#MeToo

So there is a hashtag that people are using on social media (variety of platforms) #MeToo.  The point was for people who have been sexually assaulted or harassed to express this to shine a light on just HOW MANY have experienced it.  It brought to the forefront the fact that this affects everyone, no matter who you are, what you look like, or where you live.

It called to mind one of my first lessons in the sexualization of women, particularly in the workplace.  When I was nine, I helped my mom pick out a halloween costume.  At the time she worked at Holiday Inn corporate headquarters as the secretary to a manager and they always dressed up for the holiday.

We found a super cute unicorn costume.  It came with a headband that had a white unicorn horn with silver sequins spiraled around it, and silver tinsel hanging down the back like a horses mane.  The main part of the costume was a simple white tunic.  It wasn't short, no slit, not low cut, so it was 100% work appropriate.  

I LOVED her costume and I was so excited that I helped her pick it out to wear to work.  I remember her coming home from work that day and I couldn't wait to hear about how everyone loved it as much as I did.  But she seemed frustrated.

I kept pressing because I wanted to know why in the world people would not have liked her costume.  And that day was the first day I learned about how it doesn't really matter what you do or wear as a woman, if a man wants to change the narrative, he can.

The words spilled out of her as if she had been holding them in not only all day, but all of her life.  She had tried really hard to pick a costume that the men at work wouldn't have comments about.  A lot of times the women would receive comments if they wore something deemed too "sexy", not only from the men but also from other women.  She didn't want to come across to anyone like that because she was married and it was inappropriate.

She thought that we both had done an excellent job picking her costume because it wasn't revealing, it was an innocent character (childlike even), and overall was cute but not "sexy" at all.  And despite putting this much time and effort into NOT being sexualized for her costume choice, she said she got the same comment all day long:  

"It looks like somebody's horny."

She had to explain to me what horny meant.  She was so sad and frustrated.  My mom was homecoming queen, beautiful, petite and blonde.  I would venture to say that she was sexually harassed a lot more than I ever have been just because she inhabited this idealized body.  And despite her efforts to NOT be, was still placed squarely in a sexual role.  At her job.  By her superiors.

My second lesson came when I was about twelve.  My dad took me to get ice cream at the Sno Cream Castle at Getwell and New Willow.  I was walking down the sidewalk back to my dad's truck with my ice cream cone, and this dude slows down in his car to yell obscenities about me licking my ice cream.  Dad chased his car down the road screaming about kicking his pervert ass.

I was oblivious as to why he said the things he did or what they even meant.  I was twelve and went to private school.  I didn't learn the true mechanics of a blow job until I was embarrassingly older.  Dad didn't explain to me what any of it meant.  But he did have to talk to me about predators that day.  I still played with Barbies and had no boobs, but eating an ice cream cone looked like I was sucking dick?

I know that rape in particular is about power and control, not sex.  Sometimes rapists don't even climax.  For this reason, whether you are pretty or ugly, fat or thin, you can be a victim of sexual assault.  If anything, this hashtag campaign demonstrated that.  Nothing about you as an individual matters if the motive is power and control.

Sexual harassment comes in a slightly different package.  Less about power and control, and more about degrading and objectifying, particularly in response to rejection.  As a fat woman, I feel like this has happened fewer times to me than to women who live in bodies that fit the traditional mold of "attractiveness".  Don't get me wrong, it has happened, and I was actually kind of confused.  But I am sure I have experienced this far less than my peers of average size.

Here's the thing, the vast majority of my friends posted the #MeToo hashtag.  None of them could be put into a certain category of attractiveness, body size, class, color, intelligence, education, or creed.  There was no model of overtly risky behavior, no reason for any of it except that some other person thought they had the right do that to them.

It is powerful to give your experiences a voice to be heard.  To quote a musician I recently met at a show in Nashville, "If you don't tell your story, who will?"

