My kids and I, ever so charmingly behind the times, just went to see Sing at the cheapie theater. If you are also delayed in your cultural viewing, it's an animated film about animals performing in a musical talent competition.
It's a really cute movie in general, and I love me some musicals, but one thing I was struck by was how diverse the body types were, and how no one cared.
Here are the main characters posing below. You can also see the promo clips in the video above.
Starting from the left, you've got a tiny male mouse with a big ego. The elephant is a shy girl who's trying to overcome her stage fright. The pig in capris is a stay-at-home mom to 25 piglets. (She does some amazing Rube Goldberg-esque preparations to care for her kids while she's off rehearsing, leading me to think she should really have been an engineer.) The porcupine is a teenager who's coming out from under the smothering shadow of her wannabe-rockstar boyfriend. The koala is the morally ambiguous manager. The gorilla is a boy from the wrong side of the tracks who wants to break free of his family's crime business. The sassy pig in bright red spandex is a confidently dancing phenom.
One thing in common with all of them is that never, in the course of the movie, did anyone suggest that they should make their bodies look different.
If you're irritated by your bare thighs rubbing together and producing a rash while you walk, be irritated no more. Do not mourn your lack of the elusive thigh gap: Just figure out the best thing to wear to stop the rub. Here is my best roundup of (now) tried-and-tested ideas for preventing and treating the dreaded thigh chafe.
Best thigh-rub solutions for SKIRTS and DRESSES, knee-length or longer:
My current favorite under-skirt solution (I'm wearing it while writing this post!) is cheap and comfy and available in a large range of sizes. Good on all counts, right?
They're Danskin Now Women's Bike Shorts from Walmart. I'd resisted bike shorts because I was imagining sweaty, shiny spandex horrors (no offense, biking folks — that's just not what I want encasing my nethers every day), but these are cotton jersey so they're breathable. They're just compressing enough to feel smoothing, but they don't press on my folds or make me feel like I'm being sausage-rolled. The cuffs are just tight enough not to roll up, and the length is great to prevent all thigh rash.
I've been thinking about this for a while and have come to the inescapable conclusion that there is no such thing as exercise. The very concept is a modern invention, born of people gradually and very recently, anthropologically speaking, becoming richer and more stable and therefore more sedentary for most of their waking moments.
As humans, as living creatures, we've always moved our bodies, but not until relatively recently have we moved them in prescribed repetitive motions for a short period of time per day and decreed that as "healthy."
Imagine our ancient ancestress, hanging out with her tribemates. She covers miles a day searching out roots, then bending to pull them. She walks slowly, not setting any landspeed records here, because she's got the pace of kids and older folks to match and, anyhow, where's the hurry? She carries the food she gathers as well as her nursing toddler, and when they settle in to camp for the night, she walks to a nearby stream to carry back heavy water skins. She squats and then stands throughout the day: to gather, to rest, while preparing food, while braiding a daughter's hair, while peeing. All day long, she's working her muscles but doesn't call it weight training. She's working her heart and lungs but doesn't call it cardio.
I really, really had to convince myself not to make the title any worse of a pun by spelling it "tail." You're welcome.
I want to talk with you today about my cats — one fat, one skinny — and what that means. I think it's illustrative of what body composition is like for humans as well as felines.
We adopted our kitties from a rescue. They're purported to be Maine Coons (no idea if there's a mix of something else in there), which are a large and hearty American cat breed. They're not genetically sisters and are a year apart in age, but they were raised together, so we adopted them as a bonded pair.
The big one has the broad, strong frame of a typical Maine Coon, but then she's added quite a bit o' bulk to it. Her sister is petite, very small for her breed, and so thin you can feel her spine clearly when you pet her.
I think you can see the size difference. The little, darker one is so fluffy, it's hard to eyeball how skinny she is underneath all the fur. You can see the larger one hanging off the top of the scratcher.
This is the small kitty on the same scratcher, for comparison.
They both get the same food and the same exercise opportunities. I find this fascinating.
There's a current, overwhelming tendency for any talk of overweight to blame the (human) person for being fat. There's an overt messaging that being fat is a moral failing, an inability to curb decadent gluttony or "get off the couch once in awhile." It is so culturally ingrained that most fat people believe this themselves, even if they have personal evidence that it's not true.
I think my cats could help us shed some light on this one.
