breakinglight11 | Entries tagged with skin

Not feeling great about my appearance lately. Specifically my skin and hair, but generally haven’t thought I looked great.

Last month I broke out pretty seriously, for the first time since I think the pandemic began. My Curology prescription, which had been doing pretty well by me, seemed to have abruptly stopped working, and my chin has been a spotty pink mess for weeks now. I made an appointment with an actual dermatologist who recommended an expensive prescription-only preparation which doesn’t seem to have made a dent in it, but since going away to see Bernie my use of it hasn’t been that consistent. I probably need to make sure I’m using it every night for a solid period of time before I’m sure it won’t do the job. But in the meantime, the spots are pretty bad, and right over my chin area where my skin is most showing its age. :-/ I’ve been trying not to fixate on it, but a year of Zoom calls has made me very aware of how my face is starting to change.

Sigh. Acne and sagging skin? Why do I have the worst of youth and age at the same time?

And I hate my hair. I’ve been growing it out from my short cut of the last several years, but I really don’t like the weird in-between stage it’s been in for months. I don’t know how to style it so it doesn’t look awkward, like I’m a little mushroom person. I think a lot about shaving it back down into a quiff, tall in the center and razored on the sides. I actually think I made it work, and I enjoyed having the aspect of a fierce bird. But as I’m aging, I think I might be getting too old for such a severe look. God knows I can’t function if boys don’t think I’m pretty, so I think I need to grow it out long again into something more femme. I have kind of missed having girlier hair. But I can’t get there without going through this awkward growing-out period. And if I shave it down again out of frustration, it’ll take even longer to get it long again. So I guess I’m stuck being patient and weird-looking a while more.

At least I’ve been in pretty good shape lately. Took a few pictures lately where that’s visibly on point, which makes me feel a bit better about things. I worked out really seriously during lockdown, probably the toughest workouts of my life, so I’ve got that going for me at least. However I basically did nothing over the two and a half weeks Bernie visited, so I feel so week and squishy right now. I need to get back in my good habit so dragging myself through the workout isn’t so painful. It took me a long time to build up the strength, and I really don’t want to lose it. Not to mention the slammin’ body it gave me.

Photoshop takes care of the pimples. If only my hair weren’t so mushroomy.

I've been working out in the gym at Lesley University lately. It's been very convenient, as I can go after I teach my classes, and it has very nice facilities. Mostly I just want to run indoors while it's cold outside, as I tend toward weird asthma-like symptoms when I breath cold air for too long.

As a faculty member, I'm allowed to use the gym for free, which is nice. But I've never seen anyone other than students in there-- at least, never anyone I thought looked like post-college-aged adult. I've decided not to feel weird about it, as I know I'm allowed, but it does seem a bit odd. Where are all the other people like me who can use it as a job perk? Why do I never see them? Is it just the timing? Or are there just not many others who choose to use it?

When I'm teaching I dress very professionally to give myself some authority, but in the gym I wear my typical workout clothes, often just a sports bra and leggings. I dislike seeing students of mine in there, as I don't know if it makes a weird impression. Like, hi, I'm in charge of your grade, and here's my midriff? God, I've been dreading running into one in the locker room. I know I would not have wanted to be around my professor while one of us was changing.

And I wonder how the students who don't know me read me. I've been mistaken for a student at Lesley before, but usually by other employees; only once by an actual student that I know of. Do they assume I'm one of them, or to kids of their age, am I obviously older?

I mean, I know I look good. I am beautiful. Honestly I'm in better shape than most of the students, not just in general but even those I see in the gym. But I wonder how old I read, at least to people younger than me. I turn thirty this year. My skin has been really clear lately, thanks to the excellent acne medication I've been using, but I've begun to worry about the two spots on top of my cheeks that I think are beginning to look sun damaged, or possibly just showing age. I'm afraid my metabolism might slow down at any time.

Only a ridiculous person wants to look twenty forever. But aging is a great fear of mine. So I cling a little bit to things like when I get mistaken for still a college kid. But the truth is, I'm not a kid anymore, and I worry when that's going to catch up with me.

At the end of this week, all my enormous commitments for the last several months will be fulfilled. I am going to have a very light summer, which I am incredibly glad and excited for, that even begins with basically a three-week break even from my day job in the gap between spring and summer trimesters. So I practically have a summer vacation, like back when I was in school!

I don’t want to LOAD MYSELF UP WITH COMMITMENTS RAWR. That’s my normal MO with any free time, and I know I need a break from deadlines, responsibilities, and appointments. But though I’d like to get more sleep and spend more evenings at home, I’d would like to use the time to work on stuff that’s fun and meaningful to me. So here’s some ideas of the stuff I’d like to pursue at least on a casual basis for the next three or four months.

STUFF I’M DEFINITELY DOING

Going back on my diet. I felt so good and looked freaking amazing on my smoothie and paleo diet, so I’m going to put myself back on it. It’s tough transitioning from sugar and carbs, but once I push through that I like how it makes me look and feel.

Start exercising again. Like my diet, my exercise regime had me in really great shape and health. I’d like to get back on that regular schedule for it. I may even return to circuit training appointments. I’ll be making less money for the next few months, though, so I’ll have to see if that’s in the budget.

Fix up my skin. My skincare routine has COMPLETELY gone by the wayside, and my acne is worse than it’s been in forever. I really need to get it sorted out. Having the time to take proper care of it made a big difference, and I’m hoping having less stress will help too.

STUFF I’D LIKE TO DO

Journal every day. My blog is really important to me and I’ve been too busy to keep it up. I want to go back to posting at least every week day, to have a record of my life and thoughts, as well as a way to keep present in the thoughts of the people who read it.

