Singles should be blue and not green and red like everyone else?

If you haven’t added me on twitter... yet, you’re missing out on gold (PS I’m sorry about all the twitter plugging but most of my thought processes get recorded there)- I was speculating about all these articles telling me to stop being sad about being single during the holidays.
And then, I saw a post on Sex, Lies and Dating in the City about how she felt about the phenomenon.
So here’s my take- I am so sick of those stupid articles- honestly, the numbers are going up every year. Is it because singles are actually buying into this crap? The holidays have never really been about not having a boyfriend for me. Of course I’ll feel a twinge when I see a couple skating together or my aunt asking about boyfriends but other than that, it’s mostly always been about family, friends, hot chocolate, charity and copious amounts of consumerism… and I intend to keep it that way. But these articles make me feel like a weirdo for wanting to be happy. As if I should be blue just so they can snap me out of it. My point is that coupledom shouldn’t be what the holidays are about. I mean, you have Valentine’s Day for that crap (and it’s starting to take over Halloween too with all those his-and-her costumes cropping up). Being single is something that I am all year? The only reason I’m thinking about it more right now is because popular media is telling me to. I could easily be reading articles about what to wear to holiday parties or what to buy my mum for Christmas. Instead, I’m being told why I should feel like crap. Well, I don’t. Thanks, but I don’t need your help, oh wise relationship experts. I don’t feel more or less bad about being single than any other day and that’s perfectly acceptable. So let’s just stop the buck here and move on to bigger and better things… like what should buy my mom for next Christmas.

I’m a white swan

If you have me on twitter, you know how desperately I’ve wanted to see Black Swan. Well, I finally saw it last week and I was absolutely amazed. I could really relate to Nina near the beginning of the movie- she reminded me of myself when I was younger. Sweet, meek and not entirely able to relate to many people around her- including men.
Someone else on twitter posted a question towards the lines of whether we saw ourselves as black swans or white swans. I definitely see myself as the white swan. There’s a strong correlation between ‘white’ and virginity but Nina’s whole attitude encapsulated the white swan- timid, sexually inexperienced but extremely passionate. The black swan, on the other hand was more like the character played by Mila Kunis. She’s sexy, sensual but also passionate in a completely different way. I’m trying not to spoil the whole movie for you so I’ll leave it at that and give you a little scene that I thought was interesting.
Basically, Nina’s dance instructor is having a conversation with her. He is concerned about her portrayal of the black swan and asks her if she has a boyfriend. Nina replies in the negative. He asks her if she’s a virgin. Nina smiles and shakes her head.
First of all, I thought that was odd. How would Nina ever be able to handle a sexual relationship when she’s so… awkward. I think Aronofsky dropped the ball on that one, he should have left her a virgin.
Secondly, the teacher’s reaction to this was interesting too. After she shook her head, he said “well, then you have nothing to be ashamed of” and I thought it was so typical of people. They really do think that virgins of a certain age (lets say 20 or 21) should be ashamed of the fact that they’ve never had sex.
But why?
Many men are absolutely disgusted when you have more that X number of sexual partners but it’s also bad if you don’t have enough sexual partners. As in no sexual partners.
You have to agree that men don’t like virgins. As much as their primal instincts want them to be the first ones to get there, they’re more worried about us being clingly freaks with no capacity for emotional relationships with men. If you tell a guy you’re a virgin within the first three dates, he won’t want to have much else to do with you.
That’s the problem right there. I’m nervous because I have a huge obstacle waiting for me if I ever start dating someone. At some point, he’s going to expect sex. It will probably be before we start connecting on a very deep level because that’s really how relationships work these days.
And I’ll have to tell him that I’ve never had sex and… then I’ll have to explain why. Because if I don’t, he’ll probably revert to the clingly freak frame of thinking and then I’m left in the dust… unless I come up with a good enough reason for why I’m a virgin.
So I could be honest and tell him that it’s because I’m waiting for someone important to me (which could go either way) and the reason I never found anyone good before was because I was…
1. Fat
2. Insecure
3. In love with a guy who didn’t like me
4. Emotionally unavailable
5. Good at rejecting men because I was afraid
All of those look as bad, or as nearly bad, as me being a clingy freak. But that’s not the only problem. The problem is that these are just possible reasons for why I haven’t been in a relationship because I don’t know why I’m a virgin. I really don’t.
Hell, I could blame the dating scene, the lack of available men, my busy life… but I don’t know whether that’s true or not and if I even do find someone I want to be with, I want to be able to be honest with them.
So if I were to start dating someone right now and he asked me about it, the best thing I can say is “your guess is mine”

