(This post's original home is my blog. I have told Facebook to cross- post my blog entries as notes, although I feel quite awkward about it.)
I ordered some curtains the other day. I ordered them because:
A. I have been in some sort of home-buying mania recently, wherein now that I have a (temporary) income again I keep buying things for the house. So far I have bought, in addition to normal things like people food and cat food:
On the other hand, I have also been having a lot of trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and I think the lack of dark is probably part of it. So I'm hoping the light-blocking curtains will help. They are plain white-colored, but they insisted on the website that they are "blackout" curtains, so hopefully they will keep the sun at bay.
Anyway, though, the e-mail they sent me to tell me that the curtains have been shipped appears in my inbox as "Please do not." It's because the e-mail address it's sent from says "Please do not reply to this address," but it seems so helpless and accusatory sitting there in my inbox. I feel both guilty and befuddled when I look at it. What is it I am being begged not to do?
Please do not spend money on household items you do not need?
Please do not contact us?
Please do not blame the sun?
Please do not do what you are doing.
Somehow, that "Please do not" all on its own triggers all my guilt. "I'm sorry!" I want to tell it. "I didn't mean to! I know I'm always doing things like this, and I can't stop myself."
I will be glad when the curtains get here so I can delete the e-mail. Though, when I think about it, that might be what it's asking me not to do.
I ordered some curtains the other day. I ordered them because:
A. I have been in some sort of home-buying mania recently, wherein now that I have a (temporary) income again I keep buying things for the house. So far I have bought, in addition to normal things like people food and cat food:
- A plant and pot for my office. (I overwatered it and had to bring it home, although it seems to have recovered.)
- A bookshelf at the British Heart Foundation charity shop.
- Some picture frames, in which I put printouts of four of these awesome ads.
- A small Edwardian mantel clock that does not work. ("You know this is at fault" the woman told me severely. I thought that was a bit harsh.)
- Two old-fashioned irons (the kind that are actually pure iron) to hold in place my makeshift window-screen system.
- Some light-blocking curtains.
On the other hand, I have also been having a lot of trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and I think the lack of dark is probably part of it. So I'm hoping the light-blocking curtains will help. They are plain white-colored, but they insisted on the website that they are "blackout" curtains, so hopefully they will keep the sun at bay.
Anyway, though, the e-mail they sent me to tell me that the curtains have been shipped appears in my inbox as "Please do not." It's because the e-mail address it's sent from says "Please do not reply to this address," but it seems so helpless and accusatory sitting there in my inbox. I feel both guilty and befuddled when I look at it. What is it I am being begged not to do?
Please do not spend money on household items you do not need?
Please do not contact us?
Please do not blame the sun?
Please do not do what you are doing.
Somehow, that "Please do not" all on its own triggers all my guilt. "I'm sorry!" I want to tell it. "I didn't mean to! I know I'm always doing things like this, and I can't stop myself."
I will be glad when the curtains get here so I can delete the e-mail. Though, when I think about it, that might be what it's asking me not to do.
I was interested to read this piece by Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon today about a Yoplait ad that’s been pulled because it too closely replicated eating-disordered modes of thought. (I’ve seen that ad and yes, it’s pretty disordered.)
Yogurt ads in general inspire rage, but this one in particular has been tripping my WHAT?! radar recently:
It’s also a Yoplait ad – not incidentally, I think -- and I’m pretty sure from its weird voice track that it’s been dubbed from the French. That’s not the bizarre thing about it, though. I’ve been insisting to Nick for weeks that this ad implies – probably unintentionally -- that the woman’s friends are searching for evidence of bulimia, but instead find yogurt! Allow me to impose my reading on you.
So the hostess says “Now I’ll go get the dessert,” prompting her friends to exchange incredulous glances. All well and good, we’re still in typical annoying-but-not-astounding Yogurt World in which women can’t eat dessert (but can eat yogurt).
But then the ad carries that assumption one step further, and we’re in Eating Disorder Land.
“How does she do itt?” one of the guests asks. “She looks amazing!” (read: thin). The women then search all around the house for the “secret” to the hostess’s thin physique, which she apparently maintains despite gluttonous dessert-eating (which she scandalously professes openly).
The “secret,” of course, is revealed to be that the hostess does not, in fact, eat dessert – only yogurt, which these women are so deprived as to believe is just like dessert.
But the wacko part is what comes before that revelation – the frantic search around the house. What kind of “secret” could possibly explain “bingeing” on dessert, as the guests clearly believe the hostess does, but not gaining any weight? And why would signs of it especially be found in the bathroom (where they head)? Oh wait, I know! If you read the plot literally, this woman’s friends are gleefuly inspecting her house for tell-tale signs of purging.
Honestly, this commercial doesn’t make sense in any other context. I know, I know, they probably didn’t think it through and it doesn’t really make sense, but I maintain that this commercial shows an establishment so deeply mired in disordered thought that the act of searching someone’s life for a “secret” to eating (but staying very, very thin) seems like a normal response to “outlandish” food consumption (read: normal food consumption).
Moral of the story – Yogurt commercials are really very unhealthy indeed.
(Oh, and I almost forgot -- why does Williams have to spoil a perfectly good post about body acceptance with that pat last paragraph about "but it's really not ok to be fat, guys, no for realz"? We were getting along so well until then! Mary Elizabeth, no one reasonable could possibly read this post and imagine that you are "endorsing a steady diet of dessert!" Sigh.)
