I certainly thought it was when I started drinking. As soon as I did the math and realized that you can both turn down and turn up your personality artificially with a few hard ciders, ooooh, boy, I was off to the races. It wasn’t—isn’t—of course successful every single time. Sometimes you end up in a bathroom crying about how dogs sometimes die in plane crashes, or you become known for leaving parties without telling anyone because drunk-you needs to get the fuck home right now, no I can’t wait for everyone else to get in this Uber!!!X But a lot of times you’re a little more fun or a little more chill, which is worth a whole lot if you’re a woman. Even if you have to sacrifice some safety (and money and calories and liver health) to get there.
It’s not like I started drinking alcohol and it erased all my anxiety—in fact, sometimes being drunk made that even worse; I still agonized over whether I was likable enough. And often the next morning, even if I hadn’t blacked out the night before, I would wake up panicked that I had done something horrendous that I simply couldn’t remember. It turns out that if you’re a woman you still have to pay the price the next day for being loud, for being too much, for feeling invincible. Alcohol is certainly not a panacea for experiencing anxiety or sexism. But drinking helps smooth the edges of social situations, and social situations almost always favor men. Alcohol gives you an out, a way to shirk accountability for a short while, which is a lovely vacation if you’re a woman and you’re used to being responsible all the fucking time.
I spent the end of college—when I liked a guy so desperately that I turned to alcohol in hopes of making myself likable—and the rest of my early twenties playing a little bit of catch-up. While a lot of my friends were coming down from the freshman-in-college vigor with which they approached alcohol, I was just getting started. I was like a chemist trying to figure out exactly how much Riesling I could pour into my gullet to become appealing to strangers before I tipped over the edge and became Too Drunk. I haven’t ever lost my phone on a night out or woken up in a strange place or even thrown up from drinking too much, so I don’t mean to make it sound like I went full-tilt binge drinker. But I certainly approached white wine with a lot of enthusiasm during those years. I have been kicked out of a bar. I have woken up with bruises that I don’t remember until friends remind me, “You actually did try to get up on the counter of our Airbnb kitchen island and fix a light bulb.” I have drunkenly purchased the Italian-language movie poster for Harold and Maude.
I worry a lot these days that I’ll get to the point my parents are at. That I’ll want to drink every single night, that it will become hard not to. The alcoholism in my family arrives pretty late. Two of the biggest drinkers in my family didn’t start drinking at all until they were in their late twenties. I do not feel yet like I am out of the woods by any means, that I have avoided alcoholism just because I’m not a huge drinker right now. Unlike when I was in high school, becoming reliant on alcohol actually does scare me now. I’m still afraid of not having control, of not being well-behaved. I don’t want to become dependent on wine to make my evenings bearable. That said, I do love a bottle of champagne on a night with friends. I do find it so much easier to unclench my personality just a little bit and actually enjoy myself.
I’ve had a whole lot of fun and been a lot of fun with the help of alcohol. I don’t drink as often now as I did at the end of college and the year or so after; I imbibe maybe once a week now. I still don’t drink alone ever—not because of any personal rule, but because I don’t have any desire. I drink now for the same reason I started drinking: to be more palatable around other people. To be less myself and more someone easy to be around. It doesn’t always work. But I get why everyone in my family does it. It’s hard to be yourself and have to be sober for it.
I’m Not Doing Zumba with You
I do not, under any circumstances want to do Zumba with you. Even in an emergency. Even if there’s a fire. I don’t want to do a free trial of SoulCycle and I’m not joining you for even beginners’ yoga. I’m not learning about Orangetheory or F45. We are distinctly not going to work out together.
Workout classes, I’m sorry to say, are the opiate of the already fit, or the already thin, if we’re being quite honest with ourselves—which I normally don’t recommend, but I’ll make an exception. They’re designed to make the workout that your hot friend Natalia does social for her. She wants workout buddies; she wants someone to hold her accountable for her 7 a.m. workouts.
