Marion Roach Smith’s alternate sisterly reality, with Margaret Roach.
FOR ALL TOO LONG I did not know that Saudi women had to buy their bras from men. And while those days are now nearly in the past, don’t for a second be fooled into thinking that this change came easily. Protests, boycotts, an online campaign, and finally, intervention from the king decreed that women in Saudi Arabia no longer have to talk cup size solely to men. Well, better late than never, I guess. [click to continue…]
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I’M IN FOR some necessary change. And you know what? Good for me. I’ve been feeling a little stuffed up recently, and not just in my nose with the ongoing winter in the northeast, but in my life. And necessary change is just what is called for, or so says Sheilaa, our TSP astrologer, whose predictions are always spot on. Have you read what she has to say about you?
I’m an Aries. No surprise, with my red hair and fiery nature. Did you know I write about red hair here? And that fiery nature? Well, I’m a memoirist, and maybe this piece is the very best place to read up on just how hot it can get around here and whose job it is to cool me down.
Sheilaa tells me that my wildest dreams will come true, but only if I do the work. Such a great challenge. Speaking only of my professional life and my wildest dreams, as well as my efforts to achieve those dreams, all this will be given a real outing this year as my book on writing memoir comes out this June, published by Grand Central. And between now and then (and for a good long time after that) you can find me and that book on Twitter (mroachsmith@twitter.com), on Facebook (The Memoir Project), teaching at The Chautauqua Institute as well as at The Arts Center of the Capital Region, and launching a new how-to-write memoir website.
Follow along by watching this space, sisters.
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THE BRA’S BIRTHDAY. Now there is something to celebrate, sisters. And a centennial birthday, at that. Imagine: 100 years have gone by since the first American woman said—now repeat after me, sisters—“How in the world am I going to these into that?” Oh, yes, sisters, let’s light some birthday candles and throw a few bras on the pyre, since it’s a birthday you don’t want to miss. [click to continue…]
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OUR BRAS. IN TRANSLATION. Is it just us, or do they look bigger in French?
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This post is part of TSP’s network-wide “Sisters I’ve Met Along the Way” celebration, marking 9 months of blogging together, and the women (and men) we’ve met.
I NEVER THOUGHT when I first wrote about bra-shopping months ago that it would prove the start of such a supportive (sorry!) new sisterhood. This song is my attempt to start to thank some of those I’ve met as a result.
To be sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas. Oh, yeah. [click to continue…]
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MENOPAUSE MADE ME DO IT. It’s my new favorite shield phrase, though I do find that from behind its protection come some of the more surprising things I’ve said in my lifetime. These phrases just seem to hurtle from me, and while I must admit that they feel so good as they tumble out, even I am sometimes surprised when I hear them go whizzing by. Consider, for instance, what I recently screamed out my car window about my boobs. [click to continue…]
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WOULDA COULDA SHOULDA. Oh, how we wish we were there. But the next best thing to being there is when somebody tells it as you have, about your bras. Oh, sisters we just love you for it. And the hits just keep on coming. [click to continue…]
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Sisterhood can involve a lot of shoveling.
YOU ARE A SISTER WHEN biology determines it, of course, but then there are those myriad jeweled or jagged moments in life when you know you are a sister, whether that sister be biological, adopted or befriended. Like Tinkerbell herself, these moments of recognition come sifting down through the ethos and can stop us or start us, depending on what we are doing. Just the other day I was simply putting away a suitcase, and suddenly it was 1974, and I was unpacking an entirely different suitcase in what now seems like an entirely different life. [click to continue…]
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B RAS HAVE NEVER BEEN FUNNY until now. I have never–and I am not making this up–found this topic funny until I started to write about it, and you started to write back. Laughing and crying my way through your comments, I have been renewed, reborn, reworked in ways no boob job could deliver. And I only wish I could publish those emails sent privately, but I won’t. Really. Don’t beg. But I will do this: give you this video treat, sent to me on email; a gift from a sister reader. Enjoy.
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YOU KNOW YOU’RE A SISTER when you’re trying on a bra, and every bra nightmare you’re ever had comes sling-shotting back at your self-esteem as if loaded and launched from a 44DD, and you start to get just the eensiest bit hostile in the dressing room at the pooches and the pouches, and how you look nothing whatever like a Victoria’s Secret model, and you leave 19 bras in the dressing room, buying none, and go crying to the car and call your sister. [click to continue…]
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THE OLD DAYS: In Grandma's garden.
First time here? Here's the idea: The Sister Project is a network of blogs about the many facets of the word sister, and the concept of sisterhood. A sisterhood of sister blogs, you could say. Whatever sister means to you, from identical twin to sister-in-law (or in friendship or in feminism), we’ll make room to listen in about it or express it on TSP. Like the slogan up top on our homepage says, “Don’t you have something to say to your sister?” We've got galleries of art and literature by and about sisters, and a Sisterpedia of sisterly trivia...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves. The quick study: Learn more about TSP, and how to find your way around. And oh—a giant, sisterly welcome.
