand how anyone could believe in any religion.

Atheists bother me, I have to say. They bother me the same way right-wing evangelicals bother atheists (I am not a right-wing evangelical, by the way). But this is America. If you don't believe in anything, then you don't believe in anything. Nobody can make you. And while there might be some who would try, I am not one of them.

Specifically what bothers me is when people say that religion has become (or is becoming) irrelevant because a greater percentage of Americans call themselves non-believers, because science has taken the place of religion, or whatever other reason(s). I could offer my own personal beliefs as a rebuttal, but I don't think I need to. I'm not trying to convince anyone to believe the way I do. I'm just expressing my opinion and my opinion is that such reasoning is a load of boogers.

My sister says she doesn't understand the logic of religious people. All I can say to that is that there is no logic. That's why it's called faith.

I imagine this will soon become a well covered topic on this blog, so I'm going to leave it at that for now.

Adventure

Adventure: noun

A journey away from the house via car, bike, feet, or a combination of all three, with a somewhat vague destination or purpose.

Used in a sentence: I went on an adventure to Target last Tuesday.

The American Pastime

Earlier today I went to one of my younger brother's baseball games. To be honest, he's not very good, but that doesn't really matter. My brother spends a lot of time at baseball and my parents spend a lot of time watching him. Today's game lasted nearly three hours and went into overtime, or whatever they call it in baseball, because the score was tied when the game should have ended. These are elementary school aged children and they played baseball for three hours (actually more, considering they got there an hour before the game started), while their parents sat on the sidelines and shouted cheers the players probably couldn't even hear.

This, in a nutshell, is why I don't approve of organized/competitive sports, especially for kids. You can spout all the statistics you want about how sports help prevent obesity, help kids make friends, help kids stay away from drugs, I don't buy it. They can get just as much exercise and make just as many friends playing a pickup game all by themselves without subjecting themselves (and their parents, who probably have much better things they could be doing) to long hours of scheduled practices and games, sometimes in bad weather.

But because I know it will never happen, I'm not going to suggest we get rid of organized sports entirely. It could probably be quite an enjoyable experience if games and practices lasted no more than an hour and were not held if it was extremely cold, extremely hot, or raining (today's weather was actually quite nice). I think sports teams for little kids usually do quite a good job of this, keeping the emphasis on enjoying the sport.

I'm not even going to get into all the things I think are wrong with professional, televised sports. I'll save that for another post.

Finally, I think kids should also be encouraged to pursue activities such as jogging/walking, biking, swimming, rock climbing, tennis, golf, etc. as these are activities they can do on their own time, when they have time. They will also be able to continue with these types of activities well into adulthood and even old age, which cannot be said for baseball.

Welcome To My World

Have you ever heard the saying, “The past is like a foreign country, they do things differently there?” Well, my world is a little like the past (and on occasion, I like to imagine that it is the past). I do things differently here. And now I’m inviting you (yes, YOU) to watch. I’d like to share my strange musical tastes, my historically influenced moral values, my educational story, and my love of a dead language, among other things. And if you don’t agree with me, say so. I love an argument!
I live in Boise, Idaho. For those of you who are geographically challenged, Idaho (you know, potatoes) is just east of Oregon, which is just north of California. I’m 19 years old, and a proud college dropout (actually, I hope to be a student again this fall). I hang out at church and the library. I write novels. I love to cook “comfort food.” And I am possibly the world’s biggest NCIS fan.
Just so we’re clear, I am Christian, pro-life, and anti-feminist (which means I oppose feminism, not women) and I am not going to pretend to be otherwise. My political views and moral values are heavily influenced by my historical knowledge. I think that a lot of problems with today’s world were caused by people trying to fix things that weren’t broken. It is difficult (even impossible) for me to assume that the most modern way of thinking is right simply because it is the most modern.
So, I’m off to do things differently, take the road less traveled, all those good things. I hope you’ll join me.