I'm not a gym bunny. Up until recently, my Lululemon sweats were my "eating ice cream and watching TV" outfits, not for yogic flying or striding around Yorkville wearing mirrored sunglasses and looking scrawny. My running shoes were pristine, practically out of the box, and my hand weights gathered dust next to my TV. I despaired, as the lazy often to, about my expanding waistline and inability to touch my toes, but did I do anything about this? I did not.
With my new two-week free membership to the West End YMCA, however, I've stepped on a new treadmill. As an added bonus, the gym is a great place to get over things like the desire, or even ability, to dress stylishly.
Work-out gear is not, by any definition, en vogue. It might be flattering, or comfortable, or stretchy. It might breathe well. It might have little pockets for earphones, or a built-in pedometer, but it is not designed to be worn outside the gym with any degree of style. All the companies that market fashionable gym wear are lying to you: no such thing exists. If you've spent enough time at the gym to confidently pour yourself into leggings, you are well aware that most people exercise in ratty tee-shirts with the necks stretched out, basketball shorts from 1996, and fleecy jackets. That's because most people at the gym, including myself, are shlubby messes who are just trying to look and feel a little better. The idea that everyone there is wearing sleek black Matrix-inspired getups while they sweatlessly tone is a lie perpetuated by prime-time dramedies. I myself wear electric-yellow running shorts.
There is "designer" gym clothes, but that costs hundreds of dollars and was never designed for actual movement in an actual gym. That was made for wearing with expensive complicated sneakers and sitting in uncomfortable chairs on small patios, drinking coffee out of comically small/large cups and talking about how training your dog is going. It's for wearing home from the Botox clinic. It's for day-walking through Machu Piccu on your 18th wedding anniversary trip. It's not for wearing while you slog on the treadmill for 35 minutes. It is for lattes and picking your stepkids up from circus camp. Do not be fooled. The women who wear these outfits are the same people who own driving shoes and expensive single-use detergent. Do not be like them.
Once we've dressed ourselves horribly and warmed up with some half-hearted stretching, we can enter the actual gym. Not being a person who wears running shoes every day, I always feel especially bouncy when I step into the exercise area, but that soon passes. I use my time on the machines to do the following: obsessively monitor my pulse for evidence that my heart is going to explode; stare vacantly at the name of the company that makes the machine ("Fitness Forever!"); count calories burned, strides, time, and distance traveled; and silently judge others based on clothes and hairdo.
Ladies who get really into the gym thing freak me out. I know they're getting older and maybe aren't as taut as they once were, but frankly, that's kind of a good thing. It's cool to gain some weight as you age. Not a ton - I'm not saying y'all should make friends with a bucket of fried chicken - but too-skinny is freaky on the young and unflattering on the old. But it is cool to be a gym lady. Get some muscles! Lift some weights! Get your stretch on! Understand that you will be wearing a technical fabric that will make you look like a background extra in a training montage! Accept your fate! Young women who use the gym awe me with their early-life dedication to health, plus they always seem to have voluptuous bodies and shiny hair. They're also likely to dress in black and wear eyeliner, which intimidates me and my yellow shorts and grade-school french braids.
The whole point of wearing the gym clothes, and putting yourself through the pain of the gym (and the hideousness of the outfits) is so that when you put on your civilian clothes, you feel and look better. Muscles are a great feeling, losing weight is a great feeling, setting goals and reaching them is a great feeling. The gym clothes aren't so much a great feeling, but, like with the exploding heart, they're a rung on the ladder to feeling good. So, in one way, my electric yellow shorts will never go out of style.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Issues With Friends With Kids
Friends With Kids! Oh my god! This movie has woken up a maelstrom of feelings I wasn't even aware human beings could feel! It was all rage-related Lamaze-breathing and flashbacks to Kissing Jessica Stein! Maya Rudolph was there! That was nice! And ever more ludicrously gorgeous and affordable Manhattan/Brooklyn apartments!
Okay, seriously: Friends With Kids. Can we please talk about this? It premiered at TIFF last week, but it hasn't been picked up yet, so let's just talk about vanity projects, thesis statements and hating on Brooklyn.
For the 95% of the population who is not aware of this movie, let me set up the conceit: a New York City social circle in their 30s starts hitting that life-cycle milestone, the child, with differing degrees of success. Maya Rudolph and Chris "The Irish cop from Bridesmaids" O'Dowd couple up and have some kids: she turns into a screaming, nagging shrew who publicly criticizes the me-time her hoodie-wearing husband takes on the john. Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig play a couple who are slowly driven apart by his half-hearted participation in parenting, and their joint affinity for red wine. And finally, Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott play long-time friends who, after watching their friends' post-childbirth relationship with horror, decide to have a kid together, but without all that couple-y stuff. Their unusual set-up allows them to keep the focus on staying in the dating game and eventually landing their hotter life partners, and side-steps the degeneration of romance that their friends have suffered.
The concept is a little smug. But hey - we can live with smug! But as the film gets going, it becomes clear that Westfeldt, who does not have children, is convinced that two friends could baby-share. There's a rant by Jon Hamm that asks the questions the audience must have wondered: what do you a tell a kid who knows his parents were never in love? How can you have the hubris to think your parenting styles and needs will overlap without talking it out in advance? How do you justify gambling with someone's life, and their understanding of what it means to love and commit, when you demonstrate that having a child together takes a backseat to finding a super-hot sexual playmate?
The super-hot sexual playmate, played by Megan Fox, obviously doesn't want kids. Kids, she says, tie you down, make you slow and fat, and limit your ability to implausibly star in a Broadway musical. Fox's role in this movie is to play the hedonistic slut: she can put her legs behind her head! She's hot. But she she won't touch him when he's sprayed nostrils-to-nipples with baby diarrhea, all but strangles a toddler in a bistro, and Scott is duty-bound to break up with her. She's not The One after all. (But! Legs! Behind her head!) By assigning Fox the childless role, the choice to remain childless is dismissed by the film as an indulgence of selfish and young people, a decision that would be impossible to sustain into your thirties.
