Sex Toys, Pastina, What's the Difference?

Last week my son was feeling a little under the weather. He was nursing a cold and was sluggish. The damp, rainy weather wasn't helping. He was also in a funk about some personal stuff and was just having one of those days. I thought I'd make him a pot of chicken soup which magically always seems to cure what ails him. His favorite kind of chicken soup is something we simply refer to at home as "Pastina" for the teeny tiny star shaped pasta that goes in the soup. He loves it.


As is usually the norm for me, I was busy and trying to do a few things at once while making the soup. I over cooked the Pastina and it was gloppy and pasty. Mad at myself, I spooned it into the soup nevertheless when I should have pitched it and started over. When my son came out of his room and spooned up a bowl, he adopted a tone only the truly injured can conjure when faced with more injury on top of what they've already been forced to endure. 'Mom!" he wailed, "How do you screw up Pastina!”


He was crushed. He was a mere spoonful away from comfort and it all disappeared. After a few wise ass remarks about my putting mashed potatoes in chicken soup, I made a box of Mrs. Grass soup and sent him off fairly satisfied considering. Still, I felt badly for having ruined the Pastina. He needed it. Pastina is comfort food. It's comfort. It's a warm embrace that occurs from the inside. It warms and soothes and relieves some of what ails a person. It's something we need once in a while when we're down. It's a cure. One he needed.


So is sex.


I was watching a reality television show and in an attempt at humor, one of the female participants made a joke about one of the other participants needing a sex toy because she was in a funk. After a couple of snickers and knowing looks, the comment was approved by the rest of the ladies present in the scene. They nodded in agreement while giggling. I sat there muttering under my breath... she doesn't need a sex toy...she needs comfort.


How difficult it is to need comfort and not find any. How unbearable to reach out for some and find that you come up empty handed. We all need comfort. Even the strongest of us need some TLC from time to time. Life can be hard and unforgiving. So can the people in our lives be hard and unforgiving as well. Once in a while we need to reach out and get some comfort. Sometimes the comfort takes the form of a person. Sometimes it's a bowl of Pastina. Sometimes it's a sex toy. Does it really matter how we get it when we need it? All that should matter is we get the comfort we need.


One way or another.


Indeed.

Swan Feathers

All of my life I have had the benefit of encouragement and support from the many female role models I've been fortunate to have in my life. My mother, her friends, grandmothers, aunts, friend's mothers, teachers, club counselors and one amazing college professor in particular, impressed upon me the incontrovertible fact that I had within me the ability to be who and whatever I wanted and that they were there to help me to figure out what exactly that was. These wonderful women dispensed sage advice and wisdom on relationships, friendships, education, work ethic and on the struggles women face, each from the differing and diverse perspectives of their life experience. Their invaluable wisdom remains with me to this day.



I felt fortunate to have come of age at the height of the Feminist movement. I bore witness to an exquisite part of American history as one after another of previously male dominated arenas became inhabited by women. It didn't happen overnight, the process often travelled long and incredibly winding roads, but it did eventually lead us to the place where women not only could touch even the most conservatively built ceilings, but could reach up and shatter them, opening the passage for those women who followed behind.


Feminists that followed never stopped shattering those ceilings. While Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in three straight sets on national TV in 1973, it wasn't until 1980 that the first class of cadets at West Point included women. It wasn't until 1983 that Sally Ride was given a mission as the first woman in space and 1984 when Geraldine Ferraro became the first female candidate for the vice presidency of the United States. The all women's Catholic college I had attended had finally integrated men my sophomore year, punctuating the end to a time when one could make an argument for the segregation of such institutions by gender, but the Citadel did not admit women into it's hallowed halls until 1996.


Growing up during the '60s, my mother made it her business to cultivate my love of reading and later wisely diverted my teenage attention away from my bedroom mirror and toward more substantive and reflective worthy thoughts about myself and others. Her hand pushed me past celebrity driven magazines and reigned in my youthful fascination with the entertainment industry by reinforcing the notion that having a meaningful life for myself was far better than spending my time reading about someone else's. I took the same tack with my own daughter, and similarly shared these thoughts with her friends, my nieces and the daughters of my friends. I wanted to honor the women from my past by emulating their generosity and guidance.


