This week for Role/Reboot I wrote about the relationship I see between personal decisions and political ramifications. Or, sometimes, between political action and the resulting personal choices. It goes both ways.

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Here’s my new wall hanging from Cusco:

You see this image everywhere in Cusco, the backs of female heads. Sometimes it’s more literal as they sit in a circle, the goings on of which we are not privy to, sometimes it’s more abstract, like my pattern. They’re backs are to us, because what they’re doing is not for us, the viewer, the outsider; it’s for themselves. They call it “la chismosa,” which means “the gossiping.” I loved it immediately.

So I bring this thing home and start looking for a place to hang it, and that’s when I notice this…

And this

And this

And this

The vast, vast majority of my art is depictions of women. I’m fascinated by the ways that different cultures and communities and artists choose to represent them (One of the many reason I use the Rosie icon for this blog). Have you ever seen that stat about how much of the art in major museums is by women (very little), how much of it is of women (a bit more) and how many of the naked people are ladies (a whopping 85%).

Not all of my art is created by women (though much of it is), but the common thread (if you can find one besides gender of the subjects) is that I like images of women that push back on the idea that they are objects against which someone else can project intent (lust, desire, protection, etc). La Chismosa is amazing because it’s such a desexualized (without being ungendered) way to portray women as having relationships completely separate from their interaction with men.

The flapper, the “garden buddha,” the image of Radha and Krishna (bought in Chennai, India), there’s a self-contained agency about these women. They are not waiting for the actions or reactions of anyone else. I didn’t pick them for that reason on purpose, but when they’re all lined up, it seems so obvious.

Now that I’ve noticed it, I should probably stick with the trend, don’t you think? Where to next, and what should I bring back?

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Dear Anonymous American Couple on Your Honeymoon,

When you met me, in an airport in Lima, Peru, I was clearly trying to contain my panic. I’d just landed after 10 hours in the airspace of nine countries, and I couldn’t find my wallet.  The airline claimed they didn’t have it and it wasn’t in the seatback pocket or under the cushion or in any of the obvious places. It was gone. I asked to borrow your phone, and you told me you didn’t have one, but asked me why. I shakily explained, forcing the tears out of my voice and creating a false cheerinees, a jaunty, “oh, you know how these things go” positivity. In my head, I had already resorted to sleeping in the airport. Instead, you asked me how much money I needed and handed me $100 to get me to a hostel and to find me some dinner.

Dear Marcelo the Taxi Driver,

When you picked me up at the airport, I explained to you in rather shaky high school Spanish (lots of unconjugated verbs and a tendency to repeat “entonces,” and “pues,”) that I had lost my wallet on the way here. You asked if I had called my mom, which I hadn’t. You offered your phone, insisting I call whomever I needed. “But it’s international,…” I said, and you just waved away my concerns. I reached my mother in Florida and explained the situation. She promised to figure out how to wire money across continents and assured me it would be fine. Sir, the cab fare was only $11, and had I had any more money than the kind couple had given me, I hope you know I would have tipped you better.

Dear Eleri, My New Friend and Moral Support,

Over coca tea and bread and jam in the tiny kitchen of our hostel, we started chatting. After explaining the bind I’d gotten myself into, you offered to accompany me to the bank–”for moral support,” you said–where I was going to try to secure some sort of emergency cash or limited access to my funds, anything to enable me to continue on my trip. During the walk, we talked about your work as a pharmacist, your adventures through South America, and the kind of world we both wanted to travel in. At the bank, you waited patiently with me for over an hour while I negotiated paperwork and red tape. “It would be hard to do this kind of thing alone,” you said, and you were right.

Dear Miguel, the Most Patient Banker Alive,

When I walked into your office explaining my “emergencia,” and asking for “ayuda,” you did not roll your eyes at the silly American. You did not tell me that it was Saturday morning and the bank would be closing soon. You did not tell me that on the weekend what I was asking was next to impossible. You picked up the phone and made some calls. And then more calls. And then some faxes. You filled out form after form, helped me answer security question after security question. Most importantly, you kept smiling at me and assuring me that it would all work out. You told me sometimes it can take hours, and when I told you my next flight left in less than three, you made it happen. I walked out of your office with my money safely tucked into three separate locations and the first easy breath I’d taken in 12 hours.

