Real Women Have Mitochondria

The day I got training wheels was the day I realized I was “curvy.”  

My dad came home with a set for me when I was 7 or 8 years old, just a few days after I’d ridden a bike for the first time down a hill with a speed bump at the bottom. My skinned knees, wrists, elbows, cheek, chin and ribcage were not at all amused when I lost my balance and made hard contact with concrete. I asked for a set of training wheels, post haste.

My dad sat down to affix the wheels to my bike while I pretended to supervise. He perused the instructions and muttered to himself that the wheels were not suitable for a child weighing more than 50 pounds. I felt my cheeks go warm with embarrassment since I knew for a fact that I weighed more than these wheels’ apparent max capacity. Dad took notice and said “Are you kidding me? You weigh more than that?!? Yikes!” He said it with a smile and meant no harm, but I still left the room with my head hanging low. I felt ashamed. 

Just like that, BAM! I was hyper-aware of my body. It dawned on me that 85% of my female classmates were indeed smaller than I was, and that the boys liked those girls better. An aunt had recently offered to pay me one dollar for every pound I could lose, because didn’t I want to be prettier? When puberty struck quite suddenly after an injury to my jaw did something wacky to my pituitary glands, my insecurity level reached a frightening peak that lasted well into my twenties. Body image issues followed me like a stage-five clinger with an axe to grind; I spent years trying to be smaller and employed unhealthy means to try and get there.  

So now curves have sort of made a comeback: joy to the world! You see it on TV, on the radio, on the internet and on t-shirts bearing Marilyn Monroe or some other curvaceous female’s image: real women have curves, it’s all about that bass, and anacondas don’t want none unless you got buns, hun. You’d think I’d be all about this refreshing mentality being of the curvier persuasion, right? Well… about that.

Here’s my first issue. The kind of “curvy” that’s lauded as sexy too often only refers to the Jessica-Rabbitesque shapes of women with voluptuous hourglass figures and not so much to that of plain ol’ fuller-figured women such as myself. I try so hard to identify with the “curves are hot” thing because frankly it feels like I should, and while I do appreciate society in any way embracing the concept of beauty being packaged in different sizes and shapes, it doesn’t always feel like my particular body type is the “right” kind of curvy. This is where social media can really make a regular girl want to pull her hair out; the Instagram models and Kim Kardashian types with their overabundance of self-indulgent photos make a great and maddening case for the fact that my curves are for the birds in comparison to theirs; not only my non-carved waist but my cup size, butt, nose, lips, eyes, pinky toe and gosh-damn nail beds are apparently the wrong shape, size, color or model year.

This brings me to my other problem with the “real women have curves” movement, and that’s that it does the exact same thing that the “skinny is sexy” ideal does: it defines beauty and sex appeal as only applying to a certain type of woman with a certain set of characteristics. It not only leaves out the women who don’t possess those physical traits but shames them into feeling like they aren’t feminine if they don’t. What I’m talking about is skinny-shaming, and it’s everywhere I look.

Given my life’s quest to be thinner, I’d never really given much thought to this side of the struggle. Think about it though. Being told or made to feel that I’m not beautiful or attractive because my body cannot fit into a size 6 is annoying, no doubt about that; my hips don’t lie and they say “we’re wide!” so I try and try to get their circumference down through healthy eating and exercise. Meanwhile a slew of other women wish theirs were a little less modest and a little more Minaj because in pushing the agenda for seeing beauty in a larger figure, smaller girls have become the new punching bag.

This is very evident in media and music which have begun painting women’s bodies as less desirable if they lack the certain curvature that has become so synonymous with sex appeal, like when Megan Trainor’s momma apparently told her boys like a little more booty to hold at night. I know a lot of people are giving her props for the message behind that song, but that message is sullied for me because it puts down the girls without said booty abundance. Then we have Nicki out here going so far as to say “f*ck you if you skinny, bitches!” This grinds… my… gears. It belittles women who don’t fit the big booty bill and is demonstrative of one of my major hot buttons: women’s body-shaming coming from other women. Enough already. A naturally slender, less curvaceous female is just as real a woman as Amber Rose, Christina Hendricks or Sofia Vergara are, and no one should tell her or me or you any differently.

