Everything's Trash, But It's Okay
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(C) WRAPPING-PAPER FEMINISTS
They kind of remind me of my niece, who for a long time gave zero fucks about the presents people gave her and only cared about the paper it was wrapped in. I’d be like, “Olivia, you like this book I got you about black astronauts?” No reponse because she’d be off staring at the wrapper paper the way people tripping on mushrooms look at the evening sky. Same with some feminists who only listen to a feminist message if it’s being delivered in a certain package. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen sex workers online talk about the failings of feminism only to be dismissed because of their profession. The notion that if you don’t look (read: appropriate kind of white woman) or act a certain way then you aren’t “one of us.” And this is not saying that the white women who are making valid points shouldn’t be making them. Of course they should. But, for example, while it was nice for actress Brie Larson to use her time while accepting the Crystal Award for Excellence in Film at this year’s Crystal + Lucy Awards to address the lack of diversity in the field of film criticism, it was strange to see how viral this moment went. I mean, queer people and WOCs have stated for years that they don’t have the same access as their white counterparts to screenings and aren’t hired by bigger media outlets, which are intent on keeping that profession mostly white, male, and straight. Yet no one gave a damn until a famous, wealthy white woman said something. Nope.
(D) APOLOGY-TOUR FEMINISTS
These are probably the most popular of the four. They move through the world in a reckless, Steve Urkel sort of way, routinely causing trouble, busting out a “Did I do that?,” offering up a nice enough sounding apology, and then carrying on with the same action that got them in trouble in the first place.
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Clearly there’s a lot of masquerading going on, which can lead to infighting that’s counterproductive to progress as well as hurt feelings and women wanting to give up and stop rooting for feminism. Well, I implore those who want to give up to not do that. Don’t let the disappointment be the only imprint feminism leaves on you. There are too many people who came before us, who fought tirelessly for us, so disappointment wouldn’t be a stain on our lives like perhaps it was on theirs. But this isn’t my biggest plea. I’m saving that for feminism.
Feminism, you honestly just have to do better. I know you’ve heard this a million times and a million ways, but you have to figure it the fuck out and do better. Yes, you. The onus is not on those you’ve consistently excluded to fix this. And trust me, it needs fixing, and I’m not talking about relying on repeating the same “remedies” of the past. Meaning, I don’t need the sorries. I’m not interested in the #NotAllWomen defense. I have no desire to engage with your expression of guilt as a sign that the state of things bothers you. Show us it bothers you by behaving differently. Act as if you understand that inclusiveness is what feminism should have been about since day one. And not because you’re hoping you’re going to get a pat on the back for doing what you should’ve done in the first place. Okay?
Normally, I would attempt to lighten the moment right now, but sorry, not sorry, I can’t. Feminism, I’m deliberately hard on you the way Tyra Banks was hard on Tiffany. The way my parents were on me when I was growing up, which used to piss me off, but as I got older, I understood it. They loved me the most, which is why they demanded the excellence they knew was within me. So, feminism, I say this to you: You’re one of the things I love the most in the world, which is why I expect the most, because I know you have the potential to be everything you should be. Give me something to root for. Give me and all women of color, queer women, trans women, lower-class women, something to root for. Most importantly, give us love, because while you’ve been hard on us, the love has been in very short supply. Give us the love we deserve and we’ll root for you forever.
LOL. Wut?: An Incomplete List of All the Ways Being a Woman Is Ridic
Sooooooooo, if you haven’t picked up on it by now, the lady experience can be complicated and frustrating. Obviously, it has its pluses (such as being capable of having multiple orgasms; on average, we live longer than men; and according to Time, women are more likely to obtain a college degree), but it definitely has its cons, and the negatives can feel oppressive at times. Remember when Leonardo DiCaprio was trying his damnedest not to be human tartare for that giant-ass bear in The Revenant? That’s pretty much how many of us, especially those in the middle-class bracket and above, are about the biggest and, more often, the tiniest problems or inconveniences we face. So, to deal, we frequently dip into our complaint attaché cases* to use tools that help us defend ourselves when it may seem, in the moment, that our lives, core values, sense of selves, or even just our valuable time are on the line.
