APW Happy Hour

Happy Hour Brought to you by Monogamy Wine | APW

Left: Glamour, April 2014 (featuring Lena Dunham) | Right: New York Magazine, March 10-23, 2014 (featuring Elisabeth Moss)

HEY, APW!

I want to take a time out to talk about the book I’m currently reading, because it’s amazing. If, like me, you do things like read New York Magazine and listen to NPR, then you’ve already heard a lot about Jennifer Senior’s All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. (Or, if you’re Maddie, you’ve never heard of it, which is cool too.) It’s a super smart exploration into what it means to be a modern parent, specifically, children’s effect on their parents, not the other way around. It also contains some of the most beautifully written descriptions of the emotional depth and otherworldly joy of parenting. If you’re at all interested in the subject, read it. Seriously.

Otherwise, in a week where Lena Dunham is on one of my magazine covers and Elizabeth Moss is on another, let’s just meet in the link roundup, why don’t we?

Open thread below!

XO
MEG

Highlights of APW This Week

Bridal shows: they’re ACTUALLY shows! And a little bit scary to attend without a flask, honestly.

We introduced our pitcher cocktail series, and I’m fully in favor of having a brandy Sidecar this weekend. Or maybe a pitcher full.

We had some great on-theme conversations this week about being hungry for it (or not) in our careers, and they’re still going strong!

Choosing a wedding dress. Sometimes you have to admit that you you do, in fact give a fuck.

Mourning singledom. Will I miss my clawfoot tub? Spoiler: yes.

Link Roundup

It takes courage to want something. This post on childhood vulnerability broke my heart (open).

New York Magazine’s photo essay of a day-in-the-life of Jemima Kirke really stuck with me, because it gives a not-usually-viewed image of motherhood that jives far more with who I am. Even if I don’t tattoo my shabbat guests.

You shouldn’t need a reason for not wanting to have kids.

Lena Dunham on feminism, body image, and women supporting women (watch the video!), plus badass pictures. (You have to buy the print magazine for the whole interview, which I for sure did.)

Elizabeth Moss, on how she needs to be friends with me. (Needing to be friends with Lena is too obvious to mention.)

My (now, actual, real life) friend Maggie on how to answer “What do you do?” when most descriptions of your job make people think you’re unemployed. (Me.)

Makeup that addresses the many shades of women.

Eternal Sunshine destroyed the idea of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl before it even existed.

L’Wren Scott never wanted to be identified as “Someone’s Girlfriend.”

“It might be that the greatest act of kindness on the Internet is to be quiet.”

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Becoming Less

Becoming Less | A Practical Wedding

I had always expected the wedding dress shopping process to be an exciting time in my life. I suppose I had never really thought about how being a recovered anorexic would affect the process. Or, rather, how the process of dress shopping would affect my recovery. As I began to look at pictures of dresses, the actual prospect of trying them on and looking at myself in a mirror filled me with dread. Downright panic, even.

Brides are iconic. They’re supposed to look a certain way. To be beautiful, and, of course, to be thin. Years of looking at pictures of models in wedding dresses, their humanity Photoshopped right out of them, do take their toll, no matter how much I tell myself I’ve risen above. This isn’t a story about me coming to terms with not looking like a model, though. This is a story of what’s happened since then.

Since becoming engaged, I’ve started dieting. Falling into old patterns is so easy—the diet plans and the calorie counting are so comforting. The charts and lists and numbers are like old friends, and they give me the steady assurance that I am becoming less.

For years, I worked tirelessly to be less. To take up less physical space in the world, yes. But also to need less from the men I dated. To be the girl who gave her boyfriend (whoever he was at the time) everything he wanted, without asking for anything in return. To be less myself, and instead, to attempt to be the exact woman that particular boy wanted. If only I could disappear into the image of his ideal woman, I’d be worthy. I’d be chosen. I never really succeeded in that endeavor, but I tried. Oh, I tried.

I still have those thoughts—I must make myself less in order to be the kind of woman who’s worthy of marriage. But then my fiancé comes in and reads me like a book and tells me, without any prompting from me, that he doesn’t want me to be less. He wants me to be more. More of everything that I am, because he knows me and loves me, authentically and fully, and it hurts him to see me become less of myself. With him, I am chosen, and it did not require disappearing into his ideal.

Like magic, he knows that I’m dieting, too. He’s told me that he’s worried, and I know that if this gets out of hand, he’ll be the one who asks me to seek treatment. In the meantime, he offers and he loves. He offers me food. He offers with authentic love and without judgment, and that really does make it easier to accept. I don’t need to be less for him. The urge to starve is still there, but my rationalizations for it are not. I’d be lying if I said I always accept what he offers. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t lose another pound last week. But it’s something. It’s a start.

If I could tie this story up in a neat bow, I would. However, our wedding is still a year away and this battle is far from won. This is not a victory or a moral of the story—this is merely a hope. When I stand with him on our wedding day and we commit our lives to one another, I hope that I won’t enter our union withering and less. I hope I am able to enter it as myself, authentic and full.