When people imagine someone who has had plastic surgery, they often imagine a woman with pushed up, too-round breasts and a stretched, unnatural face. There is something sad about her. It is sad that she “needs” it. It is sad that she is vain enough to get it. She lacks character, she has the wrong priorities, she is admitting defeat. She is, above all, superficial.

No one can ever guess by looking at me.

The end result is nothing like the stereotypes, so people say things in front of me about women who get plastic surgery. Those things are never nice. Sometimes I just listen, too uncomfortable to chime in with my own story. It’s not a story I like to tell. It’s an awkward story about awkwardness. It implies the kind of self-dislike that feels like a messy secret. It’s inherently painful. It’s also a story with a happy ending.

It’s not just me — I know a lot of women who have chosen cosmetic surgery. Young women who I was friends with for years before they mentioned their breast reduction. Older women who finally whispered something about their face lift, confessional, nervous. Lipo, eyelids, jaw, breasts increased or decreased—some of the surgeries sound (and are) more medically necessary than others and others are obviously purely cosmetic. Like mine. The modern Jewish woman’s procedure of choice: rhinoplasty. The one with the worst name. Rhino. Great. I always have to picture the damn animal clomping around with its massive snout and horn. That’s me!

(I shouldn’t be so hard on the rhino– it’s really kind of noble looking. source)

In my family alone, I can think of three other women who have had nose jobs. Their profiles were whispered about at Passover and Chanukah gatherings. “Did you notice . . .?” I never had.

When, five years ago, I finally sat down with a surgeon and admitted that I really, really wanted to change my face, I asked him not to change it too much. I asked for something subtle. An adjustment. That is usually what I hear from other women who have been in similar situations, too. It is almost never as extreme as people imagine. It is more of a . . . negotiation. Look, nose, you haven’t been good to me. You’ve made me feel shitty for so many years. Every time I look in the mirror, I see a rhino. But I am also not ready to give up completely on the face my parents gave me. I want to accept myself. I am a liberated woman. I have read gender theory. I just want a little tweak.

The truth is, cosmetic surgery made me feel empowered. I was choosing to change something about myself that had distracted me too long. I wanted to think about other things. I wanted to move on, and no amount of pep-talking and gender theory reading seemed to do the trick. I was tired. I was fed up.

(like this scenario, for example, which clearly needs thinking about. source)

I wish I had grown up in a world where appearances weren’t so constantly important. That would be a world where cosmetic surgery was irrelevant. I wish I lived in a world where ugliness was an acceptable option and women were as successful for their minds as their bodies (or, gasp, more so!). But that is not today’s world. It’s just not. And as long as it’s not, for some women, for many women, cosmetic surgery is a relief—a way of controlling something that can feel as though it controls us. At least, it felt that way to me. And the extra judgment, the dismissal of these procedures as a vain, pathetic choice is frustrating. For so many of us, it can be a step on the path to self-acceptance. It might be the thing that allows us to stop thinking about the way we look so much.

It’s ironic – in a culture that gossips endlessly about the way women look, and rags ceaselessly on the public women who don’t look “good enough,” and seems confused about what the hell to do with all of the eating disorders that just keep cropping up among middle-schoolers, we are still awfully critical of the people who seem to be paying enough attention to believe that their appearances are really important.

We wave our hands dismissively at the women who get too caught up in the whole beauty thing, who can’t seem to see beyond it, who pay serious amounts of money to change their surfaces for the sake of looking prettier/more acceptable. We give a little derisive snort. Please. Get over yourself. Cosmetic surgery can sound like giving up and giving in. It’s embarrassing. It’s shameful. Shh . . . don’t tell anyone the secret about your face!

But maybe people just don’t understand it. Maybe it gets too quickly oversimplified. There’s more to it than meets the eye; more, when you search under the surface. Real people’s stories are always more complicated, and it would be interesting to finally hear them. In fact, I think it is time we heard them. Cosmetic surgery shouldn’t have to feel like a secret women need to keep. It shouldn’t be a secret that women are under enormous, regular, normalized pressure to look a very specific way.

After I got my nose job, I didn’t look very different. In fact, I looked so much like I’d looked before that no one even noticed. But something changed in my mind. I was done worrying about my nose. I had done what I could. I had gone all the way. And I was ready to let it go.

(and think about what life would be like here. source) 

This piece appeared originally on Daily Life

*  *  *

Cosmetic surgeries stories anyone?

Unroast: Today I love the way I look in really big earrings. Always. Always.

I look in the mirror a lot not because I’m vain, necessarily, but because I’m constantly forgetting what I look like.

Really, I am. My appearance startles me all the time. Basic things about it. “Wait, is that really my chin? But for real now: is that actually how it looks? Does anyone have confirmation on this? Do we have proof of chin?”

It’s confusing: I look different in different lights, in different clothing, in different moods; I seem to morph ever-so-slightly with mild fluctuations in the atmosphere, shifting with faint variations in the ambient temperature. Sometimes when someone mentions that they think they saw me on the street the other day, in Cobble Hill, coming out of a burger place, bent furtively over an enormous double cheeseburger, I try frantically for a second to remember how I looked that day. Was it a good day? Did I look like a person I wanted to look like that day? The cheeseburger was good. I know that much.

I am a little surprised that I look like myself all the time to other people. What does that person look like? She teasingly eludes me.

In the evenings, as I grow third trimester tired and lose my ability to attentively smile and grimace at the appropriate moments in other people’s stories about their love lives, I have been watching more and more of the show Alias on Netflix. I love spy things. I love it when the woman spy parachutes into Romania or wherever in her plain, zipped up parachuting outfit and then she unzips it in a single, triumphant motion, and BAM! underneath is a sexy red evening gown with a plunging neckline! She just landed from 1,000 feet up in six-inch heels! And she will very soon be running in them, as the bad guys chase, but never catch her. I love that shit. It makes me want, for the millionth time, to wear wigs constantly. Why are we not all wearing wigs all the time? Wigs seem like so much fun.

(the dress is also bullet-proof, of course…source)

Anyway, Bear thinks Alias is kind of boring and bad, and every time he looks over my shoulder at my flickering computer screen, where Jennifer Garner is round house kicking an enemy of the state in her stilettos, he shakes his head and goes, “None of this makes any sense.” And then I go, “It’s a TV show.” And then he goes, “But it doesn’t make any sense! And she sounds like a little girl.”

Which she does. She sounds just like a little girl, with that sweet, whispery voice, her big, soft eyes always about to well with helpless tears. But she is not helpless! That’s the cool part! It’s feminist! See? She knows kung fu!

But really, if I’m being honest, Alias, for me, is partially just a show about Jennifer Garner’s face. And about her body, too. But definitely starring the perfect, sculpted lines of her jaw, the fullness of her always-pink lips, the clean simplicity of her little nose, her warm, wide eyes. Everything about her face is pure and neatly stated and lovely. She looks amazing in every single wig. It’s a wonder to watch. So many TV shows, it seems, are partly about whatever the plot is doing, and partly about how beautiful a woman is. Look at her in all of these different settings! She has to go undercover as a stripper again!

I suspect that if I had to go undercover, I would probably not be convincing as a stripper. I suspect that I would immediately twist my ankle on the parachute landing, and my six-inch heel would snap right off and I’d limp into the elegant Romanian party with the zipper stuck on my sporty parachuting outfit, one sparkling red spaghetti strap showing, asking if I could borrow someone’s cellphone so I could call the CIA and ask to be taken home—oh, and could I get a double cheeseburger while they are at it? International espionage makes me hungry.

(source)

I get up to pee because it’s been five whole minutes since I last peed, pausing Alias just as Jennifer Garner is poutily, deftly seducing a very dangerous Russian arms dealer, and my reflection in the bathroom mirror catches me off-guard. I have been looking at her face for too long. My own face is nothing like it. My own face is heavy, blotchy, uneven. The eyes are surprisingly close together—I don’t remember them being that close together—have they migrated? In the descriptions of the developing fetus, features are always migrating. “Week 20: your baby’s ears have migrated to their final position on either side of his head!” YES! It’s about friggin’ time.

