we can't be saved from what we love.

I spend most of my time on this blog talking about things that have happened to my vagina and things that irritate the crap out of me. For a change of pace, I'd like to talk about things that move me.

I have always felt an incredibly deep connection to the GLBT community. I self-identify as queer, but I think it goes deeper than just belonging. Through the course of my feminist awakening, my sexual enlightenment, and my growth into an adult, I sought to find an aural or visual experience that depicted the world as I feel it. It's hard to say whether the view or the world itself is broken, but it lies broken nonetheless. It's sharply hued and violent, but silent and subdued. It's where we play with fire and still drown.

And I found Nan Goldin, a photographer who grew up in Massachusetts and made a name for herself photographing herself and her friends, many of them gay, in front of the drug-addled backdrop of New York in the 1970s and 80s.

I feel disconnected from much of the art I experience on a regular basis, and some of the literature. But Nan's work touches me so much. I feel we are cut from the same cloth. I feel we live in the same world together. She has been one with the freaks. She captures the despondency that has so often permeated my life. Her photographs recognize the complexity of the juncture between gender, sex, and mortality.

And yet there is no desperation in what she shows us, sad as it all may seem. It is a reality created in the desire to love things, even if society tells us we are wrong. It is a reality where we all realize that we are going to die and as a result, all we can do is live.

Many of the subjects of Nan's original photographs died by the time she gained recognition for her work. They never knew their raw beauty was seen by thousands of people. They just lived their imperfect lives in a world that wasn't ready for them. They are pure. Their images are haunting.

These photographs always make me wonder: how do we ever really interact with one another? And how can we forgive ourselves for the mistakes we've made?

All of these works, of course, belong to Nan Goldin.

I've got a secret.

One of my greatest character flaws is that I try to pretend to be cultured. I feign interest in the arts; I masquerade as a literature snob. To put it bluntly, I am far more crass than I let on to strangers and loose acquaintances. Outwardly, I am a devotee of the Western canon; inwardly, I want to read any book that has the word "penis" in it.

So I have been acting like I don't enjoy reality television. I know it's pretentious, but the social circles I've been frequenting lately are most definitely of a higher intellectual caliber. As such, I'm sure they find my unending appreciation of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" appalling. I could watch that shit for HOURS. I detest the people on the show and generally find their antics tasteless, but it amuses me nonetheless.

Since I'm 24 and MTV is now the dominion of the teenaged crowd, I've been denying my love for a certain hyper-tanned, Ed Hardy-wearing motley crew of ill repute. That's right, I fucking love Jersey Shore.

Now I know that you, assumed loyal reader and friend, are wondering why a person reeking of cynicism and feminism would support such a vapid entertainment outlet. So hear me out.

It takes a lot of guts to admit you've fucked someone. It takes serious balls to air your dirty laundry in public. It doesn't matter if everyone wants to hear it, or no one does. Imagine if all your weakest moments were videotaped. Imagine if everyone knew you slept with your roommate, and heard your drunken outbursts, and saw your naked breasts as you writhed in a hot tub.

Now, imagine if you didn't give a shit.

This is where the brilliance of this superficial social experiment comes in. 

I love the people on Jersey Shore because they're not attempting to be anything. They're not pretending their tits are real or their storylines are genuine. The whole experience of the show is so contrived that it goes past artificial and somehow comes back to real. We can see past what everyone expects them to do; yet when they do it, we don't blame them. We can't. We created them. They are the manifestation of all the dumbest, purest things we desire. We want sex and tequila and expensive sunglasses covered in rhinestones. The stupidest part is that we deny it.

That's not to say that I'm going to go douse myself in spray tan and bedazzle some crop tops. The greatest part about entertainment is that it can remain just that. I can watch empty people make out and make tons of money, and it really has no effect on who I am or who I will be. It's just oddly comforting that there's a group of people out there, charged with doing nothing but living out the ridiculously selfish fantasies of my generation, and I can watch them make the thousand mistakes I've made. They're not ashamed. And maybe I shouldn't be, either.

the motherhood malady.

