Boooooring

I have been so unmotivated this past week. I haven't exercised at all. I fought a migraine for a couple of days, but mostly it was just inertia and spotty sleep.

I saw a childhood friend for the first time in 20 years yesterday and really had a nice time. We had some great conversations that made me think. One that was particularly thought-provoking was about being a teenager and the relative importance of Getting Boys to Like You.

I couldn't Get Boys to Like Me back then and I didn't really try all that hard. I wished one would from time to time, of course; I had all kinds of crushes, but I couldn't have handled any kind of relationship emotionally and I think I knew that on some level. I also wanted boys to listen to me more than I wanted them to like me; and for better or worse, I got my wish. I always had really high standards in that I wanted The Boy That Would Listen AND Like Me, which is, of course, totally unrealistic when you're dealing with teenage boys, but what can I say? I read a lot.

My friend and I had both heard all our lives as girls how important it was to grow up and get married, which sounds so totally 1950s in retrospect that it's pathetic, considering we were growing up in the 1980s. I mean, Mary Tyler Moore had long since tossed her beret in the air by then, bras had been burned, the Pill was on the market, they had NOW pamphlets--why didn't the women in our lives know better? (And what if we had been gay? Of course, that wasn't really discussed back then, at least not in anyone's house that I knew. The first person who came out to me was my male best friend when we were sixteen. I had known him since we were six, and my response was, "Okay...I love you." I remember crying privately afterward, but it was because I knew his life would not be as easy as I would wish for him, and sure enough, it wasn't. But I digress, as usual.)

Some people say that women dress more to impress other women than they do men (and I'm assuming we're referring to straight women). I've thought about that a lot and I think there is definitely truth to it. It has always bothered me how we socialize girls in this society. I hope it's more enlightened now than when I was growing up, but somehow I doubt it. I always hated all that "Mean Girls" crap--the way girls compete with each other, comparing themselves with each other, and basically flat-out torture each other. Who's the prettiest? Whose hair is the longest? Who's the thinnest? I see adult women do it, too, and it makes me want to spit. Whose kids are the cutest? Whose husband makes the most money? Who has the biggest house? What a waste of energy! When I was 12, there wasn't much alternative other than befriend boys or bury myself in books, but I have long since refused to be close friends with women who operate on that level as an adult; as a result, I have several absolutely amazing women as my closest friends today.

But the why-women-dress-up thing! That's what I was thinking about. I've always just wanted to be comfortable. I did make more of an effort when I was younger--more makeup, more dresses, fussier hair, but I wasn't comfortable with myself and thought I had to do that in order to be somehow acceptable. At some point, thankfully, I stopped caring. Now I'm a total T-shirts and comfypants (that's what we call pajama or lounge pants in my house, one word, just like that--"comfypants") person who doesn't put in earrings or wear makeup for weeks sometimes (because I'm not working right now). Some people are really disturbed by this. I've had people tell me I would feel better about myself if I just put on some makeup and dressed up a little more. I do those things--when I go to work, or I'm going out on a date with Mr. Salted. But when I'm at home, who am I supposed to be trying to impress? My husband doesn't care. I've never had a relationship with a man who said, "Why don't you dress up a little more? Why don't you slap on a little warpaint before I'm seen with you in public?" I've also always maintained that if you only dress up once in a while, people really notice it and tell you how great you look the whole time, which is enjoyable for everyone involved. :o) Why set impossibly high standards for yourself for that kind of thing when you don't really enjoy it in the first place? (Or, if you're like me, you downright resent it?)