Throw a party. I love having parties, and I haven’t done it in forever. Maybe just the “cool people come over” kind or maybe with a theme. Like, a Fancy Party where everyone must dress up, or a Costume Party to make up for how I missed Halloween this past year.

Write seriously. I haven’t been doing much writing and it’s seriously slowed down my output. I want to not let the responsibilities of work or production make it so I’m no longer generating work. Not sure which project to focus on— Mrs. Hawking part 4? Adonis 2? Something else? —but I’d like to make some significant progress on something.

Learn how to do makeup. At least, better than I can right now. I’ve actually gotten pretty okay at basic, pretty, semi-natural makeup, but watching so much RuPaul’s Drag Race has gotten me fascinating with the transformative powers of makeup artistry and there’s a bunch of looks that I’d love to learn how to master.

Rework my Problem of the Protagonist theory. This is an idea I’ve been developing as a literary critic that I’ve recently done some mental refining on. I should do a rewrite of it to reflect the progress I’ve made. I think it’s actually a really useful idea and I’d like to make it as clear and precise as I can.

Write up the GM notes for my latest tabletop roleplay mod. I wrote this recently to run for inwaterwrit and some friends, and it came out better than it had any right to given how swamped I’ve been. Entitled “Silver Lines” and set in New York in 1889, it involved Mary and Arthur from the Mrs. Hawking series, and included some cool characters and interesting history. I’d like to write down the information needed to GM the thing so I don’t lose it.

Finish Lady Got Back. This is my idea for a parody of Baby Got Back about Victorian bustles. I have a lot that I like so far but it isn’t quite done yet. I’d love to finish it and then find somebody to record it in a perfect posh Victorian accent. That would be hilarious.

Rewatch all the Marvel movies. Just for fun. Not everything has to be work, right? That’s what vacation is for!

STUFF I’M CONSIDERING

Changing my hair. I’ve still got this bee in my bonnet, I’m afraid. I was kind of disappointed by my attempt to go blonde, as it seemed to just fade to a light brown after like two washes, so it didn’t really satisfy my craving for something really different. Part of me wants to use the fact that I have no real need for a professional presentation this summer to try something really unusual— an unnatural color, an undercut? –and if I hate it, let it grow out or dye it back or whatever before the classes I’m teaching start this fall. But as usual, I’m nervous about not liking it, as I hate not feeling pretty, and the last attempt was really not worth the great expense.

Drag myself out. Related to my desire to develop greater facility with makeup, I’ve wanted to see if I could make myself look like a boy for a long time now. It might be fun to actually attempt it, with makeup and clothes and all that.

Work on my fashion designs. I know it’s not the best use of my time, because I don’t really have the time or resources to fully realize it in any way, but last October I started drawing up some ideas for a collection as a change of pace from my current creative work. It kind of has a post-apocalyptic aesthetic to it and I think I came up with some really cool stuff, so part of me would love to play around with it more and refine the ideas.

Make a costume of some kind. Don’t know what, but I haven’t been exercising my sewing or design skills enough recently. Maybe I should make something for a Hawking play, or maybe try my hand at a cosplay.

Record vocal diaries. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, like blogging by voice rather than by text. I might start with stuff I’ve already written just to try it, and then branch into doing podcast-like new things on various topics. Maybe I’d review stuff, or just do new blog entries that way.

So that’s all the stuff I’m considering. Almost certainly won’t do all of it, and maybe new ideas will occur to me. But I’m really looking forward to having a lower-key life for a while, where I can do stuff that seems fun rather than just stuff that’s become a responsibility.

The shows are over for now, and that means I’ve reached a bit of a lull. Though I have more to say about them, I think I will save it for the Mrs. Hawking blog. For now, I will reflect on the state of other things in my life now that I don’t have quite so much on my plate.

As for my work situation, in addition to tutoring, I now have two classes again. As often happens in the life of an adjunct, you gain and lose classes on short notice, and I was offered a Short Fiction class for the Lesley extension at Bunker Hill. It’s not the best timeslot— three hours on Friday nights starting in March —but I wanted the second class and it’s only for a few weeks. Since it doesn't start right away, I have a bit more time before I have to worry about it. It’s nice to only have to plan for one class for a little while. It started yesterday and I feel prepared, so I’m in pretty good shape there.

While I did a good job staying on top of most of my responsibilities, a lot of the stuff I just do for myself fell by the wayside. I did a good job sticking to my diet and exercise plan, even during tech week— which honestly is the most important to me —but my skin and hair are pretty wrecked. I completely fell out of my skincare routine and had a really charming breakout around my mouth. Yuck. My hair started to concern me when the dark roots began to grow out, but weirdly they bothered me more when they were shorter. Now they kind of look like I have light highlights, which I sort of like, but I think I probably need to get a trim, if not do something to fix the color.

In the next couple weeks, I mostly need to go into maintenance mode. Rest, get my life together, not take on anything new. I need to clean up my house and find storage for all the new props and costumes purchased for Vivat Regina. Everything could use a good scrubbing down, as I haven’t had the time to clean as thoroughly as I usually do.

I do have a little bit of project work for the moment. But I won’t get into that just yet. Mostly I just want to put myself back together and recharge.

( Cut for diet, exercise, and body talk. )
I also added in a calcium pill and a joint supplement. My doctor recommended the calcium, as all women under thirty-five should be working to build up their bone density before it starts deteriorating, and I thought the joint pill might be a good idea since I've been running so much. I haven't experienced any knee pain, but I have noticed they've started clicking when I do squats and things that involve deep bends. That's not much, but it makes me nervous, as I know runners often suffer knee problems later in life. So maybe the supplements will help stave things off a little.

