Eat the Damn Cake

I know intellectually that there is a baby in there somewhere, a very tiny one, but my brain mostly interprets the pregnancy as illness. An ongoing, relentless illness that crushes me into bed and sits on my stomach and won’t let me up except to vomit. And vomiting isn’t a relief. You think it will be, for the few minutes afterward, when your body remembers that it used to be, when you were normal-sick with a stomach bug. But this isn’t a bug, it’s an infestation. No, it’s a baby. It’s a baby.

I had to cancel everything.

The people I had to tell said, “Well, it’s good preparation for motherhood. You don’t have control!”

But I was going to use these months, I thought feebly. I have so much to do. I’m supposed to finish a book. I’m supposed to get a book deal before I have this sudden baby, so that I can feel satisfied about having done something big with my career before everything is different. The impending baby sometimes looms large, like a loss or a magical, unknowable portal that I am headed straight for. Like knowing if you keep going that way you’ll drive off the bridge, but your hands are glued to the wheel. What was I thinking? I think, on the toilet for an hour because I can’t poop, crying and humiliated even though I’m alone. But then I’m so exhausted and weak that I can’t remember my own ambition. What was it that I thought I wanted to do with my life? Why did I care?

(since I spend so much time with it these days, I kinda wish mine was nicer. source)

“Did you have morning sickness?” I ask desperately, when I talk to relatives.

“Not really! I felt good!”

And then I have nothing to say to them. I am afraid of how I will sound. Self-centered. Wimpy.

Someone said to me, “I was sick, but I didn’t focus on it. Maybe you’re focusing on it too much.”

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A version of this piece originally appeared on Daily Life, and I’m republishing here with some of the original parts. My editor wisely slimmed it down, because I am long-winded and the internet is a faced-paced place. But the awesome thing about a personal blog is that you can keep everything you like about your writing. 

The New York Times had a little debate about makeup recently. Essentially, the question posed went like this: “Is makeup good or bad for women’s self-esteem? Because it seems like it’s probably really important that women wear it all the time.” It’s not the first time this question has been raised in the mainstream media. Attempting to argue that women shouldn’t feel pressure to wear makeup, Thomas Matlack made the case that his wife is stunning without it. Because she’s just stunning. Slate thought this was a counterproductive and slightly obnoxious point, and I agree. Emphasizing that some women look “naturally gorgeous” without makeup isn’t exactly reassuring. Actually, it just feels like more pressure.

The idea of pure, natural beauty has this whiff of cruel competitiveness about it. Some women have “it”, others need makeup. And then we have this dichotomy, where some women “need” the help that makeup gives their faces, and some women, blessed by a God who is on the Victoria’s Secret mailing list, don’t.

If there’s such a dichotomy, then I know which side I fall on. I mean, I get the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, too (because no matter where you hide, it will find you). I am not a “natural beauty.” By which I mean, I would never be asked to play the love interest in a music video about a girl who doesn’t need makeup because she’s so beautiful. I mean, when I wake up in the morning, my face is puffy and weird and my eyes look squinty and confused, and my skin is sometimes cleverly unpredictable, like we’re playing some ongoing game called “Guess where the giant mutant pimple will turn up next?”

(I don’t think they’d want to play…source)

But I don’t wear makeup.

Not because of some defiant decision I made about embracing my inner earth goddess or accepting the hard, bare truth or something. Not because I’m making a political statement about equality and oppressive beauty standards. I just never learned how to do it.

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Sorry, two relationship-y pieces in a row. I know. It just happened that way. This one was on the Frisky originally, for my column there, and it was also syndicated on XoJane. So if you saw it either of those places, I hope you’ll forgive the redundancy. Even if you’ve already seen it, I always love the discussions that happen on this blog, so I wanted to share it with you guys, to see what you thought. 

The other day, a girl emailed me:

“I’m worried that I’m not pretty enough to get a guy. I’m single, and want a serious relationship, but sometimes I think I can’t find one because I’m not prettier.”

I wanted to exclaim, “That’s ridiculous!” But instead I thought, Well, of course you’re worried.

When I was single, I reasoned that being hotter was always better because it would give me more options. The hotter I was, the more guys would be interested in me, and the more choice I’d have in the matter. So even if I thought I looked fine, it would’ve been better to look, well, even better. (And then there is no limit—you can always be hotter, somehow.) And when I thought that I looked significantly, depressingly less than fine, I was scared, because I felt as though I might miss out on something essential.

This is not irrational. It makes sense, when we think of women’s worth as being closely matched, at least initially, with their beauty.

(source)

From the time we’re little girls, we’re taught that if we were prettier everything in our lives would be better. We would have the things that we want. Girls become preoccupied with their appearances in an effort to control and improve their lives, and are too often driven to despair when they don’t see themselves as fitting into restrictive and seemingly arbitrary beauty standards. And this is not some dramatic interpretation—it’s just life. Some of us escape unscathed, and some of us are blissfully oblivious enough, and some of us recover from middle school and go on to not care very much, and some of us continue to be chased by the howling, hungry beauty demons into our adulthood and even until we die.

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Sometimes I see girls walking together, and they’re inevitably wearing the exact same shoes. Sometimes they are wearing the same shoes and the same jackets. Sometimes they mix it up a little, like the jackets are all leather, but one is brown, one is black, and the other has both brown and black on it.

