Quote of the day UPDATED

"I'm not as thin privileged as I used to be." - a Savage Love commenter.

Found this via an unrelated search, but it does remind me that the Reddit thread inspired by/ranting against/providing copious traffic to (thanks guys! I should rile people about undergarments more often - maybe then the blog-ads I forget are even there would amount to something) my earlier post on bra-fit includes a debate about whether or not I have "thin privilege." The only information I'd provided in that post was that I lack gamine-privilege - what, you hadn't heard of gamine-privilege? Let me educate you: It's the privilege to go out in a camisole. To be menswear-chic. My point being that my skepticism about the bra-fit industry did not come from being a woman to whom none of this marketing was directed in the first place. And I left it at that - no details, no... dimensions - because that's the WWPD way.

Anyway, one participant says that I said that I'm not thin (but that I could very well be fat and privilege-oblivious - good to know!), but another is like, no way, she never said that, she is thin. 

But alas, I failed to do the thing one must in such conversations - provide accurate, up-to-date full-body photos, and the complete roster of measurements (weight, BMI, waist size, cup size, etc.). One must situate one's self. But one neglected to do so. So it must remain speculation.

The Reddit-users were forced to Google-image-search, from which they have determined - bizarrely - that they know what I currently look like. The photos that produces are not terribly revealing, but even if they were full-on bikini-and-calipers - and if one makes any reference to one's build, one owes the internet bikini-and-calipers - they're from a good long while ago, back when I lived in cities and, like, went out places. Who knows what I look like now.

(OK, of my three readers, at least two are probably people I know and am actively in touch with in real life. They may have some idea. And Obama - surely he knows all. Meanwhile there isn't much, mirror-wise, in this apartment, so I myself am not entirely sure.)

Which is really the problem with looks-privilege-talk on the internet. Well, one of them. Another is that using "privilege" in reference to looks suggests a dichotomy like the (ever-increasing!) one that exists wrt class/income. People who say they're 'middle-class' are often in denial in one way or the other. But most of us are within normal limits when it comes to looks. 'Middle', as it were. And looks are subjective in a way that wealth is not. (Yes, relative wealth is important, but either you can afford housing/healthcare/kids' education/some fun stuff or you cannot.) Exceedingly few of us either benefit from the advantages of being gorgeous or suffer from the effects of being unusually plain. 

With socioeconomic privilege (also known as "privilege"), people can be evasive, but there's generally an answer. With looks... there's self-reporting subjectivity. As in, I could tell you that I'm basically Gisele, but that would not make it true. Self-esteem as vs. what others see. (The proverbial model-who-still-thinks-she's-a-gawky-loser.)

Also important: whether someone is or is not photogenic. Whether a photo has been doctored. Whether - if no photo - what sounds on paper like conventional beauty amounts to the same in person. A 'leggy blonde' might or might not be Claudia-Schiffer-esque.

Of course, if beauty privilege exists within the online world, not just in reference to off-line, then one really could just have a blog, no photos, claiming to be a beautiful woman, and somehow benefit from this entirely constructed identity. Stranger things have happened. 

Oh, and in anticipation of the inevitable response: thin privilege is real, as in the advantages of being not-fat are real, and especially key for women. Thin privilege plus white privilege means when there's an empty seat next to you on public transportation, someone takes it immediately. 

But thin privilege isn't identical to beauty privilege, so even if a thin woman goes through life not knowing what heavier women deal with (that is, if she's never been fat - something people on these internets seem quite ready to assume), she may still know perfectly well what it's like to be bullied for one's physical appearance, to be rejected romantically time and again (and remember, the default assumption in our society is that girls and young women receive a constant barrage of offers). 

Finally, it's come up here before whether privilege is something that can be acquired - i.e. the working-class Harvard grad. (Some say yes - I prefer to call earned privilege 'advantage,' so as to distinguish it from unearned.) But there's a related question, which is whether what matters more is what one has now, or what one had at some formative time. This could apply re: looks or wealth/status, but the whole earned/unearned issue never quite applies with the former. I remember some study a while back, showing that men's income correlated with their height, but not their current height, their height at 16. Something like that might well be true for women and weight, or just women and looks.

On an unrelated note, somewhere on Facebook is a picture of me at 12 or 13. My name isn't anywhere on it, and I'm not tagged. And I'm fine with that.

