If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been sitting at this computer, television humming in the background, and the CTV noon news has come on – somebody buy me a gun!
It isn’t as if I have so much as met her, but I do know that I wouldn’t be able to stand her, not even in the same room, not even if I were drunk.
In fact, just hearing the name Christine Bentley gives me the shivers. I don’t know if it’s the cut of her clothing; her voice; her politics (oh yes, I suspect this ranks…ranks ranks…high on my list); her precision; her blue-tinged eye shadow, or the way she stands, postured and what feels like smug, but every time I hear her voice the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I have these feelings about other women, too, and as much as I wonder whether I ought to be ashamed of myself, I can give you reasons why they make me uncomfortable.
- Nancy Grace…strident shrewish she-devil, screeching through my cerebellum, sordid details of another grim crime, another child victim lost in the night
- the woman who works on the Weather Network who I want to call Heather but haven’t stuck around long enough to find out, and whose manner and side-long glances remind me of mean, middle-aged island gossips
- Carrie Fisher, who is as close to a member of the Old Boys’ Network (how many times do I have to listen to her calling women broads? Ugh) as any woman in the Northern Hemisphere
- Tracey Tre Armstrong (if she calls another dancer “Love” or “Honey”…ay yai yai, she’s ridiculous) (I think she has modelled herself on Brandy) (and I don’t mean the drink, although…) and the long-suffering Mia Michaels, of whom I have fantasies in which they sail off paddle-less in a pea-green boat and never, ever, return
- Marilyn Dennis (who seems, to me only of course, mean in the way of the weather woman and of the newswoman) and Marilyn Lightstone (have you heard her?)
Face it. This isn’t a long list. And while I am sure there are others, generally when it comes to the notion of one-on-one chitter chatter I can imagine myself liking practically anyone, even when I think they might not like me.
But how lazy am I? Instead of dashing off at breakneck speed to change the channel, I sit here spending valuable time – yours and mine – writing an entry about women I don’t like.
Mostly though, when I consider them and the chief reason I don’t like them (she said euphemistically), they seem to fall under the category of Ladies Against Women: women who would not be kind to all women (and I do not mean this in terms of reactionary behaviour, which I see as an entitlement, not as a weakness or a fault).
So maybe that’s the deal. Like attracts like and opposites tend to despise one another. Or as Madeleine Albright said, “There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.”
