That One Time I Joined A Book Club

Okay, so here is a story I need to tell carefully. Let me lay out a few things before I launch into the narrative: two of the people in this book club were lovely, and not all stay-at-home moms are freaks. Okay? Keep these things in mind.

One day, my friend Jenn asked me if I wanted to join a book club. I like Jenn a lot, and I have met a number of her friends, who seem cool. I have never been in a book club, mostly because I generally breeze through a book in a day, and retain no details more complex than, “It was about a family, and it was good.” Jenn, however, assured me that the book club would be more about wine and sociability than hard facts about books, so I said okay.

I can’t remember the title of the first book that we read, but it was about a family, and it was good. Actually, I remember more than that. There were, like, ten kids in the family, they were Finnish-American, and they belonged to a religion that discouraged drinking, music, nail polish, unkind thoughts, and dating outside the religion, among other things.

Aside from me, Jenn, and another nice woman, there were two women who I can only describe as the Stay-At-Home-Clintonville-Moms (or SAHCMs). Immediately upon sitting down (ps, there was no booze. I was promised booze!) the SAHCM began talking about how hard their lives were, you know, being SAHCMs. Now, at this point, I had not mentioned the fact that I had nearly two decades of experience in momitude, so anything they had to say about their spawn was nothing I hadn’t gone through. Not knowing this, they schooled the rest of us on how difficult it was to raise children. “You don’t know the pressure,” the head fuckwad (HF) said at one point. “I have to keep this child ALIVE.”

I believe that, at this point, I rolled my eyes. Lady, put a few door knob covers on doors, get a safety gate, and call it a day. Don’t sell your child on the internet. There’s not a lot to it beyond that. However, the HF SAHCM continued to lament about how the time children spend with their parents in their formative years (I am still, by the way, unsure about which years are formative for a child. I think 20 – 26 are formative years. I am guessing that’s wrong) shapes whether or not the child will become a success or a serial killer. Thoroughly fed up by this point, I said, with a level of dryness that I normally only reserve for very special occasions, that I’d managed to get a child to age 19 without him serial killing anyone, and I’d done it while a) being a single parent, b) working full time, c) getting myself an undergrad and law school degree, d) not buying organic, e) working out five days a week, and f) not acting like a total freak about it. I also mentioned that I’d read somewhere that children who get five quality minutes with their parents every day generally come out well-adjusted and secure.

I could see the SAHCMs look at each other. The other normal woman threw in that she’d read a book about how French parents are totally chill about child-rearing, and how their children end up awesome (and able to pull off slim-legged pants, flats, and red lipstick flawlessly).

There was tension from there on out. In addition their unhealthy obsession with their children, the HF SAHCM was also totally stressed about her marriage. “I get NO time with my husband,” she lamented. Because she was so busy, you know. What was she busy with? Over the next hour, she discussed the three books she was reading, her blogs (yes, she had several), her twitter account, all of her Facebooking duties, and pinning shit on pinterest, all of which centered around how difficult it was to be a SAHCM. At this point, I was in the early stages of PTSD.

Needless to say, I quit the book club a short time later. Furthermore, I've crafted a few simple rules to determine whether or not I will join a book club in the future. They are:

1. People actually have to read and finish the book
2. If one person monopolizes the conversation, they pay the tab
3. It's a book club, not a therapy session
4. Anyone who gives anyone else PTSD is immediately kicked out 
5. It really has to have wine
   
   

Millenials!

One evening, my precious twenty-year-old son was over at my house for a visit. I was watching America’s Next Top Model, and he was simultaneously sending snap chats, on Facebook, texting friends, watching a video online, taking phone calls, and watching the television. At some point, I looked over at him and said, “You know, once you have children, you’re actually going to have to get off of all of your electronics and actually raise them.”

“Nah,” he responded. “There will be an app for that.”

And that’s why I’m super annoyed with Millenials. In case you didn’t read about what Millenials are in this blog, they are people born between 1982 and 2001. They have a reputation for being fantastically self-absorbed and privileged, although I have to say, they are pretty handy with the technology. Now, just as I’m sure there are Canadians who aren’t bastards and Scorpios who aren’t deviants, I am certain that Millenials who are not annoying also exist - but color me skeptical. Here are a few of my gripes about you, the Lamest Generation:

1. You immediately run out and buy BMWs when anything goes your way. Stop buying BMWs! Unless you want the Germans to win.

2. When top level executives at your company say they have an open-door policy, you assume they actually mean it. News flash: they don’t care about your opinion, and they don’t want you in their office. Put your stupid head down and get to work. And I know that work is sometimes, “not what you really want to do.” All I want to do is work out and drink wine, but I don’t feel the need to tell everybody.

3. Speaking of stupid heads: you also think that basic rules of grammar don’t apply to you. And yet they do. They really do.

4. It is not adorable when you bring your infant children into bars. I totally get that you need to drink your shandy with your besties, but it’s no longer about you anymore. The only person who ever made anything of himself after being raised in a bar is Babe Ruth, and the only reason why you even recognize the name Babe Ruth is from the movie the Sandlot. He was a real person!

