Armchair Activism

I've been signing petitions on Change.org for a while now -- at first I wasn't convinced it could possibly make a difference, but their Victories page says otherwise. If nothing else, I find out about things I care about but would rarely hear about.

Well, I read about Old Navy's new line of Pride shirts on afterellen.com a few days ago, and then I came across this article today, and I got a little frustrated. Apparently, gay pride is only marketable in 26 stores out of Old Navy's 1000+ locations in the U.S. Apparently, my identity and equality are commodities that are only a safe economic bet among less than 3% of Old Navy's customers, and they couldn't even extend the line's availability to their online store. Personally, I find this offensive.

So I decided to take my armchair activism up a notch and actually write my own petition. If I've done it right, it will arrive in the email inbox, not only of Old Navy's customer service department, but of the CEO of Gap Inc., which owns Old Navy. I didn't want to be obnoxious and email-blast my friends (clearly I have no such compunctions about the owners of Gap and Old Navy), but if you have a second and would like to sign, it would be much appreciated. You can sign below, or find the petition here.

Change.org|Start an Online Petition »

Cross-posted from my Livejournal.

Stuff French People Like

• IKEA. In a serious way. A new one opened in Tours a few days ago - an hour and a bit away from Poitiers - and I decided to go with my host parents on Monday morning, because I've never actually been to an IKEA. It was less like a shopping center and more like some bizarre home-decorating-themed amusement park. It was absolutely massive, and absolutely packed. There were probably 20 cash registers, and each one had an hour-long wait. At the café upstairs, equally massive lines. Even at the mini-café/fast food counter downstairs, Bruno must have waited 20 minutes for our sandwiches (still beating Brenda, of course, who was stuck in the check-out line). Fast food is quite the novelty for French people. They have McDonald's (which is not cheap here; also, they sell beer - ah, cultural differences) and a chain called Quick, but that's literally about it. IKEA's version is set up very much like an American fast food restaurant, with self-serve soda fountains - something that is practically unheard of over here. The soda is all off-brand, and the food is along the lines of McDonald's, but people were flocking to it like mad.
• The dining experience. Not just the food, but the rituals that go with it. Sit-down family dinners are a fact of life; we always set the table (no serving from the stove or fetching your own dishes); someone (usually Brenda) always dishes everyone's plates. And there is always, always cheese after dinner. When we were in Sarlat last weekend at the antique market, the vendors had brought their lunches with them, but there was none of the sandwiches and paper plates business that would have showed up at an American incarnation of this sort of affair. They had folding tables (some of them had brought tablecloths), real dishes and cutlery, wine glasses and bottles of wine. Ice chests held entire pork roasts and salads. And obviously you can't forget the baguettes. A lot of stereotypes of French culture that I'd read about have turned out to be outmoded, possibly by several centuries, but this one hasn't changed - the French are serious about eating.

Those who cannot write, translate.

Due to the interesting scheduling habits of the university, all four of my translation classes meet on Monday and Tuesday, which is fine and all except for the part where I have three translations due at the beginning of every week. Ah well. Today we looked at the extract of Toni Morisson's Song of Solomon we had to do over the weekend, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I'd made a lot of the same choices as the native French speakers in the class. (Today's the day to get a bit of a morale boost before M. Fryd's class tomorrow, in which I will undoubtedly discover that I can't speak or write French.) I spent most of the class period wishing that everyone but the ten or so of us who actually cared would just go away (I haven't seen a teacher have that much trouble keeping a class quiet since the year I read to the kindergarten class every week), but the professor had some interesting insights (including one spot where she'd actually understood the English better than several of us anglophones...that was slightly embarrassing). After class, I checked out a copy of Le chant de Salomon from the university library, and discovered that the translator had rendered most things the same way we had in class; in some cases I even think we did a better job. So, yay for us.

In between classes, I went into town with Elizabeth to attempt to pick up the books we'd ordered for our literature class. First the bookstore was closed over lunch (only on Mondays - I'd understand if it were everyday, but what about Monday particularly necessitates a long lunch break?), and when we returned, the saleswoman told us one of the books was indefinitely unobtainable; no, she didn't really know anything, would we please hurry up and go away. So that was frustrating. In the interim I tried to procure makeup, having had a clumsy moment with my powder that ended with it everywhere except in its container, but a) the color Matte Ivory doesn't exist in France and b) when the saleswoman found another color that would work for me, it was out of stock. Today hasn't been my day for shopping.

My second translation class (French to English) was predictably frustrating, since the professor and I do not speak the same version of the English language. It's doubly frustrating because she will commend all sorts of approximate, even verging on ridiculous, translations from the French students, but she has no problem shooting down reasonable suggestions from the anglophones in the class if they don't match her specific idea. "Approximate" is probably the best way to describe her style of translation. Given that, it's fortunate she doesn't have us tackling canonical French literature the way my other professor is going after serious English/American stuff (Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Garrison Keillor...oh wait). Instead, we've been translating excerpts of murder mysteries and newspaper articles, though I disagree strongly with some of her pronouncements about journalistic style. Can you tell I'm really a fan of this professor? I'd like to poll the audience: is "a pressure cooker ready to explode at any moment" a legitimate metaphor for a tense situation (think riots, racial conflict, etc.)?

