The One Where Amber Talks (almost coherently) About Religion

With the Christmas season recently completed, God and Jesus and those fellas have been on some people's minds an awful lot lately. When word spread of the massacre in Newtown, many people turned to religion for comfort and to ask how something like that could happen. Prayers were said and vigils were held.

Then something else happened. Some of the people who turned to God for comfort then shifted their gaze. In sadness and anger, they wielded religion as a weapon. "If God were more present in our schools," they said, "things like this wouldn't happen." Shaking their heads, they mused, "this is what happens when you turn your back on God."

I got really, really angry when I read things like that. I am still angry thinking about it. I'm still not sure if I am truly able to put words to my feelings, but I'm going to try.

Passing judgment on others is not okay. Wrapped up in the sentiments I summarized above is the assumption that those who are not Christian must therefore be morally void or bad people. Is that really what these people believe? That there are those who are saved, the good people, and then those who are not, the bad people? I'm not a Biblical scholar nor am I a Christian, so I'll abstain from quoting religious texts with which I'm not really familiar, but my understanding has always been that Christianity is a religion of charity, love, and forgiveness. Maybe that's not so?

My other primary problem with the sentiments about God in schools is that, well, they're wrong. Factually. God wouldn't prevent people from shooting each other any more than he has prevented priests from molesting kids. A glib point, yes, but it holds water. Being Christian doesn't remove the existence of free will. People will do what they want to do, and while the pressures of religious doctrine might encourage certain behaviors, it's not a mathematical certainty. Think about the people who bomb abortion clinics - they actually believe they are doing God's will by murdering people. They don't see any problem with killing people to prevent the killing of (tiny) people...who, in fact, are also killed in the prevention killings. But those crazies are not the ones (as far as I know) who have been proclaiming with sorrow that God could have saved the children of Newtown. It's the normal people who aren't crazy. They really, truly believe that a Bible in every classroom and a prayer at the start of each day would somehow prevent things like this. I can't imagine a sadder, more confused line of logic.

Recently, a crazy person shot a bunch of firefighters in NYC.  Are we really going to blame the godlessness of firehouses, now?  Or perhaps we're going to accuse the neighborhood in which the man lived of not being holy enough?  When we start blaming the victims or the community rather than the perpetrator, we absolve him of any wrongdoing.  It is the same line of logic that argues a woman's skimpy outfit invited sexual assault.  Even in less-charged circumstances, the same logic follows.  If you hadn't left your purse open, your phone wouldn't have been stolen.  If you had gotten that fancy security system, your break-in would have stopped at the front door.  If you hadn't been walking in that bad neighborhood, you wouldn't have been mugged.

We've probably all thought those things.  I am constantly reminding my students to keep their phones and bags on them and not to leave things on a table if they're leaving the room.  It's sad, particularly because I teach in a tiny school where we call each other by first name and at least attempt to have a respectful, safe environment, but it's the reality.  And yet, there is an important distinction that needs to be made here.  If a student's phone is stolen after they left it on the table, it's not that student's fault.  They might have been able to prevent the theft, yes, but it is the fault of the thief.  Period.

If we blame the student, we remove personal responsibility from the thief, as if it is in the student's power to keep the phone safe but not in the thief's power to not steal a phone.  Maybe this sort of victim-blaming mentality is a mechanism we use to make ourselves feel safer.  If it's the victim's fault when something happens to them, then it was within the victim's power to prevent it.  If it's in the victim's power to prevent bad things, then it's within my power to prevent bad things from happening to me.  Hence, I am safe.

Is this really how we want our elementary school students to think?  If they had just prayed harder, maybe a random person wouldn't have shot their friends, their teachers?  If the teachers had just broken the law and forced religious teachings into the classroom, then the shooter would have skipped that room?  If we blame the school for not being holy enough, we are automatically blaming the individuals within that school.

Think about who that really means.  Teachers who lied to the shooter to protect their students only to be shot themselves.  Staff who shielded students with their own bodies and were killed.  The acts of courage and love performed that day should be beyond reproach.  If I can break my own rule and quote some scripture: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)  If a teacher performs an act of the greatest possible love, doesn't that mean that God is already in our schools?  Doesn't that mean that He is already within those who love and care for others, those who would protect innocent children without hesitation?

I worry that the self-satisfied superiority expressed by those who blame secular education for the shooting means that those people do not see any other problems that need to be addressed.  If the issue is the lack of God in schools, then there is no need to examine our gun laws, or the lack of availability of mental health services in this country, or the way news organizations celebritize mass shooters.  That mindset makes me sad, and a little scared.  There have been plenty of all-Christian-all-the-time communities throughout history, and none of those (as far as I know) were without problems.  Putting a cross on every door and the Commandments in every main office of every school isn't the solution.  But maybe if we all took some of that scripture, the bits about love and forgiveness and charity, and actually did what it said, we'd be in much better shape.

