What a strange week this has been, full of friends and antagonists, both old and relatively new; shifted time; internal evolution and emotional revolution; the deeply ingrained dissonance of a lifetime of staccato tempo, always out of step with the body electric; lost opportunities, chaotic potential, and paper cut insults.
I got in a town car this morning at 3:30am. I hadn't slept in almost 20 hours, after a week of moderate sleep-deprivation (less than five hours a night on average) and more than its share of drinking. Soft jazz played on the radio. The streets were dark and empty. I stared out the window, mutely watching the reflection of colored lights slip over the windows.
After about fifteen minutes, the sound dropped to silence unexpectedly, and the bent and elderly man behind the wheel spoke for the first time.
"Last night I was watching a movie with John Denver and George Burns. I'd never seen it. Burns plays God, and Denver is a man who has lost his faith. Burns comes to him and tells him he has to go around and share the word with others."
"At first Burns is just a voice, then later he appears bodily to Denver. God tells Denver he can look or sound like anybody. God says he appears as the person Denver was most likely to listen to, but if Denver wanted, God could look like anything."
"Denver starts going around and telling people that God is speaking to him, that he has found faith. His wife and family think he's crazy. He doesn't care. He does it anyway." FN1.
Then he adjusted the rear view mirror to met my befuddled gaze in the backseat. "I didn't tell you before. My name is Joe."
While I tend to use this space occasionally for fiction writing, I swear that in this particular case, this is exactly what happened to me. And this town car driver intervention of David Lynchian proportions is a pretty solid analogy for the weirdness of the last ten days of my life.
In some ways, it has been a terrible and disappointing week, both personally and for the collective us. In some ways, it has been a surprisingly wonderful week, far exceeding even my best expectations. Overall, though, it's felt overwhelming full of conflicted potential.
Once, a few years ago, a road trip with my very own the Kate, we were driving across Indiana in winter in the early morning, and she hit a patch of black ice. The car began to spin, and she overcorrected, then overcorrected again. FN2. We glided across the road, the car turning in circles, then continued to spin across the grassy strip separating us from traffic traveling in the opposite direction.
As we crossed the center divide, I honestly wasn't sure we were going to stop. I was pretty sure we were about to spin uncontrollably into oncoming traffic, with my side facing their ominous headlights. I remember clearly thinking, "Wow. If this keeps going, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to die."
A very long moment or two later, we ground out a little over halfway across the esplanade. There was a deep trench in it, and the car's wheels finally lost contact with the frozen ground, wedging us perpendicular to the highway. We were stuck and needed a tow to get the car unwedged, but the car were otherwise fine. Eventually we got pulled out and continued down the highway, passing an eight vehicle pile-up including a tanker truck where several people had been severely injured less than a half mile ahead of us. Had we not slipped into our own vortex, we might have been caught up in it.
I was trying to figure out how to explain the emotional impact of this week, the personal joys and sorrows, the steps forward and back, pressed up against the public horrors heaped on women and people of color by what we laughingly refer to as justice and democracy. I've been trying to figure out to describe the shock and pain I feel personally, how it has strangely rubbed like sandpaper against the contours of an already out-of-context week where the past, present, and future seemed extremely loud and incredibly close.
That moment on the black ice is as close as I can come. This week feels like the moment that unmoored us in the darkness that night, the one we never saw coming until it was too late. The split second out of step, just before everything slips back into place, for better or worse. It is out of sync with the rest of my life, and when the momentum of movement grinds to a halt, I wonder which direction I will be facing: forward, backward, parallel to my regularly scheduled life? Will I find myself miraculously only a little worse for the wear, and continue down the road I was headed as if nothing significant has happened? Will this all fade into a strange memory that seems more like a dream than something that actually happened? Or has the entire thing -- the pain, the disappointment, the surprising happiness -- changed my destination?
I don't know.
And yes, I know this entire piece has been an incredibly non-specific, self-indulgent piece of navel gazing, but the details of my personal frictions, proverbial black ice, barely avoided disasters, and moments of feeling strangely alive? They really aren't significant in and of themselves. Nothing that happened to me directly in the last ten days is all that remarkable or even noteworthy. In a vacuum, they would make for terribly boring stories, really.
The way a very public trial in Florida, a routine trial in D.C., a bill in Texas, a trip to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and a conversation with a drunk Eastern European man who lives in France about justice, social activism, and my past makes me question my career choices isn't all that interesting in and of itself. Just like reliving some of the best and worst parts of high school while stuck in a dorm in Boston at a week-long company retreat, full of the kind of giddy highs and lows one only really has at sleep away camp when you're twelve and your real life is so far away it is easy to envision mountains where there are only mole hills, doesn't make for an epicly told tale at the end of the day. Neither does the way receiving bad news in a particular moment lessen the sting, only to find the poison of the forgotten embedded stinger slushing around inside bring on the full necrotic blow the next day.
But, in the moment of unknowing, that feeling? The feeling I had crossing the black ice, or when the driver seemed to be strangely trying to tell me, with the borrowed voice of God, to wake up and pay attention because this was one of those moments that if I didn't stop and look around, I might be missing my life speeding by me? That is worth telling. It is worth noting those moments that unhinge you a little, driving you to question things about how others perceive you, how you see yourself, and what you should be doing with your life. It's easy, in the day to day, to forget the miracle of having a life at all can be. It's easy to coast along in your routine and never question the assumptions of your values, the correctness of your choices.
"Keep your distance; I haven't got a thing to say. Where's the exit? What time is it, anyway? You said I would like it here, but I don't feel a thing. Where's this happening -- in your head? But my mother said Smile like they want you. Smile like you're in control. Smile like you mean it. Smile, baby, you're on a roll. Smile, smile, smile…."
"Smile," Cristina FN3.
________________
FN1. The movie, it turns out, is Oh, God!, released in 1977.
FN2. I feel compelled to mention here that Kate is a very good driver who has never had an accident. This incident was the closest she has ever come to being in one. It was a fluke thing.
On moving, the Aurora, Colorado shooting, and DSH Perfumes Vanille Botanique
Dear reader:
This is a three-part post. It is long. (What can I say? I missed you!) Feel free to skip ahead to the perfume if you want. Everyone else, hang on, and remember: keep your arms and legs inside the car at all time. <g>
Part One: On Moving.
That's great! It starts with an earth quake, birds and snakes and airplanes. Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
~ "It's The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," R.E.M.
My old original LC mail box!
Goodbye forever!
Rejoice and glad tidings, for I have a place to live! For those of you who know nothing about the Portland real estate market, let me tell you a harrowing tale of a town where young people come to retire, no one wants to buy, and the rental market is a brutal, awful place. Luckily, David and I found a lovely house with a week to spare. We have to be off campus on August 1, so we are in the midst of a massive move. Like everything else in the new economy, we found the house through friends, and we are living with friends because (1) he's starting school so we could use the rental discount, and (2) after being in a fishbowl, we would probably die if suddenly we were locked in a room with just each other day in, day out after a decade of constant visits from friends. We need some transition time.
We are moving into a lovely one and a half story. We have a deck. We have fruit trees (green apple, plum). We have a fireplace, dishwasher, and a clothes washer/dryer of our own. There are flowerbeds for me to plant and walls for me to decorate and at the holidays, I can actually put up decorations people can see. I will finally be able to get a welcome mat.
Moving is tiring...
Group house or not, I feel awfully grown-up all the sudden. FN1. It's not quite how I imagined my life as a kid. I mean, I remember my parents when they were my age, and I am still a lot less 'grown-up' than they were at the time. But I'm a lot happier and my life is full of good friends and laughter and love, so as far as I'm concerned, I ended up in a much better place than the place I thought I wanted to be.
