Stephanie Dolgoff's Blog, page 2

Don’t you know it’s all about the mush

Not my booty! (Some hot model in Fitness magazine)

So here’s my question: What if you’re simply not all about that bass, bringing booty back or even a fat-bottomed girl who makes the rockin’ world go round?

In all truthfulness, Sir Mixalot likes big butts (you’ll recall that he cannot lie—not about that, anyway) and Trace Atkins hates to see a woman with a “honky tonk badonkadonk” go but he nonetheless loves to watch her leave.  There was much butt glorification on last night’s AMA’s (see: JLo and Iggy Azalea singing the future classic, Booty).

I’m just wondering, what if, like me, you have an unremarkable butt but a pot belly worthy of an entire chapter in an anatomy text, dappled like expensive luggage with stretch marks due to the remarkable feat of having carried twins? Let’s say you have nice legs–long and thin relative to your belly–but not much of a waist to accentuate your already fairly flat, “white lady” booty. (That’s an inaccurate term, I think, because I have white lady friends with rather majestic rear ends.)  If you read the women’s magazines, which I, of course, do (when I’m not writing stories about butts for them), you know you’re likely either “apple” shaped or “pear” shaped. I’m an apple, otherwise known as an egg-on-a-stick. That is, when I’m heavy—my middle is where all the weight tends to go, rather than to my ass, and so doubling as convenient, portable seat cushioning.

Where are all the hit songs about my body type? Am I, or my fellow eggs-on-sticks any less worthy of love and song lyrics? Yes, for optimum “objective” attractiveness, you’ll be wanting your waist to be 70 percent of your hips (booty inclusive) and blah blah blah. I’m closer to 1:1, 2:1 after a large Thanksgiving meal. But what if the insubstantial butt I do have has a really good personality? And what if there are secret legions of “belly men,” guys who just love a big, squishy tummy you can practically disappear into, who are too afraid to speak out for fear of being mocked by the ass and hooters guys?

I mean, right? And if I’m not right, I’d prefer not to know, so don’t tell me.

Thanks to John, who is working on a song right now, for reminding me that I have a blog and I should write on it.

 

Don't you know it's all about the mush

Not my booty! (Some hot model in Fitness magazine)

So here’s my question: What if you’re simply not all about that bass, bringing booty back or even a fat-bottomed girl who makes the rockin’ world go round?

In all truthfulness, Sir Mixalot likes big butts (you’ll recall that he cannot lie—not about that, anyway) and Trace Atkins hates to see a woman with a “honky tonk badonkadonk” go but he nonetheless loves to watch her leave.  There was much butt glorification on last night’s AMA’s (see: JLo and Iggy Azalea singing the future classic, Booty).

I’m just wondering, what if, like me, you have an unremarkable butt but a pot belly worthy of an entire chapter in an anatomy text, dappled like expensive luggage with stretch marks due to the remarkable feat of having carried twins? Let’s say you have nice legs–long and thin relative to your belly–but not much of a waist to accentuate your already fairly flat, “white lady” booty. (That’s an inaccurate term, I think, because I have white lady friends with rather majestic rear ends.)  If you read the women’s magazines, which I, of course, do (when I’m not writing stories about butts for them), you know you’re likely either “apple” shaped or “pear” shaped. I’m an apple, otherwise known as an egg-on-a-stick. That is, when I’m heavy—my middle is where all the weight tends to go, rather than to my ass, and so doubling as convenient, portable seat cushioning.

Where are all the hit songs about my body type? Am I, or my fellow eggs-on-sticks any less worthy of love and song lyrics? Yes, for optimum “objective” attractiveness, you’ll be wanting your waist to be 70 percent of your hips (booty inclusive) and blah blah blah. I’m closer to 1:1, 2:1 after a large Thanksgiving meal. But what if the insubstantial butt I do have has a really good personality? And what if there are secret legions of “belly men,” guys who just love a big, squishy tummy you can practically disappear into, who are too afraid to speak out for fear of being mocked by the ass and hooters guys?

I mean, right? And if I’m not right, I’d prefer not to know, so don’t tell me.

