tic dock toe

It's weird that there's this whole world I don't know anything about. Like I live on another planet. But I like it here, in real reality. There's books and parks and conversations and beaches. There's radio and rock shows.

Did you see the movie Lord of the Flies? I know there was a book, but the movie scene brings this image home best. These kids, you know, get ship wrecked on an island. They have to survive. The longer they stay on the island, the more their social structure is built and the less clothing they wear. This happens slowly throughout the story, one thing at a time added -- loincloths and face paint which seems perfectly normal given the circumstances. They live in a flurry of savagery and survival-of-the-fittest. The sounds of the jungle beat around them. This is their world, and you accept that. You've been a part of it for two hours; it makes perfect sense.

So in the final scene, they start chasing Piggy toward the beach -- they're going to kill him probably, and you saw it coming. It's a natural progression. Jack the nimble, tanned like a dirty penny and covered in bright paint, bounds through the forest with his wooden staff raised, howling. And he leaps out into the sunlight, onto the sand, onto the spit-polished boots of a meticulously groomed military officer.

Suddenly in contrast, their whole world is exposed for the madness it has become, light cast on the heaving ribcage of our fearless leader Jack, whose savage tribesman face paint is staining the black leather boot of said official. The contrast is chilling.

This is how I felt watching television last night.

I've been going to the UW fitness center, and while that probably deserves its own hysterical entry, let's leave it at that for now. The Stairmaster is the only gym machine I've bonded with thus far. At this gym, you can plug your headphones into your machine of choice and synch up with one of three televisions. MTV, VH1, and CNN. CNN is stationed in the middle, and a row of unused machines is aligned before it. People fight over MTV. VH1 is a palatable consolation prize.

I've been sitting in the middle so I can flip between MTV and VH1, like a moth hovering between two light bulbs, mercilessly drawn to both, unsure of which death would be sweeter.

I've reconciled this with myself. It began when VH1 was doing their "I Love the 80's" series. The music was hysterical. The hairstyles. You know -- you were there. Or you heard stories. Then they were featuring the 100 best worst songs of all time – "they're so bad they're good". Candy entertainment like this is harmless and a good distraction from the discomfort of exertion. Sometimes I found myself staying on the Stairmaster after my 25 minutes was up, just to finish the show. To remember those music videos I grew up on. During commercial breaks I'd flip to MTV to see whether the girls were beating the boys on "Road Rules". I began to enjoy it. I felt like I was finally getting at least a miniscule crumb of pop culture – enough to tie me to this planet, no matter how thin the thread.

I haven't been to the gym in a couple of weeks, due to holidays and illness, but I'm looking forward to starting the routine again. Last night I got on my machine as usual and plugged in. Except on the screen was not the friendly What-is-the-Meaning-of "…all I want to do is zoom zoom and a boom boom…" that I was expecting. No -- it was a woman talking about having one of her toes shortened.

It was a skit from Saturday Night Live or similar, making fun of people obsessed with plastic surgery. She was hysterical. Talking about how her whole life, her slim feet and lengthy second toes had held her back from accomplishing her dreams. When she went to the beach as a young girl, she was so embarrassed of her toes that she would cover them with sand. Later in life, she didn't interview for the jobs she wanted because she feared having to wear open-toed shoes. What would people think of her lengthy digit? They would judge her and shun her. Her mildly-extended toe also prevented her from having a happy marriage or conceiving a child.

Then the voice-over boomed in; it was a VH1 news show. She was dead serious.

No. It couldn't possibly be true. But here was VH1 with their cameras in the operating room of world-renown plastic surgeon Dr. Scissorhands, chopping off her second toes and re-attaching them, minus half an inch. This is a common request now, he tells the newscaster. Women get their toes cut short to fit into the demanding shoe styles this year. (Cue: flashy video clips of asian models in stilettos prancing down the runway.)

Now, I've been complaining about my feet since I was 15. I have big feet. But I'm also six feet tall. It kind of comes with the territory. Were they smaller, my already fragile balance would be thrown to the wind. Women's shoes almost never come in size 12. And if they do, they're usually ugly. It's frustrating, but I've mostly remedied the situation by always getting boys' shoes. Doc Martens, Fleuvogs and Converse. I was pretty angry about my feet until I discovered Zappos.com, where you can search for shoes purely by size, so you don't have to continually scroll through and see all the shoes you can't have. It works out. (Plus they have free shipping.)

Anyway, it seems unbelievably ludicrous to me that I would hack off an inch of my feet just so I could wear size 10's and not be tortured endlessly for my men's UK Supervog Angels. While I'm at it, maybe I should hack an inch off the top of my head so I can be even closer to the average American ideal.

(Small side rant: every model you see is six feet tall. Where do they get their shoes?)

After we see her surgery, and it's really truly gross, we see her smiling in her new suit, with her strappy sandals showing off her new, stubby toes. She got the job! She even got married. She is happier than she has even been in her life. And it's all because of her toes.

Now some people have been saying to me in response, "Hey, if that's what it takes to make someone happy, go for it." I'm not against anyone being happy. It just makes me really frightened to see how our society has gotten so fucked up that someone can't get married because of an extra inch on her toes. But on the show, they interview all these people who nod in agreement with her and clap this surgeon on the back, and doesn't he do good work, and isn't he proud to help neurotic women feel good about themselves? And after that story is done, it's on to botched botox injections and face lifts, deep tanning and hair extensions, women spending thousands of dollars a month to remedy their "flaws". And in between commercials for stuff to fix your dry hair and stuff to fix your fat ass, are ads for sinful chocolate cheesecake and chicks lustily devouring ribs and beers at TGI Friday's.

Like the warped, torrid reality that had become Jack & Piggy's world, this insanity of selling perfection, advertising consumption, and obsession with youth makes sense when you're inside it. When every day you see the commercials of skinny chicks eating barbecue with their hands followed by "give us a week and we'll take off the weight", and programming like "Made", and the alien-white of Jessica Simpson's vinyl teeth, the madness -- becomes normality. Viewed from the outside by someone who is so cut off from that world, it's scary how far this has progressed. In psychology 101 we learned about "foot in the door" syndrome. It was the same mental state that allowed lab students to shock test subjects with higher and higher voltage despite their pleas for mercy. They had started with a painless jolt. It was easy to keep going, especially with the study director urging them on.

Society being screwed up is not a news flash. The topic has been rehashed a million times, but I don't think it really sinks in until you go away for awhile and come back. I went away to the world where, when your toes are long, you buy bigger shoes. When you're fat you put on those bigger shoes and go for a run. The fresh air filling your lungs keeps you young.

And a big, heartfelt smile is the best face lift in the world.