Hmmmm. I believe there's an Amanda Palmer song in there somewhere. FN2. That's appropriate, since I saw her last weekend. It was a small venue show to raise money Literacy Bridge, an organization that provides a "talking book" to help spread educational programming in Africa (best practices for pre/post-natal care, subsistence farming, etc.). The whole thing was terrific, especially the cause involved. The tickets were a belated birthday present from El Hubs, and it was a great night/gift and our local friends, The Doubleclicks, were the opener.
Part Two: On The Aurora, Colorado shooting.
"Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing. I'm very scared for this world."
~ "You are Everything," R.E.M.
Before I get to the perfume in this post (and yes, I'll eventually get there), I wanted to say a few words about the Aurora, Colorado shootings. I bring this up in part because Amanda talked about it a lot at the show, and also because I'd be thinking about it regardless.
Depending on how you count, this is the fifth, sixth, or hundred and twelfth mass shooting since Columbine. FN3. FN4. I know we spend a lot of time on the "why?," but if we are trying to figure out what makes someone crazy and destructive, while that question is worth exploring, it is probably besides the point. There have always been and will always be crazy people, destructive people, people who are not satisfied with killing themselves and want to take others with them. Why would they hurt others and/or hurt themselves? There are socio-cultural debates about the state of mental health care, hopelessness and disconnection in the digital millennium, and the fetishization of violence that we could talk about for hours. Me? I just keep hearing, "I Don't Like Mondays" in my head. Stupid, but true.
Ukuleles save lives!
We keep asking these questions because we all want answers. We want a solution, something that makes us feel safer and helps the world make a little more sense. We want to feel like there is something we can do, actively do, that gives us back our power over the insanity of the world. I get that, too. I feel it as much as the next person.
The question is: what concrete thing can you and I do to make a difference?
When you sit and ask yourself, "Why is this happening so much now? Why is the impact so much larger now than when people went crazy in the past?", I think we all have to own the fact that the proliferation of guns, specifically automatic and semi-automatic guns, is 80% of the answer. I'm not saying someone can't do a lot of damage without one six round revolver, but if you want to know why the number of injured and dead keeps going up and up, I think we all see this is a huge part of the problem.
Now, I am not anti-gun. Yes, you read that right. Not against personal gun ownership. Given my general leftie swerve, this probably surprises many of you. Part of it is my upbringing, as I was raised in a world where every man I knew was a cop, or in the military or a sport hunter or a combination thereof. In my mind, it felt like gun ownership was something that came with adulthood, like getting a driver's license or drinking alcohol. Grown-ups had guns. All of them. FN5. My house came replete with a plethora of guns, including an AR-15, one other guns we know was used in Aurora.
This assault rifle, which had *no business* in my suburban home for a lot of reasons, was used throughout most of my life to prop up a fan next to my parents bed so the fan blew directly on my father while he slept. "Be careful getting out of bed on that side," they'd tell John and I, "there's a gun over there." John and I were raised with what I believe was a healthy if somewhat non-specific fear of guns, taught to think of them with the same kind of fear one treats a poisonous snake; it lives over there, stay away and don't even come close to it, it could kill you if you touch it.
The result of this upbringing is: I know how to shoot a gun. I do not own or carry one, but if I felt compelled to, I'd be fine with it. David doesn't have a gun, but it would not have been a barrier to our relationship if he had. Having a gun in a home doesn't scare me or worry me; I just don't really see the reason to have one. I don't need it for work, like most of the people I grew up with, and I'm not interested in sport hunting, like the rest of the people I grew up with, because I have other hobbies. In my mind, a gun is a tool for a specific purpose, and since my life does not contain such a purpose, it doesn't contain a gun. If that were to change, I'd be fine with it.
So when I tell you that the solution is the complete ban on the sale of some weapons to the general population, I need you to understand that it has nothing to do with me
hating guns or wanting to take your guns. When I tell you that background checks and gun control laws and waiting periods are the key to a better world, it is not because I am some knee-jerk reactionary hater when it comes to guns. I just generally believe that it should not be easier for me to go buy a gun than it is to buy Sudafed. I believe those who have a documentable propensity toward violence or mental instability do not need 24/7 immediate access to fast-firing, high volume weaponry.
This doesn't seem like a political issue to me. It seems like common sense. It has become a political issue because gun manufacturers have a lot of money and they know how and where to spend it. We have ways to fight them, though. It's our vote. Politicians don't like being laid off any more than the next person. If you believe in gun control, tell you elected representatives that this issue matters to you and will be an issue you follow when it comes to their donations and voting record. You can find out who your reps are here (Fed and State), and check their voting records on any issue here (Fed) and get their record as it relates to gun control (and any other issue) through their organization report cards here. Your voice does matter, and let's face it: all the money in the world can't save a politician we choose not to vote for.
Though I don't think Jim Morrison meant it quite this way, I am reminded in this moment: "They've got the guns but we've got the numbers." Or, to put it another way, "I believe in peace, bitch." Thanks, Tori Amos. You always know how to say what I'm feeling with a twisted flair.
We need more gun control. More guns will not result in less violence. And for anyone who thinks armed civilians in the theatre could have stopped this incident, I will only note the following: 1. the theater had a sign up telling gun owners to leave their weapons in their cars, so any law abiding citizen would have been unarmed anyway; (2) two members of the military were shot and killed in the incident. All the training in the world, including how to avoid live fire, isn't going to save you in a crowded, smokey stampede; (3) even the best trained people will struggle with a surprise attack requiring a response that includes accurate shooting in a moving crowd in a smoke filled room. More guns would have meant more people shot. Again, we're not talking about rocket science. This isn't a movie; it's real life. Common sense says more shooters, no matter how well trained, experienced, and/or armed they were, would have meant more wounded, more dead.
The answer isn't more guns. It's fewer guns.
Well, that was decidedly non-perfumey, wasn't it? So let's talk about what I'm wearing right now.
Part Three: A Review of DSH Perfumes VanilleBotanique, aka "Dear gods in the ether, where have you been all my life?"
The world is collapsing around our ears. I turned up the radio but I can't hear it..."
~ "Radio Song," R.E.M.
As we make our move today, I am currently sporting Dawn Spencer Hurwitz's Vanille Botanique, a 100% botanical designed for Indiescents. DSH Perfumes describes it as:
Vanille Botanique is a luscious, balsamic vanilla in the classical style. A soft jasmine heart and bergamot top note balance and round out the bouquet. Such deliciousness!
Top notes: Bergamot, Lemon, Rosewood (bois de rose) Middle notes: Bulgarian Rose Absolute, French Beeswax, Grandiflorum Jasmine Base notes: Australian Sandalwood, Buddahwood, Civet, Labdanum, Peru Balsam, Siam Benzoin, Tahitian Vanilla, Tolu Balsam, Vanilla Absolute
Indiescents' description adds the following: "Rich, decadent vintage style vanilla perfume; all botanical. Subtle citrus in the top, warm, sensuous florals mixed with rich gourmand notes in the heart and luxurious base of balsams, resins and of course vanilla."
So now we have the perfumer's description, some notes, and some ad copy, let's talk vanilla perfume for a second, shall we? Lots of houses make vanilla perfume. It's, ummmmm, how do I say this....abundant almost to the point of being unwieldy. People love the way baked goods and old books and sweet cocktails smell, and every tom, dick, and bath and body place in the mall will tell you that this or that vanilla is a well-paced selling standard for them. I think most fragrance and flavor companies would bear me out when I tell you that vanilla/vanillin, real or synthetic, is a primary note available in abundance.
