Shiny Legs and All

So you want to share something on FB. Then you scroll down and you have to look at bodies at the end of the article. All the time. There are ads for stuff having to do with bodies. Bodies, bodies, bodies. Lose weight. Lift your butt. Get a tan. (But don’t be too dark.) Get rid of sagging skin. Lose unwanted hair. Wrinkles. Under-arm flab. Bikini lines. Hair, again. Weight again. Gross drawings or pictures about bodies. More bodies. More about flab. More about wrinkles. More about a better sex life. Most of the ads are directed at women. You scroll more on FB and log off in disgust after looking at jokes about B-words and bodies juxtaposed with shiny photos of flowers and pumpkins. Autumn leaves and wars.

Once in a while there is a cure for baldness. Hmmm, hmmm. New and improved! A man is the target too, but never, never as much as you.

Then you flip on the TV for a talk show dialogue on racism and you hear a woman call another woman “some ho.” You hit the button on the remote and watch a 300 lb man flip over a quiet African-American girl at a school desk and heave her onto the floor. As your heart breaks again, you have to listen to a conservative rant against everyone who might care about others, her lips smacking in disgust at the ignorance of those who might rally for better pay and accountability.

You watch and observe. You look at how the women are dressed. Bulging cleavage is the norm. Don’t get me wrong, but please what is the point you are trying to prove?

On the news, on every talk show, women are sitting there with their bare legs glistening for the camera. No lines, no veins, no bulges, no sagging. All tight and crossed and perfect. You want to show off your “assets” and your power, I suppose. Fine, fine, expose, expose but no man is looking at your mind on these shows.

No flab, no gab. It’s an honor, you say. But as the observing mouse in the corner, the message is clear. It is not your mind or words, they want to hear. So keep on working, firming and toning. In the end, what I see is still the men who direct. The men who know everything. The men who present. The men who control, the men who patrol. No, I don’t dislike the warrior gender. They can’t sit there with glistening legs. They are tied up in ties all tight to their necks, with stiff shirts and collars, they are endangered as players.

Every single show presents women with glistening legs. Message: women are still sex objects and nobody will listen to you if you don’t have bare legs, perfect legs all the way up to your hips.

You can’t post a decent article without 15 messages telling you you are not good enough. You can’t age. You can’t have wrinkles. You have to have perfect legs. You are never good enough.

TIME OUT to media backers, to campaigns, and hustlers. You’re wrong, so wrong.

I am good enough.

I have spoken.

You do not have to have shiny legs to be intelligent and respected.

For the greatest speaker on earth is a tree-with shaggy bark and gnarly roots.

Without her, you perish, shiny legs, fine suits, and apparel. As the goddess enters from behind the moon

she knows.

You are good enough.