Blog Archives

Current Issues  /  PotD  /  science
Science, Psychology, and Bullies
March 14, 2016
charles i. letbetter - science, psychology and bullies

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’ —Isaac Asimov

 

charles i. letbetter - science, psychology, and bullies

Science depends on replication. Psychology depends on publication. Bullies mar both.

Creative people walk a fine line between brilliance and insanity. We know this, or at least, we think we do. Anecdotal observation tells us the premise is true even if there is no research to support the observation. Science, however, actually does confirm a link between creativity and mental illness. Maybe. That report was published in 2010, but the whole premise was later brought into question when additional studies failed to replicate the results. Arguments between researchers are ongoing, but trust me, we’re all nuts.

Science relies on research that can be duplicated. A scientific theory is just a nice idea until someone can not only prove their concept to a reasonable degree (100% certainty is often impossible), but someone else has to be able to copy that research and achieve the same results. Studies cannot be considered accurate if there is no corroboration. That’s just the way science works.

Well, that’s the way science is supposed to work.

The field of psychology has long had a PR problem and much of that problem revolves around the difficulty that exists in duplicating their research. It’s one thing when scientists are doing research on inert materials or with factors that are relatively absolute. Psychologists, however, have to do their research with humans, which means they’re working with a base set that, at its very core, cannot be duplicated exactly. Sometimes, they can’t even get close. Two different study groups in two different parts of the world may duplicate research methods exactly and still come up with wildly different results, not because the methodology was flawed, but because of basic differences in the humans studied. This makes finding necessary corroboration difficult, and significant when it happens.

So, let’s take a study done some 20 years ago. This study, which involves chocolate chip cookies and self-control, has been the basis for 83 similar studies and almost 200 additional experiments, all coming to the same general conclusion. So, one would think that this passes the scientific requirements for proven theory. Pretty much everyone in the field of psychology accepted this research as fact.

Then, last week an announcement was made that brings all that research into question. There is a paper set to publish next month that directly challenges all the findings from the past 20 years on this particular subject. Most importantly, for this conversation, it challenges how psychological research is performed and the common use of macro-analysis in assessing that research. What the paper seems to infer is that huge bodies of established psychological research are wrong because of errors in macro-analysis.

How does this affect you and me? Everything your therapist told you may be pure bunk. That doesn’t mean psychotherapy isn’t helpful; don’t go cancelling that appointment just yet. But people who rely on the accuracy of that information, which not only includes psychotherapists but aspects of law enforcement, retail planning, marketing, transportation, and everything else that relies on studies of human behaviour, now have more reason than ever to question the veracity of information being presented as fact.

While psychology is the field currently in the hot seat, you should know that questions concerning the accuracy of published research have been around for a while. A study from 2005 claims that most research findings are false. But then, an article for the American Psychological Association questioned whether there is a reproducibility crisis.

There are a crap ton of reasons these fallacies exists, but what they all ultimately come down to are money (no big surprise) and what Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert calls shameless bullies. There are millions of dollars in funding on the line, not to mention tenure, based on a researcher’s ability to publish their findings, and the greater number of scientific publications have shown a distinct bias for publishing papers that are positive and declare new findings that, at least on the surface, seem to move science forward. And while the scientific method requires that research be duplicated, there is considerable animosity between original researchers and those who would reproduce their work. Katie Palmer’s article in Wired last week, “Psychology Is In Crisis Over Whether It’s In Crisis,” had so much back and forth on the issue that my  head was nearly spinning by the time I waded through everything. Folks with Ph. D.’s can be just as mean as street hoods, they merely use words that cut sharper than a switchblade.

How does one resolve an issue like this when the very methods that might solve the problems are part of the problem?

Dear science: we need you to get your act together and quickly. We’ve trusted you, put faith in your findings, confident that research that was duplicated was accurate. Now, we are beginning to question whether we know anything at all. Finding out our science is skewed is rather on par with finding out those deities we believed in probably don’t exist. Who and what are we supposed to believe? Who and what are we supposed to trust? Is anything real?

I can handle psychology being in flux for a while. After all, scientists are just as crazy as creatives. Just don’t tell me what we know about gravity is wrong; it’s Monday and I might come unglued.

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Hashtag Philosophy  /  Mythology
#WhyIDidntGetIntoHeaven
March 13, 2016

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. —Mark Twain

 

charles i. letbetter - #WhyIDidn'tGetIntoHeaven

Concepts of Heaven and who gets in are quite subjective. Tossing belief systems aside, why would you not get in?

Having been raised in a Southern baptist church, concepts of Heaven and Hell were burned into my mind, or sometimes, the seat of my pants. Poppa would pull out the fire and brimstone about once a year; that was about all he could muster because he really wasn’t that kind of preacher. Heaven was a more frequent topic, and one much easier for him to discuss, but there was always that uncomfortable balance of not making everyone suicidal in their desire to get there. He was careful to not make Heaven sound so wonderful that someone might want to organize a bus trip right then and there.

Most every religion has its concept of some form of paradise in the afterlife. For some it is achieving a total state of Nirvana, for others it is becoming god of one’s own planet. There are mythologies by the hundreds and each has some form of immortal existence divided subjectively either between the good and the bad, or the believers and the heathen infidels. Those who are rooted firm in their faith are adamant that they’re going to the place of the divine and the rest of us are not.

But if we miss heaven, or paradise, or Nirvana, or whatever, it is not without cause; there has to be a reason. Even though the rules are highly subjective, again, based on one’s belief system, there are reasons one might not make it through those pearly gates. When I saw this morning that #WhyIDidntGetIntoHeaven was trending on Twitter, I just couldn’t resist seeing what wonderful excuses people had created for failing to meet St. Peter. Here are just a few samples:


(You might have to be as old as me to get that one)

That’s just a brief sample. As one might expect, there are some that are too profane even for my taste, and there are more than a few quoting Bible verses or sections of the Qu’ran or questioning the very existance of such a place. Those are the folks who don’t get the humor in a hashtag game such as this. The whole point is to momentarily toss theology in the garbage and not take ourselve, nor our religion, quite so seriously. No serious disrespect is meant, we’re just poking a little fun at mythologies whose subjectivity can be so incredibly broad and open to interpretation.

So, what would my reasons be for #WhyIDidntGetIntoHeaven? Some of the best excuses have been taken already, but we did come up with a few reasons. How could we not?

