Though things are lookin' dead around these parts, my blog has moved...

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Dear Russ,

http://dailyuw.com/2009/7/22/fashion-fetishes-real-women-can-be-thin-and-health/

Russ,

You’re right, the many of voices bemoaning images of skinny models plastered on billboards, smeared all over magazines, and flooding commercial after commercial absolutely have a  “chip on their shoulder[s].” But it’s not against thin women.

Rather, it’s the larger social norms propelling these images that’s got us so dang worked up. Social protocols that sternly women against women laughing to loud, demand she embodies passivity, tells her she’s “a bitch” for asserting herself, and above all, tell her not to take up to much space. That’s what’s making us mad: This idea you’re championing: being small, slimmed down, firmed and tightened up is inextricably ensnared in mainstream female “sexiness.”

Many of the writers and activists you imagine whining about “thin women,” are in fact, quite skinny themselves. Some of them are recovering from decade long battles with anorexia, the most under-diagnosed life threatening illnesses our country faces today.

Some of these individuals have stood in front of a bathroom mirror frantically scouring their emaciated frame for fat, telling themselves their concave thighs could really be a few inches smaller in diameter, or admiring their protruding hipbones and golf-ball sized shoulders.

Lot of the “healthy” size zero women you applaud could tell you tale or two chillingly similar to this. And such “horror stories” chronicle the life stories of more women than you might think. Considering the well-circulated advertisements showcasing rail-thin models--and that fashion designers still make sample sizes of their new collections in a size two--it’s hardly surprising about one in four women in college resort to unhealthy weight control tactics.

The problem is that these “horror stories” go untold. Women suffer in silence. Women wont tell you they’ve stayed up late at night chewing gum and drinking black coffee for hours after a grueling 90 minutes on the elliptical spent flipping through a magazine of waifs for inspiration.

They’ll tell you a jarringly different story.

As you affirmed, men prefer thin women. Thus thinness for many straight women is an achievement, a coveted prize. Something we have that fuller women don’t. That explains why thin females have recounted to you (a male) so many instances of strangers commenting on their weight. These anecdotes are coded: “I’m skinny and people are noticing my body. You should too.”

Don’t feel too flattered. A whole other mess of social norms and popular culture teachings--disseminated through the T.V., movies and magazines-- tell women they ought be the object of your (male) gaze, regardless of whether or not they want to fuck you.

It’s kind of you to refrain from “begrudg[ing] the ladies their exasperating fetish for tall, muscular men.” To be sure, some men who don’t meet the beefed-up male body ideal in the media touts, also experience self-doubt and body loathing.

Still, I doubt that society’s whisper telling to men to be big and beefy has the same power to damage lives as the cultural Loudhorn blaring the message: ““Be tiny!,” to women from every corner of our culture.

“Most of us could live our lives a little healthier — a few by gaining weight, yes, but many more by losing it,” you claim.

Fair enough. An approximate 60 percent of adults—and a growing number of video-game and fruitloop raised children—pack more than their fair share of pounds. A McDonalds lurks on every corner threatening to clog our arteries.

But couldn’t we all be healthier and happier if we accepted our bodies? Conn.-based NFO WorldGroup’s 2003 study suggests about 75 percent of Americans don’t like the one they’ve got.

And for women especially, loseing weight involves reduction. For men, losing fat is also cheered, but only when it is converted into muscle mass.  

Men are not encouraged to get smaller when they embark on a diet.   The blueprints for femininity, however, leave women to conclude female health is achieved through restriction. Undertaking a project of self policing and self-denial predicates fitness, we are told.

Your article adds to a choir of voices clamoring for more body modification. Our society--especially us women with those chips on our shoulders-- have had enough of that jabber. 

It’s time for more body affirmation.

 

 

Katie's Spot Moves!

to wordpress. adios, blogspot. it's been real. 

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday.

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. 

But also be sure to eat sourdough bread, and run really fast down cracked cement stairs.  Genuine, raw, a little callous, "I've been here long before you born" spiraling green vine cover stairs. 

And then, don't forget!  Disappear into the mist. The mist Golden Gate bridge plunges into on a cool September afternoon. Drink a little coffee, and so what if I'm wrong about everything? she said.  At least for a little while...you'll be free. 

Don't get angry at the silly sea salt breeze and giggle when the seagulls eat $6 bread bowls of chowder peeking outta the dumpsters for free. 

And fall asleep as the stories scrawled on the bathroom wall wait patiently, wisely,  for you to come visit them on your midnight pee.

