ColumnWhat defines the new chic? Grit and glimmer in conscious measure.

Over dinner recently, a colleague and I abandoned a hot and heavy discussion about the political zeitgeist for something decidedly more dessert-appropriate: women. The End of Men, the death of the the Death of Marriage myth, Lady Gaga, gay marriage, the endless debates about women getting funded in Silicon Valley – XX as cultural object is too hot to handle right now, but it’s less What Women Want and more What Women Are (and fools who confuse the two shall soon be parted from their money). If Superwoman is mercifully out, so is Single Girl. Women no longer fit into neat boxes, if they ever did: Wife. Mother. Career Woman. Bohemian. Twentysomething. Fortysomething. Old. Nope. Not your .xls, not your funnel, not your category. An extremely palpable swirl of chutzpah and quirk, charm and cojones, rock solid and rock star? Yep. And just in time. “It’s like there’s a new chic going on,” started my creme brulee compadre.

“She’s cool like confident.”

“She’s not afraid to say she wants a relationship.”

“But only if she wants one. Which she might not.” This, with a wink.

“She thinks ‘feminist’ is a pretty word.”

“Aw. Because it is.”

How to spot The New Chic? It’s motorcycle boots in your minivan. It’s courage, it’s eschewing Christmas if you feel like it, it’s not being afraid to be less liked and more respected, it’s borrowing the best traits from the boys and making us all more human in the process.

The New Chic means dropping the fear of fat. Bring on the butter. It’s good for your brain.

The New Chic likes girls, or boys, or both, and sometimes out of order, and don’t worry so much about it.

It’s breaking rules in accordance with her limits, which she knows intimately.

It’s leading the conversation in mixed company; something that can still stun a man. Try it, it’s fun!

Also? The New Chic doesn’t consider singledom a thorny brambles of broken GPS on the proper path to the soul’s completion, formerly known as a wedding day.

“This could go on all night!”

The New Chic often does.

The New Chic doesn’t go gaga over babies by default; in fact, she may not even notice them.

Did you hear? She brags and delivers.

She tells The Nagging Voice to fuck off so fast it scurries.

You’ll never catch her judging another woman with her eyes in group company.

She hasn’t done it all. She hasn’t seen it all. She isn’t everything and everyone.

She might have a hot pink stripe in her hair. Over 40? She still wears it long.

The New Chic is a forever fan of chivalry and that means: she extends it to others including and especially men.

Fact: a good thick moisturizer beats caking on the foundation any day.

The New Chic means walking out the door looking good; not made up, good.

She wouldn’t be caught dead in fast fashion.

She can drive a stick shift but prefers to bike in her heels instead. Because she wears heels. Sneakers. Are. For. Running.

She doesn’t prefer to text with the men she sees.

She is scrupulously honest because it just feels wonderful.

She is on time, every time.

She blurs the lines and doesn’t look back because she has nothing to hide on Facebook.

Two words: black coffee.

The New Chic does not drink Diet Coke. Does not diet (exception: the three hours before a date).

You can spot her because she stands up straight, sucks in her tummy tight, squares her shoulders and doesn’t pad the living daylights out of her nipples.

To err is human, to never brush your teeth in front of him, divine.

The New Chic is loving what you own to the greatest degree but letting it all go just as readily. Think of it as If the Buddha Consumed (and hey, he did). Example: A friend’s grandmother, who is something like a bonus grandma to me, has built a vast fortune in her life, and she has the personal drapery of diamonds to prove it. I’m talking the kind so big, they slide to the sides of her fingers whether she wants them to or not. Not bad for a girl from Oklahoma whose first crib was a drawer. “We never have insured these old things,” she drawled to me over brunch one cold Dallas day. “If a piece gets lost or stolen: eh, so what? I’ve enjoyed it.”

On that note: celebrates old people.

It’s being inspired by men rather than finding them merely useful. (We are all going to be better off for that one.)

It’s having the courage to build towards the best.

The New Chic has better things to do and hires people to help.

The most timely thing about The New Chic, though, is the sheer fun of it.

Your turn.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life.

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The post The Insider’s Guide to Life: The New Chic appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhen trolls invade real life.

Last week, I answered my cell phone while pulling up to a stop sign in my car. I will be the second or third to admit using your cell phone while driving is irresponsible; that’s why I don’t do it. I use a hands-free set. But I hadn’t even had the chance to reach for my set when two cyclists pulled in front of my car and began berating me. It took me a moment to realize this was what was happening, because one was taking a photograph of me with his camera. Flash-blinded, I slowly registered that the other cyclist was actually yelling with a level of smug approaching orgasmic: “What you are doing is ILLEGAL and DISTRACTING! You are BREAKING THE LAW! Do you understand how dangerous this is?” I appreciated the careful enunciation, but it was that last dollop of condescension I found the most delicious. It’s just one more reason to date a cyclist! So I can run him over.

