Flip-Flops

While other, better, people are looking for signs of spring like crocuses and returning birds, my mind is focused on my feet. The very second that the hideous mounds of dingy snow have melted, and the ambient temperature rises above 40, I will be able to wear flip-flops again. I wear them all spring, all summer, and as far into Michigan fall as I can possibly go without risking frostbite. In the summer I usually wear a floaty skirt, a T-shirt and coordinating flip-flops which range in fanciness from the kind you buy at Target for two bucks, to a vertiginous pair of platforms that I wear for more formal occasions. I also own a pair of “Fit Flops” which I bought because they promised to give me legs like Cyd Charisse; so far I still have the legs of a Victorian dining table, but they are supremely comfortable shoes.

Although I am usually highly susceptible to the disapproval of others, the flip-flops are an area in which I am proud to say I have stood firm. (No pun intended). I have been told countless times that they are bad for my feet, they offer no support, they are “an accident waiting to happen.” I have, in fact, wiped out walking a gravel path in a pair of platform flip-flops, turning my ankle and embarrassing myself. After a day of ice and elevation, I was back in the shoes that threw me. I also broke a toe last summer after accidentally kicking a metal shopping cart. Although the flip-flops were, arguably, the cause of the injury (because, what, I would have been wearing steel-toed boots at the grocery store?) the bonus was that the aggrieved toe, swollen to the size of a plum, would not fit into any shoes in my possession, other than…flip-flops. Had the Queen of England visited Michigan and invited me to share clotted cream scones with her, I would necessarily have worn flip-flops with my elegant dress, or gone barefoot.  Despite this evidence, which I largely choose to disregard, I find it hard to believe that flip-flops are any more dangerous than stilettos, which many women wear on a daily basis. I tell myself that the lack of support and frequent injury during three or four months of the year is balanced by the fact that I spend the rest of the year in an orthopedically wholesome assortment of Asics, Danskos and Uggs.

Other nay-sayers come from the fashion world. I am a reader of fashion magazines, and a frequent visitor to various fashion-related websites; flip flops are roundly dismissed as unattractive, juvenile, and not much better than Crocs or Birkenstocks. They make legs look stumpy. They say to the world “I don’t care what I look like.” They are a “Don’t” of unrivalled significance. (Well, aside from Crocs, wife beaters and Christmas sweaters). My defense to this assault is that I think they are damned cute. I think they say “beach,” and “freedom,” and “woohoo!” I think they speak of fun, watermelon, popsicles, fireworks, endless days, sun-warmed tomatoes, grilling, and porch-sitting.  There is nothing like them for showing off a pedicure and a toe ring. They take the seriousness out of a skirt, and a cute pair with a patterned strap or a flower on top makes people smile. My legs are stumpy anyway; why not have stumpy legs and cute, summery feet instead of broadcasting my need for fashion sleight-of-hand by wearing kitten heels to the farmer’s market?

Speaking of kitten heels, I do have other, dressier summer shoes. For the theater, a wedding, or a luncheon with my mother at “The Club,” I have a pair of kitten heeled slides, a pair of neutral pumps, and a pair of sky-high wedge slides in a neutral tone for that leg-lengthening effect. They are pretty, and I know where the line is between flip-flop occasions (brunch by somebody’s pool) and Real Shoe occasions (cocktail parties). When I cater, I still wear my Danskos because there is nothing quite like dropping an 8-inch Chef’s knife on your bare foot to put paid to a day of slicing and dicing. I also wear my Chuck Taylor’s and my Tom’s when I feel like it, most often on occasions where I am likely to be walking through dirt or mud. I had only to sink into the muddy field in flip-flops during one soccer game to figure that out.

I have also tried Crocs, which are very comfortable, but which I find so distractingly hideous that I couldn’t stick it out. They remind me of clown shoes, and I am pathologically terrified of clowns. They cannot, unless one is a 16-year-old model, be worn with a skirt. They make a funny squishing sound when you walk.  Birkenstocks have also been rejected, although I really loved the pair I owned, and found them extraordinarily comfortable. I do not like them with shirts, however, and they project a kind of earnestness which, frankly, I project merely by showing up. I do not need to enhance the impression that I am a Lefty Tofu-Eating Whale Saver with a copy of “Mother Jones” in my hemp carryall. Quite honestly, I would rather have people think things like “she looks kind of serious, but hey, she has cute flip-flops and fanciful, multicolored toenails!” Because I know that’s what they’re thinking.

