“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids.”

Do you see anything wrong with that statement? I mean besides the obvious douchbaggery behind it? Mike Jeffries of Abercrombie & Fitch only wants young, attractive (thin), “cool” people to wear the clothes his company sells.

But are all popular, pretty people “cool”?

When I was a young teenager, which is presumably the target market for stores like Abercrombie, the “cool” kids were the ones who hung out off campus so they could smoke. The girls looked like Joan Jett, and jean shorts were only considered appropriate if you were washing the car.

The popular kids, the sporty ones, hell, the RICH ones, with a tennis court and a pool in the front yard and a 30 ft yacht moored in the back, they looked like the models in the Abercrombie ads. Very, very few of them were “cool”. They were pretty, had nice clothes, nice cars and were assured nice university educations, but their lives were too easy and too pretty for them to be cool. They were popular – they ran the student council, they were on all the sports teams, other kids aspired to be like them. But did they have that edge, that spark, that thing about them that drew people to them (as opposed to perfect teeth and shiny hair)? Nah.

Jeffries seems adamant that Abercrombie only wants attractive people wearing the clothes he sells, because it might reflect badly on his brand.

“Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla.”

But I can’t actually tell the difference between the clothes on Abercrombie’s website and stuff sold in a dozen other stores, including Wal Mart. There is nothing at all unique or “cool” about the plaid shirt, jean shorts, grey sweatshirts and tank tops that grace their website.

Maybe that stuff matters to Jeffries’ target market, but what this store sells is the epitome of “vanilla” to me. I get that insecure teens want to follow trends, and that the pretty, popular kids do set those trends for most mainstream teens, but… cool??? Let’s not kid ourselves here. In the great big world outside the school playground, nobody is going to look at a kid (or a pretty model) in Abercrombie gear and think, yeah, that person is cool.

And this is why I’m kind of confused at the uproar about Jeffries’ most recent comments regarding not wanting to sell clothes to fat people (Abercrombie only stocks up to about a ladies size 10). If you’re interested in wearing the bland, boring, cheaply-made duds that Abercrombie specializes in, there are plenty of stores that carry the same stuff, and in larger sizes. Those clothes seem to be pretty interchangeable.

The lack of uniqueness of Abercrombie’s products is oddly part of what makes the clothing so popular – kids searching for “cool” are nothing if not malleable sheep who are happy to follow whatever is marketed to them as long as they don’t stand out or appear different, as long as it’s what the pretty people are all doing, thus making them safe from mockery by the more popular.

And again, I must reiterate my point. This is not the real definition of “cool”.

In recent times, particularly the age of marketing to teens, “cool” has been manipulated in definition to include “popular”, which is the context in which Jeffries uses the word. But the truly cool know this to be false. Cool is about individuality, which is the exact opposite of what a kid tells the world about themselves when they step out in the same bland mass-marketed styles that all the other kids are wearing.

The truly cool are not afraid to be ugly or odd. They revel in being unique, they eschew brands, they are free-thinkers with creative ideas. They are not bland, faceless, pretty people whose best trait is washboard abs or skinny arms.

In fact, I want to look at Mike Jeffries’ comments as a positive thing – for both fat people and (real) cool people. Because if the offensive comments of a corporation’s CEO cause even one person to think differently about shopping there, and make them take their money away from Abercrombie to a different store, then that’s a really marvellous thing. Even better if those same people take their money to a small shop where they can support a local designer, or to a vintage store where they can create a look that is unique to them alone. And better yet, if in their anger at not being able to fit into the clothes at some douchy mainstream mall store, they start making their own clothes, or styling their own outfits and actually revealing something of an interesting personality in the things they wear, that’s more cool than anything.

(Because in case you haven’t guessed yet, personality is what makes you cool, not plaid shirts and washboard abs.)

Finally, I present you with a pair of skill-testing questions.

Which of these two ladies is cooler? The pretty girl with the perfect hair, or the fat girl who looks like she’s crazy fun?

And for the dudes… washboard abs or the guy with the weak chin? Come on, who’d you rather hang out with?

I rest my case.

Remember those essays? The first day back to school, the teacher was still setting up the year’s curriculum, ordering books, etc., and so you’d get handed a piece of loose leaf and a fresh new pencil and directed to start off the school year with the child’s worst enemy – the familiar essay.

We lived in the poor part of town. Nobody I knew came back on that first day of school with stories about Disneyland, or Europe. Camping maybe, but it was never one of those fancy camps where you learned French or how to play the oboe. It would have been a week at Grandpa’s fishing lodge (shack) getting eaten alive by black flies and leeches.

