Hey, lady! Don't erase yourself from your own story! Sure, the stories in our culture say that a woman who is unpaired is defective somehow- too picky, not submissive enough, not pretty enough, and a man who is unpaired has been burnt by those evil women who are trying to chain him down with marriage, or fuck too much, or only want 'bad boys' or aren't submissive enough, or etc, etc. But you don't have to believe it! You can be the hero of your own story! Or at least I believe that. Or maybe my ramblings are pretty boring, sorry...

Time magazine tells us common knowledge- you can spend an hour exercising and then drink a Gatorade and calorically it's a wash. Not to mention the idea that you have to spend a hour vigorously exercising every day is pretty discouraging to folks like me who are dragging their tired bones every where.

Worrying about the appearance of your vulva squicks me. Of course, the idea of throwing thousands of dollars down the drain shocks me too. It's just another area where we're supposed to compete now. Man, I hate american society.

Here I see another one of our woman obligations- be in a double bind. Deceptive Tranny/OHNOESTRANNY!!! Prude/Slut Overly involved mother/lazy 'mammy' Working mom who neglects the kids/lazy 'welfare mom'. Note that some of these are racialized and some of these are...I don't know the word for 'particular to the transgendered experience'.

In other news, NPR tries to debunk Canadian healthcare myths.

My hair was first "relaxed" at 4, and stayed that way until I shaved my head at 17. I still remember the huge scabs relaxer gave my scalp.

said by spike on twitter.

I'm glad someone else got huge scabs on their scalp from relaxer. I always feel awkward when people say you should get a relaxer; be professional! And I'm thinking 'why would I waste hours and tons of money on that?" My hair hates the idea of straightness. It grows quickly, and when I relax it, it's a small layer of straightness over tons of new growth.

I was reading Pandagon[yes, I know!] and I thought that the fact that I am a slacker is greatly determined by my gender. I work 30 hours a week in my nonpaid job. Now, for a dude, that would be great! But as a woman, I'm expected to do girly crap[with what money? and you can spend all day in the beauty shop, just sitting there], clean stuff, etc. I'm an old maid at 25, so I don't have to do a bunch of wedding planning or fool with kids[today I had a hard time thinking of a solution for a woman who wanted a changing table our bathroom didn't have]

Possibly related, is bfp's story about health. The health care debate pains me because we talk about cost,cost, cost, and nothing about the cost of keeping everyone sick! Or the cost of being a woman doing a complicated calculus about how many cups of rice are in your pepper and how many points that is. Or the cost of being a little kid asking for an adult's chips and getting a lecture about working for what you want.

I think about this guy at work. He's biked from 18 miles to get his classes and drug tests so he doesn't have to spend a weekend, a week in jail. So he doesn't have to miss work and lose money for his wife, his nine grandkids. There's so much going on, that even I, a middle classer apparently closer to the ground than those on their lofty perches talking about how if health care was free, we'd use more of it.

What about the cost of our babies born too little, too soon, too sick? What about that?

One of the most important woman obligations is to feel bad about your motherly performance. To help you with this, I release ten reasons why YOU,yes,YOU are a bad mom.

1)You're too fat. ONE SLICE OF CHEESE A DAY IS TEN POUNDS! YOU'RE GIVING YOUR KIDS OBESITY WITH YOUR EATING HABITS! Because as we know, even if your children are all sick, you work full time, and your husband is off playing Fallout 3 23 hours a day while ignoring the screams of the children, you must worry about the calorie content of cheese.

2)You're single. How dare you dump some guy who treats you like crap or that you're just not happy with? Don't you know that you must hold on to a sperm donor no matter how much he degrades your quality of life?

3)You have too much sex. The horror! I must go to my fainting couch and get my clutching pearls right now.

4)You feed your kindergartner nuts. Don't give nuts to children under 6, you idiot.

5)You watch R rated movies. Corrupting your children with your very thoughts!

6)You breastfeed. OMG! OH NOOO! WHAT IF SOMEONE SEES PART OF A BOOB THAT'S NOT BEING SEXY?!

7)You formula feed. YOU'RE KILLING YOUR BABY!

8)You're poor. You shouldn't be off providing crazy things like food and shelter for your child, or worse, using taxpayer money to provide luxuries such as that. You should be stuck at home reading wholesome books and blending organic apples into baby food, which is the only thing children under the age of ten should eat. EVER.

9)You let your mom watch your child. Your mom thinks cookies and milk are an appropriate snack instead of a 4 oz cup of soy yogurt.

10)You allowed your child to watch tv. Might as well toss them in the river if you're going to let them do that.

More woman obligations:

Know how many calories are in an orange
Know about the mysterious and fast changing array of beauty implements
Listen to people who think you have no taste in movies b/c of your bits.
If you have kids, you're always a mom first and foremost. Dad can say "I'm a scientist" Mom is a "Scientist and a mom".
Do remember to be 'not committed to your job' because you took off a day to mop up after the projectile vomiting toddler, but a week long golf trip to Spain is fine for your coworkers.

The first ten woman obligations.

1)Worry a lot about your appearance. You are obligated to go OMG, THEY SAW ME WITHOUT MAKEUP!! Yes, you, even if you don't wear makeup. Your face? it's not good enough on its own.

2)Don't have fun in bed. Either have sex just for procreation or for performance. Worry a lot if your stomach looks fat or about the horror that is having a gag reflex.

3)Do stupid household tasks. You're supposed to care about matching people's socks together. And if you don't fold your husband's underpants, he'll know you're really mad at him![the last sentence is from an actual conversation]

4)Be interested in gross baby stuff. From holding the drooly things to hearing all about how someone's water broke AND THE BABY NEARLY FELL ON THE FLOOR!!! Never puke when people are telling you the gritty gritty details about babies.

5)Don't have any hobbies that aren't beauty related. When you need time to yourself, don't watch a movie or play video games, go and remove some of your hair. Because that's the ultimate relaxation.

6)Don't have the awesome toys in your childhood.

Instead of that amazing robot with real gun sounds, get some boring old fake lip stick. That probably is toxic.

7)Be submissive. REAL women are submissive in bed. Fake women are focused on their own pleasure rather than someone else's.

8)Don't know anything about science. Instead of reading meaty books on psychology, try books about how to get a man. Don't read about biology, read about astrology! Learning sucks!

9)Feel guilty all the time. If something goes wrong, it's all your fault. Yours. You are the downfall of society. Single mom? You ruin the city! Married mom? You're probably a bad one. Not a mom? You're selfish.

10)Base your worth on how big you are. Don't look at your sense of humor, wit, or kindness when evaluating yourself, focus on how your thighs look. If you gain a little weight, let it ruin your day and be consumed with guilt.