More to Love? (Or Hate)

This show was an experiment on many levels. The premise: an overweight bachelor and 20 or so overweight bachelorettes attempt to find love in the typical alcohol-filled elimination-game setting. Is society ready to see several overweight people fall in love? This show will apparently answer that question.

I watched the first episode on Hulu this morning- meaning that I didn’t have all the first night hype that many of these shows that people regularly follow have. I also skipped commercials which meant that I didn’t have as much anticipation. Now…my reaction is as follows:

Decent show but I have a lot of issues with some of the way the women were portrayed and how they portrayed themselves.

ISSUES:

-Where did they find these women? Cry babies anonymous? When you watch shows such as the Bachelor (what this show is essentially modeled after) the women are confident and know they are worthy of this man. This show--- not so much. So much crying and whining about how they never felt loved and never had a date or been kissed and all of it was due to their weight. I personally didn’t notice one woman who was happy with her body and happy with the way her life was going… Not to be racist or feed into stereotypes…but they should have had some of my fellow sistas on there! I personally hate my size and want to lose weight but some of the women I see down here LOVE their bodies and are HAPPY. They dress well and carry their weight well…they are not sloppy. Which brings me to my next point.

- What the hell are these chicks wearing? I saw so many bras and bra straps. There is a certain way to dress for your body and these women do not know it. No one can wear EVERYTHING. You’ve got no boobs? Cant wear a halter top! My problem, at my skinniest, was that my hip and rib bones protruded- even as a skinny girl I had to worry about what I wore!!… Some of these girls… come on! Some dresses were like two sizes too small and made some of the girls have like 14 different muffin tops peeking out. You should essentially be able to wear whatever you want…but if you do…make sure that your its and bits aren't showing (underwear, areas of skin that aren't meant to be shown with that outfit, privates...) These were BEAUTIFUL girls packing themselves into ill-fitting dresses. Come on now...



- Some of the first things out of the girls’ mouths while meeting this man are “What do you like to eat?!” …There’s nothing totally wrong with this…I just thought it was interesting. Not…do you speak any languages? Where do you work? Do you like puppies?

- The show, similar to the other ones, places the girls name and their occupation under them. In addition this show thought it important to put the girls’ heights and weights on as well. Now…I don’t know what’s up with their scales…but…uh…. Well you watch the clip and you decide..

- One other thing…a lot of them women were crying and going on about how people judge them immediately based on their size and don’t give them a chance or try to get to know them. Then a couple of seconds later… "they’d rather have the skinny bitches”. So, let me get this straight, you want someone to treat you with respect regardless of your size but you can so quickly dismiss someone else and judge them because they are a different size? Please…

POSITIVITY:

Uh..there’s not much. They did find some interesting women but most are unhappy with their weights. I think it is good for society to get more used to seeing normal sized and larger people on t.v. instead of brainwashing us into thinking that everyone should be a size 0. Is it good for us to get TOO comfortable with obesity? Who knows… It’s definitely not good for us to see anorexic and sickly people all the time...

THOUGHTS/SPINS:

I wonder why they did a large man searching for love with large women. If I was a t.v. exec- I would have made bank on this! This would have been my set up. In the hills of Hollywood there are two adjacent houses. In one house, Jason, a gorgeous and very muscular architect is searching for a beautiful woman to spend his life with. In the next, Vanessa, a beautiful and athletic exec also begins her own quest for love. The catch? Both of them prefer the love of a curvier significant other. That would be interesting! Two shows for the price of one!
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Gonna do my best to keep up with this show and see how it goes. I'm sure...like all of the rest...whatever marriage happens at the end will fall through quickly after but its always interesting to watch the train wreck as it goes.

To the women... GROW SOME BALLS! Stop crying!

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ALL PRAISE TO SS - While I Issue an SOS

Let's begin this blog by praising the one consistent poster on this site,  at the moment -= Southern Substance. Being completely honest with you all, for the past two weeks I have been very preoccupied with applications, phone interviews, and just mental anxiety. As you all know, I really need a legitimate job that will allow me to grow professionally. Stagnation just isn't my thing.

