well, the letter of rec is still going strong (i assume?) but the job was a bust. it was a great job that i was definitely qualified for, but alas. one of the job requirements is two weeks of international travel. here i was worrying all weekend that this international trip would mess up the trip we have to go back home and then go to my brother's wedding, cause they would be happening at the same time (because THOSE are the kinds of problems i'm TALKING about, the ones i'd like to have) when i didn't even make it to round two of interviews. i was telling dh today that it's hard not to be bitter and it's probably not true, but i just imagine that as soon as they see this overweight lady come in and she's just not great in person or at interviewing, even though she was great on paper, it's all over. i just don't have a chance.
there are two kinds of jobs i'm applying for:
1 - the job i'm already doing. which makes it hard to create a convincing reason about why i'm leaving a job to do the exact same job.
2 - a job that's a bit new and different but that i'm still qualified for. these are the ones i'm getting interviews and then falling flat on my face for.
i got the news this morning--thank heaven it was quick at least--and i was feeling okay. then i was feeling worse. but then i told myself that i have law school and even if i can't get a job before then or decide to stop looking, I HAVE LAW SCHOOL. IT IS HAPPENING.
then my old cup/bathroom employee (who has been mentioned several other times here) called to ask desperately for advice about how to get a job on campus (and ask our director for a letter of recommendation, because we all know she deserves it). she used me as a reference for the job she got when she left in december, which means she has lasted....... four, yeah four months there before looking for a new job. as she was talking to me about which jobs she was thinking of and i was avoiding giving actual advice, i was thinking, yeah, i applied for that one, too. and that one. and on and on. and the thing is, she'll probably get one of those campus jobs because she's bubbly and skinny and a terrible employee, and it's the terrible employees i've known that have had the easiest times getting jobs.
after i finally got off the phone with her everything kind of went to shit again. these are the high times and the low times, for sure, and you don't have a high without taking a low.
if you need me, i'll be doing the happy dance in my underwear all night at home.
a great professor agreed to write me a letter of rec for law school because she's "confident" i'll "ace it." and i got personal email asking me to come in for a job interview tomorrow for a prestigious job i applied to late last night because they were "impressed with my resume" and really hoping to meet me.
FINALYYYYY. i don't know why the good things come all at once, but it sure makes for a good day.
a great professor agreed to write me a letter of rec for law school because she's "confident" i'll "ace it." and i got personal email asking me to come in for a job interview tomorrow for a prestigious job i applied to late last night because they were "impressed with my resume" and really hoping to meet me.
FINALYYYYY. i don't know why the good things come all at once, but it sure makes for a good day.
we are now in a new phase of cancer called: Dad is in Denial, Hurts Me, and says Other Rash Things.
i thought my dad deciding before christmas not to have any more brain scans until he showed symptoms was a good thing, but now he refuses to even say the word "cancer". he went to a couple of support group sessions and then stopped going because he's determined to be "normal again" and completely rejects the idea that he is living with a disease that will kill him and that he should be making the best of the time he has. my mom told me that at christmas he kept saying to her that he would just spent time with us kids later when he felt better (we all got together at their house specifically to spend time with him) and he could just bow out if he felt like taking a nap or didn't like the game or wanted to watch tv. he doesn't understand that he is the best right now that he will ever be.
this is all punctuated with his difficult behavior. bickering with my teenage brothers about stupid stuff. singing twinkle twinkle little star when everyone's trying to be serious during family home evening. after we had a positive exchange about my applying to law school he said, "well we need a lawyer in the family. the one we had killed himself." (his brother, my uncle, who died right before my wedding.)
he's always been a sarcastic, dry, opinionated person but he also just has no power to control it lately. when the movie selma came up he went on and on about how the reason he didn't go see it is because he didn't need to sit through a movie about black power, even though he was "grateful for what dr. king did." and his comments about fat people. oh, the comments. he was in my passenger seat when i was driving and he warned me to watch out for this kid (who i don't even actually think was overweight) because if i "hit him he'll leave a dent in your car." he then went on and on about how bad he feels for fat people because "if you look at their legs they make an 'A' shape" because, essentially, in his opinion, their legs are bowing under the weight of their body. he then went on about the manholes on the road and how sad it is "nowadays" that they are bigger because "they must have a fat guy working for them."
maybe i just watch too much grey's anatomy, but to me it feels like the tumor is already back. that's always how they explain uncharacteristic personality changes so maybe it's just easy to tell myself.
we visited them last weekend, for the first time in three months. mostly i want to be there for my mom, who is essentially being crushed under all of this and the only one holding their pissy shit together (seriously, why is everyone in that house so pissy). but it drained me to be there. their house is a hotbed for contention and disagreements, between my dad and my teenage brothers. then add to the mix my engaged brother (and his fiance who hates my mom) who, after waking me up when he was coming to bed one night (we both slept in the living room), spent a short amount of time trying to convince his fiance that i was asleep so please just climb on him and make out with him.
it's not the same. and of course it isn't. but it already hurts too much and we're not even in the descent.
i thought my dad deciding before christmas not to have any more brain scans until he showed symptoms was a good thing, but now he refuses to even say the word "cancer". he went to a couple of support group sessions and then stopped going because he's determined to be "normal again" and completely rejects the idea that he is living with a disease that will kill him and that he should be making the best of the time he has. my mom told me that at christmas he kept saying to her that he would just spent time with us kids later when he felt better (we all got together at their house specifically to spend time with him) and he could just bow out if he felt like taking a nap or didn't like the game or wanted to watch tv. he doesn't understand that he is the best right now that he will ever be.
this is all punctuated with his difficult behavior. bickering with my teenage brothers about stupid stuff. singing twinkle twinkle little star when everyone's trying to be serious during family home evening. after we had a positive exchange about my applying to law school he said, "well we need a lawyer in the family. the one we had killed himself." (his brother, my uncle, who died right before my wedding.)
he's always been a sarcastic, dry, opinionated person but he also just has no power to control it lately. when the movie selma came up he went on and on about how the reason he didn't go see it is because he didn't need to sit through a movie about black power, even though he was "grateful for what dr. king did." and his comments about fat people. oh, the comments. he was in my passenger seat when i was driving and he warned me to watch out for this kid (who i don't even actually think was overweight) because if i "hit him he'll leave a dent in your car." he then went on and on about how bad he feels for fat people because "if you look at their legs they make an 'A' shape" because, essentially, in his opinion, their legs are bowing under the weight of their body. he then went on about the manholes on the road and how sad it is "nowadays" that they are bigger because "they must have a fat guy working for them."
maybe i just watch too much grey's anatomy, but to me it feels like the tumor is already back. that's always how they explain uncharacteristic personality changes so maybe it's just easy to tell myself.
we visited them last weekend, for the first time in three months. mostly i want to be there for my mom, who is essentially being crushed under all of this and the only one holding their pissy shit together (seriously, why is everyone in that house so pissy). but it drained me to be there. their house is a hotbed for contention and disagreements, between my dad and my teenage brothers. then add to the mix my engaged brother (and his fiance who hates my mom) who, after waking me up when he was coming to bed one night (we both slept in the living room), spent a short amount of time trying to convince his fiance that i was asleep so please just climb on him and make out with him.
it's not the same. and of course it isn't. but it already hurts too much and we're not even in the descent.
two of my co-workers went to a leadership conference in memphis tn last week. the main thing they had to say about the trip was how surprised they were by "the race issue." apparently it is actually real. for anyone else living under a rock here in utah, again, to reiterate: there are some racial issues in tennessee right now. apparently it came up a lot and people, in particular "this one black lady" got pretty heated about it.
they have talked about it in passing a lot since then. today my boss says, "aren't you glad that you live here? what a nice place this is. such a nice environment." i'm definitely so glad he is so blessed to removed from the darkness and unnecessary trouble of the world on his land on a mountain in utah where his four nearest neighbors are his siblings and their huge ass white mormon families.
they have talked about it in passing a lot since then. today my boss says, "aren't you glad that you live here? what a nice place this is. such a nice environment." i'm definitely so glad he is so blessed to removed from the darkness and unnecessary trouble of the world on his land on a mountain in utah where his four nearest neighbors are his siblings and their huge ass white mormon families.
more on taylor swift
my real introduction to taylor swift happened when my friends and i were getting ready for a school dance our senior year of high school, 2007. "teardrops on my guitar" comes on the radio and my friend turns it up a little and starts crooning about how much she loves taylor swift.
the thing about this friend is that she is also blonde, blue eyes, thin, classically pretty, trendy, pretty conservative but very popular with the guys, nice to everyone but so much so that it sometimes came off superficial. as far as looks went... and actually, in more ways than that... she was pretty much a clone of taylor swift. during our years of high school, a lot of my heartbreak and the heartbreak of my then-best friend/her long-time best friend/i-think-i-got-to-get-really-close-to-that-girl-because-they-were-feuding friend came from this girl that loved taylor swift. she always got the guys. she was always the preferred acquaintance. she was always coming out on top for everything. they knew the same people and, again, especially when it came to guys, this friend was never, ever, ever actually in the running when it came to her and t-swift-lover. none of us were. and this taylor swift lover was so genuinely nice. she did and said things for me that other people never have. we hung out and she was the first friend i told that i got into college. but our friendship was essentially doomed not because we didn't love each other but because of how everyone else treated us when we stood side by side. it could never work unless i, and all of us, were willing to do that and take the back seat every time.
