I can’t help myself – have to share a good deal when I snag it! A couple of amazing steals to snack on, whether you’re enjoying a glass of wine or an afternoon espresso…
This precious shortall for Hill is on sale for only $20 (!!!) — down from $72! It comes with three removable applique figures (including a bunny — perfect for Easter!), but I will most likely use it without. I’ll layer over a Kissy Kissy onesie.
This traditional white diaper set is marked down to $36 from $100! I had to get it for Hill — the hat alone would probably retail for around $25! (IMPORTANT UPDATE: This arrived and the stitching is pink! PSA! Better for girls. Not sure why it was in the boy’s section. Still, precious…)
I mentioned this in my post earlier today, but ICYMI: this gingham dress is only $15!
By: Jen Shoop
SWOONING OVER THE BRAND HORROR VACUI (SEEN ABOVE) — WOULD KILL FOR THIS DRESS
Four stars. Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent follows the stories of an intelligent and curious wealthy widow, a pious country vicar, and a mythical serpent in a fictionalized but hyper-realistic 19th century setting. It was an interesting companion to last month’s pick in that both grapple with narrative conventions in interesting ways. My sister described Cusk’s narrator as “the anti-narrator,” and this book was in some ways an “anti-novel”: the conflicts, climaxes, and resolutions were artfully blurry and non-distinct. One of the book’s central conflicts, for example, is the age-old friction between science and religion, one that the reader understands nearly immediately will not be resolved simply in this book (or in real life for that matter) — it is an interrogation that extends well beyond the confines of this book and Perry seems content fueling its ongoing burn here, with no intention for easy resolution. Other conflicts of character take on a similar, more philosophical, tenor: at the book’s conclusion, we are left wondering: what actually changed here? Who is happy and who is not? No one has ended up in a traditional, committed relationship despite the fact that there are several romantic entanglements, an imminent death remains at bay at the book’s close, and multiple romantic triangles remain unresolved and curiously non-fractious. In this way, the book is deeply and presumably intentionally unsatisfying. It does not give the reader what she wants. We open on a messy scene and we end on a messy scene, and the question is — why?
In some ways, I read these contrarian literary moves as feminist: Perry does not want us to fall prey to the borderline misogynist (or at least reductive) trope of women hating women as they vie over the same man. And she seems to be suggesting that satisfying, long-term relationships can take shape outside of the conventional institutions of marriage and even monogamy. Further, she seems to imply, some relationships are at their best as purely or largely intellectual endeavors. This is the undoing of the traditional marriage plot. Writ large, Perry seems to be hinting at a modern kind of love. No rules, just right. (Ha.)
The novel’s other remarkable achievement is its precise conjuring of a historical time period. Were it not for the “anti-novel” conventions which imply its modernity, this book could have been published in the 1800s. It is steeped in historical detail with nary a cap tip to the present day — and what historical detail it has! It is rich with minutiae, especially of the flora and fauna variety. It reminded me in this sense of Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, which I know many of you loved.
And yet for all of its achievements, I found the novel shallow. I discussed the book with a group of girlfriends and we ran out of steam after a couple of points were made. This is at uncomfortable odds with my current read, JP Delaney’s The Perfect Wife, which reads like a chick lit thriller (i.e., fast and without much artistry in the way of words) but has left me pondering many of its provocations at length — the novel is about a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has just lost his wife and decides to recreate her through A.I. It asks all kinds of questions about technology, morality, life and death, immortality, ethics, art v. science, self-engineering, self-creation, self-definition. A lot to chew on.
Has anyone else read either book? Would you share your thoughts?
Post Scripts.
+Next on my reading list: Say Nothing, a non-fiction account of “murder and memory” in North Ireland; Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (getting crazy good reviews — about an African American woman who is accused of kidnapping a white toddler for whom she nannies while in a grocery one evening, and a lot of the racial tensions and complexities of transactional relationships more generally); and Ghosted for my next brain candy thriller read.
+I have also heard Jessica Simpson’s Open Book is a delight on audiobook (she narrates). I am thinking of downloading this and listening to it while walking Tilly/on the Subway though I’ve never done an audiobook before (!)
