As evidenced in my [many] un/sent letters to Oprah, President Obama, the makers of Lays Potato Chips, both print and online newspapers, in addition to the comment section of the various blogs I fancy, let’s just say for argument’s sake, that I am prone to rather large pronouncements.
If I “love” you, I love you with my whole heart, if I simply “like” you, I like the best about you, and if through my extra-sensory scorpion receptors, I “sense” that you don’t “like” me [we Scorps are extra-feely, extra passion-y types], well then, I feel no ways about reciprocating that dislike, and I’m off you faster than you can say “wrong move.” Still, I tend to have a sixth sense about “things”—I see dis/honest people—and my head and my heart are inextricably linked. I’ll say right up front that what affects me “intellectually” usually affects me “emotionally” and try as I might, there is no fixing this condition.
As you might have deduced, given the urgency of my recent tweeting, I’ve had this intense, personal, and somewhat public dis/affection for Fashion. To me, it’s like the giant elephant in the room, but seeing as though no “sane” person would use the words “elephant” and “fashion” in the same sentence, let’s just call it a Snake, you know, as in The Garden of Eden.
Truth be told, I’m not entirely sure how or when this rage//rant concerning Fashion came about. Suffice it to say that it happened whilst perusing the myriad fashion blogs on the internet. I kinda got my FILL of following “amateurish” 30something fashion bloggers taking too-close a cue from “stylish” 20something fashion bloggers taking too-close a cue from street teenagers emulating Britney Spears emulating Taylor Momsen emulating Lindsay Lohan, wanting to be The Olsen Twins, emulating that youth-sucking media machine AKA, Holly’weird. And if I see one more blog of a mildly attractive white girl posing, posing, posing in what she thinks is style/fashion for umpteen entries, with little or nothing in the way of meaningful textual information beyond the “this is me before I got sloshed” featuring the uninspired, yet oddly ubiquitous: “this is me in my Naughty Girl Crotch Pose,” I’m going to hurl the contents of my liquid lunch.
Still, “legitimate” Fashion blogs/street sites and online pubs are the first majah radar stop with respect to immediate information regarding new trends, current happenings–according to Fashionologie, “it’s a good time to be a Chinese model”– and all the must have it Stylista news that’s fit to print. Just ask Anna Wintour [or Tavi, The Style Rookie]. There are many notable gems out there. Many of them with superb editorial content as well as that leading edge Fashion-y Fashion that we all want and crave. These Stylista Bloggistas certainly don’t need my endorsement to underscore that point. Still, call me old school, but nothing beats holding a behemoth of a fashion mag in your hands and flipping from page to page to page to page…
Personally-speaking, I like my fashion served straight-up with a generous helping of intellectualism, a dollop of whimsy, together with equal portions of creativity, originality plus fantasy, culminating in a heretofore inexpressible intangibility. Purist, thorough-bred fashion—whatever that is—for fashion’s sake, which is some respects keeps fashion “safe”— is not interesting to me. As a result, the awesome thing about the ‘net is that you can find a virtual smorgasbord from which to tickle your fancy. But as mentioned, the pickings vary wildly.
And so I swiftly took to the Twittersphere un/ceremoniously “dumping” on all of the Fashion blogs that I perceived to be lacking in form, content and substance, as if I had some personal stake in what was being offered. It wasn’t that difficult. There was/is a lot of cheese to choose from.
After that exercise, I felt I needed more. Purging, so to speak, does leave one slightly unsatisfied. I knew that Halle Berry was on the cover of September Vogue magazine having learned earlier on Twitter that her appearance marked something like the 5th time in over 116 years that a Black woman had graced its cover. Shelby Knox, the young white feminist writer had done a breakdown of the pathetically embarrassing stats, and comments were swift and unrelenting. Cool I thought, it isn’t “just me.” Read what Jezebel also has to say.
I then proceeded to buy three September Issues of fashion magazines—a relatively small sampling considering what is out there, but I wasn’t conducting a scientific experiment here, I was simply looking at pretty fashion pictures preparing to be seduced by all things girly and sweet. In order, I purchased Elle, Vogue, and Flare magazines. All three didn’t necessarily “disappoint” per se. Actually, it was my Elle purchase that prompted my Twitter breakdown and I decided that Asian Canadian Joe Zee was personally responsible/accountable for the lack of diversity.
That said, when one takes a cursory newsstand glance with respect to girth, substance, style and editorial content, you too will note that Vogue wins out. Elle runs a close second, and Flare, a disappointing and distant third. My reason for choosing Flare is because I am Canadian and it hails itself as “Canada’s Fashion Authority.” I have never subscribed to Flare, or Elle or Vogue. I buy them when it strikes my fancy, particularly if I like the editorial. Not just fashion editorial, but overall information editorial as well. If it has these two ingredients, then I consider it a Win. Remember now. I can get my fill of fashion eye-candy and info on the ‘net. For Free Ninety-Nine. I therefore assume that the printed fashion pubs will show and tell me what’s good. And make it all worth my precious time and money. Dig?
“September is the January in Fashion”
Consequently, as with all the Januaries of our years, the September issue [of Vogue, and any other fashion publication for that matter] comes with Great Expectation, and even greater Anticipation. The expectation that the fashion tone of your year will be set, and has been set in print and image, writ large. Any questions or queries or misgivings you may have about what to do, who to do, and what to wear whilst doing it— for the “beginning” of the fashion year, as it were, you need not fret because, the “Fashion Bible” as it is called in some circles, should be your go-to resource guide henceforth. Lastly, if you know nothing else of Fashion, and I’ll respectfully dis/believe you, if you don’t mind, you must at the very least cop to knowing that “September is the January of Fashion.” That’s a direct quote from the woman with the fake British accent in the Anna Wintour Vogue magazine “September Issue” movie. And she should know. So don’t argue.
But let’s be very clear here. The Grand Dame of fashion is American Vogue, helmed by none other than the beautiful British fashion Ice Queen herself, Ms. Anna Wintour. But don’t get it twisted. We are talking about one of this century’s most revered and inspired, sometimes reviled, creative geniuses. And if you think that fashion is all about fluff and filler, I respectfully submit that you should “fuck-off,” and think again. I daresay, I could attempt to get into the whys and wherefores as to the particular artistry and je ne sais quoi of Vogue magazine’s pop culture appeal, but that would be like breaking down The Oprah Factor in tidy digestible morsels and I have neither the skill, interest, nor the inclination to explain that in this post. Plus, yawn, forgive me, I’m a little bit bored with the Oprah Oeuvre. “Next customer please” as they say at McDonalds…
Cool.
Keeping Score
Now that we’ve covered ALL that, here’s where a little score-card action might come in handy. And if you still claim to know nothing else about fashion, other than that little stint where that disgusting brat and [s]pawn of a pathetic Mother, Lindsay Lohan “guest”-designed the Ungaro collection much to the snickering delight of the fashion cognoscenti, then I have absolutely no sympathy for you, particularly if you cannot spot the different between a jegging and a legging. Keep UP, please.
So, as mentioned I’m keeping score on Vogue, Elle, and Flare magazines. I like Flare because Fashion Director Elizabeth Cabral is wicked talented. She was photographed by and appears in The Sartorialist. Her pairings say effortless rock n’ roll chic, and who doesn’t want to look sexy, stylish and effortless? She makes it happen and should the American pubs choose to snap her up, I wouldn’t be surprised. I choose Vogue, because Vogue will always speak for itself, and requires no editorializing from me, except I’m going there, ‘cuz that’s how I roll. And American Elle. J’adore Elle. Elle is the original chronicler of the rock n’ roll priestess. At least it was for me. When I lived in France, I loved French Elle. It was playful and sexy and had that French flair. But this is America, and 25 fun-filled years later, Elle has created an American swagger, in that oh so distinct American way that was/is hard to beat.
“Do You Really Think This is The Most Important Message to Put In the September Issue?”
Witness the scene from the last 20 seconds of the trailer of The September Issue clip where Anna Wintour is sitting with two editors going through the editorial content. She has the magazine draft in front of her and as she flicks through its glossy pages she looks up and says to the two women: “Do You Really Think This is The Most Important Message to Put In the September Issue?” Which brings me to the issue I have with Flare magazine’s general editorial. In a [few] word[s], it sucks. Like it’s shockingly bad. Let me explain:
When I picked up my Vogue September issue I could read about cover feature Halle Berry [pg 648]; a story about Women who are also Mothers who work on the front lines in the military by Elizabeth Rubin [pg 380], a well-written expose by Julia Reed on BP Oil [pg 352], a story by Marcia DeSanctis about Activist Ophelia Dahl and her work to help rebuild Haiti [pg 448]; a story by Robert Sullivan about a new drug for people with MS [pg 556], and on it goes. Here’s the scorecard: A-List advertising for the first 100+pages, check; gorgeous fashion editorial, check; relevant, interesting and timely features editorial, check. Grade: A+ | Diversity Grade: D
Elle magazine gives you a much different fashion perspective/POV. While Vogue is the fashionable older sister, Elle is her hipper, younger more street-stylish sister. Don’t get me wrong, Vogue is ever much the stylish trend-setter, but Elle has its nose and ear firmly pressed to the ground and cares very much about youth/popular culture. They feature quite prominently on The City for goodness sake and prior to that on The Hills! When I peruse through the September issue of Elle magazine, I get a full length feature on America’s sweetheart Julia Roberts, the “star” [I loathe that term] of the biggest chic flic book turned movie turned marketing machine [don’t get me started], Eat, Pray Love. [pg472], plus not one, but 3 fashion spreads of her photographed by 3 famed and different photographers; in the “Table of Contents” on page 154, I get the usual info, but interestingly a smartly written book review, yes a book review, in addition to something called “Hot Content.” Let’s just say that not only does Elle capture the attention of our collective ADHD very well, it seems to move right along with what is relevant in a deliberate way. So while Vogue clearly has the first pick, cream of the crop, also known as the elite in designer advertorial, Elle runs a close second with its ads that showcase a more youthful modern line. And even mo’better, not one to rest on its laurels, it took out its own promotion page called Elle: Evolved “launching the next generation: ELLE for the iPad. Is this genius or what?
I like Roberta Myers Editor’s Letter. It’s warm, it feels personal, and she rambles, which I like. Amongst the well-written emerging and current fashion people profiles, one written by Canada’s own Katrina Onstad [pg234], there’s a shocking article that provides the kind of follow up material one looks for in culture-making headline material in the story of the American psychologist woman who falsely cried rape due to taking prescribed doses of testosterone; plus other stuff that keeps you in the know. If nothing else, Elle should pride itself on that. Here’s a breakdown: Elle Style A to Zee with Asian Canadian creative director Joe Zee [pg214]; Elle Fashion Insider featuring the creators of Opening Ceremony written by Ariel Levy [pg 226]; Elle Intelligence [pg361] featuring movies, culture reviews, books; Elle 25 [pg373] which features culture making news. Grade: A+ | Diversity Grade: D
The point? Elle is well-organized, and carefully considered, like Vogue. It’s compartmentalized in such a perfect way that keeps you heading back to either review an interesting story, or to find the shop they listed for that perfect bracelet. You get the sense that Roberta Myers and her team rested at nothing to bring us the goods. You get the feeling that like any insane creative offering, she didn’t stop until she achieved fashion nirvana. There’s a reason that publications like Vogue and Elle breathe, and a reason why Flare doesn’t.
How Flare Rates
Where Elle is at, is where Flare needs to be, the absence of a consistent display of Cultural Diversity, notwithstanding. At the very least, Flare “should” aspire to achieve what Elle has achieved. The thing about Flare is that it lacks a point of view. Not only does it suffer from a fashion personality disorder, but it is so overwhelmingly self-conscious in that too-polite Canadian way such that it crudely sustains the “fashion is credible metaphor” without any real material to back it up. I know, ouch. Sure, they’ve got the A List models, I mean, what model or actress wouldn’t want to be on the cover of a publication with a sustainable readership even though according to a recent article reported by the Globe and Mail, the “majority of Canadian magazines are seeing a circulation decline.” Yes, it’s got kick-ass fashion direction thanks to Elizabeth Cabral, but that is not enough. Or is it?
While Elle and Vogue and Harper’s put multimillion dollar actresses on the cover for their September issue, Flare decided to go with the “big boobed” Victoria’s Secret model, Doutzen Kroes boasting an “Exclusive A-List Angel” cover story with material that opens with the cover model’s diet description [pg 169]. Really Flare? You get an exclusive, and you think it’s important to begin the exclusive with what the girl eats? Elsewhere, Flare editor Lisa Tant writes that the bombshell has returned. No such “report” could be found in Elle or Vogue. Didn’t Flare get the memo? Or did they just make it up because there wasn’t anything else “relevant” to write about with respect to Canadian culture? Yawn. Doutzen is gorgeous, but big whup?! She’s got boobs and she’s hot. Next!
