Dear spas and salons offering special "deals"...

[This was originally posted in my other blog that I don't like very much, Dear You,.  Dear You, was supposed to serve as a place for open letters to society, fictional characters, history, ephemeral ideas, whatever and whomever I felt the need to write to.  Not giving it enough time and focus, it unfortunately became a rant blog.  Some of my entries are still in keeping with my ideas of what this blog is, so I'll repost them here.  I'll never edit, allowing the original intent to remain unspoiled. 

This note was published in September of 2012, and was the start of Dear You,.]



Whether you are offering your different prices as "sales", "specials", "limited time offers", or Groupons / Living Socials / other deal-of-the-day options, I'm talking to you. I love a lot of your services. I'm a huge fan of the occasional pamper, and I'd never say no to a well done massage. I would make pilgrimages to your wonderful stress free oases regularly if I could afford to.

That said, please start offering deals that are useful! I'm sure lots of people take you up on your special deal on a very specific and potentially dangerous new fad hair treatment. I know you "sell out" of your sales on a hot stone- aromatherapeutic-couples-teaching-(insert yogic term here) massage treatment. Obviously, it is a good business model for you. But just once, could you please offer x% off any treatment? Or, Buy one treatment get another free? I would kill to be able to afford a simple 60 or 90 minute swedish massage, a haircut, and a brow wax. Simple, basic, and no less relaxing than your specialty item that you can't get anyone to book.

Please, offer a basic sale. I would love to give you my money.

From,

Me

Don't put [me] down...

So, I've been doing a lot of thinking about equality and the female experience in a male driven world.

Yeah, me, and the rest of the internet liberal 20 somethings, I know.

But really, I've been doing some work that I hadn't been brave enough till now to inch towards, let alone actually engage in.  Looking at past decisions and situations and how I've stored them within myself and evaluating how I carry them with me has been a terrible, awful, no good, very bad monster lurking in my closet or under my bed or whatever other place monsters hide. Except in creepy wardrobes like that kid in "Night Terrors" who stores the real-to-him monsters he imagines and turns into dolls and then Amy's a doll and oh god creepy and everything is made of wood and the sonic screwdriver doesn't work on wood and yes, this kind of distracted thinking is why I've been able to avoid true self evaluation. But I'm doing it now.  And it's been hard, and will continue to be hard.  I'm finally putting a name to those "bad things" and finally processing.  I'm beginning to be able to understand what's triggering my anxiety, and how to work through it or around it. I'm starting to feel enough self-worth to be able to say "that's not okay."  I don't think I'd ever been able to say it before.

Part of what's helping is this wonderful facebook group that a friend of mine put together.  We post and comment on articles and other web based goodness about gender studies.  I haven't been saying a lot on the group wall, but I've read every single piece posted, and even found a youtuber that I'm now totally obsessed with.  I'm not a huge poster there, and I don't mean to become just a reposter here, even if my last few entries have been reposts. But, I really like this piece I want to talk about a little.

This is just another opinion piece in another blog on another popular blog service site.  But, I really liked what it had to say.  Yes, there are tons of people making the same point. And there are internet memes out there making fun of the Disney Princess dysfunctionality and everything it teaches young girls.  Sometimes, the "humour" of the ones listing "stockholm's syndrome", "compulsive lying", "necrophilia", etc. are so disarming when you look at it all at once like that, it's hard to really evaluate the concepts those posts are trying to bring to light. And of course, few articles talking about what we loved as children being "bad" actually point out that many of those stories aren't original, but come from the folk tales of fill in the blank cultural group.  But our society loves them so, and they really do inform our lives and basis for reality. 

I don't know how anyone, parent or otherwise, sitting down and telling me "you know this movie is make-believe, right?" would have changed my life.  I'm not sure that stubborn child me would have wanted to hear "it's okay to love something and still know it's not right in real life".  I'll never know, I can only guess.  But how wonderful would it be if that was the new norm?  If parents could articulate, "this is a great story with big problems if it were to really happen to you." The closest I think I've ever heard was "she's not a good role model for little girls. You can be more."  That's certainly the wrong message, isn't it?  It's not "she's not good enough" that worries me. It's "what she goes through is okay". It's "it's okay that society treats her like this and no one stops it". It's "there's nothing wrong with this". Granted, we hide it within magic carpets, witches, and extreme circumstance, but it's all still there.

It's a little scary to realize how hard wired this all is...

This universe just leaves me cold...

Earlier today, I posted an article with very little comment, because it made me so angry, I couldn't find my words. Firing a person in the arts due to their choice of production 8 months after it was approved clearly reeks of the "one angry patron/donor" situation, and that shit drives me crazy.  I was wordless because I felt like my words had already been said in so many ways, and don't feel constructive when they're laced with anger.

And then I read this article. (Warning- keep reading before clicking through.)

I find myself wordless again. I have so much frustration, sadness, and disgust, that I'm out of words.  I'm embarrassed to be among this version of humanity.  Of course, this article is really a shock article, designed to get a reaction from the audience, not really to share news.  If I did research, I'm sure I'd find a correlation between other shootings and the trend discussed in the article. Or the holidays being relevant. Or SAD playing a part.  Or half the people involved "had it coming".  Or something.  I'm sure that if I looked at the other side, I'm just a stupid liberal being sad.

But really, folks.  It doesn't matter what time of year it is, what holidays you do or do not celebrate, or what kind of day you had.  A lot of my friends are being "clever" on facebook and other social media and saying the world did end yesterday, and things are already so bad that we didn't notice it.  How is that being funny?  What if it's coming true? Stop hurting each other.  Stop creating a world that is so awful that our only commonality is disagreement. Stop turning this experience into a nightmare.

Please?

Omigod, really?

This teacher was fired in Ohio for producing a high school production of "Legally Blonde, The Musical" due to content and staging....

The school had produced "Grease" recently as well.

Which show's message would you rather teach?  Rising above to find your true self, or conformity brings happiness?

One short [year] in the emerald city...

So, every year for a while now, pantone tells us what the color of the year is. Most times, I mock it.  If you were to google "pantone color of the year" right now, links would fill the left side of your screen, and a big block of 2012's "Tangerine Tango" will pop up on the right.  And it certainly does pop! But this coming year, the new color of the moment is.... emerald!  It's the first green in this series of "colors of the year"(which as far as I can tell started in 2000), and near to my favorite shade of the stuff! 

Maybe now it won't be so hard to find things I want in not lime green or hunter...

How much better could this be in a pure jewel tone, or kelly green?

For more about why emerald is awesome, click for the short attention span Washington post write up (with a pretty cool dress featured), or the pantone official version.

And now, links to some of my favorite green things that exist on the internet, but are never around when I go looking for them in person. Because the photo option won't work on this computer, for whatever reason...

Sparkly shoes

Velvet shoes!

Corduroy jacket

I'm sure it will be a year of being frustrated by the series of options out there, as usual.  I'll probably still see plenty of "uuugggh, why did they combine it with THAT color?".  But knowing that there will even be any more emerald out there makes me incredibly happy.