Cold Spaghetti

Based on my last post, a friend of mine pointed out this Washington Post article by Rebel Dad comparing Mommy and Daddy bloggers where he asks, ‘do Dads whine less than Moms?’

Rebel Dad prudently offers the conclusion that Dads, though more and more active in the rearing of children and in many cases taking over roles as primary homemakers, just haven’t “earn[ed] our stripes yet.”  He ponders that Dads don’t get to whine as much because the gulf between the responsibilities of Mothers and Fathers in raising a child is too wide for the discourses to be the same.

Well, yes.  But there’s a lot more.

Somehow, gender equality went down the road of ‘proving’ the sameness of one sex to another: I can do what you can do, therefore, we are equal.  So the ‘rights’ of women were earned by women adopting masculine behaviors to prove workplace equality.  (Consider the well-known statement made by Gloria Steinem: “Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.”)   To be successful, women have adopted a model of education and work life that mirrors the single man.  Activities associated with being a woman (marriage, babies, mothering) are seen as weak and inconsistent with professional behavior.  No one will take you seriously if you have a baby during your PhD because a man wouldn’t (physically) have a baby while doing a PhD.

It’s not just a bum deal for women; strict gendered roles are insulting to both sexes.

Here’s the thing: women and men are NOT the same.  One sex bears children and the other one doesn’t.  That biological difference needs to be taken into account for both to be equal.

Rebel Dad is 100% correct when he says that Dads don’t ‘whine’ as much as Mothers.  Because they can’t.  That discourse is feminine, reflective of the assumed responsibility of Mothers as parents.  Consider: a woman is shopping with a small child who is not behaving well, crying, fussing, whining… standard stuff.  People judge her parenting, blame her for not disciplining the child (even if she is trying to handle the situation) and may even make overall judgments about whether or not she is ‘working.’  If the same situation were playing out with a man, the response would be more empathetic; Dad has his hands full and doesn’t know what to do.  Both are patronizing, but associated with very different cultural responses reflecting very different gendered assumptions.

We Moms bitch more about parenting because when the chips fall down, the world looks to us to pick up the pieces.  Men can walk away, shrug shoulders in confusion, and just feign ignorance.  Women don’t have those options — or face harsh criticism when we do.  Coming to terms with being both a Mother and still be respected (as those hip, childless people we used to be) is a big part of Mommy blogging.  ‘Whining’ is one way to work it out.  Would Dads regain that same pre-fatherhood hipness if they whined in the same way?   No.  They work out their own parenting and gender conflicts in different discourse.

Moms are doing all we can, I think, to show that being a Mom IS hip and that the workplace, the academy, and society in general needs to accommodate our awesomeness.  All three are very slow in this acceptance, so pardon us if we feel the need to air grievances.

Just one more important point.  I remain deeply bothered about the initial questioning regarding ‘whining.’  Because asking whether Moms whine more than Dads is simply a thinly veiled open door for people to bitch about Moms.  AGAIN.  ‘Cause seriously, lady, you complain when you work and you complain when you stay at home.  Look, see?  Us men can handle either situation, and with less bitching!  So why don’t you just figure it out already?’

And that is the real whining we’ve all heard enough of.

Without a doubt, the best thing I have ever done for my career was have children.

Going completely against the words of my advisers (“no one will ever take you seriously if you have a baby while you do a PhD”) and in contrast to my departmental peers (almost all of whom are not only childless but single) — I got married and had babies.

And it was the best thing I have ever done, or could ever have done, for my career.

I work in Public Health, specifically in International Health, where I study things like poverty, development, gender, migration, and disparity.  In terms of methodology, I am a big believer in qualitative research in health; that we need people who actually unpack what all those health numbers mean so that we can be most effective in how we address health.  So when I walked into a rustic birthing facility with my visibly bulging 6 month pregnant belly to hold the hand of a young mother and help her labor — that woman gripped my hand and trusted me.  A year later, when Will crawled around the cement floor with other babies in the community meeting, women easily opened up to share stories of how they feed their children.  People approached me in buses and street corners, pushing Will in his stroller through the streets of Lima.  When I brought Kate into homes of newly arrived immigrants after Katrina, I compared nursing techniques with new Mothers struggling to figure out how to do it on their own.

What does it mean to be a Mother and work in International Health?  It means everything.  Being a Mother just breaks through all the differences that culture, faith, ideology, geography, wealth, and language build between us — although they may shape how we are Mothers, the visceral experience of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and simply having a child is universal.

