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:

(Source)
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:

(Source)
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.

On failing to be a contributing member of society

I've been unemployed for nine months.

I graduated at the top of my undergrad class in 2010. I managed to convince the federal government to pay for almost my entire graduate degree. I've published shit. I've presented alongside really smart people at conferences. But I've yet to convince an employer that I possess the skills that would make me worthwhile to hire.

Friends suggested that I write an entry about my adventures in seeking employment. I replied that readers don't tend to gravitate toward blogs in which the author spends the bulk of her time sitting around in her pajamas, drinking beer and watching cat videos on Youtube. I think they thought that it would make a funny and entertaining post, regardless. To those friends: you've been warned.

I knew that I was going to be unemployed for a while when I graduated last October. But I hadn't prepared myself for how disorienting unemployment was going to be. For the first time in my life, I'm not "doing" anything with myself. I’m not even working on anything, let alone excelling at it. I have nothing to show for the last two seasons of my life, aside from a few completed knitting projects and some extra books on my bookshelf. I'm completely directionless. And, much to my disappointment, Nora Ephron isn't materializing from beyond the grave to tell me to suit up and grab my own life by the balls. YOU’RE LETTING ME DOWN, NORA.

(Source)
Bitch, please.

Immediately following graduation, I felt blissfully liberated by my unemployment as I quickly came to realize how all-encompassing school had been for me. I had essentially approached my work with a grad school mentality since kindergarten, and I was exhausted on every conceivable level. Waking up with the knowledge that I had some money in my bank account and absolutely no obligations or responsibilities to mar my day was the most deliciously satisfying sensation I could imagine. I could spend the day doing anything. Or nothing! The world was my proverbial oyster.

Of course, anyone who knows me knows that I quickly started spending days doing nothing with alarming frequency and impressive dedication. Unemployment has unfortunately allowed all of my antisocial tendencies, which school had always forced me to keep in check, to run completely rampant. I can easily go for days without leaving my house. Or without carrying on a conversation with anyone other than my cats. It's not because I’m depressed. It's not because I suffer from some kind of social anxiety. I’m just bored.

Oh God, so bored. So very bored. So bored that I sometimes legitimately worry that my internal organs will suddenly just stop working out of sheer apathy. So bored that some days the thought of having to wash my hair fills me with an unnamed, hyperbolic dread. So bored that a trip to Starbucks becomes about as exciting and novel as winning an all expenses paid trip to the Mediterranean.

I didn't realize how much I defined myself by my studies until I wasn't studying anymore. All of a sudden, I had no conversation starter, nothing to contribute to about 90% of my peers’ conversations, no reply to the dreaded “So, what do you do?” I had been so immersed for so long in being a student that I had never realized how much of my life I devoted to my work. How much time, how much brainpower. I quickly came to realize that academia, even at the undergraduate and Masters levels, had been a real vocation for me, something that very much defined me as a person while also accounting for a staggering and depressing majority of my waking thoughts.

So without it I feel very…purposeless.

Because now I’m defined by my unemployment. And that is literally the worst thing to be defined by. Except for maybe bad breath. Or grammatically incorrect tweets. Or having Nazi allegiances. Now, my interactions with people rarely deviate from the following template:

Them: Hey! How’s the job search? Found anything yet?

Me: No.

Them: Really?! *assumes sympathetic face* Oh…but you're such a smart girl. Something will come along eventually. Don’t you take it personally.