I don't mean to give you the wrong impression; despite wanting to engage this professor in argument after every sentence, I think I'm learning a lot from the class, probably exactly because I disagree with her so much. I'm also learning how to keep my mouth shut and carry out these arguments in my head. I'm coming to the conclusion that translation is something I really could enjoy as a career.

La samba des jours avec toi

Time for another "brief" resume...er, no, that's not actually the word in English...what am I trying to say? Summary. While I wouldn't say my French is improving in leaps and bounds, I'm definitely getting worse at English, for whatever that's worth.

Friday: First day of class for "Religion, pouvoir et société en France: XVI, XVII, XVIII siècle." We spent most of the (three hour) class covering the basics of Christianity, by which our professor actually meant Catholicism. As in, "to be a good Christian, you must believe in the edicts of the Pope and the councils, which are comprised of representatives of all Christian priests." Um, right, about those Protestants and Orthodox churches...Still, he's an interesting lecturer (for which I am excessively grateful, given the length of the class period) and I think it's going to be a really good class. It's also quite comforting to have other Middkids in the room. Also the first class for "Histoire de littérature du Moyen Age," which...isn't as interesting as it sounds, so far. The professor printed out the notes for us, and then pretty much read them aloud for the hour and a half class. At least it won't be much work. Thanks to the foibles of the bus system, I had a few hours after that class finished before any prospect of getting back to Mignaloux would present itself, so I headed into downtown. My jeans have been getting a bit loose, so I figured the obvious solution was to eat more pastries and hence bought an extremely tasty and beautiful strawberry tart, which I consumed in the sun in the Place Charles de Gaulle. Just in case that didn't work, I went to Monoprix and bought a belt.

Saturday: Into town a bit early so I could peruse the market in front of Notre Dame by myself before meeting the rest of the group. This is a serious market. You can (and people obviously do) buy all your groceries for the week there. The dead chickens (with head and feet attached) disturb me, the bread makes me drool, and the flowers are a constant temptation. Fortunately, I know they couldn't survive a day of wandering around with me, so my pocketbook is safe. I did indulge in fresh raspberries and a baguette (I refrained from the amazing and huge donut-shaped loaf of bread). Then I met some other Middkids plus Jeanne, a former Middlebury French T.A. and Poitiers native, and we had a picnic (I tried pâté - and didn't like it at all - but was fairly proud of myself for being brave) before heading off to see a few things for the Journées de Patrimoine, i.e. "all those cool buildings they don't normally open to the public are on view this weekend." The things we visited weren't really what I had in mind, but we did see a pretty nifty little chapel absolutely covered in wood carvings, the inside of a nunnery (disappointingly modern - turns out it's also a retirement home, run by the nuns), and the Baptistère St. Jean, which before it was a baptistry was a Roman villa, and after it stopped being a baptistry was a workshop for a bell-maker who used the baptismal pool for casting. There are some neat frescos on the walls. I thought about striking off on my own after the group disbanded, but I'd had enough walking so instead headed home, where Christelle and I were abandoned by the rest of the family, who had various things to do. We foraged for dinner and ended up making a salad with grapefruit and corn (such obvious things as tomatoes being lacking), and I was told off for not being familiar with Moby (a singer, apparently?). It was really quite a nice evening.

Sunday: Church as usual - it's getting harder to understand the American pastor as I get more acclimated to hearing actual French people speak French. Also, the really weird non-liturgical communion thing is getting old. This coming Saturday night I'm planning on checking out mass at the Catholic church in Mignaloux (never mind that I can't take communion there at all). Afterwards, Christelle and I were supposed to pick up Brenda from the friend's house where she'd stayed the night, but were instead invited to join them for lunch. It turned out to be a whole crowd of British people, two of whom own this gorgeous and huge property that they've turned into a sort of auberge thing, the rest of whom were just down for the weekend (would that I had that much money). They were practically caricatures of themselves, gossiping about the royal family, discussing football, and saying "tremendous" every other word. It was quite charming. The oyster I choked down to be polite was not so charming. Followed by seafood pie, which I also ate (not wanting to be a stupid American is making me very adventurous). At that point one of the British guys started quizzing me on American politics, making it very clear that he was very right-wing, but also much better informed than me, so I mostly made polite, noncommital hem-hemming noises. It was awkward. The afternoon was passed working on my English-to-French translation homework, which was truly evil - obviously chosen for all the descriptive language, whose plethora of English synonyms boil down to three or four French words. And then dinner with my family, which was...seafood casserole, and whole miniature lobster things. Christelle had to crack mine open for me, as I had no clue what I was doing. I nearly chickened out, but I peeled off its little claw-foot-things and ate it mostly without shuddering. But really, I almost had a heart attack when Brenda took the lid off the casserole dish.

