Tag: feminism

The Chronicles of Quarnia: The Cryin’, the B*tch, and the Wardrobe

Leave a comment

Let the record show that I do not live alone. I have two roommates, one of whom has been in the apartment for the duration of the coronavirus lockdown. She’s nice and we get along fine, but truth be told we met on Facebook and have not yet become friends who hang out together. All of this to say, it has felt very much like I live alone, sometimes going days without even seeing my roommate, just hearing her footsteps. 

When I moved in I had the luck of moving into a furnished room. The furniture, however, left much to be desired and my ever-expanding collection of clothing wore out the dresser long ago. Despite my passion for shopping, furniture is one of those areas of expenses that doesn’t really give me that shoppers’ high I crave. At least it didn’t before I was trapped in my apartment for three months. But before that I dreaded spending money on something I actually needed. A new dresser would not bring me joy. I couldn’t get any fun out of it. It’s like buying band-aids. 

Thus the first dresser I bought was the cheapest $60 I could waste.  It took me forever to build, did not meet my space expectations by a mile (because I also disregarded the reviews), and it fell apart almost immediately. That begrudged dresser would become a raggedly upcycled shoe rack.

I don’t know about you, but spending nearly every hour of every day in my home has inspired me to upgrade my home. It was time to stop staring at a dresser that was missing the front of the bottom drawer. I put on my big girl pants and started shopping. Picking out an Ikea dresser that fit my budget and my needs made me excited about transforming my little space. I’d built Ikea furniture before—and I’d built a dresser before. I knew it wasn’t a walk in the park, but I was prepared for the challenge. 

The instructions adorably suggested two people work together to build this dresser. How discriminatory! Without a partner and the appropriate space, frankly, I set out to build a new home for the threads I love. 

Ikea instructions are so simple they’re easy to overthink, I think. Or maybe they’re just bad. There are minimal captions which is infuriating. Sometimes the pictures will say it’s not the tiny screw that looks like this, it’s the tiny screw that looks like that. I think two of the hundred parts were labeled which was a fun puzzle. But I got the frame together in just under five hours. Finally it was time to put the top on, and when I realized it was not smooth sailing.

Building furniture is kind of like doing sudoku. You can get away with little mistakes in the short-term, but they will reveal themselves in real-time. The 9 looks like it can work in that box but when you move to the next column you’re going to see trouble.

The instructions told me to insert eleven no. 118331 screws in the top piece. But I only had 7. I searched high and low for the missing screws, but resolved that Ikea must not have sent them and I could live without. The top didn’t fit right on the frame. Shifting and shoving, I measured and raged how could this possibly not work? Sure there were missing screws but could there also be missing holes? I went to bed, deciding to take a break and look at it with fresh eyes in the morning.

It kept me up for a little bit. Where did I go wrong? What’s the missing piece? When I returned to the instructions the next day, I swear to you they had changed from the night before. Allegedly, I put four of the 118331 screws in holes actually fit for the 603440 screws. Thus getting the top on was screwed. 

Filled with a rush of relief that I was not, in fact missing pieces, I worked through the rest of the instructions. Another five hours later I had completed nearly every step once incorrectly and then correctly. Put every drawer track on backwards.  Nailed the back on the front. And awoken anyone in my building trying to sleep in on a Saturday with my hammering or my expletives. 

But to see this beautiful dresser assembled and in place made me feel invincible. Lonely and invincible. “I can’t believe I did this by myself” met “I can’t believe I just had to do that by myself.” I’m still waiting for this dresser to get up and dance for me or something to just really make all the sweat and tears worth it, but I do appreciate finally having a proper place to store my bras.

If You Always Do What You Always Did…

1 Comment

My mom will be pleased to read that some of the things she has said to—or in some cases drilled into—me have stuck with me into adulthood. This she has said both to me and to her own mother on countless occasions: “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” 

A quick google search found that quote attributed to author Tony Robbins, along with Albert Einstein and Henry Ford. I’m not sure where my mom first heard it (and no, I didn’t bother to ask), but it clearly stuck with her as she passed it on to me. I would be inclined to believe it came from an innovator like Einstein or Ford because it expresses the idea that if you keep doing the same thing, you’re going to keep seeing the same result. 

Sure there are more details involved, but you can imagine Henry Ford standing in the factory saying, “Ah murderation (or some other old-timey exclamation)! If we keep building one car at a time, we’ll just keep making one car at a time and it will take lifetimes to see all of America driving automobiles!” or something to that effect. And thus, the assembly line was born. 

My mom has so far not heeded this advice when I’ve come to her in shambles because I haven’t been able to revolutionize an industry. But she does present it when I come to her and say, “I have x problem and it’s not getting fixed because y.” The y is usually some person with routine patterns that need to change or some job that needs to change or some habit I’ve created that I need to change. In essence, she cuts right to the point. No nonsense, no frills. If you can change it, you have to—if you want the result to be different.

Why in the world could I possibly be writing this when we’ve just had two mass shootings in 24 hours? I can’t possibly put two and two together.

But it’s bigger than that. I know we are not the same country we were when Columbine happened. Or Virginia Tech. Or Sandy Hook. Things have changed, albeit on a microscopic level, but things have changed and I won’t pretend people aren’t doing anything to change the routine of gun-related tragedies. But we have to understand that on a macro scale, the effort to end gun violence has remained mostly the same. You don’t need to be a policy expert to see that. Why? Because we’re getting the same result. Either we’re not changing the right things or maybe we just aren’t changing anything.

