FemiKnitsm

This is an article I wrote as my final project for my magazine writing class.

A woman in her 20s gets on the subway and takes a seat. She has a short, trendy haircut and a pierced eyebrow. When she settles into her seat, she takes out needles and yarn and begins knitting. Several of the other passengers on this uptown train watch her with interest, their eyes bouncing from her knitting needles to her facial piercing.

For a lot of people, the word “knitter” conjures up the image of a gray-haired old lady – possibly their grandmother – making some hideous sweater or lumpy afghan to give away for Christmas. Or maybe it’s the oppressed 1950’s housewife, in her pearls and hoop skirt, knitting socks for her family to distract herself from her domestic boredom.

That may have been the case at some point, but those stereotypes hardly ring true anymore. It might seem unusual to picture a twenty-something woman with Kool-Aid dyed hair and tattoos picking up a set of needles and making a sweater, but today, women and men of all ages and walks of life enjoy domestic crafts like knitting, sewing and baking.

A new generation has taken on an ages-old craft, bringing with it all of its beliefs and technologies. The cliché attached to domestic hobbies has been abandoned and replaced with younger, fresher ideas and manifestations. Ravelry.com, a knitting and crocheting website known to members as “MySpace for knitters,” has over 230,000 members. Kelley Deal of the Breeders has written her own pattern book, Bags that Rock, and Debbie Stoller, Editor-in-Chief of the feminist magazine Bust wrote the Stitch N Bitch books. The knit and crochet books are immensely popular; the first one sold over 200,000 copies within six months of its release. There are also books about “punk knitting” as well as the title DomiKNITrix by Jennifer Stafford.

Many of the women and men engaging in these activities identify themselves as feminists. During the second wave of feminism in the 1960s, which was characterized by the attempt to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the popularity of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and, most famously and controversially, the Roe v. Wade decision, many well-known activists denounced these domestic arts. They saw cooking, sewing and knitting as ways to trap women indoors and keep them from leaving their kitchens in pursuit of jobs and liberation.

Today it’s not uncommon to see feminists, the same people who will picket for reproductive rights, rail against objectification and fight against deep-rooted gender stereotypes, enjoying these activities. Ravelry boasts groups dedicated to magazines like Bust and Bitch as well as general feminist groups. Searching Ravelry for “feminist” and “feminism” will turn up about 20 different groups, the largest of which, “This is What a Feminist Knits Like,” has over 2000 members.

Feminists have gone from denouncing and avoiding these crafts to embracing them. They have taken activities formerly cast aside as “woman’s work” and turned them into hobbies, occupations and even forms of liberation.

“I definitely love that women are reclaiming the work that was once used as oppression. By taking the power into her own hands and knitting for her own reasons, a woman is subverting the authority of yore,” Jess Hicks, a Ravelry member, said. “I believe that many women have decided that they should be able to enjoy any activity they wish. Reclaiming the agency to craft has empowered many women.”

Maybe second-wave feminists were crazy to completely denounce crafts as patriarchal. After all, isn’t choosing an activity purely for your own enjoyment the most liberating decision of all? Many believe that one of the fundamental purposes of feminism is to allow women the freedom to make their own choices in regard to career, sexuality, lifestyle and, in this case, hobby.

One could argue that society has mandated certain ideologies during different eras; that second-wavers had the right idea for the time they were living in.

As Ravelry member Henofthewoods pointed out, “Early Feminists were not dealing with a world at all like what we deal with. Sometimes their positions were extreme to the point that we look now and they seem silly, but in context they were doing the best they could to remake the world.”

Perhaps in order to get to the point where women could choose these activities, the very ones that kept them tethered to their living rooms, as hobbies they first had to distance themselves from them completely. In that era, it may have done an actual disservice to feminism to sew or bake for fun; women had to prove the world would continue to turn if they avoided domestic activities before they could return to using them for enjoyment instead of work. These hobbies had to disappear before they could have their comeback.

“I only knit when I want to, and if I don't feel like cooking, my husband doesn't think less of me. I think we had to go through a period where it wasn't OK to enjoy knitting or cooking before it was OK for us to like to do it, when we want to, again,” said Stephanie, a law student who identified herself as a feminist knitter.