The rest of us spent the days at home, or at a grandparent’s or babysitter’s house if our parents worked. There would be trips to the lake (aka. a mile long forced march in the hot sun), or the beach (for this you definitely hoped for a drive, otherwise it was a 2-mile forced march in the hot sun, up a huge, steep hill to get home), but usually it was a “make your own fun” kind of summer where you spent the days in the woods, at the playground, in a wading pool in the backyard, or lolling around watching “stories” with Grandma in the cool of the living room with the blinds down.

When I was old enough to be considered responsible to babysit my younger brother for the summer months (I was 13, he was 6, the closest relatives were a couple of blocks away in case of emergency), we’d fill our days with walks to the lake, or the library, but we’d also dress up nicely and get on the bus and go downtown where we’d visit a museum and meet our mother at her work for lunch.

That I was allowed, at age 13, to wander around the downtown core of a smallish city, by myself, with a 5-year-old in tow, boggles the mind years later in the age of helicopter parenting, but I was always precocious, and independent and incredibly responsible.

Nowadays, the summer has little meaning for me as a time frame in which to do something “special”. When you’re self-employed, even statutory holidays aren’t really vacations, and as a hater of hot weather, I’m more inclined to be inside in front of the AC than at a beach. This is partially to do with the climactic difference between sweltering humid Toronto and Halifax with its fresh sea breezes, but also because there’s usually something that needs doing.

This year, oddly, I find myself with a couple of months that are “free” before I get into the serious work of my two main projects. The arts market that I put together last month will return for four monthly instalments in September, but other than some website updates, there is not much for me to do on that front until mid-July.

And while I’ve stupidly ambitiously decided to start a literary journal, I can’t begin working on it in any serious way until the submission deadline occurs and I have a better idea of what material I have to work with.

In the interim, I have two months with nothing to do. How to fill them?

First of all, that literary journal will require a special program to lay it all out. It turns out we’ve progressed since the days when I used to make zines in WordPerfect. So summer project #1 is to learn InDesign so I can actually put that journal together.

Next, I’ve got a pile of patterns and some lovely bits of fabric, so I’m going to be updating my wardrobe with some new clothes. The fat girl offerings in stores are usually not to my liking, and there was a time when I aspired to be a fashion designer and drafted my own patterns and bought whole cowhides to make leather jackets. So I’m happy to get back to that again.

There’s always stuff to do around the house, and after 7 years in the same apartment, some rooms could use a repaint. The dining room is high on my list.

But for me, summer was, and is, always about reading. Those weekly trips to the library with my little brother happened mostly because I’d run out of stuff to read. And while my parents were weirdly strict in many ways, they allowed me pretty much free reign when it came to books.

However, it seems there is much that I’ve missed, including some of the 20th century’s great masterworks. In the lead-up to the Great Gatsby film, I realized that while I’ve read the other novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I’d never actually read Gatsby.

My Dickens is incomplete. I’ve never been able to get into Hemingway, but surely I should read some Gertrude Stein. And Nabokov and Colette are always worth a re-read, aren’t they?

Fortunately, since so many of these works are now in the public domain, they’re available very cheaply in eReader format. I’ve yet to warm to the eReader (we’ve got a playbook, purchased on the cheap from a friend who worked at Blackberry), but perhaps the complete (illustrated) works of Shakespeare will help to win me over. I’m still dubious about the beach potential, but the likelihood of me sitting out in the sun on a disgusting, humid Toronto summer day are low anyway.

So this summer “vacation” will be about getting things done, yes, but it will also be about reading – reading all the stuff I’ve missed, and rereading all the stuff I didn’t miss.

And I might even set up an inflatable kiddie pool in the living room, just for nostalgia’s sake.

If you watched CBC’s The National last night you might have caught my 15 seconds of fame as I was interviewed for a piece about perfume and perfume allergies.

Unfortunately due to a miscommunication on the specific topic and my own failure to research the correct issue, very little of what I said in the interview was used, and what did get used was out of context.

When the producer originally contacted me, I was told the piece was about a new law in the European Union that would force perfume companies to list the ingredients on the labels. In fact, the piece was about a move by the EU to ban certain (natural) ingredients that have been in perfume for decades and are thought to be the cause of an increased number of allergic reactions to perfume products.

So when Aaron Saltzman asked me if I though the ban was a good idea, and I near-shouted “Absolutely!”, I was wrong.

Don’t misunderstand – I would ban all commercial perfumes everywhere if I had the power to do so. They are unnecessary in the grand scheme of life. Perfume companies play into our insecurities and manipulate us into buying things we do not need to feel better about ourselves (you are, in fact, LESS beautiful when wearing perfume, at least to those of us with sensitive noses). They make people ill – more and more so – as this potential ban clearly demonstrates.

