Oh I Don’t Know…

Call it out of character, but I’m having difficulty mustering feminist outrage against the supposedly “new” phenomenon of pre-teens buying into the “Slutoween” trend by donning tarty costumes made especially for them. 

Why? Well first of all, I have trouble with the idea that pre-teen girls trying to dress older than their years is anything new, or even necessarily something that adults should be overly alarmed about. Adolescent girls have always pilfered mom’s lipstick and changed in the bathroom at the school dance into that shorter skirt the ‘rents wouldn’t let them leave the house in. Yeah, part of that is pressure from society, but part of it is also natural curiosity. Trying to figure out what the hell to do with one’s newly morphed pubescent body is a big undertaking and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of experimentation (and plenty of fashion train-wrecks) to figure out your relationship with your budding body. Dressing older (and by association, sexier) is as much about independence to most teen girls as it is about fitting in and being pretty. Instead of trusting our girls to navigate the muddy waters of adolescence and make good choices why do we behave as if it only takes one pair of sparkley fishnets to turn a 13-year-old into a baby prostitute?

Case in point, when I was in seventh grade I saw the movie Clue and decided I wanted to be a French maid for Halloween. My mother tried to talk me out of it. She even tried appealing to my emergent feminism by explaining that French maids are sort of a degrading male fantasy. This tidbit was pretty much lost on me. At that point my budding sexuality did not include any awareness of dominance, submission or other kinks. All I knew was that French maids got to wear frilly costumes, carry feather dusters and speak in smarmy French accents. Who wouldn’t want to be a French maid for Halloween? All mom’s suggestions for other, more appropriate costumes for a thirteen year old (“What about being a bag of grapes!? We can blow up some purple balloons and stick them to a sweat suit!”) fell on deaf ears. I was dug in. I was being a French maid for Halloween. 

Instead of locking me up and throwing away the key, my mother reluctantly took me on a field trip to the local costume shop to pick out the most conservative French maid outfit we could find. She also insisted that I wear a turtleneck under it and drape a shawl over my shoulders, “Because it will be cold out.” I went out trick or treating in the outfit, practiced my smarmy French accent, accosted several people with my feather duster, collected a butt load of candy and came home… without herpes. I did not magically become popular with all the boys. I didn’t even end up dating for another three years. I didn’t ditch my well worn wardrobe of peasant skirts and wool clogs for leather pants and bustiers. The next Halloween I went as Red Death from Phantom of the Opera in pants, a tuxedo shirt, a floor length cape and a mask that covered most of my face. In short, I remained unharmed by my brush with the Slutoween phenomenon. 

Was I just lucky that I didn’t become a statistic? I think not. First of all, I had good parents who wanted to have constructive conversations with me about my choices instead of just slut-shaming me. Because she actually listened to me my mother learned that my interest in being a French maid had more to do with playing a kooky character than pandering to the male sex. In fact, pandering to the male sex wasn’t even on my radar at that age. Even if it had been, I’m sure mom and I would have had a conversation about that too.

Unlike the author of the Daily Mail Article, I don’t believe that, “Parents who allow their offspring to wear this junk should consider putting them up for adoption.” I am so glad that my parents valued me as a person who could make her own decisions instead of thinking of me as a Pretty Pretty Princess that they had to keep pure as long as possible no matter what the cost.

Pre-teens of both genders are thinking about sex all the time and it’s totally natural. What else are you going to do when your brain is totally bathed in hormones? We’d be foolish to think that denying them every pair of tacky earrings or pot of lip gloss is going to stop them from growing up too fast. Guarding your daughters from the trappings of adulthood is a false sense of security. Instead of trying to take away the makeup and the high heels, why aren’t we trying to teach young women that these things don’t have to define them? Because that would mean that parents would actually have to talk openly and honestly about growing up with their kids… and that’s just awkward. Better to call them  whores and ground them until they are 30! 

As a kid I was encouraged to think for myself and stand up for what I believed in and be my awkward, imperfect self in any way that I wanted to be. This didn’t win me many friends in Junior High but in the end I think it made me less susceptible to the junk culture that tells girls their only value is being attractive. I understand that parents have a very real responsibility to protect their kids form predators. I also understand just how damaging it is to sexualize children from a young age. I just don’t think that the solution to the problem is to shelter our children more. I think the solution is to help our children learn to make good choices on their own.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if my mom had refused to let me wear that French maid outfit on Halloween. I certainly would have had less fun dressed as a bag of grapes. Would I have merely snuck out in the slutty outfit anyway? Would fishnets and heels become even more attractive and glamorous once I knew that my mother hated them? Of course! Perhaps the fact that I had permission to experiment with the sexy outfit in the first place also empowered me to reject it in the end. Bottom line… kids are vulnerable, precious and impressionable but they are also a lot smarter than we think they are. Raise your kid well and a little eyeliner (or a slutty Halloween costume) isn’t going to change who they are. 

