Thursday, January 31, 2013

The Benefits of Being Stacked


An interesting TED talk on the construction of beauty

"And I got these free things because of how I looked; not who I am. And there are people paying a cost for how they look and not who they are. {...} When I was writing this talk, I found it very difficult to strike an honest balance. Because on the one hand, I felt very uncomfortable to come out here and say, 'look, I've received all these benefits from a deck stacked in my favor.' And it also felt really uncomfortable to follow that up with 'and it doesn't always make me happy.' "

I think one of the hardest things women ever have to do is learn to be happy with ourselves, to be happy within our own skin. It's one of those things that I wonder if we ever really do. It's just so ingrained in us to hate our bodies that I often wonder if it's even possible not to.

I'm of the belief that there are three different ways of dealing with this.

The first is to change yourself. Many of us take this route. Not just once. But often. Most, everyday. We dye our hair. We wear certain clothes. We put on makeup. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. And I can honestly say that I do this mostly for myself. Because it makes me happy to do so. But, as a theater geek, I also know the value of a good costume. I understand that, when I put on that dress or that powder or those shoes, I am saying something very specific. I'm using visual means to communicate something about myself to the world. Be it the killer heels that make me half-a-foot taller, so I don't have to look up at people today. Or the concealer that hides the blemish that makes me feel too conspicuous for not the right reasons. Or, yes, the dress that reveals my assets, so for at least today I can mute down the voice that near-constantly points out all my flaws.


The second is to hate yourself. Again, not just once or sometimes. But. All. The. Time. To take that omnipresent voice in all our heads that assures us that if we just lost twenty pounds or had different hair or different skin and listen to it, let it color and sink its claws into everything we do. To define yourself more by what you're not than what you are. We all do it to an extent, but I've seen the damage it does to those who can't find ways to shut it out.

The third, which seems the best option, is to just stop caring so much. To give up the struggle. To realize that the world's definition of beauty is entirely unattainable and not worth aiming for. I can never decide if this is harder for ethnic minorities or not. On the one hand, we can't fit that definition of beauty. It is impossible for us. The standard definition of beauty is tall, thin, and, most applicably, white (don't believe me, watch the video). I grew up wanting to fit that definition, desperate to do so, while knowing I couldn't. 


Which, strangely, was helpful. I can't--not without drastic means far out of my financial and practical realm of reality--make myself white. I was born, will live, and will die forever outside the standard and accepted definition of beauty. After a while--usually about sixteen years, give or take your own awkward adolescence--you realize that it's not even worth trying. So you make peace with yourself. With your skin tone. With the shape of your eyes. With your height. And, yes, with your weight.

One thought that has always comforted me was the acceptance that, for all my assets and flaws, I'm actually fairly average. I can be pretty confident that, in any room I walk in, I will not be the most attractive person or the least attractive person in the room.

This shouldn't seem like a nice thought, but it is. I no longer have to shoot for that illustrious pretty rank because, no matter what I do, I'm unlikely to ever hold it. And I no longer have to worry about hitting that ultimate low because it's likely that I won't.

And, even if by some chance I do end up holding one of those titles, all it ever takes to change that is a room change.

Kinda makes the whole thing seem a little arbitrary and meaningless, doesn't it?


Yet we--and, yes, I am including me--spend so much time, effort, and money on it, sink so much stock in it. 

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

I Know I'm Not a Big EL James Fan But...

...for God's sake, "'Fifty Shades Of Grey is not a manual: it's a work of fiction and this is a case which demonstrates that things can go wrong."

I believe in the lifestyle; I believe in the fun and love and health of it. But it isn't something that just anyone should do. And it isn't something that should be done without proper thought, research, experience, and precaution.

And those who portray it--particularly the overblown, extreme, rare examples of it--without that thought, research, experience, and caution do a disservice to those of us who actually do it. Who live it. At best, they portray us as something we're not.

At worst...
Jeweller found not guilty of 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' attack on partner after jury hears she signed a 'sex slave contract' 

Unknowingly, unwittingly, whatever, they're teaching the worst kind of behavior to the most vulnerable among us; those who don't know any better. Fantasy is great; I'm a big fan of it. But those who write it and publish it out to the wider world have an obligation to realize that under that fantasy exists someone else's reality. Take a little care with it.

