Because I'm feeling a bit under the weather, I thought I might write out some feelings with the old grade school standby, the haiku. Please, enjoy.
Surgical fuckups
left me feeling freezing cold
hurray for blankets!
(I had my surgery this week. As they were removing the ovarian cyst, the whole thing burst, releasing some sort of disgusting goop into my lady cave. It took 16 liters of fluid to rinse me out, which lowered my body temperature and had me shivering and cursing in the recovery room. One of the nurses told me "there's no need for that kind of language," which is complete bullshit. There's always a need for that kind of language.)
The cyst burst open.
Food comparisons are gross,
But way too common.
(The doctor called what came out of the burst cyst "like rice, or cottage cheese, or something," and hadn't seen anything like it before. As a fan of both rice and cottage cheese, I wish he had compared it to something else.)
Haikus are wicked
For painkiller addled brains.
Also, I love toast.
(It took a full 24 hours for me to eat solid food. Everyone who knows me is shaking their head in disbelief that I went so long without a snack.)
Way too much bad pain
through the stitched-up belly parts
Bring on comfy pants!
(I cried when I tried to get out of bed for the first time. Total red-faced sobbing, because I was so cramped up that I couldn't even extend my legs. For one brief moment, I was 100% convinced that I was going to spend the rest of my life in the fetal position, weeping and clutching at the nurse. Not a high point in my life.)
I feel way better
than I felt Thursday morning.
Anxiety sucks.
(I've been dreading this for months, and now that I'm firmly in the "lets see how much this hurts" phase of things, I've got to admit that I'm so happy the surgery's over.)
An ovary's gone,
I guess it was pretty wrecked.
Still. That leaves just one.
(I'm actually kind of sad that they had to take one of my ovaries. I can still have kids and get my period and all that, but it feels a little like I'm living without a reproductive backup now. In a way, I know that's kind of a silly way to feel, but I feel like guys with one nut might know a little something about this.)
Through this whole process,
I have been given the best
people I could want.
(Seriously, everyone I know has been so on-side with me and this whole thing. I've had the best luck with my family and my friends-family in terms of getting to talk about it, having company to appointments, having folks just be there to listen and to hold my hand. I was so intensely nervous about this whole thing, and I'll cop to be a bit of a drama queen as a result. But there were so many people around to make me laugh, make me feel better, make me feel loved. I'm a lucky woman.)
I am sleepy now
Sorry about this odd post.
These meds kick my ass.
(Snore...time for me to fall back asleep.)
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
The Skinny On Showtime
Dear Showtime's Executive Producers and Casting Agents;
Dudes. (I assume you're mostly dudes.) I dig your shows. Weeds? That's a great show! It's funny! Andy Botwin makes me giggle, and you got Zooey Deschanel to come on and talk about her period. Mega props. Mary-Louise Parker's character has great clothes, and Celia is one of the best filthy mouths on TV. Californication? That's kind of a trainwreck, to be honest, but it's watchable and Duchovny, to no one's surprise, makes a pretty decent asshole. Dexter is a good show, what with the killing and the deadpan voiceover and the Michael C. Hall being all scary and sexy. Dexter is great; you can practically feel the Miami heat radiating through your television tubes. It makes a nice contrast to Dexter's icy emotional state.
Those are just the shows I watch; you have a great lineup. The Tudors, The L Word, Nurse Jackie, Queer As Folk - all shows with serious critical cred backing them up. People love your shows. Not just the critics - regular TV-watching folks, people who used to be loyal to HBO, are checking out your lineup. You done good.
On behalf of the television-watching public, I implore you just one small thing. Don't change a thing about your writing stable or your settings (I love Dexter's Miami, for instance), keep your fantastic actors, and definitely give whoever does your costumes a raise. But please, for the love of toast, feed your actresses a sandwich.
Showtime is a cable channel, which means they can flash titties around like it ain't no thang. But the Showtime ladies are uniformly skinny, which means they aren't really flashing a lot of glorious breasts. Most of what I see seems to be ribcage. There are a couple exceptions - Celia on Weeds isn't a size four, and we've seen her rack a few times; LaGuerta from Dexter stays fully clothed, but isn't a tiny slip of a girl. But by and large (or small), the women on Showcase programming are seriously skinny.
