"Why Don't You... Cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt banded with bamboo, and pin with colored thumb-tacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week?"

Wrote Diana Vreeland, quoted in "Diana Vreeland Asks, Why Don't You.... Diana Vreeland helmed the stylish pages of BAZAAR for 25 years. During that time she penned an advice column with extravagant ideas for the modern woman. We rounded up 12 of Vreeland's most outrageous and stylish suggestions. Check back every week for new audacious advice. So, why don't you..." 

Harper's Bazaar did that round-up in 2014, and Diana Vreeland worked there from 1936 until 1962 and then at Vogue from 1962 to 1971. I got sidetracked into the topic of Diana Vreeland after blogging about the Vogue editorship passing from Anna Wintour to Chloe Malle. As I noted in the comments section to that earlier post, I had a job in the early 1970s that required me to read Vogue (among many other magazines) ever month. I was intensely aware that there had been an earlier era that was so much wilder and crazier.

But the pink bulletin board with thumbtacks seems within anyone's reach. I assume "pin with colored thumb-tacks all your various enthusiasms" means use colored thumb-tacks to pin up slips of paper upon which you've written words representing whatever you're currently feeling enthusiastic about.

The unusually pink sunrise — 5:05, 5:07, 5:16, 5:17, 5:25.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"In contrast to the various septuagenarians on the national stage, [Doug Emhoff is] a youthful, keenly focussed guy who says 'awesome' a lot."

"I spoke with Tricia Gronnevik, a forty-four-year-old credit-union marketing analyst who attended the San Antonio rally. 'Doug just blew me away with how real he is,' she said. 'It doesn’t seem fake or forced, like good old J. D. Vance.' Gronnevik is a fifth-generation Texan—she grew up on a ranch—and she thought Emhoff would be a worthy First Gentleman. 'We need a new version of masculinity represented,' she said. 'I’m really tired of the alpha-male toxic bullshit. Being a South Texas country girl... I grew up in deer camps listening to a lot of misogynistic shit. It’s refreshing that we have men here who are supportive and not punching down, being bullies.' Emhoff’s 'super-cool' musical taste 'is making me love him even more,' she added. 'I’m a big New Order fan, too. The Cure is my favorite band of all time, so if he’s a Cure fan I’m gonna die.'"

Writes Sarah Larson, in "Doug Emhoff Takes His Gen X Energy on the Road/On the trail, Emhoff has made loving music, and his wife, look like a campaign in itself. 'If he’s a Cure fan, I’m gonna die,' one rallygoer said" (The New Yorker).

I asked Google what's the most famous Cure song. I got this:

Now, there's your nontoxic masculinity. Aim higher younger-than-boomer guys. I saw JD Vance's fuchsia tie at the debate last night, but there are miles ahead on the road to detoxification.

IN THE COMMENTS: People are talking about this Daily Mail article, so I want to note that I have seen it:

"The intentionally repulsive color won over the internet, and then the summer, and then, at a pivotal moment, an entire presidential campaign."

"In a few short days, supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, memed chartreuse into an unusually potent political symbol.... 'I will aspire to be Brat,' Jake Tapper said on CNN to one of his correspondents, who had been holding up a slime-green meme printed out on a sheet of paper."

From "You Can’t Escape This Color/'This is not millennial pink. The energy behind it is alive'" (NYT)(free-access link).

I used the last of this month's NYT gift link allowance on that article. Why? Because I knew it was hard to understand without more explanation, but I didn't want to do the explanation.

And you'll need to go over there anyway to see the particular green in question. It's a color that's connected to this word "brat," which reminds me of a word from many years ago when I was a teenager: "groovy." It was new and cool and precisely expressive of youth for a very short time before it got seized upon by everyone old and it became embarrassing. 

From the golden moment before the collapse of "groovy":

Once the TV talking heads and political candidates start using your word, they've stolen it from you. You have to move on or use it ironically or do whatever it is you kids do today when the adults are annoying you. 

As for you political candidates, be careful using the word "brat" in Wisconsin. I remember when John Kerry screwed up.

At the Pink Cloud Café...

... you can talk in the middle of the day.

Photo taken this morning at 6:53.

"Even the name of the place Corey Brooks frequented for routine medical care — Magee-Womens Hospital — felt alienating."

"Patients donned pink gowns. Cutouts of pink bras were plastered on the walls. A sign urged patients to 'fight like a girl.' 'Things like that are just incredibly disorienting for someone going into those spaces who is always being reminded, hey, this wasn’t designed for you,' Brooks said. 'You’re not really sure if you should disclose to these people that you’re trans or not.' Brooks identifies as nonbinary and transgender, but as someone who was assigned female at birth, they share similar health needs as cisgender women for gynecologic care and screenings for chest health as they age...."