I had a coupon for a free styling fee, so I decided I would be out nothing if I gave it a go. I told my stylist 5 fall tops in XL, please, and then I crossed my fingers and waited.
I posted a little video review & unboxing here, but I will post a written and photographic review below for those of you who prefer not to hear me yammer. Or you can do a little of both.
At any rate, I NEED YOUR HELP! I have a scant three days to decide what to keep and what to send back, so let me know what you think!
Have you heard of Stitch Fix? Assuming you're on Facebook, I'm going to say yes. It's all over the place there, with people giving out their referral links left and right (oo, oo — here's mine!), and it sounds so freaking great.
Stitch fix is a subscription clothing service. Your personal stylist sends lovely clothes to your home that you can try on sans dressing-room fluorescents. All the fun of shopping, none of the hassle … for women sizes 0-14. Ah … there's the rub. The chub rub, I mean.
Seriously, 14?! Is that all?
I'm 5'9" and fat. (That is not a pejorative, just a descriptive.) I haven't been a 14 on the bottom since my wedding, unless we count Old Navy jeans, which, let's admit, we shouldn't.
But I'm on that bubble, where I'm sometimes plus size and sometimes conventional. I often do wear size 12-14 on top, but sometimes larger, and more like 16-18 on bottom. What's a fluffy girl to do in the face of Stitch Fix discrimination?
I'm 31 weeks pregnant, and I am tired. I'm sore in various mentionable and unmentionable places, I've all but abandoned bending over to reach anything that's fallen (whatever it is will keep until someone else can), I shuffle and lurch and waddle instead of walk, and I can't get comfortable in any position. If I sit, the baby seems to have no place to go. If I stand, my left leg falls asleep. If I walk, my hips ache within minutes, and my pelvis starts to burn. If I lie down, my joints protest and various muscles cramp up on me spasmodically throughout the night.
I'd like to just … not do much. Just sort of wait and gestate.
But I still feel all this pressure to keep going. Because that's what we do, right? The modern woman? Or, probably, any woman? There's already the myth of the woman working in the fields, squatting to deliver, then tying the newborn on her back as she resumes her harvest. As long as the baby's inside instead of out, we're supposed to keep moving, keep working, keep taking care of things, keep exercising, and above all, stop being such a wuss.
I'm in Victoria, B.C., today with my parents,
so who's up for another round of cell-phone randomness?
Mikko made up a new game on the beach
called dragging driftwood into a big pile.
Someone needs more toys.
On top of him.
See that pirate dude in the corner? That's Mikko's contribution.
Alrik pointed at this pink Power Ranger and giggled.
"Nummies!"
I play Stuff on My Cat to keep from getting bored
when playing Power Rangers with Alrik.
All he ever has the Power Rangers say to me is, "Hi, Mama. I fightchu!"
Welcome to the Sunday Surf, a tour of the best blogposts I've read throughout the week.
We're not letting the wintry rain get us down.
The family headed downtown to the museums and monorail.
Thanks to Google+ for this automagicked motion! (Connect with me if you're on G+!)
We stopped in a Japanese novelty store, where most everything's $1.50,
and the boys got these tubes. Why? Why, indeed. They love them.
Pint-size cuties wax rhapsodic about their exuberant and fanciful dreams:
"When I grow up, I'm going to go to the moon … and then we can float to school."
"When I grow up, I want to float around in my big pink bubble … or use my magic wand to make rainbows fall from the sky."
Other kids profess their joyous plans to be a dolphin tamer, swim with mermaids, and live in a bouncy castle.
As the ad continues: "Remember when you thought anything was possible? It still is."
Yes, as the smiling grown-up ladies swinging on rope swings, tootling on basketed bikes, and bouncing on trampolines assure us … anything is possible to us now as adults.
Assuming that the only thing we want now is to lose weight.
"32" - Taylor Swift "22" music video parody. I particularly laughed at the part about finding a dentist and about my whole body being sore from walking up a staircase. And I totally do have acne AND wrinkles!
I'm happy to have a guest post today at ourfeministplayschool about my longing for a red tent. It's part of her series on {menstruation. Period} that looks at menstruation from a variety of perspectives.
I think it was when I read The Red Tent several years ago that it first occurred to me that being confined to home or a certain location (aka a Red Tent) during one's period might be not a punishment but a release. Ever since getting my first period at age 12, I have sought to dissemble, to conceal, to pretend nothing was happening once a month that was out of the ordinary. Even when cramps were threatening to bend me double and I felt my intestines roiling with a sure certainty that they would be pushing something out soon, I tried to sit primly in social studies class, not letting on that anything was amiss — especially not to the boys.
