Because it’s the dead middle of the week and my daughter is finally napping, I thought I’d take a moment to share some of my recent musings. Enjoy.
~ My favorite moments in “Fresh Prince” reruns are when they step outside the box and go all postmodern on us. For example, before a trip back to Philly, Will was talking about a certain former nemesis with whom he was fearing an encounter. When Jazz asked him who this specific guy was, Will responded, “He’s the dude twirling me over my head in the opening credits.” In one season premiere, Will comes out and asks, “Hey, who’s playing our mom this year?” (after the role had been handed off a couple times in the series.) Later in the episode, Will turns to Nicky, the “new baby” from the previous season (who is now speaking in full sentences, walking, and appears to be no younger than 3 years old.) and exclaims, “Whoa! Weren’t you born, like, a month ago?”
Love. It.
~ I used to think that “Eleanor Rigby” was a song about socially-inept loners who can’t connect with anyone else. And only recently did I realize that it’s about the sad, scared loner in all of us.
Yeah, I’m a little slow.
~My sister made me an incredible mix CD last summer that included N.E.R.D.’s “All the Girls Standing In the Line to the Bathroom”, which is a fabulous blend of ass-shaking beats and smooth Pharrellian lyrics. Anyway, after listening to it for months and singing along with it to my infant child, I stopped to reevaluate the lyrics.
A hundred-dollar bills? Look at’chu! Ah-choo!
I read on, appreciative of the mastery of such effectively moving language and the genius in which their deeply brooding undertones were incorporated into such a catchy, crowd-pleasing sound.
But… um… See, with the excited beat and all I’d just kind of assumed that it was a commentary about the silly absurdities of the clubbing lifestyle. Turns out I’d been singing a song to my infant daughter about those superskinny girls with cocaine problems who waste their lives in posh nightclubs and parties and then are sad and empty during the day so they go back every night and do it all again.
Oops.
~ Nothing really shocks me anymore and there are very few things that actually scandalize me, but, for some reason, when I saw an ad for the new Schick Quattro for Women Trim Style razor/trimmer combo, I had one of those lifted-eyebrow-tilted-head-”Barroo?!” moments.
The new razor is identical to the men’s version in that it has a basic straight razor on one end and a trimmer on the other (with adjustable combs! Assuming a man wants to put a fade into his goatee) Now, the general public can surely understand the immediate need for a hair trimmer on a men’s razor as men have to deal with, you know, facial hair and perhaps want a tool that will shave their stubble in addition to shaping their facial hair features as per their personal preferences.
However, being that we live in a society that is completely schizophrenic when it comes to sexuality, I was wondering how the company was going to address the need for a trimmer on a razor made for women. I mean, they couldn’t very well come out and say, “This part’s for your pubes, y’all.” but they had to somehow get the point across to sell a broad audience on the razor’s necessary functionality.
And ZOMG, you guys; I was NOT disappointed.
As I’m watching, the camera wanders through scenes featuring tall, lithe, beautiful women with smooth hairless legs that would be too long for a giraffe. But, in every scenario, the camera pans past the women and focuses on a… ahem.. a bush. Yes. A bush that is.. oh, how do we say.. unkempt. And, with the buzzing sound of the trimmer, the extraneous leaves and branches magically fall away from the shrub to reveal a professionally pruned masterpiece. This alone was giggleworthy knowing the types of conservatives that dominate this part of the country who may be watching. However, what’s even more hilarious is that the bushes are pruned into very distinct vaginal shapes [although they look completely ridiculous on shrubbery] like a landing strip, or an inverted triangle. So any frigid woman who may have attempted denial as to the commercial’s allusions had her intentions completely thwarted in the strangely explicit analogy of the product’s purpose.
Well played, Schick marketing department.
~WARNING: Unbelievably Judgmental Moment Ahead
(No, seriously, this is bad. Like, I’m probably going to Hell for this one. But I do have a point! And some musings that really aren’t rooted in evil and hatred! Just bear with me!)
Ever have a friend/colleague/lover/acquaintance who you liked for the most part but sensed that there was just something sucky and/or “off” about them? And you may have known this person your whole life, but one day you just suddenly realize that this person is certifiably white trash? Now, maybe you’d never noticed because said person didn’t immediately show symptoms that fit precisely within your personal stereotypes of this demographic (perhaps regarding location, social status, monetary history, sartorial/cosmetic implementation, education level, basic hygiene, political leaning, dietary habits, or whatever you personally typically consider a trait of white trashery… trashitude?… trashiness?) or maybe you’d just subconsciously ignored it out of personal motivations or maybe you just weren’t that invested or maybe it involved some other scenario to influence your personal perspective, but suddenly the basic characteristics are so obvious you kind of can’t understand how you couldn’t have seen it before now?
Man, talk about a total shift in dynamics and subconscious social agreements… not to mention daily perspective. Kinda makes you rethink all your relationships and if identifying objective societal labels within all your interactions might save you a lot of time and consternation, regardless of how terribly un-PC that might seem. Not that you should just stop loving your mom if you suddenly realize that the world views her as a drunken redneck and you kind of agree and also happen to despise drunken rednecks (that’s where learning to accept those we love for exactly who they are -warts and all - is put into play.) But maybe stepping back to objectively see the basic, surface-level, shallow label that someone we don’t necessarily love or cherish embodies would give us a better option as to whether or not we should spend our best energies on them. And, since that seems extremely intolerant (and I’m really just flinging out random ideas, here, people. I’m not committing to any of this so don’t take it as my absolute opinions or stances on human interaction.) and presupposing of diversities in people before you even get to know them on a deeper level, then maybe resorting to the labels and subsequent stereotypes associated with this person’s character would help us gain a better understanding on their juxtaposed perception.
