"Daddy Issues" - Episode #1, THE BROKEN HOLLY HOBBS JEWELRY BOX INCIDENT

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I promised myself that this wouldn't become a personal blog, I had one of those on MySpace.com that I was actually particularly proud of until Myspace devolved into the cesspool it is today.  

I actually had considered this a "gutter-blog" for awhile, being exceptionally ill for a time with an unknown cause that I was terrified was colon cancer. 

It's not colon cancer.  Or cancer.  Yet.

So my gutter-blog was for poetry posts.  I was scared I was dying and I just wanted to shoot my spiritual flare into the ether void that composes the interwebs and the multiverse.

Then I angrily linked it one day to a Facebook Admin page I had created, outraged that some Facebook Admin pages glorified Creepshots, candid shots of YogaPants, and even more infuriatingly the FB page dedicated to hating on "12 Year Old Sluts", so I had made a page in response called "12 Year Old Rapists" - which basically showed a few various male creepers, like this 19 year old dude that made friends with a 12 year old boy through Xbox Live and met up with him to sodomize him.  Because fuck you for saying a 12-year-old is somehow inherently a slut.  Fuck you for looking and for taking a picture and for putting it on Reddit so other creeps could "flap" or "fap" or whatever the hell that disgusting word is for man-boy masterbation via Erape.

But then my FB Admin page evolved, as did my blog, and Pintrest boards, I became a legit for sure for shit cyber-feminist.  So please know, I don't consider this bit an evolution, this is a necessity.  

I'm more than sure me admitting I see a therapist surprises no one.  

My therapist recommended I start documenting some of my more traumatic memories to cleanse them from my psyche.  Permanently.   

So I figure, might as well just blog about it when I have to, yes, as part of my therapy.  This is for a few reasons: I'm a writer and I'd be writing it down anyways, so why not let it be read, especially if maybe it can somehow help someone else out there somewhere that might be hurting from bad memories.  Or even help you tell your own story, maybe people will realize in a nation full of single moms as head of household how truly hurtful it can be to label a domestic violence survivor someone with "Daddy Issues" because honey-childe daddy is the motherfucker that has issues.  He projected his issues on you, you were the focus, not the culprit. 

I feel on some level that posts of this nature will be disappointing to some and that you will not enjoy them.  That's okay and I don't want to just write about childhood trauma henceforth, so I'll potentially be starting a sub-series via my Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz Blog entitled "Daddy Issues" to differentiate between normal societal deconstruction posts and my therapy posts.  

Please keep in mind that I am a real person, living my life currently and my occupation is not yet that of a professional writer or blogger, albeit that would be a dream come true, but I have a job, I cope with physical and emotional aliments, have family and social obligations sometimes these will all impact on my ability to blog, as well as what I blog about.

But I am proceeding to write now about the night that I think my father would have beat me to death...

DADDY ISSUES - Episode #1, THE BROKEN HOLLY HOBBS JEWELRY BOX INCIDENT  

I had a very mild crush on an older boy in my apartment complex as a kid.  He was really funny and I was friends with his little sister.  Anyways her family had invited me to what I think was a church event, there was a fun snowball fight, good food, I came home very happy.

Dad wasn't really in a good mood.  At that time he was going to a community college for art classes and he was working really hard on some watercolor book he was painting for class.  He seemed pretty annoyed that I came home in general, especially happy.  He demanded that I go to bed early almost immediately, but I was amped up from the days fascinating activities, I wasn't tired.  I wanted to stay up and watch a special he had recorded on the VCR about aliens and have a hot cup of tea after playing out in the cold and dark for what felt like hours.

As I write this, in retrospect, as an adult now, I realize that either I should have gone to bed as asked OR had my father not been such a malignant narcissist he would have expected my homecoming, been gradatory, already had a cup of hot tea waiting or made it for me himself.  Especially since I was so short, and you know, fire.  But I was like oh 11, I think 11 when this happened.  And dads aren't moms, amirite?!

So I weaseled my way into staying up, watching the alien special, and drinking some hot tea.  Only none of that got to really happen.  See I was excited, in a good mood, a happy kid pumped up on sugar probably, and I was just moving too fast so when I went to put the chair back that I had used as a stool to reach the tea that Dad put in the highest cupboard  pushed back under the kitchen table, I did it too fast, and accidently bumped his feet.  Which according to him ruined what he had been working on for hours (ah, it's watercolor, I grew into an artist, using watercolors and oils myself, so now I know that he could've just oversaturated the spot with more water to dilute the mark, eventually erasing it completely or in a pinch--there's fucking white pigment watercolor for just such mistakes, so I didn't really ruin it).  But he got SO pissed...

