Last year, Bria Quinlan and I made a bunch of t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, and more with writerly and bookish designs. Apparently a lot of you like our stuff, because we're still in business!
If you're looking for gift ideas for the writer or book lover in your life, check out all the different designs we have at Writer's Yardsale: http://www.cafepress.com/writersyardsale/
Here are a few examples below. Click on the image to see the entire collection for that design. There are many different color and style options for t-shirts, and lots of gift items to choose from.
I like BIG BOOKS and I cannot lie! Our newest design.
This design comes in t-shirt and poster form too! **One of our HOTTEST sellers**
Comes in t-shirts, mouse pads, coasters, and more!
**Our BEST SELLER** Writer's Block: When your imaginary friends stop talking to you
Another top seller! For when you spy on people people watch.
We got a little bit "cheeky" with this one. But customers seem to love it! Ha!
Great quote for the schizo in all of us. :)
Reading is sexy!
Those are just a few of the designs we have available. Check out the entire Writer's Yardsale for more!
And don't miss out on these exclusive Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Twilight designs, available for a limited time at Spreadshirt.com: http://romanceyardsale.spreadshirt.com/
If you have purchased from The Yardsale before, send us a photo of your item! We'd love to feature it on our blogs.
Have you ever read the hilarity that is Hyperbole and a Half? If not, I highly recommend you remedy that. After this post. Don't go now, because you won't come back here. Go later.
I'll even link it at the end of this post so you can seamlessly scoot on over.
(That is not an invitation to skip my post and scroll to the bottom. *eyes you beadily*)
Though I wouldn't blame you if you did. Cuz Hyperbole and a Half is enriched with vitamins of hilarity and truth that feed the soul.
Moving on.
The fine author at Hyperbole and a Half created this chart. I happen to believe she drew it for me. Or, yanno, the other 32 billion people who can relate.
I currently find myself at the middle of the grid: I'M SUCCESSFUL!!!!! Only because I finished the major project I've been working on all summer/fall.
I tend to have one major project going at all times. I wallow in a mire of self-inflicted hermithood, sustaining myself on a diet of junk food and Sudafed. I'm one-track-minded. I can't focus on anything else and tend to not know what day it is or whether or not I've showered that particular week.
But when the major project is done? And it's time to launch said project? And I finally take those few feeble steps out into the great wide world and fill my lungs with fresh air for the first time in months?
I feel like this:
There is this surge of productivity. The thrill of the launch. Time to do the little things I put off for so long like:
- cooking the real food
- cleaning the hermit cave
- laundering the hermit garb
- washing the hermit hair
- appearing presentable to the public
- having real conversations with the hermit guard (the husband)
- feeding the hermit heating pad (the cat)
- taking the hermit cave alarm system (the dog) for a walk
- going shopping
- doing the little, scraggly day job duties I should be doing every day but put off because my brain can't sustain more than one task at a time
So here I am. Seemingly free for the moment. I feel like one of the twins in a DoubleMint commercial. All happy and clean and tan and blond and flirty and unhermity.
So I'm taking this free time to DO ALL THE THINGS!!!
I think I'll redesign my blog. Make a few more t-shirt designs for Writers Yardsale. Hold a poll to name The Freakin' Fantastic Garden Gnome. Giveaway some books. Introduce you to The Shin Kicking Elf. Watch some terrible movies. Read some unterrible books. I dunno. Something fun. Something I haven't had ANY time to do.
Because I won't be dancing this lively jig on The Plateau of Success for very long. Soon, the System Failure Monster will come along to chew my legs off and I'll become the same old squidgy pulp of social unacceptableness all over again. I'll crawl slowly and painfully to the precipice, hurl myself over the edge, make a nasty-sounding and cringe-worthy splat, then climb back up again.
Because that's what I do.
Until then, have a fabulous holiday week! For those of you enjoying turkey this year, have a piece for me. (Dark meat, thankyouverymuch.) I'll be having fajitas. At a Mexican restaurant. With Polish friends.
All of which I am extremely thankful for.
I'm even thankful for the Projects of Doom. Because without them, the fleeting Plateaus of Success wouldn't exist.
Now go have a laugh at Hyperbole and a Half!! (That should totally be their slogan. It RHYMES!)
And the link to the DoubleMint commercial. You know you want it!
