It has been forever since I posted anything because I just moved into my first ever house with my husband!  I am married!  I am in a cute little house with my husband!  Well, not right this second because I am at school for exam week.  In three days, I will be back at home though.

In my entire life, I have never felt this incredibly happy before.  Ever.  I spent every day from Friday to Tuesday with him, well except when he was at work.  We went to the grocery store together, cooked dinner together, brushed our teeth together.  Everything that we had to do, we did together!  I can’t believe how lucky I am right now.  I am so in love! 

Prior to this weekend, I had no idea that married life would be so super fun!  We didn’t even have furniture the first night, and we had so much fun just camping out.  As of right now, a rubbermade bin is our table and nightstand; for two days, it was a chair.  Things aren’t perfect, but I feel so happy.  I just had to gush!!! 

Josh is so amazing.  I feel so lucky to be with him.  We can talk about anything (really).  We think all of each other’s jokes are funny.  We’re laughing all the time.  When he is home, we’re never apart.  He is so sweet and thoughtful too!  I’ll explain more about all of his wonderful qualities later.  Swoon.  <3

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