Letter to Hugh Hefner

Dear Hugh Hefner,

I won't beat around the bush. That's your specialty. Here's my request:

Please die.

I think you've lived long enough, and I know you've done enough damage in this lifetime. I am amazed that you didn't get chopped to pieces and pasted on the doors of sexist men who get off on objectifying women as an example of what should happen to your type of creature. I suppose women just aren't violent enough to go through with actually eliminating your existence.

I must admit, I have fantasized about you. Oh yes, Hugh. I think about kneeling in front of you and while you say something degrading and inherently sick to me, I castrate you with my teeth. Oh, I get hot just thinking about it.

Seriously, though, don't you think you've made enough women feel like their bodies (their young, undernourished, photoshopped bodies) are all they really have to offer to the world? Haven't you published enough issues of your miserable excuse for a magazine to make enough women around the world wonder if they're worth lies anywhere other than their cup size, thus encouraging (too many) women to get breast implants they didn't need or weren't even sure they wanted? Haven't you had enough fun on that absolutely sickening TV show of yours, parading your three girlfriends who were not even ideas when you were already old enough to be their grandfathers?

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say yes, Hugh, you've had enough.

Now please, go ahead and die.

I'd really love to know how the hell you got away with all this sexist behavior for so damn long. See, this is something that makes me mad at the whole world. If there were a magazine out there or a TV show about straight white men making fun of, degrading, and objectifying people of color or gay people, we would not stand for it! Imagine a magazine that had a photo-spread of white men- excuse my explicitness- coming all over black men. Or straight men physically hurting gay men. The world would stop it immediately.

So why is it that we put up with these venues where it's okay to turn women into objects in service of men?

I don't know Hugh, and World, I really don't know. And since it doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon, well then I really just want Hugh Hefner to die.

Look Hugh, I'm sure you have some quality somewhere along the line. I know you're a human being and I'm picking you out of a (sadly) very large pool of men who do what you do. But see, you make it okay. You just parade your pimped-robed self around and say, "Hey, it's okay to use women for their bodies, to have several girlfriends at a time, to have sex with women born centuries after us, to exploit their sensuality and beauty." You normalize sexism, and you profit from it.

I know what you're saying to yourself right now, Hugh. I mean, it's a free world, right? No one's forcing these women to do anything, right?

Right. But that doesn't make it right. Nor does it justify sexism. So just shut up with that argument. I'll write a letter to the women who willingly pose for playboy and as your girlfriends later. Right now, I'm focusing on your behavior and my desire for your death.

I know you fell in love when you were young and your wife cheated on you and you never recovered and lost faith in love and all that. I feel for you. That's rough. I know men love deeply, and I know it takes them a while to recover. But dude. You're old. You're a fucking old man. Go to therapy. Get over it. Or, as I have stated would be my preference, just die already.

Listen, I think the female body is beautiful too. I think my body is a wonderful part of who I am and my sexuality and my appeal to men. I understand that men hunger for women, and that getting your penis inside us is very important to you. But you, Hugh, you take it too far. You disrespect our sensitivity, grace, and love of admiration. You hurt us by turning us into bodies and sex symbols for other men to enjoy. You cheapen our sexiness. You empower yourself and other men by limiting what we have to offer as individuals.

I think that if you bothered to look past the double D cups you so love, you'd be stunned by the beautiful hearts that live behind the silicone. If you took the time to see how much we can love, how much we want to be loved, and how beautiful life is when you respect us, you might actually learn that women are incredibly strong, sensitive, graceful, caring, and soulful. We're also nicer and have better sex when we feel respected. But I don't suppose you know anything about that.

But I have no hope for you, Hugh. I have hope for other men, though. I have hope that men in the world, who grew up with Playboy and who worship you, might come to their senses. Might have an enlightening moment one day where they think, "Golly, I wonder what it'd be like if I treated a woman like a human being! That sounds like a life-expanding and soul-filling opportunity. How exciting!"

So, Hugh, I beg of you.

Please.

Die.

Die, and may your reputation and everything you created- or should I say destroyed?- die with you. Die and be forgotten. Die and leave behind the women whose souls you've cut. Let them have a chance at seeing that their self-worth lies beyond their bodies and youth.

Die, Hugh Hefner, die.

