Women – Word Ninja Girl

Dissecting the Popularity of 50 Shades of Bad Grammar

Back in 2014, I was at a writer’s conference and was waiting in line for a seat in the hotel restaurant while chatting with a woman I had just met in the lobby.

I didn’t know who she was at the time. Just a really fun and interesting person who had crossed paths with me on that day.

We chatted about a lot of things and the topic turned to romance and erotica writing. I had just published a book under a pen name in that genre.

She had been asked to contribute to an article entitled, 50 Writers On 50 Shades. A look into why a book with so many obvious grammatical errors and ridiculous plot lines had rocketed to the top of the best seller list.

Sidenote: published in the summer of 2011, this book had sold more than 150,000,000 copies just one year later.

So as my new pal, Katharine told me about the article she had been a part of and the fact that the book’s popularity had left the public and the publishing world shaking their heads as to why it was so damn popular, I said, “I can tell you why.”

She tilted her head and said, “ OK. Tell me.”

When I finished my explanation, she gaped at me and said that was the first time she had heard that theory and she wished I had been a contributor to the article too.

Two things

1-I found out later that Katharine was a literary agent. (!!) In New York. With a very successful firm. Yikes. I’m over there shooting my mouth off about my thoughts on women’s romance writing and she’s just laughing and chatting away. I would guess our visit was a nice change from people hitting her up for book pitches and publishing favors.

2- About an hour ago, and years after that chat that had people listening in and chuckling, I found myself on a FB Group message thread where the members were still discussing this baffling phenomena of poor writing generating a best seller and a bazillion dollars. People are still talking about this! Reading through the responses, one thing was clear; no one was addressing the core issue that draws women to read hot, erotic, material.

I couldn’t resist throwing my 50 Shades theory into the fray. The same one I gave Katharine in our not-at-all private setting with a bunch of conference attendees pretending not to listen in. Granted, it’s more than a decade later so not verbatim. And it’s updated, but it’s damn close to the first word barf. And it still feels accurate to me at least. So here it is.

Why was 50 Shades of Grey so freaking popular?

I’ll tell you why.
13 years ago, when the 50 Shades book released, women everywhere, were just realizing something. We were tired of being in charge of our own orgasms.

Directing men in bed with body movements, some words or drawing a map on us to say, “This spot! Right here! The same place that you’ve missed a thousand times!”, gets pretty freaking frustrating.

And given that all they have to do is insert in a hole and repeat to reach their happy ending, women have been living with a lot of mediocre sex. Yes. Some fantastic too, but when you canvas women for factual data, those experiences are as frequent as Halley’s Comet.

So, horrible grammar aside, that guy in that book took 100% charge of the delivery and quality of that girl’s orgasms and, because he enjoyed doing so as much as he did, he even showed her more ways to reach those “little deaths” to more spectacular conclusions. Without a road map! Or running dialog with specific instructions! Unlike the reality of most sexual encounters with non-fictional males who roll over and snore 2 minutes after making a deposit.

Yes, even just 13 years ago, most women were just starting to be more open about seeking satisfying erotic reading, more so with the privacy of a Kindle or e-reader that would allow them to read anywhere, anytime, anything they wanted.

The explosion of horribly written erotica for women after that grammatical dumpster fire was published, was unprecedented. And it also gave an opportunity for the really great writers to rise and shine.

So, thank you E.L. James for that contemporary trailblazing into women’s “romance” writing and she, in turn, can thank Anais Nin for lighting the way.

Women were so hungry for reading about (fictional) lovers who not only can deliver, but REALLY enjoy delivering the goods, that they devoured that spectacularly mediocre writing in 2011. Like picking through the inedible chicken bones to find the juicy meat clinging to the book carcass. And given the fact that Romance Fiction is now a $1.44 Billion dollar genre, I’d say we’re still a little peckish.

And that is why E.L.James is currently lounging on her pool deck in the South of France and we are all in line at Taco Bell waiting for our black bean grilled cheese burritos.

Poetry Day- Stand Mother’s Day

STAND

You stand with us

You, who nurture cities

You, who stand as big sister

You, aunt

You, best friend

You, neighbor

You who nurture the soil and raise up food and blossoms

You who bring creatures home and show them humans can be loving too

You who protect us, heal us, inspire us and entertain us

You who teach us what we need to know

Mothers – all

You stand with us.

