Fame Whoring and Growing Up

Yesterday I saw a video of Courtney Stodden (17yrs old) and her loving husband, Doug Hutchison (51yrs old), who is dressed as Santa Claus. Courtney, in typical fashion, is dressed in a tiny red bikini and sits precariously on Santa Doug’s lap while she rocks around and gyrates, in what I naturally assume is a desperate attempt to keep from falling off his lap and into the snow. Brrrr…

Courtney is such a generous girl that she offers to turn the tables and visit Santa instead this year. She wants him to experience the full effect of Christmas and lets him know that she wants to slide down his chimney. What a sweet girl!

In all honesty, I have no idea why they happened to be whoring themselves out to paparazzi, and whoever else was unlucky enough to be nearby on this particular day. Maybe it was for their first Christmas card as a married couple, but I digress.

I fully understand that her parents gave permission for Courtney to marry her “soul mate” at 16, but this is disgusting and it still involves a minor. Even if they were filmed by bystanders as the couple participated in a personal photo shoot, shouldn’t the pictures still be considered to be sexual objectification of a 17 year old girl. Her parents may have signed off on her getting married, but I don’t think they signed her up for underage porn.

I’m not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t get why the objectification of children is meeting such little resistance in society these days. It seems that children today are racing to get to what they perceive as adulthood (which seems to manifest itself in the form of skimpy clothes and babies at 16) and too few people are stepping up to remind them that they aren’t going to have any idea what to do with adulthood until they’re much older. My God, I’m 33 and I still don’t have the hang of it all the time.

I wish everybody would just stop pushing kids to grow up so quickly. I, for one, think my childhood wasn’t long enough to begin with.

If We Only Knew Then

I found this older post written by someone  whose writing I love. It made sense then and makes even more sense this week as I close a chapter of my life.

I wish that when I was younger I could have met my current self. We would have sat down at a coffee shop so that I could explain life to young me in terms that only we would understand. It would have saved me a lot of hardship.

You can listen to all the sage wisdom you want, but things only make sense when you can explain them to yourself in your own words. For instance, I’ve been told for three years that Breaking Bad is the best show on television, but only after I watched it was I able to tell myself exactly why everyone was right. Other truths I know now that I can explain them: that I’m not missing any crucial information and that poker really isn’t all that fun; that heartbreaks do fade but they take about a year longer than you expect and by the time they do you really don’t care about it enough to notice; and above all else, life is simpler than you think.

I used to think that life was an intricate series of levers and pulleys, buttons and switches, Mexican standoffs and hostage negotiations. As I get older I realize that life is more Netherlands minimalist than Jackson Pollock. The problems don’t get fewer, and in fact they grow in number, but the way I index them in the database is different. More problems get filed under fewer category headers.

Things are getting simpler, and it’s making life better. Here’s the cheat sheet:

People want to be liked. We all crave attention and affection and we all reject shame. When we get embarrassed we send a thug version of ourselves to the forefront to do our fighting for us. We’re at the top of the food chain just under fear. We don’t want to be in a relationship to hear the words “I love you,” we want to be in a relationship to say the words “I love you.” We want to feel needed, and exceptional and we hate feeling insignificant. We want to ace a hearing test. We are binary creatures; if we’re the plaintiff, we want to win every dollar. If we’re the defendant, we want guard every penny. We want to make more money than last year. We don’t want to get cancer or die in our cars and we want the same for our loved ones. We go out on weekends to try and have sex while trying not to get punched in the face. We drink so we can be ourselves and not mind it so much. We’re desperate to be understood. We want to know someone else has felt it, too. We hate being judged unfairly. We want to make the person we heard wasn’t all that into us change their minds and admit they had us wrong. We want sunny skies with a chance of killer tornadoes, just to keep music sounding good. We take hours upon hours to admit to self consciousness. We don’t know exactly how to pleasure each other. We just want love. In any and every form.

(via jhnmyr)

Knock him for whatever you want, but the man understands my human experience.

I Have No Fucking Idea What I’m Doing

“I Have No Fucking Idea What I’m Doing’ is easily my favorite blog post ever written. Jenny Lawson is amazing and you should be reading everything of hers if you aren’t already.