Take it outside of gun violence, and I keep begging the question: why are we as a country doing the same thing year after year, election after election and expecting different results?

When I was in my last semester of college, I had a painting professor give us a prompt to think about and eventually paint about. He gave us with no context this quote: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” I didn’t google it at the time—I’m not sure if we were explicitly prohibited or if I was just lazy—but I now know where it comes from and that alone will give a lot of folks all the context they need. But the class discussion illuminated for me the meaning that whoever is in charge is not going to be taken down by the same means that they were put in power. The actual reference is a book by civil rights activist, Audre Lorde.

If defeating Trumpism™—or however you choose to define the chaos everyone is seeing in this country—is the goal, then the strategy we tried to use to beat it in 2016 is obviously not going to work. Yet here we are trying it again. Maybe if we just vote harder this time…

I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic about the future and the work that some leaders are doing to combat hatred as well as the other issues like climate change, healthcare, and immigration. But I find it truly mind-blowing that we have really just gotten so comfortable with the idea that the America where people aren’t in constant anger if not fear and sadness will reappear (or, for many many people, appear for the very first time) if we just keep doing the same routines. 

I will put it in writing: I would love to see a revolution in this country. As a historian, yes I think it was something of a remarkable bureaucratic feat to create this nation at the time of its foundation. To be able to fight against the strongest military in the world and with no legal right and a noose on the line to say “We want this freedom and we’re not going to stop until we get it,” is really bold. 

There is no difference between what the founders did 243 years ago and what a group of determined individuals who band together, go against the grain, and refuse to quit can do today. We take the American Revolution for granted because we think that should have been the only one. 

Yes, that common phrase people say Jefferson said about every generation needing a revolution, is mostly fake. But he did say, “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” He’s actually talking about Shay’s Rebellion—a relatively small uprising over, go figure, taxes—which turned out to be a major catalyst for the writing of a small document known today as the Constitution.

I’m going to try not to go down a historical rabbit hole here, but this example kind of nuances the thesis of “always doing what you always did.” The rebellion mirrored the Revolution in that these farmers felt they were being taxed unfairly, and they took physical action to get a say. The major change here was that they were farmers and not wealthy men leading the charge, and they were thus swiftly defeated. So to that end, it proves the point that doing the same thing won’t work. But they did see a changed result in that their protest made the people in charge realize the Articles of Confederation weren’t going to work.

From this example, we understand that a revolution in the traditional sense that Americans understand it probably won’t work. But we need to understand that the revolutions that work focus on the technical definition of a revolution: a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people’s ideas about it. 

There is no revolution so long as we’re using the same systems that built whatever it is that needs to be changed. There will be no real revolution until we change the entire way we think about how our government works.

By The Way, I Forgive You

Leave a comment

While I emotionally gear up for this year’s Grammy Awards, I can’t stop thinking about how proud I am of one of my favorite artists, Brandi Carlile. Her album By The Way, I Forgive You shattered me in the best ways a person can be shattered. I don’t like country music at all. Brandi navigates a couple of different genres, one of them being country, but her brassy roots put a soul so impassioned into her music and her lyrics that she transcends. I wanted to write about what this album means to me one because it’s full of important human lessons and notes on existence and two because I hope it will inspire you to listen to it if you haven’t already.

Every Time I Hear That Song

The opening track on this record might pack the strongest punch. Brandi croons the album title into this bittersweet tune. It’s thank u, next if thank u, next had a soul. Brandi says to her transgressor, By the way, I forgive you / after all, maybe I should thank you / for giving me what I’ve found / ’cause without you around I’ve been doing just fine. She’s learned a lesson here, and she’s grateful for that despite the pain she has suffered.  You feel the exact emotion she’s singing about—you love this person but they have hurt you so bad that it’s still hard to leave them. And she knows this person isn’t even really apologizing—I gave you all I had and got the worst of you—READ ME.

The Joke

I have to admit, this one took a few listens. It was the first single Brandi released ahead of the album’s debut. I loved it when I first heard because it showcases Brandi’s unbelievable vocal chops. But beyond that on my first listen, I wasn’t hooked. Then Obama put it on his 2017 list of favorites, and I had to listen again. And I was struck by the lyrics. It encompasses feelings of insecurity, oppression, all the nasty things the world can throw at you but then she embraces you and says the joke’s on them. And she took it further while promoting the song, explaining it’s not just a typical anti-bullying message, it’s political, too. Brandi said in one interview she was thinking about refugees in Syria when she wrote The Joke, and that becomes vividly clear when you listen back to the line, They come to kick dirt in your face / Call you weak and then displace you / After carrying your baby on your back across the desert. It’s an anthem.

Hold Out Your Hand

This one gets ya. Upon first listen, it’s the first super upbeat track on the record, but its lighter sound doesn’t mean it packs any lighter of a punch. Like The Joke, it rings as incredibly anthemic to me because of the way Brandi chants in the bridge: Deliver your brother from violence and greed / For the mountains, lay down for your faith like a seed / A morning is coming of silver and light / There will be color and language and nobody wanting to fight / What a glorious sight! / What a glorious sight! The song despite its cheerful sound is a prophecy of the days coming after these days of reckoning. When we’re all done with the violence and the hatred tainting our world and we find in our hearts to forgive those who’ve wronged us—what a glorious sight. That’s the biggest lesson, and it’s on the album cover: forgive. Ahead of the album’s release, Brandi wrote an open letter to a pastor from her youth who refused to baptize her as a teen because she’s gay. She wrote about the impact that moment had on her identity, and what it has taken to forgive this man. I had never thought of forgiveness as such a radical action, but in this world where someone can do something like that—say you’re not welcome because of x—it really is.

