This has been percolating in the back of my mind for a little while. Still in progress.
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part one
Oak Falls, Ohio. Sunday afternoon.
If you were to walk (fly?)
by my window at any given time between Friday afternoon and the wee
hours of Sunday night/Monday morning, my guess is that you'd probably
hear the somewhat unsettling sound of juicy fruit being savagely
chopped.
What is this — Annoying Orange?
Slice and chop.
Slice, slice.
Slice and chop.
Sometimes,
as I wait for my laptop to load, I play silly games on my cell phone,
because listening to its rumble is like a sedative. This mundane ordeal
is rather dull, so I won't delve much into it. Instead, I can insert a
"5 minutes" or, "An eternity later" — Spongebob card, and you'll still
get the point. It is a terrible, terrible wait until the damn thing
loads. (Fuck you, Windows Vista. Sincerely, the world.)
I should
probably introduce myself, because you are a real person and not a
diary, and since you are reading this you probably need this
information.
So, I am Olivia — like Detective Benson, from Law & Order,
except I was born before the show started — but no one except my dad
when he's pissed off with me calls me that. So, you can't really
mentally call me Olivia. Everyone calls me Liv, which is short and cute
and reminds me less of olives. Not that olives are bad or anything. In
fact, I quite like them. But I don't think people like their names to
sound like food. Unless they're Kevin Bacon. In that case, it just adds
to the awesome.
Um, what else? Well, I'm a senior… I write a lot…
Oh, yeah. I actually aspire to become a writer in the future. Like, an
actual writer. I mean, in these days, anyone with an Internet connection
can consider themselves writers. You can have your own personal blog,
or a news blog, a fashion blog, or a sports blog. You can write
fanfiction and post it online, or write long comments on other people's
blogs. You can fish a picture from Google Images and put a silly,
"thoughtful" caption underneath. You can write about what the "flavor of
the month" wore at the such and such award show. And you can still
consider yourself a writer.
But I don't want to be that
kind of writer. I want to study journalism or creative writing at a
place like NYU and work as a freelance writer. Write for the New Yorker,
or Time Magazine, or The New York Times. I honestly hope I don't end up
giving atrocious and offensive sex advice for Cosmo. Because, let's
face it, you don't get many breaks in journalism if you're a woman.
The
problem is that I detest school. Not in the way most students do: Whaa,
I have a book report, and a quiz, and a project on some stupid
historical event that I don't give a crap about. It is more like: The
"knowledge" I am gaining is bullshit, and I probably won't need it
anyway.
That's when I get depressed and angry.
To be
completely frank with you, today the precise cause of my bitch-ass-ness —
and, yes, I am using a word coined by Diddy, circa Making the Band
— isn't the low growling of my slowly dying Antec. That would be a
petty reason to whine and moan about. It's just the world we are all
cohabiting — it is filled with ignorant, complacent, conformist
assholes.
Let me break this down for you:
• I don't like
when people sham other people — whether it be a race issue, a gender
issue, a sexual orientation issue, or a weight issue,
• people seem to be under the impression that there is only one ideal, one role model/lifestyle they should follow, which brings me to my next point,
•
undermining a woman because she doesn't eke out your requirements of
the "Perfect Female" (according to the collective second head of all
men) is not cool.
I am not confrontational, admittedly. I
sometimes like to keep my opinion to myself, because there is nothing
forcing me to express it. (So, yeah, Jess — I applaud you for spewing a
steaming pile of crap in front of class.) But, boy, when you boast
something that offends me…
My father tells me that people have
their own views and the right to express them, and that I should respect
that. But you know what? I have the right to dissent. Their opinion
doesn't have to be mine, also.
"… condemn the media for
perpetuating these unrealistic — and, frankly, offensive — ideals and
presenting them as exemplars worth following. Thank you."
That was
the moment when Mr. Dunn ought to have asked if anyone had anything to
add. Because, then, my hand would shoot up like an arrow (okay, that was
a hackneyed metaphor, and for that I apologize) and basically hand
Jessica Stewart's ass to her.
I would tell her that by criticizing
the supposed exemplar media endorse, she was being a hypocrite. That by
getting offended when a person gets called fat, she was suggesting that
being fat is something no one should ever aspire to become. That saying
women with no curves aren't real women and that men essentially
determine how we should feel about ourselves was invective. And then
someone would mutter under their breath about "fuckin' feminists". And
Jessica would emphatically proclaim something along the lines of: "I'm
no longer speaking to you" and "I am twelve".
But none of this happened, because Mr. Dunn didn't ask if anyone had anything to add.
What
I meant to say is that some things hit a little too close to home. I'm
going to tell you an interesting story — or dull and childish, depending
on your definition of interesting. As a child, I've been told who I am
supposed to be, how I am supposed to look, and how I am supposed to act
to fit into society's accepted norm. Family, friends, teachers,
acquaintances, strangers — everyone somehow feels this strange need to
patronize my life. I have this theory (shut up, I'm serious) that people
are control freaks; if what they have is less than ultimate control,
they freak out. Hence the 'freak' part. When something or someone doesn't comport with their idea of 'norm', they are obligated by the law of nature to intervene.
So,
I'm asking you: how about we just stop telling people how they should
look like, or what they should eat or wear, or how to act in a way that
pleases us?
tbc
