Open Letter to Harry Connick Jr: In Praise of Women Loggers, Suspenders and Crew Cuts

Or: What Went Wrong When Harry Met Sally and her Girlfriend Peppermint Patty

Dear Harry,

Oh, Harry.  A sweet corner of the Internet is all blissfully abuzz after recently meeting you, but here I am feeling all pissy about a few of the things you said.  I'm okay with that, because what is good about the Internet is that it's big enough that everyone can speak her own truth, sharing peace, love and hashtags along the way.

I also feel fine about disliking you despite tons of peer pressure because a decade ago I liked you even when everyone else was over you because you were such a whiny, bad actor on Will & Grace--which was quite a feat, considering how whiny Will & Grace themselves were.  Thank God for Karen, am I right?

So what I'm saying is I used to like you, pretty piano man.  Sure, you can't compete with, say, Lyle Lovett in the sexy or musical skills departments.  But you have an appealing gentleness, a certain femme fatale quality about you with your lush lips and devotion to romance, and I respond to feminine gender expression as much as the next man or next lesbian does. 

I used to like you, Harry, and when I heard you were visiting the BlissDom conference for (mostly) women in social media, I was excited.  Not as much as some others--I mean, I've never wanted to bed you--you're not hot like that and you're not my type--but I figured you'd be a good performer in a small venue and a nice guy,  like a good friend to ask to brunch, maybe to sneak a kiss from on New Year's Eve.

But, dang, you blew that.

I was in the audience in Nashville Friday night when you played a song or two before heading on to watch your Saints win the Superbowl.  (Congratulations, by the way, Who Dat indeed!)  I only heard a little bit of your Dixieland, though, because I was so put off my your lounge-singer opening prattle that I left.  (Well, also I was out of drink tickets and the cheese table was getting picked over.  But mostly I was miffed at your stupidity.) So that's why I'm writing, Harry, to give you a little what's-for, and to give you some advice.

Here's where you blew it:

You played a song, and everyone was all swoony over you--over the very fact that you were there. See, we're pretty easy, man. Many of these woman let Cover Girl trick them into wearing baby blue eye shadow because they wanted to come to your concert all glam, Harry, that's how tender and open blogging women can be to people who pay us a little bit of attention.  Hardly any foreplay was needed, just a few sweet words about our work and your charitable work, and we could have all been in Harry, Harry heaven together.

But instead you got all pre-pubescent boy on us.  All hotel lounge-singer.  And if it weren't bad enough that we had to deal with drunk, rich Tea Party conventioners in Boston fetish attire, you had to be all sexist, classist and homophobic too in your welcome monologue.  Oh, Harry, who dat write that crap for you to say? Who Dat?

You were all "oh, I'm so relieved to see how nice you look."

You were worried about how we would look?

"I thought you'd be rough looking women, with crewcuts, suspenders, and flannel shirts."

You mean you were worried you might have to sing to some of the hottest women on the planet, the women "strong" enough, as you say, to look butcher than you want them to?  That would be horrible, Harry?  Oh, because it's so fun to make insults laden with gender stereotypes and homophobia!?  About women who might dress, or act, outside of your narrow definitions of feminine!?  You smooth-talking crooner, Harry.

"Because I thought it was the Women's Logger Convention."

Canadian Women Loggers during WWII

Oh, har, we get it.  A juvenile joke! Great way to show respect. Just a juvenile joke brimming with sexism, gender oppression and classism too!  All wrapped up as some sort of goofball attempt at flattery.  Were we supposed to cheer, squeeeeee: oh, he noticed we're prettier than the picture he had in his head about loggers who were butch and could kick his ass for being so smarmy, oh swoon!?!

How old are you, Harry.  Pushing 40, right?

And then you went on to work the mic like a Holiday-Inn Saturday night, noticing how the every detail you mentioned made the foamed up audience swoon more.  You made fun of how easy the bloggers were. "I can't miss, I can't miss," you said to your band.  "She was half Buddhist and from Bombay!"

You were stealing jokes from Rodney Dangerfield, man, and that is such a red flag of all things not okay.  A joke about cheating on your wife?  Tiger Woods!  Just kidding! But you love women. Your three dogs are women! Ladies and germs, I'll be here all week.

These women, these 'logging women, deserved better.  You wove in words of respect about what they do, but for me it was too little, too pandering, too late.  Your dumb jokes had already revealed plenty about how you think about women, and you took advantage of the good will of kind women excited to hear you by getting them to laugh with you at the expense of people who are different from themselves, something these good women in other circumstances wouldn't have done. That's just gross, Harry.

