HILARIOUS. I love how the cross on the T-shirt in frame 2 gets revealed as something meant to be impressive but not quite so in frame 3. And the slouch of the guy on the bench, whose body language and ending every sentence with “Man” would never indicate he’s talking about shopping for shower curtains. This is GREAT cultural commentary, Alison. Good stuff.
Congrats on the People Magazine list! You must just be reeling. Sleep on it, let your unconscious sort it out.
Speaking of cultural commentary — I’ve spent the last few days periodically watching (and laughing wildly) over:
To all the fellows out there with ladies to impress
It’s easy to do, just follow these steps
One: Cut a hole in a box…
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just watched the SNL clip. Congrats again on the People Magazine List. You deserve all of this you know Alison……you really do!
It’s hard to grin and bear those male types whose stops include Starbucks, Carl’s Jr. and AM/PM, where working out is an afterthought for the shape they look to be in.
I always thought I’d be snickering with schadenfreude when men started getting into the dumb stuff marketed to women. It hasn’t happened yet.
I can’t bear to glance at the cover of Men’s Health for fear they may broach the subject of cellulite. I shall weep for us as a species should that happen. But hey, People magazine? Holy cannoli, I might even have to buy one instead of reading it in my therapist’s office.
Yep, boys are dumb, but that clip was funny. Thanks for sharing Maggie.
The mets are still hat guys and just because they are capable of lifting heavier weights than women does not make them any more knowledgeable about fitness. Men think they can tell women how to do it right and perceive dieting as a threat to their masculinity, as pathetic a state it may be.
Wow, you have Macy’s in Vermont? I go to a gym well-known for its cruising (in the classic sense, Duncan and Silvio!) but I hear most of the action takes place in the men’s locker rooms. My fave interactions are when the men are grunting up a storm while lifting and other women and I snicker at their expense….sometimes I just want to yell out, “Give birth already! It’s killing me to hear you go on like this!” But, I also love watching/looking at the guys. Some of them are just downright beautiful, and I’m in awe of how strong they are. It makes my own sets go by quickly!
Also, wanted to respond to Maggie’s post in the last thread about her friend Pam. The story has certainly stuck with me; it’s so very sad. Thanks for sharing it, and for all the work you’ve done on behalf of women and girls.
judybusy, I read an interesting article by the gay anthropologist William Leap. He said that in the Washington DC health club where he got a membership, gay men did cruise each other, but would usually exchange phone numbers and meet elsewhere. It was “straight” identified men who’d do it in the sauna and stray corners.
I know what you mean about watching people work out. One of my favorite movies remains Robert Towne’s “Personal Best”, which I see as an interesting (if flawed) film about bisexuality instead of a failed film about lesbianism as many see it. The sport photography is just stunning: women lift weights, run, jump, and so on, and are photographed with care and love. If Tee Corinne could have done film, she would have photographed women athletes like that, I think. And the women are all, except for Mariel Hemingway, real athletes.
Maggie, thanks for boosting my ego! And I also LOVED that SNL clip (especially the expressions on Maya Rudolphs’s face-priceless!)On xmas eve, they showed a rerun with another excellent “video”: I’m sure many of y’all remember it; “The Chronicles of Narnia”? Don’t have a link, but I’m sure it can be easily googled. It’s f’ing hilarious, even the second time.
Alison, a couple of days ago, at my employer’s holiday party, I actually overheard this bit of conversation between two of my straight male co-workers; “Gary, do you think this sweater vest makes me look fat? Maybe I should take it off, just go with the shirt?” (True, my hand to God.)
the anthropologist’s comment about it being the “straight” identified men who use the gym for their trysts reminded me of the music of Romanovsky and Philips. (Anybody remember them?) They (along with Michael Callen and The Flirtations )
did for gay male (and sometimes lesbian) culture in music what DTWOF did visually. Their songs were a scrapbook of the political and social gay 90s.
The last time I googled “Romanovsky” I learned that Philips was managing a health food store in the Boston area and Romanovsky was entertaining wedding parties with his accordion. But i just searched again and discovered–oh joy!– that Ron Romanovsky has a brand new solo album!
That SNL clip is going to be viewed tomorrow at work, for sure…where do I work? Why, MACY’S! And lemme tell ya, you haven’t seen metrosexuals in action until you’ve seen a burly Chicago firefighter arguing vehemently with his (female)fiance between Wedgwood’s “Madeleine” china pattern vs. Bernardaud’s “Constance” for their registry. When they settle that, another battle ensues regarding the stemware. When some guys create a beautiful table setting, I say, “Wow, aren’t YOU the clever urban metrosexual?” and watch them turn pale and their balls climb up into their abdominal cavities. It’s fun.
Maggie Jochild, I also wanted to express how I was affected by your story about your friend Pam. You have done the best thing possible - turned pain into positive action. It’s something I’m certainly not always capable of, and I have a lot of respect for you for that.
Now I have to go get “dick in a box” out of my head….
Oh, and in the last thread - Duncan’s “people of pallor.” Christ on a raft, that’s fucking genius! I’m so white one can view my entire neural network running just underneath my skin. I wonder if I could get some weird job at a medical school as a study aid. No dissection necessary! Thanks, Duncan, for a great label for those of us who are pigmentally challenged.
Which thread to choose? I’ll just connt on others being like me, reading it ALL. I loved “people of pallor” too. In 1979, my roommate Kathie Bailey started, as a joke, using the phrase “people of lesser melanin”, only to have it picked up by dykes striving for political correctness but not using their own thinking about it. Very funny. Not that I’m making fun of political correctness, because it was (and is) an earnest attempt to use language to help redress imbalance. When my godson was four or five, we were discussing ethnicity and he declared (not joking) that his ethnicity was pale. He had overhead his parents talking about SPF issues with him (he is so very, very pale) and reached his own conclusion about that that meant.
TSB, kudos to your son. (Ginjoint, I too cannot get “dick in a box” out of my head. And now it’s blending with Alison’s guy rubbing his buzz cut and Gary asking his friend if his sweater vest made him look fat.) One review I read said of those two sketches that it reminded them of the glory days of SNL, when the humor was unrestrained. For those of us addicted to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, this question, what is funny and what are the uses of humor, is being talked about every week. I wonder how many of us watch on this blog Studio 60, and Grey’s Anatomy? I saw Tavis Smiley interview Shonda Rime before Grey’s ever aired and knew on the spot it was the show for me, because of how she’s addressing race on TV.
Silvio and Duncan, I LOVE how you make me think. And even more, I love that we’re discussing class on this blog. One stat I want to throw out there is that 80% of the working class people in this country identify themselves (mistakenly) as middle class. Which helps explain why politicians always claim to be playing to the middle class, when it sure doesn’t look that way from the issues being discussed. Poor people and the owning class, on the other hand, seldom have delusions about where they are on the scale — we/they are viewed as the expendables, and are often understand each other better than those of other classes. Somebody (sorry I can’t remember your name at the moment, honey) mentioned the Bertold Brecht quote, which I’d never heard but loved it — it is very similar to Gandhi’s comment “There are people so hungry that the only meaningful definition of God is as bread.” Anne Wilson Schaef, at least a decade ago, said American culture as a whole was owning class, not just compared to the rest of the world but also in its ideals and media culture. If that’s the case, everybody except that 2% at the top is walking around feeling deprived and frightened about survival. Which would explain a lot.
Another important thing to remember about class is that economic punishment (i.e., classism) is the glue used to keep most other oppressions (especially race and gender) in place. There is, of course, the omnipresent threat of violence keeping us in line, but day to day, it’s the fear of losing our jobs, our homes, our spot on the ladder that keeps those hellacious lies about non-people-of-pallor and non-dick-wearers being handed as if they were true.
Thanks for bringing up the economic reality of motherhood, Silvio. And my heart broke when you said you lost custody of your children. My god, I’m so sorry. How did you go on? And bless you for telling us.
These guys are everywhere: Overheard in free weight section of California Fitness…
Guy A(clicking off gizmo but not touching wireless ear piece thing):We can’t get into Hugo Boss. They got fire regulations. Unless you want to queue half an hour.
Guy B: See if you can book us foot rubs instead…
But I’m still intimidated by their mass & muscles…
Can i be a “person of pallor” too? I’ a redhead, and my skin glows like a halogen light bulb, it’s so white. But I’m extremely freckled (I must’ve been a liver-spotted dalmation in a previous life), so much so that one summer day, I fully expect all the freckles will finally join together, and I will have the tan of my dreams…
I was back reading the previous posts, and I suddenly remembered a bit of “Little Women” trivia: I once read an article that strongly argued that “Mr. Baer” actually represented a female partner for “Jo” –or her creator–(remember-he has a “beard”) and that “Little Men” represented her desire to live in a “man’s world” vs her desire to retain her “feminine” nature. Does anyone else remember reading this, and if so, what’s your take? I must confess, although I read “Little Men”, I was not as taken with it as it’s predecessor, so I don’t remember much of it. Did Jo actually birth some babies, or were her children adopted?( I thought they were adopted–but I’m old, and my memeory’s foggy.) I know the school was for boys-some without parents? All that aside, I’ve always had this feeling Louisa was on our team, even though I know of no proof to back this up. (Brain fog-rising again…)
Why all this disdain for straight men that don’t conform to the butch stereotype? What would you like these men to be discussing? Car repair? The size of a woman’s breasts? The pleasures of war?
I think it’s nice that men now feel comfortable enough to talk about things that were formerly thought feminine. I took that to be the point of Allison’s comment at the beginning of the sketch–she used to be intimidated by these big, burly men, but now she sees that they’re just like everyone else.
The great benefit of being a metrosexual, Virginia, is that it means a man can both “talk about things that were formerly thought feminine” AND “the size of a woman’s breasts” and the “pleasures of war.” I think you’re right about Alison’s point in the sketch; but you know, guys who talk about breasts and war are still people, just like everyone else. People who intimidate us are still people. And all in all I agree with you here: I don’t get why metrosexuals are supposedly so funny, except in a fag-joke sort of way, which I don’t think is funny either.
The whole metrosexual thing is one more marketing fad, as far as I can tell. (I read a book earlier this year by the advertising people who claim to have sold the fad.) Though yes, many men are interested in “unmanly” things, but I don’t see that worrying about whether a vest makes you look fat is an improvement. Other things are more important, and women should not have to worry about these things (are my thighs disgusting?) either.
Thanks, Silvio and Maggie, for all your kind remarks. As I said, I’m not sure where “people of pallor” comes from. Maggie, I remember encountering the term “melanin challenged” or “melanin deficient” sometimes.
Silvio, I knew Paul Philips slightly here in Bloomington in the 70s. Alas, R & P’s music never did much for me. I’m still looking for gay men’s music that I could be really be a fan of, and I don’t think I’m ever going to find it. I need to get my guitar fixed so I can go back to making it. Matter of taste, I guess.
You’re right, Virginia, we should not be poking fun at men because they are doing “feminine” things, and if I’ve done that, I regret it. For me, the humor/irony comes from the fact that the non-target group (in the case of gender, those raised with male conditioning) invariably gets to define the divisions between the two groups in a binary, and when (in this case) men decide it’s suddenly okay to be talking about shopping and worried about how they look, that behavior gets redefined as male. There is no logic to any of it, no rational basis for any gender roles. Masculine/feminine are equally toxic, myths used solely for oppression to which we are raised to be emotionally attached, and I personally believe there is no good to had in trying to reclaim or rehabilitate them.
The humor in the SNL sketch is akin to the humor of Stephen Colbert — someone putting on the role somewhat sympathetically in order to comment on how ludicrous it is. It’s an extraordinarily effective way to point out the idiocy of masculinity — similar to drag, but far better done than any drag I’ve seen except for “Paris is Burning”, where those dragsters understood how to simultaneously address class and race, not just gender (I mean, they are all intertwined constantly anyhow). Most drag is a one-trick pony. Another great example of drag that contradicts more than it reinforces was in the documentary “Third Eye Blind”, a group of four Chinese-American dykes who did drag performances about the racism of the U.S. military man, instead of glorifying/sexualizing men in uniform. And, back in the 1980s, the women who were in Izquierda, led by Naomi Littlebear Moreno, would periodically perform as the Dyketones (not to be confused with a later all-white lesbian Dyketones band that has cassettes at Ladyslipper) — a parody of 1950s doo-wop that, again, punched gaping holes in the misogyny and racism of that era’s pop music affectations and divisions.
What I expect of art, of meaningful pop culture, is that do several things at once — raise the level of discourse, question the dominant paradigm, reflect a shared reality which is not being depicted enough in other media, stay kind except when dealing with a group holding onto oppressive behavior, offer hope and at least one idea of how things could be different, etc.
I have made the leap into this thread. I am happy to see that the discussion of class has made the leap here too!
shadocat, delighted to learn that you are a redhead! (One should give all colors a fair chance, but I confess I am partial to redheadedness.)
Unfortunately, my home computer is too slow to play those SNL videos, so I will have to let my frustration at not understanding the joke blow right away, and just be happy I am home for two weeks, even if it means not having the use of my fast office computer. Two weeks home is a wonderful thing!
Duncan, do you know the music of Fred Small? He was a Boston lawyer who took up music full time. A very good songwriter. Perhaps you have heard his songs: “Scott and Jamie” (about a court custody case that removed two little foster children from the home of two gay male partners.) And then his allegory of tolerance: “If I were a Moose” […and you were a cow/would you love me anyhow?]
In the 90s after seeing him perform at some political function for gay rights, I idiotically wrote him a fan letter and asked him why he didn’t “come out”…He actually wrote me a handwritten reply and told me he was not gay; just an ally. Was my face red! As if it would be my business anyway if he were…
Romanovsky and Phillips wrote some good ones too. Some of my favorites include “No Such Thing as False Hope,” “One of the Enemy,” and “I’m in Love with my Therapist,” to name just a few.
When it comes to songwriting, being written by a gay person is not automatically enough for a song to touch my heart or make me laugh. A good songwriter is a good songwriter, period.
Back around 1988, I went to a women’s festival, and being new to feminist/women’s culture I was trying so hard to appreciate feminist songwriters. In the midst of this total overhaul of my entire aesthetic history, I thoughtlessly bumped Joni Mitchell off my “okay” list. Another lesbian heard me analyzing/criticizing her work, the way we do when we are trying to justify our taste. She looked at me and said “Joni Mitchell is the Goddess of Music!” She could have been reading my mind, if it had not been filmed over with my insecurity as I tried to slap my instincts into line with what I THOUGHT I should like.
Years later I thought about this moment, and realized that Joni always voiced her own original take on everything, (and so musically) and that was what made her a strong intelligent woman and an original writer.
So Duncan, I sympathize with your quest for gay men’s music you can “be a fan of.” PLEASE get your guitar fixed. If you make music that is as intelligent and eclectic as your conversation here, I would love to hear it.
shadocat,
I am not familiar with that theory about Professor Baer, but I do remember that Jo gave birth to two little boys who are part of “Little Men.” I would agree that her life in Little Men is more male identified than her life in Little Women, where she was surrounded by girl issues. And in Little Men, Jo gets to live a role that is more free than hers would have been in “polite society.” She is the boss, after all, of her little world, whereas, if she’d grown up to live in polite society, she would have to observe more female conventions.
So in a way, Alcott was able to circumvent the public’s expectations of her character, because she is surrounded by boys and is kind of a jack of all trades. (Baer is kind of helpless without Jo; she is almost the husband, in a way.)
By “he has a beard” did you mean that Baer was serving as Jo’s “beard” [disguise]?
Jo of Little Women always reminded me a little of Jo of the Chalet School (who ended up marrying the school doctor & having triplets called Len, Con & something…) they were both exciting but safely feminine role models who had exciting adventures, grew up in very female environments then married good husbands and had many happy children…
Don’t suppose anyone else here remembers the Chalet School books?
It’s nice to know you’re a fan of the redheads; so many people aren’t you know(”redheaded stepchild”,etc).
Thanks for clearing that up about Jo-like I said, I didn’t read “Little Men”, or “Jo’s Boys” with the same ardor that I did with LW, partly because(remember, I was about 11), I thought Jo had sort’ve “sold out”, marrying
and all.
While surfing the web looking for the afomentioned “mystery article”, I have not found said article yet, but I was able to find some interesing quotes, which maybe would help to bolster my theory as LMA as “family”. (BTW, you are correct about the whole “beard” thing—Mr.Baer, at least according to this writer, was really serving as the other sort of “beard”–an effort to disguise Alcott’s ideal partner, or even perhaps, a real relationship.) Anyhoo– here are the quotes (the first from Wikipedia, my old stand-by):
Although the Jo character in Little Women was based on Louisa May Alcott, Alcott, unlike Jo, never married. She explained her “spinsterhood” in an interview with the writer Louise Chandler Moulton, “… because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”
Or this one from the “Books and Writers” website:
Louisa May Alcott died from intestinal cancer in Boston on March 6, 1888. She never married. In an interview Alcott once said of herself: “I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body”.
