Telling stories

When I started teaching, I was alarmed to learn that a female student had been dissuaded from particular areas of study by a senior professor who suggested that women were too enmeshed in the pragmatics of daily life to do the abstract theorizing necessary for higher scholarship.  All my years of egalitarian experience slammed into the brick wall of outmoded attitudes about bodies and gender.  As if living back in the Renaissance, scholars were supposed to be disembodied minds, removed from the material world, while women were consigned to the material world through the necessity of their bodies.

Apparently, this professor hadn't heard of the theorizing that arises from personal experience.  Somehow, the notion that the personal is political had not infiltrated that particular ivory tower.

Fortunately, though, the blogosphere gives us a broad platform for telling women's stories - not only of weddings, but of marriages, careers and daily lives - and showing,through concrete example, how the personal and political intersect and shape one another.  Telling stories is a concrete form of activism, a way of taking up space, giving voice to our experience, and saying that it matters.

Today, there are two spectacular stories about power, and change, and women's lives.  You must read How Love Can Heal and Anna (of Accordians and Lace) on Idiosyncratic Skills.  These are stories of the hardscrabble lives of women who probably have more useful, world-changing wisdom and insight in their little fingers than that ivory tower professor accumulated in countless years of theorizing.

Furla Fashion Fumble

After two weeks in Italy - which included four days in Milan, the fashion capital of the WORLD, and home to the flagship stores of such luminaries as Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Versace and Emilio Pucci - I came home empty-handed. Somewhat unbelievably.

When we left for Italy, my plan was to buy a decent handbag to upgrade my professional image, and more than likely, a pair of shoes, because, well.... I love shoes and Italians make wonderful shoes. With a plan and a full day on my own while Eric was lecturing, it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that I would score some stylish Italian accessories.

But: NOTHING!

My tour of the "Golden Quadrangle," Milan's fashion center, left me feeling a bit out of my element. If Gucci and Prada don't fit my lifestyle at home, what was I doing at these glitzy stores in Milan? When a $1200 evening gown at Valentino began to look reasonable (because, uh yeah, I have so many black tie events to go to...), I knew I had to get out of the neighborhood.

On the way to yet another cathedral, Eric and I passed a Furla shop. Angels were singing and a beam of light landed on a perfectly balanced, stylishly simple handbag. Laaaaaaaaaa!

I lust after these Italian handbags, but at $400-500 in the US, they're quite a bit out of my price range. When we stopped to admire the bags, I noticed that they were around 200 Euros. Still expensive, but far less than at home.

Much to my dismay, I paused. I choked.

My shopping karma deserted me.

We kept walking. I didn't throw down my credit card for one of those buttery-soft leather confections.

Now I see delicious handbags everywhere,

patkas, via Simply Lovely

Morelle, who is sadly closing her shop.

or maybe it's still open here.

but they do not measure up to my Furla dreams.

Today's travel lesson: Know your exchange rates inside and out, so you can quickly calculate in your head (200 Euros = $247, fully half the price of a Furla bag purchased in the US!).

Also, know the approximate cost of things you are thinking of buying, easy to research on the web. I didn't fully realize the price differential between a Furla purchased in Italy and one purchased in the US until I got home and checked Furla US's website. Had I been aware of this difference, I might not have choked!

What the heck are rhodium eroders?

Have any of you heard this phrase before???

Apparently, some people wear the rhodium plating off their white gold rings faster than others. The ones who wear away the rhodium fastest are 'rhodium eroders.'

Dr. Cowgirl and PK have both been alarmed to find the white gold of their year-old engagement rings turning yellow. I've noticed that the inside of my engagement ring is getting a yellowish tint, too.

Though rhodium is known to wear off, and white gold rings are supposed to need re-plating every so often, we thought it was on the order of 5-7 years, not annually. Apparently, re-plating the rings hurts them, because the gold is sanded down (thus removed!) before the new rhodium plating is applied. Getting the ring re-plated every year would soon cause it to vanish into nothing!

Brilliant Earth has suggested waiting as long as possible to get the rings re-plated. This doesn't seem to be an ideal solution if the rings are not looking their best. Anyone know anything about getting white gold rings re-plated???

Copy room convo

Scene: Unsuccessfully trying to get a letter of reference to print on letterhead. A student comes in.

Him: What program do you work for?

Me: I'm a faculty member in X department. What about you? What do you do?

Him: I'm a student in Y department. What's your name?

Me: Elizabeth [Barefoot].

