no boys allowed in the room!!!!

LL that's a great tumblr! I love old pics and I love your love for old pics. When I worked at a newspaper at age 18 my favorite thing was raiding the box of ancient, unclaimed photos. They're not at my house but when I get them back I should post some of them.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6adhjEt5u1rzge1ho1_500.jpg

nice arms, eh?

Yeah, I love that shit. Otherwise discarded photos of real people. Thanks for looking!

xps shit, abbott. that's awful about your mom.

(i went thru a size 2 phase thanks to my health ish and SO many ppl said i looked great. ugh. i looked absolutely skeletal, and i knew it, but it fucked with my head.)

One of my very first jobs was scanning fingerprints for the NY DCJS. It was an awful job, but the mug shots from old arrest records almost made up for it. We did a box from the 30s/40s that was just incredible.

Woah, that's awesome.

In my experience a thing that's just as bad as the negative comments about weight is the amount of praise that people (parents and otherwise) give to other people who have lost weight.

O! T! M!

So like five years ago I took myself out of the game and quit dieting and also decided that I wasn't going to participate in diet talk (or I'm so fat conversations, or I was so bad I ate a brownie conversations). And it is SO CONFUSING to people! It's kind of hilarious, actually, although refusing to engage in these conversations and letting the other people be confused by it goes against all of my training and inclination as a person who makes social situations work.

xp that dude looks like jjjusten a little bit.

lol I was thinking he looks like Jason Lee but Jjjusten looks like Jason Lee so that makes sense.

Ha, yes.

Whoa WCC mugshots? that kind of thing totally makes me drool.

my personal favorite

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6ad0snN2X1rzge1ho1_500.jpg

Well YEAH! He's cute even by contemporary standards.

That guy is cute.

lol x-post

he has a nice smile

Lots of those campaigners are cute!

Maybe I just like the '70s Kurt Vonnegut look

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6adk2Pw0H1rzge1ho1_r1_500.jpg

some more mugshots for you, LL, here: http://thehairpin.com/2012/06/are-you-allowed-to-smile

I do too -- my love for Donald Sutherland in the 70s is well documented, I'm afraid.

Another topic: I went on vacation by myself recently for the first time ever in my life and it was so incredibly fun. Even though on the plane I kept thinking of crazy Lise's encounter with a macrobiotics flame in The Driver's Seat. Staying in a hotel by myself, flying by myself, doing what I wanted when I liked – all a blast. I think if I ever get in a relationship again I'll still take vacations by myself. I like the feeling of being a woman just having fun by myself and deciding shit!

OMG there are few things I love in life as much as taking vacations by myself. BIG FAN, lifelong devotee!

Nice work.

My aunt in Germany does that all the time! A couple of years ago she went to Egypt and London by herself both for a week. She's married but I guess just likes alone time and I'd guess my uncle probably appreciates it too. I think it's pretty awesome.

I love flying by myself! I've never GONE anywhere by myself, though; I'm always meeting people where I'm going. I tell myself that's one of the reasons I haven't traveled more widely: because I'd be going alone and it makes me sad/uncomfortable--well, that and the expense.

I'm at the point where I literally could no longer imagine having to travel with someone when I go on holiday.

I love solo vacations! I have and will continue to take them even though I am coupled. I kind of treat business travel as solo vacation, even though it is for work. Still get to fly alone, hotel alone, choose what to do on off hours, etc.

I went to Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East and North Africa for over a year by myself when I was 19-20. Made lifelong friends. Beat going to college.

I've traveled alone but never gone on actual vacation alone. I don't know if I would. Not because I wouldn't want to (I like doing things alone, generally) but because of time/resources. Plus, we haven't gone on that many vacations together thanks to finances and then law school and then introductory levels of vacation time.

Meaning that going on vacation together is still enough of a novelty that I don't want to not do that.

I like the idea of vacationing alone, however. Maybe some day.

ugh, i am so so sorry about your body-policing moms - it's bad enough that too many acquaintances and random strangers do it, but your own mother? I feel embarrassedly fortunate in this regard in that my mom always thinks i look nice when i put nominal effort into my appearance.

xp - i can vouch that it helps to have a partner who needs extended periods of alone time too

Ugh my dad is pretty terrible about just saying whatever comes into his head which often includes remarks about people's looks (it's a weird habit, he'll also just walk around saying out loud the names of stores and signs he sees and 50% of the time make some dad-pun on them). So after 18 months of not seeing my parents I was staying with them and my dad was constantly making comments about every female presenter on tv, all appearance-related so it took me about 10 mins to flip. He commented 'why is she wearing so much make-up?' and I was all BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE YOU JUST SIT THERE CRITICISING EVERY PORE OF THEIR BODY EVERY MINUTE and to his credit he did shut up for a bit after that.

thankful (well not really thankful) that my mom focuses on hair policing.

