Mychal Denzel Smith on how Trayvon Martin’s death launched a new generation of black activism:
While the audiences for these new groups may not be larger than the older ones’—the Dream Defenders has more than 27,000 Twitter followers; the NAACP has over 74,000—the newer groups use Twitter to hear from, not just talk to, their members. The Dream Defenders hosts Twitter discussions about its key issues, including gun violence, the criminalization of black youth and the prison-industrial complex. Community cultivation is vital as these organizations take on the challenge of long-term movement building. In February, Agnew and others put together a Tumblr called “Blacked Out History,” featuring members’ artwork. “We were born out of [the Trayvon Martin] murder, but that didn’t become our focus,” Agnew said.
some fancy-ass DIGITAL JOURNALISM about erosion and water issues in Louisiana
I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think someone should drive Ben Stein out to the desert and leave him there and let the elements decide his fate.
he can take the dude who hassled Retta with him
hey guys, Mallory here, I don’t normally hijack Nicole’s link roundup but I had to do it this one time; last night I stopped by the Burrito Shop on my way home for a bean and cheese and rice burrito because sometimes I’m not looking for a meal with flavor and texture so much as salty ballast/adult baby food, and I ate my burrito in record fuckin’ time, because you don’t really need to chew when the densest part of your meal is a soft tortilla, and the second I shoved the last of the burrito in my mouth an older gentleman walked up to me and said in the most respectful tone imaginable — without making eye contact — “That dress looks really lovely on you,” and then he left without trying to speak to me again.
I am immortal; I am subject to none of the laws that bind animals and man. I am a leaf on the wind; watch me soar.
the fucking bullshit we are still going through to have safe abortions in this world:
When women do seek medical attention, Women on Web also counsels them about how to avoid criminal charges if they live in countries where they have reason to fear prosecution. To ingest the mifepristone and misoprostol they are told to place the drugs in their cheek or under their tongue, where the medicine cannot be detected in the body. (If they are inserted vaginally, they may leave fragments.) Gomperts says there is no medical reason for women to tell anyone that they’ve used pills. Treatment, if needed, is the same as it would be for a spontaneous miscarriage. “Women shouldn’t be afraid to look for care when they need it, and at the same time they shouldn’t do anything to incriminate themselves,” Gomperts said.
When restaurant workers can’t afford to eat:
Though the low-wage nature of serving, cooking and dishwashing is well-known, the report puts some hard numbers on this phenomenon: 32% of restaurant workers meet the USDA definition for food insecurity, more than twice the national average. (The definition of food security that the USDA uses is “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life”—food insecurity is measured by asking people if they ever didn’t have enough money to buy food, if they skipped meals, etc.) This is particularly jarring given that food prep—i.e. restaurant work—is one of the fastest growing jobs this decade, and the ROC report claims that it’s the segment of the food system that employs the most workers.
In the final evolution of the meme, the soundbite falls away and ventriloquism robs these individuals of the ownership of their own words. For a good while, I don’t think a week went by without the echo of “ain’t nobody got time for that” departing from the throat of some white suburbanite in my presence. So entrenched are Sweet Brown’s words in common vernacular—much like the many, many, many appropriated hallmarks of AAVE—this particular iteration of the meme appears to have a long shelf life ahead of it. (Fortunately, “Hide your kids / Hide your wife,” seems to have truly died.)
Arthur T. Demoulas is back in at Market Basket.
Article from yesterday: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119239/transge…
This quote captures the gist of it: “At one conference, another scientist said, ‘Ben gave a great seminar today—but then his work is so much better than his sister’s.’ (The scientist didn’t know Ben and Barbara were the same person.)”
(I’m not 100% on this article’s trans* gender politics. Sorry if it makes anyone feel uncomfortable.)
I haven’t read the article but that particular anecdote is several years old. Glad it’s still making the rounds.
Man, I don’t know if it’s just been a rough week (month, it has been a rough MONTH) or what but the pictures in that article about the Market Basket CEO are making me tear up. Happy employees getting shit done!
I am ready to return to Market Basket, happily. Although I’ll have to figure out when the best time to go; they are busy on a normal day, forget it when everybody wants to come back!
I think I’m going to end up looking at that article about 10 times today. Everyone is so happy! And the good guys won!