I should probably include something about the pictures at the top of this page, too, but that doesn’t make as much sense when one is reading from Twitter.

Again, this is just fun. If you didn’t check your self-rightesousness at the door I really have to question why you bothered reading at all.

Oh, and what was I listening to while writing this? You know my habit. After all, it is Sunday.

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Current Issues  /  PotD
History Repeats: 1968 in 2016
March 13, 2016
charles i. letbetter - history repeats 1968 in 2016

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. —Karl Marx

 

charles i. letbetter - history repeats 1968 in 2016

The violence seen at political rallies this week remind us of a time that was actually worse. As history repeats itself, are we in for a violent summer?

The scenario is all too familiar. A political event in Chicago. Police and Secret Service highly visible with instructions to keep protesters from interfering with the event. Protesters interfere anyway. Police react. People are hurt. Several are arrested.

But wait, we’re not talking about events of this past week. I’m referring to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. If you think this year’s political cycle is the craziest thing ever, then please allow me to give you a brief history lesson. While we are still relatively early in the year, and yes, history repeats far too often, things will have to get a lot worse for this election year to equal the chaos of 48 years ago.

1968 was, by any account, a watershed year. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been murdered on April 4, setting off unrest around the country. The war in Vietnam was not going in our favor, with the North Vietnamese having launched the Tet offensive at the first of the year. Pop artist Andy Warhol was shot April 3 (he recovered). Anti-draft protests were already common and continued to intensify. CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite aired a special, Who, What, When, Where, Why? directly contradicting official accounts of how things were going in Vietnam. President Johnson announced he would not run for re-election.

Political scheduling back then was more condensed than it is now. Candidates were still making up their mind whether to run as late as April and May, completely missing the early state primaries because they could get at-large delegates through backroom dealings. Care was taken to craft a strong anti-war platform to distance candidates from President Johnson’s policies that had dragged his popularity down to something in the neighborhood of 32%.

Then, California happened. Senator Robert Kennedy won the state’s primary rather handily; it looked like he could unite factions and take the nomination from Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He had been celebrating with supporters at a rally in San Fransisco and as he is leaving the stage, just after midnight  on June 5, Kennedy is shot and killed by Sirhan Sirhan. The split in the party was now unreconcilable.

While the nation mourned, summer grew hot as Richard Nixon slugged it out with Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan for the Republican Nomination. On the Democratic ticket, Vice President Humphrey considered himself a shoe-in, but still faced strong competition from Senators George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy. In the middle of all that, Alabama Governor George Wallace was running an independent campaign that seemed to have all the Southern states sewn up.

By the time of the Democratic convention in Chicago, hard lines had already been drawn. Using a system, not unlike the super-delegates available today, Humphrey had already clinched the nomination, but several states threatened to change their votes. Abbie Hoffman had mobilized some 100,000 young people, ostensibly members of the Youth International Party (YIPPIES) with the specific goal of disrupting the convention. McGovern and McCarthy had their protesters as well, both inside and outside the convention center. Infamous Chicago Mayor Richard Daly, a supporter of Humphrey, responded to the threats by, among other things, calling out the National Guard and surrounding the convention center with fencing topped with barbed wire. Allegedly, troops and police had been given the order to “shoot to kill,” but that was never directly proven.

Wait, it gets worse. In the hot August heat, the air conditioning at the convention center kept going out. Taxi drivers went on strike. Telephone operators went on strike, and in 1968 that really was a big deal. Phone service could not be guaranteed. Television was limited to broadcasting from either inside the Conrad hotel or inside the convention hall, so they would have to use film, which had to be processed, to cover the riots outside.

The convention was a literal bloodbath, with both protesters and delegates running afoul of police and National Guardsmen. Lincoln Park, where many of the Yippies were camping, was bombed with tear gas which then contaminated the hotel rooms of delegates staying nearby. Free-for-alls erupted on the convention floor as delegates argued over platform planks. The worst day of rioting, August 25, came as delegates argued over the peace plank of the platform. As protestors attempted to march on the convention center, they clashed with police and Guardsmen resulting in hundreds of injuries, including reporters and doctors attempting to help. Nothing like it has been seen since. Chicago police recorded almost 600 arrests, including reporter Hal Bruno who is now political director for ABC news. Everyone widely considered the possibility that the United States was on the brink of collapse.

We didn’t collapse. We know how the election, and the war, turned out. In hindsight, we can see where the mistakes were made and wish things had turned out differently, but the point is that through such a dark and divided time in our history, we survived. If history repeats, we have that success on which to build.

As I watch the campaign rhetoric float across my social media accounts, I see concern in many voices that we are widely divided as a nation and many wonder if we can survive the deep differences of opinion. The scenes in Chicago and St. Louis are frighteningly familiar for those of us old enough to remember. The frustration of young people who feel the government has let them down is exactly what allowed Abbie Hoffman to mobilize so many thousands. Racial tensions are also every bit as high now as they were in 1968 and who would be surprised if we were to see Gloria Steinem leading a National Organization of Women (NOW) march on either Cleveland or Philadelphia. Seeing CBS news journalist Sopan Deb manhandled and arrested by Chicago police was chilling.

Yet, we’ve not hit that tipping point, and I hope we don’t. The death of Robert Kennedy played heavily into the subsequent violence in Chicago. Fortunately, violence this year has not reached the point of homicide. After 1968, Secret Service agents were assigned to leading candidates and we’ve already seen them at work. However, we must also remember the attempted assassination of George Wallace during the 1972 campaign, which the Secret Service was not able to stop.

We’re just now hitting mid-March. We’ve summer yet to go and climatology forecasts predict it could get hot. Perhaps it’s comforting to know that if history repeats itself we’ve survived such turmoil before. Let’s hope this isn’t that year. We don’t need another 1968. We don’t need another President Nixon.

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Advertising  /  Fashion
Are Networks Censoring Sex or Size?
March 12, 2016
charles i. letbetter - are networks censoring sex or size?

If you ask men about their body image, they will tell you they look better than they do. And if you ask a woman, she’ll tell you she looks worse. —Gloria Steinem

 

charles i. letbetter - network censoring sex or size

ABC and NBC say they turned down Lane Bryant ads due to sexuality violations, but is the real reason a matter of size?

