Christmas Shopping in #YEG: the last minute #buylocal guide.
You've got a week.
One week until Christmas Eve. Well, technically eight days. I know some of you keeners finished your gift shopping in October, but there are those of us who have left things to the last minute, because, really, it didn't feel like Christmas around here until about a week ago.
Don't worry, I've got your back and am here to help you out. This list is mostly going to be for all my local readers, because if you are an online kind of shopper, at this point, unless you want to pay a week's salary for express shipping, you are kinda hooped!
Since you've got eight days to go, here is a list of eight of my favourite local shops. I guarantee you'll find something for whoever you are shopping for at one of these great, local shops in Edmonton.
1. Salgado Fenwick - Everyone likes a cool t-shirt and there are plenty to be found here. Along with some great accessories (you have to check out the travel laundry bags for the frequent flyer on your list), artwork and some locally made jewelry and cards too. And you can sit down and write your Christmas cards and have a nice cappuccino in the Barking Buffalo Cafe while you are there. They are also having a cool "wrapping" event tonight if you are around and want to check it out!
2. Little Brick Café - Yes, it's true. Besides the great coffee and ambiance of the Little Brick coffee shop, there is also a small 'General Store' that houses a nice selection of unique gifts and locally made products like soaps, books, t-shirts and cooking and coffee making paraphernalia. As you can see, I am a fan of coffee and shopping together!
Santa shops HERE!
3. Jilly's - I work out at Infinite Fitness 3-4 times a week, which is two doors down from this beautiful gift shop in Edmonton's southside neighbourhood of Terwilligar. This basically means that I am in this shop at least once a week. You'll find something there for your mother-in-law, your sister, your niece and nephew, and maybe even your dad. Check out the cute Living Royal socks that I love to put in everyone's stockings, their great selection of locally designed jewelry, and all the fun and stylish Christmas decorations that fill the store at this time of year.
4. 4Cats Art Studio - My kids and I love our local art studios and the wonderful women who run the three that we frequent regularly (in Riverbend, on Calgary Trail and in Summerside). Now you can bring home some of the fun of 4Cats with their great little gift sets. The polymer clay kits are a perfect stocking stuffer and the canvas art kits are great for anyone who wants to unleash their inner artist!
5. Any shop in the HighStreet/124 Street shopping district. I know it's a pain to get to these shops right now with the bridge being closed, but please, take the time to get over there and spend your shopping dollars with these local businesses, they need to know how much we value them especially with the challenges surrounding the area.. Hit up Cloud Nine to get everyone a new set of Christmas PJs, visit Paddy's Cheese Market to get all the fancy/stinky/deliciousness for your parties. And to all the dudes - GO TO LUX Beauty Boutique! Trust me. And they will wrap it all up for you too. Carbon Environmental Boutique is the place to buy for the environmentally conscious folks on your lists, and if you are looking for unique and trendy - Red Ribbon is your shop. Henry's PFT will take care of those who like to beautify their homes, and if all else fails, hit up The Wine Cellar and get them a great bottle of wine.
6. Habitat etc.- I can't NOT stop in this shop anytime I am on 104 Street. It's tiny and if you blink you might miss it (corner of 104 St and 102 Ave), but it is worth paying for parking downtown to go! If only to smell all the wonderful candles they carry. Need a gin making kit for someone? They have that. Want some cool wood sunglasses? They have those too. I really like this shop for those hard-to-buy-for husbands and boyfriends. Something from here will work. I promise!
7. And while you are downtown, another great place to shop is Workhall Studio. Not only are they a great local designer whose clothing line is simple and versatile and bloody gorgeous, but for every garment you purchase from them, they will send one to a local women's shelter. I know where I would love my Santa to shop this year!! (HINT! HINT!)
8. There are those people for whom you really just need to get a box of chocolates. And this is totally fine, but why not make it some locally made chocolates from Jacek this year? I almost hate eating these chocolates, because they really are tiny little pieces of art. But I will! Because they are also extremely delicious!
*****
Ok, there you have it everyone. Now, go forth and shop and get it all done, so you can put up your feet in some fuzzy socks, have a nice hot chocolate or cappuccino or mulled wine and relax knowing that everyone is going to be happy with their awesome gifts this year!
