Posts by Ashley:
Write a book– You already know why I probably won’t be accomplishing this, and I’m OK with that.- Visit San Fransisco – Done!
- Buy a house – Done!
- Learn to scrapbook – Done! Kind of! Well, done enough!
- Host a holiday meal – Done! I hosted my family for Good Friday last year!
Listen to all of albums on my iPod– Seriously, who has time for this with all the great new music out there?- Visit Ireland – OK, this I still want to do.
- (Maybe a sub-goal of #7) Visit Dublin on Bloomsday – This too.
- Visit France… again – Yup. Still want to do this.
- Visit Barcelona, Spain – Can you see traveling is a big goal of mine?
- Publish a book (or at least give it a good try) – I count this as done. I gave it a good try.
- Get a dog – DONE! And she is awesome.
- Teach a course at a university or community college – I still think this would be fun, though it isn’t the ultimate sign of success as a teacher as I once thought it was.
Attend another English conference– Eh. English conferences are cool. Conferences in general are way cool, and I’ve done a few of those. So, altered and done.- Read 50 books (for pleasure) – I’m getting there. Kind of.
Make it to State for Contest Play– I quit doing Contest Play. And I’m a-OK with that.- Watch 20 films I’ve never seen before – I really stopped counting this. It’s probably done.
- See 5 plays or musicals – With all the plays I saw and read for Contest Play this year, this is done.
Take a creative writing class– Why do I need a creative writing class? I have a specialization in Creative Writing from a great university.- Re-learn French. Or learn Spanish. – This would still be very useful.
- Learn more about wine and wine and food pairings – DONE!
- Attend a multi-course wine dinner – DONE!
- Host a multi-course wine dinner – This would be really fun!
- Clean out the guest room closet/boxes of files – Done. And we moved, so it’s a moot point.
- Actually walk ALL 39.3 miles in the Avon Walk (and train for it!) – I’d still like to do this.
- Get some artwork for the walls of our home – DONE! It still counts if I make it, right?
- Buy a real couch – DONE! And I love it.
Get Tim to try Indian food (yummy!!!)– This will just be impossible, I think.Begin to collect and edit personal essays for my second book– Again, I tried.- Organize my jewelry – DONE!
- I’m in Boston right now.
- I taught a group of amazingly bright students last year. They wrote quest papers for me that made me realize why I do what I do.
- I’ve made fantastic connections with wonderful people on both professional and personal levels.
- I’ve thinned out my commitments in an effort to be able to focus on what really matters in life.
- I’m happy. And isn’t that really the most important?
It’s Blog Carnival Day!!!
July 25th, 2012It’s blog carnival day!! The best day of the month by far. This month’s carnival is about Women and Film, and our host, Carrie, did a fantastic job putting it together.
So what are you waiting for? Go check it out!
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30 Before 30: Revisited
July 24th, 2012
No, it’s not my birthday. No, I haven’t recently turned 30. But… In light of a lot of recent realizations I’ve made about what it means to be successful – and what it means to enter a new decade in your life – I think it’s probably time to revisit my 30 Before 30 list. Here’s where I get to expand on my successes and alter the list as I see fit. In bold are the ones I have done.
Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. And I’m only 28!
Here are some things I have done that aren’t even on the list:
Photo Credit: Frosted with Emotion
It’s My Life, I Guess
July 23rd, 2012This post was written as a submission to The Last Name Project, a joint series by from two to one and The Feminist Mystique that explores what people do with their names when they get married, or what they are thinking of doing if and when that happens.
I am a high school teacher. And I kept my last name when I got married.
As you might expect, there was a range of reactions to this. I got married in October, so when I came back after the long weekend (we didn’t take a honeymoon right away), everyone asked what they should be calling me. When I told them they could call me what they’ve always called me, I got responses ranging from, “What kind of man lets his wife keep her name?” and “What, are you some kind of crazy feminist or something?” to “ Good for you!” or “I wish I had kept mine.” One person asked me if I was keeping my name just for the year to make it easier on the students. One person looked at me funny and, when I asked him if he had a problem with it, he said, “Well, it’s your life, I guess.”
It is my life, so I guess I can do whatever I want with it. And I did. And, frankly, besides the initial shock, it didn’t affect anyone else at all.
You see, people are often very surprised that I kept my name, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m a teacher. No one bats an eye when famous writers, actors, or other celebrities keep their names. They have, after all, already made a name for themselves, literally. (People who know I write say, “Oh, I guess that makes sense because of your writing.”) But when you are a teacher, your job isn’t seen as important enough to retain your identity for. Teaching is, after all, made for the family life, and lots of people become teachers because they love teaching, sure, but also because they want to have children and teaching has some great benefits: good hours, summers off, great insurance, decent job security. If you’re setting yourself up for the family life, why wouldn’t you want your whole family to have the same name?
I didn’t keep my name because of my teaching. I didn’t keep it because of my writing (most of my work is published without my last name so my students can’t Google me anyway). I didn’t keep it because of my family.
I kept my name for me.
My husband, also a teacher, had a hard time accepting that I would want to keep my name. Dropping that bomb on him well before we were engaged was my way of testing whether or not we would make it for the long haul, and we almost broke up over it, in fact. A few days later, though, he came back and told me he was fine with it, if that is what I wanted to do. When I asked him what changed his mind, he said, “I thought about it, and I’m not willing to change my name, so why should you have to be?” That’s when I knew, for sure, I’d marry him.
