everyone's a critic

You ever go to someone's house and they have some completely different stations on their cable/satellite than you have and thus you are sucked into a vortex of TV watching when you don't even ever watch most of the stations you have on your own TV ever? Just me again? Okay.

Well, I was at a friend's house the other day and he has Palladia, which is apparently a music channel, and on Palladia they were playing Later...with Jools Holland, which is apparently a very famous UK show that I'd never seen or ever heard of. (There's a lot of apparentlys in that sentence. I guess I'm weaseling instead of fact-checking today. Deal.) Jools Holland was (not "apparently"--this was internet-verified) a member of Squeeze, a band I like very much and which was part of the soundtrack of my college life. Like, if they ever make a movie featuring me in 1981, "Tempted" will be playing over the montage of me walking around Allston in too-tight high-waisted jeans and a Rolling Stones t-shirt.  Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, on Later the other night, Alabama Shakes were performing. Also Norah Jones, Jack White, The Chieftans, and some English chick I have never heard of who did some very interesting electronica. Why is this not on my Directv, again?

I was watching Alabama Shakes, the lead singer of which, Brittany Howard***, is a larger woman, and she was performing in a long tunic/short dress over capri leggings. I turned to my friend and said, "That woman should wear pants at all times. Worst cankles ever."  And was immediately ashamed of myself.  The woman has a tremendous voice and a hit record.  Her cankles are irrelevant.  But more importantly, why am I judging and picking apart another woman's body?  Who am I to criticize someone else's body parts?  Part of me says, "Well, honestly, she's not an unattractive woman and if she just made another wardrobe choice--boots, long pants, a maxi skirt, even leggings/tights that didn't cut off right above her ankles--she'd just look so much better on TV. It's a criticism of her fashion sense, not her body."  If I could sing (ha!) and Jools Holland invited me on his show, I could imagine viewers at home looking askance if I chose to perform in short shorts. "That woman should keep her cellulite covered, man."  But, really, that's bullshit. Maybe Ms Howard likes her lower legs. Maybe she doesn't see them as an unsightly "problem area" that needs to be camouflaged. Who the hell am I to place that judgment on her?  If I were to appear in public--on stage even--with my cellulite on display, is that anyone's business but my own?  And would I have ever had the same reaction to an outfit by a male lead singer? (Okay, I may or may not have suggested it's time for Iggy Pop to look into shirts. But that's with more fond amusement than real criticism. Also, while we're on the topic...kinda...I can stop complaining about Carnival Cruises using "Lust for Life" in their ads now that recent events have proved that going on a Carnival cruise really *is* like a scene out of Trainspotting. Feces on the walls? Check! Heh.)

So, mea culpa, Ms Howard. You rock whatever garments you choose and if anyone like me suggests otherwise, hit 'em in the head with your guitar.

You know I had to drop that in there.

xoxo

***yes, I did actually look that up too. You're welcome.

larcenous sobs disrespecting other people's property, etc

Not to get all cranky-pants on y'all, but do you see the above?  It's an Altus nylon dip belt that I ordered on Amazon last night for 22 bucks and change.  Why?  Well, lemme tell you.

Yesterday afternoon at the gym, the Y-owned nylon dip belt was missing. I searched the whole entire fitness floor--because people not returning things to wear they are supposed to be kept is a whole nother problem--and it was just gone.  I can only surmise that it was either stolen, broken, or put somewhere totally inexplicable like, I dunno, the locker room, the pool, or the basketball court.  This effed with my planned workout. I was not pleased. And it came to me like a message from on high*** that these things are probably fairly inexpensive and that I should just buy my own and never get irritated by its disappearance again.

You know what else is always disappearing at my Y?

The oly bar collars.  At one time--maybe a year ago?--we had 8 pair, most of which were brand new. We're down to two now. Two. And one pair is kinda wonky.  So six pair were stolen? Really?  Because what the hell do people do with them at home?  If you have an oly bar set-up and a rack in your house, why are you lifting at the Y? And if you have an oly bar set-up and a rack in your house, you've spent hundreds of dollars for them. You can afford to buy a $9 set of collars I'm sure. I've tried to envision some kind of deviant sexual purpose people would be stealing those mothers for but even my warped imagination is not up to it. So, seriously, people, wtf?  I am, again, almost tempted to buy myself my own set of collars to bring to the gym but someone would probably take them off my bar when I went to the bubbler for twenty seconds to refill my water.

