How I deal with street harassment

My modus operandi used to be just continuing on my way as I boiled with humiliation, anger, fear, and helplessness.

Until last summer, when I had a job that 1) gave me a lot of practice talking to strangers, and 2) was located just off a plaza where a number of verbally aggressive homeless men congregated.

I got fed up with the harassment and started talking back.

What helped me make a habit of responding: Thinking of one or two comebacks flexible enough that I wouldn't have to improvise. And plenty of dudes willing to "help me" "practice."

My standbys are:

• "That's actually NOT my name."
• "Did I ask for your opinion?"
• "Excuse me?"

Add some righteous indignation and laser eyes, and you're set.* Useful on public transit as well as with panhandlers or fellow pedestrians.

When it comes to Jerks in Cars, there is not much time, so my repertoire is limited to gestures like the finger. Depending on proximity, speed of traffic, and how much berserker you have in you, you may have the option of assaulting the vehicle in question. (Speaking as a mere kicker of bumpers and banger of hoods, the dudes hate having to admit that their chariot of misogyny is not untouchable.)

Not surprisingly, coming back at a harasser is much easier in some circumstances than in others. Homeless men don't particularly intimidate me.** An young, expensively dressed man, a big man, a large group of men — any of these would generally be more intimidating me. Depending on my survival radar, I might decide it's not worth it. That's fine. (The point of talking back is not that you are a weak person if you don't.)

Respect for intuition/survival radar withstanding, no harasser has yet responded to me in a way that outweighed the satisfaction of talking back.

The point is: that you are allowed to be angry at men who try to degrade you, and you don't have to swallow that anger. That it is not your job to be pleasant and submissive. It is not your job to treat harassers as if they are not doing a terrible, shocking, unacceptable thing. Feeling helpless sucks, and claiming your right to act like what you are — a human being with reasonable rights and emotions and the means to express both  — is cathartic and constructive.

*Laser eyes can work pretty well preemptively too, if you're getting warning vibes from someone's demeanor.
**Almost all of the men who harass me are panhandlers or otherwise visibly homeless. Somewhere in the overlap of race and class with sexism and this being San Francisco, there is an answer to this. I have an inkling that harassment in public places generally takes place across boundaries of race and class, and that men harassing or assaulting women of their own class and particularly race are more likely to do so in private.

The next time you eat something sweet, fatty, or high-calorie...

1.
I saw a sign at Panera that say, "Only [xxx] calories for the entire meal."

What an odd phrasing, I thought. I wrote it down.

I recently saw the exact same formulation in another food ad recently. Don't remember where.

It's how we normally talk about money, e.g. "Only $4 for the entire meal." The "for" indicates an exchange, that you must give up something in order to get and eat the food. And that's why it's weird.

You lose money when you buy something to eat. But do you lose calories when you eat it? Of course not. You get calories when you eat something. Calories are not the cost of eating; calories are the core benefit of eating. The calories are what you're paying for.

2.
There were a couple times at college where I was concerned about money. That was a new thing for middle-class white USian, mostly-supported-by-her-parents me. And a revelatory experience for my relationship with food.

I remember walking through the grocery store, laughing at the 100-calorie packs — no thanks, I'd prefer a snack that doesn't leave my stomach growling — and declining to go to the gym, because spare calories are a luxury, and calories are a gift with enjoy a few more hours of life! written on them, and because calories are awesome and I'm grateful for them.

3.
I would like to do an inventory of a supermarket. Measure the cost/calorie of each item, and then compare the marketing across different cost/calorie levels.

4.
Those of us with the means to be well-fed act as though "post-calories" comes along with "post-industrial." But calories are energy. We'll never be post-calories. Not even the diet industry's best successes at creating anti-fat panic can change that. Humans need a given amount of calories, no matter how fat they are or how passionately they would like to be thinner. A low-calorie lunch means you'll need a higher-calorie snack or dinner, and exercising doesn't mean you "get" more calories to "spend" later; it means you need more calories.

5.
The next time someone or something tries to shame you for eating something sweet or fatty or higher-calorie,  let yourself be puzzled, because it is puzzling.

The human body knows how to find find equilibrium over the course of a few meals or a few days, so that you get just the right amount of calories for you. Do they not understand that? Or do they think that shame can lower a human's basal metabolic rate?

