It's another Mothra Monday

 
  

 

    

A horse is a horse

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Lady Fair

Take care. I love you. Be well

Something has been bothering me, a lot, and I’ve gone back and forth on posting about it. Originally I was going to make a YouTube commentary, but couldn’t bring myself to do it without going off the deep end. Then I thought of Facebook, but knew I could get myself into all kinds of trouble there, and that’s the last thing I want.

This incident happened some months ago, when I saw a rare post from a Facebook friend whose posts never seemed to show up in my feed (and only about 10 per cent of my “friends” ever appear there. It's always the same old. The reason? Facebook assumes that, because they're in my feed a lot, it’s what I want, so gives me “more of the same”). 

In typical Facebook fashion, this is someone I know of, but don’t know personally, and with whom I have over a hundred Facebook friends in common. In part due to his platform as an edgy "alternative" arts journalist, he has been quite open about his lifelong struggles with mental illness, believing (and I truly agree with this) that this topic needs to be hauled out of the shadows where it never belonged in the first place. But something was very amiss with his post.

I went on his page to see what was going on. The posts were strange and kind of scary. He used the word “manic” several times, in a lot of different connotations (including some crude sexual references the likes of which I could not find anywhere else on his page). There were veiled and not-so-veiled references to self-destruction and violent death. This made me very uneasy, but far worse than that were the comments: the dozens of “LOLs” and “right ons” and even “awesomes”, as if his readers were finding all of it hugely entertaining.

In spite of or maybe because of the work he had done illuminating mental health issues, people apparently thought this was some kind of exuberant prank and were egging him on. Meantime, hints of suicide kept showing through. He mentioned looking down the seventeen stories of his apartment building and imagined “impaling myself on the maples below”. More LOL’s, more “right ons”, dozens of idiot emojis - and (worst of all) “Hey, we’ve all been there” (which we HAVEN’T. Nothing is more bogus and potentially dangerous as empty, false “empathy”, pretending to know what it feels like when you absolutely do NOT. It’s like saying you know about cancer from a mosquito bite.)

The posts escalated, becoming more florid and making less sense, along with photos that were increasingly alarming, until someone – a family member, I believe - posted with great urgency that anyone who had seen him should contact the family immediately. They didn’t know where he was.

Most of the comments by now expressed concern, but there were still a few dimwitted remarks (“Hey, it's all good! You’re Canada’s gonzo journalist, mate!”) People who compare someone to Hunter S. Thomson should be reminded of how his life ended, with a single gunshot wound to the head. 

When the family finally announced they had called the police, most were relieved, but others still went on and on about “oh, no, you didn’t call the COPS on him!” The trouble with unburying mental illness from its airless crypt is that you uproot a whole array of primitive, ignorant, even goddamn stupid attitudes that go with it, such as denial and misperception and totally inappropriate “seeing the funny side” when it really isn’t too damn funny at all. I'm not against it, but humor about such a subject only comes in retrospect. Perspective equals time plus distance. Can you make jokes about heart disease when you’re flat on your back and fighting for your life?

There was a brief update from his brother about how grateful he was to the police for getting him safely to the hospital. This seemed to shut up the idiot Greek chorus for a while. "Police" is such a knee-jerk term, especially to jerks who don't think. The police are trained to deal with people in all kinds of distress, for all kinds of reasons, and for the most part, they do their job very well. But people still use terms that reflect very dated, primitive thinking: "they dragged him off", "they threw him in a mental hospital", etc., when very likely no person was "thrown" at all. Some still use that most horrendous and dehumanizing of terms: "they put him away". It's one of those holdovers from another century (or two) that deserves to disappear.

I see two kinds of posts on FB about the “hot topic” of mental health (the term seemingly replacing “mental illness”, which assumed you could never be well): boilerplate posts as ready-made as a microwave dinner (“Most of you won’t even bother to read this far” and “copy and paste this message, DON’T share, just to show you care!”, emoji, emoji, emoji). I always have the vague uneasy feeling that someone is making money off these things. To alleviate that vague guilt that hangs around most of us these days, people WILL copy and paste the thing, hoping they've done their bit to "raise awareness" and can just get on with their day.

The other approach is much like the “cancer awareness” thing where it seems like a bunch of cheerleaders waving pink pom-poms. In this case, God only knows where your donations end up. I’m not saying we shouldn’t address the subject - quite the opposite. But let’s really talk, talk about things that are real and painful, not spout easy platitudes and rah-rah for the team. Believe it or not, there is a time when "being positive" is the last thing you need to do.

