Perhaps it still seemed possible, last summer, to stem the tide of thwick-thwacking, near-naked feet invading offices and social events and White House photo opportunities. But, at a certain moment, the once-humble rubber thong crossed over into mainstream acceptability.
The flip-flop is, in fact, rather understated when compared to the latest craze in plastic footwear: the Croc.
Because, while it is entirely possible to overlook a pair of flip-flops, Crocs, most often worn in Palm Beach shades of pink, green and yellow, have a kind of in-your-face casual-ness.
Originally created as a lightweight, non-slip deck shoe for boaters, Crocs hit the market in fall 2002. Soon adopted by active, outdoorsy types (who'd seen their beloved Tevas snapped up by tourists and were desperately looking for a less conspicuously trendy replacement), the foamy cloglike Crocs later found their way to the hard-working feet of chefs, nurses and pregnant women everywhere.
Which is where they might have stayed. Because, Mario Batali notwithstanding, chefs, nurses and pregnant women don't exactly form a holy trinity of fashion coolness.
Then kids started wearing them.
Not teenager kids. Actual small children.
And, somehow -- unlike, say, aqua-socks or sneakers with light-up soles or other kiddie footwear trends of summers past -- Crocs began to catch on with adults everywhere.
They are, of course, incredibly comfortable. Over time, they mold themselves to the shape of your foot, cushioning your arches in all the right places.
But they are ridiculously goofy looking. Not just juvenile, but actually ugly. And it's an insistent kind of ugliness, like the ugliness of fuzzy bunny slippers, that dares you to stare at their wearer's feet.
The sociology of shoes
There is probably some sort of sociological meaning that can be teased out of the Croc-wearing trend, the way grown-ups now find it charming to dress like their children, rather than vice-versa. And it probably says something about our self-obsessed culture, the way people have taken to Crocs, wearing them like campaign buttons that say, "Comfortable feet are my top priority in life."
One could also, if one were so inclined, trace the evolution of office etiquette from the days when people wore dress shoes because it was expected of them, to the critical, Zeitgeist-changing moment when pragmatism, and a major transit strike, prompted them to start commuting in sneakers and changing into heels and oxfords once they arrived at their desks. It's been a slippery slide since then, right past the shoe industry's failed looks-like-a-pump-feels-like-a-sneaker campaigns, into a business casual world in which it seems hopelessly square to use a footwear choice to convey your professionalism.
But I'm not going to write about any of that. Because I'm really just interested what the Croc-wearers have done to make the world safe for flip-flops.
'Appropriate' is a relative thing
Last summer, people actually bothered to get upset when several members of Northwestern University's national champion women's lacrosse team wore flip-flops at their congratulatory White House reception. Even at the time, this struck me as kind of a funny thing to be outraged about. (Personally, I try to save my fits of righteous indignation for, um, violations of the Constitution and Geneva Convention. But that's just me.)
A year later, though, when creators of expensive leather shoes are so consistently borrowing from the design elements of $5 plastic sandals that it's hard to tell the difference between Old Navy flip-flops and the latest Italian imports, the idea that toe-baring thongs would be inappropriate for a big occasion seems laughable indeed.
At least, you have to say now, taking a second look at the photo of the Northwestern lacrosse players, posing with the President in their summer skirts and dresses, none of them is wearing a pair of bright orange Crocs.
And, yet, as soon as we draw the inappropriateness line at Crocs, some other trend will pop up to make them look positively subtle and refined.
This is, inevitably, a generational thing. At some (biologically determined and/or culturally influenced) age, our brains start to lock in certain ideas. We become less eager to try new foods, new music and new looks. "New" starts to morph into "strange." And familiar becomes a synonym for right.
Last year, I immediately recognized this creeping fuddy-duddyism in the people who raised a fuss about college women wearing flip flops to the White House. So I had to wonder if my nose-wrinkling reaction to the Crocs trend was coming from the same "you kids today with your funny-looking shoes" sort of place.
Which is why I went to try on a pair of Crocs for myself. And why I can't wait to get home to wear them. In private.