The next time you eat something sweet and fatty, remember why it tastes so delicious. It tastes delicious because it is the assurance that you will continue getting to be alive. And that is something for your body to be happy about.

Goodbye, July

A mediocre month. It brought Havel, Virginia Woolf, thick fog, and finally employment. Ravens came and left. I spent it rather at the mercy of my brain — back and forth between an obsessive buzzing mood and a numb, heavy, tending-towards-despair. But sometimes it's just a matter of riding it out. If you can continue to get out of bed, eat, go outside, write, those things, if you can just wait for it to subside and protect yourself from (doing) things that would make it worse, then you'll be okay. That's how you can practice hope when you don't feel hope.

Summer classes are over now, thank goodness, and I'm looking forward to this month. August has always been my favorite flavor.

(my) piercings, part two

I don't have them anymore. Two small scars instead.



The piercings had been migrating since the spring at least: the posts stuck out further and the ends weren't flat against my skin anymore. I noticed at the beginning of September that I could see the metal of the back (the part that lies under and parallel to the skin) through the hole and knew it would be coming out soon.

Migrating? Essentially it's the same process as when you get a deep splinter: the body recognizes it as foreign, so it works to push it out. That doesn't always happen with this kind of piercing, but that's what my body decided to do. It could have been that they just got one bump too many. Who knows.

I intended at first to go to a piercer to see if they could do something to reverse the process. But even I could tell that one of them was almost ready to fall out, and the piercer would have charged me money for fixing or proper removal, so I just...plucked it out. The first came really easily. The second one still had some skin around it, so I tugged and cut at the back part a bit and then gave it another day to finish on its own, which it did.

You can see what they look like now/how big they are, the back part together with the top part that's visible on top of the skin when they're in. The little metal things by the acorn.



I was really, really bummed and shocked when I first realized they were coming out, even though I had noticed them migrating. I thought they'd be gone in a day or two, and seeing as they were an important part of my appearance, it would have been kind of like waking up without freckles, or with a different hair color. I would have felt disoriented and somewhat...unfamiliar. And of course, because I got them with my very beloved Ellie, who still has them on the opposite side, it would mean losing the most immediate reminder of our time together. Luckily, I did have time to prepare myself mentally for not having them, to go through a bit of grieving. Once they were finally out, I wasn't sad, since they'd been looking kind of wonky.

So they're gone, after a little over eleven months. I probably won't replace them, because it's expensive and it wouldn't be the same. I've toyed with the idea of getting two small white-ink tattoos over the spots where they were, but I kinda like the scars too.

[part one]

What I know about eating at college

[vegetarian meatballs=love]

I have had a request, from an incoming freshman who has heard too many horror stories about the Freshman Fifteen*, for a post on how to eat well while at college—i.e., while living in a dormitory and on a dining hall meal plan.

Here is what I know about general good eating.

"The best way to nourish your body is not by a) counting calories b) adopting a diet c) depriving yourself of dessert or any other foods. It's to listen to your body’s internal cues, and respond as best as you can."
-[weightless]

One. You can listen to your body and give it what it wants; it knows when you're hungry, restless, full, or tired. Eat what will satisfy you when you're hungry, stop when you're full, sleep when you're tired, get out of your room and exercise when you're restless.

The body (clever thing) hasn't been conditioned the way our heads have been to think in terms of good foods and bad foods, diets and rules and plans and wagons, guilt and "self-control." It still knows what it needs and how it works. And shockingly, the way it wants things will generally keep your weight stable.

Two. If you strive to pay attention to what you're eating, you will enjoy your food more, notice when you get full, and be more aware of what will satisfy your body.

Three. Three regular meals plus snacks is the Best Way. Eating frequently in smaller amounts does wonders for keeping your mood, metabolism, and energy stable and your appetite under control.

Four. Restricting what you eat confuses your appetite and metabolism. Even if you overeat at one meal, it's best not to attempt to compensate at the next meal, or at your next workout. We don't give much credit to moderation and regularity in eating, but they work extremely well. (Imagine that!)

Oh, and? No offense, but dieting is a rubbish idea. It's crap for your health and crap for weight loss.

Five. Being thirsty can make you feel hungrier, but eating obviously doesn't make you feel less thirsty, so keeping well hydrated helps keep you from overeating without meaning to.