so from the beginning, taylor swift was representing something that i could not only not relate to, but that harmed me and my non-thin, non-blond, non-taylor swift friends without meaning to. i never had teardrops on my guitar, i knew what the real shit was with romeo and juliet, and i definitely wasn't looking for a "love song" and was confused about why an 18 year old was singing about getting a marriage proposal, i wasn't daydreaming about someone else's boyfriend, and in general i was never, ever, not even as a teenage girl, into that fairytale stuff.
this is essentially the same problem i have with taylor swift today. i don't have a long list of ex lovers, i've never been to new york, i've never really been super stylish, and i don't have any cats, which is most of what taylor swift talks about. don't get me wrong, i worship her for sticking it to the media when they ask her sexist, stupid questions. but in general, she is on a planet where i not only don't live but have never been to.
when "shake it off" was released i was so happy; i really like the song. it was around this time that i would be listening to the radio in my car and something would come on and i would think wtf this is terrible and it's grating my brain turn it off now and my hand moved immediately to the power button. what was happening was the release of taylor swift's other singles. so fine, the music isn't my type. today i listened to "1989" in its entirety and as an album, it's a good piece of work. i'm glad taylor got out of the country industry. i'm sorry to everyone that loves country, but people are kidding themselves if they think she could have gotten so big without breaking up with country. i think she's becoming a new kind of artist and really succeeding in transforming herself. but add onto the publicity of the album all the news about her hanging out with karlie kloss and crew and going on vacation with them and everything, and she just reaches a whole 'nother level of unreachable for me. you vacation with your friends and put them before guys. great, girl power. they are also all models and extremely beautiful and successful women in certain industries, and that is not a club i will ever, ever, ever be in. not even in real girl world.
her entire public representation runs on the idea that she is "just like you," just like every other teenage girl or young woman out there. but everything i see coming out from her only reminds me that i will never, ever, ever be like her. to me, she's the kind of girl that's okay with leveling the "girl playing field" and lifting up and supporting other girls when, whether she realizes it or not, whether it's fair or not, whether she understands it or (probably not), she will still always always win. it's nice to say that "let's all women just be friends then, this is from the patriarchy and women don't need to compete with each other," and i agree. but i don't think taylor swift does. her track listings clearly show that she is in completion with women, especially for the attention of guys. her entire last album, with the exception of a few songs, fails the idea of the bechdel test, and it's her album!! i love beyonce and lily allen singing about their husbands and i love feist's moody music about relationships. but damn, somehow it's just not the same with taylor swift.
the thing is that this is an unsolvable problem. erasing patriarchy between women and having a "sisterhood" (hate that word) does not erase it between men, and as long as men are still buying into patriarchy, taylor swift wins at work, in her personal relationships, and indirectly in her relationships with other women whether she's helping other women or not. it's not her fault that she's a talented, wealthy, white, slender woman, so we can't hold it against her, right? that's where a conversation about privilege comes in, and hers is insurmountable. it's kind of like olivia wilde (whom i love) coming out and urging women not to "cut their faces" and get plastic surgery all while she has one of the most distinct and beautiful faces in the industry.
it's a difficult problem because if you were to ask a backseat girl like me or my friend to choose between feminism/making taylor swift feel okay and getting a job/having a chance to biologically reproduce in a family environment, it gets uncomfortable really fast.
rather than taylor swift, give me some lorde. oh gimme, i love lorde. the thing is, ella and taylor are really, really good friends. genuine friends (as far as i can tell). and this should be the marriage-metaphor, that the blonde girls that patriarchy prefers and the kind of weird, more cerebral underdogs (to put it in very simplified, stereotyped terms) can live together in perfect harmony. i realize this is a severe faucet of internalized misogyny i have and that i need to work out. my way of working it out right now is to recognize how problematic it is and ignore it and play nice and theorizing about "taking the back seat" and try to transform it. taylor swift does a lot right. she is an improvement in so, so many ways. that can most definitely be enough when she has never personally done anything to me.
the only other problem i have with taylor swift is how she indulges celebrity idolization. she owes her success to her fans and rightly recognizes that and gives back to them. there is something obviously really wonderful about that. but there is also something really harmful about that. you can argue that the relationships are genuine because she is indeed connecting directly with her fans through social media, and it is therefore a real relationship. but is it? social media is entirely a problem of its own that i won't go into, just like i won't go into this much more right now. but taylor swift sending her fans christmas presents just is not as genuine to me as jennifer lawrence, the most bankable star of 2014, not going to the oscars because she doesn't actually like it, didn't want to, and wasn't contractually obliterated. so she didn't. she didn't feed into the fame-fake-worship that causes so many problems. jennifer lawrence has her own problems, definitely, but that is something i relate to a whole hell of a lot more.
i will never be a part of taylor swift's club.
the thing about this friend is that she is also blonde, blue eyes, thin, classically pretty, trendy, pretty conservative but very popular with the guys, nice to everyone but so much so that it sometimes came off superficial. as far as looks went... and actually, in more ways than that... she was pretty much a clone of taylor swift. during our years of high school, a lot of my heartbreak and the heartbreak of my then-best friend/her long-time best friend/i-think-i-got-to-get-really-close-to-that-girl-because-they-were-feuding friend came from this girl that loved taylor swift. she always got the guys. she was always the preferred acquaintance. she was always coming out on top for everything. they knew the same people and, again, especially when it came to guys, this friend was never, ever, ever actually in the running when it came to her and t-swift-lover. none of us were. and this taylor swift lover was so genuinely nice. she did and said things for me that other people never have. we hung out and she was the first friend i told that i got into college. but our friendship was essentially doomed not because we didn't love each other but because of how everyone else treated us when we stood side by side. it could never work unless i, and all of us, were willing to do that and take the back seat every time.
so from the beginning, taylor swift was representing something that i could not only not relate to, but that harmed me and my non-thin, non-blond, non-taylor swift friends without meaning to. i never had teardrops on my guitar, i knew what the real shit was with romeo and juliet, and i definitely wasn't looking for a "love song" and was confused about why an 18 year old was singing about getting a marriage proposal, i wasn't daydreaming about someone else's boyfriend, and in general i was never, ever, not even as a teenage girl, into that fairytale stuff.
this is essentially the same problem i have with taylor swift today. i don't have a long list of ex lovers, i've never been to new york, i've never really been super stylish, and i don't have any cats, which is most of what taylor swift talks about. don't get me wrong, i worship her for sticking it to the media when they ask her sexist, stupid questions. but in general, she is on a planet where i not only don't live but have never been to.
when "shake it off" was released i was so happy; i really like the song. it was around this time that i would be listening to the radio in my car and something would come on and i would think wtf this is terrible and it's grating my brain turn it off now and my hand moved immediately to the power button. what was happening was the release of taylor swift's other singles. so fine, the music isn't my type. today i listened to "1989" in its entirety and as an album, it's a good piece of work. i'm glad taylor got out of the country industry. i'm sorry to everyone that loves country, but people are kidding themselves if they think she could have gotten so big without breaking up with country. i think she's becoming a new kind of artist and really succeeding in transforming herself. but add onto the publicity of the album all the news about her hanging out with karlie kloss and crew and going on vacation with them and everything, and she just reaches a whole 'nother level of unreachable for me. you vacation with your friends and put them before guys. great, girl power. they are also all models and extremely beautiful and successful women in certain industries, and that is not a club i will ever, ever, ever be in. not even in real girl world.
her entire public representation runs on the idea that she is "just like you," just like every other teenage girl or young woman out there. but everything i see coming out from her only reminds me that i will never, ever, ever be like her. to me, she's the kind of girl that's okay with leveling the "girl playing field" and lifting up and supporting other girls when, whether she realizes it or not, whether it's fair or not, whether she understands it or (probably not), she will still always always win. it's nice to say that "let's all women just be friends then, this is from the patriarchy and women don't need to compete with each other," and i agree. but i don't think taylor swift does. her track listings clearly show that she is in completion with women, especially for the attention of guys. her entire last album, with the exception of a few songs, fails the idea of the bechdel test, and it's her album!! i love beyonce and lily allen singing about their husbands and i love feist's moody music about relationships. but damn, somehow it's just not the same with taylor swift.
the thing is that this is an unsolvable problem. erasing patriarchy between women and having a "sisterhood" (hate that word) does not erase it between men, and as long as men are still buying into patriarchy, taylor swift wins at work, in her personal relationships, and indirectly in her relationships with other women whether she's helping other women or not. it's not her fault that she's a talented, wealthy, white, slender woman, so we can't hold it against her, right? that's where a conversation about privilege comes in, and hers is insurmountable. it's kind of like olivia wilde (whom i love) coming out and urging women not to "cut their faces" and get plastic surgery all while she has one of the most distinct and beautiful faces in the industry.
it's a difficult problem because if you were to ask a backseat girl like me or my friend to choose between feminism/making taylor swift feel okay and getting a job/having a chance to biologically reproduce in a family environment, it gets uncomfortable really fast.