So there was that whole conversation in which R. said I should, if I'm having trouble sleeping, feel free to wake him up. You know, so he could share in the joys of pregnancy, too. And I responded that I probably wouldn't do that -- on purpose. much. -- because there was no point in both of us being sleepless and cranky.
Then there was the reality of me waking him up at 2:30 this morning to ask, "Do only dogs get hip dysplasia?"
[Answer: Apparently not. Though it seems unlikely that I have it, despite the fact that I'm sure this is what it feels like.]
He responded with something mildly comforting, like that leg cramps are apparently very common in pregnant women. (I love that he read a couple of the pregnancy books without telling me.) He also mentioned that cows get hip dysplasia, too, which is not as rude as it sounds because we actually own cows. (Long story.)
Then, he went back to sleep.
Two hours later, when I noticed him stirring slightly, I asked if he wanted to play cards. (Isn't that what people with insomnia do?)
This made him laugh. But he declined. Largely because I don't actually know any card games. And because he knew I'd fall back asleep eventually.
I am trying to come up with some sort of hard-and-fast rule on what constitutes being a pain-in-the-ass versus just being honest about one's needs. So far, I'm just making it up as I go along.
And, so far, pretty much anything I want is reasonable. Right?
Leslie's "She Said" column today should be required reading for anyone who is pregnant, has been pregnant, is thinking about getting pregnant, or knows-and-loves anyone in any of those categories.
Leslie, who is slim and petite, proudly claims to have gained 50 pounds with each of her pregnancies. She reported this to me the other day with an almost giddy smile.
I have to admit that my initial reaction was not all that positive. Fifty pounds is a pretty significant percentage of my normal body weight. I couldn't imagine being happy about having to carry that around.
And, while I certainly haven't been dieting, I have been very conscious about how much weight I gain while pregnant. Partly, it's vanity: even though, thank goodness, the aesthetic standards of local public television are a lot looser than, say, a major national network, I do have the weekly TV gig going on and I'd rather not look like a blob on camera.
Mostly, though, it's a weird sort of Protestant work ethic feeling of guilt that had me believing I should look a certain way: with the cute, symmetrical and perfectly proportioned "bump" that all the Hollywood pregnant people seem to have -- and then very quickly lose.
Which is strange, actually, since it's not like I've looked like a movie star at any other point in my life.
Anyway, without being too ridiculously cheesey and Oprah-esque, reading Leslie's essay today was kind of an eye opener for me.
(Also, there was the very sweet older male colleage who spotted me in the hallway and, upon taking in the great expanse that is my belly declared, "Looking good, kid!" That was one of my favorite compliments ever.)
So, while I've already bought the post-partum workout books and videos, I'm going to work on being more Zen about the whole thing. And if it takes a while to get back into the skinny jeans, oh well. I mean, I do get a kid out of the deal. Which is really pretty great.
On WBEZ's 848 this morning, political reporter Ben Calhoun used a phrase that, I think, perfectly sums up the dominant attitude about the trial that wraps up today.
He said he was wondering if people were really paying attention to the trial, or if there wasn't a certain amount of "corruption fatigue."
Young people, in particular, are presumed to be totally cynical about politics (this study, "The Daily Show Effect" has some interesting things to say about that assumption) and, it's generally assumed that the decline in newspaper readership (which is, I am required to point out, a tragic reflection of social disengagement) reflects a kind of why-bother-caring attitude about all things civic.
I've long wondered, though, if, on some level, the opposite is true. What I hear from a lot of people is not so much cynicism as idealism, and a feeling of being overwhelmed. When I pester people (especially young-ish women) about voting, and, specifically, about why they don't vote, they often say that they don't feel like they know or understand enough about the candidates and issues to make an informed choice.
Of course, this is the sort of comment that drives a lot of reporters and media types nuts. "Read the paper!" they scream, "Get informed!"
But, in defense of the non-voters, that's a lot harder to do than it looks. Our stories about the great issues of the day are often so full of back references and "inside baseball" names and terms that we're almost taunting new readers with their ignorance.