My skin's kind of a mess, though. I've been so busy I haven't been as consistent scrubbing my face with my automatic face brush lately, and I've broken out a little. It's funny because they don't recommend using a brush like this every day, but apparently my skin produces SO MUCH YUCK it defies conventional wisdom. Sigh. If I get back in good habits it should probably get better again, but I'm only going to get busier from here, so I'm sorry it takes so much dedication to work.

It's officially been twelve weeks of my current diet-exercise-skincare plan. I've been very happy with the results, as my skin and abs look the best they ever have in my life.

My face routine is pretty much exactly what I want it to be. I love my electric face brush, which I use to wash my face every night before I go to bed. I've read that you're not supposed to use them every day, but I have been because I think it's working for me. That combined with my moisturizer has kept my skin clearer, brighter, and dewier than it's been since I was a kid. So I'm sticking with that for the foreseeable future.

My diet and exercise, however, I think I'm going to change up. While my current plan served me well up to this point, I'm pretty sure I've plateaued. So I'm going to try something new and see what difference that makes. On September 1st, I'm going to switch to this diet where you eat high-protein smoothies two meals a day and eat a large, no-carb, no-sugar meal for dinner, with one cheat meal a week. My dad has been doing it for a while now and he lost a lot of weight. According to my dad, you don't even have to exercise on that plan for it to happen. Of course, he's a sixty-three-year-old man and I'm a twenty-eight-year-old woman, so God knows how different our workings are, and also my goals are only to lose the layer hiding my abdominal muscles.

So what I think I'm going to do is kind of chill out with the eating restrictions for the next couple of days. Hopefully that won't mess up my system too much, or make the transition any harder. Then on September 1st, I'm going to eat the mostly-smoothie diet for a week, without working out. That might make it easier for my body to adjust. Then I'm going to start working out again while on that diet, with a new regime that is how martial artists get abs. Three months is probably the right amount of time to see if it works. I wonder if it will be miserable, but I'm going to give it a shot and see if it works.

I’ve been investing a lot of effort lately into working up the old mortal shell through which God would have me experience His creation. I am probably a little too wrapped up in my own vanity, but I also care about keeping myself healthy and in shape. It makes me feel really good to look pretty and feel strong, so though it adds a fair number of extra responsibilities to my list, for me it acts as a form of self-care.

( Content warning for body and diet talk to follow. )

I am two days into my two-week break, and taking good care of myself. When I get very busy, certain personal care stuff tends to go out the window. Other than sleep, which everything else tends to get pitched out the window in favor of, I find myself sacrificing things like eating right, getting enough exercise, and taking care of my skin. But these two weeks, I'm making up for it. I am exercising every day, including returning to ballet class. I am cooking for myself again, upping my fruit and vegetable intake, and I've decided that two weeks is a perfect period to cut out processed sugar and carbs, just to reset things a little. And I'm regimenting my skin care routine, seeing if I can't get back in the right habits, and adding some topical treatments to see if I can get rid of my blackheads and pimples. I feel better already.

My dad recently has taken an interest in ancestry and genealogy. I think it has something to do with my mother’s death and a desire to preserve family history. He has made an elaborate chart of our family, both his side and my mother’s side, on Ancestry.com, partially thanks to other people who have listed our family members and allowed us to connected them to our tree. It’s been interesting; though most of my great-grandparents were peasant immigrants who arrived in America around the turn of the century whose ancestors we know little about, my one grandmother was a descendant of a family that can be traced back twelve generations to Ireland in the 1700s. And we learned those people existed because my dad found them on the site.

The site also offers genetic testing to tell you what your genetic pedigree is. It maps your genes and tells you where in the world those genes were thought to originate going back thousands of years. We decided to do that after we saw the results of a test my paternal grandfather took. He’s a first-generation Italian-American and conforms rather strongly to the stereotypical look. We were astonished to find that though he is mostly genetically of the Italian-Greek strain we’d expect, he was many other things we didn’t realize— he was about twenty percent North and Sub-Saharan African, for example, as well as a small fraction of Iberian, Persian, and Caucasian. (This makes me laugh to think of my racist British-American great-grandfather, who didn’t want my grandmother marrying my granddad because he didn’t like Italians. HOW’D YOU LIKE THAT HE’S ONE-FIFTH BLACK TOO SO SUCK IT.)

Mine and my dad’s tests came in too now. This is me:

And this is my dad:

Look at me. I am NINETY-THREE PERCENT WHITE EUROPEAN. Whiter than my dad, although interestingly more Italian than he is, when he visibly conforms to the visual stereotype of one. People tend to think I look WASPy, which is funny because despite my dad’s big chunk of British I got almost none. And of my mother’s family, who was Italian on one side and white and Asiatic Russian on the other, it seems I only got the Italian! We were making jokes about me being found in a space pod in a field until Ancestry.com confirmed the genetic relationship. I’m weirdly disappointed. I have a Mongolian great-grandfather! My dad’s dad is twenty percent African! And I end up assorted flavors of cracker.

Lately, as I've gotten more into feminism and related forms of social justice, I've come up with what I've found to be a way of addressing a lot of the criticisms people have to certain techniques used in SJ theory. I'm sure someone else has thought of this in some form or other, but I've never seen it quantified, and I find it really effective when pointing out the flaws in many of these critiques. I call it the Perfect World argument.

