we need more than one beauty standard

I spend a lot of time thinking about gender identity. I sit around reading about other people's gender identity, questioning my own gender identity, talking about what it's like to have a less common gender identity, and these are all very important to me personally and academically.

But tonight, when I went to women's caucus, my two friends led a discussion with a goal of rekindling our passion for feminism-slash-gender-friendly-politics, since club membership is dwindling. Toward the end, we were talking about our biggest frustrations in daily life, and we got stuck on body image.

For the very first time, I told a group of people about my fight against disordered eating and shitty body image. It's a fight that I've largely won, for now, but from a purely academic standpoint I understand that this is not the sort of thing that goes away.

I did not say "I admitted to a group of people." It shouldn't be a secret. It's not something to be ashamed of. For me, this fight has come mostly from images I ingested from television and the movies--from Disney on up to the L Word. I haven't done the research to speak to the causes of eating disorders as an epidemic, but I've done enough reading to know that the media and issues of control (check for that one being present in my life, too) are big ones.

After I spoke my piece, which was really to do with comparisons to other people and No Fat Talk Week, another friend turned to me and expressed that it was good to know that everyone struggles. (Here's where I add that I am small-framed by most people's standards, and not especially fit or muscular, and she is curvy and belly dances and does zumba.)

What. The. Hell.
If littler girls are conditioned to hate their bodies, and medium girls like one of the leaders tonight are conditioned to hate their bodies for different reasons, and bigger girls are conditioned to hate their bodies for still other reasons, WE ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG AS A SOCIETY. Where is four-foot-eleven  on my television screen? Where is 160 pounds doing news interviews? Why are snow white and cinderella and barbie all built the damn same way?

Why is it that if you don't consciously avoid mainstream media and capitalism, you're exposed to the idea that there is only one acceptable body type? Why is it okay that all the jeans they sell in the mall are cut in the same proportions of inseam, hips, ass, thighs? Why are there padded bras, minimizers, elastic girdles, jeans with butt pads? Everything they sell, from shirts to undergarments to liposuction, is designed to make our bodies look just like someone else's. Enough.

What the hell is so wrong with our bodies the way they are? NOTHING.

I want every damn six-year-old and sixteen-year-old to hear and see that wherever your body fat and muscle distributes is good.

my mental state yesterday. title is Stomachache.

hating myself is the flavor of dark green undertone of olives, salty good like tears then suddenly foul, gray, slippery

knowing you tastes like stomach medicine
sweet berry then dull burning embers catch my tastebuds after the mouthful
chalky temporary relief until reality sets in again

makes my mouth twist with sour acid

i hate november.

such a craptastic two days. i don't even know where to start.

some things are gonna change around here, i think.

happy post forthcoming, i promise!

I never ever post poetry online, and i don't think this one is particularly phenomenal, but it's a start

You
should probably be nervous around me nervous about me
I
see what you try to keep hidden hear the words you don't say, if
You
shut up use your eyes not your tongue
My untrained subconscious
starts telling with the corners of my eyes and teeth against lips

it went like this:

social paranoia
cleaning the gluten out of my system
reduction of anxiety and paranoia
fearlessness = dumb mistakes
dumb mistakes = consequences
consequences = doubts ability to judge trustworthiness of fellow humans

i suppose that is healthy, to some extent. but it makes storytelling more...complicated. i don't know how to claim space but not more than i want.

Song challenge 07

(a song that reminds me of a certain event)

Wherever, Whenever by Shakira. event: the first time it occurred to me that I liked girls. eighth grade Spanish class.

:D

attitude

i'm trying optimism, because the rest of the semester is looking pretty terrifyingly busy right now. I am not going to write down my ridiculous list of assignments, exams, and responsibilities; instead, here are the things that are going to be good about the time between right now and the semester ending:

1. Ballet Performance Group show and then Harry Potter tonight with a couple of friends, including one who graduated and i see much less often than we'd like
2. Making AIDS awareness pins with red ribbon on Sunday
3. seeing my puppy over thanksgiving break. whatever else those three days turn into, they'll at least involve my dog and some quality cuddling.
4. the instant where i drag myself off the plane and through the security exit in newark airport, when i see my dad (who's come to pick me up) and relax for the first time in hours
5. getting some sleep tomorrow morning, finally
6. definitely going to tilt one of these weeks to just relax and dance
7. hot showers
8. getting my hair cut with one of my suitemates after thanksgiving
9. late-night chats with people i'm getting to know
10. the existence of Indian food
11. I found my favorite (okay, only) hat. so i can wear it and look gay and camouflage bad hair days.
12. sweatpants becoming increasingly acceptable to wear on weekdays
13. women's caucus bonding activity during reading period. usually alcoholic, always fun.

