"Here our dreams aren't made, they're won."

 

Everything on my end is turning kind of topsy-turvy right now and I am trying to get my bearings.

We have finally wrapped principal photography on the film, which is amazing because we worked so hard on it all summer. I can't even count the number of hours I've spent on this movie, and I'm so ready to see the final product when it gets out of post-production in a few months.  If you haven't watched the trailer, please check it out and give it a thumbs-up or 'share' it with your own friends if you dig it. It's gonna be a gory good time.

In addition to finishing up the first movie I've really worked on in this capacity, I've been stressing about trying to get the house cleaned out, listing things on eBay en masse, taking things to the thrift shops, etc. to try and clear the rooms. I have a big holiday party every year and invite all of my friends over, and it's going to be a hell of a lot more difficult if there's piles of shit everywhere people have to walk around creating a labyrinth in the house. It's a daunting task that I'm kind of tackling head-on by myself, but I'll get there. Just need to discipline myself--- every time I get overwhelmed I sit down and check Facebook or leave to go out and get some fresh air for awhile, and that really isn't a great strategy when it comes to trying to get things done.

My photography has really been keeping me busy too. I've done multiple photo shoots in the last few weeks, and it's so much fun coming up with ideas, gathering props, designing 'looks', etc. Soon my very dear friends Matt and Donna and I (as well as several of my other friends, once we get things situated closer to time) will be filming a music video for a great band in Dallas, which I'll be directing. I can't wait for that to happen either; it'll be awesome to see one of my visions come to life like that. I hope, haha... big projects always seem fun until you're pulling your hair out in the middle of them.

I'm traveling a lot--- as a matter of fact, I don't have a free weekend from now until November. I'm going to Indianapolis on Thursday for HorrorHound, which should be fun; I've never been before, and my friend Shae is bringing me on staff to assist her since she works the con every year. Then I come back and get ready for a weekend of re-shoots and pickup shots for "Sacrament" as well as the wrap party, then head to Columbus, OH to see Thirty Seconds to Mars play, then fly out to Los Angeles for a week. The jetset life isn't for the faint of heart, that's for sure...

Speaking of Los Angeles, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and there are major changes on the horizon for me. I graduate college with my AAS in Marketing in December (assuming I pass Intro to Economics this semester, that is...) and I have been looking at job options. There are places in Dallas I could apply, and Dallas is where the vast majority of all of my friends live. I have a built-in family there, a safety net of people who love me and care about me and would look out for me if something went wrong. But the original plan was to move in with some friends, and that plan has been put on indefinite hiatus, and when I started looking at the rent for places I liked in decent areas of Dallas, I realized that for what I would spend in rent to live in the city, I could live in an even bigger city with even more opportunity.

My darling friend Steph helps manage an apartment building only a few blocks from Hollywood Boulevard; they're charming, adorable little units with hardwood floors and French windows, right off the freeway, and when I stayed with her in August we walked to the Chinese Theater in about ten minutes of easy roaming. She lives in the heart of Hollywood and the units in her building cost the same amount as a mid-to-nice loft-style apartment in the 'heart' of Dallas. Not to mention that I have a lot of friends in LA too, and a boy that I really like lives there, and considering that I want to get into the media industry, what better place to try and dive in headfirst than Los Angeles? I'm twenty-seven, I have no kids, and my only family left here is my grandma, who supports me going out there. There will never be a better opportunity for me to just pack up and head west than right now.

I figure that I'll go out there after graduation and sign a one-year lease. That will give me one year to throw myself into LA culture, apply for jobs, and try to get my feet in the door. If things don't work out, I will always be able to return to Texas after that year's up and say "Oh well, I tried". But the saying is 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' and if I don't at least give it a shot, I'll never know if I could've pulled something amazing off or not. I need to at least try--- Los Angeles has always felt like a home-away-from-home for me, and I've wanted to live there ever since my mom first took me there on vacation when I was little. I get so sad every time I leave behind that land of palm trees and neon lights and that constant tingly feeling in the atmosphere that anything could happen.

So, as of right now that's the plan. We'll see how it plays out, but I am going to be spending my fall working toward this goal and hoping that if I hit the ground running, I'll at least land on my feet.

Sharpen up your teeth, your dreams are more than worth defending.

When you go in for psychiatric counseling before your weight loss surgery, most doctors will warn incoming patients about 'transference'. The majority of us aren't eating food because we're hungry or because it tastes so damned good, we're eating because it fills a hole inside of us. We feel lonely or inadequate or anxious or stressed, and so we use food and the chemicals it triggers in our bodies to make ourselves temporarily feel better. And sometimes it even works for a few minutes at a time, tricking us into thinking that it doesn't matter if we're single or had a bad day at work or got kicked off the soccer team or flunked a test because we have cookies.

So what happens when they take that away from you? When the surgeon cuts your belly and removes the gland that makes you produce a hunger hormone, when you get sick if you eat more than four ounces at a time, when the smell of a Twinkie makes you feel like puking? Then what do you do to tamp down all of those emotions that are now running through you like the beasts in Where the Wild Things Are?

A lot of post-weight loss surgery patients become alcoholics. Some of them become addicted to exercise and the endorphins it kickstarts in your body; doing crunches until you feel dizzy can produce the same amount of happiness as a cupcake, supposedly. Some people just try to find ways to 'cheat' their diet, sneaking bites of ice cream or chocolate or drinking flat soda even though they know it's bad for them simply because it's the only comfort they're used to.

My mother died a little over a year ago; a year and one month, actually. She was forty-seven and beautiful and vibrant and had a contagious laugh and she never met a stranger. She was the last person in the world who deserved the hand she was dealt, at least in my life, and she went out like someone snuffing a candle. All of that beauty and light and goodwill and joie de vivre took to the sky and vanished, leaving only her imprint on the people who knew her.

