The Beauty of Women

Dedicated to my girlfriends.

Beauty and Advertising

The expectations we hold about how women should look and how much time, energy, and money it takes to get there are utterly ridiculous. This was true in our society prior to the practice of photoshopping models. Hell, make-up is very similar to Photoshop! Corsets and spanks perform the same function. Please, don't get me wrong, I support a woman's right to pluck, stuff and paint anything that she wants, but advertising is pervasive and insidious. Hats off to the Julia Bluhm for trying to get the editors of Seventeen to stop altering young women's bodies on their pages.


Article about Julia Bluhm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connie-dieken/seventeen-magazine-photoshop_b_1663430.html

The following is a poem that I wrote that is in response to some of the craziness I see in the young women I know and what I remember from my own adolescence. I am afraid we are letting people who want us to buy things tell us what sexy is, and if you add to that the very human desire for love and attention it can be a toxic mix.

Rebellion is one way to fight society's expectations

It Needs a Fucking...

Feeling a little bit

little girl lost. I want

to be dream girl princess be-

love-ed. Take me under your wing and tell

me everything is going

to be ok – like ice cubes

plucked from a stainless

steel bucket clinking – chinking

their virgin squares-  into tumblers ready

to accept booze – long legs

up the side

of the glass.

Hoping the tiara will fit

a girl today

kissed on the side of her head in the

hall way.

Photo by Tom Van de Ven

-by a boy who she said

maybe, you know…

tell her, she could get in trouble. Plucked

pubic hairs – conversely get rid

of that plucked chicken look. What describes

when something is

exactly

the opposite of what

it should be? For most women

natural beauty is anything but. Hours

spent with glistening images, and the

sign on the door says Don’t clean

the stainless mirrors in the men’s

or women’s restroom. Steam expands

to fill available space.

Getting Older

I have always celebrated milestone birthdays with a flourish; taken pride in being a woman who welcomes age and wisdom. Forty was difficult though. Somehow, overnight, the quality of my skin changed, my hair thinned and I realized that no matter how much I denied my societies expectations of female beauty they were all within me - time bombs waiting to be set off by the big 4-0. Trite but true. How do you hold on to feeling lovely from the inside out in a world that tells you that all that matters is your outside?

Like Those Women

The wind is warm                                                                                          

here, but even on lake-days

where I am from

you shiver inside your towel, the snakes

soft and green, surprising your bare

toes in the grass.

Women here go for long walks in the hot

air, growing brown and lean. Where I am

from the women are plump and pink

spending days cozy with books. Snakes here

are sandy brown and rattle

like seed pods. I am easier alone here.

The summer the rains flash

suddenly, drenching one hill

and leaving another chalky with dust. Where           

I am from it mists on firs and stony

beaches and swamps for ten months.

the days are short

the sun never shows. Here

there are days the sun never leaves completely,

long hot nights I wear cut-offs

and tank tops watch the lightning

flash on dark hills. Bare my feet on warm rocks in the dark to feel the sun.

Desert Sunset 

Here the plants flower

when they can, leaf when possible. In a dry year

the ocotillo flower early - then wait

months – for the rain

to leaf, verdant

alien pipe-cleaners arc from the ground.

Where I am from green

crawls

round the edge of every square of pavement

slinks from dank basements –

swallows

junk cars in fields.

I walk dry hills and like those women

I am growing lean and brown

Love and Choice

I met my husband, Joe, years before we started dating; we ran in the same circles. I remember the exact moment when I started falling for him. I worked at The Country Aire, a natural grocery in Port Angeles, Washington. Joe had just returned from a trip to Thailand and at one glance I could see and feel the electricity he brought back with him from that trip. My feelings for him were further confirmed by the twinge I got when a mutual friend talked of setting him up with someone else. The poem below is our wedding poem and tells the story of that 'first meeting'. Perhaps more importantly it tells the story of us choosing one another.

Joseph Elvis Vastano of the Intrepid Heart

When you leaned in

toward me, across the counter

and told me

you were glad

to see

me and I knew

as you walked away, the tips of your curls red-sunshine-gold

that you were.

That we keep choosing

to face one another’s walls-

instead of walking out

onto the open plains of life lived alone.

When I turn around and you are still there, and again, and again- still there.

It is not easy,

it is not clean,

it is gloriously messy.

Like Saguaro. Like rocks on the hillside. Like flood waters in the desert

I imagine

adventures before us- sorrows and joy.

Trips across continents and waters. Worlds from

the inside-out.

Really though- it is all imagined.

We cannot know what faces us.

As I face the unknown it is you I want at my side, Joseph

of the Intrepid Heart.

Choice

Of all of the things I think I know about marriage, it is choice that impresses me the most. While we don't choose to fall in love, or when and certainly not with whom - we do choose to keep love, to do the things that sustain it, and we keep expecting to fall into love yet again.

Many of my favorite couples (you know who you are!) are people you wouldn't think would work well together. It is my guess that from the outside Joe and I were an odd match.  This man I keep choosing to spend my life with is as willful as I am. The poem that follows is a rant, a declaration. We choose to use our powers for good.

We will not be torn apart by Wrath or Zest or Zeal.

 

We will not be torn apart

by passion, rather we will be joined

by it. Your water to my fire

we make steam – and power the gears

and pistons of our own valiant

new world. Our machines will fly

like eagles no matter how improbable

they seem. Your fish and my lion

will splash in the sunlight. We will accelerate

into hairpin turns. Your stories will dance the tarantella

around my poems then lean in close

for whispered truths.

We will not be torn apart by resentments,

rather we will hike up our trousers and wade

in and part the waters of them. In their wake

we will discover sand dollars, snail

houses and moon stones. We may not hike

to the top of the ridge hand in hand, but surely

we will stand there together. Look out at high-

country lakes, the ocotillo, the golden eagle hefting

from the boulder, the tiny glittering cities.

We will not be torn apart by passions, rather

we will uncover them. You bring the dynamite

and the blasting caps. I will bring the earplugs

and a nice picnic lunch. After the sediment

settles we’ll eat bread and cheese and sort

our treasure.

Joe in the tent by a lake in Arizona, with our trusty steed standing by.

Our Future

While we cannot know our futures -to paraphrase a poet I know- but it is fun to hatch schemes. In an earlier post I talked about my sadness that our son is growing up and moving on. That sadness is truly counter-balanced by the places Joe and I will go and the treasures we will sort.