Merry, happy, joy, joy,
N~
feminist: especially on the hard days
I am having a tough time this week.
Being a feminist.
It hit me especially hard on this day. December 6th.
Twenty-six years ago today a man walked into a classroom at L'Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and murdered 14 women and wounded 14 others. Before he started shooting he uttered the words, "I hate feminists!"
I was 17 years old at the time. Super self-involved with my own life, my on-again-off-again boyfriend, and sneaking into bars on the weekends with my fake ID. I am sure I watched the news that night and knew what had happened, but I can guarantee that at that moment in my life, this was just something that happened on the other side of the country and it didn't affect my little world.
Two years later and in University, the reality of violence against women, of needing someone to "Safe-Walk" me to the bus stop after a late night class or lab, of a few too many dates gone wrong (read - most likely date rape, but no one told me I could say no , or wasn't at fault because I was drunk, and I mean, I did invite them in, right?), sunk in.
And so you learn. You learn to not make too much of a fuss, to not take up too much space, to not make too much eye contact, to walk with your keys between your fingers-always at the ready. You learn to not drink too much or to make sure you have a wing-women willing to pull you out of a bad situation about to get worse. You learn to laugh at the jokes, even when they are always at your gender's or your expense, you learn to play the game to get ahead, according to the rules established by the good ol' boy's club. You learn that all those catcalls from strangers are compliments and you should feel good that "You've still got it." You learn that feminist is a bad word and you don't want to be one of those militant, butchy, angry women. You learn to subvert all your power, your opinions are cushioned with softness, and you learn to say I'm sorry, a lot. You learn all of this from the culture around you and you inadvertently get a fucking PhD in misogyny.
Fast forward to today and you are remembering that 14 women were killed because they wanted to be engineers. Because they were women. Because they were women in a {then} predominately male-dominated field of study. Because they were feminists.
And in a #ThisIs40ish survey in this month's Chatelaine magazine, 68% of the women surveyed, when asked if they are feminists, said NO.
I am not going to lie, I have a stomach-churning, jaw-clenching, utterly visceral response when people tell me they are not feminists. It makes me angry. And watching this video made my blood pressure skyrocket. I am a middle of the road feminist? I am a closeted feminist? I am in no way a feminist? I don't believe in labels? WOMEN, PLEASE!!!
Do you know what I hear when I hear women say these things? I hear all those 'how to be a nice girl' lessons we learn growing up. Don't rock the boat, don't take up too much space, don't choose a side, don't offend anyone, don't speak too loudly, don't "lean in" too far. I hear women spewing the rhetoric of decades of patriarchal media and messages that like to keep those of us of "the fairer sex" in the nice little boxes they've constructed for us. I hear victim-blaming, I hear apologies for being women and having opinions of our own.
Chatelaine says that Feminism has a "branding" problem, and while I won't completely disagree with this, I will disagree with who has been in charge of the branding. When women say they aren't feminists or can't seem to identify with that word, all I want to do is ask them what being a feminist means to them, with full knowledge they are going to bring up the radical image of a bra-burning, man-hating, no make-up-wearing, she-devil. And then I want to ask them where they think they got this idea from? Who told them that this is what feminism is? Who controls the images we see, the articles we read, the news we consume?
WHO BENEFITS WHEN WOMEN REFUTE FEMINISM?
It sure as hell is not women. When you constantly get side-tracked into a semantic discussion about the "bad PR" of the word, and not the movement of feminism and the fight for equality itself, you are succumbing to the greatest trick the patriarchy ever pulled, convincing women that we are each other's worst enemies.
We live in a world where the wage gap between men and women still exists. Where women's access to health care and their rights to bodily autonomy are being stripped away daily. Where women are threatened with death and rape for having opinions about video games. Where hundreds of girls can be kidnapped, sold into forced marriages and raped, all for wanting to get an education. Where a judge will ask a teenage rape victim why she couldn't just kept her knees together. Where 14 women are killed BECAUSE THEY ARE WOMEN. Where more than 40 women will come forward to bravely tell the world about the most horrifying thing that has ever happened to them, perpetrated by someone we all thought was one of the good guys, and people with say that they are "bitches" and "unrapeable". Where we still hear the tired line, "boys will be boys", and if he is 5 years old and he hits you, he must REALLY like you, and if he is 35 years old and he hits you, you'd better have solid proof before we'll believe you or help you.