Despite their separate, rocky dating scenes, Westfeldt and Scott are totally united and on par in their parenting abilities. There's no resentment when she calls him at 3 AM to rock their colicky offspring. He's able to make the little bastard instantly stop crying after she's been dealing with the screaming for an hour, a move that would have me questioning my sanity. They agree to split everything, time included, down the middle, so they can keep dating and having their own, non-parenting lives. Obviously, this is insane, but Westfeldt is firm in her conviction that friends really would be better than couples at raising children. Her characters demonstrate an unworldly geniality to childrearing. Even the most mellow parents occasionally feel like they're going to freak out: these parents never do. The gender parity is taken for granted, despite the fact that in the other two couples - like most couples - the woman is charge of the screaming, the cleaning, the silent crying and the feedings.
The movie relies heavily on Westfeldt's talents: she wrote, produced, directed and starred in thie film, a power play that means her fingerprints are on every frame of the film. I'm not going to lie - I disliked her. Westfeldt is blonde, about 95 pounds, and talks in a breathy Minnie Mouse voice. The movie runs a little blue - the seduction line is "I'm going to fuck the shit out of you," (also said by: date rapists everywhere!), and it's jarring to hear her utter it in an oopsy-cutesy voice. Scott is slightly miscast - he looks like a grim Eagle Scout when he's mad, and Megan Fox is way out of his league. But Westfeldt is, by far, the biggest dud... but, you know, this was clearly designed to be a breakout role for her. It's her show.
The supporting cast is great: Hamm convincingly plays a louche dad and Wiig, his long-suffering wife. Despite their friction, the relationship between O'Dowd's and Rudolph's characters is solid and enviable, and O'Dowd is affable and charming - I would date that guy, for sure. When Jon Hamm has his drunken what-are-you-thinking rant, the characters all freeze in horror, but Rudolph and O'Dowd make sure they clutch hands first. I loved that. (Meanly, I would guess Westfeldt had nothing to do with that moment, either.) I feel like this movie was trying to teach me something about being a woman, or a mother, or a New Yorker, or something. Like, it's fine to be a mom, as long as you're hot? Or, like, your husband will grow to hate you, so you might as well fray his last nerve and be done with it? Kids are sweet? Romance is needed in childrearing? Love is extraneous? Baby poop will get on you? Brooklyn is a wasteland? WHAT IS IT?! Jon Hamm always plays a jerk? TELL ME! Because, while Maya Rudolph is my movie-star girlfriend right now, and New York is awesome, this movie is NOT GOOD in a way that I have very strong feelings about. Don't see it. Or do see it, once it's in wide release, and then we can talk about it in loud voices on the bus.
Okay, seriously: Friends With Kids. Can we please talk about this? It premiered at TIFF last week, but it hasn't been picked up yet, so let's just talk about vanity projects, thesis statements and hating on Brooklyn.
For the 95% of the population who is not aware of this movie, let me set up the conceit: a New York City social circle in their 30s starts hitting that life-cycle milestone, the child, with differing degrees of success. Maya Rudolph and Chris "The Irish cop from Bridesmaids" O'Dowd couple up and have some kids: she turns into a screaming, nagging shrew who publicly criticizes the me-time her hoodie-wearing husband takes on the john. Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig play a couple who are slowly driven apart by his half-hearted participation in parenting, and their joint affinity for red wine. And finally, Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott play long-time friends who, after watching their friends' post-childbirth relationship with horror, decide to have a kid together, but without all that couple-y stuff. Their unusual set-up allows them to keep the focus on staying in the dating game and eventually landing their hotter life partners, and side-steps the degeneration of romance that their friends have suffered.
The concept is a little smug. But hey - we can live with smug! But as the film gets going, it becomes clear that Westfeldt, who does not have children, is convinced that two friends could baby-share. There's a rant by Jon Hamm that asks the questions the audience must have wondered: what do you a tell a kid who knows his parents were never in love? How can you have the hubris to think your parenting styles and needs will overlap without talking it out in advance? How do you justify gambling with someone's life, and their understanding of what it means to love and commit, when you demonstrate that having a child together takes a backseat to finding a super-hot sexual playmate?
The super-hot sexual playmate, played by Megan Fox, obviously doesn't want kids. Kids, she says, tie you down, make you slow and fat, and limit your ability to implausibly star in a Broadway musical. Fox's role in this movie is to play the hedonistic slut: she can put her legs behind her head! She's hot. But she she won't touch him when he's sprayed nostrils-to-nipples with baby diarrhea, all but strangles a toddler in a bistro, and Scott is duty-bound to break up with her. She's not The One after all. (But! Legs! Behind her head!) By assigning Fox the childless role, the choice to remain childless is dismissed by the film as an indulgence of selfish and young people, a decision that would be impossible to sustain into your thirties.
Despite their separate, rocky dating scenes, Westfeldt and Scott are totally united and on par in their parenting abilities. There's no resentment when she calls him at 3 AM to rock their colicky offspring. He's able to make the little bastard instantly stop crying after she's been dealing with the screaming for an hour, a move that would have me questioning my sanity. They agree to split everything, time included, down the middle, so they can keep dating and having their own, non-parenting lives. Obviously, this is insane, but Westfeldt is firm in her conviction that friends really would be better than couples at raising children. Her characters demonstrate an unworldly geniality to childrearing. Even the most mellow parents occasionally feel like they're going to freak out: these parents never do. The gender parity is taken for granted, despite the fact that in the other two couples - like most couples - the woman is charge of the screaming, the cleaning, the silent crying and the feedings.
The movie relies heavily on Westfeldt's talents: she wrote, produced, directed and starred in thie film, a power play that means her fingerprints are on every frame of the film. I'm not going to lie - I disliked her. Westfeldt is blonde, about 95 pounds, and talks in a breathy Minnie Mouse voice. The movie runs a little blue - the seduction line is "I'm going to fuck the shit out of you," (also said by: date rapists everywhere!), and it's jarring to hear her utter it in an oopsy-cutesy voice. Scott is slightly miscast - he looks like a grim Eagle Scout when he's mad, and Megan Fox is way out of his league. But Westfeldt is, by far, the biggest dud... but, you know, this was clearly designed to be a breakout role for her. It's her show.
