Archive for category: Deep Thoughts

Yesterday it was 40 degrees Celsius in Melbourne and for some (possibly related) reason, my internet stopped working. I decided to amuse myself by watching one of the movies I’d downloaded recently and hadn’t gotten around to watching, I chose Liberal Arts because I like Elizabeth Olsen. I wasn’t expecting to love it but I thought it might be a way to fill in a couple of hours and maybe it would be a little bit sweet or fun or something because although I obviously have a cold, dead heart sometimes I do like to have a little smile. I should have known what I was in for from the start, I mean when is a movie written, directed by and starring a white 30-something dude from a sitcom good? Let’s be real. But I was actually a little surprised by how pissed off I got while watching it. It got me thinking a lot about older men and younger ladies and sex and the whole social construct of virginity. Now be warned – there will be spoilers in this so if you care about that (you probably shouldn’t) stop reading, go watch Liberal Arts and then come back and chat.

A quick overview of the movie – Josh Radnor (aka Ted from How I Met Your Mother, I will probably just call him Ted whenever I talk about him because that is all he will ever be to me) plays this mid 30s dude named Jesse who lives in New York, works in admissions at NYU and is generally pretty sad and lonely. He goes back to his old college in Ohio to see an old professor he’s buddies with and meets Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen) who is 19 and free and interesting in the way that only manic pixie dream girls can be. There’s a mutual attraction, she makes him a mix cd of classic music (pretty much a rip off of the whole Shins thing in Garden State or the mix cd Kirsten Dunst makes in Elizabethtown), they become pen pals blah blah blah. It’s basically about how Ted misses being young, college was the most fun he ever had, and he kind of wants to try to relive that time by hooking up with young Zibby but he also kind of thinks he should accept getting older. Zach Efron makes a couple of appearances as a stoner hippie guy, probably the best/most likeable character in the movie so good work Zefron.

Anyway, the scene that bothered me the most was when Ted and Elizabeth Olsen are about to have sex; she tells him she’s a virgin and he freaks out. It’s a common movie trope, the girl who is ready to give herself to a guy (vom) and he freaks out because he doesn’t feel worthy and tells her she should wait for somebody more special or something. I’ve seen it in about a zillion movies and tv shows. Here’s a good example:

(Shoshanna from Girls)

It got me thinking a lot about the idea of virginity and how it’s portrayed in society/life/films etc. I’ve seen this exact scene in a lot of movies and always felt annoyed by it but I’d recently read this quote which kind of made it click in my head as to why it annoyed me so much.

“What does virginity mean to a queer person, who may never have vaginal intercourse in her/his/hir life? What of a lesbian who chooses to never engage in any sort of penetrative sex act her entire life, does she remain some sort of super, extra virgin? If a straight man receives a blowjob, he will in all likelihood still consider himself a virgin, but a gay man receiving a blowjob may have a more complicated understanding of what it means for his sex life. In many ways, our conception of “virginity” erases or invalidates queer sex.” – Sex Pos Grrrl

The whole situation of an man telling a (usually younger) lady that she should wait for somebody special is completely condescending, as though these older men somehow know the worth of sexual experiences and of a ladies’ body better than she does. As though these silly virginal girls just can’t understand the power and importance of sex unless they have had penetrative penis in vagina sex, regardless of any other sexual experiences they might have had. It makes me think of another really great quote I read on tumblr a while back (give me the proper source if you have it!) – ‘I think the concept of virginity was created by men who thought their penises were so important it changes who a woman is‘ (And yes, I know dudes are considered virgins too but not in the same disgusting purity ‘gift’ bullshit way girls are). This idea that p-in-v sex is the be all and end all of becoming a sexual being or whatever is a load of shit. Sexuality is a fluid thing and I hate this idea that those who have had p-in-v sex are somehow wiser or have a greater understanding of sexuality that those who haven’t.