Have you ever seen a penguin dancing? You might in San Francisco.  

And don't forget, don't you ever forget. About me. 

Here We Go Again

Bugs have been dominating my life. Sometimes I think I have crabs, other nights scabies sneak into my dreams. But still, I got a feeling that tonight is going to be a good, good night. Even if its a borrowed feeling, I'll take it. I wonder if you live somewhere that has fleas, then move somewhere else, they follow you to your new abode. I wonder if using that weird black and red dusty hairbrush I found in my mother's bathroom today gave me lice. God, this is annoying. I have been thinking about bugs so much lately I am to tired to think. I think. But alas, I must give you this story, so. Whew. 

Here We Go Again

Exhausted, twitching, fat, happy and full, the little turtle swam himself into a deep, deep sleep. Miles above him, all a ceiling of thick, tangled seaweed blocked out all light. It was cool and quiet, and he closed his eye lids and began to dream about pieces of children floating by. Severed limbs and thumbs and pinky-toes drifted listlessly though his imagination, sparkling and dancing in the ocean water. What has happened to me he thought sadly, why am I sorrr dirftyy, and sorrr old all of a sudden. It felt like he was still recovering from Saturday night, when he had sat with the landthings on a chair puking yellow foam stuffing and smoked bowl after bowl of Delicious, home grown, California weed. He started to drift himself, way back to when he was a real girl. 

Margarat yawned and rolled out of bed. Fuck, she thought as her bony body crashed to the polished hardwood floor. Why did I loft this fucking piece of shit? She pulled a long t-shirt over her bra and black spandex, which itched something awful. Grabbing a banana speckled with brown Dalmatian dots, she ran out the door. Time for fucking class.

Margaret was not excited, not in the least bit, for Chemistry 101. It was going to be a bunch of anal-retentive mother-fuck chemistry major freshman for christ’s sake, little shits were sure to raise the curb on tests her and her clove-smoking photography major friends would scoff at as the drank PBR or two-buck-chuck and talked about the irony of people trying to unmask the human condition. Fuck this school for making me take this fucking lab science class”  she crowed out loud, startling the girls bathed in juicy perfume ahead of her in the coffee line. Margaret ordered a black drip, dumped half a pack of sugar into it—not splenda, real sugar, so fucking be careful not to pour ALL of it in, she carefully reminded herself, and headed to the greenhouse. It looked way to fucking cheery at eight fifty seven in the morning.

            Jacob slept soundly through his alarm. Around ten o-clock, he rubbed his eyes, and then his balls. Sauntering across the hall, he sat down at his Dan’s clean-as-whistle desk, and began to grind what was left of his dub sack from last night. He turned on the TV to hear a news anchor drone on and on about the crazy religious fucks protesting the town hall meetings. “Lets Bury Obamacare with Kennedy” read the sign of one man, cloaked in flannel, his squinty eyes tiny little slits amid an overgrown forest of curly brown public-looking hairs all over his fat-ass face. “Fucken Crazzzzies”, he said to Dan, who had since materialized in the doorway behind him. “Crazy, Crazy fucks dude. “I know, Dan replied , plopping down on his bed, staring at the T.V. 

Closing Time

Time for you to go out into the places you will be from. 

Yesterday, as I was riding down Wilshire, I was hit by a black Lexus SUV. The driver wore a blue tooth and light cashmere shrug, equally sleek, black, and stunning. Are you Okaaaay? She spoke slowly and rather absentmindedly, as if nearly turning me into a pancake was puzzling, confusing, funny even. I am soooo sorry, um here let me give you my numberrr OK? She was drawling now, i was wondering if she was drunk. i can hardly believe it actually, that I've lasted this long in Los Angeles without getting bulldozed by a car. i bike on main roads all the time. in the left lane.  rarely do i ever stop for red lights, i always start riding across streets when cross walk signs are seconds from expiring, and worst of all, i weave between lanes of traffic, darting in and out of people's side mirrors, like a blue bullet on my piece-o-shit-but-super-speedy 1970's french peugot. Karma is such a crusty old hairy asshole. 

