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The Roots, The Rain, And The Flowers That Grow

The days of not writing spill over one into the next - it's too early, it's too late, I'm too busy, I'm too tired - but if I had to say what's really been tripping me up... it's that I'm starting to discover a place for me in the world.

I am, by nature, something of a loner; and that's especially conducive to writing, given that it's such a solitary activity. Like many loner writers, I found a place for myself in the big city... any number of them, really... where I could be in a crowd of people, and still, in many ways, be quite alone.

When I actually made the leap into writing as a more full time gig, I knew that I could easily cut myself off from the world, and I worked to fight it. And when economic circumstance pushed me into working at Starbucks, I felt that, too, would ease my sense of isolation, force me, in some way, to remain incontect with the public.

All of which has worked out in ways I never quite expected. Life and economic realities led me away from Boston, back to New York, out here in Westchester. And where I used to disdain suburban life for so many reasons (13 years in Manhattan means the Manhattanite will never fully leave you), the necessity of living in it and with it has made me find virtues as well as flaws.

Westchester is, more than many suburban counties, a collection of small towns; yes there's Yonkers and New Rochelle (and, I suppose, White Plains), but the combination of a great deal of wealth and zoning that favors limmited development means many parts of the county are collections of homes surrounding small town centers, and I do mean small. It's amazing how often the words "cute little gift shop" can pass one's lips.

I looked around this week, with all its stresses, and realized that, for better or worse (and mostly better), I have put down roots. I find this odd. I don't quite know how it happened, but there it is. I have become entwined with a network of fellow Starbuckians; I have begun to know my neighbors; I have become more involved in the lives of my customers.

(This, by the way, is something we are supposed to do: Starbucks believes that "customer connections" are key to the business, and we make it a point to get to know you and your habits. When you tell your friend, cheerfully, "I'm so amazed they know me and they always have my drink ready", it means we're doing it right... that's what we were trained to do.)

And so I know Nancy and David and their rambunctious boys; I know Stacey and Stu and Lesleigh and Mark and Scott and Jerry and Wayne and so many more. I am, for the first time in years, participating in a local community theater production, and I will be onstage in Annie in just a few weeks. All because Chris, the nice lady in my store who appeared on Broadway in the show, told me they needed more men.

As I stood on the bare stage this past Monday, I felt more alive and more at home than I have in ages. Rehearsals are only just starting, but it's been an invigorating, challenging, joyful process and doing this, I realize, is feeding my soul... as one of my coworkers said this morning. It's weird - having roots, feeding my soul... watching the flowers grow. I could learn to like it here. In a place. And maybe I can write from this place as well as the loner place. We'll just have to see how that goes... won't we.

OMFG! That Bitch! We Hate Her!

Since I am the last person to have any right to judge other people's reality TV habits (two words: Paradise Hotel. Two More Words: Big Brother), I just have to say up front: to all my friends and readers who like the Real Housewives series... this is not about you. Or your tastes.

That said, when friends say "Oh my God, you should watch Real Housewives of ____", I am always bewildered. First by the notion that I would watch them, and second... why anyone else would.

But TV can be addictive, and reality TV, after all, is designed to invent drama where little or none actually exists, so I can't say I don't know why people watch; I do. What baffled me, as I generally reply, is why the Real Housewives genre gets the attention that it does.

Over this weekend, watching parts of both New York and New Jersey (and having, in the past, caught parts of Atlanta and Orange County) I'm come to realize... that's not true either. It's not that I don't get the appeal of the Housewives series... it's that I do. And that, really, is why I find the whole thing so troubling.

It's easy, some five or six copycats later, to forget why the Real Housewives of Orange County was created to begin with: some combination of the success of MTV's Laguna Beach (itself an attempt to capitalize on the success of The OC) and ABC's success with Desperate Housewives created the alchemy of concocting a series following "real" stay-at-home wives, with wealthy husbands, and documenting their "real life dramas."  That it took off, like a rocket, was somewhat unexpected, and as Bravo has spun out carbon after carbon copy of the formula in city after city... it's become clear that the network tapped a fascination few could have necessarily predicted.

