Watching “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” really is the most conscious thing we can do all week.

The other night, my husband and I performed a newly-established ritual in our marriage. “I’m going to watch the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills now,” I defiantly told my significant other, who glanced up long enough from grading papers to roll his eyes and turn up NPR. “You know, Michelle Obama watches. Her husband, the President, admitted it,” I added. I know this hard fact because I also following each viewing by a bracing read of gossip columns about the Housewives.

But back to my staged rebellion against everything.

“And your professor friend watches the Housewives. With her PhD. She told me,” I shrilled like Justin Beiber before marching into the living room. Once there, I set myself in front of the television, stabbing the remote rebelliously at the TV. I wasn’t fabricating defensive drama at all. I was being real. Housewife real.

Sure, the Beverly Hills Housewives might come off as shallow, anti-intellectual wannabes obsessed with money and eternal youth supplied by a plastic surgeon’s needle. But the rest of us know that the women from the RHOBH are really just socially-conscious wunderkinder inspiring us all to make the world a better place. There has to be redemption in watching this series. My sheer force of furious typing says so. Consequently, I present the three lessons of conscious living. It’s all about the journey, people.

First, they teach us to appreciate our faces. If you were to rewind time-lapse photography on most of the Housewives upper bodies, you would either discover a decomposing rabbit or find that they were once extremely lovely sans Botox and fillers. As someone who is of Housewife-friendly age, I can assert that sometimes our bodies just want to get on with it. Eventually, we all start to treat our skin and digestive tracks with more attention than we ever thought possible. But when we know it can swiftly be erased with the mere swipe of a cosmetic procedure, we learn to appreciate our flaws more.

Bullying awareness from the Housewives

Second, the Housewives provide useful public service announcements about bullying. A recent episode involved the Housewives transported via time machine back to 7th grade. It went something like this: a Housewife hosts a party. Two Housewives decide they don’t like the New Girl. When the New Girl fights back, all hell breaks loose. Dialogue includes things like “Bring it, bitch,” “She’s mean. I don’t like it. Make it stop,” and don’t forget, “Yes, I am a slut.” Really, we’ve all just received an important Schoolhouse Rock about the dangers of middle-aged bullying.

Finally, they promote animal-friendly living. Housewife Lisa VanderPump famously waggles her Pomeranian Giggy all over the west side of Los Angeles. Giggy dines at the finest restaurants. Giggy drinks out of expensive water glasses. Giggy has 37,235 followers on Twitter. Dame VanderPump has raised the bar on animal acceptance. Now it’s just up to us to train our flopping Labradors and unappreciative Persians to appreciate the finer things in life.

Really, it’s like the RHOBV (or Really Hoping Michelle Obama Believes in Vices) are the Mother Theresa’s of the West Coast. You can join the First Lady and me to watch these selfless ladies on Monday nights on Bravo at 10pm.

Sustainable style news from EcoSalon’s West Coast Fashion Editor.

Beauty Does – Defining beauty, or rather redefining it from its traditionally narrow confines, is a charge that eco-fashion editors hold dear. Please join EcoSalon and Groundwork Opportunities, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that supports projects to reduce poverty in the developing world, for Define: Beauty the first annual fashion show that will fund a clean water well for 4,000 people in Moshi, Tanzania. Held this Thursday, September 29^th, the show will feature original pieces created by San Francisco designers Cari Borja, Ken Chen, Dallas Coulter, Sarah Liller, MENK, Kajan Padraig, Retrofit Republic and Daniel Sudar that are designed to show the intrinsic beauty within us all. Beginning at 6:30 pm, the event includes a reception that will feature expertly crafted bites from Mission Cheese and Beast and the Hare. Want two tickets to the event? Just leave a comment below and you’ll be automatically entered to win.

Equinox Fever – The best thing about it being officially fall? We can get serious about picking a piece, or two, from Pendleton Woolen Mill’s magnificently modern and fashion smart Portland Collection.  Created by the newly signed on design team of Nathaniel Crissman and Rachel Turk, co-founders of the vintage inspired label, Church & State and John Blasioli, who designs an eponoymous menswear line, the designers reported in this Month’s ELLE having “their minds blown” by a visit to the company’s archives of hundred year old garments that had been “frozen and thawed to preserve against moths” in downtown Portland. Although the collection’s Native American-inspired motif is this season’s surface pattern touchstone, the unisex line of sweaters, coats and knitwear (prices $68 to $650) are designed “to make it something people would still want to wear 10 or 20 years from now.”