Today: I'm starting to get acclimated to this early morning thing, though I wouldn't say I enjoy it per se. I went to second-year translation this morning (my first time, having missed it last week), and it would have been excellent if the students would just stop muttering all the time. I could barely understand the professor or the person reading their translation. My third-year translation class this afternoon was about half the size and therefore didn't have that problem, but my professor drives me a bit nuts. She's English, and we clearly don't speak the same version of the language. I'll translate the French in a way that sounds perfectly natural to an American, and she'll look at me like I have three heads before giving me a brusque "no" and telling the class the only right way to translate it (her way, obviously). It's a pity, because French-to-English is the side of translation I actually want to be able to discuss in depth and talk about nuance and interpretation and such. Oh well. In between my classes (a space of five and a half hours - quite long, but not long enough to make going home worth it), I went to the library (which is dead quiet and full of silent, studious people, quite a contrast to the section of the Midd library I'm used to working on) to read more of my Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil. I probably covered 80 pages in the space of several hours' concentrated reading. So, you know, only 500 more to go. I might make it by the end of the semester. Upon getting home, therefore, I did the responsible thing and watched a James Bond movie. My host family has the complete collection, and I've only ever seen the most recent, so I watched GoldenEye. It was pretty excellent, in a cheesy action movie sort of way. I have a feeling I will be taking further advantage of their DVD collection. Although I had to change the region settings on my laptop in order to watch it, which I'm slightly displeased about as apparently you can only do so five times (which seems quite arbitrary). Oh well.

And now, having caught up with myself, I am going to head to bed. I really want my 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. sleep schedule back.

Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre de la France

Yesterday was a bit of a red letter day in that I spent more time enjoying myself than not. In other words: hurray.

My first class was called "Littérature et histoire: représentations de l'Amérique." I was hoping it would count for CMP credit (comparative cultures - i.e. other cultures with North America, because clearly we're the only people who count) at Midd, but it turns out the class is based around a book called Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil. The spelling is funny because it was written in the mid-1500s by a guy by the name of Jean de Léry, French Protestant missionary and explorer of the area around present-day Rio de Janeiro, which the French briefly colonized before being routed by the Portuguese. I think it's going to be a really interesting class, though the book is 600 pages of 16th-century French, which isn't hard to decipher, it just doesn't go nearly as quickly as normal French. Even cooler, Jean de Léry had a contemporary named André Thevet who was a Catholic missionary (so even though they were there at the same time, they didn't do much interacting - the Catholics had the island, the Protestants the mainland) who also wrote a book, of which there's a copy of the original printing in the Médiathèque François Mitterand here in Poitiers. So anyway. I'm going to spend a semester learning about cannibals and French missionaries. Fun stuff.

After a rather tasty pizza (which doesn't much resemble American pizza) at the cafeteria, I proceeded to "Théorie des genres et poétiques comparées: la mimèsis," which would have been not at all what I was expecting, except that I had no idea what to expect. Mimesis, for those who (like me) have forgotten all the technical terms they learned in lit class, is "representation or imitation of the real world in art and literature." We mostly read excerpts of Plato and Aristotle and talked about how Plato thinks mimesis is bad (one step further removed from the ideal) and Aristotle thinks it's normal (representation is how we give meaning to the world). It was more philosophy than literature, but quite interesting. We'll see how that goes.

I then ventured into town to look for books for my classes. There's nothing like the Midd bookstore (I actually miss it, even with its exorbitant prices; at least everything is laid out in an orderly fashion), more along the lines of Barnes & Noble crammed into four or five very small floors with amazingly inadequate signage. I did not spend €60 (nearly $90) on the recommended dictionary for my translation classes, going instead with the €20 variety (what's 100,000 words either way? If I need more I'll go to the library). I did purchase Bescherelle: la conjugaison pour tous, which is a magnificent little book that makes my nerdy heart glow. The first section is devoted to 88 tables with paradigms for every possible category of verb. The second section is all about the grammar of the verb, proper usage, etc. The third section is an exhaustive alphabetical list of every French verb in existence, with numbers to refer you to the appropriate paradigm for conjugation. And it's small and red and shiny and the charts are color-coded and I'm pretty much in love. I found the book about Brazil with no problem, but had significantly more issues with the books for my comparative literature class, La Locandiera (Italian) and Minna von Barnhelm (German), both in bilingual French/original editions. One bookstore told me they might be in Monday (our professor swears she ordered them at the beginning of the summer); the other told me they didn't think those editions were still in print. At that point I gave up and decided to go to the library.

