Tag: Gender / Sexuality Issues

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Life Imitating Art (Again): They're Either Gay or Fatally Flawed!! Blah!

blogger panel discussion notes

Last night, I attended Media Bistro‘s panel discussion entitled “From Blogger to Author” which was about, as the name implies, bloggers who ended up with some pretty cool book deals. It was quite informative. Michael Malice from Overheard in New York was there (and I caught him eyeing my Naughty Ms. Kitty writing journal, pictured above; he wanted one badly and was extremely jealous, I could tell!!), talking about graphic artist Harvey Pekar‘s biography of him; as well as interior designer Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, of Apartment Therapy, who was wearing extremely cool multicolored-striped socks; Rachel Kramer-Bussell, who writes Lusty Lady; ICM’s Kate Lee, a.k.a. “literary agent of the blog superstars” who came across as a very intelligent, shrewd businesswoman for her young age; editor Laura Mazer of Seal Press; Julie Powell, author of Julie & Julia, a Bridget Jones-style diary of cooking all of Julia Child’s recipes in one year and supposedly the author of the most popular blog to date; and my personal favorite (in terms of his blog, which I discovered only after last night), Rob Rummel-Hudson, whose sweet My Beloved Monster and Me, is the basis for his memoir, to be published in 2008, Schuyler’s Monster, about his little girl and her rare neurological disorder. Learned lots of interesting tidbits about such things as blog ‘hits’ and page views versus publicity, the challenges of blogging versus book writing, how these awesome book deals came about, and witnessed a rather fun debate mainly between Lee and Mazer on whether literary agents are still necessary.

Anyway, I stupidly left my notes at work, so was searching the internet for info on the panelists, and, while looking for Julie Powell’s cooking-diary book, came across this fun little interview with her. I just love “who’s your favorite literary character”-style quizzes, and the first question here, which fictional character would you most want to date and why, completely stumped me. At first, I thought, oh that’s easy, I have lots of favorite male novelists. Then, I realized, ooh wait, that question was which of their CHARACTERS do I wanna date? Just because the character’s creator is desirable, doesn’t make him so… after all, the author must have an ironic detachment from his little creation to make him compelling.

Thinking of my favorite books: there’s Andrei Makine’s Franco Russian war child in Dreams of My Russian Summers, but that character had lovely little thoughts like, women should just die after sex when they’ve exhausted their usefulness. And, even if forgiven for those sentiments, is a man who doesn’t know whether he’s Russian or French, who’s so conflicted over his national identity, really a desirable partner? Ditto for Jeffrey Eugenides’s fascinating Cal in Middlesex regarding gender / sexuality identity. While I hugely appreciate Oscar Hijuelos for making me feel actual sympathy for the womanizing, sexist, even sometime rapist Cesar Castillo in Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, he’s not exactly someone I want to spend time alone with. Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov — now there’s marriage material! Hemingway’s characters are, well, Hemingway characters. Salinger’s characters are smart-assed shitheads with engaging voices who make great narrators, but to date?… Philip Roth characters … ugh. Martin Amis men … ugghh. Nick Hornby males … uuuuggghhh… Leaving, for me… Augusten Burroughs‘s heroic survivors of things like complete childhood insanity who are, of course, GAY. And E.M. Forster guys… hmmm… much better than the most of the aforementioned but, yes, same little problem as Burroughs…

I can honestly only think of Emma‘s Knightly as a desirable man, and he’s 2,000 years old, so is bound to be a bit old-fashioned… Powell at first answered the question saying, ooh I dunno, that’s a hard question for a straight woman … Couldn’t agree more, unfortunately. But, on the bright side, I guess I do find something about all of these great writer men to fall in love with. Ironic detachment; it’s a marvelous thing. If only every man could strive for it…

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Carnival Carnival!

funny feminist bed pic

Not that carnival, unfortunately (though I really really REALLY wanna go to that one…)

I just saw this link today on a fave website of mine, which was timely, in light of Natalia‘s mention of a dance blog carnival. I hadn’t known what one was. This is a feminist blog carnival — looks to me like mad blog fun, with days and days of insightful reads! I think a dance carnival is definitely in order! And, hey, at ours we CAN have Samba…