UPDATE

As usual, Autumn had the answer all along.

In-flight movies quasi-reviewed

The insane, expensive, and exhausting process of getting a poodle to and from Germany is, at last, complete. Bisou minds flying a whole lot less than her humans, and cheerily peed for about an hour when she got out of her enormous kennel and onto Newark's familiar terrain.

At the Frankfurt airport. "Discover Germany."

I watched "The Five-Year Engagement" and "Young Adult" on the flight (spoilers ahead), and while the latter was the better movie by so, so much, the two blended together somewhat. One was in Michigan, the other Minnesota. Both contrasted sweet, fertile young women with flawed, screw-up career gals who don't know a good thing when it's right in front of them. Both showcased uprooted-cityfolk snobbery. Both were watched on no sleep, with possible nodding-off for 30-second intervals midway through. 

But gosh, "The Five-Year Engagement" was dreadful. It didn't help that the plot centered around the academic-career ambitions of the woman, yet this "career" was so vague that she seemed at various points a college student (smitten with a prof in a lecture hall), a grad student (which I believe she's referred to as at one point), a postdoc (the ostensible catch-all answer) and a professor (there's a party for faculty and their partners, which they attend), all during the same "job." Nor that the movie was pre-PC-level obliviously racist (the black postdoc-ish-thing among her colleagues can't cut it, while the Asian one is psycho, and Hasids are played for laughs for basically existing). Oh, and over-the-top sexist (its message being, a woman who has a higher-prestige job than her dude is an emasculating beeyotch, with a side message about how if a woman has any professional success, it's because her boss wants to sleep with her.) Nor, as someone who did in fact move to the woods to be with my spouse, did I appreciate that Ann Arbor (which I've never been to, but still) is portrayed as some kind of woolly-mammoth-filled forest. And what was up with the side plot that was "Knocked Up," except that Seth Rogen had made whichever micro-morph was necessary to become Chris Pratt? 

It's a bad sign in a rom-com when you're rooting for the female lead to for goodness sake go off with the other dude. Better-looking (this was not Jason Segel at his best), smarter, more enthusiastically into her, better job... The worst thing about him was that he anointed her an assistant professor, which, as bad qualities go, isn't so ethical, fine, but sure beats leaving a loaded bow and arrow for hunting deer out when a young child is around (with predictably gruesome consequences). And, speaking of male beauty, what kind of Apatow movie provides no Paul Rudd whatsoever? Normally, Jason Segel plays sweet with a creepy edge, a Nice Guy who's actually, at the end of the day, nice. But he makes for one lousy misogynist. When the man-child ultimately triumphs (after nobly dumping a sexy, sexually voracious 23-year-old we're expected to suspend extra disbelief to imagine liked him in the first place), the movie announces its commitment to blah.

"Young Adult," however, was kind of great. It's the rare movie that finds a way to make it make sense that the protagonist is being played by someone ridiculously beautiful. Normally, there's this odd thing where you can never tell if the character is meant to be as attractive as the actor in the role. Like, when someone will refer to Emily Blunt's character in "Five-Year" as pretty - is the character as pretty as the very pretty Blunt? Prettier? With theater, it's presumably more definitively about the character than the actor. Whereas in "Young Adult," the root cause of Charlize Theron's character's woes is that she happened to be born looking like Charlize Theron, which is to say looking, in each scene, like a still of it would read "Lancôme," and it's actually an ad for foundation. The movie wouldn't have been the same if it starred a Jennifer Aniston or Kate Hudson, a girl-next-door rom-com type who would, in this role, read as conceited and as perhaps overestimating the burden their beauty placed on them. Whereas a Theron born into a town of non-Therons (which is to say, any town or big city anywhere in the world) will have a different experience from the get-go. 

But what's great is how not-heavy-handed the movie is, how there's clearly something wrong with the protagonist, but you don't get the sense that you're watching a specific DSM diagnosis adapted for screen. Hair-pulling, alcoholism, depression, a quasi-psychopathic inability to feel emotions mixed with some ability to feel emotions... it all amounts to an original character, rather than one who'll simply read as real to those who've known someone with whichever issue (Sheldon's unstated Asperger's on "Big Bang Theory," say.) The only misstep was the overemphasis early on on the fact that the Patton Oswald character was neither gay nor impotent, despite having been gay-bashed and injured there as a youth. Once that's been mentioned, and mentioned again, and mentioned once more, you know he and Theron's character will be getting it on.

