so, i know i promised to put up a new katie girl post every tuesday. and i fully intended to keep that promise. however, things have been a bit crazy around here with strep throat and the cell phone disaster and now i am leaving for a retreat in pennsylvania for the weekend.
so katie girl might have to wait a bit.
although i assure you that the next entry is going to be really good. seriously. and that i will post it next tuesday. until then, here is what’s on my mind (because that’s what a blog is for, right?):
i stayed up until one o’clock finishing o, pioneers by willa cather this morning and almost died it was so good. i like to read cather when i’m homesick. i know she is writing about nebraska, but her descriptions of the plains are painfully beautiful and remind me so much of the farms around owatonna.
i also love that cather was this fantastic, gifted, gender bending lesbian trapped in victorian culture. her writing always manages to convey this in such fascinating ways. in everything i have read about cather’s life there is this great sense of the tension between who a person is, who they are meant to be, and who they have actually become. cather moves to new york city when she’s young and gets this great job as an editor, but what she really wants to do is write. so she creates this mediocre novel that is essentially a second rate version of henry james. other people like it, but cather is unsatisfied…she just can’t seem to find her own voice. frustrated, she leaves new york city and travels to visit her brother and to visit her parents in her hometown on the prairies of nebraska. this is where she finally finds her story. she starts composing o, pioneers and finishes it after returning to the east coast. she subsequently writes several more books and stories about life on the great plains including my antonia and the song of the lark.
i love that cather had to go home before she found her story. she had to reconcile where she came from, her roots, with the version of herself she had spent her twenties creating. and it is in this reconciliation that she must have realized she needed both. home is where she writes about and she writes it beautifully, but she needed both who she was and who she had become to find her authentic voice. roots and wings. somewhere along the line we all figure out we need them both. a lesson i’m still trying to learn.
willa cather was definitely a katie girl. and i envy her (as any author would) for finding the story she was born to tell. you can see her settling into the language of o, pioneers. the prose is absolutely effortless because she is speaking a truth from her own life, complications and all.
i leave you for the weekend with one of my favorite passages, and a promise that i will be back with a new entry for the katie girl project next tuesday. until then:
“she had never known before how much the country meant to her. the chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. she had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.”
i have been conspicuously silent for the past few days…there is a reason.
thursday morning i woke up with an incredibly sore throat. like, i couldn’t even swallow. i decided to stay home from work and ended up sleeping from 12:30-6:30. guess i really was sick. i chatted briefly with mom, who thought it was probably just your basic sore throat and that i would feel better the next day.
it didn’t.
day two i wake up and it looks (and feels) even worse. my tonsils are so huge i can hardly talk. so i navigate my new insurance plan on my own (with lots of help from c. and a.) and make an appointment to go see a nurse practitioner in adams morgan. i show up and get tested for strep…which comes back positive. surprise, surprise. now for those of you unfamiliar with the extreme pain associated with strep throat, count your lucky stars. for those of you who have never had to navigate public transportation in d.c. while experiencing the extreme pain associated with strep throat, also count your lucky stars.
one metro and an 80 bus ride later i made it to cvs to get my prescription…i bought some gatorade (which i could barely swallow) and waited a half an hour to get my antibiotics. this all had me close to tears as i trudged back outside to wait for (yet another) bus to bring me home. as i was standing at the bus stop i called mom for some much needed sympathy and we chatted for awhile about my diagnosis. there was a guy standing at the bus stop with me, but i didn’t pay too much attention to him. he was only about 10 feet away, so i can only assume that he heard my entire conversation with my mom about strep throat, etc. after i got off of my phone i was checking the time when the guy ran over, grabbed my arm, and pulled my cell phone out of my hand. right there, in broad daylight, in front of the government accountability office. i screamed something like “are you kidding me!?” and tried to pull it back, but he (being much larger than i) absconded with it hastily. i stared down the street in disbelief.
