{"id":286,"date":"2014-12-16T01:30:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T09:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/melaniebaldonado.wordpress.com\/?p=286"},"modified":"2014-12-17T01:01:19","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T09:01:19","slug":"big-brother-issues-part-1-beat-downs-and-sex-symbols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/?p=286","title":{"rendered":"Big Brother Issues Part 1: Beat Downs and Sex Symbols"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d like to say that I&#8217;m my own person and that all of my ideas and first impressions of the world were formulated and found by me, moi, and yours truly.\u00a0 That I was born\u00a0into a\u00a0world that\u00a0could be my oyster.<\/p>\n<p>I was born into a family where a big brother already existed. I was born into his world.\u00a0 He took his big brother responsibility so seriously, sometimes I feel like part of me is an off-shoot of him.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Big brothers are sort of an anomaly.\u00a0 They look out for you, but they also see you as a puppy sees it&#8217;s chew toy.\u00a0 It didn&#8217;t matter that I was a girl, I had limbs and eyeballs, so therefore he was going to\u00a0practice the &#8220;Suplex&#8221; on me every time\u00a0he\u00a0watched the WWF.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s\u00a0a video, just in case you don&#8217;t know what it is.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jh2Nr0iRA4E\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>I&#8217;m always a little jealous of the girls who say, &#8220;What?!\u00a0 My big brother <em>never<\/em> tried to kill me&#8230;&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Were your parents monks?\u00a0 How did your brother learn peace in such a hostile world?<\/p>\n<p>Besides learning how to fend of wrestling moves, one of the first\u00a0concepts I learned from my brother was what made a woman not only beautiful, but iconic. What others might call a sex symbol.\u00a0 As a kid you don&#8217;t think in those terms, you just hear your brother say, &#8220;Farrah Fawcett is the prettiest woman in the world&#8221; and you automatically know that Farrah Fawcett\u00a0is what attractive means.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_287\" style=\"width: 212px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/farrahposter1.jpg\" data-rel=\"prettyPhoto[this_page]\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-287\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-287\" src=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/farrahposter1.jpg?w=202\" alt=\"THE Poster\" width=\"202\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/farrahposter1.jpg 460w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/farrahposter1-202x300.jpg 202w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/farrahposter1-300x444.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 202px) 100vw, 202px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-287\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">THE Poster<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As a little girl, I had no knowledge of the nipple controversy surrounding Farrah Fawcett&#8217;s poster, the one that made my brother love her so much.\u00a0 All I saw was a red bathing suit, a full head of hair,\u00a0cleavage, legs, and a giant smile. Because my big brother watched &#8220;Charlie&#8217;s Angels,&#8221; I watched &#8220;Charlie&#8217;s Angels.&#8221;\u00a0 At that point in childhood, we were inseparable.\u00a0 He watched it for Farrah.\u00a0 I lucked out-\u00a0 I was watching women who were\u00a0saving the day\u00a0as opposed to damsels in distress.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_288\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/charliesangels3.jpg\" data-rel=\"prettyPhoto[this_page]\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-288\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-288\" src=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/charliesangels3.jpg?w=300\" alt=\"One of the reasons I like to wear white and 70's fashion\" width=\"300\" height=\"211\" srcset=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/charliesangels3.jpg 800w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/charliesangels3-300x211.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-288\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the reasons I like to wear white and 70&#8217;s fashion<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I thought Farrah was\u00a0pretty, but I didn&#8217;t pick her as my favorite Angel.\u00a0When I was a little girl, I\u00a0picked\u00a0females I could\u00a0pretend to be\u00a0during role-playing games with the other girls.\u00a0 I couldn&#8217;t bring myself to pick someone who my brother thought was sexy.\u00a0 It\u00a0felt almost incestuous.\u00a0If\u00a0I wanted to be Farrah\u00a0it was like\u00a0wanting to be someone\u00a0my brother\u00a0wanted to get schmoozy with.