Why I made Bella Swan Fat and Ugly

Today while I was cashiering at my grocery story, a kind gentleman came through and tried to conspire jovially with me. He pointed to a magazine, purported to be a Healthy magazine, with a thin woman on the cover.

"Look at this!" He cried while I rung up his groceries, "Does she look healthy? It's sick! She's a skeleton!" I smiled kindly without engaging, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. A few things were happening in that moment, and it has taken me half the day to unpack it.

For one, the woman on the cover of the magazine was Giada de Laurentiis, a chef who I don't particularly like except for the fact that her recipes are sometimes really tasty. She's petite, she's Italian, she cooks for a living. The stress of that lifestyle, compacted by the stress of now being a celebrity chef (an a "sexy, skinny" one at that) are unimaginable. Most professional chefs suffer from overwork, alcoholism, poor eating habits, and myriad health problems. It is very easy to gain weight in a stressful kitchen.

Celebrity women, on the other hand, are required to be skinny and boney in order to be appealling. When they aren't, a great deal of attention is drawn to their avant garde, sometimes "political" statements (Adele, Christina Hendricks). Regardless of the shape of their body, it appears that we care first and foremost about their bodies. Even when these women struggle to keep their bodies sane, we critique their lines, puffy eyes, potential surgeries, and choice not to wear make-up during an errand. It is very easy for these women to suffer eating disorders.

I don't know Giada di Laurentiis personally, but I am sure that there is nothing she could do with her weight to satisfy everyone. To someone, she will always be too fat. To this man, she was too skinny.

I felt like he was personally attacking the woman on the magazine cover, not the publicists, photographers, or directors of that magazine. I'm no longer obese and I no longer pull the gaze of a room to my size, but I am still wary of how our society treats "fat" people. I'm not skinny either (though I think I'm plenty skinny) and so I think this man, also because of our circumstances, felt safe confiding in me that this woman was anorexically thin. Perhaps he felt I would agree with him, that as a woman I was tired of seeing all these skinny girls in their skinny jeans all over the media.

In that situation, my customer was blaming the women for being too thin and he was taking advantage of my position of service to agree with him (I cannot possible begin any true argument with a customer. I can be honest, have good conversations, and nod knowingly but in the end, you are still my customer and I still represent a company to you. I am no longer myself).

When I first re-wrote the Twilight series for myself, I re-contextualized Bella as fat. It was fantastic and liberating. I am still so proud of that work of fan fiction, even though I insisted on following the decrepit scaffolding of an inept writer. In the past ten years I have spent my waking consciousness becoming aware of the stories and oppression of my brothers and sisters. Every day I give thanks for being born a fat female, because without these two "knocks" against me I might have simply floated along in my white, middle-class American privilege. Only when I felt the first slap of judgment on my own body, only when I strained against the invisible binds of my so-called gender, did I find a language which would later become invaluable to me.

Mitt Romney will never be able to read Toni Morrison because he just can't relate.

When I began to notice the subtle and insidious nature of sexism and fat-shaming, I inherited a vocabulary. Later, when reading stories about racism, homophobia, gender normativity, and other restrictive labeling, I recognized some of the vocabulary and some of the experiences. This allowed me to give authority to those stories, and once they had authority I could really, truly listen. Because I finally believed them.

I wanted to write a story that would help with that, one which would pass on the vocabulary and allow others to open up to similar experiences of oppressed brethren. I don't know what it is like to be castigated for being underweight, I do not know what it is like to actually be anorexic or bulemic, but I am keenly aware of what it is like to be judged by my body first. I am daily aware that as a woman I am flesh first, sex second, and much further down the line (sometimes never) an autonomous being. I have been able (and still continue) to use that experience to empathize with others. Recently the challenge has been to recognize where I have been complicit in my own oppression as well as that of my brethren. And I hate to tell you this, but we are all complicit.

I chose to be complicit when I kept my job and my representation of the company rather than explaining to the man that he was again judging a woman by her body. I let him go without passing on the vocabulary or trying to share the experience. I would make the same decision again, but I have to live with the fact that somewhere, that man thinks I truly agreed with him.

The twin brothers sympathy and empathy

Edward (sympathy) and Jasper (empathy) should not have been superficial or foolish. Luckily due to little writing Jasper escaped the brunt of the douchebaggery, but Edward spent four whole books oblivious to the consequences of telepathy.

