A field guide to growing up without growing apart
Speaking of work, because that is all I have to talk about apparently, I asked for equity today. When I started working here in February of 2015 there were no employees, just a CEO with an idea and some sales and two of his […]
As you know, my husband and I recently went on a two week vacation. Since we were camping the whole time, I made the decision to not bring any makeup along. Now, it’s not that I typically wear a ton of makeup but I definitely […]
I’ve been a bridesmaid before. We’ve made the invites, taken the photos, planned the parties, and so much more, but something about this summer’s bridesmaid duties has felt off. You’d think I’d have gotten the hang of it by now, seeing as this is my 4th wedding party, but this morning I figured out the difference, the thing that’s missing this year. It’s friendship, it’s my fellow Naughty Princesses.
In the past it was all four of us planning together, talking through what the Bachelorette would look like, delegating tasks, all giving speeches. For this wedding I’m a million miles away from them, planning parties for a girl they don’t know, and while it’s flattering to be the Maid of Honor, it’s also incredibly isolating when I don’t know any of the brides’ other friends and none of the other bridesmaids are interested in helping. This summer has been filled with making paper flowers, planning parties, and trying on dresses, all alone. When I see the bride I know she feels it to, only getting help from me and criticism from her mother. If I’m stressed I can’t even imagine how overwhelmed she is feeling and it’s so sad to think that she doesn’t have a group of friends all in one place dedicated to helping her. I can only do so much alone.
The bachelorette party is this Friday night and I’ve worked really hard at getting everything together and awesome for it to work out. But suddenly this weekend I panicked at how much money I’ve been spending on it – food, decorations, drinks, all add up when you’re the only one paying. And in a fit of strength and desperation I started delegating. I told one bridesmaid she was in charge of wine, and another that she was in charge of appetizers, and sent out a mass message to all the guests to bring any fun games and décor that they had lying around. I could manage desert and after dinner snacks, most of the decorations and the major activities. But it was time they stepped up and did more than show up.
But instead of getting little to no responses like I’d expected, in the last few days the party has taken on an entirely new life. People offering to make cakes and bring mixed cocktails, bring crazy games and decorate entire locations. The bridesmaids are still dragging their feet but the other guests are completely stepping up. Suddenly I feel like I’m almost not doing anything, and while it’s partially amazing, it is also stressing me out that my friend and her friends will think I’ve totally dropped the ball. And after being entirely on my own all summer, having help is feeling a bit like a failure.
But I know that’s not true, and even if it is, it won’t matter come September 28th after her wedding, when I never have to see any of these people again if I don’t want to. It’s just a shame that I’m not friends with all of these people already, so we can share more than a few last minute messages before the party. I miss planning with help, and planning with people I can count on, planning with Cindy, Snow and Merskank.
I’m sure most people are used to this kind of party planning, and it’s about time I joined the real world of wedding parties who live in all corners of the country. But I’m grateful for those good wedding experiences we had just after college. When we were still all together and still all on the same team.
Who knows, maybe this party planned by strangers will work out better than I expect. Anything can happen! But I’m probably still going to fill my car with everything they say they’re bringing, just in case.w
The idea of a Bucket list has never really appealed to me. It seems like making a list of things to do before you die is so definitive and constricting. What happens if you die without completing it? What happens if you complete it and […]
GUYS! WHEN DID JUNE HAPPEN?! I feel like I always say this but, seriously, has spring gone by too fast for anyone else? Now that June is here and my Grand Euro Adventure is coming to a close I’m really feeling the pressure of heading […]
As many of you know, Sleeping Booty is currently on a European adventure. Now of course she is having a lot of fun, but recently she admitted to the fellow princesses that she was missing quality girl time. She expressed the need for some female empowerment. Now, I’m sure all of you know what that term means generally, but for the princesses it has a very specific meaning. In college we were known for our quarterly “Female Empowerment Nights.” These were girl only parties that we hosted with the sole purpose of empowering. We made kickass music videos, did crazy competitions, made awesome artwork, skinny dipped, and even burned our bras.