It was true. I’d driven all of one block in a residential neighborhood – mine, and this is important – at the feckless speed of 20 miles per hour whilst on my phone. Even though I hung up the phone (more out of incredulity than guilt), the two cyclists continued behind me for two more blocks, deeply enjoying their special mission. Which is why I can report firsthand that being yelled at for nothing much in particular for two blocks is DISTRACTING. So distracting, I temporarily got disoriented in my own neighborhood and drove blindly for several minutes, pedestrians be damned.

Trolling happens all day online. It’s par for the virtual course. The internet is just full of uptight cyclists with cameras ready to reprimand naughty girls in shiny cars on cell phones. You never know what That Guy from High School will attempt on Facebook, or what angry email may come seething into your inbox ranting about some post of which the sender of said angry clearly missed the entire topic, not to mention point. A lot of times, they don’t even have the right site.

No big deal. But trolling in real life, by which I mean the one that doesn’t give you carpal tunnel? People, it’s time to get on down out of each others’ grills. I am concerned to find that trolling is finding its way even into the social habits of our noble cycling brethren. Perhaps they are an indicator species for the rest of humanity. The weak link, if you will.

I don’t think I’m the only one experiencing this. Our managing editor’s daughter was recently lectured by her school principal – this is elementary school – for having the nonconformist audacity to sport a single feather in her hair. It’s distracting! says the principal. No, it’s personality, and you don’t have to like it, but it’s none of your business.

The world is not out to offend us. Sadly, it is indifferent to us. And it turns out, other people are not just figments of our reality. They move and stuff. Unexpectedly, even!

Continuing in the automotive theme of trolling, because we couldn’t be more American right now: Last week I was at a dinner. I came out to find my car had quite literally been sandwiched bumper to bumper between two cars. Har, har. I marched into the corner cafe and asked around for the owners of both vehicles. No dice, just lattes. Forty minutes later, I was beginning to get annoyed. I called the police, and together we knocked on doors. At last, one hipster came darting out to move the geriatric green sedan backed up against my car’s nose. As he passed me, he preemptively put up his hands in such exaggerated fashion I thought he was crunking and was jealous because I don’t know how to. But no, he was just manning the defense. You’d think I had plans to eat his face. Now, maybe this kid has a habit of blocking other motorists and has developed this defensive mechanism to deflect violence to his person, but I’m going to venture he expected a big can of bitching out.

And then there’s the woman in the minivan who gave me the bird when I actually saved her from a fender-bender today. No good deed goes unflipped.

There have been enough of these incidents lately to give me pause before I go tweet and like some more. I started thinking about all the times I’ve snorted in derision at that one SUV that is the first on the hill to sign up for a crooked parking job. The times I’ve barely held my tongue, wanting to chide a child at the market for acting, unoriginally, childish. The moments where I have raised a fist, imagining what it might feel like to lift just the one finger. Pity it requires lifting a finger.

Maybe that woman on her cell phone needs to be on her cell phone. Maybe the guy who turned like an idiot isn’t such an idiot, just having an idiot moment. Maybe one day you need to be the idiot, and that’s okay. We actually don’t know why people are doing the stupid things they’re doing, and unless they’re putting us in harm’s way, we could care less so we should care less. People are limited, like furniture. Stupidity is as reliable as death and taxes, and more so in some places. Live and let live and live some more before perfection freaks us all out and we need plastic slipcovers.

By the way, the proper retort to all this is not, “But people really are that dumb and selfish. This is why I hate them.” The proper retort is: “I can’t believe you are knocking cycling, Sara. So not green. You obviously hate the planet.”

Let’s keep the trolling online where it belongs. This is practically what the internet was made for. Take that world, I have a blog!

tl;dr Be nice.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life.

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ColumnLet’s talk about rape.

No angry letters to the Ed this month (What am I doing wrong?). But I’d like to address news editor Andrea Newell’s recent piece on the social stigma of rape.

I think often about the things I hope to see happen in my life.

I’d like for therapy to be more widely accepted and used (and paid for by employers and communities, because it’s in our best interest); I’d like for men to be seen as beautiful, not beasts (because they are); I’d like for children to be more properly educated and fed and attended to so as to turn out more emotionally and physically stout adults. I’d like for us to spend money on ourselves and our future instead of on hurting ourselves and sabotaging our future. I’d like a more civil, optimistic, less cynical social welfare system.

