Ask Jenn Vicious: For the Love of Short Men

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Hey, I’m a 5’9 woman and my boyfriend is 5’4.  I have been with him for a few months.  I didn’t think the height difference would be a problem but I guess it is.  I just don’t feel like a woman when I’m with him.  I feel like we look awkward and sex is kind of unsatisfying.  I don’t want to leave him for those reasons because they seem shallow, what should I do? 

Anonymous

I respect that you don’t want to want to leave him for reasons that seem shallow. Unfortunately, you DO want to leave him for reasons that are shallow. You should just accept that fact.

I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt right now. Probably your relationship just isn’t that great. If it was really good in other ways, (connection, communication, sex, etc.) I’m guessing you wouldn’t care about the height thing, which is a really stupid reason to not like someone, btw.

So let’s assume you need to leave this guy because your relationship is just unsatisfying. When you dump him, say that. He doesn’t need you making him feel shitty about his height.

I can not end this post without pointing out that you have a serious problem that has absolutely nothing to do with your short boyfriend. If you are looking to other people to define yourself, whether it’s to make you feel like a “woman” (whatever that means) or anything else, you are always going to have problems.  Look to yourself, figure out who you are and how you want to be in the world before you start dating someone else.  Then it won’t matter how tall they are.

Source: inourwordsblog.com

6 Reasons to Throw Away Your Instant Coffee

This is about real coffee. You know, the kind that comes in the form of beans, runs through a machine (or a mortar and pestle, if you’re into that) and is freshly ground, emitting heavenly scents with every whiff you take. This is for all the people without a coffee-maker.

1) Stop punishing your taste buds. Let’s face it—real java tastes better than the instant kind. Don’t have a coffee maker ? Get a French Press. Not only are these relatively cheap and all over Craigslist, but they add more body (see below) to your blend. You can even make your own with a pitcher and a plate with holes in it. If someone asks what it is, just say you’re building a fake UFO to trick aliens into landing on your window-sill. If they show up, you can welcome them with a classic cuppa joe.

2) Fair trade. We are all struggling, but our struggles are more or less first-world problems. They are not so bad compared to the people who grow and harvest coffee beans in developing countries. Are you really going to miss that extra 80 cents ? Just skip dessert and buy some quality brew instead. Almost every brand has its own version of fair trade so that you can support decent working conditions and sip without guilt. (Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

Breakups Suck. Don’t Make It Worse.

Breakups are never fun, whether you’re the dumper or the dumpee. Telling someone, or hearing from someone, “I don’t want to see you anymore,” sucks. But, there are ways to make it easier. This is not a piece about those ways. This is a piece about the shitty ways I’ve broken up with people, or been broken up with. Because sometimes, we all need to take stock of ourselves and our lives, and realize we aren’t perfect.

The first boy I ever dated broke up with me. A year later, he came out of the closet. It would take me another three after that. Clearly, we were not meant for each other. And yet, it wasn’t so much that the relationship (if, as fourteen year old closeted queers who had Spanish class together what we had could be called a relationship) was over that bothered me — it was that he chose to break up with me in class, in between asking for help with his homework and telling me the only reason he was dating me was to get closer to my friend Em, the hottest girl in school. Telling someone that the only reason you were interested in them was because they had a friend you found attractive is a very bad way to let them know you are no longer interested in them. (Read More—>)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

A Bad-Ass Mother: Learning to See Pride and Power in the Mirror

“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

RuPaul got it right. This is a lesson I’ve had to learn and relearn through my entire life.

When I was a kid, I lived in the shadow of my older sister. She was the smart one, the pretty one, the kind of girl that you wanted to be. I, on the other hand, was a spastic hyper mess. I had no sense of social propriety, I just tagged along with my sister and did what she told me. I was a bit of a sheep on my younger days. (Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

Finding Fulfillment While Being Friends With Benefits

I never thought I’d utter this phrase in my life, but I recently decided to give it a chance… I’ve agreed to be friends with benefits with someone. For many people this is not a huge ordeal, but for Dear little Prude here, it’s a big ol’ fiasco.

That’s not to say it’s a conflict of interests for me. My rather “libertine” sexual ethic would shock my mother if she ever found out, so I have no moral/ethical dilemma because I think about it more than I act. Besides, I’m not looking for anything serious right now. So in theory the arrangement is ideal, right?

To my great disadvantage, life is much more complicated than that, because isn’t it always? The truth of the matter is that I’ve got baggage in this situation. My friend, Alex*, undoubtedly has their fair share, too, some of which I know. From my perspective, though, my baggage appears overweight. (Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

Serial Dater: the Politics of Dating

I had a pretty terrible date recently. I visited my home state of Iowa for a few days and seeing as how there’s not much to do, I spent my time catching up on reading, watching season 5 of Gilmore Girls and chatted on dating sites. This meeting, back in Chicago, was the result of one such correspondence. He was smart, funny, fun, fit and had big beautiful eyes. By all accounts, he was a catch. But he had a secret.

