Friday, January 8, 2010

The Common Denominator


On Facebook there is a breast cancer awareness campaign making it's way through the maze of social networking. Via FB messages, women are asked to post the color of their bra as their FB status. Nothing more. Just the color.

So if you have seen many updates with just the word "magenta" typed in, the mystery is now solved and you can resume living.

I still do not know how this activity can possibly benefit breast cancer research or awareness at all but that's another story and another blog entry for another time.

Anyway, most of the women on my FB who posted a color tended to opt for colors like "teal" or "periwinkle" or maybe "black and gold glitter." Only one of my FB friends confessed to "beige" because lets face it, if given a choice, women will embellish if not totally fabricate even the smallest detail of a story, or even a whole life for that matter. We're delusional creative like that.

So, I posted None. (I burned them in the 60's) which kind of violated the rules that clearly stated we could post only one word and that word was to be a color, but you know, that's how I roll. And after I posted that I thought of Gloria Steinem.

And the fact that I am Gloria Steinem's worst nightmare.

Not only do I stay home and do little domestic things, I also

1. wear an apron (even if it is of the a very hip Williams Sonoma variety.)
2. knit
3. make bread

And to make matters worse, I help my husband with his career by

1. taking charge (she might like that) of the invoicing
2. volunteering (she'd probably like that) to be the voice of the common person (she'd totally hate that.)

Now most people do not go through life trying to be common - you know, like on purpose. And neither have I. In fact, I always thought of myself as anything but common, but as it turns out - I may be uncommon on the inside but on the outside (as in the outside of my head voice) I am totally common.

Yes, I sound common. And for some strange reason it's not easy to find voice over "talent" that can purposely sound common because people who have chosen this career (you know, the kind that like go to school and study all on purpose-like) are also often "announcer" types who get paid not to sound common so they kind of lose the ability to revert back to anything ordinary the minute they are in front of a microphone.

But not me. I stand there with my sensible shoes and my Walmart sweater (which gets larger with each washing) open my mouth and Ta Da! All kinds of ordinary comes out.

Then I read a few lines, sometimes I do it a couple of takes - put on my coat and hat and call it a day.

This usually takes like 15 minutes. Then I stop at the market, go home and make a kick ass dinner.

Another ordinary day in the life of a very common woman.

1 comment:

  1. Oooh, I sound 'common' too! I wanna do voiceover!! Sounds like a great job - good for you.

    My accent is a strange mix of London, Essex, Norfolk, New Zealand and Fen. The Fen part is the really 'common' one, in my opinion, but there you go. I pick up accents by osmosis as a kind of social camouflage.

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