Be your tree

On Saturday night, we watched a really good documentary, American the Beautiful, about the business of beauty in America, the problems that the way that business operates pose for American girls and women. If you want to see some scummy guys explain why they only want to date skinny blonds, and watch a lovely girl enter the modeling industry and come out the other side thinking she is fat at worthless, and find out why they all think that way, watch this documentary. This clip is my favorite moment of the whole movie. It is Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues, relating a story about a woman in Africa explain why we should all love our bodies, no matter what they look like.

I am a feminist

There, I said it publicly. I have been reading Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti this week, and it has made me mad. Do you know how much absolute junk and lies about women are out there? Do you know how much our lives are controlled by old white men? Don't let them. Get out and vote for Obama this election - and yes, I know that Sarah Palin is a woman, but she is a woman with mad wack, ignorant, hateful opinions. Just because she is a woman doesn't make her automatically good.

The book was making me reconsider my choice to change my last name when I got married. Benjamin said I didn't have to, but at the time I couldn't see not changing it. Now, it would take a lot of work to change it or even just to hyphenate. Besides, I didn't completely get rid of Donovan, I just made it a middle sort of name. It was a choice I made, so now I will live with it. But it was a choice made harder by all the insane rhetoric that I managed to absorb and all the worry I had about what people would think about me. Totally bogus. As I get older, I am slowly learning that it is better to, in the words of the snarky advice on a video game I play, "Don't worry about what others think; they don't do it very often." Hmm. Maybe we will just make something up for our (hypothetical) child. Or just stick to pets.

Anyway, if you want more information about being a full frontal feminist, you can check out Valenti's web site feministing.com.