Currently.

Being a teacher at a university has its perks.  I have the entire week off for Thanksgiving break, not just the two days afforded to most under-graduate or elementary school teachers in the state of Connecticut.  I also did something that I've never done before - I'm having my students send me drafts of their final papers much later in the week.  This is letting me catch up on some things I normally wouldn't be able to do during a break, like sleeping and sitting still.  And blogging!

I've been trapped in the cycle known as GRADE ALL THE THINGS in the past two weeks; 38 final drafts of Paper #2, as well as several revisions of said paper, and plugging in midterm grades and writing up final project assessments and all of that fun stuff.  So some things had to get put on the backburner, like blogging and cleaning and eating vegetables.  But now I'm on break, I've had a green smoothie for breakfast -  yes I'm one of those - and catching up on some things that needed to be addressed.  I'm also currently digging a few things that I thought you guys might like to hear about, so I'm going to to hopefully make this a recurring series of blogs about things I'm currently into.

Currently Watching: Catching Fire.
The newest installment of the Hunger Games series - the book is a trilogy, the film is a proposed quadrology - came out on Friday, and the boyfriend and I saw it on Saturday after a stellar Friendsgiving dinner at my bestie Shelley's house.  It kicked. My.  Ass.  (both the dinner and the movie!) Catching Fire did everything right.  It had the pathos the first film lacked - except for when Rue died, that was heartwrenching - and the director, Francis Lawrence, is much more skilled at action sequences than Gary Ross.  He also knows how to employ closeups with a wide angle lens, a technique that doesn't wreck the viewers' perception of space.  Therefore, the movie looked better than the first film in the series.  The performances are richer; I don't even have to go into how obsessed I am with Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Banks in this movie, do I?  The stakes are higher.  The political commentary is more incisive.  Also, read this: Why Peeta Mellark is Katniss's Movie Girlfriend. What a great commentary on the gender schema present in the film and the books.

Also - the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special.  I don't watch a ton of Doctor Who although I am a big fan, but the episodes I've seen I've highly enjoyed.  The Special aired while the boyfriend and I were at the Friendsgiving, so we made sure to stay away from social media during that time.

Currently Reading: The Divergent Trilogy.
I must be honest; a few pages into the first book in this series, I was convinced it was nothing more than a retread of Hunger Games.  But it's got enough changes to keep things interesting.  The city that was once Chicago is now divided into several factions: Abnegation (selflessness), Dauntless (bravery), Erudite (intelligence), Candor (honesty), and Amity (kindness).  At sixteen, the members of the factions take a test to determine which faction they are best suited for, and then they make the choice as to which faction they will go to.  Tris Prior, an Abnegation, is tested, but she comes out as testing positively for three factions: Dauntless, Erudite, and Abnegation.  This multiple result makes Tris a Divergent.  From there, mayhem ensues. The book is incredibly involving from an emotional perspective, which is a lot different than HG because that book is all about trauma that divests one of emotion.  Here, emotion is powerful and it ricochets throughout the narrative.  Also, I feel the relationships formed by Tris are handled in a way that is more involving than Hunger Games, but that's something that comes from the narrative being about relationships in a way that The Hunger Games is about a wider commentary on political and cultural norms.  Basically, it's crack, and you should get on it.  They just released the final book in the trilogy, Allegiant, which I've already bought off Amazon even though I'm only halfway through Insurgent, the second book.  It's that good.

I do read things that are not YA dystopian fiction. This is just more fun to talk about than the other book I'm reading dealing with the culpability of German women during the Holocaust.

Currently Listening: The Last Podcast On The Left.
This podcast is not for people who are sensitive.  I will say that much.  It's a group of comedians - Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zembrowski - who sit around and talk about their research on all things macabre and weird.  They cover everything from serial killers to ley lines to alien abductions to cults.  They're a bunch of goofballs, but the best part of it is that they are tremendously organized and researched, so you laugh while learning something.  It's incredibly offensive, but that is my jam.  My current favorite episodes deal with serial killers; they're starting a new series called Big Hitters that cover the most infamous killers of all time, and they just opened the series with two episodes on Ted Bundy.  It's what I looked forward to after teaching all day on Wednesday, and they never disappoint.

Currently Eating: Pink Lady apples, Brussels sprouts, buffalo tofu.
Not all at the same time.  I'm just saying that these things make me happy.