+Ordered this for summer. I’ve been eyeing it forever and I just had to jump before it sold out. I was debating between the dragonfly and this floral stunner by the same brand for a long time, but the dragonflies spoke to me. (I’m also a little worried about buying maxis with tiered hems like that because I’m so damn short and know I’ll have to have it hemmed and hence ruin the effect without a huge seamstress cost.)
Mr. Magpie and I both found “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” (the Tom Hanks movie about Fred Rogers) tremendously moving. I was a little young for “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” and so did not grow up with him or know much about him — and I was deeply touched to learn what an incredible human and radical Christian he was. Two notions I cosseted from his presentation in the movie and have been turning over since:
+Being a calm, kind person requires focus and practice. I’d never considered “goodness” in this way, having always unthinkingly assumed it to be an inborn trait. The movie suggests Mr. Roger’s gentleness and empathy were consciously cultivated. What do you think of this?
+There is a scene in the movie where a reporter is attempting to get in touch with Mr. Rogers and, when he gets through, Mr. Rogers says something to the effect of: “I figure if you wanted to speak so badly with me, I should be excited to speak with you.” There was something in this exchange that felt profound to me. How often am I guilty of powering through a seemingly perfunctory phone call to, for example, schedule a doctor’s appointment or ask whether the butcher has guanciale in stock, without really thinking about the person on the other end of the line? I would never describe my interactions as rude or even brisk, but I will admit that I approach those phone calls from the standpoint of: “I need to extract x information” or “I need to accomplish y task” before doing these other 32489 items on my list. Mr. Rogers’ interaction left me aspiring to be more human and empathetic in my daily exchanges.
+My sister recently raved about these racerback bralettes as the perfect thing to wear with blouses — where your bra straps so often slip off your shoulder. The racerback style prevents that from happening. Bonus: only $15.
Can you tell I’m in the mood to shop this week? Good Lord. I am itching for new duds given the slightly milder temps and the fact that we just booked our house for the Hamptons the first week of July! (Do I or do I not already have a Pinterest board with all of the items I’d love to buy my children for the summer largely inspired by our trip?! micro will be wearing a lot of BusyBees bubbles and rompers and polos with seersucker trunks; mini will be wearing pretty summer dresses like this and this).
2 // MADEWELL SKINNY OVERALLS (I SHARED A PIC OF MYSELF IN THESE, TWINNING WITH MICRO, ON INSTASTORY AND GOT SO MANY INQUIRIES — THESE ARE SO, SO FLATTERING! I WEAR WITH A FRILLY WHITE BLOUSE, LIKE THE ONES LINKED ABOVE, UNDERNEATH TO ELEVATE THE LOOK)
3 // SUPERGA SNEAKERS (CURRENTLY ON SALE WITH THE SHOPBOP PROMO)
4 // NATORI FEATHERS BRA (THE BEST THE BEST — ON SALE IN SELECT COLORS HERE; SPRING’S A GOOD TIME TO REFRESH THE LINGERIE DRAWER, WHICH I KEEP TIDY WITH THIS SET)
5 // SHIRTDRESS (ALSO LOVE THIS IN BLACK, SLIGHTLY OVER $100)
P.P.P.S. As we head into spring breaks and warmer weather in general: may I make a plug for these super compact microfiber towels? I always keep on in the basket of my stroller in the summer months, when mini tends to make a beeline for the splashpads in Central Park. Very thin, folds up into a small square, and yet really dries! Bonus: they are cute.
By: Jen Shoop
Do you consider yourself a grandmillennial? A friend of mine sent me a link to this article and said: “This is you.” Ha! Upon reflection, I’m fairly certain I qualify, though I tend to favor a mix of styles in my own home. We have some sleek and modern pieces, some more casual coastal pieces, some Ralph Lauren-esque, masculine pieces, and then, for example, an outrageous set of antique bronze candle sconces with bows at the top I scored on Etsy a few weeks ago that epitomize the grandmillennial vibe. (These are similar.) I bought them to flank an enormous portrait we have hanging in our dining room — and so the room is truly a mix of the modern and the traditional, with hints of the grandmillennial tucked in for good measure.
