If you want to gauge how much a social problem is determined by society to be a matter of individual morality more than a collective problem that can only be addressed by a collective solution, you could do worse than to ask, “Are individual women considered the gatekeepers/middle class white women the moral exemplars on this issue?” Rising obesity and nutrition-related health issues? If we considered it a social problem, we’d look to economic controls on corn syrup, restructuring our food distribution, building more opportunities for exercise into our city structures. But if we considered it a matter of morality, we’d simply demand that women show off their moral purity by having a race for the smallest waistline. STDs and unwanted pregnancy: If it were a social problem, we’d have sex education and free condoms for all. But instead we tell women to keep their legs shut and save for daddy their husbands. Just because a lot of people have abandoned religion except in the nominal sense doesn’t mean that we’ve spared women from duties as the moral mainstays of families and society. We’ve just redefined the duties.
Which is what troubled me about this story in the NY Times about “Ecomoms” and how environmentalism is becoming a trendy hobby-duty for suburban housewives, a replacement for PTA meetings, church bake sales, and other demonstrations of the housewife duty to uphold her family’s moral status in a community. It’s not that I think it’s the worst thing in the world if the richest and most wasteful people in the world rein it in a little in terms of environmental destruction. It’s just that once an issue has been coded as the moral responsibility of housewives, it tends to stay there, and larger collective solutions drift out of view.
By the way, has everyone read the blog Stuff White People Like? It’s my new obsession. I am so jealous I didn’t think of it first. It’s fucking brilliant. It makes me as happy as Dadsmacker.
As usual with the NY Times, the promise of any sort of new moral duty that will get the bitches out of your workplace and back into the kitchen where they belong causes the editors to yell, “Can this green light get any greener?!” The ecomom trend causes swoons, because it promises to load up the household with so much shit to do that women simply have to quit their jobs. Added bonus is the opportunity to subtly mock women for prattling.
The women gathered in the airy living room, wine poured and pleasantries exchanged. In no time, the conversation turned lively — not about the literary merits of Geraldine Brooks or Cormac McCarthy but the pitfalls of antibacterial hand sanitizers and how to retool the laundry using only cold water and biodegradable detergent during non-prime-time energy hours (after 7 p.m.).
Move over, Tupperware. The EcoMom party has arrived, with its ever-expanding “to do” list that includes preparing waste-free school lunches; lobbying for green building codes; transforming oneself into a “locovore,” eating locally grown food; and remembering not to idle the car when picking up children from school (if one must drive). Here, the small talk is about the volatile compounds emitted by dry-erase markers at school.
Truly, fuck that nonsense. Look at that picture above. I know that if I were stuck in suburban hell, with my major life duty to be a well-displayed yuppie trophy wife and mother, having this saving-the-world excuse to hang out with my friends away from my family and drink wine would be quite tempting. I don’t blame the writer Patricia Leigh Brown for all but invoking the clucking hens, though. You write a lifestyle piece for the NY Times, you know that you’re almost obligated to reassure the editors that when women get together to talk, it’s nothing but hens clucking and certainly nothing to worry about. Something that says to the edtiors at the Time: They are not laughing at you. No! They are being silly bitches, taking themselves too seriously. The subject of your unimpressive cock never comes up. It’s all baby wipes and efficient light bulbs.
I’m going to pitch an article for the Times about how feminist political blogging is the fancy new trend that will help get your wife out of the office and into the home. Wonder how many months worth of living expenses I could pay with that?
But is obsession with environmental moral perfectionism the 21st century version of Mother’s Little Helper?
“The truth is, we’re not living very naturally,” said Linda Buzzell, a therapist in Santa Barbara who publishes the quarterly EcoTherapy News and often holds sessions in her backyard permaculture food forest. “We’re in our cars, staring at the computer screen, separated most of the day from the people we love.”
“Activism can help counteract depression,” Ms. Buzzell added. “But if we get caught up in trying to save the world single-handedly, we’re just going to burn out.”
My doctor told me I needed to cut down on reading people using empty rhetorical devices like appeals to the natural in order to reduce my anxiety and stomach acid. It seems that the moral uprightness version of environmentalism that’s being pitched to replace real environmentalism that relies on collective solutions is not really about saving the environment at all, but subduing people’s anxieties that are created by living in a society where we’re consumers first, people second. But of course, the only solution allowable in the U.S. is to be consumers first, but in a way that seems kind of like your personhood has value outside your role as a cog in the economy. Like this:
Part “Hints from Heloise” and part political self-help group, the alliance, which Ms. Pinkson says has 9,000 members across the country, joins a growing subculture dedicated to the “green mom,” with blogs and Web sites like greenandcleanmom.blogspot.com and eco-chick.com. Web-based organizations like the Center for a New American Dream in Takoma Park, Md., advocate reducing consumption and offer a registry that helps brides “celebrate the less-material wedding of your dreams.”
Emphasis mine. I love it. I’m doing the cynic’s version of the happy dance, because that highlighted phrase says everything you need to know about why we’re never going to fix what’s broken in our society short of major catastrophe. People are rightfully uneasy about the whole weddings-and-romance culture, which posits that the important thing is to have a huge consumerist display. The love is secondary and almost not necessary to the fantasy. But the bride-to-be can’t do something outrageous like say, “You know, fuck capitalist patriarchal standards. No wedding. If we have to get married, let’s just do it at the JP.” So how to have the big, consumerist wedding while quieting the inner doubts that are telling you that it’s all fucked up? Send out your invitations on recycled paper! That’ll sedate the rebel within.