I think depression and PTSD have largely come out of the closet, which is a start, though celebrities still “admit” they suffered from depression years and years ago (NEVER recently – that’s still too great a risk). PTSD is associated with first responders, military heroes, sometimes cops, but that’s about it. If you were sexually abused as a child and can barely function, that’s not it, it has to be called something else. Due to media emphasis and a certain level of social discomfort, PTSD has been largely claimed by heroic figures running into burning buildings. People insist they’re even more heroic for the tremendously risky act of seeking help.

I won't say much about myself because it is too excruciating, except to say that when I "disclosed" to a literary agent that I have bipolar disorder, she emailed me back with two words: "You're brave." It struck me as a remark along the lines of, "I wish I had the nerve to wear that dress." The "brave" thing was weird, because I could have bipolar disorder and be the biggest chicken on the block. Having it doesn't automatically make you "brave". So I guess she thought I was brave to have the nerve to tell her such a thing. I was left with the feeling that I had done something that had made her profoundly uncomfortable.

I like to say, and often people don’t have a clue what I mean, that when it comes to mental illness, we haven’t had our Stonewall yet. Every day, people bandy about terms like “whack job” and “nut bar”, expressing casual contempt for people who, like my Facebook friend, COULD NOT HELP his behaviour, because that is the nature of the illness. The mentally ill are the very last group of people in our culture whom you can vilify, mock and dismiss with no penalties, because no one even notices you’re doing it. We all say those things, don’t we? Why is it such a problem? It doesn’t really mean anything. Why are you so damned oversensitive? 

I lost a beloved brother, the one confidante and support I had in a childhood lived in an emotional war zone, to the damaging effects of schizophrenia, back when all they could do for people was drug them senseless to keep them from “acting out”. And yes, sometimes we lost track of him, didn’t know where he was and had to call the police, and it was horrific. Then when the worst happened, my mother-in-law said to me in a terrible double-entendre, “at least now you know where he is.” 

Why does it have to get that bad? It doesn't. If the health care system were more complete, if there were enough beds, if people would drop their mockery and horror and act human, as human as they probably could be if they tried - but I digress. My point is, what you say reflects what you think. It displays your understanding or your ignorance, not just to your Facebook friends but to the world. 

Sometimes the less you say the better. Just keep it simple. Take care. I love you. Be well.

Anne Revere and Helga: one and the same?

I think this is my second attempt to portray in photo collage what I think is an astounding chance resemblance between Anne Revere (a character actress of the 1940s and 50s who was often cast as a wise matriarch) and the immortal Helga, Andrew Wyeth's mysterious muse. Some years ago I saw a documentary which featured "the real Helga" coming out of hiding at last. (It seems that, surprise-surprise, she was Wyeth's mistress for years, with his downtrodden wife in full knowledge of the fact). Weirdly enough, she looked nothing like Anne Revere in older age - more like one of the elderly Gabor sisters, perhaps, pre-fat-farm. The earthenware features had hardened into something more like cement. She looked sort of - cheap, and it was a disappointment.  I don't know anything much about Anne Revere and don't feel like looking it up (but you can, if you want to). I haven't seen photos of  her past about age fifty or sixty. But whenever I watch National Velvet or A Place in the Sun (both of which feature her in the kind of solid supporting role that makes a movie memorable), I see Helga, the full lips and defined nose, the serenity and warmth of expression mixed with a strange remoteness. No doubt these two things have nothing to do with each other. But I see it, even so.

Arsenic and Old (green) Lace

Arsenic and old (green) lace 

 

(Excerpted from an article in Racked, a now-defunct historical website)

In 1814, a company in Schweinfurt, Germany, called the Wilhelm Dye and White Lead Company developed a new green dye. It was brighter than most traditional green dyes. It was bolder. The shade was so jewel-like that it quickly began being called "emerald green." And women loved it. Largely because it was during this time that gas lighting, rather than candlelight, was being introduced. When women went out to parties at night, the rooms were considerably brighter than they had been only a few decades before. These party-goers wanted to make sure they were wearing gowns that stood out boldly — gowns in a shade like emerald green. People also began using it for wallpaper and carpeting. Victorian Britain was said to be "bathed in… green." 

The effects of arsenic exposure are horrific. In addition to being deadly, it produces ulcers all over the skin. Those who come in close contact with it might develop scabs and sores wherever it touched. It can also make your hair fall out, and can cause people to vomit blood before shutting down their livers and kidneys. 