And I would like for us to end rape as the everyday thing that it is.

If I were walking down a dark street to my car, and were approached by a man and mugged for my money, I’d be shocked, hurt and scared. It would hurt. I would be upset. I would immediately call my closest to provide comfort in the hospital (if I were really beat up badly), or I would recover at home with my girlfriends over a silly movie and a bottle of wine (if I were mostly just shaken). In any case, I’d feel a proud vindication, a certain defiant justice in knowing it was not my fault, that I’d encountered a sociopath or maybe a desperate guy strung out on drugs, and after some time and plenty of explanations to the bank and my credit cards and assurances to my corner barista that my cheekbone was blue from a lunatic, not a boyfriend, I’d go on with my life. I might be a bit more cautious about where I parked; or I might just buy a bigger can of pepper spray. I would probably tweet about it.

And yet.

If I were attacked in this classic alley-at-midnight scenario society so loves to conjure up when we think about rape, unless I were very exceptional, it might not be the same. In that dark street, the shame would begin. I cannot say for certain; but both anecdotal reference and statistical reporting by some of our best available organizations consistently find that most women never say. And that’s the problem. Would I tell every detail to my friends, my colleagues, my parents, a partner? The internet? Would I tell anyone anything at all? Unlike a mugger hot on my wallet, would a rapist bent on overpowering cause me to internalize my pain rather than share and eventually just shrug it off?

And if, like most women, I were assaulted in a situation less violent but no less painful (and to hell with those in power for their medieval would-be definitions of rape, including comparing it to little more than a flat tire on the road to successful womanhood), I might be even less inclined ever to tell a soul. Was I drinking? Was I flirting? Was it late? Was I wearing something sexy? Am I sexy; am I a woman? These shameless questions are put to our shamed victims, sending the clear message that for a woman, being a sexual being – that is, being a human being at all – is the same thing as wanting sex. Wanting it.

Why should any woman bother to tell at all? The perpetrator will simply go on with his life; while a woman would have no benefit to gain from sharing the ordeal, and almost certainly face judgment of some kind. (If the GOP has its way, this might include investigation from the IRS.)

And so: as much as one-fourth of the female portion of an entire generation internalizes its pain, produces the next generation, and goes on in sickness or in health. And the men and women both judge them for their pain if they are brave enough to tell. In this, we women are still defined by little more than our private parts. Men are still defined by their inherent inferiority. That is, they cannot possibly control themselves. And what of their pain? So, let’s watch it and joke about it instead.

You’d think we could all hold each other in just slightly less contempt.

The facts ought to overwhelm us, and yet Hollywood comedy darling Seth Rogan makes mainstream movie jokes about date rape, unapologetically at that, which we all but overlook. We live in a society where by some measures, as many as one-fourth of women are victims of sexual assault. 25% growth for a company is phenomenal. 25% in a raise? You must be good. 25% gain on your investment is almost unheard of. 25% unemployment is the Great Depression. In other words: 25% is a lot. We should be able to agree that 25% of anyone being hurt is 25% too many. (Note: there has been criticism of the original academic study’s finding, primarily from conservative media, though few would dispute that the modest numbers reported by law enforcement are inaccurate.)

I remember when I first stumbled upon this famous “1 in 4” statistic as a 16-year-old editor at my high school newspaper.

Tom, my editor-in-chief, stormed in from the copy editing room. “25%?!” he yelled, as if I hadn’t yet figured out this new altavista.com research thing. I whipped out the NOW fact sheet and held it to his face. Flicking over the page, he grew quiet. He walked back to the copy room without a word. We published the article, which included an account from a sophomore girl who’d been recently raped by an older male student and decided not to report it because, in her words, what was the point?

That was a long time ago. Not much has changed.

Rather than be examined by a concerned populace and addressed by an appalled government, rape instead enjoys status as an adrenalitic click driver even for the most popular online publications (some of which are little more than cheap T&A gussied up with a few real reporters and celebrity bloggers). And we do nothing. In our voyeuristic appetite, we accept. In fact, we even quite enjoy it as porn.

Rape: these are a few of our favorite things.

What broken down fabric of relationships has unraveled to bring us to such a state? I don’t think it’s the people I know; is it the people you know? Because it’s someone, and I can’t begin to fathom who, but I know we must begin to address why.

The stigma of rape hurts everyone. It hurts women but it also hurts men. We as humans are meant to support and love each other. We need each other. We are all, in our varying preferences and orientations, designed for each other. We wonder in dismay at addiction and abuse, at divorce, at corporate and political corruption, at popular culture’s superficiality, at our own inability to connect in satisfying ways. We judge, and in quiet we hurt. Momentary salvage: we leave ourselves and numb out.

