Introducing! Lexie's Five Star All-Star Books! And! Gail Collins Explains Feminism and I Eat it Up!

I use the reading database and social network GoodReads religiously. I treat it as an external record of my reading history: I have tracked every book I've read since graduating college five years ago. I read at a rate of about fifty books a year, and it's sometimes difficult to keep track of everything. 

My favorite aspect of GoodReads is its star rating system.* I realize other services use the same, but recent reports have suggested that those reviews are, um, mostly made of lies. (Amazon, I'm looking at you.) To ensure more or less consistency in my reviews, I have the following criteria for determining my star rating: 

One star: disliked the book actively or didn't finish it due to boredom or disgust.

Two stars: meh. My time could have been used better, but I didn't stop reading it.

Three stars: I'm not sorry I read it, but I won't read it again.

Four stars: I might reread it in the future.

Five stars: I will actively recommend the book to others.

So now it's Money Where Mouth Is time. Check out the Five Star All Star Books tag to see the Books Lexie Thinks You Should Definitely Read, No Really, Soon.** Also check out my Audiobooks tag for audiobook reviews (which are difficult to find if you don't subscribe to Audible, I guess).

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins

This is an incredible book. Hands down. It should be required reading in high school. Gail Collins has both written the definitive history of feminism in the second half of the twentieth century, and collected a remarkable oral history from those who lived it. 

There are so many amazing things in this book. At first I was riveted by the description of life for a woman in the 1960s, a life my grandmothers, mother, and aunts lived but I never quite understood. It is at once so foreign (Sandra Day O'Connor was told there were no legal jobs available to her-- except secretary? Unbelievable!) and familiar (then, as now, women's bodies were public property, to be glorified and shamed by others). 

Although I count myself as a well-informed feminist, there were certain things I just didn't get. Why did the ERA fail? Just how many bras were burned? (The surprising answer to that last question? None.) How did the young generation of feminists in the 1970s interact with the still-living suffragettes? 

So much of modern feminism is concerned with women "having it all." I find this discussion a bit tiresome-- both men and women have to make sacrifices to balance work and life. I have found the discussion in mass media of women "having it all" to be not helpful. Why is the focus solely on women? Where are the working dads who are trying to make it work? Instead of lamenting that we can't have it all without a nanny to raise the kids when we're busy at work and good subordinates to count on when we're busy with family, why don't we take a hard look at our work culture, and, moreover, our own goals to decide what is really important to us? Isn't it, I don't know, greedy to expect that we should be able to have it all? Isn't all of life a balancing act? We only have so much time and so much energy to devote to everything, and at some point choices must be made.

So when articles like The Atlantic's recent [thingy dingy omg] come out, and all my Facebook friends light up with indignation at the Professional Woman's Lot In Life, I roll my eyes and turn to the next page. 

Collins broke it down for me, though. Reading the aggregate history of women in the modern workplace made it easier to for me to accept and understand that the issue of "having it all" is still geared predominantly toward women. And more than that, I gained a real understanding of how lucky I am to stand on the shoulders of the women who came before me. AND how much work is still to be done.

That's not to say the book is mostly about "having it all." Collins goes into all aspects of life, from work, to family, to home, to school, to coming-of-age. She follows the lives of several women, some of whom became important voices in the feminist movement and some of whom have just led interesting and ordinary lives.

Plus, the book is absolutely riddled with amazing little factoids. Did you know that all divorces had to have one party at fault and one "wornged" party until fairly recently? If both parties were cheating, for instance, both parties were at fault and therefore no divorce could be granted. Oftentimes you needed a witness to the "crime" of infidelity, so a cottage industry of professional mistresses arose, simply so they could be caught in the act in super-contrived scenarios. Crazypants!

So yes. If you're a woman, read When Everything Changed. If you're a man, read When Everything Changed. If you count yourself as neither, read When Everything Changed. It's the most important book of American history I've read all year, and it's a really engaging read. 

Read it if: You're at all interested in the history of gender. If you're a woman. If you're a man. If you identify as neither.

Lexie's Shelves: read, non-fiction.

The author is: awesome, down to earth, and funny.

