I'll be reading Growing Up with Tamales for story time at Blue Willow Bookshop, in Houston, on Thursday morning, May 15. Tell everyone you know with kids in the Houston area. How do you find and support local indie book stores like Blue Willow? By going to Booksense.
On Saturday, May 17, I'll be in Dallas, reading and signing at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, for the 13th Dallas Children’s Book Fair & Literary Festival.
On June 22, here in Houston, I'm going to do a poetry workshop. It's free and open to the public, y'all, and they're having one every Sunday in June, taught by local poets I love and respect. So come on down.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
gimmicky "diet" bookI went to the bookstore the other day and came across a diet book called Skinny Bitch. Or Skinny Bitches, Skinny Bitch Diet... something like that. I had to flip through it to see what the gimmick was. The beginning was "tough love" type insults. They said that "fat slobs" had to admit that they had a problem, get off their lazy asses, quit eating so much, etc. And it went on in that vein for a few chapters, telling the reader to exercise more and eat less, with liberal peppering of the words fat, slob, bitch, lazy, etc.
"How long can this book sustain itself?" I wondered.
In the middle, there was a chapter about meat being fattening. And then, with no warning whatsoever, the book became a hardcore vegan tract. Flipping through it there in the aisle, I saw the usual arguments about cruelty and health issues. They even busted out and told the reader that she didn't need that much protein survive. "Look at giraffes!" the authors said. "They don't need that much protein!" (That's usually the part where I stop listening to vegan evangelists in real life--when they suggest that my dietary requirements should be the same as an herbivores.)
So the book got hardcore vegan in the middle. Then, for Act Three, the authors apologized for the ugly words and the tough love, and said they only did it out of genuine concern for the reader. Then, there was a lot of "you go, girl!" sort of truisms, about living for yourself and not waiting for love to change your life, and only being able to change yourself, and loving yourself whether you're fat or thin... and that men would love you if you were beautiful inside as well as out, and that being beautiful inside was only possible if you were "cruelty free." (I.e., if you don't eat meat.)
And this is what I have to wonder. What is the point of browbeating insecure straight women into becoming vegans? If you believe in veganism, why aren't you browbeating everyone equally? Do the people behind this book believe that insecure straight women, once they become vegans, will influence everyone else in the world to follow their example?
I didn't understand it. It was puzzling to me. I was, and remain, puzzled.
I am secretly a man.
That's what people think about me, when I don't act the way they believe a woman should. I am secretly a lesbian, a robot, an alien, an animal, or crazy.
No, you guys. I'm a woman. Really! I just don't always feel like getting all emotional with you. I don't want to have personal dramas--at least not between 8 and 5. I just want to do the work I've agreed to do for money. And then go home.
I save my emotions. I'm running out of them, as I get older, so I save what remains for the weekends and spend them on little things. You know? Art, music, commercials with sad music... my own children, my own family, my own romance.
Don't take it personally, that I don't get emotional with you. Don't think I'm abnormal. I'm just conserving resources. Please understand, and help me. I'd do the same for you.
[censored]
I just wrote, deleted, rewrote, and deleted a bunch of stuff about prettiness. About losing weight, becoming prettier, people hating pretty people, people treating pretty people like objects or possessions, people stalking and harassing pretty people, pretty people becoming defensive and protective of themselves, other people mistaking pretty people's defense mechanisms for haughtiness and conceit, people who hide their own prettiness out of fear, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, attempts to change one's negative mental associations with prettiness and weight loss, fervent wishing to be judged by my actions and not my looks, the fact that prettiness, in spite of everything, is still valuable and not something you would ever really willingly lose...
... the fact that I can't write anything about any of these things because it's obnoxious, it sounds like Andie McDowell smirking "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful," the fact that you're not allowed to say aloud that you might believe you're pretty, sexist socialization, my grandmother flying down from heaven and slapping my face, women being damned if they do or if they don't, possible self delusion, annoying self censorship, annoying fear. 2:51 PM #
Comments:
Oh my God, I never ever thought I was pretty till I was at least 35, (low self-esteem and crappy guys etc, no doubt) and then decided I looked great... and hated it. Best thing about getting too old to have people think you're a hot chick anymore is nobody thinking you're a hot chick anymore. A hot chick is treated like she has the brain of a hot chick, one that just got barbecued maybe. It makes you want to kill people.There, I said it.
