Personal Breakthroughs for 600, Alex

I've just had an epiphany--an epiphany about myself. (Incidentally, this is one of my essential characteristics of a critical thinker--the ability to continually discover new things about oneself.) Throughout high school and college, I received several Bs. Each time, as one would expect from an ordinarily straight-A student, I decided on a reason for the B--in order to internalize and deal with the situation, and thus move on from my perceived failure. I offer a list of the Bs that stand out in my mind, with accompanying reasons for their existence.

Chemistry (High School): I'm bad at science.
Pre-Calculus (High School): I'm two years ahead in math.
Gender and Society (College): I skipped some classes that resulted in missed quizzes, and I didn't like the professor.
History 105 (College): I never went to class.
Forensic Science (College): I'm bad at science.
Linguistics (College): Lingustics is hard, and I'm not really interested in it.
Anatomy and Physiology (College): I'm bad at science.

Notice any patterns there?

With the exception of any "I'm bad at science" answer, every reason on that list is completely valid. I was indeed two years ahead in math; I did indeed never go to class; Linguistics is indeed hard and uninteresting (to me, anyway). In retrospect, I got a B in forensic science because the course was heavy on entomology, which I am decidedly not interested in. I got a B in Anatomy and Physiology because the course was heavy on physiology, and I hadn't taken a basic biology course in about 5 years, and hence was rusty on central topics like cell function and replication, enzymes, the like. Straight-A students are monsters in that they expect to consistently excel; when I got a B--a B, for chrissake!--I assumed I was bad at something.

Except, not always. I didn't assume I was bad at math when I got a B in pre-calc; I rightly recognized that I was in an advanced course and so found it a bit challenging. I didn't assume I was bad at gender studies when I got a B in it; I rightly recognized that I didn't like the professor, and so skipped class as as well as failed to give the course the time and attention I should have. I just kind of blew it off. But these are things I've always known I'm good at; I've always been good at math, and since I usually got As in my major, I knew I wasn't bad at anthropology, just didn't care about Gender and Society. I also didn't decide I was bad at anthropology just because Linguistics is hard; I didn't dismiss an entire field just because one piece of it was hard for me.

So. Why do I think I'm bad at science? I'm clearly not. I did exceptionally well in classes on things like evolution, human biological diversity, research-oriented statistics,  and archaeology--all clearly science-based topics. As an anthropologist, I have regularly excelled in an field that relies on scientific methods to explore cultural and societal issues. Now, if I were really bad at science--the fucking foundation of most of the things I'm good at--how could I possibly be good at anthropology?

I can think of two possible reasons.

1. We did a lot more of everything else besides science when I was homeschooled; it was more a function of a homeschool environment lacking equipment rather than because my mom is a bad teacher or doesn't know anything about science. When I started public school, I had less of a science foundation than most of my peers; consequently, I may not have excelled as easily at science as I did in other subjects, leading to the belief that I was naturally less adept.
2. My culture tells me women are bad at science.

Both, maybe?

My point is, I'm not bad at science. I am currently a scientist, and I'm damn good at it. I decided against forensic anthropology because I thought I'd be bad at it, but I probably shouldn't have. Getting lost in an entomology class doesn't mean I can't be a forensic anthropologist; getting a B in Anatomy and Physiology because I lacked a solid cellular biology foundation doesn't mean I'm bad at physical science. Even if I'd taken an actual forensic anthropology course and gotten a B, all it would have meant was that I'd have to work a little bit harder at forensic anthropology than I had to at, say, the trigonometry course in which I earned roughly a 99% and learned absolutely nothing.

One of these things is not like the other

The men's tournament is The NCAA Tournament, naturally.

March MADNESS is right

Ah, March Madness. This is always an interesting time of year for a basketball fanatic such as myself.

Note that I used the phrase "basketball fanatic" -- a phrase sans the [usually elided] modifier of "men's". Most guys who describe themselves as basketball fanatics leave out the very important fact that they are not, as they say, fans of basketball in general, but fans of male-played basketball -- which is very, very specific.