You dumb little bitch you ruined it

Go to bed, NOW!--you should have gone to bed when I told you

Now you dumb cunt, you ruined it

I scramble to turn off the VCR tape and tv, turn the teapot off and it was there he cornered me, towering over me, screaming so hard spittle sprayed out at me, his hazel eyes turning silver as they always did when he got that mad, he didn't look human to me than.  I even wrote a short story once--I'm remembering just now as I write this--about a girl who grew up on an isolated farm with an abusive father who falls in love with a young farmhand and after learning of the father's abuse they plot together and replace the father's heart with that of a pig's; I wrote it because I always thought he looked like a pig, the way his face would scrunch up into itself as he went fucking nuclear.

Silver-eyed-pigman-face descended upon me, towering over me, stalking me down the very short, very narrow hallway in our crappy Section 8 apartment, down the diarrhea shit brown carpet, I was walking backward toward my bedroom.  Facing him, feeling completely vulnerable.

You dumb little fucking bitch

You fucking should have gone to bed when I fucking said so

At this point the watercolor page he'd been working on had already been ripped out of the book and he crumpled it into a ball with both hands and threw it hard at my forehead, getting into my face, fucking just I don't even remember what he was saying but it was like heat coming off a car in summer after a 50 mile drive, radiating hatred. 

What happened next?  I have PTSD, I get mixed up sometimes about stuff.  This theraphy sucks. 

I think I was apologizing, trying to convince him how sorry I was, that it was an accident.  

Anyways, he hit me, he balled up his right hand and kinda sledgehammered into my left shoulder.  That ended up being the worst bruise I've ever had to this day.  I was afraid he had broken something, or tore a muscle or something, that bruise ended up turning every color, every color, yellow, red, green, blue, black, purple, orange, even white.  I couldn't raise my left arm for like over a month.  It hurt too bad.  I realized at some point after this incident, I needed to ice it.  I put a bag of frozen brusselsprots on it because I hate brusselsprots.  And Dad first asked me why I was doing that.  My dad would get so mad sometimes he'd blackout and apparently he was abusing painkillers and always had a huge jug of cheap long island iced tea under the kitchen sink and a large jug or box of pink wine, or whatever wine in the fridge itself. So that was always fun, trying to explain the aftermath of his wrath to him, because his self...didn't remember?  He told me I didn't need the ice pack because I didn't have a bruise.  Like he just didn't believe me, so I put it back in the freezer, closed the door, showed him my arm and demonstrated that it had been weeks and I still couldn't raise my arm above shoulder level.  I had learned this by accident, when I tried to raise my left arm to answer a question in class, realized I couldn't and suffered extruicating pain. That incident I didn't hid so well and some of my girlfriends found out, told me to tell on my dad, show the teacher, Tara was super mad.  It wasn't like I hadn't tried to tell other adults and friends before, it's just nothing really happened and I was too scared to be an early adult, I didn't want to get a job at 14 and work for an apartment.  I wanted to go to college, fall in love, live with a good man instead.  Not by myself amongst so much uncertainty.  So I don't think I told that time because I knew my dad would probably get into some serious shit for doing that to me.

But that's not all that happened that night.

When he sledgehammer punched me, my right side was thrown into the dresser in my bedroom, I lost my balance, I fell down.

I felt so undignified, so humilated, all this, over a simple accident.  Tearfully, I screamed that I hated him, it was my first admittance of this from me to him directly.

Oh you HATE me?!--You hate me?!

YES!!!--I hate you!!

Well I fucking hate YOU!!!!

With one giant swooping gesture he swept everything off the other dresser to the immediate right of the bedroom door when you first walked in the room, this including the breaking of quite a few breakables.  Most noteworthy a lamp and a Holly Hobbs jewerly box my paternal grandmother had made me, that shattered into more pieces then you could imagine.  Some larger chunks gouged the plaster out of the wall, I think one piece even got stuck in there that I had to pull out like a splinter from the wall furtherst from the dresser, so great was this one sweeping gesture with rage.  

