When The Pants Come Off

I should mention the things I'm reading more often, especially when I both like what I've read and I know the author. This morning it was an article by a college chum, Chris, on male and female body issues and a call for more nudity. Sign me up! Oh wait, as anyone who has ever had the (mis)fortune of living with or near me knows, I've already signed up.

Now, I may have an unfair advantage in that I grew up in a clothing-optional or, put a more accurate way, too-lazy-to-really-dress household. Some of this naturally arose from 4 people living in 650 square feet with one bathroom, but some of it was probably latent and subconscious hippiedom on the part of my not-that-hippie parents. We weren't full on nudists, we were just more of a "hey, is it ok if we wear our underwear to dinner?" kind of group. Other people tell me that's kind of gross.

Whatever long-lasting psychological damage I feel sure my more modest brother suffered from this, I do know that nudity and shame were never a thing we had in our house. It just wouldn't have occurred to us. Gym class? Not a problem. Those bizarre open changing rooms in some department stores? Ditto. I remember being shocked at the grown-up gym one time when I had been working out with a female coworker who went through all kinds of frightful contortions to cover herself after showering and wondering how that became her normal; similarly I may have inappropriately busted out laughing at college once upon discovering that a couple I knew slept in full-on clothing together. It's one of those things where what you grow up with really does become default normal. And just like the woman's side of the bed is the left side, the proper attire for sleep is nothing. It's just what I knew.

Now I can't claim all of the benefits Chris has discovered from an embracing of less clothing - I still weigh myself quite a bit (and can someone explain how the scale went up .2 pounds this morning from the time I woke up through the time I had finished my daily coffee and what comes after coffee?) and I still worry about how this or that part looks, but the root causes of my here-and-there body dissatisfactions don't come from a place of shame and for that I am eternally thankful to good old not-quite-dressed mom and dad.

It is, however, worth noting that the brain still edits. For example: would I be comfortable meeting up with Chris and his family at a clothing-optional mini-golf course? I honestly don't know. The stubborn, defensive part of me says, "of course! Naked mini-golf with open-minded friends is what all normal people should do!" But nudity in front of family or strangers is still far more comfortable than nudity in front of people one actually knows. However attired we were for family dinners, when we had friends for dinner, it wasn't like my dad actually showed up in his briefs, or encouraged his guests to do likewise.

So I'm going to think about this, Chris, because I like to be proven a hypocrite as often as possible (and lest anyone reading this gets the wrong idea, no naked mini-golf has been proposed). In the meantime, though, if any of you come over and want to take off your pants, we're chill with that!

Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed To Read The Internet

It starts, innocently enough, with a link on facebook. Then I read one article which links to another which links to another which gets me to this.

And then I get all aggro again.

"Real Bodies Unite is appealing to all those women fed up of being bombarded with unrealistic imagery in the fashion and beauty industry, by launching a global campaign to raise at least 10,000 signatures for the use of body diversity instead."

Flashback: the year is 1991. A certain young feminist author with a hot, new, provocative book comes to talk to our eighth grade class (yes, I just outed my age). She talks to just the girls in the class about how Vogue and, I don't know, Beverly Hills 90210 are forcing us to hate ourselves and how we look and how those are the reasons we have poor body image. A certain student in the class raises her hand and politely (ok, probably not that politely) asks the feminist author if she is smoking crack. How on earth can a magazine make us do or feel anything we don't want? Vogue doesn't make this young lady feel bad about weighing 150+ pounds at 14 - she feels bad about her weight because she looks bad. Objectively. Whether or not Anna Wintour exists. It is possible that said young student is forcibly escorted out of the room and counseled by a teacher to maybe stop with the talking because the feminist author's message will be important to some of the student's classmates and she shouldn't ruin it for everyone.

20 years later and this theory has become widely accepted and a cottage industry.

It is neither the anorexic model, nor the agency that employs her, nor the magazine that prints her, nor the designer who hires her, who is at fault in the tiresome lady-body-image debate. We, the ladies. We're the problem.

Yup, I said it. Wanna be taken seriously, ladies? Accept responsibility for your own complicity in this. Reading the Real Bodies Unite mission statement (which I sincerely hope was written by a teenager, otherwise I cannot excuse the poor grasp of the English language) would have you imagining that the media (capital-M, lowercase-M, whichever) puts thoughts into your head. Thoughts you can't un-put there. Like Son of Sam and his dog. She/we are powerless when the media speaks. The thoughts are unthinkable. Good thing it's only telling us to hurt ourselves emotionally and psychologically, otherwise the courts would be jam-packed with defendants saying "Glamour made me do it."