I have a major soft spot for Market Basket because I was completely obsessed with it when I lived near there (and still kind of am), so I am extra happy about this story.
I love this piece, too! Humanity at it’s best.
God, but bean and cheese and rice burritos are just so good.
They’re the culinary equivalent of jammies.
MALLORY you never cease to amaze. What wizardry are you working on the men of this world??
It’s her on-point cardigan game.
This Market Basket saga has been FASCINATING. Like, I am the girl who groans when you hand her a multigenerational saga because NO, NO, THIS IS GOING TO BE SO BOOOOORING NOOOO, but the entire Demoulas history of family betrayal and cheap produce has been like, 100% chin-in-hands tell-me-more.
I lived the first 32 years of my life with food insecurity (like, it’s only since I got married last year that I haven’t skipped meals [my effed up metabolism, let me show you it] or lived for a week on egg white omelets and crackers). It screws with your head and your body so, so badly to never be food secure. I can’t believe that we’re a nation with so much food and so much hunger all at once. And the nightmare of being surrounded by and working with food you can’t afford to eat is so wretched.
The food service industry (and so many others) really need labor reform. If you’re working one single job, you should be able to afford to feed and house and clothe yourself; it shouldn’t take two, or four, jfc.
The grocery store near me, which closes for every Christian or war-related holiday, has a big sign about being open regular hours on Labor Day. I suspect that I will not be shopping there much longer.
If there are any good articles about the Market Basket Family Saga, PLEASE SEND THEM AT ME. Demoulas vs Demoulas! Employees rise up! Groceries! I love it.
There were a few great ones about how Arthur T.’s father screwed over Arthur S.’s family, so Arthur S.’s seemingly spiraling descent into vengeful madness is actually the culmination of a decades’ long grudge – http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/news/ci_2622…
Actually, every article that paper has done on the Demoulas saga has been good, better than the reporting by the Boston Globe et al; the family is local to Lowell, so the paper has history with them and has really gone in-depth.
I’m told that there’s an old novel based on the Demoulas family but I think this whole thing just BEGS for a new, glorious fictionalization!
This is a story that cries out for a musical adaptation.
This is my home town newspaper and it is usually terrible, but it makes me really weirdly proud to see it getting props on The Toast. woah. Fitchburg represent I guess?
I was also fascinated to see employees risk their livelihoods for a corporate executive – like, has that EVER happened in this country?
No kidding. And it looks like they were successful, which is an amazing story to head into Labor Day with – I’ll take these small victories when the month of August has been so revealing of how deeply broken parts of life in the US are – so, good for them! Hurray Market Basket employees! I hope Arthur T. takes the support of the employees VERY seriously and continues to be a corporate head they want to support.
It was amazing, you guys. We have two Market Baskets in our town, and everyone was out protesting every day. And the employees who were the most dedicated to the protest and most vocal were the guys with 25-30 years at the company.
My local paper interviewed one of them, asking him if he was afraid he would lose his job because he was striking. He replied that if the Arthur S. regime stayed put, it wouldn’t be the same Market Basket and he was sure his pay would be cut and his work devalued.
I live in Market Basket central and I heard yesterday that there was “a deal” but until Nicole posted a favorable link I was afraid to find out what the deal was. For once, things went the right way.
The Market Basket traffic control operation has to be one of the smoothest I’ve ever seen. What’s required for that? 1) Smart, adequately paid workers 2) enough of those workers. Oh, yes, the traffic control is necessary because the prices can’t be beat and the quality is really quite good. It’s amazing to me that any business person could have thought that MB would survive without all of those elements in play. HA, I say. HA.
GOD I thought the Awl would be an OK place to read the comments but It’s Not.
Anyway, speaking of workers who are unable to eat at their own restaurants, in Anthony Bourdain’s book Bloody Valentine, he has a chapter devoted to a man who works at a high-end fish restaurant in New York deboning and slicing fish, who doesn’t make enough money to eat at his own restaurant. Ever. So Bourdain takes him there, he has a great time, but really the guy prefers his quiet home life and eating the occasional pizza or whatever. And on the surface it’s nice (“hey, guy finally gets to eat the fruits of his labours”) underneath it’s pretty nasty–this guy has worked at an extremely fancy fish place, for years, is the best they’ve ever had, and can’t afford to eat there? At all? Ever? And Bourdain the white dude comes along to bestow the gift of a meal on this dude, but it turns out he prefers simple food anyway, womp womp, back to normal we go. It’s all very disconcerting in a way I can’t quite articulate because this is a comment and not something I’ve devoted a lot of time to thinking about, but returning to the main point here, it consistently surprises me that restaurant workers (and by extension fast-food workers and coffee shop workers) are so habitually underpaid when it’s such a major part of the economy and yet bitching about bad service and having to tip servers comes up constantly. What a world.