Yesterday, I read a bullshit article in the New York Observer about this new "faminism" trend, which fluctuated between typical trend-piece-stretch (a couple famous women and some spoiled New York housewives do not a trend make) and backlash propaganda. It's basically a story about how feminism is out, and tending to thirty thousand snot-nosed little brats instead of working is what women should be doing!

It's in full effect, ladies. Run for your lives.

'Women are defining themselves more by their families than they are by themselves,' said Pamela Paul, a 39-year-old mother of three in Harlem and author of Parenting Inc. 'It’s no longer about something as selfish and self-advancing as abortion or the pill.'

 Oh, right, because not having a child when you can't afford one and not bringing more human beings into an already-overpopulated planet are so SELFISH.

What the article is trying to drive home is that it is now popular - nay, the status quo - to forego our self-actualization in favor of strollers, and view the personal as not political, but parental. Again, yet again, women are expected to find fulfillment only through motherhood. And we call this a "choice."

But I want to know - what choices, as women, do we really have? Settle down, become mothers - for whom? We're told we have more reproductive freedom than ever before in history, and the preponderance of prophylactics available in 2010 absolutely makes it true, in a tangible sense. That doesn't stop society from reminding women that our "clock is ticking," that "time is running out on your fertile years," that it's "biological destiny." It's backlash like all other backlash, it's just another way of attempting to force women to fit the mold. I find it incredibly disheartening that, even this far along, we only have the illusion of choice. Choice would imply that all options are equally viable and acceptable. There is only one socially acceptable option for being an adult female in America, and we all know what happens if you don't take that road.

I just wish for a society in which our worth is not purchased by a diamond engagement ring, and our future is not formed in a marital bed. We should all be able to want any kind of life as women, be it full of children or without any - but you shouldn't need a certain life to be a woman. I want to be living proof.

giving up the ghost.

At least the majority of the American people don't think I'm an unqualified moron. Yet.

This morning, sleepily, after hearing extensively about my menstrual woes, my husband remarked:

"You make being a woman sound like the worst thing, ever. It seems like you're barely holding it together all the time."

He's right.

I'm quitting, you guys.

I guess you could say this is a long time coming. Since I've gotten married, my hygiene has slipped significantly. I don't wash my hair nearly as much as I used to. I cut it off for a bob, which I intend to gradually snip away at until my hair resembles Edie Sedgwick's. I only wear makeup if I'm actually going somewhere (anywhere public any time before 6 pm doesn't count as 'somewhere'). I've worn high heels two times in two months. I'm just fucking tired of being female, and I don't care anymore.

I'm tired of not being able to shit regularly. I'm tired of haranguing my breasts into a wired felt-cotton trap every morning. I'm over worrying constantly if I'm knocked up. I'm sick of concerning myself with how I look and wondering if I should censor what I say.

You see, women are in a constant pursuit of looking as attractive as possible. Always. We are told from childhood that our purpose is to decorate the earth, to light up men's faces as they leer at our chests and appreciate our delicate features. We are on display 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We're supposed to diet and keep up with trends and have huge breasts and no wrinkles and not be smarter than the men we're involved with and we should be mild and passive and motherly and cheerful and just fucking perfect. If we're not doing everything we can to impress dudes, then we're under fire for being fat, ugly, man-hating feminazi lesbian shitasses (Scott Baio's wife's words, not mine - though I wish I could take credit for such a zinger). And if we happen to be too attractive, it's our fault that we led men to rape us, because we're sluts and whores. We have to be slaves to a society and then get backhandedly fucked by said society just for doing what they tell us.

But you know what? I'm not doing it anymore. I have a nice place to live, a job that's tolerable, an awesome cat, and a man that loves me even if I have chipped nail polish and have been wearing the same bra for four days in a row. Even so - what is the point where we say enough is enough? Is that aging? Recognizing that you're not the hot chick, the ingenue, the demure doll who men bend over backwards for? Or is the recognition that you don't even care enough to try to play that game anymore?

Women deal with enough blood and shit and tears. We owe it to ourselves to be honest. And to love ourselves for that honesty alone.