Boobs and High Heels

I am a feminist. I say this with full sincerity. As far as I'm concerned, a woman who is not a feminist is a masochist – end of story. I have never allowed the lack of a penis to stop me from doing anything except weeing standing up. I can change the spark plugs in my car, hammer a nail, use power tools, channel surf and burp as loudly as any bloke. I can also cook almost anything, knit, crochet, make my own clothes and go to the toilet without half of it ending up on the floor. On the weekend I installed new locking door handles on two of the bedroom doors while my husband pruned the roses. Life is as it should be in this home; we both do what we are good at, not what traditional gender roles dictate. I am glad my daughter is being raised in such a balanced household. I also like Barbie. I like her glamour, her shoe collection and her independence – I mean really, Ken was an afterthought, right?
When I was twenty I was struggling somewhat with the whole feminism thing. I had read The Female Eunuch several years before and thought I had the whole deal sussed out. Then I moved into a share house with a woman who challenged me to become a "real feminist". She wanted me to disregard my male friends, stop wearing bras (easy for her, she was flat chested) and stop wearing make-up. But I am a Goth, and cleavage, long high heeled boots and elaborate make-up was what I did. Yes I understood the implication that stiletto heels cripple you so you can't run away, that revealing clothes distracted from your intellect and that hiding your face under make-up was like wearing a mask and hiding your true self. I was torn.
Then I met a woman, twice my age, a fabulously strong, determined, intelligent, deeply feminist woman who lived her life on her own terms. She had done the whole hippy thing in the sixties and drank and smoked and took drugs, laughed loudly, told dirty jokes and had sex with whoever she wanted. I was totally enamoured with her, I wanted to be like her, I wanted her to be my mother. She also had a husband, a degree in mathematics, a house in the suburbs and a huge Barbie collection. What a revelation!
Feminism is not about following a particular doctrine, about burning bras and hating men. It's about living your life on your own terms, it's not allowing the lack of a penis to stop you from having a go at changing the washer in the bathroom tap. It's about doing things because you want to do them, not because some overbearing male tells you to. If you want to dress like a slut then go for it, but do it because you feel good about yourself when dressed that way and you better make sure you have the guts and the grit to defend yourself if you have to.
Nothing makes me angrier than excuses for removing self responsibility. When I hear that a woman who was raped "deserved it" because of the way she was dressed or where she was I get so outraged my head almost explodes. I don't care if the woman was stark naked in a bar at 3am, no-one EVER deserves to be raped or bashed or murdered (except maybe my ex) and the simple truth is that men are responsible for their actions. I don't care if you're drunk or if your father molested you when you were a child, we make choices. It is a conscious decision to hurt another person and I demand the right to say and wear whatever the fuck I want without repercussion. I know that's not a reality, but that's why I'm a feminist – it damn well should be. The fight isn't over, until a woman can walk alone down the street in the middle of the night without fear we need to keep up the battle.
And as for Barbie, well, there are a few very sick women who have tried to emulate her physically with ridiculous breasts and bleached hair, but generally – what harm has she done? She has many careers, she has been a single parent, she has her own house and car and campervan. She is an accomplished equestrian and she has a killer wardrobe. I'm fine with her and I don't mind that my daughter has dozens of Barbies and a huge box of clothes for them. What I do mind, and what I am very fearful of are the Bratz dolls and their associated merchandise. With my above argument in mind – they dress like strippers, even the babies. There is no glamour, not a single outfit influenced by Hepburn or Taylor or Armani, it's all street trash garb. My husband innocently brought two Bratz movies home from Video Ezy the other day, thinking the girl would like them. I'm sure she would, in fact I have had an all out screaming match followed by a full on-the-floor-limb thrashing tantrum in said store with her previously because I wouldn't allow her to hire a Bratz movie.
I refuse to buy into the sexualisation of children. I will not buy the girl a bra until she has breasts to put in it – even though bras are available for toddlers! She will not wear fishnet or high heels or get pierced until she is old enough to understand the implications and able to deal with them.
Apparently the average age teenagers start having sex these days is 14. That's outrageous. Not only is it detrimental physically, but what sort of psychological damage is it doing? Why can't kids be kids anymore?
I watched a few minutes of one of the Bratz movies, just so I could have an informed opinion, I barely made it through 5 minutes. A bunch of stripperesque girls sitting around saying "what-everrr" and flipping their hand in the air, tossing their hair and bitching about other girls. No. No, no, no, no and no. It's wrong, it's bad, it's obscene, it's far too American and my (almost) 5 year old girl doesn't have the sophistication to see it for what it is. A few weeks ago the girl discovered Cartoon Network and switched from ABC kids. The change in her behaviour was apparent almost immediately. We went for a bike ride and she shouted "looser!" at one bunch of cyclists and then "do you want a piece of me!" at another. After I stopped laughing I was horrified. Suddenly I had "ruined her life" because I wouldn't give her another chocolate biscuit, and she now says "awesome" and "aw maaan!!". I don't like it. Cartoon Network is being discouraged. I don't want to have to deal with a teenager until she is chronologically a teenager. At 5 she can stick with kiddy stuff.
Bratz are banned in this house. Read more!

