Be as pretty as you are but that's enough!

I have known my friend Karen for ... oh, at least 22 years. If a movie were made of her life, they'd have to hire Winona Ryder to play the lead. The classic/intelligent face, the doe eyes, the pixie-cut hair.

When we get together we're like those chipmunks from cartoon-land, known as Chip 'n Dale. Up to no good ... but very polite and well meaning at the same time. Sometimes we tend to be polite and apologetic to the point of ridiculousness.

Lately we don't get a chance to see one another in person that much because Karen lives a few time-zones away. So we don't get as caught up in holding a door and saying "After you, no after you, no after you, no after you..." the way we (and the chipmunks) do. Nowadays there's just a lot of polite/funny writing back and forth over email. Sending funny things we discover in our travels, and frequently laughing over some poor shmuck's typo that comically changed the entire meaning of his sentence.

Yesterday, while I waited for my car's first oil change, I read a blog that Karen had discovered and sent to me. It is from Huffington Post by a writer named Hannah Brencher and I will paste the link here for you. It's all about how women shouldn't be so apologetic for being who we are. No more "sorry" whether coming out of our mouths or lurking in our hearts. A kind of take me or leave me attitude you don't read about much. Usually women are targeted with "are you ashamed to be wearing LAST MONTH'S lipstick shade? Help is here!" kind of messages. We're never good enough and BY GOD we haven't spent nearly enough money solving the problem. That's for sure.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-brencher/im-not-gonna-tell-you-you-youre-beautiful_b_4142547.html

So, after I read the blog, Karen and I chatted back and forth even as I was picking up the keys to my car (thank you smart phone technology!). Karen told me that she was advised by someone to SMILE. She told me how it really deflated her. She had been playing ukulele and, in her concentration, had forgotten to appear f*ckable to the audience.

Now, I've heard about this phenomenon before - women are told to smile all the time. It occasionally happens to me (though my usual schtick is to be asked if I'm lost - which is a real indication of what I must look like to the outside world, omg).

Being told to smile is really insulting. If you wanted to smile you would. Why should you smile if that's not what you're feeling? 

Pardon me? What's that you say?

You should smile so you look PRETTY???? Put a phony look on your face so people on the other side of it like what they see?!!! Hmm, more on that in a minute.

I would like to say that telling women what expression to have on their faces is misogynistic and patronizing and MEN HAVE TO STOP THIS.  But I simply can't make that accusation because often it's women themselves who tell each other to smile. 

Women have been so bombarded with marketing messages that we believe the What Not To Wear messages without questioning them. We all would love to have one of those brutally-insulting total makeovers (after which we'd all shower and look the same way we looked before the makeover, only now we've trashed and rejected our authentic selves on national television much like Oprah did when she sported "size 6" jeans and wheeled out a wagon loaded up with many pounds of fat to represent all her lost weight.) (That was the longest bracketed phrase I've ever written and you just witnessed it.)

Back to that chat we were having, the one about smiling and beauty and all that. I'll admit that I tell my daughter that being pretty is nice. She is pretty so I can tell her that truth.  But foremost, Rachel is incredibly smart and I make sure she hears me saying that 10 times more often than I tell her she is pretty. But yes, I do tell her she is pretty because she has the gift of beauty and it would be a waste for her to believe otherwise. That would be like having a Lamborghini in the driveway and seeing a 1989 Pacer. Being a nice-looking person and feeling ugly is a form of dysmorphia too many people suffer from. And that's not right either.

But my point is ... whatever you look like? That's good enough. Come on women, get over this battle to look better, younger, sexier, firmer, everything-er than you already do. I'm sure last month's lipstick shade and last year's jeans and this year's extra 4 lbs are good enough. If you're turning 40 and you look like you're turning 40? That's okay!. My God, how many eyes do you need on your ass anyway? Last time I checked we're living in a society where polygamy is outlawed, and even in societies where it isn't, it's the MEN who have several spouses, not the women. Find that one man who loves you for who you are, who likes the package you really come in, and get on with it!

Next time you feel less-than-hot and you're beating yourself up about it, or you forget to "smile" ... just remember we're women and not animals. It's not our job to be always attracting males. Many people believe it is in fact a woman's job to be looking downright f#ck-worthy at all times of the day, even if you're dragging the recycling to the curb at 6 a.m. or whatever. Well, I don't buy into it and neither does my kid (I won't allow it).

If you don't like my looks, I won't apologize for not appearing f*ckable to you. As a matter of fact, go f$#k someone else - maybe even yourself.

DEAR READERS: I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU. Have you ever been told to smile OR change the way you look/dress/wear your hair? If so, how does it make you feel and how do you handle it? 

Happy Birthday Facebook - Why my facebook status hasn't changed in a while

Years ago I received an email from a good friend who had moved away to a place I rarely have the pleasure of visiting - Prince Edward County. It was an email via facebook, telling me if I wanted to see Jen's photos I had to click here, do this, do that, and voila I'd be face to face with images of my gorgeous friend and her two beautiful sons.

