I’m familiar with Vivian Vance, Vivien Leigh – but Vivian Maier? Nah. Never heard of her. But then her images kept cropping up, moving cross my social feed and my consciousness. And like any great artist, once you know who she is – yowsa. Unforgettable, and how could I not have been familiar with her name, her work, her amazing ability to capture humanity – including stunning self-portraits in black and white – at its most authentic? Well, Maier kept her identity close and confused, and work hidden, moving about the world alone, independent. To make money and support her photography, she primarily worked as a nanny for various well-off families throughout her adult life, most in Chicago – including a brief stint as a housekeeper for – Phil Donahue!! All this after a childhood that was spent primarily in France, and NYC, with periods of living in what appears to have been deep poverty.
Maier also took photos in a less than stellar time for female artists as a whole, especially one who was untrained, didn’t have money, or connections, a highly individual and private woman living and working on her own terms in mid-twentieth-century ‘Merica. There are many, many great images among her work, but – a few are below. Love love LOVE.
Maier was not known or recognized for her work until after her death, yet – to see her photos is to immediately understand what great photography is, or can be.
I am unable to post the YouTube to the documentary (Finding Vivian Maier) of this marvelous and mysterious woman’s life, work and subsequent ‘discovery’, but it’s available there and other streaming platforms, including one I am unfamiliar with, Philo. Her wiki page is also linked below. https://www.philo.com/player/player/show/U2hvdzo2MDg1NDg4OTk2NDg1MjQyOTY
Let me be the first to admit I do not use cruise control, ever, unless I hit it on my steering wheel inadvertently, by mistake, and then only for a moment. I don’t like sliding into unconsciousness by choice, by prompt or the flick of a switch, behind the wheel or anywhere else. Let me steer. I will never own a self-driving car, which is an oxymoron of the first rank. Self-driving means I drive it, me, the owner, not – it – it does not have a ‘self’. Cars, no matter how much men love them (#NotAllMen #SomeWomenFFS) do not have souls, are inanimate unless we animate them, and that goes double and triple for any cars made by that noxious, spoiled prick Elon Musk.
But, and, however – we all have auto-pilot setting in our daily lives, those moments of walking into a room or out of another because – oh shit, I forgot. There I was, moving through a space that is completely and utterly familiar, and I forgot what I was moving toward, or from, or to get, or to get rid of. I was on auto-pilot. It happens all the time, especially as we age although, I wonder about that.
Maybe we forget, or go on auto-pilot more often when we’re stressed and exhausted, or are surrounded by clutter? Because I seem to find it happening to me just about the same amount of times now as it did twenty or thirty years ago. Thirty years ago, I used to misplace my apartment keys inside my apartment in NYC and completely lose my shit in frustration. Nowadays I laugh when that happens, but it almost never does. Perhaps because I’m wiser, as well as older and hey, that whole ‘more scattered with age’ thing is probably just ageism, y’all. Could be.
Still, auto-pilot is real, and at a spa I have been visiting for decades it came into play in a delightful way, mostly, I’ll admit, because it ‘ended well’. I was in my first full day at the spa, having slept okay, not great, waking at 5a.m. to do 6:30 a.m. yoga, reading to pass that 90 minutes productively. I know I know – you’re at a spa, Moj, can’t you just relax, forchrissake? Apparently not, or not yet this most recent visit.
I tend to arrive at the spa in hyper-drive after over two hours on the road, a trip that this time included a brief but pungent altercation at an EV charging station. I’m going to a spa today, getting there in another hour, and this cow is screaming at me? She tried to cut ahead of two of us who’d been waiting, and waiting patiently. No, no, no, no, no you don’t, lady! (Fuck. This is not the vibe I’m looking for!) Once I get there, however, it’s lovely, perfect, just what the doctor ordered, other than the sense I always get of being absolutely drained by the trip, and, maybe, by real life. Argh. Let’s get to it. Deep breaths.