As he told me he hated me too, he started kicking me, in the stomach, which I eventually curled up into to protect, sobbing the entire time, and he kicked me more in my legs and my ass.

I think I started screaming for him to stop and then he did suddenly, just as suddenly as he started.  This was my normal for a decade.  Dad sat in the dark in the rocker chair he had, rocking, but quick 'cause he mad.

Told me to clean up my mess.  I went to get the sweeper but he told me no, said it was too late to use it, the noise would wake the neighbors, to pick the pieces up by hand.  I had the brazeness to complain that it would take too long if I did it that way and weren't we being loud enough.  He yelled at me with a threat that was enough to scare me shitless.

So that's what I did.

I picked up the pieces.  All of the pieces of my broken heart.  See the jewerly box was a white heart with Holly Hobbs painted on the top, the lid was a heart, and since my grandmother made my dad the black sheep of the family, that's all I had of her, they had disowned us.  So I put really important shit in there.  My mom wasn't around.  It was just me and my dad.  But these pieces, some were dust.  All parts sharp.  Since I could tell that my dad was still murdeously angry while he rocked like a mad man, I shook the entire time picking these pieces up by hand.  Cutting my palms and fingertips, I shook so, for he was muttering to himself about what a dumb little stupid cunt bitch I was.  And I didn't want him to come back into my bedroom.

I hated it when he was in my bedroom.  He kept the cordless phone's charger in there and would use it as an excuse to come in my room all the time.

I had this all as a type of flashback last night, I haven't thought about it in years.  I can't believe it happened to me.  I know I didn't want it too.  I also didn't plan on writting about stuff like this until after my dad was dead.  

I was hoping this would be cathartic but it's just embarrassing but I'm going to post it anyways because I can't accept this happened for no reason and I realized during the rehashed flashback that my dad could have easily killed me that night, he was that angry and I was that afraid.

But he didn't kill me, and I don't scare like I used to.  

*~Namaste~*    

The Top Ten Things Wrong With America And How To FIX Them - Starting With #s 1 Through 3

Caution: this post is purely antidotal rhetoric without factual basis beyond my own experience and powers of observation.  In no way is it supposed to be presumed that I am correct.  But I do encourage you think about what you think the top ten things are that are wrong with America and how you'd go about proactively changing things without hurting anyone, because the Lord Almighty knows, far more than then things are wrong with America, but here's a few to start some dialogue, featured in no particular order:

1). WE WORK TOO FUCKING MUCH

Jesus H. Christ, we work all the fucking time when we can find the work and then it's still not enough for The Man, we have to clock mandatory OT or get a second PT job.  Chicks work through their labor pains not to lose their base pay scale.  This shit happens and it happens here, in America.  I have seen travesties committed against my own people.  The employer-employee social contract is tainted and corrupted for the most part.  We are consistently overworked, underpaid, underemployed, undervalued and dehumanized.  It is done systematically.  We are in the belly of the leviathan at all times, we are enslaved for a wage and call it freedom.  We should never settle for the term "working poor" to be anything other than an oxymoron.  Trickle down economics is a fucking pyramid scheme.  It's all bullshit, the great majority of you hate your jobs.  You know it's a joke, you're just another cog or crank of a capitalistic beast gone out of control.  But not just any capitalism, you are under the spell of predatory Janus-face capitalism.  It manufactures the consent of your children to bow to this bogus system (see the quickly approaching number two).  It's sole purpose is to create the malleability of your will, stealing your hard earned wages through taxes, fees, necessary commodities, and manufactured needs.         

This idea of the "welfare state" and the "welfare queen" is utter total bullshit and many a cat has gotten fat on the restriction free legit "corporate welfare nanny state" our paid for government endorses.  As we erroneously pretend a corporate entity is a human blood person.

I get furious when people seem to think that the average American is a stupid, selfish, lazy simpleton.  The average American has been misguided and lied to all their lives.  They are under a grand deception of sorts, they are bred to accept the illusions of Hollywood, commercials are the new pulpit.  They cling to religion with the best of intention, but it is a limp empty teat, bearing no more milk for them.  They starve spiritually.  A lot of our children drink too much, drug too much, and fuck too much.  They don't have big thoughts.  They're taught to regurgitate memorized 'facts', not to deconstruct in our schools.       

