Shitty Women

Women are the worst.

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(This blog will take the average adult reader approximately 5 minutes to read.)

Hi. I am a woman. And I am the worst.

I have a long history of judging other women. For what they wear, for what they do with their lives, for the way they handle their emotions, for their interests, for their hobbies—if there’s a thing that women do, or are, I’ve probably judged a woman for it.

Likewise, I have a long history for being judged by other women. For what I wear, for what I do with my life, for the way I handle my emotions, for my interests, for my hobbies—I’ve been judged by other women countless times.

This blog is the pot calling the kettle black. Continue reading →

When the body precedes the soul

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There are 1,328 words beyond this point. This blog will take the average adult reader about 5 minutes to read. 

So long as the body precedes the soul, equality cannot exist.

So long as we see people primarily as the bodies they inhabit, rather than the souls that they are, there will never be equality of any kind.

This specific thought, “So long as the body precedes the soul, equality cannot exist.” came about in my head after spending some time over the last few years thinking about how the porn industry feeds misogyny. Porn reduces the actors of it to their bodies—and nothing more. Porn consumers’ actions say to the actors, “Your personhood—your soul—you—do not matter to me, because you are nothing more than a body.”

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On Women’s Ministry

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(This blog will take the average adult approximately six minutes to read.)

I don’t think I’ve managed to keep it a secret how I feel about women’s ministry. Like. Ever. I’ve probably erred on the side of being a total arsehole when it comes to my opinions of women’s ministry.

And I want to be clear, before I go any further, that I fully acknowledge that women’s ministry is a huge blessing for many women—for some women, the various forms that women’s ministry is extremely helpful and edifying. I get that. But I also want to be emphatic that much like pants—yoga or otherwise—women’s ministry is not, and I don’t think can be, a one-size-fits-all ministry. I’ve seen it treated largely as such.

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“Unwanted” (and other lies I believe)

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This blog will take the average adult reader approximately four minutes to read.

A friend recently pointed out to me that, in all aspects of life, I am a data collector. I know I do this consciously as part of my job—and I know I do it as a bit of a hobby. I never realized until very recently that I do it non-stop in my head in my personal life. It is an adequate way to describe how I process much of the world around me, though.

I collect data by observing behaviors (intentional and otherwise), language, and my environment—I sort it into data sets—and then I draw conclusions. I can trace this behavior back to when I was about five years old—I’m sure people that knew me as a wee tot can trace it back even farther. It is how I process information. All of life, for me, is data collection and analysis.

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Dressing an overweight female body.

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This blog will take the average adult about four minutes to read. 

As you probably know by now, I’m an overweight woman.

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I first became self-conscious of my body around seven years old when a friend told me to suck in my gut if I wanted the boys to like me. Photographic evidence suggests I started actually getting chubby around the fourth grade. Once I became aware of how terrible my body was as a child, I started dressing like a boy—because even at that young age, boys’ fashion was more forgiving (and comfortable!) than girls’. It was all baggy pants and baggy shirts for years. With the advent of fleece vests in middle school, I spent much of my life in one of my vests—to hide the midsection, I suppose. In high school it was more of the same—baggy pants, baggy shirts, baggy hoodies—baggy pirate clothes (<- truth).

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The way we talk about overweightness needs to change.

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(There are 1,465 words after this. That’s a little less than five minutes of reading for the average adult. This is a continuation from An introduction to being overweight.)

“Oh my gosh, I’m so fat.”

*shoves food into mouth* “Haha I’m gonna get so fat!”

*is telling a story from the day* “… and this fat woman—and she was huge—did this *mildly offensive thing*…”

“He was like—disgustingly overweight.” 

*after eating a meal* “I feel so fat.”

“Oh my gosh did you see the fat lady on the bicycle? She looked so ridiculous!”

Those are all things I hear on the regular—from people who I love, and from people who love me. They’re not about me—but it feels like they are. The ones I listed above actually come from specific memories—I recall each of those moments clearly because they felt so uncomfortable.

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I am my favorite idol.

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There are 795 words after this. That’s under 3 minutes of reading for the average adult. 

I write a lot about failure. Specifically, I write a lot about failure as it pertains to womanhood—because, quite honestly, I perpetually feel like a failure at womaning.

It comes up often in my head and heart with the words “not good enough”. Lately, those words have been playing in my head on repeat as I repeatedly come to terms with the fact that most of my friends are married and many are having kids. I want that so badly—but I’m not good enough. That’s why I’m 30 and am seemingly unwanted on the romantic front—I’m not good enough. (I’ll write more on that later. I can feel it welling up inside me like vomit.)

In my own head, I’m not good enough for a plethora of reasons. I won’t list them out here—a lot of them can be found in past (and future) blogs. Summarized, I am a shitty woman.

Continue reading →

An introduction to being overweight

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There are 1,248 words beyond this point. That’s just over 4 minutes of reading for the average adult. 