I don’t understand how young ladies can be expected to feel any agency over their own bodies and their own choices if they are being constantly told (especially by older men) what sex has to mean to them, what virginity is, which sexual experiences are big/important and which aren’t. Now obviously nobody is obligated to have sex with anybody else and there’s a million different reasons not to have sex with somebody, and maybe somebody else not having had p-in-v sex is a dealbreaker for you. Sure, cool, that’s fine – but there’s a way to communicate that without telling the other person what importance they should place on this one sex act, and without pushing all of your moral judgements about sex onto them. It’s a bit of an off-shoot of slut shaming, holding up this idea of female virginity as a measure of purity, and as a gift that should be given to one special man. As though having p-in-v sex for the first time in a spur of the moment situation or with somebody you’re not in love with would somehow be a huge and horrible mistake. I just hate the way girls are constantly being told how they should feel about sex, what their ‘first time’ should be like and even what sex is when really these are things that are highly personal and should be figured out by each individual. Maybe you’ll feel like you lost your virginity when you have your first orgasm, or when you have oral sex, or anal sex, or maybe you’ll feel like kissing somebody was the singular most important sexual experience you’ve ever had, maybe you’ll never feel like any sexual experience you’ve had is any bigger or greater or more ‘life changing’ than any other and all of these scenarios are completely normal and completely ok. I don’t think it’s at all helpful or healthy to hold up this idea of one size fits all sexuality, it’s so heteronormative and dumb.

In 2011 I’d been blogging for a year and I was averaging about 30,000 hits per month on Fat Aus. I was also reading a lot of blogs by professional bloggers who had sidebars full of little advertisements (or ‘sponsors’ as they usually liked to call them) for small businesses and other blogs. Plenty of these bloggers had a similar sized readership to mine and some of them actually made a living solely from their blogs and that sounded like a pretty fun job so I decided to give it a try. I didn’t plan on being a full-time professional blogger but I thought it might be a good way to make a bit of extra cash for doing something that I enjoyed. I checked out the sponsorship or advertising pages on blogs that were a similar size to try and gauge what the going rates were (which was actually kind of hard, apparently most bloggers don’t like being up-front with their rates or traffic stats and I couldn’t be bothered sending emails pretending to be a potential advertiser to find out), set up an ‘advertise here’ link and not too long afterwards I started getting emails from small business owners and other bloggers who wanted to buy an ad space.

At the height of my short career as a blogger who earned money from her blog (I just can’t refer to myself as a ‘professional blogger’ without seriously cringing) I was earning a few hundred dollars a month. Most of my advertisers were people with small businesses and a couple of other bloggers but I started to attract a bit of attention from bigger businesses who were interested in appealing to the niche readership I supposedly attracted (in all honesty I think that the readers of Fat Aus, even back then when I posted almost exclusively outfit photos, are a pretty even split between plus sized and straight sized people). I began receiving lots of emails from PR companies (often addressed to the always lovely and individualized ’Dear Blogger’) usually wanting to know my rates for a ‘sponsored post’. A sponsored post is when a blogger writes an entire blog post that is just an advertisement for a brand or website and the going rate is usually somewhere between $50 – $300. I had never bought or ordered from any of the brands or websites I was being asked to write about, and most of the websites didn’t even offer postage to Australia so I didn’t feel that sponsored posts were something I could post on Fat Aus without feeling really unethical so I turned them down. I also received a lot of emails from websites asking me to write posts for them about fat fashion for ‘exposure’ (aka for free) which I turned down. I’m not completely opposed to writing for free but I would only do it if it was for a website that I felt a personal connection with, not for exposure for my blog. I felt that the advertising I was offering – an image on my sidebar with a link directing to the advertisers’ website, was different to writing sponsored posts because the reader was free to ignore the ads if they weren’t interested in them. As a blog reader there is nothing worse than getting excited for a new post from one of your favourite blogs only to click-through and realise you are reading an advertisement for something you are not interested in (ok, there are a lot of things that are worse but I still hate it).  In the past I have accepted free clothes in exchange for reviews from a few companies and although I only accepted things from brands I liked, I still don’t think I would do it again. I don’t think that a review of something that was given to a blogger for free is ever going to be completely unbiased – if I accepted something free to review, hated it and wrote an honest blog post about it I would surely end up on some bloggers blacklist somewhere (which is something I always keep in mind when reading those kinds of reviews on other blogs). When I come across a product or website I really like I often do tweet or blog about how good it is because I want others to be able to enjoy it too but I only want to do these things on my own terms. Similarly to this, I do still engage one type of advertising on Fat Aus – the ASOS Affiliates Program. I only use it to link back to items I’ve bought from ASOS and I just think of it as making back a little money from all the money I spend on there (if somebody clicks through from a link on my blog and buys something I get 5% of what they spend), its advertising but I can use it on my own terms.