I have one question for all women who don't want to identify as feminist because they think that doing so means they will be seen as some kind of angry radical.
WHY THE FUCK AREN'T YOU ANGRY YET???
What is it going to take to get you to see the validity and the necessity of embracing feminism, both the word and the movement? What is your tipping point? How close to home does something have to hit before you're ready to say ENOUGH? I firmly believe that positive change can't and won't happen without a little righteous anger spurring it on. I want more women to get angry and demand better, first of themselves, and then from everyone around them.
Roxane Gay says it best and most succinctly in the last few lines of her book, Bad Feminist (one I highly recommend everyone read),
“No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am a feminist. I cannot and will not deny the importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but I also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a woman. I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.”
Me too Roxane, me too.
Especially on the hard days.
N~
In Sweden, a new campaign is underway to give every 16-year old in the country a copy of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book "We Should all be Feminists". A brilliant little book and adaptation of her 2013 TEDx talk of the same name.
In the spirit of giving and of getting more women to embrace feminism, I have purchased 3 copies of the book and will be giving them away to three lucky readers. Keep it for yourself, put it in the stocking of someone who you think needs to read it, or better yet, read it to your children and give them a head start and solid intro to feminism.
To enter, leave a comment on this post about why you are (or are not) a feminist, and share the post on Facebook or Twitter (leave me a link).
NOT IN MY BREAD BOX
Ladies, we need to talk.
About feminism. AND VAGINAS.
It has come to my attention that there are some of you out there who are LITERALLY pulling some nasty junk our of your vaginas in the name of feminism. And while I am usually not one to tell anyone how to DO feminism. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS.
NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!
We have enough problems as it is trying constantly to remove the F-WORD status from feminism and getting people to truly understand what feminism is, to accept it as a movement and as something worthwhile to identify with and work towards as a common goal. You know, all that equality for all human beings, regardless of gender, race, sexuality and such.
But when you start pulling yeast out of your vagina to make sourdough bread rolls and doing so in the name of feminism, WE HAVE A PROBLEM.
This is the kind of shit that confuses people. That steers them FAR, FAR away from feminism. That makes us all look like radical, man-hating, "HAHA! Look what I made you eat from my VAGINA", weirdos! These kind of shenanigans are not winning anyone over! And like it or not, we are not done with this fight, and alienating folks with some experimental vaginal yeast baking is not how we recruit more to OUR MOST RIGHTEOUS CAUSE! And here is a little PSA - just because it comes from your vagina, doesn't automatically mean it has to be some grand feminist THING and you need to write an essay about it (you are NOT Naomi Wolfe FFS!).
Can we PLEASE focus for a bit and get back to the BASICS? You know, like closing the wage gap between men and women, and white women and WOC. Oh and maybe we could all do better learning about and actively incorporating intersectionality in our feminism and checking ourselves when our white feminist fragility overshadows the lived experiences of our brown and black and asian sisters. Or how about we deal with the hate and misogyny that women have to content with daily in the online world, and then there's also that pesky human right of ensuring access to all forms of reproductive health care for women. I mean, COME ON!! We have some bigger issues to deal with here. THESE ARE THE REASONS WHY WE NEED FEMINISM, NOT vagina bread!
Seriously, someone needs to just go get herself some Canestan. I know, I know, that shit is expensive. Twenty bucks for one little ovule and a tiny tube of cream? What kind of misogynist asshole runs THAT pharma company? (Oops, my angry, man-hater is showing!) Here is a little frugal feminist trick I just learned - GARLIC. A tiny clove of garlic up in the lady bits will clear up that yeast infection, and you can still feel all radical about using food to cure what ails you and YOU DON'T NEED TO BAKE ANY DAMN BREAD! {I mean you totally could if that is really what you want to do, just use REGULAR yeast, mmkay?}
Don't get me wrong, I am very much for everyone being more vagina-positive. I am a big fan of the new vagina emojis that have recently come out. They make texting my husband WAY more interesting. I am a fan of the words, VAGINA, VULVA, LABIA. These are the proper words for our body parts and we should use them more often. What I don't want, is for us to equate feminism with vaginas all the time. That in and of itself is alienating as well, because, HELLO, there are women who don't have vaginas and there are men who have vaginas and having or not having one doesn't = feminism.