Plus, there's a limit to how much crap a person can reasonably expected to haul to the gym. Especially on the bus. I already bring my workout journal and pen, LiquidGrip, iPod, water bottle, usually my Kindle Fire, sometimes my yoga mat, very occasionally a bathing suit and flipflops, gym clothes (if I'm not already wearing them of course), just enough grooming implements to ensure I'm not skeery when I'm leaving, one of my supplements I take immediately post lifting, and--after Friday if Amazon comes through--my dip belt.  I really do not want to swap out my gym bag for a suitcase, kwim?

Does this shit happen at your gyms, readers, or is my beloved ghetto Y just blessed with a particularly sticky-fingered or irresponsible crowd?  And do you haul an unconscionable amount of equipment with you to the gym?

xoxo

***hey, you have your religious experiences and I'll have mine

i drink alone

This post is only very tangentially related to health and fitness, but it does touch on body image so I'ma drop it in here.  I'm just dying to share this experience with y'all.

Last night I braved the snow to go see George Thorogood, who was performing at the Lynn Auditorium.  Before I get to my point, lemme just express some amusement at this whole set up. They're trying to make Lynn Auditorium happen as a concert venue, which is just a little bit bizarre seeing as it's located in City Hall. I told the friend that I was attending the concert with that this meant there would be no beer. I was wrong. They had concessions set up and they were indeed selling beer. Inside City Hall. I don't even... Alright, I'm probably just cranky about that since I didn't have one. I'm on a diet and very much moderating my alcohol consumption. Sigh.  The other reason they are not gonna make this concert venue happen is that there's really no good parking. We found a space on street a few blocks away, but it took ten minutes of riding around. Plus, if they weren't selling beer inside City Hall, there's no good bars around there to pre-game. Um, without getting stabbed.

Anyway.  We found a space, walked over, got our tickets scanned and went in. (They weren't checking bags. I coulda brought my own beer, yo.)  My friend needed to use the restroom before we found our seats and I didn't, so I just waited in the hall, watching my fellow concert-goers.  It was stunning. Everyone--almost literally everyone--was between the ages of 45 and 60. Watching these clots of middle-aged people milling around the halls, I had this weird deja vu sensation, like someone had scooped us all up out of the halls of my high school in 1978 and deposited us 35 years later.  And the 35 years had not been kind.  My friend came out (bitching that the City Hall bathrooms were not really built to handle a crowd, heh) and I said, "Tell the truth. We look just as old as the rest of these middle-aged people, don't we? It's very humbling."

Readers, it's not as if I don't look in the mirror every day. And it's not as if I don't look at my same age friends and clearly see how we're all growing grayer/saggier/wrinklier/heavier/balder/etc. by the year. But it took a whole concert full of 50-somethings without any younger people to break up the visual to feel the full impact.  Humbling.  I was just saying to another friend the other day that, as I'm presently job hunting, I know I'm supposed to be worried about age discrimination and the fact that maybe a younger person is gonna get hired before me, but that it pissed me off, because in my head, I'm thirty.  A wiser, more experienced, less crazy thirty, but still. Thirty. I was joking about fudging my resume to make it harder to figure out how old I am, but the whole George Thorogood experience made me realize that no one but me is ever gonna think I'm thirty.  I guess that's demoralizing as well as humbling!  I can squat and deadlift and jog and go to yoga and all it's gonna do is turn me into a very fit old person.  Which is better than a non-fit old person, but I don't know what that says about my job prospects.

Here's a couple of my favorite Thorogood song for your troubles.

Yes, I DO know the second one is a cover. Shut up.

xoxo

P.S. Another lesson from last night? Drunk and/or high 50-somethings behaving at a concert like it still was 1978 are not cute. I'm talking to *you* bleached blonde chick in the tight pants, falling off your stillettos while dancing in the aisle and having to be removed by security.  I'm also talking to *you* guy two seats over whose miasma of really really skunky weed almost gave me a contact high and who despite all that apparent THC was NOT mellow and had to keep climbing over me every ten minutes to go to the hallway for god knows what.