I am chomping at the bit for the opening of Flip Flop Season. I have gotten them all out already (and there are lots of them) inspected them for wear, and made plans to replace any that blew out last season, like the pair I was wearing when I fell halfway down the basement stairs. I guess that would count as another flip flop-related injury. At any rate, as part of the Checking of the Flops ritual, I have painted my toenails in colors inspired by the picture in this post. Here’s to a season of fresh air on my toes, that lovely sound of shoe slapping against foot, and relatively few injuries!

Branded

A couple of years ago I read an article about two women who, for a heart-stopping amount of money, would create a personal  ”brand.” The author of the piece was interviewed and given a brand, a process involving questions about her, everything from her taste in interior design to childhood memories. Being a narcissist of the highest order, the most appealing thing to me was the notion that you could pay these women to spend hours asking you questions, listening to you talk, and focusing on nothing but…you. Therapists limit conversation to 50 minutes and want to talk about unpleasant things, friends and family expect some reciprocal attention, but these women were charged with nothing short of being fully in thrall to the details of a client’s favorite high school class, fabric texture, and Austen heroine. (I am intentionally not googling these women and finding out the details about their product; my purposes are better suited by the kind of hazy recall that can best be expanded or contracted without the  tedious parameters imposed by Actual Facts).

Best of all, at the end of the Q & A, and after the proprietary voodoo calculus was complete, one had a brand and could go forth able to tell any prospective employer, date or customer exactly what they could expect. Surely, for the thousands of dollars involved, no one was branded as “sleazy, selfish and concrete,” even if such a summary might be honest, and give fair warning to all comers. It seems far likelier, that no matter one’s shortcomings, a brand identification would involve words like “dynamic,” “creative,” “fearless” and “compassionate.” I don’t know what, if any ethics rules apply to the business of personal branding, but one rather suspects that the zero-bedazzled check is handed over along with a clear expectation that one will be portrayed as Nelson Mandela rather than Kate Gosselin. I wondered, though, whether a person who was given such a brand would also then be…branded like some readily identifiable head of cattle, and possibly constrained to remain with that herd of dynamos, aesthetes or do-gooders for all eternity. Would one have to go through the process again if things changed, or was a premium placed on sticking to the original brand as a tool for generating loyalty and easy identification?

Although I am generally not a big thinker on business topics, the notion of branding interests me a great deal. If you are Apple, everyone knows what to expect – cutting edge, user-friendly, sleek and beautiful products. We would be shocked if Apple produced, for example, an iPod with a pebble-textured navy plastic backing. We would also be surprised to see processed cheese at Whole Foods, or to learn that Volvo was introducing a new line of two-seat sports cars with molded fiberglass bodies. A strong brand can even withstand and bounce back from controversy or bad press. Bill Cosby did it, and both Apple and Whole Foods have risen above bad products, criticism and negative reporting. Toyota and Tiger Woods are strong brands that seem to have been kneecapped, but both stories are far from over. My husband says Tiger can bounce back if he plays golf again and wins, and Toyota could emerge sadder, wiser and back on top.

We want to be able to believe in something, we want to be able to trust that something branded and sold as “reliable” and “good” is actually reliable and good, provided that our own experience dovetails with what we are told. If we have an iPod and love it (I myself worship my Touch in an unseemly manner) we are predisposed to discredit data that says Apple is not really cutting edge, that it’s smug and full of itself, and that it is often marketing technology developed long ago by competitors. We know it is a cool product, and we’ve known that since we first felt the arrows of envy piercing our hearts at the sight of a milky white MacBook or a pair of iPod headphones trailing into a jacket pocket. If they slip up, we dismiss it as we would with a beloved friend; we tell ourselves that people (and companies) make mistakes. It’s not like they sent Pintos out on the road, or something.

So a personal brand might be a useful thing, I guess in dealing with people with whom one planned an arm’s length sort of relationship.  For the most part, one’s business associates want someone reliable and competent rather than someone who shows too much human flakiness.  When I had a law office it was white and airy, with lots of bright colors and non-law books, calculated to create a sense of ease and normality for distressed clients. If I had attended a seminar on law office management and transformed my work space into something dark and forbidding, my clients would have felt both anxious and misled. In that situation, I had essentially created a brand and knew intuitively that my success depended partly on maintaining it regardless of changing personal influences and preferences.

