Butterball Hotline Bling(ee)
Dames Nationals of the United States, We Have a Very Bossy Proposal for You.
No, President Bartlet. A DIFFERENT proposal:
Thanksgiving Should Be Demoted
The Facts:
Thanksgiving is too close to the Christmas/Chanukah/Winter Gift Giving Season.
Do to this proximity, we, the American public, receive insufficient time off from work to celebrate it, rendering the travel required to spend it with family both highly stressful and very expensive.
In addition to its temporal proximity, the thematic overlap between Thanksgiving and [insert your preferred Winter Gift Exchange here] is extreme-- as currently celebrated, both involve being with your family, eating loads of rich food, accomplishing many logistical tasks, attempting to win the love and approval of people frequently hard to delight, and expectations of Formal Festivity that can, if not carefully managed, quickly become oppressive.
If you are a member of a blended family, a far-flung family, an interfaith family, or an even partially estranged family, these complicating factors are unduly compounded. We love BOTH these holidays, but are exhausted just thinking about it!
This thematic and temporal closeness does a disservice to Thanksgiving, making it feel like little more than the dress rehearsal for the REAL family holiday-- all the anxiety and high-stakes of Winter Gift Giving, none of the material rewards.
IN LIGHT OF THESE FACTS!
We, your Dames, do formally propose that THE FOURTH OF JULY should replace Thanksgiving as Christmas/Chanukah/Winter Gift Giving’s family-centric holiday counterpart.
We anticipate the following happy outcomes
Thanksgiving-qua-Thanksgiving could recede slightly in importance, transforming from High Stakes Family Holiday B into Friendsgiving, a day celebrated with friends, chosen family and local communities, who currently have NO formal holiday and would surely benefit from one.
Instead of producing an endless slate of thinkpieces on how to get along with your extended family, America’s Internet Publications of Note could instead produce an endless slate of better thinkpieces addressing the complicated colonial history of Thanksgiving in this country.
It would allow greater distinctions to develop between our family-centric holidays. Instead of two, quite alike and right on each other’s heels, American families could have one High-Risk, High-Yield Winter Holiday, that demands dramatic feats of festivity but brings a sense of accomplishment, and one Low-Expectations, Low-Key Summer Holiday, suitably remote from all other major exertions, where they would be able to make only as much Formal Fuss as suited their taste.
Further, let us add: FIREWORKS!!
We know Canada has, as they so often do, already threaded this needle very neatly, with their Thanksgiving falling in mid-October rather than late November. Our hats are off to our maple-loving neighbors to the North. But we bet that they'd still benefit from making a nice fuss over Canada Day on July 1st.
International Dames Nationals, please tell us: What are the big family holidays in your countries? Are you smarter than we, your American Compatriots, or do you, too, have official & de facto national holidays in close proximity? Do your countries have an Independence Day-equivalent and, if yes, do you celebrate it with fireworks? If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, do you move the big Winter Solstice-affiliated Gift Giving Season to June/July, or has Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries led us astray? Please chime in!
Hit reply or tell us all about it on Twitter.
Reminder: Win GREAT ART by Kady MacFarlane!
You still have *FIVE DAYS* to enter our Very Bossy Giveaway for stellar fiber art pieces by beloved #Damesfav Kady MacFarlane. There are three ways to enter:
Favorite Kady's Etsy stop, YadyKates, at etsy.com/shop/yadykates to be kept up to date with new listings
Share Kady's Etsy shop, YadyKates, at etsy.com/shop/yadykates on your preferred social media outlet, along with your favorite listing/product/thingamabob
Share (retweet or reblog) Two Bossy Dames posts on the giveaway
Screenshot your entries and send them to abossygiveaway@gmail.com, limit 5 entries per person please.
The giveaway will run through December 1 when winners will be chosen at random and the grand prize and winners revealed in Friday, December 4th's newsletter. As a bonus, enjoy free shipping from YadyKates with the coupon code BOSSY through December 4. So, RUN DON'T WALK to Etsy and delight in her wares!!
The Franzenfreude You've All Been Waiting For!
