Have you ever heard that if you hear something mentioned more than three times the universe is trying to get your attention?

Let me say first, that I try not to watch a lot of television because I wasted a lot of time on it in the past.  But having said that, I do try to keep up with what's out there, at least a little, so that I can know what people are referring to on social media.  

Among my Black, female friends, two shows seem to be generating the most conversation right now.  Once is the night-time soap Scandal, and the other is cable drama Being Mary Jane.  On one hand, these are shows about powerful, successful women with high profile careers. They are also the characters that the shows are centered on, rather than merely being the friend or the side-kick.  These are the types of characterizations that women, especially women of color, have been clamoring for.   The only down-side?  To paraphrase my friend Cassandra, "Why do they have to  be side pieces?"

Both characters, although savvy professionals, are knowingly involved in relationships with married men.  To Hollywood, that makes for high drama, and wonderful story lines.  To the viewer that realizes that Hollywood still has a long way to go with it's portrayals of women, especially  it's depictions of minority women, it feels like one step forward, two steps back.  Even as we are finally given unqualified leads in television shows, Hollywood still cannot resist the temptation of portraying powerful women, of any race, as incapable of handling a healthy personal relationship.

It is well documented that Hollywood has a problem with women.  It is only remarkable when you see or hear of a woman being promoted, or a woman in a position of power, because it is so exceedingly rare.  Although the box office and ratings successes of women-helmed movies and shows, both in front of and behind the camera, should justify allowing women more autonomy and control over what images of them are portrayed on screen, the more I see and read about, the more it seems like we are running in place.  For every Black Widow, we get two Mikaelas.  For every Mara Brock Akil, there are dozens of young writers and directors whose ideas won't even be read because someone will notice the sex or race of the submitter, and decide right away that the writing is not good enough, and/or there will be no audience for it.

Who, exactly, is this audience?  Certainly not the one's who do not consume the media presented without question or comment; in fact these are the viewers television execs would like to avoid.  We hold them to a higher standard, because we realize that television both defines and reinforces popular images of women and minorities, and for every negative portrayal, or stereotype confirmation, there will be more work on our part to counter it.  Which is why when women, especially minority women, are shown engaging in morally questionable behavior, no matter how together the rest of their lives are shown, that one little tidbit stands out.

Historically, minority women's sexuality has always been thought to be one or the other of extremes: either the sexless, hyper religious Mammy, or the tart tongued, sassy strumpet.  Rarely did a t.v. or movie character defy either of those polar opposites.  Single Black women weren't shown at all, certainly not dating normally, until the show Girlfriends aired.  Mostly, single women were shown as being loose, or easy.  Here we are, decades into the portrayals of Black women on television, and even though we finally won the career battle, and the starring role battle, the character still has to have a faulty moral compass.  You cannot tell me that those in charge could not have come up with a better romantic story line than to have women we are ostensibly supposed to admire involved with married men.  

Therein lies the rub, not just for Black women, although that stick in the eye hurts that much more.  Why can't you have a woman that more or less has it all together be the center of the show? I dare say that these women could have been dating a wide variety of men with other, serious issues, and it would not have harmed the viewership in any way.  I understand that flaws make for better story, but must the flaw go straight to stereotype?  A nervous tic, is a flaw.  Being embarrassed about a poor background is a flaw.  Being condescending to others is a flaw.  And all of these flaws can be had by anyone.  I realize that Hollywood rarely entertains original ideas, nor does it respect the input of women unless said input conforms in some way to the vision they already have of what they feel women's roles should be.  But with the wealth of new ideas, writers, directors, and pure talent out there, if they bothered to look carefully, they wouldn't have to resort to tired stereotypes for conflict.

When I write the names of my children and myself, I write three different last names.

Maybe you've heard of me.

I am the never married, inner city single parent.  The image that is painted of me  by the world at large is one of wanton sexual promiscuity, complete irresponsibility and damaged children.  Statistically speaking, we live in an impoverished area, we live at or near the poverty level because I don't have enough of an education to have a job making much more than minimum wage, and since mine is the only income, it is woefully inadequate.  My children will suffer from not having both parents in the home, all the studies say, and I am to blame for it all.

That's what conservative media sells their constituency, anyway.  For some people that's very true.  For SOME people.  For most of the rest of us, the truth is far more complicated and nuanced.  If you are willing to listen, there is a story there, just not the one you think it is.