Because of that, it's a crowded field out there -- good, bad, and ugly. So I'll tell you right now that are already a number of good vanillas to be had. My personal favs are, in no particular order: Annick Goutal Vanille Exquise, Atelier Cologne Vanille Incenseé, Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille, L'Artisan Vanilia. I am happy to report Dawn Spencer Hurwitz has once again found a way to seperate me from my hard earned dough with Vanille Botanique, which will round out my All-Time, Top Five Des(se)rt Island vanilla scents. Releasing at Number Five, with a bullet.
Why am I so quick to proclaims its supremacy? In keeping with the theme, here are my top five reasons.
1. VanilleBotanique is so warm!Vanille Botanique is almost a hot scent on my skin. It works the way I'd expect a hot pepper taste to translate into perfume. It rises in smexy wafts from my arm in a way that is decidedly unfoodie. I bet it's the civet in the base that's making me feel all ha-cha-cha about it, but about a half hour in -- wow, do I want to have sex wearing this perfume. (There, I said it). It smells the way I'd write a scene with people licking vanilla frosting off each other. I know, I know. You're taken aback by my frank dirtiness, but there it is. What can I say? I learned it by reading you, Chandler Burr.
Spray sample from Indiescents. GET ONE TODAY!
2. Vanille Botaniqueis strong. I mean this in a good way. Not like, "Hi, I'm here to knock you down with my perfume," but more, "Who was that masked woman leaving a terrific scent wake behind her!?!" When it comes to Vanille Botanique, a little dab (or spray) will do you; the scent keeps blooming. Vanille Botanique is a scent that will love you for a long time (seriously, why am I being so dirty!?!), and for me that makes the price point totally worth it. I'll buy a bottle and it will last me forever. FN6.
3. In no way does Vanille Botanique smell fake. There are so many vanillas out there that smell like cleaner, or bathroom spray, or cheap candle, or floor wax. This is definitively not one of them. It smells beautifully natural, and if you were trying to sell me on the differences/purposes/superiority of pure botanicals, this would be a good scent to point to.
4. Vanille Botanique is vanilla, yes, but so much more.It's not foodie. I can't believe it is so strongly vanilla and I do not get food at all. No candy, no cocktail, no baked goods. It's -- dare I say it? -- floral, but without being very green, like L'Artisan Vanilia is. The opening is lemons and roses and vanilla bean pod skins, not something to put into food and drink. It is more something I'd expect to get from a beautiful floral centerpiece. The middle is dry and light, without being angular and open like Vanille Incenseé. Some aspects as almost...I don't want to say soapy because it has potentially negative connotations, but yes, soapy. This is not the vanilla of your local bakery or your mom's kitchen, and even if you think it is, I challenge you to smell deeper, because there is simply something more about Vanille Botanique.
5. Vanille Botanique is the vanilla you've been searching for. If you're one of those people who always tries a vanilla, especially ones that get continually high praise, and think, "This is close to what I want, but not exactly what I was looking for," I bet this is your huckleberry. It is just so damned beautiful that I keep thinking, "How did I not know I wanted this?" But that's the truth. As someone who loves vanillas and tries them at all price points and in lots of forms, I didn't even know vanilla could smell like this -- dirty and hot and sexy, of earth and sweat and skin and very much alive. Perfume is amazing that way, isn't it? You think you know what there is to know about a thing and then, bam! A whole new world opens up.
Bottom line? Get some DSH Perfumes Vanille Botanique.It's terrific.
Five Nods. No question.
Vanille Botanique sells from Indiescents at 30ml for $130.00. You can also get samples there. You can also go straight to DSH Perfumes, where the scent is available as a body wash, shea butter body cream, body lotion, massage oil, a water-based spray concentrate, and in a couple of EdP sizes.
Want more? Try....
~ a review
from Perfume Pharmer
~ a review from *jen at This Blog Really Stinks!
~ a review from CaFleureBon
~ a review from Victoria at EauMG
~ a review from Trish Vawter in The Perfume Magazine
______________________
F1. Also all our roommates are 26 or older, so this isn't your typical college-aged group house.
FN2. Video of said song...
FN3. I seriously do not understand how people can remember Columbine, Virgina Tech, Congresswoman Giffords, and Batman, but somehow forget that time a woman-hating lunatic used three guns to shoot up an LA Fitness in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I think it is because only three people died and nine were wounded, because otherwise it was an equally terrifying attack on a benign public location where people generally do not expect to be attacked and believe they are safe. Also, the shooter killed himself, so there was no meal of a trial for the 24-hour news cycle to feed on. But seriously? Dude killed several women and would have killed several more because 1. he was crazy, and 2. he couldn't get laid. (No, really. That's the reason. He said so in videos and letters.) In my mind, this is also a huge tragedy.
FN4. The cynical feminist in me requires I also tell you that part of me believes the
reason no one cares about this shooting was because it was a clear example of misogyny, and no one in America cares about that, because our society is perfectly fine with hatred and violence against women, even when it costs women their lives. She needs to say that, just for the record.
FN5. Don't ask me how it escaped my attention that few women I knew had guns. They all knew how to shoot them and had access to them in their homes, so I guess I always felt like they 'had guns' in the same way that two people sharing a car both 'have a car.'
FN6. Incidentally, I will say that I find this almost universally true with my DSH perfumes. They have great longevity and good sillage and I have never regretted a single purchase, which is impressive since I went nuts during the site redesign sale and now have about 12 different scents in roller form.
All photos were taken by me. The video belongs to Amanda Palmer.
A Personal Reflection on Mainstream Messaging, the Practicalities of Child-Rearing, and the True Definition of Reproductive Rights
((Trigger warning: The following post does not talk about perfume. It will, however, talk about abortion, miscarriage, difficult pregnancy, and domestic violence. This may be upsetting for some of my readers, and I wanted to warn you up front so you could pass this post without reading further if you choose. No hard feelings on my part, I promise. Feel free to skip this post if you’re here for the perfume; I promise we will return to that tomorrow. Also, Twilight Breaking Dawn: Pt 1 Spoiler Alert.))
YA and Fandom, generally
If you read this blog with any regularity or follow me on twitter, it’s obvious I deeply enjoy the genre of literature popularly known as Young Adult. Among the fandoms I admit I belong to is one replete with problems. Dear reader, I admit it. I am also a Twilight fan. FN2. As someone recently exclaimed at a feminist event I went to, “You can say it: Yes I read the Twilight books, they were awful and I loved them.” I have read the books, all of them. I own and have seen the movies several times. FN3.
I am also an ardent feminist. In the context of Twilight, as you may already be aware, this is kind of a problem.
Twilight and Feminism: Fiction and Philosophy Collide
The internet is covered in angry screeds against the terrible messages being fed to young readers through these books. There’s the fact that Edward seems to confuse the idea of pursuing someone with stalking them. FN4. There’s the fact that Edward is extremely controlling, and his need to be in charge of every aspect of Bella’s life, to the point of disabling her car to keep her from leaving at one point, is classic domestic violence behavior. Lest you think I’m picking on Edward, Jacob (and the wolves)? Not much better. In one scene, he forcibly kisses Bella when she is adamant that she does not want him to, clearly violating her consent. He uses emotional blackmail (threats to his own life) to cajole Bella into physical intimacy. He warns Bella repeatedly that, due to his nature, he has an explosive temper and if she does not behave in a way that is pleasing to him, he may lose control and hurt her. Again, we’ve wandered into classic DV behavior, the kind that if a friend told me about, I’d be driving them to the courthouse to get a restraining order if I had to fill out the forms for them myself. Bella is problematic herself, as she is a classic victim, hiding the behavior of these men from her family and friends, lying to diminish the pain they have caused her, blaming herself for provoking behaviors in them that clearly violate her autonomy and individualism. FN5. FN6. FN7.
