Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 73

An interview with a person who is better with money than I am.

So, you guys know that I rarely make sponsored or commercial posts. When I do, it’s usually because I think you can take something away from the post, even if you don’t necessarily purchase or utilize the product. Or, it’s because I can get free sunglasses and put them on my dog. In any case, when I do a sponsored post I’m always up front about whether or not I’ve been compensated for making the post. In this case, I have not. But when Marianne from Personal Capital contacted me about doing a post on female financial role models, I thought “this is something I probably need to address more in my own life, and I’m sure some of my readers are in the same boat.” So that’s why I’m bringing you this commercial-oriented post today.

After reading a CNBC article wherein she learned that only 53% of women have started planning for retirement (in comparison to 65% of men), Marianne was inspired to reach out to bloggers to ask them, “who is your female financial role model?” And when she reached out to me, I realized that I didn’t really have one. All the women I know are in the same boat I am. The boat is leaky, and full of holes through through which debt swamps us, and all our money gets washed overboard. And depending on your generation, socioeconomic status, level of education, and all kinds of other variables, some boats are More leaky than others.

Such is the case with the woman I decided to profile. Because even though she isn’t necessarily doing better than any of the other women I know, I thought she was a pretty good example. This wonderful friend of mine didn’t want to share her real name when talking about money, and I told her that I would refer to her as Cherie. But I lied. I’m going to refer to her as Professor McGonagall, due to the fact that she is a cat lady.

Professor McGonagall  is a single woman who has recently bought her first house with some help from family. She’s an office manager for a small local business, and she keeps a budget religiously. “I keep a little notebook where I track every transaction, so plus or minus. It’s just like keeping the check register that the bank sends you. I just know how much money I have left for groceries and gas and fun things, after all the bills, because all the bills get paid first,” she says.

Even though her budget structure is fairly simple (“I get paid every week. I have a master list of when everything is due every month. Like, my cable is always on a certain day, or my mortgages on a certain day. And every week, I budget out what’s due. Even though I don’t pay my mortgage every week, I deduct a certain amount from my checking account so it’s like I don’t have the money.”), Professor McGonagall stresses that keeping track of her finances is a priority: “If you live paycheck to paycheck, you know that you have to keep a strict weekly or biweekly budget, because otherwise you’re just going to run out of money.”

When I asked Professor McGonagall how she learned to do this, she answered, “By f–––ing up by not doing it in the first place. It just made sense to me.”

This highlights one of the major problems Gen Xers and Millenials are running into: no one bothered to teach us any of this. Even in economics class in high school, we learned precious little about keeping a household budget, balancing a checkbook, or navigating credit card interest. “I really wish I would have known how credit cards work,” McGonagall  says. “Even in college, I didn’t realize how debt worked. I didn’t realize how interest works. I just wish I could have known how credit worked when I was younger.”

Professor McGonagall isn’t a fan of credit cards. “I feel like they are the devil. But unfortunately, in this economy, you have to have a credit history to get anything. When I wanted to buy my house, I didn’t have any credit cards. The first thing the bank told me was, ‘you have to get a credit card.’ I had to spend  small amounts on it to boost my credit, because no credit is worse than bad credit. So basically, because I didn’t have a car payment or anything else I was doing that wasn’t just bills for utilities or cable or rent or something, I didn’t have that. If you are operating without credit cards or loans of any sort you don’t have a credit history.” She says she would absolutely live a debt-free lifestyle, “If that made sense in the world economy, I would do that.”

Even living on a budget for fifteen years isn’t a guarantee that things will always go smoothly. McGonagall reevaluates her budget every single month. “I feel like, and this just happened to me, I was trying to use a sliding budget instead of a budget every week, and it bit me in the a–– to the tune of I don’t have any money left in savings. So I have to reevaluate every month. Usually I plan on a set amount. I’ll budget a hundred dollars for my electric bill, even if it’s not going to be a hundred dollars. But I already planned on how to cover it if it was higher. And then all that money ends up going to something else that I need.”

I asked Professor McGonagall if she’d put away anything for retirement. “Frankly, I can’t afford to save for retirement. I’m basically, at this point, just making enough to cover my bills and my groceries and my gas. Certainly nothing is going to retirement.”

