Barnmaven

Finding my speed

My daughter is growing up so quickly.  I am starting to see her reacting to peer pressure, to worry about being noticed for the wrong reasons.  I often find myself thinking back over time and wondering if I've been careful enough with my words to help her avoid the body awkwardness that has plagued so many women.  When I compliment her I try to remember to not just say how beautiful she is (and oh, she IS) but also how loving and smart and funny and creative she is.  The time left I have to truly influence her is nearly over - very soon she'll be at that age where her classmates have far more power than her mother over her self-image and the directions she chooses to take her life.  Like most of you I have plenty of sweaty-palm moments when I realize just how powerful peer pressure can be and pray like mad that I've been the mother I want to be so that my daughter has an inner compass with a strong enough magnetic north to overcome the negativity and shallowness she is sure to encounter.

I want to be a guide for her just as my own mother was for me,  leading the way for me to appreciate the value of having outside interests and staying active. 

Riding and caring for my horses, my home and my yard do a lot to keep my body moving, but with a job that mostly involves driving a keyboard, I know those things are not enough.  Over the last decade or so I've focused more on being healthy than on losing weight, although after the kids were born I had quite a lot of extra weight to lose.   I prefer exercise that feels good, particularly yoga, but I've been aware for some time that I frequently don't pay enough attention to my cardiovascular health.  SG frequently cites a study he read which concluded that one of the biggest contributors to longevity is the one's aerobic capacity.

Now I'm no stranger to cardio.  I was a rower once, and in the sprint races your typical rower goes anaerobic within the first minute or two of a 2,000 meter race.  Rowing uses every one of the large muscle groups, so the lungs must work extra hard to meet the body's demand for oxygen.  Of course that was a long time ago and nothing I've done since has been quite as phsyically demanding, childbirth notwithstanding.

 Back in 2011 I had started a C25K running program and was in the middle of my fifth or sixth week when I managed to give myself a severe bilateral sprain.  That put me off my feet for a while - fortunately NOT during the time of year it would keep me off my horse.   Six weeks on my lazy ass helped me go soft in a way I was not entirely comfortable with, but my vow to jump back on the exercise wagon had about as much veracity as my frequent threat to sell my children to the highest bidder.  Then last summer I ended up losing a lot of weight due to severe gastric issues. Instead of encouraging me to start exercising again, all it did was give me a good excuse to be lazier than ever.  When you are like me and you keep several sizes of clothes and the smallest ones fit without even having to try hard, complaency is easy to come by.  Unfortunately, lazy eventually catches up with you.  And it has.  I haven't weighed myself since I was pregnant with my daughter, but my clothes started telling me I had one more size to go before I was right back where I was at the beginning of the summer.

I made a few attempts to restart my C25K program.  Its bitterly cold here, though, and I have little time as it is -- I don't enjoy spending an extra half hour putting layers of clothes on just to stay warm enough to suck in freezing lungfuls of air as my out-of-shape body tries to make itself jog.  Screw that.  But now what?

As often seems to happen in my life, fate - a/k/a my parents - intervened.  About a month ago my parents told us they wanted to give SG and I a wedding gift.  Yes, that's right.  We got married three days after I sprained that ankle in 2011 and they are just now getting around to the wedding gift.  But who am I to argue?  Better late than never.

They bought us a treadmill.  Not a crappy, cheap treadmill - a really nice treadmill.  Probably the nicest treadmill I've ever been on.  Its got a Wi-Fi connection and an 11 inch touch screen and will also hook up to your iPod and mix you a martini.  In fact, I think might actually be smarter than me.

The days of coming home, dropping my briefcase on the floor and pouring a glass of wine have gone by the wayside.  The New Me comes home, puts dinner in the oven, throws on my running shoes and climbs on the treadmill.  Its taken a few weeks but I'm starting to see some results.  I'm able to run two miles now, and twice I've actually run three.  Okay, maybe I didn't exactly RUN.  I am not exactly anyone's idea of a runner.  But I'm doing a nice imitation of jogging.  I'm moving and I'm breathing and its getting easier.  I actually had a hard time zipping up my english riding boots this weekend because my calves seem to be growing a muscle.

Will it last?  I'm determined to make it so.   I think back to all the things I've started in my life that eventually faded away.  In context, however, I've always exercised.  Just not always consistently.   What I'm more keenly aware of now is that the older I get the less attainable fitness becomes.  Its not the weight I care about so much as longevity and quality of life.  With my arthritis and structural issues, being fit is the best way to keep myself active and pain free for as long as possible.  Its the best way to give myself a shot at being around for my kids for a long time to come. 

If ultimately it also helps to show my daughter that there's no such thing as "too old to get fit," so much the better. 

Just doin' my job.

 

You've wasted another perfectly good ten minutes reading my blog.  THANKS!

 

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Girl things

My left shoulder hurts.  It has for years, but not like it has lately.  Lately whenever I try to put my arm up over my head, do pushups, carry hay or saddle my horse it really really hurts.  I went to see the shoulder guy at the Orthopaedic clinic, and he gave me a shot of steroids but that only worked for a little while, so I was back there this morning.  He wants to rule out a small tear in the rotator cuff before he puts me in physical therapy, so they're scheduling an MRI. 

I'm so excited.

I've never had an MRI.  And what if I have to have surgery?  Another scar to show off!  Cool!

Yes, I'm that person.

