Friday Links 9/27/13

If you read one thing this week, make it Rachel Cohen-Ruttenberg’s essay Shame and disconnection: the missing voices of oppression in Brene Brown’s “The Power of Vulnerability.” A taste:

People from any marginalized group can do all the personal work on themselves they want, but that work is not going to magically get them off the margins and connected into the larger society. If you’re on the margins, it’s not your attitude that’s got you disconnected. It’s stigma and systemic exclusion. I can be the most psychologically healthy, spiritually evolved, kick-ass disabled person on the planet, and that is not going to solve the social, sensory, and architectural barriers that enforce my disconnection from the able-bodied world every single day.

She also has a great follow-up post, Connection takes more than courage.

Now, on to the rest of the links…

Fa(t)shion
-s.e. writes about the problem of greenwashing in the fashion industry.
-The Frugal Fatshionista reviews Light in the Box, which sells inexpensive formalwear in both straight and plus sizes.
-These indie nail polishes and lipsticks look fabulous.
-I love the clothes in Skorch’s Plus Night Out Recap.

Amber Riley = the awesomest. She’s so adorable and such a great dancer!

Fat Acceptance
-Shannon talks about what things changed–and what didn’t–when she unintentionally lost weight.
–Four fat-positive Netflix picks (and one you should avoid).
-Why “fat-phobia is the last acceptable prejudice” is such bullshit.
-Ragini writes about the recurrence of her eating disorder and her experience with extreme fatphobia in her native India.
-Sonya Renee reflects on the invisibility of women of color within the fat acceptance movement.
–What about really fat people with health problems?
-If you don’t want to become enraged and incredibly sad, avoid these three pieces: a special report on medical fatphobia,  one woman’s experience with a weight-loss-encouraging workplace wellness program–while she was fighting a life-threatening eating disorder, and the terrifying story of a man who died after he was refused medical treatment based on his weight. This is why we fight.

Feminist Hulk smash the devaluation of pink collar work: on gender, value, and opportunity

Sarah Kendzior’s latest piece on poverty and workers’ rights is, as always, full of truth. The whole thing is a must-read–seriously, I’ll wait, go read it and then come back–but one part in particular resonated with me:

Teaching, nursing, social work, childcare and other “pink collar” professions do not pay poorly because, as Slate’s Hanna Rosin argues, women “flock to less prestigious jobs”, but because jobs are considered less prestigious when they are worked by women. The jobs are not worth less – but the people who work them are supposed to be. 

I’ve been ranting about this for so many years.

So many of the men in my life have high-paying computer programming jobs, and so many of the women in my life have low-paying teaching and childcare jobs. I’ve worked in childcare myself, and let me tell you, it’s hard.

Having conversations at the toddler level all day is a special kind of mind-numbing. Spending all day in a room full of crying infants is a special kind of nerve-jangling. And sometimes you get peed on. (I learned the hard way to keep everything covered when changing baby boys’ diapers.)

There are the good moments too: when four toddlers are trying to fit in your lap for story time, when you’re out on a walk with the kids and one of them makes an observation and you see so much intelligence, so much creativity, so much promise just beginning to blossom. There are fun times with bubbles and balls and finger paint. There’s a playfulness you don’t get in the average office job.

But overall, it’s incredibly hard work–and vital to a well-functioning society, and laughably underpaid.  Or it would be laughable, if it weren’t so serious an indictment of our nation’s priorities.

Wednesday Fa(t)shion Inspirations, 9/25/13: adorable children edition

Because adults are not the only people with style.

Konadlicious

Green & Gorgeous

It’s time for a pro-life economy (no, not that kind of pro-life)

From the tragic story of adjunct professor Margaret Mary Vojtko’s death to my own adventures in job insecurity, everything I’ve read and experienced has convinced me that we need a pro-life economy.

Not in the traditional anti-abortion sense (ugh), but in the sense of putting human lives first, and profit second. And since our lives are inextricably tied to the health of our planet, we need to prioritize that too.

We need jobs. Green jobs, well-paid jobs, jobs with benefits (or government systems to provide those benefits).