If we want to begin to address our ills, we might start with our most intimate violations of trust, the one that affects a very significant portion of our population – including the next generation. And because we cannot change these patterns overnight, perhaps the best thing we can do to begin to dismantle the overwhelmingly ugly specter of rape from our society is to remove the stigma from the victims.

I remember a conversation with a would-be suitor in college. Over pasta marinara we got into a heated argument about choice. I just couldn’t believe he was pro-life. I asked him if he thought even victims of rape and incest should be forced to bear an attacker’s child. He said simply that he wasn’t sure but that he thought if a woman were raped or the victim of incest, we should embrace her and not judge, because it wasn’t her fault, and that we should welcome any possible eventual child as a gift: a healing balm as the product of an unfair attack. I was furious. My eyes welled with reproach and I abruptly ended the lunch (he was mortified).

I wondered how any man, especially a young, progressive one at a good university, could think in such a way. Yet his statement was so naively hopeful, his voice so full with acceptance, I will never forget the conversation. Of course, the reality is that most women who are victims of rape or incest don’t have the benefit of loving partners or supportive communities to care for them and a child, a product of assault, as an alternative to abortion. And further, women should be able to stand as women; that is, we shouldn’t need a community’s “protection” or “support” when victimized in order to validate our own experience. We should be able to decide for ourselves how best to live.

But in retrospect, his sentiment was innocent, his sincerity so apparent. Here was a man who would stand by a woman with not a trace of judgment were she to be a victim of sexual assault. He plainly said so. And he clearly meant it. And we need more people like that.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life, exploring topics such as media, culture, sex, politics, and anything else. Cheers and spellcheck!

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The post The Insider’s Guide to Life: Rape As We (Don’t) Know It appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnArmed with an iPad. And dangerous?

After a weekend in New York for eco fashion, it was off to Cape Cod with our managing editor, Amy DuFault, who makes her home here with her family: a musician-designer husband, two children and a cockapoo named Mick. They live in a classic New England cottage flanked by two ponds and woods. It’s April, but it’s still quite cold, and the winds whip through the bare trees and howl around the house. Inside, it’s warm and cozy, and Amy and I work on spring plans from the dining room instead of the office downstairs, where we can catch glimpses of house wrens and ospreys in the branches of the oaks and fat gray squirrels scurrying across the decks.

In between calls and ticking off to-do lists after dinner last night, Amy looked up from her laptop: “Sara? Let me just read you this email.” I know that tone of voice well. It’s the tone that comes with sharing a query from a hopeful writer wanting to cover the healing properties of crystals on a passionate case of eczema or the story about how slathering oneself in essential oil of Dalmation sage mixed with powdered placenta can cure the depression. It’s the tone that asks if we’d like to advertise cat psychics. Or perhaps we’d like to attend and cover the trade event in San Pedro about new 1.3763% more efficient copper conductors in industrial incinerators? It’s a dynamic industry.

This proposal was from one Clyle Reed, who suggested we introduce an eco-spirit section led (obviously) by him, and named for him. It was written in English, but appeared to have been improved upon by either a spambot or a drunk Scot. We really couldn’t decide. Topics would include his mother, his childhood, and his expertise in – among other gifts – spirit gathering.

We’ll blame the time of day; Amy responded. “Tell me more, Clyle.” This unleashed a flurry of emails from the Lord’s minion (his actual email address). We fell into an earnest – and loud – discussion about culture and psychology, or more accurately, online oddballs and insanity, forgetting that Amy’s young teenage son was nearby. As we read email after email from Clyle, aghast at what we’d semi-wittingly unleashed, her son ignored us, engrossed in whatever he was doing on his iPad. A few more minutes of our noisy analysis, and he sauntered into the kitchen. “Sometimes I really worry about what the world is coming to,” Amy said, shaking her head. And then we heard it. A snicker from the kitchen.

We looked at each other. We looked at the kitchen, graced by one immensely puffed up child, grinning ear to ear. He croaked “Clyle!” before collapsing into a fit of laughter as we shrunk in horror. The query, so strangely and brilliantly written. The succession of increasingly eerie ramblings, the insanity of which would have impressed John Updike; the perfectly crafted personal blog; the fresh gmail address. We’d been had by a thirteen-year-old, and he’d been audience to the entire progression of his macabre puppet show. Needless to say, he was thrilled by our total mortification. After we managed to make eye contact with him, we explained why the joke – while ingenious – was inappropriate. We sent him to bed post haste, so that we could laugh until we cried.