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of trying to put on an item of clothing that you’ve worn dozens, if not hundreds of times before, and having it not fit. I’ve had that happen twice in the past month with two separate pair of pants. One popped a button when I sat down and the zipper broke on the other. Sigh. I’ll blame faulty manufacturing for the zipper because there’s no way to prove that it wasn’t, but the button popping is more difficult to excuse. I’ve sat here eating chocolate for a month (because it makes you smarter) and not getting any exercise. So, instead of losing 20 pounds, which is what I need to do, I packed more on. Needless to say, my current body image is not positive. I am not a fan of my current size.

For women, body size and body image is an even more critical issue. In extreme cases, negative body image leads to severe eating disorders and even death. That’s why a number of retailers, including Dove and Lane Bryant, have created ad campaigns around supporting a positive body image, regardless of one’s size. Even Sports Illustrated got in on the act casting curvaceous model Ashley Graham for one of the covers of their famous swimsuit edition. Supporting a positive body image among women is a good thing, and has even proven to be good for business.

So why, then, did two major television networks, ABC and NBC, refuse to air the new Lane Bryant ad featuring Ashley Graham? NBC claims the ad violates “broadcast indecency guidelines.” I’ve searched through the ad meticulously, though, and fail to see how that claim is justified. NBC says they’ll air the ad if edits are made, but Lane Bryant says the ad is just fine the way it is and I tend to agree. In fact, so does pretty much every other broadcast outlet out there. No one else has turned down the ad for any reason.

The two networks can claim the ad is too sexy, but the appearance is that body size seems to be the greater issue than sexuality. Take a look at other ads both networks run and there would seem to be a double standard. Neither network seems to have any difficulty playing dangerously with the censors when the bodies are lean and fit, so why do they have a problem with bodies that have curves, bodies that are real, and bodies slightly larger than the size 2 that dominates most of fashion advertising? Here’s the ad. Take a look for yourself:

I could sit here and harp on the issue all day, but what ultimately matters is how you and I respond. Support those who support a positive body image and size. Censorship, for any reason, is just not acceptable.

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Current Issues  /  PotD
Food Chain Disruptions
March 12, 2016
charles i. letbetter - food chain disruption

Food, in the end, in our own tradition, is something holy. It’s not about nutrients and calories. It’s about sharing. It’s about honesty. It’s about identity. —Louise Fresco

 

charles i. letbetter - food chain disruptions

When it comes to eating healthy, when has the rule ever not been one of moderation?

The little ones in our house have become food critics. They have taken to watching Food Channel re-runs on Netflix. Things such as Cupcake Wars and Worst Cook in America can keep them occupied for several seconds at a time, between bursts of body-slamming each other into the couch. On one hand, the shows have ignited their interest in food and cooking, especially in regard to cupcakes. On the other hand, however, it has made them much more picky about things that six- and seven-year-olds really shouldn’t notice, such as plating and food presentation.

Last night, as I served the little darlings a dinner of baked cod with a wheat cracker crust and steamed veggies, little man looked up from his plate and informed me, “I really think you could have crushed the crackers more; there are some pieces there that are really too large.”

He’s lucky I let him eat.

Knowing what to eat seems to become increasingly more difficult with every day. The Nestlé company issued yet another recall yesterday, this time for frozen pizza, Lean Cuisine, and various Stouffer’s Lasagna. The problem? Glass in the spinach. I’m still trying to figure out how glass gets in spinach in the first place, but then, I never have really understood how mass production of frozen food works, either. While frozen is, admittedly, a wonderful convenience on those nights when I’m exhausted, I would still rather order out for fresh pizza than settle for frozen. We just don’t consume that much of it because the taste isn’t there.

Putting healthy food on our plates doesn’t really seem like that big a challenge, in my opinion. We typically know our schedules in advance, we can look at the weather report and guess which days are going to be physically challenging for me, and we plan our menus accordingly. During the summer and early fall, we tilt heavily toward fresh veggies, especially things we grow in our own garden. During the winter and early Spring, before things have a chance to grow, we rely more on things I can put in the slow cooker of the morning and not have to worry about. Eating reasonably healthy isn’t difficult for us.

However, we are fortunate to not have a lot of restrictions on what we eat, either. None of us have serious food allergies or sensitivities, so I don’t have to worry about making substitutions for ingredients that are natural.  Not everyone has that advantage. There are millions of people who are diabetic and have to avoid sugars, for example, and finding substitutes that work in various recipes can really be a huge challenge, especially when everything artificial seems to have issues.

The latest sweetener to run into problems is Splenda. A study published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health this week found “increased incidence (p < 0.01) of hematopoietic neoplasias in males” when sucralose, the primary ingredient in Splenda, was injected into rat feed on a regular basis. In other words, regular consumption of Splenda causes cancer. This study feeds into a long-standing claim against the sweetener that, until now, has had no basis. A 2015 article on Snopes  lists such cancer claims as false. Splenda, which, by the way, is owned and manufactured by Indianapolis-based Heartland Food Products Group, was quick to dismiss the study, stating:

Sucralose has been extensively researched, with more than 110 studies conducted over a 20-year period.  These studies include rigorous testing to specifically identify any potential for causing cancer.  Worldwide regulatory authorities, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Food Safety Authority, Health Canada and the World Health Organization, have reviewed these studies and confirm that results show no link between sucralose and cancer.  The U.S. National Cancer Institute also supports this conclusion. 

I’m not one to decry “artificial” foods that are designed to help people with food-related diseases, such as diabetes and Crones, be able to enjoy relatively normal lives and eat the dishes they have traditionally enjoyed. Every food contains chemicals, folks. Most chemicals are naturally occurring and to the extent they can be extracted and used to help people, I’m all for that and can even encourage further experimentation and exploration. Natural foods can kill even more quickly than artificial ones if ingested by the wrong people.

What’s more likely to cause danger is the way we prepare our food, not the food itself. For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns that over-cooking potatoes, whether fried or baked, can increase amounts of naturally-occurring acrylamide, which really does create a variety of health issues. Understand, this problem occurs even with organically grown potatoes. The chemical is there regardless of how the potato is grown or harvested. What makes the difference is the length of cooking time.

We have a choice. We can either live in fear of everything we might want to put in our mouths, or we can use some good old common sense when choosing and preparing our food. There is very little that is actually bad for you in reasonable doses. Yes, some of the chemicals that occur naturally in our food can also be used in plastics or household cleaners, but the proportions are so outrageously different as to not be comparable. One can die just as quickly from so-called “clean” food when it is prepared incorrectly or smothered in excessive fats and sugars. Eating an all-natural diet doesn’t help one bit if one is consuming 7,000 calories in a single meal. The rule of moderation still applies for the vast majority of healthy people.

