Because my eating disorder was predicated on starvation and restriction, I knew that when I started eating normally again I would gain weight. I just wasn't sure how much or when it would stop.
Needless to say, when I stopped eating chia seeds at every meal and started eating normal, regular food (while still eating very clean and healthy), I gained necessary, needed weight. And my stomach felt great, my hair grew like crazy, my nails were stronger, I felt confident and powerful in my workouts, and I didn't look constantly grey and drawn in the face. I also got some other, more pressing medical concerns figured out, which was fantastic.
And then I gained a little bit more that just feels a bit bleh on my body. And I know how to handle it in a way that is NOT damaging.
Right now I'm in Week 2 of Jamie Eason's LiveFit Trainer, available on bodybuilding.com, and it's been a great program so far because it's been re-teaching me how to lift weights, something I LOVED in college but stepped away from when I wanted to just lean out (read: get as skinny as possible). Now I want to feel strong, so I've been lifting and it's awesome. I'm also eating meat and fish a LOT more now. Don't worry, I won't turn into one of those weirdos who eats nothing but chicken all day long, and there's no way in hell I'll ever be Paleo, but I do feel a lot better when animal proteins are in my diet. I also won't lift super heavy, because if I lift too heavy I'll turn into She-Hulk. It's just the way my body is built.
Right now, I'm pretty sure I'm in the 140s. A few weeks ago I weighed myself at the gym and it was entirely off, but I'm blaming that on a variety of factors, so I won't give you guys that number and I don't look at that as a real number. Right now, I'm probably in the 140s, and that's probably where I'm going to stay barring illness or I cut out everything yummy ever from my diet. I don't know what my actual weight is.
A few years ago, my 'happy weight' was the 130s. But looking back at photos, I know that still wasn't the weight for me. Sure, I could maintain that weight when I was eating the things I shouldn't for my body's health (gluten and lactose) and working out in ways that weren't necessarily right for me such TONS of cardio, tons of hot yoga that kept me dehydrated, really small portions, etc.
That happy weight didn't include nights when I drink lots of wine, eat cookies, and watch HBO with friends. Or order fried food at the casino when I go there for a concert. Or get up on a day after eating chocolate fondue at midnight and go for a long walk instead of trying to burn off all the 'chocolate calories'. I eat healthfully and super clean with lots of fruits, vegetables, gluten-free grains, and eggs/fish proteins 5-6 days a week, and then I have margaritas and tortilla chips on Cinco de Mayo, dammit.
I've been thinking about the kinds of things that go into gaining weight after an eating disorder, and I'm going to just list them for you here.
1. If your eating disorder, like mine, was predicated on restriction and starvation, you are going to shock your body when you start eating normally. Will your body change a lot? Yeah. But think about all the stuff you gain! Strength, mental clarity, shiny hair, a menstrual cycle that doesn't up and disappear like a Lost storyline...it's all great stuff you're getting with those extra lbs.
2. You will mess up.
I went from truly trying to take care of my body to completely falling apart when graduate school and other things in my life happened in October 2011, and there were a few months that I didn't do the right things for my body. It's the way of the beast and now I know better. Now I exercise and eat in a way that's healthy but relatively normal. Well...I don't know how normal it is to willingly bounce into the gym at 6:30 in the morning to lift heavy things. But hey that's just how I roll. I have a family that taught me to love exercising hard. Even when I was really overweight I loved being outside and running around and working up a sweat.
3. You are going to have to throw out a lot of stuff. It's an excuse to BUY NEW STUFF.
You will have pants you won't fit into anymore. And that's okay. DO NOT KEEP THEM. Throw them the hell out. If you have them in your closet you'll be staring at them wondering how much you'll have to do in order to fit into those pants/skirt/dress again and you won't, and then you'll be depressed that you can't squeeze your newly healthy ass into jeans a Russian pre-teen couldn't fit into. It will drive you bonkers until you get them out of the house. Think about all the new things you get to buy that will accent your beautiful frame (I'm really, really into dresses and skirts at the moment), and all the clothes you're donating to contribute to someone else's closet. Someone's rolling in J.Crew matchstick jeans right now. Also, those teeny weeny Gap size 2's I was so proud to squeeze myself into would be too tight if I ate anything bulky. I'd eat a salad and the zipper would squeeze my stomach. For real. I'd rather wear a dress than have to deal with that.
4. The weight you gain may not be all fat.
I know for a fact that I've put on muscle as well as fat, which is because I'm actually feeding myself the right things that contribute to a healthy muscle gain. I wasn't eating any protein even when I was trying to find healthy vegan sources of it, and when I did find some, it wasn't ever enough. I was constantly feeling like I had to keep eating because I never felt satisfied. Now that I've reincorporated animal proteins in my diet, I'm actually seeing results from my lifting and yoga programs. Also, for whatever reason, the weight I've gained seems to have gone straight to my ass. Which probably is the best thing ever. Not only because weight gained in your rear and thighs tends to be less dangerous than if you gain visceral weight in your abdomen, but because BADONK.
5. Your 'happy weight' might not be the weight you want it to be.
Trust me I've had my share of freakouts when my body started changing, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm healthier now than I've ever been. Ever. That's the trump card I throw when I have to throw out those tiny pants.
Because this is a life that is absolutely freaking crazy. Huge, and expansive, and full of things I don't want to miss out on by feeling like I want to diminish myself into a tiny, fragile weight. I feel strong, and capable, and healthy, and that's worth everything. Also, I know that the people in my life who love me love me for more than the tag on my pants.
Was my life safer two years ago? More controlled? More allowing of a body frame that is very thin? Of course.
I wouldn't want that back.
ally
Monday, May 6, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
An Open Letter to Randy Smith of the Chattanoogan.
This is an email I wrote to columnist Randy Smith, regarding his inflammatory piece on my dad located here. Read that and then read on. I'm posting it here so that it's public for you all to read, because my point should be read by more people than just him.
Hello Mr. Smith,
Hello Mr. Smith,
I'm emailing you regarding an article you wrote for the Chattanoogan concerning my father, Geno Auriemma, and comments he made about Pat Summitt at the end of the game on Tuesday.
First off, I just want you to know that perhaps your quotation was taken out of context. My father, as polarizing as he may be in his approach to the game and to the people of Tennessee, has nothing but respect for that woman and what she has done for the game of basketball. After the game on Tuesday, he was asked to put his career in perspective against coaches such as John Wooden, Adolf Rupp, Coach K., and Pat Summitt and he refused to be compared to any other coach but Pat because he valued her contributions to the game of basketball from the women's side so highly.
His comment about how Pat Summitt was the greatest basketball coach who has ever lived was not said in an attempt to make himself look good, or anything of that ilk. It was said quietly, and full of humility.
I know all of this, Mr. Smith, because for the past 28 years of my life I have been told to comport myself in a way that is, yes, strong and confident but also highly aware of those who have paved the way for me in the world of women and sports and to treat all of them with respect. None of us, including my father and his players and career, would be anything they are today without the contributions and heroism that Pat Summitt has displayed. Of course, there have been clashes between them but what's past is past.
Their relationship has been patched up since Pat Summitt's devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer's and I have been in contact with Pat several times over the past year. I wrote a tribute to her in my blog* that got some coverage in Tennessee as well as Connecticut, and I heard from hundreds of Tennessee fans and their stories about how Pat has touched their lives truly touched my heart. I consider her to be a wonderful, amazing person. And it's a shame that you have used your article and your voice in the media to be a beacon of promoting conflict between UConn and Tennessee fans.
I'm not even really mad about the article you've written, I'm more upset that fans of the two greatest teams in college basketball will see it and continue to bear a grudge against a man who has made mistakes with his mouth (and trust me, I know he has made his share of mistakes) but strives to be excellent in everything he does.
I'm not writing this to rush to "Daddy's" defense. But when I saw your article, I began shaking with frustration and anger because of the way Geno has been portrayed in the media and the absolute contradiction that is to the man I call my Dad.
I'm not asking for a retraction because as Voltaire once said "I detest what you write but I would give my right arm for you to continue to write." But I hope you think about what I've said and perhaps think more before you put opinions like that out in the media. I found it disturbing, incorrect, and profoundly saddening.
I thank you for your time.
Alysa Auriemma
*I am such a self-promoting jerk, aren't I? In the words of Shangela Laquifa Wadley, I am a postmodern pimp ho. Hallelu.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Gr8ness.
