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I’m Too Sick to Work, But I Still Budget Money for Makeup


The other day, I found myself staring at the latest collection from Melt Cosmetics online. I’d been eyeing it on Instagram for weeks. Did I need it? No. But it’d been at least five months since I last bought myself makeup, so I clicked add to cart and got all $200 worth of the line.

While this might seem like a common splurge for many makeup enthusiasts, it definitely feels like something others might judge me for—honestly, it’s something I judge myself for at times. Despite the fact I that usually only buy makeup around three times a year, as someone who’s unemployed, I don’t exactly have money to spare.

After being diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses—the biggest being Lyme disease—I’m now living at home with my parents at the age of 27 because my illnesses have taken over my ability to go out and live my own life. While other twentysomethings joke that “adulting” is hard, I’ve had to ration the $12,000 I saved as I pushed my way through internships and entry-level jobs. But I’m lucky that’s not always on my mind. I’ve got too many other things to worry about.

Right now my focus is on being less sick or perhaps just feeling “fine.” I’m often exhausted and lightheaded; starving and completely without an appetite. I have both insomnia and the inability to wake up. Sometimes my joints get so swollen, it hurts too much even hold my phone. And when I’m struck with a bout of intense nausea, I’m just happy I don’t accidentally throw up on my cat. Through all that, though, I still have to muster up the energy to go to weekly doctor appointments and treatments.

Most of this feels like a bearable discomfort, because I’m so used to it all by now. And yet, when I look at myself, barefaced, in the mirror, all I still see is a sick person.

While some may see makeup as frivolous—or worse, a costly, empty pastime that somehow makes you vapid—for me, it’s therapeutic.

I first started caring, like really caring, about makeup when I was 18. I’d just started to develop skin condition on my face. I couldn’t just cover it with concealer; I thought I needed full-on foundation. To not look gaunt, I thought, why not add some blush? Ooh, and highlighter? If I was going that far, I might as well enjoy doing my eye makeup and throw on some lipstick for good measure. Before long, makeup grew into a hobby. And then when I got really sick, my use for it evolved again. It became my armor—a shield to protect my self-esteem. I might be sick, but I don’t have to look it.

More than that, it’s also a ritual that helps calm my mind. While some may see makeup as frivolous—or worse, a costly, empty pastime that somehow makes you vapid—for me, it’s therapeutic. It’s a soothing, creative outlet that doesn’t drain my energy. And believe me, energy is a precious commodity when you’re dealing with chronic illness. One night out, and I can sleep until the evening of the next day, or worse, I’ll wake up in twice my normal pain. As I’m constantly bombarded with the ramifications of my illnesses, finding small things I can enjoy from the comfort of my home is essential.

I think deep down it bothers me because I wish I were well enough to work and actually afford these things like a person in “good health” would.

While I spend time every day, twice a day, on skin care, I only actually do my makeup when someone is coming to visit or when I’m leaving the house. A lot of the time, this means I’m putting my best face forward for my weekly hospital visits, where I get stabbed with a needle to receive much appreciated saline infusions.

I try my best to schedule at least one hour to take my time doing my makeup and I always look forward to it. I find real joy sitting down in front of my mirror, eyeshadow brush in hand to sweep a luxurious shade over my lids, followed by a flick of liner to create the perfect cat eye. When I do this, my illness isn’t at the forefront of my mind. Sure, I think about covering up my dark circles, and my face often looks puffy or swollen because of my illnesses, but apart from that, beauty truly is an escape.

By this logic, I know I shouldn’t feel shame or guilt when I do decide to buy makeup. But it’s the same feeling I get when I travel or go to a concert or even just to the movies. I think deep down it bothers me because I wish I were well enough to work and actually afford these things like a person in “good health” would.