Hobby Lobby v Burwell: A Gateway Drug for the Kool-Aid Vendors

Unless you live under a rock or are just awakening from a coma, you’ve seen the buzz on Hobby Lobby vs. employee health care coverage bru-haha. Our Supreme Court, in a mind twistingly ignorant move allowed some family-owned or other closely held businesses to opt out of a federal requirement to pay for contraceptives in health coverage for their workers. The reason for these companies to push so hard on this issue? Because they believe that some forms of birth control amount to abortion… like birth control pills.

OK, Kiddies, let’s talk about birth control pills for just a moment. The pregnancy process works like this: The female ovary (the little house where unfertilized eggs hang out) prepares to drop an egg into the fallopian tube approximately once per month throughout the female’s reproductive years. In a welcoming party for the unfertilized egg, the party planners of the uterus have decorated their walls with a cheery red carpet of blood. When the unfertilized egg that’s waiting in the wings of the fallopian tube is pierced with a male’s active sperm, it is then considered “fertilized”. It then continues its journey into the party room (the uterus) where the cheery bloody walls act as a queen sized bed for a potentially fertilized egg where it can then go through the gestation process, using the blood as nourishment, and be delivered after completing gestation, out of the body as a full term human being. Ta-da!

Birth control pills, also known as oral contraceptives act as a “cloaking device”, just like the ones the Klingons use to make their way through other people’s star systems undetected. The chemical compounds in the birth control pills trick the sperm into think that the egg is already fertilized and like drunken frat boys, they just writhe around for a while until they pass out and dissolve into corporate America without causing any trouble. The undisturbed egg can then makes its way, safely protected from fertilization, out into the uterus where it can exit the female’s body in the sloughing off of the cheery bloody wall decoration known as menses, or the monthly period-just like Luke, Leia, Han and Chewbacca made their way out of the Death Star by way of the trash compactor. The egg doesn’t get fertilized in that scenario.

Hobby Lobby and other No-Choice organizations, being the cutting edge science researchers that they are, have decided that these pills are a form of “abortion” because they have chosen to define an unfertilized egg as a “person” and they have chosen to “opt out” of the government health program’s family planning coverage…for their employees.

Question: If the religious right considers an unfertilized egg a “person”, does it also consider a sperm a “person”? And how are they then going to police male masturbation- a mass-murder using their definitions of “life”?

Let’s cut to the chase and call this what it is. This is an end run, chicken shit, back door way for members of religious groups to put the squeeze on anyone working at their companies who do not adhere to their particular religious beliefs. Let’s just say it. If they had their way, they would not hire non-Christians right from the get go so they wouldn’t have to mingle with the cooties of non-believers, but the “law” (insert tongue cluck and eye-roll here) says they are not allowed to discriminate based on sex, religion, race, gender, age etc.

It doesn’t seem like a big deal to open the door to this sort of round-about discrimination, but this small wedge allows much larger policies to slide their religious policing policies right out into the main stream.

Imagine this- it’s 2015 and Loretta Johnson, who has had the same family physician for many years, needs to refill her birth control prescription. She now has a choice: she can either go to her family doctor, pay her co-pay for an appointment, get the written prescription, have it filled at a drug store paying full price for the prescription (today- $41.99 per pack at Walgreens, or $503.88 per year). Note: Back in 2012, when her health insurance covered her family planning prescriptions, she paid $15 per month or $180 per year.

Her second option is to find a local women’s clinic or Planned Parenthood. She will make another doctor’s appointment taking more time off work and when she arrives she must first run the gauntlet of religious nuts who are protesting – now right up to the door as they just won a ruling saying they didn’t have to stay back far enough so women can safely enter. Once inside, she’ll have to pay her co-pay determined by her insurance provider plus between $10 and $50 for her pack of birth control pills depending on the ones her body will tolerate. Note: a vasectomy for a male is a short office visit with local anesthetics, costs between $300- 1000 and once it is done, there is no need for their female partner to use any kind of birth control ever again…but that is another story of epic gender cowardice…

