it's that time of year -- the time when everything starts tasting like pumpkin. i love pumpkin and pretty much everything that tastes like pumpkin. pumpkin pie is probably my favorite part of thanksgiving. pumpkin soup is one of my favorite soups. sometimes, when i read harry potter, i lament the fact that pumpkin juice doesn't really exist.
but october and november are wonderful months, because pumpkin-tasting food and dessert starts appearing everywhere. a couple of years ago i fell in love with the starbuck's pumpkin latte (ok, so it was a decaf nonfat pumpkin latte, but it stil tasted fabulous). last week i discovered that starbuck's also makes a pumpkin scone -- and it is lovely. i highly recommend it.
what i'm craving now is pumpkin frozen yogurt from TCBY. when i lived in austin, i used to go to TCBY a couple of times a week -- but during october and november, i went even more often. actually, i more or less lived off of the pumpking yogurt at TCBY. since i graduated from college, though, i've been in withdrawal, as i only get TCBY a couple of times a year now -- usually in an airport that happens to have one, or when i'm back in austin over winter break.
this year, we're going to minnesota for thanksgiving break. apparently, there are TCBY's in minnesota (see, i knew minnesota had some redeeming features). i'm not sure what our schedule is going to be during the few days we're there, but i don't think i can leave the state without having made at least a couple of pumpkin yogurt runs. i can taste it already... yum. :)
so i blogged last week about the oppressive force of "women's fashion." among the many wonderful comments to that post, there was a particularly insightful one from andrew, in which he made the crucial observation that the fashion industry, like many mediums that discriminate against women, is based on the sexualization of women. it's no secret that the reason women wear heels, hose, skirts, and make-up is, in one way or another, men. we do it because we have been socialized to believe and/or have empirically observed that it makes us attractive to the opposite sex, or because we are forced to do so by educational and professional structures that have been built and are being run by men, or because we have been taught that these things are inherently womanly by other women who have long been steeped in such patriarchal notions. i don't think any logical person would contend that, if there were no men, women would wear heels or makeup.
what's interesting to me is how subtle and truly pervasive the sexualization of women is. it extends to so many spheres of society and so many integral aspects of life, and yet doesn't elicit so much as a raised eyebrow from the majority of world's population. everyone knows the media portrays women as sexual objects without agency. everyone knows societal stigma for overweight women can be so powerful as to foster eating disorders in 1 out of 4 college women in america. everyone knows that sex sells, and "sex" in marketing focuses on women.
what we may not always be aware of is that, in addition to the hose and heels paradigm that i've already implicated, women are sexually objectified in many other seemingly benign ways. i've read a few really good articles in the past week about the sexualization and eroticization of women and girls in many arenas, and they've got me thinking. i'm including the text of these article in the extended post.
the first is a great overview of several women- and sex-related phenomena by bob herbert, a new york times editorial columnist, called "why aren't we shocked?"
the second is another op-ed piece from the new york times, publishedon the same day, and written by allison glock -- it is quite timely, as it is about women's halloween costumes.
the third is yet another timely new york times article about women's halloween costumes by stephanie rosenbloom.
the last is a disturbing, but very insightful review of the hypersexualization of (often underage) girls in american apparel clothing ads.
all are worth a read. also, these pictures of girls' halloween costumes are a little frightening -- for non-halloween reasons. and this site is definitely worth a look.
so i guess you could call this post installment two on this theme. i don't doubt there will be more.
Why Aren't We Shocked?
By BOB HERBERT
New York Times
October 16, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
"Who needs a brain when you have these?"
— message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women
In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.
Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.
In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.
There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was:
a hate crime.
None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.
The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor.
The text asks, "When was the last time you got screwed?"
An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman's face with the lotion spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.
We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We've been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we're still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.
What have we learned since then? That there's big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it's never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.
A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We're all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels — objects — and never, ever as the equals of men.
"Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible," said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women's advocacy group Equality Now.