I feel like universally, women make less than men, and I think that the money they do make is expected to go back into the household. I think that a lot of times women saving for retirement takes a backseat.” Since her answer echoes the statistic that so alarmed Marianne, it seems like we may be seeing a bit of a crisis when Gen Xers reach retirement age. They may find themselves working well past the average age of retirement we expected in years past. More positions occupied by workers who should be moving on to retirement spells trouble for the generation entering the workforce.

So, what’s the solution? Saving money for retirement.

While it’s not possible for everyone, it doesn’t hurt to check into the possibilities. Personal Capital has come up with a retirement calculation app to help you do just that. I believe you have to sign up for a free account on the Personal Capital website to use it. I haven’t used the app myself, so I can’t endorse its services, but if you decide to use it, please share your experiences in the comments. And if you have a female financial role model story of your own, you can share it there, too!

THE BABY is here!

The Baby is available on Amazon and Smashwords TODAY!

When life unravels, someone has to wind it up again. Sophie Scaife has found herself in such a position one time too many. She should be celebrating a new year and bountiful success; instead, she’s trying desperately to hold her world together as it tears apart. 

For Sophie and her husband, billionaire Neil Elwood, coupling the domesticity of marriage and their steamy games of Dominance and submission comes naturally. Rekindling their sinfully kinky affair with an old flame makes their passion burn hotter than ever, and Neil’s lust for Sophie is matched only by his drive in undertaking an ambitious new philanthropic venture. 

But in the wake of Neil’s greatest triumph comes a staggering life change neither of them are prepared for. Overnight, Sophie finds herself in a new reality, wholly unlike the life she’d planned. As emotions run high, Sophie struggles to reconcile the husband she cherishes with a man she no longer knows; a man she loves too much to let go without a fight… 

Content warning: contains mention of suicide and suicidal ideation, as well as recovery. 

Ebook available now at Amazon and Smashwords!*

Paperback available from CreateSpace.**

Available in audio from Tantor Media December 22, 2015.

*(All formats, including .RTF and .HTML are available at Smashwords. Third party retailers such as iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo receive the book from Smashwords and list the title when they receive it.)
**(Paperback available on Amazon and at third party retailers soon.)

WARNING: THE COMMENTS ARE NOT A SPOILER-FREE ZONE.

Double Steve Bonus Monday

(Hawking)

#LegionXIII (Rome watch-along) S01E01: “The Stolen Eagle”

It’s time for another watch along with Bronwyn Green and Jess Jarman! Our new banner is made by the lovely and talented Isabel, who also made our Merlin Club banner (I’m the sleepy centurion)! But before this one was finished, I was like, “You know, if she doesn’t get it done this week, I can just use this picture of Ray Stevenson, since he was in Rome.”

I’m fully aware that this isn’t a picture of him when he was in Rome, but you’re welcome anyway.

Someone actually sent me that picture because they said it’s how they imagine Neil Elwood. So you’re welcome for that, too.

Anyway, this watch-along party is a lot shorter than our previous TV watching club, because are only two seasons of Rome. So enjoy this one while it lasts, and join us on Monday nights at 9 PM EST. This one is only available on Amazon prime or DVD. Sorry about that, but I really wanted Jess and Bronwyn to watch this one, so I can destroy their lives the way I did when I made them watch Game of Thrones.

Quick rundown of the episode: episode one speeds us through the demise of the friendship between Caesar and Pompey. Imagine if Obama and Biden had a falling out, and they started sending each other really passive-aggressive letters, and then Biden tried to steal Obama’s golden eagle, and then Obama cut the head off of Biden’s secretary and sent it to him in a box. That’s kind of how this whole ancient Roman thing goes down. Also, Pompey bangs Caesar’s niece, and then doesn’t marry her. There’s also this whole thing with a horse.

Related to the horse thing, Caesar’s niece, Atia, buys this horse (which is a really nice horse) and sends her teenage son through like, the most dangerous part of Gaul to deliver it to Caesar, just so she can get some brownie points. Octavian (the aforementioned teenager) gets captured by some bad guys. Like you do when you’re a completely unarmed kid just riding a horse through Gaul.

So back to this golden eagle thing. I’m not talking about the Midwest chain of grocery stores, but an actual golden-eagle-on-a-post thing that Caesar really enjoys having. It’s this emblem of his might in Gaul. Or something. Anyway, after Caesar captures Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, he makes the poor defeated dude kiss it, and then somebody steals it. So now someone has to find it.