Kids these days. I remember rolling my eyes in frustration for months at trying to teach my mother how to use email (“You don’t use caps, Mom!”); this child had created an entire supporting ecosystem in mere minutes for his prank. He knew how, he accessed the services and tools, and he did it all in moments for a lark – for free. The internet is now home to one more blog which will never be used again, and Cape Cod is currently host to two embarrassed adults who, while fast themselves, are clearly no match for a seventh grade boy.

My own “kid” brother, who is 25, can text on his smartphone without looking at it. In fact most of the time it’s in his pocket. I’m not so much older than he is, but the rapid iteration of technology savvy – not just from generation to generation but between siblings and a year or few – is remarkable. He’d be an easy victim for Clyle, too.

The unreserved integration of technology by “the youth” scares many people, who fear for the innocence and safety of our children. I’m not one of them. While I don’t hole up in my house fervently watching for signs of the Singularity, I believe the fact that kids use technology without thinking about it – while we are still muttering and marveling over the details of the transition – is a positive thing.

Yes, there are predators on the internet, but there are predators IRL (that’s “in real life”), too, and what today’s kids intuitively grasp is that living online and off seamlessly is a productive, useful way to make life better because they can. They know this well enough to be wry about it, if last night’s missives from Clyle are any indication.

They’ll have to grapple with text thumb and their brains will be studied for changed learning patterns – consequences of change we are only beginning to understand and won’t be able to dismiss. But we should look at this cultural shift another way. One thing these children will not do is waste time. They will have grown up used to living in the present, all the time, and there will be little pause for regret, much less the gridlock and analysis paralysis of our social and political fabric. Jenny McCarthy’s inane babbling about indigo children has it all wrong; these are kids who simply have horse sense with no patience for horse shit. Their brains have been trained to look at reality and now, not myth and belief and maybe, and they’re used to witnessing the results of their actions in real time. We played Telephone with cans and strings and grew up to spin messaging with publicists. They’ve grown up with the iPhone and Android and Google cache, and they’re going to be kicking livid at what we’ve done.

So I doubt the results of this “tech stuff” will be anywhere near as apocalyptic as the cynics fear; I doubt things will even fray. Shame and love and altruism are still effective social motivators, and unless these suddenly evolve out of us thanks to “the Twitter,” will continue to be. Belonging is everything to humans, and our children will wonder why we cared so little about this, and why we did everything so stupidly. While we whine without ceasing about “their” infatuation with instant gratification – texting, Facebook, games – they’re soon going to ask what the kettle has to be so shrill about.

It’s a truly useless cynic who sees a dystopian future instead of a hopeful one. If we can manage to hand them the world without destroying it first, they may just be able to save it.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life, exploring topics such as media, culture, sex, politics, and anything else. Cheers and spellcheck!

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Hi, I’m Sara and my life is one big, fat, unmitigated episode of relentless luxury.

I can explain.

I came to this realization this morning as I was getting ready for work. Yes, work, where I change the world by surfing the tubes, swapping tweets and drooling over sustainably shiny shoes. The indignities never end. There’s me, at 8 a.m., swirling something shimmering and organic on my eyelids with a very soft, very small brush. Fifteen minutes before that was more trial and tribulation in the kitchen, where I was shivering thanks to my bare feet on the equally bare bamboo floor and was forced to reach for my handmade-by-adorable-developing-world-children-of-legal-working-age, soft wool slippers.

Thankfully, my fair trade French press coffee with local cream warmed me up enough to make my way back to my master bedroom where I reviewed the contents of my closet and pulled on all sorts of also soft, stylish things. Layering can be stressful, so it’s a good thing I’ve got my chosen companion animal milling around my ankles, helpfully mewing moral support. Poor thing, she’s soon to be carted off to the groomer’s for an earth-friendly bath and blow out. Like me, she suffers.

It gets worse, this crashing series of mainly soft things that is my life. Each night, if I don’t have dinner plans, I have to cook dinner. That’s the merciless reward at the end of a long day of work, which required getting up before noon, showering in a big glass shower with all sorts of scrubby, fruity, flowery gels and potions, making myself pretty and fresh, and did I mention making myself pretty?

But wait, there’s more!

These things are not stresses or difficulties at all, and of course that’s my point. This morning, looking into my considerately-lit vanity mirror, I became aware of what I was doing. I mean really aware. Makeup. Hair. Products. Jewelry. Clothes. Music and meows in the background, I saw myself in the mirror. The ridiculous luck of it! I’ll say it again, and believe you me there’s neither guilt nor irony, just sheer, stupid, what. the. fuck: the ridiculous luck of it!