I’ve always maintained a social circle of varying political stances. I can recall many a heated conversation at dinner parties about contradicting beliefs. Once, a bartender friend of mine told a public teacher friend of mine that 30 students per teacher sounded fine and if you liked your job, you should be able to do it. The teacher replied that if the bartender had fewer kids in his class growing up, he might have had a better education and could get a job that allowed him to keep his shirt on at work. Inevitably, by our second drinks and the arrival of our entrees, our differences seemed farther away. The baiting, shouting, laughing and earned respect for each others’ differences was always more enjoyable than the food.

So I felt like a hypocrite when my date told me he was a Republican. “I’m sorry, what?” I asked as though I must have misheard him. “I’m a Republican,” he repeated. “Is that a problem?” “No, of course not,” I assured him and myself. “Just… uncommon among gay men, that’s all.” (Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

See Me As I Am: On Preferring Gender Neutral Pronouns

I prefer gender-neutral pronouns. Gender-neutral pronouns are my preference.  Please use gender-neutral pronouns when you are referring to me in the third person. I’m not a she. I practice the words in front of the mirror, forcing them out shyly at first, a mere mumble even though it’s just me, myself and I, all of whom I know are completely okay with my genderqueer identity. As I repeat them, they come faster, stronger, louder, the confidence building with every time I form the words. Please use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to me.

And yet, when someone asks me, “What pronouns do you prefer?” I still shrink away from answering as firmly as I feel. “Oh, I prefer gender-neutrals,” I say, “but not enough to actually insist on it.” I use an equal mix of male, female, and neutral pronouns to refer to myself, I explain, leaving out the tidbit where I only use female pronouns to refer to myself in jest, or when I’m around my biological family. I sit silently, or I make it a joke, when people refer to me as a woman. A customer demands a male technician, and I bitch about how I can’t reveal my trans status. It’s funny, but it’s also, a little, maybe, true. (cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

Civil Rights Are For Everyone: Why Ann Coulter's Logic Is Twisted

When’s the last time you took heed to something Ann Coulter said? Truth is, you probably haven’t.

And there’s probably good reason. Coulter’s inflammatory style of discussing current events from her conservative perspective unfortunately detracts most people from engaging with any of her social critiques, yet it’s that very thing that attracts legions of readers to continue making her a New York Times bestseller.

While promoting her upcoming book “Mugged” yesterday on ABC’s “This Week,” Coulter stooped to a new low, if there’s such a thing with this woman. Coulter dared to advance this extreme assertion: “civil rights are [only] for blacks.”

As if blacks are the only group to ever benefit from civil rights provisions. But even when other panelists challenged her yesterday, she continued her ill-conceived rant:

“We don’t owe the homeless. We don’t owe feminists. We don’t owe women who are desirous of having abortions, or gays who want to get married to one another.” She added, “Much of the left… dropped the blacks after five minutes” and are now jettisoning the group in favor of championing immigration and embracing Latinos.

And to top it all off, she suggests:

“We owe black people something. We have a legacy of slavery. Immigrants haven’t even been in this country.”

Talk about twisted logic. Perhaps the only thing she’s right about is that America has a legacy of slavery that needs to be examined and bridged through systemic reforms. But she asserts that feminists, homeless persons,  gays and immigrants are somehow not entitled to civil rights because we haven’t “done anything” to them.

Oh, but America has. (Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

On the Right Track: How to Cure Emotional Blah-ness

You know that feeling when you just have way too many emotions running rampant throughout your mind and even body? That’s me right about now. I’m coining this feeling “emotional blah-ness.” There is just not an appropriate emotional marker to signify exactly what I’m feeling right now. Numerous things whizzing in my brain at all times of the day. None of them staying for too long before being ushered away by some other feeling of equal urgency.

“Am I smart enough?”

“Am I cute enough?”

“Do I look fat right now?”

“Why isn’t anyone talking to me?”

“Am I good enough?”

“Do people really like me?”

“Am I funny? Or are all my jokes just feeble attempts to make friends?”

“Am I spending too much time with books, and not enough time with people?”

“Am I doing the right thing with my life?”

“Am I just over thinking everything and need to just chill out?”