That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream America. Forget the embarrassed, inhibited raincoat crowd of the old days. Now Mr. Solid Citizen can come home, log on to this $7 billion mega-industry and get his kicks watching real women being beaten and sexually assaulted on Web sites with names like "Ravished Bride" and "Rough Sex — Where Whores Get Owned."
Then, of course, there's gangsta rap, and the video games where the players themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the Academy Award-winning song this year was "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"), and on and on.
You're deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It's all part of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches down in places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel Mines, Pa.
[the clinique ad that herbert refers to can be viewed here.
~nas]
Halloween on Heels
By ALLISON GLOCK
The New York Times
October 16, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
NORTH CHATHAM, N.Y.
ALL I wanted was a pair of mouse ears. It is Halloween season, and to the delight of my children, I promised to dress up as the country mouse.
I was a recent transplant to rural life, so it made sense. Besides, I already owned the overalls and the flannel shirt. I just needed the ears. And maybe a wedge of plastic cheese.
So my girls, 4 and 6, and I went to Target, which has much better lighting than Wal-Mart — and Isaac Mizrahi. It wasn’t long before I discovered that the only ears on offer at the Target Festival of Fright were of the “sexy cat” variety. Sexy cat is fine if you are in your 20’s, unimaginative and trying to persuade people that you possess latent feline qualities. As I am neither latent nor in my 20’s, I continued down the Adult Costume aisle.
I walked past the displays for the sexy devil and the sexy bunny and the sexy leopard — which, confounding logic, was already sold out — before happening upon the wall of full adult costumes. The first was Tavern Lady, an off-the-shoulder dress and faux-leather vest. It was followed by French Maid (ruffled mini-dress with matching headpiece), Cheerleader (pleated micro-mini and fitted vest) and Wonder Woman, which had not only a nearly invisible skirt but also red vinyl boot covers that reached to the thigh.
At $49.99, Wonder Woman was among the priciest costumes, along with the Geisha — both $20 more than Stewardess, which consisted only of a polyester wrap dress with a plunging neckline.
A quick trip to Wal-Mart and Kmart revealed the same dubious selections.
While the hemlines were slightly lower on the Kmart French Maid and Cheerleader, Wal-Mart hewed to form with a saucy Red Riding Hood and a naughty rag doll, advertising a “sultry vinyl bodice and thigh highs ...
lollipop not included.”
A theme was emerging. And it wasn’t Halloween. Since when did Halloween costumes become marital aids? The hobo has turned into the Hillbilly Honey. The traditional vampire is now the Mistress of Darkness. I have nothing against playing erotic dress-up, or even mass-market fetishism.
I’d just prefer it didn’t converge with a family holiday (and wasn’t sold next to the dryer sheets). If you want to play cheerleader at home, go team. But trick-or-treating with your children in anything featuring latex and cleavage seems like a little too much trick.
And really, wasn’t Halloween the one day modern women could relax about looking hot? What if I just want to be a mummy sans yummy?
I noticed that on the outside of every package was a photo of a woman modeling not only the costume, but teetering heels and bras of the push-up variety. The First Lady costume was not, as one might expect, a red business suit, but a pink crepe mini-dress. At least it had the matching pillbox hat. The angel was dubbed “heaven’s hottie.” Even the witch had a slit up her tattered skirt.
My girls were confused. “Where are the monsters?” they asked. “Where are the superheroes?” I pointed weakly to Wonder Woman and her thigh-high boots. “She’s pretty,” said my 4-year-old. Before adding, “You can see her breasts.”
As I watched them scan the selections, soaking in the unspoken message, I remembered my freshman year in college, going to a Halloween party dressed as a pumpkin. My face was painted orange. My torso was covered in fabric stuffed into a wide, round orb. It was not seductive. And it hadn’t occurred to me that it should be. There were no adult pumpkin costumes in the superstores. No vegetable costumes of any sort.