These "brothers" could respectively sense what anyone was thinking or feeling.

Thoughts, as we all know, are not the same as speech. On rare occasion do we find it better to articulate while sentences to ourselves. Usually our thoughts are sloppy and sporadic, as anyone who has tried mindfulness meditation soon finds out. There are bursts of memory, emotion, song, and singular images attached to meaning without context.

Have you ever remembered a song but you cannot recall the words, tune, our even perhaps the meaning? Then what is left? What is that piece we hold onto? Those are the sorts of thoughts I imagine a telepath would find.

And then empathy, not just seeing another's point but viscerally feeling it as well. No wonder Jasper couldn't continue to murder sentient beings.

Most of conflict arises from fractured communication and, while it would be entirely one-sided, these brothers participated in pure and immediate communion with any sentient being.

There was no longer "the other" our even the unknown. All motives, however illogical or cruel, are completely contextualized.

I recall a throw-away conversation in hich Edward is talking about music (his character dearly loves music and I appreciate that) but then Edward dismisses all the music between 1960 and 1990. All the "devil music" I'm sure, but honestly I think a character like him should be able to find a way to appreciate quite literally every single song made. He has the ability to guess or actively know how that song feels in the artist's head. Imagine Mozart to Mozart's ears, imagine the grandness which he felt that he fell short of. Amazing.

They should have been the most patient, sensitive and careful creatures imaginable. The one who talks you through your tantrum to the other side. The one who always "gets" you.

That alone would make them seductive and dangerous, as well as easily usurp their own characters, their own selves. As someone who is a mirror to others it would be a shock and a novel thrill to encounter a person you cannot reflect, a Bella who asks you to be yourself.

What depression looks like

Photo source (great paragraph about depression admist a funny article)
I confess that I have played into the stereotype myself. Even though I have been aware of my depression for at least a year and struggle to live with it, I shrugged off the truth about what depression looks like when I wrote. It is my greatest regret in my re-writing of the Twilight story.

Depression does not look like droopy-dog from Looney Tunes. It's not that mumbling loser in the corner listening "How could this happen to me" by Simple Plan (*gag*) on endless repeat. And it is certainly not the catatonic zombie Bella Swan turns into for four (six?) months when her boyfriends leaves her.

It's Kurt Cobain laughing and playing with a kitten and his newborn daughter.

It's me right now, sitting outside a Starbucks on a busy street and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude. I am reading a good book which I got for free and will be paid to write a review for. I am going to help out at the food pantry later tonight in my community. I have two short stories I'm editing for work and I'm proud of their progress (and the meager amount of money I'll be picking up on Friday!!) I just got a call for a pre-screen to work as a supervisor at Whole Foods (which for me is a dream job right about now). A stranger dropped a mysterious card on my table inviting me to a "party experiment" that sounds right up my ally.

I'm feeling pretty good.

But that's right now, in this moment.

Saturday I got myself worked into such a fury of anxiety that I spent 24 hours vomiting. That happens to me about once every four months and it never gets "easier", in fact it gets worse. Much worse.

A huge part of me is terrified to go to this job pre-screen because I feel under-qualified and over-qualified. My hips are sore from working out last night and a very familiar voice in my head hisses, "See? This is why you stopped doing that. Just stay home. Just disappear."

I just left a counseling session where I used up six tissues (Ladies and Gentlemen, a new record!) and my therapist asked if I wanted to look into prescription medication. She's trying to get me better help, more adequate help, and that stupid voice in my head thinks, "She can't handle you. You're such a mess."

My depression is real. But so is my gratitude and my joy. I'm not an automaton, though I can lapse into that behavior when things are bad. Even at its worst I can still work up a smile for a friend or look presentable in public. Sometimes I tell great jokes or give deep insights. I'm still a human, still complicated and full of contradictions.

Bella Swan turned flat, which was surprising given her already shallow character. If a real person were to tune out like that she would be admitted to care instantly. Some people really get that ill, really disappear that way. But it doesn't look anything like what happened to Bella Swan. Her "depression" is an insipid lie.

When we think about depression in terms of characters like Bella Swan and not people like Kurt Cobain, then the whole person is not taken into account. Any indication of happiness, respite, or social lubrication is taken as proof that "This person isn't really depressed." I don't have to frown all the time to be taken seriously as a depressed person, and that shouldn't be expected of me.

