The world has lost a great milliner and a cool lady.
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Modern Farmer has an incredible piece by an undocumented farm worker, the first in a series:
The work is hard — but many jobs are hard. The thing that bothers me more is the low pay. With cherries, you earn $7 for each box, and I’ll fill 30 boxes in a day — about $210 a day. For blueberries, I’ll do 25 containers for up to $5 each one — $125 a day. With grapes, you make 30 cents for each carton, and I can do 400 cartons a day – $120 a day. Tomatoes are the worst paid: I’ll pick 100 for 62 cents a bucket, or about $62 a day. I don’t do tomatoes much anymore. It’s heavy work, you have to bend over, run to turn in your baskets, and your back hurts. I say I like tomatoes — in a salad. Ha. With a lot of the crops, the bosses keep track of your haul by giving you a card, and punching it every time you turn in a basket.
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This week’s Social Q’s column is notable for having the most non-problems in one place ever.
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What no one tells you about dramatic weight loss. Mostly about extra skin, but also touches on the ideas Kate Harding expressed in “The Fantasy of Being Thin,” which is always a hell of a read.
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Rob Ford, explained. Talking points, if you’re out of free NYTimes articles after the last one: racism, Ford’s rampant alcoholism, and why he’s lodged in Toronto’s colon in the first place. Or you can read this article on how the Toronto Star got the video.
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Worth it: The Hairpin’s Love Actually fanfic series.
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Sweden is enforcing the Bechdel test.
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The other Chris Martin:
And then here we are talking about painting. Painters should shut up and paint and when we stop painting we should dance or have sex or get a massage or take a shower and we shouldn’t be talking about painting. But here we are talking about painting endlessly, and of course the part about painting that we all love is the part that nobody gets to by talking about it. So, yeah, I got all these books about art and I love art and I love the history of art and I’m always interested in looking at paintings. Any kind of paintings are interesting to me. You show me a painting in a barbershop, a painting by some kid, any painting. I love paintings.
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Laurie Anderson says goodbye to Lou Reed, it’s unbelievably beautiful and touching.
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If it seems like The Toast gives too much Link Roundup! space to Roxane Gay, she needs to stop writing such interesting things.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Lady, if the worst your son has to deal with is that people comment on his height, you guys have it fucking made.
I have abnormally tall sons. Especially the first, who’s 18 now and tops his abnormally tall dad by an inch or so. Ya know what he says to the eight million people who tell him he’s tall, has gotten tall, is a giant, must like basketball, etc? “Yeah!” or “Thanks” depending on the context.
BECAUSE IT’S NOT THAT BIG A DEAL.
Sure, every time we head to his great-aunt’s house for Passover, we bet on how many “you’re so tall!” comments he’ll get versus “how’s school this year?” comments, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t learned how to just accept that as a facet of his life, and hardly an onerous one at that.
The younger one’s in the midst of a growth spurt, and really, it’s a good thing. Because now people can start in with all the ‘tall!’ comments to balance out the ‘braces!’ and ‘how’s school?’ ones. Gives him a little variety in the chit-chat.
Send him to Holland, they’re all goddamn giants here.
…so you’re saying I should move to Holland?
GO BE WITH YOUR OWN KIND
Average height of a man is 6′ and of a woman is 5’7″? MY PEOPLE!
It is really noticeable how damn tall everyone is. I’m about 5’5″ and I constantly come up to about everyone’s shoulder. It’ll be fun when I start teaching and have a crowd of giant undergrads to try and impress…
I grew up in a place chock-a-block with Dutch settlers (and have Dutch heritage myself). My 5′ 10″ was totally normal there–it took moving to a city with hardly any Dutch people to feel tall.
I always felt short, so it’s just that everyone is slightly taller than that, but I have a friend who at about 6’2″ is really tall in his home country (Romania). Moving to Holland where a good chunk of the male population is his height or taller was a bit startling for him.
My partner’s family is 100% dutch and 100% short, so… It’s probably good we’re all in Australia?
There are short Dutch people! I’ve met a few. It’s just that the average is well, lanky.
I’m a 37 yr old 5’9 Indian woman. My relatives still comment about how tall I am and ask if I’ve grown any in the last five years, and would I consider modelling as a career (currently unemployed scientist)? A simple hello would suffice.