rather than taylor swift, give me some lorde. oh gimme, i love lorde. the thing is, ella and taylor are really, really good friends. genuine friends (as far as i can tell). and this should be the marriage-metaphor, that the blonde girls that patriarchy prefers and the kind of weird, more cerebral underdogs (to put it in very simplified, stereotyped terms) can live together in perfect harmony. i realize this is a severe faucet of internalized misogyny i have and that i need to work out. my way of working it out right now is to recognize how problematic it is and ignore it and play nice and theorizing about "taking the back seat" and try to transform it. taylor swift does a lot right. she is an improvement in so, so many ways. that can most definitely be enough when she has never personally done anything to me.
the only other problem i have with taylor swift is how she indulges celebrity idolization. she owes her success to her fans and rightly recognizes that and gives back to them. there is something obviously really wonderful about that. but there is also something really harmful about that. you can argue that the relationships are genuine because she is indeed connecting directly with her fans through social media, and it is therefore a real relationship. but is it? social media is entirely a problem of its own that i won't go into, just like i won't go into this much more right now. but taylor swift sending her fans christmas presents just is not as genuine to me as jennifer lawrence, the most bankable star of 2014, not going to the oscars because she doesn't actually like it, didn't want to, and wasn't contractually obliterated. so she didn't. she didn't feed into the fame-fake-worship that causes so many problems. jennifer lawrence has her own problems, definitely, but that is something i relate to a whole hell of a lot more.
i will never be a part of taylor swift's club.
the patriarchy work retreat is drawing near so i'm eat home lounging in the spring sunlight and sorting old assignments for letters of recommendation. i'm taking my liberty with my feminist-sickness so i can have my feminist cake and eat it, too. and seriously, letters of recommendation are the worst. the three teachers i worked at length with have all retired, and there is one teacher left who is my lone hope but i think she will write me something good. at least i'm hoping, because it's seriously my last chance. i only took one class with her but i crushed it so i hope she will take pity on me. i had to have a come to jesus moment with myself that i need to pull up my bootstraps and just ask. here's to hoping i can find those old tests with 100%s on them.
i'm also watching wild. when i watched it in the theater i had been looking forward to it for months. it was a sunday morning and i was so relaxed and the theater was so empty--there were maybe one or two other people in there. right when the movie starts this guy comes in and sits not in the seat next to me but two seats over. this immediately set me on edge. he was muscly and very, very out of place in the theater where i and a few others were about to have this wrenching, beautiful heart-to-heart moment of healing with cheryl strayed and reese witherspoon.
he sat there and was kind of looking sideways at me (or was i exaggerating and imagining it?) and fiddling with his hands. does he have a knife? why the f is he in this movie and why would he sit next to me in an empty theater? the deep, uncomfortable irony of feeling this way in a movie that was ABOUT THIS was not lost on me. should i take my keys out? if he takes my purse or something then at least i have my keys. but if i do that will it let him know i suspect him? will it make him more irrational? i should take my phone out so i can at least call dh if something happens. i don't even know his phone number by heart so i'm screwed if this guy takes my phone. but will my nice phone just entice him? all i would need to do is run out into the theater lobby and management would help me, right? ........they would, wouldn't they?
maybe he's a film student. maybe he just really appreciates the book the way i do. maybe he's a rebellious, tender but really masculine film student who just wanted to watch wild on a sunday without his friends judging him.
no, i don't owe it to him to write safe, non-threatening narratives for him.
i'm still mad at that guy for putting me on edge for the rest of the movie. nothing happened and i bolted as soon as it was over, but could he really be that oblivious? could a guy watching wild really not understand that it was his responsibility to mind his own business and not make a woman uncomfortable?
the hobo times part was his favorite, if that counts for anything.
i'm still scared of guys in movie theaters and thinking about it today and i'm hiding in my house for a few days so i don't have to go to a gendered work retreat. i always feel like, for me, the line between self-care and being pathetic is extremely thin. maybe i'm just being seriously so pathetic right now. but the alternative, right now, is not worth it.
i'm also watching wild. when i watched it in the theater i had been looking forward to it for months. it was a sunday morning and i was so relaxed and the theater was so empty--there were maybe one or two other people in there. right when the movie starts this guy comes in and sits not in the seat next to me but two seats over. this immediately set me on edge. he was muscly and very, very out of place in the theater where i and a few others were about to have this wrenching, beautiful heart-to-heart moment of healing with cheryl strayed and reese witherspoon.
he sat there and was kind of looking sideways at me (or was i exaggerating and imagining it?) and fiddling with his hands. does he have a knife? why the f is he in this movie and why would he sit next to me in an empty theater? the deep, uncomfortable irony of feeling this way in a movie that was ABOUT THIS was not lost on me. should i take my keys out? if he takes my purse or something then at least i have my keys. but if i do that will it let him know i suspect him? will it make him more irrational? i should take my phone out so i can at least call dh if something happens. i don't even know his phone number by heart so i'm screwed if this guy takes my phone. but will my nice phone just entice him? all i would need to do is run out into the theater lobby and management would help me, right? ........they would, wouldn't they?
maybe he's a film student. maybe he just really appreciates the book the way i do. maybe he's a rebellious, tender but really masculine film student who just wanted to watch wild on a sunday without his friends judging him.
no, i don't owe it to him to write safe, non-threatening narratives for him.
i'm still mad at that guy for putting me on edge for the rest of the movie. nothing happened and i bolted as soon as it was over, but could he really be that oblivious? could a guy watching wild really not understand that it was his responsibility to mind his own business and not make a woman uncomfortable?
the hobo times part was his favorite, if that counts for anything.
i'm still scared of guys in movie theaters and thinking about it today and i'm hiding in my house for a few days so i don't have to go to a gendered work retreat. i always feel like, for me, the line between self-care and being pathetic is extremely thin. maybe i'm just being seriously so pathetic right now. but the alternative, right now, is not worth it.
9:30pm, nice and comfy in bed. dh gets a call from one of his problem employees asking if the guy can take part of his shift off. dh concedes and the guy says:
"thanks for being flexible. my wife's trying to get pregnant so we have to time things just right and the timing's kind of weird."
so glad our family could be a part of your family tonight bro!!!!
"thanks for being flexible. my wife's trying to get pregnant so we have to time things just right and the timing's kind of weird."
so glad our family could be a part of your family tonight bro!!!!
today i googled "is overeating an eating disorder" and found this, which brings me to embarrassing story time.
after we got married it took a few months for underlying problems at work, my dad's tumor, the brunt of my feminist awakening, my disillusionment with the church, my sexual frustrations, and my general feeling of being trapped in our sunshiny-neighbors-up-your-hoo-haa to surface and for me to become depressed. that winter was the ninth circle of hell. i knew something was wrong at the time, but a lot of things were still okay--i was still looking into events on campus and volunteering, i was in the honeymoon phase of my marriage, i still had my friends around--and things on the surface were pretty normal.
my then-part-time work days were punctuated with a weird situation that i can describe perfectly but that i barely remember. we didn't have a car and while i would sometimes walk down to the campus grocery store to buy groceries, more and more i didn't. i had been having this weird anxiety attack about cooking for my husband because feeling like i should do it came naturally but with no dishwasher and spending 4/7+ nights at home alone i was feeling a lot of weird feminist things about it. combine all of this with my depression and with a love of papa johns pizza delivery, which i had discovered my senior year when i was exercising 3+ hours a day, and it was a set up for disaster. another big factor was $$$. when i was a senior i could afford pizza once a week. but now? now i could have it whenever i wanted and it wouldn't make a big dent in my bank account.
i'm going to be really real here and say that sometimes i was eating two pizzas a day. i would get home around 2pm and order a pizza (so easy! no groceries! so delicious! right at my door!) usually it would stop here but sometimes it has happening every day or every other day. but in the pit of hell, during the absolute worst of it, i would sometimes order pizza for lunch, eat pretty much all of it, and then i would order pizza again for dinner from a different store to avoid being judged. and i would eat it all.
it's hard to describe what made me do this, or at least it was until i found this article today. that deep sense of hopelessness and just wanting to feel better and not being able to control myself. i was consumed. i could not escape it. as i was eating it i hated myself, but i couldn't stop. afterward i just hated myself more. it was the truest sense of addiction. i've never told anyone besides dh before.
in school i had a roommate who would order pizzas day after day, usually two at a time. she would give me her credit card and beg and cry for me to keep it away from her so she couldn't order them (i think i have blogged about this before). at the time, it was like the twilight zone. she was the one who would leave her addiction recovery pamphlet from the church on the couch and then awkwardly hide it when our home teachers came. i knew she had a pornography addiction (which she was also open with us about........) but it never occurred to me then, when i was in the peak physical form and best mental space of my life, that she had an addiction to food. and to see all those pizzas coming to our house, day after day, and to see her helpless, it's unimaginable to me to think that i became her.
these days i'm in a much better place, but i'm still working to have control and find ways to improve my situation and empower myself. so as a public display of good faith in myself, i want to recommit to some suggested ways to improve.
Manage stress. - This is the most difficult factor for me... obviously. I have never done this before, but I think one idea I could follow through on is to go on a walk instead of eating when I'm bored or need to unwind. There are a lot of places a couple blocks away from where I live that I could go, and this is something I don't take advantage of like I used to.