I have built up a family around myself, a family of incredible friends who I can count on for anything, but in the process I have also lost touch with a lot of people who I thought would be there for me forever. My grandmother has sunk so deeply into her own depression at losing both her husband and her daughter to cancer in the same year that she hardly resembles the woman she used to be; she is beaten-down, quiet, doesn't even like to get dressed most days. She stares at the TV for days on end and gets only a few hours of sleep a night. In May I was given an award from my school, named Marketing Student of the Year; she didn't attend because she didn't want to get out of her armchair and get dressed for the ceremony. A lot of my friends have pulled away, unsure of how to deal with me now that my mother's gone. She was the buffer, the catalyst, the skeleton key that could open any door. I am simply me and for some people, that's game-changing. We're not a matched set anymore and so I am damaged goods, the leftovers.

Not everyone knows this, but my mother was a hoarder. She had a major shopping compulsion and she maxed out multiple credit cards on collectibles, dolls, toys, everything she saw on QVC or Home Shopping Network that caught her eye. She had every note anyone passed her in high school; she kept all of the drawings and stories and report cards I ever brought home. She had over forty photo albums cataloging her memories. She was afraid of losing things, of losing people. She surrounded herself with as much as she could in an effort to wall herself in.

Now that she's gone, I was left with a huge house... full of things. Three large bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, two bathrooms, and a kitchen overflowing with items my mother used to fill the holes in her life, the transference she was suffering from being a single, lonely mother.

I've had multiple garage sales and countless trips to Goodwill, had friends come in and buy bulk items for their own craft projects or collections, and sold dozens of batches' worth of things on eBay. And yet every time I turn around, there's another closet full of Rubbermaid totes full of Barbies or Pez dispensers or Matchbox cars or Ty Beanie Babies or clothes or shoes or purses. She had four Rubbermaid totes full of purses, no joke.

Some of the stuff's been easy to pack up, to sell off, to put away; I have very little emotional attachment to some of her belongings, like the McDonald's toys or the Pez dispensers. But then there are other things, like love letters she received in high school from boys who had crushes on her, and old diaries, and her satin letter jacket from school, that I just can't bring myself to get rid of and those things I keep and sometimes I find myself sitting on the floor reading her journals and crying. I wear her class ring on my right hand and her sneakers are the ones I wear to the gym and everything I do, I have that undercurrent thought of Is she with me right now? Is she proud of me? Is this how she'd want me to handle this?

If I hadn't had the surgery, I would be even bigger than I was, probably pushing 400 by now easily. I would be crying while I ate ice cream and lay on the couch for hours. Instead I don't have that option, so I go to the gym and do crunches. I run on a treadmill even though it hurts and I'm not very good at it. The other day I ran so hard that my heart rate spiked to 190 after 30 seconds of running, and my trainer made me stop to cool down. We think that I might have mild tachycardia (they found a shadow when they did my EKG pre-surgery but said it was minor enough that I didn't need to worry about it; however, I get extremely short of breath easily, not just winded but dizzy/faint with lack of oxygen and I never feel like I get enough air when I'm running). But the gym makes me feel like I'm in control of myself, that I can focus on the sound of breathing and the thud of my heartbeat and the gross sweat-slick feel of my skin instead of being here in a catacomb of memories and loneliness. I come home to a vacant house to a huge empty bed and a cat; at least he's here when no one else is. It gives me a reason to come home.

No, my transference has been running and not on the treadmill. I threw myself into my best friend's movie, possibly even biting off more than I should've tried to chew for my first time out of the gate; I helped with the script, I produced the majority of the budget, I chose the wardrobe and am responsible for laundering it, maintaining it and bringing it to set each shoot, and I'm one of the main actors in the film. I've also helped with everything from location scouting to craft services to putting together the wrap party. It's been very rewarding but also really exhausting and even I am not so dense that I can deny why I'm doing it; it's a distraction. It's something for me to focus on that isn't my home life.

When I wasn't working on the movie, I was traveling. I went to LA twice this summer and will be going back in October. I went to Boston for a fundraiser. I go to Dallas every weekend. I've been to Vegas. In the next few months, I'll be in Columbus, Indianapolis, and back in LA. I just can't stand the idea of sitting still, staying in the house all by myself with nowhere to turn that is my own. I've been thinking about the possibility of buying an RV, of moving to LA for a year, of relocating into a fresh start. I'm graduating from college in December and so I'm trying to find out the 'what happens next' part of what I should do once I have that diploma. It's only an associate's so I may continue taking classes online to get a bachelor, but who knows? Everything is up in the air right now for me.

All I know is that I could do anything.

I just can't be afraid to leap.

Fatty Fatty Two-by-Four

It's interesting to me how everyone's self esteem is different; there are people who are perfectly content with their bodies and people who loathe the way they look, and on both ends of that spectrum are people who, to our own eyes, shouldn't feel the way they do.

I was mocked and teased my entire life for my weight; I heard snickers and whispers as I walked by a group of people, many of my friends said incredibly hateful things behind my back, and once when a friend and I were having a heated argument she said "I only keep you around because you make me look that much hotter in comparison." Despite having a family who took every opportunity to tell me that I was beautiful, I never believed it. I had self esteem that was in the gutter and I was insecure about virtually everything in my life. I hid behind being loud and laughing a lot and making jokes, often at my own expense, to cover up how insecure I felt in the shadow of my beautiful friends and the rest of the world. I felt like I had to apologize for who I was.

