As usual this week has been chock full of news and things I could choose to get outraged about. I’m trying a new thing where I try to limit and focus my outrage like a laser beam rather than just letting it splatter all over the place ineffectually… So for me there are two big stories this week, that ended up being a little too similar for my liking. The two stories? Marines United and International Women’s Day.

HOW can they be the same at all, you might wonder, a story about men in uniform sexually harassing and humiliating their female counterparts online and the day of a general strike for women’s labor? Pretty much seem like polar opposites, don’t they, that is until we all get to comment on them, until we get to participate with the news, until we become part of the story. Continue reading → Marines United With Us

I realize that title sounds like we’re leading into a “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me…” moment, but there is no worm eating going on over here. Bear with me because I think where we’re going is important.

Last week I had the serious good fortune to be in Italy. Now, there’s a lot to say about Italy, but what I want to say today was also prompted by a friend of mine who just decided, in spite of her vociferous inner demons, to buy and wear a bikini to her local pool. She was pretty freaked out and decided that her fear was her best indicator that this was exactly what she ought to do. She did it, took a picture, and posted it on Facebook.

I’m guessing that the bikini to one piece ratio at her local pool in the U.S. (East Coast if that makes a difference, which now that I’m thinking about it, it might) is VERY different from said ratio in Italy. In Italy, I was one of maybe 4 women on the beach in a one piece, and two of the other 3 were great grandmothers. The other, perhaps another American. I lay there in my one piece which seemed kind of sassy when I tried it on, and felt like a total prude. I saw every shape go by and all of them were playing, at the beach, in their bikinis. Bikinis of all description, covering varying (within a relatively small range) amounts of flesh. The rest of the flesh? Out there, sunning, swimming, building sand castles, applying sunscreen, napping. Perfectly normal. Continue reading → Nobody Cares