\u00a0\u00a0Ew&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Besides, I knew I could never be Farrah, because I was a brunette.\u00a0 I liked Jacklyn Smith and\u00a0Kate Jackson.\u00a0\u00a0They represented my breed, somehow; and I wanted to grow up to be like them, sexy and smart. \u00a0Later, I\u00a0included Cheryl Ladd in my likes because I thought she looked\u00a0beautiful\u00a0even when\u00a0knives were thrown at her in the opening credits of the show.\u00a0\u00a0 Also, just because she didn&#8217;t look like me, I wasn&#8217;t going to hate her.\u00a0 What kind of idiot\u00a0does that?<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_291\" style=\"width: 239px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cherylladd.jpg\" data-rel=\"prettyPhoto[this_page]\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-291\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-291\" src=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cherylladd.jpg?w=229\" alt=\"Cheryl Ladd- I actually own shorts like this, and it's her fault. \" width=\"229\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cherylladd.jpg 1125w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cherylladd-229x300.jpg 229w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cherylladd-783x1024.jpg 783w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cherylladd-300x392.jpg 300w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cherylladd-940x1228.jpg 940w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 229px) 100vw, 229px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-291\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cheryl Ladd- I actually own shorts like this, and it&#8217;s her fault.<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_290\" style=\"width: 220px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/daisyduke1.jpg\" data-rel=\"prettyPhoto[this_page]\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-290\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-290\" src=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/daisyduke1.jpg?w=210\" alt=\"Daisy Duke was the reason scissor sales went up in the 1980's.\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/daisyduke1.jpg 423w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/daisyduke1-210x300.jpg 210w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/daisyduke1-300x428.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-290\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Daisy Duke was the reason scissor sales went up in the 1980&#8217;s.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>There was\u00a0another chick who I wanted to be from my brother&#8217;s favorites, and that was Daisy Duke.\u00a0 I can&#8217;t tell you one episode of the Dukes of\u00a0Hazaard, I was too young.\u00a0 I know the background, car chases with the\u00a0sheriff in the General Lee, and the family laughing together at the end of every episode, but not much more.\u00a0\u00a0Daisy Duke\u00a0amazed me.\u00a0 She had two brothers, and they never beat up on her! When I was a little girl, I saw\u00a0a very sexy\u00a0female hold her own in\u00a0a\u00a0good ol&#8217; boys world.\u00a0\u00a0She was ahead of her time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;She&#8217;s hot,&#8221; weren&#8217;t the only\u00a0words that told\u00a0me what women impressed my older brother.\u00a0 On drives through Malibu,\u00a0he would point at giant\u00a0mansions overlooking the ocean and say, &#8220;That&#8217;s Cher&#8217;s house&#8230;.\u00a0 that&#8217;s Madonna&#8217;s house&#8230;. that&#8217;s where Sylvester Stallone lives&#8230;&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how he knew they lived\u00a0in those houses, he most likely heard\u00a0it from another older kid.\u00a0Maybe they lived there, and maybe they didn&#8217;t.\u00a0As he showed me cliffside homes and named celebrities, my eyes grew wide. \u00a0I believed that he actually had insight about the people who lived behind the walls of those PCH\u00a0fortresses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There is a time in childhood when younger siblings treat the words of their older siblings like gold.\u00a0 Maybe we never completely\u00a0grow out of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sylvester-stallone-rocky-iii-phot.jpg\" data-rel=\"prettyPhoto[this_page]\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-296\" src=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sylvester-stallone-rocky-iii-phot.jpg?w=240\" alt=\"Sylvester-Stallone---Rocky-III-Phot\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sylvester-stallone-rocky-iii-phot.jpg 256w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sylvester-stallone-rocky-iii-phot-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>For the record, my brother&#8217;s name is Rocky.\u00a0 He put Cher\u00a0and Madonna on the\u00a0same level as his\u00a0namesake and hero.\u00a0 That&#8217;s pretty empowering to a little girl who looks up to her big brother.