So we are worked too much, we commute too much, we are separated too much from one another, we are alienated.  We're forced to drink the corporate sponsored red Kool-Aide and say it tastes great, it makes us so fulfilled and happy. When for most of us, homelessness is a mere one paycheck away.  We are not rich, we are enchanted by bullshit fluff.  

We could work 20 hours a week, 15, 5 -- or even NONE, we could enact a mandatory living wage of $35,000 annually to each American citizen making working an option, not a socially manufactured obligation.  Giving rise to meaningful work and a truly skilled labor class, a glorious creative class.  Nobody says we have to live this way.  The rules can be fluid, we are all connected.  We just have to want more for each other and ourselves.

The automation age is coming soon and there's bound to be more job displacement than we've ever seen.  Baxter Bots will take the worthless jobs, nobody really wants anyways, but then they'll grab the helm of specialist positions formally reserved for the intelligent human, robots will replace physicians, surgeons, teachers, because robots won't demand a pay scale or benefits or try to unionize, and do as they're programmed.   

If you're poor, you're best off embracing working only as much as required since your labor is making someone else rich.

There is so much human misery in this world, much of it over acquiring money, so what if some of that pressure is eased?--it would eradicate homelessness, reduce prostitution if we had a base guaranteed income just for existing as a member of the human race.  This would do much for the everyday person.  There is also so much more uncertainty in this world and such a need for so many to have an opportunity to start over.     

The funds for such a venture are there, they've just been misallocated.  Too much money is fed into our prison and entertainment and sports industries.  These things are hollow distractions and excessive life-altering punishments when it comes to penalization over trivial transgressions.  

Speaking of which, I digress.

#2). STOP ADVERTIZING TO PEOPLE 

Just fucking stop it already.  None of this bullshit matters, you're wasting trillions of dollars on advertising, nobody gives a shit anymore.  Funnel that money on better-spent ventures that would benefit all of America.  Start trying to see how many eating disorders fall off the radar after a couple of years of no adverts whatsoever.  Trust results and word of mouth as ways to sell your product.  Be ethical in your business decisions, stop trying to poison the fucking planet and rip people off.  And for Christ's sake, stop selling to the children, stop pimping your damned products to the kids, stop selling them toys, clothes, sexy dolls, stop all the horseshit, back the fuck off and get out of our psychosphere you fucking psychos.  

We are under a constant physic barrage of infotainment that cripples our souls.  Since birth.  My generation is the generation that knows our cartoons existed merely to sell us toys.  And now you sell pink pretty princesses to our young women and you sell guns to our sons.  It's created a horrid rancid quagmire of homogenisation, both of places and personalities.  It's awful.  Advertizing ought to be illegal.  We can seek our own information and determine on our own if a product is good for us or not.  There is an over saturation of false diversity when we all go shopping and it is known that humans are depressed when presented with too many choices, the entire shopping experience is an illusion of choice and imagined wealth.  It's not real.  You are fed the machine so you can feed the machine, but you should be raging against it.  You should be exorcising all the demons from the hallways.   

You should be demanding more, by demanding less.  I am under the personal belief that we need advertising in our lives about the same as we need warfare, that is to say, not at all.  It serves no higher purpose in the aspirations of mankind, other than the serving of the profit motive of the very few, at sometimes the cost of great spiritual oppression of the very many.  

Which leads me to number three...

#3). LEGALIZE DRUGS   

You know what creates drug addicts?--an emotional wound, abuse, molestation, poverty, chronic anxiety, chronic pain, but drugs don't create addicts, if they did, everybody would be addicted to every single drug they've ever tried which is just not true.  A victimless crime, is no crime at all.

In Canada, employers are not permitted to drug test their employees since they rightfully recognize that it is an infringement upon their personal liberties and should have no impact on work performance.  What is any entity corporate, government, or otherwise, having anything to do with what I personally wish to ingest in my body?  Now when it becomes problematic and endangers others, yes, then I should be jailed and restrained.  If a certain drug is known to cause such issues, it should be studied fairly and deemed a real danger or not to society.

But the issue of pot, when both cigarettes and booze are legal, two of the most lethal substances you can ingest long term are somehow socially acceptable--you gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me!!  