There has been something weighing very heavily on my heart for the past two years. (Longer even, but it was only recently that it started keeping me up at night, sick with worry.) Something that I've watched claw at the hearts of some of my closest friends, tearing them down, making them weaker than I believe them to be. Making them doubt themselves, hate themselves, hurt themselves and those they love. Something that makes them put their lives on hold--this one precious life that is over by the time we feel like it's just begun.
I'd like to talk about it today, mainly to get my thoughts and worry off my chest. Get it out there. I know it has nothing to do with writing or books or publishing, so you don't have to read if you don't want, but it does have everything to do with self-worth and drive and passion. I think it's something that affects everyone. And we keep sweeping it under the rug.
I don't want to do that anymore.
The issue is female self-image in the media.
A few years ago I might have rolled my eyes at this topic because it didn't hit as close to home as it does now. But now that I've become fully aware of the warped body images the media is selling to us, it is an issue that's become impossible for me to ignore. I see it everywhere now--on television, in magazines. I hear it in every conversation I have with another woman. I hear it out of my own mouth.
Her body. Her weight. Her eating habits.
My body. My weight. My eating habits.
My fellow ladies, if we spent half the time we do talking about our bodies and our looks and actually used it to talk about philosophical and social issues, we'd have the world's problems figured out by now.
I truly believe that.
If we took all that time we spend pining over a better bod and exercising until we hurt ourselves and actually attributed that to spending time with our children, our family, our friends, helping our community, helping the poor and the hungry and the needy...who knows what we could accomplish.
I know it isn't as simple as that. But I believe a world of good could come from us simply changing our viewing habits.
Did you know that it's possible to change our opinions on beauty? It's as simple as controlling the images we allow to flash before us--cutting out the lies and replacing them with truth.
I started doing this a long time ago by cutting out magazines and TV commercials. Once I stopped buying magazines (3/4 of them are advertisements anyway) and got a TIVO so I could skip past TV commercials, I actually became a happier person. I wasn't looking at myself in the mirror as much. I wasn't spending as much money on stuff I didn't need. I didn't have as many bouts of depression and self-loathing.
I was beginning to find freedom from the invisible--but all-too constricting--bonds of consumerism, and I realized how the media affected my self-confidence day in and day out. Most of us have no clue that it contributes so much to our unhappiness until we cut it out of our lives.
But even then, I still believed that in order for me to be considered a beautiful woman, I had to be size 8 or below. I still believed I needed to look like a Hollywood celebrity in order to reach my peak beauty.
It wasn't until I became a member on Pinterest that I started noticing a pattern in the images I was seeing on a daily basis. I was browsing fashion blogs and clothing styles so much that I started spending more money on clothes. (Which of course is what the clothing industry wants from fashion blogs. That's why they send fashion bloggers items to try on and photograph and blog about...) Anyway, I noticed that all those women wearing those stylish clothes were tall and slender. White and tan. Young and beautiful.
None of the clothes would fit me, or look good on my body type.
Then I noticed friends on Pinterest posting images of women in swimsuits like this one below to "keep them motivated" at the gym. This one is labeled "healthy weight loss" where the girl goes from a perfectly lovely 134 pounds to 110.
Why is it that in our society, 134 pounds is considered unhealthy? Why is the image on the right considered more beautiful? What is WRONG with the image on the left exactly??
Here's another:
The thing about goal weights are that they're usually 100% ridiculous and unnecessary. They become unhealthy obsessions rather than true desires to become healthy individuals.
Why? So I can look like her? What will that achieve? Will her body bring me happiness? Prosperity? Will it make me a kinder person? Will it help me serve others with a selfless heart? Will it help me stop overeating? Will I love myself more?
Will it bring me love?
According to a fascinating article the other day, probably not. Especially if you're looking for a man who only bases his dating pursuits on body type. The article started off with the photo below:
An online survey was conducted where 60,000 men were shown images of women sized 8, 12, and 14 in bikinis. Overwhelmingly the men were more attracted to the size 12 and 14 than the size 8. It tells us what we've always known: men will almost always prefer curves to a bony hip and shoulder.
What else does the survey tell us?
That finding love and gaining the attraction of a man is NOT why women diet or exercise. It also usually has nothing to do with "getting healthy."
For a lot of women, it has a lot to do with competition.
