Amber L. Carter's Blog, page 32
October 31, 2013
#MonthofThanks: JOIN ME.
I've been waiting all month to start doing this, so it makes sense that I would put off writing about it until the night before.
Since November is the month where we give thanks, I'm going to riff off of some of the things I've participated in in past years and do a Month of Thanks. Every day I'll write down something I'm thankful/grateful for, take a photo of it, and post it on here, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
So, between this, #IAmtheOne posts, NaNoWriMo stuff (IT STARTS AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT AND I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M WRITING ABOUT YET), and me trying to play catch-up on some super fun photobombs and random posts/topics…there's gonna be a storm of posts coming this way in November.
Good, because unless you're doing NaNoWriMo and except for that one day where we get to drink and eat like maniacs in the spirit of thanks, November is usually super fucking boring.
* Imagine me saying "JOIN ME" in a Darth Vader voice and you'll get the gist of why I don't really write in coffeeshops anymore, mostly because people think I'm crazy when I start giggling to myself while writing. I spent a lot of time alone as a kid. I didn't really have a lot of friends. I HAD TO BE MY OWN BEST FRIEND AND SIDEKICK, OKAY, EVERYBODY?!
(Very Damn Important Law #1) Be (Unapologetically) Amber
When it comes to making goals…it's complicated. I don't tend to do well with the whole "I will accomplish a billion book sales by June 15th, 2016" type of goals…basically for the same reason why I was asked to take the SATs in the 6th grade but still almost didn't graduate high school due to skipping so much class - I don't like to be hemmed in by your bourgeois rules and archaic concepts of time, maaan.
This particular character trait of mine can be analyzed at another time.
The point is: When it comes to the constructs of changing behavior in the realm of this whole master plan, I figured I would chuck out the idea of making specific improvement goals out the window and instead take a page from Gretchen Rubin's book and come up with a dozen (or less) tenents that I want to start living and learning by.
I don't have an official title for the collection of them yet, but right now, I'm just going to call them Very Damn Important Laws.
(Mostly because "Very Damn Important" is my working title for a project I'm crafting (you can't steal it. I already registered it) and because I like being able to say, "It's the LAW!" when telling myself or someone else to do something)
So for the next few days/week, I'll take you through some of the Very Damn Important Laws I've come up with for myself that are going to help frame this new thang of mine. You can either copy them (I already copied some of them from Gretchen, and I don't think she'd mind) or come up with some of your own.
Ready? Here's the first one:
There’s a scene from The Runaway Bride that I think about often: It’s the scene where Julia Robert’s character, Maggie, makes six plates-full of different kinds of eggs and sets about trying each kind to figure out what her favorite was.
The scene is memorable because it’s the climax of the most subtle yet telling part of the movie: Every time Richard Gere’s character, reporter Ike, interviewed one of Maggie’s jilted fiancés, he would ask them what her favorite eggs were. The audience later realizes that each of them gives him a different answer for how she likes her eggs, but always ended that answer with “Same as me.” Meaning that Maggie’s favorite eggs were always the same as their favorite eggs.
I first saw that scene when I was 20 years old, and it’s resonated with me ever since...and I think it resonated with a lot of women. Either from reading Cosmo or dating some guy in high school who proclaimed we weren’t deep enough if we didn’t like Bob Dylan, I think a lot of us girls grew up feeling that, in order for us to be ultimately attractive, we had to be Matchers when it comes to our choices and preferences. And that scene was a telling lesson that it's best to always order the kind of eggs we liked (eggs being symbolic, of course) instead of just copying our boyfriends.
For the most part, I like what I like. Long-time readers already know that I delight in geeking out on stuff like mystical wolves or creepy fan art or dumb reality shows. I don’t tend to care whether or not the general public thinks that stuff is cool. But I have noticed that I have this tendency to sometimes align my interests and persona with the certain ideal I have in my head of the kind of person I’d like to be with. Initially, I know that sounds way fake-girl and Cosmo-centric, but before you get the wrong idea, I am so not the girl who pretends to like football because the guy she’s dating is into it.
I mean that. I will never, ever like football just because someone I like is into it.
What I mean is: Sometimes, my thinking and preferences are more concerned with what I think might be attractive to someone else instead of what is attractive to me. I worry about my body not just because I don’t particularly like it at present, but because I worry that it’s not attractive to others. Sometimes I hesitate to fly my freak flag because I’m scared it will turn someone off. Sometimes I attempt to cultivate certain traits and preferences because it’s what I think will instill the most pride in the men in my life.
Yeah.
You’re right.
It is fucking exhausting.
Here’s a small and kind of silly example:
I would be on OkCupid and would stumble across a Super Cute Guy. Every so often, I would read a Super Cute Guy’s profile and find myself getting more and more excited with every line, thinking, “Oh my god, this could be the perfect guy for me.” And then I would invariably spend the next 20 minutes editing and honing my profile so that when he read it, he would say, “Holy crap! We have so much in common. I wanna be with this girl.”
And the thing is, I was never lying, per say. Most of the time, the reason why I already liked Super Cute Guy was because he already liked things I liked, but it was simply things that I either didn’t talk about in my profile or just didn’t like enough for them to be my genuine top favorites. Like with sustainable development: It’s an abiding interest of mine. But is it a full-blown passion? Do I lead with it? Nope. When I saw another guy’s profile that did, though, you bet your earth-saving ass that I put something in my profile about how I get jazzed about that stuff, too. Sometimes it felt innocent, like, "oh hey, you just reminded me of something I liked that I forgot about", and sometimes it felt…kind of gross. Like I wasn't really being all that genuine or full-frontal about who I really was.
The switch on this came with something kind of dumb...I was getting to know this new friend on Twitter, and I saw that she had listed a cartoon movie as one of her favorite films. And I realized that I so admire the people who just put that stuff out there. And I do, in some areas of my life, but I was ashamed to admit to myself that some - okay, a lot - of my underground thinking tends to lean toward what I think might be attractive to a certain type of person, instead of just figuring out and focusing on what it is attractive to me.
For instance, I realized the other day that Anne of Green Gables is one of my all-time favorite books. In terms of lifetime defining, Anne is it. Harry Potter books are the few, if not the only, books I make a point to reread every year (in October, because wizards and Halloween and duh). And I think the Shrek movies are BRILLIANT. They’re hilarious and nerdy and subtle and sweet and the music score just kills me and they have, hands-down, one of the best messages out there...for all people. I could watch those movies a million times (and have done, back when I worked with children with autism) and not get sick of them. But when it came to stuff like creating an online dating profile, I would chuck out Anne, Harry, and Shrek in favor of stuff that could be considered cooler, more grown up (The Royal Tenenbaums! This one book with a cool title that you’ve never read because it’s now out of print!). Most of the time I rationalized it with the argument that the former needs a qualifier, a defense in order to make someone else understand why I might love it, whereas something like a Wes Anderson film simply does not. But when I was thinking about all of this stuff in terms of my self image, I realized: That is a wagon load of super hot bullshit. I don’t need to qualify anything! I have written maybe a BILLION times on this blog about how it should be okay to just let people like what they like...and here I was, worried that some douche on OkCupid wouldn’t find me attractive if I listed one of the most well-loved books in the history of the world as one of my favorites.
So I decided to start a list. A list of things that make me, me. Every time I think of something that I know I really love but just haven’t fully owned yet (or actually really dislike but don’t tend to admit openly), or whenever I discover something new about myself during this process, I’m adding it to the list. It sounds kind of self-absorbed (let’s just admit it right now and get it out the way: This whole project is self-absorbed. On fucking purpose), but it’s actually pretty freaking fun to make a list of stuff like this about yourself. And like I wrote in this post, once you discover something about yourself and decide to just freaking own it, there is this sort of elation. It’s like scraping some of the clay off the Golden Buddha.
So I decided to make “Be (Unapologetically) Amber” the top of my Very Damn Important Laws, because it reminds that it’s more important to be authentically, genuinely, unapologetically everything me - and to accept and love all of that - instead of internalizing other people’s perceptions of me and holding the validation of others above my own. To stop trying to be this vision of who I think I should be, and instead, just start getting jazzed up about who I actually am. And to be fair? In some areas of my life, I’m really, really good at this. I know how to stand up for myself when it comes to bullying and I know how to defend myself against negative bullshit. But I also know that I have to get better at this when it comes to how I think about my body and how I think about myself.