We moved along the aisle. I casually searched for the male equivalent of the Stewardess. Perhaps a Hot Fireman costume? Or maybe Handyman? But there was no Pool Boy. No Sexy C.E.O. There were, in fact, very few men’s costumes at all. A gorilla. A generic monster. A handful of serial killers.
We gave up on the mouse ears. Walking back, I noticed in the middle of the boas and six-inch heels and fishnets hung a Nun costume. It was a floor-length robe with modified wimple. Unlike the other ensembles, which offered bust and hip measurements, it was one size fits most. The
price: a modest $9.99. According to the Target Web site, it is a best seller. Probably among men.
Good Girls Go Bad, for a Day
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
The New York Times
Published: October 19, 2006
IN her thigh-highs and ruby miniskirt, Little Red Riding Hood does not appear to be en route to her grandmother’s house. And Goldilocks, in a snug bodice and platform heels, gives the impression she has been sleeping in everyone’s bed. There is a witch wearing little more than a Laker Girl uniform, a fairy who appears to shop at Victoria’s Secret and a cowgirl with a skirt the size of a tea towel.
TRICKS Seemingly innocuous characters have a sexy edge in costumes, which evoke male fantasies and reinforce a larger cultural message:
younger is hotter.
Anyone who has watched the evolution of women’s Halloween costumes in the last several years will not be surprised that these images — culled from the Web sites of some of the largest Halloween costume retailers — are more strip club than storybook. Or that these and other costumes of questionable taste will be barely covering thousands of women who consider them escapist, harmless fun on Halloween.
“It’s a night when even a nice girl can dress like a dominatrix and still hold her head up the next morning,” said Linda M. Scott, the author of “Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism” (Palgrave
Macmillan) and a professor of marketing at the University of Oxford in England.
The trend is so pervasive it has been written about by college students in campus newspapers, and Carlos Mencia, the comedian, jokes that Halloween should now be called Dress-Like-a-Whore Day.
But the abundance of risqué costumes that will be shrink-wrapped around legions of women come Oct. 31 prompts a larger question: Why have so many girls grown up to trade in Wonder Woman costumes for little more than Wonderbras?
“Decades after the second wave of the women’s movement, you would expect more of a gender-neutral range of costumes,” said Adie Nelson, the author of “The Pink Dragon Is Female: Halloween Costumes and Gender Markers,” an analysis of 469 children’s costumes and how they reinforce traditional gender messages that was published in The Psychology of Women Quarterly in 2000.
Dr. Nelson, a professor of sociology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, said the trend toward overtly sexualized costumes actually begins with little girls. “Heroic figures for women or considered icons of femininity are very much anchored in the femme fatale imagery,” she said, adding that those include an assortment of Disney heroines, witches, cocktail waitresses, French maids and an “interchangeable variety of beauty queens.”
While researching “Pink Dragon,” Dr. Nelson found that even costumes for little girls were gendered. Boys got to be computers while the girls were cupcakes. Today, there are bride costumes for little girls but one is hard pressed to find groom costumes for little boys.
Additionally, Dr. Nelson said, the girls’ costumes are designed in ways that create the semblance of a bust where there is none. “Once they’re older women it’s just a continuation of that same gender trend,” she said.
Men’s costumes are generally goofy or grotesque ensembles with “Animal House”-inspired names like Atomic Wedgie and Chug-A-Lug Beer Can. And when they dress up as police officers, firefighters and soldiers, they actually look like people in those professions. The same costumes for women are so tight and low-cut they are better suited for popping out of a cake than outlasting an emergency.
Obviously, however, many women see nothing wrong with making Halloween less about Snickers bars and SweeTarts and more about eye candy.
Rebecca Colby, 28, a library clerk in Milwaukee, said the appeal of sexy costumes lies in escaping the workaday, ho-hum dress code.
“I’m not normally going to wear a corset to go out,” said Ms. Colby, who has masqueraded as a Gothic witch with a low-cut bodice, a minidress-wearing bumblebee, a flapper and, this year, most likely, a “vixen pirate.”
