It's Time for a Label-ectomy

I still can't believe that clothes come in size 0.  In my youth, no one wanted to be called a "zero," although there certainly were worse names.  Beyond the incomprehensible notion of someone other than a specter or wraith being a size zero, though--are the "zero" racks at Dillards just empty?--any single-digit clothing size seems a bit impractical to me.  Single digits conjure up images of infants and children, not child-bearing women with mama hips and fleshy breasts.

Yes, labels have their place in our lives ("may contain nuts," for instance, is a life-saving bit of information for someone who is allergic or considering a run for Congress).  But, beyond the practical, many labels have outlived their usefulness, or taken on new, sinister meanings.

Take former Nebraska senator Shirley Marsh, who died recently.  I've become so label saturated that I considered it an egregious, sloppy error when the local paper described her as a pro-choice Republican.  Well, it turns out that such people actually exist.  Or at least once existed, before labels became so inflexible and exclusive.

And the whole Eric Cantor defeat has left his colleagues--people who may actually have been willing to meet halfway on contentious issues like immigration--scrambling to outdo each other in their newly-forged "south-of-the-border"paranoia.  Tell me that labels aren't behind this latest hoopla. 


These days, we seem more content to let labels guide us than to actually step into the messy ring ourselves and wrangle a bit with all those competing, complex ideas, and everyone suffers in the aftermath.

What good are these political bookends without a few good books tucked between them?

I know, I know.  

What on earth does a size-14 female--a moderate Democrat who actually once voted for Dave Heineman (not proud of that at this particular moment)--have to offer to this conversation?  Well, first of all, there really doesn't seem to be a conversation on this particular topic, but, aside from that, I have nothing but my muddled, complicated, middle-aged humanity to offer up.

Back in the day, those labels might have been enough to earn me a place at the table.  Now, though, I suppose those same labels have relegated me to "inconsequential" status.

...not that anyone's sitting at the table anyway.