Below, sharing some of my favorite grandmillennial finds, whether you’re full-force or just dipping your toe in the pool:
P.P.S. Remember how my old apartment was named Louise? I feel like my new one might be named Charlotte — a little younger but still high maintenance, a little bit stuck in her ways. We have arched doorways and a very traditional layout (no open floor plans), but high ceilings and lots of dramatic molding.
It has taken me months to write this post despite many Magpie reader requests for it, as I was at first too raw and emotional to write about it, and then life moved on and now when I think about nursing Hill, I get the warm and fuzzies rather than the sharp stabs of guilt and grief I experienced while weaning him. Frankly, I can barely conjure what I was feeling as I tried desperately to persist in breastfeeding him. This is in part because I think mothers are hard-wired to forget the difficult bits of birthing and caring for newborns and in part because so much of parenting is intensely emotional in-the-moment, only to evaporate into thin air hours later, forgotten between precious bedtime feedings and scraping broccoli buds out of the high chair.
But I wanted to write this nonetheless because when I was weaning Hill, I felt horribly alone and horribly sad and — well, like I was floundering. Despite my bright-eyed declarations that fed was best and that I would go with the flow and that I wouldn’t put myself or the baby through the extremes I went through trying to feed mini in the face of a chronic undersupply — I found myself in anguish as I attempted to breastfeed micro. I was devastated but accommodating in the face of yet another undersupply after he was born. I’d had visions of being one of those EBF-ers, but the old breastfeed-then-supplement routine was familiar to me given that I’d done it for eight months with mini, and so I leaned into it with something like confidence. Though I wouldn’t have said it out loud, I was determined to breastfeed him until at least as long as I’d gone with my daughter — but ideally until a year, I inwardly estimated.
So many of you lovely readers wrote with encouraging messages: “Keep at it!” “Babies don’t wean themselves; you can do this if you have patience!” And there was a bounty of practical advice, too: “Switch the bottle nipples to the lowest speed!” “Nurse in the dark!” “Do a lay-in!” “Maybe he’s teething!”
I felt lifted by these sentiments, spirited. I got to work. I tested most of the advice, with the exception of switching the bottle nipple speeds — and more on that later. And so I felt ashamed and frustrated as I found myself continuously giving micro the bottle after he’d fuss in fury at the breast upon each nursing session. I cried a lot. For awhile, we managed to hang on to the evening nursing sessions, which were always quiet and drowsy anyhow, but then he refused those as well, arching his back and angling his face away from me. Even though I knew it wasn’t personal, it felt like a rejection.
Oh, how I cried, often on Mr. Magpie’s shoulder, much to his bafflement. He was kind and loving, but equally perplexed by the seemingly endless fount of emotions on this subject.
For a month, I pumped and fed him what I could from a bottle. And I hate — HATE — the pump. And then I slowly started dropping pumping sessions until I was pumping once every day, then once every other day, and then nothing at all.
I can’t quite put into words the acidity of my emotions at this time. I was wrecked and determined to find a way, and yet I found myself going through the motions of weaning him, and judging myself for it. I kept remembering the once-encouraging phrase “babies don’t wean themselves” and feeling the creeping sense that I had given up, or given in, or not tried my hardest. Why hadn’t I switched the bottle nipples back to the zero speed, for example? And yet I hadn’t, and I wouldn’t — because I also possessed a powerful, silent intuition that Hill was happy with the speed of the bottle and was hungry and that it was the right thing for him at that moment, even if I didn’t want it to be.