thankfully (two) knights in shining armor (of a sort) saw the incident happen from half a block away…one tried to catch the creep and the other came to ask me if he could call the police. the cell phone wasn’t recovered. and a very sad girl boarded the 80 bus about 10 minutes later bound for home.
when i arrived back at our little row house no one was home (roommates all being at work), so i called my dad and promptly burst into tears about the injustice of it all. i hate having strep throat, being in a city that is still so unfamiliar sometimes, and having my cell phone stolen by random scary men at bus stops in broad daylight. dad (of course, because he is my hero) immediately called verizon, cancelled the phone, ordered me a replacement one, and had it ups’d out here. it will arrive tuesday…but that so isn’t the point.
the point is that the person who stole my phone saw me and assumed i could afford another one. and while my parents can, i can’t. and i hate taking money from my parents at 22 years old. i am a volunteer, living and working with around $100 worth of spending money a month and while my basic needs are met, i don’t have the ability to make emergency purchases like a new cell phone. when i was standing at the bus stop with the guy who took my phone i didn’t think twice about his race, his income level, or the way he was dressed. because society (and lvc) has repeatedly told me that it is inappropriate to make judgments about people based on these factors. i didn’t feel unsafe standing next to him because i have spent the last six months working through a lot of the preconceived ideas about race and class that i had before i moved out here. i can honestly say that, while i noticed him, the thought didn’t even occur to me to be scared. but even though i didn’t stereotype him, he stereotyped me. he made assumptions about my income level and ability to replace that phone, when in reality i had just spent close to a week’s stipend on paying for antibiotics out of pocket because our insurance doesn’t have a prescription benefit.
am i pissed? hell yes i am. i am angry that this is the world that i live in and that no matter what you do, or how hard to work to overcome putting other people in boxes they are so quick to put you in one. maybe i am young, white, privileged, and vulnerable, but i have a right to stand on a bus stop at 2:00 in the afternoon without having my cell phone stolen or being afraid of the black man that i am sharing the bench with.
i’ve spent the last several days in bed, groggy from tylenol p.m., watching the west wing and wondering when the world is going to get better. racial politics and stereotypes haven’t gone anywhere except underground, folks. i think it’s time we all start acknowledging that and moving towards a solution.
…may just be my new favorite place. i was walking over to meet r. and d. yesterday before our fabulous dinner event (at which i drank far too much champagne) and outside the 7-11 on 13th and irving a man looked at me and said: “do you know how pretty you are!?”
new favorite person. new favorite convenience store. but what i should admit is that i did, in fact, give him a face like “are you kidding me right now?” my immediate response because it was (a) pouring rain and (b) the end of a very long day at work. and although i have heretofore hesitated to put any concrete definition on what a “katie girl” actually is…one thing i decided last night is that katie girls own the compliments people give them.
so i promise, next time a random street man tells me that i’m pretty, i’m going to respond with a simple “thank you.”
okay, there are actually multiple reasons. but today i love it because of this article. it interviews several people…but my favorite responses came from sandy fernandez who edits the washington post magazine’s date lab. read on, and i think you’ll see why:
they say you know when you know. I think that’s . . .100 percent, absolutely, no
question, true. And you know when you don’t know, too, though often you won’t admit it.
i wish i’d known when I was 19 that . . . that maxim about love being hard work is only for when you’re, like, married with kids. but if you’re just dating and it’s such hard work — buh-bye. life’s too short.
when things get really bad . . . ask your friends to give you their unvarnished advice. take it.
heartache is . . . an important and noble emotion to feel. Once. Or twice. After that, you’re just being indulgent.
valentine’s day . . . is a great excuse to get drunk and — wait a second, this is a family newspaper, right?
in the end, what’s most important is . . . finding someone who has your back, always and no question. it’ll totally change your life.
these are definitely the responses of a katie girl! in fact, for those of you that haven’t written to me yet, this could be a good format to write your response (hint, hint). here are my responses:
they say you know when you know. i think that’s . . .something that women in relationships tell women who aren’t in relationships to make themselves feel superior.