However, my allergic reactions, as far as I can tell, are all based on inhalants. That is, from breathing in the product. Also, as far as I can tell, my allergic reactions are to synthetic ingredients in these products (I’m affected by perfume and scented laundry detergent equally, and ain’t nobody tending a field of lavender in Provence to make fabric softener); I am able to use products with “natural” fragrances or essential oils with no ill effect whatsoever.

This ban would affect natural ingredients such as oak moss (a key ingredient in Chanel #5), which is more likely to cause a contact allergy, aka, a big scary rash.

The thing about contact allergies is that, for the most part, they occur with prolonged exposure. Ask any person in the food service industry about contact allergies – I know of someone who developed an allergy to carrots after a year of peeling 50 pounds of the things every day. Once when I was on an internship while at chef’s school, I had to clean 20 pounds of squid every day, and by the third week of the placement, my hand were cracked and bleeding as I developed a reaction to the squid ink.

So while it’s possible that a very small minority of people might have a skin allergy to a perfume after the first use, it’s more likely that someone would have to use a lot of it to have a problem. Which is why previous generations never really seemed to have a lot of perfume sensitivities. Perfume was expensive and precious – few people wore it every day and when it was worn, for special occasions, it was applied sparingly. People in previous generations also used fewer products overall, and used them with less frequency, and those products were more natural than the chemical soups we apply to ourselves today.

The EU wants perfume companies to replace the natural ingredients with synthetic ones, under the assumption that fewer people will have allergic reactions to the perfumes. I think this is incredibly misguided for a number of reasons:

First, most people wear so many different products that even if an allergen was isolated, unless the individual was tested for that allergen, there would be no way of knowing if it was that specific ingredient causing the reaction, or if the allergy was the result of two ingredients (possibly from different products) having a reaction to each other. Keep in mind that testing of cosmetic ingredients is usually done by the ingredient manufacturers, not the product manufacturers (in part to get around having to admit to animal testing). Seldom do cosmetic companies test to see if ingredients in a specific product might react to each other, and testing against products made by other manufacturers is never, ever done.

Second, the main treatment for most chemical allergies/sensitivities is avoidance. Would it not be common sense that if you use a product and it gives you a burning rash that you stop using that product? Why would the EU force manufacturers to change their decades/centuries old formulas to accommodate what must really be a minority of customers who apparently don’t have the common sense to stop using something that makes them sick? [1]

Third, I think we really need to look more closely at the synthetic ingredients used in cosmetics, particularly over the long term. It wasn’t until the 70s and 80s that cheap synthetic versions of perfume became available, and around the same time, we started using many more products on a daily basis, most of which are, at least partially, synthetic in origin. Our parents and grandparents never used all these cosmetics and so we have no documentation as to the long-term effects of these products on our health. In an age when almost all of us have some level of PCBs and mercury in our bodies, what else might we be absorbing from the products we use every day?

I have an obvious bias in wanting to see perfume banned from pretty much everywhere. Within about 45 seconds of coming into contact with a (synthetic) perfume-wearer, I experience a piercing migraine. The pain is so blinding that I have, on occasion, not been able to speak, and my husband thought that I was having a stroke.

But I really don’t agree with the proposed EU ban. In fact, I’d much prefer a ban on synthetic ingredients; return perfumes the rare and expensive things they once were [2]. Get rid of the cheaper versions, the eau de toilette, or eau de cologne, definitely ban anything in a spray format, and encourage people to wear less product overall. I think that would go a long way to cutting down on allergic reactions and to promoting the health of everyone.

The perfume companies won’t go for that, of course, but if the ban passes, they’re kind of screwed anyway, so it might serve them well to be less greedy and instead stand behind a natural and artisanal product instead of selling a whole lot of inferior versions of their product to anyone with money to waste.

[1] As with any scientific study, it is important to ask – who stands to gain from this? Government bodies seldom come up with things like bans, especially bans that would affect billion-dollar industries that are part of a region’s culture and history, without someone lobbying for it in the first place. The EU, while occasionally very forward-thinking when it comes to regulations that protect its citizens, can also be notoriously corrupt. Who stands to gain from that billion-dollar industry having to reformulate hundred-year-old perfume recipes to include synthetic ingredients? It may make me a bigger conspiracy theorist than Richard Belzer, but everyone wave at those nice men from the chemical companies with the dollar signs over their eyes, won’t you?