Now, obviously, I cannot blink and be across the ocean to engage in empowering activities with Sleeping Booty. But what I can do is send all my love and empowering thoughts over the mighty internet to you tonight. So Sleeping Booty, here is a playlist to make you fierce.
1. To remind you that it’s always Ho’s Before Bro’s, I give you the Spice Girls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ
2. And of course, you must remember the good times. So here’s the song we made our first empowering video to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJWtLf4-WWs
3. Because you are The Wind Beneath my Wings, and Because Beaches is the most ridiculous chick flick ever made!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kbc_F_uMsw
4. Remember that its ok to need Wide Open Spaces, that’s why you took this trip in the first place:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dom7VlltBUc
5. Don’t fall for no ‘Scrubs’, because you know how much you’re really worth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM
6. And finally, switch the man in this song with me and know that any of us princesses would walk 500 miles just to be with you when you needed us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbNlMtqrYS0
We love you and don’t you ever forget it! You are never alone!
Man I love menfolk. It’s not that I don’t love women (female empowerment forever!), but I also just really (really) enjoy men, and as a result of spending the last few weekends in the company of more of the opposite sex than usual, I’m reminded […]
It’s Thanksgiving! And there is no better time to thank all the wonderful people and bloggers who’ve inspired and supported us over our first year of blogging. We’re so appreciative for this online community and incredibly shocked by the amount of love we’ve received from […]
A week ago a friend of mine told me she has decided to become a body builder. And I’m fucking pissed.
Okay so I’m not so much pissed as I am worried… and not so much worried as just plain shocked… and not so much shocked as just completely and utterly overwhelmed. What the hell? Is body building really still a thing? Normal people actually choose to do it for fun? But seriously, it exists?
To me body building has always been this cartoonish joke from the past, sure people used to do it but after Arnold Schwartzenkegal kicked everyone’s ass the ‘sport’ more or less faded out, right? They must have realized that steroids aren’t healthy, right? Those winners in the Guinness Book of World Records are rare people, right?
I even get that it’s sometimes fun to watch super buff guys fake wrestle in the WWE or even be entertained by the 80 year old woman on YouTube who lifts her car, but body building in real life? Like as a hobby that my close friend is choosing to spend the next 2 years of her life participating in? Like something that is prevalent enough that the local gym is offering classes to help you compete? Like something that smart, intelligent, young people decide to do for fun? That kind of body building doesn’t make any sense to me.
From what I’ve learned in the last week, modern body building competitions are like beauty pageants for really muscled people, except beauty pageants at least ask the contestants to answer a question and show off a talent before making them parade around in a swimsuit. There are no scholarships or promises of world peace here, only spray tans and creepy posing, the judges circling around to inspect the competitors like they’re buyers at a dog show.
As my friend explained what her regimen would entail for the next 2 years of her life I did my best not to let my jaw drop, seriously questioning her sanity as well as my reality. Apparently she is going to drink 3 protein shakes, take at least 8 ‘vitamin’ pills and spend two hours in the gym every day. It’s a myth that eating small meals all day is healthier for you she assured me, so her plan is to skip breakfast and lunch, eating two large chicken breasts and some special protein filled rice for dinner. Then once she’s in better shape (March apparently) she’ll approach the body building coaches that have advertised at her gym, asking them to take her on as a client for the next 6 months. If they agree she’ll pay them $2,000 upfront (not sure if that is for the full 6 months or not) and she’ll be given a meal plan, more diet/muscle pills and a community of like-minded people to hold her accountable for her body.
