Clothes are like skin to me

While blundering around in my files trying to find something, I found this. It was originally written for my first blog, the late and never-lamented Open Salon thing that was eventually driven out of town by vicious, insular harpies who didn't think I had a right to be there. Fine.

This essay, while relevant, doesn't entirely apply now, because my closet has since been vastly pared down (though it's surprising how many of the pieces I mentioned are still there). But I'm once more in a cycle of weight loss/body change. The more you do this, the worse your final shape will be. Today I look like a melted cookie. But perhaps it's still good for my health.

My blog style has changed, in that I no longer try to do "good" writing. No one wants to see it , and I don't feel like doing it. I see other people's blogs now and think I am in a hospital room. But only because mine is like a basement or garage or tool shed with spiders crawling around in it. No one reads it anyway, right? Well, not many. So why have I spent my life doing this? Hmmmmmmm??

I'll no doubt realize the answer a few seconds before I expire. Meantime, read this, it's pretty good, even if I no longer write in this sort of essay style - it'd kill me with boredom now

This is the kind of job I could put off forever. I don’t just hate my bedroom closet, I fear it. Long ago my husband moved his stuff out. Like a miniature version of Hoarders, it tells stories that ain’t pretty. Everything is so tightly packed in there that it emerges squashed into  ripply pancaked wrinkles that are nearly impossible to get out.

I am tired of this great whale, this leviathan that I have to wrestle with each day just to find something to wear. I am powerless over my wardrobe, and my closet has become unmanageable.

The thing is, I take care of my clothes, almost fanatically. I hand-wash and I hang-dry and I don’t bleach and I do all those things the little tags tell me to do, or not do. Because they irritate shit out of me, I remove most of the tags surgically, with a stitch-ripper. I take such fanatic care, the result is that nothing dies. There are items from every year going back to (bllompfdhhd). Items going back to so many fluctuating weight levels, I’m embarrassed to even think about it.

Shape-shifters like myself have always had a hard time finding anything nice to wear. Not to mention pyramid-shapes whose hddd’pvlms are a tad larger than “normal”. And those with penguin-flippers for arms, so that shirt-cuffs lop down 2 or 3” longer than “normal”. Turned-back cuffs do not look casual, they look sloppy and weird, as if you’re a kid playing dressup.

My body is not normal and my psyche is not normal, so what do I do?  Recently I’ve been on yet another round of weight loss, and though I’m not trying very hard at all (and so far, not using a scale to prevent the usual salivating obsession), I’m getting results. ALL my coats fit, that is, the ones that aren’t a little tight, but they all button up. I’m slowly beating the “bottom button” curse which all pear shapes will know about, the top of a blouse fitting beautifully and the last button pulling violently apart as if it’s three sizes too small.

What’s getting me now is that I know I have to get rid of some stuff, if only to make room for the things I’ve just snarfed up in the spring sales. There are pants in there that go back to 115 (AD, not BC) and (gasp) 165. There are pants with high waists and pleats. There are sweaters shoved in the back, probably from the 1980s, with big firm shoulder pads.  (For me, with no shoulders to speak of, they were a great blessing, and I hated it when they went “out”). There are unwise purchases covered in glitter or beads or even feathers. And there are lots of things that I take out once in a while, look at and put back, convinced they’re too nice to wear. I’m not sure what I am saving them for.

Then there are those few (very few) indispensable pieces, things I just wear and wear because they make me feel good. Blazers have always made me look great, almost as if I know what I’m talking about, because they’re structured (and I’m not) and have shoulders (and I don’t), and I have a cranberry one in pinwale corduroy and cranberry is my favourite color, well, next to turquoise (and there’s that turquoise blouse, and the t-shirt I picked up in New Mexico with the little “milagro” all over it – the t-shirt that DOES NOT GRAB MY ASS!) And stuff like that.

