Today’s post is highly self-interested in that I’m sharing some options for two seemingly random, possibly boring household goods that I spent a decent amount of time hunting around for over the weekend: a perfect picnic blanket for an upcoming picnic in Central Park, and a chic decorative storage basket for Tilly’s stray dog toys. (*Photo above from Camille Styles.)
+Budget: This fouta striped style or this fruit-print style, which conveniently fold up into a square that can be carried over the shoulder. (Amazon also has a ton of well-priced foutas in a range of colors, but the H+M one has a water repellant side which would be convenient on grass.)
Currently, we toss Tilly’s handful of plush toys in the closet or behind mini’s toy bins when we want them out of sight and out of mind. This has the unfortunate consequence of inviting Tilly to nose through mini’s toys when in pursuit for her own — so I decided that we needed to find a dedicated spot for her belongings somewhere else. We already have a lot of browns and neutrals in our living area, including two seagrass baskets (this would be a great, inexpensive alternative!) we use to contain mini’s books and toys, so I was hoping to find something that would introduce a little color or interest to the space, although I also came across some great basics.
Finally, because searching for a picnic blanket made me feel very summery, some other amazing summer fashion finds — all but the basket bag are under $200, and most are under $100!. Click the images to be taken to details, or see links below!:
P.P.S. Neiman’s is having an incredible shoe sale RN. I have these booties in my cart; though I’m so NOT in the mood to buy winter clothes right now, I know I’ll pat myself on the back come next October. I also think these heels would be heavily worn in the evening, and am in love with these cork-heeled pink babies! To me, they’re the perfect Sunday Mass shoe — comfortable, not overly-high, ladylike, but on-trend.
P.P.P.S. This and this just went on sale and I’m having a hard time resisting their appeal…
By: Jen Shoop
“What did you study in grad school?” I was recently, rather startlingly, asked. It’s been some time since I have spoken about my studies at Georgetown University (the above picture is the exact corner of campus I think about when asked about Georgetown — I walked down this corridor maybe a thousand times en route to class), or since anyone has cared to ask, since I’m nearly ten years out and wildly out of practice when it comes to speaking academese. I reached for my pat reply:
“High modernist poetry and poetics.”
“Poetics,” repeated my conversation mate. He looked over at me inquiringly. “Poetics?”
“Oh–” I interjected apologetically, suddenly feeling like an incorrigible snot, like that time I haughtily tossed around Ezra Pound’s name during a cocktail party . “Poetics meaning the strategy and art that goes into writing poetry. Sort of — the mechanics that poets use.” He nodded, turning his mouth into an upside down “u” as he seemed to mull it over for plausibility.
His reaction made me think for a minute about the necessity of using “poetics” in that sentence. Wouldn’t poetry have sufficed just as well, implicit as it was that, given my degree, I was studying more than just the words on a page? And what about the modifier “high”? Had I really needed to distinguish between flavors of modernism for the purpose of this polite conversation?
Yes, I ultimately decided. Yes, I had. I’d used technically correct, exacting language, and the gentleman across from me was bright, inquisitive, well-educated. I don’t think an orthopedic surgeon would have “dumbed down” her response to an analogous inquiry as to her medical chops by describing herself as “a body doctor,” and though the tenor of his query had been mildly reproachful, I ultimately denied any transgression on my end. On further thought, I also doubted whether I’d registered his tone correctly: had it been reproach or, possibly, curiosity? And if the latter, had I done him a small kindness in glossing the word for him on the spot? And if the former, had I redeemed myself regardless by proving that I had used the word knowingly, carefully?
Suffice to say that I have been hard at work in the project of thinking about language as not only a means for self-expression, but as a mirror for many of the cultural and social frictions of our times, and sometimes I discover I land in a different spot, looking at the expanse of language from a different mount, observing some new formation or distribution in its topography.
Today I feel strongly that I needn’t have shied away from using the mot juste, even if it might have caused temporary dissonance on the listener’s end, as I was using it without pretense and with an aim at specificity. I’ve just recently finished the page-turning non-fiction book Nemesis, on Jackie and Aristotle Onassis’s complex and salacious life together, and I felt that the author was occasionally affected in his diction, using European phrases like “cri de coeur” and “mariage blanc” and “vilet de pied” that, taken together, imply Peter Evans’ worldliness, his cultivation. I love French words, too, and will use them in my English writing — above, I used the phrase “mot juste” unblinkingly because it was the simplest, most direct conveyance — but I found myself lingering over his repeated applications from time to time: yes, the phrase mariage blanc was deployed perfectly in such-and-such case, but cri de coeur was used four or five times in the book, and I’m unconvinced that the phrase was additive to all but one or two of the occasions. Meanwhile, or on the other hand, there are words like jurisprudence and ecclesiastical, which have the feel of pretense but are in fact beautifully precise, a generosity to the reader. In short, I feel that there are distinctions to be made between ostentation and exactitude in writing — slender, delicate ones, for sure, but they abide.
Where do you land on this topic? Have you ever stared down the question of whether to swap a simpler word for a more technically correct one? What’s at stake? (And are there gender/age dynamics at play in these interactions, too?)
Post-Script.
+This breezy dress has the look of a higher-end piece from The Reformation.
+Against many of your suggestions, I picked up this beach read (described to me as “a rom com in written form”) after finishing Nemesis because I wanted a palette cleanser before diving into this. It is rather prurient reading, but I do appreciate this: the book shuttles between the perspective of a woman and a man falling in love with one another and their tender and anxious concerns about how they are being perceived by one another ring true to me.
P.S. One of my favorite posts. I miss my grandfather when I read it, and it also leaves me optimistic for my future in writing.