Oh how glorious for you! (And how depressing for my sons in the future – they really don’t like basketball all that much, but can the relatives get that past their brains? Sigh.)
In their stead, next time you see them, take this with you: Hello, doc_dk! Nice to see you looking just the same as you always do. I hope life is treating you well.
Yeah, I’ve been abnormally tall since about second grade and people feel compelled to point it out to me all the time, which is annoying for sure, but in the Hierarchy of Problems (just my own personal problems, not even counting World Hunger or anything) it’s pretty damn low.
Also the answer gets at the real point – no one knows what to say to kids, at all, ever, anyway. So even if he wasn’t tall it would be some other dumb thing that the kid doesn’t know how to answer. He’s nine! Mumbling is a perfectly acceptable response.
You can get around the NYT thing by using an incognito window if you’re a horrible paper-stealing sort of a grad student.
Ahahahahahaha the Social Q’s column… (nice placement right under the farm worker’s confessional btw). Tipping is hard! It’s awkward when people tell my son he’s tall! Ugh, old people want to talk to me! I’m overthinking congratulating my friend on his wedding! Who are these people who see these things as issues worth writing to the New York Times about? Can I have your life, if the biggest thing you have to be concerned about right now is how much to tip the barista?
The “old people want to talk to me” one is maybe the most insane. LIFE IS SO HARD.
Right! You seriously can’t take a few minutes out of your very busy and important life to chat with people living in a retirement home who are most likely very, very bored and lonely? You felt so irritated by the fact that the hostess didn’t personally turn away everyone who wanted to say hello that you wrote to the NYT to have this columnist validate your feelings and tell you you were right in a national newspaper? Cripes.
Except he/she wasn’t right, he/she was just a massive a-hole.
Oh yeah, no, I agree, I meant that the writer WANTED the columnist to say he/she was right, not that he/she was actually right. “Massive a-hole” is correct.
As far as I’m concerned, the WHOLE POINT of eating at my grandmother’s retirement home is so she can show us off. Look! I have visitors! I am cared about, and they brought me news of youth and vigour! I am so cared for, in fact, that people will willingly come and eat this food rather than going for sushi! My grandmother makes me stop at every table so she can tell them I’m a lawyer.
I mean, my grandmother is a huge show-off, so YMMV. She put the flowers I sent her for Christmas in the lobby “so everyone could enjoy them”. And before anyone tells me that was a kind gesture, I know my grandmother, and believe me, it wasn’t.
Ooh, thanks for reminding me of the Kate Harding post, as someone who is so totally on board with fat acceptance, yet is tearing my hair out constantly about this goddamn baby weight (is it still baby weight if your kid is now a toddler? Asking for a friend). Truly tops. I can’t wait to move past the cognitive dissonance phase she talks about.
Ugh, yes, this. It’s not so much that I mind that I weigh more right now, it’s that I’m stuck in this mental and physical limbo – I’m not pregnant, but I don’t look like I did before even though I only weigh about 10lbs more, and what the hell do I do with these giant knockers, and why did my butt move around to my stomach, and all my pants suddenly fit like “mom jeans,” and and and. I’ve always been a reasonably self-confident person, but body acceptance, it is hard.
My daughter is almost 11, and I’ve almost accepted that, short of some BS plastic surgery, the pooch around my belly button isn’t going anywhere.
Those two pieces from NY Mag and Kate Harding are absolutely /blowing my mind/. Holy shit. Yes yes yes yes yes yes YES.
It’s very clear that I need to go through all of Shapely Prose. Does anyone have recommendations for other good stuff from there- pieces that particularly spoke to you?
I don’t have any recommendations off the top of my head, but I found a lot of their posts on beauty really helpful. (I believe there’s a tag for that category).
Oh, and Fillyjonk wrote an *amazing* post called “Meat and Metaphors” inspired by PETA’s (horrible) advertising. I recommend that one! I would link to it but I’m at work.
OH also, they have a post on the most bizarre dieting tips readers have received. That post (and its comments) are a cavalcade of craziness.
I followed Shapely Prose for years and years, and there is sooo much great material there, but here are a few posts that I linked on my blog-at-that-time.
Here is the Helpful Diet Tips post mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
From the FAQ, “Don’t You Realize Fat is Unhealthy?”