Arguably, the Greatest Thing Dame M. Has Ever Made.
Dame S. was the guest critic on The Worst Bestsellers podcast this week. Treasured #Damespals Renata & Kait host this fortnightly skewering of books they read so you don’t have to. If you haven’t had the pleasure to hear them do their thing yet, some of our favorite episodes include Modelland (featuring a voice you all know & love), The [Utterly Bananas] Christmas Sweater and their Bests & Worsts of 2014, Part 1 & Part 2.
For this episode, we read and eviscerated Jonathan Franzen’s latest opus, PURITY. As longtime readers know, Dame S. has a complicated relationship with Le Franz and this episode is 88 hilarity-and-profanity-filled minutes of ranting about...well, about a lot of things. This is a long book. We cracked ourselves up and hope you’ll chuckle, too. If you’d rather skip to what to read instead of PURITY, we’ve got you covered, and Rebecca Solnit offers this helpful philosophical assist, as well.
Our Jointly Selected Top 2 Links!
We imagine that like.... everyone has already read these two, as they've been The Toast of the Internet Town all week, BUT! In case you missed either:
"Selfie: The revolutionary potential of your own face, in seven chapters" by Rachel Syme (recently much and correctly beloved by your Dames.) Choice excerpt:
Consider this: maybe a woman — or really any person — who takes and publishes many pictures of herself is simply ambitious. She wants people to recognize her image-making ability, her aesthetic boldness, her bravery for stepping into the frame and clicking send. When you tell someone that they have sent too many images of themselves into their feeds, when you shame them with cries of narcissism and self-indulgence, when you tell them that they are taking up too much virtual space (space that is at present, basically limitless, save for the invented boundaries of taste): you need to question your motives. Are you afraid of a person’s ambition to be seen? Where does that come from?
"On Pandering" by Claire Vaye Watkins, a stark and honest inspection of what it feels like when you realize you've ingested the Patriarchy and are unconsciously replicating it in your art. And-- via Twitter/Rusty Foster's Today in Tabs, how that process differs for Jacqui Shine, as a queer woman, and how it differs for Nicole Chung, as a woman of color.
This Week In Hamilton
May we all be this thrilled with life at least once a week.
This conversation between Phillipa Soo & Lea Salonga is wide-ranging and a true must-read on (among other things) Asian representation on Broadway.
Slate performs a noble act of service journalism by providing a round-up of some of the best #Ham4Ham shows, plus some historical, musical & social context.
Daveed Diggs & his friend Rafael Casal recreated some of their favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips frame for frame. There are eight of these little gems and each one is so perfect. You’ll want to gobble them all up in one 5-minute burst. (Alert Reader Alyssa shared this perfection with us!)
Thrill to the staging of “Yorktown” - Laurens leaping in from the left, redefining bravery! The dancing! HERCULES MULLIGAN! We won! We won! We won! WE WON!
We believe the children are our future, especially when they perform a really great ensemble version of Wait For It.
A Schuyler Sisters Duvet Cover: why not?
Talib Kweli analyzes Hamilton’s lyrics from a rapper’s perspective. Surprise! He thinks it’s really great!
I mean, this is a thing that could happen to anyone. Whoops!
Beyond the Lights Tweetalong Reminder!
Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAAAAAY! If you’re in the US this weekend, we figure you’ll have had enough of the holiday & will be ready to make the transition into the working week with a deliciously swoony romance.
If you, like Dame Sophie, missed Beyond The Lights this one in theaters last year, it’s kind of What if The Bodyguard, But Good? The super-talented and beautiful Gugu Mbatha-Raw (who you may remember from Belle) deals with the uglier aspects of pop stardom and pursues love with a very handsome police officer.
When: Sunday, 11/29 | 7:30 PM
What & Where: Beyond The Lights - find it on Netflix & join us on Twitter using #beyondlights
Two Bossy Dames Are The Trash of the Thing
(As are @MrsFridayNext & @sophiebiblio!)
Bossy Extras, like The Love Boat, are waaaaaiting for youuuu
on Tumblr.
viaelphabelle-of-the-ball.