Eat the Damn Cake

After a shocking amount of the day had passed, I realized that I hadn’t looked in the mirror. Not once. I’d brushed my teeth and rubbed moisturizer into my cheeks and gotten dressed and gone out and I hadn’t glanced up at my reflection at all.

Without looking, I felt lovely.

I was wearing a flowing shirt with a thin, elegant belt over a long, soft, thin dress. I felt fashionable and sort of bold. Outside, I walked through a group of guys, and for a second, I thought that they were thinking that I was glamorous. It didn’t matter whether or not they were thinking that. It seemed reasonable for them to.

I felt like I fit in and stood out at the same time. I felt like the right balance of things.

It wasn’t so much that I was concentrating on how I looked. I wasn’t. I was busy. But I was assuming that I looked good. The assumption lay on the floor of my mind like a fine oriental rug. It made everything more graceful. It made everything more comfortable. It made everything a little nicer.

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When I got home again, I almost didn’t want to look, but I had to. The mirror was like a magnet. I opened the door, closed it behind me, took off my coat without stopping and made a beeline for the mirror.

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This is a topic I try to avoid.

This is what my mind did just now, to arrive at it: OK, let’s see…what have we got…did bras, don’t have enough belt pictures yet to write a post about how much I love belts, Bear will kill me if I write another post about our relationship, food could be good, but I’m full…a post about how cute my cat is? No? OK…then God.

But reader AT asked me about belief and spirituality, and I’m gonna answer, damnit. Because that’s the kind of person I am (a person who occasionally answers questions).

I don’t believe in God. It bothers my mom. It bothers a lot of people, actually, who don’t even know me.

I don’t believe in God, but it’s not because I never tried.

When I was a kid, my best friend was born again. It happened very suddenly. One day, no one was talking about God, and the next, she was telling me that I was going to go to hell, because I was Jewish. My parents were going to go to hell. I remember her words. “It’s a rocky road to hell.” I don’t remember the context. I just remember thinking of ice cream. And also being offended. There was no way she was right. I was pretty sure I knew just about as much as she did about the world, and pretty sure someone had been telling her lies.

But she swore that there was gold dust on her hands, at her bible camp. God had done that. And that sounded really cool.

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I should have known it was a bad idea. What was I even thinking?

It all started when Bear needed a new suit rightthissecond. He only had one, and it had already been patched twice, and now there was another hole, in the same place. He needed it by, like, the next day, for a big meeting he suddenly remembered he had, and there was no time to get it fixed.

We went to Men’s Wearhouse near Union Square and got two for the price of one. It was very exciting. One was pale gray, and we both felt like it was really extra cool and a little daring. The other was dark gray, and it looked stately and solemn. I was unhelpful, because all suits look the same to me, and I think they all look good on Bear, and so I concentrate too hard, trying to figure out the differences, and then I focus on the wrong things and start to question my judgment.

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“It’s too boxy. Except boxy is a flattering look on you. But I think the line of the bottom part is too straight. It looks severe. But I guess suits are severe, so that might be intentional. Wait, try the other one– that was less severe….OK, that’s not boxy enough.”

Bear seemed to trust his instincts, and, for a guy for whom normal jeans were a huge upgrade from the strange cargo pants he used to have, he has a surprisingly discerning eye for formal clothing. As far as I can tell. The whole thing took maybe twenty minutes.

And then, after we were very pleased with ourselves for getting two nice suits for the price of one, I thought it would be fun to stop in at Victoria’s Secret, just a couple blocks away. Valentine’s Day was coming up…My bras were all ancient and bedraggled. It might be fun. Did I already say that? You know that’s a bad sign.

(source)

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OK, thank god. I was starting to think that no one wants to marry educated women.

No, that’s not true. I didn’t really think that. But sometimes I felt like the rest of the world did. I read all this stuff about how women with multiple degrees who earn more money than their partners also end up doing all of the housework, and raising the kids basically on their own. The articles about stay-at-home men often depict them as tragic characters with fragile egos who are uncomfortable with their partners’ successes and also would like more allowance with which to buy video games, please.

The new 60% of college graduates– women– are going to be forced to “marry down,” IF they marry at all (and we all know what happens when people don’t get married…A TERRIBLE LIFE!).

Marrying down is a thing now. I get the feeling we’re all supposed to be really scared.

(marrying down…what does it even mean? and i always think couples where the guy is shorter look awesome.  source)

But I just read this piece by Stephanie Coontz in the NYTimes. And it gave me hope. Or at least, it gave me some perspective backed up by some studies that sound just about as legitimate as the other studies that back up the pieces that take my hope away.

Allow me to summarize: Educated women are going to be OK.

Actually, some research shows that they have more caring, involved partners and better sex lives.  They get and give more oral sex, apparently. And they do it while cooking organic, grass-fed dinners with their culinarily inclined partners.

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A reader named Jackie sent me some photos of herself eating ice cream, along with this note. I asked her if I could publish it, because I wanted to share her story.

As a long-time lurker of Eat the Damn Cake, I’ve always admired the women who sent in pictures of themselves eating that cake. They looked so happy and carefree. There was once a time when I never thought I’d feel that way about cake–I had an eating disorder for nine long years. It came and went in terms of intensity and form, but it was always there. Big family events were always punctuated by trips to the bathroom or serious food gymnastics to avoid the calories. I wasted a sad amount of time during my teenage years hating myself and being scared and anxious.

But this is me, eating ice cream, exactly two years after the last time I purged. I look happy and carefree. I don’t feel that way all the time, but today, I definitely do. And I feel proud. I’ve got that recovery swagger now, and it makes eating cake no longer daunting. For anyone out there struggling—recovery is totally possible (for me, it took admitting myself into treatment)! And it will happen, if you’re ready for it and you deeply want it. Eat the damn (metaphorical and literal) cake and work for what you want.

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