For the first eight years of our marriage, [Michelle and I] were paying more in student loans than what we were paying for our mortgage. So we know what this is about.
And we were lucky to land good jobs with a steady income. But we only finished paying off our student loans—check this out, all right, I’m the President of the United States—we only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago.
Fuck these patriarchal beauty standards”. I hear you loud and clear, but women wearing pink and glitter and heels are not the enemy. And believe it or not, a whole bunch of women LIKE wearing that shit. We are not dumb, less feminist or watered down because of it. A long time ago when I was in undergrad I walked up to my feminist friends sitting in the grass and they started talking about my pink backless shirt and how their own clothes weren’t so “cutesy,” then it got awkward so I left and one of them said “see you later Blossom”. Do you remember that show? I loved it. But that’s not the point. The point is that my “friend” snuck a little snide comment in front of our all of our other friends simply because I like dressing up. And that was at least 8 years ago and I still remember everything about that day. Feminism is not about laughing at other girls and making them feel insecure. Especially over something as trivial as clothes. Remember you are pro-choice. Respect my choice to wear booty shorts.
I give you virtually everything I have. I give you all the best things I have, and while these things are things that I like, memories that I treasure, good or bad, like the pictures of my family on my walls, I can show them to you without diminishing them. I can afford to give you everything.
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. “This is often considered to be man’s first attempt at a calendar” she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. ‘My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.’
It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women’s contributions?
“Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?”
Yes.
Wait, do you think those things are exclusive? That books can only be one or the other? I would rather read a book with all of those things in it: a laughing, crying, educating, distracting book. And I would like more than that, the kind of book where the pages groan under the weight of keeping all such opposites apart.
Advice for young feminists? Do something else besides feminism. I’m serious. The feminist blogosphere is oversaturated in my opinion. Please, find something else you love and take feminist theory there. It gets lonely over here in tech and video games – I have a great crew of other feminists but we are a little island in a vast sea. We need more feminist minded business bloggers, feminist theory wielding finance bloggers. Labor organizers with a feminist lens blogging. Can you imagine what Deadspin (the sports blog) would look like with a feminist on staff? Restructure writes about science, tech and feminism – join her! Publish a blog doing literary criticism with a feminist lens! Take on the NYT! Talk about class issues and feminism. Whatever it is, apply your feminism in a different space.
Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.
Mitch Albom, Five People You Meet in Heaven (via bookmania)
