and it's got some hip music, too

on the heels of britney not being fat, let's all take a moment to watch Dove's new internet ad about caring for your daughter's body image. it's like they heard my cries! at least somebody's paying attention.

Join me, on my high horse

It's Thursday, let's talk about what's wrong with the world.

Rant #1: the people at wendy's in laramie don't care that i'm a vegetarian

It's true, they don't. Maybe I went a little overboard with my reaction to the poor cashier, but seriously? The fact that Wendy's has all of these nice salads, but they are all prepackaged with MEAT in them, is what's wrong with America. Did you notice that we're all fat (except for Britney, see below)? Did you notice that we treat animals horribly? Did you notice that there is absolutely nowhere in Laramie to go on a Sunday night to get a quick bite to eat that's not going to make you feel disgusting?

Sometimes I'm ok with agreeing to the fact that you're just not going to find a lot of vegetarian-friendly places in a small town in Wyoming. Sometimes I feel like saying, why the hell not? Evidence is coming out that our meat-consumption habits are doing more to harm the environment than driving our SUVs. I know people get nervous when we talk about something so close to home, but it's time to start really thinking about this.

Rant #2: people think Britney is fat

She may be kind of dumb, and sad, because capitalism/the promise of love and attention lured her into being nothing but an object. But please, folks, she is not fat. I know this conversation has been happening all over the place--"give her a break, she just had two kids" is the one I've been hearing a lot. I appreciate that people are pointing this out, but even if she didn't just have kids, SHE WOULD STILL NOT BE FAT. She's a perfectly normal sized person who just hasn't been able to keep up with her totally-unfeasible-in-the-real-world four-hour-a-day workouts.

The problem is that up until this point, Britney has existed only for our consumption, and we are angry at her that she is no longer the perfect little hot schoolgirl we wanted her to stay forever. What's even sadder is that the teenage girls who are carefully observing our behavior as a nation are internalizing our treatment of a woman like Britney.

This means that at 16 most girls are way over-sexualized*, that they will do a lot more to get the attention of boys, that ultimately they will place more importance on being attractive than being smart. What happened to the women's movement? Our rampant comsumerism is eclipsing our desire for equal rights. At some point, this is going to come back to haunt us.

Maybe I'm just speaking from my naive standpoint, since my teenage years were pretty well sheltered. If any girl in my high school came to school dressed like the girls are now, we would immediately think she was "troubled". Of course, that was almost 15 years ago, and I guess times do change. And I, apparently, get older.

What do you think?

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*A side anecdote: I was in JC Penney in Amarillo, TX a few years ago when I overheard a few 50s-ish women browsing the junior's section. "Look at how short this skirt is!" I heard one of them say. "It's no wonder they all get pregnant--they just bend over and oops! there you go."