For example, if, every day when you go to work you get into a heated argument with one of your colleagues because you bring a ham sandwich and she/he believes that meat is murder and screams at you about it and tapes pictures of slaughterhouses to your lunchbox and threatens to set your sandwiches on fire one day [when she can finally get office policy about that changed] and you find yourself dreading work [even more] and you feel like it’s your personal right to eat whatever the hell you want for lunch so you scream right back at her and then, over time, you begin feeling exhausted from such pointless daily emotional upheaval because of the actions and emotions of this one person who really does not matter in the general scheme of your life. Maybe maybe, if you’d just stopped after the first time she went ballistic on you to assume, “This woman is just another tree-hugging, vegan nutjob from some mountain town who feels validated and important when she continually pickets for her thousands of lifestyle beliefs in between bong hits. Apparently, she’s a little socially inept and stubborn and perhaps a little dumb. Those things aren’t going to make her a lot of friends… Poor girl. ” then maybe you wouldn’t have wasted so many of your lunch breaks yelling at her or car rides fuming because you think her actions are really attacks on your character (which is probably what she’s been working to make you think, really.) Maybe that’s your first step in learning to disengage from the dramas other people may try to bring to you and finding a steady sense of inner-peace. (At least toward the small things. The big things are another discussion altogether.)
The one problem with my potentially using this method one day is the fact that I don’t actually slap labels on my friends until long after they’re my friends, and usually only when I’m trying to describe them to someone else. (i.e. “My friend Blank is so rad! She’s this awesome clothing designer, nympho riot grrl and sometimes she’s a little flaky ’cause she’s a bit of a stoner and she listens to really terrible music, but I do love her.”) So, it’d be tough for me to start slapping labels on everyone that I meet in the off-chance that they might suck and I’d need to get away from them.
Look, my beliefs in functioning from Love ultimately brings me back to learning to accept the flaws in other people without allowing ourselves to become personally affected by their actions. This, I feel, is the basis of happiness within ourselves and toward others. So, what I’m really saying here (finally, right?) is that perhaps flinging a basic, stereotypical label on people we find difficult from the very beginning of our interactions is a beginner’s step in learning how to recognize human differences, consider alternate perspectives or motivations, and mentally give other people permission to be exactly who they are (no matter how crappy a person may be) without allowing ourselves to waste too much energy arguing with them or taking their actions personally. Maybe that’s just how some of us have to bridge the gap between total judgment and human acceptance.
Just a thought.
(I understand if you never respect me ever again for saying that in print, btw. I don’t harbor that many judgments or stereotypes, actually, and even when I do, I honestly have very very few prejudices toward entire groups of people. In fact, I can’t think of any sect of people I just flat-out loathe and/or whose members I wouldn’t give an honest chance in independent levels. I’m good about giving people a chance to prove themselves as likable before I fling them into one of the categories that I don’t like/can’t relate to.
But the aforementioned stereotype-in-stealth is the only one I’ve always wanted to comment on. So no, I’m not apologizing for it. )
(Here, look, I’ll show a little compassion in the next bulleted thought.)
~ Whenever they discuss obesity on CNN, they always show stock footage of fatties walking around and I always feel so bad for those people. Because their faces aren’t exposed on camera, the network isn’t required to have these chubby pedestrians sign any form of model release. Can you imagine sitting at home (or at a friend’s home or at a bar or at the doctor’s office waiting room), watching Headline News and suddenly seeing a zoomed-in image of your ass/hips/stomach/thighs [perhaps in Hi-Def] while some nutrition expert prattles on about how we’re dying as a country because we can’t put down our McFlurrys (sp)?
Yes, okay, it’s a very important conversation to be having right now because we are a country with terrible eating habits and sedentary lifestyles that are driving us into early graves and mounds of debt in hospital bills and unnecessary health problems. But don’t we think making a public example of innocent people just out for a walk is a little “Mean Girls“-esque? Isn’t trying to get the general public to recoil and consider these specific people disgustingly unhealthy kind of perpetuating the body-image issues that usually cause obesity or starvation in the first place? Maybe instead we could show images of healthy people at the gym or those awesome old people who, due to a long-term healthy lifestyle, are still able to waterski and run marathons and all that?
Makes me thankful I’m not a morbidly obese resident of Atlanta.
~ On VH1 Classic’s series Heavy: A History of Heavy Metal, they considered KISS to be in that category. And they are NOT. (Dee Snyder and Alice Cooper agree with me.)
Any rock band who sells dolls of themselves (with 8 year olds in the commercials) among the hoards of other crap they manufactured with their faces on it and makes a rock/disco fusion album IS NOT METAL.
And anybody who says otherwise is crapping on all those guys who paved the way in metal and, really, the entire metal genre and it’s rich, colorful history. BOOOO VH1 and your ridiculous commentary!
:: Exhales ::
Thanks for letting me get that out. I feel much better now.
Who's said what now?