[2] If not for the fact that it might kill me, I’d love to do a scent test, comparing various qualities of the same brand of perfume products to see if the real perfume affected me in the same way that the cheaper, more chemical-based versions do. I’m betting that the pure stuff, you know the tiny bottle that runs $400 an ounce, wouldn’t bother me at all. But I’m not brave enough – or stupid enough – to do that to myself.

Further reading:
A list of common perfume ingredients.
Info about synthetic fragrances and ingredients.
Campaign for safe cosmetics.
Details of the proposed EU ban.

On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself sitting in a restaurant measuring the cost of my meal against the cost of the clothes on my back. This entree costs as much as my shirt. This tiny dessert, more than my scarf. A multi-course tasting menu can ring in at more than a pair of really well-made boots.

Like most people I’m inclined to blame this disparity on the high price of food. But I am wrong to do so, for the problem is not that quality, well-prepared restaurant food is to expensive, it’s that the clothing that we typically buy in chain stores across the Western world is far too cheap.

As Elizabeth Cline points out in her engaging and delightfully well-written book Overdressed, we like cheap clothes. A lot. Most of us have more clothing than we can ever reasonably wear, and manufacturers feed into our desire for more by creating clothing as cheaply as possible. Who cares if a shirt falls apart after two washes when it only cost $10 to begin with?

Cline gives herself up as an egregious example of a very common problem; she has a closet full of clothing – a total of 354 pieces (!!) – and nothing to wear, because despite her addiction to shopping and cheap deals, none of it is made very well, fits very well, or is of particularly high quality. And while chain stores whet her appetite by adding new items every week, it all sort of looks the same. And none of it makes her feel especially stylish.

With a brief history lesson on the evolution of fashion from a time when almost all garments were tailor-made or made at home, to the current era when almost all clothing is made overseas, Cline demonstrates how our garments have significantly simplified in their construction. We chalk this up to a desire to dress more casually/comfortably – who wants to go back to wearing corsets and panniers? – but it primarily came about as a way for manufacturers to simplify production. A t-shirt is far easier to cut and construct than a blouse or suit jacket, for instance.

Cline traces the move from domestic manufacturing – remember when most clothing was made in New York’s garment district, or regional factories around North America? – to the shift to overseas, mostly based on cheaper labour costs. Posing as a fashion designer looking for a manufacturer for an upcoming line, she visits factories in China’s Guangdong Province where a manufacturing zone is now home to 100 million people (that’s 1/3 of the total population of the USA!) that create pretty much everything the Western world uses on a daily basis.

She reports that the factories she is shown are actually clean, safe, and well-lit and even convinces a contact to send her photos of the living quarters for the average factory work, which she equates to being similar to a college dorm. In terms of human rights issues, at least based on what Cline is allowed to see, China seems to be improving conditions for factory workers.

No so in Bangladesh, where much of the world’s cheap knitwear is now manufactured. Here, violations are still rampant with health and safety issues typical of the average garment factory.

Cline also spends a chapter tracking where our used clothing goes once we donate it to charity. Don’t automatically assume that your old coat will make it to the racks of the Goodwill or Salvation Army – only about 50% of donations make it into the charity shops, and then, if they’re not sold within a week or two, they rejoin the crap donations to become rags or mattress stuffing. And all that stuff you’ve heard about your used clothes going to third world countries? Not so much anymore. Turns out that many majority world countries have a higher standard of living than they used to, which translates into more money to buy new clothing. Paired with the same chains that produce cheap clothes for the Western world opening shops in Asia and Africa, those folks have little need of our cast-offs anymore.

Of course, because the majority world is buying the same cheap crap we are, there’s even more of an environmental effect caused by the manufacturing and disposal of cheap garments.

Cline does offer solutions to this massive issue, but this is where her book starts preaching to the choir. Sure, there are plenty of people who are dedicated to buying fewer items of better quality clothing and taking care of those items so they last for years. Many of us never put away our sewing machines and still make our own clothes or at least mend/alter store-bought garments so they fit better and last longer. She also suggests buying re-purposed garments, thrift store finds, or new garments made with eco-friendly fabrics and sustainable, fair-trade practices. But the number of people willing to make those efforts, especially when they cost significantly more money (and a lot more time), are surely a teeny tiny minority.

Finding your own sense of style and appreciating quality workmanship in a garment is something that tends to happen as people get older. I’m not sure we can expect the majority of teenagers and young adults – the target demographic of the fast fashion chains – to be interested in such practices. I made about 75% of my own clothes when I was a teenager, but I was also an aspiring fashion designer, and a big freak who wanted to stand out and look different. I also knew how to sew and knit, and there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t put in a pot of fabric dye, just for fun. Mainstream kids today don’t seem to have the same interests.

