nakedjen

BreastFest 2007!

Speaking of Breasts....we're having a little festival in Santa Cruz and we'd be delighted if you decided to come and join us.  We promise there will be lots of breasts and lots of fun!

I really hope I'll see all of you there!

Naked Vegetarian

Alicia Silverstone’s Sexy Veggie PSA
Order a FREE vegetarian starter kit at GoVeg.com

Now that's a naked vegetarian.  I wish I could tell you all that being a vegetarian makes me look like that, too!  However, truthfully, I'm not even a vegetarian.  I eat sushi!  People who eat sushi are not vegetarians!  Not by a long shot.  I used to be a very strict vegan, at one time in my life.  It was during that time in my life, that I came up for the recipe for Clyde's Cookies, among other things, but I will honestly say that even when I was the strict vegan, my naked body NEVER looked like Alicia Silverstone's.  No way.  No how. 

The folks at PETA say that this advertisement is going to be run on regular broadcast television.  As a PSA.  And the first target market is Houston, Texas.  Because Houston is one of our nation's fattest cities. 

I'm just wondering how many people in Houston will be calling their local television stations to complain about the Naked girl emerging from the swimming pool that caused them to choke on their BBQ beef ribs and gravy? 

It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out in our new America.  Can we handle a naked Vegetarian on our televisions?  I guess we're going to find out. 

Care for some Breast Milk with That?

I am not a breast-feeding mama.  Buddha and Stella are able to manage just fine without needing to breast feed these days, but we all know that if they did need to I'm just the kind of dog mama that would probably figure out a way to breast feed them.

I'm not trying to be funny, actually.  I am a doula.  And I always encourage my new mamas to breast feed their kids.  I do believe that breast milk is one of nature's best inventions and if you are able to breast feed your baby, you should.  Of course some mamas are not able to do that and I completely respect those mamas, too.  We all make the choices that we have to make in this life, including the ones involving our offspring and the very best care and feeding of them.

If you are a mama that has chosen to breast feed your child, however, I do believe that you should be able to do it whenever your child is hungry.  Not when it is convenient for those around you.  I am not one of these people that believes that there is an appropriate place for breast feeding a baby.  Oh no.  I am one of those folks who believes that breast feeding your child is a loving act of nourishment and it is none of my business to tell you how to do it or where to do it or when to do it. 

If you need to feed your child in Applebees, go right ahead.  I'm not going to stare at your nipples or your naked breasts while you do.  If you want to feed your hungry child on the airplane while you're flying to Hawaii, be my guest.  I promise to look you in the eye while I'm chatting with you and not stare at your chest.  If your child is hungry while you're in the audience of the Bill Maher show, I sure hope you take the opportunity to feed your child right then and there at that very moment. 

Come on, people.  Breast feeding doesn't need to be a political or polarizing event.  Breast feeding is a beautiful fact of life.  All life.  And as long as we continue to choose to populate this planet, we should accept that breasts will provide the perfect food for our babies. 

Proof of a Life Fully Lived

We all know that I have long maintained that a naked body is a beautiful body.  That there is absolutely nothing wrong with being naked.  That when we're naked, we're truly loving our selves. 

I've also maintained here on Nakedjen that a naked body doesn't have to be about sex.  It can be sensual, it can be sexual, yes.  But it does not have to be.  Your naked body can just be a true representation of who you are.  Bare to the world, freckles, roly poly stomachs, flabby thighs and all.  At least in my case, that is.  Your body may not have freckles, a roly poly stomach or flabby thighs.  Whatever your naked body does have, I'm sure it is absolutely beautiful, too.  That's the thing about naked bodies.  They're all unique and they're all beautiful.  Just because they are.

I was so happy to find this article on Salon today. 

Levinson says that because "the Web for the last 10 years has made more nudity available," the culture is (finally) coming to recognize that it isn't a mortal sin to take your clothes off when there are cameras around. "We as a society are finally growing up and it's a healthy thing," Levinson says.

Everyone's going to have one. You may even have one now. And it'll get out onto the Web. It may even have leaked already. And in time, whether the photos are of a teen star or a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States (John Roberts, I'm talking to you!), we'll come to recognize such images as being nothing more than proof of a life fully lived.

I encourage all of you readers of Nakedjen to go and read it.  Yes, it is preaching to the choir.  But you know, thoughts like these actually give me hope about our future.

I've always maintained that if we can learn to truly embrace and love our naked bodies for what they are...just beautiful examples of nature...then we'll possibly arrive at a better understanding of one another.  Clothes do not make the man or woman or child.  It's what is in our hearts and minds and souls that counts.  And our naked bodies are merely beautiful vessels for those hearts and minds and souls. 

When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Naked

Happy Naked Friday. 

The Best Defense

greetings from whole foods in cupertino. i'm using their wireless. and eating a lunch they made for me. and enjoying their patio. all good things. i had acupuncture this afternoon and am meeting some women over here for dinner, so i'm basically killing time.

this morning i trained with holly for the marathon. 8 miles! go me. har! but it was the perfect day in santa cruz for training. and holly said that she'll do the big sur marathon with me in april. so once i'm finished with nike in october, i'll keep training with her and we'll do big sur together in april. i like that because then i won't just become the sloth eating bon bons on the couch, you know?

had a lovely evening with dearsweetdave last night. we enjoyed vegan (yeah vegans!) organic ravioli and salad (well, i had a salad...dearsweetdave in his infinite wisdom had cereal.  cereal and ravioli is most certainly a gourmet combination.  just ask any of those fancy chefs on the food network!) and then we watched an episode of weeds. we really do love that show. and we talked.