Welcome to The Getty Center: A small, well-known and loved L.A. paradise of gardens, museums, pop-up sculptures in every color of the rainbow. Lavender and garlic caught me off guard as I slowly made my way down Robert Irwin's garden, a zigzagging stone path lined with  tiny red, yellow and light blue explosions bursting out of soft green leaf beds. The blossoms hung from overhead, keeping a watchful eye on the visitors who came--some from lands as distant as Virginia and Hong Kong!--to marvel at their spunky and spiky and silky flowered comrades. Water cried down the path next the the visitor trail, but like our senses, it too grew up, and learned the value of silence, at least a little bit by the end of the journey. The thick stream that crashed angrily through boulders at the top of the path calmed into a slow and steady trickle by the time we all reached the center. Not only  do the museums house Monet's cathedrals dressed in morning dew and (for the next few months) roomfuls of busty french noblemen cast in bronze, The Getty is also home to Van Gogh's Irises.

Last night I journeyed to Santa Monica, a 8-mile strip of streetlights wrapped in bright blue lights, tiny vintage shops, and beach cruisers. The pier is home to a neon farris wheel that swirls yellow, blue and florescent green into a black night sky. In front of most of the houses is a buffer of palm trees, high bushes swaying lightly, and imperfectly pieced together spunky wooden fences that don't scream"Keep Out," as the Beverly Hill high rot iron gates do,  but  guard the secrets each peculiar shaped beach abode holds.  

Sandwiched between the mansions of Malibu and the turban-wearing, electric guitar playing roller bladders of Venice, Santa Monica is a family friendly little town that might be mistaken for Edmond's Wash. if it weren't for the weed dispensaries dotting the main drag. We moved south into Venice beach to Abbott Kinney st. Here,  we found the brig. Despite this bar's  reputation for stiff drinks, my $5  cosmo failed to give me anything more than a sugar high. Plus it came in a glass about 90% full of ice. The night was far from a bust though: we moved to a gay bar about three blocks down, making it in moments before last call. We didn't have to wait at the bar and I met a teddy bear like fellow from Tacoma, Wash. Near felt like I was home in Capitol Hill. Afterwards we crammed in Simon's car and headed to the Mar Vista home he house-sits. Inside we devoured Vegan snack, met two wise old cats,  and a slipped into a hot tub nestled deep in the rear corner of an overgrown garden. 

This morning, Corey and I went to The Harvest Cafe in Brentwood. A charming little restaurant with dressed in brink and oak paneled walls, the Harvest Cafe's brunch blew me away. I devoured an egg white omelet of fresh organic veggies blanketed in tomato basil sauce. We rode back listening to George Watsky and drinking the sun of San Vicente Blvd. 

Hollywood Farmer's Market

The name sounds like a cruel oxymoron, I know. But believe it or not, Hollywood actually is home to a sprawling four-block hub of local farmers pedaling fresh organic fruits and veggies. Bustling with people on Sunday afternoon, the market leaked wafts of earthy green sprouts, juicy citrus and sweet musky incense that hit my nose the moment I stepped off the metro red line. Ah new found nasal bliss! Near cured my hangover. 

The market resembles an outdoor Pike Place, plus a street devoted to ready to eat entrees, most for under $7. Sadly, because Sky Vodka from the night before still sloshed violently in my stomach, I couldn't really muster the strength to go for one of the browned chicken and veggie kabobs letting off a thick savory steam from the grill in front of me. But next week, I vowed, I'll be ready. 

I boarded the bus home with my Trader Joe's tote filled with peppers, onions, mango-nectarines and a spinach-like leafy green vegetable that seemed to be popular with the long-haired, tanned supermodel looking shoppers sporting long sundresses and gigantic sunglasses. All, I might add, for under $10. 

I plan to return to my little Hollywood oasis next week. 

Evenings at the Treehouse

This night marked evening number three of cheap wine and priceless conversation in the wood paneled, bohemian living room that smells of incense, otherwise known as the Treehouse. (Simon wants to rent it out to filmakers, perhaps ones interested in making seventies themed pornos?) 

Last night, I met some of my roommate Roman's cinematographer friends in my living room. We devoured a traditional German dish, Italian Beer and a Pinot Gris with a cartoonish label. I know that Roman is just a subletter like me, but he seemed so at home with  one of his oil slicked hair friends in thick rimmed glasses, fitted denim and a nearly sheer white button up shirt. The cheese cloaked casserole we are  might be described as the weird and delicious offspring of macaroni and cheese and scalped potatoes and ham. Greasy, and expectational. After dinner his friends talked movie jargon and I zoned out on a olive green seventies style couch with a C-Section gap spewing yellow foam padding. 

 Tonight, I met a black watermelon seed eating Israelite who's name is Kent--oddly enough, the same as my best friend's red neck boyfriend, a US road tripper named Jeff who hopes to visit a ghost town in death valley CA, and a dude named Richard who attends (or fuck, attended?) Harvard. I liked him far more before discovering either of these details about his life. 

