The Stepford Wife.

Just relax,
And allow the social the rules to guide you.
And interject,
At opportune times.
The powers that be,
Feed you your lines.

Well-mannered, good.
Does what she should.
Well read,
Well bred,
That pretty head.
Alright.
Polite.

Just smile,
As their words are closing in around you.
And genuflect,
When they come near.
Just grit your teeth,
Consumed with fear.

Ritual absurd,
Seen and not heard.
Heard and not seen,
A tainted dream.
Well-mannered, good.
Does what she should.
Well read,
Well bred.
A joke instead?

Alright. Polite.

Self-Critique


This entry will not have a resolution.

I will not tie up loose ends, or weave some fabric of meaning from the frayed bits.

I will fight against my tendency to cram each and every experience into the thesis-antithesis-synthesis framework. I will not turn this blog into a Chicken Soup for the Soul-esque space where every story ends on a hopeful and moralistic upturn.

Because we don’t always get the weekly gym pass. And sometimes we go through life not realizing why it is that our bras don’t quite fit.

But fighting this tendency won’t be easy.

I’m a resolution addict and I hate ambiguity.

In my mock cross-examinations, I always asked that one final question too many. That extra question that was supposed to nail the witness down, ended up alerting her to my theory and allowed her to wiggle away.

I’m compelled to finish the sentences that people leave hanging.

I ask people to lay all their cards on the table before they even realize they have a deck in their lap.

On the other hand, maybe I’m unhealthily fighting against an innately human tendency. Doesn’t this desire for meaning, resolution, and clarity define our existence and explain why so many turn to religion and spirituality?

Shit! Did you see what I just did? Just there. Just above. I wrote that turning-point phrase. Under normal circumstances this is the paradigmatic shift that happens somewhere in the middle of my essay that allows all pieces to fall into place and tumble down the logical gradient into some point of clarity.

I decide to try on a double A bra. I break through the robotic exterior of the gym introductress.

The paradigm shift occurs, so said Thomas Kuhn (albeit in the context of science), when the bits and pieces of observed information no longer fit into one’s current model. In order to achieve cohesion and resolution, there is a paradigm change - a new model is created that can reconcile the dissonant observations.

Before all this paradigm shift stuff, there was plain old-fashioned rationalization. Things don’t make sense? No closure? No problem, just rationalize. You’ll ultimately come up with some conclusion that allows you to go on without that unsettling uncertainty to ruin your day.

No. I will remain strong in my fight against closure.

Again, normally at this point I would write something about my new found realization about the importance of embracing ambiguity. I might relate an anecdote about my photography instructor’s perceptive comment about my obsession with contrast. Or maybe I would take the easy-but-true route of criticizing North American politics. You’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists.

But that again, would edge me closer to resolution. I won’t do it.

The only problem with writing this way, is that I’m not sure when I’m done.

Livin’ the Good Life

The greeter at the gym actually called me “fresh meat.”

Then, before I could ask for the membership rates, I was whisked off to the far regions of the gym. I found myself sitting in a dark corner across from Karen, my gym introductress.

She handed me a book and told me it was mine to keep, just for coming into the gym.

On the cover of the book was a terrifying photograph of what appeared to be an 80-year-old man doing a push up. His smiled like a Cheshire cat and his teeth gleamed iridescent blue/white. He had those botoxy expressionless eyes that made him look like a cross between Chucky and a wax figurine.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Oh,” swooned Karen, who tilted her head and caressed the cover, “that’s the founder of our gym. This gym is not just a gym. It is a lifestyle. This book will introduce you to that way of life. It’s kind of, like, inspiring.”

Sorry to digress, but is it even possible to buy a product or service without purchasing a lifestyle? In Naomi Klein’s book No Logo she discusses the Starbucks phenomenon and quotes the CEO as admitting (actually boasting) that their coffee is no better than any other coffee on the market. We pay a premium at Starbucks, so he argues, because we are buying our own little piece of Starbucks lifestyle. (I must admit, it is a lifestyle that I have bought into in a big way).

“Um, no thanks. I mean, I’m sure it is a great book, but I have lots of reading to do for work and..”

Karen’s face flushed momentarily with hurt, “Suit yourself.” And she grabbed the book from the table and ceremoniously placed it under the giant clip of her clipboard.

Tour time.

Karen paraded me around the gym in a mechanical way. She seemed to have a personal anecdote for every machine along the way. Most of her stories began like this:

“I remember, when I was like you, first starting out and I had never used machine X…”

I was beginning to wonder whether Karen herself was a machine.

I asked Karen if we could just skip the equipment and head to the group exercise facility.

“I don’t really like exercise machines. They kind of freak me out,” I told her

“Freak you out?” I could see that this comment had thrown Karen into a state of severe cognitive dissonance. Her robo-mind could not retrieve the Gym-endorsed response:

100 Print = “this is our state-of-the-art thigh master”
200 If n$ = I use thigh masters, goto 400
300 If n$ = I don’t use thigh masters, goto 500
400 Print = “I remember when I was starting out on the thigh master..”
500 Print = “I remember when I didn’t use the thigh master”
n$ = “I don’t like machines, they freak me out”
Output = Does not compute, terminal error, reboot

[Yes, as a nerdy child I dabbled in Basic programming. I mainly programmed ‘choose your own adventure’ games. Then my parents discovered I was writing an erotic choose your own adventure game and cut me off]

But gyms are scary places. I see thirty people running on treadmills in The “Cardio Theatre,” silently sweating to CNN news, and I can’t help thinking about how bizarre and unnatural it is. We’ve evolved to the level where many of us can refrain from any form of physical exertion during the day, and then we rely on machines to relieve us from our sedentary lifestyles.