Thanks to John, who is working on a song right now, for reminding me that I have a blog and I should write on it.

 

Payment in kindness

I suppose it’s a little unseemly to consider what you’ll get in return for performing an act of kindness. If I were a better person I would excrete selfless good deeds from my pores while whistling all the livelong day, bettering the lives of others with nary a thought how it made me feel. Right. Selfless. Redundant.

But guess what? Not that person.

So here’s what happened: A woman got on the bus (oh, the drama on NYC public transportation!) and didn’t pay her son’s fare. Her son was maybe 8, but there’s a height cut-off and he was too tall to ride for free. Most drivers wave all kids on unless they are loudly, obnoxiously and undeniably middle schoolers, or Amazons, like my gals. Many a parent, including myself, has hoped to save $2.50 a kid, but are prepared to pay if asked. This mom didn’t have it.

The driver was in the right, but was barky about it (“You can’t just march on here…”). The mom failed to take the high road, instead making a left at “jerk-off” and a u-turn at “asshole.”

So I paid the kid’s fare.  The woman thanked me. But then she kept arguing with the driver, even as she steered her son to a seat, muttering and sputtering in anger. I sat putting on my mascara.

I suppose I had hoped that my paying it forward would sprinkle the fairy dust of kindness all over the M21, briefly making our little four-person universe a better place. It kinda didn’t.

I shared this with my co-worker Lauren, who edits The Kindness Project, a page at Woman’s Day in which we ask readers to share small acts of kindness. “Oh, yeah, it’s an interesting sociological question,” she said. “The whole idea of how the good deed will be received. It’s not always pretty.”

Lauren told me how she offended a woman by offering her her seat on the subway (again with the public transportation!). “She said a snippy, ‘No thank you. I’m not that old.’” Yeesh. Essentially the feeling of being offended by Lauren’s gesture (which was, in fact, because she was older looked like she needed to take a load off) overwhelmed the warm fuzzy spirit in which it was made. In my instance, the woman was touched, but instead of being inspired to forgive the driver his grumpiness, she kept on with the anger. My boss Susan said she has been saying hello to her neighbors as she jogs by and they look at her like she’s a nut job.

The bus mom said, “Thank you again,” as she disembarked. Perhaps she’ll mull it over and the fairy dust will work its magic after she’s had another cup of coffee. Maybe she’ll pay something forward (a few weeks ago a woman named, of all things, Geisha, bought me my coffee at my office caf because I was short). My friend Gordon suggested perhaps another rider who witnessed it will be positively affected, adding to the occasional fantasticalness that is the human condition.

Here’s hoping! In the meantime, have a day. 

 

Payment in kindness

I suppose it’s a little unseemly to consider what you’ll get in return for performing an act of kindness. If I were a better person I would excrete selfless good deeds from my pores while whistling all the livelong day, bettering the lives of others with nary a thought how it made me feel. Right. Selfless. Redundant.

But guess what? Not that person.

So here’s what happened: A woman got on the bus (oh, the drama on NYC public transportation!) and didn’t pay her son’s fare. Her son was maybe 8, but there’s a height cut-off and he was too tall to ride for free. Most drivers wave all kids on unless they are loudly, obnoxiously and undeniably middle schoolers, or Amazons, like my gals. Many a parent, including myself, has hoped to save $2.50 a kid, but are prepared to pay if asked. This mom didn’t have it.

The driver was in the right, but was barky about it (“You can’t just march on here…”). The mom failed to take the high road, instead making a left at “jerk-off” and a u-turn at “asshole.”

So I paid the kid’s fare.  The woman thanked me. But then she kept arguing with the driver, even as she steered her son to a seat, muttering and sputtering in anger. I sat putting on my mascara.

I suppose I had hoped that my paying it forward would sprinkle the fairy dust of kindness all over the M21, briefly making our little four-person universe a better place. It kinda didn’t.

I shared this with my co-worker Lauren, who edits The Kindness Project, a page at Woman’s Day in which we ask readers to share small acts of kindness. “Oh, yeah, it’s an interesting sociological question,” she said. “The whole idea of how the good deed will be received. It’s not always pretty.”