Well, 2 weeks ago, I went to a career fair that really had some exciting prospects. Two of the companies I met with have since shown interest in my job applications, and I have been struggling trying to keep the slightest sense of internal serenity and sanity as I await the outcome. I want to explode you all! To go THIS LONG without anything official just bores away at the soul of a man (as it would with a woman, I'm sure...you see, I'm so anxious that I'm typing in politically correct stream of consciousness: a testament to my newfound ADD).

Well here's the deal, today, MONDAY, I potentially hear back from an exciting job prospect about my candidacy (not guaranteed to hear today, but the email said possibly). Today, MONDAY, I also have a 2nd round phone interview with a BIG consumer retail corporation for a position that PAYS but is something I'd NEVER EVER considered. Both opportunities are exciting and uncommon, and I WILL (I REPEAT WILL) JUMP at and attach myself to either one, just like an unloved stepchild would to a kind stranger.

You have no idea what thoughts are raging through my head. I can't do anything these days - clean, write songs, email, apply for new jobs, blog, go out - ANYTHING, because I'm paralyzed with anxiety. This is the closest I've come to hope being realized in a while, and I am beyond impatient to know the outcome - good or bad.

Wish me luck! I'll update you guys either way regarding the responses I hear. Hopefully your professional lives are not nearly as precarious as mine. AAH, I just want to scream and blurt out to the world how exciting these two opportunities are!

But alas, patience and discretion are virtues. No really, I just need a job haha. Hope you're holding up wherever you are and whatever you're going through.

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*Highlights* - Jilted Bird

Aww...poor thing!



How Anne Heche of him...

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Silly

I love when people turn serious ceremonies into something fun and engaging. Here are a few examples!~

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Affirmative Action and Me

Affirmative Action: positive steps aimed at increasing the inclusion of historically excluded groups in employment, education and business. Such steps are not designed to offer preferential treatment to, or exclude from participation, any group. To the contrary, Affirmative Action policies are intended to promote access for the traditionally underrepresented through heightened outreach and efforts at inclusion.

Definition taken from the American Association for Affirmative Action


To be honest…I don’t know how I feel about Affirmative Action. It has had a really negative effect on me but, by the same token, I can see its purpose pretty clearly. Personally, it has clouded my perception of myself and my sense of self worth to a huge degree. Every step I take, every opportunity I get, I have to wonder if I’m only getting it because I am black and because I am a woman; the higher I go, the worse this gets. I know…I know! People have been fighting in this country for ages for leaps towards equality and here I am complaining that a major move towards it is ruining my life. But let me give you a peek into what I mean.

While I enjoyed my time immensely at Dartmouth and proved my worth by keeping an above B average (I had a rough first year…), I always felt that the white, more privileged students were often thinking that I had only gotten in because of affirmative action. Now, to be honest, I’m sure they weren’t even worried about me or what I was doing there, but I always felt that I had to represent black women (and black people) positively. I had to show them that the negative portrayals in movies and on t.v. were not correct! Again…I was probably imagining their thoughts of me but the pressure was so immense.

As I neared graduation and we began to look for jobs…I was told by several people that the fact that I’m a black person AND a woman would bode well for me in the professional marketplace. Someone referred to it as “killing two birds with one stone”; it would be better for the company to hire a black woman rather than a black man and a white woman… what the hell? Now, I have to be honest. In high school and college, I hated the notion that the color of my skin would take me further than someone who might be more qualified than I. I didn’t want anything handed to me on a platter; I just wanted to get in on my own merit. Now…now that I realize how hard it is to break into the professional world without strong background references…fuck it. At my current job, there are a lot of young blacks like me here trying to break into law school and, quite frankly, this will look good on our resumes. From what I can tell, we are all qualified young blacks who come from middle to lower-class backgrounds. No one has a parent that attended Harvard Law or who works as a lawyer or judge currently. Not having a background or a strong reference to break into this bloated field means that a lot of people will get overlooked (think: those questions on college/law school apps- Has anyone in your family attended ______ Law?). If being black will get my foot in the door and make them take a closer look at me…I’ll take it. I don’t want to be accepted just because of my color or sex…I just want to be considered!



So I guess affirmative action is a good and bad thing. Good because it forces companies to diversify and have people of all backgrounds and upbringings and levels the playing field for those who may not have even been considered for schooling or a job. Bad because it allows people that hold racist ideals to have more fuel against those that they view as lesser than them and lowers the self esteem and self worth of those who may feel that an opportunity has only arisen due to their skin color, sex, sexual preference or whatever.

