There is no home like the one you've got...

Updates from Rwanda, Part 3

You know that scene in Almost Famous, where William Miller is getting further and further into life with the band and farther away from his home and life before he got the gig with Rolling Stone Magazine?

 He's on the bus, and he's freaking out because he is sort of feeling the last of his normalcy slipping away, and he turns to Penny Lane and says, “I need to go home!”

 And then Penny smiles, slow and wide, holds up her empty palm and pretends to blow something out of it into his face, waggles her fingers, and says, “You are home!”

That is what the last few days have felt like.

The ex-pats here keep trying to get me to stay longer...or permanently. They keep proposing options, both ridiculous and realistic. They have offered to pass me around as a live-in counselor and cook. They have suggested I teach at one of the local tech schools, and even offered to get me a tour. One particularly alcohol-soaked night, it was suggested I learn to distill vodka from potatoes on the internet, and then start Kigali's first distillery. I even have a backing offer.

I've only been here about twelve days, but strangely, I could see it. Of all the things I thought I could imagine when I not only left home for the first time, but of all places, went to Africa, I did not imagine liking it enough to be able to imagine myself living here.

And yet...I could see it. I could imagine taking in generation after generation of Peace Corps. volunteers who wanted a safe place to live with hot running water. I could imagine working here, living here, even driving here, which has to be one of the scariest endeavors available. Kigali, for all its problems, is beautiful. It's decently well-organized. It's relatively safe.

There are things I would miss: easily accessible and wide varieties of cheese, for one. Any hope of decent internet. Western healthcare. American television. Obviously I would need to find a way to get my perfume collection here in one piece.

But there are so many things here I can already see myself missing when I go back: fresh and plentiful fruit juices, glass after glass. The beautiful countryside with its lakes and mountains, which I am only just starting to explore. The art, the music, the dancing, the textiles. The flowers that grow everywhere, in more kinds than I have seen outside botanical gardens, all fragrant and bright. And I'll tell you this: I eat a helluva lot better in Africa than I ever do in the U.S.

I knew that coming here was going to be an adventure. And that was good. I needed a little adventure in my life. A smidgen of upheaval. Some mild shakubuku. 2014, the year of doing things I never imagined I'd do.  It seemed like a theme worth embracing.

I did not expect to come here, look around, and think, “Yes, I could live here. I could be okay with getting my own electricity and water. I could adjust to the less than reliable internet. I could be happy here. I could learn French, and even a some Ikinyarwanda. I could live this life.”

I realize a huge part of my feelings about this have to do with the relative safety of Kigali, my high amounts of contact with other Americans, and the general high quality of life I'm experiencing here. Nonetheless, I did not expect to find myself thinking, “Yes, I could like and even love living in Africa.”

I miss my friends back home, but I don't miss home itself in the way I expected. It's an interesting, discovering new things about myself.  It's nice to know that even well into my thirties, I am not done growing, changing, becoming who I am supposed to be.  Any reports of my death have been exaggerated, even in my own mind;  I am still, very much, alive.

And this feeling of fitting, of being bigger than I thought I was, more capable of embracing newness, chaos, change -- it's wonderful. It reminds me again how often we live our lives small, thinking we are only capable of navigating a thimble worth of experience, when inside we are vast oceans of being. At the end of the day, our boundaries are defined more often by our fear than by our own capacity.

I would like, very much, to be less afraid.

Today I am wearing Lavanila Laboratories Vanilla Grapefruit. Available at Sephora, Vanilla Grapefruit is described as follows:

An uplifting citrus, this addictive blend of juicy pink grapefruit, fresh lime, crisp cedarwood, and warm Madagascar vanilla is fresh and inviting. Kissed by sunshine, this unique scent lifts the spirits.

Each fragrance starts with a warm base of Madagascar vanilla and layers on a unique blend of pure essential oils for an exquisite expression of nature that captures a mood, a memory, or a moment in time. Hailed as the world’s first healthy fragrance, natural technology infuses organic sugar cane alcohol with skin-saving botanicals and antioxidants for a modern twist on the classic art of perfumery.

Notes: Pink Grapefruit, Lime, Bergamot, Orange, Cedarwood, Madagascar Vanilla.

Sephora describes Vanilla Grapefruit's style as “Exotic. Sensual. Addictive.” Maybe that's why I keep respraying it. On application, the grapefruit note is strong, but fades quickly into a mixture of grapefruit, vanilla, and lime that smells more like those chewable fruit candies than actual fruit to me. That isn't a knock, by the way. I love those things. I just wouldn't reach for this one looking for a realistic fruit scent.

After about an hour, a lot of that candied smell burns off and Vanilla Grapefruit settles into a scent that is more woody and powdery than foodie or floral. The bergamot is very faint on me, but I get a nice balance of cedar and a vanilla that reminds me of the big tins of puff powder with giant pink powder puffs I used to get as holiday gifts when I was a little girl. Those things only ever smelled like one of two things: roses or vanilla. (Honestly, it's a wonder I love both notes so much. I guess I figure I'm spicy enough on my own that adding a little sweet certainly can't hurt.)

Vanilla Grapefruit is decently long lasting. I can still smell it faintly over six hours along. In terms of sillage? Moderate. I wouldn't take a bath in it, but if you're a careful sprayer, you can wear it without giving anyone around you a toothache.

I'm sure all this sugar is going to make everyone who sniff this feel like Vanilla Grapefruit is the province of fifteen year old girls.  Well let me tell you, I am no teenager, and I get a lot of compliments on it, so don't right off it's light, fizzy fun as too youthful for you without trying it out first.

Vanilla Grapefruit is available from Sephora in a 75ml spray for $58. I feel like this is a pretty good price for what you're getting. As always, I recommend trying before you buy.

I could only find one other review from Musing of a Muse.  Too bad for you fumies out there.  Vanilla Grapefruit is a nice little scent and I will always remember it as part of my trip to Rwanda.