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Orgasm and the Successful Straight Woman, Part II

Apropos of my earlier post, my friend, Kathy, sent me this article, which I found very disturbing. It’s by journalist Vicky Ward, though it sounded a bit like Candace Bushnell, and was in the Financial Times. She basically says that highly successful men — at least of the business variety — do not want careerist women, or even women with any sense of self. Rather, they need handmaids who, while glamorous and intelligent, exist to cater to their every need, like a mommy or personal servant:

“He wanted someone who was smart enough to read him, in the same way every top-level executive needs a personal assistant smart enough to know, instinctively when to speak, when to stay away and when to put the call through. . . He needed this person to run his life seemlessly so that his time would never be wasted with menial tasks like reading an electric bill, packing a suitcase or instructing the staff. . . He needed someone glossy enough to reflect his glory and power but clever enough to know not to outshine him. She needed to know when to chatter away charmingly and when to shut up … ”

So, a successful businessman needs a wife who’s smart, sophisticated and glamorous but who will completely subjugate her every will and desire to him. Just when I was asking myself whether we were living in 2006 or Jane Austen times, when women were educated simply for the purpose of obtaining a man, and what kind of woman intelligent, educated and cultured enough for these men would actually be interested in landing such a child-husband, Ward announces that these women so subject themselves because they’ve presumably signed pre-nups and know they will be left with only $5 million and an apartment, which is nothing here, “since Manhattan for single women over 40 can be a brutal place.”

This remark makes me think the article is a joke. Kathy says it’s not. But, I mean Ward has to be saying that tongue-in-cheek, right? Does she really think the city is brutal for women over 40 or for those who have only $5 million? Or, am I just so poor that I have no idea what’s at stake for those accustomed to having five houses, their own jet, and a full help staff?!

Ha ha, it’s funny because, in looking for a link to Bushnell, I found this interesting article which half confirms and half provides a counter-point to Ward.

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Are Straight Women All Doomed to Orgasm-less Lives Like Sophia in Shortbus?…

Lincoln Center fountain

Last night was so beautiful! Imagine, 60-degree evening temperatures in New York in November! The world’s not all bad…

I ended up without plans, so decided to go to the opera, forgetting that the Met Opera is not the NYCBallet or the ABT, where there are nearly always last-minute Family Circle (that’s poor-people nosebleed section) tickets available. Also didn’t realize that last night was Anthony Minghella’s new production of Madame Butterfly, so not only were there no below-$250 seats available, there were no seats available at all. I waited in the cancellation line anyway, but to no avail. Ended up spending a lovely evening, though, soaking up the gentle misty breeze by sitting on the edge of the plaza fountain people-watching.

But, while in line, I couldn’t help but become quite engrossed in a conversation taking place behind me. Two women in their mid-forties, whose friends were outside trying to buy tickets directly from patrons while they waited in the official cancellation line, struck up a conversation with each other. One asked the other where she bought her boots, yadda yadda, then they exchanged questions of who they were there with — both were with female friends — and soon the conversation turned to men. Neither had ever been married, and neither had a boyfriend, though both were looking. Both were high-level executives with several advanced degrees. Both had been on umpteenth dates recently — had tried Eharmony, Jdate, Match.com, you name it — and were appalled at what they’d met. Not that the men they’d met were lying cheating deadbeat loser date-rapists or any such thing; just that they were horrendously under-sophisticated, under-accomplished, witless bores.

Today I finally got around to seeing the movie Shortbus. The film focuses on the sexual aspect of relationships, and centers around a group of twenty- to thirty-something New Yorkers and their various problems. I thought some of the dialog was witty (although at the beginning seemed a bit writerly), and the character I found most compelling was a gay man from a backwater town who’d turned to hustling in his younger years because it was the only way he knew how to express his sexuality — a situation that involved a lot of abuse and eventually resulted in adult inability to be physically close with his partner. Anyway, the main female character — Sophia — I found rather sadly funny. Her problem was that she couldn’t have an orgasm. I’m actually not sure what explanation the screenwriters ended up giving for this — the character mentioned something about having strict parents during a therapy session with a dominatrix. But I thought it was so damn obvious — she couldn’t have an orgasm because her husband was a pathetic loser. He wasn’t a bad person at all — he was a nice, and rather cute guy — just boring as hell and nowhere near a match for her accomplishments. Cute doesn’t cut it these days…