I'm sure if you're at all interested in or on the side of social progress you've heard someone resent what they usually call "reverse whatever-ism," such as when some compensatory preference is given to a member of a disadvantaged group, or when a member of a majority/privileged group is not welcome in a space or conversation. For example, when white people are told that it is not for them to weigh in on certain racial issues because they are white, or when men are excluded from certain feminist spaces because they are men. This offends a lot of people, often because they are so accustomed to their privileged status that it is difficult for them to be forced to take a subordinate position in anything, but also because they think to themselves that if discrimination based on sex or color is a bad thing, it is a bad thing in any case, so men or white people should be no more excluded than people of other genders or races.

This is flawed because it is an example of what I call the Perfect World argument. It is a theory that, in pure raw theory-land, is technically correct. That "technical correctness" is what a lot of critics hinge on to justify their objection. It is even something that social justice agrees on (in its purely theoretical state.) But it is not a valid argument because it assumes social conditions other than situation at hand being perfect-- that no larger inequalities exist already that require mending or compensating for. The equivalent of trying to find the actual speed of a racehorse when you're assuming the horse is spherical and the track without friction. The "Perfect World" in this case would be one that was not systemically racist and sexist, where all examples of racism and sexism occurred on a micro-scale between individuals as opposed to being an undercurrent that affects us all unconsciously to some level or another. In that world, any behavior that contributes to less of the injustice at hand in any sense, in any case, is a net positive. In that most generous interpretation, I understand people without a huge amount of study into the state of social justice who are otherwise well-meaning defaulting to that seemingly logical perspective. They may even think that by speaking out against ALL prejudiced behavior, they are modeling correct behavior for others.

But we DO live in a world that is systemically full of bias. And not all kinds of bias, either, there is obviously a substantially greater amount of prejudice against people of color than white, and women and gender-variant than men. The scales are already so unbalanced that you are not actually aiding in the cause of bringing more justice into the world by advocating for somebody who already has significantly fewer disadvantages. So when you, for example, stand up for the right of a white person to contribute to a conversation about and for people of color, you are actually just making yet another example of privileging white voices-- you've added another drop in bucket of white presence and representation while taking a scoop out of the much small bucket of the presence of people of color. It's assuming your racetrack is so frictionless and your horses are so spherical that your calculus for the speed they're moving at is a million miles off.

So, "Perfect World Argument"-- a point of view that isn't exactly wrong in a pure theory sense, but assumes outside conditions being equal when they are not, and so is not applicable to the situation under the conditions in which it actually exists. I have found this a really helpful concept for explaining to people why a lot of pure theories are not appropriate to real world justice issues. People tend to respond better to hearing, "Well, you're not wrong in theory, but it doesn't account for all the uncontrolled variables."

There's a concept in literary analysis known as "Death of the Author," which states that once the written work is finished, it is an entity completely independent of the person who made it and outside the influence of their intentions for it. This is meant to account for input made unconsciously, and for the interaction between the work and how it is experienced by its audience.

I confess in most literary forms I'm a bit skeptical of this theory. While I can certainly attest firsthand that writers don't always have a grand plan for every little thing they put into their pieces, I think that without the author's intentions you wouldn't have the characters, the stories, and the depth that are so appealing to you. So such interpretations tend not to resonate with me. I just can't get into it when it so obviously comes much more from the audience than from anything actually coming from the piece itself.

Death of the Author is basically the justification for a lot of fan fiction, but it's the biggest reasons I can't seem to get into fan fiction that wanders too far from the style and characters as presented in the original. Yes, yes, those two male characters are glancing meaningfully at each other, but saying it's because of unresolved sexual tension between two people who have never indicated any history of homosexuality and would have to be totally repressed not to acknowledge it at all I think says more about what you want to see than what they're demonstrating. Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to see that. I just don't know if you can justify as having any kind of character honesty or narrative integrity. Sure, you can definitely write a meaningful story where the way a character lives their life (in any manner, not just sexually) changes, but such changes always have major repercussions. In fan fiction, usually the consequences of whatever reinterpretation is used is not explored to a realistic degree and while I make no value judgement about enjoying stories of that kind, I don't think they are the highest possible achievement on an artistic level.

And yes, I do get how that sort of fan fiction is often a way for people to represent things that they don't get to see in any mainstream media. Queer people especially. Representation is important, and I certainly don't fault anyone for finding some way to depict themselves or their feelings when they can't get it anywhere else. But I kind of wonder if, in a perfect world, it wouldn't be better to just make original stories that do that representing. Not because of any issue of what's right and what's wrong. I just think it might result in stories with better narrative integrity. Of course, we don't live in a perfect world, so until we do let people do what they need to. Still-- not that it matters, but since I'm talking about it --that's the reason I don't find it enjoyable to read.

As I said, in a perfect word I think artists should work hard to make new art that includes more diversity. God knows I, for example, write too much about white people. My two most major works at the moment take place in 1880s London and 1930s Connecticut, for Christ's sake. And I shouldn't let myself settle for that. A lot of people use "that's just not how I see the story" as a justification for why they don't include anything other than white cis het people in their work. And you know, I sympathize. I generally do believe that stories that are carried out according to the vision you are most passionate about. I think the REAL way to deal with that issue is to pose the question of "Why don't stories about more diverse people ever occur to me?" Well, accept that it's because we're all unconsciously racist and sexist and try to do better! So, we must ask, "What stories can I write about with authentic engagement that WOULD be best expressed by diverse characters?" And if you can't think of any way to do that, well, your racism and sexism isn't so unconscious anymore, is it?

I mean to make more of an effort in this way. Mrs. Hawking sequels can certainly accommodate a move in this direction, though it might be tougher for the Fairfield universe. Still, I mean to think up stories in which I have a genuine investment in telling that aren't just about the same old white folks. (That idea where Lillian Holland breaks out of the asylum, changes her name, and moves to Chicago to run a speakeasy jazz club is a definite possibility...)

