• Psychology of Life

    What is Beauty? Is it Okay to Age?

    We have allowed marketing companies and dress designers to define the beauty of women.  Every time we  wear high heels we are buying into this magical definition of what a woman should look like and what she should be.  Unfortunately, many women who are leaders, buy into this definition, however, they can afford to do so.  If you have the money to sculpt your face and your body, if you have the money to hire original designs by the best designers, you are doing so at the cost of everywoman.  You look fabulous with your balloon breasts and contoured waist, but you make everywoman who cannot afford perky breasts and a cool-sculpted stomach, feel bad.

    Why do you do this?  As a famous woman, why do you allow the perpetuation of this mythical creature called the “perfect woman”?  Why do you buy into the definition of fashion houses (and, of course, men) that will tell you what is beautiful ~ and they really have no idea, except their own idea.

    Out there in front, redefining beauty are women like Ashley Graham who gives credibility to plus sizes and Alicia Keyes who refuses to wear make-up.  Both women strongly state that women need to be who they are.

    What is beauty?

    My husband always says that proof that men are running the world is on the feet of women who still wear high heels.  What would cause a woman to wear high heels?  Fashion dictatorship; that is what causes women to wear high heels.  Anthropologists will tell you that wearing high heels (which thrusts breasts forward) is a mating ritual of old societies.  However, in these old societies, women rid themselves of the high heels once a mate is identified.  No woman willingly wears such painful footwear because she wants to, she wears this footwear to compete and to gain male acceptance.

    What is wrong with extra weight?  What is wrong with crepe paper skin? What is wrong with a wrinkly neck?  These are all natural evolutions of the human body.  It is only the marketing industry and Madison Avenue that wants us to believe that an aging body is unnatural and embarrassing.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

    The model form is unnatural.  Human beings that are “in the natural” do not look like the normal model looks.  Humans are a diverse group that come in all shapes, sizes and colors, all of which are normal and most of which are attractive.  We are all attractive when we are compared to ourselves.  It is when we compare ourselves to the television and fashion runways and magazine pictures that we become unattractive. 

    This is not to say that beauty does not exist objectively, it is to say that we have become harsh taskmasters of the beauty of women.  Marketing America has carved out one look as THE LOOK and we take no discussion.  Any woman who does not have this look is a woman that must be manufactured into this woman.  For this manufacturing process, millions of dollars in beauty products are mass produced and sold.  Plastic surgery is a multi-billion dollar business that is thriving.  How and why?  So that all women can fit into this one size, a size that is deemed correct and attractive by others that are not we.

    Why is the perfect-looking woman sexy?  Why isn’t the perfect woman a librarian or a scholar?  Why does the perfect woman need so many accoutrements?  Why does she need long eyelashes, hundreds of dollars in cosmetics and an endless supply of clothing that is form fitting and constantly revealing?

    Women, we must take back our power and define our own beauty.  It is quite fine if we do NOT spend $26.00 on a pair of underwear.  We do not need cosmetics or Forever 21 to keep us looking beautiful.  It is quite fine to be 45 years old and 65 years old and 85 years old.   We are still beautiful and certainly, smart and exceptionally wise at these ages.

     

     

     

  • World Affairs

    There is No Reason for any Young Person to Die because of War

    We have the technology.  We can manage destruction through our technology, we can win battles and wars by pushing buttons and aiming war weapons.  So why is anyone still being killed?  Why is anyone still being maimed?  Why is anyone still engaged in actual violence, when we can control our environment and our relationships with technology?

    We have enough nuclear weapons to turn the Earth into a lifeless lump of rock several times over.  Why?  We only have one Earth.

    We keep on investing in one hundred million dollar aircraft that have no where to go and no one to fight.

    We stockpile our weapons or we sell them to police stations all over the country, why?  Would we turn the tanks toward civilians?  Would we torpedo a yacht?

    We have so much, that we are forgetting the concepts behind the purchase of the weapons.  We don’t need that much, we do not really need the majority of the weapons we are currently manufacturing.

    Again, we have the technology.  We can shoot and/or bomb any enemy in a small space with a drone.  For larger threats such as Isis training camps, we have larger bombs and weapons.  Weapons that cannot be seen by our enemies.  We have weapons that bring no danger to those who steer them and shoot them.

    War and Death

    “A simple child, That lightly draws its breath…What should it know of death?”  William Wordsworth, We are Seven, as published by Time on 12/30/1991

    The current world is not interested in waging war through military weaponry.  The current world is using software to win wars.  The stock market and its many versions and fluctuations give power to the countries that manage them.  But, much more power is wielded by those with wealth.  It is not the might of  military weaponry that controls the world anymore (if it ever was).

    And yet SIPRI* reports:  “In late 2017 the US Senate approved a new military budget for 2018 of $700 billion, a substantial increase over the 2017 budget.”  The second largest spender is China and with the majority of the world’s population living in China, their budget is less than half of America’s budget.  SIPRI states: “China, the world’s second largest spender, allocated an estimated $228 billion to its military in 2017, an increase of 5.6 per cent compared with 2016.”  Even with an increase China is not getting within a fifty percent range of the U.S.

    Who wants a larger military budget?  No one, except arms manufacturers.  They are the ones who benefit from this continued madness.  We know it, they know it and every single politician knows it.  There is great profit in the military madness and we Americans allow it to continue.  The arms manufacturers make billions in profits and have a lobbyist standing on every corner in Washington D.C.  They are h.u.g.e. contributors to politicians and the attendant political parties.