So when I do choose to spend $200 on makeup, that ability comes down to my privilege of having family who can offer the financial and emotional support that every person with chronic illness desires. They worry about me, they care about my overall wellbeing, they make sure I get all the treatments I need, and they try to help me have a semblance of a normal life when they can. But still there’s that little voice in my head that tells me I don’t deserve nice things. Because if it weren’t for my parents’ support, I wouldn’t have them. I’d probably be thousands of dollars in medical debt, except I have zero credit and no job so I’d probably just have to forgo essential treatments and visits to my Lyme-literate doctor instead.

Without my parents’ financial aid, I’d probably be struggling to talk and living with excruciating pain. Once I start thinking of those what ifs, I have to back way up and remind myself I’m lucky. So, yes, still having savings that I can spend on small pleasures is a privilege, but I take it as it is and try very hard to just live my life.

When my package from Melt finally arrived, I could feel the excitement reverberate throughout myself. Once I got the box open, I wanted to touch all the pretty new products, but instead I opened each one with care, looked at it, then put it back. It felt like these were too nice to use, but I waited in anticipation for an outing where I would be able to show them off. As usual, someone would probably compliment my makeup, “Wow you look great, you must be doing better!” and I would give my go-to response, “No, that’s just the magic of makeup.”

May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month. You can read more about it here.



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When You Wear a Turtleneck You’re Elegant; When I Wear One, I’m Oppressed


If you follow runway news even casually, you’ve likely heard about the rise of “modest” dressing. Broadly defined as clothing that’s not revealing in terms of cut and fit, modest dressing isn’t exactly a new idea, but in the last few seasons, it’s emerged as a consistent theme in the mainstream, secular fashion scene. On the fall 2018 runways, for example, there were below-the-knee skirts paired with up-to-the-collarbone blouses at Tibi, all manner of oversize outerwear at Balenciaga, anoraks as dresses at Dries van Noten, and long skirts over trousers at Gucci. Meanwhile, brands have started catering more explicitly to “modest” dressers, including sites like the Modist, which sells designer pieces that fit within modesty standards from the likes of Marni and Rachel Comey, as well as Macy’s, which in February introduced The Verona Collection, a line of modest clothing. Just this week H&M announced it would also launch a modest fashion line. In fact, if you keep up with fashion trends, there’s a good chance the clothes you’re wearing are more covered up than the ones you were wearing, say, two years ago.

As a Muslim American political fashion blogger who’s dressed modestly for most of her adult life (for me, that means favoring billowy cuts and not showing skin beyond my face and forearms), you’d think I’d be all for this. And, to a certain extent, I am: I have no complaints about my newfound ability to walk into a store and pick out a long-sleeve shirt that isn’t translucent or dramatically scoop-neck with relative ease. (Provided the shirt in question is ethically produced.) But there’s one huge difference between my wearing a chunky turtleneck with an ankle-grazing skirt and that same look on Valentino’s fall runway: I also pair my outfit with a hijab. As I’ve been seeing more people who dress the way I do from the neck down, I’ve become acutely aware of a painful double standard generated by what I choose to wear from the neck up: Non-Muslim women can sport modest clothing and be called professional or elegant, yet when Muslim women dress modestly, our taste and style is often overlooked. Or, to put it more bluntly, when you wear a turtleneck, you’re elegant; when I wear one I’m oppressed.

PHOTO: Victor VIRGILE

A look from Carolina Herrera’s fall 2018 collection

I’m 23 now, and I started wearing a hijab in sixth grade and dressing modestly my freshman year of college, a moment when I started to be comfortable in my own skin and no longer felt the need to conform to the uniform of tight-fitting clothes and short hemlines favored by my peers. While I dress modestly for spiritual reasons, even secular women’s decision to cover up has been framed in the media as something deeper: As former Céline creative director Phoebe Philo, an early adapter to the modest dressing trend, put it in an interview last year, “When you feel secure and comfortable and protected [by your clothes], you feel stronger.” Modest dressing, in other words, is an empowered choice.

