sticks and stones

In middle school I was fat. I got teased a lot and it was terrible. But ultimately, being a fat kid made me a stronger, more empathetic person.

Or did it? I mean, the empathetic part is true: I remember very vividly how it felt to be called mean names and treated like I didn't matter, and now go out of my way to say positive things to people and make them feel important and at ease (perhaps this is the key to my success as a publicist?)

But I don't know if being fat as a kid has made me much stronger. For example, if mean Jimmy pushed me into a row of lockers and said, "Move it you fat cow," while walking past me in a crowded hallway, I'd pretty much just want to shrivel up and die. My faculties of reason and wit would completely desert me, and I'd just stand there, jaw open, ready to cry, like a STUPID, WIMPY fat cow.

between agreeing with mean Jimmy ("I am a fat cow and everybody knows it") and blaming myself ("why can't I just be thinner? tomorrow I'm going to try that new anorexia thing I've been hearing so much about") and imagining all of the amazing things I could have and should have said that would have put mean Jimmy in his place ("at least my mom's not my sister", "nice rat-tail, Then, I'd spend the remainder of the day obsessing over Jimmy's comment. I'd vascillatedouchebag", all manner of shameless, flagrant vulgarity.) Sometimes I'd practice saying those things in my head, imagining elaborate scenarios that ended with mean Jimmy in tears and a crowded hallway full of people applauding for me, doing their best to hoist my fat ass up in the air to parade me around the school on their shoulders as their hero.

I never mastered the art of the quick, snappy comeback, and no such thing happened.

Not to dwell on yesterday's news, but it occurred to me after I wrote of the Mystery Man that I felt the exactly same way after he called me a bad waitress as I did when getting picked on so many years ago. (And when the post got excerpted on Universal Hub and an "anonymous" commenter said means things about me, I felt the same way again. And so on...)

And I realized that I really use this blog as a way to get back at those people. It's a venue for all of the wonderful, unspoken rebuttals I have for the massive pricks out who keep on pushing me into lockers. Sure, I may stare at you blankly like a stupid fat cow in the moment, but my wrath will eventually be heard.

After all, isn't that what the Internet is for? To help those who were geeks and losers in high school to inherit the earth?

welcome to fat week

Welcome to Fat Week, everybody! Fat week happens once a month and begins exactly one week before I get my period. And it blows.

Friends will tell me that I am crazy, not fat, and that this is all in my head. Boyfriends have banged their heads against the wall trying to talk me off the ledge during Fat Week. Strangers likely won't even notice it's Fat Week. The problem is that I notice. My body is kicking off Fat Week right now, with flair and celebratory style. My body is ringing it in with gusto. Huzzah Fat Week!

To some extent, the people who say Fat Week is all in my head are correct. More precisely, it's in my hormone secreting glands. Fat Week is the direct result of changes in hormone levels that happen at predictable times during my cycle. Today, for example, my progesterone levels are at an month-time high, and my estrogen and testosterone levels are also peaking for the second time this month. Estrogen & Testosterone on high? That's usually a good thing, as estrogen & testosterone are the hormones that make me outgoing, confident & feel as though I can take over the world during Thin Week (a.k.a. Week 2 of my cycle). Today Progesterone trumps the E&T card making me calm, collected, and since I am sensitive to it, a little blue.***

Tomorrow, all hell breaks loose and ALL of my hormone levels will plummet as I begin the hellish descent into PMS.

I also call this Fat Week because I literally am fatter this week. Every month I gain & lose at least five pounds over the course of my cycle (since I finally bought a scale in January I've been able to measure this for once and for all). For this duration of this glorious week I get to sport those brand new pounds like a shiny, spanking new pair of shoes. Heavy shoes. Shoes that only weigh five pounds, but feel like they weigh 25.

As you can see, Fat Week isn't just in my head, nor is it exactly real, as in just a week's time, I will lose exactly five pounds in the space of two days. But for now, Vive La Fat Week!

Welcome to my crazy, crazy world...

***All of this info was gleaned from a lovely little book by Gabrielle Lichterman called 28 Days. Pick up a copy & unlock the secrets of your cycle, especially if once a month you think you're going crazy. It's not all in your head & you are NOT alone!

manorexia

I spent the better part of Wednesday looking at images of very thin models wearing very expensive clothes.

I wasn't just messing around, I was working -- it was for a media placement for one of my clients, the Achilles Project, who open the doors to their innovative boutique/restaurant on Monday. There was something unusual about these skinny models, however: they were all boys.