I am so tired of trying to explain to disbelieving men that other men act like animals who have no control over their actions.  It's like, "well I would never do that, therefore you must be exaggerating."  So in addition to my childhood lessons above, I offer the personal experiences below.  Some of these stories I never told anyone, not even my Nana, because I assumed they wouldn't believe me.

I have been groped on a packed subway.  There was a lot of commotion so my friends and I all got off at the next stop.  When I told them what was going on, they shared that it happened to them as well on the same train, at the same time.  Some dude was literally sticking his hand between all of our legs and sliding his hand back out to rub on everything.

I have been "checked" on multiple occasions.  I was wearing pretty elaborate costumes and I guess someone thought I might be a drag queen since I was with my gay friends.  Instead of asking me if I was a girl or not, they just checked me for a "tuck".  I would be happy to explain this to my straight friends if it doesn't make sense, but essentially they verified with their hands if I was a girl or a guy.

The power went out at a bar I was in, so I walked over by the bathrooms where the only emergency lighting was because it seemed like the safest place.  Some asshole planted his hands on either side of my face, started sucking on my neck, and ground me into the wall with his pelvis.  I slid down the wall to get out of his pin.  I had never seen or spoken to him before.

After my grandfather died, Nana had a male caretaker/live in companion.  I remember when I would call and talk to her on the phone he would yell out things in the background like, "Tell her to get her legs out of the air, we need to ask her a question!"  I told her it was really weird and uncomfortable, she didn't really get it either but brushed it off and said he was joking.  I was leaving her house on Christmas, told everyone good-bye, and he was the only one who followed me outside.  I said "Merry Christmas" and gave him a hug because he was like family and he forced his tongue down my throat.  I spent the last years of Nana's life trying to avoid him without telling her why.  I was a virgin at the time.

I could give you countless examples of harassment that occurred particularly when I was doing the online dating thing.  Men who met me for dates who assumed we would be having sex just because I agreed to meet them for coffee.  Men who were disappointed that I didn't show up dressed "more sexy" because my halloween costumes were (note: they had stalked my other social media accounts that were not at all attached to my dating profile).  Men who thought it was cool to expect sex from me, but didn't want to be seen in public with me because I was too fat.  But, there are far too many examples of the depraved behavior that comes from a mostly anonymous internet profile, so I am going to skip all of that.

I have never been raped.  I was never touched inappropriately as a child.  On a by the book, criminally charged basis, I have never been sexually assaulted.  But if you read the above paragraphs and weren't a little disgusted by the behavior involved, I really have to question your humanity.  I didn't put out to any of these men that I wanted to be touched or that I was ok with any of it.  Actually, in every situation, my consent wasn't even a question or a consideration.

The narrative often includes some idiotic commentary regarding bad decisions that women make that put them in situations like this.  About drinking, or what they are wearing, or being too attractive.  So riddle me this: how is it that a morbidly obese woman who was made to feel the opposite of sexually attractive (if anything), wearing normal clothes, doing the same thing that all of her peers were doing, made a bad decision that resulted in this?  What was it for me?  That I chose to ride a crowded subway?  That I was in a bar with a group of people I knew?  That I was in New Orleans for halloween with my friends?  That I decided to attend MY FAMILY CHRISTMAS GATHERING???

I don't know how this changes.  Sometimes it feels like it is impossible to even convince anyone that there is a problem.  I look at the experiences I have had and even I think to myself, "well, it could have been worse".  Yeah, it could have been worse.  

"Well, you weren't raped."
"Maybe they just didn't know how to approach you."
"You're too intimidating so they have to act more aggressively."
"He was hot, I don't know why you didn't just go along with it."

It could have been worse, but do we really want to live in a society where that's our standard?  

Body Confidence In Costume

I have been cleaning out my closets recently (both figuratively and literally).  Working through the food issues has not been easy and I only feel like I have just started.  I feel similarly about my actual closets.

My brother and I have been living together since 2006 and we moved into this house in 2011.  Since then, we have both gotten married, adopted several pets, and acquired a lot of stuff.  My sister-in-law is about to add another chicken nugget to the family (or baby nugget lol).  A household with 4 adults, 4 cats, 2 dogs, and 1 baby is just not in the cards for the Joyce clan.

