Pageants Are Stupid....Oops Did I Say That???

Yes I did! Pageants are stupid, and I can’t believe that in the year 2007 four year old girls are being pranced around with adult makeup and hair that is higher than they wore on the show Dallas in 1985. Also, I can’t believe women in their early 20’s are calling this "Overrated Swimsuit Competition" (that once was a one piece modest swimsuit show, and now has turned into a skimpy two-piece silicone enhanced prance) a “Scholarship Contest”. May I ask where the men are in these pageants? Well, don’t they need “scholarships” too?

A recent study by Catalyst, a Manhattan-based women's research and advisory group, found that gender stereotyping is still pervasive and leads companies to "underestimate and underutilize" women's leadership talent. Well I wonder why? Could it maybe have anything at all to do with the way we start off our young girls at four years old, prancing them around in bikinis and too much makeup? Yet we make ourselves feel better by saying we are preparing them for the world by giving them the chance for a scholarship so they will be the next CEO of a company. Too bad she will just fight the entire time to get there, or maybe never even occupy the corner office because of the stereotyping she receives throughout her life by her male counterparts. And all because of something she probably never wanted to participate in…A STUPID PAGEANT….OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN, he, he, he

How Do You Wake Up Your Sleeping Beauty?

Suddenly waking up and realizing I have traveled across a certain time period in my life and not being awake for it is a little frightening. I’m not necessarily speaking of missing a particular milestone in life, but instead realizing that the last time I thought about what I wanted in life was many years ago. I remember vacations, family gatherings, and other photo worthy moments, I just haven’t really felt awake for many of these moments, and I suppose part of this is that after a loss in my life I decided to take on the persona or the attitude of “I’m just living”. No need to set goals of where I’m going or timelines of when I need to be there- They only get changed anyways…

My life before was goal driven. I not only had goals for everything, but I also needed to know exactly when I was going to achieve every one of those goals. When I went through this personal loss, my world fell apart and all of my goals and timelines crumbled right before my eyes. I learned that one person can set goals for a future, but another can crush them just as easily. Maybe this is also when I decided to just close my eyes in order to get through the pain. The only consequence is that I also closed my heart and forgot who I was and who I wanted to be.

Now after years of becoming who others have wanted me to become because “I’m just living", I need to find out what the process is to wake up and how to uncover the layers, yet not go back to the person I was six years ago?

And the Pursuit of Happiness...

I was people watching today and I noticed for some people certain discussion topics will create that bright spark of happiness in their eye, while others may not even blink during the same exact conversation. Of course this makes sense knowing we are all individuals with different interests, but there are just so many things today that try to group people into categories that it’s weird to actually open your eyes and see the individual uniqueness of people.

Knowing how society likes to categorize people, I did a little research to see what was out there about “What Makes People Happy”, to actually see if there was any ONE thing that could make all of us happy. Well, I learned that all of us can make ourselves happy simply by behaving in bold or extroverted ways, that Placebo pills can make us happy, and there were several articles online about how money will NEVER make us happy.

After reading several articles, I started to daydream and drift off into ex-boyfriend land where I couldn’t help but remember how I have had so many boyfriends that were made very happy with money. Well, I guess the moral of the story is that there is no general answer on how to be happy and everyone should just find out how for themselves.

I took some time to think about what makes me happy and this is what I came up with (of course in no particular order):

1. Seeing my nephews and niece giggle
2. My sister
3. Making others laugh
4. The smell of fresh linens on a bed
5. Getting coffee on a Saturday and people watch
6. Finding a great book and getting lost in the story
7. My very close friends- the ones I trust and confide in
8. Dancing
9. A beautiful blue sky in the beginning of summer
10. The feeling of new love

Is 30 Really The New 20???

I realized today that 31 is old. I know I'm not close to being put into a retirement home, but when you hear, "You don't look THAT old!", you start to realize that 31 is old. It is a good thing that my emotions were stable today, so that my immediate next thought was that this could have only been intended as a compliment.

Of course my emotions stood stable only long enough to say thank you and then my mind started racing..."How haggard am I supposed to look?"..."No wonder after my 30th birthday the bartenders stopped hitting on me"..."I feel a wrinkle developing right where my right eye has now started twitching"...

OK, BREATHE in and BREATHE out AHHHHHHHH..........I need to Get control of myself!!!!! I can at least be thankful that I've been blessed with good genes and I don't look THAT old or maybe just all of the sun worshipping I've enjoyed over the years has not caught up with me yet. Whichever it is, I'm thankful!

SO, what do I do from here you may ask? Well, I don't know what other 30-somethings do, but I put on my black bikini and go to the pool.