That was how I ended up on facebook.

Soon I was hooked. I love to write, keep in touch, be kept-in-touch-with (don't tell my English teacher I dangled that one in front of you), share photos and otherwise be part of what's going on with the folks I care about. So I began checking and posting to facebook daily. Then frequently. Then constantly.

So that whether I planted tulip bulbs that nasty squirrels devoured, or if my daughter Rachel said something particularly clever, I would post something pithy to my status. Sometimes I would just post the words "something pithy", and chuckle to myself. Something pithy. Ha ha, I wrote something pithy! What a clever status update!

Yeah, I was that guy.

Facebook was fun. I sent out friend requests, and received them now and then too. And after a few years, I had 100 facebook friends. Most were human. One was a citrus fruit by the name of Orange, whom I'd never met. These were good times, indeed.

And over the years I used facebook to connect with some terrific people. I got to know my Calgarian cousins, Karen and Lori, and watch them grow up into the amazing young women they are today. Hard to believe we share chromosomes because these girls are so much more fun, sportier and more upbeat than I've ever been. I also mingled in the old Ottawa high-school network through a lovely long-lost friend, Loanne, who had always been super-cool, yet super-kind to me when we were young, despite the fact that I was super-awkward, even back then. And, incredibly, I met Barb (more about her some other time), one of the nicest things ever to happen to me.

But then, one day, I noticed I was no longer in the triple-digits in the facebook friend department. Somehow I only had 99 friends.

I would scroll through the 99 names, trying to figure out who was missing. I couldn't come up with the answer.

At about the same time, in my real life, a very good human friend named Frieda with whom I would visit just about every week, started falling off my social calendar. She was really busy, or sick, or away, or busy, or sick or her kid was sick, or away ... and I believed all that ... until of course I didn't.

I looked on my list of facebook friends to see if I could find her husband, Devan, who held their facebook account.

Nope. No more Devan. He was no longer my facebook friend. That mystery was now solved. But it generated a new one. WHY? What could possibly be the reason he would end our facebook friendship? And why was Frieda seeming to end our real one?

I looked at the calendar on my fridge to check when our most recent real-life interactions had taken place. Months had passed since I'd seen Frieda. That wasn't good. I had to connect with her and lay it all out for discussion the old fashioned way: on the telephone.

As it turned out, I discovered from the phone conversation, I had offended my friend's husband on facebook, and they weren't getting over it.

"He says you're not welcome in our home anymore, Dana." said my friend whose children had grown up with mine.

What did I say to offend him?

"You called him a pervert."

But, I explained, Devan had commented on the photo of my blond highlights saying "I hope the carpet matches the drapes".  So I typed back that he was a creepy pervert. I said some other things too. It was so over-the-top. I guess on facebook he couldn't tell, but it was a JOKE.

"Well, there's truth in every joke, and we believe you think he's a pervert."

Actually, I do think he's a pervert. Some of my best friends are perverts. I've always thought he was crude - especially with all the silly perverted emails he would send of German girls bent over the chalet railing with no panties under their dirndls ... but his perversion didn't stop me from liking him ...

"I'm sorry, Dana, but that's how it is and there's nothing I can do."

And there it was. My real-life friendship, a friendship in which babies were born, parents had died, and childhood cancer had been diagnosed ... a friendship that started before Mark Zuckerberg hammered out his first line of facebook code ... a friendship that I had clearly taken for granted ... was officially over.

I haven't laid eyes on Frieda or Devan - or their statuses - ever since. Plus, in real life, they've sold their home and moved out of town.

That story isn't the only reason I quit facebook. Yes, I ended up quitting facebook after that. The other reason I quit facebook was that it helped me reunite with this guy (http://www.examiner.com/article/local-spiritual-leader-says-dire-2012-predictions-wrong-part-1-of-3 ),  a handsome fella I had idolized since I was a young camp counsellor where we worked with learning disabled children, years ago.

I had the world's biggest crush on him that never really went away. One day, through his facebook invitation, my mom and I went to hear him speak about positive thinking and spirituality. He said he was a trans-channeler for the angels, which should have tipped me off, but it didn't. Seeing him at the front of the small audience of folks in search of positive thinking ... and watching him pretend - or believe - to channel the voice of the archangel Michael ... all I can say is it was one of the strangest, most bewildering and disappointing experiences I have ever had.

Within 48 hours of leaving that "seminar", I found myself in my living room huddled over the laptop, cancelling my facebook account altogether. Facebook doesn't make it easy, either. It can take a long time to go through the process of clicking this and deleting that ... much longer than it takes to join ... and even then you're not really out of their clutches. They email you several times to remind you that it's not too late to resurrect the account, which is still there waiting for you, despite your requests to close it.

