miercoles GIGANTE! or, this post is nothing to get excited about.

I added a nice, brief, offensive rant at the very bottom of this post about how stupid and lame that one shall-go-unnamed magazine is, the one that made the awesome and candy-studded Kirtsy change their name, but since we will never again acknowledge the old name's existence, because it would draw undue attention to the other, craptastic joint, well, just, yeah.  'Course, that doesn't mean I didn't totally use it blatantly and repeatedly in my rant down below.  Heh.  I said "down below" when referring to skir-- the magazine whose name shall go unspoken.  Heh.

Anyhoodily.  Read on, brave reader.

*****

Things I would like to post on today, but haven't got the hyperfocus needed to zoom in and analyze closely (hyperfocus is a particular element of ADHD; oftentimes, prior to diagnosis, people who have ADHD assume they're OCD because of this ability to become consumed by some subject to the exclusion of all else in their lives; for example, I once spent three days cleaning a shower with a toothbrush, and I wasn't even on crystal meth.  See?  Sounds a lot like an obsessive/compulsive behavior, right?  I thought so, too.   Turns out, this is the hyperfocus thing.  I would say I'm relieved, only it's just hopping from one lily-pad of crazy to another, which just isn't all that much of a relief):

*write several posts for green mom finds on the skin care products I just bought that are all completely amazing and cool and *also* lacking in massive, disgusting chemicals, and also smell fresh and good and wonderful.  I want to do this especially intensely because, Cristina!, I *know* this time these are good products.  One of them in particular excites me, because it's a line created by a local (to Portland) mom who grows the herbs herself, and creates the products, and packages them, and does all of her own promotion and marketing and sales.  HOW AWESOME IS SHE.  Yes.  I want to meet her and court her and give her a gigantic ring made of yarrow root and sage.  (Would that be an insult?  Possibly.  I would not intend for it to be, but such is my hyperactive, impulsive way.   Bleah.)  (Her product line is called Wild Carrot Herbals, and her farm is located in a town named Rickreall, Oregon.  I just bought the vanilla bean skin cream, and the ingredients are

water, organic coconut oil, fair trade certified raw shea butter (fair trade!), virgin cocoa butter, vegetable emulsifying wax, vegetable glycerin, palm stearic acid, organic jojoba oil infused with Madagascar vanilla beans, sea buckthorn seed oil, vanilla fragrance, grapefruit seed extract and organic vanilla essential oils.  (nothing I couldn't pronounce without sounding out like a second-grader!  big ups.)

She actually printed the following alongside the ingredients list:  Resist the urge to eat it.  I'm grateful for the reminder; it smells that darn appetizing.

*write a post about this new design I made for a friend of a friend recently, and feature a photo, because DAMN but it came out supa-cute.  (hi!  I brag.  I'm a braggart.  Braggy-pants McGee!  Whee!  Uh.)

*write about my burgeoning recognition of how my stripper past is a good thing, that I need no longer be ashamed, and introduce the element into that particular piece about how my shame regarding having been a stripper was always related directly to how trashy it seemed, how low-brow, and not because I felt that it was a moral failing; in fact, I was always stoked on the fact that I had the -- okay, I was totally going to say balls, here, but that just seems a little inappropriate given that I am a female and my dancing was often (but not always, and yes, it was hot when not) for males, so prolly, unless I were she-maleing it, that would've been a big, unexpected, unpleasant surprise to those who gathered in order to watch.  ANYWAY, goddamn distractability *shakes fist at ADHD* -- I am seeing, upon considering it, that my having been an atypical "type" within the stripper realm was, in fact, a path I helped spur, along with the others who were doing similar things, performance-art things, being the sometimes-goth who refused to bleach her hair and wear fake talons and typical cheesy stripper apparel, rather, who made it burlesque when there wasn't yet a revival of such, who wore whatever struck her fancy and even if (only, really, it was WHEN) that turned off the clientele and she was mocked and almost fired on several occasions because she refused to look like the other cookie-cutter girls imitating the Playboy centerfolds of the day, and she wore actual costumes, and played specific music related to those costumes, finding ways to be sexy without being the prevalent Barbie-esque type, reveling in small breasts and slightly-larger-than-average thighs and ass, making no attempt to disguise her contempt for the obvious ploys in which to entrap the customers at the clubs where she worked.

I did it for the love of the dance, of the feeling it gave me when the music and lighting and scents and my hormonal timbre were all just so, when my favorite costume sat in just the right place on my hips and my torso, when the temperature and the barometer and the atmosphere communicated perfectly with my skin and when I felt like I was made out of an astral cloud, silvery mercurial slickly satin, I could fly and I did.  And I could feel the people watching, their eyes as much a part of my movements as the force in my gut that propelled me around the space.

