We expel vitriol and we start choosing our candidates by process of elimination: I can only vote for my candidate because the other candidates made this mistake, made that mistake, etc. Also, I'm ignoring the mistakes my candidate made, or I'm rationalizing those mistakes as "not as harmful" to our government/humanity/etc. I'm not blaming people for having this reaction, though. I think it's a response to post-traumatic stress. It is a fear-based response. We're so used to having to choose between bad and worse that we're still evaluating a pool full of awesome candidates--brilliant ideas and flaws and all--by purity tests instead of looking at all the ways they work well together. But we don't have to this time around. We have a bunch of good candidates, all of whom would bring something different to the stage, flaws and all. Remember: government is a team sport. We're all in this together. Cue High School Musical theme.
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I couldn't even look at the scale today.
I remember hearing an adult very close to me--a female adult very close to me--tell me, when I was turning 11 years old, that this was the age at which most girls "start to balloon." I danced 10-20 hours a week from then until I was 22 years old. I was 108 pounds graduating from high school. Too skinny, most people said. Bean pole, my ballet teacher called me. Grasshopper, my best friend called me. In middle school, I read a book about Axell-Crowne Syndrome, Life in the Fat Lane. I thought: that'll never happen to me, but how horrible that it happened to this character. I learned about self-image issues. I learned about anorexia and how you're not supposed to have it. I learned about bulimia and how you're not supposed to hide it. I got tiny boobs that I saw through my leotard. In high school, I was too busy being anxious about my acne to care about my weight. I thought: it's okay that I have zits in my T-zone, because I won't get them around the rest of my face. Then they spread toward the outside of my face, lined my jawline like green plastic army soldiers swarming for a battle. I was nerdy. I had a big mouth. I was uncool. I was perpetually tardy. My mom told me not to eat junk food. I ate it anyway and never got bigger. Freshman year of college, I gained 10 pounds. At first I was afraid of them--then I noticed I'd started getting hips. Boobs. I was getting curves. 118 pounds and I was afraid more than anything else about acne. I was put on Accutane. My face got flaky and I had to remind myself, every day, that I wasn't ugly. I had a boyfriend. Someone liked me, right? The longer the relationship went on, though, the more I thought my boyfriend only told me I was beautiful because I had low self-esteem. I always wore makeup. I didn't read magazines, hardly watched TV, but I knew my acne made me undesirable. If I wore makeup, I was pretty. But I didn't have that natural beauty everyone was starting to talk about. Mine was fabricated. Came from a plastic box and a brush. Everyone was just too kind to tell me the truth. Dear Ann Carr(-Tunney) of Penn State,
I just watched you in the 1980 AIAW National Women's Collegiate Gymnastics Event Finals. I'm about 35 years too late in writing this letter, but in my defence I wasn't alive in 1980. Regardless, sorry for the delay in this letter. I know that's no excuse. But those 35 years make a huge difference. I see you in your blue leotard, dressed up with white curved streaks in a flippy pattern throughout the body, and think how dressed-up you must have felt. You were twenty-two, at the top of the world. First woman to be awarded a full athletic scholarship at Penn State. US National Team member. Gold medals galore in the 1975 Pan-American Games, winner of three Broderick Awards, but today at 57 years old, none of that is bragged on your LinkedIn profile. Instead, you've quietly made 10 connections and modestly mention your 27 years of service with the School District of Philadelphia. I think of Sydney Johnson-Scharpf, daughter of another gymnastics legend 15 years younger than you. You paved the way for Brandy Johnson and Brandy paved the way for Sydney--down the generations you've passed on levels of difficulty and expectations for one, two, three somersaults in the air before landing back down to the women who came after you. And they're so young now. Sydney Johnson-Scharpf is nearing 16. She's tired in the 2014 Secret US Classic, after coming back from three injuries, so young, so old, the weight of fame siding with gravity to keep her down. Gymnastics is so different now. Your floor exercise in 1980 featured large amounts of ballet incorporated in your exercise. Growing up as a dancer, I'd always thought gymnasts were just doing it wrong, with their hands splayed out into what we call "competition hands" in the studio dance world, their ribs sticking out, their backs arched too much. The older I got, the more I separated gymnastics "dance" exercises from my own. They were a different species. Gymnastics did not equal ballet, and that was okay. But then I saw you, and realized I was wrong. Or, at least I would have been in 1980. |
PART OF THIS COMPLETE BREAKFASTBlog not recommended for sober consumption. |