Him: Oh, [Bare-y]? Lizzy [Bare-y]?

Me: Don't even go there.


What's up with the patronizing, diminutizing nicknaming?!?? Do I need to drop the friendly, informal demeanor and start referring to myself as Dr. Barefoot all the time? Should I boycott the copyroom and demand that the administrative people make all the copies for me? Would a grey wig and thick glasses garner more respect?

I may be a little sensitive about my gender and age, in that I'm a department that has historically been male. However, I'm hard pressed to believe that this student might have said, upon meeting one of my grey-haired male colleagues, "Oh you're Bobby? Bobby Scholar-y?"

How would you handle such situations?

Wedding album hell

The wedding was lovely. The photographer was one of the sweetest and most talented people I ever met. Her images were so beautiful they hurt my eyes. I mean, gorgeous. Unexpectedly breath-taking.

So when I got the album proof today from an outside company - NOT my photographer, I must emphasize - I was expecting all kinds of loveliness. I couldn't wait to flip through Kate's images, beautifully-organized on well-designed pages... and - what fresh hell is this???!!??! The album proof was cluttered, disorganized, and out-of-order. Though I was pretty much the most chill bride ever - told my florist to work with any seasonal local flowers in the red-orange-yellow color-family, gave our baker carte blanche to create a tasty cake - I flipped through the proof pages saying no, No, NO!

I hadn't realized just how important Kate's aesthetic sensibility had been in creating a beautiful depiction of our wedding day - and how easily a sloppy layout could mar the beauty she depicted. I'm not saying that the wedding day has to be all about prettiness. It was about so many things: fun, family, love, natural beauty, peaceful moments, laughter, heartfelt words, us. But none of that showed through in the cluttered layout, with images overlapping others, and crowded six or more on a page. And I'm embarrassed to reveal how much the album would have cost, had we purchased it: more than the cake, which made 100 sweet-tooths very happy, and provided us with an entire layer to freeze for our first anniversary.

In this alterna-wedding-blogosphere, we examine and question wedding traditions, and poke holes in those that can no longer stand up to 21st-century scrutiny. But this wedding album proof threw me right into the midst of all the not-suited-for-us traditions we thought we had escaped.

The largest photos were a close-up of the two of us kissing - it honestly looked kind of creepy and overly-intimate - and of me hugging my dad. It's a lovely photo, but undercuts the story of the day, which is that I walked down the beach with both parents. The father gives away the bride, so that's what matters. That's what we enlarge, according to our WIC-approved formulas.

Because I know an online photo album company can't read my mind, I carefully put the photos in order to tell the story of the day, before submitting my order. They disregarded the order completely, showing dinner toasts at the after-dinner cake cutting, and people departing from the ceremony on the same page as people arriving at the ceremony. Argh!

Wedding album lessons learned:

1) Don't pay for the full album before you see a proof or a plan (fortunately we paid only a "design fee," for what appears to be an algorithm-controlled design process: Father - enlarge. Bride - enlarge. Groom - shrink. People giving toasts - all on one page, even if there are 8 of them and they're so small you can't see them.)

2) Give *explicit* instructions. (I wrote back with a full page of design revisions. Let's see how they do.)

3) Compare offers. This faceless company offered 25% off, bringing the cost to way less than what our photographer would charge - but I'm surely her layouts are much better.

4) Consider doing it yourself (or together... or pawning off on your partner!). Petite Chablis and Accordians and Lace both did nice reviews of online wedding album software. I should have listened to them, before the WIC dug in its claws and started convincing me that I need a leather-bound, "professionally-produced", heavy-leafed photo album. How did this happen now, just when I was congratulating myself on having avoided the WIC throughout the wedding process?? (I might have to credit Mr. Barefoot here. In trying to guard my precious new-faculty-member time, he thought we should farm it out. Right motive, but little did he know that it would feed directly into the evil WIC.)

I suspect we'll head toward #4. It will be worth a few hours' time to have control over how the album turns out, and we can spend our savings on a weekend of skiing.

Any suggestions for high-quality online wedding album services?

This Ring's the Shizzle!

Rings - plural - actually.

Four - count 'em - four! Such a statement!

Probably not what my niece had in mind, when she told me to request rings for every finger upon my engagement, but perfect for those days when you're feeling less demure debutante and more shit-kicking suffragette.

Wendy Brandes, via Fashion for Nerds.

The trouble with wife

Of all the terms we have for our beloveds, wife is not sitting well with me.