Some things on the list so far:
I love YA paranormal romance novels. I know it sets me up for Twilight jokes. I know people don’t take the genre seriously. But I love them - they're fun and fantastical and dreamy and exciting all at the same time. They are simply a pure pleasure to read.
I actually really don’t like camping. I love the idea of it, and I like it better if there are clean and well-lit restrooms near by, but I don’t dig the uncomfortableness of it.
I want kids, but I’m terrified at the prospect of both giving birth and taking care of a newborn. I think I would be an excellent adoptive mother.
I love watching The Bachelor and The Real Housewives franchises. I find them to be the ultimate entertainment: I love watching the interplay of strong personalities within constructed or mundane scenarios. I anticipate and enjoy a Real Housewife reunion or a Bachelor finale the way football fans do the Superbowl. And I don’t think enjoying those shows makes me shallow.
I would like to be with someone who is both funny and serious. Why do I always feel like I have to choose one or the other? I’m both. There has to be someone else who is, too.
I love the movie New Moon. After watching it 100 times - at first as campy entertainment and then in begrudging earnestness - it’s in there. And I think Kristen Stewart does some amazing acting in it. I think it’s directed well, the cinematography is great, and there’s some scenes in there that deserve to be recognized for their brilliance (the scene where Edward gets out of the truck and then is at Bella’s door faster than you can blink? The Victoria chase scene where the crow’s wings flap slower than her run? So subtle that you won’t catch it if you’re not paying attention, but it’s outstanding movie making when you do.). Some of the acting is rough, some of the lines and their delivery are dumb, but overall, it always makes me feel good when I watch it. It’s become my go-to “I don’t feel good so I'm taking a sick day” movie.
The easiest way to make myself happy is to listen to a Nerdist Podcast or read McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
What's on your list? Share it up! We're all friends here! (Or at least, we could be, if you took the time to share stuff about yourself with us…)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Catch up, half-pint:
I Am the One I Am Waiting For
In Which RuPaul Becomes My Spirit Guide
The End Game
This particular character trait of mine can be analyzed at another time.
The point is: When it comes to the constructs of changing behavior in the realm of this whole master plan, I figured I would chuck out the idea of making specific improvement goals out the window and instead take a page from Gretchen Rubin's book and come up with a dozen (or less) tenents that I want to start living and learning by.
I don't have an official title for the collection of them yet, but right now, I'm just going to call them Very Damn Important Laws.
(Mostly because "Very Damn Important" is my working title for a project I'm crafting (you can't steal it. I already registered it) and because I like being able to say, "It's the LAW!" when telling myself or someone else to do something)
So for the next few days/week, I'll take you through some of the Very Damn Important Laws I've come up with for myself that are going to help frame this new thang of mine. You can either copy them (I already copied some of them from Gretchen, and I don't think she'd mind) or come up with some of your own.
Ready? Here's the first one:
There’s a scene from The Runaway Bride that I think about often: It’s the scene where Julia Robert’s character, Maggie, makes six plates-full of different kinds of eggs and sets about trying each kind to figure out what her favorite was.
The scene is memorable because it’s the climax of the most subtle yet telling part of the movie: Every time Richard Gere’s character, reporter Ike, interviewed one of Maggie’s jilted fiancés, he would ask them what her favorite eggs were. The audience later realizes that each of them gives him a different answer for how she likes her eggs, but always ended that answer with “Same as me.” Meaning that Maggie’s favorite eggs were always the same as their favorite eggs.
I first saw that scene when I was 20 years old, and it’s resonated with me ever since...and I think it resonated with a lot of women. Either from reading Cosmo or dating some guy in high school who proclaimed we weren’t deep enough if we didn’t like Bob Dylan, I think a lot of us girls grew up feeling that, in order for us to be ultimately attractive, we had to be Matchers when it comes to our choices and preferences. And that scene was a telling lesson that it's best to always order the kind of eggs we liked (eggs being symbolic, of course) instead of just copying our boyfriends.
For the most part, I like what I like. Long-time readers already know that I delight in geeking out on stuff like mystical wolves or creepy fan art or dumb reality shows. I don’t tend to care whether or not the general public thinks that stuff is cool. But I have noticed that I have this tendency to sometimes align my interests and persona with the certain ideal I have in my head of the kind of person I’d like to be with. Initially, I know that sounds way fake-girl and Cosmo-centric, but before you get the wrong idea, I am so not the girl who pretends to like football because the guy she’s dating is into it.
I mean that. I will never, ever like football just because someone I like is into it.
What I mean is: Sometimes, my thinking and preferences are more concerned with what I think might be attractive to someone else instead of what is attractive to me. I worry about my body not just because I don’t particularly like it at present, but because I worry that it’s not attractive to others. Sometimes I hesitate to fly my freak flag because I’m scared it will turn someone off. Sometimes I attempt to cultivate certain traits and preferences because it’s what I think will instill the most pride in the men in my life.
Yeah.
You’re right.
It is fucking exhausting.
Here’s a small and kind of silly example:
I would be on OkCupid and would stumble across a Super Cute Guy. Every so often, I would read a Super Cute Guy’s profile and find myself getting more and more excited with every line, thinking, “Oh my god, this could be the perfect guy for me.” And then I would invariably spend the next 20 minutes editing and honing my profile so that when he read it, he would say, “Holy crap! We have so much in common. I wanna be with this girl.”
And the thing is, I was never lying, per say. Most of the time, the reason why I already liked Super Cute Guy was because he already liked things I liked, but it was simply things that I either didn’t talk about in my profile or just didn’t like enough for them to be my genuine top favorites. Like with sustainable development: It’s an abiding interest of mine. But is it a full-blown passion? Do I lead with it? Nope. When I saw another guy’s profile that did, though, you bet your earth-saving ass that I put something in my profile about how I get jazzed about that stuff, too. Sometimes it felt innocent, like, "oh hey, you just reminded me of something I liked that I forgot about", and sometimes it felt…kind of gross. Like I wasn't really being all that genuine or full-frontal about who I really was.
The switch on this came with something kind of dumb...I was getting to know this new friend on Twitter, and I saw that she had listed a cartoon movie as one of her favorite films. And I realized that I so admire the people who just put that stuff out there. And I do, in some areas of my life, but I was ashamed to admit to myself that some - okay, a lot - of my underground thinking tends to lean toward what I think might be attractive to a certain type of person, instead of just figuring out and focusing on what it is attractive to me.
For instance, I realized the other day that Anne of Green Gables is one of my all-time favorite books. In terms of lifetime defining, Anne is it. Harry Potter books are the few, if not the only, books I make a point to reread every year (in October, because wizards and Halloween and duh). And I think the Shrek movies are BRILLIANT. They’re hilarious and nerdy and subtle and sweet and the music score just kills me and they have, hands-down, one of the best messages out there...for all people. I could watch those movies a million times (and have done, back when I worked with children with autism) and not get sick of them. But when it came to stuff like creating an online dating profile, I would chuck out Anne, Harry, and Shrek in favor of stuff that could be considered cooler, more grown up (The Royal Tenenbaums! This one book with a cool title that you’ve never read because it’s now out of print!). Most of the time I rationalized it with the argument that the former needs a qualifier, a defense in order to make someone else understand why I might love it, whereas something like a Wes Anderson film simply does not. But when I was thinking about all of this stuff in terms of my self image, I realized: That is a wagon load of super hot bullshit. I don’t need to qualify anything! I have written maybe a BILLION times on this blog about how it should be okay to just let people like what they like...and here I was, worried that some douche on OkCupid wouldn’t find me attractive if I listed one of the most well-loved books in the history of the world as one of my favorites.
