Hot, Not hot

According to ABC:


Hot:

Not Hot:

So no problems with Britney pashing a woman decades older than herself, but when a man pashes a man similar in age, there's a problem?

Right.

Edit: Lambert's replacement? None other than girlfriend beating R&B singer Chris Brown. And ABC is now saying Adam wasn't cancelled because he was gay, or because he kissed another man, but because he was "unpredictable on Live TV"

So that's the message, performers. You can do whatever the hell you like - up to and including bloodying the lip of your partner - as long as you can follow a cue and don't deviate from the script. Just don't be original or spontaneous. Our precious little eyes couldn't take it.

Two for the price of one

Two worthy causes have organised rallies in Melbourne at the State Library to bring attention to their cause.

Except one didn't check with the other. I guess there's not a lot of crossover.

And so the Equal Love same sex rally and the R18+ Ratings Rally have organised their respective rallies at the same time, same place, same day.

Admission

Today, once again, I put strangers' opinions of me ahead of my own comfort.

It was hot here today. Hot in the house, hot outside. It got up to 32 degrees, and it's still 25 now, at 10.59pm.

I'm wearing jeans. Not by choice, not because I don't feel the heat (By God, do I feel the heat!), but because I am afraid of the judgement, and the scorn, and the comments and the assumptions of people I do not know, and more than anything, from those I do.

I should backtrack. I have eczema, and the attendant dry skin that goes with it. Year-round, but worse at time when the temperatures change suddenly (Like now) no amount of moisturising will stop my lower legs from cracking and peeling, and my skin is tender, sore and red in places. It's manageable, but annoying.

As a result, during these flare-ups I can't shave my legs, and I can't wax. Depilatory creams are out at all times- my skin is just too sensitive for that. Those rotaty things that pluck the hair out? Also take off skin that is peeling, and did I mention the pain? Not keen on adding to it.

These times can last for a week, a month or six months. A Flare-up can materialise overnight - or during the night - and disappear just as quickly. There are things I can do to help, and one of them is avoiding peeling layers of already-cracking skin off with a razor, and not applying hot-wax to an area that's already causing me pain and discomfort.

But what do I do when it's hot? When it's summer? When I cannot shave, or remove the hair in another way?

When I have the choice between comfort and embarrassment? Between wearing shorts or a skirt or a dress and being cooler but enduring the looks, the sneers, the questions and comments? Between saying "Stuff it. I'm hot" and meekly accepting that Women Should Not Have Hair Where Men Do Not Want Them To Have Hair Even Though We Grow Hair There So Clearly We're Supposed To Have Hair There And It's Annoying Removing That Hair But For Some Reason It's Okay For Men To Have Hair There, and hide my shame behind pants and jeans?

Every time, EVERY time, I make the choice to put another person and their opinion in front of my comfort. I will don the Jeans of Wussiness. I will stand here, watching other women walk around in dresses, or skirts or shorts wishing I had made a different choice, but I cannot bring myself (and the sensible, progressive woman in my head is SCREAMING at me right now) to leave the house with the fact that I have not been able to shave my legs for a month on display.

Even though when I see it on another woman, I applaud their choice and celebrate that she has the guts to do so, I cannot do it myself. Even when I get as far as questioning myself as to WHY another womans choice is any of my damn business, I baulk. Every time. I am distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of going out in public in anything that displays my legs when I have been unable to do any hair-removal. And if I could get past that barrier? You can bet your bottom dollar that if challenged on it I would probably explain WHY I have not been able to toe the hair-free line instead of asking that person who the hell they think they are to question my body and my choices in relation to it.

I wish I could say this year will be different. I wish I could say that I'm taking lessons from something and drawing up my strength and biting the bullet and girding my loins and ditching the fucking pants and being a bit more bloody comfortable, but I don't see a change this year. Today I did what I do every year, and put the pants on and tomorrow I will doubtless do the same. I talked to a girl at the party tonight about the dilemma and her suggestion was Maxi dresses. Something that still hides the hair but will make me slightly more comfortable.

As long as I don't cross my legs. Or examine myself too closely to ask myself why I'm bowing to societal pressures when I don't want to and why I preface every one of these discussions with "But! I have a good reason not to!" bleating. And why this has taken me an hour to write, and why I'm still hesitant to hit Publish.

And that's my admission. I am a coward, and I am uncomfortable, and I am will make myself uncomfortable so you will not baulk at my hairy legs. And I don't know if that's ever going to change.

**Edit. Spelled "Baulk" as "Balk" throughout. Four years practically living in pool halls will do that to a girl.

Why I bother

Why I bother with slug patrol:

A Black Beauty rose I planted on July 7th this year, backed by six week old strawberries and parsley.

Slugalicious

And so, in my twenty eighth year, it came to pass that I'd become so domestic that not only was I posting about cooking, but gardening advice.

Oh, God.

Specifically, how to deal with slugs. In a pet friendly manner, considering we have two cats that do venture outside with us occasionally. Hopefully eco-friendly, for no other reason than the fact that I don't really like gloves, and most chemicals mean wearing them.

Want to know what I discovered? If you use orange halves - like, for example, the orange halves left over from the juice we make - as bait, you can collect all your gardens slugs with very little effort, for convenient disposal.

Okay. I just need a moment. I just blogged the words "You can collect all your gardens slugs" with a straight face.

