Yesterday I woke up with a pounding headache testing the boundaries of my cranium. I ached all over too and my heart was beating about twice as fast, like I was working out. But the weirdest part was what I can only describe as hot flashes. I was hot, period. I woke up too hot and then remained on the verge of sweating perpetually. But then I’d get really hot and just start sweating buckets. I could feel the heat seeping out to the reaches of my limbs and my head felt like it was swelling; the moisture adhering my pj’s to my back. Then it was gone. Misery.

It was early. I woke up around 6:45 to see Dave leave for work in one of his new suits. Man, did he look sharp. It’s been so long since I saw him all done up in a crisp suit, shirt, tie that I forgot he could look that professional. Wish I had taken a picture, but, you know, I wasn’t feeling well. After he left I sat at the computer reading the morning download. My glass of choco-tooyoo planted nearby, from which I sipped occasionally. I started feeling so lousy I actually took some ibuprofen, which seemed to alleviate some of the pressure immediately. Placebo effect? It didn’t help that much so that by 8am I was back in bed again trying to sleep, which I couldn’t because my heart was pounding too fast and too loud. I think I finally dozed off around 10am. Dave called around 12:25, interrupting the peace. I felt completely recovered, albeit fatigued from all that energy burned. The culprit then? Me thinks ovulation. I hate that.

It's a new thing. My body is changing and I wonder why: I am the same and I do the same things, so why now am I having this kind of pain? The typical response when I present this to a doctor is: It's all hormones. Yeah, as if there is nothing to be done, there is no need to worry, because if you're body makes it then it's OK. Just take ibuprofen, they say. And then, invariably, they add that it's OK to take the maximum dosage for, like, weeks without harm. And I always think that's just not good enough. Just because this kind of thing can be attributed to my hormones doesn't mean it's automatically "normal" or, shall I dare say, "healthy''? Not everything our bodies produce on their own is healthy, like those folks whose bodies produce too much cholesterol. The fact is that pre-menopausal women's hormone chemistry just hasn't been that well researched, except in regard to tricking women's bodies into thinking they're pregnant. Doctors just don't have the knowledge to respond with anything other than, "Just take the maximum dosage of ibuprofen."

You know I never want to admit to any kind of discomfort directly produced by my sex. I have always seen it as sign of weakness, as one of the many things the unfair world uses to justify women’s inferiority. I never want to let the pain or the inconvenience interfere with my productivity. And productivity is the key word, because when I think about it I realize that equality is inextricably tied to capitalism and modes of production. That women are direct producers seems always to be overlooked in that equation, with only production in terms of material goods, and not human resources, as the defining output.

Moving on…

Bob arrived last night on the last flight into Seoul. All of our visitors seem to arrive on the last flight of the evening. Hm. First thing he says is that his bag got searched and he had a heck of a time even checking his bags because they were too heavy. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t ask for that much stuff and he’s only here for a few days; no other visitors have had problems. So?

I wrote in an email to him earlier in the week:

>Chocolate Power Bars. Yum! Bring as many as you can haul.

Aigoo. You know, when I say stuff like that, I imagine people with their luggage almost full, tucking in Power Bars among clothing. At the most, I expect one box of twenty from Costco. But never, ever, did I expect the above statement to be taken literally and without any kind of inquiries for clarification beforehand…

Home. One of his bags weighs 80lbs. It almost didn’t get on the plane. Bob opens it up to reveal several boxes of 20 Power Bars from Costco, totaling around 260 actual bars. Good grief! The worst part is, I can’t afford that many power bars. I live on a budget over here! I don’t know how I’m going to pay him back.

It was awkward. I wanted to say, why didn’t you ask me before you paid this much for something? But I didn’t want to insult all the effort he undertook to get them to me. Aiiiieeee!

Now I understand why I kept getting all these emails from my G-ma about Bob having to bring extra luggage. I kept wondering because I knew I hadn’t asked for that much, but I just thought, "Wow, he must really travel light if he has to bring more luggage just for the stuff I asked for." And why didn’t G-ma say anything? She knows that when I ask for Power Bars I usually only ask for one box of 20 from Costco.

Well, it’s all moot now. Good thing I love those things.

(Bob says, "You eat those things? I tried one and it tasted like an old brownie that sticks to the back of your throat on the way down.")

So last week I’m sitting across the table from an American guy here in Seoul whomI know only from emails posted on a newsgroup. We are talking about another US guy on the group who recently married a Korean woman. This guy says in response, "Well, it’s bound to happen: Korean women are beautiful." And I was like, "But you are sooo ugly…." Beautiful people don’t usually go for the Jabba The Hut (sp?) types I see lumbering the streets of Seoul.

Light bulb.

So I figure that one way you can measure the development of women in a given society is by the degree to which men must conform to pressures of beauty standards. If women have the social and independent financial power to choose with whom they will partner up, then men have to resort to honing their physical attractiveness and personality skills. I figure some of these guys over here - you know who you are - are the losers in the American leveling out: When money and power alone can’t secure a docile partner, when you are held accountable for your personality and poor grooming habits, one must emigrate to Asia….

And I say this with the whole beauty culture trap nagging at me. I hate how we are prisoners of an unattainable, unrealistic ideal of beauty that is becoming more and more fabricated than an actual representation of human shape and diversity. As a woman I struggle with this all the time, even as I love to wear lipstick and eye shadow, or stress about hips-as-wings. In that vein, I am concerned too to see men pulled into the fray and succumb to a common oppressor: consumer capitalism.

Moving on…