So I decided to start a list. A list of things that make me, me. Every time I think of something that I know I really love but just haven’t fully owned yet (or actually really dislike but don’t tend to admit openly), or whenever I discover something new about myself during this process, I’m adding it to the list. It sounds kind of self-absorbed (let’s just admit it right now and get it out the way: This whole project is self-absorbed. On fucking purpose), but it’s actually pretty freaking fun to make a list of stuff like this about yourself. And like I wrote in this post, once you discover something about yourself and decide to just freaking own it, there is this sort of elation. It’s like scraping some of the clay off the Golden Buddha.
So I decided to make “Be (Unapologetically) Amber” the top of my Very Damn Important Laws, because it reminds that it’s more important to be authentically, genuinely, unapologetically everything me - and to accept and love all of that - instead of internalizing other people’s perceptions of me and holding the validation of others above my own. To stop trying to be this vision of who I think I should be, and instead, just start getting jazzed up about who I actually am. And to be fair? In some areas of my life, I’m really, really good at this. I know how to stand up for myself when it comes to bullying and I know how to defend myself against negative bullshit. But I also know that I have to get better at this when it comes to how I think about my body and how I think about myself.
Some things on the list so far:
I love YA paranormal romance novels. I know it sets me up for Twilight jokes. I know people don’t take the genre seriously. But I love them - they're fun and fantastical and dreamy and exciting all at the same time. They are simply a pure pleasure to read.
I actually really don’t like camping. I love the idea of it, and I like it better if there are clean and well-lit restrooms near by, but I don’t dig the uncomfortableness of it.
I want kids, but I’m terrified at the prospect of both giving birth and taking care of a newborn. I think I would be an excellent adoptive mother.
I love watching The Bachelor and The Real Housewives franchises. I find them to be the ultimate entertainment: I love watching the interplay of strong personalities within constructed or mundane scenarios. I anticipate and enjoy a Real Housewife reunion or a Bachelor finale the way football fans do the Superbowl. And I don’t think enjoying those shows makes me shallow.
I would like to be with someone who is both funny and serious. Why do I always feel like I have to choose one or the other? I’m both. There has to be someone else who is, too.
I love the movie New Moon. After watching it 100 times - at first as campy entertainment and then in begrudging earnestness - it’s in there. And I think Kristen Stewart does some amazing acting in it. I think it’s directed well, the cinematography is great, and there’s some scenes in there that deserve to be recognized for their brilliance (the scene where Edward gets out of the truck and then is at Bella’s door faster than you can blink? The Victoria chase scene where the crow’s wings flap slower than her run? So subtle that you won’t catch it if you’re not paying attention, but it’s outstanding movie making when you do.). Some of the acting is rough, some of the lines and their delivery are dumb, but overall, it always makes me feel good when I watch it. It’s become my go-to “I don’t feel good so I'm taking a sick day” movie.
The easiest way to make myself happy is to listen to a Nerdist Podcast or read McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
What's on your list? Share it up! We're all friends here! (Or at least, we could be, if you took the time to share stuff about yourself with us…)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Catch up, half-pint:
I Am the One I Am Waiting For
In Which RuPaul Becomes My Spirit Guide
The End Game
Very Damn Important Law #1: Be (Unapologetically) Amber
When it comes to making goals…it's complicated. I don't tend to do well with the whole "I will accomplish a billion book sales by June 15th, 2016" type of goals…basically for the same reason why I was asked to take the SATs in the 6th grade but still almost didn't graduate high school due to skipping so much class - I don't like to be hemmed in by your bourgeois rules and archaic concepts of time, maaan.
This particular character trait of mine can be analyzed at another time.
The point is: When it comes to the constructs of changing behavior in the realm of this whole master plan, I figured I would chuck out the idea of making specific improvement goals out the window and instead take a page from Gretchen Rubin's book and come up with a dozen (or less) tenents that I want to start living and learning by.
I don't have an official title for the collection of them yet, but right now, I'm just going to call them Very Damn Important Laws.
(Mostly because "Very Damn Important" is my working title for a project I'm crafting (you can't steal it. I already registered it) and because I like being able to say, "It's the LAW!" when telling myself or someone else to do something)
So for the next few days/week, I'll take you through some of the Very Damn Important Laws I've come up with for myself that are going to help frame this new thang of mine. You can either copy them (I already copied some of them from Gretchen, and I don't think she'd mind) or come up with some of your own.
Ready? Here's the first one:
There’s a scene from The Runaway Bride that I think about often: It’s the scene where Julia Robert’s character, Maggie, makes six plates-full of different kinds of eggs and sets about trying each kind to figure out what her favorite was.
The scene is memorable because it’s the climax of the most subtle yet telling part of the movie: Every time Richard Gere’s character, reporter Ike, interviewed one of Maggie’s jilted fiancés, he would ask them what her favorite eggs were. The audience later realizes that each of them gives him a different answer for how she likes her eggs, but always ended that answer with “Same as me.” Meaning that Maggie’s favorite eggs were always the same as their favorite eggs.
I first saw that scene when I was 20 years old, and it’s resonated with me ever since...and I think it resonated with a lot of women. Either from reading Cosmo or dating some guy in high school who proclaimed we weren’t deep enough if we didn’t like Bob Dylan, I think a lot of us girls grew up feeling that, in order for us to be ultimately attractive, we had to be Matchers when it comes to our choices and preferences. And that scene was a telling lesson that it's best to always order the kind of eggs we liked (eggs being symbolic, of course) instead of just copying our boyfriends.
For the most part, I like what I like. Long-time readers already know that I delight in geeking out on stuff like mystical wolves or creepy fan art or dumb reality shows. I don’t tend to care whether or not the general public thinks that stuff is cool. But I have noticed that I have this tendency to sometimes align my interests and persona with the certain ideal I have in my head of the kind of person I’d like to be with. Initially, I know that sounds way fake-girl and Cosmo-centric, but before you get the wrong idea, I am so not the girl who pretends to like football because the guy she’s dating is into it.
I mean that. I will never, ever like football just because someone I like is into it.
What I mean is: Sometimes, my thinking and preferences are more concerned with what I think might be attractive to someone else instead of what is attractive to me. I worry about my body not just because I don’t particularly like it at present, but because I worry that it’s not attractive to others. Sometimes I hesitate to fly my freak flag because I’m scared it will turn someone off. Sometimes I attempt to cultivate certain traits and preferences because it’s what I think will instill the most pride in the men in my life.
Yeah.
You’re right.
It is fucking exhausting.
Here’s a small and kind of silly example:
I would be on OkCupid and would stumble across a Super Cute Guy. Every so often, I would read a Super Cute Guy’s profile and find myself getting more and more excited with every line, thinking, “Oh my god, this could be the perfect guy for me.” And then I would invariably spend the next 20 minutes editing and honing my profile so that when he read it, he would say, “Holy crap! We have so much in common. I wanna be with this girl.”
And the thing is, I was never lying, per say. Most of the time, the reason why I already liked Super Cute Guy was because he already liked things I liked, but it was simply things that I either didn’t talk about in my profile or just didn’t like enough for them to be my genuine top favorites. Like with sustainable development: It’s an abiding interest of mine. But is it a full-blown passion? Do I lead with it? Nope. When I saw another guy’s profile that did, though, you bet your earth-saving ass that I put something in my profile about how I get jazzed about that stuff, too. Sometimes it felt innocent, like, "oh hey, you just reminded me of something I liked that I forgot about", and sometimes it felt…kind of gross. Like I wasn't really being all that genuine or full-frontal about who I really was.
The switch on this came with something kind of dumb...I was getting to know this new friend on Twitter, and I saw that she had listed a cartoon movie as one of her favorite films. And I realized that I so admire the people who just put that stuff out there. And I do, in some areas of my life, but I was ashamed to admit to myself that some - okay, a lot - of my underground thinking tends to lean toward what I think might be attractive to a certain type of person, instead of just figuring out and focusing on what it is attractive to me.