But guys — partly inspired by my post on what I’d like to wear for our planned trip to the Hampton’s for the Fourth of July, and partly inspired by the discovery of the above babe via Pinterest, I’m now mega into the idea of wearing my new Hermes-lookalike scarf (under $50!!!!) to the beach this summer. I already own a Missoni turban/headband similar to the style shown below that I absolutely love to pull out during the summer — it’s super boho but I’m into it (though I also like this more elegant Pucci style) — but I’m now dying over a vision of myself wearing a scarf wrapped around my head and knotted in the back. Will I look like a European princesa floating around on a yacht in the Mediterranean!?
And speaking of Missoni, I like the idea of wearing my headscarf (or this Gucci…WOW) with this Missoni-esque crochet cover up (under $120!)! Perfect along with a simple one-piece like this or my tried-and-true Solid + Striped Annemarie one-piece (on sale here!).
While we’re on this topic, am I too young to pull off Jackie O.’s headscarf thing? Will I look like an old Italian grandma pushing one of those wheeled shopping carts around the city? Y/N.
Finally, if you’re liking the idea of the scarf situation but not ready to go full-on turban, you can get just a taste with this scarf-inspired headband from Anthro, or this one from H+M (only $10! — and while we’re talking bargain buys, this scarf from H+M is VERY Gucci RN).
And if you like the scarf idea but aren’t into putting it anywhere near your hair, how about these scarf-accented heels (so freaking CHIC!), these Liberty of London scarf sandals, or this scarf-print kimono! I like the idea of tossing it on over a bathing suit, or wearing it, as in the third color variation, with white skinnies and a black tee.
Mr. Magpie and I are heading to the Hamptons with our best friends for the Fourth, so I am now daydreaming about what to wear — can we pull off the Taylor-Cara-Gigi striped swimsuit picture above?!?! (They’re wearing Solid + Striped suits.) Here’s what’s on my radar:
Fourth of July Dress.
+This two-tone lovely by of-the-moment label Staud is understated elegance at its finest.
+This organizer makes me so happy and keeps my under-sink area tidy as can be.
#Turbothot: Regret.
I read and re-read and re-re-read your elegant and insightful reactions to this difficult-to-write piece on the weight of words. I don’t think I’ve ever fretted over the publication of any post more than I did that one. The morning it went live, I walked around with a pit in my stomach: had I gotten it right? It had taken me a full week to write, and I woke up several times in the middle of the night thinking about how to tweak a certain phrase or edit a certain paragraph — how meta, right? I was especially concerned about the use of the word hygiene in one of the final paragraphs — was it too clinical? I knew I had to get the language in this particular post as close to perfect as I could given the subject matter.
Alison wrote: “Shame is a horrible, abusive teacher — it might help you learn, but god do you feel shitty about yourself and the whole situation.” I carried that around with me for the next couple of hours, thinking: “How true, how well-put.” And it occurred to me, as we took the 66th Street Transverse that slices through Central Park in a cab ride home from dinner with my parents, that regret is a similarly devastating instructor — and I use regret in the sense of grief over what’s not been done. What’s been missed, skipped. In general, I subscribe to the belief that everything happens the way it’s meant to happen, and in that framework, regret should have no home.
But there are many things that I have regretted, and over plates of pasta at Sandro’s on the UES, my parents told me about the reason for their visit to New York City — a trip to Castle Gardens — I felt a deep pang of regret. Let me explain: Castle Gardens is an environmentally conscious apartment building in Harlem that houses formerly incarcerated and homeless individuals. They offer a range of supportive services, and provide a dignified, we’ll-meet-you-where-you-are approach to the needs of their clientele. My father has dedicated his retirement years to the cause of eradicating veteran homelessness in Washington, D.C., and this trip was arranged such that some of Castle Gardens’ best practices could be brought back to some of the projects he has spearheaded in the nation’s capital. As he explained how inspired and impressed he had been, I could only think this:
A few weeks back, I took minimagpie downtown to meet up with a girlfriend on her lunch break. It was miserable, driving, cold rain. Taking the Subway in fair weather is challenging enough, but when I introduced inclemency to the mix, I was overwhelmed by the situation, especially given that I do not have a rain cover for mini’s umbrella stroller, so I was attempting to hold an umbrella over her legs while pushing the stroller in a bizarre crab move, rain pelting my face. I’m not above admitting that I felt both self-pity and pride as I wheeled us through Bryant Park, sopping wet.
On the walk back from an admittedly restorative lunch, I saw a homeless gentleman holding what might be the saddest sign I’ve ever read:
“Homeless and humiliated veteran. Sorry if I offend you.”
I literally cannot think about the sign without tears pricking my eyes. Sorry if I offend you?
I remember wheeling by him, borderline sprinting to the subway stop, and I knew I should have stopped to give him something. I remember the moment well — my heart said one thing, my head said something else. I pushed ahead, collapsed the stroller, and clambered down the stairs to board the Subway, feeling — with each step — that I was past the point of no return.
As I listened to my father talk about the reason for his trip to New York, I deeply regretted that harried afternoon in the rain. And as rode home in the cab, the thrum of the city in my ears, I realized what an effective teacher regret can be — and I nodded in agreement with Alison’s assessment of shame. Shame is a kind of inward violence, but regret is a soft tearing at the heart. Both are part of the human experience — they enable us to learn, to grow, to change — but God willing I’ll avoid both as much as possible in the future.
*I promise I’ll write something more uplifting this upcoming week. YIKES! Regret! Shame!
#Shopaholic: Floating Acrylic Frames.
+Obsessed with these floating acrylic frames for showcasing not only photos, but little notes and cards and invitations of personal importance. I have a couple of beautiful notes from friends and family celebrating mini’s arrival over a year ago that I’d like to immortalize in these!