That white drop is NOT yeast!
And this isn't NEW. People have been doing all kinds of vagina-related art and making vagina-related political statements for a long time. We have the vagina-knitter, the menstrual blood Trump portrait painter, the vagina kayak maker who is actually on trial for her art, Georgia O'Keefe. It's true, VAGINAS ARE EVERYWHERE!
My issue is not with the vagina. Vaginas are awesome! And we should all take the time to appreciate them and TAKE CARE OF THEM properly! My issue is with making feminism look bad and confusing people and turning folks further away from anything related to the word feminist or feminism. And no matter how you butter your toast, THIS MAKES FEMINISM LOOK BAD.
There is no heroism here. Sure she's gone viral with her recipe and many people are genuinely and not surprising TOTALLY ICKED OUT BY WHAT SHE'S DONE, but this woman does not speak for me or for the feminism that I want more people to embrace.
Now, thanks to her, I'm going to be off all kinds of bread for the time being - and I really like sourdough. And unfortunately, many more people are going to be off all kinds of feminism too.
THANKS A LOT!
N~
take a seat
I want to talk about pee.
Because I am done. DONE. DONE. DONE! With accidentally sitting in it in public washrooms, finding it all over the fucking walls in airplane toilet closets and stepping in it around the toilets in unisex bathrooms.
People. Sit the fuck down when you are peeing. ALL OF YOU.
Ladies, stop trying to hover. JUST STOP. Accept that you do not have the quad strength to hold that position and you will NEVER have the ability to aim from within all the folds of your lady parts either. You will not catch herpes/gonorrhea/syphilis from a goddamn toilet seat. Put some toilet paper around the seat if you need to or use the paper seat covers if they are provided, but for God's sake SIT DOWN! IF you still insist on doing your hover-spray-quad-workout then at least have the decency to wipe up YOUR OWN PISS after you are done!
And MEN. Let's talk. I know, I know, since you were three years old, all you ever wanted to do was pee standing up "just like daddy", but come on. The fact is that you are not very good at it! And how many of you actually clean your own toilets? If you do and your the dudes who clean up after yourselves, then kudos to you, but I'm not holding my breath that you're in the majority here.
Parents, PLEASE, teach your boys to pee sitting down. Teach them to respect the fact that OTHER people have to use toilets too and NO ONE wants to sit on or step in pee. EVER. I don't care how much emphasis you put on aiming at the damn cheerios in the bowl, it DOESN'T WORK! And if I hear one more man-baby tell me that "real men" pee standing up, I will punch said standing pee-er in his poorly aiming junk!
Now by all means, pee standing up at a urinal, that's what they are there for and no one sits on them, but if you are in a toilet stall, or AN AIRPLANE LAVATORY - BISH PLEASE! Sit the fuck down! No amount of aim is going to work against a sudden bit of turbulence, I promise you!
Here's the thing that I don't get. Everyone sits to poop, so why is sitting to pee such a big deal for certain people? Men, please tell me, do you do a standing pee and then sit down to poo? Is the male ego so damn fragile that it can be broken by something you do primarily behind a closed door, all ALONE? No really, I need to know. FOR RESEARCH.
Now, I can hear it already, "Calm down Natasha, it's JUST pee. It's a sterile fluid. NBD!"
NO.
It's about respect for others and some general personal cleanliness too. Especially in public washrooms. It's just pee until you are the one stepping in it or sitting on it or gagging at the stench of it all over the base of the toilet. I mean, have you been in an elementary school bathroom lately? That shit is NAAAAAAAaaasty! No one flushes, pee is everywhere, it's fucking gross. We need to do better with these kids people! They grow up to be hover-pee-ers and poor aiming dudebros.
And because I hate to rant, just for ranting sake, I have a couple of solutions to offer for this disgusting problem:
1 - TEACH ALL YOUR KIDS (boys and girls) TO PEE SITTING DOWN. (And the trick about putting toilet paper around the seat if they/you are germ squeamish.)
2 - If you live with/share a toilet with a standing pee-er, cleaning said toilet, by default of this fact, becomes their job. FOREVER!
And for God's sake, and I wish this didn't need to be repeated...
WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS AFTER YOU PEE! Yes, every time.
