Things I overheard while talking to myself

So I realized something a little while ago. Mainly that, for the first time since I got tossed headlong into adolescence by early puberty I'm actually pretty happy with my body. It's not 100% (though find me someone in our society who is 100% happy with theirs given all the negative messages we're always receiving and I'll sell you a bridge) but for me it's higher than it's been for a long time.

I'm also more comfortable being a bit more feminine. I still think my gender identity is more towards the androgynous, but I wear skirts and dresses more often these days and (gasp!) actually put on some makeup, though it's just foundation and powder that make me look a little less tired all the time and is part of taking better care of myself in general. I think it's not so much that I wasn't feminine as that what I was told was the "correct" way to do it by society at large didn't gel with me, so I had to find my own version, which is less about lace and ruffles and more about subdued and saturated colors like blues and purples. Not to mention my newfound love of knee-high boots and leggings, since I don't particularly like having my legs uncovered, since I seem to always scratch the hell out of them and it's just more comfortable for me to have something over them.

I saw my therapist today and mentioned that to him, as well as the fact that I know some of this comes from when I first started developing and that made me a target, for instance the Bully Girls making the (stupid) assumption that any girl with boobs is a slut, which of course has its own issues since it's slut-shaming. It's a totally bullshit idea, but it's so ingrained in our culture that of course they did it. So for a long time I associated my own body with shame and negative things.

I've also been trying to train myself out of using the same sort of language that got thrown at me about other people and their bodies and dress styles, even if it's only internally. I'm definitely getting better at upper-cutting the negative voice in my head that says stuff like that and telling it to shut up (and yes that is how I picture it). One great thing about the queer community is that you can find a lot of body-positive people in it, and while there are issues in the community there's at least awareness of these issues.

I have an FM receiver in my MP3 player, and as I was walking home an ad came up for a weight loss thing. But here's the thing: It was for men, but it was marketed to the guys' women, something to the effect of "get your man back in healthy shape by making this call for him!"

My face was D: the entire time. Just no.

The product is probably snake oil anyway since it claims the guy can lose weight while not changing his habits or diet (hahahahahaha... no) but still. There is just so much wrong with the entire way that was presented. That was offensive to both men and women.

Right now, I'm actually wearing a skirt. And no, nobody forced me to do it.

I have no idea what came over me, but the other day I decided that I wanted one. So I went over to Filene's Basement and found a nice black one that comes to just above my knees and bought some tights, and here I am. Now if only I could find some knee high boots that fit around my calves since I love that look.

Part of it was that I was thinking earlier that some people would be surprised, then I remembered that I'm in a city where no one really knows me. In other words, all that high school garbage doesn't apply here and no one will give me any grief about it. It's rather refreshing to know that you can basically remake yourself.

Earlier in my life I had a period of time where I basically shunned feminine stuff, but now that I'm older I think I'm starting to embrace it a little more. The trick is to do it on my terms, which is to say avoid frills and pastels. These days I consider myself fairly androgynous a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean I have to shun one side completely.

It was kind of embarassing that I had basically forgotten how to wear tights and put them on backwards (quite uncomfortable, I assure you), but I got some help from Angelo's girlfriend. She also helped me add belt loops to this skirt since it sits a little too low on my waist (I was basically right between two sizes and went for the slightly larger one since I could do this), but with a belt it sits right.

I think it also once again makes me look older than I really am. I look like a 20 something grad student now.

I wasn't going to take these tonight, but one benefit of the crappy quality of the webcam is that it hides the big bags under my eyes from a week off too little sleep, too much stress and allergies. D:

These new ones actually aren't that different from my old ones in terms of shape, but I like the effect they have on my face (balancing out my wide forehead and jawline while emphasizing the arch of my eyebrows and shape of my eyes, yes I thought far too much about this), and it always bugged me the way the old ones ticked up slightly at the temples:

Getting photos of these without the glare of the screen interfering is harder than it looks:


Side view, to give a better sense of their shape:


And another. Also visible are my "hair antennae" in the front:


Also, these are technically men's glasses since they were in the "men's" section of the display, not that I care. Amusingly enough (or not) as I was browsing the frames in the women's section of the eye doctor's office they were called things like "Fun" "Flirty" and "Passion"... while the men's were things like "Legacy" "Boardroom" and "Confidence" among others.

... Really, eyeglass manufacturers? Really?

(Incidentally mine didn't have a name, just a model number, and are from a company called Tempo that makes them for both genders)

(And as a bonus the new curtains are visible in the background, though they're not actually that puke-green and are in fact more olive, once again it's the picture quality or lack thereof doing that)

Have a random commercial that I saw last night. It made my jaw drop.



Sadly enough, the thing that struck me most is that the guy's headphones are turned up way too loud. As in, if they're that loud you're probably giving yourself hearing loss. I do the "if you can hear anything when you hold them at arm's length it's too loud" rule with mine, but too many times a day someone walks by me with their music turned up loud enough for me to hear, sometimes to the point that I can make out the lyrics. No no no no no. It's obnoxious to everyone else and it's going to make you go deaf, so in 20 years I'll be interested in the rates of hearing loss among my generation. Commercials like this Do. Not. Help. since it normalizes the behavior.

Oh yeah, and the booty shaking and objectification. But unfortunately I'm used to seeing stuff like that so the headphone thing is actually more shocking. Yeah.