That story reminds me of a parody of “Good King Wenceslas” from one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. The Good King’s a snob and gives some passing peasant his leftovers as conspicuous charity. The peasant is insulted that the king thinks he’s so desperate to eat someone else’s half-eaten rich-people food and is better off getting sincere help from someone of his own class. I don’t have a real connection to make either.
Also reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine opens “Top ‘O the Muffin To You!” where they only sell muffin tops, and she tries to give the muffin bottoms to a soup kitchen, but the soup kitchen rejects them because “homeless people don’t want to eat muffin bottoms.”
I think it’s also that the food the peasant is getting from someone who is from his class will KEEP, (bacon, sausages, lard) while stuffed peacock will not.
(That is, the book has a central conceit that Christmas is about when surviving the winter wasn’t certain, not about gluttony. That it’s about driving back the darkness and retaining enough shared mercy and justice that the sun coming back is an important metaphorical thing.)
Welp, I guess it’s OK that poor people are poor! They just prefer simple things.
It’s so sad that this is the message people often take, instead of, you know, food is *cultural,* and people largely prefer the food they think of as “real food” over other people’s universalizing standards. Part of food justice is that people deserve access to sufficient food that contains sufficient nutrients and *suits their tastes,* which is why it’s problematic when people’s food culture is ignored by supposed champions of food. Like, if your food pantry is in a basically Hispanic area, it should not be full of macaroni and cheese, because that is some bullshit. And if you want to expose an adult to a brand-new type of food and he doesn’t immediately love it as much as you have come to, that’s not some deficiency of taste in him. That’s *how taste works.*
That’s a great point. There was a great piece on African immigration to Europe in the New Yorker this past spring, and one thing that really stuck with me was a quote from one of the Eritrean asylum seekers in Sweden, saying they all hated the “boiled grains” they were being given to eat. Like… yeah, wow. You have to pay a ton of money for people to traffic you illegally into Europe for a chance at asylum, you might get arrested, re-trafficked, or DROWN on your way there, you then have to sit around waiting for the asylum verdict in this foreign land without your friends or family, and on top of that you don’t have any opportunity to prepare or eat the food that tastes delicious and reads as “real food” to you. Most of us would just crack.
Also nothing makes me roll my eyes harder than Michael Pollan’s “food rules.” I was in a rich person’s house recently and they had them framed in their kitchen and I was like YEAH, OF COURSE YOU DO.
I don’t see the connection to rolling one’s eyes at Michael Pollan’s food rules—don’t they include things like “be skeptical of anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food” and “be suspicious of non-traditional foods”? Seems like he’d be on your side here.
Oh, the Michael Pollan part was re: Hththe1st saying “people largely prefer the food they think of as “real food” over other people’s universalizing standards. Part of food justice is that people deserve access to sufficient food that contains sufficient nutrients and *suits their tastes,* which is why it’s problematic when people’s food culture is ignored by supposed champions of food.” Michael Pollan as a champion of food is definitely not interested in your food culture, if your food culture involves anything processed.
To get a bit rantier about it, I’m not on the side of people who think that things that were around a hundred years ago are inherently better than things that weren’t, or that everyone should eat the way rich white people like to eat, or that “don’t eat in your car” is a neutral piece of advice to give in a country where some people work four jobs just to survive and have to fucking SLEEP in their cars between those jobs, to say nothing of eating. I could probably keep ranting, but there’s a good summary and discussion here: http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/eat-food…
“The food was so much better when half the population devoted a third of their day to preparing it.”
I’ve never understood the great-grandmother thing. If I tried to explain nori to her, she’d nope her way out the door, and I KNOW she cooked everything to well done and boiled vegetables yellow because, you know, a couple of her children died from food poisoning. Pretty sure I could explain Doritos in like five seconds though, and she basically ate only pudding cups after turning 90.
