a bit of a katie girl.

happy friday!

xoxo.
ellie

i have a confession.

since moving to washington d.c. i sometimes indulge in long, unadulterated fantasies about my little red ford escape. i catch my mind wandering to those blissful collegiate days, when i had to walk a mere half mile to the parking lot at st. olaf college and put the keys in the ignition for instant transportation to such exotic locales as cub foods, target, or the twin cities of minneapolis and st. paul.

life was good.

my escape (or as my friends and i call it, the escápe) is decked out with a six disk cd changer, sun roof, stow and go seating, and plenty of room for my dog. it got me safely to and from camp, work, school, art museums, band concerts…and before this year, before lvc, i may have never been aware of my cute little car’s dirty little secret. it is a bona fide gas guzzler.

at 28 mpg on the highway and an annual fuel cost of $1700 i am beginning to realize the environmental and economical impact of all the driving i did before moving to washington d.c. this year. in the volunteer program i am currently doing, my transportation stipend is $45 a month. i usually spend around $50 which brings my total transportation costs for the entire year to about $600, or a third of what driving would cost.

did i try to talk my middle-aged, slightly cranky father (whom i love dearly) into a hybrid? of course i did. but two years ago when we chose this car he still felt the technology was too new to invest in. he felt that, like the iphone, hybrid cars would reduce in price and increase in quality over the next several years and that it would be better to wait until we purchased one. while i’m not disagreeing, per se, what i am realizing is that it isn’t easy being green.

i am thinking seriously about moving back to minneapolis next year, a city almost completely devoid of convenient public transportation of any sort. a bad bike accident in my younger days (and by younger i mean 18, which found me in me in the cat scan machine in the emergency room with a slight concussion and some memory loss, has left me leery of two wheeled transportation. i do enjoy walking, but it doesn’t always fit so neatly into my type-a, over scheduled lifestyle. so what is an eco-conscious girl to do?

this is one of the many dilemmas i have faced while exploring sustainability this year. for those of you who don’t know, it is one of the core tenets of lutheran volunteer corps. my house of seven female volunteers is working toward the goal slowly…but we have had some hilarious moments along the way. take the diva cup disaster for example.

i am grossed out by diva cups. there, i said it. i know i am a feminist. i know i’m not supposed to think that the menstruation cycle is dirty. i’m supposed to celebrate it, right? be a womyn, connect with the moon goddess or some sort of new age bull shit. but the honest to goodness truth is that i hate blood. in any form. and after several conversations in our house about how bad for your body, the environment and society in general tampons are…all of my roommates ordered diva cups. except me. my one requirement for this arrangement was that i didn’t have to see them. ever. i didn’t even want to know they existed. my roommates agreed and i spent the first six months of this year living in my bleached cotton, plastic applicator fantasy land where i pretended i wasn’t destroying the environment every month and that alternatives simply didn’t exist. and you know what? it worked.

it worked until, after work one day, i saw one of the alternatives staring back at me from the sink. and i screamed. i started jumping up and down, shaking my hands, and yelling at my roommates to come save me. i hadn’t behaved this way since a wolf spider the size of my hand crawled into my sleeping bag at bible camp last summer. the offending roommate came and removed the item. life returned to normal. but i’ll be darned if it hasn’t been bothering me since. in my mind’s eye there it is, little…convenient…reusable. next to its little purple pouch. do i love the environment this much? i’m still deciding.

the truth of the matter is that being green is complicated. “eco-chic” has begun to permeate our lifestyle. a blog post i read recently from her bad mom asked if eco-moms could be the new soccer moms. she wisely asks:

But what if it undermines the cause? What if the ‘trendiness’ of eco-maternity really does just make it seem as though eco-moms are just another version of soccer-mom: fundamentally absorbed in their own interests and disinclined to think beyond their own communities?

greenlagirl also points out that the sheer trendiness of “organic” and “eco-friendly” products have created an undeniably lucrative new market, with some companies failing to deliver what they promise to conscious consumers. apparently, some of the most beloved brands in the business (kiss my face and seventh generation) are being sued by the organic consumers association for containing carcinogens.