Eat 3 meals a day plus healthy snacks. - I've developed countless "food schedules" or meal plans by week and they are beautiful things. Still, it's seriously so difficult to follow through with them. Mostly, take out is more convenient, if I buy fresh food but don't follow through it's a huge waste of money, and eating or snacking out is a huge part of my relationship with dh and what we do to relax. A key to eating healthy, I've found, is preparation. Soaking your grains and cutting up and bagging up veggies and other healthy things. So next week I'm going to take time each night to prepare some healthy options for the next day.
Avoid temptation. - Hard one, because of the social aspect (i.e. I live with someone who has different eating habits than me and I don't think it's right for me to control what he eats or say what he can or can't bring into the house). A lot of what I eat through the day comes out of my bag while I'm on the go, so today I'm going to take all the junk food out of my bag and put some healthier options in there.
Stop dieting. - I don't believe in fad diets so this is not an issue.
Exercise. - I will walk home from work (45 min walk) a few times a week when it works out for us with getting the car home.
Fight boredom. - I will keep my to-do lists up to date (I have one for work and one for personal life). If I can keep a list and put manageable, one-time actions on it, it really keeps me moving and busy with taking care of all the little things I want to do or I'd like to get done.
Get enough sleep. - I will get in bed at 10pm every night. Usually I read or listen to a TV show in bed to quiet my mind so I can sleep, but simply by going to bed earlier and on a schedule, I'll be getting more sleep.
Listen to your body and keep a food diary. - I will recommit to using my private Instagram account to take a picture of everything I eat and writing in the caption why I'm eating it.
Get support. - Well, I wrote this blog post, so that's a start! I'm a person who's usually actually dissuaded by people checking up on me, but something about putting things down in writing in public make me be honest with myself and also really think through my situation.
(i know web md self-diagnosis is not generally a great way to go with your life, but i'm pretty grateful a quick google search can return valuable information and help me learn about myself and continue trekking this road.)
after we got married it took a few months for underlying problems at work, my dad's tumor, the brunt of my feminist awakening, my disillusionment with the church, my sexual frustrations, and my general feeling of being trapped in our sunshiny-neighbors-up-your-hoo-haa to surface and for me to become depressed. that winter was the ninth circle of hell. i knew something was wrong at the time, but a lot of things were still okay--i was still looking into events on campus and volunteering, i was in the honeymoon phase of my marriage, i still had my friends around--and things on the surface were pretty normal.
my then-part-time work days were punctuated with a weird situation that i can describe perfectly but that i barely remember. we didn't have a car and while i would sometimes walk down to the campus grocery store to buy groceries, more and more i didn't. i had been having this weird anxiety attack about cooking for my husband because feeling like i should do it came naturally but with no dishwasher and spending 4/7+ nights at home alone i was feeling a lot of weird feminist things about it. combine all of this with my depression and with a love of papa johns pizza delivery, which i had discovered my senior year when i was exercising 3+ hours a day, and it was a set up for disaster. another big factor was $$$. when i was a senior i could afford pizza once a week. but now? now i could have it whenever i wanted and it wouldn't make a big dent in my bank account.
i'm going to be really real here and say that sometimes i was eating two pizzas a day. i would get home around 2pm and order a pizza (so easy! no groceries! so delicious! right at my door!) usually it would stop here but sometimes it has happening every day or every other day. but in the pit of hell, during the absolute worst of it, i would sometimes order pizza for lunch, eat pretty much all of it, and then i would order pizza again for dinner from a different store to avoid being judged. and i would eat it all.
it's hard to describe what made me do this, or at least it was until i found this article today. that deep sense of hopelessness and just wanting to feel better and not being able to control myself. i was consumed. i could not escape it. as i was eating it i hated myself, but i couldn't stop. afterward i just hated myself more. it was the truest sense of addiction. i've never told anyone besides dh before.
in school i had a roommate who would order pizzas day after day, usually two at a time. she would give me her credit card and beg and cry for me to keep it away from her so she couldn't order them (i think i have blogged about this before). at the time, it was like the twilight zone. she was the one who would leave her addiction recovery pamphlet from the church on the couch and then awkwardly hide it when our home teachers came. i knew she had a pornography addiction (which she was also open with us about........) but it never occurred to me then, when i was in the peak physical form and best mental space of my life, that she had an addiction to food. and to see all those pizzas coming to our house, day after day, and to see her helpless, it's unimaginable to me to think that i became her.
these days i'm in a much better place, but i'm still working to have control and find ways to improve my situation and empower myself. so as a public display of good faith in myself, i want to recommit to some suggested ways to improve.
Manage stress. - This is the most difficult factor for me... obviously. I have never done this before, but I think one idea I could follow through on is to go on a walk instead of eating when I'm bored or need to unwind. There are a lot of places a couple blocks away from where I live that I could go, and this is something I don't take advantage of like I used to.
Eat 3 meals a day plus healthy snacks. - I've developed countless "food schedules" or meal plans by week and they are beautiful things. Still, it's seriously so difficult to follow through with them. Mostly, take out is more convenient, if I buy fresh food but don't follow through it's a huge waste of money, and eating or snacking out is a huge part of my relationship with dh and what we do to relax. A key to eating healthy, I've found, is preparation. Soaking your grains and cutting up and bagging up veggies and other healthy things. So next week I'm going to take time each night to prepare some healthy options for the next day.
Avoid temptation. - Hard one, because of the social aspect (i.e. I live with someone who has different eating habits than me and I don't think it's right for me to control what he eats or say what he can or can't bring into the house). A lot of what I eat through the day comes out of my bag while I'm on the go, so today I'm going to take all the junk food out of my bag and put some healthier options in there.
Stop dieting. - I don't believe in fad diets so this is not an issue.
Exercise. - I will walk home from work (45 min walk) a few times a week when it works out for us with getting the car home.
Fight boredom. - I will keep my to-do lists up to date (I have one for work and one for personal life). If I can keep a list and put manageable, one-time actions on it, it really keeps me moving and busy with taking care of all the little things I want to do or I'd like to get done.
Get enough sleep. - I will get in bed at 10pm every night. Usually I read or listen to a TV show in bed to quiet my mind so I can sleep, but simply by going to bed earlier and on a schedule, I'll be getting more sleep.
Listen to your body and keep a food diary. - I will recommit to using my private Instagram account to take a picture of everything I eat and writing in the caption why I'm eating it.
Get support. - Well, I wrote this blog post, so that's a start! I'm a person who's usually actually dissuaded by people checking up on me, but something about putting things down in writing in public make me be honest with myself and also really think through my situation.
interesting to learn that adolescents and adults take the same level of precaution unless there is an adolescent audience (in which case, yep, the adolescents get reckless). would be really interesting if someone did a study on introverted and extroverted adolescents. although i wasn't really aware of it then, i was a pretty introverted teen and was baffled when my peers were saying they were, above all, grateful for their peers. this, to me, was a shortsighted and unimaginable choice when we were facing and benefiting by so many other things as teenagers.
i was just telling dh the other day that i was always the good girl. the good daughter, the good sunday school student, the good student, the good sister. good, obedience, straight-shooting, patient and always praised as such. (i think in the long run this significantly stunted my growth because i didn't develop that hunger that other people did to prove themselves and find a place where they belonged. i belonged agreeably and quietly in the pocket of all the adults in my life that were responsible for me. it kind of neutered my talents and i remained convinced this is why all geniuses are rebellious, troubled people.)
i of course had friends and they were at times a huge part of my life but it wasn't until, over the summer before 8th grade, i got contacts and dyed my hair blonde, that i became hot over night and started doing reckless things, mainly, fittingly, dating around a lot and eventually getting with my punk high school boyfriend. that little bit of beauty really came to define the rebellions i did take up (boys).
in general though, i didn't usually keep an "adolescent audience" or a lot of friends or spend a lot of time with my peers and, based on this article, is probably a big reason i was a "good girl". since introversion and extroversion is biological it's pretty interesting to think that people might be biologically predispositioned to be "good girls" and "good boys" (which, let me be the first to say, is not what it's cracked up to be and actually, again, has long term disadvantages).
i was just telling dh the other day that i was always the good girl. the good daughter, the good sunday school student, the good student, the good sister. good, obedience, straight-shooting, patient and always praised as such. (i think in the long run this significantly stunted my growth because i didn't develop that hunger that other people did to prove themselves and find a place where they belonged. i belonged agreeably and quietly in the pocket of all the adults in my life that were responsible for me. it kind of neutered my talents and i remained convinced this is why all geniuses are rebellious, troubled people.)
i of course had friends and they were at times a huge part of my life but it wasn't until, over the summer before 8th grade, i got contacts and dyed my hair blonde, that i became hot over night and started doing reckless things, mainly, fittingly, dating around a lot and eventually getting with my punk high school boyfriend. that little bit of beauty really came to define the rebellions i did take up (boys).
in general though, i didn't usually keep an "adolescent audience" or a lot of friends or spend a lot of time with my peers and, based on this article, is probably a big reason i was a "good girl". since introversion and extroversion is biological it's pretty interesting to think that people might be biologically predispositioned to be "good girls" and "good boys" (which, let me be the first to say, is not what it's cracked up to be and actually, again, has long term disadvantages).
