Introduction

          Thank you for reading this blog. Or, if my friends and professors are right, thank you for reading my attempt at gaining exposure as a writer in the age of social media. There are many blogs reviewing Kat Von D’s new lipstick line, or Real Housewives that you could’ve read.   I’m really grateful that you chose to read mine.

            Let me lay this all out for you.

What Is This Blog About?

           This blog will be about a lot of things. My relationship with my family, love, life events that shaped me into who I am today, writing and my childhood. You know, really frivolous stuff that helps you pick out what you should wear to the club. This blog is suppose to reflect how I think, what I think people think of me, and how I observe the world around me. Sometimes this blog will verge on having an essay style of writing.  Sometimes it will be purely anecdotal.  And sometimes, I’ll be typing this and crying as I down a bottle of red wine.  Hopefully, I won’t slur my writing, the way I slur my words.

                  I’d reference Carrie Bradshaw writing her SATC column, but I actually want people to read this…

 

Will This Blog Help Me To Understand My Millenial Daughter

         Maybe.   Maybe not. I only follow a few millenial tropes. I worked hard in College to get a Bachelors in Creative Writing.  So while, I don’t follow the millenial stereotype of self entitlement.  I am swimming in student loan debt, at a time when having a Bachelors doesn’t mean shit.

        I do have a tendency to hide behind my phone in social situations.  However, if you were bullied as a kid, and found out you didn’t care what people thought when you were texting your best friend at a party of strangers, wouldn’t you too?

         However, I don’t really agree with parents reading vice magazine, or watching Girls, to better understand their daughter.  It seems a bit better, if not anxiety inducing to try to listen and get to know your daughter. Being emotionally closed off from your kids is usually a sad truth for most families, but its usually a sadder truth when that emotional withdrawal exceeds the death of a parent or child.  And then they’re questions left unanswered, and a chance for closeness has slipped from your fingertips.

      You know what?  You should just take her to Sephora. Bitches love Sephora. 

Will This be A Social Justice-y Blog

           I’ve always hated being labeled as the social justice girl, just because I care about rights related to race, class or mental illness.  Fuck, some people call it empathy. For example, I don’t think its cool when teachers send girls home from school because their shorts are too short or their bra strap is showing.  These are the same teachers, principals and school officials that criticize Muslim women for wearing burqas, but fail to see the implications in chastising a girls outfit as distracting to her male classmates.  Just a disclaimer.  I get very passionate about things like this. If you’re a teacher and are pre-occupied with a teen girls bra strap and exposed legs, it says more about you, then it does the teenage girl.  Stop sexualizing every inch of the female body.

So Is This a Feminist Blog?

          I’m going to use the F word.   Fucking Feminist.   This is a feminist blog in the sense that I will be focusing on feminist issues from time to time, but its a lot of things.   Its a blog about my relationship with my family.   Its about blog about my  fucked up relationship with food.  Its can be a blog about Catherine Breilat and so much more.

I don’t know.  I already read Jezebel. 

       I know.  I peruse jezebel.com once a day.  I think their formula of social justice issues with a sprinkle of celebrity gossip and articles crucifying Terry Richardson/Woody Allen really works for them.  Unfortunately, I am not jezebel.com, but I’m a bisexual woman of color who can offer a unique perspective on my family, self and our cultural landscape. .

What Else Should I Know

1. I have the ability to feel great after leaving the gym.  I also feel great after eating cake.

    2) Michael Fassbender, you were integral to my development as a sexual woman.

   

                                        Alternate Titles for This Blog

Gone Girl(Theres a sale at Forever. If you don’t let me go, someones gonna die)

Give me a Job Writing For jezebel.Com

Fuckboys, The new Pinnochio.  When they lie, their dick grows.

Constant scrutinization got me here.

When life gives you lemons, roll up some Lemon Kush

                          Me at age three, giving you Jonbenett Ramsey Realness

Body Shaming, A Family Pastime

Princesses Tend To Not Have Bellies

            I don’t remember a time I wasn’t fat. Like being bisexual or African American, being  pudginess feels as part of me as the hair growing on my arm.  The first day I realized this, I was five years old, and searching for the perfect Halloween Costume. Disney Princesses ruled my life.  The white shelves in my bedroom were filled with VHS movies where Allen Menken’s composing reigned supreme. I didn’t care whether I got to be Belle, Cinderella or Snow White. I just knew I wanted to be in sequins and a tiara.

       I would get neither.

        I would get neither because non of these costumes fit me. At a whopping ninety pounds, non of the zippers would go up my back and neither of my two fat arms would fit through the tiny cap sleeves. In fact,  I didn’t merely have a chin, as much as I had multiple chins, descending in size, much like a collection of Matryoka dolls.

                                You Are What You Eat. I Ate a collection of Fat Babooshkas, so naturally….

       For the next four years, I would be a Witch for Halloween, because if theres anything that being plus sized has taught me, people really have trouble seeing curvy women as beautiful, feminine princesses.

      I don’t remember what my Grandmother’s response was.  However, based on her usual comments about my weight, Its probably for the better.  I blocked that shit out.