Keeping my name has made very little difference in our lives. Occasionally, he cannot check into a hotel room if I made the reservation, and sometimes we get mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. R (his last name). Or, even worse, Mr. and Mrs. Timothy R., as if marriage has deleted me from the earth entirely. Even better is when we get mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. S (my last name); I hang those envelopes on the fridge.
My students don’t even care. Some think it’s weird, and others think it’s cool, but, for the most part, it affects them very little, just like it affects the adults in our lives very little. We thought for about two seconds what we would do with a baby should one come into the picture, and we immediately decided that, since a baby would be a combination of both of us, it would have a hyphenated last name. What will they do with that big name once they’re married? Just like us: whatever they want.
Even though not changing my name has not had a huge effect on our life together, it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I was able to retain some of my identity when I started my marriage. I was terrified of losing myself in marriage, so it was a way for me to realize that wasn’t going to happen. It has helped my husband and me realize that a name does not bind a family together; love does. And what better realization to have when you start your lives together?
Photo Credit: California Cthulhu (Will Hart)
Everyone Needs a Vacation
July 18th, 2012
So I’m taking one.
That’s right. In perhaps the best stroke of awesome timing yet, we’re leaving today for Boston. Our train leaves from Union Station at 9:30 tonight, and by 9:30 PM on Thursday, we’ll be in Boston.
That’s right. We’re taking the train across half of the country. This is either going to be awesome or awful, but nothing in between.
Penny is staying with my mom for a week – because my mom is literally a saint – and we’re going to have the best and most deserved vacation ever. We’re going to see a Red Sox game at Fenway, we’re going to check out the Harpoon Brewery, we’re spending some time on the Freedom Trail, and we’re taking the ferry to Salem. I’m seriously pumped.
BUT! Don’t worry! I have not forgotten about you all! I have some awesome guest posts and cross-posts lined up this week. Some of my favorite writers will be here talking about relationships, rape jokes, coming out, and much more. I have something fantastic scheduled every day I’m gone, so be sure to check in often! I won’t be able to respond to comments, tweets, Facebook messages, etc. very much, though. Sorry!
If you miss me so much you can’t stand it, though, I’ll probably be posting photos to my various social networks. You can see them over in the right sidebar. I post lots of pictures, though, so you’ve been warned.
With all that said, I have more to do right now before we leave than I’ve ever had to do in my life, so I’d better get to it! Have a good week, everyone, and I’ll see you when I get back… on Blog Carnival Day!
Photo Credit: mikecogh
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Why You Will Not See a Book From Me This Year
July 17th, 2012
Many of you know – and even if you don’t know, you probably won’t be surprised to learn – that I have been working on a book for the past year. It was an anthology of essays about how modern women maintain their independence in modern relationships. It was meant to dispel stereotypes of the nagging wife and the wife-as-homemaker as well as to give young women many examples of how modern women are making it work in their relationships. I had lots of awesome writers, from up-and-coming essayists to New York Times bestselling authors. Their viewpoints were all as different as they were. I felt like this book could finally give young, newly partnered women a space to breathe because they could finally see that they don’t have to conform to the standards of our parents’ generation, or the standards of feminism, or the standards the media sets out for us.
Sounds great, right? It was.
But I had to give it up.
I ran into a few snags that I just don’t have the time and energy to overcome. Authors withdrawing or not submitting their essays, an agent who wanted the entire thing to read like a novel without much analysis and who sent me on a wild goose chase to get x-number of “big names” as if there was some sort of magic ratio for these sorts of things (I don’t think there is), and finally an awesome, female-run publishing house that operates on a semi-self-publishing model that would have been perfect had I not just bought a house, rendering the cost of semi-self-publishing prohibitive. Finally, I need to reduce my stress level, and this, as you can imagine, was very stressful.
I grew up with the one and only dream of being a writer and publishing books. I wrote to authors and they wrote me back with the advice you might expect they give 12-year-old budding writers: Read. Write every day. Experience life so you have something to write about. It was inspirational that authors would take the time to write to me. Now, I’m surrounded by stellar writers almost on a daily basis, and they give me the same advice. Read. Write every day. Experience life. And I’m still inspired. I dreamed of a publishing house seeing my work and not wanting to pass up on its merits. I dreamed of Hemingway-style publishing success stories. You work hard, you make the connections, they can’t pass up your cutting-edge idea.
But that’s not how it seems to work anymore. With nonfiction, no longer are cutting-edge ideas enough to publish a book. You need a huge platform. You need previous successes. You need a way to market your own book. More and more, publishing houses are relying on the merit of the authors themselves, not necessarily the books they publish, to carry the book into skyrocketing sales. And it’s all about sales, not about ideas. Not about great writing. It’s about what they think will sell. And it saddens me greatly that the only way a great press, who is focused on the ideas of women and their unique voices, can operate is with the financial backing of the authors themselves, because otherwise the house might not make enough money based on the sale of those books themselves.
It’s like I told my husband the other day. I’m that kid that grew up idolizing Michael Jordan, only to realize once I was older, that he was actually a scumbag, and so were the rest of the NBA players. Money-driven and not much else. The love of the game is gone once money enters the picture. It’s all about the paycheck. I know; I’ve seen Jerry Maguire.