I'm the person who sees snow falling and I might pretend to be annoyed, because that's apparently what you're supposed to feel when it snows.  Inside, though, I can't wait for the adventure of driving in it.  There might even be an accident!  I might end up stranded in the wilderness and have to hike through the mountains and eat my companions to survive!

I'm the person who gets a scrape or a cut and the only reason I go looking for a bandage is so I can walk by my husband and kids and say "LOOK!  I'M BLEEDING!"  If the cut isn't bleeding enough I'll probably squeeze it a little to see if I can get more out of it.

I'm the person who hates needles and gets tattoos.  "How many hours did that one take?"  "Four two hour appointments."  "Didn't it hurt"  "Oh, yeah, it hurt like hell.  It was awesome."  And when I'm under the needle and the artist asks if  I need a break and I say that I'm fine and they respond with "Wow, most people would have had to take at least a couple of breaks by now," I'm all "FUCK YEAH."

I'm the woman who will smack a volleyball into the face of the guy on the other side of the net with barely concealed glee, run over the shortstop on my way to second base and barrel through the guy trying to set a pick on me when I'm guarding the guy who's driving the baseline.

I put on my coveralls and a baseball cap, put my truck up on ramps and change my oil, change my filters, refill my washer fluid and try to see if that pesky leak is just a loose bolt that I can fix myself.  I look like a greasemonkey, and I could care less.

And this may sound crazy, but at the same time I like that I can put on a fancy dress and get my hair and makeup all just so and knock my husband's socks off with my awesome female self.  I very much like my femininity and all that it entails.

I'm not alone in this.  So many women I know are just like me, strong and soft.  Tough and tender.  My daughter is one of them.

Pink, bright hot pink, is her favorite color.  She loves My Little Pony and Dragons, stuffed kitty toys and light sabers.  She wants to be a princess and a ninja. She has beautiful hair to her waist and she prefers jeans to dresses.  She came to me on Christmas day to talk about how upset she was when some relatives and friends gave her brother "boy" toys and gave her "girl" things like body wash and perfume.  She was upset to think anyone might think that she was a "girly girl." 

There is so much to love about being a woman.  While its a sure bet that my childhood in the late 60's/early 70's subjected my psyche to a great deal of gender role absolutes, I enjoy wearing makeup and dressing in clothes meant to showcase what I think is attractive about myself.  I care about how my hair looks, and I struggle like many women about the impossible-to-walk line between having fingernails that are neat and pretty or fingernails that allow you to do things like cinch a saddle, throw hay bales and repair fencing. 

In 1983, the year I graduated high school, 95 percent of autobody repair workers were male.  There must have been something brewing in us and the classes of women that followed.   As of a decade ago, the number of women in that industry tripled -- a 369% increase.  Other typically male-dominated industries have seen similar jumps in female workers - firefighting, millwork, engineering and law enforcement, to name a few. ¹  I've been a lot of things in my work life, but the bulk of it I've spent in transportation. 

I might have grown up watching Charlie's Angels, but I think I still understood at a very deep level that those women were still playing to male sexuality and that they represented very little that was real.  Anyone with half a brain knows that television and movies tell you lots of lies about how people look and what they say and do.

So when Amazon Girl complained about some of her gifts, I told my daughter that people weren't trying to be unkind if they bought her "girly girl" presents.  I told her even though she might not be a perfume and flowers kind of young lady that it wasn't demeaning for people to think of her as feminine.  Besides, isn't a gift is more of a reflection of the giver than of the receiver?.  But I get it, as might any woman who in the hormone hell of early puberty was mistaken more than once for a boy.  But I want her to know - to believe - that she doesn't have to be one or the other.  Both aspects of her exist together and there's nothing wrong with that.  There's nothing wrong about being a woman who can both take care of herself and look good doing it.

The dividing line between two worlds that were once very separate has become thin and transparent.  We may be very different physically, we may in large part have critically different ways of thinking and organizing our lives, but in so many ways we have broken free of the gender roles that at one time were used to contain and limit us.  I think thats a good thing for all of us, men included.

So hey, do you want to arm wrestle?

 

^{1.  Bureau of Labor Statistics 2005 Current Population Survey}

 

Thanks Blogher for featuring this post on Blogher.com!

 

 

Welcome to our world, fellas.

Have you ever listened to the BJ Shea morning show on Seattle's KISW? 

Me either.  I hate talk radio and morning programs.

Except we were stuck on 405 trying to get out of Bothell and back to the dry side of the state after seeing Bonnie Raitt at Chateau Ste. Michelle the night before, and my random station surfing landed me on this particular show right as the hosts were discussing a most interesting topic.

According to a recent study, women are now more interested in men for their looks than for their money.  Men?  They're more interested in a woman's intelligence than her looks. 

From the reactions of the shock jocks on the show, you'd think this was the worst news EVER to hit the airwaves.  At one point one of the guys was going on about how male movie stars are too good looking and it sets women up to have unrealistic expectations of men and how they look.  Dude, did you really just say that????

Imagine.  Men bemoaning a double standard created by movies and the media that sets an impossibly high standard of physical perfection for one gender.

One of the hosts, I'll assume it was BJ, went on to say how the over-50 women he and his wife knew that weren't married were simply unhappy and that women had better learn to be less picky or they might end up (horrors) alone and unmarried.   Spinsters.  GASP! 

I think he might have been taking the study results a little too seriously and reaching a fairly unlikely conclusion, but then again, it was talk radio, and I know ratings depend on the hosts' ability to get their audience lathered up about something, anything at all.  Even so, as deliciously entertaining as it was to hear men object to being treated like arm candy, I think BJ has a couple of good points. 

