I know, I know, the sun worshippers of the world are latching onto their last precious rays of summer’s glory days. But I didn’t choose the Victorian/Morticia/Pug life…it chose me! Ha-ha! I am an autumn baby; late October, thanks. When the days begin to cool and the leaves begin to turn, I swear it is then that my soul truly awakens. Yes, Halloween is my favorite holiday, but I haven’t been able to really celebrate in years! That’s gotta change!

I woke up this morning and was excited to try a new (to me) dandruff shampoo from Biolage I had ordered online. The reviews swore it was the best thing ever! I also splurged, slightly, on a nice conditioner by Nexxus. I had a new pair of shoes, earrings, necklace, and a dress, too. I hadn’t put these things together in my mind yet, but as I was getting dressed, well, it all just worked out!

You see, my work bff, and honestly the biggest cheerleader in my life (and that is a high bar, lemme tell ya!), came back to work today after a vacation. They took one look at me this morning and flipped out! They always do, but this time did feel more special. They insisted I was glowing and needed a pic. I gushed over my new shoes that I’m now in love and obsessed with, and they immediately gasped as they’d never seen me in pointed toe shoes.

So I was super feelin’ myself today, and why not?! I haven’t had many of those as of late. I do have a bit of a shoe addiction, always in search of the most stylish and most comfortable shoes. I may have found them! No idea how my shampoo worked out yet, I got to work with my hair still wet so I threw it up into a top knot so the back could dry and just left it. As always, I was in a rush this morning, so my makeup was a quick thing.

These shoes, though?! OMZ! Naturalizer had a sale, I think 25% off or something. I looked at their entire line, there’s some cute flats but nothing exciting, until I saw these babies. I kept going back to the page, telling myself, “No! No more shoes! You are out of control!” but it didn’t stick. The free shipping on top just made matters worse. They come in wide widths! They’re leather flats, pointed toe, mules! I got an 8 wide and they fit like a fucking dream right outta the box! That never happens. I expected some initial discomfort, but I’ve had zero. ZERO! I wore them without socks today, but may try those half-liner style ones, so my toes are protected. Not sure I’d even need it but I want these shoes to last forever and I hate when the insole gets wrecked before the outsole does.

My lovely work bff takes great pics, even if they are just using my phone. They told me where to stand and just kept clicking away. Such a pro! Ha-ha! Honestly?! I love these pictures! I love this outfit and these shoes and everything about today’s outfit! I’ve really been into inexpensive jewelry lately. I got a 4-pack of cheap hoop earrings on Amazon. (Also got this amazing deal on these huggie style hoops!) The sweater is discontinued but it’s my absolute favorite thing, it’s from ModCloth. The dress is also Torrid, but couldn’t find it on their site, maybe it’s gone. My glasses are from Coastal (dot com) and are also my favorite ever (they might also be discontinued, sorry)!

I bought this rose gold-tone, caged heart necklace at Torrid a couple of months ago but couldn’t work it into an outfit until today. Wooo!

The ring is from Minette and is 14k rose gold, with two small onyx stones on either side of a tiny white pearl. It makes me so happy, this little ring. I have another of their rings that I also adore. I love the daintiness of their rings, but all of their stuff is great quality, fast shipping, affordable prices, truly sweet packaging!

I even did my nails kinda fancy last night. I’ve been growing them out to see how long they can get until they all break. Ha-ha! I do my nails myself, usually just a solid color with the occasional glittery accent nail. It’s sort of meditative for me, doing my nails. I enjoy it in any case. Also, it’s hard to take a pic of your nails. Just sayin’! Ha!

Just look at these colors?! And it’s a lovely warm and breezy day outside. I know many of you are not excited about cooler weather. Honestly, it hasn’t been a very hot summer here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m grateful for that as I cannot be in the sun (allergic to sunscreen + natural redhead = instant spontaneous combustion). I think I’m in a good place, physically and mentally, for the most part. I’m making some progress which I hope to write about soon. Someone even brought in some cakes for someone’s birthday at work. Woo cake! Ha-ha! I dunno, I’m just lookin’ good and feelin’ fine and pretty dang contented with that at the moment.

