So here we are.
It’s been a bit since any of us have posted here at Rational Creatures. For me it’s been finishing grad school, running after a baby who’s started crawling, moving from an apartment to a house, and working full time. For others I know it’s been the varied demands of motherhood, work, show rehearsals and performances, etc etc etc.
And before that it was Erin dying.
I’ll admit it’s been difficult to come back here. What, after all, can be said? What doesn’t feel silly and petty and unimportant in the face of the bullshit waste that we call her death?
So we’ve just been living. But now, finally, I’ve had some thoughts noodling around in my head, and I figured might as well come back to it. Only time to start is now.
Let’s talk about taking up space.
Women are conditioned to take up as little space as possible. This is clearest physically. We’re supposed to be small – not just thin, but dainty, petite, slight. “You’re so tiny!” we tell each other, as if it’s the highest compliment, because it is, because that’s what we’re supposed to be. Fat women are expected to slim down, or at the very least make an effort at it. And if you’re still fat (for now, until that next diet program works sweetie) you should “dress for your shape”, wear slimming clothing, use these 50 ways to look smaller by next week! Make sure you work out every day, but don’t build your muscles, you don’t want to get big, do you? Three pound weights could be lifted by a sickly toddler, so that should be perfect for you to prevent that bulk! Your meals and your appetite should both be small, by god, and if those don’t do the trick, we’ll make sure we cut away pieces of you, and you’ll start shrinking away, so fast that your skin will hang off of you, and then we’ll cut that away too! (more…)