Maddie was playing around with the TV remote today while I was making her a snack in the kitchen. All of a sudden, I hear the TV making weird moaning noises, when I walk in and see a PPV porno playing on the TV. I laughed, turned it off, and gave her a snack, being more concerned about the upcoming bill than my one year old being exposed to 30 seconds of women making out together.
Later that day I took maddie swimming. She's seriously an awesome swimmer, and I've even got her semi-dog paddling towards the wall when I ask her to. (this is what happens when your mom used to teach swim lessons to toddlers - she forces you in the pool and dunks you underwater before you're even aware of how to use your arms.)
A woman came up to me and said, "Oh, I LOVE your daughter's swimsuit!"
"Thank you," I said, very pleased with myself. There really is nothing cuter than babies and swimsuits. There's something about how their bellies stick out and they waddle around that swimsuits make them look even cuter.
"I just love that swimsuit," she continued, "it's so sexy. What a sexy baby."
WHAAAAT? Did this woman seriously just call my one-year-old sexy? I didn't know whether to laugh or run away yelling, "pedophile in the pool!"
I was really tempted to say "huh, it must have been from all that porn she watched this morning."
Instead I just laughed and said "ha, I didn't think babies could be sexy..." and swam away.
The moral of the lesson is that parenting can be really weird. And don't buy adorable swimsuits for your children, because then the weirdos will come out and talk to you about them.
I have had a theory since I was about 16 - January is terrible.
If you're a student, classes start in September. Halloween is in October. Thanksgiving is in November. The mother of all holidays, Christmas, is celebrated all December long. (and if you're like me and have a soul, celebrated during parts of November, too.)
But then January hits, and there is nothing to look forward to. No holiday. No sunshine. No warm weather. It's a long, long month of freezing cold, sunsets at 5:30, and no twinkle lights.
'Tis the season to celebrate nothing, fa la la la la la la blah blah.
The Whiteley household is no exception. Jeff had to work from 9 pm - 9am last night. Maddie seems to sense whenever Jeff works an overnight shift and wakes up at 2:00 am to have a party. yaaay. When he got home today (a Sunday , I was looking forward to going to church and getting out of the house, only to be overwhelmed by sleep deprivation. When I woke up, he had to leave again for work.
I think our ward thinks we're inactive.
It's too cold to take maddie out to a park, and Jeff has the car all the time, so Maddie and I slump like vegetables in our house, desperate for some social interaction.
Grad school can't come soon enough.
and neither can a second car.
and neither can February.
One of a few things I have learned since being here:
the tornado sirens go off constantly, and people consider it no big deal. They are very loud, and eerie. The only time I have ever heard a siren before is in apocalyptic movies, possibly involving aliens. So while no one freaks out, I start yelling around squeaking,"jeff? Jeff?! JEFF!!! WE NEED TO GET TO A SHELTER RIGHT NOW!!!" almost weekly.
I'm meeting up with a professor from SLU tomorrow for them to evaluate my resume and determine whether or not if I could get into any PhD programs next year...
(yes, SLU. The same university that canceled their program and threw my academic future in limbo. fun stuff.)
Only maddie has to come with me. Making this meeting only ten times more nerve-racking.
Hopefully...
1. the professor likes babies
2. Being a mother somehow makes me a more attractive candidate.
3. maddie sleeps like an angel the entire time.
of course, now that I'm saying this, none of it will come true. I can see it now... I will get horribly lost in traffic, I'll struggle finding a parking spot in downtown saint louis, it will be 110 degrees (again), making maddie miserable and angry. I'll stumble into the meeting late with sweat stains everywhere, Maddie will scream so loud that I won't be able to hear anything that the professor has to tell me (even though the only thing the professor will have to say is "amber, you're pathetic and no university will ever accept you and your nasty baby!") and then after leaving the meeting, I'll come back to the car to realize that I've parked in the wrong parking spot and my car was towed away.
Obviously it's time to stop thinking about this and go to bed.
So last night I discovered that saint louis university has decided to get rid of their counseling program. (i.e. - the program I was accepted into and the major reason why Jeff quit his job so that we could move across the country.)
it's not made up. I swear.
In one day I have gone through the five stages of grief.
1. Denial - thinking that there was no way that this could be real. I mean, this just doesn't happen.
2. Anger - after discovering that this was indeed very real, yelling at the head of admissions about how much they've screwed up my life plans, and forced me to put off my education another year instead of letting me accept other grad schools.
3. Bargaining - considering SLU's offer to let me get a Master's in Social Work... even though I don't want an MSW, I want to be a counselor.
4. depression - eating french fries. and ice cream. and a milk shake.
5. acceptance - starting to consider the positives of not going to school.
I have to say, I haven't fully accepted that this is happening. Any time someone tells me "oh, this is for the best..." or "God probably wants this for you", I feel like screaming at them: "OH REALLY? WOULD IT BE FOR THE BEST IF I DECIDED TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE?!?!".
