The Yoga-Boob Conundrum

I love yoga. I’m not great at it, but that doesn't stop me from doing it as often as possible. Sometimes at a cool, gently scented studio, surrounded by lululemon zombies and other times when I’m drunk at a friend's apartment.

Sample scenario:

Friend: Hey there, buddy. You, uh. You bustin’ out a little tree pose there?

Tree- Erin: Yup.

Just call me TreeBeer'd. TREEBEER'D, geddit? Nevermind. Gah.

Sample scenario #2:

Me: Hey, you guys, I’m gonna teach y’all how to do shoulder stand! It’s like a headstand, but with your shoulders! Just—hey, will you just hold my skirt? Will you hold my skirt so it doesn't fall down? Hold my skirt. Cause I’m gonna put my legs over my head now and I don't want you to see my panties. Am I wearing panties? Lemme check. Okay, yes I am, but I still don't want everybody to see them. Are you holding it? Are you holding my skirt? Okay. 

Yeah...they saw my panties, didn't they?

               

Shoulder stand is actually one of my favorite poses, because you have to go through plow pose to get there, and if you have never had this happen before, getting mascara on your inner thigh is a thrill, let me tell you.

Yoga is great. It is great for relaxation, for strength, for fighting depression. One thing yoga is not good for? 

Boobs. 

Yeah. Titties. Jugs. Melons. Bazoombas. Yoga turns these guys into assassins, constantly trying to suffocate their host bodies with themselves. Gravity is their accomplice, particularly when you're doing an inversion (an upside-down pose). They basically try and race each other to the floor.

 Many a time, a yoga instructor has exhorted me to “let your head drop,” when I’m in Downward Facing Dog and I don’t say anything because I’m concentrating on breathing like Darth Vader, but I want to say “Look, honey, I want to release the tension from my neck, but if I do that, I’m going to be motorboating myself.” This is why actual dogs keep their breasts a safe distance from their breathing apparatus.

These bitches have it made.

The other big one is Child’s pose, meant to be a calming, comfortable pose you take when you just can’t make another Chaturanga happen and you need a minute to breathe. Except PSYCH! Not with big boobs. With these not-so-funbags attached to my chest, I’m not chilling out and reconnecting with my breath, I’m like “haaaughhrrglle…I can’t breathe!” Also, your face is covered in boob sweat. You’re welcome for that visual.

Hey, what do you call a pair of sweaty boobs?

Beeeeeewwwwwwwwbs!

...I'll show myself out.

In addition to being dicks about breathing, boobs have another drawback in yoga. A usual flow class involves many vinyasas, when you lower yourself to the floor and then slide forward with your chest opening to the ceiling. A delicious back bend for sinewy yoga types, for me it’s time for my twins to make a VALIANT ESCAPE ATTEMPT. They sense freedom is close and they LEAP. So I’m constantly having to shimmy them back into my traumatized sports bra, and look furtively around the room to make sure no one saw any nip. At this point, my yoga bra has just given up on life and boob restraint. I’ve had people suggest that I double up on the brassieres, but do I look like I am made of sports bras people?

I highly suggest you do a Google Image Search for "dogs doing yoga" it is worth your time.

So friends, if you are a member of the itty bitty titty committee, you should def give yoga a shot. You were born for it. And also for most of the mass-produced clothing in the world. And my curvier ladies...you should also come to a yoga class with me, but bring a tank of oxygen. In case of boob suffocation.

Authoress's note: I am only an amateur yogi, so please excuse any misspellings/capitalization errors. If you point one out, all it'll do is make you look like a pedant. 

And nobody is a pedant-phile.

So I Went To See The Avengers

So, I just saw The Avengers: Age of Ultron and I was a little upset about something. If you know me and you saw the movie, you probably have an idea of what it was.
The black widow tells Bruce Banner that they are perfect for each other because neither of them can have children. Because she was ritually sterilized as part of her assassin training.

Because bebbehs slowly you down. NO SERIOUSLY.

I find the whole sterilization trope to be just as annoying as its inverse, the magical pregnancy trope. Both are thematically pretty rapey.