+Buying a couple of these for toting mini’s snacks on the go.
+The beautiful blogger Julia of Gal Meets Glam has a new collection of dresses out at Nordstrom — I love this one.
+I know a lot of you were looking for less expensive versions of those Simon Miller bags that have been everywhere — HERE YOU GO!!! (Under $70!)
+With the imminent (any day now, pls and thank you) arrival of warm weather, I’m gearing up to get back into my running routine. I have my eyes on a new pair of Nike Flyknits — they are SUPER LIGHTWEIGHT (almost like a sock?) and I love the colors of this pair (on sale!)
+If I had a formal wedding to attend this summer, I would definitely splurge on this. I’M OBSESSED.
+I have a Veronica Beard blouse almost identical to this one (under $130!) and wear it with everything — layered under overalls, with skirts, with jeans! SO VERSATILE. (You can get the look for even less with this $60 steal.)
Last Friday night, I found myself alone and left to my own devices. Mr. Magpie was at a work event that evening and had warned me that he probably wouldn’t be home until midnight, and, after I’d successfully fed, bathed, and pajama-ed mini, I took she and Tilly out for a walk around Central Park during that magical golden hour just before seven, fed mini her nighttime bottle, and rocked her to sleep.
After sliding the pocket door to mini’s nursery closed and cleaning the kitchen, I was practically radiating with joy at the thought of an entire evening to myself. It goes without saying that I adore evenings spent in conversation with Mr. Magpie, but — variety is the spice of life and there was something deliciously indulgent about having no one to account for but myself on that stray Friday night. I ordered dinner for myself (a Sweetgreen salad, which sounds boring on the surface, but Mr. Magpie is not a salad-for-dinner kind of guy, and it was just what I wanted), poured myself a glass of sparkling wine, put on my new favorite face mask (full review here; and PSA: it’s on sale RN!), lit my new candle, sat down on the couch in my favorite pajamas (I just discovered they now come in a short version!), and put on Julie + Julia. (I didn’t care for it the first time around, and was equally uninspired at my second viewing — I can’t stand the way Amy Adams plays that character for some reason. It’s cloying and overdrawn. But still — it felt so delightful to put on a borderline bad chick flick with no explanation needed.)
It reminded me of that Sex and the City episode where Carrie talks about SSB, secret single behavior: what people do when they’re alone. I remember Carrie talking about eating saltines slathered with jelly standing up at her counter with her socks on. My evening was decidedly less idiosyncratic — could I have been enjoying a more #basic night? It was like a page out of Cosmo magazine: “How to De-Stress on a Friday Night” and “10 Steps to Instant Relaxation.” But it was also perfect.
What’s your SSB? I’m wondering if you have some more inspiring and quirky ways to pass time solo — but if you don’t, let’s join hands in solidarity around our SBB — secret #basic behavior.
Post-Script: Reader Q+As.
The evening also gave me time to respond to some recent reader Q+As:
Q: My mom is coming to visit [me in D.C.] soon and each time she visits, I am disappointed to not know more shops we can visit (specifically antique stores / clothing boutiques). Was wondering if you had any recommendations for shops in DC?
A: I absolutely love the little corridor up in North Georgetown on Wisconsin Ave, just south of R Street, starting with A Mano, an adorable gift and home goods shop that has been there for a long time. You’ll find a bunch of little boutiques on your walk down Wisconsin, but for antiques, you MUST make it to The Christ Child Opportunity Shop, just south of P Street on Wisconsin Avenue. My grandmother and mother volunteer(ed) there, and they consign upscale home goods and furnishings and art and the profits go to support children in need. Mixed in among all those great little boutiques are some of my favorite eating spots — Bean Counter for good sandwiches (apparently a lot of celebrities stop in there!); Patisserie Poupon for great salads, lattes, and pastries; and Cafe Bonaparte for French bistro fare. (And there’s also an incredible wine bar further up, north of R, called Bistro Lepic. They have a wonderful wine list and Mr. Magpie and I used to go on dates there frequently!) For dessert — Thomas Sweet is a CLASSIC for ice cream, and there’s a fancy gelato spot called Dolcezza in that vicinity, too. Finally, if you have time for a manicure, I used to go to Vicky’s religiously every week for many, many years. Vicky is a doll!
Nowadays when I’m home, my mom will often take me to Bethesda Row to shop — they have more chains than boutiques, but there are a fair share of unique stores in that area, including a free-standing Lilly Pulitzer store and a Sugarfina candy shop (I have a major sweet tooth). I spent a lot of my early teen years there because I had braces and my orthodontist’s office was right there, and then there was a movie theater that we all used to hang out at before we were old enough to do anything else. So, good memories!
Also, if you’ve not yet been, you MUST go to Black Salt, my favorite restaurant in D.C. They have an excellent happy hour — I think oysters are $1 or $2 apiece, martinis and champagne cocktails are marked down, and you can get smaller, more affordable portions of some of their powerhouse dishes.
Q: I’m obsessed with the look of Self-Portrait, but their clothes are out of my budget. Can you recommend a blouse that looks like Self Portrait but costs less?
A: YES. This and this. The latter is at the top of my spring wishlist in blue!
Q: What other blogs do you read?
