Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Is There Going to Be ANOTHER Day of Reckoning For Me?

I just got shocking news this evening: after recently recovering from a knee injury from wrecking my old car, my father was rushed to the hospital this evening. At last report, he suffered a heart attack, is currently in ICU & hasn't regained consciousness. He also has fixed pupils, which isn't a good sign.

For those who haven't already read about this, I have a very complex relationship with my father. I'll spare you some of those details but I didn't have a Ward & June Cleaver upbringing. The only way my life would be similar would be if Ward had been an alcoholic who eventually cared more about drinking than his family & June had to step up and be both mother and father. My mother's definitely no stupid woman & she's a far better human being than many of us. My sister is definitely a better human being than many of us; maybe that's where she got it from.

Distance has improved that relationship in some ways. I don't have to be part of that drama or deal with him getting drunk & showing his ass. My mother would say he's mellowed in his old age & they've been through a bunch of shit but if it were me, I'd have left so many years ago. Remember, I'm the one who told my mother she should get a divorce when I was 7 years old.

I don't think I'd have married him in the first place but I probably say that having seen what it's like to live with an alcoholic parent. I know you can't change someone & it was my mother who told me that whatever a guy does before you marry him, he'll do after you marry him.

When I went to CT in 2003, I discovered that there was a huge amount of unresolved shit in that relationship. Particularly with his drinking with that neighbor kid when I was in 8th grade (an older kid we looked up to who was under 21) & me writing a long, multi-paged letter about how I felt. I think I even outright wished him dead in it.

I've gone from blind hatred & fantasies about killing him with the car to a state of numb indifference. I knew when we had this huge fight driving home even when the roads weren't great & he said "If you were a man, I'd punch you" that we weren't going to ever have a functional, normal father-daughter relationship as long as he sat in denial on this. Never said "I was wrong to do that & put you kids through the strife I put you through." My parents have never acknowledged putting us second, much less apologized for it.

That's why I'm so hard-core when it comes to not bringing kids in bad situations or putting them second in life. No kid needs to be put in the position of having to be the strong & responsible one, not having a parent to guide or protect them from the realities of life. Granted, it could have been far worse. I was never physically or sexually abused but the emotional abuse I got was bad. I did get called a bitch & because my mother wouldn't let us curse, we couldn't use profanity on my father.

I feel like it's even worse when someone's making your life Hell & doesn't have a substance abuse problem to partially excuse it. Drinking was a deal-breaker for me when I looked at who I'd marry. You couldn't be my husband & a social drinker; I outright told guys (including my husband) about my childhood & that I couldn't live that again so it would never last if I had to worry about alcoholism becoming a cast member. Maybe I should have added mental issues to that as well; it's something else I'm not good at handling & probably explains why many of my family members are as they are. My father was a great parent when he was sober; when he wasn't, it sucked.

I haven't really dwelled on this since I've been trying to live my own life & you can't resolve conflicts with someone who refuses to admit to doing anything wrong. Mainstream society would side with me on this & I shouldn't have to back down and say "Oh, it was perfectly okay to get drunk and not take us to things, embarrass us in front of our friends, let your drinking buddy kidnap us, make us have to keep secrets from our classmates & stunt our social development, drink with the underage neighbor kid we looked up to, etc."

I'm not sure how I feel about all this. I did tell my mother to pull the attorney card if she had to since I don't think anyone should be getting substandard care or general substandard treatment. My husband kept pushing me to have an emotion. I just have a million concerns in my head.

For one, I wonder if he's going to live or end up brain dead i.e. not being the same person. I know my family can't afford an institution & it would kill them to do that. I also don't really want that kind of financial drain on my mother since she's gone through enough in this life. She doesn't need more. He apparently never said anything about staying on life support or not.

Second, I wonder if and/or when I'll have to go to NC. That prospect bothers me, especially when things have been going well for me. Even my husband has had things look up for him. I would have no place to stay unless I was in a hotel since people either have no space, aren't in town or their homes would be unsafe for me. My husband said he'd go with me to any funeral that happens but I saw how he acted last time when shit hit the fan so I'm concerned he'd just cave again and let Nick the Ineffectual continue to think he's his better.

I, on the other hand, will be very nasty if he gets problems & have no issue telling Nick the Ineffectual to his face that I wish for him to watch his son die a slow, painful death. Be a monster to me & I'll be monstrous right back. Even up the ante if I feel I need to for my mental health.