In sickness and in health

I am sick. Although most who know me would instantly associate me with an Alice Cooper type sickness, at the moment I am physically unwell. Not severely, I have something of a cold, starting as most do in my throat and now settled into my lungs. Basically, I feel like shit. After a horrendous shopping trip this morning I convinced the girl that she needed to look after me and let me lie in bed and rest. Soon I was tucked under a sequined purple piece of fabric, clutching a teddy bear and eating a pear that she had massacred for me. Bless her. I even managed to read a few chapters of my latest Bourdain acquisition (A Cook's Tour) before she got bored and demanded attention.
I am not a traveler. I have been a few places, but I don't really enjoy it. I am a homebody to the core. In my own home I feel safe and comfortable, I can relax. But reading Bourdain's accounts of exotic lands and even more exotic food I imagine that I could enjoy traveling; all it would take is an unlimited budget and the license to eat anything I wanted – this would mean a get-out-of-jail-free card in terms of calories and dysentery inducing micro-organisms.
Bourdain's descriptions of Vietnam brought back many memories of my trip there several years ago, in fact, he was there the same year I was. It was pre-bird flu and Vietnam was still finding its feet in terms of the massive tourist rush that was in progress. I had never been to any Asian countries and I was totally unprepared for the poverty and the constant harassment.
But back to the start…
At the end of 2001, after more than 18 months of trying to get pregnant and two miscarriages I walked into my doctor's office and asked her to try to find out why things weren't happening for me. She shrugged, reached for one of those big books doctor's have on their shelves, and commenced to write an order for every test imaginable. I had blood work done for hormone levels, vitamin and mineral levels, anything that may have been a factor, including genotyping. She ordered all the same tests for my husband. Weeks later we were back in her office as she explained the findings: my husband had a genetic mutation, a translocation of a part of chromosome 8 with chromosome 10. There was a chance we would never be able to have children. We were gutted, the rug pulled out from under, hit by a truck and several other metaphors for devastated. We walked out of the doctor's surgery, turned right and walked straight into a travel agency. "Send us somewhere nice, with beaches and good shopping, nothing too touristy but nothing too primitive, even a bit of luxury" was our request and we handed over our credit card. $8000 later we were booked to go to Vietnam for two weeks. Now anybody who knows anything about travel in Asia will immediately exclaim "$8000? That's outrageous!", and it was, but we had neither the strength nor the will to argue, we just needed to get away and have somebody else organize everything for us. And we did what I called the "rich white bastards" tour of Vietnam, we stayed at the best hotels, had guides and a personal driver for all commuting. We had several stretches of independence so we didn't feel like totally useless tourists, but these proved to be only opportunities for us to argue over what to do.
One of the drawbacks of attempting to run away from problems is that they invariably follow you. After two weeks of bickering our way around Vietnam it should have been obvious to us that our marriage was doomed, but we were both pig-headed idiots and soldiered on. A few months later I was pregnant with the girl.
I brought back with me from Vietnam many things – a gorgeous lacquer dinner set (which we gave to friends as a wedding present), a few lacquer photo albums, many clothes, hundreds of photos and an embarrassment for the excesses of my rich western lifestyle but also a deep seated shame for the damage my country helped the Americans inflict on people who basically just wanted to be left alone.
Also I think the seeds of hatred for my then husband had started to sprout, he was the worst traveling companion I could have imagined and turned what should have been a great adventure holiday into a grueling ordeal.
Anyway, I have decided that when I don't have anything utterly riveting to blog about, e.g. what I gave the cat for dinner last night, I will write an episode of a travel blog from my trip to Vietnam. Read more!

