Clean Killjoys, A Lack of Chill, and Crop Tops

Hi guys! Classic Hairpin advice column “Ask a Lady” is back and I am very excited to announce that this time the Lady is me, your friend Monica Heisey. As an anxious and bossy person (great combo), I basically live to over-analyze situations and offer life suggestions based on that analysis. I have even written a how-to book about generally being alive, a little volume called I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better, which you can buy in Canadian bookstores after April 28th and in American bookstores in September.

In the meantime, I have tried my best to answer a few pressing questions from friends and readers here, online, on the Hairpin dot com. I would also love to hear your alternative solutions to these problems in the comments, because really the best part of asking for advice is cherry-picking your favourite answers from a number of thoughtful options. Let’s do this!

Since the New Year started I’ve been making a concerted effort to adopt a healthier lifestyle. I’m working out for the first time in years and eating “clean,” and it feels really good; I’ve seen some results and I’m interested in pushing myself and seeing what I’m capable of. I really love it, but my friends pretty clearly think it’s lame. If I opt out of pizza or going for wings or something (honestly #snackwave is making me feel like such a killjoy), they act like I’m not fun anymore. I tried suggesting some of them join me for a workout and was met with blank stares. Am I being a stick in the mud or are they being awful or is it somewhere in between?

This is an issue near and dear to my heart, butt, and thighs. I completely understand the feelings of both “oh my god, I’m trying out a fitness thing right now, can I live” and “we are trying to eat nachos as a group, it’s an important time for us all and everyone is quietly noticing that you’re not eating the nachos and it hurts our feelings.”

However, to be honest, I recognize the latter feeling with more shame than the former. The truth of the matter is that everyone (but especially women, lucky us) is accosted with all kinds of confusing, judgemental, and contradictory messages regarding food, bodies, work, and fitness all day every day. If you do not have some kind of base-level complex about what you eat or how you look or the ways in which you exercise or do not exercise, you are an advanced and evolved higher being in my eyes. I consider myself pretty aware and work hard to combat negative feelings associated with food, looks, and fitness, but it’s hard to break the habit of comparing myself to others or thinking too much about changes in my weight, or imagining the kind of perfect life I would have if I just bought a juicer and committed already. I have a very complicated relationship with the amount of athletic wear my sister sports on a regular basis. It’s like she’s always coming from or about to go to the gym. Her active lifestyle is, of course, exactly none of my business. It does not, in theory, bother me that she is more fit than I am, that she is more comfortable in yoga pants, that she has more stories about “boot camp.” But it is something I tend to Make A Note Of when she’s around.

There is a possibility that your friends are doing the same note-taking about your new lifestyle; that when you come to pizza night with healthy snacks you brought from home all they are seeing is a big celery with a face, reminding them that they got a FitBit for Christmas and haven’t taken it out of the box. This is not 100% their fault (see above, re: daily confusing, judgemental, and contradictory messages), but it is also 1000000% not yours. It is also possible that they just miss having another person to split the cost of an extra-large plain cheeser.

Whatever the reason, try to gently point out to your friends the next time they’re making you feel like you’re not fun anymore because you’re trying something new. “It’s bumming me out that you guys are not being supportive right now,” is something you might consider saying. After all, if you had a new job or were trying a new class or a new sexual partner and it was making you feel amazing, your friends would be cheering you on big time, right? Inviting them to come work out with you is maybe a step too far — it’s okay that they don’t share your interest, I will never attend “boot camp” — but the impulse came from a good place, and your friends should be trying for the same. They might think your new choices are a bit of a downer, but they don’t have to make those choices, they just have to respect them.

I have no chill when it comes to text messages. I spend so much time stressing out about how and when and what time to text people I’m interested in, and I never even come off as breezy or cute as I want to. Basically, how do I text???

The Great Question of Our Time. I am going to be honest with you here: my policy with regards to texting goes against most conventional wisdom on the subject. While it is true that carefully constructed flirty messages or mysterious and aloof one-liners or crowdsourced repartee can be very effective in a flirting context, these are, I think, a recipe for disaster. What happens if you ensnare the object of your affections and then have to text them without your sassiest friend on hand to compose your witty retorts? What do you do when you’re IM-ing IRL, a practice formerly known as “talking”? With any kind of potentially romantic or sexual interaction, the only real option is Balls-To-The-Wall Weirdness as soon as possible. They must be prepared.

Obviously do not be weirder than you are for *effect* — no one (at least not anyone worth having sex with) wants to text Natalie Portman in Garden State — but be as true to your Truest Self as possible, even if that means relinquishing some of the “who is cooler” power. Do not pretend to have chill where there is none. Do not affect a distance you do not feel. Certainly do not let someone just spell the world “cool” like “kewl” without making fun of them if you (rightly) think that is very, very worth making fun of. There is no correct way to text a person, and you should just do it however feels best to you. If you want to drop your crush a message even though they haven’t said anything in a while, just do so, come on, you are not a baby. If they are freaked out by your expression of interest in the form of not waiting for them to text first, that is a flaw on their part. The world is full of people to text and if you do not feel worthy of low-key, high-quality flirtatious text-based conversation, we need to talk about your self-image, hello.

In the words of Madonna Louise “Esther” Ciccone: express yourself, don’t repress yourself. We’re all on our phones all the time, this is a known fact. It is a lot more obvious an effort to space your texts out in an aloof-seeming way than it is to just respond to someone when their message reaches you. The sooner we all agree on this the sooner we get to stop having the conversation “how long should I wait to text if they waited like three hours last time?”! [NB: Please know this advice is coming from a woman who recently received the message “it is hard to get sexually excited about this nude as you have photoshopped Drake in traditional Hebrew garb over your nipples.”]

Can I pull off a crop top?
Yes.

Monica Heisey is a writer and comedian from Toronto. Her work has appeared in The Toast, The Cut, Rookie, Gawker, VICE, Playboy, and many other web and print publications. Her first book, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better, comes out Spring 2015. Writing about herself in the third person is a nightmare.