Shapeshifters, Sexy Ghosts, and Other Mysterious Blobs

Posted on 07/27/2008 by Jane Devin

I recently had cause to remember The Year that Blew My Mind. It wasn’t mind-blowing in a good way – the oyster of the world didn’t open up and reveal any grand pearls of wisdom – instead, my gray matter was challenged to find reason for the unreasonable, and causes for the inexcusable. The resulting implosion left my mind scattered across a parallel universe, in which people made no sense, and reality could shape-shift like Play-Doh. In that world, people could mold their own blobs of facts and opinions without any regard for the actual truth or evidence of a thing. They could believe that Elvis is still alive, the Holocaust never happened, and that George W. Bush was a great President.

One of the blobs I recall came from a philosophy class, in the form of a particularly stubborn student who sought support for his shapeshifting opinion. “Reality is all just what we believe,” he said. “If I didn’t believe this Pepsi can existed, then it wouldn’t exist.” No matter how others argued that the Pepsi can was a material fact that existed independently of his thoughts – that it would exist with or without his belief in it – the student persisted in a type of egotistical thinking that left him in charge not only of objects in his own path, but that gave him the God-like ability to change matter into non-matter.

Outside of that class, I had never run across people who were prone to believe that a Pepsi can – or any objective fact – couldn’t really exist without their permission. They may have had differentiating opinions and beliefs, but they were based on some part of reality, even if cherry-picked to meet a personal need, belief, or preference.

For instance, I once had a neighbor who was enthralled with Tammy Faye Baker. For reasons that escaped me, he just adored the heavily made-up Queen of PTL and religious scandal. When I brought up issues like 24K gold bathrooms, “seeds of faith”, and vulnerable, workaday investors, he didn’t deny the facts – he simply hand-picked which ones were more important to him. She was funny, and charismatic, and he thought she had paid enough for her crimes. He chose beliefs that best met his personal concept.

And we all do that to some extent, particularly for people we love or admire, or even hate. We often magnify either the good or the bad, until the good is shined to a heroic luster, or the bad is blown up to villainous infamy. Reams of poetry are written for new lovers, who are coddled in the glow of novelty, while scathing diatribes are written about former lovers, who became stale, hurtful, or disappointing in some way.

In the world of shape-shifting reality though, Tammy Faye Baker might be Mother Theresa in same-sex drag. Maybe those tears she shed were really the sweat of Jesus and his twelve drag afficionados.

Lovers, past or present, may be wiped from existence with the stroke of a new memory. Maybe that drunken one night stand didn’t really happen. Maybe people just woke up naked together because they were recreating Rodan’s The Kiss for artistic reasons when they were suddenly felled by the sleeping disease African trypanosomiasis. Maybe, too, the lover in question wasn’t really a human being, but a sex-starved ghost like the one who visited Anna Nicole.

After living through The Year that Blew My Mind, I gathered up my gray matter to ask a singular question about the shapeshifters: Why? The singular answer that came back to me was Motive.

As complex creatures, we are connected to each other not only by DNA, but by story, opinion, and belief. We lack no opportunities to hand-pick facts and beliefs that best fit our individual paradigms. We can overlook bad traits in those we love because their love makes us feel great, and feeling great is more important than finding fault. When the bloom falls off the rose, and love lessens, then the bad thing we once ignored suddenly overwhelms everything else. The wet towels left on the floor become a symbol of disrespect – the forgotten anniversary becomes evidence that he or she never cared in the first place. Opportunities to connect or disconnect abound, and are most often reasonable, even if often exaggerated. Wet towels and forgotten anniversaries are annoying, and can be symptomatic of a larger problem.

The question in the shape-shifting world, though, is why people seek to change material fact or create whole new matter altogether. The answers are as varied as the motives.

Recently, I heard a story about two friends who had a private conversation. One of those friends then went and shared that conversation with another friend. That friend then made their conversation public, and a joke was taken wildly out of context and used as ammunition against friends #1 and #2. People formed strong opinions based on misunderstood third-hand evidence, but no one – not a single person – thought to question the motives of friend #3, whose actions had a rolling stone effect of harm and damages. There’s little doubt that she knew it would, as the resulting fallout proved, yet the major role she played in creating strife went unchecked. Motive? To create drama and gain attention. Mission accomplished.

