Hiatus

Dear readers,

In lieu of an actual post tonight, I will be spending time writing offline. In a notebook. In my bed.

xoxo,

Christine

P.S.  Check out the awesome conversation between me and Sif on last week’s post, and add your comments, okay?  Okay, good.

Girl Power

I finally feel the way I did in college, when I was learning something new every day and ready to take on anything. I think the key part of that sentence is “learning something new every day,” because that really inspires me to get moving. I’ve been lurking around a few feminist blogs for the past week, and that’s all it took. It didn’t seem to matter that I’ve been working at a non-profit for three months, or that I’ve been leaving peace cranes around since January, or participating in the Health at Every Size movement. Nope; the moment I start reading feminist writings, I’m raring to go.

Check out this awesome video:

Now go to the Girl Effect website. Isn’t it neat? They just got going in May. The strange part is, they got going because of the Nike Foundation and the NoVo Foundation. One tends not to associate Nike with helping people in developing nations, you know? As far as I can tell, though, the money goes directly to organizations that are actually helping, and not to Nike (who seems to have given a start-up grant). I haven’t found any financial documents for the Girl Effect. It looks like Nike and Novo teamed up and named their partnership the Girl Effect. Hm… I’m anxious to see where they’re going with this.

In Which I Rub my Genie Lamp

Do you use the words “I wish” very often? I do and I don’t — that is to say, I think about the things I wish would happen, but I’ve recently given up saying the words aloud. Thinking about what I wish had happened or what I wish would happen makes me feel bad. Isn’t that the nature of the words? Wish: to want, desire or long for. Meaning already dissatisfied with what you’ve got?

I must admit, I’m a bit dissatisfied with certain things, like the fact that girls playing football is news. It made me say my first “I wish” statement in a while: “I wish girls playing football wasn’t news.” If I had been less disgusted, I might’ve clicked on the article (found on Yahoo! news last night some time) and saved the link so I could post it here, but I didn’t, so I can’t.

Seriously, though, wouldn’t it be neat if girls playing football wasn’t news? That would mean that girls and boys either played together in the same league, or girls and boys played together in different leagues, with both leagues equally skilled. Of course, if they were equally skilled, wouldn’t they play together in the first place?

I imagine when the first women entered into sports, it made headline news.  Then again, maybe not.

You Know What Happens When You Assume….

Here’s something that’s either new or something I never noticed before: people assume I’m healthy. Ha! They assume this because I’m thin, and because I have a penchant for eating vegetables.

This is not to say that all people assume I’m healthy. In general, though I think some people, like the people at the supermarket where I buy salads for lunch occasionally, look at me eating salad for lunch and think, “Man, that chick has it together. Look at her, eating salad. She must be watching her weight. I wish I was healthy like her and ate salads for lunch instead of this delicious but unhealthy BLT.” This might be an exaggeration. I don’t actually know what these people think.

I base my generalizations on some comments from some of the women at my work. Most of these comments start, “I know you’re a healthy person, so….” And then they offer me some sort of vegetable option. Someone said they know I like V-8 because I like vegetables. Someone else told me the snacks at a committee meeting might not be to my taste because they were cheese and crackers, and one time a roasted chicken.

These may not seem like a big deal, but I get these comments once or twice a week. That’s kind of a lot, considering there are 3-4 people who work in my office on a daily basis. Let’s say that every time there are 4 people here, I get 2 comments per week. If I worked in an office with 50 people, that would be 25 comments a week about how healthy I am. And I’m not healthy.

If I was healthy, I wouldn’t get migraines every week. I also wouldn’t catch every cold that came my way (it’s a skill, really), or need more than 9 hours of sleep at night to feel rested. These things just don’t seem healthy to me. Yes, I like to eat vegetables. No, it’s not because I’m trying to lose weight or maintain my current weight. It’s because vegetables taste good.

I might be a little sensitive to these kinds of comments. For all I know the women at my work (who are nice women, and I generally enjoy their company and we get along for the most part) are just trying to be nice and let me know of things that might or might not be to my liking. Still, I feel like if I were fat with a penchant for eating vegetables, I wouldn’t get these types of comments. Or maybe I would get these comments, but take them to be, “Wow, you’re really fat, here’s a V-8 to help you slim down” kind of comments.