They did a similar thing on Doctor Who, which is the love of my life, but I didn't mind it (clearly I'm biased). I thought (as a woman with fertility issues) that the infertile character's reaction was valid: she (Amy Pond) felt that her femininity was invalidated and by no longer having a viable uterus she was no longer good enough for her husband. Is it lazy writing, somewhat. Does it accurately represent a possible emotional reaction? Yes. It is hard to express to men how many factors there are constantly waiting to tell you that you're not a "real woman" and infertility is a biggie. If you can't bake a bun in your oven, why even call yourself a woman? In the Who storyline, there was a positive message to be taken from a shitty situation (one that many women find themselves in) when Amy's husband declares that he knew she was infertile and he didn't care. She was worth more to him as a person than just a baby making oven. And we women need to believe that those men exist in order to ever stop drinking.

I honestly don't know why they thought this tripe (this was a typo, I meant to say "trope," but you know, it holds up so I'm leaving it was necessary for the Black Widow. But more importantly, they missed an opportunity to make that moment about a woman's agency and not about something that was done to her. You mean to tell me Natasha Romanoff would ever be happy settling down with Banner and a little green-skinned, Crimson haired brood (tiny baby Christmas hulks do sound adorable)? That is definitely not how I read that character.

Would it have killed noted ambivalent pseudo-feminist Joss Whedon to actually give his strong female character a mind of her own beyond MUST HAVE BABBY. OH NO I CANT. BETTER BANG BANNER. The one man she can't disappoint with her barrenness.

I find it much more ick than the boneheaded comments made by frat boys Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner that got lots of tongues wagging during the press tour. Though Renner's casual implication that differently-abled women are laughably unfit for the touch of a man (fuck you, dude) deserved more noise and a better apology.

I'm certainly not suggesting that anybody not go see The Avengers, hell, I'm probably going to see it twice. But damn, I am bored with this trope. Not all women have the exact same uterus feels, and if brave, smart writers would let their characters actually make choices, I think those characters could take us to amazing places.

The Folklorist Goes To Hollywood!

As many of you may know if you follow my Instagram (Kissonthewind), I spent this weekend schmoozing in LA with some of my former London crew. The whole getaway was a delicious break from the constant snow of Brooklyn (seriously, it was the first time in two months that I could feel the tip of my nose), but the highlight of the weekend was the Shorts HD party at the Paley Center for the Media.

Palm trees everywhere! #defrost2015

 

Just getting to go to the Paley Center itself was a treat; you hear so much about Paleyfest, it seems like somewhere that a TV and Film devotee like myself just needs to visit. It looks good when you check in there on Facebook. Don’t pretend you don’t give yourself a prestige check in once in a while.

I went to the Ladies’ just before the shindig got started and imagine my surprise when I nearly walked into two people wearing gold paint and not a lot else. They were still in the process of turning each other into very flexible human Oscar statues. Eventually, they left to delight the crowd with their incredible strength and ability to pose for hours of pictures, but they left a fine veil of gold glitter over the restroom. Not that the women at this party didn’t shine enough on their own!

Just some light yoga to set the mood.

 

As Shorts HD CEO Carter Pilcher pointed out, there were a notable amount of female directors and producers nominated across the three Oscar Short Film categories (animated, live action, and documentary). Three of these women (Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry for Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 and Kristina Reed for Feast) got up to accept an Academy Award the next night, along with three men. Women are making progress in Hollywood, but is there anywhere else they are being recognized in literally equal numbers to male filmmakers?

With all of the compelling actresses in front of the camera, many casual film fans may not realize that there is an appalling lack of women behind the cameras, especially in positions of creative and financial power. But short film is an important site for emerging talents to launch themselves into a wider spotlight, so I personally hope that the success of these women presages even greater achievements from female filmmakers.

I was also excited to meet Mat Kirkby and James Lucas, who won Best Short Film Live Action for The Phone Call, which stars my favorite Anne Elliot, Sally Hawkins (if you don’t know who Anne Elliot is, I’m not sure we can be friends). Kirkby was wearing a plaid suit that can only be described as “fly as hell.” He definitely gets my vote for Best Dressed. When I complimented him on his pocket square, he lamented that it wasn’t folded with enough flair for the occasion and gave it a fluffing.

Then he was ready to party.

I think we all know who the Best Dressed Blogger was. Mmmhmm.

As the Prohibition-inspired cocktails flowed around the room, born aloft by attractive servers, the love and passion in the room was palpable, along with the nervousness of the nominees. I couldn’t help noticing that the people deftly whisking glasses of moonshine or champagne around the room were wearing two distinct costumes: classic tuxs for the boys and a rainbow of modish wigs for the women. The contrast wordlessly articulated a great fact about the Oscars and the weekend of revels preceding them. No one can resist the lure of Old Hollywood, that aesthetic of winking diamonds and a silk sleeve falling over a delicate shoulder, and that keeps us looking back to the grand tradition of the Academy Awards. But the film world is also looking forward, for new stories, techniques, and talents. Progess in art, technology, and social issues.

