Category Archives: This is a Woman

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

BY bonnie

“You’re the kind of woman that other women hate!”
“I hate you so much!”
“You’re so gorgeous; I hate you!”

What.The.Fuck.

At what point exactly did hating each other become a compliment? How is this a good thing? And what is really so wrong with old-fashioned compliments that don’t drive wedges between ourselves and our friends? Compliments like, “You look great!” I mean. If you’re looking for emphasis you can just add a “really” in there. Let me demonstrate: “You look really great!” More emphasis needed? Add a motherfucking cuss word. “You look really fucking great!” Need a non-bad-word for a church picnic? Try learning some adjectives. Here’s a list:

Alluring
Angelic
Bewitching
Classy
Dazzling
Delightful
Elegant
Exquisite
Graceful
Grand
Lovely
Magnificent
Pulchritudinous
Radiant
Refined
Sublime
Wonderful

Yeah, I said motherfucking pulchritudinous. And you are. And I love you. Which is why we need to stop hating on each other.

I posted this image (via Adios Barbie) on SOAM’s Facebook wall yesterday and proceeded to have the weirdest debate ever about modesty of all things. This particular image isn’t even about modesty. It is clearly discriminating against size (or, as one woman pointed out, any aspect of a woman’s body that doesn’t fit conventional beauty standards). To debate modesty is rather pointless anyway, since it’s all subjective. The idea of what modesty is changes from era to era, from culture to culture, from woman to woman. The point of the whole thing – modesty included – is that we have to stop making comments and judgements about other women’s clothing. Or about other women’s anything, really. Cause news flash: if it doesn’t affect you, it doesn’t affect you.

Instead it keeps us separate. It divides us. Where we could be coming together to support each other and to promote the validity of the spectrum of what beauty is, we are actually contributing to this one particular ideal that is created for us and that keeps us feeling bad about ourselves. Instead of lifting each other up, we – under the facade of a compliment – tear each other down. Honestly, I’d rather you just insult me. That’s easier to know what to do with. This confusing frenemy bullshit women have created for each other is detrimental to each of us, and particularly to women as a group.

In many circumstances I might say it’s better to get to the root of a saying and say that instead. But in this case saying, “You’re so beautiful that I’m jealous of you” isn’t really any better. If you are jealous of a friend that is your issue. It’s a legitimate issue and I am not trying to undermine your feelings, but it is your issue. By stating such a thing to a friend you put this weird burden on them to feel guilty for having been complimented, and to try to make you feel better. Chances are they try to make you feel better by tearing themselves down (“Oh, but I look terrible today! You look much better”). And we’re back to degrading ourselves. This time as an unharmonious duet.

Does it feel good to know other women are jealous of us? To hear that we’re hated for our beauty? Sometimes it might, yes. At least on the surface. But I would bet that if we dig deeper, we’d find that it’s a kind of bitter happiness. A happiness that’s less actual happiness and more a consolation prize for having been pushed away from a friend. If we can’t be loved, at least we can be beautiful.

Know what’s more awesome than the consolation prize? The actual prize. Of getting (or giving!) a real compliment. No strings attached. You’re beautiful! I love your eyes! That color makes you look radiant! Your hair looks amazing today! I love that dress on you! You look motherfucking pulchritudinous today!

And you do. Look motherfucking pulchritudinous today.

Just Life, Lady Links, This is a Woman

What today has been like so far.

BY bonnie

So my day has been like this:

1. Wake up to an email from the BBC about doing a story. What? That’s normal.
2. Make coffee to try to become human for aforementioned interview.
3. Do interview.
4. Think coffee is empty and go to check cup but instead spill coffee all over everything. Also: waste coffee.
5. Cry. I am so tired. This week has been so busy and I have so much to accomplish in the next hour and I didn’t have all the caffeine. Cry.
6. Get a call from a local news station still in SOAM mode but it wasn’t about SOAM at all. WON TICKETS TO COMIC CON INSTEAD.
7. Did I mention I started my period? Cause this is all just kind of a lot to handle.

This is what my day has not been like:

1. Having the week’s Lady Links already prepared and ready to go.
2. Sitting down and having time to write up this week’s Lady Links.
3. Finishing a whole cup of coffee before noon.
4. Making a pretty little picture to post with this story so that I can be, or at least look like, a Responsible Blogger.

Well. You know my motto: Thank god I’m cute.

