Yes, that’s my bra strap. Why are bra straps so scandalous? OMG! That woman is wearing a… BRA! (faint)

My doctor is massaging my insurance companies to pay for me a good TENS unit.

I have been using the electrical stim at physical therapy for a little over a month and combined with some simply stretching exercises to help build strength and flexibility, my awful lower back pain is mostly gone. Woohoo!

My therapist sent me home with a loaner unit on Wednesday and I’ve been playing with it ever since. I love it. It takes some trial and error to get it to stick in the right places, but it’s helped quite a bit.

And it’s something I can have on my person at all times — not just at home (hard to keep a gel pack on my back all day) — that interrupts the pain signals, meaning I can reduce my pain killer use correspondingly. The fewer narcotics I take, the better. Especially with that full-time desk job I will be starting in a couple weeks.

But I am a naughty girl. I have been browsing Etsy for a cute and stylish case to carry it on my hip…

Just yesterday had to buy a size 4 to get a correct fit on top.

When are they going to standardize pant and basic shirt sizes for the other sex? I guess they wouldn’t make as much money if women didn’t have to make a trip to the fucking dressing room before being able to buy anything. Women might like being able to buy a size that fit accurately without the guesswork, and then they might actually be able to go in a store needing a specific basic item and pick it out and pay for it and walk out!

No, it’s much better for her to have to pick through a dressing rack, pulling out items of clothing in arbitrarily-assigned size numbers based on what looks approximately big enough to fit whatever their widest part is, shaped as though women were simply scaled replicas of some barbie doll basic: the exact same body, sized up or down with locked proportions at every point: no long torsos or tall legs or narrow hips or full bellies or racks of doom; women’s bodies as documents on a copy machine: you’re 108% the Ideal Woman? Great, you’re a size 12! Oh, no matter the inseam is too short or the straps are too long. The problem is with your body, not with our design practices. The burden is on you to seek out an alterationist and pay on top of our already marked-up cost just to get something that fits you correctly.

But just to make sure you don’t take it home and find out it clings too tight to your ass, let’s take it in the fitting room, and do let me know if you need a different size or color! Oh and honey, you’re rocking some major VPL — you need a good thong. They’re next to the shoes on the back wall. And don’t you think this shrug would go great with your outfit? You’ll need it to cover those scandalous top two inches of your arm, which aren’t quite covered by the just-slightly-see-through top, which you’ll need a good undershirt to wear without showing off your satin-and-lace demi bra to your coworkers.

And if you open a store brand credit card today, you’ll get 10% off your purchase!

Pretty please? I’m required to make a daily sales quota and the picking’s been rough. Apparently not every person can manage a new Visa for every retail store they ever visit, and if they did, why, there’d be no one left to sell the credit cards to! Sigh. This world today.

Welcome to the fatosphere, amandaw.

5′8″. 173lbs. BMI 26.3. Sizes 12 and 14 top and bottom. 38-34-44.

My habits have not changed. I eat the same shit I ate six months ago, and get the same amount of physical activity (trust me, that is carefully monitored). The only thing that’s changed is the shot in the ass I get once a month.

After my body settled down from puberty, I was 5′8″, 110lbs, 16.7 BMI, sizes 6 and 8, 32-25-36. I had no appetite and was visibly undernourished. Fending off accusations of anorexia, I would insist that “I’m not fat; I have fat.”

Just before I turned 19, I started on the Lyrica, which gave me a normal appetite. After about a year of slow and steady weight gain, my body settled in to 5′8″, 150lbs, 22.8 BMI, sizes 8 and 10, 34-30-40. And there my body stayed for just about three years.

Three years during which I lived a variety of lifestyles, to use the popular vernacular. I ran around college eating quite a bit; I ran around college eating almost nothing; I sat around my mother’s house eating fast food at least five times a week; I started working on my feet eating healthy portions of home-cooked family means (sandwiches, chicken, grains, pasta). And I stayed the same weight through all of that.

Last night, I went to a friend’s house to try on suits for an upcoming job interview. She used to work as a paralegal, so she had an abundance of suits. She is, well, the average American woman size-wise. She had several suits mostly in 10 and 12 but across a range of sizes.

