Weddings, the union of two families in a formal ceremony, formal being the operative word. Clothes suitable for a high profile event such as this one are very gendered. Men wear collared shirts and ties, whereas women wear dresses. The question is, what if you’re neither? The answer? No one is sure. As a non-binary person, this THE question not only for weddings, but in general. When others gender you, no one can see what your gender is, but instead bases it off of certain characteristics. These characteristics are mostly visual and sound based. For example, masculine people are assumed to be male, whereas feminine presenting people are presumed to be female.

It really is wild that different cloths cut certain ways with certain patterns show people a binary gendered system. I went to a wedding this past weekend, and of course everyone was wearing clothes that made them present a certain way. I dressed masculine, as I usually do. Dressing masculine for me is easier and more comfortable than dressing feminine. Of course, dressing this way makes people perceive me as a man.

When someone uses he/him pronouns for me, dysphoria sets in. Luckily enough, my significant other is very supportive and unafraid to correct people at the drop of a hat. People always give funny looks or are confused when I’m referred to as her partner. Some relatives asked why I wasn’t her boyfriend, and after that always comes an explanation. It’s very odd for me to have someone fight this hard for my pronouns and identity. Personally, I’ve gotten tired of correcting and educating others. It gets old after a while. She is such a good ally for me when it comes to this. Her allyship to my gender identity is astounding.

Weddings themselves are very binary things as well. A holy union between one man and one woman. Thinking about the concept of marriage as a non-binary person is also very intriguing because when I get married, there has to be changes that no one really thought about when the concept of marriage was created. Am I a groom? Am I a bride? A broom? Everything feels up in the air when you don’t follow the gender binary.

Once again, the question is what if you’re neither? The answer? Do whatever makes you feel good. Do what you want. This ceremony is for yourself, not your family, not anyone else. If you plan on getting married as a non-binary person, be yourself and have a blast.

My relationship with my body is complicated to say the least. I cannot even think of the number of times I have wished for my body to be different. Like many others, I have struggled with being happy with what I see when I look in the mirror. I may be happy with this part here or even most of it some days, but I’ve never achieved 100% happiness with my own body. Sometimes I feel guilty for not loving my body. It supports me, it ensures my health, and acts as a vessel for my consciousness. When I find issues with it I wonder if I am taking what I’ve been blessed with for granted. Then I start to think about how my body could be better. I could have a flatter stomach, a bigger chest, I could be taller, have less fat on my body, etc. When I start to have these thoughts I try my hardest to be more accepting of myself and my body.

My relationship with body influences my relationship with other aspects of my life including food, clothes, and exercise. When I think of the foods that I am about to consume, I think of how that will cause my stomach to grow, how this will influence my weight, and overall appearance. A similar flood of thoughts occurs when considering to exercise. My relationship with my body then alters the clothes I feel comfortable wearing and what I feel confident in. These questions are constantly flooding my mind and to be honest it is VERY EXHAUSTING. Constantly thinking about how I look and how I feel about how I look can be mentally tiring. The older I get, the harder I work to be happy with the body that I have. Although I catch myself looking at how flat my stomach looks when I walk past the mirror, I try to remember that how it looks today, tomorrow, or the next should not have any impact on my happiness in relation to my body. It has become more important to me than ever to love my body no matter what it looks like and make changes based on bettering my health not my overall appearance.

TW: Body image, eating disorders mention, drug use mention

Every so often I come across a post on social media reminiscing about a past that never was: back in the 90s/early 2000s when “naturalness was celebrated” but now “every girl looks the same,” most likely referring to the current prevalence of extreme cosmetic surgery, high coverage, transformative makeup, and photoshop/Facetune of every feature on the body. Sigh. Not to be rude, but these people must be too young to remember reality, simply clueless, or suffering from amnesia. Of course you’re going to have nostalgia for what has already passed because you’re sick of being bombarded with an oversaturation of whatever’s currently trending – you’re desperate for something different to break up the monotony. But the truth is: no era has ever been been accepting of naturalness, but rather, each and every era tells us what we should specifically aspire for in that moment and how to obtain it. Of course some just already have It™ and don’t really have to do much to meet the standard, but as for those who don’t? You either have to a) kill yourself (figuratively and sometimes literally) to try your best to fit in with whatever’s en vogue, or b) wait it out until you’re back in trend…if you’ll ever be the trend.

Speaking on the 90s/early 2000s beauty trends specifically, it boggles my mind that a lot of people consider this to be the beacon era of natural beauty when I think of all the crazy shit that happened in retrospect. We still wore tons of makeup, it was just a different style. We still got cosmetic procedures done – a lot of them as a matter of fact (anyone remember the now fallen AwfulPlasticSurgery.com?), the procedures we wanted were just different. Dangerous diet fads were similarly pervasive, especially considering the fact that being rail thin from head to toe was all the rage. This also spurred our cultural hyperfixation on women with eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, which usually just sensationalized them as jokes or subjects of horror as opposed to recognizing EDs as a legitimate concern that need legitimate help. And just as insidious, the “heroin chic” look glamorized and encouraged drug use in a way; it didn’t just stop at looking like you shoot up heroin, sometimes you actually shot up heroin to get and maintain that bony, angular figure.