But why not? I've rarely tuned into the shows, since little of it fascinates me. The women chosen for these shows have lives that don't, generally, interest me, the kind of suburban (except for New York, but let's get back to that), slightly boring lives of women with money and more than a little free time. If you've worked in a mall - I have, a lot - you've seen these daytime shoppers, and it's not a way of life that ever held much interest. I don't mean that negatively - lots of livestyle choices aren't mine - it's just not my life, and wouldn't be, however well I married.

Still, what the Real Housewives shows get at is an intersection of money and class that does drive a lot of cultural conversation and commentary. In the eighties you could point to a number of women who had married well who tried, with varying success to break into New York's Upper East Side elite: Ivana Trump most obviously, but women like Pat Kluge, Carolyne Roehm and others. They were the staples of gossip columns and a certain kind of sneer-y celebrity journalism, their cravings for a kind of respectability laid against their lavish wealth, and their mixed efforts at good taste. This story is not new, and the judgments that play out in our culture tend, most often, to fall harshly on women.

The modest dramas that play out on the Real Housewives shows - and play out, it should be said, interminably, given the way in which the shows are shot and edited - tend, mostly, to pit, one or more of the women against one another; it's dizzying, even in a modest attempt at watching, to keep track of who's saying what about whom, why it matters, and who, in the end, bears the blame. And there's always blame. Someone, clearly, must be at fault. The dramas play out against the backdrop of upscale shopping, dressup parties (be they charity events, "fashion shows" or similar Function Hall type occasions), and the luxury homes that seem, in these shows to be in endless supply and constant variation. So many examples of crass luxury and dubious taste... so little time.

In the end, though, I was interested, though not surprised to discover that I could, in fact, figure out what drove the storytelling in fairly short order: familiar cultural tropes about how women must compete with one another and undermine one another, in the guise of a kind of friendship; and class based judgments meant to remind us that to have money does not mean one has class, and that the rich have problems and dramas that we (an audience not quite as rich) would never want, and should be relieved not to be wealthy, and not have the same issues.

(And, on a related note, it should be pointed out: what these shows try to say about promoting "enlightened" notions about gays, especially gay men, is beyond insulting, as well.)

As I said at the start... this isn't to indict the audience; I don't think there's something wrong with watching the Housewives shows, finding the dramas - such as they are - compelling, or taking sides (OMFG, Danielle! What's with her??). Reacting to the way the shows are edited and the stories are told seems to me like proof that the people making these shows do, in fact, know what they're doing, and what sells. But the bad taste I'm left with is about the people who are making these programs, who revel in other people's miseries, who profit from painting women of a certain class as greedy, catty bitches, callow, shallow and unworthy of respect or decency. It's insulting to women who, as far as I can tell (given all that editing), seem fairly ordinary and human, and whose mistake, if it can be called that, is that they think notoriety on reality TV is the same thing as fame, or respectability. Who's to say they're wrong about that, after all?

In the end, what drives me away from the Real Housewives genre is not that "I don't get it", but in fact, that I do: I get, all too well, a reaity TV world where women are catty and bitchy and call each other names and fight over trivialities. I grew up on soaps; I'm a lifelong Dynasty fan. And maybe it's just that I got my fill. Or maybe it's that, under the veil of fiction, I can comfort myself in thinking that in real life, I know better than to think women, really, are all about fighting and calling each other names. Whatever it is, I know I can't make the leap to watch a Real Housewives show, think that it's all fun and games and harmless and not perpetuating a lot of ugly stereotypes and myths about women and their lives that I have no business feeding into or perpetuating. Thanks but no thanks, and OMFG, I get it... she's a bitch, and we hate her. Is that enough?

The Thought Of Food, The Food For Thought

As a Starbuckian in the New York City region, I get to live one of the latest trends up close and personal: while a nation debates the moves of "Nanny" Bloomberg to reign in health issues and food, I get the day to day insight on what it means to eliminate trans-fats, or put calorie counts on a menu.

