Duck, Duck, No Geese

I was born and raised in an extremely rural area of Southwest Georgia. It wasn’t easy being what I am compared to what passes for typical around here. My first cardinal sin was my complete indifference to football (which has, in all honesty, turned into loathing as Ive grown and found out how sexist the NFL is). This was followed by my lack of religion (football comes before Jesus in the South. Surprisingly) and compounded by the heavy metal I loved and the way I didn’t act like a fragile damsel in need of rescuing by a strong, brutish man driving a raised 4 x 4, gas guzzling truck. In fact, instead of wilting in the presence of masculinity, I threatened to kick a few ignorant, bigoted asses in my high school days when the natives made unwarranted jokes about friends of mine.

It’s no surprise that I wanted out of here as soon as possible. I dreamed of it. Planned it. Yearned for the day when I could see those plans come to fruition. I would run so fast the day I graduated high school the streets would burn in my wake.

It didn’t happen that way though.

I spent a lot of my time blaming my problems on where I was instead of realizing a lot of it had to do with who I was. I figured that out slowly and surely along the way, and eventually decided this was home. I can’t leave the Spanish Moss covered Live Oaks, the long summers perfect for drying laundry on a clothesline, my two acres of rural paradise…

The girl who mismatched Marilyn Manson shirts and thrift store polyester pants is perfectly content with her knees in the dirt growing vegetables in her garden or mowing the grass with a whiskey sour in one hand and a dog in her lap. If you were to tell my 16 year old self that she would find peace and, in all honesty, complete and utter joy in being followed around her yard in Climax, Georgia by a 4 pack of Indian Runner ducks, she’d tell you to go fuck yourself. But, that’s the way it is.

So, with the prompt “duck” I couldn’t resist showing off my feathered babies, weird as they may be. And hold the glazed duck dinner jokes. I could never eat a part of my family.

Posted by Jenniy French on Sunday, May 3, 2015

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Be sure to check out the other contributions for today's Sunday Confessions on More Than Cheese and Beer

Say Cheese!

I take a lot of self portraits or #selfies if that’s your preferred nomenclature.

It’s not a daily thing, and I surely don’t post dozens at a time, but when I look in the mirror and feel that moment of beautiful, I snap a photo. Sometimes I sit for a moment and stare at the image in the tiny rectangle screen of my phone wondering if that’s really me before I hit the little trashcan icon deleting it as quickly as it was snapped. Sometimes I post them before I can second guess myself and play it off like I have all the confidence in the world.

For that, I have assuredly been called vain right on my own photographs which is alright because I know that’s not my reality. In reality, I have battled a host of self image issues and still do, though these days I’m on the winning side of that battle more often than not. In reality, it took me until I was in my late 20s to ever really post a full body picture anywhere and only recently that I’ve been able to do so with any sort of regularity, without getting sick at the thought or turning ten shades of red.

It’s a funny thing, the relationship between social media and selfies. You see someone posting various images of themselves quite often and begin to wonder just why they’re so full of themselves or maybe there’s the assumption that they just want a good, unhealthy dose of attention. For some reason, it seems the automatic response is to disregard the person as shallow. But when is the world ever really so black and white? When are behaviors so easily explained?

I suppose there are certainly people who are so vain that self portraits are a momentary bragging right, but when I scroll through my feed and see a gorgeous face looking back at me on my Facebook newsfeed, I tend to hit that like button instantaneously because I get it… I get that desire to feel some control over how other people see you because you’ve been full of self-doubt for longer than you can remember and hate 90% of photos other people take of you. I know that it’s exhilarating to feel that moment of acceptance when you post that picture and how much it goes towards building you up that you can even hit “share” instead of deleting every single image you take. In that moment, you see yourself as a whole instead of seeing a kaleidoscope of every flaw no matter how tiny…really see yourself and like what you see, smile at your own image. It’s freeing, that smile. It’s such a change to feel the oft crippling weight of self-doubt lifted even for a moment. The more it happens, the more often that smile lifts you up.

See, it really isn’t about the number of “likes” you get on the photo, it’s about how you see yourself. Maybe the comments people make add to the overall positivity you feel, but ultimately, it’s about your own thoughts and feelings about an image of you in a captured moment that translates to how you can see yourself overall. It’s about you doing you and being perfectly okay with who you are both on the outside and the inside.

Post those selfies, people. There’s not a fucking thing wrong with you loving all of you wherever you are on your journey.

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Sunday Confessions, y'all. I love them. I hope you do too. Please check out the rest of today's contributions on the More Than Cheese and Beer blog and ask about participating. Every Sunday is a new challenge. It's amazing. 

Song and Dance

Once the bass begins to hum across the speakers, the car transforms. It is no longer an automobile capable of getting me from point A to point B.