With all the best of intentions,

Larissa Dzegar

image from http://www.paddy-boehm.de/karikaturen/gross/Hugh-Hefner.jpg

Birthday Wishes

At 9:30pm on July 15th, 1985, my mother's water broke in the kitchen of my parent's first house. My dad ran in to see it, then ran out and started calling people and screaming, "the bag broke! the bag broke!" Off they went to a hospital, where my mother had a C-section. A couple of hours later, a big full head of black hair breathed its first breath on its own at 1:03am on July 16th, 1985. They named that screaming wrinkled little girl Larissa Daniela Bonfim Dzegar.

Today I went to an intense yoga class to sweat out this past year and make space for a new year in my life and, since I intend to live to be 100, to make space for the next three quarters of my life. It got me thinking about what I've accomplished and seen in the past 25 years and what I'd like to accomplish and see in the next 75. So, mirroring what Gloria Steinem did for her 75th birthday, where she made a wish list for the remaining quarter of her life (she too, intends to live to be 100), but instead of making the wishes about herself, she made them wishes for the world, I'm making a wish list for what I'd like the world to experience while I'm on it for the next 75 years.

In the next 75 Years I'd like...

- To attend many, many legal gay marriages.

- To see actors be treated with respect and dignity. (This is a euphemism for: To see Hollywood and agents and casting directors burn in hell. Make someone else feel like a dog.)

- To see a woman be elected president of the United States.

- To be GIVEN health insurance that covers birth control, birth, gynecological visits, menstrual needs, and abortions.

- To read about how sex education in high schools around the world include lessons on how much sex can be enjoyable.

- To open a fashion magazine and see women of all shapes, sizes, heights, colors, backgrounds, and lifestyles displaying clothing that is affordable and accessible to every woman.

- To talk to women around the world and hear them say "I love my body."

- To teach my daughters and grand-daughters and great-grand-daughters self-respect and self-love rather than skills to find a husband and procreate.

- To see domestic workers being given the same value, benefits, and treatment as investment bankers.

- To read about Hugh Hefner's death.

- To see the government fund the creative arts.

- To give natural birth with a mid-wife and see other women valuing that over hospitals, drugs, and male doctors.

- To learn that every child in the world has access to water, food, an education, a playground, and a park.

- To learn that Fairy Tales such as Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and any other sexist illusion-selling brain-washing story has been banned.

- To see fathers staying at home taking care of their kids as much as mothers.

- To see higher academia become a right rather than a luxury.

- To see "beauty" parlors close down and in their place open libraries and health centers for women.

- To turn on the TV late at night and see women talk-show hosts who do not feel the need to talk and act like men in order to keep their position.

- To see Brazil win 10 more world cups. (I just had to put that in there...)

- To see the distribution of weapons be discontinued.

- To walk past the "women's interest" magazine section at Barnes & Nobles and not find a single magazine that says, "How to get your man to propose" or "How to win the battle against cellulite."

- To eat ice-cream and not feel guilty after.

- To go to a yoga class in manhattan and see a room full of people of color.

- To see men who want to be single fathers pursue and be given that right.

- To hear my daughter ask me, "What is love?" and be able to answer, "It's the greatest gift in this life, and I have known it so many times."

Happy Birthday to Me!

The Break-Up

The first time I got broken up with I was 19, which is actually pretty late in the game considering I'd been going out with boys since I was 13. Here's how it all went down...

The Situation (or- Why it was Never Going to Work):

He was 14 years older than me (which is normal for me, but in this case, it was a huge gap sometimes). It was a long-distance semi-open relationship (kind of like, what you don't know can't hurt you but let's not kid ourselves kind of thing). We had nothing in common other than each other. He was a handsome man who got a lot of attention from women, and I consequently lost a lot of weight and worked out till I was almost spitting out my uterus, every day. I thought that maybe if I got really really hot, he wouldn't look at other women. (Take your guess on how well that plan worked out). In the year that we were together, we never used the word love. And I faked orgasms every time we had sex (at that point I had not even had a real orgasm yet, so all I knew was faking, and apparently I was really good at it. I no longer believe in or support faking orgasms, for the record).

