wnywoman blogs - Hole in Her Stocking

What Will It Take?

nospam@example.com (Cassie Lange) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:01:14 -0500

In case you haven't heard, on December 2nd, the NYS Senate had its long-awaited vote on gay marriage and voted against the bill that would have made it legal in our state.

This is an outrage.

In my eyes, those who argue from a religious standpoint cannot possibly be considered in this decision. This has nothing to do with the validity of those opinions; I believe in freedom of religion, and as long as your religion is peaceful, I firmly believe that you have the right to any opinion held by that religion. However, as has been said by many supporters of gay rights, this country was founded on the belief that people should be free to follow whatever creed they deem to be true, and that creed should have little bearing on the law. There is supposed to a separation of church and state in America. And there is a difference between basing law on morals that are generally accepted, such as the immorality of killing, etc, and between withholding rights from groups that some religions deem unacceptable.

And atheists can marry, can they not? People who firmly and openly reject the teachings that these prejudices are founded upon are perfectly fine to get married. And for them, it is not a union in the eyes of God. It's a union based on trust, and companionship, and legal rights, and love. And that's exactly what it should be for the GLBT community.

I also don't understand the arguments about the sanctity of marriage. How sanctified is it when divorce is common and generally accepted? Marriage is an institution that is expected to last, yes, but in many cases, it simply doesn't. And often, that's no one's fault, really. People change and grow and move away from each other, and it's a natural part of life. Marriage is not what it used to be; it's not a purely economic institution that creates security for women who cannot get their own jobs, since we live in a society, thankfully, in which women have every opportunity to be self-sufficient. And it's not - and never really was - a completely permanent union based on everlasting love. It's simply a way to secure incredibly important legal rights to your partner's life, and a way to publicly declare the love that you have for each other.

And there is no doubt in my mind that gay couples love each other as much as straight couples. So why should they be denied the opportunity to make their love a public and legal union? Why should they not have every right to be able to support their partner and be there for their partner in sickness and in health in the same way that straight married couples are able?

I'm an active supporter of the gay community at SUNY Geneseo. I'm an ally in the Pride Alliance, and some of my closest friends are gay. And I know that their sexual identity is hardly their identity is a whole, and I know that sexuality is not a choice but something that you are born with, same as your gender, or your race. And I know how much it hurt them to find out that the people who support them in this Great State of New York and in this Great United States of America don't care about their rights enough to let them be able to marry, to let them be able to feel like equal and deserving citizens.

Out of the many couples that I'm acquainted with here at Geneseo, there is only one that I can really see definitely being together long enough to get married, and that couple is comprised of two women. They have been together longer than any of my friends have been with their significant others - two years - and they're amazing together. And the fact that if they do some day decide that they want to commit to each other completely and want to get married, they cannot do it because their representatives have decided to deny them this right... I can scarcely believe it.

What will it take to make the government realize that this should not even be an issue? It frustrates me to see acceptance and progress everywhere I go in my life and still see the ramifications of prejudice in the law-making process. I dream of the day when gay marriage seems as obvious a freedom as interracial marriage.

I'm not trying to preach, or convert. I do believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and if anyone disagrees with me on this issue, I know that I cannot persuade otherwise. My intentions are only to convey the deep sense of injustice that I feel has happened this week here, and to help anyone who isn't familiar with these issues or the gay community at all to see the perspective of someone who is deeply committed to helping her GLBT friends and neighbors in any way possible.

And if you agree with me, please, let your voice be heard. Call your senators. Call your Congressman. Call anyone in power. That is what it takes. The politicians are voting the way that they are because they are getting outraged phone calls from those who are opposed to gay marriage; they are being intimidated by prejudice. We need to help them realize that there are people out there who DO support gay marriage, and who would like to see it become legal in the state that we love to call home. This is supposed to be a government for the people, by the people, and we need to demand the rights that we believe in.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again!

nospam@example.com (Cassie Lange) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:39:10 -0400

I'm awake this late on a Thursday night, with class in the morning, because tomorrow is the day before Halloween. Every year my college has a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and tomorrow my friend and I are hitting thrift stores and then spending the evening becoming Columbia (her) and Magenta (me) and going out to shout at the screen with the rest of the Rocky Horror fans at our campus. I love crafty things and I love putting together costumes, so right now I'm like a kid on Christmas Eve; I'm so excited that I can't sleep.

It's not surprising that I love going all out for screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show: I grew up with the movie. My mother has been watching it every Halloween for as long as I can remember. When my brother and I were little, he would sit on my mother's lap and I would sit on my grandmother's, and they would cover our eyes and ears during the raunchy parts -- which, as those familiar with the movie know, come often. Still, we loved what we were allowed to watch. One of my earliest memories is doing the Time Warp for my grandfather in the basement of my grandparents' house when I was probably four years old. I remember, in middle school, finally being allowed to watch more than just the parts at the beginning, and being shocked at the ending. In high school, when I could watch the whole thing unedited without being scandalized, I forced my bewildered friends to watch it for the first time, with props and with dancing.

It's just a jump to the left.