Alas, it is time to move out.  I have been diligently trudging through the absolute nightmare condition of my sewing room.  I haven't had much time for sewing projects since I have been working on the house for the last two years.  Prior to that, I did a booth at the Cooper-Young Festival that essentially took all of the creative out of me.  I made a lot of cute shit that a lot of people really loved, and very few actually purchased.  I guess everyone gets a good, strong failure every now and then.

I don't really want most of the stuff anymore, and I want to downsize a lot before my husband and I find our little nook to move into.  Fortunately, my sister is all about some free art/crafty supplies.  I feel less guilty about getting rid of stuff if it will go to someone who will actually use it, and she is super stoked about free shit.

In any case, it came to the question of my costume closet.  She said in no uncertain terms that she would never wear any of those, and that I had some big ole balls to wear all of it so confidently like I did.  Maybe that is something that comes after you hit 30.

At the time I started making costumes for myself, it was out of necessity.  They didn't actually make cool costumes in plus sizes in the early 2000's.  And I didn't just need cool costumes, I needed fabulous ones.  The period of my life where I spent a lot of time with my gay guy friends was in full swing.  Since I can sew, I made my own.

I think this was one of the first costumes I made for myself.  There were other ones before this that I just kind of put together, but this is the first one that I put a lot of time or effort into. 

Halloween 2004 - Beer Wench

It started kind of a thing that we did at the time (my best friend and I).  We didn't really need a reason to dress up.  Most of the time if we were going to Backstreet, we were wearing "theme night" clothes just because it was fun.  I am sure it was also a way for me to stand out, yet hide myself behind a facade at the same time.  Since I was at a gay bar, it wasn't like some dude was going to hit on me anyways.

Around the same time, I had started doing Nutri-System and working out more.  The changes in my body brought more confidence and the costumes followed suit.

May 2005 - Moulin Rouge

June 2005 - store bought Playboy Bunny

By halloween of 2005, I had lost 80 pounds and was experiencing some full-on self-confidence for the first time in my life.  That first halloween after I lost weight and had been working out and building muscle, we went as sexy leprechauns.  I made both of our costumes.  

I will say this: I searched high and low for a sexy leprechaun costume I could just buy.  Since I had lost weight, I figured I should be able to find something.  When I say there was nothing available like this at the time, I am serious.  There were several years in a row where I would decide to be something, hand make my own costume, then all of a sudden two years later that costume was on the market.  I probably should have been a costume designer.

Halloween 2005 - Sexy Leprechaun

Looking at this photo now, I have to agree with my sister about my big ole balls for wearing it.  But I felt good about myself and about my body and I didn't care who saw that.  The next several years went through many iterations of costumes for a variety of events (Mardi Gras, Southern Decadence, Halloween, New Year's, etc). 

The fact that I made these myself only added to my street cred at the time among my friends.  They didn't care if I was still fat or not.  I had some mad skills with my sewing machine, and the more outrageous the getup the better.

But, it was a double-edged sword.  I got a lot of attention for what I was wearing.  When I was in the company of my gay friends (or really any time I was in New Orleans), it was overtly positive.  But outside of that, I got a lot of flack/scorn/ridicule for wearing these among straight people specifically.  

Don't get me wrong, my *friends* loved them (gay or straight).  But strangers are not kind to fat people no matter how many hours they spent sewing a custom-made costume.  It was almost this attitude of "there's a reason they don't make that in YOUR size" or perhaps "fat people don't deserve to feel sexy".

I will say this, the more I made these and wore them, the less I cared what anyone thought about my body.  I put myself out there in a pretty vulnerable way, but I really enjoyed making these and showing them off.  I noted the photos if they were store bought costumes.  The rest, I either hand sewed all of it, or I started with a base (like a corset) and made the rest from there.