Men's basketball fanatics are in heaven right now; you can't turn on the tv or glance at a paper without getting basketball -- men's basketball. Don't get me wrong; I freaking love basketball -- men's and women's. I love March Madness because there's always a basketball game on, and I love watching basketball. But it's different for me, and in a variety of ways.

1) One of the reasons I love March Madness is because it's the one time of year when it's relatively easy to find a women's game on ESPN[2/U].

What men's fans don't realize is that as far as television coverage is concerned, every single day of the regular season is the equivalent of women's March Madness -- it's not too difficult to see the games you want to see. I haven't seen my [women] Boilers at all this year, and since they're not in the NCAAt, March Madness won't change that a bit. I have seen my [men] Boilers several times, despite not getting the Big Ten Network (there are times when I think I'd punch myself in the face repeatedly over a period of 72 hours for the Big Ten Network).

2) One of the reasons I hate March Madness is because the statistical probability of my getting into an argument over the inherent value of women's sports increases exponentially.

Inevitably, when discussing MM, the women's tournament comes up, because it is, shockingly enough, also on my mind in March. This invariably leads to at least one male voicing disbelief that anyone in this country actually watches women's sports, or bursting into hysterical laughter at the suggestion that a game was enjoyable to watch.

About that last; the conversation usually goes something like this:

Me: Why don't you like women's sports?
Him: Women's sports are fucking boring.
Me: Have you ever watched a women's game, in any sport?
Him: ...

Alternatively, it might go something like this:

Me: Why don't you like women's sports?
Him: Women's sports are fucking boring.
Me: Have you ever watched a women's game, in any sport?
Him: Yeah, I saw like 4 minutes of one once; it was really boring.

I actually get this quite a lot. Like, a lot. And I've just thought of a killer retort, that I, unfortunately, have never thought to use before.

What if I told you I'd watched Super Bowl XLI and that was enough to conclude that all men's sports are boring?

This would test

1. his knowledge of football (what happened in Super Bowl XLI?), and
2. his logic.

I'm not really holding my breath over #2, considering that the guys who give me this sort of bullshit are all pretty much the same.

Anyway, it's stressful. It's stressful to be faced with the choice of either

1. getting into a heated debate and winding up with the ANGRY FEMINIST label (I thought you were one of the guys because we were just hanging out and talking basketball but now you're all up in my grill why can't you just be the laidback cool chick I thought you were before you got all crazy on me), or
2. stop talking about women's sports, which includes both not bringing up conversation topics I want to talk about and pretending it doesn't bother me when people slam the women's tournament (so I wanted to watch the Butler game and CBS was stuck on St. Mary's-Villanova so I tried ESPN but they had some goddamn women's game on. it was bullshit.).

I love March Madness. But for me, it's inherently stressful.

Don't even get me started on the bullshit I get when I try to explain why I don't fill out a bracket. I can't even figure out if that crap is sexist or just dumb.

I'm not fat.

I'm also not disabled, or a person of color, or trans/queer/other, but the point of this particular post is that I'm not a fat person. (And yes, I'm using the word "fat" -- not as a derogation, but as an adjective.) I've been thinking about discrimination a lot lately, probably because I've been reading the shit out of Shakesville lately, but the point is that I have some things to say.

I'm not fat, but I've been made to feel "less than" (as they say over at Shakesville) because of my relative level of fatness, in a very specific area: breast size.

I'm 5'4" and 125-130 lbs and I wear a 32-34D bra. This does not make me, in any way, extraordinary. I know plenty of women with various combinations of the numbers I just threw out; most of my sisters come to mind immediately. And yet, it's so goddamn hard for me to find a bra, because apparently I AM extraordinary with my D-cup breasts.

My best friend, who I love dearly, wears an A cup. She, like many of the women I know, shop at Walmart/Target for bras, because they consider 3 things when buying a bra:

1. It must fit me.
2. It must be cute and/or sexy.
3. It must be affordable.

She, like myself and many of the women I know, considers those three characteristics to be essential when purchasing a bra. You might say she considers it her right to obtain a cute, well-fitting bra without shelling out a lot of money for it. I also consider it my right, but here's the thing: she can accomplish this -- easily. Swimmingly, you might say. She wears A cups. She can breeze in and out of Walmart/Target in 10 minutes and come away with several bras that she likes and didn't really pay that much for.