P.P.S. Final lesson: I should probably cut my hair. All the women my age with long hair looked like shit and I am sadly probably no exception.

confessions from the land of yoga pants

Perhaps you've read this article about men, women, and yoga pants or any of the responses to it floating about the interwebs the last few days. It's created a lil kerfluffle, as you might ascertain from the fact that the original has over 350 comments posted if nothing else.  Well. I have things to say. But if you haven't read anything about this and you do not wish to tax your brain and/or hand clicking on my link, let me first summarize the gist of the original.  Dude cannot stop himself from looking at attractive chicks in yoga pants, dude feels at least mildly ashamed of this, dude thinks women cannot possibly be wearing yoga pants only for comfort as they claim but must instead be wearing them to make dudes like him look.

First, a confession.  I don't know if I've mentioned this on here before, but between recuperating from my surgery and then being laid off, I haven't worked at a "real" job since the beginning of October. This has led to, um, kinda giving up on dressing like an actual grownup person most of the time.  I had dinner with my former co-workers last month and one of the first things I asked a colleague who'd also been made redundant was, "Hey, Chrissie, have you totally stopped wearing real pants yet?"  Oh, we laughed. Yup, yoga pants err'day.  Fifteen or twenty or twenty five years of getting up every morning and forcing oneself into some iteration of acceptable business casual means when the blissful day comes that a girl doesn't have to, can you blame her for wanting to jettison the pants with zippers? Really?  Article Writing Dude may not believe it, but yoga pants are indeed the most comfortable garment the human race has of yet invented.

Second, yet another confession.  Despite the fact that I objectively know they are tight, form-fitting spandex, I don't feel particularly alluring in yoga pants.  I think I look good, nice, presentable, whatever, but not "oh mama."  In fact, I recently had a...let's call it a date...yeah, date...with an ex at which I showed up in yoga pants ('cause see above: real pants boycott) and I felt compelled to apologize that I hadn't made any effort to look shmexy.  Shmexy to me is dressy tight jeans, boots with a heel, a shirt or sweater that shows a smidge of cleavage.  That's what I'd wear when I purposely want someone to look, whether a specific someone or a general someone.  Yoga pants are what I wear to lift heavy shit or stretch or do housework or run to the store or give a massage or otherwise want to be able to move in comfort and forget about my clothes altogether while also looking presentable and, y'know, just fine.

Now, to my point, my rebuttal.  Article Writing Dude says that women MUST be wearing yoga pants to be looked at since if they only wanted comfort, they'd wear baggy sweats instead.  Oh, AWG, you are making one of the crucial mistakes that oh so many men make when they think they're understanding anything about why a woman does anything. (I've had this actual argument discussion with male friends in real life, male friends who are neither morons nor any more chauvinistic than the average bear.) Men seem to think that anything a woman does is related to guys. When it comes to what we wear, gentlemen, that is a very, very false assumption. Most women dress for themselves first and other women second, with men a distant third (unless of course they are specifically trying to seduce a certain someone, please a beloved partner, or just pull at da club.) So, in the case of yoga pants, I wear them for myself because they allow me to be comfortable while not feeling unattractive or sloppy; I don't hardly ever wear pj pants or baggy sweats for myself because, while comfortable, they do make me feel sloppy. Secondarily, I don't wear those pj pants or baggy sweats in public because of other women: I'm aware that looking like a complete slob instead of at least a little cute is the kind of thing that can draw negative judgment. I'd be embarrassed to run into a client, an acquaintance, a non-immediate relative while wearing baggy ass sweats in a way I wouldn't be if I were wearing yoga pants and cute sneakers.  Nothing to do with wanting menfolk to look at my crotch or my ass, thanks. Sorry, guys. It's NOT all about you all the time.

That has nothing to do with anything. Other than it's hilarious. And true.