I do not under any circumstances want to be accountable for a 7 a.m. workout, do you hear me? I am not meant to “squeeze in” workouts on my lunch break or otherwise. I most certainly do not want to pay a monthly membership fee in order to re-create my middle school gym class.
I know. I know I’m allowed to “go at my own pace” in theory. But in practice, you want me to keep up with people who can do that thing where you hold your leg up in the air while standing. The cheerleader thing. You know what I’m talking about. I can’t keep up with people who can do that. My hips do need to be opened; you’re right. I’m not going to go try to solve that crisis in front of twenty-five other people in a mirrored room.
Why the hell would I want to work out with other people? Why would I want an experience where we’re all trying to get our bodies to do the same thing? Every friend of mine tells me, “Sophia, it’s not competitive—just focus on yourself; no one is looking at you.” That’s utter bullshit, and we all know it. If I was really focused on me, there wouldn’t be mirrors and there wouldn’t be other people and there wouldn’t be an instructor named Mandi or Tracy at the front of the room with a Britney Spears headset on, shouting inspiration at me. If this were about me, if this were for my well-being, it would be an afternoon nap on my couch. Everyone is checking each other out and you can’t convince me otherwise. We’re human!!
I took a couple of Zumba classes in college at the urging of my roommate; it was a full-frontal nightmare. Not only was I red, sweaty, and more out of breath than everyone else combined, but I never got the moves. Everyone else looked vaguely musical stomping their left foot on the waxed gym floor; I looked like an oversize toddler having either a tantrum or an exercise-induced asthma attack. I can never tell what I’m supposed to do when the instructor is facing me. Do I reverse her moves and mirror her, or do I match her? Am I supposed to raise my right arm because she’s raising her right arm or what? What’s the plan here?? Can’t she just face the fucking mirrors so I can follow along?
I don’t mind working out. I’m not going to pretend I love it, that it makes me feel so good after I’m done. I get weird headaches when I work out that doctors don’t care enough about to figure out (despite their fervent enthusiasm for me losing weight). I have low blood pressure that makes it feel like I’m going to pass out sometimes when I bend over. I passed out one time at a gym and had to lie down on the floor; I got up only to pass out again. I like seated exercises like biking and rowing for this reason. My legs get itchy if I walk too much in one day because my circulation is terrible. Workouts are a necessary part of my life that I do a couple of times a week if I can and if I can’t, oh fucking well.
I used to work out every day. Every single day! Can you imagine? I lived in a building with a gym (it was college; remember when your every need was met within a one-mile radius?). This gym had glass walls, which I guess are technically just windows. Anyway, there were huge glass window-walls and the gym was smack in the middle of the lobby of the building. I do not know why you’d put a gym in the middle of a fucking lobby; I think that’s violent. The person who designed this apartment complex so clearly had 9 percent body fat and didn’t feel ashamed to work out in a glass box.
I, of course, like a normal person, felt shitty about it, but I was also in college and trying very hard to get fit. Hence working out every day. I was doing tricep dips, that’s how much I wanted it. Tricep dips are desperate. If you want to get fit so much that you’re doing tricep dips, I think God should just give in and give you the b
ody you’d like to have.
One time I was using an arm machine; I don’t like using any machines other than cardio machines, because the bigger weight machines are dominated by men. Men congregate around them and take up space and watch you and talk to you and that is not the experience I want to have. I don’t want any man anywhere near my body when I’m trying to make it do a thing it expressly doesn’t want to do, like lift thirty-five pounds. There should be gyms where cis men are not allowed; I’m sure this exists, but I need more. Men make going to the gym a living hell; however, with a gym that’s open 24/7 like the glass box was, you can usually stay up late enough on a Friday or Saturday (or get up early enough any other day) that no one is there. In college if you’re awake before 10 a.m., it’s as quiet as Christmas morning.
