help or harm? power, intent, & objectification #FitchTheHomeless

I tried not to click the link, the one about sticking it to the elitists at Abercrombie & Fitch by outfitting the homeless in their branded gear. It reeked of gimmick and exploitation, so I didn't watch. Until I did.

I'm not gonna link to it. It's findable. The premise is that Abercrombie is terrible (and they are) because they don't want anyone bigger than size ten in their clothes. #FitchtheHomeless' solution? Buy up thrifted Abercrombie stuff, and give it to the homeless! That'll show those sexier-than-thou tools at corporate!

(I'm breaking my first rule of Fight Club Twitter by acknowledging Twitter in this space, but it is what is is.)

#fitchthehomeless is just another way to dehumanize a different group of people. it's no clever dig at A&F when the homeless are punchline.
— the smitten word (@suzannahpaul) May 15, 2013

Abercrombie & Fitch is intentionally branded for fit, white, middle class cool kids. Imagine a similar gotcha! campaign in which A&F clothes were given to bigger-bodied people, underprivileged black kids, or hurting, bullied students, and we were encouraged to photograph them to show their CEO what's what.

That would feel pretty gross, right?

the stunt "works" b/c it's acceptable to dehumanize homeless. we expect them to gratefully accept any and all leftovers. #fitchthehomeless
— the smitten word (@suzannahpaul) May 15, 2013

this is exploitative--> hahaha, homeless people are disgusting! look at your precious brand on the dregs of humanity, LOL! #fitchthehomeless
— the smitten word (@suzannahpaul) May 15, 2013

A non-degrading zinger campaign could have outfitted the elderly in Abercrombie. A&F wants their brand to stay youthful, and recreating their hallmark sexy black and white poses with seniors on Hoverrounds would have made a similar point without the ancillary exploitation. Something like that would have been playful and even provocative, but since Grandma and Grandpa are not generally suffering marginalization or social ostracism, their appearing onscreen would have had a wholly different feel.

Changing the power dynamic changes everything.

I've been writing online for over five years. I occasionally poke sacred cows but have never gotten as much blowback as I did yesterday. It got a little out of control up in my mentions for several hours.

@suzannahpaul Quit being so ignorant or just join sides with A&F already.. What type of person are you?
— Trisha Roberts (@TrishaRoberts23) May 15, 2013

@suzannahpaul it's bc your a big ignorant. They Are doing it bc he refuses to donate them to homeless.
— Amy (@ameliac612) May 15, 2013

A lot of folks were adamant that meaning well is all that matters. If we succeed in pissing off Abercrombie's jerk CEO, and a few homeless folks got some wrong-sized pants in the bargain, what exactly is the problem?

@geraldmitchell @suzannahpaul But the worst case scenario here is that the homeless people are getting clothes on their back !!
— Kevin Wagg (@TheKDOG1970) May 15, 2013

@suzannahpaul You can try to call it a punchline but giving clothes to the homeless is still a benevolent act
— Justin Loranger (@DJ4LMNTZ) May 15, 2013

@suzannahpaul it's donating to people in need, and working toward ending degrading any group.
— Michelle (@shellsglitter) May 15, 2013

Is it really? This kind of drive-by "charity" looks a lot like degradation to me, and I can think of a few things homeless people need more than an Abercrombie tee shirt shoved at them by a stranger with a video camera. Did they get permission to film? Did they even ask their sizes? I didn't see much human kindness in clips casting homeless men and women as little more than voiceless human props.

One of my critics told me, "Sounds like you don't want homeless to have nice things." I guess that depends: nice things like Abercrombie clothes or nice things like dignity, respect, need-based services, homes? There are ways of helping that honor the image of God in human beings, and #FitchTheHomeless isn't that.

@suzannahpaul Guys she wear AnF and was a cool kid in hs so of course she would denounce this idea
— fakeCapinclutch_27 (@Capin_Clutch_27) May 15, 2013

You got me! I am an Abercrombie-wearing Queen Bee hot girl. I am in this to protect the brand.