Other stories include the suffocatingly, self-reflexive first person account of a move to New York by Toronto native Hannah Sung on page 154. The first line reads, “Telling people of my impending move to New York, I was met with the same two words every time: “I’m jealous.” If this isn’t enough information to make a reader flip quickly to the end of the magazine and search for the nearest Elle/fashion editorial, I don’t know what is. The writer doesn’t tell us who she is, why we should care, why she might be relevant to our lives, but more importantly, why the hell she’s moving to New York! In the gorgeous pretty/sarcastic words–she used to be a fashion model, you know– of Calgary-based Canadian TwitterStar Kelly Oxford, “… bragging about living in NYC after you escape your small town is the most small town thing you can do.” I rest my case.
A few pages over on page 156, Rachel Giese writes about mean/girl bullying. This article belongs on the side lines of a daily newspaper such that the “story” could be summed up in two paragraphs or less. It has no business being a featured article, occupying what could be precious fashion real estate. The opening begins with a story about the experience of 26 year old girl writer, Dana Lacey. I’ve never heard of Dana Lacey before. A quick google of her name yields a blog of her freelance creative work, but the article doesn’t suggest why we might find her interesting other than she was a ‘victim’ of jealousy bullying. At the end of the article, there is a poll type paragraph bolded in black in which you can see if you fit into the 3 situations that are opportunities to experience mean girl/bullying. There is no suggestion that a psychologist specializing in bullying wrote these scenarios. Rather one might assume that the author herself might have created the scenarios based on personal experience.
To wit, under the AT SOCIAL EVENTS category it reads: “Whatever the get-together…you tend to dominate the conversation.” [Me: Last time, I checked, the person who “dominates” a conversation is usually the most comfortable with public speaking, and generally has the “confidence” to do so. If you don’t like the conversation, start one of your own!]. Under, the AT WORK category, the scenario reads: “You let an intern take the blame from someone else for a deadline that you missed.” [Me: Last time I checked, interns are the grunts of the office, and it is their “responsibility” to take all the abuse humanely possible without jeopardizing their career or anyone else’s. That said, nobody is ever going to believe a person who "blames" an intern, given their complete an utter low, unpaid status on the totem pole. You feel me?]. Lastly in the AMONG FRIENDS category: “You purposely ‘forget’ to invite one of the key friends in your circle when you make plans to hang out.” [Me: What the hell is a “key friend?” And what criteria is this based upon? People do genuinely "forget" to do alot of things, does that mean they are bullies and mean girls because they do so?].
Get with it Flare. Is this what you call September Issue material? Hasn’t the subject of mean-girling been done to death? [I even wrote my own post about Mean Girls months ago]. You decide.
But the biggest letdown of all is that Canada’s Fashion Authority is sadly anything but. Canada, Toronto specifically, is the second most culturally diverse city next to Amsterdam. We don’t support a “melting pot” mentality, rather we encourage, boast and pride ourselves on being racially diverse, and multi-cultural. Walk through any suburban or downtown residential area and you will instantly experience a reflection of this concept. We intermingle, we inter-date, we inter-marry, and our lifestyles reflect that.
So then I thought, OK, well Flare is not the only fashion publication who doesn’t fully support diversity–beyond the ‘token’ editorial here and there– they all don’t, certainly not in the way that they “should.” Awhile back a NFB film documentary on “the institutionalized racism in the beauty industry” as evidenced by the alarming lack of diversity in fashion made the rounds and was featured on the blog Racialiscious. Some of the usual suspects, including Fashion Television Host @Jeanne_Beker weighed in, without much to add to the discussion than what we’ve heard in the past. “Covers with non-white models don’t sell; designers prefer non-descript faces that are not too ethnic; ethnic faces need to fit the European aesthetic,” and on it goes. They follow a pretty Canadian model trying to break into the market. But she is 24! Old by model standards, and sure she’s pretty enough, but she’s no [Polish Canadian] Daria Werbowy or Coco Rocha. Even I, the general magazine reader could tell you that! What was most surprising to me is that Canada’s fashion heavyweights seem to simply acquiesce and succumb to the popular school of thought without offering any solutions, or corrections, or a plan about how to change it.
If as Canada’s own design guru, agent provocateur, and Glimmer wisdom-provider, Bruce Mau says, “Radical New Thinking Has To Start Somewhere,” what better place than “Canada’s Fashion Authority? Here’s what I suggest:
- Change the Editorial Content. Make it relevant. Make it good, Make it timely. Make it count.
- Get good writers. “Name” writers if you have to. But writers who have more to report on than the trivial content of the current September Issue. Granted, any writer worth her salt can peak the interest of a cynical audience and make the most trivial subject interesting. Put these writers through a rigorous screening process so that they produce interesting cultural content. For example, Toronto just went through the G20 brouhaha, where’s that? We host TIFF in September, where’s that? You couldn’t get a profile on Cameron Bailey, or his wife, the very fashionable filmmaker Carolyn Hew, who incidentally hails from Winnipeg, home of Guy Maddin and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet? She exudes fashion. Our Indie Movie Scene is huge. Toronto artist Safiya Randera and her film doc, “My Father the Terrorist,” is big news on Facebook. Where’s that? James McCallum a member of the Philosophy Kings and the duo Sunshine State recently moved with his multi-ethnic family to London UK this past summer, where’s that? We also have a growing Muslim population with many young women who cover for various reasons, what about a regular feature talking about that as it relates to fashion ideas?
- Hire a Guest Blogger to give Good Column. There’s a very popular blog written out there called Bras And Ranties. She is a GIFT to the Toronto scene. Engage her very popular and with-it discussion threads. Another blog by Canadian Ex-Pat Murieann Carey-Campbell writes the Bangs And a Bun column. She’s been short-listed for a Cosmo Blog award and just recently started a blog called Field of Dreams that drips positivity. Do you know the Toronto-based Etiquette Doyenne, Lily Lemontree? She is a “lady” in every true sense of the word! I found her through my favourite “housewife,” Coryanne Etienne of @Housewifebliss who writes about the art of nesting with a modern twist.
- Get a Fresh Young Perspective on Foodie’ism. Have you met MadebyMariko? She’s a 30-something foodie scenester, and graduate of George Brown culinary school, who blogs about her various un/successful forays into food. She’s smart, cute and funny. She’s also a former fashion addict and the niece of ½ of the international design duo; Yabu Pushelberg which also happens to be her day job. [Tell me that you couldn’t get a food sponsor to support her column on a monthly basis, or pitch Pusateri’s or WholeFoods, heck even Loblaws to get involved using their gourmet ingredients. The food network is HUGE and fashionistas love to pick their salad and get drunk at all the best restolounges.
- Put a real marketing team in place to aggressively approach high income brands such that you get the proper lifestyle/fashion support a fashion magazine should have. Where are the big ticket advertisers? And if you have to have a Rogers ad in the magazine, couldn’t you have one that is sexy and projects a fashion image?
- Lose the weird Curly Q font that you use as the opening letter for each new feature. It’s ugly and distracting. And a bit “try-hard.” Speaking of try-hard, hire that bitch, LaineyGossip to report on Holly’weird. As much as I am loathe to “appreciate” her blog, she is relevant, Canadian, and Asian. In the context of the latest celebrity nonsense, her posts on her Mother, whom she fondly refers to as the “Chinese Squawking Chicken,” are priceless.
- Create a Bit More Desire. Make me want to purchase Flare over Elle or Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, not because it is Canadian, but because it’s good. A good cover is only window-dressing, what else is happening underneath the cover models ahem, skirt, so to speak?
- Add some Edge. Canada is brimming with creativity. Our music scene has been the talk of the underground scene for years. Hot girls LOVE musicians. What should I buy and why? Why not get James McCallum of the aforementioned Philosopher Kings to post a diary on living in London? He moved there for a reason. Get that story.
- Make a strategic alliance with the likes of the sweet young fashion talent, Brittany Law, founder and editorial director of the online magazine StyleRepublic , who was profiled in ShopBop, and who recently contributed this writing piece to Bergdorf Goodman regarding Fashion's Night Out. Speaking of which, where is Flare’s coverage of that event? She also does a wicked Follow Friday column featuring fashion’s popular and most sought after.
- Mine the Fashion Blogs on a regular basis and tell us wassup! Or at the very least give us something they are not. Cathy Horyn recently wrote this article for the New York Times, called Fall Fashion: What Do Girls Want. It was essentially a profile piece on ShopBop founders and other with-it 20something/style trailblazers in the know. She goes on to say: “There is plenty of research about the so-called Millennials — people ages 18 to 29 — to suggest you can’t lump them all together. Not only is this group likely to become the most educated generation in American history, according to a Pew Research Center survey this year, it is also the most racially and ethnically diverse.” {My Italics}. If this isn’t proof-positive that Flare has an opportunity over and above the other fashion titles, I don’t know what is!
- Think Outside the fashion box. Round table a discussion on print magazine relevance from somebody other than your 6 degree circle of friends. Don't lie. You all know, exactly what I’m talking about. Whenever Canadian fashion wants to “invite” women in to discuss Topic ABC, you girls always invite the usual suspects who also happen to be your close friends. And really, that insider/clique business is so irritatingly "Gossip Girl." Please grow up, and please endeavour to get the 'hello' OVER yourself!Why not conduct a little random poll at the go-to places in every city. Get a skinny jean sponsor like J Brand or something and ask random stylish Canadian women, like the this 20something Canadian girl BrittanyDefhr from style+substance, recently featured in Vanity Fair and described as a "favourite," what they want from their so-called “Fashion Authority.” If Flare’s Fashion Director, via Twitter says she: “hates chick flics,” “hates the term fashionista,” and “hates the term foodie,” consider enlisting the services of someone who “loves,” understands and appreciates those terms in the context of today’s popular-culture-speak, and roll/[role model] with the good times!
- 12. Fashion is an “elite” sport. Create the illusion that there will always be something about fashion that I am not “worthy” of having. To that end, slapping a $2.99 red sticker at the top right hand corner of the magazine cover of the Biggest Fashion Issue Ever is so not incentive for any self-respecting chi-chi bitch in her right fashion mind, to make a purchase. Truthfully, she might be more inclined to quickly skip over that pub in a trendy heart beat. [Kidding of course. The price-tag is totally "on-budget" for fashion students, and students of fashion, but Fashion is not charity, never has been, and if all of a sudden you expect me to believe that "fashion has a conscious" beyond making a profit, well then you must think me more gullible than the rest of 'em].
Speaking of Blogs, you did read this article online @VanityFair, right? It states that "Fashion Has Gone Viral." And it lists the top blogs that fashion-followers should check out. Just sayin'
Finally, I don’t claim to have “all” the answers. Mine is but one opinion, but I think it’s one worth considering. Call me anytime. And let’s round-table this and flesh out a real proposal that’s gonna live up to the “Authority” you so boldly claim.
I’m at your disposal. Love you! xobolaji
Tags: Anna Wintour, Barack Obama, Brittany Defehr, Brittany Law, Bruce Mau, Coryanne Etienne, Doutzen Kroes, Elizabeth Cabral, Flare, Glimmer, Housewife Bliss, Jezebel, Julia Roberts, Kelly Oxford, Lily Lemontree, Lisa Tant, Mr Joe Zee, Oprah, Racialiscious, style+substance, StyleRepublic, Tavi, The Style Rookie, Vanity Fare, Vogue. The Sartorialist
Posted in Pop Cult-ish, The Stink-ish, Think This-ish | No Comments »
When tweeting, the dialogue in my head goes something like this:
Me: You know you shouldn’t be such a hater [on Twitter] when it comes to expressing yourself, particularly when tweeting about something you’re dissatisfied with.
Me2: I know, but I almost can’t help it. Part of me knows that I should “play the game” but the other part hates playing games.
Me: Get used to it.
Me2: I don’t think I can, it goes against my better nature. Plus I suck at Poker.
Me: Change your nature. Learn the game.
Me2: I can’t change what nature created. Plus I’ve tried. And I can’t keep the number sequences in my head.
Me: Well, then modify your behaviours to suit the status quo. And maybe write crib notes on your hand like Sarah Palin.
Me2: The status quo is what got me into this mess. Plus, some people don’t think Sarah Palin is very intelligent.
Me: Listen, you’re not the only girl with a bone to pick. Just work a little harder on your poker face.
Me2: Never said I was the only “grrl” with a bone to pick. And my face and my brain and my heart all work simultaneously. The face mimics the heart in my case. Sorry.
Me: Well then, stop acting like the universe is supposed to bend to your will. A lot of people like things just the way they are.
Me2: Well, I don’t.
Me: Then do something about it, or else you’ll drive yourself crazy, drive everyone else crazy, and alienate a lot of “good” people
Me2: Define good.
Me: You know, what? I can’t answer that. Good is relative.
Me2: Relative to what?
Me: Relative to how it’s viewed on the scale of importance in the Grand Scheme of Things.
Me2: Ya well, one person’s idea of importance is another person’s bag of salty potato chips. Chips were the “downfall” of Oprah you realize. [Or was it the little blue corn chips? Same thing in my book].
Me: You lost me.