Yogurt ads in general inspire rage, but this one in particular has been tripping my WHAT?! radar recently:
It’s also a Yoplait ad – not incidentally, I think -- and I’m pretty sure from its weird voice track that it’s been dubbed from the French. That’s not the bizarre thing about it, though. I’ve been insisting to Nick for weeks that this ad implies – probably unintentionally -- that the woman’s friends are searching for evidence of bulimia, but instead find yogurt! Allow me to impose my reading on you.
So the hostess says “Now I’ll go get the dessert,” prompting her friends to exchange incredulous glances. All well and good, we’re still in typical annoying-but-not-astounding Yogurt World in which women can’t eat dessert (but can eat yogurt).
But then the ad carries that assumption one step further, and we’re in Eating Disorder Land.
“How does she do itt?” one of the guests asks. “She looks amazing!” (read: thin). The women then search all around the house for the “secret” to the hostess’s thin physique, which she apparently maintains despite gluttonous dessert-eating (which she scandalously professes openly).
The “secret,” of course, is revealed to be that the hostess does not, in fact, eat dessert – only yogurt, which these women are so deprived as to believe is just like dessert.
But the wacko part is what comes before that revelation – the frantic search around the house. What kind of “secret” could possibly explain “bingeing” on dessert, as the guests clearly believe the hostess does, but not gaining any weight? And why would signs of it especially be found in the bathroom (where they head)? Oh wait, I know! If you read the plot literally, this woman’s friends are gleefuly inspecting her house for tell-tale signs of purging.
Honestly, this commercial doesn’t make sense in any other context. I know, I know, they probably didn’t think it through and it doesn’t really make sense, but I maintain that this commercial shows an establishment so deeply mired in disordered thought that the act of searching someone’s life for a “secret” to eating (but staying very, very thin) seems like a normal response to “outlandish” food consumption (read: normal food consumption).
Moral of the story – Yogurt commercials are really very unhealthy indeed.
(Oh, and I almost forgot -- why does Williams have to spoil a perfectly good post about body acceptance with that pat last paragraph about "but it's really not ok to be fat, guys, no for realz"? We were getting along so well until then! Mary Elizabeth, no one reasonable could possibly read this post and imagine that you are "endorsing a steady diet of dessert!" Sigh.)
Something that makes me sad these days is that I’ve lost…well, to be trite, I’ve lost some of my faith in humanity. I used to feel a certainty that people mostly act kindly and decently, at least one-on-one, and that people are, by and large, vaguely “good.” It’s the internet that that has perpetuated this crisis of faith in me, and I don’t like it.
For one thing, submitting to a view of humanity in which people are routinely hostile and aggressive seems to demean those things I value in my own life. It’s as if the internal voices that tell me that my own thoughts are insincere and worthless have expanded to form a world-view, and I don’t like giving those voices any more power than they already have.
Moreover, it’s simply hard to believe it’s true. In my everyday life, people are rarely overtly unkind, and I have frequently had experiences wherein a stranger has gone out of his or her way to help or compliment me.
Of course, that’s not universally true – I’ve been shouted at and harassed on the street; I’ve been the victim of rude driving; people I actually knew have been unkind, bullying, or rude to me and to those around me. But those experiences are, in the totality of my experience, rare. Most interactions I have with other human beings range from neutral to pleasant. (I have no doubt, by the way, that I would experience more unpleasant interactions were I not a middle-class white woman, but I still think that overall the number of people who interacted with me in a neutral or pleasant way would overwhelm the number of those who were hostile.)
Except on the internet. The frequency, the range, and the depth of the vitriol a heavy internet user encounters is, as a number of people have noted, extremely dispiriting.
Read more »
For one thing, submitting to a view of humanity in which people are routinely hostile and aggressive seems to demean those things I value in my own life. It’s as if the internal voices that tell me that my own thoughts are insincere and worthless have expanded to form a world-view, and I don’t like giving those voices any more power than they already have.
Moreover, it’s simply hard to believe it’s true. In my everyday life, people are rarely overtly unkind, and I have frequently had experiences wherein a stranger has gone out of his or her way to help or compliment me.
Of course, that’s not universally true – I’ve been shouted at and harassed on the street; I’ve been the victim of rude driving; people I actually knew have been unkind, bullying, or rude to me and to those around me. But those experiences are, in the totality of my experience, rare. Most interactions I have with other human beings range from neutral to pleasant. (I have no doubt, by the way, that I would experience more unpleasant interactions were I not a middle-class white woman, but I still think that overall the number of people who interacted with me in a neutral or pleasant way would overwhelm the number of those who were hostile.)
Except on the internet. The frequency, the range, and the depth of the vitriol a heavy internet user encounters is, as a number of people have noted, extremely dispiriting.
Read more »
Sometimes these days I have the sensation that my ability to write is slowly coming back, like brush after a wildfire. Little shoots of green things – mostly weeds – begin, tentatively, to curl in and out amongst the sharp brown and grey edges the fire left behind, disturbing the dusty earth. All the dead things are low and weathered, nests of twigs protecting what life is left after the searing cleanse.
Sometimes these days, very occasionally, I have the urge to write things down, to think complicated thoughts and to work through the tangled underbrush of an idea. I hadn’t even realized how thoroughly those things had gone until they started to come back. The beginning of restoration shows me, in the half-light of dawn, the extent of the devastation that burned through the night before.
Sometimes these days, very occasionally, I have the urge to write things down, to think complicated thoughts and to work through the tangled underbrush of an idea. I hadn’t even realized how thoroughly those things had gone until they started to come back. The beginning of restoration shows me, in the half-light of dawn, the extent of the devastation that burned through the night before.