The Mother

I don’t have kids. I don’t want kids. But wow. Brandi paints the most beautiful picture of motherhood while managing to be honest about it. The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep. She acknowledges that having her first daughter, Evangeline transformed her life in the most inconvenient ways that doing such can. You lose sleep, things you loved, order and organization, but it’s all worth it. All the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time / From inside of the ages through your eyes. It stings because Brandi also acknowledges the hardships she has been through herself and that she knows her daughter will face. But she complements that fear with the hope and confidence that Evangeline will grow up to fight against the evils in the world as well—When we chose your name we knew that you’d fight the power too. Chills.

Whatever You Do

If I don’t owe you a favor, you don’t know me. This song ~attacked~ me from the first line but in a good way. What makes this song special to me is the way it kind of nuances that theme of forgiveness. Brandi waxes poetic on a few different struggles and how that kind of makes it hard to have a relationship. There are days when I change with the weather / To hold you in place would be wrong. The prose is nice because she doesn’t try to apologize for this. She acknowledges it as a fact of life, with love being the only thing that can mitigate that—I love you, whatever you do / But I’ve got a life to live too. Maybe that’s not the best interpretation of what she’s trying to say, but I think it is a fact that sometimes you love someone even though everything about your lives makes it difficult. You can walk away from it or you can kind of forgive the situations and embrace your loved one.

Fulton County Jane Doe

A wacky one. It’s not quite upbeat, but it’s not as much of a ballad as the other tracks. Jane Doe gets it bite from that feeling of being known, being accepted. Brandi’s message is very clear on this one—You’re more than Fulton County Jane—the imaginary “you” is this person who has been reduced to a noname. The idea of identity loss interests me because Brandi’s not saying this person has come to this place of lostness on her own accord, she arrived there by outside factors. Brandi in interviews talked about how the song like others on the album alludes to things like the opioid crisis and the global migrant crisis. She’s holding out a hand here, saying you’re more than a Jane Doe.

Sugartooth

I almost wish Brandi called this one “The Ballad of Sugartooth” because that’s what it sounds like—an old western kind of ballad that tells this story of a hero’s journey. This hero, however, is a tragic one. This is the other song I was just talking about that’s about the opioid crisis. That makes the song kind of hurt a little more because it doesn’t sound as sad and horrific as opioid addictions are. She offers an incredibly compassionate view of it though by kind of comparing addiction to someone with a sweet tooth. So many people dismiss those addicted to drugs because “they made that decision,” when that’s such a false narrative. Yes everyone can make the choice to try drugs, but whether or not you get addicted after one try is something far beyond your control. Nothing could tame him and nothing could hold him / He only took the pills when the doctor told him—we’ve seen the stories over and over of people who break their ankle and a month later they’re addicted to oxy, but the problem persists.

Most of All

One of the more personal tracks off the album, Brandi talks about her parents in Most of All. She reflects on what they’ve taught her, how they shaped her, and to remember what comes back when you give away your love. With the chorus here Brandi takes forgetting out of the proverbial instructions to forgive and forget. She understands that you shouldn’t forget when someone has wronged you, but remember what they give back to you when you show them love. If you show someone love and they stab you in the back, maybe you will come to be able to forgive them, but don’t forget what they did to you. But on the flip side…

Harder to Forgive

Brandi thought of everything on this album. With the penultimate track, she says yeah everything I’ve said here is a lot easier said than done. We want to say we forgive everyone, period. But she acknowledges that sometimes it’s remarkably difficult to do so. She offers, Sometimes I pretend we never met / Because it’s hard to forgive than to forget. We’ve all had that experience of just walking away from a situation because forgiveness kind of feels like a fix. If you forgive someone, that means things can be okay again, or so we’re often taught. So Brandi offers that solution of forgetting because sometimes people wrong you so bad you don’t want to have any hint that things can get better. But I think ultimately she’s saying you don’t have to reconcile when you forgive. When it all boils down, forgiveness is personal, and a choice that only you can make for yourself.

Party of One

This piano ballad closes out the album on a somber note. It’s deeply reflective and painful, even. I’m still kind of processing it a year after I first heard it. The song itself has such an insane body, that’s the best way I can describe it. The way Brandi’s voice kind of cracks when she belts, I am tiiiiiired. She’s talking about loneliness if you didn’t get that from the title. In doing a bit of research for this post, I learned she was reflecting on the loneliness she kind of experienced after the birth of her first daughter—something that came from what she called “internalized homophobia.” Brandi’s wife carried both of their children, and while Brandi is genetically related to her daughter Evangeline, she talked about how navigating motherhood in a same sex couple was an experience she had to kind of struggle through. To me it speaks volumes to the problem of loneliness in general that it really can change you as a person if you don’t work through it. And she does as we see at the end of the song she finds her belonging again and it ends on a bit of a lighter note.

 

I didn’t mean for this to get so so long, but there really aren’t enough words to talk about how much I love Brandi and how much her music has helped me to do introspection through so many different scenarios in my life. Thank you, Brandi and all of your team for your art. Thanks for reading. If you made it through this whole post, you really should just listen to the album it’ll be quicker I promise.