All that said, like all texts, the books can be read a number of ways. FN8. I think that’s good. I think there are lots of ways to read a text and good texts allow for a multiplicity of readings. I think Twilight fans get a bad rap for being unaware of what we’re reading, which may be true for the younger readers, but isn’t necessarily true for the many adult fans. And I think you can admit a piece of work has problematic messages and still enjoy it. FN9.
Breaking Dawn and Bella’s Demon Spawn: Reproductive Rights Issues
But even as a Twilight fan, I struggle with Breaking Dawn. It is my least favorite book in the series, and the first half my least favorite half of the book. Given that, I wasn’t super looking forward to this recent film release, but I decided to go do the marathon thing anyway because I like to get my fangirl on among other fans as a pastime. Watching the film’s take on the material raised some issues for me I’ve always wanted to address, but also made me reevaluate my own position a little, and I wanted to talk about that.
My biggest hang up with the books has always and forever been with Bella and her “demon spawn.” I have struggled immensely with a book that appears to rabidly affirm the idea that a fetus’ life is more valuable than the woman carrying it. I’m adamantly pro-choice. I’ve had a pregnancy that resulted in a miscarriage that almost killed me, much to the sadness of my husband and myself. I’ve also had abortion, a choice I made as a teenager that I don’t regret and that, given the violent isolated situation I was in, I think was the right one. FN10.
It has always galled me that Bella insisted on risking her life to have Renesmee, even when her own partner was begging her not to do it. In the film adaptation, Edward says rather succinctly: “I thought we were supposed to be partners. You made this choice without me.” Reading the books, which are written from the perspective of Bella (and in this section only, briefly from Jacob’s), I always wanted to yell at her, “Yeah! Listen to Edward and Jacob! Your life matters, too!”
Without ever getting into the moral and ethical issues of when life begins or when a lump of tissue because a person, I do not accept that anyone has the right to tell me I should die for someone else. Every society in history has made exceptions to laws against murder to allow for killing in self-defense and defense of others. The right to protect your own life from a credible threat is something that every society has deemed acceptable. We are not lambs waiting for the slaughter. We have the right to fight for our lives. That includes a woman facing a life-threatening pregnancy.
Reading T:BD I have never understood Bella’s refusal to even consider this perspective. It was the point in the story where her penchant for consistently discounting the value of her own life and acting like a Victorian tableau of the self-sacrificing Angel in the House goes a bridge too far for me. She’s been begging for forever with Edward for over a thousand pages. She’s been willing to sacrifice (1) the lives of those she believes she will eat as a newborn vampire with little to no regard for the human sacrifice her new form will require; (2) the love of and relationships with her non-vampire friends and family because they cannot see her as a vampire/will be her mortal enemy/she might try to eat them; (3) the love of another paramour who may be a better, healthier fit for her; all in the name of an eternity of love with Edward. Suddenly all that goes out the window. Bella will die right now, and no suggestions that she might have a child or be a mother in some other way will be considered. It seemed unreal to me. Bella stopped being a person I could understand or empathize with.
Watching the film, though, I had to check myself. Here is a woman who is pregnant. She has made a decision about what she wants to do regarding that pregnancy. She is fully informed of her options and the possible risks to her own life and health. She is sober, rationale, and steadfast in her choice. Seeing the pressure mount against her was a real and difficult thing to watch. One of the things the film clearly demonstrates in a way I’d always missed on paper was the systematic way Bella is badgered by everyone around her to change her mind. The disregard for her right to make a choice about her life and her body was something I hadn’t really considered before. It made me want to fight with her, not against her.
And this gets into the tricky bit for me. Like the characters of the book, I just wanted Bella to live. I wanted her to consider her life one worth saving. Like the pro-choice woman I am, I resisted a story that tells women their lives were worth less than the fetus growing inside them. In doing so, I ignored Bella’s right to make the choice that was right for her even if I didn't agree with it.
One of the areas of law I occasionally guest lecture on is Feminist Jurisprudence and Reproductive Rights. One of the main points of my lectures is this: we have a tendency to define reproductive rights very narrowly when we talk about them, boiling the entire area of rights down to the narrow issue of legal abortion. Reproductive rights, though, are about a lot more than that. They encompasses issues such as: whether a woman can sign away the rights to a child before it’s born and then change her mind afterward (FN11); whether the state has a right to limit the ability to conceive of women charged with criminal offenses as a condition of probation, or to extend a criminal sentence for a drug addict through the end of her pregnancy in order to protect the health/life of the fetus (FN12); whether a woman has the right to have a large number of fertilized embryos implanted simultaneously, even if she already has many children she cannot financially support (FN13); whether or not a person has the right to adopt based on sexual orientation (FN14); who takes ownership of fertilized frozen embryos when a couple gets divorced (FN15).
All of these questions raise issues relating to our right to make decisions about reproduction. Can a woman have a mid-wife in a hospital instead of a doctor? Can the hospital refuse and insist she use an MD instead for her delivery? Who has primary rights of custody of a child born through surrogacy: the mother of the egg, donor of the sperm, the person who carries the child to term in her body? These aren’t easy questions, and people land all over the map. When you drill down to specifics about the multiplicity of issues wrapped up in reproductive health, people tend to have internally conflicting positions they haven’t explored. No one has asked them to. We simply ask: pro-life or pro-choice? As though everyone, to some extent, isn’t at least a little of both.
When it comes to the health and life of a pregnant woman, I have strong feelings. I look at my husband and our life, and I know the world I’d leave a child behind in without two healthy parents. I know that my husband’s position is much like Edward’s eloquent short statement in the film: “Do you believe I could love, or even tolerate, anything that would take you from me?” It may be selfish, but David has been pretty clear about his feelings on the matter: anything that takes me from him isn’t worth it. He wants me to live, period. I recognize the responsibility I’d be leaving him with if I died, and care too much for his mental, emotional and physical well-being and my own to create a situation like that.
At the same time, my sister Erica was very clear to me and to everyone else regarding her recent pregnancy: if it came down to Erica or the baby, she would accept no choice that limited the chances of a successful delivery of a healthy child. If that meant she had to die or have seriously compromised health, even if it resulted in permanent disability, she’d do it. Save the baby. It wasn’t the choice I’d make for myself or that I would have made for Erica left to my own devices, but I respected Erica enough that if the situation had come down to it, I’d have followed her directive because, in the end, it’s her body. It’s her life.
Returning to the legal aspect of these issues for a moment, there is a line of cases with a similar fact pattern that I’ve always found distressing and that sprang to mind as I watched Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Pt. 1. A woman, late in her pregnancy, goes into a hospital. The pregnancy is in distress. It is endangering her life, and may also endanger the child’s. The hospital strongly recommends early delivery by Cesarean Section. FN16.
For a host of reasons – financial, ethical, moral, religious, health-based – the woman refuses. She will not have the c-section. She will wait to deliver naturally. The hospital is adamant the surgery go forward; the woman is equally adamant that it not. The hospital board calls its lawyers, who file a motion with the court seeking a court order to force the c-section, whether the woman wants it or not.
In one case, the court denies the motion, pointing out that the idea of physically restraining a woman and forcing surgery upon her she doesn’t want for her own good, a surgery that may not be necessary, violates her bodily autonomy in a way that can’t reconcile with our fundamental freedoms. There will be no surgery, even if it costs both mother and child their lives. FN17.
