DIY life

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to do woodworking. The heat of sandpaper against smoothing wood, the smell of raw wood coming out from underneath the old varnish, the sawdust coating I'm gradually acquiring... *happy sigh*

This feels good.

It makes me want to start the rest of the project ideas I've been tossing around.

There's a way of living in a more hands-on manner than we tend to do in developed countries like this one, that is probably very good for the soul. Not good in the sense that, if you have no choice then doing things yourself will spiritually sustain you. No, they might sustain you physically, but that's not what I'm getting at here.

Let me try this from another tack - when my depression is at its worst, the best thing for me to do is the do something. Anything, really. Visit friends, go for a walk, paint - that one's really great for me - all these things help. It gets my body moving despite my own protests; it forces my mind to focus on something other than my own shortcomings. But I can't hang out at my friends' houses every single day. They'd get sick of me, my dogs would miss me, and Bear will be home soon, too, so I'll need to be here for him. I can go for walks, but that's a timed event - can't do that all day, every day, either. I can't even paint every single day; I have to do something different or my mind gets bored and goes back to being depressed. That's why I get into so many different types of crafts (book making, jewelry making, rune crafting, etc). Sometimes, I just need something new. Or, something that has been in the background so long that it feels new, like wood working.

Anyway, I'm rambling. My point is (I think) that I find working with my hands to be spiritually sustaining, no matter what type of work I'm doing, and maybe that's something I need to work into my regularly scheduled activities.

I haven't really had a schedule since Bear's been with his dad. He's usually the reason I keep one. I've made a couple feeble attempts at scheduling myself for regular stuff (i.e., getting chores done on a schedule, rather than when I notice they need to be done, or remembering to take my meds in the mornings, or planning to do certain tasks). This past week I scrapped the whole schedule idea. I felt like I'd go crazy if I tried to get myself to do anything on any sort of schedule unless it was actually necessary. But then again, I spent that whole week pretty much in the bottom of a vicious bout of depression. So, not a good example.

Yep, that's me rambling again. As I was saying - this DIY stuff feels pretty good. And when I think about it, the people who do more DIY stuff seem less stressed in general... maybe I should study that. I wonder if Lowes or Home Depot would fund that study? Hmmm...

SQUIRREL!
(ADD, much?)

Whew, I can't focus for crap today.

Point: I'm gonna do a little crafting/DIY every day that I can fit it in. Cuz it'll feel good.

"Mamaaaaaaaa!" - Bear

So the plan was that my little Bear would spend the bulk of the summer with his dad, after spending a couple weeks with my mom. Here's how things have gone down thus far: I went to Iowa with Bear and we stayed at Grandma's together for about a week and a half. Then I came home. Bear spent another two weeks with Grandma, then flew from Grandma's house to his dad's house on 14 July.

He was going to stay at his dad's house until late July. Well Bear has decided doesn't want to stay there that long. Instead of coming home at the end of July, he's now coming home on July 3rd. Surprise!

I'm both happy that I'll see him again sooner, and totally unprepared for him to get home that early.

I also felt, when I received the news, that I shouldn't really be that surprised - but I was. I knew Bear had expressed the desire to come home early, but that was while he was visiting Grandma. Bear and Grandma can be a little bit oil-and-water-ish sometimes. I figured that once he got to his dad's house, he'd have a great time and not want to come home - even at the end of July. That's what has happened in the past.

Past, shmast.

[Side note - my spell check doesn't like "ish" but thinks "shmast" is cool. I'm pretty sure "shmast" is not a real word. You fail, spellchecker.]

This year, things is Different. Bear misses me. That surprised me. When I spoke to Archer about it, he said this (which is probably more of a paraphrase than a quote), "It's not surprising. You're that boy's whole world. He loves you so deeply. With everything he goes through, you're the only one in his life who understands him. Of course he misses you."

I've never seen that before, and I said so to Archer.

He responded, "You don't see it because you're so used to thinking of yourself as not being a natural mother, as being bad at mothering, but you're a very loving person. Once you started digging yourself out of that hole of depression, that came out. When you were depressed before, you were cut off, but since you started coming out of that, you have become a great mother to Bear. He knows that you're there for him. You're doing great. Just cut yourself some slack."

When Archer and I first met, a little over two years ago, I was just beginning to realize that I had  chronic (Major) depression, and I had no idea how to manage it. I was cut off from everyone, including Bear. Gradually, I began to see that and figured out how to correct it. And I've found ways to help Bear deal with his ADHD and anxiety - he's doing better than ever, and he's not even on meds anymore. He's finally thriving, and so am I.

Thank you Archer, I see it now. As always, you help me find the point to my story light years faster than I ever would have found it on my own. You're my hero.