Right on Time

Leave a comment

Hello—is it me you’re looking for?

It has been way too long, and I apologize for my absence. Junior spring kicked my butt, and this is going to be both a life update and thought piece on coming of age, because that’s all I think about these days. I am preparing to enter my final year of college and therefore doing a bit of panicking about my future. I am excited to earn my degree and go out into the big bad world and show it what Kamaron McNair is made of, but that comes with this intense anxiety that the big bad world is going to reject anything that Kamaron McNair has to offer. I have expressed this anxiety to a few of my mentors and they all say the same thing—I’m right on time.

This is apparently the moment in my life and all of our lives where we do this panicking and feel like “Oh my God what am I going to do with the rest of my life because it starts tomorrow and I’m not prepared and I’ve spent 16 years in school and haven’t learned a thing and why does everyone keep posting these articles about how my generation is so miserable and we can’t buy houses or diamonds and we ruin everything and I’m going to ruin everything and the world is a mess and I want to fix it but I’m broke and have no connections and I got the wrong degree and and and and and…”

Here we are. Right on time.

I am frustrated because you all know that I don’t want to be put in a group with another person, much less the whole of humanity with this idea that everyone does this panic dance at the same time and I’m not special. I know. No one is telling me I’m not special, they’re just looking out for me and telling me that it’s okay to not know but here’s why I am special and why this panic has thrown me into a whirlwind whereas it seems most of my peers are just casually panicking. This year was incredibly difficult for me emotionally. I try not to get too personal on here (a website named after me), but I’m going to because I’ve reached an important milestone and there was little to no cake involved.

I got my heartbroken this year, romantically. I add that qualifier because I’ve been heartbroken before. My dad died, after all. I didn’t get into the college I set my heart on. I’ve been hurt before. But I had never been hurt by someone who I adored in this way, and I want to apologize here to every woman I have discounted for grieving romantic relationships. That’s a lesson that I needed to learn firsthand, and now I am glad that I have learned it because I have even written about it on here before. Grief is not a spectrum, it’s a scatter plot. There are different kinds of grief and measuring by comparison is not helpful to anyone, so I’m sorry.

I’m writing about this now even though it happened a few months back and I am just about completely over it because it really did rock me to my core in a scary way, but it taught me a lot about myself. The boy was not worth my time or my heartache, but that’s not something we can help. I was attached, and he was not. A telling scene from our short-lived relationship was a time I was saying a lot of funny things (as I do) and he said that we should get a TV show because we were so funny together. It’s kind of a stupid example, but a perfect one that showed he used me to make himself look better.

I did a lot of self blame after the end of the relationship because I knew that he was going to hurt me. The entire time we were involved I was afraid of it happening. He hurt me a lot of little times, and then the kicker at the end was completely predictable, but I was the greater fool. But, I learned (in therapy) that none of that was my fault. Even if I knew he was a bad person it was not my job or anyone’s to make him a good person. I gnashed my teeth and tore my clothes because I felt like I let this thing happen to me, but my therapist really reminded me that in general, we don’t let bad people do bad things to us. They just do them because they’re bad people.

The next lesson came this summer when I was admittedly still stewing a bit about how this boy wrecked me for a little bit and ruined a lot of things that should have otherwise been a great time for me. Lorde release an incredible album this summer, Melodrama, and she wrote a song called “Writer in the Dark,” which is about her breakup. The song is kind of ruthless in its beauty because she’s saying “You hurt me, and I’m going to write a song about it and it’s going to be huge because I’m Lorde and you’re not” (very Taylor Swift on her part, which I was not ecstatic about, but I respect the artistry).

Lorde talked about writing the album and how she felt a little guilty writing about a person and immortalizing them in her lyrics, but this song is her way of saying they know what they did, and they knew what they were getting into. She said in an interview “But it was important for me to say. And I don’t think that song is apologizing for it. It’s more like, what did you think was going to happen? I was doing this before I met you and I’ll be doing this after you’re gone… I felt quite empowered.” I read that interview, and thought “That’s it! This is what I feel!” Some of you may have been reading this blog post and thinking it’s super petty of me to trash this boy on my website, but he knew I was a writer. And he trashed my life.

That’s enough on him, though. This is about me and career aspirations and what the heck am I doing with my life? Well this whole experience was important because the breakup made me question a lot of things about myself—my confidence, my relationships, etc.—which coincided perfectly with my plans for the future panic where I started questioning a lot of things about myself—my confidence, my qualifications, my passions, my financials, etc. However, I know it’s all going to be okay. I found a quote from a Samuel Beckett play while researching one of my papers this spring that says, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” It’s a simple sentence that became my mantra. The comma is the most important part because it forces you to believe in your fortitude without coming to a full stop in your doubt. You tell yourself there is no way I can get through this, but you quickly remind yourself that of course you can.

I did not intend for this post to go the cliché route, but here we are. This is special because while it sounds like I’m heading for an inspirational moment, I feel as though I cannot inspire any of you, readers, because I am still in this moment of panic, and still striving to learn as much in this moment as I possibly can. I’m going to figure it out, and I will take you on this journey with me, so long as you show up on time.

Women, America, and Selective Revolution

1 Comment

As a student passionate about American history, I read about all of the movements that have pushed this country to become better and better. I keep running into this issue, though, of the reaction to the American Revolution vs. nearly all movements that followed. I continue to be amazed by the amount of stubbornness in this nation. Why was the War for Independence the only revolution that was okay?