I’ve tried some of those dating services those Met women were talking about and found the same thing they did, the same thing Sophia was left with. And I don’t think it’s the Helen Fielding / Nick Hornby dilemma we’re facing at this point: I don’t think most of them are noncommittal cheaters. Many of the guys I dated weren’t scared of commitment, it was more that they were ready to settle down as long as that meant moving to some boring suburban town where they could spend as little time in the office as possible and come home every night to the TV and DVD player. I swear, several men listed TiVo and Netflix in their “Five Things I Can’t Live Without” lists. They didn’t have interesting jobs, they weren’t impassioned about their careers, they just didn’t seem interested in really doing something with their lives, in really being someone. Most of them had less education than I did and less career and educational achievements. I think for most women, like for Sophia in the movie, it’s hard if not impossible to feel sexual passion for a man they don’t feel passion for in general. And who can feel passion for these guys?

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Bah Humbug! Where Have All the True Drag Queens Gone?

Halloween Parade

Every year I tell myself I’m not going to go. And every year, I always seem to end up in the Village for the increasingly crowded, increasingly touristy, increasingly boring parade. My excuse this year was that my friend, Rebekkah’s Scottish boyfriend was visiting from Glasgow. And it was definitely fun to introduce an out-of-towner to our annual tradition. I’m just not sure what exactly the tradition is. I remember my first year here (not gonna say when that was…), when my older, wiser, fashion-industry maven friend, Judy, whom I will ALWAYS view as the consummate sophisticated New York woman 🙂 , and her friends, took me to this restaurant / bar in Chelsea and we sat there all night sipping cosmos (which I thought just about the greatest invention imaginable) admist the nastily raucous Chelsea throng of gay men with perfectly sculpted bodies in leather g-strings and stilettos — Judy and friends flirting with them, me by turns gawking and giggling. Voyeur though I may be 🙂 , that was seriously one of my best New York experiences — just watching other people express themselves so freely was kind of freeing to me. And it was the one time I felt like I could walk practically naked through the streets of N.Y. and be perfectly safe (and the city was NOT such a safe place then). I just feel like that’s not there anymore; judging by the eye-rolling and Valley Girlish “Ohkayyyy?!?”‘s at some of the totally watered-down drag costumes, the tourists who come now to see the spectacle would die if they saw the revelers of yore. Maybe, like feminism, the thought is that there’s no longer a need for that kind of expression, or maybe the gay drag thing got commodified so that it’s just silly and annoying now… Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and more sated on the city, who knows…

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Penis-Head, Non-Sexist Doctors, and Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia!!!

So, I went to Columbia Headache Center, spent several hours with a headache specialist, and this was my diagnosis! Not penis-head — that was Luis’s diagnosis. I had my films with me from a former brain MRI I’d had that my neurologist had given me to take to the headache specialist, and after looking at the slides, he told me I could keep them. So, since I go to the dance studio on my way home, I had the films with me, and when Luis asked me what was in the huge shiny silvery envelope marked “images” and I told him “my brain,” he said, “cool, I’ve never seen one of those before. Let’s see!” So there we stood in the middle of the studio floor, under the chandelier, looking at a bunch of small images of my brain from various viewpoints. In one of the shots that looked like it was taken directly above my head, Luis found an object that he thought was shaped exactly like a penis (only Luis!). I couldn’t completely make it out, but Luis obviously has much more experience with male genitalia than I do, so I believed him. He yelled, “now we know what’s on YOUR brain, Tonya!” He also found some shapes resembling grass and weeds… So, my diagnosis from the head pain neurologist was “Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia,” and my diagnosis from my gay dance teacher was “Penis Brain.”