Halloween 2007 - store bought Sailor Girl

Mardi Gras 2008 - Mardi Gras Float
Note: I actually had the flu

Halloween 2008 - Queen of Hearts (the rabbit and hatter are strangers lol)

Mardi Gras 2009 - store bought Flasher

Mardi Gras 2009 - with the NOLA PD

Mardi Gras 2009 - Mardi Gras Bead Dress

Halloween 2009 - Blind Melon Bee Girl

Mardi Gras 2010 - Moulin Rouge (again)

Mardi Gras 2010 - Candy Snatch

Halloween 2010 - store bought Masquerade

Halloween 2010 - store bought Flapper

Halloween 2010 - Schizophrenic Ballerina

Mardi Gras 2011 - store bought Devil

Mardi Gras 2011 - I literally went as a Drag Queen
Someone literally asked me if I was a real girl.

Halloween 2011 - Ursula the Sea Witch

Southern Decadence 2012 - Trailer Trash

Southern Decadence 2012 - you really needed both photos for the full effect

Halloween 2014 - store bought Flo and Mayhem

Halloween 2015 - store bought Day of the Dead

Christmas 2015 - store bought Mrs. Claus
My sister asked us to wear something nice for a Christmas card.

Halloween 2016 - Bee Girl (again) and Devo Guy

The past few years since my husband and I got married, I haven't really put a huge amount of time into hand sewing anything.  The Cooper-Young thing really drained my creative energy for a long time, and the house drained the actual energy.  I don't think we are actually going to do anything this year because my surgery is on November 1st and we have a lot to do before then (and no costumes at this moment).

I hope that once life is a little more settled down, this is something I can go back to doing for both of us, because I did truly enjoy it.  Though I always fit in in New Orleans, it is hard to find an appropriate place to wear something so elaborate in Memphis.  There definitely is a lack of appreciation for things like this here.

I don't really get the apathy probably because Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year.  I always kind of cock my head to the side with a very confused look when adults say they don't dress up for halloween or that it's something for kids.  Why?  It is the one day of the year when you can be anything you want.  

If anything, I have always felt like I am stuffed into this very plain shell for all of the other days of the year.  Halloween is probably the day I get to dress the way I would prefer to every day.  It would be kind of hard to show up at my bank job dressed as a saloon girl.  I mean women in this industry hardly get any respect anyhow.

Looking back over these, I see two things.  I see the evolution of my costumes in a variety of places and events with different friends.  It brings up memories of trips taken and a lot of fun times.  I think you can see in my face in each photo that I am enjoying myself.  Secondly, I see the evolution of my body.  Although I started in my sexy leprechaun costume at one of my lowest adult weights, I gained all of it back over the period of time these photos were taken.

I see the confidence in my costuming soaring in the forefront, but the confidence in my body declining in the background.  I definitely gained a "I don't really give a fuck what you think of me or my body" attitude over the course of these 10+ years.  And at my core, I think I wanted to wear each of these and force my sexuality onto people whether they wanted to see me that way or not; whether they thought a fat girl should express herself like that or not.

I don't know that I will ever wear these again.  Some of them are too big now anyhow.  I haven't really figured out what to do with them at this point.  Mostly because I honestly don't think most fat girls have the balls to wear them like I do.  Perhaps, there is a drag queen costume charity that needs some bling.

These are definitely some of those things that are hardest to get rid of when you are trying to simplify your life.  So much time and effort went into each one of them from designing to actually creating them.  It's not something I can just throw away mostly because there are still pieces of me woven in.

"How's Your Eating?"

*I have decided I will refer to my therapist as ST from now on (super therapist, duh).*

ST: How's your eating?
ME: Well I thought I was doing better because I was drinking more, but then I got some kind of bad news about some people in my family possibly having some health issues and I haven't been drinking enough like I should.  And then I got on a scale and realized how much weight I have gained since I almost died and I almost died a little inside.  So...
ST: So... how's your eating?
ME: Not good.