Simple— we got lucky.

We all know the story. The colonists, fed up with British taxes and ready to be a sovereign nation, overthrew their government and won the war to earn that right. Of course, it was not that simple, and the men that started the movement knew by doing so, they were accepting a noose if they were to fail. But they didn’t. Lucky for us, they were successful and thus we spell color without the u.

But the nation as we know her today was not born in 1776. In fact, she wasn’t really close to how we know her for another ten years. Yet, I am afraid the way the new Americans treated rebellions after their own was a red herring for the next two and half centuries.

First of all, the way Colonists treated their rebellion was not exactly justifiable in my book. While I am thankful for their efforts because of the outcome, I’m not sure it needs to be glorified the way it is. They quite literally held guns to the heads of men who did not want to participate in their acts of treason. They exiled them out of a country that was not yet theirs. No one pretends like this was a peaceful protest, but we forget when celebrating our Independence that it started as a protest.

Fast forward a century, and we are in the midst of the Civil War. Of course, I am thankful that the rebels this time were not successful, however, I have to question the legitimacy of Lincoln’s actions and the war that ensued. Weren’t the Confederates just replicating the Colonists? If they wanted to be on their own (granted, for horrific reasons), who was to say that they couldn’t? I suppose this is why war breaks out instead of peace talks, but it is so interesting to me that in a nation that celebrates the rebellion that founded it, why did we suppress any rebellion that followed?

The people in power get to decide if rebellions will work and when. Every movement that changed legislature or systems of government had to be accepted by whoever was in power. The first Women’s Movement did not turn into a war, but it changed some of the systems that oppressed women. The Civil Rights movement was closer to a war in the streets, but still did not go nuclear, and changed some of the systems that oppressed black citizens. The Women’s March was in no way a war, and hopefully will not turn into one, but the people in power have to make a change, but I am afraid they are too stubborn.

I’ve been processing the Women’s March for the last 24 hours and trying to make sense of everything that is happening in this country. I could not march because of travel, but I felt so empowered to see so many people standing together for equality above all else. Yet as soon as I go online, all I see is unrest. Not that I expected the march to defeat sexism and save the country, but I wish the opposition would see the issue here.

In general, the opposing side of events like the Women’s March are from people who continue to pledge their allegiance and patriotism to this nation. I do not understand how they see a difference between the women marching and the Boston Tea Party. In my history class, we talked about how the taxes on the colonists that allegedly pushed them to revolt were on objectively not that extraordinary. The thing we ignore, though, is that a colony of people felt oppressed. Were they themselves guilty of oppressing much larger numbers of people? Yes, of course, but that’s a whole other rabbit hole. Regardless, the colonists felt oppressed and they decided to do something about it.

We, the women and men who march, feel oppressed. We are not whining, we are not throwing a hissy fit. We feel oppressed, and we want to do something about it. You who oppress us do not get to decide whether or not we feel oppressed. That’s not how feelings work. Also, it’s not just a “feeling,” it’s a system. If the opposition had facts or evidence to support the idea that we are not oppressed, perhaps we would not be marching. The British could have pretended that the colonists had nothing to feel oppressed about, but they knew they were wrong so they fought back. Our oppressors know they are wrong, which is why they are fighting back with nonsensical tweets and “alternative facts” or whatever other circus acts they put out.

Maybe this won’t turn into a revolution, but I hope it does. It’s not about being conservative or liberal or green. It’s about being a human and acknowledging that we are all humans. And though the signers themselves did not believe it, this nation was allegedly founded on the idea that we are all created equal. The colonists felt unequal, and the British felt attacked, but they did not stop fighting.

Neither will we.

My Body Story

Leave a comment

Before continuing, I want to say that by writing this I am not trying to inspire anyone. I am not trying to convince you to love your body even though you should. I am not making a plea to society to accept me the way I am. I am writing how I feel about the bones, the muscles, and the fat that I have been blessed with for over 20 years. This is my body story.

There’s this half-serious joke in my head where I attribute the shape of my body to a summer I call “the summer of bagels.” In my memory, there was a summer where my mom worked every day and left me and my older sister Kassidy home alone with a dozen bagels a week for the whole summer. We have talked about this and recognized that there is basically no way this could have happened because I have two other siblings and at the time a dad who should have all been home during these days. But in my memory, it was me and Kassidy every day until my mom came home from work around 3:30. We would get up, make bagels with butter, Kraft singles, and garlic salt; take all the cushions off the couches, build a fort, and watch the Lion King. Every day.

I bring up this summer, because in my head this must have been the summer I got fat. That’s what makes sense. Bagels make you fat, and it was after that summer that I started to see myself as such. It was around second or third grade, and I started to realize that the other girls I was friends with didn’t have to pull their pants up to cover their belly buttons. I started to think about dieting. I started thinking “next summer I’m going to run every day and be thin.” I’ve had that thought every summer since then, and have never gone through with it.

First it was the juniors section. I started wearing “juniors” clothes in 4th grade, which I thought was really cool because I felt like a teenager even though I was only 10. I didn’t fully realize that it kind of meant I was bigger than most girls my age, but I didn’t care then because the Juniors section was way cooler than the “Girls” section. But 4th grade brought the challenge of a new school with a lot more kids. In my town, there are 4 elementary schools that are Kindergarten to 3rd Grade, then everyone goes to the Intermediate School for 4th-6th Grade then Middle and High School. In 4th grade I realized I was no longer a big fish in a small pond. I was a fat fish in a skinny pond. On the first day of school a popular boy told me to “go back to the zoo,” and I realized I had become an outsider overnight.