And yes, everyone has their very own monogrammed complaint attaché case. I don’t care how nice you are. You complain. Regularly. Firing off a snarky tweet that garners tons of faves and retweets, spending money on retail therapy or actual therapy, or simply expressing frustration in hopes of either finding a resolution or blowing off steam? I’ve been there, done all of that, and most likely so have you. In fact, so have many Americans, as we are quick to bust out the case at the first sign of discomfort.
Don’t get me wrong; sometimes the complaints are necessary. Like in 2015, when now-disgraced founder and former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkreli raised the price of the drug Daraprim, an antiparasitic commonly used to treat HIV patients, from $13.50 to $750.00 a tablet. Naturally, this sent shock waves across the country, people were rightfully outraged, a litany of think pieces were written, and months later, Turing lowered the cost to $375 for some hospitals, hailing this 50 percent price decrease a “victory.” Yeah, no. This is a victory in the way when I’m at Dunkin’ Donuts and I ask for some ketchup packets for my hash browns and they give me just one packet that’s as wrinkly as Brad Pitt’s baby character in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Undoubtedly, what Shkreli and his company did was full trash, so people voiced their disdain because being silently complicit would’ve been inappropriate. But! For every one of these glaringly outrageous situations, there are thousands where going for the complaint case is just ignorant.
Take, for example, that 2013 viral video of a lady going off on a Los Angeles Apple store employee because she thought she could roll in there sans an appointment and get replacement parts. Raise of hands if you’ve ever gone into an Apple store that wasn’t insanely crowded. For real, every time I go to Apple’s Genius Bar, I just see a line of Old Roses from Titanic who were formerly young hipsters, talking about how “it’s been eighty-four years” since they first walked into Apple, seeking help for their technology woes. Of course, waiting for something to be fixed when you weren’t planning on waiting can be annoying; however, losing your mind over something that insignificant is abuse of the complaint attaché case.
Now I, on the other hand, know how to hit that sweet spot of complaining only when necessary and only for legitimate grievances. J/K. I vent way too much over the littlest things. Maybe it’s the Seinfeldian influence of grumbling and pointing out the “what’s the deal with . . .” in life, which elicits laughter from friends, family, and audiences. But more than that, the truth is, I, like many people, love complaining. And the more innocuous the offense, the better.
For example: Commercials automatically playing when you open a page in your web browser? Most people probably take half a beat to register that’s a little irritating. Not me. I turn this nonissue into a bit if someone is in the room with me or not. I mean, think about it. A commercial casually starting up like that is the most presumptive shit I’ve witnessed since the creation of the Baywatch spin-off Baywatch Nights, where the characters were . . . fully clothed the whole time, thereby completely getting rid of the reason folks watched Baywatch in the first place. I mean, Lol.nasa.gov/IsPlutoAPlanetOrNah. Never in my life have I been like, “Ya know, what would really set this Lululemon online shopping
experience on fire? A pop-up video automatically playing Denis Leary’s gravelly voice—which sounds like he gargled seventy-two pebbles from the Fraggle Rock set, by the way—as he yammers on about the torque on the new Ford F-150.”
And if you think that commercial nonsense is bad, then don’t even get me started on baths. Okay, actually, get me started on baths. L. O. L. at myself for caring, but seriously, what is the deal with baths, y’all?! I don’t care about bubbles or how many bottles of champs are on the bath sill or whatever Janet Jackson baby-whisper songs you have playing in the background; the fact remains that a bath is just marinating in your own filth like you’re a piece of oxtail in a stew. Let that sink in for a moment. There are people chilling in their own body broth, then going out into these streets, ordering a salad at Pret, and sitting next to me, pretending they’re fresh as a bouquet of gerbera daisies. These people live in a web of lies, and I want no part of that mess.
