Eat the Damn Cake

It was inevitable. Eventually, there were going to be photos. And I was going to have to see them. And my opinion of myself on the day of my wedding was going to suddenly change.

It was also inevitable that due to all of the mornings I wake up in the city, I was going to be woken up at some point by the incessant, unrelenting pounding of a jackhammer. That was today, and naturally it stopped as soon as I gave up completely on sleep. But first it did this thing where it’d stop for a minute or so. There’d be this sudden, blissful space of peace. Like the world had settled under a soft blanket. And then, BAM. Bambambambambambambambambambambam! Just when my mind slipped back into white nothingness. I began to think, dimly, that we were having a kind of dialogue. The jackhammer was mostly just swearing at me, and calling me terrible things I can’t repeat here. I was mostly being pretty nice.

And to turn this all into a neat little metaphor, photos are a little like that. There are these soft spaces of quiet where I begin to imagine that I actually look the way I look in the mirror, to myself, on a good day. Or the way I feel when I’m grinning. Or dancing. Seriously, when I put on music and dance by myself (which I would never really do, of course, cause that would be weird…), I feel like I look really, really hot. My body moves in such cool ways, and I think things like, “Who could resist this? And THIS? Yeah, that’s right.” And “Damn, girl! Make that booty go!” And I do. Make that booty go, that is. But I do not want to see myself doing it. Because I know what would happen. I wouldn’t see a sex goddess, or Salome, but a nerdy Jewish girl who is obviously trying way too hard. And who doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with all the junk in her trunk. Continue Reading »

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Breaking news from science: beauty is quantifiable! You can measure it! Did you think that beauty was subjective? It’s not. Did you think that people were attracted to different appearances? They aren’t. All men are attracted to the same woman. She’s…Jessica Biel! And the rest of us? We just occasionally remind men of Jessica Biel in some small way.

I was watching a documentary on Netflix called The Science of Sex Appeal. I was nervous. I was waiting to be told by the most prominent scientists at the most prominent research centers and universities that I would never be hot. And then I was waiting for them to explain to me why not, using some very serious-looking equations, a bunch of fancy computer generated diagrams, and a legion of student participants who all eagerly confirmed their hypotheses.

It wasn’t the first time. Continue Reading »