Lauren told me how she offended a woman by offering her her seat on the subway (again with the public transportation!). “She said a snippy, ‘No thank you. I’m not that old.'” Yeesh. Essentially the feeling of being offended by Lauren’s gesture (which was, in fact, because she was older looked like she needed to take a load off) overwhelmed the warm fuzzy spirit in which it was made. In my instance, the woman was touched, but instead of being inspired to forgive the driver his grumpiness, she kept on with the anger. My boss Susan said she has been saying hello to her neighbors as she jogs by and they look at her like she’s a nut job.

The bus mom said, “Thank you again,” as she disembarked. Perhaps she’ll mull it over and the fairy dust will work its magic after she’s had another cup of coffee. Maybe she’ll pay something forward (a few weeks ago a woman named, of all things, Geisha, bought me my coffee at my office caf because I was short). My friend Gordon suggested perhaps another rider who witnessed it will be positively affected, adding to the occasional fantasticalness that is the human condition.

Here’s hoping! In the meantime, have a day. 

 

Hot children in the city

People ask me what it was like growing up in New York City, which is where I was raised and am raising my daughters. I’m still growing up here, at age 46, every damn day. And like most people who have lived in the same place most of their lives, I don’t have the perspective to answer that question very well.

I usually say something about being able to flee my home early and often when it became too dysfunctional is what saved me from being an even more miserable adolescent than I had been. Had I been trapped in a box in a quiet cul de sac, I imagine, dependent on my parents to drive me somewhere else, I think I would have done nothing but eat and throw up and be depressed.

Instead, I ate and threw up and was depressed some of the time, but also ran around this outrageous town with it’s cross-dressing club kids and street artists and the music blaring from every ground floor apartment with my amazing friends who were from all over the universe and stayed at their homes and had them at mine. This allowed us all to see that our family’s way (thank GOD) wasn’t the only way.

Because of that–really, thanks to public transportation and a particular brand of loving but loose ’80s parenting and everything that this city arrays before you like an all you can eat buffet of crazy–my friends and I were able to create a support system and a school outside of school that gave us tremendous room to be ourselves. All things considered, NYC was a great place to grow up, given that growing up is really hard wherever you are.

But who knows? There are pros and cons to any place. I’m here, raising my daughters here, because it’s home, where my imperfect family is, where I feel best equipped to teach my kids how to take care of themselves. None of my native New Yorker friends came here from somewhere else as adults to prove anything or to get away from what they feel was a too-conformist upbringing or to be the best in their industry, as so many do, so we tend not to be prone to excess. Native New Yorker parents–and please, friends, chime in if I’m not speaking for you here–are just moms and dads like everywhere else who want our children to be safe and smart and kind and happy.

Still, it’s trippy to see your young ones living the 2.0 version of your New York childhood on these same streets, especially since the city is much safer than it was in the Koch administration, and because us parents are much more up our kids butts than mine, at least, were back then. I walked three blocks home from the school bus alone in the third grade, crossing over to avoid the crack house on the corner of 97th and Columbus which is now bespoke condos facing a Whole Foods. My mom tells me I insisted, accusing her of being overprotective. I don’t let my kids cross the street without me and they’re in the 5th grade. They’re too giddy, spaced out, and, well, childlike, in my view.

Thing is, while a safer city in which they don’t have to be quite as street smart allowed them to be that way, that’s only a good thing if they don’t get hit by a car.

Which is why I am not one of those people who long for the city’s seedy past, when Times Square was truly the festering, filthy, stinking armpit of the universe (as opposed to the shaved, deodorized and hyper-corporate armpit it is now). New York was often an unpleasant, scary place that smelled like pee. But a lot was easier, both for us as children and for our parents. Things were cheaper, schooling was less complicated, and according to my mom, anyway, parenting was less of an achievement-oriented occupation, here and in the ‘burbs.

Not for nothing, for all the “wildness” of life in the big city as a small person, the only place I remember smoking pot was as a kid was in Livingston, NJ, when I visited my camp friends. I envied their rec rooms, but they complained they were bored out of their gourds. And yet, most of them, too, turned out fine. Go figure.