Perhaps I should think about looking shmexy more often. Or start wearing pj pants to WalMart.  Apparently success (in loooovvvvve) requires one of those two strategies.

xoxo

in which i torture you with more nostalgia

Apparently February is trip-down-memory-lane month here at MMiNaE.  (We the management do NOT plan these themes, they just happen. Like surprise pregnancies or toenail fungus. Something like that.) Anyway! Today's post is going to travel even further back in time, back back back to the late '70s, when your humble correspondent was in high school.

I've mentioned before that I was a small, clutzy, not particularly fast child*** and that thus while I was not picked last in gym class or on the playground, I definitely was picked in the lower third. And I've mentioned that I therefore grew up not thinking of myself as an athlete in any way, shape, or form and was surprised to find in my middle age that, hey, I'm kinda good at lifting weights and sorta strong for my size.  Since realizing this, I've lamented that I didn't find this out earlier, like, say, in high school or college. It would have made my emotional relationship with my own body for the next 30+ years different, I think, and definitely would have increased my self confidence.  Nowadays when I'm in the gym I (improbably) think of myself as a little badass and that affects**** me outside the gym as well. The funny thing, though, is that I also realize that even 35 years ago, that's what I wanted to be.  I just had no way, and no encouragement, to make that a reality, at least in healthy ways.*****

During my recent closet/drawer cleaning binge, it came to my attention that I only still own three things from my high school days.  A big white piggy bank with red hearts on it that my future ex-husband bought for me for Valentine's Day 1979 at Quincy Market, back when Quincy Market was an awesome cool place to go on a date. (Ha!)  A gold and onyx ring that was not new when it was given to me and that, after many years of being worn on and off, has worn so thin in the band that I would fear to wear it now.  And a pair of 5 lb plastic weights filled with sand I bought my freshman year (?) of high school and that has survived many moves with me, living on a basement shelf unused for the almost 18 years I've lived in this house. Like the piggy bank and the ring, I've never quite been able to bring myself to get rid of them. It's strange.

I always say that my genesis for wanting muscles was Terminator 2, but obviously the existence of those 5 lb weights proves that's not strictly true. I remember buying them at the army/navy/sporting goods store where we all bought our Levis, convinced that if I just did every arm exercise I knew a hundred times every day, I would have beautiful "toned" (gag) arms. Obviously no one had told me (in gym class or in the many many articles in Seventeen or Glamour magazine that promised I would be skinny if I only did the proscribed exercises 20 minutes a day) about crucial concepts like rep schemes, progression, or rest days, and me n' my lil plastic weights were doomed to failure.

Is it time for this picture? Sure. It's never not time for this picture.

Later, the summer before junior year, I have my second distinct memory of wanting a muscular body.  I was in my boyfriend's car, stopped at a light, and a girl/young woman crossed the street in front of us.  She was wearing a racer back tank top and she had what I would now refer to as a V shape as well as beautiful shoulders.  I remember being acutely jealous that her back and shoulders looked like that, as well as thinking that you had to be born with that shape or you'd never have it. See: misinformed again.

Finally, junior year we got a Nautilus machine for the girls' locker room. In 1978, this was fancy shmancy and newfangled and no one was sniffing about how free weights were far superior, yo. No, this was cutting edge. And the reason we got it was--according to our gym teachers anyway--that seeing as the boys had gotten one for the football team to use, they had to provide one for us or someone could sue their asses because of Title IX. (I am woman, hear me roar.  The '70s were basically awesome.)  No one taught us to use it or cared whether we did, but some of the gym teachers would let us stay down in the locker room to purportedly use it instead of playing volleyball or some such shit.  In reality this meant we mostly sat around on it and chatted. But I did love to use the leg press section. Many many many light weight reps of course. Sigh.

So, yeah. If I carefully look back, I always did want to lift weights. I always was drawn to it. I just was never encouraged or taught anything useful about it. That's a pity. What gym class could have been, if only...

