no boys allowed in the room!!!!

“pathological need to feel fly on vacation.”

THIS IS ME

I put effort into how I look - hair, makeup, clothes, jewelry- like 6 x a year at home, but will dress up every single day I’m on vacation

I’m in camp Yerac. The thought of checking a bag freaks me out. If I don’t wear/use every single thing I’ve oacked multiple times, I feel I’ve done something very wrong. I’m a proponent of packing for 1 week even if you are gone for 3. I will do laundry in a bath tub if it cones to that. I have buy socks if I run out before laundry gets done. I have worn my spouse’s underwear when I have run out of my own. Shoe selection is my biggest issue as I try to pack only one pair in addition to those I wear on the plane.

It should be said that I don’t travel much, the opportunity to do so makes me want to dress up MORE.

Everyone’s different. We don’t need to do it one way or the other or divide into teams. I know that wearing dumb clothes makes me less appealing as a travel partner. That’s part of why I felt bad at the airport.

I’d love to have the kind of travel experience that makes me care less about what I’m wearing. Instead I’m stuck in high school kid mode wearing my ruffled shirt on the school trip to Washington DC.

I love when people look fab from a suitcase! I keep it simple because I like the ease, and also the challenge. I alsobiy things on the road to liven things up, for example the like 5 loose cotton dresses I picked ip in India which have replaced my sarong/tee look of prior packs.

That was supposed to be “also buy”

Yeah, I have to keep it simple because I hate the whole process of flying so much. I do tend to dress a bit nicer when away but everything I have is super comfortable but has one weird styley thing about it that I wouldn't feel underdressed if I am out from morning to dinnertime.

We don’t need to do it one way or the other or divide into teams. I know that wearing dumb clothes makes me less appealing as a travel partner. That’s part of why I felt bad at the airport.

if we did, I would be on your team. I am the "maybe this will come in handy" person when I go places. But even on the occasions where I don't use the extra pair of underwear, or socks, or warm layer, or tank top, or plastic bag to put things that are wet and kinda gross, or fingernail clippers, or spare phone charger cable/plug, or multi-tool (off-brand leatherman basically) ... I feel better having the "maybe this will come in handy" items. otoh the only shoes I travel with are the ones I wear on the road/plane, and a pair of like, bathroom/bedroom slippers.

Haha I love that you'd take a multi-tool, I might borrow that idea.

I also generally pack for every hypothetical situation ("maybe we'll go to the opera!") and don't feel bad about it. That said, it is a blessed relief to travel to a warm country and pack only silks and light cottons so that ten dresses can squeeze into a backpack-sized space. This talk is very much making me want to book another holiday - flights to...Bergerac are only £20!

I am absolutely shit at packing. I always bring way too much and forget the essential things. It helps when I make lists but I'm still terrible. New goal - get better at packing!

When you are in portugal you should find a bottle of Madeira from your birth year. It will last you forever even after opened. You can have a little every birthday.

― Yerac, Monday, April 8, 2019 6:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My parents and I went to Portugal (Lisbon, the Algarve, and Madeira) for 10 days when I was 13 and my dad did just that. IIRC he opened it on his 50th birthday. IO have a wonderful time. It's a beautiful place and I really want to go back one day. Madeira is out of this world beautiful.

We don’t need to do it one way or the other or divide into teams. I know that wearing dumb clothes makes me less appealing as a travel partner.

To be honest, reading your posts has made me desperately want to join your team for a one-off full glam holiday extravaganza, but I have nobody to do it with irl, bah.

Instead I’m stuck in high school kid mode wearing my ruffled shirt on the school trip to Washington DC.

I love you so much and feel exactly like this almost always. I think the thing that changed for me this trip is that I can't even imagine that where we're going is real and I don't rly know what "normal" ppl wear there so all I can do is style myself how I would ideally want and not have to think about every nuance of how formal something is or if it's right for this setting or that activity. Which I normally do. Because I complicate everything. Anyway, other places might as well be THE MOON to me is what I'm saying. I can't wait to get off the plane in Madrid and hear Spanish.

That said, it is a blessed relief to travel to a warm country and pack only silks and light cottons so that ten dresses can squeeze into a backpack-sized space.