We need an end to the ideology of infinite growth–which, in a world of finite resources, is quite literally unsustainable–and a focus on human health and happiness.

We need an end to the casual cruelty of corporate capitalism–the callous profit-seeking that allowed an adjunct professor to die penniless, near-homeless, and uninsured while the university’s president received a $700,000 salary.

Bill McKibben succinctly summed up what’s wrong with our economic system in his 2007 book Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future:

Alongside the exhilaration of the flattening earth celebrated by Thomas Friedman, the planet (and our country) in fact contains increasing numbers of flattened people, flattened by the very forces that are making a few others wildly rich.

His observation is even more true now than when he first made it, back in the less-shitty days before the Great Financial Crisis.

Sunday links, 9/22/13

Fa(t)shion
-Huzzah! Re/Dress Cleveland is now open. In other exciting Re/Dress news, the iconic Size Queen rainbow zebra dress is now available on their site.
-The Phatshion Peacock hung out in a a fatkini under a waterfall, and the resulting pictures are gorgeous.
-So much nostalgia: the 27 most ’90s outfits worn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
-Good news: ASOS Curve has expanded their sizes range to include size 24, which could actually fit women who wear up to a 26-28 since their sizing runs large.
-I love these portraits of women who sell African print fabric in London.

Fat Acceptance
-For the “news that make me want to smash things” files, a toddler in Saudi Arabia was given weight-loss surgery. Fuck.
–Fat as a metaphor: don’t do that, everyone will know you’re fat!
–Fat kids and formerly-fat kids are at significant risk of eating disorders, yet are more likely to go undiagnosed and untreated.
-So much yes to this quote about the hot fat girl revolution.
-Ragen discusses ways to increase mobility regardless of size.

Everything Else
–When your (brown) body is a (white) wonderland: the best analysis I’ve read yet of the racial dynamics in Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance.
-#IAmMargaretMary.
–Who is a “journalist?” People who can afford to be.
-In Norway, prisoners are actually treated like people.
–Queered science: why social justice and STEM fields should hang out more often.
–Occupy at two: how a flawed and fleeting utopia changed the world.
-Roxane Gay is calling for submissions for her new series at Salon featuring writing by feminists (of any gender) of color.
–Fear and loathing (as a 21-year old queer) in Singapore.
-I would love to visit this steampunk coffee shop someday.
-This golden retriever’s puppy’s first visit to the beach is the cutest thing ever.

Quote of the day: how millenial-bashing hurts the most vulnerable among us

My friend Becca made this observation on Facebook the other day. There’s so, so, so much truth to it:

“What I hate about these blanket ‘Young people are idiotic narcissists because they’re been made to feel special just for existing’ pieces is that they are unlikely to affect the people who actually are idiotic narcissists. They are more likely to affect the people who already have low self-esteem, who have been treated badly by others merely for existing. Those are the people I want so fiercely to protect, because those people realizing their self-worth are so crucial to maintaining love and compassion in the world.”

The post-employment economy and its discontents

First, a blog note: My Friday Links post will probably be late this week (again). It’s been an exhausting week, and I have a busy weekend planned–so I’ll get to it as soon as I can, but I’m not sure when that will be.

With that out of the way, here are some reflections I’ve been having on the issues I started exploring in my post about millenials and the terrible economy we’ve inherited: one that I’ve best heard described by writer Sarah Kendzior as a post-employment economy.

On a message board discussing both my post and the millenial-bashing one to which I was responding, I read a comment (which unfortunately I can no longer find)  that said, basically, money doesn’t buy happiness–that it’s possible to be happy and have a good life without making much money.

On one hand, there’s a lot of truth to that. On the other hand, in our society, money can buy a lot of things it shouldn’t.

Like the ability to follow a career path that interests you.

To a certain extent, money has always been able to purchase opportunity; but as Alexandra Kimball discovered, it’s a lot more extreme now than it was for our parents and grandparents. Entire professions are closed off to all but the wealthy, as she experienced firsthand: after years of trying to start a career in journalism, she was able to break into the field only after receiving a surprise inheritance.

Or, say, compassion.