One of the great beauties of short film is that they can arguably push more boundaries and be a more effective vehicle for innovation than features that are more encumbered by financial expectation. So I will end by echoing a sentiment held by more than a few of the short film luminaries that descended upon Beverly Hills this weekend: these shorts deserve to be seen on the big screen, like any other great works of film. If you have the chance to see them at your local theater, they are worth your time.

Overheard in Brooklyn: Douchey Couples

Ladies, in my two short weeks of living on my own in Brooklyn I have come to a realization: all of our friends and family people  are shit-talking us to their boyfriends. On multiple occasions while dining or brunching solo, I have overheard some variation of the following convo:

Boyfriend: Your friend/sister/cousin is so ugly.

Apparent Girlfriend: What? No.

Boyfriend: No, Babe. Babe. Babe, no. Her face looks like a toaster mated with a watermelon. Babe.

Girlfriend: But I think she’s so pretty!

Boyfriend: No Babe. Just no.

The incident that established this prototype happened at a table behind me at a Spanish place in Greenpoint. From what I could hear, they were systematically addressing the attractiveness of all females on the GF’s Instagram. What kind of asshole does this, seriously? Who sits down and says, “Hey, how about you tell me how attractive or unattractive everyone I love is, and when we don’t agree you can belittle my opinion?” But only the women. Funny how that works, eh?

 

For the record, I would not have banged this guy.

I imagine he’s an aspiring pop star, currently shopping a single entitled “Babe (Babe, No).”

Arguably worse were the couple I encountered in back room restaurant of a Scandi joint that did tasting menus with beer pairings (review to come, possibly). The guy and the girl were equally wangs. A match made in dick heaven. My butt jostled their water glasses on my way into the booth. They got their revenge by being horribly annoying the rest of the night. They were very concerned with random celebrity body parts; Chris O' Dowd’s penis (“You mean his real penis?”), Scar Jo's boobs (“But were they like, her actual boobs?”).

 

When the girl declared that teaching is the easiest profession to do if you have kids, I nearly threw my glass of Seson in her face. Also, she did physical affection like an alien working hard to pass undetected amongst the humans. She kept leaning forward to jerkily rub the knee of her companion in a circular motion. It reminded me simultaneously of curry combing a horse and a vigorous handjob. Later she did a thing that might actually been an attempted handy-j. She also did this rambunctious patting thing that did not look pleasant.

The artisanal beer that almost ended up in some tramp's face.

 

"She's pretty thin. Not very chesty, though." The guy said, apparently of a family member. You guys, this is how all of your male relatives discuss your body behind your back to their pretentious alien girlfriend.

Furthermore, I would like to say to all couples and people who dine in groups, when you are seated next to a solo gal who looks engrossed in a history of Byzantium/ Vonnegut paperback/slowly decomposing journal, she can hear you. She can see your hand on your man friend’s wang and it is making her uncomfortable.

It’s making everyone uncomfortable. Go back to your room and screw, pervs.

So, I guess the point of all this is to say Thank You to any of my friends or family people who have ever had this conversation:

Boyfriend: Erin is so ugly. She looks like a potato mated with a firetruck.

Utter Goddess: Hey, fuck you, I love Erin, and I couldn’t give a shit if you think she’s attractive.

Star Goddess Extraordinaire: Also? Erin is super pretty. Suck it.

 

Friends and family people: DUMP THIS GUY. The only ass he should be giving this much consideration to is yours. Or maybe porn butts (I’m a realist).

So this one time I tried to write a book...

While I was living in London, I had the insane idea to try and write a book. An encounter had just taken place betwixt myself and a devastatingly attractive person, and yours truly was crafting some very intricate scenarios in my mind for how we would meet , and justifications for why someone so appealing would stoop to date a chubby American geek, such as myself. Then someone told a story about being at a banquet with E.L. James, novelist and main perpetrator of misconceptions about BDSM.

The proverbial light bulb went off above my head.

If James could write bad fanfic where nobody behaves like a real human and make millions of dollars off of it, why couldn't I write good fanfic with relatable characters and make, like, a totally reasonable amount of money?