Photo downloaded from Christine Macaluso-Russo–many thanks.

Hot children in the city

People ask me what it was like growing up in New York City, which is where I was raised and am raising my daughters. I’m still growing up here, at age 46, every damn day. And like most people who have lived in the same place most of their lives, I don’t have the perspective to answer that question very well.

I usually say something about being able to flee my home early and often when it became too dysfunctional is what saved me from being an even more miserable adolescent than I had been. Had I been trapped in a box in a quiet cul de sac, I imagine, dependent on my parents to drive me somewhere else, I think I would have done nothing but eat and throw up and be depressed.

Instead, I ate and threw up and was depressed some of the time, but also ran around this outrageous town with it’s cross-dressing club kids and street artists and the music blaring from every ground floor apartment with my amazing friends who were from all over the universe and stayed at their homes and had them at mine. This allowed us all to see that our family’s way (thank GOD) wasn’t the only way.

Because of that–really, thanks to public transportation and a particular brand of loving but loose ’80s parenting and everything that this city arrays before you like an all you can eat buffet of crazy–my friends and I were able to create a support system and a school outside of school that gave us tremendous room to be ourselves. All things considered, NYC was a great place to grow up, given that growing up is really hard wherever you are.

But who knows? There are pros and cons to any place. I’m here, raising my daughters here, because it’s home, where my imperfect family is, where I feel best equipped to teach my kids how to take care of themselves. None of my native New Yorker friends came here from somewhere else as adults to prove anything or to get away from what they feel was a too-conformist upbringing or to be the best in their industry, as so many do, so we tend not to be prone to excess. Native New Yorker parents–and please, friends, chime in if I’m not speaking for you here–are just moms and dads like everywhere else who want our children to be safe and smart and kind and happy.

Still, it’s trippy to see your young ones living the 2.0 version of your New York childhood on these same streets, especially since the city is much safer than it was in the Koch administration, and because us parents are much more up our kids butts than mine, at least, were back then. I walked three blocks home from the school bus alone in the third grade, crossing over to avoid the crack house on the corner of 97th and Columbus which is now bespoke condos facing a Whole Foods. My mom tells me I insisted, accusing her of being overprotective. I don’t let my kids cross the street without me and they’re in the 5th grade. They’re too giddy, spaced out, and, well, childlike, in my view.

Thing is, while a safer city in which they don’t have to be quite as street smart allowed them to be that way, that’s only a good thing if they don’t get hit by a car.

Which is why I am not one of those people who long for the city’s seedy past, when Times Square was truly the festering, filthy, stinking armpit of the universe (as opposed to the shaved, deodorized and hyper-corporate armpit it is now). New York was often an unpleasant, scary place that smelled like pee. But a lot was easier, both for us as children and for our parents. Things were cheaper, schooling was less complicated, and according to my mom, anyway, parenting was less of an achievement-oriented occupation, here and in the ‘burbs.

Not for nothing, for all the “wildness” of life in the big city as a small person, the only place I remember smoking pot was as a kid was in Livingston, NJ, when I visited my camp friends. I envied their rec rooms, but they complained they were bored out of their gourds. And yet, most of them, too, turned out fine. Go figure.

Photo downloaded from Christine Macaluso-Russo–many thanks.

Tween cakewalk

Any of you who have tween daughters are familiar with the fact that–all of a sudden–if you inhale air within 15 feet of them in front of their friends you are “So not cool, Mom.”

(Yeah, cuz I was totally trying to be extra cool in the way I didn’t let my cells die by depriving them of oxygen. Whatever. Dealing with tweens makes it really hard not to start talking like one, which of course is the MOST embarrassing thing you could do. See: “Mom, no one SAYS that.”)

And if you so much as EXhale (let alone say hello to a friend of theirs at drop off or point out that they have eye schmutz and might want to do something about it) you get the dreaded, “No, Mom. Just, No.”

I was all set to be on my best behavior when I took my girls, who are 10, and my boyfriend’s 12-year-old daughter on a walking tour of great cupcakes around town. My kids are awkward around Ruby, who is beautiful and reserved and more teen than kid these days, which makes my mile-a-minute still-silly girls extra self-conscious.