Recently, I've been watching a couple of reality shows about child beauty pageants. (WETV has one, and so does The Learning Channel.) That whole culture is something I find truly sad--bordering on offensive--and yet strangely fascinating. It raises my feminist-lite hackles, but it's hard to take my eyes away from it; it's the cultural anthropologist in me, for its participants do not seem to be of my planet. I feel so sorry for the little girls. The adults in their lives pour insane amounts of money (enough to pay for a top-notch college education a few times over) into having their offspring be judged and win or lose for the most capricious of reasons. These titles are determined by things with improbable names, like "Wow Wear". If the girls are at the age where they are losing their baby teeth, some wear dental bridges (sometimes called "flippers") to make them look like they have a full set of adult teeth. (Often the effect of a flipper is to appear to put Gary Busey's teeth in a little girl's mouth, and it's disturbing. Besides, what is cuter than a kid with a missing tooth or teeth?) They wear more makeup than Cleopatra at a rave and the hair on each child is bigger than the entire band Poison's hair, circa 1988. They spray tan these children (which looks like pure torture from here). Then there's the coaching--many of the families pay people (I wonder how they qualify them, seriously) to teach the girls to flirt and shake around. I've seen the mothers on these shows yell things at their kids like, "You have a booty, so SHAKE IT!" The lineups at the end when they announce the winners is full of smiles that don't reach the eyes, which is more disturbing to see in any child than all of the above put together. Talk about teaching little girls to compete against each other, only to the nth power. And not only against each other, but against themselves. How are they ever going to feel that they measure up? They are immersed in the pursuit of perfection before they even know it has teeth. And claws.

Women's friendships can be so deep and so profound, and yet there are women walking the Earth--far too many of them--who have scorecards in their heads, noticing how often their coworker wears the same dress, or how long it's been since their sister-in-law changed her hairstyle. It takes so much time and effort for girls and women to overcome relentless programming that teaches you that the world begins and ends with Whether Boys Like You. And if you are a straight woman, do you really want to have a relationship with a man who knows whether or not your Coach bag is fake?

All apologies

Many people seem to think fat people need to apologize simply for being fat. Some of them are fat people themselves.

I like tie-dyes, batiks, and bright colors. I don't purposely wear things that make me look like a pumpkin--horizontal stripes have not been a part of my wardrobe repertoire for quite some time--but neither am I afraid of color. I do try to wear colors that are good for me, fun accessories, etc. I've often been complimented on my fashion sense as an adult, which is still a bit of a jolt for me since I was the kid with the clothes from a garage sale (before that was cool) or the ugly K-mart fall-aparts. In my real adult life, I'm a T-shirts and jeans person by nature. (I do believe in good hygiene at all times, and foundation garments in public. Makeup, however, is optional.)

So on this day a couple of years ago, I was wearing a nice, not inexpensive, batik outfit from Junonia, a button-up shirt with matching pants. It was red, more toward the wine end of the color wheel than the Santa end. The coworker--who was at least my size, if not larger--said, "You know, I could just never wear anything like that," hastening to add, "but it looks fine on YOU."

My response was immediate: "I wear whatever appeals to me, what I feel comfortable in. I don't feel like I have to apologize."

I could have been offended, and I certainly had a knee-jerk flicker of that, but ultimately her statement brought forth my compassion. I was also really proud of myself, because I knew I meant what I said, and because it showed me I had come a long way. I know what it's like to hide in the navy blue or black sack (I still do it sometimes); women of all sizes joke about their "fat pants", and most of us have *at least* one pair. But it's one thing to have "fat pants" for your own comfort; it's quite another to feel as though you have to be dressed or presented in a certain, impossibly perfect way as an apology to the world at large.

Today, I happened to be wearing a bright tie-dyed shirt. I went to the pharmacy to pick up some prescription-strength vitamin D and some sugar-free candy. I saw the pharmacist give me that look, that "you should be in a big black trenchcoat, you fat hog" look. (She was fat herself.) It's that whole, "Don't just hate the way *you* look, be sure and spread it around" thing women are so programmed and socialized to do in this country from the time we are little girls--that catty, bitchy, competitive bullshit I've never had any time or patience for. (It goes without saying there were no feelings of compassion from me today!)

Apologizing for being fat goes far beyond the clothes we choose. A lot of fat people develop great senses of humor, not only as a coping mechanism, but as a way of being accepted. I know I certainly did, and have, and sometimes still do. (I consider humor the most healthy coping mechanism I have.) Growing up, on some level, I believed that I had to be charming and funny in order to be accepted, because I wasn't pretty in the right way (and I was smart and poor with a screwed-up family whose business everyone seemed to know). This is something I still deal with. Sometimes large women seem to be everybody's buddy or everybody's sister or everybody's mother figure. There seems to be an unwritten code that fat women are just going to take what is offered (bad romantic relationships, wishy-washy friendships, etc.) because they are fat and that's all they can get. Unfortunately, a lot of fat people buy into this.