It's better to be Natalia Vodianova than fat

I'm glad to have helped Elizabeth Nolan Brown theorize about why the concept of "natural beauty" is a load of bunk. The deal with natural beauty is, it's meant to sound like this noble concept - it lets you avoid toxic chemicals and fight the patriarchy! - but it's actually fairly creepy. It's about shaming those who get pleasure from self-expression through appearance-manipulation, a spectrum that ranges from spray-tans to neon mohawks. It is also, at its essence, about making sure that women with dyed hair, thinness brought about by dieting, high heels, etc. don't sneakily trick men into reproducing with them, and god forbid producing offspring without the desired traits.

The story Elizabeth responds to is about an 18-year-old British girl who won a contest for her natural beauty. Says the winner: "Women should not have to feel that they have to wear make up. I hope people will look at me and think they don’t need to wear lots of make up." Yes, this is exactly what women will think when they see a clear-skinned, rosy-cheeked 18-year-old.

But this above-average UK teen has been majorly outclassed on the looks-privilege-gaffe front. Natalia Vodianova, the startlingly beautiful Russian model, a woman who exists for the express purpose of reminding us that some high-fashion models aren't merely skeletal and vacant-looking but are in fact better-looking than the rest of us and even though they're 30 they look like a girl who peaked at 14 did at 14, which is why they're paid the big bucks, the very same Natalia Vodianova explains that we could all look the way she does, if only we didn't eat so much, oink oink. And so, we are meant to believe, the former fruit-peddler launched a hundred thousand eating disorders.

Meanwhile, as far as I'm concerned, Vodianova is inspiration for us normal women not to go on a diet for vanity reasons (to be distinguished from: doctor's orders, or an attempt to avoid being subject to anti-heavy-person discrimination). I look at a picture of Vodianova and think, the fact that she's thinner than I am is absolutely the least of it. If I were as thin as Vodianova, I'd still be much shorter, and would be a gaunt and cranky version of myself, not a Slavic supermodel. Far from being depressed by this knowledge, it frees me up to not worry about it.

Privilege successfully acknowledged, without excessive YPIS hand-wringing

While I greatly admire Tavi Gevinson's writing, and am most honored to be included with her on Jessica Furseth's latest list of "excellent wordsmith bloggers", there's something that never quite sat right with me about the Tavi phenomenon. Gevinson, child (now, at 15, not-so-child) fashion blogger extraordinaire, was meant to represent an alternative to the mainstream. A self-identified feminist, she was meant to be all about self-expression-through-dress, minus the dreaded beauty standards that usually come with it. So promising! As someone who's pro-self-expression-through-dress, and anti-dividing-time-between-skin-cream-shopping-and-calorie-counts-on-yogurt-containers, I was very much on board.

But given that the current beauty ideal in fashion is 'Nordic preadolescent', however many silly hats and oversized '90s-nostalgia sweaters naturally-blond-and-tiny Tavi piled on, I was always stuck thinking that there was only so much she, however well-meaning, could do with the personal-style format. Photos of someone not only thin, young, and white, but for whom wrinkles, frizz, acne, and hips are not an issue, have a certain edge when it comes to looking like conventional high-fashion photography. As in, what, on Tavi, looks Fashion would, on most anyone else, look ridiculous.

Of course, it's not Gevinson's fault that she looks like... whatever the precise opposite would be of the title character of "Precious" as styled for that movie. And as Fashion Week photos of the blogger with actual fashion models attest, Gevinson's significantly shorter than they are - in keeping with the child-prodigy thing, but something that would certainly limit her participation in the fashion world to that class of interesting-to-look-at-but-could-never-actually-model-clothes. And, if her appearance happens to coincide with runway trends, these tend not to much overlap with middle- or high-school ideals, so her self-deprecation about her looks reads as sincere.