Closer to home, The Bastard continues to make up rules as he goes along, leaving devastation and despair in his wake. His motive is to feel more powerful, and to exert what power he does have in ways that buoys his flagging ego. Mission accomplished.

Bush, Cheney, and Company continue to reorder matter and facts in their Invisible Pepsi Can world, where an “axis of evil” exists against the backdrop of the All-Mighty, All-Good, All-Powerful capitalist structure of America. WMD’s exist, then they don’t. Soldiers die, but it’s not all that sad if they hide the coffins from public view. It’s not about the oil, but then it is – oil companies who haven’t been in Iraq for 36 years now have no-bid contracts. The mission is really, finally accomplished.

Those of us who believe in objective truth can’t let ourselves be undone by those who believe that the world spins on an shape-shifting, make-believe axis. The truth of both fact and matter will eventually bear out, no matter how many people choose to create blobs of something else.

The shapeshifters are frustrating (and even frightening when they hold power), but by examining their motives – by asking just that one question – we can better understand the world they live in and avoid getting caught up in their crazy-making blobs.

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She Jumps, and Has Her Reasons

Posted on 06/29/2008 by Jane Devin

Every night for several years, you’ve hopped onto a trampoline. You’ve jumped and jumped until your heart raced, your body felt weak, and you were exhausted. It’s this ritual, you believe, that allows you to sleep, and you have slept so brilliantly during these years that closing your eyes has become, in itself, a thing of beauty. You feel healed by sleep, both released and energized by the time morning comes.

Now, though, you’ve developed small fractures in both feet. Your knees are unsteady. Your legs shake in waking hours, as overly strained muscles begin to separate from bone. Still you jump, only more slowly, and more aware of the damage being done. You begin to question your methods, and momentarily consider other alternatives, but nothing feels as perfect or reliable as the thing you are most familiar with. Ultimately, you jump so that you can get there – to the place you love – the place that makes you feel wholly alive and beautifully human.

One evening, your trampoline disappears. It is gone, and you cannot afford to replace it. Your body, despite its accumulation of damages, aches for nothing more than the nightly ritual of jump-bounce-twist-turn. Your legs feel as if they’ve taken on a restless, unhappy life of their own. They moan and twitch and rebel beneath you. Your heart, used to taking a nightly pounding, feels eerily still.

You do not sleep.
You begin to dream of horrible things while you are painfully awake.
Your body, you feel, has betrayed you.
You fear you will never sleep again.

You pace the floors, and so much comes to the surface in the dark of night. Bitterness, sadness, fear, anger, apathy. Your mind, overly-full and anxious, turns dark and despairing. In losing the trampoline, everything else you once loved also feels lost to you. You begin to associate your jumping with all the wonderful things you fear are lost forever, creating a black and white list of reasons you must, absolutely must, have your trampoline back. Without it;

you will never sleep again.
You will never again feel right, or whole, or rested.
Unrested, you will never be happy.
Unhappy, there is no reason to live.

The thought of getting back on your trampoline begins to consume you. It’s only the thought of jumping again that brings you close to feeling any sort of happiness. Small fractures and torn ligaments become, in your mind, a smaller and smaller price to pay, and even somewhat meaningless in your list of self-justified consequences.

You need the trampoline.
Your body demands it.
You, or some very important, alive, or sacred part of you, will die without it.
You’re are in more pain when you don’t jump than when you do.

The trampoline becomes everything, and until you have it again, little else seems to matter. You need to tie off the vein, light the pipe, snort the coke, take another pill, binge until you puke, starve yourself into a silhouette, gamble until it’s all gone, sleep with another stranger, drink yourself into oblivion — because nothing else, you are convinced — will ever make you feel as good or as much like your truest self.

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Missing Something on Mother’s Day

Posted on 05/12/2008 by Jane Devin

Being Mother’s Day, I wondered if I should write a post about my mother but then I thought, no. It’s too sad, really, and not the kind of tribute others want to read. Many mothers, it seems, left dark mysteries and heartaches as legacies to their daughters. Mine was no exception. It would be more fitting to write about MJ on some other occasion, like a cold rainy day, when there’s no sunshine to compete with my pen or my memories.