“Even though you’re in a costume when you go out to a party in a bar or something, you still want to look cute and sexy and feminine,” she said.
Indeed, many women think that showing off their bodies “is a mark of independence and security and confidence,” said Pat Gill, the interim director of the Institute of Communications Research and a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.
It is a wonder gyms do not have “get in shape for Halloween” specials.
In her book “Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality”
(Harvard University Press), Deborah Tolman, the director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University and a professor of human sexuality studies there, found that some 30 teenage girls she studied understood being sexy as “being sexy for someone else, not for themselves,” she said.
When the girls were asked what makes them feel sexy, they had difficulty answering, Dr. Tolman said, adding that they heard the question as “What makes you look sexy?”
Many women’s costumes, with their frilly baby-doll dresses and high- heeled Mary Janes, also evoke male Lolita fantasies and reinforce the larger cultural message that younger is hotter.
“It’s not a good long-term strategy for women,” Dr. Tolman said.
But does that mean women should not use Halloween as an excuse to shed a few inhibitions?
“I think it depends on the spirit in which you’re doing it,” Dr.
Tolman said. “I’m not going to go and say this is bad for all women.”
Perhaps, say some scholars, it could even be good. Donning one of the many girlish costumes that sexualize classic characters from books, including “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” “Cinderella” and “The Wizard of Oz,” can be campy, female sartorial humor, said Professor Gill. It can be a way to embrace the fictional characters women loved as children while simultaneously taking a swipe at them, she said. “The humor gives you a sense of power and confidence that just being sexy doesn’t,” she said.
Dr. Tolman added that it is possible some women are using Halloween as a “safe space,” a time to play with sexuality. By taking it over the top, she said, they “make fun of this bill of goods that’s being sold to them.”
“Hey, if we can claim Halloween as a safe space to question these images being sold to us, I think that’s a great idea,” Dr. Tolman said.
But it may be only an idea. Or, more fittingly in this case, a fantasy.
“I love to imagine that there’s some real social message, that it’s sort of the female equivalent of doing drag,” Dr. Nelson said. “But I don’t think it’s necessarily so well thought out.”
Tanda Word, 26, a graduate student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, who wrote a satirical article about the trend for The Daily Toreador, agreed. “I think it’s damaging because it’s not just one night a year,” she said. “If it’s all the costume manufacturers make, I think it says something bigger about the culture as a whole.”
Salacious costumes — the most visible reminder that Halloween is no longer the sole domain of children — have been around longer than plastic Grim Reaper scythes. But there has been an emergence of “ultrasexy” costumes in the last couple of years, according to Christa Getz, the purchasing director for BuyCostumes.com, which sells outfits with names like Little Bo “Peep Show” and Miss Foul Play.
“Probably over 90 to 95 percent of our female costumes have a flirty edge to them,” Ms. Getz said, adding that sexy costumes are so popular the company had to break its “sexy” category into three subdivisions this year.
Heather Siegel, the vice president of HalloweenMart.com, said her company’s sexy category is among its most popular. (The two best- selling women’s costumes are a low-cut skin-tight referee uniform and a pinup-girl-inspired prisoner outfit called Jail Bait.)
“Almost everybody gets dressed up really, really sexy for it,” said Carrie Jean Bodner, a senior at Cornell University in Ithaca who wrote about the abundance of skimpy Halloween garb for The Cornell Daily Sun last year. “Even the girls who wouldn’t dream of going to class without their pearls and pullovers.”
Last year Ms. Bodner, 21, dressed up as a sexy pinch-hitter for an imaginary baseball team. This year she and her friends are considering being va-voom Girl Scouts.
Ms. Getz of BuyCostumes.com said far more women are buying revealing costumes than firing off indignant e-mail messages asking, “Why are all of your costumes so sexy?” (though some do).