 
From "For trans people, medical visits can be more traumatizing than healing/Trans patients share their stories of subtle discrimination, outright hostility and ill-informed medical professionals" (WaPo).

Is everything woman-specific now going to be characterized as unfriendly or even wrong and toxic?!

"It almost feels like the millennial pink of yesteryear run through an algorithm to make it feel 'post-pandemic' — that kind of Roaring Twenties redux...."

"... I will say the idea of wearing this shade of pink appeals more to me right now than wearing muted pink — say, millennial pink."/"Pantone identifies it as a 'hybrid color,' or 'a carmine red that does not boldly dominate but instead takes a "fist in a velvet glove" approach.' They also say it 'welcomes anyone and everyone.' But it’s interesting that most of us think of it as closer to pink than red."/"Pink is a fact of life, and it does feel that the brash maximalism of Ms. 18-1750 suits our current moment much better than a more restrained cotton candy or carnation shade."

From "Pantone’s Color of the Year Was Made for the Metaverse/Say hello to Viva Magenta, the color no one asked for, coming to a world where no one lives" (NYT).

Here's the 18-1750 swatch (which looks pretty red to me):

"Everything — hair, makeup, jewelry, wardrobe and nail care — seemed to communicate calm, control and, especially, neutrality...."

"[Cassidy Hutchinson] wore minimally visible makeup — what appeared to be light bronzer, but no discernible colors of lipstick or eye shadow.... Social media teems with thousands of tutorials on 'reshaping one’s face' with contouring makeup, how to make eyes look bigger, noses smaller, skin smoother. The overall messages are clear but contradictory: 'become an artist of the self,' 'make yourself beautiful' and 'do it imperceptibly.' It’s a tall order — time-consuming, hard to ignore and subject to wide interpretation. And it’s especially hard for women in politics.... Many of the (often young and attractive) women of the Trump administration favored an overt, high-glam style, and we saw a lot of very long hair, dramatic false eyelashes, sheath dresses and stiletto pumps — a 'beauty pageant' vibe said to be favored by the former president.... At the hearing, Ms. Hutchinson’s image was distinctly different from that aesthetic. She dressed as if ready to blend into the corridors of power, to do her job, to convey depth over surface (although she was noticeably telegenic)..... And the nation is unlikely to forget the day Cassidy Hutchinson, with her precise, low-key style, told her disturbing story."

From "Muted Tones Spoke Loud and Clear/At a surprise session of the Jan. 6 hearings, Cassidy Hutchinson calibrated her appearance to keep us listening" by Rhonda Garelick (NYT).

I'm laughing at the happenstance of seeing "surprise" again so soon after going on about the tedium of surprise. But I'm blogging this piece because I'd blogged, just yesterday, about Cassidy Hutchinson's makeup: She seems to be wearing dark foundation on her face that doesn't match her skin tone. I'm saying that based on the light pink color of her hand, which we keep seeing held up next to her face, because that's the appropriately evocative taking-the-oath position.

"The White House has invited me & I think it’s a step in the right direction. Yes, I’m going. I’ll be dressed in all pink like Legally Blonde so they know I mean business. I’ll ask questions on behalf of the ppl who have been made fun of for simply being human."

Tweeted Nicki Minaj, quoted in "Nicki Minaj hits back at Biden White House after it claims vaccine-related phone call, not visit, was offered/Earlier this week, Minaj faced backlash after she wrote a tweet asserting that a friend of her cousin's became impotent from the vaccine" (Fox News). 

Also quoted: Terrence Deyalsingh, Trinidad's health minister, saying he'd government had "wasted so much time" over Minaj's tweet about someone in Trinidad experiencing swollen testicles: "There is absolutely no reported such side effect or adverse event of testicular swelling in Trinidad."

ADDED: Fox is really on this story. Here's another article: "Nicki Minaj compares cancel culture in US to China after vaccine blowback: 'Don't ya'll see'/Minaj is waiting to get the vaccine until after she's done more research."

"I remember going to China and they were telling us you know, you cannot speak out against, you know, the people in power, there, etc," Minaj said in an Instagram Live video on Wednesday night. "Don't y'all see that we are living now in that time where people will turn their back on you … but people will isolate you if you simply speak and ask a question."

AND: It will be interesting to see who, ultimately, wins Minaj. 

"The larva of the cicada on attaining full size in the ground becomes a nymph; then it tastes best, before the husk is broken. At first the males are better to eat..."