Lady Links, Social Justice, This is a Woman

Lady Links! (6.28)

BY bonnie

So that was a fairly epic week, no?

The US Supreme Court made some big decisions. One of them sets us back about 50 years in terms of racism allowed by the law (what? no. really). So that’s bad. The other one makes us somewhat closer to even with many other countries in terms of laws allowing gay marriage. So that’s good.

And then this thing happened in Texas. A thing where a woman (literally) stood up for what she believed in for twelve hours. She was constantly harassed about whether or not she was following the law. When a second woman tried to speak her own voice she was ignored repeatedly until she asked the question, “at what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues?” And that? Was the beginning of something beautiful. It was about 15 minutes to go before Davis’ filibuster killed the anti-abortion bill when Van de Putte poised her question and all the women in the building (and probably many of the 170,000 people watching it stream live) burst into cheers and screams and chanting for twenty full minutes. When the republicans tried to silence Davis, the people took up her cause. And then, once they finally quieted down after the deadline, the republicans voted anyway. Because fuck the laws we are here to protect that’s why. What they maybe weren’t aware of was the 170,000 people watching it stream live. The hypocrisy kills me. I think, if justice is to be done, they should be given whatever punishment they deserve. I don’t expect justice to be done, though.

Why are we still living in the dark ages? I mean, really.

It’s like Paula Deen’s thing this week. She keeps going on and on and giving these weak apologies and excuses and “reasons” without ever actually facing the fact that she is, in fact, behaving in a racist way. It’s like, if no one’s getting lynched anymore that means racism is done. In all honestly, that’s how I used to feel about feminism. As a kid I didn’t see it. Women could vote now. We had the Equal Pay Act. We were allowed to become astronauts or Supreme Court justices. Feminism: Accomplished! Right? It wasn’t until I got older (and probably also that the world got smaller) that I was able to really see how things are. But I AM a woman. It’s easier to see discrimination when you are the one facing it. Paula Deen isn’t able to face her racist words and actions because she’s white and because she sees racism as this archaic thing that people don’t do anymore cause we all use the same drinking fountains now. She can’t see – perhaps because of the environment in which she lives – that she is still perpetuating racist ideals. But racism is more than just those clear symbols we grew up knowing were (or grew to know are) wrong.

Basically what I am saying is that racism and sexism and homophobia don’t always look the way you think they look. The old criteria were just the outer layer, the easy part. Now we have to really use our hearts and our minds and deeply think and deeply feel our way to equality. And that’s hard work.

Blah blah blah. On to the links. I mean the other links.

No, wait I’m not done yet. I can’t get over the blatant disregard for ACTUAL LAWS that happened there in Texas. They LIED. They CHANGED the time stamp to make it look like they passed it before the deadline. THEY FUCKING LIED. And when they were caught, they were all, “Heh. Oops. Our bad.” And that’s basically it. What we should have heard (at the very, very least) was, “Wow. You’re right. We let our passion over losing get in the way of our jobs here. We fucked up. Badly. There is honestly no way to fully apologize for how we betrayed all of our constituents. You all trusted us to work within the laws we, as a state, have a greed upon, and we completely and utterly did the opposite of that. We have learned our lesson. In the future we promise not to let our feelings get in the way of our morality. We are so, so sorry. And we know that apology isn’t enough, but we hope to show you in the future how we will stick to this promise if you let us.” And then the people of Texas should be all, “We accept your apology,” and then vote them out at the very first opportunity. At the very, very least. And this just addresses the actual lies and clear violation of the laws, not all the shady-but-not-technically-illegal stuff that also happened. How do people live with themselves? How do people continue to vote for this party? Because the thing is that I am not anti-republican by any means, but I am absolutely anti-asshat, and too many republicans in office ARE asshats.

Ok now I’m done.

~TIAW on Tumblr and Pinterest.
~You are loved. Even by your dentist.
~This is something I always wanted to do for SOAM, but I never trusted myself enough as a photographer. What a beautiful book. I am so glad it exists.
~This isn’t about body image. It’s about women in a sense, but really as more of a part of humanity. But it’s still really fucking cool. Scientists have long believed that some people (mostly certain women) have the ability to see more colors on the spectrum than the rest of us. They’ve finally found a woman who proves their theory.
~Here’s a pretty empowering post relating what happens when a random asshole guy tries harassing the wrong (actually the right) woman. (But I have to ask. How do people just randomly text people? I mean. How did he know he was texting a woman? I don’t get it. Please explain to this old lady.)