“Week 28: your baby’s testicles have migrated down his abdomen and will soon settle in his scrotum, where they will hopefully stay.” What were they doing in his abdomen to begin with? Thank god I’m having a girl.

I think my baby’s ovaries have migrated to the right place now, and so have her eyes. But my eyes have not.

What is my face’s problem? Why does it not understand that pretty women have simple, sweet, even faces? Where did all of these bulky features come from? What’s with these weird shadows and lines? What the hell, man? Why can’t I just look like Jennifer Garner? Why can’t I at least look more feminine? It’s obnoxious.

(another necessary disguise. source)

I experience a moment of despair, in front of the mirror. This is it. I’m finished. I will never look truly good.

This is familiar—this plunge, this dawning horror at the sight of myself. As though I’ve forgotten just how bad it was and then BOOM: there it all is, like flicking on the glaring lights of an operating room, and there’s the bloody truth, laid out on the cold, metal table. There’s no hope for this one. Not even Dr. House could save this one.

This is familiar– the surprise, the rush of disappointment. Damnit, I thought I’d be prettier this time.

This is familiar– the little niggling voice that wonders aloud in my ear if I can even like myself, when I look like this.

Isn’t that what it comes down to? Can I ever truly like myself, really like myself, knowing that I will never, ever look even close to Jennifer Garner? Can I like myself, if it turns out that I don’t even have the potential, the slender hope, of being beautiful?

For a long time, I liked myself less every time I looked bad. It was automatic.

But I’m tired now. I’m too slow, like a brontosaurus or something, for the responsive, immediate viciousness of the beauty velociraptor. The despair subsides—I can’t maintain it. I blink at myself, taking this whole big, complicated scene in. I am a writer, I think. Do I look like a writer? Sure. Why not? Anyone can look like a writer.

I am nice, I think. Which is important to me. Do I look like someone who would be nice to other people? Sure!

I am not afraid to make big non-normative decisions. I am strong-minded. I definitely look like someone who could be strong-minded. Which makes me smile a little.

It’s funny—I never know what to expect when I look in the mirror, but I think that as a person, I feel increasingly consistent to myself. And increasingly, that feels more relevant, somehow. It means just a bit more. Do I actually need to look consistent? Is that important? Do I really need to look like anything? Maybe, just maybe, I don’t need the world to look at me the way it looks at Jennifer Garner. Maybe I never actually needed that, I just got confused. I just got misled along the way.

It’s easy for young women to get misled in this way, there are so many paths going in the wrong direction, laid out right there, practically under our feet already, just waiting for us to walk them. There are herds of other women on them already, leading the way, so that they can look like the only way to go. And then, over here in the underbrush, weaving and cracked and nervewrackingly deserted, here’s another way entirely. This way has lots of overlooks where you can stop and unpack a big, hearty lunch. With pie. God, I want pie. Peach crumb. Strawberry rhubarb, my absolute favorite.

(oh my god, just stop. you’re too perfect. source)

It is important to smile at yourself in the mirror, I think, especially when you look really bad. Especially when you look nothing at all like Jennifer Garner and never will. Especially when you can’t believe you even look like this. It is important to remind yourself that this image, this moment, is only part of a much longer story. It’s a story about an interesting woman with a lot worth liking about her. And you are a writer, aren’t you? So tell it well. And when you are running from the enemy or parachuting anywhere, definitely wear flats. It’s better that way. I’m no international spy, but I’m pretty smart, and that is one thing I’m sure of.

*  *  *

If you were a spy, what kind of undercover work would you hope to do? I’d definitely want to go to balls, if possible, I think. For the gowns.

Unroast: Today I love the way I look right after I trim my own hair. It always feels like an exciting new start.

And speaking of which, here are some hair shots from a reader named Selena. She says: I’m a high school student, and I was planning on cutting off all of my hair right before I graduated, because I don’t want to do the whole princess thing at grad and I get a kick out of surprising people. Then I discovered your blog in a very roundabout manner a few months ago, and reading about and seeing pictures of your fabulous short hair made me wonder why I was waiting so long (I won’t be graduating until next year). I really don’t miss it at all. I was so ready to do this it’s a wonder I didn’t just do it myself in my sleep or something. I donated all 184 grams (about 6.5 ounces) of it. 

Yeah…I have a really hard time not pulling a face if I know a camera is pointed at me. 

LOVE it. And thank you for finding my hair fabulous.

I was so sure I was having a boy. I’d even given my baby a boy name, and I talked to my belly and told him he was a great son. A strong, noble, excellent son. People said, “A mother knows…” and nodded along with me.

Not this mother. Apparently, this mother doesn’t know shit.

“Can you tell if he’s a boy or a girl?” I asked the sonographer at the 20 week ultrasound, just to be sure.

She bit her lip and tried not to smile. “Oh yes. I can tell.”

(source)

He was a girl. She had always been a girl. I burst into overwhelmed tears. And then something shameful happened. Instead of being fully happy, the way every new mother is supposed to, I was worried. I was worried that she would look like me.

What an embarrassing reaction. I tried to pretend I hadn’t had it. But the thing is, being a girl was not always easy for me. And the not-easiness tended to cluster around my feelings about my appearance. The not-easiness grew and grew until I got plastic surgery at the end of college. By then, I often caught myself feeling downright ugly, and believing that my ugliness was the most critical thing about me. I wasn’t stupid—I tried to shake it, I tried to be reasonable—but my sense of my own failure as a person due to the way I looked felt like a cancer that just kept creeping back. I wanted to cut it out of me, so I signed up for a surgery that would do just that—cut off the bad parts.

I don’t need to get into the whole thing again. The point is, I struggled with the way I looked. And I really, really don’t want my daughter to feel the way I felt. I don’t want her to look at her own body and see only a compilation of unfortunate parts, like scrap metal, pieced together. I don’t want her to look in the mirror and see everything that is missing and failing instead of everything that is present and good and working just fine. And sometimes, so many times, too very many times, girls learn to see the flaws and the lack and the tiny “problems” first and always.

(“if only those damn sheep weren’t there, the mountains would be perfect. I should get them removed…” source)

I was scared when I found out that my baby was a girl. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to protect her from that. And from so many other things, of course. But definitely from that.

It’s been months since I found out that I will have a daughter, and I’ve been thinking about her a lot, of course, as she kicks and prods me, and as I get bigger and bigger and begin to gently pee myself at random moments.

I’ve had some time to wrestle with my fear. There have been a lot of things I’ve needed to let go of, to prepare for her arrival, for her reality. I have been forced to confront some unresolved issues, my own hang-ups, and the things that upset me most about the world. And after a lot of thought, and a lot of writing in my journal, and a lot of eating cookies in the middle of the night just because “the baby wants a cookie,” I think I’ve finally figured out exactly what I want my daughter to look like. Because looks matter. That’s the truth. And because they don’t have to matter as much as they did for me. That’s also the truth.

So this is what I’ve come up with. This is what I hope my daughter looks like:

I hope that she will look comfortable in her body

I hope that she will look happy

I hope that she will look like she can be bold when she wants to

I hope that she will look like she’s wearing clothes that she likes to wear

I hope that she will look like she’s taken the time to get to know herself

I hope that she will look like she laughs whenever she thinks something is funny

I hope that she will look like she has a pretty good idea where she’s going

I hope that she will look like she can forgive herself

I hope that she will look like she has plenty of fun

I hope that she will look like she isn’t afraid

I hope that she will look exactly like herself

(source)

And secretly, under everything, I have come to realize that I actually hope a tiny bit that she looks like me. Despite all of the issues I’ve had over the years with my appearance. Despite the complicated, meandering path to self-acceptance I’ve walked (occasionally barefoot, in the rain, up a giant hill—because I’m friggin’ intrepid). I remember being a little girl and looking in the mirror and loving my own face. I remember thinking that I was beautiful just for existing. And I know, deep down, under the nervousness I have about my daughter, that she will be beautiful just for existing.