I'm not mad at skinny, but I do get annoyed when it's presented as the only option for women under the age of, like, thirty-five. Showtime's men get to be fat, bald, creased and disheveled. They're allowed to be imperfect physically, because their characters are imperfect. But while the same imperfections of spirit are bestowed upon the women, they're still expected to be thin, young, and smooth. And thin. Very, very thin. Obese Americans now make up one-third of the population; two in three are overweight. But those people aren't represented on my TV screen. Why not? Hell, even average weight isn't shown too often; it's the 18.5 BMIs that populate the TV land. It normalizes a seriously abnormal aesthetic.
Like I said; not hating on the skinny. Jealous? Sure. I've struggled with wanting to be thinner, but my body has insisted on being this weight since I was 22. It's my destiny. It's not a bad one. I used to think ribcages and protruding clavicles were attractive, but it recently occurred to me to start thinking like a straight dude. Sure, some of them like skinny girls...but a lot of them like big racks, round asses, tight leg muscles. They don't mind a bit of convexity in a woman's stomach. I'm not saying that straight men love obese women (although some do, and although that can be kind of complicated, props to them) - just that having a shape and having some meat on our bones isn't a bad thing. It's actually pretty hot.
But I wish I saw more women on TV who weren't teensy weensy little girls. I want women. I want breasts, hips, asses. Maybe even - dare I say it? - a stomach. Showtime, if you're going to flash some ta-tas, I want them to be, you know, real ones. Worth it. I'm tired of counting ribs - give me something sexy.
Dudes. (I assume you're mostly dudes.) I dig your shows. Weeds? That's a great show! It's funny! Andy Botwin makes me giggle, and you got Zooey Deschanel to come on and talk about her period. Mega props. Mary-Louise Parker's character has great clothes, and Celia is one of the best filthy mouths on TV. Californication? That's kind of a trainwreck, to be honest, but it's watchable and Duchovny, to no one's surprise, makes a pretty decent asshole. Dexter is a good show, what with the killing and the deadpan voiceover and the Michael C. Hall being all scary and sexy. Dexter is great; you can practically feel the Miami heat radiating through your television tubes. It makes a nice contrast to Dexter's icy emotional state.
Those are just the shows I watch; you have a great lineup. The Tudors, The L Word, Nurse Jackie, Queer As Folk - all shows with serious critical cred backing them up. People love your shows. Not just the critics - regular TV-watching folks, people who used to be loyal to HBO, are checking out your lineup. You done good.
On behalf of the television-watching public, I implore you just one small thing. Don't change a thing about your writing stable or your settings (I love Dexter's Miami, for instance), keep your fantastic actors, and definitely give whoever does your costumes a raise. But please, for the love of toast, feed your actresses a sandwich.
Showtime is a cable channel, which means they can flash titties around like it ain't no thang. But the Showtime ladies are uniformly skinny, which means they aren't really flashing a lot of glorious breasts. Most of what I see seems to be ribcage. There are a couple exceptions - Celia on Weeds isn't a size four, and we've seen her rack a few times; LaGuerta from Dexter stays fully clothed, but isn't a tiny slip of a girl. But by and large (or small), the women on Showcase programming are seriously skinny.
I'm not mad at skinny, but I do get annoyed when it's presented as the only option for women under the age of, like, thirty-five. Showtime's men get to be fat, bald, creased and disheveled. They're allowed to be imperfect physically, because their characters are imperfect. But while the same imperfections of spirit are bestowed upon the women, they're still expected to be thin, young, and smooth. And thin. Very, very thin. Obese Americans now make up one-third of the population; two in three are overweight. But those people aren't represented on my TV screen. Why not? Hell, even average weight isn't shown too often; it's the 18.5 BMIs that populate the TV land. It normalizes a seriously abnormal aesthetic.
Like I said; not hating on the skinny. Jealous? Sure. I've struggled with wanting to be thinner, but my body has insisted on being this weight since I was 22. It's my destiny. It's not a bad one. I used to think ribcages and protruding clavicles were attractive, but it recently occurred to me to start thinking like a straight dude. Sure, some of them like skinny girls...but a lot of them like big racks, round asses, tight leg muscles. They don't mind a bit of convexity in a woman's stomach. I'm not saying that straight men love obese women (although some do, and although that can be kind of complicated, props to them) - just that having a shape and having some meat on our bones isn't a bad thing. It's actually pretty hot.
But I wish I saw more women on TV who weren't teensy weensy little girls. I want women. I want breasts, hips, asses. Maybe even - dare I say it? - a stomach. Showtime, if you're going to flash some ta-tas, I want them to be, you know, real ones. Worth it. I'm tired of counting ribs - give me something sexy.
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