In response to this thread I’ve decided that we need a sort of brag thread for all women.
Are you a BBW and want to show us your picture? Go ahead! Want to brag about your accomplishments? We can’t wait to hear. This thread is all about love and appreciation for ourselves and the other women in our lives and the awesome things that they do everyday.
First let me tell you about an couple of awesome women that I know:
The first one is my grandmother. She’s going to be 79 years old next week and she still has the energy to run circles around me. She and my grandfather (also 79) mow and maintain about 6 acres of land, and take care of three rambunctious schnoodles. My grandma is amazing. She’s the kindest, gentlest woman that you’d ever meet. Truly someone that wouldn’t hurt a fly. She is one awesome lady! Here were are together a couple of years ago.
Ok, I’ll be back with more awesome women later, but I’ve got to get to work now. In the meantime, join in! Brag on yourself or your loved ones if you want to!
I’m going to brag about my daughter. She’s 10. We switched her school in March for various reasons and went into a new, more challenging environment with grace, determination and good spirit.
Where it was tough, she persevered.
Where it was challenging, she learned new skills.
When she was lonely for her old friends, she call the old friends AND made new ones.
She shone and grew and blossomed.
She an amazing girl with shades of the amazing woman she will become.
My mum, taken during our trip to NY for her 50th. She’s the cleverest, kindest, funniest, most loving woman I know, and to top it all off she’s also the toughest and strongest. She’s been through hell and come out laughing.
She’s giving me away at my wedding next week, and I couldn’t be prouder to be on her arm.
My grandmother is 86 and wakes up at 6am every morning to run the Indian equivalent of a soup kitchen. A chapatti and dahl kitchen, you could say.
Which she finances herself (from what’s left of the family fortune, mostly; she sold her house to a developer and moved into one of the tiny apartments that were built on the land).
I can’t search for it, being at work, but I’d like to throw in the video for Mika’s Big Girls (it’s in Youtube). Does anybody know whether there is a video for Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls?
Oh, and a special toast, very appropriate given the date, to an old “Summer Song,” La Ramona, which y’all are lucky never grew to Macarena-like proportions: La Ramona es la más gorda de las chicas de mi pueblo, Ramona, te quiero…
Ramona is the fattest girl in my village, Ramona, I love you…
My cousin, who’s only 5’4", barely a size 3, and is raising the World’s Sweetest Toddler with her husband. She’s finished her associate’s degree and is figuring out where she wants to go in the realm of social work. (She had a rough childhood, which lead her to try to prevent such things in the future. I won’t discuss it further, because it’s not my story to tell, but let’s just say that she has kicked ass on top of ass and is now going to be handing asses to any assholes she encounters.)
My mom, who is also tiny, for giving me her sarcasm and her chicken recipes, recovering from a heart attack, and trying to quit smoking.
My mother-in-law, who is the tiniest, for fighting off polio, breast cancer, cervical cancer, and hepatitis, and still being one of the healthiest, most active people I know. Also, she’s generous and loving, and gets half the credit for raising my husband to be generous and loving as well.
The not-tiny women:
My friend from high school gets props for dumping her crazy boyfriend, losing 50 lbs (!), working, raising a 5 year old, and working on her bachelor’s.
I give myself props for going running every morning for the last two weeks.
I know so many great women that it would be hard to talk about them all here…
So, here’s just one. My Grandma is one of my best friends and favorite people in the world. She had the guts and determination to get out of an abusive marriage before divorce was an acceptable thing to do. She then raised her three sons with no support from her ex-husband by working as a waitress, bartender and cleaning houses. She’s one of the strongest people I know.
I, too, know a bunch of awesome women, but I’ll stick to my best friends:
FarAway Best Friend went back to school to get the degree she needed for the job she really wanted. She had to deal with all kinds of disapproval (she lives in Germany and abandoning her children for school and work didn’t go over well with some people; she actually lost friends over this) and bureaucracy. And still, she finished, got the job she wanted, at the school she wanted, and now has tenure.
Local Best Friend is an old friend’s little sister. She lived with me while she was in school and I was always amazed at how focused she was. She only saw her boyfriend on weekends during her undergrad studies because she needed to make sure she got her degree. She pushed herself through grad school, even though it was sometimes incredibly frustrating (there were tears). She’s probably the most determined person I’ve ever met. She’s been a mom for almost a year; I’m really looking forward to seeing who her daughter will grow up to be.
I’d like to take this opportunity to salute my friend and coworker, Lupita. Her mom died of a brain tumor when Lupita was 10, and she had two younger siblings. A few months later, her dad married the wicked witch of the west, who was horribly abusive to her stepkids and also burned all the pictures of their mother. Lupita is one of the kindest, most caring people in the world, and it amazes me that she is so loving after all she went through. Just hearing her story put tears in my eyes. I love Lupita!