Now, ultimately I thank you for your rudeness, because you paved the way for me, my girlfriend and others to have quite a few conciousness-raising conversations that night and the next day with people who said after thinking about it, they wouldn't have laughed along, wouldn't have wanted their children to laugh along, just as they wouldn't if you had made a racist or ethnic slur.  Conversations like that are awesome, to see people get it, to see mothers imagine that their daughters were being dismissed and start to understand the damage of judgment based on gender and sexual oppression, if not for themselves, at least for their children.

You words certainly didn't sting everyone--lots of people didn't even hear you, others simply thought it was just a very juvenile joke but weren't your eyes blue!-- but quite a few people were bothered or were curious from some tweets Liza (another out gay blogger there) and I sent out that night, and wanted to talk about why stereotyping women's expected appearance is hurtful to all women, to lesbians and gays, to young people who need to express their gender outside of prescribed girls=pink, boys=baby blue (but not baby blue eyeshadow, of course) boxes, and to women who want to work in male-dominated fields, or who because of socio-economic or geographical conditions get their hands rough in a day's work.  Hurtful to our daughters--I might suggest hurtful to your own. We turned your rudeness into reachable, teachable moments, dialogue toward changing a world where one can be looked down on because of how you look, how short you wear your hair,  who you love, or what power tools you decide to use when you grow up.  I've got to thank you for those conversations.





Bloggers.  Conversations, it's what we do.

So to pay you back, I'm attaching some of my favorite photos in celebration of the gorgeousness of suspenders, flannel shirts and crew cuts, just to balance things out.  I wanted to add some more photos of women loggers, but it turns out women are very, very rare in that male-dominated field. Glass ceilings in the forest, Harry, think about that.  Too bad, because the idea of you actually performing for some kick-ass, strong, working women (many who would be straight, many who would be gay, many somewhere in the middle, but I wouldn't ask because they could snap you like a twig, pretty boy) and you coming to appreciate their strength, character and beauty--man, that is a great thought. Who dat thinks he knows how to talk to women?

I also have a little advice to clean up your chatter for next time:  I suggest you hang out at a few k.d. lang concerts.  Doubt you could ever hope to sing like her, but that chick knows how to talk with an audience in a way that lifts up their humanity, and I'm confident you could pick up some pointers. 

Either that, Harry, or just stick to singing.  And building houses.  (Have to give you props for that, because as a lesbian it is in my twisted DNA to forgive and forget when it comes to social work.)  Stick to singing and building, and leave the talking to us.



(Hat tip to Dorothy Snarker for making my image search so pleasurable--her brilliant blogging at Dorothy Surrenders has amassed a tremendous collection of gender-bending pop culture pix. My, what beautiful archives you have!)

(And hat tip to blogger Cooking with Caitlin for capturing most of the address on video.)

Home Sweet Home in the Gaylord Opryland Nashville

I've arrived in Nashville to take care of a little BlissDomness. and have checked to the Gaylord Opryland hotel.  Mother o'Mothers, this isn't a convention hotel in the conventional sense.  Did you ever play those Tycoon games where you could create zoos or theme parks but mostly ended up making deadend paths and stacking three roller coasters on top of each other?  This hotel is what happened when some hacker kid spliced the codes from Tycoon Mall + Tycoon Theme Park + Tycoon Old Southern Plantation and then inherited a wad of Gaylord cash.  Plus queen-sized beds.

The place is so massive, with winding trails, courtyard, fountains and a freaking riverboat dock somewhere, that they give you a color and icon-coded map like they do at Sea World. The map has udders, that's how wild this place is.  I wouldn't be surprised if Shamu has a courtyard here, with splashtastic shows at 4 and 6. 

I finally find my room up in the Garden Conservatory area--basically up in the right fallopian area where the fountains sound like it's ovulation time--after a few mishaps in the Delta.  Who doesn't have a few mishaps in the Delta, though, so no regrets.  After shuffling down the longest hallway in the world, I made it to Room # G[redacted].

Then, what I always do upon entering a hotel room:

• inspect for unthinkables that can't be tolerated
• pee to mark my territory
• strip the rarely washed covers off the bed
• wi-fi up
• take off with the ice bucket in search of glace and Diet Coke

The Ritual brings me home.