Confession of the Day: I’m A Premature Bridezilla

A friend of mine recently posted a blog entry complete with to her ideal renaissance-inspired wedding dress. Never mind that she doesn’t happen to be engaged or even in a serious relationship at the moment. She momentarily pondered if this made her a bit silly. If this makes her silly, then I’m just plain certifiable. Friend, I’ll do you one further, much further. I’m not engaged either but I not only have a dress in mind… I have my entire damn wedding planned. You heard me. 

For a while I’ve wanted a Dia de los Muertos inspired wedding. My mom cringed when I once mentioned this in front of her, but hear me out mom, I’m not thinking cheesy-ass goth wedding, I’m thinking Martha Stewart Living Halloween Issue wedding. Picture it. A crisp fall day on Cape Cod. It will be just cool enough to wear an amazing Supermaggie scarf. The color scheme is purple, green and orange. The dress is 1950′s style, maybe with some colorful embellishments like this. Obviously this unique ensemble will involve a fascinator instead of a veil. Papel Picado and brightly colored lanterns adorn the place. On each brightly colored picnic table there is a different Mexican oilcloth tablecloth. The centerpieces are white ghost pumpkins carved into tasteful lanterns, and surrounded by short mason jars with bunches of Gerber daisies. The cake is a tower of Lyndell’s cupcakes atop a vintage cake stand with a sugar skull bride and groom at the very top. 

Oh, and this all won’t be mind numbingly expensive because it will all be vintage, etsy or DIY. 

Where’s the hypothetical groom in this? Oh, he just has to show up and look pretty. And wear a top hat.

Seriously though, what is up with wedding fever? or should I say wedding planning fever? Is it because a motherload of my friends have gotten engaged or married in the last year and watching them plan their weddings naturally makes me think of my own? Is it because in spite of my combat-boot stomping, anti-patriarchal “I don’t need no stinkin’ marriage to make me complete” feminist trumpeting  I’m secretly starved to settled down in partnered, heterosexual bliss? Have I been brainwashed by society to fantasize incessantly about “my special day”? 

Maybe I’m secretly a romantic at heart. Or perhaps it is the party planner coming out in me. I’m a theater person for chrissakes, most of the shindigs I throw involve mood lighting, atmospheric design and costumes (not to mention interactive craft projects, hooo!), is this all just a natural extension of my tendency to do it up?

So what’s your take on it? Is it normal and natural to dream about your wedding before you’ve even gotten engaged? Why do we all do it even if we scoff at romance? Am I helping to set womanity back like 200 years just by writing about this stuff or is it all just good clean fun? Do I even give a fuck?

Father’s Day Open Thread: Dads and Daughters

This article over at Broadsheet really made me want to call my dad. It got me thinking of the profound influence he had over me. My love of a good glass (or bottle) of wine, my penchant for nonconformity and my tendency to never shy from a good political debate all come from my father.

I’ll do you one further, I think my dad, more so than even my mom (who did teach me that women could be anything they wanted to be but with the vexing subtext that we could be those things as long as we cleaned up good for Sunday dinner) influenced me in becoming a feminist. My mother is a kind, empathetic and ethical human being deserving of her own glowing blog entry  but it was my father who taught me not to fear being outspoken, to question the status quo and to fight for my beliefs tooth and nail.

What a pity it is that so many people feel that the most important role a father can have in a young woman’s life is protecting her chastity. Reading the Broadsheet article and hearing about how Tracy Clark-Flory’s dad never gave her a hard time when she wanted to wear three inch heels to school made me appreciate my own dad’s open mindedness toward my attire.

