From My Moma to Obama

I was born into a deep-rooted, staunch Republican southern family.

Looking back, there were small signs that I wasn't going to be a good little Republican. Little things like, I became a vegetarian at 15. Growing up I didn't date boys that hunted. I drove fuel friendly cars and am friends with gay people. I'm not a fan of Western medicine and years ago I banned prescription drugs from my body. The signs were there all along the way.

The other tell-tell sign, my grandmother was a Democrat. Yes, if you read my blogs, this is the same woman who had a spare room with enough furniture to furnish another house, but that's beside the point. The point is, sometimes the Democratic gene is recessive, sometimes dominanat.

But what gave my family hope was a single photograph. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this one was a thousand words of hope.

Me in college wearing a conservative blue and white polka-dotted dress standing in the glistening sun, grinning from ear to ear...and hugging Dan Quail. And this was Quail, pre-potato blunder. My parents saw my giant smile as "I'm a happy Republican," but really it was, "I just drove a governmental sedan 120 mph in a motorcade."

Out of politeness, I would straddle to political fence. I knew my views would conflict with popular opinion no matter where I was. I guess because of my roots, I'll always be republican sympathetic, no matter how I vote. And maybe, just maybe, deep down in my young southern soul, I knew both parties were flawed.

Tonight I went to a Barack Obama rally tonight in Washington Square park in NYC. Let me put it in perspective, I was in the most liberal city in the nation, in the west village, the most artsy liberal neighborhood, to hear a liberal candidate speak. You couldn't be at a more liberal place if you were weaving hemp bags on an organic farm with your tired henna stained hands.

So I was shocked when biggest cheers of the night came not when he spoke about fuel efficient cars or environmental reform or better schools or the dangers of big pharmaceutical companies, but when he spoke about free health care for all or affordable colleges and no student loans. Those were when the big cheers came.

I thought, "damn, y'all are acting like a bunch of Republicans!" Cheering about saving money... If he had said that voting for him would get everyone 50% off at Urban Outfitters, the crowd would have gone nuts.

At the end of his speech, he was saying something like “Do you wanna change the world?” And the crowd went nuts again like free iPhones were being handed out “Whooo-hooo, we wanna change the world!!!! Whooooo! We wanna change the world, Obama!”

I just shook my head. In order to change the world, you have to be willing to change yourself and it seems like few people on either side of the political fence are willing to do that. So, I left the Republicrats and came home.

Not only did I come to terms with the fact that I'm liberal, but I'm more liberal than liberals. Who knew?

Get a Hottie in the House

So it's an election season and everyone is talking about candidates, and how you decide who to vote for - do you vote with your head? or your heart? or your gut? But I use my eyes and vote for the best looking candidate. That's how I decide.

You might think this is shallow, but think about it, no matter who you vote for, once they get in office, they start doing stupid stuff, saying stupid stuff on TV, and the way I see it, it might as well be someone who looks good while making an ass of himself.

And the country is LONG overdue for a hottie in the house, we haven't had a good looking man in the White House since Kennedy!

And if you're a guy reading this and thinking that I'm superficial - don't be judging. You can say that I need to compare 'facts' or 'issues' or 'track records' but if Hillary Clinton was running against Nancy Pelosi and Jenna Jamison - we all know who'd win. That's all I'm sayin'.

African for a Day

A friend told me about a spa that was giving away free spa tans, so I went to check it out. I learned that nothing comes for free, everything comes at a price...

I wore nothing but disposable undergarments while a woman airbrushed every bit of my pasty white body. It was darker than I had expected and judging by the concerned face of the airbrusher, it was much darker than she has ever seen. She attempted to convince me that it would look good by using phrases like "looks natural" and " will blend later."

After this humiliating experience, I looked in the mirror and felt strangely confident. Not because I had new tan, but because I had a completely new ethnicity!

I met friends for lunch, and they immediately dubbed me with a new moniker, Nooki Nooki, to match my newfound African heritage. I proudly walked all around all day, running errands with my new creamy mocha skin. It was going great, until it started to get warm and my new heritage began to bubble up and drip. I started to look spotty. Not like someone with freckles or poor pigmentation, but someone who was filthy.

My husband told me that I looked less African, and more like someone stranded in the Serengeti. In a matter of hours I went from exotic to filthy.

I took the 'if you love something, let it go' approach and finally broke down and showered. It was heart-breaking to watch my as ethnicity was rinsed away. My hopes and dreams of looking legit in a hip-hop video were washed down the drain. I had to remove the newly added "has street cred" from my resume.

After the thrill of being ethnic for a day, it was humbling to go back to being just another white woman, standing in line at Whole Foods.