It took me several months — and two fairly happenstance encounters — to make peace with all of this. The first happened while trotting around Instagram late at night and stumbling upon a description of the parenting philosophy “intuitive parenting.” Let me first state that I can’t bear the term “intuitive parenting,” implicative as it is that other types of parenting are not intuitive? Arg! Now, I don’t know a lot about this school of thought and I forbid myself from going too deep into it, but the basic gist is that parents in this camp prioritize being adaptable to the child’s needs above all else. From what I gathered, they spurn schedules and milestones and remediation-type approaches (i.e., “he’s not doing x by the anticipated y months — we have to introduce xyz strategies to get him there”). From my limited reading on the topic, “intuitive parenting” means maybe you co-sleep with your child until a year and a half. Or maybe you breastfeed for two years. Or maybe you don’t drop a middle-of-the-night feed until nine months. Or what have you. It’s more about listening and observing and doing what seems natural at that time versus, for example, aiming to have the baby out of the bedroom by month twelve, or on a strict feeding schedule by month three, or sleeping through the night by month six.
Basically, I read the description, and I thought: “I am not alone!”
I have written this countless times before, and I will write this countless times in the future, but let me again underscore that I have zero judgment for any other parenting approach or philosophy that empowers a mom to be her best self. In fact, I feel that most of my dearest mom friends are at the exact opposite end of the spectrum; many are devotees of Moms on Call and other more structured approaches to caring for newborns. I deeply respect them for their dedication and lean on their insights frequently. But I have found those models feel so uncomfortable to me that I feel like the worst version of myself as a mom when I attempt to deploy them. And it wasn’t until I read the Instagram description that I thought: “Oh my God! There are other moms like me, who have a totally different approach to this!” It was the first time that I realized I’d been inwardly criticizing myself for being “too soft” or “not determined enough.” Now, I am able to believe that I was being a good listener, observing his cues and attempting to do what he was telling me he wanted to do.
The second instance that helped me make peace with weaning was a therapeutic conversation with my sister, also a mother of two. I was telling her about micro’s sleep habits, and how most of the time, he sleeps through the night, but maybe once or twice a week, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll go to him. Sometimes he just needs a burp or some consolation and goes back down. Most of the time, I give a him a bottle. I told her this, chagrined, being almost elliptical about whether I fed him a bottle or not, and adding, quickly: “I know I’m enabling him, but…” And she said: “But why is that a bad thing? You’re doing what feels right and good right now. Maybe in another month, you’ll change your mind and decide to go a different route. Trust your instincts!” Her comment made me realize how much I was judging myself for doing something that works for us right now, and it has nothing to do with being “too soft” or “unwilling to do what needs to be done” — things I had been telling myself without even acknowledging it. When I took a minute to reflect on this, I discovered that I had been clinging to the notions that having my child sleep through the night by three months and breastfed for a full year were engrained in me as markers for maternal success. I’d absorbed them from friends, family, doctors, innumerable marketing messages from baby products, social media, and the like.
It took me until that chance encounter with “intuitive parenting” and that conversation with my sister to begin to shrug those expectations off. Like, who cares? Who is measuring? I mean — let me be clear — everyone is measuring and I have gotten my fair share of backhanded commentary as a mom. But if people are judging me, it tends to stem from their own insecurity or out of a genuine desire to share what has worked for them. In both cases, I reckoned, I shouldn’t measure myself using their yardsticks.
All this to say.
When I startled myself with the depths of my emotions around breastfeeding, it wasn’t just the hormones. It wasn’t just weepy nostalgia. It wasn’t just the desire to cling onto a powerful bond with my son. Well — it was all of those things, but it was also the soul-rending process of measuring myself as a mother and determining I’d failed. I was distraught at the thought that I was not a good mom, and weaning at five months felt an awful lot like it.
And all that to say.
If you are struggling, silently, with something as a mom — I am right there with you. Even though I am blessed with an incredible support system, I still find myself waking at odd hours, lost in waves of lonesome self-reproach. Let this post serve as a proxy for my much-needed heartshare with my sister: “You’re doing what feels right and good right now. Trust your instincts.”
+About to place a huge order at Cecil & Lou — they have so many adorable items right now! Love this rosebud swimsuit for mini, this sunsuit for micro (monogrammed!), and this seersucker dress for mini (also monogrammed).
+We use these Asian soup spoons all the time in our house — we order ramen and/or pho once a week chez Shoop.
+My favorite Etsy sources — including loads of great spots to find amazing childrens’ gear, decor, and clothing.
