Eat the Damn Cake

Beauty is only skin deep. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, anyway. Forget about all those other eyes. It’s not a big deal. If you think too much about how you look then you’re insecure, and vain, and petty. If you complain about unattainable beauty standards then you’re probably just ugly and jealous. If you don’t wear makeup then you don’t look professional. Get over yourself. They’re just ads. Those are models, we’re real women. It’s like when a bunch of people get shot in the head in an action film. It’s just a movie. If you get upset about that it’s because you’re too serious. That’s how billboards and commercials work. Don’t compare yourself to that—only an idiot would. Everyone knows they’re airbrushed. But buy the firming cream, just in case it actually works. You don’t want to look old. You don’t want to have cankles. God, no. Breast implants are OK. You’re supposed to disapprove of them, so make fun of the women who get them. But come on, they make your breasts look better. Actually, say snide things about all of the women who get cosmetic surgery. They look like they’re made out of plastic, right? But think about it…A face lift is a good idea when you’re in your fifties…A little botox. No one has to know, and it makes a big difference. Be ashamed, but do it anyway. You’ll feel better after. Love your body. Be strong. Love yourself. You’re empowered. Be the real you. Be a better you. Be the you you know you are inside. But don’t even think about gaining weight.

(Botox. Ooohh….So soothing…Source) Continue Reading »

So there’s this guy. And he’s married. He has two or three kids, and a wife. For fun, let’s make the wife really beautiful. Her breasts are definitely big, and probably somehow perky. The kids are cute, and young, and they grin and whoop when they get a hit in tee-ball (which is every time, because it’s, you know, on a tee). The guy is everyman. At least, every financially stable man with a generously bosomed, beautiful wife and a couple adorable kids. He and his three best buds like to sit around and talk about how much they want to have sex with every woman they see. Well, 70% of the women they see. Sometimes 50%, on a bad day, when they visit their elderly mother in the nursing home. Or during the dead of winter, when there are those troublesome bulky coats. Who invented coats anyway? Definitely wasn’t a man. Anyway, the four guys tell each other in excruciating detail about all the women they want to have sex with, and exactly what kinds of sexual activities they’d like to engage in with each of these women. Sometimes they admit to wanting adolescent girls, too, but then they laugh a little uneasily and say, “Careful, man—Eighteen and up. You know the rules.” Continue Reading »

I don’t feel grown up enough for my life.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was standing in the venue, and there were four people discussing how the tables would be angled around the columns, and where the bar would go, and how many “sanits” would be needed for the number of guests. And I was wearing sneakers, which seemed wrong. I felt like, as the bride, I should be wearing sleek, sexy, Manhattan shoes. I should have a sleek, sexy look. But I’d walked about 200 blocks the day before, and my feet were not interested in anything involving the word “stylish,” so I was wearing bulky sneakers. Because I was wearing sneakers, I was wearing shorts and a plain tank top. And standing awkwardly off to one side, as everyone discussed. I couldn’t remember what their roles each were. There was the caterer, definitely. But he’d brought someone who he called his “partner,” who seemed to have slightly different responsibilities. And then another person who was in charge of something else—because she used the word “sanit” a lot more. And then there was the videographer, and the sound and lights guy.

And beyond this circle of people who will soon run my wedding, there was an unrelated film crew, setting up, a tiny girl with red hair, running around looking comfortable and slightly entitled (I think she was about to be in a commercial), and two beautiful, petite Asian women wearing sports bras and yoga pants, who were stretching and fixing one another’s hair. Continue Reading »

Back to the story of my relationship with Bear. In honor of my wedding, which is suddenly less than a month away. Weddings are sneaky like that. Which is surprising, really, because the thing is giant and lumbering and trailing like 300 feet of ribbons and roses and lace behind it. Sometimes I get tied up in the ribbons. Which is why I decided to start writing about the love. For part one, where I meet Bear, click here. For part two, where I am clearly not on a marriage track, click here.

So where was I.…I was sitting in an office in Manhattan, emailing Bear and trying to get some work done. We’d met the week before for the first time. We were sending each other articles from the New York Times online.

I sent him one about a place that was selling pastrami burgers (yeah, you read that right) in Salt Lake City. It was a funny little piece in a series called United Tastes that reported food trends that expressed something about the intersections of different cultures.

I said something like, “Mmm….Pastrami. Burgers? As a Jew, I’m a little offended, but definitely intrigued.”