Anyways, I think I ought hold off on passing judgement, because Richard, like everyone else I have meet at the Treehouse thus far on my Los Angeles odyssey, is pretty fucking cool. Last year my roommates and I spend to many nights far, far, away from each other absorbed in the glow of our personal computers. 

I think that it is good for me to drink wine and surround myself with interesting new faces. And maybe just exciting and fun. I do not always need to think about what is good for me, as if I were a terminally ill, mentally unstable fraught, fucked up piece of brittle, breakable porcelin. 

The City of Angels

Touched down in LA last Thursday, freezing in a jean miniskirt and smelling like airplane seat. 

No sooner than our arrival at  baggage claim did my first obstacle present itself: cleaning up the ruptured shampoo bottle mess that bathed my outermost suitcase compartment in sticky, white goo. Awesome, I thought. Welcome to Los Angeles. 

As I tried to wipe out my suitcase, running back and forth between my luggage and a quickly depleting stockpile of paper towels in the bathroom, I noticed I a team of baseball players with Saint Martin's University stamped on their bat bags and up the legs of their sagging grey sweatpants looking at me like I was crazy. As they lazily hung around the baggage claim conveyor belt, I frantically scrubbed out my personal belongings. 

Once we finally left the airport, things went smoother for madre and I. And by smoother, I mean that we went the entire weekend without (permanently) losing anything thing over $100, contracting food poisoning induced diarrhea, or dying in an automobile accident. Albeit only barely did I live to bear testimony to the last of these. My mom drives like a blind woman with a hoppy the kangaroo attached to her foot, jumping eagerly from the gas to the break pedal. Boing! Down we roar down Santa Monica Drive! Boing! We streeeeach to a halt moments before crashing into the rounded, black polished ass of a Jaguar at a stoplight. 

 Anyways, I bought a bike from a french guy with a blonde pony tail and a resort-like condo in Marina del Rey, got my mom to spring for mango margaritas and moved into a wicked apartment in Westwood. 

Chalk it up to a big success. 

At my internship today, I learned that I the Cambodian government is currently on my shitlist for  canceling a sweet beauty pageant that would have featured female landmine survivors. Many of these women got their legs blown off because of we-will-totally-supply-your-corrupt-ass-government-with-weapons-if-it-serves-our-interest-Western Imperialism. More on that, and my internship, later.  

I also learned it is physically impossible to stuff six saltine crackers into your mouth in under one minute. Try it. 

She strode outside barefoot, sunshine splashing on her soft shoulders. 

She ran down her wooden deck steps, tripping over a 40 ounce bottle of Mickey's Ice, abandoned half-drunk on the bottom step the night before. Before he has stumbled up the stairs to bang his fists on the glass deck door. 

Before she let him in. 

She started to run faster through the freshly-mowed grass of her backyard. Her dark pink toenails specks of dark pink spotting the kelly green lawn. She drank gulps of bright clean air as she ran. By the time she reached the threshold of the forest, her breath was raw and raspy. She sat down, leaning on a cedar tree, the rough bark scratching her skin through the her thin tank top of navy blue linen.  She looked up at the matrix of green and brown branches above her, crisscrossing absentmindedly to engineer a pattern that only authorized patches of golden sunlight to sneak down to her face. Her elbows were cool, but her face was sweaty. 

Drunken steps clamoring on her cracked linoleum. The clunk of his blockhead against her mirror. His hands fumbling with the bar of lavender soap that lay in a red clay dish her little sister had made in kindergarten on her sink. The door knob turning. 

A storm of ineptness has ravaged my brain lately. I feel like I cannot accomplish anything, anything at all, like buying seeds to plant flowers. Like finishing a simple short fiction piece, or unpacking my fucking clothes from the tattered cardboard boxes that line the walls of my room. I feel like I cannot speak and I cannot write. I feel like I am floating aimlessly in this world, and despite how much I tell people I have enjoyed my three week vacation from school, work and reality, I have felt like a big bumbling moron fucking, fucking, fucking up. All I have been doing is exerting my body on bikes, in pools and on road runs, stopping only for a brief moment to stuff my face to refuel. The starches, the sugars, the fucking repulsive high fructose corn syrups, the lean proteins--- they all funnel into my work, work, working body. Never do they go to my brain. 

Although I am eating more than I used to--justifiable tonight only because I angrily swore to myself I would stay up to write--I feel that eire, powerful wave of emptiness rising up from the pit of my stomach. 