Gevinson herself appears to understand the issues this poses, as evidenced by the post Furseth just linked to, one that's worth reading in full. That this is a new understanding for Gevinson is forgivable, consider that she's, well, 15:

I took this picture a couple months ago, going for some Heathers/Twin Peaks vibes, but started thinking too much about how I look in it and avoided posting it for a while. I wasn't insecure, quite the opposite -- I didn't want to post this photo because I look good in it. And, as someone whose "thing" for so long has been "Challenge beauty standards! Screw convention! Look like a grandmother on ecstasy at Fashion Week!", that somehow felt hypocritical.

As an outside, i.e. non-Tavi, observer, it's tough for me to see a difference in the photo she's referring to and the many that preceded it in the history of her blog/of other Tavi-coverage. She has always looked Fashion, and if she's now OK with conventional attractiveness (some makeup, no glasses, things I wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't pointed them out), she hasn't exactly transformed herself into a Kardashian. But what matters is that she gets a) that there's a relationship, inevitably, between her looks and her message, and b) that acknowledging and trying to understand it is effective. Important to note is what she's not doing - she's not beating herself up, nor is she just kind of saying, yes, I have certain types of privilege, and leaving it at that.

"Who cares about eyebrows?" UPDATED

The NYT Style section profiles Leandra Medine, the force behind the "Man Repeller" fashion blog, which I remembered having linked to here once before in reference to the perennial straight-men-and-women's-fashion question, but a search for "harem pants" lead me nowhere... turns out it was in reference to a certain chambray button-down.

So I will pause for a moment to kick myself for not thinking of the idea, and for a series of life choices based largely on the end goal of not living with my parents on the Upper East Side. My idea of the epitome of failure sounds, when described by a fashion journalist, like the very height of glamor.

In any case, I hadn't looked at Man Repeller in a while. Checking it out again, I was struck by how drop-dead gorgeous Medine herself is (and jealous, once again - am I the only dark-haired lady-Jew not born with those wonderful dark eyebrows? is there a woman in Scandinavia with my intended eyebrows, and when can we swap back?*), and what this means for the concept of her blog. Or, more broadly, what exactly is the relationship between beauty and fashion? 

A series on the Man Repeller blog is Medine putting on a sexy (slightly NSFW in this case) outfit, then showing how to style it so as to take it from conventional and man-getting to avant-garde, androgynous, haute-bag-lady territory. It's subverting expectations (think "What Not to Wear" or "Go Fug Yourself") to make those the "before" photos. To the uninitiated, "fashion" is about looking work-appropriate, age-appropriate, choosing flattering cuts, dressing to fit in, having the "right" jeans, looking "good." Medine is doing her part to show that that's precisely what fashion's not about. I, for one, approve.

While the concept is all about giving the finger to the notion that fashion's about pleasing men, the end result are a whole lot of pictures of a stunning young woman in skimpy clothes. Which brings us back to the question: if fashion isn't for men, how are fashion and conventional, man-attracting, female-jealousy-producing female beauty related? Two tentative thoughts on the matter:

-Even if the clothes fashion points women to are themselves not-so-sexy, a woman who thinks she looks good is one who will be drawn to clothing stores, or to looking at herself in the mirror in new arrangements of what she already owns, or to putting pictures of herself in lingerie on the Internet. 

-Ideally, fashion would be a way for those of all levels of attractiveness to express themselves through dress, and would allow even the odd-looking to be noticed, in a positive way, for their looks. In reality, dressing strangely and being appreciated for it is the privilege of the young and conventionally attractive. Not so liberating, when you think about it.

Finally, I found the end of the interview perplexing:

“I do think there are men who would see a girl wearing this stuff and think, ‘She has so much confidence and she still looks great despite the fact that I don’t know where her crotch starts in those pants,’ ” she said. “You can still tell when a girl is pretty. The men who really get repelled by what you’re wearing are a little shallow, and you probably don’t want to date them anyway.”

Is a man less "shallow" if he's able to look beyond clothes and see how good-looking a woman really is, than if he's thrown off by the presence of a miniskirt? This is like the nonsense about how men who notice women's faces rather than busoms are the nice guys, are not objectifying women. More than that, it reflects the opposite of what I took to be the point of the Man Repeller concept - that female concern about appearance need not have anything to do with "pretty."

But upon further reflexion, it kind of makes sense. The idea isn't that fashion is for women who don't care what men think of their looks. It's that fashion itself isn't employed to attract men. If that makes sense.

