Author: One Day At A Time

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Virgin are we?

So I’ll definitely put myself out there I am a virgin and I am 22 years old. And yes I am waiting till marriage. That being said I am tired of the, what seems to me, random depictions of virgins. In the movies usually the virgin is one prophetess or religious deity like in the movies Immortal and Conan the Barbarian. Or people in generally think that all virgins are prudish, stuck up, extra conservative, and hyper religious. It’s as if within the push for the feminist movement that means that have as much sex as you please and make the choice to have sex. What if you do not make that choice are you then against feminism. I thought the whole point of feminism is to respect women and the choices they make with their bodies (themselves). But more so it is lets show the men we can have as much sex as they can. I personally am not interested. It is as self there are two different secs the women who chose to wait and rock purity rings and the women who engage in sexual intercourse looking down on those that don’t. Of course I know that this goes both ways. But I feel as if women need to know that both options are viable and for this to happen sexual education needs to occur. Sex is everywhere and women are constantly being pressured to engage in something they might not be ready to yet. So where is the dialogue for those who want to wait and those who do not.

I think it is equally annoying to have certain body movements legitimatized by bodies who have sex and those that don’t. Just because I can wind and swirl my hips a certain way doesn’t then mean I have sex. Or if I can’t dance for anything doesn’t mean I am a prude. We create so many binary for ourselves that it is difficult to claim to be a feminist is daunting if as a part of that it means you have a body that participates in sexual intercourse. And to add on to that if you are any other ‘color’ than white your body is then hyper sexualized and expected to participate in sex. And if you are not that you are linked to being a prude. And fyi a prude means “a person who is excessively proper or modest in speech, conduct, dress, etc.” It comes from the french word meaning “worthy or respectable women”. But we take words and add our own derogation connotation to them and look down on the people that fit the altered rhetoric of the word. Lets change our words and connotations or words. In thus doing we change the frame of our world.

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Bodies that speak

I’ll put my name in this post because it will make more sense.This is Renita.

So I was born in Cleverly, MD and I have lived in Maryland for 21 years I lived in Oklahoma for one year and I am 22 years old. However when I open my mouth and begin to speak something strange comes out – an accent. I have no idea why or how I sound the way I do. My mother who was born in Nigeria doesn’t have the accent and neither do my cousins who I spent a significant amount of with have one. So I have no idea where my voice comes from. Interestingly enough when in America and in other parts of the world (I have traveled a bunch) whenever I speak people accept that I am from Nigerian as opposed to when I say I am from America.

Usually the conversation goes something like this

“where are you from”

me – “Maryland”

“no I mean where are you really from”

me – “my family is from Nigeria”

“oh so where you born there”

me – “nope I was born here”

“oh so you lived there”

me – “nope I have lived here all my life

This conversation has happened many a time. It is very hard for me to explain to people that I am American and they never truly seem convinced. So more often then not I say I am Nigerian it is a lot easier then the long conversation. Or if I really want to make the person that I am talking to upset I say “I was born in America but I am from Nigeria”. My thing is that everyone has an accent to anyone else. There is no unified way that Americans talk. There are different southern accents, there are new England accents, new york accents so on and so forth. So why the obsession which trying to pin point where a ‘body’ is from based on how they sound. I mean if I wanted I could make my self sound American which probably means Caucasian (which by the way a lot of people that come from Nigeria and move here do). But sorry I am not going to make it easy. This is the way I speak.

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crap I have a left hand

Being right handed is the best. Why we even have a a left hand is a mystery to me? Of course I am being sarcastic but in most cultures being right handed is preferred. I mean preferred to the point that I have seen children get scolded for using their left hand instead of their right. My older cousin should be a lefty but her father decided that he would beat every impulse to right with her left hand. Today she can write with either hand. So why the preference? Here are some fun facts about left handed people;

  • see more easily under water
  •  excel in tennis, baseball, fencing and swimming
  • generally more intelligent, better looking, imaginative, and more talented
  • children having basic problems using the wrong tools so most often times considered slow. (Maybe if we make more left handed tools it wouldn’t take them forever to figure out how to use a right handed scissors.)
  • They seem to make exceptional leaders, inventors, artists, musicians and murderers!
  • more eloquent

Even with these generally good aspects that come from being left handed we are pushed to be right handed. There is a particular Nigerian food called Eba or Pounded Yam and uses one hand to eat it. Well one time I saw one family friend sitting in the corner and eating her food. I asked her why she was basically was hiding in the corner. And she replied that she was eating her food with her left hand. It was strange to me that she felt weird eating in front of people because she was using her left hand. When you type you use both hands to do so (well unless you are my mom then you use on finger) but were did this preference for right had come from? What are some things that you do better with your left hand then you right?

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Bodies that bleed

The crucifixion of Jesus have been painted for decades. But for some reason they all look the same. He has little to no blood and has a halo that surrounds his head. Different artist my add his mother or other disciples but the amount of blood is little or none. Now this is a quite interesting depiction when from the 39 stripes on his back, the nails in his has and feet and not to mention the crown of thorns on his head one would think there would be more blood. But is we compare a picture like this: now if you would compare this typical portrayal of Jesu to the most recent depiction done by Mel Gibson and the Passion Of Christ  in this youtube clip (start watching from 2:10-4:05… be advised it is very bloody. The movie is R rated) http://youtu.be/G52Ejcf2qu8

So my question is why did earlier depictions of Jesus show Him as barely having a scratch on Him what that depiction is unrealistic. The whips they had were adorned with nails. So the nails on the whips went in his skin and then ripped off his flesh. Not only that but to make sure He was dead they pierced His side with a spear so that blood came gushing out. But society has it that what is on the inside of the body must remain on the inside. The that raises the question is there an inward and outside part of the body? Because I thought they were one in the same. But the parts of the body that we can not see should remain unseen. As soon there is a breach between the seen and unseen there is a problem. Heaven forbid we sneeze or leak and by all means possible defiantly do not bleed. We get cuts and bruised but of course we have bandaids to cover it up. And then heaven forbid we talk about females that might bleed five times a month. But don’t worry there are ways of hiding that too. So please do not bleed because that makes you human and we al know society basically wants us to be robots.