Eat the Damn Cake

The other day I had lunch with the president of Interfaith Community, here in the city. We ate in the private dining room of the building fondly called “the GodBox,” by those who know it, because it houses so many religious organizations. It’s a massive block of sandy colored stone, overlooking Grant’s Tomb and Riverside Park. There was a refined, understated buffet, and at the end of it sat two moist, untouched, round cakes. Carrot and chocolate. I ate a gigantic slice of chocolate cake with my meal. The president of Interfaith Community said, “You’re very unique,” gesturing at my two plates. I’d finished most of the cake before I touched my broccoli. There really isn’t much more to that story, but I thought of, well, Eat the Damn Cake. Because I was. And I was a little proud of myself. Which just goes to show you how transformative this whole project is.

And in honor of that thought, here are some amazing photographs that Stephanie sent me:

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I sit at a computer a lot. I’m doing it again right now. It’s not an easy thing to do. It’s daring and reckless. You risk your life. Your bones crumble, you put yourself at risk for heart disease, you’ll definitely die younger, and now my mother tells me if I put my laptop on my lap, I’ll fry my ovaries and never be able to have babies (she read an article). While I’m not exactly planning on having babies anytime soon, and I don’t even really know what my ovaries look like, the image of them being fried is disturbing. So now I try to keep the laptop at a safe distance, so that I can hunch over it without it zapping me with too many of its invisible death rays.

Anyway, the point is, my shoulders are really tight. My back is tight. There’s a lot of painful tension in my life, and not the kind where my fiancé and I sit across the table from each other in a stretch of silence that seems to last forever, until he breaks it by saying, “Did you ever really love me?” No. The kind that hangs out in my shoulder muscles.

So I decided to get a massage. And being a person of action, I immediately went on yelp.com and typed in “massage” and my address. And I found a respectable looking place on 72^nd near Broadway that didn’t sound as though a bunch of naked guys with their genitals haphazardly covered with tiny white towels might be lying around in a big room divided by emergency room-esque curtains. And I made an appointment. And yesterday I got my first massage. Continue Reading »

(image source here)

I have a lot of friends who don’t want to be called a feminist. It makes them sound unattractive. It makes them sound like they don’t shave their armpits. For the record, I once had a very attractive friend who identified as a feminist AND didn’t shave her armpits. So the armpits are not really the end of the world. But “feminist” is a word that conjures up images of all sorts of un-cool behavior. Getting offended by little things that don’t matter—like when someone slips up and calls God “he,” refusing to even try sexy high heels, and flipping out when referred to as a “girl,” rather than a “woman.” People think feminists don’t have their priorities straight. They say they talk about stuff no one cares about anymore. They beat on the same tired issues. Unequal pay. Not enough women acting in fill-in-the-blank position of authority. They may hate men. They definitely don’t attribute enough importance to a good pedicure.

I used to call myself a feminist. In college. It was an act of defiance. I was going to show everyone. Show them…Something. It was pretty clear to me that feminism meant caring about gender relations, being aware of inequality, and being free to be whatever kind of woman I wanted. Feminism hadn’t turned women into ugly, unfashionable manhaters or sluts. It had allowed women to be left alone for a minute, to figure out what we wanted to be. Continue Reading »