Why is there a note disdain for men who don’t conform to the butch type? Good question that only the author cam truly answer. The dyke character im the sketch appears to be a quiet adversary who doesn’t want to even acknowledge the presence of males. At my office I overhear male colleagues talk about the gym, their weight and trying to stay in good shape. It’s a challenge when the avaibility of processed foods from vending machines, quick mart stops and fast food/restaurant eateries beckon with the convenience of in and out and threaten our butts and waistlines. I know that when I work out at a small gym that serves our office of 200 people and these men work out. Instead of wishing those men would go away, it’s better to welcome them and support whatever goals they may have. I never see any dykes or butches working out or when I run everyday. In fact, most gay women I have seen out and about are at least 40 pounds overweight with a bad haircut themselves that they paid about $20 for. As a gay woman who is tired, tired, tired of the deep voiced butch persona that makes me cringe worse than Alison’s female character, I’ll take the metrosexual at the gym who is making an effort to defy what they were taught.
My last haircut was $12 and has gotten rave reviews from everyone. Took courage to cut off 10 inches of hair, but now six months after that haircut people everywhere I go still kind of stop, stare at me, and then breathlessly exclaim how they really love my hair.
I can only imagine that they would pass out had I gotten that evil $20 haircut.
Dear Shoe,
I agree with your rejection of disdain as a response to Others. And your point about overweight dykes (and other human beings) is true. As much as the feminist movement has worked to rehabilitate the concept that fat is okay, I can’t let go of my true feeling, which is that health is more beautiful.
Is health like money? Do we put health and wealth on a pedestle and then disadvantage those who don’t have it? (the poor and the fat are in a lower class?)
I can’t deny that I admire sleek, muscular bodies more than I admire bulky, curvy womanly shapes. Is my personal aesthetic male-identified? I am able to appreciate womanly curves–Queen Latifah comes to mind.
But most fat women don’t look sculpted like her. Have I been trained to only find thinness beautiful? I don’t know.
But I don’t like it when my jeans don’t fit me “right.” I am at least 40 pounds overweight. My doctor writes “obese” on my medical charts even though I don’t LOOK that bad; it’s all in the numbers I suppose. It really burns me up to be called obese because it does set a standard I have not chosen to live “up” to.
It reminds me of when my son was about 7; he wanted to go on the roller coasters and the parks would have a height chart the kid had to measure up to.
So I say if those men want to be health conscious, great. I think that whole term “metrosexual” is right up there with gay people calling children “ankle biters” or “rug rats.” Back in the 90s I found it kind of demeaning, just like I hated being called a “breeder” as a derrogatory term.
let’s face it, nobody likes being labelled with an insulting term. It’s much easier to be like that guy in Kung Fu in the 60s (David Carradine?) who treated everyone with respect, but he could kick ass when it was necessary.
Fat does not equal unhealthy, or unattractive. It’s a normally occurring body type — always has been. The problems with health associated with being fat in America have to do with what we’re eating (not how much), lack of exercise, and chronic dieting, all of which are implicated in things like elevated cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes in a way that just being fat does not necessarily indicate. Association does not mean cause and effect. Black skin is associated with hypertension but the solution is not to try to change your race.
Over what weight? Over the statistical average? Over what Western medicine has labeled “healthy” (the same medical establishment that labels disability as a medical problem, has a diagnosis code for small breasts, and experiments with hormone treatments to get rid of women’s facial hair?) Oh my god, you mean not looking like the “norm” is considered unhealthy/ugly? Alert the press.
It’s one thing if you want to admit your prejudice and bias, even if it is self-hatred at bottom. (Although I’m a little shocked to see it here, in these pages where most of us try not to say negative things about others based on their appearance or birthright.) It’s another thing if you try to prove it is based on science. Or that there is some agreed-upon definition of a “bad haircut” (how can you assign a moral value to a hair style?) Content of character is what counts, not skin, weight, hair, class, gender, physical ability — I keep wishing we could learn that permanently.
More on the class issue: Silvio, in the “Bloody Hell. Again.” thread, we had a discussion going on class mobility and you had made reference to it’s supposedly OK to move classes in this country. This only made ask more questions and ponder, ponder, ponder.
Mostly about really basic questions about what *are* the elements of class? Money is part of it. But is what we like culturally too? Is a person more upper class if they go to modern dance rather than a country and western concert? Can a person with a high school diploma be upper class? As far as upward mobility, I think people can go up to a point; when you start entering Society, I think that stratus is likely difficult to really penetrate. What do others think?
I am reading Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton now, and wow, did Society have many rules! In some ways, the women’s lives were much more restrictive at that class than lower ones.
Most gay women are about 40-50 pounds overweight. Am I wrong? I’m hard pressed to see a lean lesbian but most are extremely short-haired chubby to fat dykes. It’s sad that they don’t consider the health risks of being overweight. Some of you will justify it, call me hateful and say “fat is beautiful” but I disagree when it includes being immobilized to a wheelchair or crutches, having tubed hooked up or become a corpse from a stroke or heart attack. Imagine never being able to take a walk, enjoy the fresh air and scenery because you are too fat to walk. Not pretty!
But most people 40-50 pounds overweight are not confined to wheelchairs. Fat might not be your opinion of beautiful but your opinion of beauty does NOT mean you are justified in make disparaging and threatening remarks about others and their health, especially others you have not met.
And yes, you are probably wrong when you say most lesbians are about 40-50 pounds overweight. Hell, we can’t even tell who the lesbians are most of the time… how on earth could you collect reasonable data regarding overweightedness???
Well, Alison’s slender. And I’ve got a lot of lesbian customers, all in good shape and some with long hair.
Silvio, you should find another doctor~I can’t imagine 40 pounds overweight making someone obese. (Unless you’re only 4 feet tall.) Some of us love a soft, curvy body. A litle extra padding makes menopause easier. And sometimes, a few extra pounds show that the person is happy. I was my skinniest when I was miserable.
My last physical stated I was “underweight, at risk of malnourishment”. My sister, a titch shorter than I am, weighs about a hundred pounds more than I do, and we’re probably about equally healthy (with any extra points going to her - less coffee and no smoking, probably less risk of osteoporosis).
We’re different body types - I’m close to pure ectomorph, she’s an endomorph. You could look at photos of us throughout the years and see the difference clearly, from infancy on up. She was a chubby, attractive child; I a waif with stick thin legs and arms. The trend continued into adulthood and to the present. Nowt to do with our sexuality - though we could both use more physical activity, that’s got nothing to do with our sexuality either.
Health isn’t dependent on body size, or sexual preferences.
Sksindurham, I have a right to my opinion and what I am saying does NOT threaten anyone. Threat is a strong word to use, especially when no actions or consequences have been being proposed. Perhaps you feel threatened because I am not afraid to call dykes on being fat. It’s not my fault if you don’t like what the mirror may be telling you! Alison looks thin but probably is as health conscious as her comic strip alter ago Mo. As I can recall, the Mo character avoids eating bad food and is health conscious. I don’t like fat lesbians, period. I have every right to feel that way and have preferences, and that’s not a threat to anyone.
I guess everyone is going to hate me after what I`m about to write now, my problem has always been, being underweight (hope that is a word). This causes backache, bruising easily and being really really cold all trough the winter. And other people have not made this easy. When I was teen ager I was thougt to be anorectic and the school nurse made teachers check if I went to the bathroom sight after lunch, I was called flat, skeletor etc. all the time.
I have no preconsieved ideas about people with extra weight, since gaining weight is so difficult for me I might be able to guess how hard it is to loose some.
Sometimes being overweight is caused by medical conditon or medicine used to treat illneses like rheumatism or even cancer.
People do say mean thing to skinny people also, and to black people, to everyone.
If one wants to hurt person`s feelings, one can always come up with something, let`s jus not. OK?
I seem to have started a troublesome topic. First grammar, now fat. I admire the way people speak up about their opinions on this blog, but let’s not descend into unkindness.
It is interesting how things as different in mode as appearance (fat) and grammar (correctness) can incite irritation and escalation.
Am I being like parents who tell their children home visiting from college “let’s not talk about anything unpleasant” if I ask that we refrain from making hurtful remarks?
I agree with Maggie wholeheartedly when she says “Content of character is what counts… and I wish we could learn that permanently.” AMEN to that!
Judybusy, what is the name of that other Edith Wharton book that was made into a movie with Scully from the X-Files as the lead actress? The title is taken from a bible quotation and of course I can’t think of it, but the story is a chilling tale of how vulnerable a woman of that period could be without the financial support of a husband, or rich relatives. At the end of the story, after unsuccessfully trying to support herself “trimming bonnets,” she kills herself (if I am not mistaken.) Yes, the expectations of upper class women were pretty exacting.
Liz, I’d really like to believe that you’re unworthy of that comment, that it was written in haste and simply poorly worded. Do you really mean your dislike specific to fat lesbians? Or do you mean you don’t like fat people of any ilk, no matter *who* they are, that you consider them beyond the pale, people who really aren’t worthy of your time or attention?
If the former, what is it about fat lesbians that’s so unlikable? Just the way they look? How they act? How they think?
If the latter, the same questions apply.
Think about it.
Or as Tom Leher said: “I’m sure we all agree that we ought to love one another and I know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings and I *hate* people like that.”
HOUSE OF MIRTH, by EDITH WHARTON. I thought it was about the unyielding social rules. but what I projected onto it was how inflexible individuals are in the face of rules.
My, my; quite a nerve we’ve touched on with the body weight thread.
Katie, the time stamp on postings seems to be off by an hour. I wonder if it has something to do with the end of daylight savings. It doesn’t really matter, of course, I’m just trying to divert the conversation to something a little less touchy!
Okay, the English teacher part of me is going to step in.
Liz says she has the right to her opinion. Simplified, an opinion is a personal belief or view. A fact is a truth known by actual experience, observation or data. When Liz says “Most gay women are about 40-50 pounds overweight” she is stating it as one would state a fact. So, while Liz is entitled to her opinion, she needs to state it as opinion, not as if it were a fact.
More to the point, the statement “most gay women are about 40-50 pounds overweight” is rather whacked. What test subjects did you use to come up with this figure? How did you know who was gay? What weight is the “correct” one to determine if someone is over that weight? How did you collect your data? Did you bring bathroom scales to clubs, co-ops, bus stops, your local MCC?
I see dykes of all sizes and shapes (and hair-lengths) here in Boulder –although as a group, Boulderites tend to be people of pallor.
Liz, you need to get out more! Or at least, consider your comments more thoughtfully before posting them.
DW and to Silvio–Yes, it was House of Mirth. That’s the only other Wharton I’ve read. God, it was so sad! I didn’t know it got made into a movie. Must get it on my list, as I liked Gillian Anderson–at least that’s who I recall played Scully.
In case this hasn’t been posted yet, I want to mention another kudo for Alison. “Time Out New York” (the weekly what to do in NYC mag) has Fun Home listed first in their “Best books of 2006″ column!!
I’ve been over 100 lbs overweight and at no point have I ever been confined to a wheelchair or on crutches. But the kind of comments I’ve read by Liz sound very familiar - the kind of thing that starts with people saying “she’s too fat and ugly to get a man, she must be a lesbian”, which can be internalised and repeated by far too many lesbians themselves.
Still, 35 lbs down now and counting (mainly through walking, funnily enough). I’m taking up jogging in the New Year. Fingers crossed there won’t be too many judgemental characters in the park laughing at me.
Okay, okay, about the whole fat issue, straight males acting “feminine”, metrosexuals, etc. This was my take when I first read this strip, this is how I took it: when my expectations are turned upside-down, it makes me LAUGH. Suprising things, new things, often make me SMILE. That’s about it. As far as the way the guys in the gym look, we don’t know where they are on their “journey”. Maybe they’re just starting out. Or perhaps 6 months ago they were so big they could barely get theough the gym door. BTW, I thought it was cute when those young guys in my office were worried about the way they looked. Most of the time, they try so hard to project an image of confidence, so it was nice to see that they’re human like the rest of us.
Liz, I’m thinking (and hoping) you meant, “I’m not sexually atracted to larger women. I find I’m only sexually attracted to thinner women.” I’m sure if you think about it, there are some fat women in your life you really do like. It’s just that thin is what does it for you. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
Maggie, I agree, some people are just naturally bigger than others. The problem is that we see this image in the media of what the “ideal” person is supposed to look like, and those of us who don’t automatically fit into that catagory
go through a lot of angst and grief while we try to be something we’re not. (At least some of us do.)And many of the “people of thinness” discriminate against us, which I have never understood.
One of the reasons I’ve always been a Harriet fan is because I sorta looks like her (actually my friends tell me if Mo and Harriet could’ve made a baby, THAT’S what I look like-kinda scary, huh?) I’ve never had trouble finding a gf, although sometimes I suspect my “Rubenesqueness” (is that a word?)has cost me a job or two. But generally, I have a pretty good life. Now if you can’t walk, breathe, etc, because of your weight-get thee to a doctor, find a way to lose a few! Otherwise, can’t we just all get along????
The House of Mirth is a great book. Natch; it’s Edith Wharton. And the movie is as faithful to it as possible. Therein lies the reason the movie didn’t do well. The underlying predicament, rigid social norms, just doesn’t resonate today, partly because of The House of Mirth.
Shadowcat, “rubenesqueness” is indeed a word. In fact, I saw it used in a blog today.
At this point, I suspect Lois would reply, “Get along with a Red-haired Rubenesque Babe? No Problem!
But seriously, YES, YES, YES.
Having attended the Michigan Festival about 7 times (but not in the last 10 years), the beauty of every kind of body was revealed to me (I mean, literaly “revealed.”) And I marvelled at how comfortable so many women can be with their own shapes. Actually, about a year ago, I went to some local womyn’s land for a music festival and saw an old acquaintance from the 80s whom I had not seen in a long time. There was a lake, and she calmly took off all her clothes and went swimming, and she was quite “Rubenesque.”
There is an adjustment getting used to nudity, but it is a very healing thing. It is more about one’s own feelings of fear and self-distrust than about the way other people look. I remember at the Michigan Festival there were some women who would wear a decorative sash around their waists and nothing else. It was kind of shocking at first (Formerly Catholic girl here)but then one morning I realized i did not feel shocked anymore. That is acceptance, I believe.
So I just am trying to get to a place of “We all have a right to be here,” and if I can stay in that place, I stop hearing all the judgmental noises in my psyche.
Does anyone remember the photographer Diane Arbus’ photographs of the nudist colony? It was suburban mom-and-pop culture, complete with dad mowing the lawn; the only difference was that nobody was wearing clothes. Those pictures really achieved the same goal Lenny Bruce was trying to do: de-sensitize us from our shock when society’s rules (clothes, obscene language) are transgressed.
I confess, I still don’t agree that the inclusion of obscene language (where words that denote sex take on the verbal role of violent behavior and agression: at least that is how I perceive the list of “dirty words”) was a worthy goal. In spite of the bravery of Lenny Bruce, and I know he was trying to liberate himself and the world around him, I have an inner Edith Bunker that just doesn’t want to approach the need for freedom that way.
I know I am rambling, and we just reached a plateau about fat and now I am introducing nudity and obscenity; I just don’t learn, do I?
So Liz doesn’t like me. I’m having a hard time understanding how that could even be possible, since she’s never met me, and I’ve only commented a couple times on this blog, so she can’t have much of a sense of my on-line personality either.
Or maybe Liz just means she isn’t sexually attracted to me. Again, that seems weird, since she has no idea what I look like, but it’s not a problem since I already have a girlfriend.
Liz, the fact that someone is fat (or thin for that matter) tells you absolutely nothing about her health, what kind of person she is, or whether she is likely to have short or long hair (I cut off about a foot of hair recently, and it feels great. It’s still not super-short, though). You seem to have inhaled quite a few of society’s prejudices about fat women, which are not unlike society’s prejudices about lesbians. It’s sad, really.
I am not attracted to overweight lesbian women at all. I am very health conscious and prefer to treat my body as a temple and not as a trash can for fast food empties. If a lesbian wants to be fat, that’s her right and her business as long as I don’t have to help pay her medical bills and I don’t have to go home with her.
Fat is not naturally occurring but a slow metabolic rate is, which is something that most of us can control through exercising and eating healthy so we don’t get fat. Being in good physical shape is a preference and fat is not as much a preference but a choice if we choose to not care what we consume. Sexual orientation is subject to preferences and overweight lesbians are not one of them.
Read the statistics for type 2 diabetes. My ex didn’t listen but wanted her french fries and all those good tasting fatty foods that feel so good for a moment but the disease she’s got is forever. I hope she enjoys her crutches!
I’m sure a lot of people in the world would agree with you, Liz. To most folks, being overweight is a sign of moral weakness. Of course, most people probably think sexual choice is something you can choose on a whim, so they think one gets overweight on a whim as well. Which is pretty divorced from reality, but what people believe rarely coincides with reality.
Your last bit about your ex makes me glad she’s not with you any longer. The breakup must have been a bitter one.
Hate arises from fear and pain. Not logic. Let’s don’t argue with someone who is trying, however ineffectively, to share how she’s been hurt. Even if she’s being disrespectful. I say that as a fat woman, a disabled woman (not on crutches, but yes a walker, a raised poor woman with congenital bony abnormalities that really, truly were not a preference on my part to be not in good physical shape).