7 Days, The Zebra, This is a Woman

Reasons to Work Out (7 Days: Day 6)

BY bonnie

I’ve been working at this body image thing for awhile now. Probably since I was first told I was fat, around eight years old (and a couple of years ago I came across some pictures of me as a kid, and you guys? I was a skinny little thing at that age. The fuck with people telling me I was fat? STABBY STABBY STABBY).

Me as a child, not fat:

I didn’t know how to sort it out at that age, but my brain was screaming out that they were wrong. I struggled with knowing what the actual factual truth was, and still feeling less worthy of being a human because of how I thought I looked. It’s evolved a lot in the last 27ish years, and I know much better now how to love myself than I used to. And, yet, I keep finding these new layers, and each time I get to that level I feel like I have all the work yet to do. It is both energizing and exhausting.

Recently as I was leaving the gym, proud of myself for having worked hard, I thought to myself, “Even if I always stay fat, at least I’ll be fit.”

And then a little voice, from the back of my brain bravely spoke up and repeated a line I’d already read and nodded furiously in agreement with in many a fat acceptance blog.

But. So what if you’re not fit?

Because I am still holding onto that desperate need to be accepted and respected by everyone always.

And, yes, I know how unrealistic that is. But it’s my core operating system. It’s a bullshit core operating system, but it takes a lot of work and a lifetime to reprogram a core operating system.

So the thing hit me: I’m still working out for other people. I may have detached the weight loss itself from my exercise routines, but apparently only with the catch that I have to at least be in good shape. Cause that’ll show ’em.

Here’s a list of things I thought I liked about working out, but it turns out, none of these things are about me at all:
~Not being out of breath when I have to climb a flight of stairs around people who might think I’m just a fat fatty.
~Not being out of breath when I run and play with my kids. So strangers at the park won’t judge me.
~Going to the gym regularly to prove that some people are just fat no matter how much they exercise.
~Secretly wanting to be at least a little bit less fat. To show them.

Dear Me,
It’s not their business. Ignore them. You’re awesome.
Love,
Me

So here’s a list of things I actually do love about working out:

~Lifting weights and watching myself grow stronger.
~Doing harder cardio and watching myself grow stronger.
~Getting all sweaty and gross. No, really. I love that.
~Being able to do the more strenuous hikes without my head feeling like it’s trying to explode for lack of oxygen.
~Feeling good overall. Happier, more awake, less foggy. Regular exercise does this for me.

I’m going to keep those in mind and I’m going to do my best to live by them, to keep me motivated to exercise for me.

I’ve been a member of this gym now for almost a year and, while I certainly haven’t gone regularly, I’ve avoided that perfectionist attitude of, “well, I haven’t gone for a few weeks now so I just give up and when my contract is up I’ll cancel.” Instead I just go when I can, or sometimes just when I do.

And so what if I don’t? Well, now I know – on a conscious level, at least – that it won’t make me a failure.

I don’t have to be fit any more than I have to be thin. My personal value doesn’t rest upon size or fitness. It doesn’t rest on my health. It also doesn’t rest upon beauty, or intelligence, or sense of humor. I am valuable because I am a person. End. of. story.

(7 Days is a quarterly self-portrait group project I have taken part in for the last sixish years. One selfie a day for a week.)

Lady Links, This is a Woman

The So Far Still Un-Renamed Weekly Awesome

BY bonnie

Today is the Summer Solstice (for those of us in the northern hemisphere, that is – it’s midwinter down south) and my family and I will celebrate by watching the sunset at the beach. The beginning of our trek into winter, when the Earth wobbles back away from the sun. In our particular area of the world, it’s still very much springtime (if overcast days signify springtime. I don’t really know what season to call this, actually). We won’t get the heat of summertime until the fall. Seasons are confusing for us, OK?

Wow. That paragraph devolved quickly from musings on spirituality and celestial events to defensiveness about our yearly climate. Let’s just forget this happened and get on to the Lady Links.

LADY LINKS. I might have just renamed the Weekly Awesome, you guys. LADY LINKS.

~TIAW on Pinterest and Tumblr.
~This is a really powerful and heavy article about Don Draper’s rape on Mad Men. I don’t mean that he raped someone. I mean that he was raped. If you don’t read this one, at least read the two articles linked to The Good Men Project where two male rape survivors talk about their rapes.
~This one was hard to take. I mean. LLOYD DOBBLER WITH A BOOM BOX. But, if I am going to be totally (and painfully) honest with myself, I had to admit that it’s a little bit stalkery. *sigh*
~VERY cool interview about feminist porn.
~How to start loving your vagina. <--Best article all year. Share it with EVERYONE YOU KNOW. ~I've probably shared this one before, but it bears repeating. How to talk to little girls.

