Where Are All The Women?!

I would not consider myself a huge feminist, but in recent years I have been becoming more and more aware of all the INJUSTICES that women have faced, and our innate disadvantage in this world, because we just grew up with it being normal and didn't really stop to think about it. Well now I'm stopping to think about it a lot these days because it's everywhere, and as of yesterday, I was royally pissed.

I started noticing a lot of this when I watched, or learned about, guys that I knew, my age and YOUNGER, with LESS EDUCATION than myself, were acquiring ridiculously prestigious jobs and pay. Some people get a lucky break, some of us underestimate networking, sure, but it has gotten to the point where there is just no way around it. Men will work with men, men respect men, men think men deserve more... the list goes on. It is actually insulting... I would go to lots of happy hours and networking events in New York City, and when the men drink with each other, they're talking business and making connections and offering positions... but men drinking with me (or other females) want to buy them drinks and ask about the weather in California.

Basically, I have watched men all around me get better jobs and more pay, for no real reason that I could see other than they were men. If a woman were in their position, she would be making significantly less, and/or having less perks and prestigious assignments. I've seen enough to know it's true.

What's everyone's excuse? "Women choose lesser-paying jobs" - well I'll call BS on that now. Sure the teaching industry is dominated by females, but that's not the industry I'm in. So I'm over that. So we come to the REAL point: "women don't know how to negotiate well"

Well la-dee-frickin-da. I do make the concession that women may actually not be as aggressive, concerted or experienced at negotiating. But do you know what happens when you find a woman that can? They will drop her like a bad habit. They're not about to negotiate with a woman who would do that. I'm ASSUMING because it makes her look "bossy" and like a "bitch", but whatever.

Howwww to putttttt thissss?

My BFF, her boyfriend and I all worked at the same company. Between the three of us we must have had close to a combined 15 years working for that place. We knew the ins and outs, we knew their tricks, where they spent their money, what their budgets were. As a matter of fact, my BFF even helped sign on some freelance consultants for the company, while she was still with them.

So imagine our surprise when they now want to hire her as a freelance consultant and they lowball her a good $75 AN HOUR from what they had offered to others. So she politely negotiates her terms, KNOWING what they spend on freelance and consultants. Do you know what happened next?

They didn't even bother negotiating. They didn't try to work on the price or explain their offer or make a counteroffer- nothing. They said thanks but no thanks.

So women CAN negotiate, but business don't WANT to negotiate with women.

My blood is still boiling a little bit.

FOR SHAME!

The Frozen Analysis

Ronnie:  I just read the SALES of Frozen

 Sent at 2:18 PM on Thursday

 Ronnie:  Elsa OUTSELLS ANNA

by nearly DOUBLE

and she's not even an official princess!

that b**** is a QUEEN

 Sent at 2:18 PM on Thursday

me:  isn't that exactly why she should outsell everyone?

Elsa has the more fabulous outfit

that will always trump some pippi longstocking wannabe!

Ronnie:  HAHAHAHAH

PIPP LONGSTOCKING WANNABE

omg

I actually LOVE Anna!

she's my 2nd favorite character

after the business-savvy Hans

Taylor Swift Karaoke Night

Ronnie:  I want to do a Taylor Swift karaoke night!!

you should fly into NYC!!

 me:  omg

I WOULD LOVE THAT

I CALL ENCHANTED

 Ronnie:  I CALL TIM MCGRAW

 Sent at 11:37 AM on Wednesday

 me:  okay!

i also call STYLE

and WELCOME TO NEW YORK

 Ronnie:  I CALL LOVE STORY

AND WE BLONG TOGETHER

 me:  I CALL SPEAK NOW

 Ronnie:  I CALL DON'T FORGET ABOUT US

 me:  THAT'S MARIAH CAREY

Side-Crow Pose

Marisa and I have been going to yoga since January 2014. We have been going twice a week regularly since July 2014. Even though we did start at the level 1 beginner class and we now take the level 3 class, I still feel like I should be further along than where I really am. I still sweat and get exhausted and sometimes can't do the whole routine. I wonder if I'm progressing AT ALL.

