We cannot change the world unless the world wants to change...

Yesterday I spoke to my mom.  It did not go well.  Which is ironic, because I was so excited; I thought I'd come up with a Christmas present to rival the year I gave her Mr. Darcy on DVD.  Well, I say excited but that's not entirely accurate.  I also knew that brilliant as this idea was, my mom almost certainly wasn't going to want it.

With so much build up you're probably expecting something really amazing.  It's not.  I just wanted to buy my mom a dress.  Just a dress.

But the thing is if you know my mom you know that buying her a dress isn't as simple as it sounds.  I have already talked about my mom here.  I've talked about the way she sees herself and how that affects me.  Succinctly, my mother's life is an eternal struggle to conquer an adversarial body.

Nowhere is this more manifest than in my mom's wardrobe.  For the last 15 years my mom has carefully curated a collection of one dress.  The sack.  Not unlike the travesty that is Molly Ringwald's "dress" at the end of Pretty in Pink.

yes, this one, only with shoulders and without lace

To her, "clothing I like" means clothing in colors she likes.  Because styles she likes are non-existent...no, strike that.  There are actually quite a few styles my mom likes.  She actually has a really lovely and distinctive (if rather old fashioned) sense of style.  But you'd never know it to look at her because she wears none of it.  Why?  She's too fat!  It isn't comfortable!  She's too old!  All clothing beyond the shift is off limits to her!

except this pattern is definitely too busy for her...

So this Christmas I thought "Hey!  I happen to know of a great website that will custom build dresses to your exact measurements!  Wouldn't it be great if I were to get my mom a new dress, customized specifically to her that wasn't another of those wretched shifts?!"  It seemed brilliant.  If I could show her that even "fat" people can look good; that the world of pretty clothes that make you feel attractive wasn't forever beyond her; that she can wear whatever she wants!  If I could, with this one dress, open that door even just a crack, then what a magnificent gift I could give her!  So much more than just a dress!

from here, where there are several other cute outfits

But there was a problem.  I couldn't figure out how I could get her measurements any other way but to ask her.  And I knew that if I asked her she would need to know why.  See, I knew that this had to be a surprise because if I were to tell her she would instantly shut me down.  After 60 years, truly she has come to love her prison, if that's not too melodramatic a spin to put on it.  But it is the truth.  She has reasons, she has excuses, she has justifications, but the fact is that my mother is comfortable within her rigid world of body hate.  She knows the rules there (how could she not, she made them herself).  So I knew that at the slightest hint that I was thinking about breaking them she would close ranks and lock down.

But I couldn't figure out how to get those damn measurements.

So I convinced myself I was wrong and maybe she'd see what a great thing this was and suddenly change her personality.  After all, wasn't it smarter to supervise her picking out her own dress rather than risk getting one she hated?

No.  The answer to that question is no.

I called her yesterday morning and told her my plan and exactly what I knew would happen happened.  She shut me down.  She did let me show her the website (after I harassed her) and she managed to find the one sack dress they had.  But I couldn't handle listening to all her justifications for why she wouldn't even try something new.  Not when I had been so excited about this.  I got mad at her and ultimately had to get off the phone.

Because I am angry.

As a person who considers it a fundamental element of my identity that I almost never get really angry, this is important for me to say.

I am angry.

I am angry at my grandfather, whose obsession with arbitrary definitions of physical beauty warped his children's perspectives of themselves for their entire lives.  Every one of them has fought against and hated their bodies from childhood.  I'm angry at a society that both gave my grandfather that arbitrary definition and then told him it was okay to pursue and teach it the way he did.  The society that reinforced his beliefs in my mother's mind and proved to her he was right.  Right or wrong, I'm mad at my mom.  I'm angry that she cannot see through all of this stupidity and just let it all go.  I'm angry she can't see that "this is just who I am" only because she has decided it is.  And I'm angry at myself because I am still fighting the same battle myself.  Because I just had the exact same experience of feeling like I couldn't wear something because my body shape forbids it.  (Side note: I bought the dress anyway and wore it to church today and looked damn good, if I say so myself).  All of these "rules" are the purist form of bullshit and I'm angry that it still exists in the world.

And in the end, I'm angry I couldn't buy a dress and fix my mom's issues with her body.  It's an overly simple idea that obviously would never work, but I wanted it to so badly.

I think this is what I would have gotten her.
Nothing crazy.

The Benefits of Debate

Guys, today was an exhausting day for me on facebook.

I expressed opinions.

Ironically, what I'm left thinking about is not at all the original opinion, but how I feel about the experience of hosting internet debate on my internet words.

you know what I like to do? Express my opinions on hot button topics, inciting endless debate, and then completely disengage. At least I attempt to moderate and have pretty dependably civil friends....

but very secretly deep down I fantasize about a world where just once I can say "this is what I think" on facebook and have everyone say "huh, that's interesting" and NOTHING else. Just once. 

That's the last thing I posted on facebook, and it is very very true.

But it was also so untrue that here I am writing this blog post at midnight when I really really ought to be going to sleep.

This is how I tried to explain it to Matt a little while ago:

 Matt:  Facebook should make a way for you do disable comments on a status

kind of like how some articles can do that

 me:  I think that very often

but on the other hand

once I think that

I then judge myself viciously for being one of those people who wants to simply exist in a vacuum where the only words you hear are people saying "oh yes!  you're so right!" and no one ever challenges your beliefs on anything

deep-down-core-beliefs-me thinks that it is really superlatively awesome that I have so many people with contrasting opinions in my life because that way I get to hear both sides. but superfluous-lazy-me sits on top of deep-down-core-me and says "but debates are harrrrrrdddddd!"

And really that's it.  I get exhausted by these things.  But then when I complain in my head about all the feedback I'm getting (when all I wanted to do was spit my opinion out into the void with no repercussions) I remember how I need this feedback because I don't want to be one of those dogmatic blindered people who can only hear what they want to hear.

So...thank you all.  Thanks for helping me to be more deep-down-core-beliefs-me instead of superfluous-lazy-me.