Abercrombie is an ugly company. They sexualize young people, rely on cheap overseas labor, and are known for discriminatory hiring practices on top of every hateful thing their CEO said. But it's a false choice to suggest that we can either support Abercrombie or #FitchTheHomeless. There are a million ways to damn The Man that don't throw marginalized people under the bus.

Helping well starts with honoring people and upholding their dignity. Treating people as projects or points to be made is behavior every bit as objectifying and dehumanizing as the kind Abercrombie is known for. We can't oppose Abercrombie's body snark and bad ethics by turning homeless people into one-dimensional branded billboards for something we loathe. That's careless slacktivism, not altruism.

If you want to help the homeless, do it! Get involved with an on-the-ground agency like the L.I.V.I.N.G. Ministry on Pittsburgh's North Side. Find out what specific kinds of donations they need. (It might not be clothes.) Volunteer. Show up. Meet real people. Find out what housing insecurity looks like in your area. Learn.

I could say so much more about misguided top-down charity, magical intent, or humor that attempts to punch up by punching down, but I need to wrap this up. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

the space between

It’s trickier cultivating friendships as an adult, isn’t it? Babies and kids complicate the equation, but it was hard before that, too, like I graduated from college and my natural ability to connect with people my age. Cutting through the pleasantries dividing strangers from friends takes so much longer without the shared schedules and housing that once made it second nature. 

Do we age out of being open to intimacy? Are we too tired to make the effort? Too narrowly focused? Did we forget along the way how to let each other in?

Join me over at A Deeper Story, where I'm talking about community, social media, and personality type. See ya there.

so beautiful it hurts to look at you

April's end is fling-wide-the-windows
coffee on the porch
lunch al fresco and
honest to goodness dandelion-and-dogwood
Spring, God be praised.

Resurrection smells of fresh mown grass,
tastes sweet as blueberry ice cream.
We dig out bikes from the shed
and the dirt in the garden, sinking
bean poles that reach for the sky.
A new trail opens, we tie on sneakers and
emerge from hibernation. Stretching limbs we blink and
breathe in this new day, its dawning grace.

---

Western Pennsylvania winters encroach on fall and spring like choking vine. On my mopiest days, I am certain that we endure but two seasons here, Summer Camp and The Winter Of My Discontent, but the proof is in the pictures and the skip in my step today.

Spring has sprung. (Leeeeeaaaaaves!!!)

I'm playing along with HopefulLeigh's monthly What I'm Into link-up. This April I'm also down with:

• Morel mushrooms. Jim's been foraging, and we cook 'em in butter and garlic and YUM. 
• Chickens pecking about. (Less down with the fox who ate one just off our deck, though.)
• Three little piglets at the neighbors' house.
• Grilling season.
• Renew & Refine Retreat for Writers. I'm so excited to spend time learning and writing and having a little fun before summer camp wreaks its havoc. (And it's not too late to spend Memorial weekend with us...The code BREATHE gets you $25 off.)
• Mad Men. I still love that and Scandal. (There doesn't seem to be a lot else one right now, is there?) I mainlined two season of AMC's The Killing on Netflix in an embarrassingly short amount of time, and it's coming back for a third season soon. Jim thought it was slow, but I was hooked on the characters, emotional depth, and mystery.
• You already know I've been reading Bread & Wine, Carry On, Warrior, What It Is Is Beautiful, and The Mermaid of Brooklyn. I'm also reading (and LOVING) The Prophetic Imagination, but more on that another time--or better yet, head over to Kelley Nikondeha's for a week's worth of reflections.
• I used a birthday gift certificate to buy a weighted hippie-made hula hoop with fiery stripes. It seemed like the right thing to do. 
• Library story hour. I drop both kids off on Wednesday mornings for one glorious hour in which they are thoroughly charmed and I am blissfully uninterrupted. Magic, I tell ya.
• The kiddos are turning a corner. It's part timing and all grace, but we're hitting a stride. Dylan's not Too Old, and James isn't Too Little. We're out of diapers and babyhood but not yet in school, a fun place where they're little and "big" at all once, and they really are best friends. Hallelujah and Amen.

