Friends: Please stop eating lipstick

I just heard this guy on Fresh Air on NPR, maybe you guys heard it? There is lead in lipstick.* There is also some kind of weird chemical in all pliable plastic (including your car dashboard and kid's toys) that messes up your hormones.

(Note the New York Time's story on the lead in lipstick--they basically just buy the cosmetic industry's excuse! (Which is that you don't eat lipstick, so who cares?) Wow, the NYT is really awful. I am glad we mostly canceled our subscription.)

Yup, the government has virtually no legal authority to regulate cosmetics; this includes zero power to make sure they're not putting lead in lipstick.

The guy found that the European Union has banned all kinds of chemicals which the EPA of the U.S. has declined to ban. The reason? E.U. countries pay for health care. They have an incentive to protect the health of their populations.

One (just one of many) of the reasons we need to regulate capitalism (and regulate it more) is that we've seen again and again that there's virtually no incentive not to market a product that will cause illness and death so long as the produce doesn't cause an immediate, dramatic situation involving injury or death (such as exploding lipstick). Slow poisoning products (see the cigarette industry, the global warming crisis, cancer clusters, etc.) make it impossible for people to sue. "Industry" is so powerful in this country that we individuals are basically left to regulate it ourselves by suing! That is why there are so many lawsuits, CC! Tell your parents.

*Something funny that's going on in the media coverage of the lead-in-lipstick issue is: As I noted, there's no law about whether you can make lead lipstick. There is, however, a legal limit on how much lead you can put in candy. So the reporters are writing that lipstick is "over the legal limit" because it's over the limit for candy. This is funny because

a) isn't the disturbing thing here the fact that the lead is clearly in the lipstick because no agency regulates cosmetics? There are probably all kinds of junk in lipstick! You know how we know about the lead? Some NGOs tested the lipstick, for lead, just for lead, not for, like, asbestos. Tom, remember when you worked at the cosmetic company and that lady sent in pictures of the chemical burn she got, and they just sent her a big check? That's why--they're totally unregulated, and they want to keep it that way!

b) There's lead in candy???!

Not doing the lesbian avengers proud

I got to my parent's house (accompanied by the lovely CC), the rest of my family showed up, and suddenly and without aforethought, I found myself employing the word "buddy" as a synonym for "lesbian."

My sister-in-law: So where can you get a job after you graduate?
Me: Well, it is hard to find a job, but I am hoping that CC will get me a buddy hire.

(Note: Most people call it a "spousal hire.")

The next day...

My four-year-old niece (pausing in the midst of a sock-hurling game me and CC were playing with her in my parent's living room): Are you [as in, me] her [that is, CC's] mommy?
Me: No, she is my girlfriend.
Silence from four-year-old, and from her parents nearby who are surely listening.
Me: We hang out together a lot. We are, like, buddies.

A tough holiday for history PhD students

A few Thanksgivings ago, my one set of nephews couldn't come to my parents, so set #2 were stuck doing the traditional "basement show"/Thanksgiving pageant on their own. Naturally, having a cast of 2, both of whom would of course be playing arriving pilgrims, they asked their slightly older, history PhD student aunt to guest star as the welcoming Native American person. "We'll arrive on the boat," they told me (they had built a boat set out of a chair and some construction paper) "and you act happy to see us, and tell us welcome to the New World, etc."

(In fairness to them, they were so little (like 4 and 6) that they didn't know what a "pilgrim" was. They thought it was a last name.)

I agreed to appear in the pageant, but explained that my character wouldn't welcome the arriving Europeans, but instead would say things like, "I don't think you should arrive here, I already live here. I think you should return to England," and "I have a bad feeling about this." But though I told them these would be my lines, they (perhaps due to their 30-second attention spans) didn't adjust their part of the script at all. Then, during the actual basement show, with the rest of the family watching, the pilgrims seemed shocked and confused by the lack of welcome they received. So the whole thing ended up weirdly historically representative, at least in a symbolic way.

Resolution!!!

This chapter I am working on, it keeps growing and growing in the form of self-contained sections, and now it's so huge that I can't really handle reading through it or editing it. It's like 50 pages long!

Then I was complaining yet again about this to poor CC and I realized that this chapter is like The House the Pecks Built. Did you read that when you were a kid? It's about this family (the Pecks) who start out with this tiny house, but then they all build different rooms on their house so that they can do their favorite things (a bowling room, a sewing room (this being 1950), a play room, etc.; I kind of forget what the rooms were actually, but the point is) The point is that the house has like 100 rooms and the family members never see one another! And they get lonely. So they tear it all down to two rooms again.

Anyway, so I resolved that today, I am going to do what the Pecks did and delete 9/10ths of the Chapter! No, that is not true. But I resolved to like, just whip this chapter into some kind of "finished first draft" state and then declare it a finished first draft and get on with my life! So at Thanksgiving, like the European imperialist slave-owning pilgrims, I will have something to be thankful for (but unlike them, it will not be imperialism or slavery.)

Hey grant foundation ladies, bring on that cash!

