Choice is Important

I have two topics in mind as I start this one, but they're closely related. To start, I'll go with why I don't actually put 'adult' on my books, despite listing them as such.

It's pretty clear that I'm not a child, everyone's parent or can make a universal decision on what is 'okay' for everyone to read. I've revealed before that my parents never censored what I could read. There were some media that they were more squeamish about, but the main reason I didn't give them cause for concern with books was because I clearly understood that, even if it was labeled non-fiction, I should take every bit of experience and fact with a grain of salt. Nothing is more true as a rule nowadays when the internet is ambiguous with freely shared information that is more likely to be used to collect traffic for a website than actually be informative.

What your child can or should read is for you to decide and I don't scoff at those choices or offer my opinion on how strict or relaxed you might be. I may have a clear judgement, but it's none of my business. However, though I do believe it's important to classify books and possible audiences accurately, I don't think it's my business to plaster my covers. For digital books, the listings are clear and, as of yet, I haven't focused on physical bookstores and libraries. However, the digital listings would easily put these books in the correct locations.

What if potential customers or lax retailers put them somewhere else? Yes, that's bound to happen, but if you aren't prepared for a surprise, there is no shortage of ways to research before you buy. If content is something you are squeamish about, then there are plenty of ways to do so. I don't suppose everyone has smartphones or that they don't just turn their kids loose in a bookstore, but if you make a snap judgement on something you know nothing about or can't say no to your kids until you can research it, don't be the person that blames the bookstore or the author.

Why don't I just put 'adult' on there? Well, because I wasn't an adult and I'm not going to shame my potential audience. The adult rating is rarely used for just violence. It is almost always used for explicit sex and ambiguous or taboo themes. Even adults can be judged for this. Even the most free-spirited among us don't necessarily want to advertise that we're having adult toys or books or movies delivered to our homes and we don't want every nosy motherfucker passing judgement based on that word. I leave a wide trail of exactly what I'm writing. When I write for general audiences, that will be clear, but I'm sure as hell not going to bubble-wrap or pre-judge my audience. Even to cover my bases.

Books are the way we see how people think, not the way the world immovably is. Leading into my second topic, 'the way things are' is a phrase that we need to know is never a safety net for things staying that way.

As a teenager, nearly every girl I knew was suckered into the Girl Talk series. There was a popular board game as well. The entire package was loaded with questions geared only towards straight girls, how female bodies were supposed to be, and many dangerous ideals for what a girl was expected to experience to validate herself. I remember, as a 12 year old girl with a newly blooming body, nothing was more damning than the part of the book that told me that if I stood against the wall with my shoulders, heels and butt pressed against it, my back should touch as well. No matter how I tried to suck in or contort, it was impossible. I had a butt and couldn't do it so I was fat. Only I wasn't. I was always on the low side of a normal weight range and athletic.

The worst part of these books was that it was always worded as if the books were on our side, looking out for our best interests, but in truth, they were shaming us for being different. Not just our bodies, but our style, our hair, our interests and preferences. If we weren't all about make-up and boys, what the hell was wrong with us?

Even for the damage done, I'd quickly learned the dangers of blind belief. It wasn't the books' fault necessarily but the danger lay in the fact that there was a time when this was societally acceptable. If you want to know why women my age are so adamant about campaigns that tell people to stop talking about how women should view their bodies or reproductive systems, you can tell us things have gotten better, but we damn well know they could get worse. Men are still trying to tell women what they should do with their bodies, trying to pass laws even. Here's the thing: men do not get to have an opinion on women's bodies. Other women do not get to have an opinion on every woman's body either. Your husband, father, brother, king or president, male or female, do not get to have an opinion. Our bodies are our decision. Our health is our decision. Even now, the laws are more concerned with our reproductive capabilities than our overall health and this is a problem--one even claiming women's lives when they are ignored. So when we want to nitpick about our hair, weight, pimples, self-image, this is our personal struggle, not permission to weigh in. Whether it's petty or pivotal, the right to decide our personal fate should never be something anyone can bully us out of. 

Non-fiction books should absolutely be pulled when they can be dangerous to society, especially when targeting children. However, you can't apply this to all literature in all genres. The ultimate responsibility goes to the consumer. 

