MotherPie

The Bride in The Fairy Tale...

Has Marriage Become Just a Fairy Tale? Disney is launching its first line of designer gowns.  Marriages are now seen as extensions of play, as production, as practice. Are women living in fairy tales? Will being a Snow White Bride be a relevant thing? Has Disney created an unreal characterization of women?  These women now at marriage-age have always had the princess figures in their lives.  But do men know how to be Prince Charmings?  No one dates anymore, who knows what to expect? Do women feel let down when their man doesn't come through in an idealized way?  We don't live in fairy tales.  We live in a messy world where daycare is difficult, most women work and commutes are killers and family leave leaves lots to be desired.  So, wasup.

Be a Princess Bride?  Thank goodness my oldest daughter was above that trend when she got married last August.  My youngest might get hooked in to this stuff.  She loves tiaras.  Will she become hooked on Disney's make believe magic as a grown-up, too?  She, who loved Lion King on Broadway?  Disney World and Disneyland  have 2,000 unions a year and Disney began offering Fairy Tale Weddings and Honeymoon services in 1991.  Will Cinderella's Royal Court weddings become the next big thing?

This must be a hot market or Disney wouldn't be trying to capture it.  The princess yearning for young girls is growing up and Disney will keep marketing the fairy tales.  Disney designers have unveiled flower girl collections, a new line of bridal gowns inspired by each Disney Princess and there are even bridesmaid princess dresses.

Well, if you want anybody to conduct the ceremony, you can, with a few easy clicks, get ordained as a Universal Life minister to perform weddings.  At least it works in New Mexico.

Wife, Thy Name is SUPPORT. Init? (Mrs. Spitzer)...

Women are talking about the imagery of standing publicly by a man who has shown unethical and unfaithful behavior. Gov. Elliot Spitzer, hanging by a thread, his future in doubt. Did she have him sign on the dotted line before she stood up there?   Think of other women who stood by their man.  Not Hillary. Hillary's public photo was walking hand-in-hand w/ daughter in the middle, off to the helicopter after the Monica episode.  She didn't stand up in public by her man. Puffy eyed women on the podiums... heartbreaking stories.  Silda Wall, Spitzer's wife of 20 years and mother of their three daughters, "doesn't want to look at him, and he doesn't want to bear the look that she gives when she does look at him," the story goes.  As a mom, a wife and a woman, my heart aches to see this Harvard law lady be a backdrop.  Click the photo to enlarge so her pain can be more visible. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

What is the equivalent here if you turn the tables?  Venus and Mars, culture and differences. Dirty laundry kept in the closet.  What men have had to stand publicly by their errant women?   

Feminine Sense from The Heartland: Ultra-Feminine Vs. "Too Sexy"

Victoria's Secret CEO Sharen Turney said the company has "gotten too much off our heritage" and was "too sexy," no longer the ideal "ultra-feminine."  Speaking to analysts as parent company, Limited Brands, reported quarterly profits fell 12% (and that was after a bad previous quarter), Turney said Victoria's Secret hopes to bring back sophistication.

Once one of the first football pom-pon squad members at the University of Oklahoma, this Delta Gamma sorority girl from Tishomingo, Oklahoma may be able to bring some down-to-earth common sense back to an idea of sexy that has become too slutty.  She has the talent to bring the product back to feminine.  Her background includes work for upscale Neiman Marcus, a sophisticated brand.

There are more than 1,000 stores but to keep customers, apparently Victoria's  Secret needs to respond to sales and focus-group feedback and return to ultra-feminine lingerie, noted a Wall Street Journal article.  When you google Victoria's Secret, their sponsored ad comes up "Shop Sexy...." 

When times are tight, spending on delicate items gets put on hold... you know the saying, "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" and if gas hits $4.0o a gallon...
photo

I Love...

I love, therefore I am.

Some of us are lucky in love.  Some love with luck.  Some of us love. period.  Some of us have lasting love. Some are hard to love. Some reject love.  Some are in between loves.  Some are looking for love and have yet to find it. Sometimes love doesn't work.  Love becomes broken.

I've found out recently of a family member who died alone and no one knew...for six years.

This is AP photo was one of the top emailed photos from 2007 with Yahoo!  We love the idea of lifetime mating, our culture does.   

When love doesn't last, or is not there, for whatever reasons, it is sad. So I'm putting up a tribute by James Taylor and Carly Simon, once happily married, long ago, before the marriage failed.  Here's to my wish that all have devoted relationships - in friendship, in family and elsewhere. 
 

Devoted to You...

Bagdad Burning...