See, the not taking it personally is what I'm unexpectedly finding the most difficult about this whole thing. Particularly when you get turned down for a job that you've interviewed for. Because the subtext there is “Wow, you were really impressive on paper, but man are you ever a lacklustre individual.” Ultimately, the job search is very personal. You're being judged on every aspect of your person, and, until you manage to land a job, are being found wanting. Repeatedly. By numerous people. Most of whom you've never met. Maybe it's that lack of feedback that bothers me so much. I spent twenty years of my life submitting work that either garnered praise or criticism. When I got something right, I was told what I'd done correctly. When I'd failed horribly, I was shown where I'd gone wrong. My entire life had been governed by a learning curve that, upon entering the job market, had been suddenly and unceremoniously shattered. Because when I submit a résumé to an employer whom I subsequently never hear from, all I can assume is that I was too unqualified for the position to warrant an interview. But for all I know, I'm being met with silence because my résumé is an unrivaled, unprecedented dud. (Jesus Christ, I really hope that isn't the case.) The point is that I'll never know if or where I'm going wrong because our job market seems to sanction employers' silence toward prospective employees.

Upon graduation, I wasn't at all prepared for how indifferent these employers were going to be. My university’s career centre preached ad nauseam the importance of being a proactive job seeker and actively contacting business and companies I'd be interested in working with. But they never warned me that the majority of the jobs ads I was going to answer would explicitly state that the employer in question is not interested in receiving calls from interested applicants. Or that many of my proactive inquiries (and follow ups on those inquiries, and follow ups on those follow ups) were going to go unacknowledged. No one warned me that a lot of the time, employers quite simply don’t give a shit. And that most days I was going to feel like I was floating in a sea of self-doubt, clutching my MA as a lifeline, and having my calls for help fall on hearing but completely indifferent ears.

(Source)
Preach, girl.

But I melodramatically digress.

There’s no nice, tidy ending to this entry. I didn't intend for it to be some inspiring call to action for the unemployed, or some rallying "IT GETS BETTER" battle cry. I didn't want to invite pity or solicit advice (Oh, please God, don't give advice. Because everybody seems to have an uncle, or a sister-in-law, or a parole officer whom they're sure would love to read my résumé, and who invariably does not want to read my résumé). All I know is that nine months of unemployment have done some funny things to my head and have started to turn me into a person I don't always recognize. Things have started coming out of my mouth that I'd never spoken prior to being unemployed:

• "Let’s not bother to buy each other birthday gifts this year."
• "How long can I use this same tube of mascara before it'll give me a staph infection?"
• "Are refills free?"
• "I want to cook you supper tonight, but can you pay for the ingredients? I’ll…uh…pay you back…later."
• "How greasy does my hair look right now? Like, passably greasy, or 'there might be things living in it'    greasy?"
• "I’ll just have a water, please." 
• "What’s a synonym for 'skills'? No, I've already used 'abilities.' And 'background.' And ‘experience.'"
• "No, I really don’t need another nail polish."
• "Does this sweater make me look like a hobo?"

Who am I?

I’m Jean Valjean. And jobless. But hopeful.

Hopefully.

On Lena Dunham’s jiggly bits, and why you should be talking about them

I’m not really good at trends. I tend to jump on the bandwagon just before it gets a flat, crashes, and burns. Case in point: I’m finally embracing the ombre hair trend now that it’s no longer cool (seriously guys, why did no one tell me this, omg). I’m notoriously bad at keeping on top of TV trends, and generally only get invested in shows after they’ve been around for at least five seasons and/or just before they get canned.

So there was already a big hype surrounding HBO’s Girls before I even sat down to watch the first episode last month. And for that reason, I was more than a little determined not to like it. But, much to my chagrin, it had me from the very first scene. Because it is cheaper to be included on the family cell phone plan, okay? And my parents should be grateful that I’m not a heroin addict. I found myself relating to this group of girls that I really had nothing in common with, and I was loving it.

Until I saw what can’t be unseen. Lena Dunham. Naked. And, much to my embarrassment, I had an immediate, knee-jerk reaction.

I cringed.