Back in the day I went around in some serious get-ups that made my mom cry and wring her hands. While some of my friends’ dad’s told then they looked like hookers and wouldn’t let them go out of the house in miniskirts, my dad was always supportive of my choices. I remember back to one particular time when my mom informed me that I looked fat in my bikini and insisted that it was “unflattering” even after I told her that I know I’m not a size two but I still think I have a right to wear what I want to the beach. As the “conversation” degenerated into a screaming fight and I went stomping back into the house to put on a T-shirt, I head my dad’s voice timidly say behind me, “I think you look very beautiful in your bikini.” I lost that particular body image battle, but I’ll never forget my dad’s supportive voice, very quietly telling me that I had the right to feel beautiful no matter what my size. 

As the father of two daughters, my dad always tried to “stay out of our business” where “female stuff” was concerned  but whether he knew it or not when I was weathering my own body image storm my dad was uniquely positioned to be supportive in a way my mother just wasn’t able to. 

Although my mom was present too, it was my dad’s hand that I held the day I first went to therapy for an eating disorder. As I sat there, all fragile 103 pounds of me haltingly telling my parents and my shrink that I wanted to learn how to eat again, he was there. And for some reason that I still don’t fully comprehend to this day, it meant the world to me that my father was there. Not crying, not begging me to get better, not judging me or threatening me, just holding my hand. Fourteen years later dad and I have never talked about that day and I’ve never been able to say thank you. Mom and I have had plenty of candid conversations about my personal life since I was fifteen. Dad and I? Never. He may think he’s incapable of  dealing with “girl stuff” but when it really counted, he was always there. 

So for all those fathers who think they can’t be in the lives of their teenage girls, you are wanted and you are loved, even when your girls don’t know how to say it. So thanks. 

What  about the rest of y’all? What’s awesome about your dads? What have they done that you’ve never gotten to thank them for? What makes your dad cool?

Is Love Dead?

There is a fascinating conversation going on right now over at NPR’s On Point about the current status of Romantic love. Writer, essayist and critic Cristina Nehring claims that for modern people passionate love has become not an ideal to celebrate and strive for but a source of embarrassment and vulnerability.

Who’s to blame? Well there are the usual culprits, i.e feminism and the “hook up culture” (yawn) but thankfully Nehring goes beyond the tired scapegoating of feminism for the unravelling of  everything good and decent in our society and probes at the truth beyond the hype. 

Modern people live such chaotic and hectic lives that finding true love seems sort of frivolous in the face of trying to gain those status symbols that show we’re living worthy lives. Whether it’s a doctorate, a six figure job, or a chance at fame, taking time to cultivate romance seems like an unnecessary detour on our paths to achievement. After all, love may be fleeting, but that Fullbright Scholarship is forever. Heck, now they even write books about the dangers of marrying for love! 

 I see a lot of myself in Nehring’s description of the intellectual woman who feels the need to apologize for  or hide her passionate feelings as if they are somehow a handicap, something that makes her less strong, intelligent and credible. According to Nehring I’m in good company. In her research she found that great women from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Margaret Fuller and Simone de Beauvoir all had precarious relationships between their intellectual and love lives. 

As a young woman I was repeatedly warned away from getting over involved in my relationships or letting my love life distract from what my mom used to call, “the big picture.” At some times in my life I really did allow my goals to fall by the wayside in pursuit of several (doomed) relationships. After that I vowed to put my own goals first and for the most part I have. But how do you balance the single minded pursuit of your own happiness and still allow yourself to fall in love? 

For ambitious women the lurking fear that romantic love will turn us into doting and subservient partners focused on catering to our significant other’s needs instead of our own is a very real one. We fear that the lure of partnership and family will steer us away from our goals, so the solution is to avoid romantic attachments altogether. The result of this very real and justified fear says Nehring, is a culture where we’ve compartmentalized love and sex. We have no problem talking about our one night stands, our favorite methods of birth control, even fertility. But love? Forget it. 

She’s right. I feel totally free to dish about my favorite brand of lube over cocktails in mixed company, but talk about how much I love my boyfriend? I wouldn’t dare. I know it would clear the room in under five seconds. And I’d feel like a total goober for even mentioning it in the first place.

So does this sound familiar to you, gentile readers? Would you rather give yourself a fleet enema than talk about your crush in public? Is romance dead? Ridiculous? Something created to sell Hallmark cards? Did it ever exist in the first place?

What’s your take on modern love?

Stuff I Like: Teen Girl Squad

After my last post, I feel obligated to lighten the mood around here a little. How better to do it than by sharing one of my favorite web videos ever, from the geniuses that brought you Strongbad, Teen Girl Squad:

I love how the craptastical production values still somehow capture the absurdity of pubescent girls. Plus, the voice of the narrator is the same voice my boyfriend uses when he does an impression of me, because he’s a goober.