A: My favorite blogs for shopping inspiration are Daily Cup of Couture (she has exquisite taste), Le Catch for fast-fashion finds, and Luella + June (#closetgoalz). For motherhood/family content, I am drawn to the realness and down-to-earth-ness of Liz Adams on Sequins and Stripes — I admire her perspective, and I especially like following her on Instastory, where she shows the not-so-glamorous side of motherhood without batting an eyelash. I don’t know if she knows how deeply relatable and inspiring she is. I trust Grace’s opinion on basically everything: she is super real and will only feature products she loves. I had the good fortune of having dinner with her a few months back and her skin is luminescent — and therefore I will follow her skincare recommendations to the letter. I also love that she convinced me to read a YA book — though we felt differently about the book, I enjoyed the provocation to read something out of my wheelhouse, and I respect the breadth of literature she consumes and her perspectives on them more generally. Finally, for a little bit of everything, I like Hitha and Mackenzie — two women I have also had the opportunity to befriend IRL and both of whom I admire. (Aside: I personally think Mackenzie should be on a reality TV show: she is quick-witted and self-deprecating, and you can occasionally catch glimpses of this in her writing and in her Instastory collection.)
Q: I am lost as what to wear to my baby’s first birthday party in three weeks. Family only, casual, but because I work in events it’s going to be pretty styled if that makes sense and there will also be a professional photographer to capture candid shots/decor/ a few family photos. So I want to look chic while still being able to move and carry around a baby and probably be installing a floral chandelier 10 minutes before people show up. Le sigh.
A: Oooh, this is a good one. Well, I can tell you what NOT to do: do not wear a Saloni dress with a low vee in the front (mine looked a lot like this, but from last season), as I did, because I then found it so awkward to bend down and scoop Emory up and probably flashed a thousand people. Blah. You are wise to be thinking about functionality…If I were up to a redo, I am swooning over this floaty number from Doen or pretty much any of the new arrivals at Dagny, all of which boast movement alongside eye-catching details. I know you said “casual,” but a breezy dress feels right to me.
Q: How did weaning actually go? Did you have to do anything special? Or you just stopped offering her nursing? Did she accept it? Did you have to do anything for your own body? How long did it take? What did you substitute?
A: First, a HUGE congrats to you for making it as far as you have! No small feat. You are a champion and you should be SO proud of yourself. As far as weaning goes, I’m going to be honest and say it’s not pleasant. For starters, even though I was down to only one feed a day when I weaned, it took a full week or maybe ten days for my body to stop producing milk, and those seven to ten days were so, so uncomfortable. I thought I might have had a blocked duct or something, but no — it was just normal old weaning. My suggestions: take hot showers and hand express when you’re feeling super super full. You don’t want to pump or anything because that will tell your body to keep producing milk, but a little hand expression is necessary now and then (or, it was for me, because I thought I was going to explode). I’ve also heard that people use cabbage to help dry up the milk supply (literally place leaves of cabbage in your bra), but I never tried this. People swear by it though! Also, Advil.
The other element was that my hormones went absolutely berserk. I couldn’t see it when I was in the thick of it, but I was a weepy mess for a couple weeks and now I know why. The slightest thing would send me off into tears. I didn’t connect the dots while it was happening — I just kept thinking, “Oh God, why is everything so annoying?!?!” I remember that I saw my best friend a couple of times while I was weaning and EVERY SINGLE TIME I saw her, I’d wind up in tears. At one point, she gave me a long hug and said, “Girl, I’m worried about you. What’s going on?” In retrospect, it’s super obvious — I wasn’t consciously upset about weaning; I was just crazy hormonal. So, if I may offer some unsolicited advice, cut yourself a lot of slack — and just know that if you feel weepy and blue, it’s probably your hormones, and everything will bounce back eventually 🙂
Last thing to say — while it was physically and emotionally a challenging stretch, it’s absolutely nothing compared to what you went through when your son was born, and YOU WILL MAKE IT THROUGH. And the plus side is that it’s also a huge relief to not be nursing! I felt truly freed by it, though I miss it every now and then. Just keep that in mind: you get your body back! And you get some freedom back! And you can drink wine without having to think about the implications!
Q: I’m going on vacation to Hawaii and want to treat myself to a new sundress — something I can wear on the beach but also out to dinner.
A: Oooh la la! I am obsessed with this pretty maxi in the pink stripe, this mini (the back! the poms! the price!), and pretty much any of the kurtas/dresses/tunics from Roberta Roller Rabbit, like this or this, which would look equally chic thrown over a bathing suit or paired with white jeans. This bright patterned shirt dress could also look amazing thrown over a swimsuit or with flat sandals to dinner. Lastly, this breezy boho maxi would make for a seriously sexy look with tousled hair and a suntan!
I am dying to get my hands on a copy of photographer Claiborne Swanson Frank’s new book, Mother and Child. In it, Frank explores “what modern motherhood means in the 21st century” — and rounds up some drop-dead gorgeous mom-and-child duos to do it. (Hint: this would be a great mother’s day gift — as would a pretty scarf.)
In preparation for Mother’s Day, I’ve been on the hunt for a pretty coordinating mommy-and-me fashion statement for the two of us to twin in. A couple of favorites I’ve landed upon:
This is a cautionary tale I have been loathe to share because it’s detrimentally self-implicating, but — here goes:
When I was a freshman in high school, we had a visiting lecturer stop by my religion class. I cannot recall the specifics of her presentation, although I believe — devastatingly enough, as it will turn out — it centered upon the topics of diversity and inclusion. At some point in the Q+A, for reasons that are both unclear and unforgivable, I stated, without hesitation, that “my elementary school was kind of ghetto.”
I will never forget the look of shock and disgust on the lecturer’s face:
“Well, wait a minute now. Wait…a…minute, young lady. You can’t use that word.”