Fiancee felt so glamorous. It implied limitless potential. It was redolent of endless rounds of chic parties, cocktail dresses, and Audrey Hepburn's effortless grace and style.

Wife brings all that glamorous potential down to the ground with a thud. Pot roasts. Vacuuming.

Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled beyond belief to be Eric's spouse. His life partner. His companion. Even his muse or 'better half.' I just don't want to be a wife.

I brought this up at a party with some recently married friends.

Me: Is anyone else having trouble with the word wife?
Woman #1: Yeah, it's an ugly word. Like 'moist.'
Me: Moist?
Woman #1: Yeah grimaces ] moist, wife. Ugh. Those words don't role off the tongue. Not like husband.
Man #1: "Moist wife" - that's just how I like her to be. heh heh.
Woman #2: Wife might be ok. Just wait 'til you're a Mom.

I know that there's a move to 'reclaim' wife. Good. We should do that. In the meantime, I think I'd rather be a partner or a spouse.

Husband is awesome. During our reception, I was running around, inquiring of every guest: "Have you seen my HUSBAND?" So fun.

But 'wife', in my mind, is too much tied to confining, 1950s-style images, of the loss of idealism and creativity so brilliantly captured in Revolutionary Road. I feel like I might suddenly become invisible. Wife seems so tied up with essentialized images of 'how women are' and 'what women should be': endlessly caring, subverting their needs to those of their families, putting their dreams and goals on hold to nurture those of others.

Is anyone else having trouble with the term wife?

On the importance of double-checking

Our rings have been in for a couple weeks, and Mr. Barefoot has been after me to make an appointment to go pick them up. "What's the rush?" I asked. "All we have to do is pick them up. It will take 30 seconds." In my mind, that was a task to do days before the wedding.

Fortunately, his common sense prevailed, and we went to get our rings only to find out that
1) His hammered ring came out totally differently (and not in a good way) than the model we'd seen; and
2) My ring was the wrong one! Though we'd discussed an eternity band at the earlier appointment, that was not what was ordered for us.

The consultant was apologetic and helpful, promising to correct the mistakes within ten days, and throwing in the engraving for free, but this was not what I wanted to be dealing with three weeks before the wedding.

As Mr. Barefoot calmly pointed out, we all make mistakes, and it was simple mix-up, which the store promised to fix as soon as possible. Fine. But it's another trip to the store, another errand to do, one more item on the overly-long list.

More and more, I'm coming to understand why women go into "bridezilla" mode (which, by the way, is a horribly sexist and misogynist label, which is why I've put it in scare quotes. A woman stands up for what she wants, and suddenly she's a bitch?!??! Pul-leeze!) Despite our efforts to embody egalitarian gender roles, I care much more about the look and feel of the wedding. The colors matter to me. The dresses for the Women of Honor matter to me.* The guys' ties matter to me. The flowers matter. His ring - which we're going to have to look at for the next 50 years (knock wood!) - matters. But all these details, on top of a brand new full-time job, are making me far less forgiving, flexible, and easy-going than I would like to be.


*Still looking for great v-neck, chiffon party dresses <$100 that come in persimmon, pomegranate and/or cobalt blue. Any recommendations welcomed!

Karmic justice

If only I had been a prompt RSVP-er all these years, my life would be so much easier right now!

Instead, I'm on the payback end of karmic justice for being whimsical, undecided, and absent-minded. All those times I assumed, "Oh yeah, my friends know I'm coming, 'cause I told them," or "They know I can't make it because I'm out of town that week" are totally coming back to bite me in the butt.

Guess which part of the guest list RSVP'd promptly and has already sent gifts? Those would be the friends of the super-organized, highly-effective, on-task Mr. Barefoot.

And the few friends who "still don't know [their] travel plans"... clearly comrades of Little Miss Manana, inhabitant of a universe with Stretchable Time. Birds of a feather, and all that. I love the flexibility and spontaneity of my friends! But right now, when the final guest count is due to the caterer on Friday, I wish they were a little more Type A.

Should I be concerned...

... that our caterer thinks that my fiance is marrying someone named "Ashley"?

That's according to the contract she sent us.

hmmm.... this may be the only downside to having the groom very involved in the planning. The vendors know his name, but not mine. He coordinates, I write the checks.

On the upside, maybe all I have to do is show up!

He's no Stunt Groom!

(I'm trying to get him to meet with florist later in the week... just trying to determine the odds of ending up with all pink carnations*. Slim, I think. But I need to get those odds down to nil.)