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." (John 4:20-21)

A Brief Commentary on the Concept of the "Friendzone"

[Spoiler alert: This post is more aggressively offensive than usual.]

I've spent the last few minutes reading the tumblr Nice Guys of OkCupid, which is amazing.  The joke is essentially the same from post to post, but it's a funny one, and one I think needs to be made.  The short version, for you non-click-through people, is that men on this particular dating website complain about how women don't want to date them because they're "too nice" but then post other things on the same website that reveal how awful they are as people.  I'm sure plenty of people have plenty say about this, but before I get caught up in Christmas Eve gift anticipation and sugar overdoses, I'll post my 2¢ here.  Sidenote, I'm pretty impressed with myself that I remembered the number pad alt code for the cent sign.

The problem with identifying as a nice guy: Here's the thing, fellas.  YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE NICE.  That is a basic human quality.  It doesn't mean you have to be perfect, but rather that your intentions should be mostly good instead of mostly bad.  You're allowed to make mistakes, to have flaws, but you should be a good person.  Being nice is not something you get a fucking cookie for.  It is a requirement for continued social interaction with anyone else who is also nice.  Which, I'd like to think, covers most people.  The guys who you claim are all assholes who get the girls?  They're probably mostly nice, too.  The problem is that they either made mistakes, or there was a fundamental disconnect in their relationships that caused one or both parties to be hurt.  Sure, some of them are serial cheaters or just horrible people, but if you genuinely think that those qualities are what draw women to those men, you are crazypants.  And yes, there are some qualities that sometimes get bundled with dickish behavior - for example, being forward, taking risks, that sort of thing - but if you are psychotic enough to think that most or even some women are actively attracted to men that exist solely to cause them pain, just do us all a favor and kill yourself.

And that whole nice thing that you're so goddamned proud of?  That entitles you to nothing.  You do not earn an Old Fashioned by pulling out a chair or holding a door.  You don't get blowies just for paying attention to a girl's story for 10 solid minutes.  And you sure as SHIT don't get laid because you bought dinner.  Women are not automatically prostitutes, whether the currency is dollar bills or steak tips.  If you assume that you are owed any sort of affection or sexual favors because you did something nice, then you don't understand what "nice" means.  Seriously.  Like, not at all.  If you identify as a "nice guy" but you also get upset when a girl doesn't put out after you bought her dinner, you are retarded.

The reality of your situation: You probably are nice.  I mean, I don't necessarily know that for sure, but if I'm assuming that most people are nice, there's a statistically significant chance that you are, in fact, nice.  But, if you're nice, why aren't you dating whatever the 2012 equivalent of Carmen Electra is?  Dan says I mean Kate Upton.  So yeah, why aren't you dating Kate Upton?  Well, a lot of fucking reasons that have very little to do with your fundamental niceness.  Here are some possibilities:

• You are unattractive.  This could be a busted face, a terrible body, awful hair, or just something gross about you.  Again, I don't know you.  It might be fixable, it might not.
• You are depressing as FUCK.  People who mope around all day are not fun to be around.  Who wants to date somebody like that?
• You whine like a little bitch.  (See previous point.)
• You have no idea how to interact with people, especially women to whom you are attracted.
• You keep aiming too high.  Realistically assess the women you're pursuing.  Are you even close to their level?  Never go more than 2 above your own rating.  Realistically I'm a 5, maybe a 6 provided I'm wearing a push-up bra.  I'm not out there chasing 9s and then getting pissy when they choose to date other 9s.
• Your priorities make no sense and you take good things for granted.  If a girl puts you in the "friendzone", either value her friendship for what it is and move on or tell her to go fuck herself.  If you wait around for her to realize why you're awesome, you're not listening, dumbass.  SHE SAID NO.  If you're not willing to listen to her extremely clear fucking signals that you're so mad about, what makes you think you'd be a suitable boyfriend? (Also, this.)
• You are not as nice as you think you are.  Again, this is fodder for the Nice Guys of OkCupid tumblr, so I don't need to go there.

Stop blaming women for not loving you.  Their job isn't to love you.  Their job is to be their own fucking person and live their own fucking lives.  I know the number agreement and syntax of that sentence was problematic, but I don't care.  You, hopefully, get what I'm saying.  If you're so caught up in this "nice guy" thing that you define all your interactions with women based on your niceness, you're probably really self-centered.  You see women as objects that you play off of rather than as their own goddamned people with dreams, preferences, priorities, fears, doubts, and egotistical obsessions.  Plenty of women do the same thing that "nice guys" do, except they blame their problems on skinny girls instead of assholes.  But that's another post for another day.

