Over sexualized

     A Facebook post by a friend got my attention.  It was a short video featuring ads of women being used as objects.  There was something written to the effect that if women are going to continually be portrayed as objects, society will treat them as such.   Then the next part was the same ads but reversing the roles.  It was clever, funny to watch because they used some chunky beer loving men, and everyday looking women in the position of power.  There was a man leaning over the sink in boxers and little white t-shirt riding up his big belly, the wife spanking him with a broomstick, prompting him to wash those dishes faster, and another man on his hands in knees washing the floor next to a pair of legs in stilettos.  It put a smile on my face yet made me realize that a lot of women I know sexualize themselves.  Facebook is a tool for many women to show anyone who cares just how sexy they are.  One friend my age, (mid forties) posts regular pics of herself in very sexy poses, sometimes you can see she is only wearing a black bra.  The look on her face always says lonely middle aged housewife.   She will get at least thirty likes, mostly men yes but quite a bit of women too and I keep wondering when the likes will drop off seeing she is a serial poster of these come hither pics, sometimes three in one week, but nobody has stepped up to shame her yet.
      When we went to visit my husbands college roommate last summer, he had a new girlfriend he brought with to dinner.  Sixteen years younger and super animated in her chair, she assertively answered every question of mine that was directed to my husbands old friend.  I haven't seen him in over a decade but I couldn't really talk to him because she kept interjecting.  It was a night of her talking and talking.   Later I looked her up on Facebook, she had a profile pic that featured a whole line of women's asses in miniskirts, sitting down on a bench side by side.  I believe it was her friends and herself.  Her other pics were bar scenes and good times, which is common stuff to post, but in general, I notice in the single set, the quantity of posts are super revealing, like the ads women claim to hate.
     The biggest upset for me personally are towards the moms my age posting pics of their young teen daughters.  It really bums me out.  I don't have a daughter so maybe I'm out of touch but it turns my stomach.  I don't hit the like button, and I feel animosity towards the mom who posted.  Why?  Isn't fourteen a little young for their own moms pushing them out there?  When I first joined FB, my one high school friend's thirteen year old daughter who had a profile pic of herself in a white bustier, and the next year when she turned fourteen, my friend regularly posted pics of her in tiny tight mini dresses that looked like tank tops, captioning them with "my beauty", or "I'm so proud of my girl!".   Now recently an old college roommate of mine started posting her newly turned fourteen daughter in a mini dress, leaning way forward with one strap completly falling off the shoulder, exclaiming her pride.  Pride in what exactly?  A big part of me would love to see my husbands reaction if I did this for our fictitious daughter.  I would love the payback of watching him turn livid when some forty something year old pig stares relentlessly at her.
     I shudder to think what I would have done if Facebook was around in the nineties.  Shudder.  I'm not going to claim any real emotional maturity on my part, perhaps that's why it surprises me when people cross a line I wouldn't,  and of course I'm rolling my eyes when my serial posting friend strikes again.  I wonder why she wants to appear so desperate.  I guess I'm more annoyed with her because she is older, and perhaps I'm practicing what I hate, ageism.  I'm able to blow off the young girls, even their potty mouth posts, because they are young.   But an older woman screaming that loudly for attention is so irritating sometimes I have to stop myself from posting "again?". Or "oh the one with the black bra, lovely!". It's actually all tame compared to the younger set.  So perhaps I should just give her a break.    In the end it's about attention.  Women never seem to get enough of it. And it's easy to see what gets it.