Anyway, I’m very excited about my diagnosis — my official one that is! After patiently listening to me go on and on and on about my latest headache episode, the doc said right off I have this rare neurological disorder, so rare that not a whole lot is known about it other than certain meds work on it and certain ones don’t. And apparently it’s not dangerous, like stroke or aneuyrism-related, thank God! It’s just one of those things, where the person gets certain kinds of pain — in my case pain in one temple and side of my head and in my sinus cavities on that same side– as well as sinusitis-like conditions — congested nose, ear, and very watery eye and swollen lid. But there really isn’t a sinus condition, which is why the antibiotics the doctor had given me to kill the sinus and eye infections I didn’t really have, and all the decongestants, did nothing. And since it wasn’t a migraine, that is why the migraine meds didn’t work either. So, now I’m armed with an entirely new arsenal of meds for the next one. One even comes in the form of a shot! He taught me how to administer the shot myself. I have to stab myself the leg hard and fast. It kind of made me queasy thinking about it, but I KNOW the next time I have that severe of pain, I’m not gonna be thinking about being queasy! Because the pain and sinusitis-like conditions are brought on simply by the way the brain is structured, it’s NOT about caffeine, chocolate, MSG, cheese, stress, lack of sleep, or estrogen. It is just because it is, basically. So the reason I’m so excited about being diagnosed with a rare, scary-sounding neurological disorder? For one, I feel unique — how many people can say they have Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia?!? And, two, and most important, is that I feel vindicated! I KNEW IT WASN’T A MIGRAINE; I KNEW IT WASN’T A MIGRAINE; I KNEW IT WASN’T A MIGRAINE!!! So, NO ONE can tell to just deal with it until my period’s over, like a woman should, lie down with a cold rag on my head, not take on so much so as to stress myself out, or even just that I injest too much coffee, wine and chocolate. The doctor laughed when I screamed all this out at him. Even if they were migraines, he assured me, I was regurgitating the old decrepit school of thought — telling a woman she should take it easy lest she ‘compromise her delicate composition’ etc. If they were migraines, he’d give me meds responsive to migraines, not tell me I shouldn’t try to be a lawyer, writer and dancer at once. So, my doctor’s COOL! Because, honestly, another general pract I’d seen for these (yet another time my regular primary doc was out on vacation) told me exactly that: I was doing far too much and needed calm. And I remember him focusing on my job too… “You don’t really like being a lawyer, do you?”, as if such a profession was enough to mentally destroy any poor girl, or as if, even if I did hate it, that had anything to do with the fact that my eye was the size of a golfball, I couldn’t breathe out of one nostril or hear out of one ear, and it felt like someone was stabbing me repeatedly on the side of my head. Who would think that sounded even mildly like a migraine??? But of course they were migraines because I’m a female of child-bearing age, and that’s the kind of headache females of child-bearing age get. That doctor was near retirement (and now is, thankfully); my new head pain specialist was pretty young — late 30’s. And the fact he wasn’t far out of med school worked in my favor too — he remarked when he diagnosed me that he could barely remember this weird disorder from his textbooks; a doctor who’d been practicing longer, and never seen a patient with it, might not have. Ugh. I don’t give a damn if I sound ageist, but if older means too sexist to give a proper diagnosis and proper medical treatments, they need to change the way they think or get out of the profession.

Okay, off to bed. So I can get up early for my trip tomorrow morning to Martha’s Vineyard for beach and ballet!!

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No Sexist Medicine!!!

Ugh, well three strenuous dance lessons last week including trying hard hard hard to do my oh so highly prized fish with no hands turned out to be not so good. Got sick all over again. Just a bad sore throat and cold this time, no flu thankfully, and, as of yet, no horrendous headache, but the weak muscles and bones and congestion have meant I had to miss a couple more dance lessons. Which I’m really not liking right now because my showcase is coming up very soon. I guess I have to not worry. Worry creates stress and anxiety, which is part of what’s keeping me sick, I must repeat to myself. Ad nauseum. I decided not to perform in the studio’s group class, which is not Hustle I found out, but Shim Sham, a form of Swing that I’m not familiar with anyway. It would have been fun but I have enough on my plate with my crazy fast Salsa/Samba/Cha Cha routine with Luis and my slow arty lifty Rhumba with Pasha.