“No matter how thin you are, you may be fat already” aka why should thin people care about fat acceptance.
I wish I could find the post that had something like “being pretty is not the rent you have to pay for inhabiting a female body,” because I say that allll the time now.
I also strongly recommend The Fat Nutritionist, whose greatest hits are listed on her sidebar.
FAT NUTRITIONIST <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
On the NYMag piece: read the article, avoid the comments section.
Even though I knew I shouldn’t read the comments I just kept scrolling… and scrolling. After all the time I’ve spent/wasted on the internet, I really should be better at not doing that
Love these links.
NY Mag ran another excellent piece about the the lives of people after gastric bypass surgery many years ago: http://nymag.com/nymag/features/1868/
Tragic postscript for Lisa Marie Sohr, the woman in the first picture.
That fanfiction is amaaaaaaazing!
Thank you so much to the Toast for introducing me to Roxane Gay’s writing. She is amazing.
I looove movies about people who are unhappy for no apparent reason (“Margot at the Wedding”), and I would very much enjoy movies about people of color who are unhappy for no apparent reason, rather than being unhappy because of oppression. Please Hollywood, make these!
(If anyone out there knows of any, tell me and I will watch them!)
You might enjoy something like “Medicine for Melancholy”? It still deals with race (black folks in the predominantly white Bay Area hipster scene), but as the title suggests, it’s more about the characters’ overall feelings of unhappiness rather than any singular traumatic, oppressive moment.
Moved to the top of my Netflix queue! Thanks!
So, in the Roxane Gay piece, she mentions 3 best picture nominees: “the one set in space, the one about a dysfunctional family, the one about a cat-loving folk singer.”
I got the first one. What are the other two?
The third one must be Inside Llewyn Davis based on this adorable photo… I feel the second one could describe most Oscar-baity movies, haha. Maybe Blue Jasmine?
I think it’s August: Osage County that’s the dysfunctional family one? It’s got Meryl.
Okay, so if I go work as a cherry-picker I’ll be making about twice what I make now, only with no tax taken out (but no health insurance or job security or protection from harassment, etc etc). That series is such a cool idea, putting a face on a group that’s being othered always seems to help people be more sympathetic. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for her to leave her son behind.
Yeah, I immediately did the math on that one too and was surprised to find that my gross income and a cherry picker’s gross income are pretty much identical. I’m certainly not complaining, but it was a surprising bit of information. I’m glad at least some undocumented farm workers are being paid a living wage.
I also really liked that UFW is still totally relevant. My grandma has a giant poster of Cesar Chavez in her kitchen (and has, for as long as I can remember), and it sparked many a conversation about how important it is to treat people fairly when I was a kid.
But keep in mind it’s only a living wage if they worked that job all year round. Which they don’t.
also that dramatic weight loss piece… I can relate in some small way; I gained about 65 pounds with my pregnancy and then lost about 85 afterwards, quite quickly… I have loose, poochy skin in the tummy area, and my boobs are totally different, kind of deflated and smaller than before. I actually wasn’t sure I was going to lose the baby weight at all so it was kind of shocking, and then learning to accept this new body on top of all the other changes in my life has been A Thing.
Edited to Add: obviously it’s not as extreme as the weight loss they’re talking about, but I can understand that thing of like “Oh when I’m thin everything will be great” and then guess what, being thin doesn’t fix anything.
I’ve always been…um…modestly gifted in the chestal area, and was beyond thrilled when I grew (and maintained) a varsity rack during pregnancy and my daughter’s first year of life. If only someone had told me about deflation post-breastfeeding…sigh.
I am CRYING because of that last link – I can’t explain why. I feel like I know them just by the way they said their age. It was really genuine and touching. Thanks for the link!
Me too, oh my goodness. Some of them were so proud, some were a little rueful–the older women especially just grabbed my heart and SQUEEZED.
I loved how excited the little kids were to say their ages, and how proud the older people were, too. Oof.
The last old woman! “HUNDERT.” aaaaaaaah.
My daughter is almost 11, and I've almost accepted that, short of some BS plastic surgery, the pooch around my belly button isn't going anywhere.
I've always been…um…modestly gifted in the chestal area, and was beyond thrilled when I grew (and maintained) a varsity rack during pregnancy and my daughter's first year of life. If only someone had told me about deflation post-breastfeeding…sigh.