The solution to our disposable society won’t be won by everyone buying a sewing machine (also, ironically, made to need replacing and not be worth repairing when they break down, unless you can find a “vintage” machine with metal parts, made before the 90s – the gears in new machines are now mostly plastic), or buying re-purposed clothing. In fact, Cline points out that the solution might actually come from the countries making our cheap goods. With a rising standard of living in China, and a shrinking population due to China’s population control laws, finding people willing to work in sweatshops for pitiful wages is getting harder. We can expect goods (all goods) made in China to go up in price in the coming years, and even if manufacturing moves to places with even cheaper labour costs such as Bangladesh, prices are still set to rise as human rights groups crack down on unsafe garment factories in that country.

As with food, it is up to us as individuals to search out quality products, made with ethics and sustainability in mind. And just as we need to help kids develop a love of cooking, we also need to ensure that our kids at least know how to replace a button on a coat or fix a hem. Or have access to professionals who can do the more complicated repairs.

Overdressed is a sharp and accurate look at the current state of the world’s mainstream garment industry. While the solutions the author offers probably won’t be embraced by the majority of her readers, let alone the majority of the population, she paints a chilling picture of an industry that is destroying the environment and is creating financial ruin under the guise of selling us happiness in the form of a new t-shirt.

If Overdressed doesn’t have readers scouring their closets and dedicating themselves to buying fewer, but better-quality garments, I will be very surprised. But unless we make this required reading at the junior high level in schools around the world, I suspect the advice – and warnings – will fall on deaf ears.

Dear women of the Western world, please have some cake. That’s right, get up right now, and go get yourself something frosted and gooey and decorated to within an inch of its life. I implore you to treat yourself, just because it’s a crappy, cold, grey Monday.

However, if you go have cake, there are rules. First, no hiding the cake. No sneaking it back to your desk, or hiding in a closet while you devour it. Eat that baby out in the open, and to hell with what anyone else thinks! Second, you must eat the cake and then forget about it. No making yourself feel guilty, no calculating how many extra crunches you need to do to work it off. Third, no remorse, after the fact, when a skinny girl walks past you on the street, and you start thinking about how much closer you’d be to that “ideal” figure if only you’d not eaten that stupid delicious bit of pastry and frosting.

Okay, so I’m not really encouraging all women to go out and eat cake – although you can and should if you want to – certainly, healthy eating and moderation is still important. But in the past few days, I’ve come across two different articles that emphasis what a really, truly, horrible relationship most women have with both food and their own bodies.

In the first, A UK study shows that a resounding percentage of women lie about their weight, snack in secret, and lie about how much they actually eat. The study is funded by Atkins, which obviously has its own bias and vested interest in people’s diets, but it still reveals a really messed up relationship with food.

As a kid, I can remember my mother hiding in the kitchen, scarfing down cookies, fearful that my father would discover her and flip out at her for breaking her diet. I always swore I’d never do such a thing, but I have, on occasion, found myself shoving the last bits of a cookie or an handful of chips into my facehole before my partner walked into the room. I couldn’t even explain why – my husband of 14 years certainly wouldn’t ever flip out at me for breaking my non-existent diet, which means it’s some sort of instinctual reaction based on years of watching my mother live in guilt and fear.

The second study seems to show that literature aimed at women (aka. Chick Lit) can also play a role in the reader’s self-esteem. Women who read passages about thin protagonists did not feel fatter but did feel less sexy. When the protagonist was heavier (or thought she was) the result was different.

On the other hand, those who read a version of a story in which the central character expressed negative thoughts about her body “were significantly more concerned about their weight than participants in the control condition,” the researchers report.

So all that moaning Bridget Jones did about being “fat” at 130 pounds made a lot of female readers/movie viewers feel self-conscious about their own size. I remember watching the movie and thinking, “but 130 pounds is a perfectly reasonable weight…” and then feeling like crap because I was far above that number on the scale.

The moral of this story? Well, for one, stop reading stupid Chick Lit that makes you feel so bad about yourself so that you become the kind of person who hides behind the fridge to snarf a cupcake.

But more importantly, I think we all need to start questioning our reasons for doing what we do when it comes to food and body image. Why hide that bag of chips? What will happen if someone finds it? Who are we afraid of? And if there is a real person who would get angry at the sight of their friend/spouse/daughter/co-worker eating a piece of cake, why does that person have so much control of that individual’s life? (No, seriously – this is a biiiiig issue in and of itself.)

Why read books and magazines that make us feel bad about ourselves? Why let the opinions of others determine how (or whether) we love ourselves?