But seriously fellas, turn your gaze inward.  I'm not saying you need to be self-loathing or what have you, but rather that you should understand a simple concept: the common denominator in all of your failures with women is YOU.  It's not that all women are the same.  You are the same with all these women. I don't know exactly what your goddamned problem is, but rest assured that it is YOUR problem.  If you're so angry about all these girls you love dating assholes over and over, never realizing that a great guy is right in front of them...well what does it then say about you that you keep pursuing these unavailable/uninterested women over and over again?  Who are YOU ignoring, discarding, disregarding, or rejecting?  What women would love the chance to dote on you if only you would ever take your head out of your ass and look at them?  Well, maybe none.  I don't really know.  But seriously, stop playing the victim.  It's depressing, unattractive, and ultimately sets you up to have an oppositional relationship with all women.  Not exactly great for your romantic future.  If you see women as obstacles to be overcome or territory to be taken, why don't you do us all a favor and wear a t-shirt that says "I have the mentality of a rapist" and save us all the trouble of identifying you at a party.

Ugh.  Go fuck yourselves, you whiny pricks.  Merry Christmas.

Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 21: Yikes

Summer 2011

This was me in the summer of 2011, which was last year, for those of you keeping score. It was riiiiiight before I started to give more than a single shit about my weight and health. In fact, it was probably within a week of when I started this blog series. You can see now why I decided to call it Diary of a Fat Girl. I don't care how many people were bigger than me or how non-life-threatening my weight was...look at the expression of glee on my face as I'm about to dig into that delicious ice cream (now, granted, this was at a cabin where I had no control over the food and my pickiness meant that I would exist almost entirely on ice cream the whole day, but I digress). Look at the impressive muffin top/spare tire/plain ol' gut going on there. I thought that t-shirt made me look GREAT. Seriously, I genuinely found that shirt to be flattering when I was at that weight. Maybe I was just looking at my own cleavage. Regardless, I clearly was operating from a different perspective back then.

Graduation Up-All-Night 2002

I've always had some weight issues, but it didn't start out this bad. In high school, I typically wore a size 12 in pants (large, leaning medium for you gents) and maintained a weight between 150 and 170, although I wasn't weighing myself regularly during that time. I drank multiple Mountain Dews a day, ate Doritos daily, had a giant cookie for lunch at school, and did not give a second thought to portions, servings, or any of that other shit. I didn't realize it at the time, but the fact that I walked literally everywhere (we didn't have a car) allowed me to nurture these awful relationships with food without ballooning to 300 pounds by the time graduation rolled around.

Move-Out Day 2003

My freshman year of college proved somewhat counter to the general expectation. By the end of the year, I ended up losing probably 10 pounds, though I can't remember how much I weighed at any given point during that time. I hated most of the food served in the dining halls and had yet to discover the glory of the student union food court and the fried bonanza known as "Late Night" that began after dinner service ended. My roommate (pictured) and I even occasionally woke up early to haul our asses all the way across campus to exercise at the tiny gym. Granted, we didn't know any better and just spent a half hour recumbent cycling before walking home, but it was better than the zero exercising we did most of the time. Freshman year ended up being the last time I saw a weight in the almost-healthy range for a while.

End of the School Year 2004

 Throughout the rest of my college career, I fluctuated in the "chunky" weight range, comfortably fitting into size large everything, and sometimes medium. I considered this to be my standard weight and appearance, and only sometimes made efforts to live more healthily.  I wasn't really happy, and if you had asked me what my ideal body would have looked like, I would not have replied "pretty much this."  But I didn't really *care*.  So I didn't do anything.

Iftar (Dinner during Ramadan) 2005

When my school opened its big fancy gym at the end of my junior year, I went with some semblance of regularity, but my eating had become absolutely atrocious and no amount of elliptical training was going to undo the damage I was doing to myself at (and between) every meal. I hovered in the 170s of weight at this point, unhappy but not ready or willing to do anything about it. I made liberal use of thigh shapers and suck-it-in!-type clothing anytime I was not wearing jeans and t-shirts.

Summer Job Faux Prom 2006

After graduation, I began teaching and found that my only viable lunch option near work was a McDonald's. With a half hour lunch break and no car, I was limited to anything within 5 minutes' walking distance, and everything else in the area was Mexican or Japanese, not up my alley. I would occasionally make food at home and save leftovers to bring to work, but this was often not feasible or at least not preferable. By the end of the school year, I had gotten into the habit of eating a #10 every single day for lunch, which clocks in at just over 1,000 calories for those of you keeping score.

