Have a Lovely Weekend.

As a trans guy, I’ve started to notice more the ways boys are told about exactly who to be and who not to be. It’s sad. It makes me wonder if I would be a different person had I been able to be raised as a boy. I hope I would have turned out the same, but I think I would have a harder time showing my emotions. The whole thing is just so fucked up.

“Becoming a Bra Girl overnight is like waking up one day to find that you’re the baddest lion on the Serengeti after roaming it as a hedgehog.”

This just killed me. SO FUNNY.

On the NYT ‘only one kind of boy’ article: This article may focus on a semi new subject but it is at its core the same article as every article that’s every been written about race, gender, sex etc… These articles try to explore where our judgmental sentiments stem from by looking into old beliefs, how our culture has shifted, new beliefs, reactions to these new beliefs. But the thing is, there is no separation between our old judgements and our new ones. We are still just as much stuck trying to figure out what a woman/man/race/gender is capable of. Not only this, but we are obsessed with trying to tell others how they should perceive the new man/woman/boy/girl/human/dog/rat/blade of grass/passing butterfly. Society (i.e. you, the reader) has an obsessive need to control how others perceive us. Why? Because we cannot stop ourselves from making judgements. About everything.
We must judge everything because we have to know how WE fit into the spectrum. The ladder. The societal pyramid. And this mindset comes from our deep fear that we may not be enough. There may not be enough food, water, money, and ultimately happiness for everyone.
I don’t know how to change our society’s pre-conceived notions of people. How to stop people defining each other’s value. But I do know that you always have the ability to think deeply about who you are and who you want to be. You have the ability to be resilient against judgement. To choose to treat others with kindness and fairness. To give people the room to be true to themselves without being afraid of how it might affect you. And honestly, I can’t imagine a more powerful way of changing society than that.

just had to comment – I loathe this idea of a “bra girl”. It’s just another way to objectify women. Society (including women) need to just start letting women do what feels comfortable for them without having to attach some sort of label or hierarchy or bar to it. If you will be more comfortable without a shirt on, take it off. High rise leggings or low rise leggings, who cares! Whichever you own will do just fine. I wish it was as simple as that. I know society has taught us that we need to hide anything about ourselves that isn’t “perfect” but the truth is we’re already perfect. You don’t need to hide your rolls! No one cares about how you look as much as you might think they do. end rant!

“Malcolm Gladwell is.” LOL!

Hi Joanna– love everything about Cup of Jo! Just wanted to share the credit of the Bob Dylan photo. It was taken by the late Don Hunstein, a dear friend of mine’s father. You can read more about his extraordinary work photographing music legends here, in his NYT obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/arts/music/don-hunstein-dead-photographer-of-music-stars.html

Mormons have taught self sufficiency forever and therefore most of us have some kind of garden, whether it’s a plot or a couple plants in 10 gallon buckets. Just about every Mormon I know in Utah has a tomato plant and a zucchini plant because they’re great easy beginner plants with a good yield. We lock our car doors in the church parking lot because if we don’t we come out to bags of zucchini. The point is, zucchini bread being Utah’s number one recipe is only surprising if you don’t live here. ;)

Lol’ing at the “Cows!” “horses!”– because, duh, everybody does it!!
but does anyone else do the “harses, harses, harses…” ala Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle? :’)

Can I put a plug in here for Design Mom’s recent post / Twitter rant on abortion? I thought it was phenomenal!

so so so random, but stumbled upon this blog post recently and found it to be insightful when it came to parenthood: https://love-taylor.com/2018/09/12/saying-yes-to-the-mess-a-letter-to-my-son/

PA and asparagus?! Whaaa…?

Woot woot. Lesley is in town!!

Those mirrors are beautiful! The prices? WOW. The site said “from $15…” That’s for a nail. To hang the $585 mirror. Haha!

I read the ‘one way to be a boy’ NYT article and my reaction was, I disagree. There is ‘one way to be a girl’, then and now, and that is to be magazine-style attractive. Full stop. I was raised in a strong feminist groove and assumed I was beautiful, awesome, desirable, and capable of anything I wanted to achieve – my appearance never crossed my mind, nor did my mom talk about shaving or flattering clothes or any of it whatsoever, it just wasn’t on my radar and I wore what I invented every day. When I emerged from my ivory tower (I was brainy enough to start college at 14 and skip highschool), I was blindsided when a man I had a crush on went for my tall blonde friend instead, when comments in my social group about women who didn’t shave their legs were negative, when girlfriends suggested I might want to try wearing my hair in a high ponytail because it was cuter…and on and on. In a nutshell, I understood I had to be Barbie, perfectly cute AND a rocket scientist. And Barbie my looks were not; I’ve been plain Jane always, but I didn’t know that or care until I did. Being appearance-focused took me years to fine tune and never became natural; I learned minimum essentials like wearing mascara daily and getting my waistlength hair layered, resented my mother for not teaching them to me, and never was able to learn how to showcase what small positives I did have going for me since they fell so wide of the mark it felt hopeless to young me. At that time, as now, the ‘you can be anything’ message was strongly present for girls, and I personally value intelligence and intuition for myself, but the truth remains: there is one way to be female, still, and that is Barbie looks plus professional chops. I want to see that change before my daughter hits adulthood! I let my son cry, my daughter destroy the pinata, and know part of being a balanced mother will be somehow teaching what society expects so they aren’t heartbroken when their lovely souls aren’t beautiful or tough enough to get top marks in our world.

Cows and horses !!!

New York=chicken cutlet???

Can we credit Jenny Rosenstrach for chicken cutlets in NY?
:) we enjoy her cutlet sandwich in IL (but also Ital beef!)

The Staycation article is hilarious…

Also, SO thrilled to get this post early on a Friday! I usually spend a long Friday afternoon refreshing the page over and over, desperately hoping to find that the weekly roundup has been posted so that the last, painful gasps of the week pass more quickly.

is “bra girl” the new BDE?

Frasier is 25 years old? I feel old. Frasier is still my go to if I need a 20 minute pick me up. And the episode “The Ski Lodge” is my go to when I need 20 minutes of unadulterated laughter.

Bra girl! I’m dying. I exercise at home so I’m always in a sports bra and yoga pants but I’m about to take a Soul Cycle class for the first time (was anyone ever so nervous to workout?) and wondered if I should wear a shirt. My great fear is someone looking at me thinking, “Oh, she thinks SHE has a body worth showing off?!” Ugh body shame is real.

The beauty of the internet, in general, and Cup of Jo, in particular, is the sense of not being alone: “Cows!” “Horses!”
Yes.

Love that the state recipes link includes the US Territories!

Also missing Mari today.

Have you read Rachel Giese’s Boys? She’s an editor at Canada’s top magazine (which happens to be a women’s issues magazine) and it’s an incredible look at gender identity in a feminist society and how we haven’t taught boys to believe that they can be anything but a stereotype.

Related, I want to ask to what extent CoJ considers the icons it posts photos…Bob Dylan has treated women very negatively in his music, so it seems to fly in the face of the feminism you profess to put him up on a pedestal (especially when the internet is so full of interesting and beautiful men who are not awful.)

I was Bra Girl today. (It felt great!)