I have got so much to give.
I swear, I do.
I may not have nine lives,
but this one feels brand new.
Yes I've lived a good one.
I have tried to be true.
There are some things I never realized
'til I met you.
How the wind feels on my cheeks
When I'm barkin' at the moon!
There is no home like the one you've got
'cause that home belongs to you!
~ “Barking at the Moon,” Jenny Lewis

BREAKING NEWS! Emergency Posting in Response to Developments in The Lizzie Bennet Dairies

{SPOILER WARNING! If you are just starting/have not yet started The Lizzie Bennet Diaries follow NO LINKS.  NONE OF THEM.  Start at the beginning, right here. For the rest of you, read on.}

Dear Reader:

I must interrupt this week's run of plague-related musings to bring THIS EMERGENCY UPDATE wherein I share, in GIF form, my reactions to yesterday and today's developments in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, generally relating to the rogue known as George Wickham and his dealings with the totes adorbes Lydia Bennet, aka THE LY DEEE YAAAH!

Here, in graphic form, are my various stages of coping with the wickedness of Wickham following yesterday's reveal:

THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!

SERIOUSLY? IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING?

And then while externally I am doing this...

...so my housemates don't realize I am genuinely unhinged

 over the twists in a story I already know the cannonical ending of, inside? 

I feel like this...

...which quickly becomes this...

...and also this....

So then I turn to my other LBD fans for comfort.

And they help me...or at least, they try.  

But really? We're all SIMULTANEOUSLY 

FREAKING THE F*** OUT...

...so it ends up being more like this.

At times like this, there's only one thing left to do:

And when it comes to saving Lydia, we all know who we need:

Though is this particular case it's more like...

And when I remember to have faith in Darcy, I feel like this.

And there you have it!  All the stages of my Lydia/Wickham-related freak out.

But remember ladies, here in the really real world, don't be too swept up in your Darcy-worshipping. Instead, keep these fine words from The Doubleclicks (aka my college friend Angela and her talented sister Aubrey) in mind when deciding whether the boys of your current daydreams has the good Darcy qualities or the....less ideal ones:

(Ed. note: Apparently when I am emotionally unhinged, I cannot spell the word 'diaries.' Fixed now.)

Notes from the Plague Den - The Beginning of Exile.

A week of reviews: perfumes, bath salts, body oils, books, digital content, and more!

Hello dear reader:

Are you tired? I am. I am emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted. Switching entire career fields is demanding! And bonus: I have managed to come down with the actual, honest-to-god, knock-you-on-your-derrière flu. I've been in bed for over two weeks, which has made it difficult to smell…well, anything really. And yet, I have smelled terrific the whole time, which has been a joyful note in the cacophony of task-shifting and illness-ridden noise in my life.

It's funny how much my mood can be affected by the presence or absence of scent. Six or seven years ago, I'd never have thought of it as important. Now, it can turn a whole day around. Scent is no longer incidental to my life. It is a kind of presence that weighs on me in its absence. I love; you don't know how much you are missing, then once you have it, missing it is so much more than never knowing.

Want to know what I've had to sustain me for lo these many sleep-filled days and nights? Well, first of all, my only real company has been this tiny Eeyore. If you are estimating his height at no more than three inches, you have the size correct. Thank goodness David insisted I pack it. I resisted, but being sick and three thousand miles away from my kittens? A little snugglie, it turns out, goes a long way.

As you might expect, I also have this bevy of cold and flu crap: orange juice, daytime and nighttime cold and flu tablets, Emergen-C, various soups from every local Chinese delivery place in the area, whathaveyou. Two things I want to point out, though, that have been extremely helpful. Neutrogena Norwegian formula hand cream, and Rosebud Perfume Co. distributed Smith's Minted Rose Lip Balm.

The Neutrogena Norwegian formula hand cream, which was provided by my hotel, has kept my hands, my cuticles, and my elbows moisturized despite my frequent crazy hot showers, my cranking the heat in my hotel room, and spending hours buried under blankets and pillows. I'm impressed that this relatively cheap moisturizer has done such a handy job. I'm sure there are better products out there, but for the price point? Terrific. I'll never leave home without some again.

Smith's Minted Rose Lip Balm I would have sworn by prior to this incident. However, having suffered through dry, high winds and incredibly low temperatures followed by a terrible flu, the fact that my lips are still intact -- no flaking, no drying, no cracks or bleeding -- has made an unwavering devotee of this $7 gloss available at Sephora or through Beautyhabit, which is where I first found it. It is a little flavorlessly waxy and a smidge on the sticky side, but I will trade those minor shortcomings for a gloss that gives healthy lips even in the harshest of conditions any day.

I rarely stray from perfume into recommendations on other beauty products because, honestly, I feel completely out of my depth endorsing one over another. I don't hoard, errr, I mean collect them the way I do perfume. But when I run across a low priced, knock out product that I feel truly good about? I see no reason to keep such info to myself. So expect me to continue to drop a little bit of cheapskate-oriented beauty product knowledge on you going forward. I splurge heavily on perfume, but I tend to be pretty chincy on everything else, so if you're cash strapped, I'm happy to provide you a few tried and true items that would make great stocking stuffers or 'bad day' retail therapy-related purchases.

As always, know that this is based solely on my own product experience, and comes with all your latin-based buyer beware caveats. Deal? Deal. Moving on.

Since my world has consisted of nothing but delivery food and bad cable TV for the last week, let me tell you what I've been watching online. The internet at the hotel was too slow for Hulu or Netflix, but it was good enough to run one of my new obsessions: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. A friend pointed me toward this awesome online adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The story, told as a series of online interactions between modern versions of the main characters through tweets, tumblrs, jams, and vlogs, it is a surprisingly compelling remaking of the classic tale. I like the real time aspect. I appreciate the emphasis on the ways the themes are just as engaging today was they were when the book was written. And most of all, I love the hilarious modern twists -- Darcy as a hipster? Hilarious!

The best way to catch up is to follow the story link, so you don't miss a single nudge,wink, or Q&A. It takes…okay it took me hours to catch up, but it was worth it, and it didn't cost me a penny! Now that's entertainment. I could wax poetic for hours about this, particularly given that we just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice.  Instead, I am going to point you toward my delightful friend Thu, who not only introduced me to The LBD, but did her master's thesis on Pride and Prejudice, and wrote this awesome piece in celebration of the pub-a-versary.