THE BALANCING ACT OF BEING FEMALE; OR, WHY WE HAVE SO MANY CLOTHES


Perhaps a bit of an oversimplification of why I have such a fabulous closet, but an interesting take on it.

"Women’s closets are often mocked as a form of self-indulgence, shop-a-holicism, or narcissism.  But this isn’t fair. [...] It’s a difficult job that we impose on women and we’re all too often damned-if-we-do and damned-if-we-don’t."





Saturday, January 12, 2013

The Risk in No-Risk


Not that I agree with everything in it, but it's not all wrong either.

"Traditional courtship — picking up the telephone and asking someone on a date — required courage, strategic planning and a considerable investment of ego (by telephone, rejection stings). Not so with texting, e-mail, Twitter or other forms of “asynchronous communication,” as techies call it. In the context of dating, it removes much of the need for charm; it’s more like dropping a line in the water and hoping for a nibble."

It's not that I object to hookups or casual dating. I don't. They have their place and purpose. And, if they make those involved in them happy, by all means continue as you are.

I just think that effort and riskand therefore any real sense of reward and value—has too often been taken for granted or even eliminated altogether. We too often trade intimacy for ease, real relationships for ready-made conveniences. 

We fill up on emotionally empty-calorie filler and yet rarely feel full. Then we wonder why so many of us feel lonely and unsatisfied regardless of our relationship status.

Perhaps this may be one reason why BDSM and kink are rising in popularity. There is inherent risk and effort involved in the lifestyle. There are rules and roles and skills and steps that must be employed to do it well. 

There is sexiness in that kind of effort. Appeal in that type of commitment and competency. It's difficult to invest the trust and effort and time required for these types of relationships and not create worthwhile intimacy.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

A Million First Dates


Also really interesting.

“Each relationship is its own little education,” Jacob says. “You learn more about what works and what doesn’t, what you really need and what you can go without. That feels like a useful process. I’m not jumping into something with the wrong person, or committing to something too early, as I’ve done in the past.” But he does wonder: When does it end? At what point does this learning curve become an excuse for not putting in the effort to make a relationship last? “Maybe I have the confidence now to go after the person I really want,” he says. “But I’m worried that I’m making it so I can’t fall in love.”

Fill The Jar Challenge

I am a huge fan of this!


"There is an old saying that states that if you put a penny in a jar each time you make love during the first year of a long relationship, and then take a penny out each time you make love after the first year, that you will never empty the jar. I think this is a sad prediction, but from speaking with many friends and acquaintances, I realize that for many this is the reality."

Instead of resigning ourselves to this fate, I agree, the aim should be the Fill the Jar Challenge

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Papi's Little Girl Needs to Learn a Lesson - Part One


The End of The World -  
Part One

Ivy Ferris collapsed onto the bus’s badly upholstered seat, her feet aching in the high-arched heels she wore for her job as an administrative assistant at Saint’s Marketing, a small, niche ad agency. Laying her handbag next to her, she shrugged out of the fitted jacket before undoing the first few buttons on the sleeveless shirt beneath.

The day had been hell. They’d had five fussy clients in and out of the office all day and, to top it all off, Harlan St. James, president of the company was out sick so she’d been forced to play apologetic hostess all day.

She was bone-tired and her face hurt from smiling. All she wanted was to go home.

Home.

It was still such a strange idea to her.

Her mother had been a professor of evolutionary psychology, who—no matter how hard she tried—just couldn’t quite make tenure. So they’d constantly been moving about from college to college, trying to make her positions stick.

Growing up in temporary, month-to-month apartments—and then finally her own college dorm rooms followed by her own cheap efficiency apartment—Ivy had never really had a real home until she’d moved into Marcus Ramirez’s house.

But it’d felt like home since the first time she stepped foot in it. As if she and the space recognized the other’s soul. It looked like the sitcom houses she’d stared at with such fascinated longing when she was young. It was a tall, if narrow, brown Victorian, sandwiched between identical blue and brick-colored ones. Comfortable. Settled. With steepled towers and patterned clay tiled roofs. It even had a white picket fence encircling it. It was what she’d always dreamed of as a child, every time she’d had to pack and unpack her life into as many cardboard boxes as their small, fuel-efficient car could hold.

