My Rejected Article

So some of you know that I'm writing for a trendy New York glossy these days (well, if it were more popular, it would be "trendy;" at this stage it's merely aspiring to trendiness). They have commissioned several articles from me (well, if I were getting paid it would be "commission;" at this stage it's merely orders I obey), one of which was this one I've posted. My managing editor asked me to write a treatise on the ugliness and outdatedness of shoulder pads for the March issue (yes, it's a political science review). So I did, and for reasons not revealed to me, my article did not make the cut. This didn't hurt my feelings too badly, as so far I've been rejected thrice by the New Yorker and roundly ignored by the Times, and with such giants on my resume of failure I've come to excuse the rejections of humbler enterprises as "slavery to fashion." But you can read it for free. Bon Appetit!

Once in a while when I was in college my friend Araminta and I needed to assuage our blues with a trip off-campus. Rarely did this involve much planning ahead or even a token glance in the mirror before we got into her long-suffering Volvo and drove to Denny’s. In fact, we usually just set out in whatever sorry rags we had been studying in; sometimes sweats, sometimes PJ’s, sometimes whatever faded t-shirt and long john’s we had worn to class every day that week. While neither of us was a vision of glamour on these occasions, I noticed that she had a distinct advantage which saved her from utter frumpiness. For a moment I considered that it might be the two cup sizes she had on me, but then it occurred to me that the world is over-run with giant-busted women, and very few of them have that “je ne sais quoi” elegance that Araminta had in her bedraggled paisley jammies. What was it?

I realized then that it was her mannishly square shoulders which made even her most casual and untailored garments seem chic and complete. Such shoulders, in their broadness, accentuated the smallness of the waist, provided a frame for the bust, and minimized the width of the hips (a woman built like this rarely has to worry whether her “butt looks big”—what could possibly look big next to those shoulders?). Surprisingly, this broadness across the back that I described as “mannish” emphasized the femininity of her figure, and she didn’t have to do any “dressing up” to look, well, dressed up.
This realization made me wonder why I seem to be the only woman who mourns the loss of the shoulder pad in womens’ fashion today. Why would women have ever given up something so flattering and, forgive what I’m about to say, aesthetically empowering?

I should explain. The shoulder pad entered womens’ fashion in the 1940’s as a variation on the soldier’s uniform. The country was largely supportive of the war effort and naturally, fashion reflected this. It also helped that Adrian dressed his muse, the popular film star Joan Crawford, in suits with padded shoulders, and also that rations on various fabrics restricted designers from indulging in the usual flourishes to add excitement to their designs: full skirts, puffy sleeves, etc. They suddenly had to be very economical in their creations, and the sleek, sparse suit padded and squared off at the shoulders proved an appropriate, and elegant, solution. Women’s social role shifted as well; she entered the workplace, taking over many of the jobs usually occupied by men who were now abroad, and the authoritative look afforded her by this simple adjustment to the cut of her clothes fit her new image perfectly. She didn’t look like a man, but she did look powerful, in a way only men had previously been able to appear.

Then the war ended, and with it not only the rations on fabric, but the need for women in the workforce; in fact, a massive campaign was launched to drag women back into the home to free up those jobs for the returning G.I.’s. After enjoying a taste of a fairly independent life outside the home, women were now maneuvered back into their formerly sequestered lives (a problematic trend astutely, famously, documented by Betty Freidan in The Feminine Mystique). Not surprisingly, fashion took full advantage of the lift on rations and came out with skirts embellished with extra yards of fabric. Fashion also relaxed its wartime strategy of militarizing the female image. The ‘soldier’ look was yesterday and the new look was far softer and less structured, except in the infamously pointed brassieres popular in the fifties. This look was somehow, in the never-humble opinion of this amateur social scientist,…so obedient. Poodle skirts, skinny-heeled slingbacks, and good girl peter pan collars: the only body parts to enjoy special emphasis were the good ol’ mammaries (just in time for the baby boom! Co-inky-dink?). The shoulders, which in the forties had been enhanced to the effect of suggesting strength, professionalism, and an authority at least superficially on par with that of the male, were now allowed their natural weak slope, their former emphasis now dropped several inches south.