Six. Not every meal has to be perfectly rounded, but if you stay slightly conscious of what you've been putting in your body, you can adjust accordingly for any deficit at your next snack or meal. E.g.: If you feel like you've been low on protein, have a hard-boiled egg or some roasted chickpeas at your next study break. If you're feeling sluggish and you realize you have been subsisting primarily on carbs for the past couple days, tacking a salad onto your next meal will probably be a help.

I highly recommend reading "What is Intuitive Eating?" and this interview about beginning to adopt intuitive eating principles.

And what's different at college? 

The dining hall where you'll be having many of your meals might be buffet-style.
This is where intuitive, mindful eating comes in. Overeating ceases to be a worry if you listen to your body. Your stomach doesn't want to be stuffed; it's either previous calorie restriction or emotional factors that make people overeat.

You have to choose your own snacks and keep them in your bedroom.
Hopefully your residence hall does have a kitchen where you can cook if you're so inclined, but the bedroom-snacks thing can make it easier to eat out of stress or boredom. Again, work on becoming a mindful eater, and be thoughtful about how the snacks you keep around will fit in with your dining hall meals. For example, when I'm at school the snack foods that I keep in my room are things like dried fruit, yogurt, almonds and roasted chickpeas, and not because I don't like sweets or carby things. Rather, it's because fruit and vegetarian protein are the things that my dining hall doesn't offer as much of, whereas it's pretty good at doing desserts, fresh breads, and cooked vegetables

But the dining hall doesn't provide all of your meals, most likely.
Some people are used to cooking when they leave for college; others not so much. For the meals you have to prepare for yourself, you kind of just have to figure out what's doable and affordable for you. Of course there's a ton of almost-prepared food to choose from in the supermarket (canned soup, freezer food, sliced bread and peanut butter and jelly, etc.), and sometimes that's all it feels like you have time for. For when you can dedicate a little more time to those meals, though, why not copy some of the simpler recipes your family uses? Or take a look in this free e-cookbook? You'd have to get some less-basic ingredients, but it promises that each of its recipes requires a max of 5 ingredients and 10 minutes to prepare.

You may will start staying up ridiculously late, if you don't already.
There's nothing wrong with being a night owl (I love the late hours) and there's nothing wrong with eating at night, but 1) sleep deprivation can mess with your appetite, and 2) the quantities you eat should ideally taper off before you go to sleep. I think nights are when it's easiest to overeat. Probably the best safeguard against this is, as always, remembering to take notice of how hungry your stomach actually is: just because it's been six hours since your last meal and someone's ordering a pizza, that doesn't necessarily mean you're hungry for another full meal, especially if you've just been sitting at your desk. I tend to drink a lot of hot tea when I stay up late; it's good for when your mouth is hungry but your stomach isn't.

Accordingly, if your class schedule allows, you may be waking up at lunch time. 
That's rather tricky. What I've found works best for me when I sleep in like that is to eat something small as soon as I wake up, and then wait until I'm feeling normal meal-type hunger signals (n.b. not the same as hunger pangs!) for my first meal. After that, proceed as normal, i.e. snack when hungry and have a meal sometime in the evening or late afternoon. I insist on having that morsel upon waking because I know it's not that I haven't gotten hungry; it's just that I slept through the hunger! Bottom line, the body still needs fuel to start the day, even if you don't feel like it and no matter what time it is.

Anything I haven't covered? Any advice of your own?

*which, it turns out, may be closer to the Freshman Five

Addendum

...to my most recent post. (I hadn't intended to stay on this subject, but your response makes me think one or two more posts would be appropriate. More soon.)

I want to clarify that you are not at fault for feeling the effects of a sexist and oppressive beauty culture.

I could not blame you if you feel terrible about yourself. No, no, friends. It is all too understandable

But it is your responsibility to take hold of what tools and help are available to you — so that you can push back against these unfair standards, so that you can claim your right to do what you want in life regardless of what you do or don't do in regards to your appearance.

Responsibility? Do I really mean that? Yes. This is where we come back to the idea that your choices in this area affect all the rest of us.

So do what you need to do to be good and fair to yourself, and in doing that, you will be good and fair to your fellow females. Retrain your thoughts. Don't indulge in self-loathing. Give yourself what you need to be strong, because as we have agreed, it is not an easy fight. Ask for support from people who love you (What does that mean? It means ask them for what you need but can't give yourself.) Give support to them when they need it. Find people who love you and themselves. Reach out for support from a therapist or counselor. Affirm your intrinsic worth and your unique gifts, and affirm the people around you in the same way.