*"Seinfeld," distiller of all life's truths, uses the eyebrow question to show how straight women's perceptions of female beauty differ from those of straight men. As in, women notice eyebrows, men don't.

UPDATE

Sadie Stein at Jezebel takes the unsurprising-for-Jezebel approach, which is to point out that Medine's privilege is showing. Eh. Medine has a clothing budget that looks outrageous even to this Upper East Side-reared Jewess, but I'm not sure how any of that matters within the context of her blog and the questions it poses. (Of course, it appears she's living at home for college - maybe dorm money's just going to clothes instead?) If the issue is what man-repellent fashion means in terms of feminism, what matters is Medine's looks - her 'pretty privilege,' if you will. Along the same lines, I have trouble buying the self-deprecating, alternative-to-Fashion tone coming from Tavi, considering her slimness, symmetry, youth, and overall resemblance in everything but height (which is barely noticeable in pictures anyway) to runway models. And Tavi's not living in splendor in Manhattan, but is, famously, of the Midwest, of the suburbs, plucked from obscurity. I mean, there are certainly fashion blogs that elicit eyerolls at the ostentatious displays of limitless shopping budgets. But it's not the issue with the Man Repeller. Instead, this is another example of Jezebel spotting wealth and ceasing upon it as an opportunity to play the I'm-poorer-than-that-rich-bitch game.

On abs

Amber's right, I like this essay. Especially the point about how men shouldn't view looking hot as something that takes away their intellectual cred, or whatever other cred they've been cultivating. But just the general idea that straight men should do what they can, within reason, to look good, this I support. Stamp of approval. With a few caveats:

-The heart's in the right place - yes, women assess male looks, yes, this fact of life is underreported - but the answer isn't to exactly transcribe male sexuality onto women. The scenario where the woman who looks normal enough to other women walks by, and men one after the next turn their heads to get a better look at her ass (something that we've all seen happen on the street, but also, memorably, something I saw in one of my high school classes, whenever this one girl would stand up. Teachers, do not do this.) Women's heads turn when hot guys walk by, but it's not typically so anatomical. Whenever you've seen images ("I'm a Samantha!") of women doing this, of women hooting, hollering, and leering at the backsides of men, what you're witnessing is a point being made, that women can be just as visual as men. But it's about making a point - women who are being visual don't typically show it in the same way as men.

-The women are born with it, men must work out for it argument: Here, I think, too much of a distinction is being made between men and women. Faces are hugely important for both sexes, and unless all you need is the removal of a harmless but enormous mole, any attempts to make major structural changes will only make you look odd. (Or so tell me the moments I've caught of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.") Then comes the importance of male physique beyond abs or no abs - a slender, broad-shouldered man is not going to "need" to work out the same way as a heavyset, round-all-around one will. And yeah, the height thing - women who don't notice short men won't start noticing them if they start working out. The women who already do notice short men have already proven they're not noticing men on account of those men's conventional attractiveness, and are unlikely to be swayed by a bicep.

-Meanwhile, female beauty is natural? I will disabuse all of that notion with one word: weight. Women who are naturally slim - as in, who don't need to agonize or diet or work out to maintain physiques that would not in a million years be called "fat", are already few and far between. But even such women were once girls, and girls - all girls - are taught how not to become fat. It's virtually impossible to be a woman in our society who doesn't associate food with unwanted weight gain. Women's relationship to food is just fundamentally different from that of men, such that whereas some men worry about their weight for aesthetic reasons, all women do. Even women who couldn't get fat if that were the desirable build and they ate cheesecakes every night in the hopes of piling on the pounds. The big breasts-flat chests distinction the author makes is one that, assuming we're talking about What Men Want, is only being applied to women who are already thin. Thinness is assumed. Not the same thinness as one finds on the runways, but still many sizes down from what most women in America fit into.

But even if there were some class of woman aged up-to-23 (at which point we all degenerate into hags - "23" is coming, let me be clear, from the post, not from four years past-it me) who could effortlessly seduce all men by parading by in bikinis, what good are a lot of naturally beautiful coeds? For all the talk of 40-year-old men who "only" date women under 25, the fact is that there aren't a whole lot of very young women in the grown-up dating pool. Even the rare non-rich, non-famous man who finds himself a 24-year-old girlfriend will, if things go well, soon enough have a 28-year-old on his hands. Point being, the Naturally Beautiful Woman for all intents and purposes doesn't exist.