One of my dearest friends, someone I've always found to be pretty much the epitome of beauty, has had a lifelong weight fluctuation. For a long period of time she lived a life that many people would envy, traveling with celebrities and seeing the world while working a glamorous, high-profile job; in addition to that, every time she would post a photo she'd get hundreds of people gushing over her beauty or calling her adjectives like 'flawless' and 'radiant', myself included. Yet she sent me a message today asking me if I noticed a difference in the way people treated me pre-surgery versus the way I'm treated now, and if it bothered me how intensely people seemed to celebrate it.

And it definitely made me think.

I grew up loathing my body; my mother certainly loathed hers. She was single and never had much luck in the dating department despite her outgoing personality and the fact that everyone who met her loved her. She had a ready laugh, a beautiful smile and a heart of pure gold but men were turned off by the fact that she wore a size 26/28 and bought her clothes at Lane Bryant and couldn't sashay around in miniskirts and high heels at the bar. She was an incredible mother and a great friend, but men came to her to ask her to help hook them up with her more traditionally-attractive friends. She participated in every fad diet of the 80s, 90s and beyond, buying workout tapes and exercise equipment, joining gyms, even hiring a personal trainer. She lost 100 pounds on her own steam the year before she was diagnosed with MS, when a six-month bout of being bedridden caused her to gain it all back and then some. She fought with her body her entire life.

I wasn't as pessimistic about mine at first, and I tried to encourage her to dress younger, to buy rock t-shirts, to dye her hair a more vibrant red, to wear sparkling eyeshadow and paint her fingernails green. I wanted her to let go of that idea that she couldn't be beautiful just because she was big. After all, I was modeling for plus-sized pinup sites. My friends assured me that I was pretty 'for a big girl'. I didn't think that I was ugly even when I was at my heaviest; I was just fat.

Yet in our society, fat is ugly.

I didn't go on a single 'date' in high school, even while my friends went steady and made out with each other on the weekends. Instead, I helped hook them up, was an alibi if they needed to avoid their parents for awhile, or I tagged along and waited awkwardly in a Denny's while they frantically got in their kissing time in the parking lot before curfew. I was set up on a few dates by friends, but they were obligatory and fake and none of them led to anything. It was just guys being nice to get in good graces with my friend, or to repay a favor from something. A boy I knew for years, who I was crazy about, made out with me in secret and then told me that we could never actually 'date' because he couldn't be seen going out with a fat girl. Even though, he assured me, he really liked me.

In college my boyfriend was never like that, but he also has a tendency to date girls on the bigger side because that's his preference. It doesn't diminish how we felt about each other, but it was an important factor in the how we started flirting. If he'd only been into skinny girls, he would've never gotten to know that we both loved reading in bed or making silly jokes or trading mix CDs. 

I went to LA last week and my weight loss was really noticeable to me. But not for the reasons you might think.

LA is a city of beautiful people, and by LA standards (most standards, really) I'm still grossly overweight, obese, undesirable. And yet in LA, this time, I felt more comfortable than I probably ever have. I walked miles up and down the Venice boardwalk with my beautiful friend Stephanie, who is a model and complete eye candy, and I didn't feel self-conscious. I bought several shirts on the boardwalk and never had to ask "What size do these go up to?"; I just found the larges and, in one case, a medium without incident. I didn't have pain in my ankle from walking, and I wasn't drenched in sweat or short of breath despite us walking in bright sunlight in the middle of the day along the shoreline. Steph and I went to restaurants and I didn't have to worry about fitting in the booth without my gut being pressed against the table. We went into stores like Popkiller and I didn't have to stand and study the sunglasses while my skinny friend tried on clothes; au contraire, I was the one who tried on shirts while Steph browsed. 

On the plane, I didn't bulge over the armrest into the lady next to me's territory. I didn't have trouble fastening the seat belt, or dropping my tray table. I didn't have any problems at all. But moreover, when I boarded, a very cute boy helped me get my bag into the overhead compartment. He flashed me a smile. I smiled back and that was the end of it... but I remember boarding that same flight last October at my biggest weight, and I was wrestling with my roller bag because it wouldn't fit down the aisle easily and was too heavy to pick it up. Multiple people sighed, rolled their eyes, looked away from me as I struggled. No one offered to help. Now can I directly tie that to my weight? No. Maybe that day the plane was just full of assholes and this day a nice guy lent a damsel in distress a hand. But maybe not. 

People tend to avoid fat people; we're the last acceptable plague, a blight on humanity. We're not supposed to wear swimsuits where others can see us, or wear shorts if our thighs have cellulite and dimples and flab even if it's a hundred degrees out. It's 'gross' if we buy pretty thong underwear and even the 'big-girl-friendly' stores like Lane Bryant, Torrid and Cato's preach the importance of layering your body in Spanx and girdles before you wiggle into those muumuus because you wouldn't want to offend anyone with your fat. Even in places that are supposed to be friendly, our bodies are the enemy.

While I initially did this for a myriad of reasons, I DO notice that the way even my own friends perceive me is different. I recently went to shoot a band; I've been friends with them for nearly two years but haven't seen them play live in almost a year. I showed up at the show and it was their first time seeing me; both the band and their girlfriends were freaking out about my weight loss, and two individual people--- both well-meaning, and I didn't take it the wrong way--- said "Oh my god, look how hot she is now!" I'll admit, even though I knew they were coming from a sweet place with it, it made my hackles raise a little. When I post photos of my weight loss progress on Facebook, sometimes there are comments like "You're becoming such a beautiful young lady" or "Wow, you're looking amazing these days". I know that people don't mean anything by this, but I think it's another subconscious way of saying fat is bad; this is better. And while it's true--- I feel better, not only physically, but I'm much more confident and less self-conscious than I used to be--- that being more slim and healthy is better than feeling out of sorts with my body the way I used to, I don't like that weight loss is considered synonymous with better or, worse, beautiful. 

