Branding self-identity.

Everything looks different if it’s pictured in print, on TV, or within the frame of a computer screen.

When I was kid, my parents’ garden was selected to be featured in Sunset magazine.  I had grown up in that garden — climbing the plum tree to reach the ripest fruit at the top, lying on my back in the moss to find shapes in the passing clouds, sprinting down the back steps to fetch my parents bell peppers or spinach or basil for dinner.  I was familiar with the beauty of the garden but also with the dirt and mud, the snails and pill bugs lurking everywhere, and the reeking compost heap in the back shed.

And so when a shiny copy of Sunset arrived in the mail and my parents showed me the images of our garden, I barely recognized it — the lotuses wide open, the California poppies without even a hint of wilt.  Every color looked more vibrant than it did in real life.  The pictures were either very close-up or taken at angles that allowed our tiny city garden to seem to extend long into the distance.  It was our garden, but bigger, brighter, and someone’s version of better.

When it comes to human beings, I would argue that media has an even more marked effect.  Flattering lighting, photography, and airbrushing has been brought to the level of an art.  These phantasmic images can be used to create allure and social power.

As my month-long advertising purge came to a close, I began thinking about how individuals market themselves.  Through facebook, myspace, and other social networking sites, we become our own products.  Nothing is a simple representation of fact; we decide what images and information will represent us to the world.  Check out this article on building a personal brand, and this posting on facebook-fueled self obsession.  The process is even more evident when it comes to blogs and personal websites.

Authenticity: come out, come out, wherever you are.  The modern world misses you.

Protein, pastries, and Plato.

Under the terms of my month-long advertising purge, I can no longer drink milk or eat peanuts. I have also been forced to break my longstanding Subway sandwich habit cold turkey (ba dum ching).

At this point, I’m tempted to shield my eyes every time I pass a billboard, just to preserve a few pleasures. Over the weekend I was walking in my Brooklyn neighborhood with my love when I saw a hand-painted sign announcing that there would soon be a flea market.

“Ooo, let’s go,” said my part fashion-queen, part shopaholic, all butch companion.

“I can’t go now that I’ve seen that!” I wailed, pointing to the sign.

“But that’s not advertising,” she objected. And after a few moments of further deliberation, I was sure she was right (whew! now I can continue my hunt for the perfect sailor dress under $10). What I wasn’t sure about was precisely why this wasn’t advertising. Today I referred to the trusty Oxford English Dictionary, where “advertise” is defined as:

To give public notice of, to make publicly known, or call attention to, by a published announcement in a journal, by a circular, etc., as ‘to advertise the resolutions of a meeting’; and with various elliptical constructions, as ‘to advertise goods (for sale), a child or ring (as lost),’ etc.

Highly unsatisfying. Advertising is much more than a public announcement, and journals and circulars aren’t the half of it. And the phrase “various elliptical constructions,” while humorous, does little to convey the power of slogans (not to mention images, music, etc) routinely used to sell products.

I found this somewhat more thorough definition in the Answers.com Marketing Dictionary:

[To] appeal to a mass audience through the communications media for the purpose of calling attention to a product, service, idea, or organization so as to arouse a desire to purchase or patronize, to give information or to modify the thinking about, to promote the concept of, to motivate behavior toward, or otherwise to persuade the general public to buy, approve, or support the product, service, idea, or organization.

Yes. Advertising seeks to modify our thinking and our behavior. It is not an educational announcement (like the flea market sign), because it’s aim is not merely to inform. It’s aim is to persuade, to create a new understanding, a new reality — one in which the product is irresistible.

To get a little philosophical on your proverbial asses: advertising is rhetoric.

Did anyone else love Plato’s Gorgias as much as I did? In these dialogues, Plato explores the difference between philosophers (who seek truth) and rhetoricians (who seek to persuade, irrespective of truth). Plato likens rhetoricians to pastry bakers: both produce something that is compelling to the senses but which has no real substance or value — no truth. Plato (or Socrates, the real-life character in whose voice Plato writes) felt that rhetoric was a destructive force — one which was chipping away at the foundations of democracy in Athens — and he committed himself to maintaining “purity of mind and soul.” It was Socrates’s insistence on truth that led to his eventual execution.

You read it here first, folks: no pastries = death.

On that note, I’m off to lunch, to find food I can still eat from a restaurant or grocery I can still eat from. Wish me luck!

How my mother made me love my body.