I’m not saying publishers are scumbags. Please don’t misquote me. But the idealism of a child growing up with shelves upon shelves of books, hoping one day to see her name among them is quickly squashed when she realizes that the overwhelming reason most of these books get published is to make money.
So what is that child-turned-woman to do?
I know lots of similar people who stuck with it, and I’m so glad they did. They’ve produced wonderful books that I’ve been privileged to read. I, however, decided to walk away for now.
I somehow got it into my head that I had to do all of these things before I turned 30, or before I decided to have kids. I somehow got it into my head that, if I didn’t have a book deal, I wasn’t a true writer. I somehow got it into my head that I wouldn’t be successful if I didn’t have a book to prove I’d done something worthwhile.
Except then I realized that life doesn’t, in fact, end when you turn 30, or even when you have kids. And I realized that, if this blog, my work at GAB and Care2, my list of work published on other sites isn’t proof of being a writer, what is? And I looked back on notes my students wrote me at the end of the school year. “Thank you for having such an impact on my life.” “Thank you for teaching me that bullies don’t carry the weight I think they do.” “Sophomore year was awkward and awful, just like you said it would be, but being able to come to your class for an hour a day was a relief.”
All of these things I’ve done? All of this writing and activism and teaching and their intersection?
This is worthwhile. This is an accomplishment.
Then it hit me. Writing isn’t a profession. It’s a way of life. It’s a way of seeing the world and analyzing what is in front of you. It’s a philosophy of life and teaching. It’s more than a book; it’s a lifestyle. And I’m living it.
And I don’t need a book to prove that. I’ve already got the proof I need.
Photo Credit: shutterhacks
A Fine Line Between Enough and Too Much
July 16th, 2012I am the type of person who always needs something to do. Ever since I was little, I’ve always needed some kind of project to work on. It’s probably why, even now, I write and keep up this blog and do all sorts of crafts (I even have a Pinterest board specifically for when I need a project to do), especially in the summer.
You’d think that, being a teacher, my summers off would be so relaxing and awesome. They’re not, actually. If I could work year-round, I would, because I hate that summer lull where I spend all day in my office, writing, and usually don’t even bother to dry my hair or put my contacts in. I haven’t bought gas for my car in weeks which, yes, is an awesome money-saver, but it just tells you how little I actually leave the house.
So, as you can imagine, I usually pair the summer lull with lots of projects. Writing here, writing at Care2, copywriting for some extra cash, doing crafts, reading books, writing a book (more on that later, possibly). I get all of these projects going in the summer months, and then, when school starts again, I try to keep them going.
Usually, I fail.
When I start all of these projects, I do a pretty good job of balancing what I can handle and doing just enough to keep myself from tumbling into the perils of extreme boredom. Usually, once school starts, it’s a lot to handle, but I manage. However, when one thing goes wrong or if I find out one piece of bad news, I have usually reached my tipping point and suffer a pretty awesome breakdown. Or burnout. No one can really predict which.
It’s a lot like a roller coaster. Lulls of boredom, and a big lead up to super busy periods, with a plummet back down into boredom again.
It’s something I struggle with. I don’t want to start too much now so I won’t be able to handle it later on, but I also don’t want t sit idly by while I wait for school to start again.
Every year, something has to give. And every year, I can’t decide what it will be.
So I guess I’m looking for some advice. How do you handle stress? How do you handle long periods of boredom and the inevitable rise of busy-ness on the roller coaster that is life?
Photo Credit: Lee J Haywood
I’m Featured!: The OpEd Project Byline Blog
July 13th, 2012
I have had the great honor of being featured on The OpEd Project Byline Blog very recently. They said really great things about me, too! Check it out.
You, too, could have such a great honor. If you’re in the Chicago area and you are interested in writing, check out The OpEd Project seminar on 7/28. I went last October, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done for my writing. There’s also a happy hour afterwards, and I’ll be there, for all Chicago feminists, including the seminar participants (but you don’t have to be a seminar participant to go). Be there or be square.
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Quick Hit: Rory Gilmore’s Bookshelf
July 11th, 2012
If you are even remotely close to my age (i.e. pushing 30), you probably know a little bit about the Gilmore Girls. If you know even a little about the Gilmore Girls, you know that Rory – my teenage idol – always had a book with her. Literally, at all times. This girl made it cool to bust a paperback out of your purse at a boring party. She also, obviously, made it cool to care purses big enough to fit your book.
So what was she reading all that time, you ask? Well, now there is a Tumblr that will tell you! Check it out.
BUST Magazine’s website just ran an article on it, and listed all the books. I’ve included the list below, and the titles in bold are the one’s I’ve read. Warning: It’s a pathetically small amount.