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I cringed! Cellulite – ew! Touching thighs – gross! Boobs that sag – WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

I realized that I had never seen a body like this on TV before. Here’s a girl who looks nothing like the women whose breasts and asses usually grace my television screen. But what was most shocking about Lena Dunham’s naked body was how unabashedly she was showing it in all its glory, badly lit and without being airbrushed. Why isn’t she embarrassed by how her boobs are going to look in that sext? Why isn’t she making excuses for that roll of fat on her stomach? It’s not actually okay for her to look like that, is it? I was mortified by this response, because it’snot the reaction a well-educated feminist should be having. But I realized that I was being as hard on Lena’s body as I am on my own.

And that’s when it hit me that this was the first time I had seen a body in mainstream media that even remotely resembled my own. The first time. In 26 years. Just think about that.

That’s not to say that “fuller-figured” women aren’t being represented on TV or in movies. But the “chubby” girl as an archetype generally serves a single function in her particular plot: to be the “chubby” girl. She’s often apologetic about her appearance, and/or self-deprecating, and/or defensively caustic. Her dialogue, the way she perceives herself, and the way others view her all emphasize her physicality, and more often than not, one of her purposes is to be the foil of the “skinny” girls that surround her. This makes room for a conflation of the female body and the comedic grotesque that is nowhere more clear than in Rex Reed's now infamous review of Melissa McCarthy’s performance in Identity Thief. While he lampoons the movie on the whole, Reed is particularly scathing in his personal attack on McCarthy, and centres much of his criticism on her physicality: in his words, McCarthy is little more than “a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success.”

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McCarthy’s not only irritating, she’s fat and irritating. How dare she. And she isn’t just obese. She’s “tractor-sized.” A “humongous creep.” A “female hippo.” Jesus, Rex. Tell us how you really feel. But while Reed’s review was rightly attacked as little more than a brutal and offensive piece of fat-shaming, his characterization of McCarthy isn’t unprecedented. While McCarthy may indeed be a wildly successful, Oscar-nominated actress, it’s hard to deny that the majority of her roles centre on and draw attention to her obesity. For better or worse, she has carved out a niche as one of Hollywood’s few plus-sized actresses. As a result, her body has become a crucial component of her character.

So in many ways, Lena Dunham isn’t doing anything revolutionary, since Hannah’s “chubbiness” is one of the characteristics that defines her in both her eyes and the eyes of her friends and family. Think of her standing on the sidewalk yelling about how hard it’s been for her to be 13 pounds overweight her entire life. Think of Adam playing with and joking about her belly fat post coitus. (A warning to my boyfriend: if you ever do this to me, I will seriously punch you in the teeth, for real.)

But the thing is: I don’t “relate” to Melissa McCarthy anymore than I “relate” to Angelina Jolie. While I appreciate the fact that she has (deliberately or otherwise) shaken up Hollywood’s body politics, her body doesn’t speak to or for mine in any way. Sure, I can definitely believe that she’s a woman who has worn a pair of Spanx or two in her day, and sure I can commiserate with her stories of undergarment malfunctions (that interview with Ellen? HILARIOUS, by the way). But ultimately her body is just the opposite extreme of the emaciated forms that have been glorified for far too long in Western media, and is equally alienating for many female viewers.

It’s the awkward middle group that’s being ignored. The girls who certainly aren’t obese, but who probably have a hard time finding a flattering pair of pants. The mes and the Lena Dunhams of the world. We’re the ones who are still virtually unrepresented. So I can’t help but think that Lena Dunham is very consciously using her body not only to challenge mainstream perceptions of beauty and sexiness, but also to challenge ideas of what is “acceptable” to show in film and televison.

It’s probably not surprising, then, that Dunham’s dimply arse conjured up a veritable shit storm of negative feedback from the show’s critics. And most of the show’s reviewers do tend to slip in some comment on Dunham’s less than goddess-like form, whether it’s pertinent to their review or not. For Andrea Peyser, Girls is little more than “Sex and the City – for ugly people” headlined by “a fat chick named Hannah.” In Linda Stasi's review for The New York Post website, Dunham’s “blobby body” similarly takes the front seat: “It’s not every day in the TV world of anorexic actresses with fake boobs that a woman with giant thighs, a sloppy backside and small breasts is compelled to show it all. It’s a boon for the out-of-shape and perhaps a giant economic loss for high end gyms, especially in Brooklyn.”