The car point is an excellent point. I had never thought of that.
My great-grandmother made balogna roasts for Sunday dinner. I’m not eating that, no matter how old-timey it is.
I was talking about this with my mom just now; she pointed out that even her mother wouldn’t eat soy, because it’s “food for cows”.
I guess it exposes my naivete. I worked in food for well over a decade, and my happiest memories of those times were *all the free food.* Seriously, I got to eat so much terrific stuff just because it was lying around and eating it was kinda what the staff did…you know, for food. I’m now in a career that I love and adore, but the most startling thing about it was…really, I have to pay for everything I want to eat now? Like, everything, forever?
The idea that there are food establishments out there that *do not let their employees eat the food* — that is blowing my mind right now. What the shit is that about? I had no idea my own food-work experience was not normative. None.
Not only did this restaurant not allow employees to eat the food, but it actively discouraged them from eating there on there off time. On the idea that it was encourage fraternization with the waitstaff and create a bad atmosphere for the regular customers.
I had the same experience, and employees were encouraged to take home leftovers to avoid food waste. We had an unstated agreement among the staff that those who needed the leftovers most would take them.
I did have one job where we were only allowed to eat certain things for free from the menu, but that I kind of understood.
A college boyfriend worked at a very fancy restaurant, wherein the staff all dined together before service, and they got leftover bread and such to take home. An acquaintance worked at Chilli’s (I think? maybe Outback?) and was allowed one meal per shift (this was often her only meal, but she was allowed to order the biggest thing there was and eat it over the course of her shift). And my crazy roommate worked at McDonald’s and was allowed a certain dollar value per shift (like $4 or 5 I think; she usually took it all in those tiny milk cartons).
So, I think it is more expected that restaurant staff gets food. It is very sad if they don’t.
My husband worked in a fairly fancy restaurant when he graduated college, and the waitstaff not only got a free meal during their shifts, they were actively encouraged to hang around after their evening shifts and have (not-free) drinks. Which they did. It was lovely. The idea that the employees don’t get to partake, or at least get leftovers at the end of the night, is ridiculous.
I worked at a Chili’s maybe 6 years ago, so perhaps the policy has changed, but all we were allowed to eat for free were the chips and the soft drinks. If you wanted a meal, you could buy it half price, but you still had to buy it. I remember getting in trouble for making myself a quesadilla with the little fajita tortillas and shredded cheese.
Yeah, I’ve been a line cook for eight years now – even for a few years at a Michelin starred joint! So I’m pretty sure that this is mostly across the board – and we always, always had a family meal before or after our shifts. I’ve always been encouraged to come in and eat, too, though obviously with an employee discount, because otherwise I truly could not afford to eat there. Shift beers or cocktails are standard. (Though even I was incredibly startled at my last job, when I found out that we were allowed one glass of wine half an hour before closing time, if we so wanted.)
This thread is really pissing me off, because it’s just upsetting to think that there are restaurants out there who undervalue their employees so much that they won’t even feed them. I know it happens! But that’s messed up, man.
A lot of dining/beverage establishments define that sort of thing as “theft.” I worked at Jimmy John’s and then at Starbucks, and I only got to eat leftover product if I had a cool manager who hated to waste food. But then there’d be a crackdown at the district level, and bam, time to throw away all the muffins.
A friend works in McDonald’s and while they don’t oficially get free food (I think they just have a discount or something), the employees tend to just take stuff and then say it fell on the floor and they had to write it in as an expenditure. The management knows about this and doesn’t give a fuck. (But this isn’t in the US, so…)
And of course, Bourdain narrated, in his smug, horrible voice, how much he learned from this simple worker.
There are a lot of problems with how the restaurant industry works (from the inconsistent hours, to waitresses dependent upon a tipping system, etc.), but the worst part about living with food insecurity in your own home and working in the food industry is seeing the vast amount of food that goes to waste, coming back from tables where people just didn’t finish it, or didn’t want to take it home.
I shall inform you all about the Exact Opposite of Mallory’s Experience in the open thread, where we can all mock the man in question without going too far off topic.
Misandry is always on-topic!
I wanted to add a GIF here, and I know I’ve seen the how-to in other posts, but please, y’all, remind me how that goes?