Still, women may be buying racy outfits because that is all that is available. Ms. Getz said she wished there were more sexy men’s costumes on the market and that the lack of them is but further evidence of the gender double standard. “It’s just not as socially acceptable,” she said, adding that men feel comfortable expressing themselves with Halloween costumes that are “either crude or outrageous or obnoxious.”
Ms. Siegel of HalloweenMart.com said the costume industry is merely mirroring the fashion industry, where women have more variety in their wardrobes. Besides, she said, men are less interested in accessorizing. “They’re happy grabbing a mask and a robe and being done,” she said.
At least they get a robe. Ms. Bodner of Cornell estimated that it will be about 30 degrees in Ithaca on Oct. 31.
“We’re not just risking our dignity here,” she said. “We’re risking frostbite.”
F*cking Progressives: American Apparel wants you to bend over for its anti-sweatshop schtick
By KEELY SAVOIE
Clamor Magazine
Issue 28, Fall 2006
With the arrival of American Apparel in Park Slope, Brooklyn’s stalwartly anti-chain-store neighborhood, the trip up gritty, traffic-clogged Flatbush Avenue now culminates in the lusciously moist, open mouth of a Lauren W. Her tongue flirts with her fingers through parted lips, and it looks as though she’s inviting us to taste the same quintessential flavor of American Apparel she appears to be savoring: CEO Dov Charney.
American Apparel ads have become their own pop-culture entity. At first sight, they excited something in ad-watchers and media-thinkers. The ads seemed new, edgy, smart, and real. They feature very young women (and some girls under 15, if rumors are true) who are unpolished, un-retouched, and hyper-sexualized. The camera-eye leers at crotch level, focusing where flesh disappears under thin cotton fabric, lingering on bruised thighs, scratched buttocks, stubbly armpits. It lurks above the tawny-skinned, thin models who are lolling about on tousled sheets, propped against door jambs, bent over plastic crates, or sprawled on cheap couches. The camera’s lens becomes a proto-phallus, as if you are seeing a photographic rendition of a horny boy’s favorite sexual fantasy. It’s not a far stretch; Dov Charney is listed as the “artist” in many of the photo montages on the American Apparel website. In Lauren W’s slideshow, she is shot from the shoulders up against the backdrop of a pillow. In excruciatingly close views, we are taken through a series of her facial expressions of lust, sexual excitement, orgasmic ecstasy, and coy satiation. In one of the final shots, a male hand reaches down from behind the camera, and touches her chin.
“Dov’s whole thing [is about] humiliating women . . . not letting them be strong and in control – always [appearing] vulnerable,” says Adam Neiman, CEO of No Sweat Apparel, AA’s main anti-sweatshop (and pro-union) T-shirt-and-tank-top competitor.
These are the ads that took American Apparel from being unknown to becoming almost as much of an urban fixture as Starbucks – that’s what we’ve been told. At first the ads were a welcome departure from the air-brushed anorexic tyranny of most Madison Avenue “sex sells” fare, but under the surface of the too-close, Polaroid-candid, spots-and-all realism was the same ol’ same ol’: “Sexual expression co-opted by capitalism,” as Jean Kilbourne, author of Can’t Buy My Love and ad-critic extraordinaire, puts it.
The images of super-young models prostrated in positions of hyper-sexual vulnerability are reminiscent of a Calvin Klein advertising controversy of a decade ago, in which pubescent teens were deliberately posed to evoke that bastion of ’60s sleaze, rec-room pornography. Unsurprisingly, the CK ads generated immense controversy, which of course translated to immense profits.
By the same token, American Apparel ads recall the “classic” ’70s images from Hustler magazine, which also adorn the walls of their retail stores. Predictably, the smarmy AA ads have generated considerable buzz that has facilitated American Apparel’s ascendancy. But American Apparel did CK one better. The edginess of the ads garnered the headlines, but the topper – the piece de resistance for Charney’s target demographic – appeared further down in almost every single article ever written about American Apparel: the parenthetical appeal of AA’s anti-sweatshop schtick.