And if you think the effects were terrifying for the people who merely brushed against these fabrics, wait until you hear what happened to the women who manufactured them, working with the dye every day. Matilda Scheurer, a 19-year-old woman who applied the arsenic green dye to fake flowers, died in a way that horrified the populace in 1861. She threw up green vomit, the whites of her eyes turned green, and when she died, she claimed that "everything she looked at was green." When people began investigating such workshops, they found other women in similar distress, like one "who had been kept on [working with] green... till her face was one mass of sores." 

The Victorian slang for an attractive person — "killing" — even took on new meaning, with the British Medical Journal remarking: "Well may the fascinating wearer of it be called a killing creature. She actually carries in her skirts poison enough to slay the whole of the admirers she may meet with in half a dozen ball-rooms." 

You would think that these stories would have caused people to immediately stop wearing the color, but, of course, they didn’t. Some people tried to tell themselves that they’d be safe provided they did not lick the fabric or wallpaper, which was, unfortunately, not true. Others claimed that the doctors were simply lying, because some people will always believe that science is just not real. All this in spite of the fact that every Victorian household probably had a jar of arsenic to poison rats, so they knew it was poisonous. 

This backlash meant it took until 1895 for regulations to be put in place regulating conditions in factories where workers would be exposed to arsenic. Fortunately, by then, "in the absence of government intervention, the people of Britain had used the power of their pocketbooks" to demand alternatives to the arsenic-based dye.

Thank goodness they did.

Blogger's commentary: This seems like an extreme version of the old saw about "having to suffer for beauty". What alarms me most of all is the denial that existed for DECADES about the dangers of this extremely poisonous substance. Combined with the excessively heavy, close-fitting fashions of the time, arsenic dye would create a sweaty toxic stew ideal for skin penetration.

Even the ubiquitous green wallpaper in the fashionable Victorian parlour gave off a gas which eventually rotted a person's insides as well as their brain. Factory workers got the worst of it, with an incredibly horrible and grotesque death in which they literally turned green all over. 

This was, in my opinion, far more dangerous than the extreme corseting which many now defend, claiming that if the corsets were "well-fitting" they could not possibly have caused serious health problems. But "waist training" is now a wildly popular activity for those who are into fetish-wear, not unlike the toe-tipping "ballet boots" which wrench the wearer's feet and spine into an unnatural c-curve. Thus it's a kink, a popular kink which is being vigorously, even angrily defended all over the internet in a way which puzzles me. 

Others claim - and in light of the thousands of crystalline-quality photos from the era, I can't see how they can defend this - that Victorian women didn't even wear tight corsets, but only reduced their waists by two inches or so. But the photos belie this, and the dresses on mannequins display astonishingly small waists, fitted on the dress form much as they would fit on the wearer. I can't help but believe that tightlacing fetishists are attempting to downplay or even rewrite obvious historical evidence to make a bodily-distorting kink more acceptable.

But never mind! We're not even talking about corsets here, but poisonous green arsenic-based dye which was killing people for some SEVENTY years before sufficient regulations were passed to make it illegal.

So why was this colour such a big deal, to the point where women were willing to risk their lives, or at least vigorously deny that there WAS any risk? The first time I saw this "arsenic green" (and I will admit I've never seen it in person), I was quite dazzled by it. Green is not my favorite colour in any of its permutations, but this was so deeply saturated, so dazzlingly jewel-like, that it grabbed me visually as few other shades do.

Then I thought of something (or someone) else: Scarlett O'Hara! Green was definitely her colour, from the glorious flocked barbecue dress with the ruffled neckline to her infamous Rhett-deceiving gown made from the green velvet curtains hanging at Tara.

Arsenic dye is never mentioned, either in the movie or the book, but in the novel it seems that everything Scarlett wears is green, a colour which brings out her alabaster skin and raven hair. She also complains all the way through the story about the agonizing tightness of her stays and how much they restrict her movement (but she never removes them, not even when reduced to picking cotton in the fields after the fall of the South). Though Margaret Mitchell was a blatant racist responsible for one of the most appalling pieces of historical fiction in literary history (and note that she won the Pulitzer Prize for it), she DID do her homework meticulously. I believe she was  accurate in portraying women with extremely tiny waists (and Scarlett's, remember, was only 17 inches!). Fetishists can do whatever they want with their own bodies, of course. But the revival of the kink is relatively new. What will happen when we come back in 30 or so years? Will pushing your stomach up, your liver down and your lungs in maybe-just-maybe turn out to have some long-term damaging effects?