Plastic Fantastic!
There was a scene in this week's "Tell me You Love Me", my favorite feel-bad TV show of the season, where the married-with-kids-but-not-having-sex-with-her-husband blonde is frantically pulling plastic containers out of her kitchen cupboards and throwing them into a plastic garbage bag. She's furious because she's just learned that these plastic containers are one of the main culprits of the environmentally-triggered estrogens which have caused her daughter to begin menstruating at the unnervingly young age of ten.
What a great scene. TV is often just radio with pictures. (Then again radio is often email with sound.) Not one word was spoken, yet she clearly tells the plastic containers she hates them while she is telling herself that she is a bad mother.
Maybe it resonated with me because just the day before I watched the episode I'd done exactly the same thing. Well, not exactly the same thing, I also had sex with my husband. And I did throw the containers directly into the recycling bin. (Surely she must have a bag from Target or WalMart or wherever it is she bought them in the first place.)
The scene pulsated energetically because it brought the personal and political so close together, where they belong, rather than leaving them where they are usually found in the media, on opposite sides of the bed, not making love or talking or even knowing what each other might possibly be thinking.
Plus the containers are, of course, symbols of womanhood. Bowls, vessels, chalices: woman. As she throws away these contaminating/contaminated containers, she's throwing herself away. Throwing away her daughter's contaminated body. Starting over.
As usual it's not as easy as all that. After the doctor's appointment where she and her sexually distant husband learn of these estrogens the couple laps up ice cream, i.e. milk. A food which is made to bind infant to mother. A food which is used in American culture to bind us to consumerism. And which is, healthfully speaking, probably on par with the plastic containers. (Yeah yeah, calcium. Get it elsewhere. Say dark leafy greens?)
Maybe in the next episode they'll realize that the estrogens may be partially responsible for the husband's lack of sex drive. Or maybe that won't happen for another year. Or ten.
We become our new selves in fits and starts.
One cabinet at a time.
One purchase at a time.
One thought at a time.
And then all at once. A giant leap. If we're lucky!
Follow Beth Lapides on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bethlapides
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Maybe they will add the effects of (BGH) Bovine Growth Hormones from meat on people in that show.
BGH effect fish down stream in some of the same manner as the hormone from plastics except it cause males to mature slower and have smaller testicles. The female still go into egg laying cycles too early before they are fully grown and their eggs are malformed.
The complete research on BGH has never been released to the public
You might be right about the cause of no sex albeit his obvious love and refusal to even admit, much less discuss a problem. But I think his problem is he's gay and totally in denial because he loves her and his kids. The reason I think this is because he actually had a scene where he masturbates and has an orgasm. If he can do that he can have sex, so getting an erection is not his problem.
I am surprized you got this on the web. The plastic indusrty got the show about plastic and the estrogen pull from PBS with threats of lawsuit.
Be ready.
MOST OF ALL NEVER MICROWAVE ANY FOOD IN PLASTIC CONTAINERS OR BOWLS.
Beth, that was great! Thank You!
I feel like this show has gotten a raw deal because all that is ever talked about is THE SEX THE SEX OMG THE REAL SEX!!!!!
The depth of emotions in these characters and their issues is really intense.
I, too, thought of so many analogies as "Katie" went through her cleansing process. She is one of my favorite characters. She represents SO MANY women.
I had not thought about the Estrogen Levels impacting on the asexuality of her husband.
After a couple of episodes it's understandable that there's what appears to be real and graphic sex. The issues these couples are dealing with are tied irrevobly to their sex lives. One couple has the woman unable to deal with the thought of her fiancee ever possibly having sex with anyone else and the ugliness of out of control jealousy where he's already guilty even though he hasn't done a thing.
The other couple trying to have a baby is pretty obvious. The wife's inability to get pregnant is what's tearing them appart. Obviously sexual intimacy is an issue in the problem.
The third couple is happy in every way, except for the tense unspoken sexual aspect hanging in the air between them.
Yay! Beth is blogging here again. You should blog every day....twi
Ok, your tirade against plastic I can understand, but your tirade against milk? What I sense in your post is really an underlying distrust, nay, dislike of the modern world.
Milk comes in plastic bottles. They use benzine to make plastic. This causes a chemical reaction that creates a synthic female hormone that LEACHES into food and liquids stored in plastic bottles.
This female hormone cauise problems for women, men, and children. Makes women more agressive, men more passive, and can make young girls start thier periods earlier.
So
Where's the part
Where we all stand up,
Go to the window,
Open it up and yell
All together now....
"I AM MAD AS HELL AND I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!"
Hmmmmmm?
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