86 Responses to “Save your soul with recycling”
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You know, I agree about the NYT’s and their fixation with what overeducated bored sahms do all day. This one was a little better than the one about the ny celebrity moms and their environentally friendly cleaning products, I thought.
But I have to say — I am really happy about the thought of a growing environmental consciousness among moms. This is because it is in our role as mom that we justify our worst environmental choices. The SUV needed to protect our dear children. The Little Tykes plastic world of slides and play houses that will fill landfills forever and ever. The juicebox and the lunchable.
My biggest offense these days is a travelling soccer team. I travel two hundred miles many weekend to go to soccer games. We try to car pool, but don’t do it too often. It’s gross and offensive. But I associate the soccer with something positive and wholesome for my kid, and those associations fuel my most primal feelings as a mom.
Another reason mom consciousness is important to change is because it’s the best way to change kids. As long as kids are raised thinking they’re entitled to every piece of plastic crap and every road trip it will be hard for use to change into a less consumptive society.
Are there any problems that mainstream American society considers to be collective problems rather than matters of individual morality? I can’t think of any. Our culture is just set up so it can’t recognize an issue until it’s converted into a question of personal guilt.
Of course if a single one of those moms demanded that the recycling company’s contract be pulled or not paid until they fulfill their contractural obligations to take cardboard and items not fitting in the green bin, she would immediately be told to go back to her place and not meddle in the doings of the “experts” (meaning the men who supposedly work for the taxpayers).
That’s because demanding something real be done isn’t seen as a woman’s place (even when she is a taxpayer and better qualified professionally than those in the local government). Finger wagging about unseparated plastics is her job!
‘Web-based organizations like the Center for a New American Dream in Takoma Park, Md., advocate reducing consumption and offer a registry that helps brides “celebrate the less-material wedding of your dreams.”’
RIGHT to your point- no mention at all of the Groom-to-be’s responsibility here, was there?
Another in a series of jokes on us disguised as Life pieces. I am, frankly, so SICK of this patronizing I could barf. I fucking recycle. Get off my ass and make it A LAW, goddammit. Cleaning up after other people (and by “other people”, I obviously mean “men”) is NOT my job.
“Stuff White People Like” is now my favorite thing ever, thanks you.
DeadMan
Recycled weddding invitations?
Doesn’t something have to be virgin??
Ms Kate, they’ll hand out unchewed gum and fresh sticky tape at the wedding as party favors.
I’d like to comment on your post but I’m too busy laughing my ass off at “Stuff White People Like.” So. friggin. funny. Though it’s more like Stuff Progressive White People Like.
Ohhhh, man. “Breakfast places.” So true.
These moms are drinking wine? Where’s the Today Show to report on this troubling trend?
“RIGHT to your point- no mention at all of the Groom-to-be’s responsibility here, was there?”
I’m not sure many grooms care about the physical size and extravagance of the wedding….
“Stuff White People Like” is not particularly brilliant. White people like voting Democrat and not shopping at Wal-Mart? What could be whiter than voting Republican and shopping at Wal-Mart?
Problem Guilt Owner
Poverty Society
Global Warming Society
Crime Society
Racism Society
Sexism White Patriarchy
Income Inequality Society
Poor Education Society
Social Justice Society
Voter Supression White Republicans
War White Republicans
Excess consumption White advertisers
What else?
Thirding or fourthing the brilliance of Things White People Like.
I’m not sure many grooms care about the physical size and extravagance of the wedding….
Oh, they care, all right. They just don’t want to make it look like they care, because then they might actually have to do some of the work. So it’s, “Oh, I don’t want a big wedding, but we have to invite all 50 of my cousins, their spouses, and their children, or my family will hate you forever. Make it work.”
I want to mod the statement
“Are individual women considered the gatekeepers/middle class white women the moral exemplars on this issue?”
into something like this…
“Are individual women considered agents for some random purity test on this issue”
It’s definitly all about the whole gotta be an angel thinking angelic thoughts in a cruel, dirty, thoughtless world!
They can. I did, and I don’t know why more couples don’t. Same result without the stress and debt.
My comment was supposed to indclude: But the bride-to-be can’t do something outrageous like say, “You know, fuck capitalist patriarchal standards. No wedding. If we have to get married, let’s just do it at the JP.”
They can. I did, and I don’t know why more couples don’t. Same result without the stress and debt.
Thanks for this post, Amanda. At the risk of exposing my secret identity, I’m currently writing a dissertation on a closely related topic, and your post is helping me articulate something that I’ve been struggling with. There’s a real de-politicizing effect to a lot of what constitutes contemporary environmentalism - recycling etc, but also organic products, timber certification, carbon credits, hybrid cars, and on and on. Your post does a great job of highlighting the gendered aspects of this individualizing project, which I’ve been having trouble with.
The “Stuff White People Like” is funny in parts, desperately strained in others, and provoking all sorts of breast-beating on the internets. But I’m down with whatever takes teh man down a peg, however problematic.
Stentor: Yes, there are the non-problems like Islam, and gay marriage.
Grump. Any commentary from the peanut gallery on how this seems just a larger version of Moms Cleaning Up The Mess Other People Make?
just an echo of the Grump.
