Not.

I generally despise television advertisements, especially the ones aimed at women or their children.  We all know that children are rather suggestible; my son wants a blanket with sleeves and my daughter wants some of those wonderful hanger thingys. Personally, I could use some Space Bags ™ for my over-stuffed linen closet, but that’s neither here nor there. The worst commercials are aimed squarely at middle-aged moms.

There are the ads that want me to believe that Andie McDowell, Linda Evangelista, et al, would be dried-up, old hags without the unguents and potions they want us to buy. Or that grown women need to be small enough to fit comfortably in kid chairs or wear their teenage daughters’ jeans. Anything approaching a post-pubescent hip-width is greeted with horror.

OK, so not only are we supposed to maintain an impossible beauty standard, lest we suffer the odious fate of not being sexxxay anymore, we are also not allowed to feel physical or emotional pain. Now, I am all for medications to relieve pain or depression, solely for the benefit of the person in pain. But this attitude is apparently not shared by advertisement agencies. If we are depressed, we need to take antidepressants so we can be more social and not burden others with our sadness. Any benefit to the depressed person is but a side-effect.

Physical pain is even less acceptable. Women who suffer from fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis are being targeted for several new pharmaceuticals. This is especially ironic because so many women suffering from fibromyalgia were told it was all in their heads by so many doctors for so many years. Now fibromyalgia is fully recognized as a medical disorder and women are getting the treatment they need. The thrust of the ad, though, is “take our meds ’cause middle-aged ladies in pain are no fun.”

My newest outrage comes from an aspirin company pushing their migraine-specific version. The tag-line is “Don’t let your pain become someone else’s problem.” The visual is a mom playing with a child. Because the only reason we should even want to relieve a headache is to keep from imposing on our families. God forbid we should want to get rid of the throbbing pain because it sucks for us! No, we alone are not worthy of a pain-free life. If not for our poor, beleaguered partners and children, we should just allow the pain of a migraine to reduce us to a mass of quivering, light-phobic jelly.

I don’t get migraines, but my tension headaches are real barn-burners. Trust me, the last thing I think about when I take those little blue gelcaps is whether or not someone else is inconvenienced by my pain. I am inconvenienced by my headache and that is enough. 

Interesting how you never see men-specific meds marketed as “cures” for other peoples’ problems. We never hear how a man’s sexual problems may be affecting his partner so he should take Brand X e.d. drug. Or how his frequent nighttime bathroom trips are also keeping his partner awake so he should take Acme Prostate drug. Every drug specifically marketed to men emphasizes the benefits to men. Weird.

Exactly why is there a difference in marketing? There are really only two possibilities, equally disturbing. One, marketing departments assume that women should only care about their health as it pertains to and affects others. Or the more probable two, the knowledge that women have been socialized, inculcated with the belief that they are defined only by their relationships to others.  Since we are not individuals, worthy in our own rights, we are just daughters, girlfriends, wives, mothers, sisters, grandmothers. And as just somebody else’s whatever, it is assumed that we won’t take care of ourselves unless we are told that our health problems make us bad wives or mean mamas or burdens on people who shouldn’t have to actually care for us.

The sad thing is, they’re right, to a degree anyway. Check out Twitter or Facebook profiles sometime. People who put their relationships to others first on the list are usually women. I’m guilty of this myself; wife and mother are the first two things on my profiles. Mr. Prairie, the most dedicated husband and father, doesn’t put either in his profiles. While anecdata is no proof, check it out yourselves. Moms are more likely to put that high on the list, because it is expected of us.

While parents of either gender are supposed to put their children’s needs ahead of their desires, only mothers are expected to subsume themselves to their families. If we don’t put ourselves dead-last on our own lists, we are horrible people, bad mothers, selfish bitches. Even when it comes to our health, we have to consider others first. So the ones taking care of others get the least care themselves.