I’ll be forty-one soon, and I gotta say it ain’t bad, this gettin’ older thing. Though my grandma always told me, “Never get old, Sarah!” I know she only meant the tough stuff. I’m grateful to have the life that I do and more so the people in it. This may seem like some silly outfit of the day post, but for me this was a pretty big deal. Sounds shallow or superficial, perhaps. I don’t dress up for the validation or approval of others. I dress for me. I love how I feel when I love how I look. It’s a collection of things, really, and fashion is a big part of that for me. I also sit at the front desk of a major tech startup in silicon valley, so I take a little pride now and then with my appearance.

I find it both empowering and liberating. For me it is a part of a myriad of things I consider to be in my own self-care arsenal. Sometimes it’s just jeans and a t-shirt and getting my ass out the door in the morning. Other times it’s a bit much, but I don’t care. If I’m feelin’ it I try to go with it, when time permits.  I was quite pleased with today’s ensemble, though it came together through happenstance. Having a friend cheer me on is the best! They will be moving out of state at the end of this month and I don’t know what I will do without their presence everyday. We’ll text, of course! Ha-ha!

Oh my sweet, lovely readers! It is not everyday that I have the pleasure of a halfway decently written troll email. Yeah, email! Novel! Ha-ha! This morning I had a message from our new “friend”, Duncan. Here, take a look:

Prepare yourself for the science of internet trolls…

Hello,

I was wondering about the whole idea of fat pride. Is the idea just that you accept yourself for who you are and your weight? I looked up some statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and I found some interesting information. It said that obesity is linked to the following problems:

• All-causes of death (mortality)
• High blood pressure (Hypertension)
• Type 2 diabetes
• Coronary heart disease
• Stroke
• Osteoarthritis (a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint)
• Sleep apnea and breathing problems
• Some cancers (endometrial, breast, colon, kidney, gallbladder, and liver)
• Mental illness such as clinical depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders
• Body pain and difficulty with physical functioning

I want to know if you know that these risks that come with obesity, and how a lot of people in the fat pride movement still choose to accept themselves although obesity leads to many negative health problems. Can you explain why people still choose to accept themselves even though obesity is not good for the human body?

 

Thanks

Troll make internet mad. Troll like anger. Troll want people as miserable as troll.

It gave me such a smile. So I took another sip of coffee and replied. I’m a writer, after all, it’s kind of what I do. Ha!

Look at you, Duncan. You didn’t bother to read my blog, didn’t bother to post a comment publicly. You felt yourself to be such the expert that you had to reach out to me personally and directly. Why you think it’s any of your business at all, well, I already know why. You’re a cis-male human (I’ll assume you’re caucasian as well since you showed up at my virtual door with a sack of assumptions yourself). This world was ravaged and then rebuilt by your kind. Every system, societal or otherwise, was made by and to benefit you. Social beauty constructs? Yep! That too!

You see, Duncan, and I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, though I already know how you’ll respond, the word “obesity” as you’re using it and modern medicine chooses to use it, means to over eat. You’re assuming (and we all know what happens when we assume) that I as a fat person must over eat and that is how I got a fat body to begin with and maintain its unseemly physique. Nope. That’s the easy answer for you to tuck yourself in with at night. Life isn’t so simple. I don’t owe you or anyone an explanation for my existence. I don’t owe you or anyone an appearance of your preference.

This is my life and my body. I don’t come into your space, virtual or otherwise, and demand a single thing of you. If you’ve even read this far I hope you will take that alone into consideration. You came into my virtual space and demanded to know personal details about me. Had you read my blog you’d see that I don’t use terms like “fat pride” and there is zero science to back up your ridiculous list of scare tactics that you’re blaming on simply having a large body. Correlation is not causation. You know nothing about the lives of fat people. You only know your own life, as we all do.

It’s a matter of human decency and respect that I ask you to apologize, excuse yourself, do some heavy self reflection, and hopefully be willing to see that other people’s lives and bodies and appearances are no one’s business at all. Period. Try thinking for yourself instead of repeating the marketing buzzwords of profiteers.

If you want to google all the made up stuff you hear and soak in beliefs that only affirm what you already believe, regardless of hard scientific facts, and call it research, so be it. But don’t bring your bullshit to my door and expect me to grovel. Fuck off, Duncan!

You do NOT have to explain yourself

Is ‘fat’ really the worst thig a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or cruel’? Not to me. J.K. Rowling

I saw a meme this week that at first made me irritated, but then made me happy because fuck yeah!

