The Written WordBlogging About.

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A different perspective.

There has been a lot of talk about how female char­ac­ters in comic books and games are often hyper sex­u­al­ized com­pared to their male coun­ter­parts, and how it’s a symp­tom of how women are treated in the ‘gamer’ world at large. I am also not in any way shape or form a fan of this stereo­type, and pos­si­bly for a dif­fer­ent rea­son than you may think.

Dis­claimer: I do not con­sider myself a gamer because I am not a fan of video games (though I adore board games), and I am not into comics. I do, how­ever, enjoy the occa­sional LARP (though I’m only ever a NPC because I think I’d be bored if I wasn’t switch­ing roles so much) and almost every one of my friend is a gamer, role­player, and/or is into comic books. Also, my opin­ion does not reflect any­one else’s but my own. I am curi­ous if other women feel the same way though.

I think we can all agree that to one degree or another we all have escapism ten­den­cies, whether it be we crack a comic book, watch a TV show, or escape to a video game world where you can hit peo­ple on the side­walk and gar­ner points instead of jail time.

My per­sonal way of escap­ing has been through books, mostly fan­tasy or light sci-fi. I could con­nect with the char­ac­ters, espe­cially ones where the women often play a lead, if not key, role. The lead men were often not described as hand­some (I’m think­ing Dirk from Arrows of the Queen by Mer­cedes Lackey), and they were bright and often intu­itive part­ners for the women in the story.

This is the part where I become a bit vul­ner­a­ble and admit that that is how I always imag­ine a good rela­tion­ship. Not per­fect in tem­pera­ment or in phys­i­cal­ity, but work­ing together they can make magic that makes every­thing else incon­se­quen­tial. I have seen it hap­pen (rarely) in real life, so I do know it exists.

All right, now that I have bared my soul a lit­tle, let’s think about this in the con­text of comic book char­ac­ters, specif­i­cally the female ones.

Comic books are as much fan­tasy as my nov­els are. I was attracted to these nov­els because the char­ac­ters appeal to me, and their world and way of being is an escape from the world I inhabit. I’ll be the first to raise my hand in admit­ting I have had fan­girl crushes on my favourite char­ac­ters before. I accept the fact they have affected me in var­i­ous ways.

It makes me pale to think of the world that comic book women exist in. They wear span­dex and incred­i­bly tight fit­ting cloth­ing all the time, they must be con­stantly wor­ried about their breasts pop­ping out of their cos­tumes, not to men­tion hav­ing to con­stantly think of how they can pose in the most provo­cate ways while kick­ing the bad guy’s tail.

As a young woman who will NEVER look good in one of those out­fits (while not deny­ing I have my own assets, thanky­ou­very­much) with­out cladding myself in mul­ti­ple pairs of spanx and prob­a­bly a corset around my waist and each thigh which would pretty much reduce my bad-guy-rear-kicking to zero, I find it dis­may­ing that that is what the ideal woman looks like in the comic book world. I am not say­ing that men who read them think those are the ideal, rather the world they escape to does.

I can’t com­pete on a phys­i­cal level with those fan­tasy girls with­out seri­ous recon­struc­tive surgery. I can see why men want them, but it’s so intim­i­dat­ing to a woman like me. The men in the world I escape to are… well.… human. Fal­li­ble. Imper­fect. Lov­ing. Gen­tle. Intel­li­gent. In every shape and size. The way I see my ideal guy. I don’t read comic books because the sto­ries –and let’s be hon­est, the men– in them don’t do it for me.

Clear as mud?  

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Decisions

There are so many deci­sions as the years pass that you need to make, most of them excit­ing as you com­mit to shape and grow your future in cer­tain ways. You will feel every time that you rede­fine your pri­or­i­ties, rearrange them con­stantly, and add or sub­tract from that list that you are one step closer to being who, and what, you want to be.

I am get­ting to the point in my life I am going to have to make some hard decisions.