And also, I know that she will not be me, even though she is inside my body right now. She will be this complete other person. But maybe, just maybe, she will rock these genes I’ve given her. Maybe she will take them farther than I ever could. Maybe she won’t give a shit. Maybe she will be ferocious. Selfishly, I want that for my features. I want that for my future. I want that for my daughter.

(beautiful just for existing…source)

This appeared originally on my Mirror Mirror column

For some reason, I just wanted to include a bunch of photos of New Zealand with this post, because I sometimes google “beautiful new zealand” and just stare at the results and feel soothed. So I did that, instead of trying to find pictures that fit better. Maybe it’s OK– maybe this somehow works. Maybe not, and hey, you got to look at some mountains! :p

*  *  *

I’m dying of curiosity: (if you have one) how does your daughter look? Do you see yourself in her? Do YOU look like your mother?

Unroast: Today I love the way I look from the back

This is the full version of my piece about pregnancy that appeared here on Slate. I wanted to share the original, because I like the details, and Slate was nice enough to let me. 

When I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t really want to tell my friends. We’d talked about babies, over wine and second draft feature articles at a non-fiction writers’ group, and everyone agreed that if you’re smart, you wait until you’re thirty-five.

“There’s too much to do before then!” said one of the women, summarizing.

I was twenty-six when I got pregnant, which meant I’d jumped the gun by almost a decade.

In a lot of different parts of the country, having a baby in your mid twenties is not a big deal; According to a 2009 report from the CDC, the average age of first time mothers in Texas, Oklahoma, Utah and nine other states New Yorkers rarely visit was recently twenty-two to twenty-three. But the average age of first time moms here in New York was twenty-six, and twenty-seven in New Jersey, where I grew up. When you account for factors like advanced education, the numbers climb. The Pew Research Center notes that 71% of first time mothers over thirty-five are college educated. Since I arrived in NYC, I don’t think I’ve even met anyone who didn’t go to college.

But on my Babycenter.com Due Date Club app, people are constantly starting threads with titles like “aNy othr teen moms on here???” And they get plenty of sympathetic answers. In New York City I only know one other woman my age who has a baby. She’d gone to Harvard and worked on Wall Street, but, she once confided in me in low tones, “I always wanted to be a mom.”

(my eternal hero– Robin McKinley. God, can this woman write a fantasy novel. source)

I have not always wanted to be a mom. (If I’ve always wanted to be anything it’s a famous fantasy novelist – dorky, I know). More immediately, I’ve wanted to get a college scholarship and then get a high GPA and then get into an Ivy League grad school and then have a sparkling career in the big city. I’m not sure about how sparkling my big city career has been (a guess: not particularly), but I made the rest of my goals happen.

Until now, the conversations I’ve had with my friends about babies have sounded something like this:

Glamorous, perfectly made-up Mara: “My mom is a nurse. She says it’s a myth that women are less fertile in their mid-thirties.”

(We all nod sagely.)

Julie, who has just been promoted and is managing ten people and attending star-studded work parties: “I need to spend at least another five years on my career. And anyway, my boss hates pregnant women.”

Stephanie, who works at a tech start-up: “Five years, definitely. That’s the right amount of time. You have to live your own life first.”

Everyone else: “Yes!”

Me: silence

I had been married for a couple years when I decided to go off birth control. By then, I was in therapy to try to cope with my career-related anxiety. At my preconception appointment (this is a thing! Although I may be the only one who has ever taken advantage of it), the doctor congratulated me for being so proactive and told me to go off the pill three months before I was even thinking about trying to conceive, to get the hormones out of my system and allow my body time to readjust. So I did. And then I panicked. “I have to finish my book,” I told my therapist. “Maybe I should wait another year? Six months? I think I rushed into this. I’m not ready.”

But my body was. Two hours after that therapy session, I peed on a stick, telling myself that I was stupid for even taking a test this soon. It said “YES” in very straightforward digital letters. I was already pregnant.

I have had many visions of my professional self over the years, but none of them involved children. At six I decided I’d be a prima ballerina. At ten, when my dad took me to Carnegie Hall, I touched the stage at intermission and swore in a whisper that some day, by the time I was fifteen hopefully, I would walk across it to the gleaming grand piano. My mom, a strong-minded feminist, always told me that I could achieve anything I set my mind to. Specifically, she hinted, it’d be nice if I became a lawyer. Or a rabbi, because I had such charisma. I once briefly forgot how to pronounce my own name when introducing myself to a cute boy– but she insisted that I was born to lead. Later my dad was rooting for me to become a professor, and I did in fact get into a graduate program after my last year of college.

(“seriously, Kate, you need to keep leaning in!” source)

My friends were career oriented and driven, and for all of us, being a young woman was about proving ourselves in a competitive world. Sheryl Sandberg and Hillary Clinton were urging us forward, reminding us of our endless potential. And it was clear that having a baby before fully establishing yourself professionally was exactly the same as giving up on your potential. Having a baby was the kind of thing that my friends’ less ambitious sisters sometimes did, much to everyone’s long-distance concern.

I got married young, at twenty-four. I didn’t mean to, but I fell in love in a way that wouldn’t compromise. “How long do you think people our age should wait before getting married?” I asked my boyfriend. He thought about it. “Five years?” he said. “That’s ridiculous!” I said, surprising myself. He looked surprised, too. “Wait,” he said. “Would you actually consider getting married sooner?”I looked down. “Well,” I said, and I knew I was blushing like crazy. “Wait,” he said, “You would marry me?” “You have to ask for real!” I said. Soon, he did. About five years before sensible people our age might get married, we did it anyway.

But marriage isn’t anything like a baby. Despite what some people seemed to think about it limiting a person’s freedom, I felt more available to pursue my career goals and other interests than I ever had before. Without the distraction of dating and with the support of another income, I could push myself harder. “You should write!” my new husband said. “That’s what you want to do, so you should give it a shot.”

Tentatively, I left a job I’d never really liked, and soon I was working part time and writing every spare moment. I was nervous. I wanted this so badly. Actually, I was nervous all the time. I was also the meanest boss I’ve ever had. I berated myself for not being more productive, for not being more savvy, for taking a whole day off. I berated myself for never, ever making enough money. One night, after a piece I’d worked really hard on finally went live, I had my first panic attack. My heart was frantically trying to escape my chest. I struggled to breathe and my mind kept insisting that everything was terrible. That everything in my life was shattering and skittering under the couch when it hit the floor. It didn’t make any sense. After what had felt like an eternity trapped under a pile of rejection letters, my blog was getting big, I’d signed onto a column, and three literary agents contacted me in the same month. It was beginning to seem like I might survive as a writer, and suddenly I was terrified that I’d mess it up. The panic attack subsided, but my fear persisted.

These were angsty, whiney, first-world problems, I thought, but I couldn’t seem to shake them. So I plowed ahead, telling myself that if only I had a big break, if only I succeeded in the way that I sometimes succeeded in my dreams, where Bill Bryson was constantly telling me that he’d read my latest bestselling book and he loved it, then I would feel better. I would finally relax. By the time I turned thirty, I swore to myself, I would have arrived.

(“you’re doing splendidly, Kate!” source)

But then something happened. I began to think with an eerie, abrupt certainty that I should get pregnant. At first, I dismissed the urge as self-sabotage. You just won’t let yourself achieve your goals. But the changed part of my mind fought back. It said, There is enough time in life for all of this. Babies and writing, too. Stubbornly, it seemed to imagine that everything would somehow turn out alright, that life had a slower, more graceful arc than I pictured. The part of my mind that relentlessly encouraged me to have a baby sounded reassuringly like healthiness. It sounded like growing up. It sounded like calming down. And I was emotionally exhausted. I gave in.

In the middle of the night, during the first trimester, too sick to sleep, I found myself downloading books about infertility. I didn’t know why, but suddenly, I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on about and by people who wanted a baby more than anything and couldn’t have one. It occurred to me slowly, over weeks, unfurling like my baby’s limbs: I wanted someone to explain to me that getting pregnant meant something wonderful and important. I wasn’t sure I was allowed to feel proud of myself, and I was a little embarrassed that I did. For my whole life, I’d wanted to stand out and go farther and be more impressive than other people. But on a certain level, becoming a mother is completely ordinary, and only the infertile writers seemed to appreciate its simultaneous miraculousness.