So what are businesses like Hobby Lobby really up to, on a larger scale? Let’s zoom in on that Gauntlet of Religious Nuts. If the religious right had their way, Planned Parenthood would not exist. If they had their way, birth control in any form, would not be available. Since we still maintain a small bit of common sense, there are medical services that exist that some church folks want gone but short of witch burning, Spanish Inquisition style wholesale slaughter which is now, thankfully illegal, they are relegated to annoying the shit out of people in any way they legally can. Beyond the service of abortion, places like Planned Parenthood offer breast cancer screening, pap smears and family planning options. MOST clients go for non-abortion issues, but that’s not what the religious right wants to believe. Here, grab a case of Tums and read some first-hand stories of what women have to go through when they want to make a visit to a women’s clinic. http://www.cosmopolitan.com/celebrity/news/abortion-clinic-protesters

Imagine the year 2022 if America stays on the strange trajectory the religious right is hoping to keep us on. Companies can now create “religious friendly workplaces” for their own religion exclusively. Students graduating from high school or college must now locate places of business that align with their own personal beliefs and from that pool, they can then submit their applications for employment. Even though employer discrimination against, sex, religion, race, gender and age is still illegal, the door to “religious friendly workplaces” was opened in 2014 with Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. Religion friendly work places have just brought all their once private practices out in the open and they have created environments where those not of their religion feel so uncomfortable in the setting that they choose not to work there. The more applicants avoid applying to cross belief work places, the more polarized to one religion the workplaces become and the closer they arrive at being a 100% same-belief settings effectively circumventing the anti-discrimination laws. They will serve only their special brand of KoolAid in the employee cafeteria, all day, every day.

That could be coming if we don’t wake up and do something right now.

So how did it get this far; this back slide into the middle ages when women were breeding stock and property and their freedoms were determined by guys in dresses and guys in general? Glad you asked. Have you ever had a person come to the door of your home and ask if they could talk to you about their religious beliefs? Of course you have. Have you ever been stopped on the street, handed a pamphlet, been harassed in a subway or other public transportation building when some stranger decided to butt into your day and prosthelytize? Of course you have. Now, take as long as you need to think about this question… Have you ever had someone knock on your door, stop you in public, harass you at an airport, or hand you a pamphlet trying to get you to join the atheists or spiritual free thinkers who do not follow an organized religion? Of course you haven’t. Why? Because we are busy living our lives. We are too busy to spend all day everyday sticking our noses into other people’s lives attempting to convert them to our way of thinking. That’s why.

We don’t care what your personal, private, religious beliefs are. We do care of you are trying to shove them down our throats. Sadly, while we have been busy living our lives, like an infestation of roaches in the kitchen, religious groups have been scurrying from their pews wielding their bibles out into the midst of the free thinkers. Out here, they are systematically eating away the fruits of our labors; the very laws and freedoms we now take for granted because we could not imagine that anyone would have so narrow a view of the world that they would spend their time trying to bend the will of anyone else to their own way of thinking.

We couldn’t imagine, after the Spanish Inquisition, ethnic cleansings, holy wars, witch burnings, and the massacre of millions of “heathens” by church followers throughout human history that in the year 2014 there would still be people busy at dismantling our freedoms. But there are. And they run places like Hobby Lobby. And for every small bomb they lay beneath anti-discrimination laws there are a dozen more explosions attached that will be coming at us when they drag in behind the opening salvo. They’re dragging mines. We need a big old can of whip ass Raid and we need it now.

We need to fight fire with fire and that fire is money. Religion has, for too long, had a free ride in this country. They have hidden behind tax exempt status while campaigning, politicizing and sticking their noses into legislation even though the tax exemption requires a non-political involvement. Tax exemption should be removed from all religious organization, they should be audited and the trillions of tax free dollars they are currently using to buy and place their puppet politicians should be brought into government coffers. It should be used for the things America needs right now; road repairs, bridge repairs, infrastructure, free school food programs for all children and affordable higher education that allows us to compete in a global market.

If there is no taxation without representation, there should be no representation without taxation. PERIOD.

And if we don’t find a way to do something BIG to stop this trajectory, then we will be revisiting a past that even they won’t want to be living in. And by “we”, I mean people who believe that individuals should be allowed to make their own decisions regarding their physical bodies.

If we don’t change direction we will end up where we are going.

Signed,
Mimi DiFrancesca Heberlein: voter, human, free thinker

Nurture Nature In Our Blood

Today it’s Mother’s Day in America. That’s a nice thought but it leaves out millions of women who mother in their own way every day they live.