My favorite quote from the blog (which could have been stolen from my journal):

“It’s been eating at me for the last week, but I think I’ve finally figured it out.   My five-year-plan is to never be the kind of person who’s stable enough to have a five-year-plan.  It’s technically the same plan I had five years ago, and guess what?  I’m totally on track.”

Read the post: I Have No Fucking Idea What I’m Doing

Read the blog: The Bloggess

There’s No Crying At Britney

Last night I made the nearly fatal mistake of going to see Britney Spears. I thought it would be fun to transport myself back to the late-90s and hear some fun Brit-Brit. You know, back before she went all crazy and shaved her head.

I was wrong. It wasn’t fun, however, that’s another blog.

What I am still confounded about this morning is the crying girl in the bathroom after the show. There weren’t any straight men there so it couldn’t have been guy drama. It certainly wasn’t because she was overcome with emotion after hearing Britney’s closing song, Till The World Ends (By the way, I just had to utilize Google to see what the name of the song was as it sounded like 75% of the others I heard.). Perhaps she was just very sad because she, much like me after my first Fleetwood Mac concert, had waited so long for this day and it was over, but I don’t think that was it either. My guess is that Nikki Minaj’s opening set gave her a headache, which had blossomed into a full-blown migraine by the end of the night and she was in pain. I hope she feels better today.

I am continuing to cry silently, weeping for the loss of three hours of my life and $16 which would have been better spent on Harry Potter.

It’s Not Always Noodle Salad

One of my favorite quotes from a movie comes from As Good As It Gets. I’ve always loved Jack Nicholson’s character, Melvin Udall, and his ability to break things down to an uncomfortably basic level. At one point in the movie Melvin, Simon and Carol are on a road trip to Baltimore as Simon is explaining his estrangement from his parents to his travel companions. Carol states that everybody has horrible stories to get over.

Since first seeing this movie on Valentine’s Day in 1998, I have heard Melvin’s reply when I hear people focusing on all the negative that has happened in their life.

It’s not true. Some people have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But, a lot of people, that’s their story. Good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you’re that pissed that so many others had it so good.

My life has certainly not always been good times and noodle salad, but the past couple of years I’ve been making a concentrated effort to have more noodle salad to make up for the times like I’m having now (not horrific, but not great). I try not to dwell on the negative and I don’t broadcast every bad thing that happens in my life. Everybody is going to go through hardships, some more so than others, but you can’t live in it and it’s definitely not doing anybody any good to focus on everybody who seems to have it better.

There will be adversity. You will be faced with uncertainty, hard decisions and heartbreak. You will be held accountable for your mistakes, people will hurt you and, believe it or not, whether you mean to or not, you will probably hurt other people. In the midst of all of this, try to remind yourself that there are good times and noodle salad to be had, even if you have to make them yourself.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

If you’re a girl who grew up in the 80s and haven’t seen this movie, you’ve been slighted in one of the worse possible ways. Girls Just Want To Have Fun (starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt and Shannen Doherty, among others) captivated me at the age of 9. The first time I saw it I was hooked. It was like the cleaned up, non-abortion Dirty Dancing for pre-teens. To this day, I watch it every time it comes on TV and I’m pretty sure the DVD is lurking somewhere in my house.

I remember watching it one night and being filled with a sense of melancholy. I walked out in the our back yard in Austin, Texas, sitting down on the folding lawn chair and crying. A few minutes later my mom was out there trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I told her I was sad because nothing that cool was ever going to happen to me in my entire life.

Twenty-two years later, I think I am destined for something even better. I’m just still waiting to see what that’s going to be.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun – Trailer

Baby Birthdays and Other Reasons You’re Oversharing

Each morning I get up, let my dog out and wander aimlessly into my kitchen to prepare whatever low-carb, lo-cal “breakfast” I believe I can force feed myself without incident. This morning as I was spooning cottage cheese out of the container I noticed a pastel green party invitation laying casually on the granite counter top. It was one of the customized, glossy photo invitations that everybody is using now for everything from bah mitzvahs to Christmas cards. The light green back ground was covered with floating daisies and, in the center there was a cockeyed picture of some stranger’s fat, redheaded, smiling baby.