As I paged through look-books from McQ by Alexander McQueen and Shipley & Halmos, I couldn't help but notice: all the male models looked as thin, frail, and anorexic as their female counterparts. I was shocked.

I do recall the heroine-chic thing of the mid-1990s, but the models from these look books? They evoked something different. Just as the high-waisted, wide-leg jeans I bought last month are similar but not-at-all like my mom's bell-bottoms from the 70's, these skinny guys seemed to foretell a new era of thin. It's bad enough that we don't let the women eat, I thought. Are we now taking food away from the men, too?

Intrigued, I googled "anorexic male models" and turned up this article from last Thursday's New York Times. Says writer Guy Trebay: "Far from inspiring a spate of industry breast-beating, as occurred after the international news media got hold of the deaths of two young female models who died from eating disorders, the trend favoring very skinny male models has been accepted as a matter or course."


Huh. Really? Then I began to wonder: How will men respond to this new trend?

Are food issues going to become de rigeur for both genders now?

Will men finally begin to understand what it's like to have the media plucking away at their self-esteem all the time?

Will we see an increase across the board in manorexia?

It levels the playing field in a way, I guess, to have food issues plaguing everyone, not just women. But when I dream about gender equality, meritocratic food issues aren't exactly what I have in mind.

friend or foe???

The scale that I bought from Target.com came in the mail today. I have avoided owning such a thing for my entire adult life, preferring to take a "don't ask-don't tell" approach to the number that is my weight. On the one hand, I realize that numbers can be deceiving, and that a person's general health can have very little to do with some magic number they conceptualize as their ideal weight. On the other, I realize that I have obsessive tendencies, and have avoided purchasing one for fear that if I did, I would torture myself with it.

However, in light of this post, I thought it might be a good idea to bring a little reality to the business of my body image issues. Who knows? Maybe having a scale in the house will be a good thing? Maybe it will help me stop worrying about the unknown so much, deter me from deciding that I have magically gained ten or fifteen pounds when I have no material reason to believe that is the case. And it might be nice to know, for once and for all, exactly how many pounds I gain from water when I have PMS (somewhere in the vicinity of 1-3 I think, but to my crazy mind, it usually feels like ten.) So, I made the Mathematician buy us a scale using his company discount on Target.com. He likes gadgets & selected a fancy one. I have been eagerly anticipating it's arrival since its purchase Sunday evening.

I unwrapped the scale and squealed with glee when I realized that it can not only measure my weight in pounds and kilograms, it also measures my total fat percentage AND the total percentage of water in my body. (I do not know why the latter is important.) I liberated it from its plastic packaging, plugged in the included batteries, and briefly skimmed the instruction booklet (so as to avoid blender-melting disasters like this one) before giving it a go. The question loomed. Would our new scale be my friend or my foe?

I then immediately weighed myself eight times in a row.

The first time I got on it, the scale told me I weighed about 2 pounds more than I thought I should. Foe I thought, and narrowed my eyes at my new enemy. Then I realized, Oh, wait. Maybe I should take off my shoes. And , while I'm at it, my clothes. Jeans are heavy.

The second time I got on, the scale reflected what I considered to be a much more acceptable number. Friend! I smiled. Welcome to your new home.

The third time I weighed myself, I was disappointed to see that it was accusing me of being 55.5% body fat. Foe, I scowled. I hate you! How dare you call me half fat!!! Then I read the instruction booklet, and realized that was the water percentage number the scale was reporting, not the fat percentage, and being 55% water is goo. Friend!

The fourth, five, sixth, and seventh time I weighed myself, it was in an attempt to decipher the body fat tabulation offered me by the scale. First it said I was 20% fat, then 23% fat, then 21% fat, then 18%fat. My reactions to all of these numbers: Foe, foe, foe, probably foe but since you're 2% less than the initial estimation and 5% less than the highest, I might like you a little better. Then I referred again to the instruction booklet, and realized that all of those numbers were on the low side of normal, with the 18% figure being below average.

By the eighth time I weighed myself, I realized: Staring at these numbers isn't going to change them. At this point, I've been playing with the scale for, like, 20 minutes. I'm naked and I just weighed myself eight times in a row for no reason, and I would never ever do this if someone else were home. So, I put on my clothes, declared a truce with the scale, and made a new home for it beside my closet.

Friend or foe? Who cares, at least this new appliance is honest. And I need something in my life that can tell it to me straight.

Shirley Polykoff, the Patron Saint of Blonde Marketing

Does she or doesn't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure...

