Lies!

Truth. The fuzzy, grey stuff in between.

Does anyone remember the show "Figure it Out"? With the guest panel (of not so funny B-list television actors) and the talented (and not so talented) children? Eh? Anyone? Probably not. There was this one kid that went on the show, and his... thing was that he had the world's largest collection of toe jam. Which was really just a jar of lint. But he still got to be on TV for 15 minutes. Which made me wonder why they call it "toe jam". To me, that implies either pain or moisture. Gelatinous moisture.

Which made me wonder why feet get such a bad rep as far as body parts go. Sure, they get kind of sweaty and fungi-ridden, but I feel like they deserve a second chance. They do contain something like 25% of all the bones in the body. And... that's the only redeeming quality I can think of right now... dammit.

And then I tried to think of a body part that wasn't disgusting, but all I could come up with was fingers. But they're kind of the most disgusting of all. They do all the dirty work. Plus, they're all nobby and gropey and full of knuckles. And then all those thoughts ended, and I moved on with my life.

I was folding jeans today and decided that my entire family could be represented by the number and types of jeans that they had in the load of laundry. My mom had many different colors and styles of jeans (about 3 of them) for she is the most versatile of us all, as far as different roles go. And also wears the pants in the family. My dad had one pair of jeans in the entire load (it was a big load) and they were "Relaxed Fit", which basically means that he is a man. A man that wears pants. My sister had at least 4 pairs in the load, all of them fairly identical which just screamed "attention whore" to me (at the time that I was folding all these).

My sister's size 2 pants also made me think of how tiny women are these days. And how hard it must be to raise children (or conceive at all for that matter) with such little body fat. If you've never watched a toddler for a few hours, let me tell you, they are physically exhausting. And that's just a couple of hours! Not even close to full-time motherhood.

It's like the female body has been turned into a piece of art. It isn't really valued for it's usefulness or durability anymore, just for the arc of the cheek bones. Or how tightly you can get the skin to stretch over your ribs. Personally, I kind of like using my body, because I'm young and it still seems to be working fairly well. And... oh God, this is turning into another self-righteous, body-image bashing fest...

The point is, I plan to let my body do what it was meant to do (run, jump, fall, shed, digest, make babies, wear out, die, etc.) whether it's an asthetically pleasing process or not. Maybe we should stop holding the traditional idea of a "work of art" in such high esteem, and start regarding other qualities as artistic in their own right. Like a crowbar. A crowbar is useful (depending on how resourceful you are with it) and you'll probably only need to buy one in your lifetime... and now I'm comparing women to crowbars.

I think I should just go to bed.