Catherine Connors

It’s his birthday, and that’s lovely and I’m excited and there’ll be presents and cake and a party and all that, but all that I can think about today is death. What I mean, rather, is that when we talk about laws restricting women’s rights to reproductive freedom — that is to say, to the right to the integrity of their bodies, the right to freedom from any entity, state or otherwise, dictating what they can do with their bodies, including the cells that cluster therein and form the potential (the potential) to become lives outside of those bodies that death is something unpleasant but outside of our control, except when we’re holding firm on the death penalty, or insisting upon our right to deliver death upon anyone who threatens us or trespasses upon our property. We don’t, most of us, like to talk about what it would mean to live a truly good life or to have a truly good death

I thought about it really hard not that long ago, when I was deliberating about whether or not to color my hair pink, not because pink hair isn’t something I would ordinarily do (I have done far weirder things to my appearance than pink hair), but because I worried that I was getting too old for it. What matters most is that it — pink hair, sequins, false eyelashes, Birkenstocks, whatever — makes you feel good, because without that you aren’t going to look good. But those definitions don’t include disappearing lips, and a surplus of chin hair doesn’t make anyone feel good. It’s one thing to speak truth to the power of the beauty industrial complex and assert our own definitions of beauty; it’s quite another to feel supported in those definitions, in a world where women become invisible past a certain age.

This is partly because I believe to the very depths of my soul that there is nothing in the world that isn’t made better by books (well, stories in general, but let’s stick to books here; my film/TV/video lists are also very extensive, but I’ll come back to these), and partly because I am a recovering academic/teacher and a forever nerd, and that means that I try to put everything into either a) a lesson plan, or b) a research agenda (or, in the very best cases that fill my heart with joy, both! ) It’s such a detailed picture of the dynamics of sisterhood, girlhood and womanhood, with a cast of female characters who collectively represent a really rich tapestry of feminine experience (the influence of Pilgrim’s Progress is only very thinly veiled — each character represents a feminine characteristic. And I’ll make note of my very favorite fairy tale: The Snow Queen (the story on which Frozen was very loosely based), because it’s a wonderful tale about a beautiful friendship between a girl and a boy — in which the girl saves the boy — and because contains one of my favorite lines in all of folklore: ‘“I can give her no greater power than she has already, As I said, this is only a partial list; the longer list also includes Anne of Green Gables (not just because I’m Canadian and obligated), the works of Beverly Cleary, the Nancy Drew series (with caveats), The Babysitters Club series, Persepolis, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (the whole trilogy is great, and yes, you should watch the Netflix movie), a smattering of mythology, one or two books of the Bible, and (with tongue only slightly in cheek)

It’s pushed its way into my head because my head is where I live, my head is where everything happens, my head is where things are comfortable. Sometime in the night she got down from that bed and went to Emilia’s room, and in some manner or another clambered onto her bed, which is forgivingly low (“she was here for a long time, Mommy,” Emilia said, surprised. I came to the desert after Lily died because I could; I came because I couldn’t after Tanner died, after dreams changed, after decisions were made. I came because Lily’s death created a gash on the landscape that let the floodwaters flow freely.