It was the seemingly incompatible combination that really launched AA from obscurity to ubiquity within a couple of years of opening their first retail store. Therein lies the genius of the marketing strategy of American Apparel. They know sex sells, but free press with a progressive twist sells a whole lot more.
The real story of American Apparel’s ads is how the company has used the bodies of its barely legal employees to shore up its appeal to the progressive left by implanting anti-sweatshop shtick into every article generated by its low-budget, sexist ads. And the AA demographic – low-wage-worker-defending (but high-wage-earning), guilt-ridden lefties who want nothing more than to assuage their own angst-ridden middle-class anxiety about having succeeded in the capitalist world by consuming with conscience (and the more conscience, the better: sweat-free, fair-trade, organic, vegan, and sustainable) – ate it up.
“He [is] basically telling the left on one hand, ‘Yeah, you’re making me work,’” says Neiman. “On the other, [he’s saying], ‘Kiss my hairy bare butt.’”
American Apparel’s fame as an anti-sweatshop hero company is rooted not in ideology, but in the cut-throat clothing industry. Charney had just opened American Apparel’s first retail store in downtown L.A. when he learned that another T-shirt-and-tank-top outfitter, the late SweatX, aimed to open a retail outlet right next door. “He saw a threat from SweatX, so all of a sudden he realized that there was press – lots of it – so he played that angle,” says Neiman.
“Dov had never shown any interest up to this time in the sweatshop issue whatsoever,” Neiman says. “It was all about sex – sexy tees, sexy tees, sexy tees – was it.” Sex is still the central concern for Charney. Wherever Charney goes, rumors and insinuations follow. Stories about workplace nudity, inappropriate come-ons, and outright sexual harassment seem to sprout out of Charney.
But it’s also a whole lot more than just sex. It is the cynical positioning of those female bodies over a backdrop of progressive causes, an incomplete and cognitively dissonant seduction that seems, nonetheless, to have worked well enough that almost every shirt I’m tempted to buy has that tell-tale three-circle logo of American Apparel. And no wonder: American Apparel is, ironically, the brand of choice for any number of progressive organizations who decide to do a little T-shirt marketing.
“It always astonishes me when people who consider themselves progressive fall for this,” says Kilbourne.
[just FYI, here are some more very interesting reads on american apparel:
American Apparel: Trading sweatshops for sexism
American Apparel, LLC
~nas]
when i was in high school, i took this class called "business computer information systems, aka "BCIS." it was a fun class -- kind of like glorified computer lit. we worked on PC's... we got good at keyboarding, we became proficient in word and wordperfect (back when people still used wordperfect) and lotus 1-2-3, and we did a bunch of internet exercises -- web searches, e-mailing, etc.
i remember one day in class, we talked about "netiquette." i don't think anyone has ever used that word outside of that class, and it sounds kind of '90s and silly now, but it made sense at the time. it was about the etiquette you're supposed to have as an internet user. we were taught to be careful when e-mailing people or posting things on websites, because things always seem different electronically than they are in person. we were advised to watch our words, since tone of voice and facial expression are lost in electronic communications, and we could be perceived in a way that we didn't intend. we were told to not say things over e-mail or in online posts that we wouldn't say in person, since it's much easier and quicker to type things out and press a button than it is to say something to someone's face, and we could unintentionally offend people and damage relationships. and finally, we were told to never say anything in an e-mail or an online post that we didn't want immortalized in writing forever.
i think this advice makes even more sense to me now than it did then. with the proliferation in the use of the web, both in volume and in new types of media (take the advent of blogging, for instance), there's exponentially more opportunity to accidentally say something stupid, hurt people's feelings, or a burn a bridge. i've definitely had some education about this stuff as the years have gone on...
