I am starting to feel like arie transitioning has created this senerio in my head where i am a confused kid choosing lunch tables. I want to sit with the queer kids, technically that is where i fit in, but the queer kids will all just think i am trying to hard to fit in. Then the straight kids are the kids who used to be my friends, and when i sit with them they all get furred brows and don't understand why i am there. "Aren't you dating a women now?"
yes, on all accounts i consider Arie to be a sexy little mamasita in which i have the pleasure of being with. I'm happy with her and i see myself with her for a long period of time. however, i have no idea where my place in the sexual preference lies. Yes, i am usually out for the dick, but i find girls attractive too, i always have. I have never thought about dating one until i got a huge punch in the vagina one day. now i am in this awkward middle ground where i test positive for pansexuality, but with only one person so it doesn't really count,(guess i didn't read the fine print) but shouldn't the sheer fact that i am staying with the person i love because of her and not her gender be enough to be considered pansexual? or do i continue to call myself straight and explain that i have a girlfriend for the rest of our relationship? when do i get my queer licence? does it come in the mail? do i have to graduate? are there classes?
i guess the reason i find this so unsettling is that i dont want to step on anyone's toes, maybe it's weird but i stumbled onto this lifestyle while as others have overcome obsticals and self loathing and heartache. it's very much like i am the new kid in school and i need to prove that i am enough to come hang with them.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
It's hard out there for a fat girl pt 2
taking the liberty of straying away from what i usually write about on this blog in order to write about something that effects me pretty much every second of every day. I know i am not the only one dealing with this, i have talked to at least two friends facing body issues as well. figured i'd blog about it
Have you ever noticed that when a boy is chubby he is the "funny fat guy," or he's "just a little husky but he's cute." it's like being an overweight male compared to being an overweight female is cake...unless it was already eaten. Girls are never regarded in such a positive fashion, you never hear "oh yeah she is a little chubby, but she's really smart." and i have never once herd the term "funny fat girl." In the 20 years i have been overweight, people have treated over weight females as if they shit their pants regularly, or if they had committed some sort of awful crime. Perhaps this is just the feminist in me, but it is widely known to be dissected more and looked at as objects. so its no surprise that when a women is fat its "yeah shes cool, but shes pretty big though." if i had a nickle for every time i herd a women or man say something along those lines i would have a shit ton of nickles...no lie.
let me tell you a little bit about my day today. I work at a day camp, and not 2 seconds into being at day camp did i have 3 girls ask me why my arms were so scarred (something i am really sensitive about) i told them about the fact that i had a skin disease covering about 60 percent of my body when i was younger. Yes this isn't an attack on my weight but it certainly kick started my body conscious attitude. After that i had another kid tell me i looked weird in glasses, something i have worn every day.
about an hour or so later one of the kids tried to pick up some of the counselors, she got to me and i told her not to try. she did anyways and failed saying i must be about 200 or more. yeah, moral of the story is kids are giant assholes but it also shows that even to a 12 year old can tell that being fat is unacceptable in modern society.
it didn't always used to be like this, back in the old times a girl being overweight was seen as a turn on. It meant that she had enough money to buy lots of food. god i miss the old days.
anyways, back to my point. Men don't usually have trouble finding clothes at the mall...all men wear the same type of clothes which comes in all different sizes. women, on the other hand have to hunt through the 2 plus size stores at the mall (one being lane Bryant in which all the clothes are made for women over 40) in order to buy clothes kind of sort of resembling the hottest styles, but altered just enough to hold our fat asses and 4 chins. The magazines say skinny jeans are hot this season and they give fat girls giant parachute pants....THAT IS LITERALLY THE EXACT OPPOSITE!
Less we forget that the mainstream media feeds off celebrities with a little too much cellulite on there legs... "hey did you see that?! zoom in the camera....that little patch right there, i think that fat BOY IS SHE GROSS! HEY EVERYONE LINDSEY LOHAN IS SO FAT!" how is that supposed to make me feel when you are taking every little imperfection on these people and blowing it up (quite literally.) It is like out fat are the Jews in Nazis Germany. they try to exterminate fat by forcing healthy diets down our throats and rigorous work out routines. Don't get me wrong, i love eating healthy, however my weight does not portray that. i work out, i like working out, but i also love butter so it doesn't help much. why can't i just be fat and like it? but it doesn't seem to do much. i think maybe i would be a whole lot more accepting of my body if people actually stood by the "everyone is different and special" principle they threw at us in middle school. maybe then i wouldn't be thinking about that cookie i just at and how i need to do ten more minutes on the elliptical to burn it off.
