The Vine: February 17, 2006
Sars,
I hate nylons. HATE. Thigh highs are my friends — not only do the good ones actually stay up, they make me feel sexy in a “I’m the only one who knows what I’m wearing under here” sort of way.
Problem? By big toes are destroying each and every pair. Even though I keep my toenails trimmed, after a few wearings, I find a hole. Sure, clear nail polish works if you find a run halfway through the workday, but I can’t keep mending and re-mending them that way. And at $20/pair for the good ones, I can’t just keep replacing them.
Help!
Thanks,
Leggy Loser
Dear Leg,
The obvious solution, of course, is to find cheaper ones that stay up. Failing that, you might look to your shoes as the culprit. I find that certain pairs will put my toe through my tights, while others don’t, so if you can track that and figure out if some shoes are more prone, you can try the little ball-of-the-foot inserts in those shoes. Those lift your foot and level it out a bit so that your toe and toenail aren’t driving down on the fabric all day. You can also shine a flashlight into your shoe toes and make sure there’s nothing snaggy in there.
If it’s a toenail issue, you can file your toenails more aggressively; wear Band-Aids over them; or put on a pair of Pedz or “foot condoms” under your stockings. But…stockings run. That’s baseball. That’s why I only wear tights, so I don’t have to replace them all the damn time.
Readership: Any brand recommendations or run-prevention tips for Leggy here?
Dear Sars,
I know you used to read Bust, and I’m wondering if you still do. Specifically, I’m wondering if you’ve read the Editor’s Letter in the Dec/Jan issues (with Rose McGowan on the cover). If you haven’t, the point is sort of moot, because I sort of just want another opinion on whether I’m reacting too sensitively to it.
To summarize, Debbie Stoller is apparently not a big fan of Adam Carolla’s humor, which is admittedly a bit on the Neanderthal side. But rather than doing some kind of thoughtful piece, she proceeded to tear apart the man’s appearance, such as his “giant Pez-like teeth, and dude-fro that makes him resemble a Brady brother missing link” and likening his work to “putrid, unfunny spew.” Her main bone of contention seems to be that he is unattractive, and he has two shows, but they don’t let unattractive women on the TV. Therefore, I guess, it’s cool for her to make fun of his appearance.
It wouldn’t bother me so much, except it’s all done in this self-congratulatory tone, like she’s striking a blow for women’s rights by making fun of the man’s dentistry. Plus, she spelled his name wrong all throughout the letter — “Adam Corolla,” not “Adam Carolla.” Nine times, she got it wrong. And she complains about having to see his mug on a billboard right outside her window, so it’s not like she couldn’t have looked out to check her spelling.
If I stumbled upon something like that in a magazine that didn’t fall into that realm of feminist puiblications, I might not be so uptight about it. But I’m so startled to see this magazine, that I generally view as a pretty positive publication, really crossing a line. If a men’s magazine had gone off on a woman’s appearance the way Bust went after Carolla’s, they would probably excoriate that publication, and rightly so. I feel that just because you turn around a shtick and say things about a man you imagine he’d say about a woman, it doesn’t make you clever, and it doesn’t mean you’re striking any kind of blow for equality. If anything, it sets us all back. It only embodies that third-grade mentality of “Boys are better than girls!” “No! Girls are better than boys!” when in reality, no one is better than anyone else based on gender.
Again, this is all fairly extraneous if you haven’t read the letter itself, and I apologize for my verbosity on the subject either way. I guess what it boils down to is curiosity — do you feel like that Editor’s Letter is a positive empowering statement, or do you feel it’s sexism in the guise of feminism? Or, you know, neither. I’m just interested in you take.
Signed,
I Drove A Corolla All Through High-School And College. It Wasn’t Flashy, But It Was Dependable And Got Great Mileage
Dear Dogs Looooove Trucks!,
I don’t read Bust anymore, for a number of reasons. I used to really dig it, and I still dig their book, but it just stopped speaking to me after a while — partly because I don’t own a vibrator and don’t appreciate being spoken to like that makes me unenlightened, but mostly because of the kind of frustration you describe with the editorial. Somewhere in the late nineties, the mag really started to feel like kind of a clubhouse for girls with Bettie-Page bangs who wore a lot of rockabilly-cherries clothes and hosted Pot-Brownie Decoupage nights in their East Village apartments, and there isn’t anything wrong with that per se. Feminism doesn’t require its proponents only to interest ourselves in scholarship on the historical Mary Magdalene or whatever the hell, and I think that if Bust wants to position itself as “taking back” crafts and sparkly stuff as part of a woman’s individual experience, the liking of which shouldn’t ghettoize her as an unserious person, that’s awesome. We shouldn’t have to apologize for enjoying “girly” stuff.