Seventeen slammed for transphobic article

The November issue of the teen glossy includes an article called “True Life Drama: My Boyfriend Turned Out to Be a Girl,” written by a young woman named Sheri, as told to editor Jessica Press. In the article Sheri recounts her experience with Derek, who is ultimately revealed to be a young trans man.

“It felt like my whole first love was a lie,” Sheri writes, in a piece that equates Derek with men who lie about being fathers or those who have a drug problem.

And there goes the last iota of respect I had for teen magazines. Sure, because being trans is totally like being a drug addict. And yeah, it's so easy for people to come out as trans these days, seeing as people are so understanding. (The sarcasm of the last two sentence should be obvious)

And in a case of extreme irony guess who's going to be a man tonight! ME! Suck it, Seventeen.

One of the sociology blogs I follow mentioned an article in The Wall Street Journal about how "women have a new body part to worry about", mainly their ankles. I saw this same article headline a few days ago and rolled my eyes. I remember snorting when people on the news were criticizing Hilary Clinton for supposedly having this when they could have, y'know, been talking about her political experience and things that actually matter for a presidential candidate.

Women have a new body part to worry about

I'm just glad I can walk on my right ankle considering how many times I've twisted it over the years and had it crushed under the hooves of horses (that last part has happened twice). And we wonder why lots of girls get eating disorders and are otherwise insecure about themselves (including me at times, I admit). And of course that article says only women have to worry about it, men are supposedly immune to this sort of insecurity. Bullshit. Just ask my friend Krys, who Sara has threatened to throw him like a javelin since he's maybe 120 pounds soaking wet and skinny as a rail but complains that he's too fat.

And yes that is my comment in there saying that this is a load of crap. I'll repeat that as many times as I need to! For some reason this sort of thing in particular sets me off.

Though props to one commenter who replied with the following:

I have fat ankles because I have bursitis.

Luckily for me I don’t give a sh*t.

Oh wow, some people going against gay marriage in New Hampshire are stuck in the 19th century in more ways than one:

Ronald Goodwin, of Alexandria, called the [gay marriage] legislation "morally corrupt."

"Some of the women have been wearing their pants so long that some of the men have forgotten their identity. It's time the men put their pants back on," he said.

Let's see, homophobia and sexism in one sentence. How far we have come! Seriously, though, they're panicking because they've lost four states, but the sky hasn't fallen yet.

Oh yeah, and I seriously doubt that guy got the double meaning of what he was saying. Yes, please put your pants back on. You're scaring the children.

So... *cracks knuckles* I have to do a paper for Philosophy of Race & Gender about identity, where you have the right to define your own identity and where society has legitimate claims on defining you. Eep. I have a rough outline already, I just need to pull things out of the text and expand from them.

I was talking to Sara earlier, but she's gone to choir practice for a few hours, but hopefully by the time she gets back on Skype I'll have made some progress on it. It's not due until Wednesday, but I'll try to do the bulk of it now and leaving the minor tweaking until later.

I skipped church today in part because I needed sleep (seeing as I didn't get much the other night due to having to wake up for the summit) and good thing, too, since I slept until about 12:30. Plus, you know, I needed to do this. So I've got my book, a cup of coffee, Pandora Radio playing, and few distractions. Let's do this.

I've been doing a bit of New Year's restocking in my music department, since I ended up losing part of the music collection on my laptop after an update moved stuff around and I accidentally deleted the music files. I hate it when the updates do that, especially when they don't load your profile correctly, which basically means that everything is there but in a different place and saved as "read only". Restarting usually fixes it, but in this case the music files were a casualty, so I'm re-ripping the stuff I have on CD at home and re-ripping some stuff from WMA format to MP3 format, which is a lot better as a container and can play in practically anything. I'd actually been meaning to do that last part for a while but hadn't gotten the chance.

And just looking through the folders in the music section now, I'm embarrassed to say that I still have Linkin Park on there! Boy, that brings back (unpleasant) memories. I was such a dweeb when I was 14-15 years old, but at least I can laugh at it.

I also just got off the phone with April, my hairdresser, and we've set up an appointment for tomorrow at 1. I'm thinking of going for something a bit like Natalie Portman with less spiky stuff up top, and it was actually a picture of her that gave me the idea. I can already hear people saying it's "cute", but I'm more concerned about it not being a pain to deal with. And considering how dykish I already look it would fit, and maybe bring out the red in my hair (since generally the shorter my hair is the more obvious it is that there's a bit of red in it).

But despite the above assertion that I'm fairly dykish, I do have a feminine side (which mostly manifests through stuff like cooing over small fuzzy animals). I've made it a habit to paint my nails with a very light, almost transparent pink, mostly to protect them. Most people don't even know I'm wearing any nail polish until I point it out, since basically it just makes them look shiny. And while I don't wear makeup (with the exception of a little powder foundation that I occasionally put on if I feel like it) I do moisturize the skin on my face and legs. I also just threw on some lip balm since it's still very cold outside, and Dad and I are about to go out. On the whole it's more than I used to do, but it's not excessive and it's still easy.

Basically, some changes, some stayed the same. 2009 is looking pretty good so far.

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Now playing: E.S. Posthumus - Tikal
http://foxytunes.com/artist/e.s.+posthumus/track/tikal