So there are no better people in the world to speak about issues like social justice, responsibility, activism, and the work of creating a better world.

You know what light bulb brought me to this conclusion?  Reading Jenny’s line about seeing Alejna and baby Theo for lunch, during which the baby “audibly soiled his diaper.”  The universality of the experience struck me — how that could have happened anywhere with any group of women and all the Mothers in the room would know the sound and share the response.  It reduces us all to the most fundamental of our qualities, that which makes us human: our ability and responsibility to care for each other.

To me, Jen and Mad‘s Just Posts are the internet representation of the important and relevant words of regular folks — and particularly of Mommy bloggers, who are routinely maligned and discounted as unimportant.  I know that writing about my family is important.  The personal is political — and the work I do living here, in this wounded city, is as important as any news about town, if not more.  Seeing similar experiences, thoughts, and challenges from others through Just Posts helps me see those same personal and political actions in so many other communities.  Finding them was a gift and has become something that I look forward to for inspiration.

So that is why Alejna and I, with the gracious blessings of Jen and Mad (and also Su), have teamed up to carry their legacy.  We sincerely hope that people will continue to send us recommended reading from bloggers throughout the world who have written something that makes us all more aware, more committed, more involved.

This heaviness is in my heart and head.  These things (past, present, future?) and more…are things I just can’t shake.  Really, they are the kinds of things one shouldn’t shake away: we should put our faces right up to them, shine that mirror onto our natures, and teach each other better ways.  Which is why I am embarrassed that at times like these, my instinct is to grab my family and run.  My worst weaknesses, fear and sorrow.  Sometimes I just can’t find a silver lining.  Sometimes I can’t help but see the worst.

Jaded, cynical, and rational, I cannot believe in a benevolent creator that loves the people of earth, so I need to believe in a world of people who love each other.  It’s all I’ve got.  It’s all I am.

Which is maybe why, tonight, when Will picked this book to read at bedtime, I finished it with great difficulty.  Not the hormonal sensitivities of a younger woman feeling nostalgic over a cheesy movie’s surprise patriotism — but the hitching breath and breaking voice of an adult who doesn’t know how to explain how ugly things happen in a world her children are being taught to love.

It’s dense, y’all.  So here’s the first dose.

It’s about race and health in public health research.

The U.S. is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society, so we use race as a variable in all of our research.  We do this partially because of the fact that racial differences persist in virtually every area of health interest, and partially because of convention – we publish statistics stratified by race, we control for race in research models, and we exclude individuals from analysis on the basis of race.  What we (‘we,’ meaning me and my colleagues of health researchers… if I might take that presumptuous leap of status) don’t do is stop to question whether race is really an appropriate construct – what it means, what it really differentiates, and what it ultimately suggests.

This is really important because the use of race in public health research is very problematic.  The idea is that using race categories controls for some sort of undisclosed differences in population genetics… or in fancier talk, the epidemiologic assumption is that there is a genotypic difference that is being controlled.  But in reality, researchers aren’t in the practice of, say, taking gene frequency measures in their participants.  And more to the point: they aren’t even in the practice of defining the criteria for assigning a person in one racial category to another.

Well, if you’re still with me, you might be asking about the standard.  Because, surely, our medical researchers have come up with some hard and fast rule about the biologic concept of race in medicine.

Nope.

And as much as population geneticists will jump up and down screaming about things like ‘continental racial categories’ and the higher incidence of genetically-related disease in certain groups (say, sickle cell) – the bottom line?  All our genome work has us coming back again and again to say that genetically, we’re all pretty much the same.

Richard Cooper (an MD and Epidemiologist at Loyola Med School in Chicago) is sort of the Master and Commander of this discourse and I’d be remiss to try and restate what he says so darn clearly:

Racial differences reflect different social environments, not different genes, even where two groups live side by side, as do blacks and whites in the United States.  Race does not mark in any important way for genetic traits; rather, it demonstrates beyond question the paramount role of the social causes.  We have much more to learn from that paradigm, rather than the one offered by ethnogenetics.

In short, when we’re studying race, we’re really not studying genotypic differences – we’re studying phenotypic differences.  (e.g.: the differences that result in our environments, not our genetics.)
Okay then, but public health uses race all the time and finds all sorts of interesting results.  What does all that mean??