My mom texted me yesterday saying that SNY wanted a one-word response from her to incapsulate the championship. She came up with Remarkable.
I think I'm still in disbelief. It hasn't sunk in yet. None of it has.
But let's rewind back to the Notre Dame game. Aka, the game that nearly made me throw up.
I was paralyzed with fear for most of the day. To the point that my appetite disappeared, which if you know me at all is really the worst thing that could ever happen. But at the same time, in a weird way, I knew we were going to win. Maybe it's because I thought there was no way we would lose to one team three times in a season. But there was a weird feeling in my gut of "We got this." I haven't felt like that in a while in the tournament. Definitely didn't feel that way in Indianapolis and Denver. I felt it on Tuesday.
Just like 2012, we were supposed to go to our friend's house to eat snacks and watch Game of Thrones, set to start around tip-off of our semifinal. I didn't want to be that mess like I was last year, so I made a very drastic decision. "We are not watching the game at all right now or until the show is over," I announced to my boyfriend as we drove to the watch party. "We're going to hang out with our friends to watch our show and I want to enjoy myself. If we win, we win. If we lose, we lose. I just want to go over to my friend's house and have a good time watching our show, and then we can check in at halftime. And if you check the score of the game, do NOT tell me what's going on, no matter what happens, or I will murder you." He agreed.
I spent the entire first half of the game watching Thrones, eating pralines, and drinking wine with my friends. And, shockingly, my nerves completely dissipated. I felt relaxed and at ease. It also helped that this week's episode of GOT was one of the funniest ones ever, but I honestly grew less and less nervous as the hour wore on.
At the end of the episode I finally allowed my boyfriend to tell me the score. I didn't believe we were up 10. It seemed too good to be true. Plus my boyfriend tricked me into thinking he was seeing bad news on his phone when he checked the halftime score. Jerk.
You would think I watched the second half. Are you kidding? I didn't want to ruin the luck! I turn into a superstitious creature this time of year. Wouldn't you? At the end of the game, I sat there in happiness, watching our team celebrate. Finally, after three heartwrenching losses, we got the one that counted. Hell, I take every single loss to Notre Dame over the past two years gladly, because we got THIS one. We got this one for Maya Moore, Lorin Dixon, and Tiffany Hayes. We got this one for them.
The reason we won the game on Sunday is because, well, mostly Breanna Stewart is a monster and we had a dogged determination to outplay ND but also that we comported ourselves with confidence, ease, and efficiency. We're also getting a lot better at not letting setbacks in a game get to us emotionally, something I honestly cannot say about Notre Dame during that second half. It was fascinating to watch the complete and total breakdown of the Notre Dame offense and defense as the game wore on. They just completely stopped functioning and communicating, and the frustration and attitude was written all over their faces. (I'm not making this up out of whole cloth...if you watch the tape you can see it clear as day. In the immortal words of Outkast, "I'm just being honest.")
I ended up watching the game with my boyfriend at his place. I was going to invite him to my apartment to watch, but a quick survey of my kitchen led me to conclude I didn't want our Final Four championship game dinner to consist of egg whites and ketchup. Someone remind me to grocery shop.
My nervousness was different, more sedated than the type I'd had before the ND game. This was a nervousness borne out of everyone saying we had this in the bag. Louisville beat Baylor, for God's sake. There's no way we would just roll over them. And for the first 5ish minutes of the first half, it seemed that way as we found ourselves down four. That's when the pessimist part of my brain thinks it's all over and we're screwed.
Then...it all changed.
I sat in shock as our run grew to 19-0. Saw Kelly Faris, who usually isn't one to look for the three, nail them over and over again. Saw Kaleena turn into an efficient offensive power. Saw Breanna Stewart just...do everything.
Best moment of the game wasn't when Breanna did all of her amazing work, or Kelly's 3s, or Kaleena's dominance. The best moment was when Buck got in the game and SCORED ON A BREAKAWAY LAYUP. I screamed so loudly I'm pretty sure the neighbors woke up. That might be my favorite moment of this entire year.
When the buzzer sounded I didn't cry, like I have in other years. I just sat there and smiled, and watched the girls celebrate. I wished like hell I could be there to watch it with them, and to hug all of them, but I'll have to wait until I see them later on this spring.
I'm going to miss how unbelievably sweet Heather Buck always is. She always comes straight up to me when the team visits my parent's house and gives me a big hug, asking me how I'm doing. She's one of the smartest kids my dad's ever had and despite the fact that she never turned into a huge star for us, I don't think she would have wanted it any other way. She was and is beloved by our fans.
I've known Caroline for nearly 6 years and the way she's grown from her freshman year into a leader for this team through the devastating knee injuries make this ending all the better for her. She's a sweet kid with a damn good brain for basketball and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if she got into coaching.
And oh man, I wanted this one for Kelly so bad. Nobody, and I mean nobody, deserved to get their final season ending the way this one did like she did. She's one of the best people my Dad has ever coached. I'm lucky to know her. I said to you guys in my recap of our win in San Antonio three years ago that Kelly was going to be a force to be reckoned with. And she is.
I'm so happy to know these girls, and to have this game go the way it did, and have the season, with its ups and downs, end the way I wanted it to last year when I had to watch the girls cry after the Notre Dame loss in the Final Four. But we needed all of those heartbreaks in order to make this triumph so amazing.
Remarkable.
ally
PS. No Obama this time. I'm not allowed to go because I've "met him too many times already." File that one under Problems Nobody Else Has. I feel like an asshole even complaining about it.
PPS. Stay tuned for some exciting news regarding travel plans for business this summer.
I think I'm still in disbelief. It hasn't sunk in yet. None of it has.
But let's rewind back to the Notre Dame game. Aka, the game that nearly made me throw up.
I was paralyzed with fear for most of the day. To the point that my appetite disappeared, which if you know me at all is really the worst thing that could ever happen. But at the same time, in a weird way, I knew we were going to win. Maybe it's because I thought there was no way we would lose to one team three times in a season. But there was a weird feeling in my gut of "We got this." I haven't felt like that in a while in the tournament. Definitely didn't feel that way in Indianapolis and Denver. I felt it on Tuesday.
Just like 2012, we were supposed to go to our friend's house to eat snacks and watch Game of Thrones, set to start around tip-off of our semifinal. I didn't want to be that mess like I was last year, so I made a very drastic decision. "We are not watching the game at all right now or until the show is over," I announced to my boyfriend as we drove to the watch party. "We're going to hang out with our friends to watch our show and I want to enjoy myself. If we win, we win. If we lose, we lose. I just want to go over to my friend's house and have a good time watching our show, and then we can check in at halftime. And if you check the score of the game, do NOT tell me what's going on, no matter what happens, or I will murder you." He agreed.
I spent the entire first half of the game watching Thrones, eating pralines, and drinking wine with my friends. And, shockingly, my nerves completely dissipated. I felt relaxed and at ease. It also helped that this week's episode of GOT was one of the funniest ones ever, but I honestly grew less and less nervous as the hour wore on.
At the end of the episode I finally allowed my boyfriend to tell me the score. I didn't believe we were up 10. It seemed too good to be true. Plus my boyfriend tricked me into thinking he was seeing bad news on his phone when he checked the halftime score. Jerk.
You would think I watched the second half. Are you kidding? I didn't want to ruin the luck! I turn into a superstitious creature this time of year. Wouldn't you? At the end of the game, I sat there in happiness, watching our team celebrate. Finally, after three heartwrenching losses, we got the one that counted. Hell, I take every single loss to Notre Dame over the past two years gladly, because we got THIS one. We got this one for Maya Moore, Lorin Dixon, and Tiffany Hayes. We got this one for them.
The reason we won the game on Sunday is because, well, mostly Breanna Stewart is a monster and we had a dogged determination to outplay ND but also that we comported ourselves with confidence, ease, and efficiency. We're also getting a lot better at not letting setbacks in a game get to us emotionally, something I honestly cannot say about Notre Dame during that second half. It was fascinating to watch the complete and total breakdown of the Notre Dame offense and defense as the game wore on. They just completely stopped functioning and communicating, and the frustration and attitude was written all over their faces. (I'm not making this up out of whole cloth...if you watch the tape you can see it clear as day. In the immortal words of Outkast, "I'm just being honest.")
I ended up watching the game with my boyfriend at his place. I was going to invite him to my apartment to watch, but a quick survey of my kitchen led me to conclude I didn't want our Final Four championship game dinner to consist of egg whites and ketchup. Someone remind me to grocery shop.
