Girl Detective

I flipped through a Lane Bryant catalog the other day and was appalled at what I saw. Lane Bryant is a plus-size retailer for women. The models in the catalog were not plus-size. Technically, they might have been plus-size for models, but they were hardly plus-size women–I’d say about size eight, a good deal smaller than average, which is about size fourteen. I found the same situation on their home page; those models are NOT 14W and up.

Then I found something quite curious. The Lane Bryant catalog is–bafflingly–not affiliated with the Lane Bryant stores. Both websites note this prominently.

According to the website for the catalog,

In business since 1901, Lane Bryant brand has become the acknowledged industry leader in women’s special size apparel. (Lane Bryant Catalog is not affiliated with Lane Bryant retail stores.) We offer a complete wardrobe, including shoes and intimate apparel in a wide range of styles, colors and sizes — all at value prices.

According to the website for the stores,

Lane Bryant is the most recognized name in plus-size clothing, and our emphasis on fashion�not merely size�makes us a style leader. Lane Bryant stores are not affiliated with the Lane Bryant Catalog.

Interestingly, the Lane Bryant Stores site uses both larger models and larger mannequins than does the Lane Bryant Catalog site. The Stores site focuses on fashion and style, with impressive and attractive selections. It features fitted and sexy clothing, encouraging a celebration of size.

In contrast, the Lane Bryant Catalog site has bland clothing at bargain prices. The Catalog site depicts a great number of shapeless items, which look even more baggy because of the less-than-plus-size women who are modelling them.

I do not currently wear a plus size, but I spent many years of my life hovering above and below a size 14. I have long been disgusted with a fashion industry that uses the term “women’s” as a synonym for plus size. All women are demeaned by this usage. I am discouraged that special sizes like petites and plus are often put in different parts of a store than are the “regular” women’s clothing sizes. This unnecessary segregation, which usually only makes sense to a store’s merchandisers, sends a further message of alienation. That Lane Bryant Catalog, “the acknowledged industry leader” in plus-size women’s apparel, uses non-plus-size models and features such unappealing choices adds insult to a past series of injuries. I would not support a retailer like this. Instead, I’d head to the Lane Bryant stores. They seem to be about celebrating one’s size, not hiding it. That’s a good shopping philosophy for all women, of any size.

My husband and tech guy G. Grod adjusted the comment controls to filter out likely spam from the comments so we wouldn’t have to approve each comment. Check out the comments on the first post. One got through–skillful spammer.

That slippery comment is as clever as its namesake lunchmeat. For reasons I can’t comprehend, G. Grod not only likes but actively seeks out Spam, the product. I shouldn’t be surprised. We are both from the Philly area, but only one of us has a penchant for scrapple. It’s not me.

Don’t know what scrapple is? Robbie Fulks sings a good definition, which you can listen to here. It is what it sounds like–mysterious meat.

Why is Spam clever? If you have not had the occasion lately, and I can’t blame you if you didn’t, check out a can of Spam the next time you’re in a grocery store or even Target. The copywriting on the Spam can is hilarious. They know it’s a joke, so they celebrate it. I will not even quote it here; the experience of reading it on the rounded, rectangular tin of meat is part of its charm.

The can is so well-written that it almost makes me want to eat Spam to show my support. But not quite.

Ever since I had the baby, I’ve struggled with my posture. Soon after Drake was born, I reached for something and had a shooting pain in my hand. I went to get it checked out and saw a family doctor, a chiropractor, and finally a physical therapist before someone ventured their best guess that the problem was a weakness in the midback, translating to a weakness in the shoulder, and travelling down to the hand from there. When I did the recommended exercises, the shooting pain went away. When I slacked off, my hand became numb at night and I would experience periodic numbness all along the arm. I’m back, then, to doing the exercises and feeling better. I’m very conscious of not rounding my shoulders, though it’s hard to pick up and carry the 25-pound Drake without doing so.

I get tremendously aggravated, therefore, when I see catalogs and magazines in which the model is posed in that round-shouldered posture, like this. This is not only bad physically, but in the yogic tradition it shuts in the heart, so it’s bad emotionally, as well.

My friend NYC Bette has worked with actual models, and says that the stereotypes are often true: vapid people who smoke a lot, eat very little, do a lot of drugs, and don’t even exercise because the development of muscle might alter their body and make the clothes not fit.

Ignore the models. It’s an unhealthy stance, one that only gets exacerbated by the physicality of motherhood, with breadfeeding and baby carrying. Madonna had it right, way back before she was even a mom or into yoga: open your heart.

The tendency is to overcorrect and arch the lower back and stick out the boobs. This doesn’t help; it’s just bad in a different way. Instead, the correction is to breathe into your middle back and open your heart, projecting it as if you had a lovely pendant at the top of your collar bone that you wanted to show to good effect. Also helpful is to lie on the floor with a rolled towel under the spine between the shoulderblades.

