Eat the Damn Cake

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. The winner was announced here.

Yup. There’s more. Remember when we were doing the Shabby Apple giveaway, and I felt really bad that there weren’t options for more than like, five sizes, and I did that annoying thing where I apologize a lot? Well, then Melanie, one of the readers of this blog, recommended that I check out eShakti.

eShakti describes itself as “…a unique women’s apparel store online that allows custom changes in the style of the garment – sleeve, neckline, length can all be changed by the customer to her preference.” They offer the full size selection from size 0-26W, as well as custom sizing.  You can basically design your own stuff, but a lot of what I saw on the site didn’t look like it needed to be changed.

I wrote to them and asked if they’d do a giveaway with ETDC, and they said yes. Because Cake is delicious

(it could be yours! I really, really love this one…source)

So here’s the deal.

What you win: ANYTHING under $60 on the site (except stuff in the Overstock section). That’s a lot to choose from. Whatever you choose can then be custom sized and styled (also for free).

How you win it: To be in the running to win, like eShakti’s Facebook page here and then comment under this post. All comments count, unless they say “I DO NOT WANT TO WIN. I HATE WINNING.” You can say, “Hey, what’s up?” you can say, “I love polka dots.” Or just hi.

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Sometimes I think there’s an invisible baby in my life. It follows me around, waiting, gurgling and cooing in pointed judgment.

I measure stuff against it. “So if I can get this damn book published by the time I’m twenty-seven. Twenty-eight, maybe. Then I’d maybe be ready.” It reminds me that I’m getting older, faster,  all the time. “What are you, thirty-nine? Oh, twenty-five! Not so different…Your eggs are already shriveling and growing more diseased and lopsided by the second. You’re not a kid anymore. Which is too bad, since you hit the peak of your fertility when you were, like, sixteen, or possibly even younger, when you still had those braces that ultimately didn’t even make much of made a difference. You thought it was cool to get the bands in holiday themed colors. YOU WERE MOST FERTILE THEN. And now look at you! Scrambling around, trying to find yourself or something, as time runs inexorably out. The clock is ticking, woman! Don’t think the clock isn’t ticking, just because you’re covering your ears.”

(source)

People ask me, “So are you guys thinking about kids?”

That’s what happens when you get married. Even in New York City, the land of not-having-to-think-about-kids-until-you’re-30.

“I think I’ll have a baby when I’m thirty, man or not,” said one of my friends at a group event.

“What?” the other twenty-something women cried. “Thirty? That’s too young! How about thirty-five?”

The land of not-having-to-think-about-kids-until-you’re-35.

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Bear wanted to know if I thought he was alpha enough.

The thing is, women don’t like beta guys. Women want a man who’s an alpha.

I’ve been running into these words a lot. They are used to describe men in articles, in research papers, casually, in conversation.

“He’s totally beta, y’know? He has, like, no self-confidence.”

(source)

There’s all that Pick Up Artist stuff out there, floating around on the internet, being inhaled by guys who already suspect they don’t fall into the sexy category. I read a little of it, once, when someone mentioned negging to me. Negging, for the uninitiated, is when a guy gently lowers a woman’s self-esteem through expertly subtle jibes. And then she sleeps with him because her self-esteem is lowered. “I love tall women. Nice heels…What are they, five inches?” GET IT? HE’S SAYING SHE’S NOT ACTUALLY TALL. (Clearly, I’m no Pick Up Artist– the ladies already love me).

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I have a bad memory. Some people can remember things like the name of the class their favorite professor taught in college. Bear can remember the course number. That’s insane. I don’t even remember the names of my sophomore or junior year dorms. In fact, I have no recollection of either sophomore of junior year. They’re gone. I mean, who needs them? It’s the beginning and the end that count. That’s why the middle of the movie is usually a bunch of montages that show slow, boring things, like falling in love and getting to know someone, happening quickly, set to inspirational music. There isn’t nearly enough inspirational music in my life.

I remember a lot of details about boys I dated, and I wish I didn’t. But in general, my memory is bad.

I told my grandma the other day on the phone, “I have to write this down somewhere, because when I’m old, I’m going to blame it on age. Also, my back already hurts. And I can’t always hear what people are saying. Especially if I’m nervous.”

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll offend her by referring to old people in non-politically correct ways (what IS the correct way? “Person of many years and much wisdom”?), but she just laughed.

Maybe I’m a writer because I can’t remember anything. I have to write it down to keep it. But then I catch myself remembering the wrong thing– I remember the thing I wrote, not the thing that happened. Or I remember the scene from a photo, not the scene from life.