I tried on every suit. I think there were seven or eight.

None of them fit.

OK — one fit… if I didn’t zip up the pants.

I was fucking humiliated.

I haven’t been able to fit my own jeans recently. I am fortunate that the only thing I’ve had to leave the house for recently has been physical therapy, so I’ve had official excuse to appear in public wearing sweat pants.

The friend was very helpful, and we ended up at Kohl’s where she bought me a fitting skirt, pair of pants, button-down top, and thong.

(Which makes her the first person to ever buy me underwear.)

I was not well. I had done far too much that day, to begin with: wake up early, physical therapy, driving to Canonsburg and back for aforementioned syringe in the ass, and shower, all without a single pain killer. I should have known to take one before going to the friend’s house, because trying on clothes always exhausts the hell out of me (I’d put it on the level of a long shower in terms of physical cost). But I didn’t until all the clothes-trying-on was done.

The physical consequences should be obvious, but something else happens when I’m in that kind of state. My brain goes blank. I am putting so much energy into staying awake, alert, upright, and minimally active that I don’t have any brain power to spare — to form coherent sentences, find the right word for the idea I am trying to express, offer responses that are relevant to the topic being discussed, or just plain make any sense.

Being social in this state is hard enough. It’s even harder when there’s the dark cloud of humiliation hovering over your head.

I looked myself in the mirror. I arched my back, sucked in my stomach, straightened my shoulders.

The gut didn’t go away.

God. I don’t know how to say this. It’s hard. It’s really hard. Up until recently I still saw myself as the skinny chick. My brain still thought it was stuck in the body I inhabited as a teenager.

And now? Now I’ve finally caught up: my brain feels like it’s stuck in the body I inhabited those three years prior to the Lupron.

I was OK, mostly, as I grew. I’ve been involved in fat acceptance for a while now, and body positivity has been a pet issue of mine for years and years; I trained myself to stop finding things to disparage, whether in myself or others, and instead find things to treasure. I accepted my fat rolls, and welcomed the substantiating of the tits. I admired my ass. I was building muscle; my thighs are thick and solid and I rather like them that way.

But now I can’t fit in my fucking clothes. And it’s fucking embarrassing.

***

I have a lot to deal with, personally. But right now I am fervently hoping that cessation of the Lupron will go hand-in-hand with shedding of the weight I’ve gained. I’m already damn sick  of it. The first month I suffered worse pain, dizziness and tremors and fainting spells; I had two months of reprieve after that, and in the last month the back pain came back like a boomerang and hit me in the ass, and brought with it cramping, nausea, and a scary amount of hair loss.

I have two months remaining. One more shot.

I’m scared. I’m scared I’m going to keep gaining. I’m scared there are some new and even more bizarre side effects in store. I’m scared that after the Lupron is done the pain will come right back. I’m scared it won’t have done anything.

I’m scared that all of this will be for nothing.

I’m scared that the Depo won’t do my body any better. I’m scared my periods are going to be as bad as ever when I come off the birth control. I’m scared we’ll end up running into trouble trying to conceive. I’m scared pregnancy is going to wreak havoc on my body. I’m scared of birth. I’m scared I won’t be able to keep up with kids once I have them. If I have them.

Most of all, I’m scared the pain is never going to go away. I’ll be thirty years old and living with the knowledge that I’m not even halfway done living and I’ve already exhausted all my options.

And when I look at that prospect, honestly? I want to die.

***

I meant this post to be about body dysmorphia. Fat. It ended up being something else.

I don’t know. I’ll be ok. But I’m struggling.

You kept me afloat financially for my first adult years in California, and you kept my husband and I out of debt for our first year and a half in Pennsylvania.

Dealing with you was always frustrating, but damned if I’m going to let anybody deliberately starve you to death.

I think people would do well to remember that what they pay in FICA goes into a pool of money that funds not only retirement benefits but also benefits for the blind and disabled. If Social Security were reconfigured to be mandatory individual IRA accounts rather than the rolling system it is now, the blind and disabled would be shit out of luck.

People would also do well to remember that they might become disabled any day.