great decision of the day is to look into daft punk interviews, and my two great finds are this article (seriously, just feast on that), and this one as well.
i just love this shit. "I think that music and any form of art means that people who are receiving things are putting the meaning to it much more than the meaning the people who create it can put into it. Except you put in into just something and then the perception of the people puts the meaning into it. Either there was no meaning in the first place or there was plenty of meaning. There is no logical link between the fact that at the end something completely meaningless might find a lot of meanings, or something that has lots of meanings in their meaning can seem completely pointless and meaningless, so the connection is just the one that connects us between the stuff how we appear and how people apprehend it and think it is."
that is some solid postmodern stuff. back in school when i was rambling on about telos and pynchon and relative, culturally-assigned meaning, this is the kind of stuff i was in love with. and this paragraph that bangalter spits out is something that someone of lesser talent and prestige would get slaughtered for by people calling "bullshit" the way kim kardashian gets slaughtered for things she says. but he's a genius so it means something.
but what i love about it is that they are turning out those unstoppable hits like "get lucky" that everyone loves. what i love about it is that only someone who believes in this "bullshit" could produce something like "get lucky". so even though most people mock the bullshit while they embrace the good beats, they are all secretly benefiting from and actually getting more happy because of postmodernism and the people doing postmodern lifting.
and today that just validated for me everything i believe in.
definitely also see here: sia. identity is the defining problem in postmodernism, and it's no mistake that both daft punk and sia both hide their faces; it's a very postmodern sentiment. anyway, so after several several several albums with different groups sia decides in 1997 to travel the world with her partner. they agree to meet in london and while her partner is there waiting for her, he dies in a car crash. after sia gets the news she hits the drugs and alcohol and this lasts for years, almost destroying her. slowly she begins to write songs and becomes behind-the-scenes famous for hits like "titanium", "wild one", and "diamonds".
the thing about songwriting these hits is the way she talks about it. i watched this interview on it and she talks about how she just gets these ideas for these songs by picking one thing, usually an object (titanium, diamonds, chandelier), and then just writing an entire song around it in like an hour. boom, done. then, though, comes the part where she sells a lot of them off because they're not true to her. she says something like, 'this is a fine song but i give it to someone else because my fans would never accept this shit from me, it's not me at all.'
next comes her immense fame and success and her own fear to even show her face and accept it because of her own struggle and weakness, so she wraps her identity and brand around this blonde wig, which she shares openly with other women, with lena dunham (a land-mine laying and stepping feminist in her own right) and kirsten wiig (a multi-talented but somewhat pigeon-holed woman very, very much nervous of and hesitant toward her own fame as well--i mean, she always snuck out the back of the rockefeller plaza after snl to avoid the crowds and won't take pictures with fans unless they promise not to post them on social media) and maddie ziegler (young up and coming, and now famous, dancer). her brand crosses in and out of and defies those identifying lines and she, as a person, is left to sort and keep her identity for herself.
and whether the public appreciates it or not ("nice try sia, we already know what your face looks like!! har de har"), she is doing something very important and brave in a time when a picture of you can go around the world five seconds after it's taken. and she's being a fucking artist at it, too, and we are all benefiting from it. the artists that can navigate that postmodern, whacked out space are the ones that are redefining how we dance, how we spend our summer nights, how we survive, how we grow, how we protect ourselves, and how we are shaping our own legacy.
i just love this shit. "I think that music and any form of art means that people who are receiving things are putting the meaning to it much more than the meaning the people who create it can put into it. Except you put in into just something and then the perception of the people puts the meaning into it. Either there was no meaning in the first place or there was plenty of meaning. There is no logical link between the fact that at the end something completely meaningless might find a lot of meanings, or something that has lots of meanings in their meaning can seem completely pointless and meaningless, so the connection is just the one that connects us between the stuff how we appear and how people apprehend it and think it is."
that is some solid postmodern stuff. back in school when i was rambling on about telos and pynchon and relative, culturally-assigned meaning, this is the kind of stuff i was in love with. and this paragraph that bangalter spits out is something that someone of lesser talent and prestige would get slaughtered for by people calling "bullshit" the way kim kardashian gets slaughtered for things she says. but he's a genius so it means something.
but what i love about it is that they are turning out those unstoppable hits like "get lucky" that everyone loves. what i love about it is that only someone who believes in this "bullshit" could produce something like "get lucky". so even though most people mock the bullshit while they embrace the good beats, they are all secretly benefiting from and actually getting more happy because of postmodernism and the people doing postmodern lifting.
and today that just validated for me everything i believe in.
definitely also see here: sia. identity is the defining problem in postmodernism, and it's no mistake that both daft punk and sia both hide their faces; it's a very postmodern sentiment. anyway, so after several several several albums with different groups sia decides in 1997 to travel the world with her partner. they agree to meet in london and while her partner is there waiting for her, he dies in a car crash. after sia gets the news she hits the drugs and alcohol and this lasts for years, almost destroying her. slowly she begins to write songs and becomes behind-the-scenes famous for hits like "titanium", "wild one", and "diamonds".
the thing about songwriting these hits is the way she talks about it. i watched this interview on it and she talks about how she just gets these ideas for these songs by picking one thing, usually an object (titanium, diamonds, chandelier), and then just writing an entire song around it in like an hour. boom, done. then, though, comes the part where she sells a lot of them off because they're not true to her. she says something like, 'this is a fine song but i give it to someone else because my fans would never accept this shit from me, it's not me at all.'
next comes her immense fame and success and her own fear to even show her face and accept it because of her own struggle and weakness, so she wraps her identity and brand around this blonde wig, which she shares openly with other women, with lena dunham (a land-mine laying and stepping feminist in her own right) and kirsten wiig (a multi-talented but somewhat pigeon-holed woman very, very much nervous of and hesitant toward her own fame as well--i mean, she always snuck out the back of the rockefeller plaza after snl to avoid the crowds and won't take pictures with fans unless they promise not to post them on social media) and maddie ziegler (young up and coming, and now famous, dancer). her brand crosses in and out of and defies those identifying lines and she, as a person, is left to sort and keep her identity for herself.
and whether the public appreciates it or not ("nice try sia, we already know what your face looks like!! har de har"), she is doing something very important and brave in a time when a picture of you can go around the world five seconds after it's taken. and she's being a fucking artist at it, too, and we are all benefiting from it. the artists that can navigate that postmodern, whacked out space are the ones that are redefining how we dance, how we spend our summer nights, how we survive, how we grow, how we protect ourselves, and how we are shaping our own legacy.
'baby you do you'
this is the best thing to hear come out of my husband's mouth.
although it might just tie with him saying that the two of us shouldn't necessarily prop up our entire plan to buy a house on his graduation and eventual job because "we have two futures to think about." what's that? a marriage where i don't have to plan my life around my husband's career? no one prepared me for this in my girlhood.
on a related note, today i was skimming a blogger's "book" (so sad that blogger books never turn out) and she had a section on good marriage advice. the first ping of advice was NOT to marry your best friend, with the reason being that asking about your hair or your jeans or talking about your period should be reserved for your "real bff" which i'm guessing she's saying has to be a girl. essentially, it was bad writing for: "don't expect your husband to be your girlfriend."
now, something feminists don't talk about much (that i've encountered yet except for toni morrison and gloria naylor) but that i think about a lot is how traditional spousal relationships are HUGE nails in the coffin for gender equality. i don't know quite how to put this in words yet but the essence of what i'm describing is:
a woman is on her period and her husband tries to initiate sex. to discourage him, she says,
"not tonight, honey, i'm tired."
it blows my mind that this is an actual thing that people do. rather than warn him that she's on her period--wait, let's back up to how does he not already know she's on her period when he lives with her??--she makes up some excuse to, i assume, spare him what are apparently the gory details of even having to hear her say that her uterus is shedding its lining like the uteri of an innumerable amount of people on the earth all do every three weeks.
then again, it also blows my mind when i spend a weekend at my parents' house and realize my mom actually cooks every meal by herself even though there are three other people over the age of 18 and no one under the age of 14 living there (all male). even though i watched her do this every day growing up, i still can't believe she actually spends at least three hours of her every day on this. so maybe i'm not coming from a strong place anyway.
to be fair, not everyone likes to talk about periods. or jeans. or hair. or cars. or baseball. there are women that don't like talking about periods, just like there are men that don't like talking about periods. but men who throw up their hands and get annoyed when any kind of "girl talk" comes up get to do that and get a pass from having to take interest in other people on the planet only because society teaches them they can and that lady things aren't worth talking about because they're gross, embarrassing, or unworthy of men's time.
