Kelly Diels

Writer | Feminist Marketing for Culture Makers

The Fantasy of Being Holiday Fabulous

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Please know that you do not have to transform into an entirely different person in order for the holidays to be joyous for you and other people.

You do not need to morph into a domestic goddess, a consummate host, a diplomat negotiating family treaties, a foodie, a pro-baker, a walking wallet, and a mind-reader with the ability select (and fund) The Perfect Gift for every human in your vortex.

You do not need to be Holiday Fabulous in order to have fabulous holidays.

So let us retire that fantasy.

Like all culturally-imposed fantasies of becoming someone else in order to be happy, successful and loved, The Fantasy of Being Holiday Fabulous* is toxic and alienating. It alienates you from yourself and from other people — which is the exact opposite outcome to what most of us are truly seeking at this time of year (and always!).

As Kate Harding writes in another context*, these kind of collective cultural fantasies are a form of self-rejection:

…the Fantasy of Being Thin is not just about becoming small enough to be perceived as more acceptable. It is about becoming an entirely different person — one with far more courage, confidence, and luck than the fat you has. It’s not just, “When I’m thin, I’ll look good in a bathing suit”; it’s “When I’m thin, I will be the kind of person who struts down the beach in a bikini, making men weep.” See also:

  • When I’m thin, I’ll have no trouble finding a partner/reinvigorating my marriage.
  • When I’m thin, I’ll have the job I’ve always wanted.
  • When I’m thin, I won’t be depressed anymore.
  • When I’m thin, I’ll be an adventurous world traveler instead of being freaked out by any country where I don’t speak the language and/or the plumbing is questionable.
  • When I’m thin, I’ll become really outdoorsy.
  • When I’m thin, I’ll be more extroverted and charismatic, and thus have more friends than I know what to do with.

Self-hatred forces us to perform our lives; and performance inhibits true intimacy.

And to me, the only redeeming feature of this time of year is special time with my loved ones.

Like Harding’s The Fantasy of Being Thin, my own Fantasy of Being Holiday Fabulous can get in the way of what I truly want to experience during the holidays.

If I want love and connection and intimacy at this time of the year — and all the time — I’m going to have to stop performing The Fantasy of Being Holiday Fabulous, accept who I truly am, and ask people to love the real me.

(It’s true that on those terms, there may be fewer of them who do. But they’re the ones who deserve to be inside my boundaries. They’re the ones who are good for me.)

I, for example, am not built for the cooking/baking/food part of life. This is not my zone of genius.

The times I attempted to host a holiday meal were good for NO ONE.

My loved ones know this about me. They assign me things like soda or dinner rolls or pie from the famous bakery near my house — basically, any foodstuff that can be purchased is my domain.

I am THRILLED to contribute in the best way I know how…and then enthusiastically over-buy. BUNS FOR DAYS.

The rolls at Christmas dinner? Are totally my thing.

I was telling this to a someone yesterday and turns out it’s her thing too!

Like me, her loved ones directly asked her to please NOT host or cook. They assign her the dinner buns, too.

Now, I admittedly have other redeeming talents to contribute. Oh my gawd, can I decorate. My design eye is SHARP.

So if you’ve got a room to rearrange or a picture to hang or a design dilemma, I will take your anguished call. I will happily be the boss of your decor. I will ABSOLUTELY come over and re-do your house or your tree til the wee hours so it’s party-ready. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be A Proper Occasion. I’ll do it on any given Tuesday — and be thrilled you let me!

I have even set up Craigslist alerts to find the perfect _____ and swooped in to buy, revamp and deliver that piece of furniture to loved ones before they even knew they needed it.

We all have talents and contributions.

I am great at radical encouragement, writing, feminist analysis + tool-making, decorating, and picking up dinner buns.

So if I get a text requesting me to contribute any of those things, I don’t feel insulted or deficient or lacking in holiday fabulosity. Instead, I feel seen.

When you text me for dinner rolls, I know the holidays are truly here.

We will laugh because by now it’s tradition.