Ravelry member Catmadknitter pointed out that the difference is between enjoying these activities and being forced into them. “’Stick to your knitting’ is a nice way to say ‘sit down and shut up’ after all,” she pointed out. “[Second wave feminists] were trying to break a stereotype. If you view knitting, crafts, etc, as something you do because you have a second X [chromosome], then yes, it would be distasteful.”

Some think that the older generation of feminists got it wrong by distancing themselves from the domestic side. Jessica Dillard-Wright cites privilege as a catalyst for what she sees as an odious mistake.

“Why condemn women who choose to stay home, who knit, who teach, who find satisfaction in their children? That is no better than they who condemn working women for occupying themselves outside the home, which, I’m sure we can agree, is highly antifeminist,” she said. “Hobbies don’t determine feminism, politics do.”

Dillard-Wright doesn’t believe that the recent popularity of domestic hobbies should be treated as reclamation of the crafts. “To suppose reclaiming knitting is a radical act is to undermine the significance of knitting and the women who knit in the past,” she said. “It elides some of the very important, day-to-day contributions of women in history.” She feels that crafts will always be popular to some extent because of the quality of handmade goods as well as the common ideas of punk and DIY that never fully die out.

Of course, breaking down a cliché will always bring some criticism, as Henofthewoods discovered. “I have had a boss tell me never to knit in public again if I want to be taken seriously,” she said. “I really wanted to hit him.”

Mike T. has, on a smaller scale, gained a new appreciation for early feminists because of how he is treated as a male knitter. “Any man who knits in public and has gotten stares has gotten a hint of what it must have been like to have been one of the first women in a factory, in medical school or voting,” he said. It may be a very small hint, but such discomfort has helped men like him take feminism more seriously.

Ataralas is a male member of the feminist website Feministing.com who learned to knit in college. Several women in his dorm were learning and piqued his interest in the craft. He has also experienced gender-related backlash for his hobby.

“I think knitting has increased my vehemence for feminism, particularly as I move in knitting spaces. The crap way I've been treated at some yarn stores for being a dude who knits has really opened my eyes to being able to look for the same behaviors towards women in other establishments,” he said, citing computer stores as an example.
Unconcerned with the usual gender stereotypes, he added, “I like to knit because when I'm done, I have something I want, like a sweater or socks.”

Another young feminist, Caitlin, likes to use her knitting to force people to re-evaluate their own preconceptions. “I love knitting in public because it confuses people. I’m gay and feminist and smart and I’m knitting, and people just can’t reconcile those things. I love when I force people to rethink things even a little bit,” she said.

Catmadknitter was born into a family that enjoys similar results. “My mother gleefully sat at the front of the ERA folk knitting away in the 1970s and early 80s. She liked the ‘The militant lesbian is knitting clothes?’ reaction,” she said.

Caitlin also enjoys the connection it provides with older generations. “Older women get really excited about it and start asking what I’m knitting and ‘ooh that’s nice wool’ and they get to connect and feel down with the kids for a bit and I love that.”

Crafts, like many other hobbies, offer their participants more than most anticipate when they first embark upon them. For many young domestic crafters, their hobby has introduced them to friends and fostered a new community to meet like-minded people. Sometimes this has the simple benefit of broader social horizons; sometimes it results in more than that.

“I have met so many amazing feminists throughout my undergraduate and graduate school careers who knit. Each woman does so for different reasons, but they all wish to subvert authority and create their own unique, handmade garments. Overall, knitting has made my life immensely richer – and my body immensely warmer,” Hicks said.

The friends that Henofthewoods made through her crafts helped her through a rough patch. “I needed to gather strength to make some changes in my marriage. Just knowing that I have some friends who don’t have to go back to being his friend too helps me be more open about my feelings about him. Not that feminism equals throwing his sorry ass out, it’s just that I needed some support before I could really decide that I would be OK on my own,” she said.

Stephanie (who asked to have her last name withheld) had a unique take on the traditional knitting circle.

“I used to host a group called Porn and Knitting; we'd knit and watch porn, obviously,” she said. “No one was actually turned on by the porn. Mostly we'd Mystery Science Theater 3000 it or make some bullshit fake postmodern critical commentary on the whole thing.” Stephanie added that the group was fairly evenly mixed between men and women as well as gay and straight.

