It’s January: the commercial run-up to Valentine’s Day during which you’ll likely be both lightly encouraged to set new goals and badgered by get-fit-quick, lose weight/find yourself advertising.
Anecdotally, the onslaught isn’t quite as fierce as years prior, perhaps because I am a little less online than some, perhaps because the rhetoric has grown more subtle (why, exactly, does my January need a jumpstart? I’m looking at you, Whole Foods) and perhaps because something has changed—indeed, in November, Intro. 209-A took effect in New York City, a bill that prohibits discrimination based on height or weight in employment, housing, and public accommodations.
The balm I can offer for this time of year is my last publication, a book review that’s closer to an essay called “Victory Over Ourselves: How Fat Became Dangerous and Deplorable” on Mangoprism. Even if you’re not drawn to the topic, go read for the writing. [What I’m trying to say is I’m quite proud of this effort.]
If you make it through that chronicle (it is, admittedly, more than 4000 words) and emerge still looking for more, try “Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny,” a crisp critique by Raquel S. Benedict that poses excellent questions such as “is there anything more cruelly Puritanical than enshrining a sexual ideal that leaves a person unable to enjoy sex?”
And, importantly: “Is a life without bread objectively better than a life with it?”
internet collage, source unknown, ft. Meryl Streep, an actor with many accolades who is also a woman renowned for that fraught ol’ chestnut, “ageless beauty”
Speaking of the new year, in 2024 I will turn thirty, an age that, as I’ve been saying at each birthday for a while now, makes it sound like I might know something about something. But our culture still prizes how a woman looks more than her accomplishments, “idealizing the point in [her] life when she is less experienced, less wise, less competent, less powerful,” as Clare Chambers puts it. So even though I disagree heartily with this premise, I feel a little nervous about leaving the decade in which women are most valued.
To be clear, I’m not hoping to be reassured about how young I look, or how “well” I will age because look at my pretty mother (hi mom!)* Those sorts of comments, though well-intentioned, miss the point here, which is that I am approaching what should be a capacious, fruitful era with some trepidation because of the difference between my personal opinion—to be formidable is to stop caring so much about your appearance—and a social reality—being perceived as pretty, and pursuing prettiness, are systemically rewarded.
*I do, however, welcome any comments re: ‘welcome to the portal’ and/or ‘join the party, we have confetti and no effs left to give’
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Last August, I found myself resisting the end of summer more than usual. Lured by an early leaf-bordered coffee shop chalkboard, I tried drinking a pumpkin spice latte. It tasted wrong. For some reason I was feeling particularly vehement about premature gestures toward coziness (you try handing a fuzzy blanket to someone drenched in sweat and see the fury in their eyes). “Don’t brandish a gourd at me,” I said to a friend who is literally named Autumn.
I spent a few weeks resenting any encroachment of fall on the precious remnants of summer only to experience two deeply anti-climatic seasonal transitions in a row.
Sure, it was downright balmy on Halloween. I played some beach volleyball, in costume, no less. And those blue December skies were striking. But in addition to all of the drought ramifications of this relatively snowless winter, not just in New York but nationwide, I’m left with this odd, arrhythmic feeling. How will I cherish July if we spend it ablaze? How do we triumph over February if it never gets despondently cold? What does it mean emotionally and energetically to level out the four seasons in a place where they used to be distinct?
Like most anger, beneath all this aggravation lies some real grief, despair even. The planet keeps warming up, and here in NYC, the mayor nearly made devastating cuts to community compost, which could also be called an earth cooling program.
photo from a city rally protesting cuts that would have caused more than 100 people to lose their jobs at community compost programs that divert more than 8.3 million pounds of organic waste from landfills annually (sign petition here)
A combination of fundraising and what I’ll call magic money (an anonymous wealthy donor) have temporarily staved off the closure of these compost sites. Jury’s still out on the future. In the mean time, some climate-friendly solace:
Loose Ends Project connects volunteer crafters with incomplete projects—a partially knitted sweater, an unpieced quilt—sometimes left behind by a deceased relative, sometimes submitted by a living person who has become too ill or disabled to finish the work. It’s a beautiful corner of the internet.
Over the summer I stayed at a friend’s house in a bedroom with a drum set where, while trying to close the blinds late at night, I instead dislodged the entire blind and banged the crash cymbal. Perhaps you can avoid a similar fate by using www.fixmyblinds.com. Normally with blinds we either a) tolerate them in some state of disrepair for long periods of time or b) have to ask a professional or property manager for help. I don’t think it has to be this way.
Look at these “earmuffs” made from old sweater sleeves that attach to the straps on a bicycle helmet! I’m contemplating trying this project with socks I no longer relish fixing that are now more darn than sock.
No one ever asks for my opinion on pavement and cement; fortunately for me, a newsletter is a socially sanctioned platform for unsolicited advice, and a good chunk of you who read Bombazine are homeowners who could do something with this information: TRUEGRID sells high-weight-bearing, permeable pavers made from recycled polymers that stabilize soil and help control erosion. They are supposedly easy to install with gravel or grass and they are used in US National Parks. Am I reciting the highlights from their website copy without any expertise or even experience with this subject? Yes. Am I delighted by repurposed materials applied in surprising ways? Also yes.
I dug out a discarded, disintegrating bike helmet from my parents’ trash bin (yep, still a Dumpster skimmmer), popped off the visor, tucked it in my suitcase, and upon returning to Brooklyn glued it on my own helmet, whose original visor sprang free somewhere on the streets of Missoula circa 2018.
photo by Carli Neustadt from the Reclypt Circular Fashion Playground
I read a horoscope a while back with this phrase I keep returning to: raid the ancestral costume trunk! Exhibit A: Sho Madjozi, in the music video for her song Kona, clad in a traditional Xibelani and Nike streetwear, dancing worldwide. The ancestral costume trunk is both communal and individual—what might you find in yours?
In solidarity,
Abby