<3

also, i am just so used to doing everything by myself. like, i imagine if one was traveling with another person, maybe all my "just in case" stuff wouldn't feel as necessary

Lol it’s just worse with another person bc you worry about twice as much stuff being forgotten. We got to Amsterdam last year and Jordan realized he hadn’t packed a single pair of underwear.

hahahaha

lol I'm such a slob on holiday. I pack nice stuff then wear the same two things pretty much. since having kids i dress way more for comfort than I used to, also I never have a chance to shop except for essentials and none of my old clothes fit any more, whereas previously I'd kind of built up a nice collection over the years of stuff that might loosely be described as a 'style'.

my oh once managed to pack without including any tshirts/ tops for the whole week. luckily asos do next day delivery...

xpost in orbit, I may have missed, but are you going anywhere else in Spain? And then train to Portugal?

a one-off full glam holiday extravaganza
been thinking about what my ideal version of this would look like -- probably in a city, definitely housed in an apartment (not a hotel), ideally in a place i could speak the language, which leaves open any english or spanish speaking location

i have been dreaming about Mexico City ever since i went there, probably there for lack of a better option

I’m on a long weekend vacation in LA, staying at the Waldorf in Beverly Hills, with a suitcase full of clothes from old navy. The in-room hair dryer is a fucking *Dyson*. Every single guest I’ve seen here looks insanely rich. Also skinny. I’ve been working the last year to be ok with how big my body is but being surrounded by precisely manicured perfection sure makes it tough.

This room is extremely fancy and lovely, there’s a deck with a great view, I had a delicious Italian dinner, and I started watching Russian Doll which is extremely aesthetically pleasing to me, so I’m gonna focus on that.

When my best friend from college moved to LA she had a really hard time dealing with how perfect everyone looked there. It took years before she was comfortable with herself and in her own skin in that city. So sad.

So. I want 1) to get stinking drunk, and 2) I want to get laid. Difficulty: Life has made a point of telling me everything I want is WRONG.

There are actually two men showing interest in me, but one goes to the gym at my workplace, and the other lives across the street from me. (Also, extrapolating from the way he treats his dog, he is a fundamentally decent person and I don't want to do him wrong.) I don't even expect useful responses, I just wanted to say something to SOMEONE.

Smh at that weight watchers thread.

Erica, if you’re reading this - don’t go back in there. I’m staying out bc ppl are getting v weird at the idea that it’s ok to be fat.

I don't think that anyone (maybe 1) was necessarily being weird about it. I remember liking that article you posted when it first came out but on that thread I guess it could feel discouraging for people who are trying to make changes to themselves without it being a criticism on other peoples' bodies.

Just looked before coming here. All this stuff is so loaded for me that I should really just steer clear. I only commented yesterday because 1400 calories seemed alarmingly low for an adult male. There’s a reason you see people posting in there - oops gained most of it back! Ugh.

i don't read/look at any of that
i objected to the revival of the "nutrition nazi" thread and i feel that in 2019 the harm of ___ nazi is pretty clear but also i completely object to the idea that calorie restriction is equivalent to nutrition.

none of that stuff for me thx

I really did enjoy aspects of the NN thread back in the days where it was deeply into sardines, but agree that —— Nazi is not cool and I don’t have any particular sensitivities around this stuff (anymore!) so I am still game to read that thread.

Sometimes I think the nicest thing about unemployment is I don't have to hear woman who are much smaller than me complain about how fat they are.

It's always relative but, yes, this is something I've never fucking understood. How tone deaf are people that they think doing this is OK? Then again what people say never ceases to amaze me. When I was about 13 I was having a ice cream cone with friends and some fucking asshole jock dude walked by and said "You don't need that, hon". A stranger on the street said this to a child. Maybe a year or so later I had a twisted ankle and was sitting with some older camp counselors who were talkign about one of my friend's figures and how they wished they looked like her and I must have said something like "I know, right?" to fit in and one of them snapped back at me "Well, when I was your age I did look like her" as if I had no excuse. People are assholes and have absolutely no idea how much damage this shit does. Not that it matters but the fact that I was no larger than a size 12 at either of these times does make it a little more ridiculous.

How tone deaf are people that they think doing this is OK?

A lot of them probably do think that they're fat and that you (the general 'you' of whoever happens to be in the room at the time) are not. I am fairly fat but I've caught myself complaining about my size around women who are several sizes larger than me, because in my head they look good and I don't, and that's the thing. I have no problem with any woman being fat but I have a problem with ME being fat, because I've so internalised the hatred and fear. It is thoughtless behaviour, I know, but I tend to give people who are directing that prejudice at themselves and not at others the benefit of the doubt. However, if they do direct it outwards then they can go fuck themselves, that's a given.

I feel similarly about people who look at me and say to my face “I hate you” because I am small. Like I am just a small person, always have been, and didn’t ask for this. I hate you? Really? This is from friends! They always say they’re joking but 1) not funny and 2) still hurts to be told that someone HATES me even (especially?) in jest. The cruelty never ends. I’m really over people using jokes as a cover for whatever it is they’re actually expressing. Also 100% done with the self-loathing that motivates it.

