Blogished

From today's Washingtonpost.com OnBalance blog....

Fashion Bullies?

Last week the Wall Street Journal ran this article about "fashion bullies" in middle and high schools who berate other kids for not wearing the "right" clothes. The saddest part of the article to me is not the bullying aspect but the mom featured in the article--the one who drags her sixth grader to Neiman Marcus to pick out couture clothes, which then don't pass muster with her peers because they're not the "right" designer clothes. Are you kidding me?

To me, far more alarming than the bullying is the idea that parents are actually willing to buy couture clothes for kids--which designers are "right" or "wrong" is irrelevant. It's bad enough when one of my kids comes home with a stain on their clothes from Target or the consignment store; I'd have to slit my wrists if the shirt or pair of pants had cost $150.

Meanwhile, every other day you read about the housing crisis and how droves of people are having to foreclose on their houses, or how the average American has something like $10,000 of credit card debt. Why are parents--at least some of whom fall into the group who are carrying $10,000 (and many times, well beyond that) willing to "shop their families broke"?

How about instead of (or at least in addition to) programs that teach girls to navigate peer pressure to dress a certain way or be a certain size, someone offer programs to teach girls about money and how trying to "keep up with the Joneses" can seriously ruin your life? Someone other than Suze Orman, that is, who schools could actually afford to hire as a speaker.

Just reading about this couple would be enough to scare me straight!

Up front, let me give the disclaimer that I have friends who have these kinds of email addresses and I'm not trying to pass judgement or condescend to anyone. I just don't get it; maybe someone can help me understand that I'm off base on this if they feel I am.

That said, what's with women whose email address is "thejonses@whatever.com" or, worse, "myhusbandsname@whatever.com"?

It's not like email costs anything or is troublesome to set up--anyone can have multiple, free email addresses. I don't understand why a person would have a shared email address with their spouse and not just set up their own account. Is it a trust thing? An "aren't we cute?" thing? An "everything we have is ours together" thing?

I just don't get it--to me it's saying I'm just part of a couple or I'm just part of a family and not an individual. Isn't it a little self-deprecating? It seems so 50s to me--"oh, I don't deserve my own email address and honestly, I don't really get how this new-fangled internet mail works anyway, so I just leave it to my husband to deal with."

I don't know--it just makes me sad. I know couples who have the "myinitialandhisinitialsmiths@whateverland.com" address, conveying the message "we're so close we share everything and have no secrets," yet several of those very same couples have broken up because one of them cheated. And the "thesmiths@perfectfamily.com" just strikes me as incredibly sad; more often than not the women who have that email address are stay-home moms and to me it says that they've totally subjugated themselves to their husbands and kids and no longer see themselves as people who are worthy of their own personal experiences.

It reminds me of the address labels with the cartoon pictures of each family member, looking smug and perfect. Yes, the same labels I used to have when I was trying my best to play happy family.

I mean, is it a permission thing, as in the husband tells the wife she can't have her own account? Does he even check it, or does the woman just set it up that way? Would a woman have her friends address paper mail to "my friend and your husband" and intend for the letter or card to be read by both? I don't even mean in a secrecy way, just a friendship way and an interpersonal relationship way. Do my emails to Susie So-and-So need to be written as if I'm addressing both she and her husband, or the whole family?

Anyway, I just don't get it--it depresses me.

Slim Jim follow up

Really quick before Mimi kills me with her whining to leave the house--last weekend I went to the American Dietetic Association's annual meeting's exhibit hall with Patrick and ConAgra, maker of Slim Jim, had a booth. I asked several of the people staffing their booth my question about Slim Jim and why it's the only product not complying with FDA labelling requirements and none of them had an answer. They took my email address and assured me someone would contact me to let me know what the answer is.

Of course the email address I gave was my hotmail address because my gmail address is too long and complicated, and as of yesterday when I was finally able to get into my inbox for once, I had not heard from anyone yet. Of course now I can't get into hotmail at all and who knows when I'll be able to--but then again, even if I can get in, I wonder what the chances are that anyone would actually contact me.

When/if they do I'll let you know what they say.

Hotmail Sucks

For a few months now I've noticed that hotmail is getting harder and harder to log on to. Have any of you (since there are only like 2 of you reading this can you do me a favor and ask around?) had the same problems? It's driving me crazy because I hate paper mail and whenever possible opt for online statements or bills and 75% of the time now just can't get in to hotmail and therefore can't access the information in there--of course my regular emails, but also bills and, more importantly, the archive of whatever stuff I have in there--various account information like password info, login info, etc.