Obviously, that’s really not an invitation to run rampant in a cake shop, but it makes me really sad to see so many women (myself included) feel so bad about our bodies that we have to sneak and lie to enjoy a treat.

I have a weird relationship with new year’s resolutions. While I have done them in the past – quit smoking one year, became vegetarian another – part of me also really dislikes the idea that the entire Western world will get up today intent on fixing what is wrong with ourselves. It’s a nice marker, offering ease of calculation, in the same way that a small business might choose the calendar year as their business year, just to make things easier at tax time. But other than that, it’s essentially meaningless. Only the whims of the Gregorian calendar determine the “new year”. Logically, it would make more sense to tie the new year to the Solstice on December 21st.

In any case, we all get a little crazy for a few weeks in January, trying to become better people.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with self-improvement. Setting goals for the coming year, planning to cut out the bad habits and create new ones. But the motivation has to be meaningful, and it has to be personal. And ultimately, whether it’s the addition of a new habit or the subtraction of a bad one, it has to be something that makes you feel good about yourself.

The problem with personal goals is this – most everyone else around you doesn’t really give a shit. They may admire the overall goal and the achievement of said goal. They may be envious of your devotion and willpower, but unless they share that exact same goal – and are currently working towards it – they are probably bored to tears by hearing you talk about it.

And so we come to running. A number of people of my acquaintance, well into their middle age, have taken up running. Their reasons vary. Their goals are also all over the board – some for general fitness, some for power and personal strength, some to run races. Be aware that I am not dissing them at all for their dedication to getting/staying fit/strong. I am proud of them for their efforts and achievements. But every time I see or hear someone talk about their running hobby, it makes me cringe inside.

In the mental health world, it’s called a “trigger”. It’s unintentional, of course. Nobody knows that what they’re saying is causing me hurt. And on a very large level, it’s not really their problem. At all. It’s my issue to deal with. But anytime anybody starts talking about the rush they get from running, I want to stick my fingers in my ears and scream LALALALA!

See, running = humiliation. Sure, it’s easy enough to look at me and think snarkily about how a fat lady doesn’t like to run. Things bounce uncomfortably. The knees can’t take the pressure. But my hatred of running goes back past middle school. Even as a close to regular-sized kid, I was never athletic. I was never encouraged to be; while my peers were all out at little league, I was home learning to embroider or knit.

I had kept this trigger well-buried for years, decades even. But over the holidays, Greg and I did a marathon viewing of the TV show Freaks and Geeks, and one scene where the students are made to do ten laps around the gym set me off in a really uncomfortable way.

Because those ten laps around the gym – they were my greatest fear. The rest of the class would be finished and waiting while I and the other fat kid in the class had a couple of laps to go. Egged on by the gym teacher, the other, more athletic kids would taunt us. Lard ass. Fatso. Whale. Blob. I’d finish in tears, every time, humiliated, ashamed, full of self-hatred.

The funny bit is that it wasn’t that I didn’t have the energy – at school dances (and well into adulthood at nightclubs), I could spend hours on a dancefloor, leaving only to rehydrate. As a teenager, I’d regularly spend an afternoon riding my bike for 10 or 15 miles at a time. When I wasn’t on a bike I had ice skates or rollerskates on my feet. I walked the two miles to school most days.

I just wasn’t ever, in any capacity, sporty.

So while my friends all excitedly talk of their running goals and exploits, I get very tense. In my experience, the only thing runners like more than running is making other people run – and yelling at them in a humiliating way to “encourage” them. Even from people who profess to prefer running alone, because it makes them feel all zen, I am always inwardly cringing, waiting for the inevitable, “You should try it, I’ll bet you’d really like it!” even if my friends who are runners aren’t really pushy in that way.

Maybe, if I could get past that trigger, that might be true. But no amount of enthusiasm from someone else will ever overcome the really bad feelings I have embedded in my brain when it comes to running.

So for 2013, I resolve to never ever run – unless something that can kill me (and which I am not able to overpower) is chasing me. I ran once to save my life on the sandflats in the Bay of Fundy as the tide rushed in. I ran from a street fight in which headbangers came after – and outnumbered – my punk rock crew. I ran for the last bus to the suburbs from downtown Halifax on a Saturday night because I knew missing it would result in a screamfest and a crack upside the head when I eventually got home. And once, my maternal instinct kicked in, and I ran like the fucking wind to pry my dog’s neck from the jaws of a pitbull. (I don’t actually remember the running part of this last incident – I was at Point A and then at Point B, like magic, although observers say I did, in fact, run, with some great level of speed.)

