no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Someone told me to my face that I reminded him of a monkey.

Pardon the fuck out of me for being short and wiry, asshole!

Whaaaaa....?! xp

That wasn't even the worst, but it's the funniest.

Oh no fucking way is there an obligation to "maintain" other than maintaining the fundamentals of myself (aka the stuff one falls in love with); 20 pounds does not change the fundamentals of myself. I have tested this theory in real life, and it has held rue.

Also, I shit in my now-husband's pants ~2 weeks after we got engaged. SHIT IN HIS PANTS. After which there was an ambulance and a hospital stay wherein not only did I look like shit, he had to CHANGE MY EXPLOVE-DIARHHEA-FILLED BEDPANS. And kissed the lips from which I recently spewed much vomit. Not a pretty time, the norovirus weekend. So thank god one can transcend the physical, because otherwise he would be haunted by shit and vomit every time he looked at me!

if my story was inscrutable its cause i meant my bf was telling the friend how he, the BF, had been forced to develop an attraction to me - he wasnt telling the friend he had to develop one. lol. the friend was having trouble finding a GF at the time.

xp wow quincie. that's love

Once I tried to make light of body image stuff during sexytimes by telling my partner in a jokey kind of way that I was self-conscious about my stomach. He said 'yeah, I would think so'.

People are so terrible to each other sometimes! Quincie your story warms the bowels of my soul.

LJUB OMG

Jesus christ based on this thread you marry the one who DOESN'T talk shit about some aspect of your appearance because frankly all the rest do.

LJUB OMG

Xp No they don't but we fixate on and remember the bad ones! That's what's so shitty about it.

I seriously am deeply pissed that any woman in a relationship with a supposedly adult man should hear anything negative about her appearance. I mean I'm kind of floored that right hear I have heard from extremely attractive women that their physical looks have been criticized. I guess I thought that it didn't really happen??? I am dumb. And pissed.

um by hear I mean here, obv. I like to think that this is only an issue with people who audition for reality shows, but goddamn to hear it about women I know burns me the fuck up.

Weakling's desperate power grab in most cases, I'd imagine. It's just a shame they're so memorable/effective.

power grab is what i think too.

None of mine are funny, they're just mundanely, tediously cruel and evil. Suggestions for what you could/should do to yourself to be more enticing, remarks about how some woman who is the opposite of you is actually their type, I won't even bother to share the kinds of things the horrible one said and did, but even the nice/normal/average guys who were not assholes over the whole relationship still had things to say.

I guess it is probably a good thing that I am so floored by these negative experiences? Because I know so many partners (old, young, hetero, homo, etc.) wherein physical appearance is never something that I neither a) notice or b) hear about from either partners nor others? I hpe to god that this is the norm, and these assholes are the exceptions???

The collateral damage of the comments makes me way angrier than the comments themselves.

xpost um pls undo the double negative, too worked up to type I think

It's poisonous. A couple of years ago I spent some time a happy couple who were totally into each other and I noticed that she didn't shave her legs and was like, how can she even stand to present that to her mate?? He must think she doesn't even care what she looks like! Shocking.

To be fair, the stomach incident is the only really terrible appearance-related incident with a bf that I remember. Here's a counterweight: I went to a summer school when I was about 20. I was very paranoid about my appearance and didn't have any clue how to dress or do my hair or makeup. I'd recently lost a lot of weight and wasn't sure how the hell to perceive myself. Right at the end of the course, a really cool and attractive guy who hadn't spoken to me much turned to me and said 'By the way, you're the most beautiful girl in the summer school. I know you don't bother that much with doing your hair and stuff, but that's what I think. I just thought I'd let you know'. Then went back to his drink. I still think about that when I feel unattractive. I try to think: I may not be perfect but I can still be attractive despite that. Some people won't find me attractive, and that doesn't matter, and for others I'm just their thing.

^^^OTM

To be fair, there are totally chicks who give their partners (whether guy or girl) a hard time for failing to live up to their "maintenance" expectations.

Yeah, def. The thing is though that the exchange rate between currencies doesn't work out. It's not that men don't have body ish or w/e or don't like being handsome and told it and appreciated, it's that the cut to a woman is at her basic worth.

That's a good point, had not considered it that way. I had been thinging shallow chick=shallow dude, but I can see that there is difference in fundamental impact.

But I'm not rly focused on that, I'm just going to ponder ways to recalibrate my thinking to a much more awesome standard based on the healthier contributions to this conversation.

I have heard quite a few husbands call their wives fat when they were trying on clothes. Women who are size 4 or 6.

I think at least one of these instances was a about a wife who had recently had a baby.

The main bf who made me feel bad about my appearance thought he was manipulating me to change it, and thought I was not on his intellectual level and therefore wouldn't see what he was attempting to do.

oh the comment about basic worth is so depressingly otm

I just. . . I am really floored. I mean I know there are men and women out there who undermine their partner's appearance, but I really haven't run into very many folks who IRL do that??? It would be a very glaring exception in my world. Thank fucking god.