Our prior session (to this one) we talked a lot about attachment styles.  To make a long story short, there are four attachment styles: secure, and then three types of insecure attachments - anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant.  You can do your own research about attachment theory if it is interesting to you.  The essential gist of it is that you learn your attachment style as a very young child (less than 2 years old) and it take a lot of undoing to change it.

If you have a secure attachment as a child, you tend to identify with the following statements: "It is relatively easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don't worry about being alone or others not accepting me."  This kind of attachment forms in this early development period for children and is the ideal.

For me, I identify more so with the anxious-preoccupied attachment style.  The textbook characteristics are as follows:

People with anxious-preoccupied attachment type tend to agree with the following statements: "I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like", and "I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don't value me as much as I value them." People with this style of attachment seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their attachment figure. They sometimes value intimacy to such an extent that they become overly dependent on the attachment figure. Compared to securely attached people, people who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to have less positive views about themselves. They may feel a sense of anxiousness that only recedes when in contact with the attachment figure. They often doubt their worth as a person and blame themselves for the attachment figure's lack of responsiveness. People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment may exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, emotional dysregulation, worry, and impulsiveness in their relationships.

This is 100% related to why I tend to try to put myself into roles in relationships (note family, friends, lovers, et all) where I am the nurturer/rescuer.  I tend to be completely insecure in the attachment to others unless I am going above and beyond to prove I am worth it because I don't find that value within myself.

It's a lot to take in that you have been doing something your whole life that you think is related to one thing, and it is pretty much something else entirely.  I always kind of thought to myself that the root of my insecurities about relationships was due to my insecurity about my body and the way I look.  I thought myself unworthy of love and therefore went above and beyond in relationships as some sort of weird fucked up way to make up for being the fat girl.  

It is a little mind blowing to come to the realization that it actually has more to do with attachments that were formed as a very young child and that I have just been repeating the same behavior over and over again.  It is not completely unrelated to the food, however.  Because I do tend to form insecure attachments with people, I formed a very SECURE attachment with food.  Whatever I thought or perceived I was not receiving from people, I got from food instead.  Which just compounded the issue of being insecure because of being fat.

The good news is that forming secure attachments with people can be just as therapeutic in reversing this process as actual therapy work can be.  The fact that I now have some very secure relationships will help me heal myself just as much as ST will help me otherwise.  I think that is promising.

But, it doesn't change my love affair with food.  This process will take unlearning my very secure attachment to food as well.  I'm not sure how you do that after 40 years, but I am willing to try anything to change the pattern of behavior.

I do have some building anxiety about the hiatus in the progress that I am certain I will see fairly soon.  I am set to have surgery on November 1st and I won't be going anywhere (ie. no therapy sessions) for the duration of recovery.  I am hopeful that I can continue some work in this regard, but I know this is a huge expectation of myself.  Obviously, if I could do this on my own, I wouldn't be going to therapy in the first place.

I feel like I am just starting to scratch the surface of the issues I really need to deal with, and then there is going to be this extended break from any progress at all.  I am hopeful that even if I am not fully recovered from surgery, I may be able to schedule an appointment after a few weeks and my husband can drive me.  I know that dealing with the holidays only makes things more complex (if anything).

Note: feeling a little defeated about the food, my weight gain, my progress, and everything that goes along with all of it at the moment.

My Nana

It occurred to me upon rereading some of these posts that my nana (and her influence over my life) possibly seems kind of negative to someone reading this blog (and not living my life).  I don't feel like nana ever did anything intentionally to hurt me.  If anything, she loved me unconditionally.  I don't think the majority of people have actually experienced truly unconditional love.  I feel lucky in that regard.

I don't believe there was anything she wouldn't have done for me if I had asked her to and she could have made it happen.  I think if I had showed up to her house with a dead body in my trunk, we would have both struggled, but she would have helped me bury it.  There were times when I was not a model granddaughter; but if you asked her, you would never know it.  She above all, always showed me and told me that she was proud of me.

But the fact remains that every person is a product of the shit they themselves have survived.  You have to own your shit, work through it, and move forward.  My nana was a part of a generation that really didn't believe in therapy.  Owning your shit to them meant suppressing your emotions, not talking about things, hiding/lying about embarrassing parts of your past or family history, etc.  