But you know what? That’s enough running for me. I doubt I’ll ever get past the trigger that makes my brain associate the sport with feeling like a big, humiliated loser, and while I may well be wrong – we’ll never really know – I am doubtful that it will make me feel all alive and energized like it does for others.

To all my friends who have taken up running, either as a New Year’s resolution or at some previous point – good on you. I applaud your decision to include movement and fitness into your daily routine. Just please, please, please… don’t make me listen to you talk about it.

Well, the world didn’t end (in your face, Mayans!), and the sun is set to return. You can’t really beat that for good luck, can you?

Here’s to a great 2013. I’d say to a less-wacky 2013, but as my little friend makes very clear, less wacky = way less interesting.

Wishing you and yours a very joyous Solstice, and a Happy Crimbo.

Movies

If it’s just not Christmas with out Jimmy Stewart stuttering away on your boobtube, pass over It’s a Wonderful Life this year and instead check out the lovely film The Shop Around the Corner. Set in 1940s Budapest, and based on the stage play The Parfumerie (returning to Toronto’s SoulPepper Theatre in November 2013) this is the story of two co-workers who despise one another but turn out to actually be secret penpals. Directed by the inimitable Ernst Lubitsch, there are one or two culturally insensitive references (Hey, it’s in Hungary in 1940), but the film is otherwise charming.

If you pretend to hate Christmas but secretly have a soft spot for it, then Bad(der) Santa is probably for you. Billy Bob Thornton plays an alcoholic department store Santa who ends up taking care of a troubled kid. Notable for the “fuck me Santa!” sex scene with Lauren Graham, and in the x-rated version, some fun in the department store change rooms.

My favourite holiday movie is hard to track down, but should be a Canadian classic. In Dinner at Fred’s Gil Bellows stars as a Toronto businessman whose car breaks down in a small town just before Christmas. He takes a local named Fred (Kevin MacDonald) up on his offer to spend the night, only to discover he is trapped in Fred’s house forever because of the curse of a turkey that roams Fred’s yard. Parker Posey is brilliant as Fred’s sister who dreams of breaking the spell and moving to the big city. Plus great scenes with Christopher Lloyd and the turkey.

Television

Christmas is about getting drunk and doing drugs with your family. That’s all you need to know. Thankfully, the Trailer Park Boys Christmas special is not really representative of my Nova Scotian Christmases, but the sentiment is right on. Plus, you know, rum and Coke.

I can’t find a YouTube clip of Black Adder’s Christmas Carol, but it’s readily available on DVD. A remake of the Dicken’s classic, this is Rowan Atkinson et al at their finest.

If you like your Christmas vaguely creepy The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special might be up your alley. While it helps to have seen the whole series (so you understand that the black face, woman-abducting character of Papa Lazarou is not really intended to be a racial stereotype [wow, I make him sound sooo charming, don't I?]), this is a show that stands alone in its uniqueness and its creepiness. And if you haven’t seen the rest of the series, you’ll want to after viewing the holiday special.

Arm yourself with tissue before sitting down to the 3-part series This is England ’88. The This Is England series follows a group of skinheads in northern England throughout the 80s (starting with a movie, then a second series This Is England 86). It helps to have seen the previous series’ to know the background of the characters, but again, it works fine on its own as a Christmas special. Full of 80s holiday kitsch (including some seriously ugly holiday sweaters), but also a pervading sadness that culminates in the finale, I guarantee you’ll be bawling your face off by the end. (Woody and LOL 4ever!)

And finally, if the holidays just make you grumpy, the Christmas special for the UK show Grumpy Old Men will make you smile. Or at least, you’ll have someone to commiserate with. The Grumpy Old Men at Christmas (2003) was followed by Grumpy Old Women at Christmas (2004) and most of it is available on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Featuring interviews with British comedians, writers, satirists and others, you can watch Germaine Greer talk about how she’ll never cook a turkey, or Janet Street-Porter’s problems decorating her Christmas tree. If you really don’t like Christmas, this is the Christmas show for you!

I’ve been putting together a “Christmas Day dining for heathens” list since the first year we ran TasteTO, and it was very popular last year when I was writing for Toronto.com. So here it is again, modified and updated and fact-checked for your dining pleasure. (Parkdalers – the Beaver is closed on Christmas Day this year, so check the list below before heading out!)

As usual, I’ve not included a lot of Chinese restaurants because they are usually open on Christmas Day as a default. However, because Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year, and many Chinese-owned businesses are closed on Tuesdays, do yourself a favour and call ahead if you’ve got a favourite spot in mind.

Also, reservations are required for all of the options offered at hotels.