If we want people to pay attention to what's going on, especially with all the intersecting scandals in Chicago and Illinois, without having to completely exhaust themselves with history lessons and organizational charts, we need to find new ways of presenting information, like an occassional "corruption score card" that would give a quick update on who's been indicted for what and how they connect to each other. I'd also like to see a flow chart that begins with, say, a dollar I pay in property tax or the cost of my city sticker or license plate and takes me through all the places where money is being wasted on jobs for political cronies or contracts for connected businesses. That's the sort of stuff that can jolt a person out of their fatigue.
It's a tough job, being stretched out on the couch like this for hours at a time, but someone's got to do it. Just in case you have slightly less reading time than I do, here are several items not to miss:
1. For the guilty liberal who has everything: Want to stay ahead of the political correctness curve and eat only humane foods, but can't imagine giving up both lobster and foie gras? A brief piece in the Business section has just the thing for you -- a new gadget that will kill your lobster without letting it suffer. Introducing the CrustaStun.
2. For the perfectionist wife who can't quite let the socks-on-the-floor thing go: Yes, yes, we know we're not supposed to compare the housebreaking of a husband to the training of an animal. But how about an exotic animal? A nicely domesticated Modern Love.
4. What's in the Magazine today? I don't know. It didn't get delivered with my copy. And, because I work for a newspaper, I am obligated to pretend that I don't know you can read things online.
At 45, Regina Taylor has the kind of serene beauty that makes you think she's figured out a few of life's major secrets.
Her face, still recognizable from her stint, 15 years ago now, as housekeeper Lilly Harper on the acclaimed television drama "I'll Fly Away," has a fullness to it now, and an almost-fixed expression of quiet satisfaction.
So it's hard to know, just by looking, that Taylor is busier than she has ever been. She is back on television, in the David Mamet-created series, "The Unit." And she is the playwright and director behind the Goodman Theatre's current mainstage production, "The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove," based on the life of entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker.
"There was no one like her before her," says Taylor of her subject. "She really invented herself."
Taylor's voice is soft and refined, but she has an actor's ability to make herself heard over the din of the crowd at the bustling Catch 35 restaurant on Wacker Drive. And the effect of this effortless projection is soothing, almost misleadingly so. Because, while her tone seems cool, even detached, Taylor's words make clear that she has a streak of fierceness.
'Possibility of being true'
Over an elegant lunch of seared Chilean sea bass, she describes the life of Sarah Breedlove, the woman who would come to call herself Madam C.J. Walker.
"Child of slaves," Taylor begins, "orphaned at 7, married at 15, a widow and mother at 17 . . . she was a washerwoman, making $1.50 or $2 a week and yet she had these hopes, these dreams."
Walker's life, she says, is "really the story of the American dream, the washerwoman who winds up living on an estate next to the Rockefellers."
And the play she has written, Taylor adds, is all about "following this dream, this American desire, which for so many black people is a lie."
There is no flash of anger in her eye when she says this, no discernable change in her manner. But something in our conversation has changed.
Until now, we've been chatting amiably about the play's run here in Chicago, about its quickly bonding cast and their ritual of breaking bread together at area restaurants. Taylor has mentioned her life in Southern California, where "The Unit" is filmed, and how she, a fairly committed non-driver, gets around there. She has described her late mother's Texas garden and her fondness for drinking tea.
But Taylor seems to have reached her limit on friendly actress small talk.
"A lie?" I ask, wondering where this will go.
"Yes," she says. And continues, answering my raised eyebrow, adding, "A lie always has the possibility of being true."
Dreams' role in real life
So Taylor has taken, as the centerpiece of this play, a dream Walker claimed to have, in which a mysterious African man came to her and whispered in her ear the secret ingredients for a hair growth tonic.
"Some people say it's a lie," Taylor says of Walker's tale of the genesis of her hair care empire. "But, either way, what she did with it was pretty miraculous."
Taylor, who grew up in Texas and Oklahoma -- "Mary Kay country" -- had long thought of Walker as an advertising genius but, when she started researching her, came to see her as a more complicated, and important, figure.