As a final word on Death of the Author in its most literary sense-- yes, generally it doesn't really click with me when it comes to analysis literature. But the one exception to this is theater, interestingly enough. Weird that MY primary medium is the one thing that I am able to escape from it, given that it's so strong in me even when I don't want it to be. But perhaps because it is a living and highly interpretive medium, I actively prefer when stagings take the material is as many new and un-thought-of directions as possible. I mean, why do the same play over and over again, unless you're going to present it in new and different ways? In that respect, I almost actively prefer it.

I love vintage images of people of color. I love vintage images, period, I've gotten extremely into period pierces that are immersed in the trappings and the zeitgeist of a different time, particularly of women. I love the differences in the way they dressed, how they decorated their homes, the music they listened to, it has this beautiful particularity to it. But it's especially compelling to see a woman of color with a sharply classic hairstyle or dress. It's very aesthetic to me, first of all, but it's more than just I find it pretty.

It's a powerful statement against erasure. Media, advertising, whatever until very recently only had white people in it. It's very easy to get an image of periods in the past as very whitewashed. But America had other people in it too, people who wore clothes and did their hair and participated in culture just like everybody else. It's one of the reasons I love the TV show Cold Case, which I am going to have to do a full review of some point. It solves murders from a long time ago, and it encapsulates fabulous period pieces that very often tell the untold, underrepresented stories of marginalized groups-- women, people of color, queer people, trans people. An in doing so, it depicts those people as we very rarely get to see them. Here are two images from particularly good episodes, one of a family that was sent to a Japanese internment camp during WWII, and one of a woman who traveled South to support the freedom schools during the Civil Rights Movement.

I love their vintage hair-- rolled in the forties, styled up and out in the sixties -- and their vintage clothes that are the marks of the time, and all the experiences, through which they lived. Vintage images of people of color, bearing the marks of the time and place in which they live, scream, "We were there! We experienced! The things that were going on then, we went through them! We mattered!" I love how Cold Case depicts this.

And, seriously. Are you going to tell me they're not fabulous?

Seriously. As a side note, go watch Cold Case. Start with this episode, Best Friends, from which that last image is drawn. If it doesn't blow your mind with its fabulousness, well, I don't know what kind of person you are.

Watch on YouTube

I am so excited for the movie 42 to come out this April. I've watched the trailer about six times now, and it looks great. Plus I am a huge Jackie Robinson fan. He was just so cool. You see how truly amazing he was when you look at what that demanded from him in breaking the color barrier. He was actually not the best player in the Negro Leagues. Old man Satchel Paige was a better pitcher, and Josh Gibson was considered to be the best all-around player. But he was damn talented, and moreover, he was a special man. He was polite, well-spoken, a personable and charismatic guy. He was a soldier and even went to college; none of my grandparents did. They picked Jackie because he had the guts to face the brutal, disgusting racism he would encounter with dignity and grace.

Because what he did was about so much more than just making a major league career for a talented ball player. It was a huge mission for the civil rights movement. The eyes of the nation whose minds needed to be changed were on him. And what they saw was that a black man could be so remarkable— smart, classy, strong, talented, all the sorts of things people like and respect —succeeding in the highest arena of the most American game there is. While other men acted like beasts, he faced them with courage and dignity. He never gave in, never let anybody drag him down to their level, no matter how many slurs they yelled at him, no matter how many pitchers tried to bean him. Jackie made people love him, respect him. And when they realized they could love and respect one black man, it suddenly wasn’t so strange to think that maybe all of them deserved that same chance. His virtue and strength were directly responsible for tangible social change.

Because that’s the way. Hate and prejudice’s greatest enemy is humanity. Seeing the humanity of another person does more to break down barriers between people than anyone else.

Thursday night I had the privilege of being a guest on

john_in_boston's nerd culture-themed podast, Roll For It! Our topic was The Best Movies Never Made, as in, movies that were discussed by companies for production but never actually made it to the screen. I spoke about Darren Aronofsky's theoretical adaptation of Frank Miller's Year One, which would have had a slightly unhinged Batman running around in a ski mask beating thugs with his bare fists in a turn that sounds a lot more like Travis Bickle than Bruce Wayne. It was a lot of fun, and though my episode won't be up for a while yet, there are many interesting ones currently on the website, so if you'd like to hear some funny nerds talking about various topics in the culture, I suggest you check it out.

One film that was brought up that really got me thinking was, according to John, a plan at some point to do a Captain America movie starring Will Smith. I PRESUME this would have Smith not playing Steve Rogers, but rather the canon "black Captain America," Isaiah Bradley. While I'm glad they went with Steve's story first to set things rolling, this might be something interesting to include as material for sequel films. I think Will Smith might be too old for a depiction of Isaiah at this point (is he pushing forty by now?) but he'd be a great role for somebody. I like the story itself, I like the inclusion of the character into the Marvel universe. It makes sense in a vaccuum. The only thing that troubles me about it is that the point at which this story was created and introduced into continuity means that it had to be shoehorned into the existing framework of the universe. Which means that in order to justify Isaiah's existence, he basically had to be one huge secret. The rationale, I think, is that at the time people didn't want to hold up a black man as a new national hero, nor did they want the inhumane experiments by which they made him to be widely known.