Me2: I like potato chips. I would marry a bag if I could. At the end of the day it’s currently all I can think about.
Me: Really?
Me2: Yes really.
Me: Any particular kind of potato chip?
Me2: Well, I’ve always been partial to Lays Ripple. They’re plain, and they contain only 9% sodium. Just salty enough.
Me: I see.
Me2: At night it’s what I do. I tweet, [blog, maybe watch a movie and eat potato chips] therefore I Am.
Me: And this has been happening for?
Me2: About 2 weeks now. I sort of lost my marbles a few weeks ago, started to twitter rant about fashion and that’s when I decided to start eating potato chips again. I’ll likely stop on September 1st
Me: Why September 1st ?
Me2: Because September is Back To School, and any parent will tell you it’s like the start of a New Year.
Me: I see.
Me2: Ya. Anything else you care to know?
Me: Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?
Me2: ______________________
Tags: @xobolaji, blue corn chips, Lays, Oprah, Sarah Palin, Twitter
Posted in Random-ish, The Stink-ish | 2 Comments »
Is it me, or is it you?
I think it’s me, but I’m also thinking it might be a little bit of you. And more than likely it’s your fault that I feel this way, but it’s also my fault for “letting” you make me feel this way, or for feeling like I “owe” you an apology or an explanation because I feel a certain way based on what you did to me directly or indirectly.
Other than that, it must be something you didn’t do, or didn’t say, or what you might have implied by not saying the thing you should have said, but didn’t.
But I know that you know that I bet it’s something that you were thinking you wouldn’t say that set me off.
So, eff you. And eff you. And eff you. But mostly you for making me tell you eff you when I know that you didn’t mean for me to have to tell you eff you. Thank you.
Posted in Think This-ish | No Comments »
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve had a majah “bitch-on” for a few days now. The bitch, well it seems, “she” will NOT go away. “That girl” is consumed with issue upon issue, and I wonder if she had a “job” outside of raising her girlies and being a full time supah mothah, if she’d still find the time to be engaged, be enraged and all ‘round enslaved by The Media Mind Suck. Methinks yes, because once you’ve gone bitch, it’s really hard to go back. The awareness-factor notwithstanding, it’s the insipid behaviours of the masses that encourage and gently guide me into fits of dis/placement and alienated solitude. Is my only outlet the “whine & moan” pages of my blog? For now, yes, because kicking a dog is considered abusive; drinking, partying and whoring is frowned upon by The Motherati, and Jesus and the Karma Police truth be told, are generally-speaking, a reminder away from not letting me go too far off my ragin rockah.
And no, [hell-to-the-EM-EFF-no!] I have not taken up residence with the “walking wounded” either. I do not view each and every morsel of life as shit. [My beautiful girls, and my charming huzzband will not allow that sort of self-indulgence. Well, not too often anyway].
I’m just annoyed and vocal about the trivia that is being packaged and “sold” to me in the guise of it being “good for me.” Hell, the advertising no longer extols the “virtues”—a paradoxical word if ever there was one in the context of advertising— of stuff that might be necessary to “improve” my life, rather it encourages me to focus on the extraneous stuff, over and above of what I’ve “hoarded” and acquired in the first place.
“Hoarding” for those of you who don’t know, is another social/mental illness that comes as a result of our 21st Century First World Privilege, and it involves among other things, “The Hoarder” acquiring multiples of things that she may never actually use, but purchases and keeps in the event that she may one day find a use. The Hoarder typically stores the items in the home in which she dwells with family members until the stuff literally takes over, and “normal” living takes a back seat to overwhelming clutter, flith and general disarray.
I, like the rest of North America, was first introduced to the concept via the A&E Channel. [And now for some unknown reason TLC has picked up the gauntlet. Why you ask? Because filth is the “new” attractive is the “new” sexy. And if you find yourself teetering on the side of finding it slightly objectionable, somewhat loathsome and a tinge, cringe-inducing, well, lighten the fuck – up, will you. It’s “just” TV.
But just so you “know,” sharing this social media illness is what television does best. [They haven’t termed the coin, “viral” for nuthin! All the hoarders and materialists, and psychologically-wounded can placate their fears through the medium of TV, and if you don’t share this sickness—tag, you’re it!— then you can watch, get grossed out, and thank your lucky stars it’s not you. If memory serves, Oprah, my media darling—and yours—also aired an episode about hoarding back in the day. Oprah My Media Darling introduced us to a lot of previously “closeted” issues. Um. Thank you Oprah?
ON HOARDING
I find myself feeling “slightly” unsympathetic “about” this issue [not to sufferers of this malaise]. The feeling is not so much directed at the victim of said illness—should the sick “take responsibility” for his sickness and heal himself?—but towards the society that encourages and sustains it. And so to draw a-knock-you-upside-your-head-example, let me again visit the starving people in the deepest dark Africa [or your neighbour across the street, you just never know]. If the gentle people of the overpopulated underprivileged third world have a “problem,” it’s not buying and keeping and hoarding the same plastic shit over and over and over again thinking that they just might one day find a “use” for it. “Survival” has a different importance and connotation in the context of whether Mother Nature will cooperate in order to provide food, and if the corrupt political men in power will put their selfish gains before that of the people, and oh, if your children will live to see their 5th birthday.
Our 1st World Problems are such that if we really took a look inwards, we might have to face the reality that our problems are sometimes manufactured by the society in which we live. [Again, here I go with the reductive reasoning, but sometimes the duck quacks and the dog barks, and no matter how much we “think” these animals “speak” our language, they just don’t. Reality is a Bitch. Suck That.
I sometimes wonder if the clinicians ever considered that above and beyond the hoarders psychological problems, which may be a result of some deep psychological trauma, if they would ever consider putting the hoarder on a restricted financial allowance as part of therapy. If you do not have money for stuff, you cannot purchase stuff. Of course this “therapy” may not apply to the hoarder who sifts through garbage, but the ones who can “afford” to acquire material goods might benefit from this as “treatment” as well. Don’t you think?
The thing is, thanks to the 24 hour airing of our so-called dirty laundry, and our deepest, darkest, most troubling illnesses, we have been co-opted into sharing and thus “becoming” part of the sum-total of our society’s ailments and diss/functions. The hoarder on TV is the hoarder living in your home who own owns “nostalgic” gear from the 80s. The celebrity with the walk-in closet containing more than 200 pairs of shoes—a conservative number by Holly’weird standards—is your younger brother who has a collection of 25 bongs and the new mom with the 65 onesies she recieved from the recent baby shower for her 4th kid, cuz ALL CHILDREN DESERVE A BABYSHOWER dontcha know, is well, “deserving” of those 65 onesies, because well all “know” how hard it is for a new mom to do laundry!
People, People, People: It’s all the same, except now we have popular mainstream language to describe it, and a justifiable reason for doing it. What about just saying that the habit/affliction supports the treatment supports the habit/affliction that supports the treatment and call it a day. Today is Wednesday, also known as Hump Day, get over it.
Tags: A&E, Hoarding, Media, Mind Suck, Oprah, TLC, TV
Posted in Pop Cult-ish, The Stink-ish, Think This-ish | No Comments »
The ALT/LIFE
It is a great fact of the 21st Century, of our First World Lives that we are fortunate to have options and choices. The saying, “I didn’t have a choice,” doesn’t carry much weight in our daily discourse, because generally speaking, one has innumerable, if not, a plethora of choice. Much of where we end up, so to speak, depends on our choices and the angle at which we approach and view life’s more complicated scenarios. The decision to rant or rave; to look on the bright side, versus the negative side; to embrace an idea or a concept, or reject one; to believe and/or not believe; to have faith, or to fly by the seat of your pants; to rise about your set of circumstances and lot in life, or to succumb to them, etc. These are all decisions and choices one must make.
On the other hand, acting without a conscious or behaving in a violent manner can be summed up by the saying, “the devil made me do it,” or, “I wasn’t thinking,” or “I wasn’t in my right frame of mind,” however irresponsible and im/possible that may seem. But still, one makes a decision and a choice to commit an act of violence or lawlessness or to simply make a bad choice. The thought process goes something like this: I think I will, or I wonder if I should, or I am going to…And even when and if we act impulsively, I tend to believe that the act of thinking plus the act of doing somehow, somewhere happens simultaneously. Unless of course you are 2 years old and you haven’t quite learned about consequences and outcomes. Or if your reasoning abilities have been compromised and you don’t have the mechanism that permits you to reason and rationalize. But let’s also make space for the group who first make the choice to imbibe mood/mind-altering substances and then commit acts of violence or destruction and are deemed not responsible in a legal setting. [Of course, the conscious mind “knows” what it is doing and must somehow make peace with its decision regardless of what we may “trick” ourselves into believing. That shit works itself out in Karmic payback anyway so we either reconcile our Truth now, or later.
BORN TO BAD?
There is also the argument that the circumstances under which one is born affects one’s ability to made good choices. Yet despite how someone is raised, individuals soon realize that they have the ability to make good choices despite the sometimes dire circumstances and influences of their upbringing. All things being equal, I sometimes find it too easy to play the cop-out card and say that because an individual was raised without privilege or in abject poverty or negativity that he or she can’t achieve a successful life without compromising his or her integrity or the lives of others. It may be harder, but one can “try” to live a good life within their set of circumstances. We have the ability to break generational “curses,” and live the life we personally were meant to live. Just because your momma was a ho, and your daddy was a drinker, doesn’t mean you have to be too. If your genetic make-up somehow hints at the suggestion that you are more susceptible to whoring and drinking, you can “fix” that. You do not have to be defined for life through the dysfunctional ways of your family. It is NOT written. And if it is, erase it.
And ya, for all you starfuckers out there: the biggest fallacy on the planet is the cracked-out case that because you choose to have a career in Holly’weird that you can’t lead a so-called “normal” life outside the “high” life. Do not believe that lie for one second. Getting ripped out of your face is not glamourous. Certainly not when you become addicted to it—it being both the so-called glamour, and the getting “ripped” part.
THE CHOICE OF MTV
Last night, after what seemed like an eternity, I turned on the TV. As usual, there wasn’t much on offer, but I hit up MTV for kicks and I caught some of Dr. Drew’s Sober House. The scene I happened upon was one where one of the male clients, a former rocker dude, had skipped out, was returned to the House, and had a meeting with Dr. Drew to determine whether or not he should stay in treatment. To watch it now with “fresh” eyes, I was surprised at how sick, depressed and utterly defeated this individual looked. His face was drawn, sweaty and sallow, he was bloated and stocky, and he seemed in great physical and emotional pain. His eyes and spirit were dull and he was generally unhappy. He and Dr. Drew talked about his being in a state of addiction for most of his career as a musician, and he admitted that he “needed this” [Sober House] to make him well. After that scene, I turned off the television. And I thought, wow, this is NOT entertainment. This is more media exploitation. What is the motivation for this type of programming, and how does this “help” these sick entertainers? I have discussed this issue in a previous post, but my point now is to illuminate an example of a program of people who made serious, life-altering and life threatening bad choices.
Curiously, the show is not a PSA against taking drugs, or having an addiction, it’s more like a strange and twisted platform for these Professional Narcissists to become further self-absorbed and addicted. I mean, the good part is that they are seeking help, but the twisted reality, or the twist in reality, is that it’s for our benefit, the voyeur-viewing audience’s dis/pleasure. They scan for example, the freak show that is Dennis Rodman, and the camera rests on his “TV Q” face. Boy is he a creepy mess. First of all he’s unintelligible, and you just know he has psychiatric problems as well, but this isn’t addressed, certainly not by Dr. Drew. Instead we are shown a “confrontation” between Rodman and the House Mother with the big boobs where she is trying to enforce “the rules” and he’s mocking her. I mean it’s sick. My “choice” was to watch, or to turn off the idiot box. Which I did.
ALL GROWN UP & NO ROOM TO GROW
Studies have shown that one of the biggest factors in determining how an individual turns out is their social/environment. This is nothing new. The saying “you can take the girl out of the country,” “but you can’t take the country out of the girl” goes along way. There is something intrinsic to our way of being about the way we are raised that shapes our individual worldview, no matter how much exposure we experience towards a “better life.” Indeed, the people with whom we socialize tend to “influence” our social behaviours. At the same time, one should always define their own boundaries and devise their own “escape clause.”
I remember when I was first introduced to drugs and alcohol in junior high school. Friends of mine dabbled, and I did not. I remember pills being passed around, and oil caps, and uppers and downers, etc. It never occurred to me that this was something I wanted to try, and so I didn’t. And nobody forced me to try. I don’t recall losing any friends, or being told that I couldn’t hang out with my friends. In fact, we were the popular kids. We excelled at sports, music, art and general academia. The fact that some of us dabbled and others did not was of no consequence. I don’t recall any eating disorders, or mental disorders, or any of the usual peer pressures that young adults face today. I’m certain they existed, but I wasn’t aware of any alarming situations. The point is, I had choices. I was raised knowing that if I commits acts A,B, and/or C there would be consequences. And so I conducted myself accordingly. [And no, I am not a saint].
