First thing yesterday morning…
Mikey: I feel different today.
Me: Different?
Mikey: Yeah, I just feel different than I did on Friday.
Me: Anything happen to you over the weekend?
Mikey: No.
Me: Good different or bad different?
Mikey: Just different.
Me: Hm.
Mikey: Probably puberty or something.
Me: Probably.
I once read an article that said that 86% of females feel bad about themselves within the first five minutes of picking up a “women’s magazine” like Cosmo. (There’s a standard deviation of {+/-infinity} on that statistic because I can’t actually remember what the article said. But I recall that it was a big percentage/short time.)
I identified as one of those statistical females. So I stopped reading those magazines. This was about 8 years ago, and I still don’t look at them. It has helped.
But you know, you don’t have to be flipping through Vogue to find unreasonable body standards in the world. They’re around us all the time. Movies, TV, the music industry. Shit, there are toys on the market that’ll mess with a little girl’s mind and make her not love herself because her stomach’s not concave like the doll’s or her hair is not flaxen like the doll’s or her cooter doesn’t smell like strawberry bubble gum like the doll’s.
Our stupid culture has told me for a long time my body’s wrong, and despite being educated and of fair-to-middling intelligence, I’ve believed it every single step of the way. My ass is too big; my thighs are too dimply; my arms are squishy; my belly pooches out; I have cankles; my stretch marks look like the Rand-McNally of the Washington, D.C. environs; my boobs don’t defy gravity; my chin has a chin.
Cut to the end of last week when this photo started popping up in my Facebook feed:
Look how thin and taut and angular and boob-y and shiny the women in the Victoria’s Secret ad are. Silky tresses for daaaayyyys. Exact same height. Skin colors like on the townhouse exteriors in The Promenades at Spryngdale neighborhood, or whatever homogeneous enclave is two miles from your house.
And, to a woman, they are identical from the neck down.
I don’t know a goddamn soul who looks like that in real life. All the women I know look like the ones in the Dove ad (WHO I THINK ARE GORGEOUS): tall ones, short ones, busty ones, flat ones, curvy ones, straight ones, ones shaped like blueberries, ones shaped like pencils, and ones shaped like Coke bottles. Some carry their weight between shoulders and waist, and others from the hips down [raises hand]. Long hair, short hair. Skin of every color on the palette.
And this ad, or maybe this juxtaposition of ads (because I never would’ve noticed the total freaky-deakiness of the VS ad without the other), made me feel so much better about myself. I mean, I know Dove is a business, and businesses are in the business of making money, and this whole Social Mission blah-di-blah is probably just a really slick marketing ploy. I hope not. But even if it is, I don’t care because I feel so much better about myself after seeing this ad.
I. Look. Like. Them.
In fact—am I really going to do this?
…
Yes, yes I am. Fuck it. Hey, look at me, mostly naked on the internet (that’s a bathing suit… I just couldn’t do undies):
who takes pictures of herself in the mirror.
Here’s the back view:
I look at these photos, and while none of the Dove models is quite the chubster I am, my shape would totally fit in their ad. Because they’re all different shapes. And heights. And hair colors. And skin colors.
I’m sick of hating my body. I’m going to be 37 next month; this needs to end. The fact of the matter is, that roll of back fat you see up there and those stacked marshmallows I’ve got for arms and that hip-to-knee cellulite (which you can’t really see well in the photos but it’s totally there—high-five, iPhone camera!… Note to self: Buy Apple stock)? That fat and those marshmallows and that cellulite are my body, and that body carts this gal around and provides a venue for this blog to germinate and gives me orgasms and lifts heavy things. I am that body. That body is me.
Here are the parts I need to remember:
(1) There is no “normal woman”; we’re all different;
(2) yelling at myself about my body has never succeeded in effecting change;
(3) there will be people who look at me in these photos and go, Ew; I don’t have to be one of them; and
(4) somebody out there is going to like this body exactly the way it is.
But only when I do it first.
So this is my Love My Body/Real Beauty campaign. This is me. I am this. STFU, Amy, and stop being mean to yourself.
Day 1
It’s only 89 degrees at 4:00pm. There’s a pretty good cloud cover and a tiny breeze. We do the long loop, and it’s actually not terrible. Halfway through, the sun comes out. And it’s terrible.
Day 2
I’m tired and depressed, and I have been for a while. Maybe I need to adjust my amino acids? Or maybe I should just stop drinking my feelings, which is what I’ve done six times in the last month. (That’s a lot for me. I usually drink two or three times a year.)
Nonetheless, the stress of the crate-and-rotate routine is wearing on me. I email the organization asking for strategies to get Tulip adopted.
Day 3
I wake up bleary-eyed from not going to bed on time again. At the same moment I reach down to grab Tulip’s bowl, she jumps up to say good morning and cracks my chin with her skull. I come very close to hitting my foster dog. But I don’t. Then she pees on the deck. And I still don’t hit her. Good thing she’s fucking adorable.
The org emails me and suggests, amongst other things, I make a Facebook page for her. So I do. (Like it! Share it!)
Late-night 2.5 miles. Gorgeous.
Day 4
Another 2.5 miles after sundown. Less than 90 degrees is so much better than more than 90 degrees.
Day 5
Friends come over! Tulip does The Tulip Dance, and it goes a little something like this:
Love makes Tulip smile.
Day 6
Day 7
Tulip registers her displeasure at the distribution of peanut butter with an impassioned speech.
