Uniforms

When I was a kid, I read a lot of fantasy and a fair amount of science fiction. I loved the glimpse into different worlds, and the feats of imagination of the authors who created those worlds. I fell out of the habit at some point, probably in college when I spent my reading time reading whatever my non-science classes assigned, namely a lot of philosophy and social sciences, and a few novels heavy on meaning. Not that I'm complaining- I am glad to have the foundation in philosophy, and I discovered some authors I might not have found otherwise, such as Nagib Mahfouz, whose Palace Walk was a true delight, and was, in its own way, a glimpse into a world completely different than mine.

I don't know why I didn't pick up with sci-fi and fantasy again once I got to graduate school. I can't actually remember much of what I read in graduate school at all. I was dating a man from Ireland, and I remember reading some fine Irish books. Strangely, the one that sticks out the most is Finbar's Hotel, a novel in which each chapter was written by a different author. It is great fun.

Anyway, it wasn't until my husband moved in with me that I rekindled my interest in sci-fi. He is a huge William Gibson fan, and so one of the things I did was read the Gibson I hadn't already read, which I think was everything except Neuromancer, which I distinctly remember reading at my parent's house, perhaps during my stay there between college and graduate school.

I've gotten behind on my Gibson again, for no reason I can pinpoint other than being busy and being in a book club that doesn't read sci-fi (except we're about to read The Hunger Games, so maybe the rule is that we don't read much sci-fi). The last book of Gibson's that I read was Pattern Recognition, which I read not long after it came out. I remember liking it, but have only a vague recollection of the plot now. I remember three things very strongly, though: the "he took a duck in the face at 250 knots" quote, his description of mirror worlds (which I riffed on previously), and Cayce Pollard's clothing preferences, which are so strong that they are essentially a uniform.

For those who haven't read the book, one of the quirks of the main character Cayce Pollard is that she has a strong reaction, almost like an allergy, to commercial brands. Therefore, she favors plain t-shirts and Levi's with the branding removed. She also wears only black, gray, and white.

Cayce's sartorial quirks have stuck with me, perhaps because on some level, I am jealous of them. Think of how easy getting dressed would be! Obviously, there is nothing preventing me from adopting a similar uniform, but I don't really want to do so. I like color.

In uniform

I have realized, though, that I have a bit of a uniform, too. I prefer t-shirts in a solid color, with a v-neck and a slightly fitted drape, not so loose as to be boxy, not so tight as to show off my less than perfectly fit abs (or to make me self-conscious of my large chest).  I don't mind a bit of decoration at the neckline, and will occasionally vary to a scoop neck t-shirt or a polo shirt. Every once and awhile, my husband talks me into buying a shirt with a print, but this has mixed success. Sometimes I end up really liking the shirt, sometimes I end up feeling that it is too loud for me.

I've really struggled to find the perfect source of shirts. I don't really enjoy shopping these days, and would rather find something I can order online with confidence. Nordstroms had great t-shirts for awhile, but the trends have moved on and I find their shirts less flattering now.  They do carry a brand called Glima, with which I've had quite a bit of luck- but not enough luck to be able to just order them online without trying each new style on. I tried L.L Bean, since their online store is quite nice, but find their shirts don't have the right fit for me. If the shirt is big enough through the chest, then it is too big and baggy around the waist. I just received my first order from Eddie Bauer, and it looks like their shirts may be more what I like, but it is too soon to say how they'll wear.

On the bottom, I wear almost exclusively solid colors, and at work, almost exclusively pants. My office is too air conditioned to make skirts comfortable. Also, I need pockets, since I need to carry my cell phone with me at work (in case day care calls- a not infrequent occurrence, given Petunia's propensity towards fevers), and most of my skirts don't have them. Finding the perfect pair of pants is even harder than finding a good shirt. The Gap used to have some great ones, but either my body changed or their cut changed, and now I can't find anything that fits properly there. The best fitting pair of trousers in my closet right now came from New York and Co, but when I bought the same trousers in the same size but a different fabric, I got something that doesn't fit at all. Shandra explained why in a comment on an earlier post, but the result is that I can't just go online and order more of the same. Very frustrating. I am seriously considering splurging on getting some pants custom tailored, but figure I should wait until I am happy with my weight- I am currently in an active weight loss period (I'm down two pounds so far. I go slow).