With the addition of advertising I started really obsessing over how much traffic I was getting and making sure I was keeping up with the stats I had sold ads based on. I read articles about how to be a better blogger, how to get more traffic, how to get readers involved (‘End every blog post with a question to encourage comments!’ Yeah, I see you bloggers who constantly do this and I know what you’re up to). I thought about the best layouts to display ads, I promoted my new posts everywhere, I analysed data to figure out which posts were the most popular and why, I was an obsessive blogging machine. And it worked! When I followed the tips from pro-bloggers I did get more traffic, more followers, more comments, and I felt like my advertisers were getting what they paid for – well, kind of. Honestly even when I was getting 50,000 hits in a month the amount of click-throughs on ads were never that high and that’s another reason I got rid of ads, I actually didn’t think the advertisers were getting a very good deal. That’s probably why so many companies want bloggers to write sponsored posts; readers are definitely much more likely to click on links in a blog post than on advertising images on a sidebar. As time went on I started to blog a bit less than usual, down from a few times a week to once a week and then once a fortnight and I was quickly losing passion for it (this actually correlates directly to my having less money to spend on new clothes all the time which is something I’ll write more about a bit later). What made my waning interest worse was that I had an obligation. I had sold ad spaces based on a certain amount of hits per month and when I wasn’t posting, my stats were dropping so not only was I a bit sad that I didn’t feel like blogging, I also felt guilty and like I was letting people down. I kept forcing myself to blog regularly until the time was up on ad spaces that had been paid for in advance and then I took a little break. I left up the ads on my sidebar but stopped sending monthly invoices to the advertisers and I stopped blogging while my traffic stats kept dropping.

While I wasn’t blogging I was still engaging with bloggers, reading blogs and thinking a lot about fatshion blogging, advertising, consumerism and my own ethics. My blog got the most attention when I was posting multiple times each week with a different outfit made up of new or ‘on-trend’ pieces. If I posted photos of myself wearing new clothes that had just come out from ASOS and promoted the post on tumblr, my photos would get hundreds of notes and the post would get thousands of views. This kind of reaction made me feel like in order to be a successful or popular blogger I needed to be buying new clothes constantly. I would buy clothes, wear them once for a blog post and then feel like there wasn’t much point in wearing them again since I’d already photographed them. At the time I had a well paid job and cheap rent so I was financially able to be buying new things all the time but when I moved into a new place where the rent was nearly triple what I was previously paying, I could no longer afford to shop for new clothes every month and my closet was bursting at the seams anyway. I started thinking about my value as a person with thoughts and opinions versus the image I was portraying as a fatshion blogger whose only apparent talent was putting a cute outfit together and I stopped wanting to do outfit posts. For me, being a fat person who likes wearing cute clothes is a political thing and I didn’t include that side of me on this blog for a long time due to some idea of wanting to keep my personal life somewhat private but eventually I decided that if I was going to be sharing photos of myself I might as well include some context of who I am as a person; I wanted to be a three dimensional person, not just a fat lady with cute clothes.