And MOST OF ALL: do not beat yourself up for not having enough self-confidence/love/esteem.
I do this on occasion, and I know I'm not the only one. It's hilariously ironic, but also pretty counterproductive.

Though there are better places ahead for you, where you are now is okay. You are doing your best. The important thing is that you keep moving forward to claim peace and self-confidence. It's what you deserve. It's what we all deserve.

Why it is best not to be down on yourself about your weight (hint: not just because it's not nice)

Hello, here is something true:

Feeling bad about your weight does not help you lose weight.

Letting go of my anger with my weight has been a massive self-fight on several occasions because it felt like doing so would mean giving up any chance at losing weight. (I'm assuming right now that this theoretical "you" is above her set weight, as I was. Thank you, freshman twenty.)

Actually, it is much, much harder to to lose weight if you feel guilty or angry with yourself about your current weight.

It is much, much harder to make positive change of any kind in your life if you are harsh with yourself.

You have to achieve a modicum of self-acceptance before you can successfully change what makes you unhappy.

Does it sound counterintuitive? Well, it's true.

Confidence and positive motivation are prequisites for making changes in your life. Escaping being beaten up by yourself is not positive motivation.

If you don't have good energy in your system, and belief in your ability to effect change, you will not be able to achieve what you want. You will probably self-sabotage, go through cycles of extremes, and ultimately be too low on energy from beating yourself up.

Before you attempt to make a change in your life, see if you are able to say this to yourself first:

I am okay with how I am. I am not perfect, but I am acceptable to myself. I am doing the best I know, and I am learning how to do better. Just as I am in part responsible for the presence of things I don't like in my life, I have the ability to get rid of them and replace them with better things.

Am I making sense?

On my piercings

As you may have noticed in this picture, or heard if you know me on Twitter or Facebook, I had my left collarbone pierced somewhat recently.

It looks like this: two little silver discs that sit just below my clavicle.



My Ellie (also known as the astronaut sister), the friend from online who was staying with me earlier this fall, had always thought this particular piercing looked cool, as had I.

So a week or so before she left San Francisco, we trotted down to Body Manipulations in the Mission and got ours done together -- hers on her right side, mine on my left.

Side note: It might seem odd to get your collarbone pierced when you don't even have your ears pierced, but frankly, I don't like the look of pierced ears that much. Whereas I love, love, love the look of these. I was thinking about them when I wrote this bit in July.

These kinds of piercing are called dermal anchors, and can be put pretty much anywhere you can imagine. I've seen it on the nape of the neck, on a finger, on hips, on the cheekbone. The other advantage to them is that they have a much lower rate of rejection than other types of surface piercings.

They're not connected under the skin, and they're not just like stud earrings that someone stabbed into me. The backside of each dermal is a very small flat piece that lies just under and parallel to the skin.

Getting mine done--the jewelry plus the piercing and tip--was about $160. Pricey, yes, but so worth it. I absolutely love the way they look, I love having them right above my heart to play my fingers across, and it's something Ellie and I both have to remember each other by. [We have been through a LOT together.]

Did it hurt? Yes; enough to make me shake, but not cry. As they're my only piercings, I can't compare, but I hear that the main thing with dermal anchors is that the piercing isn't quick like piercing an ear. Each one took maybe twenty or thirty seconds of actual needle time, and there were a couple moments when it really bit, but once they were in, it was over.

Ellie and I both felt a bit weak when we got home, nothing that an ibuprofen and some snacks and water and couch couldn't cure. After that, there were maybe two days when I noticed the skin around my dermals were slightly bruised, but that's all. Neither mine nor Ellie's ever got gross (oozy etc.) or swelled at ALL. If  you're in the Bay Area and looking for a surface piercing, do yourself a favor and see Steve Joyner at Body Manipulations -- he is EXPERT.

So there you are. Dermal anchors 101.

eta: the story is continued here... (I did lose them after about a year.)

Follow me, children!

Tash of Little Flutters asked me some questions about writing poetry, and I answered. Bitte hinklicken! [Click on over, hmm?]