Yeah it is a thing you’ll want to talk about, the trouble is finding the appropriate audience for the topic! I’ve been called an evangelizer of the menstrual cup before, not ashamed about it either. I am ashamed of those who make women believe terrible stupid shit that creates vagina shame the world over. (And if you do have mixed feels about your vag, you’re not alone, but there’s nothing wrong or bad or smelly about your vagina! I promise!) But I love menstrual cups! The first one I tried, and have used for 11 years, was the Diva Cup. I love it! I know it’s hard to plop down that hard earned money when it’s $30+ and you’re used to buying a box of tampons or pads. But the amount of money you’ll save, the time and gas or more money towards transportation to and from the store, not to mention less waste in our landfills…it’s a no brainer!

So, here I am, seasoned cup user. Happy with my Diva Cup. And then I start hearing about some new exciting developments in the menstrual cup world: XO FLO! I hesitated, read every review, and took the plunge! Only, when it arrived (and waited until my period also arrived), it was massively huge! I would not say that I have a tiny vaginal opening, perhaps average to above average, maybe. I mean how does one even know?! But this thing just didn’t work for me at all! I ran back to my Diva Cup and didn’t consider another brand again. Until…

I heard a friend talking about their friend finding a cheap deal on Amazon for a 2-pack! I blew that off because it couldn’t be true. I was happy with what I had, had hated trying a different one, why bother? Friends! I am here to tell you that I did give that 2-pack on Amazon a try and I am using one right now! In fact I am on day 2 of using it, and it’s my heaviest day. I haven’t needed to empty it yet today! This is fabulous! With my Diva Cup on my heaviest day, I have been wanting to empty it about 2 or 3 pm (cup goes in at 7am, for reference). It is now almost 56pm and I have no urge or desire to fuck with it at all!

I was hella skeptical! For $15.99 for two cups, I was willing to take a risk.  They seemed flimsier at first glance and feel. Once I sanitized the new cups (boiling is my preferred method) I gave it a shot. At first I didn’t like how flimsy the sides of the cup were. Then the top rim seemed stiff and not as smooth as the Diva. Once inserted it all made sense, though. The softer sides make it easer to fold and to break the seal for removal. The stiffer rim made it easier for the cup to open after inserting to create a better seal. I did have a hard time this morning, nothing new there though, with getting it to open up once inserted. I have had this issue with every cup, not a surprise. And mornings seem to be when I struggle with most things. Ha-ha!

I won’t try to sell you on menstrual cups, I have written all of this before (some good links in that post), but I wanted to share with you a little update and suggest that maybe you might wanna take that same, cheaper, risk as I did. No pressure. 😉

Words to live by: There’s no wrong way to have a body.

At the start of this year I set a strange sort of a goal for myself, to finally figure out how to wear skirts. I’d figured out dresses years before, but skirts remained a mystery. I’ve never been one to tuck in a shirt, at any size my body may be. Just not my style, not my thing, no thank you, please, and thanks again, to you. As a teen I would wear a baggy t-shirt with a short, knit, body-con skirt. Never gave it much thought at the time. Now the concept seems so foreign.

I realized part of this was the whole form over function argument that would swirl around in my head. And then, do I go knee length or maxi?!  Then there was my own body issues. Yeah, I still got ’em, don’t we all? Like, I know I’m a seasoned fat activist or whatever, but there is no 100% body issue free moment of enlightenment. At least not in a permanent sense. I’ve had moments and days maybe without any sort of self hate directed at my body. Unless it’s a full length maxi dress or skirt, I can guarantee you wouldn’t catch me without teggings underneath anything I was wearing that wasn’t pants, regardless of the temperature.

All bodies are good bodies

If you search “teggings” in google images, you will find many pictures of me in the mix, if you add “notblueatall” to that search you will find countless pics of me from this very blog. I was obsessed! Not that I don’t wear them now, but I gotta say that I finally figured out skirts and decided to just love the tomboy legs I have instead of feeling need to hide them from the world. That was the key! My fucking legs. My lovely legs that have gotten me away from danger more times than I can recollect. My legs that have given me so much joy in every moment of dance that I have moved with them, even when in pain. My legs that are still strong and surprise me by their flexibility. Yeah, I figured out that it wasn’t really skirts that were the issue, it was simply how I felt about my damned legs.

