Category Archives: Thoughts

I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this post for a couple hours, so let’s just do it. Okay? OKay!

This is a post about body positivity.

It seems to me that the younger you are, the more body positive you are. People who are five years my junior trend in this direction? A decade younger? It’s damned undeniable.

Do not get me wrong. This is a good thing. A great thing. A god damned miracle!

I see women telling makeup companies to “Fuck off” unless they want to experiment with it. I see unshaved legs and experimental fashion in full force. I see people living more and caring less. That is awesome.

But I sometimes look and see people who have not been indoctrinated into a cult that tells them what they care where and how and in what color and how they must present my body. I see people who haven’t had to go through the difficult process of unlearning body shame. And I am jealous.

It feels unfair that things are (just a little bit) easier for these people. Curvy women who get to wear jeggings and skinny jeans and haven’t had the idea that they can only wear flares or bootcut jeans drilled into their head time and again. People who wear what they want because they like it, damned if it’s not “flattering.”

I see this all and I feel jealousy because they don’t have to care. And I have not yet learned how to not care. I care less, of course, but I still care.

Perhaps it’s because this body shaming was taught not as something that was negative but as a sort of awareness. You were aware of how you — or others — looked. This awareness seemed something akin to sophisticated. It was something to aspire to be.

So when I judge, both myself and others, I still feel a tinge of that awareness. I know something. It doesn’t matter that whatever knowledge I have isn’t actually useful or is actively harmful. It feels like being part of some secret club.

“Well, I know women like me shouldn’t wear stripes.”

I also know how fucking ridiculous that sounds, believe me. I may not always have realized it, but I do now.

It’s been a process, though, to get here, to shed any of that body shame, to be okay-ish with myself, to stop judging others. Some days I am much better than others. Some venues, too (I am more body positive online than in person, I think because I have a bit more time to make something other than a snap judgment).

What I do know is that instead of feeling envy or jealousy of people who are more body positive and have been taught less body shame, I should be glad for them. I should remember that it’s not easy for anyone; there is still plenty of body shame for everyone. And that, my friends, is bullshit. So I’ll redirect my anger to the institutions that are still makin’ it hard to be body positive, no matter what generation you’re from.

I am positive that they can fuck off.

I only watched one season of American Idol, and it was several years after Adam Lambert was on the show. So I would need to Google it to tell you whether he won or to watch any of his performances for the first time.

What I can tell you is that his name because pretty common, and many of the people speaking it were hung up on his sexuality and wanted to know what others thought. For a while, I was simply annoyed. I didn’t understand why a reality/game show made anyone relevant. Since then, I’ve become a fan of Lambert’s music (although, my mom is a much bigger fan and probably loved him first) and other artists, including Kelly Clarkson. I mean, I was angry and tended to belittle things I didn’t like or understand. It, wrongly, made me feel powerful.

I apologize for that, but that is not what this post is about. This post and included apology to a pop superstar (whom I will soon see perform!) is about another error on my part. You see, I wasn’t just dismissive about him as a celebrity. I was dismissive about whether his sexuality mattered at all. Can’t we, I asked, just listen to his subpar pop music rather than focus on his sexuality? Why does it matter that he’s gay?

But it does and it did, perhaps even more so at the time. For other members of the LGBTQ+ community to see Adam Lambert, an openly gay performer, competing and excelling on a show (and going on to see more success), it must have mattered a lot. There haven’t always been representing faces in that crowd. I just read an interview with Darren Hayes who discussed how his being outed led first to internal memos that attempted to keep his sexuality hidden, then to ridiculous requests that he not move in certain ways to suggest he was gay and, finally, to a complete lack of support from his record labels when he put out new music. His label wouldn’t even let him put on live shows because he was gay, so the freedom that Adam had to be gay was hard won (albeit with a lot of progress to be made at the time and still much to be made now).

I understand now when I post about violence done to members of certain communities and someone (there is always someone) has to argue that it doesn’t matter if this person is gay/brown/a woman. Because people are people and we shouldn’t see color or gender or sexuality. But, I argue (and didn’t understand then), that those characteristics color a person’s experience and may be directly tied to why those people have been victimized.

Intersections of those characteristics make for vastly different (read: worse) experiences. Trans people of color experience violence in different ways than those who are white, for example. To ignore this is not only erroneous; it’s enabling.

It’s more than that, however. Those experiences often contribute to a person’s self-expression, and there may be

So when I dismissed Adam Lambert’s sexuality, I wasn’t thinking about other aspiring musicians who might have felt inspired by his existence. I didn’t consider how brave it was for him to be out or how hurtful it was for me to think that maybe he just shouldn’t parade his sexuality around despite straight people having the right to do that always. I didn’t stop to think how his experiences would influence his art or how his sense of style might have evolved (just a guess) from the LGBTQ+ community.

I didn’t stop to consider how easy it was for me, at the time a married-to-a-man white woman, to say those things because I had never shared precisely those struggles.

I am sorry, Adam. Because I now not only realize that, yes, you are talented, but that your stairway to success was most assuredly a haphazardous one as you dodged obstacles that were a direct response to you being a gay man. Were that not the case, perhaps we could know for sure that when anyone dismisses you, it’s only because of an objective to your musical stylings and not an objection to the people you choose to love and fuck (even if the people voicing those objections, like myself, are ignorant to their own biases bigotry).

Life is just, like, this thing. Fleeting and fragile. Terrible and ridiculous and better than you could ever imagine.

And you get no say in whether you have to deal with life, what you get dealt or when it’s going to end.

It’s just so overwhelming ,you know?

But life, I don’t know, man. We’re here and it seems like the only logical way to deal with it is to enjoy the fuck out of it.

