On banishing chivalry

Elegy to Chivalry

For my birthday last month, my boyfriend and I went out to dinner with my good friend and her partner. Anticipating the fact that our meals would be a bit pricey, I had offered ahead of time to split the bill with my boyfriend, even though I knew he would refuse, as it's important to him to treat me to supper on my birthday. Just as it's important to me to treat him to dinner on his. When our waiter arrived at our table to take our payment, I happened to be holding the bill, surveying the damage caused by a few glasses of wine and some seafood. I promptly passed the bill back to my boyfriend when I noticed the waiter standing alongside us. This prompted some staggering insight from him:

"Yeah, I thought that was weird that you had the bill. I was like 'Wait now...are the girls paying?' Because that'd be a first."

His tone wasn't insulting in any way. It was just a matter-of-fact statement of a universal truth: girls don't pay for boys' meals. I was floored.

Me: "Hang on. You can't be serious. It's that rare to see a woman paying for her meal?"
Him: "Oh yeah, I never see it. It's always the guy who pays." (nodding to my boyfriend as he left our table) "Guess chivalry isn't completely dead, hey?"

The whole exchange, seemingly innocuous and meant only as cheerful banter, left me feeling completely awkward. Cheap. Dependent. I wanted to call the waiter back and demand that I pay for my own meal. For my boyfriend's meal. For the entire restaurant's Goddamn meals. I wanted to declare that I was being treated to supper because of my birthday, not because of my vagina. I wanted to explain that my partner and I have a very egalitarian concept of money. That we treat each other on special occasions. That we split everything else 50/50.

It was that word that left a bad taste in my mouth. Chivalry. It seemed so archaic, so oddly insulting.

Because chivalry is literally a medieval concept, predicated on the notion that men, by dint of their physical, mental, and moral superiority are responsible for the underlings of society. For the weak. For the oppressed. For women.

Medieval conceptions of sexuality largely stemmed from the Ancients' "one-sex theory," which assumed that men and women were, biologically, identical. Women, however, were basically inverted men, their genitalia pushed inside rather than proudly displayed outside their bodies. Inherent to this theory was the idea that all bodies are male bodies, that women were, quite literally, imperfect men, their subordination rationalized as a biological inevitability.

Chivalry prescribed, in part, the appropriate relationships between the sexes, and thrived in this culture of entrenched and systemic gender inequality. Chivalric knights were pure of mind, body, and soul, and were taxed with the responsibility of defending the honour of women who were clearly incapable of defending it themselves. Within this chivalric ideal, Woman was both Dependant and Prize, something to be lusted after, protected, won.¹

So that word, "chivalry," is sexually and historically loaded. It's not just about your boyfriend buying you supper because it's your birthday. It's about your boyfriend buying you supper because your gender, your sex, your subservience, your incapacity render you incapable of buying it yourself.

As always, Mary Wollstonecraft says it best:

I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority [...] So ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles,when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the LADY could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two. (Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792)

You go, Mary Wollstonecraft. And Glen Coco.

Yes, I like being treated nicely. I like being taken out to supper. Being offered a coat when I look cold. Feeling a protective hand on my shoulder or the small of my back. I like it when I get a door held open for me, largely because I don't like getting doors slammed in my face. As such, I return the favour - to women and men alike. 

I like being treated nicely because I'm a person. Not because of my uterus, or breasts, or generally "feminine" appearance. But because being treated well is a human prerogative. Because the desire to be respected and cared for is universal and gender-neutral.

So can we just do away with "chivalry"? Can we banish the word and all its baggage from our lexicon? Put gender politics aside and focus on being good to each other? On being people who care about the feelings, comfort, and well-being of other people? 

You know what I say to you about chivalry being dead, waiter?

Here's hoping. 

---

1 I once wrote a paper for a second-year history course examining "conflicting medieval views of masculinity," so I'm basically an expert on this topic. That said, my inner academic won't let me pass up this opportunity to cite some of the works I've probably borrowed heavily from in these few paragraphs: namely, Bullough and Brundage's Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (2000), Schultz's Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality (2006), and Kaeuper's Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (1999).^↩

On bodily celebrations

We've been talking a lot about women's bodies recently. From Elliott Roger's deranged, misogynistic rampage in Isla Vista to a case in Labrador, Canada, in which school girls were sent home for violating their school's dress code by showing their bra straps, women's bodies have gotten a lot of media attention in recent weeks. We're fascinated by how those bodies should look. How they should behave. What we should put in them and on them.

I'm not sure exactly where, as a feminist, I stand on the purportedly inherent bond between women. I realize that, for some women, sex and gender are not synonymous. I don't feel compelled to be friends with or relate to another person because we have similar levels of estrogen in our bloodstreams. But I do think that women's bodies have ensured (for better or worse) that most of us experience the world in similar, or at least comparable, ways. Whether we're sharing stories about the sexual harassments we've encountered in our lives or complaining about how hard it is to find a flattering pair of jeans, many of us do create bonds with each other through our bodies.

My mom's dear friend was diagnosed with breast cancer about a month ago. It came as a total shock, as it always does, not least because this is the second dear friend my mom has supported through breast cancer. In addition to a number of acquaintances and family members and friends who have faced cancer. In addition to her own cancer diagnosis in 2012.