Feminists unite!

And then there’s Howard Stern, who’s clearly in a position to criticize others’ looks: “[Dunham is] a little fat girl who kinda looks like Jonah Hill and she keeps taking her clothes off…good for her. It’s really hard for little fat chicks to get anything going.” (Dunham's response to this asininity confirms my suspicion that we could probably be friends.)

The general theme here is disgust, and a certain sense of “how dare she.” It’s bad enough that Dunham is brandishing her “sloppy backside” across our TV and computer screens, but it’s the fact that she’s completely unapologetic about doing so that’s just too much. And what about all that SEX she’s managing to have?! UGH.

It’s an infuriatingly problematic response, but while part of me wishes we were accepting enough to not even bat an eyelash at Dunham’s body, the other part is really glad she’s making people so uncomfortable. That “blobby body” is shocking to us because with each dimple and pimple, it’s subverting the images of the female body that the media had force-fed us and told us is sexy and acceptable. Hannah isn’t an ideal role model in many ways, but each time she strips off, girls like me, that long-neglected middle group, are finally seeing someone onscreen with whom they identify and in whose self-confidence they can take stock. While Dunham’s obvious talent for acting, directing, and writing shouldn’t go uncelebrated, one of her most important contributions to the industry is having inspired this dialogue about body image. Having provided an alternative to the sanitized bodies we generally see in the media. Having shown what a gloriously average female body looks like. And having suggested that it’s okay for it to look that way. It’s a dialogue we desperately need to be having.

Another dialogue we need to be having? How completely unhygienic Adam’s apartment looks and how Hannah should not be walking around it barefoot, let alone romping in his sheets. Run, girl. Run and get a tetanus shot.

On legacies (or: Telling my grandkids what they should think of me)

My grandfather turned 90 at the end of January. We celebrated by throwing him a big party.

This probably conjures up a very specific image in your mind. Namely of a feeble, wheelchair-bound, largely incoherent old man drooling on himself while his children and grandchildren--somewhat condescendingly--sing Happy Birthday to him while trying to force feed him cake.

But you've obviously never met my poppy.

My poppy is part leprechaun, part Greek god. He drives his car every day. He cooks all his own meals. His singing voice booms louder than the rest of the congregation at church services. He would win in a dance off. He has better skin than I do. He's an incredibly rad dude, and as I (literally) waltzed around my packed living room with him at his party, I couldn't help but feel incredibly lucky, not only because I've been blessed with an awesome man as my grandfather, but also because I've been given so much time to spend and make memories with him.

As part of my birthday gift to him, I pieced together a massive sideshow of old and recent pictures and video messages from family members, set to some of his favourite songs. It was incredible to sift through a lifetime of photographs, many depicting my grandfather as the adorable little white-haired man I've always known him to be, but some showing him at moments in his life I've never witnessed - as a fiancé, a young father, or a five-foot tall Adonis with impressively red chest hair.

I found myself wondering what my grandfather was like at my age. I wonder how he envisioned his life turning out. What his favourite pastimes were. How he went about wooing my grandmother. Whether he and I would have gotten along.

We so often forget that our parents and grandparents exist beyond our very narrow conceptions of them.