Breaking- Up (or- The Process of Crushing My Heart):

Even with all the flaming red flags and as-clear-as-it-gets signs that we were not going to live happily ever after, I was still caught completely off-guard when he broke up with me. He had to do it twice actually. The first time he broke up with me, I was like, why don't we have sex, and then we did, and we ignored that he had tried to break up with me. A week later, he called me to tell me we really did have to break up. I drove to his place. It was raining and I couldn't find a place to park. I drove around his block for fifteen minutes, and my legs were already getting weak. I knew I was about to suffer a very great loss, and the last thing I wanted was to parallel park and then walk four blocks in the rain.

He opened his door and I started laughing. There was just too much tension in me- I was either going to cry or laugh or scream. He told me to come in. We sat on his tiny beige couch. Some things were said. He wouldn't look at me. He was being vague. "It's just not working." "It's not meant to be." Things like that. I wasn't having it. I wanted to know the heart of the matter. He finally looked at me. His eyes were watery. And then he said it. "I'm not in love with you."

I didn't stand a chance at holding back the tears that were ready to stream down my face. I couldn't have been "tough" or "cool" about it to save my life.

No, we had never said we loved each other. And yeah, that always seemed weird. But I always thought I felt it. And I figured that's what mattered. Oh, how dumb I was. How willing to lie to myself. How naive and hopeful.

As I sat on his couch, crying and unable to create any distance whatsoever from the emotions gushing out of me, I had to face the truth. This man- who knew me, who spent a year with me, who had been inside me, who had revealed to me who he was, who had warmed up my heart so many times- this man did not love me and he never would.

I had broken up with people before. I had broken hearts, I had witnessed the pain I caused. I had been in relationships with boys I didn't love and, after watching them fall in love with me and doing nothing to stop it, said the same thing to them. I'm not in love with you. Now, as I stood in their shoes, I felt disgusted with my cruelty. Was it really possible that I had inflicted this much pain on someone else and then kept on living and dating as if I hadn't just cracked someone's soul?

The Aftermath (or- My Semi-Death):

I don't remember how I left, how I got home, how I slept that night. It's all a blur. I remained stuck in the pain of that moment for several hours, days, weeks, months, and years. I couldn't get in my car without crying. I couldn't smell the things he liked to eat. I couldn't wear the clothes I'd worn with him. I couldn't hear my phone buzz the familiar tone of a text message without it paralyzing me in hopes that it would be from him- and it never was. I couldn't sign on to msn chat- in fact, I soon stopped online chatting almost for good. I didn't want to do anything that involved happiness or smiling. I was wallowing in this new kind of pain, a pain I couldn't believe existed- the pain of being left by someone I loved combined with the pain of not being good enough to love.

I thought I was going to die. I felt part of me had already died. I couldn't imagine ever feeling good again. I certainly couldn't imagine ever loving someone and opening my heart again. I couldn't get up in the morning, and then I couldn't sleep at night. I couldn't eat meals, only tubs of chocolate and buckets of vodka. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror, there was nothing about me I wanted to see. No one could have convinced me that this pain would ever go away.

The Ritual of Recovery (or- Life Goes On- Because it Has to):

But, eventually, I did recover, of course. About six months after it happened, I found myself at a bar, having a lot of fun with my friends and talking to lots of boys, and when I got home, I realized I had just gone several hours without thinking of him. That was when I knew I would survive this. It took two years to fully let him go, which involved a lot of random flings, eating, sex and the city, creative projects, time spent with friends, writing, and alcohol. I actually performed a ritual in order to stop holding on to my love for him and the idea that I couldn't love or be loved again. The ritual was taught to me by a teacher in grad school. Take a piece of wood (preferably one you've meditated with and given meaning), write on it what you want to let go of (in this case, it was his name), then tie a feather to it with a red string, which represents air and fire, and then go to a body of water and throw it in when you're truly ready to let it go. The ritual works for me because I feel like I am calling upon the four elements, and thus the universe, to help me and guide me. I sat by the river for four hours before I was ready to let go of him. I cried, I wrote him a letter, and I kissed the piece of wood. And then, I threw it in, and let him go.

A week later, I met the next man I loved.

That's just how it goes. We break some hearts and one day, someone breaks ours. We think we will never get over it. We think no pain will ever be greater. But we do recover. We love again. We get hurt again. We feel greater pains. The heart and the soul are unbelievably strong and stubborn. Stronger even than the walls we put up to protect them. We can get damaged over and over again, but our hearts still want to love. I think that's really beautiful, actually. I touch my heart once a day and say, "Thank you little heart, thank you for being so brave and for loving so deeply."