The problem, to my mind, is two-fold, and the first part is that the editorial often isn’t nuanced enough to make that point clear, and it can come off as more of that Alloy-catalog “boys suck”-t-shirt brand of “feminism” that isn’t really “about” anything. And hey, I agree with Stoller. Carolla is a troll, and unfunny as well. But if you want to talk about the fact that Neanderthal humor is now A Thing, that an ill-groomed man snurfling about boobies is a reversion, or an inversion, that’s obviously attractive enough to enough people that it succeeds in the culture right now, or whatever analysis you want to give it, you…have to give it an actual analysis. “Ugly men have no right to comment on women” is not an analysis. It’s a double standard that misses the point.
And that men-are-pigs “feminism” springs from enormous frustration at the double standards that we have to deal with all the time, and I get that, and I certainly get that, sometimes, you’re just fucking fed up and you don’t feel like sitting down and unraveling all the threads of why you resent Carolla’s existence and then tying it to the wage gap. There’s a place for that kind of commentary, and if that’s what Bust feels its mission is, I’m not saying that’s wrong. I still have a lot of respect for that mag even if I don’t feel like it’s for me anymore, or right now, or whatever. But my feeling is, as you know, that feminism is about equality, about being seen, heard, and understood as a person first and an Ovarian-American second, and I think the “girls rule, boys drool” business…I mean, reversing a double standard doesn’t obviate it. It just flips the lens.
And that’s the second part of the problem: if you position yourself as a feminist publication, it’s kind of hard to take a humanist approach to your content, or you’ll just be all over the map. I mean, I get a little impatient with Bitch sometimes, too, because I do feel like not everything they cover is the sexist affront I’m supposed to think it is, and that viewing every aspect of TV and movies through the prism of whether it’s balanced toward women is…exhausting, and not something I have time for, necessarily, because I’m over here viewing running a business through said prism. But…Bitch‘s mandate is “feminist response to pop culture.” It’s right there on the cover; it’s not like they can look at the Kay Jewelers ads and be like, “Yeah, I don’t see the big deal, just ignore it.” The point of the magazine is to see the big deal, and they do a great job with doing that. And so does Bust, in a different way.
So. I don’t have much use for pearl-clutching over Adam Carolla; it’s my opinion that aiming perfectly good feminist crit on a target that big is a waste. He’s a douche, meeting adjourned. But Bust is about a perspective, and the problem, to my mind, isn’t that Stoller is wrongheaded about the Carolla issue; it’s that the mandate of her publication does constrain her in certain ways from offering more nuance. Nature of the beast.
Dearest Sars,
Let’s say that you are a working artist (or “actor”) leading a busy two-job life, working at a real estate office during the day and performing during the evening. You just spent your (short, due to performance schedule) long weekend with your entire family — including parents, brother, brother’s wife, and brother’s wife’s family — during which time you, a single girl, were surrounded by canoodling couples and talk of babies, homes and cars, none of which you can afford right now.
Now let’s say you are due to finish a rigorous work/performance schedule just before the next long weekend, and are looking forward to having something of a life before your next show starts rehearsing in late February. Suddenly, your parents come to you and ask if you would like to come with them to see your elderly grandmother and uncle over that weekend. In Minneapolis. In February. They will pay for your ticket. You know full well they would never ask married brother and sister-in-law to make this trip, but since you are single and therefore must have nothing important going on, they are asking you. You love your parents and your grandmother very, very much, but are fairly certain even a quiet long weekend at home would be preferable to three days with Grandma (who can’t hear very well and therefore will often refuse to continue/drop out of conversations rather than struggle to participate), Uncle and Mom (who don’t get along that well), and Mom (who would be much happier of you would drop the acting career for law school and get married tout de suite).