As for scents, I had the opportunity to try a few different items, including some bath salts, a terrific scented body oil, and a couple of perfumes. But….

…right now I need to sleep.

So come back tomorrow and I will talk to you about adventures in scent, as well as a couple of YA books that helped me get through the week of plague.

Saturday Mix: Idealized Into Powerlessness

Saturday Morning Musical Musings...


This Is What Makes Us Girls - Lana Del Rey





I can't find the album version anywhere I can post for you, but this is still a pretty awesome version of Lana Del Rey, "This Is What Makes Us Girls."

 I love this song for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because it reminds of this quote by Evelyn Cunningham: "Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors."

This is not to say that any one man in particular is the oppressor (though some are), so much as all of them are, to some degree, the unintentional (at at times entirely ignorant) beneficents of the things that are routinely taken as for granted as to be their purview, and to challenge that paradigm is to be at war. As women, our loving relationships with the boys and men in our lives, and even our fairy tale fed aspirations for that kind of life,  often separate us from other women  whom we come to see as taking from our coupled-units/the men we love, instead of seeing the shakes and quakes of change not as a threat to 'our' men, but rather a threat to the systematic dominance of women.

This is what makes us girls:
We all look for heaven and we put our love first.
Somethin' that we'd die for, it's our curse.
Don't cry about it; don't cry about it.
This is what makes us girls:
We don't stick together 'cause we put our love first.
Don't cry about him; don't cry about him.
It's all gonna happen.

If I Were a Boy -  Beyoncé Knowles





Released as the b-side for the hit single, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)," "If I were a Boy," was written by BC Jean, and is the only song on I Am...Sasha Fierce that isn't written in any part by Beyoncé. The videos were released simultaneously.  Though very low production, the "Single Ladies" video became iconic.  The Video for "If I Were a Boy," fell by the wayside in the wake of the "Single Ladies" success, though Knowles acknowledges putting more time and money into the latter in interviews. I think the song/video is an incredible commentary, particularly visually, of the kinds of behaviors that seem normal for men but would seem off-putting and inappropriate for a woman.  It allows us to look at the behavior and see in a vacuum, that is inappropriate regardless of the sex/gender expression of the person in that role.


One Girl Revolution - Saving Jane

Yeah, I love this song. This video is a live-performance, which I find particularly powerful.

"Raise your hand if your lipstick

doesn't make you a dumb chick.

Raise your hand if the shape of your hips

Don't compare to the shape of your mind...

I'm here to start a one girl revolution.

I'm not a barbie doll, shopping mall, silicone substitution.

I thought I told ya: I'm a soldier

and I'm not leaving til the battle's over.

One girl revolution."

Stronger Woman - Jewel

This is from one of Jewel's later albums, but proves that even as a pseudo-country rocker, she still has interesting things to say. I like the imagery in this, the official video, (though I'll be the first to admit that the obvious effort to be multicultural may not land in the positive ways I think Jewel was hoping for) particularly the locks on the corset.

No Man's Woman - Sinead O'Connor

Older, but still totally appropriate and powerful.
"Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness." -- Erica Jong.

Recommended Viewing: Bad Romance (Suffragette Parody)

Both historical and pop cultural, a fantastic video, and a great reminder that your most powerful tools as a woman are your voice and your vote.

This November, and ever time you get the chance, stand up and be counted. 

Happy International Women's Day from Feminine Things!

UPDATE: Also, this post from Ann Friedman is pretty freaking Feministastic excellent, too!

Is there room for more perfume writing?

Blogging: A Mission Statement

Pat at OlfactaRama had a great post about the general rumbling among fragrance bloggers regarding the 'glut' of new perfumer reviewers/writers/bloggers. I've seen this rumbling around for a bit now, most recently in sort of warning piece/guest post by Vanessa Musson of Bonkers for Perfume, at Now Smell This! entitled "5 things to think about before you start a perfume blog," and then a follow-up post, "The Sequel: 5 Things I Have Learnt From Perfume Blogging."

A mission statement?
You know that's right!

Now I don't want to pick on Vanessa. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, to talk about perfume bloggers or the number thereof or what makes a good/bad blog. Also, I think she had some interesting and useful things to say. FN1. But I do want to talk about this whole "why are you blogging/should you be blogging" thing because I've been wanting to comment on it for a while, and I didn't want to write a thousand word manifesto in someone else's comments section.

Okay, maybe not a manifesto.  It's more like...

A mission statement.

That's right people. I'm about to go all Jerry Maguire up in here. FN2. In fact, let's run with that as a theme, shall we? FN3.

I hated myself... no, I hated my place in the world.

Let me tell you why I started Feminine Things. I was in law school. I was miserable. I had leveraged my future to the hilt to earn my degree, only to find out that I hated my classmates/future colleagues and my industry. FN4. I hadn't written anything fun or interesting in a while. I felt as though my logic-driven studies was literally sucking the creativity out of me through my pores.

At the same time, I met Angela from Now Smell This! through our respective jobs. I told her I was thinking of buying myself a bottle of perfume for my thirtieth birthday. She brought me some samples.

So that's what oakmoss
looks like...

I summarily lost my mind and began buying tens of samples. FN5. I kept trying to keep straight what I'd tried and hadn't, what I liked best, why I liked one thing more than another. I didn't know anything about perfume.

 I had never heard the word "chypre." I couldn't tell a gardenia from a jasmine, a leather rose from a powder rose. I couldn't pronounce most of the perfume house names. I didn't even know what the big houses were.

But I had some free time. And I needed to keep track of what I was smelling. And I needed a writing prompt to help me begin writing again. I figured, "What could be harder than writing about the way something smelled for people who couldn't actually be present to smell it?

So I started this blog.

If this [points to heart] is empty, this [points to head] doesn't matter.