A few years ago, stretch fabric stormed the racks. Now it seems to be everywhere, and damn I like it, maybe a little too much. This past weight gain, which I put down to the dense regime of medication I must use to keep my health from falling apart, everything just sort of – flexed. Suddenly I could sit down OK. Waists slid down at least an inch or two even on the most conservative clothes, which for some bizarre reason flatters me. What better excuse to buy this, and this, and this!  Three-quarter sleeves, now ubiquitous, solved another chronic fit problem.

But jesus guys, I can’t take this any more. I am in closet limbo. This place is ready to explode, and most of it isn’t even really wearable. If I cull out the dead wood, I tell myself, I will reveal to myself treasures that I had forgotten existed. I have every reason, but the thing is, I hate reason.

Clothes are like skin to me. Not that I always like them. Liking isn’t the point.  They represent me, in some way that makes them hard to bag up and throw out. I can’t imagine some other woman wearing them, not even someone shivering on a street corner. They’re too old and dowdy, for God’s sake! Well, not all of them. But by now they’ve taken on my shape and scent and form and give and take. An imprint. My “vibes”, you might say. Do I love them? Maybe, but that depends. What’s love?

This morning I am going to take two or three green garbage bags and set to, ruthlessly defoliate. Rip, rip, rip (and RIP). Big chunks will be pulled out by the roots, never to be replaced. Some things I will just have to try on, even if for the last time (for I am now 2” less in the hip than I was 3 months ago), to see if the miracle will happen.  Or not.

The great law is, supposedly, if you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it. How many times have I rediscovered something I haven’t worn in ten years, tried it on and thought, Jesus, where did I get this? Thank God I didn’t donate it. They just don’t make stuff like that any more! Then put it back in the closet where it will slowly work its way back to where it was.

These items wait in the wings. I will wear them. Or I won’t. Each blouse or sweater or pair of pants seems to give off a scream of anguish as I rip it out of its socket and throw it in the bag.  Why have you forsaken me?  We saw some good times together, didn’t we? Can’t we have them again?

I try to get them to shut up as I open my third or fourth bag. But the uncomfortable truth is, it’s me that can’t move on.

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The Ice Bucket Challenge: throwing cold water

Why the Ice Bucket Challenge is bad for you

The ALS campaign may be a great way to raise money – but it is a horrible reason to donate it

Scott Gilmore

August 24, 2014




(AP Photo)

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is bad for you.

I don’t mean you will catch a cold (you won’t), or look like a craven sheep (you will). I mean that when you are inspired by a viral fad to donate your limited dollars to a charitable cause, you ignore the diseases that genuinely threaten.

The marketing gimmick is very clever. It is short, immediately understandable, and like the most popular forms of slacktivism, it is easy to do, entertaining to watch, and narcissistically self-promoting. Every screen on our desks, on our walls, and in our hands is filled with celebrities, neighbours, porn stars, and politicians showing off their earnest compassion and occasional humour. The ice bucket’s ubiquity rivals other famous charitable stunts like Movember, Livestrong, or the infamous Kony 2012.

As a result, the ALS Association has received more than $70 million so far, compared to only $2.5 million during last year’s campaign. It is a great way to raise money — but it is a horrible reason to donate it.

We, as individuals and as a society, have finite resources to donate to medical research and other worthy causes. When we decide where to spend our charitable dollars, we need to consider three factors.

1. Where is the greatest need?
2. Where will my dollars have the greatest influence?
3. What is the most urgent problem?

The ALS challenge fails all three of these tests.

First, ALS research is not an especially great need in public health. It is classified as a rare disease and, thankfully, only about 600 people die from it every year in Canada. That sounds like a lot, but that is not even close to the top 20 most fatal diseases according to StatsCan (the top three being cancer, at 72,000 deaths per year; heart disease, at 47,000; and cerebrovascular disease, 13,000).