It is interesting, the connection the prejudice seems to make between fat and lesbianism.
But, I’m going to change the topic, as others have tried. I haven’t read Edith Wharton, so I can’t join that effort. Instead, I’ll ask how many readers of this blog are practicing artists (music, graphic arts, writers, dance, fabric, cooking, parenting, you define it for yourself) and what is it, in particular, about Alison’s work that speaks to you as an artist?
Also, to Alison directly — I think maybe it’s time for your website to have a sidebar listing ALL your honors, as they do keep pouring it. It would not be immodest of you, not in the least. Promote yourself, honey.
I’m a handweaver. When I get stressed the people around me say “don’t you need to go do something on your loom?” At Christmas when I was a loose ends for a whole bunch of reasons one of the big things that got me through was weaving. I haven’t been weaving long but it’s been like coming home and my enthusiasm seems to be growing so I now do a good bit of daydreaming wondering exactly how much poverty I would encounter if I tried to make a living at weaving.
The thing that keeps resonating with me in all those amazing reviews is that Alison was telling a story in Fun Home that was uniquely hers and desperately needed to be expressed (I think that’s what one of the reviews said… don’t remember which one.) That’s what my weaving feels like. Its uniquely mine, one thread at a time, and I desperately need to express it. I now have a house littered with looms of all shapes and sizes so even if I travel, or have guests, or whatever, I can still weave something.
I also think it’s really cool that from the most ancient of times weaving has been an important and even sacred thing. I also have an academic background in physics so doing something fundamental like understanding how strings or yarn becomes cloth really appeals to me. I’ve always thought of cartooning as this magical amazing thing in which somebody takes a pen and paper and creates… people. Or ideas. Or things. Or somehow manages to tell me something that I needed to know, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. It’s a lovely form of storytelling, which is another ancient, sacred art.
Hi Maggie, I know you’re changing the topic but
i’ll just squeeze in one last crutch-fat post… I’m occasionally on crutches/walker too–and no, Liz, neither being lesbian nor on crutches was a lifestyle choice.
I think the met sketch & a lot of the postings here are really about preconceptions–& trying to push through them. Point is not making fun of guys talking about sales & haircuts but that we–looking at their exteriors–could have spent so long thinking them an alien species… and maybe the same thing applies to ‘fat lesbians’ seen from the outside?
Liz, I know you ‘knew’ your ex and her affair with french fries, but that could be like working out alongside muscle men every week right?
Maggie, does copywriting count as an art form? I’ve also written had some plays performed. What I really like about Alison B is how real & honest her stuff is–what she presents is accurate, I trust what I see–but at the same time it’s re-framed or re-focused so that I notice things I don’t notice in ‘real’ life. Makes me see real life with more depth & more lightness.
Thanks for your thoughtful, compassionate post AND your change of subject.
I am a writer. Dykes to Watch Out For (#1) was the first book I read after coming out back in the mid 80’s. Like Dykes, my first five books focused—with an eye toward humor and social justice—on day-to-day queer and lesbian life.
What has stayed with me over the last 20 years is Alison’s devotion to her art. I’m also impressed how her work keeps evolving. It’s brave to try new forms, especially when the old forms are still working.
Finally, I relate to how tough she is on herself. Not necessarily healthy, but something I also experience.
Thanks for raising the question. Back to the novel…
This is a public service announcement for Xanthe and any others who might be interested in fitness.
Jogging, especially if you haven’t done it in a long time, is hard on the body. I love to run, I even paid for a while to train with a coach, but it can leave you hurting all over which can be very discouraging. If you’re not already in good shape, and sometimes if you are, it can damage your knees and your feet leaving you in chronic pain.
There is an alternative, the adult sized scooter. I’ve owned one for a couple of years now and I love it. The particular kind I own is called a Kickbike (http://www.kickbikeamerica.com). There are some other kinds available in the U.S., Sidewalkers(http://www.sidewalkerusa.com/), Diggler Dirt Dawgs(http://www.digglerstore.com/) and Toucan scooters(http://www.belizebike.com/english/scooter.html).
The benefits are:
1) Easy on the body. The joints don’t take the same pounding as with running and you’re not as cramped as on a bicycle (I love bicycling as well; I quit when my back injuries made it impossible).
2) Low maintenance. No chain or gears to maintain.
3) Easy on the pants. You don’t wear out the seat as with a bicycle.
4) Looks cool. I get tons of compliments and when I park it people can’t resist checking it out.
5) Safe. I don’t remember ever falling off the thing.
6) Practical. I actually commute to work on it, it takes me about half an hour. On a bicycle it would take me 10 or 15 minutes.
7) Fun.
8) Great exercise. Works the muscles, works the joints, works the cardiovascular system, might even improve your flexibility.
I bought the scooter at a time when I was so injured that I could neither run nor bicycle—but now I prefer the scooter to a bicycle. It’s great.
(Caveat: The one improvement I made to the Kickbike, the installation of a wider footplate, was a big improvement and I could only get the footplate from a manufacturer in Holland (http://www.steptrading.nl/eng/index.html). If it weren’t for that little issue I would unreservedly recommend the Kickbike. Some of the other makers manufacture their models with wider footplates as the standard, and I think that’s a good idea.)
Mid level government functionary by day, fantasist by vocation. No money in it but thoroughly done. I don’t like Wes Anderson and Tim Burton because their stuff is so unrealistic. I can handle the fantasy all by myself, thanks. I like AB’s stuff because it is so real. Fun Home was not where I grew up but where I grew up had that same sense of dread and something’s wrong; seeing it in another family helps me understand mine. Am I looking in a mirror or looking out a window? I thought that’s what art is for.
When I was young, I was always fairly skinny, though I rarely dieted and never exercised beyond walking and square dancing. This was no great virtue on my part; I just got my metabolism from my father instead of my mother. During my first siege of depression and migraines in my late twenties, I got down to 87 pounds, which is way too thin even when you’re 4′11″. I was sick. Later, when I was in my early 40s, I went to a headache clinic in Michigan, where I was put on medication that successfully prevented migraines. It also made me gain sixty pounds in six months. I quit the meds, but my metabolism has never been the same. At one point I was a little over 180 pounds; now I’ve stabilized at a little under 140.
My eating and excercising habits have never changed much through all this, though I have had to give up walking and square dancing due to mysterious hip pain. I would like to get back down to 120, but I don’t see it ever happening. None of this has anything to do with my “not taking care of myself.” It’s all about metabolism. So skinny folks shouldn’t get too smug about themselves. You never know when something unexpected is going to happen to your body that will suddenly turn you into a butterball.
By the way, it was during my skinny period that I was most active as a lesbian. And I’ve always liked women nicely padded. Not obese, but squeezable. Now I’m squeezable, too.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith JcH: I always intended to be matronly; now I’m enjoying it.
Maggie-you and I have more in common than I realized! I’ll leave it at that, and go onto this new topic. I write, draw and paint-oh and (don’t laugh) sew-sometimes. I’m not that great at any of these activities (except sewing-which is ironic, cuz that’s the one I enjoy the least), but they make me feel happy and alive.
I’ve also been a comic fan since I was just a wee baby. When I was 11, my sister and I wrote our own comic strip, which we would distribute in the mailboxes of our neighbors. It was called, “The Dope Family”–not because of drugs btw, but they just did “stupid” things that we found hilarious at that age;for example, shampooing hair in the toilet, eating dog food while the dog ate people food, etc. Years later, when the children’s book series “The Stupids” was published,all we could do was moan,”We should’ve copywrited our strip!”
I love the way Alison draws, but I enjoy the way she writes even more. She makes me laugh, she makes me think–sometimes she makes me cry.But most of all, she brings out the 11 year old in me again-hiding in the closet(not sexually this time-we have a large family, and it was the only place with any privacy!)drawing pictures with my sister…
For me nudity is not an issue at all, since in Finland people go to sauna together naked almost every week.
Usually just the members of the same family go to sauna together, but I have been in weekend trips to someone`s summer house couple of times and usually everyone went to sauna there as well.
And there are naked people in the changing room in the swimming hall, at the beach in the summer.
I guess that is why people in here seem to be less self-conscious than in the other parts of Europe.
I have never bee to USA. My knowledge about life there is based on books, cartoons and movies and the relatives of my kids that I have never met in person.
Photographer - is it Art? Maybe sometimes on a good day. Now getting a resurgence of interest as I have a 30-year history of photographing gay pride etc. We’re approaching the third go at the LGBT History Month - in February - and I’m becoming A Resource which is very welcome after working self-financed for years. The HM is being very well supported, perhaps by schools using it as an anti-bullying resource so they can tick that box, but hopefully as a radical challenge too. I’m just waiting for that phone call to hang the exhibition in the conservative party central office (they have gone all fluffy this year).
See www.pamisherwood.co.uk for some of my greatest hits, feedback very welcome.
We can’t help being born gay but we can make choices when it comes to relationships where we can be true to ourselves and others, or live a straight lie. The same goes for having a sluggish metabolosm or one that could change where we can curb our consumption and exercise to stay thin or keep eating without thought and be fat. I am not attracted to fat gay women at all and have every right to act upon that preference. I don’t find “love handles” and how much there is to squeeze appealing at all along with shortness of breath, fatigue and all the other symptoms that go with obesity.
Someone speculated about my ex. When I was with her, she was never thin and needed to lose about 40 pounds but that did not matter at the time we get. Over time I came to know her and unfortunately came to know her materialistic and piggish ways. She could never be happy with all the good things she had, a nice home and someone who loved her but she wanted more to the point of excess.
While I was with her she was diagnosed with diabetes. I was devastated and concerned for her health. She had to lose weight, eat healthier and exercise and I was 100% supportive. I was mindful of foods I brought into our home and was there every morning when she would monitor her glucose level. On the day she was initially diganosed with diabetes I found her at home gorging herself on sticky buns and feeling sorry for herself. I still found it in me to have some empathy where not many would.
She did not want to follow her diet and grew tired of me. I did not make enough money to give her a lavish lifestyle and she was envious of the lesbian women at the monthly potluck dinners who were successful professionals. I did not have a degree at the time and was not good enough for her anymore. Without my knowledge she started telling people we knew that we were broken up and was actively looking for someone to replace me, before we even broke up. The day after she dumped me, she was chasing women while I was still living there and looking for another place to live.
A week before I moved out, I came home and found my ex passed out on the steps. She was in diabetic shock and unconscious. I carried her into the house and gave her sugar water and called for help. She could have gone into a coma or died. She was not appreciative and didn’t even thank me. The day after I moved out she had recently met someone and that person had moved into our home. I asked my ex how she could do this and she laughed in my face and said I should be running along and made a brushing hand gesture to indicate that I was no longer welcome. She dumped me for a fat lesbian who was a medical doctor whose income could provide to her all those goodies I could not afford to give her.
Obesity is not only based on metabolism but on selfishness and wanting more than what one needs to be happy and healthy. Love was not enough and when I see fat lesbians, I see nastiness, dishonesty, piggishness and women who throw each other away like yesterday’s paper. My ex got exactly what she asked for and is on crutches and disabled for the rest of her natural life. She was cruel and my compassion for her ran out when she threw me away and I could care less of she is in a coma.
Maggie,
Thank you for inviting everyone to reveal their talents.
I am a musician and a songwriter. I sing, and play piano, accordion, and mandolin. I have been a private musician and a public performer most of my life, but for the last few years I have stopped promoting myself, and am taking a breather. Creativy, for me, has prolific, passionate years, and then sparse, static ones. I have learned that this is okay. But my inner “should” still expects continuous output. so sometimes I just need to withdraw.
I think one of the things i have always admired about Alison (apart from her artistic qualities) has been the way she has kept the business going continuously for more than 20 years. (She is the Cal Ripken of comics!) (That’s a Baltimore baseball reference…)
SKinDurham, how wonderful that you are a weaver. I took one course on really basic handloom weaving, and I have two little samplers hanging on my wall to remind me how wonderful an experience it was. I ever ordered a 4-harness loom off of e-bay once, but I never got around to stringing it (threading it? whatever you call it) and I finally let it go, because I just was not in a place to devote the concentration it required.
But it is a wonderful art.
The other thing I love, the thing that makes me happy, is sewing. Since I was a kid, I have always loved fabric, and designing clothes. Mine are kind of slap-dash, eccentric, but it is a great feeling to see a piece of material and envision what you could make it into. I suppose I should add that my father managed a factory all his life that made ladies’ travel luggage and handbags and stuff like that. I used to visit the factory when I was a kid and I loved seeing all the rolls of fabric and all the spools of thread.
What I love about Alison’s art (Maggie, it was about time somebody asked us to discuss this!!) is her characters–they truly are people I would like to have as friends–but also I love her cleverness with words, and Fun Home really showcased this talent of hers. Her ability to include works of literature as characters in her own plot. It was an integration of intellectual concepts with gut level events.
I also want to add one thing to the discussion about whether American society perceives upward mobility to be acceptable. I was watching the original version of SABRINA last night (the one with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn.) Sabrina’s father (the chauffeur)and Sabrina are discussing whether it would be okay for Sabrina to marry Linus (the rich guy). Sabrina says, “it would be very democratic.” Her father says, “Democracy is a funny thing. No one ever accused a poor person marrying a rich one of being democratic.”
I am over with it and that includes fat lesbians. They are my past and yesterday’s paper. I hope some of them will enjoy taking insulin or hobbling with a cane or on crutches for the consequences of their personal choices but I know I will not a part of it. My personal choices are maintaining good health and being around healthy people who appreciate life, that are not avaricious and always wanting more, like that second or third helping.
That’s one fat tarbrush you have there, Liz. I hope you can move on and start looking at people as individuals one day. And being a “healthy” weight is no guarantee that you’ll avoid diabetes throughout your life.
Just for the record, I prefer to surround myself with non-avaricious individuals who appreciate life as well.. and I’ve a wonderful group of friends who’ve been endowed with all manner of bodies and fit that bill nonetheless.
How anyone could honestly wish immobility or ill health on somebody simply because that person happens to be overweight is utterly incomprehensible to me.
People are individuals, regardless of size. Knowing someone’s weight tells you one thing and one thing alone: how much they weigh. It doesn’t tell you how they got that way.. whether it was genetics, a medical condition, or those “second and third helpings”. In most cases (unless we’re talking about individuals who are dangerously under or overweight), it doesn’t even tell you all that much about the state of their health. And it certainly doesn’t tell you whether or not they happen to be a decent person.
Dear Liz,
Your ex certainly sounds unpleasant. Please look on the bright side: you are no longer with her. Holding on to your bitterness about the break up is hurting you, not her. You say you’re over it, but your pain and anger are evident in everything you’ve written. You say, “My personal choices are maintaining good health and being around healthy people who appreciate life, that are not avaricious and always wanting more, like that second or third helping.” Mental and emotional health are as important and physical health and, indeed, affect it. I’m worried that you’re letting your bitterness eat up your pleasure in life.
And it sounds as if your life has definitely improved. You said you did not have a college degree “at that time” which implies that you’ve gone back to school and now have a degree. Good for you!
So here’s a question that’s a bit of a change in topic: What is it about DTWOF that attracted you? Do you love Alison’s characters? Plot? Both? You wouldn’t be on this website if you weren’t a fan in some way. What is it that pleases you about Alison’s work?
My artistic outlets are in the garden and in the kitchen. Last year, I had a hard loss of some old, large lilacs that turned my mostly shade garden to all sun. (I appreciate the website from the last thread to help re-populate my garden!) Like all art, there is always technique to hone. This year, I want to try starting different flowers from seed that are a bit more challenging to germinate. This, I think, is akin to learning to use a new brush or loom or working with a new fabric.
Unlike Alison’s art, which I regard as thought-provoking, and meant to stimulate, I see my creations as soothing, comforting and nurturing (and obviously, AB’s art has those qualities too, as attested by so many who have written “you were a godsend when I first came out!”) There is nothing I love more than having people over for dinner with vegetables and herbs from the garden. My partner is a tremendous cook, too, and we have learned, uh, well *I* have learned to cooperate in the kitchen. (My former husband affectionately nicknamed me “kitchen fascista”)
Thanks, Maggie, for this refreshing turn of conversation!
Back to Wharton: Can someone suggest a book of criticism about her work?
Back to the mobility of class question: Silvio, good observation on marrying into class, which of course a woman (who is more typically the one doing the moving) is seen as a gold-digger. I thinks that also speaks to how people are usually most comfortable with people close to them in class–or at least that is how it seems to me. I think there has been some research to back that up, but heaven knows when or where I read it.
In college, which was the mid-80s, I took a marvelous sociology course in which we just read sociology books and learned how sociologists think from that. I remember more from that course than from most of my other courses, and I was in college a loooooong time.
Anyway, one of the books talked about demographics and how people usually predict that in the future they will be doing pretty much what they are doing now, or at least what people in their general cultural sub-group were doing now. The other thing we talked about, however, is that people rarely truly move out of their socioeconomic group. Part of the thinking that we can or do is because we have a much more specific and detailed understanding of our own group so small differences take on big importance. Big differences with people in other groups aren’t understood as well. So (for example) people can give you a very detailed ranking of income or status of those who have incomes/status near their own, but people with much larger or smaller incomes all kind of get lumped into aggregate categories. I found it fascinating then and still find it fascinating!
