I don't look good in aprons, anyway.

I want to announce something to the world:

I love my boyfriend. I do. I love him. I adore him, I treasure him, I cherish him. I want to marry him and have his babies. I think he's wonderful, fantastic, lovely, neat-o, extraordinary, cool, awesome. I am smitten with him, crazy about him, gaga over him, mad for him. He is my heart, my world, my universe, and I can't imagine a life without him where the sun wouldn't shine just that much less.

And you know what? There's not a damned thing wrong with any of that.

I realized several months ago that I was censoring myself when it came to talking about Ryan. I sat down and analyzed this, wondered what it was I feared would happen if I mentioned just how awesome he is and how much he means to me. And I struck on it: I was afraid of being frowned upon.

In modern society, there is an undercurrent of disapproval if you talk about your mate in a positive manner. It could be argued that it's seen as gloating, bragging about something you have that others don't, but I think there's something more. Something that is especially true with women.

It's a sign of weakness. If you show any sign that your happiness is related to another person--especially if you are a woman and that other person is a Man--then you might as well put on an apron, get in the kitchen, and make up some supper. You've just set Women's Rights back 50 years.

Somewhere along the line, affection for got mixed up with dependence on, and now calling someone your world is the equivalent of vowing to never have a mind of your own.

Oh, but if you want to complain? HAVE AT! Go on! Enjoy yourself! Have a ball! Bitching about the one you love shows you are not a drone, you are self-aware enough to realize that this person is not perfect.

I want to clear the air right now. I know my boyfriend isn't perfect. He makes mistakes, forgets things, puts his foot in his mouth. He almost always forgets to put up away messages online, he won't throw away his snack wrapper for days and days and days, he'll throw paper into the trash can and NOT the recycling bin half the time, and if he walks by without paying attention and unplugs my computer one more time I'll chop his foot off. Ryan isn't perfect, but I wouldn't want a perfect version of him, because I'm not a perfect version of me, and then we'd drive each other crazy in a slightly different way than we do now.

I know that, if we broke up, I would not shrivel up and die, I would not be guaranteed to spend the rest of my life along, the sun would not stop shining or the birds stop singing. I could live without him, I could possibly even be happy without him. I just don't want to.

I don't think he's the only good person in the world, the only attractive person, the only smart person. I don't think he's better than anyone else. He's just better for me.

Ryan makes me happy. He understands me, my craziness, my obsessions, my weaknesses, my faults, and at the end of the day, he'll always be there to hold me when I cry, he'll sit on the couch with minimal eye rolling as I coo over Say Yes To The Dress, he'll insist that I have some form of protein with my macaroni and cheese dinner. He takes care of me, he helps me, and he lets me help him without the first though that it damages his status as a man.

We can have conversations that range from what's for dinner to our future kids' names to how the Trial of Champions raid works to that weird house on the corner to the ethics of highway driving. We tease each other, make fun of each other, poke and tickle and push buttons. We understand each other.

I want to marry him, buy a house with him and make it a home, have his kids, build a life, fight and make up, do big exciting things with him, do the little everyday things with him, work with him, play with him, retire with him, grow old and die with him.

And yet, I do not feel that my education, my career, or the ability to have an opinion of my very own is in jeopardy. How very interesting.

I don't wear panties.

I refuse to wear panties. Before you ask, I don't walk around commando. I just hate the word "panties." It makes me twitch. It just sounds so...so dainty.

Not just dainty. Daaaaiiiinnnty. As if women, by the very act of being women, are only able to wear something that ends with the suffix "ies". We don't wear pants. We wear panties.

Of course, the other female-biased words describing those articles of clothing we wear over our bum aren't much better. Lingerie. Intimates. Dainties. Did you hear me gag on that last one?

What's wrong with "underwear?" Not "undies", that's for small children, but "underwear." There's no gender inferences, not even the vaguest description of what the clothing looks like. It's just clothing that you wear...under your clothes.

It's a pet peeve, and it's silly...but oh how I hate that word.

And Marie Claire can go fuck herself.

I informed Ryan this past week that if there is only one thing that will be outlawed in our house when we have kids, that one thing will be fashion magazines. Alcohol, cocaine, rat poison, AK-47, fine. Cosmo, HELL NO.