More than a day for mothers of children, this is a day for celebrating the sacred feminine that lives within all women.

Some hold a child
Some care for family, friends, strangers and any who need their touch.
Some embrace the furred, feathered and finned.
Some grow the foods we eat with loving hands.

Some nurture the flowers and plants that bring us beauty.
Some hold instruments to their bodies and call out the music and the art that feeds our souls.
We women are all nurturers in our own way.
We care for and feed everything that grows

and with our care

they all grow – better.

From one to another, here’s to all the Nurturers in all their beauty.

Jar of Wonder

I’ve used the last of the lotion I concocted several months back and I can’t seem to toss out the cool jar. It’s squatty and round and it once held a moderately pricey and amazing royal jelly body butter from Savannah Bee Company.

Custom blending makes me feel like an alchemist; scooping and stirring and sniffing this and that to decipher its compatibility with the other bits and bobs. I do the same thing with spices, much to the entertainment of my family. Oh, crap. Here she goes again. It starts as a chore because I’m out of something that I need. Once I get going, I fall into the spirit of the scavenger hunt around my home. Every bathroom has some Bermuda Triangle area of lotions and potions and tiny tubes and bottles from hotel stays and gift baskets that I open and smell. If it passes muster, it comes with me to the kitchen.

I start with something thick and un-tinted like Nivea and add a few tablespoons of it to the jar; then the fun begins. A teaspoon of Curel, another of Jergens another of some cocoa butter weirdness and on it goes until it’s almost full to the top. At the end, I add a big dollop of some perfumed cream with a soft and lovely fragrance like the old Breathe Romance from Bath & Bodyworks which, of course, they no longer make just because I love it. Luckily, I’ve been a miser with my last jar so I save it for mixing like Merlin would have saved his stash of dragon blood for spell work.

I’ve made a tiny treasure of this oft used vessel and now call it my Jar of Wonder and the lid bears some of my artsy handiwork and sparkles like a starry night. It seems so much more lush and decadent with the beauty lid when I go to rescue my indoor-winter sand paper feet and hands.

The point of all this is that when I found the jar empty this morning, my first reaction was the same as it is when so many good things end; a downslide into an inventory of all that once was and is no longer at my fingertips. It’s just a jar for cripes sake. I know this. But, cut me some slack. I live in mid Michigan; the second cloudiest place in America, so my vitamin D sunshine levels are dangerously low in January.

And as it turned out, while I was on my search for ingredients, the more I found, the deeper it sunk in that I do indeed have far, far more of everything of this sort than I could ever need. Even if that means I have a whole lot of a little of this and a little of that.

So, it’s not a 40 oz. vat of royal jelly body butter. No matter. If I had a giant container to mix and stir in, I could probably make 40 oz. of my Wonder Cream and be up to my neck in it for months to come. And is that not the way of all our “I don’t have enough…” stories?

Maybe we don’t have Jay Leno’s garage full of cars and motorcycles to choose from that might match our outfits today, but we can always find a way to get from point A to point B and that was the goal anyway.

Perhaps we aren’t in the throes of big-big love at this part of our lives, but we may have a dozen friends and family members who collectively fill our cup with joy and that is really something.

So I don’t have any royal jelly body butter left, but I do have all this other stuff that, together, works remarkably well.

The point is, when you’re feeling like you’ve just run out of something and you’re going to feel its absence because you have come to count on it, go on a scavenger hunt in your life and see if you might have a variety of things you can notice and celebrate and bring together to make your own Jar of Wonder to soothe the rough spots in your life.

Look around. You just might surprise yourself.

Poetry Day: Phoenix

Phoenix

Only in the opening of climax

do we awaken and

release the immortal phoenix

dreaming deeply within-

its vastness experienced

as our bodies rise

sternum to the sky

to receive the ecstatic lightening

that burns away

age,

body,

class,

race,

care

and situation-

we all rise

on wings we have kept tucked

tight to our backs

hidden beneath street clothes

extending them only

in private-

with another-

who came in the name

LOVE

POETRY DAY: Soul Mates

Soul Mates

If the soul that was created

the same moment that my soul was made

were to walk in the world with me,

to stand beside me,

look into my eyes,

to put his mouth on mine,

we would burst into blue flame

and the light would make the nighttime day

– a wave would tear through the air

shaking the trees,

rattling windows;

people miles away would turn towards the sound

of joy/pain/ecstasy

and they would blush at witnessing

so intimate a moment

of two strangers.