Our friend's surgery went well and her prognosis was good, although four chemotherapy treatments would be required that would cause her to lose all her hair. This is especially difficult news for most women, not just because we tend to have an overly sentimental attachment to our hair (due, in large part, to the pervasive theory that it is the primary source of our attractiveness and sex appeal), but because the loss of hair becomes physical proof of the presence of cancer.

Cancer is a largely invisible illness that is made visible through this loss of hair. Suddenly, a private, literally internal illness is made external and observable. It becomes an outward confirmation and constant reminder of sickness. A sign that your body has been invaded, compromised, defeated.

So my mother reclaimed her friend's diagnosis in the only way she knew how.

She threw a head shaving party. 

Many women will, at the outset of their chemotherapy treatments, choose to shave their heads. Practically speaking, it reduces the mess of balding, as it's hard to keep your clothes, bed, and house tidy when your hair is falling out in abundant clumps. Emotionally speaking, it lessens the shock when their hair does begin to fall out, as it will, rapidly and prolifically. 

The party was last weekend. There were cupcakes and pizza and pitchers of sangria. I made a playlist of bad 70s pop. There were pink feather boas, and pink paper lanterns, and pink flowers. But most of all, there was a group of women, women who were bonding over what they felt was a shared cancer diagnosis, and who were taking this step in their friend's recovery process together. When the hair clippers were brought out, there were tears and cheers, pictures and laughter. The honours were done by my mother's best friend, a former hair dresser and fourteen-year cancer survivor, in the kitchen where the three of us regularly gathered to have her cut and dye our hair. There were jokes about whether or not she should be given a mohawk. Exclamations about how perfectly round her head was under all that hair. Constant words of encouragement about how beautiful she looked. There was a palpable sense that they were all in this together, that it was unfathomable that a friend should have to go through this on her own.

It ended up being an incredibly empowering afternoon. It was the reaffirmation everyone needed that their friend would recover and thrive from her life-altering diagnosis. It was an opportunity to embrace the new, unexpected shape that her unique beauty had taken. But most importantly, it was a celebration of her body, of the trials it has weathered, the boundless strength it possesses, and its incredible capacity for regeneration. 

On True Detective's phallocentric brutality

Fair warning: if you haven't watched True Detective yet, I'm about to ruin some things for you.

I'm really, worryingly good at taking off my feminist hat when I invest in a TV show. I find myself chuckling and shaking my head as Don Draper horrendously neglects and subtly abuses the women in his life. I was nearly two seasons through The Newsroom before I realized that I'm supposed to be grossly offended by Aaron Sorkin's portrayal of women. 

So when my boyfriend and I settled down this weekend to watch True Detective, HBO's latest sausage fest, I was expecting to enjoy myself despite all my critical faculties urging me otherwise.

But what I saw really disturbed me.

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Yep, this happened. 

I understand that not every show is going to offer up empowered and empowering female characters, and this is a bit of a knee-jerk post, as I haven't given much thought to what I want to say or how I want to say it. But after watching a critically-acclaimed series in which women are systemically and unapologetically abused and brutalized over the course of eight episodes, I felt compelled to say something. Anything.

Season One follows detectives Marty Hart and Rustin Cohle (Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey) as they attempt to track down a murderer/rapist in rural Louisiana, and I should state from the outset that I wanted so badly to enjoy watching them do just that. I love detective dramas. I was drawn in by the show's aesthetic. I thought the soundtrack was great. I desperately wanted Matthew McConaughey to prove to me that he's anything other than a mumbling, greasy creep.

And I wasn't even offended when one of the first images I was assaulted with during the show's highly stylized opening credits was of a woman's bare backside resting gingerly on the spiked appliqués of her stilettos.

Or of another woman gyrating as she seductively unties her American flag one-piece.

Or as images of a deserted playground are projected onto another woman's naked rear.

...wait a minute. 

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Taken on its own, the intro isn't especially offensive. It's sexy and provocative and beautifully shot, and I appreciate that. And the gratuitous female nudity is exactly what I've come to expect from HBO. But within the larger context of the show, the intro sets up one of the primary dichotomies of True Detective: that of authoritative men with gravitas and furrowed brows in suits and ties, and vacant, naked, fetishized women. Or at least parts of women. 

In a show that ostensibly centres on pursuing justice for murdered and mistreated women, we are offered female characters who are choked, demeaned, slapped, and dominated by the very men who are supposedly their protectors. 

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The women of True Detective are vapid and transparent. They range from Dora Lange, whose naked corpse sparks the investigation that fuels the series, to Lisa Tragnetti and Beth, the equally buxom, stereotypically nymphomaniacal mistresses whose naked bodies are regularly shown pleasuring (a conspicuously clothed) Marty. Maggie, Marty's long-suffering wife, appears to have two objectives in life: to nag Marty about his prolonged absences from home, and to cook his suppers. I can't help but think that her (completely founded) tirades against Marty's neglect of his family are, in some way, meant to "justify" his extramarital affairs, and ultimately, Maggie, too, is reduced to and denigrated for her sex, relegated to a conniving jezebel who irrevocably terminates her disintegrated marriage by initiating sex with Cohle. Afterwards, Cohle, disgusted and furious, kicks a crying and apologetic Maggie out of his apartment. The implication here is that Maggie is somehow in the wrong, that she alone has initiated and performed this hasty, aggressive act, and it's infuriating to see a woman being vilified (however subtly) for taking a stand against a husband who has mistreated and humiliated her for nearly twenty years. 