I can feel my baby kicking now. She prods me from the inside, and it feels like a little reminder every time. I am here, too, my baby is saying. You’re my mother. And I am warmed and scared by it. But not the same kind of desperate fear I’ve felt so often about my career. Instead, it’s a fear that sharpens me and makes me grateful. After a grueling first trimester, I am back to work on my book proposal, and I’ve taken on a new column. Sometimes I am anxious, thinking about how I should work harder, I should have a publisher by now, but the anxiety has slipped into the background in a way I never thought it could.

The day before my twenty-seventh birthday, I had my non-fiction writing group over for cake and conversation. Everyone sipped red wine except for me, and they talked about their recent victories—a cover story, a new job, a book deal. A little awkwardly, I shared my ultrasound photos. “Oh my god,” they said, uncertain at the sight of my ghostly black and white baby. And then they were all talking at once- reiterating themselves frantically to each other, explaining why they weren’t ready to have babies, how they hadn’t accomplished nearly enough yet, despite all of their accomplishments, how they just weren’t old enough.

“I think I’m old enough,” I said, interrupting.

It got very quiet. Finally Stephanie said, “But how do you know?”

“I don’t, really,” I said. “I just don’t want to wait.”

To my surprise, she said that sometimes she wishes she could have a baby now, too, but she isn’t married and wants to get married first. Julie added, “Don’t get me wrong, I definitely want to have kids. Someday.”

“I don’t, ever,” said Mara, and she looked uncharacteristically nervous. “You’ll stay friends with me, though, after this, right?”

I eagerly promised that I would, startled and moved by the reversal of my expectations: I had thought that she would be the one who might leave me, after, when I had been rendered uncool and poopy and distracted by motherhood.

 “Can I touch your belly?” someone asked. And suddenly, everyone’s hands were on me, and I felt like the sun in one of those Styrofoam models of the solar system, with my friends orbiting my roundness. Their hands were shy but supportive, and I felt important and relieved. Rebelliously, I was impressed with myself.

(one of the only pictures I have of my daughter so far)

*   *   *

If you have kids, how old were you for your first? Did you feel young? If you don’t have kids but want to one day, what seems like a good age to do it? I’m always curious!

Unroast: Today I love the way I look in gold and yellow. Like, enough to make it look cheesy.

P.S. Just a note: I wrote this piece a while ago (placement and publication take time!), and I also exaggerated my friends’ reaction just a tad. I’ve been really blown away by how much support I’ve gotten from friends who aren’t doing this with their lives and don’t want to right now/ever.

It must be nice to be a “natural beauty.” To be gorgeous without effort or even interest. This type of beauty is perhaps the most impressive. It’s like being a piano prodigy, except that you don’t even have to touch the keys*. You can just stand around. You can sit. You should probably not eat too much, but otherwise, you’re good, because of God and genes and accident.

(don’t even worry about it… source)

It’s hard to escape the concept of natural beauty. Once in college I was in a religion seminar, and the guest lecturer, a world-traveling, leathery-tan man with an impressive literary biography described in detail the beauty of the pious Muslim girls he’d encountered on his wild desert journeys. One girl was maybe fifteen, but she radiated a kind of primal loveliness. A dewy, untouched sex appeal. Holy shit, did he actually use the words “sex appeal” in describing her? He might as well have. Rapturously, he recalled how even her thorough hijab could not conceal her bursting beauty. Unlike Western girls, and here he glanced around the table at our tired, effortful faces, this pure blossom didn’t even have to try. She simply embodied beauty. She had, somehow, regardless of politics and oppression and discrimination and whatever else, won.

I was disturbed. Why were we talking so much about this girl’s appearance in the first place? Why was this man so comfortable objectifying, exotifying, and eroticizing her, especially in an academic setting?

But we are always talking about girls’ appearances, actually.  And, in practically every context, “natural” beauty is praised.

It sets up a strange dynamic. We know, as girls, that we’re supposed to care about how we look, since everyone is always talking about how girls and women look as though it’s a really big deal. And we know, simultaneously, that it would be best if we could look as though we don’t care very much how we look, but also look as pretty as possible, at every given moment. Women are celebrated for being beautiful, and celebrated even more for being beautiful when they aren’t even trying.

Being beautiful in sweatpants is a major accomplishment.

(source)

Being beautiful without makeup is a triumph.

Being beautiful early in the morning, while exhaustedly walking the dog or slogging miserably to work—success!!

A few months ago, in the New York Times Room For Debate session on makeup, a man proudly trumpeted his wife’s ability to look super hot without even putting makeup on! And she is not exactly young anymore, either! Imagine that. 

Now imagine a woman who’s gotten “work done.” Oh dear. Not great. We feel sort of sorry for her. Snide comments are made. She looks like she’s made of plastic…There’s a desperation about her. Basically, to summarize, she’s already failed, and she’s publicizing her failure by trying frantically to correct it. A woman I know who’s had a facelift told me in confessional tones that she made sure that it looks “natural.” And of course the idea is for cosmetic surgery to look like you didn’t “need” any cosmetic surgery to begin with. You’re supposed to appear a few weeks later looking refreshed, as though you were born this way.

We women often put a lot of effort into, and pay a lot of money to attempt to “look natural.” But, you know, better than whatever natural looks like for us personally.

It can all seem a little ridiculous, when you lean back from it for a second and squint. Which is why the leaning back and squinting is so important, because we need to recognize how ridiculous beauty constructs are.

Of course, it’s not completely unexpected: We praise people for being “naturally” smart, too, “naturally” athletic, and etc. But studies continue to show, as they have for some time now, that it is generally healthier to praise schoolchildren for being hardworking, than for being naturally gifted. We know now that to emphasize a child’s inherent ability places pressure on that child to continue to be accidentally talented, which is something that is hard for anyone to control. When the children who are applauded for their natural skills fail, they are shown to take the failure very personally. After all, the process of their success has always seemed mysterious and basic and inseparable from the rest of their identity, so it must be they who are failing as whole people. When students are instead complimented and rewarded for their effort and improvement, they tend to not be so hard on themselves. When they fail, they reason, “Well, I’ll work harder next time.” They learn that they are capable of success, rather than constantly automatically deserving of it, and they learn simultaneously that they are bigger and more complex than their individual successes or failures.

With this in mind, it seems especially important to correct our widespread cultural fixation on girls’ natural beauty. Which is not to say that this is a perfect analogy, and that we should praise little girls for learning to apply makeup skillfully, so that they can make themselves prettier, even if their inherited features aren’t stunning.

(or instruct them to please make sure they find sexier sweatpants. source)

What I do want to say is: telling someone, especially someone very young, that what matters most about them is something outside of their control—something they either have or don’t have– is messed up. It’s psychologically dangerous, even. It prevents them from figuring out their own worth and taking on the world as unique, fascinatingly diverse individuals.

And goddamnit, we need to let girls do this.

What’s awesome about us as girls and women isn’t something our genes did or didn’t do, it’s what we’re are capable of as full, messy, complicated people.

In honor of this, I will continue to proudly look like crap in the morning, without makeup, rumpled in my schlumpy clothes. It doesn’t get more “natural” than that, guys.

Oh, and also, I reserve the right to sometimes dress up, and fiddle with my hair, and pose in different pairs of similar-looking shoes, and to try very hard to look as pretty as possible. Because for me, it is an effort. And because sometimes that effort is an enormous amount of fun.

A version of this piece appeared on Daily Life

*  *  *

Have you been told that you are naturally beautiful? Have you caught yourself trying to make yourself look “more natural”?

Unroast: Today I love the way I look in pajama pants. I always have, and I hope I always do.

*I think I’m using a lot of piano-playing analogies these days. I’m not sure why.

Someone stole my body from me. The whole thing, all of my pieces. I think I’m locked up somewhere dark now.

I know, because when I look down at myself, I don’t see me. I see all of the things I should be instead of being myself.

I’ve been stealthily, expertly, completely replaced.