The reason I even started thinking about all this today is this article about being picked last in gym class.  In particular, one comment was from someone who said she was indeed always picked last in gym class but that it didn't bother her. She knew she was good at other things and felt it was almost fair for the kids who weren't good at scholastics to have something to shine at. I can see that, actually. I mean, do we rail against the cruelty of spelling bees because of how humiliating they must be for the dyslexic or poor-of-rote-memory? On the other hand, because of my own experience, I really wish gym class was about everyone finding a physical activity that they really like and are potentially good at. That's the kind of thing that will carry through a person's whole life, you know?

xoxo

***who grew up to be a small, clutzy, not particularly fast adult, go figure

****or effects, possibly. I dunno, I always get that wrong.

*****I mean, learning to pee standing up between two parked cars the summer I graduated high school made me feel like a little badass too and proved useful in the years of drunken shenanigans that followed, but do we REALLY want to encourage that type of behavior?

Footnotes! Out of control since 2011!

not found in...

What do all these women have in common?

If you answered "they're what popped up when you google-image-searched 'fitness models', Andrea," you'd be correct.  If you answered, "they're all brunettes," you'd also be correct.  If you said, "apparently they all like red/grey/black/white workout clothes," I wouldn't argue with you.

But none of that speaks to my point. I'd say what they have in common is that they're all very lean, quite muscular, and yet have enormous boobs. Boobs which are almost certainly not the, um, originals.  Y'all know I hang out online in female weightlifting circles. In those circles one of the most common newbie questions is whether when the questioner loses fat will she lose her breasts too. The answer to that is uniformly "yes!"  Often blithely followed by something like "...but that's what surgery is for!" or "don't worry, you can buy yourself some new ones."

Now as the cranky, brought-up-in-the-late 70s, pro-choice feminist that I am, I firmly support (see what I did there? it wasn't intentional) the right of any woman to do what she wants with her own body, including plastic surgery.  But as a cranky, brought-up-in-the-late 70s feminist, I have to admit I am appalled that the beauty standard is increasingly shifting not just to something impossible for a woman without the right genetics (i.e. the 5'11, 120lb fashion model ideal) but one that is impossible for all women, barring surgical intervention (i.e. the 14-16-18% bodyfat but with DD/E cup breasts fitness model ideal).  That look is not found in nature.

Oh, some women are genetically blessed with boobs that contain a higher percentage of glandular tissue and thus do not lose them completely when they're at a lower bodyfat level. (Truth in advertising, I myself would never be an A cup even if I were emaciated.) And some very lucky women hold onto a good portion of their breast fat even when they're losing fat elsewhere.  But very lean women with very huge natural breasts just do NOT exist. How is holding this look up as a pinnacle of female beauty any better than saying that bound feet or artificially stretched necks are required for a woman to be truly pretty?

Sigh. Okay, okay, I'm not that stupid. I do know the difference: no one is forcing infants or little girls to have breast augmentation and no one is shunning or refusing to marry women who haven't had the procedure. It's still all-of-a-piece to me.  You're a woman. Not only do you have to watch every morsel that goes in your mouth, put in hour after hour of hard work in the gym, do your hair, use makeup, tan, and remove all your body hair, to be the pinnacle of hawtness, to be the ideal, you *also* have to have invasive surgery. There's something wrong with that picture.

I have a picture up on my refrigerator, a bodybuilding.com ad torn out of a magazine. I'm klassy like that, shut up.

Her name is Kelly Conrad. She's not a professional fitness model; she's a bodybuilding.com "employee of the month." She's also 5'3, 115 pounds, so about my size. I love her body: her stomach, her quads, and especially her arms and shoulders. I think she's beautiful, and beautiful in a way that's at least somewhat attainable to me. And what she has or doesn't have in her sports bra is realistic. I dunno. I wish that all the women in the fitness magazines and supplement ads looked more like her and less like the very lovely but very artificial sex-kitten-ish fitness models above.  Also?  Bonus redhead!  Alternately, I'd also love to see some female powerlifters with higher bodyfat (and thus maybe naturally bigger boobs) and lots of muscle in the ads, because that's a very beautiful look too.  Honestly, I don't even understand how putting a woman in an ad that your readers--if they have half a brain--know they could never look like through natural means even helps sell supplements. But obviously I'm not in advertising.

xoxo

they weren't joking about snowmeggadon

That's my front door with a 5 foot snow drift in front of it.  My son and I just shoveled for 3 1/2 hours and we didn't even do the side walks--there was no place to put the snow.  I hurt.  And there isn't even any crap food in the house for me to eat back all those calories.

xoxo