Even as the crusaders admit that they know the representations of women in the media are "not real," they seem powerless to separate fantasy from reality. Herein lies another gripe: designers don't design for "real women." (For real we should assume heavyish.) Sadly, there's a Freakonomics problem here: heavy women aren't wealthy. Only wealthy women buy designer clothing. Ergo, designers have slender women modelling their clothing. Take a look at the society pages and you'll notice that those women (possibly real, even) are similarly sized and shaped to the women in the fashion magazines. If you are 300 pounds, statistics suggest you do not have $7,000 for a dress. Why would the person selling a $7,000 dress care if you identify with his model if you're not the intended audience any way? The $7,000 dress is a fantasy just as the model is. Why isn't there a movement whose mission is to compel couture houses to make dresses that cost $70? After all, by the same logic, it's unfair to the rest of us that they don't. That we expect women to understand that ownership of a $7,000 dress is a fantasy, but ownership of the body modelling it shouldn't be, is a leap I am unwilling to make.

Women in fashion magazines, movies, television, are professionally beautiful. Being beautiful in an unattainable way is their job. They work every day to be that beautiful. Were that my job, I would lift more weights, clean my face on a regular basis, not consider exfoliation to be "a hassle," and never eat a carb. But since I don't get paid to be attractive, it's bread and sleeping in eyeliner for me. If you, personally, don't like their occasionally boyish figures or outsized busts, it shouldn't matter to you that you don't look like that. There is a serious disconnect between complaining about how unattractively thin models are and then complaining that the selfsame things you find unattractive about them, being unattainable for you, make you feel unattractive yourself.

Does anyone really, truly, honestly think that if there were women of all shapes and sizes in the media, that we women wouldn't find something else to be self-hateful about? Is it really that simplistic? Get a bunch of regular sized and lumpy chicks on the pages of InStyle and we'll all live in Utopian body satisfaction world? To quote the girl from 1991: are you smoking crack?

Want a great example? This photo. Oh, look, girls who also have rolls in their stomachs when they lean over. Bravo! But do you notice what these "real" women don't have? Here's a cursory list:

Cellulite
Scars from ingrown leg hairs
Any body hair whatsoever or the razor burn/waxing bumps to prove they ever had any
Thin hair
Split ends
Visible stretch marks
Wrinkles
Grey hair
Weird moles
Uneven skin tone
And so on, etc. etc.

Also these women may be non-thin, but none is fat. Also none is over 30. If you want to pay money to look at a non-thin-but-not-fat, over thirty woman with thin hair, stretch marks, scars on her knees from summer camp, broken blood vessels on her nose, and the remnants of a manicure from October, I'll start telling you where to send the checks. The women in that picture are no more representative of the rest of us than Kate Moss. They're merely 40 pounds heavier than Kate Moss. Everything else remains the same (it should be noted that I have no idea if there are Supermodels anymore, and Kate Moss is the last one I remember who was very skinny - I realize Kate Moss is now well over 30).

So putting beautiful women 40 pounds heavier than Kate Moss, but whose skin, hair, etc. is equally airbrushed, who have spent the same number of hours in the stylist's chair prior to being photographed, in magazines, as opposed to only showing women as thin as Kate Moss will do absolutely nothing to improve women's self-image issues. And anyone who says otherwise is an imbecile.

A dangerous imbecile who is doing exactly the same thing to women as he/she claims the media is: reducing an entire gender to a group of mouthbreathers incapable of making decisions -good and bad- for itself. Oh, don't blame that woman for her poor self-image; the magazine made her do it. She couldn't possibly be expected to stand up for herself on her own. We need to change the magazines so that the poor thing can get out of bed in the morning without wanting to take a razor to her fat, hairy wrists.

These purported feminists are doing more to halt women's progress than any fashion magazine could ever claim to do. I don't want my raison d'etre as a woman to be perpetual victimhood, nor am I comfortable with the notion that until some third-party changes its ways, I will be unable to change my own.

There is a self-image problem that exists for women, but the hard truth is that in many cases it is created by women. We are the consumers and the judges of other consumers. Beauty as a status symbol is a tenet upheld by us all and no amount of media manipulation alone will change that. Belief that we are all equally beautiful negates the very idea of beauty. Admitting that beauty is both subjective and rare doesn't hurt the feminist cause. Attempting to deny subjective beauty makes us both naive and fatuous. The actual challenge is creating a hierarchy where beauty is not the only barometer of success for women. Ignoring beauty as a factor in how we evaluate others does nothing to broaden the scope of our evaluations; it reinforces a narrow view of worth in women. If we, as women, are only evaluating ourselves and others by their beauty, we're the problem. And we need to change. Otherwise, the magazines could print blank page upon blank page, and we'd still be no better off.

A Different Kind of Before and After

Apparently, I don't look as good as I think I do without makeup. Here is me before my bridal makeup trial. No makeup whatsoever.

And here are the afters (in case you are, for example, a man, the difference between these is the shade of lipstick):





Let us, for the moment, ignore the fact that I seem incapable of taking a picture without my right eyebrow lifted. I am now willing to concede that having someone do my makeup for me might be worth the money. I very much like that Maria, my makeup woman, permitted me to let some of my flaws show. I didn't want to look like I had been airbrushed, I just wanted to look like a more polished version of me.

Now if only I could think of something to do with my hair.