Grow­ing up, I have always been a moth­er­ing type from the time I was very young. I enjoy being a care­taker, and hav­ing chil­dren of my own has always been some­thing I assumed would hap­pen. While I have never been the cottage-and-a-white-picket-fence kind of girl, I imag­ined myself with a part­ner trav­el­ling with a baby in tow around the world. My kids would grow up and be intro­duced to as many cul­tures and places as my bud­get would allow, like we were with my par­ents. Mov­ing is hard with lit­tle ones, but I think my sis­ter and I really ben­e­fit­ted from both learn­ing how to adapt on our own to new sur­round­ings, and hear­ing the sto­ries my well-travelled par­ents shared with us about their adven­tures both before and after they had us only increased our wanderlust.

I think my sis­ter and I turned out pretty darn well, thanks to the chances our par­ents took and the choices they made. We’re both world trav­ellers, well edu­cated, and we take cal­cu­lated risks with the full sup­port of our Mom because she knows from expe­ri­ence that we have what it takes to suc­ceed. And even if we don’t, it will prob­a­bly lead to suc­cess later on. As an exam­ple, my sis­ter is mov­ing to the island next week to start a CSA with some friends. I am so proud that she is tak­ing the chance to build on a foun­da­tion that she is so pas­sion­ate about.

But I digress.

Just the other day, I had a very long con­ver­sa­tion with a good friend of mine the other day, and it was a relief to talk to some­one else hav­ing the same thoughts and fears about the future. Specif­i­cally, what two sin­gle women near­ing the age of 30 who both have always wanted chil­dren are going to do about some­thing that really, if you think about it, is out of their con­trol. This is a com­pli­cated issue for sev­eral reasons:

1.  After about 33, nei­ther one of us wants to chance the pos­si­bil­ity of there being prob­lems with the chil­dren. Birth defects raise sharply after a cer­tain age, and we both feel that that is not a risk we are will­ing to take on. My biggest fear is to leave behind a child that, though no fault of their own, can­not take care of them­selves. Our soci­ety does not take good enough care of our less for­tu­nate for me to feel safe. This is an edu­cated deci­sion, and one that’s taken me years to research and ponder.
2.  I will not jump into a rela­tion­ship and have kids just to meet the ‘dead­line’. Thank good­ness both my friend and I are strong and inde­pen­dent, so we wouldn’t con­sider set­tling for a rushed and/or mediocre rela­tion­ship just for the sake of hav­ing children.
3.  Adop­tion, while a pos­si­bil­ity, brings a whole host of issues on its own. This isn’t a topic I feel I am ready to dis­cuss yet, but I know I’ll come back to it even­tu­ally. I also do not have the emo­tional capac­ity to fos­ter, I know myself at least that well.
4.  I don’t know if I could do it alone. It’s one thing for me to have an ‘oops’ and rais­ing the baby as a sin­gle mother, but it’s com­pletely dif­fer­ent to plan and scheme for that to hap­pen. I whole­heart­edly believe my friend can do this if she decides to, as she is much more finan­cially secure than I am. That is also a fac­tor in mak­ing sure I’d be a fit mother before tak­ing any step.

thought that writ­ing this all down would be a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence, and that I’d feel bet­ter after it was done. I’m afraid it didn’t have that desired effect. I do hope, how­ever, that maybe some­one else hav­ing the same fears will read this and feel a lit­tle less alone. I know I did when I found out my friend and I were in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions, and think­ing sim­i­lar thoughts.

Here’s my meta­phys­i­cal hand, ladies. I know you are out there, and I under­stand how hard the deci­sions you have to face are. I’m right beside you, want­ing to smack peo­ple who either pla­cate you (“Oh, you have all the time in the world! Don’t be such an alarmist”), or who belit­tle the dif­fi­culty and dimen­sion of the deci­sions ahead of you (“It’s not THAT big a risk, you’re blow­ing out of pro­por­tion.” or my favourite, “Kids are too much work and money any­way, think of it as the uni­verse say­ing you shouldn’t have kids.”).

Next time some­one says those things to you, imag­ine me stand­ing right behind your shoul­der, glar­ing at the offender while men­ac­ing them with a base­ball bat. It won’t make them stop, but it’ll maybe make it more bearable.

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Where's my montage?

Some­thing has been seri­ously irri­tat­ing me with movies and TV shows I have been watch­ing recently. Some­thing that actu­ally has me reach­ing for a book dur­ing shows, or I’ll find myself press­ing fast for­ward on the tightly-held remote with­out real­iz­ing I am doing it until I am 30+ sec­onds ahead, and curs­ing at myself because I prob­a­bly have gone past where I should have stopped and missed some­thing.