things I did today

• went to both of my classes
• strategized with professor about how to not fail bioorganic chemistry
• studied a little bit of bioorganic chemistry--oxime formation
• met with women's group adviser #2, where we received way too many helpful suggestions for the number of hours i have in a day
• ate pasta and also "tacos" that were really nachos. oh, and granola in yogurt
• wrote about two pages of my paper, and more importantly figured out the structure a little better
• watched iron jawed angels for the first time
• had two sort of intense conversations simultaneously instead of writing said paper. it's on development of primary sex characteristics, and prior to tonight, was maybe a quarter of the way done. but now i have a research question, and i know how to work my background material into the rest of the text.
• sent my resume and application for independent research to people writing me letters of rec
• freaked out about how i should be applying for jobs and/or grad school instead of the award i'm actually applying for
• worried about aforementioned two conversations and how not to resume old unhelpful social patterns. reflected on personal growth in the area of these topics.

sunday evening blues, making your life miserable since 1996

i need a vacation and i probably won't get one until December.

i'm very gracefully falling apart.

i asked to drive but i feel like someone cut the steering wheel wires and the brakes are sparking instead of stopping.

nighttime really can go fuck itself.

unrelatedly, i want to throw a party.

tacos are not that complicated

Dear dining "services," AGAIN,

i am not a chef. however, i do know a couple of things that are not that hard to figure out.

first, pico de gallo is definitely not straight-up chopped tomato. i don't claim to know what it is, but i'm sure it isn't this.

(side note: i looked it up, and according to The Internet, you can find out the etymology of the name and also that it generally involves onion and sometimes chilis, lemon or lime juice, cilantro, cucumber, radishes, and other firm fruits. the end)

also, please do not look at me like i've got three heads when i ask for sour cream. or for crunchy corn tortillas. they may not be authentic to actual Mexican cuisine, but you've been serving them since september, and i could have found them in the grocery store at the age of six. And i am not all that good at directions. why are you confused about whether you serve them today?

part three, if you wanted to not block the entire utensil slash condiment area during the dinner rush, there wouldn't be the pedestrian equivalent of a traffic jam. if you really wanted to improve life, you wouldn't keep the forks six feet off the ground--they are literally above my head and therefore very hard to reach--but that's another story.

and since when do you make rice with hot sauce?

(the reason i care so much and am so damn annoyed about this: hard-shell black bean tacos are the only gluten-free and vegetarian option in the student union/on the weekends. besides salad, but i drop weight as easily as i drop F-bombs.)

Song challenge 06

A song that reminds me of somewhere.

Songbird, by Kenny G. My dad loves jazz, among other types of music, and sometimes in the evenings he would sit in the library in the front of the house, reading and listening to music. (I assume he still does, but I'm not around in the evenings much in pipersville.) This song in particular is one I associate with him, and more importantly with the corner of the house that is his personal spot. The blue leather couch and set of side tables are usually strewn with the newspaper, whatever novel or biography he's reading, and a bunch of highlighted copies of value line.

I even made a copy of his CD.

oh shit, does that mean to be a functional and not broke adult i have to invest? and read the tiny tiny print in value line?

like a mathematician who can't subtract

How did I end up in this mess?

I read enough to know this is a psychological stage and that things will get better, but i'm also human, and right now i'm angry at myself.

I was having a chat with a buddy earlier tonight that reminded me of something about myself. Backstory is that we haven't known each other too long, but he's one of the people i talk to online late at night when i should be doing homework. we were talking about a bunch of stuff, including something he'd alluded to a few times before but seemed nervous to talk about. my attempt to encourage him to continue if he felt comfortable was to take a guess at the topic. ...and i was right. pretty much spot-on in my perception of him and the thing he was worried about. Reading people is one of the things i'm good at in life. I like that I have the ability to tell what's up with people, even if they try to hide it. I can usually spot things others can't.

(This, incidentally, is exactly why I can't argue. Things people don't tell me directly are not fair game, in my book, and it's likely that everything I ever realized about a person would come spilling out in one rage-filled paragraph. I'm not a cruel person, even when I'm pretty angry or upset, but it means I have to keep my mouth shut. even at the expense of looking like a crappy fighter.)

So I repeat, how did I end up in this mess?

How the fuck didn't I see it coming?

And more importantly, what the hell do I do now? I don't want to be that girl.

life is improving

team,

my heart is warmed. i've talked to several people this week who don't suck. good listeners, don't dump all of their problems on me at once, friendly in a noncreepy way, etc.

Things that are good to do:

eat

sleep

express your feelings to other people, selectively.

understand that you are still a good person even if some of your grades are bad

i really want that tattoo, but that's a topic for when i'm less tired.