It is now a mobile stage geared up for my top performance. The acoustics are crystal clear. The steering wheel is my mic and my drums. My air guitar is perfectly tuned.

The car is my place to really belt out my favorites. To grind my hips to the Black Keys while I fantasize about Dan Auerbach and sing along with all the soul I can give.

I think about my life and really apply all my heart to the Alabama Shakes.

I groove like I’ve never grooved before to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.

The Kills and the Deadweather get all my sass, the very best of my sass.

When I need to slow down and nod my head to stoner jams, I play Graveyard.

Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears get all my smiles.

The worst days, I just play Eyehategod and wail my frustrations into the empty spaces until the appropriate amount of levity has been reached.

Some days I get bluesy with Janis or Buddy Guy. Other days, it’s an air guitar on straightaways with Jimi.

The Sword gets the days when I’m ready to let my brain trip over the notes as they stumble together, and Red Fang is the best choice for stumbling over lyrics and not giving a shit if they’re only half right because they’re distorted and unclear yet begging to be sung.

No matter the tunes I choose to fit my mood, being in the car is my time to shine like no one is fucking watching whether I’m stopped at a red light or driving on a country road, and I’m okay with that. Traveling along at 60 mph while my Lancer transforms into a midnight blue stage and I become the headliner for the evening is the best sort of roadtrip even if it’s just down the block to the store. On longer trips it’s even better. Sometimes on my 13 hour treks to Texas, that stage is the only thing that keeps me awake…

That and the fear I get every time I cross into Louisiana thinking about that time I stopped at a random truck stop to pee and saw two live tigers in cages in the parking lot ready to get rid of any evidence that my body may have been in that area at any time….needless to say I don’t stop in Louisiana for bathroom breaks anymore.

This is part of Sunday Confessions with More than Cheese and Beer. Check out everyone else who linked up today on her blog!

Sunday Confession: Bringing Sexy Back

I will never, not once, fit the mold that our society has created for the perfect female form. My wide hips and short, stocky frame just aren’t made for it. I could work out and become more muscular and get in better shape, but I’m never going to be a “model type” especially considering that these days anything above a size 6 is considered plus-sized in modeling while the average size of women in general hovers around 12-14.

That’s a pretty huge disparity.

What makes this even more telling is not the idea that women were actually bigger in earlier eras. In actuality, the average BMI of modern women is slightly larger than it has been in the past. The difference, however, is that the average BMI of the perfect body form—the ideal that all women are inundated with and pushing for—has gotten smaller. In other words, the average model or celebrity’s BMI has gotten smaller while the average woman’s has gotten larger making it nearly impossible for 95% of women to reach the goal so often shoved down our throats with fad diets, celebrity magazine covers, and fat shaming.

But you know what?

Fuck that noise.

Women can be sexy at every size because it takes more than a number—be it BMI, dress size, or weight—to define what sexy is. It is, most often, a mind-state, the hint of confidence, the walk, the overall package of looks, brains, and heart. We see women on screen, in photos, and cat-walking on super thin legs then feel our own thighs moving against one another as we walk and cringe. We feel a roll when we sit and become distressed. We develop body issues, confidence issues, food issues and, unfortunately, eating disorders all because we don’t look like this highly unattainable ideal form. Why are we doing this? Why has it become so necessary to look like anything other than ourselves?

The answer, simply, is that no good answesr to those questions exist, and we need to stop. Stop obsessing about ideals. Stop stressing over the number on a pair of jeans. Stop wanting to be anything other than

Tess Munster

healthy. That may be easier said than done. In fact, I know how difficult the process of acceptance is…I’m in the midst of it while still obsessively tracking every single calorie I eat. It’s hard to let those old habits die. It’s hard to see someone like Ashley Tisdale and not wish I was 6 sizes smaller but then I see models like the gorgeous Tess Munster loving her body and wish I had that courage and peace with my physical self. It’s going to be quite a journey…a journey that I hope more women will join me on because together we can redefine what we think of when we hear the word sexy, and it doesn’t have to be about flat abdomens, thigh gaps, and bony hips that were meant for holding the lowest cut pants on the market.

It can, instead, be about soft curves, thick thighs, witty comebacks, freckles---anything that defies the current accepted idea. We can bring sexy back to reality and stop holding ourselves to ideas of perfection that really don’t exist unless we become able to photoshop our actual bodies because most often the perfection we’re trying to obtain doesn’t even exist in reality...only on a computer screen that is then transposed onto a magazine page or an ad. We can accept that sexy entails those things that we hold as ideals but includes far, far more than that.

We, ourselves, are the only ones with the power to accept that being real is all that is required to being sexy, and it is up to us to take that shit back.