Knowing that Grandma is probably not long for this earth, you feel tremendously guilty about saying no — but you also see no reason to martyr yourself continually just because you don’t happen to have a husband. Should you go for Grandma’s sake, or blow the dust off your spine and put it to use?
Thanks,
And By “You” I Mean “Me”
Dear Clevah,
Dusting off the old spine seldom hurts — but make sure you’re getting it out of dry dock for the right reasons, and not just because you have certain beliefs (and resentments) about your single status within the family. I’m not saying you’re wrong to make the assumptions you have about the situation; I’m saying that you don’t want to react too strongly in the other direction just to make a point. You know?
In other words, look at this situation and leave everything else — your parents’ motivations, your sister’s role — out of it. Do you want to see your grandma, put that time in while you still can? If the answer’s yes, does the pain-in-the-ass-itude of this trip’s timing outweigh your desire to spend time with her when she and other relatives who will be present are somewhat difficult?
Leave the martyrdom out of it; it’s not helping you make good decisions about your family. Look at the actual choice in front of you. If you can’t do it, you can’t, but if you don’t want everything to Be About you not being married? Don’t make it about that your own self.
Dear Sars,
I’m a pretty regular Vine reader, and have been for a couple of years or so because I enjoy the way people present their problems and like your way of pulling the salient details out of a long and circular letter. However, there’s something I’ve meant to ask a couple of times and have finally got around to it after a recent Vine.
What does the word “spaz” or “spazz” mean to you? In England, Scotland and Wales (not entirely sure about Northern Ireland), it’s more or less universally understood as being short for “spastic,” a name for people with cerebral palsy, and it’s really offensive — much worse, on my scale of things, than using “retarded” or “gay” as casual insults. It’s used a lot by kids in playgrounds, and by a few adults who probably also don’t have a problem with the casual use of racist or homophobic language.
I’ve hated it hearing it since I was pretty young, and it was the one rule that I was so scary about that I actually succeeded in convincing my brothers not to use it (pretty miraculous, since the dictionary definition of “younger brothers” is “will do anything you tell them not to do just because”). Since I started university seven years ago, I’ve been best friends with someone with mild cerebral palsy who was called “spaz” all the way through school, and will simply remove herself from someone’s company if they use it or any of its cognates, noun, verb or whatever, because it’s exceptionally hurtful to her.
So yes, I’m pretty hardcore about it, and I maintain a strict “no one who uses the words ‘spaz’ or ‘spastic'” policy on my Livejournal friends’ list. As far as I’m concerned, nobody over the age of fifteen in Britain has any excuse for not knowing what it means, either. The most popular cerebral palsy charity was called The Spastic Society until around 1990, when they changed their name to Scope because “spastic” had become a playground insult of choice.
Outside Britain, things get a little more complicated. I’ve come across Americans who claim to have no idea that “spaz” is related to cerebral palsy and say that they always thought it was a perfectly innocent contraction of “spasms,” and are horrified to discover that it’s offensive. Then again, I’ve also met Americans (including my ex-girlfriend, who was from the Midwest) who looked at me in shock when I asked her whether she’d say it, and exclaimed that of course she wouldn’t, it’s a horrible word.
Knowing that an American might be using it completely innocently doesn’t stop me flinching when I see it or hear it, but it does mean that I don’t automatically think as ill of them as I would of a British person. I also never know whether to ask Americans not to use it around me (as I do British people), because I don’t automatically adjust my language usage to meet American definitions of sensitivity: if I were writing about offensive language for a primarily Anglophone-European audience, for example, I would write what Americans usually refer to as “the n-word” or “n****r” out in full, because whilst it is certainly recognised as a highly offensive and unpleasant word here, we don’t have the convention that it shouldn’t even be written or spoken out loud. I’d rather Americans didn’t use “spaz” of course, and I am very pleased when Americans choose not to use it because they don’t want to give offence, but I don’t necessarily believe that the inhabitants of Country A should cease to use a word because it’s offensive in Country B.
I’m rather short on conclusions about what my actually point is here. I just thought I’d ask.
Yours,
We were annoyed enough when Snyder used it in Buffy, but we could have killed Joss Whedon when Willow did
Dear Annoyed,
I think your point is probably that I used the word, and you want me to know that it offended you.