(I shouldn't, but I can't resist: Thanks, Captain Save-a-Ho! Hahahaaaa!)
[The above is in reference to Archer's penchant for saving damsels in distress such as myself. It's probably a tasteless joke. I have a terrible sense of humor.]

something

I'm not sure I should post this. It used to be easier to make these decisions, when my blog was anonymous. It didn't matter because nobody would see me later and feel the need to express some sort of sympathy or well-wishes. That's always so awkward in person, because I know this will never go away. The cycles will complete, and I'll feel better for a while, until it begins again. This is just the bottom. I hope this is the bottom.

I'm going to post this, because I want people reading to have a better understanding of what depression is from the inside. I'm posting this for the sake of those times when I feel better, and can't find the words to explain what it was like being on the bottom.

~

Right now, I feel very little. Little enough that it should frighten me, but it doesn't. It just is. Everything just is. I feel no need to get out of bed. I feel no need to leave my house. I do these things anyway, because my rational mind is still in charge, mostly. It's a cold rationality. It's empty, but it's right. I don't get up and interact with the world because I want to; I do it because there are other people I've made promises too. I know that if I break those promises, I will not be acting as the person I want to be. There's nothing in my heart that cares, but my head knows that later, my heart will care again. More than that, my need for fairness is anchored in me somewhere deeper than my heart, somewhere deeper than my depression has yet touched. For now, I feel dead.

The only spark of emotion I felt today was when I got angry with Archer. I was wrong to be angry with him, but at least I felt something. The anger was only skin deep, and it faded quickly, but it was something, and that's a good sign.

My heart still leapt to hear his voice on the other end of the phone when he called me. Not so high as usual, but still. Something.

I still felt anxious when we started talking. Not the good anxiousness I usually get, but still. Something.

I got angry when he seemed to be blowing me off. He probably wasn't, but maybe he was. I don't know. And now that the tiny burst of anger has faded, I care to find out, because I know I should. My heart doesn't care. My heart is blank.

But I know that if I could just hear a whisper of love in his voice, my heart would jump again, and everything would be a tiny bit better. And that thought, somehow, brought me a shadow of pain. I think that's a good thing.

- It's gone now. -

I'd like to apologize to him, for feeling so little. For not being supportive of him. For getting angry.
And I will, if he will pick up the phone.

Somewhere under this blanket of nothingness, I ache for him. 

ferret!

A couple months ago I bought a ferret for my little Bear. He had asked for a hamster because he wanted something little he could play with. I nixed the hamster (they really tend not to be terribly playful with their people, in my experience), and convinced him that he needed a ferret.

Best parenting decision Ever.

bubbles

Today I rode passenger in my little truck while my friend drove us around to do errands. I didn't feel like driving. I didn't feel like doing errands, either, but as long as she was driving, it wasn't so bad. I sat there with my right arm and leg out the window, blowing bubbles with a bottle of bubbles shaped like a bottle of wine. A very tiny bottle of wine. That arm-and-leg-out-the-window thing makes more sense if you know that a) I live in the desert, and b) my truck has no AC. The bubbles didn't last long once they streamed out the window, but it was totally worth it. It made me feel like I could ignore how fucking difficult everything single thing is right now, and just smile at the bubbles. I was putting a positive spin on mental vacancy.

hermiting

I'm hiding in my house today. I needed to do some errands - drop the rent check off at the bank, for example - but that would have required putting on pants and going outside my yard. I don't have the will to do either of those things. On the bright side, my hands aren't shaking today, which makes it easy to type. That might be because I haven't had my medicine yet today. I think that's what makes my hands shake all the time. I can hear Archer saying, "baby, you need to take your medicine." I know, but I have to take it with breakfast, and I wasn't hungry until just now. I'll take it, I promise. It's ok though. I'm staying home today. This is my safe place. I'll be ok.

The Madonna, the whore, and the BMW (a short academic offering)

If the art of a culture is a reflection of its values, advertisements should be considered no differently than a sculpture or a painting. Advertisements, too, reflect what we value. In terms of gender ideologies, our advertisements show us to be a culture rooted still in the Madonna/whore dichotomy of womanhood and the accompanying ideas of how men should react to feminine gender performances. In this paper I will focus on how this plays out in one particular commercial. 

For my analysis, I’ve chosen a commercial from the car company BMW, promoting a line of convertibles (BMW commercial – youtube). In this commercial, we see a rakish man driving, presumably, away from a liaison with an attractive woman who tosses her scarf down as he drives away. The setting appears Italianesque and affluent. As he drives, he neatly avoids the steady stream of increasingly intimate apparel being tossed down to him by attractive women on balconies. Finally, he gets to his destination, which seems to be his own wedding. His bride waits on the steps of a cathedral, waiting for the groom and surrounded by the men of her family. The groom hands the bride handkerchief so that she can dab the pending tears from her eyes. This move gains the groom the renewed approval of the bride’s family members. The scene cuts away to show text: “The new 3 Series Convertible/It could just save your life”. We come back to the cathedral scene and all seems well, until the bride unfolds the handkerchief and discovers that it’s actually a pair of lacy white women’s panties.