We see a woman's body with rock hard abs and we say, "Hey! How come my abs don't look like that?" We see how our friend has thinner thighs and we say, "Wow! I'd kill to have legs like that!"
It has nothing to do with being attractive so we find love. It has nothing to do with health. Most of us just want to look as good--or better--than the fellow ladies around us or the ones we see on TV. Period.
When I realized this, it truly disgusted me. Mostly because it's so true. My husband loves my curves. So much so that I often frown at him and find myself saying stupid things like, "I'm huge! How can you love this?"
My self-image isn't warped because my man thinks I should be thinner, it's warped because the women in my life think I should be thinner. The women on TV think I should. The women in magazines think I should. The media thinks I should. And therefore I think I should.
So I put my foot down. I started following a woman on Pinterest who has a board called "Curvy Cuties and Wonderful Women."She often posts images of real-sized women, and when I see them in my Pinterest feed, I know I'm actively changing what I perceive as a beautiful female body.
These for example, are images we wouldn't see in too much magazines:
Why do we view these women as less beautiful than the stick figures I posted up above? Because they have fuller thighs? Softer stomaches? Thicker arms?
We've gotten so used to seeing women with teenage boy bodies and labeling them as having "ideal beauty." No hips. No chest. Skin and bones. We warp ourselves into believing that is the ideal body shape, not even fully realizing where that ideal comes from.
I promise you, it doesn't come from us alone. It comes from the media, the television, the magazines, the commercials. And who wants their thoughts dictated by them? I'd rather have my own mind and be happy about it, thankyouverymuch.
(If you've stuck with my rant until this point, can I offer you a virtual hug?)
All that said, here are ten challenges I'm going to be tackling in the next few months. I'd really love it if you took them on with me, or just picked one to try.
From now on I'm going to:
1) Cut out the vast majority of false, photoshopped images that I put in front of myself. I will flip past the "beautiful women" in magazines, because they're all airbrushed and touched up. None of them actually look like that in real life. Instead, I will put images of REAL bodies in front of me. Real women. If I'm going to look at another woman's body, I'm going to make sure it represents the vast majority of women--the average size.
2) Reach that point where I really do believe what I said in #1 whole-heartedly. What we see on television and in magazines is NOT real. No woman has pore-less skin. No woman has crease-less necks when they turn to the side. No woman holds herself in those ridiculous poses in real life. And no normal person can work out for a living like celebrities do. It's just. not. real.
3) Stop pouring over images of false beauty for "inspiration" and "motivation." If I work out, it's going to be because I LIKE DOING IT. If I'm only doing it to go from one size to another, or look just as good as that other chick at the gym, I'm going to stop and rethink it. Then, because I'm already in my healthy zone for weight for my height and age, I'm going to choose to do something more productive. And fun.
4) Eat something I enjoy and don't feel guilty about it.
5) Stop talking about my eating habits/goals/calorie count. This will be a tough one for me, but I'm truly going to put forth my best effort. Can you do it with me? I fully plan to talk about food in general, because I adore food, but I'm not going to talk about calories or how "bad" I was because I had a slice of pie.
I like pie.
I'm going to friggin' eatpie.
6) Stop talking about my weight and my body around my friends. Chances are, some of them are larger than I am. And we can tell our friends over and over that they're beautiful and they don't need to lose weight, but when we beat ourselves up about our own weight, which may be less than theirs, we're telling the whole world that we're not skinny enough. Not desirable enough. And that speaks volumes. Everyone hears us, even when we think they don't. It makes our larger friends think, "If they don't think they're beautiful at 130 pounds, what must they think of me at 170? They tell me I'm beautiful, but they must be lying to my face." Even though we may not be lying, they'll think we are. And that puts their trust in us on the rocks.
7) Stop talking about my weight and body and eating habits around the little women in my family. Kids hear everything we say. They watch us like hawks. They imitate us. Do we really want them growing up to be as consumed by their body image as we are? Do we want our little men to believe that real beauty is based on looks? On a size 2 or 4 for that matter?
8) Stop telling only my thin friends that they're hot, or they have a great bod.