I blanched. I was mortified. I still feel the burn of humiliation and regret all these many years later, and I remember sitting there, anchored to my seat, hard-gulping and nearly vibrating with embarrassment, for the thirteen agonizing minutes until the bell rang. How could I have been so careless with my words? I glued my eyes to my hands as I loaded my belongings into my backpack, terrified that either the instructor or the lecturer would pull me aside after class for further admonishment, and then skulked out of the classroom with my tail between my legs. It was only after I’d escaped down the back stairwell to the safety of the far wall of The Commons, a byzantine network of lockers and gaggles of girls on the first floor of the main hall of my red brick high school, that I could take a deep breath. I stared blankly into the hollow of my locker and thought about the weight of the word I’d just used. Badly done, Emma.
I have spent hours and hours of my life thinking about this moment. In the days after, I would puzzle over why the hell I had used that word so flippantly. It was hard to conjure my interpretation of the word in its original context after my comeuppance, but I marveled, sickened, over how I had somehow overlooked its racial implications until the moment it left my lips in that classroom. My friends at my elementary school had used the word so freely, gesturing to the chipped wooden cubbies we used as lockers and the cracked asphalt we gathered on every morning and afternoon, and the crackly, intermittent intercom that had probably been around since 1973. But they also used it to describe other things: a classmate using a small white trash bag to transport his clothes to school, another wearing shoes two sizes to big because they’d been on sale and hadn’t had them in his size. I had conflated ghetto with cheap, or rundown, or — in some abstruse sense — the feeling of trying too hard, but I knew — even before the incident — that it was an edgy word, since my parents never used it, and my friends tended to smirk and gloat when saying it. It had the feel of a lazy curse word to me, but I’d never interrogated the matter further.
Now I knew.
Of course I had known that bad words and slang words had no place in a classroom, but, with a flash of apprehension, I discovered that other words could be issued in poor taste, too, and for reasons far more pernicious than a disregard for propriety. I began to think more critically about the composition of my elementary school: it had been remarkably diverse, and I’d not given adequate thought to what that meant until that moment. Because it had the lowest tuition of any Catholic school in the archdiocese and it sat on Massachusetts Avenue, just blocks from Embassy Row, my grade school classes were a mezcla of children from devoutly Catholic, low-income families and the sons and daughters of ambassadors from abroad. And then there was the Nurmi family — my family — which didn’t fit either category, but the school was conveniently proximal to our house and well-run by old-school nuns and a deeply frightening Monsignor who wore a flowing black cassock on his days off and scared the bejesus out of us, factors far more important to my reasonable parents than social standing. I have long respected them for sending me there: though they had the means to send us to far fancier grade schools, they were unconcerned with bumper stickers and the old who’s-who and pragmatically intent on a convenient, decent, very Catholic education for their five children. As a result, I had friends like Yara from Guinea-Bissau, Maria Cecilia from Chile, and Sam from Zimbabwe, for whom English was a second language and America was a second home. And I also had friends like Fabiola, Marco, and Dishaun, who all lived in parts of D.C. I’d never been to before and came from families less fortunate than mine. I knew this because they would joke about joining the Church choir. You could secure a special scholarship if you were accepted into the choir, and the fact was that the school never turned anyone down, and so — there was a long-standing ring of self-deprecating humor centered around the notion of being poor, being bad at singing, and joining the choir.
Indeed, in my thorough and repeated reviewings of my failing, it has always puzzled me that class distinctions were so legible to me while racial ones were not. I am not saying that I didn’t see race; to say that would be disingenuous, and in fact I distinctly remember that when I briefly “dated” (“dated” being a loose term, as I was in the sixth grade) a black boy, another classmate — also black — commented on my “jungle fever.” Those were his words, not mine, and their colonialist slant makes me itchy. Where had he picked up that phrase? Was his deployment of the phrase OK given his race? Did he even realize what he meant? And yet, I hadn’t been stunned or disgusted when he said them; his tone had been inviting, impressed even — and I was never, even in the face of such casual markers of racial divide, under the impression that I was breaking any rule or going against any norm in dating this boy. I was far more conscious of the fact that my family was better off than many other families than I was that I was white and most of my classmates were not. When I intimated to a friend that I might try out for choir, feeling excluded from their after-school camaraderie, she replied: “Better not. You might be using a spot someone else needs.” There was justice in her words, and also a very clear marking off: the class lines were impossible to miss. The racial ones were blurrier to me.
I am not looking for a way to curtsy out of my mistake; I am mining my memory in order to unpack the provenance of a racially-charged word I’d chosen to use. The fact is that I had strolled around with the word “ghetto” in my pocket after stealing it from my classmates and assumed it was OK for me to bandy it about, too — and it wasn’t. Of course there is a difference between intentionally deprecatory racial slurs and a misunderstood word, but casual propagation of misappropriated language is powerfully nefarious, and — I learned that day — I must take care with the ballast of my words.
These many years later, I remain repentant — the guilt I felt when I discovered I had offended someone through a flashy turn of phrase still reverberates. The experience has seriously shaped my perspective on the politics of language. Would you think less of me as a writer if I admitted that I always have one tab of my browser open to the dictionary? Because I do — I do so that I can cross-check when I trot out a word that feels off or of dubious origin or implication. It’s not always about politics, of course — I accrue a pocketful of new words (recent acquisitions include internecine and hubristic) every week in my reading, and I’m always eager to try them on for size myself — but I’m most leery when I’m deploying a word acquired via pop culture (“can I pull off thirsty?” I wonder aloud). It’s un-writerly, unnatural even — but I learned the hard way about the weight of words.
