Snowed In

Friday is Gender Buffet day at the Women’s Center. Usually the discussion is pretty inspired and we end up lingering afterward and snacking and chating about feminism and art and gender and love and whatever else. We got to talking about valentine’s day, and I offered that I felt the day was really oriented towards lover/lifepartnering and I’m looking for affection and intimacy and support outside of that context lately, and we had a really cool discussion about sleeping with friends and sleepovers and how there should be a women’s center sleepover and stuff.

At some point I got up to graze the lunch table, and Renee (the women’s center intern) was like “oh, are you hungry Erik?” and I was like “yeah a little” and before I could protest she ran off to the kitchen to scout out some more food. She came back empty handed and then I explained that really, I’m not dying of hunger, but I am trying not to be wasteful, and that launched an awesome discussion about food.

I started telling Renee about my veganesqueness and Niko joined in and started talking about her veganism. I was telling them how I’m wanting not just to spend lots of money on fake meat and gourmet produce, but to actually figure out a way to eat sustainably and responsibly on a budget that a large swath of America could afford. We got to talking about rice and beans and how it makes an awesome staple diet, and Renee professed (bodily!) her love of rice and beans and told us how when she was growing up her family would just cook up a huge pot of rice and beans and it’d just be there, ready to eat all week.

That was really inspiring for me, and then Niko ran back to her office to grab something for me. She comes back with a sheet of stickers like these:

Which she drew. Also awesome and inspiring. Two weeks ago I had another awesome conversation with Renee about self-image and how I’ve been approaching my appearance differently as a result of my feminism. I’m growing out my beard, and enjoying that. When I look in the mirror and think my hair looks ugly, I don’t “fix” it, I take the “ugly” parts and accentuate them and realize that they’re awesome. And that stuff is mostly coming from the feminist women I’m talking to.

And lots of my friends have been really inspiring lately in other ways too. I think my recent focus on sustainability is coming totally from Kaya and Alex. My focus on cooking has been totally feeding off of Kensy’s energy. I’m climbing in part because Matthew is so supportive, and working on art because other-Matthew got so excited when I told him what I was doing. It’s just awesome to be mutually inspired.