Take this incident that Adam Weistein relates in his response to the original piece.

Last weekend my baby had a fever, and we contemplated taking him to the ER, and my first thought was – had to be – “Oh God, that could wipe out our bank account! Maybe he can just ride it out?” Our status in this Big Financial Game had sucked my basic humanity towards my child away for a minute. If I wish for something better, is that me simply being entitled and delusional?

Or kindness. As Molly Crabapple points out in her brilliant, beautifully written, must-read piece about the relationship between art and money:

So much of the difference between the experiences of rich and poor comes down to kindness. Kindness is scarce. Kindness must be bought.

If you have money, you can pay to live in a bubble of politesse. Excellent wine choice, sir. Here’s your gift bag, madam. Often, you don’t have to pay for it. The mere promise that you might will keep you sipping prosecco and deserving of servile attentions. Soon, you think this treatment is earned.

Meanwhile, we treat the poor with casual cruelty. Single moms on welfare have their homes searched by police to make sure they’re not hiding a man in the closet. But it’s too much to ask bankers to justify the bonuses they sucked off the public teat. The poor get stop-and-frisk, drug tests, and constant distrust.

In our current system, money doesn’t just buy things. It buys the right to be treated like a human being.

OOTD: Blue, yellow, and floral (aka I miss business casual)

One of the hard things about my current mailroom job–aside from the sheer physical exhaustion–is that I don’t get to dress up. I’m on my feet all day, and the packages are not particularly clean, so I have to wear clothing that’s easy to move around in and that I don’t mind getting stained. This leaves me with a fairly small set of options.

It might seem like such a little thing, but I really miss the everyday, low-level dressing-up that comes with the office jobs I’ve had.

This outfit is from my last office temp job, in the registrar’s office at a university. It was near a lovely park that was perfect for taking outfit pictures on my lunch break.

Tank top and cardigan: Lane Bryant, skirt: vendor at a dance festival, shoes: Naot, necklace: So Good, earrings: CoupCoup Designs (aka my college friend Emily), hair flower: vendor at a local arts festival

Wednesday fa(t)shion inspirations, 9/18/13

Attack of the Sugar Monster

Zataara

Why is Generation Y unhappy? It’s the economy, stupid.

At the Energy Exodus earlier this summer

If I read one more piece like this, I’m going to scream.

No, my generation isn’t unhappy because we’re entitled special snowflakes who want rainbow-barfing unicorns on our lawns. We’re unhappy because we’re facing crushing student debt, a terrible job market, the downgrading of most stable jobs to contingent work, falling wages, and widening inequality. We’re unhappy because we’re working longer hours for less pay–or getting our hours cut to the point where we can barely survive. We’re unhappy because so few of us have health insurance or paid sick days.

We’re unhappy because we’re coming face to face with the reality that we might never be able to afford to own a home, or have children, or many of the other things we want to do. We’re unhappy because we see our dreams and opportunities vanishing before our eyes. We’re unhappy because we look around and see so many of our friends struggling–so many bright, talented people faced with shitty options. We’re unhappy because we’ve learned first- or secondhand that intelligence and hard work don’t guarantee being able to pay the bills, let alone personal fulfillment.

Not to mention that we live in a world where our government shamelessly spies on us, where corporations have more rights than people, where there’s a mass shooting every few months, where the environment is being destroyed at a stunning and possibly irreversible rate.

Of course, this isn’t to say we’re all unhappy. Happiness is a lot more complicated than jobs and money and ambition. Happiness is also about friends, family, community, art, music, dance, nature. It is entirely possible to find happiness in the midst of suffering and injustice–people always have. There is so much love in our world, so much beauty, so much connection and fierce resistance and hope.

Generational divides, too, are more complicated than many make them out to be. Millenials aren’t a stereotype, and nor are our Boomer parents or our Greatest Generation grandparents–or our Gen X friends, or anyone else who doesn’t fall into the millenial/boomer/gg taxonomy.  We are all shaped by our times, by our opportunities, by the social and economic landscapes we navigate–but we’re also so much more than the sum of our years. We’re all human. We all have our struggles and our passions. We all have our stories.