Hurricane Hygiene
November 3, 2012 § 2 Comments
Monday
Damn, you knew you should’ve taken a shower this afternoon before the power went out. You were too busy reading hurricane updates to actually prepare for the hurricane. Before going to bed (much earlier today than usual), you wash your feet by flashlight because you still have some dignity. Being in the bathroom in the dark is scary. Bloody Mary bloody Mary…
Tuesday
You don’t bother to apply makeup because you know for sure you’re not going outside today. Also, hair is up in a bun because you were supposed to wash it yesterday and now it’s been three days and it’s getting kind of icky. If you’re lucky enough to still have running water, you can at leaset wash your hands and face. Otherwise, there’s always hand sanitizer! There’s no point in washing any other part of your body because you’ve been completely sedentary the whole day.
Wednesday
What? That’s not dandruff…it’s…kindling…for the fire you’re building in the middle of the living room to keep warm! Rub some coconut oil on your head; it’ll help.
Today you put on some makeup because you’re heading to a friend’s place uptown. If you’re one of those people who won’t go out in public without a little eyeliner or mascara, you’d better hope you’re applying something semi-permanent because you, in your rushed naiveté, assume that you’ll be back home by nightfall and thus neglect to pack anything. Even a toothbrush.
Now would be a really nice time to own some comfy sweatpants, but you only have jeans because this is New York, where your closet (if you have one) doesn’t have enough room to store extraneous clothing items. Sigh.
After hiking five miles to your friend’s apartment (still faster than a bus!) without breaking a sweat (because it’s cold outside), you are rewarded with a shower. Now you really wish you had brought a change of clothes or toiletries, but you bum a toothbrush, towel and some gym shorts off your friend. You don’t bother washing your hair (still wound tightly in a bun) because it’s long and plentiful and you’re just too tired to deal with it. Without your Clarisonic brush and the daily 5-product regimen you use on your face, your skin also gets dryyy. But considering how oily your face usually is, perhaps it’s an improvement.
You sleep in the shirt you’ve been wearing all day. Don’t worry; it’s okay to do that if you didn’t sweat. No shame.
Thursday
Your friend kindly lends you a shirt, and you don your pants, socks and hoodie from yesterday and journey to another friend’s casa. By now, your hair (still in a bun) is a certified mess. When hair is in need of washing, some people’s scalps are oily enough to start a grease fire, while others’ are dry enough to start a forest fire. You finally let down your hair and give it a thorough washing. How did people deal before showers were invented?
None of your friends had floss. Who needs floss anyway? You’ve never heard of anyone actually getting gingivitis. You use your old t-shirt to wrap your wet hair and wear your friend’s shirt, the one you’ve been wearing all day, to sleep. You realize that you haven’t shaved your legs in two weeks (it is fall, after all) and hope the extra fuzz will keep your legs warmer. In any case, it’s November now, so you have a valid excuse not to shave all month.
Friday
You don’t bother changing after waking up — your friend’s clothes are actually pretty comfortable, and besides, you’re just spending the day bumming around her apartment while she’s at work. Amazingly, your eye makeup has managed to stay on, which means you haven’t rubbed your eyes for 60 hours. What self-control!
After hearing that electricity is back in your apartment, you gleefully return home to find your kitchen only faintly smelling of the rotting garbage and perishable food you left behind. Forget taking a shower; the water is still blisteringly cold. The thing you’re most excited about doing? Changing out of the underwear you’ve been wearing for the past three days.
Not The End Of The World
November 1, 2012 § 3 Comments
I started hearing about the impending hurricane on Friday afternoon, when my editor warned that we might not be able to come into work the next week. I was intrigued, but not worried. On the map, my apartment was located in Zone C, making it unlikely that we would be forced to evacuate.
On Sunday, my roommate Catherine went out to stock up on food in preparation for the Frankenstorm. It took her two hours because the checkout lines extended from the front of the store all the way to the back. When I went out later, I saw that Trader Joe’s had a line to go inside the store, like it was Black Friday. Crazy. I stopped by the nearby Asian grocery store instead to buy some vegetables and cookies. The wind was already whipping down the street as runners squeezed in one last jog.
We spent Monday relaxing at home; I had some articles to work on but applied to jobs instead, which I suppose is better(?). I quickly ran out of cookies. Hurricane Sandy had landed, and I got tired of reading about it after the first three hours. Around 8PM, our lights started flickering. Then they went out. I was somewhat worried, but my laptop and phone were at full power, and I didn’t expect the blackout to last for more than a day or so. What I didn’t know at the time was that we lost electricity not due to a controlled outage, but to a massive explosion at Con Ed that would take way longer than a day to fix.
That night, I went to bed early and watched What To Expect When You’re Expecting (surprisingly funny, but I watched it solely for Chace Crawford, whose storyline was excruciatingly unrealistic and unentertaining) and Disney’s African Cats (cheesy narration/music but incredible footage), figuring that using up my laptop’s battery was fine since I couldn’t do anything else in the dark anyway.
