Unemployment Among Today's Lost Generation

UPDATE (7/27/11): I have since been on two interviews. Interview #1 went very well, except for waiting 20 minutes before meeting with anyone and hearing the receptionist call for four different people to come speak with me. Interview #2 I was told by the employee that the manager was at a meeting and would be back in one hour. I was a little ticked until I went to HR and found out that HR schedules appointments without knowing whether or not the manager is even available. However, when the manager finally arrived, I was told by the same employee that he would be unavailable to see me that day. Too much to ask for the courtesy of personally popping your head in and saying, "Hi, thank you for your patience but I'm so sorry I can't see you today. Can Employee Generic take your information?", especially when I know that even as little as 1 minute late might mean the difference between getting the job and remaining unemployed. It seems very strange, or maybe I'm just too old school now.

I couldn't have said it better myself: A generation of reluctant moochers

Many kids my age are painted as lazy, self-absorbed, spoiled. While you won't get an argument from me that many fit that description, the truth is that most of us don't want to sit on our parents' couches, eating our parents' food, driving on our parents' gas, and sleeping under our parents' roof.

It's killing us. In some cases literally, in the form of higher stress levels which lead to higher rates of health issues. I spend most of my energy looking for ways to develop income (both traditional and alternative), trying to find some happiness, and burdening my parents as little as possible. Many times, the best I can do is shower a little less, have one piece of toast instead of two, and go for the water and not the milk.

(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, from website http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/older-workers-without-jobs-face-longest-time-out-of-work/)

I have no control over my kitchen. I cannot buy the groceries that I know I can use to make healthy meals. I cannot avoid food filled with high fructose corn syrup or preservatives or other public health hazards when I don't buy the groceries.

I'm just barely going to be able to finish school, and I know I'm not alone. Even though I hold a Bachelor's Degree, I went back to school for an Associate's in Automotive Service Technology because the BA was getting me nowhere in the job market. Through a combination of scholarships and tuition assistance (the government denied me any kind of grants because I was pursuing a degree lower than the one I already have), I should be able to finish in December, only because I have one class to take and no books to buy. If that weren't the case, it's entirely possible I'd have to drop out, wasting three years and about three thousand dollars, and that's just if you only look at direct school costs.

I hate it. I look nonchalant to the rest of the world because to dwell on it would make me sick. To people who worry that I won't move out of my parents' house because I'm comfortable should relax: I'm not comfortable. There is nothing comfortable about wondering if you are taking your showers too long, or going hungry just a little bit longer so you don't eat as much, or trying to keep your hopes up every time someone calls you with an interview for a job you'd otherwise be embarrassed to apply for.

I sincerely hope politicians can get their collective acts together and produce the necessary solutions soon. A block of population aged 18-25 that's bored and unemployed has been shown historically to be more violent and socially disruptive. Should things stay the same or even worsen, the U.S. post-collegiate population would become a tinderbox ripe for a match that could ignite a social movement more violent than the civil rights protests.

May whatever deity you believe in grant that things change soon.

More Evidence The Republicans Aren't Helping

UPDATE: Sarah Palin has announced that her daughter-in-law became pregnant before marriage. Considering Bristol's already had her first grandchild, I wonder how secure Palin's opinion of abstinence-only is? Sarah Palin To Be A Grandmother Again

Apparently Governor Rick Perry has a bit of a learning disability: Why Are Texas Teens Getting Pregnant

In 2007, the article states, Texas had the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country. Right after Perry instituted abstinence-only programs for sexual education. Deciding that wasn't good enough, the program continued, and in 2009, 94% of schools had no sex ed beyond abstinence-only.

Now, the pregnancy rate is 50% higher than the national average, and Texas also leads the country in REPEAT teen pregnancies.

I was going to post yesterday about this article (Birth Control Coverage Under Obamacare), but it seems my procrastination paid off this time, as both of these articles address the same thing.

Kids will make smart choices if you give them the tools to. At our cores we are the same animals with the same instincts as those we keep as pets, so we know we are fighting a losing battle when we tell kids not to have sex. Instead of telling them not to, and then pretending not to hear any other possible conversation, is no better than a teenager who wants to explore her sexuality safely but can't because she has no information. Kids need more information, not less.

I'm also a staunch believer that our school's sex ed fails because it fails to address sexuality. We teach biology fine. All things being equal, penis + vagina = baby. But how does penis + vagina = love? Or = pleasure? Or even = orgasm? My parents didn't have that convo with me. Did yours?

We have enough data on programs and services to be able to judge whether or not they are working. Once pollsters have had a chance to question Texans teens on WHY they are having unprotected sex and having children too soon, I suspect most abstinence-only programs will be on their way out.