• A Month Of Sundays by Julie Mars
• The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
• Small Island by Andrea Levy
• My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
• A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
• My Life in Orange by Tim Guest
• Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
• How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
• The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
• Nervous System by Jan Lars Jensen
• The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• How the Light Gets In by M. J. Hyland
• Oracle Night by Paul Auster
• Quattrocento by James McKean
• The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan
• Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
• Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach – BONUS! I’ve taught a chapter of this one
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
• The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
• Old School by Tobias Wolff
• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• The Bielski Brothers by Peter Duff
• Brick Lane by Monica Ali
• Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
• The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
• Property by Valerie Martin
• Rescuing Patty Hearst by Virginia Holman
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
• The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander
• Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
• Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
• Fat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
• Unless by Carol Shields
• Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
• When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
• Songbook by Nick Hornby
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Extravagance by Gary Krist
• Empire Falls by Richard Russo
• The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
• Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
• The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
• A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson – BONUS! I’ve taught “The Lottery,” too
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
• Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos by Julia De Burgos
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Time and Again by Jack Finney
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Sybil by Flora Schreiber
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Cousin Bette by Honore De Balzac
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – BONUS! I’ve taught some of this one, too.
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Emma by Jane Austen
• On The Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
This brings my grand total to 29. I suppose that’s not too bad, when you think about it.
How many have you read on this list? Any you think should be added?
Photo Credit: a book diary
Tim Vs. The Ants
July 10th, 2012If you have a house, you probably have ants. No, let me correct that: If you live on the ground floor of anything, you probably have ants. And a whole manner of other bugs, for that matter.
We have a house, therefore, we have ants.
Before we moved in, I noticed a few of them crawling around on the carpet. One of them even ended up crawling up my leg as I was laying on the carpet. From what I’ve seen of ants, though, this was nothing. Usually, I see swarms of them surrounding some nondescript piece of food someone left on the floor. A few ants here and there? Please.
We have a dog, though, and she often eats food and treats and leaves crumbs on the floor. Sometimes, she eats bones that are stuffed with treats. She’ll get about halfway into the stuffing and drop it in favor of something else. We usually leave them on the floor because, well, who cares?
One day, she was looking at one of these leftover bones kind of funny. Tim looked at it and, sure enough, there were ants swarming around the whole thing.
This is what started the ant war.
Tim wanted to get some bug spray/pesticide of sorts, but I won’t allow that stuff in the house. I don’t know why, but recently I’ve gotten really weird about chemicals being used in the house. This applies to cleaning supplies, pesticides, even preservatives in our food. I’m not 100% conscious of all of it, but if there’s a natural way to do something, I’d rather do that. This is for our benefit, as well as for the dog’s. It hasn’t rained here in like three weeks (probably longer, actually), so spraying a pesticide around the outside of the house and waiting for the rain to wash it away would be awful, especially since Penny likes to sniff and lick stuff. A lot.
Tim’s mom recommended we use vinegar to clean the floors. Bugs, apparently, HATE the stuff. Also, it kills them, so that’s maybe an added bonus. So that’s what we did. Tim also hosed down the brick paver patio we have, because I’m sure these ants are making their home underneath those bricks. Spots like that are, after all, their favorite.
Of course, a few days later, all of the ants were still very much alive, but in a different place. They were crawling in our potted plants and in the grass outside of the patio. Within a few days, we could see ant hills in the cracks of the patio again.
They weren’t inside at all, but they were still alive. Now, it was personal. Tim was not going to be beaten by these ants. No way.
Yesterday, Tim donned his battle suit and gathered up his weapons. This time, he chose to use vinegar to not only clean the floors, but also to wash off the patio. He also used two huge pots of boiling water which he poured directly down the ant hills. I’m pretty sure he hosed the patio off again, too.
“You know there’s such a thing as overkill, right?” I asked.
“Yes,” was his response.
“Okay then,” was all I could say, and I went back to my book.
Eventually, he found a new errand to run and the ants were forgotten.
Until this morning. I walked outside to water my plants and noticed that the patio looked a little weird. Dirty, kind of. So I crouched down and got a closer look.
Yup. My patio was riddled with ant carcasses.
Those black dots? Ant carcasses. At one point during my inspection of the patio, a breeze picked up and they blew around, too. It was disgusting, because I really do hate bugs, but I have to give Tim props for finding a cost-effective, environmentally-friendly, chemical-free way to exterminate them.
So. Tim: 1, Ants: 0.
Feminist Odyssey Blog Carnival: Submission Troubles, SOLVED!
July 9th, 2012
In case you haven’t noticed yet, the BlogCarnival.com site is down. According to a few twitter friends who have used the site for some time, this happens quite frequently. That’s not good!
So we decided to create our own form for you to use to submit your posts. This way, we can fix it ourselves if it crashes for some reason. Here is the form, so go ahead and submit your posts right now! I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you have trouble with it for any reason, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Remember, this month’s carnival is being hosted by Carrie at Don’t Be Afraid To Open Your Eyes, and the theme is Women & Film. The deadline is July 18, so submit your posts today!
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It’s not that we can’t have it all. It’s that we shouldn’t.
July 9th, 2012
I have to officially weigh in on the “have it all” debate. I’ve been thinking about it a lot – and I’ve been reading most of the articles in response to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article that have come across my dash. I even wrote something about it in which I applauded Slaughter’s choice to return to her teaching job after her two-year stint in a high-powered career so she could have more time with her family. But even that wasn’t quite what I wanted to say.
The fact of the matter is, in my opinion, Slaughter is right. We can’t “have it all.” But I think she didn’t take it far enough. I think we can’t have it all, nor should we.
I watch a lot of television in my spare time, and although I know that what we see on TV doesn’t necessarily represent real life, I also know that a lot of it does. There are a lot of portrayals of high-powered career women and men out there and, most often, they have one thing in common: they don’t have anything else outside of their careers. And, if they do, they drive themselves up a wall trying to juggle it.
