first, go read the dean article on the front page of nytimes.com. i'm still torn, mainly because i have a rather crushing sense of the importance of getting bush out of office. democrats are in a precarious place right now: i don't think we can win just by motivating the left, and i know we can't win just by co-opting the center. after all, that's more of a reverse co-optation (is that a word?!?!?), and, the country's mood being what it is (gullible and reactionary at the same time! how great!), we're not going to beat the republicans at their own game. the question, i suppose, is whether someone like dean can pull in not only all the traditional democrats (and even, please-God-please, some from the right wing of the party, just maybe) but all the people who haven't voted for the last umpteen years because there hasn't been anyone to vote for.

second and entirely unrelated, an essay for anyone who still thinks that body image issues are groundless or apolitical or otherwise not serious. (not many of the people who read this, i'm sure. oh well.) let me tell you a little story:

i have been very proud of myself during the last week, finally having gotten to a point where i run my three miles a day in under thirty minutes. this is a major coup for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that i do my running in broad daylight on the public streets -- not my favorite venue for a wide variety of reasons, including running on concrete (ouch) and preferring dark and desertion while i exercise.

yesterday i was nearing the end of my run, jogging north along the river, when a man in a truly horrific yellow cadillac yelled, "better keep running, you're still fat!" he squealed away in a cloud of exhaust fumes and laughter, and i stopped in my tracks. across the street a family out for an evening walk -- mom, dad, two kids, cute black lab -- stopped as well. mom flushed, looked scandalized, and shot me a furtive look; dad looked blank and tugged the dog ahead. the little boy, who couldn't have been more than seven or eight (my little brother's age, i thought to myself) actually laughed out loud. his sister, asleep in her stroller, remained blissfully unaware of this particular facet of girlhood.

i walked the last half mile home, trying to decide what, exactly, i was feeling. nobody's said anything like that to me since probably early high school, but it's amazing how it gets to you when the foundation upon which all your issues are built is laid bare. my brain couldn't quite decide between SO WHAT and I AM NOT, though logically and politically i know the former is the right answer to such an attack. after all, if somebody shouted something derogatory at an african american person, their correct answer would not, could never, be "how dare you call me black?"

but yesterday's little farce is not in the least about me, really. it's about all kinds of things, including the sickness of american culture and the new face of sexism. not many people are telling women directly that they shouldn't participate in society these days. instead the tactic, conscious or not, has been to undermine women's sense of agency and purpose by socializing them to ridiculous standards about how a woman should present herself. who can be an effective and whole person when her brain is crowded with prohibitions about body proportion? (the answer is, roughly the same number of people who can be effective and whole professionals when they live in defiance of the appearance rules, namely, not many at all.)

the fact that the so what/i am not option exists for me means that i'm lucky in a number of ways. if "i am not" were unavailable to me (i.e., if i really thought i was particularly fat), the fight for dignity would be quite a bit more difficult than it is now...which of course is entirely not ok. "i am not" actually endorses the opinion that fat's never ok; it is an individual response to a huge collective problem, and one that denies outright that lookism of whatever sort is actually just a socially acceptable cover for the worst sort of sexism.

i wonder whether i'll live to see the day when SO WHAT becomes the instinctive answer for women faced with assholes in cadillacs.