If We Were Having Coffee (10 November, 2020)
Oh happy day!
Well, wasn’t Saturday’s news a relief?
There is of course a hell of a lot of work still to do, but I’m going to spend a couple of days luxuriating in the good news. This is the first time I can remember a really-really-significant-to-me election going the way I wanted it to in a long time.
I’m afraid I’m gonna get a bit serious on you this week, and break out of my usual quick-fire list (though there’s still some yummy food and great music down the bottom of the email!). A note about timing - I’m writing this on Sunday morning, so anything that happens in the 36 hours between me hitting ‘save’ and the email going out, I don’t know about!
Like many of us, I’m so excited about Kamala becoming VP - probably actually more excited about her than about Joe. I have a colleague whose 9-year-old daughter now gets to see a woman who looks like her, kicking ass on an international scale - and may barely remember the time when that wasn’t possible. I grew up in a household where we did not like Margaret Thatcher, but I always knew it was possible to reach that level, if you looked the way I did - heck, I look (very) vaguely similar to Jacinda Ardern - that’s something that little girls of colour haven’t previously had. The Vice-President-Elect is a no-nonsense, Converse-wearing, properly-laughing, woman of colour, and I’m so happy to see her on that stage!
That’s one reason I was so sad to see the inevitable start to comments like this, lasering in on the fact that as well as the articles about Kamala’s accolades and accomplishments, journalists are also covering how she presents herself.
Clothing matters. Kamala Harris, first female Vice-President-Elect of the United States, wore a white pantsuit for Saturday night’s celebration not just because she looks amazing in it, but because of the symbolism white clothing has as part of the women’s suffrage movement. If the Telegraph article above, or this great piece in Harper’s, were the only coverage the V-P-elect were getting, that would be a problem, but they’re not. What she wears is the least important thing about her.
I think back to myself as a young teen, having fully absorbed the message in Matilda (‘you chose books, I chose looks’) - as if you can only have one of the two. I spent years trying to figure out how some of the girls I went to school with had such smooth and glossy hair, before someone let me in on the secret: heat styling tools.
It’s one reason Legally Blonde means so much to me - it’s an unabashed celebration of the idea that you shouldn’t underestimate a woman just because of how she presents herself. Also fizzing along in my head is the background storyline of The Devil Wears Prada, in which Andy Sachs realises how little she’s understood the hard work and artistry that goes into fashion, style, and beauty. There’s also the idea that you should judge a book by its cover, because there’s a team of designers working to make sure the cover art represents the book’s contents and makes it appealing to its intended audience. I guess where I’m trying to get here is this - when a high-profile woman, or her stylists, have made a specific choice about how she appears to the world, it doesn’t serve us - or them - to pretend that they haven’t worked hard on that choice.
There’s a great Vogue video on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s beauty routine, in which she says:
"The reason that I think it's so important to share these things is that, first of all, femininity has power — and in politics, there is so much criticism, nitpicking about how women and femme-people present ourselves… There's this really false idea that if you care about makeup or if your interests are in beauty or fashion, that's somehow frivolous, but I actually think these are some of the most substantive decisions that we make and we make them every morning."
There is an irony to my writing this now, when I haven’t been to a meeting in person for about seven months, I admit. At the last work event I went to, just as the world was beginning to change in March, I was a panellist at a Women In Sustainability event on Green Finance and Sustainable Investment, and I took great care in picking out an outfit - a ritual I really enjoyed. How was I going to present myself in that situation? How was I going to show, even before speaking, that I respected the fact that everyone there had given up their time to listen to what I had to say? I really miss that.
That’s not to say this is an unabashed positive. Thinking about Legally Blonde again, there’s a line in the musical where Elle sings “Being blonde and being hot/ that got me exactly squat,” which is demonstrably false. Had she never dated Warner Huntingdon III, she might never have gone to law school, for a start.
Back to reality - I’ve said before how uncomfortable I am with the ever-rising tide of grooming expectations. The first time I heard about getting a professional blow-out for a big meeting, I was stunned, and not in a good way. I also remember the pressure I felt as a new grad to build up a professional wardrobe, and the toll it took on my bank account. Some people - especially people of colour or in the LGBTQ community - find it really difficult to reconcile how they have to present themselves in the workplace with who they are inside, or find themselves restricted by dress codes which don’t allow for natural hair or any gender-fluidity. I haven’t even begun to talk about how Kamala and AOC, as women of colour, face different - higher - expectations than many other women in public life when it comes to personal presentation.
Until appearance is irrelevant, though, as someone working my way up my chosen career path, I find it incredibly useful to find out how other women present themselves, and why they find the armour and war paint they need to wear in battle - sorry, into the boardroom.
Just a few links from me, this week:
In the vein of the above, pieces on AOC’s lipstick, Joe’s aviators, and the Merkel rainbow.
One of my favourite spontaneous-party videos I’ve seen from Saturday (sound up for this one):
The first of Melissa Cox’s new newsletter series, for those of us living alone during These Times (she refers to it as ‘lockdown two’, which it isn’t, here in Scotland, but it’s weird nonetheless) - Lockdown Two: This Time It Also gets Dark at 3pm.
This great automated playlist Spotify put together for me, generated to accompany the lakes, my current favourite track from Taylor Swift’s folklore.
A friend sent me the link to this great piece by Tom Cox, about being in love with Taylor Swift’s music and the genius that is folklore in particular.
Smitten Kitchen’s blueberry scones are a delicious - and quick - bake. I used frozen berries (I’m not made of money!) and had to put in an extra couple of tablespoons of flour, but barely half an hour after I started, I added some raspberry jam and yoghurt for a red-white-and-blue bowl of goodness!
I’d love to hear your thoughts this week - the easiest way to share them is to use the comment function built into Substack and this post. In the meantime, I’m off to watch Legally Blonde and catch up on my Nanowrimo word count.
Speak soon,
Lily
Find me on Instagram - @LilyMCooks - and my shop at Bookshop.org (AD - affiliate link)