I then thought maybe I should write about my kids, but everybody who reads this blog already knows how much they mean to me, and Lis and Mac have heard it a thousand times over. We celebrated Mother’s Day early this year, and I was beautifully spoiled, but in a grown-up way I’m not sure I’ll ever really get used to. Not that I don’t appreciate the thoughtful and lovely things my children pick out, but let’s face it — they’re not exactly finger paintings or handcrafted dinosaur dioramas. They’re not rhinestone studded potholders or construction paper cards. They’re not Mommy presents, but presents for a Mother. With a capital M. Meaning mature, meaning older.

I miss the days of getting misty-eyed over Crayola drawings. I miss reading children’s books out loud. I miss writing stories for my own kids. I miss the smell of freshly shampooed heads, and the feeling that the crook of my arm had a divine purpose. I miss having a little person to go places with, and I miss how everything that was old and boring to me was brand new and exciting to them, like light switches, twinkling stars, ice cubes, and telephones. I miss the grade school essays they wrote about family, even when they were embarrassing. Along with “I love my mom. She is funny and good and paints my fingers,“ my daughter also once wrote, “My mom’s favrite thing is be naked and eat spaggetti.” (Meaning — I like to take baths and eat spaghetti. Separately. One is a naked activity, the other is not).

My son once told his school principal that I gave him fifteen names, and then proceeded to tell him all the derivations, terms of endearment, and nicknames I gave him. The principal called me and told me I was confusing my son, who apparently didn’t know what his birth name was. Of course MacKenzie Richard Cooper Ross Love Honey Boychik Sweetie Handsome Boo Bear LittleMan Mackie Deega Daw knew his name. He just thought it was funny to string the principal along. The same way he thought it would be funny, at three years old, to sneak to the top of my closet, where I kept a whole bunch of promotional materials left over from radio remotes. One of the boxes contained colored and glow-in-the-dark condoms. Mac decided these would be great for preschool. We were living in uber-conservative Montana then, and the preschool owner was a devout Christian. I got the call about an hour after dropping Mac off. She was not amused, and Mac was kicked out of preschool. (Is there a doubt which of my kids were the problem child? Of course, it was the one most like me).

I really should have had 10 more kids, spaced two-four years apart each, so that I could always have one in tow. It’s strange to me being the mother of grown-ups. I still have a lot of child left in me, and am often surprised by the mirror image of a 46 year old woman. I am nineteen, fourteen, ten, and five in so many ways. I remember viscerally every moment and milestone of childhood — my own, and my children’s. I remember the taste of Pixie Stix even though I haven’t had one in years, and I still get a little thrill over seeing old favorites like Old Maid, Chinese jump ropes, Jacks, and real roller skates in the toy section of the department store.

I coo over other people’s babies and toddlers, and think how very lucky they are. And I have to admit I feel a small pang of envy every time I see one of those big toothless smiles from an infant, or watch a toddler doing the it’s-all-new-to-me mummy walk. I still browse the children’s section in a store, and wish more of my friends had babies so I’d have an excuse to buy tiny shoes, jeans, and dresses.

Neither my recently engaged daughter or my college-attending son want children any time soon. My daughter hasn’t decided if she wants children at all. She dreams, instead, of an inter-species ranch, with dozens of feathered and furry beings to fill her time.

So I’m in the in-between stage. No longer a mother to little ones, and not yet a grandmother. (Yikes. If I don’t feel old enough to be the mom of grown-ups, I sure don’t feel old enough to be called grandma. Still, if it happened tomorrow, I’d be thrilled. And I’d be called Nana). In the meantime, of course I think about it. Adoption. Giving birth. Doing it all over again, but better, with more experience, more wisdom, and more purposeful intentions.

Then I look around. The world outside is growing colder by the minute. People are just a shade crueler than they have ever been before. Apathy not only abounds, but has become a way of life for millions. Irrationality is still acceptable, and even promoted and catered to in some circles. Opportunities slip and slide and no matter how good or smart a person is, there are no guarantees of success. There are pains involved in raising children, and those pains almost always involve other people, like bad parents, bullies, and tired teachers. The rest of the world will never care about or want to protect your children as much as you do.