In other cases, the court grants the motion, and issues a court order allowing the hospital to go forward with the c-section without the woman’s consent. The court indicates in its decision that the balance of lives at risk outweigh the woman’s right to choose her method and condition of delivery, whatever her reasons. If she has to be restrained and cut-open against her will to save her and the child, so be it. If it means weeks of recovery, a more expensive procedure, higher risk pregnancies later in life, the inability to have a vaginal pregnancy in the future, well, so be it. Those things pale in comparison to the value of life, even if it means cutting open a woman and taking the child from her body while she fights,sometimes physically, against the choice.
The latter choice may be the sensible one in terms of lives saved, but at what cost to our individual and collective liberty? Does anyone have a right, in the end, to take the fetus from a woman’s womb by force? Does anyone have a right to tell her she can’t have it if she wants, if she is fully informed of the risks, and says no, I want to do this even if I will die? I don’t think so. I don’t think I have any more right to tell Bella Swan she can’t keep her demon spawn, even if it kills her, than I think the Religious Right should be able to tell me I have to continue an unwanted pregnancy, any pregnancy.
The film makes me reevaluate my personal disregard for Bella’s voice in the decision. I cannot discount her, and it is the height of hypocrisy for me to personally dislike her for making a choice different from the one I would make. It makes me no better than the people who call women who have abortions names, who discount their voice in making the reproductive choice that’s right for them. I admit that my dissatisfaction with T:BD was a lot about that, and about the way Bella’s self-righteousness mirrors so many of the people who have condemned me for my own decisions.
Reproductive Rights: The Fiction vs. The Reality
And yet, I still dislike T:BD for the following reason: Bella’s choice is one made in a perfect fictional vacuum, completely divorced from the reality of the situation. A sixteen or seventeen year old girl who faces a difficult pregnancy and asks herself, “What Would Bella Do?,” is going to be making a decision based in a world created by its author largely without negative consequences. If you choose to carry a life-threatening pregnancy to term IRL, here are some advantages Bella had that you will not.
1. Free, private home healthcare from an expert surgeon.
2. A giant family who do not have to work, have no children or other responsibilities of their own, to take care of you day and night throughout your pregnancy because they never have to sleep.
3. A relative who can control your mood swings, assisting you to feel calm and at ease so that stress does not further contribute to your deteriorating health and the health of the pregnancy.
4. A miracle drug (i.e. venom) that may not only save your life, but heal every injury that you suffer related to the pregnancy within days, including returning the use of your legs after your back breaks and your spine is injured.
5. Considerable wealth sufficient not only support you through the pregnancy, but to sustain you and your child and any of its special needs into and beyond childhood.
6. A giant family of people who do not have to work, have no children or other responsibilities of their own, who can provide full-time child care for you at any time and are happy to do so.
7. A child that will grow into complete autonomous adulthood within a matter of a few years, such that you will no longer be responsible for his/her care and upkeep.
If Bella’s choice had meant her life, I might honestly like the books better. If Bella and Edward had been burdened with a child whose “specialness” meant any kind of negatives beyond a misconception about her being a killing machine that is resolved relatively easily within the context of the books and within a year or two won’t even matter, I might have liked the books better. Hell, if Bella herself had turned out to be the newborn killing machine we were promised, and had to be kept away from her mostly human child for years, that would have made it a better, more interesting story.
Bella’s choice seems ridiculous because it’s too easy. When Edward says, “But you’ll die!” Bella’s response is, “No! The Venom!” A real pregnant woman in distress like Bella was does not have the option of vampiric healing post-delivery. She’s going to be very sick, probably permanently disabled, and that’s if she’s lucky enough to live. The child isn't going to Renesmee perfect, either. Her child is going to cry, get sick, need constant care at great expense for many years, and there aren’t going to be a houseful of wealthy caregivers who do not require sleep hanging around to help with every problem. Money is going to be an issue because not everyone has a relative who can see the future and game the stock market appropriately. People don’t raise their children in homes with six additional childless couples who want nothing more than to hang out and help with the baby.
My problem with Breaking Dawn, in the end, isn’t Bella’s choice to continue a life-threatening pregnancy. It isn’t that she “won’t listen to reason,” or bow to the desires of others. It’s that her choice is free of consequence, divorcing it from the real difficulties that face a woman with a life-threatening pregnancy. It preaches a kind of moral absolutism to young readers who have no context for the problems of the real world. If Stephenie Meyer did a disservice to reproductive rights activists on both sides of the coin, it’s that she diminished the value of Bella’s choice by taking those consequences away. If you are pro-life, you take that position with the full knowledge that being a parent is a difficult, time-consuming, life altering choice. The ease of Bella's motherhood discounts the real sacrifices parents make for the children, over and over.
That is the discussion that needs to happen with young readers of the book series. We need an analysis of the easy resolve of Bella’s decision, not whether she had the right to make the choice in itself. My hope is that when my feminist blogging sisters and brothers begin to pick apart Breaking Dawn on completely rational and reasonable bases, they will remember that the fans who love the books are looking for people who want to respect the characters and talk about their motivations and choices, for good and for ill.
Because that's the thing about choice: no matter which choice you make, it's a difficult one. Whether you continue a pregnancy or terminate it, there are consequences. In that context, I think it’s important to discuss Bella’s exclusive right to choose for herself what will become of her pregnancy and the agency that choice demonstrates, while simultaneously looking at the ways the one-sided presentation of the choice and the way its aftermath diverges from reality and into a land of fiction where real pregnant eighteen-year-old girls facing real life-altering choices cannot follow.
__________________
FN1. As a little girl in front of me at the movies Thursday night had eloquently pointed out on her t-shirt: I have “SO MANY TEAMS.” I watch Vampire Diaries obsessively. I’ve been to Harry Potter book releases and Wizardrock concerts and watched documentaries about Harry Potter-inspired fan work. I’m super psyched for the release of The Hunger Games.
I’m into a lot of fandoms, most of them teen/YA related. To be fair to myself, I’ve always been this way. I was also into: 90210 (original and reboot), Melrose Place, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Felicity, Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars, Angel, Greek, The O.C., Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, Supernatural and probably every other teen show you’ve ever seen that was created after 1988. It’s just a genre of storytelling I enjoy. One of my all-time favorite movies is Brick which would be a YA book if it were a novel. I love John Hughes and Cameron Crowe, who are masters of stories about teens and young adults. So this isn’t a new thing for me any more than YA is a new genre, and I’m not going to dig out my original Christopher Pike books or my hardback Nancy Drew collection to prove it to you. YA is changing, IMO for the better, and getting more of the recognition it deserves, but that’s an entirely separate post/discussion.
FN2. Again, we can talk about why I like the books at some other time, because that too is a lengthy discussion.
FN3. I’ve only seen the film Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 once.
FN4. Watch this video if you haven’t already.
FN5. If I don’t stop talking about the DV parts of the books, I’m never going to get to the choice issues I want to talk about. I need to say this though: it would be nice to see anyone, anyone, write a BDSM YA book that actually involves a lot of discussion of consent and boundary setting, etc. Because I get the appeal of dominance/submission dynamics in sexual relationships, believe me. I just think there’s a framework to create that kind of dynamic in that protects individual autonomy, consent, and choice, and then there’s this.
FN6. I could also write a significant piece of sexual autonomy vs. slut shaming wrt Bella and Edward, but that is also another essay.