Mornings, my cat, Roo, knows to wake me up if I miss my alarm, sweetly chewing my face until I pop out of bed, scoop her up and “dance” with her for a few minutes as I make the coffee. It’s our routine and she expects it. If we don’t dance, I don’t hear the end of it: the digging-to-China-in-the-litter-box-till-4-a.m. gag is a sure thing. What an odd luxury that is, too, the litter box treatment. Odder still that I have a small housebound animal, a pet, with acres of fur so soft it startles me, who loves nothing more than to hang around me all the time. It’s all she knows. It’s her gig.

So here’s yours truly, far from perfect, being honest: I could really stand to be more grateful more often. We all could. Even when we’re tired and sick; even when the mortgage is late. I’m not even close to the millionth person to say this, but the actual, physical moments of life are so spectacular it boggles. That you have that soft brush to caress your face. That there’s coffee and before that, blankets like clouds. Music and food and movement and sex, and perhaps most of all, bills. (More on that in a moment.)

So here’s what I’m wondering: when did feeling good become such a chore? I did not sign up for that.

If you’ve ever groaned about having to apply your “face”; if you’ve ever sighed at just having to pick up the dry cleaning; if you’ve ever grumbled because you couldn’t afford yet another night out and needed to use those farmers’ market vegetables in a home cooked meal, you and me, my friend, we need an attitude adjustment.

Think about all the things that feel like chores for a lot of us: working out, cooking, showering, getting dressed, putting on makeup, running errands, paying bills, and yes, sex. How many moms have said goodbye to makeup except on days when there’s an appointment in the city? How many couples have let their sex lives dry up? How many singles opt for expensive dinners or cheap, unhealthy takeout over cooking up a bite to eat?

Ugh, I’ve got to work out. Yes, moving the body, such an onerous and unpleasant task. Which means I’ll have to wash my hair. Oh, the delicious smell! The invigorating scratching of fingernails against scalp! Steam-streaked smiley faces on the shower door!

Absolutely exhausting.

It is exhausting. Looking in the mirror here, we’ve all got way too much to do, and not nearly enough time to do it. Something’s wrong with this reflection.

There’s a character in the film Friends With Money, played by Frances McDormand, who struggles with chronic depression. Her compassionate husband is a shampoo tycoon and she can’t be bothered to wash her hair. In one scene, against the sunny backdrop of a Los Angeles farmers’ market, her friend (played by Catherine Keener) asks, kindly but firmly, how many weeks it’s been since she washed her filthy strands. McDormand’s lady grows visibly upset and mutters a helpless defense about it just getting dirty again.

In one of the final scenes in the film, she’s in the bathroom with her husband. They’re talking about life and marriage via shampoo and hair, and she reveals how sad she was to learn from him, early in their marriage, that all shampoos are pretty much the same beneath the scents and special packaging.

For her, and so many of us in one way or another, feeling good – feeling essentially human, in my book – has become a chore. What’s the point? It’s as if a collective depression has settled over our culture, like a pedal that won’t quite let up from the pump of the heart. All the wonderful things that define and enrich our humanity, our aliveness, seem with alarming consistency to be relegated to the Chore category. Whether it’s rouge or riesling, we’ve simply taken what used to be Sins and anointed them as Chores. Work, too, which in its own way feels good and enhances the spirit, is a chore for most of us, a means to an end that’s increasingly meaner.

No wonder going green is a tough sell. For Christ’s sake, we even frame that as a chore. Use less, consume less, sacrifice more. Sounds like a real scream. Nothing like inducing images of misery to get folks behind a cause. (The major marketing thrust of the green movement, that is, the idiocy of it, is a post for another time.)

Existence As Chore is pervasive, all right. Exhibit A: We all have a so-called chore at which we particularly excel in avoiding. For me, it’s not cooking. Cooking is a luxury, never a chore – it quells the wired in me. For me, honey, it’s money.

I thought about that this morning, too, as I twirled the mascara wand. (I’m taking another WTF: embellishing eyelashes.) I’m forever thinking of bills as to-do’s – annoying but necessary tasks to be crossed off until the next month. I suddenly saw that my relationship with money is, um, putting it mildly, dysfunctional. Really, those “bills” are tickets to living. The car insurance isn’t a pain in the butt that leads to something great, it is, in itself, great. I’m serious! By the time I got to the eyeliner I was shaking my head at myself in the mirror. Self, I thought, paying bills should bring you joy.

Yes, joy, and so much joy I can’t stand it. I can get so focused on the payment, whether in the form of the last few seconds of Warrior pose or clicking “Confirm Amount”, I forget that the means themselves are wonderful ends, rich and rewarding in their own right.