5. And baseball reminds me of all of your fake trophies. I am just going to break it to you right now: you didn’t earn any of those trophies. You got them because you grew up during a time when everyone was number one and everyone was a winner, and you fell for it. Although thanks for keeping trophy makers in business. Mighty charitable of you.

6. Ugh! Charity! You guys think that you’re actually doing charitable work by hitting the “like” button on Facebook for some stupid cause like, “Wear a red bra to show that you support breast health.” Charity is not a click. Unless you are clicking out dollars from your dollar belt directly into the hands of a charity. But I recommend just writing a check. Wait, do you even know HOW to write a check?

7. Oh, Facebook: changing your profile name from your actual name to a combination of your first and middle name is not going to protect your employers from finding all of those pictures and status updates of your underage binge drinking. Sorry. Actually, not sorry.

8. In other “sorry” related news, you were all raised to believe that just saying sorry erases the stain from your bullying, sexting, law-breaking, self-centeredness, and general putzitude. But I am tired of hearing, “Well, I’m sorry if that bothers you.” Try actually being sorry, rather than just saying it, and fix the things you’ve broken.

9. And, now that I think of it, stop using “bullying” as a synonym for “I am acting like an asshole, and someone just pointed that out to me.” Bullying is a terrible and specific thing; it is not general criticism. If you’re acting like an asshole, people have a right to treat you like an asshole. Try not acting like an asshole.

10. Your reaction to this blog is probably to go cry to your mommy or daddy to write me a strongly worded email. That’s how you made student council/got that cool internship/broke your lease without ramifications/got your last boss fired, right? Cool.

11. Oh, one last thing: stop flat ironing your hair to death, wearing shirts that are a size too small, going to wine night at Giant Eagle, texting on your phone while driving DESPITE THE FACT THAT IT’S CLEARLY AGAINST THE LAW AND HAVEN’T YOU SEEN THOSE COMMERCIALS??? THEY’RE TALKING TO YOU, hogging all of Netflix, making up new forms of social media, loving Johnny Depp, and starting sentences with “I.” Thank you!

Looker

Since I started a blog, I’ve wanted to write something about my unadulterated love for the sisters Williams. Serena and Venus, that is. In my mind, I have always been a six-foot tall take-no-shit black woman, so their success is my success, right? Anyway, every time I try to write something about them, it always comes out like this:

“Serena and Venus are awesome. Like, really, really, really, really, really, really awesome. Totally awesome. They’re so great. Don’t you think they’re great? They are. So great.”

That, as it turns out, makes for a shitty blog, so that’s why you haven’t seen it. HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that I don’t still somewhat-obsessively follow stories about them. So, because I lead the Cats with Knives chapter of the Serena and Venus fan club, I am fully aware that, while I think they are perfect female specimens, others feel very comfortable trash-talking their looks as too tall, too muscular, too black, too heavy, etc. etc. etc. Because Serena and Venus, arguably two of the greatest ever tennis players, in the end, are reduced to their looks.

It seems that this treatment is not limited to my girls, the Williams sisters. Marion Bartoli, the Frenchwoman who just won the ladies singles title at Wimbledon without dropping a set, was described by John Inverdale, a BBC commentator, as a woman who would “never” be “a looker.” Here is a picture of Bartoli, a perfectly-lovely human being.

Inverdale, who looks like this, typifies the societal illness that allows people to reduce a woman to her looks, regardless of achievement, based on an impossible-to-meet standard of beauty. Any accomplishment that a woman has is invariably followed by an unflattering description of her looks. Even objectively gorgeous women, like Beyonce, Gisele Bundchen, and Angelina Jolie have been described, in order, as, “ugly without makeup,” “horse-faced,” and “ugly from the waist-down.” If these women are ugly, what chance does an even modestly less-attractive woman face?

Here’s what’s what: I am not going to sit here and point to things that make the Williams sisters or Marion Bartoli attractive. They don’t need me to do that. But what I will say is this: every time we let a woman be reduced to nothing based on a distorted standard of beauty, we are sending a message out to the world that this is how we should view the women in our lives, including ourselves. And, when we do that, we tell the young women of the world that, first and foremost, they need to be attractive, which is why 13-year-olds sit around in boob-baring shirts and enough makeup to spackle a house, making duck faces on the internet instead of getting their asses on a sports team or student council. Jesus Christ people, didn’t Whitney teach us that the children are our future? We need to show them all the beauty they have left inside – to give them a sense of pride!
So, as a woman who won’t use the camera installed on my laptop at work to have meetings with my distant colleagues because the angle makes my jaw look like Jay Leno's, I say this to Venus, Serena, and Marion: you have the bravery to excel at what you do, knowing that the world is watching, and harshly judging your hair, faces, bodies, outfits, and any other manner of unrelated things. Strong, confident, athletic, and undaunted IS beautiful. Here’s looking at you, ladies.