Then come September my friend will willingly cover her porcelain white skin with an orange spray tan and take routine steroid tests before parading around in a bikini as judges inspect her muscles, measuring them and comparing them to another girl’s who is just as desperate for their love. The prize money is minimal and the favor of the judges is everything, I tried not to explode as she told me that she’d be working on her abs more than her arms because the judges tend not to go for bulky biceps and that all cardio is out because just lifting weights straight does much more good. Seriously, this is her idea of a hobby? Altering her body in hopes of pleasing a complete stranger? She thinks this is something that will make her happy? No cardio?!
The worst part is that she isn’t happy now and thinks that this will somehow bring purpose and fulfillment into her life. But how can worrying about what you look like help you find happiness?
When I met her in college she was about 15lbs overweight, having grown up in oversized t-shirts to hide the boobs that had grown too much too fast. As we grew closer I watched as she shed the weight and her wardrobe, posting photos of scantily clad women on our walls for inspiration and reading beauty and dieting blogs regularly. She was always a beautiful girl, but in the last few years she’s become a stunner, putting in hours daily to perfectly primp her hair and paint her face. Every person she meets tells her how beautiful she is. Maybe she has trouble taking compliments to heart or maybe she just will always crave more of it. Maybe it’s my fault for not helping her get over this sooner.
She’s tall like me and her boobs are the kind that have never fit in a string bikini, so you can imagine my surprise when she told me she thinks she can transform her soft pale self into a tanned muscled mass. What’s the point, I asked her, genuinely confused to why she’d even consider something like this.
It’s for the challenge, she told me, she’s never had to work hard at anything in her life (school came easy) so she might as well see what she can do. She then pulled out her phone and scrolled through Instagram photos tagged with #thinspiration and captioned with “nothing tastes as good as healthy feels,” excitedly showing me what she’ll look like in a few months. This girl is my favorite she told me, pointing to a person that was tall like us. How could I argue with her then? She was so excited, and exercise and challenging yourself are good things, right?
Well it’s been a week and I’m ready to argue, realizing that these body building competitions are all about looks and pleasing gross judges. There is nothing about health, happiness or making the world a better place anywhere amongst these pageants and I’m worried guys, I’m so worried. How am I supposed to sit back and watch as my friend wastes her intelligence and beauty and life chasing some screwed up ideal of beauty?
The only part of this that makes even minor sense to me is the exercise part. I have plenty of friends that are hard core athletes, two of my best friends are skiing in the Olympics this year and another 6 of my Facebook friends are headed over there too. I think it’s awesome that they have 10 pack abs and can bench press themselves 100 times, that they’ve chosen to spend 60 hours a week in the gym pursuing a goal. I know how good it feels to push past that wall your body thought it saw and how rewarding it is to accomplish things that so many other people can’t do. But getting in shape isn’t the problem here. Being strong or dedicated or athletic isn’t the problem here.
The problem is the why.
My friend is doing this because she wants to look good in a swimsuit. She is doing this because she wants to look the BEST in a swimsuit. She isn’t creating anything other than a visual ideal. She isn’t seeing how much weight she can bench press or see how fast she can ski around a gate. She isn’t trying to win a medal for the highest jump or prove that women can dunk too. She is purely and simply working her ass off to be more attractive, trying to find happiness and validation from people outside herself.
And I hate it. I hate it. I hate the concept and I hate the practice and I hate that she’s about to spend her time and money on this crap instead of on other beautiful and important things that I know she can and should do. She has a boring, terrible job that she has no intention of leaving, and a perfect supportive boyfriend who only fights with her because he doesn’t know how to make her happier. She told me she wants to go on anti depressants but she can’t because they might react poorly with her new vitamins. She used to want to be an actress and a singer, a public speaker and a politician, now instead of trying for any of them or coming up with something new she’s decided to spend all her time over the next two years on her body. And I don’t know how to show her or tell her or explain to her that happiness isn’t found in what we look like.
How can spending that much time of your life thinking about your appearance be healthy? How can tailoring your body to be visually pleasing to a group of people who care nothing about you be good? How can spending 2,000 on pills and classes and meal plans be better than traveling the world? She says she’s doing it to accomplish something, to have a goal, but a visual goal, a comparison goal, a goal that is nothing more than an arbitrary judgment can’t be good.