BUT HERE’S THE THING
But here’s the thing: In our First World 21st Century Lives, we have a dearth of choice, an overwhelming amount of booty and an embarrassment of riches from which to choose. Some very/good, some very/bad, and lots in between. You might say that the resulting consequence of having all this choice, is our tendency towards developmental addictions, dis/orders, social ills and dis/eases that miraculously fit the clinical manifestations of those choices in the mind, body, spirit and soul. [Too reductive? Perhaps, but I sometimes wonder if we abstain from some of the trappings of our overwhelming privilege of being able to choose the “best” of the best, or simply the items that are within our grasp by virtue of us having a few extra dollars if we might also have to be content without having to “choose” to be addicts of one form or another. You feel me?
For example, television has taught us to watch the idiot box for “information” while selling us items to “improve” our domestic lot via commercial advertising every 7.5 minutes, for 30 seconds—not sure of the exact stats— around whatever sitcom, drama or entertainment program for which we have tuned in. And yet the thing is, just because it’s “available” doesn’t mean we have to “choose” it. Aha! But that’s where the psychology of the mind-suck comes into play.
An activity such as TV-watching may seem relaxing on the one hand, but depending on your level of sensitivity, that 30 or so minutes of “mindless” activity, replete with advertising, has already planted some seed, negative or otherwise into your being. It’s like ingesting recycled air, you might feel better because you feel cooler, but while you are ingesting that recycled air, you are always ingesting environmental chemicals and all manner of dust mite, dead skin cells, etc., that get swept up into the atmosphere that is supposedly improving your state of being. Right. But, “Everything in Moderation,” right? So you continue to watch a “moderate” amount of television over time, until you become “addicted.” A fairly innocuous program like the news turns into your addiction. And you have to watch CNN, Anderson Cooper, or Lloyd Roberts and/or Peter Mansbridge, because they give you the “straight” goods. You “trust” them, and you “believe” in their delivery. You might some day be able to “predict” the types of stories they cover, and what particular slant that appeals to your sensibilities rather than that other guy on Global who seems a bit too attractive, and oh snap, isn’t he the dude who was photographed with that other dude wearing makeup? Still, you might think you “prefer” so and so’s suits over the over guy’s hairstyle. It goes on. Because you have been exercising your right to make a choice.
WHAT THE CLINICIANS MIGHT TELL US
The tidy package at the end of the sermon is this: What motivates and moves us, better yet what controls us or pushes us ever so slightly into the things that we are lead to believe that we have little or no control over is the fact that we now know that some people, have “addictive” personalities. That there is a “quality” about the DNA of certain individuals which cons them into manifesting [a] certain addictive behaviours to things that are “pleasurable” by North American standards. [Universal standards? Perhaps not. By my estimation, no starving children in Africa are obese or have a twinkie fetish, cuz, well, you just can’t get that crap down there, let alone a “healthy” nutrition-fuelled meal. And the women who live in Sweden won’t ever likely suffer from Tanorexia because the preferred look is “Swedish” Blonde and snow white, unless of course they are seduced by American television and an LA lifestyle]. Consequently, whatever the addictive personality “chooses” as his addiction of choice is given the addict’s full attention to the exclusion of more healthy behaviours. The treatment for such addictions might be abstinence or different drugs that alter the mood to stunt the desire for the previous addiction.
Lastly, I am no psychologist, psychiatrist, or self-help guru, my *observations* are simply that. And heck I battle my own set of “demons” on a daily basis, but what I do know to some degree is this: wealth is defined to some degree as excess; spirituality is now a marketable quality; and youth and innocence are exploitable. Let me apply my favourite saying: “Everything is permissible and nothing is Sacred.” This too comes down to the choices one makes about what we value, and what we find valuable.
It’s your choice. Own it.
Tags: CNN, Dr. Drew, Global Television, Karma, LA Lifestyle, LLoyd Robertson, Media, MTV, Peter Mansbridge, Reality TV, Sober House, Tanorexia
Posted in Pop Cult-ish, Think This-ish | No Comments »
So if you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m the Passionate type.
The passion part carries equal weight with my being Emotionally Sensitive and Terrifically Intense. Ya. A Barrel of Laughs is what they call me. But, come on now, I can be fun, too. [Never said I was “cool.”] And I know how to have a good time. But I’m not for everyone—who is? Guess what peeps, when you get older, you also get to a place where you’re OK with this. [Well, some of us anyway].
I also endeavour to live the old-school vibe of “live & let live,”—a beautiful phrase I adopted from my Mother growing up. Another was: “Everybody has a right to earn a living,” but also, “No one owes you a living”. These little philosophical gems breathe their way back into my being when shit hits the fan, or in more delicate terms, when the time is now. Still, sometimes I get caught up. Because living in order to let other’s live, means that you sometimes have to tread the slippery slope of watching but not participating, listening but not commenting, allowing but distancing, accepting without judging, and so on. In other words, you gotto be a SAINT!
And yet, as much as I live in this world, I try not to be too judgmental, yet I reserve the right to express an opinion, popular or otherwise— about the things I feel strongly about, or the ideas and situations that offend my delicate southern sensibilities. Ok, that was a lie. I’m not from the antebellum south, but had I lived in the influentially racist Southern 1900s, rest assured I’d be swooning and fainting and blushing all over the place. Still, what I yam, is what I yam, and it simply boils down to how I’m hardwired. At the end of the day, my goal is not to hurt or harm anybody by my actions or words. That said, the pen is mighty. Mightier than the Sword? That’s debatable.
I had a friend who once told me that she liked talking to me because of my odd/different worldview. To me this was a great compliment because I have never deliberately tried to express an un/popular opinion, I just believe what I believe, and say what I am moved to say. Of course, I stand to be corrected, enlightened even, and I don’t for a minute believe that I have all the answers, or questions. I certainly do not. But I’m full-grown now. And I own my thoughts, and I own my beliefs. And these are the things that ultimately guide me.
Interestingly, for the longest time, when I was old enough to do so, I never *really* expressed my thoughts out loud because my opinions seem to slightly deviate from “the norm.” In other words, I did not much live according to pop-ideals, and I did not know how to “go along, to get along.”
For example, growing up I would get spankings, and my older sister, not so much. Being the eldest she was unaccustomed to misbehaving or acting the fool. It just wasn’t her bag. I, on the other hand, I was mischievous, and when I would mess around, I would be disciplined in the form of a spanking. And when I got disciplined, I would shout the house down, and of course, the spankings would continue. Until I stopped screaming, or simply acquiesced.
One time, my sister took me aside and said, “look, no need to prolong this charade, just clench your butt and try not to be so loud.” But I couldn’t. Perhaps I wouldn’t? The spanking hurt like hell, and my Mother was hurting my feelings by striking me, and I had to let everybody, including God and the neighbours know that I was being hurt. So naturally, these occurrences were a regular part of my growing up. Was I abused? Hell no. But I learned that I was a sensitive flower, and it wasn’t in my disposition to go against my feelings without somehow imploding. And thus a passion was born. And perhaps that’s where the seed of “live and let live was planted.”
Fast forward to many years later.
When your life is seemingly “ideal” and there is no known reason why you need to rage against the machine, because you are happy-pappy in your corner of the market, and what happens around you doesn’t “have” to affect you [unless you let it]. Any emotional bullshit that somebody may experience which is outside your realm of experience matters very little. And lucky for you, the bubble-dweller, well, you absolutely don’t have to engage, if it suits you.
For example, in the US there is this whole Race issue between The Black people and The White people. There always has been, because as some of you may know, and might acknowledge, if you’re feeling particularly generous, is that race is loaded. And there is no pleasant way to discuss race without somebody getting heated, or somebody getting offended, or somebody saying something insensitive, or somebody saying something offensive, and on it goes.
The point it, yes, “we” need to put all the stinking cards on the table, perhaps not all at once, to see what kind of hand each of us has been dealt. A the same time, we need to respect those cards because cards don’t lie, unless somebody has messed with the deck. You feel me? And that’s Race in a nutshell. Some days the cards seemed to be stacked up all wrong, and on other days, well the cards seem to go in favour of the individual who’s most confident with the cards he’s be dealt.
Which brings me to yesterday’s audio assault to the masses by way of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, she of the dime-store dispensing psycho-babble rhetoric, and quickie-fix remedies. Yesterday, “Dr. Laura,” as she likes to be called, was the bearer of the latest media trash to prick up my ears. Her verbal assault against “12% of the population” her definition of black folks, involved her use of the word, “Nigger.” Yup. She so went there.
When I listened to the live audio of the exchange, courtesy of Media Matters For America, between Dr. Laura and a caller, I was incredulous, not because she did not address the issue of the caller, a black woman married to a white man who expressed resentment at her husband’s unwillingness to refrain from using what she considered insulting language against black people in her presence and also his resistance to informing friends in their company not to use similar offensive racial language.
Dr. Laura, in her feeble attempt to get the caller’s side of the story, asked the woman to cite examples, inferring that the black caller may be “hypersensitive.”
Laura then lashed out, telling the caller that she “had a chip on her shoulder,” and then proceeded to state that she [as a white person] was confused because “when you turn on HBO, all one hears is Nigger, Nigger, Nigger.” Let me add that the woman never got around to citing her own examples of racial intolerance she bore witness to in her home, because Dr. Quack launched into her own racist tirade mostly defeating the purpose of the call in the first place. And what the listeners got instead was Dr. Laura’s personal point of view on the Race issue in America. It was shocking to say the least!
Dr. Laura then took a break and came back and asked the caller what she was thinking about during the break to which the caller responded that she was taken aback by Dr. Laura using the N word so liberally. And then it was on. Laura said she did not “say” it, she said that “when you turn on the TV you hear, Nigger, Nigger, Nigger, Nigger.” Dr. Laura then proceeded to talk about Obama, suggested that the woman shouldn’t “NAACP-her”—whatever that meant!? Unfortunately, the caller wasn’t able to get a word in edge wise. But the best of Dr. Laura’s comments reserved for last was this: “if you are so hypersensitive, you shouldn’t marry outside of your race!” And then she said that she didn’t want to talk further and that was the end of the segment.
KABOOM!
After I heard that I got on my Twitter account. And proceeded to “discuss.”
I then proceeded to go “off” on Fashion, because no matter what happens in the world, unless we are talking about issues of weight and/or eating dis/orders. Then fashion doesn’t care. At the time, I was receiving Twitter updates about the usual vacuous fashion concerns, and it irritated and annoyed the hello outta me. I Tweeted that it was seemingly very cool for the JetBlue guy to goes berserk and get called a “folk hero,” and his lame-ass story is picked up by the media in seconds, but the quacky bitch Dr. Laura says Nigger, and it’s barely mentioned. But apparently it was mentioned. Just not on my feed. And then it lead me to question who I followed.
Do I make people uncomfortable? Does race make people uncomfortable? If you are not affected by race because you happen to be part of a so-called dominant group, should you not at the very least, weigh in? What concerns you? What drives you? What do you care about other than what makes you look good? Is it the company you keep, the idiot box you idolize or who’s life you want because yours is not sexy or glamourous enough? Oh! The Vanity Insanity!
FASHION BLOG/GERS
A few days ago, I Tweeted that maybe I should start photograph/posting the shit out of myself in various places outdoors wearing little girl fashion clothing, with rilly high shoes, and a professional pout. I mean, this seems to be “the look” that fashion bloggers are going for these days. Has it always been so?
Fuck, it’s annoying as hell. The larger question is why are 20something and 30something women [& older?! probably not] posing and pouting like over/sexualized children? Is the goal here to attract, subvert, antagonize, seduce, and manipulate the male gaze? Or are you doing this creepy shit for women?
Or is there some “underground” stuff happening that I am blissfully unaware of? I’m confused. Are you showing me your anorexic/voluptuous naughty bits for self/discovery and “girlpowerment/empowerment,” or is fashion code word for under-age trysting. I’m not sure. But I rilly wish somebody would make it STOP. [One of these kooky "girls" who happens to be 30something is selling a kind of self-help girlpowerment kinda booky-book, replete with the "love yourself first" vibe, but when you go to her site she's wearing the aforementioned teenage clothing with requisite pout, and sports mouse-ears. I'm not lying.
ON A DIFFERENT NOTE
Here’s a video a friend sent me, and I love it to bits. It was her gentle way of getting me off my Eat Pray Love rant; that other horribly popular mind-suck that is eating up far too much marketing real estate and causing me to consume far too many bags of potato chips this week. When I sent the vid to my huzzband, he told me not to send him my “periodicals videos.” Of course, I know what he means, and you do too. He’s funny as hell and it made me laugh. Like out loud. At my computer. [I do that often].
Phew, looks like I got my sense of humour back, thanks Choo. Kissz.
Tags: Black People, CNN, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Eat Pray Love, Fashion Bloggers, girl power. Media Matters for America, Racism, White People
Posted in Mom-ish, Pop Cult-ish, The Stink-ish, Think This-ish, ithinkyoushould | No Comments »
11:00pm’ish.