I desperately hope that my relationship with my future grandkids is comparable to mine and my grandfather's. So to those future grand kids: I really hope you exist somewhere down the road, and I dedicate this entry to you. I’ve probably become very tired and jaded and forgetful. I bet I talk to myself and constantly complain about my physical ailments. Apologies. Please know that I was once young, and coherent(ish), and (somewhat) less cranky, and that we probably could have been friends:

• Nanny drank a lot of beer in her day.
• In a similar vein, Nanny was a pretty great drunk. She usually didn't get sloppy or out of hand - alcohol just amped up her sense of humour and destroyed what little social filter she had when sober.
• Nanny wasted a lot of time resenting her hair and buying products to fix it.
• Nanny knows what it's like to be pain-in-your-guts, warm-in-your-pants in love.
• Nanny had a pretty nasty sense of humour. She liked to make people laugh and generally succeeded by a) making fun of others, and/or b) voicing acerbic observations that no one else wanted to voice.
• Nanny found her greatest joy in singing. She also used to play guitar, but her fingers are probably too arthritic to do that anymore.
•  Nanny was generally considered to have a pretty respectable rack. She referenced it more than was acceptable in polite conversation.
• Your great grandparents and great-great-grandparents were pretty awesome people, and Nanny like them a lot. Nanny's poppy could yodel. Her grandmother drove a VW bus in the 1960s. Her dad built a 1980 Mini from the ground up. Her mom shared her wicked sense of humour, but was infinitely more glamorous than Nanny and never left the house without a full face of makeup.
• Nanny used to regularly drive around town in her car, singing show tunes loudly.
• Nanny was once reprimanded by a woman in a New York City bathroom.
• Nanny once had pretty wicked road rage. Ironically, she's probably the source of others' road rage now.
• Nanny had a potty mouth.
• Nanny started going grey at 12. Hopefully she has accepted this reality of her body and has finally embraced her silver tresses.
• When Nanny was your age, an acceptable way to spend an evening with friends was to go dancing and drinking at a bar. Nanny hated this activity with the fire of a thousand suns, and would generally pass these evenings pretending to have a good time while silently judging her peers. The music was loud, the drinks were overpriced, the people were gross, and Nanny would rarely get through the evening without getting covered in someone else's beer. She desperately hopes that these evenings are never romanticized as The Good Old Days.
• Nanny never met a pizza, pasta, or turkey dinner she didn't like.
• Nanny spent way too much money on lipstick she never used.
• When Nanny was young, it cost her $10 to get into a movie and the better part of $70 to fill up her car. A fancy coffee could cost over $5. She refused to believe that these prices will ever been considered anything other than atrociously expensive.   
• Nanny spent the first half of her twenties feeling pretty lost and directionless. She'd love to commiserate with you over cookies and a cup of tea if you feel that way, too. She's pretty confident you're going to come out the other end of your apathy.

 (Nanny hopes she overcame this apathy, and isn’t currently living in a carboard box, as she long feared.)

On Spanx and why they are not—contrary to popular belief—magical creations from a mystical land

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Ahhh...liberating.

There are so many moments in my life when I want to take my fellow woman under my wing. To the girl with the lipstick on her front teeth - please let me discretely indicate that you need to check a mirror. To the girl stumbling around downtown in the seven-inch stilettos that only marginally fit - let us go shop the Naturalizer website together. To the girl who insists on writinggg Facebookkk postsss likeeee thisss - actually, no. I don't want to be your friend.

But this New Year's Eve sent my "helper" instincts (which usually lie abysmally dormant) into high gear. This year, we decided to forgo our usual house party by dressing up and going dancing. As I stood by our table, nursing an overpriced drink and donning festive headgear that was going to leave me picking glitter out of my hair for the next week, I felt the sudden urge to scream at my fellow party goers:

GIRLS. SPANX. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

See, Spanx are meant to supplement what your own body naturally has going on. Unless that dress fits you without any underpinnings, put it back on the hanger and back that mother up. Those Spanx have not magically caused you to drop fifteen pounds. (Celebrity endorsers will try to convince you that this will, in fact, happen. Those people sit on a throne of lies.) Oh, and I know you're wearing a pair because they're peeking out from under your dress. Because they've tricked you into buying a dress that's too small for you.