I’m not setting out to tell anyone to rewire themselves in what they find individually attractive. What I do want is collective acceptance of the female body in all its variation. I want for all of us to be able to feel comfortable in our own skin, to be seen as perfectly beautiful, sexual, desirable creatures with appeal and worth and value that isn’t measured by our waist-to-hip ratio. I find it unacceptable to define beauty in exclusionary terms, and not just in how men see women but in how women judge each other as well.

So here is my own little body image manifesto: I think a woman should feel sexy whether she’s shaped like a Coke bottle or like a Coke can. She should focus less on being thicker or thinner and more on being healthy. No woman should feel pressured to wear makeup, nor should she be shamed if she happens to really like putting it on. Let a girl wear sky-high heels whether she’s 5’6” or 6’5” and don’t give her lip about it because that is her prerogative. Please, love the big boobs or full derriere of women who possess these body parts- but don’t make the women who lack these assets feel inferior either. Don’t assume that the skinny girl is healthier than the one shopping for plus-sized jeans, but don’t discount the slender girl, she might just teach you a few things. Gisele is a beautiful woman, so is Tess Holliday. Curves don’t make a real woman and neither do six-pack abs. You know what all real women have? DNA, cells, cytoplasm. Real women have mitochondria. Put that on a t-shirt.  

 

V-Day

Buenos Diaz! It’s Valentine’s Day, that day on the calendar that makes singles sick, lovebirds swoon, and people with kids wonder whether they bought enough Valentines for everyone in Timmy or Jenny’s class and whether they’re bad parents for choosing the store-bought cupcakes over the homemade and Pinterest-inspired. Today is also confession day here at Buenos Diaz. Gather round now, come in close. Can everyone hear me? OK, here goes.
I, Vanessa Diaz, am a girl, and sometimes I act like one.

Honest to God, 97.6 percent of the time I don’t mind and even enjoy being single. Knowing how to be alone and relish it is something I’m quite proud of, really. I like that I can go see a movie, take a trip to the Farmers Market, sit at a restaurant or coffee shop or lay out in the park all by my lonesome and not feel a desperate need to be accompanied if company isn’t in the cards that day. I’ve been very independent for as long as I can remember, so tell me why this year there is something about this saccharine-soaked, commercial concoction of a holiday that for whatever nonsensical reason really has me thinking deeply about my life choices. It feels pathetic. I will elaborate.

I hate having to admit this because it makes me sound like one of those girls, the ones who bitterly denounce “Singles Awareness Day” by sulking on their couch listening to Adele and eating Godiva. Maybe it’s the flower deliveries to people not named Vanessa at work or the emotion bubbling beneath the surface of my composure every time I realize I am quitting my job in 3 weeks. Maybe it’s because my favorite of favorites is no longer a well I can draw from and that person is going away and shacking up with someone for the love-filled weekend while I’m sitting here noshing on Gourmet Inka Corn (corn nuts for the grown and sexy) with a glass of Nebbiolo (I wrote this Friday night, I’m not being a booze-hound before 9am).

I just suddenly miss… affection. I miss nervous first kisses, or warm, familiar ones that melt you; I miss butterflies, anticipation, cutesy gestures, intense bouts of eye contact; hands in my hair, hands on my face, eyes wide open, eyes wide shut. I miss hand-holding, flirting, passion, surrender. I miss hearing someone call me pretty. I miss feeling pretty.

The worst part though is the feeling of guilt, that sense of “I’m not supposed to feel the feelings!” that eats at me as someone who normally thinks of themselves as strong, independent and not at all why-aren’t-I-in-a-relationship centric. I feel like I should be impervious to these juvenile affectations, like its sacrilege to miss the warmth, the smell, the feel of a man and still call myself a feminist. This is especially true now that I’ve reached an age where I think I’m supposed to be enlightened and above all of this mess, so now I’m not only feeling out of sorts but feel dumb for feeling that way to begin with. I feel like I’m betraying my own ideals.