For instance, I realized the other day that Anne of Green Gables is one of my all-time favorite books. In terms of lifetime defining, Anne is it. Harry Potter books are the few, if not the only, books I make a point to reread every year (in October, because wizards and Halloween and duh). And I think the Shrek movies are BRILLIANT. They’re hilarious and nerdy and subtle and sweet and the music score just kills me and they have, hands-down, one of the best messages out there...for all people. I could watch those movies a million times (and have done, back when I worked with children with autism) and not get sick of them. But when it came to stuff like creating an online dating profile, I would chuck out Anne, Harry, and Shrek in favor of stuff that could be considered cooler, more grown up (The Royal Tenenbaums! This one book with a cool title that you’ve never read because it’s now out of print!). Most of the time I rationalized it with the argument that the former needs a qualifier, a defense in order to make someone else understand why I might love it, whereas something like a Wes Anderson film simply does not. But when I was thinking about all of this stuff in terms of my self image, I realized: That is a wagon load of super hot bullshit. I don’t need to qualify anything! I have written maybe a BILLION times on this blog about how it should be okay to just let people like what they like...and here I was, worried that some douche on OkCupid wouldn’t find me attractive if I listed one of the most well-loved books in the history of the world as one of my favorites.
So I decided to start a list. A list of things that make me, me. Every time I think of something that I know I really love but just haven’t fully owned yet (or actually really dislike but don’t tend to admit openly), or whenever I discover something new about myself during this process, I’m adding it to the list. It sounds kind of self-absorbed (let’s just admit it right now and get it out the way: This whole project is self-absorbed. On fucking purpose), but it’s actually pretty freaking fun to make a list of stuff like this about yourself. And like I wrote in this post, once you discover something about yourself and decide to just freaking own it, there is this sort of elation. It’s like scraping some of the clay off the Golden Buddha.
So I decided to make “Be (Unapologetically) Amber” the top of my Very Damn Important Laws, because it reminds that it’s more important to be authentically, genuinely, unapologetically everything me - and to accept and love all of that - instead of internalizing other people’s perceptions of me and holding the validation of others above my own. To stop trying to be this vision of who I think I should be, and instead, just start getting jazzed up about who I actually am. And to be fair? In some areas of my life, I’m really, really good at this. I know how to stand up for myself when it comes to bullying and I know how to defend myself against negative bullshit. But I also know that I have to get better at this when it comes to how I think about my body and how I think about myself.
Some things on the list so far:
I love YA paranormal romance novels. I know it sets me up for Twilight jokes. I know people don’t take the genre seriously. But I love them - they're fun and fantastical and dreamy and exciting all at the same time. They are simply a pure pleasure to read.
I actually really don’t like camping. I love the idea of it, and I like it better if there are clean and well-lit restrooms near by, but I don’t dig the uncomfortableness of it.
I want kids, but I’m terrified at the prospect of both giving birth and taking care of a newborn. I think I would be an excellent adoptive mother.
I love watching The Bachelor and The Real Housewives franchises. I find them to be the ultimate entertainment: I love watching the interplay of strong personalities within constructed or mundane scenarios. I anticipate and enjoy a Real Housewife reunion or a Bachelor finale the way football fans do the Superbowl. And I don’t think enjoying those shows makes me shallow.
I would like to be with someone who is both funny and serious. Why do I always feel like I have to choose one or the other? I’m both. There has to be someone else who is, too.
I love the movie New Moon. After watching it 100 times - at first as campy entertainment and then in begrudging earnestness - it’s in there. And I think Kristen Stewart does some amazing acting in it. I think it’s directed well, the cinematography is great, and there’s some scenes in there that deserve to be recognized for their brilliance (the scene where Edward gets out of the truck and then is at Bella’s door faster than you can blink? The Victoria chase scene where the crow’s wings flap slower than her run? So subtle that you won’t catch it if you’re not paying attention, but it’s outstanding movie making when you do.). Some of the acting is rough, some of the lines and their delivery are dumb, but overall, it always makes me feel good when I watch it. It’s become my go-to “I don’t feel good so I'm taking a sick day” movie.
The easiest way to make myself happy is to listen to a Nerdist Podcast or read McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
What's on your list? Share it up! We're all friends here! (Or at least, we could be, if you took the time to share stuff about yourself with us…)
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Catch up, half-pint:
I Am the One I Am Waiting For
In Which RuPaul Becomes My Spirit Guide
The End Game
This particular character trait of mine can be analyzed at another time.
The point is: When it comes to the constructs of changing behavior in the realm of this whole master plan, I figured I would chuck out the idea of making specific improvement goals out the window and instead take a page from Gretchen Rubin's book and come up with a dozen (or less) tenents that I want to start living and learning by.
I don't have an official title for the collection of them yet, but right now, I'm just going to call them Very Damn Important Laws.
(Mostly because "Very Damn Important" is my working title for a project I'm crafting (you can't steal it. I already registered it) and because I like being able to say, "It's the LAW!" when telling myself or someone else to do something)
So for the next few days/week, I'll take you through some of the Very Damn Important Laws I've come up with for myself that are going to help frame this new thang of mine. You can either copy them (I already copied some of them from Gretchen, and I don't think she'd mind) or come up with some of your own.
Ready? Here's the first one:
There’s a scene from The Runaway Bride that I think about often: It’s the scene where Julia Robert’s character, Maggie, makes six plates-full of different kinds of eggs and sets about trying each kind to figure out what her favorite was.
The scene is memorable because it’s the climax of the most subtle yet telling part of the movie: Every time Richard Gere’s character, reporter Ike, interviewed one of Maggie’s jilted fiancés, he would ask them what her favorite eggs were. The audience later realizes that each of them gives him a different answer for how she likes her eggs, but always ended that answer with “Same as me.” Meaning that Maggie’s favorite eggs were always the same as their favorite eggs.
I first saw that scene when I was 20 years old, and it’s resonated with me ever since...and I think it resonated with a lot of women. Either from reading Cosmo or dating some guy in high school who proclaimed we weren’t deep enough if we didn’t like Bob Dylan, I think a lot of us girls grew up feeling that, in order for us to be ultimately attractive, we had to be Matchers when it comes to our choices and preferences. And that scene was a telling lesson that it's best to always order the kind of eggs we liked (eggs being symbolic, of course) instead of just copying our boyfriends.
For the most part, I like what I like. Long-time readers already know that I delight in geeking out on stuff like mystical wolves or creepy fan art or dumb reality shows. I don’t tend to care whether or not the general public thinks that stuff is cool. But I have noticed that I have this tendency to sometimes align my interests and persona with the certain ideal I have in my head of the kind of person I’d like to be with. Initially, I know that sounds way fake-girl and Cosmo-centric, but before you get the wrong idea, I am so not the girl who pretends to like football because the guy she’s dating is into it.
I mean that. I will never, ever like football just because someone I like is into it.
What I mean is: Sometimes, my thinking and preferences are more concerned with what I think might be attractive to someone else instead of what is attractive to me. I worry about my body not just because I don’t particularly like it at present, but because I worry that it’s not attractive to others. Sometimes I hesitate to fly my freak flag because I’m scared it will turn someone off. Sometimes I attempt to cultivate certain traits and preferences because it’s what I think will instill the most pride in the men in my life.
Yeah.
You’re right.
It is fucking exhausting.
Here’s a small and kind of silly example:
I would be on OkCupid and would stumble across a Super Cute Guy. Every so often, I would read a Super Cute Guy’s profile and find myself getting more and more excited with every line, thinking, “Oh my god, this could be the perfect guy for me.” And then I would invariably spend the next 20 minutes editing and honing my profile so that when he read it, he would say, “Holy crap! We have so much in common. I wanna be with this girl.”
And the thing is, I was never lying, per say. Most of the time, the reason why I already liked Super Cute Guy was because he already liked things I liked, but it was simply things that I either didn’t talk about in my profile or just didn’t like enough for them to be my genuine top favorites. Like with sustainable development: It’s an abiding interest of mine. But is it a full-blown passion? Do I lead with it? Nope. When I saw another guy’s profile that did, though, you bet your earth-saving ass that I put something in my profile about how I get jazzed about that stuff, too. Sometimes it felt innocent, like, "oh hey, you just reminded me of something I liked that I forgot about", and sometimes it felt…kind of gross. Like I wasn't really being all that genuine or full-frontal about who I really was.