At least 2 or 3 times a week, someone will ask, "So... have people stopped eating now that the calorie counts are there?" or some such question meant to get us to admit, sadly, that everything goes to hell when people discover that cake is, well, fattening. (The next most popular question is "are you losing business because of Dunkin Donuts", because they recently opened up near us. No.)

The reality is not that simple - and it's the reason why, while I was mildly annoyed with the idea of the counts, I've become much more inclined to back them. If you generally favor people being informed, I think you will probably agree - it's better to provide more information rather than less, and calorie counts on menus do provide the initial pieces of information for people to make better, or at least different, decisions. And that seems like a good thing. A very good thing.

Still, it's not everything. Not all decisions based on calories turn out to be helpful - a distinct subset of people who take in the information seem to become bargainers, adding calories here (whip cream!), subtracting calories there (nonfat milk!) in ways that don't really help the bottom line. There's the "what the hell, I'll splurge" crowd that always seem to be able to justify a brownie, this time, in exchange for some other transaction later... and like some sort of pusher, I find myself using the "why don't you splurge" line a lot less.

But people ask, and what we've found, in our slightly more than anecdotal, but not formal study, way is that calorie counts get a lot of people to think and change their order. Not give up entirely and leave, and not swing (mostly) to extremes. But to do things a little differently - to try the skim milk, or the sugar free syrup. Or the pastry with fewer calories.

I bring this up because, as it turns out, actual studies confirm much the same thing. A new study of Starbucks found that people's food choices are in fact changing:

average calories per transaction falls by 6%. The effect is almost entirely related to changes in consumers’ food choices—there is almost no change in purchases of beverage calories. There is no impact on Starbucks profit on average, and for the subset of stores located close to their competitor Dunkin Donuts, the effect of calorie posting is actually to increase Starbucks revenue. Survey evidence and analysis of commuters suggest the mechanism for the effect is a combination of learning and salience.

A new study in Pediatrics suggests similar things about parents and their choices for kids: armed with information, parents make healthier, lower calorie choices.

The thing is... we can give the information... but we can't expect the choices. Not all behavior changes because of calorie counts, and I think a lot of food activists don't seem to know how to draw a distinction between a suggestion and a requirement. We can require calorie counts on menus (and we can, and should, require greater clarity in those counts at many fast food restaurants)... but we cannot insist everyone make the choices we'd like them to make. In part because we don't have that kind of control... but also because, as I've said before, this notion that we "know" what every person needs to be eating is itself a bit of a fallacy.

Mostly, I think Bloomberg got it right, too, in starting with the basics. Calorie counts is a start. Trans fats is a start. And reducing sodium, as he's proposed, is a good next step. Let's get down the basics of food information and policy... and then let's see if we need to do more. Give the food for thought... and don't try to do the thinking for everyone else.

It's A Gift

Since it appears today is going to be an "easy day" of catching up on real world projects (i have an - unrequested - easy week of semi-vaca from the 'bucks), and I am happy with where the blog is just now... I'm going to leave today with just a question for you, the reader... though I know when I do stuff like this, not much happens.

But it's worth a try.

I was thinking, just now, about gifts, and about giving. I love Christmas, and always have, not because I get presents - I mean, I do like them, but it's not a huge deal - but because I get to give them. I like choosing just the thing for people I know and love, wrapping it carefully, and seeing the look when they receive it, open it, and hopefully, like it.

In that vein, my question is, as we start the new year - what were some gifts you got this past year that you loved, and why?

Here are mine:

1. A lovely sweater from my boss, who had me as her Secret Santa. Totally unexpected, in my favorite color, and I didn't even ask.
2. The Women, on DVD, from my Mom. As we all move away from the VCR, I didn't even think about the fact that all I had was a VHS version of it. And my Mom just picked it, randomly, from my AOL wish list. What a treat.
3. A stove top Italian percolator, measuring spoon and coffee. Never a bridesmaid, or a bride, until this past year, I didn't know what to expect for the "bridesmaid's gift" - and I half feared a group gift of sad jewelry to wear at the ceremony, as I see so many other girls get. Instead, my Red, of course, picked just the perfect thing for each of us, based on her extensive study of our lives and tastes (no, really - she's a Virgo; I expect a spreadsheet was involved). And knowing my love of coffee (seriously, I discovered that as a barista), she got me one of those metal stove top percolators, coffee, a measuring scoop... and a little notebook to write my thoughts. And while I was initially unsure about the percolator, as it turns out, it is a delight: boil some water, send it through coffee grounds... and you get a perfect, one serving pot of perfect intense coffee. I just had a cup, in fact. As I do most days (or at least when I'm not trying out my new French Press which I got myself).