Last fall as rhetoric heated up against Iran, I came across a blog, Life Goes On in Tehran which gives a personal glimpse into city life.  I regularly check the award-winning anonymous blogger Riverbend who writes Baghdad Burning.  She left her native country, Iraq, finally, going to Syria. I am saddened that she has not let us hear her voice. October 22 is her most recent post. It has been a long while since she posted last April when her family decided to leave Baghdad. Then nothing for months until September. She is now a refugee. She wrote on her September 7 post about her move, "Syria is the only country, other than Jordan, that was allowing people in without a visa. The Jordanians are being horrible with refugees. Families risk being turned back at the Jordanian border, or denied entry at Amman Airport. It’s too high a risk for most families." Last April when her family decided to leave she wrote, "I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere."  Her voice and that of my brother-in-law who volunteered to go there, made the war personal.

I miss her writings.

A Woman Should Have...

"MAYA ANGLOU'S" BEST POEM EVER
 

 

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own,
even if she never wants to or needs to...



A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

something perfect to wear if the employer,
or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour...



A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..

a youth she's content to leave behind....



A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....



A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....

a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...



A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....

one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who lets her cry...



A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....

a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family...



A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems,
and a recipe for a meal,
that will make her guests feel honored...



A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....

a feeling of control over her destiny....



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

how to fall in love without losing herself..



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

how to quit a job,
break up with a lover,
and confront a friend without;
ruining the friendship...


EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over...



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW.. ..

whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't take it personally...



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...



EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...

Ramble: Bag Ladies...

I'm still liking the handbags that I discovered in June at the Bloomingdales trunk show in NYC: Zen3 Bags. I carried one all last summer.  You can order directly from the site.  This one, left, is one of their current offerings at the high end at $320.  For $120 a very basic black bag is available and is similar to the one at Bloomingdales last summer.

My first sign of a zoom-zoom over-the-top economy was the lust for the very high end handbags and the frenzy that women in New York made over trying to get the very latest cool bag.  Sure enough, the sales for these items are slowing as our economy slows. As the NYTimes writes, an entire economy built around aspiration is starting to collapse. 

Back to the basics.

Hairy Pits...

This painting by Matisse, Nu sur fond rouge, (edited for publication here) sold last fall at the NYC Sotheby's auction for $4 million, under the estimate of $5 to $7 million.

The French ideal of beauty.  When I was a college student studying in France in the 1970s, I was surprised that cultural ideals of beauty  varied from the American norm.  I found it odd that French women didn't shave their pits (or legs), nor did they wear deoderant.  I'd sit on the bus and ladies would stand holding the bar above, upraised arms about nose-level with me.  They would walk the streets with their long baguettes tucked under their arms.

Fashions and ideals of beauty change - they have here in America (think the Dove beauty ad).  I know French fashions have led the world but I don't know about the hairy pits.   

The Most Needlepoint: My Mother or My NYC Friend...

I forgot how much needlepoint I had done for my mother and was reminded on my last visit during that horrid ice storm.  One of my needling friends sent me a handmade needlepoint gift for my birthday and it was an utter delight.

When I'm in Fort Worth I'm hoping to stop by a good needlepoint shop and pick up something new to stitch.  It's been awhile - at least since I belonged to a Stitch and Bitch in Houston - since I've done much.

When my son-in-law needed a stocking?  I bought one already made. 

Cultural Appeal: Britney Spears & Wild Girls...

What does the Britney Spears Saga tell us about our culture? It used to be that Princess Diana could pop the newstand sales.  Now it is Britney and media is following the story because it is profitable.  The U.S. version of Britain's OK!, a new entry in the celebrity print rag field,  has put photos of Spears the cover 54 times in the 103 issues since January 2006 while U.S. Weekly had Spears on almost two thirds of its covers in the past 15 months.  Spears is the a hot property for media saga stories, ranking at the top of celebrities, outpacing Angelina Jolie and Paris Hilton but her brand appeal is lowest. 

The appeal of these stories is soap opera-esque, for celebrity stars such as Anna Nicole Smith, or murdered white girls that have made female talking heads such as Greta Sustern on CNN and Nancy Grace stars in their own right for sad sagas on the latest dish on distressing damsels. 

Covering cultural angles, think about the culture appeal of this sad story on Spears. Anti-heroes say something about our values, what we care about, what we hold as important.  She's not a sheroe.  She's the modern non-Cinderella.  Her shoe is a shattered slipper.

She's a Hot Topic for Shrinks,  notes a story about the NYC winter conference gathering of the American Psychoanalytic Association.  Mental problems - the need to put a box and diagnosis and a frame on the problem? The stigma of mental illness?  Bad mommy? Divorce and marriage? Celebrity unstyled and raw?  Wild young girls?  Bad girl?  Gawker follows the charts for media attention between Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears. Paris was the first, they write, to break into the serious media in 2003.  This is a play out of the move to on-line 24/7 coverage and the shift we are seeing, which I covered in an earlier post, Media Watch: $ad $aga - Britney $pears.   Is she representative of everything we can't talk about?

What, exactly, is the base motivator, culturally and societally for this story?  Morals? Taboo subjects? Ideal/non-ideal females? What is the emotional appeal and what do you think this says about our culture?