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_292\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cher5.jpg\" data-rel=\"prettyPhoto[this_page]\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-292\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-292\" src=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cher5.jpg?w=300\" alt=\"One word- Cher.\" width=\"300\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cher5.jpg 750w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/cher5-300x207.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-292\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">One word- Cher.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I know that my brother was a little rough on me, not because he hated me, but because he didn&#8217;t want his sister getting taken advantage of.\u00a0 It was his job to prepare me for the world that he was experiencing, and it was a boy&#8217;s world.\u00a0He talked to other boys about sexy women and body parts what they wanted to do to those sexy women; and it was\u00a0okay for them- but it was never okay for anyone to think about his sister in those terms.\u00a0 Those beat downs he gave me served a dual purpose.\u00a0 One, he was training for his own future should he need to fight in the street, and he was training me for mine, should I ever need to fight off anyone who thought like him and his friends.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>I&#8217;m grateful that Rocky was my big brother.\u00a0 As much as he was my tormentor he was also my protector. He was the person who consistently pulled back the curtains to the windows of a kid&#8217;s world to show me more than I would have seen had I been alone.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sex-symbols.jpg\" data-rel=\"prettyPhoto[this_page]\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-293\" src=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sex-symbols.jpg?w=300\" alt=\"sex-symbols\" width=\"193\" height=\"144\" srcset=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sex-symbols.jpg 614w, https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/sex-symbols-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 193px) 100vw, 193px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sometimes people\u00a0judge present sex symbols with jaded\u00a0adult perspective, and don&#8217;t see the deeper layers of what a child might see.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Because we (my brother and I)\u00a0didn&#8217;t know the words &#8220;scantily-clad,&#8221;\u00a0&#8220;slutty,&#8221;\u00a0&#8220;loose,&#8221; &#8220;whore,&#8221; &#8220;hooker,&#8221; and &#8220;nipple-flasher,&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0we were able to see the women on television the way that\u00a0we wanted to.\u00a0\u00a0On that screen,\u00a0we\u00a0saw bad-ass, strong,\u00a0smart, pretty, and confident females.\u00a0 Females who got\u00a0respect<\/strong>.\u00a0<strong>Thus, we formulated our\u00a0own un-adult-erated\u00a0definition of what made a woman\u00a0attractive.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">When my big brother\u00a0picked\u00a0the Charlie&#8217;s Angels and Daisy Duke as ideal women, I did too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Because his words were gold.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Thank God he had good taste.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>xo and thank you for reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d like to say that I&#8217;m my own person and that all of my ideas and first impressions of the world were formulated and found by me, moi, and yours truly.\u00a0 That I was born\u00a0into a\u00a0world that\u00a0could be my oyster. I was born into a family where a big brother already existed. I was born into his world.\u00a0 He took his big brother responsibility so seriously, sometimes I feel like &hellip;<a class=\"excerpt\" href=\"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/?p=286\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,427,433,291,435,426,333,429,430],"tags":[468,469,470,471,472,473,474,475,476,477,478,479,480,481,482,483,484,485,486,487,488,489,490,491,492],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-clean-comedians","category-clean-stand-up-comedy","category-comedienne","category-female-comedian","category-flappers-comedy","category-funny-standup-comedian","category-standup-comedian","category-woman-comedians","tag-1980s","tag-brother","tag-brothers","tag-catherine-bach","tag-charlies-angels","tag-cher","tag-cheryl-ladd","tag-daisy-duke","tag-farrah-fawcett","tag-gender-roles","tag-icons","tag-issues","tag-jacklyn-smith","tag-kate-jackson","tag-madonna","tag-parenting","tag-rocky","tag-role-models","tag-sex-symbols","tag-sexy","tag-siblings","tag-suplex","tag-television","tag-the-dukes-of-hazzard","tag-wwf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4727,"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/4727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniebaldonado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}