Second, it is already extremely well funded. As this chart from CDC data shows, last year ALS killed 6,849 people in the U.S., and attracted $23 million for research (a ratio of $3,382 per death). Heart disease, by contrast, killed 596,577 but only raised $54 million (a paltry sum of $90 per death). If you want your donation to make the biggest difference, fund the diseases that need the most money.

Finally, ALS research is not an urgent need. If you want to help where time is of the essence, then look to Syria (greatest international refugee crisis in a generation), Ebola(now a full blown global health emergency), or the Central Africa Republic (quietly bleeding to death unnoticed by the world).

We aren’t rational, though. Typically, you will spend more time considering where to order a pizza and what to put on it, than you will deciding where to donate your charitable dollars. As a result, the real threats, the diseases that are far more likely to kill you and your loved ones are ignored. This is why the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is bad for you, and me, and all of us. Instead of supporting what is most needed, we support what is most amusing.

But you can change this. Print the simple reminder below, fold it up, put it in your wallet. And the next time you reach for your credit card number, pause and actually think.

Good reasons to donate:

1. Need
2. Influence
3. Urgency

Bad reasons to donate:

1. Ice Buckets
2. Armbands
3. Mustaches

Scott Gilmore is a former diplomat and the founder of Building Markets.

DARWIN, THE IKEA MONKEY: best cash-grab of the season!

Maybe it's because it's Christmas, with all the feverish fund-raising that goes on. I don't know. But I am plenty pissed by the following story.

A lot of you already know about Darwin, the cute little baby rhesus monkey (or whatever kind he is: it's a little unclear now) found leaping around an Ikea store in Toronto, wearing a baby-sized shearling winter coat.

It was the kind of story that makese a great kicker on the news: "And, finally. . . ", with chuckling anchors making droll little monkey jokes with absolutely no awareness or concern for what is really going on. It's YouTube, folks, so it can't be real and no one can be hurt by it. Harmless entertainment.

That is, until the public was made joltingly aware of the fact that there were more "issues" involved here than a displaced monkey in an adorable coat.

We saw video clips of Yasmin Nakhuda, the kind of person who anthrop - anthropo - oh well, screw it, treats pet monkeys like people, with a human need for close nurture. One of those eccentric people who dress their pets in all the latest styles, haul them around with them, brush their teeth with them, and shit like that.

While Nakhuda was off shopping, presumably in Ikea, the cleverly-named Darwin escaped from her car and - weird or what? - bolted into the store, where it ran around frantically "trying to find the cafeteria" (chortled all the news people) "because it wanted a cheap hot dog or some meat balls." More likely, it wanted to get out of a typical frigid Toronto winter before it froze to death.

One would have thought that would have been the end of the story. The eccentric lady takes her exotic pet home with her to celebrate Christmas. But wait, all of a sudden, unlike in the US where you can own a Bengal tiger or a deadly cobra or whatever-you-fancy and keep it in the back yard while your toddlers roam around and throw stones at it, this monkey has been confiscated. It's been snatched away by a strange-looking "sanctuary" called Story Book Farm.

Just the name is weird. It just doesn't suit a primate sanctuary. There used to be a Story Book Gardens in London, Ontario, a must-see for kids everywhere (and I was dragged there at least 14 times). Did it have animals in it? I think so, in those wretched, suffocating barred cages that reeked of ammonia and dung. As a child, I thought it was natural for animals to pace back and forth all day.

So now little Darwin, obviously capable of making decisions for himself and his own well-being, has finally seen the light.

Though his former owner has been lambasted for the horrible sin of treating him like a human being, suddenly Darwin (renamed like a religious convert, a kid adopted from the Ukraine or someone in the witness protection program) is talking, just like a human!

Yes, talking! And you wouldn't believe the things he is saying. This is a direct quote from the Story Book Farm fundraising web site:

I was found wandering the parking lot scared and confused on Sunday Dec 9th.

I am only a baby and had no idea where I was.

The kind people at Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary took me in and are providing me with a permanent, loving home where I can learn from other monkey's and I am told may have a surrogate mother!!!