Even compliments about your appearance, even from people who mean them in the nicest way, aren't that simple anymore because they reinforce that that is an important thing. I guess that's what dysfunction and evil do, they corrupt beautiful things into hateful ones because there's a crack in the world.

you could not be more otm about that

not hateful so much as loaded

also this is the ugly side of "no negative self talk" -- it doesn't go away, it just becomes internalized and then comes out in unsavory/funky ways
like sbd emotion farts

I can add to quincie's story with a similar one of my own -- a long terrible night of stomach virus, alternately throwing up or diarrhea for just, hours on end. I'm practically a wet noodle by noon the next day, and it's slowed down somewhat but still persisting. Mr Veg was working from home so he could keep an eye on me and keep me hydrated etc. So I bolt to the bathroom for another attempt and as I start vomiting I suddenly feel the other end just completely give out. And I leapt up onto the toilet but I was too late and oh it was just horrible. Clay had come to check on me bc he heard the noise and he cracked the door open and I just looked up at him and started bawling.

He didn't say a word, just helped me get cleaned up and helped me back into bed and then set to cleaning up the bathroom.

The next day I said jokingly something about going from both ends, and he grinned and said 'All I wanted to do was laugh but you were so sad I figured I'd save it for later'. And he seriously didn't look askance at me for being in that awful, foul state.

I think for myself, Mr Veg and I spent a long time building our relationship from afar, so that did take the physical out of the equation for a time. By the time we met in person, all of our interactions kind of did all of the attracting for us. I would never on paper have thought that I'd marry that guy, and maybe I was superficial enough when I first met him in college that had I seen a photo I maybe would have been weirded out. But all of the times when he was there for me when no-one else was, the fun we had on long boring road trips, all of the conversations we had and things we learned from each other, the dumb jokes and silly face, that was who I fell in love with and married.

I mean, you have to *want* to kiss them, and *want* to have sexytimes - there's no denying that the physical isn't important. But as you start coloring inside the outline of them with what you learn about them as you get to know them, the theory is they become more than the sum of who they are physically *because* of your relationship to them, what you gain from them, what they gain from you etc.

that comment upthread about how you think about 10,000 other things other than the physical description is SO true.

but it always sounds so nebulous when I write it down that I can completely understand how it seems like an alien concept.

that's v reassuring!

i totally hear where you all are coming from about the negative stuff. comments people have made about my appearance have stuck with me for years and years. i've always had sort of a complex about it. there are so many better ways to spend my time than worrying about this and yet..!

yeah it sucks that the ppl you don't end up staying with are the ones who fuck you up. and it's nice in theory to say 'hey screw them they don't matter' but ugh it's all there ready to be cross referenced with any everyday experience, it's really hard!

but I guess maybe it helps to know that there are ppl out there who aren't dickheads about your looks and who can make you feel good/confident without saying anything directly about yr physical attractiveness or perceived lack thereof. etc

The critical comments just become part of the woodwork, even ones that weren't harshly meant (and those of course really wound and are remembered). I suspect if other experiences are like mine that you just learn from experience that being pretty & palatable matters and is one thing you have to do to earn and keep love? Or, "love," I guess, if you don't realize that that isn't it.

there are ppl out there who aren't dickheads about your looks and who can make you feel good/confident without saying anything directly about yr physical attractiveness or perceived lack thereof. etc

this bears repeating

Indeed.

Yo, I put this in the what's happening thread but maybe it kinda goes here: I hung out yest with one "radical lesbian separatist" rocker and my friend who is a sweet but straight-shooting photographer/artist/activist, and I just totally got an infusion of who gives a fuck. It feels pretty good! A glimpse of an alternate reality where a whole bunch of people just don't care about shit that makes me stress when *I* think about it. And an alternate future, maybe, for me and whoever ends up being with me in it, friends and self-professed misfits and whatnot. Good, good feelings.

Sat night I hung out with friends and we discussed the significance of Young Guns and whether or not it influenced the nu-metal phenomenon

Laurelita that sounds like what the doctor ordered :)

It waaaaas. With that plus doing relief stuff, I am all recharged and sensible (for a little while). :)

For Zelda-playing daughter, dad gives Link a sex change:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/i-am-no-man-for-zelda-playing-daughter-dad-gives-link-a-sex-change/

killer

lol pantyliners and helicopters

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me9swskNBj1rlbyzno1_500.jpg

Fresh panties all the time!

Although props for actually using the word "discharge" in their ad copy.

Oh god now instead of "House music all night long" I've got "Fresh panties all the time" going through my head and 1) fresh panties! and 2) it doesn't really scan. This is going to be the end of me.