The Size Small Dress

A few months ago, I was browsing through online stores and stumbled across a beautiful dress. It was absolutely perfect for my body type. This little black dress was everything I had been waiting for- and it was sold out. I was back on this website two weeks ago and spotted it again. But it was only available in a size small. I determined to either try to find a way to take it out or designate it as my new goal dress.
It came in yesterday. And it fit.
Not only did it fit. It made me feel like I a freakin’ goddess. I’m not sure if most of you know but I’ve been overweight all my life. This year was the first year I hit the “average” BMI range. It’s the first year I didn’t reach for the largest size of pants that the store carries. It’s the first time I felt normal. And this dress made me feel hot.
I’ve been reflecting a lot on what my new body has meant to me. My thoughts on fat acceptance and the glamorization of unrealistic body shapes hasn’t changed but I’ll elaborate on that later. This post is about me.
Because after years of struggles with exercising, dieting, programs and pills… last year, I pulled myself together and started losing weight the hard way- the long way.
And here is where it as gotten me…
- I can stand in front of a mirror and think I look hot (I could do it before too but I sensed that I was faking it)
- I can smile at a guy without any inhibitions (when before I felt like he’d think I was crazy for being so fat and still bothering)
- I can stop feeling like my friends feel sorry for me (like I’m holding them back every time we’re waiting in a line to get into a club)
- I can walk down the street, see a guy looking at me and think he thinks I’m hot (instead of panicking about stains and static hair)
See what the common factor here is? All of these things had nothing to do with how I looked, more so, they were about how I saw myself… which leads me to the last and most important thing of all:
- Confidence
When I was larger, I had none. When I was slightly smaller in high school, I was on the path to higher self esteem but as I started gaining weight, I slowly slipped into a dark cave of self-loathing and embarrassment. I was embarrassed of myself.
It was really sad and I don’t know who to blame for that. Myself? The media? Men? But, like I said, that’s for another day.
Today, I get asked to dance by guys who I think are attractive and it doesn’t seem completely insane or random as hell. Today, I can stop being extremely awkward around men I don’t know fearing that they’re only talking to me because they’re bored/weird/trying to get to my friends. Today, I can talk to a hot guy without being puzzled, suspicious and angry. Today, I can look at my high school crush and decide that he’s a little shit who doesn’t deserve me. Today, guys who never wanted to talk to me before think I’m worth talking to.
Whether it’s confidence or weight loss… I honestly don’t know or care for the time being. What I know is that I feel great. And that’s something I can’t apologize for.

“So-and-so will have sex with you”

It’s the response I’d usually get when I told people about my “problem”
In real life and on this blog too. I don’t think people realize what the problem here is. The problem is not that my hymen is intact or that I’ve never had physical sex. It’s more about being single, about being never-not-single. The virginity part is real but the bigger part of the problem is that I’m a relationship virgin. Would losing my virginity solve anything?
Absolutely not. I could run over to a dive bar and have sex with a random. The problem is still there.
I don’t think people really understand that. Correct me if I’m wrong but having my cherry popped probably isn’t going to open the floodgates to a rush of love and affection from men. And I’m not making assumptions here. I know it’s not true.
Let’s refer to the American Virgin for this one, Sarah who had sex with a friend of a friend who found meaning in the encounter but it didn’t change her life. Another blogger, Chloe, had a long running blog centering around her virginity and even when she lost it, she felt hopeless about love. Even VS, the is-she-or-is-she-not-a-fake-virgin found that her virginity isn’t a big deal.
The act of deflowering is not a big deal
We’re still stuck with all these ideas about virginity and how it’s supposed to change you. Shouldn’t we know better by now? I mean, most of these people who dismiss my virginity as a problem easily solved have had sex before. They should realize it before anyone.
As an older-than-average virgin, I lie in this vague area. I know about sex but I’m not sexually experienced per se. I’m still looking for love so I can identify with single bloggers. Where I fail to identify with them is in the fact that I haven’t had been in “requited” love. That’s where I can connect with single women who may or may not have had sex but are having a hard time finding men or being in a relationship with them.
My cherry has little else to do with it.

