no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I don't think I'm as hard on other women as I am on myself. I definitely try not to be. Going to start using your tricks tbh.

yeah! i was a having a low self-esteem day last Friday, and then I went to see Wild Flag, and the drummer looked way hot, even though she had my build, and she was wearing this supercute black & white polka-dot dress with a black waistband, and it made me feel better about myself.

I talk about this all the time and it won't be news to anyone, but I try to use that displacement to my advantage when I'm stressing about things outside my control like my body and why no one will ever love me, by making myself useful/creative in some way that makes me sweat it out and be strong. It's not "better" if it puts a certain kind of helpfulness or utility over JUST BEING A PERSON WHO CAN BE WRONG OR FOOLISH SOMETIMES, so I should probably flag that and curb it, but I find that approach v empowering.

*waves to Amanda*

now i want a business apron too.

It's an engineer overall!! Imma get you a wooden train whistle.

I don't think I'm as hard on other women as I am on myself. I definitely try not to be. Going to start using your tricks tbh.

― Juggy Brottleteen (ENBB), Thursday, November 10, 2011 9:50 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark

i don't think you are, either. i have actually had the thought that you are very good at being generous about other people's looks. i was a horrible wench in my head my sophomore year of college, by contrast. i think it was because i was hungry tbh.

to be horseshoe<3

i think it was because i was hungry tbh.

Real lols!!

Being hungry can totally bring the crazy.

I am horrible, horrible, in my head. If people could hear me, I would shunned from society, and rightly so. Horrible. I'm a lot happier these days than I have been in years and years, so it's easing up but...this is why my inner Laurel needs to be kept in check with rules and stuff.

I try to channel rrrobyn a lot when I start doing that. It helps! And it makes me happier because rrrobyn.

remembering being hungry is the other thing i do, tbh. that sucked and i don't care how much i hate the pictures people tag of me on facebook i'm not doing it again.

as in you had an eating disorder?

the thign about the being horrible in your head is it's all terrible lies. like, this will sound trivial but i had the experience after i stopped being so crazy of going back and seeing movies that i had watched in that crazy frame of mind and thinking, how could i have thought this incredibly thin actress was fat? seriously that intense punishing gaze is some funhouse mirror shit.

no i didn't have an eating disorder i just obsessively dieted. i would say my eating was disordered sometimes but no more than most women i knew, sadly.

It is, but mine isn't really about fatness, it's about everything else, and everything.

but i did have one particularly bad year of it.

xp Christine - i just wear black tights, except when it's super hot, but pretty much when it's 90 degrees, i am in not-giving-a-shit that i haven't shaved my legs in a month territory.

It's really nice to reflexively have healthy responses to things, though, and then remember when it would not have been a healthy response, and marvel at how I've managed to change the rules of the world I make for myself to live in, over time.

Whenever I have a major attack of the guilts, I think back and see if I've forgotten to take my medication. Almost always, it turns out that I had.

it is always instructive, too, when beautiful, amazing women like Erica have these feelings and then i just get infuriated like IT IS TOTAL BULLSHIT THAT SHE IS SPENDING EVEN A SECOND OF HER TIME WORRYING ABOUT THIS

that's true about everyone, and then you can kind of turn it around and apply it to yourself

xp Christine - i just wear black tights, except when it's super hot, but pretty much when it's 90 degrees, i am in not-giving-a-shit that i haven't shaved my legs in a month territory.

That would work for me, except that my legs look after a week of not shaving like most women's do after a month.

I often think admiringly of Amanda and her quickness to be affronted at slights to her person, because she gives herself the benefit of her own protectiveness.

xp I look back to my Twenties, when I was genuinely lock-her-up mentally ill, with a lot of horror.

is it actually visible if you're wearing black tights? maybe i'm that much of a lazy slob to think it looks fine?

"THIS ONE is taking herself home." I just adore the fiery little person who said that and didn't lose a SECOND to self-recrimination or feeling apologetic to those people.

omg as long as i'm oversharing, i'll give a specific example. my mother is a very beautiful woman and i think not coincidentally really in the bell jar about this stuff. a couple years ago she was really really bad with the never stopping talking about how disgustingly fat she was (she's not but it doesn't really matter). just horrible things she would say about herself. anyway, we were having a picnic oen day and she found out an older woman she knew had been left alone for the weekend by her family. and my mom just flew into action, picked the woman up, brought us home, whipped up a ten-course meal and entertained her friend in an incredibly graceful way. i was sort of in awe and i remember thinking, this is what everyone loves about you, how capable and generous you are, not how effing small you are! it seemed like a tragedy she couldn't see herself that way.

these stories are breaking my heart!