Just the other week, one of my dearest, smartest friends made the well-articulated point that you can’t say anything anymore without stepping on someone’s toes; he pondered whether we have sacrificed a degree of freedom of speech in today’s litigious, “PC” environment. And then, just a few days later, I was listening to my hero Roxane Gay on — improbably enough — an episode of “Bitch Sesh,” a podcast in which two comediennes break down and poke fun at episodes of The Real Housewives, and she stated that she believes that it was Gwyneth Paltrow that bit Beyonce. Have you been following the whole #whobitbey phenomenon? Essentially, an actress posted on Twitter that she had been at a party at which Beyonce was bit on the face — yes, bit on the face — by another celebrity. People have spun out all kinds of theories about who did it and why –and Roxane believes that it was the Goop queen herself. Why? As she put it here, “[Paltrow] just seems like the kind of woman who would overstep that boundary. I think that I think that because I saw her singing a Jay-Z-Kanye song once and she said the n-word while she was singing it, and I was like, “Girl. No. Not for you.” Which to me is the same kind of thing as biting Beyoncé, so I think she bit Beyoncé.”
And so there are these two contradictory thought currents coursing around me: on the one hand, I am an avid believer in freedom of speech, especially as a writer myself, and I’m inclined to agree with my friend’s well-observed comment. On the other, I am horrified by but not unsympathetic to Roxane’s conflation of verbal violence with physical violence. Horrified because I’m no better than Gwyneth given my ghetto comment, and sympathetic because I have always felt that old schoolyard rhyme to be unthinkably misleading; it should be: “Sticks and stones can break my bones / but words will always hurt more.”
Of course, these “tent poles” needn’t be mutually exclusive, and when I think about it, there’s almost an ethical imperative that they shouldn’t be: I can write well, and articulately, while practicing good hygiene in the exercise of language. (I use the word hygiene carefully here, too, as I don’t intend to say that my word choice is contrived or robotically bleached in editing, or that bigoted thoughts can be in some way sanitized through the topical application of spellcheck — but to underscore my belief that extreme care must be taken, and that, for many years now, I have operated under a primum non nocere oath to the vocation of writing.) So here we are, today — me, plucking and planting and preening my words and fretting over whether this entire post will be perceived as tone-deaf, and me, feeling as though my experience is nonetheless worth sharing and that I have the space to do it. And all because of the weight of words.
+Inslee desktop calendar. I use this constantly. I didn’t realize how many times a day I would open my computer to look up “dateandtime.com” or my Google calendar in order to figure out the timing for something — this obviates the need.
+An infinity of post-its. Mr. Magpie was appalled to find nearly an entire moving box full of post-its when we moved to New York. I love them so much — they’re perfect for stowing bite-sized thoughts and reminders, and I tuck them onto the pages of my day planner and apply them to the mirror in front of me throughout the day. I prefer to write on them in sharpie — it’s an odd but satisfying habit.
+My day planner. I am extremely picky about planners — I’m 100% analog and must write my to-dos down against a calendar, so I need a planner that has enough space on a daily basis to accommodate my tick list and large enough pages so that I can slip receipts/invitations in between them. As I write this neurosis out, I realize I completely lifted my mom’s style: I now suddenly recall the smooth slide-and-click of my mother’s desk drawer as she’d open it and turn the pages of her own planner, the receiver of our home phone cradled between her ear and shoulder. “Let me just see…yes, the 24th? 10 am? I can do that.”
+My mirror. (And, sadly, the picture at the top of this post is not my actual desk. Sob.) We ran out of space to hang an oversized white wood mirror that had been in our guest room in Chicago and that I’d salvaged it from The Christ Child Opportunity Shop in D.C., where I paid a casual $40 for what should have retailed for several hundred. Since moving to New York, we’ve stowed it on my desk, propped up artfully against the wall. Every day, I sit in front of it and write, taking occasional breaks to glance at myself. It’s an odd place for a mirror, but the symbolism is not lost on me: sitting down to write this blog is a long look in the mirror in more ways than one.
+Elizabeth Arden 8 Hour Cream. I am legitimately never anywhere without it — including at home. It’s like that thing they say about rats or cockroaches or — most likely — both in New York: you’re never more than five feet from one? But any Nurmi woman is never more than five feet from a tube of 8 Hour Cream.
+A candle, and I just bought this one — a new scent for me. I almost always stick with either Tocca or Fresh candles, but this caught my eye (nose?) at Blue Mercury the other day. I love the feeling of writing next to a lit candle.
+A hand-written list of blog topics and products I’ve been eyeing. I usually convert these into a digital list on Trello, but right now, they’re chilling on a piece of paper waiting for Tilly to tear into them, so I’ll share them here:
A pair of wooden tongs so I can stop burning my fingertips every morning while retrieving my daily toast;
A toast rack — can you tell I wrote these down after breakfast? Also, my mom had one of these and I always thought it ridiculously outmoded, like the “crumber” she forced us to use after dinner…but now I see the appeal and rather like the idea, especially since Mr. Magpie complains when his toast has sat on a plate for too long while he’s out walking Tilly — it gets soggy!
A marble platter as a gift for a friend who enjoys entertaining;
Sephora is about to launch its yearly promotion — starting Friday, you can get 15% off your purchase if you are a beauty insider (it’s free to join) — and it’s that time of year I stock up on beauty products I can’t live without and test the waters when it comes to products I’ve been coveting but not yet convinced myself to splurge on. I’m sharing what’s in my cart below, but thought I’d first throw out a hodge podge of beauty tips I’ve acquired over the years from makeup artists and people with beautiful skin (ahem, Grace).
+Massage your face lotion into your skin for a good 60 seconds after application so that it truly absorbs. Up until my mother shared this beauty gem, I’d simply dab it on and go about my business, never realizing how much lotion I was wasting and missing out on the effects of the high end skin care I was investing in.
+Similar to the above, Grace recently shared in a podcast that you’re supposed to scrub your face for nearly two minutes when exfoliating. I hadn’t been doing this either, and the results, when I started investing a bit more time, were shocking: my skin was literally glowing!