The Little Things That Prevent Me From Being An Adult

My aversion to showering is well-documented. This is a character failing I know. Most adults do not consider "took a shower" to be a milestone needing celebration. But I think it's important to note that it's not the shower qua shower that I object to, merely all the things showering implies: hair conditioning, exfoliation, combing of hair, application of various types of moisturizer - and that's on days when I don't suck it up and actually do my hair and makeup.

Our shower is perfectly sized, but short on storage. Since I have no special affection for the act of showering, I have done little to ameliorate this problem. As such, it is not unusual, especially during shared showers, for various wash items to fall to the floor: combs, body washes, conditioners, etc. And yet, as I attempt to embrace adulthood with all its hygiene requirements, I find that I would like to have more room for my stuff.

Oh who am I kidding? The entire bathroom could use some assistance. Neither of us is really all that keen on bathroom maintenance (see empty roll of toilet paper on the dispenser and active roll of toilet paper on the counter; towering stack of magazines; unused but unmoved cups; assorted daily items not replaced in medicine cabinet). I don't even grok this, which is what I found when I google imaged "Martha Stewart bathroom." Now, I also read the post that accompanied the picture of an impossibly groomed medicine cabinet (who does this?) in which the author admitted to being occasionally lazy, but her occasionally lazy and mine have two entirely different meanings.

I did, however, take solace in her 8-minute regimen. Take 8 and only 8 minutes to do something tidy. I like this in theory. Much like, "only eat until you're full," it makes a lot of intellectual sense. In reality, my full and other people's might be different, ergo I simply avoid eating altogether. I would very much like to become an 8-minute kind of person. Since the last cleaning of my kitchen (long long long long overdue) I have been wiping up when I see spots of stuff on counters and stovetops, so there might be hope, but amidst that hope is the stepstool with the stack of magazines that didn't fit in the bathroom perched precariously on the top step so...

I have been to many of your houses (I'm looking at you AMY) and I notice that they all seem well-kept. Do you have maids? Or do you actually take time to fix your own houses and how do you do this when the DVR beckons? Or the knitting site? Or, really, well, anything?

But this weekend we will pack ourselves off to the Container Store for 8 minutes of looking for bathroom organizers. And I will try very hard to spend 8 minutes actually unpacking and installing our purchases.

I Hate Kate

This is, of course, patently untrue. I love Kate. I love her like the little sister the boy would never let me dress him up as. I love her like the prettiest doll in my collection, the one I give all the nice clothes to. I love her greatly.

But she's not good for your wallet, that Kate.

Kate is the in-the-knowingest person I know which might not be saying much, but I would wager she is the in-the-knowingest person most people know. And yet Kate has timeless style. It doesn't hurt that she's simply gorgeous and looks good in everything and even when her hair looks like shit it still looks good.

However, Kate has a knack for introducing a person to needless things that fast become needful. For years, or at least since Giorgio and 7th grade, I wore men's Fahrenheit cologne. I know that now that seems frankly awful, and, frankly, when I smell it on someone else, I have to suppress a gag or two, but at the time it seemed like a good idea (see also Zima). I wore it throughout college and might have worn it still today had Kate not taken me to Barney's that one time in 1999. Damn you, Kate!

Now I am madly addicted and totally loyal to Creed's Neroli Sauvage (but don't buy me any now, I have 3/4 of a fresh bottle). What's the problem? you ask. Well, do a quick google search. Better yet, I will. And if you don't use it over the course of, say, 5 years, it does go bad. I don't actually know what perfume costs, I just know this feels expensive. Very expensive. And now, of course, very necessary.

So I was overjoyed when, for Christmas (Christmakah, whatever) Kate got me a gift certificate to a nail salon that specializes in some weird-ass gel stuff that's supposed to be better for your nails than polish blah blah blah. Not only do I rarely have my nails painted (because my lifestyle: cooking, knitting, etc.) is not conducive to maintaining a manicure, but also because such a uselessly trendy thing couldn't possibly be my bag.

When we went together a couple of weeks ago, it just got better. These women were charging upper class ladies of Manhattan upwards of $60 bucks to manicure their nails in, I'm not kidding, polyurethane. Also known as sealant. Also known as the stuff you can buy a gallon of at Home Depot for 8 bucks. Do you know how many nails you can paint with a gallon of anything. I half-giggled through the entire manicure because I thought it was such a gas that women were lining up to fork over 2x and more the cost of a regular manicure to have their nails painted by glorified contractors.

hahahahahahahaha

doh!

You see it's now been two full weeks. I have: knit, made 360 chocolates, washed countless dishes, stuck my hands in raw chicken parts, gardened, fumbled with pointy parts on my shoes, you name it. I have done all the things that generally render my manicure hideous in a matter of hours. Well, my polyurethane nails? Yes, obviously, they're perfect. Not a scratch, not a dent, nothing. Initially I was going to have them take off the polish (oh, did I forget this tidbit? They CHARGE YOU $20 TO REMOVE THE POLYURETHANE!) before the wedding I'm going to this weekend, but hell if they don't look just fine.