PHOTO: Getty Images

A look from Gucci’s fall 2018 collection

PHOTO: Getty Images

A look from Tibi’s fall 2018 collection

The conversation about Muslim women’s fashion is decidedly different. My decision to wear a long-sleeve dress with a high neckline, for example, is often seen as my wanting to “hide” or being “ashamed” of my body. I know because these are the actual comments I routinely get on my blog and social media accounts, along with “Why do you allow men to tell you how to dress?” or “Why do you hate your body?” And also: “Why do you wear a symbol of patriarchy and self-hate?” (Most of these comments, notably, come from men.) I’m sure fellow Muslim women who dress modestly deal with these comments regularly.

There’s a lot about this line of thinking that bothers me. For one thing, it makes it seem like I don’t have any agency when it comes to my fashion decisions. Let me be clear: I love my clothes. I’m happiest when I’m covered head-to-toe in clashing patterns. (I often wear prints from Iran, the country of my parents’ birth.) These commenters also fundamentally misunderstand the religious teachings that inspired my decision to dress modestly, which are rooted in the same principles as secular women’s—taking the emphasis off the female body as the defining characteristic of womanhood.

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PHOTO: Peter White

A look from Isabel Marant’s fall 2018 collection

This double standard has implications that go far beyond ignorant comments left on a style blog: In the U.S., for example, Muslim women might be reportedly singled out for government surveillance by the way they dress. A recent report found that Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), a grant program sponsored by Department of Homeland Security (DHS), identifies hijabs and other forms of modest clothing typically worn by Muslim as an indication of “radicalization” or holding “extremist” views. Last August President Trump was reportedly shown a vintage photo from the 1970s of women from Afghanistan clad in miniskirts as proof “that Western norms had existed there before and could return.”

All this plays into something that’s quite common in fashion—the phenomenon of trends seeming to only get the rubber stamp of approval when Western, white people embrace them. In the end, I just want more people in the fashion industry to understand the nuanced politics of fashion, including the double standards. I also wish people recognized that when I wear a modest outfit, it’s because I’m wearing what I want. Personal expression—that’s elegant.

Hoda Katebi is a Chicago-based activist, photographer, and author of the political fashion blog joojooazad.com. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @hodakatebi.

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I’m Tired of Feeling Bad About Genuinely Liking Anal Sex


I was in high school when Sex and the City premiered and, like many women of my generation and the generations that followed, that show taught me a lot about sex. Like, a lot: Things I didn’t even know existed were introduced to me every Sunday night—and one of those things was anal sex.

At the time, anal between straight couples wasn’t even on my radar. I knew that gay men engaged in it, but I held on to some pretty old-school notions when it came to why straight women would do it. Namely, as Charlotte put it so eloquently in Sex and the City’s “Valley of the Twenty-Something Guys” episode, “Men don’t marry Up-The-Butt Girl. Whoever heard of Mrs. Up-The-Butt?” Back in 1998, I agreed—and that statement was the first thing that came to mind when my college boyfriend suggested we do the deed a few years later.

Even though I was determined never to become Up-The-Butt Girl, I was in love for the first time and figured one encounter with anal wouldn’t put me in whatever category a future Mrs. Up-The-Butt might reside. The experience was, for lack of a better word, awful. It was painful, uncomfortable, and as I would tell my boyfriend afterward, it felt like I was “taking a backward shit,” if that were even anatomically possible. But on top of the physical discomfort, I also felt ashamed. It was humiliating that this was what he wanted and humiliating that I consented. What did this say about me? What other so-called “deviant” things would I consent to in the name of love? I didn’t even want to imagine.