I disagree that one needs a husband (or wife) in order to be happy.  Being partnered is great for many people, but there truly are men and women who are quite content to live unattached.  Relationships are hard.  Relationships can help us accomplish our goals, but there are times they can hinder us as well.  When you hook your wagon to someone else's star, you take on each others' concerns, desires, frustrations, needs and wants.   Personally, I'm happy that SG is as hands-off as he is when it comes to giving me space.  As much as I love him, as much as he loves me, we both have things we enjoy doing alone or with our individual friends.   I know myself well enough to know that mostly I am one of those people who wants to be in a relationship.  Even so,  I'm grateful for the times I've been on my own, for learning not just to be okay with that, but to actually like it.  Finding your bliss is a more pure evolution when it isn't being influenced by a partner.   

When it comes to looks, though, my gut reaction is that BJ Shea is correct.  Yes, we are attracted to the people we're attracted to, but there is more to a person than their physical appearance.  If someone is just looking for the chemistry of a fling, I suppose limiting your criteria to simple appearance is fine, but when it comes to seeking relationship material, looks don't count for nearly as much.  Research indicates that the more time we spend with someone, the more likely we are to enter a relationship with them.  Chemistry grows when we find someone who matches our emotional needs, not just our physical desires.

BJ also contends that most men aren't really that shallow.  I agree, but I'll take that to another level and say that most people aren't really that shallow.  I think we all have certain types that we are attracted to, and certainly everyone can appreciate visual appearances, but I think the majority of people are looking for long-term commitment really do pay attention to a lot more than looks. 

Even so, people have the right to be where they are, even if that happens to be a place of depthless interaction and missed opportunity to appreciate others' finer qualities.  Its true that I can still work up a head of steam if I dwell too long in the false standards of beauty our film and print media create for our daughters (and apparently, now, our sons), but its also true that I'm less bothered by this phenomenon than I used to be.  I give less credence to arbitrary rules of beauty set by people whose opinions matter little to the reality of my life. 

Is it more important for one to look good or to be good?

Is it more important for one to be beautiful or to be interesting?

Is it more important for one to be flawless or to be self-reliant?

Its not that you couldn't be both, but if I had to pick one characteristic over another, I'll choose character over looks every single time. And the amazing thing about that, is that the more you know and appreciate a person, the more you are able to see the beauty of them.

Being Girly

Sometimes I think I write too much about dealing with my kids and their issues.  This morning, for instance, could have provoked yet another thousand word essay on the joys of trying to get out of the house on time and why it never ever happens and how I'll never qualify as Mother of the Year because I keep losing my temper and my son hates me because he doesn't get TV, DS or laptop time tonight.  But...his medicine got in him.  So I assume his teacher will have a better day than my morning was.  But this isn't about that.

This post is about being a girly girl.  Or being not a girly girl.  Or about being both all at the same time, and reconciling the picture of who I am in my mind with the reality of me.

With all due respect - and apologies - to the ultra-feminine among us:  I have never felt I was one of you.  I was the girl who wanted to get the most offensive rebounds in the basketball game, not cheer the team on from the sidelines wearing a tight sweater and a skimpy skirt.  I was the girl who collected snakes and dug clams and spent most of her weekends on or around her horse and who only wore dresses if threatened with death or disinheritance. 

It wasn't that I didn't want to be pretty.  I did want to be pretty, oh so very much.  But I knew that I wasn't.   I knew, deep inside of me, that I was never going to earn peer acceptance for being cute or petite or having a feminine voice or a sweet laugh.  I could only be good at certain things, and those weren't necessarily the things that purchase a pass into the world of beautiful girls.  And I liked the things I was good at, even if they weren't considered truly feminine pursuits. 

I sailed along through high school and college mostly feeling like Marmaduke trapped in a china shop.  Eventually, finally, I started figuring out that I had assets that went beyond being able to beat the average guy in an arm wrestling match, and more importantly, learned to enjoy making the most of them.  I would guess its taken me about twenty years altogether to become more at ease with the woman inside me who wants to look pretty.  I finally had to understand that pretty and smart don't have to be mutually exclusive.  I finally get it, that I can change the oil in my car by myself and that doesn't disaqualify me from putting on a pretty dress and some makeup and a dab of perfume on my wrists and being attractive in a more conventional way. 

I've learned that there is NOTHING WRONG with wanting to look attractive.  And the most interesting thing about it all is that I reached a point in my life where I don't do it for anyone but myself.  I don't get dressed up to impress a man, I get dressed up because I want to.  And I dress down because I want to.  Dressing down doesn't make me a dirty mom.  Its just one aspect of who I am.

And to clarify, "attractive" to me doesn't mean looking like Angelina Jolie or Grace Kelly or any of those skanky Jersey Girls on television.  It means looking like me, all dressed up.  Beautiful is the way you see yourself, beautiful is the way love sees you.  Likewise, ugly comes from inside too.  Ugly is the way some people act, not the way they look. 

I don't worry what people will think of me in the grocery store if I've been on my horse and I'm covered in dust and hair and I'm wearing my boots and I have hat head.  Go right ahead and stare at me disapprovingly if you must, I don't notice it and even if I did you lack the power to make me feel bad.  The flip side of that coin is that when I make the effort to dress up and look pretty, I don't need you to approve of me for me to know I look good.  That comes from me, not you.