My regular internist is back from vacation, so I went to see her last week about the hideous headache episode (see last two posts). She said regardless of the sinus x-rays it still sounded more like sinus than migraine and x-rays aren’t very good at showing everything that’s going on anyway. Since my general neurologist is not helping much, she decided to send me to a headache specialist. I have an appointment with Columbia University’s headache center next Monday. It should be good. They’ve already directed me to download several forms requesting detailed info on the pain and gather all my sinus and brain MRIs I’ve had over the years. I’m also gonna print out my blog entries describing this last headache episode (at least one good thing a blog is for!) and type out my old headache diaries. And I’m gonna INSIST that they not take one look at me, see ‘female of childbearing age’ and label me a migraineur. It’s sexist, unfair, and downright potentially harmful to me. Sexism simply has no place in medicine. I want them to consider all of the possibilities, and only after they’ve considered everything, including the male-dominant cluster episodes, will I let them tell me they could be migraines and proceed with the typical migraine meds. I don’t want to take those damn meds (which, as I’ve described before, constrict blood vessels serving the brain thereby causing frightening lightheadedness / light-upper-bodiedness and stress me out over the possibility of, at best fainting at an inopportune time, at worst suffering a stroke or heart attack) unless I know for sure my headache is a migraine and they’ll actually work.

Anyway, my throat is still sore and I still have gallons of post-nasal drip but hopefully, hopefully, I am now on the road to recovery and can resume my dancing later this week. I bought some killer Country Life vitamins recommended by a friend who had gastric bypass and couldn’t eat for months, and finally meekly asked my landlord to repair my broken air conditioner (the wonderful man bought me a new one after determining the old was irrepairable!), in case my crazy illness was related to that nasty heat wave we had. And, though my past week was sadly devoid of dancing, I did catch up on some reading. I managed, without vomiting, to get myself as far as my nearest New York Public Library to return a ballet videotape (ABT‘s The Dream), and, while there, found a copy of Kaavya Viswanathan‘s young adult chick-lit novel “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” which, thinking they were all pulled by the publisher after numerous allegations that either she or her editor plagiarized from several other YA writers, quickly snatched and read, out of sheer curiosity of course! And it actually was pretty good, I thought. It was a sweet, over-the-top comedy about an Indian girl whose parents push her so hard to get into Harvard that, in her quest to convince the dean she’s worthy of admission, she loses something of herself, which, through the course of the novel, she regains. Of course I don’t know how much content Viswanathan may have pilched from other writers since I don’t read contemporary YA (though ideas aren’t copywritable anyway), but something I know she couldn’t have “stolen” was the hyperbolic but truth-ringing parts about immigrant parents pushing their poor kids at all costs to realize their American dream. They were hilariously sad, and for capturing at least that, at such a young age (18), I think Viswanathan should be commended.

I also borrowed a copy of Colson Whitehead‘s new book Apex Hides the Hurt, which I think I was just too zoned out on meds to get, and Melissa Bank‘s The Wonder Spot, which I found surprisingly un-put-downable for being about rather mundane subject matter. It’s basically just about the life, from early puberty through adulthood, of this very ordinary woman who’s not particularly good at anything, struggles to find a suitable career, struggles to find a suitable man, struggles with losses of friendships and family members — it delineates a normal female life, basically. Yet it was a very interesting read for me. I find myself constantly struggling to be not normal, to be above average, to have everything — be a dancer with perfect technique and artistry, as close to professional as possible though I well know I started way the hell too late in life for that; I dream of someday winning a major literary award, but it’s incredibly difficult just to write the first draft of my novel with an intellectually- and emotionally-demanding 50-60-hour-a-week job as a lawyer; and I want to be this amazing lawyer who argues a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Supreme Court and writes formidable law books and articles, well respected as being at the top of my profession, but there’s no way I can even keep up with developments in criminal law outside of that required by my job with the writing and dancing. I guess Bank made me think, wow, some people, most people, almost all people in fact, just ARE, and that’s enough, that’s perfectly fine, that’s even interesting to read about. And Bank herself — I’ve often been so envious of her, as I’ve been of other writers who’ve had a bestseller or won a literary award or had their book made into a movie, but this is really only her second book and she’s not 15 years old. I mean, you can have some accomplishments, and still be ‘accomplished’ … as long as I have some things in life to be mildly proud of, I guess I’m okay; I don’t completely suck as a human being.