*img src=”gif url”* except instead of the * * you put < and > at the front and back!
Not sure about gifs, but for images you grab the direct image code (not the page address) and paste it between the ” ” of img src=””/
then put little < > around it.
I will preemptively say that we should Set Him On Fire and rest in the knowledge that I am correct, regardless of the particulars of the story.
I will preemptively pass you a lighter.
It’s alright, he’s probably already burning. Inside.
… and, lo, this GIF grows ever more appropriate.
Re Ben Stein, I am so sick of pundits saying “but he’s so big!” as if he was an elephant that required tranquilizing. Michael Brown was a human, not a fucking hippopotamus.
The idea that large (and almost always black) bodies are criminal is completely unmanageable to my brain. Like, what in the hell are big dudes supposed to do to avoid getting shot by the police? Not… exist? I guess that’s probably what Ben Stein wants.
FOR REAL. I mean it’s … his body. It … just grew. Bodies do that. Everyone has one. Nobody has much choice in the matter until we have the technology to all become just brains floating in vats.
MARKET BASKET! Incoherently excited.
i read that article about gomperts & medical abortion yesterday and it was like an emotional rollercoaster. such a small group of people can make such a huge positive difference in other’s lives…because at the same time such a small group of people can make life a living nightmare for women. ughhhhh
“I mean it used to be, there was a time…when lynchings of African Americans were not that incredibly rare.”
I have never closed an article tab with more fierceness and rage in my life, oh my god.
I thought to myself “yeah, thanks to racist buttholes like you” and then I clicked close tab with a certain amount of vim.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, Ben Stein. SERIOUSLY???
And now they get shot by police instead. What’s your point, douchefuck?
RETTA. If you read the comments on the Jezebel article, there are screenshots? twitpics? guys i dont get twitter of her tweets where she takes someone to TASK for being a racist moron. And then she talks about Michael Brown.
RETTA I LOVE YOU. I hope that asswipe fails miserably in his acting career.
after this, i think anyone who bothers to google him won’t go within 10 feet
I saw that and it was ON. POINT. Retta is the best.
The NYT article on Women on Web made me tear up with happiness near the end. So many women pushing for all they’re worth just to help other women! I am so thankful and happy, and I’m going to not read any other news ever again so as not to burst my own bubble.
This is the paragraph that got me all fired up:
“Ten women each gave Gomperts 10,000 Dutch guilders (about $5,500), part of the money needed to rent a boat and pay for a crew. But to comply with Dutch law, she also had to build a mobile abortion clinic. Tapping contacts she made a decade earlier, when she attended art school at night while studying medicine, she got in touch with Joep van Lieshout, a well-known Dutch artist, and persuaded him to design the clinic. They applied for funds from the national arts council and built it together inside the shipping container. When the transport ministry threatened to revoke the ship’s authorization because of the container on deck, van Lieshout faxed them a certificate decreeing the clinic a functional work of art, titled “a-portable.” The ship was allowed to sail, and van Lieshout later showed a mock-up of the clinic at the Venice Biennale.”
The fucking MOXIE! Love, love, all the love for Gomperts.
I have had random men on the street w what I initially perceived as predator eyes surprisingly say really nice things lately! “You look really nice tonight” / “Hello, beautiful”/ “Have a good night!” etc. and it didn’t make me feel disgusting and threatened– nay — i actually SMILED! Which is what I imagine men on the street are aiming for generally? Have street-men been reading The Toast?!
One guy said to me “Nice ink” as I was walking my dog. That is the only thing I want dudes to say to me when I’m walking around half-asleep at 7am haha. But a cute little old guy got out of a taxi, held the door open for me, and said “You’re a very pretty girl!” and tipped his hat, and I couldn’t help smiling at that. Street-men! Sometimes less repulsive than generally expected!
I think tone as well as what is actually said is crucial. ‘Hello, beautiful’ has been said to me in a horrible creepy ‘I am looking you up and down and imagining you naked and you should be flattered’ voice that made me shoot DEATH EYES at the man. But I imagine it can be said in a nice, non-creepy way. Never happened to me but I expect it can.
This happened to me last week, i.e. a man sitting in front of me on the streetcar said “Hey, great pants!”, then turned around, put his headphones in his ears, and did not engage in further conversation with me.