Currently Dealing With: Stupid People on Facebook, PhD anxiety.
First, if I see one more uninformed person talk about gun rights or the Affordable Care Act or other things that are rage-inducing I am going to scream.   UNSUBSCRIBE.  My new thing is just to ignore those who don't know what they're talking about, and just trust that I'm doing the best I can do to educate those who want to learn and grow.  It makes my life easier.

Second, I am all done sending out my PhD applications, and because of that, I just have to wait the agonizing three months it will take before I hear anything (usually applications take until mid-January to make it to anyone's desk because of the winter break, and then it takes them a ton of time to read the applications and send them off to their respective committees, and THEN they have to send out waitlistings and other such nonsense.  So, all I can do is wait.  And it is driving me insane.

I'll probably write something later on this week about Thanksgiving, but don't hold me to it.  It's hard to write when you're snuggling your nephews, passing out on the couch from tryptophan, and diving face first into sweet potato pie.

ally

How Am I Doing?

This year for Halloween I decided to go as Danaerys Targaryen.  Not just Dany, Mother of Dragons, but I wanted to go as her pivotal character moment from the entire series; when she emerges from the fires of her dead husband, naked and unburnt, newly born dragons clinging to her body.  It's an absolutely badass moment and perfect for a Halloween costume.  But it would require me to wear a body stocking.  A painted body stocking, but still a stocking.  There was a time in which I would have done several things on the days leading up to these Halloween party in order to look skinny in the stocking.  Not 'good', mind you.  Or present.  Not even healthy.  Just skinny.  It involves a lot of cardio and barely eating anything of substance until the party...in which I would binge my brains out and fall asleep on a couch from a food coma.  I was a riot at parties during this stage.


You guys heard me confess that I had relapsed last year.  You also have heard me talk about how I was at a not-so-happy weight this past spring which was due to a combination of factors dealing with hormones and other unhealthy habits.  Not disordered habits, mind you, but my body was off. 

I'm here today to talk about how I'm doing.  I'm doing it now because this is the middle of my semester, and this is normally the time in which I lose my mind and dive back into supremely bad habits.  That hasn't happened at all, and I want to document it.  But first, let me take you back a bit.

When I started losing weight at 202 pounds, I had a goal number on the scale as a lot of dieters do.   By September of 2006 I had gotten myself down to 156 pounds by eating healthier and generally trying to stay more active. That's a perfectly fine weight for a lot of people, but I was still dealing with some binging issues and most of that weight was visceral fat carried in my stomach and hips, so I had a bit more weight to lose.  It also didn't help when I came back to school and one of my acting teachers, after telling me I looked beautiful, took a look at my body and added "You could lose even more in your hips." Note to all drama teachers out there - NEVER DO THIS.

Then, in the summer of that year I came down with mono and ended up getting down to 147 pounds - one pound down from my original goal weight - due to, you know, sleeping for two weeks and not eating anything more solid than bananas.  But I managed to keep this weight loss for a solid two months even after I got better because I wasn't eating as much, and when I was it was healthy foods, and I was working out sensibly.  Which is interesting when you think about it.

Then, I started reacting to my stressors and immediately gained a ton of weight back, which looking back isn't so surprising - I was binging like crazy and then trying to work it all off.  That horrible feeling when you feel like your stomach is going to rip open? That was me nearly every day. 

Now let me clarify something quickly...I'm petite, and 156 pounds on my frame is not the same as that amount of pounds on yours.  Nor was it 156 pounds of muscle.  It felt like I was carrying around an extra 10 pounds of luggage.

In April 2009, I moved to New York and joined a gym.

I ended up losing about 20 pounds in three or four months and got down to around 128.  Remember how I said at 155 that I wasn't quite done with getting that extraneous weight off? Well, at 128 I was beyond done.  When you're passing out in restaurants, you are not at the right weight.  Doesn't matter if everyone is telling you you're so skinny; "holy shit, you're so skinny" isn't always a compliment.  I didn't spend any time on my brain or intelligence or trying to be a better person or doing any of that interior growth you're supposed to do when getting "healthy." I just wanted to be thin.  At whatever cost.  Because isn't taking care of your body and making it look good part of being an actress? Isn't that the point of it?

My body was literally screaming at me every single day to stop what I was doing.  It's amazing how tone-deaf you can be when your goal is so off.

This is such a gross picture, but I'm putting it here because you deserve to see what I looked like at my lowest weight.  This was in December 2009.