Then there's Audrey, Marty's angst-ridden, promiscuous, Goth daughter. Audrey is a stereotypically taciturn teenager who is clearly harbouring some very complicated feelings toward her father. They are completely incomprehensible to each other, and over dinner one night, Marty turns his gaze on Audrey's body, attempting to impose on it some sort of order:

Marty: "I'm just trying to understand - what is it that you're going for? What's the message?"

Audrey: "There is no message. It's just me."

"What's you? Your hair? Your clothes?"

"Women don't have to look like you want them to, Dad."

"No, women, but I'm talking about my teenage daughter [...] I'm just trying to understand."

"Well who told you you had to understand?"

Audrey is reduced by her father to a mass of clothes and hair, relegated to a body that he owns ("my teenage daughter"), but neither controls nor understands. Clichéd though she may be, Audrey is the only woman in the show who actively resists Marty's domination, and she is tellingly and quickly silenced - shortly after the above scene, a disgraced Audrey is driven home by her father, who has been called to collect her after she is found having sex with two older boys in a parked car. Again, Audrey is dismissed as irrational, incomprehensible, defective: "This is something I'll never understand," jeers her father, "being the captain of the varsity slut team." Audrey receives her father's fist to the side of her face, and virtually disappears from the remainder of the series, appropriately suppressed, humiliated, slut shamed. Both Audrey's and Maggie's story arcs climax with dubious sex acts that leave the audience ambivalent about both women. 

True Detective's women are uninspiring at best and infuriating at worst, and while I understand that this is a show "about men," its phallocentric treatment of women and the female body is hackneyed in its brutality, deeply troubling in its ubiquity. The question that remains is: why? Why does True Detective make being "about men" synonymous with degrading women? Why am I being offered yet another show that alienates me as a female viewer, that makes me clench my thighs, raise my eyebrows, and feel uncomfortable in my own body? 

Feminist responses to True Detective flooded the Internet within days of the first episode's release, and the reception of the show's treatment of women seems to be divided into two camps: "Ew, gross," and "Get over it."

On the one hand is someone like The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum, who, like me, suggests that True Detective is essentially the same shit in a different pile. All the show does is repackage the shallow portrayal of women that's all too common on our television screens, depicting a series of  "Wives and sluts and daughters - none with any interior life." On the other hand is Slate's Willa Paskin, who argues that yes, True Detective treats its women terribly - and that's the point. The show is self-awarely sexist, and the audience is supposed to appreciate that what they're watching is wrong. It's a story about the terrible things men do to women, and its male leads aren't exempt.

Logically and rhetorically speaking, I "get" Paskin's line of thinking. She's essentially arguing that True Detective isn't a misogynistic show, it's a show about misogyny. But I don't think we're yet at a place in our mainstream depictions of women where the nuances of that distinction are fully appreciated or understood. The thing is: I don't want to have to step back and think critically about whether or not a show is being self-consciously misogynistic. I don't want to accept that its sadistic, fetishistic portrayal of its female characters may very well be "the point" of the series. I don't believe that film or television is obligated to teach morals or offer utopian alternatives to the way our world currently works. But if I wanted to see all the ways in which women can be sexually objectified and exploited, I'd watch porn. Or turn on the news. Or take a history course. Or read the tabloids while I wait in line at the supermarket. Or walk into an American Apparel. I am daily inundated with reminders that society tends and always has tended to treat women badly. It's so clichéd and so uninspired. And I'm oh, so tired of it. 

On dietary dreams and the power of choice

At one point during my grandfather's wake in 2011, my grandmother took me around the room, introducing me to various neighbours, family friends, and long-lost cousins. Her introduction was consistent - "This is my granddaughter, Meaghan. She's the real smart one. She's gotten all kinds of scholarships from the university." This was largely met with empathetic smiling and nodding from well-wishers who really couldn't care less about my academic endeavours. "Well, she must get that from you," one distant relative kindly replied.

"Don't be so foolish. I never got to go to university," was my grandmother's immediate response.

It's a moment I'll never forget. My grandmother's answer was instant, matter-of-fact. There was no hesitation in her voice, no palpable sense of regret. I didn't get the impression that she had wanted to go to university but had been financially or intellectually unable (and let me assure you that the latter was most definitely not the case). Instead, the implied subtext was that university, quite simply, wasn't an option for girls of her generation like it is for girls of mine. That choice wasn't even in her cards.

I quickly realized that this idea of "choice" is integral to my definition of feminism. The ability to choose to get married. Or not. To have children. Or not. To opt out of university. To bypass beauty products. Or to wear Spanx under your graduation gown as you accept your Master's degree. The belief that people deserve the freedom to have choices, opinions, dreams, and the limitless ability to enact them without fear of prejudice is, for me, part of what it means to be a feminist.

So the latest Weight Watchers ad campaign is deeply troubling to me.

Each ad opens on a little girl enumerating her dreams for her adult self. "When I grow up, I want to float around in my big, pink bubble," one quips. "I want to be a dolphin tamer, and I want to swim to the bottom of the ocean," another declares. The tone of these commercials is silly, but optimistic and hopeful. These girls have opinions, unrealistic as they may be, on where they want their lives to go. They have unabashedly fantastical visions for their future selves, visions that are in no way restricted by their gender or their bodies.