So, even with a uniform of sorts, finding clothes is not as easy as I'd like. And finding good books to read is apparently too easy, since Gibson's later books are still in my "to read" queue!

What about you? Do you have a uniform? How do you find new clothes? Any books (or genres) you aren't reading and don't know why?

Guest Post at A Gai Shan Life

I have a guest post up over at A Gai Shan Life. Revanche saw some of my earlier posts about working motherhood and asked me to write a guest post with some advice for a 20-something like herself. I am always a little intimidated by being asked for advice- all I can say is what worked for me (or, more accurately, what I think worked for me), and I know that there are many different paths to happiness in this life.

But anyway, my post is up. Go check it out, and while you're there, check out some of Revanche's other posts- she's got a great attitude towards life.

If you're clicking over from Revanche's place, welcome! You are probably most interested in my working motherhood posts, but you could also check out my Guided Tour of My Blog or 2011's Year in Review post for a flavor of what my blog covers.

My regular readers may remember that I said just last week that I wanted to take a break from work-life balance/working mom posts.  I'm not doing such a great job of that, am I? Well, I swear I meant it. My next post is going to be about clothes. You'll see.

Trip Story: Austin

I think I'd better finish writing up our Great Texas Trip of 2012 before the last stop fades from my memory- the trip was over two months ago now.

Our last stop was Austin. True to its reputation, it has a very different vibe than San Antonio or Houston- but we couldn't really appreciate the nightlife for which the city is famous, since we were traveling with our kids. We still had a good time, but of the three cities, it is the one where I most felt like we were missing something because we had kids with us. Namely, we missed out on Austin's legendary nightlife and music scene.

We did make it to Threadgill's- we went there for dinner the first night we were in town- but we didn't stay for the music. Instead, we headed down to the bridge over the river, to try to catch the bat flyout. It started out as a beautiful evening...

... but it started to rain before the bats came out, so we headed back to the hotel without seeing the bats.

The next day, we walked up to see the capitol (my husband has a thing about seeing state capitols, and I've just given in to it).

Note the Yellow Rose

It was a pleasant walk up one of the main streets of Austin, which gave us a flavor for the town. We even stopped at a funky little coffee shop for snack. It was basically a refurbished shipping container, with a nice garden out front- and sadly, its name is already gone from my memory.

We had lunch at La Condesa, which was our least kid-oriented meal of the trip (which is saying something, given that we basically ate in a bar our last night in Houston). The restaurant was more inline with our pre-kids tastes. I was a little nervous when we walked in, saw how stylish it was, and noted the lack of a kids menu (or other kids). But the staff were really welcoming, the kids did great, and the margaritas were awesome. I'm glad we stepped a little outside our comfort zone.

We went from sublime to... well, a little less than sublime for dinner. Hubby really wanted some BBQ, but we had a hard time finding a BBQ place that had anything on the menu that our kids might eat. He did some Googling during naptime and found a place called Dickey's. He also found a park near to the restaurant, so we had our plans set. The park was great- it is fun seeing the different playground equipment in different cities. This park had a cool standup twirling toy. It looked a bit like the sail on a windsurfing board, and was leaned at a slight angle, so that it was easy to spin on. The whole family had fun with that.

Dickey's turned out to be more like a fast food chain than a BBQ restaurant, but the food wasn't bad, and the staff were unbelievably friendly, even giving Pumpkin a second roll after she finished her first one. Hubby went for a full BBQ plate, but after the excess at lunch, I thought I'd go for something lighter and just ordered a stuffed baked potato. I had neglected to allow for the Texas-sizing of things: the potato I received was roughly the size of a football, and was smothered with cheese, bacon, and BBQ pork.

The next day, we decided to head to Zilker Park. I wanted to check out the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, but it wasn't open in the morning, so we just went to the playground and rode on the train, instead. On the plus side, we did finally see some live music:

After the train ride, we headed over to the botanic garden, to see the dinosaur tracks. The tracks turned out to be a bit of a disappointment- they were from a small dinosaur, so weren't as impressive as any of us anticipated.

But the rest of the gardens were very nice, and we enjoyed them.