Never having used a French library and having no idea how the cataloging system worked, I went straight to the computer to search, and miraculously found both books in the appropriate editions and available in the library I was in (not a given - there are university libraries scattered throughout the city by subject). So I went to a librarian to ask for help finding them, and was redirected to a pile of small yellow forms, told to fill one out for each book I wanted, and present them to the librarians at the long counter labeled magasins (stores). I did so, they went off to search, and came back 10 minutes later with the books I wanted (there was apparently some issue finding La Locandiera). Apparently they do not trust mere readers to navigate a library. I'm curious as to how they decide what goes in magasins and what in the big room full of books I saw through the door to my right. Oh well. I finished La Locandiera today and very much enjoyed it, though having the Italian and French side by side kept getting me sidetracked on suspicious translation choices.

In the evening I went to a Bible study group that Christelle is a member of, called GBU (Groupe Biblique Universitaire), which, as it turns out, is part of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, to which InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (the student group at Midd) belongs. Small world. Anyway, it was interesting. The point of the group is to be somewhat more academic than religious, making study of the Bible open to people of any or no faith, so there was no praying or singing or anything like that. Students in the group take turns presenting studies on shortish Bible passages; I wasn't overly impressed with the first one -- I thought everything they said was fairly self-evident -- but it's a good theory and I hope some interesting things will come out of it. If nothing else, I'll learn quite a lot of vocabulary specific to religious stuff.

After the meeting, we ate at one of the University Restaurants (or RestoU's), where we had galettes and crepes and sparkling cider (which, as it turns out, is alcoholic in France -- surprise surprise). There were a lot of jokes told, some of which I got and most of which I didn't. Humor and plays on words will probably be one of the last things I conquer. Still, it was fun, and everyone was very friendly and only a little mocking about having to explain everything twice for the American.

Today was spent trying to make a dent in the letters I owe people, which was only vaguely successful (turns out writing letters takes a long time, which wasn't an issue over the summer when I had lots of time), finishing La Locandiera, going to the post office, and working on one of the three translations I have due next week. I love translation so much. I think I'm spending way more time on it than is strictly necessary to do well in the courses, but whatever, I'm learning and having fun. I was surprised this afternoon when Bruno came home at an uncustomary hour with a friend of Brenda's in tow - he speaks no English, she speaks no French. I got some impromptu practice at interpretation, which was pretty cool. Brenda grew up in Zimbabwe, as did her friend Susan, who now lives in England. Tonight at dinner (which was pretty amazing and ended with chocolate soufflés) they told stories about childhood in Zimbabwe, their high school classmates who died in the army (mandatory conscriptions, such a scary thing), what it's like going back now. I was trying desperately to remember enough from my history of Africa class to put it in perspective, but mostly what I could summon up was that Robert Mugabe was/is pretty much a lunatic (now that I'm reading the Wikipedia article, I remember there were a lot of acronyms involved: ZAPU, ZANU, etc. -- what Susan and Brenda were calling the Bush War we learned about as the Second Chimurenga). It was really weird realizing that I was getting more or less the colonialist side of things (they're civilians, obviously, but still). As far as value judgments were made in our class, it was mostly in favor of Africans rebelling against colonial opression, but when someone tells you their high school classmate was killed by African terrorists, you don't really know what to think. Anyway, dinner conversation was incredibly interesting.

Now I should definitely go to bed, as it's up at 6:45 to get ready for an 8 a.m. history class. 8 a.m.'s suck even more when you have to take a 7:30 bus to get to them.

Le repos

Today I did nearly nothing, which was exceedingly pleasant. I had a brief run-in with the micro-onde (quite literally, microwave) this morning in attempting to defrost a baguette (freezing them works really well for keeping them fresh, as it turns out) - it kept making noise after it was done reheating, so I kept pressing buttons trying to stop the noise, which probably made it worse. Eventually I left it alone and it stopped after about 15 seconds. But still, weird.

After that I devoted myself to being slothful in a foreign language (mostly): I watched "Chariots de feu" ("Chariots of Fire"), which is an amazing movie, though I cheated and watched it in English with French subtitles because I absolutely can't stand dubbing (the translations were interesting, though). The last time I saw it was in early middle school, and I have since become familiar with Gilbert & Sullivan, the Allegri Miserere, and the hymn "Jerusalem," giving me an overall much greater appreciation for the soundtrack. I wish choir were still a popular thing for young boys to partake in. They have such amazing voices. 

I then started in earnest on La gloire de mon père by Marcel Pagnol, which I only yesterday discovered was a book before it was a movie, and so promptly searched out and bought it, along with the sequel Le château de ma mère. Reading in French is slow going and not the relaxing experience it is in English, but I made it nearly to page 100 in a sitting, which is a lot better than I usually do on books for French class. I can see why they decided these books would make good movies - they're very visually descriptive, and the narrative voice of the little boy is hilarious (it makes me happy that I can understand humor and puns in a foreign language).

This evening I went shopping briefly with Brenda and Christelle at a papetrie (stationery store) to look for school supplies, which are fun in any language. Though I really, really miss my Mead student day planner - I've had the same one every year for many years running, and it's the perfect size, layout and lack of clutter. I'm kicking myself for not bringing one with me. I found one by Clairefontaine (which appears to be the most popular stationery brand over here, and isn't nearly as expensive as in the states) that works, but still...it's not the same. Here ends the lecture on French school supplies.