This time is for rest, for relaxation, for refuel, for sleeping until noon without parents hassling you. This is what I am supposed to think. I am supposed to be cool with not going out to bars with old friends. Without spending days lazily smoking bowls and going on epic adventures through the woods and taking dainty fairy steps to cross narrow streams. Without the beach. 

Without, with-

Without you. I am supposed to be so happy, so full. Alone. 

Really, it is not as bad as I've made it out to be. Really, I think I am extremely nervous to to start an internship.  

I do not care if I am not good enough for you, she thought, standing in front of her mother's bathroom mirror. She turns away from the mirror, bends down to quickly slather lavender lotion on her hairless legs, her thighs concave sacks of yellow flesh thrown over long bones. She sneaks a peak at the mirror behind her, and can see her hip bones proudly saluting the ceiling underneath her skin. Running up her back is a single-file line of vertebrae presenting  themselves like soldiers aligned for inspection. They hope to win her gaze too. 

Good enough for you? Hah, what a joke, she mused. She smiled. To reveal her pearly, only slightly crooked teeth. It looked as if a strong hand was pulling her skin from the back of her head, tightening the skin over her face. Like the hand was ready to scalp her. A veil of clear gloss lay on her lips, normally fraught with white from the cold summer breeze, or chapped from snarling winter winds. 

Good enough for you? Tonight I am good enough for me, she lied and licked her bottom lip. The assurance invigorated her.  She turned slowly to the side, like a suspect in a police line up. She shot another glance at the mirror and sucked in hard. Her stomach retreated and she put her hands on her hips and I am doing this for me. She pulled up her skin tight jeans and I am doing this for me, no one else. She smiled. Her eyes laughed deep green pools and knife sparkles.  

Friday

Today is Friday, but it does not feel like it. 

Fridays are beach bonfires and a six-pack of BudLight tall boys. Fridays are long, slow drinks of sunshine and wafts of barbecue, jean shorts and lazy sessions of porch-smoking. Fridays are bike rides and lifetime movies playing in the background while figuring out what outfit to rock. 

Today is a bleak cloudy sky, a roar of traffic whipping around the s-curves of I-5.

Today is an wise old blue comforter drenched in rain water left out on the patio last night, deflated and threatening to mold right there on the cement. 

Today is a strange, strange Friday.

Fridays laugh and run. 

Today snarls 

His wrinkled face cringes and he spits out a senile warning: "don't come out here."

Fridays are scrambled eggs and salsa and orange juice.

Today is branflake, fiber-pumped cereal. 

Welcome!

Hello there, my name is Katie. 

I am a woman, a writer, a sister, a Pacific Northwest loyalist, and a leaner. I am a Fuji Apple fanatic, a lover, a thrill-seeker, a collager, a coffee fiend, a listener, an aspiring world-traveler, a runner, a storyteller and a fighter. 

More or less in that order. 

An awesome turn of events has led me to claim this tiny comer of cyberspace as my own. Mostly, my junior year of college came clamoring to a hault, and a great number of my seemly "important" commitments--going to classes, writing papers for these classes, pedaling my heart out on my trusty Ironhorse bicycle up Pine St. to get to campus on time to catch a professor, flag her down and shove these papers under her office door mere moments before said professor peaced the fuck out for summer, etc.-- have all dissipated. Left with few places to be and even fewer "important" things to do, I have decided, or rather pledged, to carve out a small chunk of every single lazy, lemonade-drenched day this summer to practice the one ritual that has long frustrated and ignited me. 

I decided to write. 

To be honest with you, I have been writing all my life. As soon as I learned how to craft letters, I started scribbling in purple jelly-ink pens all over the pages of pink glittery My Little Pony journals.  I continue to journal like a madwoman today.  Although my handwriting remains an illegible scrawl, my journals have since morphed into stacks of boring 79-cent spiral-bound volumes of college-ruled notebook paper. 

Still, I wanted to try something new this summer. I wanted to share my writing with the rest of the cyberworld, showcase my vulnerability to any friends and family who happen to stumble into my little abode on the net.

I also wanted to be cool. It was high time, I reckoned, to get my hands dirty playing with this newfangled blognology. And seeing as I already had a facebook and a twitter, blogspot offered me one final online frontier to explore.

So here I am, and here I will stay all summer, scribbling at you in Times New Roman. Here I will tell stories, and some of them may even be true. Here, at Katie’s Spot. 

Please do come again. 

I will be cooking up many goodies to share.