Things that bugged me: There was a lot about "having it all," which I still kind of have a problem with. See above. 

*My second favorite aspect of GoodReads is its "shelves" system. It allows me to gather books into categories I choose, plus I get to name them silly things. I have shelves for "books-my-mom-would-like" as well as "fun-to-read-on-public-transportation" for those books with scenes that are probably a little too steamy for the Metro (but whatever, I do what I want). I also have categories of mystical beasts from "everything-i-read-is-about-vampires" to "zombies-are-the-new-vampire." I can keep track of the non-fiction I've read and the YA books I've read. 

**Possibly not so much a "series" as "I was super bored on the airplane and decided to write a book report." It's a toss up. 

DANCESTRAVAGANZAAAAA Part 3: Following is not the lamer pursuit

I attended the Lindustrial Revolution Lindy hop exchange in Charlottesville, VA on Memorial Day weekend. I had more fun than should be legal and gathered a lot to think about. In my somewhat obsessive thoughts about the experience, I wrote several emails to friends (mostly Emily). These entries are culled from those.

It's important to remember that I am an Intermediate Lindy hopper. I've really only been dancing and trying to improve consistently for about a year, although I learned about five years ago and have been dancing sporadically since 2007. All of my comments are tempered by that relative inexperience.

To read all the posts in this series, click on the "Dancestravaganza series" tag.

A big part of this weekend were the workshops. I was super excited about these, because I feel like I'm at a level where I don't get as much from the normal classes as I once did. We covered some new material in these workshops: new steps and the like. But as a follow, the stuff that I really got out of it was more philosophical, which was awesome.

As follows, this is generally the advice:

1. follow what the lead leads
2. don't plan ahead
3. have your stylings be convenient for the lead

Most of the time the lessons are focused almost entirely on the lead. He lead learns moves that they can use to lead us. That's fine and necessary. After all, that's how the dance, you know, works. But at a certain point, I don't know how to improve my dancing. When I'm dancing with a great lead, my dancing is on the awesome side of intermediate. When I'm dancing with a mediocre lead, my dancing is on the lower side of intermediate. My engagement in the dance was beginning to be dependent entirely on the lead's ability to engage me. Where to from here? 

But the advice this weekend was more like, um, well... it's difficult to explain. But it felt freeing.

Instead of focusing so hard on connection and partnership, we follows were brought into the discussion more. We talked about direction and momentum, and about communication and interpretation. Basically the lead communicates the direction and the momentum in and with which the follow goes, and the follow does whatever she likes once she has that. "You are two dancers. You must dance together. The dancing creates the movement." We talked about things like being an active follow who has some agency, which is super awesome.

It's nice to have it reinforced that there are moments in the dance that are open to interpretation, and so long as I'm going the correct direction, I can take some liberties in what I do with myself and how I play with the rhythm. It's just so nice to hear. It's like I have permission to be creative and to mess up a bit. The lead can handle it if my styling gets in the way, probably. Ideally it wouldn't, but leads get the hell in my way all the freaking time. So there.

But wait, Lexie, you're saying. What about original rules 2 and 3? Isn't that what those are about anyway, just not as explicitly? The answer is yes. But the follow's role tends to get lost in the noise of the lead's movements. Elaboration on how one could take advantage of these rhythmic moments, and encouragement to do so, was something I was sorely missing.

Lindy hop is a dance that's built to be a bit more participatory than traditional ballroom dancing, Part of its evolution had to do with tap and solo jazz, and there are no lead/follow distinctions from there. Also, a passage on dancing in the Gail Collins book really stuck out to me. In the 1960s, women could suddenly go dancing without dependence on a man. Women could be good dancers without men. Women were free to dance however the heck they wanted. They could dance with each other or by themselves. And instead of waiting for someone to ask you to the sock hop, you could just do it your own self. 

Although I am a woman fully in charge of my own destiny thanks to the women who have come before me (what what Susan B!!), I don't always feel that way when I'm doing my favorite leisure activity. It was causing me some minor cognitive dissonance, which was no good!

