That not-so-fresh feeling of internalized misogyny
A debut! A reveal! The opening monologue of my solo show A Little Bit Much. Also, I'm hosting a workshop and co-creating event for writers, artists and people who make stuff.
Today at A Little Bit Much, I’m sharing the opening monologue of my show of the same name! What??!??! Yesss! Yay! And you know where I wrote and edited that show? In the Creative Cauldron, a Community of Practice I started so I’d write the thing I most wanted to write but that felt impractical and impossible to prioritize!
I love creating in community. It helps me to keep my butt in my chair and slay the distraction dragons. I love being with people as they make headway on their projects, sharing in solidarity the challenges of prioritizing a creative life in a world that seems to want us to self-extract endlessly like good little machines.
If you’d like to come play with me, I’m hosting a free workshop followed by a creative co-working space called Courting the Muse! Join me and other makers to slough off the heavies, swim in the creative river and make some art!
I want to hang with the humans making art if for no other reason than to save their damn souls!
A bit of background and process if you’re interested…(or jump down for the show!)
Writing a show was a very new experience for me. I’ve primarily written short form for readers. I’ve written and given talks, but those have a whole different vibe and process. I’m going to serialize my show here, to see where the performance pieces become essays. What’s cool and fun is that how I’d speak the content and how I’d write the content are different, so consider what’s being shared today as an experiment. I’m in the playground!
Below is a video of the opening for my show. Alongside it is an essay of that very opening, but fleshed out further on the page. HOW COOL IS THAT?!? The video is only 450 words, the essay is 850. When I was cutting words for the spoken piece, the ol’ word economy game, I was told it would feel like removing organs, but in the end, feel like a good colonic. I love a good colonic. Can you tell I’m nerding out?
I hope you like it. I want to make art that’s funny, relevant and touches something true and I hope this hits the mark. But also, it’s been so joyful to make that approval is not the currency I’m seeking and that is a wild feeling I want every human to have when creating forevermore the end!
If you want to cheer me on and support me in riding these new edges, now would be an amazing, generous, heart-bursting time to become a paid subscriber. I’d really appreciate it.
That not-so-fresh feeling of internalized misogyny
You know what fascinates me? Identities. Those stories we internalize about who and how we are. The stories our families tell. The stories our culture tells. The stories the media sells. The stories we quietly repeat to ourselves as we process the world we’re a part of. The world we feel belonging in, or not.
And why do some identities come and go, like a sneeze? While others elbow their way over, move in, fester. Avoid eviction like a professional squatter, seemingly becoming who we are.
Like the identity of being too much.
I’ve always been too much.
I talk too much. I take on too much. I think too much. I do too much. I say things where people are like- ummmm, that was a bit much.
I was so stoked to be here, I was almost born in the car. The speed of my birth smashed into the patriarchy as I was caught by an emergency room doctor, not my mother’s OB, whom mom described, even when I was little, as “An Asshole”. He wouldn’t let her hold me until he finished handling me like an inconvenient object on a too-busy day. Yes, but of course I’ve had somatic therapy and re-birthing sessions to clear that shit up. Obviously.
I was a colicky baby. I cried until I could speak and haven’t shut up since. Some people have very strong reactions to that when you’re a woman. Or a precocious little girl.
I was blessed to learn about womanhood from my maternal lineage. I discovered the power and magic of my being and my body through wisdom bestowed upon me by my grandmothers, my aunties, an empowered community of sovereign women.
Haha, just kidding. That didn’t happen. I learned what it means to be a woman, to inhabit a female body, from the same place we all did.
The media.
Those precious early lessons were all about how flawed my body was. A shapable object. A disposable commodity. I wouldn't have understood those concepts as a child. As a kid, it was more of a general sense of wrongness, a slow and wondrous set of discoveries that what lies beneath is flawed. And fixable.
In 1987 when this commercial aired, I was six years old. By this moment, standing in the kitchen with my mother, I’m 8 or 9. I’d seen it enough times to memorize the dialogue and tone. Intimate and connected, secrets shared between mother and daughter. I recognize the feeling of my own mother being a cozy confidant while watching the ad.
I’m standing next to the stove while my mother stirs peaches into the chicken curry, a family fave. I now know that peaches in curry are a strange ingredient, but let me tell you, it works! I say to my mother the same line the teenage daughter says to her mom in that commercial. “Mom, sometimes I just don’t feel fresh, even after a shower.”
Silence.
I watch her face, a mix of confusion and consternation and then the moment she gets what’s happening and understands what I’ve just said. No, she doesn’t hand me a package of Massengil.
“Che, do you know what that commercial is advertising? That’s a douche. It’s a product with chemicals used to flush your vagina. Vaginas are beautifully self-cleaning, those products mess up your PH, are harmful and even when they are medically appropriate, are not meant for healthy young girls.”
Bless my mother! Matriarchal wisdom!!!!
But what power did she have against the onslaught? That was just the beginning. It had been hinted at. My body was a problem. There are products to fix it. I couldn’t yet parse out why something might exist if there wasn’t a real need for it. I didn’t know about manufacturing needs, creating problems to sell solutions. But I did now know, for some unknown reason, that I’m probably disgusting.
Whoever decided advertising douches to pubescent girls is an okay thing to do are total douchebags. I picture them sitting around, MadMen style, downing a rye and coke, flicking a smoke, filling a boardroom with their brilliant ideas about women’s bodies.
“What problem are we solving here fellas?”
“Stank. Ass. Pussy!”
“Yesssss. And how are we going to do it?!”
“Triggers! Make the problem personal. Emotionally sticky!”
“Shame and embarrassment! Threaten their sense of belonging!”
“Good job men! We have the magic sauce to take them from disgusting…to desirable! From fermented fish flesh…to fresh!! From crusty cunted…to confident!!! From a fetid, festering pit of rotting repulsion…to Country Flowers and Summer Breeze!!!!!” Which were actual scents of the Massengil douche.
My mother fortifies me with some healthy skepticism. Advertising can’t be trusted. My young mind thinks I’ll never fall for that again.
And I never do.
Bold and powerful. Well done.
stank ass pussy 🤣