One day, after months of being on a recumbent bike and doing kettle-bell squats, I decided, due to a distinct lack of men around, to try using a weight machine. No one else was in the gym with me. It was silent, still. I had the freedom to look like a dumbass while I tried to contort my body into the right shape for lifting.
I’ve heard the key is to try the machine first with no weights so that you get what you’re doing, what the motion is, ideally, so that you don’t hurt yourself. I sat down on one of those arm machines where you face the machine. You know when people have sex in movies where one person is sitting on the other person’s lap (a good shot to hide titties if you need to because of an actor’s contract)? Well, that is what it looks like when you sit on this workout machine. You sit on the machine’s lap and then you reach your arms around like a big sex hug. Of course, eventually the idea is to pull your arms back in sort of a rowing motion. I started with zero pounds to make sure I got the vibe. Good to go. And then I upped the weight to ten pounds. And then I upped it again and again. I was feeling myself. I was like, “Wow, Sophia. This is fitness. This is health. Look it up, friends, this is wellness.” No one was around and I was thriving. I’d made a very simple machine work and no one was laughing at me for doing it wrong.
Until, from behind me, I got a tap on my shoulder.
Friends, Romans, countrymen: NEVER EVER FUCKING TOUCH ANYONE ELSE AT THE GYM.
I managed to not scream bloody murder at being snuck up on. I took my headphones out and turned around. Standing there was the guy from the front desk.
I thought maybe I’d broken a rule. Maybe I was there too late and the gym wasn’t actually open 24/7? Maybe a water main broke under the gym and they needed to shut it down and do reconstruction? Maybe there was a fire and all the exits were blocked and he and I were going to die together in the glass box and everyone would remember my commitment to fitness? No such luck. The guy from the front desk had seen me through the window-walls of the gym and wanted to come in and tell me that I was actually using the machine incorrectly.
This was my exact Nightmare on Elm Street.
He was like, “You need to keep your shoulder blades down. Pretend that there is a walnut in between them and you’re trying to squeeze it.” I remember him saying this because I was like, first of all, why the fuck on earth am I trying to squeeze a walnut? Do you mean crack a walnut? Why specifically a walnut? Is there something about this workout machine that ties it irrevocably to this specific tree nut? Also why is a walnut sitting between my shoulder blades? Who keeps a walnut there? Is it suspended? Glued on?
My biggest fixation, however, was: Why the hell are you talking to me? Why was it so important to cross over an entire massive lobby and use a key card to get into the gym to make sure that I used proper form while lap-sexing this machine? Was this necessary?
The worst part was, he wanted me to be grateful for his coaching. And I was so stunned that this stranger was correcting me that I let him guide me through a few more reps and then he walked away super-satisfied with himself, his charity work done for the year. No need to go to Lambda Chi Alpha’s philanthropy events this semester! You corrected an ignorant gym lady!
And that is why I’m never going to join you for an 8 a.m. kickboxing class; I know for a fact that everyone is watching my shitty body the way you watch a semitruck go down a steep incline. And I obviously never used an arm machine again.
Good Coffee and Why Pierce Brosnan’s Voice in Mamma Mia! Is Perfectly Fine
I was once hanging out with a guy I’d had a yearslong crush on. To set the scene, this person is waaaaay out of my league in pretty much every way other than I’m not a douche and he kind of was.I
I’m at my best when I’m around a crush. I’ve usually done like four or five sit-ups, I’m wearing clean clothes that I think I look cool in, I have good posture all of a sudden, I have mascara on. Without a crush, what’s even the point of taking care of yourself and looking nice, you know?II Anyway, my crush and I are walking along the street and my friend is there and because this crush is a really, really smart person, I’m trying to Prove Myself. (I feel like I need to take a quick detour here and remind you that at the time I was nineteen [or twenty].) So this guy and I are getting into what are retrospectively very banal philosophical debates. It’s exactly like a rom-com, but it’s real life and he is not actually attracted to me and is just an argumentative douche BUT I DON’T SEE THAT, OBVIOUSLY.