While that doesn't sound totally unreasonable, I'm not sure I totally buy it, and here's why. Basically everything in the Marvel universe stemmed from one attempt or another to recreate Captain America. Most of them failed, or at least went drastically awry. It seems that Isaiah, until his physical and mental breakdown late in life, was pretty much a success. I know there is a long history of black accomplishments and presences being erased from the historical record, but I still find it kind of strange that nobody would know or want to talk about if they knew that they actually managed to make another Captain America. At the very least, so they could replicate the process on a "more desirable" candidate.

But perhaps that's how it would be. There's a great entry on Gertie' New Blog for Better Sewing called "Retro and Race" that talks about how odd it is that it strikes people as transgressive to see black people in vintage looks. But the reason depictions of black people in those eras are rare is not because they weren't part of culture and society-- as Gertie says, black women "wore clothes and did their hair" --but because of how whitewashed history becomes. People of color people are often glossed over rather than included in recollections of "the way we were." Like the paintings of the driving of the final Golden Spike of the railroad that don't have a single Asian worker in sight despite the huge part they made of the workforce. Just as including a later experimental subject in Project: Rebirth who was a black man helps work against that whitewashing, highlighting the fact of that whitewashing in his story helps people become aware of it. And mindfulness, I believe, is always the first step to handling things better. So it could be a powerful way to tell a cool story in an upcoming Captain America film.

My grandmother certainly considered herself to be white. Her name was Julia Leone, nee Gush, and though I never had the chance to ask her about it or anything, that was still pretty clear. She had plenty of reason to. She had skin that was within the reason range of shades for a white person and no features that marked her otherwise. Her maiden name had any indication of ethnicity mangled out of it before she was born, while her married name, though Italian, was white enough. Her husband was white; she was even the mother of a pink-skinned, green-eyed, yellow-haired girl-- the proverbial angelic blonde child. The culture she sprang from and identified with is white culture. If you saw a picture of her, chances are you would not think anything different.

But really... my grandmother wasn't all white. Not completely. She was a first-generation Russian-American. Both of her parents emigrated from Russia in the early Twentieth Century. They met, married, and had eleven children in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of whom was my grandmother Julia. They spoke Russian, worshipped at a Russian Orthodox Church, and identified with the associated ethnicity. My great-grandmother Anna Sherba was fair and blonde, the source of Mom's looks, so unlike either of her parents. This is not an usual appearence for an ethnic Russian, but I was very surprised to hear it-- after all, Grandma, the foremost representative of Russian blood in my life, had sharp features and dark coloring. But that's because of my great grandfather, Tymko Gush, known sometimes as James Gush, whose real surname was lost to Americanization a hundred years ago. According to my Mom, he had tan skin, high cheekbones, and almond shaped eyes. To look at him, he was not a white man, he was obviously Asian.

Because of the Mongolian conquest of the area that would become Russia, there are parts of it where the inhabitants have quite a bit of Asian blood. I'm not positive, but my great-grandfather may have even been Siberian, where it is particularly common. Because of this his ethnicity would be hard to qualify, since he was likely the product of generations of mixed people marrying other mixed people, but he was probably some proportion of Asian and white. That combination is likely the reason why my grandmother looked as white as she did. But it makes me wonder-- what did my great-grandfather consider himself? Did he think of the white versus nonwhite issue? Or was he just "a Russian," a more important distinction in a new country where so few share your ways and customs? I have no idea if there's any conflict between Russians of pure Caucasian decent and the Russians who have some Asian in them. In America, I know pretty much every immigrant in my family suffered some poor treatment from someone on account of their ethnic background. Did my great-grandfather ever get treated differently for someone recognizing him to be nonwhite?

I think of my immediate family. Now on the third generation in this country, my family appears very white, and benefits from the associated privilege. In fact, people have assumed that we must have the very highest level of privilege that being white in this country can possibly confer on you because of how well we present-- that we're not descendents of relatively recent immigrants (we are), that we do not have a close working class history (we do), that we come from people who are rich and educated (we don't). My grandparents-- poor, uneducated, and foreign --did not experience that same privilege. Their backgrounds made them targets for all kinds of hate and discrimination; even my mother and father faced some of that growing up. But still, the time and place my grandmother lived, when you're already suffering because you're ethnic, well, at least you're not tormented for being nonwhite. Getting to claim whiteness was some status better than none. So I guess it's not so strange that my grandma would forget or ignore that part of herself. After all, people tend to consider you to be what you look like. When she looked around, in the mirror or at her blonde daughter, it was probably easy to forget.

Tymko Gush, however, is not the only one I wonder about on that side. My great-grandmother Anna makes me wonder as well. She came to this country from Galitzia, a small area that has been owned by several countries but at the time was Russia, at the age of seventeen to escape the Bolsheviks. At the time, many Jewish families were fleeing from the exact same place to America as well. Her first job in the country was working as a maid for a Jewish family. And I realized when I came to Brandeis that many of the weird "family words" we'd been using-- nebbish, noodge, schmatta --were Yiddish, and had come into use because Anna used them. Those are small things, but they made me wonder... could my great-grandmother have actually been born a Jew?

My mother scoffs at the idea. That blonde ethnic Russian? This was the woman who took her to church every Sunday, who was devoutly Russian Orthodox her entire life. She explains the Yiddish with Anna's maid job when she was first learning English, so their words became her words. (Also, it turned out we used them mostly wrong.) Mom's almost certainly right; of course she knew the woman and I never did. But I can't help wondering, if for only one reason-- Anna Sherba was my mother's mother's mother. So if she was Jewish, then under the law, so are we. So am I.