*** This public service announcement/rant brought to you by my wet ass after I sat in some hover-pee-er's God awful attempt at controlling her spray!***
N~
See, it's not that hard of a concept!
Dear ADELE, I owe you one...
I pitched a thing to some people and they liked it and it is published and I am getting paid for it!
So....
Hello, my name is Natasha Chiam and I am a freelance writer.
Ok, so maybe one article doesn't sound like a whole lot, but don't rain on my parade people! THIS IS A BIG DEAL!
Please go read my thing, I think you'll like it.
You can find it over on BonBon Break. Big thanks also to OurPact for being their generous sponsor this month. Make sure you check out this great app for helping parents manage kids’ electronics usage.
““Hello from the other side.”
This is a line from Adele’s much awaited new single and video released last month.
In a teaser before the release of the video, Adele also wrote a letter to her fans and posted it on Facebook. She is calling her new album her “make-up” album, the one where she is making up with herself. I find myself going back to her words again and again and wondering why I can’t stop crying every time I hear this damn song.
And then it hit me.”
I'm keeping my torch, thank you very much.
Two weeks ago today, I woke up to a comment on my blog that was, well... at the very least, long. It was from someone who claimed to "know me". This person chose to remain anonymous though, so didn't really want me to KNOW or identify them. Just that they've been watching, reading, and keeping tabs on me for the past 20 years.
That comment could have totally ruined my day. I could have deleted it. I could have responded to it in kind, but instead, I chose to just sit with it for a bit, complain to my friends on Facebook and Twitter, and then go back and dig for the feedback behind all the nasty vitriol and personal judgment thrown at me with those words. I knew it was in there - some nugget of truth hidden that I needed to hear.
And then I thought to myself and to him...
WHATEVER DUDE! (I've made the assumption the comment was written by a man, but I could be wrong.)
You don't know me! From what you wrote, you never really did, and from the sounds of it, you sound kind of petty and bitter. Did we have a fight? Did I 'friend zone' you and you can't get over it? No, seriously... What happened?
Listen, you are right, I am not the same woman I was in my twenties. If that was the case, THAT in and of itself, would be the tragedy here. I've grown, I've changed, I've switched careers three, maybe four times since then. Why are you holding me to the dreams of a single, 20-something-year old who was trying to figure out who she was? Have you not also changed significantly since then? I see you are now married. That's nice.
You said in your comment that I should drop the torch of feminism that I never really held onto and let the younger fems take it. You also made a lot of hurtful, personal, and rather dick-ish remarks about me (that say more about you than me, if we are being honest), but this is the one thing I keep coming back to, because it was in this part of your lengthy comment on what you think of my life, that I found that nugget of truth.
Twenty years ago, if someone had come up to me and asked if I was a feminist, I am pretty sure I would have said, no or I don't know. When I was at university, I was in a program that was 90% women. We were all scientists, learning and working in medical laboratories that were also mainly made up of women. At that point in my life, and in the environment I was in, it never occurred to me that my gender was a problem, or would hinder me in my chosen profession.
Shortly after I graduated, the political world changed (thanks Ralph Klein!), and my ability to work as a professional laboratory technologist went up in smoke, along with the 500+ jobs that the government cut in my sector. Luckily, I still had a good job working as a clerk at the hospital and was able to bump up my hours to an almost full-time position. It took me three years to regroup and find a career that I wanted to pursue in earnest. Once I had made that decision, that is what I did.
Once again, I found myself working in an environment where the majority of my co-workers where women. Upper management, on the other hand, was definitely male-dominated and it was here that I first experienced workplace sexual harassment. Except I didn't recognize it as such. In my naïveté, I thought people (my peers and my superiors) genuinely wanted to talk to me and listen to my ideas, and not just get into my pants. And even though I never slept with anyone at work, the attention I sometimes received from upper management, which I assumed was because of my abilities and ideas (and often was), others assumed was because of my skills in the bedroom. Female co-workers started to resent me and male co-workers made even more advances towards me because they thought I was "easy", or used the resentment of the others to their advantage to try to sandbag me at work.
And still, at this point in my life, I would not have told anyone emphatically - YES! I am a Feminist!
