Goodbye Ireland, Hello Scotland!

Well, in September '10. I got into the MLitt Creative Writing programme at the University of St. Andrews! I'll be studying poetry starting next September. I AM SO EXCITED!

Two New Poems-- The 13th Warrior

Hey Everyone,

Two of my poems, "Babysitting," and "In the Waiting Room," came out in The 13th Warrior recently, another groovy journal. Check them out here and support poetry! Hope you like them!

(This is some graffiti I captured in Cork city)

And Now I Look Like a Woman

I have been meaning to write this for a while now, but as with all new endeavors, I needed some time to process. I stopped shaving totally, all together about 2 months ago. Poverty put the idea in my head, and then fashion feminism cemented it. I couldn't really afford another razor blade, and my skin was so irritated from shaving with soap and dull razors that I just stopped for a week or so. I asked my husband if he "minded" and he burst out laughing, "It's your body and you are a woman, and grown women have hair. Of course I don't mind. And even if I did, why should you care? It's your body. You have a right to your hair. When did women start shaving anyway?"

I always considered myself a feminist in the true sense of the word. Why on earth would I ask my husband if he "minded"? Obviously culture has done some naughty things to my brain. So I did a little research and stumbled upon this article, "Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture" by Christine Hope. According to Hope's research, the fashion industry began "encouraging" American women to shave their underarms around 1915, when sleeveless fashions became popular. Harper's Bazaar featured an ad stating: "Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair," which appears to be the beginning of degrading women's body hair in America. The war against leg hair appeared when fashion shifted and allowed women to display more than just an ankle. According to Hope, convincing women to shave their legs was more challenging, so advertisers got creative. "Some advertisers as well as an increasing number of fashion and beauty writers harped on the idea that female leg hair was a curse."

Well that was the last straw for me! I stopped shaving that day, permanently. Despite my new freedom, I still felt ashamed of my body hair though, so much so that I actually became anxious in social situations! I'm bisexual and have had both male and female partners, but it was always my previous male partners who felt strongly about my body hair, one of them saying he preferred "hardwood floors" which was his stupid euphemism for "the pre-pubescent girl style." (P.S. This guy was also physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive). The extent of my anxiety alerted me that something was wrong. What did I think was going to happen? Did I think that men, women, and children would shield their eyes from the soft black patches under my armpits? Did I think that the bus driver would strike me as I hitched up my skirt to step on the bus? And, more importantly, did I think they would be justified? What a scary world that would be! I had to think more seriously about this, about taking control over my own body, owning my natural womanhood, loving every little hair because it's mine and it's supposed to be there.

This blog post "The Politics of Body Hair" by Anji on her awesome feminist blog, Shut Up, Sit Down is a wonderful exploration of culture, body hair, and looking like a woman. I agree with every word! I quote,

"Much of this can be attributed to the fetishisation of youth. Like glossy hair, bright eyes and unlined skin, hairlessness gives the body the appearance and feel of a young girl’s, or what I once saw described on the website of a hair removal product as a ‘prepubescent appeal’. It is curious that in a society where paedophilia is so reviled and such a huge problem, it is thought of as harmless and ordinary that men live out their paraphilic fantasies by requiring that the women they are exposed to look as young as possible. Pornographic media advertises its ‘barely legal teens’. Actresses are routinely referred to as ‘girls’ rather than women. The image of the ’sexy school girl’ is accepted and even desired, not just in pornography but in advertising, music video and themed nightclubs. Women slather on creams and apply blusher to their cheeks in order to attain a more ‘youthful’ appearance. Cosmetic surgeons and expensive underwear promise to give the illusion of the ‘firm’, ‘pert’ and ‘perky’ breasts which generally only occur naturally in adolescent girls. Most curiously of all, women are required to remove the most visible, prominent physical sign that they have entered adulthood – their bodily hair."

Just now, two months after the fact, am I beginning to relax with my new, adult woman body. The belief that body hair is ugly was so strongly ingrained in me by my culture, my exes, and my mother (who tirelessly degraded my body) that it really took a lot of positive affirmation for me to become comfortable. But ultimately, it is people like Anji and my husband who reminded me of all the fantastic feminist reasons why I was inspired to give up shaving in the first place (and no, not because of dull razors and crappy soap, although that helped). Also, the idea that I am supposed to look this way for a biological reason certainly gave me a wake-up call. Anji says,

"Grown women are, after all, meant to have hair on their armpits, vulva and legs. There is nothing ‘unnatural’ about a hairy woman; if there were then the hair would not grow there in the first place. Likewise, there is nothing ‘unfeminine’ about a hairy woman; if femininity is defined as ‘like a woman’ then a woman in her natural state is by definition as feminine as she can be. Indeed, one could say it is the hairless woman who is ‘less feminine’, as she removes parts of her natural, womanly body."

The fact is, it is a totally unreasonable "standard of beauty" that convinces women that they want to shave, or that they "prefer" themselves shaved. It's just another way to control women, to keep them looking like girls, and to deny them their natural bodies, which are ultimately the paragon of beauty. So ladies, what's it going to be? Repression and Razors or Liberation and Fluffiness? I love my fluffy self. I look like a woman.

