The Biddies
Thinking back on my always-testy relationship with the cool kids — no matter what school or city I was in — I remembered something that happened when I was a junior. It was my first year at a two-year arts high school and I quickly found a group of girls who, like me — and in marked contrast to the prevailing aesthetic of dirty hair and studiously “weird” thrift store rags — wore trendy clothes and (way too much) make-up.
That fall a half-dozen popular seniors — who were nothing like the sort of kids who would be popular anywhere else, and were proud of that fact — made a tape about our little group. I’m not sure how it got out but somehow it did and it was the sort of scandal that swept our small school. In it they called us “the Biddies” — no idea where they got that term — and ragged on us for being bimbos and airheads (we weren’t).
There’s only one thing on that tape that I remember clearly. It was from a guy I knew from my American history class. We sparred regularly and loudly — as I said, I’ve never been afraid to speak up in class. He was a real asshole to me in general starting from the very first day.
He said — and I’m paraphrasing because I never heard the tape, but was told the contents by people who did — that he was going to fuck the brown-haired one from behind and pull her long hair.
I was the only brunette in our group.
I remember at the time being embarrassed. Like it was my fault that this guy was sexual harassing me on tape for all the school to hear (everyone did, through someone). I was also confused — I was a virgin. What did fucking from behind even mean? Is this something people do? Is he talking about rape?
My parents were completely horrified and wanted him expelled, but I remember feeling like that was too extreme. It would only draw more attention to the issue. It would only bring me more mortification.
We had a mediation session with the assholes. They were forced to apologize. They were suspended. I kept on speaking my mind in class, though we never sparred directly.
My girlfriends and I appropriated the term. Until we graduated, we called ourselves “the Biddies” with pride.
Or what we thought was pride.
What choice did we have?
Jesus it’s hard to be a girl.
I’ve got nothing today, blog-wise — we ended up switching our Ty-Lör/City Grit reservation to tonight, so no food pics to share — but I’d like to offer you this picture, taken almost exactly 19 years ago, shortly after Gena was born.
We had recently moved back to Minnesota after two years in San Francisco. We were living in a double-apartment 26 floors above downtown St. Paul — my dad’s concession to Shelley’s very reasonable distaste for snow and, let’s face it, the Midwest.
I was eleven and a half and, as you can see, very nervous about this whole baby sister thing. Proud, happy, but nervous. I look like a kid out of place. I look exactly the same in the video of my parents’ wedding a year and a half before Gena’s birth — and not just because I wore the same festive ensemble you see above, one I picked out myself and really loved. The whole process of creating a new family turned me inside out with anxiety. Sometimes it still does.
I was listening to an old This American Life today that begins with Ira Glass talking about how these days it’s a badge of honor to say you were a nerd growing up — how even kids that were popular claim they weren’t. Few people, he observers, seem to remember the sweaty-palmed agony of true nerd-dom.
I guess he reminded me of … myself. I remember viscerally the feeling of having no one to sit next to at lunch. I remember the way it felt in my bowels.
Look, I wasn’t a nerd or a geek, though I’m sure I got called those names. I was a bookworm, I loved computer games and glamorous girls in movies, I wanted to be an actress. I was an optimist, loud in class, a kid with lots of energy and drive to do, and that probably left me more vulnerable to the usual childhood meanness. It certainly didn’t help that I moved across the country twice in two years.
For a decade — actually, until I was 19 or so — I was at odds with the popular kids. Sometimes, for a day or two, friends with them, but more often than not a butt of their jokes.
In fourth grade my number one frienemy announced on the school yard (in front of all my other frienemies), “I heard that if you’re ugly when you’re a kid you’ll be beautiful when you grow up.”
She paused.
“Well if that’s true, Nora, you’re going to be Miss America when you grow up.”
My heart sunk.
It’s funny the things you never forget.
Look, as I said, I’ve got nothing, blog-wise. No real point to this. Except to say that I have such deep empathy for girls. I see them on the street, talking to their friends — and I feel for them.
It’s really hard to be a girl — it’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong (I distinctly remember feeling very grateful I was born a girl rather than a boy), but there are so many opportunities in any given day to get your heart stomped on, to have your dreams trotted out in front of the whole class for them to laugh at — and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t fight back, not really. That makes it worse. And you can’t cry — oh god no. (Not that you can help it.)
