Sex object or hormone addled morons?

On Tuesday September 27 the Secretariat for Women’s Policies of the Brazilian government requested the censorship of a lingerie commercial staring world famous super model Gisele Bundchen. The claim is that the commercial portrays women as sex objects. I’m usually very sensitive, and easily angered by the portrayal of women as sex objects, and yet this commercial didn’t raise any red flags until the news came out today. You see, instead I had always assumed the commercial portrayed men as brain damaged, hormone addled morons. Here is the commercial, you decide. And if you have an opinion, leave a comment.

it's not the easy way out

Three days ago a woman requested a key from a real-estate agency to examine and consider a vacant office space on the 14th floor of a downtown building. The night before last the same woman cooked her boyfriend his favorite meal. She invited his brother to have dinner with them and made sure everything, from the wine to the shrimp dish, was absolutely perfect. She said goodbye to her guests at the door and retreated to the privacy of her final hours. By the morning she had laid out her precious belongings on her bed with specific instructions for their disposal. By mid morning she had jumped out of the window of the vacant office on the 14th floor, leaving instructions that the key be returned to the realtor.

I sat on a windowsill once. I didn’t jump because the suffering I would cause to people I loved would be so much greater than any suffering I could be experiencing. The balance of pain in the equation simply didn’t work for me. So, to jump, a person has to believe that those she leaves behind are better off without her. Even if she never asked, she has to be certain.

People do, in fact, get tired of living. Personally I don’t think anyone should die before they have gotten tired of living. But that entails a state of hopelessness and disinterest in anything that may happen tomorrow. There is no TV show you want to watch, there is no seasonal food you want to eat, there is no place you want to visit, or revisit, there is nothing broken that you’ve been meaning to fix, there is no project, no book, no movie, no play, no birthday party, no skinny jeans to get into, no restaurant you want to try, no wine you want to open, there is nothing you want tomorrow, nothing at all. So, to jump, a person has to believe that the world of tomorrow holds nothing of interest, and what’s worse, the world of yesterday holds nothing worth remembering.

I read somewhere that people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge said they had changed their minds half way down. Their reasons for jumping seemed less significant in the void. You can’t take it back, there is no rewind, no pause button, there is no arguing with the void. So a person has to believe that her resolve is steadfast and right, right beyond a shadow of a doubt, immovable and unchangeable.

I half understand these reasons, except for the resolve required, I have never experienced such absolute, unwavering resolve. Once you step off the ledge time must stand still, fourteen floors and an eternity to consider the quality of your resolve and the quality of your existence. I hope her resolve remained steadfast to the very end, and that she found the peace she concealed so well she lacked. But most of all I admire her brave foolhardiness in choosing the quality and the exact duration of her life.

Barcelos, Portugal

Apparently my great grandmother’s father was from Barcelos, Portugal and my great grandmother was an avid collector of mementos. So among her belongings are some fantastic family photos, a post card collection from the early 1900s, and a set of postcards with views of Barcelos at the turn of the last century. The latter I share with you in this post. Blogger will not display the slideshow, please click on the image to see the Picasa album.



Here is an excerpt from wiki about the city [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelos,_Portugal]. Originally a Roman settlement, it expanded and became the seat of the First Duke of Bragança in the 15th century. The palace of the Dukes of Bragança was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755 and is now an open-air museum. The town's famous symbol is a rooster, in Portuguese called o galo de Barcelos ("the Rooster of Barcelos").

One of the many versions of this legend goes that a rich man threw a big party. When the party was over, the rich man noticed that his sterling cutlery was stolen by a guest. He accused a pilgrim and let him go to court. He protested his innocence, but the judge didn't believe him. The judge was about to eat a roasted rooster when the pilgrim said: "If I am innocent, this rooster will crow three times." When the pilgrim was about to be lynched, the rooster crowed. The judge released the pilgrim. The story ends a few years later when the pilgrim returned and made a statue over the event.

The art connoisseur

My dog’s name is Saskia. Just now I was walking her across the street, and a woman who was crossing with me asked her name.  I told her "her name is Saskia" expecting the usual blank stare followed by "what?" But instead the woman had a quick retort, she said "that's not a suitable name for a dog. She should be named ‘happy’ or ‘joy’". So I told the woman that the original Saskia was the wife of a famous painter named Rembrandt, while at the same time considering that Saskia's life had probably not been all that happy or joyous.

As we continued on the sidewalk, the woman looked down at Saskia and told me she looked like one of his paintings. I was delighted at that, I think she's beautiful and that may be the highest praise she ever received from a stranger. I smiled and thanked the woman. - In retrospect I should have walked away at that moment in the conversation. -  The woman then looked at Saskia and said that her fur looked like his brush strokes. In my mind’s eye I tried unsuccessfully to picture Rembrandt’s brush strokes and conjured words like, precise, exact and flawless; then I looked at Saskia’s wispy, disheveled,  two-tone fur, then I looked back at the woman.  She might have noticed my confusion because when she continued she explained “picture his self portrait, the brush strokes are just like that”.  I thought of the Rembrandt portrait hanging in the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and just as I was concluding that it wasn’t a self portrait, the woman continued.  “But not the one where he cut off his ear, I don’t like that one, it’s not happy”.




I shit you not! That actually happened to me today.

The Gettysburg address in 2011

Lincoln walks up to the podium, standing before a congregation of civilians, military personnel and the international press, he begins:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and”, but he’s interrupted. A youth in the front row calls out:  “Dude! What’s that score you started talking about, did you score four times? Was it like, four different girls or four times with the same one?” Lincoln is taken aback, he’s not certain he understands the question, but explains that score simply means twenty.  The youth huffs, accuses him of lying and walks away, but not before adjoining “There’s no way your skinny ass scored 20 times dude! You couldn't score twenty if you were the last man on earth!  You’re full of it!”

Lincoln clears his throat, looks at his notes on the back of the envelope and continues.  “Well, where was I? Yes – conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”  At this a rather robust woman in fatigues and boots, who had been leaning against a tank whittling a stick with her army issue survival knife spoke up. “Hey! You in the funny hat! What’s that about men being created equal? Aren’t you forgetting something? What about women you sexist pig?” She never stops whittling the stick, but now she looks up and stares at Lincoln. “You come over here and I’ll make us equal!” She emphasizes her last statement by slicing the stick in half with a forceful diagonal swipe of the knife. 

Lincoln swallows hard. “I assure you madam, that will be quite unnecessary.” He continues, “er, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men” he pauses to look at the woman who has lowered her eyes to her handiwork and is listening intently. “AND women are created equal.”  He smiles nervously and scans the crowd.  A few are still listening to him, but most have started talking amongst themselves.

Lincoln continues “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”  He looks up from his envelope.  There are a few more people listening to him.  He chooses to ignore the two in the front row who are now discussing which two generals should have sex with each other in order to conceive a nation and just how long they would endure. He eyes the whittling woman nervously.

He continues.  “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground.” And he is once again interrupted by a private in the back who stands up and protests “Damn right we can’t hollow this ground! If you want trenches you dig ‘em yourself.  This is not WWI dude! We don’t go around hollowing ground anymore!”  Lincoln explains that he said hallow with an “a” and not hollow with an “o” and the man sits back down complaining that if the lecture was going to be tricky he should have had some overheads or something. 

“The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” At which the whittling woman stands up straight and asks “Brave men? Men? Really? What have I been doing here then? ‘Cause I got the power to detract right here in my hand mister!”

And so it stands that in our juvenile, gender equal, politically correct, free speech times, Lincoln would have had to walk away for some fresh underwear and would, in fact,  never have finished his historic speech.