      Some of the first forays into dieting took place after this event. This consisted of me saying to my sixteen year old cousin “I’m mature enough to know the correct foods to eat, so I have the tools to lose weight”.  This would follow me begging my Grandma to take me to Macdonalds.   Yes, I was only five when I said this, and yes, this is a perfect example of the relationship I would have with diet and exercise for the next 23 years.  I would talk about dieting, and losing weight as if it would be my transformation from pudgy little sister to an amazon who could take on the world, only to say fuck this, I’m hungry.

thing is, I’m not the only person in my family who practices this juggling act. My mother has been a size 4, a size 13, and a size 22.   My Grandma has told me that “Based on how dem’ jeans fitting, you ain’t dietin” before offering me her famous fried chicken. Based on the body shaming, I’ve endured (as well as my mother, and even though she won’t admit it, my Grandmother at the hands of her mother) I can tell you it never leads to someone committing to well balanced meals an exercise.  I can tell you’ll constantly think about food.  Yo yo diet.  Or even worse,  eat something that you love, and then hate yourself for it. 

Soul Food and Soulless Ridicule

        My Grandmother is a lot of things.  She’s whip smart(I got my biting sense of humor from her) and strong. She’s also super organized and charming. At times she has also seemed to teeter totter between the anger of Tyler Perry’s Madea and the manipulative/hypercritical nature of Lucille of the cult series Arrested Development.

                                                            Unfunny Stereotype                       Hilarious And Demonic AF 

                                          At least the bitch on the right loves alcohol and won’t drag you to church

 

       See what I mean?  SHE’S C-O-M-P-L-E-X. There were times when she was the epitome of a Betty Crocker mom. There were also times when she made me feel like I was Sissy Spacek in Carrie, and she was the blonde mean girl, hell bent on covering me in pigs blood.  The easiest way she could get me, was by targeting my weight.

      She’s grabbed my love handles in a dressing room(multiple times) to express her disgust with how an article of clothing fits me. She suggested a girdle after noticing my full stomach, when shopping for prom dresses(I didn’t originally want to go, but she insisted I would regret it), to which my German aunt, (a woman who finds it difficult to not talk down to her black in-laws) agreed stating “Yeah I noticed that”, as if I couldn’t hear them upstairs.

       Her comments, also tended to be juxtaposed with very healthy meals, such as fried chicken and chocolate chip cookies.  So, I really don’t know whose fucking team she was on.

       However, I understand why she is the way she is. She came of age at a time when having a positive body image, was not an ideal.  In fact, it was more like 1) try not to be ugly, 2) be a good cook and 3) get a husband.   She was married off at nineteen by her mother(My great grandmother, who liked to comment on my Grandmothers weight gain, post pregnancy).  Whenever, we’re at a family event and someone tries to take a picture of her, she dodges the camera like a sphinx. She’s commented on being too fat(Honestly, she’s beautiful and looks amazing at her age) constantly, and doesn’t seem to see how toxic it all is.

       She doesn’t see how unhealthy body shaming is, to the point that she fails to realize that my mother’s life long yo-yo dieting is a result of it.

MIRROR IMAGE

       Me and my mother are very much alike.   We’re writers. We’re people who tend to play the role of introverted observer at parties. We’re both plus sized women who constantly think of food, are afraid of food, and afraid of being judged while we eat.   We were raised in the same environment of constant scrutinization.

       I don’t think my Grandmother’s brand of cutting people down to size, has done my mother much good. Her weight has yo-yo’ed all her life.  Around the time of my conception she had lost a huge amount of weight, and had begun dating(my father) a young Jewish man. She stopped taking thorazine, a medication prescribed for schizophrenics. One of the side effects happened to be weight gain, and my mother traded getting sexy for the summer, over sanity.

                        Me and mommy, if we had money,a personal trainer, and a close relationship

 

      Right now, my mother is a size 22.  When she visits from New York, she picks at her plate. Years of comments from my Grandma, has resulted in her being afraid to eat in front of her.  The worse thing is, she closet eats.  The second to the last time she visited, my Grandma commented that she could hear her russling in our snack jar in the middle of the night.   I don’t think my statement, that “women are often afraid they’re going to be judged every time they eat” might’ve sinked in, somewhere deep down inside.

       I’ve tried talking to my mother about this, and it seems just like my Grandma, she’d rather live in a cycle of ignorant bliss. The first time I tried to discuss our family’s body shaming with her, her best response was “Well, you know, us Brown women are very beautiful, and we have to live up to that”.

      I’m getting too young for this shit.

Breaking The Cycle

        However, maybe thats the light at the end of the tunnel.  I’m aware of this endless cycle of self loathing the women have set up in my family, and I think its bullshit.   I will have children one day.   I might have daughters one day.   They probably won’t look like super models, but thats okay.  Maybe they’ll have my tenacity.  Maybe I will have enough tenacity to tell my daughters that their beauty is a result of their intellect and drive.  Their ability to empathize with others.  Maybe thats enough, for me to find beauty within myself.