My husband didn't get that you can't tell someone who's gone through the things I have that they must go backwards after making so much forward progress. Call me selfish, naive, whatever but going backwards would be my functional death. If you give me no pro-social outlet, I'll have to go the antisocial route. I've told people this before & I felt like my husband ignoring it meant he didn't truly believe me or get what it is to me. No therapy is going to change my view & I'm not going to take meds; I don't feel I need them since I do function fairly well & am far happier today than I was living in NC or the South (who wouldn't be happier living their dreams?). I bet meds would also steal my creative energy & who wants "normal" me? I wouldn't & doubt any true friend would either. My husband goes without saying; he's definitely anti-meds on general principle.

Third, I'm not sure how this whole thing is going to resolve with me mentally. I'm not earth shatteringly devastated & do feel worse for my mom and sister. I can't live up to some little "happy, functional family" tableau. My reactions are different. My tears (if anyone ever sees them since I don't cry in public very much; I'm not even good at letting myself sit & have a good cry) are for different reasons. The unresolved stuff is definitely part of it. The fact that I never got that acknowledgment is another part. Can't we have something in between total sadness & indifference? That's where I'm at right now. I also at least understand the "why" of my father's alcoholism, which didn't come until later in college.

So much is going through my mind right now. I'm not sure I'll get to sleep tonight even though I'm coming down with a cold. Maybe I should do dishes or put meat away. It's a radical notion at 3:30 in the morning but hey, I have to do that stuff sometime.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

The World of Modeling & Officially Being One of "The Beautiful People"

I had my modeling debut on Wednesday. As in, I got to be in a fashion show for a legitimate designer who has a track record & contacts. The models I worked with included people who do it professionally. This was an opportunity I never really expected to get, even though every girly girl would kill to do it. After all, there are modeling scams all over the place. Plus, I'm in a grey area on height.

However, I'm so darn thin that I look taller than I am. That's nothing new considering one mother whose kid I watched one summer thought I was 5'8 when I'm actually shorter than that.

My opportunity actually arose when I went to an event for my film company & met a designer who invited me to participate. An awesome person, by the way. I would totally work with her again.

Things you should know about modeling:

1. It is NOT as easy as it looks. Really, it's not. This is one point where mass media and the general public have it totally wrong.

2. The things that form the attorney mindset are murder in modeling. You can't be paranoid, obsessed with a routine or overly eager to please. You've got to have some self-confidence, be prepared for the unexpected and let go of things.

3. Modeling may be the only space where you aren't being encouraged to cover up or repress yourself. I actually loved going to my debut since it was the one forum I've been in where I wasn't being made to feel shame for looking as I do or where I'd have to worry if something was too revealing or too sexy.

4. Being in a sorority is very good prep for being in a fashion show. You have to do a lot of posing for pictures, though you do get to be alone much more often than with sorority picture taking. I remember doing TONS of pictures for our sorority events & girls outright saying they felt like they should be models with us having to pose so darn much for picture taking from different people.

5. If you were the ugly guy/girl back in the day & get a modeling opportunity, the arrogant friends are useful resources here. If they overcame their ugly guy/girl past, even better.

Models and the world of fashion modeling has a very nasty rep in society. When I was a teenager, the only thing I really heard about was how the models in magazines were unrealistic to what girls actually looked like and that if you were a small size, you were "unnatural." Hell, pretty girls have gotten a bum rap as well! Look at shows like Daria or My-So Called Life. You have the Fashion Club, Quinn Morgendorfer (whom I'd look more like if I were an animated character) and a whole episode of My So-Called Life where the model of this one magazine is attacked just b/c she looks better than others. Even today, you have certain feminist types and fat appreciation folks who aren't content with just empowering themselves in the face of society's standard of beauty. Instead, they have to engage in skinny & pretty hate.

Are there vapid airheads in that world? Sure. Are there models with eating disorders or managers and others telling models to lose more weight? Probably. I didn't experience that myself & haven't heard about it from anyone I know in that field but I'm sure it happens.