So on the way to picking up Ruby, I proactively told Sasha and Viv that I was going to make an extra special effort not to be embarrassing, but that they needed to cut me some slack, since I need to be allowed to minimally converse in order to affect the day’s plans, which involved the basics of checking in at the tour, etc.

“Yeah, that would be good,” Sasha said. “Like, don’t go up strange women and say, “O.M.G. I LOVE YOUR HAT!”

I harrumphed. “Oh, come on, I have never in all my livelong days, said ‘O.M.G. I love your’ anything! That’s not fair.” (“Mom, no one says ‘livelong days.’”)

This was our tour guide, on the right. That is indeed a cupcake hat.

[image error]

“O.M.G., I love your hat!” I whispered to her as we checked in. “Thanks!” She whispered back. She was a pro. Or a mom of tweens.

As we froze our fingers licking frosting off of them at 6 different cupcake venues, I mostly kept my mouth shut, speaking only to facilitate cupcake procurement and to suggest ways of staying warm. But the stress was getting to me.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Viv asked, as I pursed my lips together.

“Nothing. I just want you to know how many potentially embarrassing things I could have said today that I didn’t say. I really deserve a lot of credit. Oh, wait, I’m not saying one right now. Oooh, it’s hard.”

Three girls looked at me, stony faced, though I thought I saw a hint of a smile in Ruby’s eyes. Probably my imagination.

Then Viv said, “No, Mom. Just, No.”

 

Tween cakewalk

Any of you who have tween daughters are familiar with the fact that–all of a sudden–if you inhale air within 15 feet of them in front of their friends you are “So not cool, Mom.”

(Yeah, cuz I was totally trying to be extra cool in the way I didn’t let my cells die by depriving them of oxygen. Whatever. Dealing with tweens makes it really hard not to start talking like one, which of course is the MOST embarrassing thing you could do. See: “Mom, no one SAYS that.”)

And if you so much as EXhale (let alone say hello to a friend of theirs at drop off or point out that they have eye schmutz and might want to do something about it) you get the dreaded, “No, Mom. Just, No.”

I was all set to be on my best behavior when I took my girls, who are 10, and my boyfriend’s 12-year-old daughter on a walking tour of great cupcakes around town. My kids are awkward around Ruby, who is beautiful and reserved and more teen than kid these days, which makes my mile-a-minute still-silly girls extra self-conscious.

So on the way to picking up Ruby, I proactively told Sasha and Viv that I was going to make an extra special effort not to be embarrassing, but that they needed to cut me some slack, since I need to be allowed to minimally converse in order to affect the day’s plans, which involved the basics of checking in at the tour, etc.

“Yeah, that would be good,” Sasha said. “Like, don’t go up strange women and say, “O.M.G. I LOVE YOUR HAT!”

I harrumphed. “Oh, come on, I have never in all my livelong days, said ‘O.M.G. I love your’ anything! That’s not fair.” (“Mom, no one says ‘livelong days.'”)

This was our tour guide, on the right. That is indeed a cupcake hat.

[image error]

“O.M.G., I love your hat!” I whispered to her as we checked in. “Thanks!” She whispered back. She was a pro. Or a mom of tweens.

As we froze our fingers licking frosting off of them at 6 different cupcake venues, I mostly kept my mouth shut, speaking only to facilitate cupcake procurement and to suggest ways of staying warm. But the stress was getting to me.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Viv asked, as I pursed my lips together.

“Nothing. I just want you to know how many potentially embarrassing things I could have said today that I didn’t say. I really deserve a lot of credit. Oh, wait, I’m not saying one right now. Oooh, it’s hard.”

Three girls looked at me, stony faced, though I thought I saw a hint of a smile in Ruby’s eyes. Probably my imagination.

Then Viv said, “No, Mom. Just, No.”

 

IKEA existentialism

I spent all yesterday morning in a certain kind of Hemnes hell that anyone who has ever assembled a piece of IKEA furniture–especially one with casters and drawers and 17 similar but not interchangeable screws–is familiar with.

