On Setting Boundaries...

I know we've broached this subject before, but I thought it was important to revisit.  Mostly because I am realizing how guilty women are made to feel when they say "no."

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but do we women start policing each other and how much we've sacrificed with our jobs, families, and relationships?  I feel this, "Well, I did it so you should have to now," mentality permeating my everyday life!  I know I sound naive, but I've had the privilege to work in some relatively martyr-free environments in my day...and I think it spoiled me!

So how do I draw my proverbial line in the sand without seeming like a laze or unambitious?  Is there any happy ground?  I feel (many, not all, of course) men are given respect when they say something conflicts with their schedule, but a rationale must be given from a woman.  What gives and how do we fix it?

The Ghost on Sunday Morning

I've been going to Barre class as a way to excercise for almost two years now.  I love that it is a way to turn my brain off, dance a little, and combat the hours I spend each day sitting at a desk hunched over my laptop.  In the two years I've been going to Barre, I've never been jolted out of my hourly reverie in the way I was last Sunday.

As I was stretching before class, the typical soft Sunday morning chatter was filling the studio: grumblings about the fresh snow, who had stayed out a little too late the night before, and the best remedies for this infernal cold that has been going around.   All of this conversation dropped of a cliff of awkward, chilling silence when a new Barre attendee padded into the room.

To say this woman was ill would be an understatement.  Her hands and feet mimicked that of a marionette, too large and heavy to be on such frail and spindly appendages.  An ankle was wrapped tightly in athletic tape, nearly double the size of the other ankle.  Her sunken cheeks were emphasized by her swollen salivary glands and puffy eyes.  When she removed her baggy sweatshirt, the silence in the class turned over on itself...there was a collective need, wish, hope of health and healing for this ghost of a woman.

The entire hour after class began was spent strategically casting my gaze in directions away from this woman.  Nobody wants to stare.  Nobody wants to be rude.  Nobody wants to talk about the ghost in the room.

Kids These Days...

 

...are so smart.

I always wondered why I only had She-Ra as a superhero option when I was little!

Vote!

When I was doing my study abroad in Chile, I was astounded that there was a national holiday on voting days.  Everyone had the entire day off to make it to the polls.  It was actually against the law to not vote, so you can imagine Chilean voter turnout is pretty impressive.

Now while the U.S. still hasn't figured out the benefits of making our voting day a national holiday, I will say I am honored and privileged to even have the opportunity to cast my vote.  It was just over ninety years ago in the United States that women still weren't allowed to vote.  We were chattel, to put it bluntly, and our roles were refined to making babies and maintaining a household.

I do not take lightly a right many women fought so passionately for, some even died for this right.  So, as a women, who is not a piece of property, I will vote today and I hope you do, too.

Source

Learning to Love Oneself

Being a woman has historically been pretty stinking hard.  We've been objectified and vilified since poor Eve wanted a snack, so I guess I shouldn't have been so shocked and saddened by a recent post on the Marie Claire blog.  If you haven't read it, I'll distill this piece of garbage down to one smelly turd for you: fat people aren't allowed to be happy.

Yep.  Pretty crazy that a writer, Maura Kelly - to name names, can PUBLISH a piece of hateful bigotry on a nationally consumed magazine site.  The whole blogosphere has been "shame on the editor!" and "shame on Maura!" but, honestly, this is a big shame on US, as a society.  Shame on our cultural norms that still make it ok to make fat jokes, put on reality tv shows that torture overweight people to a smaller size, or cancel shows that humanize overweight people.  Shame on our cultural norms that still insist a person's worth is a number on a scale and how photogenic their profile is.  Shame on us for letting fodder like this article surface on the Internet and get over 200,000 hits in two hours.  Shame on us for not stopping this horribleness.

Being a young woman in America is tough.  Now, don't get me wrong, I know there are still atrocities occurring to women as a whole in other places in the world as I type, but that falls in a completely different stratosphere of hardship.  I would NEVER lump the issues women face in America today with the human rights violations women survive in other parts of the world, that isn't what this blog post is about.

To teach a young woman, on every medium possible, that, sure, she can be smart and go to college and all that crap, but she won't really, truly be happy until she's skinny and pretty, is atrocious and unacceptable.  To teach a young woman that two people expressing love and affection is "gross" and "distressing," is just setting her up for a lifetime of judging others and being judged.  In some way I feel this is the start down a slippery slope of de-humanizing a group of people, as a whole, and it needs to stop. 

SO, instead of ranting and re-posting and linking to this article (which I totally just did), let's take today (and this weekend, for that matter!) to let ourselves be loved.  No matter what size, gender, ethnicity you are, try to really believe that you are deserving of love, because you absolutely are!  Don't listen to what tv shows, magazines and blogs have to say (except this blog, of course;)), I'll tell you, because it's true, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. xo.

(Photo of the show Mike & Molly, the sitcom that started the whole thing!)

Standing Up

This is Joan Trumpauer Mulholland.  She was nineteen when this mugshot was taken in 1961 for protesting segregation in a non-violent Freedom Rider protest in Mississippi.  She went on to go to college at Tougaloo, as one of five white students.  She graduated in 1964, went on to teach in Virginia  and raise five sons.

I'm looking to Ms. Trumpauer Mulholland for inspiration and fortification, since Utah is moving forward in drafting a bill similar to Arizona's.  I want to be able to tell my kids that I stood up for something when it was wrong.  How lucky are her sons to be raised by such an amazing woman?

From the Breach of Peace blog: She joined the Freedom Riders, she says, “because none of the things I was being taught in Sunday School were being applied in real life. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ The children’s songs we all learned – ‘Jesus loves the little children … red and yellow, black and white.’ ”