My nervousness was different, more sedated than the type I'd had before the ND game. This was a nervousness borne out of everyone saying we had this in the bag. Louisville beat Baylor, for God's sake. There's no way we would just roll over them. And for the first 5ish minutes of the first half, it seemed that way as we found ourselves down four. That's when the pessimist part of my brain thinks it's all over and we're screwed.
Then...it all changed.
I sat in shock as our run grew to 19-0. Saw Kelly Faris, who usually isn't one to look for the three, nail them over and over again. Saw Kaleena turn into an efficient offensive power. Saw Breanna Stewart just...do everything.
Best moment of the game wasn't when Breanna did all of her amazing work, or Kelly's 3s, or Kaleena's dominance. The best moment was when Buck got in the game and SCORED ON A BREAKAWAY LAYUP. I screamed so loudly I'm pretty sure the neighbors woke up. That might be my favorite moment of this entire year.
When the buzzer sounded I didn't cry, like I have in other years. I just sat there and smiled, and watched the girls celebrate. I wished like hell I could be there to watch it with them, and to hug all of them, but I'll have to wait until I see them later on this spring.
I'm going to miss how unbelievably sweet Heather Buck always is. She always comes straight up to me when the team visits my parent's house and gives me a big hug, asking me how I'm doing. She's one of the smartest kids my dad's ever had and despite the fact that she never turned into a huge star for us, I don't think she would have wanted it any other way. She was and is beloved by our fans.
I've known Caroline for nearly 6 years and the way she's grown from her freshman year into a leader for this team through the devastating knee injuries make this ending all the better for her. She's a sweet kid with a damn good brain for basketball and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if she got into coaching.
And oh man, I wanted this one for Kelly so bad. Nobody, and I mean nobody, deserved to get their final season ending the way this one did like she did. She's one of the best people my Dad has ever coached. I'm lucky to know her. I said to you guys in my recap of our win in San Antonio three years ago that Kelly was going to be a force to be reckoned with. And she is.
I'm so happy to know these girls, and to have this game go the way it did, and have the season, with its ups and downs, end the way I wanted it to last year when I had to watch the girls cry after the Notre Dame loss in the Final Four. But we needed all of those heartbreaks in order to make this triumph so amazing.
Remarkable.
ally
PS. No Obama this time. I'm not allowed to go because I've "met him too many times already." File that one under Problems Nobody Else Has. I feel like an asshole even complaining about it.
PPS. Stay tuned for some exciting news regarding travel plans for business this summer.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Punch Back.
So. If you have a pulse, I'm positive you saw what happened on Easter Sunday with Baylor dropping to Louisville in possibly one of the most stunning upsets in women's college basketball history, or even college basketball history in totality. (yet nobody talked about it on Grantland. I see you, Bill Simmons.)
I didn't get to see all of the game, but I caught fragments of it. I saw Shoni Schimmel drill threes from the parking lot (and that INSANE behind the back thing she did) and I also saw Brittney Griner basically get caught in a 'box and EVERYONE RUN AFTER HER' defense. I saw a brilliant game plan by Jeff Walz to throw Griner off her game. I saw Kim Mulkey lose her shirt. That was weird.
I did not get to see the final play of the game; at that point, the party I was at to celebrate the season premiere of Game of Thrones had put the show on HBO. Then my phone died. My boyfriend proceeded to turn on his Gamecast so I could enjoy the show and keep up with the end of the game. That's lurve right there.
Something that really stuck out in my mind that night after the end of the game was the complaining about officiating. It's something I've done in the past as well as many others; the women's game is stuck with crappy officials at this time. They don't call body-checks, but they do call hand checks. They fall for the simple flop and call it a charge. They don't call holding in the paint nearly enough, and they often try to even up the score by over-calling the favored team. It's a fact of life.
My issue stems with the fact that a lot of people blame losses on crappy officiating. Particularly the Baylor loss. They say it all has to do with the fact that officiating in that game in the final minutes wasn't up to par. While that may be accurate in some cases, I'd like to mediate on some things that have been a-stewin' in my brain space for the past two days, and I'd like to share them with you.
Here, in succinct terms, is how you counteract crappy officiating.
1. If you're losing but you have the opportunity for a late game comeback, you put your team on your back and you win. End of discussion.
One of the things that Brittney Griner needs to work on is her body control and overall dominance in the paint. "What?!" you may cry. "She's the record holder for shots blocked, man or woman!" Yes, that's true. But if you've watched her as many times as I have, you'll see a lot of those shot blocks are sometimes simply a matter of size difference. Brittney has an enormous wingspan and she's 6'8". That alone will block or alter the trajectory of attempted shots. But if you look at the game tape of Louisville/Baylor, you'll notice that in a lot of key plays BG is nowhere to be seen or she's tipped the ball slightly but not entirely. She's either out of the paint away from the ball or she's on the perimeter, already running up the court. If you're down by 8 with a few minutes to go and you have a legit chance of winning the game, you get your ass in the paint and you push your internal volume to 11. In our game yesterday Breanna Stewart only had 3 blocks, but she flew at the shooter like her life depended on it. That's the attitude you have to take. If you're getting tangled up in the lane and they aren't calling anything, you MAKE them call it. Griner has that tenacity in stints, but it fell apart in the Louisville game because - and she's done this a number of times - she allowed the pressure of the game to build up in her head and froze. She's a lot better at this than she used to be, but she still needs to work on her in-game reaction.
I kept thinking of the 2003 Final Four, when we were down by 9 with 4 minutes to play and Diana scored 9 points in an 11-2 run to beat Texas in the National Semifinals. She posted up, she made threes, she hit her free throws. She was, as Mike Patrick said of her once, "The All-American, All-Everything." She is also, as Dave Chappelle once said, "COLD BLOODED."
That's why the legacy of Diana Taurasi, even though it isn't as overtly dominant in the stat line as Brittney Griner's is, is more important to the game as a whole. She embodied mental toughness. And I don't think I've ever seen a player get the crap beaten out of her like Diana did. Dad said one time in an interview that his kids on the 1995 championship team would "kill you to win the game." That's the kind of tenacity and power Louisville displayed in that game. Same with Delaware against their 1st and 2nd round opponents, and even in the Sweet Sixteen Elena Delle Donne scored 33 points and played every position on the floor to get her team back in the game. As many issues as I have with Skylar Diggins, she gets the job done as well.
2. You don't let your team get down by 20 points in the second half, and then rely on a frantic last-minute rally that can go either way, especially if the officials have been calling the game in a way that isn't in your favor.
My dad likes to compare basketball games of great importance to boxing matches. "You have to go out there and throw the first punch, and then just keep on punching until the end of the game." Which is why if we come out with guns blazing early on in the game, the game's outcome is never in doubt afterward which is hard to say about a lot of teams. Once we build a substantial lead, we usually don't let up.
You render the officials obsolete by not allowing them to take control of the game's tempo. You do that by playing hard, smart, efficient basketball for the entirety of the game, from the minute the ball gets tipped. That's why when we came out in the second half and clobbered Maryland in the Sweet 16 it rendered the complaints about the shitty officiating in the first half rather moot. We were up by so far, a crappy call here and there couldn't put us out of the game. Also, looking at the final foul tallies by Louisville and Baylor, they seemed to be pretty even. Yes, BG was swarmed by defenders all game and yes, they were probably a bit too aggressive. But you have to do what you need to do in order to win. Physicality only gets you so far. If BG wants to be even better at the next level, she needs to work on that aspect of her game.
3. Shit happens. Deal with it, fix it if you can, and move on.
Things happen that you can't control or explain all the time. It's called life. Diana carried us to two more national championships when nobody in the universe thought we could because she had the burning desire to win and she also knew it wasn't something that was promised, and she did it with a stress fracture and back spasms. She was also aware that nothing is promised and the best thing we can do is make the most of what we have.
You only need to look at Kevin Ware's horrific compound fracture during the other Louisville game last weekend to know that no game or season is promised. I have never seen a team reaction like that in my life, and it immediately made my heart break for those guys. These guys could've done what I probably would've done in that scenario - fold like a collapsible deck chair and let Plumlee stomp all over them. But they didn't. They took a potentially game-killing experience and turned it into a turnaround rout of Duke. It was stunning to watch and kind of inspiring. The Louisville girls took that and made it into energy. They reacted to it with action. Baylor's response to the pressure inflicted upon them by Louisville is apparent in the outcome of that game.