The next morning, I woke up to the sounds of Catherine rushing around the living room while talking on the phone, and I learned that they now expected the power outage to last a week(!!!), and she was planning to head uptown to stay with a friend. I started getting alarmed and texted a few friends who live in New York to see how they were doing. I also called my aunt with hopes of staying with them for a while, but I couldn’t get through and concluded that they must’ve lost power in New Jersey as well.
Catherine cleared out with her daughter early Tuesday afternoon, kindly leaving me with some flashlights and a box of tea lights. All afternoon, I saw people walking around outside, and wondered what they were doing and where they were going. I, on the other hand, spent the whole day eating, reading and sleeping. Seriously, I took two naps and ate three meals in the span of nine hours. It was partly due to the fact that it was really cold in my apartment, and the only warm places were in my bed or by the stove. Fortunately, we still had running (cold) water and gas, so I could try to use up the perishables languishing in the dark fridge. I was incredibly bored and wished I had my GameBoy (an attempted solo game of Scrabble did not pan out as well as expected).
When the sunlight started fading, I lit 11 candles in my room (more matches than I’ve ever used in my entire life) and started reading some of Catherine’s daughter’s picture books because I had finished October’s Vanity Fair. One of the picture books, about a cat living a fabulous New York life, had the word “sexy” in it, as in her neighbor’s male cat had a “sexy smile.” I was really disturbed by the use of that word in a children’s book — I don’t think any child could or should understand the meaning of that word until they learn what sex actually is!
I was trying to conserve my phone’s power, but I briefly called B to have him check my school email for me and found out that class was canceled for the rest of the week. Things were getting serious, and I decided to relocate the next day. I had tired of reading my journalism books, so I picked out a book of short stories from Catherine’s extensive collection to read in bed: Zhang Jie‘s Love Must Not Be Forgotten (1979). The two stories I read were about lost love and kind of depressed me, so I went to sleep a little past midnight.
Despite having slept early and extra amounts the previous day, I woke up at noon on Wednesday. My cell phone signal had been iffy but viable for the past few days, but it was totally gone by the time I got out of bed. I planned to hang out at Esther’s for the day to recharge (and maybe shower…), so after eating a big lunch, I packed up my laptop and charger and headed out. It was 1:30PM.
Five hours later, I finally arrived at Esther’s apartment on 145th Street. Did it really take me that long to travel uptown from East Village to Harlem, a distance of merely 9 miles? (I could’ve driven from Chicago to Des Moines in that time!!) Yes. Yes, it did.
Won’t Leave Me Alone
October 18, 2012 § 2 Comments
One recurring theme since coming to New York is the unprecedented amount of attention I’ve gotten from strange men, mostly on the streets, mostly (probably) crazy bums. The only time I’ve experienced anything like this was two years ago in Hong Kong, when I was 10 pounds heavier — and thus had bigger breasts — and wore low-cut tops, causing certain people (mostly creepy old men) in HK to behave like they had never seen cleavage before.
On Tuesday afternoon after dropping B off at Newark Airport, I sat on the train on my way back into Manhattan. The inside of the train looked like this, with cushioned benches; the seats on the right can fit three people comfortably while the seats on the left can fit two, if they sit pretty close together. It wasn’t very crowded, and I picked an empty seat on the left, prepared to stare out the window for half an hour (or sleep) while listening to my iPod and wishing my boyfriend wasn’t flying 1,108 miles away from me.
In my peripheral vision, I saw a tall person dressed in black stop next to my seat and hoist his bag onto the shelf above my head. The seats around me were empty. He sat down next to me, and I moved closer to the window, annoyed that of ALL the seats available nearby, he chose mine. Whatever.
The train started moving, and I was gazing out the window, lost in thought, when I felt my neighbor say something to me. I pulled out one earphone and turned my head. He was a thin man, probably in his early to mid-30s, had a receding hairline of wavy black hair, and was somewhat formally dressed in black layers. He asked me if I knew how long it would take for the train to reach Manhattan. “Um, about 30 minutes?” I responded, and that gave him the chance he was so obviously looking for to continue talking to me.
He asked me where I was from. What I did. Where I lived. Out of politeness, I tersely answered his questions and asked him about himself. He was French (he had an accent) and worked as a private chef. He might’ve been handsome if I were old(er) and desperate, who knows. Mr. French Chef gave his game away when I asked if he was visiting New York (he had a suitcase), and he said that he had lived there for three years. WTF! As if he didn’t know how long the train would take!! I scoffed (internally), incredulous, and put my earphone back in once the brief conversation stopped, but he kept trying to talk to me. CAN I PLEASE JUST THINK ABOUT MY BOYFRIEND IN PEACE, I thought.
But no. He clearly had an agenda — he walked in from the back of the car, which meant he probably followed me onto the train, and deliberately chose to sit next to me so he could chat me up for half an hour. So he wasn’t going to take a hint.