Finally, people would do well to remember that in reality, almost no one has a cohesive nuclear family with money and bed space to spare for a person permanently unable to contribute financially. Very few people have a savings of more than a couple hundred dollars. Not every city has a homeless shelter. Not every person has good will with wealthy benefactors; not every person has friends in good places. Not every family is functional, or even intact. Not every country, state or county invests in a strong set of public welfare programs. I could go on.

The debate around Social Security always rests on the assumption that the SSA is simply a retirement fund. It is not so.

Without Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income and the Medicare benefits I still had to wait two years for, I would have to have remained living with my (mentally ill and emotionally abusive) mother, and my disabilities untreated. Between those two things, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I would not be where I am today.

I would have killed myself.

Cheers.

This shit makes me blood boil.

This morning I read (rather, viewed) Lauredhel’s documenting of the bullshit uni discrepancies for the Olympic athletes. Remember, these are athletes; there are surely performance advantages to skin-tight Lycra vs. baggy poly or vice-versa depending on the sport, but why then are women always mandated the Lycra and covering as little skin as possible (yes, this is in the rules) and men sometimes skintight, sometimes baggy, but always covering a modest amount and always far more skin than their counterpart women’s unis?

On that note, I was wandering around our discount store today after a job interview, grabbing some band-aids and bathroom products and a few more Fuji apples (divine!). I meandered by the sport care section, looking to replace my late shower chair and see if there was any sort of wrap to keep a heat pad on my back. I noted the name of the manufacturer of the products available there, and came home to print out a few product pages to discuss with my physical therapist.

While browsing the site, I curiously clicked on the “ Life Care™ for Her” link. This is the page that comes up:

What is wrong with this picture?

Oh yeah. The sexy vixen with smoky eyes trying to seduce you to come…tighten her knee brace.

WTF?

You’ll notice the pictures on the packaging, of course, includes more pictures of hairless poreless fatless pigmentless sssssexy chick. And they helpfully spotlight them in the middle of the page!

Mmmmm, check out my soft, silky, supple, b……races.
Why don’t you come support me, baby?

Targeted Support for Today’s Active Women. “Active,” huh! Smirk, wink, amirite amirite

I included the full first screen of the page to give a context as to the site it’s on. This is sports medicine. It’s hot/cold gel packs and creams, and tapes and wraps and braces. By contrast, here’s another picture of a woman on the site:

She’s wearing skin-tight midriff-bearing clothes, but at least she’s wearing any at all — and she’s up and active and at least her awkward position is actually doing something.

And here’s another page for one of their product series (as opposed to just a category of products). Notice that all but one of the pictures have been converted to grayscale and digitally edited to look like an understated grey model.

I don’t see why the same approach couldn’t have been taken with the women’s series of products — which appear to be designed so as to be better marketed, not so as to be a better product for women’s particular needs. They say they are thinner and sleeker so as to be less conspicuous under clothing, an advantage that I see no reason to be confined to women. Surely men in business suits would benefit from a non-bulky ankle brace too?

The message this sends to viewers is, simply put, even when you are injured or sick, you must always be sexy. What it tells women is that they need to shave their entire leg before they put on that knee brace. And white women should preferably tan, without tan lines. WOC need not apply, of course. Nor fat women.

There is quite simply no time that we, as women, are permitted to escape from the exacting standards set for us to be on-the-ready for any male passersby. Not when we are sick, not when we are injured, not when we are active or participating in sport, not even when we are altogether disabled. We must always be aware of our appearance, not in terms of presentability, but in terms of sexual attractiveness to a hypothetical mainstream white heterosexual male.

Even when no one can see us at all.

Chew on that for awhile.

Extra credit: The store had a different women’s-series set of products: they were “for her” and their distinguishing characteristic was that they were sized larger for a “plus-size” body. Apparently only women get fat.

how utterly stratified our society is.

I’ve been hearing radio ads for the PA Governor’s Conference for Women for months now, but recently (and before the unfortunate breaking news) touting speakers such as Elizabeth Edwards, and, uh…. I mostly really don’t register any of the names after hers.