From the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition:

Usage Note: Till and until are generally interchangeable in both writing and speech, though as the first word in a sentence until is usually preferred: Until you get that paper written, don’t even think about going to the movies. Till is actually the older word, with until having been formed by the addition to it of the prefix un-, meaning �up to.� In the 18th century the spelling ’till became fashionable, as if till were a shortened form of until. Although ’till is now nonstandard, ’til is sometimes used in this way and is considered acceptable, though it is etymologically incorrect.

I made friends with the American Heritage 4th edition when I read its usage note for he:

Usage Note: Traditionally the pronouns he, him, and his have been used as generic or gender-neutral singular pronouns, as in A novelist should write about what he knows best and No one seems to take any pride in his work anymore. Since the early 20th century, however, this usage has come under increasing criticism for reflecting and perpetuating gender stereotyping. �Defenders of the traditional usage have argued that the masculine pronouns he, his, and him can be used generically to refer to men and women. This analysis of the generic use of he is linguistically doubtful. If he were truly a gender-neutral form, we would expect that it could be used to refer to the members of any group containing both men and women. But in fact the English masculine form is an odd choice when it refers to a female member of such a group. There is something plainly disconcerting about sentences such as Each of the stars of As Good As It Gets [i.e., Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt] won an Academy Award for his performance. In this case, the use of his forces the reader to envision a single male who stands as the representative member of the group, a picture that is at odds with the image that comes to mind when we picture the stars of As Good As It Gets. Thus he is not really a gender-neutral pronoun; rather, it refers to a male who is to be taken as the representative member of the group referred to by its antecedent. The traditional usage, then, is not simply a grammatical convention; it also suggests a particular pattern of thought. �It is clear that many people now routinely construct their remarks to avoid generic he, usually using one of two strategies: changing to the plural, so they is used (which is often the easiest solution) or using compound and coordinate forms such as he/she or he or she (which can be cumbersome in sustained use). In some cases, the generic pronoun can simply be dropped or changed to an article with no change in meaning. The sentence A writer who draws on personal experience for material should not be surprised if reviewers seize on that fact is complete as it stands and requires no pronoun before the word material. The sentence Every student handed in his assignment is just as clear when written Every student handed in the assignment. �Not surprisingly, the opinion of the Usage Panel in such matters is mixed. While 37 percent actually prefer the generic his in the sentence A taxpayer who fails to disclose the source of ___ income can be prosecuted under the new law, 46 percent prefer a coordinate form like his or her; 7 percent felt that no pronoun was needed in the sentence; 2 percent preferred an article, usually the; and another 2 percent overturned tradition by advocating the use of generic her, a strategy that brings the politics of language to the reader’s notice. Thus a clear majority of the Panel prefers something other than his. The writer who chooses to use generic he and its inflected forms in the face of the strong trend away from that usage may be viewed as deliberately calling attention to traditional gender roles or may simply appear to be insensitive.

One of Drake’s new things is to stick his finger up his nose. This drives his father, G. Grod, crazy.

Funny, because it doesn’t bother me that much. But the nuclear screams of death, and flinging food on the floor? Those work my every last nerve.

[By the way, during one scream in the coffee shop the other day, a woman put her hands to her ears. Today, during our childhood ed class--more about this later--after letting one loose other moms looked pained. I figure if other moms think it's bad, then this is not just run-of-the-mill screeching.]

The other day during lunch, Drake shoved his finger up his nose, waited a bit, took it out, then pointed at me insistently with it, grunting “Unh, unh, unh!”

I responded simply, “That’s great, sweetie. Thanks so much for sharing.”

One of my many pet peeves is people who ask stupid questions at author readings. I feel so bad for authors when they are asked “Where do you get your ideas?” I like Jennifer Weiner’s response, “Target.”

While all authors I have ever seen have graciously answered this question, I’m not sure that I would be able to be so polite. So when I have my “when I get my book published and am doing readings and someone actually comes to them” fantasy rolling in my head, I think it would be a good thing if questions were submitted in advance, so I could weed out the “Where do you get your idea?”s and all the questions that aren’t really questions but just a way for the inquirer to sound erudite in front of a crowd. In real life, though, I haven’t even put together a good submission package for my book, so I think I can say with certainty that any author readings on my part are a long way off.

Censoring comments, though, is happening right here, right now, because as soon as we put this site up, my comments feature got spammed with poker solicitations. So I have to approve comments before they get posted. This actually is far more like abashed agony then my authorial fantasy. I don’t get tons of comments, and I’m thrilled by each one, since they affirm that people are actually reading this. So believe you me, readers, I don’t want to make commenting harder. But I did want to let you know why there is a delay in seeing your comment posted.

Blame the poker spammers. I didn’t want it to come to this.