(If this is a rerun, I apologize. If not, then excuse the brain-fart.)
EPITAPH
2/5/98--7:30P
How do you want to be remembered? Like the woman-hating drunk at the bar, earlier tonight, who verbally assaulted one of our beloved bartender-goddesses? Like Mike says, as I walk up tonight, "Are you gonna fuck us tonight, JO-ANN?" To which I reply, "EXCUSE ME?" "Are you going to fuck-up and verbally abuse all us "BAD MEN" of poor character?" To which I replied, "Don't hurt my feelings, Mikee--or I'll take your iguana." {You've kinda gotta see his hat to understand that one.}
Fiona Apple on the cover of the Rolling Stone in all her ethereal-waif glory. Marilyn Monroe in the Sunday-paper-coupon-pull-out-section as a collectible plate with lots of realistic cleavage. Gloria Steinem has had the same haircut and the same stupid ideals & illusions for 20 years. And I'm confused--does America hate women so much, or does America teach us to hate ourselves, or do we teach our daughters to hate themselves because we'll never be "good enough"? And good enough for whom? Who the fuck are we trying so goddamned hard to impress, that we starve ourselves and stick fingers down our throats and razor blades in our skin and silicone injections in our lips and our asses and our not-quite-perky-ENOUGH tits?
And women fight with each other, to no good end, other than catty one-up-woman-ship. Fiona fights with Janeane Garafalo, because Janeane made vicious fun of Fiona's eating-disorder-fuck-you-I've-been-raped-chicness. As opposed to Tori Amos's pity-me-I'm-a-wood-sprite-who-got-raped-I'm-so-miserable-ela`n. Janeane is a chunky, blotchy, angry woman who likes to fuck with the world in general. Sometimes Janeane is amusing. Sometimes she is right. Sometimes, she grates on me like a fingernail on my cervix. Fiona is a thin, pale, angry woman who likes to rip @ her own flesh when she's nervous. Sometimes, Fiona is amusing. Sometimes, she is right. Sometimes, I just want to grab her by her skinny neck and cram a box of Twinkies into her pretty, pouty mouth.
Marilyn Monroe is still our madonna/whore American idol, a slut that we can contain and worship for her bright, hidden eyes and those voluptuous hips and that broken spirit. She had to die. Her sex identity was too powerful--it threatened June Cleaver and American frigidity-repression that kept women "in their place". And we only remember Norma Jean as a dumb bombshell who wound-up naked & dead.
And we only remember Janis Joplin as a Southern-Comfort-swiggin'-hippie-chick, cryin' and singin' the blues over some man. Well, most of America only see that--and that damn, "Bobby McGee." (I hate that fucking song. Like it's the only one she ever did.) They never want you to remember anything she SAID--just that Hollywood motel-room floor where she croaked in her own puke.
And I worry about these girls who are the drowning-water-goddesses-of-The-Rape-Club. From what I see, I wonder if there are any women in America who haven't been raped. And all these little vegan-hippie-chick-stoner-singer-broads who bitch & moan about "SAVE THE ANIMALS" as they poison their own bodies.
But this "blossoming SOCIAL CONSCIENCE" bullshit gets old, when you realize that these angry little martyrs don't SAY A FUCKING THING about the Bosnian Muslim women and the Czech women who are murdered and raped and forced into farm-tool abortions--FOR "ETHNIC CLEANSING"--just like all the American Indian mothers and sisters and daughters who were treated like less than flesh by those "brave Union soldiers." And you never see them protesting the ritual sexual mutilation of women and girls in Africa that continues to this day. Maybe our modern suffering poster-girls just don't know. Maybe they're too busy protecting cows and pigs from my dinner table.
But is that all they want to be remembered for--whining and crying and starving on tofu? I hope not. Is all I'm going to be remembered for is that one-note, off-key song of mourning for that one boy who was too selfish to take his knife out of my back? Will speaking the truth only be remembered as “feminazi” bullshit, man-hating complaints, because I LOVED A MAN TOO MUCH?
Well, if that's all you hear, brother, you ain't listening--and if that's all you remember, then pucker up your senile lips, and kiss my wide, white, gelatinous fanny!
~~~
(C)1998, Joanna E. Beattie
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