I had a lovely yoga class and dinner, slept some, read, more yoga, then hit the breakfast line, always so good, and downed my usual very large cup of tea. Yum. I decided I would finish my book, allowing myself to digest the good stuff, and then go on the elliptical for at least ten minutes, followed by a long, hot shower and sauna. Then lunch, more yoga in the afternoon, dinner, more reading, maybe even more yoga after that, the kind that prepares one for bed. What a fabulous way to spend my day. Days. Heavenly.
It was truly all good. I even had brought my earbuds to listen to music while elliptical-ling, perfect. I kept them on as I walked the length of the lengthy building to the basement sauna and spa, men’s on the far side behind me, close to the gym (the west?) women’s on the near side, near the parking lot and my room (the east?). The whirlpool is still closed, bummer, but Covid made it obsolete, not to current code, chalking up yet another loss to that crushing pandemic. I showered long and hot and leisurely, already feeling like at least a thousand bucks, if not yet a million.
And, finally, the sauna. Let me be frank, I prefer a steam room, but enjoy a sauna if that’s what is on offer, and it was. I was the only person using the space, better and better: peace, quiet, heat. Oh, the joy of doing nothing, and of looking forward to several long, slow beautiful days of doing nothing but yoga and possibly best of all (after the treat of several massage sessions), no thinking about what I have in the fridge, or don’t have. No cooking, no cleaning, no washing up, no shopping or making do. Yay.
I closed my eyes; I may have even snoozed a bit, lightly, soaking up the heat, enjoying the whole of it until my reverie was broken by – male voices. WTF? Maintenance workers? It has to be. Grabbing my towels, and thank goodness I had two, I stepped out into the locker-room, hello, what are you doing here, this is the women’s sauna. No, no it’s not; it’s the men’s. They flipped them this past year. What?! What? I laughed so hard. And I kept laughing about this the entire time I was at the spa, including every single time I ran into one of the guys (the other took off like a shot and I never saw him again), who I embraced at each encounter because what a gent, what a sport, what a laugh. I had missed the change in signage because I was on auto-pilot, and still, kinda, being the driven, ‘must be productive and never waste time’ person I had come there to neutralize, heal, alter, I was in my assholic ‘I know this place; I’ve been here a million times. Huh? Read the signage? Whatever. I don’t need to, sheesh. Full speed ahead, first time losers.’ Sigh.
Heeheeheeheehee. Oh, it slowed me right down. Yes, yes it did.
**Hopi Indians leader White Eagle commented on the situation we are in a few days ago (by situation, I mean You-Know-Who and his South African support-billionaire wreaking havoc in D.C., and elsewhere)
“This moment that mankind is experiencing now can be seen as either a door or a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the door is yours. If you absorb information 24 hours a day, with negative energy, constantly nervous, and pessimistic, you will fall into this hole.
But if you take the opportunity to look at yourself, use the time to rethink life and death, to care for yourself and others, you are walking through the portal.
Keep your home, keep your body safe. Connect with your spiritual home. When you take care of yourself, you take care of everyone else.
Don’t underestimate the spiritual dimension of this crisis. Take the perspective of an eagle that sees everything from above with a broader perspective. There is a social issue in this crisis but also a spiritual issue. They both go hand in hand.
Without the social dimension we fall into bigotry. Without the spiritual dimension, we perish in pessimism and meaninglessness.
Pack your toolbox and use all the tools at your disposal.
Learn the resistance from the example of the Indian and African people: We are and still are being threatened, extinct. But we never stopped singing, dancing, building bonfires and having joy.
Don’t feel guilty for feeling happy in these difficult times. It doesn’t help at all to be sad or angry. Resistance is resistance through joy!
You have every right to be strong and positive. And there’s no other way to do this than by adopting a beautiful, cheerful and empathetic attitude.
This has nothing to do with alienation (ignorance of the world) – It’s a resistance strategy.
When we enter the door, we are given a new worldview because we have faced our fears and overcome adversity. That’s all you can do now:
– Seek solace in the storm
– Keep calm, pray daily
– Make it a habit to meet the Holy everywhere, everyday.
