Dogged Blog

And thus do shoes make potential criminals of us all

I had to take my mother to a doctor's appointment at 8 AM this morning. I was sitting there waiting for her to come out of her exam, wishing I'd had just one more cup of coffee before I left the house, when a woman walked by in the best wedge-heeled, high backed super cool Mary Janes I've ever seen. If she hadn't been a tiny little thing who probably wore, like, size 4, I'd have thrown her to the ground, torn off her shoes, and run away with them and let my mom take a cab home.

Equally fashionable: Plus-sized clothes, deceptive marketing, and why I'm returning a skirt

If you've known me or been reading my blog for a long time, you might know that I lost a great deal of weight a few years ago -- more weight than most people weigh, period. I pretty much hate the way we talk about weight in this country, and it's very hard to discuss this topic without pissing me off, so although I'm always glad when I accomplish any goal I set for myself, I still tend to get annoyed when people congratulate me on my weight loss. Consider yourself warned.

I also think the visceral disgust with fat in this country is a fucking social disease, and that being fat is no worse for our health than sitting on our asses in front of the computer all day, or breathing the crap stale air in an office building, or eating processed foods. So if someone is fat, I have no agenda to judge or change that, but I also ask that they respect my right to do what I want with my own body, including lose weight.

Disclaimers aside, let's get to the part about clothes.

Although I've lost all this weight, I'm still "big and tall" by fashion standards -- I'm 5'10" and wear a size 18 Tall, 20 in some styles of pants. (It was actually hard to type that; I'm not as liberated as I would like to be.) So I mostly shop in the department known euphemistically as the "women's department" -- which must make size 3 women wonder WTF they are -- or, somewhat more descriptively, the "plus sizes."

Some stores, like Nordstrom, have a dedicated department for plus sizes, and other stores cater exclusively to sizes 14 and up.

Plus-sized clothes at Nordstrom are around the same price and quality as smaller sizes, although not always as fashion-forward. Companies like J. Jill, one of my favorite places to buy clothes, make the exact same fashions across all size categories, including tall sizes up to 20, bless them, although they don't always make everything in all sizes.

Among the "plus sizes only" stores/catalogs are some moderately expensive ones, like Silhouettes, and many, many really inexpensive ones, most notably the entire family of catalogs sold at "One Stop Plus," a retail aggregator of Woman Within, Jessica London, Roaman's, Avenue, and several more.

And after that very very long lead-in, which would no doubt make my editors and journalism instructors have heart attacks, we get to the main point.

Why are so many plus-sized clothes so badly made?

Look at the photo at the top of this post, and the skirt in the photo to the right. Set aside the issue of whether or not these clothes are to your taste or things that would look good on you.

But do consider this: Both images are promoting and depicting a new line of slightly higher-priced clothing with a fancy French designer tag, Taillissime, marketed as a more fashionable, slightly edgier, brand of plus-sized fashions through a group of companies that normally target a lower-end market.

To understand what I'm saying, compare these images with a couple of the same company's non-Taillissime images:

Now go Google "OneStopPlus coupons" and see how extremely aggressive these brands are with their discount policies. Their marketing is a heat-seeking missile for cost-conscious plus-sized women.

Because I'm lucky enough to have a fairly decent clothing budget, when I shop from these types of catalogs it's for basics like sweat pants and jeans, you know -- dog walking clothes, lie around the house clothes. I've known for years that their "fashionable" or "career" clothing  is of  poor quality -- not well constructed, and of cheap materials, as well as not being expensive. But I recently gave the new Taillissime line a try. And I bought that black skirt in the photo, because it really looks cute to me.

And it's a piece of crap that's going back as soon as I can slap some tape on the package.

I wouldn't normally care, but I do today. Because large-sized women should be able to freaking buy a skirt that at least looks close to how it does in the photo and not have to spend a hundred dollars on it -- because their smaller-sized peers can do that, easily. There are many, many places to buy reasonably priced, fashionable clothes in non-plus sizes. While they may not last beyond a single season -- the "cheap" has to come from somewhere -- they at least won't be made of glaringly tacky fabrics, as this skirt was, or have uneven hem lines, as this skirt did.

Large women on a budget are at the mercy of some pretty crappy choices for clothing. I'm sure this is a problem for women of any size, but when you're doing your best to look sleek and professional in a world that judges you on first impressions and how put together you are, and that's already assessing you negatively because you defy the mandate that all women must maximize their physical attractiveness for the viewing pleasure of the general public... you can see the problem.

If only Taillissime and the companies that sell it had put as much care into the execution of these clothes as they did into their marketing, photography, and even their design. Because some of these things would be cute if they actually looked like their photos.

