Category Archives: MOVEMENT!!!!!!!!!!1

The Positivity Committee

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facebook_1468681560021Nicki and I ran the back office of the organization, but our shared work station was situated in the front office. We were a crew of 25 crammed into 3,000 square feet on one level, pretty much working at bunk desks and feeling like sardines in a can. While the others had cubicles (though tight) or offices (though shared), we worked at a ramshackle amalgam of used particle board and dusty padded fabric that had been dropped in the middle of the building lobby. If Nicki backed her chair out too fast, she ran the risk of slamming into my legs, positioned four feet away at my stand-up desk. If I leaned too hard on my computer platform, the whole works creaked and threatened to collapse. We each faced a building entrance, and all day long visitors and colleagues streamed through the doors, constantly interrupting and disrupting our space. Our work station sucked, and we had the worst of a bad situation. Yet we were consistently the most positive people on staff. We chose to own that public space and create a welcoming, friendly, upbeat vibe we hoped would radiate through the office and change the culture. We called ourselves “The Positivity Committee” and formalized our program through targeted, strategic acts of kindness. Continue reading →

Have You Ever Heard Of Sex Discrimination, Sir? Part 1

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md solo

I didn’t know what had coalesced in my unfolding adolescent sense of self in the summer of 1972 when I subverted gender-segregated work roles at a suburban Atlanta McDonald’s franchise. I hadn’t intended to when I looked in the eye of my shift manager and declared, “Have you ever heard of sex discrimination?” He had denied my request for a lateral move from my front-of-the-store counter service assignment to the male-exclusive crew on the cooking grill. At age 17, my freshman year of college under my belt and working the summer in a collective of temporary teenage hires, I had recognized a female ghetto when I was in one: girls worked the counter, boys worked the grill. Girls served the customers and boys cooked the meat. And I wanted to work the grill. Continue reading →

Body Image: It’s A Family Affair

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desrosiers duo 1My mom and I were kicking back in the grass of Sheep Meadow in Central Park last summer when it hit me–we needed to write the manual on positive body image in the context of the mother-daughter relationship. We are exceptional in that we share a positive image of our respective bodies. I learned it from her, and she learns it from me. We understand we are lucky, and we are grateful. We talk a lot about what holds women back in society, and we’re convinced that struggle with body image is one of the major culprits. The pressure comes from the culture, it comes from the family, from friend groups, the media, ourselves. Disliking, hating, and shaming our bodies, our desperation to change them to an unattainable ideal all take valuable energy we could be using for gender-advancement purposes. We have to do something. Continue reading →

Taking Advantage Of The Situation

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facebook_1466977878801When I was a kid I was accused of taking advantage of the situation on a frequent basis, usually by my dad, who was at times desperate to polish his only child’s impulse control flaws right out of what he saw as her diamond soul. At the time, however, I was unaware of his parental longings, understanding only that I was constantly in trouble for behaviors that felt fluid and natural. We’d come home from a camping trip, and as my parents were busy unloading gear, I’d furtively grab a marker and write the cheer “Woooo!” on the kitchen counter, heart pounding from my daring indiscretion. It was OK, because the washable ink beaded right up upon contact with the gold-flecked 1950s formica, and rubbed right off without a trace at the slightest touch. Scrawl, rub, scrawl, rub. I did it over and over, testing the limits, until I cut it too close and my dad walked in the back door with an armload of REI, catching me in the act. Face tightening into the disapproving scowl I sought to avoid at all costs, while directly courting it with my impulsive behavior, (what an exhausting paradox for an eight year-old psyche to bear), he took my arm, saying through angrily pursed lips, you’re taking advantage of the situation! And I was in trouble again. Continue reading →

If Not Now, When?

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20151221_210233…continued from Tuesday

A few weeks ago I published a post called A Direct Appeal where I called on men and boys to fight systemic sexism and shift rape culture out of existence. I asked men and boys to get involved on a micro level, to challenge other men and boys, to change the conversation, to call out bad behavior, and support women and girls. I asked them to leverage the power afforded them by their gender to put an end to violence against women. But if I’m not working the same angles for other oppressed groups, what am I? If I am not leveraging the power afforded me by my skin color to put an end to violence against people of color, what am I? Continue reading →

If I Am Not For Others, What Am I?

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20151221_210233It’s a horrifying, gut-wrenching time to be human. I suppose it always is, and always has been, and maybe none of the staggering hate-motivated events are new, just our ubiquitous recording capabilities and 24-hour news cycle are. We’re sick with hate. Sick from hate. I’m starting to hate humanity. But before I seek refuge in my dark feeling that the sooner humanity is wiped off the planet, the better, I return to an adaptation of a Hillel quote I once saw on the front of a Seattle synagogue that makes me do the work. Continue reading →

12 Years Of Unchecked Prosperity

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IMG_20160122_094111Monday I sobbed over my cancer-stricken cat Mokie as our vet slowly, gently injected him with the sodium pentothal that would put an end to our collective suffering. He’d been losing weight since early summer, but never a thin man, he looked fabulous for a period of time before we realized something was wrong. Such a cruel irony that the boy we’d affectionately called “Fat Man”, who tipped the scales at more than 14 pounds at one point, whose head seemed too small for such an engorged body, was wasting away into a delicate skeleton. By the end, he lost more than half his body weight, earning him the new name of “Tiny Love Man”, or TLM for short. It was a mindfuck at best that our boy who once seemed to gain weight by breathing was in a weight loss free-fall, his appetite dimmed, muscles wasted, bones protruding.

Mokie went from a boisterous, energetic, curious big boy, passionate about food and attention to a tiny shadow of himself within a period of three months. Continue reading →

At Hope

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hopeA few months ago I resolved to take a certain path in life, mostly relating to career, and more importantly, actually setting a life goal. I’ve rejected goal-setting for as long as I can remember.

Junior year in college I started hanging out with some new friends, who happened to be very ambitious people who had their lives neatly mapped out to include all kinds of tall orders, pies-in-the-sky and grand visions. I hadn’t thought much beyond next quarter’s class schedule, let alone life after college. I would listen in rapt fascination at their conviction, wondering if any of what they wanted was possible, and secretly dismissing their plans as grandiose, their future lives as boxed-in before they could begin. One time one of them said, “people without goals are losers. I simply can’t understand them.” Not long after that assertion the relationships ended and I parted ways with the group. There’s only so long a loser can hide out, before her lack of goals is revealed, her worth as a friend diminished. But to me they were the losers, setting everything up into tight patterns in advance, every detail accounted for. What about spontaneity? What about living for the moment? What about crisis, and life is messy, and shit doesn’t always go your way? These people knew nothing. I was the realist. Goal setting was out, because life smashes your plans and hope spirals down and away, and I was a cynic already at age twenty. Continue reading →

The Initiative (Starve The Negative Until It Dies) Pt. 2

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initiative 2(Continued from Tuesday)

The Initiative was going to work this time, I decided. The organization was small, the mission statement clear (and don’t get me started on the drama and trauma caused by lack of a clear mission statement in the workplace), and the work worth doing, the cause worth believing in. I looked around the table and told my colleagues, “together, we represent thirty-five percent of the office. If we want to make changes, we have the numbers to support them.” We all looked at each other, realizing suddenly that we did indeed represent a rather critical mass, and in that moment I felt a flicker of hope that maybe things could be different. I asked the group if we could agree that we had defined the problems at work down to the tiniest nuance, and that process had become its own problem. Yes. I asked the group if they wanted to try an experiment with me to see if we could influence others in the office with the hope of changing the culture. Yes. I laid out my simple plan: keep it positive, don’t feed the negative, keep it on the level. Continue reading →