Is it true...blondes have more fun?

If I've only one life...let me live it as a blonde!

Do these phrases sound familiar? They should: these ads were penned back in the '50s by a trail-blazing female copywriter named Shirley Polykoff, and changed the American hair care industry forever. Let me put it this way: before Shirley Polykoff penned that first slogan, just 7% of American women dyed their hair, most of whom were actresses and models. When Shirley's stewardship of the Clairol account ended in the 1970s, that number had skyrocketed to 40%, and included women of all walks of life.

Shirley Polykoff's words were so effective, they even inspired me to pursue a book length project on the topic, 50 years later. But who was Shirley Polykoff? I scoured the Internet to find out, and in the process learned: she was a delightful paradox.

She was born in Brooklyn in 1908 into a poor, Ukrainian Jewish family. She went on to became one of the most successful, well-compensated advertising professionals of the 20th century, despite the obstacles presented by industry bias against her gender and her religion.

She was a natural brunette, but always dyed her hair blonde, even when she was still just a teenager, "even in the days when the only women who went blond were chorus girls and hookers."

Shirley's attitude was decidedly unfeminist: "Miss Polykoff was cut from a pre-feminist mold, never forgetting, as she often put it, that she was 'a girl first and an advertising woman second,' (NYT Obituary, 1998.) Polykoff went by a different name at home, as Polly Halperin, always kept the two lives separate, and put her family first before her career. She even insisted that her employers cap her salary at a measly $25,000/year, as she believed it inappropriate for a woman to make more money than her husband (her advertising firm, Foote, Cone & Belding, doubled her salary twice within a few years of her husband's death.) But Shirley's actions spoke louder than her words, and Ms. Polykoff was incredibly ambitious: she lied about her age so as to obtain a job in advertising while still in her early teens, worked her way up in the ad world and held a copy-writing job (as opposed to a secretarial or administrative position) in the '30s when the Depression found many American men out of work, and already had an established advertising career by the '50s, while most of her peers were at home managing the cult of domesticity.

Now, I truly believe that advertising and marketing in this day & age have a terribly deteriorating and damaging impact upon women's self esteem. More specifically, upon my self-esteem. I struggle every day with notions that I am not skinny enough, blonde enough, made-up well enough, dressed well-enough, and on and on. And I am not alone: as Naomi Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth, "Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the West's controlled, attractive, successful working women there is a secret 'underlife' poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control." Wolf argues that we may be worse off than our un-liberated grandmothers, that the beauty myths that bind us now may be more stringent than our great grandmother's corsets.

And then there's Shirley Polykoff, a woman who, according to her daughter Alix Nelson Frick, believed "you could acquire all the accouterments of the established affluent class, which included a certain breeding and a certain kind of look. Her idea was that you should be whatever you want to be, including being a blonde." And thanks to her brilliant copy-writing, that's exactly what I've done.

What do you think, readers? Is it a delightful paradox? Or a vicious cycle? Are we liberated by the ads? Or oppressed by them?

Some days I feel like I just can't decide...

on losing ten pounds

I am sitting in my doctor's office, shivering in a paper hospital gown. I am getting my yearly physical. She is great, but as per usual, I can tell she is in a rush. A long line of patients came before me and a longer line will trail after me. Now we are going over my vitals.

"Stop me if you have any of these symptoms," my doctor says, before rattling off a long list of ailments. "Headaches, dizziness, chest pain, nausea?"
"Nope."
"Depression, trouble sleeping, anxiety, irregular periods?"
"Um, no."
"Changes in weight? Sudden loss or gain?"
"Well, it hasn't been sudden, but I'm pretty certain I've gained weight."
"Really?" my doctor asks, looking puzzled.
"Yes. I'm sure I've gained ten pounds. Of course, I can't be certain because I don't own a scale."
She shuffles through her papers a minute, comparing numbers from this year and last year's charts. "You didn't," she says, finally. So matter of fact.
"Really?"
"Yup."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Exactly the same as last year," she says, looking up at me, looking tired.
"Okay," I shrug. "Well, cool. I'll take it. Hey, it's kinda like I just magically lost ten pounds!"
My doctor does not laugh. She does not seem amused by my body issues.

Trepidation

So, I haven't posted anything in months. There's good reason for that.

You see, my last post about the Italian in the wine store wasn't very good, and caused me far more trouble than it was worth. I tried to make it cinematic & interesting, but I rushed though it, and it shows. I can accept that it's not my best writing. Really, I was plowing through the piece for the wrong reasons. I was trying desperately to get something posted on this site, to actually get some traction with this project, to be a little less self-critical and self-censoring for once. The result? A post that is undeniably sub-par.

