The world doesn't hate you. Don't hate the world.

Dear daughters,

This is you being awesome

The world does not hate you.   

Look, everything in that post is true. The world is unfair. People can be horrible. A whole lot of the world, in general, thinks that being a girl is pretty much the worst thing you can be. So I'm not writing this to criticize the parent who wrote the above, or argue with anything she said. I admire her passion and her principles. I love that she teaches her daughter to go out every day and show the world how awesome she is. I like big chunks of that post, and the first time I read it, I thought "right on! Fuck 'em all!"

But I kept seeing it posted on facebook, by a lot of different moms. And I thought about it. It occurred to me I would express the same basic ideas rather differently, and I want to tell you why.

Granted, sometimes I want to say "fuck 'em." I have said it. When I get sick and tired of "girly" being used as an insult. When I get fed up with the "girl toys" and "boy toys" aisles at the big-box stores, or when I am frustrated because I have spent untold hours looking for appropriate Halloween costumes for your age. (This, by the way? NOT appropriate.) When I think about a culture that tells us motherhood is the most noble thing we can be, then doesn't support parents or families or children after they leave the womb, unless they fit into certain very specific, very gendered boxes.

You are 5 and 9 years old, respectively, and I shouldn't have to special order and pay $30 each for a pair of shorts that reach mid-thigh and don't have words written across your butts, or go to three or four stores in search of sandals in a size one that don't have heels. That makes me feel ill. A lot.

I could write several posts ranting about how utterly broken gender culture is in this country, about the messages we send little boys and little girls -- and big boys and big girls -- that can screw us all up for life. But that's not what I want to tell you about. You will find that out soon enough. And when you do, you will, I hope, be horrified, and refuse to buy into the conventional wisdom that your looks and your weight are your only source of self-worth, or lack thereof.

What I want to tell you, instead, is that the world loves you. I want you to wake up each morning knowing that you are utterly awesome, and that other people are too, and the world is a freaking fantastic place.

You will, of course, learn that there are people who treat other people badly because of things they have no control over: gender, sexual preference, appearance. There are people who are just bullies. There are people who want to make sure you stay in what they think is your place. You both have already started to learn that lesson, and there's no help for it. But you also know -- and I never want you to forget -- that there are completely wonderful people in the world, as well. Who help other people just because they can. Who give up their own comfort to make things a little bit more comfortable for someone else. Who will go out of their way to make your day a little bit brighter, for no reason other than that you both live on the same planet and it feels good to make someone else smile.

I'm not saying you have to be one of those people. Lord knows I'm not, not very often. I don't have that much energy and frankly I don't have that much self-sacrifice in me right now. But I want you to know they are out there. They might not outnumber the haters, but they are out there, and they love you.

And I'm not saying give up, accept unfairness and stereotypes and do nothing to change them. You can fight them, without hating the world that brought them into being. That world brought you into being, too.

Here's the other extremely important thing: you have nothing to prove to anyone. You go out and be awesome, because you ARE awesome, but if you don't want to be the one who proves that a girl can [fill in the blank] just as good, or better than, a boy, you don't have to. You didn't choose to be female, and you don't have anything to prove just by virtue of your sex.

You know that it's ok to like trucks, and motorcycles, and the color pink, and sparkly nail polish, and princesses and Transformers, whether you are a boy or a girl. You already know you can grow up to be anything you want to be. As long as you don't forget that you have a zillion choices, you don't have to be the one who makes the most radical choice. Someone will, eventually. If it's you, because that's what you want, fantastic. But if what you really want is to be a yoga instructor or a parent who stays home or an English teacher, then that's what you should do, instead. Don't do anything just to prove the haters wrong. Do what makes you happy.

Don't let people make you feel bad because you like to wear makeup or cry at sappy movies or collect Barbie dolls. And don't let people make you feel bad because you hate makeup and would rather sleep an extra 15 minutes, because you chop all your hair off and wear black nail polish, or because you would rather learn to rebuild an engine than sew a straight seam. Don't feel bad for wanting to get married and have children. Don't feel bad if you don't. Both are perfectly fine, valid choices. Frankly, just about anything you choose is just freaking fine, if you are choosing it because it's what you want. Not because you want to either a) conform or b) rebel just for the sake of fitting in or sticking out.