Mine is a story of an insecure girl who sought to soothe her insecurity in the worst possible way, relationships with men thought to be the objects of other women's attentions.  If you were to ask me what I was thinking, I would probably tell you that I thought that I could be the one to make the relationships "work" where other women had failed previously.  The fact that I believed this not once, but twice, tells you that I was either a hopeless romantic, an incurable optimist, incredibly foolish or a rotating combination of all three.  All I can say is that between romance novels and romantic comedies, there was a long stretch in my life where I had particularly unrealistic notions about relationships, and people's willingness and ability to "change" given the right circumstances.  Mercifully, I figured it out at the two child mark, but some women take far longer, and unfortunately, are the ones who turn bitter after the reality that you can't change people sets in.

But as much as I admit to making two extremely poor choices (based on looks alone) in relationships, eleven years apart, I do not regret having my children.  That's not to say that this has been an easy road.  I realized on the day of my son's birth that the majority of the responsibility for child raising was going to be on me, and I made a promise to God and myself that I was going to step up to the best of my ability.  I was one month shy of my 21st birthday with only a high school education, but I had a pleasant enough personality, a good professional demeanor, gave great "phone", and had a history of front of house type jobs (Which I didn't realize at the time meant I had kind of a pretty face. I've always thought I was funny looking.   Live and learn.), which I was able to translate into a series of receptionist jobs.  I say series because initially the only work I could get was through temp agencies, which was far from steady work (I can't begin to tell you the number of times we were evicted because I was out of work just long enough to get behind in the rent.), but it kept us afloat for 10 years.  During that time I worked my way up from Receptionist to Executive Secretary by learning on the job any skill I didn't already have.  The upshot to that, however, was that my son had a lot of issues both at school, and with his daycare, and when you are a contract employee, if you don't go to work, you don't get paid.  Which is why I missed my son's learning disabilities by so far a margin that by the time anyone was halfway willing to do anything about it, he had already given up on school.

By the time my daughter came along, I was in both a better, and a worse, spot.  I had completed trade school to learn how to repair computers, thereby turning a longtime hobby into a profession.  But my relationship with her father was already mostly over, and by the time she was six months old, we were living on my sister's living room floor.  It was a long slow crawl to the lower middle class for us.  The first step was an entry level civil service job for me at the ripe old age of 32.  The next step was a small 2 bedroom apartment in a working class suburb of the South Bay.  What was supposed to happen was for us to build from there.  But...

Our little family fits the description while blowing it out of the water.  Yes, we live paycheck to paycheck.  I wanted to live in a safe-ish neighborhood, especially because of my son, and I wanted to be somewhere I could let my daughter play outside, without fear or worry.  Mercifully, where I live is about average for the region, price-wise.  I drive an eight year old used car, but there is still a car note, and insurance.  I tried mightily to live without a car on several occasions, and so long as I had no life outside work or church, living without a car was doable.  The minute I wanted to do anything at night, or in any of the outlying suburbs at odd hours, there was an issue. My son did drop out of high school, and is struggling because of it, but so are many other young men and women with untreated ADHD and other learning disabilities.  The ADHD, by the way, is hereditary.  I have it, as does my daughter.  If you can tell from the title of this blog, there are three people in this house that have fairly serious social, emotional, concentration and organization issues.

Nobody knows how or why, but somehow, we make it work.  Despite what you may have heard about young Black males without a high school education, my son has not only NOT become a criminal, he has never been in any major trouble.  My daughter is an academic superstar, with the social behaviors exhibited by natural introverts, preferring to be alone with electronics or with a good book as often as with other people.  Whatever they end up believing later on in life, I gave them a Christian foundation so that they would both have some spiritual grounding, as well as an extended church family.  I have always encouraged communication between the fathers and the children.  Note:  I said between the FATHERS and the CHILDREN.  I have also made it very clear that the state of these relationships are the responsibility of the father, as I would neither force these relationships, nor discourage them.  I would only intervene if there were absolutely no other way to resolve an issue.  My son has chosen to have limited contact with his father; my daughter's relationship with her father is, much like the Facebook status,  "complicated" (see earlier statement about only intervening if I had to).

You won't hear about my little family on the news of course.  We are the OK square pegs that simply do not fit in the dysfunctional round holes that society would have you believe we should be in.  We are far from perfect, obviously.  I get frustrated with all the new parenting methods and I yell.  My restless, impatient son is drifting between goals, and trying to figure out what to do with himself.  My daughter is in the throws of an ADHD enhanced pre-teen life, and it's attached emotionalism.  Quite normal, actually.

No one is suffering from a lack of anything.  Sometimes we run out of things, or have to wait until payday.  We are three people getting through life, day by day.  Nothing remarkable or extraordinary.  Which doesn't sell newspapers or political agendas.