"... but after copulation the females, which are then full of white eggs." Wrote Aristotle, quoted in "How to Cook Cicadas, According to 3 Richmond, Va., Chefs/Cicadas are swarming the East Coast, and three Southern chefs are cooking them up every which way. Kung pao bugs, anyone" (Bon Appétit). 3 recipes at the link, plus this revelatory tip:

After all, if cicadas [are] the shrimp of the dirt, they should stand in just fine for their pink cousins...

... in whatever shrimp recipes you've got.

Since the word "shrimp" has popped up, let me drop in this song I chanced into yesterday when I was researching the question what are the greatest melodies? 

 

How many shrimps do you have to eat/Before you make your skin turn pink?

Pink and white.

In the UW Arb today... pink redbud and white redbud... 

 

Pink and white magnolia... 

  

Me, in pink and white... 

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

"He’s 26 years old but still sees a pediatrician: Why some young adults don’t move on" (WaPo).

What the hell is wrong with sticking with your regular family doctor? You have a relationship with this person. He or she is a real doctor. It's not like you're going to a veterinarian. You like what you have. Why is The Washington Post age-shaming the young?

Well, age-shaming the young is an old game. Grow up, they say and have been saying for eons. If it's not that you're acting too babyish and unserious, it's that you're old before your time. I say a young person can be young in the way that feels right to them. I say you are the master of your own time. You are how you feel, and you don't have to match up your chronological age with a stereotype of how people that age are supposed to be. I mean, take care of yourself, don't hurt others, and work on making your life what you want it to be. And use your actual chronological age when interfacing with a system that uses chronological age — getting a driver's license, running for President, etc. But other than that, you're your own person. Don't let people push you around with act-your-age shaming.

Anyway... from the article (which I'm finally skimming):

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) attempted to address the issue of transition from pediatric care into adult care in a policy statement in 2017 and concluded “the age of transition” should be based not on a number but on the patient’s individual needs. The decision “should be made solely by the patient (and family, when appropriate) and the physician and must take into account the physical and psychosocial needs of the patient and the abilities of the pediatric provider to meet those needs,” the policy statement said. In addition, it said that ‘the establishment of arbitrary age limits on pediatric care by health care providers should be discouraged. Health care insurers and other payers should not place limits that affect the patient’s choice of care provider based solely on age.”...

Living at home and remaining on parents’ insurance policies aren’t the only reasons ­20-somethings stay with pediatricians. Medical advancements over the past decade are extending the life expectancy of those with chronic childhood illnesses, such as congenital heart issues, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia and diabetes, and the pediatricians who cared for children with these conditions sometimes remain with them as they get old....

And I want to criticize the Washington Post's illustration for its "26 years old but still sees a pediatrician" article (skillfully, charmingly rendered by Ery Burns):



The idea is, clearly, that the millennial is a snowflake. Now, what I think is interesting is that of course the generic snowflake millennial is a white male. Secondly, his snowflakitude is signaled by the playthings (presumably the stuff one encounters in a pediatrician's waiting room) but also by the colors he wears, notably pink pants. I've got a problem with the use of pink to say weak and childish. Pink is associated with females. It's a purplish pink and the jacket is purple. I think the message is: effeminacy. I reject the use of femininity to mean weakness and childishness.

"The trim speaker, wearing white pants and a purple cardigan to match her purple Manolo heels, stabbed her fork into one of my home fries...."

"[M]any Democrats see Pelosi as the thin blue line — albeit in fiery orange and hot pink hues — standing between them and a lawless Trump...."

From "It’s Nancy Pelosi’s Parade/'If the left doesn’t think I’m left enough, so be it,' she told me" by Maureen Dowd (NYT). I'm just highlighting the colors... because they jumped out at me. Much more at the link.

Also, I think it's funny to talk about Pelosi as the line between order and chaos just as she's breaching the line between my plate and yours — and so agressively: stabbing the potatoes.

"Stars are suddenly dressing like flamingos."

Feathery photos at Page Six.

IN THE COMMENTS: Rick Turley reminds us of the "lesser known Manfred Mann song":



Lesser known but still probably the third most well known Manfred Mann. The only 2 that beat it are "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" and (the Dylan cover) "Mighty Quinn." Here's just a little something extra, because I looked up the lyrics to "Mighty Quinn" at the Genius lyrics-annotating site (click to enlarge and clarify):

A pigment that "we think is the blackest material in the universe, after a black hole."