Now, as far as I’ve ever heard, the word on this side of the pond has nothing to do with cerebral palsy. It means “klutz,” that’s it — there’s no connotation of any specific disability. Nor does “spastic,” from which it’s derived. I always thought “spaz” was short for “spasmodic.”
But I think your real question is whether I’ll stop using it now that I know it’s offensive in the UK. And the answer is no, for two reasons. First, I’m American. Second, it’s…precise. I can’t speak for everyone who uses “marginal” words like “spaz” or “gay,” but I work with words, and if I’ve used a marginal word like that, I’ve used it for a reason, and I certainly hope it’s clear from context and from the bulk of my work that it’s not because I think less of people with cerebral palsy, or GLBT people, or the differently abled, or whomever. Rather, it’s because I’m trying to convey an exact meaning, to describe something as well as it can be described, and when I say that someone is spazzing, it wouldn’t occur to me that CP sufferers would find it offensive, primarily because it wouldn’t occur to me to call them something so blunt-force and imprecise. Never mind the rudeness aspect; it just isn’t accurate. But when I do use “spaz,” it means there isn’t another word that I believe gets that job done. “Gay,” I don’t need to use; it is exact, in its way, and conveys a Richard-Marx-video quality that’s valuable, language-shortcut-wise, but “smurfy” works just as well, and avoids the potential for sounding insulting.
I understand why people get offended by certain terms. I’m not saying that they, or you, shouldn’t, because in a broad sense, I think it’s important for all of us as an English-speaking culture to look at, be aware of, and discuss the ways we use language. It’s a crucial discussion and, to me, an interesting one, and while so-called “politically correct” efforts to cleanse the language of sexist or otherwise offensive terms can sap English of its power, examining the reasons for those terms, and looking at our attitudes as we examine our names for things, is good work to be doing anyway, because it can also make us more aware of how we talk to, and about, each other. I mean, the use of “the N word” seems like an easy call, but what about African-Americans using it? What about Chris Rock’s riff on the difference between the two terms? What about how it’s used on The Sopranos? Because it’s just a short step from that conversation, which is about whether anyone “has the right” to use the word “n*gger” and how uncomfortable it made me to type it even with that ineffectual little asterisk in the middle, and the conversation about how white people and black people relate to each other — or don’t — in this country.
Am I going to put the phrase “the spazziest spaz who ever spazzed” into my next column and give you a volley of angry twitches, just to make this point? No. Your point is taken, and I’m sorry if you were turned off by the usage. But my word choice is exactly that — an informed choice, made by someone who works with words for a living. Not that you’re “wrong” to still take offense; that’s your reaction, so here we are. But you also chose to bring it to my attention and see what I had to say about it, and I think that’s the key to unpacking “ugly” words. I’ve said it before, but let’s get it out there. Let’s dig around, even if it smells bad, and talk about what we’re actually talking about. Because what we’re really talking about is each other, and it’s worth doing, and it’s worth doing right.
Hi Sars,
Just wondering: what are your thoughts on declawing cats?
Thanks,
Freddy
Dear Fred,
All over the damn lot in here today, aren’t we?
My cats still have their claws. My furniture, my hands, and I pay for this decision every day. And I did have an appointment all set up, back in the day, to have the Hobe declawed, because he ignored his scratching post and I just couldn’t deal, but my dad talked me out of it — said it was cruel, described the actual procedure to me, and reminded me that if Hobey ever gets out by accident, or I move to an outdoor-cat-friendly place, he’ll be fucked. So I cancelled it, and now most of my sweaters have pulls, but — that’s baseball.
And it is a cruel procedure, and it does leave them somewhat defenseless, but if the only way you can adopt a cat away from certain death is to declaw him, due to building regulations or your roommates wanting to have nice things or whatever, I guess you can justify it. But you can also train your kitten where to claw, keep their nails trimmed, and just accept that having pets mean you don’t live in a showroom home.
You can also find cats at shelters who are already declawed, so if you really can’t deal with the cat “manicuring” your couch, there’s that. But I really don’t believe in it, and I would strongly advise you to find another, less invasive way to protect your knits from harm.
Tags: Ask The Readers cats popcult rando retail the fam