We can't and shouldn't child-proof the world and we can't and shouldn't penalize adults for responsible curiosity either. There will be times when we haven't prepared our children for everything they come into contact first, but we can't protect them from every lesson and sometimes pain has to be the teacher. I know what it's like, to want to protect children from pain, but it does them a disservice. It breaks my heart when my nephews learn the hard way, but those lessons are also the ones that stick, the ones they won't have to trip onto softly again and again because there are never consequences that deter them. They don't learn caution or wisdom without pain. While I never want them to hurt as I do, I also never want them to make them so dependent on me being that there that the world will crush them the minute they stray.

I try to be thorough with my arguments for and against my topics, but it's always possible I haven't considered something. If you disagree with me, why do you think 'adult' is a necessary label? Why do you think fiction-based media should be as responsible as non-fiction? I'm happy to defend my answer or change my mind.

New to Me

While it's almost impossible to make an idea wholly original, most of us actually aren't looking for that anyway. In the many books I've read, the many words I've filtered through me, there are a lot fewer moments of profound change in my thinking or mood by comparison. I pore through entertainment of all types rarely expecting a revelation anymore--sometimes I'm just banking on a nostalgic high.

I didn't get into Game of Thrones for being original. For all of its taboo topics, it wasn't even shocking. If anything, it took all the parts that people were already writing about throughout human history and stopped letting powerful prudes cut them out. It's not some morally depraved trickery on the part of modern times but at some point, we stopped seeing sense in protecting grown-ass adults from controversial topics. They are still rated and able to be kept from children with the ease of technology but they aren't stricken from consumption by people who have every right to make that decision for themselves. 

GoT, however, was still original in a sense that today's trends are not. It's not a remake of a story already done, sometimes in the exact same media as before, ten or more years later. The characters and names and specific plots are not suspiciously or even blatantly mimicking something else.

My own stories? After not looking at them for a few years, those are new to me too. I rarely ever replay a game, reread a book, or rewatch a movie... Or rather, I don't ever plan to. The tendency I have is to think of something I once consumed and, if I can't think of it right away, it only builds this insane need to re-experience it when I can remember.

This can go badly. While I haven't yet cringed at my published stories, I've certainly murdered the magic of nostalgia by attempting to revive it. Instead of always insisting I relive it, sometimes I do look for something similar.

With a caveat. I will almost always ignore any attempt by authors, reviewers, etc. to compare it to a popular title. It's one thing to list inspirations in a bio but I am naturally suspicious of anyone who uses the popularity of something else to sell a story. In my experience, the ways it is 'like' something are not at all the ways I have hoped it was. The problem with telling me your work is like Stephen King is that the man is prolific and his own work isn't like the rest of his work. J.K. Rowling? If you mean it's set in a magic school, I've already read (and not finished) about 50 stinkers with that theme. I'm interested in knowing if it's a light or heavy read and, as for the nostalgia? 

Marketing doesn't nail that. It's kind of a weird set of feelings. It could be some element of a book cover, a font, a description or it could be the first book we dig out of a church sale crate. I'm not looking for a shiny bestseller, but a secret treasure. Not new, but new to me. 

And here's the thing: the next Tolkien will always be a man. We're a long way from a world that stops passing a gendered torch. That's not to say it wouldn't be flattering to be called the next Ursula Le Guin or Anne McCaffrey but those aren't household names. J.K. Rowling? (Again, she's a question; sorry, Joanne.) Go into purist fantasy circles and while, she's a token name to say 'see, a woman's successful in fantasy', she's also more deeply excluded on a list of 'serious' fantasy contenders. 

So I'm not going to navigate any genre by its bestsellers. While Netflix and Hulu are making bolder, sexier, more diverse choices (not always successfully, but gotta love them for going for it), there are many creatives struggling for a fair chance. While I'm not a fan of identity politics putting the squeeze on entertainment, it's just as true that perspectives of all kinds (and not at the expense of the white male) need to be observed.

However, some attempts are laughable. The insurgence of corny 80s style family comedies featuring people of color are terrible. They weren't good when it was white people and it's not less disturbing that these are all-black, all-Asian or all-Latin casts. It's too on-the-nose segregated in a way that backpedals on being 'woke' (and fuck that stupid term). There was a show on Hulu, I think it was called Here and Now, with a hippie white couple that adopted kids from all races and despite my initial wariness that it was going to be another on-the-nose heavy-handed toddler-lecturing hot mess, I was surprised to find a lot of cultural honesty, human fallibility and even a suspenseful fantasy element. Look it up and watch it. I'm disappointed it didn't get at least one more season.