Posing Questions – The salient “Posing Beauty in African American Culture” show currently at USC’s Fisher museum in Los Angeles examines a wide range of media, including photography, film, video, fashion, advertising and internet that, according to the program notes, hopes to “challenge idealized forms of beauty in art by examining their portrayal and exploring a variety of attitudes about race, class, gender, popular culture and politics.” The exhibition includes images of women clad in frilly white dresses and sun hats in 1938 Louisiana, Lyle Ashton Harris’ 1987 photograph, “Miss America,” which shows an African American woman with white face makeup and an American flag draped across her bare upper body, and a striking photo of Michelle Obama taken in 2006, engendering a stirring discussion about what is considered beautiful, both within African American culture and beyond. Don’t miss the panel discussion, “Posing Beauty Posing Questions,” on Oct. 4.

Collaborations for environment and sustainability abound this summer.

Despite contributing to a whole lot of fast fashion, the fashion collaboration phenomenon is far from losing any steam. Teaming designers with retailers like Missoni for Target and the hot off-the-press announcement of Versace for H&M, has even hardened ethical fashion editors like us tempted. Seems like everyone is getting in on the hard-to-resist concept. Happily, that also includes a new wave of partnerships between high profile brands and environmental causes.

Cult beauty brand, Crème de la Mer lined up with ocean saving charity Oceana to raise awareness for World’s Ocean Day on June 8th. In conjunction with a special launch of a blue line limited edition jar of their celebrated algae rich moisturizing cream, the company contributed $200,000 to the charity and produced a mesmerizing film, The Seven Seas Sound Mix. Described as “an ambient journey showing seven remarkable people muse about their love for the sea in a sensory compilation that focuses on sustainability, ocean awareness and the infinite beauty of the sea,” the film is an effective appeal to preserve the world’s endangered oceans.

Outspoken and visionary, Dame Vivienne Westwood has long looked out for the environment as part of her personal manifesto. Announcing last week a second collaboration with the International Trade Center and their Ethical Fashion Africa Project, her latest range of brightly colored bags and accessories will now be widely available on the YOOX site. A short film directed by Juergen Teller that premiered in Florence showed Vivienne teaching her skills to locals in Nairobi. In her inimitable way, she announced that the sales from these bags go towards helping impoverished Africans, but the making of them provides work “not charity.”

Asos, the online fashion brand that is slowly but surely establishing itself as the web’s most expansive fashion presence announces their second Asos Africa collection this month. The first, launched earlier this year was made by small producer groups in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa and is dedicated to creating jobs in underprivileged communities there. Sure to be a hit after Michelle Obama was spotted this week wearing a sleeveless print cotton shirt from the line, if you don’t believe in the “Obama effect” just ask J.Crew.

Emerging style icon, Kate Middleton is well known for her love of mass market retailers or what the British call “high street” chains. One of her favorites, Whistles, has just has launched its first capsule eco collection in conjunction with Ciel, the award-winning, sustainable label. The collection is comprised of eight beach wear pieces in prints inspired by heritage brand Liberty. Whether you like her style or not, she is fast becoming one of the worlds most photographed women.  If she were to decide to wear one of those pieces during her visit to Los Angeles next week, she’d be having an ethical “effect” all her own.

Image: viviennewestwood.co.uk, Kate Middleton in The Telegraph

Last week, Walmart announced (with the help of the Michelle Obama megaphone) that it was embarking on a five-year plan to help America eat healthier.

The plan involves reducing the amounts of sodium, transfats, and sugar in its Great Value line of goods, pushing its suppliers to do the same, lowering the prices on fresh fruits and vegetables to make them more affordable, and building more stores in under-served communities.

The optimist on my right shoulder says, “With the incredible power Walmart has to influence the supply chain, this could have a real impact on the way America eats. If Walmart can get Kraft and other big food manufacturers to reformulate their products, then everyone will benefit, even the 10 people who don’t shop at Walmart.” If people are going to eat packaged food (which they are) shouldn’t it be healthier?” And, “Isn’t a low-paying grocery job coming to your neighborhood better than no job at all?”

