Dem Bones

Yahoo today had these pictures of Jaclyn Smith and Linda Carter, citing how amazing they still look. Agreed. But they’re from a time when it was in fashion to have good bone structure. The It gals of the 70s and early 80s all had killer cheek bones and jaw lines that could cut glass. First, that always ages well. Second, if they do have work done, they’ve got something solid to stretch the old canvas over.

Lots of the popular girls today are either the soft and girlish look (what a friend of mine calls a bowl of oatmeal with 2 raisins for eyes) like Miley Cyrus or Emma Watson (or Lindsay Lohan to watch the process in fast forward) or they have a some bone structure and stay skinny enough for it too look prominent (Kristen Stewart or Katy Perry). Either way, once the collagen goes, they’re going to look like a balloon with all the air let out. Then the only thing you can do is plump things back up, which can be pretty dicey in results (hello, Meg Ryan Queen of the Trout Pout and the wax statue that once was Nicole Kidman).

Not that there’s much else they can do about it, other than enjoy the collagen while it lasts and then sand bag the River Styx as long as they can. Either the bone structure gods smiled on your cradle or they didn’t. It's also why some women who were really to harsh as young women to be truly pretty (like Glenn Close and Meryl Streep are aging better than their more conventional peers). Me, I was not blessed with much in the way of cheek bones and no jaw line to speak of. But I was blessed with a solid schnoz. So I’m relying on it to act like a tent pole to hold things up while what’s left of the sand trickles to the lower end of the hour glass.

You gotta fight for your right to Tea Party

It seems like a lot of the next election’s debate is rolling up to one question: do people have a legal right to do stupid stuff? It started out as a debate about government infringement on personal liberties. But then I think the Tea Partiers found that they had to back things that they don’t personally like, like freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Well, they do like freedom of religion as long as you’re free to choose their religion. Other religions? Not so much. Tea Partiers loooooovvvvveee their liberties. As long as they don’t include gay marriage or porn or drugs or abortion or civil rights.

And part of that has to be that if they actually love those liberties too, they’d find themselves agreeing with liberals – which, whoa, that would be freaky for them. Can’t have that. So, the debate is turning to freedoms that they can still get in an argument about. Like their right to smoke, eat junk food, drive gas guzzlers and use incandescent light bulbs. Yes, there’s a fight in Congress about the governments efforts to force tax-payers to phase out the use of incandescent lightbulbs. Halogens may last longer and cost less in electricity to use, but dang-it they’re weird. And possibly gay. And no hardcore conservative wants a cheap, queer light bulb in their house. And the damn liberals want to argue with them about it.

And it seems like the elements of government control they hate most are the ones that some people would say are just trying to stop them from doing stupid stuff. To themselves. And frankly, I’m having a hard time arguing with them. If they want to be fat, emphysemic, poor and sitting in the dark, that’s their choice. Frankly, some of the things that the government thought were a bad idea in the past (interracial marriage, abolition, women’s suffrage, suffering a witch to live among us), actually turned out to be pretty good things in the light of a more reasonable age. And somebody had to have the courage to speak up for them (“Hey, maybe we shouldn’t burn Goody Barlow for hexing the Wilson’s cow”) in order to change the world. So maybe the Tea Partiers are right to fight boldly for their right to eat and uplight as they choose. Maybe Twinkies and incandescent bulbs will be discovered to cure cancer. And you’ll have Michelle Bachman to thank for saving them from destruction.

Applause, applause

My youngest niece. Bless her heart. I have 3. Each as different as it’s possible for females to be. But the youngest, well she’s something else.

So Monday we had the big family cookout. Everybody is milling around, munching, talking, cooking, kibitzing about other peoples’ cooking, you know, a cookout. This left the kids with pretty much nothing to do but be kids. And one of the things that was laying around from the party box (yes, there’s a party box), was giant load of plastic leis, glow necklaces and mardi gras beads (What? That’s not what you have in your party box?). So, most of the kids have one or two decorations, and go about their business. The 12-year old proceeds to make elaborate outfits out of plastic flotsam, including off-the-shoulder tops, head pieces and roman sandals. And then starts a mini America’s Got Talent competition in the living room, where she was host, judge and contestant.