Yes, the officials made some bad judgment with non-calls. I had the same issue with the Maryland game when Kelly Faris got clobbered and Dad freaked out and got a technical (although, thank God, did not remove any part of his clothing). Refs suck in women's basketball. This is a fact. And apparently the NCAA is too busy protecting unconscionable coaching practices at Rutgers to really investigate shitty refs.
Life is 10% the things that happen to you, and 90% how you react.
As for our own chances in the tournament re: the Notre Dame rematch...I'm not going to lie, I'm scared. I refused to watch the Big East championship because I was so terrified, and then when we lost on that heartbreaker shot at the end I honest to God cried. I knew that this is what it must have felt like for Ruth Riley, Niele Ivey, and the other members of the 2001 Notre Dame team we beat on a buzzer beater Sue Bird jump shot in that Big East title game. But remember, they beat us in the Final Four that year and subsequently beat Purdue to win the National Championship. I would just not like a repeat of what happened last year when I got super drunk at a Game of Thrones watch party out of severe Final Four defeat depression. Ok?
In closing, let me just say this: This is in no way a condemnation of Brittney Griner. I have massive respect for the things she has done in her four years at Baylor to expand the face of women's basketball as well as increase parity in the women's game. I'm just noting some things that are a common occurrence across basketball as a whole.
Also, if you are one of those people who condemn Brittney Griner by reducing her to the 'she's clearly a man' description...do you have a medical degree? Have you personally examined Brittney Griner? Or are you contributing to the massive genderphobic hyper-heteronormative fuckery surrounding that gifted athlete since the day she put on a Baylor uniform? You clearly have problems with your own masculinity if you do that to a 21 year old kid. Or you suck at basketball and you're jealous. I think Brittney Griner is not only beautiful, but incredibly talented and has dominated the face of women's basketball in the past four years. She also seems like a decent kid.
Unfortunately, you need more than decency this time of year.
ally
I didn't get to see all of the game, but I caught fragments of it. I saw Shoni Schimmel drill threes from the parking lot (and that INSANE behind the back thing she did) and I also saw Brittney Griner basically get caught in a 'box and EVERYONE RUN AFTER HER' defense. I saw a brilliant game plan by Jeff Walz to throw Griner off her game. I saw Kim Mulkey lose her shirt. That was weird.
I did not get to see the final play of the game; at that point, the party I was at to celebrate the season premiere of Game of Thrones had put the show on HBO. Then my phone died. My boyfriend proceeded to turn on his Gamecast so I could enjoy the show and keep up with the end of the game. That's lurve right there.
Something that really stuck out in my mind that night after the end of the game was the complaining about officiating. It's something I've done in the past as well as many others; the women's game is stuck with crappy officials at this time. They don't call body-checks, but they do call hand checks. They fall for the simple flop and call it a charge. They don't call holding in the paint nearly enough, and they often try to even up the score by over-calling the favored team. It's a fact of life.
My issue stems with the fact that a lot of people blame losses on crappy officiating. Particularly the Baylor loss. They say it all has to do with the fact that officiating in that game in the final minutes wasn't up to par. While that may be accurate in some cases, I'd like to mediate on some things that have been a-stewin' in my brain space for the past two days, and I'd like to share them with you.
Here, in succinct terms, is how you counteract crappy officiating.
1. If you're losing but you have the opportunity for a late game comeback, you put your team on your back and you win. End of discussion.
One of the things that Brittney Griner needs to work on is her body control and overall dominance in the paint. "What?!" you may cry. "She's the record holder for shots blocked, man or woman!" Yes, that's true. But if you've watched her as many times as I have, you'll see a lot of those shot blocks are sometimes simply a matter of size difference. Brittney has an enormous wingspan and she's 6'8". That alone will block or alter the trajectory of attempted shots. But if you look at the game tape of Louisville/Baylor, you'll notice that in a lot of key plays BG is nowhere to be seen or she's tipped the ball slightly but not entirely. She's either out of the paint away from the ball or she's on the perimeter, already running up the court. If you're down by 8 with a few minutes to go and you have a legit chance of winning the game, you get your ass in the paint and you push your internal volume to 11. In our game yesterday Breanna Stewart only had 3 blocks, but she flew at the shooter like her life depended on it. That's the attitude you have to take. If you're getting tangled up in the lane and they aren't calling anything, you MAKE them call it. Griner has that tenacity in stints, but it fell apart in the Louisville game because - and she's done this a number of times - she allowed the pressure of the game to build up in her head and froze. She's a lot better at this than she used to be, but she still needs to work on her in-game reaction.
I kept thinking of the 2003 Final Four, when we were down by 9 with 4 minutes to play and Diana scored 9 points in an 11-2 run to beat Texas in the National Semifinals. She posted up, she made threes, she hit her free throws. She was, as Mike Patrick said of her once, "The All-American, All-Everything." She is also, as Dave Chappelle once said, "COLD BLOODED."
That's why the legacy of Diana Taurasi, even though it isn't as overtly dominant in the stat line as Brittney Griner's is, is more important to the game as a whole. She embodied mental toughness. And I don't think I've ever seen a player get the crap beaten out of her like Diana did. Dad said one time in an interview that his kids on the 1995 championship team would "kill you to win the game." That's the kind of tenacity and power Louisville displayed in that game. Same with Delaware against their 1st and 2nd round opponents, and even in the Sweet Sixteen Elena Delle Donne scored 33 points and played every position on the floor to get her team back in the game. As many issues as I have with Skylar Diggins, she gets the job done as well.
2. You don't let your team get down by 20 points in the second half, and then rely on a frantic last-minute rally that can go either way, especially if the officials have been calling the game in a way that isn't in your favor.
My dad likes to compare basketball games of great importance to boxing matches. "You have to go out there and throw the first punch, and then just keep on punching until the end of the game." Which is why if we come out with guns blazing early on in the game, the game's outcome is never in doubt afterward which is hard to say about a lot of teams. Once we build a substantial lead, we usually don't let up.
You render the officials obsolete by not allowing them to take control of the game's tempo. You do that by playing hard, smart, efficient basketball for the entirety of the game, from the minute the ball gets tipped. That's why when we came out in the second half and clobbered Maryland in the Sweet 16 it rendered the complaints about the shitty officiating in the first half rather moot. We were up by so far, a crappy call here and there couldn't put us out of the game. Also, looking at the final foul tallies by Louisville and Baylor, they seemed to be pretty even. Yes, BG was swarmed by defenders all game and yes, they were probably a bit too aggressive. But you have to do what you need to do in order to win. Physicality only gets you so far. If BG wants to be even better at the next level, she needs to work on that aspect of her game.
3. Shit happens. Deal with it, fix it if you can, and move on.
Things happen that you can't control or explain all the time. It's called life. Diana carried us to two more national championships when nobody in the universe thought we could because she had the burning desire to win and she also knew it wasn't something that was promised, and she did it with a stress fracture and back spasms. She was also aware that nothing is promised and the best thing we can do is make the most of what we have.
You only need to look at Kevin Ware's horrific compound fracture during the other Louisville game last weekend to know that no game or season is promised. I have never seen a team reaction like that in my life, and it immediately made my heart break for those guys. These guys could've done what I probably would've done in that scenario - fold like a collapsible deck chair and let Plumlee stomp all over them. But they didn't. They took a potentially game-killing experience and turned it into a turnaround rout of Duke. It was stunning to watch and kind of inspiring. The Louisville girls took that and made it into energy. They reacted to it with action. Baylor's response to the pressure inflicted upon them by Louisville is apparent in the outcome of that game.
Yes, the officials made some bad judgment with non-calls. I had the same issue with the Maryland game when Kelly Faris got clobbered and Dad freaked out and got a technical (although, thank God, did not remove any part of his clothing). Refs suck in women's basketball. This is a fact. And apparently the NCAA is too busy protecting unconscionable coaching practices at Rutgers to really investigate shitty refs.
Life is 10% the things that happen to you, and 90% how you react.
As for our own chances in the tournament re: the Notre Dame rematch...I'm not going to lie, I'm scared. I refused to watch the Big East championship because I was so terrified, and then when we lost on that heartbreaker shot at the end I honest to God cried. I knew that this is what it must have felt like for Ruth Riley, Niele Ivey, and the other members of the 2001 Notre Dame team we beat on a buzzer beater Sue Bird jump shot in that Big East title game. But remember, they beat us in the Final Four that year and subsequently beat Purdue to win the National Championship. I would just not like a repeat of what happened last year when I got super drunk at a Game of Thrones watch party out of severe Final Four defeat depression. Ok?