And he wrote back, “Want to go try one?”

I smiled at the screen and typed, “Of course!”

He said, “How’s this weekend?” Continue Reading »

This post is written as part of a project called No Makeup Week, originated by Rachel Rabbit White. She’s encouraging bloggers to try going a week without makeup, and to write about their relationship with makeup. And to post photos of themselves without makeup. I’m all over it. It’s a great idea, and I hope you’ll check out her stuff.

(For years, I thought this was the sexiest photo ever taken of me. No makeup)

I’m bad at makeup. Always have been. I’m scared of it. It’s powerful. Like a lightsaber. And when you haven’t trained as a Jedi Knight, then you really shouldn’t pick one of those things up. Another blade might pop out the back, like with Darth Maul’s. Maybe that’s part of the problem—too much Star Wars, not enough….Whatever little girls are supposed to like. I didn’t know what that was. I was homeschooled. I thought other little girls were cool for being good at math. I thought I was cool for thinking to get hockey skates instead of figure skates, so I could go as fast as the boys. And I never once defined myself as a tomboy, either. I was extremely feminine. But being feminine wasn’t based on what I did, it was based on how I felt. I felt like a pretty girl.

The first time I encountered makeup was when I stayed with my aunt and uncle in Florida when I was ten. My aunt had a lot of makeup, and every day she put a surprising amount of it on her face. I could understand why she was good at it, because she also painted pitchers and tabletops, with neat, perfect detail. It was like surgery- so many delicate tools. It was like those painters who have a brush of every size, and a palette that they clean after every painting is completed. Even as an art, it felt unfamiliar. I had about three brushes for when I painted, and the paint got everywhere.

“Would you like me to do your makeup?” She asked me.

Well, yes, of course! I was fascinated. The shade she picked for my lips was called “coral.” It was a beautiful color. Everything took a long time, but when she was done, I looked at my new face in the bulging makeup mirror, and thought I looked a little like a mermaid. We went out. I wore some stretchy black pants and a white vest. We went out to dinner, and when I jumped up from the table and ran off to the bathroom, I felt eyes on me. I looked around and a man was staring at me. He had been staring somewhere lower on my body, but now he looked at my face. He was old. He was sitting with his wife. And he wouldn’t stop staring at me.

I kept the coral lipstick. I couldn’t believe my aunt was willing to part with something so precious. But at home, I wasn’t very interested in applying it. I liked to take it out of the drawer once in a while and look at it. Roll it out of its secret tube and back. I knew there was some shared mysterious code of womanhood here. But learning it felt far away. Continue Reading »

Objectivity is a bad idea. Maybe it’s a necessary idea, but it does a lot of damage. Maybe groups of people arrive at it automatically, in order to structure a frighteningly chaotic, inexplicable world. Well, not entirely inexplicable. The sun exists to light the earth, so that things can grow, and people can see where they’re walking. And it goes around the earth because that’s what God told it to do. Everyone can agree. Or, at least, everyone could agree…And later everyone could agree that objectively, there was no way people would ever be able to invent a machine that could fly. And when women were upset about anything, they were hysterical, because their uteruses were releasing strange woman gases that made them act funny. And a scientist wandered through the streets of London in the mid 19^th century, counting beautiful women. He found that there was a much higher percentage of them there than in the countryside. Beauty, he concluded, comes with intelligence. The countryfolk were clearly less intelligent, which was why they were out there, plowing and stuff.

Objective beauty has been around forever. For much longer, I’d imagine, than people have been plowing fields. People are constantly comparing things. I mean, it’s really how we’re still around. “These are both berries, but this one reminds me of the berries from the poisonous berry bush of death, whereas this other one looks like it might just be a blueberry. I’ll eat the blueberry.” “I want a mate, and both of these people are capable of mating with me, but this one lost his foot on that hunting trip, and he can’t run as fast as the other one, so he won’t be able to catch as many animals, and prove his manhood, and the other men will come to look down on him, and then my offspring will be mercilessly teased because their father is lame, and I’ll eventually be driven from the group and forced to fend for myself, which will probably result in my death. So I should go with the guy who has both feet.” You know, stuff like that. We’re always trying to figure out what is better than what. Who is better than who. And beauty is an important measure of “betterness,” because it’s on the surface. In other words, we can all see it, so we can all judge it.

(source) Continue Reading »