The mon­tage.

This is the clas­si­cally stu­pid dis­trac­tion device where usu­ally the main char­ac­ter (though on occa­sion it could be the arm candy ingenue, or in artsy films even the antag­o­nist can spur the scene) goes through hours, days, weeks, months, and some­times even years in a few heart­beats set to an annoy­ingly sappy sad song all set to make you “feel the pain”. Often the char­ac­ter exhibits signs of depres­sion– extended stays in bed, cry­ing, lonely walks in the rain, no sign of life in the eyes as they pre­form their jobs day-to-day, and avoid­ing social­iza­tion as much as they can when faced with the shrug­ging bewil­der­ment of friends. Noth­ing good or bad hap­pens dur­ing this time, it’s sur­vival on fast-forward.

My mon­tage can kick in ANY moment now.

This woman really says (and illus­trates) the sit­u­a­tion real peo­ple face– with­out mon­tages descend­ing like Fairy God­moth­ers to save the day– in her newest comic: Hyper­bole and a Half

You KNOW that at any time the sun will come out and thing will be bright again.

You KNOW that soon enough you’ll get a sec­ond chance at love, find a bet­ter job, make up with your friends.

You KNOW that ‘allow­ing’ your­self to stay in bed and watch­ing Being Erica* instead of work­ing on projects is not pro­duc­tive and can actu­ally come back to bite you.

Hard.

Most women my age seem to be wait­ing for The Per­fect Job, or Prince Charm­ing. I’m actu­ally pretty happy with my job, I see it tak­ing me great places in the future (ref the title for plot point). I am also sat­is­fied with stay­ing sin­gle for a while, while I work on becom­ing a bet­ter choice of a part­ner.

I need to get to that time where the puz­zle pieces fall into place, I can lift myself back up into the light (because I have no doubt that I can), and get back to being … full of much­ness. The art jour­nal­ing, the yoga, the meds, noth­ing seems to be work­ing, despite my faith that all of it will.

Ok Uni­verse– bring it on. All I ask is that you don’t let the song it gets played to be “She Will Be Loved” by Maroon Five. Please.

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What to do?

I real­ize I have not blogged in a very long time.

That is mostly because the things that have con­sumed me recently are not blog-able (more on that in a moment), and par­tially because I am on the com­puter so much at work it’s hard to con­vince myself to be on it longer than it takes to check email and Face­book when I do not have to be.

I want to get back to writ­ing. I truly do. How­ever, I have two lists stand­ing in my way.

The first list is what I will not, or can­not blog about:

1) Rela­tion­ships I believe that it is unfair to blog about my roman­tic rela­tion­ships because every­thing can be inter­preted by the read­ers in a way I can’t con­trol, and I can’t and won’t put a part­ner in that posi­tion to be judged.

2) Work This is a whole pow­derkeg of issues just wait­ing to explode if I took it on. Not that it wouldn’t make for extremely engag­ing read­ing, but with my employer being a young SaaS, it’s wouldn’t be politic of me to write about our bumps and bruises as the com­pany grows.

As you can imag­ine, at this point in my life both of those two top­ics take up the major­ity of my time and brain­power.

I am, how­ever, engaged in many dif­fer­ent hob­bies and ven­tures out­side of work and (cur­rently non-existant) roman­tic rela­tion­ships. My sec­ond barrier-erecting list is as fol­lows:

1) Mixed media art I have barely dab­bled in this, and after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion it’s just not in the bud­get for me to take it on as a seri­ous hobby. Should I marry rich or get a huge raise at work, this could be a viable topic.

2) Diet­ing As a late 20’s woman who has been any­where from mor­bidly obese (lord I hate that term) to over­weight her whole life, this is also a huge topic. My issue with it is that I am so tired of obsess­ing about when I eat when, and what I eat, and what I WANT to eat but can’t. Plus, I can’t imag­ine that I can add any­thing to the incred­i­ble wealth if infor­ma­tion and opin­ions already exist­ing. I am a very firm believer that there are many paths to God, and no one is right or wrong. I also believe there are many paths to a healthy lifestyle, and again, no one is right or wrong as long as it works for you.