Imagine all of those things running through your head all at once. Its pretty hard to pinpoint an exact descriptive place-marker on all of that. Overwhelmed? Stressed? Anxious? Nervous? Depressed? They just don’t seem to fit whats going on. I don’t feel any of those things. I feel very much in control of my situation, but all of these emotions are bombarding me all at once leaving me in a purgatory of being: the blah-ness, if you will. (Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

But knowledge of cheating is not nearly as bad as being the person they’ve cheated with. I know this is a less nebulous moral area and I’m not proud for any for any part in it. But what exactly was my part? There are different levels of transparency with sleeping with someone who is cheating. Sometimes they say they’re not cheating and either aren’t in the relationship any longer or it’s an open relationship. You can either ask for verification from their partner or believe them. Personally, I try to avoid phone calls that sound like, “Hey, I’m about to sleep with your boyfriend and I was wondering if that was OK. If so, do you have any suggestions or tips?” Talk about a boner killer. Either way, sometimes I believe them, sometimes I don’t and sometimes I don’t care. But there’s only so many sometimes before I have to ask myself if there’s some sort of appeal.
Adam Guerino, Serial Dater: Enabling Cheating

Source: inourwordsblog.com

Confronting the Lies We Tell Ourselves

We all tell ourselves different lies, probably on a daily basis. When we’re confronted with the reality of this self-deception,  it’s awkward, uncomfortable, sometimes disarming. Unfortunately, for someone like me who seeks to be as authentic, rational, and emotionally stable as I possibly can, I go through cycles where I sit down and inventory the lies that run through my head on a regular basis, and then I start to attack them with logic, dispel them with rational thought… or at least I try. Here are some of the lies I find to be the most pervasive in my life…

1. I need someone in my life to be happy and to feel complete. 

This is probably the biggest one for me. I remember asking a friend once, “Where’s your other half?” He very quickly responded, “He’s not my other half. That would mean that I’m not a complete person in and of myself. That’s not me.” He’s right, for the most part. I do believe that, as humans, we’re made to be in relationship with others, to be a part of a community. That said, I know plenty of friends who are single and perfectly content. We’re all whole people, even if we don’t always feel like it. And unfortunately, whole does not necessarily mean without pain or brokenness, but while the process of healing is often helped by the presence of others, we never really need someone else to complete us. (Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

Growing up, girls are encouraged to be and rewarded for being pleasers. Be polite, stay out of the way, help out around the house, smile when you’re told to, don’t interrupt the grown-ups talking. Boys get these manners lessons too, I hope, but they are often simultaneously being rewarded for speaking up. Being loud, intrusive, aggressive, ambitious, and self-promoting are acceptable, if annoying, male traits. By adolescence, boys know that they’re rock stars and they stop apologizing for it. Studies show that men who are disliked in the workplace, or thought arrogant, still get raises and promotions. For women, however, being disliked in the office is both personally and professionally damaging.
Emily Heist Moss, Why Women Need to Stop Apologizing For Everything

Source: inourwordsblog.com

Pumpkin Everything: Reasons to Love Fall

Kara: Being a born-and-bred Midwesterner means that I’ve always loved the changing of the seasons, they’ve always had a bearing on my sense of the continuity of life and its changes. One of my favorite seasons has always been fall – the changing of the leaves, the crisp autumn winds, the layered clothing, the delicious and hearty foods. Moving to Colombia, I lost my experience of the changing seasons, because the weather here stays pretty much the same year-round. It has really reminded me how much I appreciate the changing seasons, and what I miss about them. However, the season which, on the whole, I find myself missing the most is fall. I just can’t get enough of it.

Carly: There’s something magical about autumn. It’s not just in the way the leaves gloriously move from green to reds, or the smell of bonfires on the wind, or the last powerful thunderstorms to drench us all before the clouds start making snow; it’s all that, and none of that, and so much more. It’s in the way the Earth yields up her bounty of fruits and grains for our sustenance. It’s in the balance between night and day on the Autumn Equinox, before Summer’s light gracefully surrenders to the shadowed Winter. It’s in the way each individual leaf gradually alters its green, reworking itself into a golden or red pennant before leaping from the branch that has always been its home in the most heartbreakingly beautiful death. That’s what fall is- a time of change, a time for dying. But we need that death. We need to say goodbye to things we’ve outgrown, to remember our ancestors, to prepare for the long months of darkness to come, to take stock of our lives. How else can we survive Winter to gaily greet Spring, reborn? Life begets Death, begets Life; and the Wheel keeps on spinning…(Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

Ways College Freshmen Can Avoid Roommate Drama

The 2012-2013 academic year is upon us. For first years, venturing away from the homestead, this means many are about to experience the joy of having roommates for the first time. If you are lucky, you meet a great friend. And at worst, you live in hell for a year.

If you are anything like I was my first year in college, you are completely naïve about what living in one room, with a complete stranger, for a year will be like. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. Now, entering my senior year of college, having shared a bedroom for two years, living in an intentional community of ten people last year and now living with two guys (being the only female in the apartment), I like to think I have some wisdom on the subject of peaceful co-existing with roommates. (Cont.)

Source: inourwordsblog.com

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