By 6th grade, I had befriended all these popular kids, and become somewhat popular myself. The only thing I was missing was the clothes the popular kids were wearing: Hollister, Abercrombie, Aeropostale. One reason was my family was just kind of against spending so much money on such cheap clothes, but the other reason was the clothes weren’t made for girls my size. One time at the mall, Kassidy and I wandered into a Hollister and before the cologne could hit our lungs, my dad pulled us out by our necks saying “We don’t shop here.”

Middle school wasn’t hard for me. I thrived in middle school. I tell everyone I know that I was really popular in middle school as if that’s something to be proud of. No one ever called me fat, and if they did it was because I had called them something much worse.

High school was where things got really tricky. I had a really hard time adjusting to private school. And I gained weight to show for it. Softball season came and I tried on my uniform and sobbed. The pants didn’t fit. I had to buy my own pants and felt like I was sticking out like a sore thumb.

At the end of a season of warming the bench, my coach broke the news to me. She needed me to lose some weight this summer.

I had and still do have a lot of respect for her. And I accepted what she told me as correct. I needed to lose weight in order to get better at softball. She handed a workout plan to follow that summer. My sister was also getting married at the end of the summer and as the biggest bridesmaid, I wanted to fit into my dress a little better, so I started the plan. I stopped the plan maybe a week into it. But I started dancing instead. Not “real” dancing, but playing Just Dance on the Wii in my basement. It’s a killer workout. I played religiously. At the final fitting for my sister’s wedding, I had gone down a size, and the seamstress congratulated me.

I returned to school with a newfound confidence. Not because I had lost a ton of weight (I didn’t, really) or changed my size ever so slightly. Sophomore year was the year I started to love myself. I started to learn not what clothes looked good on me, but what clothes I liked to wear (and that looked good on me, but that’s not the point). It was around this time that body positivity started to be this radical new trend. Seventeen Magazine started their Body Peace Treaty, teaming with celebrities to make a pact to love their bodies no matter what they looked like. I can’t say that that is what I needed. I didn’t need Demi Lovato saying “I love my body so should you,” for me to love myself. Or maybe I did.

From there, I only got better. I grew into my body and just started to figure it all out. The end of high school and beginning of college continued to teach me about this vessel I inhibit. College softball taught me about the incredible feats I can put my body through, and my body will still thank me. A love of fashion and growth of the plus size industry has taught me that style literally does come in every size. I still get frustrated sometimes because mainstream retailers are still hesitant to diversify their sizes, but I find ones that aren’t afraid of big girls, and I give them my money instead.

This turned into a longer story than I intended, so I’m a little sorry for that mainly because I haven’t said what I’ve wanted to say yet and I’m still figuring it out. I just want people to know that I don’t need sympathy or special attention. I’m not afraid to be fat. Fat has this awful connotation that too many people in this society seems to be afraid of, but I’m not. I used to pray every night that God would let me wake up a size 3, and every morning I would rage against him, but not anymore. Some days I pray I can wear shorts without fear of chafing, but you know, it’s a part of life.

I was told kind of my whole life that I have to fit a certain mold or do things a certain way because of my size. When skinny jeans first got popular, my whole family mocked me for even thinking I could find a pair in my size. But I haven’t worn anything else since my freshman year of high school.

What I hate is when I make a comment about my body like having fat thighs and people rush to my defense. I appreciate the thought, but I don’t need it. Contrary to popular belief, “fat” is an adjective not a death sentence. I hate when skinny girls complain about being fat becuase it makes me think, “If you think that’s what fat looks like and it’s so ugly to you, what do you think of me?” Not that I need everyone to think that I’m so beautiful, but when it’s your friends, it makes you wonder.

I’ve been thinking about this post for such a long time, and I’m kicking myself for not writing it sooner because now I’m afraid I haven’t done it justice. I’m just so tired of people trying to stand up for other fat people. I think there is a lot of fat shame in society like there is a lot of racism and homophobia and other prejudice that we can’t seem to eradicate. I don’t have to defend myself to anyone, but I am going to love myself unconditionally and unapologetically.

I’m healthy. I’m very active—not that those things matter to anyone except me. What I really want to say is I don’t think I needed all the outside inspiration and I don’t think I can inspire anyone to love their bodies the way I do mine—they have to figure it out on their own. I know people look at me and wish they had this confidence and I want to tell them: you do. You just have to find it inside of yourself. Mine was here all along I just had to tune out a lot of negativity. I hope you’ll do the same.

I’ll end with a few lines from my favorite poem, “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

xoxo,

Kam

What is a Safe Space?

Leave a comment

Because I constantly face nagging from the side of my generation against the improvement of society, here I am talking about coddled college students again.

So much of society (or people on the internet) spend their days complaining about how college kids “need their safe spaces” these days. The theory is that we’re not going to make it in the real world because none of us know how to function without a “safe space,” and we’re too easily offended and so forth.

Wikipedia defines a safe space as:

“In educational institutions, safe-space (or safe space), safer-space, and positive space are terms used to indicate that a teacher, educational institution or student body does not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech, but rather is open and accepting, thereby creating a safe place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and all students.”

