Little white gloves

Mickey Mouse wore them. Jackie O wore them. In the 1950s everybody wore them. But why would you? What a hassle.

Some epochs it’s our cleavage that’s the problem, sometimes our ankles, maybe the naked back of the neck, or just the modestly clothed evidence that we actually have

Witch, letting her hair down.
Photo credit: Routledge Textbooks

 two legs. Two legs?? (faints). And in olden times, and/or olden places, word has it that women should cover up their hair, to be civilised. 

Their savage, sensual, you’re-a-bad-influence-on-me hair. Put it away ladies, you might wreck the ships at sea!

Somehow for a while there our hands were just as dangerous. Or was there something else going on? I don’t even own a white shirt, myself – five minutes and I’d spill something on it. White gloves would be impossible. But I suppose that must have been the point: got work to do? Nope. Lady of leisure. So poor you have to cook your own meals? Nope. Servants. Any reason you might have touched a door handle lately? A key? Money? A toilet brush? Nope. Rich and privileged. Someone else does all the dumb stuff for me.

Photo credit: Stanley Kubrick

And that’s how gloves stay white.

As a symbol of status and prestige little white gloves are a fairly high-viz message. And if the mob don’t notice you’re the elite, well you only have to wave at them. Job done!

I think it’s high time we brought them back. That way we can all see at a glance who’s willing to get their hands dirty and do the hard work that needs to be done, in this Difficult Age. But this time, let’s not let the ones with the nice white gloves on be in charge. There’s not much they’re capable of contributing, I know. But we could all use a hand with the dumb stuff.

Projects

What did you do in the weekend? Tidy up the house? Mowed the lawn maybe. Dusted your collectables and rearranged the kitchen cupboards.

But if you wanted a break from domesticity, from chores, from the four walls of your life, maybe you went to the beach.

Bad luck if you live on the south coast.

Because someone has been there before you, rearranging the driftwood, piling up stones, arranging washed-up logs into patterns. Who IS this guy? You’re bound to have seen his efforts if you live in Wellington. Bad enough that we have rubbish bins, and parking spaces, and PEOPLE everywhere at the coast.

At Red Rocks (obvs).

Still, tune them out and you have the majesty of the ocean, the primal rocks that once formed the edge of Gondwana, the empty sky, and the faint distance of the Kaikouras, shimmering at the edge of the horizon, ghostly blue and capped with early snow.

You could be in the middle of nowhere, in an ancient time. Your modern stressed-out soul soothed by the timelessness of the waves; yesterday, today and tomorrow. The patterns of wind and wave on the shore, shells, driftwood, and dried out kelp where sea and the southerly have strewn them. Random, shifting, real.

But, SURPRISE! There is a man with a mission, twiddling with our landscape. Who does he think he is? Frankly, I find him very rude. It’s one thing to graffiti in the built environment. Some of it’s ugly, some of it’s art, all of it’s like a dog pissing on a

Must you?

lamppost. But at least it’s all on the same level – someone has built something, or painted something, installed something – and someone else has decorated it, to make a point. Fair enough.

But when you graffiti the beach, well, that’s another matter. You reduce the natural environment – a precious reminder of who we really are – to a piece of stuff. An adjustable backdrop. Furniture.

I know, it’s only human, arranging, filing, tidying, making your mark. But can’t this guy just stick to imposing his ego on his own turf? Trim your hedges, Stacking Man, by all means. Straighten up your picture frames, alphabeticise your spice rack, and rake parallel lines in your zen garden. At your house. But the beach belongs to all of us  – and none of us. So leave the beach alone.

Party games

No one goes to a party wanting to have a really bad night. (Though sometimes I’ve not gone, just in case I do.)

But looking at old photos recently I was reminded of a time that I’m sure some would rather forget – and probably many already did, years ago. Ah, the loneliness of the remember-everything historian.

Photo credit: Blue velvet vintage

It was a great party. Miles out of town, a beautiful old house in a huge amazing garden, and all the old faces. Fabulous food, sound system in the barn, and a whole lot of drinking, etc. It was a long way home so we all stayed the night, crashing out one by one as the wee small hours wore on; on the living room floor, in tents outside, on the verandah, in the barn.

And then we all woke up. Who was that screaming and shouting? Was that someone sobbing?

It was our hostess, with a bottle in her hand. It was our friend, bon vivant and ‘great guy’, and our fellow guest who’d woken up to find him in her sleeping bag, on top of her.

Turned out we were all shocked for different reasons, and it was the first time I’d seen how this plays out (though sadly it hasn’t been the last).

Because did most blame the rapist? No. They took his side. In fact they didn’t even see it as an attempted rape. The woman who smacked him over the head though, protecting her friend, well. Clearly she overreacted. Because, he’s a really great guy. It’s just that he’s been drinking. And, well, he’s someone we know, how can he be a rapist? Must be a mistake. He didn’t mean any harm. Is she crazy? 

In a way I wasn’t surprised that his man-mates stood up for him, though it made me feel angry, and confused, and kind of…invisible. But my women friends too? Even some of them seemed to think it was no big deal – like it would be fine to wake up to some random man molesting you in your sleep and – what, exactly? Say excuse me do I know you? By the way could you get your hands out of my pants and kindly exit my sleeping bag? 

“He’s a good guy, it’s only when he’s drunk.” People can so easily convince

Photo credit: Marina Molares

themselves it’s not rape when it’s someone they know, because that doesn’t happen in your own crowd. It’s something different, something more innocent, it can’t be that bad. 

We were a politically aware kind of bunch, no one would have dreamed of blaming the ‘victim’. But many just couldn’t bear to put the responsibility for this ugly scene squarely where it belonged: on the aggressor. So they bounced the blame onto the rescuer, a stand-up hero who’d stepped in and protected another woman from a sexual attack. Outraged, I suspect, almost as much at having her hospitality violated – my house, my party, how dare you behave like this – as at the violation of her friend. 

All these years later I confess I’ve forgotten the name of the woman in the sleeping bag, but I’ll bet that unlike all those other guests, drunkenly arguing til dawn about who was in the wrong, she still remembers every single detail. She was so lucky that our hostess was right there, brave, strong-minded and willing to act; not doubting her own reading of the situation. And him? He was lucky she didn’t hit him harder.