Shedding a Bit of Bitch

I am kind of a bitch. And I try as hard as I can to do self-reflection but we live in a culture where women judging other women is a regular pass time. Here's the most recent example of this in my life:

I was shooting the shit with the program coordinator at a local nonprofit where I regularly volunteer. Because I'm in once a week, I've found myself pretty friendly with several of the staff and opened up recently about my weight watchers stint. When I was in last week, the program coordinator mentioned this to another staff member because she, too, is doing the online program. I'll call this staff member Ellen.

Ellen is approaching 60 and has been doing nonprofit work for 30+ years. She's born and raised in the midwest and identifies as a lesbian with a working class lifestyle/budget. She was thrilled to find out she and I could "talk points" and strategize, particularly in relationship to budget-friendly options. She's only six weeks in. As she's talking about all of the "switches" she has made in the past six weeks (which is weight watcher's lingo for not actually changing much about how you eat, just compensating with synthetic, processed low-cal alternatives) she mentioned how floored she was to find out the point values in her current eating habits. A McDonald's double cheeseburger is 2/3 of our daily points. A McDonald's cinnamon thingy is half. She says, "So I'm not doing that any more! I lost 4 pounds a week when I started for the first two weeks." She assured me that the weight loss has evened out to more like a pound and a half/week but she was glowing with this revelation. I notice her khaki pants gaping where her belt was cinched a hole tighter.

I have not had this kind of success. I'm not even sure I'm losing weight just yet. So I'm immediately jealous. Then jealousy turns to anger and anger to bitchiness (which I kept internal). I thought to myself, as Ellen is suggesting this brand of bread that is only "1 point a slice", "I'm not going to do that. I don't even eat bread that much. And I don't go to McDonald's. And I don't drink soda or coffee drinks with calories. Why does she get to lose all the weight? And why is she surprised about McDonald's food?" I think, somehow, that I am more deserving than Ellen.

When she asked me if I had anything I was working on in particular, something I was trying to swap or avoid, I said, honestly, "alcohol." She raised her eyebrows. I felt like jumping to my own defense but thought better of it. I just shrugged my shoulders.

Then yesterday, I made one of my go-to meals that I've been making since late college. Peanut tempeh stir-fry with rice noodles and lots of frozen veggies. I plugged my recipe (and I actually measured my ingredients as I put them into the peanut sauce, since usually I just eyeball and taste test) into the online point calculator. The recipe, in the bowlful amount that I ate (and I often eat two helpings) was almost half my points. And I thought, well, it's not a McDonald's hamburger.....

All this to say, if the weight loss doesn't work, perhaps I'll shed a bit of bitch and remember the complicated (class) politics of women's consumption. And be a bit more mindful of a mouthful.

Is Weight-Loss Self-Absorbed? Wait...Is this blog self-absorbed?

The answer the latter question could very well be yes. The answer to the former I am still wrestling with, as a feminist, as a scholar, as a buddhist-christian-queer-antiracist-socialist.

One of the things that I'm very concerned about is Arizona's ban on Ethnic Studies and their corresponding immigration battles. I teach about this stuff, particularly in my class on American women writers, where we begin with slave narratives and end with Chicana feminist thought, wrestling with ideas of citizenship and belonging and their relationship to a feminist social justice project. My students surprise me with their insights and their varying relationships to activism and history.

Last week I had students read an interview with a black feminist scholar, Evelyn Hammonds, about growing up in the Jim Crow South and pursuing a science degree at MIT in the late 1970's. In a critical writing response, I asked students to make connections to Harriet Jacobs' Life of a Slave Girl and the idea that withholding education is a tool of oppression.

I was surprised to find that many of my students did not know what the Jim Crow Laws were.

That afternoon, intimidators with gun holsters disrupted a peaceful vigil held to recognize the death Trayvon Martin.

The next morning, racist graffiti was scrawled on the side of our campus Black Cultural Center, a building that arose out of student activism and a push of Black Studies (now called African and African American Studies) in the 1970's.

Meetings were held. Undergraduate student orgs representing students of color created a response and faculty and instructors like myself stood in support.

The next morning, we marched from the Hale Center to the Alumnae House to interrupt a meeting of the Board of Trustees. Afterward there was a sit-in, followed by news of more racist graffiti.

As I was marching with students and faculty, I felt the pinching in my groin and the tightness in my tail bone gradually release. There was a dull pain in my walk but it was overshadowed by the energy of the group's movement--the anger, the frustration, the sadness. And I thought, does it matter that my body is here?