This is an awful conundrum. The reason I don't paint my nails is that it's not worth the trouble. But, while the polyurethaning process takes an ungodly amount of time, it really effing works! And yet I think I would sooner shoot myself in the face than spend $60 to have my nails painted and then $20 to have them unpainted (though I think if you do both at the same visit i.e. unpaint then repaint, it only costs $70. Only.) and that's without the tip. Do I really need to tip $12 on this? On the rare occasions I do get a manicure it costs $10 for which I am all too pleased to leave 20% - here that $12 ONLY COVERS the tip.

And yet, my nails look so so nice painted. And this is worry-free paint. I'm going to see what, if any, horrid damage the stuff does to my nails once it's removed before making any major lifestyle modifications but, damn you, Kate, you've done it again!

WWCD

It is an unremarkable Tuesday and yet I am wearing a clean dress, high heels, and hair spray. I have mascara on, and lip gloss (with liner) and perfume. My eyebrows are plucked and my underarms smooth. This is not normal.

But something has happened in my bathroom and in my life and I cannot ignore it. A new crop of beauty products have arrived and, once utilized, they shame my lazy ass into shape. They are the beauty products of the beautiful and graceful woman who is staying in our guest room with her husband, the dearest friend of devoted partner. They are merely her travel beauty products. And the fact that her travel products and my permanent products were equal in scope has given me pause. I know I've written about this before and it's something I truly struggle with: how does a girl on a budget manage to do all the girl things she's supposed to while also saving for retirement? Well, I'll admit that after only two days of sharing my bathroom with C, I no longer care how much it costs, I'm willing to join the cabal of adult females who bathe and anoint regularly.

And yet, C is effortlessly beautiful. Whatever it is she's doing in my bathroom she's doing it with a light hand. I have mentioned as much to her and then she pretends she doesn't speak English. But she addresses one of my major concerns with doing one's self up which is that one tends, then, to look done up. And I don't like looking done up. From a vanity perspective, I think it ages me, and from a social perspective, I tend to think it cheapens me. C just looks together. Like someone who just spent an afternoon on a boat and got some color. Like someone who doesn't look at the act of face washing as a chore.

She has also renewed my commitment to spending the summer in dresses. Yesterday she wore, literally, a hoodie dress in a simple grey heather. She looked phenomenal. Perhaps the ridonkulous and covet-worthy red leather jacket dressed it up, but I saw her in the morning, before the jacket came on.

So I'm going to try, even after she leaves (and we are sad), to embrace more heartily the idea that 20-30 minutes in the morning is not going to kill me. After all, I've been flossing, and losing that 2 minutes hasn't radically altered the happiness in my life. Besides, my hair is looking really incredible and that doesn't happen when I just comb it and put it in a ponytail.

Miami: Not About Cuban Food

I bought my first two-piece bathing suit the summer I graduated from high school. It was black and from J. Crew and made in that cottonish material that wasn't shiny. The top was a triangle and the bottom was a brief. The moment I made the decision to buy it was a big one. There's a picture of me from that summer in a pool in Massachusetts and you can see I'm still not quite comfortable without that piece of fabric covering my midsection, but I'm smiling, so at least I'm trying.

I have a picture in that same pool from two summers earlier. I am wearing a frankly ghastly royal blue one-piece with visible underwire cups for a variety of breast I still can't grok (the cups were spaced about two inches apart forcing the breasts to point out to the side, like Farrah Fawcett hair or the orange cones the guys on the ground use to direct planes).

I made the decision to go to two pieces after a long and frank (and frankly filled with self-loathing) accounting of me and my body. A diet here, a chocolate eclair binge there, I was going to have more or less the same shaped body for the rest of my life. I was never going to get any taller, nor was my waist going to get longer. And I would probably never have washboard abs. And, after thinking about those things I said, essentially: F it. I wanted a tan stomach. And I'm pretty positive I also wanted to send myself a message that two-piece bathing suits weren't only for Cindy Crawford (though I know she looks better in hers than I do in mine and that's ok too).

In the (number deleted) years since then, I have owned seven additional two-piece bathing suits and zero additional one-pieces. When I pack for the beach the only choice is what color. The tops are still triangles, but I've managed to wean myself off high waisted bottoms. Call it confidence or a deep misunderstanding of reality, the result is the same.

And do you know what I've noticed (when I am not, forgive me, noticing that women really do peak physically at about 16)? I'm not the only person on the beach or at the pool who "shouldn't" be in a bikini. Bathing suit season is the great equalizer. And people watching the parade of imperfections makes me feel a lot more generous to women whom, while dressed, I might harbor some unbecoming envy. I hope my personal parade of imperfections is cheering to others as well. The fact is very few people have perfect bodies. Choosing to walk around essentially naked while knowing we have imperfect bodies is both a courageous decision and one I know can be fraught with painful anxiety. Because we all think we're being judged.

And we are.