There's just something about cult classics like Rocky Horror. Especially when they're as participatory as Rocky is; I dressed up as Magenta my freshman year here, when I was still timid and new, and felt awkward and ridiculous walking across campus with my rather skimpy maid's costume and huge hair, and voiced great concerns to my friends about being the only one crazy enough to dress up, but when I got there, I realized that I was far from alone. Corsets abounded, and fantastic makeup, and glitter, and brave men in stockings and heels. And when the movie started, it was clear that I was in the company of others who loved the movie as passionately as I did. Those new to the movie fumbled through the script we were given when we came in, but when I screamed lines like, "HOW STRANGE WAS IT!?" a huge part of the audience screamed with me.

Maybe it's the sense of community that comes from an event like that. Maybe we just enjoy being in the company of others who love what we love. Maybe it's because we feel more understood as human beings when others take a strange and passionate delight in a movie about cross-dressing, scantily clad, occasionally incestual aliens that celebrates sexuality, B-movies, and rock and roll all at once. Or maybe it's just so damn fun to have a reason to dress up as Riff, or Frank, or Magenta.

Whatever it is, it's completely robbing me of my ability to calm my excitement and get some sleep for my classes tomorrow.

And Women of Western New York, I want to know: What's your favorite cult movie? Is it Rocky Horror, like me? Are you a Priscilla Queen of the Desert kind of gal? Dawn of the Dead, maybe? Clerks? Or something more subtle and less well known?

Tell us about it, Janet!

Curvy Jeans, or Lack Thereof: A Rant

nospam@example.com (Cassie Lange) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:25:00 -0400

I'm a curvy girl. This is a fact that I'm not ashamed of; I don't mind having hips, even in a society that has a disturbing (and, thankfully, seemingly waning) new obsession with the skinny jean. Unfortunately, the top of my head barely brushes the sixty inch mark on growth charts, and being a five foot tall woman with curves is no easy feat when it comes to shopping.

I am constantly frustrated by the lack of choices that I have when it comes to jeans. I'm a big fan of the Lucky brand, since they and other more expensive denim designers tend to have a good selection of sizes (in my very limited experience) but in this economy, especially as a student, I find it difficult to spend so much on one pair of jeans. My favorite stores lately are Gap and Express, and while they do offer a "Curvy" option, I argue that it's more of a symbolic gesture. I have ravaged Gap looking for the Curvy style, and it's hard enough to find just that, much less with the "Short" or "Ankle" qualifier attached to it. And I don't want to hem! Please don't make me hem. I see no reason that I should have to take a basic pair of jeans to a tailor or inexpertly to my sewing machine just because I'm a little bit on the short side. Express is very good with their selection of "Short" and "Tall" alike, but their "Eva" style for curvy women is available (even online!) in just one style, in two slightly different washes.

This seems like such a mistake to me. I'm sure that I am an unusual build for my height, but one of my closest friends is built exactly the same, so I know that I'm not a total anomaly. It is hardly strange to be a curvy lady in America. How, then, do the consumers justify carrying such a limited selection of choices for those of us who are well-endowed below instead of or as well as above?

Gap, for example, has a style called "Always Skinny." Really, Gap? Really? Always skinny? What kind of messages do labels like that send to women? And so many of the jeans and pants are like this. I am personally a fan of the colored denim that's out now, especially the purple and turquoise colors, but I have not seen a single pair that was not in the skinny jeans style. Is this some sort of subtle fashion elitism? If you have an ass, you cannot wear purple jeans? Perhaps this is a message that maybe only thin legs look good in colored jeans - a message that I could see possibly having some truth to it - but damn convention, I still long for deep violet denim to wear when I'm feeling particularly colorful.

Meanwhile, women with beautiful curves who should be wearing jeans that hug the hips are trying to be fashionable and are mistakenly buying and wearing skinny jeans, which is, of course, a grave mistake. And often I have heard these misguided women ridiculed for their "muffin tops" and the like that result from wearing the wrong jeans, but I feel for them; what are bigger women to do, when these are the only options presented to them? It's hardly their fault.

But maybe things are changing for the better. I was shopping at the Gap at the Boulevard Mall the other day, and meandered through what I thought to be a rather lackluster selection of quasi-seasonal clothing to find myself at the back of the store too suddenly, since I was hoping to find a good sweater there. I looked up at the back wall and saw a selection of lovely trousers, and then realized what was strange about the scene: they were labeled "curvy." I managed to find a pair that also had the "Ankle" qualifier. Needless to say, those beauties came back to college with me and I can see them from where I sit now, hanging over my desk chair, roomy in the right places and good and short, waiting to be taken out with a t-shirt and a cardigan. But what I wonder is, did I just have a stroke of good luck? Or is this a glimmer of hope, a sign that perhaps these chain megabrands that dominate our malls are realizing that their consumers, despite what is fashionable, come in a variety of shapes and sizes?

I fully submit myself to the possibility that I'm just looking in all of the wrong places. I'd like to believe that somewhere there is a magical place filled with jeans for the tall and thin and the short and curvy, both. But until I find it, I will wear my Eva Express jeans in all of the two colors that I'm allowed as a five foot tall curvy girl, and dream of purple jeans that don't threaten to rip open wide when I try and hoist them above my knees.