Double-edged sword I guess. I know…I know…damn women/minorities are never satisfied!


Interesting article about affirmative action in the Supreme Court and why affirmative action is better as a race-based system.

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Off My Chest

I'm suffering and struggling to keep my eyes open because I couldn't sleep last night.... I have held this in for so long but I have to get it off of my chest.

When I was in college... a close friend of mine was raped. It was a horrible situation and it still haunts me as I’m sure it does her. I have these dreams...they will come out of nowhere…I’ll have had a happy day and be on my way to bed and then the next morning I’m so tired and stressed and I have snippets of the dream playback in my mind. Oh I had that dream again.

There’s so much guilt involved in this…sometimes I’m able to repress it and I can go months without thinking about it… It will always be with me though because there is so much regret and it was never officially closed in the manner that I would like. That and the fact that, had I been a better friend and more careful, the situation probably wouldn’t have happened. She was soooo drunk and was having a good time dancing in a pretty small party. About thirty minutes later, I realized she was gone and called her cell phone. Maybe she headed home to sleep it off I thought. I had this sinking feeling though and something told me to go and look for her.

The party was in what we called the NAD (Native American House on campus) and I had never been in there, so, although it was a small house, I didn't know what all of the rooms were. I made my way upstairs...peeking in open doorways...listening at doors. I heard nothing. I headed downstairs; there was a door that lead to a room that looked like the storage room in my own building so I assumed it was locked. If only I had opened that door...

My dreams of this situation haunt me; I wake up with tears streaming down my face and in actual physical and emotional distress. If I had just opened that fucking door I could have saved her!!! After I wake up, I force myself to think the situation through, to imagine what I would have done to this asshole if I had walked in. She had been dancing with him all night and had snuck out of the party to make out with him. She told him from the jump that she didnt want to have sex and when things started progressing, she tried to leave the situation. He was able to hold her there and do his dirt. If I had walked into the door, I would have killed him. Maybe its a good thing I didn't because there's no way I could have controlled my rage. I see myself picking up a broom or some object and swinging it baseball style across the side of his head. Or tackling him and wailing on him with my fists- releasing all the anger I had from my own similar situation. I'm so angry- why couldnt I have just opened the fucking door?

She told me that it hurt so badly that she blacked in and out of it but awoke to him getting dressed. He was telling her that it wasn't rape because she agreed to it and that she should stop crying. He gave her his cell phone number...he actually put it in the phone for her... See, he said, if I raped you...why would I give you my number? Dumb ass. He then left the room. She sat there crying for a bit...staring at the ruined couch cushions. Looking back, there was sooo much blood. She then flipped the cushion over and came to find me. I had already headed home and was talking with my friends when she called me. The moment I heard her voice, I knew something was wrong. I ran out of the room, probably scaring the shit out of my friends, and ran to her. She was at the entrance to our building but couldn’t get in. Blood on her pants. I knew...there was no need to ask. I said Where is he...where did it happen? and she motioned to the NAD, conveniently across the street from where I lived. I ran up to the door and started banging as hard as I could. I didnt know the code and couldnt get in and I didnt give a fuck that it was 4 am. Someone opened the door confused; they were still cleaning up from the party. I ran down to the basement and burst in the door. Some guys were on that couch! They didnt realize that they were sitting on a crime scene! I said "Move.." and flipped the cushion over. They were startled. I called Safety and Security and a female officer showed up within minutes. She came in and saw the cushion and we headed to the hospital where we spent the day doing a rape kit and checking her out. She got medicine for all of the STDs and got some cream for the rips and tears in her private area and for the bleeding. I feel like a horrible friend because I was zoning in and out at the hospital- I had been drinking pretty heavily that night as well- but I was doing my best to be there for her. We were there so long...until like 11 the next morning.

I regret the whole fucking thing but I definitely regret flipping the couch cushion over in front of those NAD guys. They figured it out and got him off campus and home to Maryland or wherever the fuck he was from....He wasn't a student...just some idiot up there for a party weekend...

I wish I had opened the door. Even if I had killed him and was rotting in jail for my crime...it would have been worth it.

If you're reading this, I'm sorry...call/e-mail me! I miss you...








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