"Young women at the time were turning their backs on the corseted shapes of their mothers, with their nipped waists and ship’s-prow chests — the shape of Dior..."

"... which had dominated since 1947. They disdained the uniform of the establishment — the signifiers of class and age telegraphed by the lacquered helmets of hair, the twin sets and heels, and the matchy-matchy accessories — the model for which was typically in her 30s, not a young gamine like Ms. Quant."

I'm reading — with tears in my eyes — "Mary Quant, British Fashion Revolutionary, Dies at 93/Known as the mother of the miniskirt, clad in her signature play clothes and boots, with huge painted eyes, fake freckles and a bob, she epitomized London’s Swinging Sixties" (NYT).

Thank you, Mary Quant! Thanks for the great joy of the very best fashion — in my subjective experience — the most fun, the most relief from formality and stodginess.

And thanks to the NYT writer, Penelope Green, for coming up with "nipped waists and ship’s-prow chests" to express so concisely what felt great to rebel against.

Futurism was much cheekier then:

"In Mississippi in 1947, two Black teenagers asked for fried chicken and watermelon before they went to the electric chair. Professor Green painted one ornate platter for each boy."

From "Julie Green, Artist Who Memorialized Inmates’ Last Suppers, Dies at 60/For more than two decades, she rendered death row prisoners’ requests for a last meal on a series of plates, bringing a human face to capital punishment" (NYT). 

She planned to paint the meals until capital punishment was abolished, or until she had made 1,000 plates, whichever came first. In September, she painted her 1,000th plate, an oval platter with a single familiar image: the bottle of Coca-Cola requested by a Texas man in 1997. She died a few weeks later....

The plates are white china with the image of the food done in cobalt blue glaze. She got the idea to do this project when she read about a man whose last meal choice was glazed doughnuts. The obituary writer does not note the glaze/glaze inspiration/coincidence. It's just put there for us to see.

Nor does the obituary discuss race, even though — out of all those 1,000 plates — one of the choices it highlights is the fried chicken and watermelon that 2 black teenagers wanted. For many years, it has seemed verboten to mention fried chicken or watermelon in connection with black people. What is it about this context that made it seem okay?

Is it just that Julie Green — who looks white in the photograph — has died? Is it that she meant to express empathy for the condemned? But she systematically commemorated any condemned person who was given a meal choice. The obituary chose which examples to isolate. I was surprised to see this breach of taboo.

The author of the obituary is the NYT style writer Penelope Green. No relation to Julie Green, I presume. I see I have a tag for Penelope Green, and I see that I have especially enjoyed her writing — about Marie Kondo (here), Cat Marnell (here), and new urban communal living, blogged here: "And another thing I like about Penelope Green is: She put 'social justice' in quotes." 

I wonder what Penelope Green really thought about Julie Green's art project. An obituary writer can't inject criticism. Or can she?

The cheap, obtuse fun of mocking Marie Kondo for selling some expensive, carefully chosen objects.

I saw the mockery the other day, but didn't want to take the trouble to say what is too obvious to ignore, but here's Penelope Green saying it in the NYT: "Marie Kondo Wants to Sell You Nice Things. What’s Wrong With That?/Her new online store honors her brand’s ethos: that objects can make people happy."

Kondo's decluttering was never about getting down to the bare minimum. It's about getting rid of everything that doesn't make you feel happy. That assumes you do have a few things that really work for you. But what would those things be? And what if you're just starting out? And also, what if you need to buy gifts for people who you know have followed the Marie Kondo method?

Here's the KonMari store. And here's the page for the most-mocked thing: Tuning Fork & Rose Quartz Crystal/$75.

Marie uses a tuning fork in her everyday life to help her to reset – and she’s never without a crystal. Striking the fork against a crystal creates pure tones that are believed to help restore a sense of balance. Made of aluminum alloy, this KonMari tuning fork has a frequency of 4,096 hertz. Comes with a rose quartz crystal.

She's never without a crystal, but she doesn't make any assertions about what the crystal is supposed to do. Leave the crystal beliefs to others to propound, but as for the tuning fork, the belief is stated: It restores a sense of balance. I note that there's no assertion that Marie believes that or that the belief is true. The assertion is only that there are such beliefs out there, presumably somewhere in the mind of some human beings, because where else could beliefs that complex exist? A cat might have a sense of balance, but it's unlikely that a cat has beliefs about a sense of balance, and virtually impossible for a cat to think it could recover a lost sense of balance by using an object to make a particular sound.

"Ms. Marnell turned the tropes of women’s magazine writing upside down, with stories like 'The Art of Crack-tractiveness: How to Look and Feel Hot on No Sleep'..."

"... which offered tips like 'Brush your teeth!' along with a how-to guide to real beauty products for fellow partyers who might, like Ms. Marnell, have spent the night in a warehouse, as she wrote, with a 'bunch of U.K. dustheads for five straight hours.' It was irresistible, and also appalling, and the internet tied itself up in knots debating Ms. Marnell’s honesty, talent, authenticity and narcissism, along with the exploitative and enabling behavior of her many bosses. Naturally, she got a book deal and a half-million dollar advance from Simon & Schuster."