Which is why you've never heard of me.  Or any of the rest of us.  And you never will.

I remember loving the series "In Search Of..." in the late 70's and early 80's.

They explored everything from mysteries to folklore to paranormal phenomenon, and we lapped up every episode.  Burgeoning nerds we were, we loved anything having to do with science fiction and/or the unexplained.  I was already a mystery junkie, and this show was just catnip to me.  What I really loved though, were the shows where they investigated mysterious creatures, like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.  Those episodes held my attention for the full hour, wondering if they just might give me a glimpse of these elusive monsters.

Actually, I kinda wish the show was still around today.  I have a creature I would like them to investigate to see if in fact it actually exists.

I want them to find the elusive Wonder Woman.  Obviously not the DC comic superhero, nor the Lynda Carter, 70's variation that I grew up with.  Well, not SPECIFICALLY, anyway...

What I want them to find is this mysterious woman who has attained the state of perfection that all women are supposed to aspire to.

She still wears the same size she wore in high school, because although she is married and has three perfect children, an advanced degree and a high powered job, she still has the time and energy to work out every day and prepare three healthy meals a day for her adoring family, all of whom she has individual time for as well.  She is the picture of health, wealth and success.  We, too, can be her if only we try hard enough.

And we believe it.  To the tune of a billion dollar health and wellness industry hell bent on selling us the myth of perfection attainable if only we buy this cream or that super-food or practice another new exercise fad.  Lets not even mention the proliferation of for profit colleges consistently promising more than they could ever reasonably deliver in an employment climate already overburdened by too many people with degrees they can't possibly use.

But still we seek her...

Facebook is a useful experiment is social psychology.  We all flock to the posts of (and eagerly press "Like" for) the posts of women we think have a handle on life.  We need to affirm, in large groups, women we think fit the image we hold in our minds of Wonder Women.  This could be a woman who is successfully managing a household.  Or a woman with a career we admire.  Whatever we think it means to attain absolute success as a woman, we cling to that image, and anyone projecting it, with a reverence most wouldn't believe if they weren't practicing a bit of it themselves.

But these are just regular women.  Not Wonder Woman...

I remember reading an article in the fall of last year stating that Hollywood could not get a satisfactory reboot made for Wonder Woman, the DC comics female superhero with roots in both World War II and the Cold War.  Many ideas have been tried and discarded, and one script even made it all the way to a pilot being shot before it was realized that, that, too, would never work.  Our 70's icon, Lynda Carter, intimated that maybe what Hollywood was missing was the fact that a great deal of the Wonder Woman story was about sisterhood.  Others opined that it was an unwillingness to seriously consider the ideas of female writers.  Heck, even I dabbled in creating a story for Wonder Woman (What's one more bad idea among so many?)  Although I think both Ms. Carter and the female writers are both correct in their statements (and Hollywood has a HUGE tendency to write female characters as if they only exist for male satisfaction), I think there is even more to this mythology that is missing.

If we are searching for a Wonder Woman, we are going to have to create her.  If we go by the models that we already have, from comic book superheroes, to the flavor of the month media sensation, to the internet fueled Mommy Wars, we are already experienced at creating impossible images to hold ourselves up to. What we need , then, is someone who can hold the weight of all of our expectations, both real and imagined.  Someone perfect, inside and out.

Or we can create someone closer to who we really are.  A woman who means well, but doesn't always manage every situation well, every time.  Someone who fell for the wrong person, and is now a single parent ( far truer than most realize), but is doing the best they possibly can with their current circumstances.  A woman who is neither thin, nor fat, nor cares what people think because she is too busy with a full life to be bothered with the type of pettiness that the world would love to keep women embroiled in.

And occasionally she DOES don a cape.  Just to keep out the wind or the rain, mind you.  But she looks wonderful in it.

Sometime around the end of January, I decided it was time to take my daughter to her first art museum.

My decision was aided by the fact that for one day each year, art museums around the city offer free admission, which was enough motivation for me to plan a trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  I had never been there and had always wanted to go, so my excitement when I first broached the subject with Ashley was matched only by her phone distracted apathy.



Me (to Ashley): How would you like to go to LACMA on the 25th?

Ashley (staring at phone): What's LACMA?

Me: It's the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  It's free that day.

Ashley (still staring at phone): What do you do at a museum?

Me: Look at paintings and sculptures and stuff. 

Ashley (looks up skeptically from phone)

If you have ever gotten the side eye from a kid when trying to convince them to do something that will separate them from their beloved technology for more than a few minutes, you will know that the next sentence in this exchange is CRUCIAL: it will mean the difference between an affirmative cultural experience with your child, or another Saturday spent watching her watch a screen.