Dear Senoras Huff and Woodward,

You two are the most memorable Spanish teachers I had, 12 and 10 years ago, respectively. While practicing irregular verbs or memorizing airport vocabulary, it never occurred to me how essential your training might ever be. There is not a chance in hell I would have successfully walked out of that bank without the conversational Spanish I learned in your classrooms. My facility with the language is halting these days, rusty and gooey from lack of use, but man, the fundamentals are strong. There’s a particular kind of confidence that comes from knowing you can understand and make yourself understood in another tongue. It’s not a skill on which we Americans place a lot of value, but I find it infinitely easier to show a little linguistic humility than to slam my American passport on a counter and start issuing demands.

Dear Family of Mine,

You are all pretty awesome. You sent encouraging emails. You provided financial and emotional assistance. You followed up. You checked in. More than any of that, though, you imbued in me through direction and example the kind of calm in the face of calamity that allowed me to figure my way out of this particular tight spot. Mom, Dad, I have seen you both navigate emergencies with grace under fire and solve problems with charm and ingenuity. From you I learned that lesson #1 is Don’t Panic. Lesson #2 is Seriously, Don’t Panic, It Will All Be Fine. That’s a certain kind of desperate optimism that I don’t have to call on very often, but when I do, I’m glad I’ve got such an example.

Thanks a bunch, you guys, it was a GREAT trip,

Love

Emily

I love traveling alone for a number of reasons to be explained at some other time, but one of the challenges is that all of my brilliant observations go unnoticed. If a thought is had in the forest but no one is there to hear it, was it really as insightful as I thought it was? Por ejemplo, I just finished Mark Adams´travelogue Turn Right at Machu Picchu about his own trek through Inca country, the history of the empire (which reached 10 million people at its height) and the ´discoverer´ of Machu Picchu, Hiram Bingham.

Do you know what I underlined throughout the book? The ladies. Oh my God, the ladies. You are all rolling your eyes right now, like….duh, Emily is all about the womens, but seriously you guys, it was like half a book was missing. It´s not Adams´ fault, history is written by the winners as we all know, and winning, in all of its measurable forms (think elected seats, published articles, coronations, etc) has been traditionally male. But there were at least half a dozen times throughout the book where a woman was mentioned in passing, and I was like, Wait, Mark, don´t stop now, what´s her story?? Por ejemplo,

• Annie S. Peck – She was a mountaineer in the early 1900s who was ostenisbly racing Hiram Bingham to the top of record breaking South American peaks. This is 1912 we´re talking about here.  She also got a masters from University of Michigan in Greek in 1881. She became known not for scaling Matterhorn, but because she wore pants while doing it. When she got to the top of Mt. Coropuna, she planted a flag that said ¨Women´s Vote.¨ How have I never heard of this chick?
  
  

  Annie Peck

• Cura Occlo – She was the wife (and sister) of Manco Inca. She was captured by Gonzalo Pizarro (allegedly the nastiest of the conquistadores). When Manco rebelled against the Spanish (he was the puppet kin), he steals Cura back and they escape into the jungle from whence they battled the Spanish for years. All does not end well for Cura, however, she was captured again in 1539, raped and tortured, and finally executed in a public square before her body was sent to Manco via basket down the river (or so says the legend).
• Dona Angelina Yupanqui - She was the child pride of Atahualpa, the Inca king killed by the Spanish after the most famous failed ransom attempt of all time. She became the mistress of Pizarro (by choice? doubtful, who knows…) and bore him two sons. When he was killed, she married Juan de Batanzos, who wrote the early classic Narrative of the Incas.
• Alfreda Bingham – Hiram´s wife´s fortune bankrolled most of his adventures. From Hiram´s letters to her, it was clear that he confided in her about his exploratory insecurities. After raising seven sons while he was off adventuring (wonder how she felt about that…), they divorced in 1937. She eventually remarried a composer.

I want a biography apiece on each of these ladies. Pronto! Seriously though, they each get a few footnoted mentions in the biographies of their male contemporaries, but there are clearly volumes that could be written on each of them.

Off to the Inca Trail tomorrow. Stay safe and wish me luck!

I kind of get it; for a while, tech has been this secret space of very smart, very nerdy dudes. Because they were so isolated, they were able to create a work environment that suited them perfectly. Now the treehouse is being invaded by girls (though not as fast as we might like) and they’re pointing at all the pictures of boobs on the wall and being all like, “Yo, guys, you’ve got to get rid of this shit.”

