Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Travel Time!


Ack, I'm leaving for Spain today! I'm really excited and nervous and just sort of a ball of feelings and preparations. Fortunately, as you can see above, the quality assurance team was on hand to inspect my luggage for me.

Amazingly enough, I feel really prepared. Usually before I go on a trip I am frantic and run around thinking I forgot something, but not today. I'm still getting the last things together, but I'm not too worried. It doesn't hurt that I'm going to a city where I could probably find something if I forgot it. Plus, assuming high school didn't completely fail me, I speak some of the language. That barrier has made me nervous when I've traveled internationally before, so it's nice that yo hablo espaƱol.

I'm not even too scared about giving a presentation. Honestly my biggest concern is the fact that I'm presenting early in the morning and may still have some jet lag! I did this paper for a class last semester, so I've presented it before, and had feedback so I knew what needed to be fixed. It's almost like my class presentation was a dress rehearsal! Don't tell the professor I said that, haha.

It kind of sucks that I have to miss classes, but I've been working hard to get ahead so I don't fall behind. Plus, the week after I return is spring break so I can catch back up on anything I miss.

Wish me luck!

Friday, February 21, 2014

Friday Fashion: Laid-Back for School

I've been trying to keep up a more mature look when I'm in class, in part because if the reasons I discussed when I talked about looking young. And often I'll wear dresses, but sometimes I just feel like pulling on jeans and a t-shirt. So I found a way to dress that a little more professionally, by adding a blazer (I'm obsessed with this one from H&M+ that I recently found) plus some nice accessories like a long necklace, cute bag, and oxfords.


Class Casual

Monday, February 17, 2014

Ancestors and History

I recently signed up for six months of Ancestry.com, and I'm learning lots of interesting things from it. I'm finding people in my family tree who were around for major historical events, which has piqued my interest in lots of different things.

For example, I discovered ancestors who came over on the Mayflower. This isn't really an era of history I've paid a ton of attention to (aside from the forced, one-sided, likely-racist reenactments shoved down our throats at Thanksgiving every year), but now I'm looking more into it.

Apparently this Stephen fellow is my ancestor.
Historical topics are a lot more interesting when you consider that someone whose blood you share was actually involved. I traced my lineage even farther back and ended up discovering Empress Matilda. I had never heard of her before, but reading her Wikipedia article, I'm intrigued. She sounds pretty awesome. I've actually bought a book about her, as well as about the Plantagenet line, and I mean to read both of them over the summer.

I do wish I could get deeper into other branches of my family tree. My Ancestry subscription is called "world traveler," but that couldn't be more misleading. When I get into the parts of my lineage that were in Germany or Italy, I hit dead ends. Can't find a thing. It's really unfortunate. I'd like to connect to those branches of my tree, as well.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Fashion Friday: Dream Purse

I am so in love with this bag right now. I don't have the money for it at full price, so I'm just going to cross my fingers that it turns up in a sample sale sometime soon.

{Susan Nichole, $150}

Call me old-fashioned...

...but if I wanted to sift through random hook-up ads on Craigslist, I'd go to the "casual encounters" section, not the dating one.

As if it's not hard enough to do online dating while fat, I also get to sift through a bunch of pictures of genitals and people who clearly only see women with my body type as objects to be fetishized.

I know, I know. It's Craigslist. What do I expect, right? Well, OKCupid is kind of terrible and I'm too cheap for the pay sites. Blah.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

My Favorite Suggested Lay's Flavor

Need I say more? Perfect for internet arguments.

Don't Fat-Shame. Really, Just Don't Do It.

Seriously. Just don't fat-shame.

There's no point to it. It doesn't make people magically thinner. Being magically thinner wouldn't make people magically healthier. It doesn't make you superior. It doesn't do anything positive.

All it does it promote bigotry. It makes people hate themselves. It reveals that you are an ugly and small-minded individual full of prejudice.

It's worse for fat people than actually being fat. It's degrading to mental health. It promotes stereotypes. Stereotypes have real implications.

It leads to fat people being hired less. It leads to fat people hearing rude comments shouted at them from cars. It makes people feel awful.

It hides behind some veil of "helping." People who fat-shame get away with it because they think they're encouraging fat people to de-fat themselves. And apparently de-fatting is the be all and end all of...something.

But it just causes pain. It leads to depression and isolation and prejudice. It causes nothing good and everything bad.

So just don't do it.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Nobody Believes I'm 30, and That's Actually Not a Good Thing

This post is probably going to sound like a humblebrag, but it's not. This is legitimately something that bugs me.

People don't believe me when I say I'm 30. When I moved into my apartment my roommates were surprised to hear it -- they thought I was about 25. And then yesterday at work it happened again.

I recently dyed my hair brown. I was trying to cover up the pinkish undertones that wouldn't leave after my most recent foray into purpledom, and to do so I had to go fairly dark. The woman at work commented that it made me look more mature, and I said, "well, I am 30." She was pretty shocked, because she thought I was in my twenties.

I'm not lying. See:

I'm 30. Not to mention 5'6" with brown eyes.
I inherited my complexion from my grandmother, who had beautiful skin. Even at her death at 87 she didn't really look her age. And I know that some day, likely not too far in the future, I'll be glad of this. But for right now it's annoying.

See, young women don't get taken seriously. We just don't. I know someone will try to argue that young people in general don't get taken seriously, but let's not split hairs: it's worse for women. We get talked over and mansplained, there's the obvious and well-documented wage gap, we get covertly and overtly discriminated against because the assumption is that a) we don't know anything and b) we're just going to leave next year to make babies.

I'm the second-youngest person in my cohort (and the youngest woman). It hasn't been too big of an issue, but I do sometimes feel that when certain topics come up my word isn't taken seriously. Like there's an unspoken assumption that I have less "life experience" and therefore can't speak with authority on some subjects. (That's not to mention the "you're young, you'll change your mind" I once got from someone when I mentioned I'm not planning on having kids.) I feel that having less of a personal attachment to some topics means you have a more distanced and objective viewpoint that can be beneficial. Not for everything (for example, I wouldn't presume to know more about racism, homophobia, or cissexism than someone who had experienced it), but there are places where distance provides clarity.

The things I've addressed here actually were a lot of the impetus for starting this blog and giving it this title in the first place. I know there have been many posts that don't have to do with adultishness (what, that's totally a word), but the spirit is still here. And I've been trying to present myself with a more mature persona. Hence the dark hair. I've also been trying to dress the part -- those cut up punk tees are only for casual lounging -- to maintain an air of professionalism. It's hard, of course, and not without its sacrifices. But it feels like something I need to do.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Pro-Selfie

I think selfies are great. There are always so many people talking about how annoying they are and how self-absorbed people who take them can be, but to me, they're great. They give people, especially young women, power.

Yeah, power.

The internet has democratized so many things -- music, publishing, art, etc -- and taken the gatekeeping away from the small number of outlets who used to hold it. This means that instead of relying on magazines and style sections to display the images of women, the control is now in the hands of the women themselves.

Look, here's a selfie of mine from this morning:


Seeing that picture makes me feel good. I am in control of my image, and I am choosing to share what I looked like at 8:30 this morning. I am also noticing that I need to Windex my mirror, but whatever.

The point is, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of self-pride (or even self-absorption) in a world that constantly demeans women and tells us we're not good enough. And it's empowering to see different people from different backgrounds, with different body types and personal styles showing off what they look like and what they're wearing. It's a celebration.