There are so many good, good reasons to legalize drugs, I can't even list them all, I know it might sound shocking at first, but it's really the only way to regulate such things, take money from out of the hands of terrorists, from gangs, and drug cartels, you take away their fuel, their fuel is illegal drugs, the attraction for a lot of people is the notion of illegal.  They feel they are doing something naughty, but if that notion is eliminated, they can finally see it for what it really is, without prejudice and determine if it's actually just stupid.     

Polish

"I didn't know how to spell our last name."

"I was a kid, only 8 years old."

"My mom and I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"So we moved into my grandfather's."

"I didn't know how to spell our new last name, so I just wrote 'Polish' on those cards, you know for school?"

"Well one day, the school sent him a letter..."

"It was addressed to a Mr. Polish."

"Yeah, well...my grandfather didn't find that as funny."

"He made us both sleep in the vestibule, me and my mother, until I got it spelled right."

"V-I-L-A-V-I-N-N-Y-I-O-Y-S-W-I".

"So nawh, your last name isn't weird."

The Temple of She

Read a National Geographic article about kumari and shakti, kumari is a living goddess and means virgin girl; shakti is female power.  Nepal still worships little girls today and has been doing so since the 10th century.  It's getting harder for them to do of course, and the entire article is absolutely fascinating and I encourage you to find it, it's called Living Goddesses from the June 2015 edition. Sadly, they stop being living goddesses as soon as they bleed, that can come by menstruation or by an errand cut.

I personally practice and advocate continuous cycle.  You can do this on birth control.  The placebo period is completely unnecessary and was thought up by some idiot 1920's type minded gents that somehow figured women not having periods would make them hysterical. Now men having periods would make them hysterical but women not having them, Christ, it would be liberating.  Just try it.  I love it.  No tampons, no pads, no cramps, no mood swings, no ruined underwear.  Just think ladies, not only do you not have to have children, you technically don't even have to have a period. 

Motherhood is no great thing.  Not as it once was.  Too often mothers are overburdened today in contemporary American society.  Men are so reluctant to be husbands.  My father often used to say, "Why buy the cow when you're getting the milk for free?" Now what if it's not just women that were the cow, what if it's men?  Mankind as cowkind.  Why have the baby, why have the period?  Truly, as a logical human being think about this system of birth and reexamine it as something, horrific.  There's a tremendous amount of pregnancy induced diseases and medical complications that too contribute to the overall unappealing nature of reproduction.

So perhaps with today's technology of the marvels of continuous cycle, as long as a kumari does not get cut - she could practically, be a goddess indefinitely.  As long as she remains a virgin.  Can't taint the goods, that's how they become dirty bits.

With bioprinting and full body transplants becoming an eventual reality, humans may achieve long-term life spans that could feel like immorality.  Could we become goddesses?

I don't know.

I read another article in Salon today about how globally teen girls are actually committing suicide at a higher rate then dying in childbirth for the first time ever, and they are actually more like to die from suicide then any other thing.  Our teenager women are killing themselves, dying by their own hand globally more than any other cause.  The patriarchy is driving them mad you fools, you madmen, you morons are denying an entire sect of civilization their inherent humanity.

Do you know what a "tree hugger" is?  A group of women in India hugged trees to save them, to prevent them from being cut down.  They shielded them with their own bodies.

The earth itself is revolting against the imbalance of an over saturation of male energy.  That's what Mad Max's Fury Road is about.  That's what Ex Machina is about.  Male perversion driving their own extinction.  Humanity doesn't have to all die.  It's down to adapt or die.  Evolve or die.  They say the 6th extinction is being driven by humankind but let's be real here, John Lennon wrote and sang 'Woman Is Nigger Of The World' "she's a slave to the slaves".  The sixth extinction is being driven by mankind and many a woman was detrailed by Motherhood, too preoccupied to stop it.

How can little girls be worshipped as living goddesses in Nepal since the 10th centery but here, in 2015, in America, we have Amber Alerts and countless stories of paedophila and too many young children left for dead after unimaginable violations?  How can that be?

We've forgotten some sacred aspect of ourselves.  We've traded magic for perversions.

Do you remember the cannibal cop?--there's been a documentary made about it called 'Thought Crimes' (or something close to that) and people whine about how the man didn't technically *hurt* anyone.  But how the hell does a man even think that way?  About rape, butchering, being sadistic...those aren't the natural qualities of a man, those are the unnatural qualities of a sociopath, a psychopath.  He entertained and had *fantasized* about murder.  Murder.  Murder isn't sexy.  Sex is about creating life, not taking it.  And if you think otherwise you are a legit sick fuck.  Legit.