Those someones are Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. They don’t get along real well. Pullo is a disobedient drunk, and Vorenus is a real uptight military dude. Also, there was this whole thing where Vorenus had Pullo flogged and sentenced to death, which is kind of a sore spot. They go on a buddy cop mission to find the eagle, and in doing so, also find Octavian, and Pompey’s slave who helped steal the eagle in the first place. And then Caesar sends the slave’s decapitated head back to Pompey and writes a letter that’s basically, “hey, I’m bringing the military back and I’m super pissed at you.”

 My favorite part of the episode: When Vorenus and Pullo rescue Octavian, and Octavian furiously bashes in the head of one of his kidnappers over and over and over. It looks a lot like this:

“PC load letter? What the fuck does that mean?”

My least favorite part of the episode: the part were poor Octavia have to get all tarted up and paraded in front of Pompey to ultimately be publicly humiliated after he sleeps with her, then marry someone else. I want to protect Octavia at all costs.

Favorite costume:  Mr. Jingle Dick.

Team Atia or Team Servillia: Team Atia, always. Well, not always. But in many episodes. In this one, definitely, because she’s the most interesting.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet:

#LegionXIII pic.twitter.com/ynrBem0wuG

— Jessica Jarman (@jessjarman) November 3, 2015

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? Servilia’s party hair.

Guess Jess’s head canon. It’s probably way too early to start thinking of head canon, but I have a feeling Jess will be slashing Vorenus and Pullo before too long.

Now go check out Bronwyn’s and Jess’s posts, and join us on Monday at 9 PM EST for season one, episode two, “How Titus Pullo Brought Down The Republic”. Tweet to #LegionXIII to join us!

 

One Week to THE BABY!

Hey everybody! We’re a week away from the release of The Baby!  I’m so excited for you to read this book. But so far, I haven’t posted much about it.  I previously released an excerpt (that hadn’t been through proofreading yet, so ignore the typos),  but today, I’m releasing the blurb (or, “back cover copy”, as we old-timers say).

 

When life unravels, someone has to wind it up again. Sophie Scaife has found herself in such a position one time too many. She should be celebrating a new year and bountiful success; instead, she’s trying desperately to hold her world together as it tears apart.

For Sophie and her husband, billionaire Neil Elwood, coupling the domesticity of marriage and their steamy games of Dominance and submission comes naturally. Rekindling their sinfully kinky affair with an old flame makes their passion burn hotter than ever, and Neil’s lust for Sophie is matched only by his drive in undertaking an ambitious new philanthropic venture.

But in the wake of Neil’s greatest triumph comes a staggering life change neither of them are prepared for. Overnight, Sophie finds herself in a new reality, wholly unlike the life she’d planned. As emotions run high, Sophie struggles to reconcile the husband she cherishes with a man she no longer knows; a man she loves too much to let go without a fight…

Content warning: contains mention of suicide and suicidal ideation, as well as recovery.

The Baby will be available at Amazon, Smashwords on November 10, and all other retailers as they make it available. If you read on Nook, Kobo or the iBooks platform,  those formats are always available from Smashwords, as is the option to read directly on the Smashwords site. The paperback edition will follow.

One thing I beg of you is to avoid spoilers for this book, and to avoid spoiling it for others. There is been a lot of speculation with regards to the title, and  and I’m sure there will be even more speculation with the release of this blurb. It would be awesome if you tag spoilers on social media for this one, and I would really appreciate it.

DOUBLE STEVE BONUS MONDAY

(McQueen)

Growing up in a haunted house

Since it’s Halloween, the internet is full of more scary stories than usual. At this time of year, people love to recount their tales of spooky encounters they’ve had, but you rarely hear stories of haunted houses that are positive.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned it on the blog, but I grew up in a haunted house.

When I was born, my mother and I live with my grandparents. Parts of the house we lived in were rumored to be two hundred years old; once during construction on the oldest room in the house (the dining room, which had been a single room cabin), my great-grandfather found a bottle of whiskey with the date 1773 molded into the glass. other parts of the house had been added on over the years, and for most of those my family owned it.

