Let me tell you something

I enjoy J. Crew. Mostly for their perfect fit tee shirts, as I consider a tee shirt, jeans, a scarf and ballet flats the perfect outfit for any and all occasions. I generally am only willing to purchase them on sale, however, so when I get a J. Crew sale e-mail, I generally check it out, as I did this morning. When I did, I came across this little gem:



From J. Crew

Your standard slim fitting gray sweatshirt reading "darling!," an object of clothing I would personally never wear and especially never purchase. Good thing too, because it was on sale for $199.99. Two hundred dollars people. On sale. The retail price was $398.00. Four hundred dollars. Now, it is made of cashmere, which I've never been willing to spend enough to own but I hear is very nice. But still. Where the hell would you even wear that? I'm fairly certain the only time I've ever spent over $100.00 for any single item of clothing was for a formal event dress. Somehow I can't reconcile the fact that the same store where I get tee shirts for less than 20 bucks is selling a four hundred dollar sweater. That's ugly to boot. This is what is wrong with us people. No one needs a four hundred dollar sweater. No one.

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Quote: Tiny Delights

Via C. Style

Yesterday's tiny delight: a Tesla kitten making biscuits on my tummy.

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The Curse of the Sexually Active Female

There comes a time in most women's lives where they are concurrently sexually active and desperately trying not to get pregnant. Married, single, swinging, what have you, we all go through it. During that period of time, you generally think you are pregnant at least once a day.

 

Logic goes out the window. Ok, rationally, I KNOW I need to have had sex within the last few weeks, at least, but what if, some how, some, like, SUPER sperm was just holed up in there waiting for ovulation day?

 

Feel a little nauseous today? Pregnant.

 

Warmer than normal? Pregnant.

 

Right foot itchy? DEFINITELY PREGNANT.

 

It doesn't matter if pregnancy is, in fact, the least likely cause of your minor ailment (see: too many burritos, effing summer and poison ivy for above). If you are desperately trying not to be pregnant (say, oh, you're still 25 and poor-ish and getting married in 3 months and living in a shitty one bedroom apartment like myself), then every abnormal thing can and will be taken by your brain to baby land.

 

Shows such as "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" only encourage this neurosis. I don't want to be one of those clueless women! I must be ever vigilant, you say to yourself. And God help you if you Google your symptom with the words "sign of pregnancy" because there is for sure one woman out there for whom the first sign of pregnancy was a runny nose and she will be happy to tell you all about it on some message board.

 

I like to think I'm not stupid. I went to graduate school and all that. I know the most common legitimate signs of pregnancy, what conditions you need to get pregnant and how to best prevent pregnancy. And yet, I have absolutely purchased pregnancy tests I knew I did not really need just to stop that little voice in my head from asking me just where I expect to put a crib in this tiny apartment.

 

Perhaps the most annoying thing about all of this is that I can't expect it to stop until I'm menopausal, because I know that it will be just as bad when I WANT to be pregnant and am looking for reasons to pee on the stick. Then, having had a baby, it will go back to "deargoodnesspleasenoIcanthandlemorerightnow". So heads up politicos-you don't need to be worried about the contents of my uterus. I do plenty of worrying for all of us.

 

Side note, I told my fiancé I was going to write this post and he responded that I should not because karma will ensure that I become actually pregnant any minute now. Here's hoping karma isn't that much of a bitch.

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There is Nothing Wrong With Me.

The other night I slept in my old room at my parents' house. I didn't have any books with me and I was looking for something to read before bed, so I pulled out a stack of old diaries (periodically I would get the bug to journal, start one, keep it for 3 months, and then get bored/realize I had nothing of importance to write. Much the path this blog has taken. But I digress.)

 

Firstly, I don't recommend reading things you wrote in middle school. I was deeply embarrassed for my 13 year old bespectacled and be-braced self who actually took the time to encircle her crush's name in hearts every time she wrote it. Gag me with a spoon. I put those down in favor of a journal I started in college, thinking it might reveal a more enlightened and less painful version of myself, but as it was written before I started taking social anxiety medication, it was mostly about how much I hated living at college and wouldn't have minded getting hit by a car (see, I wasn't depressed in the sense that I wanted to kill myself, just apathetic enough that I wouldn't have minded if someone else had. Thank God for paroxetine, amirite? My journey to acceptance of pharmaceutical help may be another post in the future.) Finally, I found one, count 'em, one, entry that I was not ashamed of, reading as follows:

 

"My mom tells me I 'know where I fall' on the looks spectrum. My grandmother says how unfortunate my pimples are. My advisor 'advises' me to get a boyfriend.

 

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME."

 

You go college self. This was a particularly appropriate find as I have been really wrestling with body image lately (probably a combo of summer "beach season body are you good enough to be seen half naked" promos, reading Kjerstin Gruys' tale of her reflection-less year in Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall and my upcoming wedding). I find myself constantly vacillating between wanting to lose 10 lbs. and finally have "perfect" skin and wanting to be a model of body positivity, content to live in a healthy body and finding beauty in the experiences I have in said body. I don't want to want to change. I want to be happy with myself right now. When I tell B "I'm feeling fat today," (as if fat is a feeling) I want not to stop BEING fat, because I know that I am at a healthy weight, but to stop FEELING fat, but since the FEELING part is in my brain, it's a lot more difficult to change. I don't want to lose physical weight. I want to lose metaphorical weight made up of self-doubt and self-hate.

 

Sometimes I do have spurts of self-love, where I feel happy and healthy and beautiful. That feeling that your beauty is radiating from the inside to the point where it eclipses any physical "flaws". And then the doubt creeps in. Sometimes it comes from catching a glimpse of oneself in the bathroom mirror and realizing your mental image is not matching what you're actually seeing. Sometimes it comes from seeing an ad or some conventionally beautiful person and thinking, oh who am I kidding, my inner beauty can't possibly compete with that rack. And sometimes, and this, I think, is worst of all, sometimes it comes from a comment from those around us who think they are being kind.

 

None of the people I wrote about in my diary meant to hurt my feelings. My mother meant to imply that we should accept the "looks" we are given and learn to be content with them. My grandmother thought that, since acne can be treated, she should perhaps point out how much more conventionally beautiful I would seem if I did just that. My (college) advisor thought that I was lonely and that I needed to "get a life" (um, that one was still mean though and not really appropriate. Just tell me what classes I need, thanks). Still, they hurt, because they all seemed to imply that I was falling short of some standard. I'm glad I had the strength of self then to take that momentary sting, brush it off and remind myself "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME" and I'm glad I came across it again in a time where the balance between self-hate and self-love seems so fickle. Because it's the truth. There is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me if I don't meet a conventional beauty standard. Or if I do. Or if I lose 10 lbs or if I don't. If I have pimples sometimes. Those things just...are. They simply exist, without being good or bad.

 

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME. And there is nothing wrong with you.

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