Now, I’ve always said, if the kid ever gets a taste of a real audience, that’s it. She’ll never willingly step off of a stage again. The only reason that she’s not experienced it yet is that she’s under the mistaken impression that she’s SHY. Huh-huh. I have politely refrained from disabusing her of this mad notion by not saying, “Sure, kid, pull the other one.” Eventually, it will happen. School play. Glee club. Amateur night at the Improv. Something. She’ll get one taste of the good stuff – applause. And it will be like heroin to her poor attention starved system. Because really, we’re just her family and there’s no way we can compete with an actual auditorium. Meryl Streep, watch your back. I hope she'll remember to thank Aunt Julie when she gets her first Oscar.

Cyranose

So last Friday, I went to see Cyrano de Bergerac at the outdoor Shakespeare fest. Yes, I know. Not Shakespeare. Go with it.

And somewhere in the middle of the death scene, I realized how much differently I viewed this story as an adult compared to as a teenager. I remember loving the movie when I was a weepy teenager. Cyrano is quite the swashbuckler. I loved me a swashbuckler as a teen. (Still do.) And the Dallas Shakes Cyrano is a devilishly handsome son-of-a-gun with a way with a sword and a word. I was content. In spite of the fact that that the play is done outdoors. In the summer. On the surface of the sun.

The big thing that’s changed is that I loved the tragedy of the whole thing back then. The ever-so worthy Cyrano, brilliant, honorable, tres gentil, denied happiness with his beloved because of his horrible disfigurement (and can I just sidebar that quite obviously the French don’t share our proportional assumption based on a man and his nose? Otherwise C de B would be quite the popular boy). Yet he stays devoted to her, quietly in the background, selflessly assuring her happiness. I would have been reduced to a blubbering effluent mess when I was around 16. And then, as he dies at the hands of his enemies, the truth is finally revealed – boo hoo hoo hoo hoo! So romantic. The end.

What really? You deny yourself happiness because God didn’t give you the perfect little button nose of your dreams? That’s it? Dumbass. If she can’t see beyond the tip of your nose (ha!), then she’s not your girl. And she ain’t all that in the first place. Get off your damn knee, and go find yourself some happy. And Roxanne? I’d have been pretty effin’ pissed if I found out that he’d been basically lying to me all that time. And let me stay in a goddamn nunnery 10 freaking years! When he could have been writing me kickass sonnets and making like French bunnies? IDIOT! I don’t care if you’re dying. Slappity-slap-slap! Over a nose? Please.

In fact, my teenage self could probably have used a slappity-slap-slap too. Seriously. There are some things that are better left to the pubescent.

Jill & Chase

This came up because of a specific male friend who I looked at and though, “You know, you really need to go make friends with a lesbian.”

Though we’re treading into generalization land, there is a documented phenomenon of the straight woman/gay man friendship. The Will & Grace thing. Been there, and been the beneficiary of a very nice little symbiosis. I’m not sure what my gay boyfriends may have received for being friends with me (other than my kickass personality and superior disco bunny skills). But I do know what I get out of it; I get the benefit of the male perspective. From a totally disinterested party. There’s no hidden agenda designed to present the male of the species in the best light. Or the worst light either. They’ll call a dog a dog. But also explain why some behavior might not be quite as woofish as it appears in a man’s way of thinking. Sure, you can get the male perspective from a straight guy friend. But I don’t know. I always think there’s some varnish on it. Either there’s a “I don’t currently want to sleep with you, but you might get breast plants or we could both end up drunk together, so I don’t want to burn any bridges” element, or a guy doesn’t want to throw a bro under the bus by revealing the He-Man Secrets of the Universe. But with the gay guy, he knows and he’s willing to tell.

Straight guys just don’t have that kind of synergy with lesbians, for the most part. I don’t know why. They seem to like a lot of the same things. And if there’s anyone in this world who could use a window on the opposite sex, it’s straight guys. Take this friend of mine. He’s got woman problems. And I could tell him that she’s bananas and stringing him along. But somehow he never seems to hear that kind of thing for me. Maybe he’s busy wondering what I’d look like with breast implants and a bottle of Jack in my hand. But if he had a good lesbian in his life, she’d be able to tell him these things and he’d know that she’s just looking out for him. In the words of Henry Higgins, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" A lesbian could have explained it for him.