The entire point of the campaign is about daring to dream. About capturing and reclaiming the boundless optimism that defines us as children. About refusing to let our own fears and feelings of inadequacy keep us from dreaming and hoping big and large.

Remember when you thought anything was possible? It still is.

It's about women making choices for themselves. And the choice is clear.

To be thin.

I'm not dismissing Weight Watchers' validity as a weight loss program. I know people who have achieved great success following Weight Watchers, and I do believe it's one of the better diet plans out there - inherent to the program isn't the idea of denying yourself food, but of instead learning healthy and balanced eating habits.

But there's something grossly disturbing about conflating the innocent and unapologetic optimism of a little girl with a grown woman's dissatisfaction with her body and her desire to fit the mainstream definition of beauty.

And this is very much a women's issue. None of the prospective clients in this commercial is visibly male. In fact, Weight Watchers is an exceptionally female-centred diet plan - out of all of its celebrity endorsers, I can't think of one who was a man. The entire brand centres on women encouraging women to lose weight, and if it's true that "real men don't diet," then the implicit suggestion is that real women do. And should. Nay, it's something we should all dream of doing one day. 

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I'm very confused by the marketing here. Do women, by contrast, not eat real food? Or achieve real weight loss? Is this man somehow superior to the riff-raff women who subscribe to plain ol' Weight Watchers? Does his penis make his diet theoretically better than mine? SO MANY QUESTIONS. 

What bothers me the most about these commercials is that they aren't depicting women who look as though they require a diet plan at all. I honestly don't think I would be as offended if the women in these ads were obese and desiring to make healthy changes in their lives - not because society expects them to be skinny, but because they, as people, have decided that they want to embrace a healthier lifestyle. Of course I know that "thinness" is not synonymous with "healthiness." But this commercial would be very different if the narrative suggested that by believing "anything is possible," women can believe in their ability and determination to take control of their lives and develop a positive relationship with food. If this were about aspiring toward healthiness, about Weight Watchers being a healthy choice, then that would be a positive, empowering message I could get behind.

Except the word "health" isn't mentioned once in these commercials. Neither is "nutrition." Or "empowerment." The image that the viewer is instead bombarded with for thirty seconds is of already thin women being inordinately excited at the prospect of getting thinner. The suggestion is that the little girls in these ads are merely part of a cycle - that one day, their sense of wonderment at their own boundless potential will subside, and that they too will look in the mirror and be dissatisfied with what they see. That it's inevitable. That we all end up hating our bodies eventually. The entire campaign feeds on women's ubiquitous sense of bodily imperfection - "You've always dreamed of being skinny, and now's the time."

The first time I saw this commercial, it made me truly and deeply sad.

I want so much more than this for my future daughter, or granddaughter, or daughter-in-law. I want her to have dreams and goals that aren't shaped by a socially-imposed sense of inadequacy. I never want her to stop being amazed by her body and her mind and what she can do with them. I hope her power of choice and her ability to dream is never compromised or sullied. 

And I hope that this post will seem as archaic to her as my grandmother's exclusion from university seemed to me.

On festive filmic obscurity

Christmas has always been much more about music than movies for me. My favourite moment of the holiday season is standing in church on Christmas Eve and belting carols at the top of my lungs. I love trying to find new music to include on my Christmas playlist. I will cry when I hear "Silent Night" for the first time each year. And "White Christmas." And "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." And Christmas hasn't truly begun until I've heard Band Aid.

I've never seen A Christmas Story. I'm pretty sure I've never watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas in its entirety. I first saw A Charlie Brown Christmas as an adult. And I watched Home Alone for the first time last year (and it wasn't even any good THERE I SAID IT).

No, I didn't live under a rock as a child. No, I didn't have fanatically religious parents who only let me read my bible/make animal sacrifices in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I just seemed to gravitate toward really obscure Christmas movies when I was a kid. Excepting The Muppet Christmas Carol, of course. That always has and always will be a classic, and if Robin the Frog as Tiny Tim doesn't make you cry, you are made of stone, and we probably shouldn't be friends.

I honestly think this is one of the loveliest, most touching Christmas songs ever written. If you don't have tears running down your neck right now, there's something wrong with you.

In a recent fit of maudlin nostalgia, I took to Youtube to see if I could find some of the Christmas movies I once loved, most of whose names I didn't even know. And, much to my surprise and great joy, there they were, in all their low-quality glory! So naturally, I re-watched them all. Seeing these movies for the first time in almost twenty years completely transported me back to being a kid in December and all the excitement, simplicity, and wonder that the season involved.

And so I share them with you.