FN7. I am also not touching the class or race issues buried in the book, but I do recommend that all twi-fans and twi-haters read Natalie Wilson’s Seduced By Twilight, which does a great job of respecting fans and simultaneously problematizing the book series. It’s a wonderful thought-provoking book by a great author/speaker. If she comes near you, go see her.
FN9. Dear self-congratulatory Buffy fans: I am one of you and have been since the beginning and never missed an episode -- NOT ONE IN SEVEN YEARS -- but I could just as easily put together a video that showed Buffy going right along with being stalked and being in love and having a relationship with a sometimes violent and abusive guy who made the people who loved her scared for her and generally uncomfortable, someone Buffy hides from her friends and family routinely, blaming herself for the unsavory aspects of their relationship.
And then we can talk about Angel/Angelus, because let’s not forget: Buffy did that crap TWICE.
FN10. Dear anti-choicers: Please direct all hate mail to feminine.things @ gmail . com. I screen comments, so no one is going to see you call me names anyway. You might as well just send them directly to me.
FN11. Baby M, In re Baby M, 537 A.2d 1227, 109 N.J. 396 (N.J. 02/03/1988) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_M].
FN12. State v. Looney, No. 99-F0065 (Parish of Ouachita, Fourth Judicial District Court, Feb. 25, 2000) (District Court Judge Carl V. Sharp gave Kathy Looney a choice between sterilization and ten years in prison, following her conviction for beating three of her eight children with an extension-cord. A month later, the sterilization condition was deleted and Looney was mandated to stay on Norplant. In December of 2000, the Court then deleted the Norplant condition.); State v. McGee, (Shelby County Juvenile Court June 25, 2004) (Tennessee Juvenile Court Referee Claudia Haltom signed a court order for long-term birth control for Loretta McGee, 33-years-old, who is mentally disabled. Ms. McGee was called to Juvenile Court for a proceeding involving one of her ten children.); U.S. v. Vaughn, Sup. Ct. D.C., Crim. No. F-2172-88B (August 23, 1988) (Superior Court of the District of Columbia lengthened the sentence of a pregnant, drug-addicted woman in order to keep her incarcerated until her baby was born. Vaughn was convicted of check forgery.)
These are only three cases involving state-mandated birth control. There are many more.
FN13. In case you don't know 'Octomom's' story, go here.
FN14. In Re Gill, the case overturning the 33 year ban on same sex adoption in Florida. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/us/26florida.html].
FN16. Pemberton v. Tallahassee Memorial Regional Center, U.S. District Court, N.D. Florida, Tallahassee Division., October 13, 1999 (court enforced a hospital delivery with c-section over mother's desire for vaginal delivery at home with a midwife)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemberton_v._Tallahassee_Memorial_Regional_Center]; Jefferson v. Griffin Spalding Count Hospital Authority, et al., 247 Ga. 86, 274 S.E.2.d 457 (1981) (Supreme Court of Georgia upholds superior Court order to force a c-section) [http://supreme-court-georgia.vlex.com/vid/jefferson-griffin-spalding-hospital-20402875];
Samantha Burton v. State of Florida (hospital sought a court order to confine a pregnant woman, Samantha Burton, for fifteen weeks to protect her fetus) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton_v._Florida; http://www.aclu.org/reproductive-freedom/florida-court-upholds-right-pregnant-woman-determine-medical-care]; In re Baby Boy Doe, 632 N.E.2d 326 (Ill. App. Ct. 1994) (Illinois courts declined to issue court order to force c-section).
You can read more about various legal battles of pregnancy between health care providers and the pregnant woman here and here.
Scent Spotlight on EnVoyage Perfumes L’Emblem Rouge and Giveaway
Shelley Waddington, perfumer of the EnVoyage Perfumes lines, reached out to me recently with an intriguing new offering. Like any good 'fumie, I jumped at the chance to review it.
EnVoyage Perfumes L’Emblem Rouge is part of the Rubicon Collection. This 100% natural scent is a "Deep, Lightly Spiced Rose Soliflor" and is described as follows:
The many meanings that cluster around rose – friendship, passion, love – are fulfilled in L’Emblem Rouge. It incorporates the full scentual and spiritual significance of the rose. Sensual rose set in soft woods, balsam and amber. A modern classic with a timely message.
Top Notes: Cassie, Mace, Cinnamon, Bitter Orange, Juicy Grapefruit, Green Pepper, Iranian galbanum, Violet, and Cistus
Heart Notes: Organic Iranian Rose Otto, Ylang-Ylang, Heliotrope, French Jasmine sambac, Violet, and Honey
Base Notes: Guaiacwood, Sandalwood, Copaiba, Vetiver, Cedarwood Virginia, Tolu Balsam, Benzoin Siam, Tonka, Vanilla and Ambergris.
Did anyone call for a spicy rose? Because here it is with emphasis on the woods and spices. I get a lot of wood in the opening, which is a new aspect of roses for me, and I've got a lot of roses. Tonka and cedarwood provide a strong, gently sweet base that comes immediately upon application and feels almost like a dry chocolate powder dusted over rose petals. After a few minutes I also get some bitter orange and grapefruit, which was a unique twist on spicy rose. Over time, L’Emblem Rouge becomes a gently sweet, slightly edible, spice mix with what feels like a rose base. Despite being a soliflor, the rose here seems less the focus but more the lead partner in an intricate dance.
I tried it next to Teo Cabanel Oha, Juliette Has a Gun Lady Vengeance, DSH Perfumes Dirty Rose, DSH Perfumes Beach Roses, and DSH Perfumes American Beauty, and it was nothing like those . However, as I dug back through my bag of perfumey tricks, I did find a scent it reminded me of, and I think provides an interesting contrast - Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chyree.
Une Rose Chypree, on me, is a hot sticky (but lovely) mess of cinnamon, labdanum, and patchouli. L’Emblem Rouge has more sweet foodie citrus and wood. "Lightly spiced" is a good description because the spice aspect is gentle and less aggressive than Une Rose Chypree. Now while I love and admire Une Rose Chypree as I do most Tauer Scents, the truth is the gentleness of L’Emblem Rouge makes it infinitely more wearable by the average person. It's a strong, bold, and yet surprisingly accessible scent. Given my choice between a bottle of the each, I would have a difficult time choosing, but think I'd probably go for L’Emblem Rouge.
For any one who has ever thought all naturals were weak and fleeting, lacking both the oomph and staying power of synthetics and mixed ingredient scents, I offer EnVoyage Perfumes L’Emblem Rouge as counter-exhibit A. Beautiful blooming on the skin, moderate to high sillage, and long lasting, L’Emblem Rouge is proof positive that all natural scents can have long lives; a dose from a wand sample lasted on me in excess of six hours, though it stayed relatively close to the skin after about three and a half. Still, in a sprayer? Probably a scent I'd still be catching hints of after a long day at work.
On the whole, I find L’Emblem Rouge artfully composed, and well worth a try. It can be found here.
A beautiful scent alone is a wonderful thing, but L’Emblem Rouge is particularly special because of the generosity of the fine folks at EnVoyage Perfumes. A lifetime gift of five percent of all L’Emblem Rouge proceeds are donated to Broadway Cares, a leading nonprofit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organization.
I am old enough to remember HIV/AIDS at the height of its prominence in terrorizing the American psyche. I came of age in the late 80s/early 90s, and I have crystal clear memories of the incredible effort put into educating my generation about safer sex practices. I am not HIV+, but I have known and cared greatly for people who were, a few of whom lost their lives to AIDS or AIDS-related complications.