And so began a period of furious writing; between June and August I churned out 30,000 words. By the end of September, it was longer than my Master's Thesis. As I worked on it, I came to realize that yeah, there was a love-story there, about a girl with issues and a big butt trying to cope with the experience of getting exactly what she wished for, but that wasn't the point of it. The real romance was between a girl (butt and issues still in place) and her city. I thought the point of the story was to write about my hilarious crush, but really it was an excuse to write about London and the scenes and sensations I felt while I was there.

So it seems kind of fitting, after my last blog, to post an excerpt of what I've written. An exploration, of my doomed love affair with London, if you will.
Even if it is just my Mom and my cousin reading this.

Me: Let me love you!

My Cousin: LET ME EAT YOUR FACE!

This scene is the main character, Dani (who is basically a better, more confident version of me), describing her walk to work after having had a romantic disappointment.

Enjoy (I hope)!
______________________________________________________________________

The next day, I walked 45 minutes to work. This is as per usual because by some perverse quirk of the London transit juggernaut-clusterfuck, there is no tube or bus route that does not actually make this journey longer. One can, if one has the means, get a cab, but if one does not leave at exactly the right moment, exactly 9:30 or exactly 10:15 (by which time I would be super late for work) one will inevitably get sucked into the vortex of traffic that is the Old Street Roundabout. It isn’t an unpleasant walk, delicious smells waft from many dodgy looking food vendors, there is some badass street art, and the view is always improved by stubbly-jawed gentlemen in tight pants with meticulously tousled hair.

You routinely run into interesting, even anachronistic, characters that look like they were simply plucked from some exotic or past setting and dumped into the middle of a modern metropolis. For instance, I once saw a man who looked, for all the world, as if he had just wandered out of some spicy-scented middle-eastern bazaar onto the wet, gray pavement outside of Liverpool Street Station. He wore flowing white and taupe robes and a white cap on his gnarled, tan head. A thin, white tendril of a goatee spiraled off of his chin like a twisted tree branch. In his arms he held a huge bushel of peacock feathers, each one almost as long as he was tall. He didn’t appear to speak any English, but was hawking them aggressively to passerby with a toothless smile that never wavered.

That’s routine in London: the uncommon is so common that it becomes commonplace.

Routines can be depressing and monotonous, but they can also be a comfort. For instance, I find it comforting to walk past my neighborhood Subway twice a day, on my way to work and on my way home. It is a known fact that every Subway in every corner of the world smells exactly the same. It reminds me of home in a way that isn’t personal enough to incite homesickness.

More unpleasant is the smell of the people that one walks by, especially first thing in the morning. London women, especially those dressed in the sort of dressy casual business attire that marks them as working in the city, wear a prodigious amount of scent. When you walk past one of these gals, it hits you in the face like you’ve just walked into a tangible wall of synthetically produced fragrance. I think I could handle it more if the scents were varied, but there are really only five that I smell on a regular basis: there is the one that sort of smells like coconut, and the one that sort of smells like flowers, the one that smells nice but in an old shoe type of way, the one that I’m sure is meant to smell “spicy” but ends up smelling faintly of tacos, and the one that I think must be Chanel because it has a vague bottom note of Nazi operative. Equal parts delightful and disgusting, my morning commute always served as a reminder of where I was: the center of the known world.

On Seeing A New City

I’m about to say something I never thought I would say:

I miss the Tube.

It isn’t that the Subway in NYC isn’t that much different conceptually, being crammed into an underground cigar tube with a bunch of strangers is much the same anywhere (except Paris. THE HORROR). But the signs are less easy to understand, there are fewer maps, and it’s slower and less efficient. Last night the train I was on stopped service for seemingly no reason, and the doors always take forever to close.  Also, everything is newer and therefore less pretty (not you, Greenpoint Ave station, I like your green tiles).

But it isn't New York's fault. See, I’ve figured out what is happening with me emotionally. It’s like I was seeing this guy named London and what we had together was real. We both loved history and ethnic food and cold, misty nights. But we were torn apart, star-crossed lovers, by our families (by this I mean our governments and their visa laws).

And now I’m seeing New York, who is like, the nicest guy. Everyone says he’s great, better than London even. I thought London was The One, but all these new voices say that NYC should be my main squeeze. I can't shake it; I’m still hung up on my last boyfriend, the one with the sexy accent.

Maybe New York is my rebound.