This is a little outdated, at least in my own definition, because now I think a safe space—or at least the safe spaces I know—are broadened to support anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc. Either way, the point of a safe space is to designate a space that is free from hate.  But there’s more. A safe space supports discussion, debate, and disagreement. A homophobic person is allowed in the safe space, but they’re not allowed to spew hatred when they come in. They can ask questions and try to seek understanding, but they should not come in with a closed mind.

We know the world is not a safe space. We see it every day on the news. How stupid do you think we are to think that we assume everyone is trying to make us comfortable when we pay witness to not just offensive words, but murders happening in our world because of sexuality or race or gender or ability.

What is the point of a safe space? The point is to try. If one room starts as a safe space then turns a whole college into a safe space which turns a town into a safe space, couldn’t the world eventually be a safe space? I know that is wishful thinking. Look at our presidential candidates.

Someone at my school said, “There are no safe spaces, there are only safer spaces,” and that is true. But when people say “there are no safe spaces, we just have to deal with that,” they are promoting violence. I understand where they are coming from. It is difficult to imagine a world where everyone gets along. Equality is a really big word. But why would you be complacent? Why are you okay with the fact that black men and women are being murdered for the color of their skin? Why are you okay with police officers shooting unarmed people in wheelchairs? Why is it acceptable for women to on average make 21 less cents per hour than men?

A safe space is not a bubble. A safe space is an opportunity to learn without being attacked. A safe space is not a barrier we put up so we don’t have to listen to oppression. A safe space is a hope that one day no one will be seen as inferior for things they cannot change. A safe space is not an attack on the freedom of speech. A safe space is a counter-strike on violence.

The 2016 Oscars

Leave a comment

I will preface this post by reminding everyone I am a feminist. I am a mixed black and white woman who believes in equality. I would agree, The Academy Awards this year was unnecessarily white washed.

I watched the Oscars at an event in New York City called Every Single Word: The Oscars at the Bowery Ballroom. The event was a live commentary featuring: Franchesca Ramsey (MTV’s Decoded; Creator of “S*** White Girls Say to Black Girls”), Danielle Henderson (creator of Feminist Ryan Gosling), Sean Rameswaram (WNYC Host), Crissle West (co-host of The Read; Drunk History), Naomi Ekperigin (writer for Broad City & Difficult People), and Bowen Yang (Broad City). The event will be hosted by Dylan Marron (Welcome to Night Vale; creator of Every Single Word). It was awful.

While I have not read or seen most of the work of these writers or comedians, I understand they are all pretty accomplished and well known in their fields. What I saw of them last night makes me not want to read or see any of their other work, frankly. I understand the need for dialogue and debate about the racism at The Oscars and the systematic issues at play—this event was not that. It was unproductive heckling.

I can’t remember the last time I was in a room full of so much hate. The host opened the show with a lot of sarcasm about what we were about to watch, and an explanation why we were all here to watch it. He asked all the straight white men in the room to identify themselves so everyone could laugh at them. He handed out tally cards for people to count the times certain inevitable things happened such as “the word ‘diversity’ is mentioned.” He even handed out confetti poppers to be exploded every time the camera shows “white guilt.” I understand the point, sort of, to uplift people of color in this space, because we have been put down in the world’s arena. I did not feel uplifted. I felt uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because my “white side” was feeling the “white guilt,” but I think it’s more because the whole event was overkill.

I went to this hoping for a respectful conversation about the real issues reflected in the Oscar nominations. What I got was a room full of hatred towards anyone not of color, or maybe in the LGTBQ community. I don’t think that was the point, but that is what I felt.

The panel hated Chris Rock’s monologue, exclaiming he “sold out” and felt he made a mockery of the situation. I felt he did a good job as a black comedian hosting essentially an all-white party. Someone just said to me earlier in the week “We make jokes about the things we feel most uncomfortable about. It’s how we cope.” That’s how I felt about Chris Rock’s jokes, but apparently I was wrong.

My ~favorite~ part of the evening may have been when Vice President, Joe Biden, came out and the panelists talked about how sexy he is and how they would or would not sleep with him as he spoke about sexual assault. Yet every commercial break the host showed clips of past acceptance speeches where men were sexist because they said the women were sexy. Joe Biden was one of many figures who made the panelists ask each “would you or would you not do?”

If we take out the fact that I was very hungry and physically uncomfortable in my plastic folding chair for four hours, we still have the same result. The event was a screaming match between these panelists and a screen, and it had little positive effect in my opinion. My colleagues seemed to enjoy it, and I’m glad they did, but I did not. I think screaming about how much you hate white people is not going to get us any further towards equality. You cannot beat hate with hate.

xoxo,

Kam

Why I Want to be a Trophy Wife

1 Comment

Woah woah woah. Before you start asking yourself, “Wait, isn’t Kamaron a super feminist? Why would she post this???” remember that headlines are meant to grab your attention and pull you in.

The term “trophy wife” is one often used by men and women alike to describe a woman that a man married for her looks. She is there to sit on his shelf and look pretty while everyone admires what a great job he has done.

Stop this.

This idea is ridiculous, and both parties look dumb taking part in it.

I love when anyone- especially men- find me attractive. Who doesn’t? It’s good to feel good about yourself, and it is good to find someone who is physically attracted to you. However, if I am looking for a mate, I NEED him to be attracted to my brain. I will always accept compliments. You love my hair? Great. You think I should be a model? Awesome. But self-indulgence aside, I want him to also tell me how smart he thinks I am. How creative I might be. How he loves the way my mind works. How he is generally interested in the things I have to say.