I love big weddings. They CAN be done without the classist, patriarchal history of marriage traditions rearing its head. But they’re just fun! Humanist minister. Open bar. “Celebration” by Kool & The Gang. Anticipation in the buffet line. (Love that seafood newburg!) A reason to actually shave my legs and wear a pretty dress somewhere. Seeing my mother’s Aunt Mary who can’t get over how tall I’ve grown… in the last 30 years.
Weddings are emotional rites of passage for people to bring a spouse into their family. I never met the fiance/es of several second cousins more than once or twice but being a part of their wedding helped me accept the virtual stranger more into my family. I have a first cousin who up and married a stripper. After telling everyone in the family she was a stripper before people even met her he was too embarrassed to invite anyone from our side of the family to his wedding. Not even his sisters or parents. So now they live in exile in Maine and refuse to attend family gatherings, though they’ve been invited many times. I’m not anti-stripper. I would have appreciated an invitation to the wedding.
I definitely think I’m one of those people who needs a wedding for formal closure on the dating thing, so I know the relative’s mate is a fixture in the deep6 mega-huge extended family. I tend to cry during the ceremony too, if I like the people getting hitched. Otherwise I’m counting down the minutes until disco + pinot grigio = happy deep6.
“I’m not sure many grooms care about the physical size and extravagance of the wedding….”
You’d be surprised. It’s kind of like how “men don’t care about dirt” is usually closer to “men assume that someone else will take care of the dirt, ergo they don’t have to care about dirt” when you get right down to it.
Are there any problems that mainstream American society considers to be collective problems rather than matters of individual morality? I can’t think of any.
Fires!! We have successfully convinced America that we are better off if there is a collectively-organized and collectively paid-for solution to your house catching fire. We were doing pretty good with education there for awhile (the whole rise of free, public school thing) but that seems to be backsliding.
Re - Amanda’s actual post. I guess I’m somewhat confused. Is the purpose to illustrate how the ecomom trend confuses a new brand of consumerism with “false” environmentalism? Or is it a criticism of the emerging gender roles for eco-conscious behavior?
It seems there are “classes” of environmentalists. There are the “small living” greens who know reuse-recycle is about more than soda cans, don’t buy new clothes just because theirs are a season out of style, and generally try to leave a very small carbon footprint. Then there are the “big living” greens who still want a McMansion - but they build a LEED certified McMansion and buy carbon offsets right after they book their 3-week eco-adventure vacation at an eco-conscious spa in Belize that uses only locally sourced organic products. I can imagine environmentalism is only palatable to a certain class of people if they can turn it into a consumer trend, instead of acknowledging it’s about a paradigm shift against consumerism altogether. I’m trying to come up with a metaphor for this, but they’re all shitty, so I’ll just say that getting people to understand the ultimate concept that choices we make as consumers have serious effects on other people and the earth is almost worth dealing with the kind of people who think the “green revolution” is about building a 4000 sq/ft solar-prefab glass house in the Nevada desert for a family of 3.
Moment of rage: A couple months ago I was reading “Domino” magazine. (If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a design/modern living mag.) They have a couple pages where market editors (whatever that job is) list their favorite trends and plug particular products that fit the trend. I think the one I saw was designer logos or initials or something like that. Anyhoo, among a bevy of overpriced crap I saw a delightful Chanel bag with a zipper, made out of some waterproof material. The description listed it as a reusable grocery bag. Just one. Price? $900. For a grocery bag. Same size as the ones you get at your local Whole Foods for a buck. Now, acknowledging that people of a certain class will think this an “eco” choice, instead of just buying the one-dollar bags and donating the other 899 bucks to a charity, this is still *sadly* part of what “environmentalism” has to be to court a certain level of acknowledgement by the wealthy.
Are there any problems that mainstream American society considers to be collective problems rather than matters of individual morality?
Yes, if they’re liberal problems. Like feminism and sexual autonomy. These are *social* ills and must be crushed by the god-fearing righteous.
Wow. I was just bitterly reflecting upon this very issue while washing out the tomato tins to ready them for the recycling bin. We’ve recently got mandatory recycling in our town, and the requirements they put on us for what they’ll accept, and the condition it has to be in, add up to a not-inconsiderable amount of extra housework. And fine, yes, I have wanted kerbside recycling for years and am glad to have it, but the hectoring, guilt-inducing tone all of our communications on the subject from our local council fill me with rage. All of these communications are, by the way, not-very-subtly directed at the women of the house. Great. It’s my duty to save the planet, personally, and failure to rip my cardboard boxes into the proper size for the bin will lead to fines and ecocide and being branded as a lousy wife and or mother. Meanwhile, local industry continues to dump crap into the rivers, manufacturers continue to package their crap in un-recyclable containers, and our council only takes *some* kinds of plastic packaging and not others, and they aren’t terribly clear on the subject. And they’re about to start random snooping through our bins to determine whether or not we’re following the rules. I think I preferred just dragging our stuff to the recycling centre myself.
On top of everything that Amanda says, this presents “acting in pro of the environment” as an UPPER MIDDLE CLASS HOBBY. You know, something that only the fricking RICH can AFFORD.
How long before not eating (expensive) organic food becomes as immoral as being poor, I mean, fat?
