You Can't Run, You Can't Hide

I've been living TV free for nearly 9 months now.

For the most part it's been awesome...considering that TV and pot are how I coped with chastity and rage for 4 years. I feel my attention span growing back. I have become more sensitive to violence. My tolerance for poor grammar has reached new lows. My libido has reached new highs. (The last one may also be the effect of less pot and rage)

But I miss Dr. 90210. This is a show that truly has something to offend everybody and I fucking love it! Each week was a peek into a soul more narcissistic and solipsistic than the week before, the doctors, the patients, the patients' families. Good God!

I like to think I have a "live and let live" approach to most personal matters. Particularly when it comes to plastic surgery. But whatever principles I do still retain are affronted by a mother's weeping with joy for their 16-year-old daughter's new boobs. Or by a Doctor, upon examining his vaginoplasty work, declaring, "Look at that cute little labia!" Or by the recipient of ass implants remarking upon now she has the "confidence" with which to shop "like a regular woman."

As a woman who regularly takes pride in her adorable, symmetrical tits and ass-filling jeans in the designer discount store at least twice a week, this may seem hypocritical. Aside from some acne and dandruff, I don't veer too wildly from a standard 20th Century definition of beauty. Is that what gives me my confidence to not subject myself to infection and anaesthesia? Say the lithium weight never came off, and I was still kicking it size -14 style, would I be cursing every roll or just feel curvy and sexy? I can't answer that.

What I can say is that since I can remember, I have been relegated to the fringe of every group I have been thrust into. Not rich enough, not ghetto enough, too foreign, too American, too intelligent, not smart enough, too lazy, too ambitious, too "out-there", too much a philistine. My tits didn't make me less of an outsider within my own family. My cute, li'l tummy didn't mean I had any real friends in college. My hot ass was no use when I got fired. My straight teeth didn't keep a boyfriend from trying to shove them down my throat.

Pretty much what I want to tell these girls and guys on Doctor 90210 is to turn off the TV, put down the Cosmo or Maxim quiz, tell the mall to "fuck-off" and go to the local thrift shop. (note I did not say library or museum. Yes go shopping) Find an album that looks cool, get some juice glasses that tickle your fancy, try on a 1000 pants, find something crazy that makes you look fantastic. To you.

Other people are a real "you win one, you lose one" situation. So you might as well be happy being yourself. Lest you find your vagina being appraised on basic cable by an assclown with a spray tan and a Messiah complex.