Maybe I can get him to go to the dress fitting for me as well... Since I'm not great with self-denial, and still very much in the throes of the dissertation, which must Must MUST be done in three weeks, I'm going to postpone the fitting. I'm may be the only bride in history who has not wanted to see her dress as soon as it arrived. The time is better spent reducing stress by working out at the gym.

In other news, we also nailed down a spot for the rehearsal dinner/ welcome party. I was devastated to learn that we couldn't have a Friday night barbeque at the hostel/ restored army barracks where some - but not all - of our guests are staying. Hostel rules preclude entertaining outside guests there, so (still lacking that beautiful large backyard, and realizing that an October evening could actually be a bit cold for a barbeque) we set out on a hunt for a casual restaurant that could hold a large group. Harder to find than you'd think. None of our favorite taquerias worked out. But lo! - there's a brewery just a mile from our house! Now we're signed, sealed and delivered for beer & 'za the night before the wedding!

*no offense meant to lovers of carnations! I know they can look very chic. They're just not my flower.

Don't hate me, un-bride

You wanna know the real reason I haven't gone to SF for the first fitting of my wedding dress?

I'm worried that it will be too small.

See, I was between sizes when I ordered it. A size up would have needed significant alterations to fit, while the size ordered was just a little bit snug. The consultant encouraged me to order the smaller size and just "lose 5 to 8 pounds." Not much. I assured her (and myself) that I was at my winter weight, and a few weeks of salads and daily workouts would have me fighting trim.

Ah, but we didn't figure in the stress munchies that join at my computer each day. And we didn't count on me spending 8-10 solid hours in front of the computer, all day, every day.

I'm maybe two pounds lighter than when I ordered the dress in January. My fitting is in three weeks. Goodbye alcohol, laziness, and bread.

I welcome any other (sane, healthy, and vegetarian) ideas to help me fit into my dress.

(I can't believe I am capitulating to Shrinking Bride Syndrome. $)@$#^*&#@ ego. and Wedding Industrial Complex.)

Snooty Snoot Salon, Redux

or, Yes, the Economy is Really That Bad

Back in January, when I had been engaged mere weeks, I went on a wedding dress shopping expedition in San Francisco with three friends, two of whom are also getting married this year. A Saks sample sale was the catalyst for our foray, but we checked out a whole range of places, from Jessica McClintock, where dresses started at $99, on up.

Walking down the street, we passed the lovely windows of a fancy national bridal salon, which we'll call Snooty Snoot Salon, and spontaneously rang to see if we could come up. At that point, I was an absolute wedding neophyte. I still thought $1000 was a lot of money for a dress, and I didn't know that bridal salons are are not enamored of spontaneity. Had they told us to come back when we had an appointment, that would have been fine.

Instead, they grudgingly invited us up, and seemed a bit taken a back when four grad students tromped into the store, looking like, well, grad students. Our appearance did not suggest that we had tons of money to spend - because we did not. The consultant seemed to further regret her decision when I revealed that the top of my price range barely overlapped with the bottom of the price range of dresses in the store. Having never investigated wedding dresses before that day I had no idea how expensive they can be.

My wedding date was the third strike: "You're getting married in October?!??! This October??!!! You're really a bit late to be looking for a dress. Thank goodness you came in TODAY!" [Lady, I couldn't have come in any earlier, because I wasn't planning to get married, before now!]

So we didn't exactly hit it off. I tried on a few of their inexpensive dresses, and with every dress change, the consultant cooed about how 'slimming' the dress was. Since I didn't feel the particular need to be 'slimmed', 'slimming' began to feel like code for "you big fat cow." [For the record, I'm a climber, a yogi, a bike-commuter, and a hiker. I'm no toothpick, but I'm of quite average size. I hate the cultural construct that tells women to virtually disappear by losing so much weight before their weddings, suggesting that we will disappear altogether once we are married.]

Every opinion or idea I ventured about my wedding or my potential wedding dress was quite incorrect, according to the consultant. I think it's fair to say that I was not her favorite customer ever.

I was quite surprised, then, to receive a phone call yesterday from the same consultant, informing me that if I hadn't bought my dress [which one would think I must have by now, since Jan. was already too late for an Oct. wedding], I might be interested to know that Snooty Snoot Salon is having a 15% off sale, and I was welcome to come in.

It's rather alarming to hear that the economy is so bad that they are courting customers they had no use for four months ago.