"She was the first dark-skinned, African-American woman to put her own image on a product," Taylor says. "She changed the world's perspective on black women."
Six more years of research followed, during which Walker "did start to come to me in my dreams," Taylor says, and the figure that emerged was a "visionary who can't see what's right in front of her."
Walker's personal relationships were troubled. She was married three times and clashed often with her strong-willed daughter. She died, Taylor says, "literally because she worked herself to death."
Taylor can sometimes seem to talk in circles. She is obsessed with the idea of "being able to name yourself," as Walker did, and with the ways in which dreams work their way into real life. She deflects questions on other subjects -- her own career, the dearth of roles for actresses in their 40s -- and returns, again and again, to the story of C.J. Walker.
Only Walker
"Where she came from, literally the mud of the Delta, she couldn't read or write," says the hyper-literate Taylor. "But she educates herself and becomes this brilliant business woman."
Though she remarks that Oprah Winfrey is clearly Walker's modern-day counterpart, Taylor is not interested in discussing that further. For her, right now, there is only Walker.
So, yes, there is the hit TV show. And the next play she's writing, and maybe a musical, as well.
But, this afternoon, after a cappuccino and a short walk, she will return to the Goodman, for another day's rehearsal, another day of channeling the woman who comes to her in her dreams. And she will keep life's major secrets to herself.
They should call it the Taste of Indiana," sniffed the well-dressed guy in the elevator. "They're the only people who go." And the rest of us smiled and nodded, the way you do when someone says something in an elevator that is obviously meant to be overheard. Because it is, of course, required of city dwellers that we express a certain baseline level of contempt for the people who merely visit the downtown area. None of us wanted to look like suburban rubes.
It has become a ritual of the summer festival season in Chicago -- a natural evolution of the festivals themselves, really -- to bemoan the crowded awfulness of the largest street fairs. True Chicagoans remember when these events were better. Things were more real then, before the tourists and poseurs started coming, before there were corporate sponsors and live radio broadcasts.
And, the rest of us, late-comers who know, because we cannot say which ward we were born in, that we can make no real claim to originality or authenticity of experience, have to cling to our own complicated levels of snobbery. At least we didn't drive. Or buy the T-shirt.
Irony on the side, please
If we deign to attend the Taste of Chicago at all, we expect to do so only with a sense of ironic detachment. We go so that we can sniff about how fat (the rest of) America is getting, how poorly behaved other people's children are and how tragic it is when old guys wear their baseball caps at non-standard angles.
We are supposed to laugh at the notion that the Taste has anything to do with "street food," which we, with our Bourdain-esque sensibilities, associate with teeming Vietnamese markets and other Lonely Planet destinations, rather than the hyper-groomed grounds of Grant Park.
But I can't make myself do it anymore.
My secret and deeply-held affection for the Taste has, for too long, been a love that dared not speak its name. I have pretended to be appalled by this 10-day-long orgy of giant turkey legs and dubious refrigeration, making excuses for my attendance like "writing a column about it" and "entertaining out-of-town guests."
Even this year, I have recruited friends from New York to visit next weekend so they can be my Taste beards.
The truth, though, is that they had me at the miniature portions -- an uncredited precursor to the tapas craze -- and the brilliantly obscure ticket-pricing scheme. I would find a reason to go to the Taste even if I had to do it alone.
So, this summer, I am coming out of the closet.
I have loved the Taste of Chicago since I first stumbled on it as a high school student in town for a campus tour in Hyde Park. And, when I was thinking about moving here, years later, the delicious memory of a teeny, tiny semi-frozen slice of cheesecake pretty much clinched my decision. (OK, it was the cheesecake and a looming break-up with a bad boyfriend in another city. But mainly the cheesecake.)
I love the corn on a stick and the half-cheeseburgers and the rainbow sherbet. I love making a meal from pad thai and catfish. I love creating culinary themes, like "dumplings of multiple cultures," and charting a path from pierogies to potstickers to ravioli to samosas.