The supporting cast is great: Hamm convincingly plays a louche dad and Wiig, his long-suffering wife. Despite their friction, the relationship between O'Dowd's and Rudolph's characters is solid and enviable, and O'Dowd is affable and charming - I would date that guy, for sure. When Jon Hamm has his drunken what-are-you-thinking rant, the characters all freeze in horror, but Rudolph and O'Dowd make sure they clutch hands first. I loved that. (Meanly, I would guess Westfeldt had nothing to do with that moment, either.) I feel like this movie was trying to teach me something about being a woman, or a mother, or a New Yorker, or something. Like, it's fine to be a mom, as long as you're hot? Or, like, your husband will grow to hate you, so you might as well fray his last nerve and be done with it? Kids are sweet? Romance is needed in childrearing? Love is extraneous? Baby poop will get on you? Brooklyn is a wasteland? WHAT IS IT?! Jon Hamm always plays a jerk? TELL ME! Because, while Maya Rudolph is my movie-star girlfriend right now, and New York is awesome, this movie is NOT GOOD in a way that I have very strong feelings about. Don't see it. Or do see it, once it's in wide release, and then we can talk about it in loud voices on the bus.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Breast Of All
As I was leafing through Entertainment Weekly a few days ago, I was struck my a collage of images from the upcoming fall television season. Nothing special going on: a few waitresses transposed over someone posing with a handgun: the usual pappy "look at us!" kind of schtick that ensures that, by the time the pilot is aired, we're all vaguely aware of what we're going to be looking at here. Waitresses? Yeah, I'd watch that.
But one of those waitresses is the luscious Kat Denning, and guys? She has boobs.
I know most woman of reproductive age have 'em, but let's face it: there isn't a lot of diversity amongst the TV breasts. They're usually high and small, with a little bit of jiggle if you jog (and a little bit of pointiness if you're watching a Friends rerun - they must have kept that set at, like, six degrees), but a lot of the time, the "cleavage" is about as sexy and voluptuous as a frying pan. If you're a little older, or not quite in the bell curve, you could adjust them: either "naturally" through over-exercise, which gives you that alluringly bony sternum, or go discreetly under the knife to pump up your basketballs. Young women, as they're represented in the TV demographic, aren't as likely to be weird-skinny. Their assets just haven't really had time to be anything other than perfect, but their coltish figures take very well to a regimen of baby carrots and elliptical machines if they don't quite conform.
I check out women...constantly. As my (very patient and and slightly amused) boyfriend pointed out today, if I was a dude, I would be one of those construction workers who sexually harass attractive women. I'm a fan of legs: long, lean gams where the short-shorts are short and the thighs don't touch. At 5'1", my legs are muscular, well-shaped, toned and strong. I love my legs, but I don't think of them as luscious, and they certainly aren't long. The same can't be said about my chest: I am very well endowed there. I get a classic hourglass shape when I'm working out, so it ends up being very va-va-voom. Lots of deep v-necks in my wardrobe.
The thing about large breasts is that they don't often work in the real world. I'll give you a for-instance: I hate being warm, so tank tops are de rigeur in my wardrobe. With big boobs, "tank top" equals "revealing." Culturally, large breasts are understood to be sexy, sometimes over-sexed. They're seen as relatively low-class. They're often the hallmark of an ethnicity that white people think of as "other," like Latina. Revealing small breasts is artful; revealing large breasts is pornographic. Think about Dolly Parton and Pamela Anderson. Now think about Gwyneth Paltrow and Natalie Portman.
In my quest for body acceptance, I'm trying to come up with some role models I can turn to when I start feeling like I never see myself on the screen. Kat Dennings is totally foxy: she's got an pre-anorexia Angelina thing going on, which I like very much, and her face belongs on billboards. But is she a stick? Nah. She's got curves, man. It's nice to see curves on TV. Just like, when Maw Whitman shows up in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, she's got a shadow of a double chin. Because, you know, she's a human. Doesn't mean she can't kick some serious ass.
Please note that I'm not talking about the carefully curated curves of Jessica Biel or ScarJo: those women, though undoubtedly beautiful, aren't regular humans. Or the "large breasts" of Megan Fox, who, in her newest movie, is the thinnest woman I've ever seen onscreen. Seriously: look at this woman's midsection. Where is it? I recently read an article about why No Doubt didn't put out more music. Between her kids, her fashion line, and her workout routine, she explain, Gwen Stefani just didn't have the time to record new music. The day my workout becomes my actual job is the day that I crawl into bed with a tub of cream cheese icing in order to spend some serious time realigning my priorities. Some exercise is good and it's a great feeling to be fit, active and healthy.
But coming to terms with that shadow of double chin, or absentmindedly rubbing your belly while you wait for the bus, can be a powerful moment. Knowing that other women are out there doing the same thing, even women in an industry that has powerful forces demanding that the chin and the belly shrink away, is reassuring and empowering. I don't know if the Dennings's new sitcom is going to be any good; it's just nice to know that her "normal" body isn't holding her back.
But one of those waitresses is the luscious Kat Denning, and guys? She has boobs.
I know most woman of reproductive age have 'em, but let's face it: there isn't a lot of diversity amongst the TV breasts. They're usually high and small, with a little bit of jiggle if you jog (and a little bit of pointiness if you're watching a Friends rerun - they must have kept that set at, like, six degrees), but a lot of the time, the "cleavage" is about as sexy and voluptuous as a frying pan. If you're a little older, or not quite in the bell curve, you could adjust them: either "naturally" through over-exercise, which gives you that alluringly bony sternum, or go discreetly under the knife to pump up your basketballs. Young women, as they're represented in the TV demographic, aren't as likely to be weird-skinny. Their assets just haven't really had time to be anything other than perfect, but their coltish figures take very well to a regimen of baby carrots and elliptical machines if they don't quite conform.