That said… the talk was all about GROUPS of people and the specifics cannot be applied to individuals. So I’m not saying anything about any specific person. I have noticed as we have aged, however, that my partner and I are tending to make choices that put us in situations that are sort of modern equivalents of where our parents were. So despite all our education and larger incomes, we are returning to the familiar.
I’m late in getting to this thread since I’ve spent the last few days recovering from the direct jump from end-of-semester chaos to the Family Zone. Since xmas I’ve mostly just read novels and puttered in the kitchen (soup stock, homemade bread, curry…).
The thing that prompts me to comment now is not all the fat discussion (yowzah!) but to express delight that Silvio plays the accordion. I’m aspiring to mediocrity on my newly-acquired accordion. It’s so beautiful - pearlized red and white. As a pianist, the right hand is no trouble, but my left hand is just clunky as all get-out. It always seems to overwhelm the melody line. Any advice on getting it to sound lighter? On the whole ‘breathing’ thing? (Since I live in Wisconsin, I s’pose I should be working up to a good polka.)
Oh, to add to the class discussion, I think it’s so, so important to move beyond just considering income. I’m nearing the end of my career as a grad student and have been living on not much money for a while now. In the last few years I’ve been keenly aware of how I (and many of my colleagues) have become very good at expressing a certain strain of middle-class values even though we don’t have the money to support the full lifestyle; it’s accomplished through the careful acquisition of technology (the laptops required for our work, the iPods beloved by all but especially by those studying music), having a veggie garden that’s both a labor of love (yep, I grew 18 varieties of tomatoes last summer) and a functional source of food, etc. We’ve become remarkably good at focussed skimping and focussed spending such that the latter expresses certain expectations / aspirations that are related to those held by many folks with more money than us (perhaps especially our professors, who become more and more like colleagues the closer we get to finishing the damn dissertataions).
That’s a long way of saying that class is as much about social expectations as about money flowing into a household.
Sivio-Sew you are a seamstress as well!!(haha) Seriously, I hate the actual sewing, but love “having sewn”. Don’t do clothes as much anymore, but make curtains, decor-stuff, totebags, stuff like that I’m usually motivated by seeing something in an expensive in an upscalle store, and thinking, “Well hell, I can make that or 10 bucks.” Then I do!
jmc,
yes, those social expectations will get you every time.
Although I grew up in a middle class New Jersey suburb in the 50s and 60s (decade, not income), which included two cars but no dishwasher or dryer, when I went to college and afterward, I acquired those thrift store/voluntary simplicity values that 20-somethings had in the 60s and 70s. So I never learned to spend money on furniture, preferring to use my money for more important things like travel, or musical instruments. Fast forward thirty years to the late 90s, and I had still never paid money for new furniture.
While working at an administrative job while getting my master’s degree, I invited a professor whom I thought was a kindred spirit over for dinner. (She taught feminist studies…caution, never assume anything!) She walked into my apartment and sniffed, “Oh! This is how I used to live when I was a college student!” I was about 40 yrs old at the time! I was half shocked at her apparent higher economic status and the other half totally insulted to be so patronized. Oh well. Live and learn.
Oh, and welcome to the joys of accordion playing! I like it because it is more portable than a piano (although heavier in the long run…), and you feel the vibrations right on your chest as you play! One thing you might enjoy is exploring the melodic qualities of the left hand buttons. you can play scales and melodies with those buttons too.
For all of us who were hurt by Liz’s comments or worried about their size, just remember–right now, you are at someone else’s goal weight.
My junior-high comeback still works well for me too:”Oh Yeah? Well the only thing that wants a bone is a dog, and he just buries it in the backyard!”(Just make that an inner chant-I don’t advise saying it out loud…)
Hear, hear to all the AMAZING class comments. I think about this topic all the time and yet every single one of you said stuff that I’d not directly considered before. Likewise, I had begun to suspect this blog was attracting similarly creative folks, and wow, is that true.
I had a fantasy last night, as I was going to sleep, about winning the lottery — well, I have that fantasy every night, but this version was that I was able to sponsor a “reunion” for all of us on this blog, kind of like YearlyKos, if you know what that is. It was in Burlington, of course, and people came from all over the world to meet Alison, discuss her work (academics were salivating over it), meet each other, have workshops (about brushwork, grammar, and Doris Day, for sure), talk about art — can’t you just imagine it? It first in my head I was calling it The Alison Review, but right before I dropped off it became the Bechdelnalia.
Now — to respond specifically to JMC’s last post — yeah! Several years ago I was asked to lead a workshop on class and classism at the local Festival of the Goddess, and for it I devised a class-specific version of the Power Shuffle invented by Ricky Sherover-Marcuse and used in New Bridges training, for instance. I was hoping to address how, in a group that is choosing a sort of uniform downward mobility, such as the lesbian community I spent my 20s in, class divisions were still deep and perceived much more acutely by the target group than by the non-target group. I wanted to give the women on the non-working-class and “below” side of the divide some concrete indicators of class they had been not seeing and/or ignoring. This exercise, which I called the Class Layer Cake, succeeded far beyond my hopes for it. I’m going to list the questions I used below — I am indebted to numerous sources for the thinking that helped me create this list, so I do ask you credit me if you use this but I’m determined to share it freely. Each of these questions is designed to (very roughly) divide people into lower, middle and upper class, without using income:
1. Did your parents/the people who raised you finish high school, finish college, or get a graduate degree?
2. Did your family ever receive any kind of public assistance OR has your family gone abroad for reasons other than visiting family still there or being sent on a job?
3. Were you raised by a single parent/are you a single parent OR have you or your parents hired someone to work in your home?
4. Have you lived in a trailer, family-owned or subsistence farm, or government-subsidized housing OR in a gated community, apartment building with doorman/front security, or owned a second home?
5. Do you or the people who raised you work for an hourly wage doing manual labor, skilled or unskilled work, pink collar or clerical, OR is at least 30% of your annual income from something other than your direct labor? (If you don’t know how much of your income comes from non-labor sources, assume it is over 30%.)
6. During high school and college vacations, did you work at a wage-earning job, OR during those vacations you went to a non-church camp or traveled with the expense paid for by your family?
7. Did you or your family ever go without car insurance because of lack of money, OR did you or your family ever own more than one new car at a time?
8. Are you or any member of your immediate family disabled, chronically ill or dead due to lack of medical care because they could not afford it, OR do you or any member of your family have attendant, nursing care or assisted living which is paid for privately?
9. Do you or any member of your immediate family have visibly missing or decayed teeth, OR have any of you had cosmetic caps or teeth polishing?
10. Have you or any member of your famly ever been Holocaust survivors, non-English-speaking immigrants, homeless or incarcerated?
If you want instructions on how to do this exercise with a group, or the Power Shuffle, contact me directly.
To be honest I don’t really how many women were hurt by my comments because I meant every word of it. There are a lot of lesbians who are fat and there weren’t Alison would not have a reason to create the comic “Metrosexuals are Taking Over My Y” and those lesbians would be working out alongside her at the gym and the metrosexuals would not be as apparent.
I don’t care if any obese lesbians were hurt and it’s not like I sad that anyone was ugly and their mother smells but was telling the truth and make NO apologies for the fact that the truth HURTS! Reality sucks and that’s not my fault.
What I can’t get over are when fat lesbians slick back their hair, sport a blazer who think they are so smooth or charming casanovas. It’s even more laughable when that cute female coworker, who is straight, befriends a fat dyke and this dyke develops an infatuation and moons after her like a puppy dog, much to the amusement of coworkers who take notice. I have seen it and it makes me cringe with embarassment.
When it comes to lesbians who are charming and appealing, Portia DeRossi comes to mind. Hillary Swank did a wonderful job in portraying gay women and celebrating masculinity in women in the films Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby. Personal Best positively portrayed good aesthetics in gay women. I wish gay women would strive for those things and maybe Alison would not feel so isolated at the Y.
I think of this website or blog or whatever it is - someone called it a slow chat room - as a wonderful dinner party. Smart, funny people with something worth saying and who usually observe the “two minute rule” (honored in the breach at the dinner parties I have to dress up for). I was reading Calvin Trillin’s appreciation of his wife who had a thing about smoking and, he said, “could be frank enough on that subject to provoke a shouting match at a dinner party.” We have just gone through a shouting match. Neither side seems swayed. Can we now retrieve our party manners and get on with what makes me come here every day? OK, several times a day.
Judybusy, I’m glad you liked the gardenweb.com link and I look forward to trading plants with you in the future. (I’m johnsaunt on that site.) But you still haven’t answered the questions about your moving up a zone because of the cows and cars. Someone thought your cows were expelling so much methane gas that they’d changed the temperature of your zone! My question is this: If you moved up a zone to 5, were you in zone 6 (which is lower geographically) or zone 4 (which is lower numerically) or did you mean something altogether different? Inquiring minds want to know!
Nice questions! And how an individual pays for college (assuming they go), and who pays for their first car…
There are still all those weird places where social values and economic realities interact. I was raised lower middle/upper lower class economically (single parent, government aid, heat and telephone cut off at times, etc, etc) but decidedly upper middle class socially (all four grandparents had attended college and it was a clear expectation for children in my family, though we were also clearly expected to figure out how to pay for it on our own). Altogether, it makes for an odd world perspective…
One last comment today. Pointing back to Duncan’s search for music by gay men, of course the task of recommending music by identity category is kind of odd, but I’ll throw a name in the hat. The Prince Myshkins are a pair of song writers that moved to Madison recently from San Diego; I assume, but don’t know absolutely, that they’re a couple. Anyway, they write songs with lots of political content and *brilliant* wordplay that will be appreciated by DTWOF fans. (And one of ‘em plays accordion!)
Check out some of their MP3s online. “The Dr. Laura Polka” is an especially rich example of their unexpected rhymes and references (Benjamin’s aura makes an appearance); at the right time, certain lines in “Ministry of Oil” have been known to bring tears to my eyes.
It looks like they’re due for some east coast dates in January. For other Madisonians on this blog, they play at Mother Fool’s (Willy St.) a couple of times a year. Strongly recommended.
I’ve skipped over some of the postings to get in something quick here. hope it’s useful to someone . . .
reading the comments about weight, health, etc. reminds me of a comment that someone once made to me. this is a guy who spent much of his life what I believe is called “height/weight proportionate” — in the personals at least — and then gained a LOT of weight as a result of a medical condition. he’s managed to shed some of that weight and is healthier as a result . . .
anyway, I’ve tended to take pride in my good health and height/weight proportionality, until he commented that both are due to good heredity rather than any special effort on my part. true, I don’t live on highly processed or fast foods . . . at the same time, my main souce of exercise is walking to and from my car, taking stairs, etc. and I’m not good about eating veggies. basically, I favor carbs and am constantly resolving to be more thoughtful about what I eat.
I’m grateful for my good health and that (for now at least) I’m pain free. but I really can’t take credit for these “attributes.” and I watch myself about being judgemental of those who have other attributes. sometimes you hafta look below the surface to find what’s most attractive in a person.
Meg,
Interesting comments about socio-economic-class status. One side of my family of origin all have graduate or post graduate degress, while two of the three siblings on the other side didn’t finish high school. My parents met at teachers’ college. My brothers and I were expected to get (and did get) undergrad degrees as a matter of course. I made a poor marital choice in my early twenties, and have spent the last fifteen years climbing out of the economic and psychological pit that created.
It’s amazing what poverty and emtional abuse can do to your sense of self empowerment and choice. At the grocery store, carbs are cheaper per oz than lean meat or veggies. When you’re working twelve hours a day to put someone through a second undergraduate program, it can be hard to find the time and energy for a daily workout. Fitness isn’t always, but can be an economic and class issue.
Just some random thoughts…
Wow, this is quite a series of comments! Where to begin … Not on class or metrosexuals I think, otherwise I’m not sure when I’d stop! Being a British gay man I think I have differing views on both!
Ovidia - can I ask where you’re from? I never thought I’d hear someone on this blog mention the Chalet School! My mother had every single book. The main character of the series is partly based on Jo from ‘Little Women’ and the book is even mentioned in a couple of the series. There’s also a strong subtext or undercurrent of lesbian relationships within the 62 books, which comes and goes depending on the fashion of the times and is most evident in the books of the 1920s and 40s. There’s an interesting article online somewhere discussing this aspect and speculating on the sexuality of the author. Just Google Chalet School and you’ll find it.
On the subject of artistry I attempted a career as a contemporary dance choreographer but it didn’t work out sadly. So now I pour my creativity into cooking and I also knit and crochet - it’s very therapeutic, although there’s a hint of occupational therapy behind it all.
I’d love to have a garden, Judybusy, but I just have a concrete yard. So I make do with container gardening and growing my own cooking herbs on my kitchen window sill. It’s so healing, it’s unbelievable. It’s also good mild exercise for those who are conscious about their extra poundage! *cheeky grin* But let’s not start that again. If I wanted to make your respective bloods boil, I’d point you to this article:
which is a movement to enhance our respective concrete jungles? I’m being cheeky as the site is a British one, but the idea is imported from movements in New York and Montreal. I thought it was such a fantastic idea! Subversive gardening!
Just skim read some of the comments on ‘weight’. I have to agree with Liz on the weight ‘fact’ studies (will post sources later’ in the UK have noted that lesbians are more likely to be overweight that hetrosexual females, why?. Well it could be the fact that ‘lesbians’ are subjected to the male gaze and do not feel the same body image pressures. Whilst the opposite is true within the gay male community ‘body beautiful/ muscle mary’s are heids up as ideals….its such a shallow culture. However with the progs like the L word promoting the slim lesbian..the days of a body image free lesbian are numbered. Yes obviously cultural/material influences play their part too (Meg).
If you want to change topic…why don’t lesbians going cruising or participate in the tearoom trade/cottaging?, answers on a postacrd!!!
“However with the progs like the L word promoting the slim lesbian”
Well, considering that it’s tv, it probably wasn’t ‘promotion’ so much as it’s… tv. Where _everyone_ is insanely attractive, unless it’s a sitcom where the men can be fat schlubs (but the wives still have to be gorgeous of course)
As far as the weight issue in real life, my backround is a straight, slightly overweight (I got them childbirthin’ hips) straight gal at a university with a great number of sorority girls. I can tell myself over and over and over that it’s what’s inside that counts, there’s a wide range of beautiful, but honestly… none of that means a damn thing when I keep getting rejected in favor of gorgeous skinny girls. All the affirmations that I know in my rational brain to be true don’t help when I get in a certain state. Of course the irony is that I have it bad for skinny guys. I don’t mean merely trim, but that emo/indie rocker type skinny. On the other hand, that body type has always been considered undersirable for guys, while the ‘muscle man’ physique just never held any appeal for me at all. My point is… I have no point. Just rambling.
The class questionare is really interesting. My family is pretty solidly middle class, but having my mom constantly insti
163 Responses to “Sketch Diary 12/26. Metrosexuals are taking over my Y.”
December 27th, 2006 at 1:33 am
HILARIOUS. I love how the cross on the T-shirt in frame 2 gets revealed as something meant to be impressive but not quite so in frame 3. And the slouch of the guy on the bench, whose body language and ending every sentence with “Man” would never indicate he’s talking about shopping for shower curtains. This is GREAT cultural commentary, Alison. Good stuff.
Congrats on the People Magazine list! You must just be reeling. Sleep on it, let your unconscious sort it out.
Speaking of cultural commentary — I’ve spent the last few days periodically watching (and laughing wildly) over:
To all the fellows out there with ladies to impress
It’s easy to do, just follow these steps
One: Cut a hole in a box…
For the rest, check out the SNL short film now up (uncensored) at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA
(Disclaimer: Not for viewing by children.)
And Shadocat — you are so effing eloquent. I mean it.
December 27th, 2006 at 2:09 am
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just watched the SNL clip. Congrats again on the People Magazine List. You deserve all of this you know Alison……you really do!
December 27th, 2006 at 2:56 am
It’s hard to grin and bear those male types whose stops include Starbucks, Carl’s Jr. and AM/PM, where working out is an afterthought for the shape they look to be in.
December 27th, 2006 at 5:57 am
I always thought I’d be snickering with schadenfreude when men started getting into the dumb stuff marketed to women. It hasn’t happened yet.
I can’t bear to glance at the cover of Men’s Health for fear they may broach the subject of cellulite. I shall weep for us as a species should that happen. But hey, People magazine? Holy cannoli, I might even have to buy one instead of reading it in my therapist’s office.
Yep, boys are dumb, but that clip was funny. Thanks for sharing Maggie.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:38 am
The mets are still hat guys and just because they are capable of lifting heavier weights than women does not make them any more knowledgeable about fitness. Men think they can tell women how to do it right and perceive dieting as a threat to their masculinity, as pathetic a state it may be.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:48 am
This has a really nice Harvey Pekar feel to it.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Wow, you have Macy’s in Vermont? I go to a gym well-known for its cruising (in the classic sense, Duncan and Silvio!) but I hear most of the action takes place in the men’s locker rooms. My fave interactions are when the men are grunting up a storm while lifting and other women and I snicker at their expense….sometimes I just want to yell out, “Give birth already! It’s killing me to hear you go on like this!” But, I also love watching/looking at the guys. Some of them are just downright beautiful, and I’m in awe of how strong they are. It makes my own sets go by quickly!