This isn't even the worst part, the worst part is having to be at work down by the beach with 14 beach bunny life guards in there tiny bikinis. and when one who is probably at most 160 is being called the fat life guard. well, i happen to be bigger then her, does that mean i am the fat counselor? am i being discriminated on because i'm bigger? this is fatism!
anyways, i posted a creative writing piece i did in school last semester that everyone thought was funny, it applies to this such issue so i will post it...maybe then i can be the funny fat girl instead of just fat.
Have you ever noticed that when a boy is chubby he is the "funny fat guy," or he's "just a little husky but he's cute." it's like being an overweight male compared to being an overweight female is cake...unless it was already eaten. Girls are never regarded in such a positive fashion, you never hear "oh yeah she is a little chubby, but she's really smart." and i have never once herd the term "funny fat girl." In the 20 years i have been overweight, people have treated over weight females as if they shit their pants regularly, or if they had committed some sort of awful crime. Perhaps this is just the feminist in me, but it is widely known to be dissected more and looked at as objects. so its no surprise that when a women is fat its "yeah shes cool, but shes pretty big though." if i had a nickle for every time i herd a women or man say something along those lines i would have a shit ton of nickles...no lie.
let me tell you a little bit about my day today. I work at a day camp, and not 2 seconds into being at day camp did i have 3 girls ask me why my arms were so scarred (something i am really sensitive about) i told them about the fact that i had a skin disease covering about 60 percent of my body when i was younger. Yes this isn't an attack on my weight but it certainly kick started my body conscious attitude. After that i had another kid tell me i looked weird in glasses, something i have worn every day.
about an hour or so later one of the kids tried to pick up some of the counselors, she got to me and i told her not to try. she did anyways and failed saying i must be about 200 or more. yeah, moral of the story is kids are giant assholes but it also shows that even to a 12 year old can tell that being fat is unacceptable in modern society.
it didn't always used to be like this, back in the old times a girl being overweight was seen as a turn on. It meant that she had enough money to buy lots of food. god i miss the old days.
anyways, back to my point. Men don't usually have trouble finding clothes at the mall...all men wear the same type of clothes which comes in all different sizes. women, on the other hand have to hunt through the 2 plus size stores at the mall (one being lane Bryant in which all the clothes are made for women over 40) in order to buy clothes kind of sort of resembling the hottest styles, but altered just enough to hold our fat asses and 4 chins. The magazines say skinny jeans are hot this season and they give fat girls giant parachute pants....THAT IS LITERALLY THE EXACT OPPOSITE!
Less we forget that the mainstream media feeds off celebrities with a little too much cellulite on there legs... "hey did you see that?! zoom in the camera....that little patch right there, i think that fat BOY IS SHE GROSS! HEY EVERYONE LINDSEY LOHAN IS SO FAT!" how is that supposed to make me feel when you are taking every little imperfection on these people and blowing it up (quite literally.) It is like out fat are the Jews in Nazis Germany. they try to exterminate fat by forcing healthy diets down our throats and rigorous work out routines. Don't get me wrong, i love eating healthy, however my weight does not portray that. i work out, i like working out, but i also love butter so it doesn't help much. why can't i just be fat and like it? but it doesn't seem to do much. i think maybe i would be a whole lot more accepting of my body if people actually stood by the "everyone is different and special" principle they threw at us in middle school. maybe then i wouldn't be thinking about that cookie i just at and how i need to do ten more minutes on the elliptical to burn it off.
This isn't even the worst part, the worst part is having to be at work down by the beach with 14 beach bunny life guards in there tiny bikinis. and when one who is probably at most 160 is being called the fat life guard. well, i happen to be bigger then her, does that mean i am the fat counselor? am i being discriminated on because i'm bigger? this is fatism!
anyways, i posted a creative writing piece i did in school last semester that everyone thought was funny, it applies to this such issue so i will post it...maybe then i can be the funny fat girl instead of just fat.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Today at camp.
summer for anyone else on the planet usually means two things. The two being, lots of rest and relaxation, maybe a few trips to Cancun or Florida, even dirty Jersey counts as a nice summer escape to some people. For me however, summer usually comes with great responsibility. I have a summer job at a day camp five days a week, and weekends are spent doing summer college classes. It's not that i hate summer, I love hanging out in the sun all day, although in order to do that it means look after 15 rugrats scurrying about, and i still don't have as much stuff to do like i usually do.