so now what? will we ever be green enough? do even the smallest efforts count? i hope so. it may take me awhile to get my hybrid car or to discern which shampoo is going to be least likely to cause cancer…but until then i’ll have my re-usable bags and in season produce. i’ll continue turning off lights, showering every other day, and not drinking bottled water. i’ll keep using all-natural cleaning products and laundry soap. i’ll ride the 80 bus, the world’s most inconvenient method of public transportation, and i will walk. i will drink fair trade, organic coffee and shop at the co-op. i will calculate my eco-footprint and think about ways to reduce it. i will add complication to my life to preserve the beautiful complication of our planet’s delicate ecosystem.

and who knows? i might even start using a diva cup.

xoxo.

ellie

so, i am new to the blogging world. and although i would like to admire my own creativity, i’m not sure i would have come up with something quite as clever as blogher.com. i came upon it while procrastinating at work, and interestingly enough, found myself quoted! in a very well written and thought provoking article, nonetheless! check out suzanne’s blog, here.

i immediately signed up (duh) and started checking out some of the blogs. what a cool community of women. they also have “assignments” from time to time, one of which is to write a letter to your body. i think i might do this, and you should too. in fact, a letter to your body would make a great submission to the katie girl project (hint hint).

happy thursday to you all (maundy thursday if you are of the christian persuasion).

xoxo.

ellie

i am a katie girl because i finally fit comfortably in the “gray”, at least for the time being. for a long time i was in the “black”, and then i had a short stint of “white”; now i am comfortable having absolutely no definition other than “gray”.

i grew up in a seemingly normal family, but found myself in trouble – especially regarding boys. it started with my first kiss at summer camp at the age of 14, and my life got deeper and deeper into the “black”, solidified with my first sexual partner at the age of 16. august 10th, in a hotel room. i think his name was paul. after that, it was “black” nearly every weekend…. i can’t remember their names, where they were from, or anything about them. i loved the gratification, but shortly after would feel intense remorse and depression. they didn’t love me. they probably didn’t even like me. you might say that my “black” was a black hole of empty fulfillment. despite concerned warnings from family and friends, i turned my back. i was too good, i was in too much control. i just didn’t care.

then one cold and lonely night I hit the ultimate bottom of my “black”. i was sick of living. what’s the purpose? there was a voice on the other end of the phone, relaying a message of hope and love; a message of “white” purity and cleanliness. (no, he wasn’t a jehovah witness.) in essence, he was my “white knight”, my savior. he led me to believe in the goodness of people, in the goodness of myself. and after many months, i finally realized i could love myself. i could love him. we had the utmost pure and wonderful relationship, abstaining from drinking, smoking, even sex. i climbed up on my soapbox and denounced family and friends, the ones who tried to save me from the “black”. now they were the ones who needed “saving” from their lives of sin. i burned bridges with my moral preaching and was happy knowing i was better than everyone else. i didn’t need anyone except my white knight.

but the higher you are, the harder you fall. it was bound to happen. i was left in pieces like a broken stained glass window…. once black, and painted over white. Now completely indistinguishable. who am i? where do i belong? i had driven away nearly every friend and family member who remotely cared…. if not by my “black” behavior, than by my “white” condescending preaching. thankfully there were a few other “katie girls” who understood the confusing rollercoaster of “creating yourself” who stuck by my side and were quick to forgive and forget. i love them tremendously and am extremely thankful to have them in my life!

my favorite quote of all time is, “life is not about finding yourself; life is about creating yourself.”

i am 23 and finally starting to realize that i am OKAY in the “grey”. in fact, this is where i belong. i’m neither “black” nor “white”. i am not a sexual deviant or a godsend that lives strictly by the bible’s teachings. i am me. and I have finally “created myself”. i am a “katie girl” who is surrounded by people who love me – grey and all.

the blog moderator would like to offer her special thanks to the author of this piece, a lifelong friend of whom i couldn’t be prouder. i love you, girl.