Let me tell you how little I had to go on. I didn't own any non-Body Shop/Bath & Body Works perfume when I started. No one linked to me. No one. My friends didn't even read my blog. You know how much I cared? Not even a little.

Those sunglasses are to hide
my tear-filled eyes.

I didn't start the blog to get readers. I needed a place to think and reflect and write. I needed, some days, a place to scream.  I needed a place for me.

Perfume inspired me. It was overwhelming at first.  I would put something on, and BAM! The perfume I was smelling made me feel...everything.

I would smell a scent and it would remind me of my deceased grandfather, and I wept. Another would remind me of the smell of gardenias in my grandmother's backyard...and I blubbered for an hour. A scent reminiscent of my old high school boy friend? More tears.

Basically, I cried a lot.

But I also wrote a lot. I remembered how much I liked words, liked the texture and feel of them in my mouth as I read my writing back to myself. I loved the vivid images perfumes evoked, the random pop cultural connections that would spring into my head when I sniffed at my hand, and just how damned happy I was. My perfume made me so happy. Still does.

First class, that's what's wrong. It used to be a better meal, now it's a better life.

They get free samples in first class?

Even over a year later, I didn't have anyone sending me samples. FN6.   I didn't have any awards. I didn't have any invites to be part of special blogging events. I still didn't have any links to other bloggers. I didn't even have someone to swap with because Angela and I had both left our positions and, sadly, didn't see much of one another.

 I was spending all my disposable income and then some on samples, but there was no way I could keep up with blogs like Now Smell This! or Perfume Posse. So I didn't bother trying. I bought sample sets from The Perfumed Court so I could learn the difference between a candied violet and a soapy violet, if anyone could make a decent orange scent, what constituted a boozy scent, whether I'd ever like anything other than a rose. New releases - who cared? I hadn't even tried Patou Joy or Guerlain Mitsouko yet.

I read a few books about perfume, but mostly? I just smelled, and then I wrote about it. Then I'd smell some more, and write about it. I'm not promoting blogging with blind ignorance.  I'm just saying, everybody has to start somewhere, and you should never be so afraid of looking stupid you miss an opportunity to learn. As I blogged, I trusted my instincts and my own impressions of the scents. You know why? Perfumes smell different to and on different people. They evoke different memories. They elicit different connections. What smells like a funeral to me may smell like heaven to you.  I think both reviews are probably correct.

Was I writing what my esteemed colleagues were? Nope. As far as I could tell, everyone else had a lot more knowledge of the industry and a lot fewer pop references, no one else was using song lyrics for titles, and I didn't see anyone else occasionally freaking out about feminist politics. Did I have "a new perspective to offer"? Ha! Who cared? I was writing again. It felt terrific.

This April 15 will mark four full years of blogging about perfume. I haven't stopped yet, and I have no intention of doing so.

The key to this business is personal relationships.

One thing that keeps coming up in posts about the 'crowded field' of perfume blogging is the idea of "lost readership" and " fluctuating traffic" and "shouting into the void."

Largely these things seem like nonsensical concerns to me. I admit to being flattered by readership. Who isn't? I admit I like comments. But mostly, I write this blog for me. Maybe it's the writer in me that thinks it's a good idea, but I prefer to give credit to the historian.

When I was in college, I read A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 for a class. This work by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is one of the best books you can read about American life in the period in large part because it reflects the thoughts and feelings of the daily life of a real person as they were living it. This is history gold, people! It doesn't get more primary source than that.

 Do I think I deserve to be the speaker for our times? No, I do not. But I suspect Martha Ballard didn't think she would be either. Part of the reason I write this blog,  and part of why I write and document my life to (quite frankly) an absurd degree (you really should see my scrap books of movie tickets stubs - not even joking), is because part of me thinks, "What if I end up the Martha Ballard of the early 21st Century?" You never know who the Angel of History's eye will fall upon in the rubble. If it's me? I'd like there to be plenty of material for that intrepid historical scholar to work from.

And to that end, I try to document the work I've enjoyed reading around the internet here, and on twitter, FB, G+, and the like. I like to share things with people, to talk about them and read them. And I like to give inspirational credit where credit is due, even if the inspiration is to blog at length about how I disagree, whether that be related to perfume or not. Discourse is intensely valuable and immeasurably rewarding, particularly when it challenges us to (re)consider our own assumed postures. I am grateful to those who prompt me to bring pen to paper, fingers to keyboard.

Plus, being nice? Kind of the golden rule.

Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded.

This isn't my first blog. I started a livejournal back in the late 1990s, then I had an independent blog I designed myself that was hosted on a friend's server for a few years. Before that, I wrote in spiral bound notebooks. FN7.

Can I be your ambassador
of perfume kwan?

I'm not really in the beauty industry, and I doubt I ever will be. I still don't know as much about perfume as a lot of other bloggers. You know what I learned on Castle two weeks ago? How to properly say the name of a perfume I actually own. FN8.

I keep going anyway, learning and trying and collecting. Will I keep writing Feminine Things for a while? I like to think so. I see no reason for stopping. And even though I do have all those things now - awards and event invites, links and followers and commenters and even, yes, the occasional free samples to review - I would still keep writing here if I didn't.

Most flattering to me, though, is that you keep reading, and others find my work valuable.  This blog ended up on a couple of Women's Studies syllabi in courses on feminism and the beauty industry in the last couple of years.  I actually got to send a message to one of the classes that used my blog.  As someone who has made a life of studying sex and gender in popular culture, it touches me to think I might help someone else learn and grow.

Truthfully? I never track my traffic. I didn't even know about this wikio/Ebuzzing thing until I read Vanessa's follow-up piece. Google ranks sites? News to me. I like it when people post on my drawings, because I like to give pretty things away. Other than that? I might as well be writing letters to myself.

When I went back to look at my very short initial post today, there was a comment on it, one I never even replied to. How great is that? Three days in and I had a reader. One reader. Perhaps it's her I'm still writing to.

