Jean Ryan9 Comments

The Spandex Tsunami

Am I the only person perplexed by the staggering popularity of Spandex? Why have so many women decided that tourniquet tight legwear is a wardrobe must? And not just slim women; women of all shapes and sizes pry on their pants each day and head out into the world, defiant as new parolees.

I don’t care if you have a rockin’ body, I don’t care if you don’t. I’m just tired of seeing so much of you. I never signed up for a free subscription to your ass.

“They’re super comfortable,” a friend assured me, beaming at her thighs, which were shrink-wrapped in a dark gray material splashed with giant yellow daisies. “They move with your body,” she explained. Indeed your body cannot shake them; you’ve eliminated the option.

Yoga pants. Compression wear. Training tights. Leggings. Designers have worked hard to come up with fetching names. Still promoted/justified as sportswear, the distinction has become meaningless.

There are a handful of competitive sports that benefit from tight uniforms. When winning is measured by a thousandth of a second, a second skin is the way to go. The rest of us have options, especially those who don’t know they do, who believe that compression tights and skinny jeans are tickets to freedom.

Every time I see a girl in tight jeans—which is every day, many times a day—I cringe a little, imagining the difficulty involved in sitting, bending and walking. A fashion that limits movement, impinges on circulation and inhibits healthy breathing is not a product that favors liberation and empowerment.

Remember Grunge? I do, even though it last just half a minute back in the early 90s. With origins in the Seattle area, Grunge fashion—for both men and women—was characterized by durable and cheap clothing often worn in a loose, androgynous manner to de-emphasize the silhouette. Make-up and excessive grooming were shunned; the whole point was to disavow the pitfalls of conformity and capitalism. Decades later, men are still wearing easy-fitting clothes; women, sadly, are not. I guess Doc Martens, roomy jeans and flannel shirts did not contribute to the objectification of the female form. If a women’s body is de-emphasized, who will want it? Who will care? What is it worth?

What I miss most from the Grunge period was the way women carried themselves. The sureness of their movements, the nascent confidence. Women were realizing at last that they owned themselves, or could. Who needed to measure up? For a brief period in our evolution, the female body was under autonomous rule as women adopted a brave new world of non-fashion and individuality.

A style that celebrates personal freedom is not a style that can be easily re-packaged by clothing designers, and so Grunge died out. Hoping to monetize the attitude, the fashion industry has tried at intervals to echo the lost look, offering distressed garments at high prices, but these attempts do not illustrate what Grunge was all about. The mainstream cannot adopt a subculture without losing its grassroots nature.

So far, I’m not seeing any sign that women are ready to peel off their Spandex and slip into something more comfortable. I’ve been waiting for that sea change, for some daring designer to introduce loose-fitting jeans for women. Imagine the culture shock, millions of females moving freely through their days, empowered by the anonymity of modest, comfortable clothing. Of course, there is still the matter of make-up, hair dye and Botox, but we have to start somewhere.

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Lovers and Loners, a Short Story Collection

Thanks to my publisher and dear friend Mark McNease at MadeMark Publishing, my second collection of short stories, Lovers and Loners, is now available on Kindle. Those with other types of electronic tablets can simply download the Kindle app to their device. The paperback edition will be out in just a few days.

The stories in this new collection feature female protagonists who struggle for footholds in a shifting world. “Parasites” involves a widow who agrees to have dinner with a man she believes is a killer. “Manatee Gardens” explores the relationship between a mother and daughter who discover common ground at a marine sanctuary. In “Chasing Zero” a woman with a mysterious illness loses her hold on the callous man she adores. “Odds and Ends” follows a woman running errands on the last day of her life.

Lovers and Loners is a study of the human predicament: our eagerness and despair, our hidden fears and stubborn hopes, the blunders we make and the ways in which we are salvaged.

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Jean Ryan2 Comments

“Savages” in On The Premises

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I am honored and delighted to have won second place in this contest for my story “Savages.”

On The Premises is an online fiction magazine founded in 2006 by Tarl Kudrick and Bethany Granger.

Stories published in On The Premises are winning entries in short story contests launched each December and June. Each contest challenges writers to produce a great story based on a broad premise supplied by the editors. Winning stories are published in each April and October.

I am grateful to editors Tarl and Bethany for this opportunity and distinction.

Jean Ryan4 Comments

Regrets, I’ve Had A few

I recently read a Facebook post that began with three words: “Have no regrets.” The author went on to justify this remark by reminding us that every decision we have ever made has fashioned us into the people we are today. This argument does not seem sufficient. Couldn’t we be more than we are today? Why is it wrong to imagine so?

Dictionaries define regret as a feeling of sadness, repentance or disappointment over something that has happened, especially a loss or missed opportunity. I can’t imagine there’s a person alive or dead who has not experienced this wistful angst. Regret is the product of a robust conscience and a working mind. If we did not regret our mistakes, we would not learn from them. We would be something less than human.

The nice thing about regrets is that they lose no potency by being kept private. I could tell you right now what my top three are, but I won’t. They are mine. Like the small and steady diminishments that come with age, I don’t deny my regrets. I allow them, forgive them; I keep them close. Wrinkles and regrets—what can you do but give them a home?

I can’t believe there’s a purpose to everything, hidden trajectories designed for each of us. While life on this planet is held in exquisite balance, it is also random and unjust, urgent and ever-changing. Our lives are so rife with choices and hazards that regret is inescapable, maybe even an adaptation, a feature meant to foster compassion and humility.

Not that we need to be mired in remorse, mourning the options we didn’t pursue. To dwell on something is to stop moving forward. But if we own our regret, acknowledge where we might have done better, we might in fact do better. Some of the roads we could have taken are closed off now–no matter; more open up all the time.