If you’re having difficulty comprehending all this, or don’t know who to believe, maybe you just need to eat more chocolate. Chocolate makes you smarter. Run with that. We’ll all have a better day.

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Fashion
That CFDA Report on NYFW Isn’t Helping
March 10, 2016
charles i. letbetter - cfda report on nyfw

Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it. —Groucho Marx

 

charles i. letbetter - CFDA report

What good is a report that spends ten pages talking and still says nothing?

Everyone in and out of fashion has known for the past couple of years that the whole construct of fashion weeks need to change. The most recent season is a perfect example of why. Some shows are customer-centric and are heavy on spectacle. Some shows are buyer-focused and try to totally block out consumers from attending their events. Other designers try to merge traditional runway presentations with various social-media tie-ins using apps such as Instagram and Periscope. There was little feeling of cohesion at any of the four major cities but, at least, the governing bodies in Milan and Paris both made statements that they’re not planning on changing from the traditional format. While that decision may yet come back to haunt them, they deserve some credit for making a definitive statement on which labels, designers, buyers, and editors can all depend.

For New York Fashion Week, the Council of Fashion Designers in America (CFDA) is responsible for the NYFW schedule. However, they do not have any logistical control nor any authority in telling designers and labels what they can or cannot do. Without anyone to tell designers no, NYFW has become the largest fashion week in the world. This past season saw more than 275 designers making some form of presentation during an eight-day period. This does not include events such as the Saint Laurent ready-to-wear show in Los Angeles just before NYFW kicked off. This is great news for the city of New York. NYFW generates more revenue than the Olympics or the Super Bowl. However, the environment makes it difficult for designers who have little or no name recognition to draw the attention of buyers and editors who are already swamped.

Just how difficult is it to get noticed at NYFW? Consider that, at my peak in 2014, I struggled, and often failed, to make it through eight shows a day, and that was when the tents at Lincoln Center still provided a central location for the majority of major shows. I topped out at 67 shows that week. That means I missed roughly 75% of the shows! I only made it through 23 this season, which means more than 200 presentations escaped our view. There simply is not enough time in a day to cover everything.

Getting noticed isn’t the only problem designers have at NYFW, though. As technology has changed, the current schedule of showing a collection, taking orders, then delivering on those orders in 4-5 months has deteriorated. The causes are obvious. Smaller ateliers with only an online presence may seem a small threat when viewed one at a time, but together they take millions of dollars out of the retail flow. Fast fashion houses such as H&M and Zara completely turn over their inventory every eight weeks, with new items arriving almost daily. Consignment and resale shopping has also grown dramatically the past five years. All this together, along with others such as online-only discounters, represent billions of dollars coming out of traditional retail, severely impacting fashion’s traditional flow.

Oh, but there’s still more. Now that a large number of fashion shows are streamed live on the Internet and/or mobile apps, in addition to live or nearly live pictures on Instagram, NowFashion, and Vogue, among others, consumers see the new styles, and want the new styles when they see them, but those same styles are old news by the time they actually hit stores 4-5 months later. By the time clothes are on store shelves, fast fashion retailers and online discounters have already produced and sold enough knock-offs that the “new” stuff feels old when it arrives.

Then, there’s the added fact that many designers are flat out exhausted by the current schedule. With many brands supporting spring/summer, resort, pre-fall, fall/winter, homme spring/summer, and homme fall/winter, there is a new deadline for designers every other month, or it would be every other month if the calendar made any sense. Dates actually overlap so designers are often working on four different collections at any given time.

We’ve seen these problems building for the past five years; they are neither secret nor surprise. With the loss of major sponsorship for NYFW after Mercedes-Benz exited last year, there was little question that something needs to be done. The question is: what? To that end, the CFDA hired big-five firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to help study the problem. Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Bring is someone objective and let them help.

Yeahhhhhh, about that …

Last week, the CFDA released BCG’s report. You can read the whole thing here if you wish; it doesn’t take all that long. There are a lot of pictures. What was the final conclusion after all this time and money was spent? Look for yourself:

While the CFDA will not promote only one specific idea at this time, it was imperative to bring out all the issues. It will encourage designers to try and experiment with new concepts and will foster continued conversations on the topic through stakeholder meetings, panel conversations, and workshops throughout the year. The CFDA owns the New York Fashion Calendar and will accommodate all types of shows and events and continue to support all designers regardless of how and when they show

For those of you not versed in consultant-speak, please allow me to translate for you: “Do whatever the fuck you want and we’ll stand here with our thumbs up our butts holding the calendar. You have our best wishes.”

This sorry excuse for a statement ultimately amounts to no statement at all and renders the whole report pointless. Void of any guidelines, and with a decree that they’ll support whatever a designer/label chooses to do, CFDA essentially gives up NYFW to complete anarchy with the door wide open for mayhem. While the report recognizes all the pertinent issues and accurately assesses the options, what was needed was for the CFDA to make a choice. Choose a method, perhaps a partnership between two methods, and say, “Hey, this is what NYFW can support, anything else and you’re own your own.” Instead, get nothing.

I can understand how the CFDA and BCG came to this conclusion. Read between the lines and the consultant speak and it seems rather obvious there is a preference for an in-season hybrid that uses capsule collections for sale at show times with the remainder of the stock arriving later. However, given they interviewed such a very small number of people (50 total), all it takes is one or two people voicing opposition to raise concern. Acting as a rule-setting authority is new ground for the CFDA, which still suffers from a lot of who-died-and-left-you-in-charge attitudes among its rank and file. Rather than risk upsetting any one group of designers, they punted, tossed everything on the table, and are waiting to see what happens next.

NYFW needs strong, authoritative leadership. Diane von Furstenberg has done well as the board’s chair, but the rest of the CFDA board of directors is a mish-mesh designers with such a disparate set of needs and interests that I doubt they can be unanimous on anything. Theirs is a society in which even one person not on board with the plan gets noticed by the press, and ultimately consumers. Designers are, inherently, under obligation to put the interests of their own labels ahead of those of the group. Such an organization has no business being in authority over a set of events that require definitive guidelines and objectivity.