If I’m remembering correctly, the first generation of my family to live there was my great-great-great-grandmother, one Mrs. Euphemia Putman Pickles, famously arrested (well, famously in my family) for engaging in a “fisticuffs altercation” with a Mrs. Knickerbocker over some allegedly stolen hay. As far as I’m aware, she’s not one of the ghosts in the house. I guess she could be, but no one’s ever found themselves on the wrong end of the spectral punch, so I doubt it.

The house is located two miles outside of the very rural town where I still live. For many years, there was an undertaker here, but not a funeral home (there is one now; the family who used to own it gave out full-sized candy bars on Halloween and commended us for our bravery, as they didn’t get many trick-or-treaters). The nearest hospital is twenty miles away, a nearly insurmountable distance before the advent of cars In the early twentieth century. Our little farming community did see the addition of a small hospital (it is now closed), due to a flux of tourism relating to our many pristine lakes and the fact that we were a stop on the now defunct Chicago, Kalamazoo & Saginaw Railroad. The point of me telling you all this is to help explain that for a very long time, people in this community lived in their homes, died in their homes, and were prepared to go to their final rest in their homes.

One such unfortunate soul was my grandmother’s little brother, Tony. During a typhoid outbreak in the 1940s, he contracted the sickness at seven years old. He died on a cot in front of the window where my grandma now keeps her phone. When he was alive, he used to wake up his parents by running into their room, putting his hands on their bed, and kicking his feet up against the wall. That still happens; small handprints on the bed in the same bedroom push into the mattress, and kicking rattles the wall. Tony has also been seen walking around the house by various family members. I believe I’ve seen him once, though I mistook him for my son (who very much resembles him) until I remembered that my son wasn’t with me.

Another family member who’s been spotted is my great-great-grandfather. He’s been seen standing at the top of the stairs. I remember that every night, reliably, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. It wasn’t the creaking and groaning of an old house (when you live in a very old house, those fade into background noise you barely notice anymore), but the sound of a person coming down at a normal pace with weight on each step, exactly as it sounded whenever anyone came down.

When he died, his casket sat in the bay window in the living room, where the Christmas tree goes now. My great uncle was very young at the time, and was found sitting in the coffin with his grandfather, combing his hair. This is a cherished memory in my family, and spoken of fondly.

I swear we are not the Addams family, though I do wish they were somewhat distant relatives.

Another dearly departed family member who prefers to hang around is my great-great-grandmother, who died in the room that later became my bedroom. She loved children, my mother, especially, as she was a toddler during the years that my great-great-grandmother was bedridden, and would run into her bedroom every morning to greet her. When I was a child, I never had a creepy feeling in that room, though as I got older I became inexplicably freaked out by it.

A few months after my son was born, we stayed the night at my grandparent’s house, in my great-great-grandmother’s room. We put our son in a crib at the end of the bed and, because the room could get cold at night, hung a blanket over the end of the crib in case we needed it for him in the night. Sometime in the night, I woke to find my son lying perfectly centered in the crib, the blanket not only folded over his chest, but under his little arms and tucked into the sides of the mattress. The next morning, I asked my grandparents if they’d tucked him in during the night. My grandmother hadn’t gotten up in the night, and my grandfather said that while he got up to get a snack, he didn’t go near the room for fear of waking the baby. My grandmother’s explanation? “It must have been my grandma. There never was a baby warm enough for that woman.”

And that was the matter of fact attitude with which my entire family approaches the house. We all know it’s haunted, we’ve all seen and experienced things there, and it’s no big deal. Though one of my cousins is terrified of the place, and my aunts agreed that I was nuts for staying there alone when I was a teenager, the house doesn’t bother me. I’ve always liked the way it feels like you’re not alone. Being in a non-haunted house is lonely when no one else is there, but you can be the only living soul in my grandma’s house and still feel like it’s a busy house with lots of people in it.

The most recent person to pass away in the house was my grandfather, several years ago. While I haven’t seen him in the house, I do one day hope to. And I hope the house stays in the family for many more years to come. I’d hate to think of our departed loved ones trapped in some Beetlejuice-style scenario with people who don’t appreciate them.

No, romance novels are not all the same, but thanks for offering your uneducated, unsolicited opinion.