Blogging on Blogs: Food Blogs

nospam@example.com (Cassie Lange) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:54:20 -0400

As handy as they are, cookbooks can be frustrating. Most lack pictures of every recipe, much less each step of the cooking process, and it can be difficult to know if youre properly slicing or dicing. Honing personal skills and learning from mistakes is an important part of becoming a more experienced cook, but sometimes you just wish that the minutiae of complicated recipes could be presented right there in the recipe.

Enter food blogs. Food blogs are written by women and men from all different backgrounds with a range of culinary experience. The internet makes it possible to read about a new recipe tested by a young woman who has just decided to teach herself to cook, and those of us who are also new to cooking can sympathize with her experiences and learn from her mistakes. The more adventurous of us also have access to recipes and guides from internet-savvy professional chefs and others who have been trained in the culinary arts, and, without buying expensive gourmet cookbooks, we can try complicated recipes with the aid of pictures and detailed step-by-step instructions on the blog, either or both of which have a tendency to exist in abundance on many food blog entries.

Most who use the Internet to help find new dishes know of sites such as All Recipes (www.allrecipes.com) and Epicurious (www.epicurious.com) as places online to find recipes. But sites such as TasteSpotting (www.tastespotting.com) and Foodgawker (www.foodgawker.com) are revolutionizing the way that we can discover new recipes. These websites have pictures from food blogs displayed in an eye-pleasing formation of rows and columns, and each picture has a caption beneath it and links to the original blog post from which it came. When you see something that looks particularly beautiful, intriguing, or tasty, you click and are led right to a post that will help you make your own version of the dish. And these sites do not discriminate against the ordinary; cookies and cupcakes get as much consideration as macaroons and soufflés.

Food bloggers write about not only recipes but techniques, and some of these techniques might not be accessible to the average Western New Yorker otherwise. Pad Thai is a popular and delicious dish, and on her blog Chez Pim (www.chezpim.com), Pim, who is originally from Bangkok, intricately describes the way to make authentic Pad Thai. This is a technique that might not readily be available to the ordinary American, especially in English, but through blogs we can learn how to reproduce food from other cultures, as well as from our own.

So the next time youre itching to cook or bake something new, forget the cookbook and search online. The vast culinary world of food blogs awaits you.

Buffalo Gals

nospam@example.com (Cassie Lange) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:29:10 -0400

I danced with a gal with a hole in her stocking
And her knees were a-knockin' and her shoes were a-rockin'
I danced with a gal with a hole in her stocking
And we danced by the light of the moon

Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight
Come out tonight, come out tonight
Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight
And we'll dance by the light of the moon

In March of 2008, my mother took me to HSBC Arena to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. I knew a few of his songs Hungry Heart, Dancing in the Dark, Born to Run but wasnt too well versed in his music. I studied up on his major songs for a good month or two beforehand so that I could heartily sing along to the ones that everyone knew. I enjoyed listening to him, but at this point, he was just another musician who my mother absolutely adored and who I tolerated fairly well.

I now firmly believe that if you are sort of a Springsteen fan before you go to an E Street concert, you will be completely converted afterwards. Im an avid concertgoer and dont like to throw around the word best when it comes to concerts, but E Street is definitely in a league of its own. I was absolutely blown away that night, and have been a passionate Bruce fan since. My mother and I have attended two concerts since that one one in East Rutherford, NJ, and one in Hershey, PA, because no car ride is too long when it ends with a Bruce concert- and are trying to figure out tickets for the upcoming HSBC gig. When my friends hear music coming from my room, they expect it to be Bruce. Just last night, my housemates and I were relaxing with music from one of our i-Pods, and he told me that I could pick the music, adding, But I dont have any Springsteen, so I wrote a term paper for a music class last year on Bruce Springsteen. Its a lifestyle.

At that first concert in March, Bruce announced that they were going to debut a song for the tour that night, and launched into a rip-roaring version of the traditional song that my grandmother would sing to me when I was falling asleep as a child: Buffalo Gals.

I named this blog Hole in Her Stocking not only as a tribute to that life-changing night at the E Street Band concert but as a tribute to the Queen City herself. I believe that part of the reason that Bruce speaks so clearly to me is because I am a Buffalo Gal. He writes from a working class background and writes about needing to find yourself in a world that isnt so kind to all of us, and he writes about being true to yourself and still having a good time. And I think that encapsulates so much of what Buffalo is about.

We Western New York women are more than aware of the fact that the City of Good Neighbors and her surrounding areas are not going through the best times right now. The Queen City herself, you could say, has a hole in her stocking.

But through all of the economic troubles, through all of the uncertainties and the hardships, we keep on rocking.

When I realized that Bruce was playing a song that was about Buffalo Gals, about me and about the women that I know, I was filled with pride. And I remain filled with pride. I live in Geneseo to attend the SUNY college there for eight months out of the year, but I am thrilled each and every time I return to the area. Im proud to represent Western New York out here with those from Rochester and Albany and Long Island, and Im proud to be blogging for women who know what its like to go out and dance by the light of the moon.

Welcome to Hole in Her Stocking.