Happy Summer (or Winter) Solstice! I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

Lady Links, This is a Woman

The As-Yet-Officially-Un-Renamed Weekly Roundup of Women’s News

BY bonnie

Well. That’s a name. Of sorts. Want to help pick a new name for what was formerly called the Weekly Awesome? Click here.

~TIAW on Pinterest and Tumblr.
~This is kind of old news (I’m kind of behind on Awesome stuff so a few of these are old news) but I’m sharing it in case you haven’t heard it yet. Sometimes I feel voiceless in this world. I’ve boycotted Nestle for years, but they don’t care. But sometimes – hopefully more and more often – companies listen. And, in this case, Facebook also had to listen. And it’s about damn time.
~Another one on Facebook and misogyny. Also with an awesome ending.
~Here’s an interesting article from NPR about fat-shaming and career/higher education options.
~Remember that one Dove ad a few weeks back where the women described themselves to a sketch artist? XOVain decided to do something similar and got very different results. Now, I do this this was all somewhat intentionally skewed – and so was the Dove one for other reasons – but, if nothing else, it’s SO refreshing to hear women speaking about themselves with such positivity. LOVE.
~What better way to fight misogyny than with snarkasm? I give you Forehead Tittaes, a “product” “endorsed” by Marion Cotillard.
~Last one today. Patrick Stewart. That is all I need to say.

This is a Woman

Official TIAW Welcome!

BY bonnie

To those of you coming here from SOAM or TIAW – welcome!

I’m really excited about the possibilities that lie ahead for zebrabelly.com and TIAW’s continuing online presence. If you want to continue following TIAW online you can click the link up there at the top of this blog (or right here) and you will find links to everything you need.

Right now this blog is quite bare since I decided it was time for a fresh start (I’ve actually been blogging personally for about 12 years) but I plan to bring over old posts as necessary from time to time. TIAW will, for the time being, at least, remain online, although no longer taking submissions. The TIAW Facebook page will slowly evolve into a Facebook page for this entire blog, not just the TIAW aspects of it.

I am hoping this place will become a lively, loving community for the same feminist issues TIAW always dealt with plus more. You can read more about me here to get an idea of what you might expect to see me write about in the future.

Now go to this post and let me know what you think about possible new names for the Weekly Awesome.

This is a Woman

Where You and I Rename the Weekly Awesome Together

BY bonnie

Hrm… Need less terrible ideas….

Over at TIAW, I posted a weekly roundup of all feminist and body-image related stuff which went under the name of The Weekly Awesome. The name always bothered me, though. Because some of the items were not awesome at all; they were angering. But I hesitated to change the name because I didn’t want to insinuate that anger isn’t a good thing when it’s necessary. My thought-process was something like this:

I don’t want to call angering things awesome because “awesome” brings to mind something uplifting.

But anger is important and necessary to fight the things that make us angry. And that’s kind of awesome.

But it bums me out and I don’t want to hear that something’s going to be awesome which leads me to expect Happy Things only to be bummed out.

But I feel strongly that anger is also awesome when it’s necessary and lord knows it’s so often necessary in these issues.

I. Um. May over think things. A little bit.

Eventually my circle of thoughts would spin so fast, I’d go flying out and land in a pile in the corner dizzy and needing more coffee or chocolate. Or chocolate coffee.

I considered divvying them up sometimes to keep them separate, but there was really no way to know if I’d get enough items each week to necessitate both. And I didn’t want to sit on them to collect enough for a post.

And, really, isn’t life all messy and awkward anyway? Life isn’t divvied up all nice and neat. And I am constantly trying to remember that in my life and in the projects I do.

Even so. This is my blog, and it appeals to my sense of order to have a name that suits the weekly roundup posts I do. So there. Life may be messy – and I may try to embrace it in other places – but it’s also OK to take those things I can tie up into neat little packages and tie them up into neat little packages.

Therefore, I’m changing the name. I’m overly partial to alliteration for some reason so right now I’m leaning towards Feminist Fridays, but I’m also worried that might sound a little dry. So I’m asking for your opinions. What do you think we should rename this weekly post?