Also brb going to read “Chipotle is Monstrous” again, which is truly my favourite thing Mallory has ever written because it is so, so correct.
I am always tempted to do this when I walk to work from the train station – i.e., tell people I see that I like their dress/pants/shoes/bag/dog. But I worry that they’ll think I’m Crazy Stalker Lady, so I just think it very strongly in their direction.
Ugh, I just found out about this from the Awl piece about misogynoir memes and I just…hate everything. Seriously I just. Can we just light the entire fucking world on fire?
Oh no. I just watched that. Well, that’s me strengthening my opinion that the world is a horrible place full of unremitting misery.
“Despite all we may hear about abortion being a benign procedure, it’s really not,” Chireau said of the pills. “And it’s important to remember it’s elective. This is not lifesaving surgery or surgery for cancer.”
screw you lady, you bet your ass that if I got pregnant I wouldn’t consider it “elective” for one second, thanks for being so gross and self-righteous and judgmental
Also, being pregnant isn’t exactly benign.
“Alleged feminist” Ani DiFranco YES LAUREN JACKSON YES
I…really wish we wouldn’t do this. This is textbook “No True Scotsman” silliness. Oh, someone who claims to be a feminist is sometimes wrong or even awful about things? Well, that’s because she’s obviously NO FEMINIST!
Spoiler alert: some feminists are sometimes wrong or even awful about some things. We very much resemble people in that way. Hell, there are those that argue *lots and lots* of feminists are *quite frequently* wrong and awful about some things. I think that’s a case you can make, and it shouldn’t just be written off with, “Well, not the *real* feminists.”
For sure, feminists of all stripes do problematic shit all the time, no matter their intentions. My concern lies in the way they handle being called out- which, in Ani’s sake, involved a spectacular nonapology before issuing a sincere one. I can also understand why incidents such as this make WOC like the author wary of her in the future.
Oh, right! But what I’m saying is, spectacular nonapologies are evergreen. Lots of people make them. *Feminists* make them, not just alleged feminists. And some feminists, on account of being raised in a toxically racist world, have not gotten all their shit together surrounding race. Some of them may even be straight-up racist! But it’s a dodge to just go, “Oh, well, that has nothing to do with me, because I’m a *feminist,* and people with racist baggage are only ever *alleged* feminists.”
I’m in no way defending anything about the plantation event incident or her handling of it. I’m just saying that it means feminists can fuck up, not that fuck-ups can’t be feminists.
I’m picking up what you’re putting down.
OH MY GOD I WANT TO SET THAT BODYSHAMING ASSHOLE ON FIRE. (Re: Retta thing.)
Thank you for the misogynoir article. This is going to sound dumb, but I had no idea that people (plural) were doing this digital blackface, ie white people giving themselves a “black” name/avatar/voice and making comments and stuff on social media. I mean, of course I could image SOME crazy person doing that, but I’m pretty shocked that it’s a whole thing to discuss. On the one hand I want to think it’s the same as me picking a big “dude” monster as my videogame avatar instead of the hot-tits elf or whatever, “trying on identities” or something? But actually…no, that’s just fucked up and wrong.
On Mallory’s story:
Sometimes I see people around town, women and men, who just look really nice. They are dressed well (not necessarily dressed expensively) and they look lovely. And sometimes I want to say that to them. I want to walk up and say, “I don’t know you, but you look really nice today & I appreciate it.” But I am also a nerdy-looking dude & don’t want to seem like a creep and/or creep someone out, so I never do.
I think the general brightline in employer sexual harassment is you can compliment the object (ex: pants, dress) but not how that makes the person look (that shirt looks good on you… it looks good on your body).
I don’t think it’s ever okay to say, “the way you look pleases me. good job, object.”
That makes a lot of sense, thanks!
If you look through all the comments on this post (and elsewhere, we talk about this fairly regularly) I think you’ll find that compliments that are not direct comments on our sexuality or attempts to control us are pretty welcome. “You look great” (and variants) or “that thing you’re wearing is awesome” (and variants) are nice things to say to anyone, and they feel good to receive.
I think in general: if you’d say it to a dude, you are safe saying it to a lady. If you saw a particularly natty gentleman rocking his suit, you might tell him he looks great or that he made your day or whatever, and it’s not a come-on, it’s just letting him know his fashion sense is creating joy in the world around him. Same deal for ladies.
