I am pretty sure I am a bad feminist because all I want is a baby.  Seriously.  That’s it.  All I want in the world is to be a mommy.  I know there are other things I have to do to get to that point, but what I want is a baby.  A mommy is the only thing I have ever consistently wanted to be since I was a little girl. 

It was comical how much I wanted babies as a kid.  My grandma’s allergist who I haven’t seen since I was like nine still remembers that I used to say I wanted a hundred babies.  Oh, and if you said my dolls weren’t babies, I would freak out and sometimes cry. 

All I want right now is a baby.  Of course, Josh (my husband!!!) and I know that having a baby in a one-bedroom duplex is kind of out of the question right now.  Especially because we’re still worrying about having enough money for groceries.  Our goal for savings is having enough money that we can have a baby in two or three years.  That is our goal. 

I feel so lucky to have found someone who wants a baby just as much as I do.  He’s so sweet, and I know he’s going to be a great daddy.  I just wonder if I’m the only girl who has these kinds of ridiculous maternal inklings.  It’s not something I really hear a whole lot about.  I’m really curious.  Send responses to sugarplumfairy68@gmail.com. 

Are we less maternal as a culture than we used to be?  Or does it happen later in life now?  Or is it just something we’re too ashamed to admit a lot of the time?

I’m currently looking for a job and have been looking on monster, careerbuilder, and even craigslist.  I know craigslist is sometimes used by scam artists, but I know smaller companies often used it because posting is cheap.  Well, evidently it is also used by perverts. 

I sent my resume to an ad asking for a personal assistant and asked for more information about the job.  I thought the person posting the ad wanted someone to photocopy, fax, and run errands.  The poster had said they would like someone who could cook, but that seemed fine as I like to cook.  He asked for someone friendly, which is normal.  Well, here’s what I received in response to my emailed resume:

Now, once that you’ve gotten past the awful punctuation, the repeats, and the spelling errors, I’m sure you’re appalled.  Seriously.  Seriously?  He wants me to come into his house at any time and give him massages and “anything else.”  I’m pretty sure that counts as prostitution, yes?  And for $10 an hour?  I’m not trying to sound conceited, but if I wanted to be a hooker, I’m pretty sure I could get more than $10 an hour.  If I sent him a resume detailing my job history, why is he asking me to come to his house with a mini-skirt and no panties!?!  I am appalled and disgusted.  Who does that?  There’s a whole other section for adult gigs, so why did he post that on the actual job page?  I’m really hoping it was just some jerkface pulling a practical joke, but something tells me it was serious.  Maybe it’s my lack of faith in humanity…

I was on Jezebel this afternoon and ran across a piece called “The Problem with Ugliness.”  I was intrigued because it touched on an issue I so often ponder.  Who decides who’s pretty?  Do ugly people know they’re ugly?  Are some people just gross?  I loved it.  I think everyone should read it.  Seriously.  Everyone. 

In an ideal world, no one would talk about other people’s sexual mores.  I have tried so many times to stop talking shit about other people because I know it is a negative habit.  Every time I tried to stop, I couldn’t though.  So I’ve decided to come up with a new goal for myself.  I will only slut-shame people who REALLY deserve it.  Totally brilliant right?  So…now I will discuss who really deserves it.

I have been cheated on by the three boyfriends I have ever had.*  All three of them waited until we’d been dating over a year to do it, and each instance was worse than the last.    Every time, it has been with a girl who I viewed as less-than-amazing in the morals department.  All of them cheated with girls who had more sexual partners than me; in the most recent instance, the girl had been with at least seven times more people than me.  She had sex with my boyfriend after having known him for a week and knowing he had a girlfriend.  Sure, my boyfriends in all of these scenarios was the one who wronged me.  And sure, these random girls didn’t owe me anything. That doesn’t make them less whorish.  Every person who KNOWINGLY has sex with someone else’s partner should be slut-shamed. Any person who has sex with someone else while they are in a relationship should be slut-shamed more.

I say person because men and women should be equally slut-shamed.  I don’t believe in double standards, people.  I don’t.  No one should be skeezy, and the standards of skeez are the same for men and women in my book.