Show resistance through art, joy, trust and love.
**Emma Goldman (a paraphrase of a longer prose statement, actually!): “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”
*from The 19th and journalist Errin Haines (The 19th’s Editor-at-Large) & if you don’t follow and support The 19th, do!https://19thnews.org/about/
Our nation’s history has been shaped by the work of making real the ideal of equality that was written into our founding documents and has long been regarded as a measure of truly representative democracy. The start of a new administration is a chance to define who we are as a country, to get us closer to the more perfect union our founders envisioned. In his inaugural address on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President Donald Trump called for unity and for the country to become a colorblind meritocracy. But his actions in his first days in office defied the Constitution, years of precedent, and a set of national norms and values. The president’s opening focus has been on rewarding toxic masculinity and restoring White men to their rightful place in our democracy and society. He issued executive orders releasing from federal prison many of the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021; attempting to rewrite the criteria for citizenship, and ending federal protections against discrimination, diversity initiatives and a broader definition of gender. Trump’s agenda is outlined in inflammatory terms, and the cumulative effect of his early actions is an attempt to define how certain people get to participate in public life. It’s a direction that is not only at odds with King’s legacy of a freer, fairer, more equal and inclusive society, but a rejection of gender and racial equity as part of a healthy democracy. Instead, after his winning campaign pledge to Make America Great Again, Trump’s second-term priority is moving quickly to establish who will benefit — and who gets to be an American. “Trump and all the people around him understand deeply that gender equity and democracy are linked up, and they have a broader agenda to undermine our democracy,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center. “They’re going to keep a big narrative out there that is filled with these constrained ideas of gender and then dismantle the rights people have come to rely on, one at a time.”
Four years ago, President Joe Biden took office also pledging unity and promised to prioritize ending systemic inequality as one of his governing pillars. Many of Trump’s executive orders this week were aimed at dismantling such efforts, with language that echoed Trump’s Inauguration Day pledge to “end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public life.” Diversity is not a value of “American greatness,” as defined in Trump’s executive orders, casting efforts to increase equity as discriminatory. Whether women — who make up slightly less than half of the U.S. workforce — people of color or LGBTQ+ people are represented is incidental. Gains in representation and greater access to opportunity for these groups in America’s workplaces has helped to close the equity gap. On the campaign trail, Trump told his voters that he would protect women, “whether they like it or not.” In an executive order issued Monday, entitled: “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” Trump ordered the federal government to recognize male and female as the only genders, effectively erasing transgender and nonbinary Americans from public life under the guise of concern for women’s safety.
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order reads. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”
Meanwhile, Trump eliminated what Goss called a “core tool” in forcing institutions to address sex discrimination in hiring, pay and harassment in an executive order that ended a civil rights-era order that expanded equal employment, requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action in new hiring and benefitting women in particular.
Institutions like colleges and universities “understood that they had significant obligations based on race after the Civil Rights Act, but they weren’t following it based on gender,” Goss said, noting that the protections of the order signed by President Lyndon Johnson preceded the Title IX laws passed in 1972 that ended sex-based discrimination in schools receiving federal funding.
On Monday, Trump also pardoned hundreds of people — mostly White men, many of them accused or convicted of violent crimes — who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election that Trump falsely claimed he had won. Many of them are returning to their communities after they were turned in by relatives, neighbors or others.
Their release was another campaign promise fulfilled by Trump, whose reelection insulated him from further prosecution or consequences for his alleged role in the Capitol attack.
The rioters’ actions that day were a display of the toxic masculinity that has largely defined the president’s base and became a cause Trump campaigned on. Instead of facing further consequences for their actions, they were rewarded by their president.
Four years ago, Biden took office vowing to unite the country, and departed having failed in that attempt. Trump has given lip service to unity, but none of his actions have united the country, either, though they have already reshaped our democracy.
Trump’s definition of unity is for the coalition of Americans who agree with his vision for the country: one that celebrates rioters and condemns diversity, that eschews pronouns as politically correct and values his idea of patriotism over people’s lived experiences.