I look, too, at my clean apartment. There are no crumbs on the floor, no piles of school papers on the kitchen table, no mountains of laundry waiting to be done. Didn’t I wait for this? Didn’t I long for the day when I wasn’t mopping up after muddy shoes and endlessly folding clothes? Didn’t I yearn for the day when I could take a long, uninterrupted bath, or write for hours at a stretch? Of course I did. But the frustrating part of parenting was the smallest part. The larger part — the gold stars and long talks, the small hands in clay and the school age dramas — never got old. Only my children did. I, on the other hand, hardly aged at all, unless one counts in years and biology. I don’t. I count in words and memories. In experiences and feelings.

And on this Mother’s Day, I feel both fulfilled and empty. Like a mother, of course, and one who is well-loved and appreciated, but one who’s also missing the days of being a Mommy. Missing the goodnight kisses, the tuck-ins, and those sweet hours between their bedtime and mine, when I actually relished my “alone time” and felt compelled to do something grand, special, or important with it. Now there are many such hours. I fill them as well as I can, with work, writing, books, projects, friends, pets, and more — but.

I just miss being a stroller-toting, school work correcting, dinner fixing, Band-Aid carrying, bath running, toy buying, tickle your back, love you to infinity and bigger than the universe, crook of the arm Mom.

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Jane’s Guide to Proper Cussing

Posted on 04/11/2008 by Jane Devin

Dear Elisabeth,

Somehow, in all those sterling lessons I imparted as a parent, I left out this highly crucial one regarding cussing etiquette. As I watched you, my beautiful Venus daughter, trying to cuss the other day — and doing it all wrong — I realized I had failed to teach you even the rudimentary basics of proper cussing. Shame on me. What the hell was I thinking? Every well-versed and emotionally generous woman should be able to employ these colorful words properly.

Let’s start with hell which, as you may have noted above, should always be spoken as if it’s italicized. Otherwise, what’s the point? The fiery meaning of hell is subdued when it is said without the proper attending passion. What’s a hell without fire? North Dakota. So if you’re not going to give this devilish word its due, you might as well say just say Fargo for all the feeling your improper usage will evoke.

Fargo.
Hell.
Fargo.
HELL.
Feel the difference?

The word “fuck”, unfortunately, has entered the mainstream. It’s unfortunate not because it’s not a useful (and even occasionally beautiful word) but because its use among people who are not really cool enough to say it has diminished its rebellious nature. Face it — we don’t want to hear pubescent teens or Bill Gates say fuck. Never mind that they’ve done “it” — the word is rarely about “it” anymore — and it’s certainly not about wearing hideous jeans halfway down your ass, or even dominating a world market.

The word “fuck” is about being ethically outraged, or full of righteous passion, anger, or emotion. Losing a video game, or being found guilty of monopolizing, hardly qualifies as ethically outrageous or righteously passionate, angry or emotional. Uncool people, of course, don’t know these things, so they totally fuck up a perfectly good word, and sound like complete idiots when they do.

Now that I’ve shared rule #1 of the word “fuck” — that you should be cool enough and passionate enough to use it properly — let’s move on to rule #2. It’s fucking. Not fuckin’. The full ing is crucial to proper usage, which is? Let’s review — to express a state of being ethically outraged, or full of righteous passion, anger, or emotion. Without the “ing” this otherwise strong word loses much of its muscle and becomes weaker, watered-down slang.

One word that should never precede the word “fucker” is mother. It is just not cool. (However, if the pre-fix comes from outside the family, such as “ex-lover fucker”, or “sperm donor fucker” than this usage is entirely appropriate).

Oh no, here it comes. . .the oft-despised, much maligned “C” word. Like the infamous “N” word its usage should belong exclusively to those who were once the targets of the name-callers, in this case women. Women should own the “C” word with all due authority and do with it what they will. Most will choose to use it sparingly, some will choose to integrate it into safe and sane playing, and others will shriek loudly and cover their ears at the mere mention of the word. It’s best to use this vibrant, powerful word only in select, known company.