When I began regularly blogging again I got rid of the ads and stopped offering advertising, I stopped focusing on solely outfit photos and started writing about things I was interested in and I started really enjoying blogging again. I’m glad that I can talk about fatshion and clothing brands truthfully and honestly without worrying that if I say the wrong thing I’ll miss out on the chance to review some free clothes or worrying about losing advertisers. I like being able to go for months without buying any new clothes and not feel like I’m missing out on something. I love that I rarely even look at how much traffic my blog is getting these days. I’m interested in creating an online space for myself where I can write about anything from feminism to music to fashion because I’m interested in presenting myself as a multi-faceted person, and not as someone who is willing to sell out my ideals for a few bucks, some free clothes or ‘brand relationships’.

(This blog post was somewhat inspired by a series of awesome posts Definatalie has written lately.)

I hate this whole culture of cool that is wrapped up in ‘not giving a shit’. I hate that for so many people around my age the pinnacle of ‘coolness’ (whatever coolness is, who even knows to be honest) is about how much you can not care about stuff. Coolness that is wrapped in things like not giving shit about Daniel Tosh’s rape joke, or not giving a shit about whether or not it’s okay for white girls to appropriate other cultures, or not giving a shit about Caitlin Moran’s racism or just generally not giving a shit about whether or not the words you use might be offensive to somebody.

I can’t understand this idea of  ’Oh wow, it’s so cool that you don’t give a shit about whether you’re racist or sexist or otherwise offensive.’ This idea that caring about not being an offensive dickhead is just so uncool, that educating yourself is so uncool, that caring about trying to be a good person is so uncool. Being an ignorant, racist/sexist/homophobe is just so much cooler, not giving a shit about how you make other people feel is just so much cooler. Being offensive is so edgy and funny. Knowing that something is offensive but not caring is just so awesome.  I can’t understand the way that people who are really caught up in this ‘coolness’ like to write off those of us who do genuinely care about these issues as ‘feminist killjoys’ and ‘PC police’. I don’t care about these issues because it gives me some feeling of moral superiority over those who don’t; I care about these issues because they either affect me directly or because I know people who are directly affected and hurt by these things. I care about these issues because I genuinely believe that they are important and that they matter.

I am the uncoolest guy ever because I think compassion, empathy and trying your best to be a good person are important. I think critical thought, examining and checking privilege, and interrupting whiteness are important. I think intersectional feminism is important. I think that words mean things and that we should all choose our words carefully and do our best to stop using hurtful or offensive terms in every day speech. I think that as bloggers with fairly large audiences it is our obligation to do all that we can to make sure our posts, outfits, and comments are not offensive or hurtful to our readers. I don’t think that fashion blogs or fashion bloggers are exempt from engaging in these discussions just because they may not directly fit into the usual blog post topics. I think it’s important to hold other bloggers accountable for their words and actions and not to just ignore bad behaviour because you think somebody is ‘cool’. I feel like as human beings and as adults it is our responsibility to think about how our actions and words (both on and offline) will make other people feel and to do our very best not to be hurtful. This goes for racism, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, heteronormativity, classism etc. I do give a shit about these things, I really give a shit and I wish more other people did too.

Seriously, after two seasons and something like 44 episodes of Party Of Five, I’m starting to hate the Salingers. Especially Charlie and Bailey who are disgusting jerks. But anyway, here’s what happened in season two. If you missed the season one recap you can find it here.

Griffin showed up! I don’t actually remember much about him except that I think Julia marries him at some point. He actually first showed up in Season One and was played by James Marsden (above) but from Season Two onwards he was played by Jeremy London (below).

Apparently they put them both in red t-shirts so we wouldn’t get confused.

Jennifer Love Hewitt made her first appearance too! Little babby JLH! She looks so young. She plays Sarah, a nice girl who is really into Bailey for some inexplicable reason.

Charlie still had a mullet and was still the worst dude ever. Ugh, just look at his dumb face.

Julia was still dating Justin (aka Heroin Bob from SLC Punk), that’s them making out in the background. Bailey still had dimples.