For one, it means that the results might be screwy.  The majority of public health research occurs statistically: where a model full of complex and overwhelming Greek letters spell out a variety of things (the independent variables) that predict what happens to an outcome (the dependent variable).  Race is most often used as a dummy, or binary, variable – meaning that you are either black or white – so the lack of conceptual clarity about what in the world each of those categories means leaves a great deal of room for error… if you aren’t controlling for something very clearly within your model, it means that your variable is open to error.  It could be measuring the effects of other things in your model, including things in the error term.  This means it could be “endogenous,” which, in public health research, is a Really. Bad. Thing.  Suggesting that using race as a binary variable presents a problem of endogeneity to statistical models is sort of like saying that that ‘vegetarian’ gravy your Mom has been feeding you for all your 20 years of vegetarianism is actually made from 6 different animals.  It ruins everything you’ve ever done with it and colors your ability to use it in the future.  It’s better to just not know.  Or to ignore the reality.  Or!  To reinvent it!

Like, for example, saying that race doesn’t really mean what we think it means.  Let’s get real, you say, we know that race is all messy!  So when we’re talking about race disparities in health, we’re actually measuring other things… you know, like socioeconomic status, discrimination, cultural factors, stuff like this that we know have a racial component.

That’s all fine and good, I answer, but public health models shouldn’t be proxy for anything not clearly defined.  That’s not good science.  It’s more logic to argue that if race is a proxy for other factors, then we need to find better ways of measuring those other factors.  If we’re going to intervene effectively, we need to clearly understand what is going on.

Let me give an example.  Let’s say that you are a health researcher and you’re studying prenatal care utilization.  You’ve got a great regression model controlling for a variety of factors and your results show a statistically significant coefficient for the race binary variable (that the mean number of visits is higher for whites than for blacks, even when you’re controlling for things like income, age, insurance status, etc.)  You might fall into the trap of reporting (as is embarrassingly common in published research) that “race is a significant determinant of prenatal care utilization.”  Think about that for a minute.  The color of one’s skin has nothing to do with how many times someone sees the doctor.  How the world around someone reacts to them due to the color of their skin (or other individual factors) may very well impact how many times they attend a prenatal visit… but that is not what the model is measuring, nor what the data is suggesting!

Further, if you go along that route, you may filter that finding down to medical and public health practice.  It may be unintentional or even unrealized, but your intervention could be focused on race, trying to address whatever it is about being black that means you go to the doctor less.  You may not even think to see what is going on with the doctor, or the clinic, or the system because you’re so focused on intervening in on that race factor… and you’d be missing the point.

Public health science needs better conceptual precision about the measurement of race, period.  At the very least, the lesson here is that we need to be clear on what we’re measuring and how we’re interpreting it.

Possible reader comment:

“Are you really working on a PhD, because honestly, I read your blog and uh… you’re just totally a Mom with a camera and a sometimes nice way of writing.”

No, really, I am working on a PhD.  And while I don’t necessarily feel like I need to say anything to prove that fact, I am starting to turn a corner with my work.  No, no, I’m way too entrenched in academic aloofness to claim some sort of importance in what I find interesting (we get kicked out of the ivory tower club for that kind of uppity behavior) – but I do feel GOOD about it.  In the sense that there could, maybe, be some sort of usefulness in something, somewhere.  Was that stated aloof enough?  Phew.

Unsure of where to start, I’m just going to start at the beginning.  I figure, too, if I can just talk about this in normal language to explain to a regular person, than I do really ‘get’ the big picture here.  So think of this as an exercise.  Oh, and as something that will come in parts… because these blog posts need to be taken in steps before we reach full stride.  I’m telling you: I get winded easily.

So I study health inequalities.  I’m interested in where the best interventions can be made to improve  lives and health statuses.  In particular, I like health research because of how health reflects on social and political histories: there is a story, a reason, why certain people are healthy and others are not.  War, racism, segregation, climate – these all help paint health.  How this happens and how we should work as a nation and as a global community to mitigate those effects are of endless interest to me.

My current research is with Latin American immigrants to the United States.  Because I am working in New Orleans, the majority of these immigrants are Honduran – not Mexican — which is against the norm in many other areas of the United States that can correctly characterize their Latin American immigrant population as largely Mexican.  In short then, what I am studying encompasses both what it means to be an immigrant from Latin America living in the United States and what it means to be a racial minority within the United States.

So the first place to start is with race and health.  Stay tuned.