I've seen gorgeous people of all sizes, and I happen to find a lot of plus-sized people very attractive. It depends on so much more than the size of your jeans, and I hate the emphasis that people put on the idea of weight loss. We're obsessed with the very nature of it. But if you post something on your Facebook --- "Got on the scale, down 3 pounds!", for example--- just watch how many likes, comments, and accolades you get. We celebrate weight loss because we think that the slimmer someone is, the closer they are to true attractiveness and beauty and worth in our society. That is an epidemic that needs to stop. Weight has nothing to do with beauty, or value. 

I'm learning so much about myself as I see the way the world perceives me changing. 

With every pound I lose, I am gaining perspective. And I just wish I could go back and hug 348-pound me and say You're beautiful now and no matter what, you always will be.

But knowing me, I wouldn't have listened anyway.

What Makes You Beautiful

I have always found beauty in strange places.

When I was a little girl I would look for beauty in the fluffy fur of a kitten my mother was bottlefeeding or in the colorful paint job on my My Little Ponies. Now that I'm older, I see it in the crows' feet around crinkled eyes, in gaps between teeth shown behind slightly-parted lips, in the asymmetrical pattern of freckles. I find it in laughter and casual handshakes and people walking down the street who I will never say hello to.

In part, that appreciation of beauty led to me becoming a photographer. When I was fourteen, I was a freshman in high school and desperate to find somewhere I belonged. A group of kids one year ahead of me in school were into punk and went to all of the local shows. They were incredibly exotic to me, decorated with Sharpie tattoos and Elmer's Glue holding their dyed hair into outrageous spikes; their clothing was colored, safety-pinned, stitched and layered to make Halloween costumes they wore all day every day. I was enamoured with their language, their music, their laughter; we went to the punk shows and crowded up by the stage in sweat-soaked tangles of limbs, groping for one another in the semi-darkness, screaming lyrics we knew and headbutting people who came too close like angry baby goats. We wore thick-soled sneakers and drank from two-liter bottles of generic soda passed among the mosh pit between songs. Somewhere in the mix of that my mother bought me a camera, a Canon 35mm SLR, and I began taking it everywhere. You'd be hard-pressed to find me without that nylon strap slung over one shoulder, lens banging against my hip as I walked through the halls of school or went on weekend-warrior adventures with  my friends. Every Monday I'd walk into the pharmacy and drop off a handful of rolls of used film, then eagerly wait for the pictures to come back in their sticky little envelopes. Photos of everyone laughing, shoving food in their faces, banging on their instruments like the world was going to end. Eventually I graduated to asking friends to model for me; at sixteen we prowled and trespassed in the shadowy bits of my hometown, my friends posing on rusting catwalks or suspension bridges or their own bedspreads. I brought my camera to concerts and angled myself up against the railing, shooting icons, disgusted and discouraged when the developed photos revealed brilliant fuschia blurs of motion. I hadn't yet learned ISO or shutter speed; I was completely self-taught and the first few concerts I shot, I blew it. I saw others taking pictures without a flash so I tried it, then was bewildered when my return was not good at all. Then I shot one entire show with the flash on, trying to make sure my photos came out this time. Except all of those photos were overblown, the lead singer ghost-white, and you could see the streaks of makeup on his neck where he hadn't blended his foundation in well. His chest was red and splotchy with exertion above the V neck of his shirt. No, this wasn't what I wanted either; where were the beautifully-lit, artistic pictures I saw in the magazines and on the websites I adored? What was I doing wrong?

Of course, knowledge comes with research and practice, and slowly I began to develop my skills. By the time I went away to college I felt fairly confident and upgraded to a digital SLR, sure that this would not only be cheaper but would yield better results than my previous endeavors with film. I taught myself using college friends and the beautiful wilderness around our campus in West Virginia; I had whole scrapbooks of pictures of snow, leaves, twigs. I wish they'd turned out better because Mother Nature gave me a beautiful canvas and I just wasn't entirely sure how to capture it properly.

Now I am twenty-seven, and I would never say that I'm a great photographer but I've certainly lucked out and snagged some shots I'm incredibly proud of. Some of my work's been published, and most of it hasn't. Either way, I have quite a bit that I can look at with pride, and that's more than I could've said in high school when I had no idea what an aperture was.

However, one thing has never changed within me; I still find beauty everywhere I look. I am drawn to the unusual, the unique, and the unconventional. I have shot models with perfect bone structure and illicit bodies straight from the cover of adult magazines; I've shot pouting mouths and perfectly-bent wrists and smoldering eyes more times than I care to count. There's something about seeing a camera come out that lends most people to put on a mask and strike a pose.

The models who are the most beautiful to me are the ones who allow their flaws to show and who make them their own. Who refused to see them as 'flaws' and instead labeled them 'assets'. These models make my life so much easier, and together we create art that I'm incredibly proud of.

At my heaviest, I still wanted to be a burlesque dancer. I've watched the art since I was probably fifteen or so and have always envied their fluid grace. Many burlesque dancers are heavier-set girls who mainstream society say shouldn't be in skimpy sequined and beaded outfits, shimmying on a stage. There is a club in LA that I've always wanted to attend; Club Bounce caters to plus-sized women and their admirers, and the idea of a club like that thriving in a city as looks-obsessed as LA makes me so happy.