It’s late. I don’t usually write posts this late because I’m usually surfing or checking Twitter updates, talking to my huzzband, watching him design something, or cleaning something in my house. Traditionally, at this hour, I might be checking in on our beautiful sleeping girls, or rummaging through the fridge or cupboards looking for something to eat. You know, something.
But tonight, we are in our office space working on finances, and I’m on Twitter. Something catches my eye. It’s about the Fantasia Barrino overdose/attempt. And this twitterer/blogger I catch is phenomenal in her assessment of what is happening on the Internet. She’s on point, brutal and eloquent, breaking it all down telling us why we shouldn’t cast stones or be smug, etc.
She tweets furiously—almost every ½ minute, if not less—and intelligently and constantly. It reads like Jazz. Hell, it is Jazz. You can read the rhythm in her words. I decide to follow her, and when I get to her page, I go back pages and pages reading her stuff. All of it good. Engaging. Entertaining. After a time, I head on over to her blog. It reads like stream of consciousness, she’s a poet for sure. She rambles, gets up, dips in and dips out, mostly she takes you on the journey of her mind which for the most part, is kinda fractured. Aren’t we all? Just a bit?
She talks about having Biopolar II Disorder, and depression and being hypomanic. [Lawd, but is she intense, ya’ll]. I read the post where she explains being hypomanic, and why she hasn’t ever found “love” due to her dis/ease. Yes, love, y’all. I scan a few more posts she’s written. Not very many paragraph breaks. No pictures, much less white space, just clumps of text upon text upon text. And lively words that are humerous, and bleak, and breathless.
She. Is. HILARIOUS. And slightly crazy. A tad off. [By whose standards, you ask?]. She talks about her meds, about her children, other people’s children, television–that great insidious crazy-maker, and planter of subliminal dysfunction [my words, and I'm sticking to 'em!], plus mountains of things that one might wonder if it’s healthy to share. But she’s a Writer. A Confessional Writer. And a little fractured. But a Writer.
Between reading some of her posts, I check in on Twitter. And similar to this dude I recently unfollowed, [like 10 minutes ago], she is updating her Twitter with comments about a fricken TV show she is watching. Oh crap. I dislike that with the utmost intensity. Really? You’re gonna waste my time by updating TV tweets? As if TV isn’t a mindsuck all its own. Now you gonna mess up my Twitter feed with that nonsense? So she tweets something “funny” and then seconds later she is cursing, and going OFF on the person who RT’d her tweet but changed it up slightly. [Caps and expletives and all...] So I thought: Oh snap, girl did warn us all that she was bipolar. [And brilliant]. But bipolar. And I thought, no. I do not want to follow you into the deep dark recesses of your happy-angry-sad-manic-fragile-beautiiful mind. Not at this late hour. Perhaps not ever. But thank you all the same for sharing. Good night.
Her blog entry reminded me of the New York Times writer, Daphne Merkin who recently wrote about being in therapy for a substantial part of her life. Except sister girl whom I unfollowed writes with what I consider to be a tortured beautiful soul, and Daphne, while brilliant, writes and whines in that New York-Woody Allen, look at me, but not too closely unless I invite you in kind of way of the privileged, to the point of [our collective] embarrassment. Still, how lucky for her [and us] that Ms. Merkin is well-educated and chronically, and pathologically self-referential.
This essay is not the first time Daphne has written about her illness. Mostly because she is her favourite subject. She is painfully self-aware, almost like she has split herself in two to talk about what it’s like to be her on pharmaceuticals, and what it’s like to be her in the therapist’s office, and what it is like to live your life wanting to die, and what it’s like to have a predilection for spanking. [I read this last item on Wikipedia. Overshare?] It’s terribly morose and melodramatic, and I say that with respect not having been through anything like that in my life. After the second of eight pages, I wanted to stop, but found myself wanting to keep going. And when it ended, I felt exhausted. And drained. So I read some comments. People were brutal, and slightly unforgiving. And honest. Most were sympathetic, but agreed that the woman needed to concentrate on something other than herself, if only for a moment or two. Ya. I kinda agree.
Having read that, and said all that, I now realize that I live close to someone with an undiagnosed mental illness. And just so you know, people who are mentally ill will make you, the person who is not mentally ill, crazy. Not by design, but because they cannot “help” themselves. So you, the [relatively] sane person, must guard yourself against the insanity. Not an easy feat. But if you believe that people are trying to make you crazy, then believe that they are. And the more time you spend with “crazy” the more the crazy seeps into your head. And you should not allow that. You are allowed to protect and distance yourself from crazy, so do it. Because someone else’s [definition of] crazy doesn’t have to be your [definition of] crazy. Feel me on that point, and take it to the bank!
As writers, we have been given the gift to express our minds, and we are “allowed” to say what is on our minds. We are allowed to express ourselves in the way that fashion people will demonstrate their flare with fabric; hair stylists will primp their hair or others; accountants and brokers will buy stocks and manage money; chefs will make a beautiful meal; gardeners will build a mosaic of flowers; musicians will string notes together to make music; politicians will make promises, and so on. The interesting “danger” with words is that when you know how to use them, they can reveal a certain “truth.” As well, they can be the poison pen that gets used against you [or somebody else].
Interestingly, people are all about censoring words [and any other creative craft which hits close to one's emotional core], particularly when we writers say something that may make you uncomfortable. For example, Christopher Hitchens, the scholar atheist of our times is dying, and everybody wants to know if he might now make his way to finding God & religion. Hitchens is adamant that he will not, and that if we hear of a conversion down the pike, it is a lie. To paraphrase his most revealing thought: he carefully implies that the cancer may infect his brain and cause him to do or say things later that he might not be aware of or endorse. But also that people are now currently praying for him, and he has not suggested that people stop this activity. Because it is after all, for their comfort, and not his.
Interestingly, what Mr. Hitchens “knows” as much as you or I, is that whatever one manifests in the mind can certainly take up residence in the body. So like most people in time of fear, and uncertainty, one must eventually find a place, or an entity, to placate the soul. Let’s just say that I, for one, will be none too surprised if Mr. Hitchens finds solace in some calming spirit other than the imaginary spirit of his cranky belief system.
Tags: Bipolar Disorder II, Christopher Hitchens, Confessional Writing, Daphne Merkin, Depression, Dying, Fantasia Barrino
Posted in Random-ish, Wellness-ish, ithinkyoushould | No Comments »
Like you, sometimes I bite the hand that feeds me. It’s not something I do intentionally or wilfully, but I do live in this world, and it is a hard fact of life that one is not always righteous or good or above reproach. Being human dictates that we all at one time or another will mess up. And luckily for us, we’re all sinners and nobody loves a sinner more than Jesus.
What I mean is that if you “believe” then you know that “confessing” your sins—coming clean as it were—is a step in the righteous direction. Any addict can tell you that without having gone through the 12 steps. You fall off the wagon, you get back on the wagon, you fall off the wagon, you get back on the wagon, and on goes the cycle of our addicted lives. [Recognizing of course, that you will forever an always be a “recovering” so and so, and that the potential to “fail” is always there lurking in the deep recesses of your conscious-sub/unconscious].
Presently I am a ranting lunatic [and armchair critic] for anything that pops up on my Twitter feed. There are people out there who warn Tweeters about people like me. Here is a quick portrait: @MTVCANADA tweets about hiring interns. And I “hollah back” that they should stop exploiting youth. The Daily Beast by way of The New York Post tweets about the Jet Blue flight attendant dude [who was subsequently caught whilst having sex!] and how he is a “folk hero,” and I tweet back that my understanding of a “hero” does not involve some guy throwing a temper tantrum in public. And when Bill Maher, one of my favourite big-nosed white guys called someone, “an arrogant stupid bitch,” I tweeted back, “them’s FIGHTING words!” I then immediately looked up Wanda Sykes’ twitter account who happens to be a “friend” of Bill, to tweet that he was rude! and I didn’t hear anything from her either [as I expected]. Curiously, “no one” else considered the remark offensive. Um, Feminists, you all didn’t catch that did you?
And I also thought I was being “funny” and “on point” when I saw that over 100 people retweeted @KanyeWest’s tweet asking if it was Monday, when I countered with, “Wow, maybe I should just fart, and then press record.”
Crickets people. You could actually hear the crickets!
It was likely after that moment that I realized that I may have a slight problem. That I may in fact be a hypocrite—similar to the way in which Alanis Morrisette used the word, “ironic.” For starters I now realize that perhaps I need to re-acquaint myself with Diplomacy. For example, when a popular blogger called a girl who won a MTV contest a “icon,” I retorted that we use the term a bit too liberally. Not to her directly of course because people do not usually “attack” people on Twitter. It presume it is because it is considered bad etiquette or in poor taste to do so. Not sure. I’m a Twitter Virgin. With over 1400 tweets. Ya.
So when another popular fashion blogger wrote a post about hair and asked her readership who they follow because they have cool hair, I had to stop, breathe, and reread the post before I tweeted “dear fashion: somedays i think you must ask yourself if people really do give a shit and why.” There’s also this widely popular dude who just Tweets. Like today he tweeted every minute about freakin Entourage. I told him “for the love of God, pls put this shit down in a blog!” Strangely, he didn’t tweet back.
I also keep reading on the Black blogs how black people in America are constantly and overtly discriminated. How Oprah should return to her “roots,” how Fantasia will not get a “pass” like Angelina Jolie for her transgressions, and so on. Don’t get me wrong. Racialism is REAL, but it really is exhausting reading mediocre writing about Race and why everything is so exhaustingly racial. Last time, I read something about how this one contributor believed that A Different World deserved to be made into a movie because it was “time” people. There was even a petition you could sign. I think I tweeted back, “ya, cool, I’m down with that, except that Jada Pinkette-Smith annoys the hell outta me!”
Still there is some very good stuff happening that doesn’t raise my blood pressure, and makes me feel happy, not terribly hypocritical and truly blessed to be a part of this interesting online community. There’s the writer/poet Honoree Jeffers who writes the ass off the page, and who you know is just as fire-y and passionate in person. And my new favourite, BangsandaBun, who just explodes with sassiness and sarcasm. I look forward to her tweet updates the same way I love the laughter of my girls and seeing my husband after a long day.
All of which leads me to consider how much of a hypocrite I am. I tweet fast and furious about how evil the media is, and yet I use it. I rage about fashion practice, but I love new anything that is stylish and impressive, and I follow a good many fashion blogs run by original and creative types. I also make snide remarks about Women’s Health magazine but I continue to receive their Ab updates in my in box and so on. The other day, I cracked on Eat Pray Love because they are selling the crap out of this “spiritual” odyssey, and then I catch feelings because only a few people get my point. Kinda reminds me of the time I went on my MTV rant, and a commenter told me to simply tune out. Would that it were that simple…
So you see my problem. It’s not that I dislike the world, I live in it for God’s Sake. When MTV tweeted about wanting interns, I almost signed up. Not because I want to be a part of the “problem,” because I fancy myself part of a new “solution!” I think they need an in-house critic so that they don’t take themselves too seriously. Oh, I should also mention the Christopher Hitchens thing. I used to read him at Vanity Fair back in the day. I “enjoyed” his contrarian point of view until I saw him on Strombo talking Atheism. I was bored. But now he has cancer. And he looks a fright. From wellness to sickness in as long as it took him to puff one too many ciggy butts and promote God is Not Great.
The End.
Tags: BangsandaBun, Eat Pray Love, Honoree Jeffers
Posted in The Stink-ish, ithinkyoushould | No Comments »
A recent visit to one of my favourite blogs, BangsandaBun inspired the following post about babies/children and breeders. Lady Bangs tells it like it is, and if you can’t handle her truth, you’re best not to read it. She often does etiquette-inspired posts about gentlemanly and ladylike behaviours—she lives in Britain after all—and she has this whole thing *against* Madonna thing, mostly where it concerns Madge’s lack of age-appropriate behaviour. It’s positively funny and totally original. She also writes The Bitch Please Advice Column in which she doles out sensible advice. The kind of advice that strokes your delicate sensibilities one moment, and then gives you a wallop in the gut to remember why you asked for her “take-no-prisoners-advice” in the first place. She speaks frequently about wanting to “bitch-slap” folks for their stupidity. Point taken, Lady Bangs, consider us all slightly deserving of a bitch slap here and there…
Which brings me to Ms. Bangs “anti-kid” post, “An Open Letter To Parents.” Here’s a taste: I’m sorry to burst your bubble, it’s just a fact. I mean, I know that your child’s every breath leaves you in awe and wonderment, but to the rest of us, it’s just some pretty regular shit. She admonishes the parent who puts their kid’s picture on Twitter, FB, and, perish the idea, as an update status. On Twitter, I responded that gulp, I thought it was kinda harsh, but kinda funny and that I could also “appreciate” her line of reasoning. [She responded that I didn’t quite “fit” into the offensive category of parenting, and we had a good laugh—well, as much of a laugh as much as 140 characters can allow.