# posted by
alice : 9:54 PM
Right now I hate a narcissist kind of beautiful. My neighbor is beautiful and finds sugar daddys who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on her and she never has to work. That is fine and I’d love for it to be me, but she enjoys it at the expense of her daughter. She made her, then 9 yo, daughter spend the nights completely alone for a couple of years so she could spend the nights with her sugar daddy. Right now she is off with a security guard from the Vatican she met while vacationing in Rome two months ago. They are madly in love and she is moving to Rome she told me yesterday. I am sure she plans to have her daughter stay here with her grandmother.
I know that, if you were Miss Universe (and I am sure you are getting close), you would never do that to your kids.
To back up to a previous posts, I saw a picture of NPR’s Terry Gross and she did not look anything like I had imagined. I can’t seem to reconcile that.
Vicki
# posted by
: 7:45 AM
Gag. As your resident mostly-vegan vegetarian, I've got to express disgust with this ridiculous excuse for a book. Any vegan worth their organic sea salt is doing it because it feels good and it contributes less to the exploitation of people, animals and natural resources. Obviously, you can't be misogynistic and pretend to be compassionate because you don't eat animals. I hope this sensationalist book tanks and is forgotten immediately.
There's a new health club movement in Denver called the Anti-Gym that makes my blood boil. It's all about putting down fat women (aka "chubbies") and the website is full of photos of "self-respecting" entwined hot women. It's basically everything we all hate about health clubs times ten.
I enjoyed the list of things we missed in your censored post. Too bad you deleted it because that topic always makes for thought-provoking reading.
Happy Thanksgiving.
# posted by
Marigoldie : 12:15 PM
You know, you are right about the pretty thing. I had always thought I was a "fairly decent" looking person until I turned 40. One day I looked in the mirror and thought, "I fucking ROCK! I am HOT!" (I just turned 43 Monday.) I think Alice has a good point. Older women have more confidence and we aren't afraid to show it. And even if you are not a ten, confidence is attractive and sexy.
We aren't twenty year old, posing in trashy clothes, looking for some boy's approval.
Viva la hot grown up women!
# posted by
: 8:15 PM
Vicky- I was very surprised when I saw Terry Gross too, for some reason I thought she had long, wavy brown hair.
I would like to read the censored part of the post too. Sometimes, I think I'm attractive but I never feel like I can believe it myself, I have to depend on other people to decide if I'm attractive or not.
# posted by
: 8:56 PM
You nailed the emotional drama thing - I feel like I have run out of the excess over-the-top emotions that governed my early adulthood. Now I save the drama for when I really need it!
# posted by
Velma : 9:54 AM
I'm with anonymous above -- prettiness and the way it affects the way women are treated and expect to be treated is always interesting to read about and I would like to read your comments. Maybe an edited version?
# posted by
Archigeek : 5:08 PM
Alice: Yes. Especially on the wanting to kill.
Vicki: I would never do that, you're right. But I think that people who do that -- the seeming narcissists -- have damaged self-esteem. They can only feel valuable when someone else thinks they're pretty. You know?
Marigoldie: I actually thought of you (and a couple of other vegans) when I saw it. I was like, "I know Marigoldie would not be down with this."
I like (hate) the way the shaming women thing is back so strongly now. Wonder why that is. Republicans? The Taliban? War time? Recession?
Anon 8:15: "not looking for some boy's approval." You just said it -- one of the most important things a woman ever learns. Word up.
Lauren: Y'all are making me want to see Terry now.
Archigeek, Lauren, Marigoldie: re: the censored words: I will probably write about that stuff, but later.
For some reason, it's really hard for me to say, "Now that I'm pretty again..."
Because it's so wrong for me to say that I think I'm pretty, right?
And... all I wanted to do was complain about the way people treat me, now that I'm pretty again. :)
But more cogently than this.
Velma: Right. Like, when you need to stand up for yourself or for someone else? Or show love? Or admit fear? Important stuff. Me and you both.
# posted by
Gwen : 7:38 PM
RE:I am secretly a man.
i enjoy reading your page because your writing isn't "he/she said this and i felt bad afterwards" and so on. i use Avant browser, and its one of my home pages. i enjoy reading it. love those Illustrated Stories. good stuff.
# posted by
Jay : 9:19 AM
I am also not a man. I might be pretty though. It's so difficult to tell because the definition keeps changing.
# posted by
jagosaurus : 3:48 PM
Jay: Thanks.
Jag: I know, right? I believe that you're pretty, though.
# posted by
Gwen : 7:45 PM
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