People of course, had other labels for me: bossy, slut, loud, emotional, bitch. And they weren't wrong. I was and I still AM almost all of those things. And as we all know, being a woman who knows what she wants (professionally, personally and in the bedroom), who says so, and then gets it, doesn't always fit with the narrative of the day or the patriarchy. I would see the looks on people's faces when I would walk up to the CEO of the company I worked for and just start talking to him and I DIDN'T CARE, I had ideas and wanted to share them. And yes, anonymous commenter person, I did date more than a few men while I worked at the hospital - residents, nurses, laundry porters - I was young, and single, and totally date-able, if you know what I mean. Trust me, there was nothing desperate about any of it! Also true, I met my husband at work, we fell in love and got married - as one does sometimes! Contrary to what you think or are trying to imply, I feel no shame about any of this.
Two life-altering events happened to me over the course of six months at the end of 2005 and into 2006. One - I went to a large, incredibly beautiful and traditional African wedding in Dar Es Salaam and spent the next two weeks in Tanzania. That whole trip knocked this sheltered little Canadian girl right on her lily white behind and opened me to people, places and experiences like none other in my life. I am not ashamed to admit that racism never affected me to any significant degree until that trip. The questions, both curious and often rather dismayed, my asian husband and I faced while travelling across this beautiful country, made us realize how much we take for granted in Canada, and how important it is to recognize our privilege and grow from that place. Especially as we embarked on the next significant chapter in our lives - starting a family.
That second life-altering moment happened the moment I found out I was pregnant with our first child. Everything was perfect for the first six months of that pregnancy, which was also a bit unexpected given my history of Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was working, I had a new manager who recognized my talents and nurtured them without employing misogynistic shame tactics, and my husband and I had settled into our first home and adopted a puppy. I was still bossy, and loud, and even more emotional, (duh, PREGNANT) and still not quite a feminist.
Fast forward six months. A fight with a male co-worker over an workplace event we were planning ended with my blood pressure reaching epic, and dangerous, levels and me being immediately hospitalized and put on bed rest when it showed no intention of going back to normal. It was September 26th, 2006 and it was the day that my life's trajectory changed. The road I was on gave out right under my feet and thrust me onto a completely different one. One fraught with danger, uncertainty, and little to no control over the destination, let alone the way there. Perinatologists, neonatologists, words like viability and survival rates, all of this floated around us, and we were thrust into a world that no one can ever prepare you for. You learn to drive while you are on that road. And learn I did. I read every piece of information I could get my hands on about having a premature baby, the signs of pre-eclampsia and eclampsia and ran through every scenario imaginable, with every possible outcome for this baby. I had the hospital, my OB, my husband, my parents, and my neighbours on speed dial on my flip phone, and wasn't afraid to use it.
I think the simmering of the feminist in me likely started the morning of my son's birth day. We were prepared for anything, as long as it kept both of us safe and alive. Induction was performed via cervidil gel and by some random fluke of nature, it worked VERY quickly on me. Within an hour and a half I was in labour, but the problem was, no one believed me (except for our doula). I cycled between 30 second contractions and MAYBE 15 seconds of rest for about 5 hours. When the nurses finally agreed to page my OB and I was able to get into a tub, I immediately felt the urge to push, and it was discovered that I was already dilated to 10 centimetres and the baby was crowning. The next 15 minutes are a blur of nurses screaming at me not to push as they tried to get me upstairs to the actual Labour and Delivery room, me screaming at them to FUCK OFF - which my husband says he heard while he and our doula took the stairs up and I was shoved into the elevator, and then the very fast birth of our child into the chaos of an L&D room that had no idea what was going on. I kissed him once before the NICU staff, who somehow miraculously showed up within 30 seconds, took him and his father away to yet another part of the hospital while my until then absent OB delivered my placenta and stitched up my 2nd degree tear.
I've never thought of my first child's birth as traumatic, mainly because the whole second half of that pregnancy was one extended stress-filled event we were hoping would end well. In the aftermath of it, and with the benefit of hindsight and all I know now, I think of the ways I could have advocated better for myself. I would have asked more questions, I would not have accepted being blown off or ignored, or the way people were discounting my own experience at the time, simply because that's not the way they had seen things happen in the past.