i wish i’d known when I was 19 that . . .staying in a relationship for more than six months is setting yourself up for a broken heart.
when things get really bad . . . listen to your parents and your friends. if everyone else is telling you he isn’t right for you, he probably isn’t.
heartache is . . . often the beginning of a beautiful journey. in the midst of pain you see things you otherwise wouldn’t have noticed…for me, a broken heart was the beginning of recreating my life and becoming the person i should have been all along.
valentine’s day . . . is the leading cause of death for stuffed animals in the united states (just ask my gordon setter, nellie…the proud destroyer of nearly every valentine’s day gift i’ve received from well meaning but unoriginal boyfriends).
in the end, what’s most important is . . . finding someone who complements rather than completes you. life is too short to wait for someone else to come up with answers about your life.
happy early valentine’s day to all of you…i wish you love in any (all) of its various forms. keep those submissions coming!
here is my essay on why i’m a katie girl
(for an explanation of the whole project, see the entry directly below this):
i am a katie girl because i have big hair. anyone that knows me, knows this. when i was born i had chestnut brown ringlets covering my entire head and the nurses tied in three pink bows. i am a katie girl because the feminist in me questions this sometimes. that i had a socially constructed gender identity at less than an hour old.
but back to my hair.
when i was two or three it started growing in blond. my mom has a lock of my hair that is half blond and half brown. it also straightened out. but it was still big and thick, and when i was in kindergarten my mom used to crimp it and put it in a side ponytail. i was frequently referred to as “lioness” and “large marge” as a child because of it. it became part of my identity.
in high school it was popular to straighten your hair. thin, straight hair was all the rage and my katie girl hair didn’t fit. adolescence had turned it curly and wild again. in the summer it frizzed out and at some point in junior high i had dyed it a bizarre shade of yellow-blond. it didn’t fit in and so neither did i. i used to straighten it everyday, layer by layer, inch by inch, until it was unrecognizable. one day i overslept and when i walked into class one of the guys i went to school with laughed out loud at my katie girl hair. i’ll never forget standing in our physics classroom, humiliated.
when i went to college i started noticing girls on campus who were unapologetic about their katie girl hair. some had dreads and afros, others had pin tight ringlets, and still others rocked amazing pixie cuts. to a vulnerable eighteen year old this bordered on miraculous. at the end of the year, my best friend and i realized that we had the same katie girl hair. at the end of high school, she had cut hers short, much like i had straightened mine. by the end of our freshman year we were embracing our crazy waves (which aren’t exactly curls) and wearing our hair huge. and gorgeous.
i used to hate it when people touched my hair. they were usually commenting on it or trying to smooth it down and it made me feel like i was being violated. i needed people to leave my katie girl hair alone, to just let it be.
i still straighten my hair sometimes. for job interviews and important meetings. it is still patted down by well meaning middle aged women on occasion. i still wear it short because long my katie girl hair is too much. now my friends call it my “sex hair.” i’m okay with this. i also apologize for it frequently. when people say my katie girl hair looks nice i tell them i overslept and didn’t have time to straighten it.
i’m a katie girl because i still don’t feel like i fit. because i think my hair defines me sometimes. because the complicated relationship i have with the way i look is a battle i am still fighting. i don’t look in magazines and see myself, i have to look in the mirror for that. and the person i see there is a katie girl. complicated, happy, judgmental, passionate, driven. and more than a little bit self-conscious about the skin she’s in.
as promised, here is my attempt at explaining what i am now referring to as “the katie girl project.”
i majored in women’s studies in college, and one of my enduring passions over those four years was reading the stories of women’s lives. eleanor roosevelt, adrienne rich, gail griffin, katharine hepburn, toni morrison, willa cather, the list goes on and on…these are the women i learned about, the lives i read about and wanted to make my own. as we grow and move through this world we collect bits and pieces of these wild, courageous women, and incorporate them into our own lives. we make mistakes (lots of them) on the path to self-actualization and understanding. as my favorite college professor once said, “we come to knowledge through a lived life”. this idea is the inspiration for the katie girl project.