Race and gender have always been the unfinished business of our politics. In his second term, Trump’s approach is one that fails to acknowledge history or respect people’s differences. It constrains the ability of women, LGBTQ+ and people of color to be their full selves, telling them instead that they must hew to his narrow understanding of how to be American.
Our nation’s forebearers also excluded these groups in our founding documents, but our 248-year journey has been one of expanding who gets to be an American. That has been the collective meaning of making America great.
Happy V.D. (insert eye-roll here ______________, altho I love that V.D. also denotes venereal disease). On a lighter and happier note, I loved the film, Tootsie, which was and remains a human, hilarious (the line “Does Jeff know?” still cracks me up every time, along with many others), heart-centered, proto-feminist classic film, one that was written by two men, moreover, skewering men, the male ego, the entertainment industry, gender perceptions, power dynamics in relationships of all kinds, and more – all of which deserve examination, and – where appropriate – skewering. Teri Garr, Bill Murray, Charles Durning, Dabney Colman, Jessica Lange, and Geena Davis in a small, supporting role – along with Hoffman and director Sydney Pollack playing characters not far from themselves – how could it not stand the test of time?
And, having been in the business of show, how could I not love it? But, beyond the humor and roasting of egos and that entire industry, so many deeper questions were touched on, and deserve highlighting.
The casual sexism it showed, in 1982!!, the power dynamics at play between Lange’s character and her director on and off the set, the notion of sexual harassment and exploitation, including a ‘casual’ form of sexual assault (Geena Davis’s character: “He kisses all the women on the show. We call him “The Tongue”.”) – was revelatory and important. Culturally, we tend to think of the entertainment industry as particularly sexual and sexist – ‘the casting couch’ – but all industries are – all industries are; a difference that matters is that we are much more likely to hear about what goes on and wrong in the business of show (thinking of Blake Lively, and her recent spate of trouble), in part because it gets covered by a designated press corps that serves the show business industry. In other words, you will not be hearing from women who wait tables, or clean motel and hotel rooms, or type letters, or do a thousand other less spotlit (or compensated) positions who are mistreated by their bosses.
And then there is the fact that as Tootsie, Hoffman was less than movie industry standard gorgeous, to say the least – FOR WOMEN. That Hoffman – 5’5″ – was a movie star at all (among so many other famous men) is a testament to the different standards for men on and off screen, as well as to the fact that when casting roles, if you have 25 speaking roles for men and 5 for women – you’re going to cast a wider, and more generous – male net. Ditto only much worse for women of color, who are grossly underrepresented on screen and everywhere else.
Hoffman himself has addressed an aspect of this – his lack of beauty as the character of Dorothy Michaels, a.k.a. Tootsie, as a woman – in numerous interviews, from which the following is drawn: To prepare for his role, Hoffman watched the film La Cage aux Folles (1978) several times. He also visited the set of “General Hospital” for research, and conducted extensive make-up tests. In an interview for the American Film Institute, he said that he was shocked that although he could be made-up to appear as a credible woman, he would never be a beautiful one.
Hoffman said that he had an epiphany when he realized that although he found this woman interesting, he would not have spoken to her at a party because she was not beautiful, and that as a result he had missed out on many conversations with interesting women. He concluded that he had never regarded Tootsie as a comedy.
From Tootsie, during Dorothy Michaels’ screen test (this also still make me laugh, even while… well.):
Rita: I’d like to make her look a little more attractive, how far can you pull back?
Cameraman: How do you feel about Cleveland?
Rita: Knock it off.
And even with Hollywood’s press corps, abuse of all kinds still goes on, particularly of children – whose parents are all too often exploiting or looking the other way, all for cash – and of women in subsidiary roles and jobs. Because whatever industry we’re speaking of, the powerful are just that: powerful, protected, valued, more valuable in literal dollar terms – and, still, most often male. Progress has been made but – we have a long way to go. Deep breaths.