Happy saturday, kids.

Gold Diggers, Skinny Bitches and Trophy Wives, Oh My!

Cue the Kanye kids; I feel a blog entry coming on…

Want to learn the secret to true and lasting relationship fulfillment? Don’t want to work when you’re over 40 (or perhaps at all)? Wondering why all your type A female friends are “slaving away” while all the bimbos you know are off getting hot stone massages? You need Smart Girls Marry Rich. Penned by the same altruistic mavens who brought you (the thinly veiled vegan-orexic propaganda) Skinny Bitch, Smart Girls Marry Rich is the ultimate guide to achieving security and happiness in your long-term relationship (hint: it has nothing to do with your dude’s sexy blue eyes). Because who else would you trust to give you relationship advice than the women who bestowed upon us the sage like nutritional adage: “Healthy = skinny, unhealthy= fat”?

OK, I know (or perhaps I just hope) that supposedly instructive tomes such as Smart Girls Marry Rich and The Rules are just a bunch of inflated crap that’s designed to be incendiary so the authors can get on talk shows and sign six figure book deals, but I just can’t look away. It’s not just that they fry me… they fascinate me. There is something about looking at a view so violently opposed to my own that I can’t write about it without squirming in my chair. Maybe it is because it forces me to examine and defend my own views, or maybe it’s because I love a fight. At any rate, here’s my take on Smart Girls:

First of all, I can’t stand self-help books that divide all women into two opposing camps. Either you are a miserable, overworked career harpy or a pampered, cerebrally challenged bimbo. Has anybody ever met anyone who truly embodied either of these stereotypes? What if the overworked career woman actually (gasp) finds her job fulfilling? And for the last time, why is it automatically assumed that every woman who doesn’t work outside the home lives a life of leisure? The hardworking (mostly) stay at home mom that raised me would take exception! She worked her ass off bringing up two kids, running a household and helping my dad sustain the family business. To this day girlfriend has never had a hot stone massage, although she sure as hell deserves one.

I may be about to start a feminist shit-storm by saying this, but I’ll say it anyway. Women, whether we’re high-powered career types, stay at home moms, or some amalgamation of those things, make choices. None of these choices are inherently weaker than others, they are just different. I think it is actually pretty cool that at some point in my life I will be able to make a choice to shift my focus from career path to mothering, to some sort of collage of those two things, and back again, as it makes sense for my family and I. I get to decide how to put my life together. Chances are the man I start my family with will never get to make those sort of compromises because it is assumed that the only way any natural red blooded heterosexual male would ever want to contribute to his family is by working a very narrowly defined 9-5 job. We all say how terrific we think stay at home dads are, but the overall subtext is that any man who would give up a life of ambition to focus on fathering is lazy, emasculated and unmotivated. We feel sorry for stay at home dads and the women who marry them. How can she respect him when she makes more money than he does? How can he feel like the man when he’s changing diapers?

Don’t even think your partner might relish having a more equal hand in creating a home bringing up your family. According to the Smart Girls you’re kidding yourself. Ask for anything aside from a traditional male partner who will play his part to provide, provide, provide and you’re asking for trouble. And he better be established before you tie the knot because a self made man whom you support in achieving his goals will leave you once he gains success. Once again, my parents who married in 1972 with 500 bucks between them and went on to start a successful business and own multiple homes would bristle at this assumption.

Nobody asks guys if they “still want to be working at 40.” Nobody expects that men would all be happier if they married wealthy and live their lives sipping Mimosas by the pool. Yet time after time, women are told that we’re supposed to feel unfeminine, nay, unnatural for having a drive, curiosity and ambition that might challenge us to explore (and even find deep satisfaction) outside the domestic sphere. Women’s work is incredibly undervalued in our society, yet we’re instructed that we give up all our chances for power, security and a happy life if we attempt to pursue other types of work. Clearly, the only power that is is safe and appropriate for me to have is the power to get a man to buy me stuff.

Smart Girls really plays into the whole security hysteria that is plaguing our culture right now. Everyone likes to think they could have avoided the stock market crash. We all would like a little more stability in our day-to-day lives. It is tempting to believe that marrying rich can provide that stability. I understand the point Smart Girls makes about the fact that romantic love is fleeting so a marriage that lasts a lifetime needs to be built on something more stable, but I disagree that money is what makes a marriage stable. Just ask all those bankers who are getting divorced by wives who “didn’t sign up for” life in the middle class.

