In one part of my dream night before last, I was driving in a nice, leafy urban neighborhood. Suddenly there was a loud explosion not too far in front of me, and I realized it was a car exploding. The explosion was very dramatic, with lots of dark gray smoke, and it completely vaporized the car--no subsequent burning car, practically no debris, nothing. There was an object where the car had been, and I realized with some alarm that it was the woman who had been driving. She was in remarkably good shape seeing that the car had been destroyed, but it was obvious she was seriously injured (although there wasn't really any blood; there hardly ever seems to be any blood in even my most violent dreams). Several passersby ran up to her, and I guess I did too, because I remember looking down at her feebly moving her arms and whispering, "help me!". A couple of proactive types were hovering over her, so I figured the most useful thing for me to do would be to call 911 (not being a proactive type myself). I went back to the car and started dialing, but my hands were shaking so badly that it took about 10 tries to get to the operator; each time I would either mis-dial, accidentally hang up, accidentally press the button for the internet browser, etc. It was very alarming, a new twist on that dream where you can't lock the door against the pursuing Bad Guy.
The next thing I remember, I was in an unfamiliar house where I lived (temporarily, I think) with my parents in addition to my husband. Things are a little hazy here, but there was some yelling between me and my mother and/or my husband--I can't remember who was yelling at who, although I think I was giving as good as I got.
Apart from fighting with family members, I was making some kind of concoction of onions, corn, canned beans, and some other miscellaneous ingredients. I went off to take a break while it was cooking, and ended up watching the ultimate chick flick on a tv in a spare room. Diane Lane, or a reasonable facsimile, was the female lead, and Viggo Mortensen (or, again, a doppelganger) was the male lead. She was falling into his arms (of course), and there was some of that requisite chick-flick music-less slow-dancing around the room. She got very emotional and started talking about how lonely she had been, and he said something totally unrealistic (but very chick-flicky) about how now she would never have to be lonely again because he was there to love her. I was simultaneously enthralled and disgusted, and also a little disgusted at myself because I realized that I wouldn't, in theory, at all mind a world in which people said that kind of thing to me (Viggo's line, not Diane's); although I could do without the slow-dancing-around-the-room stuff.
After the chick flick, I saw an iphone-like cell phone lying around and started messing with it (I think it belonged to my husband, who was off at work). There was an animated movie on it, and I guess I figured it would be a palate-cleanser after the extreme romance-novel thing I'd just watched. The drawing style was interesting, very stylized and a little more hand-drawn and raw than typical anime style. I don't remember the story line at all, but Calvin and Hobbes made a cameo appearance.
Showing posts with label gender stereotyping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gender stereotyping. Show all posts
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
chubby and manly?
I hate to displace the great dream below, but if I don't I'm going to forget this. I've had three depressing low-self-esteem dreams lately, three nights in a row.
1.
All I really remember from this one is suddenly realizing that my posterior was WAY bigger than I had been thinking it was. This didn't really fundamentally shake my self-concept, it was just really weird and very surprising. My first thought was, "well, I guess I didn't need to be worried about having a lack in that area", and my second thought was, "oh, I guess I should start exercising more". I also wondered what other aspects of my self-image were totally inaccurate.
2.
This was the worst one, and I was discombobulated by this one for a while after waking. It was in the course of a much longer dream in which I was in Italy on an extended vacation with my parents, sister, and grandmother. We were staying in a huge rented villa. It was a very old building with a lot of weird rooms and strange layouts resulting from hundreds of years of add-ons and modifications. There was also some very unattractive carpeting and paint (think a church basement/fellowship hall with carpet that was cheap thirty years ago).
At some point I was attending a wedding in a nearby church. I don't know who this wedding was for, but the curious thing is how I was dressed. Normally in a dream like this I would have gone through an agonizing search through a weird assortment of very detailed clothes, but I don't remember a getting-dressed sequence in this one. I do remember what I was wearing: an oversized sports jersey (hockey?) tucked into a rose-colored below-the-knee early 90s pleated skirt and topped off with a squarish navy blue cardigan (??!). I had my hair straight and parted on the side, and I remember being satisfied with how I looked [although, at the same time, my always-awake editorial review board was strenuously objecting to the outfit].