Those are the same things a realist would say. Because, well, Walmart isn’t going away anytime soon and until Congress starts doing its job to ensure healthy food and equal opportunity for all of our nation’s citizens, we’ll just have to take what we can get.

The first lady is a realist. She mentioned in her remarks during the press conference that almost half the population of the U.S shops at Walmart each week. Why not go where you can have the greatest possible impact? The first lady is trying to get something done here. Who can blame her for going where the real power is?

Corporations have become citizens and our lawmakers are more interested in blocking the proposals of the other party than in actually enacting policies that will improve the dismal state of our nation’s collective health. This means people who care about such things are put in the position of praising Walmart for taking measures that the company wouldn’t do if it didn’t, in the end, serve their bottom line.

The cynic on my left shoulder thinks there is something terribly wrong with this.

When we leave it up to packaged food companies and retailers to determine what is “healthier,” we’re in trouble. Just this week, it was reported by Marion Nestle that packaged food companies are developing yet another new label that not only lists calories, fats, sodium, etc. but also “positives.” It’s obvious that any industry-led healthier food initiative is going to become another marketing tactic.

Marketing isn’t education and education is what the public needs.

In my ideal world, there would be a giant public education campaign around healthy whole foods, information about how to shop for, store and prepare them, and family-friendly employment policies that will leave people with the time to cook real food. Oh and the farm bill would have to be written so that it doesn’t subsidize the kind of crap that sits on the interior shelves of our supermarkets in favor of healthy whole foods.

I know. I’m dreaming.

The part of the initiative that sounds the most interesting is Walmart’s pledge to drop the prices of fruits and vegetables. Ever sensitive to charges that it squeezes its suppliers to get its prices so low, making it hard for farmers to break even, Walmart execs promise that it will cut into its own profits, not farmers’. The company hopes to do this through supply chain tweaks and make up for lower prices in higher sales volume. If Walmart is so eager to cut its own profits for the nation’s health, why can’t they pay their employees a living wage that will allow them to buy real food, instead of relying on taxpayers to foot the bill? It’s been well-documented that employees of Walmart and other retail chains often make so little money that they qualify for taxpayer-funded food stamps and public assistance.

Add to that the fact that, whatever Walmart says about supporting farmers, doesn’t always play out in real life, as this article in the Pensacola Business Journal about a group of local farmers who have to dole out oodles of cash for a Walmart approved food safety inspector makes clear.

As to the final pledge, to open more stores in underserved areas, Walmart has always wanted to open more stores in poor neighborhoods. In fact, they had to negotiate with labor leaders and the Chicago city council and promise to raise their lowest wages when attempting to open a store in the Pullman Park area of Chicago’s South Side.

Maybe with a combination of low paying jobs at Walmart and cheaper produce (at Walmart) people in underserved communities will be able to buy produce (or at least use their food stamps to do so). But that’s not what I would call opportunity or choice.

One could argue that working at Walmart and being able to use your food stamps to buy fresh produce is better than being unemployed and shopping at the liquor store. But here I go dreaming again: This is America and we can, and should, do much better. Our citizens should not have to depend on the largest retailer on the planet to provide whatever crumbs of jobs and healthy food it chooses to provide. It’s up to society to create opportunity for all. But what’s a society when profit-seeking corporations have the same rights as people?

In a funny take on the parallel universes the left and the right live in, I’ll leave you with some gems from Media Matters.

While the left thinks Walmart is evil in a big, giant Bentonville box that bullies communities, workers, and suppliers, the right thinks that the First Lady is bullying Walmart.

From Fox Business Freedom Watch, 1/20/11:

“This is sort of like Joe Biden saying to BP, give us the $20 billion or we’ll take it? The president, through his wife of all people, says to Walmart, “Start selling what we want you to sell, or we’ll make it illegal for you to sell the other stuff.”

And from Fox Business, America’s Nightly Scoreboard, 1/20/11:

“Walmart pays protection money to the thugocracy. Yes, Walmart’s politically sensitive moves may yield profit, but Walmart has to constantly improve its image as a pre-emptive defense against leftists who hate their success, and hate the company’s resistance to labor unions.”