Ice bucket in hand, I figured the vending/ice would be close because I had already traveled an expanse of hallway.  I was right.  My room is almost at the end, so I just walked a few more paces and hit a hub.  I hopped in an elevator down one floor.  I briefly consider going back to my room for my shoes, but I didn't, just kept my eyes on the Diet Coke prize.

I stepped out, ice bucket in one hand, crisp singles in the other, ready to complete my mission, when just five paces to my right the light changes, and WHAM, holy 1990s Catwoman,  I'm in a mall.

Facing a full-sized Godiva store.

Mecca.  If Mecca is very ready for Valentine's Day.  This is almost as good as From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Seriously, if anyone has any pull with the Intervention people, Godiva down the hall can not be good for my sleep.  How many times have you awoken in the middle of the night at a beach house, campsite or vacation home, stumbled towards the noise and there you saw the least reliable members of your group amid the wreckage of the whole week's brownies, booze, bacon, drugs, what-have-you, and they are all: we couldn't sleep.  Yeah, that's me.

So I tiptoed in to Chocolate-Cupid-o-Rama, plucked the three crisp singles out of the ice bucket, and asked the pretty Juliette Binoche if she knew what I liked, and if I could get it for three bucks.

She opened a tab for me.  In the name of Allison Worthington.

If I were the type of person to squee, this might be the time.  Help?

Okay, also: Gaylord?  GAYLORD?  Who named you, GAYLORD, and just what is his/her point?

We Can Create A Foundation to Support Bloggers!

I believe supporting the Arts is one of the important ways we better our world. Service takes many forms, and all are necessary: the gifted content creators in the blogosphere are artists, and my life is so much better --our culture is so much better -- because of their work. The heart and soul of blogging, the truth of self-expression online, is so much more than the ridiculous few business models we've tried to use to support our artists.

 

For many of us, creating content and publishing online is our Parisian salon, our Algonquin Round Table, our Bread Loaf. We are a community of creatives. We know that publishing is a sacrifice, a commitment, the rushing, moving channel for our art, and we want to make way for the highest quality in online work to be supported whether or not it appeals to corporate sponsors. And are devoted to our community of creatives, even when we truly know each other: we are united in our passions, connected in doing what we are drawn to do. Every writer I know has said that her work has improved because of the practice of writing online, the feedback of audiences, and the exposure to other gifted, brave, vanguard authors. We know the value of quality and necessity of blogging, which is what makes us so very generous with our own limited finances when one of our own is in need.

 

I've often wondered why our rich tech brothers haven't become like the Medici's in Renaissance Italy. Why haven't they stepped up to fund creative development, or to create a foundation to protect our burgeoning art form and its creators? I'd like to encourage them and other related businesses to do so--and not solely by giving us free printers to review. Printers, coupons and samples of cleaning products don't pay emergency room doctor bills or get the electricity reconnected.

 

As a patron of the arts, I've donated money to many structured emergency relief funds. They are so important, so useful, in helping artists and writers continue to work despite financial setbacks. What if bloggers could have access to a fund like:

 

the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, which helps craft artists

 

the ASJA Writers Assistance Fund, for nonfiction freelancers

 

the PEN American Writers Fund for published writers

 

the William A. Graham Artist Emergency Fund, which helps visual artists

 

or other public, private, regional or local funds.

 

We have an opportunity to build this thing. I've submitted a request for a seed grant to start the process, from Pepsi's Refresh Everything crowd-sourced corporate giving project. This is what they are doing with the money they saved by not airing a ridiculously expensive Superbowl ad.  This is an amazing gesture toward a future that is more authentic because of crowd-sourcing, and because of what we do every day in this space.

 

I've just put the idea out there to see if bloggers think that our art form needs this type of support. Do you? If so, please register and vote, and share the news. Republish parts or all of this post. Promote on social media. Do what you do, begin to protect what you love. The top two ideas in the funding category will be funded each month.  If you have ideas of your own, submit it now for the next round on voting in March.

 

How it works:

1. Easy registration.
2. Vote every day in February.
3. Promote the link.

If you would like an email each day reminding you to vote, please email me at debontherocks@gmail.com to be added to the list. It's a very cool list to be on, but it won't be used for any other reason.

 

I'm offering up this idea because I love us. Even those of us who drive me crazy--sometimes especially them. I love what we do, and that we are lucky enough to do it. My heart breaks when economic suffering or personal and family crises gets in the way of creating for such brilliant people. I'd like to give us a chance to claim this next step in our medium's development. Please join me.

 

www.refresheverything.com/blogging