Perhaps what I’m most annoyed with is that the women who’ve made these comments assume that they know me and what I’d like or not like, and that bothers me. I am not defined by my eating habits. Are you projecting your eating habits onto me? Please stop.

[Disclaimer about the BLT/health comment: I'm not making any judgment calls on whether or not a BLT is healthy. I'm saying that some people might use a sandwich with bacon as an example of what is unhealthy because it contains bacon, which is deemed to be a bad food. Also, I'm not trying to say that watching your weight is the equivalent of healthy. It's not always the case.]

How am I Doing so Far?

• Location: Border’s Books, Peabody, Massachusetts
• Date: Sunday, June 22, 2008
• Description: Lime green crane with peace signs all over

Here is another one of Roy’s cranes.  Here’s what he said about it: “Went to Borders tonight to browse place a crane.  Plopped the crane down in front of War & Peace, turned the camera on and got the dreaded ‘No Memory Card.’”  Whoops!  This is a fantastic drawing.  It makes me feel like I’m in a cartoon.  He draws much better than I do.  That’s cool.

I was so proud of myself for writing that post on feminism last week.  I had it in my head all evening, and then I went to my yoga class and felt really great and connected to my body, and I was looking forward to coming home and continuing writing.  On the way out, I noticed a woman walking in front of me who was in the yoga class.  She was on a mat near mine, and I remembered that her arm placement during one pose was particularly impressive, so I told her.

“Your arms stretches were excellent during that one exercise,” I said, and mimicked the arm movement.  “I noticed that your arm was going all the way down to the ground, and it was really great.  My arms don’t do that,” I added.  I wanted to mention how I’m still new to this yoga thing and working on my muscles movements, but for some reason I was too shy.

She looked at me in surprise.  “Oh!  Thank you,” she said.

Then, instead of telling her about my muscles and how tense I normally am, I repeated myself and said, “My arms don’t do that.”  I’m sure if she hadn’t said anything, I would have eventually added something about my arms just to break the awkwardness, but she didn’t give me a chance to feel awkward — at first.

“Well… all bodies are different,” she said.

Then I wanted to explain how I knew that and how I looked at pictures of different bones that day, and how they were all different and I knew that and bones grow in a spiral and it was super cool, but instead I let the conversation lapse and the woman probably thinks I’m all down on my body now.  I’m not.  It was a failing moment for me and my recent plan to go all out on this Health at Every Size thing.  In fact, now that I think about it, I think I even repeated myself again.  That’s depressing to remember.

Well anyway, I peeked into the pool section after we said goodnight, and there was this little girl standing in front of the pool windows.  She must’ve been about three, and she was wearing a fabulous red dress.  She smiled at me.  I noticed her dimples were huge.

“What’s her name, mommy?” the little girl said and pointed at me.

“I’m Christine,” I replied, “What’s your name?”

“Ranya!” she said.

“That’s a very pretty dress, Ranya,” I told her.

“My mommy’s name is —— and my daddy’s name is ——-,” she told me and looked at me expectantly.

“Those are beautiful names,” I said and smiled at Ranya and her mother, who was sitting nearby and watching us chat with a bemused expression.

“My daddy’s a boy!” Ranya seemed upset that I called her dad’s name beautiful.

“Boys’ names can be beautiful too,” I said, and then since I didn’t see who I was looking for in the pool section, I added, “goodnight!” and walked away.  Ranya said something else to me or at me or about me, but I didn’t hear it because her voice was tiny and I was across the room.  So I waved and walked out the door.

Afterwards, I felt bad that the first thing I told Ranya was that her dress was pretty.  I mean, yes, it was pretty, but it was also reinforcing the idea that the first thing you should notice about someone is what they’re wearing or what they look like, and that it’s okay to comment on a stranger’s personal appearance.  That’s not the best thing to teach kids.  I felt a little better once I remembered I told her a boy’s name could be beautiful too, but I didn’t feel like that was redeeming enough.

I don’t know.  Even though my body felt good, my mind felt bad because I had two strange experiences in a row about bodies and appearances.  Instead of showing off my beliefs to others about bodies and how they’re all beautiful and that it doesn’t matter what you look like, I let that fall to the wayside because I felt awkward in the conversations.  This probably means I need to work more on my people skills than my Getting Fit skills.