Shit. Please don’t make a habit out of saying it — any more than once or twice a day usage goes beyond earthy good humor to redneck overkill. The only cool redneck woman is in a song, and she — according to Gretchen Wilson — ain’t no high class broad. No one wants to be the pride of Dublin, TX anyway, unless they’re from Dublin and have no plans to go anywhere else in life.

Bitch. Now here’s a word that women have tried to own with pride. Meredith Brooks wrote a lovely, popular song about it, and there’s even a feminist magazine that has the word on its masthead, but the co-opting of this verbal complement to “bastard”, and especially its duality of use as a squawking, backbiting verb — “he had the nerve to bitch about it” — has left women as the renters, rather than the true owners of their favorite cuss word.

I say if you can’t really own it, give it away to those in need. Namely, men. Not just our lovely, needy gay male friends, but men in general need this word. “Bastard”, as it were, is underused and understated, and doesn’t really cover the full spectrum of male diva behavior — such as starting a war with a third world country in order to make astronomical profits for your friends, or lying to millions of unsuspecting consumers about the safety of certain products, or looting hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in order to live a lavish, if unlawful, lifestyle. Yes, Bush and Cheney are bitches. Slick lobbyists and their predominately male political allies are bitches. Dennis Kozlowski is a bitch.

See? We can give the word “bitch” away, and let them keep “bastard” while we’re at it, and suffer no ill effect. Let’s choose, instead, to own a word like Goddess, which has no negative connotations, and which truly reflects the spiritual and aesthetic beauty of women. Like you.

Love Always,

Mom

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But She Won’t Make Love With the Lights On

Posted on 03/28/2008 by Jane Devin

When I close my eyes, I see the dresses and the gowns. The paper dolls and the Barbie dolls; the pretty bows that tied me down. Then I see my face, staring down at my shiny shoes. . .they took me to a place where they gave me pink instead of blue.” – Tina Schlieske, “Paper Dolls,” Monster Album, 1994

My friend Pamela was about four years old, tumbling away happily in her living room, when she found herself shaken from her childhood reverie by her father’s voice. “Cover yourself!” her father shouted. “Young ladies don’t show their underwear to the world.” Her father’s words stung then, leaving Pamela confused and feeling shamed.

Welcome to girlhood, circa 1960′s, when wearing dresses was mandatory, and monkey bars and swings filled the playgrounds – a mean temptation that required creativity and presented us with our first catcalls. “I see London, I see France. . .”. Yes, our underpants were of paramount importance in the scheme of things, inhibiting our movements, stifling our physical expressions, and causing us to worry, at the tender age of five or six, how best to cover up to avoid the shameful display of our undergarments.

Today, only a handful of schools mandate skirts for girls, but the shame factor that’s been part and parcel of girlhood for centuries has lessened only by small degrees.

Biological imperatives aside, the traits attributed to girls are often a source of shame. Sensitivity is mocked as weak. Empathy is often viewed as “girlish” and unfitting for a competitive world. Gentleness is seen as less effective than brutal frankness. Those who have these traits, whether they are male or female, are often seen as less competent than those who have a harder-edged, less sensitive, personality.

In fact, the crux of sexism (and homophobia, racism, and almost every other hateful attitude towards difference) can be summed up in one word: shame. Whatever does not fit into the dominant paradigm must be cast out, ridiculed, and shamed into its submissive place.

We know it, we’ve seen it, but how do we process this information?

“It’s like the McDonald’s story about the woman and the coffee,” my friend Barbara says to me. “What you’re talking about, shame and sexism, becomes a water cooler joke. People hear the stories, but they don’t really understand what’s involved, or how long-term the damages are, and the whole matter ends up being diminished into some yarn about entitlement, with people blaming those who got hurt, and even feeling sorry for the ones who caused the hurt in the first place.”

Being familiar with the case of Stella Lieback, I understood what Barbara was saying. McDonald’s did, in fact, sell coffee at 190-degrees, thirty degrees higher than normal, and capable of burning skin down to the muscle layer in two to seven seconds. Lieback’s injuries required skin grafting and took almost two years to heal. Yet, Lieback’s case is often called up as an example of trivial lawsuits.