Olivia, there may be cynical calculation in big weddings. Some extended families calibrate cash wedding gifts to the reception: nothing for destination weddings and elopements; smaller gifts for cash bars and buffets than for open bars and sit-down service. They, in effect, pay cash for conformity to their preferred social custom. When my spouse and I got married, we went on a full-year “campaign trail” of extended family ass-kissing. then we held the wedding on an off-season date, did many things at the lowest price we could get without tipping off the relatives that we were keeping costs down, and invited way more people than we actually wanted. We ended up turning a significant profit; though we paid for the wedding out of our pockets, we took in enough to pay for it, a two-week trip to Spain, and put a little in the bank.
Amanda I LOOOOVE that blog (Stuff White People Like). It is hilarious. I like most of the shit on that blog like expensive sandwiches and the Magnetic Fields (but don’t tell anyone because they will revoke my Black Card).
I like The Assimilated Negro too. Funny stuff similar to Stuff White People like. He sometimes posts things that help to educate (mostly white) hipsters on the interesting things they might encounter after they move into their amazing new apartment in that newly-cool, gentrified, post-ghetto neighborhood (like what to expect at the local chicken-wing joint that has not yet been replaced by a Pinkberry or Asian-Fusion restaurant yet).
Living in fly over country, I question the accuracy of Stuff White People Like blog. Some of the descriptions are spot on, but others are quite alien to me. I suspect the writers have not actually hung around real white people. I mean, I’m as white as they come, but some of the stuff they write about was quite alien to me. I suspect this is one of those NY/LA things.
In regards to stuff white people like, of course it really is “stuff white yuppies like”, but it is very amusing. Its frustrating too, because a lot of things things are just part of european/american bourgeois culture and have been for centuries. They aren’t really wrong, but we are all afraid to own it. We refuse to accept that we have our own culture instead we run around thinking we know so much about everyone else’s. We want to be local, we want to be down with the people. But its all bullshit because we aren’t down, we are privileged. We get things they don’t. We can go get liberal arts degrees and still walk right into nice cushy middle class jobs.
We can do the “grand tour” after college, see europe, live in a ski area. Start bands, pursue performance art. And afterward, go to law school, get an MBA and retake our places as the ruling class. (or rather, the foot soldiers for the ruling class, we don’t get to hang with the CEOs and the oligarchs.)
First, Things White People Like is fucking hilarious AND fucking brilliant (though it’s really more like “Things That White Hipsters and Yuppies Like”…and, naturally, I like a lot of the things on the list).
Second, is this NYT trying to show what people who are better/cooler than you are doing with themselves in some desperate stab at being a cultural kingmaker and trying to appeal to the incredibly narrow slice of society they’re profiling? This pisses me off so much because it helps nobody: on the one hand, this alienates those of us who would like the Times to be some sort of journalistic voice that can rise above the shamelessly corporatist and trend-obsessed din of our vaunted MSM, while on the other hand it simply confirms the belief of the (sizable) Wal-Mart shopping, Republican-voting portion of the population that rich liberal elites in New York want to tell you how to live your life. Ugh. All the while, environmentalism/anti-consumerism is completely reduced to some sort of hollow fashion or fad by people who have more spare time and money than most of us and who think they’re better than you as a result. Seriously, does the Times management really think this is going to sell MORE newspapers???
I guess I shouldn’t hold out much hope for the Times anyway…in recent years they’ve been pwned in terms of non-editorial content by WSJ and USA Today (on the latter: seriously, WTF??!), and they employ David Brooks and Shit-Eating-Grin guy. And Maureen Dowd.
In regards to stuff white people like, of course it really is “stuff white yuppies like”, but it is very amusing.
I also found the blog to be hilarious, but I’d change it to “stuff yuppies like,” full stop. No whiteness necessary, at least in my experience - much of the stuff here is a class/geographic/social status/political identification thing. Characteristic of urban, highly-educated (mostly well-off, but not necessarily, especially if they’re in some version of graduate school) Democrats, including those who ain’t white. Which basically describes me, which is why I thought it extremely funny. I think I’m going to send it to my dad, who thinks that only other ethnicities have “culture.”
Amanda wrote:
Got to disagree here — not that that will surprise you!
There are a lot of people who hold that obesity — or smoking or STDs or unplanned pregnancies — are societal problems, but don’t believe that we can (legitimately) impose societal controls that would address the issues. Yeah, people being too fat can have societal consequences, such as driving up health care costs, but you’d be hard pressed to find Americans who believe it is within the scope of governmental power to regulate what we eat to try to force us to lose weight.
That leaves putting pressure on individuals; we can push the idea that being thinner is healthier (doesn’t work all that well) and sexier (now that works a bit better), but we can’t impose controls that would force us to be thinner, even if such is better for us.
We tried imposing the social control of banning alcoholic beverages, because such was clearly good for society, but it just flat didn’t work. We’re still trying with recreational drugs, and you can see how well that’s working.
“We tried imposing the social control of banning alcoholic beverages, because such was clearly good for society, but it just flat didn’t work. We’re still trying with recreational drugs, and you can see how well that’s working.”
…so you’re advocating making “recreational” drugs legal? Do your neighbors know you’re anarchist?…
Have you ever noticed how people who are so quick to shriek that fat people are disgusting and they drive up health care costs are also the people who believe that there’s nothing wrong with private health insurance and that any sort of single-payer system is evil communism?
There are a lot of people who hold that obesity — or smoking or STDs or unplanned pregnancies — are societal problems, but don’t believe that we can (legitimately) impose societal controls that would address the issues.