The Night Before Christmas (1968)

Parts 2 and 3 here and here

Since this movie predates me by almost twenty years, I have no idea how it even got on my radar, but my dad recorded it off TV one day and that VHS was in heavy rotation, let me tell you. The movie is a fictionalized account of the events that inspired Clement Moore to write The Night Before Christmas. It opens with Moore leaving for a short business trip a few weeks before Christmas and promising to bring a special present back for each of his children. The requisite doll and candy are requested by his unimpressive, not-main-character-worthy children, but Charity, his eldest daughter who has impossibly long eyelashes given the fact that mascara hasn't been invented yet, asks for a book. Moore departs, and Charity almost immediately starts to cough and feel cold, which we all know is a sign of imminent tragedy. Sure enough, Charity's gone and contracted pneumonia, WAY TO GO CHARITY. Moore rushes home to find his daughter delirious and near death. In an attempt to soothe her during her fevered ravings, he begins to pen a story to read to her. And thus The Night Before Christmas came to be. Charity ultimately recovers and all is well, God bless us, every one. 

This movie was clearly subtitled: "The Heaviest Christmas Story Ever Told." Why I was not disturbed by watching a little girl only a few years older than me almost succumb to an easily contracted infection is beyond me. It likely had something to do with the fact that I was completed enamored of Charity's flouncy blonde curls. Or that stringing popcorn to decorate your tree was the most ingenious thing I'd ever seen. Regardless, I loved the aesthetic of this movie, and it very likely spawned my ultimate obsession with the nineteenth century. It also made the Christmas when I was bedridden with pneumonia (and pink eye. Christmas 1995: worst. Christmas. ever.) seem ridiculously romantic.

A Family Circus Christmas (1979)

Part 2 here

Another rip-roaring comedy that centres on hallucinatory fantasies and characters' mortality! While decorating their tree, The Family (do they have a surname? Likely not.) discovers that their tree topper, a star made by their paternal grandfather, has gone missing. That night, Jeffy, the second youngest son, dreams that he asks Santa to bring Granddad, who now "lives in Heaven," home for Christmas. When The Mom learns that this is Jeffy's Christmas wish, she tries to explain to him that it's beyond even Santa's powers to bring someone back from the dead, but Jeffy will hear none of it. Later that night, Jeffy is visited by the ghost of Granddad (who is eerily mute and transparent, but who is always accompanied by groovy jazz music), who shows him where he can find the star. TAKE THAT, MOM. The family restores the star to its rightful place atop the tree, and joy and happiness reign.

I really have no idea why this movie had such appeal for me, and this one is particularly touching for me now that my paternal grandfather, whom I also called Granddad, has passed away. Maybe it was because the star topper reminded me of the one my grandparents used to have on their tree. Children aren't particularly discriminatory in their affections. Oh, and the Family's pet dog is named Barfy. There's that, too.

The American Ballet Theatre and Mikhail Baryshnikov's The Nutcracker (1977)

Another film that predates me by a decade, another main character who is tripping balls. Obviously, The Nutcracker isn't an obscure Christmas work, but I was particularly obsessed with this adaptation. In case you had no childhood and/or were raised by wolves, The Nutcracker is set in Anytown, Western Europe in the 1800s. It opens on the Christmas Eve party of the Stahlbaum family, whose guests include the local magician/resident weirdo Herr Drosselmeyer. Drosselmeyer gives the Stahlbaums' daughter Clara a terrifying looking nutcracker as a Christmas present, and when her idiot brother manages to break it immediately after she receives it, Clara is heartbroken. In the middle of the night, long after the party has ended, she sneaks downstairs to check on her nutcracker, which has been placed in the parlour for safekeeping.

Then shit gets weird.

The Stahlbaum home is clearly dealing with a major infestation, and, once downstairs, Clara is attacked by the house's mouse population. Which is disturbingly life sized. Her nutcracker comes to life to protect her, and, after defeating the mice, transforms into a beautiful, human prince. In a series of acid-induced hallucinations fantastical dreams, the prince takes Clara to the Land of the Sweets, where they are entertained by its magical inhabitants and crowned King and Queen. Clara awakens back in her home and stares wistfully at the snow falling outside her window, leaving us to wonder was it all a dream...? 

Yes, it obviously was, Clara. Let's stop lying to ourselves. You are clearly a 25-year old woman. And if a strange man in very tight pants shows up in your house in the middle of the night and offers to take you to his "Land of the Sweets," RUN, GIRL. Even if he does look like this:

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So. Many. Jokes.

A side note: How did I never know that the Nutcracker Prince, alias the Mikhail Baryshnikov, is Aleksandr Petrovsky from Sex and the City? Not being a ballet aficionado, Baryshnikov has always just been a faceless name to me. But now he's a face, too. Oh, is he ever. Here's one more in the spirit of giving:

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Peace on earth.

As a child, this movie was the epitome of all things beautiful for me. The costumes looked like they were made of candy and the music was exhilarating. I wanted to be Clara and have my handsome prince whisk me away to fairy land in the middle of the night. I wanted the tutu to be a staple of my wardrobe. I wanted to be effortlessly graceful. I wanted orchestral accompaniment to follow me everywhere I went. Come to think of it, I still want all those things. And seeing the Nutcracker in New York City remains on my bucket list to this day. I also felt a personal connection to The Nutcracker when I was little, because my mom and I used to see a local production of it every Christmas. In fact, I once had the opportunity to star as one of the humanoid mice that attacks Clara in the first act. But because I could barely get through watching that scene without hyperventilating with fear, I figured I'd save myself years of therapy and wisely declined.

So there they are - the Christmas movies that you've probably never heard of that sum up my childhood. Watch and enjoy, and may your days be merry and bright. 

