This whole month, both of my literature classes have turned into discussions of what defines the human and what we assume that humans deserve by being human. We’re reading a lot of 18th-century stuff on colonialism and slavery, so it keeps coming up, even if I fear that the conversation is getting wide of strictly [...]
Archive for the ‘Body’ category
Weighty matters
Being Stella and writing about weight loss seems predictable. It’s a cliché that women are obsessed and oppressed by body image, but I’m going to come out as someone who just lost weight and feels really good about it. In the fall, a confluence of stressful and unhappy events led me to stop eating properly [...]
Not to be reproduced: New Year’s open thread
Rene Magritte, La Reproduction Interdit / Not to be Reproduced (1937) On January 1, 2011, I was lucky enough to wake up in the home of dear friends, with whom I had joyfully celebrated the night before (at a party complete with bicoastal buddies, disco dancing, and a “gorgeous gateau”). As we eased into the [...]
Good hair
How much money do you spend on your hair? If you’re a guy, do you cut it yourself? If you’re a woman, do you go to Supercuts? Or a fancy stylist? Is there a real difference between a $40 haircut and a $400 haircut? How about color? Do you spend money getting the gray out? [...]
A queer addendum
I was at a party recently and got to talking to one woman about elite vs. non-elite (in my parlance, “fancy” vs. “not fancy”) educational institutions, and whether it mattered how elite the school was that one attended for various career paths. We digressed to talk about one institution, let’s call it College X, of [...]
Menstruation memoir
If all goes to plan, I’m having my last period. That’s 29 years of menstruation. Approximately 382 periods. Thousands of tampons and pads. There’s nothing fun about menstruation and yet facing its end is bizarre. It’s what one does. It marks the months. It’s the inconvenience around which one plans. It’s the interrupter of hot [...]
So you’ve decided to have surgery!
Congratulations, you’ve decided to go for it. Good for you! Having surgery is an important step in your life. Actually, it’s sort of like having a kid: although not as potentially cute, your surgery could be just as hobbling, so it’s not a decision you should take lightly. OK, so here are some recommendations for [...]
Breathing the World Around Us
About a week ago my mother was hospitalized after a rare reaction to the antibiotics she was given for pneumonia which caused her lungs to seize and interrupted her breathing. She was shopping with a friend of hers when she collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. Thankfully she’s making a full recovery [...]