If you don’t, I’m not sure I can consider you sane. That’s not politically correct, but it would be crazy to be anything other than happy when it takes just as much effort to be miserable.

Maybe I’ll change my mind when I’m dealt another bad card or have to deal with a struggle I didn’t see coming, but for now, I’m just going to live life.

This is kind of a stream-of-consciousness thing. I might stumble with words and thoughts that aren’t as clear or supportive as I’d like. It is not my intent to talk over any victims, their families or members, and I will continue to share their words via social media. But it’s impossible not to have thoughts, and I just wanted to get them all down.

50 people is the largest mass shooting the country has ever seen? C’mon, this is America. Surely, we’ve had worse than that.. which led to: I can’t believe how desensitized I am to violence like this as an American.

I am so relieved this was far away, that it doesn’t personally affect me, that I am not the target demographic for violence like this. I am reassured by my privilege. In the same token, I feel guilt at feeling these things, and I can only wonder how long it will be until those things are no longer true. The next bombing, shooting, hate crime or act of terrorism could hit much closer to home. And it’s awful even if I am not personally affected.

I can’t believe people are trying to erase the significance of it being a gay nightclub. This stuff matters. How can it not?

I also cannot believe that people will just paint him as a Muslim connected to any group. He was clearly mentally unstable, and professed his allegiance to multiple, mutually exclusive groups.

I do not want people to focus on that fact that the gunman was potentially closeted gay or bisexual because it minimizes the fact that most violence is done to the LGBT community by members of the straight community. But it’s clear he did have a preoccupation with the LGBT community.

And how can people say it’s not time to argue about gun control? Not only is it always time to argue for some sort of stricter regulation on firearms, but it makes sense to do it after a heinous crime is committed with a gun. In fact, I don’t understand any of the pro-gun rhetoric that’s being used right now.

I find it especially funny that people who say the gov can’t infringe on their second amendment rights even if it would deter some criminals and terrorists, which it would, are the same who say that men who have sex with men (and women who have sex with men who have sex with men) cannot donate blood. If you argue that the rights of the majority outweigh the risks of the minority, you cannot take both stances. Sorry.

Everyone has a theory how it could have been prevented or the violence lessened — never mind that there was an armed, off-duty police officer who fired at the shooter.. and he was overtaken and killed.

If more guns are the solution, then we’ll have to mandate firearm training and education for everyone, including those who never intend to be gun owners. I’m not sure how since we can’t even do this uniformly for gun owners.

I have no qualms about my stance on gun control. I could live comfortably in a country where citizens weren’t allowed to have them. I know these countries exist. I also know that countries such as Australia have successfully taken almost all guns off the streets. I realize the biggest hurdle here is the American culture surrounding the second amendment, and I’m not sure how we get to where other countries are from where we currently are. And, yes, it might mean that people are unable to protect themselves but people are going to die anyway. That’s so completely shitty but I’d rather see progress than this heel-digging-in we’ve got now.

I also understand that guns are just a tool but they’re a tool created specifically for destruction, even if that destruction is necessary or condoned. This one of the reasons why comparing guns to cars re: regulation is an imperfect analogy, but cars were not intended to do violence. They just happen to be capable of it, especially when used incorrectly.

Technology is both a blessing and a curse. That some people were able to call or text their loved ones even moments before their deaths is amazing. But to be on the receiving end of those calls? I can’t even imagine.

I am incredibly humbled and touched by the reports about the victims, their lives and the hole their deaths leaves in the world. From Anderson Cooper to BuzzFeed, the response has been tactful and compassionate.

It’s so difficult to process death. One moment, someone is alive and the next? Their machine has shut down. There’s a finiteness to that, which I just cannot grasp.

And, finally, I just wish I didn’t know that I would eventually come to peace with this.. until the next time.

River – Sarah Mclachlan

I’d only vaguely heard this song before I bought Sarah’s Christmas album. It’s melancholy but somehow not in a bad way. I don’t even know how that works. Her version of “O Little town of Bethlehem” is also worth a listen or twenty.

Gothic Christmas – Within Temptation

This song is cheesy and ridiculous, and I love every moment of it. Let’s talk about evil Santa and Rudolph (not Krampus). Let’s make everything sparkly and green

Leroy The Redneck Reindeer – Joe Diffie 

Speaking of cheesy, there’s this one that’s about 20 years old. It’s got that Christmassy feel but it’s totally got that dated 90s country sound, too. And it’s going on my iPod as I type!

Deck the Halls – SheDaisy

Slightly less redneck is SheDaisy’s version of “Deck the Halls,” which might be the only version I actually like. It sounds so grown up, and it’s crazy to think I first heard this when I was in high school!

Winter Dreams – Kelly Clarkson

Kelly Clarkson’s Christmas album is one of the better modern Christmas albums in my opinion. There are some classic covers, but the new songs manage to capture the feel of Christmas and the jazzy tempos match Kelly’s powerful voice so well. “Winter Dreams” could be my favorite Christmas song of all time, but “Underneath the Tree,” and “4 Carats” are excellent, too.

A Mad Russian’s Christmas – TSO

It’s all really hard for me to pick a single song by TSO that I like. I know that most people only like Christmas Eve in Sarajevo, and it’s good, but they’ve  got multiple Christmas albums! “Wizards in Winter” is a song that I keep on my iPod all year long, so I think that shows you how much I like it. But “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” ugh. It’s everything, guys!

Sufjan Stevens – Christmas In The Room

If you want coffee shop indie music, then this last track is the one for you. It’s not my favorite on this list, but it’s definitely enjoyable and festive/