I am so happy to finally be able to live and act like a real monkey!

Story Book farm did not expect to get me for Christmas and we could desperately use funds to help pay for my care as well as the other amazing monkey friends I have made.

I will eat A LOT of food. I would also love to be able to play with toys and other enrichment items and all of this costs money.

Please consider makng a donation towards my care, this is my Christmas wish.
No donation amount is too small, every little bit helps! :)

Other Ways You Can Help

Even if you can't contribute, you can help me and my other new monkey friends by sharing this campaign with everyone you know.
Thank you for your support, and for helping me have a very well deserved Happy Holiday.

Plese feel free to visit our website to learn more about us:
www.storybookfarmprimatesanctuary.com

Does this somehow speak to you of "cash grab"? It makes me plenty uneasy, along with the pictures and videos of monkeys in Story Book Farm bouncing off the walls of wire mesh cages. This is not my idea of a sanctuary, where animals can roam free in some semblance of the wild. And maybe even interact with each other in some way that's more natural than sticking their fingers through the mesh.

Even the "parking lot" reference is bent to make it all seem more cruel. He was found in the store, not outside. And notice how they've suddenly, magically changed his name back to Darwin for the sake of public recognition (though only for the purposes of the campaign).

Wouldn't Darwin be better off in Yasmin Nakhuda's bathroom brushing his little simian teeth? Maybe not. Lots of people treat their dogs like babies, but that's apparently beside the point. This Storybook shit is deeply suspicious to me. It seems to me it's just another form of abuse, and certainly exploitation.

Do they really think they're going to squeeze money out of people by yanking Darwin's string and making him "talk" so people will feel guilty if they DON'T donate?

I got one of these things in the mail the other day. Don't even remember which charity, but it said something like, "We were about to present our usual gut-wrenching, guilt-inducing end-of-the-year pitch to to help suffering children, but suddenly had to put it all aside when an urgent crisis arose which will result in a horrible, agonizing death if you personally don't do something about it!! Little Hildegard is a sweet innocent toddler who is now suffering from Stage 4 cancer and will surely die in horrible agony if you don't pony up and empty out your wallets NOW. Don't you want to save her? What in hell's name is the matter with you?" (And so on, blah, blah, blah.)

I know charities are suffering. But I also know that you have to pick and choose, you can't give to all of them, and such extreme guilt tactics are inexcusable. It all reeks of manipulation and laying a staggering load of guilt on the public. I can just see their PR people saying, "Well, you know, we could always keep this story until Christmas, that is, if the little girl is still alive. You know how people are at Christmas. They always give more." I happen to know that these people have been hired to do this, to "spin" their issues for maximum manipulative effect, justified by the fact that charities must now be run like businesses, no matter how crooked and mercenary their tactics.

This time it's about a displaced monkey - not just any monkey, but the IKEA MONKEY, now just as famous as Justin Bieber for his cute little YouTube antics. Even better: there's now an "Ikea Monkey Controversy" that will spawn still more news items to tack on to the end of the TV news broadcast, inspiring still more chuckling, bantering and not-very-clever "monkey custody jokes". Or else sober-faced, cheek-biting items while the anchors try to pretend this story means shit.

Meantime, the most important issue has been totally buried in hype. This isn't a "thing", but an alive, sensate being that is more intelligent than your beloved Rover or Hissy the Cat. It's being thrown back and forth like a football in the name of "animal rights", and it is totally disgusting to watch.

Not just thrown back and forth, but shoved into the public's face in a breathtaking campaign known (literally) as Dollars for Darwin (even though his name isn't even Darwin any more! This is nothing but brand recognition served up with a side order of cute alliteration.)

Why do I feel as if my wallet is being forcefully squeezed? Why do I feel that no matter how much I donate to every cause, worthy or not, I will still feel like a guilty wretch for not giving even more? Why do I feel a sort of nausea about this whole story, knowing it can't possibly have a good ending for anyone? For the only thing more heartlessly mercenary than squeezing out donations for the plight of a sick human being is exploiting the innocence of a vulnerable, helpless baby animal.