Take The West Wing for example. I know that show has been off the air for a while, but since I am in the middle of watching it for the first time on DVD and it’s a great, well-researched show, and it also represents the same kind of job Slaughter herself left in favor of the family life, we’ll use it. Can you think of one character on that show, besides President Bartlet, who had a really good, solid relationship? I mean, I’m only on season 4, but I cannot think of one. They either don’t have relationships, or the relationships they did have ended. And they certainly don’t have kids, or they don’t see their kids very much because they are always at the office.
The thing with the characters on The West Wing, and any other pop-culture representation of high-powered career people, is that they made their choice. They chose to be a part of the White House and, for the most part, it was OK with them that this was all they had. The same thing goes for life. You make your choice and stick with it. You can either have the high-powered career or you can have a career that is more conducive to family life and the family to go with it. You can’t have both. And if you try to have both, well, you all read Slaughter’s article, so you know that happens.
We seem to be forgetting that this isn’t just a problem for women. This is a problem for men, too. The difference is that men were brought up with the mentality that they have to provide for their families no matter what, and so that is, essentially, the only choice they have. Some break out of that mold and choose careers that allow them to be home more often to help out, or stay home all together, but based on the fact that most women are still doing the lion’s share of the housework, even if they make more money than their male partners, I’m guessing it isn’t all that many.
The bottom line, though, is that men have to choose, too. They just don’t talk about it so often because it is a choice they were brought up knowing they would have to make. Us women, on the other hand, have been told that we can do anything, which we take to mean that we can do everything.
You can’t do everything. Not all at once, anyway. You can, actually, have it all. Just not at the same time. And that means that you have to make choices, and you have to be at peace with those choices. And there’s nothing wrong or unfeminist about that.
If this topic interest you, or if you find yourself struggling to have it all, I highly suggest you check out Undecided by Barbara and Shannon Kelley. I guarantee you’ll find some of the answers your looking for in that book. At the very least, you’ll find help pinpointing the problem.
Photo Credit: Victor 1558
I Need My Husband’s Permission to Pay Bills
July 6th, 2012I can’t even make this stuff up. OK, here’s the story, and it all starts with the fact that I finally have a grown-up driver’s license.
For those of you who don’t know, a grown-up driver’s license is two-fold. First, it’s one of the new-fangled non-forge-able ones that Illinois started issuing well after I turned 21 and renewed my license for the last time. Well, that’s not true, entirely. I had to renew it again two years ago, but since I’m a safe driver, they just sent me a sticker and I kept my old, copy-able license. Second, even though I haven’t lived at my mom’s house for two years, or for the two years right after college, I still had a driver’s license with her address on it, as I lived in apartments and it was, in fact, my permanent address. Now, though, since I’m in debt on this new house for the foreseeable future, it is as permanent an address as any, so Tim and I decided to change our licenses to reflect our new, grown-up state.
Most of my friends got their grown-up licenses a long time ago, because most of them changed their names when they got married. Since I didn’t change my name, and since I knew we were moving to a house in the very near future, I never saw a need to change my license. Now, though, I can finally fit in. And, I finally don’t have to explain to every cashier ever that my license is, in fact, up to date, because there is a sticker on the back saying so. Exciting stuff.
More infuriating than exciting, though, was the actual going to the DMV itself to make the change. We woke up early to get there before the lines got too bad. I called in to the DMV to ask them what we needed for an address change. They said two pieces of mail. What they should have said was two pieces of official mail – utility bills, insurance policy, bank statement, etc. So that was partially their fault, but also partially mine because, duh, I should have known that personal mail wouldn’t work. But, I figured Tim had utility bills with him, so, worst case scenario, I could use those.
We got to the DMV and they asked for our documents. They wouldn’t accept mine because they were personal mail, obviously, so Tim pulled out the utility bills. None of which were addressed to me. Um, ok, what? I own this house, and I help pay the utilities, so why aren’t they addressed to both of us? Of course, the lady at the DMV doesn’t care about this problem, so we leave and go to the car where I ask Tim what the deal was.
“I told you a month ago,” he said, “the utility companies have to hear from you before your name can be on them.”
“I thought my name was on at least some of them!” I said. Nope. Every single utility company needed to hear from me before I could be added. “OK,” I said, “I’ll have to call them today.”
“No, you can’t,” Tim responded. “I have to call and give them permission to add you, and then hand you the phone.”
WHAT?! These companies need PERMISSION FROM MY HUSBAND to add me even though I PAY BILLS, TOO?!
Essentially, yes.
To be fair, if I had called and set up the utilities in our new house in my name, they probably would have asked for my permission to add Tim. (But, would they? Or would they just assume, as a man, he was the head of the household and add him, no questions asked? I don’t know.) Thank goodness, though, that I’m not in an abusive relationship because if I needed his permission to change something about my phone or any other utility and he wouldn’t grant it, that could lead to a host of other problems that would, essentially, keep me in an abusive relationship. It reminds me of that rule saying that people without income cannot get credit cards, which, of course, disproportionately affects stay-at-home moms and, sadly, can also perpetuate abuse.