In closing, let me just say this: This is in no way a condemnation of Brittney Griner. I have massive respect for the things she has done in her four years at Baylor to expand the face of women's basketball as well as increase parity in the women's game. I'm just noting some things that are a common occurrence across basketball as a whole.
Also, if you are one of those people who condemn Brittney Griner by reducing her to the 'she's clearly a man' description...do you have a medical degree? Have you personally examined Brittney Griner? Or are you contributing to the massive genderphobic hyper-heteronormative fuckery surrounding that gifted athlete since the day she put on a Baylor uniform? You clearly have problems with your own masculinity if you do that to a 21 year old kid. Or you suck at basketball and you're jealous. I think Brittney Griner is not only beautiful, but incredibly talented and has dominated the face of women's basketball in the past four years. She also seems like a decent kid.
Unfortunately, you need more than decency this time of year.
ally
Monday, March 25, 2013
My Body Is Not Your Right.
This post is going to be a mess, mostly because my thoughts relating to the events in Steubenville, Ohio, and Torrington, CT, are so wildly all over the place that I can't really get them to coalesce at the moment. But if I don't say them I'll explode, so...here we go.
When I was 15 years old, I attended my first-and only-high school dance. Well, outside of junior and senior prom, which were excuses to spend a ton of money on getting fake hair weaved into my real hair and gel manicures, as well as opportunities to cry in the Jessica McClintock dressing room because the size 14 dress would barely fit over my hips. I digress.
I remember what I wore down to the shoes. A sundress with flowers, a grey cardigan, and Keds. I don't go to dances to hook up. I learned that lesson in sixth grade, when I saw my crush dancing with another girl and spent the rest of the night crying on my couch thinking I was going to be alone forever.
That dance was the first and only time I have ever been touched by a guy in an aggressive, anonymous way. While moving my way through the crowds to find my friends at the other end of the dance hall, I got my ass grabbed. Not like one hand on my butt. I'm talking both hands, actively clamped onto my rear end for about 3 seconds, and then they released. I have no idea who did it, and I really don't care to know. But it haunted me. I felt violated on a level I had never experienced before. That 3 seconds of involuntary possession caused me in an indirect way to retreat back into a shell of virgin fear for a number of years.
It may seem laughably small, the fact that the only form of sexual invasion I've ever experienced was a pair of hands gripping my butt. But I do remember feeling like someone just saw my body as something they could physically experience without permission, as if society or our view of women had given this dude permission to grab. I still don't know who did it. Hell, maybe it was one of my friends being funny and I can't remember. But it altered my perception of what the dance was supposed to mean.
The reason I reference this moment is because I'm fully aware of my position as a privileged white cis-gendered heterosexual girl who can pass for 'normal' in a heteronormative society (yes I use big English major words. Google them, you peons). A lot of times, I feel like I'm on the outside looking in when things like Steubenville or Torrington occur. I cannot conceptualize how it must feel to be in that situation. But I do feel the effects of growing up in a culture that insidiously promotes feminine subjugation, to the point that some of the students in Steubenville's case weren't even versed in what 'rape' meant.
Girls are usually told they're being hysterical when they get emotional. I am not a girl being hysterical. I am calm, present, grounded, and really, really pissed off.
Mostly because the situation in Steubenville seemed to circle around this poor girl, who was unconscious, getting blamed for her sexual violation. That doesn't happen with guys; guys don't get blamed when they're assaulted. When the Jerry Sandusky case broke, no one blamed the victims. Nor should they be blamed. A victim of assault or rape is never to be blamed. Yet, here we are.
I also think it's bugnuts that the entirety of the media outlets is sympathizing with the rapists and their jail fate. You know what's worse than the fate of those boys? The fact that they raped an unconscious girl at a party and then bragged about it in a viral video for shits and giggles and left her to figure out what happened to her from Tweets about the party. THAT'S what's the real tragedy. We don't teach young kids to respect each other.
At the same time, I kind of can understand it. Teenagers have a vague conception of what rape is because guess where they're getting their concept of sex from? More often than not it's online porn, in which a passive female is thrown around like a rag doll and experiencing zero sexual pleasure while a guy gets his kicks. There is no reciprocation of sexual acts, only a concentrated desire to please with no concern for their own body. Not that there isn't porn out there designed to counteract this issue with tasteful and respectful representations of mutual gratification, which is nice. Hell, the fact that I can even say that means we have come a long, LONG way from where we used to be. It's also indicative of how far we've come in the feminist movement that this kind of rhetoric is even allowed in the public conversation. I'm thrilled it's getting more notice.
At the same time, we are a country that is petrified of teaching kids about sex. Kids aren't stupid, and they're sneaky as hell. The more you tell a child they aren't allowed to do something, the more they want to do it. My nephew isn't allowed to run around the elliptical when I'm on it, but that just makes him more curious to find out what would happen if he got too close. Maybe tell kids that sex is a thing, and if they do it, to use protection and don't just throw it around at everyone they see, and maybe there will be some more constructive conversation about sexual health? But I digress.
So let me just outline this as clearly as I can, if there are any teenage boys reading this who are confused on what 'rape' defines itself as:
If you engage in sexual activity with anyone without their consent, that is rape.
If you penetrate another person with anything, even if it's unrelated to sexual organs, that is rape. (Sometimes people do this in order to leave no trace of their DNA behind.)
If you engage in sexual activity with someone who is unconscious or asleep, therefore unable to give their consent, that is rape. (Although that's not sex in my opinion, that's just trying to dominate someone who can't defend themselves. Which makes you look like a Grade-A dick.)
If you engage in sexual activity with someone who ends up saying 'yes' because she's afraid to say 'no', that is still a form of rape. And the defense of 'she eventually said yes' doesn't hold up. Hell, I'm 135 pounds and I'm pretty muscular and in damn good shape, but I probably could not get away from a 220 pound male if he decided he wanted to rape me. So a lot of victims end up stopping the fight because they know in their soul they can't stop the rapist, or they're terrified they'll be hurt in another way. This usually occurs in a gang rape situation in which the woman is hopelessly outnumbered. Writing about this is really, really rage-inducing, by the way.
Also, females aren't the only victims of sexual assault. You dig? There tends to be a lot more shame around male victims of rape. Why? Because it makes them 'less of a man' to admit they were brutalized by another man? Um, it makes the RAPIST look like less of a man.
Whatever happened to getting to know someone or winning someone over with your wit or humor or intelligence? A real man doesn't have to force me or get me drunk to get my pants off. I'm pretty easy to please. Rape shouldn't be an option. At all.
That being said, my advice isn't "don't rape". That should be a given.
My advice also isn't "don't get raped", although I have taken steps in my life to avoid situations in which an assault could occur. It's a sad fact that girls tend to have to worry about the possibility of being sexually assaulted at most points of the day (especially at night if we're walking around campus and we need to get from point A to point B alone. Scary.)
My advice is: Maybe just don't be an asshole. Every day, when you wake up, resolve to just not be an asshole. You'd be amazed at how great life ends up looking.
Maybe try to be a good person. Maybe respect people and their body boundaries. Maybe choose to be a decent, upstanding individual and take care of a girl if she's in a bad spot at a party, rather than use that as an opportunity to treat her like a piece of meat.
I'm not the most experienced duck in the pond, but I'm one of the lucky ones. I happen to have a partner who treats my body with respect and dignity. I wish this were everyone's experience.
But if you're looking for someone who has a personal investment in rape culture cases, you should read my best friend's op-ed piece on Hypervocal: I Am Jane Doe. Chelsea and I have been best friends since we were 8 years old. For a few years we lost touch but we reconnected through Facebook (thank God for that damn thing), so I was not actually in contact with her when she was dealing with her rape, but she has come forward with her story and it is compelling, heartbreaking, but ultimately sort of triumphant, as this is the first time she's talked about her rape this publicly. It broke my heart, but I couldn't be prouder of her or the reaction she's gotten from her piece. She deserves every bit of the praise she's getting.
Hopefully this situation, as Chelsea said so poignantly in her piece, will lead to constructive conversation about rape culture and apologists and perhaps we can work to reverse the public discourse. But it won't happen unless we speak up.