Shortbread and Bitterness

Well, it's been a while since my last blurb….so what's been happening…..We had our first go at making Halloween pumpkins, which went quite well. They looked great at night with the candles going. We had one bunch of trick or treaters knock on the door – in their casual clothes. So I told them their costumes were shit and gave them some of the overcooked shortbread I was in the middle of making. They seemed pretty happy with their brown biscuits. The pumpkins are now sitting in the yard going mouldy and no doubt the boys went home and told their mums that I make really bad shortbread.
The shortbread was for the pre-school stall at the primary school fete. I cut it into Christmas tree, star and bell shapes, and put 9 pieces into a little cellophane bag and put some curly ribbon on it. It looked very naff. I haven't heard how much they sold or how much for, but I can feel good about having contributed.
The veggie patch is going well although for some reason the bok choy, parsley, rhubarb and rocket have all bolted to seed. This needs research and remedy. I am battling some little green caterpillars for ownership of the remaining bok choy and the weeds are just starting to encroach but otherwise it's all good.
There was a rather unexpected and tragic death in the immediate family that lives abroad. The circumstances of the death have rattled us quite badly. My husband has had something of an epiphany as a result and is promising to be the world's best husband and step father from now on. Meanwhile, he had to wear Speedos to work under his jeans because he didn't have any clean underwear. My efforts towards domestic goddess status are not going well.
On the weekend I took the girl to the big city to stay with her father and I spent the weekend catching up with friends and family. Over the past few months the girl and I have traveled south a couple of times due to my grandfather's illness and as such I allowed the X to spend time with the girl without asking him to contribute to airfares, which is our usual arrangement. So to reward my generosity he refused to take the girl on Friday night as he and his wife had tickets to Phantom of the Opera so he picked up the girl from my hairdressing appointment on Saturday morning. This caused several logistic problems with accommodation and travel and ultimately cost me extra money. When he informed me that his wife's sister was staying with them (and I extrapolated that to could-have-baby-sat) I was not amused. Later in the weekend he informed me that his wife was pregnant. Now this is something I have been anticipating and I actually am glad that the girl will have some siblings, but I was very unprepared for just how much the news triggered me into bitterness and pain. Don't get me wrong, I'm not jealous of the new wife, in fact I pity the poor fool and feel little but compassion for her and her naivety. But I feel cheated. I am unable to have more children, my age being a contributing but not the only factor. The X gets to simply marry a younger woman (much younger) and he can go for family no. 2. He carries a genetic mutation which caused us problems when we were trying to conceive and I had two miscarriages before getting pregnant with the girl. It took two years and was heartbreaking. By the time my third pregnancy reached viable status I was already exhausted physically and emotionally from the previous miscarriages and spent the entire pregnancy in super-paranoid mode being totally fearful of more loss.
My pregnancy was relatively easy physically, the usual nausea at first, sinus problems and then reflux/heartburn later and some intermittent sciatic pain and perpetual tiredness. Nothing too bad, yeah? Now, I'm not precious and I'm not a princess but making a person is hard work and puts an enormous strain on your body. A little bit of pampering, sympathy and compassion would have been nice – in fact, it would have been wonderful.
But the X thought it was hilarious to grab my oversized boobs and squeeze them, and when I cried from the pain he would laugh and do it again. He refused to allow me any indulgences, if I was tired or my back was hurting it was just too bad. If we went out at night he would refuse to come home early and at one party stayed until after 1am and even teased me with the car keys and laughed at me in front of his friends when I started asking if we could go. He even started competing with me and I would come home from work (so tired I was almost crawling) and he would already be in bed because HE was so tired/back hurting/not well leaving me to walk the dogs and organize dinner. I wanted to eat well, nutritious food, do the right thing etc but X refused to cook so if I was too tired to cook we had take-away. I used to joke that the girl was made of pizza.
The labour was difficult and ended with an extended episiotomy and forceps. I was badly damaged and actually totally incontinent for days after. The pain lasted six months. I was determined to breast feed as I had bought right into the "breast is best" propaganda but of course the baby had other ideas and fought me all the way. After 10 weeks of every feed being a fight I finally gave up and I was heartbroken and felt like a failure.
For the first month X was great, he helped with preparing formula and bottles and would even do his share of night feeds, I wouldn't have coped without him. But then he went back to work and the help stopped. He would put in token amounts of help but was basically emotionally and almost totally physically absent. The more I asked for help the more excuses he came up with to stay out at nights. Due to our financial problems (not entirely X's fault, but largely) I returned to work when the girl was only 3 months old. I was still only getting 4 hours of sleep a night and after six months of this I reached breaking point and considered suicide. I was diagnosed with Post Natal Depression and put on medication, which helped. Did the X change his ways? Did he offer any help, support, affection, compassion even a cup of tea?? No.
I was very isolated, ashamed and scared. When the girl was almost two years old I had finally had enough of his bullshit and told him to leave. My life hasn't stopped improving since.
The point of this tirade is to say – I didn't get to enjoy being pregnant, I didn't get to feel special. And I didn't get to enjoy having a baby. It was an ordeal; I was constantly stressed, deeply unhappy and very, very lonely. I blame him for this. If he had just helped me more, if he had just loved me as he said he did, if he had just shown some concern for my welfare if he had just BEEN THERE then things would have been quite different.
I now have a wonderful husband who loves me very much and I'm sad that I won't get to experience pregnancy and a baby with him, that my only experience was with a totally selfish, heartless bastard who ultimately didn't care if I lived or died.
So on Tuesday when they returned the girl to me, I looked at them and knew I should say congratulations, but I couldn't. I know it's wrong, but I resent their happiness. He doesn't deserve to be happy; he doesn't deserve a second chance. I do, but I don't get one. There is no justice here and it hurts me.
Shit happens, get over it, yeah? Yeah.

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