Also, wanted to respond to Maggie’s post in the last thread about her friend Pam. The story has certainly stuck with me; it’s so very sad. Thanks for sharing it, and for all the work you’ve done on behalf of women and girls.
December 27th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
judybusy, I read an interesting article by the gay anthropologist William Leap. He said that in the Washington DC health club where he got a membership, gay men did cruise each other, but would usually exchange phone numbers and meet elsewhere. It was “straight” identified men who’d do it in the sauna and stray corners.
I know what you mean about watching people work out. One of my favorite movies remains Robert Towne’s “Personal Best”, which I see as an interesting (if flawed) film about bisexuality instead of a failed film about lesbianism as many see it. The sport photography is just stunning: women lift weights, run, jump, and so on, and are photographed with care and love. If Tee Corinne could have done film, she would have photographed women athletes like that, I think. And the women are all, except for Mariel Hemingway, real athletes.
December 27th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Maggie, thanks for boosting my ego! And I also LOVED that SNL clip (especially the expressions on Maya Rudolphs’s face-priceless!)On xmas eve, they showed a rerun with another excellent “video”: I’m sure many of y’all remember it; “The Chronicles of Narnia”? Don’t have a link, but I’m sure it can be easily googled. It’s f’ing hilarious, even the second time.
Alison, a couple of days ago, at my employer’s holiday party, I actually overheard this bit of conversation between two of my straight male co-workers; “Gary, do you think this sweater vest makes me look fat? Maybe I should take it off, just go with the shirt?” (True, my hand to God.)
This stuff cracks me up.
December 27th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
Hey All.
Here’s the link to “The Chronicles of Narnia” clip.
http://www.nbc.com/Video/videos/snl_1432_narnia.shtml
Enjoy!
December 27th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
I just got the Best American Comics 2006 volume for Xmas. I didn’t realize yours was in there. Not that it’s all the surprising…it just made me happy
December 27th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
a hAH hah hah hah hAA HAA HAA HAAA HAHAHAHHAAAAAAAA!~
a heh heh heh hee. . ..
December 27th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Duncan,
the anthropologist’s comment about it being the “straight” identified men who use the gym for their trysts reminded me of the music of Romanovsky and Philips. (Anybody remember them?) They (along with Michael Callen and The Flirtations )
http://members.aol.com/sigothinc/callen.htm
did for gay male (and sometimes lesbian) culture in music what DTWOF did visually. Their songs were a scrapbook of the political and social gay 90s.
The last time I googled “Romanovsky” I learned that Philips was managing a health food store in the Boston area and Romanovsky was entertaining wedding parties with his accordion. But i just searched again and discovered–oh joy!– that Ron Romanovsky has a brand new solo album!
http://cdbaby.com/cd/romanovsky
This music and the DTWOF are linked in mind as documentation of a unique 10 years or so.
December 28th, 2006 at 12:24 am
That SNL clip is going to be viewed tomorrow at work, for sure…where do I work? Why, MACY’S! And lemme tell ya, you haven’t seen metrosexuals in action until you’ve seen a burly Chicago firefighter arguing vehemently with his (female)fiance between Wedgwood’s “Madeleine” china pattern vs. Bernardaud’s “Constance” for their registry. When they settle that, another battle ensues regarding the stemware. When some guys create a beautiful table setting, I say, “Wow, aren’t YOU the clever urban metrosexual?” and watch them turn pale and their balls climb up into their abdominal cavities. It’s fun.
Maggie Jochild, I also wanted to express how I was affected by your story about your friend Pam. You have done the best thing possible - turned pain into positive action. It’s something I’m certainly not always capable of, and I have a lot of respect for you for that.
Now I have to go get “dick in a box” out of my head….
December 28th, 2006 at 12:58 am
Oh, and in the last thread - Duncan’s “people of pallor.” Christ on a raft, that’s fucking genius! I’m so white one can view my entire neural network running just underneath my skin. I wonder if I could get some weird job at a medical school as a study aid. No dissection necessary! Thanks, Duncan, for a great label for those of us who are pigmentally challenged.
December 28th, 2006 at 2:10 am
My son and his partners made both of those popular SNL sketches. Don’t I just love reading about them here.:-)
December 28th, 2006 at 3:33 am
Which thread to choose? I’ll just connt on others being like me, reading it ALL. I loved “people of pallor” too. In 1979, my roommate Kathie Bailey started, as a joke, using the phrase “people of lesser melanin”, only to have it picked up by dykes striving for political correctness but not using their own thinking about it. Very funny. Not that I’m making fun of political correctness, because it was (and is) an earnest attempt to use language to help redress imbalance. When my godson was four or five, we were discussing ethnicity and he declared (not joking) that his ethnicity was pale. He had overhead his parents talking about SPF issues with him (he is so very, very pale) and reached his own conclusion about that that meant.
TSB, kudos to your son. (Ginjoint, I too cannot get “dick in a box” out of my head. And now it’s blending with Alison’s guy rubbing his buzz cut and Gary asking his friend if his sweater vest made him look fat.) One review I read said of those two sketches that it reminded them of the glory days of SNL, when the humor was unrestrained. For those of us addicted to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, this question, what is funny and what are the uses of humor, is being talked about every week. I wonder how many of us watch on this blog Studio 60, and Grey’s Anatomy? I saw Tavis Smiley interview Shonda Rime before Grey’s ever aired and knew on the spot it was the show for me, because of how she’s addressing race on TV.
Silvio and Duncan, I LOVE how you make me think. And even more, I love that we’re discussing class on this blog. One stat I want to throw out there is that 80% of the working class people in this country identify themselves (mistakenly) as middle class. Which helps explain why politicians always claim to be playing to the middle class, when it sure doesn’t look that way from the issues being discussed. Poor people and the owning class, on the other hand, seldom have delusions about where they are on the scale — we/they are viewed as the expendables, and are often understand each other better than those of other classes. Somebody (sorry I can’t remember your name at the moment, honey) mentioned the Bertold Brecht quote, which I’d never heard but loved it — it is very similar to Gandhi’s comment “There are people so hungry that the only meaningful definition of God is as bread.” Anne Wilson Schaef, at least a decade ago, said American culture as a whole was owning class, not just compared to the rest of the world but also in its ideals and media culture. If that’s the case, everybody except that 2% at the top is walking around feeling deprived and frightened about survival. Which would explain a lot.
Another important thing to remember about class is that economic punishment (i.e., classism) is the glue used to keep most other oppressions (especially race and gender) in place. There is, of course, the omnipresent threat of violence keeping us in line, but day to day, it’s the fear of losing our jobs, our homes, our spot on the ladder that keeps those hellacious lies about non-people-of-pallor and non-dick-wearers being handed as if they were true.
Thanks for bringing up the economic reality of motherhood, Silvio. And my heart broke when you said you lost custody of your children. My god, I’m so sorry. How did you go on? And bless you for telling us.
December 28th, 2006 at 4:20 am
TSB: Your son and his partners made BOTh those sketches? That is so great! You must be so proud…
December 28th, 2006 at 5:55 am
These guys are everywhere: Overheard in free weight section of California Fitness…
Guy A(clicking off gizmo but not touching wireless ear piece thing):We can’t get into Hugo Boss. They got fire regulations. Unless you want to queue half an hour.
Guy B: See if you can book us foot rubs instead…
But I’m still intimidated by their mass & muscles…
December 28th, 2006 at 11:29 am
I just love, love, love these sketch diaries.
December 28th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Can i be a “person of pallor” too? I’ a redhead, and my skin glows like a halogen light bulb, it’s so white. But I’m extremely freckled (I must’ve been a liver-spotted dalmation in a previous life), so much so that one summer day, I fully expect all the freckles will finally join together, and I will have the tan of my dreams…
I was back reading the previous posts, and I suddenly remembered a bit of “Little Women” trivia: I once read an article that strongly argued that “Mr. Baer” actually represented a female partner for “Jo” –or her creator–(remember-he has a “beard”) and that “Little Men” represented her desire to live in a “man’s world” vs her desire to retain her “feminine” nature. Does anyone else remember reading this, and if so, what’s your take? I must confess, although I read “Little Men”, I was not as taken with it as it’s predecessor, so I don’t remember much of it. Did Jo actually birth some babies, or were her children adopted?( I thought they were adopted–but I’m old, and my memeory’s foggy.) I know the school was for boys-some without parents? All that aside, I’ve always had this feeling Louisa was on our team, even though I know of no proof to back this up. (Brain fog-rising again…)
December 28th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Why all this disdain for straight men that don’t conform to the butch stereotype? What would you like these men to be discussing? Car repair? The size of a woman’s breasts? The pleasures of war?
I think it’s nice that men now feel comfortable enough to talk about things that were formerly thought feminine. I took that to be the point of Allison’s comment at the beginning of the sketch–she used to be intimidated by these big, burly men, but now she sees that they’re just like everyone else.
December 28th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
The great benefit of being a metrosexual, Virginia, is that it means a man can both “talk about things that were formerly thought feminine” AND “the size of a woman’s breasts” and the “pleasures of war.” I think you’re right about Alison’s point in the sketch; but you know, guys who talk about breasts and war are still people, just like everyone else. People who intimidate us are still people. And all in all I agree with you here: I don’t get why metrosexuals are supposedly so funny, except in a fag-joke sort of way, which I don’t think is funny either.
The whole metrosexual thing is one more marketing fad, as far as I can tell. (I read a book earlier this year by the advertising people who claim to have sold the fad.) Though yes, many men are interested in “unmanly” things, but I don’t see that worrying about whether a vest makes you look fat is an improvement. Other things are more important, and women should not have to worry about these things (are my thighs disgusting?) either.
Thanks, Silvio and Maggie, for all your kind remarks. As I said, I’m not sure where “people of pallor” comes from. Maggie, I remember encountering the term “melanin challenged” or “melanin deficient” sometimes.
Silvio, I knew Paul Philips slightly here in Bloomington in the 70s. Alas, R & P’s music never did much for me. I’m still looking for gay men’s music that I could be really be a fan of, and I don’t think I’m ever going to find it. I need to get my guitar fixed so I can go back to making it. Matter of taste, I guess.
December 28th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
You’re right, Virginia, we should not be poking fun at men because they are doing “feminine” things, and if I’ve done that, I regret it. For me, the humor/irony comes from the fact that the non-target group (in the case of gender, those raised with male conditioning) invariably gets to define the divisions between the two groups in a binary, and when (in this case) men decide it’s suddenly okay to be talking about shopping and worried about how they look, that behavior gets redefined as male. There is no logic to any of it, no rational basis for any gender roles. Masculine/feminine are equally toxic, myths used solely for oppression to which we are raised to be emotionally attached, and I personally believe there is no good to had in trying to reclaim or rehabilitate them.
The humor in the SNL sketch is akin to the humor of Stephen Colbert — someone putting on the role somewhat sympathetically in order to comment on how ludicrous it is. It’s an extraordinarily effective way to point out the idiocy of masculinity — similar to drag, but far better done than any drag I’ve seen except for “Paris is Burning”, where those dragsters understood how to simultaneously address class and race, not just gender (I mean, they are all intertwined constantly anyhow). Most drag is a one-trick pony. Another great example of drag that contradicts more than it reinforces was in the documentary “Third Eye Blind”, a group of four Chinese-American dykes who did drag performances about the racism of the U.S. military man, instead of glorifying/sexualizing men in uniform. And, back in the 1980s, the women who were in Izquierda, led by Naomi Littlebear Moreno, would periodically perform as the Dyketones (not to be confused with a later all-white lesbian Dyketones band that has cassettes at Ladyslipper) — a parody of 1950s doo-wop that, again, punched gaping holes in the misogyny and racism of that era’s pop music affectations and divisions.
What I expect of art, of meaningful pop culture, is that do several things at once — raise the level of discourse, question the dominant paradigm, reflect a shared reality which is not being depicted enough in other media, stay kind except when dealing with a group holding onto oppressive behavior, offer hope and at least one idea of how things could be different, etc.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:08 am
I have made the leap into this thread. I am happy to see that the discussion of class has made the leap here too!
shadocat, delighted to learn that you are a redhead! (One should give all colors a fair chance, but I confess I am partial to redheadedness.)
Unfortunately, my home computer is too slow to play those SNL videos, so I will have to let my frustration at not understanding the joke blow right away, and just be happy I am home for two weeks, even if it means not having the use of my fast office computer. Two weeks home is a wonderful thing!
Duncan, do you know the music of Fred Small? He was a Boston lawyer who took up music full time. A very good songwriter. Perhaps you have heard his songs: “Scott and Jamie” (about a court custody case that removed two little foster children from the home of two gay male partners.) And then his allegory of tolerance: “If I were a Moose” […and you were a cow/would you love me anyhow?]
In the 90s after seeing him perform at some political function for gay rights, I idiotically wrote him a fan letter and asked him why he didn’t “come out”…He actually wrote me a handwritten reply and told me he was not gay; just an ally. Was my face red! As if it would be my business anyway if he were…
Romanovsky and Phillips wrote some good ones too. Some of my favorites include “No Such Thing as False Hope,” “One of the Enemy,” and “I’m in Love with my Therapist,” to name just a few.
When it comes to songwriting, being written by a gay person is not automatically enough for a song to touch my heart or make me laugh. A good songwriter is a good songwriter, period.
Back around 1988, I went to a women’s festival, and being new to feminist/women’s culture I was trying so hard to appreciate feminist songwriters. In the midst of this total overhaul of my entire aesthetic history, I thoughtlessly bumped Joni Mitchell off my “okay” list. Another lesbian heard me analyzing/criticizing her work, the way we do when we are trying to justify our taste. She looked at me and said “Joni Mitchell is the Goddess of Music!” She could have been reading my mind, if it had not been filmed over with my insecurity as I tried to slap my instincts into line with what I THOUGHT I should like.
Years later I thought about this moment, and realized that Joni always voiced her own original take on everything, (and so musically) and that was what made her a strong intelligent woman and an original writer.
So Duncan, I sympathize with your quest for gay men’s music you can “be a fan of.” PLEASE get your guitar fixed. If you make music that is as intelligent and eclectic as your conversation here, I would love to hear it.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:17 am
shadocat,
I am not familiar with that theory about Professor Baer, but I do remember that Jo gave birth to two little boys who are part of “Little Men.” I would agree that her life in Little Men is more male identified than her life in Little Women, where she was surrounded by girl issues. And in Little Men, Jo gets to live a role that is more free than hers would have been in “polite society.” She is the boss, after all, of her little world, whereas, if she’d grown up to live in polite society, she would have to observe more female conventions.
So in a way, Alcott was able to circumvent the public’s expectations of her character, because she is surrounded by boys and is kind of a jack of all trades. (Baer is kind of helpless without Jo; she is almost the husband, in a way.)
By “he has a beard” did you mean that Baer was serving as Jo’s “beard” [disguise]?
December 29th, 2006 at 2:46 am
Jo of Little Women always reminded me a little of Jo of the Chalet School (who ended up marrying the school doctor & having triplets called Len, Con & something…) they were both exciting but safely feminine role models who had exciting adventures, grew up in very female environments then married good husbands and had many happy children…
Don’t suppose anyone else here remembers the Chalet School books?
December 29th, 2006 at 4:57 am
Silvio,
It’s nice to know you’re a fan of the redheads; so many people aren’t you know(”redheaded stepchild”,etc).
Thanks for clearing that up about Jo-like I said, I didn’t read “Little Men”, or “Jo’s Boys” with the same ardor that I did with LW, partly because(remember, I was about 11), I thought Jo had sort’ve “sold out”, marrying
and all.
While surfing the web looking for the afomentioned “mystery article”, I have not found said article yet, but I was able to find some interesing quotes, which maybe would help to bolster my theory as LMA as “family”. (BTW, you are correct about the whole “beard” thing—Mr.Baer, at least according to this writer, was really serving as the other sort of “beard”–an effort to disguise Alcott’s ideal partner, or even perhaps, a real relationship.) Anyhoo– here are the quotes (the first from Wikipedia, my old stand-by):
Although the Jo character in Little Women was based on Louisa May Alcott, Alcott, unlike Jo, never married. She explained her “spinsterhood” in an interview with the writer Louise Chandler Moulton, “… because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”
Or this one from the “Books and Writers” website:
Louisa May Alcott died from intestinal cancer in Boston on March 6, 1888. She never married. In an interview Alcott once said of herself: “I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body”.
Makes ya think a bit, doesn’t it?