Yeah, this thread has really reinforced my confidence that the sort of compliments I like to give are generally the sort that people will feel good about.
Thanks!
I agree with everyone’s comments on this, but I’d add, just to be on the safe side, that I personally would avoid the “I appreciate it” line – that makes it sound like their self presentation is a favor to you. I might be being too sensitive on this, but I generally only say “I appreciate it” when someone’s done something for me and I’m thanking them. You clearly aren’t trying to convey that anyone is or should be dressed to please you, so just saying “You look really nice” or “wow, I love your style” or something like that, minus the “and I appreciate it,” might be better.
That’s a good point. My thought is more like, “you have made my day a little brighter” but “I appreciate it” would come across as weird.
Reading the comments, it’s sort of hilarious/depressing how low the bar is for an Ok Interaction with a strange guy.
I’m a guy and just never talk to women on the street (because why would I?) but maybe I should revise my policy to just affirming their life goals. I ‘ll lean out of car windows to yell things like “Hey lady! I bet it’ll all work out for you, career-wise!”
i was supposed to have a babysitter today (a fill-in sitter) but she never showed up or answered my calls, so
I’m in the middle of this article about the largest retirement community in Florida and it’s fascinatingly weird! I have an aunt and uncle who moved there recently. They each got a golf cart and got to choose the colors/decorations (he got the Yankees logo, she got …something else, I dunno). http://www.buzzfeed.com/likethebreadorthedressing…
On it! You had me at the golf carts.
Anyone else get a creeping sensation of horror while reading the descriptions of the community in that article?
yeah I found it interesting that at the end the author called his parents and wanted them to move there …. I would not do that.
Ben Stein proves that intelligence has nothing to do with a person’s worth.
That ProPublica article was informative but…maybe I’m just a grump…the fancy digital journalism thing just doesn’t tickle my buttons. It was more enjoyable for me to read that avalanche story last year with scripts disabled than it was to have to stop reading and click on interactive stuff.
What Mallory said made me think of the one of only two times when a male stranger making remarks about my appearance has not been creepy/annoying but nice. I was in Cambridge, UK and walking along with a big bunch of beautiful peonies. This elderly Cambridge don (in tweed obviously) looked at me and exclaimed ‘Flowers! YOUTH!’ after which he immediately blushed and hurriedly walked away looking terribly embarrassed. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be paid a more charming compliment in my life. Siiigh.
This is a wonderful story! I can picture it perfectly in my head and it pleases me very much.
Thanks, I am glad that this memory is now not just giving me pleasure! 😀
That is so Cambridge. I work for the University and have encountered some of these men. It pleases me that you had a positive experience.
At Clare perhaps? 🙂 I was at Queens’ for a year and generally had a positive experience though I’m glad to be back in the hustle and bustle of London.
The woman in India who fought off a leopard for half an hour with a sickle. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/27/leop… Badass quotes: “The leopard lunged at me many times and we fought for a long time,” “I gathered my courage to fight back. I promised myself that this is not my last day here.”
Thanks for the link to the memes and misogynoir article which is super-interesting, intelligent and incisive.
The part about respectability politics reminded me of a discussion my boyfriend and I had about the horrible power of the ‘Angry Black Woman’ stereotype. His friend told him that, depressingly, she felt under immense pressure never to seem remotely annoyed as then she would be labelled as an aggressive ‘Angry Black Woman’, that the stereotype made her afraid of showing any negative feelings.
“and said in the most respectful tone imaginable – without making eye contact — “That dress looks really lovely on you,” and then he left without trying to speak to me again.” << Possibly the greatest thing someone can do.
I was at a bachelorette weekend recently (which is a thing now, I guess? A weekend can be a LONG TIME, let me tellya.) and on the second miserable night of drunk dbags, there was a man ahead of me at the bar who took his drinks, told me in a polite tone that I looked very nice in my dress, then wandered off into the night, never knowing he’d probably just saved every straight male on that island from certain lingering death. Treating people like human beings! Who knew?
It’s reassuring to know that not all bachelorette weekends (for they are always weekends in Britain) are total hell. Props to that gentleman for being a decent human.
I enjoy her use of the passive voice here, as if her sickle use and the death of the leopard merely happened to coincide.