Reblogged from Whirligig-a-Gogo:

Oh, that’s all of us? I guess we should all stand up then! Following up on what I wrote the other day, I decided to make my own Perfect Woman image for people to share around town. Actually, I made a few; options are good! …

This was Ninaws’ follow up to the same photo I posted about on Sunday.

“Because, OMG, skinny bitches are gross!  Who would want to fuck that?  Amirite?”

People’s bodies come in all shapes and sizes.   You don’t have to be attracted to them all, but you sure as shit don’t need to do line-ups of one type against another and then post (or repost) some body policing shame-a-thon up on a social network in order to get high fives and ‘likes’.

And if you thought this was somehow empowering, think again.   Our body shape and size is largely determined by genetics, so how is this compare and contrast line-up supposed to make anyone feel better, when all it’s really doing is saying, “If you look more like the women on the top, well then it sucks to be you, because you’re scary!”  And the overwhelming majority of us look nothing like either of those two sets of women. “Real women have curves.” No, actually, not all women do, and it doesn’t make them any less fucking real if they don’t.

Also, and why isn’t this the most obvious fucking thing ever, but all the photos featured in the bottom row are obviously from fashion shoots, while the ones on the top are candid shots of celebrities who happened to be at the beach?   No one looks in real life like they do at a photo shoot!  Even before Photoshop, they would still pose them, and stitch them into swimsuits that would be most flattering, do tall their hair and makeup, so comparing a model shot of Elizabeth Taylor to a shot of Keira Knightly just hanging out at the beach is fucking ridiculous.

If you want to encourage acceptance of women’s bodies, you should find an image that is a positive portrayal of multiple shapes, colors, sizes, without imposing a hierarchy.   Something like, I dunno, This…

Source: naturalmodelsla Borrowed from - http://healthyisclassy.tumblr.com/ Click to visit!

Also, Keira Knightly’s abs are fucking ridiculously jacked.  Holy six pack!  God damn, girl, you buff!

Just sayin’.

So, I’m not regularly dating.  I am, however, irregularly dating.

I mean, I still have a profile up on a dating site, but since it’s not really breaking my heart to be single, I’m not fully invested in the whole process, am sort of half  doing it to be doing something, and it’s not going so well.  More than anything there have just been a lot of awkward exchanges, and some red flags a’waving.   But I digress . . .

I’ve met a couple of people here and there that I’ve been hanging out with.   It’s all very much just about as serious as Sponge Bob, at this point.   Yep, “still” (grr) single.  Still crazy.

So, last night I was hanging out with a guy friend, and the topic of threesomes came up.  I said that I wasn’t interested in having a threesome with a guy and another girl.  This lead him to say that he didn’t think that he and I could ever be compatible, because I’m too closed minded, since I wouldn’t consider a threesome.   I’m not closed minded.  I’m straight.

(It should be noted that I had not been considering having sex with him, so this is kind of a moot point.)

It reminded me of an exchange I had with another fella some time back.  I was trying to encourage him to stop with the endless flirting, and, you know, actually take me Out, instead of just talking about it.   Well, he had suddenly changed his tune, and let me know that now he had decided to only take out “ladies who like other ladies.”

What exactly am I supposed to do with this?   I guess whatever floats your boat, but what about actually floats my boat?  I also just don’t understand why this would be such a shock to anyone.   I mean, why would anyone assume that I would be into women when I’m so obviously into men, and haven’t shown any signs of being into women.   I guess it’s wrong to assume anything about anyone’s preference, but it’s equally wrong to assume that I can just turn gay all of a sudden.

It’s a huge double standard.  These same guys, they would never dream of having a threesome with me and another guy.   It would never even occur to them, and there’s not a lot of precedent for it in media, either.  While there are so many examples in pop culture of the portrayal that women’s sexuality is fluid, men’s is in most cases portrayed to be rigid.   For women, there are a gajillion porns, Girls Gone Wild, Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl, etc, where at any moment a woman who identifies as being straight could become attracted to other women.  Because it’s not enough that we face pressure to be beautiful, youthful, smart, and malleable in a hundred other ways, now we have to be bisexual, too.   Or at least be willing to have sex with someone we’re not the least bit attracted to in order to be attractive to the ones we are.

Pardon my French, but FUCK THAT SEXIST SHIT!

Message to the dudes of the world . . . .I can’t help it if I’m hetero.   Oh darn!  I actually am attracted to humans that have body shapes and appearances similar to yours.   What a bloody tragedy.   And this idea that I should have sex with someone I didn’t want just to prove something to you or that it means that I am closed, narrow, or small minded is fucking insulting.

I’m straight.  Get used to it.

Just sayin’.

And a side note to any bisexual women and/or women who do want to have threesomes with another woman, go get your get, and I just want to be clear that I got no problem with you.  In other words, I ain’t mad atcha.