We point out to friends and lovers the good bodies and the bad, sizing ourselves up in their wakes. But it really comes to naught. Since while she might have cellulite, you have moles; while her ass is wide, your thighs shake too much; while her breasts are fake, your nose is too. I feel better about myself not because so many others have flaws, but because I feel part of a group of flawed people as opposed to the only flawed person looking in on perfection.

I know bathing suit season is a well-trod path of insipid Cosmopolitan magazine articles designed to traumatize and debase, and I know it's popular to jump on that bandwagon: "oh, I hate bathing suit shopping!" But I would like to suggest that this year, we ditch that cliche, buy something in a snappy color (I'm still looking for the perfect red), and simply resolve to eat ever so many fewer tortilla chips (which is good for us anyway). I've got an itsy bitsy magenta bottom I'm not quite ready for, but it sits in the drawer reminding me how much I'd like to be.

Feedback and Follow Ups

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Originally uploaded by reallyct

I am trying to embrace small-town living (and by small-town, you should understand me to mean fewer than 3 million people or so). When I saw that there was something called Art on the Avenue in Greenwich, I knew I wanted to go. Local artists' work being featured in local stores and an opening night schedule of festivities featuring live music? Love it. And certainly that was what was on offer last night. But it was lacking for me. There was no feeling of community. The streets, while populated, were not packed, and people were guarded, insular, and unsmiling towards strangers. As devoted partner (sadly at work during my perambulations) said later, Greenwich is a bedroom community and, as such, not a TV-ready suburb of neighborhood pool parties and town hall dances. This evening of purported festivities merely highlighted the differences between my perception of all non-urban environments, and their reality.

I mention this here because I had waxed rhapsodic about the feel of Scarsdale. But Scarsdale is also a bedroom community and while the lady at the knitting store in Scarsdale was nicer than the lady at the knitting store in Greenwich (I later discovered the reason: the Scarsdale knitting lady reverse commutes from Manhattan), the vibe of the street wasn't that much different. So I told devoted partner that for our next move, I'm thinking the south where it is possible that the small-town community shtick that I think justifies not living in the center of the world exists.

Nut-allergic Ed and I ate dinner together on Wednesday - our annual fete-ing of me by him to celebrate how long I have been alive - and he commented that in my anti-special-needs-food post I made no mention of litigation; that is, I didn't mention that the reason people pussy-foot around the nut-allergic, especially when those nut-allergic are children, is that should the child have a severe allergic reaction to the smell of peanuts somewhere in its vicinity, the parents would surely sue. He's right. I didn't mention it. Mostly because I hope those people are consumed by righteous fire, but also because I was being idealistic.

What the parents who crusade for peanut butter-free schools don't seem to realize is that the trading floor on the NYSE won't be peanut butter-free. Eventually, when there's no one left to threaten with lawsuits, their precious little angels will emerge into a dangerous world where peanuts exist. Their workplaces will have peanuts, their public transportation, the streets they walk down. So one of two things will happen: they'll adapt or they'll drop dead. I don't see how preventing the inevitable helps anyone. I know if you have that severe an allergy your life probably sucks, but might I suggest going to a special school, like other people with severe physical disabilities do?

Finally, Aidan wrote about women and lingerie this week. I knew she was going to because we had briefly discussed it, but I was not prepared for the response. No one, but no one, was on Team Yelena. Of the 29 comments left on the post, mine was the only one that advocated fancy things. All the other women were of the, "I'll wear baby-vomit stained yoga pants cause they're comfy and I dare my husband to not want to make it with me," opinion. That's partial hyperbole, but none of the other commenters thought nice undies were a necessary component of a well-lived life. This made me really sad.

And only partly because I dream of opening a lingerie store (I thought I could get together with Kate, my most fashionable friend, and open a fancy bra/fancy shoe store and call it Tits and Toes). I maybe a holder of many minority opinions and sometimes this might make me feel supremely badass (i.e. Tom Jones rocks!), but when stared in the face with it, especially about something I feel passionate about, it kinda stings. I am forced to ask why am I so alone in my thoughts. These thoughts, however, did not make me abandon my quotidian habit of wearing supremely badass underthings. After all, today might be the day I meet Tom Jones!

I(bra)nic

Ok, I'll admit it, I spent a fair bit of the commute trying to come up with this title and I'm still not pleased with it. Mostly because it suggests that I'm about to write a political piece on the shared histories of Jews and Muslims. But 'braronic' didn't work, nor 'brarony,' and I'll grant that this doesn't really work either, but the implicit: "The Irony of the Bra" sounded a little too 'must publish so that I can get tenure in the sociology department.'

But now we know what we're talking about. I've been wanting to write about this for a while, but, as with most great ideas, I had a mild epiphanic moment in the bathroom this morning and decided today was the day. As I'm sure you can guess, we're going to talk about foundational garments. To declare some bias from the start (not news for anyone who has ever lived with me or come to my house or gotten changed with me or been to summer camp with me), since arriving at the age where foundational garments were necessary, mine have always been pretty. I had a friend in adolescence who looked bangin' in the calvin klein panties that were popular in the late 80s, but I absolutely didn't. I was not then, nor am I now, best flattered by sportive styles. So I was always a lace and tulle kinda girl.