The year I struggled the most was right after college.  I was working for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC, and had living expenses that were crippling.  One month, desperate for a suit I could wear to some of awards ceremonies I had privy to attend, I purposely used my overdraft protection to write a check that I knew I couldn’t cover on overdraft — knowing that I was to be paid two days later and therefore would not bounce.  That following month, already starting in the hole because of my $50 suit, I gave $10 to a co-worker in the mail room who was collecting money for his daughter’s school.  Initially after I gave it, I regretted it.  It was the same $10 that was suppose to be my lunch money for the next few days.  But ultimately, when I thought about it, giving that money became one of my proudest moments.  I’d be feeling so strapped for months — living paycheck to paycheck — and it made me feel better about my situation and myself to give to others.  Didn’t Anne Frank say that no one ever became poor by giving?

I’ve written before about the importance of spending a little more to lend support to local organizations, local business owners, and local products.  As 2008 drew to a close, I was thinking more and more about the things I’m most proud of this year and wanting to talk about giving… but I felt like it would come across as showy or superior, which is not how I feel about it nor how I want to come across.  So I stayed quiet about things like money and giving.  Then Jen and Mad posted about giving and encouraged it from others.  So here I go.

I’m proud at how we give.  And each year, we strive to give more.  I’ve read a lot about folks trying to get back to basics, reusing and recycling, all that jargon that is so popular these days.  But what about giving your time and money?  That, in my opinion, is the giving that matters.  If you’re just giving away stuff from your attic or closet or basement that you don’t use anyway, is it really an effort to be a better person and community member, or just to improve your own life?  And while that’s good in it’s own place, what about setting examples for our children on giving more than our old things: our time, our attention, our energy, our talents, our hard-earned money… to help others?  Isn’t teaching compassion and empathy the whole point of living simply — and if it isn’t, well, then shouldn’t it be?

This year, we gave more than 5% of our total income in cash donations, donated our services to local fundraisers, served on nonprofit boards, sponsored local events, volunteered on committees, showed up for work days, assisted with computer help to organizations and individuals, wrote grants, taught English, and offered translation.  All of these called for our time and took us away from paying work.  We don’t have money to burn or family inheritance safe guards.  If we just had made our donations in-kind and saved the cash, we could have done all sorts of things we’d have loved to do: spent more time at the beach, gone to Disney World, finally replaced that 12 year old mattress with a king-sized set, upgraded my 6 year old camera, or hired help to finish some of the many renovations we’ve been working on for years.  But we believe that the only way to give is to plan for it every month as a necessity.  There is never enough for anyone to feel secure, it’s always that way.  So giving has to be a priority.

No one has ever become poor through giving.

And really, what will happen if you gave an extra $20 or $50 or $100 a month?  Would you starve?  Would you lose your home?  Because within that month, there are many many many many many in our world who will.  What will you have lost?  I’m not trying to be preachy… this is what I feel, what I say to myself when I feel frustrated or stretched thin or like I’m denying myself or my family things that could make our lives easier or brighter.  Because in the end, we are better than great.

And ultimately, when we came to the end of the year, I didn’t regret the things I hadn’t bought or done.  (Even if I still wish we had that big bed and am bummed that we are stepping over construction debris each day.)  All that really doesn’t matter.  Instead, I wished I would have given more during the year and encouraged others to do the same.

When you come right down to it, we live extravagantly compared to most of the world.  So we should do more.  There is so much more to do.

In the first few months of this year, we are giving monthly donations to Abeona House, the preschool we helped start after Katrina.  While Abeona House is just one of the organizations we give to, it’s one of the ones closest to our hearts and the one we pledged to give the most to.  Having helped start the organization, we know how it works, where the money goes, and how it is managed.  We know that the people employed are being paid a good wage (although childcare professionals are paid a pathetically low salary across the board everywhere) and full-time employees receive benefits, which is rare in this field in our city.  There are Abeona employees who lost homes in Katrina; one is still living in a FEMA trailer.  Abeona is one of the only preschools in the city to offer a sliding scale tuition.  Donations to the school help it offer placement to more lower-to-middle income families (teachers, social workers, nonprofit organization workers, artists) who would otherwise not qualify for State-based assistance programs.  If you are looking for a 501c3 organization that will use your donation in the service of children’s programming and family support: this is one that applies.

Other organizations we feel similar about and give to are Ecole Bilingue (where our kids currently attend school) and Planting Magic Beans (founded and run by good friends of ours in Peru).

No matter what happens, I know that we will be okay in the ways that matter.  And ultimately… No le hará rico; no me hará pobre.