On cat love

If my friends' posts on my Facebook wall are to be believed, there are three things that matter to me in this world: Jane Austen, chicken mcnuggets, and cats. This list is more or less exhaustive.

I'm the girl who goes to a party, finds the cat, and spends all night talking to it in an obnoxious voice. Even after being together for our entire adult lives, my boyfriend is still disturbed by amazed at just how much I talk to my cats (hint: it's a lot).

So you all must have known that this post was inevitable.

I'm an animal lover generally, and I love hearing about people's unique relationships with their pets. So when I found the blog Lola is Beauty a while back, I knew I was going to like it...because it's named after the blogger's cat. The blog includes beautifully photographed travel, fashion, and lifestyle pieces, but also features a series called Bloggers and Cats. Each entry spotlights a different blogger and her answers to questions about her cat(s). Since I'm neither hip nor popular enough to be one of the bloggers featured on Lola is Beauty, I'm borrowing the questions for my own use. Sincerely hoping Claire doesn't mind.

The basics: what breed are they, how old, how did you come to live with them, why did you call them Jake and Zoë?

I come from a long line of cat fanatics, so when we had to have our 17-year old cat put down in 2006, we were totally, irrevocably distraught. We made it about three weeks before we decided that getting another pet was a necessary step in our healing process.

Jake and Zoë (formerly Cupid and Sweetheart, due to the proximity of their birth to Valentine's Day) came as a pair from our local humane society. Their mother had been brought to the shelter while pregnant and had had her kittens there. She and the rest of her litter had already been placed in homes by the time we came looking to adopt, and we knew we couldn't possibly break the last two kittens up. So home with us they came.

I have absolutely no idea what breed they are, and I'm not convinced that they actually are brother and sister, because they look nothing alike. Zoë definitely has some Turkish Angora in her. Jake is...Jake.

How would you describe their personalities? Are they friends?  

We've often said that we've never encountered cats as good-natured as Jake and Zoë, which is a pleasant change of pace, as all our previous cats have been seriously deranged had minor behavioural issues. They are incredibly vocal, and often wander the house meowing, trilling, and chirping. They follow us around like dogs. They have literally never hissed at or been aggressive with us, and will truly put up with anything.

Exhibit A.

Zoë is incredibly high strung, though, earning her the affectionate nickname "Jesus Christ, get off the Goddamn curtains" from my dad. Everything is a cause for alarm for her and is potentially the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity. She's extremely curious, and is often found doing things she's not supposed to be doing, like hiding in my underwear drawer or eating my books. She's also incredibly talkative. Zoë will chat with you for hours on end with a meow so loud and assertive that it's hard to believe it came out of such a tiny cat. She also gets sporadically and intensely needy, and bestows her affection violently and with great physical force. She's basically a white, fluffy truck driver. 

Jake is so easy going that I sometimes wonder if he's been lobotomized. Oftentimes, he only requires an affectionate look in order to start purring. I regularly pick him up upsidedown and walk around the house with him, and when I put him down he'll start smooching me (not sure who this suggests has the bigger problems). He has the muted, delicate cry that Zoë should have, even though he's at least twice her size. He's loving and sweet--if a little intellectually stunted--and wants to be showered with affection all the time. He loves having his belly rubbed and loves to play - he gallops around the house in the middle of the night with his toy mouse in his mouth, desperately trying to wake someone up to play with him. He also loves playing with dry spaghetti noodles, and will sit by the cupboard, looking at the knob, and crying for someone to open it and deliver unto him the grain of the gods. He thinks he's still a kitten and has no idea how fat and awkward he's become. 

Zoë is the leader and Jake is the follower, and they have the intense love-hate relationship that most siblings do. One minute they're hissing and lusting for each other's blood, and the next they're washing each other's faces. Jake is hilariously and problematically jealous of Zoë, and if he hears you talking to her will barge into the room and usurp your affection with a clearly implied "DAFUQ?" He has major attachment issues that would be costing us a lot of money in therapy bills if he were human. 

What are their favourite foods?

We never got in the habit of feeding them from the table, so they don't go for much other than their cat food. But Zoë has a bizarre and unexplained obsession with simulated cheese flavour. She will also cut you for anything sweet and sugary. Also: toilet paper.

Do they have any preferred lounging locations? Any signature poses?

They're both masters of the always popular "curl into a ball and press your front paws into your nose" pose. Zoë can usually be found sitting in a window, plotting the demise of anything that blows/flies past her line of vision. Jake is a very regal poser: he likes to assert his imagined authority by lying with his two paws stretched out directly in front of him. Alternatively, he can be found looking like this:

What is a day in the life of Jake and Zoë like?

Their day begins when they hear us filling their food dishes. Jake begins every morning by snuggling with me as I have my morning coffee, and their mornings are pretty active - there are toy mice to decimate, birds to chirp at, and black clothes to cover in fur.

At some point in the afternoon, Zoë will start crying to be put in her favourite hiding place - high atop the shelf in our hall closet. If no one is around to help her in this endeavour, she'll take matters into her own hands by scaling our coats. She likes it here, because she has a bird's eye view of our porch, and also because Jake is too fat and lazy to chase her up there. Afternoon is nap time and around supper the cycle repeats itself. Jake usually requires a second, nighttime cuddle to round out his day.