If you haven’t picked up on it by now, your girl has lots of opinions about the minutiae, which, full disclosure, besides making people laugh, also helps pass the time, and considering the self-starting dumpster fire that is the world right now, focusing on the minutiae can be especially soothing and a welcome distraction. But I also get worked up about weightier issues, and when something messed up or awful happens, making jokes helps me cope. And it should be no surprise that much of the time, the weightier issues that are a thorn in my side revolve around the onslaught of ignorance and discrimination that women face. Yes, yes, life is hard for everyone, but I can only write with authority from the female experience, and I think we can all agree that there is a lot thrown at us.
We fight to be taken seriously and viewed as fully realized people as opposed to objects for consumption. Then there’s the societal pressure we feel regarding beauty and/or relationship status. Striving for equality in a world that was, by design, built on the foundation of inequality. And so on and on. However, it’s not just these life-defining and lifelong battles. It’s also the little things, like when I used to work in an office building.
Most of the dudes were strolling around in dress shirts and slacks; meanwhile, all the women would make it known that the interior Jack Frost (aka air conditioning) was nipping at our noses, toes, and elbows. As per usual, we’d get teased about constantly being cold, but trust me, women don’t wake up thinking, You know what would be tight? Spending eight hours huddled in my office/cubicle, sipping coffee and shivering while rocking a coon-fur coat like Kurt Russell in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. We don’t want to live this life, dudes, so chill—heh—with all the jokes about women being cold at work because it’s all your fault, buddy boy! Yeah, you, dude! The Journal of Applied Physiology conducted a study, and it turns out that men’s metabolic rate is, on average, 23 percent higher than women’s; furthermore, Nature magazine did some research and reported that most workplace thermostats are set based on a model developed in the 1960s (which conveniently hasn’t been updated to acknowledge that women are in the workplace), which, as you probably have guessed by now, only recognizes the metabolic rates of men.
This range of BS has had me reaching into my complaint attaché case with more frequency as I age. And while I don’t have the power to resolve these problems, I do have the power to vent about them and make us all laugh to stop ourselves from crying while we deal with big problems, small inconveniences, and everything in between. So, without further ado, here is a by no means all-encompassing list, in varying order of importance, of some funny and not-so-funny things that are absolutely boo-boo about being a lady.*
Elastic hair ties that practically leave signs of the stigmata when we wear them on our wrists for even the shortest amount of time. Look, if I’m wearing one all day, fine, the little hair tie can brand me like I’m some cattle a rancher added to his farm before the hard winter that’s a-comin’. But that’s not the case, is it? The least these hair tie companies can do is make it so that when I take a tie off my wrist, it doesn’t leave an indent in my skin the way my sweatpants do on my stomach when I have two Christmas dinners and desserts in one day while home for Christmas vacation.
People will say, “What’s the big deal? Just leave it down or, if you must have a hair tie, toss one in your purse and pull it out when you need it.” Um, mind your fucking business, Carol. Even if your name isn’t Carol, that was some unhelpful Carol-ass shit to say. First of all, I don’t want my soup to taste like it has traces of Shea Moisture shampoo in it because when I bent over to eat some, I accidentally dipped my hair in it, nor do I enjoy my neck feeling like it has a layer of Crisco on it because I’m wearing my hair down when it’s hot outside, so no, I won’t just leave my hair down. Second, that whole “just toss some hair ties in your purse to find later” thing does not work. They either get lost and the next twenty minutes of my day turns into a damn Cold Case episode of me trying to find where they went before I give up, or they get coated in old ChapStick residue, crumbs, and melted gum that has oozed out of its wrapper. So, like the Tony Hale to Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Veep, I gotta have the ties on standby. On my wrist.
