Up and down the stairs

Netflix did warn that "Upstairs, Downstairs" would be addictive, but there should be some special warning above and beyond that for people already somewhat addicted to that part of European history. To questions of emerging modernity, of the changes in family life, of the mingling of aristocrats and upwardly mobile Jews. I mean, I'm sure everyone has trouble not allowing the next episode to start, but if you're picking up on every last hint they're dropping that World War I is imminent, gah! It's the soap opera version of my dissertation, but across the channel.

As much as I get that it's, you know, fake, I start getting very much into the show, really living the history, really concerned about the outbreak of World War I. Now, this one's kind of new for me. As a child, I had many nightmares about the other World War (due to what may have been excessively early and explicit Holocaust education), but WWI is not something I'd ever feared on a personal level. But now! You just see what's coming! Someone writes "1914" in an inscription and you're like, watch out! They don't know about trench warfare, but it's imminent! Nothing will ever be the same! So much for Europe!

Where I'm at in the series, it's not looking good. The house just took in a family of refugee Belgian peasants. Because a good % of my family-by-marriage would have been war-torn Belgian farm-folk at the time, and because when it comes to this show I apparently have too easy of a time suspending disbelief, I start to think that this is somehow a documentary about whichever French-speaking relatives my husband may have had back in the day.

So I was alarmed, to say the least, when I heard this historical reenactment this morning. I had to remind myself that no, I'm not in Belgium (the bright-blue skies gave that away) and no one's invading New Jersey at the moment.

Daily Mail Online headline brilliance

"Man goes to hospital with a kidney stone... and discovers he's a woman"

"'It was the pasta's fault': Dr Oz explains THAT trouser bulge... claiming spaghetti 'excited' him in Good Housekeeping shoot"

"Pretty accounts manager who left woman fighting for her life after nightclub glass attack walks free as judge describes her as a 'decent young woman'"

Insensitive Knick-Knack Week

Your Tucson coverage continues. It's a safe bet that any of the well-shot dramatic landscape photos were taken by one of two astrophysicists. Close-ups of poodles, cacti, these I can take some credit for.

In honor of Insensitive Knick-Knack Week, I will return to the earrings-and-racial-insensitivity topic. Because I sure do like them, I hope it's not somehow offensive for me to go around wearing these. (Cheapness Studies note: at the store where I got them in Tucson, they went for about $20 less than indicated here.)

For the link-averse, they are a pair of lab-created (that is, faux) white-opal drop earrings, set in silver not-quite-filigree, but kind of like that. They are this fabulous mix of space-age, iridescent, and geometric, yet, even with all that going on, non-clunky. They are also made-in-the-USA-by-Native-Americans, which is either Good or Bad for the community in question - good because it's supporting them economically, bad because it's the appropriation (see more posts than I could possibly link to here) of their styles by pale outsiders. Styles that come from peoples displaced so that my peoples could, in turn, displace on over from whichever pogroms. (Banality of the day: the history of oppression is complicated.)

While this particular pair of earrings does not look (to me, at least) distinctly Southwestern or Native-artisan enough to be identifiable as such, if they did, they'd be on-trend. Various forms of "cowboys-and-Indians"-inspired fashions have been so-very-now for a while. Thus Tavi's "Twin Peaks" motif, thus all the designer-collab Pendleton... and thus the (mildly NSFW) "Navajo panties" scandal, wherein trendy chain stores sell undergarments and less racy attire as well, using the Navajo name, without, needless to say, Navajo approval. My earrings are evidently genuine Navajo-produced. Less problematic than a "Navajo" thong made in China, but not entirely OK.

But it's iffy when it is and isn't OK to take fashion inspiration from groups other than your own. I don't want to usurp anyone else's traditional dress, but on a certain level, everything is appropriation. Even dressing generically "American." If I wear pearl studs, and not for a need-to-look conservative occasion, I feel a bit silly, because my family wouldn't have been, still wouldn't be, accepted in a Lilly Pulitzer world. (And it would sure piss off Simon Doonan.) Anything preppy will come across as social-climbing, in a Ralph Lauren-né-Lifshitz kind of way. And it's similar with "heritage" fashions. And of course, any hip-hop-inspired anything, on someone as pale as I am, presents obvious awkwardness.

But problems arise if I dress "Jewish." I have the ethnicity for Hasidic garb, but not the piety. Dressing "Israeli," when I've only ever lived in New York, Chicago, Paris, and Princeton, and have not served in the IDF, doesn't sit right. And even if I went for the look derogatorily labelled as "JAP," this would not be authentic, because that's more of a suburbs-of-NY aesthetic, and is not something I actually grew up with. I am not from Ugg-North Face-French manicure country, not that there's anything wrong with that. The only authentic option is for me to wear a lot of black, or to wear whatever the street-fashion blogs dictate, because that's "very New York."