 

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    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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I DON'T love boobies: or, why I refuse to buy pink TicTacs

Postmedia News Oct 14, 2011 – 9:21 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 14, 2011 10:55 AM ET

By John Colebourn
KELOWNA, B.C. — Students at a Kelowna middle school have been told to leave some “edgy” breast-cancer bracelets at home.
Springvalley Middle School has banned students from wearing the breast cancer awareness wristbands because they say the bracelets are offensive.
The bracelets, which have the slogan ‘I [love] boobies!’ printed on them, are part of a youth-oriented breast cancer awareness campaign by Keep A Breast Canada.
The wristbands were banned last month, when it was determined the language is not suitable for teenagers, said School District 23 superintendent Hugh Gloster.
Gloster said they were first made aware of the controversy by a number of parents who complained. From there they felt the bracelets violate the school’s code of conduct.
“Our code of conduct says if you are wearing something offensive to people then you’ll have to cover it up or remove it,” said Gloster.
Gloster said the Keep A Breast campaign is very different from other cancer drives.
“There’s an edgy nature to the marketing,” he said. “In some cases it has caused distraction and some people feel it is offensive.”
Keep A Breast executive director Michelle Murray has said the bracelets are for a younger demographic to heighten awareness about breast cancer.
Gloster said the school will still be active in other health-related campaigns.
“We certainly recognize the need for awareness for breast cancer,” he said.
Vancouver Province

(And I quote.)

This little story, which I first heard on the evening news (and, incredibly, the news anchor did not say what the slogan was!) sums up much of what I've been feeling in the past few years about a certain cancer awareness campaign.


It's enough already. It's enough with the tits up, or tits down, or tits hanging out. Enough boobs, boobies, tee-hee-hee, aren't we daring, aren't we modern! And most especially, it's enough with the flood of marketing, the tasteless line of every kind of goods imaginable from sweaters to mugs to pens to notebooks to knitting wool (it's all PINK, folks - why on earth would you want to knit in any other colour?). Edible goods have been creeping in, too, but I was especially offended when I went to buy some shampoo at the drug store and the clerk aggressively pitched a prominent display of grapefruit-flavoured pink TicTacs.

Why am I offended? Because if you really buy what this campaign is pitching, you will sooner or later come to believe certain things:

(a) Breast cancer is the #l killer of women in North America (if not the world).

(b) Selling lots and lots of pink things will cure it.

(c) The money from these pink things all goes to breast cancer research.

(d) Other forms of female cancer just aren't as important.  So we don't need a campaign for them. They'll sort of take care of themselves.

All these assumptions are completely false, but why would we know that? Steadily bombarded by the pink machine, we are slowly and unwittingly becoming mesmerized into believing what they are telling us. Or what they want us to believe.

I don't know how this pink avalanche got started, but it has reached the point of nausea for me. School children wearing "I love boobies" bracelets? Just the fact that women's breasts are now glibly being called boobies makes me shake my head.

I have breasts. They have been useful to me: in fact, I used them for the function for which they were designed, and it was a wonderful experience. Now they're more of a hindrance, harder to fit with a bra, in need of mammograms and intense poking and feeling by doctors. But they're there.

I don't think I'm a stick-in-the-mud, but I don't want anyone, not even my life partner, calling them "boobies" because it is a juvenile, vulgar term that only takes away from the dignity of the cause: or does it? Everything these people do, no matter how tasteless, is eagerly swept up and embraced by beaming women running around in pink track suits.

It's a known fact that testicular cancer is one of the leading causes of death in men over a certain age. So why is there no "I love balls" campaign, with pictures of. . . oh never mind.  Rectal cancer? It might be misconstrued if we claimed to "love" assholes (for surely that term is no more vulgar than "boobies"). And how can you love ovaries? I love what they DO, mind you - they're miraculous little organs. But a cancerous ovary is a ticking time bomb, not a bouncy little thing you put on a bracelet.

