Florida, Here I Come!!!

In less than 48 hours from now, I will be escaping down to West Palm Beach and Miami, Florida for 9 days of sun, sand, and lots of sea!!!  This will be my 3rd trip to Florida.   This year I went through VRBO.com and rented condo in Lake Worth right next to the Intracoastal Canal, a mere 3blocks away from the ocean.  I have found that renting a condo can be quite a bit cheaper than staying in a hotel for a week.   My itinerary includes a steady diet of sea food and margaritas all week long; many long days of sunbathing, swimming, and seashell hunting from sunrise until sundown; snorkeling with tropical fish and shooting underwater photos at Peanut Island; visiting a topless beach in South Beach, Miami; and sailing on the high sea in a 35 foot sailboat!!!  I will be sailing with Captain Don Newmann from the West Palm Beach Sailboat Club in his sailing vessel.  Capt. Don is also a sailing instructor, so I will be learning a thing or two about how to operate a sailboat during our expedition on the Atlantic Ocean.  We will be sailing down the Florida coast on the Gulf Stream wind, which Capt. Don says all professional sailors throughout the last 500 years know that the Gulf Stream wind is THE BEST air stream to sail by.  It provides for optimal sailing conditions, especially in the crystal clear waters of the south Atlantic and Caribbean.  I am just beside myself with excitement; I have never before been on a sailboat or out on the ocean in my entire life!!  I am well-prepared for this trip in every way possible.  I have a brand new wardrobe of sexy beach-wear clothing from Victoria’s Secret, I have a rental car lined up so I can easily get around, and I have compiled a special Florida playlist of music on my Ipod complete with nautical music by Sting to listen to while walking and relaxing seaside and Latin tunes by Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Lopez, and Enrique Iglesias to listen to while driving and doing whatever else. The next three weeks will be spent doing pre-trip body maintenance--hair coloring, acrylic nail fill and pedicure, body waxing, and exercise work-outs to ensure that I will look HOTT on the beach.  I will be flying out of St. Louis at 6:00 AM and arriving in Florida at around 11:30 Eastern Time, so I should be lying on the beach with a drink in my hand by noon!! :)

What's With All These Grumpy Old Men Ranting About Birth Control?

Why do Orrin Hatch and other grumpy old men hate birth control so much??

On August 1^st Kathleen Sebellius, Secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, accepted the recommendations by scientists at the Institute of Medicine to mandate that all insurance companies cover the full cost of birth control without co-pay.  This recommendation was based off the scientists' findings that increased access of FDA-approved birth control to all women would greatly improve women’s health, reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and cut down on health care costs associated with multiple pregnancies and complications.  The IOM recommended that all health insurance carriers cover the cost of birth control with no co-pay in order to make prescription contraception easier to access by low-income women.  This new regulation will not only cover the costs of contraception, but will also cover the costs for breast pumps for nursing mothers, STD-testing and treatment, and counseling for breastfeeding, STD's, and domestic violence.  Basically, these new regulations will require that insurance companies cover more of the costs for preventative care, which will in turn keep people healthier and keep the health care and Welfare costs down.  I had no doubt that Sebellius would affirm these recommendations, because making sure women have good access to preventative care (and yes, birth control IS preventative care since it treats a myriad of female disorders and prevents unwanted pregnancy) will improve their health and in turn cut down on health care costs.  It costs FAR less for insurance companies to cover the costs of month birth control than it does to pay for pre-natal care, delivery, and health care for the children once they are born.  The cost of birth control can range from $50 - $100 per month.  The cost of raising ONE child from birth to age 18 is about $150,000 or more.  You do the math.  With the way our current economy is in complete shambles and millions of people are suddenly finding themselves without a job and a means to provide for their children, you’d think EVERYONE would be on board with doing whatever it takes to help women stay healthy and limit their family size.