“When you talk about the lives of girls, and the shame they learn, and the sexism they face as they grow older, it’s often dismissed, or treated as something we should just get over,” Barbara continues. “It becomes a joke – women seeking some sort of due they don’t deserve, with men being “forced” to play along. And really, so much of what passes as social change or enlightenment is just smoke and mirrors, still. Look at what happened to Anita Hill in the 80′s. Look at how the media treated Hillary Clinton when she showed emotion this year. Women are still being trivialized and ridiculed at every turn.” Barbara, at 56, had excellent parents who encouraged her to excel, but she was not immune from feeling shame about her sex in girlhood.

“There was always the “cross your legs, be a lady” thing,” she says, “but it went so much deeper than that. We could be smart, but we weren’t supposed to act it, because that would be arrogant or unfeminine. On dates, we were advised not to show our appetites, not to laugh too hard, and to let men lead. We were, it seems, always having to act something, instead of merely being ourselves.” Barbara, who has been married for close to thirty years, recalls her first year of marriage with a bittersweet laugh.

“I went to sleep with my makeup on. There was no way I was going to let him see me without ‘my face’ on. . .and no, I didn’t think I was ugly. I just. . .I guess I thought I always had to be as pretty as I could. Weird, huh? The funny thing is, since then he’s always thought I look better without makeup.” Despite her awareness, and the support of her husband, Barbara still struggles with issues of beauty and femininity. She doesn’t feel “right” going to the store without makeup, and feels “naked” without her jewelery.

“The cover-ups,” says Kathy, “that’s what I remember most.” Kathy developed early, sprouting breasts in fourth grade. “Trying to find clothes that covered my bra straps, and getting my bra strap pulled from the back anyway. And oh my God. . .the shaving! The short gym shorts we had to wear, or the bathing suits. I was mortified by the thought that my pubic hair would show, and as mortified by the stubble and the razor burn.” Kathy’s experience points to the fact that the development of girls is more public than that of a boy’s, a situation we both agree is made worse by advertising.

“If you were to listen to all those feminine product commercials as a child, without a good grasp on the facts of biology, you’d think women were these continuously leaking, bleeding, smelly creatures that constantly needed to be on guard against drips and odor. I know that’s how I viewed them and even now, in my forties, all those messages have had an effect.” Combined with schoolyard jokes about girls smelling like fish, Kathy, like many girls experienced an anxiety about her developing body that boys, in general, didn’t and still don’t.

Outside of growing taller and getting deeper voices – both of which are praised in our society – the turn from boyhood to manhood is a relatively quiet and private affair, edged with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Girls, on the other hand, grow their breasts under the watchful eyes of classmates, and grow hair where it is deemed unacceptable.

The faces and bodies of pubescent girls and women, with their “unwanted body hair” and menstrual cycles, are a marketing goldmine. Dozens of magazines exist for the sole purpose of selling them on fashion, cosmetics, perfumes, and beauty products. Between the slick ads, diet tips, and sex advice, there may be an article or two on self-esteem or empowerment, but look where it’s coming from — between pages of size 2 models selling the concept that everything about a woman, from head to toe to attitude, needs to be changed, buffed, dressed up, fixed, or enhanced in order to achieve true beauty, find love, or win acceptance in society.

Pretty is as pretty is marketed. The airbrushed model of womanhood exudes confidence, but this lies in her ability to betray and hide the truth of her humanity. Only in the perfection of this betrayal does she emanate happiness. At size 0-2, she has kept the girl and abandoned the woman. Her straight teeth have been capped or bleached to ultra-whiteness. No stray hairs grow from her waxed figure. Her skin does not wrinkle or dimple – she is a well-manicured, unblemished, soft-skinned, long-lashed, long-legged, full-lipped beauty.

To undo her takes work. To undo the damage, and ease the anxiety the marketing doll has caused, can be a years-long, even a life long, endeavor.

My friend David, after telling me all the reasons he was crazy about his girlfriend, once complained, “but she won’t make love unless the lights are off.” She was witty, brilliant, kind, just an exceptional person, he explained, but she had this hang-up, and he couldn’t understand why, or why his assurances weren’t enough. After all, he told her how beautiful she was all the time.