How many people do you know of (in your own family or otherwise) who have some shady parts of their family history that have been glossed over by years, distance, or outright lies?  From criminal activities, to unwed mothers forced to adopt out their babies (or abort them), affairs, men raising children they don't even know aren't theirs, the list goes on and on for the people in that generation.  Maybe if my nana had been able to heal some of her own wounds, pieces of our relationship would have been different or healthier than it was.

I feel that nana never healed from all of the miscarriages she had trying to have a baby girl.  She probably had a pretty high level of PTSD and unresolved grief from all of those experiences that led her to be overprotective of me.  She manipulated situations in my life if anything to keep me closer to her.

She was never shown a lot of affection as a child (one of twelve) and grew up very poor.  She told me stories of kids on the school bus making fun of her for having cardboard in the bottom of her shoes.  She was probably made to feel worthless by them and others in her community.  She was never made to feel special as one of many children.  In fact, being second to oldest, the responsibilities of caring for the younger kids fell on her shoulders as a child.  They didn't even remember what day she was born (she spent a lifetime thinking her birthday was the day before it actually was).

This is the only photo we have of her as a child

She also told me stories about a male family member (I don't recall if it was an uncle, grandpa, whatever) that used to wait in the barn for her (or her sisters or cousins) and try to catch them to molest them.  She said she was too fast and always got away.  But what an overwhelming feeling of not being safe at your own home.  I asked her if she ever told her parents.  "They never believed us," was all she responded.

When she left home as a teenager, her father told her not to come back.  She said it was a full ten years before she ever visited them again.  By that time she was married to my grandfather, and my dad and uncle had already come along.  How rejected she must have felt as she made her way out into the world as a teenager without family support to back her up if something went wrong.

This appears to be taken prior to leaving home

My nana was married once before my grandfather.  This would be one of those family secrets that gets swept under the rug.  She came home from work one day to find her first husband in bed with her cousin.  Another round of rejection and abandonment to add to the list.

But my nana's generation would say that the appropriate response to all of that was to suck it up and get over it.  There was no therapist to work with her to convince her of her value as a person.  There was no one to help her through the rejection, the PTSD, the grief, any of it.

My nana showered me with so much love, probably because she never felt loved as a child. She was always buying me things, probably because she never experienced that as a child and felt neglected.  She was always feeding me when I came to her house, probably because she went hungry when she was poor.  She never created healthy boundaries, probably because she never felt she deserved the love she received in return.  She was overprotective of the life she built with my grandfather, probably because she didn't have that security before.  She was always telling me how proud she was of me for being so smart, probably because she never graduated high school.

Nana was a flawed human being, just like everyone else I have ever known.  She made what she thought were the best choices with the information she had at the time.  She never had the opportunity to own her shit (or work through it).  She used coping mechanisms that a lot of other people use.

Taking a step back from your life and your relationships and really taking a hard look at your past is not an easy process.  It would be easiest for me to just continue to use food as my coping mechanism and carry on whether I gained all the weight back or not.  It would be easiest to continue to berate myself for perceived failures and just insist on trying harder over and over until I kill over from doing so.

It's always easiest to stay the same.  Change is hard.  But I am trying to own my own shit.  And, I am trying to place the shit back where it belongs when it isn't my own.  Do not misconstrue this for blame.  I do not blame anyone for my shit.  If anything, I overly blame myself for shit that isn't even mine.  

But there comes a time when you have to realize that you cannot spend your life looking for someone else to blame for your own shit.  You just have to accept it as a part of you, change what you don't like, and move forward into a different and healthier phase of life.

If anything, the only thing I fear at this point in this process is that it may be hard for other people in my circle to accept new expectations and boundaries that I need to create for myself.  I hope that there will be a level of understanding that I am trying to end a family cycle that has gone on for long enough, and we are all at point of needing to take responsibility and own our own shit.