December 29th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Why is there a note disdain for men who don’t conform to the butch type? Good question that only the author cam truly answer. The dyke character im the sketch appears to be a quiet adversary who doesn’t want to even acknowledge the presence of males. At my office I overhear male colleagues talk about the gym, their weight and trying to stay in good shape. It’s a challenge when the avaibility of processed foods from vending machines, quick mart stops and fast food/restaurant eateries beckon with the convenience of in and out and threaten our butts and waistlines. I know that when I work out at a small gym that serves our office of 200 people and these men work out. Instead of wishing those men would go away, it’s better to welcome them and support whatever goals they may have. I never see any dykes or butches working out or when I run everyday. In fact, most gay women I have seen out and about are at least 40 pounds overweight with a bad haircut themselves that they paid about $20 for. As a gay woman who is tired, tired, tired of the deep voiced butch persona that makes me cringe worse than Alison’s female character, I’ll take the metrosexual at the gym who is making an effort to defy what they were taught.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:45 am
My last haircut was $12 and has gotten rave reviews from everyone. Took courage to cut off 10 inches of hair, but now six months after that haircut people everywhere I go still kind of stop, stare at me, and then breathlessly exclaim how they really love my hair.
I can only imagine that they would pass out had I gotten that evil $20 haircut.
Heh.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Dear Shoe,
I agree with your rejection of disdain as a response to Others. And your point about overweight dykes (and other human beings) is true. As much as the feminist movement has worked to rehabilitate the concept that fat is okay, I can’t let go of my true feeling, which is that health is more beautiful.
Is health like money? Do we put health and wealth on a pedestle and then disadvantage those who don’t have it? (the poor and the fat are in a lower class?)
I can’t deny that I admire sleek, muscular bodies more than I admire bulky, curvy womanly shapes. Is my personal aesthetic male-identified? I am able to appreciate womanly curves–Queen Latifah comes to mind.
But most fat women don’t look sculpted like her. Have I been trained to only find thinness beautiful? I don’t know.
But I don’t like it when my jeans don’t fit me “right.” I am at least 40 pounds overweight. My doctor writes “obese” on my medical charts even though I don’t LOOK that bad; it’s all in the numbers I suppose. It really burns me up to be called obese because it does set a standard I have not chosen to live “up” to.
It reminds me of when my son was about 7; he wanted to go on the roller coasters and the parks would have a height chart the kid had to measure up to.
So I say if those men want to be health conscious, great. I think that whole term “metrosexual” is right up there with gay people calling children “ankle biters” or “rug rats.” Back in the 90s I found it kind of demeaning, just like I hated being called a “breeder” as a derrogatory term.
let’s face it, nobody likes being labelled with an insulting term. It’s much easier to be like that guy in Kung Fu in the 60s (David Carradine?) who treated everyone with respect, but he could kick ass when it was necessary.
December 29th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Fat does not equal unhealthy, or unattractive. It’s a normally occurring body type — always has been. The problems with health associated with being fat in America have to do with what we’re eating (not how much), lack of exercise, and chronic dieting, all of which are implicated in things like elevated cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes in a way that just being fat does not necessarily indicate. Association does not mean cause and effect. Black skin is associated with hypertension but the solution is not to try to change your race.
Over what weight? Over the statistical average? Over what Western medicine has labeled “healthy” (the same medical establishment that labels disability as a medical problem, has a diagnosis code for small breasts, and experiments with hormone treatments to get rid of women’s facial hair?) Oh my god, you mean not looking like the “norm” is considered unhealthy/ugly? Alert the press.
It’s one thing if you want to admit your prejudice and bias, even if it is self-hatred at bottom. (Although I’m a little shocked to see it here, in these pages where most of us try not to say negative things about others based on their appearance or birthright.) It’s another thing if you try to prove it is based on science. Or that there is some agreed-upon definition of a “bad haircut” (how can you assign a moral value to a hair style?) Content of character is what counts, not skin, weight, hair, class, gender, physical ability — I keep wishing we could learn that permanently.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
More on the class issue: Silvio, in the “Bloody Hell. Again.” thread, we had a discussion going on class mobility and you had made reference to it’s supposedly OK to move classes in this country. This only made ask more questions and ponder, ponder, ponder.
Mostly about really basic questions about what *are* the elements of class? Money is part of it. But is what we like culturally too? Is a person more upper class if they go to modern dance rather than a country and western concert? Can a person with a high school diploma be upper class? As far as upward mobility, I think people can go up to a point; when you start entering Society, I think that stratus is likely difficult to really penetrate. What do others think?
I am reading Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton now, and wow, did Society have many rules! In some ways, the women’s lives were much more restrictive at that class than lower ones.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Most gay women are about 40-50 pounds overweight. Am I wrong? I’m hard pressed to see a lean lesbian but most are extremely short-haired chubby to fat dykes. It’s sad that they don’t consider the health risks of being overweight. Some of you will justify it, call me hateful and say “fat is beautiful” but I disagree when it includes being immobilized to a wheelchair or crutches, having tubed hooked up or become a corpse from a stroke or heart attack. Imagine never being able to take a walk, enjoy the fresh air and scenery because you are too fat to walk. Not pretty!
December 29th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
But most people 40-50 pounds overweight are not confined to wheelchairs. Fat might not be your opinion of beautiful but your opinion of beauty does NOT mean you are justified in make disparaging and threatening remarks about others and their health, especially others you have not met.
And yes, you are probably wrong when you say most lesbians are about 40-50 pounds overweight. Hell, we can’t even tell who the lesbians are most of the time… how on earth could you collect reasonable data regarding overweightedness???
December 29th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Well, Alison’s slender. And I’ve got a lot of lesbian customers, all in good shape and some with long hair.
Silvio, you should find another doctor~I can’t imagine 40 pounds overweight making someone obese. (Unless you’re only 4 feet tall.) Some of us love a soft, curvy body. A litle extra padding makes menopause easier. And sometimes, a few extra pounds show that the person is happy. I was my skinniest when I was miserable.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
What a strange turn this thread has taken… may I recommend ‘Shadow on a Tightrope’? An excellent book for dispelling some of these myths.
http://www.auntlute.com/shadow.htm
My last physical stated I was “underweight, at risk of malnourishment”. My sister, a titch shorter than I am, weighs about a hundred pounds more than I do, and we’re probably about equally healthy (with any extra points going to her - less coffee and no smoking, probably less risk of osteoporosis).
We’re different body types - I’m close to pure ectomorph, she’s an endomorph. You could look at photos of us throughout the years and see the difference clearly, from infancy on up. She was a chubby, attractive child; I a waif with stick thin legs and arms. The trend continued into adulthood and to the present. Nowt to do with our sexuality - though we could both use more physical activity, that’s got nothing to do with our sexuality either.
Health isn’t dependent on body size, or sexual preferences.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Sksindurham, I have a right to my opinion and what I am saying does NOT threaten anyone. Threat is a strong word to use, especially when no actions or consequences have been being proposed. Perhaps you feel threatened because I am not afraid to call dykes on being fat. It’s not my fault if you don’t like what the mirror may be telling you! Alison looks thin but probably is as health conscious as her comic strip alter ago Mo. As I can recall, the Mo character avoids eating bad food and is health conscious. I don’t like fat lesbians, period. I have every right to feel that way and have preferences, and that’s not a threat to anyone.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
I guess everyone is going to hate me after what I`m about to write now, my problem has always been, being underweight (hope that is a word). This causes backache, bruising easily and being really really cold all trough the winter. And other people have not made this easy. When I was teen ager I was thougt to be anorectic and the school nurse made teachers check if I went to the bathroom sight after lunch, I was called flat, skeletor etc. all the time.
I have no preconsieved ideas about people with extra weight, since gaining weight is so difficult for me I might be able to guess how hard it is to loose some.
Sometimes being overweight is caused by medical conditon or medicine used to treat illneses like rheumatism or even cancer.
People do say mean thing to skinny people also, and to black people, to everyone.
If one wants to hurt person`s feelings, one can always come up with something, let`s jus not. OK?
December 29th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I seem to have started a troublesome topic. First grammar, now fat. I admire the way people speak up about their opinions on this blog, but let’s not descend into unkindness.
It is interesting how things as different in mode as appearance (fat) and grammar (correctness) can incite irritation and escalation.
Am I being like parents who tell their children home visiting from college “let’s not talk about anything unpleasant” if I ask that we refrain from making hurtful remarks?
I agree with Maggie wholeheartedly when she says “Content of character is what counts… and I wish we could learn that permanently.” AMEN to that!
Judybusy, what is the name of that other Edith Wharton book that was made into a movie with Scully from the X-Files as the lead actress? The title is taken from a bible quotation and of course I can’t think of it, but the story is a chilling tale of how vulnerable a woman of that period could be without the financial support of a husband, or rich relatives. At the end of the story, after unsuccessfully trying to support herself “trimming bonnets,” she kills herself (if I am not mistaken.) Yes, the expectations of upper class women were pretty exacting.
December 29th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Liz writes: “I don’t like fat lesbians, period.”
Liz, I’d really like to believe that you’re unworthy of that comment, that it was written in haste and simply poorly worded. Do you really mean your dislike specific to fat lesbians? Or do you mean you don’t like fat people of any ilk, no matter *who* they are, that you consider them beyond the pale, people who really aren’t worthy of your time or attention?
If the former, what is it about fat lesbians that’s so unlikable? Just the way they look? How they act? How they think?
If the latter, the same questions apply.
Think about it.
Or as Tom Leher said: “I’m sure we all agree that we ought to love one another and I know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings and I *hate* people like that.”
December 29th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
HOUSE OF MIRTH, by EDITH WHARTON. I thought it was about the unyielding social rules. but what I projected onto it was how inflexible individuals are in the face of rules.
My, my; quite a nerve we’ve touched on with the body weight thread.
December 29th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Katie, the time stamp on postings seems to be off by an hour. I wonder if it has something to do with the end of daylight savings. It doesn’t really matter, of course, I’m just trying to divert the conversation to something a little less touchy!
December 29th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Okay, the English teacher part of me is going to step in.
Liz says she has the right to her opinion. Simplified, an opinion is a personal belief or view. A fact is a truth known by actual experience, observation or data. When Liz says “Most gay women are about 40-50 pounds overweight” she is stating it as one would state a fact. So, while Liz is entitled to her opinion, she needs to state it as opinion, not as if it were a fact.
More to the point, the statement “most gay women are about 40-50 pounds overweight” is rather whacked. What test subjects did you use to come up with this figure? How did you know who was gay? What weight is the “correct” one to determine if someone is over that weight? How did you collect your data? Did you bring bathroom scales to clubs, co-ops, bus stops, your local MCC?
I see dykes of all sizes and shapes (and hair-lengths) here in Boulder –although as a group, Boulderites tend to be people of pallor.
Liz, you need to get out more! Or at least, consider your comments more thoughtfully before posting them.
December 29th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
DW and to Silvio–Yes, it was House of Mirth. That’s the only other Wharton I’ve read. God, it was so sad! I didn’t know it got made into a movie. Must get it on my list, as I liked Gillian Anderson–at least that’s who I recall played Scully.
December 29th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
In case this hasn’t been posted yet, I want to mention another kudo for Alison. “Time Out New York” (the weekly what to do in NYC mag) has Fun Home listed first in their “Best books of 2006″ column!!
Woo hoo !!
Congrats from Cathy in Queens
December 29th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Hi Virginia Burton,
You’re right! It does seem to be on Atlantic time rather than EST. I hope it’s not throwing folks off too much!
December 29th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
I’ve been over 100 lbs overweight and at no point have I ever been confined to a wheelchair or on crutches. But the kind of comments I’ve read by Liz sound very familiar - the kind of thing that starts with people saying “she’s too fat and ugly to get a man, she must be a lesbian”, which can be internalised and repeated by far too many lesbians themselves.
Still, 35 lbs down now and counting (mainly through walking, funnily enough). I’m taking up jogging in the New Year. Fingers crossed there won’t be too many judgemental characters in the park laughing at me.
December 29th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Okay, okay, about the whole fat issue, straight males acting “feminine”, metrosexuals, etc. This was my take when I first read this strip, this is how I took it: when my expectations are turned upside-down, it makes me LAUGH. Suprising things, new things, often make me SMILE. That’s about it. As far as the way the guys in the gym look, we don’t know where they are on their “journey”. Maybe they’re just starting out. Or perhaps 6 months ago they were so big they could barely get theough the gym door. BTW, I thought it was cute when those young guys in my office were worried about the way they looked. Most of the time, they try so hard to project an image of confidence, so it was nice to see that they’re human like the rest of us.
Liz, I’m thinking (and hoping) you meant, “I’m not sexually atracted to larger women. I find I’m only sexually attracted to thinner women.” I’m sure if you think about it, there are some fat women in your life you really do like. It’s just that thin is what does it for you. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
Maggie, I agree, some people are just naturally bigger than others. The problem is that we see this image in the media of what the “ideal” person is supposed to look like, and those of us who don’t automatically fit into that catagory
go through a lot of angst and grief while we try to be something we’re not. (At least some of us do.)And many of the “people of thinness” discriminate against us, which I have never understood.
One of the reasons I’ve always been a Harriet fan is because I sorta looks like her (actually my friends tell me if Mo and Harriet could’ve made a baby, THAT’S what I look like-kinda scary, huh?) I’ve never had trouble finding a gf, although sometimes I suspect my “Rubenesqueness” (is that a word?)has cost me a job or two. But generally, I have a pretty good life. Now if you can’t walk, breathe, etc, because of your weight-get thee to a doctor, find a way to lose a few! Otherwise, can’t we just all get along????
December 29th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
The House of Mirth is a great book. Natch; it’s Edith Wharton. And the movie is as faithful to it as possible. Therein lies the reason the movie didn’t do well. The underlying predicament, rigid social norms, just doesn’t resonate today, partly because of The House of Mirth.
Shadowcat, “rubenesqueness” is indeed a word. In fact, I saw it used in a blog today.
December 29th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Shadocat,
At this point, I suspect Lois would reply, “Get along with a Red-haired Rubenesque Babe? No Problem!
But seriously, YES, YES, YES.
Having attended the Michigan Festival about 7 times (but not in the last 10 years), the beauty of every kind of body was revealed to me (I mean, literaly “revealed.”) And I marvelled at how comfortable so many women can be with their own shapes. Actually, about a year ago, I went to some local womyn’s land for a music festival and saw an old acquaintance from the 80s whom I had not seen in a long time. There was a lake, and she calmly took off all her clothes and went swimming, and she was quite “Rubenesque.”
There is an adjustment getting used to nudity, but it is a very healing thing. It is more about one’s own feelings of fear and self-distrust than about the way other people look. I remember at the Michigan Festival there were some women who would wear a decorative sash around their waists and nothing else. It was kind of shocking at first (Formerly Catholic girl here)but then one morning I realized i did not feel shocked anymore. That is acceptance, I believe.
So I just am trying to get to a place of “We all have a right to be here,” and if I can stay in that place, I stop hearing all the judgmental noises in my psyche.
Does anyone remember the photographer Diane Arbus’ photographs of the nudist colony? It was suburban mom-and-pop culture, complete with dad mowing the lawn; the only difference was that nobody was wearing clothes. Those pictures really achieved the same goal Lenny Bruce was trying to do: de-sensitize us from our shock when society’s rules (clothes, obscene language) are transgressed.
I confess, I still don’t agree that the inclusion of obscene language (where words that denote sex take on the verbal role of violent behavior and agression: at least that is how I perceive the list of “dirty words”) was a worthy goal. In spite of the bravery of Lenny Bruce, and I know he was trying to liberate himself and the world around him, I have an inner Edith Bunker that just doesn’t want to approach the need for freedom that way.
I know I am rambling, and we just reached a plateau about fat and now I am introducing nudity and obscenity; I just don’t learn, do I?
December 29th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
I don’t think we reached a plateau about fat. I think we reached a plateau about objecting to fat. Quite a different little animal.
December 29th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Hi all, fat lesbian here to add my $0.02.
So Liz doesn’t like me. I’m having a hard time understanding how that could even be possible, since she’s never met me, and I’ve only commented a couple times on this blog, so she can’t have much of a sense of my on-line personality either.
Or maybe Liz just means she isn’t sexually attracted to me. Again, that seems weird, since she has no idea what I look like, but it’s not a problem since I already have a girlfriend.
Liz, the fact that someone is fat (or thin for that matter) tells you absolutely nothing about her health, what kind of person she is, or whether she is likely to have short or long hair (I cut off about a foot of hair recently, and it feels great. It’s still not super-short, though). You seem to have inhaled quite a few of society’s prejudices about fat women, which are not unlike society’s prejudices about lesbians. It’s sad, really.
December 29th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
I am not attracted to overweight lesbian women at all. I am very health conscious and prefer to treat my body as a temple and not as a trash can for fast food empties. If a lesbian wants to be fat, that’s her right and her business as long as I don’t have to help pay her medical bills and I don’t have to go home with her.
Fat is not naturally occurring but a slow metabolic rate is, which is something that most of us can control through exercising and eating healthy so we don’t get fat. Being in good physical shape is a preference and fat is not as much a preference but a choice if we choose to not care what we consume. Sexual orientation is subject to preferences and overweight lesbians are not one of them.
Read the statistics for type 2 diabetes. My ex didn’t listen but wanted her french fries and all those good tasting fatty foods that feel so good for a moment but the disease she’s got is forever. I hope she enjoys her crutches!
