It’s a national issue, an issue of rich and powerful men, an issue of confused feminism. It’s an issue of normalizing the sexualization of young girls. It’s the infantilization of girls on the brink of adulthood.
A playlist of breathy baby women is playing in the background while my husband works out.
I ask if he’s playing this insipid music on purpose. Every song sounds the same.
He says it’s relaxing.
Why anyone wants to relax when they’re exercising is beyond me and another story but I wonder why something so vapid is relaxing to a grown man?
Perhaps a non-threatening female voice, the voice of civilization, is an antidote to the hours of negative news, facebook blather and youtube talk shows that will balance out this early morning effort towards good health.
Is this some reincarnation of the Marilyn Monroe era of soft speaking breathy starlets who never raised their voices but gently subjugated themselves to the powerful men they played against?
Now there’s something more insidious married to that display of deference in the music industry.
Its blatant sexuality is not the least bit sexy though it’s provocative.
On one end and in the beginning was the daring display of superstar energetic big show performers like Beyonce who popularized the pelvic thrust and gyrating generous asses beyond the strip club.
Maybe the thought behind that was that they were in charge, in control of their bodies and sex and were taunting the audience with that. That was emblematic of a powerful woman, a feminist even, in their minds. I’m guessing because I don’t know any of them personally or I would absolutely ask. To me it feels like inciting rapists.
Now make way for the coming of age pop singer whose act involves a little girls pink bedroom, a bed full of teddy bears, and her in a tiny bit of lingerie which threatens to reveal all as she rolls around the bed like a budding gymnast.
This I saw on SNL and some award shows and the latest travesty was Sabrina Carpenter. Look it up.
Girls and women have sold their images to the internet to satiate men’s appetites for porn. Some might say, why not? They have the right and power to choose what they want to do with their bodies.
History reveals the tragic truth that many of them feel powerless, lost and desperate. Countless images were probably stolen or coerced. The story of the powerless being fodder for the powerful is written in the history of humanity. The victimization of the weakest is a stain that will not erase.
I wonder what some father would think if he came across his daughters’ image there.
I wonder what the father of any pretty adolescent girl would think if he himself was lost in the fantasy of sexually defiling someone like her.
I wonder what the mother of that girl would think if her husband had a taste for girls like their own.
The sexual revolution of the sixties challenged the notion of sex being tied to marriage and procreation. It was a counter culture questioning of authority and expanded views on sexual diversity.
And like most things in this country, it went too far and became something more extreme.
For some it became a judgment on the people not participating in the free love and anything between consenting adults is cool movement.
Maybe for some of those judgmental folks sex was a way to work out abuses or confusion from the past. Or maybe they were simply adventurous.
For others, performance sex or having to raise the stimulation bar wasn’t a necessary means to a fulfilling experience. They were sometimes labeled puritanical or prudish or uptight or frigid.
There were also folks who were repressed and ashamed and practicing salacious sex in secret.
I think I know which ones paved the way to an internet porn industry that’s reduced our relationships to the opposite sex to an anemic version of what intimacy might have been. I could be wrong.
Enter Jeffrey Epstein and his merry men.
Shouldn’t this be a wake-up call to the industry that shapes so many young minds?
Popular music reflects and makes an impression on popular culture.
What is popular now has crippled us with a mental health crisis.
The words of today are confusion, frustration, isolation.
We did not go from Puritans to pedophiles. It was all always there.
We have more information to understand ourselves now. Our selves have been amplified by our tastes in popular culture. Our habits have been exposed by endless news stories.
But maybe we don’t recognize ourselves at all.
Hilary
bitchin yoga 
It’s Time to Amend the First Limb of Yoga
I’m a modern yogi living in an age of ignorance enabled by a sub culture of lost boys, heralded by the designers of Project 2025, MAGA and the rise of Donald Trump.
As such, I’m considering a need for modernizing the lessons of my profession handed down from a time and place long ago and far away.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are the foundational text of yoga philosophy written around the start of the Christian Era. They include an eight fold system of discipline known as the eight limbs of yoga.
The first limb focuses on the philosophic nature of the yogi in relation to others.
The second limb is five points of self reflection
The third deals with a physical practice to strengthen the body
The fourth describes management and control of the breath for the nervous system
The fifth begins the exploration of turning the senses inward as a bridge between the outside and inner world
The sixth is focus on a single point to sharpen concentration
The seventh is a flowing meditation
The eighth marks liberation through total absorption in harmony with the divine
At the base, the first limb outlines the moral restraints and actions of social behavior that will lead to an opportunity to enjoy personal space. I think of it as keeping the drama low so the obstacles to an unencumbered life are minimal. Interaction with others is benign. The dream is to actualize a life of purpose and joy.
Three of the five constructs in this first limb of ethical guidelines are couched passively as non-doing.
Don’t harm, don’t steal or covet and don’t be greedy and hoard. Listed second under not harming comes truthfulness which is an action not just non-lying. The final construct, self restraint, is purposefully an action as well.
At the time the Sutras were written, the moral codes were meant more as a protection for the practitioner (who would likely be described today as an isolationist) than his fellow man. Truthfulness as a subset of non-violence. It makes sense that for a yogi to remain centered in her “space” truthfulness with kindness was self protection. If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything. Making enemies destroys peace of mind.
Self restraint is a willful action toward the right use of energy. Why didn’t they say non-dominating? They intended to describe it as action rather than non-action. It implies the actor has integrity rather than indifference. What a remarkable nuance to depict these tenants with a specification that describes decent human behavior with such economy. Again, this right use of energy was primarily to benefit the doer.
I present the timely introduction of a sixth tenant to the first limb of yoga. It is non-fearing and should head the list. Fear begets violence, dishonesty, stealing, greed, and erodes self restraint.
As for truth, I think it might be time to throw self protection out the window before there is no window. Indeed exhausted political pundits are finally calling lies lying instead of the cautiously described “untruths”. Being forthright requires tough love. No one ultimately benefits from softening the cruel edges of deeds done by people in power these days.
The integrity of self restraint is evident in public figures who speak respectfully to or about the despicable people they disagree with in the Trump administration. At this point I’m pretty sure that’s not getting the country back on track but they can probably sleep at night knowing that they didn’t dive into the slop.
Lack of self restraint is Donald Trumps’ signature style. It is protected by the violent lying stealing greedy frightened hoarders he surrounds himself with.
If yoga got it right, none of them have peace of mind. None of us are equipped to move toward enlightenment for ourselves or the country. We are frozen in fright, flight and freeze times. Unlike when the Yoga Sutras was written, these moral codes must be universal! We are called into the fray to amend ourselves as a group as well as individuals. We are intertwined.
Those who don’t watch or read the news and proudly declare that they have nothing to do with it are not living truthful lives. They are not practicing self restraint as an action but as a doing of nothing.
Isolationism is democracy’s’ death knoll. They might as well be boy scouts in a bunker with sociopaths.
We are afraid. We are insecure. Our status is stuck. Our drive is to survive.
This brings me back to non-fearing. Non-fearing could beget right action and truthfulness even if it brings upheaval. Restrained but fearless, powerful but non-violent is the dream.
So what do you think fellow travelers, is it time for non-fearing to lead the way?
Hilary
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