But then after I've calmed down, I've realized a few positives:
- Being able to be a stay at home mom for just a little longer
- getting a part-time job so I can boost my resume
- forgetting the notion of a master's all together and going straight for my PhD
The truth is, Saint Louis will be a great move for us. Financially, jobs in our field pay a lot more, and housing is much cheaper. And even better, we will be around some amazing family. It was my acceptance into SLU that gave us the kick in the pants we needed to uproot. Hopefully this experience will give me a kick in my pants to get my PhD and enjoy one more school-free year.
but that doesn't mean that I'm not still a little full of rage.
and I kind of feel like throwing things on the ground. like this guy.
Luckily there is so much to be done before I move that I can immerse myself in packing and suppress my feelings like a healthy, normal american.
Growing up in liberal, hippie Portland you find your fair share of hippies. And liberals. And feminists. When I thought of feminists, I had this image of a woman in a tie-die dress burning her bras down by the waterfront park in Portland. (probably because that kind of thing still happens in Portland)
But coming to BYU, I had a bit of culture shock. No one was a hippie liberal feminist. In fact, no one even voted for obama! (gasp)
So I kind of sunk into the crowd and closeted some of my ideas. I wasn't sure really even what my political or social beliefs were, so I took the classes and waited to find out what I believed in.
When I had signed up for Psychology of Gender and Women's Studies, I kind of rolled my eyes. After all, women are equal to men and there's just no reason for all of these crazy feminists to shove their bra-burning agendas down my throat, right?
Let me throw some stats your way: (all of these stats were taken from my psychology of Gender textbook):
- Women are still paid less than men for doing the exact same job. (on average, they're paid 79 cents on the dollar that men are paid) Even in women-domineered careers like nursing, men are still paid more. And the census shows that this hasn't gotten better since past years! (see image right)
- 26% of all women will be raped at some point in their life. and 56% of women are sexually assaulted in some way.
- In classrooms, boys receive more encouragement for speaking up and voicing their opinions than girls do.
The list goes on and on... and on.
Then I thought to myself, "well, yeah, but I mean, things are better compared to everywhere else." And you would think our own country would be better, right? Being such a great industrialized nation? wrong. The US falls way behind the rest of the world in several areas.
- The US provides the least amount of maternity time. (European countries give 6 months paid off, canada gives a year paid off!)
- The US has very few women in parliament in comparison to other countries in the UN. (see image to left)
So I came to a conclusion - there is still so much more that needs to be done before women are equal. And since Feminists seek for equality, I guess that made me a feminist.
But there's such a negative stigma associated with the word "feminist". I even asked Jeff one day:
A: "You'd consider yourself a feminist, right?"
J: "No."
A: "But you agree with me on pretty much everything! And you agree that there's a lot that needs to be done before women and men are equal, right?"
J: "Well... yeah."
A: "So that makes you a feminist, too."
J: "Yeah, I guess so. It's just that I don't like the word. I don't want to be associated with the stereotypical feminist."
I didn't really understand what Jeff meant. After all, I didn't really consider myself a bra-burning hippie. It's just that after learning everything I had learned, I couldn't ignore the facts.
But this past week I finally understood what Jeff meant. I've had a few people bully me for my beliefs. I'll quote what they had to say here:
"I just feel bad for you--that something happy... still gets tainted by feminist arguments. Finding the bad in everything isn't a very healthy practice."
"When you take such a strong stance like this on a matter post so frequently on it, despite how good and legitimate your arguments might be, anyone outside the bubble who doesn't care as much, starts invisioning you as a zealot."
"Amber is a bit of a feminist like Hitler was a bit of a meaner."
I never meant to offend anyone, but apparently labeling myself as a feminist meant that other people could freely attack me. I never wanted to come off as a "zealot" or be compared to Hitler in any way. And I'll admit it, I cried. I thought about deleting my blog. I thought about never posting anything about women's rights or never posting anything about my opinions ever again. But what good would that do?
This is what I believe:
I'm a feminist... not because I think women should be exactly like men, but because women should have the same opportunities as men.
I'm a feminist because I think I should be able to have a career without being judged for not staying at home, just as much as other women should be able to be stay-at-home moms without being judged.
I'm a feminist for Madison, because by the time she turns 8, studies show that she'll likely already have a bad body image and have attempted dieting. she'll also have given up dreams of being president.
I'm a feminist for my future sons, because the media teaches that it's ok for men to be violent towards women, and that affects the men in my life.
Above all, I choose to focus on how the media affects all of society because studies show that this inequality isn't because of inherent sexism, but from learned portrayals of women in the media:
I don't...
- burn bras.
- believe that the way to equality means that society should put men down.
- think that men and women are exactly alike. We are different, and we should celebrate those differences.
Lastly, if you disagree with me, that is fine. I don't know how you can argue with the facts, but you have the freedom to do so. Just don't leave a message or a post attacking me personally.
To quote my good friend Amanda, "misogynists gunna hate."
I thought this was funny.
And particularly appropriate considering the hitler comment.
pssst... agree with me? there are others out there like me!
and I'm crocheting. I know I'll regret it in the morning (or in 3 hours when maddie wakes up for her feeding),
But it's been so long, and I'm loving curling up on the couch with a ball of yarn while watching saturday night live.
.jpg)