1A. I can fully admit this might not be commonplace, but I’m sure some of my sistern out there can relate to the following: head hair winding up in your butt crack. A few times a month, I’ll be taking a shower and discover a few hairs from my head sticking out from between my booty cheeks like baguettes popping out of a basket on a Parisian person’s bicycle. How. Does. This. Happen? I just don’t understand. I assumed the hair from my head and my butt had minimal contact, but little did I know that my body is hella like Downton Abbey, with my head being aristocratic while my butt is more servant status and the two are interacting all the time! I’m not sure how to fix this nuisance, I just thought that on behalf of ladies everywhere (and maybe some dudes), I’d start a dialogue in hopes that we can come together and think-tank this issue and figure something out.
There are few things more laughably ludicrous than women being asked if they’re okay when the only difference in their appearance is that they’re not wearing makeup that day. I generally only wear makeup for public appearances, while in my day-to-day life as well as on my social media posts I’m often sans makeup, so most people know what the real me looks like. Still, there are those moments where someone assumes I’m tired or am in the middle of a crisis because I’m not beautified. And that “someone” is usually a guy. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I’m constantly seeing grown-ass men dressed in the “You are not the father” starter pack wardrobe (ugly polos or baggy dress shirts, khaki pants, run-down shoes, etc.), so maybe dudes can pump the brakes on women having to look perfect? I mean, I get that faces are the first thing we tend to see about each other, but society has trained us to believe that women wearing layers of makeup is a beauty standard worth aspiring toward.
Sure, there are instances where some ladies paint themselves to the point of being unrecognizable without makeup. And in that case, it’s fair to, in your mind, turn into Hercule Poirot in hopes of figuring out what’s going on. There are also those on social media who photoshop or Facetune their pictures to look like impossibly perfect versions of themselves. But for the most part, women are not waking up looking like Huey Lewis, then shellacking on makeup and walking out the door looking like Leona Lewis. Rarely is a bait and switch going down. People are just rude and behave as though if a woman doesn’t fulfill her “duty” of looking flawless, then she must be in the middle of a breakup or is unemployed or depressed. Look, not walking around dolled up like a model 24–7 doesn’t mean I’m going through anything, a’ight? This is just what my skin looks like without the help of Fenty Beauty. Without foundation on, my skin can look like a couple of compare-and-contrast paint swatches at Home Depot; some of my pigmentation is dark in certain places, lighter in others. I have a few acne scars, and my eyebrows can look like a mechanical pencil eraser that’s one-third of the way gone. I’m more than perf
ectly okay. I’m just being me, and ain’t nothing wrong with that.
Let’s be frank: Summer is either a heaux stroll for a lot of single people looking to catch some strange or simply an opportunity to break free of the chains of itchy, chunky knits and show off some skin. You probably guessed by now, but my heaux strolls have never been successful. Usually, I just wear breathable yet comfy sacks that don’t show off my body at all or I’m rocking jorts aka jean shorts that turn my crotch into an Easy-Bake Oven. Thus, I’ve never picked anyone up and just settle for keeping track of my steps via my Apple Watch. Still, I have my moments where I get it right and look cute in a romper or skirt. Then I’ll take public transportation, sit down, and part of my bare cheeks make contact with the seat.
You ever have a dry heave push its way to the front of the line of your bodily reactions the way a hungry actor does at an audition for a Broadway musical? That’s what happens to me during my butt-to-seat sitch in New York City. Don’t get me wrong, I love NYC so much, but that love will not blind me to the fact that the subway trains and buses are hotbeds to a whole host of germs. So whenever my bare tush touches the seat, I wanna tell my butt, “Well, butt, we’ve had a good run. We went to some art gallery shows and understood none of what we saw, mastered dipping it low to a few Rihanna songs, and looked amazing in that one pair of pants that we wore all the time,” and then donate it to a plastic surgeon’s office for some patient to use for their booty implant. Then I remember soap exists, and I, like most people, use my cell phone while using the bathroom, so I mean, I’m always a skosh dirty anyway.