She's all passive aggressive about it, like "so that's what you're doing with your hair these days!"

When my mom saw my most recent haircut she said, "So you're back to the Ramona Quimby." <3

here is a topic i relate to

which brings me to an interesting point!

yesterday someone told me "i like what you've done with your hair" -- i hadn't seen him for a while, and he doesn't know me all that well, and i am not easy to get to know ANYway but relations with him have been strained more often than not. and he says, "i like what you've done with your hair."

huh?

I don't know how to navigate the possible subtext of that. At all.

I think it just means he thought your hair looked nice?

I find that very difficult to believe for some reason, but I guess there's really no telling what he meant since I didn't ask him. I just changed the subject. I don't often feel awkward around people, but something about that particular moment made me really feel weird and uncomf. Not because I thought he was being sincere, but because it sounded like a robotic thing to say.

It also sounds like he's at least 20 years older than you and it's 1946.

"I like what you've done with your hair" just sounds like one of those "how to win friends and influence people" kinds of tips, you know, that they learn in smarmy books. Start conversations with people you find difficult to talk to by leading with a compliment.

Anyway, I was just thinking about this thread on the way home.

And I was remembering how, when I was in my late teens and early 20s, I learned to bond with other women by putting down our own appearances. That whole thing of "my thighs are fat" "oh no my thighs are much fatter" as a way of bonding with other women over one's insecurities.

And I was thinking about what we have been doing on this thread today, which is bonding over how destructive it is to face body policing, and coming up with solutions and solidarity of how to resist it, and bonding over our experiences and how we've overcome them (or tried.)

And it's funny how it's a similar sort of bonding experience, except that whole thing when I was 17, that used to make me actually feel kinda yucky at the end of it. And the thing that we have been doing today, it actually makes me feel better. But both through the process of bonding through sort of complaining about something. But what a difference it makes, to complain about pressure, instead about our actual selves.

And I just wanted to say, that's awesome, and thank you ladies.

And that is 5 paragraphs in a row I have started with the word "and" which is a total grammar sin but I'm not going to change it.

<3<3<3

Yeah that shit always made me straight up uncomfortable. Like I know you're supposed to say "oh no you look gorgeous look at my [flaw] it's worse" but it just feels totally phony.

"That must be difficult for you, but I wouldn't know because I'm fucking awesome." *jumps in helicopter, flies away*

^ how I would respond to those things if I was an asshole with a helicopter

haha believe it or not no one likes that
it doesn't help that my copter says DEA on the side

No one also likes when you pantomime casting a fishing rod and reeling in a fish
No one likes a wiseass

xp I guess I should stop telling people that I like what they've done with their hair - which I have employed when a new hair style or cut has been busted out. I didn't know it was so robotic.

This thread makes me so glad I never had parents who played appearance headgames (they stuck me with every other possible kind of neurosis though) and that the geeks I hung out with weren't particularly concerned with if they were too fat or too skinny. Random school jerks were aplenty, of course, but they had lots of other reasons to pick on me (poor, too tall, out of style clothes & cars &c). The place I work now is, of course, a very superficial place and that's a bit hard, but I'm almost 30 and they're all 25 anyway so I can deal with being different. And of course, my quirkiness lends itself to descriptions of me as "creative" and "interesting" and all sorts of descriptions based less on my body type and more on my overall appearance.

Of course, my Mom was 95 pounds at 5'6" or 7" (she fed her 4 children before she ate, a financial ED if you will) my whole life and I wish she had been a bit tougher about making me exercise more or eat less, which she never did. I gain weight easily and most of my life was very sedentary. It's hard to change your life at 30 - would've preferred to start at 7 with a soccer class or something. But my parents wanted me to be free to choose the way my life turned out, which is tough to do before you've learned life lessons! Damned hippies.

But what a difference it makes, to complain about pressure, instead about our actual selves.
amen

totally

interesting re: overall appearance. i was also thinking, while reading the boobs/bras thread, about common lines we hear about showing off our "best assets" to detract from our apparently less-than-stellar assets. which annoys me, breaks our bodies/selves into parts to accent and draw attention to. like "you should show off your ____ more!" and things like that. i mean, yes, certain cuts of clothes look good on different bodies, but i would say let that be about the whole rather than the parts. i think there are a lot of clothes out there that are really all about the parts.

I wish she had been a bit tougher about making me exercise more or eat less, which she never did. I gain weight easily and most of my life was very sedentary.

In my experience, the former doesn't have a whole lot of impact on the latter.