It was Marcus’s dream house too, she knew. Having been shuffled around the foster system his whole life, Marcus understood Ivy’s desire—her driving need—for a home. He had it too. He’d once told her that he’d bought this house almost before he’d been able to afford it, often choosing mortgage over food because while he could survive a day—even a week—off just scraps and leftovers, he just couldn’t survive losing this house. His home.

Maybe that was why—that strained, awkward night three months into their relationship—when she’d told him her most guarded, rarely spoken secret as they sat in front of the fireplace in his perfect house, he hadn’t looked at her like she were crazy. Hadn’t looked at her—like so many others had—as if she were damaged.

She remembered that thoughtful look on his face, the quiet strength of him filling the room, right before he’d smiled, sat her on his lap, and agreed to be her Daddy. Her Papi.

Ivy looked out the window of the bus at the passing scenery, seeing that her stop was quickly approaching. She sat up straighter. She needed to get ready.

Reaching up to her bound hair, she deftly unpinned the blond curls, letting the spiraled curls fall to brush her shoulders in springy ringlets. She tucked the pins inside her handbag before taking out her disposable makeup removers.

Carefully, she wiped the oil-soaked pads across her face, wiping away her foundation, powder, and blush. Her stress, her worries, and the toll of years. She could feel herself getting lighter, younger, as the weight of the world was wiped away.

Once clean-faced, she felt freer. Felt a smile creep across her face. Not the coy, reserved, proper one she’d been using all day to placate demanding clients. But the smile of a child. Unburdened by worries of crow’s feet or laugh lines. Not mentally measuring the proportion of lips to teeth to gums, aiming for that winning smile practiced to perfection in mirrors. Hers was a smile that spoke purely of joy.

It was magic, that smile. The way it spread through her, changing the way she held herself. The way she saw herself. The way she felt inside her skin. As an adult, she was always so aware of how others saw her. Was so aware of the fact that people were always watching her, judging her, making sure she toed that exacting line the adult world—the real world—set.

But when she stepped into her other role—her other self—none of that mattered anymore. Scooting back in her seat, Ivy marveled at the fact that her feet didn’t quite reach the bus’s floor. She kicked her legs, letting her heels—which now made her think of times long ago when she used to play dress-up in her mother’s shoes—swing and smack against the bus’s wall. She listened to the hum of the engine, to the weary sounds of the other riders, and tried to get her beating feet to match the world’s rhythm. To lose herself in those sounds.

She turned to press her hands and face against the bus window’s glass and watched the familiar neighborhood whoosh past her. She breathed a heavy puff of air against the air-conditioner-cooled pane, watching with delight as it fogged over the world. She took one finger and traced a big heart, taking exacting strokes to make it perfect. Quickly, before the heart disappeared into the clear nothingness of the glass, she scribbled the initials IF + MR in the heart’s center, sealing it—the wish of it, the promise of it—into the ether forever before pulling the bus’s cord to signal her stop...

Read Part Two Here

Papi's Little Girl Needs to Learn a Lesson - Part Two


The End of The World - 
Part Two
Read Part One Here

To read the rest of this story, please check out this novel of interwoven stories with Deep Desires Press!

Kinksters call it play for a reason. Come have some fun!


Life can make love hard, especially in the kink community. Follow an eclectic, kinky ensemble, through a series of interwoven stories, as they struggle to put a little more play into their lives.

Especially when the marriage between Kat and Peter Richards starts to fall apart. It’ll take this community of kinksters to bring them back together again. After four years of marriage, Kat and her husband’s relationship seems so…nice. Not bad. Just average, ordinary. Nice. They haven’t played in forever and she desperately misses it. She wonders if they’ve lost their spark and worries her happily ever after came at the cost of her sex life.

Peter will need the help of their friends  — from an exhibitionist learning to reconnect with her body and appreciate being looked at again, to an exhausted, off-duty cop having a rough night with an unexpected partner, to a Little struggling to keep her roleplay fantasy fresh against the toll of reality’s ticking clock — to remember that, with trust, communication, and the right partners, play can make life and love so much better.

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