Swimwear

Hello ladies. Remember how you have been scrutinizing yourself in the mirror all year? And what about all of those commercials that reminded you that you could be bouncier, skinnier, more sudsy and giggle-ier? Yeah I remember too. In fact I am reminded every day that I need to go on an Acai (or something) diet, and bust through cellulite, remove stretch marks and drink light beer when I party.
It's not just me getting the message, day in and day out either. Any husbands out there sports fans? GREAT! Then you understand that there is no better place for men to find that same message, underscored by cool guitar riffs and loud crashy cool dude rock and roll synchronization.
So now that you know you don't measure up gals, what will you do? Well since you look so awful naked, why don't you put a patch over both breasts, your crotch and a portion of your ass and walk into the brightest sunlit illumination of the year for all the world to have a look?
O.K. so that just doesn't make a lot of sense does it. In fact, men get that! They wouldn't DARE expose themselves to that degree. Are you kidding? In fact that's HILARIOUS! Men in tiny bathing suits is relegated to funny Europeans, and comedy schticks a la Jackass and the famous"Meet the Parent's" poolside scene. Can you imagine a man letting us get that close of an idea of how toned/untoned, and bulge-ess or bulgeless they are. We could make our decisions in a snap though. "Too small!" "Too fat!"Well I guess someone has put a stop to that kind of scrutiny...Yeah, men get it. They wear comfortable, sloppy, oversized board shorts. Imagine running on the beach in those ladies! Piece of cake!
So what are we doing? And why do we keep letting the culture tell us that all women, as a rule, are expected to strip every summer? Who is telling you to do that? Or, why are we continuing to allow the culture to make a mockery out of what women represent to men?
Women's liberation, my ass! Oops, I mean..."hey, look at my ass!"

Who is the Outcast?

In high school, those of us who wore scads of black, smoked cigarettes and represented an array of assorted hacked up hair, were fodder for all manner of insults. There was almost this strange sense of camaraderie for those of us who had to come together in dark unity, airing fresh wounds resulting from passers by hurling scathing verbiage at our exteriors. Fringe groups were labeled "underground" as if were were relegated to night-time existence for fear of otherwise suffering unbearable abuse by daytime exposure, at street level.
But now what? Who is the fool these days? Who is hiding their head in shame? What is the counterculture group du'jour. Certainly it is no longer the pack of any 15 kids, whose only distinguishing features are their various individual piercings, breadth or type of which might serve to set them apart, one from the other. Perhaps their individual sharpie scroll-work tattooed on any number of skinny jean may be variegating under closer inspection.
Let us not single out that murky assemblage alone. There was also, throughout my secondary school days, another collection of displaced castaways. The "nerd"or "geek" had his or her own shameful and collectively discarded cross to bear. All manner of entertainment readily capitalized on this genre of socially exiled entity. The culture laughed and pointed mercilessly at the buffoonery any one of these "Poindexter"s might exhibit at any given moment.
What does it take to be a reject these days? I might even postulate that normalcy and well adjusted kids are the more disdained and discredited ones. Are they just too simple? Parents marriages too in tact? Do they go to church? Are they saying "no" to "sex" and drugs? What do YOU think of this group?