If you’ve only lived in one place your whole life this might be a difficult concept, but when you move to a new city, totally by yourself, it can truly feel like you are dating that city. You go to Yelp or Urbanspoon to figure out where New York is taking you for dinner that night. You ask the girls who have been seeing London for a while what their favourite dates are with their city. You sit alone at bars listening to the voices around you, tasting the neighborhoods, learning the ambient sounds. You get used to hosts/hostesses asking “Just you?” and you say yes, because it would sound insane if you said “Excuse me but Eugene, Oregon and I are on our second date, do you mind?”

So I’m not speaking totally metaphorically (or rationally) when I say I’m still getting over my last city. So far, all of the things I like about NYC are things that remind me of my lost London (woe). It doesn’t help that the area I’m staying is just like Dalston (the area to the north of where I lived in London [coincidentally, to the south of Greenpoint is Williamsburg, which is generally acknowledged to be the Shoreditch of New York]) except everyone is Polish instead of Turkish. 

Less kebabs here. Little upset about that.

Luckily, my new BFF Brooklyn has been taking me out for some delicious cocktails.

Baby's First Day In New York

On my first day in New York City, it snowed.

It snowed a lot.

I didn't pack any serious snow gear, for the simple reason that I don't own any, so by the end of the day I was basically an abominable snowlady. No wait, that sounds too majestic, I was an abominable snow drowned rat.

I ventured forth again today only to have my train break the hell down or something, so I power walked to my 7pm show and arrived about 15 minutes late. I am so upset about missing the opening number that I might go back again. Also, there are other reasons. Mainly to stalk Ron Weasley. More on that in a sec.

I feel like the musical "Once" has become a bit of a routine for me. I aw in back in March in London, after seeing on a poster at Green Park tube station that an actor I liked was in it. I damn near fell of the escalator. It's a hilarious, beautiful, and very human show. It's so damn good that I can forgive it for falling so heavily into the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. My Mom, who has what might be termed better taste in music and movies than I do, made me watch the simple, unspectacular and singularly lovely indie film that the stage play is based on. Being a teenager, I flounced back to my room, probably to stare at pictures of boys with dyed-black hair. But later, I stealthily downloaded all the songs from the film on Kazaa, or LimeWire, or whatever platform we were using to cheat musicians of their hard-earned coke money that year.

The cast was better in London, but Once has officially dethroned Phantom of the Opera as my favorite musical.

The musical really expounds wonderfully on the richness of Irish culture (it's set in Dublin), as well as that of the immigrant experience in Ireland themes which were present, but underused in the film. It also adds new songs, develops snippets of songs from the movies into full-fledged numbers, and adapts the melody of the Oscar-Winning "Falling Slowly" into a score that is at times whimsical and others haunting. The first time I saw it, I was so charmed that I felt suffused with happiness, due in part to the fact that I hadn't experienced any theater in probably years. I felt a lot of hope, and I felt like all of the lyrics applied to my own life. Lots of people feel that way, I'm sure, universality is the magic of a well-written pop song. I cried then, and I cried tonight, but for very different reasons.

After the show, the GPS on my phone wasn't working, so I waited outside the theater to give it a minute to boot up. But the actors on their way home thought I was there for autographs, so I just went with it. The lead actor, however, didn't show. Who the hell do you think you are, Steve Kazee? You're not. You don't do the little butt-dance thing nearly as well as he did (I would find a video of said butt-dance, but frankly I'm scared to Google it).

This cutie plays a Czech drummer with the immortal line "More soul. Less pants."

 He definitely leaned his head against mine, which is the most action I've gotten since I left London.

As I was leaving, a man crossed my line of vision wearing a familiar looking beanie. It was Nathan fucking Lane, and he was wearing the exact same beanie he had worn ten years ago when I saw him leaving "The Producers." God, I hope he splashed out for a new beanie at some point. There was a huge crowd waiting to meet the stars of "It's Only a Play," who include Lane, Stockard Channing, Megan Mullaly, Matthew Broderick, and Rupert Grint. If you know me, then I assume you know the Grint was in the Harry Potter films. RON WEASELY WAS NEXT DOOR TO ME THE WHOLE NIGHT AND I NEVER KNEW! So yeah, I might go back. I might see the play. I might just buy a parka and wait outside the theater every night until I can get myself a sweet, sweet selfie with him.
So, I didn't get to fangirl all over Grint, but Matthew Broderick signed autographs and took pictures with everyone. Such a class act. I really appreciate him mustering a smile for this picture.

Erin and Matthew, ten years after our first encounter



 And then I saw this giant billboard of my boyfriend in Time Square!

I share him with many women, both human and dwarf-kind, one assumes. It's a very modern arrangement.