I, as you may have already guessed, can't do that. I can't shop at Walmart/Target for bras unless I want to sacrifice characteristics #1 and #2 (anything that fits me properly at Walmart/Target is, frankly, the ugliest thing ever, and also, "properly" is a relative word). I can't shop at Victoria's Secret unless I want to sacrifice #3, and potentially #1 (they say they can measure you so that FINALLY you will wear your correct bra size, but I've found that their measurements surprisingly coincide with whichever size they currently have the most of). For that matter, I can't shop at Victoria's Secret, or Nordstrom, or any of those fancy bra places, because I live in a fucking ski town and we just don't have them here.

And so, my "bra rights" are severely limited because I have big boobies. My big boobies are not my fault; I have not had breast implants; I just have big-breasted genes. Does my best friend deserve more bra rights because she has smaller-breasted genes? Looks like it from the outside.

These days, I don't feel "less than" because of my breasts; it's just an annoyance that I do my best to get around. But in high school, when I was the dorky, shy girl with D cups, surrounded by my friends, who were beautiful girls with B cups, max, all incredibly popular, I did feel "less than". I felt that the reason I never dated was because I was Fat (by Fat, I mean the derogation and shame that generally seems to come with the adjective in our culture).

In gym class, we had this scale one day that told you your body fat percentage. Our teacher told us healthy women had around 25% body fat. Mine was 26.something%, and this made me feel Fat.

Seriously. I was like 1% above average, and it made me feel Fat. Luckily, I was a rather wise 17-year-old, which allowed me to quickly quash that omg i'm such a Faaaaatty impulse and remind myself that my teacher had said "around" 25%, and 1% was not that much higher than average, and I was pretty healthy and active and beautiful and fuck their stupid body fat percentage.

But really, those wise thoughts are beside the point. I should not have had to think ANY of those thoughts, and the society that put them there is to blame.

And the final annoyance: I'm told a lot, implicitly and overtly, that I should be delighted at my large breasts, because some people would do anything to have them. This is bad, in my mind, for several reasons:

1. It's my body, and how I choose to feel about it is none of your goddamn business.
2. You don't know what you're fucking talking about, because you've never had a hard time finding a bra that just goddamn fit you.
3. Society tells me I'm supposed to have big breasts, in order to be a Sexually Desirable Woman, then turns around and makes it difficult to have big breasts on a daily basis, not just for 90 minutes of a feature film. Your succulent breasts exist only to feed my fantasies; dealing with them in the real world is entirely your problem.

I guess this last is more sexism and less focused on the topic of this post, but there it is.

*** *** ***

I went back and forth for a while over whether I actually had a right to discuss this. Like I said, I'm not fat, and I keep saying that I'm not fat not because I'm trying to establish right off that I'm not fat, lest anyone thinks falsely that I am, because I am not fat goddammit no fucking way -- but because I'm just not. Nobody who saw me on the street would give me the fat adjective, and neither would my BMI, if you believe that crock of shit. And yet, I have been discriminated against on the basis of my relative size.

Which is exactly what made me realize that I do have a right to discuss this, and not only do I have a right, I have a responsibility. I was feeling that perhaps complaining on t3h internets about my experiences would be something along the lines of bragging (oh hey I'm not fat, check me out everyone), or rubbing my neatly average body in your [fat] face (woe is me, I'm a size 4 but look at how hard my life is), but the truth is, if I allowed those thoughts to prevent me from sharing my experiences, I am no better than the fat-shamers, because why the shit should I feel like I'm bragging by talking about my average body unless that average body is inherently preferable to a fat one? Which would mean that fat people deserve shame -- which I do not believe.

If we want acceptance at every size, we need to talk about every size; I can't hide in my hole feeling guilty because I'm not *shudder* fat -- thank god i'm not fat! because it does nobody any good.

If I felt Fat (read: undesirable, unloveable, "less than") because of 1 goddamn percentage point, how much worse is it for the fat 17-year-olds?