One physical trait that I've always not liked about myself are my fingernails.  The women in my family of origin have very sturdy, very strong hands.  Functional hands. But - terrible nail beds.  Short, wide nail beds, not the nice long oval ones I so admire.  The nails grow out splayed and split and not so very nicely.  I am also not good about caring for my hands.  I never wear rubber gloves when I'm cleaning house or doing dishes.  So I have these short fingernails and they're always getting broken and cracked.  They're ridged, my cuticles are an embarassment.

I have mostly accepted that these are the hands I have, but I don't necessarily have to like them.  And it does feel strange when I go and pay for a pedicure and come out of the shop with lovely toes and newly de-calloused feet in sharp contrast to the mangy cuticles and chopped off nails on my hands.

I have talked myself into and out of artificial nails for years.  I had them briefly in my twenties.  I even bought nail polish the exact shade of my red Nissan Pathfinder.  But they didn't last, I split one painfully due to my clumsiness, I was terrible about getting fills done.  And then with my current lifestyle, horses and dogs and cleaning stalls and all...it didn't seem like something I could - or should - do.

Except I have this one index finger where the nail is splitting.  And it won't stop.  Its been split for over two months now, and as it grows, it just keeps splitting.  I've tried polish, I've tried special plastic "bandaids" just for fingernails, I've tried acrylic nail polish.  I've tried nail treatments.  In the end, I just keep cutting it back farther and farther and no matter how far down to the quick I get it, it still splits and the edges of the split catch on things like my saddle pad or my shoelace and it splits farther and more painfully every time.

So I gave it some thought.  Artificial nails don't have to be long nails.  They can be as long or as short as I want them to be.  Even if the nail technician thinks they should be longer, it doesn't really matter.  I'm the customer, I get to ask for what I want.  And yes, artificial nails are harder than hell on your real nails.  But my real nails are complete crap anyway, so honestly, does it really matter if they get thin and brittle and crack?  They do that anyway!  Artificial nails require maintenance.  I'm notoriously bad at taking care of myself.  So now I have a compelling excuse to go take some time for myself and spend it on something that looks nice.  Artificial nails look fake.  Yes, but even fake looking nails look a thousand percent better than the ones God graced me with.

Wow, I had an argument with myself and I WON. 

Lookie here:

Girly hands. 

I can still beat you at arm wrestling, though. 

NaBloPoNoMoHuhWha and thoughts on the "obesity problem"

I'm just not going to kill myself writing some piece of crap blog post just so I can say I posted every day. 

I thought about it.  I thought about trying to pass of some piece of brain dead drivel as a "blog post" and simply opted out.  That's not the way I like to do things.

After I spent the day finishing up repainting my dining room and doing a few minor bits of housework (and inadvertently going "WHOOF" every time  I tried to sit down and my thighs reminded me about all the posting in my dressage lesson) I went and I got a haircut and I came home and I sat down and drank a glass of wine and I completely lost the will to move or talk or even think.  I was that kind of tired where your body just wants to curl up in bed and maybe you'll be able to sleep and maybe you won't but every second you insist on staying past horizontal your skin and your eyes and your hair and your feet all scream at you to just crawl between the covers already because you're DONE.

And so I did.

---------

So this stupid sprained ankle has me struggling with feelings of guilt every time I put something in my mouth.  If I'm not running I shouldn't be eating says my shameful self.  Riding your horse and painting your living room don't exactly qualify as "sitting around," interjects my healthy self. 

Those two continue at war, and I continue to watch the battle being waged across magazines and news stories and blogs, the battle over whether being overweight is dangerous or healthy.  I commented on a recent blog post at Jessica Gottlieb's blog wherein Jessica took exception with a photo of a beautiful, albeit very curvy young woman.  Many commenters agreed with her contention that this woman was obese and therefore completely unhealthy.  I disagreed.

Looking at someone's picture tells you virtually nothing about their level of health or fitness.   There are plenty of active people who are also overweight, just as there are a great deal of thin people who are sedentary. 

There was a great interview with author and PhD Linda Bacon in the recent issue of MORE.  Bacon is a physiologist and the author of Health at Every Size.

In the interview, Bacon  contends that the term "obesity epidemic" is misleading.  While it is true that as a whole people in our society are heavier than they have been (at least in the years since we started tracking factors like weight), it is not an "epidemic" by any means, nor is there evidence that being heavier actually poses deadly risk.

She points out that while there is indeed a link between being overweight and developing Type II diabetes, its not a proven fact that being overweight actually causes the diabetes.  Scientifically it is well-known that being insulin resistant causes a person to gain weight.  It is more likely that the insulin resistance, which can have genetic and environmental factors, causes the diabetes and the state of being overweight.  Even so, those leading the charge in the anti-fat movement love to tell everyone how being overweight is causing everyone to become diabetic.    Similary there are associations between other illnesses and weight, but because there is an association between the two doesn't necessarly prove that one causes the other.

Bacon posits that the most dangerous and unhealthy condition is not that of being obese, but that of being sedentary.  In study after study, people who are overweight but active are healthier and live longer.   A 2008 Harvard study found that overweight women who exercised at least 4 days a week have a significantly lower risk of heart disease than people who don't exercise (regardless of weight).    Bacon also refers to studies that show that obese people with cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, hypertension and type 2 diabetes actually live longer than thin people with the same conditions. 