And before you accuse me of ranting from atop my pedestal, let me state for the record: I own Spanx. I have worn Spanx. I feel that little bit more confident when the lower half of my body is tightly bound in industrial strength Lycra. This last point sits uneasily with my inner feminist. And believe me, I question why I invested in a pair of Spanx every time I suffer the ignominy of contorting my body into unnatural shapes to squeeze my limbs into a tube of spandex. Or when I'm navigating the intricacies of peeing through a hole in the crotch of my nylons. (This isn't too much information, people. THIS IS REAL LIFE.)

But as I was watching the endless parade of girls in too-tight dresses strut past me, wrestling with and clearly uncomfortable in their clothes, I wasn't judging them for wearing Spanx (although the very existence of supportive undergarments obviously speaks to a cultural obsession with "perfecting" women's bodies that is problematic and disturbing). On the contrary, it would completely hypocritical of me to condemn Spanx—in fact, I was wearing a pair under my dress as I walked across the stage to accept my Master's degree. How's that for feminism. And I'm certainly not trying to start a dialogue on how we should love our bodies, flaws and all. Because that conversation has been had. And, quite frankly, no one seems to be listening.

What amazes me about Spanx is that they completely distort their wearers' perceptions of their bodies in a way that other beauty products do not. All beauty products hinge on the implicit suggestion that there are things "wrong" with women's bodies that require "fixing." But the majority of these products, whether they be makeup, or hair dye, or high heels, are visible. They're obvious. They make no bones about their existence. You're not fooling anyone into thinking that your lips are actually that red. Or that your hair has zero flyaways. Or that your cheeks are naturally and perfectly flushed. All. The. Time.

The thing about Spanx is that they're supposed to be a secret. No one's supposed to know you're wearing them. They're what's going on behind (underneath?) the scenes, hiding that cellulite that you're not supposed to have, either. I think it's because they're invisible to the outside world that so many women become completely blind to the realities (notice I’m not using the word “shortcomings”) of their own bodies the minute they don a pair of Spanx. Far too many women—especially in the 18-29 age range, it seems—are buying clothes that blatantly don't fit their bodies in the hopes that a pair (or two) of Spanx will be the solution. I've heard this conversation though dressing room walls. I've had it with my own friends.

Too many women have ceased dressing for their bodies and are instead dressing for the bodies promised by their undergarments.

Of course, a lot of it has to do with marketing. You know what drives me absolutely mental? Using girls who look like this to sell a product designed to keep wayward fat in place:

Because let me tell you one thing right now, Spanx. That girl right there? She is not your target audience. I can practically see her hip bones through her girdle, for Chrissakes.

This is not an entry about shaming women, or their bodies, or what they choose to put on those bodies. But please, girls—get to know your bodies (...that phrase was creepy in my head and is no less creepy in print). Get to know what suits you. Get to know what doesn't. I, for instance, know that no amount of Spanx binding is going to make me look good in a pair of tight white pants. And (because I'm not living in 1985), I'm okay with that. There's nothing wrong with being a size 00 (yes, that’s a real thing) or 16 or 67. But if you're going to try to improve the look of your body by binding it in Spanx, at least hold up your end of the deal and BUY CLOTHES THAT FIT YOU in the first place. I don't want to give you the impression that I spent New Year's Eve silently judging the physical shortcomings of my female peers. I wasn't looking at these women thinking "why in the name of God did she wear that dress?" No, I spent New Year's Eve pitying these women, thinking "why in the name of God did that miserable soul think she was going to be comfortable in that dress?"

Because Spanx are lying to you about your bodies, friends. They're making you believe that you're smaller than you actually are. And when you think you're smaller than you actually are, you buy clothes that don't fit you. And when you buy clothes that don't fit you, you end up spending New Year's Eve wearing a dress that's gradually cutting off the blood supply to your extremities. Spanx claims that its mission is "to help women feel great about themselves and their potential." But it's hard to look particularly empowered when you spend your entire evening fishing your dress out of your buttcrack.