Tomorrow we have individual meetings with M. Paoli to choose classes. I know I want to take History of Religion in France and a translation course. I suppose I'll fill the rest of my schedule with literature classes. I asked Christelle to look at the bus schedule and confirm that the buses I want to take tomorrow really do exist, which she did, so hopefully tomorrow I will conquer the bus and not vice versa. We shall see.

Vignettes

I'm very thankful today is Sunday: nothing on the schedule that requires doing battle with the bus system. I went to church with my host mother this morning. It was...different. It's called the Église chrétienne (Christian Church), and is exactly what I expected from the name: not actually in a church, praise and worship music, about as non-liturgical as it gets. Lots of spontaneous praying and hand waving. The pastor is American and speaks French worse than I do. All he did was give a sermon; he didn't even serve or particularly bless the communion; you go up and take it "as the spirit moves you," I guess you could say. Me, I like the ceremony and tradition of liturgical churches. But living in Mignaloux, with no buses on Sunday, I'm not sure what other options I have. We'll see.

Mignaloux does have its plus side, being small and cute. Today there was a big market thing, basically an all-town garage sale (it reminded me strongly of the Kolache Festival, sans kolaches, and with sausage in a baguette rather than on a stick). I saw lots of interesting stuff, including an amazing number of matched sets of beer glasses, piles and piles of the little china figurines that come out of King Cake, Readers Digest condensed classics in French, and tons of vinyls, which Bruno collects (he came home with Johnny Cash and Sting, among others). It was pretty fun. However, it greatly disturbed me that they planned on selling the rabbits at the petting zoo for eating. That's just wrong.

To backtrack a bit, we tried to register at the Scolarité des Sciences on Friday and had all sorts of trouble with our American health insurance not being accepted. The nicest of the ladies told Lauren and me to go to our class anyway and we'd get it worked out later, so we did...and we're not going back. I came to that conclusion more quickly, having understood less of the computer science related material than her, but it's not what either of us was looking for. So I'm ditching math for the semester, which leaves this week pretty much free.

We did two walking tours of the downtown area, one Friday afternoon and another Saturday morning, with M. Fabrice Vigier, a history professor at the university. We saw a lot of churches, including some that have been repurposed. It was all quite interesting, and also damp - it's rained every day so far, and the forecast predicts rain for the foreseeable future. Charming. Tomorrow I'm planning to go into town in the afternoon, when there's at least a chance at sun and I am nearly certain the buses are running to/from Mignaloux, to explore inside a few of the churches at my leisure. I love old churches, and devoutly wish people still habitually built in stone. Though it's awful to see the graffiti and ugly paint and electric lights and other indignities people inflict on beautiful old churches. Progress is all well and good, but it should stay away from certain arenas.

I finally bought a cell phone, which is pretty cute and weighs almost nothing, being as basic as it gets (which is exactly my cup of tea). I had to go with the cards to add minutes, because you can't sign up for a month plan without a French bank account - a credit card doesn't cut it. Minutes are kind of ridiculously expensive, as previously noted, but all received calls are free and work even if you don't have any credit to make calls, and emergency numbers are free as well, so it's good for being reachable and in case of emergency.

In general, I'm getting a bit more settled in, though everything is inordinately tiring, including talking to people. I can understand French if one person is speaking in a relatively quite environment, but start adding people to the conversation and I completely lose it. Hopefully that will get better quickly.

The Revolution is Coming

The customary forewarning: this post is unlikely to interest those of the male persuasion.

In my first real post on this blog, I ranted about the dearth of knowledge about proper bra fitting and the difficulty of finding proper bras. I noted particularly the abysmal range of bra sizes offered in department stores. I can now quite happily rescind that criticism, at least in part. I walked into Dillard's today to buy shoes, which happened to be just across from the lingerie department. I decided to browse through it, not particularly hopefully, and was extremely suprised to see formerly hard-to-find sizes on the rack, including some quite respectable brands like Le Mystère. There wasn't a lot of selection outside the "normal" (i.e. firmly established) size range, but finding a 32G in a department store is a formerly unheard of phenomenon and is definitely cause for celebration. There's still a ways to go - for example, the sales staff didn't quite know what to do with the new sizes. The "fit specialist" I approached seemed to think the bra alphabet went straight from DDD to G (for future reference, the badly designed and rather ambiguous system goes: AA A B C D DD DDD/E F FF G GG H and so forth). Still, there is undoubtedly progress! "Nonstandard" body types of the world, rejoice!