I kind of want to turn these re-cap posts in Claudia Salinger appreciation posts because she is the best Salinger. Here she is throwing her bra away because she is an awesome young feminist. Actually she bought a too-big bra and then stuffed it with tissues but I like to think this is a feminist act.

Julia and Griffin made out and she cheated on Justin. But not long after that Griffin stole money from some guy and then got sent to military school in New Orleans so he didn’t appear in much more of season two. Before he left he did suggest that Julia should get a tattoo of a yin yang sign which I was screaming over.

In most of the episodes he was in, he kept wearing that same old red shirt.

Charlie and Kirsten nearly got married, but then they didn’t. Lucky for her.

Claudia made friends with Cokie Mason from The Babysitters Club movie (aka Marla Sokoloff and her character in PO5 had a name but I’m going to keep calling her Cokie) and Cokie kept calling her ‘Fiddle Girl’.

They smoked cigarettes on the bus. See, I told you Claudia was the best.

Julia and Justin went to see Sophie B Hawkins (OMG!) and the crowd was seriously pathetic. Like, why are they all sitting down and looking grumpy?! What is wrong with you kids?!

Charlie almost cheated on Kirsten with Christie Masters-Christianson from Romy and Michelle.

Sarah (JLH) wore this great red dress to Charlie and Kirsten’s wedding that didn’t happen.

Here are some ‘I’m not actually getting married’ jears.

Look at Julia’s awesome sex hair! This was totally one of her best moments, getting drunk at her brother’s non-wedding and losing her virginity to an equally drunk Justin.

Claudia and Cokie Mason got drunk in the tent. Where is the Claudia Salinger spin-off because I want to watch it.

Sarah found out that she was adopted (and that her biological mother was Debra from Everybody Loves Raymond) and got pissed at her parents so Bailey gave her a key to his house and basically invited her to move in. Come on kids, you’re 16 years old! It’s not time to exchange keys just yet!

This babely teen lesbian was into Julia and Julia was not impressed. But later she wore this great outfit and comforted her and I suppose learnt tolerance or whatever (kind of like Claudia and the gay violin teacher in episode one).

Charlie was dating Kathleen, this busy boss lady and one time she wasn’t paying him enough attention or something (because you know, she had work to do at her job) so he walked into her office and carried her out like this. Way to make her look weak and powerless in front of her employees, Charlie you douche.

Sarah started singing in this band and did a sexy version of ‘Fever’ while taking her jacket off while playing a show at a cafe one afternoon which was kind of weird but whatever. Then of course Bailey (douchebag extraordinaire) got all jealous and started telling her she shouldn’t dress so ‘revealing’ and kept trying to make her wear turtlenecks and insinuating that she’s a slut and stuff. She told him off and my hatred for Bailey grew even more.

Charlie’s girlfriend Kathleen pulled a big Valley Of The Dolls suicide attempt after he breaks up with her which I thought was out of character but this scene did look pretty awesome with the huge loft apartment and pink pyjamas.

Claudia is holding a copy of Sassy magazine in her hand in this shot! She is the best.

Danny Masterson appeared as a guy in Sarah’s band who Bailey (of course) got jealous of.

Claudia was supposed to be playing seven minutes in heaven with this guy but she was Not Having It. Claudia Salinger is a role model.

A little baby teenaged Kate Hudson showed up in a really small and pointless role.

And here are some jears to finish off. I think these were of the ‘I nearly lost my late father’s restaurant and my younger brother had to spend his college money bailing me out’ variety. You suck, Charlie!

Some things that I forgot (or couldn’t be bothered) to get screen caps of: lots of great denim 90s fashions, a long lost Grandfather, Julia getting pregnant and then miscarrying, Charlie trying to hook up with a waitress, getting turned down and then firing her (lovely), and some creepy teacher trying to hit on Julia.

What will season three hold?! I’m going to guess more bad lighting and more jears.