So here's what I say to you, Spanx. Sure you made me look a bit trimmer under my convocation gown. But you're also perpetuating a culture where it's not only okay for women to constantly want to alter their bodies, but also to wear clothes that DO NOT FIT their bodies. It's when we wear clothes that do not fit us that we want to alter our bodies. See the abusive cycle of self loathing you're contributing to?

Power panties, indeed.

On re-learning to write

I haven't made a New Year's resolution in a long time. Several years ago, in an attempt to prove--if to no one but myself--that I actually am in control of my life, I haphazardly resolved to floss more regularly. That happened to be the year I got my first cavity. So we can all conclude how successful I was in keeping that promise to myself. This blog was born out of a New Year's resolution to keep my writing skills from falling into disuse following the completion of my MA. It wasn't made until the New Year in question was already a week old.

I feel as though this project was doomed to fail right from its tardy beginnings.

Now that I've lent myself to the powerful first impression that I am an apathetic procrastinator with questionable oral health, let me assure you that neither of these characteristics could be further from the truth. My dentist regularly compliments my teeth. More pertinently, I've seriously thought about starting a blog for months, but have always let my own fears of inadequacy keep me from writing that fateful first entry. "Is my writing entertaining?" I wondered. "Will people actually read this stuff?" I mused. Do I have enough original thoughts to sustain a blog past its initial honeymoon phase?

It's probably for similar reasons that I haven't kept a personal journal since I started university. For the last seven years, I've made a career (and I really do think that a committed student, unpaid and downtrodden though she may be, can consider academia her "career") out of writing, but, ironically, my graduate degree has, in many ways, made me a less assured writer. Sure, I produced a thesis. Sure, I've gotten my material published. Sure, I could write you an essay examining Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection vis-à-vis sexually monstrous male characters in Gothic literature. (To my eternal credit, I actually did write this essay. It will provide proof of my youthful sapience when I am old, senile, and drooling on myself in some nursing home.) But the idea of sitting down to write with absolutely nothing but my own musings to guide me is a new and scary undertaking. I think this is mostly because my degrees taught me to be so hard on myself as a writer. For me, writing has, for a long time, been something to be scrutinized, challenged, and ultimately rewritten. Moreover, it was something that was so often completed with some ulterior motive in mind: to impress a particularly formidable prof; to satisfy a degree requirement; to earn that all-important scholarship. Writing for writing's sake has become a foreign concept to me.

I've found myself in a strange and distant land.

So if you've made it this far, congratulations: you're now part of a moment in history. I have no idea what is going to fill these metaphorical pages, but thus begins my pitiful attempt to stake out what my beloved Miss Austen would term my own "little bit...of ivory."¹ May it make you think and chuckle, and may it always be grammatically pristine.

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1 I'd like to think Jane Austen and I were BFFLs in a past life. She is the focus of much of my scholarly work; without her, my blog would be titleless; and I can't imagine that I won't write a blog entry about her in the future. In an 1816 letter to her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, she compares the limitations of her authorial scope to the vastness of his:

By the bye, my dear E., I am quite concerned for the loss your mother mentions in her letter. Two chapters and a half to be missing is monstrous! It is well that I have not been at Steventon lately, and therefore cannot be suspected of purloining them: two strong twigs and a half towards a nest of my own would have been something. I do not think, however, that any theft of that sort would be really very useful to me. What should I do with your strong, manly, vigorous sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?

The "little bit...of ivory" refers to the literal ivory pages of the diary on which she wrote. Imagine penning one of the greatest English novels in a Moleskine notebook. Now imagine penning one of the greatest English novels in one of these bad boys:

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Ivory notebooks were a more convenient medium than ink and paper, because the writer could jot his or her notes in pencil and then easily erase them. Of course, one can also read a lot into the implied feminine frivolity and impermanence Austen associates with her own writing in comparison to her nephew's "manly…variety and glow." But that’s a different blog entry for a different day.^↩