Confessions of a Skinny Girl

My sister and I look nothing alike. When we were growing up she was petite with bright, curly red hair, and everyone adored her. I was a gangly brunette who tended to stay in the background. As we grew up, however, Eileen began to fill out. Her shoulders broadened and she developed what my mother affectionately called “baby bearin’ hips.” She wasn’t fat, but her broad stance and muscular build made her look bigger than she really was. She was the ideal Renaissance woman. A Rubens picture of rosy health. She began dieting in her early teens.



I never filled out. My hips and shoulders remained narrow and unsuitable for the bearing of babies. I could eat all I wanted and still manage to look thin. I never had to diet. In fact, most of the time I felt guilty about being skinny.

Eileen didn’t resent my thinness, but I knew that my very existence made her feel fat. We couldn’t share clothes like other sisters, and I could eat all I wanted without getting disapproving looks from our parents.

I wanted to gain weight. I wanted to have a big body and be confident, and thereby set an example for Eileen. I wanted to be able to rant with righteous anger about the impossible standards of thinness presented in the media. I wanted to stand in solidarity with all the “big” women who were oppressed for their size, but I couldn’t change my body type any more than Eileen could change hers.

My attitude began to change my senior year of college. Due to stress and the loss of my gallbladder I began eating less and less. I wasn’t anorexic, eating just became difficult since my body was no longer as good at processing fats as it used to be. I wasn’t trying to lose weight, I just couldn’t stomach big meals anymore, and weight loss was an unavoidable consequence.

I went to graduate school the next year, and if anything, my problem got worse. My boyfriend would bring me food and try to pressure me to eat more, but my stomach had shrunk, and I often felt sick after eating. And that was when I did eat - some days I would eat almost nothing because I was too stressed or too busy. I never purposefully starved myself. It was just that either I was so concerned with working that I didn’t notice that I was hungry, or my appetite was killed by anxiety. Graduate school is not for the faint of heart, or stomach.

On the rare occasions my parents saw me Eileen and my mom would comment on my size. “Oh, honey!” my mom would exclaim, “You’ve gotten so skinny!”

“You’re so skinny!” Eileen would say doing her best to sound like a yiddish mother, “Go eat a sandwich.”

The problem was that I had begun to enjoy the weight loss. I like the attention it got me. I was secretly thrilled each time I needed to drill a new hole in my belt. I looked at pictures of my self from earlier in the year and couldn’t believe how much weight I had lost. People noticed my weight loss and complemented me. I felt special. I felt beautiful. I was obtaining the impossible thinness our culture idolizes. Honestly, I was a little afraid of gaining my weight back. I had lost twenty pounds, but I didn’t want to gain a single one back.

I would never have admitted to any of that though. Of course I wanted to gain my weight back. Equating beauty with thinness was unfair and untrue. And a part of me still felt guilty. The thinner I got, the bigger Eileen was in comparison. Like trashy tv or a hidden pint of Ben and Jerry’s, weight loss became my guilty pleasure. I was keeping track of my calories, supposedly to help me make sure I reached my goal of 2000 each day, and though I tried, I secretly rejoiced when I failed.

I knew it was unhealthy and wrong, but I was achieving a cultural ideal. Being skinny in American today is equated with beauty. It is also seen as a moral victory. Being overweight is the result of laziness and gluttony. Thinness is not only seen as attractive: it represents self-control and hard work. It’s what everyone is working so hard to obtain. For women especially, thinness seems like the ultimate achievement.



The summer after my first year of grad school, my family took a week long vacation to Florida. While down there my mother decided to buy Eileen and I new bathing suits, which we both needed desperately. I quickly and easily found one I liked at the first place we went. My biggest problem was decided what color to pick. All of the choices would have fit my just fine. They seemed to all be made with my body shape in mind.

Eileen was not so lucky. She was 19, and wanted a cute, colorful bathing suit modest enough to wear around her family, but flattering enough to make her feel beautiful. She couldn’t find anything. She tried on suit after suit, but they were all too tight or too revealing. Most of them would certainly have resulted in a wardrobe malfunction if she had tried to actually wear it in the water. The ones that actually fit her were dark colors or what she called “old lady” bathing suits. We went to four different stores including two surf shops and a target, before she finally settled for one at Wal Mart. It was black and white, and showed a little more skin than she wanted, but it would have to do.


