Reddish Musings

All right, so, I have something slightly embarrassing to admit:

I don't like taking showers.

I've never liked taking baths or showers.  Even as a kid, I remember it always being something of a struggle to convince me to get clean.  The problem is not that I enjoy being dirty.  No, the problem is now, and I suspect it was then, that showering has always seemed utterly pointless.

My first point: Showering is unproductive.  What can you really DO in the shower?  You can sing, I guess, but Oscar Wilde would argue that, since music is a form of art, that is useless.  You can brainstorm, MAYBE.  But unless you have some kind of magic writing device that functions in water-based environments, you won't really be able to retain many of your ideas.  I guess you could hold a debate, if you had someone willing to stand in the bathroom and argue with you while you lather up.  But overall, nothing really gets done.

Some people get a therapeutic use out of showering, but I just don't.  I can count on one hand the amount of times I've gotten home at the end of the day and looked forward to hopping in the bath, and enjoyed my time under the spray.  So, for some, I guess, there is a use, but it still feels entirely pointless.

"But Red," you might say, "isn't getting clean productive? Isn't shaving and shampooing and washing an end result?"

Maybe.  But it's not a very good result, because... and here's my second point:  Showering does not fix the problem it intends to fix. Sure, it might get you clean for a second.  But, living in Texas, I know firsthand that sometimes I start sweating and feeling gross again before I am even out of the shower at all. And maybe your cleanliness lasts for a few hours, but before you know it, you've gone outside.  You've produced sweat, your hair has gotten oily, your legs have gotten prickly, and the next day you're back where you started.  It's maddening to me.

I just can't really get behind it.  However, society demands that I not stink, and I understand that request, I just wish showering didn't feel like such a time sink.  It feels like a chore, not something I enjoy.  And the older you get, the more stuff you have to do while you're in there!  As a kid, it was basically: Soap up, wash off, get out.  Then it was: Soap up, shampoo up, rinse off, get out.

Now?  The ritual goes: Shampoo hair, rinse out, wash face with daily pore cleansing lather**, rinse off, condition  hair***, rinse out, soap up with scent-free dove soap because my skin is terribly allergic to everything, rinse off, shave armpits, shave legs, tend to lady bits, rinse everything off, dry off, apply lotion, apply powder...

And I'm sure with this list I am not even doing half of the things a Modern Lady is expected to do.  Because I don't care about all of that. All of this is JUST to maintain the absolute minimum amount of health and cleanliness I can bear.

** Face Wash Sidenote:  I used to have perfect skin.  I'd get a pimple every now and then when I put my face in my hands too much, but I never experienced this "acne" thing, and barely had a greasy face or head at all.  Then I got the Mirena IUD.  Sure, 5 years of not worrying about spawning SexFruit is great, but if I still had insurance I would contemplate getting it removed simply because of what it has done to my HEAD.

My hair gets greasy within hours of showering.  It used to be bouncy and full of wave, and now it's often flat at the top due to the oiliness that I can't seem to get rid of.  And my face.  Ugh, my face.  I feel like I need to wash it every hour on the hour.  I can feel it now. I can feel my face getting oily and it just won't stop and aa;sdfja;slkfj aaaaaugh.  There's gotta be something I can do. Maybe a hormone balancing act? I don't know, but it's driving me nuts.  Anyway.

*** Conditioning Sidenote: I HATE CONDITIONER.  When possible, I buy shampoo/conditioner combinations, because I detest the feeling of conditioner in my hair.  I was raised to wash the feeling of soapiness completely off of me, and conditioner never really leaves your hair.  That's the point of it.  I understand that logically, but some minor obsessive-compulsive aspect of me goes berserk when I can still feel it.


*deep breaths*


Anyway.  Showering.  It's my least favorite chore, one that I am making myself pay attention to and do daily, because that's what adults do.  It's always the last thing I want to do during a day, which is the real reason I normally take them at night.

It's just not fair that everything else in my life can get washed while I attend to other things (dishes, laundry, etc.), but I can't just hop in a cleansing suit and get on with my life while it goes through a cleaning cycle?

Come on, Science. Catch up!

I'm going to do something shocking.

I'm going to defend the Twilight series.

...okay, back from puking in my mouth a little.

All right, so, much like any other popular young adult fiction in this decade, the Twilight series are under attack from "concerned" parents.  These parents are so concerned with what their children are reading that they are challenging the books' rights to be in public libraries.

Now, part of me quails at the idea that this means Twilight and Harry Potter are somewhat related to each other.  In fact, according to this article, Harry Potter books aren't even in the top 10 of challenged books anymore, meaning Twilight is beating the HP series at something.  Even if that "something" is really "pissing off Christian parents who can't be bothered to actually investigate what their children read," that just isn't right.  Come on, pastors! Keep preaching the evils of black magic over the evils of lame vampires!

I kid.

Whenever I hear about books being challenged, banned, or burned, it makes me angry.  I don't care what is in the book, how much I like or dislike the material, the author, the characters, any of it.  The idea that someone out there can decide what is okay for me to read angers me.

But these parents have been on crusades since public libraries began, I imagine. There have always been "edgy" authors who endorse sex, magic, drugs, alcohol, and anything else that these people feel will cause their children to immediately join gangs and go to jail without passing Go.  There will always be misguided parents who feel that the only way they can keep their children in line is to purify the world around them, rather than encouraging their children to make good decisions based on their shared morals. It's sad, really.

The idea that libraries should not be allowed to carry these books at ALL shows no trust in your children, no ability in yourself to monitor what your children read, and an obnoxious arrogance to assume you can control OTHER people's reading choices.

However, like I said, these little wars against books have been happening for a long time, so I don't really waste my time getting worked up over every indictment against a novel with dirty things in it.

What upsets me this time around is that some people are supporting it, only because it's Twilight.


I get it.  I do.  I don't like the books, either.  But before we all grab our torches and pitchforks, remember who you're giving the power by joining the fight.  You are not giving power to the intelligent elites on the internet.  You are not giving power to people with good taste.  You're giving power to people who argue that Pokemon endorses communion with demons.  You're giving power to people who think Harry Potter  teaches you how to kill people with "Latin Words."  You're giving power to people who wanted to ban Shel Silversteins A Light In The Attic because it had "a suggestive illustration that might encourage kids to break dishes so they won't have to dry them."

If you don't like Twilight, that is completely okay.  You're not alone.  But I'm pretty sure I read some books that other people don't like. I also know that it's way more fun to bicker about taste in books than it is to all read nothing but The Bible* all day.

So, encourage people to read better things.  Don't ban them from reading the bad things.

~Red

*Nevermind the part where The Bible has a lot of magic, sex, drugs, and murder in it, too.  Somehow that always gets overlooked.

I've got a problem.