When I write the words, dear reader, I am literally imagining you out there, reader, and I hope you will hear me when I say the following:

Words are tools; writing, a learned skill. The more you use them, the better you get at writing. Whatever inspires you to write, write about that. If it's wine? Start a w(h)ine blog. If it's shoes, go with that fetish. If it's making up funny, misspelled statements to apply on photos of cats, I hear there's a market for that. It's a big old internet out there, and I am not in any way afraid of losing my reader to you. I can't. They live here, in my head.

You complete me, dear reader!

So if you've got something to say about perfume, I want to hear it! If you've started a scent blog you don't see listed in my sidebar of bloggers, tell me. Provided you aren't a spamming troll, I'll be happy to add you. I can't promise I will always have time to read everything you write and comment on it, but if you inspire me to think or talk or write, I will give you the internet love you deserve. And I truly hope you do it better than I do, even if you start your very first post tomorrow.

Who knows - I might even learn something.

Leave a comment to be added to the blogroll.  Or just to say you love/hate/indifferent me, sweet reader.  For deep down in the spidery corners of my ventricular chambers, I feel the same about you.

But I love my wife husband. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
______________
FN1. For instance, I, too, regret not going with Wordpress. Though if I move now, I'm probably going to Drupal Gardens. Because this Bitch? She hearts the cutting edge technologies. (Given that, I still don't know why I ended up on Blogger. I think because I was broke and it was free. Thanks for asking.)

FN2. Dorothy: "I loved your memo, by the way."
Jerry: "Thanks... actually, it was just a Mission Statement."

Bonkers!

FN3. Also, if you all don't like this post, please don't golf clap me off stage left with my sad little fish in hand. Plus, Tom Cruise is actually bonkers, so I think it works thematically. Also, I love Cameron Crowe, so you can all suck it.

Wait -- am I not supposed to be telling readers to suck it? Damn, I'm bad at this.

FN4. Loved my coursework and my profs, though. Holla to my Lewis & Clark faculty, what? What! Seriously, though. I really should have just gotten a Ph.D. in Legal History or Legal Philosophy.


FN5. Yes, tens, not hundreds. I was broke, remember?

FN6. I actually don't mind paying for samples.  I appreciate that materials are expensive and most of the perfumers I buy from are independent small business owners who need to recoup/cover their costs.  I'm just happy they let me have the samples, instead of selling by full bottle only.  I couldn't afford to try much perfume if I had to buy full bottles just to try them.

FN7. I still write long hand in notebooks.

FN8. Seriously. It isn't fracas? As in "to cause a"? I am terrrrible with French. Ah well. I might sound like a stupid culturally-illiterate American, but at least I don't smell like one.

The Will of Instinct.

On Amanda Palmer, Nirvana, and the Language of Violence in Popular Culture

**TRIGGER WARNING.**

This is not about perfume. No, this is about AMANDA FUCKING PALMER (aka AFP), and intimate violence and sex/gender politics.

I remember the first time I heard Nirvana’s “Polly.” I was, I don’t know, fourteen, I think, but already deeply familiar with the idea of being trapped in a cage by someone violent who thought they loved you. FN1. I remember having a visceral and negative reaction to “Polly” in the same way I had negative reactions to the fetus tree imagery in “Heart Shaped Box.” I remember thinking at the time that Kurt was an angry dude who did not like women, and who seemed to blame his feelings of inadequacy as a man not on patriarchy and misogyny, but on the women in his life and at large. I distinctly remember having an argument with a boy I was dating over this feeling and being completely without the language I needed to express my reactions to some of Nirvana’s work, particularly “Polly,” in a coherent way.

Let me say that I know very little about the Patron Saint of Grunge. I haven’t bothered to study him. So when I talk about all this, I’m not talking about Kurt, the man, or Kurt, the artist’s intent made real. FN2. FN3. I’m talking about how I, as a young abused girl without the language or strength to describe what was happening to me, had been happening to me, was continuing to happen to me, seemingly with the world’ s knowledge, permission, and tacit approval, felt about his work in the moment.

To me, Kurt seemed angry, and the angry in his music appealed to me. The chords that struck me as wrong, however, were the thinly veiled digs at women, the idea that women were a “tar pit traps” or leeches, sucking the life out of otherwise good men, as if women are the enemy and not the trap of rigid gender/sex roles. It’s the same gut level reaction I have to a lot of Kerouac’s work. Any time I hear the words, “pretty girls make graves,” I want to punch someone in the face.

It’s possible that Cobain, and Kerouac before him, meant to put a spotlight on the ways misogynists justify their wholesale use and abuse of women rather than representing a position the artists themselves held. Certainly the history of the song’s origins provided by Nirvana’s surviving members seems to imply Kurt was more interested in understanding the psychology of someone who brutalizes another person at the intersections of sex, violence, and control than identifying with them.

Who Killed Laura Palmer?
"All you good people..."

The problem with this kind of approach to feminist critique of violence is that the work sits out there afterward, speaking for itself, without a narrator standing by to anchor it in context. It finds its way into the bedrooms of girls like me who hear it and only hear  the world’s (at the time) most popular band reveling in a kind of sadism she is beginning to know personally. I was that girl, the girl who hears the words and thinks to herself, “Is this how the whole world is? Is no one stopping what is happening to me because the things my abuser tells me are true, and this is just the natural order of things?” No amount of in-depth documentary histories or "VH1 Behind the Music" interviews or tell-all biographies will ever change the visceral experience of hearing "Polly" and thinking, “I am trapped, just like her. I’m going to die here. I’ll never get out.”

That is why I am so GLAD there are women out there like AMANDA FUCKING PALMER who take work like this, reframing and reclaiming it to show how terrifying and violent and awful and tragic and sickening and inhumane the ideas lurking beneath the riff are,  no matter how they are intended by the artist to be taken by the listener. Much like Tori Amos’ chilling rendition of Eminem’s “ ’97 Bonnie & Clyde”, AFP’s newly released video for her cover of “Polly” is heartbreaking and so resonant with real life that it took me less than one minute to find multiple examples of the ‘fictional’ events in the video happening to women here in the first world in the last two to three days. FN3. FN4.

You can see the video here, in all its disturbing and terrifying realness.