And I love the cherries, the ones that come in a bag at the Dominick's booth and have been stored on ice. Of course I know that they are no different than the ones I could buy at the actual grocery store. And, though I've never stopped to do the math, I'm sure the grocery store ones are cheaper, too, though spending those little tickets, like spending foreign currency, is a kind of alternate-reality experience for me, both liberating and strangely affirming.
(Personal note to Freakonomics author and University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt: Why is it so tantalizing to spend those little tickets? Are we all just collectively really bad at math, or is there a more complicated psycho-economic phenomenon at work?)
Next stop: Naperville?
I worry, naturally, that my feelings about the Taste are a sign of incipient suburban-ness, that I am on my way to becoming one of those people who'll claim to be from Chicago and then later explain that they actually live in, say, northwest Indiana.
So I soothe myself with rationalizations -- I don't go on fireworks day; I'm not like those people -- and subtle distinctions. I don't spend more than an hour or two at a time. I have never eaten one of the turkey legs. I was appalled when McDonald's set up a booth.
I tell myself that -- rather than a first step on the slippery slope that leads to Merrillville or Naperville or any other ville -- my goofy, tourist-y love for the Taste is a kind of civic pride, the same sort of native boosterism that has long characterized true Chicagoans. It's like going to see "The Break-Up," despite all the bad reviews.
Besides, if savoring that bag of cherries is wrong, I don't want to be right.
I was sharing dinner with a few friends when one of them posed a half-serious question to the group: Who would you vote for in 2008?
Everyone else, citing a serious shortage of good options, refused to answer. But I pride myself on making the best of a situation, so I blurted out, "Russ Feingold."
This drew mixed reactions, from raised eyebrows to outright derisive laughter, but R. understood my reasoning immediately.
"Oh," he said, as if something had suddenly become very clear, "Because Paul Wellstone is dead."
The man understands me.
Since that evening, I've decided to commit myself fully to the Senate's most unabashed liberal. And I read, with giggling, giddy interest, GQ's Q&A with him.
It's interesting and semi-insightful and all that, but the best part, to me, is this exchange:
Did she [Hillary Clinton, with whom Feingold traveled to Iraq] pack more than everybody else?
[laughs] That would be a dangerous area for me to get into, because I may pack a little more than I should.
So you pack like a girl?
There would be those who would say that. And it would not be the easiest thing to deny.
Could we please have a liberal, metrosexual President? Please?!
Where's the line that marks a person's crossing over into serious over-sharing territory?
Like beauty, over-sharing is, perhaps, in the eye of beholder. Which means it's quite subjective. What might be an interesting personal tidbit to you could be a major dose of Too Much Information to me. (OK, actually, the reverse is likely to be true. I have a sick fascination for the too-personal things that people share when they let their guard down. Or, you know, have a long lunch with a reporter.)
Women, clearly, share more than men. And younger people share more than older people. And people who are in the public eye, well, let's just say they're generally not shy. About anything.
So it's probably no surprise that NBC5 anchor Marion Brooks decided it was totally OK to share with visitors to her video blog the very graphic details of giving birth to and nursing her new daughter.
Rob Feder writes about it in his column today. (If you've got Windows Media, you can also check out the video itself on WMAQ's website, here.)
She discusses, among other things, the pain and difficulty of breast-feeding. She doesn't really say why she's sharing this information, but I'm betting on some combination of the standard responses: "I wish someone had told me this stuff!" and "People do seem to be interested."
I was lucky enough, if "lucky" is really the right term, to have someone tell me most of that stuff, but that's really the very happy coincidence of my best friend helpfully getting pregnant about 6 months before I did. She's been an incredible test-case/field researcher. And, really, I happen to believe that nipple information is generally something you should be getting from a close friend or relative, not from a news anchor. (Call me old fashioned.)
I'm more interested in the second line of reasoning, that it's OK to share really personal information because, well, people do seem to want to know. Some people.
Since first mentioning my own pregnancy in a column, I've gotten tons of great letters and e-mails from people full of congratualtions and unsolicited (but generally quite useful) advice. I also got one e-mail, this weekend, from someone who asked, "Is every column now going to be about your pregnancy? If that's the case I'm done reading it. . . . God I miss Mike Royko!"
