August 3, 2018
This picture is pretty old, maybe my senior year in high school. But just look at that freedom, that innocence, that embrace of nature! Where is that girl? I think she’s still walking around in here, but there’s a matte layer of routine and responsibility over her now. And sometimes after a week of flood warnings, storms as you sleep, and furiously flapping windshield wipers, I forget the option to just go stand in the rain.
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My wedding was perfect – and I was fat as hell the whole time, Lindy West. “I have never in my life been fatter than I was on my wedding day, I have
never shown my body in such an uncompromising way, and I have never
felt more at home in that body. I was fully myself, and I was happy. We
are happy. This life is yours, fat girls. Eat it up.” I’m going to sneak some extra reads in here because I want to
front-load this weekend with LOVE. Captain Awkward hosted a conversation
on her Patreon about bodies and the online resources and writing that “helped you be kinder and gentler to yourself and others around bodies
and/or eating,” so I shared this write-up of her wedding that Lindy West
did a few years ago. Reading this piece when I was preparing to get
married was the permission I needed to by joyfully and wholly myself
that day. - You Don’t Have to Love Your Body, Ijeoma Oluo. Captain Awkward shared this piece and the next one, which I felt were really valuable: “I also love body neutrality. I love the freedom of slouching and
wearing gross sweatpants and not combing my hair and scratching my butt
and not giving a rat’s ass about my body whatsoever. I like allowing
fleeting moments of body negativity to pass by without so much as a
cursory glance as I get back to forgetting my body exists. I like the
rare and welcome surprise of occasionally getting dressed up and saying,
“hey sexy lady” to myself in the mirror and then once again going back
to forgetting my body exists. I like not having to strive for anything
regarding my body other than basic maintenance in the hopes of keeping
it running a little longer. I like the freedom to ignore even that.” - The Fantasy of Being Thin, Kate Harding. “So
giving up dieting and accepting my body didn’t just mean admitting I
would never be thin; it meant admitting I would never be a million
things I might have been. (Which, I’m told, is a phenomenon sometimes
known as “maturity.”) I am absolutely not one for settling — which is
where the confusion about pessimism comes in, I think — but I am one for
self-awareness and self-forgiveness. Meaning, there’s a big difference
between saying you can’t be anything other than what you are right now,
and you don’t have to be anything other than what you are right now. You
will probably never be permanently thin, unless you are already, but
other than that, the sky’s the limit. You can be anything or anyone you
want to be, in theory.” - Your Brain Really Does Get Slower in the Summer, The Cut. “
A new study
found that students who lived in air-conditioned buildings (where the
temperature averaged 71 degrees) performed better on tests than students
living in buildings without AC (which averaged almost 80 degrees).” I knew it! I’m sluggish in the summer and this helps me feel justified. -
Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor. He was everything he was on TV and more. “Fred Rogers’s ethos was unlike any other: scrupulously moderate,
tolerant, and anti-consumerist, driven by cutting-edge models of child
development and infused with dollops of real Christian love. (Rogers was
in fact an ordained Presbyterian minister.) At the same time,
his worldview was steeped in traditional values: discipline, modesty,
self-control — preparing children for the real world of routine and
responsibility. And he was training the parents of the future,
delivering his message across the “vast wasteland” of television and
directly into people’s living rooms.”
Bonus features:
TheFriday5 