I sobbed when I finished AFP's video the first time through because all I could think was, “This is what I’ve always imagined feeling/happening when I heard this song.” Polly, the caged bird/girl, attempts to appease until she can be free, focusing on nothing but surviving one more moment.  She is like an amalgam of Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer and Waldo, the caged Myna bird who is one of the only witnesses to Laura's kidnapping.  Both Laura and Waldo end up dead, sacrificed on an altar of patriarchal culture that still believes women can be kept like pets, treated like animals, and are worth nothing more than their purity, their womb, and their service to male pleasure.

The difference between the “Polly” story in my head and AFP’s video is this: I never imagined Polly escaping, never thought a woman like Amanda would be there to save her if she tried. I cried in part because it was a better ending than I ever imagined for Polly, and I am grateful to Amanda Palmer for giving it to me, new salve for an old wound.

Laura: The Will of Instinct.

There is one line from “Polly” that chills me to the bone because it has always rung entirely true for me: “It amazes me, the will of instinct.” The Will of Instinct. The drive and desire to survive, to move on, heartbeat to heartbeat, waiting for one chance out between two worlds, Madonna or Whore, life as a victim or death. The Will of Instinct. To keep going, to keep pushing, to never give up or slow down or give in, to have any sense of self-worth or pride or strength to fight after another brutal day.

The Will of Instinct.

I admire the generations of intimate violence survivors who have stood up and continue to stand up and fight for their lives and their humanity for so many reasons, but most of all, I admire that they keep fighting. And I admire awesome feminists like Amanda FUCKING Palmer for taking the language of the abuser hiding in our culture as entertainment and focusing our attention on it, showing it in all its horrifying and terrible truth.
_________________
FN1. To be perfectly clear, because I think clarity is important, I can only partially identify with the personal experience of this story.  I am a child survivor of domestic violence and have personally experienced being held against my will while my life was repeatedly threatened. I am not a rape or molestation survivor, though I have experienced enough forcible sexual contact in my life to give me the tiniest silver of a fraction of understanding of what the survivors I do advocacy work for have been through. I have known and loved many survivors, though, and I have lived with them through the aftermath.  I can tell you it is brutal and awful and can destroy a life, and every person who survives to go on and thrive and be good and decent is a testiment to human resilence.

FN2. There are clearly feminists who think Kurt is awesome and had a ‘feminist world view.’ The line that kills me in this article, btw, is

Many of the women interviewed initially found “Rape Me” an unsettling song, but eventually came around to seeing it as Cobain’s clumsy but well-intentioned attempt to incorporate feminist theory into his worldview.

Riiiight. Those feminists just needed to get to know Kurt personally and/or transcend their personal, visceral reactions to his songs to see that his works were absolutely intended to be feminist. I must have missed that memo while someone was beating the crap out of me.

FN3. Okay, no. The thing that kills me most is the ACTUAL ARTICLE TITLE. "Nirvana's Secret Feminism." Wow! How progressive! You're a secret feminist. Does that come with a decoder ring and spy magnifying glass?

FN3. I actually wrote an entire paper about the Tori Amos cover in college I had so much to say about, so I won't go into it in depth here. To keep this short, let me say  I acknowledge “’97 Bonnie and Clyde” differs from “Polly” in a number of ways, the most important being that Eminem was actually expressing a desire to kill his (ex)wife. Whether Cobain intended to exercise internal demons through verse or to spotlight systematic violence against women is something only he would know, though it seems he intended the later, making the intent of his work more closely aligned with Amos and Palmer than with Mr. Mathers, even if it ultimately fails to translate to into that kind of critique in the form it was recorded and presented by Cobain himself.

FN4. And let me point out, these are just the stories that make it into the newspapers and AP wire and only represent a tiny fraction of the women being kidnapped, raped, and murdered all around the world as a matter of course, for war, for male pleasure, for male power, and for profit.

Fantasy Perfume Line: Twin Peaks Perfumery

Smells those trees, smell those Douglas Firs. ~ Special Agent Dale Cooper

So since this came up recently an awesome Twitter exchange with Meredith and Victoria, I thought I’d post about it. For a couple of months, I’ve been thinking about how if I were a perfumer, all my scents would revolve around some weird pop culture reference because that’s how my mind works. I don’t have any plans to become a perfumer, but I like to think about what I’d make and what it would smell like. I even considered buying accords and trying to mix my own, knowing that I’ll never quite get to the high end chemistry part of perfumery.

To that end, I bring you Diana’s fantasy perfume line. The first installment would be inspired by David Lynch’s cult classic television show, Twin Peaks. If you knew me in real life, you would know I am obsessed with Twin Peaks. I have been since it aired when I was twelve. I watched the original series, bought Laura’s diary (totally inappropriate for the average twelve year old, btw), and still own Agent Cooper’s cassette tapes to Diane, though I have nothing to play them on anymore. My twenty-seventh birthday was a Twin Peaks-themed Party, and I dressed as dead Laura Palmer, complete with stiff plastic wrapped like a tall collar. I am so familiar with Angelo Badalamenti’s work that when I heard Neko Case’s “Look for Me (I’ll Be Around)” I thought, “That reminds me of Badalamenti’s work with Julee Cruise.” Then I discovered that was her inspiration. Only a “meh” fan of the Dresden Dolls, I completely fell in love with Amanda Palmer when she made Who Killed Amanda Palmer? because the album can be dark and mysterious like my beloved TP.

You get the idea. There are fan and there are fanatics. I’m the latter.

Part of why I love Twin Peaks is because the show embodies the five senses like so little else does. There is ongoing dialogue and mysterious clues that revolve around things you can only smell or hear or feel, which is super cool considering the media involved in the actual storytelling is visual only. From the way the presence of evil smells like burnt engine oil to the opening few scenes that describe phone static by way of saying “it has that open air sound, y'know? Where, it sounds like wind blowing, like wind blowing through trees…” to the universal obsession with a damn, fine cup of coffee, the show begs you to see, smell, hear, and even feel your way through the series.