Here's to you, Chels. And to all of the Jane Does.
I may not be in your number, but I will do whatever I can to make sure you are heard.
You will be heard.
ally
When I was 15 years old, I attended my first-and only-high school dance. Well, outside of junior and senior prom, which were excuses to spend a ton of money on getting fake hair weaved into my real hair and gel manicures, as well as opportunities to cry in the Jessica McClintock dressing room because the size 14 dress would barely fit over my hips. I digress.
I remember what I wore down to the shoes. A sundress with flowers, a grey cardigan, and Keds. I don't go to dances to hook up. I learned that lesson in sixth grade, when I saw my crush dancing with another girl and spent the rest of the night crying on my couch thinking I was going to be alone forever.
That dance was the first and only time I have ever been touched by a guy in an aggressive, anonymous way. While moving my way through the crowds to find my friends at the other end of the dance hall, I got my ass grabbed. Not like one hand on my butt. I'm talking both hands, actively clamped onto my rear end for about 3 seconds, and then they released. I have no idea who did it, and I really don't care to know. But it haunted me. I felt violated on a level I had never experienced before. That 3 seconds of involuntary possession caused me in an indirect way to retreat back into a shell of virgin fear for a number of years.
It may seem laughably small, the fact that the only form of sexual invasion I've ever experienced was a pair of hands gripping my butt. But I do remember feeling like someone just saw my body as something they could physically experience without permission, as if society or our view of women had given this dude permission to grab. I still don't know who did it. Hell, maybe it was one of my friends being funny and I can't remember. But it altered my perception of what the dance was supposed to mean.
The reason I reference this moment is because I'm fully aware of my position as a privileged white cis-gendered heterosexual girl who can pass for 'normal' in a heteronormative society (yes I use big English major words. Google them, you peons). A lot of times, I feel like I'm on the outside looking in when things like Steubenville or Torrington occur. I cannot conceptualize how it must feel to be in that situation. But I do feel the effects of growing up in a culture that insidiously promotes feminine subjugation, to the point that some of the students in Steubenville's case weren't even versed in what 'rape' meant.
Girls are usually told they're being hysterical when they get emotional. I am not a girl being hysterical. I am calm, present, grounded, and really, really pissed off.
Mostly because the situation in Steubenville seemed to circle around this poor girl, who was unconscious, getting blamed for her sexual violation. That doesn't happen with guys; guys don't get blamed when they're assaulted. When the Jerry Sandusky case broke, no one blamed the victims. Nor should they be blamed. A victim of assault or rape is never to be blamed. Yet, here we are.
I also think it's bugnuts that the entirety of the media outlets is sympathizing with the rapists and their jail fate. You know what's worse than the fate of those boys? The fact that they raped an unconscious girl at a party and then bragged about it in a viral video for shits and giggles and left her to figure out what happened to her from Tweets about the party. THAT'S what's the real tragedy. We don't teach young kids to respect each other.
At the same time, I kind of can understand it. Teenagers have a vague conception of what rape is because guess where they're getting their concept of sex from? More often than not it's online porn, in which a passive female is thrown around like a rag doll and experiencing zero sexual pleasure while a guy gets his kicks. There is no reciprocation of sexual acts, only a concentrated desire to please with no concern for their own body. Not that there isn't porn out there designed to counteract this issue with tasteful and respectful representations of mutual gratification, which is nice. Hell, the fact that I can even say that means we have come a long, LONG way from where we used to be. It's also indicative of how far we've come in the feminist movement that this kind of rhetoric is even allowed in the public conversation. I'm thrilled it's getting more notice.
At the same time, we are a country that is petrified of teaching kids about sex. Kids aren't stupid, and they're sneaky as hell. The more you tell a child they aren't allowed to do something, the more they want to do it. My nephew isn't allowed to run around the elliptical when I'm on it, but that just makes him more curious to find out what would happen if he got too close. Maybe tell kids that sex is a thing, and if they do it, to use protection and don't just throw it around at everyone they see, and maybe there will be some more constructive conversation about sexual health? But I digress.
So let me just outline this as clearly as I can, if there are any teenage boys reading this who are confused on what 'rape' defines itself as:
If you engage in sexual activity with anyone without their consent, that is rape.
If you penetrate another person with anything, even if it's unrelated to sexual organs, that is rape. (Sometimes people do this in order to leave no trace of their DNA behind.)
If you engage in sexual activity with someone who is unconscious or asleep, therefore unable to give their consent, that is rape. (Although that's not sex in my opinion, that's just trying to dominate someone who can't defend themselves. Which makes you look like a Grade-A dick.)
If you engage in sexual activity with someone who ends up saying 'yes' because she's afraid to say 'no', that is still a form of rape. And the defense of 'she eventually said yes' doesn't hold up. Hell, I'm 135 pounds and I'm pretty muscular and in damn good shape, but I probably could not get away from a 220 pound male if he decided he wanted to rape me. So a lot of victims end up stopping the fight because they know in their soul they can't stop the rapist, or they're terrified they'll be hurt in another way. This usually occurs in a gang rape situation in which the woman is hopelessly outnumbered. Writing about this is really, really rage-inducing, by the way.
Also, females aren't the only victims of sexual assault. You dig? There tends to be a lot more shame around male victims of rape. Why? Because it makes them 'less of a man' to admit they were brutalized by another man? Um, it makes the RAPIST look like less of a man.
Whatever happened to getting to know someone or winning someone over with your wit or humor or intelligence? A real man doesn't have to force me or get me drunk to get my pants off. I'm pretty easy to please. Rape shouldn't be an option. At all.
That being said, my advice isn't "don't rape". That should be a given.
My advice also isn't "don't get raped", although I have taken steps in my life to avoid situations in which an assault could occur. It's a sad fact that girls tend to have to worry about the possibility of being sexually assaulted at most points of the day (especially at night if we're walking around campus and we need to get from point A to point B alone. Scary.)
My advice is: Maybe just don't be an asshole. Every day, when you wake up, resolve to just not be an asshole. You'd be amazed at how great life ends up looking.
Maybe try to be a good person. Maybe respect people and their body boundaries. Maybe choose to be a decent, upstanding individual and take care of a girl if she's in a bad spot at a party, rather than use that as an opportunity to treat her like a piece of meat.
I'm not the most experienced duck in the pond, but I'm one of the lucky ones. I happen to have a partner who treats my body with respect and dignity. I wish this were everyone's experience.
But if you're looking for someone who has a personal investment in rape culture cases, you should read my best friend's op-ed piece on Hypervocal: I Am Jane Doe. Chelsea and I have been best friends since we were 8 years old. For a few years we lost touch but we reconnected through Facebook (thank God for that damn thing), so I was not actually in contact with her when she was dealing with her rape, but she has come forward with her story and it is compelling, heartbreaking, but ultimately sort of triumphant, as this is the first time she's talked about her rape this publicly. It broke my heart, but I couldn't be prouder of her or the reaction she's gotten from her piece. She deserves every bit of the praise she's getting.
Hopefully this situation, as Chelsea said so poignantly in her piece, will lead to constructive conversation about rape culture and apologists and perhaps we can work to reverse the public discourse. But it won't happen unless we speak up.
Here's to you, Chels. And to all of the Jane Does.
I may not be in your number, but I will do whatever I can to make sure you are heard.
You will be heard.
ally
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Thinking Thursdays.
This is going to be a recurring theme on the blog...much more so than the video stuff. Now that I'm teaching a lot more, I realized that the LAST thing I want is for my students to see me flail and drop F-bombs on a video, and then expect them to take me seriously. Not going to happen. So they'll come back, just later.
This recurring post style is going to be just a catchall of things I'm thinking about, or stuff that's happening I wanted to share with you guys, or just things I really, really, really like to do. Or Internet Links. Or .gifs. So...here we go!
1. Okay. I am so on board with you all that the picture of my Dad slapping Kim Mulkey's butt is all sorts of weird. There are many things my dad does that make me go:
Trust me, that picture was one of those things I wish I could scrub out of my mind with BLEACH.
But I read this article, and then just got pissed off. Quit PMSing. She let him slap her butt - and it was a very, very very nice butt - and he did, and everyone thought it was funny. Weird and totally not what I would want my nearly 60 year old Dad to do in front of AP cameras, but what can you do? Calm yo' ass.