 “But a romance novel isn’t exactly ‘ Infinite Jest.’ though some bodice-rippers are dirtier than others, there is a formula — at some point, the wealthy heiress or the lady-in-waiting hooks up with the horse wrangler or the errant knight, and jeans come off or, well, bodices get ripped.”   —Justin Wm. Moyer,  The Washington Post

If you’ve heard the term “bodice-ripper” lately, ten to one it’s because some clueless journalist is writing a story about romance novels. This week, the stories have been about Laura Harner and her plagiarism of Becky McGraw and Opal Carew. The story has gone somewhat viral in the news media, showing up not only at The Washington Post, but at The Guardian, Jezebel, and the Daily Mail. Despite the seriousness of the allegations, commenters on several of the sites appear to agree with Moyer’s blanket assessment of all romance novels.

Detractors come up with the same tired excuses to hate the genre time and again. It’s criticized for being formulaic; in his Washington Post article, Moyer goes on to accuse romance novels of having a “fill in the blanks quality”. This is particularly rich coming from a journalist who largely copied and pasted his entire story from The Guardian.  If Moyer had bothered to contact  McGraw, or any other romance author or reader, before writing his article (as Allison  Flood, author of the Guardian article did), he may have found someone willing to  clear up his misconceptions and help him save face. Of course, that would have required actually communicating with silly people who are clearly below him.

Echoing Moyer’s asinine position, some commenters on the Guardian article felt that Harner’s plagiarism was a  non-issue, since the formulaic qualities of these novels rendered them all exactly alike.

Let’s examine this allegation, shall we? Why don’t we compare The Liar, by Nora Roberts, in which a widow learns that her late husband was a con-man and falls for a small-town contractor, all while raising her three-year-old daughter and living  in the dangerous shadow of her husband’s lies, with Virgin River, by Robyn Carr, in which a widowed nurse moves to a small mountain town, where she rescues an abandoned baby and falls in love with a former Marine. “Wow,” you might be saying. “Those books both have  widows! They both have children! They both have small towns! How can you possibly tell them apart?”

Well, one is a romantic suspense with danger and murder, and the other is a feel-good romance about learning to love again. Sure, they have things in common, but so do many high fantasy books. You can find plenty of superficial similarities between Tolkien’s  Lord of the Rings saga and Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series (an all-powerful dark villain, an ancient horn, shadowy black wraiths), but does that mean they’re the same story? Does it mean either series is less worthy of praise, or that one doesn’t have value? What if we throw fan boy favorite A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin, into the mix? After all, that series also has a chosen one named after a dragon,  so it’s practically indistinguishable from The Wheel of Time,  and therefore not any good.

To say that all romance is the same because they all share genre conventions is like saying all sports are the same because at the end of the game, someone’s going to win. Yes, in a romance novel there will always be  a character who meets another character and falls in love, but that’s hardly a “fill-in the blank” template. One of the characters can be anyone; a reporter. A cowboy. A vampire. The other could easily be a fairy, or a detective, or a billionaire. And the obstacles to true love are not going to be the same for a sheik and a hotelier as they would be for a werewolf and a DEA agent. Setting, too, influences the plot as much as the characters; a Regency heiress simply can’t have the same life experience, motivations, and dreams as a space explorer in the year 2309, unless we’re talking in the extreme abstract.

In the mainstream press, romance novels are a joke. Despite raking in $1.08 billion in 2013, the industry is still derided as worthless. Maybe it’s because 84% of all romance readers are women, and romance writers are mostly women, as well.

No, wait. There is no “maybe”. That’s exactly why.

If misogyny didn’t come into play, why aren’t people like Moyer roundly mocking Nicholas Sparks for his formulaic novels?  If future civilizations unearthed Nicholas Sparks’s catalog, they would likely believe that the entire Earth was made up solely of North Carolina. The same with the frequent New England settings of the novels of Stephen King, who has also written numerous stories in which something spooky happens to a white male writer.

To take a broader look,  how many men have written novels in which unlikely groups of heroes from vastly different personal backgrounds band together to win the day? And what about superheroes? Men and women with various powers and themed outfits, all bearing the burden of a super villain arch nemesis and the dangers of their own hubris. It’s a largely male-dominated genre, defended to the death by a largely male-dominated audience who are just as passionate in pointing out the differences between their favorite heroes as romance readers are in pointing out the abundant variances in their genre. Yet, only the former has reached a place of pop-culture relevance that earns it respect. Even if that respect is given somewhat grudgingly to comics, romance readers and authors can only expect to find derision and snide hostility from people who refuse to read the books, but who are all too willing to offer their uneducated, unsolicited opinions.