My son was born at 9 PM that night, and apart form our initial little kiss, I didn't get to touch him until 3 AM, after I snuck out of my own hospital bed and walked up to the NICU and asked the nurse on duty if I could hold him. All 3 pounds, 13 ounces of him, with more wires and tubes attached to him than seemed possible on such a tiny person. Yet, there he was, breathing on his own, holding my finger, sleeping in my arms. I sat there and watched him all night long and a helpful nurse brought over a breast pump so I could get started with our breastfeeding journey.
You want a moment when I became a feminist? When I took up that torch? It was that night. And maybe even then, I wouldn't have identified it as such. It would take me another three years and the birth of my second child - accomplished completely according to my wishes, to fully own my feminism and say it out loud. But that night, watching my son sleep, seeing his every pulse and breath on the monitor above his incubator, and listening to the steady whooshing of the breast pump extracting the tiniest bit of colostrum from my breasts, I knew that I was a changed woman. And it wasn't just because of the birth, it was because for a lot of that time, I was alone. I was alone in the hospital at night, still waiting for my blood pressure to come down, with a baby one floor away, and a husband and dog at home in our own bed. I was alone in the wee hours of the night figuring out breastfeeding and caring for this tiny human. Then I was home, and it was me, alone, setting my alarm and getting up every three hours to pump even without a baby around so that he would have MY breastmilk in the NICU when I could not be there. And in all that time alone, I found a strength within me that I didn't know existed. It propelled me forward when I had thought I couldn't take one more step. It made me learn new ways to do every day simple things and forced me outside of my comfort zones. It sent me to the internet to seek out the community I needed to help me grow.
I've said many times before that motherhood was the catalyst to me owning my feminism and that still holds true today (and if you had truly been reading, you would know that already). I am a perpetual late bloomer and the discovery of my feminism is no exception to this rule. Motherhood is not the ONLY thing that makes me a feminist though, and looking back at my life and experiences makes me see how much the culture that we live in shaped my thoughts and how much of that I now know needs shifting.
Anonymous Commenter guy, you told me that I should drop the torch that I never really held onto and give it over to the younger fems to pick up, but to this I say NO, I will NOT. Because while yes, it has taken me this long to come into the fold, I AM HERE TO STAY. Why would I leave now? I am not done. Feminism is not done. I love that so many young women are out and proud Feminists, making the world that much better for themselves and in the end for my own children as well. I support, and amplify, and learn from this younger generation every single day. I take those lessons, as well as the ones I have learned from feminists of the past, and incorporate them as best I can into my life, both online and in real life. And as with anything that we want to teach our children, the best lessons start in the home. I will continue to hold on to the torch of Feminism as long as I am here to teach them - even if that lesson is simply to not make the same mistakes that I did in the past. And when the time comes, I will pass the torch on to them, to take forward into a brave new FEMINIST world.
N~
P.S. I do hope you, your wife and her friends have all enjoyed your daily dose of "snark reading" over your morning coffee!
On a scale of 1-10, how sexist is it to think your world leader is hot?
On Monday night, Canada went and got itself a brand spanking new Prime Minister. We went top shelf people. Picked the Brand Name version. CBC News called it less than two hours after the first polls closed on the east coast.
I then posted a picture of our new Prime Minister-Designate, Justin Trudeau, on Facebook. This one below from a few years ago. I wrote, "Dear Non-Canadian Friends, This is our new Prime Minister."
That Facebook post of mine is 4 days old and now has over 15K likes, and over 26K shares. And quite a few comments about how sexist it is to be objectifying our new Prime Minister Elect.
Justin Trudeau is a good looking man. Of this there is no doubt. And really, in the world of politics, we often don't expect looks to be a part of the package. Nor do we expect youth to win out over experience.
In this election, the Conservatives and the NDP actually used these attributes AGAINST Mr. Trudeau in many of their campaign attack ads. The "Justin, he's just not ready." Interview ads not only infantilized him by continually calling him by his first name, the dig at the end about the "nice hair" and being "like a celebrity" further tried to make him out to be a shallow and hollow candidate, not worthy of the job.
But here we are, with a young, very good-looking Prime Minister, in what my friend Jen wanted me to call the PRIME of his life (She's the punny one!), and people all over the world are freaking right the fuck out about it. Here are just a few of the headlines from publications the day after the election.