Mmh, that’s doubtless why those friggin’ collectivist hippies at Archer Daniels-Midland would freak out, man, if the FDA started restricting where you could put high-fructose corn syrup (which is what Amanda suggested in the first place), or BGH (which is already banned in a whole bunch of countries).
I look at a lot of your examples of failed social control (which doesn’t always mean banning something, either; it can mean restricting access to it) and see a lot of dollar signs pushing in the opposite direction. Prohibition and the Drug War failed because there is a lot of money in (and demand for) recreational drugs. Regulating recreational drugs might work a lot better. In every municipality where I’ve ever lived, a public-spaces smoking ban has caused restaurant and bar revenue to go up. So maybe there’s something to Amanda’s argument after all.
Mighty Ponygirl: Yes, I have noticed that.
@ Bella: Sheesh! THat sounds so oppressive!
My city has “free” curbside recycling and has for years. This means that we’re provided with green bins, and our recycling gets picked up once a week. That’s it. It’s run by a local garbage company (why we don’t have municipal trash pickup, I have no idea), the same company that we used when we lived in the next town over. They’ve been very affordable, reliable, and laid back.
Now, folks in the next town over have to pay for recycling themselves, and consequently many don’t do it. But most do, and overall the system seems to work.
I couldn’t imagine something so insane as what your town’s doing.
You know, I’ve often noticed this, but I’ve rarely seen it thrown into such high relief. It’s not enough to be a homebody—gee whillickers, I’m a homebody—no, one is obliged to be a homebody of the right kind. One must be a homebody with the proper attire, the proper hairstyle, the proper fitness regimen, the proper taste in booze, the proper biography, and the proper motivations.
So much work is invovled in rendering oneself fit not to be seen. It is a puzzlement.
and Dana
But when its the USDA targeting women to make the rest of the individuals in society thinner, its okay, and doesn’t prove Amanda’s point? Even when Brian Wansink, the new head of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion at the Agriculture Department,
calls moms ‘nutritional gatekeepers’, can you say that individual women aren’t being treated as gatekeepers?
Is that one of those self-empowerment-thru-pole-dancing poles in the foreground? Let’s see how many silly housewife crazes we can get through in one day!
Every entry on “Stuff White People Like” tells non-white people how to deal with the idiosyncrasy. The white people they’re talking about are fundamentally good people, and the kind of people that people who aren’t white would want to deal with. I might laugh that
Why would I want to impress a Republican fundie? That person is probably racist.
And more of them apply to non-white me than my white boyfriend. Even more apply to a friend of mine, who shares my ethnicity but is quite a bit richer. It’s just silly. Both my friend and I know that we’re coconuts anyway, so we got a kick out of it.
I have no idea why it tacked that last sentence onto the first paragraph. I don’t remember typing it all… maybe I’m going crazy?
In every municipality where I’ve ever lived, a public-spaces smoking ban has caused restaurant and bar revenue to go up. So maybe there’s something to Amanda’s argument after all.
It definitely worked that way out here in California, which is one of the reasons it’s spread across the country. Turns out that if you don’t have to worry about the person next to you smoking an entire pack in the course of eating dinner, people will actually go to bars and restaurants more often. What a wacky concept.
Please, PLEASE do it. That could be a masterpiece of subtle comedy.
When I read the article, the thing that really stood out for me was that there were underlying criticisms of both women and the environmental movement in general. Most of criticisms of women were pointed out in the post — cackling women looking for an excuse to get together and drink wine, a new moral responsibility for women, etc. But on the flip side, there is also the tone that what they are doing to try and improve their impact on the environment is somehow frivolous and silly simply because middle class housewives are doing it. I personally think it’s great that it’s an issue that people — whether large corportations or housewives or hippies — are taking to heart, and painting the green movement like a silly pasttime for clucking women-hens with too much time and money on their hands reduces enviromentalism to the status of weekly bunko or pedicures. In essence, the article paints both women and greener living as frivolous, and I stongly resent both of those implications.
When I read the article, the thing that really stood out for me was that there were underlying criticisms of both women and the environmental movement in general. Most of criticisms of women were pointed out in the post — cackling women looking for an excuse to get together and drink wine, a new moral responsibility for women, etc. But on the flip side, there is also the tone that what they are doing to try and improve their impact on the environment is somehow frivolous and silly simply because middle class housewives are doing it. I personally think it’s great that it’s an issue that people — whether large corportations or housewives or hippies — are taking to heart, and painting the green movement like a silly pasttime for clucking women-hens with too much time and money on their hands reduces enviromentalism to the status of weekly bunko or pedicures. In essence, the article paints both women and greener living as frivolous, and I stongly resent both of those implications.
Woohoo…one more thing I can be a failure as a woman at. We’ll make that 5,643,924.
An illustration of priorities: here in new Orleans, we STILL do not have curbside recycling back as part of our garbage pickup (pre-K it was once a week). It has been TWO AND A HALF YEARS ALREADY!! And new garbage contracts have been negotiated at insanely high prices, that even include spraying the French Quarter streets daily with deodorizer (it is nice not to have the stench of party-tourists’ vomit and urine, but I wonder how environmentally friendly that stuff is). But recycling…. nah.
Apparently our city officials think we have infinite landfill space available, when in fact all the demolition/construction debris of the cleanup and rebuilding is creating a major disposal problem.