Writing about Anish Kapoor — in that post about "The Bean" and "The Clenched Fist of Truth" — got me to an article that reminded me that I need to write about the death of Stephen Hawking. I'm going to write about Hawking in the next post, but first I want to read this 2016 Guardian article "'You could disappear into it': Anish Kapoor on his exclusive rights to the 'blackest black'/Artist defends controversial deal with developers of Vantablack, the blackest material ‘after a black hole.'"

The pigment is comprised of microscopic stems of colour that are 300 times as tall as they are wide, so that about 99.6% of all light “just gets trapped in the network of standing segments”, he explains. “It’s literally as if you could disappear into it.” The pigment was being developed for scientific and military use due to its “masking ability”....

But when Kapoor won exclusive rights to the material in February, it came with backlash from the artistic community. “I’ve never heard of an artist monopolising a material,” the artist Christian Furr told the Daily Mail. “All the best artists have had a thing for pure black – Turner, Manet, Goya … This black is like dynamite in the art world. We should be able to use it. It isn’t right that it belongs to one man.”

Kapoor defended his exclusive use of the material: “Why exclusive? Because it’s a collaboration, because I am wanting to push them to a certain use for it. I’ve collaborated with people who make things out of stainless steel for years and that’s exclusive.” He believes much of the debate comes down to emotion. “The problem is that colour is so emotive – especially black ... I don’t think the same response would occur if it was white.”

Kapoor, who has had two decades of psychotherapy, said it’s the “psycho side” of black that makes us want to possess it. “Perhaps the darkest black is the black we carry within ourselves,” he says. “It’s not the night where you switch the lights off – it’s the night where you close your eyes. There’s a psycho side to blackness that we don’t associate with other colours readily. I suspect red does the same. I’ve worked with red a great deal, for not dissimilar reasons.”

A psycho side to blackness.... That sounds wrong, but he's an artist; what does he have to do with politics? Read in that post about "The Bean" and "The Clenched Fist of Truth" and find out.

Can you own a color? You can have a color as a trademark (like UPS has brown), but obviously Kapoor can't own "the blackest black." But what he got was a particular substance, a pigment, that allows black to be seen in way that reflects no light at all. There's a distinction between pigment and color. Color is what is perceived in your brain when light enters your eye. Pigment is stuff that light can hit before bouncing into your eye.

ADDED: Also missed by me back in 2016, the maker of the "pinkest pink" retaliated against Kapoor for hogging the Vantablack:

To keep Kapoor away from PINK, buyers of the paint were asked to sign a legal declaration at checkout to ensure that the artist and his associates would not be able to buy it for him.

And here's Kapoor's response:

Have you heard about Dolores?

"There’s a part of my personality that I don’t like anyone to see, a part of me that is my Daddy’s girl. I call her Dolores and she does not like it when she thinks people are not being straight with her. I don’t want anyone to see Dolores but I could feel her rising up inside me as Brooklyn continued to waffle about Tom."

Writes Donna Brazile in her book "Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House." (Tom, in case you're wondering, is someone Brazile wanted to hire at the DNC, where she was interim chair and outraged to be controlled by the Clinton campaign (i.e., "Brooklyn").)

"Dolores" was murderous:

One night when I went home I called Charlie Baker to warn him that I was struggling to keep Dolores contained. “Charlie, I’m about to kill Robby,” I told him. “And it ain’t going to be pretty.”...

"Dolores" had the biggest dick:

[Clinton campaign liaison Brandon Davis] looked at me sternly as if it was annoying him that I would try to take back control of the party as any chair would. Dolores was becoming furious. “You know, this does not feel like a negotiation to me,” I said. “This feels like power and control. Gentlemen, let’s just put our dicks out on the table and see who’s got the bigger one, because I know mine is bigger than all of yours.” The sound on the other end of the conference call was a rustle of confusion. “So what will it be, gentlemen? Because I am not waiting around anymore for permission. What do you say?” After some more deflecting and dissembling, their response was that they would have to get back to me. When the call was done, Brandon left the room, looking disgusted. This day was serious. This whole election was serious, and for a moment there I was concerned that I had taken it too far in the way I had confronted Brooklyn. I recovered from that quickly though. We could not lose this election to Donald Trump and I was not going to play nice or waste time. Dolores might be rude and feisty, but she usually got what she needed. Those boys in Brooklyn probably never wanted to speak to Dolores again.

By the way, I'm getting bored reading Brazile's book. The main thing is that — as she tells it now — she wanted the interim chair position to give her an independent role, making decisions and spending money for the Clinton campaign, and the campaign exercised control. Her predecessor Debbie Wasserman Schultz had — as Brazile tells it — known her place and laid back and enjoyed her perks.