Dieting doesn't work.  People who restrict their calories and lose a lot of weight gain it back when they start eating normally again.  It is only a very small percentage of dieters who actually succeed, and the negative emotional effect of failing at weight loss is causing people to feel disproportionately unhappy.  And for what reason?  Because they don't look like someone else thinks they should?  That's no reason to feel bad. 

I'm not advocating being unhealthy, not by any means.  I see no redeeming value in loading yourself up with junk food and spending all of your time sitting on the couch watching TV or in front of the computer playing games.   But nowhere is it proven that all overweight people are sitting on the sofa twenty-four-seven gorging themselves on potato chips.

What I AM saying is that the shaming of fat people needs to stop.  Nothing is gained by insisting that fat people are unhealthy.  Trying to get people to feel bad about themselves accomplishes nothing except to make the finger-pointers look like judgemental so-and-sos.    I've never been a small person.  I'm tall, for one, and genetically built on the...er..."sturdy" side.  I've been heavy, I've been thin, but at any size, I've felt my very best when I've been physically active.  I can stack two tons of hay, I can cut my own wood, build a chicken coop from scratch and I can carry a 90 pound dog into the vet's office.  I can make a 1500 pound animal back the hell off by simply looking at him and lifting my hand.  I am powerful.  I can polish my toes and put makeup on my face and wear a killer dress and look fabulous.  I am beautiful.  I can do all of this despite the fact that you probably can't count my ribs and I'm inching past the "halfway" mark in my 40's. 

I refuse to feel bad about myself because I don't fit a magazine definition of what beauty is supposed to look like. 

Don't let them fool you into it, either.

 

 

 

Things that are short

My nails.

My hair.

My time.

Number three naturally leads to numbers one and two.  One and Two keep three from being as short as it otherwise might.

Sometimes I look at women with long, manicured nails and I feel a stab of want.  I'd love to have hands with long, oval nail beds that naturally grown the perfect nail.  You know, the nail that looks awesome with polish on even when the nails are short.  But then I think of all the things that my hands need to do -- all the things that my hands are capable of doing -- and the envy washes out with the tide. 

I try to imagine what my life would be without the ability to saddle my horse, build things, play my guitar, roughouse with my dogs, bathe my kids, and I can't. 

I run my fingers through my short hair, growing out a bit now and unruly in its desire to curl up and around my ears and go the wrong way on the right side of my forehead.  I can grow it long if I want.  Sometimes I do want long hair.  And other days I look at it short and I think that it looks perfect just the way it is.  I remember how long it took to dry it and try and tame its nonconformist spirit.  I think of the other things I like to do with my time -- not the least of which being sleep. 

My hair is short.  My nails are short.  And because they are short, other things can be a little bit longer. 

Time with my children.

Time with my horse.

Time with my dogs.

Maybe I don't look as feminine as I could.  Maybe I don't look quite as polished.  I'm perfectly OK with that. 

Short suits me just fine.

Traumatic

I have always loved words.  I grasped the concept of reading at the age of three and I never looked back.  Through the bright afternoons of my childhood and the impossibly dark years of puberty and college, reading provided me with a way to escape, an avenue of avoidance.  My life has never been so bad, but I did have a lot to avoid.

That early grasp of language earned me a boot uphill, out of kindergarten and into the first grade.  Academically I was more than ready, and it feels sometimes that I got average grades in school simply because I was always three steps ahead of where the rest of the class was learning, and so distractible if I couldn't be challenged, that I just got bored and stopped trying.  Academics were never really the issue, but social skills were for most of my childhood the crisis du jour.  Its one thing to say that I was a precocious little girl who easily got along with most adults and never met a stranger.  Its another to say that I had, then and now, difficulty making friends within my peer group.  Then, it was hard to be the child who wasn't socially mature, who was sensitive, who cried easily.  Whether it was that they sensed in me an easy type of prey or whether they resented me for being smart or just because they loathed me on sight, the girls in my classes from elementary school all the way up were not kind to me.  I had few friends, none of them from my class in school.  The older I got and the more aware of it I was, the worse it felt. 

When I started fifth grade we had a new teacher at my school.  She and I did not click well, she seemed to resent the time that I was pulled from her class for advanced learning modules, and I didn't have any respect for her.  I sensed clearly that she did not like me, and I simply refused to perform.  My mother met with the teacher a few times, and then with the principal.  When it became clear that we were going nowhere fast, my mom applied to the district to put me in a different school.

This meant Mom had to pick me up and drop me off at school every day, but apparently she felt this was worth the effort. 

It was in fifth grade that I started to develop, somewhat.  I got my first bra that year. 

They didn't make stretchy little cotton training bras back in 1975.  They made torture ensembles of heavy straps and heavy cups, or so it seemed to me.  But I was proud of my new bra.  I thought it made me very grown up.

My first day at my new school with my new bra, I showed it to one of the girls in the bathroom.  "What size is it?" she asked.  "32A," I proudly replied.

That was the last moment I was proud of my boobs for a number of years.  Because the minute I walked out of the girls bathroom into the hallway and onto the playground for recess, my new classmates had cleverly concocted a little chant just for my benefit:

Roses are red, Violets are blue - Mary wears a bra sized THIRTY TWO!

I wanted the pavement to crack open and swallow me whole.  I spent recesses for the next few weeks inside the classroom or in the library, reading books and making every effort to escape my classmates.  They would find me, though, and the chanting would begin, until I think finally some teachers and playground duties cracked the whip and the taunting stopped. 