The really good thing about deciding not to have advertisers/’sponsors’ (they’re advertising, I don’t know why so many bloggers insist on calling them ‘sponsorships’) anymore is that I no longer worry or even really care about traffic and stats which means I can just write (or not write! I no longer feel guilty if I don’t update for a while) about whatever I feel like without worrying if I will lose followers. So with that in mind, here is the first of many (probably six since there are only six seasons) Party of Five recap posts. I re-watched Party Of Five Season One last week (I think the last time I saw it was when it was on tv for the first time) and took some screepcaps and felt some feelings so here they are. I suppose this should come with a spoiler warning but I mean, it first aired in 1994 so I don’t know if it’s really possible to spoil it at this point.

I thought the show started out just as their parents died but it actually starts about six months after so there’s not a big emotional beginning or anything really.

Julia (Neve Campbell) starts out dressing like a total dork, what is that polo?! I’m almost certain she’s wearing the same navy blue parka she wore in The Craft here.

But after an episode or two she starts dressing in awesome 90s styles, including my personal favourite of pretty/little dresses with a big leather jacket. I dress like this at least twice a week.

Julia’s cool friend dressed in the pretty dress/big leather jacket style too.

Brittany Murphy was in a couple of early episodes as a Mean Girl named Abby. She reminded me a bit of Abby Morgan and I was disappointed when she disappeared after like two episodes. Look at how young and cute she was! This was pre-Clueless. R.I.P angel.

AJ from Empire Records also appeared in a couple of early episodes as this guy PK (what is with this dude playing characters with names that are initials?) who kind of dated Julia. He was pretty cute but luckily he then disappeared, freeing Julia up to start going out with Heroin Bob from SLC Punk. Unfortunately I forgot to screencap any Julia/Heroin Bob moments but he is way cuter than AJ/PK so good for Julia.

The whole ‘Claudia sleeping in a tent in the dining room’ thing really started to annoy me, because LOOK AT THIS HOUSE! As if there aren’t enough rooms for her to have her own bedroom. Come on, guys.

Charlie Salinger AKA Matthew Fox AKA Jack Shepherd cried a lot of early 90s JEARS. I think these were ‘I just met the drunk driver who killed my parents’ jears.

Here he is with a mullet barely holding back the jears because his girlfriend is talking to another dude (Charlie Salinger is an overly jealous douchebag by the way).

Here’s old Charlie getting really pissed that his girlfriend is trying to study for her PhD and isn’t in the mood to have sex. He had a really charming tantrum right after this. It was around this time that 16 yr old Bailey Salinger’s (Scott Wolf) girlfriend, Kate, was like ‘I don’t want to have sex until I’m married’ and Bailey got super pissed and said ‘I can’t believe you made this decision about us without considering how I would feel about it’. I was screaming. Body autonomy obviously means nothing to those gross Salinger men.

Another creepy Salinger sex moment - Charlie’s girlfriend, Kirsten, feels uncomfortable about having sex on a really squeaky bed since he lives with his four brothers and sisters (seems reasonable to me). He tells her she feels like that because she doesn’t feel like she belongs in the house yet, convinces her to have sex on the squeaky bed anyway and says ‘let’s make some noise and show them how much you belong here’. The ‘them’ they would be showing are Charlie’s teenage, pre-teen and infant siblings. Why do you want your family to hear you having sex Charlie, you sicko!?