It’s only a matter of time before mass media emerges out of the “IG Baddie” craze and rebounds back to crowning extremely thin bodies as superior. Now before The Skinnies start cheering, consider this: what if we could all just be left alone and not ever have to worry about when our bodies will go in and out of style? What makes me nervous is the possibility that counter-movements like body positivity (embracing and loving bodies as they are regardless of what they look like and not feeling pressured to change them) and body neutrality (not giving a fuck about what a body looks like and just simply existing) will also be trends within themselves, coming and going in waves as opposed to being mainstays. Hopefully we can work to grant these ideologies fixed positions within our culture that will eventually eclipse the trending of bodies, but only time will tell.

TW: Discussion of OCD, face picking and scarring, and mental disability

I have always heard that. In different versions in different voices. Sometimes even in my own head. But when I look at my face now, I see the remnants of the damaged body I live in, evidence of an uncontrollable mind, and a reminder of a complicated relationship between them and the world around me. 

3 weeks ago, I found out I have something called “Pure O” OCD. In clinical terms it is the experience of obsessive unwanted thoughts without visible compulsions or rituals. I won’t delve into what my specific obsessions are. What I will say is that I have lived my life believing I am a bad person. That the thoughts were the sum of my life and they allude to the evil I for so long considered to be me.  

https://www.madeofmillions.com/articles/pure-o-an-exploration-into-a-lesser-known-form-of-ocd

Imagine going to sleep and only to wake up the next morning to see a clump

of hair on your pillow.

Hair.  We all have it or have had it in our life at one time or another.  Some

have more than others; some have less than others, and some don’t have

any at all.

Hair comes in many colors, different lengths, and various types.  Hair can

also be styled in many ways.   Hair can be straight, coily, wavy, and curly. 

We spend a great deal of time on how we look.  Men and women spend lots

of money to maintain their beautiful head of hair. 

As beautiful as the hair can be, there are various types of hair disorders.

  One in particular is alopecia areata.  Alopecia is an autoimmune disease

that causes the loss of hair and sometimes causes baldness.  Alopecia can

also include the loss of your eyebrows and eyelashes.  The hair on your

head begins to shed and sometimes causes bald spots.  The disease cannot

kill but it can be traumatizing.   It can also affect you emotionally.  Nobody

is exempt from this hair disorder.  It affects young and old and the disease

does not discriminate.    Some factors attributing to alopecia are stress, diet,

and hereditary.  

If you think you are suffering from hair loss, it would be helpful to schedule

an appointment with your dermatologist.  There are various types of

treatment for alopecia but there is no cure.  There are also numerous

products on the market that will attempt to help you grow your hair back.

  Dealing with alopecia, sometimes the hair grows back and sometimes it

doesn’t.  You cannot recognize someone who has alopecia.  People with

alopecia often wear a wig, hairpiece, or toupee to hide it from others.  Those

who have accepted living with alopecia go bald and walk as proud as a

peacock.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

As someone’s who’s dealt with severe OCD anxiety for most of my life, I’ve always been against the whole mindfulness gimmick. I think it was honestly…bullshit. But I think I might have figured it out on my own. So what is mindfulness to me? I think its literally stepping outside of my mind. When you have anxiety it can be easy to forget that the only organ in your body isn’t just the brain you’re using to overthink and obsess about everything with.

Lately I try to focus on what my body can do and how it feels. I focus on how my legs feel when I walk or how my body feels when I lay in bed under my covers. I look at the objects around me and listen to the sounds in my environment. I go outside just to feel the cold on my skin. I find myself enjoying little things like the sounds people make when speaking or feeling the water drip down my body in the shower. I love feeling my boyfriend’s warm skin against mine and feeling him breathe against me when he falls asleep on my chest. I’m starting to realize there’s so much more going on around me than the thoughts in my head. I won’t say this was easy. But its something I’ve learned to do through determination and the help of my antidepressants.

My favorite thing right now is the way I feel when I move my body. I feel so free when I work out. Knowing that I can run or walk, I can move my body this or that way is so freeing. I’m starting to feel like I can do anything. There’s something so inspirational about my recent coming into mindfulness. I am unsure of how to describe it. But I feel like there is many parts of me that I have been ignoring due to my anxiety being so bad. I want to explore this some more.

Trigger warning! This post is about physical, emotional, and child abuse in a fictional TV show episode. In addition, I will be describing some very disturbing abuse scenes. Even though it is fictional it can be upsetting.

For this blog post, I am going to talk about Assassination Classroom.

TW// I’m a democrat (idk if this is even a real TW, but just in case, you can’t say I didn’t warn you, lol)

Okay, I’m going to speak completely from my heart for this post. I want to talk about the current 2020 presidential election. I want to say that I’m so excited, as president-elect Joe Biden and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris were elected as the two leaders of our free world. In regards to Harris, I’m EXTREMELY excited that she’s made history for us minority women. I mean… OUR NEXT VICE PRESIDENT IS A WOMAN, TAKE THAT PATRIARCHY! LOL! Us women are really uplifting and empowering one another to get into these spaces that women either have never dominated, or ever even been present in. So, kudos to Kamala Harris!