Jump ahead to the 1980’s: women once again storm the workforce, not due to any national crisis, but simply because it is the next step in the progression towards equality with men, initiated by the women’s lib movement. As newcomers to the corporate world, women do what they can to fit in, the pervasive mentality being that women have to prove they belong in this traditionally masculine domain. Women’s office clothes now mimic the man’s suit: though the bottom half is a skirt with pumps (because we couldn’t go so far as to let women actually be comfortable in slacks and flat shoes and even, god forbid, unshaved legs) the top half is a smart blazer with, again, shoulder pads. These shoulder pads, however, are an exaggerated version of those of WWII. The new shoulder pad doesn’t merely level and extend the shoulder a centimeter or two; it often takes the shape of a curve, which creates small humps at either shoulder, achieving that “linebacker” look bemoaned by reactionaries to the trend,--or it extends so far out that the wearer has to turn sideways to enter doorways. Perhaps this is a manifestation of “80’s excess,” or perhaps designers just don’t want to be caught repeating a trend that had been made popular by someone else four decades previous, so they revamp it in this mutant state. In any case, the look lasts for about as long as it seems necessary for women to masculinize their image, which is not much longer than the first decade of their corporate life.

Since then, women have felt more at home in the business world and thus entitled to dress as women rather than as masculinized females. The shoulder pad has been shrugged off. Will it come back? Most likely if it does, it will be for purely aesthetic reasons, as there are so many fewer arenas left in which appearing manlier could benefit a woman; she has her own identity now, and that identity has been, at least in theory, validated by her society. The author, if you haven’t guessed already, mourns the shoulder pad’s absence in popular fashion, also for purely aesthetic reasons, but does not foresee its return any time soon. Why? There are two reasons for her pessimism. One of them is that fashion has basically fallen off the deep end in its escalating pursuit of skankiness. The questions now seem to be, “how much of my pubic hair do I need to wax off in order to wear these extra-low-rider jeans?” and, “does the bra strap peeking out of my tank top match the thong peeking out of my pants?” In other words, the whole ideology behind today’s fashion appears to be “how to be sexy (in that “Sexiness for Boneheads” way taught by MTV)” rather than “how to look good.” Coco Chanel once said that the proper goal for a woman when she dresses herself should not be to look rich, but to look elegant. There is a sorry lack of such subtlety in today’s trends. Sexiness is defined by what seems like a checklist of the obvious. Tits showing? Check. Ass showing? Check. Gams showing? Double check. Midriff exposed? Check. The sexiness of a woman in a tailored and, yes, padded, dress or blazer (think Lauren Bacall in To Have and To Have Not, think Kate Hepburn in Philadelphia Story, think Evita) is too complicated to make the cut in today’s world where Paris Hilton is an style icon and rap-video hootchies herald the newest accessories your fourteen-year old will be begging you to buy her. A padded garment emphasizes a body part that is not distinctly sexual, and thus has very little hope of gaining popularity until a massive shift takes place in the collective psychology of our society.

The other reason I don’t think the shoulder pad will come back any time soon is because women simply don’t know what looks good on them. So many of us don’t realize that it is preferable to look like a linebacker than like an overgrown cheerleader. If women knew what looked good on them, these fashions would have died far sooner:
1) Jeans with large areas, usually thighs and/or buttocks, bleached out (“Do these make my ass look fat?” You bet.).
2) Shoes designed to suggest the head of a duck-billed platypus: the turned-up toe and the heel extended behind the ankle make one’s foot look two sizes larger. No good!
3) Baby-T’s: even if you do have washboard abs, is it really appropriate to have your stomache showing oustide of the gym or a beach on St. Bart’s? And for the rest of us, why abuse your pooch by making it bulge over the top of your jeans? Not attractive!
4) Pink eyeshadow: Why buy over-priced eye cream if you’re then going to wear makeup that makes you look like you’ve been crying and that’s why your eyes are puffy (and yes, pink eyeshadow makes your eyes look puffy!).
5) The Jennifer Aniston ‘do: Sorry ladies, those two years back in the ‘90’s when you all were whipping your stylists into a frenzy over that ill-begotten coiffure? Bad idea! It made your head look big, it hid your face, and it emphasized the lines on your neck (and you who had such lines were too old to be imitating 20-something sitcom stars. For shame!).
6) The ruffled mini: and sorry, Paris, the only woman with the legs for this skirt is my three-year-old niece. Give it back!
7) I already mentioned this but it bears reinforcement: Consider this, ladies, would Jackie Kennedy have worn an exposed thong?