There was a time when I bought into it--I was certainly programmed by those around me and my culture to buy into it, after all--and in low moments, I still wrestle with it. A lot of my life, I wouldn't wear a dress, and I did make a great effort to hide. I put up with more than I should have from people. I felt like I had to apologize simply for breathing oxygen and not being every other human being's idea of "hot". In my late teens, I got tired of feeling that way all the time, and I worked on it for years; it didn't happen overnight. I kept my good friends close, let the flaky ones go, and I found out there are good people (even men!) that judge me for what I am and do rather than what I appear to be. I learned to say things like, "If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree." And mean it. It's okay for me to be a real person with moods and needs and dislikes, whether or not I'm fat.

And I have nothing to apologize for.

Working for a living

I need to be doing it. This is the longest stretch of time in my adult life I haven't had a full-time job--four months. I do some freelance writing and photography, but not much of late.

I'm trying to write a book. I've started writing books my whole life, and about 20-40 pages in, I discard them in disgust because they're never good enough for me. Perhaps I was destined for short stories and poetry; I have finished, even published, a couple of each. I wrote my first book about third grade; I would so pay to have a copy of it now, just for the laughs! It was about a dog named Fluffy (for real), and I wrote it on some horrible 1977ish stationery that probably had a mushroom print across the top. I gave it to my third-grade teacher in the box the stationery had come in and never saw it again. (I would have probably ripped it up later, anyway. I've always found ripping up my writing to be incredibly cathartic. Burning it is fun, too, but I have a little phobia about fire. Shredding is also the bomb, but in reality I usually end up ripping it up if I don't like it. It just feels good.)

I've also been doing other things since I've been out of work, like turning 40, cat wrangling, taking pictures, reading books, putting my vinyl LPs on CD, scanning old pictures and putting them on CD, putting up a Flickr site, and researching and pursuing this surgery.

I'm not feeling very motivated or optimistic about the job search. In particular, I am becoming gun-shy about Craigslist job postings. I've had a couple of in-person interviews from resumes submitted to employers that posted positions there, and one actual job that lasted two months because they lied about just about everything and didn't pay what they had promised. The last in-person interview consisted of me sitting in a waiting room all dressed up with copies of my resume for half an hour.
Probably fifteen people walked by while I was sitting there. Several of them made eye contact with me, and I smiled at them. One of the receptionists kept paging the person who was supposed to interview me--or pretending to. After about half an hour of this, she came out and said she was sorry, but they'd have to reschedule my interview.

They never called me, of course. I noticed that the company posted the position again on Craigslist this week.

Of course, my immediate default reaction was to think it was because of my weight. When I related this experience to a couple of friends--neither of whom has a weight problem, but they both happen to be twenty years older than I am--they said they had had the same thing happen to them. One of these friends was a man and one a woman, so apparently this kind of thing isn't always gender-specific, either.

I know there have been many jobs I haven't gotten because of my weight, and there are some I will never even attempt to apply for because of it. When I was younger, I took it much more personally when things like this happened. I was still trying to fit into society's ideal--or I still thought I should be trying to--as if my brain, skills, and personality had nothing to do with my value as an employee. (I also actually show up for work, am not a drama queen, don't steal, and can make people laugh, among other things.) I also knew in my bones, even at that time, that I was never going to fit into society's ideal. I could have had 15 plastic surgeries, thrown up every day, and never even come close.

The difference between then and now, for me, is that I have since learned that many people who fit societal beauty standards often never feel like they are good enough, either. Some of them feel like no one listens to them or values their brains because of the way they look. Even back then, as much as I wanted to be "gorgeous", I would have rather had someone really listen to me than look at me and stop listening. Every.single.time.

I also feel that getting older means the pressure is off. I don't want to be 19 or even 25 or 35 again, so why should I wish I looked as if I were? Outer beauty fades. Gravity happens. And when it does, I should hope that I have developed an above-average amount between the ears and in the heart, or life is going to be very, very empty.