Shut. UP.

A guy I went to high school with posted this awful video about modesty (The Evolution of the Swimsuit), with a hearty "This is FANTASTIC! I encourage everyone, especially young women, to take time to watch this video and share it with their friends. What this woman says is not opinion; it is truth! How will you use your beauty?" First of all, eww I hate men telling women what they need to watch especially when it's like "Hey womenfolk! Listen up! I'm a man, which means I'm a huge perv! If you don't believe me, just watch this video, it will help you really understand how pervy I am!!" ... Do you people realize how you sound?

Anyways, I commented "I did not like this video. The more we reinforce this idea that men can't control themselves and women need to be accountable for men's 'animalistic nature', the more that becomes true. How insulting is that to men? "You are nothing more than your instincts, so we need to make sure women are aware of that and take responsibility for you." We can't keep blaming women for men's poor actions. We are all accountable for our own decisions and the focus needs to be on making men responsible for their own responses, not women."

Some random guy I don't know commented later and said, "I am a man and I am not offended at all. I loved it. I feel like I am very in control of myself; I am not in control of which lobe of my brain is activated when I see something, though. If women want to stop being objectified, they need to stop making themselves an object."

I didn't feel like getting into an argument about how much of an idiot he probably is (I considered something along the lines of "I guess I just hold the men in my life to a higher standard... you know, different than the standard I would hold a dog to," but decided against it. I'm not a fan of internet arguing. But I did take BIG issue with one part of his comment: "If women want to stop being objectified, they need to stop making themselves an object." Uhhh... WHAT?! So a women who dresses immodestly... BAM OBJECT.

Do people not realize that this approach to modesty lessons incites this type of reaction? "I'm a man, I'm ruled by my penis, women are objects." Uh... hey buddy, you're dragging your knuckles a little. And did you really just eat a fly out of your friends hair? Because that's what this type of crap makes you sound like - an unevolved animal. This guy literally just excused anything a man does to a woman, if she was 'making herself an object.'

So I commented back "Women are never objects, no matter what they are wearing. A woman could *never* make herself into an object."

A little later I hear a ping from a facebook notification... sure enough, it's this guy. As I clicked on the link to see his response, I was expecting something like "OK that wasn't the best wording, you know what I mean." So I imagine my surprise when I saw:

"Disagree."

Oh. My. Gosh. I about peed my pants. What an a-hole. How can people think this????? How can people be OK with this? Do they not hear themselves?

Every time a modesty lesson like this is taught, there is one more tally in the "it's women's fault" column, rather than the "I am accountable for my own actions" column. I'm sure men are also getting that reminder, but they're hearing this crap far more often. Cut it out!

New Girl

When we first left Provo, I was craving a fresh start, a new scene. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with the old scene... it had just been my scene for a while. I moved to Provo in 2008. I was excited to see some new things.

But I have to admit... I don't like being new. I don't like not having any friends. I don't like not knowing anyone. I don't know how to act around people that I don't know. I don't know how to be myself. I am so, so, so quiet around people I don't know.

My goal in this new phase has just been to be upbeat, friendly, positive, and kind. To smile at people that I see and ask them how they are doing. To at least attend social events, even if I feel uncomfortable. And I've been doing that. But I still feel like I haven't connected with anyone, and despite my constant efforts to be someone that people want to be around, I feel like no one really wants to be around me. Not that they dislike me... just that they aren't terribly interested in me.

I feel so boring and different. At church, I'm way younger than everyone else and I don't have any kids. I'm a woman who is focusing on her career - weird. At work, I'm married, don't drink, and didn't belong to a sorority. I try to attend all the social functions but just end up silently listening while everyone tells their stories of drunken escapades and sorority drama. Compared to that, I am boring!

I envy those people who are so warm and open and make friends easily. I am such a private person and I rarely open up about my life, and I can see why that would make people be disinterested in me. I think about the person I am around my friends: goofy, hyper, cheesy, opinionated... yet I find myself just disappearing at work. Silent. Friendly. Boring.

I'm a legit working woman! Well... kind of. We're just doing training now, so I haven't actually started doing any work.

Oh I am so excited to have this job. The things I'm learning at training have gotten me even more excited. I think it's going to be a good fit for me. UP is an awesome company and I can tell they try hard to take care of their employees. There isn't a "weed out" mentality like there is at the Big 4 - they genuinely want you to have your career with them.

Let's see... UP works really hard to emphasize safety. A large portion of their workforce is in very risky environments where even the slightest mistake could be the difference between life and death, so there is a lot of push for safety and this is carried over to the corporate level. Whenever you meet in a larger conference room or training room, the meeting starts with a safety briefing where you identify someone who can perform CPR, someone who is willing to retrieve and use the AED if needed, someone to call 911, where to go in case of dangerous weather, and where to go if we need to evacuate the building.

We've had a lot of socials. They took us out to lunch twice, we had an evening welcome event, and we had a golf tournament this past weekend. A golf tournament! We were on teams and it was a scramble, which means everyone hits and then we pick the best ball and all hit from there until we get to the hole. I. Am. Not. A. Golfer. I was enjoying the first... 5 holes, but then I was kind of bored. We played the whole 18 holes, and it was windy and cloudy and cold!

There are like 50 or so people in the audit department, and the vast majority of them are recent college graduates. The pattern is that you start as an "associate auditor," get promoted to "staff auditor" after a year, then "senior auditor" the next year. At that point you can leave audit and go work for the company in another division, or stick around for one more year as an "audit supervisor" before leaving for another department.

Let's see.. what else has happened in my life - we took an overnight train to Denver last month to buy a used car. I love it, it's so cute. The weather here  has been weird - it bounces back and forth between nice and sunny and rainy and windy. So windy! That's going to be an adjustment. Omaha is beautiful though. I'm surprised - I was expecting it to be really flat and no trees, basically big sky country. But, it's actually very green here, and there are more trees here than in Utah. It's also quite hilly here.. not like Virginia hilly, but some nice rolling hills.

It's starting to feel like home here. It's still hard being away from my friends in Provo, being only a text away from hanging out. It takes me a long time to warm up to people enough to totally be myself, and I have some mild social anxiety from spending time around a lot of new people. I'm not one to overly self conscious about my appearance, but I am totally self conscious about my personality, especially when I'm around new people. But, meeting new people means making new friends, and I know I'll feel better soon.