It’s a funny kind of logic that actually makes a lot of sense, because the truth is, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans really want to regulate business. They just have different methods of making sure it doesn’t happen.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Willem Van Bergen

For Thanksgiving I found myself staying in a yurt near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There was a small propane stove and no running water, but Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving and so we made a concerted effort to eat well.

The stuffing used locally baked pumpkin bread, the sweet potatoes were organic and made without a Cuisinart in sight, and I hand-chopped a cranberry relish. After not finding anything but absurdly cheap, huge frozen birds that surely came from the mass farms of nightmares, we accepted the fact that we would be without the Thanksgiving staple. Fine in our books, as no one was interested in eating “a depressed, fake bird,” as one friend put it. Fortunately, an organic, free-range, local bird was scored at the last minute.

Sitting in our woodstove-outfitted yurt filling ourselves with the bounty of a day of cooking felt perfectly normal. We were, after all, celebrating the most traditional of American holidays.

But apparently the scene was far from normal. In a weekend op-ed piece in The Washington Post, Brent Cunningham and Jane Black pose that the latest of culture wars is being fought in the culinary world, and that “many in this country who have access to good food and can afford it simply don’t think it’s important.” In other words, canned cranberry sauce over orange-infused reductions and Butterball turkeys over hand-plucked birds from the fair the next county over aren’t what the general population is making sure to put on the platter.

If you’ve determined that you’re concerned with good, healthy food it turns out that only might you be criticized for sticking your nose in the air, but you might just be plain old abnormal.

Even the queen of conventional tradition, Mrs. Sarah Palin herself, has taken it upon herself to give the finger to campaigns that would provide for healthier school food policies. If you don’t want your kids eating sweets at school you’re clearly bonkers.

In response to First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program, which aims to reduce childhood obesity, Palin put it simply:

“Just leave us alone, get off our back and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track.”

I, too, like to make my own choices. Fresh over processed, local over trucked across a country, small farms over agribusiness. In other words, against the current cultural norm. However, when a large percentage of the population uses Palin’s self-described “rights” to buy government-subsidized food products predominantly made with high fructose corn syrup and proven to cause weight gain, maybe the idea of being “abnormal” isn’t so bad at all.

As Cunningham points out in his op-ed, “access to and the cost of ‘elite’ food isn’t beyond the budgets of many, perhaps most, Americans.”

So what will it take to make a cultural shift towards better food? Start by accepting the fact that abnormal isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And make sure your kids know it, too.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Well, not so much.

PETA Steals First Lady When She’s Not Looking (January 2010)

Want to be endorsed by a celebrity? Now you can, with the all-new PETA marketing technique “Shameless Theft (TM)”. If your work is in a good cause and you like the idea of, say, First Lady Michelle Obama giving it the thumbs-up, simply steal her image and slap it wherever you please. When a fuss arises, clarify that you’re “honoring” your target by featuring their image (while furthering your own aims without prior permission). Oh, and when you finally back down in a show of “good faith,” be sure to point the finger at someone else. It’s the adult thing to do.

Incidentally, this entire post is personally endorsed by those huge blue aliens in James Cameron’s Avatar. No, really.

KFC vs. PETA: Flaming Silly to Monumentally Daft (January 2010)

As we’ve noted before, there’s nothing that PETA enjoys more than the smell of roasting Kentucky Fried Chicken – the company, that is. Their latest attempts to haul this fast food corporation over the coals? Firstly, PETA wants Indianapolis fire trucks to sign an advertising deal, the same way the fire department has with the finger-lickin’ folk – and secondly, a 5.5 foot tall statue of a gory chicken on crutches, artfully monikered “KFC Cripples Chickens”.

In both cases, local officials denied the requests, citing inappropriate context and legislation and, in the former case, the fact that “advertising on a fire truck could even lead motorists to believe a truck heading for an emergency was just performing a stunt.” Quite.

