Monday, January 28, 2008

The Matron is on a Philosophical Roll

My previous post about race has me all riled up. Actually, it's not the post so much but the statistic--I'm still in shock. Shame on us, Minnesota.

Warning: Heavy Feminist Hand Ahead

Here's a poem by Joan Larkin:

A Kiss

The hardness
with which you still hate
your body
is a kiss for the fathers.


This is old-time, down-home feminism of those bra-burning, free-loving sixties. Larkin's poems are about rape and incest. Hers was a body that suffered the worst our culture has to offer women.

But take away the word 'fathers' and I can acknowledge how very hard it is to be truly 100% comfortable in this female flesh--flesh that both traps and baits, is desired and reviled, sells and is sold.

I threw out the family scale a few months back. Actually, John did it for me because I didn't have the strength.

Do I feel liberated? Well. . . . now I have a pair of jeans that I must try on every single morning to insure they fit exactly like they did the day before.

Boy, I need all kinds of revolutions today.

9 comments:

Jocelyn said...

See how much good info I get when I come here? I'd not read that poem before. It sums up (in this "post-feminist" world) how much power and energy we body haters hand over so easily.

I have had several frenzied weeks, to the point that I said to my husband, "I'm so stressed out and generally whacked that I haven't even thought about my damn weight and how much I hate it for two weeks." His response was, "That's kind of healthy. Maybe you need to work more and stay stressed."

Jodi Anderson said...

"Well. . . . now I have a pair of jeans that I must try on every single morning to insure they fit exactly like they did the day before."

Thank you for saying that because it made me laugh and I REALLY needed to laugh. :)

Lisa Wheeler Milton said...

Bring on your feminism. We can take it!

Mrs. G. said...

I know these jeans. I have them and I hate their stinking patriarchal guts.

Tootsie Farklepants said...

Perhaps a march on Washington is in order? You know, all the women? Setting their jeans on fire? I would totally do that.

Minnesota Matron said...

Well, well, Tootsie. Now that would be a sight! I'd love to see us, depanting by the thousands. !

Anonymous said...

So hard to love your own body, isn't it? Why can't we be as forgiving of 30+ year old women's bodies as we are of toddler's bodies or young children's bodies, or even babies' bodies (which, when one thinks about it, are kind of the weirdest looking of the bunch...)?

Karen Jensen said...

It is so hard to be liberated. Really.

Karen said...

Can you imagine how different the world might be if women devoted as much time/thought/energy to cultivating their minds as they do to their bodies?