Talk about being chattel for men.  Talk about being garnish on their fucking plate, it is sickening!

We are the treehuggers, we are the bearers of life.  By default.  Men cannot be permitted to maul us anymore.  We need to lift our daughters up, not as Disney princesses but as shakti kumari.

Right after watching the doc on the cannibal cop, I watched 'Thin' - a documentary on female eating disorders.  A really unusual juxtaposition, a film on a man that wanted to eat women, followed by females that didn't want to eat.  Both being byproducts of the fetishism of the female form.

And it's all enough to make you scream, make you lose your mind, and want to kill yourself but you mustn't.  You must muster on for another day.  You must muscle on for another way.

Yes.  We can do it.

Did Rod Stewart Sing Bette Davis Eyes?

Of course, Rod Stewart sings 'Bette Davis Eyes'!  Everybody knows this!  How my life partner had gone so long without ever even hearing the song was somewhat mystifying to me, so I Googled "Rod Stewart Bette Davis Eyes" so he could hear what I thought was the original cover.

However, it was me getting schooled that day, for as I searched for a singer that never sang that song, it became clear that what I had Shazamed, thinking it was a female singer doing a cover of Rod Stewart's song - was the actual singer the entire time.

Rod Stewart doesn't sing the popular version of Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carnes does.  In fact, she released the song in the spring of 1981.  

I grew up hearing this song on the radio I don't know how many times and the general consensus was that it was Rod Stewart.  But it was just a common, severe case of mistaken identy. 

I know this is a lighthearted post, but perhaps some of you out there know what that indescribable feeling is when you thought you knew truth, reality, and fact with such certainty that you are convinced what you know is accurate information.  But then that gets challenged, not by a debate but by a moment of discovery.  Where the real truth is indisputable. It can shake you to your core.  

This was a life foundational song for me.  Believing it was a man singing the song, I remember being a child and thinking that that was what was important to garner a man's attention: being mysterious, having big eyes, yet being too clever would frighten them, despite being enticed.  Those were my initial impressions of the lyrics, it was like a warning, "don't be too smart or the boys will think you're a spy."  It's a song about using men, but when you think the song is sung by a man, whatever kind of potential female essence of the originating voice is lost to the listener.

It just becomes a song you accept, another brick in the wall of your reality.  Nobody educates kids on song lyrics, except maybe when you question your parent on them, but it's going to be tinged by your parent's life perspective or limited knowledge.

So did Rod Stewart sing Bette Davis Eyes?

No.

How did my hearing change?  It's obviously a woman singing the song...

...but what is she singing about?

Another woman.

It's a woman singing about another woman.  There's pain and admiration in her voice.  That 'S' as a hiss.  It's not just about her having pretty big eyes anymore, for instance, who was Bette Davis becomes more important.  She was an actress who was known for playing strong, independent women.  The lyric, "her hands are never cold", means her heart is.  Then you got to try really hard to remember who the fuck Gretta Garbo was and you realize she was another old-timey actress.  That turns out to be the cause of method acting and somehow earned credit for being one of the "first modern women" (an assertive woman?).  

So this song isn't as pop as I thought, this shit is deep.  It's complex.  This sounds more like a lesbian ode.  

Yup.  That's exactly what Bette Davis Eyes is about.  The romantic interest of a woman for another woman.

If only I had grown up knowing that.

Marisa - (poem)

Your daughter’s not a poem sir.

She’s not a Haiku or a Limerick.

She’s actually kind of sick.

Looks like a drunk whore on Instagram. 

But I guess that’s normal.

Something to be really proud of.

Your daughter’s not a poem.

She’s not a Ballad or Acrostic.

She’s more borderline, more autistic.

Can’t even comprehend grammar or empathy. 

Mayhap she’s a Burlesque Blank Verse

Suffering from neuropathy.

Your daughter’s not a poem.

She’s not graceful or careful.

She’s not a bridge of sighs.

There’s no ravens on her bust of Pallas,

There’s no flies buzzing on her lies.

And despite her Dramatic Monologue…

…your daughter is no poem.

She’s no Epigram, no Epithalamium,

No Free Verse.

She merely cries and can curse 

Like an inebriated soldier.