The invitation encouraged the recipient to come and celebrate the life and happiness of Baby. All I wanted to celebrate when I looked at this picture was Baby getting into some clean clothes that hadn’t been covered in green puke (which I was later informed was Baby’s first taste of guacamole. Who puts that in a public photograph?).

I placed my breakfast back in the refrigerator, content that I was about 100 calories closer to a girlish figure than Baby due to my now non-existent appetite.

What happened to cute first year pictures? Was a matching outfit, or an appropriate photo really too much to ask? I would have settled for a photo sans a regurgitated lunch.

With the rise of digital photography, Facebook and photo sites like Flickr, we’re much more apt to take and share pictures of the mundane and sometimes even digestively offensive, but does that mean that it’s okay to send invitations to your loved ones for a birthday party, where, if the invite is any indication, I’m more likely to walk away having been puked on than I would at a Vanderbilt frat party?

This is just one more instance of over-sharing in today’s world. Just because you can put it out there doesn’t necessarily mean you should.

Be Kind, Rewind: Thanks for 2009

I don’t blog as much as some of you, or myself, would like, but given the retrospective nature this week I wanted to say something about the year before it passes me by completely. This isn’t one of my sarcastic, haha moments. It’s more like a giant, mushy, personally written Hallmark Card.

First let me say that I don’t really like the idea of a New Year’s “resolution”. If you want to go on a diet, go on a diet. If you want to quit cursing, quit cursing. The magical effect that the stroke of midnight has doesn’t effect your willpower. However, as fantastic as 2009 was, there are things I can do to make 2010 (and my life in general) even better for myself. For that reason I like the idea of setting goals for myself in the upcoming year. Nothing has to be obtained overnight and if I slip up a few times, I haven’t failed a resolution. We’re all works in progress.

• Worry less about my text messages, emails, Facebook and cell phone in general when I am in the company of living, breathing people. Nothing tells somebody they’re lower on the totem pole faster than being ignored for an electronic device. Plus (even though I’m guilty of it), I just think it’s rude.
• This includes “me” time that I’ve set aside to do things that I enjoy. I don’t have to spend every second of my day beholden to the mobile phone gods.
• Endeavor to manage my time more wisely. It’s not as much fun to have fun when you’re constantly worried about everything you aren’t getting done.
• Take up for myself more often.
• Be a little more careful with my heart and a little more giving with my affection.
• Take more silly pictures and take myself less seriously. It’s ok to be silly and get really excited about completely stupid things in front of friends. They should love me for my neurosis, not in spite of them.
• Spend more time with friends playing games, laughing and talking and less time struggling to hear them in noisy bars.
• Relax.
• Hang out with my family more.

“Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that” – Michael Leunig

This year has been nothing, if not full of the unexpected. So many seemingly innocuous moments led to such bigger events that I can’t even begin to recount them all in my head. I guess I could call it the year of the Butterfly Effect. I already know the year has brought more happy than hurt, more laughter than tears and I hope in time I will see that it brought more beginnings than endings.

I’ve been able to make a lot of really fantastic memories this year and even though the endings to some of the stories aren’t what I had hoped, the stories themselves brought me some of my happiest moments from the year and without some of the sad, I wouldn’t have had some of the really, really, ridiculously happy. In time I’ll see where even the darkest moments were leading. I’ve been blessed to spend time and reconnect with old friends whom I love more than they will ever realize. Most of these people don’t realize the impact they made on me more than a decade ago, but I hope in another ten years I’ll be able to explain it to them more articulately. I’ve made new friends out of old friends and in some cases, even made their friends my own. Whether you know it or not, every once of you has had a part in making this an amazingly great year for me. To quote Mr. Sinatra, “It’s been a very good year for city girls who lived up the stair with the perfumed hair.” Here’s to hoping it doesn’t all come undone when I’m thirty-one.

I love you all.
Happy New Year!