Unless, of course, as a country we keep electing politicians who prefer holding their hands over their ears and ignoring all evidence that proves that what they are doing isn't working.

Letting The Big Girls Hang Out (potentially NSFW)

I have been bra-free now since Novermber 2003, almost 8 years. I have never looked back. I feel very strongly about going bra-free, because there are psycho-social issues about wearing a bra that make discussing going bra-free very difficult for most women.

When you bring up the topic, many women will cover their breasts with their arms, and most will at least stiffen up and hold their arms closer to their bodies. They become defensive, curl in their shoulders, and emotional. Many women can't discuss bras and their breasts without crying.

Why?

It seems to me that most women consider their bras armor, the same way a warrior wears his breastplate into battle. Same as a warrior, when a woman comes home, the first thing that comes off is that damnable bra. A bra shields the woman. . . from what, I have yet to figure out.

This association of a bra as armor breaks down even further when you think about what bras do and the stated reasons why women wear them: lift the breasts, support the breasts, look attractive, be comfortable. Let's address each of these.

1: Lift/Support
This is one the manufacturers have been trying to sell women for years. Your boobs are too big for your body to manage.

Let's completely ignore the fact that our bodies EVOLVED with the breasts on our chest. Let's also ignore that bras move the weight from the chest to the back and shoulders, often with the result of headaches, back pain, neck pain, and long-term discomfort.

The truth is breasts sag for two reasons: age and weight. Bras have very little to do with it. However, by going bra-free, you can "pick up" your breasts and make them look a little firmer. When you remove the bra, the pectoral muscles and connective tissue in your chest carry the weight of your breast. The first 48 hours of going bra-free are the worst as your muscles become accustomed to carrying weight. After that, the pain subsides rather quickly. In as little as a week, I was doing stairs and playing volleyball (and I'm large-breasted). Also, as most women will tell you, breasts reflect the weight of the woman, but when you've gained weight and then lost it, the breasts tend to sag a little as the result of the stretching.

The idea of wearing bras for your health has also faded. Bras have been linked to fibroids, chronic migraines, and cancer (though the cancer study is very controversial).

2. Look Attractive
Watch TV for 30 seconds, and I'd be surprised if you didn't see at least one example of a woman whose breasts are artificially lifted in order to promote her sex appeal. But what are we promoting? When you think of small, perky, firm, floating tits, who do you think of? Not a 30-yr-old woman with three kids.

Diane Naugler, Ph.D., currently a sociology professor at Kwantlen Polytech in British Columbia, did her thesis on breasts and found that, on average, the perky, firm-looking breasts produced by bras seemed to imitate a young teenage girl (14-16) with B or C cups.

Bras encourage a youth-focused sexuality, adding to the already-disconcerting problem of the sexualization of youngsters. We're trying to make 8-year-olds look 14 just as much as we're trying to make 30-year-olds look 14. Both are wrong. We should be comfortable with our bodies the way they are, not the way the TV tells us they should be.

3. Comfort
The comfort here is purely psychological. I've never known a woman who liked wearing bras so much she didn't take them off the second she got home.

The oft-quoted statement is that 70-80% of women are wearing the wrong-size bra, which contributes to the red indentations, back pain, neck pain, steel-wire-digging-into-your-armpit ugliness that accompanies bra wearing. But this statistic is inaccurate.

99.9999% of women are wearing the wrong size bra - the only exception to this are women who have their bras specially made, usually because the breasts are significantly different. The bra industry, like all other clothing, manufacture bras to standard sizes, sizes that do not necessarily have any basis in reality.

For a bra, the first number is the distance around your chest, underneath your breasts. The second measurement is taken around the chest but also across the nipples. For every inch of difference between the two measurements, add a cup size. 1" = A, 2" = B, 3" = C, etc.

But how many women would actually fit into this standard? Additionally, the measurement reflects both breasts, while the bra individually fits both, forbidding any possibility that the breasts are different sizes.

There is no comfort, support, lift, or attractiveness in wearing bras; there is only the knowledge that you wasted 70 bucks for something that doesn't even work the way it's supposed to and risks your health.

As always, I encourage people to take information into their own hands and use their own brains. Here are some resources if you or someone you know are interested in the subject:

http://www.007b.com/why_wear_bras.php

Going Braless.net (This site is best for its forum, a support group for women who go bra-free)

Burning the Bra: Feminist Pop Culture Revisited (Pops to download a PowerPoint presentation on going braless as feminist practice)

(FYI, the picture is a camisole, an undershirt that is a good alternative to bras, especially in the workplace.)