She will not be an Idyll when she gets older.

She’s not an Italian Sonnet,

Got no bees in her bonnet,

No gumption in her tea.

She just expects things to be handed to her,

As you’ve mainly done; for free.

It’s possible she’s an Irregular Pseudo-Pindaric Ode.

And is no doubt a Narrative Lay.

(Of course that is code).

Despite being temporal

She’s not Pastoral, or a romantic Rondeau.

Fondue has more substance.

No sir, 

Your daughter is no poem.

She’s not a Senryu.

She’s vain but not a Villanelle.

When you’re in town she always turns up the hysterics 

And I suppose she repeatedly broke her phone 

While she was buried way down in the barracks.

I know I might sound mean-ish.

It might make you squeamish.

In front of your transparent house

I stand with a stone.

Your daughter is a lot of things, sir.

   But she’s certainly not a poem. 

17 Female-Centric Themed Documentaries That Everyone Should See

#1). THE HUNTING GROUND

From the crew that made THE INVISIBLE WAR, comes a jarring exposé of rape crimes on various U.S. college campuses, institutional cover-ups, and the harrowing social toll on victims and their families. The film follows rape survivors as they endeavor to further their education while pursuing justice, facing brutal retaliation, harassment, and resistance every step of the way.

#2). THE INVISIBLE WAR

An unprecedented investigative documentary about one of America's most shameful and best-kept secrets: the rape epidemic within the US military. Today, a female soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.

The film reveals the systemic cover up of the crimes against female American soldiers and follows their struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice. Featuring frank interviews with high-ranking military officials and members of Congress that reveal the combinations of circumstances that exist for Rape Culture to thrive in the American armed forces, its history of cover-up, and what can be done to bring about long overdue change.   

#3). SEXY BABY

Aptly titled SEXY BABY paints a particularly disturbing portrait in regards to Winnifred, a middle school student, amidst the rise of a new sexual landscape via the cyber age. 

The documentary focuses on other individuals and topics, but the most intriguing aspect are the trials and temptations that the contemporary tween faces thanks to unchecked corporate media that creates hypersexualized youths all in the name of profit.  It begs to question if what is truly being exploited are the minds and souls of America's children, not just their bodies.  It's a film that left me feeling sorry for 21st century parents.

#4). MISS REPRESENTATION 

An analysis of the Hegemonic society that utilizes the media as a gender engineering tool and how this sets into motion the subordination of women in American culture that perpetually undervalues women as individuals in both the political and social arenas.

#5). THE MASK YOU LIVE IN 

By the makers of MISS REPRESTATION, this is an excellent juxtaposition film that examines if American masculine culture is not only actually toxic for boys, but ultimately for everyone.  Suggesting that American male culture forces boys to suppress their humanity, making many of them dangerous.

#6). INDIA'S DAUGHTER

A harrowing examination of the New Delhi, India bus rape, this BCC special was banned in India.  Very tactfully done and not sensationalistic, most telling is the stemmatic violent misogyny that an insulated patriarchy is not only capable of but is capable of justifying - no matter how irrational.  

#7). MONDAYS AT RACINE

On the third Monday of every month, sisters Cynthia and Rachel open their Long Island, New York beauty salon to women undergoing chemotherapy. The sisters are determined to give women who are losing their hair, eyebrows and eyelashes a sense of normalcy and dignity in a traumatic and uncertain time.

In this Oscar-nominated short film, Director Cynthia Wade examines what hair means in American culture, and reflects on issues of womanhood, marriage, and survival.

#8). PINK RIBBONS, INC.

A brilliant film about how breast cancer has become less about finding a cure and more about "pink ribbons" becoming an industry.  It actually gets pretty revolting and most likely will infuriate you, as it should. Especially in recent lieu of VICE basically making a public service announcement with their special report KILLING CANCER.  Any free thinker that regularly questions the status quo establishment truly needs to see this documentary.  

#9). BREASTS: A DOCUMENTARY 

Even though this is from 1996, it's just as relevant for today's viewer.  The fetishizing of the female breast in American culture is challenged by twenty-two women (ranging in age from 11 to 84), with 41 breasts, talking candidly about their breasts, mainly topless. They speak out about adolescence, bras, commercial images of women's bodies, having breast implants or, in one case, a breast reduction, health problems with silicone, doctors' exams gone awry ("I think you have a throat infection, let me examine your breasts"), breasts as power tools and as objects of pleasure, cancer, living with mastectomies, and the effects of time and gravity. Humorous, straightforward, and reflective, it's a classic.  If you can find it.