(interesting to note that women stereotypically don't do this. what women do is roll their eyes, smile, and say, "boys.")
what i don't understand people not getting is that we could change what we expect of men and it would be okay! actually, it would be great. by taking all of those conversations (and unavoidably, those fears, worries, stresses, joys, and intricate parts of who we are) only to our girlfriends, we are letting our husbands know that it's okay for them not to be involved in our lives on a basic level.
i think it's safe to assume that a traditional man who marries a traditional woman based on traditional criteria probably is not having a lot of intimate, gender-theory-thought-provoking interactions with women or people of different genders in general. maybe this is only true for mormons--traditionally, in the most conservative and officially, widely taught sense, we're supposed to date superficially (don't even date one on one, just in groups), and to date a LOT of people until we meet a good business partner--i mean marriage partner who checks off the items on our uninformed, gender-guided list.
this is all while not being particularly close to anyone of the opposite sex, because that could only mean trouble, of course. the traditional man gets an unexamined, unquestioned pass on understanding what it means to be female because expecting men to learn about or be interested in not just female-gendered things but actual women is emasculating and dehumanizing. even though the traditional man knows nothing of women ("what do women want, anyway?? not even they know!"), no one is alarmed by the fact that he is entering into, in a traditional relationship, stewardship over a woman.
so our traditional male has finally acquired a traditional female essentially by her respecting his masculinity in the right ways and him purposefully knowing nothing of her femininity. and what all this leads to is a traditional, pretty superficial relationship consisting of people continuing to play up their gender roles (and having a lot of traditional marital problems, which then become accepted as "woman are just that way" and "men are just that way", which then become normalized, which then become the punch lines of marriage-themed "ball and chain" jokes, which then teach the next generation how to gender and be in a gendered marriage). a man in this situation will never have any reason or framework to rethink gender roles because the only woman he knows is great! she loves traditional gender roles!
i imagine being in a traditional marriage is like never actually coming close to your spouse as a human being. essentially, in protecting the "purity" and "innocence"--or, essentially, the separation of the genders--they are rendered inherently unable to relate to each other in life, and they aren't expected to. essentially, by dancing the dance that upholds the traditional gender dichotomy a person is saying that them acting out a gender role is more important than them getting human understanding for the unique parts of them as an individual.
i guess what i'm saying is that it's not enough for feminism to talk about abuse in relationships. (not trying to belittle abuse... there's obviously an urgency to abuse that is light years away form being addressed, despite all the effort already being made.) we really do need to expect the genders to look at each other in a different way, and people in relationships should be the first, not the last, to do this. i guess i'm saying that i'm for a comprehensive and objective sexual education (including the mechanics of human pleasure, not "male pleasure = boys are visual" and "female pleasure = women are sooo emotional"). i guess i'm saying that it should be weird for women to take their problems to their girlfriends instead of their husbands, not the other way around, and also that everyone regardless of gender should cultivate wonderful friendships with everyone else, regardless of gender. it should be more normal for husbands and guys in relationships with women to be feminists than not to be feminists. in 2015, a woman should be able to let her partner know that she's on her period, and they should be as frank in return.
mostly i'm saying the genders need to stop giving each other permission to go on being respectful (or not so respectful) strangers.
also, i realize more all the time how spoiled and truly privileged i am to have wonderful friends and an amazing husband.
although it might just tie with him saying that the two of us shouldn't necessarily prop up our entire plan to buy a house on his graduation and eventual job because "we have two futures to think about." what's that? a marriage where i don't have to plan my life around my husband's career? no one prepared me for this in my girlhood.
on a related note, today i was skimming a blogger's "book" (so sad that blogger books never turn out) and she had a section on good marriage advice. the first ping of advice was NOT to marry your best friend, with the reason being that asking about your hair or your jeans or talking about your period should be reserved for your "real bff" which i'm guessing she's saying has to be a girl. essentially, it was bad writing for: "don't expect your husband to be your girlfriend."
now, something feminists don't talk about much (that i've encountered yet except for toni morrison and gloria naylor) but that i think about a lot is how traditional spousal relationships are HUGE nails in the coffin for gender equality. i don't know quite how to put this in words yet but the essence of what i'm describing is:
a woman is on her period and her husband tries to initiate sex. to discourage him, she says,
"not tonight, honey, i'm tired."
it blows my mind that this is an actual thing that people do. rather than warn him that she's on her period--wait, let's back up to how does he not already know she's on her period when he lives with her??--she makes up some excuse to, i assume, spare him what are apparently the gory details of even having to hear her say that her uterus is shedding its lining like the uteri of an innumerable amount of people on the earth all do every three weeks.
then again, it also blows my mind when i spend a weekend at my parents' house and realize my mom actually cooks every meal by herself even though there are three other people over the age of 18 and no one under the age of 14 living there (all male). even though i watched her do this every day growing up, i still can't believe she actually spends at least three hours of her every day on this. so maybe i'm not coming from a strong place anyway.
to be fair, not everyone likes to talk about periods. or jeans. or hair. or cars. or baseball. there are women that don't like talking about periods, just like there are men that don't like talking about periods. but men who throw up their hands and get annoyed when any kind of "girl talk" comes up get to do that and get a pass from having to take interest in other people on the planet only because society teaches them they can and that lady things aren't worth talking about because they're gross, embarrassing, or unworthy of men's time.
(interesting to note that women stereotypically don't do this. what women do is roll their eyes, smile, and say, "boys.")
what i don't understand people not getting is that we could change what we expect of men and it would be okay! actually, it would be great. by taking all of those conversations (and unavoidably, those fears, worries, stresses, joys, and intricate parts of who we are) only to our girlfriends, we are letting our husbands know that it's okay for them not to be involved in our lives on a basic level.
i think it's safe to assume that a traditional man who marries a traditional woman based on traditional criteria probably is not having a lot of intimate, gender-theory-thought-provoking interactions with women or people of different genders in general. maybe this is only true for mormons--traditionally, in the most conservative and officially, widely taught sense, we're supposed to date superficially (don't even date one on one, just in groups), and to date a LOT of people until we meet a good business partner--i mean marriage partner who checks off the items on our uninformed, gender-guided list.
this is all while not being particularly close to anyone of the opposite sex, because that could only mean trouble, of course. the traditional man gets an unexamined, unquestioned pass on understanding what it means to be female because expecting men to learn about or be interested in not just female-gendered things but actual women is emasculating and dehumanizing. even though the traditional man knows nothing of women ("what do women want, anyway?? not even they know!"), no one is alarmed by the fact that he is entering into, in a traditional relationship, stewardship over a woman.
so our traditional male has finally acquired a traditional female essentially by her respecting his masculinity in the right ways and him purposefully knowing nothing of her femininity. and what all this leads to is a traditional, pretty superficial relationship consisting of people continuing to play up their gender roles (and having a lot of traditional marital problems, which then become accepted as "woman are just that way" and "men are just that way", which then become normalized, which then become the punch lines of marriage-themed "ball and chain" jokes, which then teach the next generation how to gender and be in a gendered marriage). a man in this situation will never have any reason or framework to rethink gender roles because the only woman he knows is great! she loves traditional gender roles!
i imagine being in a traditional marriage is like never actually coming close to your spouse as a human being. essentially, in protecting the "purity" and "innocence"--or, essentially, the separation of the genders--they are rendered inherently unable to relate to each other in life, and they aren't expected to. essentially, by dancing the dance that upholds the traditional gender dichotomy a person is saying that them acting out a gender role is more important than them getting human understanding for the unique parts of them as an individual.
i guess what i'm saying is that it's not enough for feminism to talk about abuse in relationships. (not trying to belittle abuse... there's obviously an urgency to abuse that is light years away form being addressed, despite all the effort already being made.) we really do need to expect the genders to look at each other in a different way, and people in relationships should be the first, not the last, to do this. i guess i'm saying that i'm for a comprehensive and objective sexual education (including the mechanics of human pleasure, not "male pleasure = boys are visual" and "female pleasure = women are sooo emotional"). i guess i'm saying that it should be weird for women to take their problems to their girlfriends instead of their husbands, not the other way around, and also that everyone regardless of gender should cultivate wonderful friendships with everyone else, regardless of gender. it should be more normal for husbands and guys in relationships with women to be feminists than not to be feminists. in 2015, a woman should be able to let her partner know that she's on her period, and they should be as frank in return.
mostly i'm saying the genders need to stop giving each other permission to go on being respectful (or not so respectful) strangers.
also, i realize more all the time how spoiled and truly privileged i am to have wonderful friends and an amazing husband.
beyonce by beyonce. i am completely obsessed with this album lately. i listen to it at least once a day. i know i know i know i am pretty behind on this, because it came out over a year ago. but i feel like it's better to discover something like this later than never. every song is so good and the production story is just so fascinating (right down to the mystery producer "boots"). i've read a lot of things about the album (best that i've read being this article), but beyonce turning her squeaky clean image on its head with this album is an endlessly beautiful thing. in an age when practically all female musicians are turning their nose up at being feminists--taylor swift, meghan trainor, katy perry--it's hard to forget that beyonce was once among them but also hard not to forgive her when this shit is happening:
i just relate to the record and its origin story, as far as how beyonce identified herself, so much. is she a feminist? yes. is it weird-hard being a feminist, and is she always evolving as one? yes. how's work? sucks sometimes, but she's learning to be her own woman. are there problems in her marriage? yes. is her marriage good though? unequivocal yes. is the sex sexy? yes. what's it like being a mom? unlike anything else (and "Blue" is unlike anything else on the album). who seriously needs to ask a woman these things? i feel like that is the heart of what she gets at with this album. who needs a promotional period for your album when your album is simply an answer to all the ridiculous, but societally acceptable, questions you've been asked your entire career?
i just love this so much, because it's my life.