So I figured, lazily, hey, I’ll go check out that web site, and it tells you to save the date (October 2) and I think, you know, I wouldn’t mind going. I mean, I’m utterly meaningless to any of the people who are going to be there, but I would love to hear Elizabeth and I would similarly love to hear many of the other speakers — it seems like something that wouldn’t really be a business opportunity for me (but maybe they’d take pity on the young disabled just-trying-to-get-a-job-as-a-secretary girl? I dream, I dream) but it would be an enjoyable experience, so if I wasn’t working, you know, I wouldn’t mind spending my spare energy, you know?

And then I click on Register Now! out of curiosity and I find out it’s not just energy it would cost me.

These prices are valid through September 2. Prices will increase on September3.
	General Seating	$125
	Table of 10	$1,250
	Mother/daughter combo	$200	Each additional daughter $75
	Student	$60	Student ID required

…. yeah.

This reminds me of the first flight I took, LAX to PIT to visit mattw back in May of ‘05. I’d only ever flown in a tiny puddle-jumper, but I had taken an Amtrak once when I was little enough to remember it clearly but also not remember why or where I was going. And you know how they have the concession car and you can get up and move around if you want, and buy food, and sit in the window car for a bit? Yeah — I thought that’s how things would be on the plane too. Silly me.

I mean. I grew up poor, and now I’m living the comfortable lower-middle life. And I have a pretty socioeconomically diverse network of friends and acquaintances now. But every once in awhile it still hits me hard. A ten-ton wrecking ball smack into my naive expectations.

I dunno. There’s really not much point to this post. I just feel shut out, wistful. It’s that realization that the world is so, so vast, but moreso the reminder that, well, that world? Is not for you.

ETA: I think what bothers me most is that I already knew that the conference wasn’t particularly meant for me. I’m a 22-year-old disabled girl who’s trying to move up to a job as a state-employed secretary. I don’t think I’d particularly have a place there. But I figured there would still be access, you know? But no; it’s closed off. I know this is how these things operate, but that’s rather my point; I grew up so far away from any of this, I had no clue. And every time I run into one of these unexpected roadblocks, I just feel like a friggin’ reject.

Shame and disappointment.

I never took seriously the cries that either Obama or Clinton were narcissistically selfish because they were so extremely unelectable and their nomination (or attempt at) would ruin the party, etc.

But, truly, if John Edwards had been nominated, we would be crushed right now. Which goes to show the folly in the supposed safety in picking a white Southern heteronormative male with a picture-perfect family.

I am glad he didn’t win, despite my support for him throughout his entire run. But, I think, I am still glad that he made this run. He set the standard in health care, putting necessary pressure on Obama’s sadly insufficient plan, and possibly even pushing Clinton to be bolder and wider-reaching with her health care plan than she otherwise might have been. He hit hard without being offensively antagonistic, pushing a refreshing populist progressive platform so hard that he cemented its place in the party’s platform itself for this election round.

And, I think, that influence is underappreciated. I don’t think we would be nearly so successful were it not for his campaign. A great many voters are thirsty for progressive policy, eager to see how different our economy and our society will be with a responsible, liberal value system driving our federal government.

As an aside, isn’t it weird that all this has come down, from Clinton to Edwards, and we still haven’t had the convention yet? Maybe that’s my youth talking; I wasn’t nearly this involved in the political process four years ago.

No, this place isn’t dead. I failed to cross-post my first few posts at Feministe, intended to post a weekly round-up, forgot last weekend, and here we are today.

My posts at Feministe:

• Introduction
  
• Their Story
• Things that make my life easier (pillow edition)
• Quick hit: No fucking way
• Your class is in your skin: what are your experiences?
• Why yes, I am several days behind in my Google Reader, why do you ask?
• PSA (the silly one)
• Things that make my life easier (heat edition)
• Friday Catblogging
• Elitism
• Linky linky
• OK, folks, it’s time for a privilege check
• PSA (the serious one)
• Airing of Grievances
• On a meta note
• Pardon me
• Things that make my life easier (silly edition)
• Is it worth the risk?
• Friday Catblogging & miscellany
• Farewell

I’ve bolded those I’m particularly proud of or which fostered a good discussion (a couple of those are 100+ comment threads — I don’t know if I’ve had that many comments through my entire blog history!) — if you weren’t following at Feministe, do check them out. And my farewell post has a summary of a few of the topics I am working on to post here.

Mmmm… always nice to settle in back home after a time away.