I was self-conscious growing up and refused to wear anything revealing or sexy; I performed as Frank-n-Furter once in a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show. It took all of my nerve to pull on those thigh-highs and step into those shoes, and when I looked in the mirror I was actually proud of myself for doing it. I made it through the performance and we got an ovation; people loved it. As I was walking out of the theater, I overheard someone make a remark about how 'huge' the Frank was in the cast, and immediately I felt a flood of shame and embarrassment. I had made an asshole of myself in front of a theater full of people. No one wanted to see a girl my size parading around in panties and a garter belt. What had been a fantastic night was ruined in one fell blow.

I am now 230 pounds, the scale holding steady, and I am working out with a trainer and eating right in small portions. I am living life to the fullest; my ankles and knees don't hurt anymore when I walk, and I feel confident and beautiful most of the time. I am still morbidly obese by pretty much any standards on any map, but I don't feel that way. I bought a dress at H&M, which doesn't carry plus sizes, and it fits me wonderfully. I got my hair cut off and for the first time I can see my jawline without having to do a special 'Myspace angle' head tilt to do so. I have some work to do on my body yet, but overall I am in love with the feeling of moving without pain, of fitting into clothes that don't necessarily cover every inch of skin of mine.

This weekend, friends and I went out to a fancy dinner and we dressed up. I shimmied into leggings and high heels, a dress that came from the 'regular'-sized rack at Hot Topic, and a shrug. I felt like a million bucks and kept my head high all night. I didn't feel like the 'fat girl' playing dress-up the way I did when I would try to disguise my body in a dress. I felt beautiful.

And yet.

I came online tonight to find a girl I vaguely know (we met once at a concert over a year ago, and she isn't the kind of person I'm likely to hang out with on my own time) writing a rant on her Facebook feed about how 'pathetic' it is that bigger and older girls get their pictures taken and profess to be 'models', coming up with pinup names for themselves and such. She got defensive when I called her out for being close-minded, but honestly everything about what she had written rubbed me the wrong way. I'm friends with a lot of plus-sized models, actresses and pinup girls. I know big girls who can shake what their mamas gave them better than any 'svelte' girl I've seen. I hire curvy burlesque girls for my birthday parties. As for the 'old' bit, who is she to judge who is 'too old' to be beautiful? My favorite model I've ever shot is in her early forties, a mother, and was laughing for most of the shoot and 'ruining' any chance of making the photos 'sexy' (for the record, the end result was some of the most beautiful and wonderfully natural photos I've ever shot).

In s

In short... I believe everyone is beautiful. I think of all of those years that I was shamed for wearing tank tops or shorts or a bathing suit. I think of the hateful comments made to me in hallways or stores, or worse, the 'well-meaning' comments about my 'pretty face' or asking if I really needed another slice of pizza. My entire life, my family were the only ones who tried to convince me that I was beautiful; everyone else around me delegated me to the role of the fat friend and I adapted accordingly. Now, I am still fat but I am fiercer than I've ever been before. I am all teeth and claws when it comes to defying the beauty standard; we are all models, no matter our size or age or gender or bone structure. We have the right to bare ourselves in front of unblinking lenses and turn the bodies that society critiques into art. We have to own ourselves and tap into that inner beauty or we'll stop noticing it at all.

We are all worthy of being framed. Every roll, stretch mark, freckle, scar, wrinkle, stray hair, crows' foot, bald spot. Every single thing that makes you who you are is your own--- own it, and make it beautiful. Make every moment worthy of a picture. Make every breath art.

Life's too short to worry about people telling you what you are or aren't.

Today was a good day. A day that, at the end of it, you look back and kind of smile and nod in satisfaction.

We're on a brief break from filming due to people being out of the country and such, so it's been fairly relaxed on my end. Not to say I haven't been keeping busy--- my photography is providing me with lots of opportunities and I'm very happy and lucky for that. But on the whole, it's been nice getting to sleep in, cuddle my cat, and work on cleaning out my house. It's been peaceful, to say the least.

Today I decided to do something a bit more drastic and I booked an appointment at The Mane Event, one of the more high-end salons in Waco. Usually I don't bother with such things, and if I have to get my hair cut I go to Ultracuts or some other generic place where I don't even know one stylist from the next. 

My hair is kind of a touchy topic for me. Every woman in my family has very thin, fine hair that begins to thin even more when she turns about thirty right at the top of our heads. My grandmother has very thin hair that she backcombs and teases desperately to try and hide it, and my mother had a wide part that was growing ever-wider before her chemo made it a non-issue and we shaved her head. The men in my family are the same; my grandfather was mostly bald by forty-five and my uncle has long, stringy, very thin hair. So we are just not genetically blessed as a people. When I was young I had thick, curly hair and for awhile it looked like I would take after my father, but alas. Around high school my part began to widen and I went to a barber shop to cut all of my hair off short. After that, it was noticeably thinner without the weight of the curls pulling it down, and you could see my scalp no matter which way I parted it, which way I styled it, or what I did. I started dying it weird colors when I was fifteen, and kept that up for the rest of my adult life; my hair's been blue, turquoise, purple, pink, red, white, orange, black, brown and every shade and combination thereof. People started saying "Your hair is falling out because of how much you color it", but I knew that wasn't the case. I actually took very good care of my hair, using top-end products and deep-conditioning it as well as using dyes that weren't harmful and waiting about two months or more between bleach jobs. But I couldn't convince people that the hair loss wasn't my fault somehow; men bald and people just say "Oh what a shame" but it's so taboo for a woman to lose her hair that people automatically assume she is doing something wrong. I even buzzed my head down to the scalp a few years ago and GI Janed it for awhile, just so that it could come back my natural color with no chemical interference. I had hoped it would prove to people that it wasn't the products I was using that was making it thin out so drastically. Alas, nothing seemed to help--- I tried Rogaine and Nioxin and every 'thickening' treatment I could find to no avail. Finally I just settled for keeping my head buzzed down very short and wearing wigs all the time. The wigs were adorable, easy to maintain, and did things that my hair would never, ever be able to do. I could switch colors at a whim and go from long to short in two minutes. And best of all, people who had never met me before didn't know I was wearing a wig. I felt like an actress playing a part; choosing my wig every day became as much a part of my routine as choosing my eyeshadow color or which shoes I'd wear. 

