Short 'n' sassy.

I never want to have “no-nonsense” hair. If for some reason I ever feel the need to have short hair, I would much rather take the artfully messy, attempted gamine route than go the way of the humorless, wash-and-go man-woman. Because it is humorless, isn’t it? Who do you know who has both a sensible hairstyle and a fabulous wit? I can think of no-one who fits that category. And hey, call me a hopeless perpetrator of stereotypes, but I’m going to go even further out on a limb and say that as a rule, women who have no-nonsense hair also:

1. have a dreadful sense of style;
a. pantsuits, twinsets, and loafers for one subset
b. football/hockey jackets and bad jeans for another.
2. call other women “gals”;
3. are strident in whatever their area of personal interest may be, be it work or their child’s right to prayer in the classroom;
4. lack a stereotypically minimal level of femininity – remember Jamie Lee Curtis’ aerobicized bod? Even in cocktail dresses and skimpy lingerie, it was incongruous, wasn’t it? It’s hard to imagine her or any other neatly clipped anti-sylph soaking in a bubble bath while eating chocolates and reading a trashy novel.

Yes, I like to generalize grossly, but who doesn’t? Of course I can think of one person who defies this stereotype, but it’s the exception that makes the rule, right? (What does that expression mean, by the way? It makes no sense.)

So this is exciting: today a federal court in San Francisco begins hearing a challenge to Proposition 8, that triumph of bigotry that was passed by a not-so-caring public in the 2008 California elections. This morning on NPR, one citizen of California was quoted as saying that Californians are tired of wasting the taxpayers’ money on a ridiculous issue like this where “the people have already spoken” through Prop 8 about how traditional marriage should be between a man and a woman. Well, honey, that’s tough, because even though you may have voiced your opinion, and even if that opinion is apparently shared by a majority of the people who voted on the issue, that doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t make it constitutional. Our l’il ol’ legal system is designed to keep the occasionally misguided majority from getting the last word when to do so would violate the Constitution (see, e.g., Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia). Maybe you could stop wasting everyone else’s time and money by focusing on more important issues like eradicating world hunger or minding your own business.

At least this is what I am hoping; that when our conservative Supreme Court is faced with this case on appeal, they won’t be able to deny that to deny a person the right to marry is to deny that person equal protection under the law. Separate but equal is inherently unequal, y’all.