And I'm ashamed that I ever played into that idea with my writing. I'm sorry that I didn't speak up sooner.

The importance of names.

My name is Aubrey, which everyone tells me is a pretty name. I choose to believe them. However, when people ask what it means I'm sure they're expecting something just as pretty. Maybe God's grace or Snow falling on white cherry blossoms in the fog. I don't know. But what my name does mean is "blonde elf ruler".

Yep.

Elves. They're all mine. Dibs especially on the blonde ones. Or maybe it's because I was born blonde. Whatevs, I have a ridiculous name. I'm named after a park where my mother was when she met my dad (aww, romantic!) What I'm trying to say is, names can be important because they carry stories and images.

One thing I like to think about is what would happen if Jacob Black and Bella Swan got together with a hyphenated name. They'd be the Black-Swans.

I think that is totally awesome! Swans are actually fairly nasty creatures, uppity and territorial. I kind of like the extremes of the bird, looking so pretty and yet being so mean. And black swans (barring the psychological ballet drama) are even more fabulous. I love unconventional beauty and all the ripe symbolism that comes with a black swan.

But now that I'm re-writing this clustercuss I can't use the same names. I'm combining some of the characters (they were meager to begin with) and I'm throwing plenty of my own pizazz to make this mine, but I have a response and it needs to be heard. Even if it is only heard by a dozen people.

But I'm stuck on the names. I like Adam for Jacob, because "adam" means Everyman and I want to write this from his perspective as a human representative in a wacky world (poor sap). I thought Jacob was a good choice for the original series because it means usurper and I was always rooting for Jacob to usurp Edward's position in the triangle!

But I'm stuck beyond that. I have ideas and hopes, little symbols that I'd like to pop in for added depth without making them too obvious or clunky. My vampires choose their own names and so they will be significantly more symbolic (I'd like to name the family Nuvola, Cavogente, or Mancanza. These have meaning for me but I don't want the difficulty of the Italian name to cause the reader to stumble. Originally I thought to name them Mangiapane but I like that name too much and I also don't think anyone can pronounce it*.

What do you think? Are names important or secondary? Can I just name them all Bill, Bob, Jane and Missy or should I really put care into their titles?

*mahn-ja-pahn-A!

Vampire chic

In a good photo there is a special something, an invisible "eye" guiding the viewer to a realization. I recently recognized it in the sweetness and kindness with which Bill Cunningham captures candids of fashionable New Yorkers. This ephemeral gaze can be brought to any subject, regardless of skin color, weight, age or handicap.

Skinny models on high-fashion runways are an easy target. They are easy to loathe and disregard as emaciated mannequins strutting for paparazzi. Only recently have I grown to appreciate the art and work behind modeling, clothing design, and fashion photography.

There is a fierce, cold quality which is alluring and unnatural. Why it is beautiful I cannot say, but it is beautiful nonetheless. It is this ephemeral, invisible quality that cannot be grasped but only recognized.

I've been stumbling around this idea for awhile now. There are two directions in which this gaze could turn. It could become universal, shedding beauty and attention on all subjects. There could be a kind attention, seeking out the beauty in every individual. He who seeks beauty will find it.

Or we could fall back on the easy looks of young, vapid children posing. I'm afraid when Smeyer wrote her books and gushed about the unnatural beauty of her vampire children, she was seeing with a closed gaze, the common gaze.

I'd like to play with this duality. I'd like the vampires, creatures who have been around for centuries, to have an open gaze. They are raised around their own "beauty" and bored by it. Instead they seek out the Realness of people. They see beyond their own hipbones and pale skin.

However their prey, the humans, are captivated by these unnaturally formed idols. The humans see blank faces, pouting lips, and uniform skin as perfection. It is a small and narrow sort of pretty, one which leaves the humans vulnerable and blinded. 

I don't want to hate the skinny or the pretty faces in the media, that is the wrong reaction. I will recognize that they are pretty, but I wish to emphasize that were it not for the demands of their prey the vampires could have kept their human form. A Smeyer vampire is a sad thing, two-dimensional and removed from complexity. At first the humans will celebrate and gawk, but in time a wider gaze will be demanded.

The writerly space

Today I cannot wedge myself into the writerly space. It's claustrophobic and surreal to begin with, but if I want to get any clarity of vision or hear the concentrated sounds of reality then I need to get inside. Some days are easier than others. Some days I wake up already feeling the familiar crystal hum and knowing I can pick up the resonances. Today I feel squished and ungainly, pressing and struggling to little avail.