From a NYT piece, "Cat Marnell, a Former Beauty Editor, on Her New Addiction Memoir."

There's a big interview with the woman, whose "hair fell out a few years ago." (She has many wigs.) She was smoking furiously and drinking a lot of coffee, then switching to wine.

I’ve just finished reading your book, which is harrowing, so I’m a little shaken.

Dude, that was four years ago. I have everything now but hair, though I’m not in recovery and I’m not clean. People are like, “Is it so brave to tell everything?” I’m like, “No.” For me, being brave would be being in a program and getting clean, instead of “I found a way to talk about my problems ad nauseam and somehow get paid for it.” Not that I want to reduce what I’ve accomplished. I want to say good things.

The interviewer is female, by the way. Penelope Green.

Here's the book: "How to Murder Your Life."

She does have an amusing writing style. You might think only other addicts would want to read about excessive drug use, but I think it all depends on the quality of the writing. You don't have to be an addict to like reading "Naked Lunch" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." But that's the male addict point of view and set of experiences. Marnell is telling us about being a "party girl" in NYC, loving fashion magazines — "I wanted to huff Anna Wintour" — and all that makeup.

And an obsession with aging:

"Johanna wants to make communal vegetarian meals and keep chickens. Mariel Berger hopes for social, artistic and political collaborations. Harmony Hazard is into hula hooping, book groups and anarchism."

Look out, the NYT has a new style piece. It's very Stuff-White-People-Like. Very women-reader-pleasing. But I actually really love that first paragraph quoted above. Not that I'm not a woman reader. I am.

The writer is Penelope Green, and the subject is the new urban communal living. Actually, one of my favorite subjects is evolved hippiedom. So, I'm going to read all this:

... Ms. Berger and others seem to share the ideals of the old-fashioned communes of yore, except that their groups are tiny, urban-centric and linked to outside interests like fixing bikes or, here in New York City, membership in the Park Slope food co-op. And like communes, many collectives give themselves names: The House of Tiny Egos (a name that’s decidedly more evocative than, say, Findhorn, that of the hoary Scottish commune) is a five-person collective in a century-old brick bungalow in Bed-Stuy. Not only do they aim to remain of the world, they hope for a convenient location, one that’s near all the major subway stops....

Ms. Berger met Ms. Hazard, who had been living in the East Village in her mother’s town house and looking for work in “social justice”...

Looking for work in social justice... Why does that strike me as so funny? And another thing I like about Penelope Green is: She put "social justice" in quotes.

... she said, at a permaculture conference in Vermont last summer. Permaculture is big with the collective-living crowd...

Permaculture?

... it’s a model for sustainable living that extrapolates principles from natural ecologies — like how different plants grow together for their mutual benefit — and applies them to other systems like, well, group housing.

Culture... as if it grows. Permanent... when even plants are not permanent. But why not have an ugly and silly word to denote your dreams?

I've had enough Hazard-Berger. On to the next exemplary communalists:

[I]n Philadelphia,... three roommates... needed five more.

Their advertisement on Craigslist [included:]

“You will probably not feel at home here unless anti-ableism, anti-ageism, anti-classism, anti-racism, consent, trans-positivity and queer-positivity, etc., are very important to you,” the ad read.

Very important? Not just important. I love the way they didn't reject the non-like-minded. They just threatened to make them feel uncomfortable. Appropriate, for folks so in love with the prefix "anti-."

One of the housemates is "Gauge, 30, who is transitioning from he to she and works in an S&M store, and also declined to give a last name. ('My family has no idea where I am — or if I’m even alive — and I’d like to keep it that way,' she said.)" No last name, but her first name is Gauge. They'll never suspect it's their Gauge.

Ms. Feigelson explained that they were being “super-selective,” because an activist house, which is what she hopes theirs will be, she said, “can create tension.”

Yeesh. And ha ha. Penelope Green is, I think, totally trashing them... and the whole "activist" self-image.

At this point in the article, Green consults Helen Fisher," a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University and a relationship expert (she is the scientific adviser to Chemistry.com, a spinoff of the dating site Match.com)." Fisher reads these ridiculous Craigslist ads and says, not what I would say — i.e., these people seem way too annoying to try to live with — but:

The idealized, small-scale communities they described reminded her of the hunting and gathering bands of pre-history. So she was a bit concerned that their creators didn’t seem to be searching for individuals with different skill sets. Dr. Fisher, whose new book, “Why Him? Why Her?” explores the neurochemistry of gender differences, concluded that the ad writers were by and large “estrogen-expressives, or what I call Negotiators,” which she defined as “compassionate, verbal and emotive,” as well as “Explorers, meaning those expressive of the dopamine system, or people who are energetic, creative, politically liberal.”

Negotiators? Compassionate? The hell! Could you please squirt a little more buy-my-book juice into your analysis, Dr. Fisher? Do people who are politically liberal really deserve to be brought down in this queasy sea of estrogen?

I think most people — most people I'd be at all interested in living with — would read this article and dream only of a solitary cell to live and be left alone in.

And, I should add, I never wanted to live in a hippie commune either, back in the old days.