I check out women...constantly. As my (very patient and and slightly amused) boyfriend pointed out today, if I was a dude, I would be one of those construction workers who sexually harass attractive women. I'm a fan of legs: long, lean gams where the short-shorts are short and the thighs don't touch. At 5'1", my legs are muscular, well-shaped, toned and strong. I love my legs, but I don't think of them as luscious, and they certainly aren't long. The same can't be said about my chest: I am very well endowed there. I get a classic hourglass shape when I'm working out, so it ends up being very va-va-voom. Lots of deep v-necks in my wardrobe.
The thing about large breasts is that they don't often work in the real world. I'll give you a for-instance: I hate being warm, so tank tops are de rigeur in my wardrobe. With big boobs, "tank top" equals "revealing." Culturally, large breasts are understood to be sexy, sometimes over-sexed. They're seen as relatively low-class. They're often the hallmark of an ethnicity that white people think of as "other," like Latina. Revealing small breasts is artful; revealing large breasts is pornographic. Think about Dolly Parton and Pamela Anderson. Now think about Gwyneth Paltrow and Natalie Portman.
In my quest for body acceptance, I'm trying to come up with some role models I can turn to when I start feeling like I never see myself on the screen. Kat Dennings is totally foxy: she's got an pre-anorexia Angelina thing going on, which I like very much, and her face belongs on billboards. But is she a stick? Nah. She's got curves, man. It's nice to see curves on TV. Just like, when Maw Whitman shows up in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, she's got a shadow of a double chin. Because, you know, she's a human. Doesn't mean she can't kick some serious ass.
Please note that I'm not talking about the carefully curated curves of Jessica Biel or ScarJo: those women, though undoubtedly beautiful, aren't regular humans. Or the "large breasts" of Megan Fox, who, in her newest movie, is the thinnest woman I've ever seen onscreen. Seriously: look at this woman's midsection. Where is it? I recently read an article about why No Doubt didn't put out more music. Between her kids, her fashion line, and her workout routine, she explain, Gwen Stefani just didn't have the time to record new music. The day my workout becomes my actual job is the day that I crawl into bed with a tub of cream cheese icing in order to spend some serious time realigning my priorities. Some exercise is good and it's a great feeling to be fit, active and healthy.
But coming to terms with that shadow of double chin, or absentmindedly rubbing your belly while you wait for the bus, can be a powerful moment. Knowing that other women are out there doing the same thing, even women in an industry that has powerful forces demanding that the chin and the belly shrink away, is reassuring and empowering. I don't know if the Dennings's new sitcom is going to be any good; it's just nice to know that her "normal" body isn't holding her back.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Gevinson Me A Break
It's weird to wake up one morning and realize, at the age of 27, that I'm over the hill. Tavi Gevinson, who came to the public eye as a prepubescent style blogger, has grown boobs and launched a new website. As a result, I'm feeling a bit irrelevant. (Taking it personally is kind of my thing.) She's getting major coverage for her new venture - New York is blowing up over it.
I'm fond of Gevinson in a distant way - she's become an unlikely minor style icon, and while I believe that civilians shouldn't have access to designer clothes until they can vote, she clearly started out with a child's fanaticism for the dress-up box. Now, she's got her mitts on some of the designer clothes she gushed about in her more youthful projects, and she's a bona fide influence. Her aesthetic is often the gauzy look of an Instagram photo crossed with the obsessive love of the girls who make shrines to fictional characters. Her love affair with The Virgin Suicides, and J.D. Salinger books is endemic in teenaged girls across the continent (maybe, you know, I was one of those girls?) and she knows how to pose.
Gevinson's focus is apparently going to incorporate some nostalgia pieces, specifically for the 1990s. This is...what's that word? Dispiriting? Infuriating? Am I old enough to remember years that teenage girls now long for as "a simpler time"? Are Empire Records and Hole albums legitimate cultural touchstones? Woe is me. Full disclosure: when I was in high school, roughly the time Gevinson was born, I was making elaborate collages of 1980s pop culture touchstones, obsessively watching Back to the Future, and listening to the Romy and Michelle soundtrack. In short, I was just as annoying.
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not ready for '90s nostalgia. The frumpy silhouettes alone are going to kill me - dudes, have you seen first-season Dana Scully lately? It's all belted/pleated/pegged in there. Or Friends? God, does this mean high schoolers are going to start getting The Rachel? The hairdos of the '90s, which were sleek to the point of self-parody, did not allow my self-dreading curls to thrive. Grunge, which is the early-90s alternative to the CK One thing, flatters no-one: plaids upon plaids and boxy jackets. I'm going to cry. I know the best vintage-inspired looks update "the look" without returning to the crappy parts, but that doesn't leave a lot left to be inspired by.
Plus, there's a weird part of me that wants the 90s resurgence to just not happen. You know what I wore on my first day of high school, in 1996? Green jeans, a blue sweater and Sketchers with a sole as thick as a dictionary. I'm oddly protective of that particular brand of ugly: the spaghetti strap prom dresses, the platform mary-janes, the Gap. Style cycles have sped up to an insane degree in the last couple decades - the 1930s influenced stylish women in the 1970s, and some dudes in the 1980s updated the '50s greaser look with leather jackets and sneers. But the early 2000s reached for the 1980s, and now, barely into the 2010s, we're looking at mid-1990s for clues on how to live stylishly. In fifteen years, we'll be living in a state of everything being fashionable and no new influences. See you in 2026! Please, let there be a silver jumpsuit waiting in my government-issued pod.
I'm willing to chalk this '90s thing up to the intersection of teenage girls and their elaborately constructed sense of misplaced nostalgia. I did it. A lot of the women I know who got their start as fashion-conscious little weirdos have done it. Gevinson, with an admittedly larger audience and wielding much more influence, is doing it. It can be comforting to think that "before my time" really means simpler or purer, but as the world speeds along and 15-years-olds become culture magnates, what we really pine for is a childhood - innocence of our world, and a chance to play dress-up in adult clothing.
I'm fond of Gevinson in a distant way - she's become an unlikely minor style icon, and while I believe that civilians shouldn't have access to designer clothes until they can vote, she clearly started out with a child's fanaticism for the dress-up box. Now, she's got her mitts on some of the designer clothes she gushed about in her more youthful projects, and she's a bona fide influence. Her aesthetic is often the gauzy look of an Instagram photo crossed with the obsessive love of the girls who make shrines to fictional characters. Her love affair with The Virgin Suicides, and J.D. Salinger books is endemic in teenaged girls across the continent (maybe, you know, I was one of those girls?) and she knows how to pose.