And when I came of foundational garment age, Victoria's Secret still made lingerie that could make a girl feel pretty. Just off the top of my head I remember the lace balconnets I had in orange and lime; the satin hunter green with autumnal accents (again if we went to summer camp together, you remember this one too); and the two rickrack pattern balconnets in red and navy, both of which ended up in a girlfriend's possession sometime during college for reasons I can't quite remember, and the latter of which is memorialized on my high school yearbook page.

But then something changed chez Vicky. Bras were all 'miraculous' and lace and tulle and satin were replaced by lycra, spandex, and cotton. Gone were designs and in were seamless styles in beige and beige and, occasionally, taupe. Not only were the padded designs not at all flattering, but I didn't want to walk around all day knowing I was wearing a cotton-blend seamless taupe bra. That does simply nothing for permitting a woman to acknowledge her inner bombshell.

So I searched elsewhere and, stereotypically, found myself shopping with the French. A simple look at ANY French lingerie website or store will underscore a major cultural difference: the French find underwear important. If you are not at work, I urge you to compare and contrast our mid-range store and theirs (and I would like to say that these are the landing pages for each site's bras; I didn't go hunting for pages that would prove my point).

My main problem is that the undergarments popular and readily available here fall into two, and only two, categories: eminently practical and self-mocking. Whether you shop at Victoria's Secret, Frederick's of Hollywood, Trashy Lingerie, or Agent Provacateur, there is an undercurrent of mirth. Bras as costume. Sex appeal or desirability as merely dress-up. When I pass by a lingerie store, I see t-shirt bras and things you would only wear on joke night. The idea of quotidian sexuality simply doesn't exist.

And I hate that.

Hate. Hate. Hate.

Because I think it says something incredibly dangerous about our attitudes towards sex. In the same way I have major major problems with the popularity of a certain series of books/movies that revert to Victorian ideas about women being taken/protected/unable to make rational decisions because they are being devoured by supernatural creatures, I have a problem with the idea that sexy lingerie must be subjected to ironic filters in order to be acceptable. If a women wears sexy lingerie unironically, she's probably a 'rhymes with more' (literally or figuratively). And just so we're clear, I'm talking about wearing the kind of things on the Darjeeling website, not anything more risque or complicated. Simply put, I advocate a woman wearing something nice under her suit. I know that for me, knowing that I am beautiful underneath my clothing is a huge confidence booster throughout the day. And I thought this even when I wasn't coming home to someone who would see it.

And it's getting worse for reasons I don't quite grok. Ten years ago the lingerie department at Sak's still had a variety of options, including popular brands from Europe. Now they have beige and the occasional tee-hee garment. One of my favorite French producers closed their American operations because there wasn't demand. And while you can find a simply dizzying array of control-top pantyhose, you have to search far and wide for a pair of stockings and chances are you'll pay for them as if they were made of saffron.

I have wiled away many an afternoon dreaming of opening a shop that stocked lovely things only to remember that I cannot singlehandedly create a market and that the current market says no to lace, no to color, and no to style.

And I say, as someone who can stress-test the hell out of a garment, that this is not a comfort issue. I would put my undergarments up against any t-shirt bra in a comfort test and a support test. Simply put, if the garment wasn't comfortable or supportive, it wouldn't be on my body. No I think the sole issue is fashion and availability, and I am deeply troubled by the underlying implications. Mostly because I no of no easier better way to go from blech to va-va-voom than by putting on a nice bra and panties. Even under sweats, even just to do the laundry, even when you're just going to see your accountant. Spanx might make you feel thinner, but they won't make you feel pretty. You'll be reminded all day of your imperfections and the garments you have to buy and wear to mask them. Wear a beautiful bra and panty set and suddenly those extra ten pounds, the loose skin from childbirth, and the thighs that are never quite tight enough DON'T MATTER AS MUCH ANYMORE. Trust me on this. I am an imperfect woman who most days would rather ONLY wear my underwear because it makes me feel exponentially prettier than what goes over it.

Thursday Nopropos

The miracle of power has distracted me from most things. It was simply Promethean in its significance. I could see while I peed. Truly amazing stuff. It just makes me wonder how people in olden times even survived.

I don't, as a rule, hand out money to people on the subway, pretty much regardless of their pitch. However, I'll admit that the school kids selling candy DURING SCHOOL HOURS kinda pisses me off. The level of math they will use to make change from a five strikes me as less apt to help them advance in life than the math they would use if they were in school. Which makes me want to make my donation predicated on their ability to demonstrate that it's ok that they're cutting school to sell candy. Like, if they could tell me the chemical symbol for salt; or tell me the formula for the area of a circle; or who the 3rd US president was. And I think I chose easy ones (originally I was going to ask for the quadratic equation before realizing that I never remember it either and that it most likely isn't even taught in NY public schools).