I think Debbie understood the rules of the game. She would not cause anyone any trouble. Now that I was replacing Debbie, it appeared Brandon’s job had expanded to include making sure that I played that game, too. Brandon was the first one in the door on Sunday, and he took a seat on the brown leather sofa across from me. Here was a young man without a boundary facing a woman who has walls built up and barbed wire around them, too. He was the kind of guy who would argue with you about the color of a wall. I said that this pink was too bright for my tastes, and he corrected me saying this was not a bright pink, it was a tropical pink.

What kind of guy argues with a woman about the right name for a particular tone of pink? Is it a woman-with-the-biggest-dick move to make a guy talk about pinkness?

"Pink-collar jobs are crap jobs for anyone... We need to reinvent pink-collar jobs so men will take them and won’t be unhappy — or women, either."

The closing quote (by a female lawprof) in a NYT article titled "Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree."

The title is a little ambiguous. "Their wives agree" means women don't want their husbands to be nurses, not the wives also don't want to be nurses, but if the closing quote is the point, then the wives also probably don't want to be nurses. (And by "nurses," the NYT means to refer to mostly to home health care workers and hospital assistants, and not the higher level nurses who are more like doctors and who I'm guessing don't appreciate seeing "nurse" as an umbrella term.)

If the closing quote is not the point — and the bulk of the article says it's not — then the problem is that men (and their wives) perceive the job as unmanly, but if they could get over that mental obstacle, men would like the job and be good at it.

There's a third theme, barely touched upon. The work actually is manly, in that it requires the lifting and moving of heavy patients, and men really are needed.

And a fourth theme: Many patients discriminate against men. Nature discriminates against men by killing them off at an earlier age. There are so many elderly women, and many of them don't mind saying that they won't accept a male health care worker. They're afraid of sexual predation. Whether men avoid the job because they're afraid of being thought of as a potential predator (or afraid of false accusation) is not mentioned in the article.

From the comments:

I am a female doctor and I find this whole issue surprising and disturbingly outdated. Gender does not register to my consciousness when working with a nurse, only their skill set. I have never heard the term pink collar but I find that as irritating as the rest of the article. Not all girls do pink. Not all nurses are women. Let's stop the a stereotypes! Nothing beats a good nurse period.

Ha, the female lawprof gets knocked by the female doctor. "Pink" is only used in that lawprof quote. But I think I see where the lawprof's thinking is. It's not that she sees women as "pink." She's implying that other people see women's jobs as insignificant and the old-fashioned term "pink collar" seems to embody that disrespect. And — I'm reading the etymology of the term now — that's always how the term worked:

The term "pink-collar" was popularized in the late 1970s by writer and social critic Louise Kapp Howe to denote women working as nurses, secretaries, and elementary school teachers. Its origins, however, go back to the early 1970s, to when the equal rights amendment, ERA, was placed before the states for ratification (March 1972). At that time, the term was used to denote secretarial and steno-pool staff as well as non-professional office staff, all of which were largely held by women. De rigueur, these positions were not white-collar jobs, but neither were they blue-collar manual labor. Hence, the creation of the term "pink collar," which indicated it was not white-collar but was nonetheless an office job, one that was overwhelmingly filled by women.

But if you don't know the origin of the term, it sounds as though it's insulting women, and it may also repel men from jobs we'd like them to take.

And why can't we stop the sex discrimination against the color pink? "Pink Wasn't Always So Girly/A short history of a complex color." Pink would like to break out of your crabbed little stereotypes and live a richer, fuller life.

At the Wet Pink Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.



(And if you're doing any shopping, consider using The Althouse Amazon Portal.)

The loopy optics of Hillary's "Woman Card."

Count the problems:



1. Hillary's original response to Trump's pestering her about playing the woman card was "Deal me in!," which refers to playing cards. That's not a playing card, it's a credit card.

2. A credit card is for running up debt, so the most obvious meaning is that women are to blame for the debt, we have our needs and wants and think we deserve special, gender-based power to satisfy ourselves, and Hillary wants to facilitate this profligacy.

3. That awful international pictogram for woman — so impersonalized, so inane. The main distinguishing feature of a woman isn't the shape of the torso, delicate legs or hands, or long hair, but a skirt. And Hillary never wears a skirt.

4. Skirts... the color pink... I thought we were getting away from these stereotypes — from the stark binary view of the sexes. She's off trend.

Dawn's pink steam flows left.

The view from my window a few minutes ago. The pinkness is gone now, but the UW heating plant puffs on. My personal — gigantic — lava lamp.