We ended up driving back home and digging out some documents that had my name on them along with our new address and getting everything worked out, but the fact that I need my husband’s permission to pay bills is really grating on my nerves. Through this, I’ve also come to discover that our bank didn’t change my address on my personal bank statement, just on our joint accounts and Tim’s personal accounts. I also have not been able to get checks from our joint account with both of our names on them, either, but all of this probably has more to do with our bank’s incompetence than anything else.
Still, is it too much to ask that I am able to take some onus over bills I’m equally financially responsible for? Apparently, yes.
And what if anything ever happened to Tim, God forbid? How would I have access to accounts my name wasn’t on? I joked yesterday that I’d just stop paying them, since I wasn’t responsible for them, but what an outdated policy. If I can prove that my name is on the account we use to pay the bill, and that my name is on the mortgage and deed to the house, it should just automatically be added to the utility bill, end of story. But, alas, I need my husband’s permission to pay bills.
What year is it, again?
Photo Credit: My Sweetheart the Drunk
Monthly Review: June 2012
July 6th, 2012
I don’t know if you all know this, but I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing elsewhere. Sometimes, I write things that might interest you, so I’ve decided to start doing a monthly round-up of my writing elsewhere, and I want to know what you’ve all been writing this month, too. Enjoy!
Top 5 From Care2 Causes
These are my top 5 favorite articles I wrote at Care2 Causes. To see all of my articles, go here.
Take Care of Yourselves, Activists – Activists aren’t taking care of themselves as well as they should in order to keep their activism sustainable.
The Ethics of Childbearing – There are many things to consider when deciding whether or not to have a child. Ethical considerations should be among those.
Can Women Have it All? – Can women truly ever balance life and career? Anne-Marie Slaughter says it’s not possible, and I weigh in on the debate.
Title IX Can’t Change Classroom Stigmas – Title IX turned 40 this month, but we still have a long way to go in fighting against the stigmas some classes still hold.
Should Teacher Standards Be Reexamined? – Teacher standards are disproportionately affecting people of color in Illinois, and they need to be reexamined.
Elsewhere I’ve Been
These are articles I’ve published other places.
As an added bonus this month, my essay, Babies Ruin Lives, appeared at The Good Women Project, and on my birthday no less! Don’t let the title deceive you. The essay tackles how I plan to “have it all,” including children. Maybe. Someday.
Top 5 Roundup
These are my 5 favorite articles from other people that I’ve read this month.
Boy Blogger: Media Images Get Into Boys’ Heads, Too – SPARK a Movement
What’s on Rory Gilmore’s Bookshelf? – BUST Magazine
Why an English Teacher Introduced Her Class to the World – The Atlantic
I Intervened on a Man Yelling at a Woman. Did I Do the Right Thing? – Role/Reboot
WATCH: The E.U.’s Breathtakingly Sexist Science Video – TIME Magazine
What have you been writing this month?
Shameless self-promotion! Tell me what you’ve been writing this month in the comments, and include links!
UPDATE: My comment moderation program might have spammed your comment if it contained more than two or three links, especially if you’v never commented before. Solutions: 1) Pick your top 2 posts. 2) Make a habit of commenting on posts here so the software identifies you as a real human being. 3) Email me and I can put the comment up for you.
Submit to the Feminist Odyssey Blog Carnival: Second Edition
July 3rd, 2012The official call for posts for the Feminist Odyssey Blog Carnival: Second Edition is up over at Don’t Be Afraid to Open Your Eyes! This month’s theme is Women and Film, and the carnival will go up on July 25. The deadline for posts is July 18, so get writing and submit your posts to Carrie. Don’t forget to spread the word, too!
If you need more information, check out the carnival homepage here. Happy writing!
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Happy 4th of July!
July 3rd, 2012
Happy Fourth of July, everyone! If you’re in Chicago, don’t stay outside for too long because it’s going to be a hot one. And if you’re anywhere, play it safe with those fireworks!
Regular blogging will resume on Thursday. Or maybe Friday. Until then, have a great holiday!
Photo Credit: daspader
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The OpEd Project Comes Back to Chicago
June 29th, 2012You guys. The OpEd Project is coming back to Chicago with another awesome core seminar on July 28. Some of you may remember that I attended the core seminar last October, and it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. It inspired me to have one of the best years of my life, to become a thought leader in my community, and, of course, publish some articles.
The cool thing about The OpEd Project is that it isn’t just about writing op-eds. It’s about being inspired to say what has to be said, in any venue from newspapers to PTA meetings to conversations with friends. And that’s how change happens.
If you have any interest in this at all, you should attend the core seminar in July. As an added bonus, the Chifems are co-hosting the happy hour afterwards, which is open to all so you can meet the newly-minted OpEd Project Alums, along with leaders Deborah Siegel and Michele Weldon, Chicago feminist Kate Harding, and I’ll be there, too. Super early bird registration ended yesterday, BUT if five Chifems register to take the seminar together, you can get 20% off! That’s a lot! Contact OEP’s Chicago Regional Intern, Claudia Garcia-Rojas at claudia@theopedproject.org for more information. There is also the Pay in Words program that can offer scholarships to people who need them.
This is a GREAT opportunity, you guys. Don’t miss it.
Here’s some more info from the OpEd Project press release. Hope to see you there!