My daughter's generation knows little of what life was like for a woman before the "women's liberation movement". Her contemporaries have no idea what it meant to be a female athlete before dawn of Title IX. They would never be told that a college education might be a waste of money because they would be stay at home mothers. They would never thus be asked, during a job interview, if they planned to have children.They would never work a job that paid one salary for a man and a different, lower salary for a woman. They would never come under scrutiny for choosing to be childless. Nor would they be judged unfavorably for having done so.


So it is with much dismay that I have observed some disturbing activity at iVillage recently. iVillage is a subsidiary of media giant, NBC, and a so-called women's website. I joined the site in 2006 because I become involved in the wonderfully diverse communities of message boards they had there. I found these communities reminiscent of the time spent with other women in my life growing up, women who have given me good advice and guidance, and I saw an incredible mentoring opportunity and a way to pass the proverbial torch on to a new generation. So much so did I immerse myself in this wondrous place of women's voices, that I have been a community leader there for nearly three years now.


Much to my displeasure and purely as a business decision to increase revenue and divert traffic to maximize the effect of ad placement on the iVillage website, namely certain message boards, iVillage has deliberately taken all of the content relating to the category of Love and Sex and placed it solely and exclusively underneath the category of Pregnancy and Parenting. A trick, a draw and a trap designed to get women to see the ads purchased by companies selling baby products and parenting wares. While a heading and a tab for Love and Sex still exists on the site, there are no links to any of the content to be found. The tab is a shill, a ruse and nothing but virtual lip service to those, myself included, who raised the alarm when we first saw the proverbial writing on the wall. All content related to Love and Sex, a topic so important to all women of all ages and stages of their lives, is now solely contained within the Pregnancy and Parenting area. On a so-called women's website no less!


The Women's Movement came about as a way to break women out of preconceived roles as wife and mother. We fought hard to be recognized as women first and foremost and not be defined by our ability to reproduce and iVillage appears intent on trying to single handedly unravel this vital part of women's history by categorizing all things "woman" under Pregnancy and Parenting. This lumping of the Love & Sex content under the category of Pregnancy and Parenting may seem like a good business decision and a way to "guide traffic" to a place perceived to generate the most revenue, but is a slap in the face to any woman who stood up and fought to be seen as something separate from these roles society foisted upon us for generations. It's like we're back to viewing women as brood mares again at the whim of a marketing strategist. A misguided marketing strategist.


I am a 52 year old healthy, vibrant, intelligent woman who is married, the mother of three children and grandmother to one lovely precious six year old young lady.The fact that I can reproduce (or rather did at one time) is not my sole function and therein does not lie my value nor the key to unlock spending my net wealth. To categorize and funnel all content relating to Love and Sex, and drop it beneath Pregnancy and Parenting on a women's website, by a major corporation, is nothing short of insulting and chauvinistic. Their message is a confusing one and a foolish one.


When I joined iVillage in 2006 the site billed itself as "the first and most established media company dedicated exclusively to connecting women at every stage of their lives". That's what caught my eye and drew me in but now this vibrant and thriving community of women is sadly dying a slow death for lack of diversity in its future membership. Unless a woman has an interest in Pregnancy and Parenting, she will never discover there is a world of content associated with Love and Sex on the website because it's hidden in a place most woman would never look. Women are all but blocked from adding their voices to the communities there unless they have an interest in Pregnancy and Parenting.


iVillage has undercut a valuable and vibrant resource on their website, removed the presence of so many wise and diverse women, women in a position to give invaluable advice and offer leadership by their presence, by their intelligence and by their life experience. What an incredible loss.


Last Sunday I took my granddaughter out to visit an apple orchard and dairy farm. While we walked along a creek bed we saw some swans on the water. We stopped and sat on some rocks, talking as we watched the swans. She stood suddenly and reached toward the water's edge and grasped a swan feather that was floating there. Handing it to me she said, "Nonni, make a wish!".  Apparently one makes a wish on a swan feather and upon it's return to the water the wish will come true ... or so says this wondrous young lady. My wish was simple. I wished for her health and safety, for her happiness and her opportunities, that she always has the capacity to love and be loved in return and that she finds her purpose in life and her own fulfillment.


I'm thinking now that perhaps I should have also wished that places like iVillage would not set women back generations in the name of marketing strategies and site traffic and that my granddaughter never be perceived solely for her reproductive value for any reason whatsoever. Our girls deserve better than that.


Indeed.