I don't have a thoughtful way to end this blog except to say that I think it did, that it does. I'm reminded of the political philosophy of Stokely Carmichael, who understood that white bodies carried privilege that bodies of color did not. So when he became a founding member of SNCC, he encouraged white student leaders to travel to the Jim Crow South because their presence would garner media representation that the local black organizing was not receiving. These white bodies were meant not to be leaders but to listen and engage. To be present.

And I understand today that there are limitations to the work that SNCC was able to do. And I also understand that we live in a different media culture than Stokely Carmichael but I also know that white privilege still exists. And if I can use it for anti-racist organizing, I will.

But I can't do it unless my brain is working. My body is moving. And I am able to stand/sit/write/speak in solidarity.

Please sign this petition--no need to be a student at my University.

It's Always the Tartlette that gets you...and the lychee martini

This week has been a lot of trial and errors with the new Weight Watchers plan. Here are some things I learned:

The Lychee Martini, while a delicious accompaniment to maki rolles and seaweed salad at a friend's goodbye dinner, cost me twice the points as a glass of white wine would have. Lesson learned: I went to bed starving that night.

The spicy maki rolls are twice the points of the regular maki rolls. Noted.

I ate a "tartlette" following a professor's book reading yesterday. The tartlette was no more than three inches in diameter, two bites of creamy, silky custard bedding two single slices of strawberry and kiwi. In trying to find a "dessert" point equivalency through the WW website, I found that this may be as much as a quarter of my daily allotted point values. Used my weekly "supplemental" points so I could have a soup and cracker mini-meal before bed so I wouldn't go to bed as I had earlier in the week.

Veggies and fruits are free, of which I am suspicious. Fruit matters when you are trying to lose weight and/or when you have trouble metabolizing sugars. I am still keeping my fruit to 2-3/day. Slight distrust of system.

Shelled soybeans and avacado are not free. Avacado was not a surprise here but the soybeans were, as I discovered in putting together my sobe noodle, soybean, steamed veggie lunch.

The makeup of the WW website is such that processed, manufactured food is the easiest, quickest way to keep track of your "points". This is a problem. Individually trying to build every combination of foods I eat because I choose local restaurants and often vegetarian options is time-consuming.

I'm still playing around with the "activity tracker", which I don't understand. Limited options of activities that don't include power yoga (pretty sure the website only understands yoga as meditation) and resistance weight-training via balance ball. Many of the activities that I'm allowed to do with my hips are un-trackable.

Final reflections: I have found myself drinking less alcohol and eating more vegetables, both of which are steps toward balance. I am going to talk to my acupuncturist tomorrow about any sort of appetite moderation work but in the meantime, I'm off to finish my buddha tattoo.

Weight Watchers is for Hetero Housewives and other Misconceptions

It's been 7 months since I began project 28.

I have made no progress toward losing my 28 pounds.

I have, however, passed my PhD Comp Exams without having a major mental break. And I finally feel like I'm getting on top of some of my chronic pain. And I'm more balanced, the ultimate goal of the project.

But the prognosis persists: my hips will get better if I lose some weight and tighten my core muscles. Acupuncture helps. Physical therapy helps. But extra weight matters when we're talking chronic joint pain. And I still sit for a living. reading. writing. thinking. kavetching.

I've tried upping my exercise.

I've tried working with a nutritionist.

I'm talking through feelings and compulsions in therapy.

And here's what I've come up with: the average nutritionist can't tell me any more than I already know. This might sound presumptuous but here's the thing: I spent two years hospitalized for an eating disorder, getting nutritional counseling day and night, and I study women's health for a living. And food politics is a passion of mine. I know we don't grow corn we can eat in this country. I know that corn syrup is not the same as sugar. I know what a gluten-free diet promises; and that gluten in the U.S. is different than gluten in Europe.

So the average nutritionist can't tell me anything I don't already know.

I also can't afford anything besides average.

A friend of mine told me about a Weight Watcher's deal. She's a young, breast cancer survivor and is trying to trim up to reduce her risks of recurrence. And I thought "Weight Watchers is great. My mom did Weight Watchers in the 90's." And then I thought, "Wait. Everyone's mom does Weight Watchers." Then, "Weight Watchers is for moms." In the process of a week of considering point systems as a valuation of food and nutrition, my thoughts kept rolling."Weight Watchers is for heterosexuals." "Weight Watchers is for folks with suburban lives." "Weight Watchers is not for queers."

