pretty isn't enough

my friend and mentor and acting coach e was at the IT awards ceremony the other night. she could only stop by for a bit, but it meant so much to have her there...without her, size ate never would have been. she really helped me get it all out of my whirling dervish of a noggin. she also convinced me that my story was worthy of being told...and heard.

bless her.

while we were at the bar, she told me a story about her daughter, t, a delicate little flower of a girl that she adopted about a year ago from a Russian orphanage. when t came to this country, she knew no english. she is now fluent. t is also a very pretty little girl, and as we all know, when you are a little girl and pretty, people will tell you this all of the time, as if, this is your only redeeming characteristic. e does her best to counter it with other compliments, but this is America after all...

the other day, t came home from school, and exclaimed to e:

"The teacher said I was very, very pretty, Mommy."

"T, now you know that there are more important things than being pretty."

"I know, Mommy. Like being beautiful."

this, coming from a 4-year old.

lord help us.

well, color me shocked.

so...whaddya know?

i won!

one of them anyway: Outstanding Solo Performance for size ate.

thank god joan and melissa won't be there.

well, heaven's to betsy, where have i been?

busy. lots of lovely things going on that leave little time for lovely blogging, but i hope to resume my almost-daily practice of posting. i miss it, and don't you miss meeeeeeeeeeee?

egads. tomorrow night is the awards ceremony for the New York Innovative Theater Awards. size ate was nominated for a couple of awards that i will not win, but it's a wonderful excuse to totter around in my silver "Barbie" shoes and drink martinis as if i am S.V.I. (someone very important).

as one might expect, what to wear has been the source of much consternation. first, it was to be a frothy, pink strapless number that i got for a song a couple of months ago. sparkly, pink and pretty, but still elegant. then i decided...too sparkly, too pink and too pretty for the Off-Off Broadway awards. for the first time in my life, i felt the need to be weirder.

so, i dug through my closet and unearthed two dresses from the late 70s that i bought at Salvation Army years ago. one's a shimmery champagne gold with a empire waist and a low-V neckline. very Saturday Night Fever. i decided, however, that it just makes my breasts look waaaaay too big (like a pair of pendulous flour sacks, frankly), and i prefer for people to look at me when we're in conversation, and not my flour sacks. the other one is a black, low-cut dress with 3/4 length sleeves and a flurry of ruffles around the neck and wrists. reminds me of something a sexy, suburbanite mom might wear to the neighborhood cocktail party...think Joan Allen in The Ice Storm. so, that was gonna be that. the black dress with a big chunky belt and my silver Barbie shoes. meow.

but noooooooooo....

it had to go and get hot again. like most attire made in the 70s, my groovy dresses are made of the finest quality polyester, which means that in any temperature above 60 degrees, and i would be tres miserable.

screw this. i'm just gonna buy a black top and skirt, add some funky jewelry, and call it day.

so saturday i stopped into Express and tried on a couple of things. i first tried on the size 10 black pencil skirt. hm. too big.

do you have a size 8?

no, but we do have a size 6.

um, that will be way too small.

but i try it anyway. hm. odd. it fits like a pencil skirt should fit...a bit snug, a bit sassy, a bit Doris Day in Pillow Talk.

wait, wait, wait...a size 6? COME ON. i don't wear a size 6. here is vanity marketing at it's goddamn finest. companies make the labels in a true size 10 read size 6, a true size 8 a size 4, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. why? so we'll buy it, that's why, and so we'll come back and keep buying from the store that makes us feel skinny even though we're the same damn size we were when we walked through the door! Banana Republic does it, Old Navy does it, The Gap does it, and now i know Express does it. goddammit! how fucking stupid do they think we are???

(knock, knock, knock on the dressing room door.)

can i help you with anything else?

nope. i'm all set. i'll take the skirt.

boycott outback steakhouse.

this article from Gawker was sent to me by my friend b. oh, my friends know me so well...

Fattie Aussie Models Ruin Oz Fashion Week, Kicked Out of Oz Vogue

Look at these heifers! Ladies, please, cover yourselves -- you're repulsively enormous. While our own New York fashion week begins its weekend of anorexia-friendly fun, the Australian Fashion Week is still roiling in the aftermath of its own little Dreyfuss Affair. Seems that designer MaraJoara decided to champion "real women" by putting a few size 8-12 models on display along with the tiny waifs who can't keep their pants up over their skeletal pelvises. Though hardly even zaftig in any normal universe, models like those above caused much squawking among the Ozzie fashionistas. Even those who grudgingly admired the feminist statement couldn't help slamming the larger lassies' amateurish catwalking. Fashion organizers supposedly tried to get the designer to kick out the size 8-12s, but she refused; even though the fleshy models are calling it a win for their team, the puckish crones of Vogue Australia deleted coverage of the MaraJoara show from their website. Giant oozing lardos who look like they might actually consume food need not apply. Approved meals may consist only of champagne, Red Bull, cigarettes, and Vicodin.

well, yes...they do look like women, not prepubescent boys. i've always thought it's more of a test of a good designer; designing for a "real woman." as opposed to a clothes hanger. valleys and hills are always far more interesting than plains. i mean, look at oklahoma.

boooooooring.

on beauty

i'm mostly in favor of tiaras, but as a general rule,
i don't think their weight should exceed the weight of the person upon whose head they reside.

Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it, nor make flannel out of it.
- D.H. Lawrence

It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.
- Albert Einstein

housekeeping is overrated.

i just swept and mopped my kitchen for 2 hours.

how come i don't feel like more of a woman?

thin=happiness

a good friend of mine has been going through a bit of a rough patch so she decided to go home and stay with her parents for a couple of weeks. i don't know. it's a double-edged sword, being with your parents when you're going through a tough time especially post-25 years of age. i mean, it's a comfort to know that there are at least two people in this world who love you unconditionally (however dysfunctionally) BUT, these two people are the main reason you're so screwed up in the first place. god love 'em.

the other day she called me from her parent's house. her father had just said to her, and i quote:

you shouldn't be depressed; you're so thin!

thankfully, she's coming home this coming weekend. rumor has it that's exactly what Lizzie Borden's dad said to her.

baking + bedlam + blessings

of course Buddha eats carbs!

lovely, lovely, lovely weekend. spent much of Saturday inside since it was purely Londonian outside, but baked this yummy loaf of whole wheat bread - moist and soooo easy. the tip tip tapping of rain on my windows and the smell of baking bread...what more can a girl ask for? well, the perfect handbag, Naturalizer stilettos, and someone to explain my 401k to me, but 'til then...

Farmgirl's Almost Too Easy Whole Wheat Beer Bread
Makes One Loaf

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon baking powder
14 ounces beer (or 12 ounces beer & 2 ounces water)

Optional glaze: 1 egg & 2 teaspoons water, beaten

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. Slowly stir in beer and mix just until combined. Batter will be thick. Spread in a greased 8-inch loaf pan, brush with egg glaze if desired, and bake until golden brown and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes.Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool 10 more minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Saturday evening was spent at a dinner party which, after the ingestion of multiple uber-margaritas, morphed into a full-out Scissor Sisters dancing party - a snorting laughter kind of night.

quote of the evening: i can't think; i'm wearing lipgloss!

yeah, i don't know what's going on here...margarita black-out.

Sunday? glorious, sunny, Autumn-is-flirting-with-us-kind-of-day. i get a bit melancholy when fall starts unfurling her auburn tresses. nostalgia? regret? residual pining for a new back-to-school Trapper Keeper? don't know. it's not necessarily a bad melancholy. it's a reflective sadness, and it encourages afternoon naps and wandering walks. spent the afternoon alone in Astoria Park underneath the trees, reading 'n' dreaming...then stopped at the playground on the way home to swing. weeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! an activity, i hope, that i will never tire of. impossible. i plan on staying a little bit 12-years old forever.

stare at my ass all you want, if you think it looks smaller.

most of us women have spent our lives fearing white pants.

2 reasons:

1. we menstruate.

2. it is a widely held belief that white pants make you look fat, or fatter than you are, or slightly bigger than your skinny-assed self. whatever. you get my point.

black is slimming. white is widening.

or so the story goes...

so, then, it was with great hesitation that i purchased a pair of white jeans on sale from the Gap last year for $10. don't know what drove me to actually make the final purchase, but i know i still wasn't certain when i left the store. would my bottom half end up looking like swollen marshmallows smooshed together in a cellulite-laden s'more?

apparently not, for every time i've worn them someone asks me if i have lost weight, and i have decidedly not lost weight. nightly chocolate peanut butter cup ices from Uncle Louie's do not hasten weight loss in any land that i know of.

the other day i wore them, and my friend p came over to rehearse for a small music project that we're putting together. p, you should know, is anything but subtle. he's completely and utterly inappropriate and frequently crass, but it is these selfsame qualities that make me trust him implicitly; he does not bullshit. i walked downstairs to let him in, and as he followed me up the stairs, he says in his thick Brooklynese accent:

"yo, you lost weight?"

"no, i have definitely not lost weight."

"bullshit. i'm staring at your ass, and you've lost weight."

now, i wish i could give two shits when someone says that to me, or better yet, i wish i were offended. i long for the day when i respond to a comment like that with:

WHAT?! ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY I HAVE A SKINNY ASS, MOTHER F*&^ER?!?!

until then tho...i need so many more pairs of white jeans.

Let me listen to me and not to them.
- Gertrude Stein