Happy Feminist

This week, I'm obsessed with documentaries. In all honesty, I don't watch a lot of TV because.....Toddlers and Tiaras. There is more shit than valuable entertainment on television, so I find other ways to entertain myself. A couple of days ago, my computer wasn't picking up an internet signal so I resigned myself to not working or cleaning or running errands or doing anything else productive. Secretly, I needed a break so I clicked on Netflix and looked up a documentary that someone had raved about on Instagram. Notice how I just used two modern day media forms in one sentence, who would ever guess I'm so old? The movie was called Miss Representation and it was a 90 minute class about women's rights, women in the media and how we are creating an unrealistic female ideal . It set me on fire. There were numerous books I put on my to-read list and when my husband called to see if the internet was back up, I angrily spewed a fifteen minute dissertation on how fucked up our society is, how dysfunctional our idea of beauty is and the fact that I may not make dinner for him ever again. If you haven't guessed, I have a tendency to take things to the most dramatic level possible. For a moment, I even contemplated shaving my head just to prove how serious I was about feminism. I really can't be trusted to consume too much information in such a short period of time.

Today after some Christmas shopping, I came home planning to work on my book, but wanting instead to watch another documentary. In order to justify sitting on my ass and accomplishing zilch, I pretended that my computer was frozen, surfed my options on Netflix and stumbled upon one called Happy. It talks about the genetics of happy, the happiest people on the planet, the most unhappy country and people who are happy despite what many would view as an impoverished lifestyle. Now instead of shaving my head, I wanted to volunteer, learn to surf, move to Hawaii, stop buying crap and start talking to my neighbors. See? I'm telling you, be careful what you show me, I'm a chameleon.

So are you happy? Am I happy? Most of the time, I am. There have been times in my life where I have dealt with depression and almost weekly I need a good cry in order to keep waking up in the morning, but I would say that I am a happy person. Here is where I think some people get backed up with the whole happy thing. "Well, you are happy because nothing bad ever happens to you." Wrong. A lot of shitty things have happened to me, some that I am still working through.
"Well, you are just oblivious to all the horrible crap in the world." Nope, not that either. While I don't choose to follow breaking news or tragic events, I'm smart enough to know that they happen and compassionate enough to know that it's not okay when they do. I can't control these things, but what I can control is how I feel about my life.
"Well you have the perfect life, so of course you are happy." Perfect for whom? It works for me, but it may not work for you. Perfect isn't real anyway, it's a perception that we allow ourselves to believe as fact. Being happy doesn't come from "perfection" or big houses or fancy cars. Happy is a combination of many factors, most of which revolve around community, relationships and doing for others. It inspired me to do more to create happiness in my life and reaffirmed the fact that I really want to live on a beach. Hint, hint, husband. :)

The moral of the story is that this week I am a Happy Feminist. Next week, who knows, I could be a Happy Feminist Vegan or a Happy Feminist Vegan Republican (is that a thing?). It all depends on my documentary options and my computer being broken.