I know myself to be a white Christian. Though I acknowledge my background to be infintessimally nonwhite, I think it would be silly to consider myself as anything else. That part of me is extremely small and extremely distant from me, plus I see a pale face and Caucasian features when I look in the mirror. But it's fascinating to know it's there in my background-- that I'm a little more complex than meets the eye. And I'm a Christian in my bones. I've heard of people discovering their Jewish heritage and deciding to return to it, but I can't imagine why that alone would be enough to draw you. It certainly wouldn't compel me. But how strange to think that a fact in the past could possibly make something true, that, without its acknowledgement, seems like a fanciful impossibility. I could, technically, be a Jew. It doesn't change me... but it changes something.

Funny how these things work.

For the record, the list of things I have resolved myself to in the hopes of self-betterment:

- work out six days a week

- treat my face with cleanser and moisturizer every night

- take proper care of my skin

- stay hydrated

- use only reuseable shopping bags

- buy less meat

- maintain more than my self-mandated minimum in my savings account at all times

- stop biting my nails

- never wear schlubby clothes

- do not waste money on low-quality purchases

- reduce waste output

- plan meals and grocery trips in advance

- drive less and walk more

- consume minimal junk food

I will check my progress on this in a little while.

So I am working on my newest larp project, The Stand, and I am actually making a lot of progress. Trying to ride this wave of creativity while I can as far as I can. The Stand is a western, a cowboy game set very far north in California in the year 1848. One thing that came up for me recently in the writing process for this game is whether I have a realistic ethnic makeup among the characters in the cast. The group that it occurs to me that I am missing from my PC list is Chinese-American.

I'm kind of troubled by this. The immigrant Chinese made a huge contribution to early Californian history, and it's especially problematic to me because the non-white presence in the typical settings for cowboy stories is all too often ignored. Hell, at the time of my game, California had only just been annexed by the United States from Mexico. There were more than just white settlers out in cowboy land. And The Stand does have characters who are not only white but also Latino and American Indian, other peoples who did live in this part of northern Califonria in 1848.

But though I am interested in having that part of the history represented, I'm having a hard time finding a place for a Chinese presence. And I really hate forced political correctness. The ethnic characters I have already in the game I included because their inclusion felt natural to me. It makes sense to have, in a mid-nineteenth-century northern California frontier town, mostly white people with a smattering of those of Mexican or Native American extraction as well. I also have one black person because it makes a certain plotline possible. I'm just not really coming up with anything for this theoretical Chinese character to do. And I'm having a hard time envisioning any of the character I currently have as being Chinese instead.

And my game takes place right before the San Francisco gold rush. The railroad is still just an idea in the heads of some forward-thinking American businessmen and politicians. That means two big economic oppoturnities, gold mining and track laying, that drew the Chinese in large numbers to Califnoria have not really come into existence yet, especially not as far to the north of the territory as my setting is. It isn't really all unikely that at this time and place, there just wouldn't happen to be any Chinese immigrants.

So I am making the conscience decision now to not include a Chinese-American character in The Stand. I can't seem to find a place for one, I can't currently come up with a plotline for one, and I believe to say that there could reasonably not have been any present is not historically unjustifiable. I will not include a character that is not playable and well-rounded just for the sake of being politically correct. At the same time, I record this decision-making process here because I regret that I can't do something to portray a part of history that is so frequently omitted from storytelling. I do not do this out of ignorance, or of a desire to whitewash, but because I will not present compromised gameplay and story elements just to be racially diverse.

Since I'm feeling pretty good right now, I am settling my brain onto the various things I feel like I should work on in the near future.

I think it's time to get serious about looking for a different job. The one I've got now is perfectly pleasant and all, and they've been very nice to me here, but it's not really what I want to be doing and while the pay isn't bad, they don't give me as many hours as would take some of the pressure off the old budget. So I think it's time to try and find something more to my interest that pays a little better. I know it's a tough market out there, but I have recently just reached one full solid year of real work experience, and I know that it's usually easier to find a job once you have one and prove you could hold it down. So I'm a little hopeful. Ideally I'd like something in writing, editing, or publishing, so that's where I'm concentrating my search. I am not relishing the whole searching and applying process, but I've gotten a few applications out there and I am resolved to buckle down on this.

I really need to get writing again. It's been a while since I really did serious writing-- there was The Labor Wars, but that is finished now and I should keep myself busy. I certainly need to get cracking on my Intercon K bid, The Stand. I've actually made some progress on it recently that I'm very pleased with, but I don't want to lose momentum. Also, I should really work on some non-gaming stuff, something that I could actually maybe possibly someday take to a publisher and take a shot at the the hopeless pipe dream I'd really like to go after, being a professional writer. I have a lot of stuff started that has languished due to being busy with life, school, work, gaming, and stress, and a lot of it really wasn't half-bad. I am resolved to work on The Stand as well as a piece of literature that maybe I could someday get published.

Also, I want to continue the progress I've made on actually taking care of my health. I am not working out every day like I wanted to, but I am working out more frequently now than I was before. I have not been perfect about my skin care routine, but my acne is greatly reduced and my face looks clearer than it has in ages. I've also been drinking a lot more water. Since Jared's parents gave me this really nice metal water bottle, I've been carrying it around and actually drinking from it. The only downside is my body is still accustomed to being chronically on the edge of dehydration that it doesn't know what to do with all the extra water, and so I'm sent running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. My eating habits are mostly okay, though this past week or so they were all thrown to hell. I'll have to get back on track with that. I've also decided that I'm going to have at least one day a week where I don't eat or buy any meat. This is more for environmental and pocketbook reasons than health, but I think it's a good small change to make.