And I will know you love me just as I am.

YOU, as you are, are the greatest holiday and everyday gift we could ever ask for.

* The heart of this blogpost and its title is an homage (womanage?) to Kate Harding for writing The Fantasy of Being Thin in 2009. A decade after reading it, I am still grateful. It changed my life.

I originally posted the seed of this blog post on Instagram, here.

I also write about another culturally imposed fantasy I call The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand because it is yet another damaging narrative telling us which select few women are worthy of rights, resources, respect, attention and even affection. I obviously want us to divest of this sexist, racist imperative, too.

TRUTH: “You Can’t Be Friends With Someone Who Wants Your Life”

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“You can’t be friends with someone who wants your life.” – Oprah

I’m sharing this photo because in a life full of achievements, this moment *had* to have made Oprah Winfrey’s inner highlight reel.

Oprah is an extraordinarily accomplished woman.

She’s not superhuman. She has flaws. We all do, even our icons and heroines. I personally feel like she co-parented me (as a latch-key kid, her show was my after-school babysitter) — and still, I seriously disagree with her on some issues.

And: whatta career. Whatta life. Whatta woman.

WHAT AN IMPACT.

That’s why that quote from her runs like a ticker tape through my head (so much so that I have to repeat it!): “You can’t be friends with someone who wants your life.”

I know this to be true. I know that when I’ve wanted someone else’s life, it made me transactional, strategic, subservient, and sometimes envious. In other words: not a safe friendship or business bet.

And I know that when friends, lovers or colleagues wanted what I had, we always ended in conflict and destruction. Always.

So screen for this. In yourself and others.

Best case scenario: it’s an indicator of a power imbalance that needs to be addressed — and it can be if you’re conscious of it and steward or share your power wisely.

(Read Cedar Barstow’s work on power, especially if you think you’re not a power-seeker. Her books, Living in the Power Zone (aff) and The Right Use of Power (aff), are game changers.)

Worst case scenario? Impending doom for everyone involved.

And in these urgent times, when there’s so much interlocking governmental, financial, social and environmental corruption that we need to resist, we’ve gotta be building our resources and capacities up.

Not navigating interpersonal destruction. Not picking ourselves up off bathroom floors.

It’s hard to fight — or create — when you’re weeping on cold tiles.

So let’s do our work.
Let’s build our temples.
Let’s grow our lives.
And congratulate others on theirs.
(Belated congratulations, Oprah!)

photo: President Barack Obama awards the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Oprah Winfrey during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 20, 2013. Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson

#WeAreTheCultureMakers #TogetherWeRise

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We Are Each Other’s Necessary Tendernesses

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Had an amazing conversation with really thoughtful culture makers and dearly beloveds.

As a result, I cried. Then I added a chapter to my book outline.

Both were necessary tendernesses.

I’m sometimes scared of friendships and community because sometimes they break your heart…but the best thing we ever do is lean on each other and lift each other up.

In other words, grateful.

#togetherwerise #wearetheculuturemakers
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What Looks Like Personal Choices are Often Framed Up for Us By Society

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“Time is a Feminist Issue”: this was the heart of a speech that author Brigid Schulte gave a few years ago.

I read about it in an interview she gave to an Australian magazine (and she told me about it later, when I interviewed her in 2016).

She explained how the way we use our time is predetermined and overdetermined by our society and gender roles, rather than by each of us. (I’m paraphrasing.)

Some people take care of life-giving activities — like producing food and caring for others — which allows other people to be “productive” in “socially important” ways.

Some of the people — usually privileged white men — are on the receiving end of all this effort and time then have the leisure to make great works of art and books in the literary canons.

Their ability to create staggering works of genius was predicated on having leisure time in which they could think and be inspired.

The rest of us don’t have, and have never had, leisure time.

Anyway. At the time I read this article I’d just had a baby. He had colic. It was summer and all my other kids were home from school. My partner was out of town on a work project. And I could not figure out why, despite being on maternity leave and not having to “work”, I simply could not seem to find time to write a book.