Brother's Wedding 2007

The next two or three years saw the most impressive gains in weight, and I basically didn't notice. It was so gradual and I was so used to being fat and unhappy that it just didn't occur to me that this was any different than I had been in college or even high school. I went from 12s to 14s, no longer fitting into medium anything, and sometimes preferring XLs.  I never fit into any of my clothes properly anyway, and I had no real experience with what it felt like to fit into things well because I was always chasing a smaller size than I should be wearing, so I rocked some pretty awful clothing choices, size-wise, thoughout this time. I knew it wasn't going well, but I had no reference point for what "well" was like

Wedding of Aforementioned Roommate 2008

I drastically overpaid for a 6-month membership to that fancy university gym in the hopes of recapturing my vaguely healthier time in college, but I rarely went and ultimately ended up burning that money at a time when I genuinely could not afford it. I went from C to D tits (the only thing I was fine with), bought a belt so I could wear pants that fit my enormous thighs without sliding down, and fostered a wonderful set of back boobs. Again, I didn't *feel* fatter, because I had always felt awful and bloated, so I wasn't able to see any of these changes as connected to any actions. As far as I was concerned, stuff like back tits were new symptoms of the same disease I had always had, and nothing had really changed.  When I began grad school during my third year teaching, any mental work I had done trying to psyche myself into becoming fitter (happier, more productive) was suddenly re-appropriated for the endless readings and papers involved in my coursework. I knew that if I ever hoped to lose weight, it would not take place during grad school. The stress was unbelievable and unrelenting.

Alzheimer's Walk 2009

Starting in 2009, I began to balloon out to nearly 200 pounds. It wasn't drastic and it wasn't a surprise. I knew I wasn't doing what I needed to do if I wanted to weigh less, so I made perfect sense to me that I would weigh more. I went up to a size 16, officially an XL, and finally started to get mad about my weight. I don't know why my attitude shifted, and even now I'm not sure if I was mad at myself or at the world, but I no longer felt as though my weight and unhealthiness was a fact of life that was both inevitable and permanent. I didn't lose fifty pounds right off the bat, and I didn't make huge sweeping changes that altered every aspect of my life. But I still start trying to do *something*.

Halloween 2010

At first, it was stuff like Turbo Jam and caloriecount.about.com. I didn't really know anything about anything, but I knew that I had to deal with both the food thing and the no exercise thing. On multiple occasions, I went down ten pounds, then back up eleven, then down fifteen and back up seventeen. I always seemed to bounce back up to my old weight plus a pound or two extra.

That gets us back to the summer of 2011 and my ecstatic fucking ice cream face. I had taught for five years, finished the coursework for a masters degree, bought a goddamned condo (well, jointly), and formed a stable and healthy relationship with a guy who liked to play video games as much as I like to watch (currently he's embarrassing his AI opponents in Saints Row: The Third). Basically, I had all my shit sorted out, my stress post-grad-school was dropping like a stone, and I became acutely aware of how fucking miserable my weight and my body were making me. I felt awkward and lumbering, weak, swollen...I wouldn't even fully realize how yucky I felt until the weight started coming off.

Post-Zombie 5k May 2012

Beginning with this blog and the promise of zombies chasing me relentlessly, I began to work comprehensively and relentlessly on myself. I read books, browsed websites full of research and advice, logged obsessively on myfitnesspal.com, and eventually joined Fitocracy. It was through these websites and resources that I began to learn enough to make real, concrete changes in my mentality and habits.  I measured food on a scale all the time, which still seems a bit OCD, and tracked every calorie every day.  I still do that, over a year later.

I began to see my relationship with food and my body as primarily psychological in nature rather than physical/practical. I still eat shitty food pretty regularly. Sometimes I go over my calories for the day. But I have been losing weight for 18 months and I'm not looking back.  I do my best not to let the stalls and plateaus affect me, because I know that maintenance, at least for me, is its own kind of progress, and that I am doing good work. Perfection is not the goal; improvement is.

July 2012

I'm comfortable enough in my new body and lifestyle now that I've started to become scared of reverting to my old ways and old health. Before, I had tried and failed so many times to effect any sort of long-term weight loss that I considered the return to fatness a standard part of the process. It didn't upset me to go back up to an old weight. It was just what happened. Now, having almost 100% new clothes, loving my body for the first time ever, and shifting my focus towards overall health and accomplishments rather than just a number on a scale, I'm fucking terrified of what it would mean to gain that weight back.

August 2012

But I think it's good to be scared. It keeps me focused and accountable. Having positive things to head toward is wonderful, and that's the stuff that keeps me motivated day in and day out. But having negative things to run away from has its own benefits. If I'm not driven to go for a run because of the wonderful way I'll feel afterward, maybe I'll get my ass out on the road because if I don't, I'll blow up like a puffer fish and have to go buy all my own clothing back from the Good Will down the street.  It might be an exaggeration, but if I'm not scared, it means I'm complacent, or worse - indifferent. I won't let that happen. I look and feel too awesome to let it get like that.

November 2012