Nocturnality à la Holly

I'll make do by catching the sunrise--
you lay sleeping--I was escorting it to you.
-Bella Akhmadulina

Or, what to do when everyone but you is asleep.

Because night-owlishness is basically my unofficial major, I thought I would share some of my favorite ways to pass the uncommon hours.

• go to the nearest playground and swing until you've almost-but-not-quite given yourself a stomachache

• play dress-up and assemble a really awesome outfit for the morrow

• blog

• burn a mix CD of excellent and sing-a-longable tracks, relocate a laptop or CD player to the bathroom, and enjoy a long shower to your new soundtrack

• quiet-dance wildly around your house/apartment/dorm in a weird costume (or no costume at all) - iPod optional

• read an book's worth of pages - but instead of going straight through one whole book, read chapter one from one book, chapter two from the next, and so on

• write a letter

• decorate upcoming pages in your journal

• wrap yourself up in Christmas lights and settle yourself in front of your RSS reader

• play Guitar Hero with the sound off

• take advantage of the empty streets and go for a bike ride/longboarding

• if you have a bathroom scale, drink lots of tea and watch your weight go up and down over the course of the night

• memorize a poem or Shakespearean monologue, and resolve to find an excuse to launch into it sometime during the next day

Sophomoric advice on freshman year

It would be pretentious to call this list anything like comprehensive, so I shan't. All I've done is think of the things I didn't read or hear before my first year of college that I wish I had. Without further ado — a little foolish wisdom from me to my bloggy freshman friends. Take it for whatever it's worth.

• Mandatory orientation events? Not all of them actually are that. Consult an upperclassman if possible, because some of them are good, but if you think you've got something better to do — one last dinner with your parents, a trip to Target at a less busy time, or just the bonding experience of cutting a boring event with some new acquaintances — you probably do.

• Don't be inhibited when it comes to approaching the other new students. They are all just as lost as you are, and no one wants to go through college without friends, even if meeting them means looking a little awkward. The first few weeks of freshman year may be the only time in your life when you are surrounded by people your age who are all just as desperate as you to make friends and secure social happiness for the next four years. Take advantage of that opportunity.

• The same desserts that look so luscious the first few weeks will keep getting cycled through again...and again. You've got four whole years to eat your fill of them, so why rush?

• Don't let your high school identity cramp your style. If some aspect of the way you present yourself displeases you, then change it! Now that no one around you remembers that you were ever otherwise, it's a great time to try being what you've always kind of wished you were.

• Get to know your professors. Often said, but not so easy to do. Why? Adults that erudite can very easily be intimidating, but you have so much to gain from talking to them that you really owe it to yourself. If you don't get the opportunity in class, make a point of introducing yourself to them at the beginning of the semester. Office hours or lunch in the dining hall is good for when you have questions or ideas that didn't fit in the class discussion. When they invite groups of students over to their houses, accept and go!

• Do your laundry before you realize that you have to. Granted, the strange looks you get for going to the laundry room in a dressy skirt and swimsuit may make the trip more amusing, but I think most of you would agree that not exhausting all your other clothing options is even better.

• Know what activities keep you sane, and insist on having time for them. I, for example, go a bit crazy without pleasure reading. If I cut it out of my schedule to make more time for schoolwork or time with friends (both good things), I always regret it eventually because then I can't destress as well, and I start getting resentful of the things I gave it up for. And loony cuil is just not as productive as happy cuil. So, I journey regularly to the public library and make sure I'm always reading a good non-school book, even if some days it's only for twenty minutes before I fall asleep.

• Get regular exercise. That's kind of a duh, but a lot of college students look at it as a luxury their busy schedules can't afford. If you can make it a habit (which, remember, is said to take twenty-one days), you'll be so much happier - enjoying the endorphins, destressing, warding off the freshman fifteen, and all that jazz. Take it from someone who took too long to make physical activity a part of her routine.

I'm planning on asking my friends what they would add, and I may think of something else, so I'll prolly have one more post on the topic. But have you any questions, my dear freshies/pre-freshies, or anything else you'd like to hear more about? Any knowledge that I've gained from a year at college is at your disposal, so please feel free to ask by comment or e-mail me at wieeinlied[at]hotmail[dot]com. If I think of anything else I'll stick it in a new post.

Fellow post-freshman year readers, anything to add?