So... that's me. How about you?

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Sorry for the moment of relative silence. Christmas duties call - have to buy a lot of festive swedish items for our smorgasbord, and will probably be out of pocket almost all day. Dare I suggest... an open thread? I'd love to hear from the people who come here to visit (i know you're out there), but don't necessarily leave a comment. Talk about Christmas, or about healthcare.. or whatever moves you. See you later. Now, I am off to see Red. :)

Cheap, Chic... Not Chintzy And Cheating

I have been meaning, for months, to mention that my dear friend Jennifer has launched a blog of her own, Dinner With Friends. It is the blog she was surely meant to write, and for anyone looking to read about fashion and style and life in the city - with a definite point of view - I think she's doing a marvelous job of conveying it, while being absolutely herself (which, naturally, I find fabulous).

Too much of fashion blogging, we've both felt, is too generic, too focused on the "shop" and the "buy", and not enough on the style and the enjoyment of nice things. And by nice, I do not mean expensive... Jennifer is - even at her level - a woman on a budget and (relatively) modest means. She didn't always buy Lanvin, and even now, it's a luxury, not a given.

Jennifer's bible (actually, I think it may indeed be a religion), naturally, is Vogue, with Harper's Bazaar a close second - we both find W a little too pretentious and arty to be useful (to say nothing of its relentless Upper East Side insiderisms - and it's too big) - and we've liked nothing better than to spend hours taking apart the magazine's latest issue, and evaluate the fashion, the trends, the art of the photos and the practical questions of what to wear... which I freely admit, are more theoretical for me. For Jennifer, "what to wear" is a serious issue, and Vogue is not helpful if she can't find answers in it.

Which brings me to a post she wrote which developed partly out of a conversation we had about the recent efforts of Vogue to face up to the recession and what it means to a Vogue reader. With its relentless focus on high end style, Vogue struggles when the subject of budget is raised, or having to admit that "Skirt, $950, Christian Dior" is "skirt, unaffordable" for much of the readership. The usual compact between reader, magazine and designer is that high fashion, for many is a blueprint, and the actual article of clothing may be acquired elsewhere, for less. That's why Dior and Lanvin and such are featured in fashion spreads... while the multiple page ads in the magazine are for Macy*s and Banana Republic. Compromises must be made.

It's A Lipstick Jungle Out There, Baby

Aside from The September Issue, I haven't been doing a lot of fashion writing... which is partly a reflection of how life has changed for me generally, and how not about the fashion and shopping world I can be these days.

That reality came home to me tonight when I joined Jennifer, spur of the moment and mostly by accident, and wound up in the middle of Fashion's Night Out.... when I played my role as The Gay (a/k/a that friend to straight women who helps with fashion, makeup and other lifestyle shopping).

Conceived as an "event night to spur shopping around the city," Fashion's Night Out was meant to lend some glitz and glamour to shopping that's been kind of missing, kick off New York Fashion Week, and hopefully reinvigorate the fall selling season, which is showing no more signs of a recovery than anything else this year (which is to say... you can find people shopping, just not many of them).

Jennifer and I were mainly concerned with solving her current dilemma - the arrival of Chanel's new Noir line of lipstick, three variations of the new vogue for black lipstick with red, brown and purple undertones. And Jennifer, feeling frustrated that she couldn't find one she liked, wanted to get a second opinion... and for the moment, mine would have to do.