It was hard to explain to David how all of his words, no matter how personal or strongly felt, were already undone a thousand times over by Cosmo, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie, Massengill, and others – and how the indoctrination into shame that began when we had to learn to navigate the monkey bars without showing our underpants metamorphosed into a shame of our imperfect bodies and our womanly selves.

“Why do women put themselves through all that?” David asked.

We don’t. We don’t “put ourselves through all that” any more than we put ourselves through growth spurts or physical development. Much of the shame we know is not consciously learned, but inherent in the messages given to girls and women from the cradle to the grave.

When the mannequin becomes the model, and the model becomes the treasured icon, what is feminine becomes not only what we fear in its natural state, but what we fear we will never measure up to in its enhanced form. We will never be polished enough, thin enough, fit enough, or perfect enough to earn the fearless confidence of the mannequin-model.

It takes strength and awareness – and a strong desire to grow past shame – to unlearn the lessons and mitigate the damages. To make love in the light of day, knowing we were never meant to be mannequins, but real women – organic, warm, sensual, curvaceous – and of far greater beauty and worth than the social paradigms and mass marketers would have us believe.

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Poison not Just in the Neglect, but in the Cliches

Posted on 03/10/2008 by Jane Devin

Poverty is Poison was the headline of a February 18th editorial in the New York Times. Every time I read something like this – old news passed off as a new discovery – I want to scream a little bit. Massive amounts of research, some of it quite famously cruel and spectacular, has been done on child development. That “children growing up in poor families. . . .experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones which impair their neural development” is not a new finding, nor is it surprising. These same stress hormones are found in children from abusive or neglectful homes, and it has been far beyond proven that children who are not nurtured in infancy, if they survive at all, will experience a host of problems, from social attachment disorder to learning disabilities.

What is surprising is that we, as a society, continue to expect and demand a cure through self-determination. That we negate the factual science of neural development in favor of blaming, shaming, or shunning the affected, believing that moral weakness or poor character, rather than any significant physical or cognitive deficit, is responsible for those who fail to rise to the social challenges of our competitive society.

I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.

“Get over it,” pop star Don Henley once sang. “Complain about the present and blame it on the past, I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass”. Henley’s popular song, which seemed to show equal disdain for real victims as well as those faking it in exchange for a car crash payday, reflected the attitudes of many Americans at the 1990′s height of child abuse stories. Unfortunately, there was a window of time when it became somewhat hip to come out as an abused child – and celebrities, whether jumping on the popular bandwagon, or sincerely trying to help, only caused a serious issue to be taken less seriously. People started to recoil, not from the horrors of child abuse, but from yet another sad tale of alcoholism, rape, or rage – especially those told by people living a privileged existence far removed from the hardscrabble lives of the working and middle classes.

The backlash against abuse victims was swift, hard, and long lasting. English professors across America added “child abuse” to their list of cliched topics. More and more writers were steered away from the topic by threats of non-publication. When books were published, such as “A Child Called It” or “The Glass Castle”, the endings were happily-ever-after.

The old but persuasive bromides of positivity were shined up for a new generation who were spoon fed the concept of self-esteem without the struggles and accomplishments that naturally lead to a sense of self-worth. I remember arguing with my daughter’s second grade teacher about this when Elisabeth came home one day and told me spelling didn’t matter. I was sure she misunderstood the teacher, but no. Mrs Greene informed me that correcting a child’s spelling could “stunt” their creativity and lead to lowered self-esteem. My argument that self-esteem would be a natural byproduct of mastering the task of spelling fell on stubbornly deaf ears – as did my argument that creativity isn’t so fragile that it’s destroyed under structure.

That new generation is now grown up, and they seem all too willing to carry the torch for the crumbling and blind school of self-determination, regardless of scientific discoveries, old or new. Poverty is character, and character is destiny. Trauma is gotten over by self-help books and positive self-talk. Neural pathways, receptors and hormones are nothing that an hour with Joel Osteen or Dr. Phil can’t fix. Think it and be it. Get real. Or, as Oprah – who was once of the foremost advocates for the misunderstood underclass before taking the Cosmo girl road of peddling everything from diets to beauty secrets – might suggest, discover your spirit. Live your best life.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with feel-good philosophies, positive thinking, or living one’s life with passion. The wrong enters when these things are held out by the dominant society as a cure to problems that are far deeper, more serious, and more poisonous than everyday problems.

