Dear Sarah Palin

Here's the thing. I think it's super great that we've finally got a woman on the ticket for Vice President. But I'm not so stoked that it's Sarah Palin. I have a bunch of reasons - she's into book banning, she wants to charge victims for rape kits, she has little regard for wildlife or conservation, she's abused her power as a state official to mess with people's personal lives, and she's into letting her faith govern what other people should be able to do. And she and the Republican pundits have the gall to call us naysayers sexist. I'm not sexist, I just think that Palin's being a woman doesn't mean I can't criticize her as a politician. Heck, to not look at her just as critically as a man in her position would be very sexist!

But that's not to say I don't want to sit down with her and have a chat. I'm really interested in Sarah Palin as a person. I want to know why she's afraid of kids reading certain books, what it was like growing up in Alaska, how John McCain's keeping her in hiding has affected her self-esteem. I want to know what she thinks of Tina Fey's sketches on SNL, how she feels about being called a MILF, and what her favorite cookie recipes are.

I'm actually a little obsessed. And I'm interested in what teen girls all over America have to say to her. I bet a lot of these girls, most of which are under the legal voting age, have had a good long think about what it means to have a woman on the VP ticket, and, moreso, what it means that this woman is Sarah Palin. And I bet a lot of them, like me, want to know what it's like to be her. I bet they have questions. Maybe they don't want to have her over for tea and muffins, like I do, but teen girls are more insigtful than we give them credit for, and, given the chance, I bet they'd ask the questions we all are too scared to ask.

September 11th, Which Won't Go Away

So I was at work today, as I tend to be on weekdays, milling about when a coworker asked me "do you really love New York?"

Of course it took me a good second or two to figure out that a) said coworker was being cheeky and b) she asked me because I'm wearing a nice, touristy I heart NY tshirt. Naturally I guffawed at her, insisting that duh I love New York, I lived there for two goddamned years and I miss Brooklyn every day so help me god etc.

What didn't occur to me until a few hours later is that today is September 11, and, that I was unintentionally showing some sort of patriotic solidarity with my East Coast brethren. It had been a usual roll out of bed and into the shower morning; I just grabbed the quickest t-shirt I could find and ran out the door to try (and fail) to catch the bus.

So it's 9/11. And every year on 9/11 I spend all day suddenly remembering that I'm existing in my own little world on a day that matters so much and yet flies by in a blink. I always want to say "yeah, New Yorkers still feel that moment every day," or "I used to go by Ground Zero on the way home at night, it's so weird, a big, gaping hole," or "I knew a girl whose mom died."

The thing though is that none of that shit matters a whole lot. Not to you, or, really, to me. And I'm trying so hard to make 9/11 matter that I'm worried about the size of my patriotism as if I were an frat boy stuffing his shorts. Truth: America is fucked up, just like everywhere else. But I think it's a great country to live in, every day, where we have the freedom to tell our stories and watch racy shows on cable TV and show our big, meaty legs in short shorts.

I met a cool lady tonight, Randa Jarrar, who wrote my new favorite book, A Map of Home (review to come in my next book post). She's an Arab American, and I told her that I was gonna send her book to my grandmother, who has never met an Arab person before and is terrified of Muslims. I told her that my gran a smart lady who just doesn't have any experience to show her otherwise. The thing is, the story of Nidali, the girl in Randa's book, is the story of every little girl, the story of finding self-identity and the struggle of adolescence. It's a totally cultural book, set in the Middle East, but it's hysterical and heartbreaking and perfect.

If I had my way A Map of Home would be in every high school library, even though the Tipper Gores and the Sarah Palins of our country would be all over it for the sex and the dirty words and the violence. But, that's how life is, and if we could all see through Nidali's eyes, through Randa's words, I think the youth of America would stand a chance at fighting the bullshit cultural war we've gotten ourselves into.

And on that note, I hope I never write about September 11 again. I hope it's all out of my system. Then again, I'm nothing if not repetitive.

Body of Evidence

Women are fat.

We're not chubby or plump. We're not hefty or big. We're fat.

Men can be jolly or whatever.

I've decided to be squishy.

Most of the time I'm okay with squishy. My boyfriend is okay with squishy, he's really only ever known me squishy. Of course there's the inevitable return-to-the-hometown desire: I hope everyone else is fatter than me. The truth is, I would love to be tiny for my 10-year reunion. And recently I've discovered that some pants don't fit like they did six months ago. Being happy with your body is just really bad for dieting.

And I don't believe in dieting. This whole culture of feeling in control of our lives by controlling what we eat is weird. The Atkins diet shits me - the guy DIED from cardiac arrest and put a ban on vegetables but people still want to eat steak steak steak to lose weight weight weight. And then there's Weight Watchers where you go to meetings, which, I presume is something like AA:
"Hi, I'm Judy Jones, and I'm FAT."
"Hi Judy."

"Hi, I'm Katie Clarke, and I have been thin for six months!"
(thundering applause)
And of course Nutrisystem, which, apparently, costs a damn fortune (their prices don't include a lot of parts of the "meal" they send you - like the meat).

And there is, of course, the idea of skipping food control all together and going straight to appetite control. Pills! We have a pill for everything — AND YOU NEED THEM. We have celebrities to endorse them all, too. FAT celebrities, who got skinny.

I don't think Americans — Westerners, even — will ever have a healthy relationship with food. We think of food like something naughty, an indulgence, a vice. Food is not something we eat to sustain ourselves, but to satisfy ourselves. And there's no balance. If we are satisfied, we must have had too much. My weight loss plan is this: don't think too much about it, do some pilates, walk more. I don't want to think about my snacks in terms of calories and carbs.

My friend Amelia has this theory on feeding children: kids' bodies know what they need. If you make good food available, they will, usually, get what their body requires. Her daughter seems to eat like a pigeon, but, if you watch closely over several days, you see that she gets everything she needs from several food groups. I don't see why we, as adults, can't function similarly. Eat what we want, when we want, listening to our bodies instead of the ingredients list on the backs of packages. And if I want I need I must have McNuggets, so be it. If I never lose this extra weight, I'm okay with that, too.