It was quite fun, and I have to admit, they are three hard to wear shades - I'm not sure anyone can carry off the brown, the red looks muddy, and we tried the purple and the result was... well, intense. After some discussion - if you're ever in New York and go to Saks, girls, ask for Simone at Chanel - we tried adding some glossy lip laquer on top, and that seemed to work (Official recipe: Hysteria lipstick, Dragon lip lacquer, and Vamp pencil for a good line). But Jennifer balked at multiple products and such a complicated routine... and I can't say I blamed her, though it wore well and looked fierce.

Looking fierce, really, was the order of the evening; lots of people traipsed around the stores as if it were a night at the club, and in many ways it was. The music was loud, free booze samples were available for the (very) patient, and people meandered everywhere... but there wasn't much real shopping that we saw, and pretty much every salesperson we saw, and knew, called the night basically a bust. "If we were selling hot dogs and funnel cake, we'd be doing well" one high end accessories seller said to us.

As a people watching event, the night was fun enough, kind of absurd, kind of surreal, never dull. Barneys, especially on the main level, was quite vivid. But it was also tiring, and in the end I felt for the workers more than the supposed customers: there's so much that's just not working right now in retail (and I mean the double entendre of employment, too), and a sense of desperation to the night that no one could shake.

Jennifer and I wondered if this will be repeated - if it is, I think we'll try harder to chase down Anna Wintour - and I have my doubts; Fashion Week doesn't need it, the retailers won't probably want it, and the fashion types who showed up can easily be convinced to come to other, more productive events (ones where store and label executives don't stand around, nervously fidgeting and looking uncomfortable).

Mostly I was reminded tonight, often pleasantly, of a life I used to lead, and have largely left behind. I miss it, sort of... but a little of this sort of energy goes a long, long, way. I'd rather save the fancy outfit - and the three step lipstick application - for a fun night with good friends, and probably something low key, if I had my drothers. It's a lipstick jungle out there in fashionland... and baby, we're all just brightly colored animals, if you know what I mean.

Morning Morsels: The Saturday Unsurprise

Mostly, it's a Hollywood Minute:

• News story we didn't bother reading: Noel Gallagher Leave Oasis Over Fallout With Brother
• News Story we did wind up reading, but pretty much turned out to be what we thought: DJ AM found dead in New York apartment
• But if you really want to fry your brain, try and figure out why anyone would care what Heidi Montag thinks about Brody Jenner getting tasered during a fight with Joe Francis (no bonus points fo asking "who?" to any of them)
• Okay seriously... you are going to see The September Issue, right?
• Gail Collins fears the robot menace. Why don't you?

A Whole New World

Mom and I had some time to kill yesterday before Julie and Julia, and we spent it... at the mall.

It's almost quaint, now, to remember how the mall culture was... back then. Back before. Walking around the mall, I said to Mom that I thought the economic downturn would be a massive shock to the system - a sudden reordering of our economic realities... and I'd failed to realize that the change would actually be slow and gradual.

We are, really, in a whole new world. You can see it at the mall, though I don't know if most people look at what's not happening rather than what is. Still, it's not hard to feel the energy level that's changed, the way Shopping as Entertainment has become, already, a thing of our past. The stores aren't crowded. The halls of the mall aren't crowded. People have errands to run, things to do... they really don't just stay and linger... hence, I think, why some of the earliest indications of struggle at the mall turns out to be in the food courts.

Sale signs are everywhere. Sales people have that mixed look of desperation and boredom; when we needed an umbrella (it started to pour as we prepared to leave), a woman in the fragrance department of Nordstrom practically tackled us to make the sale. Not in her department. (I know, that's part of the Nordy way, but still; you could sense her eagerness to make a sale, any sale.)

And this was the high end mall - the one with Neiman's and Nordstrom and 60 upscale stores... and as I said to Mom, might be a salvageable mall if it had about half the square footage and stores. 

Let's be clear: people are shopping. The world has not ended. There were people with bags, there were, clearly, some folks a little late on getting the memo that the party's over on shop til you drop. But the world has changed. Less shopping. Less need for stuff. Less interest in spending the day wandering the mall. Get what you need, get it on sale... and then go home.