I don’t know about the power of positive thinking on this one. Sociological shifts aren’t usually a happy thought or two away. And, hey, maybe my radar is bent and we’re all a bunch of chipper chipmunks after all.

If we’re fine and we’ve got it all figured out, I’m happily the fool. But has anyone stopped to ask when, and for the love of god why, we started considering the basic elements of living, of feeling good, of being human, as chores? If we learned anything from crazy pants Nietzsche, it’s that a culture that accounts for good as bad is a sick one. All these chores are not chores at all. They’re part of life, and they’re the better part. They are luxuries.

Image: Mattia Campo

The post When Did Feeling Good Become Such a Chore? appeared first on EcoSalon.

It often feels as if I’m unwittingly caught in a Jane Austen novel when it comes to family wranglings surrounding love and money. In this all too passe yet wrenching scenario, my 81-year-old mother is Lady Allen, the one controlling the purse strings, and I, John Willoughby, a hopeless romantic seeking a kindred spirit but warned since childhood that not to marry well would be to squander my inheritance.

In 1811 Britain, busybody Mrs. Jennings opined Maryann should hook up with the single Colonel Brandon based on the shallowest of traits: “It would be an excellent match, for he was rich, and she was handsome,” said the matchmaker.

And so it has gone for powerless women. Somehow, the famous plotting of royals and courtesans seeking powerful alliances over marital bliss trickled down to Austen’s 19th Century England, eventually influencing my mother and other conventional women of means raising daughters in the 70s.

What did marrying well mean in our mothers’ day? It would seem it all came down to an impressive curriculum vitae and a laundry list of benefits that can now run counter to our emerging eco senses and sensibilities. Here are a few of the ways our perspective has shifted:

INCOME vs. INSIGHT

Sure, the Al Gores of the world have both income and insight, but many single men out there are struggling to find work because the rich, desirable guys running the banks and the corporations have run the economy into the ground. So what’s so wrong with loving someone who shares your concerns for the planet? That’s the thinking of Green Singles, a dating services that connects couples who share more than an important name and a manse in the right hood. They share an understanding of what it means to conserve resources and love doing it together.

DADDY-PROVIDER vs. PARTNER

Perhaps the feminist movement rather than the green movement takes credit for changing our perspective of women as little girls deeded to new landowners once they wed. As Gloria Steinem said in an interview in 2006: “We have to humanize gender roles, which are in any case, the biggest source of violence on Earth. We now understand that a woman’s subordinate position is not natural.” Evolved green couples today work as a team. A woman may have a higher paying job and the man might be a skilled gardener and cook, who brings his nurturing to the table. That doesn’t rob him of his manhood or make him a deadbeat.

PROPERTY OWNER vs. RENTER

Let’s face it: It’s rare for young singles to be able to own property these days. Loans are elusive, price tags and taxes are outlandish, and unless it has solar panels or dwells in the dessert, a property often bleeds energy because of poor planning and deferred maintenance that can cost a bundle to upgrade. Many single people rent out of necessity, others because it makes good eco sense. According to a recent EcoSalon post on the benefits, “If  households shifted a fifth of their spending from purchasing to renting there would be a 2 percent (or 13 million tonnes) reduction in CO2 emissions each year.”

BIG SPENDER vs. FRUGAL LOVER

Would you sell out to greenbacks over green values when it comes to love? Classic golddiggers aside, women don’t want to prove their worth in diamonds, furs and lavish vacations he pays for. At the same time, cheap can be a sign of selfishness that isn’t good in a soul-mate, unless you are selfish,  too, and can enjoy being selfish together. We all viewed miserly Scrooge as mean because he was selective about his giving, despite the fact he helped bring down interest rates by earning money and putting it in the bank. But in the green world, frugal doesn’t have to mean selfish. Remember the old song, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby? For many of us, a hot love session and organic flowers from the garden can relax the body and cheer the spirits more than dead animal clothes and blood diamonds. (That’s not to say an eco trinket isn’t a nice gift now and then. Honey, are you listening?)

SAME ETHNICITY AND RELIGION vs. COMMON GLOBAL OUTLOOK

You might both be Asian or Jewish but that doesn’t mean you will view your world the same way, as it once did, when our ancestors passed on survival skills that allowed us to maintain our cultural identities. Today, marrying well can very well mean your mate shares your global positions on carbon reductions, peace, hunger, rebuilding after disasters, and celebrating nature rather than organized rituals that can divide neighbors rather than unite them. More important than background: Be sure he has a very healthy relationship with his mother.