+When I was a teen, my mom gave me this Bobbi Brown book on teenage beauty along with some of my first makeup (all Clinique). I read the book cover to cover. It was wise of her — it taught me how to clean and care for my skin and avoid the pitfalls of overdone makeup without requiring any awkward mother-daughter nagging. One of the tips was that — though it might go against common sense — you should never over-dry a pimple. She insists that it’s impossible to disguise a dried-up blemish; moisturize it like you would any other part of your skin, and you’ll find it much easier to camouflage.
+As a bridesmaid at my best friend’s wedding, the makeup artist informed me that most people “overpump” their mascara — he insisted that the pumping motion does nothing but dry your tube out way more quickly than it otherwise would.
+I’m guilty of this sin, but you’re supposed to wash your makeup brushes regularly, or you run the risk of spreading acne-causing bacteria around your face. I just snagged this stuff to help me stay on top of it.
+Cosmetics, like groceries, bear an expiration date. I’ve always been dubious of expiration dates on makeup — it felt like a trick to force me to toss makeup and buy new batches — but I recently dug out a little pot of lotion I’d been saving and it smelled super weird (plastic and sour?) when I opened it. I checked the date and, sure enough, it had “gone bad.”
+I have a hard time following through on this, but most makeup artists apply your lotion in upward strokes, claiming that this helps avoid wrinkles and sagging skin. It’s very awkward to figure out how to rub your face upward, but I give it a good try every morning and evening.
+A makeup artist recently told me that you’re not supposed to wear bronzer and blush at the same time. I was appalled because I’ve long layered them on top of one another and I feel like I need the “sunkissed glow” of bronzer at all times. I tested a solo blush situation and found that I looked much more natural, more awake. I realized that maybe I’d been overdoing it a touch!
+You’re supposed to apply your eye makeup first, then add your foundation and concealer and all that jazz — otherwise, your colorful eye shadow and mascara might require correction and lead you to have to wipe off your makeup (how often has this happened to you?!)
What are your beauty tricks?!
What’s in My Sephora Cart.
+I received a sample of Ole Henriksen’s Truth Serum a few weeks ago and have been dazzled by this product. (I also received a sample of their overnight gel, but didn’t notice much of anything while using it, to be completely honest.) The serum though! I’ve never used a serum before, but it’s now firmly a part of my morning routine. I apply it before my lotion and I swear my skin looks instantly plumper (gross word) and brighter. When I apply it, it looks as though I’ve just emerged from a sauna after a vigorous match of tennis or something — flushed, hydrated, awake. I’m going for the full-size; I’m a serum convert now.
+I am genuinely baffled by the middling reviews on Sunday Riley’s Auto Correct Brightening and Depuffing Eye Contour Cream. A makeup artist recently applied it and I legitimately saw an instant difference in the area around my eye — it was smoother, more elastic-looking, and much brighter. Though I still believe that La Mer eye cream is la creme de la creme when it comes to under eye care, I will be introducing Sunday Riley’s product into the rotation for the time being! (The makeup artist also used their Tidal Brightening Enzyme Water Cream and I liked the way it left my skin feeling.)
+A friend of mine raved about these First Beauty Facial Radiance Pads as an alternative to my tried-and-true Arcona Triad Pads, and I was super impressed with them. I find myself using them when I am reapplying makeup before heading out towards the end of the day — they cleanse and tone but have nothing harsh in them, and I feel like it presents me with a fresh canvas for makeup re-application. That — and they’re half as expensive as Arcona’s product!
+RMS Living Luminizer. I’m literally scrapping the bottom of the barrel on my current supply of this stuff, and I cannot live without it. It’s a colorless balm I apply to the apples of my cheeks, my brow, the tip of my nose, my charlie’s bow to get that gleaming, glowing, fresh-faced look we all long for.
+How can I not use the discount as an excuse to snap up Summer Friday’s Jet Lag Mask? EVERYONE is obsessing over this mask!
+Laura Mercier has a new concealer out and I’ve heard very promising things about it. I’m nearly done with my Nars’ Radiant Creamy Concealer (I’m so-so on it) and am game to try something else.
P.P.P.P.S. Neiman’s is having an insane sale right now — I am thinking about this and this for wearing with white jeans now that it’s warmer!
By: Jen Shoop
I have long lusted after a classic Hermes silk scarf — it’s akin to a fashion bucket list item, along the lines of a Burberry trench or a Chanel handbag. It’s timeless and heirloomable and ultra-wearable whether you’re 23 or 73. And, as street style starlet Giovanna Battaglia points out above and below, infinitely versatile!
I will occasionally prowl Real Real for a gently used one (this is an amazing find), but I have great news: Tuckernuck has a collection of affordable (under $50) lookalikes on offer and they sell out QUICK every time they become available. I snagged this one. (Extra good news: if you’re a first-time customer, you can get 10% off your order with code TNUCKNEW.) I’m planning on wearing mine with lots of all-white summer looks!
P.S. It’s ridiculous, but opening my fridge and seeing my LaCroix organized in these, and opening my cupboard and seeing my baggies/saran wrap/foil organized in these brings legitimate joy to my life.
P.P.S. These are back in stock, and I’m debating whether to snag them to get the oversized floral earring trend, or to snap up these or these…
“When the week’s small slights and emotional bruises strung together threaten death by a million paper cuts…look for the small kindnesses. They are there. You will always find them.”
Here are mine from last week:
A stranger offering to help me carry my stroller up the Subway stairs with a big smile on her face; a reader direct messaging me to let me know how much she loves my writing (thank you, Bets!); Mackenzie’s generous words about myself and Mr. Magpie; a visit to The Good Foundation’s warehouse in Midtown, where the smart and passionate women who run the program took the time to share what they do (provide families in need with diapers, baby gear, and opportunities to break the cycle of poverty) and made me realize the power of our shared experience of motherhood; a good-for-the-soul wine date with two dear friends; Mr. Magpie’s saving the last bite of vanilla cake for me; minimagpie clutching on to me and nuzzling her face into my shoulder when I picked her up after a long day of being away.