These are just a few of the objectionable trends of recent years. Perhaps I should start a “Top 100” list.

Valentine's Day Shvitz

The Russian Turkish Baths are a legendary New York institution, referenced by some of the last century’s great writers such as Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets. Under Russian management throughout its entire 114 year-old history, the baths are set in a brownstone with a famous red staircase in the East Village, the city’s old Russian-Ukrainian neighborhood. For twenty-five dollars, one gets a sagging pair of shorts, an ill-fitting, un-closing robe, and a thin, undrying towel, and can enjoy an uninterrupted day of steaming and unclogging. Unlike many of the popular newer spas, like the Japanese Ten Thousand Waves in Santa Fe or Kabuki Springs in San Francisco, or the numerous trendy dayspas in New York, the Russian Turkish baths do not present a sleek, glamorous, or relaxing environment. There are no soothing aromatheraputic scents wafting in through the grates, no sliced cucumber for one’s eyes, no new-age instrumentals playing over hidden speakers, and the slippers lying around the locker room were almost certainly not sterilized since the last person wore them (when one leaves after a session of steaming, one might experience a perplexing mix of feeling cleaner than one has ever felt in one’s life and a conviction that one has contracted a skin condition). There’s often a burly middle-aged man stomping about in his soaked shorts shilling his massages to the patrons, sometimes by actually grabbing one of their forearms and kneading it until it’s red. The patrons aren’t the young yoga-toned professionals in anklets and lotus-tats who frequent the Japanese spas; they’re mostly ancient, thick-trunked Russians and African Americans with patchy leg hair and spinal humps—I have never seen so many naked blacks and Slavs in one place, and getting along so well!

On Valentine’s evening, the Russian Turkish Baths hosted a public party, and I immediately knew this was indeed the thing to do on Valentine’s. I enlisted my good friend Angela (see “Totally Belated Halloween Post,” paragraph 3) to accompany me to this fete, which featured a boisterous gypsy band, unlimited vodka (which I found a little odd considering it was in a place that specialized in inducing lightheadedness and dehydration in its customers) and pierogi with sour cream. The crowd that night was younger and fitter than usual, and seemed more dedicated to the art of toxing than that of detoxing, replenishing their lost liquid with a constant stream of booze. People relaxed the usual New Yorker embargo on eye contact and spent the evening aggressively wooing each other, a trend that Angela and I avoided by getting into a serious debate on the Landmark Forum in the Turkish room; I guess men leave you alone once they realize just how argumentative you can be. One man proved more fearless than his colleagues, however. In the early part of the evening we noticed a young, small, reedy blond man shuffling back and forth in his flip-flops from the various steam rooms, carrying a laminated sheet of paper, which he offered for examination to one after another of mostly disinterested-looking bathers. In my dizzy state (which forced me to spend much of my time sitting on a bench in the common area nodding dully to the procession of men who approached me thinking I was waiting to get hit on), I didn’t think this man and his paper odd, although later I wondered how I could have overlooked the absurdity of someone carrying anything other than a bottle of vodka in the steaming areas. This man (I feel odd calling him a ‘man,’ as he couldn’t have been older than 22) approached Angela and me while we sat on the bench catching our breath. He introduced himself as “Avi,” the exoticism of his name contrasting noticeably with his rather whitebread appearance. A recent graduate of University of Michigan, Avi was trying to start his career as a boardgame inventor. Here he showed us the mysterious paper, steam-dampened even through the laminate, which depicted the ‘map,’ if you will, of a four-person boardgame inspired by the horrors occurring on the Gaza strip. The players represent Hamas, militant Israel, moderate Islam, and moderate Israel, with “global opinion” acting in a manner similar to monopoly’s chance card, and suicide attacks and car bombings as the modes of stealing/losing points towards the objective, Gaza control. The game itself, if dubiously informed, might have been pretty clever and appropriate for self-consciously intellectual New Yorkers, but the inventor’s sliding around the Turkish baths in his trunks presenting the game with an elaborate explanation of the rules and objectives to drunken strangers in bikinis, seemed somewhat uncouth. No matter, I started to nod off from faintness while Avi managed to engage the reluctant but unfortunately lucid Angela in a more personal discussion. In my stupor I caught snippets of their conversation indicative that I really should remain alert enough to eavesdrop more thoroughly—something about “rope burn,” and “transcendant pain.” Later Angela reprimanded me for failing to rescue her from an unwelcome invitation to a session of bondage and domination by the delicate Avi, who apparently enjoyed the strain of clamps on his nipples. I apologized for my negligence, secretly delighted that I could now use my low blood pressure as an excuse to obliviate from unwanted chatting.