P.S. Fiddled around with my blog layout for the first time in a year. It feels so strange.
P.P.S. There’s a post on College Candy concerning talking about whether you’re sexually active or not that some of you may find interesting. Apparently, in volcanic terms, I’m extinct

The Virgin Diaries

It isn’t often that I hit up my favourite websites and find a post on virginity that I take something away from. It’s even less often that I find a whole stream of posts about the subject. I love my V‘s a lot but it’s always nice to add new dialogue to the conversation.
Enter Em&Lo and Katherine Chen and her series, the Virgin Diaries.
What interested me most about her posts is the comments. The readers on Em&Lo are predominantly there to read about “sex.love.and everything in between” as per the byline of the site- well, when you’re a virgin, there’s Love… and not a whole lot else. So most of comments are from people who are sexually active. Here are a few running themes that I wanted to address…
1. Disbelief over the idea that virgins aren’t innocent and inexperienced
One comment compared a virgin to a wine connoisseur who had never tasted wine but read all about it- apparently, this guy didn’t really know wine because he never really tasted it. Which is true but only up to a certain extent- I’d say he knows a hell lot more about wine than the average housewife who downs a bottle per sitting.
2. Disbelief over the idea that virgins could have some insight about sex
This seems to seed from the fact that many of these people are recalling their own v-card loss when thinking of the author. Katherine Chen isn’t a 16 year old cheerleader- she’s an older virgin. Being an older virgin, she has spent a lot of time learning about sex. In fact, she’s probably spent more time researching it than most people have had doing it. The fact that I know more about sex and relationships than most my friends is an irony that isn’t lost on them. I kind of compare it to the woman with A cups who is continually striving to be a D. She knows more about boobs and breast augmentation than most naturally gifted ladies.
3. The resentment
This is the best part and I hear it every time the subject of virginity is brought up. A lot of single women or those who haven’t been in satisfying sexual relationships have a way of berating virgins to the point that it almost seems like they are jealous of them. It especially comes to light when I read stories about hymen reconstruction and the glorification of virgins in traditional culture. These women start seething. It’s almost depressing to read. Kind of like a skinny person stuck in the middle of a fat acceptance rally. You’re trying to love yourself and you know that a lot of people do love you too but it’s hard to feel that way when everyone in your vicinity thinks you’re worthless based on something that you feel insecure about.
What I absolutely loved was that Em&Lo countered this with a comment in the following post that replied to another comment calling partnered sex and a “virgin’s masturbatory fumbling” to Mouton Rothschild 1945 to grape kool aid with a shot of stolen liquor (I was more taken aback that the commenter seems to have such a modest view of her sexual prowess… well, she’s either saying that or she’s saying any drunk college hookup is comparable to a very good wine).
Anyway, here’s the response…
We don’t buy the Kool Aid plus shot analogy. We like to think that this site can present a really broad range of stories and voices, and we happen to think that Katherine has a unique perspective. This country (and not just the far right) has such a screwed up notion of virginity and “purity” and being tainted and all that crap. Katherine approaches her virginity in a totally different way, and we think that following her journey (as one story among many MANY others on this site) is fascinating.
P.S.: For the record, one of the reasons that we decided to gather all Katherine’s columns under the umbrella title The Virgin Diaries is that we realize that the fact that she is a virgin is relevant and important to know when you read her take on ANY topic relating to sex. Meaning, we understand that her take is necessarily different from the take of someone who has had sex.

I think that’s absolutely awesome and I highly encourage you guys to go check it out. The latest post is the Con’s of Virginity (but wait, there’s pro’s too).

Mika isn’t happy

A friend of mine, Mika, had a tough time with love. She cheated on her boyfriend in high school because she didn’t like him, she was pressured into going out with him because they were both in the same friend group. I suppose she got what she deserved when the group abandoned her after everyone found out. She went to Europe after high school and found a guy she loved. For a year, they kept up a long distance relationship and she spent a lot of money visiting him. It ended after she found out that he cheated on her. For a few years after that, she started seeing guys who fit her interests but weren’t really interested in her- besides from physically.
Finally, she started dating a guy who she shared a lot in common with. He was one of her friend’s ex boyfriends. Needless to say, that friend and some of her closer friends abandoned Mika. But Mika finally had a boyfriend in Mitch.
Now don’t get me wrong, Mitch is a fun guy but sometimes he is rude, annoying and sexually inappropriate with Mika and her friends (especially when he is drunk). He’s not like that in a subtle way, it gets to the point where Mika comes and apologizes to us (her friends) for his behavior. We dismiss it and tell her it’s not her fault but she never reprimands him. At first, I figured that she did it later in private. Then I grew to realize that she doesn’t do it at all.
Like last weekend when I went out with the two of them. We went to a party thrown by a friend of mine and he acted very rude towards the host of the guest who kicked him out of the party. I left with them and Mika apologized to me. Mitch kept going on about how stupid the whole situation was- he would not shut up. Throughout his entire tirade, I only heard Mika ask him to stop once. Eventually I ended up arguing with him about it and telling him to just let it go. I never got an apology for him. Later on, he did something else inappropriate.
The problem is that I’ve had it with him but that’s not what I’m worried about. Once when he was sexually inappropriate with me, I drew a line and he’s stayed behind it ever since.
I’m worried about Mika. She isn’t happy. These traits in a guy would be a definite deal breaker to me or any self respecting female. But they don’t seem to be a big deal for her- not only are they not deal breakers, they aren’t even worth addressing. How is your boyfriend going to know he’s doing something wrong if you’re not telling him?
I feel as if she’s given up. I’ve heard him talk about the sex life he had with his ex-girlfriends (including what these girls were good at) and she stayed quiet through the whole thing. Sure, he’s a fun guy and they are very similar but is it worth it? I feel like she sold out and I don’t know what to say to her.
“Put a leash on your man?” I can see that going over well.
It’s times like these when I’m happy that I’m single. I’m happy that I don’t settle. Especially for this kind of bullshit.