I remember getting mad when I heard about Brody Dalle (then Brody Armstrong) breaking up with Tim Armstrong. I remember reading interviews with Tim where he talked about how sad he was and I remember listening to Tropical London which was apparently about their divorce and hearing how she had broken up with him over the phone when she was in Melbourne and he was in New York and thinking stuff like ‘what a bitch’ and ‘he’s so sad, he must have loved her so much, how could she do that to him?’ and all sorts of similar shit. Even later when I read some MySpace blog post of an interview with Brody about how he was controlling and abusive and read her side of the story, I still though ‘that bitch’. I was really into Rancid but the stupid thing is, I was way more into The Distillers.  Brody was my main inspiration when I finally shaved my hair into a mohawk, I listened to The Distillers self titled album at least a thousand times, I scoured the internet for every interview with her I could ever find, I downloaded mp3s from her first band, Sourpuss, I was obsessed. And yet I still took his side (as much as you can take sides in a divorce involving two people you have never met) and thought she was mean and broke his heart. Looking back now it seems silly enough to get emotionally involved in the marriages and personal lives of musicians (although as a teenage fan it’s not that uncommon), but to just automatically think the man is a tortured genius who has had his heart broken by some horrible woman? That is a pretty good example of internalised misogyny.

(Me circa 2002. Thanks for the hair inspo Brody, sorry for being the worst)

I was the kind of teenage girl who was ‘one of the guys’. I had three or four girl friends but the rest of my high school friend group was made up of boys. I was the kind of teenage girl who would talk shit about anything ‘prissy’ or ‘girly’. I was the kind of teenage girl who would automatically hate any girl who came into the group who I didn’t already know. At the time I could think up a million reasons why I didn’t like so and so (annoying laugh, ugly shoes, likes Avril Lavigne, your typical Mean Girls crap) but as a somewhat grown up lady looking back, it’s fairly obvious to me that I felt threatened by any girl who could possibly take the attention away from me. Being one of a very few girls who was accepted as ‘one of the guys’ was a huge part of my identity for a long time and if your group ends up with an equal number of girls and boys, well you’re nothing special are you? Being one of the guys meant doing beer bongs, letting people push you in a shopping kart into bushes (CKY and Jackass were at their peak during my mid-teen years), laughing at various sexist/racist/homophobic jokes lest you be seen as a ‘typical girl who can’t take joke’ and occasionally being reminded that you were not actually one of the guys when one of your guy friends would make a pass at you. I had been calling myself a feminist since I was 15 years old because I loved Kathleen Hannah and Bikini Kill and Riot Grrrl but it’s easy to call yourself a feminist when you’re talking about celebrities, it’s quite another to actually stop hating on or being jealous of the girls in your high school.

(Different hair colours in 2002/2003. Such a ~special snowflake~)

When I look back at my teen years and even my very early 20s, I think about all of the girls and women I was a flat-out bitch to and I feel awful about it. I remember feeling jealous and threatened and expressing that by just being a completely horrible little brat. Whispering nasty things to my guy friends about the girls who were trying to talk to them at a party, laughing when guys would tell me in graphic and extremely demeaning tones about their latest conquests, agreeing with disgustingly sexist statements about how women were bitchy or annoying or not as good as men at various things. I know we all did some silly things as kids in order to fit in but I took it way above and beyond being, to borrow a phrase from Ariel Levy, a female chauvinist pig.

Around age 22 I finally chilled out a bit and made friends with a few girls who I had met through my group of guy friends and realised what I’d been missing out on. I always had two very close girlfriends, one I’ve known since 1990 and the other since 2002, but this was my first time making adult girl friends. Being friends with other ladies is the best. Ladies in general are the fucking best! There’s no competition (or at least there shouldn’t be!) about who is better at being ‘one of the guys’ because you know what’s way more fun – being one of the ladies! Not for the typical feminine stuff like shopping or talking about lipstick (which, don’t get me wrong, I completely love doing) but for every conversation you will ever have I think there is a female perspective that is often under-represented and I personally find that perspective much, much more interesting than the usually over-represented opinions of white males (I especially find this when talking about music). My friendships with other women are challenging, loving, and interesting in ways that my friendships with boys and men have never been. I still have and value my friendships with men but for me, after not having them for so long, my female friendships are incredibly important to me.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that any dislike I may have for any woman is based in jealously, I have definitely met women who have done shitty things to me or who have glaring personally flaws that bother me. I don’t think that all ‘girl hate’ is jealousy based internalised misogyny. However I do think that an important part of trying to overcome interalised misogyny is to really ask why you don’t like that certain woman. If you can come up with a valid reason (and it’s a reason that you would also dislike a man for) cool, I’m sure it’s a specific case and she’s done something crappy to you. But if you honestly can’t come up with a reason beyond something like ‘she wears too much make-up’ I think it’s worth looking deeper into your feelings because it’s quite possible you are engaging in interalised misogyny. Overcoming internalised misogyny doesn’t mean you have to love and be best friends with every single woman you ever meet. I’m sure you have legitimate reasons for not liking specific women for specific reasons, not  every single woman is awesome all the time and never does shitty things. The idea of overcoming internalised misogyny is to not hate all women for these out-dated bullshit stereotypes or to make sexist anti-woman statements about them (us) all being superficial or bitchy or dumb. It’s also about not comparing men to women in negative ways, as though being compared to or being a woman is somehow a bad or lesser thing to be (‘he throws like a girl’ etc).