Because of this personal connection, I am incredibly touched by Shelley's efforts. Any time I am having a bad day, it heartens me to be able to look around and think of all the kindnesses we do for one another that aren't necessarily required of us, kindnesses given freely to strangers who will never know us, who will perhaps never meet us, but whose lives are improved by the goodness inherent in our deeds. It is proof that human beings are probably capable of ending most of the strife and pain in the world if we can gather our collective will and marry it to our compassion and ingenuity. In this respect, we are truly and profoundly miraculous.
I can think of a lot of issues that need this kind of collective miracle, but the HIV crisis in Africa would be high on my list of problems that could be solved if we wanted. Yes, there are practical problems: trying to devise distribution chains for medication in remote locations; teaching people all across a continent from a panoply of cultures that are not slaves to time or regiment how to deal with a drug cocktail that requires a consistent routine; overcoming cultural barriers to learning preventative care and safer sex practices; even the basic difficulty of maintaining peace in order to make delivery of materials. These are just a few of the challenges.
Just looking at the meager list I have propounded, I acknowledge: it's a logistical nightmare of epic proportions. But so is the crisis. Too many people -- young and old, men, women, and children -- are dying every day from a disease that the western world has engineered out of terminal status and into a condition treated more as a chronic illness.
Those of us on top have this strange self-delusion that we will always be here. That unearned and unrealistic certainty has been called a lot of things in human history: manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, to name a couple. A good student of history realizes that the circumstances that make up the differences, though, could be reversed on us. Eventually, even Rome fell. A significant earthquake along the West Coast, a biological agent released widely, or hell, a complete and extended lack of confidence in the market, could cripple an already limping country, and the hysteria and fear that followed could reduce our once great nation, frankly, to so much anarchic dust. In that circumstance, would we really want those with the ability to provide us aid and assistance in our darkest hour to decide that reaching out would be too logistically difficult to bother?
The concept of the veil of ignorance is a simple one: wherever souls come from, the part of you that is your consciousness was born into a particular time and place. That makes some of us inherently safer, healthier, and better off from the moment of inception by sheer dumb luck. That privilege isn't something that was earned, and it could have easily been someone else far less fortunate in your shoes and you in theirs. So imagine, for one moment, that just before your personal die was cast, you had the opportunity to distribute wealth and access and resources and education. Maybe you wouldn't make it exactly equal everywhere, but you'd probably at least ensure that the minimal needs of every person next to be born were met because you could not know which of those people would be you.
Americans are hard-working, but we are also lucky. We have innovated a lot of technology, particularly pharmaceutical advances. We owe it to those born into crippling poverty and resource inequality to meet the challenges that stand between them and basic necessities like food, clean water, shelter, safety, and health care. Not just in this country, but anywhere there are people in the world willing to accept it. I'm not saying we must force other cultures to conform to modernity or western thought to accomplish this; I'm not into naked paternalism or cultural colonization. I am saying, though, that we have a moral obligation to offer some of what we have and to assist those who need and want our help. And that we carry the burnt of that logistical weight, for surely their burden is already more than enough.
But enough politics and philosophy; back to the perfume.
Shelley Waddington has generously provided me a 1ml sample of L’Emblem Rouge and a mini spray flacon of L’Eau de Emblem Rouge, the hydrosol distilled from the parfum reviewed above, to give away to one lucky winner. I'm adding a CD to the mix to entice you; and this won't be a one of the monthly mixes, but a specially made CD reflecting on the theme of the value and beauty of life and good health we so often take for granted.
Open to all readers anywhere. To enter please post below by: 12:01AM, Friday, September 23, 2011 Pacific Standard Time.
"Tomorrow leave the windows open
As fear grows please hold me in your arms
Won't you help me if you can to shake this anger
I need your gentle hands to keep me calm...
I can't believe you love me
I never thought you'd come
I guess I misjudged love
Between a father and his son.
- "The Last Song," Elton John
Ribbon image courtesy of freizeit. Chart from the United Nations World Health Organization. Other images from creative commons.
Look, here's the deal. I am VERY political in real life. VERY political. I'm one of those people who talks about oppression and privilege in real life so much that other people can find it, well, oppressive. (Pun intended.) But I do think about oppression and privilege ALL.THE.TIME. I can't watch the news, or read the paper, or look at the internet, or hell, watch one exceedingly bad episode of "Jersey Shore" in an attempt to figure out what the hell people are so enamored by (verdict? There's 45 minutes of my life I'll never get back and could have been spent reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Six Tales of the Jazz Age"), without thinking about racism, sexism, ageism, ablism, classism, our ability to define our own singular or layered identities, etc.
I grew up in what I consider to be, yes, an extremely and sometime intentionally ignorant environment filled with people who either ignored issues because it served their privilege to do so or who worked so damned hard every day of their lives to survive they did not have time to stop and worry about the socio-economic structures that kept them running on the hamster wheel. I recognize that being obsessed with privilege as a white, well-educated, young, married, childless, fully-able bodied American IS A PRIVILEGE itself, even if I also identify as a queer woman who survived domestic violence, homelessness, and poverty. I have had the room to make choices; I have made good ones. But I am reminded constantly about that other place I could be right now, that place -- literal and metaphorical -- where other members of my family reside permanently.
And frankly, I try like hell to keep it out of this blog because most of this thinking and thinking and not knowing how to change it makes me sad or angry, and I try really hard to keep this a positive place, focused on enjoying the art and beauty in a world that frequently does not make sense to me. But I just want to take moment here to say that I love Jay Smooth. He's funny. He's smart. He's thoughtful. He's articulate. And he makes me hopeful that I can figure out a way to harness my pain and grief and anger and concern to my creative impulses and make something that says something about the world and helps make things better someday.
Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. It's a shame we have a day for this. It's a shame it takes a "day" designation to make people pay attention to this problem in the first place. Hundreds of people posted their bra color for strangers on Facebook this week in an attempt to raise awareness for breast cancer (which has to be one of the least effective awareness raising efforts I've seen in a while) but when, in the last year and a half, hundreds have been busted for trafficking, both here in the US and abroad, and the problem gets worse every year, it's a shame so few people ever talk about sex trafficking with any real sense of awareness. So in case you missed it:
* Child sex slavery is a growing problem in the U.S. Every year, nearly 300,000 children are at risk to sexual exploitation in the U.S. and an estimated 500,000 incidents are not reported. This has made the U.S. the number one destination for child sex trafficking in the world.
So what can you do? Be aware of the problem. Be vigilant in your community. Be what, in older days, would be considered a "busy body." If you see a kid, particularly a young girl, in your community who seems neglected, call someone. Report it. Don't ignore it. Even if the child isn't a victim of sex abuse or human trafficking, they may be a child victim of domestic violence and criminal neglect, and you may be the person who finally gets help to them.
What do you look for? Well the U.S. Department of Education has created a handy dandy website and fact sheet on what signs might indicate that a child is in need of your help. There is also information on how to report, so if you know of someone who might need help and you don't know who to call, this may help. And when in doubt, call your local police department. I recognize that law enforcement isn't perfect and that lots of people have had bad experiences that discourage traditional reporting avenues, but reporting to an imperfect responder is better than not reporting at all. Take it from me. I informed lots of mandatory reporters of the domestic violence going on in my house, and no one ever helped us. Don't presume someone else will respond to the call for help. When everyone presumes some other reporter will do their due diligence, no one ever makes the call and those cries for help go unanswered. And we know, from high profile victims like Jaycee Dugard, it may take years before reports are finally responded to. So whether you are the first call or the hundredth call, if you feel uneasy, please call.
Because no one, I mean no one, deserves to grow up in the kind of hell these poor children experience.
"Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King, and recognize that there are ties between us. All men and women living on the Earth, ties of hope and love. Sister and brotherhood that we are bound together in our desire to see the world become a place in which our children can grow free and strong..."
Basenotes is doing a random give away for subscribers to their youtube video feed. I've embedded the video below, but I recommend going to youtuvbe proper so you can enter the draw!
Also, I have added several new blogs to the blogroll, including SmellyBlog, Vetivresse: Nosing Around in Scent, Wine & Style , and Tea, Sympathy, and Perfume, as well as a great new shopping opportunity, Rei Rien. Like others, I'm wondering how I missed this site for so long and look forward to receiving my shipment of samples. It's surprisingly hard for me to find places to get samples of mainstream fragrances, so I really appreciate Rei Rien.
Also, in recommended viewing, may I point you to this testimony from April from Philip Spooner? Spooner, 86, spoke out in favor of marriage equality during hearings in Maine on gay marriage Apr. 22, but the remarks are no less timely for being six months old. The World War II vet, and father of four, says he didn't fight in World War II for his gay son to be treated as a second class citizen. When a member of the Greatest Generation talks about the sacrifices he and others made so that we could all share in equal rights, rights we currently deny to our fellow citizens, I think it says something profound about the civil rights fight going on in America today. November is historically a month spent thinking about elections and rights and voting. In that spirit, let our thoughts turn to Martin Luther King and the distance that still remains before us as we work to realize his dream of one America, a dream still being denied to too many people in too many ways.
"We are bound together by the task that stands before us and the road that lies ahead. We are bound and we are bound. There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist. There is a hunger in the center of the chest. There is a passage through the darkness and the mist, and though the body sleeps the heart will never rest..." - "Shed a Little Light," James Taylor
Today, as people march in Washington D.C. and all over the country in an effort to raise awareness of the inequality same sex couples face in the U.S. today. From marriage to adoption to health care to end-of-life decision making to taxes, marriage for the few is not equality. As a bisexual woman I recognize the benefits I reap because I happen to have married a man. At the same time, I also know that was not necessarily what was going to happen, and I think about that other path I could have taken, one where I would be a less than equal citizen.
As a lawyer, I recognize the flexibility and ingenuity created in a federal system that accommodates fifty state living laboratories to experiment with different legal solutions to legal problems. But at the end of the day, we are one country, and that requires one solution to the problem of marriage equality. The Commerce Clause demands that we recognize the legal binding contracts entered into from one state jurisdiction to another. Marriage should be no different.
In the spirit of the day, please check out the video below. Ostensibly about greeting cards, which I also collect, there is a lovely and emotional moment at the end of the video that talks about the embrace of love and faith simultaneously. May we all move toward such a model.
As a rule, I try to keep the political commentary to a minimum on this blog. I started this as a way to talk about the feminine things I enjoy in my life, as a woman who is not proptypically feminine. Romantic comedies, musicals, make-up, perfume. But I named this blog “feminine things” and now I want to address something that was specific to women: violence against women.
Last week, America was once again confronted by the horrors of our own warped misogynistic culture, when George Sodini walked into a gym and proceeded to shot ten women, killing three, before killing himself. Several media outlets have correctly identified this as a hate crime against women. There can be no doubt that Sodini blamed women for his own unhappiness and, as a group, targeted them for his violent act. He even went so far as to keep a blog detailing his plans and his hatred.
It would be nice to say that this was a random crazy man acting out in a crazy and unpredictable way. But this isn’t the first time women have been targeted specifically for being women (the girls and women of the Amish school shooting just three years ago attest to that) and it won’t be the last. As Bob Herbert eloquently wrote in his New York Times piece, Women at Risk,
We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.
We live in a culture that accepts the systematic abuse and objectification of women. Not just a global culture, but one right here in the U.S., which is one of the places where women have the most freedom. And yet, even here, violence against women is one of the highest threats to a woman's life. Victims of domestic violence and sexual assault are not only doubted in their claims, but frequently blamed for their own victimization. The “she deserved it” reactions to Rhiannon’s beatdown a perfect example of classic victim blaming. (And let’s not mince words here: that poor girl got beat down. There’s no other way to put it.)
Every few minutes, another woman is sexually assaulted. Most of these women will be assaulted by a trusted friend or loved one. Even more women will face physical, emotional, and psychological abuse from a spouse or partner. We live in the midst of an epidemic, one that is killing women. Emotionally, spiritually, and literally, we are killing women.
As a culture, we need to find a way to say enough is enough.
To that end, I encourage you to skip your next frivolous purchase – a latte, a bottle of perfume, a ticket to the next romantic-comedy – and use it to support one of the following organizations, or one like it. If money is an issue in these trying economic times, try volunteering for an organization like the ones listed below. Remember, as Margaret Mead so eloquently said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
When we finally make a change, I want to be counted in that small number.
I have no review, but in honor of Michelle and her GAP dresses, today I am wearing Gap So Pink! my trashy girly pink grapefruit scent. Thanks to Slate.com for all the wonderful Obama-related political toons!
On this historic occasion, where we will inevitably elect either a minority president (GO OBAMA!) or a minority VP, getting dressed was easy. I picked clothes in the traditional reds, whites, and blues and a progressive style -- black knit skirt, black hose, blue docs, blue jean jacket covered in liberal pins, and my Obama'08 tee shirt.
But I had a terrifically hard time choosing a scent. Do I go cutting edge and revolutionary? Do I go staid and traditional? Classic French foreign? Homegrown American? Old traditional perfume house or new, young, net-sales based independent perfumer?
I considered a lot of options. CB's Memory of Fire, in honor of the rockets red glare and all the burning pages of history and the burning desire for change we have today. CB's Black March , because it's cold and wet and rainy here in Oregon where we march to our boxes to drop off ballots in an effort to change a country. S-Perfumes 100% Love because no matter who you vote for today, voting means you love this country and you believe in the way it works and you are engaged in the act of patriotism, which is its own special kind of love. And many other options...
In the end, though, I went with Chanel No. 5 EDT. Classic. Traditional. Purchased after I sampled it in a duty-free in the Sea-Tac airport on my way to Philadelphia to campaign for yet another equally historic candidate in the primary. French, yes, but hey -- they love a good revolution as much as the next gal. High-quality. Because the choice I made today, I hope, will be a radical choice in how normal, how mainstream, how overwhelmingly populous it turns out to be. That we have the opportunity to confound external critics and embrace ourselves -- in all our diversity -- is something that I hope can become the artful choice. The classic choice. In a country founded by radicals and malcontents and rejects, may our election of a man who blends so many different aspects of ourselves and who ran under a banner of change become the stuff of our normative fabric, for surely it already is.
While I tend to use this space occasionally for fiction writing, I swear that in this particular case, this is exactly what happened to me. And this town car driver intervention of David Lynchian proportions is a pretty solid analogy for the weirdness of the last ten days of my life.
The way a very public trial in Florida, a routine trial in D.C., a bill in Texas, a trip to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and a conversation with a drunk Eastern European man who lives in France about justice, social activism, and my past makes me question my career choices isn't all that interesting in and of itself. Just like reliving some of the best and worst parts of high school while stuck in a dorm in Boston at a week-long company retreat, full of the kind of giddy highs and lows one only really has at sleep away camp when you're twelve and your real life is so far away it is easy to envision mountains where there are only mole hills, doesn't make for an epicly told tale at the end of the day. Neither does the way receiving bad news in a particular moment lessen the sting, only to find the poison of the forgotten embedded stinger slushing around inside bring on the full necrotic blow the next day.