I grew up a tomboy for the most part. I loved to play in mud and help my dad work on his car. I took apart my bike or my skateboard and put them back together to try to figure them out. I climbed trees and preferred the cub scouts over my silly brownie troop’s activities any day. I had a bowl haircut, a gap in my front teeth wide enough for a McDonald’s straw, freckles galore, it was the eighties, life was alright. I always came home with new bruises and scrapes. Once I flew off my bike and scraped my knee so bad I swear you could see the bone beneath. I have survived a lot of trauma, at the hands of men, too. I have all of the scars to prove it! Because of this I never showed my legs. I showed cleavage, no problem. Something that would highlight my bodacious butt, you betcha. But anything above my ankle? Forget it!

Love your body

I realized that I felt most weird about my legs because of comments from others, even when my legs weren’t visible. Comments about body hair and paleness, mostly. Two things I have struggled with. Paleness I can no longer avoid, nor care to. I’m a redhead, yes natural, it’s just who I am and if I can finally come to love my hair color, then I can finally appreciate my paleness. Living in California, people get obsessed with being tan, no matter how one achieves it. Ugh! Even my former MIL would insist that I just needed a good base tan. Not possible! Now that I’m allergic to sunscreen, there is just no other option for me. #MorticiaLife

Body hair is another issue and for me more of a feminist one. In the past I had shaved my legs at first to fit in, then as a matter of attraction I suppose. That sounds silly to me now, but no cis-guy ever seemed okay with girls having visible body hair, and at the time I was boy crazy. I was fortunate to have a husband once who didn’t really care either way, but certainly enjoyed when I was freshly shaved and they savored the smoothness. Once on my own I only shaved when I had a date. Even if I shaved, I was still covering my legs with clothing. In my last relationship we never had sex so I never felt an obligation to shave and so I didn’t. I maybe shaved 2-4 times a year for the last five years, or whenever it tickled my fancy to bother.

As a fully fledged spinster I reveled in my long leg hairs. Seriously! They were soft! Ha-ha! I didn’t give it much thought at all, except when faced with social obligation things like the two times I did that whole runway fashion modeling thing. And then the weather warmed up. I was buying used clothes on eBay and looking for hot bargains and kept coming back to this black and white striped maxi skirt from the Ava & Viv line from Target. It was so cheap I felt compelled to give it a try, I could always gift it to someone if it didn’t work out. But then it did work out! And then I tried another skirt and then another, all maxi length. Then I got this body-con jersey knit dress with cute rutching from Torrid, via eBay and it was like a lightbulb moment.

You do not need certain body type in order to be happy.

I felt sexy af in that dress! I wanted to shave my legs and show off what I had to show in that dress! And I did it! And how! WOW! Then I found a stretch velvet back pencil skirt on eBay from Torrid and fell absolutely in love with it! I now wear that pencil skirt, I wear it at a midi length mostly, with a t-shirt and I feel more myself than ever! Go figure! Ha-ha! My teenage self is still very much alive within me, probably more than I care to admit. Ha! Truly this was a big deal for me! Even if no one else knew, noticed, or gave a shit. These legs were out there and loving every minute of it!

This also happened to be about the same time I started to experiment with low heels and wedges. I found a pair of pre-owned Earth brand shoes with what my bff rudely refers to as my “granny heels”, but I prefer training heels, thank you very much. And I gambled on a pair of Skechers wedges on Amazon, thinking the return policy would save me, but I wear them most of all! They are rainbow and have memory foam! Ha-ha! The silly things I get excited about, I swear! But it really does still feel revolutionary in my own warped mind. I do know better, I know others struggle with these things, too. Something about legs always felt unreachable to me in my femme-ness. Even as everything else seemed right.

All bodies are beautiful

It just goes to show you, as time goes on, we change and grow so much! I never would have believed that I would feel confident and comfortable in the things I’ve been wearing to work lately, but the compliments prove it’s right! Not that I need the validation, only that it confirms there’s nothing wrong with showing my legs. No one has gasped and backed away upon glancing on my paleness or plumpness! There’s nothing wrong with wearing kitten heels or a mid-wedge. There’s nothing wrong with my body. There’s nothing bad or unsightly about my legs! My past traumas aren’t obvious to others and they no longer have to hold me back.

What body issues have you continued to struggle with? Are there body parts that you cannot stand, regardless of how fat positive you are? What was your last body ah-ha moment?