But unfortunately, pink is not the only colour. This morning when I took my coffee into the living room, I noticed a 3" stack of greeting cards on the coffee table.

I asked my husband, "Where the hell did these come from?"

"Oh. Charities."

"Which ones?"

"I don't know, I get them all confused now."

The "stuff", the junk they force on us (tacky "holiday" cards with teddy bears on them, pens we really don't need, and - most recently - one of those environmental tote bags, an awful one made out of thin paper), is meant to strong-arm us into donating to the disease or cause of the week.

Through guilt. No other reason. We don't ask for this stuff, we don't want it. But it's impossible to get rid of it, to get ourselves off the mailing list. So it just keeps coming, and it's hard to throw it away. It stares back at us, accusing. What sort of skinflint won't give to a charity that is sweet and caring enough to send you a gift?

Maybe they think this works, and maybe it does. As with the pink juggernaut, these charities must hire some pretty obnoxious ad-men (and women) to design aggressive campaigns to make everyone feel lousy about themselves if they don't do what they tell us we "should".  In my case, it makes me so angry I won't even consider donating to their lousy cause (and statistically, only a fraction of our hard-earned dollars ever makes it to the research foundations or pink bra-makers or whatever-it-is we think we're supporting through our financial contributions).

There's something even worse, and that's what is happening at checkout counters in stores everywhere: "Would you like to donate $2 to the Send a Quadriplegic Little Girl with Terminal Cancer to the Circus Foundation?" Things like that. There are so many of them now that they all sort of blur together. Who knows how many of them are bogus. Some people give to all of them, all the time, because they just feel so bad if they don't.

By the way, it used to be ONE dollar. Somewhere along the line there was a 100% increase, and not only did nobody say anything, everybody just ponied up.

This kind of adds up. If you went on a shopping trip and went to five stores, well, I don't have to do the math, do I? If you went shopping one day a week for a year, it adds up to. . . but we don't add it up, that's the problem. That's how they get us. Nobody will mind tacking on a couple of bucks to save a sick pony or whatever it is.

One more thing. These bona fide charities are the thin edge of the wedge, allowing scammers to move in like an infection and penetrate the crack in our hearts. The other day when I was walking down Granville Street in Vancouver, I saw a scruffy-looking young couple with hand-made signs around their necks that said, "Save the Children". They were good talkers, and there were lots of takers (or should I say givers).  But then, they had already been softened up. As P. T. Barnum put it, there's one born every minute.

I realize charities are up against it, but so are we. There has to be a better way than squeezing us like this. The breast cancer campaign is an example of some very highly-paid PR person creating a monster with grasping tentacles reaching everywhere. It has completely mowed down public awareness of other forms of cancer that are infinitely more deadly. A big bucket of pink paint has been splashed on everything, and nobody says anything because it's like stomping on a bunch of baby chicks. You simply can't.

I'll make a deal with these people. The day they launch their new "I Love Colons" campaign (with everything in brown, of course), I'll wear their wretched booby bracelet with a wink and a smile.

(Post-script. I know someone will accuse me of being a skinflint who doesn't care. I'm not saying "don't give", just "be selective", not to mention careful. I'm not against breast cancer research, but those people will NEVER get a donation from me because I find them so offensive in their tactics. Over several decades I have donated regularly to UNICEF, particularly during natural disasters. They focus on the plight of children worldwide, have done it for a very long time, and I have never heard about a scandal connected with them. More recently, I give to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation: my little granddaughter Lauren has Type 1, so I often donate in lieu of a gift at Christmas and birthdays. I know my husband gives to a couple more, his own personal choices: kidney and a women's shelter, Covenant House, I think. That's quite a lot of giving. But NO PINK, please.)

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