Friday, Aug. 15, 2008

Casual Fridays are what I look forward to

BethZilla is your go-to woman for music and entertainment in the Tri-Cities. A reporter, photographer, videographer and blogger extraordinaire, she speaks her mind on anything and everything.

Today is casual Friday at work and I love my casual Fridays. Not only do we get to wear jeans, but we also get to wear tennis shoes! Be still, my beating heart...

I skipped putting on makeup today - not because it was casual Friday, but because I had to go to my doctor to see if my pink eye had cleared up. As she pulled my eyelids up and down, I wondered if she cared about the wrinkles she was causing me.

My old doctor switched professions, so now I go to a younger, more hip doctor, which has been quite titillating. My new doctor wears 4-inch pumps and a corset.

This got me to thinking about women and body image. Is it so wrong to care about how we look? Does that make us narcissistic? And if we go that extra mile to look good, no matter what our daytime jobs are, does that make it all right for people to call us derogatory names?

Especially with the Olympics going on, there's a lot of talk about gymnasts and their body fat percentage. These poor girls are being analyzed and scrutinized, which would be rough on any young mind.

Speaking of which, while I was camping a couple weeks ago, there were these two young girls who played in the lake every afternoon. They had to be no older than seven, and they would push each other around on floaties. One time, as I sat on the front porch of my parent's cabin, I heard one of the girls say to the other, "You look really skinny!"...as if it were a good thing.

My inner valley girl voice snarked "Like, that is totally badass!" Then my conscience came over me and I said to my mother, who was sitting next to me, "Can you believe that shit?"

Ever since I was little, I had been fairly skinny. Though I never had to worry about not fitting into a size 3 or below, I did find it difficult finding pants short enough for me to wear (even though I am over five-feet).

I didn't care about appearance in high school. I wore my brother's No Fear hand-me-downs forever and eventually began wearing form-fitting clothes by my senior year. There are some days where I'm still like "Should I wear this out?" and immediately regret it, but for the most part I still don't care.

Over that past year I've gained roughly 20 lbs, so this is foreign territory for me. I'm by no means "overweight" but I am a little softer around the edges, which I'm slowly coming to embrace.

But still, seven-year-old little girls shouldn't be obsessing about their weight or how skinny they look. I was trying to imagine how these girls came to think this way - I mean, what Nickelodeon show promotes tiny body images? Spongebob?? He's freaking square, for crying out loud. Maybe it's the whole Hannah Montana craze that is taking over the nation. Stupid Miley Cyrus. I don't know why, but she rubs me the wrong way, similar to how Britney Spears did when she was young and trying to be a "good girl."

I may not be wearing clothes to make me look skinny today, but I am very comfortable. I just got these jeans from American Eagle, which were only $19, and they are now my new favorite pants. I'm also wearing these retro Nike Eclipse shoes that are super sweet. I even think my grandma would love these, and she's a pretty hip cat.

Although I'm not model thin like some women in my department, you won't hear me giving comments like "Oh my gosh, you look so skinny today!" to my coworkers at the water cooler - and that's not because we don't have a water cooler anymore due to cutbacks, but because I rarely comment on how people look unless they're my close friends. Who else can you trust to tell you that you look freaking ugly?

No, instead of showering people with empty compliments, I sabotage my coworkers with a jar of candy on the corner of my desk (which has been empty for a couple of weeks). Now if only I can get my hands on some Kompeito...