I cannot iterate how irritating it is to be around a man, or a woman for that matter, who is only interested in how I look. Not just because beauty is fleeting and it’s the inside that counts and all that, but because it’s boring. We can only talk about my physical features for so long then I want to know who you think is the best bet for presidential candidacy or climate change or literally anything that involves some amount of critical thinking.

So why do I want to be a trophy wife? Because I think we should redefine what that means. A trophy is something that you win. You have to be the best to earn the trophy in competition, and let’s face it: life and dating is a competition. I want to be the trophy for most beautiful, but also most intelligent, most creative, most engaging, etc. I want to be a prize that a man earns because he is interested in these traits about me, and he thinks I am the blue ribbon across the charts.

You want to know one of the most destructive phenomenon in out society? The participation trophy. The idea that everyone should get an award just for showing up. That’s wrong. Should we encourage kids that each and every one of them is special and has potential? Absolutely. But don’t tell your kids that if they show up and exist they will get the same outcome as the kid who shows up and puts in the most effort. You don’t walk into a company and expect to get hired just for showing up, right? Why do we teach this to our children? Feelings will be hurt. But lessons will also be learned.

Bringing that into the trophy wife idea, the old meaning of the term is like a participation trophy. If a man (or woman), walks up to a woman (or man), and tells them they’re pretty, they should get a date, or in this case, a spouse. That’s crazy. You have to earn it.

To the “husbands,” look below the surface. Find out their interests, talents, hobbies, everything, and decide if this person is actually what you want. To the “wives,” set your standards high. Be the best you that you can be. Tell this person your interests and your strengths. Let them know that you are an amazing person, and decide if they are good enough for you. Also, reverse the roles here. Every trophy wife needs her trophy husband. He should be someone she wants to show off because she also had to earn him.

Do better.

xoxo,

kam

Boycott Taylor Swift

Leave a comment

Here we go.

If any of you know me personally, you know that I am not a fan of Taylor Swift. For me, it started with the music. I am not a fan of country music, so I wasn’t really into her at first. Then she got into a more pop sound so I kind of liked her okay. Who didn’t jam out to “You Belong With Me” in 7th grade? Then something changed for me. I don’t know what, if I just got tired of her music and then full on didn’t like her or if something actually happened. I don’t remember. Either way by the time she was working on her plot to destroy America, I was over her.

Let me tell you about my issues with her now. First of all, I’ve always kind of seen her as a sellout. She’s from Pennsylvania, which can be a little hick-y in some parts, but not so much Reading, her hometown. So when she decides to go into country music, I personally see that as kind of fake. Like you’re singing with a twang, but you’re from the Northeast… Alright. THEN she sold out of country music into her transitional period. Where she was still winning country music awards but her music was basically pop. Again, I couldn’t care less about country music and who gets awards, but it’s kind of sketchy that she couldn’t pick a side and it seems to me she was trying to capitalize on the music industry. And now, she’s moved from being a pop princess to trying to rebrand herself as not only a pop singer, but a New Yorker city-loving girl. Again, she’s from Pennsylvania. Who is the real Taylor Swift?

No matter where she’s pretending to be from, she’s just a money hungry selfish businesswoman. I get it. We’re all trying to make a living here. But most artists in the industry are in it for the music, and I question Taylor’s motivation. She pretends to be this All-American sweetheart with a group of perfect little minions, but she’s evil.

What other artist sues their own fans for creating their own memorabilia? I can’t think of anyone. She does this. I’m all for artists making money off of their work. I think it is hard to make it big in that business. But she has made it big. She’s worth $200 million. Yet she sues her own fans for creating paraphernalia with her face on it, and has even sued the man who allegedly taught her how to play guitar. These are everyday people with probably everyday jobs, and she will not allow them to make a cent off of her. You can’t even play her music on Spotify EVEN if you pay for it.

But it’s not all about the money. If Taylor Swift is such a good and sweet girl, what is she doing for this world? She throws money at some charities here and there, so that’s nice, but easy. Her most public cause I think most people would argue is her feminism. This is problematic.

Taylor Swift is only a feminist when it is beneficial to her moneymaking schemes. A majority of her hits come from break-ups. That’s like her MO. And she eventually took a lot of heat from that. She was teased about dating a lot of men, being a crazy person, etc. And that was all funny until she started bringing up the point that men like John Mayer, whom she dated, are notorious womanizers and serial daters, yet get none of the attention like she does. As soon as she said it, everyone was like “Yay super feminist Taylor Swift!” but that was it.

NOW she has started all this beef with Nicki Minaj (BIG mistake), and not only made a statement about her stance on racism, but also contradicted her whole mantra. While unnecessarily defending herself, Taylor made a comment about “women putting down other women.” This is not the first time she has taken this stance. Back in 2013, about Tina Fey and Amy Poehler poking fun at her, Taylor said,

“You know, Katie Couric is one of my favorite people, because she said to me she had heard a quote that she loved, that said, ‘There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.'”

YET, in the tweet, Taylor Swift was defending her music video for her song, “Bad Blood.” “Bad Blood” is a song that Taylor admittedly wrote about another female artist. She wrote a song about how much she was hurt by this other artist, and created a whole music video where she gets her girl gang together to destroy this other FEMALE artist. Idea for her next song: “Foot in Mouth Syndrome.”

Leaving out the whole part about Nicki Minaj talking about racism, and Taylor Swift thinking it’s about her… Taylor Swift is a monster.