Featured Image Credit: mrsdkrebs
Keep It Real: Teaching Media Literacy
June 28th, 2012
I’ve written a lot about photoshop and real beauty. I covered it for Gender Across Borders last year, and the article was later picked up by the Ms. Magazine Blog. I wrote about it for Care2 recently, inspired by Fair and Feminist’s “This is What a FACE Looks Like” campaign. I even initiated a No Makeup Day with my Fearless Females this winter in order to facilitate discussions about real beauty and why we feel we need makeup.
As a high school teacher, the concept of real beauty is close to my heart. Almost every day, I hear teenage girls talking about diets and idolizing pictures of women in magazines that are so clearly unreal. So when I heard about Miss Representation and SPARK Summit’s Keep It Real Challenge, I was totally on board. Yesterday was day 1, and we tweeted a challenge to magazine editors to use at least one un-photoshopped image in their magazine. Today, we’re blogging. Tomorrow, we’re posting pictures on Instagram with the hashtag #keepitrealchallenge.
I feel like, as a teacher, I have a unique ability – and responsibility – to teach media literacy to my students, especially when it comes to body image. Each February, just after the Super Bowl, I start my persuasive techniques unit, and I begin by showing them Super Bowl commercials. We pick them apart and discuss how they sell what they’re trying to sell. Then, we focus on some commercials for beauty products. The students usually start to realize that the cosmetics industry is making women feel insecure in order to sell beauty products at this part of the unit, but just to solidify the point, I show them the Dove Evolution video:
At this point, my students – male and female – are shocked when they see this video. When it ends, outraged cries of, “Is that real, Miss?” make their way across the room. Some start pulling out magazines from their book bags and pointing to pictures saying, “Is this photoshopped?” or “What about this one, Miss? There’s no way she can be that skinny.” When some of them don’t believe me, I show them the Photoshop Disasters website, and they start to realize that they have seen images like this every day of their lives, and sometimes they don’t even notice something’s wrong with them.
While I feel good about being able to teach my students about media literacy, we still have a long way to go. Most of my students will tell me that they are aware that the images they see aren’t real, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to emulate those images. 32% of teenage girls have starved themselves to lose weight. Three out of four teenage girls feel depressed, guilty and shameful after leafing through a magazine for three minutes. THREE MINUTES. If that’s the case, imagine what happens to them after watching television for half an hour, or a movie for two hours.
It isn’t enough to tell our girls that these images aren’t real. We need to teach about media literacy. We need to show them how the images they see every day are digitally manipulated. We need to teach more about health and nutrition without a focus on the number on the scale. We need to show them more images of women that have not been photoshopped. We need to find ways for them to feel good about themselves, and support and celebrate those feelings.
It’s a tough job, but, for the wellbeing of our teenage girls, we have to do it.
Photo Credit: Photoshop Disasters
Feminist Odyssey Blog Carnival: First Edition
June 27th, 2012Welcome to the first edition of the Feminist Odyssey Blog Carnival! This month, we’re talking about female friendships, and I’m really excited about it. We’ve got some great entries for y’all and I’m sure you’re just as stoked as I am about reading them. So, without further ado, I present to you an extraordinary collection of posts on feminist female friendships!
Movies and Media
Debbi Pless wrote about Don’t Trust the B* in Apartment 23 in her post, Clawing Towards Friendship with Don’t Trust the B* in Apartment 23 posted at Kiss My Wonder Woman!. She shows us how real-life friendships aren’t always about being BFFs in the end. She says: “Don’t Trust the B* might be a silly, vapid, hilarious show, but it’s got some of the most interesting female friendships on television. Just don’t tell them that.”
Carrie Nelson recently had an awesome series at the Bitch Magazine Blog. One of her posts in the series was Visi(bi)lity: Bisexuality as Rebellion: Sexualizing Women’s Friendships, which is all about how close female friendships are often sexualized in the media.
Sophie Standing wrote a great post reviewing several films that portray great female friendships. If you’re looking for some good movies to watch this weekend, check out Guest Writer Wednesday: Big Screen BFF’s — Cinema’s Greatest Female Friendships posted at Bitch Flicks.
Andrea MacEachern reviewed He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut by Jessica Valenti in her post, It’s Not a Book About Travel but Certainly a Good Read posted at Another Day of Grace.
Life, Love, and Romance
Emily Atwood wrote a thought-provoking post called The Effect of Feminism on My Female Relationsips posted at Diary of an Accident Prone Feminist. She says, “I have feminism to thank for some of my closest female friendships,” but she also draws attention to the fact that feminism has caused her to lose some friendships, too.
Margaret Hale tells us why she wants feminist friends in Feminism and Friendship posted at uncomfortablyhuman. She also talks about the problems that can arise with friendships when someone says she is a feminist.
Jo takes a different turn on the theme in her post, Experiences of Loving posted at A life unexamined. In it, she discusses how we see romantic-love as more important than friend-love, and how we shouldn’t fall into that trap.
Avital Norman Nathman found female friendships when she was pregnant with her son. In her post, Friendship: Boys to (Wo)Men at The Mamafesto, she tells a great story about how bringing a new life into the world helped her find a new life, too, and new friendships to go along with it.
Maehem wrote about how she thought she was a guys’ girl, but it turned out she was just parroting society in her post, My friendships with women posted at Life V 2.0.