The Grace of a Woman

Ten years ago I realized I was in love with my best friend. The guy I hung out with, talked to every night on the phone and who also had a girlfriend who was moving to Nashville from Atlanta to be with him. I had avoided the thought of getting involved with him because I was young and couldn’t imagine being in a serious relationship with anybody. I loved the relationship I had with him and didn’t want it to change, but with the impending arrival of his girlfriend I was forced to contemplate a world where that relationship was going to change drastically and not in a good way. What followed was three months of heartbreak and turmoil, the likes of which I hadn’t yet witnessed in my young life. I cried, obsessed and generally subjected myself to daily torture. It was incredibly masochistic of me. Eventually he broke things off with her and all was right with the world. Five years later when that relationship ended I remember thinking that I didn’t know if I was going to live through it. I didn’t know if I wanted to. Who wants to imagine a world without the person you love the most?

Fast forward ten years and in the last few weeks I’ve come to realize I have feelings for one of my close friends, but this time I see the signs. We have such a great relationship as it is, that I’ve always pushed thoughts of anything further happening out of my mind. I don’t need a serious relationship right now. The only problem is that I think he’s about as close to the idea of my perfect guy as actually exists.

A few weeks ago we were hanging out and suddenly the vibe felt a little different. In the few weeks that have passed we’ve had to have conversations about us and what we both want. First, and foremost, we want to preserve what we have. Second, I think we both have a lot to think about. I’m unsure about being in a serious relationship, but know that I can’t handle being involved with him in the least and him continuing to date other people. He’s made the comment that he’s fairly sure I’m the one and he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around it. We’re going to sit on it for a while and continue on like normal for the time being and I’m going to push those thoughts back to the recesses of my mind.

Ten years ago this would have been turmoil. It would have meant me crying, wanting to talk about it with him constantly and subjecting myself to torture. A little life experience and having a feeling that he might actually be “the one” (even though I haven’t admitted that to anybody) is letting me sit back and enjoy this for what it is, two adults who want to be deliberate with their actions, who don’t want to hurt or lose the other one and want to make sure they’re ready for what we both foresee as a commitment.

I’m not posting cryptic messages as my Facebook status or cyber-stalking anybody this time. I’m not pushing him or me. I’m sitting back and enjoying the occasional nights I get to spend sleeping with my head on his shoulder.

Random Thoughts for Today

Every once in a while my mind kicks into overdrive and there aren’t enough Facebook statuses to compensate for all of the things I’m thinking. Today is one of those days.

First of all, ice cream is the devil. I’m a recovering foodie. Even the cheap leftover plastic-tub-birthday-party stuff that lingers in my freezer is tantamount to wafting a cold Colt 45 under the nose of a recovering alcoholic. I feel like I’m on a bender and once it’s gone, I won’t have to look at it anymore. I can quit whenever I want. I repeat this mantra to myself every morning. It’s 11:30 and I’m having my first bowl.

Trying to make friends as an adult is harder than when I was a kid. I was quicker to forgive thoughtlessness a child. Now I assume that if somebody has had 32 years to learn how to behave and they still hurt you, they’re either selfish or just not that concerned with your feelings.

My mother’s cycle was completely consistent for at least 15 years. All three of her kids birthdays happen on the 22nd or 25th of their respective months.

I’m not sure I ever want to have kids. I’m of the age that I should do it soon if I’m going to do it at all. However, the thought of never sitting outdoors, under the warm summer air listening to John Mayer riff on his guitar makes me sad in a way that I simply can not articulate.

I watched five seasons of Lost in two weeks. Now I have to wait until January for the last season. I miss my friends.

At the urging of my friends I’ve broken down and created profiles on a two internet dating sites. One of the first things I find out is where they see themselves living in 10-15 years. If they say the country or a small town, I’m out. Judgmental yes, but I’m getting too old to waste time with somebody who I know isn’t compatible. I just see my life being bigger.

I’ve always thought of myself more as a Sidalee from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, but every once in a while I get a glimpse of Vivian.

I’m bored with two solid days of studying and homework. I don’t actually want to leave my house, but even my pretend British husband is too busy to pay attention to me today. Perhaps the gluttonous way I’m consuming cheap ice cream is off putting to somebody who aspires to see me naked one day.

I need a nap before I take my brother to the movie. My body isn’t accustomed to sugar anymore and the evil ice cream is towing me under.