One of the reasons I have been distracted lately is because I’ve been temporarily stunned to silence by the deafening sound of thousands of foreheads smacking into hands in despair and disappointment.  I’m sure you understand.  You heard the news, right?

Of the 192 countries represented in the UN General Assembly, only 66 (like, a third !!) are willing to support the phrase, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” And the U.S.A., with our fingers wagging at other countries whom we feel are not supportive of human rights (whatever in the world we feel they may be?), is in that pathetic majority.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, YEAH.  I hear all the cover-your-ass arguments about federal government and state jurisdiction and blahblahblah.  But you know?  Here’s the thing.  When you take these ridiculous “moral” positions and apply them to policy, it codifies a social dynamic of good versus bad.  In the policy forum, you build systems of inequality.  And in the social forum?  REALLY bad things happen.  Those who are seen as morally deviant are persecuted, seen as disposable, and not afforded the basic human rights to life and dignity*.  By refusing to support a document that recognizes all of us, with all of our wonderful differences and similarities, simply as human beings — it makes it okay to marginalize, penalize, punish, and destroy each other.

It is one thing to have personal or religiously-based reasons to struggle with different sexual orientations.  That is personal situation.  It is another thing all together to not recognize all people, regardless of differences, as human beings.  That is the fuel to the fire of hate, leading directly to the support of acts of violence, bigotry, and xenophobia.  The bottom line is, not supporting this document goes completely against our moving towards a more humane and just world.  (And means that we, the ‘human right watchdog’ U.S., are Big. Fat. Hypocrites.)

But hey, my Grandma taught me to roll with the punches, befriend the enemy, and make change from the inside.  The U.S. has a moral objection to homosexuality for no other real reason than some folks here just don’t like it.  So, since we’re on board for marginalizing people as non-human due to our own personal morals, I’d like to add some things to our “those not human” list.  Here are a few that offend my own moral sensibilities:

— Men who urinate in public.  Definitely against my morals.  Also, a threat to public health.

— People who hawk up snot balls and hork them in public places.  (See above.)

— Creationists.  (I should note that I find stupidity and ignorance to be morally offensive.)

I mean, if people simply loving each other is reason for being sub-human, then surely those on the list above qualify for the same (non)distinction.

Come on, U.S.A.  Come on, people of the world!  Our first job needs to be to protect and promote human rights without exception.  Period.  What are we, if we can’t do something as simple and clear as that?

—

* There is a good chance that something in one of those links came from Gentilly Girl, who is constantly linking to thoughtful and insightful articles on the topics above.

“Mommy, can you get me something to read while I sit on the toilet?”

“You need something to read?”

“Yes.”

“Like, a magazine?”

“No.  A book.  Can you get the one in your bedroom that is about ducks?”

—

Before you go to snap judgments…

That Little Man, the one who wants to read about ducks while sitting on the throne, has silently endured an ear infection so bad that the pressure burst through the membrane of his ear drum and started leaking fluid out of his ear.  I noticed the dried fluid when we came home from his Christmas party Friday morning and within 30 seconds, had the doctor’s office on the phone.  Any thoughts on how painful it must be to have your ear filled with pussy fluid* with pressure so strong that it breaks through an organ?  (Okay, so probably that membrane isn’t an organ.  But wow, shouldn’t this at least be memorable in the short-term?  Cause an ‘ouch,’ maybe?)  I found photographic evidence of it from earlier that morning, from photos I took during the holiday party:

So, just to be clear: men who like to read about ducks on the can are tough.  T-O-U-G-H.

Oh, did I mention?  He wore a red flashing Rudolph nose from the party all afternoon, including through the entire trip to the doctor’s office — thoroughly mortifying the two teenage boys that he sat beside in the waiting room — and delighting everyone that saw him.  You know, while his little 5-year old head was leaking pussy fluid*.

That’s my guy.  Keepin’ it real.

(Last photo by Paul, who took the photo.  Photo by Paul showing Will wearing the stocking on his head, taken by Paul, who took the photo.  Just in case: that last photo?  Paul took it.  Thanks, Paul!)

* Meagan kindly noted my use of the phrase “pussy fluid” (not once, but TWICE) in this post and though it would totally be the right thing to, um, watch my phrase-ology, I just can’t bring myself to change it.  I just can’t stop laughing at myself.

My favorite is the stick figure shaking his little butt.  Which little one do you like best?  (Video after the jump.)

12 STIs of Christmas

And here’s the public health response on this Soapbox Saturday….

