Hi everyone, Happy Halloween! Are you celebrating or are you recovering from the damage of a super-storm? All my New York and New Jersey friends whom I’ve been able to contact seem to be doing alright. If you are from a heavily affected area and you are reading this, hopefully that means you have power! I hope you are doing well and have food and a way to get to work or wherever you need to go. The size and reach of Sandy has blown my mind. Even out here in Chicago the beaches and lakeshore paths are shut down because the wind is making Lake Michigan go crazy. Having lived in the Midwest all but six months of my life, I have dealt with tornadoes and snowstorms, but have never been anywhere near a hurricane. The prospect of it is completely terrifying to me.
I was pretty excited to dress up for Halloween this year - normally it’s a favorite holiday, but the last two years sad things have been happening on/around Halloween. I did not end up dressing as Picasso’s Blue Period or a Zombie Vulva. I went to a party on Saturday dressed as Zombie Abraham Lincoln, which meant lots of fake blood and a tall hat. Before the party I was walking to the liquor store in the dark and a lady jumped and said “aye, Dios!” when she saw me, so that was pretty great. Today I am just wearing my normal all-black getup, but with the addition of my “witch’s shawl” and black and white striped tights instead of black leggings.
At work we found a gift certificate to a salon that didn’t get purchased at our fundraising event last year, and I ended up getting it. For over three years all my haircuts had been at hair schools and I had always colored my hair myself, so I was pretty stoked to get a certificate to a fancy-pants Lincoln Park salon. I went and got my hair done last night and it was so nice - super-massagey shampoo session and cool asymmetrical cut.
While I was at the salon I leafed through Marie Claire and while I was certainly expecting it to be all fluffy-puffy fashion, body image blah-di-blah I was still surprised and dismayed by some things. For one, there was a large piece about getting ahead at work. It was eight page longs, with two of the pages completely devoted to how women should look at work, and large sections of the same on the other six pages. The piece also included brief snippets of interviews with powerful women and a section about race and ethnicity in the workplace. Because female leaders, workplace discrimination, and fancy high heels are all worthy (and should be worthy) of the same amount of attention when trying to establish a successful career. Right.
The other awful thing was a first-person article about how wearing towering high heels is what Grown Up Women do and even though these shoes are painful you will look terribly frumpy and un-adult if you don’t wear them. The solution: every nine months get incredibly painful (by the author’s description) foot injections that leave you hobbled for a week; your stilettos will still be uncomfortable, but you’ll at least be able to stand them for longer periods of time. And that is worth the cost, time off of work, and pain from the injections (plus the completely unmentioned harm caused to the rest of the body by wearing tall heels everyday). I’m six feet tall and I like to rock a heel from time-to-time when I’m feeling fancy or outrageous, but to state that the only appropriate adult woman footwear is something that causes one to adopt an unnatural and unhealthy posture is just rage-inducing.
Today is the third year anniversary of when NB and I got drunk and made out for the first time. And even though (because?) I was covered in fake blood, it was still great. By this time next year, we’ll be married. I don’t generally think that things are “meant to be” but this definitely feels that way.
I was pretty excited to dress up for Halloween this year - normally it’s a favorite holiday, but the last two years sad things have been happening on/around Halloween. I did not end up dressing as Picasso’s Blue Period or a Zombie Vulva. I went to a party on Saturday dressed as Zombie Abraham Lincoln, which meant lots of fake blood and a tall hat. Before the party I was walking to the liquor store in the dark and a lady jumped and said “aye, Dios!” when she saw me, so that was pretty great. Today I am just wearing my normal all-black getup, but with the addition of my “witch’s shawl” and black and white striped tights instead of black leggings.
At work we found a gift certificate to a salon that didn’t get purchased at our fundraising event last year, and I ended up getting it. For over three years all my haircuts had been at hair schools and I had always colored my hair myself, so I was pretty stoked to get a certificate to a fancy-pants Lincoln Park salon. I went and got my hair done last night and it was so nice - super-massagey shampoo session and cool asymmetrical cut.
While I was at the salon I leafed through Marie Claire and while I was certainly expecting it to be all fluffy-puffy fashion, body image blah-di-blah I was still surprised and dismayed by some things. For one, there was a large piece about getting ahead at work. It was eight page longs, with two of the pages completely devoted to how women should look at work, and large sections of the same on the other six pages. The piece also included brief snippets of interviews with powerful women and a section about race and ethnicity in the workplace. Because female leaders, workplace discrimination, and fancy high heels are all worthy (and should be worthy) of the same amount of attention when trying to establish a successful career. Right.
The other awful thing was a first-person article about how wearing towering high heels is what Grown Up Women do and even though these shoes are painful you will look terribly frumpy and un-adult if you don’t wear them. The solution: every nine months get incredibly painful (by the author’s description) foot injections that leave you hobbled for a week; your stilettos will still be uncomfortable, but you’ll at least be able to stand them for longer periods of time. And that is worth the cost, time off of work, and pain from the injections (plus the completely unmentioned harm caused to the rest of the body by wearing tall heels everyday). I’m six feet tall and I like to rock a heel from time-to-time when I’m feeling fancy or outrageous, but to state that the only appropriate adult woman footwear is something that causes one to adopt an unnatural and unhealthy posture is just rage-inducing.
Today is the third year anniversary of when NB and I got drunk and made out for the first time. And even though (because?) I was covered in fake blood, it was still great. By this time next year, we’ll be married. I don’t generally think that things are “meant to be” but this definitely feels that way.
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