image sally mann blowing bubblesToday is the day of bursting jaw. I stay home with my tooth that I have nursed since 3:30 am when Lola Moon woke and whispered Mommy I had a bad dream......can I watch TV? I lay with one arm round Lola's cream hair and one hand pressed onto the pebble in my jaw, soft and painful, like mumps. It humped blood and disease through the lymph nodes, swelling them like tiny water balloons. I called work at 6am, the dentist at 7.
Late last night I watered the lawn by myself in the dark. The neighbor girl next door sat smoking a cigarette silently, staring at the concrete. Today I left the house and saw the neighbor's boyfriend's silver sports car had LIAR spray painted in large letters across it's side. Later still a police car circled and then stopped across the street, perched there for an hour. What did he do? Promise marriage. Change his mind about having children...and a girlfriend. Cheat? Is she the same girl I called the police on in the morning hours months ago after a night of listening to her scream, sob, catch her breath and begin screaming again. The police came, lights flashed, it was quiet.
If someone does things to you so horrible and painful that you act crazily, are you crazy, or are they?
Do you believe if you are adult and mature and smart and honest enough you can avoid loving someone who will make you feel insane? I don't.I get very angry when I think about an ex-roomate of mine. She threatened to call the cops on me because I showered with my daughter and kissed her on the lips. I also nursed her until two years old. What made me mad wasn't the threat. It was living somewhere where I know that is a real threat; I could get in trouble for doing things like Sally Mann. I can take naked pictures of my children but if CPS ever showed up at my door and found them that would be HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS. In our culture you are not nude around your children and they are not nude around you past the age of two, or maybe three, or maybe four, depending who you talk to. Girls are encouraged to be half naked, wear makeup and pump and ooze rampant femininity from age twelve
and discouraged from showering naked with their mommies. Girls have tee shirts made for their pre-pubescent nipple buds that say FLIRT but are not supposed to see their Fathers naked body past toddler-hood. Girls are given lip gloss called Cherry and Victoria Secret clothes called PINK which they wear across their asses but are not to sleep in bed with their parents past two. Girls are supposed to learn about sex from 'talks' with their parents at the 'right age' and educational videos, instead of a natural integration of discussion and healthy physical affection shown between their parents, when having neither, they learn solely from music videos, magazines, school and experience. Girls are told their vaginas are 'hoo-haas' and ' girly parts' and don't know how many holes they have until teen years because the female young body in America is not meant for understanding and respect and care, but for exposure, lust and men.Girls in our culture are raped, beaten and murdered more than ever. The sexual lives of girls often begins not at home in safe loving discussions and private exploration with good role models but with ass pinching breast squeezing and aggressive name calling middle and high school.
Sally Mann's family pictures were and are controversial. Her naked children play and think in their Southern home and land. Then there are the pre-teen and young teen girls in Abercrombie and Fitch catalogs and Victoria Secret ads, sexual looks on their faces, stomachs revealed to the public line, tops of breasts curving outward in invitation, their bodies thrust into positions of sexuality- ads based entirely around the sex appeal of young girls.
Which bothers you?