The switch on this came with something kind of dumb...I was getting to know this new friend on Twitter, and I saw that she had listed a cartoon movie as one of her favorite films. And I realized that I so admire the people who just put that stuff out there. And I do, in some areas of my life, but I was ashamed to admit to myself that some - okay, a lot - of my underground thinking tends to lean toward what I think might be attractive to a certain type of person, instead of just figuring out and focusing on what it is attractive to me.
For instance, I realized the other day that Anne of Green Gables is one of my all-time favorite books. In terms of lifetime defining, Anne is it. Harry Potter books are the few, if not the only, books I make a point to reread every year (in October, because wizards and Halloween and duh). And I think the Shrek movies are BRILLIANT. They’re hilarious and nerdy and subtle and sweet and the music score just kills me and they have, hands-down, one of the best messages out there...for all people. I could watch those movies a million times (and have done, back when I worked with children with autism) and not get sick of them. But when it came to stuff like creating an online dating profile, I would chuck out Anne, Harry, and Shrek in favor of stuff that could be considered cooler, more grown up (The Royal Tenenbaums! This one book with a cool title that you’ve never read because it’s now out of print!). Most of the time I rationalized it with the argument that the former needs a qualifier, a defense in order to make someone else understand why I might love it, whereas something like a Wes Anderson film simply does not. But when I was thinking about all of this stuff in terms of my self image, I realized: That is a wagon load of super hot bullshit. I don’t need to qualify anything! I have written maybe a BILLION times on this blog about how it should be okay to just let people like what they like...and here I was, worried that some douche on OkCupid wouldn’t find me attractive if I listed one of the most well-loved books in the history of the world as one of my favorites.
So I decided to start a list. A list of things that make me, me. Every time I think of something that I know I really love but just haven’t fully owned yet (or actually really dislike but don’t tend to admit openly), or whenever I discover something new about myself during this process, I’m adding it to the list. It sounds kind of self-absorbed (let’s just admit it right now and get it out the way: This whole project is self-absorbed. On fucking purpose), but it’s actually pretty freaking fun to make a list of stuff like this about yourself. And like I wrote in this post, once you discover something about yourself and decide to just freaking own it, there is this sort of elation. It’s like scraping some of the clay off the Golden Buddha.
So I decided to make “Be (Unapologetically) Amber” the top of my Very Damn Important Laws, because it reminds that it’s more important to be authentically, genuinely, unapologetically everything me - and to accept and love all of that - instead of internalizing other people’s perceptions of me and holding the validation of others above my own. To stop trying to be this vision of who I think I should be, and instead, just start getting jazzed up about who I actually am. And to be fair? In some areas of my life, I’m really, really good at this. I know how to stand up for myself when it comes to bullying and I know how to defend myself against negative bullshit. But I also know that I have to get better at this when it comes to how I think about my body and how I think about myself.
Some things on the list so far:
I love YA paranormal romance novels. I know it sets me up for Twilight jokes. I know people don’t take the genre seriously. But I love them - they're fun and fantastical and dreamy and exciting all at the same time. They are simply a pure pleasure to read.
I actually really don’t like camping. I love the idea of it, and I like it better if there are clean and well-lit restrooms near by, but I don’t dig the uncomfortableness of it.
I want kids, but I’m terrified at the prospect of both giving birth and taking care of a newborn. I think I would be an excellent adoptive mother.
I love watching The Bachelor and The Real Housewives franchises. I find them to be the ultimate entertainment: I love watching the interplay of strong personalities within constructed or mundane scenarios. I anticipate and enjoy a Real Housewife reunion or a Bachelor finale the way football fans do the Superbowl. And I don’t think enjoying those shows makes me shallow.
I would like to be with someone who is both funny and serious. Why do I always feel like I have to choose one or the other? I’m both. There has to be someone else who is, too.
I love the movie New Moon. After watching it 100 times - at first as campy entertainment and then in begrudging earnestness - it’s in there. And I think Kristen Stewart does some amazing acting in it. I think it’s directed well, the cinematography is great, and there’s some scenes in there that deserve to be recognized for their brilliance (the scene where Edward gets out of the truck and then is at Bella’s door faster than you can blink? The Victoria chase scene where the crow’s wings flap slower than her run? So subtle that you won’t catch it if you’re not paying attention, but it’s outstanding movie making when you do.). Some of the acting is rough, some of the lines and their delivery are dumb, but overall, it always makes me feel good when I watch it. It’s become my go-to “I don’t feel good so I'm taking a sick day” movie.
The easiest way to make myself happy is to listen to a Nerdist Podcast or read McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
What's on your list? Share it up! We're all friends here! (Or at least, we could be, if you took the time to share stuff about yourself with us…)
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Catch up, half-pint:
I Am the One I Am Waiting For
In Which RuPaul Becomes My Spirit Guide
The End Game
Obligatory Halloween Costume Round-Up, Because I Haven't Gotten Married or Died Yet & Thus Haven't Gotten To Have An Amazing Slideshow of My Adorable Moments, So I Get To Make Up For It By Doing Stuff Like This: 2013
If you know me at all or have ever read this blog, then you know that I love Halloween. And I especially love Halloween costumes. My favorites are always the play-on-words/pun type ones, mainly because they're clever, cheap, and easy.
Like me.
But first, let's take it back to a time when I was super adorable.
I could wear this Native American costume because I, too, am Native American. Just to, you know, calm any concerns out there about my political correctness when I was FOUR.
I still like to do my blush like that sometimes.
And then there was the best childhood costume of all, when I dressed up as a "Glacier Monster".
Just kidding. I was just really, really ugly that entire year.
Hike school! This is the only Halloween picture I have of HS.
You can almost see the corruption starting here, as I dressed up as a mentally-unstable cheerleader, mainly just so I could look super ugly for my game that night and piss off my cheerleading coach who hated me for having - get this! - "a negative attitude."
And then I became an adult.
Hispanic Girl Gangsta
2 Girls 1 Cup
Betty White's BoxAnd, of course, this year's costume -
50 Shades of GrayANNNND, this year's costume, White Trash -
The maxi pad is my favorite part
Missing, of course, is a picture of my Douchebag costume from 2007 (a black garbage bag with douche products taped all over it). I think Karah is the only one who has pictures of that costume, and she's not givin' 'em up.
Oh, and the Pin-Up Girl costume from 2011, which was really just code for, "I'm depressed and I have to wear a dress tonight, anyway, so..."
For blog-related greatest Halloween hits, check these out -
Corn Night
Halloween Weekend...Continued For Your Reading Pleasure, Because I'm Always About Other People's Pleasure.
The Haunting of Betty White's Box
Or pick and choose here.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYBODY!
Like me.
But first, let's take it back to a time when I was super adorable.
I could wear this Native American costume because I, too, am Native American. Just to, you know, calm any concerns out there about my political correctness when I was FOUR.
I still like to do my blush like that sometimes. 
And then there was the best childhood costume of all, when I dressed up as a "Glacier Monster".
Just kidding. I was just really, really ugly that entire year.
Hike school! This is the only Halloween picture I have of HS.
You can almost see the corruption starting here, as I dressed up as a mentally-unstable cheerleader, mainly just so I could look super ugly for my game that night and piss off my cheerleading coach who hated me for having - get this! - "a negative attitude."
And then I became an adult.
Hispanic Girl Gangsta
2 Girls 1 Cup
Betty White's BoxAnd, of course, this year's costume -
50 Shades of GrayANNNND, this year's costume, White Trash - 
The maxi pad is my favorite partMissing, of course, is a picture of my Douchebag costume from 2007 (a black garbage bag with douche products taped all over it). I think Karah is the only one who has pictures of that costume, and she's not givin' 'em up.
Oh, and the Pin-Up Girl costume from 2011, which was really just code for, "I'm depressed and I have to wear a dress tonight, anyway, so..."
For blog-related greatest Halloween hits, check these out -
Corn Night
Halloween Weekend...Continued For Your Reading Pleasure, Because I'm Always About Other People's Pleasure.
The Haunting of Betty White's Box
Or pick and choose here.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYBODY!
October 30, 2013
Buy this calendar we made for charity and filled with hot northwoods men.
Check out the sweet cover!The calendar is off to the printer. The Launch Party is on the books. The presale? HAPPENING NOW.