the name of the project comes from one of my favorite episodes of sex and the city where carrie, miranda, samantha and charlotte are sitting around having drinks and talking about the movie “the way we were.” big has just gotten engaged to natasha, breaking carrie’s heart and she has spent the episode looking for an answer to why he didn’t choose her to marry.
as the girls carouse in the bar they start talking about the barbara streisand movie “the way we were,” where streisand (the lovely, passionate activist) falls in love with robert redford (the dashing and talented, but conventional, writer). at first it seems an unlikely match (the gifted golden boy meets slightly awkward, over opinionated mensch) but eventually a role reversal transpires, as streisand comes of age and stays true to her passions while redford sells his talent short as a television writer. the two part ways and streisand moves on with her life. when they meet by chance in front of the plaza hotel some years later (in one of the most famous final scenes in hollywood history) where it becomes apparent that streisand has come into her own, stuck to her passions and displayed courage and clout while redford has merely settled. streisand tells redford’s character: “your girl is lovely, hubbell” in the heartbreaking final moments where the audience understands that sometimes love doesn’t conquer all.
the recollection inspires carrie’s epiphany that there are two types of girls. the simple girls, and the katie girls. “i’m a katie girl!” she shouts. after the women leave the restaurant she encounters big after his engagement brunch and says one of my favorite lines from all of sex and the city: “maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed. maybe they need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with.”
so this is the inspiration for the katie girl project as it currently stands. your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to send me an e-mail (ellen.draeger@gmail.com) that explains why you are a katie girl. it can be a picture, a short essay, a work of art, a quote, or anything else you can think of that helps express an important part of your “lived life” to the world.
i plan on featuring a different “katie girl” story on my blog every week. as i continue to collect stories, ideas, art, etc. i hope that i eventually have enough to do something really big with the project. so if you have any ideas on that…feel free to include those as well (!) also, please pass on this information to any fun, fearless female that you know who would be a great candidate for the project.
above all, the katie girl project is about celebrating the unique role women play as teachers in one another’s lives. we have all learned some major lessons about life, love and following your passions…we celebrate together, cry together, learn together and build our lives together. the more connected we are the stronger we become.
xoxo.
ellie
p.s. remember to e-mail me with your stories (leave a comment here with your e-mail address and i’ll get back to you). all submissions will be posted anonymously (unless you request otherwise), but for my records include your name, age and e-mail address.
i guess the first entry is supposed to be some sort of justification for putting your life on the internet for everyone to read about. so, why am i starting a blog?
1. i don’t write enough anymore. this is what happens when you graduate from college and stop being interesting (haha). i keep telling myself i’m going to write down some of the (mis)adventures of my life in d.c. for possible future use, and this seems an appropriate forum to do so.
2. i am giving up facebook for lent. that’s right, you heard it here first folks. i am not going on the social networking devil for the next forty days. god help my soul. there are several reasons for this, primary among them being that i have come to a recent conclusion that facebook is really a device to help you compare yourself to other people. and unless you are careful, it is easy to feel like your life is coming up short. so instead of making strategic changes to my quotes and adding pictures to let you know how fabulous my life is, i’m going to write about it instead. and to stop feeling like my life is inferior (so dumb).
3. i need to learn how to blog for work. we are starting one around here soon (i think) so i need to get used to the intricacies of tagging, rss, del.icio.us, etc. all of which i know little to nothing about. by figuring it out on here i will subsequently make myself look like a genius at work. duh. i also really like posting articles from the many newspapers i read on a daily basis and subjecting all of you to my opinions about them. aren’t you lucky?
4. here’s to hoping this eventually becomes a forum for guest bloggers. i’m extending an invitation to other katie girls out there to write an entry and send it to me (ellen.draeger@gmail.com). you know who you are.
so, that is all i have for now. happy super tuesday, etc. more soon.