The Cloying Scent of Death

Just in case you, like my mother, didn't already have enough things to be paranoid about, the Environmental Working Group has created Skin Deep, a searchable database of health and beauty products. It lists their ingredients and rates them on their potential harmfulness to humans, the premise being that many perfectly legal substances are possible carcinogens, neurotoxins, etc. Many of their ratings are based on just a few studies, but they always list their "data gap" so you can judge for yourself what you think is worth worrying about. I did a couple of searches on the products sitting around my bathroom - both my shampoo and soap scored a 9/10 for potential hazard. The culprit? Fragrance. One major concern is that "fragrance" essentially tells you nothing about the actual ingredients. Another is that the chemicals and preservatives used in many fragrances have been identified as neurotoxins and immunotoxins. Scary, right? I'll be thinking twice before I buy anything just because it smells good.

Girls Only!

Back home in Texas for spring break, it's already warm enough to be summer, which got me thinking of, among other things, swimsuit season. I'd like to give a shoutout to the greatest fashion innovation since the demise of the corset: bra-sized swimwear. Shopping for the perfect swimsuit can be a nightmare: you want something both flattering and comfortable that covers enough (but not too much). In my experience, it's always a problem of proportions. If yours aren't "standard," you might be out of luck. The mix-and-match separates sold in any department store fix half the problem, but if you're still taking issue with the ratio of cloth to string in that cute but miniscule bikini top, shopping by bra size is probably for you.

Many department stores carry cup-size swimsuits in the "normal" range of bra sizes, but for the best selection you should try a specialty lingerie store. Find one near you using this store locator. If you live in the middle[bury] of nowhere, my favorite place to shop online is Figleaves.com. Just select your bra size and you can browse through everything available, from bikinis to one-pieces modest enough for your grandmother.

Remember, when shopping for a swimsuit, the same fitting rules for bras still apply. In case you've forgotten, take the refresher course, or, if you barely got through my rant the first time, the condensed version can be found at the bottom of this page.

Happy shopping: with a great-fitting swimsuit you can hit the beach looking and feeling fabulous! Or, like me, the heated natatorium...

A Bright Idea

I really, really love this place. So many smart people! At lunch today, a friend told me about Bright Card, a local start-up credit card company with a simple but brilliant plan - instead of the usual airplane mileage or magazine subscription rewards programs linked to credit cards, why not take that money and do something good for the world? Bright Card, it appears, is just a normal credit card, but every purchase you make earns you carbon offsets - about the most painless, effortless step toward carbon neutrality you could take. The card hasn't been launched yet, but you can put your name on the list to hear about it when it's ready. Yet another reason to look forward to my 18th birthday!

Global Warming is Scary

Sorry, I couldn't think of anything witty for the title of this article. (I'm sure you're grateful.) I just watched An Inconvenient Truth, and I am scared, but also energized. If you haven't seen the movie, I recommend it. Personally, I'm not in any doubt about the truth of global warming, but if you want to quibble about details, just consider this: isn't it better to overreact and overcorrect now, rather than look back later and regret the things we didn't do? The consequences of not acting could be catastrophic, but the consequences of overacting are simply to make our planet a much cleaner, healthier place.

That said, I think I've found my New Year's resolution. I want to get involved in helping stop global warming, as well as educating people about it. Not that I really know how to go about it. I don't drive (luckily there isn't much need to at Midd), but I can't help flying. I use compact fluorescent bulbs. I recycle. I wash my clothes in cold water. I could stand to take shorter showers, though. The point is, I can think of some individual things to do, but I'm having a hard time envisioning actions with a greater impact. So obviously I googled it. Here are some of the things I found.

Midd's Sunday Night Group: "The Sunday Night Group (SNG) is a regular gathering of environmentally-minded students whose purpose is to launch creative programming that brings the CRI [Carbon Reduction Initiative] to the student body. We are an organization built by students to serve the students."

Stop Global Warming Virtual March: Largely symbolic, but an easy way to spread the word, and it has a good list of things you can do to reduce your personal carbon footprint.

Cool Cities Across America: Is your city a Cool City? Has your mayor signed the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement?

Carbon Offsets: If nothing else, you can write a check (or rather enter a credit card number). The sites listed on this page seem to be well checked out, but you can always do your own research. How it works: "When you buy offsets, you essentially pay someone to reduce or remove global warming pollution in your name."

"Stop Global Warming" Bracelets: A fashion statement and a donation all in one. Plus, they're made from recycled leather. Too bad I didn't find this before Christmas!

For starters, I'll be checking out the SNG and forcing everyone I can to watch An Inconvenient Truth. Hopefully I will have more to blog about soon!

"And again, with feeling..."

The last post was far too sappy. I'm not sure what came over me. Time for a good rant! Today I went clothes shopping. Can you guess the topic yet? I would like to lodge an official complaint against the clothing industry, especially the mainstream manufacturers of "fashions" for teenage girls. They hardly qualify as clothes at all. Most items can be worn only a few times before they fall apart - and that's if you don't wash them. Who decided that shirts as thin as tissue paper were a good idea? They don't keep you warm, they lose their shape almost immediately, and as a college student I don't have unlimited time to devote to making sure my clothes don't fall apart in the process of becoming clean. Most of the jeans I saw were way beyond distressed. They were anguished, tormented, tortured even. If you want your jeans to have holes, make them yourself (climb a tree, maybe?). I even saw "distressed" shoes. Personally, I like my feet to be warm, and if I'm going to pay a heinous amount of money for shoes I want them to last. I've never understood why taking fabric out of a garment increases its value. The axiom that you get what you pay for doesn't seem to hold up.

