Letters to the Editor
Argiri
Published Letters: 31 Editor's Choice: 5
-
Yes, honor the anger...
[Read the article: After years of being meek, I'm suddenly screaming at people!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bravo, Carey! Right on target!
This is one of these times I really feel for the LW. I was raised to repress anger in the name of Christianity and "niceness." Entirely predictably, I went to a very secular college and abjured Christianity and discovered, around the age of 22, that I actually have a hell of a temper and it can be used to limit the amount of annoyance I experience. I remember being quite disgusted and ashamed of myself in high school (a snakepit of a high school) because I couldn't fend off bullies with what I thought of as civilized behavior. But resolving a conflict or misunderstanding in a civilized manner requires two civil people, and when there's only one involved, there's no reason that she should allow herself to be trampled by the non-civil party. There is a time to say "Excuse me," and there is also a time to say, "Fuck off!"
I was most relieved, later, to learn that I was not a natural-born asswipe, but a person with a temper and the verbal facility to channel it productively. I still remember how full of rage I felt for a few years after that - I had a 22-year supply with plenty of accrued interest. And my personal policy on the social contract changed and evolved - forbearance is for people who are doing their best, generosity is for the generous, politeness is for the polite, and temper is for the bloody-minded who can't keep their mouths closed or their hands to themselves. I have come to feel that it is no favor to the assholes of the world to encourage their bad behavior with forbearance...they keep doing what they've been doing, others continue to suffer from their behavior, and the meek, far from inheriting the earth, grind their teeth and develop hypertension.
-
Consider the compensations...
[Read the article: I can't stand losing my beauty as I age!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I remember my own puzzled response during the transition from very pretty three-year-old to ordinary-looking five-year-old, when I found myself earning all the approval I used to get just for existing. It was not pleasant. It lets me imagine something of what the LW is experiencing now. But the forties, particularly for women who hit menopause early, can have powerful advantages. Hormone-driven female angst subsides. Depressives may find themselves getting a lot better. That firm sense of self that girls enjoy before puberty returns (for me, and for some others I know). The physical nastiness that comes with adolescence, the greasy skin and the hair that needs washing every day, becomes a mere memory. (A few teenagers look good, yes, but the teenage body, with its oils and oozes and unruly smells, is yucky!) Hormone-driven ailments such as migraines may subside or disappear after menopause. Estrogen is nasty stuff; along with helping perpetrate the race by making women attentive to babies and making their skin smooth and soft, it makes them anxious and exacerbates depression and anxiety. My main associations with adolescence and youth are savage depression and savage headaches; I would not turn the calendar back to 1975 for anything! I am actively grateful, most days, to feel so much better than I did at sixteen. LW, try turning your attention inward and seeing if you perceive some of the same kinds of relief. The outer you may turn out to be very satisfactory in a new way, and the inner you may be healthier and happier than she has been before.
-
Yuck!
[Read the article: Shaming Jamie Lynn Spears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Never mind "bad" or "impure." How about STUPID, CRIMINALLY STUPID in a person who has every material advantage and access to medical help, including birth control? When I was thirteen, I knew what it was and how to use it. So did my friends. We were ordinary middle-class kids who found out from "Our Bodies, Our Selves," which we had to read on the sly in the bookstore. But we found out.
What about adults so clueless that they don't know their underaged kid (who, incidentally, is their meal ticket for the next decade, since their eldest seems to be incapictated) is knocked up until it's beyond the point where an abortion is an easy option?
I'm also weary, very weary, of people who think of the Spears clan as role models. Why? Why, for that matter, any entertainer? Most such people are not particularly educated. Many of them, beyond their particular talents, aren't especially interesting or especially bright. Some of them seem sorely in need of psychotropic medication that they don't have the sense to obtain and take.
There is no reason to consider them authorities on anything except their areas: singing, dancing, acting, whatever.
As for the Spears group, the old ladies in my southern home town had a name for people who acted like that, and it wasn't progressive or pretty but does have a certain relevance where the Spears family's concerned.