Aliens?

I noticed it the other day, smoothing cream over my legs. Well, these legs, anyway. The ones that attach there, at the base of the torso. I was rubbing the moisturizer into them and I had this image of my head of other women smoothing other, probably more expensive, moisturizer into probably more expensive legs. Better legs. Legs that are longer and lither and tanner and sleeker. Legs that get described in books, lovingly, sometimes almost flippantly, like, of course. Of course, if she’s here, important enough to get a mention; she has these long, fabulous legs.

“I love your short legs,” said Bear, randomly, and I was insulted. “Short” was an insulting word for a second, and then I realized that he was being sweet, and he was serious, somehow, and he had, after all, started off with the word “love.” But “love” and “short” and “legs” do not work together in my mind, because I’ve memorized instinctively all the right proportions and measurements (even though I suck at numbers) and I know what is worth loving.

But I don’t know what is worth loving. Because I am worth loving.

I feel like I have an expert eye for beauty. It’s because I’m an artist, I’ve told myself. I have always painted. But really, it’s because I’m a girl.

In the mirror, over my face, hang hundreds of other, more successful faces. They have hung there for a long time now. Many years. It doesn’t even really bother me most of the time, because I’m so used to it. But I have this memory of being a kid, and holding a silver hand mirror that looked like an antique but really it wasn’t and just staring at my own beautiful face from different angles. I adjusted the light. I pouted, I smiled, I widened my eyes and played with my hair, and wow, I was splendid. I was perfection. I was fantastically complete. I was almost mythically original. I was in love with myself. Just the way you’re not supposed to be. It’s so conceited.

Is it conceited, when you’re a little girl? How quickly is it important that you learn how wrong you were, to think you were so right?

Being in love with myself was the best. I miss it sometimes, even now. I want it for my unborn daughter.

She is a wild one, I think, as she kicks hard inside my belly. She is a strong one. And I realize that I am most afraid that she will forget that wildness one day. That she will accept and want more than anything to be acceptable. My wish for her, my desperate desire, is that she will be able to laugh loudly and roll her eyes and crush judgment under her boot and say, “Fuck this noise. I’m awesome.”

I am learning, slowly, slowly, to say that. But I’m still whispering, and I’m still uncertain, and I’m still nervous that someone will call me out on it, and go, “You don’t count! You’re just bitter because you’re not sexy enough!”

That is what they say to so many women, who speak up. As though beauty is a pacifier, and some of us are born with it in our mouths and we’re too happy to ever spit it out and learn how to eat real food.

And then they say about women who are doing big things, “She doesn’t look good.” And they think it’s funny. I hear them saying this, and I shrink a little, afraid that if I ever do anything big, they will say the same narrowing, slicing, dissecting things about me and it will make me somehow smaller. I will be reduced to my parts, like the cow in my freezer, which I think of in terms of which cuts are most desirable, easiest to cook.

It’s ridiculous, amazing, how afraid I am that someone will just shout out, “You are ugly!”

As though that, alone, is enough to crush me into nothingness. As though that, as a summary, is the most succinctly cruel thing someone can say.

You are ugly= you are meaningless

It would be easier, always, to be more beautiful, I think. But how badass would it be to be ugly and powerful and not give a shit? Are we there yet? Can a woman do that yet?

I take a step, and I am pulling all these trailing, featherlight carcasses. These faint overlays of other women, imaginary, perfected women. Like plastic bag litter in oily water, filmy, clinging. Their limbs coat my limbs, drift back, wrap around me. Their hair is tangled in my hair. Their breasts, translucent, hover over mine, fuller, showing my breasts the failure of their lines, emphasizing the emptiness in the air where there should be flesh and fullness.

I know, intimately, casually, everything that my body has gotten wrong. The sloppiness where I spill over, outside of the trim, clean lines that beauty stays neatly inside, like an obedient child with a steady hand who is preternaturally expert with the crayons. Even pregnant, which I have never been until now, I already know how to evaluate my new shortcomings. The belly should be higher, rounder, smaller. I am growing large so quickly, unstoppable, out of control. My ankles thicken defensively. Even my pregnant body has been sneakily coopted, labeled, taken away from me. The version that is handed blankly back has all the usual notes scribbled across its surface. “Not quite right,” “Bulky,” “Could be better executed—we’re looking for something a little bit more…fluid.” “Missing a certain natural beauty.”

I am missing a certain natural beauty, even though this is what I naturally am.

I am missing myself.

When did the theft occur? The investigation falters almost immediately—it was done gradually, bit by bit, over many years, starting very young. So quiet, so persistent, impossible to accurately track, no one exactly to blame.

I reach up, rub my neck, sitting for a long time in the audience at a concert. I feel a certain softness that isn’t right. It doesn’t feel like the right kind of neck. Not that I have touched so many women’s necks. How would I know? But I do, somehow. It should be longer, more taut, thinner, more graceful. It should be, it should be, it should be.

I should be…

I am touching myself through the world’s fingers. I feel this body like a foreign territory. My brain has been swapped for a critic’s brain, so that I can’t stop evaluating, measuring, sizing myself up.

But at the same time, I remember my face in that heavy silver handmirror. The one that came in a silly set, with a brush too decorative to ever use on my opinionated hair. But the mirror was a portal, and my face was the magical place on the other side. I loved my own green eyes. I loved the way I aligned. The whole thing was so beautifully mine.

And I think that face—the warmth of the memory—is a clue. It’s a breadcrumb on the long trail back to where I’m hidden in the murky dark. To the place where my stolen body waits.

I haven’t lost it completely after all.

I focus, swatting away the other faces that settle, suffocating, over my features. Underneath all these layers, all these miniscule rules that all add up to not ever being good enough, my green eyes look back at me as though across an enormous distance—are they pleading?

I am coming! I sometimes want to tell them. I am coming to save you!

I am coming to save me, on these thickened ankles, belly first, carrying the weight of my daughter. So that she will someday have a mother who knows how to fight. Who can crush doubt under her boot and look up and wink and just go, “Fuck this noise.”

*  *  *

Unroast: Today I love the way I look from the side

It seems like one Harvard professor or another in exceedingly blue, alarmingly stiff jeans is always coming out with a pop psych book about happiness and how misunderstood it is.

(source)

Apparently, people make a lot of the same mistakes about happiness over and over. We keep thinking that we have to work really hard to get to it, and do certain tricky things to capture it, sort of like that scene in Avatar, where they have to bond with the giant flying dinosaur things, and they’re just as likely to get killed, because you have to really earn that bond—not just any Na’vi can fly! But man, when you stick your hair tentacle into your bird dinosaur’s tendril thing and make that platonic, yet soulmate-y connection—there is NOTHING else like that shit. So worth it.

My point is, we expect happiness to be hard. But (apparently) it isn’t really. And instead of fighting and waiting for it, we should probably just work on recognizing where it’s already sneaking around in the shadows of our current lives, like a little smiley cat burglar.

I think it’s like that with beauty and self-acceptance, too.

Lady mags are always telling us what easy steps we can take to get our bodies beach-ready by the summer, and fitness program ads shout encouraging things about reaching your goals and hauling your fat ass up that mountain of old habits and deliciously high carb food to the other side, where a smirking, hotter you is waiting, sipping a wheatgrass infused carrot protein drink. If we work harder at pilates, if we buy more age-defying makeup with science-y looking commercials that show cells bouncing around being healthier and shinier, if we finally manage to calculate that precise mathematical formula of facial shape + length of neck + relation of space between the eyes to width of chin to dimension of nostrils that will result in us at long last establishing what exactly the right haircut is, THEN, and only then, will we look great. And we will feel great, too, because we look great. And who doesn’t feel better when they look better?