Love post shelf life

     Only in the closet am I a sucker for love, the way they play it out in movies and tv shows, the fake kind that I counted on, that steered me wrong.  And I'm still into it, this fake rendition of love, even though I know its not real.  Hollywood usually gets me to buy the fantasy.  I was weeping while Linda Gray's character Sue Ellyn spoke at JR's funeral.  Dallas came back to TV and I was hoping to see Sue Ellyn and JR together in the end.  Unfortunately Larry Hagman died and I walked around for days silently asking why?  It was like a loved one of mine passed.  So the ultimate scoundrel wrote his late wife a letter that she read at the funeral, proving he still loved her in the end.  It made my heart feel full for a few seconds while I savored the promised undying love.  I have dreamt of this reunion, and now I would have to settle for this bitter sweet closure.  Growing up watching soaps, I believed like many other young females that lovers may lose their way for years but find their way back in the end.
     We had neighbors who used to fight as crazy as they did on Dynasty, this very glamorous couple never got divorced so I assumed it was because they loved each other.  My mother had to inform me they stayed because it would be too expensive for the husband to get rid of her.  One night out with them, my parents come home suddenly saying that they were fighting so bad, throwing things etc. and they were supposed to go out for dinner to celebrate their anniversary.  I thought it all hot and romantic, surely they would be having some seriously good sex later.   All that passion! Even as an adult in my thirties I kept waiting to hear they were still together, not just married because of the money but really together.  My mom just rolled her eyes and told me she was too old for him now, the glamourous wife who dressed like Elizabeth Taylor was in her late fifties.  He was into much younger women. At thirty years old I didn't understand.  Weren't they going to eventually make up and live happily ever after?  Wasn't he going to wake up and realize he missed her and immediatley fly to their condo in Florida where she stayed for months on end and beg her to come home?  I recalled a time I came over to their house for something.  I was about twelve and the husband picked up a playboy and showed me the centerfold  She was a voluptuous blonde.  He snapped to another page to show me a picture of her sitting in her boyfriends lap who was in a wheelchair.  He was confused with her story, couldn't understand how a woman like that could love a man in a wheelchair and her claim that he was a wonderful lover was just too much for him to handle.  It annoyed him so much he had to ask a twelve year old girl who knew the answer of course.  Didn't all twelve year old girls hold a much more deeper definition of love than the rest of the world?
     Now that I'm officially off the shelf, meaning being past my prime, I understand it more profoundly.  They say you have to walk in a mans shoes to understand him.  I get that it was a gift that had to come to an end.  My power is not the same post shelf life.  If I'm upset over something he's done, big deal, no skin off his back.  He still has no problem sleeping at night, snoring away to his hearts content while I wonder just how far a knitting needle would go into his eye.  Friends of mine cheat to get what they are missing from their mates.  There are no invitations to my foolish heart.  I can see it isn't real, it's an illusion in every person's mind.  And for women, it's that need to create that fantasy for their man, or to snare a man, willing to put themselves out there and portray what she thinks he wants to see.  I really don't think its real, it doesn't last as promised and I'm spitting mad I got suckered into believing all of it to begin with.  Thanks Hollywood, now please pump out some more love stories that make me cry.  You know the kind where the man never leers at women half his age when they are together, the kind that has all the right words and believable portrays that sincerity without making my eyes roll.  I'm a seasoned veteran, I've heard them all but I'm sure there has got to be a fresh spin.  Maybe I should just write it.  How hard could it be?  

Julian Lennon's birthday

Someone on facebook posted an article on Julian Lennon on the day of his fiftieth birthday.  I clicked on it because the picture was so striking, his face so much like his father's only better.  I really haven't thought much about Julian since the eighties when he was "Romeo in black jeans" but he had my attention now.  I bet he would be a dream boat in black jeans, his wavy blonde hair, killer baby face, ok Im reading the article.  Probably shouldn't have read it because I spent the rest of the day dwelling on it.  His late father was quoted as explaining to some nosy reporter that his son Sean was a planned child and that Julian was not and there was a big difference.  His following words were equally rejecting towards his first born son, a man that is almost his complete clone, his own flesh and blood.  It made me hurt for the man, made me wonder if he is stronger for it or lives his life in doubt.  John Lennon left his entire estate to Yoko and Sean, and the denial of his existence still goes on today.  Julian is still getting snubbed like an old school illegitimate son.  I could understand the probability John had resentments towards Julian's mother, maybe he felt trapped, manipulated, so he wanted to send her a message, let her know how he feels but at the expense of his son?   I wondered why I was taking it so hard, later in the car driving to my sons school at pick up time.  Maybe its because I couldn't imagine hurting my son by even the idea of rejection and even if his mother tried to give him all the love and affection and reassurances that she had, it could never be enough.  His own father showed him he was less than, and as much as I complain about never being good enough for my mother, she never rejected me on this level.  The song "Woman" came on the radio, which prompted me to think about it again in the first place.  I will think about it every time I hear a song sung by him and wonder how his son functions in life at all.   On the flip side it gives me hope.  I allowed my mothers words of doubt ring in my head for decades but people who have received worse thrive.  Now I have to see if he is thriving.  I hope he is.