2. Everyone else was applauding Rand Paul's filibustering prowess yesterday, and the fact that he did a filibuster the way you're supposed to do it. I don't agree with pretty much everything else this guy stands for but the drone thing I can get behind. I just kept wondering how the guy went to the bathroom or held in his pee that long. I know he got help from other people to do it, but still.
3. I'm currently trying out a style of yoga that's always been intimidating to me: Astanga. I usually do Power Vinyasa Yoga which changes every single time and I enjoy that because it doesn't get repetitive but there's something about the yoking of mind/body/spirit in the practice of Astanga that interests me. There are six series of Astanga yoga and it's where the Western conception of Power Vinyasa yoga such as Baptiste Power Yoga came from. Each series is fixed, and it's brutal. The primary series alone is a pain in the ass. No. Literally. At one point you kind of have to jam your foot up your butt. Check it out here. That series alone takes two hours, and there are thousands of people who practice it every day. At some point you're going to have to deal with me ranting about the different types of yoga over at the other blog, but that's for another day. In the meantime, go YouTube Kino MacGregor (an Astanga yoga master who is currently working on the 4th series) and be amazed at what the human body can do. Holy hamstrings. It should be noted here that there are SEVERAL primary series poses I just cannot do due to the fact that I am not made of Stretch Armstrong glue. But the process intrigues me.
4. I cannot take you seriously if you don't know how to walk in high heels. This only applies to those girls who buy ridiculously high heels for the sake of wanting to look fierce and then tripping all over themselves. If you don't want to learn how to handle yourself in a stiletto, then invest in a smaller heel. It's cooler to know your limitations and work with them rather than be something you're not. I always wanted to have high heels because my legs were always the really good part of my body even when I was heavier, so when I was 17 I bought myself a pair of skyhigh Steve Madden pointed-toe pumps and forced myself to learn how to rock them. Today, I own a lot of heels and I know how to walk in all of them. (I also own flats. Because nothing says "unprofessional teacher" like tripping on the hem of your pants in your hooker shoes as you're teaching Foucault to freshmen)
5. My Dad ordered a bunch of those BeachBody Shakeology shake packets a few years ago and fell in love with them, and then Shea became an ambassador for the company and asked if we wanted any. My brother and Mom decided to order...a lot. I am currently drowning in vegan Tropical Strawberry protein packs. I've had it for breakfast every single day this week and I don't think I'm ever going to get sick of them. Which is good, because I have literally a thousand more of them. My fun breakfasts make up for the fact that at dinner I'm too tired to eat anything more complex than a veggie burger, sweet potato, and broccoli. I am all about the fancy shmance over here, clearly.
6. Unpopular opinion time: I regret cutting my hair as short as I did. Note: I do NOT regret chopping it in general, as the hair was a donation to a wig company that makes wigs for child cancer patients. The thirteen inches I originally donated were the right thing to do and I don't regret it for a second. It was the next day, when I walked into the salon and asked them to give me a grown-out pixie and ended up looking like a shaved rat, that I completely regret. As well as being completely impossible to style I got the sense that people in my life hated it. Also...and again this an unpopular opinion but it's honestly what I felt at the time...I just didn't feel feminine with that cut. I felt strong and bold and kind of like an epic badass, but I didn't feel like a woman. I recognize that there are people in this world that can feel that with short hair, but I just ended up feeling...weird. I feel like I actually cut it that length to prove a point; like a feminist backlash to the pretty long hair movement. But you know what? Not everything has to be a political statement, and I genuinely adored having long hair, and I'm working on getting it back. My hair is nearly to my shoulders again and I just feel a lot better about my look. It's also not jet black anymore and is instead reddish-blonde, which makes me look more personable and less Vampira-like.
7. My nephew knows all of the words to "Wide Awake" by Katy Perry. It is damn impressive. He also learned the hard rule of life: don't thrash to Mumford and Sons after eating a big bowl of pasta. Halfway through "I Will Wait" he stopped dead and said to my Mom, "What's happening to my belly?" Ah, indigestion hits at such a young age.
8. I'm pretty sure I'm going to burn all of my jeans and other pants that are not leggings. Leggings are the best and you can dress them up or dress them down, and you don't have to worry about them fitting after Chinese food.
9. I went to see Maroon 5 last weekend with a friend at Mohegan Sun. Our seats were so close I'm pretty sure I could see into Adam Levine's tight white jeans. I think I blacked out.
10. I don't know why I hadn't been watching RuPaul's Drag Race but I got introduced to it over the weekend and I.Am.OBSESSED. I just watch every episode like, "They design all of their clothes, and do their hair, and do their makeup, AND they're witty?!"
I wish I put a 1/4th as much effort into how I look as these girls do. Damn with a side of dayum. I want to put glitter and makeup on everything in my normal life, and this show exacerbates that desire to the nth degree. I want to put that face in my walk. Good lord.
And Ru? Oh girl.
This is a weird entry. Lots of drag queens and butt slapping.
I regret nothing.
ally
This recurring post style is going to be just a catchall of things I'm thinking about, or stuff that's happening I wanted to share with you guys, or just things I really, really, really like to do. Or Internet Links. Or .gifs. So...here we go!
1. Okay. I am so on board with you all that the picture of my Dad slapping Kim Mulkey's butt is all sorts of weird. There are many things my dad does that make me go:
But I read this article, and then just got pissed off. Quit PMSing. She let him slap her butt - and it was a very, very very nice butt - and he did, and everyone thought it was funny. Weird and totally not what I would want my nearly 60 year old Dad to do in front of AP cameras, but what can you do? Calm yo' ass.
2. Everyone else was applauding Rand Paul's filibustering prowess yesterday, and the fact that he did a filibuster the way you're supposed to do it. I don't agree with pretty much everything else this guy stands for but the drone thing I can get behind. I just kept wondering how the guy went to the bathroom or held in his pee that long. I know he got help from other people to do it, but still.
3. I'm currently trying out a style of yoga that's always been intimidating to me: Astanga. I usually do Power Vinyasa Yoga which changes every single time and I enjoy that because it doesn't get repetitive but there's something about the yoking of mind/body/spirit in the practice of Astanga that interests me. There are six series of Astanga yoga and it's where the Western conception of Power Vinyasa yoga such as Baptiste Power Yoga came from. Each series is fixed, and it's brutal. The primary series alone is a pain in the ass. No. Literally. At one point you kind of have to jam your foot up your butt. Check it out here. That series alone takes two hours, and there are thousands of people who practice it every day. At some point you're going to have to deal with me ranting about the different types of yoga over at the other blog, but that's for another day. In the meantime, go YouTube Kino MacGregor (an Astanga yoga master who is currently working on the 4th series) and be amazed at what the human body can do. Holy hamstrings. It should be noted here that there are SEVERAL primary series poses I just cannot do due to the fact that I am not made of Stretch Armstrong glue. But the process intrigues me.
4. I cannot take you seriously if you don't know how to walk in high heels. This only applies to those girls who buy ridiculously high heels for the sake of wanting to look fierce and then tripping all over themselves. If you don't want to learn how to handle yourself in a stiletto, then invest in a smaller heel. It's cooler to know your limitations and work with them rather than be something you're not. I always wanted to have high heels because my legs were always the really good part of my body even when I was heavier, so when I was 17 I bought myself a pair of skyhigh Steve Madden pointed-toe pumps and forced myself to learn how to rock them. Today, I own a lot of heels and I know how to walk in all of them. (I also own flats. Because nothing says "unprofessional teacher" like tripping on the hem of your pants in your hooker shoes as you're teaching Foucault to freshmen)
5. My Dad ordered a bunch of those BeachBody Shakeology shake packets a few years ago and fell in love with them, and then Shea became an ambassador for the company and asked if we wanted any. My brother and Mom decided to order...a lot. I am currently drowning in vegan Tropical Strawberry protein packs. I've had it for breakfast every single day this week and I don't think I'm ever going to get sick of them. Which is good, because I have literally a thousand more of them. My fun breakfasts make up for the fact that at dinner I'm too tired to eat anything more complex than a veggie burger, sweet potato, and broccoli. I am all about the fancy shmance over here, clearly.