Quality aside, the clothes themselves are making fashion statements that ought to be censored. (Note: if you're thinking "hey, I like to dress like that!" - I honestly don't care how you dress if you're a nice person. I just don't care to do the same myself.) Yes, I know why the shirts are so thin (if you're going to wear a practically nonexistent shirt, at least go back and read my bra rant - there are some things we don't want to see) and low-cut, the jeans so tight, etc. I am fully aware that everyone has the right to dress how she wants, but it would be nice if there were a few more (mainstream) options between tart and frumpy old lady. I also wish the trends hadn't trickled down first to tween clothes, then little kids, and now even toddlers and infants. Little kids ought to be wearing comfy clothes (and so should big kids, if you ask me - comfort rules).

If the world were slower-paced and people cared a little more about quality, I would vote to bring back tailors and dressmakers. How amazing would that be, to have someone custom-make clothes just for you? As it is, I'm far to lazy to make my own clothes, so I'll just sit here and complain. I will add that I did manage to buy two pairs of jeans (fray- and hole-free, I might add) at the Gap, which has maintained a certain level of quality in its clothes. I'm also sometimes a fan of New York & Co. But two stores out of the whole mall worth shopping in? We as consumers ought to demand a lot better.

Alternative Giving

For Christmas, my three little cousins are getting chickens. My aunt and uncle are getting a heifer. Don't worry - they fit easily under the tree. This year, my family shopped at our church's alternative gift market, a project of Alternative Gifts International. The church raised about $4000 for various charities represented at the market - not bad for the first year, and the woman who organized it all hopes to make it a Christmas tradition. We purchased livestock through Heifer International, an organization that seeks to end hunger by providing families with sustainable sources of food and income rather than short-term relief. Those chickens and that cow will help families support themselves and hopefully others around them as their animals reproduce.

When my mom told me about the alternative gift market, it seemed like one of the best ideas I've ever heard. It's a new and better answer to the question "what do you get the person who has everything?" - give them the gift of giving. After all, if they already have everything, it's not as though they're going to appreciate a material gift. They just may think an attractive gift card telling them they've provided clean water for a village in Africa, or a medical kit for a doctor in Cambodia, is the best Christmas present ever. And if they don't like it...well, better to give them an unappreciated gift that does some good for the world than one that languishes on the top shelf of their closet forever.

You can order alternative gifts online and either have a gift card for any occasion included or have it mailed to the person in whose honor you're making the gift. Or you can buy yourself a present anytime - nothing feels better than making a difference.

A Call to Arms, or, Why I Hate Victoria's Secret

I've been wanting to write on this subject for a long time. As you may be able to tell from the title, I have some pent-up frustrations with the bra industry. In this case, capitalism and the law of supply and demand are a huge problem because the market is dictating to women what they want, rather than the other way around. What we need is some education about bras. After all, you don't go around with ill-fitting shoes, and a bra is a little more basic than that.

As an illustration of the larger problem, let's consider Victoria's Secret, which many people suppose to be high-end lingerie. One would think they'd know what they're doing. Victoria's got a secret all right - she knows very little about good bra fitting. First of all, the range of sizes the store carries is abysmal: 32A-C and 34-40A-DD. That's about average for most department stores and clothing catalogs (even Walmart carries larger band sizes, and most places have a few DDD cups). A good lingerie store (and by that I mean a real one) should have, in stock, 32-56A-J, and online the range of possible sizes is practically endless (you can find, for example, 28AA or 56L). Right now you're probably thinking "but most people wear normal sizes!" And that's where the market has done such a terrific job of brainwashing us about what a "normal" size is. Because it takes some effort and previous knowledge to find anything outside the standard department store range mentioned above, many women are under the impression that those are the only sizes that exist, and so, if they even realize that they can't find a bra that fits them, they don't know they have other options and so go on with their lives and their ill-fitting undergarments. And because women only buy the sizes stores have to offer, those are the only sizes the stores ever will offer. It's a self-perpetuating problem. That's the reason around 80% (estimates vary, but that's the most oft-quoted figure) of women are walking around wearing the wrong size bra. And hardly anybody knows. Something's wrong with this picture!

Maybe you're thinking "I'm not part of that 80%. My bra fits fine! Why, I even got fitted by a lingerie saleswoman." A word of warning - she might not know any better than you. I speak from experience when I say that saleswomen (even if they wear little nametags that say "fit specialist") will try to convince you that, if you don't fall within the "normal" size range, the flaw is in your body and you'll just have to accept it and buy the closest thing to fitting they can offer you. "Sister sizes" are the mortal enemy of well-fitting bras because they generally increase band size in an effort to find a large enough cup size - the most common fitting error (but we'll come to that later). Also, a real corsetière (i.e. a bra fitter who knows what she's doing), shocking as it may sound, needs to see you wearing a bra before she can tell you if it fits or not. If the whole idea makes you uncomfortable, read on. If you know for yourself how a bra should fit, you won't need help, though you'd be surprised how not-awkward and rewarding a professional bra fitting can be.