Now at twenty-seven, my hair is thinner than ever and all I can do is keep it as short as possible and keep rocking wigs. But--- guilty confession--- I am completely in love with both Pink and Miley Cyrus. Primarily Pink, because she is so fierce and wonderful, but Miley has really grown up into a sassy little firecracker and I love it. Her new video "We Can't Stop" is so delightfully bizarre and I adore her signature look of bright red matte lips and white-blonde hair. So I took reference photos in to the stylist, and she started cutting. 

Back in March, at SXSW, my hair was down to my jawline before I went to a screening of "Scenic Route". The movie stars Josh Duhamel, and I got kind of caught up in the moment when he asked if anyone wanted to come onstage and get a mohawk shaved by him. 

Not that it was a bad thing.. as you can see from the pic here with me and the actress Laura Ortiz, it was very thin in the middle and no amount of 'length' was going to fix it.

So the stylist tapered the sides with clippers and got it extremely short, and then cut the damaged ends off in the middle and shortened it up. Then we put bleach and toner down on it and got to work. Two hours later, I walked out of the salon looking like this:

 

It sounds stupid that a haircut should make me feel so good, but it does. It's short and neat, easy to handle, and moreover, the blonde doesn't draw attention to how thin it is. But it is also very liberating and freeing, and I am in love with it.

After my haircut, I popped by Drug Emporium, our local health food store, and found some chips that are made entirely of ground-up beans instead of potato/starches.  They are totally delicious and actually have a little protein in them, so I can have a few for a snack once in awhile. I also treated myself to the matte red lipstick you see in the photo above, which is Covergirl and awesome, because for whatever reason my uber-expensive and wonderful Make Up Forever Moulin Rouge Artist lipstick is missing and has been for a few months now and I needed to rock a solid red lip with this hair.

At six, I had to go to the gym to meet with my trainer. Zack is really doing some awesome things with me, even though I can only afford to see him once a week. He is an energetic, positive force and I love being around him. He comes up with fun exercises and always powers me through them, making me increase my reps until I feel like I'm going to fail and stopping just before I'm about to collapse from something. 

When we began our interval training, he had me work really hard for about thirty seconds and then would give me a thirty-second rest period. Now we've bumped it up; on a treadmill, I warm up with a brisk walk (about 3.5 on the speed) for a minute, then jog around a 4.5 or so for a solid minute, then go back to speed-walking and so forth. The first time we did this I thought I was going to die; the second time, we did intervals for ten minutes' time. Today we did fifteen minutes, and I jogged for six and a half of those minutes at a 4.7 without stopping. Was it miserable? Yeah. I don't LIKE running. But you know what I do like? Being able to run. My ankle pain is gone. The pain that has plagued me since college is completely gone and now I can run, jump, skip, whatever without it acting up. My knees don't ache and while my back does still hurt, I think this is more the result of my body having to carry over three hundred pounds around for many years.

Today was an ass-kickery day. Fifteen minutes of interval, then squats, step-ups, crunches, lateral pulls and stretching. He also convinced me to get on this weird little machine and do inverted crunches. Not sure how I feel about those, they made me a little headrushy, but I did alright. Made it through my reps anyway. 

When I first started, I would joke about how I hoped he knew how to use the defib machine because I was convinced that I was going to have a stroke. Now those words don't leave my throat; today I was dripping sweat, heaving for breath, and while he was putting away the kettlebells I took the initiative to get on the big inflatable ball and start doing crunches. "You're supposed to be resting," he reminded me, laughing, watching. When I finished twelve of them, he told me to start doing them to the side. I did twelve. He told me to lift one leg off the floor and tighten my core to keep my balance. I did ten with each leg. Were they hard? Yeah, they sucked. But to both of our surprise, I didn't complain at all. Zack even complimented me on my recovery time; he was surprised that I wasn't more deadbeat after the interval running.

Instead, I told him that I'd signed up for a 5K in October. His whole face lit up and he was so excited; he asked if I wanted him to start angling my training toward endurance and jogging form to get me ready. I told him to slow down and not to get his shorts in a bunch; Zack's a track star and running is his favorite thing to do, and I don't want him thinking there's a budding marathoner in me or anything. I'm only going because they throw paint on you the whole time and I thought it'd make for some fun pictures. 

Still. It's kind of fun being able to say "I'm going to do a 5K". Am I going to win? Uh, no. I'm not even attempting to. But will I finish? Yes, doubtless. And that alone is more than I could've said before my surgery; there's no way I would've done it back then. Three miles or so, in a giant crowd of people? That doesn't sound fun at all. 

I am finally beginning to like who I am and what I look like. I'm getting confidence and finding less fault with my daily existence. It's like instead of weight coming off, I'm chipping away at this negative candy shell that's been surrounding me since childhood, and what's underneath? I don't know exactly yet, but I'm liking what I see so far.

Back to good.

