girl-ish
Anonymous Dear Jane,
I haven’t thought about you much lately. Not nearly as much as I used to in the tender beginning stages of my budding romance with your ex-boyfriend. I’ll admit, I didn’t give him much time to heal from the blow you dealt him. When he and I began, you were still fresh on his mind. We spoke of your relationship very little, but enough for me to know you once had a grip on his heart. Knowing this broke mine, and it took me a while to accept that it wasn’t your fault and there was no reason for me to be angry with you. In those very dangerous beginning times, my mind wandered to you with the same frequency it wandered to him. I thought of your smile, dare I say, more than his. His smile I could see any time I pleased. Your smile I was left to imagine late into a sleepless night, the sounds of his snores far from the cause of my insomnia.
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By Hannah Bennett Did you know that 90-95% of people who lose weight would gain that weight back within one to five years? I heard that statistic approximately five years ago in a Weight Watchers meeting and thought to myself, “I will not be a part of that statistic.” I would love to tell you that I indeed did not become part of that 95%, but that would be a lie. While I did not gain back the entire 75 pounds that I shed during my two years with Weight Watchers, I have gained back approximately 50 pounds of that weight. Man, is that ever a humiliating and humbling statement to make. But it’s true; I became part of that group. I’ve been overweight for a vast majority of my life. I first noticed I was a “big girl” when I was ten. And I was a big girl. I was taller than all of my classmates, was soon to surpass my mother in height, and had already surpassed her weight. That trend followed until about eighth grade when puberty kicked in. I had reached my adult height of 5’9” I grew my massive boobs (I was pushing a D cup at 14, and my breasts have only increased exponentially in size since then), and my baby fat was starting to fall away from my midsection. Even with my newfound body, I was still bigger than most girls my age,. At 14, I started down a path that I’ve been on and off now for the past 12 years; I started dieting, exercising, and throwing up. By Tawny Aguayo Life sucks in the best way right now. I know, that’s an oxymoron if we’ve ever heard one, right? Allow me to step up on my soapbox (and probably bust my ass after my third glass of wine) and elaborate. One month ago exactly to date, I was sitting in the car, quivering with curiosity and excitement, while my boyfriend was in Kay’s purchasing an engagement ring. An engagement ring. The ring that says, “Yes, I do love you enough to spend the rest of my life with you even though I’ve seen you pick your nose and the way you deteriorate overnight.” The resounding HOLY SHIT! in my head from the moment when he casually asked me to stop in and try rings on “just to see what I liked” is still loud and clear. He made it absolutely no secret to his family and friends that he had intentions on marrying me soon and even told me his one request for the venue of the wedding. It seemed as though I had truly lucked out and found this perfect man who, for whatever reason, wanted to spend his life with me. ME. The girl whose love line doesn’t even touch her life line according to the palm reader. Fast forward to Thanksgiving Thursday. I brought him home to meet my family. They loved him as much as I did. My dad, who we normally have to pry from his bedroom to show interest in any guest I bring home, absolutely adored him. At my boyfriend’s suggestion, I had already been planning to move in after my graduation in two weeks. On the way back to his place, full of happiness and giddiness from the success of meeting the fam, he noted that we should have loaded up some of my things while we were at my house to make the move easier. By Saturday, I was dumped. And Other Deep Thoughts By Valerie Frost I wasn’t always a “feeling” person. As a child, I was rather cold and shied away from emotional situations. Even as a baby, my mother said I would arch my back and try to push away anyone who would try to cuddle me. I remember being disgusted by my mother who would unabashedly sob during Beaches and every Easter during the passion play. I should have cried during the Lion King like a normal, non-psychopathic child but I laughed at my mom expressing her sadness instead. It wasn’t until my first true love that I felt the unstoppable wave of both extreme love and sadness. I fell in love with Jack when I was seven but he died a horribly tragic death; his terrible girlfriend let him freeze to death when she stole his life raft/door after the Titanic sank. That was the first time I had ever allowed myself to cry during a movie and after that, The Green Mile broke whatever was left of the floodgate keeping back my emotions. I relished in the “Green Mile cry”, sobbing for hours and being depressed for days afterward. It was because I allowed myself to love Jack and John Coffey that losing them was so unbearable. There is a spectrum of emotions and for a while I was living my life in the relatively comfortable range of pleasant-unpleasant. Loving Jack made me feel passionate love and when he died, I felt passionately sad; my feeling spectrum had widened. Since then my spectrum has expanded from impossibly sad to ridiculously happy (both involve tears) and speaking of the spectrum of emotions...let me tell you about my dog. A Working Woman In The Film Industry By Hannah Henriques When I sat down to think about