Taken in my bestie Chelsea's apartment.  Hey girl hey, I'm sorry I took thinspiration photos in your guest bedroom.  Although I cannot find those boots for the life of me and I MISS THEM.  COME BACK TO ME, BOOTS.

After one too many incidents in which I passed out, and after one too many people were looking at me with a quizzical or teasing expression and asking me things like "Are you eating?" I decided that this skinny thing just wasn't worth it.  I felt terrible.  My hair was falling out, I was constantly cold, my skin was so dry my knuckles bled constantly, and and I missed being able to eat a sandwich without putting it on fiber bread that tasted like garbage and wrecked my stomach up.

Bear in mind, my parents were very concerned about me, but I'm pretty sure my stubbornness overrode their good intentions.  I remember getting force fed a glass of orange juice at a family dinner one time because I was so calorie deprived my eyes were rolling back in my head, and STILL thinking to myself, "This is too much sugar, this is too many calories."


When your mother is yelling at you in a restaurant to drink a glass of orange juice, that is when something needs to shift.

It took about a year or so to fully shift, but I started graduate school and teaching and began to realize that all of this restricting I was doing wasn't precisely the best choice when I had to, you know, stand in front of 22 students and talk for two hours and also sit in seminars and have to actively contribute.  I started thinking about my future, and for once, it didn't involve what 'weight' i needed to be at in order to make my dreams come true.  My dreams were coming true in waves, and none of it was about what my butt looked like in white skinny jeans.  It was all about what I could do in order to make myself into a better person, not a skinnier one.


It also isn't a coincidence that I began dating my boyfriend during all of this change, and that the change accelerated at a lightening pace when we became a couple  I could tell when I met him that A) he wasn't one of those dudebros that would run at the very first sign of emotional vulnerability and B) he wouldn't let me be less than the very best version of myself.  It takes a strong and patient soul to love me, and I knew - pretty much from the first date - that he wouldn't just tolerate me, he would make me better.  Because of him, I'm better and I'm inspired to be better. 

I started gaining a bit of weight, and ended up gaining a LOT.  But it ended up being a good thing that I went a bit overboard with the gaining because it showed me that I really didn't belong at 160 pounds.  That's a bit weight number for someone of my build, and I decided to do something about it this summer.  I worked very hard, trying to keep myself active not just with sports and workouts but also with leisurely walks and bike rides.  I did a lot of swimming, too.  As far as the food goes, I didn't deprive myself of anything.  I basically just ate a bit less, and ate more plants.  Like Michael Pollan says we should do.

The result of that work is, today I find myself at my goal weight.  The exact goal weight I had thought was right for me all along.  And I did it without illness, or starvation.  I even did it while eating meat (!!??), some cheese every once and a while, and a good deal of Hershey Kisses.  I credit my strict yoga practice, cardio, and eating whole food, and telling myself I can have as much of any sort of food as I want.  When you let yourself have unlimited freedom, you generally don't feel compulsions as strongly.  At least, I don't.  I believe in being healthy but I also value being realistic.  If I'm eating 100% healthy all the time, I feel like I'm on the shore watching all my friends boogie-board.  On the same coin, if I eat a lot of junk food my face and stomach explode.  I genuinely crave the way I feel when I eat a diet that's full of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and lean meats on occasion; I tried being vegan and my hair got more brittle than a Real Housewife's face, so I operate better with some animal proteins in my diet.  I eat chocolate.  I drink Diet Coke.  I eat skin-on chicken thighs. I eat tons of peanut butter.  I'm WAY hooked on coffee and chocolate; the Pumpkin Spice Hershey Kisses are basically foil-wrapped meth.  I don't eat these things all the time but I consider these things to be part of a healthy diet, because it means I eat relatively free of guilt. 

So when it came down to it, I didn't feel the need to punish myself for a Halloween party when the whole reason to HAVE a Halloween party is to have a blast and drink and laugh at your friends who dressed like Robin Sparkles (yes that happened and it was incredible). I strapped on that bodysuit, ate about a pound of sushi, and had a grand old time.   I didn't get a single "You look so skinny" that night.  But I got a hell of a lot of "That's an AWESOME costume." Which, duh.

It was also 20 degrees outside, so after the pictures round was done I immediately put on sweatpants.  I called that version of the costume "Gangsta' Dany."

So, that's how I'm doing.  You can read it in this post, but I'd like to read it on my face in this photo.

How am I doing? I'm alive. 

ally

PS.  You should know I typed this post while eating sweet potato pie and Cool Whip.  If your diet plan doesn't involve Cool Whip, I'm not interested.