Even throughout my 20s, when I stopped taking such a hard line on what sex said about my character, I still didn’t really enjoy the few times I had anal sex and figured it just wasn’t really my scene. But then something happened in my early 30s. Perhaps it was the confidence that came with age and sexual experience, but I found myself having anal sex with someone I was dating and loving it. Really loving it. Though there was still shame—this time about enjoying it, rather than just engaging in it. It went back to what liking anal sex said about me as a woman. Was I dirty? Deranged? Had I been dropped on my head as a child and this was the outcome of it, manifested decades later? It didn’t matter how many times I watched that Sex and the City episode in which Samantha praised anal—I couldn’t come to terms with it.

Though up to 25 percent of heterosexual men and women have tried anal sex, the taboo around it is often louder than the praise. It doesn’t matter how many stats come out on the topic, like how women who have anal sex have more orgasms (it comes with an orgasm rate of 94 percent, compared to the 65 percent from vaginal sex). It also doesn’t seem to matter that the majority of women who do engage in anal sex are well-educated with higher levels of income—information one might think would nix some of the negative stereotypes associated with women who enjoy anal sex. But, sadly, it does not.

There are plenty of reasons a woman might feel guilty about enjoying it. Just this summer, when Teen Vogue published a piece titled “Anal Sex: What You Need To Know,” the backlash was swift. Although writer and NYC-based sex educator, Gigi Engle (who, full disclosure, is a Glamour contributor), wasn’t suggesting girls run out and have anal sex—merely introducing it as an option, with information on how to do it safely—there were some alarmingly conservative, potentially homophobia-tinged responses. It didn’t take long for the hashtag #pullteenvogue to make its way onto Twitter, or for articles and videos to pop up condemning the magazine for what ultimately should have been a conversation-starter and a healthy eye-opener.

Despite the alarmism, women who have anal sex are making their way into mainstream narratives.

“Much stigma exists around anal sex, but for some women it is their arousal and favored erogenous zone,” explains Clarissa Silva, behavioral scientist and author of relationship blog You’re Just A Dumbass. “For women who know that they like anal and express it, we should [remind her] why she shouldn’t be shamed. She is simply making a decision for herself that she is interested in having better sex.”

And despite the alarmism, women who have anal are slowly but surely making their way into mainstream narratives. Lars von Trier’s 2012 film Nymphomaniac was the rare theatrical release that included anal sex (actually, there wasn’t much it didn’t include, sexually speaking), which seemed like a small but important step. Then, in 2014, both The Mindy Project and Broad City had episodes about the act. In 2015’s I Smile Back, Sarah Silverman’s character has anal while cheating on her husband. This kind of exposure just solidifies that this is a sex move that people are engaging in, even if it’s still hard to talk about it sometimes.

With this in mind, I have been suggesting it more on my own accord to get more comfortable with the fact that I like it. My partner and I did it the third time we slept together, in fact, because it was important to me that I fully embrace my sexuality—especially the parts I was once ashamed of, and which still remain taboo by society’s standards. I wanted to be the one who initiated it, thereby owning it and the fact that I enjoyed it. I’m starting to understand now that I shouldn’t allow archaic thoughts about how a woman should have sex (which typically means vaginal only), or the narrow-minded thinking of people who condemn it to take up space in my mind.

While I don’t need other people or pop culture to validate my feelings on the matter, it does help in some ways to feel a sense of solidarity. It forces us to realize that human sexuality is complicated and there’s no “right” way to be aroused or to get off. Similarly, not being into anal sex doesn’t make you a prude or somehow less sexually adventurous.

It’s definitely not for everyone, but for those of us who do enjoy it, for far too long, it felt like it needed to be a secret. Now I know how ridiculous a notion that is. A woman’s sexual proclivities don’t define her—knowing what you want is all that really matters.

More:

—Glamour’s 2017 Sex Toy Awards

—How Do I Help My Partner Understand What Gets Me Off?

—Fidget Spinner Butt Plugs Are Here for Some Seriously Twisted Anal Play



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I’m Ready to Say, 'Me Too.' Now Men Need to Say, 'I’m Sorry'


I was sexually assaulted in college.