What I'm saying is, in my long-winded, god-mom-get-an-editor way, is don't go out every day thinking the world hates you for being a girl. Or for being anything that you are. Please don't. Because that will make you hate the world. You will grow bitter and angry, and you will do things just to spite the anonymous "them" who you think are telling you who you should be. Feel free to ignore "them" and do whatever you want, obviously, but don't do things just to spite "them." They don't actually care what you do. They only even exist because we give them any power to have any effect on us.

Look, I'm no Pollyanna. I know that political machinations will continue to make the world a difficult place for women. I know that some people will look at you and think "she's just a girl, what does she know?" I know that some people will judge you on the size of your breasts, not the size of your heart or your intellect. Someone someday will see you in a short skirt, or in sweatpants, and decide they know something about you because of your clothing choices. I know that at some point in the next 10 (20, 30) years, you will feel bad about yourself because of the way you look.

You know what? I'm almost 40. I'm divorced, renting a tiny house, driving a 12-year-old car, working in an underpaid, female-dominated field. This is not what I expected my life would be at this point. And still? I'm pretty sure that the world is an amazing, beautiful place. I don't feel it every minute of every day. Of course not. But on the whole. And I know that unless I let politicians, marketers, misogynists, and oversexed frat boys make me jaded and bitter, then I still win.

I want you to win, too. I want you to be awesome. Not to show anybody anything or teach anyone a lesson or to get back and anyone who said something hateful or mean or ignorant. But just because you are both amazing, wonderful, strong, loving, beautiful human beings. And I never want that to change.

This is you being awesome, too.

It's About Choice

Oh yay, it's the Mommy Wars redux! This time with added false Republican vs. Democrat dichotomy!

To recap, in case you hadn't heard: a Democratic strategist I never heard of before, named Hilary Rosen, is taking some heat because she said of Mitt Romney, in a CNN interview, “Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of women in this country are facing.”

What Rosen was saying, I believe, is the arguably true statement that Ann Romney, married for most of her adult life to a very rich man, doesn't exactly have experience with the pressing financial problems of parenting that many of us do. Instead the media picked up "Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life" and ran with the "stay-at-home moms don't really work, according to top Democratic strategist" angle.

So Hilary Rosen had to issue an apology, saying that as a mother, she knows “raising children is the hardest job there is.” OF COURSE SHE DOES. Any mother who is raising her children and doing even a half-ass job knows that parenting is a shit-ton of work. I sincerely doubt Rosen meant to argue that Ann Romney didn't work hard and likely do a fine job of raising her five sons.

Obama campaign advisers were quick to distance themselves from Rosen, of course, calling her comments "inappropriate" and "wrong." I would say, however, that they weren't wrong. Ok, fine, "never worked a day" was a cheap shot. But is it wrong to say that Ann Romney has "never dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of women in this country are facing?" I don't think that's wrong at all. I think it's spot on.

There's also the argument that, as President Obama said when he got dragged into this manufactured controversy, "I don’t have a lot of patience for commentary about the spouses of political candidates." Well, fine, but that's a little unrealistic. Ann Romney has been active in her husband's campaign, and Mitt Romney brought her into it when he said she was his "top adviser on women's issues." Since women are a pretty damn big part of the electorate, Romney's position on women's issues is important. And if his top advisor on women's issues has little experience with the type of issues most women are facing -- well, I think that's fair game for the Dems.

So when Ann Romney says on Twitter that she "made a choice to stay home and raise five boys," I can't imagine any mother -- up to and including Hilary Rosen -- who would argue that was not hard work. The point both the Romney and Obama campaigns, as well as the media in general, missed, or chose not to address, is that Rosen wasn't criticizing Ann Romney's choice to stay home. She was criticizing the Romney campaign's portrait of her as an expert on the economic issues facing women.

Ann Romney told Fox that her "career choice was to be a mother" and "we need to respect choices that women make." Again, true. And again, beside the point. Some will disagree, but again, I don't think Rosen was disrespecting Romney's choice to stay home. She was pointing up that unlike a lot of us, Ann Romney had the means to MAKE a choice.