So far, I haven't responded to this message. Mostly, I'm not sure how I should. First, I guess I'd say that we all miss Mike Royko, or at least everyone except the family members he neglected throughout his long career. And, second, I'd point out that writing a column about modern fatherhood didn't seem like a tough call on Father's Day weekend. Oh, and third, no, not every column. Not last week's. And probably not next week's. But some.
Still, I see this person's point. It wasn't so long ago that the word "pregnant" wasn't even uttered in mixed company. To have someone writing about it from a relatively personal perspective (though, not quite Marion Brooks personal, I assure you) on page 2 of the newspaper could be slightly disconcerting.
There aren't a lot of ground rules, so I often feel like I'm just making this up as I go along -- sharing the stuff that I think has some larger meaning within this particular cultural moment and, mostly, keeping the nipple details to myself. That seems about right.
1. Seth Stevenson has a great essay on those new Mac vs. PC ads on Slate.com. I'm pretty solidly in the Mac camp, but Stevenson makes a great point about the way these ads fail to really do much more than preaching to those of us already enjoying ourselves in the choir.
3. Pretty much everyone has something to say about Linda Hirshman's new book, Get to Work. Salon.com's Broadsheet blog has a nice summary of what's out there. New Sun-Times books editor Cheryl Reed also took a crack at Hirshman. (Click "continue reading" below to see her essay.) I think Cheryl gets it mostly right, though she glides over what, to me, is an absolutely essential point in this whole debate: "Feminism is supposed to be about achieving equality with men. But what man out there can 'choose' whether he wants to work?"
As far as I'm concerned, this is the heart of the matter. Work is what responsible adults in this society do. All this happy-talk about "opting out" is really about maintaining separate standards for women (who can work, if they want) and men (who are socially expected to suck it up and work no matter what).
Feminism shaken, Not stirred: According to author, there's no choice allowed for smart, educated, capable women
By Cheryl R. Reed
Smart women have gotten lazy.
That's what radical feminist Linda Hirshman thinks. The former Chicago lawyer has devised a plan to get women out of nurseries and back into boardrooms. Laid out in her brief book, Get to Work: A Manifesto For Women of the World, Hirshman targets the Ivy League, New York Times wedding-announcement crowd, who have "opted out" of their law firms and corporate offices to stay home to raise Baby Gap.
That graduates from Harvard Business School are now shelving their expensive educations and lucrative livelihoods to attend Mommy & Me classes irritates Hirshman. She believes it should upset all of us when elite, educated women choose hearth over commerce. After all, these are women with credentials, access and power. They are the ones who can call a legislator directly, throw their prestige and money behind important causes, educate their powerful male bosses about the difficulties of raising a child and making partner.
These women, Hirshman argues, could change the world as future senators, scientists and Supreme Court justices. Instead, they're at home finger-painting with their kids.
It's appropriate that Hirshman's pocket-size book is red because it reads much like a communist manifesto, calling on women to live by strict codes for the betterment of society and for the advancement of feminism overall. Individual concerns, desires and the pursuit of happiness have no place in Hirshman's scheme.
In her view, women should have only one child, persevere in jobs they hate, marry much younger or much older men, turn a blind eye to dust bunnies and ignore milk expiration dates. Forget art and poetry, Hirshman says. Those pursuits don't pay.
It's not that Hirshman's plan wouldn't work. Her formula, if followed religiously, would no doubt produce a lucrative and prestigious career, and it does provide a guidepost to young women who are wondering what they might have to sacrifice to make it in the corporate world. But following Hirshman's rules -- as she calls them -- would be about as joyful as a rigid, no-carbs diet. Then again, pleasure does not figure high in Hirshman's equation.
"Just because work isn't as wonderful as people fantasized does not mean it isn't usually the best alternative available," Hirshman writes. "There's no such thing as a perfect job. Condoleezza Rice actually wanted to be a pianist. . . . Don't look to work for love."
Hirshman is not a big fan of choice. She believes feminism's greatest downfall was allowing women the choice of whether they wanted to work. She has a point. Feminism is supposed to be about achieving equality with men. But what ma