We had lunch at the Shady Grove, but were too hungry to wait for a table on the big shady patio, and ate inside instead. It was good, but not up to the standard we had set the previous day.

It was our last night in Austin, so we made sure to get down to the river for the bat fly out... only to be a bit disappointed by the spectacle. The kids could hardly see the bats, and even the grown ups had a hard time finding them. I think that if we ever try for the fly out again, we'll do it from the water- I suspect it is more impressive to have the bats fly over you rather than under you.

Despite the slight disappointment at the end, we had a great time in Austin, and on the trip as a whole. Thanks for a great time, Texas! 

Weekend Reading: The I Wasn't Going to Talk about Work-Life Balance Edition

I was all set to take a little break from the ongoing work-life balance/can we really "have it all" discussion. I'm frankly a little exhausted by the subject and by the effort it is taking to not take offense at some of the comments and posts that imply that women like me are bad mothers who haven't really bonded with their kids or losers whose careers are tanking or other such nonsense. So I only clicked on links from reliable sources, so to speak, and even then I didn't delve into many comments threads.

But then I stumbled across such good links on the topic this week! And I wasn't even looking! So I have to share.

First, Oilandgarlic has two excellent posts. One was on work-life balance at career levels below the stratosphere occupied by Anne-Marie Slaughter and Marissa Mayer, and even below the lower troposphere where middle managers like me live and work. I agree that the almost exclusive focus on the possibility of combing a high-powered career with motherhood is wrong, excludes the majority of working mothers, and misses a big part of the story of mothers in the workforce. The second was on how sometimes a little imbalance is the right thing. This one really resonated with me- people will sometimes feel sorry for me for not having more time for "me" and my interests outside career and family. But I don't want to pursue those interests more than I want to spend my time on career and family, and I've found a "me" hobby that fits in around the edges (writing), so I'm happy.

Next, I think I found this article about the trade offs we make and how that relates to the discussions of Slaughter and Mayer via TheMamaBee's twitter feed. It is a really good article, and I particularly like how the author frames decisions about career in terms of whether the reward is worth the trade offs, whatever those may be.

Then, Bad Mom, Good Mom had a couple of really thoughtful (and thought-provoking) posts on "the nanny issue". Go read both for some more thoughts on the work-life arrangements of those of us working below the upper levels.

Bad Mom, Good Mom references some research on work-life balance in her posts. Nicoleandmaggie have an interesting post up on some related research: they answer a question I asked about a paper on the impact of fertility timing on career outcomes, which made a bit of a splash when it came out. (Thanks for answering!)

Andie Fox, who writes the Blue Milk blog, had a good article offering an explanation for why some mothers reacted so strongly to Mayer's plans for a short maternity leave. I think she has some very good insights, but I have to say: I've been feeling more than a little squeezed by the way the conversation has evolved. And a little sickened by the way so many of the women in the various comments sections seem to be rooting for Mayer to fail. Are they rooting for me to fail, too?

Finally, I was struck by the contrast in the reactions in the comments to AskMoxie's posts about Marissa Mayer and Janet Evans (particularly given SarcastiCarrie's comment on the second thread about the volleyball player who got back into serious volleyball training 2 months post-partum). Granted, Janet Evans got back into swimming when her kids were much older than Mayer's child will be when she is planning to get back to work, but it still struck me that people seem much more comfortable with mothers getting back into sports, even at elite levels where training is essentially a fulltime job, than they are with women getting back into the corporate world. On the second post, people seemed to mostly agree that mothers- even of very young babies- deserved some interests of their own, their own "thing". Well, my "thing" is my work.  (Incidentally, I feel a little bad for not leaving this comment on Moxie's thread, but I needed to cut myself off from that thread, because once I noticed this dichotomy it made me want to scream. Which isn't to say that I found anything offensive about either of Moxie's posts or SarcastiCarrie's comment- far from it. They were positive posts. It was the difference in responses from other people that jumped out at me.)