My mother’s mother was anorexic.  As my mom grew, her body became a site for my grandma’s own disgust and self-hatred.

My mom could never eat little enough or wear girdles tight enough to please her.  My grandma’s stinging criticisms and insults diminished my mom’s ability to enjoy food.  Made her worry more, enjoy her body less.

My mom pledged to break the cycle with her own daughter.  Though she dieted constantly and continued to revile her own body, my mother told me I was beautiful throughout my childhood.  And not just that I was beautiful now, at a certain moment, at a particular size and shape — but that I had always been, and would always be, beautiful.

I didn’t believe it, of course.  Our culture scrutinizes women’s bodies, and I scrutinized my own.  I hated my thighs.  I hated the shape of my hips.  I hated my small breasts.

I became transfixed by the images of women I found in magazines.  I wanted to unlock the secrets of their beauty.  At one point, I literally measured the dimensions of these models — both their bodies and their faces.  After careful calculation, I concluded I wasn’t beautiful — no matter what my mother told me.

Over the years, I have slowly, slowly become comfortable with myself. Being femme and performing femininity has allowed me to see my body a site of creativity and social commentary; sex has played a complicated but ultimately essential role in establishing my body as my home.  And my sense of my own worth and my own beauty has increasingly come to rest on my internal values rather than on external sources of validation.

Ultimately, this is what my mother taught me: bodies are beautiful because they are human.  Because everyone scars differently.  Because there are twenty-six bones in a foot.  Because you sing using muscle.  Because of the mystery of an itch, and the relief of scratching it.  Because round and flat and light and dark and large and small can all be gorgeous.  Because they’re even more gorgeous if you use your hands. Because contractions are shapeshifters that bring pain, laughter, and ecstasy.

Because we live here.  Because we love here.

Thank you, mom, for this gift you have given me.  I take care of my body, tend to it as carefully as you do your garden.  I give it air, good food, water, touch, light.  You once carried my body in your own body, gave me life.  It is with joy that I am in your debt.

On Skittles and consumer consciousness.

It was the day after tax day and I was in need of a good sugar high.  I was just about to tear into a package of the new “Crazy Core” Skittles when I remembered: Taste the rainbow.

My experiment this month — to not purchase anything I’ve ever seen advertised — is proving to be rather galling.  A large proportion of the products I routinely buy — everything from toothpaste to facial cleanser to toilet paper — I have seen advertised.  Seriously, try to find a single brand of deodorant you haven’t seen promoted, pushed, and propagandized!

In resisting the siren song of Victoria’s Secret sales (30% off any item — why now?!), I debated whether my experiment covered only the specific items I’d seen advertised (i.e. the Perfect One™ bra) or the entire brand.  Ultimately, though, I knew that every advertisement creates an image of both the particular product and the company as a whole, so I decided that if want to do this thing right, I will to have to avoid the whole shebang (or shebrand).  Sadly, this eliminates many of my clothing shopping options — perhaps I should look into some creative alternatives such as the one shown here?

An experiment.

Dentyne, doing its part to fuck with the minds of Millennials.

I was sitting on the subway this morning, once again trying to ignore the advertisements for beer (you’ll be sexy if you drink this), candy (you’ll have more fun if you eat this), and gum (you’ll be less lonely if you chew this), when I decided my project for the month:

I will attempt to not purchase anything I have ever seen advertised.

One tricky part will be trying to remember what I’ve seen advertisements for and what I haven’t.  After all, Advertising is everywhere.  Ads on television.  Ads on the radio.  Ads flooding your mailbox.  Ads in magazines and journals and newspapers.  Ads on billboards above roads and factories and empty fields.  Ads painted onto the sides of skyscrapers.  Ads dancing and blinking and popping up and invading every corner of the internet.

But even if I don’t succeed at the task, I think the process will help me gain awareness of what I purchase and what goes into each decision.  I don’t really believe that pure freedom exists in consumer societies, but I do think that we can create room for awareness and defiance.  That is the goal of my little experiment.

Multiple choice.

What has highfemme been up to for the last however-many weeks?  Was it:

a) Falling from anti-consumerist grace.

b) Baking 5 dozen cookies, pastries, and cupcakes.

c) Doing femme organizing work to bring together countless brilliant and queertastic ladies for fun, creativity, and stereotype-busting.

d) Falling even more deeply in love with her handsome butch.