But then: across the street at my bookstore, I also picked up a copy of this month’s Pointe magazine, whose cover story features the illustrious David Hallberg, whom of course I’ve been gushing over for the past couple months since he just brilliantly danced his first season as an ABT principal (and has been writing smart little entries for The Winger blog). The mag contained mostly pretty pictures, and the story was way way too short for someone as sophisticated as he, but one thing he said at the end stood out. “Everyone blooms at a different time,” he said, and in the past three to four years he’s had to learn to calm down, have patience, stop “worrying about everything happening at once.” He’s 24 years old! So, at the ripe old age of 20 he had to force himself to stop obsessing over not yet being hailed as one of the world’s greatest dancers, which of course he now is; he’s definitely on his way anyway. So, hmmm, weighing Bank’s protagonist’s way against David’s — I choose David’s! Definitely. I guess even if it means HEEAADDAACCHE??…

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I May Be a Man…

I had my first dance lesson last night since my headache episode! I’m still a tiny bit hazy from the whole ordeal, but I’m so so SO glad to be dancing again! And, since one of the group classes was cancelled, one of the many former ballet dancers at my studio who’s training to teach ballroom was free to help teach me how to do my dream trick: the hands-free fish. A picture of real dancers (ie: Marcelo Gomes! and Gillian Murphy from ABT) is here. Oooh, but it’s soooooooooooo unimaginably hard! I couldn’t do it, try as I did. Your back needs to be so incredibly strong. It makes me realize how tough ballerinas are; elegant and graceful as they seem, their backs and legs are made of steel! I need to hook my leg around Luis’s back and hold myself onto him with that leg only. If I let my back collapse, I will fall to the floor. And it doesn’t look like it from the picture or when you see people perform it, but it’s so hard to keep your back arched and not collapse it. The ballet dancer gave me some serious exercises to do, mainly where I lie on the floor on my stomach and arch my back up to the waist as high as I possibly can, and hold and hold and hold and frigging hold. Ugh, it hurts! But I wanna be able to do this so so bad, it’s worth all the work! Happily, I’ve been able to sell Luis on it; he thinks it would be so cool to end the Latin routine with it. Consummate Latin dancer though he is, he’s been really receptive to much of my ballet-y suggestions — Luis’s great!

Tomorrow, I have an appointment with my regular primary care doctor to discuss my headache episode (see last post). The doctor on call phoned yesterday to tell me the sinus x-ray was normal. So there was no sinus infection, which scares me because that means it was neurological, as he said. I did some internet research today, and from what I’ve read, I truly think it was a kind of cluster headache, which is an extremely rare neurological condition, even more rare in women (at least 70% of sufferers are men). But migraine descriptions just don’t describe my pain very well. With migraines, you have pulsing pain on one side of your face, no necessary sinus connection, and you want to lie down and try to sleep it out. With mine, and clusters in general, the pain is sharp sharp sharp, boring, drilling into your skull, exruciating, searing, honestly even suicide-inducing, making the sufferer want to scream out in pain or even knock his or her head against a wall. One sufferer whose account I read described it as having surgery without anathesia, which is precisely how I felt, and hence was why I was begging the doctor, who laughed at me, for an emergency morphine injection. And your eye on the side of the face where your pain is located is watery and red, and you have sinus congestion on that side as well; not so with migraine.

