Why We’re Bitches

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Full disclosure: I am listening to overtly mellow music as I write this. I work with a woman who claims that she would be homicidal without yoga. Why should I disagree?

Although there is a faux trend in popular culture to suddenly acknowledge the market value of women over 40 as consumers only because of course that is the one things we are running out of in corporate managed capitalism: anybody with money. So we are suddenly faced with “positive” images after years of being ignored or just scorned. As it happens the current cutesy image of the over 40 woman is that of an individual with endless resources. The recent past of Sex in the City the sudden discovery of Meryl Streep as an actress who is not only not dead and dried up but still kicking it and shouldn’t we be happy girls? We have arrived. Haven’t we?

Have we? Try being over 40 and daring to have a fucking wrinkle and be derided as old while mocked if it is evident one has dallied with too much plastic surgery. And don’t wear an ill fitting fucking pant suit lest one be the example of the sexless vagina less power witch. On the other hand don’t try and appear too sexy. That would undermine one’s intellectual credibility. Which isn’t necessarily such a good thing to have either unless the boys approve and it can be used for corporate good and has anybody noticed that men are losing their jobs quicker than women? I can hardly wait for some irrelevant right wing middle aged commentator to drag out statistics about how men have been unjust victims in this recession and the solution is for the girls to go back into the kitchen. You know like the Reagan years when retro was cool and the very roots of your jobs disappearing to other places started.  Oh and note to men you have been fucked and you have been unjustly rearranged and you should be pissed just don’t buy into that blame the chicks ideology.

If you dye your hair you are denying reality ( thanks it has worked for me so far ) and if you don’t and let your natural wisdom show through a la grey hair you are likely to be replaced by the  cuter younger version of yourself in the office. You know the younger cuter version of yourself: the neo bandwagon crowd, the young women who think feminism is silly and they graduated with a 4.0 thank you very much. Dude. Have lunch with me in a few years. Like when you find out your maternity leave is two weeks long and you have to answer your email the whole time. America is so family oriented. Maybe it would be better if we all lived in housing complexes owned by whatever company we work for so the commute would be nice and short. Oh. Didn’t we call those company towns in the day? Nice idea we should try again since nobody can pay their mortgages even though the crisis is supposed to be not getting worse.

And if you’re fat you’re just another stupid cow American woman who can’t please her man and that is why American men are going and getting themselves nice foreign wives if you’re thin you must have an eating disorder. Good luck if you happen to be a woman of any shade or color and you don’t dress the way the Gap or J. Crew thinks you should. Somebody might fear your “ethnicity’ or complain you look too “ethnic’. I don’t know what too ethnic actually is but I know certain hairstyles are frowned upon at my work place. One thing that gets me is the very people who complain about blatant expressions of ethnicity never really show which interest in the various nationalities and cultural variations that swirl around. Never mind that Americans can barely speak one language reasonably well. Shout out to Canada the bilingual country where nobody actually really learned another language. But they talked about it.

I love the myth that it is other women who are most critical of other women. When I lost weight this year, the women were all like you go girl and one of the male doctors asked me if I did it for my husband. Holy fuck and you wonder wet behind the ears little prick why you think I am “abrasive”? Wow? How the fuck did that happen? Can’t imagine. Despite massive pressure from some unknown vortex for women to appear pleasing to men if one is too fit one is masculine or disturbing. I am not a huge Madonna fan but really if she wants to eat only vegetables and look like an ultra marathoner why do you care. Don’t you notice that on all of the formula crime/whatever shows really nice looking women are all forced to dress like funeral directors. So you stick the decent women on but they can’t even wear a cute shirt?

What happened to the poor chicks? I know they exist because I have been one and given the randomness of things I could easily be one again. But all we see in the mainstream media is the over 40 women who have kitchen I would be happy to give up an organ for. Because of course in America if you are poor and if you are a woman you must be either trash and ignorant or you had three babies by aged 16 or you made shitty choices while dating bad boys and bitch hey you deserve it. And trashy cute young women are all right to either poke fun at or have your sexual fun with but once they age holy fuck OLD and POOR…. why are you even alive seriously? So if you get an education you cause massive panic because women have gasp caught up to men and could be stealing the boys jobs and if you did not take advantage of the wonderful opportunities in America to acquire massive debt while getting said education well Oprah might tell you that you weren’t using the laws of attraction properly. And if you try and have it all somebody will knock you on your ass for it and yet if you don’t strive enough you are somehow betraying the corporate version of feminism which isn’t feminism at all but basically a message that says get a good job so you can buy stuff and make your children neurotic by sending them to the wrong pre-school hey we fucked men over for years now girls it is your turn.

And some segments of society wonder why women over 40 appear not to care seem bitchy, seem tired, seem cranky, well it might be the two hours of nightly sleep in between helping aging parents and smoothing the egos of returning adult children and the fragile ego of the laid off decent spouses/husband/significant other. I work with more women who say coming into work is a “break” compared to their home life. That should scare you since I am a nurse.

There is also the matter of being considered sexually redundant and unappealing in current society that kind of makes me not really care. The only good thing about having never been beautiful is that I did not lose my looks as I aged. Of course not that being beautiful is all that great because somebody will cut you down for that as if it is some kind of sinful act. Ah. How dare you be both beautiful and unavailable to me. The injustice. Yes. Why does the universe always think they have a right to a beautiful woman as if she is public property? Naturally if you aren’t beautiful you haven’t done your genetic duty and should be dismissed right away.

Yes. I am a bitch and I don’t see any circumstances changing that are gonna make me nicer. Middle aged men have wisdom and experience.

And. Oh. Yes. It is too late to be nice to me now.