And then I got to thinking. Can’t we all just get along? “Us Breeders,” and “Them Non-Breeders,” the people who don’t want or don’t “like” children, and those of us that do? So here’s my rebuttal to some of what she said and to the non-breeders in general. Respectfully and with tongue planted firmly in cheek, of course.
************************************************
When I read how the child-haters talk about how “annoying” and “irritating” it is to hear us breeders talk about their offspring I laugh and then I gently remind myself that they are talking about me. As in wait, oh ha-ha, the “joke” is on me?
When my huzzband and I had children, we were always *careful* not to make our children the centre of topic outside our home in discussions with friends and acquaintances who did not have, or like, children. We too were cautioned to not be “one of those parents” who talked incessantly about every poop, and grimace and gurgle because such parents were insufferable beings who deserved to have their lives turned upside down because they dared to procreate.
We heard about the breeders who would send too many pictures of Billy and Anna [not our children’s names] in precisely 62 different outfits for every season marking milestones at the beginning, middle, and end of the month and certainly nobody ever really wanted to see the first tooth, first winter, first whatever, because My God the single people might become offended, or worse yet, bored with other people’s happiness. Imagine!
Now, permit me to switch it up, would you?
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Dear Singleton Or Couple without Child Who Prefers It That Way:
Please note that it in no way makes a difference in MY life to see the ½ dressed, ½ naked pictorial of your semi-naked rump in designer skinny jeans with boyfriend/husband #1, #2, and #3 in the last 1 ½ years. I much less care about the name of your personal trainer, your preferred cocktail of the month, your preferred resto-lounge, what ski-resort you went to, or which beach you had dirty sex on, and who you partied with.
I’m less interested in what pair of designer shoes you are now wearing, how much they cost, where you found the best discount on said shoes, and which celebrity most “thinspired” you to get that botox, lip fat injection and face cream of the moment. I also don’t care that your pet iguana developed an intestinal problem or that your fricken cat swallowed a twig when you weren’t looking.
I know, I know, it’s painful and terribly unrewarding that you had to babysit your brother’s friend’s 3rd cousin on the night that Glee, Madmen and Snookie by the Seashore was on. And that the latest OPi nail polish still looks great after you accidently smudged your manicure from the Korean salon around the corner whilst dragging the tail-end of the busted weave belonging to the skank you were forced to deal with when she rubbed against your lastest “bootie call,” “friend with benefit,” or whatever casual-sex term you have coined to let us marrieds know that you are getting stuffed on the regular and oh, look at the “jealous mommy” now!
Oh, and talk about hard luck. Poor thing, you must have been devastated when your friend’s cute-from-a-distance, gooey 2 year old grabbed a bead from your Balenciaga It-Bag, which greatly compromised your Saturday night and made you miss the Kanye concert. Boohoo. Oh, and damn the crying baby at Starfuckers @ 6:00am who after smelling milk in someone’s triple, double, wooby, fooby decided that a coffee shop is the last place his nanny should have taken him because his Mommy had to make a mad dash to her ad executive job where the upstarts want nothing more than to steal her job.
Lastly, dearest Singleton, I do apologize, to the point of sacrificing my next born, that my SUV stroller—manually operated, without so much as an environmentally evil footproint anywhere makes you unhappy and –just WHERE are the bicycle cops when you need ‘em?–you might have to move your attitude out the damn way so I can manoeuvre my irritating little shits while you’re busy teetering on 5” heels and the latest shorty T-shirt masquerading as a dress between bar-hopping jaunts for designer-cocktails ’round the way.
Ya, your life sucks girlfriend. Blame it on Us Breeders.
Sincerely,
xobolaji
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So there. See how it feels? In the grand scheme of things, my showing you a picture of my kid versus you showing me a picture of your tits doesn’t make you or me a bad person. It just means that we place different “value” on things, that we have difference “priorities”–one of mine is my children–yours is not up for discussion– and that’s totally OK.
Oh, and the reason why some of us become the Helicopter Parents vs the Free Range type? To ensure that our children don’t become these pesky nuisances in front of the child-haters. Free Range is just another word for letting someone else’s kid become MY problem in the future. So sayeth the non-breeder.
Tags: BangsandaBun, Breeders, Free Range Parents, Helicopter Parenting, Motherhood, Non-Breeders
Posted in The Stink-ish, Think This-ish | No Comments »
During my blogging dry spell I thought a lot about things that I wanted to write about. In my life it usually happens that the topics which I find fascinating are the things that intrigue me [duh] and trigger me at an emotional level. It’s usually never at first an intellectual response, because being a sensory person, like most people, it’s the visceral that appeals to me most. This is why advertising works, this is why the beauty/cosmetic industry thrives and this is why dudes dig bib boobs and shiny cars and lest we forget, the 11 year old “boy humour” of this guy.
I then find ways to “rationalize” my responses to the things that affect me most. Like, for example, certain television shows. Raging against the television machine is a favourite pastime. Not because I can’t “handle” the contents, I mostly can’t—I find TV vapid and insidious—but I find myself at opposite ends of the “value” it claims to present. Don’t get me wrong, I watch. I might laugh, I usually snicker, I sometimes become engrossed, and then I get “that feeling” similar to want one gets when they’ve eaten too much pie: a nauseating rumbling in my tummy, and well you know what happens next.
Critiquing television is my way of “dealing” with the material that has assaulted my eyes and my intelligence; similar to the bulimic who enjoys the food in her mouth to a certain point and then must regurgitate what she perceives to be toxic materials from her body. No disrespect to the sufferers of eating disorders. My issue with television at times sometimes feels like a clinical affliction.
That said, I “know” that television portrays sometimes and fantastical far-off scenarios that may or may never happen to me or anybody I know—the “bizarre” antics of the cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore notwithstanding— but I can and am encouraged to “suspend” belief in as much as I can “enjoy” the moment, and have a good time. TV is supposed to provide a kind of escapism and an attractive other-worldly—and out of body for that matter—experience that is not “supposed” infect or affect my life in any drastic way. Except that it does, and it has. I don’t know about you, but I’m just not very good at the whole desensitizing thing. I for one need to cover my eyes when a guy gets shot, or a girl gets raped, or a child goes missing or when Snookie and her playmates gets Snookied. Once upon a time, this was considered a “normal” response to unpleasant and visually shocking and/or provocative material. Once upon a time we knew that these scenarios happened in “extreme” situations, but to turn on TV is to be confronted with a full-frontal assault of questionable behaviours. We knew that “some” people behaved and existed outside the law, but now they are casual acquaintances and exist less than 6 degrees apart from our best friend’s 3rd cousin.
The media messages on TV are non-too subtle for it not to have an effect on me. If if didn’t, all those crazy tv kids wouldn’t be slinging so-called tasteful/tasteless fashion product to flaunt your inner sophisticate/trashy-girl as if they had the skill and credentials to do so. It just depends how deeply invested I am in the programming of said programming, and how committed I am to undergoing the detox program of the furiously fast, f*cked-up, and fickle material that gets placed before me. Somewhere right now, there is a pixie-looking white girl of some unknown ethnic origin, crisping her melanin-challenged dermis in a mini strip mall Fake ‘n Bake emporium while sporting a busted blue/black weave down to her nether regions. After all if Snookie can do it…
The other day on my Twitter feed, the New Yor Times by way of Katie Roiphe provided me with what I suppose she considered an enlightened piece of journalism on the television show Mad Men and why we love it so. After a big mouth yawn, I decided to read the article. But first let me share this with you. I am not a “fan” of Mad Men. I don’t hate it. I’m just indifferent. When it first came on, I wanted to watch it, but living the drama of my young/growing family was all the drama I could muster at the time. I thought long and hard—ok, I lie, I didn’t give it much consideration beyond a click, click—about whether I wanted to invest in the script-created story of a dysfunctional family and office politics, when I at times, like so many others, don’t lie, am living one of my own, thank you very much.
I had seen and read about the “glamour,” [a subjectively loaded word reserved for those who exist in the realm of the pretty/superficial. What is glamour if not a display of material and/or luxury goods?!] of the Mad Men executive times, and the actors who portrayed these people, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I personally didn’t find it compelling enough to watch. Call me Snookie, but I found The Hills, The City, and The Aftershow far more watchable than this rendition of slick 60s cool. Hard-up much?!
Oh and the fixation on what’s-her-face’s dress size, porcelain china white skin, and the unconventional looking dude, aka, her nerd of a husband who gets to bang said beauty was more than I could bare. At one point I considered sending the producers and the sycophantic media whores a picture of me in full snark regalia with a caption under the Polaroid that read: This is the Face of Me Not Giving A Shit. But I thought whoa, xobolaji, let’s not make this about you, shall we?
But then Katie decided to make it all about me. Under the title of Cultural studies, “The Allure of Messy Lives,” she said that “we” flock to Mad Men because it’s sexy and taboo, and glamorous. Here’s me, “Katie, sweetums, what’s glamorous about cheating, drinking and smoking ciggybutts from 1:00pm to 3:00pm in the afternoon? Dude, if you’ve ever worked in a creative agency, this is considered de rigueur sport material, and one doesn’t have to live in the sexy 60s to appreciate that.” I considered posting a comment to the article wondering what era Katie was born in and was she just being a little naive, but it turns out she was born in 1968, a GenEx’er no less, so she can’t have possibly missed hanging out in the sexy Olivia John 80s and the OJ Simpson 90s where Duran Duran ruled and Biggie Smalls was infiltrating the mainstream college masses. Dude, now that’s glamour!
So yah. Yuk, Yuk. I just love it when somebody writes about television telling me how *important* it is to pop culture, and why I may or may not be addicted to it, and why they think I should give a Shit. All Katie has done is sustained the Mad Men metaphor, creating room for Mad Men derivatives until the glam has faded and we are on to the next! Although after the high brow of Mad Men and low brown of Snookie at the Shore, anything else seems a tad anti-climatic.
In fact after reading the article, I took to Twitter and posted, “I’ve read better blog entries than this.” No wait, that was in reference to this article by Peggy Orenstein called, “I Tweet, Therefore I am.” Really Peggy? Do you honestly think that your Twitter Addiction Assessment is more interesting than mine, or any of the millions of us Twit-Addicts. Girl, please.
Tags: Jersey Shore, Katie Roiphe, made by mariko, Peggy Orenstein, Snookie, Television, The City, The Hills, The New York Times, The NYTimes.com
Posted in Pop Cult-ish, Think This-ish | No Comments »
The Other Day on Twitter I was faced with my very first conundrum: To Tweet or Not To Tweet, and To Follow or Not To Follow. It hasn’t happened to me before, and well, like a lot of things, there’s a first time for everything.
Here’s the Tweet which I posted, and instantly deleted, but not before copying it into an email and saving it in the Drafts Folder of my Outlook:
dear @HollyOrd I am not an atheist, & nothing in this life will ever make me one. is it ok 4 me 2 follow U on Twitter. I am SO conflicted.
You see, Holly Ord is an Atheist. And I am not. Her belief system is part of her identity which she wears loudly and proclaims confidently on her website Menstrual Poetry. She’s 23 and she’s already had an interesting life. Among many things, she is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. When I read that line, I cried. [Am feeling a little sniffly right now, if you must know]. Whenever I hear or read about crimes against children, I simply lose my shit. I am ANGRY, I am DISGUSTED, and I feel an instant need to gather my children in my arms and protect them from the sickness of the world. I know that I cannot do that—simply shield them from the “reality” of our world, but I can do my very best to protect them from the former children now adults who were not protected the way they should have been when they were young.
It occurs to me that much of Ms Ord’s belief systems such as Atheism, and her liberal sexual views [she likes pornography] originated from that place where she was not protected. This is my guess. I am no expert. I do not claim to *know* or even relate to her life, but my spidey senses tell me that if this great spiritual entity was “supposed” to “be there” for people like her then why and how did this sickness occur? And yes, I am not so naive as to claim that I am unaware that this concept is one of the fundamental issues of the great God debate, but I’m soooo not going there. Then again equating Atheism, sexual expression and pornography to abuse might be reductive reasoning. And some sex trade workers will make the claim that systemic child abuse has nothing to do with their addictions or *chosen* profession. Don’t get it twisted.
It seems all too simplistic for me to say that because there is a teeming pile of giant crap in the world that it is “God’s Fault.” [Does it then mean that people who do not “follow” God should be punished?] Something also tells me that Holly Ord wouldn’t want me to “feel sorry” for or to even debate her passion for Atheism. Or to sum up the complex being she is by relating everything to her childhood. Something tells me that she found the power within to overcome and to get in touch with herself outside the realm of the things that were done to her. To me this sounds a lot like Liberation and Emancipation—perhaps Feminism—and I can get down with that.