So, in the vein of all things Peaks-related, here are my fantasy perfumes, and what I imagine they smell like:

The Double R Diner - “This must be where pies go when they die.” Notes: cherry pie and strong black coffee, a coffee “black as midnight on a moonless night.”

The Packard Sawmill - “Insurance investigator should read ‘arson’ block letters, about six feet high.” Notes: saw dust, scotch pine, burnt wood.

The Great Northern - “In a large building with many rooms alike. But occupied by different souls night after
night.” Plus, someone is trapped there. (Notes are vaguely spoilery.) Notes: Douglas fir, wet stone, cherry blossom, green tea.

Donna Hayward - Twin Peaks true good girl, voted “Most Likely to Succeed” in her Senior Class. Even when she tries to be bad, she's still so very good.  “When did you start smoking? “I smoke every once in a while; it helps relieve tension.” “When did you get so tense?” “When I started smoking.” Notes: Ginger ale and a butter cookie, but with a faint hint of cigarette smoke.

My Name is Audrey Horne and I Get What I Want - And what Audrey wants is her own perfume. Notes: Lipstick wax; the leather of brand new saddle shoes; ice cream cone (“Cup or cone?” “Cone. I like to lick.”); grapefruit (“As long as those grapefruits are...freshly squeezed."), and maybe a hint of cherry stem.

As Agent Cooper sexily notes, “Audrey, that perfume is intoxicating."

Fire, Walk With Me - All things Bob, and probably too terrifying to wear. Notes: grinding train rail, the coopery smell of blood, bonfire, burnt rubber, engine oil.

Special Agent Dale Cooper - “Dear Diane…” The ultimate intuitive detective, who dreams of mysterious secrets, shoots like a pro, and only drinks black coffee and Black Yukon Sucker Punches. And who makes a tucked in plaid shirt sexy in a way no one else can. Notes: gun smoke, shiny badge metal, crisp clean sheets, coffee, and whiskey.

And finally…

She’s Filled with Secrets - A tribute to the one and only Laura Palmer. Notes: Ink, diary pages (“We found her diary.” “No, there’s a second one.”), forest floor (“a necklace buried in the woods”), river water, and a hint of plastic (“She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic!”).

As for living Laura, she would probably smell like a big and sexy expensive department store scent from working at the perfume counter at Horne’s Department Store. (“He named it after himself.”)

Remember, “it’s the sweetest smelling job she’s ever had.”

Are you a TP fan?  If so, let's hear your ideas of some "little man from another place" (that's LMFAP to you fans out there) perfume ideas! Or ideas about Lil, my brother's sister's gal!  Or Harold, the iris growing recluse!

"The stars still shine bright.
The mountains still right.
Yet something is different are we falling in love?
Falling, falling...
Are we falling in love?"
~ "Falling," Julee Cruise

Oscar Musings: What Does a "Best Picture" Smell Like?

Further thoughts on the Oscars... See my guest post at Now Smell This! for more.

There is very little in the world as satisfying as a well-told story.

A truly good story is one that is an immersive experience. It takes the voyeur into itself, immersing you in the sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste of the moment. When any piece of art does this, we like to honor it. For perfume, we have Prix International du Parfum, the Fifis, Grand Prix du Parfum, and so forth. When it comes to motion pictures, two annual judgments tend to reign supreme: Cannes and the Academy Awards.

Tomorrow the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hand out the coveted statuettes for the 83rd time. First held May 16, 1929 to celebrate outstanding film achievements for 1927 and 1928, the “Oscars” are now shown annually in over 200 countries. So it’s safe to say that, unless you live under a rock or on Mars, you’ve heard about the little golden statute and all the pomp and circumstance that goes with it. While there are a lot of awards for various aspects – costuming, screen writing, score – the most sought after award, year after year, is Best Motion Picture. This year ten films will duke it out to be named story of the year.

When faced with contenders as varied as Toy Story 3, Black Swan, The Kids Are Alright, and Inception, how does one choose the “best”?

As perfume obsessed as I am, it tends to invade all aspects of my life, including my other obsessions. When I smell perfume, I hear music, and vice versa. When I encounter a truly beautiful photograph or painting, sometimes I have an immediate scent association. So of course, as I sit around watching movies, I think about perfume. What’s interesting is I don’t often find myself thinking about what a particular character would wear so much as I find myself wondering what scent could capture the overall feeling of the story I’m seeing.

I wonder, if this film was a perfume, what would it smell like?

So, dear readers, my challenge to you, on this Oscar-eve, is this: Think of the movies nominated for best picture this year. If you were asked to attempt to explain to someone who had not seen them what the essence of their stories were through scent alone, what would you choose?

Happy Thanksgiving, eh!

Gobble, gobble!
Just wanted to drop a quick line to say Happy Thanksgiving to any Canadian readers I have lurking out there. I also want to give a shout out to those who have the day off celebrating a guy who was trying to find India and who not only failed to find it, but didn’t even realize it and named the native people Indians. I guess it’s a double day of celebrating colonialism, but hey, at least there’s turkey.



On a slightly more upbeat note, here's a favorite clip related to Thanksgiving from The West Wing, wherein President Bartlett reflects on the search for religious freedom the pilgrims sought in the 'new' world.

Image courtesy of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.

I wanna do bad things to you...

Waaaay back 2002, I read the first of the Sookie Stackhouse novels Dead Until Dark. You may know them as the “True Blood” series, but back then they were known as the “Sookie Stackhouse books” or the “Southern Vampire mysteries.” I think there were two of them. I remember thinking the book was passable. I never bothered with the second one.

I finally broke down and watched the True Blood recently and the HBO series was surprisingly good – much better than I remembered the books being. To my recollection, the books were – in terms of writing – not even as good a quality as the Twilight series and that is saying something. (However, True Blood, the tv series, is miles better than the Twilight films thus far. Trust me.)

