There are parts of myself, eras of my life, and things I’ve done that I simply can’t bear to remember. Scenes that embed themselves into my deepest memory banks and lodge themselves under my skin. I try not to revisit the images, relegating them to the corners of my mind, preventing the inevitable shame attack. Continue reading
On our most recent girls’ nights, my buddies and I decided to re-watch some of the Disney classics (both the 1950s and 1990s era) to see how they hold up in modern times. We selected “Sleeping Beauty” (1959) for our most recent hang out and snuggled into the couch under blankets like six year-olds. None of us had seen this particular movie since we were very young, and we were eager to see how it played to our adult sensibilities. Would we long to be princesses?
By the end of the movie, I felt a stronger connection to Maleficent, the evil fairy than I did to Aurora, the title princess. I remembered then that I had always found Maleficent captivating, even as a child. And why wouldn’t I, when she holds all the power while Aurora/Briar Rose has no personality and makes no choices of her own? Continue reading
I’m grossed out by public restrooms. I hate using them. And I have to all the time due to the amount of water I drink. I’m that person who’s in-and-out, holding my breath, trying not to to touch any surfaces, flushing with my foot, washing up quickly (with soap!), and using a paper towel or my foot to open the door. You will never see me using these vile spaces to primp, change clothes, or brush my teeth. Too unsanitary. And god forbid I have to wait in line for the privilege of exposing myself to a public petri dish. I will use the men’s, if I have to. I do not make eye contact, I do not look around the room, I do not chat or smile. My objectives are access and expediency.
What grosses me out more than public restrooms is this asinine controversy we’re currently having over who is allowed to use which room. Continue reading
She’d given birth to her first child–a daughter–the year before, and I wanted to take an intergenerational look at the conflict and difficulty that seems to exist in the mother-daughter dynamic. I’d been privy to her struggles in her relationship with her mother, the pain and angst it caused her, and hoped she’d be willing to have a conversation about how she grew up, and what she’d like to do differently with her daughter.
Perhaps the most verbose, rapidly-speaking person I know (a court reporter once asked her to slow down during a testimony), we joked that I was lucky to be getting our interview in after she’d been down with the flu and bronchitis for a week. She began to take me through her early childhood, leading me from the picture of an idyllic family toward the tense, guilt-ridden, sometimes self-esteem-crippling snapshot of today’s relationship with her mother. Continue reading
I have a feeling that in this day and age we’ve all done it, taken a picture in public of someone without their knowledge or consent. Even before the cell phone camera age, I know I used to troll around Seattle with my mom’s manual Minolta, snapping shots of scenes and people I deemed interesting. Truly, some of the most fascinating photographs are candids. I’ll not deny that fact. I can remember in a high school photography class a kid raising her hand and asking our teacher if it was ethical to take candids of strangers, or whether we needed to confirm consent first. Our teacher paused, clearly having never posed the question to herself and decreed there to be no rules. Continue reading
candid uprising 