My life would be a wreck without the other women in my life - my Mom,** Cheez_Whia**, who made me the woman I am today (although I’m not sure she’d care to own up to that! ;)). My Aunt B, who always did and still does spoil me rotten in between feeding me and offering support and advice. My Grandmother, who I have referred to often as my personal lord and savior, a tiny woman with a big heart, a steel spine, and a shrewd perspective. And even my sister, who may be a childish pain in the ass most of the time but who I think really loves me and would do anything for me (as I would for her). And my BFF, even though we live far apart and fall in and out of contact, I know I can call her any time I need to and we can bitch for hours with martinis over the abyss.
Obviously my mom, who even though I was a rotten teenager who was sometimes embarrassed by her, raised said ungrateful daughter, (plus three boys) to be someone considered strong by others (even if she doesn’t like it).
My grandmom, who came over from Germany at 18, secretly eloped :eek: , ran a farm, was a speed demon, and knew/knows how to make everything from scratch (without looking at the recipe) including soap. She’s 96, and you have to hide the laundry and the beer from her because she’ll polish off either when you’re not looking.
Oh, my God! That made me tear up just reading it! I treasure my childhood photos so much, even though my parents are both still here with me, and I especially treasure the ones with my late grandma in them. I can’t imagine being cruel enough to destroy someone’s pictures of their dead mother
In that vein, I would like to mention my college friend, Anna (name changed to protect the innocent.) She came from an unbelievable background of abuse, rape, and mistreatment, including being stabbed by her stepdad and thrown out of a window, being committed to a mental hospital when she didn’t do anything wrong (she was “disobedient” because her stepdad was abusing and assaulting her) and just general crap. But she was smart and funny and awesome anyway, and she graduated at the top of her class and went on to get a Ph.D. She’s one of those people who’s infuriatingly good at everything – a scientist, an artist, a poet, and good at all of them – but she was so cool you couldn’t even get annoyed by it. So humble and awesome, I loved her.
I hopped over here from ‘the other thread’… and I’d love to play.
I’m a fat chick. I happen to be wearing a dress at the moment; I love dresses and skirts. I rarely fuss with a fancy manicure, have long hair, and wear makeup. You may glimpse my cleavage on occasion, if you’re lucky.
Accomplishments? I have a university degree, a job I really enjoy, a husband of 12 years (who is a personal trainer, by the way) and a very, very cute dog. (Perhaps the latter isn’t an accomplishment, but it’s one of the things I love about my life.) I started writing for fun, and ended up with my erotica published in more than one print anthology; I’m a published writer! (So many people I know “always wanted to write”, but I do, work hard at it, and being published is something I’m very proud of.) My next challenge is being on the company Dragon Boat racing team this summer. I can bake a pie, turn an overgrown tangle of greenery into a garden, and I’m a good driver. My team always win when I play Trivial Pursuit.
I come from a line of strong, independent women with spines of stainless steel, :). My grandma (my mother’s mother) was a divorced single parent during the Depression. Married and divorced three times, she supported her kids by baking pies for a local restaurant, taking in laundry, and washing windows. I spent a lot of time at her house when I was little, as my mother was working at a turkey processing plant that had mandatory overtime (more on this in a bit). She could grow anything, and always had a truck garden in her back yard, and a flower garden in the front. When my sister, QB’s Aunt B, got married, her flowers came from my grandmother’s garden. I still miss her, and her wonderful molasses cookies that we have not been able to duplicate!
My own mother was married to my Dad from Valentine’s Day, 1943, until his death last autumn. She worked full time from the age of 14, with a few breaks when her babies were little, to augment the family income, as neither of my parents had graduated from High School. She was working in a turkey processing plant when I was small, during the time when a woman could legally be paid less than a man for the same work. Disliking this, she applied for a position that paid a woman the same as a man’s wage: Hock Cutter. This was cutting the feet off as the turkeys came whizzing past on the production line. Injuries at this job were common and severe; only two hock cutters worked on the entire line. This job was done by my mother, and another woman, Linda, both experts at getting their knives where they needed to go without cutting themselves or each other. Male trainees sent to learn this job never made it past the first shift, either by injuring themselves, or quitting. She was finally able to quit when I was 12, and only worked one other job when finances got tough: blasting cap packer at Bermite, and this was only for a few months. She’s been retired since then, if retired means helping her kids raise their kids, and the neighbor’s kids, too. She’s 82 now, and growing frail. However, that doesn’t keep her from expressing her opinions, which I listen to carefully!
I proud of both of my daughters, who are as different as night and day. Queen Bruin, of course, is a Doper here, and has worked and struggled a lot in her 27 years. She has consistently refused a bus ticket home when things looked bleak, and did what she had to do to get her degree. She has more work ahead; law school is on her schedule next. I have no doubt she will make it! My other daughter has fought very different fights, and she would jump down a dragon’s throat to save anyone she loves, including her sister!
This post has grown long (for me), and I haven’t touched on my sister and nieces. They have inherited the same stainless steel spine, and made their way through life’s challenges, too.