“If that isn't a moderately ironic take on the whole situation, then I don't know.”

(incidentally, I got an A-)

Column, repurposed to be a Columbia Essay

My taste in music has changed a lot recently. Maybe I’ve mellowed out with age or I’ve just been exposed to new things, but I find myself less and less interested in many of the bands I listened to just a few months ago. As someone who used to identify strongly with a very specific genre, the realization that my interest in it is waning was initially disheartening, but fortunately I’ve come to realize the benefits.

Growing up, I was exposed to primarily classic and hard rock. I remember a robust supply of ‘80s hair bands (on cassette) around the house and car when I was a kid. I’m sure that had a lot to do with my interests later in life. It evolved as I got older and, of course, when I got to my teenage years I rebelled and branched out from what I had been raised on. Not being one to settle for what everyone else was doing, I discovered punk rock, and it managed to stick with me ever since.

It’s amazing how much of your life can be dictated by the kind of music you listen to, especially at that age. I now say I don’t like when people adopt a lifestyle based on a type of music, but back then it was inevitable and probably beneficial. I don’t remember the order in which it happened, but somewhere along the line I adopted a new style of clothing, new friends and pink hair. This is incongruent with my current philosophy but at the time it worked out well, giving me somewhere to fit in outside of wind ensemble.

Incidentally, the conflict between punk and wind ensemble only appeared once. The director tried to convince me I wouldn’t be allowed to attend a competition because he thought my orange hair would be a distraction to judges. Performing without a flute soloist is infinitely more distracting than performing with an orange-haired one, so ultimately I was allowed onstage even with my Kool-Aid head. At the time it felt like a victory for rebellion.

In the years since I left high school, a lot about me has changed, as it tends to do, but until recently my musical choices stayed relatively consistent.

In the five years between high school and moving to Brooklyn I lived in Georgia. While there, I lost a huge part of my sense of self. Seemingly everything about me - my political views, the way I talked, even my clothes - was farther outside of the norm than I had ever been. I lost touch with a lot of things but my music never changed, especially when I was driving alone.

When I moved to New York I didn’t know anyone, and it made me feel like I could actually be myself - whoever that was. That led to slow changes in several aspects of my life but my musical preferences still remained the same as they had been for years. I assumed that meant this was right.

What amazed me was when my taste, which had been so solid for years, began to shift. I began to be unimpressed by some of the bands that used to move me. What drew me in now was softer, more complex and seemingly not me. While this was far from a crisis of identity it was both unsettling and interesting to realize it was happening.

A lot of things have changed about me lately and maybe this is just a manifestation of that. Maybe it’s the result of that – being more knowledgeable and comfortable with who I am as a person has allowed me to stop feeling like I need a genre of music to identify myself. Maybe it’s because the Sirius punk station is off limits at work, so I substituted indie rock as the next best thing and actually liked it. Maybe it’s age or maturity.

Branching out is good. I was probably closing myself off for all those years and have moved on. Besides, a more varied taste means more opportunities for new artists, albums and concerts. I’ve seen some seemingly incompatible bands live recently, taking in a punk show one night and a folk-rock concert a week later. There was a time I would have scoffed at the idea.

I’m happy to have widened my musical viewpoint. There is only one drawback. My music collection is now larger than my iPod.

Love it.

It's the nature of hearts to break. It's in their job description. When a heart is doing what it's supposed to be doing, it holds nothing back. And sometimes it gets broken.

De aqui.

Note: Dead chicks aren't sexy

Guh.

There's a part of my that wants to take up a career as a photog doing only pictures of dead-looking dudes.

But I won't. Why? Oh wait, because I'm not a complete tool.

Jewelry

What Have You Done Now, Oprah Winfrey?

(published in Seawanhaka 12/11/08)

It’s no secret that this culture is obsessed with weight. We live in a world that has decided there’s nothing wrong with plastering the un-airbrushed version of a (usually) female celebrity on magazine covers and declaring that the two dimples on her narrow thigh make her some kind of failure. We watch Jay Leno every night as he makes biting “jokes” about how fat we are as a nation, even though similarly toned comments about gender, race or sexuality would get him banned from TV.

And we do it under the guise of health, because that’s supposed to make it OK to be rude. It doesn’t.