To figure out where I was frittering my time and what other productive people apparently knew that I didn’t, I’d been reading productivity books that advised me to get up at 4am.

Internally, I flipped. I was like, **you mofo, I AM UP AT 4AM. Breastfeeding. Where in your time-hack system is my life going to fit?**

And then I saw that article about Brigid Schulte and followed the breadcrumbs and read her book, Overwhelmed(aff), and had on of the biggest a-ha moments of my life.

Truly, it changed everything.

After having written NOTHING for months — because my time was not my own — I went on to spend six months writing an epic essay about how time is gendered; how what looks like “personal choices” are actually systemically predetermined for us; and how that shows up in our daily lives.

If you are a caregiver and you feel constantly pressed for time and then ashamed of your poor time choices (ha!!) because you can’t seem to get anything done, I think my essay — and Brigid Schulte’s book, Overwhelmed(aff), seriously, read it — might help.

#TimeIsAFeministIssue #BrigidSchulte #OverwhelmedNoMore #WeAreTheCultureMakers

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We are Not Worker Bees. We are Humans…and CREATORS.

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“In fact, many full-time artist reports that they have become more creatively rounded into full-time people.” — Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way (aff)

This! I struggle with this, exactly.

I’m a Writer and a Worker-bee trying to become a full-time person.

It’s only because I’m now surrounded, in my professional life, by healers and therapists and coaches that I realized how I’ve been socialized — to work, relentlessly, towards “success”; no matter the toll it takes on me, my body, my mental well-being, my relationships and my family — was deeply messed up and even violent.

And it’s not just me. This is how our dominant culture raises us. This is the narrative we try to embody.

It WILL, and does, stunt our lives.

I don’t want to be a drone. I want to be whole and precious human.

AND YOU MUST READ THE SECTION ABOUT “SHADOW ARTISTS”.

According to Cameron, a ‘shadow artist’ is someone who wants to be an artist or a creator of some kind, but instead makes a profession out of facilitating the work they’re obsessed with. So a woman who yearns to direct movies will become a producer. A person who wants to be a sculptor will become the administrator of an arts collective. A writer will become a teacher. A fashion designer will work be a sales person in a textiles company. We facilitate and administer and make it possible for other people to do the work we want to do.

That hit me like a thunder bolt. I recognize this life choice — in my own career and MANY of my clients’ and colleagues’.

Maybe I recognize it because someone I respect a lot, Ali Duffy, has talked to me about this, and writes and works on this, too. She calls it a form of losing your voice — when you get drawn into a successful career supporting the art that you should be making.  She often works with successful professionals who are producers, administrators, executives in very creative fields, like television or fashion, who should be creating rather than facilitating the creation of others. She is so sharp and intelligent and knows things about life — and how to show up as a creator, in yours.

A reminder: every single one of us is a culture maker. And yes, the administration and facilitation work is GOLDEN and necessary, especially when it is your calling. But if you’re actually a frustrated artist and you’re doing facilitation work instead of making cultural objects…well that’s a shadow artist and it’s a shadow of a life. And each of us deserves to feel the sun’s warmth on our skin. Let’s be the full-on versions of ourselves. Let’s cast shadows instead of living in them.

ALSO: so many people have told me to read The Artist’s Way (aff). For like, a decade. It’s only now I’m reading it — and what the hell was I waiting for? It’s truly helpful in figuring out how to stock my creative cup so that writing is not so extractive and torturous a process.

So thank you so much to everyone I ignored about this book. I was wrong and you were so very right.

#juliacameron #theartistsway #wearetheculturemakers

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Fortify

Every week, I email you a Sunday Love Letter
and they are blazing epistles of righteousness.
I write them to galvanize and encourage us.
Because we are the culture-makers and together we rise.
Are you in?





Fortify.

Every week, I email you a Sunday Love Letter

and they are blazing epistles of righteousness.

I write them to galvanize and encourage us.
Because we are the culture-makers and together we rise.
Are you in?

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