If someone told me to lose weight, I'd laugh my ass off considering I actually lost some weight recently (likely from working out) & me weighing less isn't really a good thing. It would mean going down in cup sizes, which I wouldn't want. A friend in high school once asked me if I was anorexic & I was a clothing size bigger then, so that should tell you something about how little I need to lose weight. Vanity sizing may have affected that some but I did have to get rid of things I had from that time b/c they were now too big on me.

The outfit I ended up in was actually much more revealing that anything I'd ever worn in public and was going to be more revealing but ended up being not so much. You could see my underwear in it as well most of my body, though I was clothed (no nude modeling for me, thanks). I'm hoping I can get a full pic of that at some point since I looked gorgeous & how many attorneys do you know who've also modeled while they were attorneys?

I also wasn't the least bit self-conscious about going out in it. I got out there & it was very liberating. Wearing something as part of a fashion show (or even a stage performance) is not the same as wearing it out on the street. Performance is different & if you have a creative background, you get this. Even my conservative mother got this.

Unfortunately, my night was tarred some with a fight I had with my husband. He was mad I took off my wedding ring to do the show. My understanding was I had to take it off since the designer said to take off any jewelry not part of the costume since it would mess up the pictures. He got upset and left. The designer said I didn't have to take off my ring & wanted to meet him but by then, he was gone. I learned later that apparently the owner of the venue where the show was treated him badly. Still, it did cause a fight since I felt like my husband didn't want me to model at all even though I got this opportunity & it would be stupid to turn it away. It's one thing if I tried & failed but I tried & succeeded; the future is wide open.

We settled this, at least, so now things are good. He did also say that if I had to take off my ring for an acting role, he'd understand. As bears repeating for those not in the creative field, performance is different from your real life. You're putting on a show, creating a performance. It's not the same as taking it off to go pick up guys in a bar (or girls or transvestites, whatever your preference is) so you can have an affair.

Frankly, I'm sick & fucking tired of the skinny hate and the pretty hate. As far as I'm concerned, those people can go someplace unpleasant if they want to try going there with me. I'm of the belief that people who are pretty, get modeling opportunities or do/have something desirable in society should not have to apologize for being who they are or having it. I decided after doing this that I'm not going to apologize for being pretty or having a body women envy. Why are those realities my fault? Who is anyone to go & make that my fault? Why should I or anyone else be punished for it? If you've got that stuff, you should be happy & embrace it.

That's not to say you have to be a jerk or an asshole to others but if you make assumptions about my competence or diminish my rights as a human being over it (I'm more of a reactive personality instead of someone who actively starts shit with others), then I most certainly get the right to call you a fat ass or whatever derogatory term will be fitting for you as a detractor. It's not MY problem or anyone else's that you're insecure, envious or have low self-esteem. Maybe if you worked on yourself, you'd not be going around hating model types.

I feel like somehow we've gotten to a point where being the pretty, skinny girl is the same as being a villain. You might as well be torturing puppies in your spare time. Consider another media example: the TV movie Death of a Cheerleader. Tori Spelling played the pretty, popular character who was a total bitch to Kellie Martin's character, the girl who wanted to be pretty & popular but was on the fringes of the in-crowd. I felt Tori Spelling's character was completely unsympathetic; if you watched it, you'd be rooting for her death since she had no redeeming qualities. The case it was based on was much different & the popular girl apparently wasn't a total bitch.

I actually listened to my "arrogant" friend (well, it's what my husband says but if I didn't think he had redeeming qualities he wouldn't be my friend) & realized he had a point. Plus, I remembered he hung around model types so if anyone would have insight on how I could properly prepare for this I figured he would.

Maybe it's naive but I do think it's possible to 100% embrace being "one of the beautiful people" without becoming an asshole. Let's face it, I already have problems with people assuming bad things about me for plenty of other reasons. I'm also just not a person who has to knock others down to feel good about herself. I don't have to vilify a pretty girl to make myself more beautiful (I'm a redhead so mine is different anyway); maybe that's why we have this whole mainstream attitude over it. The writers of shows and movies were ugly in their day, never got viewed as "pretty" later on & have criminally low self-esteem to this day.

Consider the Abercrombie & Fitch statement from the CEO about how they don't want fat people wearing their clothes & that they market to the "cool kids."

I heard about this and thought it was simply a confirmation of what I already saw in my high school days. All the preppie & popular white kids wore Abercrombie & Fitch clothing.

