I wandered upon a book of women's prose and poetry a while ago,
read some in the store, passed it by, went back a few days later 
and tested out another chapter, left it in the store, then finally
went back and bought the darned thing.  There was something compelling
about the content. 

I'd like to share one of the poems by Claire Braz-Valentine.
It's long and the formatting is reproduced as published.

           ************************

The Last Will and Testament of This Woman

To every woman who is my daughter
To every woman who is my sister:

I will to you first of all, my diets --
my grapefruit diet, my orange diet, rice diet, wine diet,
water diet, banana diet and fasting diet.

I will you every time anyone ever said to me, "Have you ever
thought of going on a diet?"

I will you TOPS clubs, Weight Watchers Clubs, Pill Pushing
Doctors, amphetamines, water pills, thyroid pills, and laxatives
   that I have known 
and I have known many--

I will you all the times I wished the scale would say 125 instead of 145

I will you a living girdle,
and eighteen hours girdle, 
a four way stretch girdle,
an I can't believe it's a girdle girdle,
a rubber girdle full of holes that "breathed" when I couldn't.
a girdle with legs so tight I left it in the public bathroom in the waste-
basket--
a garbage can full of girdles,
And the day a man told me, "You got an ass that could kill a man"
And all the time it was killing me.

I will you my bras, 
my bra with under-wires that pushed me up,
my cross-my-heart bra that pushed me out,
my padded bras that made me fuller,
my natural bras that made me natural,
a garbage can full of bras--
a dresser full of bras--
and the everlasting indecision about whether to or not to.

I will you something called a Merry Widow
which is something like an iron maiden.
I will you all the tears I cried lying on the bed at six o'clock in
the morning after my junior prom,
trapped in the damn thing
till I thought I was squeezed to death
And my mother finally freeing my tortured body.

I will you my diaphragm that didn't fit,
that got stuck,
that got a hole in it,
that slipped, 
that I forgot and wore for a week.
I will you my diaphragm pregnancy.

I will you my coil that made me bleed every day for a year.
I will you my bow that made me bleed every day for three months.
I will you my pregnancy that I lost because I bled so much.

I will you my birth control pills
that made me throw up, 
grew me big breasts
and then spots on my face
and a terrible case of nervousness
and a good start on a beard.

I will you my douche bag
filled with lemon flavored scents,
mint flavored scents,
flower flavored scents,
washed rinsed and flushed with flavored scents.

I will you all the foams and jellies and sprays
and suppositiories that I was ever
tempted to insert into the most mysterious warehouse of undesirable
smell.
I give you them all.
I give you them all.
  
I give you my flase eyelashes
false fingernails
my perfume 
my pancake makeup
my blusher
my rouge
my eye shadow
my mascara that made my eyes bigger,
that made my eyes darker,
that made my eyes like a distored clown
when I cried.

I give you every ad I ever read
that made me think I needed these things.
 
I will to you every bit of shame I ever was made to feel 
about being the woman I was born to be.

I will you all of this
in the hopes that once you have all these things
you will realize that you don't need them
much sooner than I realized that.

                           -- Claire Braz-Valentine

48 responses total.

I loved it!  But I'm not so sure I agree about not needing the diaphram or the
birth control pills.  Then she would have had to will us all those unwanted
children.  Thanks for sharing this one with us, Mary.

This response has been erased.

You can and should give up slavery.
You can but shouldn't give up responsability.
You can't give up consequences.

That was beautiful, Mary!  Thank you.

Audrey -- I've given up diaphrams, birth control pills, and IUDs.  I depend
on condoms because they don't hurt anyone, unlike the others, and because
they can and do save lives.  If a man cares enough about me to be worthy
of entering my bed, he cares enough to share the responsibility with me.

Of course the condom isn't nearly as dependable as birth control pills
for pregnancy prevention.  Truley share the responsability and use both.

That's a fine suggestion, as long as the pill doesn't make you ill.

or, as in my case, get undone by other medications you take.  My Dr. tells
me that the valproic acid I take, would in combination with birth control
pills, make me somewhat *more* fertile.  To make it even more appealing,
it also accentuates the probability of spinal deformaties in any
resulting babies.

No thanks.  I'll pass on bc pills.

That cetainly sounds logical, but it doesn't sound like sharing the
responsability. 
 
More men should freeze their sperm and get vasectomies.

All men should, by law.

Personally, I think that would encourage more irresponsible behavior.

Definitely, Dan.  Vasectomies don'y phase HIV a bit.

HIV isn't a significant concern in HIV tested free monogamous relationships.  

While I've heard that argument before, I don't think that we should 
discourage birth control because it might lead to promiscuity and more 
disease.  

If fools screwing around can make themselves dead but can't make more fools,
there will be fewer fools, which is good for everybody.

Fewer fools is good fodder for future thought.

And fewer fodders makes for fewer fools.

Fools follow fads no matter how much folderol they are fed.

feh.