If one buys a personal brand, I am not sure if one puts it on one’s business cards, on one’s CV, or, perhaps, on a banner affixed to the driver’s side door of one’s vehicle. Maybe there’s a sort of catalogue, a prospectus kind of thing with glossy pictures detailing the various components of  an individual’s brand: “Mimi prefers to be active, and hates to be cooped up indoors. She skis, sails, climbs rocks and hikes every weekend. She likes bright colors, sports cars, and the scent of fresh grass. She believes that government should be downsized, and that people make their own good fortune through hard work. She likes sushi, The Beach Boys, Eames chairs, and landscapes. She handles some of the largest accounts at her bank and has been promoted three times in three years. Her favorite designer is Calvin Klein, and she shops most often at J. Crew and Ann Taylor. She was born and raised in Alabama, and still has an accent and a love for barbecue and hush puppies.  Her favorite vacation spot is St. Lucia, and her scent is Estee Lauder’s ‘Beautiful.’” On reflection, that might be a bit much for someone to assimilate in the time it takes to read the words “Whole Foods,” see the endless stretches of freshly-buffed produce, and get the organic linen, ex-hippie, peace-and-love-with-money vibe.

If one is branded as well as Whole Foods is, I suppose it must be necessary to make choices consistent with the branding, in order for it to have any weight or utility. This is probably easier for a business than it is for a person, and would undoubtedly be my downfall as a brandee. If, for example, Mimi spent a weekend in the house reading “Paradise Lost” in ratty sweats while eating leftover Moo Goo Gai Pan and Saltines with spray cheez, it would be hard to square her with the dynamic adventurer of her branding. Perhaps part of the personal branding process is a set of rules which must be followed in order to get the most out of the thing; one could take the risk of choosing to disregard them in private, but Mimi in a Dodge Pickup at Cracker Barrel would cause the same jarring and uncomfortable disconnect for a client that Tiger Woods caused among his fans. If we believe in the brand, we are angry when we feel it was all a lie. This seems to me to be a much less significant issue for a corporation, for which any kind of change is akin to turning a large seagoing vessel, than for an individual who can wake up one morning and decide to get dreadlocks or start relationships with a fleet of blonde and surgically enhanced women.

There is no cosmic conclusion, here; my main interest in the branding issue (and I told you I was a narcissist) is what would happen if I won the lottery and hired the Branding Fairies. My honest guess is that, although I would thoroughly enjoy the process of spelunking in my own history, preferences and quirks, I could not be successfully branded as anything other than some hideous cultural mash-up. This would probably do me less social good than my present system of burying what doesn’t fit with what I’m selling in a particular situation, or of concealing it until the time is right and I’m “in” enough to wave my freak flag without fear of rejection. People who would hire me, befriend me or promote me based on my love of Watteau, Chanel, “Vogue” and Bach Partitas might be somewhat shaken in their resolve if they knew that I also liked outsider art, hemp hoodies, “The Utne Reader” and Muse.  I am energetic and slothful, organic and processed, a hermit and an activist, meticulous and expedient, a Myers-Briggs “introvert” one day and an “extrovert” the next, a lover of both ridiculous TV and Henry James.

In short, I am a muddled, complex human. I think that has to be my “brand,” for the time being, and quite possibly yours, as well. We all have to think, on a daily basis, about what we’re selling, because even the most counter-cultural among us are selling something, even if it’s just the clear rejection of parochial and temporal standards. The good news is that branding our selves leaves us free to change and grow with impunity, to spelunk our own depths, and to re-invent ourselves based on new understandings, inspirations and aspirations. Probably, the qualities that truly define us, that are our “brand,” will shine through regardless of our external trappings, and be visible to anyone close enough to matter. Negative feedback from the outside world gives us an opportunity to make changes, think deeply and re-evaluate the way that others see us. It is far less glitzy and entertaining than paying someone to figure it all out for us, and takes some fairly consistent work, but we all have the capacity to brand ourselves by living in a way consistent with our values.

Best of all, it’s free.

Image Credit: http://indianaintellectualproperty.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/trademarknotice.jpg

A Map of New Orleans

Having vowed (in writing, which makes it serious) to have a more open, less fraught relationship with my mother, I am making time at least once a week to take her to lunch and have a good talk. By that I mean that I drive, and she pays for lunch. If my mother lets me pay for lunch, and we are not sharing a meal to celebrate my new job, bonus, lottery winnings or inheritance, it’s time to begin steering her gently towards a neuropsych evaluation.