By the time I started my first menstrual cycle in junior high I knew WAY better than to tell anyone.

Of course, it wasn't easy to hide those bulky kotex pads that you had to pin inside of your underwear.  It would have been less obvious to wear a diaper.  Fortunately by then, most of us girls were menstruating and the girls that weren't didn't want to make it obvious that the rest of us were more "mature" than they were, so they kept their mouths shut.   We were all old enough to be horribly embarrassed by our rapidly changing bodies, and topics of menstruation and "female things" were mercifully left untouched.  Besides, there were plenty of other things to find fault with.

Thankfully I've recovered from the horror of those early days of development.  I've learned to appreciate my bosom and to not feel embarrassed when other people (visibly, verbally, whatever) appreciate it too.

Two weeks ago my daughter came home from her dad's wearing a cute new outfit.  The top has patterned sleeves and a hoodie, but the part over her chest and torso are thin white cotton.  Looking at her twirl and preen in front of the mirror, I was smiling under my hand when the awful realization struck me.    I wanted to throw up.

My baby girl needs a bra.

Its different for her, thankfully.  She's not the first one in her class, not by far, and the selection of bras for budding girls is by far superior than what we had available to us thirty-odd years ago.

We went shopping.  She picked out three - one gray, one pink, one turquoise.  She looks adorable.  Not once has she come home in tears having been teased by her peers for wearing one.

Do you know what's more traumatic than being teased for wearing a bra to school?

Being the mother of a girl who is now old enough to need a bra.

 

Do what it takes?

The Interwebs are abuzz over Catherine Hakim's new book Erotic Capital.  Hakim, a British sociologist,  is best known for authoring books and articles centered around women in the workplace and gender equality.  A self-described feminist, Hakim has made a career of attempting to understand and iterate the social, political and economic impact woman have in the workplace and how pressures of conformity and patriarchal values create challenges for women.

Given her background, many feminists are perplexed by the assertion she makes in her latest book, that a woman's best bet in the workplace is to leverage her sexuality in order to even the odds.

Yep, that's right.  A feminist telling us to use our looks to get ahead. 

Not only that, Hakim asserts that women who don't take the time to maximize their sex appeal via diet, makeup, wardrobe and options like Botox are being are simply lazy and counter-productive.

To be fair, I haven't read the book yet.  Its sitting in my Kindle account, waiting for my droid to have a 3G signal to download it.  However, the salient points Hakim makes via her interview with The Daily Beast, are worth discussion and don't require the finer points of the book to be open to debate.

"Anyone, even quite an ugly person, can be attractive if they just have the right kind of hairstyle, clothes, and present themselves to the best effect...This isn't a frivolous spending of money.  It has real benefits."

In and of itself, nothing about this statement is truly offensive.  I remember attending a seminar geared toward women in business back in the late 1980's where we were advised to pay attention to how the senior executives in our company dressed.  If we wanted to succeed, an easy way to demonstrate our "acceptability" was to dress the same way.  If the men wore suits and ties, women should wear suits and low heels.  If everyone wore solid colors - black, blue, etc - so should you.  If the environment was casual, be the best-casually-dressed worker in the office.   I don't think its such a stretch to encourage people to look their best at work, it demonstrates a level of attention and ambition that assures higher-ups that you are someone who's not just marking time at your job, you're in the game. 

Social research doesn't lie; people make assumptions about other people all of the time based simply on how they look.  It stands to reason that a competent employee who dresses like a slob is going to be less favored than an equally competent employee who dresses well, all else being equal. 

Hakim asserts that "Everybody should use all the assets they've got, and this is one asset that women have often been told is inappropriate to use.   I think women need to stop having a chip on their shoulder, or feel uncomfortable investing in erotic capital.  Attractiveness and beauty has real value."   She claims that things such as Exercise, tanning, coloring your hair and even plastic surgery are necessary evils for career success.   She identifies social skills as another invaluable asset.

Its disconcerting to have someone with Hakim's considerable research behind them to bluntly advise us that we must look better in order to compete.  But is it true?

I wonder if the reaction to this book would be different if the title were less threatening.  Looking good doesn't necessarily convey "erotic" appeal.  Dressing nicely and maintaining one's looks don't necessarily insinuate that a woman is exuding sex appeal.  Utilizing a word loaded with not-so-subtle visual imagery as part of her hypothesis is certainly one way to create controversy and ensure a greater number of book sales.  But then, without having read it, I have no idea whether Hakim is simply advising women to make sure they look good at work and not telling us to show off our boobs in low-cut tops and wear stiletto's to maximize the draw power of our legs and asses.  Because truly, those are completely different concepts.

I've met plenty of women in the business place that easily fall into stereotypical categories.  I've worked with women who were gorgeous and marginally competent, who slept with or sucked off whichever man was required in order to get a better salary, a better bonus or a promotion.  I've worked with women who were incredibly good at their jobs but who were challenged either by less-than-stellar looks or a timid personality or both, and heard them degraded behind their backs by coworkers and higher-ups based simply on the scale of their physical attractiveness.  I've heard people say things like "Oh yeah, she's really good at what she does, but..." 

Then there are those women - the ones who have it all.  Either blessed genetically with good looks or having earned them via a lot of time in the gym or under the scalpel, these women also have the brains and the personality to boot.  And frankly, they blow the competition out of the water.  They work hard, they get things done, and they look good doing it.  That's pretty hard to compete with. 