Not every trip into diversity will be amazing. It's going to have a lot of clumsiness to start. It's not proof it's all terrible. However, diversity for the sake of diversity shouldn't be the rule either. Not all same race or same gender casts will be glaringly awkward. Some do work without a forced element of biased education or flatness. I don't care for Lena Dunham but I did enjoy what I've seen of Girls. It's not even a requirement to like the actors or anything else they've done. When I'm looking to bond with an idea, I'm not the sort to let hangups lead me. Perhaps this is why marketing is so lost on me. Not only does it not influence me, I can't commit to anything that assumes other people are that easy.

I just want people to know I'm an option. You may or may not like my work. It may remind you of something you've read. Whatever the case is, it will be new to you and original in its own way.

Bonus points if it resonates with you.

Strength and Beauty: The Nature and Aesthetic of Women

Sometimes, we confuse the inner and outer beauty arguments, deciding what things should be without considering the person we're projecting them onto. 

Drawing isn't just about an aesthetic for me, although that's certainly part of it. It's not that I hate my face or my body, but there's never been a draw in simply duplicating what I see (and many an art teacher can testify to that when I took liberties in life drawing classes). When I want to draw a woman, I don't want to know exactly how it will turn out. Drawing from my head isn't so much about depicting the ideal woman as it is capturing a piece of what connects me to her.

Inevitably, the women I draw are beautiful. They're not always thin, but what I capture in their forms still reaches for grace, physical strength, emotional clarity. Sometimes, I'll draw a simple bust form...

Sometimes, I really want to play with the full anatomy.

There are always elements exaggerated, even realistically impossible, yet that's probably why I am able to reach into difficult dilemmas in my own life that I struggle to make sense of. When I pull these forms from my own experiences and observations, I am closer to my own nature.

Beauty is a concept women struggle with. We want to be beautiful but we don't. We are anxious if we'll be noticed, anxious about how we'll be noticed. We don't want to be forced to accept a compliment, told not to be a bitch when we don't want to acknowledge it the way the giver expects us to. We wan to feel safe, strong, noticed, but that isn't always about outer beauty. We want to be brave, intelligent, kind, curious, independent, but sometimes all the compliments (or insults) focus on how we look.

I know; it's a frustrating thing and we accept that is the nature of it. We know we can't have it all and sometimes we even objectify men or injure their self esteem when it comes to looks or superficial ideals of what we want them to be. 

What also should be understood is that what people fantasize about isn't necessarily what they want from reality. A bit of a morbid example, but on an episode of Law and Order SVU, a woman's identity was used by a vengeful ex on a rape fantasy site where he arranged for her to be sexually assaulted, her struggles and protests to be ignored as part of the act. While the theme is extreme, the episode touched on issues like consent and measuring virtual strangers by their online presence. Hell, the entire Catfish show can hammer that one home too.

With communities of disgruntled MRAs, MGTOWs, incels, feminazis and gender purists throwing out extreme ideas of what is expected of men and women, the prevailing danger comes most strongly from the very one-sided views of people that likely need therapy to cope with trauma rather than fueling each other's sicknesses. In the same vein, they try to police how the world should work in a way that protects them but harms others. 

Although my thoughts sometimes take a dark and gritty turn, I am optimistic. As I've said before, it's important to encourage individualism, to strive for the balance of humility and ego that lets us achieve self fulfillment without crushing others.

My struggle as a woman will still be unique to my experience. Even though I sometimes look for comfort in like minds, I know that to be too comfortable is dangerous as well. To agree with someone on one level does not mean we are bound to aspects of them we don't agree to, simply out of loyalty.

As they say, a true friend will always call you out on your bullshit. 

Mind if I wheel off these tracks and go back to the topic of art?

While drawing these pictures today, I had a bit of a mental glitch. I'd gotten used to digital painting a bit too much and the first time my pencil didn't cooperate, my left hand started pressing the page for the Undo hotkey on my tablet. Sigh. Blend or erase... Nothing quite beats the feel of paper and pencil but the transition isn't always so seamless and they both have their own challenges. I'd like to do some pen sketches if the mood strikes this weekend. As much as I love drawing women, I really need to work on men. As you can see, I have a soft style that often makes all of my males a bit effeminate. I'd like to work on some hyper masculine subjects. Not to say effeminate men aren't awesome, but I would like to extend my range.