On one hand, I understand; their secret space is being invaded. On the other hand, well, it was all theirs for a while, now it’s time to grow up and open the gates.

I was inspired by a great Bob Martin essay on the software company 8th Light’s blog called “There Are Ladies Present.” He writes about trying, and at first failing, to welcome women to the tech industry. He errs on the side of treating them too daintily, which they don’t like, and this essay is his exploration of where the lines fall:

Have we created a locker room environment in the software industry? Has it been male dominated for so long that we’ve turned it into a place where men relax and tell fart and dick jokes amongst themselves to tickle their pre-pubescent personas? When we male programmers are together, do we feel like we’re in a private place where we can drop the rules, pretenses, and manners?

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Step 1: Throw shit haphazardly in the corner. Try not to think about it.

Step 2: Count. Recount. Measure. Estimate. Create arrays every which way. Tops vs. pants. Warm vs. cold weather clothing. Do you have enough tops to match your purple pants? Stare at the bag until you feel like it is staring back at you. Don’t blink.

Step 3: Beast all of this shit. Bag 0, You 1.

So I’m going on vacation. A real one, for longer than 48 hours. If you’re wondering where, looking right at my reading list might be a hint. It’s been a few years since I’ve taken myself on an adventure and now that I’m 36 hours from departure I feel like a soda bottle that’s been shaken for the last three weeks and every time I open my mouth I’m about to spew giddy sweet bubbles all over everyone.

Wow, that was a gross metaphor.

For the last few years, two items have been everywhere with me. This trip will be our fifth continent together. 

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What’s your actual job title? This isn’t so much a real job as an adult “extracurricular activity” [ed. note: Grace has a "real" job too], but when get hired for things I am either a “demo model” or a “presentation model”.  I mostly fall in to the category of “creative cut and color”, which tends to mean asymmetrical or severe looking cuts and colors not commonly or naturally found in human hair.

What would your title be if it described what you actually do? I work on event-based contract for a major salon brand as a hair “demo model.” That means I get my hair cut and colored by creative directors of different salons (basically, the top stylists and colorists, who set the tone for the styles that are “in”).

I think the most accurate descriptor would probably be “living doll”– my head and hair tend to be an experiment ground for whichever instructor is playing around with it that day. They know I’m quite open so I’ve wound up with pretty much every hair cut or color you can imagine. For public events that aren’t just in the salon, there is a makeup artist and wardrobe situation going on too.

How on earth did you get into this line of work? Very simply: I got my hair cut one day, and one thing led to another! A friend in college turned me on to this website where you could sign up to get a free haircut from an “apprentice” at a salon who was auditioning to be a full stylist, and one day I went to quite a fancy salon for my free haircut and the head stylist asked me if I’d modeled before, and asked me back to model for an in-salon training they were going to be having.

How many different haircuts have you had? Best? Worst?

The good thing is there’s really no such thing as a bad haircut because the haircut I get on stage will often be completely different than the one I go home with– they let me know when they’re illustrating techniques that aren’t “wearable” (say, chin-length wispy sideburns or bangs that cover the eyes) and are totally not offended if I ask them to change the cut or adjust the color afterwards.

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Do you get to go to hair shows like the ones Chris Rock featured in Good Hair?  I’ve actually never seen Good Hair! But, I do a show every year called America’s Beauty Show at the Chicago convention center that is huge and really over the top, where lots of different salons and brands from all over the US show their work. The group I work for tends to be one of the classier ones there– cut and color with makeup and wardrobe, but no wigs, extensions, etc– but you will see girls (and guys) working for other groups with big hair, huge added-in hairpieces, body paint, etc. Shows are actually the best, though, because you get paid the most for doing them– depending on the number of days you work it can be in the high hundreds of dollars.

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Sidenote on the money thing since I know I would wonder if I were the one reading this: There is money in doing this, but it’s not a living wage. Sometimes you’re just getting the free haircut (which if you had to pay for it, would be a $200-300 experience, so that’s nice by itself), but for more public events you do get paid a base rate per day or per event; I used my modeling money to pay for my books while I was in school, so it was useful income but not life-sustaining.

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What would we be surprised to know about the hair modeling industry? Most people who do hair modeling are not who you’d be looking at on the street thinking, “Wow, that girl must be a model.” Hair modeling tends to be a lot more forgiving in terms of height and body shape/size; I’m only about 5’6″ and I eat food regularly and with much gusto.

