And so we blend leaves together and call it “delicious” and “juice” instead of a mealy sludge.
Me:
I like vegetable and juice drinks.
Bari Weiss:
We wear stilts to hike around concrete jungles and lie about how they are anything other than medieval torture devices.
Me:
I almost never wear heels. I don't really like them, and they are also not the footwear of choice for most homeless people.
Bari Weiss:
We get the tiny horns on the tips of our fingers and toes painted in shades so subtle that heterosexual men don’t even realize we got them painted at all.
Me:
I painted my toenails a couple of times this summer, with nail polish that I bought at a dollar store. Also; "heterosexual men"? Could that be any more of a stereotype about gay men and heterosexual men?
Bari Weiss:
We shell out hundreds of dollars for magic elixirs and oils the size of Theranos Nanotainers that don’t even promise youth but boast that they are “clean.”
Me:
So the New York Times, which hacks my phone, which watches me and EVERYONE ELSE WHO IS BEING CRIMINALLY VICTIMIZED BY VOYEURISM, which alternates excusing its criminal behavior toward me and EVERYONE AROUND ME by calling me mythically beautiful or dog-ugly, and that has promoted sexual crime since 2010, pays you enough that you can spend hundreds of dollars on skin care, while I can't get a job even for the Massachusetts-mandated lowest possible wage of $11/hour because of the fall-out of being persecuted by your employer and hundreds of other powerful people and organizations for 8 years. You probably have fabulous skin. Remember when the conglomerate was calling me "spot" because of my acne? Remember the conglomerate calling me "Murphy" because of the precipitous aging of my neck skin after a few months of being sexually harassed by the conglomerate in 2010? I aged overnight, not least because of your employer and others who are like your employer; a murderous, rapacious, misogynist, elitist gang of liars and bullies.
Bari Weiss:
We lie under fluorescent lights and hold our thighs open for strips of burning hot wax while we chat about the new season of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Me:
I don't have the money to be professionally waxed. I self-wax in the shower, using cold wax strips that I buy at the drugstore. I try not to think about the hidden and illegal cameras filming me while I press down each strip on the inside of my butt checks, put my leg up on the side of the shower wall, and try to yank the strip off in what I hope is the opposite direction from which it grows. Then Jimmy Fallon ridicules me on his talk show. My body hair has been a constant source of amusement for the conglomerate, including your employer, for 8 years. I have never seen "The Handmaid's Tale." I can't pay for it. I did read the book, years ago.
Bari Weiss:
We read about the beauty routines and morning routines and nighttime routines and midday routines of women infinitely more wealthy than we are and then study their social media accounts to see how we might approximate their lives.
Me:
Is that how you spend your free time? Gosh, that sounds rough. Maybe you didn't see the videos that Margot Robbie filmed for Vogue and that John Mayer filmed by himself, ridiculing me for the illegal video that was filmed of me from the cameras in my last apartment, where everyone, including your employer, watched my attempts to hold on to my remaining gum tissue, prevent pimples and ameliorate wrinkles. Were you busy reading the articles that your employer published about watching me have orgasms in my sleep, in a city apartment from which it was impossible to block all light at night?
Bari Weiss:
We spend hundreds of dollars on makeup that makes it look as if we aren’t wearing any makeup at all.
Me:
There you go with the "hundreds of dollars" again. Writing for the New York Times must be a lucrative gig.
Here's the address of a video that I published called "Hundreds of people have the right to sue":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hiq-pOxD324
It's about a night, during my years of conglomerate-induced homelessness, in which another homeless woman and I were very close to being raped and/or killed. It also discusses the criminal voyeurism inflicted on hundreds of homeless and other people in Vermont and in the Boston area since 2011.
Bari Weiss:
We muss our hair and pout our lips and Google “best angles” and hold our cameras ever so slightly above our faces.
Me:
So?
Bari Weiss:
We practice for future careers in STEM: If I burn 450 calories at Soul Cycle I can totally get away with a little sushi at lunch. Or maybe better go for the sashimi and hold out for a second glass of rosé at dinner?
Me:
Now that statement I really have an issue with. I was enrolled in a STEM program; I was harassed every semester that I was at that school, and in the third semester that I reported it, I was called a crazy liar and suspended.
Bari Weiss:
We give ourselves shots in the stomach that make us want to murder everyone at the office so that one day we can become the boss of that office and have a kid alone at 50 with our frozen eggs.
Me:
I don't. I am called a crazy schizophrenic who's going to end up killing someone by thousands of people from the public every day, people who don't know what has happened for 8 years, because your employer and every other media source in the world have lied to the public by omission while promoting sexual crime. Also, again I think that you and I are conversing at a socioeconomic distance; it's not my impression that I'll have the money for fertility treatments before the last period of my life is illegally filmed by the conglomerate.
Bari Weiss:
In the meantime, we brutally assess the facial symmetry of potential mates on dating apps without enough vowels and post pictures of ourselves that our friends have approved via group chat.
Me:
I wouldn't describe the almost hourly assessments of the intellectual development of many people who have perfect faces and bodies that I have proffered for almost a decade as meek or even slightly flattering. Also; you haven't seen the pictures that I have published of my teeth, have you? I promise that I didn't ask for anyone's approval before I published them. Maybe you don't worry about your teeth; the New York Times probably has a good dental plan for its employees.
Bari Weiss:
We are so much more than this. But we can’t help but get distracted by the whole charade. And we are the women who have the luxury of even thinking about having it all! This is what having it all looks like.
Me:
I'd like to think that you and your employer and every other participant in or silent observer of the insanity that has happened since 2010 are capable of ceasing to be consummate liars and hypocrites. So far, the evidence isn't convincing.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/opinion/miss-america-bikini-contest.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article