+This looks like the Sleeper dress everyone wore last summer! Pair with huge black shades and Hermes Orans (these new sandals from J. Crew have a similar ethos but aren’t dead-on dupes, which I kind of like)…
+Was moved and stirred by all of the comments on this post.
By: Jen Shoop
I wanted to take a month to really evaluate a couple of new-to-my-beauty-routine products and am dying to share the results.
Glycolic Acid Wipe Review.
First up: Glycolic acid wipes. A special thanks to Julia, who first shared this beauty wonderproduct on her Instagram. She caught me at just the right moment, as I had been battling frustrating breakouts since I got pregnant with Hill. I kept chalking them up to hormones, but — at seven months post-partum, and no longer breastfeeding, that explanation felt tenuous at best. And I was pretty fed up. I also felt that though my skin looked bright (in large part owing, I believe, to my beloved serum), it didn’t look balanced or “clear” to me. I decided to give these glycolic acid wipes a try after Julia raved about them and mentioned that she’d want to be buried with these — ha! The first week, I was a little underwhelmed and also a little scared. These felt more “heavy-duty” than any cosmetic product I’ve used in the past, especially since my skin kind of tingled/stung for a minute after application. But by week three, I was astounded. My skin was clear, balanced, and I swear to God you cannot see a single pore on my face. Most impressively, my skin is so smooth. I find myself running my hand across my forehead (probably not good for my skin), shocked at how impossibly smooth and soft it feels.
In short: tese are definitely worth testing, especially given the reasonable price — $32 for a two month supply (60 wipes). I purchased the 15% strength, for reference. My regimen has been to use my Tata Harper cleanser in the morning and then, at night, remove makeup with Bioderma micellar water (with my beloved Shiseido facial cotton — the best the best) and follow with one of these wipes before moisturizing. I’m a believer. Will be locked into this skincare regimen until further notice and am convinced my skin has never looked this good!
Important note: glycolic acid can make your skin extra sensitive to sun, so be sure to wear your daily SPF! I swear by La Roche-Posay fluid sunscreen, which glides into skin and absorbs quickly without any white residue.
Avene Moisturizer Review.
One of my provocations this year has been to test out more drugstore-variety products in order to evaluate whether prestige products are worth their price tags. I wrote about this earlier this year, but one product category that particularly interested me was moisturizers, as a friend had once told me that her dermatologist insisted that you did not need to spend over $50 on a moisturizer, as they are all pretty much the same. This seemed to fly in the face of my addiction to La Mer soft cream, and to the current hype around Augustinus Bader’s face cream, which I am still dying to try. I tried Neutrogena’s Hydro Boost after a friend swore it was a dead-on dupe for Belif’s Aquabomb moisturizer (which I love). I did like it — it absorbed quickly into skin and was very light. The scent is a bit overpowering and about a week after starting to use it, I was breaking out horribly, and I am 90% certain the Neutrogena product was the culprit, so I stopped using it. Of course, not everyone’s skin will have this reaction, so it’s worth testing if you’re game, as I was impressed with the overall quality of the product; it just didn’t work well with my skin.
I turned instead to Avene’s Eau Thermale, a French pharmacy staple, and am in love with it. It’s reasonably priced, beautifully hydrating, and just sinks into my skin. It has a scent that brings back the most intense memories from childhood, but I can’t figure out why. (But, do beware: this does have a scent for those who prefer unscented products. Not as heavily perfumed as the Neutrogena, but definitely there.) I also slightly prefer this to Belif’s aquabomb because it comes in a tube. It’s a small thing, but I don’t like tub-style moisturizers — just more convenient to squeeze out the right amount from a tube!
+Muji facial cotton. A reader pointed me in this direction — she shared that these inexpensive Muji cotton pads are getting a lot of good reviews from former devotees of Shiseido’s facial cotton! At half the price, worth a test.
+Westman Atelier products are also turning a lot of heads these days. I’m intrigued by their cult following and want specifically to try their Lit Up Highlighting Stick and their Vital Skin Foundation Stick. In the summer, I only wear tinted moisturizer, but especially given my breakouts, I have been using foundation more regularly this winter. I have been using Wander Beauty’s Liquid Foundation and am OK with it. It provides good coverage but looks natural. I just don’t love the applicator. I’d been thinking about returning to my Armani classic, but am going to give the Vital Skin Foundation Stick a try next instead.