December 29th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
I’m sure a lot of people in the world would agree with you, Liz. To most folks, being overweight is a sign of moral weakness. Of course, most people probably think sexual choice is something you can choose on a whim, so they think one gets overweight on a whim as well. Which is pretty divorced from reality, but what people believe rarely coincides with reality.
Your last bit about your ex makes me glad she’s not with you any longer. The breakup must have been a bitter one.
December 29th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Hate arises from fear and pain. Not logic. Let’s don’t argue with someone who is trying, however ineffectively, to share how she’s been hurt. Even if she’s being disrespectful. I say that as a fat woman, a disabled woman (not on crutches, but yes a walker, a raised poor woman with congenital bony abnormalities that really, truly were not a preference on my part to be not in good physical shape).
It is interesting, the connection the prejudice seems to make between fat and lesbianism.
But, I’m going to change the topic, as others have tried. I haven’t read Edith Wharton, so I can’t join that effort. Instead, I’ll ask how many readers of this blog are practicing artists (music, graphic arts, writers, dance, fabric, cooking, parenting, you define it for yourself) and what is it, in particular, about Alison’s work that speaks to you as an artist?
Also, to Alison directly — I think maybe it’s time for your website to have a sidebar listing ALL your honors, as they do keep pouring it. It would not be immodest of you, not in the least. Promote yourself, honey.
December 29th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
I’m a handweaver. When I get stressed the people around me say “don’t you need to go do something on your loom?” At Christmas when I was a loose ends for a whole bunch of reasons one of the big things that got me through was weaving. I haven’t been weaving long but it’s been like coming home and my enthusiasm seems to be growing so I now do a good bit of daydreaming wondering exactly how much poverty I would encounter if I tried to make a living at weaving.
The thing that keeps resonating with me in all those amazing reviews is that Alison was telling a story in Fun Home that was uniquely hers and desperately needed to be expressed (I think that’s what one of the reviews said… don’t remember which one.) That’s what my weaving feels like. Its uniquely mine, one thread at a time, and I desperately need to express it. I now have a house littered with looms of all shapes and sizes so even if I travel, or have guests, or whatever, I can still weave something.
I also think it’s really cool that from the most ancient of times weaving has been an important and even sacred thing. I also have an academic background in physics so doing something fundamental like understanding how strings or yarn becomes cloth really appeals to me. I’ve always thought of cartooning as this magical amazing thing in which somebody takes a pen and paper and creates… people. Or ideas. Or things. Or somehow manages to tell me something that I needed to know, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. It’s a lovely form of storytelling, which is another ancient, sacred art.
December 29th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Hi Maggie, I know you’re changing the topic but
i’ll just squeeze in one last crutch-fat post… I’m occasionally on crutches/walker too–and no, Liz, neither being lesbian nor on crutches was a lifestyle choice.
I think the met sketch & a lot of the postings here are really about preconceptions–& trying to push through them. Point is not making fun of guys talking about sales & haircuts but that we–looking at their exteriors–could have spent so long thinking them an alien species… and maybe the same thing applies to ‘fat lesbians’ seen from the outside?
Liz, I know you ‘knew’ your ex and her affair with french fries, but that could be like working out alongside muscle men every week right?
Maggie, does copywriting count as an art form? I’ve also written had some plays performed. What I really like about Alison B is how real & honest her stuff is–what she presents is accurate, I trust what I see–but at the same time it’s re-framed or re-focused so that I notice things I don’t notice in ‘real’ life. Makes me see real life with more depth & more lightness.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Maggie,
Thanks for your thoughtful, compassionate post AND your change of subject.
I am a writer. Dykes to Watch Out For (#1) was the first book I read after coming out back in the mid 80’s. Like Dykes, my first five books focused—with an eye toward humor and social justice—on day-to-day queer and lesbian life.
What has stayed with me over the last 20 years is Alison’s devotion to her art. I’m also impressed how her work keeps evolving. It’s brave to try new forms, especially when the old forms are still working.
Finally, I relate to how tough she is on herself. Not necessarily healthy, but something I also experience.
Thanks for raising the question. Back to the novel…
December 29th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
This is a public service announcement for Xanthe and any others who might be interested in fitness.
Jogging, especially if you haven’t done it in a long time, is hard on the body. I love to run, I even paid for a while to train with a coach, but it can leave you hurting all over which can be very discouraging. If you’re not already in good shape, and sometimes if you are, it can damage your knees and your feet leaving you in chronic pain.
There is an alternative, the adult sized scooter. I’ve owned one for a couple of years now and I love it. The particular kind I own is called a Kickbike (http://www.kickbikeamerica.com). There are some other kinds available in the U.S., Sidewalkers(http://www.sidewalkerusa.com/), Diggler Dirt Dawgs(http://www.digglerstore.com/) and Toucan scooters(http://www.belizebike.com/english/scooter.html).
The benefits are:
1) Easy on the body. The joints don’t take the same pounding as with running and you’re not as cramped as on a bicycle (I love bicycling as well; I quit when my back injuries made it impossible).
2) Low maintenance. No chain or gears to maintain.
3) Easy on the pants. You don’t wear out the seat as with a bicycle.
4) Looks cool. I get tons of compliments and when I park it people can’t resist checking it out.
5) Safe. I don’t remember ever falling off the thing.
6) Practical. I actually commute to work on it, it takes me about half an hour. On a bicycle it would take me 10 or 15 minutes.
7) Fun.
8) Great exercise. Works the muscles, works the joints, works the cardiovascular system, might even improve your flexibility.
I bought the scooter at a time when I was so injured that I could neither run nor bicycle—but now I prefer the scooter to a bicycle. It’s great.
(Caveat: The one improvement I made to the Kickbike, the installation of a wider footplate, was a big improvement and I could only get the footplate from a manufacturer in Holland (http://www.steptrading.nl/eng/index.html). If it weren’t for that little issue I would unreservedly recommend the Kickbike. Some of the other makers manufacture their models with wider footplates as the standard, and I think that’s a good idea.)
I hope this has been useful.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:09 am
Mid level government functionary by day, fantasist by vocation. No money in it but thoroughly done. I don’t like Wes Anderson and Tim Burton because their stuff is so unrealistic. I can handle the fantasy all by myself, thanks. I like AB’s stuff because it is so real. Fun Home was not where I grew up but where I grew up had that same sense of dread and something’s wrong; seeing it in another family helps me understand mine. Am I looking in a mirror or looking out a window? I thought that’s what art is for.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:51 am
When I was young, I was always fairly skinny, though I rarely dieted and never exercised beyond walking and square dancing. This was no great virtue on my part; I just got my metabolism from my father instead of my mother. During my first siege of depression and migraines in my late twenties, I got down to 87 pounds, which is way too thin even when you’re 4′11″. I was sick. Later, when I was in my early 40s, I went to a headache clinic in Michigan, where I was put on medication that successfully prevented migraines. It also made me gain sixty pounds in six months. I quit the meds, but my metabolism has never been the same. At one point I was a little over 180 pounds; now I’ve stabilized at a little under 140.
My eating and excercising habits have never changed much through all this, though I have had to give up walking and square dancing due to mysterious hip pain. I would like to get back down to 120, but I don’t see it ever happening. None of this has anything to do with my “not taking care of myself.” It’s all about metabolism. So skinny folks shouldn’t get too smug about themselves. You never know when something unexpected is going to happen to your body that will suddenly turn you into a butterball.
By the way, it was during my skinny period that I was most active as a lesbian. And I’ve always liked women nicely padded. Not obese, but squeezable. Now I’m squeezable, too.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith JcH: I always intended to be matronly; now I’m enjoying it.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:09 am
AnnaP! Let me kiss you!!! Smack-smack-smack!
You know the correct adjectival form of anorexia!!!
I used “anorectic” once in an article for GREEN EGG magazine and the editor corrected it to “anorexic.” Arrrrgggg!
Jana C.H.
Seattle
P.S. I may like plump women, but I have no objection whatsoever to skinnies.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:38 am
Maggie-you and I have more in common than I realized! I’ll leave it at that, and go onto this new topic. I write, draw and paint-oh and (don’t laugh) sew-sometimes. I’m not that great at any of these activities (except sewing-which is ironic, cuz that’s the one I enjoy the least), but they make me feel happy and alive.
I’ve also been a comic fan since I was just a wee baby. When I was 11, my sister and I wrote our own comic strip, which we would distribute in the mailboxes of our neighbors. It was called, “The Dope Family”–not because of drugs btw, but they just did “stupid” things that we found hilarious at that age;for example, shampooing hair in the toilet, eating dog food while the dog ate people food, etc. Years later, when the children’s book series “The Stupids” was published,all we could do was moan,”We should’ve copywrited our strip!”
I love the way Alison draws, but I enjoy the way she writes even more. She makes me laugh, she makes me think–sometimes she makes me cry.But most of all, she brings out the 11 year old in me again-hiding in the closet(not sexually this time-we have a large family, and it was the only place with any privacy!)drawing pictures with my sister…
December 30th, 2006 at 6:55 am
For me nudity is not an issue at all, since in Finland people go to sauna together naked almost every week.
Usually just the members of the same family go to sauna together, but I have been in weekend trips to someone`s summer house couple of times and usually everyone went to sauna there as well.
And there are naked people in the changing room in the swimming hall, at the beach in the summer.
I guess that is why people in here seem to be less self-conscious than in the other parts of Europe.
I have never bee to USA. My knowledge about life there is based on books, cartoons and movies and the relatives of my kids that I have never met in person.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:36 am
Photographer - is it Art? Maybe sometimes on a good day. Now getting a resurgence of interest as I have a 30-year history of photographing gay pride etc. We’re approaching the third go at the LGBT History Month - in February - and I’m becoming A Resource which is very welcome after working self-financed for years. The HM is being very well supported, perhaps by schools using it as an anti-bullying resource so they can tick that box, but hopefully as a radical challenge too. I’m just waiting for that phone call to hang the exhibition in the conservative party central office (they have gone all fluffy this year).
See www.pamisherwood.co.uk for some of my greatest hits, feedback very welcome.
December 30th, 2006 at 11:24 am
We can’t help being born gay but we can make choices when it comes to relationships where we can be true to ourselves and others, or live a straight lie. The same goes for having a sluggish metabolosm or one that could change where we can curb our consumption and exercise to stay thin or keep eating without thought and be fat. I am not attracted to fat gay women at all and have every right to act upon that preference. I don’t find “love handles” and how much there is to squeeze appealing at all along with shortness of breath, fatigue and all the other symptoms that go with obesity.
Someone speculated about my ex. When I was with her, she was never thin and needed to lose about 40 pounds but that did not matter at the time we get. Over time I came to know her and unfortunately came to know her materialistic and piggish ways. She could never be happy with all the good things she had, a nice home and someone who loved her but she wanted more to the point of excess.
While I was with her she was diagnosed with diabetes. I was devastated and concerned for her health. She had to lose weight, eat healthier and exercise and I was 100% supportive. I was mindful of foods I brought into our home and was there every morning when she would monitor her glucose level. On the day she was initially diganosed with diabetes I found her at home gorging herself on sticky buns and feeling sorry for herself. I still found it in me to have some empathy where not many would.
She did not want to follow her diet and grew tired of me. I did not make enough money to give her a lavish lifestyle and she was envious of the lesbian women at the monthly potluck dinners who were successful professionals. I did not have a degree at the time and was not good enough for her anymore. Without my knowledge she started telling people we knew that we were broken up and was actively looking for someone to replace me, before we even broke up. The day after she dumped me, she was chasing women while I was still living there and looking for another place to live.
A week before I moved out, I came home and found my ex passed out on the steps. She was in diabetic shock and unconscious. I carried her into the house and gave her sugar water and called for help. She could have gone into a coma or died. She was not appreciative and didn’t even thank me. The day after I moved out she had recently met someone and that person had moved into our home. I asked my ex how she could do this and she laughed in my face and said I should be running along and made a brushing hand gesture to indicate that I was no longer welcome. She dumped me for a fat lesbian who was a medical doctor whose income could provide to her all those goodies I could not afford to give her.
Obesity is not only based on metabolism but on selfishness and wanting more than what one needs to be happy and healthy. Love was not enough and when I see fat lesbians, I see nastiness, dishonesty, piggishness and women who throw each other away like yesterday’s paper. My ex got exactly what she asked for and is on crutches and disabled for the rest of her natural life. She was cruel and my compassion for her ran out when she threw me away and I could care less of she is in a coma.
December 30th, 2006 at 11:35 am
dear Liz, not all the fat lesbians are like your ex, it is really bad generalisation. Get over with it.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Maggie,
Thank you for inviting everyone to reveal their talents.
I am a musician and a songwriter. I sing, and play piano, accordion, and mandolin. I have been a private musician and a public performer most of my life, but for the last few years I have stopped promoting myself, and am taking a breather. Creativy, for me, has prolific, passionate years, and then sparse, static ones. I have learned that this is okay. But my inner “should” still expects continuous output. so sometimes I just need to withdraw.
I think one of the things i have always admired about Alison (apart from her artistic qualities) has been the way she has kept the business going continuously for more than 20 years. (She is the Cal Ripken of comics!) (That’s a Baltimore baseball reference…)
SKinDurham, how wonderful that you are a weaver. I took one course on really basic handloom weaving, and I have two little samplers hanging on my wall to remind me how wonderful an experience it was. I ever ordered a 4-harness loom off of e-bay once, but I never got around to stringing it (threading it? whatever you call it) and I finally let it go, because I just was not in a place to devote the concentration it required.
But it is a wonderful art.
The other thing I love, the thing that makes me happy, is sewing. Since I was a kid, I have always loved fabric, and designing clothes. Mine are kind of slap-dash, eccentric, but it is a great feeling to see a piece of material and envision what you could make it into. I suppose I should add that my father managed a factory all his life that made ladies’ travel luggage and handbags and stuff like that. I used to visit the factory when I was a kid and I loved seeing all the rolls of fabric and all the spools of thread.
What I love about Alison’s art (Maggie, it was about time somebody asked us to discuss this!!) is her characters–they truly are people I would like to have as friends–but also I love her cleverness with words, and Fun Home really showcased this talent of hers. Her ability to include works of literature as characters in her own plot. It was an integration of intellectual concepts with gut level events.
I also want to add one thing to the discussion about whether American society perceives upward mobility to be acceptable. I was watching the original version of SABRINA last night (the one with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn.) Sabrina’s father (the chauffeur)and Sabrina are discussing whether it would be okay for Sabrina to marry Linus (the rich guy). Sabrina says, “it would be very democratic.” Her father says, “Democracy is a funny thing. No one ever accused a poor person marrying a rich one of being democratic.”
December 30th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
I am over with it and that includes fat lesbians. They are my past and yesterday’s paper. I hope some of them will enjoy taking insulin or hobbling with a cane or on crutches for the consequences of their personal choices but I know I will not a part of it. My personal choices are maintaining good health and being around healthy people who appreciate life, that are not avaricious and always wanting more, like that second or third helping.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
That’s one fat tarbrush you have there, Liz. I hope you can move on and start looking at people as individuals one day. And being a “healthy” weight is no guarantee that you’ll avoid diabetes throughout your life.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
This thread has taken a decidedly ugly turn.
Just for the record, I prefer to surround myself with non-avaricious individuals who appreciate life as well.. and I’ve a wonderful group of friends who’ve been endowed with all manner of bodies and fit that bill nonetheless.
How anyone could honestly wish immobility or ill health on somebody simply because that person happens to be overweight is utterly incomprehensible to me.
People are individuals, regardless of size. Knowing someone’s weight tells you one thing and one thing alone: how much they weigh. It doesn’t tell you how they got that way.. whether it was genetics, a medical condition, or those “second and third helpings”. In most cases (unless we’re talking about individuals who are dangerously under or overweight), it doesn’t even tell you all that much about the state of their health. And it certainly doesn’t tell you whether or not they happen to be a decent person.
December 30th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Dear Liz,
Your ex certainly sounds unpleasant. Please look on the bright side: you are no longer with her. Holding on to your bitterness about the break up is hurting you, not her. You say you’re over it, but your pain and anger are evident in everything you’ve written. You say, “My personal choices are maintaining good health and being around healthy people who appreciate life, that are not avaricious and always wanting more, like that second or third helping.” Mental and emotional health are as important and physical health and, indeed, affect it. I’m worried that you’re letting your bitterness eat up your pleasure in life.
And it sounds as if your life has definitely improved. You said you did not have a college degree “at that time” which implies that you’ve gone back to school and now have a degree. Good for you!
So here’s a question that’s a bit of a change in topic: What is it about DTWOF that attracted you? Do you love Alison’s characters? Plot? Both? You wouldn’t be on this website if you weren’t a fan in some way. What is it that pleases you about Alison’s work?
December 30th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
My artistic outlets are in the garden and in the kitchen. Last year, I had a hard loss of some old, large lilacs that turned my mostly shade garden to all sun. (I appreciate the website from the last thread to help re-populate my garden!) Like all art, there is always technique to hone. This year, I want to try starting different flowers from seed that are a bit more challenging to germinate. This, I think, is akin to learning to use a new brush or loom or working with a new fabric.