Halfway through the search, Eileen broke down in tears. She felt ugly and fat. I was furious at clothing designers everywhere. Why didn’t they make cute colorful bathing suits for curvaceous girls. They were making my beautiful sister feel ugly. They were the problem. They were to blame.

And yet, under my anger at clothing stores and designers, I was also mad at myself. I wasn’t causing the problem, but I wasn’t helping. I was participating in a culture that values thinness above all else, including health. I was asking Eileen to reject a cultural lie I was neck deep in. I couldn’t ask her to accept herself and her size, while I chased the very ideal I was preaching against. I was a hypocrite, and a skinny hypocrite is no better than any other kind.

I faced the truth of my situation. I admitted that I like losing weight and that I didn’t really want to gain it back. It was the first step towards my recovery, and probably the easiest. Changing my thought patterns and eating habits wasn’t easy. I began taking a digestive enzyme that helped me process the fats my body was no longer able to deal with on its own. I also began eating more often, snacking on fruit, nuts, and chocolate during the day to help my calorie count.

I was determined to get healthy, and to stop obsessing over my weight. The best way to help myself and to help Eileen was to accept myself and stop trying to transform myself into some impossible ideal.

Chrome Book Review for People Who Aren't Techie

I was drawn to the Chromebook for its size, and I was intrigued by its speed, but it’s affordability and durability are what finally convinced me. For those of you who aren’t sure, here are the five facts to consider before buying a Chromebook. These are facts based on my research and personal experience with my own Samsung Chromebook.

1. This is not a “normal” computer. It doesn’t have a Windows or Apple operating system. It’s OS is basically more like what’s on a tablet than what would be on a typical laptop or desktop computer. This means that most of the your interactions with your Chromebook are facilitated through apps or Google Chrome. Which brings us to number two.

2. Though Chromebooks are capable of doing some things offline, they are very limited without internet connection. With all the libraries, coffee shops, and restaurants now providing free wireless, there are still plenty of places you can take your Chromebook. If, however, you have unreliable internet at home or work, then this might not be the computer for you. Personally my computer activities are almost all centered online, so it wasn’t a problem for me.

3. Chromebooks don’t run Microsoft Office, you have to use Google Drive. This one threw me for a loop, and I wasn’t sure I was willing to give up Word and Powerpoint, but after taking some time to get to know Google Docs, I like it just as much. It is a little more limited in font styles and formatting, but how many people ever used Windings in the first place?

4. The keyboard and mouse operate like a Mac’s, which took me some time to adjust to, but I like the two-figure scrolling, and I’m getting the hang of double-figure clicks. When you first log on, your Chromebook teaches you how to use it, which I really appreciated.

5. Most Chromebooks come with something called a “solid state” hard drive. The solid state doesn’t have as much storage space, but it is faster and more durable than other hard drives, which means that even though the Chromebook is thin and lightweight, it’s also durable. I couldn’t believe how quickly my Chromebook boots up and loads pages. It goes from off to ready to use in five seconds, sometimes less. This is probably my favorite part of the Chromebook.

Now you know that Chromebooks aren’t like more traditional laptops, but a lot of people like them as a second computer. They also do well for casual users and people who mostly want to surf the web. If you’re into serious gaming or plan on using it as a work laptop, Chromebooks might not be right for you, but they are fun, convenient laptop.

Makeup and Mating Rituals: My Journey to Self Confidence

I was seventeen and I had never worn make-up. Not seriously, anyway. My friends had given me “makeovers” which usually included lots of eyeshadow and blush, but I had never worn it out any where. And I didn’t really want to. I wasn’t against the idea, I just had no desire to try it.

And then there was a boy.

Anyone who’s been a seventeen year old girl knows, there is always a boy. Mine was the class valedictorian and a close friend, but I needed to make the upgrade from friend to girlfriend. Even then make-up wasn’t my idea -- my grandmother pointed out to me that I would look beautiful with just a little eye makeup. The solution filled me with enthusiasm. Make-up would make me beautiful and feminine and Mr. Valedictorian would be mine!