Hating the girl your boyfriend cheated on you with but leaving your boyfriend blameless is internalised misogyny (hate them both! Unless the girl didn’t know your boyfriend was in a relationship, in that case hang out with her and hate him together). Saying that your friends are mostly men because ‘women are so bitchy’ is internalised misogyny. Wanting to live with men instead of women because ‘women are so dramatic’ is internalised misogyny. Saying that a man who is taking a long time to get dressed or chatting on the phone all night is “worse than a woman” is internalised misogyny. The whole ‘she’s a slut, he’s a stud’ crap is internalised misogyny (it’s also slut-shaming and super dumb).

I know that I’m not completely there yet, I still catch myself occasionally thinking horribly misogynistic things but I’m doing my best and I think it’s important for other women to do the same, to really think about our reactions to each other, and try to change this kind of toxic thinking/behaviour. I’ll leave you with this Madeleine Albright quote – “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

I wanted to go to ballet lessons like my older sister had but my mother, the former professional ballerina, said “you don’t have a ballerinas’ body.” I went to gymnastics lessons for one semester before she said I wasn’t graceful enough on the balance beam and refused to pay for the next semester’s lessons. I was six years old.

When I was invited to my father’s second wedding she said “if you go, it will kill me.” I barely spoke to him for fifteen years. I was 23 years old the next time I called him. We went to dinner, we went to a bar and drank beer together. We have the same eyes. For the first time I realised what I had really missed out on, I realised how similar we were, I realised how much easier my teenage years might have been if I had known him then.

After dinner I cut a piece of chocolate cake and my mother said “do you really need that?” In my bedroom I talked about school with my best friend, who was a skinny girl from a family full of skinny people, and my mother walked in and told my friend she should teach me how to exercise. I was nine years old.

I sat in the car next to her on a cold morning and asked if she thought I was pretty. She concentrated on the road and told me that she didn’t think any parent thinks their child is unattractive. I asked again, I pushed the point and my mother said “I wouldn’t call your face pretty, but I think you’re pleasant looking.” I told her that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up and she said “you won’t make a living as a writer.” I was twelve.

Running at 5am in the pouring rain, skipping classes to go to the gym, living on cigarettes and lettuce leaves. I was always cold, my hip bones dug into the bed if I lay on my stomach, counting my own ribs. I fainted while waiting for the bus and fell face first onto the concrete, my face covered in blood and a cut that would turn into a scar that is still noticeable ten years later. I was fifteen years old and my mother said “if you lost two more kilograms you would look great.”

And my mother said “big Bertha” and “boys don’t want a fat girlfriend, he only likes you because he thinks you’re easy” and “you don’t have the body to wear something like that” and my mother said “slut.” I was seventeen. When I was nineteen I invited her to come and visit my new house, to see where I lived. She never came.

At 22 years old I stood in her living room for the last time and told her about how she had made me feel for all those years. I told her that I was moving on with my life. I left. A week later she sent me an email denying it all and telling me I was going to be cut out of the inheritance when she died. I didn’t reply.