“God, that was a great party!! I was wearing that red and pink checked dress, and Tommy was holding the supersoaker up over his head, and we were standing in the backyard, by the pine tree. I think…Anna was about to take a bite of cake! Yes. She definitely was. The fork was in the air.”

(ah, yes! I always loved to play the piano in a tutu! I spent years like that– it was the most important part of my childhood! and it was absolutely critical that the tights were polka dotted)

Or, “Mom was terrible when I was thirteen. She was so mean. She was always telling me I couldn’t do stuff that was totally reasonable for me to do. ALL I wanted to do was go on a camping trip with my 16 year old boyfriend! For three measly stupid weeks! That’s NOTHING. WHY IS SHE SO MEAN?”

It makes me sad. My 13-year-old memories are designed by 13-year-old Kate, and she couldn’t even spell.

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It’s been over three years since I got a nose job. Honestly, I can’t remember what month it was. Sometime during the summer.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much I hated my face. Enough to lie asleep while someone hacked it open. Enough to show up for the surgery even after my dad watched a live special on rhinoplasty and described it in horrifying detail to me (“and then there’s just this giant hole in the middle of your face because they flip the skin back, after they cut the piece, you know that little piece in between your nostrils? Yeah that one.”) It’s hard to remember how badly I wanted to look different. I was casual about it. I played it cool. “It’s just something I need to do, y’know?” But sometimes when I was alone, I would look in the mirror and cry because I hated my face so much. It felt unfair. So many other girls got a regular nose. And then they had regular faces. Why me? Seriously, God, what the hell?

And then I got the nose job, and, well, some of you know the story– it didn’t really make a difference.

“This has only happened to me one other time,” the surgeon told me apologetically, explaining that something had gone wrong.

Instead of my face being fantastically transformed, it was just slightly rearranged. Now my nose is a little crooked in places it didn’t use to be. It’s a little thinner at the bridge.

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When the Shabby Apple people wrote to me they suggested that my “fashionable readers” might like one of their dresses. I was flattered on your behalf. I also noticed that, although they complimented my writing, there was no mention of how fashionable I am. There’s a chance they saw some pictures of me, wearing things that hurt the eyes and the soul when combined. Or things that simply put the eyes and the soul to sleep. But never mind that. This is really, really fun.

Except that I had to pick a dress that I hoped you guys would like. It took a while. I narrowed it down to four or so, consulted five friends, agonized for days (possibly totally a week and a half), agonized even more today, when I changed my mind a lot two minutes before posting this, and then finally just picked the boldest one, reddest, most fabulous one. Why not?

So here’s the deal: I’m giving away the nothin’ like a dame dress from Shabby Apple, a very cool online boutique of women’s dresses.

This is it:

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Some people were saying in the comments the other day that I have an antiquated idea of what it means to be a woman.

Melanie said this: I think you have an amazingly antiquated view of womanhood in general. You have absorbed so many beauty standards. You spend time analyzing why you don’t conform to xxx and what is wrong w. you bc you don’t conform to xxx.

When I read that, I felt for a second as though I’d been slapped. Amazingly antiquated? Oh god. I’m terrible! Why am I so bad at being a modern woman? Is there something wrong with me for not being more confident? Since then, I’ve been thinking about what she said. It really confuses me. Which makes me want to think about it more but also makes me feel like I’m not making any progress when I think about it and after a while I just feel kinda stupid.

I don’t think there’s a big difference between having an antiquated view of womanhood and being an antiquated woman. At least not according to what Melanie says. I have an antiquated view. I have absorbed all of these beauty standards. Now they’re inside me. They’re a part of who I am. I can’t stop thinking about them. I am an antiquated woman.

What does it mean to be an antiquated woman?

Melanie suggests feeling bad about your appearance and overanalyzing it. Here are some of my own guesses (based on what pops into my mind when I hear the word “antiquated”): Cooking, cleaning, being in a marriage where your husband makes a lot more money than you, wanting babies, wearing your hair long and styled, making sure your nails are perfect all the time, reading lady mags, being bad at math, wearing tea dresses with pearls.

(source)

Or, if we’re talking, like, REALLY antiquated: lace-up corsets and therapy sessions where your doctor stimulates your clitoris for you, since you seem hysterical (that really, really used to happen. Did you guys know that’s how the vibrator was born? Because doctors’ fingers were getting so tired?)

I confess– I do some of those things on the first list. Can you guess which ones? Clue: I don’t have long hair.

But I don’t know any women who don’t do some of those things. And I don’t know any women who have never felt bad about their appearance. Which makes me think that probably all of this is part of being a woman right now. Today. In the modern age.

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