And continuing my slide into the more depressing links... I also really feel the need to share a few posts that really highlight the atmosphere in the tech/geek world that I mentioned in my post about Marissa Mayer:

First, there is an Ask Slahsdot post that is stunning in its ignorance and blithe assumption that casual harassment of a female team member is unavoidable. Apparently, some men think they need silly little games to remind themselves not to be assholes. Imagine how receptive the men in this department would be to a woman who publicly identifies as a feminist. The comment thread is one of the more depressing ones I've read in recent memory, although there are also some good smackdowns of the stupidity of the original question, from both men and women.

There was also a stunningly sexist article up on CNN about "fake geek girls," which I refuse to reward with a link. Scalzi has a good smackdown of that, but it is depressing that what he says still needs to be said, and it is depressing that if you read the comments on his thread, even some other women assume that typically attractive women need to prove their geek cred. Liz Argall, a women affected by this attitude wrote a very good post on the subject.

I'm sorry to end on a downer, but that actually feels appropriate given the cultural atmosphere on "women's issues" lately. It is clear that we've made a lot of progress. But we still have a long way to go.

Judging Judgment

On my lunchtime walk the other day, I was passed by a group of joggers. One of the men was wearing a bright orange tank top, a plaid kilt, and no shoes. My eyebrows went up behind my shades, and that judgmental little voice in my head snarked "hmmm. He must be a bit of an attention seeker, no?"

Then I told the little voice in my head to shut up, because it was no business of mine if some dude wants to go running in a kilt and no shoes, and anyway, I generally think men look good in kilts, so why would I go around judging men for wearing them? And hey, maybe running shorts bunch up annoyingly between his legs, too, and whereas my solution is to go for a different type of shorts, he chose to try a kilt. Or maybe he just likes kilts. Or maybe he lost a bet. Who knows?

My lunchtime walks are my time to let my mind wander, and this little internal exchange led me to think a bit more about judgment. I think the urge to judge is almost instinctual for us. I don't think I'll ever be able to silence that judgmental little voice in my head. But I have gotten much more thoughtful about what I do when it speaks up. I ask myself, what is the impact of this judgment, and why am I making it?

In the case of the kilted runner, the impact of judging- even if I'd yelled my snarky little thought out after him, or written an impassioned blog post about the correlation of kilt-wearing and attention seeking in non-Scottish men- would be pretty small. It is not like there are people out policing our sidewalks and impeding access to them for men in kilts. But in other cases, the impact of judging can be much larger. It can add to a culture that silences or marginalizes entire groups of people. It can contribute to unnecessary guilt people feel about just living their life in the way that makes them happiest. It can shame people into hiding, or even denying, their true selves.

And then there is the question of what I'm trying to accomplish by judging. Do I feel judged myself, and am therefore striking back, trying to establish that my way of life is a valid one? I've come to think that this is pointless, counterproductive even, particularly since many times when I take a step back and reread whatever it was that made me feel judged, there is an interpretation that is more generous. So these days, I consciously try to choose to take that interpretation. As I wrote in my declaration of neutrality in the Mommy Wars, that does not mean I have to be silent about my life and my opinions. But I try to write from the standpoint of "here's what my life is like, so if you hear people saying that living my way is impossible, or will inevitably make you miserable, let me be your counter-example" or "hey, here's what I think, what do you think?" (It is in the latter spirit that I'm writing this post, so if you read this and think I'm judging you for judging others, I am not. My opinion on this subject does not make me a better person than anyone else. It is just my opinion, and an argument for us to all think about the impact of judging other people as opposed to just disagreeing with their opinions.)

In general, if someone writes about their life from a standpoint of "this is possible, and here's how I do it" I am 100% behind that, for pretty much all legal things that someone might want to prove possible. In fact, if there is anyone reading out there who has configured his or her life completely differently from how I've configured mine, and wants a platform to share that, I'll enthusiastically provide that. Just email me and ask about doing a guest post.

If someone writes about their life from a standpoint of "I did this thing, and maybe you CAN do it, too- here's some ideas about how" I am also 100% behind that, but I start to get a little nervous, because it is easy to veer into the "...and you SHOULD do it, too" territory, which I don't much like. That is where judgment comes in, and we rarely know enough about other peoples' lives to really judge whether or not they SHOULD do something. And even if we do, they aren't our lives to live, so why are we judging? The interest area of mine where this most often comes up is healthy eating. I go searching for ideas about how to eat healthier despite the strong picky eating tendencies in my kids and myself, and it seems those ideas always come with a giant side serving of judgment. It drives me crazy. The people writing those posts and comments generally have no idea about the issues underlying true picky eating. Just give me the ideas and keep your judgment of people like me to yourself, please! The end result isn't that I am shamed into not being a picky eater- that isn't really possible. It is that I stop looking for ideas, and these people who feel so passionately about healthy eating have lost someone from their audience.