The last thing is, I've been something of a recluse lately. My being extremely busy (between work, chores, and rehearsal, my life was gone) and feeling a bit low has kept me from doing much of anything with friends. I mean to rectify this. In the weeks to come, I want to have social events and do fun things with friends again. I know I certainly didn't have nearly as many dinner parties as I meant to this summer. Please don't think I have forgotten you all, it's just my way to withdraw when the stress mounts. But if I'm managing it better and working on improving the situations that cause it in other parts of my life, I should be able to get back to my old self again.

With all the stress I've felt lately, I think having some positive efforts to focus on will help me keep steady and eventually improve. The change will do me good.

Okay, I just did something really cool-- at least, I think so. I was digging through my closet, trying to get my seasonally-appropriate stuff into the places of easiest access. In the course of digging I pulled out my "dress hanger," the large sturdy fancy hanger on which I hang my very few nice dresses. It holds the sparkly blue dress that I am grateful to Steph and Charlotte for convincing me to buy, the flame-orange dress that Frances wore in To Think of Nothing, and my black cocktail dress.

Just for fun I put on the cocktail dress just to admire how good it looks on me. What I like about it is that the front is simple and fairly modest, with a square neckline and a hem that ends a handsbreadth above my knees, but it is backless to my tailbone, with just two thin strings stretching across that bare expanse. I have always found backless styles to be the epitome of sexiness, and that works for me, since I have, if you'll excuse my saying, a very sexy back. I started thinking to myself what a shame it was that I don't often get a chance to wear it.

Then something occurred to me. On a whim, I dug out my new red blouse with the very low neckline that I just got at the Garment District and pulled it on over the dress. My reflection pleased me to no end. Each piece is lovely, in my opinion, on its own. But how many occasions do I have to wear a cocktail dress or a plunging neckline? But together, the blouse and the dress made each other more appropriate for regular wear. The blouse covered the open back of the dress, and the dress filled in the empty neckline of the blouse. And low and behold, they look very cute together! I am so pleased with myself for discovering this. Who would have imagined that two slutty articles of clothing when worn together make for a non-slutty outfit! I may prefer the look of a little more skin, but when that's not possible, now I have an adorable dressy option that isn't quite so daring! Yay!

One of my goals for the summer has been to work at taking better physical care of myself. It has been tough keeping up healthy habits when feeling so drained, so overwhelmed, and so depressed as I frequently have. So I have been taking advantage of having more free time to devote some of it to establishing healthier habits in the hopes of easing some of that bad feeling. Here's how that has been going so far.

Nutrition:
For a long time being busy and weary kept me buying easily accessible junk food. I am blaming the extra weight around my midsection to the frequent lunches I made out of a block of gruyere and a sleeve of Ritz crackers. I am working much harder to cook for myself on a regular basis, rather than just when I have dinner parties. In fact, my next week-long challenge to myself may be to prepare all meals at home. I have started making myself simple four-ingredient salads for lunches and sometimes dinners, which I am finding a lot more satisfying than I thought I would. I've also started trying to make a habit out of having breakfast by buying yogurts in bulk and keeping them in the fridge at work. Coke remains my lingering indulgence; it may be wiser to just cut it out.

Verdict: Much better, but not totally there yet.

Sleep:
Tough to say. Recently I've had a lot of problems sleeping through the night, leaving me not feeling rested in the mornings and crashing into bed stupid-early at night. I've experienced some small improvement not waking up during the night, perhaps because of the better eating and exercising. I'd like to be able to stay up a little later at night-- Jared and I have a deal that I'll try to stay up later and he'll try to go to bed earlier to mesh our schedules more --while still getting a full night's sleep. I think since I haven't been waking up so much I've been better able to get up and haven't felt so badly-rested, but it's still not perfect.

Verdict: somewhat better, and every little bit helps.

Skin:
Ah, in this department things have gotten better lots and gotten better fast. I switched to a nightly apricot facial scrub and an oil-free moisturizer, and my facial skin is doing better than it has in ages; I am looking so much clearer and more even-toned. I still have a lot of micro-zits on my forehead (tiny little acne bumps that are tough to see except up close) but as I said, I have also been taking care to moisturize the rest of my skin, and I was shocked at how quickly it got so soft. On my legs, it even makes it so I have to shave less often before the hair is visible. I also was trying to keep my nails in better condition, and I was mostly succeeding until the intensity of Labor Wars

Verdict: vast, immediate improvement.

Fitness:
This is the category that I have made the least progress in. My goal is to do either an abdominal or a cardio workout six days a week, and for a couple of weeks I was pretty good about it. Then this past week game, with all the gaming and the preparation for Labor Wars, and it went to hell. I don't feel like I've lost any weight yet, which disappoints me; I really want to sleek my tummy back out. I just got to buckle back down. It's a tough habit for me to get in because I don't enjoy it at all, except for the shape it gives me. But until I do this regularly for a reasonable period of time, I am not going to get rid of this little pooch on my gut.

Verdict: disappointing, must establish good habits for extended period of time.

So, small improvement, not enough to satisfy me yet. The only thing to do is keep with it, because that's the only way I'll get the results I want.

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All Eyes on Me

"Do you know why heroes boast? Because it makes them brave."

Entries tagged with skin

Spotty little mushroom person

Mutton working out as lamb

How to Spend My Summer Vacation

Status update in the breath

Health and body update

Time for a diet and exercise shakeup

State of the meatsack

Taking care of myself

Assorted flavors of cracker

The Perfect World argument

Death of the Author, fan fiction, representation

Vintage images of color

Can't wait to see 42

Guest appearence on Roll For It! podcast and Isaiah Bradley

The hidden mysteries in my ethnic background

My resolutions

Addressing issues of ethnic makeup in The Stand

Stuff to work on

Slutty clothes + slutty clothes = not-slutty outfit!

Self-care progress report