So yesterday we ended up at a lovely little sushi place where I could eat sushi, and she could have something else. She had already asked me to take her to Talbot’s, for me the retail equivalent of the Bataan Death March, and I had agreed; the whole point of our time together was that I would not look at my watch, think about what else I could be doing, or patronize her with my opinions of her taste in preppy shifts and cardigans. She is my mother, and it is not only unkind but backwards to assume that age and illness have rendered her a child requiring my guidance. As I dabbed a little wasabi on my spicy tuna, she made a second request: since my brother and his wife were going to New Orleans soon, could we stop by the book store so that she could buy them a map?

Before I could stop myself, before I could re-direct my automatic inner know-it-all, I said “no one uses maps, mom. I mean, I’ll take you if you want to go, but they both have smart phones, and he has GPS on his phone, and I just can’t see them hauling out a map.” She put down her chopsticks, and narrowed her eyes.

“Sometimes,” she said, ” no matter what kind of bells and whistles you have, it’s good to have a map to spread out to see what’s near what. I’m not talking about looking up how to get to a specific place; I’m talking about planning a day, or an evening by figuring out what’s in a certain area and within walking distance. I’ve been planning trips since before you were born.” She was right, she was right, she was right, right, right. She had, however, triggered my competitive inner monster, the one which could, if allowed to emerge, cause me to say the sky was puce if she claimed it was blue.

“They can do that on a computer. There are all kinds of programs for trip planning, they have maps, you can do it on Google. We do it all the time. If they really want to,” I added, taking it the inevitable step too far, ” you can even print it out and carry it around.” She was not eating at all any more.

“There’s really no need to speak to me in that tone of voice.” The Tone of Voice. I was immediately tumbled back to my Marimekko high school bedroom, complaining about some injustice or other, claiming that I was being perfectly rational. She would tell me not to use the Tone of Voice because she could tell that beneath my alleged innocence and righteousness,  I was angry, mutinous and sullen. Were I, unaccountably, to fetch up on an abandoned street in Istanbul and whisper something in that tone, perhaps between the posts of the gates to a shuttered mosque at midnight, she would know. She would hear it, she would call me on it, she would be right, and I would feel the tic forming beneath my left eye.

“Okay,” I said, willing my voice to pass the radar, “we’ll go get a map. It would be a nice thing for them to have.”

“Don’t patronize me; I’ll ask your father to take me to the book store. It’s really fine, let’s talk about something else.” I had failed.

“No, really,” I begged, willing her to hear that I was sincere, apologetic, getting back on track. “I think it’s a great idea. We’ll go after we go to Talbot’s.” The tide had turned, as it had every time since approximately 1966. She picked up her chopsticks, contemplating a golden plank of Tonkatsu pork.

“No,” she said as she toyed with the meat, “you’re probably right.” I examined her words for meaning. Did she mean I was right? Did she mean I had been unconscionably cruel and she was wishing she had given birth to someone nicer, like Ted Bundy? Were we past it?

“Really? Because it’s really okay with me,” I focused, and breathed. “I’m so sorry I was snotty about the map. It was a nice idea and I’m sure they’ll use it.” She looked up at me; I knew it was okay. Really okay.

“Thank you. I’m already tired, and I think I’m really only good for one stop after lunch anyway.”

“I can take you another day – maybe after lunch next week?”

“That would be great.” She meant it. She ate her pork and rice, I ate my sashimi, and we were easy again, both eavesdropping on the tables around us, raising our respective eyebrows when the group of women at the corner table burst into raucous laughter. We were okay, and if I needed to take her to buy a map of New Orleans next week, that was fine. If my brother left it behind on his kitchen table, that was life. For two strong-willed women leaving the terra firma of my 47 years and moving gingerly into a delicate boat on uncharted waters, we were doing better than might be expected. If one of us fell overboard, the other would be there (possibly in a tasteful Talbot’s nautical ensemble) to pull her out. There are no maps for where we’re going.

Image Credit: http://www.neptunetg.com/uploadedImages/Neptune_Now/Articles/Spring_2009/folded%20map.jpg

Balance

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal …
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance …

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.

The Tao Te Ching

[Note: this piece is a follow up to this one, but can certainly be read on its own].