But alas, this is not the case.  As soon as the GOP caught wind of these recommendations and heard the words "women", "health care", and "access to birth control", their emergency alarms went off just as I expected they would.  And oh boy did the sh*t hit the fan!!!  Literally every misogynistic anti-woman politician has now come out of the woodwork to voice their backwards opinions on women and women’s health.  Their ranting against women is so insane and comical that I’ve been sitting back and treating it like entertainment!  You can’t turn on Fox News anymore without hearing nonstop, venomous nonsense about “irresponsible, promiscuous sluts” and how cheaper birth control will suddenly turn ALL women in the US into raging whores.  It’s as infuriating as it is hilarious.  Repeating their statements myself just doesn’t do enough justice, so I’ll just let you listen to their incoherent ranting and raving against women yourselves…

Bill O’Reilly says that “Women who have sex are always blasted out of their minds and won’t remember to take their birth control anyway, so what’s the point?”  I guess he doesn't understand that birth control is something a woman takes every day, not just right before she has sex.

Sean “Insannity” Hannity snorts that birth control “has nothing to do with women’s health and is just an excuse to screw around” while vehemently defending Viagra and other male enhancement drugs as “valid medication to treat a real medical problem”.  Please.

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King laments that birth control will completely wipe out the American population...and boo-hoo's over the fact that the average American woman only has 2 children on average.  Guess we ladies better start doing our patriotic duty and start pumping out half a dozen kids or more!!

Listen real good there, Ladies!  Do you hear that??  THIS is what YOUR government thinks of you, Ladies.  Your elected government officials think you are nothing more than worthless, promiscuous sluts who can’t be trusted to take control of your own health and fertility….even if you are married and monogamous. To the millions of women out there who use prescription birth control to treat all kinds of female disorders or who are MARRIED and are trying to plan your family the way you want, are you going to take this garbage or are you going to speak out and fight back against such hateful lies and nonsense?  Let’s look at the facts here:  98% of American women already use some form of birth control.  Just think about that for a second….98%.  That is an overwhelming majority.  There is not a single TV show that 98% of Americans watch or a sports team that can claim 98% of  Americans as its fans.  In a political era as polarized as the one we’re  in now, it seems that birth control is the ONLY thing that virtually everyone is in agreement on!!  If you don’t feel insulted by these men insinuating that you are an immoral, promiscuous slut for using birth control, you should be.  These pigs have no right to make such gross assumptions about the entire female population. Having access to more affordable birth control is not going to suddenly make every married (or single) woman start opening her legs for every man she sees.  Grow up.

What exactly is going on here??  Where is all of this anti-birth control nonsense coming from?  In this modern day and age, with the high costs of raising children and other living necessities, why do so many male politicians seem to be in favor of making women give birth to litters of children??  To answer this question, we have to look deeper beneath the surface of these men to understand what’s really going on.  This anti-women’s health and anti-birth control stance has nothing to do with religion, morals, or common sense and has everything to do with an extreme patriarchal sense of male entitlement.  These men are on an obscene power trip of astronomical proportions and, to be quite frank, these are the type of men who deep down think that everyone on earth--especially women--should bow down and worship their Almighty Penises.  To these men, women are nothing more than chattel whose bodies are to be “owned and operated” by men.  This explains exactly why men like Sean Insannity vehemently defend easy insurance-covered access to Viagra so that ‘Little Hannity” can be ready for action at any minute, yet begrudge women any kind of health care that might prevent them from becoming impregnated and giving birth to all products of conception created by their Almighty Penises.  To these guys, their penises are sacred and every pregnancy and child women bear as a result of these men’s sexual conquests are a living trophy of their “manliness”.  It’s why you sometimes might hear a guy brag about how many times he got his wife or girlfriend pregnant or brag about how many children he has (even if he doesn't provide any support for them); it’s just a way for him to show off his male virility.  Of course, a REAL man with a modicum of maturity understands that children are expensive and thus works with his wife/girlfriend to plan pregnancies accordingly.  But obviously, we’re not talking about maturity when discussing men like O’Reilly and Hannity.  These are nothing more than man-children with bloated egos who want total control over women’s bodies and could care less if our physical health is dependent upon taking hormonal contraceptives to treat debilitating female disorders.

I for one am very excited and pleased to hear about the new birth-control coverage regulations. We all know from my pageant platform “Our Bodies, Our Futures” that I am dedicated to preventing unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and making contraception more accessible to those who need it is THE #1 way to do this!!!  The misogynistic Right-Wing blowhards can scream and howl about it all they want.  I could care less about what they think of me or other women; their opinion of us is sh*t.  I just hope that their incessant temper tantrums won’t do anything to cause the powers-that-be who approved this ruling to bow under pressure and change their minds, because we’ve got a good thing going here with this.