It's been a tumultuous few weeks for me--- I've been working hard on both the film project, which is very close to wrapping, and my personal photography. I started carrying my camera everywhere when I was 14 and snapped pictures of my friends. I had entire albums of photos of people in bands at local shows, people hanging out at school, people getting dressed up and 'modeling' for me. I was using a film SLR at the time, a very nice Canon that my mom bought for me, but I knew nothing of aperture or lenses or depth-of-field or anything else. I was just developing an eye for framing and composition. When I was sixteen, my high school offered a basic intro to photography class, which I eagerly took. We focused on developing our own film (already becoming an archaic and lost practice by that time) and all we did was take pictures of nature, but it was a lot of fun and I learned some valuable things about camera settings. By the time I was in college my photography was a full-blown habit and I rarely left the house without my digital camera. At twenty I purchased a very nice (for that time) DSLR and started learning the finer points. I was working with bands by then; I was doing interviews for a local paper, and that helped me get press passes to concerts. Those press passes enabled me not only to talk to the bands I admired but to shoot them. Over the next few years I worked with dozens of bands, from HIM and My Chemical Romance to Secondhand Serenade, The Spill Canvas, Yellowcard, Avenged Sevenfold and more. I learned about stage lighting and the importance of ISO and shutter speeds; it was all self-taught and I was very critical of my own work, trying to figure out what 'went wrong' when certain photos didn't come out the way I'd hoped. By now, at twenty-seven, I know that I still have a long way to go but I feel like a much more capable photographer now than when I was fumbling blindly along ten years ago. I have been lucky enough to work with some amazing bands and have a few of my pieces published here and there in newspapers or websites, and I know that this is something I want to pursue for the rest of my life. Lately, I've been granted access to photograph Rockstar Mayhem Festival, Vans Warped Tour and a few other upcoming concerts, plus I've been doing tons of portrait sessions with my friends. All in all, pretty productive, I'd say. :)

My trainer has been working me at the gym; we're mostly working on balance and stretching, which is fantastic for me. He's got me using resistance bands to pull my calf muscles and hamstrings out, and the first day we trained he had me jog on a treadmill. After 30 seconds solid I thought I was going to die from being unable to breathe. Yesterday at our session he made me do intervals of speed-walking and full-out jogging for ten minutes straight in thirty or forty-five second bursts. I thought I was going to die, but I made it the whole ten minutes without quitting or stopping for a break. I was so proud of myself. I haven't run anywhere since I played softball as a pre-teen. I don't enjoy running, but it was exciting just to be able to jog without dying or feeling the agonizing pain in my ankle that I used to feel before I lost all of the weight!

My scale is still at 232, but I'm having plenty of non-scale victories. ALL of my jeans are too big, which meant I went to the thrift store and bought a pair today of smaller size. My 'large' t-shirts fit comfortably now and in some cases I think I could even go to a medium. I have so much more energy than I used to have, and I am always wanting to get out of the house and go do something. My skin has also cleared up immensely; I haven't had a breakout since before the surgery. My skin was always pretty clear, but I would get random outbreaks every now and then; since I have no soda, sugar or carbs in my diet now and very little greasy/processed food, my complexion is a dream come true for me.

I am thinking that when the weather cools down a bit I'd like to buy a bicycle. It's so hot right now that I'd probably pass out riding one, but I haven't been on a bike since I was probably thirteen and I'd like to try picking it up again. It'd be a fun way to get around now and again. :)

Little Miss Domestic

I've been feeling really good about myself this week and taking good care of myself--- my Chike protein shakes came in, so in the mornings I've been rocking the strawberries and creme flavor. It really does taste like a milkshake and it doesn't get frothy or foamy on me, which is great because I sip it through a straw and before I know it, the whole thing is gone and I have more than 20g of protein in me! I do need to buy more Blender bottles though, especially since I don't have a dishwasher. Washing them out every day is annoying, mostly because dishes are my least favorite thing to do chore-wise!

I have also been really faithful with my gym trips; I went three times this week. One of them was Wednesday, when Zack and I had an hour-long session. We're working primarily on my balance and flexibility, which is rough. Pre-WLS, I had very bad balance but I always considered myself decently flexible. I could drop into a deep squat to check out DVDs on the bottom shelf at a store, for example. Since surgery I've had some neuropathy in my legs (probably due to a vitamin deficiency but I haven't had blood work done so I'm not sure) and it's impossible for me to squat that deeply anymore; it makes the back of my knees ache fiercely. However, Zack has been coming up with interesting stuff for us to do, mostly involving medicine balls and balance balls and planking and things like that that force me to be in control of my core muscles. I have gone swimming each time too; it is working wonders to unkink my muscles.

Thursday night I drove to see my beautiful sister Heather. Heather is a bigger girl too and she was actually chosen to be a featured person on a weight-loss reality show, but she had to bow out due to work obligations. However, the experience of going out there taught her lots about nutrition and new exercises, and so she and I come from different places on this. Heather and her wonderful wife Tanya grilled us a healthy dinner of steak, corn, squash, zucchini, carrots, asparagus and tomatoes, followed by swimming in their backyard pool. It's so much fun to have someone else who will eat the same healthy, small portions you do and who will hold you accountable for working out. I wish she lived closer because it would be great to get with her a few times a week to work together.

I had stopped at a tiny little roadside truck earlier in the week and picked up a big bag of fresh peaches. Summer is one of my favorite times of the year in Texas despite the brutal heat because we get a huge influx of fresh fruits and veggies, so it's so much fun to try and see what I can do with them. I decided to adapt a recipe I found for peach cake; I'm a terrible cook but I really love baking, so I thought there was a good chance it would turn out.

I basically mixed flour and Splenda, butter (I used real butter because margarine just doesn't bake as well), one egg and cinnamon to hand-press a crust, then cut up the peaches into large uneven chunks, skin still on them, and put them on top of the crust. I blended fat-free cream cheese, natural vanilla extract, another egg and a bit more Splenda to make a cream sauce, which I poured over the top of the peaches. I then topped the whole thing with more of the same mix I used for the crust and an even sprinkle of cinnamon across the top. It's not overly sweet, but it's pretty amazing. You serve it cold, although I guess you could do it warm if you wanted.