People are the absolute worst. I used to hate going to Taiwan to visit family because I always was the biggest girl in every room and other women had no problem pinching and laughing at the huge visiting american. My mom still thinks that the worst thing to happen in life is to become fat and it's impossible to deprogram her.

I was just rewatching the Bridget Jones movies this week because it popped up on netflix and holy crap, a lot of it has aged super poorly.

x-post - You're absolutely right and I'm sure I've been guilty of this in the past too but it just seems inexcusable in this day and age and mostly just makes me sad.

The bridget jones shit annoyed me at the time I mean wtf she's not even remotely fat at any point in the movie.

"People are the absolute worst. I used to hate going to Taiwan to visit family because I always was the biggest girl in every room and other women had no problem pinching and laughing at the huge visiting american." Until literally the last time I talked to her before she died my foreign grandmother's first question to me on every phone call would be if I was "watching my figure". I wish I could say I'm over all this shit but I'm not. I wore a dress last weekend and felt so terrible about myself I was anxious all day. I'm hot and I'm 41 years old for fucks sake. I know this and yet I was an anxious mess the entire day and had to force myself not to just go home and hide inside. Thanks grandma and random asshole who told me not to eat ice cream.

I had no recollection of the second movie and was constantly amazed about every single decision to humiliate her. xpost

I think I've only ever seen the first. How many were there??

Ha, the last time I spoke to my mom on the phone (I haven't seen my family since they voted for Trump and only talk to my mom on the phone) my spouse was saying something to me and I was shhh'ing him and she thought I had this secret that I didn't want to tell her and she said "is it that you got fat?" I was like "ffs, this is exactly why I don't like spending time with any of you when you didn't even try to be nice or appreciative that we took the time and energy to visit."

I think there are 3 although I only rewatched the first two.

The last time I spent time with my mom before her death she actually said to me, over Christmas dinner no less, "You really like to eat, huh?". When I asked what she meant by that she said that she could see it in my body. I lost my shit. This is the same woman who took me to the doctor when I was underweight from not eating and ok i have to stop because I'm getting upset just talking about it but yeah. Fuck all of this.

I'm a pretty consistently happy person but family can drive anyone to the opposite extreme. There is never anything rational about the behaviours involved.

A lot of them probably do think that they're fat and that you (the general 'you' of whoever happens to be in the room at the time) are not. ... complaining about my size around women who are several sizes larger than me, because in my head they look good and I don't, and that's the thing.

I used to be in a band w/ 2 other women, and one of them, the singer, would do this. ... She was the thinnest of the 3 of us. ... Now she is ... very, very, thin ... and she is/was open about having body dysmorphia. Anyway, what you said, emil.y, makes this weird disjunction make sense to me. ... because this woman would complain about being fat, say things that equate fat with being unattractive, in front of/to me -- a plus-sized person -- and not think she was being remotely insulting or awkward.

I do think that sometimes there's a degree of this but I also think sometimes people really are just assholes and don't care (like the women in the swimsuit story above).

I definitely underestimate the assholism of people sometimes, and it can lead to me seeming like an apologist for assholes, but I just always want to be sympathetic initially before remembering how much everyone sucks.

The cruelty of other people always has a purpose. I do apologize it sometimes from older women because they were brainwashed into thinking that their daughters need to attract and be married off in order for everyone to have successfully accomplished most important goals in life. Or else because they never got the chance to not give a shit how they looked.

xxp - I want to be able to teleport/time travel to be able to yell at these people.

It's never too late to start!

xp - ugh. I guess I am lucky in that I never got that from my mother or my grandmother. Instead I got from my mother, "it's very important that you develop skills in order to be self-sufficient, so that you don't have to get married in order to be financially stable." My mother has been more-or-less happily married to my father for 50+ years. So it's not like she is passing on a lesson that she had to learn the hard way. But, I have taken this advice, and somehow combined it with my body image/fatness, and internalized it as "because I am fat (among other personal flaws), and am unlikely to find a suitable partner to marry, it is imperative that I'm able to be self-reliant."

like if I was thin and cute and not an overbearing bitch, I could easily meet a future partner who can provide at least half of our collective financial support and carry heavy objects, and get food for me when I'm sick, etc.

My mom stressed the same thing about self reliance and I totally internalized it as well, but I thought it was bc I’m an only child and there is no one what will take care of me. I really bought that 100%.