The last couple of years, I’ve put myself to the task of some really hard work.  I really haven’t felt like I had a lot that I wanted to say publicly.   Also, there was a somewhat threatening comment that someone tried to leave which didn’t make it out of my moderation queue.   Those two things really made me take a step back, and think about what the heck it is I’m doing with this space.  For the most part, this has always been just where I come to spout off about random shit that’s on my mind, be it dating, friends, travel, or baseball.   I tried to be funny, and it felt good to watch the daily page views go up, and to feel like I was writing something that resonated with other folks out there.   I look at it as a good way to work out things that I might want to write more about in the future, or to vent things in a way that makes me laugh at them, because I’m really big on not taking myself too seriously.  But do I really need to be putting myself out there in the world wide web like this?  Am I really just a self-centered wanker?  The answers are yes and yes.

Look, I’ve gotten plenty of ‘hatemail’ and ‘trollers’ on this blog before, but this was different.  This was a person who wanted me to know that they knew who I really was (no pseudonym) and where I could be found.  It was shocking, a little bit.  And I’ve been working on other projects, so it was really easy to just fall back into those other things, and let Just Sayin’ idle.

No resolutions, no promises, I’m just sayin’ that 2012 is the year I get over it.   Let that person be mad.  Let that person hate.  Let that person come find me.   This is pretty much what restraining orders were made for, so I would love it if ne would show nir face.   I doubt ne will, as obviously this person’s whole threat is based on the premise of making sure I know that ne knows who I am, while not letting me know who ne is.

Anyway, so I’m back, and I’m more badass then ever.   And yes, I am single.  Roar, or something.

I’ve got a lot of exciting things planned for this year, which I am going to share with all you strangers out there and the general population, including my ex’s wife and my mother.  (Hi!  I see you there.)

In no particular order, here is a list of things I plan to blog about in 2012:

• My actual New Year’s Resolution, which is not to blog more
• Boot camp fitness classes (also not a resolution)
• Bicycling
• Planned travel to Costa Rica and hopefully back to Kauai again
• Elections!  (oh fun, more arguing)
• Dating!  (oh fun, more arguing)
• Feminism! (oh fun, more arguing)
• San Francisco Giants back in the playoffs!  (Hello, Mr. Posey.  We’ve missed you.)
• Music – shows and albums, oh boy
• Oakland!
• And possibly some pictures of my cat being cute.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy while I do my best to hold up my end of the bargain.

And if you have something nasty to say, well, you go right ahead sparky, but if you make it personal, I’m going to ignore the shit out of it from here on out.

Just sayin’!

So I wrote a haiku about it:

Creepy beret dude
Undesired Advances
Punch him in the dick

Just sayin’.

I spent a good part of my afternoon out and about.  I slathered up with some sunblock, and stepped out in my tank top, big floppy hat, and sunglasses.   I walked around the neighborhood, had some foods, ran into some good friends, enjoyed my leisure.  I came home and enjoyed some relaxing activities – reading, watching a ballgame, watching a movie.  Tomorrow could be really packed with a lot of activities.  There’s a lot going on, and we’ll see how much of it I manage to actually accomplish.  So, I felt like today ought to be mellow.  Monday?  I don’t really know what kind of day that’s going to be.

Now I find myself sitting here with a glass of wine, thinking about Labor Day, and of course, writing about it.   (Also listening to Raphael Saadiq and Marvin Gaye)

The funny thing about this, even though I’m not headed back to school, I’m still like a kid this weekend.  I still have that feeling like this is somehow my last chance at freedom for some time.   This is, amongst other things, completely unfounded.   I already have plans to take a Monday off in a couple weeks to go wine tasting.  I have travel plans for October and November already lined up.  I have a hard time remembering, a lot of the time, that I am not nineteen anymore, and this could be just another example of that.  I some times look at my life, and I wonder how it is that a nineteen year old has come to have her own apartment, car, career, etc, and I actually have to remind myself that I am not nineteen, but thirty-four, and that all these things are perfectly reasonable things for me to have.

But as I’ve spent some time thinking about this holiday, what it’s supposed to represent and what it actually does mean to so many of us, it has occurred to me that this next week will be the 20th anniversary of me starting my freshman year of high school.   Fuck!  I’m old.  Two decades since I became a high school student.   How the hell did that happen?

I wish I could remember a little better what I was like at fourteen.  I couldn’t tell you if I was more excited or scared to be starting high school.  I can’t really remember what my first day of school was.  I’m sure, me being me, there had to be some guy I noticed on that first day, and i wish I could remember who he was.   And really what I wish I knew more than anything is whether 14 year old me and 34 year old me have anything in common.  Am I still her?  Would she recognize me?  What would she think of this weekend I have planned for myself?  Would she be happy with how we turned out?  Would she see the beauty in the simplicity of my evening?  Would she be mad at me that we’re single or would she be pleased that we have a life full of so much that being unsingle isn’t priority number one?  Would she like our job?  Would she like our friends?  (Some of them are still the same)   Would she like this damn cat curled up next to me?

The thing is, even though I don’t really remember anything about what I was like at fourteen, I think I couldn’t have changed so much.  I mean, it wouldn’t be so hard to keep track of the reality that I’m an adult, if I had change so much in the process, would it?.   I don’t think I would be sitting here feeling like this weekend has to mean something, if I didn’t still have that memory ingrained somewhere of just how much Labor Day can change your life.   It’s possible that I’m over-thinking every damn thing about this.

