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