Two of the oldest professions

I really like this picture of myself because I'm wearing my mom's first wedding dress which was a gorgeous black silk sari with silver embroidery. She gave it to me years ago. It has one huge rip in it, but I have worn it a few times, artfully, so my ass doesn't hang out. I also like this picture because it shows my hair down when it was long. It was irritating the bejeezus out of me at that time so I cut it all off shortly after this picture was taken. Max is four months old in this picture. This is when the super dark hair he was born with started falling out, being replaced with the pale blond that he's had ever since.

Is it my imagination, or is he flipping everyone off?

I would love it if, just once, a celebrity famous for her or his sex appeal would say something like "I'm just not a very sexual person." Because I find it really tiresome to hear people like Jessica Simpson say "I'm a really sexual person. And I'm comfortable with that." And Scarlett Johansen said the exact same thing. Would a publicist let any star admit to not being all that interested in sex? I just love it when stars go and bust our assumptions rather than pander to them.

The actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers says he could never go out with a housewife. He says he can only date women who have their own careers. While I think that's just fine, it does surprise me that he specifically won't date a housewife. Does he mean he won't date other men's housewives? Or does he mean he couldn't marry a woman who wanted to become one? Since when was being a housewife not a career? Not all housewives are created equal, but a good one does all the work of a professional chef, launderer, landscaper, house cleaner, baker, and interior decorator. The only difference is that she does it for people she loves and doesn't get a salary.

I want an answer to this question right now: between a professional chef and a housewife who cooks just as skillfully, who do you respect more? I want to know why too. When you meet a "professional" interior decorator and a housewife who takes great pride in decorating her home, who do you respect more? I'd be willing to bet that most people would respect the person who's getting paid in money. Do people think it's more impressive to do a thing when other people are willing to pay you for your services?

Interestingly, this doesn't apply to sex. Everyone is expected to give sex away for free no matter how good you are at it. When everything else a person can do skillfully is considered career potential, this is the one thing that must never ever be sold. I think it's a little bit twisted that modern society values people like Lindsy Lohan and Paris Hilton, who've between them screwed almost every man in Los Angeles and Greece, yet we look at prostitutes and disrespect them because they are getting paid for what Lindsy and Paris are giving away. If we think Lindsy is so hot, and so sexual a person and we're OK with the fact that she apparently has a new guy every other week, then we aren't actually bothered by people being promiscuous. As long as they don't get paid.

Money is much too tangled up in the estimation of human worth.

Prostitution is often called the oldest profession. I think housewifery is just as old. I've never thought about that before today.

I don't look at people and how much they earn as an indication of worth. Nor does money have much to do with my feelings about my own worth. I need to earn money now. Philip and I are working very hard to make a living. So it isn't that I don't care about money. I do. It's just that if I don't make any and have to do something else, it won't make me feel like less of a person than anyone else who has made more than me. I will feel good about myself for having been willing to take risks; to follow my dreams. I value hard work. I value skills. I value other people who work hard and have skills.

In a way I admire prostitutes. I mean, I don't really approve of prostitution, but not because I think it's dirty and immoral. If Lindsy can give lots of it away for free, I don't see why someone who doesn't have millions of dollars and needs to sell it for money shouldn't. They're both doing the same thing, it's just that one of them is making money doing it. In all other professions we would admire the person making the money. I think if it was made legal everywhere and the women selling sex had a lot of protection against the abuse they so often come in for, I say, why not? What I kind of admire is how hard they work. I couldn't do it. For a lot of reasons, the least of them being the question of morality. Athletes work hard with their bodies for our collective pleasure. We enjoy their feats of speed, strength, and/or agility. We admire how hard they work, the way I see it, prostitution must be very hard work.

I didn't mean to bring up prostitution. I'm just following my mind where it's going.

I am working up to something here: it's interesting to me that, in general, housewives are only marginally respected more than hookers. I know a lot of people who would say they respect housewives WAY more than prostitutes. But from personal experience, I haven't run into very many people who were at all interested in me when I was a housewife. As though what I was doing couldn't possibly be worth talking about. A lot of people view housewives as women who stay home watching television and leaching off of their husbands. This is, in my opinion, the dark side of the feminist coin. We got more rights, we all got to join the outside work force. Being a housewife went from being one of the most respectable and expected life choices for women to make to becoming the job that's too demeaning for any self respecting woman to choose.

Now that I'm a business owner I get a lot more respect from people, women especially, than I ever got staying home.

The biggest surprise to me, in my life as a housewife, was how deeply satisfying it is. I have never had a job before that gave me so much room for self discovery, growth, finding hidden talents, and that made my quality of life so immensely improved. I miss it. Whatever happens in our future, I will always love that time in my life most because it unveiled a lot of passions that were latent in me. It gave me spiritual peace. It gave me gardening, cooking, home baked bread, a routinely clean house (pre-kid), canning, and time to sew, build, and write.

I will end with this: the best food I have ever eaten was cooked by my friend Chelsea who, if she wanted to, could kick Ina Garten's ass in the kitchen. She cooks better than most professionals for her family and friends. For free. If you had a choice to go to a restaurant and pay someone to make your food, or go to Chelsea's house and be treated to her food for free, you will choose Chelsea's food. But not because it's free. You will choose it because it's better. How can anyone not admire that and envy her husband Jeff the world class cooking he gets every day?

I think Jonathan Rhys Meyers is an idiot.

I wonder if he's ever paid for sex?