-Yes, people should take care of themselves. But is working out really the behavior that women demand? Women notice looks, but not necessarily in predictable, "the more he looks like Brad Pitt, the better," ways. Given how men's clothing works, as the poster remarks, women don't know, in a classroom, party, or workplace setting, which guys have abs, unless they really are big-time bodybuilders. Height, face, hair, general body-shape (some physical activity helps, but it doesn't need to be at the level of regular gym-going - it might help some obese men lose weight, or some sickly-looking men look more hearty, but for a man of average build?), these are the factors according to which looks-judgements are made; barring any major surprises underneath clothing, looks are no longer an issue. Frankly, I don't think heterosexual women, certainly not past junior year of high school, expect abs. Unless the guy's a professional athlete, it would, to many women, seem strange if a man took off his striped button-down and underneath were abs like the ones comically painted onto aprons. For a grown man to have "abs" is equivalent to a grown woman having no cellulite whatsoever -  it's a trait far more likely to be advantageous in a career as a model for exercise-equipment ads than a deciding factor in gaining attention from opposite-sex partners.

Those were the minor quibbles. The major one: Yes, whether she wants to be a poet or an astronaut, a woman still knows she has to put on lipstick. But there's a tradeoff: the fact that women pay attention to our physical appearances is viewed as making us less serious than men in the same fields. Oh, women can be serious (think Cuddy vs. House, women in Apatow flicks...), but we don't have the option of being too-brilliant-to-bathe. In fact, not caring adds to the appeal of some men in some fields - the rock star, poet, professor, artist, editor end of things, not, say, law, medicine, or finance. By not caring, a man might signal that he's so talented that it would lower him to the rank of mere mortals if he cleaned up nice. Or, long story short, it's assumed (incorrectly, which is another story) that men strive for career success in part for glory and in part to get women, making their drive greater than that of women, whose professional achievements if anything detract from their sex appeal. For a man who ought to be able to "get girls" from professional success alone, any obvious effort when it comes to self-presentation or even just social ease is viewed as a flaw.

But not all men are tortured geniuses, let alone in fields where posing as one would be tolerated. Even so, women who don't just wear chic clothes but think about clothes have pretty much thrown in the towel. There's an element to female concern about our own looks that isn't about pleasing the opposite sex, or even about conforming to gendered social norms. It is enjoyable for many women to dress up. If the mere facts of having long hair or wearing lipstick are viewed as suspect, any interest taken above and beyond what's necessary to attract men or look reasonable in professional settings is... you might as well start twirling your hair and greeting people with a chipper, "Like, hi!" Because an interest in fashion is mistakenly conflated with an interest in looking at one's self in the mirror and grinning smugly (see Quinn on "Daria" - Vice President of the Fashion Club), an interest in self-presentation is confused with vanity, vanity with idiocy and superficiality, and so on. Or, in less rambling terms, it's possible to dress up "for one's self" and inadvertently please the opposite sex, but because dressing up for fun is something associated with women (and, fine, gay men), the only kind of attention men are allowed to take is... abs. Where oh where are these straight women rejecting otherwise viable men on account of their abs?

Scrappiness one-upmanship

I'd been meaning to post on the concept of 'your privilege is showing' - what this phrase is for, who's using it, and why. Brief, sleepy hypothesis - those using this phrase are themselves doing just fine. If they're young, they  think it's square to be rich and are rag-wearing hipsters. If they're much post-college, they're meritocrats who'd like to believe themselves to be self-made, who kinda-sorta know they're not, but who feel better about themselves if they can convince themselves that their (online, often) interlocutors were born with platinum spoons in their mouths. If I believed that the phrase was being thrown at haves by have-nots, I'd be more sympathetic. However, I suspect that 99% of the time, that's not how it's being used at all.*

I was reminded to post on this by Charles Murray's article about the "New Elites." At a certain point (Britta's second comment to the post below was the catalyst), it occurred to me that the set Murray was describing was, contrary to the impressions one might have from, say, reading the piece, identifiable. The New Elites are those against whom a 'your privilege is showing' would sting. Those who'd even be in that kind of discussion in the first place. For this set, whose actual privilege (measured by $ or marketable skills) is quite variable, the shame is so great that an entire system of disclaimers exists to preempt such accusations. If you're going to complain that Whole Foods was out of your favorite goat cheese, remember to use the phrase "First World Problems." And so on.