Gevinson's focus is apparently going to incorporate some nostalgia pieces, specifically for the 1990s. This is...what's that word? Dispiriting? Infuriating? Am I old enough to remember years that teenage girls now long for as "a simpler time"? Are Empire Records and Hole albums legitimate cultural touchstones? Woe is me. Full disclosure: when I was in high school, roughly the time Gevinson was born, I was making elaborate collages of 1980s pop culture touchstones, obsessively watching Back to the Future, and listening to the Romy and Michelle soundtrack. In short, I was just as annoying.
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not ready for '90s nostalgia. The frumpy silhouettes alone are going to kill me - dudes, have you seen first-season Dana Scully lately? It's all belted/pleated/pegged in there. Or Friends? God, does this mean high schoolers are going to start getting The Rachel? The hairdos of the '90s, which were sleek to the point of self-parody, did not allow my self-dreading curls to thrive. Grunge, which is the early-90s alternative to the CK One thing, flatters no-one: plaids upon plaids and boxy jackets. I'm going to cry. I know the best vintage-inspired looks update "the look" without returning to the crappy parts, but that doesn't leave a lot left to be inspired by.
Plus, there's a weird part of me that wants the 90s resurgence to just not happen. You know what I wore on my first day of high school, in 1996? Green jeans, a blue sweater and Sketchers with a sole as thick as a dictionary. I'm oddly protective of that particular brand of ugly: the spaghetti strap prom dresses, the platform mary-janes, the Gap. Style cycles have sped up to an insane degree in the last couple decades - the 1930s influenced stylish women in the 1970s, and some dudes in the 1980s updated the '50s greaser look with leather jackets and sneers. But the early 2000s reached for the 1980s, and now, barely into the 2010s, we're looking at mid-1990s for clues on how to live stylishly. In fifteen years, we'll be living in a state of everything being fashionable and no new influences. See you in 2026! Please, let there be a silver jumpsuit waiting in my government-issued pod.
I'm willing to chalk this '90s thing up to the intersection of teenage girls and their elaborately constructed sense of misplaced nostalgia. I did it. A lot of the women I know who got their start as fashion-conscious little weirdos have done it. Gevinson, with an admittedly larger audience and wielding much more influence, is doing it. It can be comforting to think that "before my time" really means simpler or purer, but as the world speeds along and 15-years-olds become culture magnates, what we really pine for is a childhood - innocence of our world, and a chance to play dress-up in adult clothing.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Short Story
I'll admit it: my attention span is not great. I don't blame the internet, even though it's basically designed to amp up my already spazzy brainwaves. A bespoke befrazzling, if you will. (Please don't.) I actually blame the Babysitter's Cub novels I read as a child, because the second and third chapters were always the same - introduce the characters, introduce the club - and I trained myself to skip right over them. It wasn't like, in chapter two, Ann M. Martin was going to drop some serious knowledge on her readers. "Oh, by the way? Kristy? Totally queer. Just so's you all know."
As a result of my lazy childhood reading habits, I am no longer able to make my brain pay attention to large stories. My sister, who is way more of an internet generation than I am, has nonetheless plowed through a bunch of epic stories (Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, that one about the ring, and so on), but I barely got through three Potter books before throwing my hands in the air and muttering darkly about thirteen year olds riding broomsticks. I read the entirety of the Dark Tower series, but that barely counts - you can skip whole paragraphs in a Stephen King novel and still get the gist. NB: if you live anywhere in Maine, you will eventually encounter a) a giant spider, b) a vampire, c) bullying that goes way past "it gets better" into "why don't these kids call the cops, because clearly those bullies are going to straight up kill them."
Anyway, even though I can read long stories, my eyes get tired, my brain gets bored, and I eventually just curl up into the fetal position for the course of a long weekend and doze through entire chapters. I read 60% of Infinite Jest this way. That book contains, as far as I know, a hilarious fake game called Eshcaton based on tennis and world domination, and roughly three billion footnotes. I still recommend it to friends. I love reading in bed, but mostly because I can read, fall asleep, wake up, and keep reading without missing a beat. Books that require concentration and attention to details - like Dune's plot, for instance - tend to glaze me over, because I really do best when things are a big ol' mess. Enter Infinite Jest.
Even on the internet, the urge to wander off is overwhelming. Right now I have 21 different tabs open. I'm job hunting! I'm blogging! I'm on Facebook! (Honestly, I'm always on Facebook.) I'm reading Cracked.com articles about why old people's brains are faster and that makes them cranky! I'm looking at Google maps listing locations of famous movie shots in New York! I'm doing it all! It's basically like a Virginia Sims ad up in here, only instead of a skinny cigarette and a can-do attitude, I'm wearing sweatpants and haven't talked to anyone in hours. Living. The. Dream.
Being internet savvy has definitely messed with our collective ability to focus. We like things short- to medium-length: enough to get our feet wet, not enough to really go swimming. Anything much longer is likely to result us tabbing over and compulsively checking Facebook. But outside the screen, we should be able to focus, right? Well, my dad and I both tend to fall asleep with books draped over our faces, and I get the aforementioned literary narcolepsy on just about any story longer than 100 pages. Ironically, this has created a boon for people who create lots and lots of shorter media: think about the rise of the TV show on DVD, where once can watch 700 minutes of a story broken up into 43-minute chunks. I've received several messages from readers who have compulsively gone through my archives for hours; it's easy to do.
My gratitude for magazines, short stories, and essay collections knows no bounds. I subscribe to Harper's because it always has something to teach me in 3,000 words or less (including the memorable three weeks I convinced myself I becoming psychotic because they had run an article on women in prodromal psychosis and I, like most women, fit some of the symptoms). Dave Eggers, though he makes me howl, does a great job with the 826 Valencia kids and the Best American Non-Required Reading series, and the Best American is generally a great tool to use if you love reading but hate losing the plot. Short story collections are the spine of literary body, and I use them to audition new authors and to try out new subject matter. Anthologies are also great for this.