No matter how hard I tried to be so busy that I didn’t think about it, the day of the funeral was wrenching. Even as I bustled around the church kitchen and social hall straightening plates, directing delivery guys and supervising the church ladies arranging cookie platters with their fragile, wrinkled hands, I knew that upstairs in the sanctuary there were people suffering. Every now and then one of the ladies would try to draw me into a conversation about the boy’s accident – did I know what town it happened in? What day of the week? When his parents got the call? I knew they meant well, that their desire for details and conversation was part of their own need to make sense of the senseless, but I couldn’t engage. I smiled in what I hoped was a professional and  kind sort of way, and said I really didn’t know. I love the ladies, in their sensible shoes and good jewelry, willing to bake carrot cakes because that was the boy’s favorite, and to come in to help on a Saturday afternoon. I love them, but I had to pace myself for a long day of observed grief, grief that would come so close that it would threaten to invade my own chest cavity, tighten my throat  and burn in the space behind my eyes, rendering me useless to the family I had promised to help. I couldn’t afford to squander the protection of my flimsy emotional armor fighting off the mere shock and curiosity of uninvolved third parties. I breathed freely again only after they all left me and headed up the stairs to attend the  service.

Then, in the empty social hall, a woman in a red coat. A tiny woman who I had known most of my life; she had lived up the street from the best friend of my childhood. Her boys, older than we were, had been “nice boys” who neither teased us nor chased us with their giant, pounding feet. I knew that her husband had died recently, and I went over to ask how she was doing. “I was wondering,” she began in her impossibly charming Louisiana accent, “if I might have a cup of coffee.” I poured her one, and handed it to her.

“This must be hard for you,” I said, reaching out to touch the sleeve of her cardinal red coat. She crumbled then, like a mummy exposed to air. Her eyes filled, her shoulders caved in, and she grasped my extended hand.

“I thought I could do this,” she gasped, “but I can’t. It’s too soon. I wanted to be here, you know, to do the right thing, but I just keep thinking…it’s only been three weeks…”.  We stood there for a while, I made sympathetic sounds, she sipped her coffee. She seemed only to need that, a witness and companion.

“Would you like a cookie?” I asked. She nodded, and seemed to regain some strength as we walked to the table heaped with platters of brownies, lemon squares,  Snickerdoodles, meringues, and the glorious carrot cake. She nibbled a cookie and we talked about my long ago best friend, her boys, and the neighborhood. She said that she could not go back to the service, but that she felt ready to go home. I watched her small, straight back recede, as I stood by the cookies, holding her empty cup.

Later, after the service, the mourners came into the social hall. Amidst a sea of young lawyers in black suits, the friends of the lost boy, I sought the face of his mother. She was there, pale, fragile looking with a look of vague confusion in her blue eyes. I had to look away.

In the kitchen to take the  samosas from the oven, I heard a sound from the stairwell off the back door to the kitchen. I thought, at first, that it was someone vomiting or having a coughing fit, then realized that it was someone sobbing. The harsh, animal sound communicated a kind of pain that makes a person double over, the agony that makes people keen, wail, or sob as if the loss could somehow be purged from the depths of the body. I couldn’t see the person, and it did not seem to me to be a time to stick my well-meaning head in and offer my assistance. It reminded me of the only time I had seen my father cry, after the death of his own father. Whoever it was had chosen to hide like an injured animal, and was not  ready to become part of the crowd eating humus and carrying on conversations about quotidian things.  He or she needed to be alone with that great, hot torrent of loss.

Before I really thought about it, I was praying: “May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind quickly be freed from their illnesses. May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free.” I didn’t think God would mind a Buddhist prayer in a church basement; it was the prayer that came first to my mind.

Later, hours later, after the trays were filled and refilled, the plates and napkins cleared and washed, and food packaged for the family, various friends of the family and all of us working in the kitchen, it was time to go home. I sent vegetarian dishes home with the vegetarians, I packed my own bag with kebabs, humus, pita, fresh fruit and vegetables, and I persuaded the dear, tiny church lady who lived alone to take home a “big” meal of one kebab, approximately one cup of fresh vegetables, and two cookies.  The boy’s parents and his brother came into the kitchen to thank us for all we had done, and my 13-year-old son, who had worked with me, asked me for a hug. That doesn’t often happen anymore, and I was immeasurably comforted by his solidity and warmth. I was exhausted, my head was pounding, my feet ached, and I could feel the effects of six hours of physical labor and suppressed emotion threatening to immobilize me. At home, I took a pill, I lay on the couch with assorted dogs and cats watching Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” feeling myself stabilize, relax, and move back into the natural space of my life.