strong, influential, twenty-something women to interview for Girl-ish, the first person who popped into my head was Jennifer Silver. Jen was one of my first friends I met in college, and is a miraculously driven woman who is sort of like a bold, brash, passionate bulldozer just plowing her way through school and beyond in order to reach her goals. The last time I saw Jen we hadn’t seen each other in at least a year (if not more). I had transferred to a different school, but was back on campus visiting friends. At the time Jen was directing a performance of Into The Woods and I snuck into a rehearsal to say hey. I snuck up behind Jen and whispered “Hello” into her ear, expecting a quick “hi” back and that’s it, because she was busy directing. Instead, she hollers with delight, literally knocks me to the ground (as well as someone’s coffee--sorry), hugging me and laughing with delight. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sit down face-to-face with Jen for our interview (our communication was done strictly over Facebook messenger and Google Docs), but as I sat down to organize my notes, I pictured myself sitting quietly at a table in a little coffee shop waiting for Jen to arrive. When she finally walks through the café door, she picks me up into a giant bear hug and squeezes me until both of us have trouble breathing. She laughs and asks how I’ve been before sitting down and giving me the seriously focused “Silver face”, indicating it’s time to get to work and start the interview. And that’s the thing about Jen. No matter how much time passes, and even though we’ve slowly become strangers over the years of changing interests, new friends, and moving to different cities, she always greets me with a painfully wonderful hug as if seeing my face was the best thing that happened to her all week. So when I sat down to our virtual coffee date--before getting into the meat of things--I decided to start with the basics. I hope this helps give you a good picture so you can truly appreciate Jen for the gem that she is. A Letter By Anonymous Dear Mom and Dad,
Let me start by saying that I love you. I really do. I promise. I loved you especially when I was a kid and you were my superheroes who stayed up to help me with school projects. I loved you even when I was a teenager, moody and angst-y. I loved you even while I was away at college, exploring the world with the wings you helped me make. And I love you even now as I am learning to build a life and a home in a city far away from you. In fact, it’s because I love you that I really want to tell you this: I’m pansexual, which basically just means that, if and when I develop feelings for someone, it’s not going to matter to me what their gender is. I want to tell you this, but I know I can’t. Because I can’t make you accept that one of your daughters may not bring home a handsome young man for a husband. And I can’t make you change your mind about what certain passages of Bible may or may not actually mean. I can’t convince you of the idea that love comes in so many forms. And I can’t make you realize that this isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just who I am. I’m sorry if you think that makes me some kind of disappointment or a deviant, but I will never be sorry for living and loving the way that I do. I have fought long and hard to finally like the person that I am, and since we’re finally talking about it, let me tell you a little about the journey I’ve been for the past several years. By Hannah Bennett Balance is an important component of every aspect of our lives. We have to find balance between work and play, friends and family, salads and cheeseburgers, bourbon and water, couch potato-ing and working out, and the list goes on and on. It’s critical to find that balance in our own personal journeys so that we can stay sane, happy, and healthy. We also need to find this balance in terms of health and beauty standards in our society. Tess Holliday (Munster) recently made headlines for being the first model of her size to sign with a major modeling agency, MiLK Model Management. Holliday is a plus-sized model who is a size 22 at 5’5” tall. She is also the founder of “Eff Your Beauty Standards,” a movement targeted at encouraging women of all shapes and sizes to embrace their bodies and challenge the “typical” beauty standards we are shown daily. While there’s no denying that encouraging women to love themselves and accept who they are is a good thing, I may be taking the somewhat unpopular stance that we HAVE to strike a balance between loving who we are and striving to be our best selves. I agree that women shouldn’t be held to unrealistic standards of beauty; it’s sexist, demoralizing and unnecessary. And there’s no doubt that these images being forced in our faces day in and day out are precipitating factors for teenage girls to experiment with eating disorders, diet fads, and just low self-esteem in general. But isn’t there some middle ground here? By Beth Purvis I started a new job recently and there have been so many times where I am scrambling to fill the space between when I arrive and when I leave. Seeing as how one of my favourite television characters is a middle aged man who makes a living by doing nothing, I had a lot to learn from.
Most days, it helps to channel my inner George Costanza. He is the reigning king of lazy procrastination and faking out your boss and co-workers. Here are some tips to keep up the appearance of being busy inspired by the laziest character on Seinfeld.. (there's Kramer, but that's different) |
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