Because it's marketed through the major consumer market of housewives and middle class women more generally, Weight Watchers seems repulsive to me. It would be like buying.....a house with a yard. Somewhere near a freeway where you have to drive to a grocery store. I talked this over with Judy and Meredith, the two most radical queers I know in Columbus. Meredith: "Why would you do that?" Wrinkles nose (which are adorned with hipster frames). Judy: "Because that really works!" Raised her hands in emphasis, exposing an inch of mid-drift at the top of her high-waisted skinny jeans.

And I think about how Weight Watchers no longer requires meetings and weigh-ins. It's all about Apps and online tracking. It is not the 90's.

And also, Jennifer Hudson is hot.

So I begin the process of signing up.

After I in-put all of my information, there's a question on the bottom of the page. "Are you an active bulimic?" to which I am supposed to check 'yes' or 'no'. I try looking for an in-between category. Seeing none, I click 'yes'.

"Weight Watchers is not a program for you. You should consult a physician and a nutritionist."

Well, I've done that.

So I click 'no.'

And begin my counting.

It could be a mistake. It could get compulsive.

But it also could work.

And I don't need to buy everything to use the product. There's an App for that?

Acupuncture Take 3

There's something that seems really indulgent about sitting still for an hour, legs elevated in a plush (leather?) recliner, lights dim, flute music circulating the sound waves of the room. It's 9:45 on a friday morning and I've discarded my socks and shoes by the door. I think, I should be working on my prospectus chapter outlines. I should be responding to student emails about their final papers. I probably shouldn't have downed those two cups of coffee after my shower, Rachel Maddow waking me up with the aftermath of Super Tuesday. I think, from here, I'll get to school do some reading before my 1:00 reading and then, hopefully, have time and energy enough this evening to finish that prospectus bibliography and a conference presentation for next week. And that I should also probably plan something for dinner.

My acupunturist asks about my week. I tell her my anxiety levels are a bit heightened, which happens to me at the end of every quarter when my colleagues sequester themselves to writing and grading and I try to resume a resemblance of a balanced schedule. Can we do anything about that? I ask, my fingers tapping beats onto the recliner arm. I think I'm trying to make the flute music into reggae. Sure. She taps three needle along my hairline. She asks about my walking. I tell her the truth--that I've been much less achey, able to move a little more this week. She nods, smiles, and taps five needles into my left hand. A few more in my feet and ankles, one in my right ear.

I glance around me, two other women and one man getting treatments. At first, I'm not sure how to hold my right hand because she has placed one single needle on the inside of that wrist. I feel my shoulder and bicep tense, a quickening of my heart, then I remember to breathe. In breathing, I consciously release my right arm muscles. As I do, my hand falls toward my torsoe, the needle, unmoved from its position in my wrist, nestles into the leather arm. I realize it, with its pinhead point, is going to work with me.

For an hour, I try to pay attention to the slight twinges and nerve firings in my body. Sometimes my mind strays. I'm beginning to understand how my chapter outlines are fitting together, how my missing link is perhaps one of my main ideas of my Masters thesis. I notice my left hip sinking into the chair and slight pinches in my left foot as it adjusts to this new balance. My body is still though I can't remember consciously stilling it.

And as I sit the needles begin their writing.

The March To-Do List

I've been having trouble trying to get myself to post recently. It could be the post-exam lull. It could be because I feel like I've let "project 28" itself fall kind of to the wayside. It could be because March Madness is descending, and I'm not talking about basketball.

Here are some updates:

In the month of exams, I'm pretty sure I picked up some loose drinking habits. Like, sitting on my couch alone with gossip girl and a gin and tonic habit. So I'm working on keeping track of some of my alcohol consumption--making sure that I'm not just making a cocktail or pouring a glass of wine out of restlessness or boredom.

I've also noticed my stomach feels like an open wound. Could be combination of alcohol, stress, and caffeine. So I'm going to cut coffee after noon. Try to stick to water or green tea.