So what is this weekend about?  Relaxing, getting out, running into friends, barbecuing, cocktail drinking, running, biking, jiving, grooving, writing, and being.  Make it whatever you need it to be.  Go nuts!

And just keep turning the page.

• Call my dad to tell him that his fifth and sixth great-grandchildren were born on Friday
• Brush my teeth
• Floss my teeth
• Wash my face
• Write my novel
• Balance my checkbook
• Wash the dishes
• Feed the cat
• Take out the Trash
• Put away my laundry
• Dust
• Write my building manager about the water that has been pouring out of the whole in the ceiling in my bathroom for the past month….again
• Update LinkedIn
• Take a shower
• Drink a glass of water
• Write my penpal back

The problem is, after I’ve had quite a bit of caffeine to keep myself awake all day, it continues to keep me up all night.  Or at least, well later than I should be staying up after not sleeping much the night before.   It’s a cycle, you see.  A big nasty gnarly cycle.  And the only way out of it is to suffer.

So after the last couple of weeks of really crappy sleep, I decided it was time to give it up.  Again.  This isn’t the first time, and if after a period of abstinence, I go back to it, it’ll happen again.

So, I haven’t had any caffeine since Saturday.  This week has been hell, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by the folks around me.  Getting out of bed is just brutal.  I have been sleeping, but it’s just this exhaustion that’s been building as the week goes on.  I’m hoping some sort of reboot will be possible this weekend.  I’ve been powering through, though, and I know I’m going to make it.

The thing that puzzles me about all this, though, is the reactions of some co-workers.  ”WHY!?!  Why would you do that?”,  ” You can’t do that!”, or “No, you don’t have to give up caffeine; you just have work out, or go to bed earlier, or something.”

Seriously, what’s the big deal about me not having caffeine?  It’s not like I’m asking them to do it.  What difference does it make to them at all?  If anything, it just means there’s more coffee in the pot for them.   But you’d think I had said that I was thinking about giving up my US citizenship or something.

And you can’t be a little bit supportive?  I mean, just a simple, “Dude, that sounds rough, but you can do it!”  I’m really not expecting much, except maybe a little patience.

I really like coffee and Coke Zero, but I can and will live without them.  And it’ll be fine.  I mean, in a couple days, when I’m not a raging asshole, because I’m so fucking tired.  And it’s not going to screw up anyone else’s day if I’m not having it.

Just sayin’.

I’ve known that there are suicidal deer in the world.  I’ve seen the bodies on the side of the road.  I’ve had a few near misses.  I’ve seen it happen to other cars.  But until last night, I never knew what it was like to be in a car that hit a deer.

It all happened in slow motion, but at the same time it was so fast.   I was getting a ride home with some friends, and was in the backseat, so I didn’t really have the best vantage to see what happened.  We were on the freeway after one in the morning.  I heard my friend in the passenger seat say, “oh shit; be careful,” to his girlfriend who was driving, and I looked up.  There might have been more than one of them, but there was definitely a deer in the road ahead of us.  She was sort of splitting the lanes.  My friends slowed down and pulled to the right to go around her, and just when I thought we were in the clear, the damned deer turned and jumped right in front of the car.

There was nothing my friend could have done.  We were going the limit on an empty road.   She couldn’t have stopped completely.  And there wasn’t any way she could have known that the deer would turn around like that.

The good news is that none of us in the car were hurt.  The car was, though.   Her front end was pretty well beat up, and the radiator was fucked.  Luckily for us, our friends were quite a bit behind us with their tour bus headed home too, so once we got off the road, they were able to pick us up, and also to provide a few well timed hugs.   I feel really bad for the cost and inconvenience it’s going to cost my friend to get her car fixed, but mostly I’m just really glad that we are all physically okay.

But here I sit twenty-four hours later, and I’m not sure I’m emotionally okay, yet.  I’m still kind of feeling jittery, for lack of a better word.  This afternoon I walked down to a friends shop, and we went to lunch.  She pointed out that I was shaking, that I kept dropping my chopsticks, and that I was all kinds of agitated.  After the accident, I started shivering all over, and my heart was racing.  Even after getting home so late, I still couldn’t get to sleep right away.  I thought that was probably to be expected.  After lunch, I decided to hit the gym, to try to burn off the residual adrenalin.  Four and a half miles later, physically exhausted, I feel better than I did at lunch, but I still don’t feel like I can breathe.  I keep taking these deep breaths, but it doesn’t feel like enough.  I have a wicked headache.  And I just feel off.

The hangover of a life threatening moment, a split second when an animal made a wrong turn.

• pretty eyes, especially blue ones
• songs that make me dance
• listening to someone tell a story
• kissing
• writing the perfect first paragraph
• chocolate
• the smell of coffee
• apricots
• big hugs
• hot sun on my shoulders
• flowers
• flying through the air (on my bike, off of a rope swing, running)
• high fives
• daydreaming
• flavorful beer
• laughing so hard that I cry
• flip flops
• long showers
• art supplies
• pumpkin flavored anything
• my tattoos
• clean sheets
• fortune cookies