Here’s the details:
The Dapper Dozen Men’s Calendar 2014 will officially be released at the Dapper Dozen Launch Party at Mooselips Martini Lounge on Tuesday, November 12th(starting at 6:00)! Ordering your calendar now will ensure that you get your calendar the moment it comes out – at the Launch Party, where you’ll have your chance to meet the Dapper Dozen and even get your calendar signed by your favorite Calendar Man! And if you’re unable to make the Launch Party, there’s no need to feel entirely lame about it – pre-sale calendar orders will be shipped the day after the launch (shipping and handling is even included in the pre-sale price
.But here’s the biggest reason why you want to get in on this pre-sale: The Dapper Dozen 2014 is a Limited Edition Calendar, so once these babies are gone, THEY’RE GONE FOR GOOD. And we anticipate that these hotcakes will be selling out pretty damn quickly, so if you wanna get your hands on these Northwoods hotties, don’t make the same mistake you did in college that one time when you waited until a week before Homecoming to ask your crush to the dance, only to find out that even though she wanted to go with you, you waited so long to ask that she finally said yes to your soccer teammate just the day before, and then they ultimately ended up falling in love the night of that very same Homecoming and later got married and had five athletically-gifted talented kids with.
DON’T LET THAT HAPPEN TO YOU AGAIN! STOP BLOWING IT ALL THE TIME! IF YOU SEE SOMETHING YOU WANT, GET IN ON THAT HOT ACTION TODAAAAAY, JUNIOR!
And if none of that applies to you at all, then congratulations! You are a learned scholar of life, and you now have another chance to show everyone how on the ball you are about everything that matters.
Also, did we mention 75% of calendar proceeds will benefit Food 4 Kids, an all-volunteer program of the Hayward Community Food Shelf that provides weekend meals to children who must rely primarily on school meals for their nourishment? Cause they totally will.
Hit up our handy-dandy online bookshop to reserve your copy of the Dapper Dozen today!
** OR (if you wanna do it old-school style) you can make out a check for $15 to Amber L. Carter and send it to: The Dapper Dozen, c/o Amber L. Carter, PO Box 102, Hayward WI 54843. Checks must hit Amber’s PO Box by Nov. 13th in order to get your calendar reserved in time for the Launch Party.
October 29, 2013
The End Game.
I've been spending the past handful of days trying to think of how I wanted to go about this whole master plan that I have now. And lying around, thinking about it…it kind of made my brain ache, to be honest. I'm kind of that person who wants so badly to have a perfect, fail-safe plan before she starts anything that, sometimes, it's the exact thing that's keeping her from starting anything. Playing off some of the books I've read this past year, I tried to work up this amazing plan of goals and mantras and monthly themes that would bring me closer to this thing that I know I want to do. I had this awesome vision of, like, a body image montage…hey guys, watch this! I'm doing loving affirmations and brave experiments and reading a lot and giving my body hugs and stuff! Look how much is changed for me! I'm journaling all about it! I bet you're inspired, too!
So I started crafting goals and ideas and plans for all the things I want to do, because I'm the kind of person who starts cleaning out her sock drawer and then gets on a kick and has her whole house turned upside down by the end of the day (and then leaves it like that for the next month). But then I got overwhelmed and watched some stuff about C.T. on MTV's Real World Challenges, and then I did some research on the women of the Vanderbilt family, and then decided to wash all my pillows…for, you know, the changing of the seasons and stuff.
The point is: I know that if I focus too much on planning out some radical framework to change the way I value my body and my heart, everything I wrote last week will just end up being this really great idea I had once. And I do want to do the thing where I write about this stuff as a sort of daily process, but if it's going to be a daily process, then I need to do the thing first and then write about it.
So I really had to let go of the idea that this wasn't going to be this perfect, pre-formatted plan and process - Better Body Image In 31 Short Days! - and instead focus on coming at it from the angle of learning everything I could and trying everything that sounded great. Because, at the end of the day, there's really no way to "fail" when it comes to making active strives to loving my body and myself more, you know?
Once I did that, I also realized that the best way to figure out the beginning is to figure out the end. So I jammed out the below. And decided that, much like the Written Shot of Courage, I wanted this to be something that I read every day, whether I felt like I needed it or not. To remind myself of where I want to go and what all this is for. So I saved it on my desktop under, "To Be Read First Thing Every Morning."
And this is pretty raw, but I think that's kind of the point. It was sort of a stream of consciousness, and whatever resonated the most, I kept. So feel free to modify this to fit you, if you'd like. I'm not an affirmation girl in the sense that I like to write out one-sentence mantras to repeat constantly to myself (even though I know that works for others), but I am the type of girl who needs some sort of daily focus. I feel like this will help.
The End Game.
I’d like this to be the year of becoming more of myself.
Of celebrating the good parts. Of healing my dysfunctions and blocks...and of turning those into good parts. Of cleaning up my messes. Of accepting, loving, and celebrating the things about myself that make me me.
Of doing things for my own validation, my own joy, my own contentment and pride.
The goal is not to deprive myself of a romantic relationship or convince myself that I don’t need or want one.
The goal is to remove the blocks to love that I have built up. The goal is to learn to love myself first, to heal my dysfunctions, so that when that love comes, I am ready for it with a clean and full heart.
I am not seeking perfection. Nor am I doing battle with the things I don’t like about myself or think I shouldn’t like about myself. I am healing myself, reclaiming my wholeness. I am, every day, waking up and creating more of the life I have imagined for myself. I am giving myself good things. I am giving myself the things I have always wanted from others. I am getting to the place where I have everything I need, just on my own. Everyday, I'm learning new things about myself. I am learning how to balance my own life with my interest in someone else’s.
I am using my day to clean out my heart and mind and body.
To create and feel a peaceful calm, a secure independence. Strong and healthy and lovely and smart.
“ The ultimate partner is a divine one, an experience of ourselves that is totally supportive and forgiving. Until we know this, we keep seeking sustenance from men that they cannot give us . Most men and women today are wounded. The search for someone who isn’t in pain is unreasonable until we ourselves are healed of our own dysfunctions. Until then, we will be led to people as wounded as we are in order that we might heal and be healed together. What this means is that no partner can save us, deliver us, or give meaning to our lives. The source of our salvation, deliverance, and meaning is within us. It is the love we give as much as the love we get. The passion we most need to feed is our relationship to God. This is ultimately our relationship to ourselves. It’s not as easy as a good date, as much fun as sex, or as dramatic as romantic tension. It is work. Personal growth, recovery, religious practice, spiritual renewal - whatever words we care to use - these are the keys to our return to sanity and peace. When we have reclaimed our wholeness, we are ready to face the worldly beloved. Until then, we will look to a romantic partner to give us peace rather than remember that our role in the relationship is to bring peace, by receiving it from God and allowing him to spread his peace through us to all humankind. How often have I betrayed myself, forgetting - or, more accurately, resisting - the twenty minutes of meditation, the hour of reading, the spiritual meeting or recovery group that would prepare me for the roller coaster ride that always lies potential in an intimate relationship. Part of our problem is that we expect love affairs to always feel good. They don’t. Actually, relationships don’t feel good anyway. We feel good. Unless we are centered within ourselves, we cannot blame a relationship for throwing us off. No man can convince a woman she’s wonderful, but if she already believes she is, he agreement can resonate and bring her joy.
- Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, 83-84
Tomorrow I'll tell you about some of the guiding principles...ugh, that sounds like the beginning of a Sunday School lesson, doesn't it? Like, "Guiding Principles to Everyday Christianity"… Let's try that again. Tomorrow I'll tell you about some of the TOTALLY SUPER AWESOME RADICAL KICKASS UNICORN-AND-DRAGON-COMBINING TENANTS I came up with for this whole shiz. And then we'll actually get rolling with this stuff. Because much like I used to tell my high school boyfriends, this girl is always happier with a little less talk and a lot more action.
Because sometimes, the exact time to not talk is when I have a half hour until curfew and you're about to launch into your 100th hunting story.
Just a little dating tip for all you high school kids reading this.
Because pretty sure there's a TON of you.