See, however the campaigns want to frame it, this isn't WOHM-vs-SAHM. It's Ann Romney, or her advisors and strategists, pretending she can relate to any mom, working or not, who has ever had to prioritize buying groceries over paying the electric bill, or feel ashamed that her child is going to school in outgrown hand-me-downs, or who has to explain to her third-grader that he can't go on the field trip because Mom doesn't have the ten bucks to send to school that day. It's any politician, parent or not, thinking they know how that feels if they haven't been there. Don't tell me you understand me because you're a mother and so am I. It's not that easy.

The media might want to cast this as a working-outside-the-home versus a stay-at-home debate, but the truth is, most moms I know fought that war a long time ago and have achieved, if not peace, then some kind of wary détente with it. Most of us are working outside the home, or working at home, or not working at a job we get paid for at all, with the knowledge that we are doing what we need to do for our families.

We might have "chosen" to work because even though our spouses make decent money, we find it fulfilling to go somewhere people are wearing shoes and having conversations with multisyllabic words. Or we might be working because kids do, after all, need to eat and wear clothes and have somewhere to sleep. We might be staying home because we can't imagine missing out on a moment of our progeny's childhood -- or maybe it's because we know that whatever we might make at a paid job wouldn't cover what it would cost to keep said progeny in halfway decent daycare.

I'd wager that among the moms I know, most of us have a lot more in common with each other, whether we work outside the home or not, than any of us do with Ann Romney, or Michelle Obama for that matter. What I would really like is for politicians to stop creating fake media wars that distract us from actual problems, and get back to work making this country a place where more of us actually have the choices they all take for granted.

UPDATED : Racism: Bad: Sizeism: PERFECTLY OK, APPARENTLY.

(Copied over and expanded on from tumblr.)

hungergamestweets: Luna Lovegood?!?!?!? That little heifer looks like Casper the Friendly Ghost.
But of course, the rule applies. Pale skin equals innocence.

I found the above-linked blog through an article in Jezebel, and browsed through, appropriately horrified by the racism (as well as massive reading-comprehension fails) so nonchalantly displayed all over twitter. And I admired the author of this blog for calling people out on their horrific attitudes. Then I got to this post, where that same author who is outing people as racists displays a casual, hurtful attitude by calling someone — I’m guessing the actress who plays Luna Lovegood, who just had the misfortune of being mentioned by a random person on twitter — a heifer? 

Granted, I'm a little cranky today and I have a massive headache. But -- and correct me if I'm wrong, please -- isn't this a little, I don't know, HYPOCRITICAL? Now I'm not saying calling someone a heifer is comparable to calling someone a nigger. (That was painful to type out, but I did it, because that's the point, right?) But you can't call people out on a public platform for being racist and then turn around and use derogatory language about someone completely unrelated to the topic at hand, who did absolutely nothing to warrant the insult. Not to mention, if Evanna Lynch, the lovely, seemingly average-sized actress who plays Luna Lovegood is your idea of a heifer, I think you have been brainwashed by Hollywood and the fashion industry as to what people really look like. (And I won't even get started on that topic, or we will be here all day. And well into tomorrow.)

Since this tumblr doesn’t have comments enabled, I clicked the “ask me” button and submitted the following question: 

I was directed to this blog via coverage in jezebel and admired you for calling out racism on twitter. Then I got to the post where you call “Luna Lovegood” — I’m assuming the reference is to the actor who played Luna in the HP movies, since you talk about her “looks” — a “heifer.” How can you speak out against racism then be that cruel about someone else’s appearance? The comment was rude, inaccurate, and obnoxious, and it makes me take your blog as a whole far less seriously.

I'll let you know if I get a response.

UPDATE, 3/30:

Although the author of this tumblr, who now has been freaking interviewed by the New Yorker, has not responded to my email either directly or on the blog, he has removed the "heifer" comment from the post linked above. Good call, dude, but I'd prefer you own up and apologize. I have major problems with him getting attention and interviews for being horrified and outraged and willing to call out racists, while harboring other hurtful (if more socially acceptable) stereotypes. 

SECOND UPDATE:

He apologized, publicly, on the blog. Which I very much appreciate, although as I said in a tweet to his twitter feed, he doesn’t owe *me* an apology. And that’s why I’m glad he had the nerve to post a public apology, because when something blows up temporarily like this tumblr did, the responsibility not to be  massive hypocrit is toward your audience as a whole. 