Overall, even though I probably should have been, I hadn't been feeling encouraged to experiment in the same way leads are. Prior to this weekend, I had heard/decided that my next focus in the development of my dancing is to "create shapes with my body." That's fine and all, but there are a couple problems here. First, just "create shapes" doesn't have a root in rhythm. Plus I'm not the most naturally coordinated person in the world, so everything was getting a little disjointed and loose. 

Moreover, I don't want the dance to be solely about how I look. Styling is gorgeous and obviously everything in dance is related. For instance, grace is beautiful, but following the rhythm gracefully is a good goal. Attempting to be graceful only for the sake of beauty and interesting shapes is kind of, um, problematic. Dance is obviously a visual medium, but I don't want my dancing to be about being beautiful. I want it to be about being athletic and joyful and rhythmic. Screw beauty, I want to jump around and have fun!

So not to make this all "How Lexie Got Her Groove Back" (sidebar-- "How Stella Got Her Grove Back" about property disputes over an orange farm in Florida would be a really great movie), but I feel like I have been given permission to be a powerful dancer in my own right. I still need to not hurt my lead, but I can surprise him (or her) every once in a while. I can rock out if I'm feeling it. 

So thanks, Mike and Laura (and especially Laura) for an awesome workshop where I learned a lot and had a ton of fun. And you gave me back a feeling of agency.

Dancestravaganzaaaaa Part 2: Lessons and an Ego Check

I attended the Lindustrial Revolution Lindy hop exchange in Charlottesville, VA on Memorial Day weekend. I had more fun than should be legal and gathered a lot to think about. In my somewhat obsessive thoughts about the experience, I wrote several emails to friends (mostly Emily). These entries are culled from those.

It's important to remember that I am an Intermediate Lindy hopper. I've really only been dancing and trying to improve consistently for about a year, although I learned about five years ago and have been dancing sporadically since 2007. All of my comments are tempered by that relative inexperience.

To read all the posts in this series, click on the "Dancestravaganza series" tag.

After having not progressed in the Jack and Jill, I had my eyes set on the advanced track of lessons/workshops. To get into the advanced track, you attended a sort of mini audition. If you wanted to try out, you danced to several songs with different partners. The instructors watched and pulled the folks they think were advanced into the advanced track.

We did three dances and I danced as well as I could. It was a little sad, actually. As the dances progressed, the people who thought they were more advanced got more stressed by not being picked for advanced. My last dance was with my marine and we sort of looked at each other and shrugged as it ended. We were intermediate dancers. I gave him one of my We Won! high fives and said we were the winners. He looked puzzled at me, and I said, "Well, we're both here, so it has to be the winners level."

It's possible that's not how the Marines operate.

So a couple of things I've been proud of in my dancing are my hips and my strength. I may not salsa well, but I salsad first. My hips are prominent and I can jut them like nobody's business. And my upper body strength! I can bench press my body weight. That takes some strength. I am not a weak woman.

And in the first intermediate lesson, I was called out on... both of those things. As a result of trying to "make interesting shapes," I was totally over-thinking something as simple as stepping. In my rock step I was stepping too far back, jutting a hip, and basically breaking up all of the lines and athletic body stance you might expect to see in this dance. I was crouching and jutting with all my might. The instructor walked over.

"That rock step? Try to keep it more in line with your body. It just looks a little awkward right now."

The second thing the instructor told me was that I looked like I was getting jerked around on the dance floor by a lead who was most decidedly not my Marine buddy. The lead was shorter than me and, frankly, I could bench press the heck out of him. In attempting to wait until the last possible moment to decide which direction to go ("following on a dime" was how I was thinking about it), I was allowing my shoulders to be pulled out of line with my body, and was following through my arms rather than through my body.

These criticisms are totally valid, but I couldn't help feeling silly about them. "Hey, I'm strong!" I thought, "and my hips are rocking!" But then I spent some time thinking about how I've been approaching dancing a little bit wrong: shapes and following on a dime are less important than following well and with your whole body, and being connected to all your extremities (and hips!) and to the music. 

As my understanding of how to be the best dancer I can be changes, it will be interesting to see how it will change. Something Nina Gilkenson said in a recent interview, nobody can tell you how your body moves. For the moment, though, I am very grateful to the instructor. It made me reevaluate how I do things in dancing, and I think it will make everything more awesome in general.

But it was nothing like the revelation that was to come. Stay tuned for episode 3!

Dancestravaganzaaaaa Part 1: Competing: If you're going to wear red heels, you should probably have solid footwork

I attended the Lindustrial Revolution Lindy hop exchange in Charlottesville, VA on Memorial Day weekend. I had more fun than should be legal and gathered a lot to think about. In my somewhat obsessive thoughts about the experience, I wrote several emails to friends (mostly Emily). These entries are culled from those.

It's important to remember that I am an Intermediate Lindy hopper. I've really only been dancing and trying to improve consistently for about a year, although I learned about five years ago and have been dancing sporadically since 2007. All of my comments are tempered by that relative inexperience.

To read all the posts in this series, click on the "Dancestravaganza series" tag.

I decided to compete last weekend. Maybe it wasn't the best choice, but I don't think I was an absolute embarrassment at all, and I didn't take anyone else's opportunity to shine away, so that's fine.

How it came to be:

I was dancing with my favorite lead out of the city of Richmond. This was maybe my third dance of the weekend, and I was not in fighting shape. I had left work later than I expected, ran home, and had to buy power bars and wine (because I am learning to be a classy guest) from CVS (because I'm not that classy) before I left. Then there was a ton of traffic on the way down (because Virginia). All in all, I arrived maybe two hours later than planned. The bridge leading to the venue was out, so I parked a ways away and walked in. I didn't remember to bring an extra shirt, no no.

And lo, the lead asked me if I was going to compete in the Jack and Jill.* And I said no and laughed it off. And then I sat the next one out and chatted with a follow from DC. She was going to compete, she said, and asked if I was going to as well. I said I hadn't been planning on it, but... 

And then, in the way of two people trying to talk themselves into doing something, suddenly I had written my name on the list. I was wearing my bright red dance shoes. 

I have a weird relationship with competitions. I both want to shy away but have everyone look at me at the same time. I kept fantasizing both about missing the competitor's meeting and about advancing to the finals.

What actually happened, however, was completely predictable. I did not advance to the finals; neither did I die. I had a moderate amount of fun. I flailed my legs as much as possible, and I messed up my basic steps. I tried to cover my inadequacies with jutting my hips out, placing my arms in the air, and generally creating interesting shapes with my body. [Please note: this phrase will take on too much importance over the next couple entries.]

Walking off the dance floor, I thought about a few things.

1. A couple of my favorite dance moves are ones I've discovered from basically first principles. One is to kick while rock stepping, and one is to do a kick-and-step instead of a triple step. Both can be great in certain contexts, but I felt like they got away from me during the competition. My footwork could have easily been improved by not doing those steps.
2. The floor was absurdly sticky, as the organizers had not busted out the baby powder. I couldn't do any swivels whatsoever, and that's kind of a big deal in following. If you can't do swivels, you best be doing some interesting steps.
3. I was still wearing my bright red dance shoes.
4. ... See title of this post.

So the competition went exactly as you'd expect it to go for an intermediate dancer. I decided that this weekend was about learning and about broadening my horizons, and competing did basically exactly that.

There seem to be some unwritten rules closely around the dance scene. Out of respect, you shouldn't compete in things you know you can't win. You should reach a certain level before asking the experienced dancers to dance, only the instructors dance in the jam circles... the list goes on. Breaking these rules seems arrogant. 

Well, screw it. At this point i'll learn best and fastest by exiting my comfort zone and daring to break the rules a little (or maybe bread the rules, as I first typed. Then deep fry them). Also, at this point, I don't really know where I fit in as a dancer and how to get better. Maybe I am/was unfairly discounting myself.

Oh yeah, that was the other thing I was going to get a handle on this weekend. I was going to try to master that making interesting shapes with my body thing.

*Open and unchoreographed swing dance competitions are called Jack and Jills. The first round is open to all comers. They randomly match leads and follows, and dancing happens. An equal number of leads and follows progress to the final round. They randomly pair people up again and then each couple competes as a team. I probably should have mentioned this in part one.