Fortunately, I've already found a perfectly lovely dress, for an eminently reasonable price, at another shop in downtown SF, staffed by kind, charming consultants.

Take Your Wine Bar and Lazy Susan, and Skeedaddle

I came across this purportedly cost-cutting article via Another One Bites the Dust. All I can say is thank goodness I'm getting married on the west coast and don't have to deal with this sort of snobby New Yorkers (yes, there are definitely snobby people everywhere, but blessedly few in my social circle. Maybe because we're all impoverished grad students.)

This article seems to adhere to the brilliant line from one of the commentators at A Practical Wedding that weddings often turn into a game of "Let's Pretend We're Rich." NY Mag seems to feel that everyone is obligated to play, and wins only by convincing their guests that this is the case. Any sign of thriftiness is a sin and should be shunned. The only way to stay within budget is to pull one over on guests in such a crafty way that they won't realize that we're not rich.

Another One Bites the Dust took umbrage with this line:
No matter how tight your budget, do not have a cash bar. A wine-only bar’s thriftiness is just as obvious.

Whatever. If our guests are drinking our carefully chosen wines, I hope they'll enjoy, and not wish that is was something else.

I drew the line here:
Draw the line at family-style service. What’s next, wine bottles on a lazy Susan? Honestly, you’re better off eloping.

Now there's a serving idea! Common at Chinese weddings, I imagine, where the condiments and dishes are placed on a central lazy Susan for everyone to reach.

Thanks for the advice, NY Mag. We'll have to cancel our contract with our site and lose our deposit, since the only food service options they offer are family style and buffet (which I'm sure you, NY Mag, think is even more declasse). hrmph!

We could also debate the value of this line:
If the florist tries to charge you for the arrangements in the bathroom, don’t bite your tongue.

Um, flowers in the bathroom? Really? Maybe we'd save some bank if we didn't put flowers in the bathroom, rather than arguing with the florist about whether we'll be charged for them.

Hmmm... I wonder what NY Mag would have to say about the unisex bathroom (singular) at our site?

Egad, the more I read, the more incensed I am.
Don’t get a fresh-from-ICP artist to shoot your wedding. You’ll regret it, always .... You could opt out of the engagement shoot and save about $500, but that’s when you’ll realize if you love your photographer or if you’ll have to prepare for more of this kind of creepiness later

Huh. "Opting out" of the engagement session suggests that its mandatory. Isn't purchasing a service from a vendor more like "opting in"? We never considered having an engagement session, especially since we don't know anyone who has done this. I asked my married BFF about it, and she looked at me like I was from Mars: "what, you're not movie stars!" (Which is not to say that you shouldn't do an engagement session if you have the time and cash. I'd love to have some nice photos of us - but we have neither time nor cash right now.)

NY Mag crossed the line when they crossed Miss Manners:
avoid engraving, letterpress, and shapes that don’t fit into regular envelopes. And, print all of it at once. Skimp tastefully. Example: A save-the-date magnet isn’t the best idea.

As we have learned from Miss Manners, handwritten or engraved invitaions are the most proper. We do want the guests to feel warmly invited and welcome, even if they're only going to get to drink wine, and may be called upon to pass serving dishes to the person on their left.

The magnets? I love 'em! Our fridge is covered with save the date magnets from our friends.

So save yourself the time and angst. This is one article on wedding budgeting that you can avoid.

The bottom line is in the article's final line:
A great place to start: Event-design companies Fête and A Wedding Library offer free one-hour consultations. Go, and don’t waste a minute.

Nice advertorial, NY Mag. I wonder what these event planning companies paid for this sort of free publicity???

Insane!

source

Six straight hours on wedding blogs!

(Mr. Barefoot is out of town; my Institution of Higher Learning is on spring break [which doesn't mean a damn thing to us dissertation writers]; all my meetings and errands were done this morning.)

Like A Mindful Bride said, this thing has a way of throwing life out of balance.

Desperately need to regain balance!

What a pain in the ass!

• endless searching, phoning, emailing...
• only to find out that the fees for a particular vendor are beyond our budget.
• signing contracts
  
• trying to develop exquisite aesthetic taste in a few months, after decades of not caring much
• colors? how on earth do you choose colors???
• corralling addresses for friends all over the world
• being the center of attention: not me, so much. Not Mr. Barefoot, either.
• managing parental expectations
• nearly missing a work deadline because of emergency gown consultations (well, not so bad really. I always love a good shopping trip.)

Sign me, Dazed & Confused