We're changing the way we read, which happens all the time - Hemingway and Faulkner shooed away purple Victorian prose with their styles, and we now rarely encounter sentences that begin with "O my pains are the cause of my utmost weariness," because that shit is annoying. We love our epics, but now they're being broken up into shorter stories (that Twilight nonsense, for example). And we still read magazines, even though the push is for us to consume them, not at the newsstand, but though our tablets. But we read: in bed, online, in short and long forms. Even if we get up at each chapter break to check our Facebooks, we read.
As a result of my lazy childhood reading habits, I am no longer able to make my brain pay attention to large stories. My sister, who is way more of an internet generation than I am, has nonetheless plowed through a bunch of epic stories (Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, that one about the ring, and so on), but I barely got through three Potter books before throwing my hands in the air and muttering darkly about thirteen year olds riding broomsticks. I read the entirety of the Dark Tower series, but that barely counts - you can skip whole paragraphs in a Stephen King novel and still get the gist. NB: if you live anywhere in Maine, you will eventually encounter a) a giant spider, b) a vampire, c) bullying that goes way past "it gets better" into "why don't these kids call the cops, because clearly those bullies are going to straight up kill them."
Anyway, even though I can read long stories, my eyes get tired, my brain gets bored, and I eventually just curl up into the fetal position for the course of a long weekend and doze through entire chapters. I read 60% of Infinite Jest this way. That book contains, as far as I know, a hilarious fake game called Eshcaton based on tennis and world domination, and roughly three billion footnotes. I still recommend it to friends. I love reading in bed, but mostly because I can read, fall asleep, wake up, and keep reading without missing a beat. Books that require concentration and attention to details - like Dune's plot, for instance - tend to glaze me over, because I really do best when things are a big ol' mess. Enter Infinite Jest.
Even on the internet, the urge to wander off is overwhelming. Right now I have 21 different tabs open. I'm job hunting! I'm blogging! I'm on Facebook! (Honestly, I'm always on Facebook.) I'm reading Cracked.com articles about why old people's brains are faster and that makes them cranky! I'm looking at Google maps listing locations of famous movie shots in New York! I'm doing it all! It's basically like a Virginia Sims ad up in here, only instead of a skinny cigarette and a can-do attitude, I'm wearing sweatpants and haven't talked to anyone in hours. Living. The. Dream.
Being internet savvy has definitely messed with our collective ability to focus. We like things short- to medium-length: enough to get our feet wet, not enough to really go swimming. Anything much longer is likely to result us tabbing over and compulsively checking Facebook. But outside the screen, we should be able to focus, right? Well, my dad and I both tend to fall asleep with books draped over our faces, and I get the aforementioned literary narcolepsy on just about any story longer than 100 pages. Ironically, this has created a boon for people who create lots and lots of shorter media: think about the rise of the TV show on DVD, where once can watch 700 minutes of a story broken up into 43-minute chunks. I've received several messages from readers who have compulsively gone through my archives for hours; it's easy to do.
My gratitude for magazines, short stories, and essay collections knows no bounds. I subscribe to Harper's because it always has something to teach me in 3,000 words or less (including the memorable three weeks I convinced myself I becoming psychotic because they had run an article on women in prodromal psychosis and I, like most women, fit some of the symptoms). Dave Eggers, though he makes me howl, does a great job with the 826 Valencia kids and the Best American Non-Required Reading series, and the Best American is generally a great tool to use if you love reading but hate losing the plot. Short story collections are the spine of literary body, and I use them to audition new authors and to try out new subject matter. Anthologies are also great for this.
We're changing the way we read, which happens all the time - Hemingway and Faulkner shooed away purple Victorian prose with their styles, and we now rarely encounter sentences that begin with "O my pains are the cause of my utmost weariness," because that shit is annoying. We love our epics, but now they're being broken up into shorter stories (that Twilight nonsense, for example). And we still read magazines, even though the push is for us to consume them, not at the newsstand, but though our tablets. But we read: in bed, online, in short and long forms. Even if we get up at each chapter break to check our Facebooks, we read.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Dust To Dust
It's counterintuitive, but last month's camping trip got me caught up on my reading. You'd think that all the portaging and spider-killing would have left no room for books, but the nine of us passed around The Hunger Games and a few lefty magazines with an obsession bordering on Talmudic. In my tent, hopefully away from the spiders, I hoarded Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends, which turned to be a kind of literary to-do list for when I got out of the canoe and back to a bookstore. Chabon went nuts for His Dark Materials, a trilogy from 1995 through 2000 by Philip Pullman. It was marketed in the same vein as The Chronicles of Narnia or the Harry Potter septilogy - a fantastical children's epic - but the truth is, it's not really a story for children. Lyra, the main character in the first novel, and her buddy Will, introduced in volume two, are both pre-teens, but the thematic juice in the books is God, death of. With all due respect to the Potterites and the Narnians, Pullman's books go places kid's lit usually doesn't: deep into the bowels of purgatory, for example.
The books are plot-heavy, for sure: with a cast of thousand (hot air balloonist? Okay!) and geographically stretching over at least four different worlds, there's a lot of territory to be covered. They start with an evil plot to separate children from their daemons, the animal familiars that are the outwards embodiment of a person's soul (Chabon rightly points out that a major draw for readers is daydreaming about what one's own daemon might be), and ends up with God, the Authority himself, climbing out of his crystal travois, gibbering some nonsense at Will and Lyra, and dying. The relief the aged, insane deity feels at this final goodbye is palpable.
Pullman's books feature all kinds of magical elements - talking animal familiars, polar bears in iron armour, witches on broomsticks, shamans, and a knife that cuts through the fabric of the word - but the most wondrous and prevalent is Dust. It pervades the books from beginning to end, and is a mystery throughout. It's attracted to adults but indifferent to children. It seems to be tied to the natural world (it helps fertilize trees and erupts from the aurora borealis), but is only visible under certain scientific instruments. It reacts to human consciousness, but humans seem unaware of it. It's weird. The man does a beautiful job of making his readers wonder what, exactly, this ethereal substance is.