sleeping wasn't so great because stella threw up the entire contents of her stomach (and it was STINKY) at 4:00 a.m. and dearsweetdave was busy having battles with mosquitoes all night. he is just plagued by mosquitoes. they do not bite me. i'm immune. but poor dave. he's a mosquito magnet. and i'm often awakened to the sight of a naked man standing over my head with his balls hanging quite close to my face swinging wildly like a maniac with a rolled up copy of last week's rolling stone magazine (because, you know, that is the BEST defense against a mosquito) and cursing all while trying to not actually STEP on my head. i try to feign that i'm still asleep, but come on. i challenge any of you to actually stay asleep when you've got naked hairy balls swinging above your head with a naked man attached who is cursing and has turned on every single light in your bedroom and aimed them at the ceiling like kliegel spotlights and the rolled up copy of rolling stone is going thwap thwap thwap on the wall along with the "fuck, missed it" mutterings under his breath.

you just can't really sleep through that.  no matter how hard you try.  trust me.

Planes from the Skies

Six years ago this morning I was training for a marathon.  I woke up before dawn in Maui and decided that I would go for a veryveryvery long run before DearSweetDave woke up and get my training for the day out of the way.  We had arrived in Maui the day before and we were staying in my favorite house in Maui Meadows.  Our trip had gotten off to what we thought was a rather auspicious start because when we arrived there was no water at the house, or in the entire neighborhood it turned out, and while we could still "stay" there, we couldn't use any of the facilities. 

While I was on my long run that took me down through Maui Meadows and into Wailea and then along the coast highway and into Kihei, I was slowly picking up snips and pieces of people's televisions and radio broadcasts.  I found it slightly odd that at this very early hour of the morning, before dawn in Maui, there were already folks who were watching television and who were listening to their radios but then there are many folks in Maui who work in the service industry and I at first was thinking that these were the folks who were getting up to go make the tourists their breakfast.

The longer and further I ran, however, the more persistent the broadcasts from televisions and radios became and soon the snipets I was hearing started to weave together.  A plane had been hijacked.  Another plane had crashed.  All air traffic was grounded.  Planes were falling from the skies.  There was a state of emergency.  The President had been informed.  As I kept running, I was trying to wrap my head around what all of this could mean.  A plane had crashed?  A plane had been hijacked?  A state of emergency?  I honestly wondered to myself what madman in what foreign country had decided that he had just had "enough" of America and had commandeered an international flight and was making some sort of outrageous demands?

When I got home, I woke DearSweetDave up and told him that I thought perhaps a plane had crashed.  I also said that while we had agreed that we wouldn't be watching television while we were on vacation, that I thought we should turn on the television at the house just to see what had happened because whatever it was it sounded like it was pretty serious.

We walked into the living room.  We turned on the television.  The picture flickered into focus.  The Twin Towers fell to the ground.  I immediately burst into tears.  My brother, John, worked in those buildings.  On one of the top floors.  Surely he was now in the rubble.

Without knowing any more information about hijacked planes, about the plane that had hit the Pentagon, about Washington, D.C. being a target, about the whole big sordid plan, I turned to DearSweetDave and we both said, almost simultaneously, "George Bush did this." 

Six years have passed.  A lot of conspiracy theories are still being hypothesized about the truth of the events of September 11, 2001.  There are many among us who refuse to believe that our own government could have possibly been complicit in such heinous crimes against our own citizens.  And then there are others among us who believe that our own government is absolutely capable of exactly these crimes and worse.

I actually do not know what the truth is and in all honesty I have not gone seeking it.  I will say this.  I love my country.  But I fear my government.  I do not trust the people that we have in power or the people that they have empowered in my name.  I know that change begins with me.  So I will continue to live my life in truth, in honesty and most importantly, in love.  And I will encourage all of you to do the same.

Always in love. 

Say It Now, With Feeling

I haven't gone missing, but I have gone quiet.  I apologize for that.  There are actually quite a few blog posts brewing in my head.  Lots of things I really want to write about and chat about and say.  Things I think are important and timely.  Things that perhaps won't be so important and timely once I actually do write about them, but I will probably write about them anyway.  Because I'm me.  And I tend to just ramble on and on and on, you know?  Talking about the things that matter...to me.

However, the past few days, I've been a bit emotional about a homicide  that took place here in Santa Cruz late Monday night or early Tuesday morning (hard to discern when, exactly).  I am not close friends with this family.  In fact, truthfully, I wouldn't even say I "know" them.  However, their house is right on the corner facing the gulch where I walk Buddha and Stella every day.  Sometimes twice a day.  And Buddha and Stella have often run through their yard, knocked over their plants, and even jumped on their teenagers.

And...on Monday afternoon, when I arrived to walk Buddha and Stella, Morgana was outside watering her beautiful sunflowers.  Buddha wandered over to her to say "hello" as he so often does.  She commented to me that his head was looking "much better" and we talked about how it had turned out to be a foxtail that had caused all that trouble.  She gave Buddha a good rub on his head and scratched his ears.  And told me to enjoy the rest of my "holiday". 

And then, on Tuesday morning, when I arrived at the same spot to walk the dogs, there were police cars and an ambulance and I learned that she was dead.

Life is short.  We just never know which of our own days or the days of our loved ones might be the last.  If you're thinking about calling your brother to say your forgive him for eating that last piece of your birthday cake when you were seven or telling your neighbor thank you for the hot and sour soup she made for you when you were feeling poorly, I will just encourage you to do it. 

Life's too short to wait until it's convenient to say the things that you're really thinking.