He also says he didn’t mean it in a “sizeist” way, which, ok, but you’d never call someone a heifer as a term of endearment, either. I’m guessing he was upset about the content of the original tweet and used hurtful language unthinkingly, misdirecting his anger at an innocent party. I think this just points out that we all have a responsibility to be careful about language, whether we think anyone is reading what we put out here on the internet, or not. 

In which I ramble somewhat incoherently

What kind of effed-up world do we live in where people are telling us that we should be more scared of a kid in a hoodie than a maniac with a gun? Where "slut" is apparently a perfectly acceptable thing to call a woman who happens to enjoy sex, and people in long-term loving relationships are told they are what's wrong with America? Where people just go on shooting rampages because they are mentally or emotionally crippled from seeing their friends blown up or because they are indoctrinated by a certain worldview that says some people don't even count? Where if you don't agree with someone you don't ignore them them or sit down and listen to there side but instead call them every filthy thing you can think of because it's all anonymous on the internet? How did this happen?

I cannot stop thinking about the completely and utterly arsed-up state of the world and hoping that at least we are starting some kind of resistance and change by talking and protesting and making ourselves heard, which is easier than ever because hey, retweet, and I've done my part. But then I become paralyzed by my inability to comprehend and articulate how truly horrific it is that someone just shoots a child, here or in France or in Afghanistan, and I just want to protect my children from ever finding out about any of it; and then I think that if I do, I'm part of the problem because they need to grow up and be the people who make this sort of thing stop.

And if my kids are going to change the world they have to eventually become aware that not every child grows up happy and healthy with their only concerns about why we don't have their favorite Pop-tart flavor and how unfair it is that Alyssa got her ears pierced at NINE and why do I have to wait until I'm TWELVE. But how do I tell them that, and when?

Not right now, obviously. I'm not going to sit my kids down like that dumbass in the Kony video who is explaining, unprompted, to his 5-year-old about a crazed madman who kidnaps children and makes them kill other people, showing him pictures of "the bad guy," like, thanks, Dad, when I wake up screaming for weeks I hope you are there to reassure me that no one is going to come kidnap me out of my bed and make me shoot you. But I will always tell my kids the truth when they ask.

And maybe they won't want to change the world, but dammit, I hope that they do, even though I'm sorry that we've screwed it up enough that they need to change it. I hope that we are doing something right now, between the Occupy movement and marriage equality finally being a thing that can really happen and people sending knitted lady parts to their congresspersons and people speaking up, finally, about how shitty it is that we have so much and do so freaking little, but there will be so much more they will have to do.

There are things we can do but I am starting to think that the best thing we can do, in this generation and the one just behind us, is to try and raise fewer assholes, racists, misogynists, and xenophobes, and more people who speak up and speak out and are willing to listen, not just talk.

Don't pretend to your kid that skin color doesn't matter and we're all the same inside, because it's not true; don't let them think that civil rights and the feminist movement are just something in history class because if recent events prove anything, it's that it's not enough that our great-great-grandmothers got the vote; we have to keep protesting and talking and working to protect what they put themselves on the line for. It's not over.

I don't know the point of what I'm typing here, I'm just typing because the first line of this started out as a Facebook status, like "I'm so horrified about the state of the world right now that I just want to lock my children inside forever," but then I couldn't stop typing so I just kept going. It's Friday and I've had less than five hours of sleep for the last four nights in a row and that's probably a big part of the reason I can't actually formulate a constructive and supported argument or opinion, but am just typing until it seems like a good place to stop, but really, world, cut it out.

Stop being assholes to each other. I want my children to grow up and I want them to see the beautiful parts of the world and not have to deal with this shit. So stop it. Is that really so much to ask?

The walls go all the way to the floor, and some days that's all you can hope for

First day at Disneyworld: "Mom, today is going to be the BEST day. As long as I don't fall down."

Oh, Boo. My funny, frustrating youngest child. This morning she had a meltdown when I told her to stop threatening to poop on her sister and get dressed; I had to drag her out the door and into school, 10 minutes late, and she was fighting me every step of the way. Stubborn. So, so stubborn, so determined to show me that I can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do.