Unlike Alison’s art, which I regard as thought-provoking, and meant to stimulate, I see my creations as soothing, comforting and nurturing (and obviously, AB’s art has those qualities too, as attested by so many who have written “you were a godsend when I first came out!”) There is nothing I love more than having people over for dinner with vegetables and herbs from the garden. My partner is a tremendous cook, too, and we have learned, uh, well *I* have learned to cooperate in the kitchen. (My former husband affectionately nicknamed me “kitchen fascista”)
Thanks, Maggie, for this refreshing turn of conversation!
Back to Wharton: Can someone suggest a book of criticism about her work?
Back to the mobility of class question: Silvio, good observation on marrying into class, which of course a woman (who is more typically the one doing the moving) is seen as a gold-digger. I thinks that also speaks to how people are usually most comfortable with people close to them in class–or at least that is how it seems to me. I think there has been some research to back that up, but heaven knows when or where I read it.
December 30th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
In college, which was the mid-80s, I took a marvelous sociology course in which we just read sociology books and learned how sociologists think from that. I remember more from that course than from most of my other courses, and I was in college a loooooong time.
Anyway, one of the books talked about demographics and how people usually predict that in the future they will be doing pretty much what they are doing now, or at least what people in their general cultural sub-group were doing now. The other thing we talked about, however, is that people rarely truly move out of their socioeconomic group. Part of the thinking that we can or do is because we have a much more specific and detailed understanding of our own group so small differences take on big importance. Big differences with people in other groups aren’t understood as well. So (for example) people can give you a very detailed ranking of income or status of those who have incomes/status near their own, but people with much larger or smaller incomes all kind of get lumped into aggregate categories. I found it fascinating then and still find it fascinating!
That said… the talk was all about GROUPS of people and the specifics cannot be applied to individuals. So I’m not saying anything about any specific person. I have noticed as we have aged, however, that my partner and I are tending to make choices that put us in situations that are sort of modern equivalents of where our parents were. So despite all our education and larger incomes, we are returning to the familiar.
It’s all just so interesting to me!
:-)
December 30th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
I’m late in getting to this thread since I’ve spent the last few days recovering from the direct jump from end-of-semester chaos to the Family Zone. Since xmas I’ve mostly just read novels and puttered in the kitchen (soup stock, homemade bread, curry…).
The thing that prompts me to comment now is not all the fat discussion (yowzah!) but to express delight that Silvio plays the accordion. I’m aspiring to mediocrity on my newly-acquired accordion. It’s so beautiful - pearlized red and white. As a pianist, the right hand is no trouble, but my left hand is just clunky as all get-out. It always seems to overwhelm the melody line. Any advice on getting it to sound lighter? On the whole ‘breathing’ thing? (Since I live in Wisconsin, I s’pose I should be working up to a good polka.)
December 30th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Oh, to add to the class discussion, I think it’s so, so important to move beyond just considering income. I’m nearing the end of my career as a grad student and have been living on not much money for a while now. In the last few years I’ve been keenly aware of how I (and many of my colleagues) have become very good at expressing a certain strain of middle-class values even though we don’t have the money to support the full lifestyle; it’s accomplished through the careful acquisition of technology (the laptops required for our work, the iPods beloved by all but especially by those studying music), having a veggie garden that’s both a labor of love (yep, I grew 18 varieties of tomatoes last summer) and a functional source of food, etc. We’ve become remarkably good at focussed skimping and focussed spending such that the latter expresses certain expectations / aspirations that are related to those held by many folks with more money than us (perhaps especially our professors, who become more and more like colleagues the closer we get to finishing the damn dissertataions).
That’s a long way of saying that class is as much about social expectations as about money flowing into a household.
December 30th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Sivio-Sew you are a seamstress as well!!(haha) Seriously, I hate the actual sewing, but love “having sewn”. Don’t do clothes as much anymore, but make curtains, decor-stuff, totebags, stuff like that I’m usually motivated by seeing something in an expensive in an upscalle store, and thinking, “Well hell, I can make that or 10 bucks.” Then I do!
December 30th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
jmc,
yes, those social expectations will get you every time.
Although I grew up in a middle class New Jersey suburb in the 50s and 60s (decade, not income), which included two cars but no dishwasher or dryer, when I went to college and afterward, I acquired those thrift store/voluntary simplicity values that 20-somethings had in the 60s and 70s. So I never learned to spend money on furniture, preferring to use my money for more important things like travel, or musical instruments. Fast forward thirty years to the late 90s, and I had still never paid money for new furniture.
While working at an administrative job while getting my master’s degree, I invited a professor whom I thought was a kindred spirit over for dinner. (She taught feminist studies…caution, never assume anything!) She walked into my apartment and sniffed, “Oh! This is how I used to live when I was a college student!” I was about 40 yrs old at the time! I was half shocked at her apparent higher economic status and the other half totally insulted to be so patronized. Oh well. Live and learn.
Oh, and welcome to the joys of accordion playing! I like it because it is more portable than a piano (although heavier in the long run…), and you feel the vibrations right on your chest as you play! One thing you might enjoy is exploring the melodic qualities of the left hand buttons. you can play scales and melodies with those buttons too.
December 30th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Oh and I know I should let this go–BUT…
For all of us who were hurt by Liz’s comments or worried about their size, just remember–right now, you are at someone else’s goal weight.
My junior-high comeback still works well for me too:”Oh Yeah? Well the only thing that wants a bone is a dog, and he just buries it in the backyard!”(Just make that an inner chant-I don’t advise saying it out loud…)
December 30th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Hear, hear to all the AMAZING class comments. I think about this topic all the time and yet every single one of you said stuff that I’d not directly considered before. Likewise, I had begun to suspect this blog was attracting similarly creative folks, and wow, is that true.
I had a fantasy last night, as I was going to sleep, about winning the lottery — well, I have that fantasy every night, but this version was that I was able to sponsor a “reunion” for all of us on this blog, kind of like YearlyKos, if you know what that is. It was in Burlington, of course, and people came from all over the world to meet Alison, discuss her work (academics were salivating over it), meet each other, have workshops (about brushwork, grammar, and Doris Day, for sure), talk about art — can’t you just imagine it? It first in my head I was calling it The Alison Review, but right before I dropped off it became the Bechdelnalia.
Now — to respond specifically to JMC’s last post — yeah! Several years ago I was asked to lead a workshop on class and classism at the local Festival of the Goddess, and for it I devised a class-specific version of the Power Shuffle invented by Ricky Sherover-Marcuse and used in New Bridges training, for instance. I was hoping to address how, in a group that is choosing a sort of uniform downward mobility, such as the lesbian community I spent my 20s in, class divisions were still deep and perceived much more acutely by the target group than by the non-target group. I wanted to give the women on the non-working-class and “below” side of the divide some concrete indicators of class they had been not seeing and/or ignoring. This exercise, which I called the Class Layer Cake, succeeded far beyond my hopes for it. I’m going to list the questions I used below — I am indebted to numerous sources for the thinking that helped me create this list, so I do ask you credit me if you use this but I’m determined to share it freely. Each of these questions is designed to (very roughly) divide people into lower, middle and upper class, without using income:
1. Did your parents/the people who raised you finish high school, finish college, or get a graduate degree?
2. Did your family ever receive any kind of public assistance OR has your family gone abroad for reasons other than visiting family still there or being sent on a job?
3. Were you raised by a single parent/are you a single parent OR have you or your parents hired someone to work in your home?
4. Have you lived in a trailer, family-owned or subsistence farm, or government-subsidized housing OR in a gated community, apartment building with doorman/front security, or owned a second home?
5. Do you or the people who raised you work for an hourly wage doing manual labor, skilled or unskilled work, pink collar or clerical, OR is at least 30% of your annual income from something other than your direct labor? (If you don’t know how much of your income comes from non-labor sources, assume it is over 30%.)
6. During high school and college vacations, did you work at a wage-earning job, OR during those vacations you went to a non-church camp or traveled with the expense paid for by your family?
7. Did you or your family ever go without car insurance because of lack of money, OR did you or your family ever own more than one new car at a time?
8. Are you or any member of your immediate family disabled, chronically ill or dead due to lack of medical care because they could not afford it, OR do you or any member of your family have attendant, nursing care or assisted living which is paid for privately?
9. Do you or any member of your immediate family have visibly missing or decayed teeth, OR have any of you had cosmetic caps or teeth polishing?
10. Have you or any member of your famly ever been Holocaust survivors, non-English-speaking immigrants, homeless or incarcerated?
If you want instructions on how to do this exercise with a group, or the Power Shuffle, contact me directly.
December 30th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
To be honest I don’t really how many women were hurt by my comments because I meant every word of it. There are a lot of lesbians who are fat and there weren’t Alison would not have a reason to create the comic “Metrosexuals are Taking Over My Y” and those lesbians would be working out alongside her at the gym and the metrosexuals would not be as apparent.
I don’t care if any obese lesbians were hurt and it’s not like I sad that anyone was ugly and their mother smells but was telling the truth and make NO apologies for the fact that the truth HURTS! Reality sucks and that’s not my fault.
What I can’t get over are when fat lesbians slick back their hair, sport a blazer who think they are so smooth or charming casanovas. It’s even more laughable when that cute female coworker, who is straight, befriends a fat dyke and this dyke develops an infatuation and moons after her like a puppy dog, much to the amusement of coworkers who take notice. I have seen it and it makes me cringe with embarassment.
When it comes to lesbians who are charming and appealing, Portia DeRossi comes to mind. Hillary Swank did a wonderful job in portraying gay women and celebrating masculinity in women in the films Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby. Personal Best positively portrayed good aesthetics in gay women. I wish gay women would strive for those things and maybe Alison would not feel so isolated at the Y.
December 30th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
I think of this website or blog or whatever it is - someone called it a slow chat room - as a wonderful dinner party. Smart, funny people with something worth saying and who usually observe the “two minute rule” (honored in the breach at the dinner parties I have to dress up for). I was reading Calvin Trillin’s appreciation of his wife who had a thing about smoking and, he said, “could be frank enough on that subject to provoke a shouting match at a dinner party.” We have just gone through a shouting match. Neither side seems swayed. Can we now retrieve our party manners and get on with what makes me come here every day? OK, several times a day.
December 30th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
Silvio Soprani, I wonder if your nickname among those who know you well is Hurdy-Gurdy? ;^)
December 30th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Judybusy, I’m glad you liked the gardenweb.com link and I look forward to trading plants with you in the future. (I’m johnsaunt on that site.) But you still haven’t answered the questions about your moving up a zone because of the cows and cars. Someone thought your cows were expelling so much methane gas that they’d changed the temperature of your zone! My question is this: If you moved up a zone to 5, were you in zone 6 (which is lower geographically) or zone 4 (which is lower numerically) or did you mean something altogether different? Inquiring minds want to know!
December 30th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Maggie Jochild -
Nice questions! And how an individual pays for college (assuming they go), and who pays for their first car…
There are still all those weird places where social values and economic realities interact. I was raised lower middle/upper lower class economically (single parent, government aid, heat and telephone cut off at times, etc, etc) but decidedly upper middle class socially (all four grandparents had attended college and it was a clear expectation for children in my family, though we were also clearly expected to figure out how to pay for it on our own). Altogether, it makes for an odd world perspective…
December 30th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
One last comment today. Pointing back to Duncan’s search for music by gay men, of course the task of recommending music by identity category is kind of odd, but I’ll throw a name in the hat. The Prince Myshkins are a pair of song writers that moved to Madison recently from San Diego; I assume, but don’t know absolutely, that they’re a couple. Anyway, they write songs with lots of political content and *brilliant* wordplay that will be appreciated by DTWOF fans. (And one of ‘em plays accordion!)
Check out some of their MP3s online. “The Dr. Laura Polka” is an especially rich example of their unexpected rhymes and references (Benjamin’s aura makes an appearance); at the right time, certain lines in “Ministry of Oil” have been known to bring tears to my eyes.
It looks like they’re due for some east coast dates in January. For other Madisonians on this blog, they play at Mother Fool’s (Willy St.) a couple of times a year. Strongly recommended.
December 30th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
I’ve skipped over some of the postings to get in something quick here. hope it’s useful to someone . . .
reading the comments about weight, health, etc. reminds me of a comment that someone once made to me. this is a guy who spent much of his life what I believe is called “height/weight proportionate” — in the personals at least — and then gained a LOT of weight as a result of a medical condition. he’s managed to shed some of that weight and is healthier as a result . . .
anyway, I’ve tended to take pride in my good health and height/weight proportionality, until he commented that both are due to good heredity rather than any special effort on my part. true, I don’t live on highly processed or fast foods . . . at the same time, my main souce of exercise is walking to and from my car, taking stairs, etc. and I’m not good about eating veggies. basically, I favor carbs and am constantly resolving to be more thoughtful about what I eat.
I’m grateful for my good health and that (for now at least) I’m pain free. but I really can’t take credit for these “attributes.” and I watch myself about being judgemental of those who have other attributes. sometimes you hafta look below the surface to find what’s most attractive in a person.
December 30th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Meg,
Interesting comments about socio-economic-class status. One side of my family of origin all have graduate or post graduate degress, while two of the three siblings on the other side didn’t finish high school. My parents met at teachers’ college. My brothers and I were expected to get (and did get) undergrad degrees as a matter of course. I made a poor marital choice in my early twenties, and have spent the last fifteen years climbing out of the economic and psychological pit that created.
It’s amazing what poverty and emtional abuse can do to your sense of self empowerment and choice. At the grocery store, carbs are cheaper per oz than lean meat or veggies. When you’re working twelve hours a day to put someone through a second undergraduate program, it can be hard to find the time and energy for a daily workout. Fitness isn’t always, but can be an economic and class issue.
Just some random thoughts…
Deena
December 31st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Wow, this is quite a series of comments! Where to begin … Not on class or metrosexuals I think, otherwise I’m not sure when I’d stop! Being a British gay man I think I have differing views on both!
Ovidia - can I ask where you’re from? I never thought I’d hear someone on this blog mention the Chalet School! My mother had every single book. The main character of the series is partly based on Jo from ‘Little Women’ and the book is even mentioned in a couple of the series. There’s also a strong subtext or undercurrent of lesbian relationships within the 62 books, which comes and goes depending on the fashion of the times and is most evident in the books of the 1920s and 40s. There’s an interesting article online somewhere discussing this aspect and speculating on the sexuality of the author. Just Google Chalet School and you’ll find it.
On the subject of artistry I attempted a career as a contemporary dance choreographer but it didn’t work out sadly. So now I pour my creativity into cooking and I also knit and crochet - it’s very therapeutic, although there’s a hint of occupational therapy behind it all.
I’d love to have a garden, Judybusy, but I just have a concrete yard. So I make do with container gardening and growing my own cooking herbs on my kitchen window sill. It’s so healing, it’s unbelievable. It’s also good mild exercise for those who are conscious about their extra poundage! *cheeky grin* But let’s not start that again. If I wanted to make your respective bloods boil, I’d point you to this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6214655.stm
Words failed me on that one!
On a more positive note, could I instead point you to this blog?
http://www.guerrillagardening.org/
which is a movement to enhance our respective concrete jungles? I’m being cheeky as the site is a British one, but the idea is imported from movements in New York and Montreal. I thought it was such a fantastic idea! Subversive gardening!
December 31st, 2006 at 12:39 am
Just skim read some of the comments on ‘weight’. I have to agree with Liz on the weight ‘fact’ studies (will post sources later’ in the UK have noted that lesbians are more likely to be overweight that hetrosexual females, why?. Well it could be the fact that ‘lesbians’ are subjected to the male gaze and do not feel the same body image pressures. Whilst the opposite is true within the gay male community ‘body beautiful/ muscle mary’s are heids up as ideals….its such a shallow culture. However with the progs like the L word promoting the slim lesbian..the days of a body image free lesbian are numbered. Yes obviously cultural/material influences play their part too (Meg).
If you want to change topic…why don’t lesbians going cruising or participate in the tearoom trade/cottaging?, answers on a postacrd!!!
December 31st, 2006 at 12:45 am
not subjected to the male gaze
December 31st, 2006 at 6:41 am
“However with the progs like the L word promoting the slim lesbian”
Well, considering that it’s tv, it probably wasn’t ‘promotion’ so much as it’s… tv. Where _everyone_ is insanely attractive, unless it’s a sitcom where the men can be fat schlubs (but the wives still have to be gorgeous of course)
As far as the weight issue in real life, my backround is a straight, slightly overweight (I got them childbirthin’ hips) straight gal at a university with a great number of sorority girls. I can tell myself over and over and over that it’s what’s inside that counts, there’s a wide range of beautiful, but honestly… none of that means a damn thing when I keep getting rejected in favor of gorgeous skinny girls. All the affirmations that I know in my rational brain to be true don’t help when I get in a certain state. Of course the irony is that I have it bad for skinny guys. I don’t mean merely trim, but that emo/indie rocker type skinny. On the other hand, that body type has always been considered undersirable for guys, while the ‘muscle man’ physique just never held any appeal for me at all. My point is… I have no point. Just rambling.
The class questionare is really interesting. My family is pretty solidly middle class, but having my mom constantly insti