Since he was publishing at the same time as the wildly popular Potter series, Pullman's would-be detractors focused a lot of their energies on Harry and his ilk's witchy ways. But Pullman was far more subversive. He was often overtly critical of the Church, and of the blind adulation for authority he thinks the religious have. He literally goes ahead and kills God, and two main characters perish into a bottomless void with God's proxy, a thundering angel called Metatron. Potter's world contained a lot of good v. evil stuff, but J.K. Rowling never murdered a deity.
At the end of the books, a shadowy underworld that hitherto had been populated by vicious harpies is transformed into a place where dead folks go to tell their stories. They're guided by the reformed bird women to a place of great beauty, where their corporeal form transforms into golden particles, recycled into the natural world for all eternity. Heaven, which had been a rolling warship in the sky, is destroyed in a battle, and with no God and no Metatron to build it up again, it seems lost forever. The source of Dust - which turns out to be the physical manifestation of knowledge and experience - is renewed constantly with the dead. Even God, upon dying, turns into Dust - no more above or below anyone else, but part of the natural order of everything.
The books are confusing to read if, like me, you were brought up in a psuedoreligious household that had a vague understanding of God = good. It stands to reason, then, that the lack of God, the death of God, would be a tough break. But Pullman paints the church in a different light: in his books, the church campaigns against knowledge and understanding, since it was eating the fruit of knowledge that got us all into this clothed, dying mess in the first place. They see Dust as the manifestation of sin - which, you know, going back to that apple, it is. But not in a bad way.
Which is why I doubt that kids reading these books, if there are many, are getting the whole metaphysical dynamic. Truth be told, I had a hard time understanding a lot of what was going on. I studied the Bible in university and went to church as a kid, but the battle between good and evil, where Bad is the church - not evil church offshoots, but the legit main pillars - and Good is the upstart rebels campaigning for more information - is kind of a mind-blower. Say what you want about Harry Potter (and I lost interest around the time the book that was all about quidditch was released), but it was always clear who to root for.
That's the appeal of Pullman's so-called children's books. Usually, we like our books to have a stern and stately moral compass. But Pullman? He leaves us a little adrift, so we need to figure out what, exactly, we're rooting for here. Some of the Church-affiliated characters are sympathetic, while others are jerks; some rebel characters are huge egotistical nightmares, while others are people you'd want to drink bourbon with. He leaves it up to us. And God's death isn't the end - his particles are everywhere, in all worlds, just everyone else's. It's one of the more ambiguous books I've read in a long time, but it's a challenging and interesting one. Pullman's push for knowledge, for the Dust to settle on us all, is a lovely, weird, frightening story.
The books are plot-heavy, for sure: with a cast of thousand (hot air balloonist? Okay!) and geographically stretching over at least four different worlds, there's a lot of territory to be covered. They start with an evil plot to separate children from their daemons, the animal familiars that are the outwards embodiment of a person's soul (Chabon rightly points out that a major draw for readers is daydreaming about what one's own daemon might be), and ends up with God, the Authority himself, climbing out of his crystal travois, gibbering some nonsense at Will and Lyra, and dying. The relief the aged, insane deity feels at this final goodbye is palpable.
Pullman's books feature all kinds of magical elements - talking animal familiars, polar bears in iron armour, witches on broomsticks, shamans, and a knife that cuts through the fabric of the word - but the most wondrous and prevalent is Dust. It pervades the books from beginning to end, and is a mystery throughout. It's attracted to adults but indifferent to children. It seems to be tied to the natural world (it helps fertilize trees and erupts from the aurora borealis), but is only visible under certain scientific instruments. It reacts to human consciousness, but humans seem unaware of it. It's weird. The man does a beautiful job of making his readers wonder what, exactly, this ethereal substance is.
Since he was publishing at the same time as the wildly popular Potter series, Pullman's would-be detractors focused a lot of their energies on Harry and his ilk's witchy ways. But Pullman was far more subversive. He was often overtly critical of the Church, and of the blind adulation for authority he thinks the religious have. He literally goes ahead and kills God, and two main characters perish into a bottomless void with God's proxy, a thundering angel called Metatron. Potter's world contained a lot of good v. evil stuff, but J.K. Rowling never murdered a deity.
At the end of the books, a shadowy underworld that hitherto had been populated by vicious harpies is transformed into a place where dead folks go to tell their stories. They're guided by the reformed bird women to a place of great beauty, where their corporeal form transforms into golden particles, recycled into the natural world for all eternity. Heaven, which had been a rolling warship in the sky, is destroyed in a battle, and with no God and no Metatron to build it up again, it seems lost forever. The source of Dust - which turns out to be the physical manifestation of knowledge and experience - is renewed constantly with the dead. Even God, upon dying, turns into Dust - no more above or below anyone else, but part of the natural order of everything.
The books are confusing to read if, like me, you were brought up in a psuedoreligious household that had a vague understanding of God = good. It stands to reason, then, that the lack of God, the death of God, would be a tough break. But Pullman paints the church in a different light: in his books, the church campaigns against knowledge and understanding, since it was eating the fruit of knowledge that got us all into this clothed, dying mess in the first place. They see Dust as the manifestation of sin - which, you know, going back to that apple, it is. But not in a bad way.
Which is why I doubt that kids reading these books, if there are many, are getting the whole metaphysical dynamic. Truth be told, I had a hard time understanding a lot of what was going on. I studied the Bible in university and went to church as a kid, but the battle between good and evil, where Bad is the church - not evil church offshoots, but the legit main pillars - and Good is the upstart rebels campaigning for more information - is kind of a mind-blower. Say what you want about Harry Potter (and I lost interest around the time the book that was all about quidditch was released), but it was always clear who to root for.