As you might guess, it didn’t work. I kept wearing it though. I didn’t like having to put it on, and I didn’t like not being able to touch my eyes, and I always put the eyeliner on too thick, but I kept doing it. In my mind it was part of the human mating ritual,  like a peacock’s tale is to peacocks. It was annoying and inconvenient, but if I wanted a mate, I was just going to have to suck it up and keep going.

But even then I knew I wasn’t just wearing makeup for boys. I was wearing for job interviews, and pictures, and so people in general would like me and think I was pretty. Even the most casual observer can tell that our culture values beauty in women. Not necessarily exclusively, but from movies, ads, and magazine covers we can see that how attractive a woman is is an important part of what makes her valuable. Sometimes women are valued for other things, but their physical appearance is almost always a factor. We can see this at work in the way politicians like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are critiqued for their clothing and hairstyles when no one would think to do this to a male candidate. This puts a lot of pressure, both directly and indirectly, on real women living ordinary lives.

At college a mixture of laziness and newly discovered feminism helped me drop the habit, and when I did, I realized how much happier I was. All those years I had wondered why my face wasn’t good enough. Why did I have to cover it with powders and pencil marks to be beautiful, and now I didn’t have to do any of that. It was an important part of learning to accept myself.

Shortly after my revelation, I believed that everyone should stop wearing make-up. I was certain that they were all going through the same thing I was, and I just needed to enlighten them. A good conversation with my little sister proved me wrong. I was trying to tell her that she was beautiful and didn’t need make-up, and that instead she should accept herself. I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but by the end she looked at me, her eyes glassy with tears of frustration and hurt, and said, “Make-up makes me feel beautiful.”

I had nothing to say to that. I didn’t understand it, but I wanted her to feel beautiful, and I realized that if make-up was going to help her with that, I didn’t want to stop it. Years later, I know that I also have my own beauty rituals that make me feel better about my appearance. My rituals happen to include brightly colored socks and a particular haircut, but they serve the same purpose as make-up, not to attract a mate, but to make me feel good about myself.

I think that’s the important thing we need to keep in mind: make-up, manicures, dresses, and whatever else we might use to feel pretty don’t actually make us beautiful. They are rituals, coping mechanisms that help us feel beautiful, but in reality they might highlight it or bring attention to it when we’re already beautiful. We don’t need to be beautiful, we need to feel beautiful and therefore valuable. When we start believing that it is the rituals that make us beautiful and worthy of love and respect, we run into problems like eating disorders, extreme cosmetic surgery, and crippling low self-esteem. Beauty rituals are not bad or inherently dangerous, but when taken too far, they rob us of our confidence instead of building it up.

I guess in a perfect world, we wouldn’t need these rituals to feel good about ourselves, and the rate of eating disorders and suicide would probably go down as women and girls gained confidence in themselves, but until that day comes, we can keep doing what we need to do to help us believe in ourselves.

I’ll keep not wearing make up, and I won’t make my sister feel bad about her decision to.   

Introduction

So I guess, I should have some sort of beginning entry to let you know who I am.

I’m pretty normal. I’m a midwestern girl from a conservative background, who is way more liberal than her parents would like. I’m feminist, sex positive, and body positive. Well, at least I try to be.

I graduated from college a year ago, and spent the last year in graduate school. I’m leaving that to try and find a real job, hopefully something in editing. 

I’ve always loved writing. It’s self expression, but for me it’s also self-exploration. Sometimes I don’t know how I feel about something until I sit down and start writing about it. 

This blog is supposed to help me get back into writing, something I have stopped doing, and to help me build up my resume. Hopefully having a blog will help future employers see that I am capable of writing well, and would therefore make a good editor. On that note, a lot of the things I publish here can also be found on other websites, not because I stole it, but because I’m publishing in multiple places. Getting an article on a real website like ProjectEve.com looks more impressive than a personal blog. 

Well, now you know who I am, and why I’m writing. Now go check out some of my more interesting (I hope) articles.