He was telling me about how his friends open art galleries often in the NYU area, and how he likes to attend those events, and did I like to drink wine? Ugh. Then, as the train was nearing New York Penn Station, he gave me his business card and asked for my name and number, which I actually gave him because I guess I’m a crazy person. (Actually it’s because I’m bad at saying no and/or improvising my way out of unwanted situations.) Then I speed-walked off the train and out of the station because I was kind of freaked out.
As I scuttled toward the Herald Square subway station, I felt a wave of self-loathing. I hated myself for being too polite, for not having the courage to say “Please leave me alone,” for actually giving some weirdo my phone number. And maybe he’s actually a really cool dude and an amazing chef (or “l’Architecte du Gout©,” as it says on his business card). As a journalist, I thought, hey, maybe this guy has an interesting story that I could listen to over some wine, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the guilt I felt for not being able to stand up for myself and knowing that if I related this experience to anybody else, they would probably respond “Well, you should’ve just ignored him.”
Why? What is wrong with me? And is it even right to believe that there’s something wrong with me at all? Is it irresponsible to blame “society” for raising me to be nice to people who creep me out?
He texted me before I reached my apartment.
Hi Laura
Was a pleasure to meet !
I will give you a ring sometime this week!!
Have a nice day !!!
I didn’t respond this time.
The website doesn’t work.
The “Fat” Lady On TV
October 6, 2012 § Leave a comment
I’ve been following the hubbub over Wisconsin TV anchor Jennifer Livingston for the past few days with only a passing interest, but after reading the latest news of Kenneth Krause’s half-hearted apology (“I’m sorry you were offended” is never a proper apology), I’d like to express my thoughts on the matter.
Part of Krause’s rationale for his email was his experience being “obese as a child.” I’m tempted to go into the fat-kid-internalized-childhood-hate-and-now-spews-it-as-an-adult territory, but the email reads as more condescending than hateful — a more subversive kind of harassment.
My first question is, how much of his motivation lay in the fact that Livingston is a woman? Women are routinely held to a stricter standard in terms of appearance, and they are also easier to harass because they don’t fight back. Would he write the same email to a male anchor?
When this topic was brought up in my Writing & Reporting class, some of my classmates said it was unprofessional of Livingston to take time on-air to address a private letter. Livingston has said that she only addressed it because of the response she received on Facebook after her husband posted the letter; I’m sure that being a mother of three daughters also influenced her decision. While I don’t think I would’ve made the same decision as Livingston, I support her actions. Any time a woman defends herself in the media is a victory. Women are frequently criticized publicly: If she’s attractive, she’s probably fake or a slut. If she’s ugly, well, she could go die in a fire and nobody would care. If she doesn’t want children, she’s a selfish, emasculating dragon lady. If she’s a mother, she’s probably doing a million things wrong like feeding her children processed food and being too tired to have sex with her partner. This unrelenting public criticism makes it even easier for private individuals to judge one another and believe that it is necessary (and even good) to call out a woman’s “mistakes.”
In his email, Krause suggests that Livingston is a bad example “for this community’s young people, girls in particular.” OK, first of all, what kind of young people are watching the local news and using the anchors as role models? When I was a teenager, those people were old and boring as far as I was concerned. (Kids these days are too glued to their cell phones anyway.) Second of all, as a woman news anchor, Livingston is an excellent example to girls who want to be successful professionals and working mothers.
There’s been some controversy over Livingston’s use of the word “bully.” Stephanie Hanes at the Christian Science Monitor argues that Livingston’s misappropriation of the word “stops the conversation and leads to a fight over the label rather than the content.” Um, the drastic irony here is that Hanes, who begins to make a substantial point about Krause’s “unacceptable” and “sexist” criticism, veers off to point out how one email doesn’t equal bullying. Wow. And Linda Stasi at the New York Post (why was I reading that anyway?) actually goes so far as to accuse Livingston as being the bully (what?). The “you can’t complain about your life because people out there/people like me have it worse!” argument is not valid. And the way Stasi describes other female anchors’ “ample chests” makes it pretty clear that she has no problem judging other women. The fact that most of the commenters agree with her reasoning just makes my head hurt.
It’s worth reiterating Livingston’s point that overweight people know they’re overweight — especially if they’re women on TV — and have probably tried to combat it and don’t need the condescending advice of others. The only issue I have with Livingston’s response is the line “…your children are probably going to go to school and call someone fat.” Whoa, lady. I know what she’s getting at, but as much as the word is used in that manner, I don’t accept the word “fat” as a flat-out insult, and it’s not helpful to frame it that way.
Other than that, Livingston’s response was measured and well thought out. She didn’t bother naming Krause because she wanted to use the situation as a jumping-off point for a lesson about the true example people set for their children. We need to foster an environment where children choose healthy lifestyles out of self-love and not self-loathing, and I think that both Livingston and Krause were trying to promote that message (the latter in a more…roundabout way). The fact that his identity was even dug out was, I suppose, an inevitability of this era. But it does make for a better discussion, and I hope that women in positions to speak publicly continue to defend themselves should the chance arise.
auradis 