And to lighten the mood here, I now give you a bit by the awesome Steven Colbert that perfectly and beautifully sums up the ridiculous rhetoric spouted off in the above-mentioned videos.  Enjoy!! :)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Women's Health-Nazi Plan
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Why Do Smart Women Cling To Bad Men?

This post is about domestic violence. It is an edited version of an older post that I re-wrote in order to better illustrate my point. Plus, the older one was just too long anyway.

Lately I’ve been watching a crazy situation unfold with an acquaintance of mine. It's so messed up that it almost seems like something you'd see on an episode of Jerry Springer. As a rather straight-forward thinking woman with some common sense, it all seems very outrageous from my viewpoint and it really struck a chord with me. After thinking about it and observing other female friends, acquaintances, and strangers, I started to see that this is a much more common phenomenon than I had previously thought. And as someone who strives to empower women, I feel this issue needs to be heavily addressed.

Two years ago, this acquaintance of mine discovered that her husband was leading a double life. He had been lying to her and cheating on her all throughout their marriage. He was literally “servicing” every unhappily married or lonely divorced woman in their town. He was having unprotected sex with scores of women, and thus putting his wife at risk of contracting HIV or other STD’s from him. At one point, about half a dozen middle-aged divorced women all thought he was their “boyfriend” without any clue that they were just one of many. Later on towards the end of their marriage, he started physically hitting her. He even lost his job as a police officer due to his violent outbursts. I think the most unbelievable incident was when he was sent out to investigate a domestic dispute call and arrested a girl for stabbing her husband with a kitchen knife…and then went on to have a love affair with the girl…after arresting her for stabbing a man. I didn’t know it was even possible to be that stupid! So as you can see, this woman’s husband was about as bad as it gets.

After he began hitting her, I expected she would draw the line at that and get herself out of that situation. Many women unfortunately find themselves forced to stay with their abusers because they lack good education and skills and are thus dependent on the men for shelter, sustenance, and money. Others find it difficult to leave because they have young children with their abuser. But this woman is one of the lucky few. She is highly educated, has a successful career, has no children, and even made more money than her husband. So she could literally walk away from him at any time. But she didn’t. Instead of leaving him or at least forcing him to face some consequences for his abusive behavior towards her, she remained with him and clung even tighter to him by buying him gifts and taking him on exotic vacations. At one point, she DID get up the nerve to get an order of protection against him after he hit her, but then took him down to the Caribbean with her only a week later as if nothing had happened. They eventually divorced and moved into separate homes, but she still continued clinging to him…even paying his bills for him now that he had no job! Then several months later, she gleefully announced she was pregnant with his child. And this isn’t her first pregnancy announcement since their divorce, either. There was another one that was either a miscarriage or a false alarm. That means this has been an ongoing thing since they split…she has been trying to get pregnant with her ex-husband who abused her.


Those of us who know her and know about the situation were absolutely dumbfounded. After picking our jaws up from the floor, we all wondered aloud “What the hell is she thinking?!” This woman’s husband had abused her, disrespected her, and put her at all kinds of risks. Now that she was divorced from him, she had the opportunity to walk away in the other direction and start a better life for herself…but instead she chose to cling to him and purposely conceive a child with him so that she will now be tied to him for the rest of her life. And his behavior has not improved one bit; he is still cavorting around with every female he sees, drinking all the time, and taking his aggression out on others. While she is proudly showing off her pregnant belly as if they were still happily married, he could care less that he has a child on the way. And since she already knew that he was having unprotected sex with scores of women, that means she willingly put herself at risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease from him in her pursuit to get pregnant by him. Purposely creating a new life just to trap someone into staying in your life forever and knowingly putting your own physical health in jeopardy is about as selfish and irresponsible as it gets. Did she ever stop to think that perhaps a man who has violent tendencies, drinks heavily, and can’t hold down a job probably would not make a very good parent for a child? She doesn’t seem to realize that getting pregnant by a man she was already long divorced from isn’t exactly something to be proud of. I also don’t think she realizes what her life will be like 20 years from now when she’ll still be single and half of her life will have passed her by because she will have spent all her years clinging to this jerk and fighting with him over their child. In many ways, she has ended her own life and robbed herself of a future.


