"You negotiated your way from a C to an A? I'm so proud of you, honey!"
I ever tell y'all about the time my dad tried to make me and my sister enter a beauty pageant?
Oh yeah, it was a good 'un. I was in college at the time -- a junior or so -- and my sister a high school senior (I think) and it was summer, all of us sitting around doing nothing in the hottest part of the day in our un-air-conditioned house, and my dad's like, "So hey, the Reunion Queen contest is calling for entries -- you both oughtta enter. You win that, you get [small monetary prize -- like a hundred bucks or something], plus the title, and then you can enter [feeder pageant for Miss Texas]."
Dead serious, he says this.
Me and my sister crack the FUCK up. We're like, Yeaaaaah, no, mkay, ha ha, good one dad.
But he was in a Mood, I guess, so he kind of hunkered down on that position and started really bulldogging us both. I could not fucking believe it -- my sister, I guess, it made a tiny little itsy bit of sense, because she was a cheerleader all through middle, junior, and high school, and beautiful with long blonde pageant hair, and could make a nice living off her singing voice if ever she chose to -- but she had zero inclination for the Pageant Lifestyle, and as for me, what was I gonna do? Stand up there, puffy from all the herbal jazz refreshment (and resultant munchies) and oat sodas I was partial to at the time, wearing all black, and ... what? Spell stuff? Blather for ten minutes about divestment from South Africa? Write a 25-page paper on an arcane topic in record time, using one actual source for every three invented ones, guaranteed to get at least an A- thanks to my flair for extemporaneous bullshit?
Fucking ridiculous.
He's all "But you could win!" And we're all "THAT'S THE POINT, GOD, DAD!"
And it went on and on and we're getting increasingly desperate and yada yada yada it ends up with me and my mom having the worst fight of our mutual lives (one I'm not sure we're quite over, yet) so thanks for that, DAD, and I'm like "You don't get it -- I don't want to be OBJECTIFIED BY THE MALE GAZE!"
Which at the time I hollered, near tears, with utter passion, and which now makes me laugh like a lunatic in my cube 2,000 miles and sixteen years away, but also is TRUE, GODDAMMIT.
Btw, HHL, a smart man, had loooong ago left the room by that point. Would that I had had such sense ...
Oh yeah, it was a good 'un. I was in college at the time -- a junior or so -- and my sister a high school senior (I think) and it was summer, all of us sitting around doing nothing in the hottest part of the day in our un-air-conditioned house, and my dad's like, "So hey, the Reunion Queen contest is calling for entries -- you both oughtta enter. You win that, you get [small monetary prize -- like a hundred bucks or something], plus the title, and then you can enter [feeder pageant for Miss Texas]."
Dead serious, he says this.
Me and my sister crack the FUCK up. We're like, Yeaaaaah, no, mkay, ha ha, good one dad.
But he was in a Mood, I guess, so he kind of hunkered down on that position and started really bulldogging us both. I could not fucking believe it -- my sister, I guess, it made a tiny little itsy bit of sense, because she was a cheerleader all through middle, junior, and high school, and beautiful with long blonde pageant hair, and could make a nice living off her singing voice if ever she chose to -- but she had zero inclination for the Pageant Lifestyle, and as for me, what was I gonna do? Stand up there, puffy from all the herbal jazz refreshment (and resultant munchies) and oat sodas I was partial to at the time, wearing all black, and ... what? Spell stuff? Blather for ten minutes about divestment from South Africa? Write a 25-page paper on an arcane topic in record time, using one actual source for every three invented ones, guaranteed to get at least an A- thanks to my flair for extemporaneous bullshit?
Fucking ridiculous.
He's all "But you could win!" And we're all "THAT'S THE POINT, GOD, DAD!"
And it went on and on and we're getting increasingly desperate and yada yada yada it ends up with me and my mom having the worst fight of our mutual lives (one I'm not sure we're quite over, yet) so thanks for that, DAD, and I'm like "You don't get it -- I don't want to be OBJECTIFIED BY THE MALE GAZE!"
Which at the time I hollered, near tears, with utter passion, and which now makes me laugh like a lunatic in my cube 2,000 miles and sixteen years away, but also is TRUE, GODDAMMIT.
Btw, HHL, a smart man, had loooong ago left the room by that point. Would that I had had such sense ...
Labels: christ on toast points -- politics, cryin' amazacrazy, first-world problems, surprises in the attic, things that are bad for the world
posted by Gleemonex at 9:59 AM
6 Comments:
I don't want to be objectified by the male gaze, oh my god, IT BRINGS ME BACK.
I swear to god that "I don't want to be objectified by the male gaze" has got to be one of the best things I've heard in, like, forever. I'm going to start saying that ALL THE TIME at restaurants and parties.
You will be the HIT of those parties, Uncouth baby!
B'mouse: It surely do, don't it?
What I wouldn't do for a pageant photo of you! I assume this was a "glitz" pageant, right? And what the eff is oat soda? Oh wait, I think I know...
I know this is not relevant, but it made me think of you: http://www.foreveryoungadult.com/2011/01/21/oh-sing-sweet-valley/
I love you, Panda. :-)
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