people bash her for being like a robot but when you listen to how hard she is on herself to become better and to be in control it's inspiring. no one says that about michael jackson, who was notorious for his perfectionism and artistry. people bash on her because she doesn't "write her own music," but what's truly astounding is how those people don't understand branding in a day when it's the hottest business tactic in the market. beyonce owns and runs "beyonce", and the fact that she can bring all the biggest names in the industry together and they all tell her "there's something wrong with you" because she's so good is wonderful. some of what i've read has bashed her for pretending like she relates to the problems of everyday women--problems with beauty standards, with jealousy, with marriage, with work. but listening to this, we are definitely understanding each other on some very, very important and fundamental level.
and can we please talk about this?
i mean, come on. and this:
i want to record a cover of this for my dad when he dies. nothing has ever expressed quite so perfectly how i feel about my dad. we fought for you the hardest. it made us the strongest. but heaven couldn't wait for you. so go on, go home.
i just relate to the record and its origin story, as far as how beyonce identified herself, so much. is she a feminist? yes. is it weird-hard being a feminist, and is she always evolving as one? yes. how's work? sucks sometimes, but she's learning to be her own woman. are there problems in her marriage? yes. is her marriage good though? unequivocal yes. is the sex sexy? yes. what's it like being a mom? unlike anything else (and "Blue" is unlike anything else on the album). who seriously needs to ask a woman these things? i feel like that is the heart of what she gets at with this album. who needs a promotional period for your album when your album is simply an answer to all the ridiculous, but societally acceptable, questions you've been asked your entire career?
i just love this so much, because it's my life.
I'm climbing up the walls cause all the shit I hear is boring
All the shit I do is boring
The 9 to 5, just to stay alive
The 9 to 5, just to stay alive
The 9 to 5, just to stay alive
All the people on the planet
Working 9 to 5 just to stay alive
How come?
people bash her for being like a robot but when you listen to how hard she is on herself to become better and to be in control it's inspiring. no one says that about michael jackson, who was notorious for his perfectionism and artistry. people bash on her because she doesn't "write her own music," but what's truly astounding is how those people don't understand branding in a day when it's the hottest business tactic in the market. beyonce owns and runs "beyonce", and the fact that she can bring all the biggest names in the industry together and they all tell her "there's something wrong with you" because she's so good is wonderful. some of what i've read has bashed her for pretending like she relates to the problems of everyday women--problems with beauty standards, with jealousy, with marriage, with work. but listening to this, we are definitely understanding each other on some very, very important and fundamental level.
and can we please talk about this?
i mean, come on. and this:
i want to record a cover of this for my dad when he dies. nothing has ever expressed quite so perfectly how i feel about my dad. we fought for you the hardest. it made us the strongest. but heaven couldn't wait for you. so go on, go home.
stupid shit my employees (two male prospective business majors) said lately:
they are both in a public speaking class, and they were brainstorming at the last minute what to give informative speeches on. one of them told the other: "you should give your speech on how to be a woman."
after they finished bashing public speaking they once again rehashed how neither of them is likely to get into their program, or any business program (because they are both failing everything). they started looking at other majors and minors and saying things they would do as a back up. ("geology dude!! easiest major that starts you off at 100k. my cousin's doing it." "but there's an entire class just on groundwater..........") finally they came to the women's studies minor.
"women's studies. hmm."
"what, are you serious?"
"yeah, it's totally a thing. let's look at the classes." he starts listing them off and when he gets to 'women in art' the other one says--
"yeah, i could never survive that. i don't think so."
"huh. women's studies. really? why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
(this has been brought to you by how this will forever echo in my head when i look at his face and never be able to take him seriously again)
they are both in a public speaking class, and they were brainstorming at the last minute what to give informative speeches on. one of them told the other: "you should give your speech on how to be a woman."
after they finished bashing public speaking they once again rehashed how neither of them is likely to get into their program, or any business program (because they are both failing everything). they started looking at other majors and minors and saying things they would do as a back up. ("geology dude!! easiest major that starts you off at 100k. my cousin's doing it." "but there's an entire class just on groundwater..........") finally they came to the women's studies minor.
"women's studies. hmm."
"what, are you serious?"
"yeah, it's totally a thing. let's look at the classes." he starts listing them off and when he gets to 'women in art' the other one says--
"yeah, i could never survive that. i don't think so."
"huh. women's studies. really? why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
"why don't they have a men's studies?'
(this has been brought to you by how this will forever echo in my head when i look at his face and never be able to take him seriously again)
the summer i was a CA was the summer i first stopped going to church. since some of us always had to work sunday, we would essentially scavenge for wards to attend with whoever was also not working. i went a couple of times, but it was the first time in my life that i was sitting in sacrament meeting and i thought to myself, "i don't belong here." maybe it was the ward we went to most often, with those shiny perfect people on a level of tryhardness and beauty that i would never approach in the shiny and perfect business building that felt nothing like church. this is a time in my life when i was really, really screwed up. dh was in the mtc and the night after he was supposed to have flown out (he was actually delayed), i walked up to the mtc front gates after midnight and paced there and had a panic attack while sobbing (the same thing that happened the day he got endowed, actually, except i was by the field house). so i wasn't in the best place anyway.
fast forward to the summer of being engaged. dh and i lived in the same apartment complex and were in the same ward. we went to church a few times and then pretty much stopped. that ward was horrible. the thing i remember most about going to that ward was how amazingly beautiful my new engagement ring diamond sparkled in the dim lights of the room where we had sacrament meeting. we soon got shoved into the marriage and family prep class. interesting to note that i was not a feminist in my final form yet, and the first sunday of marriage and family prep we talked about men being the head of the household and i distinctly remember commenting and saying it made perfect sense because the priesthood has an order and a wife is a counselor to her husband just the say uchtdorf is a counselor to monson. (i was obviously still struggling hard with cognitive dissonance and going through all the ways i could calm my feminist self with traditional lds answers.) pretty quickly, though, the class became people going on and on about their lovey dovey gospel stuff and dh and i were definitely like "how bout we marriage and family prep at home instead," and we did.
we blamed our absence on wedding planning but really we were just enjoying the quiet of the apartments during church, and my relief society president was having none of it. she obviously thought i was a poor wayfaring lost sheep drowning myself by the wayside and assigned herself to be my visiting teaching companion. i remember her actually saying one time: "the hardest part for me about the gospel is that you can't force people to do the thing they should do." that really didn't bode well for her since she was weeks away from serving her mission, which i'm sure was an 18 month dark period of severe depression for her as she tried to berate and force everyone she met to do what she thought was right. but first, that summer we were engaged, she practiced on me.
she would schedule our appointments for whenever she felt was a good time, without consulting me. there were a couple times i was legitimately busy, as my mom was making trips down from out of state to do wedding stuff with me. but she would never budge, and she would always call and text me without stopping until i told her i'd be there. she was usually rude right to my face. one time she called to say she was coming over early before our appointment (don't remember why). i told her i was in the middle of something so i would come meet her where we had agreed. well she came right over anyway and let herself into my room without asking. i reminded her i was going to meet her in a bit and she said, "no we're going to meet right now." she wanted to say a prayer and so i told her, let's go into the front room (our room was a pigsty and also my personal space which i hadn't invited her into). she said, "no, we need to pray in here, i'm not comfortable praying out there." so we did.
she was the embodiment of everything i hated about mormon people. i would only meet more of her in the place we lived as newlyweds, and that was the end for me. i guess ragging on mormons as a lifelong mormon is kind of liking ragging on women when i'm a woman--internalized religious prejudice. but i don't know how to grow out of it and shake it off. i don't know how to go back to church, something i've thought about doing constantly, without thinking about what that type of mormon is thinking. i told dh on sunday that the reason i didn't just start going back like i was thinking of doing is i didn't want to give those nagging self righteous people in the congregation the satisfaction, like they would pat themselves on the back because they thought it was their nagging and backhanded comments that helped us come back into the fold like they were trying to force us to do.
the worst is when people say it's dumb for someone to leave the church "because they were offended." i didn't leave the church, per se, because of the cruel, manipulative, disrespectful people i've met in my wards. i left because i saw them blatantly presenting themselves as the epitome of what a member should be, and that in turn made me realize and question things about the church. it's like when they say that acting christlike and being an exmaple will draw people to the church--it was the opposite of that. they were doing what they thought the church told them to do and that's what drove me away. groupthink is the first thing to spit you out and point fingers at you if you don't go along with it. and that's what i can't reconcile in my heart.
fast forward to the summer of being engaged. dh and i lived in the same apartment complex and were in the same ward. we went to church a few times and then pretty much stopped. that ward was horrible. the thing i remember most about going to that ward was how amazingly beautiful my new engagement ring diamond sparkled in the dim lights of the room where we had sacrament meeting. we soon got shoved into the marriage and family prep class. interesting to note that i was not a feminist in my final form yet, and the first sunday of marriage and family prep we talked about men being the head of the household and i distinctly remember commenting and saying it made perfect sense because the priesthood has an order and a wife is a counselor to her husband just the say uchtdorf is a counselor to monson. (i was obviously still struggling hard with cognitive dissonance and going through all the ways i could calm my feminist self with traditional lds answers.) pretty quickly, though, the class became people going on and on about their lovey dovey gospel stuff and dh and i were definitely like "how bout we marriage and family prep at home instead," and we did.
