dreaded end of a great friend

Farewell, thanksgiving break. You have been good to me. The above is a picture of my stomach. It isn't flat like it looks in this picture. I am lying down. But this break has been full of great food, love, and friendship. I am really really really not excited to go back to school. But its only two weeks and then finals and then it is OVER and it is CHRISTMAS!!! So I can make it I think.

Love,
Lizzy ;)

can you find this trash can?

This is not really an accurate snapshot of how I feel, because actually I am quite happy. My english class got canceled, magically giving me enough time to actually complete the homework I didn't ever do on the weekend. I don't know how it always works out, but it does.

Now I have a special challenge for all you BYU students: can you find this trashcan? Hint, its on BYU campus. Just kidding, you will never find it. But I bet you could find it if I included this:

Yes, true patrons of the HBLL can find aisle NE and sit where I sat just now and feel the magic of it. It is my favorite aisle, because it is aisle NE! Like in Monty Python.

I just spelled "aisle" "eyle". College is really doing wornders for my intelligence.

Love,
Lizzy ;)

life, liberty, and the pursuit of thinness...

I am an eighteen year old girl. I live in a house with five other eighteen year old girls. I dance ballet. I have talked to girls from all over the world, from 8 to 48. I have heard almost every single one say, "I'm too fat," "I've gained so much weight," "I hate my thighs/hips/butt." I have not heard a single girl in any of these populations say, "Yes, I like my body."

Except for one tiny demographic: the BYU art models. All of us are unremarkable when it comes to appearance. We pose proudly in our average, bikini-clad bodies for figure drawing classes. It is impossible to draw a body clothed if you don't understand what the basic structure of it is unclothed. So, in order to give the students an accurate image of a woman's body, the models employed had to be an accurate representation of an average human body. That's where we came in.

I would not say I am particularly comfortable in my own skin, yet I regularly posed for a class of students--students of my body--in nothing but a bikini, for three straight hours. During breaks and after the class, I could see the charcoal drawings that had been done of me. Each artist was skilled and trained and had done his best to create an accurate likeness. But the interesting thing about looking at this art was that it was free of judgment. Each artist had simply drawn my body. Things I thought of as "flaws" didn't look like flaws in the art, even though they were still there. The artists had simply drawn exactly what they saw, not looking at me through the warped glasses that are society's definition of attraction, but as students seeking to understand the beautifully complicated series of lines and shapes before them.

I have never heard a model say she's fat, or ugly, or point out to me something she thought of as a flaw. We have all come to see ourselves not as the skewed image in the mirror, but as bodies that are beautiful just because they are bodies. The way those students of our bodies saw us became the way we saw ourselves.

So the next time someone says "I'm too fat," or "I wish I looked more like her" or "I wish I had your [insert aspect of image]", say, "You know what? I think you have the perfect body. I think I have the perfect body too, and her and her. We all have perfect bodies. They are just different." Because you know what? That is the truth.

If you don't believe me, just ask a figure drawing student.

Love,
Lizzy ;)

how to argue

So, usually my english reading assignments from Readings for Intensive Writers are long and boring 20-page research essays on an obscure topic I don't care about. So imagine my surprise when this morning I opened up my textbook and read this (some parts have been edited out for the sake of length):

Dave Barry: How to Argue Effectively

Dave Barry won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988. In 1975, Barry joined Burger Associates, a consulting firm that teaches effective writing to businesspersons. He spent nearly eight years trying to get various businesspersons to stop writing things like, "Enclosed please find the enclosed enclosure," but he eventually realized that it was hopeless.

I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People knows this and steer clear of me at parties, often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me. You too can win arguments. Simply follow these rules:

DRINK LIQUOR
Suppose you are at a party and some hotshot intellectual is expounding on the economy of Peru, a subject you know nothing about. If you are drinking some health-fanatic drink like grapefruit juice, you'll hang back, afraid to display your ignorance, while the hotshots enthralls your date. But if you drink several large martinis, you'll discover you have strong views about the Peruvian ecnomy. You'd be a wealth of information. You'll argue forcefully, offering searing insight and possibly upsetting furniture. People will be impressed. Some may leave the room.