+Love these clear, customizable cosmetics pouches — great for travel, so you can see everything, or if you’re tossing your essentials in your gym bag. I also use these very inexpensive clear pouches (5 for $17) to stow samples and overflow beauty products in a big tupperware bin under my sink. I have a separate pouch for different categories — one for hair, one for travel-sized products, one for skin, one for cosmetics, etc.
Another well-timed Shopbop promotion — 15% off orders over $200, 20% off orders over $500, and 25% off orders over $800! I’m planning to use it as an excuse to buy a pair of these No.6 shearling-lined boots, which I am seeing all over Manhattan and which will replace a pair of shearling-lined Isabel Marant boots that just died over the weekend (may they rest in peace — the sole came away from the footbed entirely!)
HAVE BEEN WAITING IMPATIENTLY FOR AN AGUA BENDITA DRESS SALE — NOW DEBATING BETWEEN THIS AND THIS
P.S. This means you can get my Agoldes on sale, and that now is a good time to snag a pair of on-trend Vejas.
P.P.S. If you love the Rhode dress but can’t imagine you’ll wear it more than a handful of times and therefore still balk at the cost, consider renting this one — OBSESSED WITH THE PRINT. (Or buy this yellow printed one at a discount here!)
P.P.P.S. Organized all of my favorite spring finds here.
By: Jen Shoop
I’ve had a couple of Magpie Mail inquiries asking for thoughts on a spring capsule wardrobe. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never done a “capsule” wardrobe though I admire those with the restraint to do so. I tend to invest in good basics (I invest specifically in jeans, shoes, cashmere, and feminine dresses) that I wear for seasons and seasons, and then pepper in trendier finds at lower price points. I would be nowhere without J. Brand white jeans, for example, which I wear year-round. Below, going to share some basics worth investing in (items I would buy and wear for years on end — note that some of these are reasonably priced at around $100 but that I will 100% wear for many years to cone) and then share some trendier pieces to mix in:
OK, this isn’t actually my “latest” snag, but I have been wearing this Mango sweater (seen above) on repeat lately. Especially love it with white jeans. Did I mention it’s on sale for $30?! (P.S. How beautiful is the model wearing it?!)
+THE best maternity pajamas ever. Worth every penny. Loved them so much I had three sets this last pregnancy and wore them constantly, from around five months pregnant to above three months post-partum. No joke. (Great for nursing too.)
Of the many tendernesses of motherhood, this cuts right to my core:
Hill often falls asleep staring at me. I noticed this first when he was itty bitty — maybe ten or eleven days old — and I wasn’t even sure if he could make out my facial features yet. But he would stare, drowsily, at me, almost as if comforted by my shape, until his eyelids would flutter closed.
He still does this, at nearly nine months old. I often feed him his goodnight bottle sitting on the floor of his nursery with my back against the slats of his crib, his warm body cradled in my arms, his long legs draped over my own. We say his goodnight prayers together, I whisper his affirmations, and then I sing him one of two lullabies. Often he is languorously rubbing his eyes or drifting in and out of slumber at this point, but just as often, he is calmly, drowsily staring at my face until he slow-blinks himself to sleep.
It is heart-rendingly intimate. Can you imagine falling asleep while someone is looking directly at you? The level of comfort and the lack of self-consciousness it implies astounds and humbles me–and, more often than not, leaves me holding him for just a few minutes longer, sneaking in an extra kiss, squeezing him a little closer.
Little children are exhausting. Bedtime can take the wind right out of me. Sometimes I have to take a few deep breaths in the quiet of my own room before mini sprints through our apartment door, home from school, at 3:42 p.m. (almost always, every single day, at 3:42 p.m.) in order to gather the strength to accomplish everything that needs to be accomplished between 4-6:30 p.m.–hours I am almost always on my own with the children.