Of course, there are the cases where someone is writing with judgment, and doing so purposefully, because he or she really thinks that the judgment is deserved. The writer doesn't just disagree with someone else's opinion, they think that people who hold that opposing opinion are bad in some way. There are certainly cases where that is true, where the action being judged truly deserves condemnation and the person writing the judgment hopes his or her words will cause someone to change their behavior, or convince other people not to go that route. I, for instance, really do think that people who raise their kids to hate other people are doing something bad. There may be mitigating factors that explain why they are doing it, but I still judge the behavior.

Still, I think we should tread carefully here, because when we start judging groups of people, we run a high risk of inflicting a lot of collateral damage, as overlapping groups will feel the sting, too. And sometimes, when we learn more about the situation, we realize that our judgment wasn't warranted at all, and just caused unnecessary pain to the people on the receiving end- think, for instance, of the judgment that used to be heaped on the mothers of autistic kids, when the prevailing explanation for that condition was that the mother had not been sufficiently loving. So I try to save this judgment for cases where clear harm is being done to someone else.

Which brings me back to the Mommy Wars that have raged this summer. Perhaps some of the generals in these wars think that there are true grounds for judgment of those on the "other side, " but I think that most of the rest of us realize that is not true. We all roll our eyes at the wars and blame the media for perpetuating them, and that is fair... to a certain extent. Except we are the foot soldiers in these wars. We're buying the war bonds with our clicks and our outrage. 

 

The Mommy Wars will stop when we lay down our weapons and go home, and deprive the generals of our lives to use as cannon fodder. They will stop when we refuse to sit in judgment on other mothers. They will stop when we say to the people worrying about Marissa Mayer and her still unborn child that no, in fact, we shouldn't draw any conclusions about maternity leave in general from this case, which is really about how one specific family is choosing to handle the very unusual circumstance of having the woman receive an offer of a top leadership role when she was already pregnant. Do you want to discuss what maternity leave in the US should be? Great, let's do that! But leave Mayer out of it- she is irrelevant to the discussion. They will stop when we refuse to say that a mother who has decided to leave the workforce is somehow "wasting" her education. Aren't parents their kids' first teachers? Well, I'm all for teachers who have good educations. They will stop when we tell Ann Romney and her supporters that they will score no political points from their misinterpretations of Hilary Rosen's statements. Just about everyone recognizes that taking care of children is actual work- certainly those of us in the workforce do, since we pay someone else to do that work for some number of hours every day. If you find someone who doesn't recognize that fact, deal with that person rather than igniting unnecessary battles by willfully misinterpreting the comments of someone who clearly does. They will stop when we tell those well-meaning left-leaning commenters that while there are indeed profound problems with race and class in our society that impact access to childcare and with how we value the labor of childcare, it is hugely unfair to lay those problems at the feet of one mother- no matter how rich- or even a group of mothers, unless they happen to also be the President and the leaders of Congress. In short, the Mommy Wars will stop when we make them stop by rising about the instinct to judge even when judging seems to further our own beliefs and desires.

The Mommy Wars show the risks we run when we allow our judgment to run unchecked. We're so busy feeling outraged and secretly (or not so secretly) judging other mothers that we don't seem to have any energy left to try to actually solve some of the problems and improve the situation. We've created an environment where it is entirely reasonable to expect to be judged for even the most mundane parenting decision, and I suspect that is why we're so quick to take offense and why it is so hard to have the sort of open, honest discussions we'd need to engage in to find policies that would really work.

So I say, let the kilt-wearing runners be! Maybe we can't keep those snarky little voices in our heads from making judgments. But we can engage the rest of our brains to decide if that judgment deserves to take up anymore space. What purpose is it serving? Chances are, none. Who is it hurting? Quite possibly, no one more than ourselves.