Back in skinny jeans

Pink and "Stupid Girls"

I have always liked the singer Pink with her anti-establishment ways and brutal honesty on topics most people would rather not talk about like superficiality, domestic abuse, and eating disorders. Personally, I think she is a very beautiful young woman, and her edgy mockery of petty social issues that many women needlessly suffer through, brighten my days. She points out rather well, in my opinion, that we take ourselves way too seriously sometimes in our craving to fit in. Look how silly we can get because we are so desperate to look a certain way, and act a certain way in order to get attention especially from men. Honestly, are we that desperate that we sacrifice our self esteem in order to be loved and accepted? For many of us, the answer is frighteningly a big yes.

This has been out for awhile, but in her latest video, Stupid Girls, she pokes fun at the celebutantes like Paris, Lohan, and Jessica Simpson, and shines light on how the younger women in our society our getting sucked into this notion that we have to get spray on tans, big boobs, and wear a size 0 in order to get a man to call us back, or be popular. I love how she pointed out that even a talented girl president would drop her aspirations in order to dance half naked in a 50 cent video. The point is beyond crystal, and many of us have either done something like that, or have secretly wanted to abandon "smart" dreams in order to go after "sexy" roles. The bathroom scene with the girls throwing up because they ate more than 300 calories that day was quite disturbing to me, especially in a music video, but it is a brutal reality and unfortunately is not an uncommon incident.

Here's a taste of some of the lyrics in Stupid Girls:

Disease's growing, it's epidemic
I'm scared that there ain't a cure
The world believes it and I'm going crazy
I cannot take any more
I'm so glad that I'll never fit in
That will never be me
Outcasts and girls with ambition
That's what I wanna see
Disasters all around
World despaired
Their only concern
Will they **** up my hair

The irony is only too real. It is also not uncommon for us women to be so accomplished, out creating cures for diseases, heading up Fortune 500 companies, and leading troops into battle, but yet still never being able to take our minds off messing up our hair or stressing about whether our ass looks fat in these jeans. Can we ever let go?

Full-timer and the back in skinny jeans challenge

And now for my big announcement...I have rejoined the force of full-time pay-checkers. Although the driving factor to get a full-time gig was the need for some financial stability and health bennies, I stuck to looking at companies who develop/design/create thingies in the Web 2.0 space. I wanted to continue with my blogging and online sojourns, so what better way to do that, than find a company who does Web 2.0 stuff. Hurray for me, I found a start-up creating for the Next Net space, and they love the fact that I blog because it keeps me in the know when it comes to the intimacies of blogging and bloggers.

As an added bonus, the founders are seasoned, mature Silicon valley vets who have done the tour of successful/failed start-ups as well as Fortune 500/small companies. They know it's not worth killing yourself at work and having no personal life in order to become market leader in a wink. They understand the need to work hard yet have balanced lives. Becoming a market leader in light speed is not worth losing your family, your friends, your health, or your soul. Our business is the internet, so you don't have to be in the office 9-5 to work. You meet your goals and objectives by their due dates, so it doesn't matter how it gets done, just that it does. I love this because I can organize me time and work time and have optimal life harmony. I feel like I've won the supersize, huggable, stuffed brown bear at Skee ball.

The challenge now becomes, how do I stay disciplined in my food and exercise. Granted I have not done the best job of that working at home at my own business, but now because I am in marketing, there will be the customer dinners, tradeshows, PR events, and business travel. I'm only at day 3 into my new job, and I've had my first customer dinner/drinks hob nob. I got so busy during the day that I ended up eating only a food bar the whole day. We didn't get to the restaurant until 7pm, so I was in temptation land to devour mass quantities of food to make up for what I missed during the day. As well, I've become quite the lightweight when it comes to the booze, so I need a good amount of sustenance in my tummy so that the I don't turn into a happy drunk in 5 minutes.

We started with drinks and some appetizers. I ended up having one Mandarin Orange Cosmo, 2 small pieces of happy hour pizza, a handful of calamari, a slim slice of chicken quesadilla, 3 bites of a crab cake, and for dinner itself, 1/2 of a hamburger patty and fries, no bun, but a small dabble of ketchup. Matt makes fun of me because I like to take bites of many different things rather than just having one big thing. Okay, it's my weird food thing, but I love the buffet way of eating. Perhaps, because I am conscious of not getting into the unhealthy, work, munching habits, the challenge to stay on my skinny jeans course won't be as tough as it used to be when I last worked in Corpse-rate America. Let's see!

The fatso blues

This whole week I've been on a rant about being feeling like a ginormous, bulging hefer with sock titties and crow's feet. I realize that I have been highly exaggerating the reality of my actual body size and weight. I realize that if your weight is up in the 200 and 300 pound range, then 166lbs seems like an ideal weight. Likewise, when you're 5'7" and have more muscle weight, then 166 pounds doesn't look as large then as if you were 5'2" with little muscle definition. But it doesn't matter what your weight, height, muscle ratio, every woman is going to go through phases where we just absolutely feel like a blimp, and no matter what anyone says to us, it won't matter. We'll put on our baggiest pair of pull-string sweats, plop our ass on the couch, turn on Sex and the City reruns, pop some fudge filled bon bons or salty, crunchy Cheese puffs into our mouth and sulk. Of course, we'll wash down the junk food with diet soda because heaven forbid we drink the high-caloric regular sodas.

Matt is out of town for a few days on business, and what a fortunate man he is. He won't have to bare the brunt of my incessant whining. Mind you, when it comes to my fatso blues, I'm not so much a vocal whiner, but one of those silent yet energetically sucking kind of sourpusses. I grimace, grunt, and constantly pull on the waistband of my jeans as if somehow a miracle will occur and the jeans will grow, or my gut will shrink. I'm not proud of my behavior, but that is the pattern I am so wanting to make peace with.

The fatso blues storm is here so just cover the windows, and let the storm pass.