I personally rebelled against it since I had a true sense of style my classmates didn't, I got 40% off clothes I could wear to work at my retail job at JcPenney so most of my clothing was dressier stuff & I didn't like most of the kids in my grade who were wearing this stuff. I also left shit like wearing labels behind in middle school & Abercrombie & Fitch just wasn't my cup of tea (Rave was more my speed).

The only time I got something from there was a tank top I wore to play a role in a Drama Club play I was in where I was the lead guy's girlfriend. I felt like Abercrombie & Fitch would be her aesthetic and make her more genuine as a functional, "normal" high school student than my personal style would. However, when we took the show to a theater competition outside our city I ended up wearing something more my style at the behest of my fellow cast members & Drama teacher. I have no clue where that tank top is today; it's probably vanished someplace in the annals of time and my mother's garage full of stuff you can't get to or organize.

My other thought was "Thank you! At least someone is respectful to skinny people & not making their size 2s as big as houses." Not a retailer I care for but if you're my size, shopping can suck. I'd like to be able to go someplace in NYC where there's a selection in my size and it doesn't cost a trillion dollars (other than sample sales). No one ever cares about whether I can find clothes to fit me but the skinny haters sure can.

Why should some private company have to cater to fat people when there are plenty of companies that don't cater to me as a skinny person? I can't control my size either. Should the CEO have said it publicly? Probably not & with him looking as he does, he had to have known he'd get that held against him when he made those statements.

See my point on skinny hate? It's one thing to appreciate who you are but you don't get a right to slam me or others who are skinny by nature. People have practically been calling for crucifixion of this CEO, which I can't agree with. In college, I interviewed for a job there but they had this crazy group interview session where you were evaluated based on how much you talked vs. the other applicants. Well, the big mouths are going to win every time. No opportunity to talk to anyone individually about their experience or sales abilities or anything like that. Just not my thing.

So, would I model again? Absolutely. I'd like pay for it but as long as I'm treated with basic respect and my personal boundaries are respected, we're all good. This is another one of those "we'll see where it goes" type things. I figured even if I never did it again, I would at least be able to say I did it once.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Getting Tattoos & Getting Philosophical

Read this article recently, where an employer apparently encouraged people to get tattoos. Not just any old tattoos, though. They rewarded company branding.

I've written a little about tattoos but not sure I ever really stated when it was a good or bad idea to get one or what types are okay vs. not okay. Here goes:

NEVER get a tattoo of the company you work for if you're not an owner. If you're not the owner, you could very well get fired or quit later on in disgust. The job situation could easily change and you could go from viewing it as a little slice of Heaven to tolerable or in my husband's case, a very nasty form of Hell.

Now you could also lose your business but at least if you're an owner, it probably had more of an impact in your life and might be a reminder to you of something you did well or a mistake you don't want to repeat.

I also never got a tattoo of my sorority letters or the name. If you really want to after you've gotten through the pledge period, I could understand doing that. However, that doesn't mean you can't still get kicked out at some point. Remember, it did happen to that bitch whose father draws Spider-Man.

I have no clue how it works once you've graduated college and are out living in life but I'm sure if someone became the next Casey Anthony or Ted Bundy, a national fraternity or sorority would want to take membership away from that person lest (s)he "damaged the brand" for future potential new members or the members who still had to represent the group in a college setting. No one I know has become notorious so not sure how that works but it's worth asking yourself that question before you consider getting your letters tattooed on yourself.

I guess I've also got an issue with getting something so permanent like a tattoo for something I don't have an ownership stake in. These days, I'm just not motivated to work as hard for anyone besides myself. My closest friends or people I respect would probably be next & then there's everyone else. Considering what I've seen & heard about in the corporate world these days and being who I am, is it any wonder I feel that way? Wouldn't YOU be on the defensive constantly if everyone made you feel like you didn't deserve a fair shot b/c they were jealous of your accomplishments or skills? I responded to one job ad I saw recently & read it to my husband, who said I sounded "angry" in there.

I've gotten that reaction from others when I responded to ads. Gee if you were an out of the box person & had been subjected to the endless parade of bullshit I have, might that make you not have an emotional investment in anyone?

Might that make you conclude that you are going to have to figure out your own hustle since no one who could pay you is actually going to respect or trust you?

So, if you're going to get a tattoo get something that has personal meaning for you. Fuck what anyone else has to say about it!