6. Unpopular opinion time: I regret cutting my hair as short as I did. Note: I do NOT regret chopping it in general, as the hair was a donation to a wig company that makes wigs for child cancer patients. The thirteen inches I originally donated were the right thing to do and I don't regret it for a second. It was the next day, when I walked into the salon and asked them to give me a grown-out pixie and ended up looking like a shaved rat, that I completely regret. As well as being completely impossible to style I got the sense that people in my life hated it. Also...and again this an unpopular opinion but it's honestly what I felt at the time...I just didn't feel feminine with that cut. I felt strong and bold and kind of like an epic badass, but I didn't feel like a woman. I recognize that there are people in this world that can feel that with short hair, but I just ended up feeling...weird. I feel like I actually cut it that length to prove a point; like a feminist backlash to the pretty long hair movement. But you know what? Not everything has to be a political statement, and I genuinely adored having long hair, and I'm working on getting it back. My hair is nearly to my shoulders again and I just feel a lot better about my look. It's also not jet black anymore and is instead reddish-blonde, which makes me look more personable and less Vampira-like.
7. My nephew knows all of the words to "Wide Awake" by Katy Perry. It is damn impressive. He also learned the hard rule of life: don't thrash to Mumford and Sons after eating a big bowl of pasta. Halfway through "I Will Wait" he stopped dead and said to my Mom, "What's happening to my belly?" Ah, indigestion hits at such a young age.
8. I'm pretty sure I'm going to burn all of my jeans and other pants that are not leggings. Leggings are the best and you can dress them up or dress them down, and you don't have to worry about them fitting after Chinese food.
9. I went to see Maroon 5 last weekend with a friend at Mohegan Sun. Our seats were so close I'm pretty sure I could see into Adam Levine's tight white jeans. I think I blacked out.
10. I don't know why I hadn't been watching RuPaul's Drag Race but I got introduced to it over the weekend and I.Am.OBSESSED. I just watch every episode like, "They design all of their clothes, and do their hair, and do their makeup, AND they're witty?!"
And Ru? Oh girl.
 |
| RuPaul, I bow down to you. You are my guru. |
I regret nothing.
ally
Friday, March 1, 2013
Healing After Relapse. (NEDA)
It's NEDA: National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.
I had this whole post ready on how I healed my body from my eating disorder and now my life is full of yoga, running, meditation, eating Cadbury Mini-Eggs, and joy.
Which is true and my life is pretty damn sweet.
But this post is going to be about what happens when the demons come back.
I think in order to fully heal, you have to know what it's like to go back into that dark place and force your way out of it. And if people are going to be emailing me their incredible stories of resilience through disordered eating or diagnosed eating disorders, then I should come clean about my experiences in the hope that if someone is going through the same thing that they can see there's light on the other side.
Last year, I relapsed.
I relapsed because I hadn't really healed yet. That's as basic as I can put it. It started in October of 2011 and lasted until March 2012.
I didn't revert back into a completely destructive lifestyle. It was much sneakier. I also seriously do have a gluten and lactose allergy, so don't jump up my ass about that. I was eating enough.
I relapsed in a very specific way, one that, grossly enough, I thought was 'the safest option'; it wouldn't cause my physical appearance to change in any way, and it would provide me an outlet. That's as detailed as I can get about the situation, but just be assured I wasn't doing anything that would put my health in danger.
Still, it angers me that I let myself go back into a place of mental dust that didn't allow me to deal with my stress in a healthy way. I should have gone to more yoga classes. I should have allowed more time to relax, read, or do something fun. I should have allowed myself to cry.
So yes. I relapsed.
And then I stopped.
The way I can attempt to explain it is as follows - when something happens in your life that is a force of nature, positively pulling you towards something wonderful, and you resist that pull, God won't just push you in that direction. He'll kick you. Hard. Over and over again.
You won't be able to run away, because God or Spirit or whatever's up there controlling it all has His of Her foot in your ass. And that's a big, big foot.
Over the course of a few months, I felt that urge to let go and let God, but suppressed it with bad habits that I allowed back into my life because, of course...they were safer than the unknown. A lot of times our bad habits become comforting.
Then, gradually, I started letting some of those walls come down. The feelings came in tidal waves. I did a lot of crying. Sometimes, I wouldn't even know why I was crying. It was old wounds working their way out of me. But I think it's a lot healthier to cry about something than stuff everything down. It was years of unresolved emotions getting purged.
A lot of the time, we don't want to confess our issues because we're afraid the ones we love will leave. If they do leave, or they make you feel like a victim, kick their vindictive, shitty ass out of your life. (haha. shitty ass. that's gross.)
The ones worth their salt will stick around. Not only that, but they will hold your hand and let you cry, and then game plan techniques with you so you don't fall back down the rabbit hole. They will help you because they want to. And it won't come from a place of victimization or judgment. They'll do it because they want you to be your best.
I've been habit-free for a year, and I can say with confidence that I will never relapse again in ANY capacity.
Because sometimes, not always but sometimes....love is enough.
Love can be all it takes to bring you out of the darkness. It'll make you want to love yourself more, and take care of yourself, because you'll start to see yourself the way you are seen. I wanted to love myself more, and take care of myself, because I wanted to keep a certain element of my life. I knew if I let it, it would make me a better person. And it has.
Love makes you want to experience happiness and peace.
Relapsing has no place in my current peace. My life is crazy, so there's not a lot of room for peace, but there is ZERO room for relapsing.
Love is a big thing. It takes up a lot of space.
And if you let it...love will save you.
ally
I had this whole post ready on how I healed my body from my eating disorder and now my life is full of yoga, running, meditation, eating Cadbury Mini-Eggs, and joy.
Which is true and my life is pretty damn sweet.
But this post is going to be about what happens when the demons come back.
I think in order to fully heal, you have to know what it's like to go back into that dark place and force your way out of it. And if people are going to be emailing me their incredible stories of resilience through disordered eating or diagnosed eating disorders, then I should come clean about my experiences in the hope that if someone is going through the same thing that they can see there's light on the other side.
Last year, I relapsed.
I relapsed because I hadn't really healed yet. That's as basic as I can put it. It started in October of 2011 and lasted until March 2012.
I didn't revert back into a completely destructive lifestyle. It was much sneakier. I also seriously do have a gluten and lactose allergy, so don't jump up my ass about that. I was eating enough.
I relapsed in a very specific way, one that, grossly enough, I thought was 'the safest option'; it wouldn't cause my physical appearance to change in any way, and it would provide me an outlet. That's as detailed as I can get about the situation, but just be assured I wasn't doing anything that would put my health in danger.
Still, it angers me that I let myself go back into a place of mental dust that didn't allow me to deal with my stress in a healthy way. I should have gone to more yoga classes. I should have allowed more time to relax, read, or do something fun. I should have allowed myself to cry.
So yes. I relapsed.
And then I stopped.
The way I can attempt to explain it is as follows - when something happens in your life that is a force of nature, positively pulling you towards something wonderful, and you resist that pull, God won't just push you in that direction. He'll kick you. Hard. Over and over again.
You won't be able to run away, because God or Spirit or whatever's up there controlling it all has His of Her foot in your ass. And that's a big, big foot.
Over the course of a few months, I felt that urge to let go and let God, but suppressed it with bad habits that I allowed back into my life because, of course...they were safer than the unknown. A lot of times our bad habits become comforting.
Then, gradually, I started letting some of those walls come down. The feelings came in tidal waves. I did a lot of crying. Sometimes, I wouldn't even know why I was crying. It was old wounds working their way out of me. But I think it's a lot healthier to cry about something than stuff everything down. It was years of unresolved emotions getting purged.
A lot of the time, we don't want to confess our issues because we're afraid the ones we love will leave. If they do leave, or they make you feel like a victim, kick their vindictive, shitty ass out of your life. (haha. shitty ass. that's gross.)
The ones worth their salt will stick around. Not only that, but they will hold your hand and let you cry, and then game plan techniques with you so you don't fall back down the rabbit hole. They will help you because they want to. And it won't come from a place of victimization or judgment. They'll do it because they want you to be your best.
I've been habit-free for a year, and I can say with confidence that I will never relapse again in ANY capacity.
Because sometimes, not always but sometimes....love is enough.
Love can be all it takes to bring you out of the darkness. It'll make you want to love yourself more, and take care of yourself, because you'll start to see yourself the way you are seen. I wanted to love myself more, and take care of myself, because I wanted to keep a certain element of my life. I knew if I let it, it would make me a better person. And it has.
Love makes you want to experience happiness and peace.
Relapsing has no place in my current peace. My life is crazy, so there's not a lot of room for peace, but there is ZERO room for relapsing.
Love is a big thing. It takes up a lot of space.
And if you let it...love will save you.
ally
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