MAKE THINGS UP
Suppose, in the Peruvian economy argument, you are trying to prove the Peruvians are underpaid, a position you base solely on the fact that you are underpaid, and you'll be damned if you're going to let a bunch of Peruvians be better off. Don't say: "I think Peruvians are underpaid." Say instead: "The average Peruvian's salary in 1981 dollars adjusted for the revised tax base is $1,452.81 per annum, which is $836.07 below the mean gross poverty level."
NOTE: Always make up the exact figure. If an opponent asks where you got your information, make that up too. Say: "This information comes from Dr. Hovel T. Moon's study for the Buford Commission published on May 9, 1982. Didn't you read it?" Say this in the same tone of voice you would use to say, "You left your soiled underwear in my bathroom."

USE MEANINGLESS BUT WEIGHTY-SOUNDING WORDS AND PHRASES
Memorize this list:
Let me put it this way
In terms of
Vis-a-vis
Per se
As it were
Quo
So to speak
You should also memorize some Latin abbreviations such as "Q.E.D.," "e.g.", and "i.e." These are all short for, "I speak Latin, and you don't." Here's how to use these words and phrases. Suppose you want to say, "Peruvians would like to order appetizers more often, but they don't have enough money." You never win an argument talking like that. But you WILL win if you say, "Let me put it this way. In terms of appetizers vis-a-vis Peruvians quo Peruvians, they would like to order them more often, so to speak, but they do not have enough money per se as it were. Q.E.D." Only a fool would challenge that statement.

USE SNAPPY AND IRRELEVANT COMEBACKS
You need an arsenal of all-purpose irrelevant phrases to fire back at your opponent when they make valid points. The best are:
You're begging the question.
You're being defensive.
Don't compare apples to oranges.
What are your parameters?
This last one is especially valuable. Nobody other than engineers and policy wonks has the vaguest idea what "parameters" means. Here's how to use your comeback: You say: "As Abraham Lincoln said in 1873..." Your opponent says: "Lincoln died in 1865." You say: "You're begging the question."

COMPARE YOUR OPPONENT TO ADOLF HITLER
This is your heavy artillery, for when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectactularly wrong. Bring Hitler up subtly. Say: "That sounds suspiciously like something Adolf Hitler might say." or "You certainly do remind me of Adolf Hitler."

So that's it. You now know how to out-argue anybody. Do not try to pull this on people who generally carry weapons.

if my heart was a house

Love,
Lizzy

being alone

I like this new snapshot idea. It forces me to be creative and on the spot take a picture that exemplifies my current state of mind, without moving, with only my phone camera, and without editing the picture in any way except to rotate it. I think maybe I just like to challenge myself. Actually, there's no "maybe" about it, I do. Quite often I do things "just to see if I can."

This picture is a great one because there are no people in it. If you have ever seen BYU, even if it is only out of the window of a fighter jet, you will know just how rare that is. Because there are 30,000 people who attend a school that covers approximately 1.218 square miles. Which is not large. However, I don't know if that is really how large it is because BYU doesn't post the square footage of their campus on their website; I know, how ridiculous is that. So I had to calculate it by looking at the little campus map and measuring with the little scale in the corner. And I am not good at math. Also, I put my whole internet in French, so the scale was showing in meters instead of miles. So then I had to convert meters to miles. Then I had to calculate the vertical distance, and I couldn't rotate the map to use the little scale, so I had to do a complicated driving directions search to give me how many miles the campus was high. Then I had to convert my meters to miles (1 mile is 1,609.344 meters, in case you wondered) and times those two together. I think it took me about 20 minutes to calculate, but it is all worth it because BYU is possibly 1.218 square miles large.

So, now that I've gotten that vitally important statistic out of the way, I can go on about the fact that there are no people in the snapshot. I was going to get into this great poetic/philosophic discussion about people and being alone and loneliness. It would have been epic.

But man, that math problem was exhausting. I'm lonely, we'll just leave it at that.

Love,
Lizzy :)

end fat talk

I saw this video in the Nutrition class I transcribe, and thought it was extremely well-done and applicable. I would encourage all of you to watch it and think about the message behind it.

Love,
Lizzy