I also don't like the idea of branding myself with a company or an organization; my own mother says that one job she has only offers advancement if you're willing to get the organization's name tattooed on yourself (figuratively, at least). She says she's not that dedicated to it!

The whole tattoo thing makes me question if more companies are going to demand that next for just getting a job there. If some posters are asking for pictures via LinkedIn profiles and to see all your social media passwords while making you take these fake behavioral assessments, is tattooing the organization's name on your body (or perhaps even on your butt) really that far behind? Plenty of employers already demand employees not to have a private life or a point of view.

I've gotten to that distrustful point when it comes to paying day jobs. You also get a very different perspective of the world when you lose close family members belonging to your generation at a very young age.

That different perspective brings me to some philosophical points.

One thing I've realized recently is that I'm losing my past & maybe it's not such a bad thing. I'm not "the ugly girl" and haven't been considered uncool in ages. I also have people in my life who don't seem like they're going to be jealous of me as I move up in the world. They have their own success & don't seem to begrudge me of having any. I also feel like I can respect those people I have allowed in (which isn't a large number since I've always been a private person; I also freely admit to not being the easiest person to have a friendship with). Sometimes, you also realize that particular people are in your life for a reason.

I feel like I'm going to lose more pieces of my past as time goes on. I found out news about my former friend who showed her ass at my sister's wedding that made me feel perfectly fine with having cut ties. History does not trump survival & being better in your life. You can't keep people around who bring you down, begrudge you of good things or want you to be ashamed of who you are.

At first, I felt kind of bad about it. I'm not in my childhood town or anyplace where I went to school. NYC is where my adult life is; you could probably say my college years is where my life began since that's when I got to choose where I went, my friends, my clothes, who I dated & be my full self. As pieces of my past fall away, it makes life today more cemented & permanent. It also makes regression impossible & me more steadfast about not moving backwards. It's much harder to go backwards if you don't live in your childhood town and your oldest friend from childhood is a distant memory. My former friend might as well be dead with the personality change she's had.

A big concern with doing things is still being the same person I always was; I think I still am. I'm still as much a rabble rouser as I ever was. I'm still unconventional & opening my big mouth when I feel the motivation. No one hearing about stuff I'm doing has ever been shocked by it since I always was a driven, ambitious person who was going to do something significant & unusual. My challenge is going to be figuring out how I can embrace who I am today (particularly with being an industry branded "hottie") without forgetting what it was like to be who I was in the past.

That's something I wonder: How do you let the past fall away enough so you can move on & embrace the success you get in today's time but not lose the values/experiences that make you not be the worst of the "successful" class you now belong to? And is it a bad thing if you let go of some of that past trauma if doing so will make you more successful?

Personally, I don't think this letting go of the past is a bad thing. Some people didn't have great pasts & psychologically, it's probably far better to let it fall away than act like you're still something you aren't.

To end this on a less tragic note, another observation: if you don't have a celibate marriage, don't get a wooden bed frame for your marital bed. I discovered that we may find ourselves with a damaged bed frame in the near future & I have a feeling it's the result of our combined sex drive.

It occurred to me that you don't see beds in college dorms with wooden bed frames. My beds in my dorm rooms didn't have that. Nope, they had metal frames. I figure it's because the people putting in the beds figured sex happens often on college campuses so they may as well be prepared. Otherwise, they'd have to buy new bed frames all the time since students & their sex partners would break them from so much use.

Let's be honest: that's one reason people go to college in the first place, especially if they go to school far away from their parent's house. It's the first time in life you can have sex without worrying about your parents catching you or anything you buy to prepare for it. You can get what you need without them having to go with you or find out (since the college can't talk about such things with your parents due to HIPPA laws; nor can your doctor even if the doctor's their best friend). If you move away from home for this, your parents have to let go and learn to trust you to be an adult; they simply have no choice if your school is lots of hours away & they don't have unlimited money to drop in unannounced. My mother assumed I did all sorts of stuff in college but my life wasn't nearly as exciting as she thought it was. Regardless, I do think getting to have sex without all this parental control & having to hide things from them is probably one motivating factor in going to school far away from one's childhood home.

Maybe if you've got a sex drive, you should get a bed frame with reinforced steel. I don't know.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Shaving in America: Do You Really Need to Shave "Down There?"