What am I saying? The CFDA needs to let someone else handle New York Fashion Week, its calendar, its structure, and its management. NYFW needs an owner who can be objective, who understands the changing dynamics, and more than anything, understands that if you’re trying to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. For designers to manage NYFW is a severe conflict of interest and this CFDA report is evidence of how powerless the agency is to create any real and valuable change to NYFW.

Please, Ms. von Furstenberg, start looking for a managing third party now. While it’s not likely one can be found in time to save the trainwreck in September, perhaps next February won’t hold the chaos that this one did. Without strong leadership, and soon, NYFW as we know it may totally disappear. And this report? It does no one any good at all.

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Current Issues  /  Mythology  /  PotD
Love And Loss (of rights and dignity)
March 10, 2016
charles i. letbetter - love and loss of rights and dignity

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others. —Will Rogers

 

charles i. letbetter - love and loss of rights and dignity

Love is such a beautiful thing, so why is there still an effort to deny people the right to love?

I don’t watch reality television as a habit, so I wasn’t even aware that celebrity personal trainer Jillian Michaels has her own show until yesterday. Apparently she does, however, and having all that production ability available allowed her to create a touching video which she used to ask her partner of seven years, Heidi Rhodes, to marry her. I could be cynical and question whether the whole thing was done just for the television cameras, and certainly, since the show isn’t done live, the timing is ratings fodder, but why choose cynicism over love? The video, which you can watch here, is one of those that can only be the product of a long-term relationship full of ups and downs and tugs at the heartstrings of anyone with a romantic bone in their body. I find it wonderful that they’ve not only had such a great relationship, but that their rights to recognize that relationship through marriage have been affirmed across the whole country. This is progress.

Oh, wait, those rights may not actually extend to the entire United States. Because Puerto Rico is not a full-fledged state, there is a frightening chance that last year’s Supreme Court ruling regarding gay marriage doesn’t apply to the unincorporated state. The federal judge based his ruling on the concept that only fully incorporated states enjoy the full protection of the Constitution and that, by extension, the 14th amendment does not apply to Puerto Rico. This is significant not only in terms of LGBT rights, but the full realm of civil rights based on the 14th amendment. If the judge’s ruling that the 14th amendment doesn’t apply at all, then all the civil rights gained over the past 60 years would not apply either. Maybe this will be what pushes Puerto Rico toward statehood.

Even on the mainland, though, the fight to deny rights to LGBT peoples continues. Democratic senators in Missouri filibustered for 39 hours this week in an attempt to block a so-called religious freedom bill that would, in the name of preserving religious rights, denies rights to LGBT peoples. This is significant because the bill is part of a push in that state to create a constitutional amendment that is inherently restrictive in the name of religious freedom. The bill still has to pass the state legislature before going for a statewide vote, so the matter is far from over. Still, the fact that the denial of basic rights is still an issue is severely disturbing.

That religious freedom would be on the wrong side of human rights is hardly anything new. That Christianity, specifically, has to be coerced over time to accept even the most basic of human rights has been a well-documented fact in the US since the mid-19th century. Christianity has been pro-slavery, against women’s rights (including the right to vote), anti-semitic, anti-segregation, and anti-voting rights, and ultimately found themselves on the wrong side of each of those issues. The fact that the Ku Klux Klan, as hate-filled as they are, is based on what they consider core Christian values does not go without notice.

Yet, even among Christians, there is division when it comes to LGBT rights. I was severely disappointed when the Stockton Leadership Foundation, a non-profit religiously-motivated organization, decided to cancel Stockton, Arizona’s community Easter Sunrise Service rather than include a church comprised largely of LGBT members. How these people can celebrate Easter at all after such a disgusting display of anti-Christlike attitudes is beyond me. The Foundation had never planned on inviting the Valley Ministries congregation, but after that invitation was “accidentally” sent their attempts to disinvite and then further diminish any role of the small 70-member church were more like the actions of the ancient Sanhedrin rather than the teachings of the one crucified with their approval.

Spring is a time of renewal, of growth, and newness; a perfect time for love and engagement and all those cute emotional feels. The ancient pagans seem to have gotten it right, with celebrations that involved dancing and singing and naked frivolity. Doesn’t that seem so much better, to celebrate love, than to create loss by diminishing and removing someone’s rights and dignity? Perhaps, in the name of religious freedom, the answer is for all of us, Christian, Jew, Muslim, gay, straight, transgendered, bi, curious, questioning, Pagan or atheist, to dance naked around a bonfire together. Why? Because when we strip away all the titles and labels, we’re all just human, we’re all brothers and sisters, one species of being. Create love, not loss.

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Art  /  Photography  /  PotD
Shattering Old Boxes
March 9, 2016
charles i. letbetter - shattering old boxes

Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don’t fit into boxes. —Tori Amos

 

charlesi i. letbetter - shattering old boxes

Looking at old things in new ways, looking at new things in old ways, both have the ability to shatter the old boxes that define how we think

I, personally, don’t use mobile apps like Timehop, but I’ve plenty of friends that do. Yesterday, one reposted a quote of mine that had particularly inspired them. At first, I was flattered, but then I felt the conviction of my own words. The quote was from five years ago. Here it is:

charles i. letbetter - shattering old boxes

Boxes are good for capturing the status quo, for preserving things that might one day be worth putting in a museum if only for the purpose of reminding us how narrow our thinking was in the past. They give us a place to put the things with which we have become bored, those things that might have amused us yesterday but now seem cliché and stagnant. Boxes hide what deserves to be hidden because, like Sinatra sang, “regrets, I’ve had a few.”

Boxes have their purpose, but none of them involve crawling inside and keeping ourselves contained. Yet, that is exactly what we are inclined to do, and one of the reasons that I found this quote so convicting is that I have not stayed true to my own words. I let the opinions of others keep me in a box that I have no business occupying. If I am to thrive, if I am to be at my creative best, then I have to not only step out of those boxes, I have to completely destroy them, shatter their walls, decimate their covers, so that I can never return.

Boxes are restricting, and I have always disliked restrictions. I dislike anyone telling me that I can’t do something. I also dislike limitations, though more frequently than not there is little I can do about them. If I had my way, 3D or virtual reality imaging would be much more advanced than current technology allows. My mind wants to capture images with depth and be able to manipulate the aspects of that depth in a creative fashion. I want to explore what I dream, to create from my imagination. Limitations are probably the most difficult box from which to break free, but even attempting to throw off those limitations is better than letting them keep one tied down.

