House of Eratosthenes

Blog-sister Cassy, now hitting top-gear in the Mommy-phase of her existence, has not made the cut in the hottest conservative blogger ladies ranking this year. And she’s cool with that.

I don’t regret, not for a second, having my children, and my body is a reminder of that. I can marvel over the fact that I created three beautiful lives, grew them and nurtured them and birthed them. That doesn’t mean that I can look at, say, Miss Indiana with the “normal” body and not think, man, I would kill for a stomach like hers. But that’s why I work. That’s why I’ve started running. And I know, I may never have a flat stomach again, the stretch marks will never completely fade. That’s OK. I just also think it’s fake to act as if I’m always 100% happy with that reality. Wouldn’t it be exhausting, to every day have to put up this façade? Or I don’t know, maybe for some lucky people it’s not a façade. But for me, it would be, and I’d rather be honest. I don’t love the way I look every day. I don’t hate it either. My body is what it is, and my feelings towards it are as nuanced and complicated as my feelings about most things are. And I think that we, as moms struggling with our post-baby bodies, are allowed to feel those nuanced, complicated feelings.

A lot of other women would be smart to follow her lead. There is, “It is what it is, and I’m okay with that” and then there is, “Who’s to say four hundred pounds at five-foot-nothing isn’t sexy?” The former is healthy. The latter is the opposite, and stark raving nuts.

There’s something going on here on Planet Man that a lot of women will never figure out; something about the way the fellas do things that is good and right. With us, it’s not so much the stomach — although in some cases, like mine, perhaps it should be. No, the stuff that is gone forever, that we know isn’t coming back no matter what, that everybody sees coming a mile and a half away is: the hair on the front of the dome. Not only is it a permanent change, it just screams masculinity-in-retreat.

But men don’t sweat it. Some do, of course. Mostly actors and public figures, who could make the convincing case that their wigs and hair plugs are more about safeguarding a firm and vital financial asset than soothing their tender egos. Most dudes, though, do pretty much what I do and take the Cassy approach. There’s fantasy, there’s reality, whatever’s going on with the scalp is what’s going on. It is what it is.

Dudes are lucky. We have always lived in that world. In childhood, they draw up comic books for us and make cartoons for us about muscle-dudes with enormous biceps and huge pectorals, comforting the afflicted and defending the defenseless; it partially works on us, but for the most part, doesn’t. Even if we get into the cartoon, to the point of wanting to dress up like the guy on Halloween, the rest of the year we go about our business in our torn jeans and tee shirts with spindly arms sticking out. Here and there some boy will get body-conscious, work out, and show results. But those guys tend to do that because they need to, they’re athletes, or want to show off — either way, they’re doing it for them. Even they, are happy in their skins. Superman and Captain Marvel aren’t making them feel inadequate, or I sure hope they’re not because you can take it to the bank nobody’s making a fuss about it.

It’s the separation between fantasy and reality. It’s the healthy lack of apprehension when another visual specimen, clearly superior, makes an appearance. Which is gonna happen. Girls could learn a lot about what boys know about this.

Blue Boots Our wives and girlfriends take a second look at Antonio Banderas or Daniel-Day Lewis or Hugh Grant or James Marsden, we laugh it off. Why wouldn’t we? It means more sex for us. We don’t weep and wail and gnash our teeth, wishing we were James Marsden. Who wants to be that guy? In the movies, his girlfriends are always cheating on him.

Speaking of comic books, looks like Wonder Woman’s costume is going to be the motorcycle-jacket and clown-tights thing, which cuts down by quite a bit my budget for seeing it. Not so much because Gal Gadot won’t be showing leg, although there is that. But this makes it a three-fer: Superman, f00ked-with for no reason identifiable. I’ve seen the Cavill film, own it, don’t undrestand why a reboot was needed. Ditto Batman. As one Facebook friend said about her costume, “…it needs to stop at the tops of her thighs. Or it’s not Wonder Woman.” Feminists won’t ever come around on this, but it’s really true. Wonder Woman in a catsuit looks like a zillion other butt-kicking females, some with superpowers and some just martial-arts experts. Putting her in pants is a sure sign that someone has had influence, who doesn’t know or care enough to be able to tell you anything about braclets, an invisible plane or a lasso. And her presence is going to be a crushing bore. It’s the “You find sexy what we tell you to find sexy” thing. And, with or without bare legs, it doesn’t make for fun movies. Remember those, movies that were supposed to be fun? When we were inspired to find heroes and heroines inspiring, not bullied into finding them that way?

What’s going on here, lately, is guilt. And control. It’s hard to control people who aren’t feeling guilty. It really all comes down to that: If we feel guilty, we are easily controlled. Guilt for having a flat stomach. Or, not having one. Or, appreciating one on someone else. Biceps. Hair. Thighs. Guilt-free people wear swimsuits to the beach this time of year, no matter how it looks, knowing full well that we’re all built to deteriorate and eventually dangle some appendages that will look as bad as they’re ever gonna look, because that’s the effect time has on all of us.

And they don’t tell total strangers what they are & are not supposed to find sexy. When they’re the ones being told, they ignore it. That’s how grown-ups behave. It was not that long ago that this was all obvious, to pretty much everyone. Somewhere along the line, sometime around forty years ago, it became very fashionable to single out people and condescendingly intone something to the effect of “[blank] has a thought in his/her head that he should not be having,” and we started to shame each other’s minds as well as bodies. There’s nothing modern or sophisticated about this. It comes off like a sort of never-ending witch-trial, actually.

Update 6/22/14: And, on the “20 hottest conservative men” side of things, I didn’t make the cut again. I’m fine with that.

“The latter is the opposite, and stark raving nuts.”
I remember being…”coached?” “lambasted?” “verbally assaulted?”… in a college debate class by a little ball of fat. As a conservative, I was always placed on the side of right facing off against a rabid liberal fan base, with the half chosen for the week to be my backup sadly and half-heartedly “backing me up” by agreeing with the opposition.

I don’t remember the debate topic, and I don’t know why her verbal assault devolved into it, but I do remember being told that in ancient times, being as wide around as you were tall was what every woman aspired to be and was highly sought at as beautiful. Several times I was informed she was “perfectly healthy,” despite hearing the constant wheezing, slipping on sweat following her into the room, and the horrific funk rolling off her body untouched by the evils of corporate antiperspirant.

I still wonder if, after all these debilitating years, she is still as “healthy” as she used to claim?
- P_Ang | 06/25/2014 @ 14:55
There’s certainly something going on with conservatives, liberals and standards. When the outcome of an exercise fails the established standard, apart from ignoring the shortfall you have exactly two options: Reform the exercise so that the outcome might fulfill the standard the next time, which is the conservative option, or devalue the standard which is the liberal option.

I can see a legitimate protest against that in that the standard-devaluers are not acting as liberals, but rather as bureaucrats. Perhaps that is correct. But, there is the second Conquest rule; you can certainly be both a lefty and a bureaucrat, the two are by no means incompatible, and in many ways synonymous. Also, fulfillment of a standard usually results in some sort of award — a cert, license, trophy, some other sort of token. A policy, or exercise of a policy, intended to distribute those things could certainly be characterized as “conservative” or “liberal” and this would be consistent with general usage of the terms.

Then, there is the matter of examples. We certainly do see a lot of liberals, like your debate-butterball, working hard to reform standards so that some specific case, or class of cases, can be positioned on the good side of the boundary.
- mkfreeberg | 06/26/2014 @ 03:56

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