PPS.  This didn't fit into my original post, but another reason I'm glad to be out of the ED pit of despair is that I am a straight up wreck when i allow myself to get too hungry.  I don't get angry hungry, I get "give me food right now or I will have a full scale 5150 psychotic break" hungry.

Living While Feminist.

I'm gonna get all gender-critic on your ass.  Deal with it.  It's going to be the central focus of my PhD studies, so...yeah.  Expect a lot of this stuff in the next few years.
I need to write about feminism, or womanism, or humanism - in my opinion, feminism and womanism and humanism are inherently the same construct with the same goals - because there's been some bad shit in the press about feminism lately.  And I say this as a hardcore feminist with zero apology about my feminism: Feminist sisters, quit it with trying to define feminism.  We are in the postmodern age in which defining a movement for women only leads to more backlash and misinterpretation of our mission.

If we say 'feminism', womanists get up in arms because of the inherent exclusion of black women from the origins of feminism, as well as the missing context from lower-class women of any ethnic background; the nature of feminism in its original form mostly valued the worth of white upper class ladies who already pretty much had everything.  The introduction of womanism into the lexicon attempted to rectify the wrongs done by feminism.

I'll be the first to admit that feminism has a shitload of problems.  At its worst, feminism is militant, obnoxious, and misunderstood.  It seems to me, looking around, that feminism, or the act of feminism as a political movement, is the shit-filled moat around the actual goal that feminism is attempting to promote.  The moat has been filled with anti-pornography, intercourse-hate, misandry, militant asshole-ism (what, it's a word) and mommy/body/everything-shaming.  I refused to identify as a feminist for a long time because I thought it meant I had to smear my body with patchouli, shear my hair short, and do a ton of yoga.  Well....I did cut my hair, and y'all know how much I love my chatarungas, but it took me a number of years before I recognized what actual feminism means.  And we've come to a point in which feminism, if we let it, can include all women everywhere.

My personal definition of feminism is thus: The mission for women and girls everywhere to be judged on something other than their bodies.  The mission for women and girls everywhere to not be a target of rape.  The mission to stop rape culture.  The mission to stop body shaming by educating girls and women on the strengths of their minds, rather than the lift of their breasts.  The mission for all women and girls to experience and enjoy sexual autonomy. The mission for full and total equality on every level for every woman and girl in the world regardless of ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

Note that I never said in that small manifesto "AND ALL MEN SHOULD BURN IN HELL  ALL FEMINISTS MUST BE LESBIAN AND WE ALL MUST USE CAPSLOCK. ALL THE TIME. I MUST FREE MY BREASTS FROM THE CONSTRAINT OF BRAS. ANDREA DWORKIN IS MY SPIRIT ANIMAL."

Don't jam me in a box.

Yet...I'm a feminist.  I even did a production of The Vagina Monologues.  That shows you I'm serious, because there's nothing as serious as standing on a stage in front of your parents and siblings, shaking a pom-pom and screaming "C**T" over and over again.

There are many things I do that maybe don't look like feminist activities on the surface but in actuality are just fine for any feminist to take part in.

I love baking, crocheting - right now I'm making a pretty awesome blanket for someone as a Christmas present - and pretty vintage dresses, and my taste in music is unbelievably twee (I say that while at this very moment the new Eminem album is downloading).  I'm a runner but I also like lifting, kickboxing, yoga-ing, and hanging out on the elliptical for an hour while watching How I Met Your Mother reruns.  I like green smoothies and sweet potato fries and every once and a while a good cut of steak.  I like getting my meals paid for when I go out on dates and also like paying my own way if the moment calls for it.  I refuse to apologize for who I am but I own up when I mess up.  I'm strong, but I cry pretty much all the time.  I watch a lot of romantic comedies.  This week I cried watching that little girl cry hearing her mother sing and I cried the very next day when my car got towed.  Emotional vulnerability is not weakness, it's humanity.  I like wearing UGG boots and super high heels and I'm obsessed with sequins and Nike gear.

I believe in a woman's right to do whatever the hell she wants with her body.   I don't believe in abstinence-only education.  The days of chastity belts are over.  I learned all the various ways one can go about having protected sex when I was in grade school, and it terrified me out of the entire activity.  So if you really want to scare your kids out of considering teen sex, parents, make them watch an old woman slide a condom onto a banana.  Their eyes will BURN.