And if they know their customers want more stylish clothing -- which would be why they created this line in the first place -- doesn't it logically follow that we''ll also be able to tell when we get the stuff out of the package that it's not really more stylish clothing, and certainly not worth even the slight premium it costs?

In re-reading this, I know I'm likely to set off a storm of, "You can buy inexpensive plus-sized fashionable clothing here and here and here," and I'm always happy to have new places to buy clothes recommended to me, so go for it.

But don't let the availability of inexpensive cute clothes at one group of stores or catalogs obscure the fact that the brands sold at One Stop Plus absolutely dominate the budget-conscious plus-sized clothing industry, and have for years. Large-sized women should have more choices at a lower price point, but more importantly, I think we should be treated with respect.

Short is the new black

I've been living in a fool's paradise these last few years.

Long skirt and dress lengths have been in fashion for quite a while now, and although the knee-length skirt look came in around four years ago, there were still plenty of longer hems on the racks and in the catalogs.

Now, I'm tall. Very tall. So those skirts that were meant to be ankle length were, on me, already mid-calf, which is just about where I like my skirts and dresses to hit.

All that's over now. And before some well-meaning person says "Damn fashion! Wear what's comfortable for you!", well, yes, I agree, except when something is not in fashion, it ceases to exist in stores, and yo, I do not sew and never have and never will.

And while something too long can be shortened, something too short cannot be lengthened, because in this day and age even the most expensive clothes come with only a tiny little bit of a hem, presumably to save money in fabric costs, so I can't even have the hem taken down more than, say, half an inch. And frankly, even if we were talking THREE inches of hem, it wouldn't be enough. Because I'm very tall.

Woe.

And speaking of black, the new black is also chocolate brown and sometimes charcoal gray. Now, I like gray and brown but only in small doses, and I like black. I like it a lot. That will never change. And yet, more and more often, I go to buy something in a catalog -- a sweatshirt or sweatpants, a hoodie, a t-shirt, some kind of dog-walking basic like that -- and it comes in gray or brown or, you know, magenta... but not in black.

I'm aware there are things more important than this in the world, but I refuse to give in to the "sky is falling" crap about the crazy creationist whack job the Republicans just chose as their veep nominee... I shall leave that to every other cable news commentator and leftist blogger, because really, they have it covered.

I shall simply do what I always do when everyone is running around wailing and tearing out their hair, and donate to Barack Obama. Why don't you do it too?

I come not to praise Hillary Clinton but to call a pig a pig

I'm a lesbian, a feminist, and I was a women's studies major at UC Berkeley in the 80s, and I really can't stand Hillary Clinton.

This has nothing to do with Barack Obama; before I supported him, I supported John Edwards and oh yeah, I couldn't stand Hillary Clinton.

And I'm getting fed up with two things:

• The constant refrain that everyone who can't stand Hillary Clinton is a sexist and/or dislikes her because she's a woman;
• The constant use of sexist, even misogynistic, language to denigrate Hillary Clinton.

Don't get me wrong. I really really dislike her. This isn't an attack disguised as tepid praise. There is no praise. This has nothing to do with her.

It's you guys. The testosterone-poisoned ones on the boy blogs. Yeah, you. I knew there was a reason I yanked your blogs off my blogroll after the 2004 election, and it's because you can really be fucking pigs.

The thing is, you were fucking pigs before Hillary Clinton ran for president, and you'll probably continue to be fucking pigs when her campaign is over. So I'll call you on it now, and I'll call you on it then. Knock it off. It's unprogressive, it's offensive, and it's juvenile.

As for the other side of the equation, if you don't respect the fact that I have legitimate reasons to dislike someone unrelated to her gender -- a gender that actually would normally predispose me to like someone more, not less, see "lesbian, feminist, former women's studies major," kthnx -- then you have no respect for me, my judgment, my ethical center, or my mind.

Hillary Clinton has earned my enmity fair and square. She earned it with her sense of entitlement, with her W-esque defensiveness when challenged or contradicted, and with her badly-run campaign. On a political level, she's the product of the DLC-driven, Republican-lite, pro-corporate, "I'll beat you at your own game" arm of the Democratic Party, which is the whole  reason  I spent most of my adult years checking "decline to state" on my voter registration. The Democrats have mostly been too conservative, too beholden to big business, for me.

But the boys who call her "Hillary" while always, always calling Obama "Obama"? The ones who get all wide-eyed and defend calling her "bitch" and insisting it's not a sexist use of the word? The endless, pervasive confounding of her with former President Clinton, as though they're joined not at the hip but at the cerebral cortex, because heaven knows a little wife can't have a thought of her own? And at the even uglier crap I try to forget because it just makes me too angry to even write coherently?