Lydia Guevara Picks Up Carrot And Keeps On Shooting (June 2009)

Did you know Che Guevara’s granddaughter is vegetarian? Before mid-2009, neither did PETA, but once they twigged they wasted no time in divesting her of most of her clothes, daubing her with camouflage paint and hanging a bandolier of carrots round her neck. “Join the vegetarian revolution” ran the accompanying tagline. Self-proclaimed nonviolent PETA associating itself with bloody Cuban guerrilla warfare? In the fight for animal rights, it seems the first casualty is your own core principles.

Sorry Old Boy, A Machine Could Do Your Job (November 2009)

Poor old Uga VII. The latest in the line of beloved bulldog mascots of the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia) recently passed away, leaving his post temporarily open – and PETA leapt in with the suggestion of a robotic substitute. It’s a fact that bulldogs (originally bred to fight) are so famous for their health problems that the Kennel Club recently voted to change the pedigree standards to breed out its congenital ailments.

That’s PETA’s reasoning for the switcheroo (and we’re sure virtual pet makers Nintendo and Bandai are cheering them on). But why not encourage the University to seek a mascot from America’s brimming animal rescue shelters, guys? Our tails aren’t wagging.

PETA’s Unhappiest Side: Children Yet Again Considered Fair Game (August 2009)

Oh, PETA. However endearingly barmy your antics sometimes are…sometimes you’re just plain frightening. If the image of a throat-cut clown hung upside-down wasn’t graphic enough, PETA members have also been handing out “Unhappy Meals” to visitors of a McDonald’s in Albany, New York, comprising of a t-shirt (“McCruelty”) inside an imitation burger box spattered with fake blood. All this, to children.

Don’t Toy With Your Food: Flinging Fishmongers Catch It From PETA  (June 2009)

Wander through Seattle Pike Place Market at the right time, and you’ll see flying fish. The market’s fishmongers are famous for their sure-handed fish flinging skills, and are consequently much in demand as a dazzling spectacle for hire. When the American Veterinary Medical Association employed them for a motivational conference demonstration, PETA ticked them off in a letter that raged “it’s cruel enough to eat fish, but it literally adds insult to injury to use them as toys for silly stunts.” (Except they didn’t really mean “fish” there).

PETA are fed up to the gills with dead creatures being gruesomely displayed in public. So hey, what about living ones?

Your Name – It’s A Sin (April 2009)

British electronic music duo Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, better known as the Pet Shop Boys, are currently enjoying a revival of their iconic ’80s sounds. But what’s this? “Pet Shop”? Yes, you guessed it: PETA want them to relabel themselves the Rescue Shelter Boys.

If this attempt had been successful, perhaps rock legend Meat Loaf would now be called “Vegetable Terrine” – but thankfully Tennant and Lowe turned PETA down while graciously agreeing that the request “raises an issue worth thinking about” (and we tend to agree).

By no means are all of PETA’s actions founded on shock tactics, infringements on human dignity and general negativity. We like a lot of what PETA stands for – yet we wish it would grow up a little, because what it could do is surely too important to be ruined by what it actually does. That’s our view. What’s yours?

Images: sabianmaggy, ccharmon, mikebaird, sqeakymarmot, Mrs Logic, EatMeDaily, JasonDeRusha,

Keds Champion

Keds, which launched its first sneaker in 1916, has joined forces with Barneys New York and Loomstate to create a new green sneaker which will also come in recycled/repurposed shoeboxes.

Already moving forward with their own Green Label line, Keds recently implemented 100% organic cottons for their shoes along with non-toxic inks and dyes, 20% recycled rubber insoles and shoelaces from recycled plastic water bottles.

Based on Keds tried-and-true “Champion” sneaker, the new merge plans on designing five prints that have 100 percent organic uppers and linings, nickel-free eyelets and 100 percent recycled insoles. Additional triple bottom line efforts include donating proceeds from all shoe sales to The Organic Exchange, which aims to expand organic agriculture.

Stylish sneakers were certainly not made a fashion staple by Michelle Obama, but the Keds/Barneys/Loomstate  line might be inspired by the first lady who was recently spotted volunteering with Jill Biden at a Washington, D.C. food bank in a plum and silver-laced pair made by the high-end French design house Lanvin. (The $540 pair of shoes are sold in select Barneys.)

The new green sneakers from the Keds, Loomstate and Barneys union will kindly retail for $75 per pair and will be at select Barneys locations and online this month.

A nicer price point for those of us not living in the White House.