But my gals needed a  dresser for their ’80s neon wardrobe, and so I took a deep breath and committed the time and the patience that I normally don’t have to the task.

While I was screwing and tapping and sliding and matching bits and pieces, I queued up what I thought was a clever (if a little obvious) blog post in my head about resisting the urge to try and cram a round peg into a square hole (or, in IKEA parlance, peg number 4001128365 into the hole meant for peg number 4828811165433).

I learned this lesson the painful and expensive way after trying for perhaps too many years to force myself into a marriage that didn’t fit. The wordless instructions, in the supposedly universal language of love, made logical sense but didn’t construct something solid and sustainable. (One could argue that the end result of an IKEA assembly is furniture that isn’t solid and sustainable either, but go with me on this–presumably if you put it together properly your Expedit supports your books and your Tromsö loft bed doesn’t send your kid crashing to the floor in the middle of the night. )

In my triple-clever blog post, everything one does in a marriage was directly analogous to the options one weighs as you assemble an IKEA piece: You can analyze, try a different perspective, bang, cry, cut corners, skip steps, ad-lib with outside nails, call in the experts and force things into where you think they should go, which will result in an unusable pile of particle board. I was then going to sum it up with something pithy about allowing yourself the time and wisdom to figure it out, which you eventually will, even if you abort the mission and call one of the expensive assemblers to come do the job for you.

But now I’m thinking that the IKEA-assembly-as-life-philosophy analogy only goes so far. With Hemnes, there’s a picture of the completed dresser for you to look at so at least you know that you’re screwing up, if not how to fix it.

With a relationship, not so much. There’s no agreed-upon end result, except perhaps the vague shared desire for “harmony” and “peace” and “support,” which obviously can mean very different things to the two halves of a couple. (Add sister wives and things get exponentially more complicated.)

In any case, as arduous as the process of assembling the above was, it was therapeutic and unlike life, perhaps a task better undertaken alone. This cracked me up (thanks Marina!).

 

 

I knew him when

So I’m at the gym, faux cross country skiing to nowhere and watching MSNBC to keep it from being even more tedious than it is. The talk show host introduces one of her panelists, who turns out to be a guy I went to high school with.

Super-impressive, clearly a thoughtful and knowledgeable person who has no doubt earned his nosebleed ascent through the ranks of business reporting, including stints at the two most important newspapers in the country (yes, newspapers are still very important.)

But as I listen to his commentary on the economic recovery, such as it is, all I’m thinking is, That guy told his buddies that we did things together that we didn’t when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. Not “the” thing but the next obvious thing, one of several that you don’t want to be famous around your school for doing with a lot of guys.

Now, this is hardly a crime and not even emotionally damaging beyond maybe a day or two of embarrassment and adolescent outrage back in 1982. He was actually a nice guy back then and I’m sure still is. Until I saw him on TV I hadn’t thought of it since I read one of his articles years ago. Then, as now, I wished him nothing but continued success.

(My boyfriend, who went to our same high school but who I didn’t know back then, asked if I wanted him to kick this guy’s ass. I told him sure, but only after he gets me a job at the New York Times.)

My point is, these things are what we remember about people, even after they’ve gone on to do change the world in positive ways large and small. Scares the crap out of me to think what youthful transgressions people remember about me when they see something I’ve written or see me on TV. “Look at that! I went to grammar school with her! She was too scared to ask where the bathroom was on the first day of first grade and wet the seat.” (True story.)

A few other things come to mind, which I will refrain from listing here. I’m sure there are dozens of less-than-proud moments in my history that old friends or bunk mates remember that I’ve since blocked out. I’ve told a few of my own to my daughters (who are ten and going through that everything’s embarrassing phase) to show them that once survives these traumas, by and large (the obvious exceptions being when they escalate to full scale bullying, but I’m not talking about that.)

Thoughts? I invite you all to post your version of such stories, whether you were on the giving or the receiving end of the regrettable mistake. You’ll get closure, and you’ll make me feel better for having an elephant-like memory for only the mortifying stuff.