16 Non-Canadians Who Have The Hots For Canada’s Next Prime Minister - Buzzfeed
Justin Trudeau: Internet already has a sexist acronym for new Canadian Prime Minister - The Independent UK
Canada's hot new prime minister has the Internet sweating maple syrup - Mashable
Trust me, the list goes on and on...
And here-in lies the conundrum; Is objectifying Justin Trudeau and focusing on how good looking he is a BAD thing? Because God knows that IF the new Prime Minister of Canada was a woman and was getting called a PILF - the shit would be hitting ALL THE DAMN FANS, ALL AT ONCE!
The answer to this, in my opinion, is not an easy yes or no.
Here is the thing about objectification: while yes, technically it can be done to women and to men, the status quo of sexual objectification places the man as the subject and the woman as the object. Even when men are objectified, it really isn't the same thing as living with the systemic levels of oppression and objectification that woman have for eons.
If Justin Trudeau was a "super hot' woman, not only would her body and looks be objectified, her ability to do her job would also be questioned. We don't have to look too far back in our Canadian political history to see that this is true. I mean really, can we all just sit back for a minute and contemplate what a different world we might be in if Belinda Stronach had actually beaten Stephen Harper in that CPC leadership race in 2004?
My friend Zita had this to say about all of this,
“Honestly, my biggest issue with this is that it allows people to justify the institutionalized sexism towards women that credits/discredits them based on looks in a much more meaningful way than [Justin Trudeau] will ever experience.
But when women call out media for doing it to them, they will say “We do it to both genders equally so it’s not sexism”. Except that it is- because no one is saying that how [Trudeau] looks can/should/will impact how he performs. And the same can’t be said for women.”
My point is that while it's not great that people are tweeting about our new Prime Minster finger-banging them or calling him the "Prime Minister I'd like to Fuck" (#PILF), now that the election has been decided, no one is saying or is likely to say that his good looks in any way compromise his ability to actually BE the head of state of one of the biggest nations in the world. And as my fellow feminist friend Dani Paradis pointed out, why was no one calling out all that sexism in the campaign ads against him before now?
“I can see why people would feel uncomfortable, but while a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, objectification hasn’t occurred on an equal platform. The standard isn’t double. It’s the same.
The CPCs used his looks to feminize him. That’s what pretty-boy means. This tactic was to undermine him and make him seem unfit to lead. Do you see how sexist that is? I didn’t see people speaking out against that.
Now, when the conversation takes the form of female gaze people are outraged.”
In Canada, we now have a young, vibrant, easy on the eyes new Prime Minister, who has people in this country fired up about not just politics, but about national pride and a hopefulness they have not felt in a decade. He is everything that the previous leader of Canada was not. If folks all over the world want to pay attention to Canada now because our new first couple is about to rival the Obamas in the looks category, that is totally fine with me! Go ahead and move all your butts to Canada just to be near them. I hear our immigration policies are about to get much better too!
But then again, maybe I am just used to having young, vibrant, and awesome for political leaders... I mean, have you seen my Mayor and my Premier?
Mayor Don Iveson
Premier Rachel Notley
N~
***Update: For a lovely and timely example of how things are different for men and women in politics, see the Honourable Michelle Rempel, MP for Calgary Nosehill, Twitter feed from last night as she contemplated what the response would be to her making a bid for the Conservative Party leadership. Take note of all the tweets telling this female politician with an excellent track record, that her EGO is too big for her britches in true, "Shhh...sweatheart, just stay in your place" sexist fashion!
my day of abundance
1. Second best #BreakfastClub EVER (2nd only because #JohnBenderForever) with @thejennui, @schmutzie, and @tanis_eh, and NOT ONE PICTURE taken between the four of us. It's like we forgot who we are? Oh, and four hours goes by super fast with fabulous internet friends you only see a few times a year!
2. Found my new theme song...
3. CANADA VOTED FOR CHANGE and Justin Trudeau is our new Prime Minister. Yeah, he's pretty, but he has a lot of work to do, and I am going to be ON him to live up to the hype!
Prime Minister #notJoshGroban
4. New #StarWars trailer is released and apparently a bunch of white boys are mad cause GIRLS and BLACK Characters are the leads in this movie, and they want you to boycott the movie because of this. Please boycott it all you want crybabies. More seats for the rest of us!
It was a good day, everyone.
A good day indeed.
N~