What are your small kindnesses from the past week?
Post-Script.
+I had my makeup done earlier this week and my skin looked more radiant than it ever has. The artist used this foundation — I’m not at all familiar with the brand and would have written it off as teenager cosmetics! — and it is AMAZING. The least cake-y, most natural finish I’ve ever seen.
+I think I might wear this dress all summer long. I love throwing this kind of thing on with Supergas and big shades for a walk with my fam in the morning.
+I can legitimately never have enough trays — I am about to order two of these, one to corral all of mini’s lotions and ointments on her changing table and one to keep all of our soaps at the kitchen sink organized. (We have dish soap, bottle soap, hand soap, and antibacterial gel.)
+My Dad gave me his old Apple watch and I plan on using it exclusively for running…or had been, until I saw how chic Hermes’ Apple watch bands are…
+I am seriously dying (DYING DYING DYING) over the bows on the shoulders of this dress. I think it’s meant to be a rehearsal dinner dress, but I might need it.
#Turbothot: The Book that Taught Me What I Want to Teach My Daughter.
A startling headline, isn’t it? It’s lifted from this essay by Belle Boggs in a two-year-old edition of The New Yorker, in which Boggs insists that the Italian author Natalya Ginzburg materially shaped her views on motherhood via her slim volume of essays, The Little Virtues.
I read the essay, ordered Ginzburg’s book, and then sat back in the upholstered chippendale chair that serves as my writing perch and wondered about it all. I loved the image of Boggs diving into another woman’s essays and emerging with buried treasure: “Aha, I have it! This is what has been missing from my version of motherhood!” I marveled over the likeness of two mothers visiting with one another in spirit, in thought, on the urgent and tender business of matrescence*, and I asked myself the same question: What books have shaped my views on what it means to be a good mother, fraught as the phrase “good mother” is?
I pondered this question for some time, grasping at straws. I began to scan the spines of books lining my wall. The harder I thought about the provocation, the more fervently my thoughts would boomerang from the parade of book jackets to the real life mothers I aspire to be — my mother, my sister, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law — a holy sorority of nurturing, invested, attentive moms from whom I have learned it all. Well, them, principally, but also my friends Kaitlin and Whitney and Annie and Maura and Steph, who have intercepted more than their fair share of anxious or curious or victorious text messages on the minutiae of caring for an infant, and then, also, the many moms I have quietly observed in mommy and me classes, in Central Park, in the second-to-last pew of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church on W. 71st Street.
I will never forget the first Sunday I took minimagpie to Church with me back in Chicago. It was one of my earliest solo voyages with her and I was rattled with new mom nerves and exhaustion. As I neared the heavy, bulky Church door, I looked around in panic, realizing that there was no one to open it for me. I began the awkward mom-with-oversized-stroller-in-a-narrow-doorway dance, propping the door with a foot as I jutted my hip out and attempted to swerve the stroller around alongside me. A woman came jogging up behind me to help.
“It’s easier if you push your back against the door to hold it open, and then bring the stroller through,” she said, winking at me. “One mom to another.”
I flushed — how dense was I, unable to understand the basic mechanics of holding open a door while wheeling my daughter through it? — and then immediately and deeply grateful to her, and for the long lineage of moms who had come before me.
I know that the mundane details of caring for and nurturing a baby — the “what do I do when…” and “how do I…” and, yes, the logistics of wheeling a stroller through a door — aren’t quite what Boggs was referring to when she talked about what she learned from Ginzburg: she’s talking more broadly about instructing and raising a child, about mindfulness when it comes to how we discipline and praise and nurture our children, about intentionality as a parent. But all the same, the line of inquiry led me to realize that while I rely principally on instinct when it comes to matters of motherhood, when I doubt myself, I copy the women around me. Books have shaped how I feel about many things — they have in fact mediated many cherished life experiences — but my vision of motherhood is indivisible from the real world and from the real moms I know and respect.
What to make of this?
Am I forgetting or misremembering or willfully ignoring models of motherhood I’ve gleaned from books I’ve read? What books have shaped your approach to parenting, whether literary or didactic in nature?
*A new-to-me term I’ve appropriated from — of all places — Goop. Despite my diatribe against her self-involved, over-pathologized patois, this is a word I love: matrescence. The process of becoming a mother. (Similar to adolescence, or the process of coming into adulthood.) What a beautiful concept!
+This heeled sandal is a dead-ringer for my go-to evening shoe in the summer, Alexandre Birman’s Clarita. (Incidentally, you can find a Clarita in the prettiest shade of pink on SUPER SALE here.)
+This went on sale and it’s taking all my willpower to resist its purchase…do I need it? No. But do I *need* it? Yes.
+I have to say, I’m very impressed with the glass tupperware we ended up buying — it’s oven proof, microwave proof, and will not warp.
+I’m interrupting my planned reading list because, over drinks with girlfriends a few nights ago, I agreed to join a new book club, and this is first on the docket.
P.S. Thank you for all the love on the M Series. One of you wrote to tell me that “It’s like reading a good romance novel” — ahh! Thank you. It’s written with my heart on my sleeve.
P.P.S. Some of you disagreed with my recent book reviews — and I encourage and look forward to debating them! Please share your thoughts; I have learned a lot from your comments.
P.P.P.S. I’ve been sending out secret Magpie miniposts via email (see below for example), usually featuring a single product I love or an epic bargain buy. If you’re into it, sign up here!