I still remember the very last thing I wrote as a member of facebook, to their query about why I was leaving. I actually typed this not-very-pithy but rather desperate-sounding statement: "facebook, please, just leave me alone".

After all these years, I actually forgive facebook for all these icky events that happened. It's all just a big misunderstanding, isn't it? I wish I could just sprinkle forgiveness-juice around and make Frieda my friend again and absolve everyone of their facebook sins, once and for all.

Except for the part where my old crush stood in front of a paying audience and "channeled angels". That was unforgivable.

And that's the story of how facebook and I broke up ... and why despite all the good times we shared together ... we can never be friends.

Looking Forward to the Sochi Olympics. By Looking Back

February is here. Not just any ordinary February, but the February of 2014. The month that hails the arrival of the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.

But I'm not sure there ever has been an Olympic Games anticipated with more fear, or less hope, than these ones.

The buzz around the upcoming Games has been mainly negative so far. First came the hurt, anger, and threats of a boycott by those who oppose Russia's views on homosexuality. Then came an onslaught of news items about the groups who pledge to deliver "a present" of violence to these Games and their participants. Terrorism experts warn to be on the lookout for so-called "Black Widows" -- women who blow themselves up along with all the innocent civilians around them.

Since the Opening Ceremonies are only a week away, I think it's time we wrangle the nasty pall that hangs over these games and start getting ready to cheer. Not just because our athletes deserve it, but because we and our children do. Sure, something awful might happen. But that's life in the 21st Century. It does us no good at all to miss out on the unique thrill that the Olympics can bring. The pride. The inspiration. Heck, the diversion from a cold, dreary February and all its otherwise-ordinariness.

Olympic Games take hold of our imagination the way few things can. Sure, there are plenty of movies about comic-book heroes like Superman that entertain children with thrilling depictions of strength of character, mind and body. But the Olympics are on a whole 'nother level. They are filled with real heroes, actual young people who are alive and breathing on the TV screen. Real people who woke up early and trained every day for years and years to make it this far. And here they are representing their countries. Before the entire world's eyes.

When I hear the word "Olympics", a montage of Olympics-past forms in my head like a slideshow. Out front, like a title-image, is the memory of a men's 100-metre race. I can hear the announcers' voices echoing over the vast stadium's loudspeakers, triggering roars of applause. "USA!!!" a man cries out from the bleachers. A Canadian flag billows from a woman's outstretched arms.

Sunlight gleams on their sculpted bodies as the runners bend and stretch their superhuman legs. They hop, and pace, and strut anxiously. Soon they descend into starting position, their limbs folded and heads bowed as if in prayer. Then the pistol fires. And, before anyone in the massive crowd of spectators can exhale, a single runner breaks away from the pack and crosses the finish line alone.

A short while later the gold medal is placed around the fastest athlete's neck. The eyes of the world are on him. Eyes filled with tears of joy and pride and admiration. And during these few glorious moments of victory, no matter what cliche your parents might have told you, winning really is everything.

There are a multitude of elite events worldwide in which these athletes compete, but the Olympics is universally accepted as the Best of the Best. Over the years, Olympic Gold has never lost one milligram of its cache. And yet, the Olympic games have brought about some of the most incredible scandals of our time. In 1988 Ben Johnson of Canada expanded our vocabularies to include the words "anabolic steroids" when he won the gold  medal only to be caught up in a doping bust. And then there was the outrageous 1994 attack on Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan's legs. Ms. Kerrigan's USA team mate Tonya Harding and her handlers would ultimately be held accountable, but the two skaters would still face off in Lillehammer.

But those incidents pale in comparison to what went on in Munich in 1972 where 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team and a German police officer were killed by Palestinian terrorists. If you google the words "Munich Olympics" you don't generate a list of stories about athletes and medals. At the very top of your search results you get the link to a Wikipedia page called Munich Massacre. And along with pictures of sold-out stadiums and waving flags, the black and white google images offer up scenes of terror - a gunman wearing a balaclava. Men in track-suits carrying automatic weapons. A tabloid newspaper with the headline Massacre at the Games.

I actually don't need Wikipedia to help me remember Munich, because I was there. I was only a small child, but I will never forget being in attendance at several events, including swimming. I remember how my brother and I approached strangers in the main square, collecting and trading international Olympic pins, which we affixed to our green felt Bavarian fedoras. Thanks to our parents' secrecy about the politics and terror that could easily have ruined the experience for us, we were not at all afraid. We were on top of the world with pride and excitement.

In the first sentence of a famous Dickens novel, the author writes:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

On February 7th, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics will begin. Sure, there might be some bad times ahead. Perhaps even the worst of times. But let's not deny ourselves, and our children, the chance to look forward to - and be thrilled by - the best of times, together. Allowing ourselves to be carried away on the wave of hope, rather than fear, is the only way we can truly win against the forces in life that aim to bring us down.

And win we must. Because for two weeks this February, winning is everything.