Stop. Just stop.

Can you really not find enough reasons to oppose her candidacy without dipping into the seething vat of misogyny? That's really, truly pathetic.

BREAKING: hair update

For the first time since the pet food recall was announced in March, Christie Keith, girl reporter, is taking a few hours away from her computer and going to get her hair cut.

This action, scheduled for Tuesday, July 3, at 11 AM Pacific Time,  is the direct result of seeing this otherwise quite lovely photo of herself and a "good friend," taken on Castro St. on Pride Sunday, ruined by the fact that her hair pretty much completely covered her face.

That is all.

Goodbye, Ann Richards

I really liked her.

She rode a motorcycle.

She said what she thought.

She gave a speech that no one will ever forget.

She died of cancer last night.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Richards said she never missed being in public office. She grinned when asked what she might have done differently had she known she would be a one-term governor.

"Oh," she said, "I would probably have raised more hell."

She made up for it after.

The Power of Two

I blogged a while ago about my pre-interview nervousness, and mentioned I'd interviewed Fox News' Ellen Ratner and her partner Cholene Espinoza, author of an excellent new book on Hurricane Katrina, Through the Eye of the Storm.

They were terrific to interview, and afterellen.com just published it this morning:

Ratner advises anyone with a cause to promote in the media to always be prepared for tough questions. What tough question would Ratner like to ask, and of whom?                
She answers: “I'd like to ask Bush and, really, all elected officials, the question I asked Tom DeLay, right in front of dozens of reporters: Did he have any gay family members or staffers? Did he know any gay people at all?”

The Power of Two

Also, I reviewed the film Saint of 9/11 for AfterElton.com.

BlogHer: What I Don't Mean

Something I learned at BlogHer: "Heteronormative," a really bizarre word I've never heard before this conference and one I'm staring at right now, seriously wondering if I want to use... heteronormative.

It's being used to describe the atmosphere of the conference, a perception on the parts of those of us who aren't heteronormative - which seems not just to mean "heterosexual," but to encompass anyone who colors outside the lines in their personal, sexual, and family lives. In other words, partnered women with children are the norm, and the rest of us are not the norm.

In clicking around on posts tagged "BlogHer" on Technorati, I've seen a fair amount of discussion about the conference being "heteronormative," ranging from whether or not it was (and sorry, if you ARE heteronormative, your subjective experience isn't sufficient basis for you to say it wasn't), to what could have been done to prevent it, and what can be done in the future.

One defensive remark comment I've seen made is that a panel on lesbian bloggers isn't the answer. This is where I start to get frustrated.

OK, yeah, I was already frustrated. This is where my frustration starts to grow.

No one I spoke to, and certainly not me, suggested such a panel or complained about its absence. My specific complaint is that none, not ONE, of the presenters at BlogHer was identified as a lesbian in the panel descriptions, and that the panel on blogging and identity didn't include any panelist who identified as lesbian, nor did anyone (but me, from the audience) make mention of sexual identity.

My secondary complaint is more cultural, more touchy-feely: I find it hard to imagine any more heteronormative (OK, it's growing on me) event than BlogHer '06, and for a conference of women bloggers in the San Francisco Bay Area, you'd think that would have to take some doing, and not just happen by accident.

I simply expect BlogHer to be a bit more neutral in its presentation - neither heteronormative nor queer-identified. I want the panels to more or less represent bloggers - women of color, women interested in childrearing issues, women without interest in childrearing issues, women in technology, women in education, women in the arts and sciences, women of any and all sexual orientations and identifications - you know, all of us. Not in some scientifically calculated exact ratio and percentage, but simply to the point where no woman comes to the conference and says, "Huh?"

Oh yeah, and then I want not to have people think it's whiny to notice and mention when that doesn't happen.

BlogHer: Bringing the Sex and the Fluff, and Oh, Yeah, the Shoes

My favorite panel at BlogHer was the one on Sex Blogging. Because, if you must know, I'm all kinds of shallow.

Now, don't get me wrong. The panel actually discussed some pretty heavy issues, including the privacy of our sex partners, what happens if your boss or your hostile former husband find your smutty blog, freedom of expression, the fact that google is forever, and all kinds of  twists and turns on the road to writing successfully about body parts rubbing together in interesting ways.

Panelist Susie Bright said that a lot of bloggers won't put her on their blogroll because her site is too smutty (an egregious paraphrase on my part). And panelist Melissa Gira said that when women comment on "serious" blogs, we're seen as "bringing the sex" just by virtue of our gender.

I would expand on that to say we're also seen as "bringing the fluff," and a lot of criticism... including MINE... of last week's BlogHer conference was that it felt too fluffy. Too girly. Too "unimportant."