From this day forward though, I will not talk badly about random girls who sleep with random guys or vice-versa or girls with girls or boys with boys or whatever.  I won’t say anything about people who have accumulated numerous sexual partners unless during their pursuit of an orgasm, they hurt someone else.  If you want to have sex with 9000 people a year, that’s your own business, unless you knowingly hurt someone else.  Then, you’re a slut, and I will discuss your varied sexual history and present it as evidence of your character because once you start knowingly causing other people pain, it is. 

That being said, here are a list of acceptable people to slut-shame:

Famous:Jesse James, Michelle McGee, Jesse James’s Other Tattooed Skanks, Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods’s Hos

Non-Famous: Lyndsay S. from Evansville, Indiana who fucked my boyfriend in Pensacola, Florida**, Ashley J. from Chesapeake, Virginia who kissed the first boyfriend I ever had, Emilie C. from Chesapeake, Virginia who at the very least made out with my boyfriend, All three of the dumbasses who cheated on me

Quick Review: It is OK to slut-shame people that hurt you or people you care about or anyone, really, that you know of.  It is not OK to slut-shame that random girl from your building who has a different guy over every week.  I think the world will be a better place if we only slut-shame the people that really deserve it.  Otherwise, it’s less effective.  And remember that guys deserve it too! 

*It has taken me a long time to admit this because even now I view the infidelities as my own fault (after all, there are 3 of them), but we’ll go into that in a later post.

**She’s actually a pretty nice girl.  She told me the truth about him when he wouldn’t.  Niceness doesn’t absolve her skankdom though.  Sorry.

I am a huge, huge fan of Lady Gaga.  In my admiration, I do not go to the lengths that some do in calling her a genius, but I love her music simply because it’s so catchy and makes me want to dance.  I also thought she was a wonderful role model in a skanky, Christina Aguilera during her “Dirrrty” phase kind of way.  Quotes like this made me love her: “The last thing a young woman needs is another picture of a sexy pop star writhing in sand, covered in grease, touching herself. My image was an issue at my record label. I fought for months and cried at meetings. I got criticized for being arrogant because if you’re sure of yourself as a woman they say you’re a bitch whereas if you’re a man and you’re strong-willed it’s normal.”*  She seemed like such an amazing difference from other pop stars, so separated from the cultural industry system…until I saw “Telephone.”

Now, I should be upfront and say that I am not a music video person.  With the exception of Michael Jackson videos, I think they’re stupid (plus, seeing what musicians actually look like really really bothers me).  Lady Gaga’s videos are great though, really stunning visual artwork.  “Telephone” really, really bothered me though.  It wasn’t just the over-the-top, super obvious product placement, though that got annoying after a while.  It wasn’t the fact that it was ten minutes long…though that too irked me.  It wasn’t the freaky poisoning that reminded me of “Paparazzi.”  It wasn’t even the fact that it made no goddamn sense.

What really, really bothered me was the sexual objectification of women.  The quote I just cited above was the first thing I thought of when I saw her dancing in a g-string.  This was not empowering.  It was not some feminist statement.  This was Lady Gaga, my feminist icon, dancing in her panties and objectifying herself.  I wanted to cry.  Seriously.  I’ll write more about this later, I’m sure.  Right now, I’m just kind of sad.  I can’t believe such a strong woman has been reduced to a stripper in her own music video…

*from http://perezhilton.com/2010-02-26-quote-of-the-day-701

I visited my fiance’s home in Indiana over my spring break and met his family for the first time.  It was a fun and interesting experience—as well as thought-provoking.  My fiance’s father has a bar in his basement; he and my fiance built the whole thing together, and it’s really very impressive.  Something immediately struck me as soon as I came downstairs though: several very large pictures of bikini-clad woman on the panels of the fridge.  Mixed in with these images were several much smaller pictures of my fiance’s family.

The girls in bikinis caught my attention as soon as I came downstairs.  Josh’s stepmother immediately excused their presence as soon as I saw them, and his dad just laughed.  He said (rather proudly) that they’d been up since before she got there and she’d never asked him to take them down.  The underlying tone to the whole thing was “Look what a cool wife I have!”  What a strange thing to boast about, I thought.