If we are in a box, any box, we cannot fulfill our potential because potential exceeds the bounds of any container. We all have the potential to be something far greater than our current selves can imagine and there’s absolutely no chance of finding out what that is if we fail to ever leave our box.

I am happy that the weather is warming up, that an early spring may be on the horizon. With the fall/winter fashion season ending today, I have more time to explore, to get out and walk, or take a bus, and spend time finding things that are new and different. A lot has changed around town during the winter and I’m anxious to get out and explore. Getting out of the house is getting out of a literal box.

Beyond such physical acts of exploration, though, breaking down the boxes in our minds may be even more challenging. We have this habit of compartmentalizing our thoughts, which serves an important purpose in helping us keep things organized so that we’re not overwhelmed. That compartmentalization fails us, though, when we begin to think that the boxes into which we have put things are the only places those things should be.

One of the best tools, for me, is radio. Radio works specifically because, unlike almost everything else around me, it is not inherently interactive. Yes, I choose the station and I choose when and where I want to listen, but once I’ve made those choices what comes next is out of my control and sometimes that’s a good thing. When I’m not in control, I am open to new ideas, new concepts, and new music that I might not have chosen in a fully interactive environment.

I especially find TED Radio effective at helping me shatter the walls of my boxes. If I could multitask at an endless level, I would have an eye and ear on TED talks all day long, but that’s not possible. TED radio, which is based on TED talks but not merely an audio rehash, is much more suited to my current needs. I can listen to TED radio while editing, or writing, or most anything else.

The Moth Radio Hour is also especially effective at getting my imagination going. Hearing other people tell stories, often stories of them breaking free of their own boxes in one form or another, sparks my imagination and gets me thinking in directions I’d not previously considered.

There are a lot of things we can do to help our mind break down some of the boxes that are holding us back. Ultimately, though, as with everything else, thinking is not enough, we must do something. So, here is my commitment to return to that habit of shattering boxes, taking and processing pictures in different ways, looking at situations and writing articles from a different perspective, and not giving a damn about convention or the status quo in the process. Some of you may not like what I do, but consider the possibility that even that is good. Maybe I’ll, at least, poke holes in some of your boxes in the process.

 

 

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International Women’s Day
March 8, 2016
charles i. letbetter - international women's day

Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time, a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race.—Mary Mcleod Bethune

 

charles i. letbetter - international women's day

International Women’s Day gives us the opportunity to not only celebrate women but to consider how we can improve their lives

Today is International Women’s Day. I know that because Facebook slapped me in the face with that notification first thing this morning before I’d even started making coffee. Across the Internet and around the world, today is full of speeches and celebrations for and about women, all of which are designed to be empowering, encouraging, and supportive. Despite all our improvements and advances in society, there is still no place on earth where women are truly treated as equals and given the full amount of respect they deserve.

Statistics time. Here’s what women are up against:

  • Hispanic/Latina women were paid only 54% of what men were, for the same work, in 2013
  • Globally, the United States ranks 60th in women’s political empowerment
  • In the United States alone, despite recent advances, 22 million women still don’t have paid sick leave
  • State legislatures continually introduce hundreds of bills limiting what women can do with their bodies, versus none for men
  • Roughly a third of the population in the US and Europe still mistakenly believe that women should be held partially responsible for violent acts against them, such as rape.
  • Women who work, with or without children, spend an average 15 additional hours doing chores around the house versus five hours for men
  • Internationally, twice as many girls as boys will never start school, ever
  • 70% of illiterate adults, globally, are women
  • Women account for two-thirds of people living in extreme poverty
  • One in four women are victims of domestic violence
  • One of every six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime
  • The United States still refuses to sign the International Bill of Rights for Women; they are the only major world power who had not done so

Women’s issues aren’t always about poverty, abuse, and access to opportunities, though. Within the past 24 hours, the following stories have littered the media

  • One well-known reality personality posted a nude picture of herself on social media; almost immediately, other women lashed out, criticizing the move
  • Tennis star Maria Sharapova admitted to failing a drug test after a drug she’s used since 2006 for legitimate health issues was banned this January; other female tennis stars were the first to criticize Sharapova
  • Style.com Arabia found possible evidence of one model attempting to trip another during Sunday’s Givenchy fashion show in Paris
  • A woman in Houston shut down traffic after completely disrobing and dancing on the top of a semi truck
  • Even for the one remaining female candidate remaining in the US presidential race, it is other women who continue to be most vocal in their opposition

To say that all these situations need to change is a platitude based in the ignorance of women’s ongoing struggle for even basic rights. None of these situations are new or unknown. They’ve been quite plainly documented for decades now. What stands before us today is not the sudden realization that something needs to be done, but rather the accusation that, in the face of knowing and seeing and understanding the inequalities women face, we have done practically nothing.

The United Nations Educations, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) released a survey on gender inequality earlier this year. The report is long, but one can read the document in full here. At the conclusion of the report, they offer the following recommendations:

  1. Ensure full implementation of international conventions and declarations in the field of culture in line with other human rights instruments and in respect of gender equality and diversity in order to broaden the creative horizons of women and men, boys and girls, and to ensure equal access to and participation in cultural life.
  2. Strengthen the evidence base through regular and systematic collection and dissemination by national statistical offices of sex-disaggregated data in all areas of the cultural sector: including employment, education, capacity-building, participation and consumption.
  3. Develop and apply gender-responsive policies and strategies in culture that empower all members of society, taking into consideration the diversity of different groups and individuals, and the intersection of broader social factors and inequalities that may compound disadvantages.
  4. Reinforce national institutional capacities to promote equal access for women and men to decision-making processes, financial resources and education in cultural fields.
  5. Establish leadership and mentoring initiatives for female creators and heritage professionals and ensure gender balance at senior leadership levels in the cultural and creative sector.
  6. Support international, national and local awareness-raising and advocacy campaigns that tackle gender stereotypes and discrimination in all aspects of cultural life.
  7. Encourage and involve all members of society in strategies promoting gender equality in culture. This includes working in partnership with all groups and communities concerned to promote sustainable solutions for gender-equal access, participation in and contribution to culture.
  8. Support interdisciplinary research on gender equality in heritage and the creative industries that involve groups and communities concerned, and consider the complexity and diversity of gender relations and the underlying power structures. 

