Sexy Kale costumes, $3 a bunch

Halloween! Has it already happened, or is it about to? I'm not celebrating it until the weekend, which means there's time yet for a costume epiphany. The plan had been to go as Einstein, in the spirit of hyper-localism, but then the question was, how? It's not that there aren't Einstein costumes - there are - but they're this mix of not quite right and hideous. Cheaper at the local costume store than online, but I have trouble spending any money on something I find, well, ugly. (Not actual Einstein's hair-and-mustache, which worked for him. Just the acrylic approximations.)

But also, an Einstein costume is a big ol' statement against Sexy Halloween.* But maybe too much so. Maybe the better approach is to go with sexy, but take it to an extreme, ala Sexy Pizza, as recently parodied on the Daily Show. I have some farmers' market kale I need to get through in one way or another. Perhaps I'll go as Sexy Kale, or better yet, Sexy Cliché.

I understand that there's already a vibrant feminist debate about whether women should wear sexy costumes, and that weighing in on Halloween itself makes me late. The verdict is evidently no, given the lists of generally somewhat grim feminist-approved dress-up options. There are also dissenters, protesting the slut-shaming of those whose idea of a costume is themed lingerie. There's also Dan Savage, who makes the important point that dressing skimpy attracts men, whether the skimpy dresser is male or female, which is why men looking to attract women tend to avoid it. I'm sure there are also, somewhere on the internet, feminist defenses of sexy costumes, along the lines of 'I bought the Slutty Nurse costume and am going to wear it for me,' but there only so many blog-hours in the day.

My own thoughts on the matter are basically summed up here, in a post not about Halloween. As I see it, rather than women straightforwardly being pressured into dressing as sexy vegetables or whatever, there's on the one hand, well, that, and on the other, that any overt attempt to look sexy, on Halloween or otherwise, comes across as desperate or possibly - horrors - unattractive. After all, we have this popular belief that every woman is fending off constant attention, even when she goes to the proverbial supermarket in her proverbial sweats-and-no-makeup. What does it say about a woman if she has to try?

Kalevangelism

It's 2013. Back in 2009, I was evidently complaining that one was required to enjoy kale. Specifically, what I objected to was that it's impossible to mention kale without someone immediately chiming in with the recipe that will produce a conversion in even the most skeptical. And now there's an American woman making it her (unpaid!) mission to get the French to eat the stuff. Because the stuff is absolutely everywhere, and kind of bland, I've learned to like it as much as any other green, enough so that if it's the freshest-looking vegetable available, I'll buy it. (Considers kale currently in the fridge, and how it would balance out cocktail-party hors d'oeuvres dinner. But it would need to be washed, prepared. Which would require getting off the couch.) But mustering enthusiasm is beyond me. It looks nice at farmers' markets, and poking out of tote bags brought virtuously to the same. But otherwise...

It's just such a strange dynamic, this kale-promotion. Not the kale fad - a fad I can wrap my head around. It's the overt peer-pressure element. I can understand wanting your own child to learn to at least tolerate vegetables you yourself like to prepare. But why all the spontaneous PR for random adults one doesn't even know to like a vegetable whose success you yourself don't have any financial stake in? What's it to you - a general 'you' - if someone you're not even dining with prefers collard greens or chard, or spinach or arugula,* or broccoli, or...? Maybe some really out-there argument could be made for it being in society's interest for most everyone to eat at least some green vegetables. But why must it be kale? Why does a vegetable have cheerleaders?

*Team Arugula all the way. Very 1990s, I realize, but then again, so am I. Best consumed with baked goat cheese and while wearing that newly-revived vamp-red lipstick.

A barista named Kale

I finally got my hands on Charles Murray's Coming Apart, which is to say, now that the book and all the commentary about it by those who had and hadn't read it is so two weeks ago. I read much of it, not all, at the bookstore in town this afternoon. I got a look at the full version of the infamous quiz, and learned that if your preferred method of unwinding is crap sitcoms, and not a fine Merlot, you - to borrow a phrase - might be a redneck. If I were classier, I'd only watch "The Wire" and independent films, and would pretty much be Stephen Metcalf from the Slate Culture Gabfest. But because I can immediately summon the name of the half-a-man on "Two and a Half Men," I couldn't read Murray with that smug sense of you talkin' to me that I'd expected.

What it is about - and I'm not quite done with it, but began with the intro and sections on marriage - is how there are these kids, see, and they're on Charles Murray's lawn. Well, that's the tone, but it's basically about how high-IQ elites meet at Hahvahd (and Murray holds forth somewhat self-indulgently about how the diners back when he was young and in euphemistic Boston were Americana, because this was pre-latte, or something) and reproduce, creating a high-IQ caste, and leaving the rest of 'merica drowning in a pool of its own drool.

Murray's certainly pro-marriage, but seems more interested in making sure that children are born into marriage than in whether single 20-somethings are celibate or using contraception. The only references I noticed to premarital sex were in the intro, when he's nostalgic for a time when goils were goils and didn't believe in too much heavy petting. Nor did I manage to locate the part where he urges the Fancies to patronizingly tell the Poors how to live - if anything, it seemed to be about shaming the Fancies for not eating at nationwide mid-range chain restaurants.

One of Murray's points about the elites is that they evidently eat a lot of green vegetables and whole grains. Whether they actually do this, or merely believe in it and leave farmers' markets with something green and abundant-looking poking out of their canvas totes, is another matter. But anyway, after the Murray bookstore-mooching (and for the record I buy plenty at this bookstore, but there are certain books whose sales figures I don't want to improve), it was time for a coffee. Not a latte. An Americano. Possibly more offensive.

At the coffee place, there was a sign up for something called "Eat More Kale Princeton." Not "Eat More Kale, Princeton." It's the Princeton branch of "Eat More Kale," which appears to be a t-shirt company with anti-corporate cred, from a guy who's "about eating locally, supporting local farmers, bakers, famers [sic] markets, farm stands, CSA's, community gardens and restaurants, sustainable lifestyles, social commentary and community." And why not?

Kale - a big topic and quasi-acquired taste (great in the form of shredded salad, with shallots, lemon juice, olive oil, and heaps of ricotta salata, but otherwise...) here at WWPD - is the new arugula. It's so much better a fixation than arugula, because it doesn't taste very good, because it can be grown in winter (so you can feel virtuous buying it, even if it was shipped in, as it inevitably is, from California), and because OMG the vitamins. Arugula, next to kale, is basically a Twinkie. I'm not sure which came first, but at Whole Foods in Princeton (and not, to my knowledge, in New York, Chicago...) there are what look like college-logo t-shirts - more specifically, like Yale t-shirts - but instead they say "Kale." Presumably meant to lure Princetonians into a double-take. At any rate, kale has swept through town, to the point that there is not only a "kale tasting" this Tuesday, but a barista at the local coffee shop is named Kale.

Charles Murray, this is material for your next opus. I'm thinking that back when America was great-in-your-estimation, there was nary a leafy green to be found.