I thought the whole point of an egalitarian society was that we don’t have to depend on our partners for material things so instead we can depend on them for the things that money can’t buy, you know… love, compassion, understanding, emotional support, all the stuff Bernie Madoff can’t embezzle away.

Maybe this is just an oversimplification by one of those single, career oriented, childless harpies. Perhaps once I’m gestating little Frances Bean Peaches Bjork Jr. in my womb I’ll start thinking about the cost of cruelty free prenatal vitamins, cloth diaper service, day care, braces, Rock n’ Roll Camp For Girls and Harvard and send my mate out packing to pull down six figures.

Until then, here’s one thing I do know: life’s a bitch kids. Getting up every day, going to work, making ends meet, raising kids, its hard work. I can’t imagine it all being worth all the toil sacrifice unless I’ve got someone I love deeply in my corner, fighting that fight right alongside me. Life is shitty enough, why the hell would I want to come home in the evening to someone I wasn’t crazy in love with?

Well That Was A Great Christmas, Time To Blog About It!

Its become a habit. I’ll have a memorable experience, start writing the blog entry in my head before I’m even through with it and possibly even cut the experience short, just to go home and blog about it while its still fresh. What can I say? It’s a disease.

So it’s Christmas. I’m at Cape Cod with the fam. To begin with, there is something deliciously special about being someplace when you’re not supposed to be there. That’s what made sledding at the golf course or heck, even going to school at night for the spaghetti supper so cool when I was a kid. Or maybe I just didn’t get out enough. Who knows.

The Cape is a summer place for my family. Right now when I look out the window it’s sunny and bright, if I didn’t know better I might think it’s summer out there. But it’s a little quieter. There’s no boats on the water, no bikes on the street. Everything’s a little barer, whiter, more zen.

We used to beg my parents to let us come down the Cape for Christmas, but there was always some excuse. It’s too far, it’s too much work, we’re expected to host people at home, yada, yada, yada.

But this year is different. To begin with, my mom made seared Ahi Tuna and crabmeat sushi for dinner last night.

That’s right, my uber-Italian, pasta making, never met a spice she liked, never met a dish that she didn’t think could be improved by red sauce made Asian food for dinner. Normally my mom won’t touch anything made with seaweed in it with a ten foot pole. In fact, she’s known for being so food unaventurous that it’s become sort of a tradition that every time my mom goes out of town my dad, sister and I find the most unusual restaurant we can and order the weirdest, spiciest things off the menu. One time we went to this Malaysian place in Harvard Square where my sister got an entire pan fried trout with the head on and everything.

But last night, instead of making raviolis, we all fumbled around the kitchen making sticky rice, slicing avocado and rolling Nori. It was a blast. Then we trimmed the fake tree! Seeing a Christmas tree glimmering in the front windows of our summer house is quite the trip.

Then dad and I drank too much wine. We all went to bed snug with the wind howling around us outside.

The next day we woke up and decided to walk to Stage Harbor Light.

I think it’s kind of rad that the lighthouse used to be used as a secret stash for liquor during the prohabition days.

As always when I walked there, I imagined what it would be like to live all the way out on a sand dune in a lighthouse. I pretended that I was a heroine form an L.M Montgomery novel. Why not? Cape Cod 100 years ago must have looked very much like Prince Edward Island did 100 years ago. And there was nothing Emily of New Moon loved more than a solitary ramble. And hey, doesn’t the below picture of Harding’s Beach look just like the opening shots of the Anne of Green Gables mini series!? Cue the heartwarming music, this plucky young teen is about to teach the town curmudgeon to believe in kindred spirits again!

My sister ran about on the dunes documenting everything with her new camera.When we finally got home, mom had a pile of Italian anise cookies to decorate. The kind of soft, melty ones with the chocolate kisses on the inside. KO and I dipped them in homemade frosting and all sorts of different sugary toppings, just like we have since we were kids. Just like back then, I still have to resist the urge to put a single red-hot at each sugary crest, thus turning them into boob cookies. Mom still doesn’t think that joke is funny.

Now we’re hanging out by the tree, watching the CNN interview with Barack and Michelle Obama and making dinner and yes, blogging. I’m liking this whole guilt free, adult Christmas thing…

Bachelors Beware!

So according to Jezebel.com, today is Leap Day, traditionally the only day of the year that it’s OK for a gal to ask a guy for his hand in marriage.