    No matter who you are, know this: there is no reason for a young person to die or to be maimed in battle any more.  When it happens, know this: it is happening so that the military war machine can profit.  Our freedom is not threatened and has not been threatened since World War II.

    It’s clear to all that the new battlefields are money and information.   Our software systems make everything in the world work.  Cybersecurity should be the next international defense investment that America makes.  Machine guns are archaic and outdated tools of a battle that we no longer need to fight.  We need talented and smart people to work for the people of America giving peace it’s proper place in human history.

    We need to start a new conversation about power.  The latest dramatic scandal in Washington D.C. is a warning to everyone in America.  We must have a new conversation about money, power and success in America.  Not any of those things is worth one single human life.

    *Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): the independent resource on global security.

  • Baby Boomers,  Love and Relationships,  Speaking as a Parent

    My Mother’s Burden

    Grampa Becky Gramma 1979 Grampa Me Boys 1979From my Dad’s Mom to my MomGramma and Grampa 1979 Gramma2:

    Dear Pat,

    We want to apologize for not showing up at Shannon’s.  Without parking places, John felt like giving it up, so that’s that.

    I am very appreciative of the one evening, we were to see almost all the young ones.  I was also grateful to everyone being so kind and loving to me.

    Hearing the young ones saying, I love you sounds so sweet and open, like an ordinary, glad to see you.

    I guess I could have learned from them.  If I had practiced saying instead of that noble old saying “to love is to serve.  It might have helped a wee bit.

    Then again, the older generation didn’t blurt out “I love you.”  It just seems like we were too shy and backwards.  This is all bologna.  I do feel a bit dumb.  They are all lovely and I wish we had seen more of them. 

    Every good thing should come to you.

    Love to every one

    Ma

    My mother, always in the midst of an emotional tornado.

    From Me to My Mom

    To ease her pain because I was 3000 miles away:

    Tears for you because you will always fight too and because you must watch us – stumble through journeys you have already made and you know you cannot help us and yet you are bound by some invisible magic and mystery that once made you our lifelines.

     

  • Economic Equality (A Goal),  Wise Words,  Womens Issues

    Women Have to be Meaner  

    Do Power Differently
    Do Power Differently

    How else can I say it?  Not in a male way, but in a female way.  We must tap into our own way of being and bring our power to bear to win this fight.  In order to do this, we must put away our all-forgiving nature and call a crime, a crime.  We must stop giving in and allowing our own discomfort to be put aside.

    We don’t need weapons to win this war, we are smarter than that.  We don’t need male configurations for an argument, we are smarter than that also.  Women have powerful tools at their disposal, tools that only need to be used to be effective.

    Number one, women, we need each other.  Going in to testify against a boss in a sexual harassment case, or a stranger in a rape case, is hard work.  We need each other to gain the support to get this kind of work done.

    Let’s face it!  Our cultural training is a lie!  No one is going to help us with this.  Men are not going to allow the loss of their own advantage without a fight.  This is where we women will have to be mean.  I don’t say women need to be strong or tough, and I’ll tell you why: Women are the strongest and toughest humans I’ve met, they don’t need more of that.  Women need to stop forgiving and stop changing perceptions to fit the white male power structure.

    We can do this.  We can do this by refusing to sign off on the lies that men in power try to perpetrate.  Think about the Catholic church, is it over?  Is it all okay now because the priests say so?  Of course not!  There is still hell to pay, and I mean that literally.  The church must pay for the sins of their leaders, and they must pay well!  At least as well as they themselves take for their own use.

    Think about the half million rape kits that were never processed here in America.  While a male TV producer reassures all of America’s women that rapists are caught by the SVU (Special Victims Unit).  The facts don’t bear any of that TV story out.  Not only are rapists not caught, in a half million cases, rapists are not even pursued.  How did this happen?  Women, are we asleep at the wheel, are we buying this rapist culture and (pardon the  pun) lying down and taking it?

    What is keeping us from stopping this pervasive abuse that lives in the American culture?  We have not done enough to stop this from going on.

    We can stop this power hungry, elitist, white male, rapist culture by seeing ourselves clearly and consciously.  We must do this.  We must stop this culture that disempowers us and tries to keep us down.

    The first thing that we must do is to ban together.  Any woman who is being attacked or hurt by men or by male institutions deserves the support of other women.  We must do everything in our power to put women into power.  We must count on each other to make predominately male institutions better and kinder for both men and women.  We should be supporting each other in the here and now.  We all (each and every one of us) knows what it is like to be pushed around by male power.  So let’s defend each other, right here and right now.

    We aren’t out to “get men”.  That is not what this is about.  We are out to take our own power back.  We don’t have to punish our own family members to demonstrate our own power, we just have to tell the truth about what is happening at any point in time.

    The last thing on the list is this: think long and hard about your decisions as it relates to your own power and to the power of other women.  Don’t try to hurt other women who are smarter, prettier, luckier, kinder than you.  Stand back and let them have their power.  Think about your own power, do you give it away?  Do you hand your power over on a silver platter?  If you aren’t wired to be powerful, there is nothing wrong with that, just don’t take from others to justify yourself.

    We have the power.  Let’s do what needs to be done and turn this world into a kinder, gentler place.  Let’s make sure that this new world is not threatened by destruction from our male counterparts. We can do this, we do have the power.