The answer, however, might be less complicated than I'm making it out to be. If you're conceiving of your personal style, it's best to do so in terms that have nothing to do with ethnicity, because head-to-toe of any culture or subculture's look, even your own, will, at best, look costumey. There's no not borrowing. Just stay away from symbols that you know evoke specific racist histories, and, if alerted to the fact that something you're wearing does, send it to the landfill, or better yet, donate it to the relevant museum with exhibits on intolerance of the group in question.

Rich Jews refuse gaudy attire, confuse Simon Doonan UPDATED

I think the gist of Simon Doonan's latest at Slate is that he doesn't like it when Jews dress WASPy. (Surprised?) Or something, with a forced "99%," OWS tie-in. It's obviously not new that "new money" tries to dress "old," nor that "old money" in fashion terms is about subtlety and nondescript clothes whose details only give the full story. ("Old" and "new" being, of course, constructs, as you can learn from Edith Wharton novels or common sense.) The comments about Ruth Madoff, her accent, her "shekels," and the great crime that is a woman of that background has the audacity to wear preppy outfits and is not going around dressed as "a long-nailed, tarty Long Island arriviste" make it clear enough how Doonan, at least, is defining "new money."

We're presumably meant to insert our own 'it's tongue in cheek' disclaimer, because Doonan refers to himself, a Slate columnist but more to the point a big-shot at Barneys whose memoir is on or will be adapted for BBC television, part of a famous fashion couple and general fashion-world-and-a-bit-beyond celeb, in lil' ol' me terms. But forget being offended. (Or, be offended. Because he comes from a working-class non-Jewish British background, he's forever the underdog, whereas American Jews with their unpleasant-to-his-ears working-class accents who make it big are gauche? A Slate commenter comments, "There was probably a way to write this without the subtle undertones of anti-semitism." But was there? Isn't anti-Semitism - and not all that subtle - integral to what he's saying?) Where's the originality? What new phenomenon is he pointing us toward? (OK, I could be blamed for the same - anti-Semitism is many things, but "new" isn't one of them.)

And I don't think you win any points in this contest if you're in favor of dressing like Sylvia Fine and you're from England. He doesn't have anything to prove in this area. He doesn't have any reason to dress up like an authentic British person because he is one.

UPDATE

What, short of a 10,000-page manifesto written in clear terms about how much you despise Jews, all Jews, even anti-Zionist ones, counts as anti-Semitism these days? A Slate commenter presents what I'd like to call the worst denial of anti-Semitism of all time, except that it's so typical. It goes:

I'm Jewish and leave Simon the heck alone. He's written an article on how grateful he is to Jewish people and how he hates anti-semitism. And I'm not sure if it's his husband or not legally, but his partner of many many years is Jewish. [...] Jews know better than anyone who runs the schmatta industry. If Simon was anti-semitic, he'd have been cast out just like Galliano was.

So if you're Jewish, or your partner is (and yes, Doonan's husband is Jewish), you can't possibly have written something anti-Semitic? It gets a bit meta, with the commenter defending Doonan while claiming himself (it's not herself, I suspect) to be immune to anti-Semitism on account of being Jewish, while claiming that the Jews "run" an industry. Doonan's piece is thoroughly anti-Semitic, but not in the Galliano, expressing-love-for-Hitler, beat-you-over-the-head-with-its-obviousness sense. I can't understand denying this, unless you are in fact Doonan or Doonan's husband. Or a Jew who thinks it shows you're enlightened and such if you nobly refuse to call out anti-Semitism.

Today in anti-Semitism

This I read more as someone who's taught college students than as someone concerned with The Jews specifically. But even those who've never taught anyone - and for the record, I've never experienced anything like this - will be shaking their heads. Meanwhile, there's perfectly good anti-Semitism right there in the Gawker thread - would you believe that you can't blanket-statement insult The Jews these days without being called an anti-Semite? Unfair!

And... yikes. And the victim was an exchange student at that. Furthering cultural exchange, indeed. I wonder how many exchanges go this way, producing understandings less about which countries do and don't put ice in beverages, more about where your kind can and cannot go? My first in Paris did, if less dramatically. (It was one RER ride under a "Mort aux Juifs" graffiti, which was still above and beyond anything I'd experienced in the States.) But I decided to study France, including French anti-Semitism, and eat my croissants too.

And imagine how much more fun the exchange would have been if the two young men had been not just dorm-mates (I think?) but roommates! And of course the racist twerp looks like a cross between "South Park's" Cartman and his inspiration, Archie Bunker. Not that there aren't perfectly lovely people who also happen to resemble those two, but anyway.