3) Knit­ting and spin­ning It takes me upwards of 6 months to com­plete a project, mostly done in front of Road to Avon­lea or Wind At My Back, where my only con­cerns beyond keep­ing a stitch count is when will Gus Pike will come back onto the show. Bo-ring.

4) Sewing This tempted me for a moment or two, but like knit­ting, while it is very cre­ative, it does not fufill my need to talk about deeper con­cepts and thoughts on life. Mul­ti­task­ing in that way would prob­a­bly ensure that I would be patch­ing up wounds caused by run­ning over my fin­gers with my machine too often for com­fort, or even worse, for­ever be pick­ing out mis­takes I made while day­dream­ing.

5) Exercise/Yoga This was also a fairly strong con­tender, but failed for rea­sons sim­i­lar to the topic of Diet­ing. Who wants to read about the para­noid thoughts an over­weight girl haul­ing her ample rear end around into down­ward dog has? Are those the kind of thoughts I really want recorded, and to be remem­bered for?

6) Travel See #1. One day.…

So you see my dilemma at this point, I hope. My life in gen­eral is turn­ing out to be a jack-of-all-trades track, and I am not sure I’m pleased with that.

This is clearly going to require more thought.

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Demanding, aren't they?

“What do you mean, you don’t have an online portfolio?”

Oh, come on!

To bring you up to speed on my job hunt– as of last Wednes­day I had a design/event man­age­ment job with a non-profit I have done work for in the past. I was thrilled, and feel­ing like I finally found my place.

Fast for­ward to Fri­day after­noon, when I was at a school assist­ing the facil­i­ta­tor with some work­shops, and I received a call from the Direc­tor. Appar­ently the grant that was to fund my hours had been can­celled at the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary, and so they have no money to pay me.

Great.

So while the Direc­tor is search­ing for alter­nate fund­ing (they actu­ally need some­one in the posi­tion I was to hold, so she is scram­bling), I am back to square one. This means resumes and cov­er­let­ters fly­ing out the door, and as of Mon­day, a brand new Blog.

I have been told by two com­pa­nies that I am expected to have an online port­fo­lio. Just to be crys­tal clear, I loathe web design. We are like oil and water. My cur­rent sta­tus of being less than job-ful means I can’t afford to pay some­one to do it for me. Luck­ily, I think I found a happy medium in an inex­pen­sive Word­Press tem­plate that looks like I could pos­si­bly get it to do what I want.

Please check back on Mon­day for my (hope­fully) all-new  blog and port­fo­lio site. For those of you who have sub­scribed to my blog, that may go away when I change tem­plates. Every­thing may go away, in fact.

This will be an inter­est­ing weekend.

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Moving On

Well, hello there! I have not seen you in a while. This is because of a com­bi­na­tion of many, many things, but I will just sum it up by say­ing that I have had sig­nif­i­cant end­ings in my life within the last two months. School, my Cafe job, the vol­un­teer work for Be The Change, my attempts to enjoy hot yoga, and my opti­mism about the future.

The last one may be a bit over-dramatic, but I feel like it will give you an idea of how eroded I am feeling.

Who­ever said that the reces­sion is over is liv­ing in a dream land. Just the other day, one of my co-workers at our Cafe and I were mus­ing over how every resume request­ing full time work had at least one Uni­ver­sity degree listed on it. A few had sev­eral. What does that tell you?

That being said, I have not given up. Vis­its with job coun­selors, look­ing into Government-run pro­grams for peo­ple look­ing to change (or find new) careers, haunt­ing every job board known to mankind (yes, even Craigslist). I am doing it all.

The quote for this post is one of my very favorites. I clearly haven’t pounded open the right door yet. Dyna­mite, anyone?

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Day Four

I had to take a break from post­ing yes­ter­day, because I had quite the rocky class. My fail­ures and faults are just as much a part of me as my suc­cesses and strengths are, and in the end they become just another expe­ri­ence to add to my list.

Start­ing off strong, I could feel my breath­ing is deep­en­ing, and I’m happy about stick­ing Tree pose and a few other stand­ing ones notice­ably bet­ter than I was.