This week, Oprah Winfrey revealed that she has gone off her diet and gained back 40 pounds, putting her current weight near 200.

This number is supposed to be shocking. After all, it’s the same weight that Wyclef Jean determined was too high to be allowed on his stage.

That number has a serious stigma attached to it, but really, it’s not a big deal.

What’s funny is how Oprah, in her own special way, has in the same article talked about being ashamed of the number on the scale and said that her concern is no longer about numbers, but health.

That’s quite a pickle, isn’t it?

It would be great if Oprah could keep to the second half of that and actually make her struggles about health. Maybe if she used her immense popularity and influence to turn focus, more people would follow suit. Look at how her stamp of approval affects sales for books and her favorite things. Maybe she could do the same for an ideology.

See, there’s this concept out there that may seem revolutionary to some. Really, though, it’s one of the most logical thoughts in existence. It’s called “health at every size,” frequently referred to as HAES.

The basic concept is that people should take care of themselves, eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly, but they should do it to remain healthy instead of to lose weight. Living well like this means you will be healthy even if you don’t lose an ounce.

Scared?

In a world that celebrates disordered eating, promotes the waifs of 90210 as normal teenagers and teaches women to respond to every roadblock, from job loss to romantic rejection, with “maybe I’m too fat,” this idea is pretty controversial.

The diet industry makes billions of dollars a year. Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers would be strongly opposed to HAES, which means that following it is probably a good idea.

Maybe the Wii Fit would have to remove BMI from its progress tracker, which means Nintendo would sell at least one more unit that isn’t being purchased because of their use of that archaic system. The very same one that told a 13-year-old athlete that she was “obese” and made her Mii avatar swell up like a balloon.

AlterNet recently published an article about weight. It covered a 2007 documentary called Fat: What No One is Telling You, originally from PBS. This film follows several individuals in their weight struggles, including a comedienne who exercises three hours a day, an overweight couple that gets in shape in order to conceive and an 18-year-old young man who undergoes gastric bypass surgery.

In its online form, Fat has 11 segments that range from roughly five to twelve minutes in length. Exactly one of those, which is roughly eight minutes long, even mentions HAES. The other 10 are more concerned with discussing the so-called epidemic of obesity and classifying it as a disease.

Kate Harding, founder of the body image and size acceptance blog Shapely Prose, always has a great reaction to this sort of thing: “OMGOBESITYEPIDEMICBOOGABOOGA!” That pretty much sums it up. The PBS documentary isn’t as bad as some other sources, but it does seem to try and scare viewers into thinking of their weight as a disease or a problem to be solved as opposed to a workable part of their life.

That’s really too bad, because AlterNet’s article made the film seem different. It sounded as though it would try to address the actual medical or genetic reasons why some people keep weight on no matter what while others never gain it, regardless of diet and activity. It seemed like it was going to address why some doctors are apt to treat their obese patients differently or blame more medical problems on weight than necessary.

All of that was in there, but it was packed into that same eight-minute segment. The rest of the film felt more like a chronicle of the trials of a handful of fat people than a provider of significant medical information.

This is why Oprah should embrace HAES. First off, she would personally benefit by being healthier than she probably is by shifting from yo-yo dieting to a healthy lifestyle. Plus, she would make the concept much less alien to most of the country. Maybe this would put a dent in what is an incredible fear of fat held by so many.

Many lesser-known sources have already embraced this concept with a fairly vast and fiercely loyal following. Blogging is a fantastic outlet for these ideas. While it isn’t easy to tally exactly how many readers a blog has, there are ways to gauge its popularity. Shapely Prose, for example, regularly sees more than 100 comments on individual entries and recently had to broaden its horizons. Last week the site launched its own social network via Ning, which allows anyone to start a free community. Since its inception the network has welcomed over 500 members.

Now it’s more than a blog, it’s a community, which sounds cheesy but is very important to those involved. Instead of simply reading the opinions of the three Shapely Prose bloggers and commenting related to their entries, members, or “Shapelings” as they are called, have control. Discussions on their forums range from health issues to fashion, exercise tips to dating woes. Without having to constantly remind others that yes, fat women both exercise and date.

