Sunday #2: Vegan Bootie Lady

I walk a lot in Los Angeles, so it is fortunate that I enjoy the activity. I gave up my car about 15 years ago and have been walking biking, bussing, or taking LYFT ever since, occasionally renting cars when needed. But there is nothing like walking in the city, especially on a Sunday morning when the world, or at least the portion where Hollywood is, has not yet arisen.

On this Sunday morning I walk to the gym--about a mile total one way. My bike is in the shop for a week getting a much needed overhaul, so I don't currently have biking as an option. So far, I refuse to even try those demon motorized bikes that are landing all over town like pigeon shit on a trash dump. But I digress. The walk to the gym takes me about twelve minutes. I have long legs and walk fast so if Google Maps tells me that the walking journey will take fifteen minutes, I know that I will likely make it in eleven, twelve minutes max.

At the end of my block there is a Honda dealership for people who are into that sort of thing. It is surrounded by a tall wrought iron fence with spikes curving toward the street--I suppose to discourage anyone from jacking a car over the fence. I imagine that this fence would be a good barrier in a vampire or zombie apocalypse, as long as you were inside it and the monsters were outside. Surrounding the fence is a stretch of concrete sidewalk, much like any sidewalk in Hollywood, that at times appears to be a walkway, a runway, an obstacle course, and a Halloween maze all at once.

Nobody really tends to the miles of sidewalks in my area of town, unless you count those poor souls doing "community service" to work off a traffic ticket. I see them on Saturday mornings on my way to work, unenthusiastically sweeping up the previous night's discards, but I never know whether to say hello as I pass by--does acknowledging them increase, or decrease, their shame? I cannot say, so I usually choose the safe route and stay quiet. What would I even say to them? "Thank you for your service."  "Good work--next time don't speed!" "Hey, you missed a spot."

This particular morning I am somewhat surprised and pleased to notice that someone has uprooted all of the weeds that have grown through the sidewalk surrounding the Honda dealership at the end of the block--all of them! My first guess is that this is the work of the city, which generates even more surprise within me, but I cannot imagine anyone else doing this. It is a thorough job--not one weed is missed. The only thing that confuses me is that the weeds are still on the sidewalk, lying right outside where they previously thrived in the sidewalk; now they lay, limp in the hot sun, having been pulled from their life support.

As I take in the scene, both to and from the gym, I have a macabre thought: what if nobody pulled these weeds out of the sidewalk? What if, instead, they all choose the same moment to commit mass suicide by hurling themselves, roots and all, onto the sidewalk into a sure death? Before you shake your head and declare this reasoning ludicrous remember that this is Hollywood, and stranger things have happened  than weeds giving up on life.

The other option is that this was part of a ritual--for what I can only guess. But anything is more acceptable to me than the fact that the city pulled the weeds and did not collect them afterwards. I mean, what the fuck?

I will be curious to see how long the weed corpses remain on the sidewalk before they are taken away. I hope it is soon, as walking this stretch of sidewalk currently feels like I am passing through a mass grave.

***
At the gym where I work out among the Instagram influencers, there are currently no corpses, but there is never a shortage of strange. This Hollywood gym gives me the sensation of being either in a wax museum or a mental health facility gone wild. I never know what I am going to see, and I wonder why, at this stage, I continue to be surprised by what presents itself. The police actually murdered someone in the men's locker room this year, a man who was naked at the time, who for some reason was considered a "threat" to armed law enforcement. Go figure. They closed off the men's locker room for a week while they cleaned up the "crime scene".

Today the gym is not too busy, as it is Sunday morning, but there is a woman there who catches my eye because she is stationed near me in front of one of the mirrors that covers the walls. I notice that she is setting up to take selfies of herself, er, well not exactly of herself, but of her butt. She is wearing brown stretch pants and across her rear were the words "VEGAN BOOTIE". It is unclear to me if this word display is a promotion or a warning. Truth be told, her bottom is ample, so it could be either.

She positions herself so that her behind, and the wording across it, is featured in the photos; even though I am five feet away and looking right at her, she seems unfazed. She adopts a sort of coquettish pose that suggests that these pictures are less about empowerment or sharing gym progress and more about attracting fans of her rear, or so I think. I am not sure what to think, honestly, as this type of behavior, though common at the gym from both men and women these days, is still hard for me to understand.

This goes on for ten minutes, and eventually I move to another area to work out. But I cannot shake my mood. I am bothered by what I am witnessing, but I am not sure why.

Am I angry at her? Am I envious of her confidence? Am I bothered that she is engaged in what I consider to be a private activity in so public of a space? Does her behavior remind me that I am not young anymore, and not doing what most young people do naturally these days? Yes, no, yes, and yes.

But mostly I feel sad.

***
When did our bodies become commodities? Certainly not recently--women's bodies have been products for ages. But the current trend veers on the absurd in its complete dismissal of any value beyond what shows up in images. I mean, bodies are a fun place to start, but why end there?

I hope that Vegan Bootie Lady got what she wanted, though I have a hard time imagining what that could be. Perhaps I am truly too old, and if that is case, so be it. I have no shame in my old-fashioned values. I know that, in terms of appeal, my meat-eating bootie is probably #7 on the list of attributes that I am proud of. Perhaps even lower--not because I am not proud of my bootie, but because it is a side dish, not the main course.

***
On this Sunday I suspect that I feel superior to Vegan Bootie Lady when I compare my value system to what I imagine hers to be, and this is where I fail us both. I do not know what it is like to be a woman with an ample behind, nor do I know what it is like to be a vegan (nor would I want to!). I do not know what process she went through on the way to veganism, or to be proud of her butt to the point of featuring it in her social media pages. But I do know that my judgement of it confirms that I am not, in fact, superior to her, but afraid.

I am afraid of a culture that is changing without my consent--a culture changing to suit the needs of those who are often much younger than I. Vegan Bootie Lady reminds me that the world around me and the sidewalks I walk on this Sunday morning are not completely in my control.

And that's okay.

I think.

Sometimes.

The option is to yank myself from the world like the weeds at the end of the block. I prefer to live with the struggle. I am relevant.