I’ve just been baffled by all this because I can’t understand for the life of me why any woman would ever put up with such unacceptable behavior from a man or insist on clinging to such a jerk at all costs. I have never really been in a relationship where I endured physical abuse, but I have had my share of relationships where the man tried to exercise control over me or cat around with other women behind my back. And I refuse to put up with it for one second. When a man tries to tell me how to dress, how to wear my hair, what I can or can't read, go, or do, I tell him to get lost. When he sleeps with other women behind my back, I kick him into the gutter and leave him there with the garbage where he belongs. If a man ever hit me, he’d only get to hit me ONCE…and then I would break every bone in his body with a baseball bat. I would not remain friends with him afterwards, I would not buy him gifts, I would not take him on vacation with me, I would not pay his bills for him, I would not continue sleeping with him, and I most certainly would not try to get pregnant on purpose with him!! This is why I want so badly to shake this girl and yell at her “Look at what you’re doing; how could you possibly be so STUPID?!” But then I noticed other women doing the exact same thing--stubbornly clinging to men who were abusive and clearly not good for them--and that‘s when I realized that this is not an isolated incident. It’s an epidemic. And I couldn’t help but wonder why so many women seem to choose to be victimized. Why are so many beautiful, intelligent women so desperate and willing to sabotage their own lives and happiness by doing anything they can to remain involved with unhealthy or even dangerous men?? What has happened to cause so many women to think so little of themselves and what they truly deserve?? Why have so many women come to believe that being involved with an abusive, cheating jerk is the best option they have for a relationship?? That’s when I realized that it’s not because so many women are “stupid”…it’s because they have absolutely no self-esteem at all.


This story illustrates a huge problem that is rampant in our culture and needs to be addressed: Women like my acquaintance cling to men who are unhealthy for them because they have little self-esteem and believe that their happiness, success, and value as a human relies upon being attached to a man. To them, having ANY man at their side--even a very bad one--is better than not having a man at all, because they truly believe that they are worth less when they are single. This explains why so many women I have known have stayed with abusive men and would not leave them until they had another new boyfriend lined up and ready to immediately transition to. They could not stand the thought of being single and “alone” for one minute; they had to immediately jump from one relationship into another to preserve their sense of self-worth. They have never allowed themselves to have any “alone time” to get to know themselves better and tend to their own needs, wants, and goals.  This is why the acquaintance of mine continued to be friends with her ex-husband and continued sleeping with him even after they divorced.  She wanted to continue being with him in any way she could even though he had physically abused her and treated her like dirt.  She would rather tie herself to him for the rest of her life by purposely conceiving a child with him rather than leave him in the gutter where he belongs and try to start a new life for herself with a better man who would treat her the way a man should treat a woman.  She has always been a rather heavy-figured girl and doesn't have a lot of self-confidence, and so she thinks this loser is the best guy she will ever be able to have.  It's really sad.  Ladies, we have all GOT to start loving and respecting ourselves more and stop settling for less than what we deserve!! And that includes NOT settling for or clinging to men who disrespect us, abuse us, or don’t treat us as the Princesses we all are!! If you are in a relationship with a man who cheats on you, beats you up, verbally abuses you, controls every aspect of your life, or does anything else that infringes on your happiness and autonomy, GET RID OF HIM!!! Run away as fast as you can and don’t look back!! Do NOT suppress your unhappiness and stay with him just so you can have a boyfriend/husband, do NOT hang on to him if you do leave him or if he leaves you, and for God’s sake do NOT get pregnant with him on purpose!!! Some of you who are reading this may be in bad relationships yourselves. If so, I hope this blog post will be a wake-up call for you. The fate of my acquaintance is sealed; she has chosen to doom herself for life. But YOU don’t have to make that same mistake. My acquaintance made the decision to be trapped and unhappy for the rest of her life, but you can actively make the decision to be happy and free if that is what you desire! Love and respect yourself enough to have a happy, successful, and safe life that you deserve, both for you and your children. Like they say on the L’Oreal hair color commercials, “Because you’re worth it!”