‘Virgin’ is a strange word

Virgin. Virgin. Virgin. VIRGIN. Vir-gin. Virg-in.
No, I’m not high. I just spent a lot of time looking through #virgin tweets. When you’re confronted with the same word every 140 characters, you start wondering about it.
I know I can’t be the only one who has thought this.
You know what’s strange though? In the past few years, I have googled the crap out of “virgin” but I’ve never checked out the Wikipedia page for it. The most interesting part is how it alludes to the loss of virginity being the loss of innocence and beginning of sexual maturity. It seems like such an abstract concept because I’m a virgin but I’m anything but innocent and I’m definitely sexually mature.
Other than that, there isn’t a whole lot. The page on involuntary celibacy is much more interesting.

If you’re single and you know it, flash a smile

I’ve started to realize how depressing my blog really is. Instead of talking about things that I’m finding interesting, I’ve just been ranting about how my life sucks.
The buck stops here.
Because I’m really starting to feel as if I’m finally getting to the summit of this mountain of post-teenage angst that I’ve been going through and so… I’m going to start reverting to the reason why I started to write this blog. So I can learn from it and hopefully, other people going through what I’m going through can learn from it as well.
So I’m going to start off with a lesson that everyone knows about already but little virgys like me used to ignore.
You’re not going to get attention at a bar by acting like a cold snot-nosed bitch.
As much as I complained about not getting as much attention as my friends or not the right sort of attention that I wanted, I didn’t do much to change it. Okay, I pretended that I did… but I really didn’t. My fear of rejection expanded to being rejected over a smile.
So here’s a little bit of a background story…
My friend’s boyfriend and his friends went to the same high school as I did. They were the “studs” so I tried avoiding them… even in the past 4 years since high school. Which was a little awkward since my friend and all my other friends were quick to make friends with her boyfriend’s friends. But I was overweight and  insecure so I wouldn’t acknowledge them when we were all hanging out, even when they directly looked at me in order to ask me a question or something. It was easier to refuse to talk to them than to deal with them not wanting to talk to me. I haven’t seen any of these guys in a year except for Band, this one really hot one (who I served at a bar once), and when I later saw him at another bar, he thanked me for the drinks and I responded with a wry smile.
Fast forward to last weekend. These boys were all over at my friend’s house and I was dressed to the nines. It was getting extremely awkward to the point that I knew they all wanted to talk to me. As in, they were referring to things that I was saying and I was just ignoring them (I know, I’m a frustrating person). Finally, after I got a few drinks in me. I turned to friend’s boyfriend’s friends and told them I was heading to the kitchen and if they wanted me to grab anything for them. Band was thrilled, he said he already had a beer but if I’d like to grab him another one, that would be ace. I did it for him and we chatted for a little bit. Then we went to the bar.
And I was in my element.
I was smiling at Band. Smiling at all his friends. Smiling at anyone who came up to the table to talk to them. Which resulted in a lot of free drinks. Actually, I was smiling at just about any attractive boy in the bar… and running away, when they came to approach me (come on, I can’t progress that much in one night).
When I left, Band was severely disappointed and told me so by holding my hands and asking me not to leave. His other friends seemed a little choked up as well.
So here’s the lesson girls, the advice columns are right: if you can find the courage within yourself to do so… smile at men in bars.
I’m not sure why that night was so good for me with Band and his friends. I can’t attribute it all to the weight loss and the fact that I looked great. I think it was a mixture of the fact that I finally started talking to them and that I was smiling a lot- at them and at anyone.
Whether you think I’m moving forward or not is up to you. I can’t promise I can do a repeat next time but I feel as if I’m taking a step in the right direction. And after three years of whining about being frozen in one spot, I think that’s a pretty good sign.
P.S. What is with the snow on my blog and how do I turn it off?
P.P.S. Is this not awesome, or what?