Do you have any amusing/weird/cute Jake/Zoë moments or stories you'd like to share?

They have no concept of how a litter box is supposed to work. Cats supposedly have an instinct to bury their waste in order to make it difficult for predators to track down their scent. Jake and Zoë know that they're supposed to do something once they've done their business, and they'll stand for several minutes after they're finished, scratching the side of the litter box, the cover of the litter box, the floor outside the litter box, but not managing to move a single grain of kitty litter to where it's supposed to be. We seriously think we've coddled every survival instinct out of them. They wouldn't last five minutes in the outside world.

Quickfire round:

Birds or mice? If you say "birds" in just the right voice, my cats will run to the window and start scanning the yard. They're basically furry little snipers. 

Trouble brewing.

They do love a catnip mouse, though, and we usually wake up each morning to find that Jake has stowed his mouse away in a different part of the house, just like the adorable assassin he is. 

Sunlight or radiator? Sunlight. 

Tap or bowl? TAP. Both are freakishly obsessed with water (Jake especially) and will sit in our bathroom sink crying mercilessly until we turn the water on for them. Jake, sad little mentally-challenged puppy that he is, will let the water pour all over his head if it means getting a drink.

Lap or laptop? Shhh...my cats haven't figured out yet that my laptop exists. 

Snuggling or stretching? Jake is a snuggler, Zoë a stretcher. 

Cats or humans? Both and neither. They have a completely emotionally/physically abusive relationship with each other, and while they're so attached to us I sometimes think it's unhealthy, they are hilariously afraid of people, generally.

They cray. But I loves 'em.

On that time I visited Jane Austen's house.

If I remember one thing from my undergraduate foray into literary theory and criticism (and believe me, I don't remember much), it's this gem from David Hume, penned in 1757:

We choose our favourite author as we do our friend, from a conformity of humour and disposition. Mirth or passion, sentiment or reflection; whichever of these most predominates in our temper, it gives us a peculiar sympathy with the writer who resembles us. ("On the Standard of Taste")

I love the beautiful simplicity of this idea: we like the books we like because we're drawn to authors we can imagine being friends with. It speaks to an immediacy and an intimacy of the reading process that I had never really considered before -- that a love of reading is more than an appreciation of the written word and more than a sympathetic attachment to a beloved character. That reading is not a solitary activity, but an exchange of ideas between people. That there is a very real, human connection between a writer and a reader, though they may be separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

I first read Jane Austen in a first-year history course, of all places. We were asked to choose a novel written by a nineteenth-century European author and examine its validity as a primary historical document (great assignment topic, by the way). For no specific reason (other than the fact that it was probably on TV the weekend before the assignment sheet got handed out), I chose Sense and Sensibility. Little did I know that it would effectively shape my academic path -- I went on to write an Honours paper and Master's thesis about Austen, and to publish and present on her. It also opened the floodgates for some embarrassing Austen paraphernalia. I'm looking at you, Jane Austen finger puppet.

...and at you, Jane Austen action figure.

I found myself drawn to Austen in a way that I had never experienced with any other author. I love that you can read into her novels as much or as little as you want -- that you can analyze the complex gender dynamics, political commentary, colonial undercurrents &c. of the texts while also swooning over her characters. I love that her heroines are inspiring and relatable and surprisingly modern even though they were written by a woman who didn't have the right to vote. I love the romance. I love the stories. I love the wit.

And I also love Austen herself. Because you do get an innate sense when you're reading an Austen novel that she is actually the one telling you the story, not some intermediary narrator. Every time I read one of her books, I'm reminded that she was a living, breathing woman who was bitingly funny and incredibly smart. And I really can't help but think that we'd be friends. Not in a creepy, delusional "I dream about braiding Jane Austen's hair and talking about boys as we skip off into the sunset hand-in-hand" kind of way (FYI, gentlemen: that's what female friendships really are all about). But I do feel a strange affinity for this woman who died 170 years before I was born. I identify with the humbleness of her life. I identify with her frustrations. And most of all, I identify with her sarcasm. Because if there's one word my long-suffering boyfriend would use to describe me, it's "saucy."

Jane Austen would have been hilarious to go to a bar, get drunk, and people watch with. Her letters are humourous, often mean, and always caustic. Exhibit A: in a letter to her sister Cassandra, dated Christmas Eve 1798, she anticipated my life's mantra:

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

Merry Christmas! On April 25, 1811, she writes again to Cassandra to congratulate her on the birth of their nephew:

[...] if he ever comes to be hanged it will not be till we are too old to care about it.

A Hallmark card in the making. I also love her sartorial musings, because while she obviously cared quite a bit about what she wore, she was fully aware of how ridiculous the fashions of the period were. Re: new trimmings for her hat:

We have been to the cheap shop, & very cheap we found it, but there are only flowers there, no fruit -- & as I could get 4 or 5 very pretty sprigs of the former for the same money which would procure only one Orleans plumb [...] I cannot decide on the fruit till I hear from you again. -- Besides, I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit. (June 11, 1799)

I love seeing that she was an actual woman with a real personality who lived a life beyond the pages of her books.

So when I finally took my first trip overseas this summer, I knew a visit to Jane Austen's House Museum was non-negotiable. (To my boyfriend's eternal credit, he never once complained about taking an entire day out of his vacation to visit some dead chick's house in the English countryside, and for that I am forever in his debt.)

