Glitter and Girl Power

Taylor Swift is in town, the same weekend that Barbie is opening. Claire-Adele and her friend are in town for the concert. Claire-Adele is dressed in the Midnight theme, with a shimmering navy dress and pearls in her hair. Her friend is wearing hot pink sequins.

I was on the Light Rail this afternoon, along with dozens and dozens of women young and not-so-young decked out in sequins, cowboy boots, and glitter cowboy hats. 

And I mean decked out. The Swifties are in town, and I feel like a Muggle. A happy Muggle, but a Muggle nonetheless.

It was like Halloween and prom and a wedding all mixed into one, except unlike prom or a wedding, a date was not required. This is a girl power event. Moms and daughters. Sisters. Besties.

The common accessory are homemade beaded bracelets that fans can exchange with each other during the concerts. The beads spell out names of songs, lyrics or albums, and the colors match the "Era."

At the Light Rail, I saw dads dropping off their teenage daughters to go downtown to the show. I started getting teary. I am so happy for these girls and women, all going to see the show of their dreams. I am so happy for my daughter. It is cool to see her so excited. It is really cool to see a woman performer embrace so many young women fans.

Tomorrow, I am going with some friends (I hope) to see Barbie. I'll confess: my friends and I played with Barbies until I was twelve. My favorite Barbie was Ballerina Barbie, who wore pointe shoes and had a crown glued on her head so she could twirl. The only reason I stopped playing was because I moved to Ohio. Greta Gerwig*, the director, played with Barbies until she was fourteen. Maybe if I played with Barbies for another two years, I'd be an award winning director.

Barbies were my social toy, the toy that I loaded in a grocery sack, plopped in the basket on the handlebars of my bike, and rode around town to my friends' houses. It was awesome.

Fun facts about Barbie that I read in the NYT article about Greta Gerwig. Barbie was the first doll that represented an adult. When Barbie was introduced in 1959, dolls were babies. Barbie has a Dream House before women could get a credit card. Barbie made a few missteps, like her infamous quote, "Math is hard," but we can't blame the doll for that. Was it a dude in marketing that said that? Or was it someone who really struggled to understand Differential Equations? Yeah, math is hard. I studied applied math in college. I should know. Bow down before me, motherfuckers. You all should be impressed. 

I'm just kidding!

 

(Not really.) 

Lots of things are hard. It doesn't mean with can't do them. Maybe they needed to revise Barbie's quote to be "Math is hard, but you are smart. You can do it!"

I am looking forward to Gerwig's movie for other reasons, besides it being the toy of my childhood. 

• Gerwig directed Ladybird, a beautiful movie about a mother and her daughter leaving for college.
• Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls is in the Barbie movie, which is awesome. Close to Fine is one of my favorite songs. 
• Gerwig would spend Friday evenings on her childhood at the home of her Jewish neighbors. No matter how good or bad Gerwig's week was, she felt comfort in the prayers said by the family's father. Gerwig says she wants everyone who sees the movie to be reminded they are a child of god.

I look forward to the next Seattle Sounders and Seahawks game. I wonder how long the stadium will have glitter, sequins and beads embedded in it. I'd love for a the football players to come up from a tackle more sparkly than before they went down.

* I googled "Greta Gerwig" today and the search page turned pink and had pink sparkles. Check it out!

"Keep Calm and Carry On"

Yesterday I almost witnessed a police shooting.

I was walking to work with one of my neighbors for a few blocks and I had picked up my breakfast from Starbucks. Outside the Starbucks on First Ave, I thought I had heard gunshots. Cities are load with traffic and trucks and dumpsters. "Bang Bang Bang" could be anything.

I walked another block and I saw a garbage truck pick up a dumpster. The crashing noise of metal on metal sounded about the same. 

In another block, I saw the police cars and up the hill I saw six cops clustered together. I asked a group of people standing on the corner.

"The police shot a guy they thought had a gun," one of the men said. "The guy said he had a gun." Later, I read the man who was shot was sought in a stabbing a few blocks away.

I nodded, and kept walking to work. As I continued to my office, I saw dozens of police cars, a firetruck and ambulances drive to the scene. I kept walking. 

Yesterday was the first official day people were required back in the office. People were already afraid of coming into big, bad downtown, so I didn't tell anyone what I saw. I just went to work.

My biggest surprise was how acclimated I have become to the craziness. I felt like I was living in London during the Blitz. Government officials had thought that English subjects would cower in fear as the Germans bombed the city.