Day 1
Zero comments on the last Tulip post. I get on Facebook, which I really shouldn’t do when I’m feeling stabby, and post:
Fourteen out of 15 commenters say they do read these posts. I start another edition of the Foster Chronicles. But it’s mostly because I can’t help myself.
Day 2
Day 3
Late night playdate with Mini-Poodle*!
(I only catch the tail end of it.)
Day 4
I let Tulip out in the morning, as usual. When I go outside later, I find a puddle on the deck. Did it rain? I look around. No. No rain. Hm.
Day 5
Another puddle on the deck after letting Tulip out. I think she’s picked up a bad habit from Mini-Poodle.
Day 6
Saturday morning. Tulip wants to go out, so I let her and then flop back onto my bed. When I stumble outside with her breakfast later, I find that the gate to the yard had swung closed during the storm in the night so she’s been trapped on the deck for 45 minutes. Puddle of pee. Aaaaaaaaand pile of crap. On the deck.
Not her fault.
Day 7
I take Tulip into the yard and make sure she pees out there, then I head inside to get her breakfast. When I walk out with the bowl, I find a perfect poop pile right in front of the rocking chairs.
Probably not her fault, but having a hard time feeling like it’s mine.
*I should probably note at this point that Mini-Poodle is not actually a poodle. He’s probably a bichon frisé. But I’ve been calling him Mini-Poodle for so long now, it seems dumb to stop.
My lack of talent in the kitchen extends beyond the stovetop, over the counter, all the way to the coffee machine. I make coffee that is not good.
At work we have
Makes a single cup of perfect coffee at a time. I used to use it now and again, in a pinch, but in the last week, the Keurig and I have become besties. (For some reason, I’ve been acting like a child and refusing to get in bed at a reasonable hour, which has made over-caffeination a necessity.)
And now I waaaaaaaaaant one.
There’s even
Back in January, some girlfriends and I took a road trip up to my childhood home, and we were watching Violet and Redford frolic along the creek. (Stay with me; I’m going to bring it back around to coffee.) When a raft of ducks came around the bend into view, Violet made a beeline at them, charging without a moment’s hesitation into the water. “DUCKS!”
Redford ran at the water fowl, but when his toesies got wet, he backed out and sprinted, frustrated, back and forth along the bank. He always does that. Wants to get at them varmints so bad, but does not enjoy getting wet. I can’t remember who it was, but one of us said, “DUCKS!… but water.” And now we use that phrase when we want something real, real bad, but there’s another thing deterring us.
So, DUCKS!
That is, KEURIG YUMMY PERFECT COFFEE! But all that plastic.
I consider myself a pretty ecologically conscious person. I recycle everything I’m allowed to. I drive a fuel-efficient car. I catch the first gallon of cold water from the shower in a pitcher to water my plants and fill the dogs’ bowls. If it’s yellow, I let it mellow.
But every time you use a “K cup”, you stab Mother Earth in the ovaries.
And I just don’t know if I can be that guy.
Now is when some of you point out that they make
But you’re forgetting that I HAVE A PRETERNATURAL ABILITY TO FUCK UP ALL THINGS KITCHEN-RELATED. That reusable filter requires filling, and despite the fact that I have a brain and measuring spoons, I promise, I WILL FUCK IT UP.
Those K cups are so very, very delicious and perfect.
Ducks, but water.
Me: The problem is, when you buy a 3-pack of underpants—
My sister-wife: STOP. The problem IS that you buy your underwear in 3-packs. You’re an adult.
Who’s Tulip? Start here.
Day 1
Day 2
Friends Craig and Michelle come over, and they bring
That’s their 5-month-old pit bull foster, Malcolm. Nom nom, want to put him in my mouf.
I put Tulip on the leash and let them interact. He’s a little scared but waggy. Tulip can’t feel her legs she’s so excited. She wants to love him and hug him and wrestle with him and love him. At one point, he tells her he’s a little overwhelmed, but she just doesn’t get it and keeps loving him, and I have to pull her off.
Day 3
After work, I put Tulip outside for a little while and sit on the couch to read my book. Violet comes in
And I tear up because I’m realizing it’s been so long since I’ve hung out with my own dogs. Most of the time, I figure Redford and Violet have each other, so I love on Tulip, but I know my dogs miss me.
This is hard.
Day 4
Hey, guess who comes by and
In fact, Jorge and his sons come looking for him at this point, and they tell me his name’s Jumpy.
I think I have to keep calling him Mini-Poodle though.
Day 5
Lately, we’ve been waiting until 9:30pm to walk. It’s still 94 degrees. I’m drenched, and the dogs are parched. As much as I love Durham, there are three months during which I despise walking my dogs.
Day 6
I stay out too late trying to make good on a new goal. (Chill out, Margo; I don’t succeed.) Tulip’s been in the kennel for hours, so I bring her and the dog bed into my bedroom for the night and say a little prayer that she won’t be up and at ’em early.
Day 7
She lets me sleep until 9:00! Good dog, Tulip.
We go to an adoption event in Chapel Hill in the afternoon. Tulip is really excited to see two other fosters. She wants to love them and hug them and wrestle with them and love them.
But when she’s not distracted, she lunges at the other dogs and makes monkey noises. A couple times we have to take a breather outside.
She does have a couple of brief, positive interactions with one of the other fosters, a notoriously chill dog. So there’s that.
People stop by and scratch her head and say things like, “She’s so cute; I wish my apartment weren’t so small,” and, “If I didn’t already have two…”
No prospects.