I can see it from both sides, honestly.  I value a person's ability over their looks, and as a manager I know that I want to hire people who will get the job done.  But as a woman in the workplace who is also interested in cultivating my own success, I often must consider how my physical appearance might benefit or harm me.  One button too low?  Does this make me look too casual?  Am I over- or under-doing the hair and makeup?  What is it I want to accomplish today and what meetings do I have where I may need to generate a better impression?

I have had the (mis?)fortune in the past of supervising stereotypical office bimbos. Women that reported to me but who were also sleeping with other managers in the company or getting massive boob jobs and distracting the entire office with their low-cut shirts, I can tell you quite honestly I'd rather have someone who is a lot more discreet in their clothing choices, regardless of the quality of their work.  Its not that I resent another women for being pretty or sexy, I don't.  We come in all shapes and sizes, and just because someone looks different from me or is younger than I am doesn't mean I'm competing with her.  However,  in my experience, a woman who openly flaunts her sexuality in the work environment becomes a distraction, breeds jealousy and resentment in her coworkers.  Even if she isn't sleeping her way up the ladder, if she's wearing micro-minis and being obviously sexual in her behavior, everyone will believe that she is.  

When you're managing people, you need teamwork from your people, and the pockets of overt hostility that such a woman engenders, unless she is staggeringly brilliant at her job, aren't worth it.  On that basis alone, I'm going to assume that Hakim isn't telling us to "whore it up" to get ahead, but that she rather means to look and act our best and that success will naturally follow.

I'm inclined to follow my natural instinct that the inclusion of the term "Erotic" in the book's title and the somewhat inflammatory nature of Hakim's comments in her Daily Beast interview are deliberate and designed to increase interest in the book itself, and that what she's actually proposing to her readers is something other than what the book's title suggests.   And if I'm wrong, and that's what she's actually suggesting, I will less-than gently opine that she's got it all wrong.  Crossing a certain line when it comes to what you wear and how you act at work will do you more harm than good.   And the more women that cross that line, the harder they make it for the rest of us to remind the corporate patriarchy that we are competent, we are personable, we are capable of success without using our lady parts to get there.

 Edited and added:  There is no question that our concepts of attractiveness are largely culturally defined.  There has always been an existing conundrum for the career woman who is also a conscious feminist:  How do I work to change cultural concepts while also surviving within them?  If I attempt to change the culture yet still conform to it, am I damaging my message?  Hakim's new book does little, if anything, to solve this dilemma.

Get out of the shallows and into the deep

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess most of you don't know who Israel Kamakawiwo'ole was.

OK, maybe you didn't know five minutes ago, but you just got done on Wikipedia and now you know who I'm talking about.

Here's a little help for you.   This, by the by, is my favorite version of Over the Rainbow.  Because you care about my musical opinions.  You're welcome.

 

Iz was a big guy.  More importantly than that, he was an amazing talent.  He started in music at a young age and found his calling early.  He was married to his childhood sweetheart and left her and a beautiful daughter behind when he died at the age of 38 in 1997 from complications due to obesity.

But here's the thing:  I don't want to talk about Iz's weight, or anyone's weight.  Or maybe I do, but in a larger context that has more to do with Who and not What.  Because if you look at videos and footage of Iz and the only thing that strikes you about him is his size?  You are missing so much.

One of the things that has struck me watching this video is the images of the people of Hawai'i.  Their love for Iz is unmistakable; he was a beloved son to all of them. They would have loved him if he weighed 150 pounds because it was his talent and his heart that they loved.  And when you look at people in his videos, you see a people who are a hell of a lot less focused on what they look like than on how much they are enjoying their lives.

I don't have any scientific evidence that people in America a hundred years ago focused less on what someone looked like when choosing a life partner.  I also don't have any scientific evidence that people in countries that aren't bombarded by Hollywood and the glamour media the way we are don't focus as much on looks when forging relationships.  But I'm going to crawl out on a limb here and suppose that both of these statements are true.

Have you ever met someone whose list of requirements for a spouse looked something like this:

1.  Must be physically attractive

2.  Must make lots of money

Short list, although at least it has requirements beyond "must not live in mom's basement."

Thing is, if that's your list of must-have's, you are missing so much.  Partnering with someone means so much more than ensuring your financial stability, and frankly, in today's world, even people who used to have lots of money are suddenly finding the beach house in the Hamptons in foreclosure and their spiffy stockbroker job gone down the toilet.  And looks?  They don't last.  Not without lots of help from botox, scalpel and silicone.

Now let's be honest, my relationship scoreboard is somewhat on the checkered side, and yes, I'm divorced, and yes, I'm codependent.  I've also come a long way in my search for self-actualization and a while back had the A-HA moment where I understood -- I DON'T NEED A MAN.   I need to love myself.  I need to do things that fill my soul.   And holy mother of all that is good on this earth, it freed me from so much.

When I finally reached a point where I thought wouldn't it be nice to have someone to hang out with (NOT be addicted to, NOT marry, NOT obsess over and NOT rely on for my self worth), I opened myself to the possibility that was out there.  And I dated a little bit, and then I dated SG, and here we are.  And my list?  Isn't so much a list, but maybe something like a manifesto.

