Small Town Wren

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. Is anyone surprised? And while the internet is all abuzz about how misogynistic the Super Bowl Ads were this year…I’m not going to discuss that either. Yes, shocking! How could I possibly resist the intersection of media and gender?

Because Riese over at Autostraddle wrote the most amazing takedown of Taylor Swift and the Grammys. That’s how. And oh boy, it touches on virgin/whore complexes, and copycat songwriting, and the perpetually perceived purity of childhood. And she’s got awesome charts and awesome comparison pictures between Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, and has quotes like this:

Let’s bring it back around to the lady that obvs should’ve won: Lady Fucking Gaga. Lady Gaga is viscous hungry sex in hellfire. She’s more theatrical than Broadway and every night she sings in romantic open fists. Lady Gaga opens her dress, extracts her gut, assembles it in shapes splashed in sinister glitter and then shatters her dangerous violent diamonds onto the piano and screams FIRE and it sounds like bad romance. She wants your ugly, she wants your disease, and she’s everything Taylor Swift will never be. Punks don’t win awards, they eat awards.

Yeah. I don’t need to talk about the Super Bowl. Or anything else. Just go read it.

1. I will write everyday.
2. I will make the world a better place.
3. I will not forget myself.

These are the three promises I have made to myself. They are part of my goal to be a functioning, independent human being. It’s not that I’m not these things already–I am–but I sometimes forget this. I often forget myself, and I often put myself last. This has made me an incredibly vulnerable person at times. I’m tired of being a person prone to falling apart, teetering on the edge of despair.

So I’m giving myself a head-space make over. And writing is a key component. The seven years and nearly half-million dollars invested in my education as a writer is important to me and has shaped me as a person. Writing is something I have always done, since the days when I first became verbal. I’ve come to learn that when I don’t write, I start to wilt, and that withering causes me to not write. It’s a vicious cycle that I refuse to feed any longer. So I will write. Every day, Wren. Every day.

Committing to make the world a better place might seem like a vague and tall order, but it really doesn’t have to be. It can be as simple as saying “thank you” and holding the door, or it can be far more. Either way, being mindful to stewardship and being kind is a moral and ethical obligation to me as a human being.

I’ve already touched a bit on not forgetting myself, but this is important. I really need to learn to put myself first. This has always been really difficult for me, for as long as I can remember. I’ve had altruism drilled so deep into my brain that it feels wrong to take care of myself. And it shouldn’t be that way.

And it won’t. I promise.

I ran out of my sugar scrub today. Woe as me! But not really, because I can just whip up some more. I’ve been using this scrub for a good long and I love it. It’s also ridiculously cheap. It costs about $2 in raw materials for a scrub that lasts me 6-9 months.

What we need:
1 cup turbinado sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons honey
1 jar or container or whatever
essential oil of choice (optional)

Ooh, look at that. And such pretty lights, too. I guess those are optional as well. I’d also like to point out that the honey I am using is at least ten years old. But thanks to the magic that is, in fact, honey: it never spoils or goes bad.

Basically you just mix all the ingredients in the jar. I find adding the turbinado sugar first is easiest, then the oil and honey.

I threw a few splashes of vanilla in this batch. One of my informants for an anthropology paper recommends it due to the magical properties of food. The sugar, honey, and vanilla exude love energies. I’ve actually been reading Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen and this does seem to be the case. I actually have had this book on my shelf for quite awhile at the recommendation of a different informant. I’ve always been interested in folk religion and I’ve been missing my formal research into the topic since I graduated college. I really appreciate the history and lore behind food. Folk religion and food are my two favorite areas of interest at the moment, so this is pretty much the best thing I could be reading right now.

Almost three years in the making, I finally finished The Beauty Myth in the wee hours of the morning. It’s just a shame that the most dated part of the book is the last chapter. It is an artifact of a past that already seems like ancient history.

The Beauty Myth was originally published in 1991, when I was four. The vast majority of my life has been spent in a world where Naomi Wolf’s rallying cry had already been heard. I think I’m much better off for it, too. The way my mother approaches her body and the way I approach mine are in two completely different categories. The biggest feature of note is that my mother flat out refuses to leave the house without any makeup on; it’s an odd day when I leave the house with makeup on.

I never bought into it. I was always part of the rebellious crowd, but somehow the parts of the myth that latched on to my sister and my peers never found its way to me. I don’t know if it’s because I never wanted to feel like anyone but myself, or if it’s because I’ve spent half of my life with some form of overt baldness. It’s hard to feel shame for your looks when all of your shame and self-consciousness is rooted squarely in your hair.

Or maybe it is because I was blessed with a naturally slim figure and a rightly colored face. It was a running joke at my boarding school: I’d devour six plates of food at dinner and the health services ladies would still think I was anorexic. They weighed me constantly, and lectured me on how eating is good for you, thinness isn’t everything. They had no idea I held the candy arsenal in my dormitory or that I routinely won eating contests against the burliest of the burly men on campus.

This isn’t to say weight hasn’t been a big part of my life. My mother had to defend herself when my elementary school thought I wasn’t being fed due to being so underweight. I ate ice cream every night and was part of that dreaded “Clean Plate Club” at dinner. When I shot up to 5′7″, girls began poking at my sides in the locker room and asking me how I did it. I didn’t know. I still don’t know.

A lot of it has to do with my mood. When I am happiest, I tend to weigh more. Depression makes me drop the pounds as if they were nothing. I started this past summer out at 145 pounds. Depression clubbed me over the head in September and by mid October I was hovering at 123. While the sadness has eased its grip again, the new medications I’m on are of the sort that make you lose weight. I’ve lost two more pounds in the past week. I haven’t seen 120 since I was 16.

It frightens me. I don’t like being this skinny. Once you are of a certain thinness, the pressure is on to keep it. People tend to leave you alone though if you’re even 5 pounds heavier than that thin. I’m not anymore, though. My skinny jeans are just straight legs now, and I have to belt them in so tight to keep them up. I eat, but the weight keeps falling.