This is what I'm keeping in mind as people talk about a "mild recovery" or some sign of "bottoming out" - we may have reached the bottom of... something (though I'd keep an eye on whether anything imrpoves in housing foreclosures and loan refinances... because so far, that mess seems as bad as ever). But "Bottoming out" doesn't mean "it's over." It means we have to figure out what's salvageable from the wreckage. And it means we'll still see a lot of continuing pain - stores closing, more layoffs, more people facing a job market that shows no sign of turning around soon. All the things that drove our crazy consumerist economy - the advertsing in the glossy mags, the mags themselves, the unneeded clothes and computers and toys in all those unneeded stores... all of that is grinding down. And it's not done. Not by a long shot.

I don't mind this new world, though - the mall wasn't so crowded, window shopping was as amusing as ever, and I did get a nice umbrella out of it. It is, though, a new world. And I don't think we really know where to even begin mapping it out, or make sense of it. Not yet, anyway.

Eat It

The blogosphere, I expect, will all have to weigh in on Michael Pollan's musings in this week's New York Times Magazine - it's a thin week, and there's little else to do at the beach house or the country house... or wherever upscale yuppies drive to just outside the city. Myself, I think Pollan's finally given himself away, and offered little in the way of useful rethinking about food and cooking.

Up to a point. I think my main objection to Pollan's sour take - that we don't cook anymnore and the culture encourages us not to - is just that so many of us try to fight against just such certainties. I like to cok, I always have. When I was 12, I had to fight the traditional gendered expectations of my junior high teachers and Administration to get a place taking Home Economics, rather than shop. I wasn't likely to do carprentry... but I did have to cook weekly meals for my family since my mom worked.

Although I'm not a huge cooking fan of Julia Child (I've never made a French Chef recipe, and I tend to agree the kind of French cooking she espoused is somewhat passe), I watched the show and I agree with the assessment of others - and the coming Julie and Julia movie - that The French Chef made you feel good about wanting to cook. Listening to Julia Child's passion and her enthusiasm... who didn't want to at least try?

At the same time, though, I think Pollan is laboring through some dull preconceptions that one doesn't have to share - his sense that Child pushed creative cooking on the "Feminine Mystique" generation of early second wave feminists feels forced. I don't remember it that way, and I think, as both my mom and her sister noted, the complexities of cooking in their day was as much involved as any sense of dawning feminism; and Pollan undercuts himself by admitting that most of us, not just women, and not even just women working outside the home, take much less time to cook than we have in the past.

I agree with Pollan that the Food Channel has moved away from celebrating cooking to celebrating eating, with similarly disastrous results; and that its selling of "celebrity chefs" is weird and off putting (though I think his generous descriptions of Emeril Legasse as genius are a stretch; I've eaten in Emeril's restaurants, and they're okay, but not overwhelming). But who's watching? As much as my foodie friends know the Food Network shows... they're cooking lives come from other sources and inspirations. Pollan says nothing about the interest in cookbooks or the success of an outlet like Williams Sonoma, key indicators of the culture of cooking, I think, is still out there.

Yes, we have a culture focused on quick cook colutions, fast eating, and often unhealthy options. But, as Pollan is quick to lecture us, we have a corporate dominated food production complex to congratulate for that, and while all the negative aspects need to be shown, it's also the case that Pollan's arguments for local growing and sustainable food policies don't sell well, partly because they seem superior and classist. We didn't all grow up in a home where Mom stayed home, watched the French Chef and followed Julia Child. And our food realities kind of have to accept that, like it or not, we have a culture bias to seeing cooking as cumbersome and time consuming... and a function, often, of class.

Fixing our food issues- getting better agricultural policies, helping to encourage more people to cook their own food (it actually helps diet) more and with more natural ingredients - are important, and worthwhile goals. How we do it, I think, is indeed embodied in Julia Child - it's passionate, it's positive, and it leaves room for people to mess up and go their own way. That Pollan can't quite see that - or can't quiet figure out how to encourage it - is, I think, indicative of where the "food movement" is going wrong. And as long as he's here to harangue us about not being good enough... I suspect a ;lot of people will just want to stay on the couch that much longer, eating it.