I entered the church and wasn't sure which side I should sit on, not recognizing any of the guests. I had just chosen a spot when an older man stationed on the opposite side of the church said--loudly--"young man!" I looked around to see who he was addressing, and he repeated it. Somehow I realized that I was the "young man" in question, and I tried to make him understand that I was not a young man. He was not to be dissuaded, and getting more and more worked up. He said, "young man, don't argue with me!", and went on to bluster that my lack of a tie was inappropriate and that I was going to have to leave until I could produce a tie.
Needless to say, it was extremely humiliating and destabilizing. I think everyone else there pretended that nothing was happening as I beat my retreat.
Later on in the dream, I had an exchange with Lindsay Lohan, who seemed very depressed and a little needy. We talked about how cruel the "entertainment media" was to publish pictures of "Stars without Makeup" and dissect celebrities' appearances when they didn't look any worse than your average person on the street. I got tired of the conversation pretty quickly, but I felt bad for her and couldn't figure out how to extricate myself without hurting her feelings.
3.
The third dream involved a couple of my real-life friends. We were eating in a restaurant somewhere, and one of them (who in real life is the most tactful person you could ever hope to meet) commented on how much I was eating. She said, "yes, I've always been amazed at how much you can eat and how often. I could never eat that much. I guess that's why you're chubby with a belly." This was said with a perfectly straight face, as if it couldn't possibly be offensive to me, so I figured I had better respond in kind, as if it were just a normal discussion about anything else.
1.
All I really remember from this one is suddenly realizing that my posterior was WAY bigger than I had been thinking it was. This didn't really fundamentally shake my self-concept, it was just really weird and very surprising. My first thought was, "well, I guess I didn't need to be worried about having a lack in that area", and my second thought was, "oh, I guess I should start exercising more". I also wondered what other aspects of my self-image were totally inaccurate.
2.
This was the worst one, and I was discombobulated by this one for a while after waking. It was in the course of a much longer dream in which I was in Italy on an extended vacation with my parents, sister, and grandmother. We were staying in a huge rented villa. It was a very old building with a lot of weird rooms and strange layouts resulting from hundreds of years of add-ons and modifications. There was also some very unattractive carpeting and paint (think a church basement/fellowship hall with carpet that was cheap thirty years ago).
At some point I was attending a wedding in a nearby church. I don't know who this wedding was for, but the curious thing is how I was dressed. Normally in a dream like this I would have gone through an agonizing search through a weird assortment of very detailed clothes, but I don't remember a getting-dressed sequence in this one. I do remember what I was wearing: an oversized sports jersey (hockey?) tucked into a rose-colored below-the-knee early 90s pleated skirt and topped off with a squarish navy blue cardigan (??!). I had my hair straight and parted on the side, and I remember being satisfied with how I looked [although, at the same time, my always-awake editorial review board was strenuously objecting to the outfit].
I entered the church and wasn't sure which side I should sit on, not recognizing any of the guests. I had just chosen a spot when an older man stationed on the opposite side of the church said--loudly--"young man!" I looked around to see who he was addressing, and he repeated it. Somehow I realized that I was the "young man" in question, and I tried to make him understand that I was not a young man. He was not to be dissuaded, and getting more and more worked up. He said, "young man, don't argue with me!", and went on to bluster that my lack of a tie was inappropriate and that I was going to have to leave until I could produce a tie.
Needless to say, it was extremely humiliating and destabilizing. I think everyone else there pretended that nothing was happening as I beat my retreat.
Later on in the dream, I had an exchange with Lindsay Lohan, who seemed very depressed and a little needy. We talked about how cruel the "entertainment media" was to publish pictures of "Stars without Makeup" and dissect celebrities' appearances when they didn't look any worse than your average person on the street. I got tired of the conversation pretty quickly, but I felt bad for her and couldn't figure out how to extricate myself without hurting her feelings.