I was walking next to a friend of mine not too long ago and my other friends shouted out to her how hot her body was. Not one word of praise was mentioned about me or my body. And of course I know why. Because I'm larger. I'm wider. I have a fuller face. I have rounder hips. I don't have a "hot bod." Obviously, I'm not the ideal image of beauty my friends believe in. They don't aspire to have a body like mine, so they're not going to praise me and my looks. And that got me thinking. Are these women truly my friends? Do I really want them to be? Women who praise the very thing that destroys so many women's spirits? Kills so much self-esteem? Leads us down a path of self-loathing?
This is just warped and wrong. When we give praise to those with thin and rock-hard features and withhold praise from those without them, we're perpetuating the thin ideal. The long-and-lean ideal.
We're not okay with ourselves or our friends when we look like Miss Teen UK, Chloe Marshall, who is a size 16:
We don't praise women like her. We praise women like this:
There's even an entire group of women posting images like the one above on Pinterest and captioning it: Dang girl!
What about women as hot as Chloe Marshall? Why don't they get a dang girl too?
By only praising the thin, we end up hurting and excluding a vast majority of average-sized women in our lives. I know I've done it myself. I know I've been insensitive. I've spoken about my weight and how I'm unhappy with my body in front of someone larger.
I refuse to do it any longer. I'm stopping now.
9) Stop watching television shows or films that star a full pin-up cast. I swear, it's getting worse and worse in America. I saw a few episodes of Rookie Blue when it first came out. My first reaction?
How many rookie police forces actually look like this?
Everyone on the show is perfect and beautiful, not just those pictured above. The entire police station appears to be cast from a modeling agency. Perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect bodies. That's because we don't demand authenticity in American television. We just want to look at hot people.
This is why I've started watching shows primarily on BBC. The people on their shows are more true to life. I've seen women with crooked teeth, fat rolls, wide hips, wrinkles. And do you know what? It's refreshing. It lifts a heavy burden off my shoulders.
Here are the stars of Law & Order UK (for example), who, yanno, actually look like real people. And are, yanno, actually cast for their acting talent rather than their yummy looks:
Crazily enough, the not-so-scrumptious actors usually become our most beloved characters, because we fall in love with their personalities rather than their looks.
It's a novel concept indeed, one that requires control of thought. Challenge #9 is to put my foot down and watch shows with REAL looking people in the cast. Women who look like my real friends. Not women who look like the kind of people I want to be my friends.
10) Number ten might be the most important of all. If you only try one of the challenges with me, try this one. Watch this short film about image in the media and learn how what we purposefully place before our eyes can negatively affect all areas of our lives.
Part one is the first video and part two is below it.
I definitely did not write this post to put anyone down, and I hope I didn't make anyone feel bad about themselves. I don't mean to judge or point fingers. I have been guilty of everything I mention here, and I still will be, I'm sure, until these challenges cease being challenges and start becoming habit.
I don't know how many times a woman has talked to me about these issues and I just nodded my head and smiled until they were finished, and I never thought twice about the truth of the matter. Maybe I didn't want to hear the truth at the time. Maybe I wasn't at a point in my life where I cared enough about it.
But there are women I love in my daily life who are giving up precious chunks of their one-and-only life worrying about their bodies. I refuse to be an accessory to that. I refuse to give them a reason to look at themselves and believe they aren't already WORTH SO MUCH.
I refuse to let one moment pass without telling them how beautiful they are, exactly HOW THEY ARE. And in order for them to believe me, I must treat myself with the same love and respect. They won't believe that I think they're beautiful unless I believe I'm beautiful--just the way I am.
So in order to help others, I'm going to work to change myself and what I perceive as true beauty. It's going to be hard, and I'm going to lose sight of my goal and mess up now and again, but I'd rather spend my time learning how to lift others up than learning how to lift weights. I'd rather spend my time learning the habit of self-love and selflessness than the habit of running everyday or getting to the gym after work.
I just happen to believe that's a better use of my time.
And that doesn't mean I'm not going to work out or watch what I eat. It just means people and relationships and love and self-worth come first. They're so much more important. We can't take our bodies with us.
And now I must end this enormous post because my goal for the day was a clean kitchen. I've gone and spent all day worrying about this post, biting my nails to nubs, organizing what I wanted to say (I really did, even though it may not seem like it!), and then typing it up.
If all you take away from this post is a viewing of the short film above, then I'll be proud I posted this. And if this post gives me more accountability for meeting my ten challenges head on, then that'll be worth it too.
I truly believe if we can change how the media represents women here in the States, we can change the world.