Since most women have been thoroughly socialized to be nice and accommodating, and to fear being perceived as mean, selfish, forceful, or bitchy, maybe we do respond to different kinds of marketing. It just pisses me off. Maybe I’m weird, but I want companies trying to sell me something to acknowledge that I, alone, should be reaping the benefits of that something. I apply face cream to keep my skin from feeling tight, dry, and itchy. I take pain relievers so I don’t feel like hitting myself in the head with a tack hammer. Tell me why your face cream or lipstick will make me feel better, not sexier or younger. Tell me why your pills will make my body or head hurt less, just for me.

And any benefit to my husband and/or children can just be a side-effect.

I am short, plump, wear glasses, and have shoulder-length hair that is still mostly brown. If I was wearing an orange shirt and red skirt I’d be a dead-ringer for Velma from the Scooby Doo series of TV shows and movies. I am also geeky, smart, talkative and a general know-it-all. And I’m OK that with that.

While I am now OK with being a nerd, geek, or “brain,” it took me years to get here. Growing up, my peers tried to make me believe that being smart was somehow unseemly. I never could quite get my responses right. When I first discovered that I was smarter than most of the other kids I didn’t bother to conceal my intelligence and my natural pride in it. After all, God gave me a fine, sharp mind, why should I hide it? Of course, in school, anyone who falls outside a narrow range of acceptability is punished by his/her peers and even by some teachers.

After being physically and mentally disciplined by a girl bully in my class, I became more circumspect. While I refused to act like a simpering fool, I dreaded the inevitable narrowed eyes and accusatory question, “You’re a brain, aren’t you?” It’s a no-win situation. Say “no” and I’d look like a fool; say “yes” and I’d look arrogant, full of myself, which is what the bully said.

In high school I was put into Gifted classes and honors classes, where I didn’t have to hide or pretend. And I didn’t have to effectively shut down large swathes of myself to interact with my peers. After high school I began to recognize that not everyone finds me mercurial and charming, so I learned to respond to different people in different ways. But never once have I “played dumb” to make friends. And I learned that plenty of boys like smart girls, including Mr. Prairie.

Even though I learned the difference between confident and arrogant, I never became popular. In fact, I don’t really understand the popularity of being popular. One advice columnist counseled a young girl on how not be a know-it-all in class and then sent her a booklet of instructions to become popular. As you well know, I am all me and I am all out there, come what may. Popularity just seems like too much work to me.

We are never acceptable as we really are, we have to change some aspect(s) of ourselves to make friends, find love, succeed in life. How do I know this, TV and movies tell me so. We will never get a date to the prom, stop being a basket case, snag the right guy, or be happy unless we poor, sad, smart wretches endure The Magic Makeover. A whole genre of “reality” shows now exist to shame us with fat asses, crooked teeth, bad hair, sloppy clothes. Movies prove that “ugly” nerd-girls only find true love with lip gloss and the right accessories.

And if we have to deny the existence of our brains to land a man, is he really worth landing? Or are only pretty girls worthy of love?

We all know that Daphne and Freddy have a thing going on, but poor Velma is always alone. She proves The Magic Makeover trope. She never gets a makeover, so she never finds a man. Luckily, real life is absolutely nothing like cartoons. Nearly every nerd-girl I have ever met has been extraordinarily successful in matters of the heart. Probably because love is not really based in the heart, but in the brain.

We are never going to attract the shallow guys, the insecure guys, the dreadfully conventional guys. The guys/men who like us are attracted to our intellects, our outside interests, and yes, even the way we look. And men do make passes at girls who wear glasses.

So to every awkward but brilliant girl out there, I say forget about trying to be popular. Forget about The Magic Makeover. All the lip gloss in the world won’t change who you are on the inside and if someone only likes you after the makeover, they aren’t worth your precious time or brain cells.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of a friendship and to pick it apart to find out what killed it.

And that is about all the dark humor I can manage. One of my longest-standing friendships is officially dead and it hurts my heart. It hurts my heart so much that I have been trying, and failing, to write this post since Thanksgiving. And since I need to write this, to get this pain out of my heart and onto the page, I haven’t been able to write anything else.

I should console myself that it wasn’t the best, strongest of friendships, but I can’t be so flip. The thing itself wasn’t built to last but somehow it did for over two decades, off and on. Our friendship was not built on the bedrock of the heart, but on the shifting sands of appearances.