But don't worry, he got to check an item off his bucket list, too, and see Stonehenge. And, luckily for me, our bus tour included an afternoon in Bath. Jane Austen's family moved from their home in Steventon to Bath in 1801 after her father abruptly announced his retirement from the Church. He died in 1805, and Jane, Cassandra, and their mother remained in the city until the following year. Bath loves Jane Austen: there's a Jane Austen Centre (which is located a few doors down from her former house and which includes a very creepy statue on the front steps) and an annual Jane Austen Festival. (You've missed the boat on this year's festivities, though. Apologies.) Supremely ironic, as Austen famously hated Bath: aside from being the place where she lost her beloved father (a chief supporter of her writing and the person who convinced her to try publishing her novels), her writing stagnated there, and she found her fellow city dwellers insufferable.

But her novels come alive in Bath. It was absolutely amazing to see settings made real that had previously only existed for me in her books.

"[They] set off in good time for the pump-room, where the ordinary course of events and conversation took place; Mr. Allen, after drinking his glass of water, joined some gentlemen to talk over the politics of the day and compare the accounts of their newspapers; and the ladies walked about together noticing every new face, and almost every new bonnet in the room."

-- Northanger Abbey 

"They were in Union Street, when a quicker step behind, a something of a familiar sound, gave her two moments' preparation for the sight of Captain Wentworth. He joined them; but, as if irresolute whether to join them or pass on, said nothing, only looked. Anne could command herself to receive that look, and not repulsively. The cheeks which had been pale now glowed, and the movements which had hesitated were decided. He walked by her side."

-- Persuasion

Of this I was now certain: I had to get to that damn house.

Jane Austen's House is located in Chawton, Hampshire, and became home to Austen, Cassandra, her mother, and their family friend Martha Lloyd in 1809. It was where Jane Austen lived for the last eight years of her life -- when her health deteriorated severely in 1817 (due to an undiagnosed illness that contemporary scholars have anachronistically claimed to be everything from TB, to Addison's Disease, to breast cancer), Cassandra and their brother, Henry, accompanied her to the nearby village of Winchester, where they believed she would benefit from the medical expertise of its doctors. She died later that year at the age of 41, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral. She didn't live to see any of her works bear her name -- Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, published posthumously, were the first two novels to identify Austen as their author.

All six of her completed works were shaped, in some way, at the house in Chawton. Northanger Abbey, which Austen began writing in her early 20s, was revised here, as were Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, both of which were published while she lived in Chawton. Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion were entirely written in this house.

We got seriously lost trying to find the museum and weren't helped by the fact that track maintenance meant that our train line terminated two stops ahead of our ultimate destination. After two buses, a useless map, and a very friendly local who took us under her wing and basically walked us to the front door, we finally arrived.

We came around a slight bend in the road, and there it was, right in front of us. The house where some of the most beloved novels in the English canon were written. And I cried. Oh, I cried a lot.

I was struck by the humbleness of the whole thing. The house is beautiful by modern standards, but not particularly large and not particularly fancy. All I could think while we were walking around was: She lived here. She walked down these hallways. She looked out these windows while she ate her breakfast. She sat under this tree and thought about her day. This was hardly a moment of idolatry. On the contrary, while I had idolized Austen and her works for years, the mundaneness of the house, the connection I felt to Jane Austen the Person while in it was completely surreal, totally overwhelming, and even more emotional than I'd imagined it would be. The house gave a glimpse into her existence that no other artefact could. It's where she lived. Suddenly, Jane Austen became more real to me than she had ever been before.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

The famous first lines of Pride and Prejudice...in Mandarin. 

The museum boasts relatively few items that can actually be linked to Austen herself -- a lock of her hair and a necklace given to her by her brother, Charles, are some of the only memorabilia owned by the House. In the corner of the dining room, however, sits a small, innocuous desk. It's completely unassuming and very easy to overlook. But it's the desk where she sat and wrote.

I cried, guys. I cried over a desk.

This otherwise unimpressive piece of furniture rendered Austen's books, books that I had devoted three years of my life to studying, so small and so tangible. The idea of Austen sitting at this little desk, watching people pass by her window or chickens roam her backyard while she wrote what would become literary classics was incredibly moving in its simultaneous simplicity and magnitude. We so often forget that the books we hold in our hands were actually created by someone, but that's what I was struck by as I looked at this desk -- that these six incredible works were conceived by a very ordinary woman who lived a very ordinary life in a very ordinary village. I wonder what she thought while writing, which people and what events inspired her, what she envisioned as the future of her books. While I'm sure Austen was very confident that what she wrote was good (don't let that whole "little bit of ivory" crap fool you), there's no possible way that she could have imagined the monumental and enduring success these books written at this desk would have.

She definitely didn't see an action figure in her future.

In the kitchen, the museum's curators have set up an area with quills, ink, and parchment, where visitors are encouraged to write messages. Some of these notes are later displayed in the visitor's centre, and they're written in countless languages from fans all over the world. My contribution was "I can't believe I'm finally here." And I still can't believe I was. It was genuinely awesome to see how widespread Austen's fame is, and how much her books mean to so many people. From this little house in a tiny English village, she has penetrated every corner of the globe. And that truly is a truth universally acknowledged.