At least we do finally have a private, individual option - a company called Phoenix Recycling has set up a curbside program that one can subscribe to for a fee. I get twice-weekly pickup for $15/month, and they take almost everything (even cardboard, if you break it down). But this is for something that used to be included in my garbage fees, which have not declined. And it is a step further away from collective solutions, putting more onus on the individual.
The blog is funny, but man, the comments are awesome. Many white people, it turns out, take themselves Very Seriously and assume that if you mock them, even a little, that you’re issuing some huge condemnation. I assume the people shitting bricks in comments over there are the same people that get angry that anyone dares have different cultural tastes than them. Stephen @ #32 has a read on it I like. If people can assume that satire doesn’t have to be some horrible condemnation, then they can look a little closer at why the blog is funny. I think it’s because it basically refutes what far too many white people believe—that whites don’t have a “race” or a “culture” in the same way other people do.
Lisa, thanks for the rec. Checking it out.
oops, that should have read “biweekly pickup.” My $15/mo gets me pickup once every two weeks, not twice weekly.
Nice take. This NYT article got my ire up too.
I noticed that. Similar to many men and christians, they cannot see any difference between mocking the dominant powerful group and kicking those already kept down by society in a thousand ways every day.
Maybe this is misguided, but I actually found the blog a little insulting. Not because of its satiric mocking of whites (which everyone should do 24 hours a day) but because of the satiric mocking of the ideologies of whites. Like how whites think it is important to recycle…and drive Priuses. I think those are both really positive things that the blogger portrayed in a negative light. Also, many of the posts mocked things specific to white women, which ended up sounding sort of misogynist, hint the post on co-ed sports. I might just be overly sensitive from daily dealings with sexist a*holes though.
Love “Stuff White People Like.” But I agree that it should be “Stuff Urban Hipster/Yuppie White People Like.” Being a member of that particular culture I love ironically mocking myself.
atheist woman, that was my feeling, too. I’m reading the posts going “… well, what’s wrong with liking NPR/recycling/bicycles/sushi/etc.?” I mean, yeah, you can make anything into a quasi-religion, and *that* is mock-worthy, but geez, I listen to NPR because I like their news coverage (and don’t pay for cable, not because I’m a superior snob but because I don’t want to pay $50/mo for it); I recycle because I have liberal guilt (heh) and because our town charges $1/bag for trash but recycling is free (and because I hate throwing paper in the trash); bicycle because I feel dumb driving a mile but walking is sometimes too slow; and okay, I like california rolls just because they make my mouth happy. Etc. I don’t see what’s judge-worthy about any of that, honestly. Maybe I’m too white
I think pretty much all of that would be judgeworthy if done in a “religious” way — i.e. to be holier than thou — or a conspicuously consumptive sort of way — i.e. the $5k bicycle. But I don’t get it, otherwise. Call me humor-impaired if you like — I don’t mind.
It should probably be called “Stuff White Liberals Like” since that seems to be the focus.
I’m going to pitch an article for the Times about how feminist political blogging is the fancy new trend that will help get your wife out of the office and into the home. Wonder how many months worth of living expenses I could pay with that?
Not too many unless you’re living really easy on the planet, like in your 72 square foot Honda. What I can say without outing myself is, I was shocked by how little they thought 5000 words were worth compared to what they spent printing and distributing them in the Sunday Mag. OTOH, I have found that clip to be very, very profitable over the long haul.
PrairieLily, I’ll bite: Fill in the blank for the ignorant white people: A coconut is to ‘_________’ as an oreo is to ‘black’ and a banana is to ‘Asian’. Help a non-brotha out here? I think this may be a helpful term for my kid and her new raised-by-white-fools support group, but I want to define it correctly.
Ernest housewives may garner eyerolls- I know sometimes I watch their busybodied doings at my daughter’s school and think: get a job already! But I know this is unkind and unfair. Without those room moms and women’s clubs of the world, where would we all be? I include nuns in this group- do-gooder, unpaid women who run schools, museums, orphanages, charities, voting precincts-you name it- and get made fun of for their trouble.
Working parents just don’t have the same amount of time to organize for good causes. We should be glad for their contributions.
Jan Andrea, I didn’t read it as judging. You can’t see it as snarkily descriptive? For every damned “black people like watermelon” or “Asians are math geeks” floating in the cultural miasma, I’d say white folks have at least one Stuff White People Like post coming. Multiply it by the slew of stereotypes and popular beliefs that are applied to African-Americans, Africans, Asian-Americans, Asians, South Asians, Latinos, West Indians, Native Americans, Inuit, Middle Easterners, etc.—and I don’t think white folks get to cry foul about Stuff White People Like until, say, the year 2014.
Man, I hope next month brings an exploration of St. Patrick’s Day and white folks. It’s hilarious—criticize the drunken St. Patrick’s Day “traditions” and someone of partial Irish descent will say you’re a hater, that the Irish people have been discriminated against, and why are you so bigoted about the Irish? As if the average Irish-American is not 100% part of the overriding white cultural group. As if Irish discrimination has any real effects in 21st century America. As if today’s Irish-Americans haven’t got every ounce of the white privilege that accrues to WASPs.
P.S. I’m white, affluent, liberal, listen to NPR, like to recycle, am a quarter Irish, and live in a big city.