Any magazine that even subtly insinuates that you must have a certain weight, height, size, shape, hair color, eye color, skin color, sexual preference, diet, wardrobe, exercise routine, pet, car, job, personal life, etc or else suffer the social consequences of being Weird is just not allowed in a 1/2-mile radius of my impressionable child, especially if that child is a girl. I refuse to allow any literature that portrays "weird" as anything other than "not mainstream". Weird is not bad, it's just different, and different isn't bad either, dammit.

Watch almost any TV show or advertisement, any movie, open up almost any magazine, and you'll see Beautiful People doing Cool Things. I'm in my twenties, and I still want to be that Beautiful Person playing with that Cool Toy; young children have no chance. Everywhere you look, you're being shown that if you don't look like This, you're just plain Doing It Wrong.

Just yesterday, I saw a Benefiber commercial on TV featuring a Beautiful Person. She was tall, blonde, slender, with big boobs and a teeny waist, with perfect skin and teeth. She was dressed in a white outfit that only covered her breasts and legs, and that just barely. For a FIBER SUPPLEMENT. If you need sex to sell your fiber supplement, then YOU'RE just plain Doing It Wrong.

Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, Seventeen, even "health/fitness" magazines like Shape are all about one thing: selling a product, which means selling an image, which means selling the idea that you're ugly and stupid unless you fit that image. If you go to Cosmo right now, one of the first things you'll see is a big box with "Want a Guy To Follow You Anywhere?", "Fierce Footwear", and "Why Stop at One Orgasm?", plus boxes with "Guess the Sex Position!" and "Sex Position of the Day!" and a man with his shirt off. Even with the aforementioned Shape, a relatively safe magazine focusing on fitness, health and exercise, the first thing you'll see is an advertisement for an appetite suppressant--because healthy women don't have appetites, right?

And every single magazine has tons of pictures of women--in the articles, in the ads, on the covers--that fit into the mold: big breasts, teeny waist, perfect skin and teeth, toned everything. Nowhere do you see a stretch mark, a pimple, a split end, a mis-matched pair of breasts, a gray hair (unless it's an ad marketed to the Mature demographic), a broken fingernail, or anyone above a size 6. And that's just unrealistic, dammit.

Real People have boobs ranging Honkin' to Non-Existent, and that's fine. Real People have skin that's smooth as satin or pocked with scars and blemishes, and that's fine. Real People have blonde hair, brown hair, black hair, red hair, silver hair, white hair, pink hair, blue hair, no hair, soft hair, kinky hair, hair with split ends, and that's fine. Real People are shaped like hourglasses, pears, upside-down pears, triangles, upside-down triangles, sticks, squares, and circles, and THAT'S fine.

You want to see a perfect body? A perfect person? Look in the mirror. You are who you are, you are WHAT you are. Some people just aren't born to have six-pack abs, or smooth hair, or porcelain skin, or an hourglass figure. And there is absofuckinglutely NOTHING wrong with that, there is nothing wrong with YOU if that's how you are. Walk down the street, and you won't see supermodels--you'll see real fucking people, with real fucking bodies.

These magazines insist that the only things that matter in life are (a) fashionable clothes, (b) hot guys, (c) sex, and (d) obtaining all of the above by looking "hot". I'm not apologizing for refusing to let that shit in the same house as impressionable children, and let's face it, we're impressionable children right up until we're 30. Then we become insecure adults, and that's a whole new set of problems.

If my daughter whines and complains and wants to read fashion magazines, fine. She can buy them herself when she's 18. The only way she's allowed to before then is if she shows that she knows herself well enough, and is confident enough, to not be influenced by them (plus saves up her allowance to pay for it herself). I want my child to figure herself out in her own time, through her own experiences, using her own powers of deduction and reasoning and no one else's, not even mine.

I know: I say that now, but just wait until the time comes and little Lucy is being SUCH a whiney little bitch about how all my friends get to read Cosmo, MOTHER, why can't I, you suck SO MUCH, I hate you FOREVER, and then we'll see how well I can stand my ground against the raw power of Teenage Girl Angst.

Bring it.