But, my God. When you sit on the floor of your son’s nursery and he falls asleep while locked in a loving gaze with you, you think: It is a gift to be needed. It is a privilege to be a mother. I want for nothing.
Post-Scripts: An Affordable Vitamin C Serum!
+Awhile ago, someone asked for a vitamin c serum that would not break the bank: this is getting great reviews and is under $30! (Discovered via Caitlin!)
On Wednesday, I wore ashes on my forehead in the Catholic Lenten tradition. I received countless looks of bewilderment on the Upper West Side that day, some of which resolved into expressions of relieved comprehension, but most of which seemed to be suppressing an urgent: “Um, m’am, you have a big black smudge on your forehead.”
I live in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, so this reception did not startle me. Nor was I surprised by the fact that I did not encounter a single other Catholic wearing ashes on that day (outside of our Church)–and I did find myself searching.
But what left me puzzled on this particular Ash Wednesday was the Gospel, which I have heard every year for my thirty-five years on this Earth, but which had never jumped out at me in quite the same way. The Ash Wednesday Gospel implores us to pray in secret: “do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.” The message is clear: do good in order to do good. Do not sound the trumpet before you.
Such an odd message for the single day of the Catholic year in which I bear an outward sign of my Catholicism. Most of the time, it is easy, in fact, to be discreet about my faith. I do not have to wear a yarmulke or a hijab to conform with the conventions of my religion. There are no dietary restrictions to observe and explain over Brunch with friends (“I can’t eat pork…”) Mass is early on Sundays and has never conflicted with any other activity in my life: I cannot recall a time where I have had to forgo a social event, for example, because I needed to go to Mass. (Who does anything at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday?) In short, to the casual observer, I could just as easily be a devout Christian as I could be a fervent atheist.
The exception is Ash Wednesday.
I found this tension for the first time in my life both fascinating and surprisingly uncomfortable. In years past, I have never minded the looks of bafflement on Ash Wednesday because inwardly (let me speak candidly, and shame on me) I have been patting myself on the back: “Good for you, Jen, you rearranged your day to get to Ash Wednesday Mass” and because I also assumed that most people understood what Ash Wednesday was and did not pay much attention to odd glances in my direction. For my first two decades on this earth, I lived a life densely populated by Catholics and, as a result, continuously overestimate the number of people I encounter that share my faith. This year, perhaps because we have moved into a neighborhood where it is commonplace to see boys wearing peyot and men wearing yarmulkes, things felt different. I felt more like an outsider than I usually do.
But there was something else. This year, I have grown increasingly turned off by the prevalence of virtue signaling in my life — usually on social media, but occasionally in real life as well, too. By this I mean: small ways that people toot their own horn and backhandedly compliment themselves for their goodness and virtuosity. I am just as guilty of this as the next Tom, Dick, or Harry. I’m sure I could be read the riot act based on this blog alone — “remember when you said…?! UGH!” But I am working to correct this distastefulness and highly conscious of its ubiquity online.
Of course, the wearing of ashes is not the same thing as virtue signaling. As a practicing Catholic, Ash Wednesday is a holy day of obligation. But it felt to me as though I was putting my faith on display in a way that made me more self-aware than in years past.
What to make of this, I wonder? How to untangle this unwieldy nest of mixed messages, wherein I am told to wear ashes and then reminded to pray in private? Where I observe others wearing the outward signs of their faiths and think nothing of it beyond “I admire their commitment” and yet worry that my own might be distastefully conspicuous?
+Loft has some super cute rompers/jumpsuits for spring that are selling really quickly — this has an Ulla vibe to it, this plaid style is chic and beachy (love the bow in the back), and does this not remind you of our beloved SZ Blockprints caftans?! Two of these have already sold out in my size, but I’m ordering #1 now!
+These flats look like they are Aquazzura (under $100!)
+My spirit, in dress form. No really. I have this D&G bustier dress in sky blue I bought for my honeymoon that has that exact shape and the handful of times I’ve worn it, my sister has said it’s the most me thing she’s ever seen. Which is odd because I don’t see myself as a bustier type gal, but something about the fit and color and simplicity and vague 90s-ness of it all feels like home.