I’m not entirely sure I have the courage to post this—I certainly don’t have the courage to speak face-to-face with anyone about it. And I know that by posting it, I’m only inviting that face-to-face conversation that I’ve dreaded since these thoughts started swarming about in my head about five years ago. This isn’t so much a proclamation of my courage if I hypothetically actually click post on it, but an invitation for you to be cautious how you talk to me about it, if you know me personally.

I am an overweight (Christian) woman. It’s actually easy for me to say that part.

Continue reading →

Don’t tell me God thinks I’m beautiful. 

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So—right after publishing my last blog Why “Shitty Women”? I took a shower, and like you do in showers, had a bit of an “aha” moment about one of the things I wrote briefly about.

Specifically, it was this sentence:
“No one responded to me with the vacant “God’s daughter” and “God thinks you’re beautiful” shite that made no sense to me.”

In its context, you see that I implied that people had used those women’s ministryisms in the past, and that does not seem to be part of my current life. (Praise God.)

Let me give you some context into my life, and how the phrase “God thinks you’re beautiful” has been used by others toward me:

I have not been told that I’m beautiful much in my life.

Stop. Halt. This is another one of those places where I feel like I should tell you to not respond with coddling and “encouragement”. Sit. Put away those feelings of needing to fix it. 

Of course, being a female, there’s the occasional “girlfriends” moment where another female tells me I’m beautiful—but, full disclosure: I don’t generally trust those moments. It feels contrived about 97% of the time. We can talk about trust issues later.

I can count the number of males that have called me “beautiful” on one hand—if I was missing my thumb and forefinger. I can count the number of times that a male, who wasn’t my grandpa’s age,  called me beautiful on one finger. (Note: This excludes instances of sexual harassment on the bus and downtown. I’m really talking about times where being called beautiful felt safe and made me feel loved—not the times where I’ve felt objectified and dirty.)

That one instance happened in my junior year of high school, while I was out on a band trip, and a friend of mine—nothing more—was in the elevator with me, turned to me, and said, “Kim, I just want you to know I think you’re beautiful. Inside and out.” and then we reached our floor, and he walked out.

There were times when I recounted this—the fact that I’ve not been told that I’m beautiful much, and the story I just told you—to women I was around, and without ever acknowledging the feelings I might’ve been feeling (presumably because I’m really fucking bad at expressing emotion)—they would respond with “Well… God thinks you’re beautiful.” Sometimes they might even put the lye-soaked cherry on top with, “and I do too.”

And I would realize that once again my feelings and experience had been dismissed, and that the conversation was over for me. It kind of felt like I was saying, “Excuse me, I have a gaping wound.” and the response was my friend soaking a bandage in lemon juice, rolling it in salt, and applying it to the wound.

In my shower after writing that last blog, as I was all snot and tears and full of fear from writing those words, it hit me: What a terrible fucking invitation to idolatry. 

No wonder those words were never comforting to me—because they were rooted in the idol of beauty—an idol that I hated but could never escape. An idol, that for years has spewed at me, “You are not even worthy to worship at my feet.” An idol that I simultaneously railed against, and hated that I railed against it. An idol that I planted my feet against, held up both middle fingers, and worshipped the fact that I didn’t worship it.

Now, I don’t want to dismiss all beauty as idolatry—I believe, in the words of Levi the Poet, that “beauty pulls me beyond myself like I don’t even have a choice, so I know I don’t believe in nothing.”—that God himself is the very definition of beauty, and that every echo of beauty we see in this world is a refection of the divine image.

And I’m certainly not saying being beautiful, or wanting to look beautiful (by whatever standard) is sinful. But that the temptation to worship beauty, instead of the Beautiful One, is real, and prevalent.

The response to the story I told those women to be, “Well… God thinks you’re beautiful…” is nothing short of an invitation to idolatry. It thrusts the notion of beauty back into my hands, onto my body, as though it ever belonged there to begin with—and says nothing to Christ’s beauty. It says that God is concerned with making me beautiful—rather than slowly changing me into a better reflection of His beauty.

It says this is about me. It says beauty is about me.

Rather than Him. His glory. His beauty.

The only reason God the Father might look down on me and see any amount of beauty whatsoever is because He created me in His image, and I am clothed in the beauty of His son. None of the beauty He sees when He looks at me is my own. It is all—ALL—His.

It is my hope that in all things I might reflect His beauty—I know it’s not the case right now—but I also know it will be someday in eternity. I often think about this when I’m downtown during the sunrise. From downtown Seattle, you can’t see the sunrise, because there’s a large hill to the east—but you can see it reflect in the distorted and often dirty and fog-laden windows of the skyscrapers.

I want to be that distorted dirty window that reflects the beauty of the sunrise for others to see when they can’t see the sunrise for themselves. And I believe that one day He’ll make me perfectly clean to reflect that beauty back to its rightful owner.

Rather than trying to reassure other women (and men) that they are beautiful—or that God thinks they’re beautiful—perhaps we should remind them of Christ’s beauty. It is beauty that doesn’t expire with age and gravity. It is far longer lasting (eternal), and more faithful than the sunrise itself.

“The Christ I see in you is beautiful.” is a far higher compliment.