I thought of an incident prior when my fiance went to Hooters with his coworkers.  When he objected to the idea, he was mocked and told that he should “take the leash off for a night.”  My major opposition was political, but their assumption was that I was so insecure that Josh couldn’t even go see some scantily-clad stranger without me flying off the handle.  I was the uncool girlfriend, constructed in direct opposition to his friend’s totally cool one.  She didn’t complain about him going to Hooters; she even went with him.  Even commented on girls with him!  What an awesome girl!

Why is it considered desirable for a woman to not only accept but actually encourage sexist behavior?

In popular culture, men are attracted to women who are laid-back and easygoing.  Showing passion or opposition to anything is considered a negative.  Saying “no” or even “this makes me uncomfortable” to porn or Hooters or anything else is a sign that a girl is insecure.  Or a bitch.  Or a prude.  A woman surely couldn’t be opposed to those things because she dislikes the overt objectification of women, could she?  Oh wait—that just means she’s a feminazi.  Ewwww.

I’m pretty sure most of us, for one reason or another, don’t like our boyfriends/fiances/friends/relatives looking at images that objectify women.  I know it makes me uneasy to see my fiance looking at those things, and I’ll admit it’s not just political; it’s personal too.  It bothers me that he’s contributing to an industry that exploits women.  I’m insecure about how I look, and seeing him look at those things deeply upsets me.  I’m sure I’m not the only one.  I’m also sure that some of these oh-so-cool girlfriends aren’t so OK with what their significant others are doing.  They are too afraid to say “it’s not all right” because then they would be a prudish, bitchy, political, or insecure*.  Making women worry about speaking up about what bothers them is sexism, and it’s wrong.  It has to stop.

I tell my fiance that I’m not OK with certain things.  It’s sometimes hard.  He has problems with some of the things I tell him, and we have serious discussions about them sometimes.  There are times when that gets ugly…but I think having some nasty discussions is a lot better than refusing to speak up about what bothers me.  I’m not contributing to that anymore.  And now I’m stepping off my soap box…

*From what I understand about boys, INSECURE=UNSEXY

My Confession

I am not a good feminist, and quite frankly, I don’t know if anyone really is.  My vision of a perfect feminist is pretty unattainable.  She or he (because men can and should be feminists too!) is totally comfortable in her/his skin, is in a perfect relationship, thinks before she/he says insensitive things, actually does something to promote gender equality, and NEVER EVER consumes negative pop culture.  I am a far cry from the oh-so-saintly feminist of my dreams, but I’m trying the best I can. 

reasons I consider myself a “bad feminist”
1. I like to play Daisy Homemaker.  I love to bake, and the one thing I want more than anything in the world is to have babies.  Yes, I really just admitted that my biggest life goal is to be a mommy, and I’ve spent a long time being ashamed of that.
2. I “slut-shame” people who make decisions about their bodies that I don’t agree with. 
3. Sometimes (OK—pretty often) I judge people based on their appearances.
4. I have a tendency of assuming that girls, guys, and feminists are supposed to act in certain ways and otherwise they are not feminine, not masculine, or not feminist enough.
5. I love listening to pop and country music, which is usually subtly sexist at the least and outright misogynistic at its worst. 
6. I am hung up on my appearance.  I constantly think I’m not good enough and have gotten plastic surgery to fix things I don’t like.
7. My boyfriend and I argue, and sometimes I am not as nice to him as I should be. 
8. I don’t protest for women’s rights.  I don’t mentor at-risk girls.  I don’t DO anything to support my ideas. 
9. I lost my virginity when I wasn’t ready because I felt like that was what I was expected to do.
10. I am a sexist.  Really and truly, I am sometimes.  Usually unintentionally, which is worse.  I will document more reasons later.

Now you’re probably wondering why I’m writing a post about feminism if I’m such a sexist wannabe-housewife, and it’s because I want to change my behaviors and my mind.  This blog is about my efforts to change, to understand why I act the way I do, and to express my own views on issues.  Maybe if I’m lucky, writing this will help someone other than me because I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks she’s not a good enough feminist.