#10). PRIVATE VIOLENCE

A feature-length documentary film and audience engagement campaign that explores a simple, but deeply disturbing fact of American life: the most dangerous place for a woman in America is her own home. Every day in the US, at least four women are murdered by abusive (and often, ex) partners. The knee-jerk response is to ask: “why doesn’t she just leave?” - PRIVATE VIOLENCE discredits the brutality of this logic. Through the eyes of two survivors, we bear witness to the complicated and complex realities of intimate partner violence. 

Their experiences challenge entrenched and misleading assumptions, providing a lens into a world that is largely invisible; a world we have locked behind closed doors with our silence, our laws, and our lack of understanding. You will become immersed in the lives of several other women as they attempt to leave their abusers, setting them on a collision course with institutions that continuously and systematically fail them, often blaming victims for the violence they hope to flee. The same society that encourages women to seek true love shows them no mercy when that love turns dangerous.  The film poses questions that hold the potential to change our society: “Why does he abuse?” “Why do we turn away?” “How do we begin to build a future without domestic violence?”

#11). ABOUT FACE: SUPERMODELS THEN AND NOW

I personally enjoyed this documentary mainly because it's about the experience of extremely high profile beautiful women and how they went from being naive young women to aging older women.  It's interesting how women almost have an abusive relationship with their own bodies and it is very insightful on that topic which many men and younger women who capitalize on their looks fail to completely grasp and accept. 

#12). VICE: THE JERSEY SHORE OF ENGLAND

Anything VICE makes is amazing and hard-hitting, this relatively short documentary (which I believe is part of their Fashion Week Internationale series - excellent in its own right) shows the absolutely disgusting and self-inflicting dangers when it comes to obtaining "beauty".  There is a tan obsessed woman who injects herself with questionable chemicals that make her physically ill.  'Nuff said.

#13). PLASTIC DISASTERS 

This is definitely a terrifying and depressing watch.  But anyone considering plastic surgery should view it and hopefully seriously reconsider getting plastic surgery done.  

Cosmetic surgery is absolutely unnecessary in most instances and can easily be botched as this documentary portrays.  You're better off accepting your appearance as is, after-all it's just a stupid human suit that we're donning.    

I can't find a trailer for this film on YouTube, but you can read more about it here.

#14). AILEEN WUORNOS: THE SELLING OF A SERIAL KILLER

Poor Aileen Wuornos.  I've been wanting to do a full-length blog on her for awhile.  She was unjustly demonized for the sake of media frenzy.  Granted she may have killed some men, but she argued vehemently that in many instances it was in self-defense and did not receive a fair trial.  A truly tragic character, Wuornos was perhaps molested into madness and was tragically murdered by the state of Flordia. 

May she rest in peace, as there was none for her in this world.  

#15). CAPTIVATED THE TRIALS OF PAMELA SMART

This is another American woman that did not in any way shape or form receive a fair trial.  The 1995 movie TO DIE FOR was based on this true life story, however, TO DIE FOR was based on the media portrayed "truth" that was twisted repeatedly and sensationalized.  Pamela Smart wasn't the evil temptress mastermind she was erroneously painted as being.  It just goes to show how the media machine loves to spin a narrative for viewership and obfuscate the truth.  

  

#16). BLUE VINYL 

Insightful, informative, hilarious, inspiring, and terrifying, BLUE VINYL will forever change the way you look at vinyl no matter what color it is.  

  

#17). GOOD HAIR

Chris Rock said what inspired him to make this film was one of his very young daughters inquiring if or complaining about how she didn't have "good hair" - a beautiful tribute born of a father's love for his daughter, Rock's documentary might be about hair, but it'll hit you right in the gut.  It will definitely expand your world perspective and will most likely leave you breathless, awestruck, and even angered.    

IN CLOSING:

This list was composed as in a mainly male dominated and male-centric world, female-centric stories struggle to be told.  By no means is this a comprehensive list, there's plenty of other documentaries out there that also shed light on the "female mystique" but these tales are a bit more poignant and varied, and can be enjoyed by anyone.  These films are educational and enlightening.  Happy viewing!