The Other Day on Twitter I “met” another 23 year old who too has lived an interesting life. Her name is Shelby Knox. A name which sounds rather 60s-inspired, writerly, memorable and oh so “brand”-like. Among other commitments to The Cause, Shelby writes a blog called The Ms. Education of Shelby Knox. She’s also famous for her high school activism in a film that addresses the profound issues of human rights for ALL. Of course with that kind of platform and exposure at such a young age, the world has come to expect great things. Or at the very least, messages of hope and enlightenment. No pressure darling. We’re all here to help you keep pace!
Holly and Shelby are well-known capital F Feminists. I was fortunate to find Holly through Shelby. And I was reminded & reacquainted with the brilliance of Shelby–I have been wanting to follow her for ages– through my new friend Lydia [@lydiafernandes] whom I met at a Women’s Wisdom Workshop hosted by Marla Goldstone & Rona Maynard [@RonaMaynard] . [Lydia tweeted a link for Shelby’s post, about her "Day as an Anti-Feminist (Role) Model," and I kinda freaked [comment # 109] cuz Shelby used the term a “real looking woman.”
The term “Real Woman” is my PENULTIMATE cringe-inducing term that I have had the supreme displeasure to debate. It’s so divisive. In my opinion we might as well replace the phrase “Real Women” with I Ain’t no Fake Ass Pretty Bitch or better yet, Why You All Should Hate Other Women Who Are Different Than You By Virtue of Genetic Make up or Media Manipulation.
Do you feel me on this point? It’s virtually the same. But please, please please don’t get me started, again. I crossed that bridge once before in a letter to Oprah, no less. So onwards!
So ya, Shelby and Holly are known for their political views and inspirational messages of hope for humankind. [Did you just hear the doves cry?]
The Other Day on Twitter I happened on an interesting discussion thread which was brought to my attention by the brilliant Leslie Kinzel aka, @52Stations. She writes a blog called Fatshionista. Leslie tweeted about the store Lane Bryant, @lanebryant who openly dissed Natalie Perkins, a woman in Kinzel’s Twitter Community who is an advocate for Fat Acceptance and who makes and sells a line of fashionable clothing for women. The T-shirt in question said, “Does my Fat Arse look Fat in this.” From Lane Bryant’s perspective they thought it was a bit gauche. But they didn’t know who they were messin’ with because some Fat Girls could give a rat’s ass what some over-priced corporation thinks about their philosophies concerning the language of the “Fat Positive.” And so it was on. I got all jazzed about the discussion, I posted the link about T-shirt. And then I remarked that I wanted one.
Gulp. This was the Tweet that also gave me pause. By some definition—Holly’weird exempted— I am not Fat. Per se. Ya sure, I have the everyday struggles that women with a mild case of BDD do. And I do not, in any shape or form, resemble my BFF with the rock hard abs—2 children and a MIL “did” that to me. [Ha. Ha.] Also the phrase “does this make me look fat is not only familiar to me, it’s a *normal* part of my daily routine. That said, I do not by any means have the political and social issues related to those of the amply-proportioned. And I have not ever been discriminated against because somebody did not wish to see me in a pair of “skinny jeans.”
So my wanting a T-shirt created by a woman who’s philosophy I respect and share, made me feel like a bit of an opportunist. A bit too “comfortable” and perhaps a bit too familiar with a struggle that I really know nothing about. I suppose it’s a similar thing to non-black folks using the word Nigger. You all just c’aint! Here’s Leslie’s post about Lane Bryant. Ooooh, they’re gonna be in trouble.
And now back to the Menstrual Poetry of Holly Ord. So not only did I hesitate to follow her because she’s an Atheist, but I acted all junior high when I tweeted that the word menstrual made me uncomfortable and did it mean that I hated myself. Elsewhere, I posted the link with this opening line: “The title gives me cramps. And makes me feel a bit queasy. Hopefully in 5 days I’ll feel better.” Ha. Ha.
But now, we cool, you know? Because Menstrual Poetry content is CRAZY. It’s the kind of emotional writing that makes you feel just about everything after you’ve read it. It’s definitely not “mainstream” and she certainly is *out there*. For this reason I worry about her psychological safety [and mine too]. I think all writers need to save some of the ideas they have for themselves [myself included]. I don’t mean self-censorship, because that IS unhealthy and unproductive. I mean that we might hold back on a part of our personality [or personalities] so that some of it is reserved solely for us, a kind of safe place where nobody can touch, engage with, consume or comment on. Because when you open yourself up that much, you lay yourself open to attack. Still, perhaps it’s good to keep the lines of communication flowing as it were. Menstrual, indeed.
Tags: Fatshionista, Holly Ord, Leslie Kinzel, Menstrual Poetry, Oprah, Real Women, Shelby Know, The Ms. Education of Shelby Know
Posted in ithinkyoushould | No Comments »
It’s been a long time coming….
You know the song.
So I’ve been thinking. A lot. About you, about me, and everyone else in the world as defined by North American pop-cultural-tics. Really about the American way of Life and how we fit in, or don’t fit in as the case may be. Yes, increasingly, I’m interesting in this particularly insular and narrow point of view because this world is [in] my immediate future. I am but a mere blip on the screen, but feeling like I “belong” while feeling like the ultimate insider/outsider allows me a bit of flexibility to consider my options.
It is likely that my questions are your questions, or that your answers are my answers because whatever ideas [& metaphors] that get “planted” and sustained through the various media formats are inescapable. So we become what we read, we ingest what we are spoon-fed, and we live what we learn insofar as we remain susceptible to the messages in the guise of teaching.
Beyond that, here’s the thing:
Let’s just say for argument’s sake, that I’ve been lazy. Lazy as defined by a busy mom of 2 young girls who blossom daily, busy as a wife making white rice for my Chinese husband, busy as a homemaker cooking clean etc., and busy as a woman who at times likes to classify herself as a sensitive person and a writer. The sensitive writer in me has taken a break since our 5 year old left school on June 18. No, this wasn’t a strategic break by any means, in fact almost daily from that day I’ve thought about, and been pained by my desire to write. And I’ve written many posts in my head. In fact, the other day I told my husband that I believe that I was so *exhausted* by all the emotional energy I spent on MTV that I had nothing left. Or what I had left, I felt like I needed to channel into something more immediate and tangible, like my own life. I’ve no use for unproductive ranting, it serves nothing and no one.
And yet as I continued to think about writing, I read a bit of everything. Not books, sigh, for an opportunity to read an actual book! But I took to the Twitterverse, and I Facebooked, and I just got up to surfing the net like old times.
I made some new acquaintances on Twitter like this dude, ToureX who tweets a veritable feast of opinion-information you might not necessarily get from the mainstream, and found new sources of enlightenment, new opinions different and somewhat similar to my own, and I embraced what was out there. And as time wore on, I started to feel that I really needed to put my thoughts down on paper once again. That Twitter only allowed me to express 140 characters of my snarky side and nothing too deep. Twitter actually made me think about how *important* it was to my creative expression in that it allowed me offload some of the nonsense that occupies my thoughts when I have a moment to myself.
At the same time, I think the respite was good. That perhaps the break might indicate a shift in how I approach various topics. Interestingly, media never stops, the virus keeps on multiplying and mutating, so for the sake of my own sanity, and perhaps yours, I’m back.
Thanks for sticking around. I do appreciate it.
xobolaji
Tags: Media, MTV, NewBlackMan, Pop Culture, The Gap, ToureX, Twitter
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Pop Cultural Criticism is the gift that keeps on giving. And not for anything, it is the opinions of the masses that fuel my desire to participate in ongoing discussions concerning matters of taste.
I am by no means an “expert” on Taste, except that I sometimes know what I like, I know what I dislike, and given my professional experience with design visionaries, tastemakers, creative geniuses, style gurus and the like, I just may be in a position to substantiate an opinion or two on what might be considered good and “relevant.” This is not to say that my opinion trumps your opinion, or that my opinions aren’t wholly subjective and fickle—I am a GIRL after all—it simply means that yes, Dear Reader, just like you, I need to back-up my statements with a certain amount of credibility. Otherwise I’d just be another asshole with an opinion, and God knows there is no shortage of those.
So here’s the Beef: I have a pole up my bum with respect to MTV/Live. Not ALL of it, just some of it. Some days it doesn’t bother me, and other days it consumes me like a rumble in my belly which requires an activity no less exhilarating than a good poop in the toilet. Yes, MTV brings out the best of bodily function references in me.
In the last few months, I’ve written about Daryn Jones and MTV Live, as well as some of the programming offered by MTV. I’ve never commented on their so-called Reality Shows, except for The Hills and The City, and The AfterShow with Jessi & Dan which I watch for their “fashion/style” value, and self-referential bitchy repartee if you can process that. I have watched and commented on the Dr. Drew series containing such illuminating subject matter as all manner of addiction and rehabilitation together with sobriety. I’ve watched and commented on Teenage Pregnancy. I watched the Paris Hilton, and Flavour Flav Reality Shows “back in the day” and I laughed my ass off, because what was “endearing” to me was the way in which these “celebrities” were able to turn the camera on themselves and show the lengths to which “regular” stupid young people would humiliate themselves to have their moment on television, at any expense. I watched that surgically-altered, train-wreck of an desperate human being, Tila Tequila parade around in her next-to-nothings in order for men & women to compete for a sexual tryst with her overwhelmingly chemically-addicted personona and I wondered why such programming was deemed appropriate for a before 9pm television audience.
It occurred to me that the lump sum total of these shows, and I haven’t mentioned all of them, was a blight on the face of pop culture, and I wondered why it was so easy for me to tune in rather than tune out. And then I figured it out, and I got mad. Mad enough to spit, and then mad enough to excise it from my being like the proverbial zit that you’re better off not popping for fear of infection.
But MTV is a kind of infection. It’s a virus that spreads and multiplies as quickly as the number of STDs the cast of Jersey Shore share. On that topic, I recently read an article that referenced the alarming rate of STDs between reality show cast members. Unfortunately this comes as no surprise to me. You? But the point is that once upon a time there was life. And life was good. And once upon a time there was TV. And TV was not for everyone, but some of us watched, and some of us enjoyed it for what it was, and then we turned it off. And then along came situation comedies. In those comedies we were able to “suspend belief” because we did not all have impossibly gorgeous friends, or impossibly gorgeous lifestyles, and we did not have a soundtrack and a laugh track mimicking our every raised eyebrow and grimace, and that was Ok. And then along came Reality Television. And that was the Beginning of our End.
Reality Television came in and exploited our deepest fears, our many desires and our superficial regrets. It showed our tumultuous relationships for what they were: negative, backstabbing, manipulative, base, and desperately needy. And since we were told it was “reality” and that the people were “real” somehow we were able to identify. The archetype of these characters were us in high school and in our professional careers. The Jock, The Nerd, The Slut, The BadBoy, The Pretty Girl, The Ugly Girl, The Fat Person, The Misfit, The Everyman, The Superwoman, and on it went until we could find someone or something with which to indentify.
And it didn’t stop there. Once we were “on” to the fakery of television’s “reality.” They gave us more. Until it took over the media landscape and we couldn’t escape it. And thus Daryn Jones and MTV Live was born.
MTV Live sells itself as a “satirical look at popular culture.” Really? Last time I checked Popular Culture was a Satire, and I didn’t need the genius of Daryn Jones to school me on that. Pop Culture eats itself everyday for breakfast and the more salty, fatty, over-processed it is, the more tasty we think it is. Pop Culture doesn’t require a mad genius or a satirist to shove its contents down our throats, nor does it require re/packaging in a Daryn Jones monologue. Much like Rihanna’s “Rockstar 101” in which black-sister-girl writhes around in chains and licks a sword like a panther in heat, we do not need such artistic expression for anything more than a 2 minute temporal diversion. How boundary-pushing is a statuesque black girl cloaked in chains writhing on a floor? Not very, if slavery references are your guide. But I digress, or do I?
The thing with this sort of TV programming is that nothing is left to the imagination, and nothing is sacred. Not everyone lives their lives on camera, and not everyone wants to have their lives dictated to by the people on television. You feel me? When and why did TV become the go-to reference for things that happen in our lives? When did TV become the God to which the masses kneel down and pray, “Dear Idiot Box, Please Make Me Famous, Or At The Very Least Resemble Somebody Famous.” Like, when? At some point some nobody has GOT to ask this question. And stop acting like television is the media panacea. Wake up, Zombies!