All romance novels are not the same. All romance readers are not the same. A quick perusal of the romance category on Amazon could prove that in three clicks. But if detractors educated themselves, how can they make their snide, wholly unfounded remarks? How can they display their superior taste, if they can’t put millions of women down?

If a journalist were writing an article about heart surgery, we would assume that they would consult an actual cardiac surgeon. Simply editorializing on the subject and calling it reporting would never fly. So why do we accept that writers who display open distaste for the romance genre, and who clearly have no working knowledge of it, have the authority to report on it? Unless a journalist is willing to reach out to authors and readers of romance, or at least research the genre before denouncing it entirely, then they — and we — would be better off if they didn’t write about it at all.

State of the Trout: “Some news, mostly reassurance that I’m still working” edition

Hey everybody in Trout Nation! I’m finally catching up with all the work I got behind on while I was on vacation. But I’ve still got other work that I’ve got to do in order to get The Baby to you guys on its November 10 release date. So, in the meantime here’s some stuff that’s going on:

There’s a new chapter of The Afflicted. If you haven’t been reading my free New Adult horror serial on Wattpad, Halloween is the perfect time to start. I believe you have to sign up for a Wattpad account to access the content, but it’s worth it because there are some great free books on there. You can read The Afflicted  from the beginning here, or read the latest chapter here.

Writing exercise while I was bored led to The Boss from Neil’s POV. Every once in a while on Tumblr, I’ll get  an anonymous message asking me if I’d ever consider writing The Boss from Neil’s POV. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I’m getting hundreds of messages here. It’s probably the same anon over and over and over again. But the other day I was really bored and kind of in a funk and I couldn’t concentrate on anything, so I decided I would write the beginning of the first chapter of The Boss from Neil’s point of view (you can read it here). The response I got — from anonymous people and not-so-anonymous people — was that they would like to see more in Neil’s point of view. So that’s something I started working on, and hope to release within the next year.

A long time ago, I said that I couldn’t understand why authors would write a book, then rewrite the book from another character’s POV. Then, I took a different stance where I was like “okay I can see why you would want to do that, but isn’t it really hard? I could never do that!” Which is why wrote first time the way I did. Two different POV’s, written at the same time, so I didn’t have to remember all the little details. Now I’m doing the exact thing I thought was going to be so dreadfully hard. So we’ll see how this goes.

Let’s talk about the next Buffy recap is going to work. Because  season two ends with a two-part episode (that’s pretty fast paced), I don’t necessarily want to leave a break of a full month between the recaps, which is what has sort of been happening. I also don’t want to do it all in one giant recap, because I’ll be a lot to read in one sitting. So I’m going to release two recaps closer together, maybe separated by a couple of days. Some of you were asking about how that would work, so that’s what I’ve come up with.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got from the news desk, at least until The Baby releases. Expect some promo posts  and hopefully the recaps before then.

Diets, language, and co-opting each other’s experiences of fatness

I’m trying to lose weight.

I know, I know. I ate fifty chicken nuggets this weekend. The messed up part of that is that it didn’t put me over my Weight Watcher’s points for the week.

As a person who’s looked to for fat positive viewpoints, I feel like a bit of a traitor. At the very least I feel like a hypocrite. Once you come out and you say “I’m here and I’m fat and I like myself,” you take on the mantle of representing body positivity 24/7, whether you want to or not. If you’ve just begun your journey, or you’re comfortable with yourself and your fatness, or if you struggle with your self-esteem as it relates to weight, it doesn’t matter. The moment you step into a place of visibility, people feel your fatness no longer belongs to you. It’s owned by others, and they’re going to use it to represent their social viewpoint.

I recently saw a post on Tumblr where there was a quote from Rebel Wilson, saying that she had been “good” on her diet. “Good” meaning that she was sticking to her diet and losing or maintaining her weight, as opposed to not dieting and not exercising, which would be “bad”. There’s no denying that classifying behaviors associated with weight gain as “bad” while granting the behaviors we associate with weight loss or fitness, “good” in a moral sense is harmful and unproductive to people’s self-esteem. One commenter was absolutely outraged to see that Wilson had used “good” in this context. Others deemed Wilson problematic on this issue and lamented that there would never be a celebrity who is comfortable in their own fat skin.