Restaurants

7 West (7 Charles Street West) stays open 24/7/365 and will be serving their regular menu on Christmas Day.

The Bagel House (1722 Avenue Road) is open from 7am to 9pm.

Caplansky’s Delicatessen (356 College Street) is open on all statutory holidays (including, or especially, Christmas) from 10am – 8pm, offering their menu of traditional Jewish deli food such as smoked meat sandwiches, latkes, gefilte fish and more.

Dhaba (309 King Street West) is open for dinner, serving flavourful Indian cuisine, starting at 5pm.

Fran’s has two locations (20 College Street and 200 Victoria Street) that are open 24/7/365, and the business district location (33 Yonge Street) will be open from 6am – 10pm. All three Fran’s will be serving their regular menu of diner fare.

The Lakeview (1132 Dundas Street West) is cooking up deep-fried turkey with all the fixings for $18. Comes with a slice of pumpkin pie and hey, they have Tofurky version as well. Open 24/7.

Marché in Brookfield Place (181 Bay Street) is open from 7:30am to 11pm offering their regular menu, plus probably lots of tasty holiday baking.

The Thompson Diner (550 Wellington Street West) is also open 24/7 and will be serving their usual upscale diner grub on Christmas day.

What A Bagel has three locations open on Christmas Day: 973 Eglinton Avenue West, 421 Spadina Road, and 2275 Yonge Street. All open at 7am, with closing hours that vary.

Hotels/ Hotel Restaurants

Azure, Intercontinental Toronto Centre (225 Front Street West), offers a Christmas brunch buffet with the best of brunch and Christmas dinner combined (pancakes AND turkey!) for $55 from 10am – 2pm, and a four-course dinner on Christmas day (choice of turkey or venison as a main) for $59.

Café Boulud (Four Seasons Hotel, 60 Yorkville Avenue) will be preparing a three-course prix fixe menu (with menu items such as lobster salad, fois gras, turkey with stuffing and roasted venison) for $85 per person.

Epic at the Royal York Hotel (100 Front Street West) offers a five-course Christmas Day dinner for $105. Or check out the buffet in the Imperial Room (seatings at 2pm or 6pm), for $115.

Hemispheres at the Metropolitan Hotel Toronto (110 Chestnut Street) is serving a three-course Christmas lunch for $45 per person and a four-course Christmas dinner for $65 per person.

Lai Wah Heen at the Metropolitan Hotel (110 Chestnut Street), will offer prix fixe dim sum menus at $36 or $48 per person, and a Winter Festival Prix Fixe dinner menu for $88 per person.

Toca at the Ritz Carlton (181 Wellington Street West) will be offering Christmas Day brunch from 11am – 4pm for $89 per person, and Christmas dinner (seatings start at 5pm) for $90 per person.

It used to be December was all about Santa Claus, but in recent years, North Americans are rediscovering Santa’s European sidekick. Krampus (who actually derives from Pagan mythology) is said to have accompanied Saint Nick on the evening of December 5th, leaving switches and coal for the bad children (or even abducting and torturing them) while Santa left presents for the good kids (hey, dude’s got a heavy workload as it is, why not contract out the beatings and torment?).

Krampus is now celebrated in parades, baked good and greeting cards. Here are some of my favourite Krampus images.

In the picture above, Krampus seems to have stopped for a snack with the children, and with the oranges and candies in his basket, it’s hard to tell if he’s really as mean as he seems.

Sometimes Krampus is too cute for his own good.

Here, Krampus looks more like Edward Gorey’s The Uninvited Guest, and the child, who can’t possibly have been bad at so young an age, seems nonplussed by his presence.

Krampus didn’t just take the bad children, he took the bad women too. So lest you’re thinking about getting uppity and disobeying your husband, just know, Krampus is coming for you. (Which makes me wonder if the character Papa Lazarou from The League of Gentlemen – he of the pegs and the stealing of wives – is meant to be a Krampus-like symbol.)

Sometimes though, Krampus gets more than he’s bargained for.

It is tradition to make cookies and bread in the form of Krampus, to be eaten on Saint Nicholas Day.

And Lindt makes a chocolate version, likely only available in Europe, which is too bad, because a chocolate Krampus would be awesome!

Wash it all down with a Krampus beer.

And while I’ve come across some fun Krampus t-shirts and there’s that ugly Krampus sweater making the social media rounds, you can be the star of any holiday party in your very own Krampus fez.

In my search for Krampus images, I came across this piece by the amazing artist Christopher Bonnette on his site Macula Art where you can also download the pattern for a paper Krampus.

And with a kiss from Krampus, I wish you a Happy Krampus Day!