What responsiblity does hotmail or other free email service have to users? Or actually any email service, free or not. We never question whether or not bills or information sent by US mail will arrive--it's a given that anything sent via the USPS will reach the recipient. But now that almost every single service provider--banks, credit card companies, utilities-- who used to rely on US mail now encourages paperless communication, which is entirely dependant on email; isn't the assumption that email providers have some similar obligation to their customers to ensure that information gets delivered?

For hotmail, one of the most reputable email services, to suddenly not be working 75% of the time--how is that acceptable?

I conducted what Patrick calls "fuck-it-off" research on the subject--e.g. googled "problems accessing hotmail" and clicked on the first link and took that information as the gospel truth). Here's what I found:

Ask Leo. Apparently Leo is a computer guru who joined Microsoft in 1983 and therefore should be as reliable a source of information as any on this topic.

The problem with Leo's advice (and it's not Leo's fault; he is merely illustrating exactly what I'm complaining about) is that unfortunately contacting MSN requires you to log on to hotmail--which is exactly what the problem is--that I CAN'T log on.

I then went to MSN and used their form to contact hotmail customer support--I filled in the form and clicked "send"--and got a page saying "Sorry the page you requested is not available."

WTF? So apparently there is no way to contact hotmail customer support--no phone number, as Leo pointed out (unless Leo is wrong; I'm going under the assumption that he's not), no way to log on to the site since www.hotmail.com won't even come up when I try to go to it, and no way to get into my inbox.

If Mimi weren't sitting here waiting for me to take her somewhere I'd look into it more--I'm sure there is some sort of regulating body (or maybe not?) in charge of making sure email providers make subscribers' email accessible. If any of you have any advice/answers about this issue let me know.

Badge Magic

This year Matthew moved up from Bear Cub to Webelo (pronounced "we blow"; Patrick found the irony of that name as it relates to cub scouts quite amusing).

For the past three years his Cub Scout uniform included a dark blue shirt covered with badges. This year he came home with a new tan shirt and informed me that I needed to take all the badges off the old shirt and sew them on the new shirt, along with several new ones. The easy part was removing the badges from the old shirt--Matthew was amazed at my domesticity as I ripped the stitches out. He is very appreciative of any June Cleaver thing I do and praises me highly for the slightest thing, such as removing badges from a shirt.

As soon as I removed the badges he started hounding me about when I was going to sew them on the new shirt. I told him I had to buy a sewing kit then I'd sew them.

That night I went to a Cabi party at a friend's house (suddenly I have a weirdly suburban mom social life, complete with a dozen or more new friends....I'm not sure what caused this sudden popularity after 11 years of never being invited to stuff like Bunko or girls night or whatever. I guess my new status of divorced then remarried to a hot man who cooks, cleans, landscapes his yard and adores me has some kind of mysterious allure) (Oh, and Cabi is an outrageously expensive line of clothing available only at home shows, the apparent cornerstone of suburban mom socialization. But who am I to cut because there I was with a glass of Sangria in one hand and my checkbook in the other?) and was talking to another mom and mentioned something about the imminent badge sewing.

She looked at me like I was crazy--"haven't you heard of Badge Magic?" Was she kidding? No I hadn't heard of Badge Magic--could it be that such a thing existed? Why hadn't I invented it? She went on and on, saying NOBODY sews badges on anymore--then another girl chimed in--"Sew badges? Are you crazy?" The whole gathering launched into a collective sales pitch about the wonders of Badge Magic and how now way can you even sew on those badges without butchering your fingers.

The next day I said to Matthew "Guess what? They sell this stuff called Badge Magic so I won't have to sew all the badges on!" He looked crestfallen and said that Badge Magic doesn't work, that the badges fall off after one time, that it's terrible, I CAN'T use it. But all the moms use it, I insisted, telling him about my conversation the previous night. No, he insisted--it didn't work, all those moms were wrong, you HAVE to sew the badges on.

So I bought the sewing kit and spent an hour last night sewing two of the badges on. My finger was raw and I had to stop after just those two--I still have four more to go. But Matthew was so excited, exclaiming about how I was the best mom in the world, what a great sewer I am, how I had sewn the badges in exactly the right spots.

I guess Badge Magic is for moms who don't have divorce guilt; I need to invest in a thimble.