I dozed off, and when I woke up I went into my office to check my computer. As I read Facebook statuses, reassuringly bland envoys from the world untouched by tragedy, I heard a snuffling, a crnklling and a crunching. I went into the dark kitchen to find my old, deaf dog with an empty Ziploc and a pile of small wooden sticks. We had apparently failed to get one of the bags of leftover kebabs into the refrigerator, and she had found a dog bonanza. As I smiled woozily and indulgently at her, she licked the last of the meat off of the floor and rooted in the bag; life went on.

Dear Annie – A Letter to My 17-Year-Old Self

Dear Annie,

I know you are cringing because I called you “Annie.” I know that you are already convincing yourself that you are not going to be a part of the whole world of marriage, and babies and sentimentality and “cute” things like nicknmames. I know that if you could right now, you would change your name to something like…Spike. You are watching Woody Allen, listening to Mahler and reading Fran Lebowitz, and thinking that life as a misfit neurotic in Manhattan might suit you just fine. You plan to leave this town full of pink and blonde idiots, homecoming parades and Sperry Topsiders at your earliest opportunity and find a garret somewhere to write long, sad poems and wear nothing but black.

You are pretending that it is all too stupid, from teenage romance (which you mock because you don’t have it) to familial love (which you discount as cheap because you do have it). I know that you are building yourself a shell of sarcasm, irony, cynicism and humor that, for now, protects you from the fact that you are a not- pretty girl in a world full of Farrahs, a quirky eccentric, a person who believes that everyone who teases you about your looks is a Delphic oracle, while anyone who tells you that your eyes are pretty, or your hair is thick and shiny is a fraud and a liar. For the record: your eyes are pretty, and you have a beautiful head of hair which you should appreciate now, because after you have a baby, it will get much thinner and less lovely.

I shocked you, didn’t I? Not about the hair, you snarky twit; about the baby. You will be a wife and a mother, long after you give up on the whole thing…precisely because you stop wanting it so much. It will bring you the greatest joy in your life, and you will finally feel that you can melt the armor. It’s true.

I will not tell you to do anything different than you’re going to do (although I could save you a lot of trouble), because even though you have a bumpy road ahead of you for a while longer, anything you change might make me someone other than the woman writing to you across the years.

You will also, no doubt, be surprised to learn that we are happy. If you make different choices, live different places, change directions, the ripple in the stream might magnify into a wave that would throw us onto the wrong beach. Again, I know you are shaking your head at the corny Rod McKuenesque turn of phrase, but I can take it. I’m a lot nicer and more spiritually generous than you are, quite frankly. (I’m not blaming you; just an observation). Remember the episode of “Star Trek” where Kirk falls in love with Joan Collins, and she’s part of a group fighting Hitler, and she gets hit by a car? It’s like that. If you change history, even though it might save somebody some pain, it effects and changes things that lead to goodness.

However, and at the risk of disturbing that metaphorical ripple, I will tell you a couple of things that might make things easier for you:

1. Everyone else is not always right, and you are not always wrong. We’re still working this one out, and I’m not sure how we got this way, but it’s simply not the case that the opinion or advice of any other person in the world should trump your own instincts.

2. Sarcasm is unnatractive, and you can be very harsh. You are scaring people off and then blaming it on your looks. Look around you: there are lots of people who are not particularly stunning, but who have dates, and can mix with different groups of people. It isn’t your thighs, it isn’t your bad skin, it’s the fact that you push people away. Really. Maybe, if you “get” this now, you will not have a complex the rest of your life about the way you look.

3. You really are a writer. That doesn’t mean you can’t do other things (and you will) but see #1 above, think about what you have done so far in your life that made you happy and excited, and just keep it with you. I will not, at the risk of your scathing disdain, say anything about keeping it in your heart.

Lots of people love you, and lots of people will love you. They will not care about your thighs. If you wear black, though, which you will, all the time, they will look smaller and you can spend less time fretting over them.

Best love,

annie

Image Credit: http://www.jeron.je/anglia/learn/sec/art/ppapers/gifs/print3.gif