Then there are days when the whole bell jar traps you like a spider. It is disorienting and frightening. Death can do this. 

There are days when the glass is beveled and beautiful, shimmering with rainbows. 

Sometimes it is oddly comforting to have the restricted breathing and fogging warmth of an enclosed space.

I cannot live in the writerly glass jar. It is not an inhabitable space. To be inside the crystal glass is to be separated from others. Writing is, despite being a communicative art, inherently lonely. Reading is the response to the loneliness. 

Edward has green eyes

Less than a year ago I read the Smeyer tetrology of brain-damaging swill known as Twillight, and it has changed my life. The books are an incredible clusterfuck, impossible to plumb in a single post. Smeyer is not to be blamed. She's a bad but eager writer, an avid reader, and a take-no-prisoners capital-M Mother. Bless her, I could and have been Smeyer.
We must not even blame the exploitative publishers who recognized this book as both a 300-year set back to civil rights and the golden goose. Our society demands that they profit in their work and DAMN were they successful!
No, my fine reader, we are the only ones to blame. We are the collective machinery that runs on and demands Smeyer. She would exist anyway, happily scribbling the teenage-angsty fantasies of an over-worked and under-appreciated mom, but it was us who lifted her up in praise. We selected her because she feeds something destructive and cruel within us.
We are Smeyer, and we are legion.

There were many hints in the books, pieces that hurt and wounded me so deeply that they demanded a response, but here is one. Among the reductive and bland descriptions of Edward as a mind-blowingly, pants-shittingly gorgeous super-human, Smeyer mentions off-hand that he once had green eyes.
That wounded me badly.
I began to think to myself, wouldn't those green eyes be more lovely than the caramel-honey-melted-topaz irises he currently has? Those eyes are the stamp of his curse and the mark of his rebellious family, but they are not his own. Edward has green eyes. Who is this creature?
Did he lose his freckles and moles? His chicken-pox scars and the handsome asymmetry of a natural face? Where is the olive-oil glow of summertime skin? The network of blue veins under winter-white skin? What about the identifying irregularities and the idiosyncrisities? Is he a tabula rassa, worshipped for being manifestly vapid?
I had to do something. I couldn't read books in a world where God condemns Edward to oragami-paper skin and unrelenting symmetrical perfection. I had to wrinkle the paper and leave a coffee stain. I had to give Edward back his green eyes.

There were dragonflies

I dropped my groceries on the sidewalk, my self-pity settling between the milk and the peanut butter.
A ten-foot stretch of sidewalk was swarming with dragonflies. They were three inches long, heavy and loud insects dancing around to the insane rattling of the cicadas. I looked around and stepped into the whirlwind, wondering if I might be sucked up or turned into a whizzing insect, but nothing happened. They buzzed and bolted, zipped and even crashed into each other in a sexually aggressive way.
I come from the country, not the city, but finding this little piece of odd nature in Chicago surprised me. It further surprised me that it did not seem to surprise anyone else. No one else seemed to really notice the frenetic cloud of fat bugs, or they shrugged it off as, "Gee, that's a lot of dragonflies."
When I stepped into the cloud of dragonflies I had that sad, clear moment of life which occurs out on the edges where the air is thinner.  I did not cast off my own suffering as false, but I shrugged it off for a moment. For a moment there were only dragonflies, there was only this strange phenomenon happening on someone's lawn next to my forgotten bags.
I am a privileged, middle-class white American woman. I have not known hardship until recently, and I am still often ashamed to count myself among the ranks of those suffering. I am embarrassed to suffer when I have hot running water, access to medication, and enough food for the month in my pantry alone. But I have had to learn that my own pain, while different, is nevertheless real.
The more aware I become of my own suffering, the more I see who is exploiting me or turning me into an object, the more pain I feel. Yet this pain is tinged with a weary understanding of the stories around me, a solidarity with strangers I have yet to meet. My struggle, however weak or superficial-seeming, with depression has nevertheless given me new ears and a new language.
Standing among the dragonflies, cradling a knot of pain somewhere in my body, I felt the dichotomous paradox of being both connected and isolated. The dragonflies exist in a world beyond the veil, a world which I can sometimes visit when I have been wounded or when I have been awed. It is a world that pulls me away from my own self and turns outward, with shared experiences and shared language. It is bittersweet.