Not feeling great about the way one looks in a bathing suit is in no way equivalent to actually being (as opposed to merely feeling like) a social outcast.

I feel like a fraud. I’ve never fit in anywhere…

“I feel like a fraud,” says *Kari, who spent her first six years of life with a neglectful mother before being sent to live with her elderly grandmother. “I’ve never fit in anywhere … and my thoughts just don’t seem to work the way other people’s do.” Kari, now 46, spent most of her adult years trying to climb the ladder as a graphic artist in the corporate world.

“No one ever told me I didn’t have talent,” she says, “I did, and was probably even above-average in that area, but I just wasn’t well liked. I wasn’t liked when I was myself, and I wasn’t liked any better when I followed the advice of all those self-help, how-to-heal, or how to make friends books. I knew there was something different about me – something that made other people uncomfortable – but I never found what it was. I kept trying out all sorts of different approaches, but it was like I had some invisible mark of a social pariah. My work was valued, but I couldn’t get promoted. There were convenient acquaintances, but no real friendships.

“I went to therapists. I meditated. I read every book I could find on healing and being social, and I trained myself to carefully consider every response and every action. . .

“The weirdest thing has always been the way people respond to me. For some reason, my words were always taken far more personally than if they came from someone else. For instance, if one of my colleagues casually complained, it was no big deal. If I did the same thing, even using almost the same exact words, it was an Oh my God event – people would be shocked, or instantly label me a chronic complainer.

“It’s that kind of over-sensitivity. . .to me as a person, and to my words. . . that made me afraid to speak out at all. I was labeled weird, no matter how normal I thought I was, or how like them I tried to act. I became quieter over the years, and my own sensitivity around other people became so heightened it was almost paralyzing.”

After seven jobs in 19 years, Kari quit. She subsisted on unemployment and savings for two years, while struggling with intense depression and thoughts of suicide. One therapist suggested Kari might have a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome, a diagnosis that left her with little comfort. “Even if I agreed with that, which I really don’t seeing that I don’t have many of the symptoms, it really doesn’t change anything,” she says.

Eventually, Kari went to work as an $8/hr. checker in a small grocery store, which pays her extra on the side to create signage. It wasn’t the life Kari planned, but she’s not alone.

There are profound and visible differences between a “wild child” like +Genie, who was discovered at age 13, after having been isolated from infancy in a dark room in her parents’ home, and David Pelzer, whose childhood abuse and isolation was chronicled in the book “A Child Called It.” Genie never recovered, while Pelzer went on to become a successful journalist and author. Their experiences, the extent of abuse suffered, their brains, and exposures to other people, were quite different even though there are several parallels that can be drawn.

What is less obvious, and almost invisible in society, are those who were significantly poisoned in childhood – those who were permanently affected by the crossed wires, mixed-up hormones, and neural changes caused by poverty, neglect, and abuse. Most often, those affected are physically indistinguishable from those who were reared in relatively normal and healthy homes.

The emotional and social differences, not seen by the naked eye, may range from mild to severe, with Kari’s case being somewhere in the moderate middle.

There’s no “get over it” cure, and no amount of shame or blame placed on victims can reorganize or “fix” the brain that was damaged in infancy or childhood. The best that survivors can do is to be aware of the differences and develop the patience, personal strength, and comprehensive understanding necessary to deal with being something of an outcast – with being, perhaps, “of this world, but not necessarily in it.”

For society, the question should not be about a cure that doesn’t exist, but a two-fold one of awareness and prevention. Rather than throwing the science (and its subjects) away in favor of the quick, convenient, and empirical “bootstrap” approach – which seeks to make everything from financial achievement to social success mere matters of character and effort – society might instead seek to understand the deeper, more realistic reasons why some former victims of poverty and abuse fail to thrive.

Understanding that, we might put more stock in prevention and make the end of poverty and child abuse in America a real and urgent priority, rather than shuffling both off to the easy-to-forget realm of stale news and tired cliches.

*Real name not disclosed.
+Genie was the psuedonym given to Susan Wiley by researchers. She now lives in an undisclosed group home in Southern California.

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