3.
The third dream involved a couple of my real-life friends. We were eating in a restaurant somewhere, and one of them (who in real life is the most tactful person you could ever hope to meet) commented on how much I was eating. She said, "yes, I've always been amazed at how much you can eat and how often. I could never eat that much. I guess that's why you're chubby with a belly." This was said with a perfectly straight face, as if it couldn't possibly be offensive to me, so I figured I had better respond in kind, as if it were just a normal discussion about anything else.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Totalitarian States and gender-stereotyped bathrooms
I had a rather alarming dream last week. I was carrying around a couple of grocery bags of stuff, at least some of which needed to be gotten rid of. I'm not sure whether I was planning on just dropping it off somewhere or whether I was going to give it to someone. I needed to stop in at the post office, which is where things got complicated.
In this dream, post offices were highly guarded, secure locations--I think they had started offering additional services, along the line of the passport services they already offer but necessitating tighter security (also, this dream was rather Totalitarian State, as you'll see later on). I was at a back service entrance, trying to figure out what to do with my bags of rejects. I couldn't bring them inside with me because of security issues, but I didn't even see a trash bin to dump them in. There was a pile of discarded stuff (a mix of outdated office equipment and just plain trash), but no official trash bin, so I guessed that it would be okay to leave them there while I went inside (and maybe forever, I thought, although I felt guilty about dumping them there sans trash bin).
There was a security guard involved in getting into the service entrance, too, and at first he seemed willing to let me in. Then things got bad really quickly. I don't know if he had actually seen me leave my bags with the pile of trash or if he just suspected, but he got very stern and started wielding the Long Arm of the Law and became very officious in his close inspection of my ID. The really alarming thing was that I realized that it wasn't my ID--it had been switched, planted, I suspected, by him or by an associate.
I don't remember the details, but there was some sort of knocking-about of a relatively mild nature but still very scary. I tried to protest that a false ID had been planted on me, but of course that only excited more suspicion and anger. Finally another security guard who had come from another area and who apparently had more authority intervened and let me go. The whole thing was very alarming, and I left as quickly as I could, still anxious about the items I had left by the door.
Then I was with my husband, somewhere in Europe. The location was ostensibly Geneva [I was talking about how pretty it was and how I missed it], although it didn't really look like the actual city, but more like how I imagine Stockholm or Copenhagen. There were a lot of 18th- and 19th-century buildings, some of them pink or yellow, and open stone plazas, mostly empty of people. It was really beautiful, and the fall atmosphere and cloudy day added to the appeal.
As we were standing in a plaza deciding what to do next, I realized that I should take advantage of the lull in activity to find a bathroom. We were next to some sort of museum, and I thought that would be a good option. I started looking around, but only found the men's restroom, and I decided to use it for the sake of speed (I was worried about my husband getting annoyed because I was taking too long, because he had already protested my preemptive and possibly unnecessary trip). It was extremely dirty, though, and there were two or three menacing looking young hoods in hoodies (!), which made me a little nervous. I decided to take my dog inside as a deterrent, hoping that she wouldn't betray her non-mean nature by being friendly to them [this is my real-life dog, who, being a pit bull with cropped ears, looks very mean at first]. Then I tried to find a suitable toilet, but they were all either clogged with paper or the seats were all dirty and wet. I wasted quite a bit of time trying to decide the best candidate for cleaning up a little, but finally gave up in despair, they were all so awful. I decided that it might be more time-efficient to just look a little harder for the women's restroom.
I found the women's restroom just around the corner, and it was completely different. It was the cleanest bathroom I'd ever seen, everything spotless and deodorized. It was all decorated with purple walls and gold trim, everything matching everything else, and the walls were covered with black-and-white pictures of Hollywood starlets from the 30s and 40s. I thought that was a weird touch. Apparently it was maintained by some kind of women's association, because there were signs (with a corny jingle that I regrettably can't remember) reminding members to clean up, and visitors of the members' hard work on their behalf.
