[due to either lack of friends or the fact that i just didn't trust anyone (more than likely the latter), a number of contributors were conjured up in my head to make it look like more people were writing other than myself. chloe knuckles was one of them. i liked her. she had spunk. she didn't take any crap. i suppose a little bit of my wife is in her. apparently, chloe was so convincing that many people thought she was a real person, including good friends of mine. based on the strength of the rant below, a good friend wondered if it was possible to get her interviewed by Bust Magazine. perhaps i'm more of a male feminist than i like to admit to myself. this will always remain my favorite of chloe's rants. it was originally published in ON THE VERGE v2.0 e-mail monthly for March 1, 2000.]

the neverending swimsuit competition (or "who wants to be...")

I’m wearing this skimpy number that I didn’t even decide to put on. Some guy told me that he was able to hear me better when I wore it. Judges way off in the distance shake their heads and laugh at me. I’m blinded by the lights on the stage when this voice out of nowhere told us all to hoist our chests forward and giggle. I walked off the stage, put one of my high heels through the assistant producer’s forehead, and placed a shit-stained tiara on his dome. I filled up one of the prize automobiles with cash and drove off.

I’ve got a million dollars for anyone who will bring me the heads of britney spears and christina aguilera.

"what makes you feel / and why you gotta be / like you got the right / to look her up and down / what makes this world / so sick and medieval / i know you don't know..." - Beastie Boys, "Song For The Man"

no, I do not feel like smiling today. All I feel like doing is riding the train and getting to my destination. Don’t tell me to smile. Did you really think that I would just because you said to? “you’re such a beautiful lady, you should smile more…” yeah, and you should throw yourself onto the third rail, so what are you saying? Do you really want me to smile? Would that get you off? Okay then, here’s what you need to do…KEEP YOUR PIE HOLE SHUT FOR THE REMAINDER OF THIS TRAIN RIDE. You do that and I’ll flash the widest Kool-Aid grin you ever saw while dancing a ballet. Can you do that for me?

If you even knew how sexy my brain was, you would strip down to your cerebellum and expose your cerebral cortex, but no. “you’re such a beautiful lady, you should smile more…” could you be any more pathetic? What seminar did you take to learn corny-ass lines like that? I hope you’re on this train to go back there and demand a refund.

Let me guess, I’m a bitch now, right? Stuck up? Snotty? And all because I stood up for myself and told it like it is? Yeah, that figures. Just trying to be nice? The nicest thing you could’ve done was not to say anything. You being silent for a 24-hour period would be worth a million of those lines that you have at the ready.

You know, not for nothin’, but it’s crowded in here. Could you make it your personal agenda right now not to merge with my insides?

“…c’mere. Sit down beside me. There’s something I gotta ask you. I just wanna know…what are you gonna do for me? I mean, are you gonna liberate us girls from MALE WHITE CORPORATE OPPRESSION? Huh? Don’t be shy…(fear of a female planet?) - Sonic Youth, “Kool Thing”

I recently came across this excerpt from an issue of Mass Transportation from 1943. The article was aimed at male supervisors and the steps they should take in order to ensure a positive environment for their female employees. I won’t go through all of them, but here are a few to give you some idea of what our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts had to put up with:

• "Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job."
• "Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves."
• "Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances and [she] is more efficient if she can kee her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick, and wash her hands several times a day."

“anything that you want in this world, you have to work hard for it.” It was a principle that my mother taught me a long time ago. However, judging from the success of game shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Greed, and Twenty-One, there are many who are either in denial or never learned the principle to begin with. And just when I couldn’t take anymore of the hype, I saw the ads for Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire? I was dumbfounded. Dozens upon dozens of women all lined up for the attempt to tie the knot with someone that they had never met, but who had loads of cash. Ever get the feeling that the FOX Network really gets a sick pleasure out of delivering lowest common denominator television programming? Well, some of the general public must like it that way; supposedly 28 million viewers tuned in to watch the mockery of a sacred institution. Like jrs said during our conversation about the show, “this CAN’T be the year 2000.”

“Was the title WHO WANTS TO BE A GOLD-DIGGING WHORE already taken?” - Stephanie Miller, comedienne.

Female and full is my X chromosome, no longer held in check by the madonna/whore complex set up by men. You know, either a woman’s a bitch or a queen, a saint or a slut, Lauryn Hill or Lil’ Kim. That’s too simple, too feeble-minded. Most of us are somewhere in between. This goes for everyone, both male and female. Nine times out of ten, there’s more to a person than what you see on the surface. Why should it be any different for women?

RESPECT YOUR MOTHERS. RESPECT YOUR SISTERS. And for pete’s sake, give that phone number shit a rest. What do I look like, 411?

{chloe knuckles}