Orange, not to speak for Jan Andrea, but since she was partly agreeing with what I said, I will just say this. I completely agree that “I don’t think white folks get to cry foul about Stuff White People Like until, say, the year 2014″. In fact I’m not sure there ever will be a time when that happens. All that I was saying was that I felt that it wasn’t just that the blogger was saying
that a large chunk of white liberals do these things and that it is amusing and should be judged as such (which I agree with), but that they were satirizing the actions themselves, like there is something inherently wrong and stupid with recycling and prius driving. But then again I have also been told in person that I take things too literally, and when you have the added confusion of only seeing the text and not the person saying the things…
Only if you’re talking to someone who claims to be “Irish” rather than “Scots-Irish,” because the Scots-Irish hate the Irish with a passion. It’s that lovely conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics raising its ugly head again.
That’s why you’ll never see John McCain singing “Danny Boy.”
Like how whites think it is important to recycle…and drive Priuses. I think those are both really positive things that the blogger portrayed in a negative light.
Sure, recycling and going for the lower-consumption car are positive things, but you’ll notice in both posts he’s really making fun of when people who do those things are a little to self-congratulatory about it. There was a lot of “feeling like they’re doing something without actually doing anything but spending money!” and let’s admit it, we all know/are those people sometimes.
And so much of that site applies to me, I’m embarrassed. However, I do agree with him about This American Life, and the Obligatory NPR Personal Commentary Ultra-Serious Quiet Drama Voice drives me batty. I can’t listen to them even when they’re (rarely) interesting.
Anyway, people who can afford Priuses at this point are rich enough to take a little teasing.
Kyso K, thanks for explaining. *on the Prius, that or they saved their asses off to afford one, but that isn’t really relevant*
MMm, i loves me some NPR
I don’t really see the problem here, other than that the NYT is wasting newsprint on this article. Wealthy people have more free time on their hands. If I suddenly became independently wealthy, I would spend all my time working on social and environmental issues, with some time off for globetrotting. Wouldn’t you?
PhoenixRising, I had to resort to Google myself. It’s “Latino,” apparently.
Maybe somebody around these parts actually knows but I had a feeling that SWPL was written by a self-loathing hipster. Lord knows I’ve thought to myself “Maybe if I smash myself in the head hard enough with this hammer then I won’t have to listen to another skinny-ass ironic t-shirt wearing dude tell me about his dream of starting an all organic hops micro-brew.” But then I’ll turn around and exclaim, “Oh did you see the latest Wes Anderson film” and realize I’m just as boring.
And we have to admit that there is a fair amount of privilege in shopping for “fair trade” coffee, and driving Priuses etc…
I’ve come to regard the NYT’s lifestyle pieces as a kind of dead-tree Facebook for the Manhattan zip codes (and Park Slope in Brooklyn, et al.). So extremely narrow, in more ways than one.
It also burns me that nobody seems ever to consider doing the thing that might have most environmental impact: selling their car (or not buying one to begin with) and taking public transportation. They stick to their cars and the cyclist subculture trumpets bicycling because White People, as the blog calls them, a.k.a. Yuppies, do not want to take the bus with Poor People, or simply People Who Do Not Own Cars And Are Presumed To Be Poor. The bus is very déclassé in any area with a strong car culture, even if public transportation is well developed.
I take the bus (I never learned to drive) and daily feel transports of self-rightous anger.
ok, this is my last comment on this thread (eek, i am going to start sounding obnoxious) Sara, unfortunately a lot of people live in areas that have NO public transportation, and much as it would be wonderful to walk everywhere, when your job (whatever it may be) is ten or (god forbid you are a commuter -way more) miles away that is not really feasible (especially in winter).
@sara
nowdays i live in a city where biking is very much the cool thing. and bus and public transport are okay too. but many medium sized towns have crappy public transport and some have none at all. the last city i lived in taking public transit was awful, workable with enough patience but you could literally take 3hrs to do what was a 15min commute by car.
@atheist woman
jinx! i owe you a coke.
I’ve grown very weary of the whole racism ecosystem!I’m frankly rooting for the silicon AI beings to get here by 2050 or so. They probably won’t have a concept of race, unless the silicon beings think they are better than the germanium beings. The best part will be that global warming won’t bother them a bit. As the last of the white devils is swept aside, the world will belong to the next step up the evolutionary ladder.
Yuppies, do not want to take the bus with Poor People, or simply People Who Do Not Own Cars And Are Presumed To Be Poor. The bus is very déclassé in any area with a strong car culture, even if public transportation is well developed.
I take the bus (I never learned to drive) and daily feel transports of self-rightous anger.
As long as you don’t feel the cruddy way I felt after taking the bus on my commute only to find that I’d been exposed to a strain of flu that is endemic among my small city’s poorest people, you’re really okay.
Since I have the shitty non-claims-paying kind of insurance, I got to spend $350 treating that lung infection that I picked up saving $3.50 on gas in one 55 minute ride–which takes 12 minutes in the car. Lucky me to be privileged enough to choose not to save the environment in that way every day!
It’s almost as if all the shitty failing public systems were dragging one another down. No public health funding, no public transit funding, tax breaks for businesses that build new craptastic office parks in stupid locations instead of locating their retail or call centers where folks live…it’s one seamless garment of poor planning leading to predictably poor performance.
But by all means, let’s focus on the yuppies and their self-indulgent choice environmentalism, in which the lady of the manor gets to express her moral rectitude by doing as much work as the mom in Little House on the Prairie! Thank you, NYT, for elevating our discourse once again.