Here are is a charmingly campy Leap Day Postcard from years gone by:

One caveat to man hungry maidens, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says that there is still No Good Time To Leap Into Marriage With Mr. Good Enough.

Touche Lori Gottlieb!

I myself am not so sure how I feel about the whole chicks popping the question thing. Maybe I’m an idealist, but It was my impression that in modern relationships the decision to marry was usually the result of several successful and happy years together and a series of “what if?” conversations between the couple. I always thought of the actual proposal as sort of a formality. Of course, this comes form a girl who’s parents’ marriage was the result of an unromantic story involving a cockroach in my dad’s dive apartment in Brighton and conversation about how they could live together in a nicer place “if they were married”. As far as I know, my dad never got down on one knee.

The unabashed romantic in me squees at the idea of proposing to a guy. I love surprising people, I adore hjinks, and poppping the question to my beloved seems like the ultimate ballyhoo for a girl like me. On the other hand, and I hate saying this, but is getting down on one knee just another small, inoffensive, slightly sexist tradition that we can let men keep?

Under most circumstances I loath the “it’s the last thing men have” argument. Men still have a lot of things, like higher average wages, less discrimination based on age and appearance and not having to make the choice between parenthood and a career. In addition, the idea of what “the last thing men have” is different for every man. I once got into an argument with a guy who said he’d never date a girl who didn’t want to change her last name after marriage because having your wife take your name was, “the last thing men have”. As if getting rid of sexist traditions in the first place is somehow harmful to men. After all don’t we girls have enough power already!?

It cracks me up that so many of us are pursuing unconventional marriages and relationships but courting rituals themselves haven’t gotten a chance to evolve. We can have no strings attached sex, go dutch on the dinner bill and even gasp ask men to take an equal part in chores and childcare but a girl can’t propose? Seems a little silly to me.

Although the “last thing men have” rationale is totally lame, I’d hate to rob some guy of his big chance to be a romantic rock star. Do men dream of their proposal moment all their lives the same way girls are supposed to squee about wedding dresses since they’ve been in utero? Somehow I think not. However, if we’re being old-fashioned here, I get an entire wedding day to call all the traditional shots, can’t he have 5 minutes?

The cynic in me would hate to think that my betrothed said yes because he suffers from that dreadful male inertia, and the wretchedly conservative UK rag the Times agrees and adds:

“Just when a chap gets comfy in a long-term relationship, along comes the day he dreads – when she can propose”

Damn gender equality! keeping men from coasting along in a quasi-committed undefined relationship!

From the female point of view, unless you are one of those girls who sees the proposal as an extension of her day to be a pretty, pretty, princess, the popularization of the female proposal can only be a good thing. Think about it, instead of dancing around the question, a marriage minded woman need only ask her boo to wed. If he says no, she’s free to move on and find another guy who’s more down with her philosophy on marriage. Think of all the years that will no longer be wasted on dead end relationships! This can only be a good thing for both sexes!

At any rate, I think it’s up to the couple. I’m not quite sure how to end this particular rant, but here’s another Leap Day postcard, and it’s a doozy! Looking at it, I can’t help be reminded that I am happy times have changed. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that many women really didn’t get “their own choice in a mate.” 

Score One For Not Settling…

The Stranger says what I was trying to say with fewer words and better punctuation.

Is My Biological Clock More Like a Ticking Time Bomb?

One of the upsides to blogging about all these fertility issues is that every time I think of my biological clock I begin to think of it more and more as a ticking time bomb. This in and of itself is a little scary, but it has a nifty by-product. Every time I think of the word Timebomb, I think of the Beck song of the same name, which by the way has an awesome video with hamsters in it!

Check it out!

Tick tick tick tick na-na-na-na!

Where was I now? Oh, back to the subject at hand, my fertility. To clarify my last entry, I do not think that Lori Gottlieb is a big fat, anti-feminist party wrecker. Looking back on your freewheeling 20s and 30s as a middle aged single mom, suddenly the idea of breaking things off with that smart funny sweet guy just because of his unnatural passion for soccer seems a little unreasonable. No, you didn’t trade up for that independently wealthy, Mensa-smart Johnny Depp look alike who shares your passion for obscure 16th century poetry and now you are doomed to rifle through the white elephant table of the 40 something dating crowd, and with a kid in tow to boot. So my idealism might seem a little glib looking at it from that point of view. I do not however, see having a partner who says he sympathizes with terrorists may or may not be a closeted gay man as preferable to single parenthood. Maybe if I were looking at it out the other end I might feel differently. However for her sake and the sake of her kid, I hope she settles wisely and happily.