What A Woman Wants

This is a reposting of a piece I wrote for my old blog. Still appropriate as the topic and the truth of it will never become outdated.

Recently, I’ve heard a slew of conversations about what women want; guys talking, of course.
It’s usually laced with hands being thrown up in the air for comedic exaggeration or sometimes, blind frustration, as if they are painstakingly attempting to resolve a solution for quantum gravity.

Do you honestly want to know what a woman wants? Can you handle it? We’re all adults here and if this is too adult for you then you shouldn’t be concerned with big people things that are real or messy, so go read a crafting blog. OK, here it is.

A woman wants someone who will walk up to her, wind their fingers into her hair and kiss the stupid right out of her. A woman wants someone who will see her when she’s happy, when she’s sad and when she’s pissed off and they will find all of those moments equally adorable.

A woman wants a senseless argument to be ended with your lips on hers and your arms around her making smooth circles on her back while you tell her how much you love her and that this is a moment that will pass.

A woman wants to know that she is enough for you and she wants to know that your heart stops and starts again when she kisses you back.

A woman wants someone who will tell her to open her eyes because you want to see how you make her feel just as you slide into her. And a woman wants to know, without a doubt, that since you found her, no other person in the world except her, is ever going to have a chance to hear you say that again.

That’s what a woman really wants. This isn’t rocket science. It’s the same stuff she wanted when she was 15 years old and the world was not really that complicated.

Not a single one of those things will cost you one thin dime. What they will cost you is a wide open heart and a willingness to be all in; to be there through every glorious, steamy, crazy, beautiful, angry, joyful, tragic and magnificent moment and, it will be worth it.

That’s what a woman wants.

Of Women and Other Domesticated Creatures

Somewhere along the line, we females gave up our natural, wild instinct to explore and hunt; to lead and learn; to laughing out loud and to prowling in moonlight.

We were calmed and combed and cobbled into obedient and predictable house pets; living each moment in the service of our masters and their children. Like all charades and circus acts, there comes a time when the lioness turns and she is no longer willing to perform, no matter the cost to herself. One day she remembers that she has teeth and claws and can move like lightening in the dark to free herself.

Mostly though, we women have forgotten who we really are. Like housecats, we have grown soft and fat from the lack of exercising our powerfully creative muscles. Mostly now, we purr and rub against a leg in return for food and shelter. Mostly now, we sit on window sills, watching the world outside; wild and exciting. Flesh and blood automatons, good and docile pets, we mostly, now, surrender weary hearts and fall into mental slumber as we perform expected rituals of obedience. Mostly now, we sleep in chairs and dream of rolling in tall grass and heeding the inner call to search out our own wild meal.

Women are not, by nature, domesticated creatures. Our wild nature must be systematically removed from us somewhere around the age of ten. Hovering on that precipice between the fierce androgyny of the tomboy and the blossomed, bosomed bleeder just months ahead, we lose our powerful, natural selves as we begin to listen when told to act like ladies.

The need to please replaces the need to ride as fast as we can down a steep hill to win the race. The need to see our clear skinned pleasant face reflected in a mirror wins the day over muddy war paint and hula skirts fashioned from late summer weeping willow fronds. Swaying to absent music with a head filled with images of that boy erases the screaming joy of climbing to the highest branch and holding fast while the wind bends us over the two story drop to the ground.

We have become domesticated like cats with collars and full bowls. We purr and primp and let you pet us. Sometimes, when we have had quite enough of rough hands and hard words, we let you know with our teeth, that we are not, by nature, domesticated animals. Given the choice, we would be exploring and hunting, leading and learning, laughing out loud and prowling under the full moon.

And maybe, if you are deserving, we will come back and let you be with our wild wonder for a while.

Some choose the garden path and willingly wear leashes; taking only chaperoned Saturday night walks, never to know the feel of their powerful muscles in a flat out run. Because we are not, by nature, domesticated creatures, some women keep their wild a vital part of who they are. They grow into fierce and loving beings; claws and roar intact. All are drawn to them, but move with respect, knowing that it is the choice of the lioness where you fit in her pride.

And if you are deserving, you can say you run with wild creatures who let you keep your wild as well.

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