I'll end with a quote from my dad paraphrasing William Blake during the time I went though that break-up,

"We are in this world but for a little while, so that we may learn to love."

image from http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/10/05/break_up_wideweb__470x306,0.jpg

A Romantic Finds Peace in Realism

I was a dangerously romantic child and teenager. I bought the whole "prince charming would sweep me off my feet one day and we'd live happily ever after" thing for a long time. All I wanted to do with my Barbies was make them marry the Ken's. I wrote love poems, I slept in long flowy nightgowns, I watched Dirty Dancing and Titanic until I knew them by heart, I liked to sit and stare at the rain, I never saw a flower I didn't like, I listened to James Taylor's songs obsessively, and, for a long time, I signed my name with a heart at the end of it. That's just who I was. Someone who wanted to love and who believed it could be pink and perfect when it happened.

Naturally, life happened, love visited me several times, and I eventually learned that those idealistic fantasies would never really come true and that being romantic set me up for great, painful falls. I was in college when I stopped writing poems, switched from long night gowns to pj's, stopped noticing the rain and the flowers, and found a new signature. "Men only want one thing from you," was drilled into me and I accepted reality: happily ever after was a load of shit.

I did what most young romantics do when they figure that out: had sex until I was immune to it, developed sarcasm, started drinking, and mastered the art (or should I say the tragedy?) of not letting my face give away how I actually felt. These "tools" served me well, and I survived the loss of my romantic self without making too much of a fuss over it.

Then, one day, as you may expect, I fell madly blindly in love with someone who was madly blindly in love with me too. And all the romantic dreams I had buried deep inside came rushing out, eager to participate in this love story. Poems and letters were written. There were sweep-me-off-my-feet hugs and passionate kisses in the rain. There were flowers and chocolates and three-hour-long phone conversations where we would just "hear each other breathe." It was quite beautiful at the time. I remember thinking, "This is what I've been waiting for. Someone to come along who could meet my romanticism and let me express myself completely." We were obsessively happy and life seemed to fall perfectly into place.

But.

It ended. The flame was too strong, too powerful, too fast, too hot, and it burnt out so quickly we were both left groundless- wondering where it went and why we couldn't get it back. I mourned the loss of the man I had loved, but I also mourned the loss of that romantic girl again, whom I thought had come back for good. She seemed to look at me accusingly, you didn't protect me. You let me out when it wasn't safe. I was heart-broken and desperately sad.

Some time passed, however, and once I had let go of him and who I was with him, I saw that I actually didn't want that. It was a fantasy, and we worshipped each other, which sounds nice, but I don't want a fantasy, nor do I want to be worshipped. A love that blinds me and puts me on a pedestal is actually not the kind of love I want, after all. I much rather have the kind of love I have to work for and earn, with someone whose flaws are very apparent to me, and with whom I feel at ease being just human.

I don't want a Prince. I'm not a Princess. I'm a woman. I'm a human being. I don't floss my teeth every day. I have scars. I eat too much chocolate. I'm a terrible singer who no one wants to take to karaoke. I can never throw anything away. I own shoes that cost enough to feed a starving colony. I like country music. I procrastinate. I sleep with a stuffed peter rabbit. And I have enough ex-boyfriends who could add to this list until it turned into a Russian novel.

You get the idea.

After finding the fairy-tale love story and then letting it go, I saw that it wasn't what I wanted. I want to be madly in love, yes, but with consciousness and choice. Believe it or not, I don't want to erase into someone else's being, become one, connect in a way that is inseparable. I rather create a story that has space for two individuals, who are together because they choose to be, not because they can't live without each other. Something about that is so much more valuable and healthy than indulging in the "star-crossed lovers" myth. Romeo and Juliet didn't exactly end with Happily Ever After either, lest we forget. My romantic self is still part of me, it really can't just be buried away, but it's learned to find peace with realism. I can love deeply, but I want to see who I'm loving for who they are, and be seen for who I am.

We all have a goddess within us. It makes sense to worship her. It's easy to love her.

I want to be loved for my humanity.

I want to find love, with sanity and sight.

I want romance, with realism.