And, ummmm... well, a lot of the time, it did. And I wasn't thrilled with that. And then I came home and played on my private anonymous oh-so-sekrit LiveJournal. You thought this place was as silly as I get? Not hardly.

It turns out, I'm not really all that  good at compartmentalizing my life. I start out that way, but the lines get all fuzzy after a while and all the pieces of me start leaking into other pieces and the next thing you know, I'm just a big sloppy bowl of melted stuff and those compartments and fragments and divisions vanish.

That's probably why this blog is a mishmash of themes - dogs, politics, popular culture, media, music, and a tiny dollop of my personal life. It's not a journal. (Not even my LiveJournal is a journal; it's a playground.) I suppose in many ways I really am a pretty private person about... well, what's left? My innermost thoughts, I guess. But the fact that I'm obsessed with subtextual TV lesbians and imaginary gay boys? That I went away for the weekend and brought seven pairs of shoes? That I used to be a hairdresser? That I like dogs more than people? That I'm a lesbian, and yes, I do have actual sex? All that fluffy silly sexy stuff that the blogosphere doesn't seem to think meshes real well with incisive political analysis and a critique of modern culture?

I haven't done such a good job of keeping that from leaking in here. I'm seriously starting to wonder if there's any point in trying. Because being silly, fluffy, sexy, and frivolous doesn't impair your ability to also be angry, smart, and articulate. It really doesn't. And when push comes to shove, honestly, I'd give up my shoes for world peace and universal justice.

Well, maybe not my purple suede high heeled sandals.

And I put Susie on my blogroll. Deal.

BlogHer: Sequel to a Prequel, or, No, That's Not It

I've been following Technorati tags (which I learned how to put in a Typepad post at BlogHer, thank you tech goddesses at the Tagging session!) for BlogHer, and noticed a number of attendees have only just today started to write about their impressions of the conference. So I'm not alone in wanting to let things process.

I've seen a few comments suggesting those of us who didn't have the best experience at BlogHer last weekend might have been put off by "cliques." I didn't feel that at all - I didn't notice any cliques and actually thought almost everyone was extraordinarily friendly and personally inclusive.

I've also seen myself quoted in a number of blogs, sometimes with attribution and sometimes not, and sometimes quoted out of context or inaccurately. But that's the risk you take when you open your mouth. Which is, you know, something I do a lot.

I've also seen the "mommybloggers" reacting very hostiley to suggestions that the conference was too mommy-ish. I don't blame them. If lesbians were as much the focus of the conference as mommys were (and yeah, I get there is overlap in the two groups), I'd have loved it and hated anyone saying it made them feel left out.

But I still feel the conference was too mommyish. Culturally it was alienating, for me as a lesbian and for many heterosexual women who aren't mothers or even ARE mothers but aren't interested in "mommyblogging."

And the conference really was too marketing-oriented, but there are a lot of other folks blogging about that, and it's something I'm still mulling over.

The assumption of heterosexuality as the norm was overwhelming. There wasn't even a "Birds of a Feather" sign up sheet for lesbian/bi women. At a WOMEN'S BLOGGING CONFERENCE IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA? Huh?

At one session on our identities and if we feel a need to represent and advocate for them as bloggers, not one of the wonderful panelists was a lesbian. I certainly wouldn't want to see fewer women of color up there, but is there some shortage of lesbians of color who blog I'm not aware of?

Didn't think so.

At that same session, if I hadn't spoken about blogging as a lesbian, would it have come up? I don't think so - no one else addressed it afterward, although I did get applause when I finished speaking. And I started out asking if I was the only lesbian in the room, which got a lot of hands in the air. Also a good way to meet women. Which brings me to...

Fluff. This is a topic that came up a lot in the post-mortems. It has to do with women who blog about shoes and hair and makeup, stuff that as you know I'm really into, although I don't actually blog about them all that much. Certainly not at all in proportion to how important they are in my life. And yeah, I saw a lot of really cute shoes at this thing. Bite me.

I was careful when introducing myself to say that my blog is about politics and also about dogs, and also that I edit a music blog and write about TV and movies for AfterEllen.com/AfterElton.com. Because I'm all about owning up to my fluffier side. I even told a few people I blog about Xena: Warrior Princess from time to time. I didn't mention my obsession with Gabrielle's abdominal muscles, though, because I have an image to preserve.

So, no, it wasn't the fluff thing that bothered me.

Some commentaries worth watching:

Goodbye Grassroots BlogHer (sourduck)

It Was Good, It Was Bad, I Made an Ass of Myself (feministe)

Meanwhile I'm still thinking.