That's the appeal of Pullman's so-called children's books. Usually, we like our books to have a stern and stately moral compass. But Pullman? He leaves us a little adrift, so we need to figure out what, exactly, we're rooting for here. Some of the Church-affiliated characters are sympathetic, while others are jerks; some rebel characters are huge egotistical nightmares, while others are people you'd want to drink bourbon with. He leaves it up to us. And God's death isn't the end - his particles are everywhere, in all worlds, just everyone else's. It's one of the more ambiguous books I've read in a long time, but it's a challenging and interesting one. Pullman's push for knowledge, for the Dust to settle on us all, is a lovely, weird, frightening story.
Friday, August 26, 2011
To Blatchford
Christie Blatchford has always had somewhat of a mean streak in her. When she wrote for the Globe and Mail, she focused her energy on the high-profile crimes, the war overseas, and got a reputation somewhere in the last 20 years for being a "hard hitting reporter" on her good days and "a total shrewish bitch" on her bad days.
She may have reached a new low when, earlier this week, she wrote a scathing article about Jack Layton mere hours after he died. She pummeled him for his politician's nature, for the outpouring of grief that came on the news of his death, for the so-called "Dianaization" of his death when Canadians, moved to action in their loss, memorialed him the man in Nathan Phillips Square. She scoffed at the news coverage and at his thoughtful deathbed letter.
Blatchford has often seemed to pride herself on her contrarian nature, but the commentary on her article has proved that perhaps the people whom she prides herself on speaking for aren't going to back her on this one. There are lots of people who have reacted with a "You tell 'em, Christie!" but many, many more who decried her as being thoughtless, for focusing on superficial elements rather than the larger issues - she scoffs at Layton's "energy retrofitted house," as though somehow living out one's political values is ridiculous - and fails to mention that Jack Layton, in recent months, had become something of a folk hero to Canadians. He had taken on the nation-imperiling Bloc and won, he had swept aside personal and political scandals as non-starters, he had led his party to unprecedented heights and genuinely had the support of Canadians behind him.
When he died, he released a letter that Blatchford dismissed as vainglorious pap; it was a letter that made me cry. Layton was a politician, and the letter was a political move. But it was also a thoughtful expression of his love for his life's work. He loved being a politician: leading people, changing their minds, engaging them in the political process. He was very good at it. Her dismissal of Layton's urging Canadians to work together and have faith in their country was callous and cold.
If you find yourself on Blatchford's side of things in this narrative, imagine for a moment that her article wasn't about Layton. Imagine that she was memorializing, in this dismissive, repulsive way, a favourite pastor of yours. A brother-in-law. A admired employer. Or even someone you met once and liked, because he was affable and likeable, even though part of you knew he was working on you - a politician, in other words. Now her reaction to his death looks even more appalling.
In the tradition of Dan Savage, who took Rick Santorum's name and make it into a filthy noun (Google "santorum" if you're scatologically bent), my friend Liz proposed that we take Blatchford's name and similarly defile it. Refashion her moniker into a work that means something vile, because on a sad day, she was vile. I would guess that, over time, "she's a real blatchford" might come to mean some heinous blend of callousness, "too-soon?" collar-tugging, self-aggrandizement, and plain old meanness. "To blatch" might mean to misread the tone of an event so supremely as to become a lightning rod for rage. I'm not calling for her head or her job, but I do think she should be embarrassed, and that The National Post might want to reconsider her high-profile writing, as it seems to piss off a majority of their readers.
I doubt she would, but I hope C.Blatch feels a pang of shame when she realized that Layton wasn't the smarmy a-hole she had painted him as; the tributes to him from regular, non-Post-affiliated folks attests to that. What kind of memorial will you inspire, Christie?
She may have reached a new low when, earlier this week, she wrote a scathing article about Jack Layton mere hours after he died. She pummeled him for his politician's nature, for the outpouring of grief that came on the news of his death, for the so-called "Dianaization" of his death when Canadians, moved to action in their loss, memorialed him the man in Nathan Phillips Square. She scoffed at the news coverage and at his thoughtful deathbed letter.
Blatchford has often seemed to pride herself on her contrarian nature, but the commentary on her article has proved that perhaps the people whom she prides herself on speaking for aren't going to back her on this one. There are lots of people who have reacted with a "You tell 'em, Christie!" but many, many more who decried her as being thoughtless, for focusing on superficial elements rather than the larger issues - she scoffs at Layton's "energy retrofitted house," as though somehow living out one's political values is ridiculous - and fails to mention that Jack Layton, in recent months, had become something of a folk hero to Canadians. He had taken on the nation-imperiling Bloc and won, he had swept aside personal and political scandals as non-starters, he had led his party to unprecedented heights and genuinely had the support of Canadians behind him.
When he died, he released a letter that Blatchford dismissed as vainglorious pap; it was a letter that made me cry. Layton was a politician, and the letter was a political move. But it was also a thoughtful expression of his love for his life's work. He loved being a politician: leading people, changing their minds, engaging them in the political process. He was very good at it. Her dismissal of Layton's urging Canadians to work together and have faith in their country was callous and cold.
If you find yourself on Blatchford's side of things in this narrative, imagine for a moment that her article wasn't about Layton. Imagine that she was memorializing, in this dismissive, repulsive way, a favourite pastor of yours. A brother-in-law. A admired employer. Or even someone you met once and liked, because he was affable and likeable, even though part of you knew he was working on you - a politician, in other words. Now her reaction to his death looks even more appalling.
In the tradition of Dan Savage, who took Rick Santorum's name and make it into a filthy noun (Google "santorum" if you're scatologically bent), my friend Liz proposed that we take Blatchford's name and similarly defile it. Refashion her moniker into a work that means something vile, because on a sad day, she was vile. I would guess that, over time, "she's a real blatchford" might come to mean some heinous blend of callousness, "too-soon?" collar-tugging, self-aggrandizement, and plain old meanness. "To blatch" might mean to misread the tone of an event so supremely as to become a lightning rod for rage. I'm not calling for her head or her job, but I do think she should be embarrassed, and that The National Post might want to reconsider her high-profile writing, as it seems to piss off a majority of their readers.
I doubt she would, but I hope C.Blatch feels a pang of shame when she realized that Layton wasn't the smarmy a-hole she had painted him as; the tributes to him from regular, non-Post-affiliated folks attests to that. What kind of memorial will you inspire, Christie?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