Reading Tuesday's Dear Prudence letter about the woman whose husband refused to have sexual relations with her until she was bare "down there" made me realize that's something I've not talked about here. I do have very strong views on the subject, so here we go.

If you're not completely dense, you get that I'm a natural redhead. Aside from having tempers and being really good in bed (supposedly; I haven't taken a poll of all the natural redheads & the people they've slept with), natural redheads generally have fair complexions & sensitive skin. My husband even said at one point "Your skin hates you," a concept I turned into some sweet commercial copy for myself in a commercial acting class.

Growing up, I hated that I could not get a tan to save my life. The only choice I have for skin color is pale white and lobster red accompanied with pain. Then we have the freckles, some of which also pop up in the sun. The only ways I can get tan are 1) get a second degree sunburn and let it heal (which happened once but was super, massively painful; I went swimming without sunscreen & decided to lie out in the sun on a float) or 2) get a spray tan. Even tanning at home would lead to me having orange skin since I'm not a pro & most likely would screw up the application of the self-tanning lotion.

I don't think I hated my former friend more as a child than when I got that second degree sunburn on the tops of my arms & my boobs while she had a tan on her back with "I, a heart, and the name 'Josh'" spelled out, having achieved that with spelling it in sunscreen and lying down for a while. Yeah, I hate all you bitches who can do that!!! I'd end up with a sunburned back if I tried it.

So, we've established that my skin is sensitive. In my age, it's gotten worse and will likely get even worse as I age further.

This means shaving & hair removal is not fun for me. Thankfully, I can use Nair or Veet (I'm liking Veet better since they have a sensitive skin formula) on my legs since shaving gets way too labor intensive for me. As a perfectionist, if I don't get every last bit of hair off I feel like I wasted my time doing it in the first place. Chemical hair removal is the perfect option if you are also like this & hate missing stuff when you shave. It's the only thing I'll use for my legs. Shaving my underarms is manageable since it's a smaller surface space & I can reasonably get all the hair off.

My attitude on shaving is I do it when I'm good and ready. I don't do it on a daily basis or even a weekly basis; I do it when I feel uncomfortable with the hair length. If I feel like it's too long or just don't want to see it anymore, that's when I handle it. Or if I'm going to a dressy event & feel my armpit hair is starting to look like Paula Cole's from the "I Don't Want to Wait" video. Check it out if you haven't. My sister called her "Armpit Girl" after we saw it. Personally, I don't want my underarms looking like that. I also deal with my legs if I'm going to be wearing a skirt or shorts someplace & my leg hair is starting to look like my husband's in volume.

Down there, though: how many guys actually care about that? I've had my whole attitude & practices on shaving forever, even when I was single. Guys I dated by & large didn't care. Now, maybe you'd argue that I enjoyed some pretty girl privilege here or the fact that I was willing to have sex made it irrelevant for the male population by & large. I have no idea; none of my sorority sisters ever mentioned that being an issue for them.

I personally feel like shaving is one of those things women do for other women. They don't want other women making fun of them or getting catty about it. I've never felt the need to compete with and be catty toward other women; of course, I always made sure when I was checking out guys at the club I was in a spot away from other women. One way you can tell I'm straight? When other women would be too close to me or my vantage point if I was out someplace as a single person, my first thought was "Move it bitch, you're blocking my light!"

Exactly one guy I ever dated brought up the subject with me of doing something about "down there." He's also the same guy who bugged me about paying on dates & was described by a friend of mine as having "the social skills of a rock." I call him Condo Man.

Condo Man lived in a condo (duh) & had lots of pictures of women in bikinis. I had a strong feeling I was the second girl he slept with & he was 8 years older than me. One day, he decides to ask me about shaving or waxing down there.

I told him the truth: there's two ways that area's going to look. You have the choice of hair or little red bumps. It made wearing an average swimsuit hell for me when I started getting hair since I had the choice of hair poking out or getting irritation to remove the hair.

I tried to Nair it once; that caused little red bumps. Home waxing caused me to bleed & suffer serious pain; I'm a pain wuss & probably didn't have the wax hot enough. Direct shaving didn't work either since I still had the freaking hair there & it hurt like hell afterwards.