Because women were supposed to be strong. Because one of the reasons given throughout the ages for why women couldn't be in leadership was that their "special time of the month" might at best alter their concentration and judgment, and at worst incapacitate them. I had to be a model of strong feminist womanhood and show I was not affected by the stickiness between my thighs, by the pitchfork tossing my innards, by the chemicals coursing through my bloodstream.
In The Red Tent, the women have cycles that swell in time with each other, as is often the case when feminine hormones adjust to each other in close quarters. And once each moon is a time to withdraw, to relax — for there to be no obligation, no guilt or pressure, no need to please the men or to work for a living. It is a time of renewal and release, of the young learning from the old, and the beauty of the cycles bringing the women close to each other.
I began to be quite envious I had no red tent of my own.
A long time ago, I wrote a quite depressing post on how postpartum sex after Mikko's birth kinda sucked, for a long time. I used words like "chafing" and "neutral" and "no physical sensations of pleasure." It was about nine months after Mikko's birth before I started enjoying myself again.
I thought I really should do a baby #2 update for you, since things were completely, entirely different this time around. Go figure, right?
Warnings once more: TMI up the wazoo & likely NSFW. Let's be blunt, shall we?
I'll go through the topics I covered last time to contrast and compare.
Physical recovery
Once again, I had a vaginal birth without medications or interventions. Well, definitely this time, since Sam and I were the only ones there! I probably pushed too fast in my excitement and surprise that a baby's head was coming out of me before the midwife had arrived, so I did have a little tearing that needed stitches. However, not many, and the pain down there was just sort of twingey. My bidet (!!!) helped a lot with those early days of soothing, and I had postpartum compresses pre-frozen for myself that I lurved. (I should really post my recipes for those sometime!) However, I was quite lochia-y and otherwise feeling worn out from the birth for a couple weeks. My uterus was very stretched out, making it a bit hard to breathe from the pressure on my diaphragm. (I had to lift it up and push it in when I walked for the first week or so.)
Anyhoo, I was much more hesitant this second time around to even attempt anything in the pantsal region (that's a term; look it up) until at least the prescribed six-week waiting period was up. I'm not even sure when exactly we did first re-attempt the horizontal mambo.
I do, however, remember tensing up, bracing myself, waiting, waiting … and … it felt GOOD!
Welcome to the Sunday Surf, a tour of the best blogposts I've read throughout the week.
These two handsome and independent young men were my companions yesterday.
They sat by themselves on the bus, but we all played together on the beach and at the toy store.
Even if a relative is offended when a child does not want to kiss or hug them, this is an important time to keep in mind the bottom line—kids need to learn from an early age that touch or play for affection and fun should be the choice of BOTH people, safe, allowed by the adults in charge, and not a secret.
Respectful script here, too, for what to say in situations when relatives demand or expect hugs and kisses.
Very helpful article on helping kids let go of stuff, the perfect article in response to my own swirling questions about minimalism & kids & the stuff stuff stuff that’s invaded our kids’ lives.
After that heartbreaking Zimmerman verdict, thank goodness for this message of hope: Kids Watch Interracial Cheerios Ad, Have No Idea Why It’s Controversial. I especially love the kids “Huh-wha?" reaction when it has to be patiently explained to them that it’s the interracial couple that’s “controversial."
I'm Lauren Wayne, writer and natural parent. I embrace attached parenting with an emphasis toward green living.
Riding the rails with my husband, Crackerdog Sam, and our hobo kids, Mikko Lint Picker (born June 2007), Alrik Irontrousers (born May 2011), and Karsten (born October 2014). Trying every day to parent intentionally and with grace.
I'm happy to have a 
several years ago that it first occurred to me that being confined to home or a certain location (aka a Red Tent) during one's period might be not a punishment but a release. Ever since getting my first period at age 12, I have sought to dissemble, to conceal, to pretend nothing was happening once a month that was out of the ordinary. Even when cramps were threatening to bend me double and I felt my intestines roiling with a sure certainty that they would be pushing something out soon, I tried to sit primly in social studies class, not letting on that anything was amiss — especially not to the boys.
I'm Lauren Wayne, writer and natural parent. I embrace attached parenting with an emphasis toward green living. 