Rebecca Parker from Ma Raison D’Etre wrote a beautiful post about being afraid to have female friends because you think guys won’t like you if you do. Check out: Believing Female Friends Are A Threat – And Being A Guy’s Girl at The Good Women Project.
Ashley Lauren (yours truly!) wrote Friendships Change and Grow, Just Like People at Small Strokes. You often choose people to stand for you at your wedding who you expect will be there for the rest of your life. In reality, though, friendships grow and change, and it’s sometimes important to let them.
Danielle wrote about similar problems with female friends surrounding her wedding. In her post, Feminist Odyssey Blog Carnival: Female Friendships, posted at from two to one, she finds strength in her husband-to-be, but not so much in her girlfriends, who reject her feminist beliefs.
Terri Givens wrote Women Leaders, Sisters and Friends posted at Terri Givens – diverse thoughts. In this post, she writes about her recent move to DC, and how Gloria Feldt’s No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power inspired her to start thinking about her female friendships in a new way.
That’s All, Folks!
Have you written something about female friendships in the past few months and didn’t get a chance to submit it to the blog carnival? Add a link in the comments!
And don’t forget to submit to next month’s blog carnival, hosted at Don’t Be Afraid to Open Your Eyes. The theme for next month is going to be Women and Film, so get writing!
Dress Codes: A Symptom of a Gendered Problem
June 26th, 2012
As I was moving a few weeks ago, Jessica Valenti published a fascinating article in The Nation about the dress code at Stuyvesant High School in New York and how school officials use the dress code to target female students with certain body types. In the article, she quotes several students who had spoken with local newspapers about a protest designed to draw attention to what they feel is a discriminating dress code. Valenti goes on to argue that the dress code is possibly violating the young women’s Title IX rights by predominantly targeting female students, and ends her article with the conclusion that the dress code is unfair because “It’s not the responsibility of female students to mitigate the male gaze.” She goes on to say:
You find female bodies “distracting”? That’s your problem, not women’s. Society teaches that women exist to be looked at, objectified and sexualized—it’s up to others to make sure that they don’t contribute to that injustice.
The students at Stuyvesant are some of the brightest out there—they want to learn and to engage with each other and the world around them. Whether or not they wear tank tops or shorts while they do so is irrelevant.
I’m glad the students are taking action—though I hope they don’t just limit it to one day. If my daughter were a student at Stuyvesant, I’d encourage her to break the dress code until the administration changed it. Because the real “distraction” here isn’t skirts—it’s is the shaming and shameful way this high school is treating women.
While I agree with Valenti on the point that we – as a society – need to change the way men feel they can treat women, and we also need to stop making the male gaze the women’s responsibility to combat, I disagree with her assessment that dress codes in high schools unfairly target women enough to violate their Title IX rights, and I vehemently disagree that dress codes should be protested until changed.
It is clear to me from this article that Valenti doesn’t spend much time in high schools. As a high school teacher, I can say that dress codes – for men and women – are an absolute must. I teach in a very diverse area where poverty and gangs are problems we face every day. If our administration did not regulate what clothing could be worn in school based on gang colors and symbols, we would have many more problems than we do.
Furthermore, dress codes are often seen as a way to minimize distractions in the classroom. While they do this in many ways – not least of which is eliminating gang paraphernalia from student dress – young women think they are asked to “cover up” because their male peers can’t handle themselves around their short skirts and bare shoulders. However, dress codes in school are just like any other dress code in a workplace. Most workplaces have dress codes that require both women and men to dress professionally. For students, being in school is their job, and it should be treated as such. Asking students to dress respectfully and professionally is not only within the school’s right, it is also preparing them for the world after high school.
High schoolers are at an age where they think that everything is about them, so I am not surprised that the female students at Stuyvesant High School think that they are being targeted. High school students in general think that they are being targeted. All. The. Time. I can tell you all kinds of stories about how I’ve told one student to stop doing something, and then, five minutes later, told another student to stop doing the same thing, only to have student #2 jump out of his seat and yell, “Why you always gotta pick on me?!” It just goes to show you that, when teachers and administrators correct behavior and students don’t like it, they feel unfairly targeted. It’s the age; you were probably like that in high school, too. I would hope (and assume) that the administration at Stuyvesant has and enforces a dress code for male students, as well, and I think some information on that side of the issue would be important in determining whether or not female students were, in fact, being unfairly targeted.
While I do disagree with administrators using scare tactics, victim blaming, and the assumption that young men can’t control their desires as reasons to enforce dress codes with young women, I absolutely agree with a dress code for everyone in the school – teachers and administrators included – that is judiciously enforced. The problem that Valenti outlines in her article is not about school dress codes, but about how society sees women’s bodies and the way men look at women’s bodies. Protesting the dress code is dealing with a symptom, not the disease.
Like Small Strokes on Facebook!
June 25th, 2012
Did you know that Small Strokes has a Facebook page? Now you can keep up with all of the latest gender-related lifestyle and education news from Small Strokes (and the stuff I publish elsewhere) on your Facebook timeline! Just go to the page and “like” it!
In addition to keeping up with the latest and greatest writings of yours truly, if you like the page, I’ll feel totally validated in my fight for gender justice. I know you want that, right? So go ahead and like Small Strokes today!
As always, you can always follow me on other social media. I’m pretty much everwhere. Well, I’m on Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest, at least. 🙂
See y’all on the internets!
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