I wonder whether it would be possible to harness all that energy that we expend on exercise machines and use it to generate electricity. Screw the new nuclear plants, let’s get the Bay St. elite to power our computers!

Finally, Karen was ready to talk about rates.

Now I know this particular gym gives out weekly trial passes. But they only give them out as a last-resort sales technique. Karen was not going to give one up without a fight. She wanted to close.

Thus began our verbal sparring:

Karen: So if you are ready to sign up, I’ll just start processing your details
Nadine: Actually, I think I need a bit of time to think about it. Can I try a class or something?
Karen: Well sure. Actually, if you sign up today you have ten days to change your mind, so you can try all the classes you want for 10 days.
Nadine: Oh, like a cooling off period?
Karen: Well, we like to call it a “comfort period”
Nadine: Well, I’m still thinking of checking out another gym nearby
Karen: You know, I remember when I was like you, looking for a gym….
Nadine: Karen, maybe I should just come back later
Karen: You know, you owe it to yourself to start today

Just before Karen and I went into full-out BodyCombatTM, something strange happened. Karen somehow figured out that she knew my mom, who had taught her graphic design in college. Suddenly, Karen’s hard sales persona melted away and we began discussing her dreams of pursuing a career in advertising.

She confided in me, her face for the first time showing signs of humanly emotion, that she found this job so exhausting that she was devoid of any creative energy when she got home at night and was having trouble building up her portfolio. Karen gave a furtive glance towards her director’s office, said under her breath, “oh, what the hell,” and quickly wrote me up a one-week pass, and ushered me out the door.

Friggin A(A)

Yesterday, in a dimly lit change room, to the non-beat of some synthesized wordless Billy Joel song, I bit my lip and stared in disbelief as I found myself in, possibly, my first ever properly sized bra.

For fifteen years I have deluded myself into believing that I am a size A. Not that being a size A is anything to get one’s neckline in a plunge or anything. But while the A is on the small side of the curve bell, it is still on the bell nonetheless. Something about wearing an A made me feel like at least I was in the game.

For years I have worn bras that don’t fit. I bought As, pulled the straps tight and the put back strap on the smallest hook level. But still, the bra seemed more like an accessory than any functional supportive device.

I was a late bloomer who only ever half-heartedly entered spring. When I complained to my mother about my non cleavage, she told me that what with me being so thin, if I had bigger boobs I would look like a freak.

Well, mom, look around you. This is a society that reveres freaks. There was a poster in the Student Health Clinic at my university that showed the legs of a super model and a starving African woman side by side. They were virtually indistinguishable. Try looking at a magazine photo of a model. Cover up her boobs and she is instantly transformed into an emaciated anorexic. Uncover her boobs and she is the pinnacle of beauty.

I’m not going to delve into the issue of how the media feeds us unhealthy images of women. That issue has been very well documented elsewhere. My only point here is that boobs seem to be the one aspect of the female anatomy that people don’t really expect to be ‘in proportion’ to one’s body.

I did once wear a B. I wore it with pride. I didn’t cut the sizing tag off that bra like I usually do. Itchy or not, I hoped that someone (preferably a boy) would sometime catch a glimpse of the tag and be impressed. This, of course, was before I realized that I was wearing a ‘vanity sized’ bra. At the GAP, they make people who are really a size 12 think that they are actually a size 6. This is a brilliant marketing ploy based on the fact that people buy more clothing when they feel good about their body. Similarly, my ‘petites’ bra was sized on the same principle, albeit in a different direction. People feel bad about being a double A.

But I am a double A. An AA. Anatomically Anomalous.

I am not exactly sure what it was that made yesterday’s trip to the Bay distinguishable from all my other previous trips. I have just moved into a new apartment and have just started a new job. I suppose I am learning to embrace change. For whatever reason, yesterday, after trying on five bras which did not fit me correctly, I made the choice not to deceive myself any longer. I was going to find a bra that fits.

This was no easy mission. Most bra brands do not make sizes smaller than A. Either because we below As are so few in number, or because I am not alone in my active suppression of my size self-awareness.

A well-endowed sales lady asked me if she could offer me any assistance. "Yes," I replied, "I’m looking for double As."

"Oh," she replied, while looking me up and down, "I think we may have a few of those lying around somewhere."

Yes, 'lying around'. I made a quick mental list of the types of things that lie around. Last week’s lunch. Playing cards. Pogo sticks. Lazy dogs. ‘That uncle’. Basically, things that don’t really have a whole lot of use to many people.

In an entire lingerie department there were three AA bras. None of which came in black. I figured that if I can’t be sexy in proportion, maybe I can be sexy in colour. Alas.

I tried them on, hoping desperately that they wouldn’t fit. But fit they did. Like a glove. And for the first time I felt support. Like a little hug on each breast saying, "I won’t let you down. Go ahead and bounce." And it felt good.

I can’t say that I have woken up today with some sort of total bodily self-acceptance. But I do feel that I have somehow edged into a new era of facing reality. I’m trying to see things as they are and to deal with them accordingly. If that means facing the world clad in ugly cream-coloured braziers, then so be it.