I’m that girl

I swear, we’ll move off the Beyoncé references soon enough. But for now……. You know what to do here….

Funny enough, I would never describe myself as a confident person. Through my youth- I never felt worthy. If you recall the early 2000s, token attractiveness was solely based on how skinny you were and how much A&F, Hollister, and VS Pink you owned. At least in our affluent MA suburb, those were the markers of the “popular girls.” My dad would not allow the “Pink” text to “GO ACROSS MY ASS” and much to my dismay I had to fold. We also did not have the budget. Anyway… I never had a boyfriend. I had a lot of crushes, but mostly from a distance, and on the same guys as every other glasses wearing, sale rack shopping, middle school. I often attributed this fact to my self appointed “fat body” which is sad to think about. When a lie is told so plainly and frequently, it becomes the truth. The lie here being, Hannah you should look like this.

and to think… low rise jeans are making a come back…..

I think it probably goes without saying, I was not that girl. I had hips in the 5th grade, known as “Irish birthing hips” they grew wide. This was unacceptable, and I hated the curve of my figure when I looked at my reflection. The 2000s body type that we still see idolized today is rooted in impossible standards for women- disordered eating, plastic surgery, and sick hours of personal training. You must either be stick thin like Paris or have purpose to your curves like Kim. If you ass isn’t breaking the internet, you’re just fat. And now the adage has become, “you’re not ugly, you’re just poor.” It’s scary to think about how normalized altering your entire facial structure and body has become. And while my dad actively curses the Kardashians, they still continue to change their bodies under the knife to once again provide the illusion that women look. like. this.

I owe a lot of my rebirth to the time spent alone through the pandemic of 2020-present (?)…(we’ve just been saying mid-pandemic for several years now so idk). Alone in my apartment, I grew tired of hating myself. I spent the majority of the last 25 years waging war against the vessel keeping me alive. I worked out fervently to achieve a body standard my literal genetics did not allow for. I hated my hips, the pooch on my stomach, un-smooth, uncomfortable in my skin. And then I realized, I was breaking rule number one: You cannot love someone else while simultaneously hating yourself. It’s not a feeling that goes away over night, I still look in the mirror to poke and prod at the things I’d want my body to do, but instead of blaming myself, I recognize that I’m blessed to be here in the form that I have.

My sister cracks me up, every time she walks by any reflective surface (we’re talking mirrors, store windows, car bumpers) she says every.single. time. “DAMN! Look at how good I look!” and its silly but its true, the more you speak positivity to yourself, the more you start to project that into the world. When you walk into a room, be in that fucking room, take up space, and never dim your light to make others comfortable. Ke$ha says the party doesn’t start till she walks in, BE HER. Consider shit boring until you walk in the room, be the main character in everyone’s night. Dance before anyone else does, ask a random group to pass a J (within reason, please…), compliment strangers as you pass them on the street. I’m a firm believer in the energy that you put out is the energy that then is returned to you, push the universe to give you what you want. None of this can come to life if you don’t become full of yourself, first.

I was put on to this idea of being “full of yourself” in reading Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. If you aren’t familiar, the book is a favorite of women’s book clubs- of all ages, heavily featured in any “Top Self Help Book” lists. There is a reason why her story is so widely consumed, and I was not an exception, I ate this shit up. Doyle says we need more women to be full of themselves, as in STOP shrinking yourself, stop looking externally for validation, stop ignoring your intuition. I read a perfect example of this the other day. The story goes like this:

There is a woman, and she is a mother. Her son, in middle school, had a co-ed party, of sorts. The kids were all comfortable in the living room, boys laid up on the couch and the girls were sat on the floor beneath them. When the mother came in to ask the kids, “Anybody hungry?” she watched the ways each of them responded. The boys did not look away from the T.V, they answered in teenage boy grumbles, “nah…” But the girls… did something entirely different. Every girl immediately turned to her friends, they all scanned each other’s faces, and silently appointed a spokesperson, who responded for everyone, “no, thank you”.