Most interestingly, you absolutely positively cannot lie down with a cluster or the pain is even more excruciating; instead sufferers pace the room, walk, run, must remain active at all times, which is exactly how I was, to the confusion of one friend who commented that I “take pain like a man” — ie: actively jumping around, not passively lying on the couch. That characterization made some sense to me, but it wasn’t like I was trying to act like a man. When I read about cluster headaches (hereinafter “CH”), and realized they described my pain more precisely than migraine, and read that men are overwhelmingly the sufferers of such head pain, I realized I was possibly handling my pain “like a man” because I had a predominately male headache. The only part of the description that doesn’t fit me is that mine was one long, 4 1/2 day headache, whereas CH’s are typically 1/2 to 3 hours in duration coming and going throughout the day for a period of weeks. I found this amazing CH support group website and almost cried when I read some of the accounts. I know this is badly anti-feminist of me, but when I first read that most sufferers were men, I immediately thought, oh my gosh, I can’t imagine a man going through this. Last week I was literally walking the streets of Manhattan screaming and bawling out in pain, with cab drivers, store clerks, pharmacists, even a group of police officers in a deli where I went to buy ice taking pity on me, trying to hold my hand, helping me get to where I wanted to go. Not to mention all of my friends and co-workers… But in our society, which stigmatizes any male showing of pain or emotion, it seems a man would have to try to hide his pain, would never be able to act like this, or would surely scare people. Sure enough, some of the accounts on the support group website talk about running to the basement to pace, bang heads against the wall and cry and scream out, desperately not wanting wives and children to witness such a state of helplessness. Other men likewise talked of “not feeling like a man,” being humiliated, feeling out of control, etc. So much worse to have to deal with these societally-based feelings on top of this horrendous, horrific pain. And, in my New York example, especially with the police or even begging the doctor for injectible narcotics, so much the worse if the man is minority — he may automatically be suspected of being an addict or criminal… Ugh, so nasty on so many different levels…

Anyway, I’m gonna talk to my doctor about it all tomorrow, and ask her to consider sending me to a headache specialist instead of my same neurologist. Even if I end up with a diagnosis other than CH, I feel like I’ve learned about another sad world through all of this. Bottom line: if you know people who suffer from chronic headaches, of whatever type, please offer all the love and support you can, and please don’t dismiss them!!

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Uptown Women Have No Bodies

Very annoyed. Many of my friends and family are crazed Dancing With the Stars watchers. So, I figured I’d let them know about the PBS special America’s Ballroom Challenge, a televised event that occurred at the Ohio Star Ball in November last year, in Columbus Ohio, which I attended and in which my teachers competed (and made the finals!). Anyway, the first half of it aired a few days ago. I asked everyone what they thought. One person exclaimed that obviously Dancing With the Stars must have unearthed the best-looking dancers and it was really hard to watch such homely people, even if their costumes were lovely. Another remarked that the beautiful ballroom gowns often conflicted with the dancers’ not so beautiful faces. Another said she couldn’t believe how fat most of the Latin dancers were and she’d never wear such a tiny costume. Another said she thought when the Latin dancers “squoze” their back muscles, the fat protruded, and she wouldn’t do that so much if she was them. (Because Latin dancing isn’t about really moving your body or anything…) I honestly have yet to hear one person tell me what they thought of the DANCING.

A few weeks ago, I attended a panel discussion on representations of the body in contemporary dance at the Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea. All of the panelists, who were either choreographers or dance scholars, were total theory heads and I understood about a half of one percent of what they were saying. But one female scholar, was all too clear when she snidely remarked, “Well, up until recently dancers didn’t even have bodies, not to mention brains, and uptown they still don’t. Instead they have anorexia and bunions and nicotine addictions, since there’s no way you can remain 108 pounds without one.” Of course she was talking about ballet, and I don’t think she was talking about Jose or Marcelo or Angel. It was hard not to laugh at the way she said it, but the comment stung since I’m such a ballet lover, not to mention a petite woman. I assume the audience was filled with modern dancers, DTW being a modern dance theater, and I felt like everyone was looking at me as the representative of bodiless, brainless, male-dominated women – none of which I am just because I’m thin.

After thinking about it, I remembered that this scholar was tiny herself – couldn’t have possibly weighed over 108, if even that. And many of the critics of my fellow Latin dancers are large themselves. I guess it’s a form of female self-criticism to be most harsh on other women who seem to embody the physical problems we find in ourselves. Still, it bothers me that a female dancer’s worth seems to revolve around her body. It makes me feel like, what’s the point of working so hard on contracting and expanding my pelvis in Samba and my upper back and hips Rhumba if I’m just going to be the little spidery-limbed Balanchine girl.