Well yesterday in yoga I learned that I AM because for the first time ever, I hit a side-crow pose. (Nevermind that I faceplanted after 2 seconds). Crow pose is currently my favorite pose, and I have been wanting to get in on side crow but never had the strength for it. I hadn't even attempted it in months. When it was part of the routine last night, getting up was almost so easy I felt like I was doing it wrong, which made me feel like, maybe I really am getting better! It was such an encouragement and got me excited about it all and to keep going back.

This is side-crow:

...I looked like that for about 2 seconds before I ate it. I tried it again and I faceplanted again, but at least I had Marisa there to laugh at me.

The Awakening

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

I recently stumbled across a list of the top books of the century or whatever, which listed this book as #2. I was surprised, because I had never heard of it. I stumbled across it in an antique store for $1 so I bought it, and finished it today.

Like Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, you can see what it did for it's time, but otherwise, not particularly impressed. It was published in 1899 and a huge feminist scandal, mainly because the protagonist, a 28-year-old wife and mother of 2 throws off society's definition of a woman and wants to be independent, but I just didn't like the book much, even though it was set in New Orleans, one of my spirit cities! (The other is Boston). It felt a little boring, slow, completely contrived, and I never really felt what was trying to be conveyed (emotion, urgency) really came across. But it was short and interesting I guess.

* * *

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day. 

At that time [Madame Ratignolle] had three babies, and was beginning to think of a fourth one. She was always talking about her "condition." Her "condition" was in no way apparent, and no one would have known a thing about it but for her persistence in making it the subject of conversation.

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, - the light which, showing the way, forbids it. At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears. In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight... but the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many soul perish in its tumult!

Monsieur Farival thought that Victor should have been taken out in mid-ocean in his earliest youth and drowned. Victor thought there would be more logic in thus disposing of old people with an established claim for making themselves universally obnoxious.

[Her sentiments] belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself.

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, - a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.

Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt; but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.

"One of these days," she said, "I'm going to pull myself together for awhile and think- try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don't know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am."

I may as well admit that this is my birthday, and that I am twenty-nine.

He hoped she had not acted upon her rash impulse; and he begged to her consider first, foremost, and above all else, what people would say.

There was a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to "feed upon opinion" when her own soul had invited her.

She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness, - not with any fixed design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference.

"...I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both."

"...There are periods of despondency and suffering which take possession of me. But I don't want anything but my own way. That is wanting a good deal, of course, when you have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, the prejudices of others- but no matter- still, I shouldn't want to trample upon the little lives."

The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies.

Vegetable Smoothie

Ronnie has a knack for finding the weirdest things on the Internet, and now that we only have our gchat to talk to one another, I have become inundated with more articles, Sailor Moon clips and Korean dramas than I know what to do with.

But today he pulled out an old gem from years ago that we both loved and said I should put it up on my blog and I AGREED.



If you have a minute, this is worth the watch. Wait and see what happens to all the little vegetable girls at the end!

Happy Monday.

Super Bowl XLIX

I've taken to referring to this Super Bowl as "Super Bowl X- Licks" because who the hell can read those Roman numerals.

I had suuuuch a fun day yesterday. I went to a house party in Orange County and started in on beer pong around 1p. I didn't have my best showing but then again... I'm like 7 years out of college so what do you expect.

There was lots of drinks, lots of really nice people, and my God, lots of betting. I bought 5 squares and lost them alllllll. This group actually plays LRC (!!!!!) so that showed up as well. I actually watched the game diligently for like the first half, wanted to see Katy Perry diss Taylor Swift at the halftime, and then resumed beer pong and making friends.

I did not care a lick who won this game, so I wore my San Diego Chargers shirt to the event. At some point with me in front of the TV a guy asked "So how are those Chargers doing?" and the answer was "Well they're not losing" lololololol and that just cracked me up.

The guy I was with ended up accepting a bet with his friend that the Patriots would win, so I did end up rooting for them, and it was a pretty close game so I was getting a little on edge, but they ended up winning so woohoo!

And being at work this morning makes me wish it was Super Bowl Saturday and not Super Bowl Sunday...