Given how good the show was I decided to try the books again. I even gave myself a pass on the first book, and started with Living Dead in Dallas. The writing seemed as bad as I remembered, slightly below Twilight quality, only these books aren’t aimed at preteens. By the end of book three, Club Dead which I kept reading because (a) I’m an intellectual masochist and (b) they read fast and I was curious – see (a), the writing has risen to on par with the Twilight books. That said, I actually have bigger problems with the gender dynamic that goes on in the Stackhouse series, and I’d like to talk a bit about that since it is one area that does not all seem to improve over the books.

Firstly, I would like, just once, to see one of the female “sups,” or “supernaturals,” other than Sookie do something ‘heroic.’ I use air quotes there because a lot of the actions and decisions made by any of the characters in the book aren’t heroic at all, but at least they are intended to be in a sort of traditional, hegemonic masculine way – facing down danger, taking a bullet for someone, compound raids and daring rescues, etc. It seems to me that part of the reason that all the supernatural men in Sookie’s world seem to want her (unless the writer expressly connotes a preference for men – even if the character in question is supposed to be bisexual), is because, despite being the most breakable thing around, she tends to shove herself into harm’s way. While Charlaine Harris, the author, tries to pass this off as Sookie’s determination to be her own woman and take care of herself in order to maintain independence in an increasingly dangerous world, writing things like “After a second I realized my help would not be needed, and I decided the Goddess of Really Tough Gals would have to excuse me while I closed my eyes,” undercuts actual any actual strength Sookie displays by making it seem like a kind of show. Sookie wants to be seen as tough, but when she gets an escort to do some digging around in book three, the following lines define the new relationship:

“This was the way life was supposed to be, for normal people. It was morning, time to get up and work, time for a woman to cook breakfast for a man, if he had to go out and earn. This big rough man was eating real food. He almost certainly had a pickup truck sitting out in front of my house.”

“Alcide Herveaux looked plenty rough. He was as big as a boulder, with biceps that I could do push-ups on. He would have to shave a second time if he planned on going out in the evening. He would fit right in on a construction site or a wharf.

He was a proper man.”

Seriously. That’s the line. Sitting right there in its own paragraph. Just like that. “He was a proper man.” Damn, do I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t drive an F-150 or have huge biceps. I guess any real expression of masculinity is foreclosed to them. It’s this type of stereotypical role writing that makes me crazy when it comes to these books. Even if I could ignore the weird repetitive exposition pieces – not from book to book like you get with a good series, like the Harry Potter books or the Anne Rice vampire novels, so that someone can pick up any book in the series and still get the gist of the world mechanics – but from very short chapter to chapter, as though there is legitimate concern that someone might pick up the book and start reading right smack dab from the middle, I cannot get around the weird traditional gender descriptions/dynamics. While, on the next page after the “proper man” line, Sookie is bitching about the “paternalism” of the men in her life, but she seems pissed if there isn’t some paternalism going on. If a chair isn’t pulled out, she notes a lack of “manners,” but doesn’t seem to link this with someone throwing themselves in front of her in the next fight scene.

At the same time, Sookie seems to dither when it comes to whether she wants to get into a “top/bottom” relationship with any of the men around her. (The tv show demonstrates way more sexual agency on Sookie’s part in terms of defining sexual relationships than the books do, and thank god for that or the show would be unwatchable.) I’ve read through over five hundred pages of Sookie, and not once has she made a legitimate first move on anyone. Sex just seems to “happen” to Sookie, even when her inner dialogue sees it coming for a Kentucky mile. When these interchanges happen, she rarely asserts her displeasure, and when she does, it is in a weak way that props up the myth that “no means yes” when she gets carnal with someone for five-thirty minutes before she exhales the equivalent “No, we mustn’t!” Sookie never negotiates her role in these exchanges. Personally I am all for relationships with established sex roles related to top/bottom, possession/ownership, etc. but Sookie repeatedly portrays herself as someone who has no say in the matter and is frustrated by it, all the while playing along. I want to scream at Harris – for the love of goodness, give us a freaking safe word!

While the Twilight gender dynamics may be just as static and traditional and possessory, Bella actually talks to Edward about her needs/wants/desires. Bella very clear talks about when she wants sex, how she wants sex, what she’s comfortable with and how she thinks things should occur. Critiques of the book feel that Bella is painted as weak and sex seeking while Edward is strong, noble, and virtuous (by, of course, denying his basic animal needs – wretch), but to them I say, what the hell is wrong with saying you want it? I may not love that Bella goes ahead and marries Edward to get sex, but at least there was a discussion, clearly defined terms, and a feeling that there was equal participation in sex decision making. In the books, Sookie has someone inside her before she considered whether or not she wants them there.

All of this said, I will probably keep reading the books. If nothing else, there are enough books I can definitely get a conference presentation out of the materials. Most of the critique I’m seeing aimed heavily at Twilight, but within the genre of the vamp novels/films/tv, of which I am an admitted lifetime addict, I really don’t find Twilight as terrible as the critique its taking. To me it just feels young. I remember feeling like Bella when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old. I remember feeling like the first boy I loved was the only one I ever would, and that living with my heart, once broken, was like trying to breathe without oxygen. I read the books and think, “I would have identified/do identify with this,” even if I do so now with a rueful head shake. I sometimes wonder if that is what scares the crap out of readers. We may not like fifteen year old girls identifying with Bella, and we may wish for a world that acculturates young women differently, but I have to say that Bella demonstrates more sexual agency than I did or most of my friends did until well into our twenties. My disappointments with the books, which are several and varied, don’t have a lot to do with Bella’s sexual relationships. Neither Bella nor Sookie are Nancy Collin’s Sonja Blue, and just once I’d like to see a vamp story with positive role models for top/bottom relationships between two women, but I’ll take Bella over Sookie any day.

What does all this have to do with perfume? Well, honestly, not a lot, but I never promised to talk exclusively about perfume here. Harris does talk about perfume some in the books, and Meyer talks about scent extensively, so maybe I’ll do a sister post that.

Also, in honor Sookie and her poor Southern roots (which I share), I will be starting a week of classic drug store scent reviews a week from tomorrow (8/3). Be on the look out for that. I’ll probably post again often before then, but I wanted to tee that up while I had a chance.