So many women seem to have friends who look just like them. They all have long, straight hair. They all have the same color skin and the same color lipstick. They are all teasing their one friend for being “so tiny!” because she is one inch shorter.

I nudge Bear as we’re walking. “Shoes.”

“What?”

“Shoes!” I make a quick, emphatic head bob in the right direction.

“Okay, shoes…”

A grunt, an eye point (you know, where you point with your eyes? That’s a real gesture, distinct from the ordinary “look”). They’ve almost gone by us. And then he sees.

“Ohh…They’re wearing the same shoes!”

(once I saw four girls on the subway, all wearing a version of this boot. source)

“Yes!” I hiss, too loud. “All girls wear the same shoes!”

“Weird.” He isn’t very interested.

“It IS weird!”

But it’s not weird, really. It’s normal.

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So this piece is running today over at the Frisky, for my Mirror, Mirror column there. But I wanted to share it here, too. Sorry if you’ve heard some of this stuff before– I write a little differently when I’m writing for people who aren’t, you know, you guys. 

I didn’t think that I was getting ethnic plastic surgery. I liked being Jewish. I just hated my face. I wanted desperately to like my face better. I’d spent too many years laughing with my hand over my nose because I thought it looked even bigger when my face was happy. Stupid, right? It’s amazing, in retrospect, the things we are tormented by.

When I was a little girl, I thought I’d grow up to look like a queen—exotic, powerful, with a strong, regal profile. Queen Thayet, in Tamora Pierce’s The Immortals series, had a hawk nose and she was the most beautiful woman in the world! Why not me? I had a hawk nose! I figured I would be decent at ruling a kingdom, too.

(so regal! source)

But then when I was fourteen a girl told me I needed to get my face fixed. She said she had a friend whose daddy could do it because he was a rich plastic surgeon. She said that if I went to him he’d make me pretty.

The things kids say!

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I was really excited to see this famous comedian* perform. I bought the tickets a long time in advance and it was the first time I ever did something that I first saw advertised on a subway poster. I don’t do a lot of “going out” type things. When I first came to the city for grad school, my mom would call and beg me to please just get a life.

“Go out!” she’d say. “You’re in New York City!” And then, always, she’d have some suggestions that began with “Go to a museum! Go to the opera!” And she’d already done the research. “You can get a student discount if you show up early!”

She never said “Go to a bar!”

I sort of wanted to see an all-male stripping act, but I was too shy and I didn’t know where to find one.

(although the opera can also be quite scandalous! source)

Out of guilt, in the middle of the winter, I took a cab to the Guggenheim. It was the first time I’d ever taken a cab, even though I’d been in the city for months. Students don’t take cabs—they walk or take the subway. But I was being adventurous and a little lavish, so I took a cab. It cost about $6 and I paid him mostly in change and didn’t know to tip, but he didn’t say anything. I’m still viscerally embarrassed, remembering. Who doesn’t know to tip? What did he think of me?

It turned out that most of the Guggenheim was closed that day, for renovations or rearranging art, or maybe for vacuuming. I got in for free with my student ID and I walked very slowly around the base level of the rotunda, the only open area, trying hard to carefully ponder each of the fifteen or so pieces of art. I was going to make the most of this damn museum. For a while, a cute guy stood next to me in front of a painting with one black line on it. My heart beat a little faster, but then he walked away.

I walked across the street to the iced-over reservoir and looked at the world as my face froze. It was peaceful. I was glad I’d come.

The point is, when I bought tickets to see the famous comedian at the Barclays Center that just opened in Brooklyn, it was kind of a big deal.

And then I didn’t think he was funny. And then I got a little offended. 

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I lost my engagement ring. I mean, really lost it. I haven’t seen it in a month, maybe more. I wish I was a robot and I could check my memory chip and replay all of my thoughts and actions, because then I would know exactly what happened, and I would also experience those amazing tortillas we got all over again. But maybe robots don’t like melted cheese as much as I do?

Focus.

I looked under everything with a flashlight. My dad blamed the cat, but she maintains her innocence. I looked under everything again, with a different flashlight that seemed a little brighter. It was gross under everything and I didn’t want to reach in there, but I’m pretty sure there was no ring.

And I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I don’t miss it.

And at the same time, I definitely want it back.

And while I’m talking about my ring, I should say that I’m defensive only because people keep writing these pieces about how stupid it is to have a diamond engagement ring. How wasteful and bad and selfish and outmoded and generally super duper hugely lame. And also, you’re a bad feminist if you have one.

I didn’t want to get a diamond ring, for the record. Not originally. I wanted citrine. I love the color. I wanted a quirky, graceful citrine ring. And then my mom and I talked about it a lot and she had all these very strong opinions and I didn’t, which is often how it goes and the reason why there were so many cheese platters at my wedding. And she basically twisted my arm until I squealed, “Okay! Okay, woman! I’ll have a friggin’ diamond, for the love of god!”

(here they look a little like lozenges, truth be told. source)

I mean, sort of. It wasn’t exactly like that.

My mom didn’t have a diamond engagement ring. She got married in a bit of a hurry when she was nineteen, and she wore a floral print dress and my dad wore a bright yellow suit with brown lapels that his dad told him was absolutely, seriously stylish. Listening to your parents runs in my family, I guess.

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