Angela and I then proceeded to the Russian Room. A note on the Russian Room: this is an asset of the Baths that I have not encountered in any other spa I’ve patronized. The interior resembles what one might imagine the inside of a volcano to look like, craggy, dark, steamy, with sloped, rough walls—except along the walls are two rows of faucets out of which pour constant streams of ice-cold water into buckets. This room is so damn hot, hotter than anything in the Japanese or Finnish spas, that as soon as you step inside, you have to grab one of these buckets of chilled water and dump it on your head. This comforts you for about a minute and a half, until your hair starts to burn the back of your neck and you have to douse yourself again. Now you sit down on the wooden bench, flinch as you burn your ass on the molten cedar and curse loudly so everyone peers out at you from under their head towels, and then you pick a random towel, soaked with either some stranger’s sweat or the water collecting in the uneven plains of the floor, throw it on the bench and clumsily aim your ass on it before you faint and crack your head open against the jagged wall-boulders. Now you start to wheeze and you swear that you can actually hear the delicate cilia lining your lungs sizzle and char like so much dry brush. You wince at the worrisome sensation that the liquid membranes on the insides of your eyelids are burning your eyeballs. You dunk your head into the bucket nearest you, and take long, grateful gulps from the water, which is so cold that, at any other time, you would complain that it’s freezing your sensitive teeth and hazardous to your singing voice. You eventually resign yourself to your discomfort, as the danger of slipping, tripping, burning, or fainting on your way to the door scares you into staying put. Now your eyes adjust and you find that as long as you hog one of the buckets of water and sip at it like a giant beer mug, you can almost stand it without wanting to die. Now you notice that there are maybe fifteen other people in the room, all lounging and chatting and not seeming at all as though their every pore is screaming in protest at the heat. Gays in mud masks, burly middle-aged Russians comparing forearm bulk, babas in soaked robes, bemoaning the bitchery of their American grandaughters. In the corner atop an elevated platform, a youngish studly-type, lent a slightly-thuggish aura by the towel wrapped ‘do-rag style about his shorn head, straddles a topless woman lying on the bench, holding her ankle fast against her ear for several spectacular seconds until he lowers her leg to the bench and proceeds to flog her breasts with a soapy oak branch. You then realize that the disturbingly flexible topless girl is Angela, and the man with the best job on earth offers this service for $35 a pop. Then Angela emerges sudsy and glowing from this ‘treatment,’ slurrily testifying to the profound bliss induced by the Russian stretch-and-whip (a review you find suspect as you know Angela to be an undiscriminating enthusiast of any activity requiring toplessness, flexibility, and flagellation). She even offers to buy the treatment for you as a Valentine’s ‘gift,’ and expresses annoyance at your refusal. The other patrons overhear your bickering and join with Angela in pressuring you on, pooh-poohing your objections and then just shouting over your increasingly-frantic protests. Then they start splashing you with cold water from the buckets, which feels surprisingly unpleasant, perhaps because of the village-lottery atmosphere which has suddenly overtaken the Russian Room. Finally, the hooded strongman saunters over to you and unwinds the towel from his head, revealing a sensitive face touched with concern.

“Hello. I am Sasha. I not hurting you.”

He pouts at your resistance, offers you his beefy cocked arm, and gazes benevolently into your eyes. You hesitate a moment, then place your weary hand in the crook of his elbow. With a beatific, dippy grin on your face like Blanche du Bois receiving the kindness of strangers, you lean on his shoulder and ascend the steps to the whipping bench.

I remember very little else from that night other than treading through thick slush and the sharp 2am chill through an uncommonly quiet East Village to the subway for the long ride home, where I crawled, clean and chastened, into bed.