Spare the Latte, Spoil the Day

Babble.com’s editors yesterday posted, in the spirit of its “economics” issue, “15 Money-Saving Tips” designed to help you “replace your expensive habits with cheap ones.” Nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. People are broke. We all have to cut corners, be a little more resourceful, a little more prudent. I get it. Some of the tips merit little more than an eye roll for their utter lack of ingenuity and creativity (ever thought of having a “movie night” at home instead of heading to the megaplex? Gosh, me neither.) Others I can’t say I would ever have dreamed up but certainly might save a few bucks here or there, though I somehow doubt that buying, chopping and mixing my own nuts, Xanax, and blueberries to add to generic cereal in an effort to mimic the fine taste of various, over-priced Captain Winterberry Rainbow Harvest concoctions is, actually, going to save me enough dough to justify the effort. But I largely prefer sitting on my ass and picking at my cuticles to being in the kitchen, so go figure.

Other suggestions are rather dubious, as in – Avoid the malls! Get gifts at Etsy! Handmade for all! Uh, in case you haven’t visited Etsy lately, well-meaning but slightly misguided Babble editors, let me make an observation here. To wit: a$68 shredded cloth napkin “Rosy Posy Neck Cozy” to keep one’s neck toasty and, cleverly enough, substitute for bondage-lite gear in a pinch. I mean, it is from the creator’s “urban prairie” line and designed to make poor suburban bumpkins look as “cutting edge” as their sleek urban counterparts, and it does have a (definitely unadvertised) dual purpose but people, please. If I want to give someone an urban prairie/cutting edge/shredded neck “cozy”, I’d just hack up my furry black scarf, circa 1990. Or, I could just give a beloved a gift that doesn’t, you know, suck.. There’s that. There’s also lots and lots of beautiful stuff on Etsy, I know. I’m not trying to bag the site; I’ve purchased quite a few lovelies myself. Like Mr. Toastee, for example. He (she? it?) is a crocheted – get ready – piece of bread with a “pat o’ butter on his tummy”, complete with “removable” hat and jacket and almost as cutting edge as the urban prairie neck cozy/bondage gear.. And all for the bargain price of $25. As the seller herself (yummypancakes, I’m sorry. Truly. I’m really not trying to rag on you, babe, just needed an example) notes, you might, perhaps give Mr. Toastee to someone special, someone really, really special . . . or, you could keep him (she? it?) for your very own self. But that would be just plain greedy. And to do, exactly, what with is unfathomable, but still – he’s a bargain, folks! Or, you could just burn $25, record the experience, and YouTube it for the lucky recipient.

The bottom line, though, is simply this: yes, perhaps we should all be looking out for ways to cut expenses. Looking to be more mindful and ethical consumers. But I’m so over being told to replace my little extravagances with “cheap” or “practical” alternatives. The extravagances make my day special and, sometimes, simply bearable. I don’t want to brew shitty, bargain-bin coffee, wait for it to brew, pack it up in a thermos, and tote it to work with me. I want my fast, hot, and tasty coffeehouse chai. I want it, even from Starbucks (That’s right. What of it?) And I don’t want to buy frozen meals to replace fresh take-out, or buy an exercise video I’ll never use to replace the class at the gym I enjoy – and go to. Or did, before life, baby, etc. I mean, I would enjoy the spin class I used to go to more than the exercise video that I won’t use. And, let’s be honest, neither will you. Replacing every little luxury, every tiny but decadent experience that gets many of us through 18-hour days with colorless, cardboard copies of the real deal might save us a bit of dough – even a lot – but it won’t do much to save our spirits, get us closer to that looming deadline or through yet another dreaded project, teacher conference, unbearable commute, endless day of dieting. Through the Groundhog Dayness of daily life. Andee McDowell and Bill Murray understood this. You can keep that 50 bucks a week you save and stew about how unbearable it’s all becoming while you sweat it out with Richard Simmons, test your palate with Budget Gourmet, and schlep your cold cup ‘o joe in your daughter’s pink Hello Kitty thermos (which she needs that back, by the way, since they’re banning bottled water at her school. Carbon footprints and all, you know). I’ll be the one leaving Starbucks with a steaming chai in hand, credit card bill to be reviewed hater stuffed in that purse that I didn’t really need but loved far too much to pass up . . . and I won’t be doing it with my panties in a wad and a sneer, thank you very much.