I like reading Epistemology of the Closet, Gender Trouble, and Discipline and Punish and then going home and reading Glamour.  Because dammit, what is Jennifer Lawrence wearing to the Golden Globes? I want to know!

Did I mention I like men? Well I do.  I like them a lot.  One man in particular, but that still doesn't stop me from drooling over Chris Evans in the new Captain America: Winter Soldier trailer (yes, I objectify him and I don't see anything wrong with it considering the profound history of female objectification.  Revenge!). I don't think you need to be a misandrist in order to be a feminist.  You can simultaneously work to end the patriarchy and find it lovely when a man thinks you're attractive.  There are good men out there, and they want their women to be as successful, or even moreso, than women.  Any time there's a divorce in Hollywood and it's blamed on the man getting jealous of the woman's better career, I get grossed out.  When did we start teaching our sons that a relationship is okay as long as they are the chief earner? 

I believe in male feminists.  Even if they don't self-identify, they are out there.  I wouldn't denigrate myself by being in a relationship that gave me a permanent date for weddings but denigrated my self-respect.  I was raised in a family that honored and respected strong women.  I was never told as a child that I couldn't do something because I was a girl.  Granted, it was my Dad's job to foster that kind of dream in girls, but it didn't end at the Gampel Pavilion door.  It came home and it's stuck with me. 

I believe in every single type of marriage you can conceive.  I also support people who legit just don't want to get married and are perfectly fine with how they are in their relationship.  Additionally I don't think you need a relationship at all to be a happy person.  The only person you spend your entire life with is yourself, so you better be happy with it.

I believe in victim support in the case of rape, and education in the prevention of further assaults.  I believe in taking the necessary steps to avoid assault, but at the same time, those things will happen because A) there are crazy people in this world and B) we aren't teaching our sons to respect our daughters.   Wearing a short skirt doesn't say "Come Have Sex With Me Against My Will."  Boys (and girls) should know that.

On the same coin as the short skirt and the message it sends, I don't participate in body shaming.  Ever.  I've been body shamed way too much and I've had way too many things go haywire in my own body to allow myself to be dragged down into it.  If I hear a friend complaining about their body or judging another person's body or fitness level, I think to myself Your body works.  Be grateful that it works.

Amanda Palmer annoys me sometimes, but she gets this right: "The most powerful feminist can do whatever she wants.  That's the point of feminism."  Don't let your like-dislike of the activities I listed above allow you to buy into the concept of being a 'bad' feminist.

The only way you can be a bad feminist, in my estimation, is if you participate in any discourse, activity, or movement that contributes to the oppression of any woman, or any group of women.  That can be the largest possible offense, such as raping and torturing someone, or the smallest aside, like calling a stranger a skank or saying that they're fat or something because you're in a state of judgment.  It says more about the person saying those things, than it does about the person being labeled.

My point of this slightly militant blog is this: If you don't want to self-identify as a feminist, that's fine.  That's your prerogative, and as I've mentioned the word has gotten a lot of abuse over the past few years for being too exclusive and "too white" for the majority of women in the world.

As long as you believe in your soul that women should be looked at with the same view that we afford to men, and experience the same freedoms on various levels that are afforded to men, you are in fact a feminist.  You don't have to call yourself a feminist to be one as long as you keep that one belief as a constant in your heart. 

One of my students this semester asked me, in a way that didn't mean to be insulting, "I was just wondering why we need feminism."

I gave him a very neutered response about the lack of equal pay for men and women, and the rampant abuse and religiously-funded violation of women's rights all over the world, and insidious sexism, the insanely tone-deaf response of UConn's administration to the severe rape culture prevalent on its campus, and yada yada yada.  But I summed it all up by saying, "We need feminism because we're not done yet."

We're getting there.  We're closer than we've ever been in human history. 

But we aren't done.


For now, I'm going to be thankful I live in the same era as Judith Butler, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, bell hooks, Sen. Wendy Davis, Janelle Monae, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Rodham Clinton (Clinton 2016!), Joss Whedon, Andrea/Andrew Gibson, Carol Clover, Brittney Griner, Michelle Obama, Lady GaGa, Malala Yousafzi, and so many others who are working towards redefining how we view and appreciate the woman's voice in all of its colors, genders, and sexualities.

ally

PS.  If you are thinking about trolling any of my opinions expressed in this post, do yourself a kind favor and see yourself out.  I'll end up deleting your comments anyway.