Nope, a majority of the people carried on with their lives. When the air sirens wailed, people tucked into their safe spaces. When the all clear came, people went back to cooking dinner or reading a book.

After I passed the chaos, I thought to myself "Keep Calm and Carry On." Granted, I was not at all directly involved in the shooting, nor was I stabbed by the guy. Clearly, I'd be way more distraught if I had been a direct witness or running for my life. 

Nevertheless, I wonder: was "Keep Calm and Carry On" an order from the monarch, or was it a description of what people did?

And to let you all know -- my biggest fear of walking downtown is still getting hit by a car making a turn while I am crossing the street. I am more worried about that than getting shot by the police or getting assaulted by a cracked out vagrant.

The Problem with Kings and Queens

I've been reading more about this scandal of abusing football* players at NU. Stewart Mandel in The Athletic writes about how Pat Fitzgerald was "king" of Northwestern football, turning down offers to coach at Michigan and in the NFL. 

Therein lies the problem: Fitzgerald was the king, and the problem with kings and queens is that their power is unchecked. They can say and do whatever they want. They aren't accountable. As Mandel says,

No one questions them. No one scrutinizes them. It’s not hard to see how such a toxic culture could have gone on undetected for years. And yet, the investigators said that “there had been significant opportunities (for the coaches) to discover and report the hazing conduct.”

One of the best lines from the article came from the comments from Dan K.:

I always love the concept that a football or basketball coach has intimate knowledge about every detail of every aspect of their program, but never knows about the bad stuff.

We can hope that our kings and queens will be benevolent, but we are at a loss when they are not. 

Fortunately, Fitzgerald wasn't a real king, and he could be disposed, but not after the hazing situation got grossly out of hand. His royal status allow this problem to grow without anyone checking it. He could have stopped this behavior. He was in charge. He could have pulled scholarships on kids who abused other kids. He could have had an open door and open ear policy with his players and coaches, where he listened to their concerns. 

Hazing is a sticky issue, because I'm guessing it doesn't start out as hazing, but rather evolved from teasing and testing other players into abuse. The abused kids might have put with with low teasing that then evolved into harassment. At what point do kids who have been bullied stand up? 

The very nature of kinds and queens is that we don't stand up to them. Literally, we bow. It takes courage to stand up and speak truth to power. 

As awful as this situation is, the behavior has been called out, and now the abuse can stop. The interim will be painful, but in the end we can hopefully have a safer system.

* The baseball coach was abusing players, too.

For Shame and "My Government Means to Kill Me"

Everybody loved Fitz.

Pat Fitzgerald was the coach of the Northwestern football. He was recently fired after a six month long investigation proved sexual abuse in the program. Fitz was a player for the Wildcats who when to the Rose Bowl in 1997/8.

As an alum, this hurts. It really, really hurts.

First, it is devastating that this happened under Fitz's watch. NU scored when we landed him as a coach. Since he was a player at NU and he grew up in Tinley Park, IL, he was a devoted Chicagoland guy. It was unlikely he was going to be recruited away to a football powerhouse like Notre Dame (see Ara Parseghian.)

Kudos to The Daily Northwestern for breaking the story. When I looked this story up in the New York Times, they referred to the articles published int The Daily.

This isn't like the Penn State scandal where that creepo coach was grooming children. This is where the NU players would haze and sexually humiliate the new players.

This is so wrong, and not because I am a prude. I am currently reading My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson about a young, gay, black man in New York City in the 1985, the heat of the AIDS pandemic. It is a brilliant and engaging piece of historical fiction. There is also a lot of gay sex, and some pretty wild stuff.

So what is the difference between a gay bathhouse and a college football team? Heck, even a fraternity?

Consent.

The guys who went to the bathhouses went on their own free will. Fraternities used to haze--and probably still do--but again kids can choose or not choose to participate in Greek life.

When these kids joined the football team, they did not know they were signing up to be sexually abused by their teammates. These abused college athletes were in no way able to consent or excuse themselves from this hideous behavior. These were college freshmen--still kids--who were away from home for the first time. As NU is a Division I school, a lot of these kids were on athletic scholarships. To speak out against this abuse as freshman might have jeopardized their free ride.

These players are having their own #metoo movement, and in some ways against themselves. Some of the players who were perpetuating the abuse were probably also victims of it in earlier years.

This is so heartbreaking. I feel bad for everyone involved.

Yet, the abuse needs to stop and people need to be responsible for their harmful behavior.