YSA: Would you read my personal statement for this !#@#$$# grant application?
Tom: Sure.
YSA: oh, i should have sent this before. it's the specifications for the personal statement:

”...please state career goals...please describe your helping of other women, as well as how you have worked as a teacher and mentor.”
*************************************************
Personal Statement
I am deeply pleased to apply for the #!@$%$ of ##$%%^* Women Dissertation Completion Fellowship, a fellowship just for women PhD graduate students who need money to finish their dissertations, and especially targeted to help women who have a deep commitment to mentor other women, not only because I myself am a woman, but also because of my own deep and abiding interest in women. All my life I have supported and mentored other women, even going so far as to sleep with them. Indeed, I am still sleeping with them. One is here with me right now, as I write this.

My dissertation, “Women during the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933,” is about women during the Weimar Republic, in Germany. It is about how they mentored one another, for example by creating women-only work spaces (except for the male clients who came by, but they were not there all the time) and making money to support their (female) children, especially when they were working class. Some people who read about my dissertation might say, “Why do I want to read a whole dissertation about prostitution, venereal disease, pornography and sterilization?” But although my dissertation discusses all these things, it is really about women. Women mentoring other women. Mentoring them to run away when the police raided their bordellos, and to avoid venereal disease. Mentoring them to produce postcards of their naked nun cabaret act and not to get those postcards seized by the pornography police.

All of these things, women mentored each other, together. Women together. That is what the Weimar Republic (in Germany) was really all about. The tragic rise of the Nazis put an end to this mass mentoring by German women, but my own commitment to mentor women and girls lives on. As I taught an all-women class twice that was required and that students really resented having to take (and had no clear point), I learned the value of single-sex education and of all-women spaces in which to mentor, mentor, mentor. My commitment to mentoring women has shaped my personal, professional (dissertation) and professional (teaching) lives.

*************************************************
Tom: you should make your personal statement:
"I have achieved all my goals. Now, I am just f-cking around. Send me
some cash, suckas!"
YSA: stay low, bi-atches, and keep the cash comin.
Tom: That should be your motto. Or at least, the motto of your women-only university.

Ultimate Bowling

This game, recently invented by my relatives, is just about the most sporting fun you can have inside your house since knee football. It is full contact bowling. Each team has 4 pins. They set up their pins on opposite ends of the court (rug). There is one nerf bowling ball. The team on offense tries to bowl down the other team's pins. The defense tries to block them by tackling them and taking the bowling ball. (Recently, many teams have been using large red and purple pillows to block on defense, creating a linebacker rush type situation.)

The kinds of stuff I do at work

I pretend to have an "office" and "coworkers" because sometimes as I think to myself how I lack these things, my heart swells with panic (as in: Gosh, how is my work different from unemployment??) I have in my life had a more-readily-recognizable-as-a-job job and therefore I know what it's like in an "office" with "coworkers" and especially what you tell your sweetie at the end of the day with regards to "how was work, sugar lips?"

You think of the most exciting thing that happened that day. For me, it used to be stuff like, "I helped Alice fix the copy machine!" Or, "we went to cover a car fire!" (Some of my former jobs could be pretty interesting.)

Today it was: I remembered that a book just came out on the Weimar Republic. When I remembered this, I was at my "office" which is a desk in a library. I rushed to look--did the library already have this new book?? My dissertation is also on the Weimar Republic--!! What if the new book had scooped my dissertation?? Heart-pounding search for the book. Quick, consult in-library map of book stacks!

Yes, I found it--20 minutes of edge-of-seat consultation of book's index on things like "lesbian" (one mention) and "prostitution" (one mention)...Whew, the book doesn't scoop my dissertation.

Then I got sort of peeved. How could the dude write a whole book and not mention the stuff that's in my dissertation? Aren't my dissertation people important? They are! Dammit.

That is the kind of stuff that happens at work. It's no car on fire, let me tell you. I may not tell sugar lips about this one, I don't want to spend my boredom capital with her unnecessarily.

Running in NJ

I moved out of my old NJ apartment down south a bit, still in NJ but amidst a few more trees. This is my new run through the woods a block from the house. Picture taken about a month ago. I feel really lucky to have moved next to this great run! I didn't even know the park was there until we moved in.

Sex freedom!

Sex toys (including vibrators) are illegal to sell in several states, including Alabama and Mississippi. A 2004 circuit court decision upheld Alabama's ban on the sale of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs ... ."

Here is a law against queer sex (which I define as any kind of sex that violates dominant social norms) that both 'straights' and 'homos/queers/lgbt/whatever people' can join forces to oppose!

Yay for a sex positive coalition of lots of people! Sex toy shops like Toys in Babeland and Good Vibrations initially sought to market sex toys to women as a feminist act. But they've seen booms in business, and they seem to have made sex toys somewhat respectable even to straight couples. Now will the sex toy industry help build a sex positive political coalition for sex freedom in the U.S.?

(Shout out to HAL for the tip off on these laws.)

Spoooooky

This is our awesome pumpkin.