***No Etsy sellers were physically harmed in the making of this blog.

Vajayjay Got You Down? ReJUVenate it!

According to the powers that be (recently, the LA Times and Salon, among others) female genital mutilation vaginal “rejuvenation” procedures are on the rise, leaving an unknown percentage of women everywhere convinced that something’s wrong with their vajayjays (thanks, Grey’s! And I thought all you had left to offer were dubious plot arcs and increasingly poor casting choices, having now rid yourself of the venerable Erica Hahn). But I digress, uh, as usual. Back to the old vag. Now, I’ve long associated the notion of rejuvenation with, well, sleep – around here, that’s called a 20-minute nap – a few precious, stolen moments during which a 13-month old isn’t punching me in the face or shrieking that he wants food. Not with the surgical trimming of my labia, tightening of my, er, diameters, or an injection into my G-spot for improved orgasms (god knows I’d certainly take the latter if it came right down to it, though. Just saying.)

Regardless, I’m fighting mad that I (and you, if you’re got a vajayjay yourself, so listen up) am now supposed to fret about not only my hair, the ever-problematic Ts and A, thighs, face, and facial lip size and shape but also those lips that, let’s be honest, next to no one sees. I mean, maybe during that pinnacle of sexual experimentation my 20s, or before pregnancy and childbirth stretched the shit out of them slightly changed their appearance, but not these days, right? Aren’t I supposed to be worried about the economy, the presidency, how the kid’s going to ever make it college or how I’m going to figure out exactly what I want to do for the second of the alleged five to six careers I’m supposed to have before I retire? My cholesterol, maybe? And doesn’t our apparent inability to avoid caving to trends already bilk us out of gazillions of dollars each year, spent, often in vain, to meet a rigorous, ridiculous, and generally unattainable standard of beauty and desirable femininity.? And this was before we were told our Betties were ugly and desperately in need of liposculpturing, vaginal diameter reduction, labioplasty, and G-spot puffing.

Dr. David Matlock, MD, MBA, and FACOG, and the progenitor of both the trademarked “G-Spot Amplification” (“G-Shot”) and the “Wonder Woman Makeover” (a ginormous, five-procedures-in-one megasurgery in which a patient typically undergoes “laser vaginal rejuvenation, laser reduction labioplasty, liposculpturing with Brazilian Butt Augmentation, and breast augmentation” on the same day) performs these procedures at the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of Los Angeles and on E’s reality-cum-docudrama “Dr. 90210.” That’s tight, man. Really, really . . . tight.

That’s right. There’s a spa-like institute for your drooping kitty, a cavernous fixer-upper if there ever were one, and a bevy of surgical procedures to, um, “empower” you and offer you “alternatives”. And it’s in L.A. Uncanny. And herein lies a good part of the problem – by ingeniously creating, selling, and maintaining the notion that something must be terribly wrong with the vagina you were born with, Matlock and friends have imbued us with even more self-hatred than we already exercise via these professed alternatives, which, coincidentally, cost a great deal of money and continue to sustain a culture in which only the very privileged can attain the increasingly impossible standard while the rest of us can just eff off. I’m only pretty sure that your insurance isn’t going to pay for you to whack off your labia because they aren’t porn enough or blow up your G-spot with helium (collagen? Botox? Kool Aid?) because you want to better please your male partner yourself sexually.

I’m not denying that there’s a very real need for vaginal reconstructive surgery, and I don’t wish to downplay the very real mass shunning of women in various cultures whose sex organs are hurt, damaged, or destroyed in childbirth, through rape, and via female genital mutilation. And, to be fair, that bastion of the “pretty kitty” offers reconstructive solutions to real problems, like urinary incontinence and vulvar injury. But these procedures make up – you guessed it – the minority. A small one (minority that is, not vagina. If yours were already small enough, you wouldn’t have read this far, would you?) Vaginal rejuvenation is largely marketed to women who have unfortunately internalized the notion that they just aren’t aesthetically pleasing down there and largely performed on women for aesthetic reasons alone. And that really, really sucks. I’m pretty sure that people have had satisfying, sexy-Rexy sex and have been aesthetically drawn to one another across time and space before the advent of this kind of cosmetic surgery . . . and that men and women probably didn’t turn down a solid roll in the proverbial hay because their partner’s labia was too thick, too long, too dark, too Sideways, just too too. Too something. Excuse me while I go take a look, down there, before I punch MYSELF in the face.