love is never blind, but often shortsighted

I admit it: I watch reality tv. Actually, correction, I watch a LOT of reality tv. As a writer (and a relatively intelligent human being), this feels especially embarrassing. I should know better...shouldn't I? Have higher standards? I blame this on an interest in seeking cognitive dissonance. Life as a grad student often leads to days spent debating 19th century French theater and evenings reading long-winded articles about the psychology of conjoined twins. So, sometimes I just feel like I deserve a mental break.

Today the show in question is Dating in the Dark, a self-proclaimed 'social experiment' (barf) in which three single guys and three single gals date IN THE DARK (get it? like the title?) to determine whether or not meaningful connections can be formed without the benefit of a face-to-face meeting. The premise is problematic for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is the assumption that a visually-based chemistry is always somehow more shallow and less legitimate than a connection based on what we get from our other senses. If a guy turns me down because of the low timbre of my voice, my inability to give a good capsule summary of myself, or the interior of my car (they do that sometimes on the show) is that really any less superficial?

Increasingly frustrating is the fact that the show's producers seem determined to find people who purposely conceal information like, for example, their line of work(so as not to give up the secret that they are actually models/strippers/traditionally smokin' hot folks) or have some distinguishing non-visual characteristic that serves as a complete red herring for what they actually look like.

If it's shallow or superficial or somehow immature to believe that love has to be felt with all five senses, then I am perfectly willing to be all of those things. We love and lust with our eyes not because that's all that matters, but because there are intangible, fascinating things about a person's physical appearance that subconsciously give us clues about the rest of this person's appeal. I love the way you smile in spite of -- not because of -- your nice white teeth, because when you grin it goes all the way to your eyes and I know that you are genuinely happy. I feel my eyes gravitate towards your hands, not because they are especially large or small or calloused or smooth, but because I am mesmerized by the wholly unique way you use them as you talk to me. I had no interest in knowing you in the dark until my body and my brain and my heart knew you in the light. Take that, Mr. Social Experiment.

a house of cards: thoughts on power

The most extraordinary thing about a house of cards is that it’s anti-hierarchy. Democracy at its best. It’s not like poker or blackjack or gin where there’s a high card and a low card and a card you want and a card you discard. Everything is of equal value when you’re stacking them in a house of cards. Kings and Queens can be on the bottom or the top, supporting the weight of the low-numbered cards or balancing over them. A five can rest at a jaunty angle atop a ten, the fickle deuce can press intimately against its Queen with the same candor and innocence as it uses with the eight. And those Queens…oh those Queens. Those four little beauties. Funny how, even in a different card game, all of the queens are equal not only to each other, but often to the Kings and the Jacks. No clout. No magic. It’s nothing like chess. No backwards and forwards diagonal kicking the crap out of the other face cards’ perpendicular lines. The Queen is only as strong as the game she plays, as strong as the hand that moves her across a board or angles her in a stack or flips her onto a felt table. You love the Queen best not because she is all-powerful, but because she is nothing without you. Nothing without the power and precision of your ability to choose a path for her. To guide her. To cup her in your palm and make her your champion.

a house of cards...the ultimate display of gender and socioeconomic equality.

paradox [par-uh-doks] noun - a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

Once upon a time, in a small apartment in the land of hipsters and spanikopita, I was kind of a sullen fat chick. Not PHAT, mind you, with the trendy 'ph.' Fat. Overweight and overwrought and in complete denial about both. The Mexican takeout place down the street was my secret salvation, plastic bags from Lane Bryant were hidden under my bed, and I spent the bulk of my (limited) expendable income on shoes and accessories, all of which were meant to detract from the dimensions of my physical person. I was an office drone, I was something of a dismal failure on the online dating circuit...and I was stuck.

Snap to the present. One major quarter life crisis, two years, and almost 60 pounds later, my life has been flipped upside down, with most of the shitty parts of it falling out of my pockets along the way. And yet, for all that, sometimes I feel like people took me more seriously when I was bigger and sadder and more in need of their help. As a damsel in distress, I got to be the smart, quirky one. As I am now...sometimes it's a fight to be heard beyond my measurements.

So...I'd like to introduce you to the Pretty Girl Paradox. Because sometimes you want to be the loudest, most articulate voice in the room while wearing a little dress with bows and buttons on it. THAT, ladies and gents, is what it means to have it all.