(an ongoing record of God's goodness, #400-423)

What's catching your eye and capturing your heart of late? (100 points for knowing to what my post title alludes.)

the mermaid of brooklyn

In tv land, there are generally two roles for the thirty-something woman: the (sexy) childless career woman or the (sexy) mother of a (sexy) teenager, a decidedly more supporting role. Motherhood dominates a commercial landscape for everything from paper towels to snack food, toothpaste, and air fresheners, but sustained storylines about parenting little ones are few and far between.

I posted a musing about this on facebook once, and a tired mom, admitting her own preference for escapist entertainment responded, Who wants to watch stories about real life?

I do, I thought. Not stories about diapers and crying, of course, but honest narrative about motherhood, relationships, change, identity, sex, self image, community, family, depression, joy, struggle, work, worth, meaning? Absolutely.

The Mermaid of Brooklyn is that story seldom told, a rare jewel and rough diamond both.

The sophomore novel from Brooklyn dwelling writer Amy Shearn is loosely based on her own great-grandmother, Jenny Lipkin, whose husband disappears one night without a word. He goes out for cigarettes and fails to return, leaving Jenny with their infant and toddler, his dog, and a host of questions.

The story takes place one scorching summer in Park Slope. It could be an enjoyable beach read, but it's no frivolous fluff piece. Shearn writes with honest insight and biting wit about new motherhood and the inevitable trials that set us off, set us adrift, or set us free.

Lipkin is a fascinating protagonist, because although she is not tremendously likable, she is strikingly relatable, and as a reader, you do want to see her succeed  The book takes a novel turn into the waters of magical realism, a charming plot device that serves the story and doesn't take away from its more down-to-earth enchantments.

I don't want to give anything away, but I especially liked the sensuality that Shearn imbues Jenny with as she re-learns to navigate her own body even while sharing so much of it with her young family. It was tender and true picture of life-after-baby.

Darkly funny, smart, and resonant, The Mermaid of Brooklyn tells a true tale about relationships, parenthood, second-guessing and starting over, even when today looks exactly like yesterday and the day before that.


Who is telling good stories about motherhood--or of women as more than romantic leads--in books, television, or movies? Are you reading/watching anything good lately?

TLC Book Tours hooked me up with a book, but these opinions are all mine. But you knew that;) Affiliate links, yo.

what it is is beautiful {giveaway}

I'm thrilled today to introduce you to Sarah Dunning Park, although since she is poet-in-residence for a little media empire known as Simple Mom, you may already be thoroughly charmed by her lyrical take on aspects of motherhood both sacramental and mundane. Her first volume of poetry, What It Is Is Beautiful: Honest Poems for Mothers of Small Children, had its official release this month, but I was lucky enough to receive my own copy when Sarah and I met up at our alma mater last May.

Sarah and I traveled in similar circles in college, but she graduated early, and I never got to know her as well as I wanted. Reconnecting last year on Twitter and then again in person for an afternoon with her and her girls was a delicious treat and exactly what my heart needed.

Sarah's a good mama, not because she's perfect or put together but because she's honest and kind. She generously agreed to share a poem here as well as a copy of her new book with one reader. (Yay!) It's available for only $4.38 right now at Amazon, so you might as well pick up a few for gifts. Mother's Day is just around the corner, and these poems are a cup of cool water and a needed "me too" to harried mamas in search of a little peace amid the storm of parenting littles.

Keeping the Peace

I saw it out of the corner of my eye,

noticed its tall, silver form
long before naming it in my mind:
heron. It perched, utterly graceful and
still, on a fallen trunk that sloped down
into the creek we cross over every day.
Fog was rising from the water,
and I wished I could stop the car,
approach quietly with camera in hand,
and somehow arrest the moment—
then lift it, intact, to take with me
as an emblem for the day.

Instead I turned away
to face the road again,
letting the moment flick past
like the flipping of channels,
and swallowing my awareness
that we live in a world with—herons.
The children were slumped behind me,
only just lulled into a dubious harmony
that would no doubt be shattered
if we stopped, or if I called out
for them to notice this marvel,
already now behind us.