During some magical, thrilling time in the future, every one of us has the potential to feel truly good about ourselves, because we will be a lot sexier than we are right now.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much we’re taught to think about our potential future sexy selves. Pregnancy is really a wild transformation, like one of those nature videos with the leaves going through their life stages on fast forward, so you can see them bud and grow and green and brown to death and drop off all in the span of like a minute. I feel like I am one of those sped-up sequences, with my body changing practically every day. And as this is happening, I keep reading stuff geared at pregnant women that urges us to think about our post-birth bodies already. To make sure we’re setting ourselves up to bounce right back and reclaim our tight, lithe, pre-mom selves. And honestly, I’m kind of offended. I’m like, give me a friggin’ second to just be huge and pregnant over here! I get all defensive: “Maybe I like my enormous belly, OKAY? Is it going to be alright with everyone if I think it’s pretty cool that there is an entire HUMAN BEING in my abdomen right now?”

And then I think that maybe we should get indignant about this stuff even when we’re not carting around entire tiny humans in our bellies. Because maybe we look really good already, but we’re just so used to expecting to find something wrong with our hair that we don’t even notice.

  (source)

It is entirely possible, I think, that we have learned so thoroughly that true beauty is something just outside of our grasp and self-acceptance is waiting alongside true beauty that we are missing out on how cool we are right now.

And even if we don’t happen to look gloriously lovely but are just failing to pick up on it, it seems a little ridiculous to spend so much energy working to get more gloriously lovely all the time while neglecting to work on feeling better about how we already are.

Because, really, there is no magical moment when you find the fantastically science-y concealer that perfectly balances the complicated pH of your mysterious skin and then you look and feel obviously better forever. Because even when people do get a fabulous haircut, they find themselves nitpicking and criticizing soon thereafter.

We have learned too well to keep searching and waiting and hoping. Appreciating your appearance isn’t a frivolous or impossible fantasy—it should be a basic exercise in emotional well-being. If we care enough to keep buying crazy cosmetics and feeling guilty over eating dessert and stressing out over that startlingly unforgiving three-sided reflection in the department store fitting room, then this stuff matters. It affects our quality of life. It affects our happiness.

It’s time to stop waiting to change and improve and get sexy and get your beach bod. It’s time to stop expecting a long, cold fight. It doesn’t have to be that hard. Instead, look in the mirror and think about what you really like about what you see. Because this is you, right now, with the only body you can have in this moment.

After I have my baby, I don’t intend to try frantically to rush back to my slimmer, tighter body. Instead, I want to appreciate the fact that my body just did some seriously impressive stuff. Having a baby is a big deal. But just having a functioning body is a big deal, too, when you think about it. Being appreciative of it shouldn’t be a ridiculous, improbable undertaking—it just makes good, solid sense.

So please, please, when you catch yourself thinking about the things you need to improve about the way you look and how long it might be before you can chip away at the block of your not-sexy-enoughness until something better is finally revealed—stop yourself. Think of those very earnest Harvard professors in their very blue jeans. They are wearing those jeans for you, because they’ve spent so much time researching the way you think that they didn’t notice the fashions gradually changing, over the years. It’s honorable, really. It’s self-sacrificing.

We have learned that beauty is about pursuit and inadequacy. We have learned that we can’t have it yet, or maybe ever, but we’re supposed to keep trying anyway. Let’s get smart and look at the data and look at ourselves in a way that makes us happy.

You might be surprised by what is already there. You might be surprised by how much you like yourself, right now. Maybe, secretly, defiantly, you even like some of the things that you’re not supposed to. I have always loved my squishy thighs, for example, it just took me a while to admit it.

But why not love the way we are, as much as we possibly can? Really, it seems lame not to. If your non-sexual soulmate winged dinosaur was already here, just placidly waiting for you to jump on and fly, would you say no? Well, you shouldn’t! And maybe it already is. So get on that rainbow-colored reptilian joy machine and don’t look back!

You know what I’m saying.

(source)

A version of this piece appeared originally in my Mirror Mirror column

* * *

What do you like about yourself that you didn’t expect to?

Unroast: Today I love the graceful way I sometimes imagine I am moving, as I walk.

I was thinking about therapy the other day. My therapist and I have drifted apart over the past six months or so. We had been doing phone sessions, which was great because it allowed me to eat while talking to her, and also load the dishwasher. But eventually, even those became complicated, with her new job schedule and my relentless morning sickness. And, without any formal farewell, we became unhooked and slipped apart.

The dishes have suffered. I’ve been trying to decide if I should make an effort. If I should reach out to her, or find a new therapist.

It’s often hard to explain to myself exactly why I maybe should, because therapy is often vague like that. I used to get annoyed at listening to my own problems. And then I’d have to talk about that. Which is awkward. The whole thing is awkward. Once my therapist said to me, laughing, “Kate, you overthink everything!” I liked her for that.

But when I think about therapy now, the part that frustrates me is really more about storytelling than anything else. Actually, a friend of mine who is a successful storyteller, like, as a thing, not just as an expression, said something about how in therapy she feels aware of the things she has to leave out to tell a certain story about her life. There are all of these contradictory, complicating details. There are all these details that are really the beginning of a totally different story or interpretation.

(source)

The truth is, we all need to tell ourselves stories about our lives all the time. It keeps things manageable. We get this sense that we have some idea of who we are. We sort out characteristics and assemble something that comfortingly resembles a personality. People, like dogs and chimps and probably caterpillars, too, like the reassurance of identifiable patterns. We pat ourselves on the back for being a person who consistently hates the taste of licorice—it’s a clue! Have you ever notice how proud people sometimes seem of their little weirdnesses? Oh, I NEVER wear periwinkle! It makes me nervous about buying people gifts, because what if I am forgetting one of their major quirks? What if I get them something in periwinkle by accident?

One of the things that’s so frustrating about trying to explain Bear, or anyone I really love, to other people, is that I always have to leave so much out. And as I describe him, I feel myself narrowing his character into something simpler, more consistent. But I love him for a million other tiny details, a million more quirks and other, bigger things, that might render his character confusing in the telling. He is deliciously bashful/he is quietly cocky—these realities blur and blend and twist each other into different shapes all the time. I love him in this indescribably big way, like water sloshing over the top and seeping into everything. My love is sloppy and undiscerning an all-encompassing. Sometimes I am horribly afraid that he will die and I won’t be able to preserve even the imprint of him—of my love for him—because I won’t be able to ever recreate the infinite complexity of the particulars—he’ll just be a faint fossil outline. I am not smart enough or observant enough or a good enough writer to preserve his wholeness, or even close.

And I think that all of this is why I don’t feel like analyzing my childhood, or my parents, sometimes. Even now, as I approach parenthood myself. I feel a little gross when I do it, like I’m always getting something obviously wrong. Like all I can remember about Louie C.K.’s show was this one joke and a loud farting sound. I’m translating poorly into a language I don’t speak with enough fluency for nuance. Thank god for fart humor, I guess. Really, I’m thankful. But there needs to be more.

(classic! source)

Especially growing up so unusually, like I did, outside of school, I sometimes don’t know how to make sense of myself.

I had a wildly free childhood, bursting with innocence, where I spent hours in the woods, following the stream, pretending to be the heroine in an epic tale. There was something untouched, holy, fantastical about it.

I was sheltered, but that’s OK.

Or should I be a little resentful at how unprepared I was, to face the other girls my age in college? How bowled over I was, by their different definitions of friendship, by their lightning-quick once-overs, their unspoken rules, the awful, intimidating ways they had fun, the foreign ways they were cool, the effort they made for beauty that I didn’t understand but soon understood painfully well—all the more painful for not having known it before.

My innocence was complicated, growing up. I was sexually confident. People don’t associate that with innocence. I was proud of my mind, and I operated in the adult world without too much trouble. There was something badass, unapologetic about me, then, I think. Something helpless and fragile and embarrassing, too. Something brittle about my aggressive self-confidence. Something charming about my bluster. Something frighteningly earnest or refreshingly upfront. I don’t know.

Why did I grow to hate my face enough to cut it open? How did I let myself slide into perpetual self-criticism? I remember telling myself a very hard-lined story about the way I looked: bad. And I needed to be proactive and try to fix it, and then life would be better in so many ways. I would probably just start winning things, because people would want me to win, because they’d be rooting for me, because I’d be prettier. See? Logic!