These are all reasonable recommendations. It seems to me that if we actually mean all the wonderful words that are being said about women at all the International Women’s Day observations, then we have to not merely encourage, but force our legislatures around the world to adopt these recommendations quickly. Obviously, that’s easier said than done with a US Congress that can’t seem to get its head out of its ass. International Women’s Day is meaningless, though, if all we do is talk. We have to put some popular force behind creating the changes we need or there’s no point in having International Women’s Day, Mother’s Day, or any other day celebrating women.

If we want there to be any real meaning to International Women’s Day, there must be action. Now.

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Strong, Beautiful Women
March 7, 2016

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. —Joseph Conrad

 

charles i. letbetter - strong, beautiful women

Our lives and our society would be nothing without the presence of strong, beautiful women

We are surrounded by strong, beautiful women. We see them every day. They are essential to our lives. In fact, contemporary society could not function without them. Even though they still lack full equality in a number of areas, that in no way diminishes the important roles they play in all our lives. Yesterday, however, brought three very strong, very beautiful women to mind and now that I have a few minutes I think it is appropriate to talk about them.

Former First Lady, Nancy Reagan passed away yesterday at age 94. Politically, Mrs. Reagan and I could not be any further apart, but that’s not what made her notable. She married and supported one of the most challenging men of the twentieth century through some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Her husband was shot, almost fatally, and she never left his side. When his mind began to deteriorate, she was there, a buffer between him and those who dearly wanted to paint him in a negative light. She stood strong on issues she supported. She fought breast cancer and won. She survived vicious attacks on her character. Through it all, she never stopped being elegant. She never stopped for a pity party. She never stopped being beautiful.

Yesterday would have been my late mother’s 83rd birthday. Mother was a staunch conservative whose Christian belief system dominated everything she said and did. She might have been short in physical stature, but her character was ten feet tall and there was no one on the planet who dared challenge her. I remember when former Oklahoma governor David Boren was running for re-election. The Governor was tall, large, and had the ability to present an imposing figure. Mother marched right up to him on a campaign stop, gave him a look that forced him to bend down to her eye level, and proceeded to grill him for ten minutes on the need for better education funding in the state. She backed down from no one and didn’t mind telling someone what they needed to hear. Being a pastor’s wife wasn’t easy, and neither was raising my brother and me. She managed on a budget that was impossibly small. Yet, never did she lose her sense of dignity and genteel gracefulness. She was always beautiful.

March 6 also marks three years that Kat and I have been together. I had a lot of respect for single moms before having met Kat, but she drove home the concept of women who could manage work, children, and every other challenge of life on her own. Strength? She is a United States Marine. Even though she hasn’t been active duty for a few years now, that strength and determination still show. She faces every challenge with the same grit and no-fail attitude as she would an obstacle course. She’s handling school and work and children, and most incredibly, me and still manages to find a smile, to be there for friends, and impress those who watch her in action. She keeps me going, remembers the lyrics to my favorite songs, picks me up off the floor when I fall, encourages me on the days I can hardly walk, and finds ways to make me smile when I am in full-fledged grumpy old man mode. She’s beautiful from every possible perspective but threaten her family and she won’t hesitate to leave one gasping for air.

There is no sense in which we give enough credit to the women in our lives. These are but three immediate examples of how brilliant, strong, inventive, creative, determined, and beautiful women are. I could add to the list infinitely and if you can’t as well you’re just not paying attention.

Mondays are rough for everyone, we all have challenges when it comes to adjusting from the weekend and getting into the routine of the week. Consider just how much more challenging it is for the women in your life. Not only are they having their own issues with Monday, their dealing with children’s issues, spousal/partner issues, and probably the issues of people at school and work, because it is women who most often end up resolving everyone’s issues, not just their own. Don’t you think it’s about time you said thank you?

And if it’s appropriate and possible, a kiss wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

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Wishing For The Apocalypse
March 6, 2016

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity. —Noam Chomsky

 

charles i. letbetter - waiting for the apocalypse

Our society has reached a point where the disasters of apocalypse are viewed as preferable to the fallacies of the status quo.

12 I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth [made] of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; 13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. 14 The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; 16 and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” —Revelation 6:12-17 NASB

My late father, the preacher, held certain views of the Bible more because of tradition than actual academic understanding of scripture. One of those views was that there is a coming apocalypse from which Christians would be spared by the second-coming of Christ. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of a pre-millennial view. Popa likely held that viewpoint because when he was growing up and going to school in rural Arkansas there was no other viewpoint. It would not be until many years later that he would even be exposed to alternative theologies and when, as an adult, I first approached him with the concept of amillennialism, that there was neither a second coming nor a god-appointed apocalypse, he considered such a thing unbiblical.

Regardless of one’s millennial approach, the universal opinion was always that the apocalypse was bad. That whole thing about hiding in caves and begging to be caught in an avalanche doesn’t need a lot of translation. Regardless of its literal or metaphoric details, an apocalypse was something to be avoided. Worse than any war we have ever experienced, an apocalypse would leave few alive and those few would rather be dead.

Christianity isn’t the only major religion to have an apocalyptic scenario in their cannon. Islam teaches that Isa will return and be accompanied by Mahdi to destroy Christian innovation and convert the world to Islam. Listen carefully and you’ll hear Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak often of the return of Mahdi. Ancient Mayans had an apocalyptic tale as well, though theirs may have come true with the arrival of Cortez on the continent. No matter where one finds such prognostication, the end results are always the same: nearly everyone dies.

When I look at contemporary society, though, the way it has transitioned over the past five years, it seems that we have gone from fearing an apocalypse to actually wanting one to happen. As evidence, let me offer the popularity of the movie, Mad Max: Fury Road, which won six Oscars. It wasn’t all that long ago that such tales were seen as cautionary, a warning to avoid such calamity. With this movie, though, the dangers of the apocalypse and its social fallout are preferable to a tyrannical government. Audiences cheer on those who cause chaos against a status quo in which they feel they have no control.

We would be short-sighted, however, if we blamed everything on government or expected a presidential candidate to have any hope of adequately addressing our situation. Government, like it or not, is a reflection of the people it represents. If there is corruption it is because we, as a collective society, are corrupt. If the government behaves immorally it is only because we have given it permission to do so on our behalf. We cannot blame government for our ills when we are the government.

There was a new article posted to Psychology Today this morning warns against the dangerous lack of empathy in our society. Attorney David Niose makes an interesting observation:

It’s noteworthy, and undeniable, that two antonyms of empathy—disdain and indifference—have become cornerstones of American politics. When outsiders are routinely reviled, targeted for blame by an impulsive population that isn’t capable of rational thought, bad things can happen. Add doses of anti-intellectualism, nationalism, and militarism to the mix, and you have a formula for disaster. Just ask Germany.