The point is that being “loose” and being able to appreciate a creative expression are not mutually exclusive. It’s not easy to create art. And God forbid anybody who tries to stop the artist’s need to create. I’m just saying that my finding something offensive and/or distasteful, or stupid or creepy does not make me uptight, anymore than your enjoyment of pornography makes you a pervert…
It simply means that we have a difference of opinion. Now ain’t that a blessing…
Tags: 16 and pregnant, Art-ish, Art-making, Daryn Jones, design visionary, Dr. Drew, guru, Jersey Shore, Jessi & Dan, MTV, MTV Canada, MTV Live, Pop Culture, Reality TV, Rihanna, Rockstar 101, tastemakers, Television, The AfterShow, The City, The Hills
Posted in Hollywood Staff-ish, Pop Cult-ish, The Stink-ish, Think This-ish | No Comments »
In my first life, I was a city-slicker of the urban-dweller variety. Except I really didn’t pay too much attention to it. I lived downtown and uptown. I worked and sometimes hobnobbed with the rich & famous, the professionally pretty, and the achingly stylish, and I learned and honed the beginnings of my artistic expression through some of the world’s top creative minds. I’ve got beautiful stories and memories of a time when my Life was All About Me, and by extension, the beautiful people I associated with. I’ve also got the battle scars and post-traumatic stress flashbacks to gently remind of what it meant to feel that alive. That said, dear reader, I would not trade any of my previous experience for all the tea in China. What’s interesting to me is that I lead the kind of lifestyle that bears no quantifiable resemblance to my current life just outside the booming metropolis otherwise known as the T-Dot. And as I reminisced with my old fabulous friends on the weekend, I realized that yes, xobolaji, you can go home again.
In more than a few posts, I’ve written about my frustration & fascination with the Sisterhood. I’ve written about being mean-girled, hated-on, and generally disrespected by the women I called friends, acquaintances, associates, colleagues and relatives. To hear me tell it, you might have come to the forgone conclusion that I was a “innocent” Victim, but I think that in any relationship when a woman feels powerless to assert herself for reasons only known to her, she becomes a “victim” by virtue of what she says or does not say, or what she “allows” to take hold of her—be it emotional, physical, mental, social, or psychological—and by what she inevitably learns to resist either consciously or subconsciously. If one has not built up a strong sense of self or esteem, then one can easily fall under the influence and/or “spell” of someone who has a more powerful sense of self/esteem. This is not to say that the victim does not have Power. On the contrary, that Latent Power exists and resides in the victim. Most likely, it bubbles just beneath the surface. And it will eventually unleash itself when the time is right or when it is called upon, and/or forced to do so.
My latent sense of power and self/esteem developed after I had my first daughter and strengthened and asserted itself 2 years after my second daughter was born. [I also just felt the “second wave” of this power which began when I attended a StoryTelling Workshop with Fabulous Women, and when I recently renewed my friendship with old friends].
Prior to this I lived pretty much in my own “interior world,” with the tint and harsh reality of the outside world obscured by rose-coloured glasses. The rose-coloured glasses metaphor in all actuality is punctuated and underscored by the fact that as day turned into evening, and the glare of the evening descended into night, I was never without my black Giorgio Armani sunglasses. For me, the lights of the night and inside friend’s homes, and that of the bars and clubs and resto-lounges we frequented was too intense. It is a well-known Me’ism that I am ‘photosensitive’ and prefer softer dim lights and candlelight in the evening. During the day when the white heat of the sun beats down and reflects off the granite stone of the concrete jungle you can find me sporting a pair of wire-framed Ray Ban aviators.
Fast forward to today, and the thing I’ve come to recognize is that the seeds of my personal power were always there. I just had to grow it, nurture it, own it, and uproot the area around the environment of my garden before it became complicated by rogue weeds and unruly infiltrators. Instead of giving my garden the full complement of sunshine, rain, vitamins and water, as is the “normal” course in gardening, I literally shielded it—with my rose-coloured glasses—from what I considered the harsh elements of “reality,” sometimes over-focussing, ironically, on nurturing those rogue weeds until the weeds and not the seeds [power] became my accomplishment. Indeed, hindsight is a gift. And re/memory is a blessing.
About the storytelling workshop I attended: I had never been to one before. And I hope it is not the last time I will have the pleasure of participating in such an experience. In an storytelling exchange of a few stories from the pages of my life, my storytelling partner, with the utmost respect, asked me if it might be true that I have learned to see things the way I had preferred to see them and not as they ‘actually’ are. She likened me to a vibrant energy source emanating and attracting goodness and light, with a tendency perhaps to see others and situations in a similar fashion to the point of “filtering” out the reality of those people/situations through “rose-coloured glasses.” When she told me this, I think I stopped breathing. When I finally exhaled, I asked her to repeat what she had just said so that I could process it. To me, it was like a mathematical equation—a complicated sequence of symbols and numbers and I was getting lost in the configuration. [If you know me and my relationship to Math, you know that such theoretical evaluations are beyond my comprehension]. But when she did repeat the findings of her impression, it began to resonate with me. This is what Ms Oprah calls an “A-HA Moment.” Is there a Latin equivalent? It would sound so much mo’ sexier.
In discussions relating to the Sisterhood, my response of late has been to “play the victim.” And it’s a role I’ve felt somewhat comfortable with in due in part because I was finally able to give the experiences of both the past and present a name. Instead of fighting back, I internalized my emotional responses based on what I had learned from others. For example, the former uber-talented colleague with whom I worked for four years was likely closeted, unhappy and bipolar, in addition to being a toxic bitch. And the women whom I met at a party recently who were happy to meet me at the top of the evening [or so I thought], but turned on me during the course of the evening likely had too much to drink, among other personal issues which are not my problem. Yes, I know. It all sounds so very tidy and neatly summed up now, but that’s what maturity and self-reflection does. It pulls you kicking and screaming out from the depths of your despair and the sometimes very necessary shield of your own self-absorbed cloak and brings you into the reality of Life. Still, one can choose to stay stuck in the pattern of victimhood, or one can move ahead armed with solutions so that you “never” had to feel powerless or victimized again.
But here’s the thing. Time heals all wounds. It really does. And there is no moratorium on “successful” healing or suffering. It’s as personal as the teeth in your mouth and the prints on the pads of your fingers. Honour that! And find your way back home–either real or imagined– when and if the spirit moves you to go there.
Tags: The Sisterhood, Wellness-ish
Posted in All About Me-ish, Think This-ish, Wellness-ish | No Comments »
The saying, Show Me Your Friends and I’ll Tell You Who You Are is a saying that has been around forever. I come to it by way of my Mother. As previously mentioned, my Mother had a lot of sayings which she used with frequency that gave her life meaning and purpose. She passed along these sayings to my sisters and I, her three daughters.
Some of “her” sayings continue to resonate with me and they still carry the wit and reverse psychological impact they once did. Some are an instant call to my renewed sense of self-reflection due to their implied and loaded negativity, and others have an altogether new-found meaning that resonates with me in my relationships today. These “words of wisdom,” so to speak, are the formative building blocks of my childhood as much as they are the stepping stones towards my full-bodied adult life.
The “Show Me/Tell You” saying is one such saying that no longer holds negative sway in my mind, or in my life for that matter. It was something my Mother often said in association with my behaving in a manner that she surmised was somehow indicative of—and could be explained by—my relationships to my “wayward” and/or “frowsy” friends. This meant that to have friends and acquaintances who behaved “inappropriately” was the reason that I too had behaved in a similar manner. Forget the fact that I may or may not have acted of my own volition. In her estimation, I had been influenced or negatively-impacted by the company I kept. She might also have been inferring that it wasn’t so much them as it was me, and therefore any association I had with these wayward-types was of my own pre-meditated undoing.
Now before you go ahead and think that my mother was a Snob, I don’t think she was. Then again, she is Jamaican. And if I may use this forum to paint the proverbial stereotypical picture with one good brush stroke this is it. Jamaican women have Attitude and they would sooner give you Cut-eye, and Suck Teeth than smile at you before you can say, “boo.” I know. It’s happened to me. And I’m supposedly a part of the Sisterhood.
Upon introduction, Jamaican women of a certain social class always need to know how many educational degrees you have and what social standing and background you come from. This happens much in the same way a judgment is passed as to whether you are an acceptable candidate for inclusion in their social circles based on the kink and wave of your hair, the lightness of your skin, whom you choose to marry which may or may not result in biracial children, and the skill with which you can “streps” your teeth, or cuss bad words. Ya, welcome to my world.
Somewhere in the deep dark recesses of my mind, I believe that this disposition—the need to establish station, authority or superiority as the case may be—stems from Colonialism. In those days, the closer a black individual was associated to/with “whiteness” [hi-yella, octoroon, quadroon, etc.,] the “better off” they were both in political and social standing. In addition, the Black Woman held position and ‘authority’ in the household due to systemic absenteeism of the Black Male figure in the home. The Black Male who was emasculated by the Massa carried no power to speak of. He was witness to countless injustices to his “wife” [slaves were not allowed to legally marry], the Mother of his children by virtue of rape and slave ownership, and he was powerless to act lest he become further degraded or killed for insubordination. And thus the deep psychological wounds of that relationship repeated itself until the myth of the Strong Black Woman and the Black Matriarchy took root. So as much as the Black Woman had the “burden” of Womanhood and Parenthood, she also somehow needed to fill in the role of Fatherhood to the best of her female ability. Ponder that.
Still, I kind of believe that “snobbery” is relative in the sense that, one does not have to “lay with dogs,” –a Birdie’ism—to know that one will inevitably “rise with fleas,” but one can certainly appreciate what gifts those dogs hold from afar and without actually sleeping with them. You feel me?
It is my experience that when people “choose”—some of us are “chosen”—to associate with people who are allegedly “different” than us, and don’t necessarily belong to what many of us consider “acceptable” culture, a familiar retort is that, well, “Jesus hung out with his fair share of unsavoury types and he was closer to God than any one person.” As if a comparison of one’s taste in people to that of Jesus is a convincing enough argument for associating with The Mafioso. Still, there is certainly “wisdom” in that. I personally tend to believe that associating with people from all walks of life does not mean that I am that person any more than their association with me means that they are [like] me. And yet on a Meta level, I am saying exactly that.
Awhile ago I saw a television commercial about Diversity. The exact details escape me, but the gist of the commercial was to say that we are indeed all alike. Each of the actors in the 30 second spot was different from what they said about themselves in the clip. For example, a young black male said, “I am a woman of mixed heritage when I go to the grocery store” and a Chinese blind youth said, “I am an elderly white woman when I mow my lawn,” and so on. What I gathered from this was to show that race, ability and religion should not limit or restrict one’s activities, nor should we place limitations and prejudice based on what we perceive to be difference.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts how some of my friends worked in the adult entertainment trade. I did not seek out these individuals anymore than I was sought out by my born-again/Christian friends, friends who are agnostic, or curiously atheist, or my racially-mixed friends, my gay friends, or professional acquaintances who worked in corporate environments or friends who had suffered from mental illness or lived with abuse. I was just me, they were simply them, and we all seemed to find something in common with which to build a relationship. I never once considered myself superior or inferior to them, and by virtue of their relationship with me, the reciprocal seemed to be true. The moment we both found that the “differences” were too vast, that there were things that we simply couldn’t understand and/or tolerate about one another, a mutually agreeable decision was made to move on from that relationship. No biggee.
Moving on is a natural step in the progress of Life. And it doesn’t mean that anybody failed anybody. It simply means that the times that were spent were good and thorough and sufficient enough to learn or not learn something. Much like the familiar biblical “There is a Season” quote [Ecclesiastes 3], there is a time and place for everything and everyone. Interestingly, this was not a Birdie’ism, and I posit that she did not place too much stock in our “Seasons” due to the fact that corralling 3 teenage girls to behave on cue was more important than appreciating our individual rebellious phases. Still one’s “choice” in friends may make all the sense in the world to you personally, and another individual who also shares your friendship can’t fathom what you might find desirable in that same individual. Such is life, non?
But the point I want to make is that Friendship is sometimes perilously and wildly subjective and random, if not sociologically strategic, much in the way that one chooses, or is chosen to be a friend. Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who are. That phrase is fraught with tension. What business is it of yours whom I choose to befriend, and what can you possibly tell me about myself that I don’t, on some level, already know? What business do I have insisting that you parade your group of friends before me in order for me to subject you to my impression of what your chosen friendships say about you? Which brings me to the Al and Tipper Gore marriage.
When the former US Vice President and his wife decided to divorce after 40 years of marriage, the press had a field-day. Every journalist from Newsweek to The New York Times and the Washington Post weighed-in as an authority and an expert for what they described as a “failed” marriage. They told us that the Gores were an “odd couple,” that he “preferred politics,” or that she “shunned public life,” and “suffered from depression,” etc. They reported this news as if these were the sole reasons for the dissolution of their marriage, and as if the more salacious details of their 40 year union was somehow our business.
And yet in an effort to undermine what was one of the more stable examples of a so-called “political marriage,” they missed the most inspiring point: Al and Tipper Gore were married for 40 years! The Gore marriage illustrates the “problem” with the Show Me, and I’ll Tell You saying perfectly. A beautiful friendship comes together, the parties decide to part ways after successfully exhausting the potential of that relationship, and what remains for us is our pathological desire to heap all kinds of negativity and innuendo into a situation that is perhaps no different than when you or I decide to leave a relationship that has run its course. Oh, the hubris!
Tags: Birdie'ism, Black Matriarcy, Colonialism, Diversity, Ecclesiastes 3, friendship, Frowsy Friends, Jamaican women, Jesse James, Mother, Show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are, Strong Black Women, The Byrds, The NYTimes, Washington Post, words of wisdom
Posted in Mom-ish, Think This-ish | No Comments »