On the virtual plane, there are many versions of myself, living out the choices I didn’t make. Life is not easy. I wish them well.

Jean Ryan6 Comments

Lost in Las Vegas

photo 3This morning from the 39th floor of a Las Vegas hotel room I watched the sun rise over the mountains. Impervious to the sweeping humanity below them, these mountains are the area’s only static feature and serve as a boundary to the manic development. Without their silent enforcement, who knows how big Las Vegas could get? No way will this city stop itself.

You don’t spend much time in your room, luxurious though it is. You spend lots of time walking through the hotel. This is because the exits are few and far between; if it weren’t for fire safety, there probably wouldn’t be any. Reaching one of these secret outlets requires a winding trek past Baccarat and Black Jack tables; past acres of glowing slot machines; past Chanel, Cartier, Hermes, Gucci, Rolex; past sleek bars and stylish restaurants; past dazzling chandeliers, color-changing waterfalls, giant silk flowers, colossal glass balloons, massive mosaics. Stunned by the cumulative effect of these displays, you wander for hours, lost in time, for there are no clocks in these hotels and no windows. Light and temperature, meticulously controlled, are designed to make your body forget itself.

photo 1In an effort to keep guests inside at all costs, many hotels have joined forces and created connecting passageways. These escalators and skywalks are so effortless, so discreet, that you usually unaware of the transition. How did you get from the Encore to the Venetian, from the Palazzo to Caesar’s Palace? At last, exhausted by the journey, the visual stimulation, the constant campaign of music, you stumble into a lounge or restaurant and blearily eye the menu. By then you are inured to the exorbitant prices and scarcely bother to look at them.

What did you expect? This is, after all, Las Vegas. If you think a hotel that charges $370 a night should not charge another $20 for WiFi, you have a point, but so what? Money reigns supreme here. To suggest it has a limit amounts to blasphemy. If you cannot get into the spirit of spending, you need to leave the premises. Nothing personal—you just don’t belong.

I had not been to this city in fifteen years. Previously, I recall being charmed by the clever use of faux materials. This time the sets were alarmingly real. As I walked across miles of Italian marble, I began to understand the extent of the riches involved and it made me queasy.

Many people loathe Las Vegas. It is a reckless, heedless city. It stands for all the wrong things. One day this city will run out of water—the one thing it does not have a surfeit of—and nature will be the big winner.

The mountains are out there waiting.

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First, Do No Harm

Memory. It’s a tricky thing. I’m not talking so much about our short-term memories: where are my keys? what did I come in this room for? I’m referring to long-term recollections, those shape-shifting phantoms that cannot be validated. When I get together with my sisters, we will inevitably discuss an event from our past, each of us spackling in what we remember until a revised sketch emerges. Our memories of these episodes are often incompatible, which should no longer surprise us, but does. At last, reluctantly, we allow these collaborative versions, figuring the truth is in there somewhere.

In the beginning of her book CAT’S EYE, Margaret Atwood compares time to “…a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of the other. You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that…”  What a perfect description of memory: a still, fecund pond with murky green water. In near constant succession, images float into view, displacing those around them before sinking back down. Because none of us sees the world the same way, my pictures do not look like your pictures, and what is real for me is not real for you. Each one of us is walking around with a cache of fluid memories from which we derive our identity. Who we are is what we remember.

It’s a flimsy arrangement for sure, and little wonder so many of us flock to therapy, desperate for clues to ourselves. The blurred, random images that represent our lives are not sufficient; we want verification, confirmation, something more solid to stand on than the squishy bottom of a pond. Surely a trained professional knows more about us than we know, can tell us what is wrong with our pictures and lead us out of the mire.

I recently watched a video about the fragility of our minds and how easily our memories can be corrupted, either by natural causes, like stress and aging, or by the intervention of others, specifically therapists. In some cases, I can see the value of dislodging troubling memories; indeed we probably all have painful memories we wish we could break free of. Good therapists are born healers, and I have talked to several people who are endlessly grateful for the treatment they received. Other folks have told me that therapy did not help them at all, and some even regret their sessions, claiming that therapy only made them feel worse. One woman told me she felt lost afterward, unrecognizable to others and a stranger to herself.

Our ability to remember is what enables us to learn: we need our memories to keep us alive and comforted, and to remind us where we are in this world. There are many therapists out there. The best ones, aware of their extraordinary responsibility, proceed with caution and compassion.

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Unconditional Love

The royal baby has arrived!

Imagine being venerated by multitudes from birth, before birth, based solely on bloodline. On loan to his parents, Prince George of Cambridge belongs to Britain.

Nevermind whether he will want to be a monarch, or if he is suited for such a life, this baby is third in line for the throne and a king he will be. Unless of course he commits some royal blasphemy. Then again, Charles married a divorcee, so maybe the monarchy is loosening up.

Most Americans are tolerant of the pomp that attends these royal milestones. Some may criticize the inequities of a class-structured society; some may condemn the patriarchal policies; others may object to the phenomenal wealth and privilege enjoyed by a group of people who are only nominally in charge. But who would deny Queen Elizabeth’s dedication and probity? Who would discount her decades of unstinting service, or her belief in the importance of her destiny?

I think we may be a little jealous of that idealism, that unbreakable faith. Whether we believe in The Queen’s mission or not, she does, and in so doing, she gives the British people something to believe in, a standard to live by, a notion that some things are worth keeping.

Prince George will be swaddled in adoration and courtesy. His upbringing will be a collaborative effort, a painstaking labor of love. He will be groomed for excellence in the hope that one day he will be a man fit to be king.

I’m not sure I’d elect this noble life for myself—the security measures required, the lack of privacy—but there is something to be said for being the object of high expectation. What would the rest of us accomplish with that much encouragement? If we were told each day how fine we were, what kind of people might we be?

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