Roma Children Drowned before an Apathetic Public

The Picture that Shames Italy EPA

I have read and re-read this story of the two Roma (Gypsy) girls drowned on a beach in Naples, Italy and the beach-goers continuing to sunbathe beside their corpses as if the dead children were nothing but seashells. This is a news story from July 2008, but it is just as pertinent this year. It is truly gruesome, but unfortunately, it does not surprise me. Racism has no boundaries, which is why it must be conquered by love. We are all people.

To be balanced, I have two news sources, The Independent "The Picture that Shames Italy," and EveryOne (a human rights organization) "Two Children of the Ethnic Group Roma Drown in Naples." Both are excellent articles covering the terrifying incident, but EveryOne has done some more digging, finding the story that the girls went into the water of their own volition a little hard to swallow.

Two girls Cristina, aged 14, and Violetta, aged 14, were selling trinkets on the beach with their two cousins, aged 13 and 11, and drowned in the rough tide. The Independent credits their drowning to their exhaustion and the temptation of the cool sea during the hot day, but EveryOne points out how unusual it would be for these girls to decide to go for a swim while they were working and when the Roma culture takes modesty very seriously. However, the most disturbing element of this tragedy is that the beach goers continued to enjoy the sun and such beside the washed up, lifeless bodies of these children as if they were not there at all. Peter Popham of The Independent writes, "The indifference was taken as shocking proof that many Italians no longer have human feelings for the Roma, even though the communities have lived side by side for generations."

"This was the other terrible thing," says Mr Esposito, "besides the fact of the girls drowning: the normality. The way people continued to sunbathe, for three hours, just metres away from the bodies. They could have gone to a different beach. It's not possible that you can watch two young people die then carry on as if nothing happened. It showed a terrible lack of sensitivity and respect."

Popham describes the Italians' relationship with the Roma people, "Roma have been living in Italy for seven centuries and the country is home to about 150,000, who live mainly in squalid conditions in one of around 700 encampments on the outskirts of major cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples. They amount to less than 0.3 per cent of the population, one of the lowest proportions in Europe. But their poverty and resistance to integration have made them far more conspicuous than other communities. And the influx of thousands more migrants from Romania in the past year has confirmed the view of many Italians that the Gypsies and their eyesore camps are the source of all their problems. The ethnic group is often blamed for petty theft and burglaries. According to a recent newspaper survey, more than two thirds of Italians want Gypsies expelled, 'whether they hold Italian passports or not.'"

Roberto Malini writing for EveryOne concludes his article, "'The Roma people are just a scourge,' say the politicians, the authorities, the journalists. The tragedy that took place on Torregaveta beach is not worthy of shedding a tear for, not worthy of wasting a prayer on.

On the sand lie two starfish."

Check out groups like EveryOne and Roma Rights and see what you can do. There are frequently efforts to contact government officials in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, and Italy (really most countries to be perfectly frank) that have serious human rights issues concerning the Roma people who are too long mythic scapegoats and targets of violence.

Love all people.

Meow!

This is my kitten hat. I got it ages ago in Portsmouth at this great store called The Odd Showroom. I put it on and it has made me happy all day. I got some strange looks.

Fashion is Danger

I was never Fashion-Conscious. In high school I wore whatever I felt like, usually bohemian and gypsy-traditional, or just completely bizarre punky contraptions. In middle school I wore leather pants and shiny purple sneakers. I was made-fun of constantly, and usually for my off-key clothes. But I really didn't care. I still don't care, and I wear whatever I like, but suddenly I know that leather is so in this season and I'm lusting after this Top Shop dress.


Stud Leather Dress - View All - Dresses - Topshop

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But of course, this is when I can't afford to feed myself properly. So it's more like I'm a fashionista in a "oh-wow-that's-so-pretty-but-I'll-just-stick-to-darning-my-jeans-for-the-third-time-and boy-am-I-hungry" way. So I "shop" online and drool over the "click here for a larger image" images and that's how I sate my esurience. I've seen all the over the thigh boots and sheer dresses, plus Kate Moss' limited edition line at Top Shop... I've seen it all. I'm not complaining. I'm sure I'll lose interest next week anyway, and besides, I really like those jeans. Patches are still cool, right?

Neglected adventuring

This is a shot of Blackrock Castle which now houses an observatory for the astronomy students at CIT. L and I went on a walk a few days ago out here just for a change. It's been difficult to achieve a balance. We used to work compulsively but for the past year we are forcibly unemployed. We drove ourselves crazy for the first 10 months studying wildly, applying to literally hundreds of jobs, and scrambling for a new plan. I got 15 poems published, applied to the graduate programme of my dreams, and L took up piano and discovered that he is very talented. But we burned ourselves out with all our scrambling. So the last few weeks we decided to take it easy. But that made the stress even more salient. It's like we spend our time trying not to exist. We see our poverty, we feel the ache of homelessness and the discomfort of depending on others for shelter, and all the small dramas that we try to ignore become central, and we bicker. It's desperation. 40 percent of the city is unemployed. We don't have enough to sustain us and that feeling of not enough is exhausting. Aging. We wonder if we should have stayed in America, but all wondering does is remind us that there is no one to tell us what we should do now. What we can do, we realised this morning, is give ourselves some kind of plan. Balance work and play and be strict. Go on small adventures. And to remember love brought us here and love will see us through. And ask the gods to let us win the lottery today.