I envisioned
three heads swiveling,
eager to broaden their horizons
with the wonders of the natural world.
Then I pictured a careless elbow
clipping a seatmate on the chin,
and two sets of hands clawing
at the sibling with the prime view—
of this animal
who has had the good sense to freeze
as we go barreling past.

No, I decided
(and it felt ungenerous):
today I would choose to keep
this emblem of peace to myself,
not sharing it with them directly,
but thereby preserving
the absence of conflict in the backseat,
and the heron’s solitary breakfast,
and perhaps most important,
that rare jewel—peace of mind—
for me.

© 2012 Sarah Dunning Park

To enter to win a copy of What It Is Is Beautiful, leave a comment in the vein of mothering or poetry, and we'll pick a winner Sunday night at 11:59 PM.

unsponsored content. affiliate links. please don't repost sarah's work without permission. you know the drill.

carry on, warrior

If you visit the internets now and again, it is likely that you have come across the words of Glennon Doyle Melton of Momastery.  Even if you've never read her, your sister, neighbor, or mom probably has: her post Don't Carpe Diem has 305,000 facebook shares, and that was before the Huffington Post syndicated it.

Girlfriend knows how to write words that connect, and Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed does just that. It's a roaringly funny, painfully honest, and uncommonly kind collection of personal narrative essays on life, recovery, family, truth-telling, faith, and loving well. Not everyone will appreciate Glennon's flawed-and-flighty-with-a-heart-of gold persona, but I did (and I'm not a regular reader of hers). She comes across as wildly over the top at times, but there is still something resonant and real within the silliness and self-deprecation.

A bit of the content has been previously published on her blog, which is kind of a bummer, except that they are still remarkably powerful essays. Every time, I'd be like, Man, I've totally read this one before! and then before I knew it, I was weeping or almost peeing my pants with laughter again, which speaks to the power of her storytelling.

Glennon might come across as too Jesus-y for folks who aren't religious and a little too much for some Christians (and others), but I found her grace and humor to be disarming and refreshing. I read a few passages aloud to Jim, and he loved it, too, so I'm pretty sure it's not a Women's Book (and also that Women's Books are not, in fact, real things).

Books that really make me laugh are rare, so I'll recommend them every time. There's more than enough outrage to go around, and sometimes you want to read something that makes you feel like the world isn't such a terrible place. Carry On, Warrior is like that.

TLC Book Tours hooked me up with a book, but these opinions are all mine. But you knew that;) Affiliate links, yo.

Dove's "real beauty" is a charade

Jim and I had the tv on this weekend, and a certain ad had me shaking my head and waxing feminist about the difference between the marketing of products to men and women.

Drink this beer...Get a hot chick! 

Shave with this gel...Get a hot chick! 

Buy this domain...Get a hot chick!

Advertising geared toward women is a different beast entirely, creating fears and providing "solutions" to embarrassing problems we never knew existed in our bodies and homes.

Your couch smells! Your house smells! You smell, not just at the gym but probably on your subway commute, too!

Your (off-white!) teeth are crawling with "bugs"!

Your lashes aren't lush!

Your thighs don't "gap"!

Your hair is flat! Your color dull!

And apparently, there's also something wrong with our armpits. They're not pretty enough, and we're probably not "ready" for sleeveless shirts, no matter what the weather report says.

Yup, the ad that inspired my mini tirade this weekend was created by none other than Dove, the "real beauty" company that brought us that feel-good viral ad that everyone was sharing on social media yesterday.

I should be more grateful of my natural beauty. It impacts the choices and the friends that we make, the jobs we apply for, how we treat our children.

It impacts everything. It couldn't be more critical to your happiness.

Beauty couldn't be more critical to your happiness. Imma go ahead and call that a fat corporate lie, peddled by a company with a vested interest in our believing that they can sell us both. Beauty and happiness are fleeting, at least the versions that come in a lipstick tube or can be purchased on credit. Those pleasures fade, but their elusive promise is a carrot that we keep chasing despite our better judgment.