I am seriously considering a mildly radical hair change (is that an oxymoron?). I need to solicit more opinions . Now I realize this girl is blond and skinny, has unbelievably huge eyes, and is probably Danish - so we're not sharing a lot of background similarities, but I've been wanting long, face-softening bangs for quite some time and I'm at a point in my life where my philosophy is firmly in the, "hey, it's not like the hair won't grow back," position. Devoted partner, with the caveat that under no circumstances should the brown hair be blondified, voiced no initial objections. Also her hair looks super awesome when she puts it up (yes, I also realize that this girl's job is to be beautiful and that someone spent quite a bit of time on her hair).

I bought Ad Hoc at Home after seeing pretty much every food blogger I read cook something from it and rave. I finished paging through it yesterday while sitting outside my house (where there was light) and I think I might be firmly committed to making everything in the book. It all looked good and it all looked devoted partner-approved. I'm even going to make the stuff I think I won't like because I should try more things (I'm looking at you poached salmon). I can be like all the other bloggers and obsessively document it because...

Devoted partner took first prize in the anniversary pool by procuring from me the drool-worthy camera I had been talking about for months; in fact, he did one better, he procured the newer, just released model of the drool-worthy camera. The Canon Rebel T2i should arrive today or tomorrow (backordered as it was due to its supernewness). This is super exciting! Devoted partner is really rather nice to me. I should poison his food less.

And finally, also courtesy of devoted partner, this.

Down 9 - Sort Of

I decided to fold in the first two days of March since February doesn't have enough days (and also because in the first two days of March the two pounds that should have melted away throughout February decided to come off). So February wasn't a huge success.

Which confounds me I must say. Yes there were three days in February that were gluttonous, but I hardly think that three days should wipe out a month's progress. So yeah, I cheated and took two of March's days. So sue me. End result is I am nine pounds thinner than I was at the beginning of 2010.

And I wasn't going to talk about that today until my train ride. A woman sat down next to me this morning and the first thing I noticed about her were her very cool, driving-inspired, navy leather gloves. I made a note to tell her, once she got settled, how cool I thought her gloves were. Then I looked at her. Jesus, she had an awesome haircut. A very modern, sideswept pageboy in a delightful shade of real blonde. Now I was going to tell her two things I thought were fantastic. Then she took off her plain black wool coat and the interior seams were edged in bright orange. Ok, three things. Then I saw her handbag: a camel-colored bowling-style bag with red and navy accents. This woman was knocking it out of the park on so many levels. And I told her so.

But it got me thinking. My wardrobe is a) tiny, b) solidly colored, and c) comprised almost entirely of stuff off the Gap/Banana Republic/Old Navy sales racks. Excepting footwear, I cannot think of a single cool wardrobe item I own...Yep, I thought about it again and the answer remains the same. Now I'll put my unmentionables collection up against anyone save Dita von Teese and win, but my clothing: jeans, t-shirts, a couple of button-downs from Uniqlo, some H&M stuff, and a couple of BCBG dresses I bought off ebay.

Why is this?

Well, my first answer is that clothing has never been something I've been willing to spend a lot of money on. My second answer is that I'm not a big fan of shopping. I don't like searching for things (it's why I love to shop online) so you won't find me going through the racks at Marshall's or Filene's looking for a good deal.

But why?

Certainly I feel good when I look good, and I frequently covet pieces I see on others. Well the real answer is a combination of the first two as they relate to: I never wanted to buy nice clothing for the body I had. I imagine a scenario where I find a cool jacket, or dress, or something, and buy it in my current size - let's say I spend more than $500 but less than $1000. I don't want to be this size so ultimately, one hopes, I'll be smaller. And out $500-$1000. Which sucks. Buying my wardrobe for a year at H&M for $500 total seemed to make more sense. I could always dress it up with shoes.

I don't feel that as a work in progress I can spend money on clothing. Dare I say I don't think I deserve it? The prevailing wisdom is that you should reward yourself for weight loss: little things for little milestones and something big when you get to your goal. Well, I've known for a couple of years what that goal reward would be: and Herve Leger dress. Except when I remember what those dresses cost and then become gunshy. Even in my fantasy. Sure, I can buy an $8 nail polish for losing 5 pounds, but I can't even imagine shelling out a grand for a dress. Even a reward dress. Even a reward dress for shedding a whole bunch of weight that would enable me to look like a not-Orca in said dress.

This is just not a mentality I have. Clothing is, generally, functional and black. Not fun, not the latest style, not from Intermix (I don't even know if Intermix counts as a place I should shop, that's how clueless I am). But seeing this woman this morning, a woman probably five or so years younger than I, looking so put together and so, well, cool, made me stop and consider putting a greater priority on how I look (I am, by the way, in my Gap jeans, Uniqlo shirt, and H&M blazer right now, my hair is washed but unstyled and I don't have makeup on).