Bet you can guess.  Yeah, it’s all of the above.  And then some.  Commentary, in brief: a) ah, those pesky recession sales and irresistible knee-high boots; b) with homemade cream cheese frosting, no less;  c) femmes rock;  d) I am so fucking lucky to have her in my life; and e) all I want for my birthday is more sleep.

xoxo

me

And many happy returns…

Wishing you all a year full of insight, intrigue, and things that sparkle.

Let 2009 be the Year of the Femme.

Queer dance party (to go)!

I cannot count the number of times I have danced around my living room in solidarity with this video.

Ethical community.

“We do not want to be hated for who we are, where we come from, and what we do.” — A prominent queer femme activist.

Wait. You don’t want to be hated for what you do? There seems to be an underlying assumption here that “we” only includes the honorable ones, the ones who are out there fighting the good queer fight, challenging outdated and oppressive assumptions, defending the most vulnerable and disenfranchised among us — and, moreover, spreading kindness and charity along the way.

But the queer community, like any other, is made up of good, bad, and — mostly, if we’re honest — complicated characters. I don’t think we should hate each other for instances of bad behavior, but I certainly think we should be discerning and explicit about what we expect from one another. No matter how talented and devoted an activist, no matter how brilliant a social commentator, no matter how attractive or intelligent a person, people — femmes and feminists included — fail.

And when “what we do” just isn’t right — when a person spouts racist invective or unexamined class assumptions, or is emotionally or physically abusive, or crosses sexual boundaries, or acts in ways that fly in the face of common sense and shared values — then I would argue that it is the right and the obligation of the community to hold our own accountable.

I don’t think of community as a group of people behaving as they please with mutual agreement not to judge or even react to unethical or destructive acts. I envision community as a dynamic, diverse network of people who are deeply committed to interrelated goals and who rely on one another to encourage and — if necessary — enforce behavior that leads us towards those goals.

We have to build trust if we want to build solidarity.

Creative defiance.

In honor of the holiday season and the upcoming opportunity to make good in the New Year, I wanted to share a few ideas for how to perform femininity and defy consumerism in one fell swoop — and to invite you to post some your own.

Make it yourself. Consumerism depresses creativity. We have thousands upon thousands of options, but product has been dissociated from process. I invite you, dear readers, to exercise your creative capacities. What would you be wearing right now if you let your imagination replace the images advertising has fed you? What colors and textures and shapes would you use? What could you communicate about who you are, how you feel, what’s important to you?

Whatever your skill level, it’s worth trying your hand at sewing clothing, making jewelry, knitting & crocheting, even mixing makeup from scratch. You’re capable of more than you think. Instructables and wikihow are terrific resources to get the creative juices flowing. And if you really prefer to leave the seam stitching to someone else, consider arranging a trade with a friend in need of your particular skills. Homemade dress for tax completion, anyone?

Recycle. I’m big on donating used clothing to thrift shops (especially for a good cause, like Housing Works here in New York), but I also love me a good clothing swap party. So get together some friends and let the fashion remix begin. I’m also known for slicing and splicing old dresses and tying tees into tube tops, although I have to admit the results vary (sadly my local library doesn’t carry this book). An awesome project (and present-making goldmine) is silk screening onto old skirts, skirts, and choice undergarments. Check out this great tutorial (sorry, no undergarments pictured, folks).

Invent and innovate. Got flowers (real or faux)? Wear ‘em on the lapel of your pea coat or pin those babies in your lovely locks. And, ooo honey, that scarf over there was meant to be a wrap-around skirt. There are most likely things all over your house that could be transformed into femme fashion. A friend of mine recently told me that she’s planning to make a dress from some old curtains (see dramatic pre-enactment). For my part, I have some orphaned earrings that could come together as a fabulous charm bracelet.

Mix and match. I know you haven’t worn that gray dress in ages, but what if you paired it with this red patent belt? The billowing silk blouse in the back of the closet is dying to meet your hot pink pencil skirt. And have you tried your sensible black slacks with that abandoned pair of periwinkle stilettos? My point is, you handpicked every garment that’s hanging in your closet right now. Isn’t taking a new look at your fabulous finds of yesterday a better bet than picking your way through the clothing racks downtown?

Hope these ideas are helpful. It’s an ongoing, yet welcome, challenge for me to think about consumerism through the lens of high femme, and vice versa. I’d love to hear your thoughts and share strategies on how to ensure we can play with gender without playing into the very systems we hope to question. I welcome anyone with self-fashioned items to show and tell — I’ll gladly post your inspirational examples.