I'm experimenting with acupuncture. I've now had two visits to work on this hip pain. Weirdly, after the first visit where she worked on two pressure points in my left ear (in addition to many more, mostly centered on my right upper arm) I developed the first ear ache I've ever had and it lasted for four days. When I asked her about it, she said that she had never heard of that reaction before... my body continues to surprise me. Is the acupuncture working re: the hip pain? A few days ago when I went back, she did a lot of points in my left hand, which left me unable to write for a few hours. As I was walking to the clinic, about half mile up the road from me, I noticed I had the usual pinching where my thigh meets my hip, more prominent on the left side than the right. On the way home, I noticed the pain was gone. As I'm sitting here now, cross-legged with the computer on lap, there's dull throbbing in my right ass and if I thrust my hips forward to rearrange my weight, the pinching in the front continues. My acupuncturist told me to try four sessions, about a week apart, and see how I feel afterwards. So, because I'm so desperate to be able to walk and bike and sit without constant need for readjusting, I'm sticking with it.

I'm trying to make myself do my p.t. exercises at least four days/week. My p.t. said I could start biking at five minute intervals in a month if I continued these exercises regularly. Last week I did them twice.

I keep hoping I feel energized enough to get back into my Ashtanga routine, something I've been doing since I was 15. But I've noticed something. I've actually become afraid to move. My body has defeated me. I anticipate pain even when its not there. And as a result, my body feels heavy. I'm out of shape. And I crave more sugar. So I'm telling myself: vegetables and short walks. A few yoga postures--no need for a full routine.

And with that, I have nothing clever to end this blog with. Just a hope that this list will become lived.

PhD Candidacy and Three Salzarac Cocktails

After my successful defense on Monday, I spent most of the week in celebration with various comrades and old roommates, taking the time to reflect on the months when I started my PhD--mono-laden, depressed, uninspired by a gray, landlocked city of passive-aggressive communicators, extreme racialized poverty, and the wasteful wealth of a suburbs that are a direct result of capitalist headquarters. I never thought I would make it, mostly because of my geography. There was also an outdated course requirement taught by a woman who doesn't keep up on her field, a language requirement facilitated by a department that still thinks flash-card memorization is actual learning, and thousands of dollars in student loans taken out to cover health insurance and my partner's on-and-off unemployment due to the city's devastated nonprofit and service industries. My first six months working on my PhD I thought for sure, I wouldn't make it.

And then the morning of the oral exam arrives. I've bought a new shirt, I'm wearing my uncle's tie for good luck. My slacks are ironed. In fact, to wear down the aggressive anxiety that arrived on Sunday afternoon, I began ironing everything in my closet. Then I rearranged the closet. Then I rearranged the living room. And I did my taxes.

So the morning of the exam: there's nothing to do but review some notes in the library, a mostly-superficial attention on my part reviewing key arguments and terminology, outlines for the exam questions I didn't answer (in each of our fields, we chose one of two) all the while wondering if I should have worn a blazer.

When I arrive at the exam room, it has been double-booked. There is a scrambling for a new location. There is an awkward convergence of my exam team in the hall, pats on my shoulder as we settle into our new room. I give my introduction, a summary of how my fields fit together, written out carefully in three brief pages that I have been told should be summarized even more briefly. So I don't look at the pages. I summarize my summary impromptu. There are questions. There is me interpreting the question. Answering. Reinterpreting. Re-answering. Providing anecdotes. Looking in the eyes of my four committee members, wondering what they are wondering.

Three minutes before the end of my two hours, they ask me to leave the room so they can discuss. They let me back in. I have only had time for a quick run to the bathroom, the bottle of water I brought in with me drained now, my throat still dry. They usher me to the end of the table. "Congratulations." No expression. "You've passed. You're ABD." No expression. "Really?" I might cry. Because I'm not sure why they aren't more excited. Everyone, almost simultaneously, releases themselves from the table by pushing their arms out, gripping the oak edge, and wheeling backwards, a silent glide of wheels across institutional carpet. "Let's go do the paperwork."

I'm exhausted. The process itself has been a great physical challenge of waking, reading, writing. Day in and day out for months.

Later, my advisor takes me out. I drink three sazarac cocktails. She keeps pace.

And then my old roommate, a colleague from my MA program in Boston--she struggled with me as we read Foucault for the first time, witnessed my gut reactions as I heard of the deaths of my uncle and later my grandfather, and poured me beer the evening my MA advisor told me to write one third of my thesis over, two weeks before my defense-- arrived, wheeling her suitcase stuffed with air mattress behind her. She held out her arms, smiled, and said, without my saying anything, "And of course, you passed."

And I think, "Not of course."

But my mouth sweetened by New Orleans rye and bitters and two hours of conversation with my advisor, I am feeling the beginnings of elation. But it will take days for it to settle in.