I’m not betraying anything though. I’m just a woman. I’m allowed to feel and need and want. So I will confess that I do in fact feel and need and want and that doesn’t make me any less self-possessed. Yeah, I allowed myself those thirty seconds (ok, minutes) of feeling sorry for myself, then I decided to get up, turn on the lights and think of V Day as just that: V Day. V Day as in Me day. I may not be in love, but I am loved and I do love. The rest of this blog post will focus on that love. Here are some people who aren’t obligated to love me out of a blood relation.

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I have a friend who shares my not-so-guilty pleasures plus love of steak, bright lipstick, beautiful white boys and getting on planes. We Snapchat our workouts and pics of food afterwards. In the young and ratchet days when on a crowded Vegas dance floor getting the bump-and-grind treatment from a brotha with plans, she motioned to me, pointed down at the guy and said, “V, do you want a hit?” because she didn’t want me to be left out. That poor guy looked at her hurt like, “Are you pimping me to your girl right now?” and I just about died from laughter.

I have a friend who calls me at 6am to tell me that she’s proud of me, who two years ago looked me in the eye over brunch and said, “So you’re not an author yet, but you ARE a writer, Call yourself one.” She’s black and from LA’s Valley and I’m a San Diego Latina but somehow, someway, she is my twin. We bond over books and beautiful words, delight in sarcastic wit and get into good song be it Jay or Jill or that trap music. She’s been telling me I was pretty since the day I met her and one of these days I’ll believe her.

I have a friend who for years now I’ve been calling the poster child for pursuing your passion. She pushes me in ways both overt and covert and though we may not speak often it’s meaningful when we do. She brought me to wine, let me lean on her at low points, and never made me feel stupid for loving someone I couldn’t have. She once put a slice of salami on my sangria glass because we were all out of strawberries and has dared me to dream recently in a very big and international way.

I have a friend who knows it all, the good, the bad, the ugly plus the emo, the insecure, the crazy and the expectant, all of it wrapped up in big hair and too much jewelry. He’s talked me off a ledge, showed me lightening in summer, sends me YouTube videos of hilarious throwback rap jams and tags me in stuff about books and pretty places. He’s brilliant and witty and maddeningly stubborn, pushing buttons and boundaries and schooling me in emoji warfare. He knows what I need to hear/feel and knows when things are hard for me, he tells me I’m important because I need to be reminded and even when we’re not agreeing are close in an atypical way. He encourages my honesty even when it isn’t easy, like he wants me to be sassier, louder, braver, a bigger pain in the ass if it means coming into my own.

I have a friend who reminds me that I’m talented and worthy of more than I’m sometimes brave enough to ask for, who challenges me as a writer and gets me to do things in the name of “research.” As undergrads we spent the night before final exams dancing to Afro-Cuban beats at Zanzibar, banking on my freakish memory to get us through the tests because sometimes you just have to dance. She’s shared a $300 bar tab, a stash of emergency chocolate and many life conversations with me and reminded me last night in a moment of “help, I’m a little lost” that I’m not busted. She gets my struggles and I get hers, and she’s the only person I’ll let speak cutesified Spanish to me so please don’t try it because one is enough.

You know what’s awesome- I could go on for DAYS. I have a ginger who frolicks on bays with me, who encourages me and laughs with me about words that rhyme and unattractive dance moves; I have a boss who’s a BFF who let me go supportively because she knew I’d found my passion and because she shares that passion too. I have a gypsy life-shift Sherpa who takes me on Baja adventures and tells me to keep on dreaming. I have so, so, so much love in my life that it almost seems silly to want more.

If today you find yourself madly in love with someone who loves you too, I’m truly very happy for you. I encourage you to revel in love because love is an amazing thing and even if it’s corny and cheesy to make a big deal out of it on Valentine’s Day- so what! Go for it! The world needs a little more love. Go be sappy and happy about it and let the haters hate. If you’re single like me, I salute you just the same! Love is probably all around you like it is for me, you may just have to make a list and write it out to remember that. Do it, you’ll surprise yourself.

I am now about to go enjoy my V-Day with a group of beloved friends that I am lucky to have in my life. I’m also going to lather on the SPF because I live in San Diego which has a blatant disrespect for winter. I will leave you with some wise words from Hugh Grant, a classic quote from a classic movie.

“It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.”

Happy Valentine's Day!

Bookishly Yours,

Vanessa