Anyways, there is a point to this blog. Today i got up at eight in the morning, showered moisturized, exfoliated, brushed my teeth and all the other mundane tasks it takes me to look good in the morning (it is quite a load of work to pull off looking normal as opposed to a troll like i would normally.) Work starts at roughly 9:30 and by then i have gotten at lease 30 "i'm bored"s from Katy or 45 different "where is Trevor" from Mary. Along with lots of misbehaving and arguing from the baseball cap crew, our most favorite campers (i say that with the utmost sarcasm) I don't hate my job, in fact it is cool to become the disciplinary for awhile, although it sucks when kids don't behave. You have the cheaters, the runners, the bullies, and even the eaters/biters (one girl took an entire glob of sunblock in her mouth.) and right smack dab in the middle are the good kids, the few that are at camp. I can deal with almost all of them, but the one thing that makes me sick to my stomach is bullying. I guess it just brings me back to all the times i was called names in school and makes me realize i can stop it somehow. Most of the kids i identify with are the kids who are lowest in the peeking order. Never the less, i noticed something today that made me smile. One kid, named Zach. Zach had often been picked on. He wasn't gross or weird, and he made a lot of friends at camp. What these kids made fun of him for was for something very different. What is different with Zach is that all of his friends are girls in a time where most boys and girls separate according to developmental psychology. usually at this age the boys and girls are identifying more with each other and wanting to spend the most time with each other then other sexes. Zach, however finds that he identifies with the girls at camp more than the boys. of course there is nothing wrong with that, and i have never really given it much though until today when he showed me fingers and toes.
"they're painted. my friend did them....I'm really special." he said with a big grin on his face. some of the counselors joined in at looking at his fingers and toes. a few asked why he did it.
"it was just fun i like it." this made me smile. It is not that i think he has any type of gender issues, i think if he is just being a kid and doing what he pleases, but it was nice to see that in an area full of sharks who will snap at the sight of any slight difference, there are some kids just doing what makes them happy regardless. Perhaps it was stupid to take something bigger out of a little nail polish, but i remember when i was in that very same camp as a child. They pushed me with all the older kids at a young age because my cousin was older. The girls all made fun of me and mocked me because i hadn't started shaving my legs, calling me gross among other names. it hurt me so bad i begged my parents to start shaving at just 10 years old. it may seem outlandish to make such a big deal over it, but it just made the rest of the day seem better.
Anyways, there is a point to this blog. Today i got up at eight in the morning, showered moisturized, exfoliated, brushed my teeth and all the other mundane tasks it takes me to look good in the morning (it is quite a load of work to pull off looking normal as opposed to a troll like i would normally.) Work starts at roughly 9:30 and by then i have gotten at lease 30 "i'm bored"s from Katy or 45 different "where is Trevor" from Mary. Along with lots of misbehaving and arguing from the baseball cap crew, our most favorite campers (i say that with the utmost sarcasm) I don't hate my job, in fact it is cool to become the disciplinary for awhile, although it sucks when kids don't behave. You have the cheaters, the runners, the bullies, and even the eaters/biters (one girl took an entire glob of sunblock in her mouth.) and right smack dab in the middle are the good kids, the few that are at camp. I can deal with almost all of them, but the one thing that makes me sick to my stomach is bullying. I guess it just brings me back to all the times i was called names in school and makes me realize i can stop it somehow. Most of the kids i identify with are the kids who are lowest in the peeking order. Never the less, i noticed something today that made me smile. One kid, named Zach. Zach had often been picked on. He wasn't gross or weird, and he made a lot of friends at camp. What these kids made fun of him for was for something very different. What is different with Zach is that all of his friends are girls in a time where most boys and girls separate according to developmental psychology. usually at this age the boys and girls are identifying more with each other and wanting to spend the most time with each other then other sexes. Zach, however finds that he identifies with the girls at camp more than the boys. of course there is nothing wrong with that, and i have never really given it much though until today when he showed me fingers and toes.
"they're painted. my friend did them....I'm really special." he said with a big grin on his face. some of the counselors joined in at looking at his fingers and toes. a few asked why he did it.
"it was just fun i like it." this made me smile. It is not that i think he has any type of gender issues, i think if he is just being a kid and doing what he pleases, but it was nice to see that in an area full of sharks who will snap at the sight of any slight difference, there are some kids just doing what makes them happy regardless. Perhaps it was stupid to take something bigger out of a little nail polish, but i remember when i was in that very same camp as a child. They pushed me with all the older kids at a young age because my cousin was older. The girls all made fun of me and mocked me because i hadn't started shaving my legs, calling me gross among other names. it hurt me so bad i begged my parents to start shaving at just 10 years old. it may seem outlandish to make such a big deal over it, but it just made the rest of the day seem better.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Day One:The Talk
One afternoon while driving with my mother home from soccer practice it came to me. it was so sudden and awkward for me that i found myself uncomfortable in my own skin for moments to come after that initial thought. I remember it so vividly in fact, that every time i am driving through Latham and i pass that little stoplight i get flashbacks, me caked with mud sipping on a water bottle, no older than 11, wondering to myself if i liked women.