What I did, those actions, the resistance to falling prey to peer pressure, to succumbing to the requirement that I look like one of the long line of prancing, long-legged Barbie horses, in order to succeed, it was crucial, because it helped women get one step closer to misbehaving, to saying, FUCK, yes, I'M SEXUAL, and on MY OWN TERMS, and whether it brings me profit (it didn't, fwiw) is beside the point.  I am establishing myself as being unique, being sexy, being beautiful, not because I look like what is SUPPOSED to be sexy, but what is, in fact, ACTUALLY sexy.  Because I'm a woman, and I can do this, and I don't care if the girl standing next to me who looks like Hugh Hefner's girlfriend is popping another Benji in her already-bulging purse, and I'm smiling nicely because someone just handed me a pity-five, because that isn't what I'm doing here.  I'm proving something.  I'm proving that I can exist in this space, too, even while I don't fit.  I'm making room for myself to fit.  See?  Here.  Therefore = fit.

And now, the suicide girls and the newly popular burlesque theatre and all of the other inroads made by young feminists who are saying, fuck, yes, I'm sexy, and I don't have big tits and I don't have a perky, size 0 ass, and legs long as a colt, and it doesn't matter.  I'm part of that.  I helped that cause.  I'm proud as hell.  Because this movement, this inroad, the one that is still being made, whether women of all stripes and walks and runs and dances recognize it, the movement is doing its work.  It's erasing, nay, *obliterating* all of that singed territory between the madonna and the whore.  It's giving us all a chance to be, to embrace, all of it, the light, the dark, the dignified, the disgusting, because THAT is being a woman and THAT is real AND THAT IS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL AND SEXY and it's the wave of the future if we're gonna get the beauty industry to quit wrecking us from the inside out with their shitty, chemical-rich, cancer-inducing bullshit.

Fuck yes.

But I only just realized it.

So.  ADHD?  Looks like I owe you one, today.

*another post idea, if those aren't enough:  to discuss how much I want to return to theatre, but hesitate, not because I can't do it, or don't have time, but because - I can't do it.  I don't have time.  I have already overextended myself regarding time and it wouldn't be fair to my family, and this is due to the ADHD's everpresent lure, the crooked ADHD beckoning finger, the one that whispers, c'mon, Debbie, you have time, and this! will! be! awesome!, and so much more exciting and interesting and captivating than the boring, insipid minutiae of your current regimen, and I say, oh, yes, ADHD, you're so right.  I'm coming!, and then, bam.  Even more overextended.

*more thoughts about the idea for an ADHD book; how I should format it; whether I should consult a medical personage in order to make myself sound more legit.  how I'm going to ever go about actually focusing for long enough to write one pathetic chapter, let alone all the chapters a book would require.  Ruth, your advice is perfect for me, too, but the terror that arises within me when I struggle to visualize myself seated and writing entire chapters, it makes my itching soles almost burn with the urge to run from that visual.

*there's more, but I have to leave to make a doctor's appt. and -- hey!  lookit that!  I'm late.

shit.

*******

Updated to add one more, but no less important, item to things I would post about if only I had time:

*write a post about how much the magazine SKIRT! sucks big, ugly, wrinkled-up-old-man penis.  I would include details about how the big money, colossal media corporation lifted up the combined sk*rts of the women running the awesome, fantastic site that has been renamed with something WAY FUCKING BETTER than skirt!, so nyahhh, old fucking pervs who insist on keeping their skirt to themselves, which, frankly, reeks of slightly more than a little bit of closeted behavior.  And, well done to the woman who began Skirt! back in the day, er, in the nineties, subsequently selling out to the man, and not only did she sell out her preshus, adorable company, but now they're capitalizing on her story to sashay out and playing at how they're small and start-up and cute, too, only they're not, because they're a bunch of old, white thugs who can stop with the pretense at being otherwise and may instead be excused to go herewith and suck each other's old, wrinkly penis -- penisi?  penises?  What the hell is penis plural?  I can't believe I've never run into this particular grammatical conundrum before.

*ahem*

Go Kirtsy!  Begone, Skirt.

NOW I'm done. 

phew.

Comments

[Ruth Dynamite]

You know this is IT, right? Keep going. It'll all come together in the end.

[Emily R]

So glad I ignored your warning. In college, I wished I had the groove to me a stripper, because they were pulling in a hell of a lot more than I was slinging fajitas, and tuition is expensive.

[Andrea]

I believe it's "peni" or "penii" I don't know which one, but I've seen it both ways.

[Lotta]

I would have totally stripped if I had the body.

[apathy lounge]

Not just a roll. A BUTTERED roll. With honey.

[Jenny, Bloggess]

"Peni."

You, my friend, are on a roll.