I’ve never been a stand-up comic. This is in part because I have only been alive on this earth for a very short time (relative, of course, to the grand scheme of things), and most of that time was spent sitting at tiny desks learning about exponents and analyzing the messed-up life of Boo Radley. (For those who don’t know who Boo is: Leave. Leave right now. Buy a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and read it. Seriously, how on earth have you lived?) Not a lot of time there to visit open mic night.
But mostly I’m pursuing other careers that aren’t stand-up comic related, and I don’t intend to change that. I don’t think I’d be very good on stage anyway.
Despite that, I think I’ve accumulated some good material in my relatively short life. And I decided to share a bit here.
First off, I’ve told this story to everyone I’ve ever met because I can barely believe it’s true:
My roommate in my sophomore year of college was a fashion design major who was a bit…confused. One night, as I was sitting on my bed reading, my roommate was talking to a friend. She was trying to tell her friend about a certain scandal of sorts behind a young woman who had run in a race earlier that year and won. The woman’s gender had been called into question and it was just horrible. But as my roommate attempted to explain this, she fumbled a bit. “The problem was that she had a uterus but no testes…or wait…she had testes and a uterus…” Finally she asked the question, “Is the uterus a male or female part?” (I paraphrased here, since I can’t remember her exact words). And this is a true story.
Speaking of fashion (sort of), I now have two jobs. One is at IHOP, and the other is at a store called White House | Black Market, which sells over-priced women’s clothes. One thing I noticed at WH|BM is a line of dresses that are supposed to make women appear two sizes smaller. I haven’t tried one on, so I don’t know if they work. What I do know is that they sell that dress in a size zero.
Let me break it down. Size zeros are so thin that the clothing industry can’t even assign a numerical value to their body type. (I will ignore the fact that WH|BM also stocks a size 00). So what happens when you take a dress that reduces your size by two, and you put it on a size zero? You get a dress that doubles as an invisibility cloak, I imagine.
I will close with an observation on the concept of slimming dresses. Do I think they’re a good idea? I don’t know. The whole point of wearing one, I assume, is so you can look more “attractive.” (I put “attractive” in quotes because I am using it in the context of the fashion industry’s impossibly high standards for women which dictate that thinness is key rather that admitting that every woman has a unique body type that should be cherished and celebrated, and encourage their models to starve themselves just to fit into the clothes that were only made to fit a select few in the first place, all of which plays into an elitist class system of sorts that serves to make a good majority of women feel inferior as they gaze upon an ideal that they are conditioned to believe in but biologically unable to live up to.) But if you think you look more attractive in that dress (or in that padded bra that turns your Bs into Cs maybe?) then surely you’re hoping that other people will find you attractive. And when other people find you attractive, well…one thing leads to another. Maybe that dress comes off. And maybe it looks like you’ve been wearing a visual lie. And maybe you don’t care about that. Hopefully the person who got that dress off of you doesn’t care either, because shallowness is not a virtue.
Have I rambled enough today? I think so. Especially since I think I veered off the “stand-up” course a little bit. Ah well. This is why I’m not cut out for the stage.
Comic! No need to click to enlarge today! (You still can if you want, though)
Word of the Day: Subterfuge (n) – an artifice or expedient used to evade a rule, escape a consequence, hide something, etc.
P.S. Wanna see something cool? Check it out:
This is panel 1 of the comic minus a couple layers. I thought it looked artsy and cool. Maybe I’m wrong.
P. P. S. Sorry the post got a little preachy today. Working in retail…it does things to you.
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