Later, I told myself a story about my childhood, and how all that naïve, dorky self-acceptance had left me naked and vulnerable to the eventual onslaught of beauty rules and subtly ruthless social ideas about femininity that left me shredded, bloody-faced, shivering in the cold of my own sudden, fundamental failure. I mean, I am literally writing a memoir about this. It’s definitely a story I’m telling.

But it’s not a totally simple story, either.

And when I let it be un-simple, I don’t know what to blame or thank my parents for.

I’ve tried, for a while, to figure it out. My parents are, after all, fascinatingly, dramatically flawed. You know, like people are. They might make easy targets, if I were to start firing angrily. And I can get angry, thinking about the stupid things they did or didn’t do. The ways they missed some important point.

But right now, as I waddle towards the beginning of parenthood myself, I find I am less interested in solving them. I look around, and it seems like everyone is weird in one way or another, and plenty of people had strange upbringings that set them apart in certain ways. And ultimately, most of us just don’t know why we are exactly the way we are. It’s too intricate and our lives are too sprawling and we are too influenced by too many things to keep track of.

As time shrinks, and I am swept nearer to the edge of parenthood, I don’t want to waste another moment trying to figure myself and everything else out. It’s never right enough to justify the angst. Instead, I feel almost lavishly forgiving. I forgive my parents. I forgive myself. I forgive the world for being extravagantly confusing and big.

It’s kinda all I can do, I think.

I want to start motherhood open-hearted and nonprescriptive and wide-minded. I will, of course, tell myself plenty of stories along the way, but I want to also remember that every time you tell a story, you don’t tell a lot of other ones. And those stories are often just as true, just as real. Maybe, at least, I can pick one where I look good in all the colors I like. Where I have a cool face. Where I am open-ended, unsolved, still fresh and learning. I figure we’re all always like that, anyway, the whole time, until we die.

(a periwinkle dress. source)

*  *  *

I don’t even know what to ask. This was such a meandering post. Do you feel you get something out of therapy, if you go? Do you like to analyze your parents?

Unroast: Today I love the way I can really appreciate other women’s beauty, sometimes, without being jealous. Or, maybe I’m a little jealous, but I’m mostly appreciative. Sometimes. It’s nice.

Giveaway results from the baking giveaway: The winner is Jodelle Brohard, commenter #53 under the post about sexy back hair. That’s just fun to write. Congrats, Jodelle!! I’ll send your email address to the giveaway sponsor and get you hooked up with some baking swag

And here’s a cake pic! From reader Ashley (she blogs here), who says: Here is a pic of me, no make-up, hair not done, and probably wearing the clothes I slept in, going at my son’s birthday cake! I just turned 29, have been married 9 years and given birth to 6 kids in the last 6 1/2 years, no twins.  I figure I am more than entitled to make my cake and eat it too.

I LOVE it!!! Send me your own cake pic — kate@eatthedamncake.com.

What’s Happening To My Body Book For Girls was very clear about the stages of breast development. There are five, and the last one, in the illustrations, is very complete-looking. I was pretty excited about getting there. When I read the book, I was twelve, and my body was full of secret promise. I might grow up to be a supermodel! I sometimes sketched myself as the adult I imagined I’d be. In these sketches, I had long, straight pale hair, even though my current hair was tangled and dark. It just seemed like things would be really different then.

But after I went through puberty, things…weren’t. Where were my breasts? I had been promised some breasts! God clearly owed me a couple, in exchange for the raging period that menaced my favorite white pants and the horrifyingly uncool world of extra-thick sanitary pads. Instead, God, or perhaps it was the boob fairy, passed me by and awarded a magnificently extravagant pair to my best friend, who had until then resembled a delicate blond pixie herself. Now she was alluring and irresistible to boys.

(is this the boob fairy? source)

“So,” said a boy I had a crush on at camp, after we’d escaped together into the night to sit by the moonlit river and share our teenaged souls, “are your boobs, like, really little? They look kinda little.”

Well, then.

The indignities didn’t stop there. Some of you may remember my bridal boob stories. For example, the one about me trying on my wedding gown: As I twirled in romantic slow-motion in front of the fitting mirror in my billowing wedding gown, the saleswoman remarked, “We’re going to need to do something about the chest…” She stopped me mid-twirl and gave it a poke. “Are you actually wearing a bra right now?” she said, in disbelief. I was.

(better chicken cutlets. source)

One bra, as it turned out, was not nearly enough. Two sets of cloth chicken cutlets were inserted into the bodice, and by the time the seamstress was done, my dress, when I stepped out of it, had a truly impressive figure. Sort of a Marilyn Monroe va-va-voom! We looked nothing alike, actually, my gown and I, and I felt a little self-conscious in its presence, as though it might be eying me skeptically, as I shivered in my underwear, and feeling that it deserved better.

“What should happen,” said the saleswoman, making a little joke and looking at my maid-of-honor (that same best friend from childhood), “is she should give you some of her breasts! Right?! She doesn’t need all of that, and you sure do!”

It is maybe interesting (if you’re interested in stories about other people’s boobs, or lack thereof) that I didn’t develop some sort of complex, based on all of this. I attribute the fact that I didn’t almost entirely to my big nose, and how much of my body image energy I had to expend worrying about that. I didn’t agonize over the size of my breasts, but I always had a vaguely disappointed feeling about them. Like, well, this didn’t work out optimally. Maybe we should get a consultant in here and see if we can work up a strategy to improve performance. I always sort of hoped that things would improve. I gained some weight, and my breasts made a valiant effort to fill a B cup, without success.

And then I got pregnant. And of course, I wasn’t thinking about my breasts, I was thinking about the fact that my entire life was going to change, and holy shit, how do you even begin to prepare for that?? But then, in the midst of all the existential inquiry, as I started reading about the changes my body would experience, my heart soared. I was slated to gain two whole pounds of boob weight!! This was going to be epic!

(epic! source)

On the pregnancy messageboards, women were already complaining, midway into the first trimester, about how huge their breasts were getting. “Ugghhh…I had to buy ANOTHER bra!! They are SO GIANT now. My cleavage is out of control!!”

I had never been fortunate enough to experience cleavage of any kind, let alone the kind that had gone wild. I couldn’t wait.

“Your breasts are definitely bigger,” said Bear, who knew this was how pregnancy worked and was dutifully watching my body change, with maybe a hint of gentle eagerness when it came to the breast situation. But his comment had that tone people use when they say to each other, “It looks like you’ve lost weight!” when they just feel they should say something and the other person doesn’t actually look like they have.

I barfed my way through the first trimester and emerged into the second full of hope. Onward! The months flew by, as I hurried to assemble something resembling a nursery and get my career in shape (still trying!). My belly expanded enormously, and suddenly, I desperately needed maternity clothing. I needed pants with those extremely high secret waist-bands that reminded me of old Jewish grandfathers who have moved to Florida and now belt their sporty white pants just below their nipples. What I didn’t need was maternity bras. Nope. My old, ratty, padded ones fit just fine. Well, not just fine. There was still a gap there, where my boobs could not fill the whole cup. My cup STILL did not exactly runneth over. It ranneth significantly under.

(but maybe it’s half full? source)

I’m in the third trimester now. My belly is bold and proud and round. Inside it is a little girl who will possibly experience some disappointment when she hits puberty one day. The women on the pregnancy messageboards are very upset about how colossal their boobs have become. And I am thinking that it’s probably about time for me to get over these little boobs of mine. They seem to like being the way they are, and honestly, I have to give them some credit for that. There are many advantages of course, to having small breasts. I know, I know, I’ve written before about the perks, shall we say, to remind myself and everyone else.

But I’m not going to sit here and give myself a stern lecture about gratitude and the subtle joys of small-breastedness. Instead, I’m going to hand in the towel and simply acknowledge that my boobs have won. Their will is stronger than mine. Not even pregnancy can shake their persistent commitment to being exactly who they are. And come on, that’s pretty impressive.

So I’m willing to call it quits, on the condition that I can feed my daughter, which, I hear, is an important part of the point of having breasts in the first place, anyway.

Still, I hear that when the milk comes in they get suddenly very large…

No. I’m not going to think about it. It’s about time I stopped.