(This does not address the other issue with privilege-talk - the overuse of the word when what's really needed is a simpler one: luck. The difference between those of us who went through an awkward phase as teens and those who did not is one of luck, not privilege, assuming the awkwardness did not lead to serious bullying. Being pretty or amazing at math - these might be 'privilege' if the comparison is someone with severe facial deformities or someone who can't add. But in day-to-day life, there's always someone better and worse off than yourself, in every arena. The word "privilege" evokes a certain magnitude of advantage, and it's appealing to connect whatever ways you feel screwed over in life to the kind of systematic edge of, say, a rich person over a poor one, a WASP over a visible minority.)

*To give an off-line example - I have met many people who've presented themselves as having hardscrabble backgrounds, to the point where I was starting to think that being a doctor's daughter from Manhattan was basically a capital offense... only to either see their homes or find out their parents' professions and realize that, wait a moment, this person is in fact from a more privileged background than I am. People I've met from significantly less privileged ones tend not to advertise this fact in casual conversation.

The difference online is that socioeconomic privilege is seemingly easier to hide, what with pseudonyms and the unlikelihood that anyone will end up visiting anyone else's family manse in Brooklyn Heights. This is why privilege-talk online tends to manifest itself as witch-hunts - someone will mention having eaten arugula as a toddler and whoosh, they've revealed their ignorance of food deserts, their ignorance of everything outside their posh bubble, they probably don't even know that 99% of Americans haven't even heard of lettuce, they're so sheltered. And so on. The thing is, I'm not convinced privilege-talk makes the privileged any less sheltered - it just necessitates disclaimers.

A banal, gender-specific, New York-specific anecdote

After a rough few days of reading as fast and carefully as I can, of putting a massive mess of papers in my apartment into working order, and, of course, of returning more library books than I can carry comfortably in exchange for an even bigger heap, I was ready for a treat. I was all set for that treat to be one of these, but I was feeling lazy. (Call it the 'Lack Initiative to Make Cake' diet.) So a pile of books and I headed to Uniqlo, where these - still $10-off! - became mine. It's tough from the image to see what they look like on, so I'll have to post a picture at some point, but they're more pantaloons than harem pants - in fact, they're not harem pants at all, because they lack the dreaded and comical dropped-crotch. Nor do they much look like any of these - more like a $19 version of these. Still, they are definitively silly and trendy. Which was very much the point - the molten chocolate cake of clothing.

Like I'd imagine most adult women, sometimes I think I look good; sometimes pants that are supposed to fit are too small, hair that was supposed to be one way is another, and I'm not pleased; but most of the time, I'm thinking about something else (current preoccupation: contemporary relevance or lack thereof of the Dreyfus Affair - thinking about it but not sure re: posting on it). I was not feeling especially glamorous this afternoon - I'd paired a GAP black nightgown-dress with a pale pink ballet-type long-sleeved wrap shirt; a tan trench coat; black leggings; and black oxfords, all which was well and good before the backpack and tote bag entered the picture. But the pants fit surprisingly well, and I thought, huh, not bad!

I then got on line to pay, with a mixture of delight at getting something fun and guilt at spending an unnecessary near-$20. Then I turned around. Behind me were not one, not two, but three models, and not the tall-and-thin-so-they-can-do-the-runways-but-nothing-special-in-person type of models, but the sort that do to all women around them what Uma Thurman did to Janeane Garofalo in that terrible movie that time. One was in the Estonian 16-year-old ballerina mold, another the fresh-faced all-American blonde closer to my own age and thus probably towards the end of her career, the third a dark-featured (Brazilian? Portuguese?) cross between a model and a movie star. I should mention that they were each approximately eight feet tall. The momentary high from finding a pair of flattering pants? Gone, just like that.

To make matters worse, shortly after this encounter, I saw a woman of modelesque proportions in the very same pants I'd just purchased.

Granted, I still got the pants, and am still thrilled with them. I'm convinced that I would be altogether undisturbed by my non-resemblance to models if I lived somewhere where there weren't quite so many of them, particularly in places where I shop for clothes. Le H&M Chicago me manque.