Why doesn’t she have a goal to hike to the top of a mountain every day or to compete in the Ironman? Why isn’t she spending 2,000 on a happiness coach, teaching her to love her body instead of constantly want to alter it? Why isn’t she taking the steps to provide for her future, pushing herself into new careers and learning new things? She’s only 24 years old, already 24 years old, why doesn’t she realize what other things are important?
So I obviously don’t know everything, and I’m at a serious loss at how to help my friend but right now I do know I’m the happiest with myself I’ve ever been. I know that sounds ridiculous but I swear it is really and truly because I’ve made a serious effort to do three things in the last few months. I’ve decided to love the way my body looks (I only workout to improve my stamina and overall health-not appearance), to do things that make me happy (like adventuring and loving people), and to do things that make me proud (like staying at a mediocre job so I won’t be unemployed). It’s made a world of difference in my life, and I know that these three things won’t work for everybody, or even always for me, but… it’s a start right?
And anything is better than body building.
Hey there Princesses, I’m alive! And hello there to all you readers of our little blog that helps us 20-somethings stay in touch! It feels like our audience has doubled in the last few weeks I’ve been off the grid and though we get little […]
I wasn’t sure I was going to write this. Part of me doesn’t want to acknowledge that it happened at all. But… not talking about it makes me feel like it was somehow my fault, like I should be ashamed for how a stranger made […]
I hate shaving my legs.
You know how most girls have that story of stealing their mother’s razor when they were young because they just couldn’t wait to become a woman? Or that beautiful moment when they learned how to slide the delicate blades against the grain for the first time? To them shaving seemed so glamorous, so feminine, so grown up. Shaving your legs was a magical rite of passage, one that everyone waited their entire childhood for. Well, everyone except me, it seemed. I was the girl whose mother hated hair removal, warning me that once I trimmed that beautiful preteen leg hair it would grow back darker, thicker and uglier forever. My mother barely used her razor, opting instead to head over to her friend’s salon once a month for a wax, though she made sure I knew it hurt like hell every time. Before I was 10 my brain was programmed to know that leg hair removal was the worst part about being a woman, that once I started I’d be tied to long showers, prickly spikes and wasted paychecks forever. Leg hair was a curse that we had to work everyday of our lives to rid ourselves of, and though I managed to stave off the dreaded razor until I was almost 16, my friends held an intervention before a school dance and there was no going back.
From then on I more or less kept up like I should, shaving every other day in the summer and dutifully before special occasions. In the winter I shaved before basketball games or hot tub parties, but on days (or weeks) when I knew I could, I’d wear long pants or tights to spare myself the extra 20 minutes of shower time. Shaving my legs was something I did for other people, though I always felt like there were so many better ways to spend my time than removing something that would grow back in a few days.
This spring I got my legs waxed for the first time. I’d been meaning to try it for a while, so when my mother suggested we go to her friend’s place I was excited. Could this be a viable alternative to the time suck that is shaving? It was slightly embarrassing to lie there on the table and talk to a woman who knew my mother’s leg hair so well that she could compare our growth patterns, but it was also nice to be able to ask questions and talk candidly with a person who’d heard about me all my life. She was done in an hour and yeah, it definitely hurt, but it also felt wonderful, like a purge of the guilt I’d usually have to feel for ignoring the razor for the next three weeks.
When I asked how soon I could come back she shook her head and told me that waxing was for people who liked their leg hair, that if I didn’t enjoy the regrowth then waxing wasn’t for me. At the time I didn’t understand her, dismissing the idea that it was even possible to think of leg hair as anything but the enemy, but over the next few weeks I found myself doing just that, beginning to appreciate the soft, light, beautiful hair that was growing back. Now that I was growing it out for a purpose (it has to be long enough for the wax to grab hold), I allowed myself to let go of the shame I used to feel on no shave days and actually start to take pride in it. Yeah, my hair is long, I’d tell myself, but I have an appointment to get it waxed next week. There is nothing I can do about it, so there is no point in hiding until then. Waxing allowed me to put the burden of my leg hair on another person, freeing me to live my life independent of my hair. Guys I’m serious, just like that the guilt is gone, and I love it. I don’t think I’ll ever go back.