This piece is adapted from the version it appeared in originally on Daily Life. I know I’ve mentioned the whole little breasts during pregnancy thing on this blog a couple times, but as usual, I felt compelled to then write a whole piece about it. You know, get it off my chest for good :p

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Anyone else got a pregnancy boobs story? Are you one of the people whose breasts get enormous? Of course, non-pregnant boob stories are welcome as well.

Unroast: Today I love the way I look in soft gray, soft fabric. I just want to be comfortable right now!

Here’s a short hair pic from a reader (I keep dropping the ball on reader pics, but remember that you’re always welcome to send me one of you eating cake or you with your new short hair cut, and I will publish it, because I love to share these)!

Patricia told me: My hair has been many lengths in my life. Like you I have a love/hate relationship with it. Although I have had short hair before I had never buzzed it. One of the reasons was the idea in the back of my mind, that I might have a funny shaped head. As it turns out I don’t ! My 9 year managed to share the headlice he picked up at school with me, and as I  was basically to lazy too do the whole nit pick thing with both of us, I shaved us both down.

I, of course, love it! Thank you for sharing these, Patricia!!

OK, maybe not incredibly epic. But still. (This is adapted from my Mirror Mirror column, because I couldn’t just leave it to an unroast. I had to tell the whole damn story)

A little over a month ago, I stopped using shampoo. And, speaking as someone who has clearly never been in serious bodily danger, it felt like I was being very brave. Just a couple days, I told myself reassuringly. And then, when you look like a horrifying ball of dripping grease, you can do the rational thing and return to the sweet comfort of purifying chemicals and delectable fragrances. Because that is totally how I think of shampoo, when pondering its many virtues alone in the shower.

Honestly, I’m not sure what motivated me to attempt this reckless experiment. An article about the mountaineers who have scaled Everest’s ferocious flanks? That documentary on Netflix about the dude who illegally, triumphantly walked the high wire between the former World Trade Center buildings? Maybe just a quiet, deep-rooted sense of “now or never.”

A quick summary of my relationship with my hair (and please know that I am intensely aware of the fact that I recently wrote a piece critiquing the phrase “first world problems” and that this whole piece might fit into that phrase very neatly):

I did not ever want to be someone who cared about her hair. I picture myself as a kind of fiery, absentminded librarian-to-the-dragon-king type. You know, a Cimorene from Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Cimorene didn’t care about her hair, she was too busy running away from home to have awesome adventures, while her silly sisters fussed in front of the mirror, prettying themselves for visiting princes. The thing is, Cimorene had naturally fantastic hair. Those fantasy heroine’s, no matter how adorably tom-boyish, always do.

It also turns out that I might be, disappointingly, nicer than I am fiery. But that’s another thing.

My hair and I have a long and tangled history. Literally. When I was a little kid, I sometimes cried as my mom combed the vicious knots out of it. It took forever. I grew it down to my waist as a teenager, and later walked into a barber shop and asked for a buzz cut. My hair and I tend not to get along—you could say we have a kind of persistent, bitter rivalry going.

(I think I grew it down to my waist so that I could occasionally dress up like this, alone, in my room)

Part of the reason is that it can never make up its mind. It doesn’t fit any of the familiar categories. It’s not straight and not curly. It’s sort of wavy, but sometimes with distinct curls and also with very straight sections. It gets creative with cowlicks. It was very thick for a long time until one day it thinned dramatically (it turned out that I was very anemic at the time, but even after my iron levels were back to normal, my hair stayed fine and soft). It is even an indeterminate color—a shade of brown that sometimes looks dark and sometimes light. It’s obnoxious. It’s unpredictable. I never know what to do with it, and it makes me nervous. After all these years of living with my hair, I still feel suspicious, wary, unsure of what will happen next. I am still a novice. Which is why, I think, I get sort of superstitious sometimes. I get dependent on hair products when one of them seems to for just one blessed day coax my hair into looking nice. I start to believe that this exact kind of shampoo followed by that precise amount and type of conditioner is the only thing between me and the devastating certainty that I have the worst hair a woman has ever had.

I have been known to pour just enough of my special shampoo into a little bottle, like some sort of magical elixir of good fortune and youth, and take it along with me on a trip, in case the hotel shampoo is too unfamiliar-smelling and unhelpfully composed. It felt like a risk, gingerly applying the guest shampoo in my mother-in-law’s guest bathroom. My mind was whirring, trying frantically to calculate the humidity and conducting cost/benefit analysis concerning the different settings on the blow dryer. Or no dryer at all?

And then my mother-in-law’s shampoo seemed to work wonders—or maybe it was the humidity? And I rushed out and bought a bottle for myself, for home, and I used it for a year, as a precaution, even though it was no longer clear that it was doing what it did that one, glorious day. Just in case another brand would make things that much worse.

The day after I stopped using shampoo, I thought that I was the butt of some cosmic joke. The cosmos, having a slower day, fewer exploding stars and stuff, must be sitting around laughing to itself about my hair. Because it looked really good. Sort of wild and springy, the way I like it best, because it looks most like fantasy heroine hair when it does that. This couldn’t be right.

Days went by. My hair was hydrated, full, and, if I do say so myself, quite adorable. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I went through several reactionary stages. Disbelief, joy, apprehension, and then a pure, burning indignation. Psychologists, take notes. How could this be? I thought. How could I have spent so much money on shampoo over the years? How could I have believed myself to be so dependent on it? How could we all be led to believe that we desperately need these products to make us clean and presentable and fit to participate in civilized society, when, in fact, they might be nothing more than a coconut-scented illusion?!

A primal scream erupted from my lips as I knelt there, naked, on the floor of the shower, water streaming down my face, my arms raised in sinewy defiance (in this image, my arms have to be sinewy-it’s important).

No. No. I didn’t get down on my knees in the shower. But I stood there, brow probably furrowed, scowling as I rinsed out my hair with some regular old water until it didn’t feel very greasy anymore. I felt as though I’d been deceived. I felt lame for not trying something like this until now.

And now, a little over a month since I last used shampoo, I am still sort of surprised that this is a secret. My hair hasn’t actually become fantastic, dragon-taming, royal-library-cataloguing hair. It honestly doesn’t look incredibly different from before. It’s just a little healthier and fuller, and a little better moisturized. It feels nicer to touch, in my opinion, and it doesn’t smell perfumed. It doesn’t really smell like anything.

(yes, this happened. i got that dagger at a flea market, for like $7, and i treasured it. it looked amazing with all of my elfyn warrior girl outfits. and i had a lot of those. god, this is embarrassing. why am i even sharing this?)

I can’t go so far as to say that my hair and I have become friends. We’re on decent terms, and that’s fine for now. But my new no-shampoo lifestyle has definitely raised some questions for me about the products that I grew up thinking were absolutely, critically necessary, and the ways that we all become almost superstitious about our beauty and personal-care routines. I don’t know if everyone else’s hair would respond as favorably as mine to forgoing shampoo—maybe not. But it definitely seems worth giving it a shot, based on my experience. It definitely seems like there’s a chance we’ve all been taken for some kind of cruel, sudsy, coconut-smelling ride.

And just like a rebel princess who faces down dragons without blinking, I am willing to be the one to step into the wilderness of the unknown, wild-haired, brave-hearted, without even a single 3 oz. travel-sized bottle of comfort shampoo tucked into my gown.

(I know, you’ve totally seen this photo before in another post, but apparently I have no other close ups of myself since I stopped using shampoo. Full disclosure, my hair is actually greasier in this pic than normal– I think maybe I hadn’t water-washed it yet that day. But I like it anyway)

(oh, wait! here’s another, clearly about the pregnancy, but you can still see the hair, in case anyone was really hoping for another chance at that. i know, my hair is riveting…)

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Other no shampoo stories?

Unroast: Today I love the faint ridges on my fingernails. I know, really weird and specific, but it’s sort of fun to run my fingertips over the ones on my thumbnails. I don’t know why. It just feels nice.

P.S. If anyone else wants to enter the giveaway to win some cake baking swag, do it at the bottom of the last post, just by commenting that you’re in.