when i was 15, i remember writing an e-mail to a friend telling her she'd offended me and that i felt like she didn't want to be friends with me anymore. she reacted really badly -- actually, to this day, i think she vastly overreacted in the nature and degree of her response. in any case, she wrote me a nasty e-mail telling me that if that's how i felt, then she didn't want to be friends with me anymore anyway, and she proceed to not talk to me for 2 years. this was rather awkward, of course, because our families are friends and we had many friends in common, so i would see her all the time. eventually, i think she got over it, we both grew up a little, and things are great between us now. but that whole incident and its aftermath are singed into memory -- particularly since, even after 9 years of hindsight and hopefully fair reevaluation, i still think i was treated unfairly. all because of an e-mail.
i've also been learning a lot since i started blogging almost 2 years ago (2 years?!). there are so many social complexities and interpersonal nuances involved in blogging... i can never tell how people are going to react to my feelings, my views, and my expressions of myself -- and i'm especially bewildered since the people who read my blog are supposedly self-selected. they are reading it because they choose to seek it out and spend their time reading it, not because an e-mail arrived in their inbox and they were forced to attend to it. my feeling is always that if my blog isn't something that they find worth their time, they don't have to visit, much less criticize. but i also feel that well-intentioned, productive dialogue is always a good thing. regardless, blogging is a relatively new phenomenon that i'm still acclimating to... and i find it rife with difficulties that are very similar to the problems posed by e-mail and other forms of electronic communication.
and since i've come to law school, i've seen way too much take place on listserves. it seems like the whole school is built on listserves -- there are countless student organizations, each of which has a listserve, and there is also one general listserve for the whole NYU law community. unsurprisingly, there are so many controversial events and ideas advertised, so many incensed reactions, so many personal attacks (often based on ideological views and not on any knowledge of a person's character), so many trivial and absurd public fights between a small number of people, so many reasons to wonder how people who barely know each other can be so cruel to one another -- in writing and in front of hundreds of other people. it really blows my mind.
outside of the law school context, particularly in the last week, i've had an appreciable number of really troubling e-mailing exchanges -- exchanges that i neither initiated nor contemplated. people who i know either very little or not at all have completely misunderstood a situation and accused me of things they really haven't bothered to think about or ask about first. it's so easy to just fire off a harsh e-mail without even taking a few minutes to calm down or consider the possibilities of the situation. if they knew the facts or had taken 2 seconds to ask about them, these abrasive communciations never would've been happened in the first place. and i feel like if i had been dealing with these people in person, they would never be so presumptious and insulting -- something about the face-to-face human interaction would've forced them to behave more like humans. i tried not to take it personally -- indeed, i know it's not personal. and i realize that, sometimes, people are insecure and defensive. and sometimes people can be uninformed and reactionary in their communications -- and it's not about me when that happens. so i always try to check my own tendency to be reactionary, and i always try to respond empathically and patiently and rationally, and to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
but i still find myself perturbed. it's very interesting how we've arrived at this place. the internet is a wonderful thing with a myriad possibilities for positive and productive uses that will advance civilization. but it seems like people love to abuse it. i'm not even going to start on internet porn; pedophiles in chat rooms (and often later into bedrooms); or spam, phishing, and scams that rob gullible people of their money. but i think in a plethora of less grave, far more pervasive ways, we are all susceptible to using the internet to degrade the quality and authenticity of our human interactions. people are more likely to jump to conclusions, to be judgmental, to be rude and insensitive -- "people" includes me, no doubt. so these days, i'm more conscious than ever of how i sound in personal e-mails, on my blog, on listserves, etc. and i'm honestly hoping i don't sound to others as completely thoughtless and unkind as some people have sounded to me (even in cases where they weren't directly addressing themselves to me). maybe i do -- who knows. if i do, i guess that's all the more reason that i'll always be trying to improve my "netiquette," which i think is something of a fine balance between free expression and open communication on the one hand and wisdom, moderation, and sensitivity on the other. i'm still trying to find that balance. and it saddens me to think that many, many people don't even care to look.
honestly, is it too much to ask to find a low-heeled, comfortable, attractive black pump?!?!?
maybe some of us don't want to break our ankles trying to wear 4-inch heels.