It’s not that I mind having smooth legs; I love the way hairless feels as much as the next person. And it’s not that I’m trying to shock people with my feminist leanings or hippie standards, though I’m completely in support of people who do. The simple truth of it is that I don’t mind my leg hair, and when I remove it I’m usually not doing it for me. So what happens when it matters to a potential mate? I’ll deal with it then, it’s not like choosing to shave or not to shave is a permanent choice. I know I’m not shaving for my friends, it’s not like they’ll ditch me for a little fuzz. And as for strangers, sure smooth legs would help me fit in, but I would also fit in better if I never wore high heels; that sure doesn’t stop me from the occasional night out as a 6’1” woman.
For me, most days the payoff for shaving isn’t worth it. The thing is, apparently what I do with my leg hair isn’t only my business.
I went to an outdoor concert festival this weekend and finally got to wear one of my summer dresses that had been patiently waiting for me all winter. It was a scorching day, pants or tights weren’t an option and since my waxing appointment isn’t until next week I decided there was nothing to do but embrace my hairy legs. It felt good, I still felt attractive and if anything it made me feel more confident, that I was secure enough in myself to do what I wanted and not what I felt other people would want me to do. It was empowering and freeing and something that didn’t matter. Seeing a little leg hair isn’t the end of the world.
But of course, while merrily dancing and minding my own business I heard the group of late 20-something women nearby me start to gossip about my leg hair. Minutes after the lead guitarist had made a moving toast that happiness is all that matters, the three women circled up and proceeded to tear me down. The music was loud and they were pretty drunk, so I don’t think they thought I could hear, but seeing as they were about a foot away there wasn’t much I could do but listen in.
“Oh my god, do you see her leg hair? That’s ridiculous. Shaving isn’t that hard.”
“I mean yeah I don’t feel like shaving sometimes but I NEVER let it get that bad.”
“Look how it catches the sun, just because it’s blonde doesn’t mean she can get away with it.”
“I can’t believe she left the house like that.”
“Guys can’t be okay with that.”
At the time I considered confronting them. It would have been easy to call them out on their rudeness (they had already offended the other people around us with a few swear words and valley girl exclamations), and at my lowest point I even thought of a few insults to throw back at them. “Oh I’m sorry, I couldn’t get a hold of you this morning so you could approve my body choices! You’re so right, next time I promise to find the nearest man to tell me how I should change for him.” Or “It makes sense that you would be talking about my legs because you’re so short they’re at eye level.”
But as I imagined all the ways I could put them in their place I heard their insecurities start to come through.
“Yeah, I mean no one likes shaving their legs but you know, we… we do it anyway because… because well men like it.”
“… Do you think it is true that most men don’t actually care?”
“Some men don’t care, maybe… But trust me, most care. Trust me.”
“Once you’re married or something it’s okay to let it go but that is how divorces start.”
And just like that I was sad for them, sad that these beautiful, adult women were still insecure enough that they felt like they had to shave or wear makeup or change anything to find and keep a man. As they continued it became clear that they hated shaving as much as I do, but were only attacking me because they weren’t secure enough to stop shaving themselves.
I refuse to be ashamed of my leg hair. Whether or not I shave that day or wax that week has no bearing on who I am or how I live my life. And from here on out I won’t be hiding my legs. If it isn’t important enough for me to have smooth legs that day, then I’m not going to worry whether anyone sees it. I am more than the length of my leg hair, and the more hairy legs we see, the less shocked we’re going to be about it.