Love Takes Wing And Craps On Us

I wrote a few weeks ago about my problems as a demographic nightmare. Today I got a particularly egregious reminder of this fact. I ordered shirts, and received a nightmare of my own. It was an ad for a little doll, complete with porcelain horror and disgust. Witness the photo.

To begin with, I have to explain my problem with clothes. I've always had trouble finding clothes to wear. I repeatedly have wished for a national uniform policy, just to save me the worry of selecting pants and shirts. I solved this by just creating my own uniform. It comes in two varieties, a home and away version. The home version is black t-shirt, black dickies, and trail running shoes. I'm partial to Keen. It's simple enough, and it gets the job done without drawing undue attention to myself. The away version is slightly showier, to impress the crowds. It's a black button down, black dickies, and boots. Cowboy or motorcycle, depending on my mood.

It's worked for me for a few years, except I've never been totally comfortable with the button down shirts. I finally found the perfect shirt, all black, vaguely cowboy style. Meaning it's tailored in, and shows a vaguely more masculine shape than my doughiness would suggest. I'm muscular AND fat, you see, not just fat*. The company apparently caters to people looking to recapture a mythical west of happy and lovely native women, eager for the love of doughy white guys**.

It made me concerned about what mailing lists I got myself on. Am I going to get mailings from people selling American flag macrame? Is it the other end of the spectrum, and am I doomed to get emails from shamanic healers selling medicine bags? Which one is worse?

Either way it goes, this kind of bland and horrible whitewashing of history is awful to behold. It's bad enough we've stolen land and marginalized the population; now we add insult to injury. Unless this is a casino style thing, and the people are getting new cars and cashing our checks, laughing all the way. If there is a native woman somewhere profiting off of this, then, hey good on you. But is the punishment really fitting? Do even we, heirs to murderers and thieves, deserve "Love takes wing?"

Maybe. But it's a low blow. I'd rather they take back the midwest***. Much rather.


*You don't have to believe that.
**Not like me. I'm not that doughy. Seriously.
***Talk about doughy.