After my peach cake/cobbler hybrid thing, I took myself on a movie date to see The Purge at the dollar theater. Most of my friends didn't like it, but I enjoyed it. The only thing that amazed me was that several people brought their children; it was the middle of the day on a weekday so I thought I'd be safe, but there were crying and babbling toddlers around me for most of the film. I get very twitchy about that, particularly when it's a movie about gratuitous, condoned ultra-violence.

After The Purge, I came home and decided to make a recipe from my favorite blog in the world. The owner, Shelly, is a weight-loss surgery patient who now creates recipes and blogs about post-WLS fitness. I have been craving something savory, so I decided to try her 'pizza meatloaf', which is amazing. I even did a few substitutions on her recipe which I think made it even healthier; I used turkey pepperoni instead of regular, fat-free mozzarella chunks, left out the bruschetta sauce, and when I soaked the bread crumbs, I used my protein-inflused lactose-free milk instead of regular milk. I wish people could've smelled my house when they were baking... it was insanely delicious. I still have plenty of leftovers, too; I may try mashing half a sweet potato tomorrow to get some complex carbs in there as well as make it all comfort-foody.

________________

This was a terrifically awesome, fun weekend!

It was my first Saturday off from filming in a long time, so despite very kind invites from my best friends asking me to come  to Dallas to hang out, I abstained. Instead I got up early on Saturday morning and headed to the Downtown Farmer's Market; it's the first time I've been able to make it, and boy am I excited! I want to make this a weekly thing as soon as filming is done! The market stretches to include a lot of vendor booths from local farms, slaughterhouses,  cheesemakers and more offering local, organic produce and artisanal foods. There are also food trucks and concession booths with delicious fresh offerings. It's a dog-friendly place so lots of people brought their furry companions and I got to see some real beauties, including an Irish Wolfhound that was taller than his owner when he got up on his hind legs!

Fresh ripe watermelons!

 

 Amazing waffles with ridiculous topping options... left to right, strawberries and bananas; eggs, bacon and homemade sausage, butter and organic maple syrup. YUM!

The lovely Wolfhound!

The highlight of my morning, however, was a man who owns a pest-control business here in town. He has a stunning German shepherd that is one of the best-behaved and well-trained dogs I've ever seen, and when he walked past me I had to do a double-take when I saw what was riding on his shoulder... He takes in orphaned and displaced baby raccoons and raises them until they're old enough to go to the zoo or an animal sanctuary! This little tyke is eight weeks old and was amazing... it was having a blast meeting people and 'sampling' all of the wares from the booths!

 

I purchased hand-ground peanut butter (no sugar added, it's literally just peanuts, oil and salt), a fresh cheese spread called "Leopard Spread" from a local cheese house, made of extra-sharp cheddar, cream cheese, peppers and spices, and some grass-fed beef tamales. I also sampled a delicious hibiscus-berry lemonade, which I will be buying a gallon of when I make it back to the market; it was tasty, refreshing, and sweetened with just a pinch of raw sugar. I enjoyed my treat on the bank of the river, enjoying the beautiful day even though it was stiflingly hot. 

 

After the morning at the market I headed to the flea market a few streets over, where I browsed a lot of foreign knock-off designer clothes, cowboy boots and hats, and Tejana mixtapes. Our flea market used to consist of people with booths of paperback books, racks of vintage clothing, and tons of odds and ends, but lately it's become a place for cheap imitation sunglasses and bootleg CDs, or people who buy all of the DVDs from a video store going out of business and then come here to resell them. It's a sad state of affairs and makes for boring browsing, but you never know. I snagged a primo parking space and wandered with my Powerade Zero, trying to stay hydrated in the sweltering sunlight.  I wound up finding a booth run by an older Nigerian man who had a lot of vintage camera equipment; he had rented one of the permanent 'storage building' spaces and was using it as a sort of mobile photo studio, full of backdrops, props and more. For a nominal fee he would shoot people in a variety of poses with props and costumes. While I'm not sure how that business model works out for him, he had a very nice travel hardcase with foam inserts and a vintage Canon lens I was interested in, so we chatted cameras for awhile and then I offered him twenty bucks for both, which he accepted. The case alone probably retailed for close to $75 so I feel pretty good about the deal. I needed one anyway, it'll help me transport my stuff safely to LA this fall!

Speaking of LA, I have several exciting vacations coming up. In September I'm flying to Indianapolis to help my friend Shae volunteer at the world-famous HorrorHound convention. Then in October I'm flying to Columbus, Ohio to see 30 Seconds to Mars play a show. I've been a huge fan of theirs since 2005 and I have never had the opportunity to see them live, and of course on this US tour they aren't coming anywhere near Texas. So I decided to go ahead and splurge and make it an 'event'; I bought a sidestage ticket so that I can watch from the wings instead of in the completely-insane crowd, and I get a meet and greet and professional photo with the band, among other perks. Worth it to see an incredible band who, by all accounts and things I've seen, are some of the best live performers out there. Later in October I'm flying to Los Angeles the same way I do every year; one of my best friends Stephanie lives out there and we always do a lot of fun Halloween things together to celebrate our favorite holiday. One such thing is Universal Studios, where we attend Halloween Horror Nights. I can't wait for this year to see what mazes they're going to announce!

Next weekend it's back to filming, but we're working on two very pivotal scenes. One involves horror icon Marilyn Burns, who played 'final girl' Sally in the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as the actor who portrayed the man who rescued her in the film, Ed Guinn. So that's super-exciting! We're in the home stretch to finish the movie's principal filming now, I'm working on an epic photo shoot for the weekend of August 1, and I am feeling better than ever!