While that’s a horrific sentence to type, it’s not an uncommon one: more than 17.7 million American women could write some version of it if they really wanted to. And many are, thanks to the #MeToo movement that’s happening across social media. Women around the world are coming together, using their voices to shine a spotlight on just how common it is for someone to experience some level of sexual harassment or assault.

But I’ve mostly stayed in the shadows. I’ve typed up my own post and deleted it nearly 50 times over the past two days. I shared it with my mother. My best friend. A fellow sexual assault survivor. But I couldn’t bring myself to join the masses and share the personal details of what had happened to me so publicly. At first, I thought it was out of fear—I’m a part of the 90 percent of college-campus assault victims who did not report, and one of many survivors who likely would have gone their entire lives without admitting what happened. Thinking about that night, when a guy I liked forced me to perform sexual acts against my consent, brings up emotions I’d rather keep buried; memories I’ve worked nearly a decade to try and forget.

Then I realized that, while this movement has been extremely powerful—strong enough to make me want to share my story for the first time—I wasn’t holding back because of some insurmountable fear of judgment or embarrassment. I was silent because the voice I wanted to see most on my feed was not my own. It was a man’s. Every man, in fact.

Don’t get me wrong—the posts that women are sharing are empowering, and they’ve made me feel safe, in a weird way. I no longer feel isolated, or like I will be judged for what happened to me so many years ago. I don’t wonder if my friends will be able to understand what I went through—I know they will, because in some way, it’s likely happened to them, too.

But those posts only go so far. Because, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, 99 percent of sex offenders in single-victim incidents are male. And they don’t fit a certain “profile” that’s easy to avoid, because they don’t all look like some creepy older man who gives off a weird vibe you’ve been taught to stay away from. These harassers are, quite often, our friends. And some of them actively title themselves as “progressive,” “feminist,” and “woke.”

Yet, they’ve still done this abusive, manipulative, demeaning shit to women.

Some men are starting to speak up—sharing supportive updates, saying they’re proud of women for their bravery and proclaiming they’ll step in the next time they see harassment happening. But the thing is, those aren’t the men I really want to hear from. Or maybe they are, but they’re just not admitting it.

I want to hear from the men who are committing the harassment. The man who said, “Hey baby, how you doing” as I walked out of my office last night. Or the guys who whistled and honked the car horn while I hiked through Santorini this summer. And the dude who rubbed my back while reaching for a drink at the bar last week.

Those men are the ones who need to speak up—who need to own up to the people they harmed. Maybe they didn’t even realize they were doing something offensive, instead believing themselves to simply be flirtatious or funny. It doesn’t matter. I still want to hear them apologize. (And don’t make it a huge performance. This isn’t about your feelings.)Doing so starts to take the blame away from the victims, and instead places it squarely on the shoulders of those who are committing these acts. And it shows that things might finally—finally—be ready to change.

If men were to post that kind of status—an #IHave status where they apologize for being someone’s #MeToo, actually mean it, and take active steps toward never being that person again—then I think that’s the first step to forgiveness that a lot of women need. It begins to blur the line of an “us versus them” mentality, and instead presents an opportunity for change. It opens up an avenue for honest dialogue about what men can be doing differently to make sure they aren’t perpetuating the problem.

But don’t be mistaken: Actually admitting and apologizing for your wrongdoing is not a way to shine the spotlight on yourself, opening you up to applause or an expectation of thanks. I can’t speak for all women, but if I were to see that status, yes, I would thank you. But it would be for recognizing that this is a battle that you, as a man, need to wage, and for the acknowledgment that action should not be dependent on the survivors. I would not thank you for having enough human decency to own up to your shameful, demeaning mistakes. You shouldn’t need thanks to do that.

So, I hope more men will, well, man up and admit to what they’ve done. Doing so just might create waves that steer us toward a place where women don’t experience sexual harassment or assault on a daily basis. Because, ideally, we’ll one day live in a society where sexual assault isn’t the rule, but the exception.



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