That being said, I think I figured out why this article (and others like it) is so disturbing to me. Simply put, I’m tired of being informed (and quite aggressively sometimes) that I’m lying or fooling myself when I say that I’m content with my life as a single person. It is as if people are telling me that all the things I value about my life… my cool job, my amazing boyfriend and supportive network of friends that have come to be like an extended family to me, are worth nothing if I’m not a wife and a mother. Or at least if they aren’t worth nothing to me now, they will be very soon when my biological clock starts ticking and suddenly I’m hit with the baby fever.

Oh come on, every woman over the age of 21 knows the drill. The conciliatory looks given you from relatives and friends at family gatherings when you tell them again that you aren’t engaged. And then the feeling that you have to make up some sort of tactful excuse as to why you’re cool with being single that nobody’s going to buy anyway.The reassurances are equally as insulting. I’ll never forget the mother of the bride coming up to me at a friend’s wedding and saying, “Don’t worry, there’s lots of great guys out there, you’ll be married before you know it.” Never mind that I was 24, straight out of grad school, unemployed and barely in the head space to date casually, let alone merge finances with someone. When I made a flippant response that I wasn’t in a hurry to settle down she gave me another unfortunate look that said it all, Oh honey isn’t it sad that you’re in denial about how badly you want to be married.

After all, I must be a terribly confused young woman if I choose not to fret about it or (gasp!) actually enjoy being single. I’ve tried reminding them how much fun it is being single in the city. I’ve even cracked jokes about how hard it is to find a straight guy in the theater profession. Those don’t go over too well with my parents’ middle aged Republican golf buddies.

I feel a lot like the Single Girl Who Cried Wolf, trying to convince other people that my life has meaning. But I’ve published poetry, starred in plays and met rock stars! Really, being single is pretty cool!

This year I’m taking a different tack when pestered about marriage, especially now that I’m sure I’ll be reminded that I’m pushing 30. My retort will go something like this: “Gee, I have a fantastic boyfriend that I’m crazy about. He cooks for me, we have great sex, and I don’t have to wash his dirty boxers afterwards. So I’d have to say I’m pretty happy.” I don’t care if it’s rude to talk to someone that way. I’ve been made uncomfortable since I was a teenager by receiving unsolicited dating advice from people who haven’t actually gone on a date since the Nixon administration, now it’s time for me to make them uncomfortable.

Unlike some other women who tell me they feel like they were born to be mothers, I’ve never fantasized about having kids. My mom tells me that she felt the same way until she turned 30, and then she wanted kids yesterday. That’s the part that scares me the most. Occasionally I look at my biological wristwatch and think, “nope, not ticking yet”. On some occasions, such as when I’m in a public bathroom listening to a mom explaining to her child in the next stall that “it isn’t nice to trick people into thinking that you don’t have to go potty”, I think I can actually feel my uterus seal itself shut at the idea of losing the ability to even change my tampon in peace. Nope, having kids still does not appeal to me.

Time and again I’m told that will change. As a friend of mine put it in a way that didn’t make me want to smack the smug smile off her face, “Your feelings on motherhood may not change, but don’t be surprised if they do.”

So what if they do change? What if four years in the future I’m walking aroung, minding my business and POW! My biological time bomb goes off and suddenly I want a baby today.

What if I’m not in the position to have said baby? Am I supposed to be preparing myself for a moment that may never come? What’s the biological equivalent of preparing a fallout shelter for the baby A-bomb? Should I stock up on prenatal vitamins just in case?

Then again, what’s the point of fretting over a day that may never come when I’m perfectly happy the way things are right now? As my friend said, your feelings may change, or they may not.

And if they do change… well there’s so many things I want to do with my free wheeling child-free status before I cash it in for diapers and baby food. I mean sure, my life is interesting enough, but if I’m going to have kids I need to take advantage of this whole freedom deal and do something really amazing… write a book, go surfing in Fiji, perfect my wheel pose in yoga, before I settle down.

The one thing I am sure of is that I really do love my life. No matter what my future may bring, I’m not willing to rush things. I’m not willing to do anything more but be true to myself and live in the moment. Oh, and maybe try hangliding. And learn French.