Mullets, Muffintops and bad whatever...

There are those that believe that the end is upon us. Judgment day, the end of the world, etc are being bantered around with estimated ends being anywhere from the 21st of this month to May 21, 2012.

But what does judgment mean? Isn't every day a judgment of sorts?

We try to be the best parent, the best friend, the best child, the best whatever, constantly measuring our own performance against invisible criteria that no one has defined nor ever can.

We are told-- depending on your views in a variety of words-- but essentially, not to judge others.

How often do we? How often do we glance at a muffin top or a mullet and discuss it at length? Giggle over anything that doesn't fit our description of perfect...

The main engagement of the writer is towards truthfulness; therefore he must keep his mind and his judgment free.
Gabrielle Roy

As a writer, if we challenge ourselves to not judge--to write unopinionated works--it is next to impossible to write fiction. We have to give the character very decisive opinions on a plethora of topics as without them they have no life, no breath. But what about characters who believe other than what we do? Usually, they are the villain. Be it conscious or unconscious, we imbibe our bad guys with all that we personally do not like, find loathsome and otherwise repellent.

What an interesting story it would be if we took all those same characteristics and wrote them into a character that wasn't evil...

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Oscar Wilde

This all may seem sort of random but lately I have been struggling with judging based on what information I can find... Which isn't fair. Who is represented well by things like age? Who is simply what the internet presents them as being? But it is hard not to play connect the dots and come up with a logical judgment.

Hard but something we should challenge ourselves to daily, in this authors opinion.

Iconic ladies...

Hedy Lamarr lived in another era. The glitz and glam of Hollywood were a world that Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler wouldn't have dreamed of in her early days in Austria. But at seventeen she starred in her first project, launching an epic journey into starlet history. She was dubbed, aptly, The Most Beautiful Woman In Films.

What is less known is that she was also intelligent and patented an idea that launched the government to come up with technology that, when used with the transistor, became groundbreaking for today's phone industry.

That she maintained her brains along with her beauty is evident in her quotes and possibly the downfall of a few of her string of marriages. As she said, "Perhaps my problem in marriage - and it is the problem of many women - was to want both intimacy and independence. It is a difficult line to walk, yet both needs are important to a marriage." It is quite possible some of those men married her for the stunning nature of her beauty and underestimated the power and presence of an intelligent and strong minded/willed woman.

Some other quotes that have tripped my trigger today by this excellent role model for today's girls:

"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid."

"I must quit marrying men who feel inferior to me. Somewhere there must be a man who could be my husband and not feel inferior. I need a superior inferior man."

"American men, as a group, seem to be interested in only two things, money and breasts. It seems a very narrow outlook."

"I can excuse everything but boredom. Boring people don't have to stay that way."