Pick the guy who will hold your hair while you throw up (through your nose, no less), wipe off your face and still kiss you goodnight (after you brushed your teeth, of course).  Pick the guy who thinks you are beautiful no matter what you wear and tells you so often.  Pick the guy who is so smart that his brain is his sexiest organ.  Pick the guy who makes you laugh, often.  Equally as important:  pick the guy who laughs at YOUR jokes.  Pick the guy who GETS you.  Pick the guy who shares your values, who is your equal, who will work hard for both of you, who likes to spend time with you more than he likes spending time with his friends but who isn't afraid to let you know when he needs his own time. Pick the guy who shares the chores with you not only because he knows its fair but because he likes to see you smile when you come home to a clean kitchen. Pick the guy who is confident and who understands the importance of caring for himself as much as caring for the relationship.  Pick the guy who, if necessary, understands basic wiring and can fix your bathroom fan.  Pick the guy who is willing to put up with all imaginable kinds of chaos in the form of children and animals because he is so into you that its worth it to him. 

Don't look at his car.  Don't look at his salary.  And, if I may suggest gently?  Don't look at his looks.  Because if he is all of the above?  Every time you look at him through the eyes of love you will realize that he is exactly the kind of handsome you waited all your life to find.  Maybe you just didn't know it.

We - Americans, Westerners, whatever - focus far too much on the things that will not matter fifty years from now when everything starts sagging and our children start bringing home their children and their children's children for us to love.  Money cannot buy you someone who will love you even when your chin occasionally sprouts long white hairs overnight.  He might drive a Ferrari and have windblown California Surfer Guy hair, but will he bring you the hot pad and a pain reliever when Aunt Flo's sister Carmine Cramps knocks you on your ass?  Will he look you up and down and give you an appreciative "Hmmm" when you walk out of your bathroom dressed for work EVERY morning?

When we constrict our expectations to the point that they are only able to be met by the best-looking and wealthiest among us, we limit our own ability to experience real love in the way that it is meant to be understood.

Open yourself to the possibility.  You may be surprised at what you find.

Rock your suit?

Apparently it is Swimsuit Confidence Week.  Glad I missed the bus on that one.  Its not that I’m afraid to show you what I look like in a swimsuit…I just don’t want to.  OK, well, maybe I am a little bit afraid. 

I’m not as afraid as I was five years ago, or 15 years ago.  But I’m far more conscious of what I look like in a swimsuit than I was when I was 11 years old and I didn’t even realize that a swimsuit was supposed to do anything other than cover up the private bits so you could swim mostly unencumbered but not naked.  All I cared about then was the act of swimming.  I wasn’t self-conscious, I wasn’t even self aware.  Of course, I didn’t have cellulite, either.  So there’s that.

I think I have a subconcious desire to return to the days where I wasn’t so body-conscious.  When I didn’t even know what arm fat was, much less care if I had it.  When I wasn’t concerned about how nice my bewbs looked – mostly because I didn’t have any, to speak of.   At least not compared to now.

On an entirely intellectual level I find this Swimsuit Confidence to be somewhat of a dichotomy. I am not trashing the event, not in the least.   Women can always use more cheerleading to accept themselves and go ahead and live their lives in public, regardless of their shape or size.  I’m all for that, and I like seeing women shed their fears (or at least keep them at bay with buggy whip and three-legged stool) and show other women that its perfectly OK to have a normal body and be seen in a bathing costume in public.  I like that. 

What gets to me are the catalogs and the magazine articles and layouts and the jargon that crops up around the clothing they are flogging.  The swimsuits and bras and jeans and all of it.

Maybe more than Swimsuit Confidence what we need is Stop Telling Us We Look Bad.

I want to see more positive language around clothing and less of a focus on attaining the “perfect look.”  Read any woman’s magazine article about buying the perfect pair of jeans or finding the most flattering swimsuit, and every word of that article directs you to minimize your flaws. Your FLAWS. The catalogs and the photo shoots and the everything, they’re telling you that its OK to wear a swimsuit even though you’re not perfect.  So in other words, they’re telling you to feel okay about yourself WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY TELLING YOU YOU’RE NOT OK. 

That’s total bullshit.

Treating women as if their sole goal in choosing a swimsuit or a pair of jeans or a dress should be to make their butt look smaller or their boobs look bigger (or more lifted) or their waist look tinier or cover up their cellulite suggests that if we have any of these flaws, then we are not ok.  These are marks of who we are and how we are made, trophies of the children we bore or the scars we earned.  They are NOT badges of shame to be covered up, masked, and minimized.

I, for one, would like to see a magazine layout stop talking about our fucking FLAWS for a damn minute and start talking about our positives.  I think women should dress in what feels comfortable and good to them, not buy something someone else tells them to because it makes their ass look more “socially acceptable.”  Show me a woman who wears something because she feels good in it, and I’ll show you a woman who looks beautiful not because she successfully hid her “imperfections”, but because she knows she is beautiful exactly the way she is.

You have a responsibility to yourself to learn to treat yourself with love.  Don’t withhold love from yourself, don’t put a measurement on what makes you beautiful.  Don’t say “I’ll love myself more when I lose ten pounds” or “I’ll love myself more when this wrinkle cream finally starts working" or "I'd love myself more if I didn't have these scars and this cellulite."

Love yourself exactly the way you are now.  You are beautiful.  You deserve nurturing.  You are entitled to good things.  You are entitled to be happy, to exist just the way you are RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND.  NOTHING about you needs to be changed for you to be beautiful and loved and love-able.

The more you love yourself, the better care you will take of the precious body you were given.   And the less you will worry about what you look like in a swimsuit. 

Swimsuits are for swimming in.