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Lent, Chocolate, and White Male Authors
Mar. 5th, 2015 02:26 pmSo, I gave up chocolate for Lent.*
I got the idea that giving things up for Lent is about challenging yourself, and about freeing yourself from something that has gotten too tight a hold on you. (Maybe that's wrong; this is my first time Lenting, so I might not be getting it right--but that's what I thought was involved.)
I love chocolate. I don't need the good stuff--any Hershey bar is enough to fulfill that craving. As a direct result I'm pretty sure I eat more chocolate than is good for me; I eat (ate) chocolate every day. If I'm down to the last day's candy bar, I go to the store to get more. But not too much more because if I have too much chocolate in the house I don't just eat chocolate every day; I eat lots of chocolate until I run out.
You can see why this might be falling under the heading of "things that have gotten too tight a hold on you." So I decided to give it up for Lent.
I'm going to be honest here, it has been kind of tough. A couple of days ago I saw Girl Scouts selling cookies by the entrance to the grocery store. I had just seen one of those "girl scout cookies support communist lesbian feminist baby-eater I-don't-know-what" messages, so in the interest of supporting good things, I walked straight over with a big grin and bought a box of lesbian thin mints and a box of feminist tagalongs. I told them to keep the change from the $20 as a donation and strode happily into the store... before I remembered that I had given chocolate up for Lent and both these kinds of cookies are covered in chocolate. Crap.
There was a short but uncomfortable period of considering various options while my anticipation curdled to dismay. Realistically I was not going to have the cookies in the house but save them until Easter. Know your limits; not happening. I considered making an exception for Girl Scout Cookies because Good Cause but decided against it. I considered asking to switch types but realized I would just resent the non-chocolate cookies as poor replacements. So I took the cookies back to the Girl Scout table and asked them to send them to the troops.
And then went into the store and bought myself a pint of blueberries purely as consolation. Which is part of a larger pattern--since I can't have chocolate I have branched out in the treat department. I have had some hard caramels, some butterscotch candies, dried dates and dried apricots, licorice and grapes... the world is full of possible alternatives, most of which I had been ignoring to choose among the chocolates.
Furthermore when I go through the checkout line, I have to pass the impulse treats laid out at the end of the checkout stand. And I can't help but notice, now that I can't have chocolate, how nearly all of them *are* chocolate. Hershey Bars, Kit-Kats, M&Ms, Rolos, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, the only thing that isn't at least partly chocolate is the Payday bars. I never paid attention to that until this Lent, when denying myself the easy, habitual chocolate stripped my senses bare of habit and let me notice these things.
Are the chocolate companies happy that I've given up chocolate for Lent? They appear to be content with the knowledge that no matter what I give up, millions of other customers are making a bee-line for the chocolate. And realistically, come Easter morning I will be back to eating chocolate with the best of them. So I doubt they care, being grownups, and not noticeably insecure.
Recently Tempest Bradford (whose name seems poetically just at the moment) challenged her readers to stop reading the straight white male authors for a year. I bet doing such a thing is like giving up chocolate--that it's hard, but it reminds you of all the other alternatives out there, and also makes you aware of how the straight white male authors occupy a disproportionate amount of the store shelves and the impulse buy territory down by the cash register. Unfortunately a lot of Sad Puppy authors don't seem to be as grown-up about it as the chocolate companies. Perhaps they are not as confident that their customers will be back when Lent is over.
I am too lazy to really take up her challenge. But I am going to make an effort to seek out women authors and authors of color I hadn't previously read. Because chocolate is nice, but it's important to remember that there are a lot of other possibilities out there, and the easy impulse buy territory obscures that.
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*No, I am not converting. Nope, not considering it. This is about the Lenting not about the religioning.
I got the idea that giving things up for Lent is about challenging yourself, and about freeing yourself from something that has gotten too tight a hold on you. (Maybe that's wrong; this is my first time Lenting, so I might not be getting it right--but that's what I thought was involved.)
I love chocolate. I don't need the good stuff--any Hershey bar is enough to fulfill that craving. As a direct result I'm pretty sure I eat more chocolate than is good for me; I eat (ate) chocolate every day. If I'm down to the last day's candy bar, I go to the store to get more. But not too much more because if I have too much chocolate in the house I don't just eat chocolate every day; I eat lots of chocolate until I run out.
You can see why this might be falling under the heading of "things that have gotten too tight a hold on you." So I decided to give it up for Lent.
I'm going to be honest here, it has been kind of tough. A couple of days ago I saw Girl Scouts selling cookies by the entrance to the grocery store. I had just seen one of those "girl scout cookies support communist lesbian feminist baby-eater I-don't-know-what" messages, so in the interest of supporting good things, I walked straight over with a big grin and bought a box of lesbian thin mints and a box of feminist tagalongs. I told them to keep the change from the $20 as a donation and strode happily into the store... before I remembered that I had given chocolate up for Lent and both these kinds of cookies are covered in chocolate. Crap.
There was a short but uncomfortable period of considering various options while my anticipation curdled to dismay. Realistically I was not going to have the cookies in the house but save them until Easter. Know your limits; not happening. I considered making an exception for Girl Scout Cookies because Good Cause but decided against it. I considered asking to switch types but realized I would just resent the non-chocolate cookies as poor replacements. So I took the cookies back to the Girl Scout table and asked them to send them to the troops.
And then went into the store and bought myself a pint of blueberries purely as consolation. Which is part of a larger pattern--since I can't have chocolate I have branched out in the treat department. I have had some hard caramels, some butterscotch candies, dried dates and dried apricots, licorice and grapes... the world is full of possible alternatives, most of which I had been ignoring to choose among the chocolates.
Furthermore when I go through the checkout line, I have to pass the impulse treats laid out at the end of the checkout stand. And I can't help but notice, now that I can't have chocolate, how nearly all of them *are* chocolate. Hershey Bars, Kit-Kats, M&Ms, Rolos, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, the only thing that isn't at least partly chocolate is the Payday bars. I never paid attention to that until this Lent, when denying myself the easy, habitual chocolate stripped my senses bare of habit and let me notice these things.
Are the chocolate companies happy that I've given up chocolate for Lent? They appear to be content with the knowledge that no matter what I give up, millions of other customers are making a bee-line for the chocolate. And realistically, come Easter morning I will be back to eating chocolate with the best of them. So I doubt they care, being grownups, and not noticeably insecure.
Recently Tempest Bradford (whose name seems poetically just at the moment) challenged her readers to stop reading the straight white male authors for a year. I bet doing such a thing is like giving up chocolate--that it's hard, but it reminds you of all the other alternatives out there, and also makes you aware of how the straight white male authors occupy a disproportionate amount of the store shelves and the impulse buy territory down by the cash register. Unfortunately a lot of Sad Puppy authors don't seem to be as grown-up about it as the chocolate companies. Perhaps they are not as confident that their customers will be back when Lent is over.
I am too lazy to really take up her challenge. But I am going to make an effort to seek out women authors and authors of color I hadn't previously read. Because chocolate is nice, but it's important to remember that there are a lot of other possibilities out there, and the easy impulse buy territory obscures that.
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*No, I am not converting. Nope, not considering it. This is about the Lenting not about the religioning.