I wrote that piece around 8/9, hence the date, and posted it about a month later. Two days later, the boy I am seeing--to whom I shall heretofore refer as "the Mathematician"--confronted me about it. All of a sudden we were having an issue and, all of a sudden, a talk. Since then, I've been blog-paralyzed.

At the time of our conversation, the Mathematician and I were a little less serious. More specifically, we were both feeling kinda serious about each other, but weren't using certain types of verbiage, such as "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" to refer to each other and our feelings. I have good reason for this. I just broke up with my fiance of 3 1/2 years. It was recent and colossal, and I need to just take my time right now.

None of this changes the fact that I care about the Mathematician quite a lot. I have since started using the b-word, and am quite psyched about it. And I was upset to learn that he was not psyched to read my post about the Italian in the wine shop.

To understand this, I try to imagine how I'd feel to read a similar story about the Mathematician. Maybe he'd be at a rock show, for some indie band I've never heard of. A cute little thing wearing a tee-shirt for Pinback or the Futureheads or yet another band I've never heard of and cat eye glasses would start talking to him about music. Maybe she's in a band herself, maybe she's even a bassist. She'd be just his type, and they'd have a fantastic, intelligent, and infuriatingly flirtatious conversation. So yes, I can understand where he's coming from. Just imagining him flirting with this indie rock bitch has me hot under the collar. And she's a figment of my imagination--not an Italian who can be found at the wine shop on Tuesdays and Thursday.

So what's a girl to do? What does a writer do when her pet project threatens her love life?

I have this curiosity, this minor obsession even, with the exchanges that occur between men and women, where sexuality is at play and it messes everything up. I have this fantastic title, UNDERCOVER BLONDE. But, more importantly, I have a deeply vested personal objective for this project. It's my attempt to understand how the body betrays us, how external factors, like the way we walk, talk, move, and act can at times speak more loudly about us than our voices do.

Here's an example. When I first started working as a waitress at Tremont 647, someone made up the ridiculous story that before working at the restaurant, I worked as a stripper. "Kitty? Yeah, she totally used to strip. I mean, just look at the way she walks! It's like she's dancing around a stripper pole. Duh!" Maybe it started out as a joke, but it certainly spread as a rumor, and shortly became accepted as fact, all unbeknownst to me (news-flash: people rarely spread lies about you to your face.) Months later a friend mentioned my "previous job" to me casually--to my horror. I turned bright red and almost dropped the plate I was clearing right in a regular's lap. It was humiliating.

Sure, Tremont is your typical cliquey little South End restaurant, and of course they have their own special and especially bitchy ways of teasing the new girls. But, like so many myths, at the core of this one there is some fact. Something about my body, something about the way I move, speak, and act screamed "stripper" to these people. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. I am incredibly self conscious, brutally self critical, and struggle every day with the deeply ingrained mental image of myself as a fat, unloveable little girl.

So, where is that disconnect? How can I be communicating something so far from my true feelings, without even realizing it? It's something that's troubled me since that dirty old bastard ogled me for the very first time at my very first restaurant job when I was just fourteen years old. This blog, this social experiment, the book & personal research I intend to do to support it is all part of my quest to resolve two grossly conflicted parts of myself that somehow share a mind and body. I would like to find a way for these parts to coexist in peace.

My last posting is entirely unsatisfying to me, because all it shows me doing is flirting shamelessly with a stranger for a couple of free glasses of wine, then wondering lamely if he'd have given me freebies if I was fat. That's not what happened. What happened was this:

I had PMS and was feeling exceptionally bloated and ugly that day. I went out to meet my adorable, petite, brunette friend, who has great clothes and was dressed way better than I was. The Italian was friendly and accommodating to me, sure, but I assumed he was just being professional, and hoping for a decent tip. I didn't think for a second that he thought I was pretty--how could he, when I was looking so totally fat & bloated and under-dressed next to my adorable, petite, brunette friend? We got drunk, stayed until close, and as we stumbled out the door, my girlfriend intimated that she thought the Italian liked me. We tabulated the amount of free wine he'd poured for us and decided that, yes, this may in fact be true. Of course, we were drunk, so who knew, and who the fuck cared?

That said, I understand exactly where the Mathematician is coming from. And going forward I will approach this project and all that it entails, starting with this very post, with no small degree of trepidation.