October 23, 2013
In Which RuPaul Becomes My Spirit Guide.
“And remember...if you can’t love yourself...how the hellllll you gonna love anyone else?”
Sinking down further into the couch, my teenage self frowned at the TV and then at the crumbs that had just fallen on the chestal area of my t-shirt. Taking another absent-minded munch from my chocolate chip cookie, I watched as RuPaul broke out into the grapevine, her platinum blonde wig bouncing as she stepped lightly in her stilettos heels, her backup dancers following suit. She always ended her new Vh1 talk show with this directive, and it always annoyed me. It would be easier to love myself if I was in love with someone else, I wanted to argue. Isn’t that kind of the point? Love makes you feel better and cooler and prettier than you feel on your own, right? That’s why everyone wants it!Objectively, I got it. You have to love yourself before you can love someone else. But it kind of felt like choosing a bottle of apple juice over Diet Coke for lunch, or eschewing the free Snickers Bar in favor of a banana...like you were basically choosing total lamesauce. How does a relationship with yourself become as or more satisfying than a relationship with someone else? Isn’t it kind of boring? You can’t kiss your own mouth. Slow dancing with yourself is also kind of awkward. You can take yourself out on dates, but it’s not as much fun if there’s no one across from you, telling you how good you look.
The thing was, I just didn't want to hear it. I literally could not remember a time in my life when I wasn't obsessed with boys. I was either obsessed with trying to make one my boyfriend, or I was obsessed with telling everyone how much I didn't need them (though secretly hoping that one of those beings I soooo didn't need would overhear me and decide to take up the challenge, culminating in a heated battle for my heart that he would ultimately win by surprising me at the school dance with a charming, public serenade or a choreographed slow dance on BMX bikes). And when all you've ever wanted is to have a boy fall in love with you, the last thing you want to hear is no, Amber, you're doing it wrong! No one is going to really do that until you love yourself first!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, okay. And I'll just stop wearing makeup and then cut my long hair into a crewcut and quit the cheerleading squad and start wearing sweatpants to school, too, because inner beauty first, right? Riiiiiiight.
So I carried on. The RuPaulism carried with me through the rest of my teens and my twenties, even if it did result in an eye roll every time I recalled it. I had a series of relationships, all of them seemingly different when they started but ending pretty much in the same way. I knew, deep down, that there was some stuff that I wasn't dealing with, but I kept thinking - or actually, wishing - that I would just meet the right guy and then all of that stuff would magically go away or be fixed. And then I wouldn't have to do anything! I could just be in an awesome relationship and make out a lot and be super happy and not have to face any of the super lame stuff about myself anymore.
Then, as some of you long-time readers know, I became interested in the study of self-esteem in my 30's, after suddenly discovering that I didn't really have any. I've always been an super confident and fairly outgoing person, but when it came to the stuff I told myself...about...myself, well, it can be summed up by every Real Housewife of New Jersey worth her false eyelashes: "That's not nice." So I worked on that stuff. I worked on it a lot. And I got to this point in my life where I really liked where my heart was at. This also happened to be the point where I met someone and fell in love. But our relationship kind of self-destructed, and even though I came out of that wreckage better than I had expected, I was disheartened to realize that all of that work I had done before? It had to all be done again, and there was even more to do now, thanks to some of the sucktastic inner scars I had left with. So I looked at last year as time to heal. To clear out that headspace, give myself time to get over stuff, figure out what kind of life I wanted to have, just on my own.
And that's when I discovered it. This little habit I had, this underground way of thinking. Even though I had no plans to date anytime soon, I still found myself compartmentalizing and "saving" stuff for when I was in a relationship again. It is the dumbest example ever, but it mostly went like this: I wouldn't buy the nice shampoo for myself. The $28 one from my friend's Aveda salon, the kind that smelled amazing and made my scalp tingle, that made my hair as shiny and soft as a unicorn. Nope, I remember telling myself. I'll wait to buy it for when I have a boyfriend again. Then there will be someone there to actually appreciate all that shiny soft radness.
How fucking fucked up is that?
I didn't want to buy the shampoo because I wanted to save it for a boyfriend I didn't even have yet. Because I didn't consider it worth it to spend $28 for something that only I would enjoy at this particular point in time.
Once I started noticing that type of thinking, I realized just how prevalent and insidious it was for me. And this is stuff that I have rarely, if ever, admitted to anyone else. It's not like everything I do is for the attention of a guy (just take a gander at my Twitter feed). The really strange thing is that I consider myself a pretty strong and independent woman, and actually quite enjoy being single. I don't chase after guys, and I don't lose my entire identity when I'm with one. But I also don't show my relationship with myself the same value that I would a relationship with someone else.
And I know I'm not alone in that. I know there are a ton of other seemingly confident, strong, independent women out there who are just like me. I know because we are the reason why women's magazines have the covers they do, with the articles about career success in small print and the "Make Your Man HOT" in big bold type. We're why romantic comedies are still one of the most consistently in-demand movie genres year after year. We hate and will vocally disabuse any and all societal messages that our successful, beautiful, sophisticated and busy lives are still not complete without a man to share it with...but we still secretly believe it ourselves, in our own little way...whether it's the vacation we're waiting to take until we're finally married or the $28 shampoo we don't want to buy for ourselves unless someone else is there to appreciate it.
And this why, when I wrote about being the one I am waiting for, I knew that a lot of that stuff was about more than just how I felt about my body. After I wrote it and then reread it, I was gutted but not surprised to realize that a lot of the messages I had carried with me about my body were also in a dark and twisty mess with the messages I carried about relationships with men. About my desire to find validation from relationships, and my willful refusal to care about my relationship with myself, first.
So this stuff, about being the one I am waiting for? It occurs to me that it can't just be about loving and accepting my body, because that's not possible unless I also really dig the person who resides inside it. And I do...but not enough yet, you know? And definitely not in all the ways that I should. I want to work on becoming the person who buys myself the sweet-smelling shampoo because I'll be the one to appreciate it, and I'm reason enough.
So that's where we're going with this. The body image stuff is definitely the focus, but we're also going to be taking the panoramic view...or as I like to call it, the Wholeistic Approach. And I'm ready to spend this next year figuring out how to get there. Like I told my friend Lacy the other day...I spent this past year learning how to get over someone else. So now I'd like to spend this next year learning how to get with myself.
That sounded kind of weird, didn't it? Like masturbation weird. Which, as you might have noticed, is also why I refuse to use the term "self-love." Remember when MTV did that whole series on sex back in the early to mid 90s? Where each episode was about "real people" talking about their experiences with STD's, hooking up, and masturbation? And then that kind of triggered this whole movement where fly girls talked about how everyone just needed to get real about "self-love", and that in an age of AIDS, masturbation was a totally cool, totally safe way to protect yourself?
Anyway, I remember that, and so I can't use the term "self-love" without thinking of this greasy-looking flannel-clad blonde girl talking about how she likes to light some candles and put on some Nirvana when she practices "self-love."
So we're not gong to use that term, is what I'm saying.
But back to the main point, which is:
You fucking got me, RuPaul. You hear me? YOU FINALLY WIN, YOU BEAUTIFUL BLONDE BOMBSHELL!
October 21, 2013
I Am the One I Am Waiting For.
[from]First, it was when I was five and felt like I couldn't enjoy the Slip 'N Slide with my cousins because I knew my dad thought I looked chubby in my swimsuit. Somehow I had learned that you weren’t supposed to have fun if you were fat. That you didn’t deserve it...instead of having fun, you were supposed to be concentrating on getting skinny: you were expected to do jumping jacks and eat carrots and run laps until you were thin, instead of running around and playing and laughing like there was nothing wrong with you. In my later years I grew to have compassion and empathy for my father, because I literally can’t remember a time during my childhood when he didn’t struggle with his own weight, and I know now that he just didn’t want the same for me. But sometimes I look at pictures of myself taken when I was younger and I get angry. Because no one would ever look at those pictures and say that I was fat, but somehow I always felt that way, and all the time. And the worst was that I was funny and brave and smart, but can distinctly remember thinking that none of that mattered unless I was thin like my cousins and friends.