Dick move to tell a naturally redhaired woman you won't have sex with her if she isn't going Brazilian. I accused him of wanting me to look like a 10 year old girl. Natural redheads (at least this one) & waxing do not mix: look at the after pics of my eyebrow wax in The Wedding Saga series if you think a professional wax wouldn't result in bad fu for me.

A natural redhead tampering with her "down there" area isn't going to look like some tanned Brazilian chick after waxing: she's going to have little red bumps that hurt like hell and won't be in the mood for wearing underwear, much less having sex. Forget about oral.

So, hypothetical guy, my suggestion to you if you're obsessed with having a woman who looks like she moonlights as a porn actress or Playboy model: don't date a natural redhead. If that obsession trumps the awesomeness of the natural redhead, you will just piss her off & God knows what she might do after you suggest she go inflict this pain on herself to make you happy. Plus, it defeats the entire purpose of getting rid of the hair since no one wants to be intimate if they've got those little red bumps from irritation. Why put yourself through that? By the time those little red bumps are gone, the hair's growing back.

Check out the comments on that letter. A bunch of people were defending this guy & I had to wonder if they'd ever dated a woman with sensitive skin. Some of us can't just "shave it off." If some men want to volunteer for that task & make it relatively painless for the woman, then I'll give some leeway.

If you could find me a cheap/low cost method to get rid of hair permanently without ever having to do the area again or having nasty side effects someplace, I'd consider it. I would love to never have to do hair removal again so long as the hair on my head still grew. Electrolysis is NOT cheap & it's time consuming, not guaranteed, simply not a viable option in my opinion.

You know, my whole skin thing is probably a good reason I'd never be considered to be a Playboy model. I have never had an afro or anything crazy but my centerfold pictures would have little red bumps or hair unless they airbrushed those bumps out.

Come to think of it, has anyone seen a nude model or porn actress who was a natural redhead? I haven't & if you do, I'd love to ask her about her hair removal secrets for "down there" since I'm sure she can't go on camera with the little red bumps and I doubt filmmakers love her so much they're going to spend more in editing & post production just so she can have sex on camera. Is this some other fetish section I'm not aware of in porn? It does seem to be a fetish in reality (at least with people I've encountered online & in real life, including my high school boyfriend) so I wouldn't be shocked if that was a separate category. They have clown porn so surely there's a category for this one. Maybe everyone dies in it, though.

If anyone is capable of killing someone from the intensity of sex, it would have to be a natural redhead.

Condo Man summed up the 1 in 100 guys who bothered me about things no one else did. 99 guys in a room never bothered me about things that he did. The funny thing is he bothered me about things other women get bothered about but in my case, those things never came up. If 99 guys won't bother you about something, why would you go out with the 1 who does? That question always came to mind when dating him & having fights on these issues.

Heck, if people think my husband isn't good enough for me they'd have wanted to kill Condo Man among my many jerky exes! I wouldn't be the least bit shocked if Condo Man were still single. He made me look functional & normal by comparison. He even made me look social; it was probably a turning point for me on that front.

People commenting thought this guy was watching a lot of porn or had a woman on the side. Well, if my husband tells me to be hairless after 18 years of marriage I'll tell him what I told Condo Man & how shitty that is to say to a natural redhead. I'll also have to insist on an open marriage; I realized my limit on celibacy is if you put me in a period longer than what I experienced when I was single. I didn't have even a year of celibacy after losing my virginity & I'm still trying to figure out how many months would cross that limit. I think it's within single digits though might not be less than 6 months.

I have to calculate this since then it does make it fair for me & my circumstances. The reason for this? I did a fair amount of dating once I got out of my hometown (after that, I managed to have summer relationships with guys who didn't know me in the past), had no shortage of interested guys & sex is a basic human need. Sorry if that upsets the Puritans but it is & if you knew my family, it's a small miracle that I'm not totally frigid or married to Psycho Boy. Recently found out that ex-friend didn't take God's bitchslap seriously & made the same mistake AGAIN. Sort of confirmed I made the right choice & made me say "Wow, my sister's got a much bigger heart than me since I couldn't call someone who neglects their kids a friend of mine."

Ladies, I say do what you're comfortable with and if some guy dares to tell you to be bald he'd better be willing to do the same for you. I didn't really ask Condo Man about it but he didn't go hairless for me so that tells you something. If he's got sensitive skin, he needs to be thinking twice about demanding a woman do that for him if she's got the same thing.