For ten years, I lived in Guelph. Maybe all relatively affluent small cities in southern Ontario are like this, or maybe it's because Guelph has a veterinary college and thus lots of aspiring or wannabe vets - regardless, it is a city where many people have dogs. And some of those people are my friends. Thus, I have dogsat Woody, (at my house, together with my room-mate. She bit someone while we had her), Indy (many times, once for a whole month, at her house - though I took her to my apartment for the night once) and Dexter (at his house. Dexter liked to triple-poop on walks, and I am a conscientous stoop-and-scooper). I went for endless walks with Woody's successor, Bridget, during a stint in Brandon (though I was not fond of the kisses she attempted to give me, she is, after all, a poop-eater). And all of those dogs, they were okay. I didn't bark back at them - though Indy deserved it when she scarfed the appetizers off the coffee table at a dinner party, and Woody certainly deserved it after the biting incident. At times, I even rather liked the pooches: if you say "Dexter dance!" and he hops up on his hind legs and does a 360, that's pretty cute. Even cuter, when you say "Dexter dead" and then point your finger and say "bang", he flops over dead. Sometimes, I got off on the growl you get form Indy when you rub her belly, and I still greet her with "pretty girl".
Despite that, though, despite the amusement brought on by stupid dog tricks and the many sort-of fun walks I've taken with various dogs, I know this: I am not a dog person. I don't want a dog. More than that, I don't really want to be around other people's dogs. I've never had a dog, my family never had a dog during my lifetime. I'm never going to have one, at least not at my initiative. Puppies are cute and all, but they're also annoying. That's the sort of statement that can get you lynched in Guelph, I think.
So, after all of this, it turns out I have a whole lot of affection for Boris, the smelliest dog I've ever met, a dog who hobbles along on three of his four legs because he has a hip problem, and who loves nothing more than digging into whatever was into the bucket of compost that was just tossed onto the manure pile. This weekend, I caught myself on the floor in front of the tv - in front of the tv in the house, not my apartment, because I was keeping the dog company. And on the floor with the dog, not on the couch, petting him. I caught myself thinking that I should buy a brush so I could brush all the nasty burrs out of his fur. The next day, I had him in my apartment again, and when he licked my bare feet, I didn't get up to wash them or even get annoyed by this. When I gave him his supplement, I let him eat it right off my hand, instead of putting it in his bowl because I didn't want dog slobber on my hand (but I did wash my hand right away, I haven't come that far).
I like a dog. Huh. I don't know what to make of that. But I guess it's a good thing, since I'm dog-sitting again, for most of November.
But I'm still not a dog person. Not by a long shot. I just like Boris.
Now cats, on the other hand... I want a cat. I really, really do.
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The unfortunate side effect of watching tv with the dog was that I saw the world's most disturbing show ever. I had heard of it, of course: I shop in the supermarket often enough to see the headlines in the checkout line, so I was fully familiar with The Swan and it's premise and not that shocked by it when Vanessa called me in outrage over it when she just saw on tv last week. I'd just never seen it. So I watched The Swan reunion. And not only was it just plain stupid (I turned it off after a while), its message was far too blatant. This was the message:
If you are normal looking (or ugly, with a minor "duckling" tacked onto the end of duckling, in the parlance of the show), your love life will be crap, your marriage will be crumbling, and you will not bellydance in public. If, however, you have your body radically altered, everybody (including your husband, whose interest before has waned) will want you, you will be full of confidence, and, most importantly, you will feel good enough about yourself that you take control of your life.
Now, granted, you could package the whole confidence thing into something palatable. Confidence is truly important. But if your newfound confidence is based on looking like a plastic "build-your-own-Barbie" kit, how real could it possibly be? What happens when the skin starts to sag again, or you gain the weight back? If your self-worth is so intimately dependent on your (manufactured) shell, ummmm... ?
More distrubingly, though, is that the whole show presented us with a vision of beauty that I just don't get. Is it beauty if we all look the same? Because a lot of these people looked similar after they they had their faces pulled to the back of their necks, their genetic fat deposits sucked out, and their hair dyed. It wasn't ducklings or swans, it was a damn gaggle of geese. Granted, I'm a woman, so my vision of female beauty is not the same as a man's - but I'd also hazard a guess that male taste in beauty is not uniform, so why should everyone look the same? And, to be perfectly honest, I didn't like the way these women looked in their "after" transformation. There was something incongruous, these mostly normal women trying to move like beauty queens, that was painful to watch.
Why? I don't get it. I really don't. I don't even like tatoos or piercings (I can live with them. I just don't want any), I can't even imagine radical modification of who I am. And it's not that I'm arrogant in the "I'm pretty enough" sense, because I'm not exactly under the "I'm so cute" illusion. And it's not that I don't occasionally feel a twinge of, wow, she's so pretty, wouldn't I love to look like that...
But. I'm pretty confident, in many ways. No part of my confidence, however, is based on looks - maybe it's because I have plenty of other things to create my self-image. Who knows... I know that I don't buy into the theory I heard from a friend recently, it went along the lines of "unattractive women are more interesting than attractive women because if you're pretty, you don't have to become interesting" - because, hey, I happen to know a whole lot of very beautiful women who are also very interesting (just like I know less beautiful annoying people).
I know that very few women are fully happy with the way they look. And I know that this is only going to get worse if we accept that reality television has anything to do with reality. I'm not watching shit like that again, not even for Boris' sake.
Posted by Johanna at November 1, 2004 04:07 PM