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You do need to be able to walk in heels comfortably, but the “model walk” that’s actually desirable is not so much a strut and hip-swag as an “I am comfortable walking in heels and can go in a straight line”. While I’ve seen a lot of the traditional super tall skinny model-type at hair shows working for other companies, the group I work for especially tends to just pull people that have the look they’re going for when they come in for hair cuts (like I did) or by standing outside of art schools.

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1. COLBERT: Did you hear Brad Paisley and LL Cool J’s song “Accidental Racist?” More importantly, have you seen Colbert’s rebuttal, “Oopsy Daisy Homophobe?”

2. DOLLS: Man, I still remember Kirsten and the cholera epidemic. Apparently, the American Girls focus is a little different these days (The Atlantic). 

3. MUSIC: Insanely talented tween duo Lennon and Maisy cover The Lumineers on Nashville and it is oh so good.

4. GENDER: Sociological Images has a collection of photos of girls and boys surrounded by their pink and blue crap, respectively.

5. PREZ: The President at the White House Correspondants Dinner. My highlight = the joke about Michelle’s bangs.

6. LEAN: Man, this letter from a mom to her 8-year-old daughter just about breaks my heart. The girl asked her mother whether she loved work more than her kids and her mother responds pitch perfectly.

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I haven’t written about porn in a while, but when I do, it always starts some interesting (and often heated) conversations. It usually boils down to drawing clear lines between pornography (the recording of sex acts) and the porn industry (an often gross and misogynistic entity that, as a whole, perpetuates damaging myths about sexuality and gender). This creates a fun dynamic wherein one must traverse the latter in order to find some of the former that you actually want to watch, hence the title of this post.

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It’s good advertising. It’s memorable, it’s shareable, it makes you feel warm and fuzzy. I literally feel prettier simply by watching it. Maybe I should go buy some Dove products….

Hold up.

It’s a testament to how compelling this video is that I didn’t bother to put on my critical hat and unpack this bad boy a little. I was so distracted by the swelling music and the teary eyed attractive-but-not-too-attractive people that I forgot that the broader implications of this video are hella problematic.

The blogs Jazzy Little Drops and Eat the Damn Cake do a great job of breaking it down, but here are a few of the key issues:

1. Beauty is still #1 – As the participants in the video experiment articulate, how they feel about themselves as friends, employees, partners, as human beings is affected by how they feel about their looks. This might be true, in the technical sense that many people do feel this way, but it’s not okay. We attribute all sorts of “good” qualities to those that possess certain desirable traits, and all sorts of “bad” qualities to those that don’t. This campaign does nothing to undermine this correlation, but rather reinforces it. As one participant says, natural beauty “could not be more critical to your happiness.” Is that really the message we want to send when we’re pushing “Real Beauty?”

2. Only certain things are beautiful: Namely, anything thin. The positive descriptions of body parts are pretty narrow, “thin nose” and “thin chin” = good. Round face = bad. Freckles = bad. Forget the racial connotations (are thin noses the only good noses?), what we see reflected in the commentary is not that beauty standards should be widened, but that more people meet the arbitrary requirements than we think. Congratulations, you’ve made the cut! Should there be a cut? Well, no… but there is, and you made it (phew! you’re not one of the ugly ones), so bravo for you!

3. Speaking of race….: As Jazzy pointed out, people of color appear on screen a total of 10 seconds. Yeahhhhh, like that’s not reductionist. Do you remember the story about the black newscaster with close-cropped hair who got fired after responding to a viewer who told her to “wear a wig or grow more hair?” The idea that one certain thing–long, straight hair, for example–is objectively beautiful is preposterous. All you have to do is watch Jessica Simpson’s VH1 show The Price of Beauty to remember that what you think is beautiful isn’t necessarily the standard everywhere. Jeez, how arrogant can we get?

So where does that leave us? Where does that leave Dove? I’ve been skeptical of those folks for a while, ever since someone clued me in that their parent company, Unilever, is also the parent company of Axe (maker of body spray and terrible commercials).

The goal of this ad is not to change beauty standards. It is not to diminish the importance we place on beauty as a measure of woman’s worth. It is not to remind the universe that the way you look does not determine the kind of person you are or the value you add to the world. The goal of this ad is to make you buy more Dove products. Period.

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