A poem

I keep telling myself that I'm going to be better at updating this blog, but it looks like another week has gone by without an update. Today I just looked at my list of blogs that I want to write about and picked the shortest, easiest one.

The blog today will be mostly comprised of a poem I started writing spring of 2009 called "Hipsters Don't Have Any." I finished writing it recently, but there are some things about it that I don't like. The poem was originally written as a means for me to explore some of my feelings about weight and beauty. The poem is addressed to hipsters which I think is a very subjective term that means different things to different people. I guess when I think of the word "hipster," an image comes to my mind of a thin and shaky person. A person who drapes themselves in expensive, flimsy layers of clothing. A person who knows how to put on eye makeup to make their eyes look dark like "hollows of madness." A person perpetually wrapped in an impenetrable, damning ennui... gah. When I try to describe it, it sounds vague even to me. I guess "hipster" to me just personifies the sort of person who makes me feel insecure about my looks and interests and personality.

I guess that this blog doesn't have a lot to do with my international travels, except that I sometimes feel painfully aware of my weight in Seoul, because so many women here are all small sinews and muscles. Intellectually, I understand that I am not overweight, and not unhealthy. However, it is a pervasive myth of both my culture and South Korean culture that happiness is synonymous with beauty and beauty is synonymous with diminutive waistelines. Even recognizeing this myth as a myth, I still find myself staring in mirrors and flattening my hands on my stomach, pressing my belly toward my spine until my reflection looks more like a woman I would see smiling hungrily on T.V.

So... I wrote this poem, perhaps to reassure myself that hiplines matter so little, and no slender waif-like fashionistas need to make me feel otherwise. As far as poems on insecurities and weight go, a brilliant poet friend of mine recently wrote a much more poignant one than the following, and I urge you to read it and be moved: How Shall We Speak of Weight? Finally, as far as poems about hips go, I defer to Sandra Cisnero's magnum opus, The House on Mango Street

Hipsters Don't Have Any

Hips. They do have stomachs, flat like pancakes or Kansas,
long slender fingers with small knobby knuckles,
and the gentle press of clavicle against tightly wrapped T-shirts.
But they are Hip-o-crites, because they lack any
Hips. Me, I've got hips
like hippos, with their globular, bulbous, sensuous curves.
God knows, I've longed for your necks,
the jut of your shoulder blades,
but never the distorted hips bones that lurch at jangly angles.
God knows how I've wanted your jawline and hairline
the black sheet of hair that falls over your eyes,
its shadow soft against the pale bone of your cheek.
But I've never wanted those two concave polygons
between your atrophied wasteline and skinny jeans,
where the whole world can see
your hips can't hold belts or babies or hands.