In other words, Wilson dared to not be the perfect fatty, and in doing so was letting down people to whom she had absolutely no responsibility. Now, if her comment bothers you to the point that you didn’t want to buy clothes from her new plus size line…well that’s an understandable reaction. No one has to buy Wilson’s clothes, but why should she be vehemently criticized for using what is common, if harmful, language that’s impressed upon women in Western cultures from the moment we gain a single unwanted pound? Fatphobic language subtly brainwashes us. It’s not a conscious choice to use these words and phrases. For many people it’s an automatic response, even if we’re aware of why our words are harmful (More than once I’ve caught myself saying that I was “really good today” about my eating habits). So why is it unforgivable? Why is the response to these instances hostility instead of sadness?

Rebel Wilson works in industry where her entire livelihood depends on her appearance. if Wilson did not rock the stereotypical feminine look, if she didn’t have long hair or cute bangs or false eyelashes, if there wasn’t some indication that she’s striving to glam up, she would have no job. Further, and directly related to her “good” diet comment, fat actresses are required to talk about how much they exercise, how much they eat, how “good” they’re being. They, like all fat people, must justify their fatness to strangers, just as thin celebrities have to claim to eat McDonald’s or pizza for every meal. This is no different than what any woman in any field faces; you’re more “professional” if you wear makeup and a traditionally feminine look. If you don’t adhere to these conventions, you might not have a job. Is it really reasonable to demand that Rebel Wilson risk her job, her livelihood, to combat an unfair system that’s actively oppressing her and forcing her to conform in order to succeed in the first place?

None of those things apply to my weight loss motivation (of which I remain uncertain). I fear that my desire to lose weight will be interpreted as a betrayal of fat people, as a betrayal of body positivity. I’m not dieting and exercising to stay healthy; I’m already pretty healthy, with regards to heath issues traditionally (if incorrectly) associated with obesity. I’m not losing weight because I think I’ll gain some career advantage; nobody sees me doing my job, anyway, and writing about my fatness has been a huge part of my career. I’m losing weight to change my body, but I don’t hate myself, and I’m not doing it out of some newfound feeling of “truly” loving myself enough to diet. I’m viewing this attempt at weight loss as a matter of appearance alone, no different than getting a new tattoo. Maybe i’m buying into antifeminist standards of beauty. Maybe I’m bowing to peer pressure. All I know is, this time, deciding to lose weight feels different. I’ve dieted out of despair before. I’ve dieted out of self-hatred. I know what those feel like, and they don’t feel the way I feel now. I’m comfortable with my body, I’ll be comfortable if I don’t lose weight and I’ll be comfortable if I do lose weight.

At the same time, I’m not sure I’ll handle any potential backlash with grace. Despite how open I am about fat oppression and how vocally I oppose fat hate, my weight can sometimes be a sensitive subject–not because I hate myself, but because I hate it when people disrespect me because of my weight or presume to know how I feel about it. And that goes for both fat haters and fat people who view every fat body as a platform for their own body politics.

I would ultimately love to live in a society where appearance wasn’t commented on. A place where we’re not judged by how we look. But we don’t live in that society. It’s great that there are people out there who are able to remove those harmful influences from their lives. It’s maddening that if you’re not striving for thinness or hyper femininity, if you’re not worshipping in the cult of the bikini bridge and the thigh gap, you’re automatically labelled as self-hating. I love it when women realize that it’s not a sin to love yourself as you are, or that it’s not unhealthy to have any good feelings about yourself. But not everybody can feel that way, and that’s because of those societal pressures from which none of us are spared. We can ask them to listen intently and watch their own words, and we can scorn people who refuse time and again to do either of these things. But we’re exerting a new kind of pressure on women, to force their experience of fatness into a mold, and to stifle their emotional honesty in favor of willing the problem to fix itself.

Fat hate does not exist because women are being fat incorrectly. Fat hate does not exist because a Hollywood actress (or underrated blogging genius) does or says something that contradicts a certain ideology. Rebel Wilson’s comment wasn’t a judgement against you, just like my weight loss is not my judgement against fat women. I sincerely hope everyone can respect that, just like I’ll continue to respect women of all body types equally, despite any changes I might make to my own.