The thing that really makes my heart swell when I think about girls is that they are so damn creative and confident in themselves — and then puberty hits. You sort of turn into yourself, your dim your lights, you do what you think you need to do to either go unnoticed or to go extra-noticed — as a girl — and it’s heart-breaking. Could you imagine if we walked through life with the confidence we had when we were eight?
I followed up the 90-minute, jazz-hands-and-high-kicks workout with one of my favorite breakfasts ever: Ezekiel toast, half an avocado, and a 6-minute egg, finished with a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt. It was extra extra EXTRA delicious.
… and before you unfollow me for all this Pollyanna shit I want to say I was almost taken down with anxiety on Friday and I spent Saturday in a dirty-haired, sweatpants-clad, did-not-leave-the-apartment-all-day funk. But on Sunday, things turned around. It was sunny and mild, and as I biked to Williamsburg, I felt stronger with every pump of my legs. I spent the afternoon playing Catan with Peter and two very interesting new friends and I pulled off an upset in the first game and turned this sweet hand into another win in the second (and I didn’t even have the sheep port!):
Booya.
And then I hung out with M. for awhile at Dram and we had a good chat about the things that were making me anxious and sad and let me tell you, entwining two lives is difficult stuff, trusting someone completely even harder — especially when you have this deep-rooted fear of disappearance and death — but I’m getting better at it. Sorta.
I biked home, the skyline spread before me, and my heart burst with love for my city. M. treated me to a 30-minute massage at my place across the street and it was as glorious as ever (goddamn those Chinese know their pressure points!) and I got home just in time for the half-time show and I danced around to “Vogue” and ate leftover lotus root and sucked on Szechuan peppers (I love that tingle!) and it felt good to feel something positive again.
And then I thought that I would pen a rap song about my day, changing the words to Ice Cube’s “Today Was a Good Day,” obviously (so deep, so deep, she put my ass to sleep) but I’ll spare you that. Instead on my bike ride to work this morning I stood up on the pedals and sang along to The Drifters, “Save the Last Dance for Me,” and smiled at every asshole special person I haven’t met yet who cut me off.
There was a quote running around Tumblr awhile ago, something like “when you find yourself happy I want you to take notice of it” and so this is me, taking notice.
My birth-mother Denise, not long before my birth. Listening back on Dad’s tape, Therese had hoped she had made an appearance.
“Have you ever heard her voice?” she asked me.
And then I realized that no, I don’t think I ever have.
Little me, hunting for salamanders. (I didn’t have a mole back then.)
The perfect ponytail: Claudia Schiffer in Rome, 1994, by Arthur Elgort (via neimanmarcus).
I was obsessed with Claudia for a month or so … yep, right around 1994.
(Source: movmoda, via thezoereport)
I spent a lot of time in Chicago when I was a girl. It’s the place where my birth-mom was born and the place where my parents met. It’s the place where my grandparents lived, the place where I played pranks on them in the summer and pretended to smoke cigarettes (just like them) in the winter. It’s the place where I swallowed a magnet, the place where I fractured my wrist, the place where I learned to ride a bike one-handed, the place where my grandpa and I spun circles around the neighborhood on his tandem bike. It’s the place with the sights I loved so much: the Marshall Field’s Christmas lights, Buckingham Fountain, the Field Museum, Lincoln Park Zoo, the world’s first McDonald’s, and, most of all, the K-Mart just down the block from my grandparents’ house. Walking over there with my big cousin and crisp $10 bills from grandma in our pockets — there was nothing better.
Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent my life leaving pieces of my heart in this city and that. Chicago may have been the first.
This is Libra’s “five-star weekend of happiness.” I’ll say!
Redemption Salad: redeeming the Asian Chicken Salad from itself.
I love the idea of this. My parents fed me home-cooked whole foods, more often than not from a farmers’ market or co-op, so I had major lust for anything that tasted fake (the best part hands-down of babysitting was eating Kraft Mac and Cheese with the kids).
For years I BEGGED to go to Leeann Chin (did they have them where you grew up?). I was crazy for their deep-fried cream cheese wontons with sticky sweet and sour sauce and squares of shrimp toast glistening with oil. And their chicken salad with that syrupy dressing and crunchy noodles. I’m sure everything on the menu is packed with corn syrup and salt and god knows what else but gosh darnit, I bet I’d still love it.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Weezer, “El Scorcho” (via tallgirltales, greatlake)
A blast-from-the-past ode to hapas. God damn you half-Japanese girls, do it to me every time…
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