To set the scene– it was again hot­ter than ever before in the room. Our teacher didn’t once open up a back win­dow to let air in, and I fool­ishly chose a place right under a ceil­ing heater. In the mid­dle of the stand­ing poses, a girl (I think she may have been new) got up to leave the class­room. The teacher pub­licly, and loudly, chided her, say­ing that she should go back to her place because she didn’t need to leave. The girl ignored her, and the teacher con­tin­ued with another com­ment to the effect of what­ever she was run­ning from, she won’t get away even if she does go out­side, and then con­tin­ued on with the class.

Feel­ing even more pres­sure to not do any­thing to incur the teacher’s wrath, or even catch her notice, I worked very hard at the spine strength­en­ing poses. So hard, that I started to feel dizzy and nau­se­ated. I have felt that way before, so I knew to con­trol my breath­ing, and lay down for a few min­utes until it passed.

It did not pass.

In fact, not only did it not pass, but I started to gag. Think­ing I could steel myself and get it to stop by sheer willpower, I clamped a hand over my mouth and grit my teeth. I was NOT going to be another bad exam­ple! After a minute or so of this, with my breath­ing becom­ing more out of con­trol with every clench of my stom­ach, my friend Kara kneeled beside me and said some­thing. I didn’t reg­is­ter what she said, but I half bolted, half stum­bled to the door and out into the wash­rooms before becom­ing phys­i­cally ill. I didn’t have any­thing in my stom­ach because I strictly adhere to not eat any­thing two hours before class, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Need­less to say, there were tears as I sat on the bath­room floor and con­sid­ered my fail­ure. I really, really wanted to be able to say that I had never once had to leave a class by the end of my 30 days, but clearly that wasn’t going to be an option. Try­ing to break that rather depress­ing thought pat­tern, I focused on slow­ing my breath­ing and becom­ing more calm. I was bet­ter once my class­mates entered the change room, and Kara was kind, and tried to cheer me up with some sto­ries of her own mis­ad­ven­tures. That relaxed me  a bit further.

What really helped was I had a word with our rather tough teacher. She said that I shouldn’t be ashamed, because I kept bat­tling until it was clear that I  had to leave the room. She gave me a hug and said it was only a fail­ure if I didn’t return the next day to try again.

So, with Ryan and Kara, I am back to it tonight. This time though, I am not going to be under the damned heater!

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Day Three

Wow. It was bad.

There were way more peo­ple in the room tonight, and I feel like it was the hottest I have been yet. I did, how­ever do bet­ter than my first time– I stuck all sets of the tree pose, most of the bow pose, and only sat out the sec­ond parts of fixed and camel.

My body loathes those back­ward bend­ing poses, I had tears run­ning down my face and became very dizzy (not from pain, though there was a bit of that) after the first set of fixed pose, and camel made my heart race enough so that  I ungrace­fully col­lapsed back into the rest­ing posi­tion. I am happy that, through my lim­ited expe­ri­ence, I now know the best way to get every­thing under con­trol is to only breathe through my nose.

I sup­pose accord­ing to those that say if you push your­self to pain and dizzi­ness that you are doing it right, then I am doing it VERY right. So right, in fact, I almost had to call my friend to help me get my tank top off in the shower. I stood there for a good few min­utes half in and half out, every wrig­gle mak­ing me feel dizzy and send­ing sparks of com­plaints from my sore muscles.

Tomor­row, 4pm yoga here I come.

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Day Two

Yes.

YES.

YES!

I not only dragged myself there tonight, but I also did every.single.posture. I didn’t sit out even one! I also really focused on myself, and tried to push thoughts of how I looked in the con­tor­tions, and my new mantra became “I am going to stick this one.”

Don’t get me wrong, my attempts at camel pose is enough to make a cat laugh, and my fixed pose is more like a kneel with a tii­iny bend, but still. I even did all of the evil quick mind-spinning sit ups dur­ing the mat portion.

There is an aware­ness that this kind of yoga has good and bad days, there will be times when I can do it all and more, and times when I’ll strug­gle and lay there gasp­ing like a blow­fish out of water.

Tonight, I was successful.

4

Day One

Good thing insan­ity runs in my fam­ily, or I’d prob­a­bly never go to another Bikram’s yoga prac­tice again.

