Letters to the Editor
Leeandra Nolting
Published Letters: 177 Editor's Choice: 10
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Eve Ensler, you've been beaten to it.
[Read the article: Beyond Vagina-dome]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have a male friend, who shall not be named, who at least three years ago came up with a long, stoned, complicated theory about how 1.) New Orleans is the vagina of America and 2.) the French Quarter was the clitoris.
I pointed out that the French Quarter was technically INSIDE New Orleans and left it at that, but I don't think he ever quite figured out what I meant...
Anyway, I went to the Superdome with my boyfriend (yes, Brightstar, they let guys in!) because a neighbor of mine had been one of the organizers of the event, and because I'm poor and I figured there might be free stuff. I got a bunch of ball point pens, a coffee mug, and an extremely useful booklet detailing various sliding scale medical and dental clinics in the area, and that's about it on the empowerment scale.
I also got my picture taken beside a six-foot-tall ball of bras, even though you weren't supposed to have a camera in there.
I agree with Traister in that the Superdome seemed to have been turned into a vagina by a prom committee.
All told, it was a fairly amusing Saturday, and my boyfriend seemed to enjoy the novelty of seeing the word "vagina" printed on t-shirts. But it wasn't anything to write home about.
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I think it was Tom Stoppard
[Read the article: My body, my choice, my art project?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]who said "Creativity without talent gives us modern art."
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angelbug---
[Read the article: My beautiful mommy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Check out A.E. Stallings poem "The Tantrum." (It's from the book "Archaic Smile"). It's about precisely this situation. I was about to post about it.
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I watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" not too long ago...
[Read the article: Ugh, what did she do to herself?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And was amazed by the fact that Audrey Hepburn LOOKS HER AGE (31) in it, even though she was playing a character that would have been 20 or 21 at most. There are a lot of close-ups of her face, and it's plain that she's got fine lines around her eyes and mouth.
She never got plastic surgery, and she still managed to look fantastic (and like herself) in her 60s when she was speaking for UNICEF.
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check out angel food
[Read the article: How I learned to stop worrying and love the recession]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's not to everyone's taste, but Angel Food ministries has been a Godsend to my grocery bill. It's in most big cities and many small towns. Google it and see.
Basically, a local church (you don't have to be in any way affliated with it or ANY religious organization) designates one Sat. a month for food distribution. Church volunteers distribute it in the parking lot There are no income checks and they welcome anyone who wants to save money on groceries. For about 30 bucks, you get 100 bucks' worth of food because they buy food at wholesale and have very little overhead cost.
Especially if you eat meat, it helps A LOT with the bill. (The steaks that come with it about every other month are actually really, really good!)
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allow the deaf to serve?!?!
[Read the article: Looking for a few good women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Could you repeat that please?
I can think of a hell of a lot of good reasons why someone of either sex who is deaf (or hard-of-hearing beyond a certain degree) should not be in the military...and all of them are based off the fact that THEY CAN'T COMMUNICATE AS EFFECTIVELY IN LIFE-OR-DEATH SITUATIONS BECAUSE THEY CAN'T HEAR.
Sorry, that's the good kind of discrimination, the kind that's based on common sense. There are other ways for the deaf to serve their country--I volunteered for Americorps for a year and there were many programs with that in which a volunteer's deafness would not have precluded them from service.
I agree with you on the need for video transcripts. Salon, are you listening?
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I know there are different physical fitness tests for men and women...
[Read the article: Looking for a few good women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...but all of them are required to go through basic training. Even the ones who never have and probably will never see anything closer to combat than playing in the Marine Corps band or guarding the Tomb of the Unknown have to go through the same basic training. The idea is that any of them will be ready to fight if called upon (even though, for all practical purposes, we all know some of them never will).
Heck, the recruiter at my high school was trying to get me to work for Armed Forces Radio because of my experience in broadcasting--but I still would have had to go through basic. (I wasn't tempted to join the military, but I probably would have been rejected anyway, due to deformed knees and bad hearing that didn't keep me from successfully working in radio but would have made me difficult to communicate with under fire on a battlefield.)
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hey, wasn't "pocketbook" an old euphenism for vagina?
[Read the article: Your handbag is hysterical!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Or did it refer to the entire female reproductive system?
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vanity of vanities, everything is vanity
[Read the article: Study: Most women "disordered eaters"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm at a perfectly healthy weight for my height (135 on a 5'7" frame), physically active though I don't formally "work out," in good general health, low BP and cholesterol, etc.
I don't have the body of a model. I wear roughly a size 8, (though with vanity sizing, who knows?) I have pockets o'fat on my stomach and upper arms, remnants of when I weighed 165 (which at most is only about 15 lbs over a healthy weight for someone of that height).
My attitude towards these problem areas is, and I quote, "Fuck it." They aren't health issues, they are cosmetic issues, they're really not that bad, they can be easily dressed around, and anyone who's going to see me naked is either another female, my doctor, or a lover, and in the last case he can grow up and deal with it.
You would not believe the flak I got when I wrote about this on my blog. "Fuck it" is an unhealthy attitude to take, a few sit-ups and push-ups would take care of it, most women enjoy working out, why do you think it's OK to let yourself go, don't you want to be attractive, etc.?
Well, of course I want to be attractive, but there's a difference between healthy attention to one's appearance and vanity (in both senses of that word.) Just because something is the norm does not mean it's not disordered.