From a public health perspective, fear of something is not a very effective tool to influence behavior change.  But I still find this little public health message cute and informative… mostly because it reminds that condoms protect from more than HIV.  Perhaps it is good campaign to direct at pharmaceuticals?  It does a good job of showing how ridiculous it is that we ONLY have the condom to protect against these infections, which is pretty worthless when you consider the amount of people who choose to have sex without condoms because they want to get pregnant (or live in a pronatalist culture), or are forced to do so, whether by threat, coercion, or obligation.

If anyone says ‘abstaining’ as an option, I may just hurl, or cry.  We’re not taking about American upper middle class teenagers, first of all, and second, the entirety of sexual and reproductive health doesn’t revolve around them and their perceived needs.  Sexuality as a ‘choice’ exists in only a few spaces.  In reality, many have very little choice on how their sexuality gets expressed: culture, tradition, expectations, power, money, obligation, and poverty are much more present factors than any individual behavior ‘choice.’  Which is why the condom, a method that must be negotiated between a couple, is so ineffective as a comprehensive tool.  It’s all we’ve got and at least it works when it’s used correctly, but it’s hardly the answer we need.

Santa?  Are you listening?  Here is what I would like for Christmas: A viable method of protection for sexual partners to use that prevents STIs that is NOT the condom.  Can you get your elves on that?  Our pharmaceuticals are just not heading the message.

Edison said “Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration,” which has been one of my favorite quotations for years because it absolutely puts those talkers into their place.  Yeah yeah, I’ve heard the talk, but honestly, what have you done lately?

You could say much the same about me and my writing, both the blog and otherwise, where I have all of these great ideas of things I want to say but just can’t get around to getting it down.  Writing about Love Your Body Day (on November 1st) was one of them.  My mind was full with thoughts of the cathartic spilling of the ridiculous things I allow myself to think about my body and ultimately myself.  I daydreamed about the post, what I’d say, fretting about how personal to make it, wondering how honest I could be.  I spent so much time mulling it about it in my head that I never did it.  The whole idea was to strike while the iron was hot and I let it freeze over.  So I moved on.

And then, via Kate Harding, I read this post about a recent interview with Ani DiFranco.  Ani, of course, being The Voice of My Feminist Generation — 30-something women who, 15 years ago, were listening to Not a Pretty Girl while reading deBeauvoir and making signs for the next demonstration.

Okay, I have to be honest here.  While that may have been going on in some circles, my mainstream appearance was a little much for that crowd and after attending a meeting and being insulted for shaving my legs I didn’t return.  Incidentally, though, in terms of my feminist studies and activism — I was the one selected to co-teach in women’s studies while still an undergrad; I was the one the Department approached about tutoring members of the football team in women’s studies in the aftermath of Bronzkala and VAWA; and I was also the one photographed going head-to-head with the Dean of Student Affairs over the issue of how the school handles sexual assault charges among students.  So ‘feminist’ appearances don’t mean much.  Ugh.  Did I really just write all that?  My glory days are more like gory days.

Enough.

The point here is that although I look all peaches and cream and home baked pie with my blonde hair and occasionally shaved legs, for years I’ve harbored the secret desire to be Ani DiFranco.  To Just Be That Cool.  To have it all out there so plainly.  I hadn’t thought much about Ani’s music lately, being subjected as I am to constant requests for “Elmo” and “Imagination Movers” (occasionally veering into Young MC, as my kids are HipHop fiends).  Then I read about her new album and this song.

Everything I wanted to say about Love Your Body day?  All that stuff I was thinking about?  It’s right here.

lately i’ve been glaring into mirrors
picking myself apart
you’d think at my age i’d have thought
of something better to do
than making insecurity into a full-time job
making insecurity into art
and i fear my life will be over
and i will have never lived unfettered
always glaring into mirrors
mad i don’t look better

but now here is this tiny baby
and they say she looks just like me
and she is smiling at me
with that present infant glee
and yes i will defend
to the ends of the earth
her perfect right to be

so i’m beginning to see some problems
with the ongoing work of my mind
and i’ve got myself a new mantra
it says: “don’t forget to have a good time”
don’t let the sellers of stuff power enough
to rob you of your grace
love is all over the place

there’s nothing wrong with your face
love is all over the place
there’s nothing wrong with your face

lately i’ve been glaring into mirrors
picking myself apart

… okay, I know.  I KNOW.  But it’s only 6 days more.  And it starts with “Holly” and ends on my birthday.  How could I not?