I had happily done my business and come out of the stall when I saw that a small Italian woman had come in (how I knew she was Italian, I don't know). I was nervous that she would be alarmed by my dog and make a big scene about me having her with me, but instead she said, "Oh! A pit bull! I love pit bulls!" and started going on about the merits of pit bulls.
In this dream, post offices were highly guarded, secure locations--I think they had started offering additional services, along the line of the passport services they already offer but necessitating tighter security (also, this dream was rather Totalitarian State, as you'll see later on). I was at a back service entrance, trying to figure out what to do with my bags of rejects. I couldn't bring them inside with me because of security issues, but I didn't even see a trash bin to dump them in. There was a pile of discarded stuff (a mix of outdated office equipment and just plain trash), but no official trash bin, so I guessed that it would be okay to leave them there while I went inside (and maybe forever, I thought, although I felt guilty about dumping them there sans trash bin).
There was a security guard involved in getting into the service entrance, too, and at first he seemed willing to let me in. Then things got bad really quickly. I don't know if he had actually seen me leave my bags with the pile of trash or if he just suspected, but he got very stern and started wielding the Long Arm of the Law and became very officious in his close inspection of my ID. The really alarming thing was that I realized that it wasn't my ID--it had been switched, planted, I suspected, by him or by an associate.
I don't remember the details, but there was some sort of knocking-about of a relatively mild nature but still very scary. I tried to protest that a false ID had been planted on me, but of course that only excited more suspicion and anger. Finally another security guard who had come from another area and who apparently had more authority intervened and let me go. The whole thing was very alarming, and I left as quickly as I could, still anxious about the items I had left by the door.
Then I was with my husband, somewhere in Europe. The location was ostensibly Geneva [I was talking about how pretty it was and how I missed it], although it didn't really look like the actual city, but more like how I imagine Stockholm or Copenhagen. There were a lot of 18th- and 19th-century buildings, some of them pink or yellow, and open stone plazas, mostly empty of people. It was really beautiful, and the fall atmosphere and cloudy day added to the appeal.
As we were standing in a plaza deciding what to do next, I realized that I should take advantage of the lull in activity to find a bathroom. We were next to some sort of museum, and I thought that would be a good option. I started looking around, but only found the men's restroom, and I decided to use it for the sake of speed (I was worried about my husband getting annoyed because I was taking too long, because he had already protested my preemptive and possibly unnecessary trip). It was extremely dirty, though, and there were two or three menacing looking young hoods in hoodies (!), which made me a little nervous. I decided to take my dog inside as a deterrent, hoping that she wouldn't betray her non-mean nature by being friendly to them [this is my real-life dog, who, being a pit bull with cropped ears, looks very mean at first]. Then I tried to find a suitable toilet, but they were all either clogged with paper or the seats were all dirty and wet. I wasted quite a bit of time trying to decide the best candidate for cleaning up a little, but finally gave up in despair, they were all so awful. I decided that it might be more time-efficient to just look a little harder for the women's restroom.
I found the women's restroom just around the corner, and it was completely different. It was the cleanest bathroom I'd ever seen, everything spotless and deodorized. It was all decorated with purple walls and gold trim, everything matching everything else, and the walls were covered with black-and-white pictures of Hollywood starlets from the 30s and 40s. I thought that was a weird touch. Apparently it was maintained by some kind of women's association, because there were signs (with a corny jingle that I regrettably can't remember) reminding members to clean up, and visitors of the members' hard work on their behalf.
I had happily done my business and come out of the stall when I saw that a small Italian woman had come in (how I knew she was Italian, I don't know). I was nervous that she would be alarmed by my dog and make a big scene about me having her with me, but instead she said, "Oh! A pit bull! I love pit bulls!" and started going on about the merits of pit bulls.
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