Alright. So what I do is take the orange halves we've used each day, and lay them in front of the plants that have slug or snail damage. I usually put them out when I get home from work, around seven. Then, before bed, I go out and collect them, and pick up any stragglers who're making their way to or from Orange Heaven with a stick. I put them in a plastic bag and tie it tightly so the little buggers can't get out, and toss it in the bin. I don't know whether that means Death to Slugs through lack of air, or Slug Fiesta as they feast on the orange for a while, or Slugageddon, as they eat each other to survive, but I'm not going to individually squish each one, and salt is just too cruel. Whether they survive on the orangey goodness to the tip I do not know, and do not want to know. I'm not really into Slug Welfare, I just want the little bastards to stop eating my capsicum and chilli plants without killing my cats.

It's all less icky than it sounds, really.

What isn't less icky is the song that came into my head as I was doing Slug Patrol tonight.

To the tune of "Islands in the Stream":

Slimy, slimy slugs.

That is what you are

Coming from afar

For my orange halves

Come away with me

To the rubbish bin

You can eat all the orange,

ah ha.......

And that's where it tails off when Jeremy gives me the "Why are you doing this to me?" look.

Honestly, that man has the patience of a saint.

Fat is another one of those wimmin problems

Why do we never see the flip-side of this coin?

Why are these articles always focused at females? Why is there a huge gender divide between the blame game when it comes to weight?

We're bombarded with articles of late telling us that we've got it all wrong. We shouldn't be telling girls it's okay to be overweight.

Let's not get into that, because - leaving aside the fact that there's a healthy middle ground between morbidly obese and a stick-thin size 6 called NORMAL - we should absolutely be encouraging people to be healthy. Not thin. HEALTHY.

Instead, it struck me (whacked me round the head with the rage stick more like) that we never see these articles aimed at men. I asked the question on twitter - why are these things always written about women? And someone replied in jest that it was because "men don't listen"

Well, from my experience in having to repeat myself, that's probably true. But why is the societal pressure so much stronger on women than men to be thin? Why do we perpetuate the myth that "men carry excess weight better"? They don't. And the proclivity of men to carry weight around the middle makes them MORE at risk for health-related weight problems than women.

So why are we shouting down the women who point at the chuppa-chup sticks on catwalks with the "we shouldn't be telling you fatties it's okay to be fat anyway"?

When that patently, obviously, isn't.the.point.

The point is that there is a point in between. There are a group of women, who make up the majority of the female population in fact, that fall in between morbidly obese and stick-thin models. Why are these women not represented on the catwalk? When they are, why does it provoke a backlash of Op-Ed - mainly from women, I might add - saying we're setting a "bad example" for women by showcasing real women with real tits and real arses?

Why does the debate fall two ways? "Unhealthily stick women are giving our daughters eating disorders!!!11!!" and pejorative terms aplenty for the naturally thin woman, regardless of how healthy or fit they are and "normal people on catwalks are giving our daughters fatness!!!11!!" and pejorative terms aplenty for the naturally bigger person, regardless of how healthy and fit they are.

Here's a thought: Stop making fatness a sin, and a sin that only women are responsible for. Men are just as responsible for their own health issues, and I don't see an article every bloody day about how fat men are and how they're ruining society.

More than me

If someone risks life and limb to escape persecution or poverty, gives everything they have for an unsafe passage and finally gets to their destination and wants to start a new life, they're welcome to come in, as far as I'm concerned.

If someone comes to a new country without a word of that countries language yet learns it well enough to talk to me in a short space of time, I'm happy to repeat myself without thinking them an idiot.

If a person who was qualified in their previous country for a white collar job and works night shift in a taxi while they get the same qualifications they had back home doesn't know the exact way home, I'm happy to point them in the right direction. It doesn't cost me anything to be courteous and helpful.

If someone has done more to earn the respect of their new fellow countrymen than any person who has "waited in line", pay it.

Do you know what someone like me - a white immigrant with family already here, from a Commonwealth country - does to get in?

Fills out forms.

Takes a medical.

Waits.

That's all I have to do to earn your respect. All I have to do to be considered the "right" type of immigrant.

And I'm glad my parents went through that. Because it's given us a better life, and I love this country. But we weren't hounded from our country. We weren't persecuted, or threatened or in danger.

What does someone who comes here on a piece of crap boat go through? What will they go through if we send them back? What do these people have to do to earn your respect?

Seriously. If I'm the ideal candidate for immigration, if I'm the only type of person you want in this country, ask yourself why. Because I look like you? Because I sound - for the most part - like you? Because when I walk past you on the street, or work next to you I don't make you confront your own prejudices?

Regardless of what someone is fleeing from - poverty, persecution, a hopeless upbringing with no opportunity to get ahead - they've done more to deserve their place than me. I fled nothing, endured nothing more than inconvenience and apart from some mild teasing about the way I pronounce some words, people accept me.

Once we were a nation of "battlers". A nation that gave a hand up to those who were down.

When did that change? When did we decide there was a limit (Whilst still offering a bonus for increasing the population) on compassion?

**EDIT** An additional note. I am heartily sick of hearing the "Don't like it? Leave!!!1!" bullshit everywhere I turn. Seriously? You think that because someone is an immigrant they are never - regardless of provocation - allowed to disagree with policies, politics or any social problems they see? Why? Every single person who holds that belief does their fair share of wingeing about society, but immigrants aren't.

Those people, to a man, believe that an immigrant can never truly be Australian, and only Australian-born Australians have any right to complain.