HER FAMILY PAYS FOR A BIG COSTLY WEDDING vs. THE DIY ECO WEDDING

This time last year, 21 couples in Somalia shared a joint wedding, finding the traditional lavish affairs are too hard to afford in these hard times. “I appeal to the community to simplify marriage by reducing the cost,” said one of the prominent religious leaders, adding that too many young people migrate elsewhere because of the economy. Marrying well begins with the marriage, itself, and costly has never insured success. In fact, more couples are bonding through responsible nuptials they plan together. If there is meat, it is ethically raised and pure; decor and fashions are sustainable; mass transportation is provided if travel is needed; honeymoons are affordable and often involve green travel services. Vow to use less and love more when you take your eco man. This could be the start of something small!

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Images: Aaron, Luanne Bradley

The post What Does Marrying Well Mean in 2010? The Green Perspective appeared first on EcoSalon.

A lot of people talk, but real change requires action. I’m inspired by one person who has made a difference for hundreds of women in Darfur. And he’s only 17.

From his suburban home in Maryland, Spencer Brodsky kept hearing about the extreme dangers faced by the women of Darfur when they leave the relative safety of the refugee camps to scour the desert for firewood for cooking. Women often have to walk miles in their search and risk the possibility of being murdered or raped – frightfully common in that region – each time they venture away. (Sexual assault is a “way of life” for the women of Darfur, and the international political community has been slow to help.)

Brodsky decided to raise money to buy efficient stoves for these women, requiring only ¼ of the wood, so they wouldn’t have to risk their safety and lives nearly as often. He’s raised enough money to send 420 stoves over. It’s a small step towards healing in the Darfur region, but it’s a truly compassionate one and it comes from the heart. We need people like Spencer who don’t allow distance, age or any other factor keep them from doing what they know is right.

Find out more if you’d like to make a donation to Stoves For Darfur. We hope you’ll consider it.

Image: hdptcar

The post One Teenager Makes a Difference for the Women of Darfur appeared first on EcoSalon.

The United States calls itself the land of the free, but you’d never know it from looking at our justice system. In fact, even a cursory review of the direction of our dollars will make any reasonable person wonder what this nation’s goals are for incarceration.

To resolve our great economic, environmental, and psychological woes – to shake out systemic ecological ills – will take an empowered, educated nation. I don’t know if the question is “Can Obama do it?” so much as “Will we remember that we can?” Like many of you, I’m very hopeful that we can draw upon our strengths and work together to implement meaningful changes in the coming months and years – before it’s too late. The prison system is yet another illustrative example of why we must rethink our priorities.

For every U.S. dollar spent on higher education, 60 cents are spent on corrections.

We have the highest number of prisoners per capita (1 in 140), and the absolute highest number of people behind bars in the world (over 2 million people).

With over 2 million Americans in jail or prison, we’re half a million ahead of China, whose population is quadruple ours. Supersize it!

Not exactly #1. For being the most prosperous country in the world, education spending in the United States ranks a paltry #38 in the entire world, lagging far behind Jamaica, Denmark and Cuba…which holds the top spot. Yes, Cuba.

And who are these heinous criminals anyway? One fifth of prisoners are locked up for non-violent personal drug charges. Incarceration is frequently for marijuana or painkiller use; if that seems arbitrary, you’re not alone in being confused. (We don’t seem to learn from our mistakes, however. Remember Prohibition?)

It costs between $20,000 and $30,000 per person, per year to keep someone behind bars, and about $65,000 for senior citizens. You could easily send a few deserving kids to state college for that much money.

You can bet someone is making money off of this: our government contracts management of prisons to private corporations. Corporations need to turn a profit, and the more prisoners they have, the more money they’ll get. It’s big business.

It only makes sense that prisoners receiving education behind bars are less likely to return to a life of crime upon release. Why not spend more on education in the first place? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

We have some big choices to make as a country: it’s clear that education can help to prevent an individual from entering a life of crime. It’s also clear that non-violent drug charges have imprisoned a great many Americans at high taxpayer cost, and the War On Drugs has long been considered a failure. What is the real purpose of prisons anyway: containment, rehabilitation or profit?

Editor’s note: What are your thoughts regarding this information? What changes would you like to see enacted?

At EcoSalon, we believe that living green is part and parcel of a larger cause: one that champions ecological wellness in its full meaning, seeking to integrate all the different aspects of life into a sustainable, thriving whole. Last weekend’s shopping trip, tomorrow’s dinner, today’s interactions with others – “going green” is just one function of being in balance. Ecological sustainability requires that we always seek to examine purpose. And that’s why, when we learn information like this, we believe it is vital to bring it into the conversation.

Image: recursion_see_recursion

The post Imprisoning Our Own: 8 Shocking Facts about American Incarceration appeared first on EcoSalon.