i’m going to start with a disclaimer. i majored in women’s studies in college, so i tend to see everything through a feminist critical lens. that being said, i have several thoughts about the spitzer scandal.

first, some thoughts on the “high priced call girl”. it is impossible to ignore the media’s quest for information about ashley alexandra dupre, aka “kristin”. over the past few days, t.v. shows have interviewed her friends, excavated her myspace profile, and stalked her family at their home. anybody with internet access now knows ashley dupre is an aspiring singer who has struggled with drugs. a woman who left a broken home at age seventeen to “make it in the big city”. someone who knows what its like to “wake up one day and have the people you care most about gone”. a young girl (and i can say that because we are the same age) who saves restaurant leftovers for the homeless and who desperately wants to be a star. who encourages others on her myspace page not to let anyone hold them back. a woman who is, by the very definition of this project, a katie girl.

we’ve all made mistakes. we all have a past. a history that includes things we are embarrassed about. those of us who are lucky share that history with the people who love us. we are known. what is ironic about “kristin”, about ashley, is that if governor spitzer hadn’t been caught he wouldn’t have known any of this about her. ever. and neither would we. he wouldn’t have known her real name, her checkered past, her mistakes, her aspirations. to him she was just another call girl. a high-priced good time. she was her sexuality and nothing more. we live in a society where men can pay to eliminate the complications of a relationship. where they can purchase false intimacy. people can point fingers all they want to, talk about her “seductive eyes” or her choice to be a prostitute. but the truth of the matter is, that if we lived in a truly egalitarian society, men wouldn’t be able to purchase sex. we wouldn’t be able to reduce females to their sexuality, to determine the worth of a woman based on her cup size or the way she performs in the bedroom. we wouldn’t set unrealistic standards, that even when met, don’t guarantee happiness.

take silda spitzer for example.

even pat buchanan would have a tough time finding fault here. brilliant, beautiful, harvard-educated lawyer gives up a promising career to raise three daughters and support her husband’s political ambitions. she stays thin, attractive and in shape. she is a good mother and even (for good measure) starts a nonprofit to educate privileged children in manhattan about poverty. heck, she even changed her name! while she was known in her professional life as “silda wall”, for the sake of her husband’s career she was silda spitzer. possessed yet supportive. the woman who would stand up next to her husband as he proclaimed to the world that he was either arrogant or stupid enough to pay for sex. silda spitzer is a katie girl, too. she is a katie girl because she has to function in a society that tells her to “stand by her man.” because she has to figure out a way to reclaim a personal identity as she accompanies her husband into political exile. because love makes us do complicated things.

so before we judge either of these women, let’s remember that they are each functioning in a society that is still telling them, as adrienne rich so eloquently puts it, that women should “be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us.”

we don’t live in a post-feminist world, contrary to what we all want to believe. the united states still suppresses women, not by laws, but by the implicit expectations we have to meet lest our identity and choices be questioned and criticized. it is not enough to be thin, beautiful and smart…you also have to get married young and be willing to give up everything to raise your children. and even if you do all that, your husband might still pay for sex with a woman half his age.

i am tired of hearing “always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” i am exhausted of hearing my choice to prioritize myself and my career questioned. i don’t want to see my friends open up lingerie and kitchenware at their wedding showers because i hate what that implies about a woman’s role in marriage. i don’t want anyone to tell me that i can’t do it all. i’m not sure if i want kids. i’m choosing not to marry young…and that doesn’t mean that i haven’t ever been asked. that i haven’t ever been in love. that i haven’t ever given up a relationship because i realized it was holding me back from the woman i’m meant to become. i hate that i live in a world where i have to see women like ashley dupre and silda spitzer suffer as a result of what can only be classified as gender violence.

simply stated, i want more than this.

for me, for my mom, for my grandma, for my friends. for the daughter i might have someday. power is still based on gender, on race, on socio-economic class and until that structure changes we will still see women like ashley dupre being victimized and women like silda spitzer standing by the men who do it. their silence indicating complacency in a system that they didn’t help create but are forced to participate in for their very survival. something has to change.

xoxo.

ellie