On Being Female

How the hell will we, as females, ever truly be equal when all we ever give a big shit is how our bodies look. Media constantly reinforces women's self-hate by pitting us againt each other, by showing us what could be if only we lost that extra ten pounds, etc.

Another point to ponder is, why is it every woman's goal who is a celebrity to become skinny and blonde once in the spotlight, and if she's not already white, to become so.

Let's look:

Now, why did these two women, good ol' J-Lo, known primarily for the size of her backside, not her shitty dance tracks , and Cameron Diaz have to turn around like this? Do men ever show their backsides, thusly? Of course not! Men's subtext is never "ogle me, objectify me." Though for women, especially celebrities, this is always the case.

Next up, Jennifer Hudson, who went from being a dark- pigmented, large-sized person, to a very skinny, very light- skinned person, almost overnight.

The first photo is a  "before shot" which I've dubbed "well before" because she looks like herself. The second is in the middle of her drastic weight loss, and  the last is an "after" shot, as in after she turned into someone else, both in size and colour.

She is now the spokeswoman for a weight loss company, and on the commercial she says that her greatest achievement  is all the weight she's lost, not winning awards for her talent! Wow!

Well before

Going...

Gone

(L) the blonde, super white, woman who bears so much skin now in her videos that seeing her dressed would be racy. (R) when she was in Destiny's Child, she was dark pigmented.

What about Beyonce? Here's a 'before and after'  of her as well,which is actually an after and before. Pretty insane, huh?She went from dark-skinned, and kept her clothes on, to bleaching the shit out of her skin and hair and letting big lips (aka jay-z) pimp her..she's nearly naked in the videos I've seen since she became mrs. big lips.

There are millions of examples of women choosing to, or being forced into the world of money,fame and getting pimped. Another example Leanne Rimes. She started her career as a little kid; gawky and young.

She went from normal to fresh out of aushwitz ( I can't and won't capitalize that word!)

Rimes as a kid, just starting her career, with a killer pose!

Rimes looking liked she just stepped out of a concentration -camp!

Time and time again, women sell their power.We shrink ourselves, our bodies, voices, appetites--physical, emotional, walk around politely on tippy- toe. Enter--The High Heel, keeping women infantilized since men invented them.  Hoo-Rah. Maybe the motto that men invented, along with the shoes, was " breasts out, butt up, that's the way to win your luck."

Posh Spice and Mr. Spice- god forbid she wear Birkenstocks while pregnant, what would the boys club think?!

Here's dear J-Lo again, this time pregnant, and a slave to The Patriarchy!

Apart from the infantilizing and over sexualizing of the body, they are damn painful, and ridiculous to walk in. So many women seen to feel that learning to walk in a contrapment that will do serious damage to your back, feet and  legs, is a rite of passage and a badge of honor, my sister seems to be one of them, but then again, she, like many women who hate being female, listen to men-musicians talking about women as "bitches" etc.

R.I.P Whitney Houston

I didn't know that Whitney Houston had died until last night..I was shocked, but it was a well-known fact that she and Bobby had some pretty major drug problems. Now she's gone. It's pretty sad, she rose  to the spotlight so fast and she was pretty young,  and then to die, at such a young age with no dignity, naked, in   a hotel bathtub. She was only 48.

I used to love Whitney Houston. Ok, she ended  up being a relic of the '80s, and all we ever heard about her since her last appearance, which was in the late '90s in The Bodyguard was about her drug battles,  but she had an amazingly strong voice.

Sam Kass

 Yesterday while watching Chopped, one of the chef-judges was, I later found out a  current White House assistant cook, who, on the show had been bumped up to "White House Chef." The assistant cook -turned- chef for the day is called Sam Kass, Jewish, sexy and with a surprise twist here, has no formal schooling in his current career.

This got  me thinking...about what life gives us, I suppose it's always for a reason. He wanted to be a baseball player, and apparently took a summer job in a restaurant and found it clicked with him, clearly, very well.

From the summer gig, he got another opportunity to work in another kitchen, but this time, in Austria. Austria set him on the right path, it seemed, because he then went on to open some kind of private restaurant,in his hometown, " Chicago, the city of win", to quote Common,  who is another Chicagoan.

Here's some cool background on the etymology of the word  Chicago

"At the beginning of European recorded history, the Chicago area was inhabited by a number of Algonquian peoples, including the Mascouten and Miami. They were connected through trade and seasonal hunting migrations to their neighbors, the Potawatomi to the east, Fox to the north, and the Illinois to the southwest. The name "Chicago" is the French version of the Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa ("Stinky Onion"), named for the plants common along the Chicago River.^[1][2][3] It is not related to Chief Chicagou of the Michigamea people.^[4] During the mid-18th century, the Chicago area was inhabited primarily by the Potawatomi, who displaced the Miami, Sauk, and Fox tribes. They had previously controlled the area and moved west under pressure from the Potawatomi and European settlers."( from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chicago)

Actually, I'm not really sure what it was, private restaurant slash something else, but that's where he met ..The Obamas,( cue impressive entrance  music)  and somewhere in and amongst all that he also opened some kind of soup kitchen, because the States has no social services; no food banks, no assistance, just food stamps and gluttony.

From the Obama meeting I suppose the Obamas scooped him then and there, and from a summer gig, he's now the go-to guy for local, sustainable eating, apparently, and at The White House, no less.

I like these kinds of stories that affirm that formal education doesn't need to always be the method by which you'll get where you need to be. If Sam hadn't needed a  summer job , maybe he would've never fallen into cooking?

Things happen when and how they're supposed to, it's just up to us to accept opportunities when they present themselves to us.

Sam Kass- assistant cook, but, at The White House,( I'm sure his mother is so proud..oy vey!)