Really, the only thing members can count on having in common is a lack of conformity to what we’ve been told is the right way to look and a determination to be unashamed of it. While there is a trend toward a liberal feminist bent on this site, members bring different views, are different ages and come from all over the world. One might be able to call it Facebook for Fatties, except having one common bond provides a closeness and supportiveness that might not exist on a more general site.

With a group of people who trade so many kinds of tips and offer each other so much virtual support, how is it really convincing to refer to them as “unhealthy?” There are probably people reading this who are still convinced that the very act of being fat is dangerous. Now is probably a good time to direct them to the original Shapely Prose blog (www.kateharding.net). Aside from simply reading the site for general educational purposes, there is one specific entry to find called “Don’t You Realize Fat is Unhealthy?” It has its own tab at the top of the page and brilliantly rebuts every point that can be made under the umbrella of that question.

Getting back to Oprah, this topic would make for at least a few interesting episodes of her show. Between the very concept of HAES, her own struggle to accept that lifestyle (if she truly does) and all the resources for it and opinions on it, she could tackle it from several different angles.

And if she needs any “regular people” to talk to, I’m right here. I have Skype, though I’d also gladly accept a free trip to Chicago.

And the Nominees Are...

Article on the Grammys, published in Seawanhaka, 12/11/08

The Grammy nominations are in. As usual, a few artists dominate the most sought-after categories. This year those artists include Lil’ Wayne and Coldplay.

Lil’ Wayne managed to grab eight nominations, including Album of the Year and Best Rap Album for Tha Carter III, Best Rap Song for “Lollipop” and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for “Got Money” (with T-Pain).

Coldplay didn’t trail far behind with their seven Grammy nods. A few of the myriad categories they compete in include Record of the Year and Song of the Year for “Viva La Vida,” plus Album of the Year and Best Rock Album for Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. The two leaders of the nominations will face each other along with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Ne-Yo and Radiohead for Album of the Year.

Radiohead’s In Rainbows also got seven nominations. Coldplay and Radiohead face each other three times, for Album of the Year (Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends against In Rainbows) as well as Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song (“Violet Hill” against “House of Cards”). In addition, “House of Cards” is nominated for Best Short Form Video. In Rainbows is up for Best Alternative Music Album and earned nominations for producer Nigel Godman and art directors Stanley Donwood, Mel Maxwell and Xian Munro.

Metallica’s newest release, Death Magnetic, earned the group a few nods including Best Rock Album (against Coldplay, Kid Rock, Kings of Leon and the Raconteurs). They are also up for Best Metal Performance, which the group has won five times in the past following their controversial loss to Jethro Tull in 1989, before Metal and Hard Rock were separated into two categories.

The awards are not without controversy this year. Just last week, guitarist Joe Satriani filed suit claiming Coldplay had stolen portions of his song “If I Could Fly” for their heavily nominated hit “Viva La Vida.” YouTube users have been circulating a video that overlaps “Viva La Vida” and “If I Could Fly” in order to show the similarities.

While in the past Coldplay has owned up to heavy influence form other artists – legally sampling from Kraftwerk, paying homage to Kate Bush’s drums and borrowing most of their aesthetic from Radiohead – the band maintains their innocence in this case.

Satriani isn’t alone in his accusations. The Creaky Boards, a New York indie band, already accused Coldplay of borrowing from their “The Songs I Didn’t Write” for “Viva La Vida” after seeing Chris Martin at one of their shows.

Neil McCormick, a blogger for the Telegraph in the UK, also posted a 2003 video from French singer Alizee in which the background strings on her song “Jen Ai Marre” bear resemblence to those on “Viva La Vida.”

Coldplay’s hit Grammy-nominated song has been accused of plagiarizing three separate parts – Satriani’s guitar, vocal melody from the Creaky Boards and Alizee’s background strings - though only Satriani has taken legal action. Is it possible that all of these artists just happened to use a common key and chord progression? Have mainstream rock and pop become so mundane and unoriginal that there are simply no new riffs? Or is there something more sinister behind “Viva La Vida?”

Slicing Up Eyeballs I Want You To Know

Sorry, I have "Debaser" in my head.

Anyhoo, I've decided that I'm some sort of budding graphic designer. And my work is all here. You can even order it as prints. Hint, hint.