LGBTQIAlphabetSoup

i'm having a really intense physical reaction to something I just read, and I'm not entirely sure why. my heart started racing and i got that lovely twisty nervous feeling in my abdomen, and after a couple minutes' reflection I'm thinking it's that I might be about to discover something about myself that I might not like.

The blog is http://starfishwithwings.wordpress.com/ by a guy I know named Tristan (are we friends? I'd like to be friends. He's possibly too cool to be my friend, and I think I'm bad at making friends because I'm horribly shy at inconvenient times and my brain shuts down when I should be thinking of appropriate and inspiring conversation topics, but that's not relevant at present.) The section of the post titled Psuedofriends in Psyberspace that piqued my interest slash semifreakout was about the probability that sex with a man as a man is different than sex with a man as a woman. He used the words "power dynamics" and it hit a nerve.

First, because oh! lightbulb moment! I'm not alone in thinking this! yay!

Second, because I tried explaining this once to a friend (late at night while I was drinking, which probably didn't help) and she was totally confused. I was mostly thinking aloud about how my relationships with women are different than my relationships with trans men and how that would be different than being with a nontrans guy. This explanation really didn't go well for me, partially because I'm bad at talking but largely because I couldn't get across why exactly being with a trans guy made me not 100% homosexual.

Being with a man = not gold star lesbian. But that's not exactly a clear explanation--it's because of the difference in power dynamics, as well as a lot of other factors emotionally.

What upset me is that...I thought I was cool with that. This wasn't my first relationship of this variety, and I'm not clueless about what it means when you agree to this sort of tie with a person of a particular gender. But...I was bad at it. The power differential freaked me the hell out and I didn't like it. I'm just not sure where I went wrong--the person, the expectations, the situation? The place I was in at the time? My feelings about (the lack of) control in my own life? Something else?

So I thought I was bi with a couple of "types," or maybe pansexual; I didn't have a label and I wasn't too concerned with finding one. Now I'm not so sure. Is it always like this? Do I even want to find out? For sure, I'm not especially in a place to test the waters again.

On the other hand, I sort of actually do think I'm...not just into girls. And part of me desperately wants to see that that's okay. That it won't be self-destructive.

I'm whiny when I'm hungry

Dear Dining Services,

1. mozzarella cheese is inappropriate on a taco. it is also inappropriate on burritos, burrito bowls, and probably fajitas as well. Therefore, when i go to the taco station at 11:30 am, which is only half an hour after it opens, you should try to have appropriate cheese. you can't possibly have run out of...whatever normal taco cheese is...by 11:30 am.

2. you also seem to have run out of rice chex again, which is what i really wanted when i went to the dining hall at 11:30 in the morning, because I consider before noon to be breakfast time. I know that you get cases and cases of cereal from Sysco, who gets them from the Official Cereal People, who I am sure are not completely out of rice chex. so for the love of all that is holy, please stop hiding the rice chex. it's the only breakfast object i can eat on this whole campus. awesome.

3. please stop hiding from me when i look for you to ask politely to find me some more rice chex. i only cry and/or scowl when i'm really hungry, so the less you hide, the nicer i will be.

4. please stop telling me you'll get the gluten-free cupcakes again, unless you're actually going to get the gluten-free cupcakes. please don't tell me you're going to get the other guy to do it, because he told me you would do it. this is not supposed to work like siblings blaming each other for making the mess.

5. remember three months ago, when i was so hungry I sent you an email that i wrote while I was practically crying about how there wasn't any food i could eat on campus? and we talked about how we could get gluten-free food in the corner store, and you were sort of consoling and nice and assured me that i wouldn't have to starve? i do. THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN STOP CARRYING THE FOOD all of a sudden.

Song challenge 05

A song that reminds me of someone...take me on the floor by the veronicas reminds me of a laundry list of cool people. i first listened to it while driving to virginia beach with my best friends from high school. it's a good song for flying down the highway with a week's vacation ahead of you, with the sun shining on your whole life. it also makes me think of the person i spent the whole car ride texting.

take me on the floor is also one of my friend steph's songs. it's something we play to get pumped for clubbing. so a lot of good memories associated with this one.

Song challenge 04

A song that makes me sad.

Burning bridges, by Chris Pureka. It's about losing someone you love to someone else. not in a malicious way, like they stole her away, but that she moved on. the lyrics and the tone are heartbreaking.

of course it reminds me of a girl. a girl who asked for my heart and gave it back--more than once. i don't know if we can be friends again, if i can trust her again, and that's worse in a way. the first time it happened, the not-talking phase was what really hurt. this time, it's easier, and i don't like that. but i can't keep being torn up about her, either.

thank you, song challenge.

it took me a good eight or nine months before that song didn't reduce me to tears every time i heard it.