Me: We can have lunch while we are there, and make a day of it.

Ashley (shugs, then goes back to the phone): OK, I guess.

We got up early on a Saturday morning, and started the cross town journey to the museum on the bus.  My normally talkative and observant daughter was engrossed by the games on her phone during the long ride, and I quietly wondered if she was going to get anything out of this experience.  I didn't get into art until I was a senior in high school, and Impressionism was one of the subjects I had to study for Academic Decathlon.  Up until that point, I was aware of paintings and sculpture, but only in a peripheral way.  I knew it was there, and I knew what it was, but that was about it.  I didn't understand beauty or expression, or point of view until much later.  I was determined to remedy that lack of knowledge with my son, and took him to the Getty Museum twice, so that at the very least, he could say that he had been exposed to fine art.

When we finally got off the bus in front of the museum, my daughter was immediately charmed by the hugeness of the structure.  To my surprise, she decided to use the phone on her camera to take pictures of whatever we saw on our walk through the museum.  We got in line to get whatever free tickets, passes and maps we needed for the day, and started our walk in the gallery closest to the ticket boot which featured a display of Chinese and Japanese art and artifacts.  After warnings not to get to close to anything, and definitely not to touch anything, and encouraging her to read the small letter board displays at each piece, I allowed her to lead the way as we explored the first exhibit.  She just looked at paintings and took pictures for a couple of minutes, until she stopped and pondered a wooden sculpture of a horse decked out in fine livery.  She stared for a full two minutes, before I asked her what she was thinking.  

"This looks like the horse from "Mulan".

A couple near us heard her, and gave me the pressed lip smile that let me know that they thought it was funny, but they didn't want to discourage her.  I smiled back.  You gotta start somewhere.

We finished that particular exhibit in about 30 minutes, and by then, she was ready for lunch.  While we were eating, Ashley took the map from me, and started looking at the names and description of the other exhibits, and talking about what SHE wanted to see that day.  I was happy to let her lead.  This day was about her, and exposing her to something she might not otherwise see, so I fell back, and let her pick what sounded interesting to her.

We next went to a Latin Art exhibit, where she saw paintings by Diego Rivera for the first time, as did I.  We also got to see some of the early film work of a pioneering Latin filmmaker, which started freaking her out a bit because of the early 20th century special effects, so we had to move on.  As we were exiting the Latin art exhibit and about to make our way into the next pavilion, we came across what looked to me like giant spaghetti, drying on a rack:

This was one of the many outdoor art installations that invited visitors to experience art through play.   It made me dizzy, but she thoroughly enjoyed twirling herself around in the long strings.  She was having a great time with other kids in the long spaghetti, but we eventually moved into the next pavilion where we settled, after looking at four entire floors worth of choices, on European art.  When we walked into the room where the impressionist paintings and sculptures were, and she immediately looked for a bench and sat down.  I asked her if she was starting to get tired.  We had been there for two and a half hours, and in all honesty, I was up to my ears in culture by now.

"Well yeah.  And all this stuff is starting to get a little inappropriate."

She pointed behind me, to the sculpture Eternal Spring by Auguste Rodin.  She had this same reaction to other partial nude paintings in other parts of the gallery.  I had forgotten to explain to her that artists throughout history have viewed the human body as a work of art, and painted and sculpted it regularly.  The only way she is used to seeing the human body portrayed is on television or in movies, and then only in a sexual way, so what else would she think?  Even as I explained about the human body as the subject of art work, I could see her really starting to consider the human body as more than a sexual object.  Maybe this visit was paying off in ways I hadn't thought about...

Our last exhibit for the day was a room with art from Southeast Asia and India.  Ashley was quickly burning out, and spent as much time looking for someplace to sit as she did looking at the stunning art pieces.  While I was fascinated looking at the hindu gods and goddesses, Ashley mostly looked at doors and archways:

Occasionally, I can take a hint.  We made our way out of the pavilion, down into the sculpture garden, into a beautiful light installation, then out into the street.  Ashley asked me right away when we could come back to see the rest of it.  She figured we already saw part of it, we might as well see the rest.  A small part of me thinks she was also more than a little fascinated by being exposed to something outside of her everyday experience, and eager to continue the adventure.  I asked her if maybe next time we could go to the Getty instead.  I immediately threw in the fact that they had beautiful outdoor gardens, and we could have lunch there as well.  She asked if she could bring her phone.  Just to take pictures of course.

I'll be planning that trip for later in the spring.