Eat the Damn Cake

I just sat here and wrote an entire post that was so bad I can’t bring myself to publish it. I’m trying to figure out what I actually want to say.

I think it’s more like this:

I was sitting at this same table three days ago, writing, as usual, and I looked down and hated my stomach passionately. I hated it for existing. For the physical weight of it. For its soft curve. The way I can’t ever completely suck it in. It was, in that moment, an alien parasite, attached to my body. Something that could never belong.

Poor stomach. It didn’t do anything wrong.

I want to go back in time and pinpoint the instant when this thing started. When I irreversibly decided that this was bad.

I remember standing in the hall with my mom, when I was seven or so, and there was a party going on in the living room and kitchen. I looked up at her and thought she was incredibly beautiful. I reached out and touched her gorgeous belly, which swelled out slightly, and I said, “You look like you’re pregnant.”

Continue Reading »

Last night, my brother and I were standing at the checkout counter at the CVS, buying batteries for our dad’s insulin pump, and a row of magazines was staring me in the face. They were almost at face-height, really, and some airbrushed movie star or model’s perfectly flat stomach was flashing me tauntingly.

Without thinking, I read aloud the first words I saw:

“What Do Guys Lust After in July?” I laughed and said, “Enlighten me,” sarcastically to the closest magazine.

The guy behind the counter, a young Indian man, said something so quietly I didn’t catch it the first time.

“What?” I said, embarrassed and thinking I might have handed him the wrong amount.

“Ice cream?” he said again, louder. “We lust after ice cream?”

Everyone started laughing.

“Makes a lot of sense,” agreed my brother, another man who would soon face the scorching month in question.

Actually, we’d gotten ice cream just minutes before, at a nearby Thomas Sweet.

But the point is, if you’d like to know what a man wants, maybe you should just ask him.

*  *  *

Unroast: Today I love the way I look in a bikini. I know I hated it a couple weeks ago, but yesterday I put one on, and it looked great. Depends on my mind.

P.S. New post at Skipping School, in response to a NY Times piece about homeschoolers.

Here are the mirrors I look in every day:

Bathroom

Full-length, on the door

Subway window, while it’s underground

(ok, didn’t quite capture a window there, but you get the idea)

Compact that I keep in my purse

Except for the subway, which is a wildcard, I know my mirrors pretty well. And I don’t like strange mirrors coming into my life and trying to tell me things about myself.

Continue Reading »

So here’s a problem: you like this guy who you keep running into at the poetry open mic that the bar down the street does every other week. You were both a little drunk last time, and you exchanged numbers, but then he didn’t text, and now you really want to text him, but you don’t want to look desperate. What do you do?

I get asked to solve this problem a lot.

And you know what I’m really tired of? The word “desperate.” You know which other words I hate? “Clingy” and “needy.”

“Do you think I’ll look desperate?” my friend was asking me yesterday.

Continue Reading »

This guest post makes me want to stand up and cheer. Which looks awkward when you’re alone in your apartment. But is worth it anyway. Thank you so much, Anna!

Hello, everyone!  My name is Anna.  I’m a post-liberal arts degree part-time pregnant nanny.  Normally I blog over at www.icyviolets.com, where I usually restrict my writing to the beautiful processes of making and consuming food.  But my interests run from food to fashion to body image to women’s issues…and of course when all of these things come together, as on Kate’s blog, I am hooked!

So I was delighted when she asked me to do a guest post on our society’s ideas of what constitutes a “normal” body.  To put it into context, her invite was prompted by this comment I left on her post of a week or two ago, Bikinis Hate Food:

“The other day I was reading about women’s struggles with their post-partum figure, and read some statistic that said that 86% of women don’t return to a ‘normal’ figure within a year of birth. And all I could think was, shouldn’t that stat, that huge majority, make a NEW normal?? why do we consider adolescent bodies the norm for adult women?”

Continue Reading »

Things summer forces you to do:

1. Wear shorts

2. Wear shirts or dresses with spaghetti straps

3. Sweat

4. Think about your body differently

Continue Reading »

A guest post from the amazing Fraylie. For those who don’t know her yet, Fraylie is a brilliant young woman who is at a crossroads in life. It’s a crossroads that many of us stand at for a very long time, buying more strawberry shortcake ice cream bars from the guy with the cart, and trying to figure out what the rest of our lives are supposed to look like. Fraylie graduated college not too long ago, and then worked as a waitress, and then got into grad school, but realized that grad school is incredibly expensive and that she wasn’t sure it was the right decision anyway. Now she’s looking for a job in NYC. But really, of course, she’s a writer. As you can tell:

I don’t look so great on paper.

What I mean is I am best as a human being.  With a voice that makes real, tiny vibrations and a body that slouches and sighs at all the right times, I am best sitting right next to you.  I am best when I laugh and I mean it.  It’s when you can see the sunburn on my nose and imagine sand and rock.  Then I know we’re playing a fair game.

I am bitter after so many rejections this week.  The interpersonal ones – I can almost deal with them more.  The ones where a guy stands me up or leads me on, at least I know that the power of my body tried its best.  I was there, speaking, hearing, listening and moving.  I offered everything possible, without compressing anything of the body into words and paper.

Continue Reading »