Hairy Legs and Sausages

Roll up your knickers and splash those pits with ice water kids, because it is a HOT ONE today – and it is supposed to be around 100 all weekend. Here in Portland, we like to characterize such a weather event as if it were apocalyptic and certain to ensure imminent death of old people, puppies, and those with weak dispositions. Even on Weather.Gov, there was a special alert urging people to check on their neighbors and wear sunscreen. Good advice, to be sure – but seriously, it's like 25 degrees hotter in Arizona and I'm pretty sure they aren't relegating themselves to their “it's so hot it's burning my fee-fees” fallout shelters.


With that being said, we Pacific Northwesterners are well-versed in being total wieners about any heat level that is:


A. Below 50 but not snowing
B. Above 80 but not a Saturday
C. Both raining AND windy
D. Raining on a day you did up your hair all nice


So it's not a surprise that we're all freaking out about the hot weekend. I'm right there with you, PNW brethren. Tonight, I ain't cooking a gad-damned thing. I bought vegetables and a few sausages along with a loaf of local bread and we are drinking cold cocktails and grilling some encased meat and watching our chickens. To facilitate such a lovely evening, I stopped by Otto's Sausage Market near our house for some primo logs of pork. It was then that I had a internal crisis.


If you've never been to Otto's, it is an awesome place with tons of great meats and mustards and Europoean beers (THE BEST BEERS, AND YES I'M SAYING THAT TO YOUR FACE, PORTLAND). They also have a small deli where they will make you a sandwich that you can sit and enjoy, in an area adjacent to the cash register. Today, I grabbed me some cajun chicken sausage and some Denmark something-or-other that I was told by the “we close in 30 minutes why do you have to ask me questions” meat-slinger, tastes exactly like Swedish meatballs. IKEA, get in my mouth – I'm sold. A couple Pilsner Urquells and some local bread sealed the deal, and I got in line.


Before I allow this to continue, I'd like to make something clear. I was raised by a recovering hippie, who was raised by a legit card-carrying hippie, and I'm kind of a hippie. If I had been born 20 years earlier, I probably would have hopped on a VW bus and just seen where it would take me, man, probably to San Francisco. That being said, I've been observing a trend – maybe not even that, maybe it's just Portland being Portland – that straight up sends me into 1950s housewife mode. And I saw it for the THIRD TIME in one day waiting in line at Otto's. Let me remind you again, I am a hippie pro-woman feminite lover of all genders and sexual orientations and life decisions. But oh my GOD, LADIES – shave your goddamn legs.


Okay, look, it's summer and that's super awesome and stuff but the one thing I hate about this season is I HAVE TO SHAVE MY LEGS LIKE ALL THE TIME. When I'm wearing leggings all winter, I can generally get away with less because I put a ring on it and my husband legally has to deal with a couple days worth of stubble, but in the summer when I'm wearing dresses and skirts every day – just, no. Shaving every day is a reality which I despise. But I deal with it. And there are an increasing number of women in Portland who have not shaved their legs since the dawning of the age of Aquarius. And one of them was sitting in the Otto's deli in an adorable sundress and cute shoes and a fun, summery up-do – with legs that looked like a Mediterranean pirate used Rogaine as lotion for the entirety of his pillaging journey.


I am all for women's liberation. Hell, as a card-carrying woman I climbed the corporate ladder farther than many of my male counterparts and I drink and cuss and ain't feel like having no children so I ain't gonna and all that stuff. THE 21ST CENTURY IS AWESOME because I can do those things and not be an outcast. But, that little tiny slice of Betty Draper housewife inside of me just screams internally when I see hairy lady legs on parade. This runs completely counter to everything I've told myself I believe about female independence and it makes me question if one of my parents actually gave me some bad, lady-hating DNA.


Then I really started thinking – if I showed up to work in a dress, as I do almost daily, with legs I hadn't shaved since the coming of spring, PEOPLE WOULD TALK. People would stare. I have every right to not shave my legs if I don't want to – but I would be a pariah if I didn't. I think perhaps I am super jealous of the increasing number of chicks who are just like, “nah, I'd rather not.”


So tonight, I'm the anti-housewife. Instead of cooking like I have been every night, I'm letting my husband grill big-ass manly meat-sausages while I whine about women who don't shave their legs. WHAT HAVE I BECOME. You know what, I need a bit of a vodka with a beer back just to prove I'm not Betty Draper (although I'm pretty sure she would knock that back so that's perhaps not the best example).


What is feminine, and who gets to decide what it is? Am I feminine because I love to cook, and is a woman who doesn't somehow less feminine? I am a woman because I shave my legs, and a woman who chooses not to somehow less of a woman? Why do we judge each other so much?


You know, this heat is really getting to me. I think tomorrow I'll shave my legs, strap on my apron and forget I ever questioned why I do either of those things.