(Tis folly to fuel femmes with frivolous folderol.)

ine females can fuel femme with folderal forever!!!

Thats.  . .Fine females can fuel Femme with folderal forever, folks!!!

I know its been over a year since anyone's responded to this item--but
I do think that this was a wonderful and thought provoking poem that
Mary entered... Do you have any more, Mary?

None spring to mind.  Mostly, I've not been reading feminist stuff.
Too whiney.++0

Hi all This is GV Can I join you

Hi GV!  Of course you can join us, but you have joined a discussion that
seems to have ended a few years ago.  Are you a female in India?  If so, what
sorts of problems do Indian women have that are different from problems that
Indian men have?  You can answer if you are a man, too, of course.

The thing about "feminist literature" is that it is inflammatory.
It is *quite* irritating to read something like "The Beauty Myth" and
be pounded every second you're reading with talk of the horrible
things "they" are doing to women, the hatred, the rage... on and on,
with no solutions, explanations or rationalizations, or analysis even.

What I feel after reading this stuff is a weird impotent rage, with no
clear thought, understanding of any real problem, or even vague attempt
at redress steps... I think the women who write this are really full
of rage.... and pass it on to you when you read it.

It's frustrating.

Sometimes I think we (men and women) rage silently but don't
know why.  Sometimes we get a view of what it is through a
movie, or a poem, or a glimpse into another's chaos.  I
have no problem with being enlightened.  It's when insight
into a problem is immediately solved by dispatching both
the root of the problem and the solution to something out
of our control- when we absolve ourselves of complicity,
when we embrace victimhood.

I think the reason I particularly liked the poem in #0 is
that the woman who wrote it wasn't denying her complicity.
She was accepting responsibility for her past behavior. She
was now in charge of defining herself - no excuses.
Brava.

I don't think she's admitting to any complicity -- i.e., that
she enjoyed wearing makeup, experimented with it, had fun with it,
and so on.  She's basically saying she wore it because she was
duped, and she hopes the women she's willing it to catch on
sooner than she did.  Btw, how come she isn't willing her
Lady Schick along with the rest of the stuff?  Tell me she isn't
still shaving her legs.  (Maybe she needs it to shave the beard
she got frmo the bc pills?)

I disagree.  I see calling her it "my" diet, "my" false eyelashes, and so
on.  All through the piece (to my way of reading it) she is admitting to
buying into the myths.  Even in her enlightenment she isn't calling on
society to stop its sexist ways but rather to individual women to make
decisions regarding their own course. 

Seems pretty clear to me. I don't know why you don't see it 
the same way, Michael. ;-)  

Gack, s/her calling/calling her.

It is however apparent to me that the shape, size, color, hair, repro-
duction cycles etc. of women are always the things that are targeted
for change - quite a bit more than the grooming, dress style, bodies
and reproduction mechanisms of men. 
 
Do you think that it is coincidence? Victimization? Woman hatred?
Male domination & wish to reshape women? Women's wish to be "selected"
more than men's? Society's structure in history that bestowed security/
wealth on women who were "selected" by rich husbands, and couldn't earn
their own living independently - that made women compete and comply
with any fad to be "selected"?

You know, through the last 500 years there have been so many differing
ideals of female beauty (big butts, busts, strong legs, round face,
pointy breasts, conical breasts, huge breasts, tiny waists, tiny feet,
tiny hands, white skin with blue veins, no breasts with an anorexic pre-
puberty young-boy look, muscular body etc.) that no more than 5-10% of the
female population could have fit into the latest fad in what looks good.

Yet, lo and behold, many more than 5-10% of women reproduced, married,
had children, produced the next generation. So, it just can't be that
men are not attracted to other body types than what's "IN" according
to movies and media.

What I read is that men like variety, and women therefor try to keep making
themselves look different to rearouse flagging interest, rather than having
the men find other women that look different.

I think Keesan is on to something.  Men are biologically inclined toward
spreading their seed around (over the years, men who reproduced with more than
one woman were more biologically "successful" than men who didn't.)

Women get around this proclivity for variety by trying to seem "different" over
time to their men.  I doubt that it's always conscious -- just that women who
don't may have a slight disadvantage in keeping their men at home.

But, too, the lack of pressure on men to meet a socialially acceptable look has
come and gone.  Look at the aristocracy in the French Empire period, for
instance.

This response has been erased.

It's true, though, that male clothing styles change less dramatically over
time, and that males aren't expected to put as much work into their
appearance.

Women are expected to look healthy and therefore fertile, which explain some
of the makeup stuff.  Men don't have to be as healthy to reproduce, it is
enough for them to control resources.  Are women attracted to men who wear
more expensive rather than more sexy clothing?

hi! I'm new to grex, hello everyone! 

Anybody there???

looks like nobody's there, so I'll try som other time!

We're here, but generally not at the same time you are.  

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss