“Here’s a long letter from our pastor in Holland.
“Here are five pages about the financial trouble our supplies broker got us into. This is greatly abridged.
“Here are a few paragraphs about the time we had to break up a commune, but they were so drunk that we were able to just walk up to them and physically take their rifles.”
This has been a review of Of Plymouth Plantation.
You may notice that I have a large tag in my tag cloud called Native Americana. I’ve always been a sucker for American Indians. The second two books in my trilogy are a speculative exploration of what their distant ancestor’s lives might have been like.
This subject comes up every year because of the efforts to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I’m not in favor of this, but I do love all things American Indian. (Traditional things, that is. I’m not a fan of the cultural disintegration brought about by enforced socialism on the rez. For more on this, see the book review below.) Anyway, this is the time of year when I find myself annoyed yet again by Matt Walsh.
Walsh has done yeoman’s work fighting the forces of evil in our culture, but he just doesn’t know very much about American Indians. He’ll portray pre-conquest America as an extremely backwards place, full of “stone-age” people, who “hadn’t even invented the wheel.” This annoys me. There actually had been civilizations in the Americas (howbeit, without wheels), including astronomically aligned earthworks and pyramids, even in North America. The Americas suffered a population collapse about a hundred years before Columbus arrived, as documented by Nathaniel Jeansen of Answers in Genesis and in his book Traced. So, what the Europeans found were the scattered remains of civilizations. (Except Cortez. He found the real thing, and it was terrible to behold.)
Now granted, the American civilizations had not yet been Christianized, so they resembled Ancient Near Eastern pagan theo-states rather than European medieval kingdoms. It was probably this, in fact, that gave the Europeans the intellectual edge and enabled them to conquer the continents. Other things being equal, paganism tends to make people more passive. Fatalism, you know.
So Walsh is right that the Europeans conquered the Americans fair and square, as it were. Just like everywhere else throughout history. Now, the conquerors celebrating and romanticizing those they have conquered is a tradition that goes way back. See Homer writing sympathetically about the Trojans. See the beautiful Roman statue, The Dying Gaul. See the Romans commemorating the abduction of the Sabine women, but also celebrating Romulus and Remus, whose story is enough to curl you hair. So I am all for celebrating indigenous peoples (because I love ’em), but also Columbus (because there is no call to demonize your own culture).
That said, let’s not let sympathy turn into damaging infantilization. That’s what the United States government has done with the American Indians, as documented in the book below.
Life is very bad on our American Indian reservations.
People on the reservations experience rates of corruption, unemployment, depression, drug addiction, sexual assault and child abuse that are as high or higher than any other place in the nation.
But why?
Those with overly simplistic views of American Indians tend to oversimplify in one of two ways: your average American Indian is seen either as Wise Noble Victim, or Worthless Lazy Drunk. My instincts have always put me in the Wise Noble Victim camp, but I recognize that neither of these oversimplifications explains conditions on the rez. American Indians are people, which means they are sinful but not worthless. As Schaefer Riley puts it, “Indians, just like all people, respond to the economic incentives and political conditions around them” (page 178).
I have occasionally spoken with people who seem to resent all that American Indians receive from the government. Tribal governments are “sovereign.” Tribes have the right to operate casinos on their land (in most states no one else can), and in many cases, tribal governments or even individuals receive direct payments of federal dollars. None of this is false, but what has been the effect of it? It has not led to a cushy life for tribe members; quite the opposite.
Here’s my quick summary of the “economic incentives and political conditions” created by the way the federal government has handled the tribes:
In short, massive amounts of government money and regulations have had the same effects on the Indian reservations that they always have elsewhere. The red tape is at least tripled compared to the red tape faced by other Americans, which pretty much brings any kind of enterprise to a grinding halt. The infusion of government money through the tribal government incentivizes corruption. The lack of private property and actual employment makes people depressed. The white guilt (and the red tape) have made a lost cause of law enforcement.
Schaefer Riley ends with a call for American Indians to be treated like all other American citizens. She points out that American Indians have had very high rates of serving in the military.
Indeed, despite centuries of broken promises from the federal government, despite the bitterness that often pervades Indian communities, and despite years of being told by their own leaders and by Washington’s that they must remain a people apart, American Indians largely see themselves as Americans.
pp. 175 – 176
There has to be a way to ensure that Indian crime victims have the same rights under law as other crime victims … that Indians can own land and start businesses as individuals, not just as members of the tribe … that Indian families have access to a choice of schools that will prepare their kids to succeed. It has been suggested that the larger reservations be made into their own states. Then the people who live there would be considered full citizens who happen to reside in that state. This might not be feasible politically (although I think it would be really cool), but there are a few bands in Canada who are trying to get their tribal lands incorporated as cities. This would allow them to do development that they can’t do now, and the tribal leaders would be like city governments. Failing all this, a good step would be to drastically reform (or, ideally, eliminate) the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is known for being the one of the most corrupt and inefficient government agencies in a field where the competition is stiff.
I sincerely hope that Schaefer Riley’s book catalyzes a move in this direction. It should, of course, be read by anyone with the slightest interest in American Indians’ living conditions in these modern times. But it should also be read by anyone who is concerned about the effect of government micromanaging of citizens’ lives.
I see at least three ways in which the federal government’s treatment of Indians serves as a sample of what it would like to do with all citizens:
Q: When is a good time to start mocking the prophets of Baal?
A: Around noon.
Q: What time is it now?
A: 4 p.m.
“Well, yeah, but I work for the good guys. Don’t I?”
“Who can say? Not you, certainly. In your lunatic dream of a godless universe, good and evil can only be determined by the opinions of your fellow madmen, and morality is just a matter of democracy in the asylum. Mind you, I can work with that. The government can always find a use for lunatics as long as they’re homicidal. Speaking of which, I have another assignment for you.”
The House of Love and Death, by Andrew Klavan, p. 79
The second I sat down across from him, he said, “So, Poetry Boy, here you are. And you’ll be awestruck to learn that with a single glance through the glassy surface of your idiot gaze, I can see straight into the black heart of nothingness that is your godless and therefore soulless experience of this our only mortal life. And on that evidence of my own senses, I feel safe in saying you have now become morally dead in the service of your country and are therefore ready for your next government assignment.”
“Uh .. thank you?” I asked.
The House of Love and Death, by Andrew Klavan, pp. 4 -5
What are these extra fishbone looking thingies on the side of the t-rex’s neck?
Look, this little guy has them too.
And so does this sauropod.
Are we sure we have these attached at the correct angle? Is it possible the dinosaurs could swell out their neck like a grouse or something? Should we be reconstructing them more like birds, with thicker, sleeker appearances?
Speaking of which… that’s basically a chicken foot, right?
Also … I’m not an expert, but I am weirded out by how big of a shoulder blade t-rex seems to need for his tiny hands. Were there possibly wings attached to these?
Basically chickens, amirite?
The chicken status of dinosaurs has been confirmed. They ate gastroliths, which are stones that help an animal digest, just as hens do.
Basically a moose .
A huge, terrifying moose.
I’m sure he looked better with skin on.
Speaking of what we call things, how are we supposed to keep up with prehistoric animals if they keep changing their names in this manner?
Now let’s look at some really cool petrified “wood.” Some of the specimens actually look like modern hardwood grain, but this one looks as if, when alive, it had the texture of a giant celery.
This one had some really disturbing strawlike structures inside that are creeping me out. Cork perhaps?
This one has the ghost of the tree trapped inside, going “Heeeelp meee!”
And these last two…. what the heck? I’m guessing the first one is a giant lichen and the second one is petrified slime mold or something like that.
What parts of this dinosaur are not made up? The ones in red.
Ah, my old friend, the iguanodon! I remember you from the dinosaur book I loved when I was a kid, published in the 1970s. My iguanodon back then looked like the guy on the far left. In case you can’t read the sign, it says, “These are all models of the same dinosaur.”
Next question : Triceratops. I always took its appearance for granted, ever since that same beloved dinosaur book, but now I am asking myself, What in the world did it need that huge expanse of bone for? Wasn’t it heavy? Are we sure it was all made of bone? Or was it cartilage or something lighter? Was anything attached to it … like even more expansive flaps of skin, or feathers?
This is the “death pose.” Here are some more:
Per this sign, evolutionists’ best guess about the death pose is that it’s caused by ligaments constricting as the animal begins to decay. Of course, animals that get a chance to decay don’t generally become fossils. You have a much better chance of becoming a fossil if you are suddenly buried in an anaerobic environment, such as under a giant tsunami of mud during, say, a cataclysmic worldwide flood. Which might also smash you in this position.
These different-sized femurs belong to a large herd of allosauruses (allosauri?) who were apparently all buried together.
This is pretty cool: There’s such a thing as a “brain cast” when a dinosaur’s brain gets “pickled” in peat.
Finally: Trilobites. I knew this guys existed, but I was thinking of them as basically glorified pillbugs.
I had no idea their spines were so … um … 3-D.
Will I ever be comfortable knowing these guys existed? No. No, I will not.
Thanks to the George C. Eccles Dinosaur Park in Ogden for an enjoyable afternoon feeling dwarfed by chickens and other horrors, in their pleasant air-conditioned museum!
Sorry, folks. Life has continued to be busy. So this weekend, I’m re-posting another one of my most-often-viewed essays for your edification.
I learned the word Hermeticism recently.
Here’s an extended simile of what my experience was like in doing a deep dive on this word.
Imagine that your drain keeps backing up. You take a look, and discover a root. You have to find at what point the roots are coming into the pipe, so you do the roto-rooter thing. It turns out that the roots are running through the pipe all the way down to the street and across the street and into the vacant lot, where there is a huge tree.
And oh, look, it’s already pulled down the neighbor’s house!
That’s what it was like. (Oh, no! It’s in my George MacDonald pipe too!)
I’ve listened to a number of James Lindsay podcasts, and he talks a lot about Hegel. In discussing what exactly went wrong with the train wreck that is modern education and politics, James has to dive deep into quite a few unpleasant philosophers, among them Herbert Marcuse, Jaques Derrida, Paolo Friere, and the postmodernists. And Hegel.
I had heard James describe before how Hegel saw the world. Hegel had this idea that progress is reached by opposite things colliding and out of them comes a new synthesis, and then that synthesis has to collide with its opposite and so on until perfection is reached. This process is called the dialectic. Marx took these ideas and applied them to society, where there has to be conflict and revolution, but then the new society that emerges isn’t perfect yet and so there has to be another revolution and so on until everything is perfect and/or everyone is dead.
Obviously I am simplifying a lot. James can talk about this stuff for an hour and he is simplifying too, not because these ideas are themselves complicated but because Hegel produced a huge dump of words, and he came up with terminology that tried to combine his ideas with Christian concepts so that they would be accepted in his era. Anyway, the word dialectic is still used by postmodern writers like Kimberle Crenshaw, and it is a clue that they think constant revolution is the way to bring about utopia.
So, I was familiar with Hegel through the podcasts of Lindsay, and I was also familiar enough with Gnostic thought to at least recognize it when it goes by, as it so often does. For one thing, you kind of have to learn a little bit about Gnosticism if you are a serious Christian, because gnostic (or at least pre-gnostic: Platonic, mystery religion) ideas were very much in the air in New Testament times, and many of the letters of the New Testament were written to refute these ideas. Also, Gnosticism, particularly the mind/body duality, has had such an influence on our culture that it’s hard to miss. It’s present in New Age and neopagan thought, and it’s called out in Nancy Pearcey’s book Love Thy Body for the bad effects it has had on the way we conceive of personhood.
So that’s the background.
Several months ago, I was listening to Lindsay give a talk summarizing his recent research to a church group. He was talking about theologies: systems of thought that make metaphysical and cosmological claims, and come with moral imperatives. And he dashed off this summary, something like the following:
“You could have a theology where at first all that exists is God, but He doesn’t know Himself as God, so in order to know Himself he creates all these other beings, and they are all like pieces of God but they don’t know it, and their task is to become enlightened and realize that they, too, are God, and when they realize this, eventually they will all come back together, but now God is self-conscious because of the process of breaking He’s been through.”
And I’m thinking, Sounds like Pantheism, or maybe Gnosticism.
And James says, “That’s the Hermetic theology.”
And I’ve got a new word to research.
So, why is it called Hermeticism? Does it have to do with hermits?
My first foray into Internet Hermeticism immediately showed that the school of thought was named for a guy named Hermes, as in this paragraph from wiki:
Hermeticism, or Hermetism, is a label used to designate a philosophical system that is primarily based on the purported teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (a legendary Hellenistic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth).[1] These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes (the Hermetica), which were produced over a period spanning many centuries (c. 300 BCE – 1200 CE), and may be very different in content and scope.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism
One of my search hits, I can’t remember which one, said that Hermeticism is “often confused with Gnosticism.” O.K., so if it’s not Gnosticism, that means I know less than I thought and it’s all the more reason to research.
I also found avowedly Hermetic web sites like Hermetic World, whose “summary” is actually more of an attempt to draw you into their movement:
Hermeticism – The secret knowledge
Hermeticism is an ancient secret doctrine that dates back to early Egypt and its innermost knowledge has always been passed on only orally. In each generation there have been some faithful souls in different countries of the world who received the light, carefully cultivated it and did not allow it to be extinguished. Thanks to these strong hearts, these fearless spirits, truth has not been lost. It was always passed on from master to disciple, from adept to neophyte from mouth to ear. The terms “hermetically sealed”, “hermetically locked”, and so on, derive from this tradition and indicate that the general public does not have access to these teachings.
Hermeticism is a key that gives people the possibility to achieve everything they desire deep in their hearts, to develop a profound understanding of life, to become capable of decision making and responsibility; and to answer the question of meaning. Hermeticism offers a hidden key to unfolding.
Nobody can teach this knowledge to himself. Even in competent books like Kybalion, the teaching is only passed on in a veiled way. It always requires a master to pass on the wisdom to the able student. Today, as in the past, authentic mystery schools are a way to acquire this knowledge. The Hermetic Academy is one of these authentic schools.
https://www.hermetic-academy.com/hermeticism/
This is certainly the genuine article, but it is perhaps not the first place to go. I wanted to learn about the basic doctrines from a neutral source, simply and clearly described. I didn’t want to have to wade through a bunch of hand-waving to get there, at least not at first. Still, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that Hermetic World tries to cast a mysterious, esoteric, yet somewhat self-help-y atmosphere on their first page. After all, it is a mystery religion.
Well, at least now I know why it’s called Hermeticism. It’s basically an accident of history, due to the name of the guy to whom the founding writings were attributed.
Time to move on to a book.
I am fortunate to be descended from a scholar who has a large personal library, heavy on the theology.
I asked my dad.
Serendipitiously, he had just finished reading Michael J. McClymond’s two-volume history of Christian universalism (the doctrine that everyone is going to heaven), and he remembered that Hermeticism entered into the discussion. He was happy to lend it to me. You can see all the places I’ve marked with tabs. Those are just the ones where Hermeticism is directly mentioned. I hope you now understand my dilemma.
In McClymond’s Appendix A: Gnosis and Western Esotericism: Definitions and Lineages, I found at last the succinct, neutral summary I was looking for:
[“Hermetism”] as used by academics refers to persons, texts, ideas, and practices that are directly linked to the Corpus Hermeticum, a relatively small body of texts that appeared most likely in Egypt during the second or third centuries CE. … “Hermeticism” is often used in a wider way to refer to the general style of thinking that one finds in the Corpus Hermeticum and other works of ancient gnosis, alchemy, Kabbalah, and so forth. “Hermeticism” sometimes functions as a synonym for “esotericism.” The adjective “Hermetic” is ambiguous, since it can refer either to “Hermetism” or “Hermeticism.”
McClymond, p. 1072
O.K.
So it isn’t that different from Gnosticism after all.
“Esoteric,” by the way, means an emphasis on hidden or mystical knowledge that is not available to everyone and/or cannot be reduced to words and propositions. “Exoteric” refers to the style of theology that puts emphasis on knowledge that is public in the sense that it is written down somewhere, asserts something concrete, can be debated, etc.
Even though I have literally just found an actual definition of the word that is clear enough to put into a blog post, in the time it took me to find this definition I feel that I have already gotten a pretty good sense of what this philosophy is like. Perhaps it helps that it has pervaded many, many aspects of our culture, so I have encountered it many times before, as no doubt have you.
I began to peruse the tabs in the volumes above and read the sections there, in all their awful glory.
Yep, James Lindsay in fact did a pretty good job of explaining the core metaphysic of Hermeticism. Of course, this philosophy brings a lot of things with it that he didn’t get into. If we and all beings in the universe are all made of the same spiritual stuff as God Himself, it follows that alchemy should work (getting spiritual results with physical processes and the other way round). It follows that astrology should work (everything is connected, and the stars and men and the gods not only all influence each other, but when you get down to it are actually the same thing). It follows that reincarnation should be a thing (the body is just a shell or an illusion that is occupied by the spirit, the spark of God). It follows that there are many paths to God, since we are all manifestations of God and will all eventually return to Him/It. It follows that the body is not that important (in some versions of this philosophy, matter is actually evil). Therefore we should be able to physically heal ourselves with our minds. Our personhood should be unconnected to (some might say unfettered by) our body, such that we can be born in the wrong body, or we can change our sex or our species if we want to. There might also be bodies that don’t have souls yet (such as unborn babies), and so it would be no wrong to destroy them. Also, since matter is not really a real thing, it follows that Jesus was not really incarnated in a real human body and that He only appeared to do things like sleep, eat, suffer, and die. Also, since we are all parts of God like He is, He is not really one with God in any sense that is unique, but just more of an example of a really enlightened person who realized just how one with God He was.
I imagine that about twenty pop culture bells have gone off in your mind as you read that preceding paragraph. You might also have been reminded of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, which teaches that we were all pre-existent souls literally fathered by God out of some sort of spiritual matter before we came to earth to be born.
Hermeticism is not just one thing. It’s a whole human tradition of thought. It had a lot of streams flowing into it, like Plato, first-century mystery religions, Gnosticism, and early attempts to reconcile Christianity with these things. It has a lot of streams flowing out of it, like many Christian mystics of varying degrees of Christian-ness; Origen; Bohme; Hegel; medieval and Renaissance alchemy; the Romantic literary movement; Mormonism; New Age thinking; identity politics; transhumanism; Shirley McLaine; The Secret, and the movie Phenomenon.
Not all of these thinkers hold to the exact same set of doctrines. In a big philosophical movement like this, almost every serious thinker is going to have his or her own specific formulation that differs from everyone else’s in ways that seem really important to people on the inside of the system. So anyone who is an insider or who has made it their life’s work to research any of the things I mention above (and many others besides) could come along and point out errors or overgeneralizations in this article and make me look like I don’t know anything. That’s partly because it’s a huge historical phenomenon and I actually don’t know much of all there is to know. It’s also partly because these mystery religions delight in making things complicated. They love to add rituals and symbols and secret names and to discover new additional deities that are personifications of abstract ideas like Wisdom. It’s supposed to be esoteric. That’s part of the fun.
Another reason it’s difficult to describe Hermeticism accurately is that when all is one, it is really difficult to talk about anything. In this view of the world, when you get right down to it there is no distinction between spirit and matter, creator and creature, man and woman, conscious and inanimate, and the list goes on. I called it Hermeticism at the beginning of this paragraph, but I was tempted to write Hermeticism/Gnosticism, or perhaps Hermeticism/Gnosticism/alchemy/mystery religions/the New Age/Pantheism/postmodernism. If you’ve ever read any New Age writers, you’ll notice that they tend to write important terms with slashes like that (“Sophia/the divine feminine”). That’s because it’s all one. They don’t want you to forget that. They don’t want to forget it. Even if these ideas do not go very well with the human mind, and they tend to break it if you keep trying to think them.
In a sense, Hermeticism and all these other related movements are very diverse and not the same at all. In another sense, it’s all … the same … crap.
This was inspired by me leaving comments in a feverish state, and realizing that such a chart probably existed and I was in the wrong quadrant possibly. Characteristically, when I made the chart I forgot to put “fever” on it, but clearly “I have a fever” would go in the upper left quadrant, which is by far the fullest.
I hasten to point out that this is all in fun. Except for the dig at Karl Marx.
Hi, everyone. I still have a low fever plus the muzzy head and joint aches that go with it, so this post should be … interesting.
Within the last week I finished the book above. If the Shoe Fits is a sort of very loose Cinderella re-telling. The heroine’s name is Cindy. She has a stepmother and stepsisters. They are not hostile to her as in the original story — they are actually quite affectionate — but they are gorgeous, thin Hollywood babes, very much in the T.V. world, and Cindy is plus-sized, so there are some hints that things were a bit rough in high school. The handsome prince is the heir to a fashion empire. Cindy has just graduated from fashion school, with a special interest in shoe design. As you can see on the cover, the author does manage to get her into an outfit that parallel’s Disney’s Cinderella. And yes, there are crystal-covered shoes at one point. (No, she does not lose them, though I was waiting for that.)
O.K., those are the similarities. Now, the differences. This book takes place in the fashion world and in the world of reality T.V. Cindy and Henry must get to know each other while they are both contestants on a show that is obviously The Bachelor (a show whose producer is actually Cindy’s stepmother). So, all of this is pretty different from a fairytale.
If the Shoe Fits was written by Julie Murphy, who is also the author of Dumplin’. I have not read Dumplin’ but I did see the movie. This book, I would say, has the same strengths and weaknesses as the ones I noticed in Dumplin’.
First, the strengths. Both books feature a romantic heroine who is fat. In both cases, the amount of self-pity that gal displays is very low. This is so refreshing. Plus-sized girls need role models who are not whiny and self-obsessed. Dumplin’ is in high school, so she has a few more issues with her weight than Cindy does, and it’s shown how this leads her to be unfair to her naturally thin best friend. Cindy notes that she has gotten catty comments and the like, and it’s hard to find a variety of clothes in her size, especially in the fashion world, but for the most part she’s confident and she displays no envy or hostility to the more Barbie-like women who are also contestants on the T.V. show. Finally, in both books there is an attractive male romantic interest who seems to really like Cindy or Dumplin’, and this is accepted as a matter of course. There’s no insulting discussion along the lines of, “I like you even though you’re fat because …” blah blah blah. Is this unrealistic? Maybe. But remember, this is a romance genre, so it’s a fantasy for women. Also, some guys are attracted to women who would consider themselves fat (correctly or incorrectly). Finally, whenever one person says to another, “I like you even though …,” I would say that’s a red flag. Unless it is Mr. Darcy speaking, it probably means the “even though”-er feels superior to their prospective romantic partner, and expects that they will be able to treat them badly.
So, those are the strengths of each book. The downside? Both books have a subtext that being fat is just like being gaaay.
In Dumplin’, the heroine has warm memories of “Dolly Parton parties” that she and her beloved aunt used to have. Later, she finds out that her aunt was longtime friends with a whole bunch of drag queens who are also huge fans of Dolly. The drag queens, and their theatre, are a safe space for Dumplin’ and they help her prepare for the beauty pageant. So, a major theme of Dumplin’ seems to be that drag queens are kind, safe people who make great mentors. We have found this not to be true.
In If the Shoe Fits, we have Jay.
“Jay?” Henry calls.
A beautiful person with short, perfectly edged lavender hair, a manicured beard to match, razor-sharp eyeliner, and nude lipstick rounds the corner. Jay wears a flirty skirt with a cropped sweater topped with a trench coat and platform sneakers.
“This is Jay,” says Henry.
“Follow me,” says Jay as Henry helps them down from the stage.
So, Jay is a basically a very lost and confused young man whom the author insists on calling they throughout the entire book.
I realize that what I’m about to point out is well-trodden ground, but I’m going to tread it again.
How do I know Jay is a young man? He has a beard, and he’s “beautiful.” If Jay were a young woman who had been taking testosterone, he would be overweight, balding, with acne, and the beard would be scraggly. So, my instinct is that Jay is a young man. I pictured him that way as soon as the character was introduced, and I continued to think of him as “he” throughout the book.
As a mom, I really feel for Jay. I’d like to just give him a hug and a cup of tea, and introduce him to some genuinely good father figures so he can see there’s nothing wrong with being a man. Jay needs Jesus. And yes, I realize all the real-life Jays out there would howl with indignation if they were to come to this blog and see me say that. They can only interpret “You need Jesus” as a condescending slam, not a genuine expression of love and concern. People have been reacting that way to the name and message of Jesus for 2000 years. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but just because that is your reaction right now, doesn’t mean it has to be that way forever.
Second well-trodden point: go back to the quote above and look at Jay’s outfit. A flirty skirt with a cropped sweater – already sad on a man – but the trench coat and the sneakers take the outfit to a whole new level. That level is chaos. Jay has selected for himself an outfit that screams, “I have no idea what’s going on or what or who I want to be, and I want you to admire this chaos and join me in it.” Yes, this book does take place in the fashion world, which is notoriously in love with the weird … but Cindy describes a number of her own outfits throughout the course of the book, and they all make sense. No matter how creative Cindy gets with her outfits, they are integrated, coordinated, works of art, because Cindy knows what she is: a woman.
Finally (the most well-trodden ground of all) despite the author’s best efforts, it doesn’t really work to use the pronoun they for a character we already know. (They in the singular is fine in English, when it’s referring to an unspecified or unknown individual. When we have already met a character, that person is no longer unspecified.) For example, at one point Jay leads a group of dignitaries into the boutique, and then a little later they hop down from the counter they were sitting on. (Were all the dignitaries sitting on the counter? Or just Jay?)
As someone who wears plus sizes, has a belly, and has in the past been fat, I like the idea of these chubby-heroine books. This is especially true since the majority of women in the U.S. are what the fashion industry considers plus-sized. But sadly, I think I’m done with the genre. The last chubby-heroine book I read tied confidence in a plus sized woman to female empowerment, and female empowerment to abortion, with a side advertisement for “spouse-sharing.” The one before that, a murder mystery, was tame by comparison, but it did include a bunch of little digs at white girls. I’m done.
I guess I will just have to write a chubby heroine into my own books … oh, wait, I already have!
Magya is a short, curvy mother of four who stepped out of the shadows to grab her own romantic subplot in my book The Strange Land. She was pregnant when her husband was tragically killed. Another member of the tribe stepped in to care for Magya and her children, and he found himself falling in love with her as she went through pregnancy and grieving and the hardships of a Siberian winter. He spends the year sitting on his hands so as not to bother her, and by the next year, they are married.
Sari is also a mother of four and a larger lady, but her story, in the same book, is much more tragic.
Don’t go to my novels just for the chubby girls, of course. Go for the survival and the demons and the dinosaurs. But don’t be surprised if you encounter all kinds of women – and men – along the way. That’s what happens when we just write about life.
Out of Babel Books 