we blamed our absence on wedding planning but really we were just enjoying the quiet of the apartments during church, and my relief society president was having none of it. she obviously thought i was a poor wayfaring lost sheep drowning myself by the wayside and assigned herself to be my visiting teaching companion. i remember her actually saying one time: "the hardest part for me about the gospel is that you can't force people to do the thing they should do." that really didn't bode well for her since she was weeks away from serving her mission, which i'm sure was an 18 month dark period of severe depression for her as she tried to berate and force everyone she met to do what she thought was right. but first, that summer we were engaged, she practiced on me.
she would schedule our appointments for whenever she felt was a good time, without consulting me. there were a couple times i was legitimately busy, as my mom was making trips down from out of state to do wedding stuff with me. but she would never budge, and she would always call and text me without stopping until i told her i'd be there. she was usually rude right to my face. one time she called to say she was coming over early before our appointment (don't remember why). i told her i was in the middle of something so i would come meet her where we had agreed. well she came right over anyway and let herself into my room without asking. i reminded her i was going to meet her in a bit and she said, "no we're going to meet right now." she wanted to say a prayer and so i told her, let's go into the front room (our room was a pigsty and also my personal space which i hadn't invited her into). she said, "no, we need to pray in here, i'm not comfortable praying out there." so we did.
she was the embodiment of everything i hated about mormon people. i would only meet more of her in the place we lived as newlyweds, and that was the end for me. i guess ragging on mormons as a lifelong mormon is kind of liking ragging on women when i'm a woman--internalized religious prejudice. but i don't know how to grow out of it and shake it off. i don't know how to go back to church, something i've thought about doing constantly, without thinking about what that type of mormon is thinking. i told dh on sunday that the reason i didn't just start going back like i was thinking of doing is i didn't want to give those nagging self righteous people in the congregation the satisfaction, like they would pat themselves on the back because they thought it was their nagging and backhanded comments that helped us come back into the fold like they were trying to force us to do.
the worst is when people say it's dumb for someone to leave the church "because they were offended." i didn't leave the church, per se, because of the cruel, manipulative, disrespectful people i've met in my wards. i left because i saw them blatantly presenting themselves as the epitome of what a member should be, and that in turn made me realize and question things about the church. it's like when they say that acting christlike and being an exmaple will draw people to the church--it was the opposite of that. they were doing what they thought the church told them to do and that's what drove me away. groupthink is the first thing to spit you out and point fingers at you if you don't go along with it. and that's what i can't reconcile in my heart.
i remember having this conversation with my mom when i was about 15. it went something like:
that is actually what she said to me and she was completely serious. she didn't mean it in a mean way, just very matter-of-fact, and to this day i still can't decide whether that was a great or a terrible thing for her to say. (we disagree on a lot of social things. like how when i saw "ps i love you" in theaters with her and my grandma, and after on our way to the car they were going on about how silly the movie was because no one should ever expect that level of romance in their marriage, that husbands don't actually really do stuff for you, and that marriage isn't really like that. i couldn't believe they were saying it then, and that hasn't ever been true for me now. but i digress.)
sometimes i still feel this way. i have this constant battle with myself. i don't appreciate people assuming they have a right to know me or take up my time with shallow relationships, and it's a big turn off to me (looking at you, everyone i've ever known only through church). but how can i say this AND always be looking for genuine connection when i'm not good at initiating or holding it? all my friendships kind of befell me. with the exception of my marriage, i was willing and active but not really the initiator in any of my super good friendships.
i'll never forget the super big fight i had with my particularly troubled roommate (you know, the one who told our bishop i was giving her depression because i wasn't friends with her the way she thought i should be), because one of her main points she kept going back to was: "everyone just wants to get to know you, but you won't let them!!" it was the most absurd thing because "everyone" in the ward didn't talk to me even though i spent months going to shit every night (who plays sardines in the church house, though, really? when they're 20?) and wrote those stupid love notes to people i'd just met or knew from around and never got one back. that sounds really bitter, but it's really not, and i didn't really care at the time. it was just kind of my one last great failed social experiment in "can i be extroverted?". but the degree to which it was ridiculous for her to say this was insane.
and really, she didn't want me to be there with her to be there with her, she needed me to be nice to her so she could feel good about herself, something she made very clear.
so anyway, who needs therapy when you have a blog.
me: "i'm so sad because no one wants me around unless they need me. no one ever wants me around because they want me there." i think i might have even said this included her, as i was always jumping in to help clean, cook, and watch my brothers.
mom: "well it's not bad being needed."
that is actually what she said to me and she was completely serious. she didn't mean it in a mean way, just very matter-of-fact, and to this day i still can't decide whether that was a great or a terrible thing for her to say. (we disagree on a lot of social things. like how when i saw "ps i love you" in theaters with her and my grandma, and after on our way to the car they were going on about how silly the movie was because no one should ever expect that level of romance in their marriage, that husbands don't actually really do stuff for you, and that marriage isn't really like that. i couldn't believe they were saying it then, and that hasn't ever been true for me now. but i digress.)
sometimes i still feel this way. i have this constant battle with myself. i don't appreciate people assuming they have a right to know me or take up my time with shallow relationships, and it's a big turn off to me (looking at you, everyone i've ever known only through church). but how can i say this AND always be looking for genuine connection when i'm not good at initiating or holding it? all my friendships kind of befell me. with the exception of my marriage, i was willing and active but not really the initiator in any of my super good friendships.
i'll never forget the super big fight i had with my particularly troubled roommate (you know, the one who told our bishop i was giving her depression because i wasn't friends with her the way she thought i should be), because one of her main points she kept going back to was: "everyone just wants to get to know you, but you won't let them!!" it was the most absurd thing because "everyone" in the ward didn't talk to me even though i spent months going to shit every night (who plays sardines in the church house, though, really? when they're 20?) and wrote those stupid love notes to people i'd just met or knew from around and never got one back. that sounds really bitter, but it's really not, and i didn't really care at the time. it was just kind of my one last great failed social experiment in "can i be extroverted?". but the degree to which it was ridiculous for her to say this was insane.
and really, she didn't want me to be there with her to be there with her, she needed me to be nice to her so she could feel good about herself, something she made very clear.
so anyway, who needs therapy when you have a blog.
one of the employees here had a nasty surgery done on his heel and leg. today his supervisor and my boss are talking in hushed tones (though not hushed enough, obviously) about his situation because he hasn't had enough sick time for this on-going problem. finally, right before they broke up, my boss said it was his own fault for "spreading himself too thin" because, specifically, "he doesn't have a wife to take care of him."
silly employee, you forgot to pick up a wife! don't you know that's what a woman is for!
silly employee, you forgot to pick up a wife! don't you know that's what a woman is for!
one of the most nurturing people i ever met was an art teacher i had. i took a drawing class from him about a year ago. we all had a big drawing due each class and we would gather around, all fifteen of us, and look at each drawing. he would listen to everyone talk about their drawing, even though it took forever and some people went on too long. at the end, he would give each person really meaningful feedback and touch on something they said. it sounds so simple, but the way he did it was so caring and so deliberate. on the first day of class he said, "if you have family problems or other problems... depression... please come see me and we can work it out." well, i did drop out about halfway through the class because of like, all those things. i wonder all the time why i didn't go talk to him, because he clearly would have understood.
another art class i took was an art history class. it was an okay class, but we were required about a third way through the semester to turn in the topic for our term paper (which is stupid, when you've barely learned anything.............. but okay. we weren't allowed to change our topic either). as much as i hated it, i was willing to do it, until he told us that because this was byu and because he had to read all the papers, we were only allowed to write about uplifting topics. no papers on war, discontent, anguish, disagreement, abuse, or anything else that could be construed in a negative light, because reading them made him sad and we had a "unique opportunity" to focus on the light. how fast i wtf'd at that i can't even tell you. that is the EXACT reason why mormons will never make great art, and the exact reason why i walked out of that class that day and never went back. it flew in the face of everything my humanities degree taught me--that we should learn about each other's suffering so we can hold up the hands that hang down, that we should be vulnerable and willing to speak out about our sorrows in case it might help another, that we should look to the heart and not to the (sometimes lying) smiling faces--and i couldn't believe he was the prominent art history professor.
another art class i took was an art history class. it was an okay class, but we were required about a third way through the semester to turn in the topic for our term paper (which is stupid, when you've barely learned anything.............. but okay. we weren't allowed to change our topic either). as much as i hated it, i was willing to do it, until he told us that because this was byu and because he had to read all the papers, we were only allowed to write about uplifting topics. no papers on war, discontent, anguish, disagreement, abuse, or anything else that could be construed in a negative light, because reading them made him sad and we had a "unique opportunity" to focus on the light. how fast i wtf'd at that i can't even tell you. that is the EXACT reason why mormons will never make great art, and the exact reason why i walked out of that class that day and never went back. it flew in the face of everything my humanities degree taught me--that we should learn about each other's suffering so we can hold up the hands that hang down, that we should be vulnerable and willing to speak out about our sorrows in case it might help another, that we should look to the heart and not to the (sometimes lying) smiling faces--and i couldn't believe he was the prominent art history professor.
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