Certain things should be noted about the scene which plays out in this advertisement. First, there are two opposing feminine ideologies portrayed: the seductresses, throwing their underwear at the groom (who seems to be late to his wedding after a dalliance with one of them), and the bride who is virtuously waiting for her roguish fiancé. This dichotomy of feminine ideologies is representative of the commonly referred to “Madonna/whore” ideology (Tishkoff 2005), in which women fit into one of two roles – the virtuous Madonna, or the disreputable whore. Second, all of the women in this commercial seem to be in places of power by their positioning, specifically by their relative elevations to the men in the commercial. These two things – the dichotomous female roles and the placement of the women – work together with the many details of the scene to create tacit approval and even encouragement of certain Western gender ideologies.

Let’s begin by examining the representation of the two feminine ideologies in this commercial. The women throwing their lingerie at the groom from their balconies are the “whores” in the Madonna/whore dichotomy. They are presented as alluring, seductive, and quite likely to get the man into trouble. There’s a ‘naughty’ element to their behavior which creates the idea that the groom is making his way through a gauntlet of temptation in order to make it to his bride’s side. However, he is pleased by the attention, as evidenced by his smiling demeanor, and he takes on the masculine role of a playboy. In that role, he is characterized as suave, debonair, and because of that, prestigious. The luxurious setting and expensive-looking car add to the aura of prestige surrounding the groom. That the groom’s prestige is wrapped up with his intimate connection to several women, indicated by them tossing their lingerie at him, reinforces our cultural ideology that connects male virility with male prestige. Female virility, however, is not so celebrated. The groom dodges the intimate clothing being offered, showing clear preference for the virtuous bride waiting at the cathedral. The bride’s virtuousness – her prestige – is reinforced by the groom’s avoidance of the balcony women in his efforts to get to her. Hollandand Eisenhart discuss this application of prestige in romance to great length in chapter seven of their book, Educated in romance (1990). There are subtle indications, though, that while the prestigious groom prefers the faithfully waiting bride, it’s merely humorous is the groom is caught being, or appears to be, less than faithful. The end of the scene, in which the bride unfolds the scrap of cloth to discover that her groom has handed her another woman’s panties, is intended to be funny. It’s a lighter note to end the commercial on, leaving the audience laughing. On the other hand, the audience is also subtly encouraged to contrast the freedom enjoyed by the women in the balconies with the danger of walking into a marriage because the bride will expect her faithfulness to be returned, and there will be dire consequences if it is not.

At first glance, the relative elevations and sizes of the men and women in this commercial would seem to – literally – raise women up in status. All of the women stand above the groom; even the bride is higher up on the stairs than he is. When the groom offers the bride his ‘handkerchief,’ he has to reach up to hand it to her. Additionally, in frames which show only one face, the women’s faces are shown higher in the frame than all the men’s faces are, and larger than the groom’s face is. The women are indeed portrayed as the protagonists in this commercial. The groom must evade the women on the balconies, not confront them. Then he must face his bride from a lower position, and use a peace offering to appease her when she is upset. The bride’s family members are not placed at a lower elevation than the bride, but they are still in a subordinate position, reacting as they do to the bride’s temper (which is another indication of the pitfalls awaiting the groom, should he proceed with the wedding).

The ramifications of commercials such as this one become painfully clear when viewed alongside Holland and Eisenhart’s work (1990) concerning the priorities of young women. If the virtuous woman is the one who waits faithfully at the cathedral rather than the one who independently pursues the man while eschewing committed relationships, then it’s no wonder so many young women reprioritize their romantic lives upon entering adulthood. Who wants to be called a whore? However, I do not think it fair to say that this advertisement and ones like it have the potential to change a person’s gender performance. Instead, I would hypothesize that these commercials merely encourage an already-indoctrinated gender ideology to continue. Thus, while not harmless, the role played by this commercial and its like is that of a mirror – they only reflect what is already there, providing validation for those people who already are invested in the gender ideologies these commercials show. 

Advertisements are, in general, reflective of the cultures which produce them. The advertisement I’ve analyzed is no different, and what it says about us isn’t pretty. The difficulty in finding an advertisement that uses gender ideologies to sell its product isn’t in searching out a suitable subject, but in narrowing down the field. We are inundated with stereotypes that paint men and women into oppositional corners, because in our culture, men and women are oppositional. The commercial described above merely illustrates that.

References

BMW commercial - YouTube. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved June 25, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snVZhCgy37Y

Goffman, E. (1976). Gender commercials. Gender advertisements (pp. 24-45). Washington: Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication.

Holland, D. C., & Eisenhart, M. A. (1990). Why study women's responses to schooling?. Educated in romance: women, achievement, and college culture (pp. 3-9). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Holland, D. C., & Eisenhart, M. A. (1990). Gender relations culturally construed: Romance and attractiveness. Educated in romance: women, achievement, and college culture(pp. 93-107). Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

Tishkoff, D. (2006). Madonna/whore: the myth of the two Marys. Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse.