Wrong Time to Try Bangs

I was watering the flowers on my front porch when he said it. It was a humid, early autumn day here in Paradise, North Cacalackey (go figure) and my hair was twisted into something resembling an "up" 'do. I was doing what I could to manage my new attempt at a hairstyle; I'm not sure my husband liked it.

"You know," he started, sounding unsure if he should continue. "All you need is a pair of Tiny Fey glasses, and you'd look just like..."

"DON'T SAY IT!" I shouted. My hand was raised to quiet him, like some kind of Jedi silence shield. He looked stricken, and I felt bad for my outburst. Especially since he was right. The coincidence dawned on me that morning while I was attacking my kinky locks with an over sized round brush and the hair dryer set to NUCLEAR BLAST. I didn't want to look like the newly announced Vice Presidential candidate / Governor from Alaska, but there in my bathroom, with a giant bottle of hairspray aimed at my forehead, I had to admit there was a mild resemblance.

And that's my fear: that people will think I cut my heretofore mop of tentacled ringlets to better resemble this "thrilla from Wasila". I didn't. I wanted to look as cute and stylish as the other Moms in the preschool line. I did not manipulate my head as some kind of homage to Sarah Palin. I want that on the record.

Whether or not I support her candidacy is immaterial. You need only look at the back of my car or the front of my house to know which lever I pulled last week in early voting. What fries my cankles are the assumptions people -- the media, the major parties, the non-thinking public -- make about women voters. We are not a monolithic demographic, bound by our private parts to vote in unison. We care about different issues. We espouse a wide variety of values. I have brilliant, impassioned female friends who support the Obama/Biden ticket; I have smart, thoughtful women pals who plan to vote McCain/Palin.

According to the latest census, women comprise the majority (50.7%) of the U.S. population. And still, a recent Newsweek cover demeans us by proposing to know, "What Women Want". Former publisher Katharine Graham would roll over in her grave if she saw how they made look like it was scribbled in lipstick. In trying to figure "us" out, the pundits and the pollsters and magazine editors belittle over half of the populace. Nicely done. I'm pretty sure that's what Alice Paul and Lucy Burns had in mind when they went on a hunger strike in prison to win women the right to vote.

I may be a woman, but even I can't predict to know what WE want. Just like the penised-population, our rank-and-file includes hunters and gun abolitionists, fiscal conservatives and social liberals, readers, thinkers, doers, and others who would rather not. I do, however, know a few things that we do not want: we do not want to sit down in the middle of the night and learn that the toilet seat was left in the "UP" position by the last user; we don't want to worry about our preschool / elementary-aged / high schooler the minute they leave the house, but we will, and we do; and we don't want news analysts and media titans to waste air time and tree pulp espousing thoughtless theories aimed at decoding a massive demographic based on nothing more than a shared physiology. Unless, of course, it means less air time for Sean Hannity.

Now I need to go and prepare my Halloween costume. Where did I put those Tina Fey glasses?