Now, I was loyal as a puppy dog, kind of pathetic really. But if I stepped out of line, even a little, she dropped me like I was make of fire. If I embarrassed her, I could expect a passive-aggressive letter dismissing me from her life. One time I got the dreaded letter for not spending her working hours alone and pining away. I selfishly insisted on leading my own life outside of my working hours and this was not to be tolerated.

I think it’s important to add something here. She could probably tell you all the many things I did wrong, all the many ways I failed her, perceived or actual.  But this is not a tally of who did what to whom nor is it told from her perspective. This is told from mine.

Now I can laugh at the absurdity and out-of-proportion-ness of the ridiculous letters, but they really hurt at the time.

Looking back I can see that we were both young, foolish, selfish. I was not perfect and there were certainly times when I should have been more empathetic, understanding. There were times when I let her down, but there were times when she should have been more forgiving, flexible, accepting of my all-too-human flaws.

Whenever I was so casually discarded, I never approached her, never begged her to take me back; my self-respect wouldn’t let me. But after the first time, I knew that she would eventually soften and want to be friends again. What I didn’t realize at the time was that she only softened her hard-line stance when she needed something from me. The things she needed weren’t really things at all. An antidote to loneliness, someplace to stay, a shoulder to cry on. When tragedy struck, I rushed to her side.

As the years passed, our lives took divergent paths. I married young and stayed that way. It was easy for me to transition from single girl to staid and stable matron. She married some years later and moved away. We kept in only the flimsiest touch; Christmas cards would be exchanged and nothing more.

One year I got the Christmas card back. Worrier that I am, I called her parents and got her new address and phone number. Our friendship re-thawed a bit. She had need of me again–her first marriage hadn’t worked out and I offered a sympathetic ear, commiseration, and no judgement.

When she married again and then had children, I expected our friendship to move into a new, more mature phase. We had all these things in common again and I hoped that we had both grown up a little.

About this time I noticed something troubling- I was the one doing all of the catch-up calling, the one doing the drudge work and general maintenance of a friendship. She would call me only when she needed advice or when she needed to be talked down from the new-mom-ledge. I had been there before, I had the road map, she needed it.

I began to have the sneaking suspicion that she was “slumming” a bit by being my friend. Although I am a loyal, defend-you-to-the-death, got-your-back, grade A friend material, I was chopped liver to her. I was Rhoda to her Mary, Jan to her Marcia, Velma to her Daphne. I was the nerdy, awkward bookworm, she was the head cheerleader.

The friendship certainly didn’t feel healthy, so I decided to do nothing. Stop calling, stop emailing, and see what happens. Then came Facebook.

We became Facebook friends; this seemed like a nice way to transition into a more surface-type friendship. Unfortunately, I don’t do surface very well, which has always been our problem. I am all me, all out there, come what may. Once again I embarrassed her or outraged her, or something.

Anyway, I have been able to pinpoint, if not the moment of actual death, the cause thereof. Politics of all damn things.

I posted a “Why I am the way I am”-type of essay about my personal political viewpoint. We hold rather divergent viewpoints, with me being somewhat to the left of center. It was enough. Apparently the fact that I exercised my first amendment rights and didn’t hide my liberal head in shame, and refused to bow and scrape and apologize for having my own opinions, was beyond the pale.

After a bit of back and forth and general misunderstanding on her part, she stopped communicating with me altogether. I didn’t even get another passive-aggressive letter.

The friendship became totally unresponsive and I have had to face the unpleasant reality that it is truly gone. There is no there there, anymore.

Even if, sometime in the future, she were to decide that I wasn’t so bad after all, I don’t think I could do it. There would always be a nagging doubt. What would it be this time? Which opinion or behavior, which appearance would she find intolerable next time? I don’t have the energy to always be schooling everything I do or say or write just to keep from offending her. But I do have the self-respect to say goodbye.

If you are reading this, which I doubt, I wish you well. We had good times when we had them and survived the bad times. I don’t regret anything. Take care of yourself and your family.

Me