Ha ha ha! That blog about white people was the funniest damn thing I’ve read in weeks. Mrs. F and I are laughing ourselves sick about it: even funnier than the dude getting pwned at center court when he tried to propose to his girlfriend. We are as day-glo white as you get, and we’re both 62/70 on that list. Man, we’re clichés.
The comments are even funnier; if you haven’t read them yet, do yourself a favor and skip work for them. Some people just cannot take a joke.
Oh, and we both vote “yes” on making problems subject to collective action instead of matters of individual morality.
PrairieLily, I’ll bite: Fill in the blank for the ignorant white people: A coconut is to ‘_________’ as an oreo is to ‘black’ and a banana is to ‘Asian’. Help a non-brotha out here? I think this may be a helpful term for my kid and her new raised-by-white-fools support group, but I want to define it correctly.
PhoenixRising,
While I have heard the term used to describe my Latino/Latina friends, I’m using it to refer to South-east Asians. You know, Pakistan, India, etc. And now that I’ve gone and counted, I only got 18/69. I refuse to count the entry on tea, because that’s way more part of my culture than white yuppie culture.
How exactly are you planning on using it with your child? Coconut doesn’t have the same connotations as oreo, so I think it should be ok, but I’m curious.
This from #11, “Asian Girls”:
Sooo. hilarious. and ironical, too. The rest of the post is even funnier, what with the “yellow fever” remarks and all.
Or maybe it’s too much like the shit I hear every day to be funny, or seem satirical to me.
I know. “Where’s your sense of humor, it’s irony, it’s cutting edge”. Blecch.
Ahem. ON topic, great post, Amanda. I agree if something’s not really important but we want to say it is, it gets delegated to the Mommies. Like kids, for instance.
Of course if a single one of those moms demanded that the recycling company’s contract be pulled or not paid until they fulfill their contractural obligations to take cardboard and items not fitting in the green bin, she would immediately be told to go back to her place and not meddle in the doings of the “experts” (meaning the men who supposedly work for the taxpayers).
Actually: I have to thank the SAHMs in my neighborhood for things like this. They DO monitor the trash and recycle pickups, they DO force the company to stick to their contract. They know what the company is required to pick up and if the pickup has been through and things haven’t been dealt with properly, they WILL call the company and harass them until the trucks return and pick up what was left behind.
And now we’ve got the gigantic recycle bins. They’re not the old-fashioned bins, they are large blue trash cans. We were putting out three or so bins every week–now we just fill up the large recycle can.
If you think that blog is issuing a condemnation of liberal values, I think you’re off the mark. It’s teasing. And I don’t think it should be watered down with “yuppies” or some other marker that allows the white liberal to distance herself from it. Like prarielily said, what makes this so funny is that it’s written as if it’s a guide to the culture of white people that the reader actually would not actually find hateful and repulsive. It would miss the mark if it allowed white liberals to distance themselves from it too much.
It’s basically mocking earnestness, which is always available for mockery in my opinion. Can the writer completely hate ironic hipster humor? Hell no. That blog feeds into it.
That’s what I thought ‘coconut’ had to mean, despite the wiki’s suggestion that it referred to Latinos.
My kid’s peer-support network (they are now emailing each other for help with issues at school! yay literacy!) is planning a meeting for which the agenda is, Are we white inside because we’re being raised by white people?
Knowing that there is a slang term to describe ‘South Asians who “act white”‘ is helpful in that it gives them a starting point to discuss whether anyone is experiencing that as an insult or wondering what it means. So thanks. Their adult support is from elders in their ethnic community rather than the hipster youths like yourself.
erm yeah, I went back and read every single post and then it clicked.
I’m surprised #32 got so few comments — maybe because it’s so far back?
Haha, I got props from Amanda! I’m so proud! (I actually am. I usually feel a little dumb posting here.)
I’m going to threadjack, now… just ignore me.
That’s really interesting, Phoenix. If it helps your kids feel a little better, even those of us who aren’t raised by white parents wonder if we’re “white inside” from growing up in North America, especially those of us who grew up in smaller towns away from large South Asian communities.
There’s actually a number of slang terms for “brown kids who act white.” There’s “coconut,” which I already used. I would consider this the most benign, and I often hear people describing themselves this way. There’s “white-washed,” which is slightly meaner. And then there’s “ABCD.” It stands for American-born confused desi, and I’ve never heard it used nicely. The flip-side to ABCD is FOB, of course - fresh off the boat.
There’s also a ridiculous movie called “American Desi” that is really quite terrible, but every brown kid I know has seen it, and it really hits a lot of accurate notes in depicting youth brown culture. It’s not a feminist movie by any means, so you might want to watch it first if you’re careful about such things.
For the record, Stuff White people like is funny until you get to #11, where the author suggests that white women should be denied the vote and access to div I sports. That’s where I get off the bus, cause I’m a humorless feminist (and I don’t assume all white people are in the same class either).
Meh. “Stuff White People Like” does not translate well culturally at all. [Is disappointed.]
Recycling as a personal hobby/responsibility seems like doing penance, or cleaning the kitchen when you should study: It’s unpleasant enough to give you the feeling of Having Done Something Virtuous, but rarely accomplishes anything worthwhile on its own. Though I have observed that getting into the habit of recycling and thinking about these things might lead to reduced tolerance for systematic fuck-ups, like being expected to buy loads of plastic crap. So there’s still hope…