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Eufemia Fantetti
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"W" IS FOR WORTH

11/30/2017

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Image from Pixabay
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a thousand words worth? Asking for a friend.
Holy mackerel, this entry could easily be
W is for Waffling because I dithered and dawdled between choosing worth or wealth as my November word. And so here I am, writing as the year of exposing acute misogyny wraps up. This trend could continue forevs.
​
The lasting damage of privileged men abusing power and offering paltry excuses for apologies took me down a few too many web rabbit holes. Reading. Reading. Reading. Shouting and swearing at my screen. A slew of excellence journalism that offered a reckoning, and then occasionally I would land on a hack entertainment piece that followed. Sites that use suffering of others as clickbait.

The process made me question my worth again. I say again because this is an old groove in the synaptic-firing, neural pathway-establishing territory. These insta-thoughts wander through from way back. Weigh back, when dowry determined the female future. Living a meaningful life is an individual adventure, yet most women I know have grappled with issues of value, wrestled the beast of worthwhile-ness. This should come as no surprise, considering history. In a recorded debate with the annoyingly bumble-smarmy Boris Johnson, scholar Mary Beard notes that medieval monks destroyed all the writing by the she-folks of Ancient Rome. 

Constant erasure. Consistent discrimination. Perpetual invisibility.  

Gives me agita.  

One of the incredible strokes of luck in my life is having a dad who constantly tries to teach me the true cost of every purchasable item. This may seem like a tangent but women were treated like commodities, traded for livestock or given away in marriage with hefty gifts. And I can't stop thinking about that global inheritance. My father is a product of an intensely sexist culture. His favourite activity is browsing through a selection of local supermercatos, comparing the prices on cuts of meat, and discussing which is the better deal. Clearly, he’s still worried about my comet-crashed-into-the-planet math trajectory in high school.

I nod, take notes and speak philosophically: “Life doesn't always add up.”

Bringing huge insight with a well-timed, deep comment is a specialty of mine in the Bonefran dialect. (Thank the good Lord/Allah/Buddha/Darwin/Yaweh, my dad humours me in this belief.)

Sigh. Enuff of this musing for now. The topic is rife for reflection and if I know my mind, the measure of a woman is a subject that will continue to show up in memories. Or those irksome moments when a concept is mansplained, an idea hepeated. Been there, through with that, not gonna buy a souvenir. 

Here’s a classic song—born in insult. Gird your joints and jitterbug. Burn that, friars. 
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    THROAT CLEARING... Me ME ME ME

    Graduate of The Writer's Studio at SFU, holder of an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, co-founder of the Speakeasy Reading Series & InkWell Workshops, and fluent in Napulitano.  

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