We’re about to go get coffee when I offhandedly mention that I “can’t taste the difference between good and bad coffee.” Which is 100 percent true and also fair. Like, grow up, people who think “good coffee” is a thing. He starts telling me about how I could learn to like better coffee, or at least learn about what makes coffee better or worse. I, of course, laugh in his hot face. “Yeah, but I don’t care.” Douche Crush is flabbergasted, nigh offended—how could someone not want to learn this?
And then he said the sentence that made me lose my crush on him for good:III “Don’t you think cultivating good taste is the point of life?”
LKDSfja;lskdjflksdjfl; ka
I KNOW.
I know.
You guys.
My poor friend who was standing off to the corner sucked in a deep, exhausted breath, knowing that this was going to send Douche Crush and Me down a real excruciating-to-be-around path. We finally had a real disagreement to hash out and not just nebulous, theoretical ideas to bounce back and forth. I need to send my friend a thank-you card for not ending her relationship with me before I ended my crush on Douche Crush.
I still thought he was out of my league intellectually, so what followed his pronouncement that the point of life was cultivating good taste was me getting super flustered attempting to explain to him my position, which was, essentially: Are you fucking joking? I made very few good points, so shocked was I to even have to explain this to someone. I’d have been more ready if he’d told me, “I think we should bomb hurricanes to stop them.”
This was also before I’d really gotten into Twitter, feminism, or Being Loud Online. At the tender age of nineteen (or twenty), I avoided making any real points outside of classrooms because I was terrified that everyone else would have way more information, be a total ass to me, demand to see studies that I hadn’t memorized and cited verbally, and then they’d win. Frankly, I was a white lady who was about as informed as a garden rake, so it’s not like I was wrong to avoid loud opinions. There were so many topics I felt that I had no room speaking on (and I was mostly correct about that), but the men around me never seemed to have this trepidation. Certainly there were topics I could have had an informed opinion on; however, I simply figured other people knew better.
Occasionally, I fantasize about going back in time and just fucking trouncing Douche Crush at his own game (debating people in pompous ways). Eight (or nine) years have passed and I think I could “win” against him now. Mostly because I don’t care about him anymore, and it’s so much easier to debate people who you don’t have a hot and horny crush on. But also because I’ve thought a lot about taste since then. Here’s what I know now that I had no idea about back then: he will always have better taste than I. Why? Because taste bends to
him as a well-off white guy. Taste is not, despite attitudes to the contrary, delivered divinely from above. Taste is decided by the wealthy, the powerful, the victors. Taste is often more about gatekeeping and upholding division than anything else. It also evolves over time; lobster used to be so abundant that they’d feed it to prisoners. For most of history, the people who have been in charge in the West are wealthy white men, which renders them de facto tastemakers; even when they’re going to other cultures to steal ideas, they’re still in charge of what is highbrow and what is lowbrow, what is substantial and what is fluff, what is beautiful and what is trashy. Of course, “taste” also bends in my direction as a well-off white woman.IV But I can never have taste that’s as good as a white man’s, because society says that women have bad taste.
Of course, we don’t actually have bad taste. For the most part, we’re not the ones keeping the cargo-shorts industry afloat. I’ve never had to explain to any of my female friends why something does or doesn’t match. When my boyfriend and I moved into a new place, he incorrectly insisted that a rug he owned worked in the room because it was colorful and the room was also colorful. Women have perfectly fine “taste.” But our taste is undervalued. A wonderful example of this is how early Beatles fans were women, and their love of the band was derided. They were painted as screaming hysterical teenagers whose love of a stupid boy band could easily be waved away as “mania.” And then men started liking the band. Of course, this oversimplified example conveniently starts at the point that young, mostly white women started liking the band’s music. Since the Beatles lifted quite a lot of their work from Black and brown artists, it’s pretty easy to see how the taste of Black and brown fans was ignored until it was stolen.
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