I felt very pre­pared– cloth­ing that I didn’t feel really bad about wear­ing (despite the tight fit), my own yoga mat and towel so that I didn’t have to worry who sweated on it before, and if they cleaned it prop­erly, and a water bot­tle that I had already drunk one and a half liters from that morn­ing. I was ready to go!

Luck­ily I was ‘adopted’ by a cou­ple of very nice women about my age, and they answered my ques­tions and helped me avoid the taboos of the yoga room. I had to quickly change my posi­tion after being told that when lay­ing down in savasana, you always have your feet pointed to the back wall away from the win­dows, and when doing a savasana on your tummy, always have your head fac­ing the right so you don’t have to stare at the per­son next to you. Also, no talk­ing other than the instructor’s dia­logue in the yoga room. At that point I felt like some­one should have given me the list of rules before I came in, but at least the ladies were happy to help and cor­rect me.

The first half of Bikram’s yoga is done stand­ing, work­ing on bal­ance and pos­ture. The main thing I will take away from this is that it is INCREDIBLY dif­fi­cult to keep a grip on your feet to twist your body into the poses when both your hands and feet are wet. I was dig­ging my nails in at one point just to be a lit­tle more secure. I felt pretty good at the end of this set, though the heat had steadily ramped up and was more uncom­fort­able than when I started.

The sec­ond set was floor pos­tures, meant to increase flex­i­bil­ity. This was not a good set for me.

There were quite a few move­ments in this, where sit­ting up fast and mov­ing into the poses was required, and my body was not pleased. A headache started to form at the very top of my head, and I was def­i­nitely hav­ing more trou­ble breath­ing in the incred­i­bly hot, humid room. Still, I was deter­mined to get through.

By the camel pose I had to con­cede defeat. I was shak­ing pretty badly every time I went to go into a pose, my “quick sit ups” were more like a roll over into posi­tion, and I was feel­ing dizzy and a lit­tle nau­se­ated. It didn’t help that I really strug­gle with back­ward bends like the fixed firm pose, where you are on your knees and lay back until your back is on the mat. Try­ing to bend my head back­ward in camel pose just about did me in, so I ended up lay­ing in savasana until the final breath­ing exer­cise. I was very sur­prised to find that a few times towards the end I had a few tears run­ning down my face. Being the watery per­son that I am, I am no stranger to tears, but I didn’t feel like cry­ing. My body just decided to do it. It was an odd feeling.

It took a few min­utes for me to be able to stand up at the end of class, and one heck of an effort. I am pretty sure I looked drunk, hob­bling out of the room, and col­lapsed grate­fully (but not grace­fully) on the bench in the change room, ignor­ing the annoyed looks of the next class’ par­tic­i­pants as they hur­ried to get ready for the class which would be start­ing shortly.

As my mind slowly unfogged, I real­ized I left my water bot­tle in the yoga room. Unaware at the time that this was a pre­cur­sor of what was to come, I steeled myself to unsteadily walk back in, and I retrieved it. only to have to col­lapse back on the bench for a breather. Luck­ily, all this pain was over­shad­owed by the great chat I had with the two ladies who befriended me at the begin­ning while we changed. They said I did a great job, and it was a suc­cess if only for the fact I didn’t ever leave the room. That made me feel a lit­tle less pathetic for not being able to do the whole class. A little.

Walk­ing out of the build­ing, I felt like my mind was slosh­ing around in my head, and all I wanted was to sleep. I picked up a tiny tub of goat yogurt and a banana to keep me going, and some­where between there and the bus I lost my wal­let. I combed over the area, talk­ing to all the store own­ers and look­ing in the garbage cans and behind news stands, and didn’t find it.

I was use­less for the rest of the day. Between the exhaus­tion and dis­com­fort I was feel­ing from the work­out, and the dis­ap­point­ment and stress of los­ing my wal­let and every piece of ID that I owned, it was too much.

Because I know the ques­tion is prob­a­bly run­ning around your mind; yes, I will be going back to hot yoga tonight. I said I would give myself at least a week to get used to it, and I will. I am wor­ried because I am still sore from yes­ter­days prac­tice, but I’ll give it my best.