Perhaps it was just the fact i was so young that a thought like that could bring me such a reaction, maybe i really am just not cut out to be among my lesbian sisters and one of there own, Either way i walked away from that car ride with the distinct idea in my head that I would always ALWAYS be with a male.
Perhaps it was just the fact i was so young that a thought like that could bring me such a reaction, maybe i really am just not cut out to be among my lesbian sisters and one of there own, Either way i walked away from that car ride with the distinct idea in my head that I would always ALWAYS be with a male.
cue to spring of this year, almost 10 years have passed by. By this point i have seen several men, and still not a single women, (after all i am straight right?) Chris and i are sharing embarrassing stories. i tell him about the time i caught some sort of parasite from a toilet seat while working at summer camp one day, He tells me his brother caught him with shaved legs in a pool.
I wish i didn't say what i said next, otherwise maybe my girlfriend would have been starting hormones or seeing a therapist much earlier, but it escaped me like word vomit, not one of my brightest moments.
Me: Well, as long as you aren't becoming a transsexual....right?
After such a simple sentence i stunted any sort of progress for nearly two months....Chris chose to deny deny deny, stating that he simply "identifies" with women more than men, and that it would never go any further than just "thinking" like a women. I chose to believe it, after all, i was straight and i was dating a man, and i would never date a female. 11 year old Emily told me so.
Time goes by, like i said almost 2 months, I'm sitting on a staircase, shaking while tears keep putting out the cigarette in my hand. A mutual friend accidentally spilled the beans and told me.
Me: Well, as long as you aren't becoming a transsexual....right?
After such a simple sentence i stunted any sort of progress for nearly two months....Chris chose to deny deny deny, stating that he simply "identifies" with women more than men, and that it would never go any further than just "thinking" like a women. I chose to believe it, after all, i was straight and i was dating a man, and i would never date a female. 11 year old Emily told me so.
Time goes by, like i said almost 2 months, I'm sitting on a staircase, shaking while tears keep putting out the cigarette in my hand. A mutual friend accidentally spilled the beans and told me.
Friend: So Clem and I are going to start taking Chris to LGBT club meetings, we thing it would be good for him, you do know hes been researching hormone therapy right?
No, no I didn't. I won't go too deep into how the conversation panned out between Chris and I. It was a lot of talking in circles, hyperventilated cries, and apologies. Not sure why we treated it like some sort of betrayal, after all it wasn't his fault. Needless to say, I began pondering the ultimate question to myself. One that Chris so desperately wanted the answer for but I could not give at that moment. Do I stay with him?
At first I said no, then thinking of loosing the person who got me through a bulk of my depression, my best friend, my video game partner, my cuddle buddy, and all around my other half became so stressful I spent every shower I took vomiting (the shower was my only source of privacy in a college dorm.)
Something however felt like I could not be with him, it felt as if the situation almost guaranteed disaster. In fact, the bulk of people I talked to told me I couldn't deal with something like this, because of course, I was straight.
Friend: For as long as I have known you you have always wanted that all American family, you have always wanted a male, I don't want you to get hurt and spend so much effort on something that wont work out.
Of course my friend was right, I had never thought about dating a female, and no one ever wants to get hurt, However my dad told me something one day that changed my mind indefinitely.
Dad: well do you think you could hurt worse than you do now? If you don't want to leave him then don't. It's not like he is a bad person, and no one is forcing you to leave.
Something however felt like I could not be with him, it felt as if the situation almost guaranteed disaster. In fact, the bulk of people I talked to told me I couldn't deal with something like this, because of course, I was straight.
Friend: For as long as I have known you you have always wanted that all American family, you have always wanted a male, I don't want you to get hurt and spend so much effort on something that wont work out.
Of course my friend was right, I had never thought about dating a female, and no one ever wants to get hurt, However my dad told me something one day that changed my mind indefinitely.
Dad: well do you think you could hurt worse than you do now? If you don't want to leave him then don't. It's not like he is a bad person, and no one is forcing you to leave.
So, to make a long story short, I stuck by him. I dove right into the sharks, started calling her Arie, using different pronouns, changing my whole thought process (harder than it seems by the way,) helped her buy new clothes, went to therapy appointments. Sometimes I think about what 11 year old me would of thought, then I think about how happy she would have been if she had someone, male or female, as wonderful and perfect there for her when she thought she was just an outcast. I don't think she would of minded, and I think she would of made the same decision. It was/is a matter of time and working on everything that comes with staying with a partner who is transitioning (especially if it is as drastic as mine was) sexual orientation, discrimination, and all around being the pillar for what your partner is going through, but I like to look on the lighter side....i can finally watch TLC without complaints.
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