maybe some of us can't balance in a stiletto, even if it is only 2 inches high -- maybe we wouldn't want to even if we could.
maybe some of us hate pointy shoes because they make our feet look bigger and they make us look like witches.
maybe some of us would like a comfortable shoe that doesn't make us look like someone's grandma.
maybe some of us don't want red, swollen, blistering (sometimes bleeding) excruciating bumps all over our feet.
why, why is there nothing wearable out there?!?!? you would think that if a suitable shoe existed, i could find it, seeing as how I LIVE IN NEW YORK. if the magic shoe is going to be anywhere, it's here. and yet, i search and search and find nothing.
when i was in college, i wrote an article for The American Bahai. it was called "hose, heels, and the emancipation of women." it was the first thing i'd ever had published anywhere, and i don't really know how i even ended up doing it (ok, i do -- lacey talked me into it). but i think what possessed me to write it was anger and frustration. i was sick and tired of the way that "fashion" oppresses women. who dreamed up the pair of pantyhose, the constrictive, suffocating, unnatural-looking abomination that it is? a man. who invented the high heel, the painful, unhealthy, absurdist torture-weapon that it is? a man. and who decided, long, long ago, that a woman needs to wear a skirt, the impractical, difficult, accident-prone contraption that it is? a man.
i'd like to think that these articles of (c)loathing would have died out over time, as women gained rights and people became enlightened. i'd like to think that my anger has subsided since i wrote that first article. but no, the chauvenistic madness is alive and well today -- just a thriving as it's ever been. so i continue to rage against it, because...
here we are in the 21st century... and what do you see when you look at a "modern business woman?" a skirt suit, constantly in need of pulling down, straightening, adjusting, and leg crossing; a pair of God-forsaken pantyhose that are on the verge of ripping and running at any given moment; and a pair of high heels that are endangering her long-term knee and back health and dramatically increasing her short-term risk of hitting the floor and breaking something. (let's not even get me started on make-up). women in corporate america are walking advertisements for the persistent domination of patriarchy and its continued ability to inflict cruel and unusual punishment on women. it's a man's world, and a woman will not succeed unless she conforms to these ludicrous standards of dressing herself. and that same social pressure to conform, to please, and to be attractive to men is what causes women to wear heels in other non-work settings, even when they're not required to.
why are we still subjugated on a daily basis? and more importantly, why are these elements of daily life presumed to be benign? why do people fail to recognize their oppressive force and to at least acknowledge how ridiculous these rituals are? no one talks about it... no one talks about how heels cause excessive pain and a myriad health problems. no one talks about how hose are bad for circulation and respiration. no one talks about how many skirts are difficult to wear and invite unenjoyable attention from men. no one talks about how women are still dressed according to the ignorant, insensitive, and archaic fashion plates of men.
why, ladies, why do we continue to take it? if i don't want to wear heels, i shouldn't have to, dammit. i shouldn't have to put on hose if i don't feel like it. and i sure as hell shouldn't have to shave my legs -- pantyhosed or not. and yet, i have to -- i won't get a job if i don't. that's the sad reality. i hated heels when i only had to wear them to special occasions a few times a year. but soon, i will get a real job, and i will have to wear hose and heels everyday. i will be dressed uncomfortably everyday, i will be dressed to the liking of men everyday, and i will not make it professionally if i don't. i don't think i'm exaggerating when i say that's perverse.
i don't want to wear heels. and i scream inside whenever i go to the shoe store and realize that, not only do i have to wear heels, but i can't find one decent pair of heels that will make the misery slightly more tolerable. this means that not only will i not like what i'm wearing on my feet for philosophical and aesthetic reasons, but that it's going to hurt no matter what i do. there is something so unjust about that.
seeing as how i suffer from partriarchy all the damn time everywhere i go, i find it really cruel and unusual that, on top of everything else, i have to feel it so acutely in my feet with every step i take.
high of 81 today. and it's october. :)