CCL Update

To bring you up to date on my ambition of becoming a Crazy Cat Lady, here are the latest additions to my CCL wardrobe and accessories:

(1) A lovely, very roomy pink nightie with tiny black and neon pink cats all over it (comfy!)

(2) A spiral bound notebook (a gift from my Rare One) that says on the cover "I am one bad relationship away from 30 cats." Hee hee! Apparently that joke originated with the Canadian comic Caroline Rhea who, come to think of it, I haven't seen much on TV lately. Perhaps she has retired to CCL-dom herself.

Gardening at the White House

This picture made me laugh so I just have to post it! The media has recently reported that Michelle Obama has broken ground on the White House lawn in order to plant a big vegetable garden. She says that everyone will be made to take their turn weeding, whether they want to or not. It seems like they're planting every vegetable under the sun except beets, because Mr. President doesn't like them.
Speaking for all those who love borscht, I call upon every Slavic-American to write an indignant letter to the White House. Or better yet, send along a container of Baba's best soup to persuade the Obamas to become beet-lovers. How can you not love purple soup? Or pink soup, if it's summer borscht?
Mmmmmm, borscht . . . .

Earth Hour

My Rare One and I observed Earth Hour last night at our local time of 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. I know that turning off all the lights for an hour is a symbolic gesture only, but we still felt pretty virtuous. And it is kind of neat to participate in a world-wide activity.
So during our hour of darkness, we played two games of cribbage by candlelight. I got skunked the first game, but rallied to win the second.

Makeup, Now

Today, women are generally expected to wear full makeup on a daily basis. Certainly women in the workforce are culturally encouraged to wear it as part of "looking professional." I've known several highly educated and very accomplished women who could not take one step out of the house under any circumstances unless they had on full makeup.

I read once that we should not condemn the misogyny of societies where women cannot go out in public without hiding their faces behind veils, because in our own society women must always veil their faces in public as well, except here the veil is the virtually obligatory mask of makeup. In both cases, bare-faced women are not socially acceptable.

And nowadays, deeply religious Christian women wear the most makeup of all!! Tammy Faye Baker in her heyday springs to mind immediately, of course. But WTF? How did this profound reversal occur? One theory which I read said that the modern fundamentalist acceptance of makeup signals how these women incorporated into their lives the advantages and greater freedoms of the sexual revolution without adopting feminism and without alienating their men. Fundamentalist women use makeup to demonstrate that they gladly wear the veil, because to please men is to please God. An interesting theory, but who knows if it's correct? Still, it's the best one I've seen yet to explain this very puzzling development.

Makeup, Then

When I was a kid in the 1960s, the women who surrounded me did not wear makeup every day, but only on special occasions when they got "dolled up" to go out. My mother's entire makeup collection consisted of one tube of red lipstick, a compact of pressed powder for her face and a small pot of rouge for her cheeks. My grandmother had a tube of pink lipstick which she kept in the refrigerator and used maybe twice a year. My teachers at school were similarly restrained and many wore no makeup at all. The most made-up person I knew was my Auntie Chick and that's only because she also used mascara and eye-shadow. But even she did not wear makeup on a daily basis. Wearing full makeup every day was the sure-fire sign of a trollop, everyone agreed. Respectable women were modest and sparing in their use of makeup. In fact, deeply religious Christian women (like the ones who lived down the street from us) did not ever wear makeup on any occasion. They told us girls that lipstick was a tool of the Devil and that our lips would be permanently stained an ugly brown if we used it.

Auntie Chick's Hair

When I was small, Auntie Chick's hair was jet black. She dyed it herself, of course, in the kitchen sink. But Auntie Chick was a smart woman and she knew to gradually lighten her hair colour as the years wore on. Dark hair set against an aging face only serves to emphasize wrinkles, she explained. Her hair passed through various shades of brunette and then lighter browns until, in her senior years, it was a pale beige. Once I made the mistake of referring to her hair as beige. "It's not beige," she said indignantly. "It's champagne gold!"

Auntie Chick's Eyebrows

Auntie Chick grew up a poor farm girl during the Depression. She hungered for beauty and glamour, glimpsed only in magazines and movies. She always modeled her personal style as closely as she could on the Hollywood stars she adored. When she was young, pencil-thin eyebrows were all the rage. Therefore Auntie Chick plucked her eyebrows faithfully. But she did it so often and so thoroughly that eventually the hair did not grow back. That's why Auntie Chick essentially had no eyebrows. One was gone completely and the other one was down to a tiny tuft of hair near the bridge of her nose. Auntie Chick had to draw her eyebrows on with an eyebrow pencil. Luckily, she was quite artistic so her fake eyebrows were usually pretty even and well drawn. But she continued to draw pencil-thin eyebrows even when they were no longer in style. I think she did so on the assumption that thinner eyebrows could pass more easily as real than fuller eyebrows might.