I'm not going to go out and buy a wardrobe for FatMe because I can't justify the expenditure nor rewarding myself for having poor impulse control around butter, but I am debating an experiment wherein I "do" myself up every morning for a week to see just how long it takes. So many other women seem to find the time, shouldn't I at least give it a shot? I'm also seriously considering giving away a lot of my paltry wardrobe because many of the items I have are merely functional and have no style whatsoever. Also, I noticed that I haven't worn a lot of them in quite some time (and not just because I can wear jeans to the office). And finally, I'm going back to online clothing window shopping. Not for right now, but to start thinking about the kinds of things I might like to wear when my body is at a different, thinner place.

In the meantime, if you see me wearing something you would rather see in the trash heap, please let me know.

Ma'am, That's Between Devoted Partner and Me

"Heh-heh, that's a big triangle."

People of the service industry, a moment if you will. I want to like you. I want to tip you. So please remember that your job, your sole occupational mission is to SERVE me. Now, for me personally, this doesn't mean you have to kiss my ass (though for some people it will be), but it does me you need to treat me like your source of income and not your friend (at best) or your object of mockery (at worst).

So, Tracey, if you wonder why we won't be working together again, and by working together, I mean I will not again pay for the privilege of you grooming my legs and nether regions, it's that you uttered the above sentence. This after our first encounter where I made it VERY CLEAR what I wanted my lady parts to look like and you made them look a different way, which you tried to assure me was "better," and I assured you was a) not what I asked for and b) in no way better for me. I gave you a second chance. When you tried to upsell me, again, on lady parts grooming enhancements, I did what any borderline insane person would do and took out a green pen and proceeded to draw on my lady parts where I wanted you to groom. I did this not to shame you, but to ensure that my hard earned dollars resulted in a service I wanted. You were not amused.

So you thought you'd be cute and comment on my stated preference with mockery in your voice. As if I was unaware of my stated preference and needed to you remind me. As if I hadn't literally crayoned my stated preference onto my skin. You'd think that after 17 or so years of personal grooming I might have become competent to make this decision and, wait for it, be absolutely uninterested in what you, Tracey, think about it. Unless you're offering to take care of it in some other capacity, it's really none of your business.

I wouldn't make a big deal out of this except it isn't remotely the first time I have been mocked while, let's be honest, doing some maintenance work that isn't pretty. When I couldn't afford to be choosy, it was the girls at the nail salons chortling in high-pitched voices about my relative hirsutitide as compared with the average Korean. When I had disposable income where I could pick and choose, it took me quite a while to weed out the Eastern European babushkas who clacked their tongues at me admonishing me over ingrown hairs and encouraging me to pare down my look. In fact, when I think about it, I have had two aestheticians in my life who DIDN'T suck - one just became way too expensive (I'm talking close to $200 when you figure in tip), and the other moved salons (to where I do not know). Everyone else has been rather shite.

I understand that when you were growing up you didn't hope and pray for the day when you could groom places on me I can't comfortably reach myself. I know this. I'd like to think that the fact you make, on average, $30/hour in tips is some kind of compensation (cause that's not chump change). But considering that your livelihood is tied to those tips, what possible incentive do you have to make me feel angry enough at you that I won't come back and, you know, tip you again? The motivation on this one utterly eludes me. (As an aside, something I realized yesterday while on the slab is that a lot of these women are probably sadists. Judging by the number of times Tracey asked me if this hurt, and seeming to be upset that I responded that it didn't, I would wager that she might get off on hurting women with enough disposable income to have this service performed. After the actual 4th time she asked, I told her, "I'm not shy, I'll let you know." That seemed to shut her up.)

I am sharing this kind of personally embarrassing and definitely too much informationy story because I tend to feel unashamed more of the time than some of my women friends. But if this process, one I'm actually not nearly as embarrassed by as I was in my teens, can leave me feeling so crappy, I can only imagine what it does to other people. So here's my prescription: if you are a woman who pays another woman money to have your unwanted body hair ripped from its roots by hot wax, you deserve at the very minimum to not feel mocked, intimidated, or tortured. I have had brazilian bikini waxes that felt like a little slap and tickle, and ones that felt like training day at Abu Ghraib; the latter are ones where you can stop and say, "there is no reason you should be treating sensitive parts of me with such disdain." Also your lady part regions are yours to groom how you like. If you want a heart or a star or a mohawk or a full-on 1970s retro look, guess what, you earn your own money, you can have whatever you want. If your aesthetician questions your choice, you should feel free to ask what personal stake she has in it and, if she persists, tell her you're not into chicks and that she's making you uncomfortable. If all else fails, and you have a 23 years old giggling at the mass of your unwanted hair and calling her friends in to laugh at you as well (true story - I was 17), feel free to muster as much hauteur as you can, pull your pants on, say something cutting about the fact that ass hair or no ass hair, one of you rips people's ass hair out for a living and the other doesn't, and leave the salon. There are only about a million places that would be all too happy to take your money. I suggest you discover where they are. I know I'll be looking too.