Then it was the teasing in elementary and middle school, the most painful of which came from an elder sibling. Like with the above, when I got older I gained perspective and realized that siblings have an innate talent for picking out the thing you're most sensitive about and using it to hurt you. But this was also during a particularly painful time when I had changed schools and was having a hard time making new friends, and it was becoming clear that the sibling I had always counted on to be my buddy didn't think I was so cool anymore. My efforts to figure out what I could do to change all of this would lay the groundwork for a full-fledged eating disorder in my late teens and early twenties, the basic premise of which was this: I knew that I couldn't control whether or not people liked me, but chances were that they would like me a lot more if I wasn't fat.
Then it was my first serious boyfriend, whom I started dating in my early twenties. I know that he loved me in the way that only first loves love you, but he also once told me that I was getting fat and that he didn't want to have sex with me anymore until I lost some weight. I was maybe a size 12 at the time. And one day we were in a clothing store at the mall and the girls behind the counter were making fun of me for trying on clothes that they obviously thought I shouldn't be wearing. Instead of sticking up for me, he stood by and then later told me that he agreed with them. And that was when I realized that love could be conditional. And if I wanted to keep it, then it was important to remember that people obviously loved me more when I was slender, because then they didn’t withhold affection from me or let strangers make fun of me in front of them.
And then that boyfriend died and I ate a lot because I was sad. And then my dad started making comments about my size again, which was hard because I obviously had more important things to worry about at that time, and it taught me that people don't care that you're going through a tough time if you're fat. So I went on Atkins and I started working out twice a day and got really skinny and then I met Lucas. And this is how I knew that Lucas really loved me: One morning, Lucas quietly asked me if I was eating. I lied and told him yes and he told me good, but that I looked a lot thinner than usual and he was worried about me. And that was the first time that I felt like I might know what unconditional love could feel like...that here was someone who cared more about whether I felt good on the inside than just if I looked good on the outside.
But then Lucas developed a pretty serious depression and he couldn't deal and needed to take care of himself, so we broke up. Even though I was a healthy 135 pounds, I still told myself that he would probably want me more and change his mind if I was skinnier. So I lost a bunch more weight and he didn't change his mind and I started fainting all the time. But I was getting compliments from my family and was getting asked out on dates, so I figured that I was probably doing the right thing.
Then I had this really nice period where I moved to Minneapolis and my weight sort of stabilized and I felt pretty good about myself. This was probably one of the high points of my life. If you would have asked me at the time, I probably would have told you that I wanted to get in better shape, but I also didn't feel like I had to starve myself or work out twice a day to be who I wanted to be. It was the first time when I felt, consistently, like people liked me and were proud to be my friend or sibling or date because I was funny and brave and smart instead of just how I looked.
When I moved back up north a few years later I decided that I really wanted to get into better shape. It was hard going that summer, but that fall I seemed to magically drop a bunch of weight and then I met someone. I moved back down to Minneapolis to live with him, and because our favorite dates were watching movies while eating Chipotle and because I stopped running around all day as a barista and went back to writing full time, I went up a few sizes. And he stopped kissing me. And stopped wanting to do anything that even resembled kissing. We broke up and I moved back up north and I woke up one morning and got out of bed and started sobbing, because I felt so uncomfortable in my own body, which by that time had somehow turned into a balloon. And I realized that when I saw old friends or met new ones I actually felt like apologizing - "Sorry, I'm not usually this fat" or "I wish you could have met me a few years ago...I was a lot thinner then." So I tried all my old stuff - I stopped eating and I worked out twice a day and I did Atkins and a really severe cleanse and I cut out sugar and nothing seemed to work. And I started getting more frustrated and more upset and more mean towards myself.
Which was the worst part. Because even though all the above are illustrations of how I taught myself to feel that the way people treat me is dependent on how fat or thin I am, that has never really been my biggest problem.
My biggest problem is the way I treat me.
****
Wrapping up some work one early evening before heading out to meet Jen and Lacy for our weekly night of wine and girl talk, I was scrolling through my Tumblr feed when I saw this.
I read it and then I headed over to Jen's, my mind swimming. How much time and headspace would I clear up if I wasn't constantly obsessing abut how my body looked? How much more could I enjoy my present life if I just accepted my body - not just tolerated it, or simply ignored it - but accepted it? Loved it, even? I recalled a conversation that I had with my friend Meg when we had first met...she does amazing bombshell and boudoir photography, and I told her once that I really wanted to do a session with her, "but not, obviously," I said, as I ran a hand down in front of my body, "like this." It occurred to me, as I pulled up in front of Jen's house, that I hadn't been scared to go to India and hadn't been frightened by the possibility of living in Afghanistan for a year, but the mere thought of doing a boudoir session with Meg, just as my body was, right then, right that day?
It freaked me the fuck out.
Jen, Lacy, and I opened a couple bottles of wine, settled in, and, as it typically does on nights like those, our conversation wandered over to the topic of men. Jen and Lacy asked how long it had been since I had been on a date. I gave them my answer and they both forcefully told me that it was time...it was time, it was time to get back out there, it was time. I shook my head and told them that my head just wasn't in that place yet...but what I really meant was that my body wasn't there yet. What I thought but wouldn't ever say was that, unless someone came along who forcefully showed me that they loved me and my body totally as is, no changes or modifications or improvements necessary, then love was just going to have to be put on hold until I could shrink myself again.
And as soon as I realized that I was thinking that, my mind shot back to the post I had read just hours before. And then a quiet voice whispered a stunning piece of truth.
I am the one I am waiting for.
***
After getting home later that night, I sat down and started writing the first part of this post. And cried, and wrote more, and then cried some more. Trying to detail for myself the timeline of how I had come to believe that my general worth was tied up in my weight brought up a whole lifetime of pain and hurt and insecurity. And I definitely was not going to share that stuff with you. And the worst - but also the best - was that I began to see that, while it would be easy to put that piece away and go, "Well, there it is, everybody! My poor body image is all the fault of those jerks...", there was a resounding, repeating thunderclap to each part of it. First, it was the instinctual feeling that I'm not the only one out there who can write out a history like that. And then it was that, while some of that stuff is admittedly super shitty, the shittiest of all is that I let that super shitty stuff sink in because, for some reason, it was more important for me to win someone else's love instead of keep my own.
So I decided that, maybe, for the first time in my life, instead of focusing on how to make myself more lovable to others, I could focus on falling in love with myself. All of myself, just as I am, right fucking now. Learn how to teach myself that even if I'm not as strong or lithe as the ideal that I carry around in my head, I can still be nice to myself. That being mean to myself about my body is simply not allowed anymore (nor is it allowed from anyone else). That it's more important to gently heal my own relationship with my body than it is to beat it up so I can attract someone else with it. Maybe, if my size never goes down or the number on the scale never changes, I can still feel good about myself and rock this shit out and start being the kind of woman who is funny and brave and smart because of how she loves her body and herself, instead of in spite of how much she doesn't.
Maybe instead of trying to become the person I think I need to be in order to be lovable, I start becoming the kind of person that I love being.
And I don't know how I'm going to do all this yet, but I know that I can figure it out as I go.
And if this stuff makes you feel the same way, then maybe you should do it with me.
October 14, 2013
Happy Bartolome Day!
My mom was really excited to take this photo for me. Also, fuck you, Columbus.
Take Back Columbus Day by reading this uber excellent post about it on The Oatmeal!
October 11, 2013
Yeah, you're welcome.
With the changing of the seasons comes the changing of our lives.
Or something.
And with it...we grow up. No longer are we silly girls, posing for professional photos with a smirk on our lips and ridiculous twinkle in our eye.
Nay! We are now women...grown up, sophisticated, and much, much too mature for such nonsense.
2013. My friend and Girl from the Northwoods partner Meg took this. It's really going to help my career.
Or something.
And with it...we grow up. No longer are we silly girls, posing for professional photos with a smirk on our lips and ridiculous twinkle in our eye.
Nay! We are now women...grown up, sophisticated, and much, much too mature for such nonsense.
2013. My friend and Girl from the Northwoods partner Meg took this. It's really going to help my career.
