I’m ankle-deep in Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick: And Other Essays, which I am really enjoying despite what I’m going to say next.

I AM SO ANNOYED. Or rather I’m annoyed by a handful of paragraphs in an essay about white beauty standards, body shame, and Miley Cyrus. In these paragraphs she’s talking about a high school experience and she repeatedly refers to one kid in her class as the “too tall boy.”

What the actual fuck does that even mean? Too tall for what?

Yes, I am super sensitive about “too tall.” It triggers every single one of my defense mechanisms because by nearly every standard I am too tall too. It’s a burden that I have carried with me every day of my entire life and will continue to carry until the day I that I die. I haven’t finished the essay yet and she might reconcile that she’s talking about unruly bodies and totally judging that too tall boy for being too much of something she has deemed undesirable.

I didn’t finish the essay because I had to stop after the third reference to the “too tall boy.” It made me too angry to finish, though I will go back to it later tonight.

Here are a few trigger words guaranteed to make me think stink-eye thoughts about the writer and/or stop reading their piece altogether.

Half: especially in reference to siblings. Half-sister, half-brother, whole bunch of barf. I don’t know why writers feel the need to consistently other people like this. Nothing is more wretched than being made to feel illegitimate, less than, and that’s how I feel whenever I read this word in reference to people. I’m always unclear of what the writer is trying to telegraph about a person by pointing out they are a half-sibling or have half-siblings. Am I supposed to think something different about the half-sibling? Am I supposed to read half-sister and be think “oh, one of those.” I don’t get it.

Slutty: ugh. This one. Aside from racial slurs and the r-word, nothing will make me harshly judge a person or writer for using the word slutty. I know some women are trying to reclaim “slut” and I am not for it. However, I use bitch with reckless abandon and frequent affection, so I’m not really one who should judge, but I am anyway. Slut and slutty to me just means “woman who conducts herself in a way that I don’t approve.” Well, fuck you.

Too: knock it off when using this to describe someone, it just lets us know the writer is narrow-minded and not being very thoughtful. I type those words knowing full well that I’ve called about a million people “too” something too many time to even count. Spoiler: sometimes I’m a hypocrite. I try to be better, but I frequently fail.

Adopted: I hate this one for much the same reason I hate half. I don’t hate it when it’s used as a verb, but I loathe it when it’s used as an adjective. I think of this whenever I read about what Woody Allen did to his daughter, who is always referred to as his “adopted daughter” as if that makes a fucking difference. Again, why do so many writers feel the need to point this fact out? Does it matter in any way? What does the fact that a child is adopted have to do with anything? It’s rarely germane to the story and all it does it just signal to a reader that this person is somehow different and that difference must be recognized and noted.

I’m sure there are other words that make me cranky and quit reading, but I can’t think of them right now, so they must be triggering to a lesser degree than these big four.

The post My Specific Trigger Words appeared first on I Will Dare.

1.) That feeling you get when you think you have eaten all your Potato Oles and then you dig into the bag for your taco and you find not one, but two more Potato Oles. Side note: In college whenever someone at the newspaper would journey over the bridge & across the river to get McDonald’s our friend Dave would never order his own French fries, he’d just call “bottom of the bag.” I think about him whenever I find those hidden fried-potato gems.

2.) That feeling you get when your mailbox is flooded with the thank yous from the nonprofits you forgot you donated to while you were in a frantic, mindless, tear-filled rage during the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Rapey O’Budwiser.

3.) The dudes in your social media are always aghast when the latest #MeToo or Racist Horror Show comes to the forefront, but then they go back to talking only about all the music and movies and books they enjoy by white dudes. Maybe they are the testosteroni kinda like tenderoni (which I have just learned is also chicken tenders with mac & cheese, my new favorite thing) but with nards.

4.) Dudes who only re-tweet white dudes’ opinions on everything ever.

The post Day 91 of 200: Things We Need a Word For appeared first on I Will Dare.

First: I just submitted my first ever arts grant application. It’s for emerging/beginning artists. I applied in hopes of getting some funds so I can work less, spend that time writing the second draft of the longer fiction piece I’ve been working on, and not have to worry about having to move into Sister #2’s basement.
(I can’t say the words “my novel” without making barf faces and rolling my eyes).

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Second: I got a new bra today and it’s giving me a sort of Joan Harris torpedo boob look. Or rather probably how she looked in like junior high, her breasts are much fuller than mine.

The post Two Things About Today I Feel the Need to Tell the Internet appeared first on I Will Dare.

Just like last year, I tried to keep a little note on my dashboard where I would paste each of the words I had to look up for either meaning or spelling. About fifty percent of the time I was trying to catch people using a word wrong, just for my own smug satisfaction.

However, thanks to my friend Steve, I learned that there was a word I’ve been using incorrectly for as long as I have been using it. That word? Nonplussed. Yeah, I always thought it mean unperturbed, undisturbed, chill. Nope, it means “to render utterly perplexed; puzzle completely.” Who knew? I mean, aside from Steve.

Anyway, if you want to see the other words I didn’t know the meaning of, check below.

eminence 11Jan11
monotreme 11Jan11
seminar 12Jan11
provincial 15Jan11
ennui 16Jan11
enigmatic 17Jan11
mitigated 20Jan11
philandering 25Jan11
oeuvre 25Jan11
perpetuity 26Jan11
tazes 28Jan11
circuitous 30Jan11
Expound 01Feb11
slut 01Feb11
slovenly 01 Feb11
sloven 01Feb11
plebian 08Feb11
fatuity 10Feb11
curtsey 11Feb11
scepter 15Feb11
commodity 16Feb11
jeremiad 18Feb11
upholstery 23Feb11
lame 21Mar11
crazy 21Mar11
conscious 02Apr11
flagellation 04Apr11
debaucherous 17Apr11
synecdoche 01May11
ideology 03May11
indignant 12May11
define 16May11
cohort 16May11
panacea 19May11
arcane 24May11
slayed 27May11
prayer 01May11
acrimony 13Jun11
pastime 13Jun11
pretentious 15Jun11
bucolic 23Jun11
entropic 28Jun11
nonplussed 07Jul11
bemused 07Jul11
livid 07Jul11
irreverent 13Jul11
plumb 21Jul11
esoteric 03Aug11
profound 26Aug11
emphatic 05Sep11
hoary 08Sep11
posited 12Sep11
Jodhpurs 21Sep11
tenuous 21Sep11
current 26Sep11
inamorata 30Sep11
synecdoche 30Sep11
nihilism 06Oct11
elicited 17Oct11
jejune 06Nov11
credence 06Nov11
magnanimous 07Nov11
proclivities 11Nov11
dogma 16Nov11
autonomic 29Nov11
ubiquity 30Nov11
whiff 13Dec11
inquest 14Dec11
conflation 20Dec11

Words from Ziggy (dates unknown)
currant
ambivalence
demimonde
idiosyncrasy
nonplussed
peripatetic
bellicose

The post Nonplussed doesn’t mean what I thought it meant appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hey, do you remember back in January when I was all high and mighty about shilling stuff? It was a post I swore I’d make disappear the minute I was going to start promoting my writing that appeared in other places.

Remember that?

Well, I didn’t take down the post but I am here to point you over to BlogHer, where the very fine editors have syndicated You are What You Post: A Warning & A Rant. In exchange for my permission they said they would give me money and ask only that I tell the readers of I Will Dare about the syndication.

I am nothing if not a woman of my word.

The post The Hypocritic Oath appeared first on I Will Dare.