Right on, hs!

:-)

I love your mother now!

Just from that story!

aw i sort of got tears in her eyes typing it tbh. she is lovely but i don't want to be talking about how gross i look when i'm in my 60s.

is it actually visible if you're wearing black tights?

I haven't worn black tights in years, but when it got really, really lush on my legs the hairs tended to stick out a little. But I doubt this is a problem for you.

loooool tears in my eyes jesus

Aw, that story is great. :)

I agree.

I got all verklempt reading it too, don't worry. I can picture your mom perfectly now and I have no idea what she even looks like.

another thing to say about that is my mom was berating herself because her body had changed since she was, you know, 25. and i find myself doing the same thing and it's like, bodies change, you know?

you know you know you know

Yeah, I've aired this on ilx before, in bits and pieces, but my mom does exactly the same thing, and having witnessed that for the last 30 years, I remind myself to extend myself the same outrage I felt for her when she did it in my hearing.

this is kind of off-topic, but when my parents came out to the US last year, we picked them up from the airport and on the way home my dad said to my husband "you've put on a bit of weight since we last saw you". i was FURIOUS - like, it's not ok to say that to my husband just bc he's male, my dad would never in a million years say that to me about my weight.

also kind of off topic: the last time i was this heavy, i was in a very bad situation in my life, a very terrible and degrading relationship, everything was shit. now i'm v v happy, and in an amazing relationship, but this weight reminds me of that other time... i don't really know how to articulate this but it really bothers me in a related but separate way to the general i-hate-my-body feelings.

My mom's got all these unresolved health problems, maybe lupus or something (some doctors think), but she's also been in a lot of car accidents lately and maybe it's neurological stuff. They don't know. She's got a banging R. Crumb girl kind of build that I inherited and these health issues have meant she's progressively losing a lot of weight for reasons no one can really figure out.

I should also note she's one of the hardest-working, volunteeringest, most self-extending ladies at her church (and there is stiff fucking competition in the world of Mormon women). She does a lot of unrequited good for a lot of people, and she's so kind and chill about all of it. But it's losing all this weight that finally earned her praise and attention and congratulations from both the women and men in her church. I was both relieved and fucking apoplectic to hear her say that it's the only thing that will earn women in her position any praise, that it's the only area of self-improvement people will recognize. Like, how cool that she's self-aware that that's bullshit, but how sad that that's the case. You have to look at the 99+% of the good things you are doing in life that have nothing to do with your waistline even if a lot of parts of society sometimes refuse to validate them.

I can't catch up, so

I hate pants too. All my skinny coworkers wear tight black pants and I love the look but I have to choose between tight around the thighs and my stomach or loose, I invariably choose loose and feel like a dumpy loser. Pants are my Depressed Clothes.

Viva les skirts. I have been wearing them and dresses 95% of the time (scarily, winter approaches..) and I have recently become addicted to Spanx as well..they were uncomfortable at first but they really give me back the beautiful shape my body has before I put clothes on it (I'm squishy, so there's always bra/waist/underwear lines) and erase all the bumpiness and it has been making me feel SO much better about having 50 pounds on most of my coworkers!

ugh that shit makes me crazy Abbott i'm sorry your mom is dealing with people being idiots on top of worrisome weight loss.

You guys, Jenny was otm about this w/r/t relationships, and I think about it all the time since she put it into words, it's pretty damn obvious I guess, but...we have to make a new way, you know? For ourselves as we age and change and get crone-ier in all ways. We can do better. We have each other, first of all, and this conversation and a thousand more like it, it feels like a richness right now and I just know we can make something out of it.

I wear a waist whittler every day myself (one from Hanes), and it does make a difference.

You guys, Jenny was otm about this w/r/t relationships, and I think about it all the time since she put it into words, it's pretty damn obvious I guess, but...we have to make a new way, you know? For ourselves as we age and change and get crone-ier in all ways. We can do better. We have each other, first of all, and this conversation and a thousand more like it, it feels like a richness right now and I just know we can make something out of it.

― It means why you gotta be a montague? (Laurel), Thursday, November 10, 2011 10:15 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yes, this is what i want! hear, hear!