Pathetic Ghosts

It’s so sad, but I’m hoping that getting married will increase my chances of getting my wish to try lessen my endometriosis symptoms, so I can actually have a better quality of life in addition to me not wanting children. Can you imagine that you’re potential unborn fetus that will never be conceived being more important than YOU having a good quality of life? That doctors, friends, family, and even goddamn eavesdropping strangers would push to see you have kids because it’s “the natural order of things” and “it’s so rewarding” or “it makes you a better person” than respecting your wishes to live your life on your terms? Fuck that noise. Do whatever you want to do if you can with your bodies. I’ll believe they give two shits about kids when they stop forcing people who don’t want them/shouldn’t have them to have them.

I’ve heard people visiting doctors to get sterilized just to hear from them that “What do you do if your partner dies? What if you have a break up? Surely if your current partner can’t change your mind your NEXT partner will!”

Peeps, I know things are not right in my body, but I have refused to see a doctor because they either laugh me out from the hospital or try to give me just hormonal medication (which I refuse to ever have). All problems would be solved with a uterus removal but nope. At age 36 - and 3 months till I turn 37 - I’m still too much a potential mom despite that I’ve been childfree by choice since I was 6. (I say that I was born childfree)

Do not glamorize underweight BMIs and restrictive eating.

Validate that all persons with all body types can have an eating disorder.

Understand that all eating disorders are life-threatening.

Recognize that no person is too damaged to recover.

you guys remember when PETA stole people pets off their porches and euthanized them?

you guys remember how it came out that PETA kills about 90% of the animals it takes in, including healthy and adoptable puppies and kittens, stating “ We could become a no-kill shelter immediately. It means we wouldn’t do as much work”?

you guys remember when PETA advocated killing all pit bulls for the crime of being pit bulls?

you guys remember when PETA handed out these comics to children when there were no adults looking?

you guys remember when they made a porn site and then filled it with videos of animal abuse, and (also in that link) claimed cats should be vegetarian?

you guys remember when PETA lied about sheep shearing, got caught, and defended the lie as true even after they admitted the sheep in their picture wasn’t even real?

you guys remember when they tried to excuse their horrifying ways by claiming that the person who exposed them was manipulating the facts by taking them and putting them in the wrong context?

Because I remember. I remember everything. 

PETA cares about money and publicity, its a corporation run by a psychopath who is afraid of pitts as it states in the link: she was apparently bit by one, and now she hates them. 

-spread false information about milk causing autism based on outdated bullshit information

-used holocaust imagery to compare the meat industry to concentration camps (no pictures)

-used a young man’s brutal death as a way to say “yeah that’s awful but it happens to animals every day and nobody cares about that” (tw: no pictures but the way the guy died is described and it is really horrible)

-dressed up in KKK robes and protested outside of the Westminister Dog Show to protest breeding/pure bred dogs (tw: racism)

-offered to pay the water bill for literally the poorest neighborhood in Detroit if and only if they all went vegan for a month (tw: self-righteous shitheads)

-and they definitely didn’t have two of their workers accept perfectly healthy animals from an animal hospital, with the implication that they would give them good homes, clarify that these animals were all healthy and well-tempered, and then euthanized them all in the back of a kill-van before dumping their dead bodies behind a grocery store (tw: PICTURES OF DEAD ANIMALS, animal death)

-and they totally didn’t get off pretty much scot-free for it because PETA has loads of money and lawyers to defend themselves, which coincidentally might be why the Cerate family hasn’t seen justice for their kidnapped and murdered dog, Maya. (tw: animal death)

Nah. PETA’s not that bad.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.