I can’t remember where I read this. If I think of it, I’ll let you know. Might have been “Three Women” By Lisa Taddeo

If you felt your stomach drop reading this, as I did, you knew that some of those girls were fucking HUNGRY. But you never dared voice that, be the only one… we look to each other for acceptable responses, only to neglect our own wishes. Show of hands!!!!!! WHO ELSE???

who else has been personally victimized by feminine standards of agreeableness and silence!!!!!

While the journey of self love and acceptance is a constant battle, its so beyond important WE (women…and men) push beyond these constraints of gender and even society. Fuck it. The more time you spend arguing with yourself, the less time you have to enjoy life. And if you don’t have that, then what is the point?

STOP not being yourself. Right fucking now.

Here are some things that helped me find my groove…

Wear the clothes that you WANT TO WEAR: don’t just keep buying trendy pieces and being upset when that gross Shein body con dress doesn’t fit you. Baby, it isn’t supposed to. Look on Pinterest/Tumblr or any other inspiration finding sites and take some pages out of the influencer book (NOT her weight-loss tea, JUST her fashion choices). Find styles, brands, and colors that work for you and stick to them!! Stop going to Brandy Melville, buy your size and wear it proudly. Never be ashamed to size up if your “usual” size doesn’t fit. We all know stores legitimately make shit up when it comes to sizing women’s pants. It takes a lot not to stress over the number assigned to your pants when anything above 0 is “fat” but don’t you want pants that you can sit down in without rearranging your internal organs???? Buy the right size, god dammit.
Get off your phone, read. Now I am not perfect. My screen time fluctuates and I sometimes hit a solid 7 hour/day stat when the weekly screen time report is released. But, in the efforts to take better care of my brain, I find reading to be a solid practice for my anxiety. Find a book that you’re simply unable to put down, and launch into it. Find some self help books that make you realize your experience is not your fault, you are human and these things happen.
- Fiction Books to read that you won’t be able to put down: Verity by Colleen Hoover, In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
- Nonfiction books about being a fuckin woman: as previously mentioned Three Women, by Lisa Taddeo, and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Dideon.
- ****PLEASE SEND RECS I AM ALWAYS THIRSTY FOR MORE***
- OK and- consume content by creators that empower women, are full of themselves women, brilliant and weird ass women. Some of my favorites are Drew Afualo, muthfuckin Tefi, Brittany Broski, Antoni Bumba, Ricky Thompson (not a woman but still, icon), Ilana Glazer and Patty Henderson.
Get a hobby, and interest, a passion (outside work). Ideally, your job is something to be passionate about, but we know that isn’t always the way life unfolds. Even if you are driven by your career, and career driven, that can’t be it for you. I sacrificed a great deal of my life to my career and put my life on hold in a lot of ways. Some of my favorite activities have included: riding a citi bike, trying new recipes, dancing in my living room, yoga, plants (both potted and weed, lol), ngl The Sims…to name a few. My friend Jessie does pottery and kickball, Dev is a dancer, Ali is a Soul Cycle devotee. Whatever it is that makes you feel like you’re here. Now something I gotta say: working out cannot be centered around “getting skinny.” Strength and tone are byproducts of something you should really enjoy doing. Results are not “weight-loss,” results are mental clarity, grounding in your body, and being with yourself.
You have to try new things. ALL new things. Go out with people who aren’t your usual type, go to new bars and restaurants, try new activities, say yes more often. Stop limiting the bounds of your life by lines that YOU draw, nobody puts baby in a corner, so why would you?

I want to end with is this: happiness is a feeling, not an end goal. It is just like any other emotion, it has to come and go. You will never achieve happiness, but you can do things that make you FEEL happy. Maybe that’s not a nuanced take, but I didn’t see life that way until my therapist told me. Happiness, like grief, exhaustion, nervousness, excitement, any other emotion you might think of- that’s not a permanent state. You must actively work towards it.

Say it in the mirror before you start your day.

I’m that girl.

these muthafuckas ain’t stoppin me.a