This brings us to the most important section of all...how a bra should fit. I've synthesized the following guidelines out of lots of internet research combined with personal experience -- there's a lot of conflicting information out there, but if you look at what shows up the most often you can't go too far wrong. First, let's correct a series of myths about bras.

Myth: Most women wear the correct bra size.
Fact: Around 80% of American women wear ill-fitting bras. Most women who wear the wrong size bra try to compensate for a too-small cup with a too-large band, leading to problems such as inadequate support, back pain, “double bubble” and “back bulge.”

Myth: Bra sizes are standard.
Fact: Not only do bra sizes vary by manufacturer, but no two sets of instructions for determining bra size are alike. While measurements can provide a starting place, the only way to find a correctly fitting bra is trial and error, bearing in mind how a bra ought to fit.

Myth: All cups with the same letter name are the same size.
Fact: Cup sizes are proportional to band sizes. Therefore, the cup of a 34B is smaller than that of a 36B. This is important to remember when trying to correct problems in your bra size. If your band size is too big but your cup size is correct, remember to go up a cup size each time you go down a band size.

Myth: Underwire bras are uncomfortable by nature.
Fact: A properly fitting underwire bra is both supportive and comfortable. It should not poke or leave marks in the skin. The underwire should encompass the breast and rest on hard bone, not soft tissue. The place where the wires meet between the breasts should lie flat against the breastbone, and the wires under your arms should sit far enough back that they don’t lie on soft tissue.

Myth: The straps provide most of the support of a bra.
Fact: The band of a bra should bear most of the weight of the breasts. This is why it is extremely important not to wear a too-large band size. If the band is too loose, more of the weight rests on the bra straps, leading to painful red marks and eventually permanent grooves in the shoulders. A firm, supportive band alleviates strain on the shoulders and leads to less back pain and better posture.

Myth: "Back bulges" are caused by a too-tight band.
Fact: Actually, the opposite is true. If the band is too loose, it tends to ride up too high on the back. The bust line is usually about halfway between the shoulder and the elbow, and the back of a bra should be level with the front. A tight enough band will fit straight and low around the ribcage, where there is less fat to cause unsightly bulges.

Surprised yet? Let's move on to some general guidelines about proper fitting.

The cups: Breasts should fill bra cups, creating a smooth line. A “double bubble” means the cups are too small. On the other hand, if the bra cups are baggy and full of wrinkles, they’re too big.

The band: The bra band should be tight and firm and fit straight across the back, halfway between elbows and shoulders. If you stand sideways to a mirror, you should see that the front of the bra is level with the back.

The underwires: The center gore (the place where the wires meet between the cups) should lie flat against the breastbone. If it pops out, the bra cups are too small. The underwire should lie on bone all the way around the breast. If it cuts into the soft breast tissue, the bra cups are too small.

The straps: Bra straps aren’t meant to support all or even most of the weight of your breasts. If they’re so tight they leave red marks in your shoulders, try a bra with a more supportive band. Otherwise, you can end up with permanent grooves in your shoulders.

The label: The label is the least important part of your bra. Please, don't get hung up on a particular size. All that's important is finding a bra with a comfortable, supportive fit. If you've spent most of your life thinking you wear a 36C and after being properly fitted find you really wear a 32F, rejoice! Our society has an odd double standard about breast size - many women bemoan having small breasts, but are often unwilling to admit that they might be larger than they thought. Don't get hung up on the label. Bra size should be like shoe size - if it fits, it fits, and that's all there is to it.

Now that you know how a bra should fit, chances are you may need to do some shopping. And odds are good that you may not find what you need at the mall. Don't despair! Good-size cities often have specialty lingerie stores with real corsetières. Look for the ones that have been in business for some time, since the more experience, the better. This website provides a list of bra fitting locations in 48 states and 6 Canadian provinces. If you know your size, or don't mind spending a lot of time shipping things back and forth, check out figleaves.com. They have a wide range of bra sizes from many manufacturers, as well as swimsuits in bra sizes (a huge blessing, since if you don't wear a "normal" bra size, chances are you have trouble finding swimsuits as well). There are countless other online shopping sites with a great selection of sizes and styles, but nothing is better than a physical store, as the whole secret of proper bra fitting is trying on bra after bra until you find the magic fit.

Hopefully you've found this information useful and enlightening - please, take it and use it! Share it with all the women in your life. 80% is a huge number, but hopefully if we pass on what we know we can reduce it. My hope is that one of these days, as the knowledge spreads, manufacturers and retailers will catch on and women everywhere will wear properly fitting bras. Now that would be a lovely thing.