If only we were skinnier--or curvier. If our arms were sculpted, our nail beds nicer, our lips fuller, our skin darker (or lighter), our stomachs flatter, our butts rounder, our breasts perkier, our hair smoother...THEN we would finally be truly happy, right? 

(Because if we've learned anything at all, it's that beautiful people are the happiest. Celebrities, for instance. Um...)

We spend a lot of time as women analyzing and trying to fix the things that aren't quite right, and we should spend more time appreciating the things that we do like.

Just not our armpits, right? Dove, you're kinda full of crap. You can't sell "real beauty" with a side of insecurity; that's not how this works. Yes, women experience happiness when we feel pretty, but joy is a much deeper well, which you'll never bottle, no matter how hard you try.

Joy arises from inhabiting bodies of all shapes fully and well, and women are not ornaments, shells, or prizes to be won. I may feel happy when I wear a pretty dress, but I experience joy when I dance, recognizing my own body's strength through work or play. With our hands we comfort and serve, and we are so much more than than our skin.

Joy is being present to the moment, loving and being loved, and the satisfaction of a job well-done. It's using our gifts to make the world better, lighting the darkness, and lightening one another's load. My joy is wrapped up in yours; we find happiness in connection and in the beauty of kindness, community, and truth.

Beauty is critical to happiness insofar as it is understood to be something greater than anything that can be photoshopped or purchased at a drugstore. Neither age nor "unsightly" armpits are a threat to the lasting beauty that springs from kind hearts and good works.

(And Dove? I like my deodorant without toxins, thanks.)

bread & wine: a love letter

Bread & Wine, Shauna Niequist's latest offering of essays are as charming and disarming as we've come to expect from this warm-hearted storyteller. The icing on the cake is the additional treat of favorite recipes which perfectly frame a narrative built around eating and hospitality.

Her stories are sensuous and evocative, celebrating memories shared around tables and the ways we nourish more than bodies in the breaking of bread. Shauna makes you want to cook and more than that, to feed people. Her vision of hospitality is one we seem to have lost along the way and long for again.

This is not a book about "entertaining" or showing off but eating together, eating simply, and eating well. She shares travel stories, heartbreaks, and lessons learned in community, balance, and embodied living. You definitely come away wanting to share a meal at Shauna's house, but it's still relatable: she confesses to serving cheese and crackers for dinner and admits it can be easier to feed a crowd than cook for your family day in and day out. She offers practical tips for doing both better, sharing her own learning process in between honest stories about friendship, parenting, celebration, shared burdens, and eating with joy.

I read an advanced copy that was missing a few recipes (although I have them in my inbox), and I look forward to putting more into my rotation. I did make her Breakfast Cookies. They were a little too wholesome for my picky eaters, who longed for a bite of chocolate with their banana, coconut, and oats, but they've been good for me before or after workouts.

I've been dressing salads in simple oil and vinegar for months, but Shauna convinced me that homemade vinaigrette can be just as simple and twice as versatile. Olive oil is no good in the fridge, but a maple Dijon balsamic dressing can sit out on the counter for up to a week and is as tasty on roasted asparagus as it is on greens (and probably quite good as a marinade, too). I've already made it twice, no measuring.

I definitely want to try the Dark Chocolate Sea Salted Butter Toffee and Annette's Enchiladas because hers look simpler than the way I make them, and I keep hearing rave reviews.

Both down-to-earth and inspiring, Bread & Wine captures the pleasures of fresh food, full-bodied flavor, and life shared around the table.

Gather the people you love around your table and feed them with love and honesty and creativity. Feed them with your hands and the flavors and smells that remind you of home and beauty and the best stories you've ever heard, the best stories you've ever lived.
There will be a day when it all falls apart...There are things we can't change. Not one of them. Can't fix, can't heal, can't put the broken pieces back together. But what I can do is offer myself, wholehearted and present, to walk with the people I love through the fear and the mess. That's all any of us can do. That's what we're here for. (come to the table, Bread & Wine)

review copy provided by zondervan. opinions mine, affiliate links, what-have-have. as you were, soldier.