The reference to Germany and, by extension, the crimes of World War II are troubling. Granted, we’ve heard such mean-spirited diatribe in political circles during every election cycle of the past two decades. I find it interesting that the further we get away from having leadership that actually remembers and participated in that horrible war, barely preventing an apocalypse of our own doing, the more willing we are to accuse those who disagree with us of harboring the same sentiments as war criminals. Still, yanking the conversation out of the political realm for a moment, Mr. Noise’s observations regarding the lack of empathy are accurate. Without empathy, we are far too eager to destroy our fellow man and we are less likely to care by what means we do so.

I once laughed out loud at the religious fear tactic that one needed to “get right with God” because the apocalypse is surely coming and the Anti-Christ is sure among us and all those who don’t believe are going to DIE or wish they could. Not only did I not believe in an apocalyptic event forecasted by a crazy man on an island some 1900 years ago, but I couldn’t believe that society would collapse to such a point as to allow it. I was young. I was naïve.

Now, I’m scared. Religious extremists have shifted from wanting to avoid apocalypse to embracing it. Those disenchanted on both ends of the political spectrum no longer believe a solution can be found within the system and are willing to scrap everything and start over with whatever remnant survives. Marginalized populations made economic slaves by the greed of corporate demagogues stand ready to blow up factories and sacrifice their fellow workers in order to make their voice heard.

Those wishing for the  apocalypse are almost certainly those who understand the consequences the least. Real life is not like the movies. Charlize Theron, as beautiful as she is, is not going to save anyone. When the apocalypse comes, the majority of us will vanish in a flash and it won’t be because some demi-god suddenly returned but because nuclear annihilation is a real thing. The only thing good to come of an apocalypse is that the overpopulation problem will be solved.

I dislike any policy or authority based on fear, but the pressing threat of apocalypse should cause us all to be very frightened, consider very carefully for whom we vote, and think more empathetically about those around us. If we don’t all thrive together, we shall surely die together.

Boom. Flash. Bye.

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Death Becomes Us All
March 5, 2016
charles i. letbetter - death becomes us all

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order. —Katherine Mansfield

 

charles i. letbetter - death becomes us all

The list of this year’s notable deaths has already become quite large. Yet, what about notable lives?

I was just finishing my final fashion review for the day, yesterday, when word came that country singer Joey Fleek had passed. No one was surprised, of course. Mrs. Fleek’s battle with cervical cancer was well documented. She had returned to her childhood home here in Indiana and left quietly, surrounded by her family. I’m sure there will be no shortage of tributes and memorials forthcoming.

When I woke up this morning, two more names had been added to the list. Novelist Pat Conroy, author of books such as The Prince of Tides, died of pancreatic cancer at age 70.  I found it interesting that, according to his obituary on NPR, he wrote as a way of attempting to find out who he really was, and did not feel as though he had succeeded, or, at least, had not yet finished.

Bud Collins, the tennis writer, and commentator died yesterday as well. Bud was known not only for his extremely deep knowledge of the history of tennis, but the very bright and colorful pants he wore, which really stood out in a sport where anything other than white might be considered out of bounds. His was the voice I most associate with the U.S. Open and it will be there that he is most missed.

We are only at the beginning of March, we’ve not yet made it to those dreadful Ides, and already death of notable persons is a leading topic for the year. I’m beginning to wonder if this might be the year in which everyone important dies, which would be a rather unflattering assessment of anyone left. I never consider it a good omen when someone’s death is a trending topic, and especially not when three of the top ten social media trends are about people dying.

Our society has a strange fascination with death; to some degree we always have. What’s interesting, though, is that our interest in the topic has grown more as the very act of dying has become less common. Prior to the discovery of penicillin, death was just an everyday sort of thing. If one so much as received a simple cut on the arm, one could die. Got the flu? Hello, death. Eat some bad barbecue? Death would be right there waiting. If incidents of death by cancer and heart disease seemed less frequent, it was due in no small part to the fact a lot of people didn’t live long enough for those fatal diseases to develop. Whooping cough was a more frequent cause of death than either cancer or heart attack.

Oh, that reminds me, the baby who made headlines when his mom dressed him like Senator Bernie Sanders last month? Word of his death made its way into the press yesterday, as well. The little guy, not yet four months old, died of SIDS a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, the child’s mother comes off as a bit unscrupulous as she begs for money to cover funeral costs and counseling.

What bothers me most, perhaps, is that this preponderance of death does not seem to be doing its usual job of forcing us to examine our own lives. Under normal conditions, one might look at all these deaths and think, “maybe I need to be eating better,” or “perhaps I should be more careful when I’m driving.” Death should have a way of reminding us of our own mortality and encourage us to lead better lives. For some reason, though, that isn’t happening.

Here’s a question for you to ask yourself: Is my life notable enough for anyone outside my family to mourn my death? We notice the deaths of people like Joey Fleek, Pat Conroy, and Bud Collins because of what they did while they were alive. None of them had spectacular deaths. All passed quietly in their beds surrounded by their families. If their exit from this world is worth mentioning it is because their presence in this world had some lasting impact. Without anything exceptional in their lives, all they would receive would be the standard four-inch, single column obituary in the local paper. Their lives are what give us reason to notice their deaths.

So, what of you and me? What are we doing to make our lives exceptional so that, when our time comes, people notice our demise as well? What contributions are we making to this planet that are worth remembering? Will they say we gave generously of our time to help others, or is our only claim to fame the number of flaming comments we left under online news articles? Are we living lives of creativity and invention that are worth remembering or are we too busy bickering over someone’s sexual practices to do anything genuinely productive?

We who are not yet dead have myriad choices regarding the lives we lead.  We can be exceptional, each of us in unique ways that separate us from everyone else. So, why aren’t we? Are we afraid? Or are we just lazy?

The year is too young to think that we won’t visit this topic again soon. Hopefully, it will not be you we are discussing, but if it should be, I hope we have something more to say than, “He/she was on Facebook a lot.” Live so the world has reason to notice your death.

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Art  /  Experimental  /  Fashion  /  Music  /  Photography  /  PotD
Creativity Breeds Frustration
March 4, 2016

Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment. —Dale Carnegie

 

charles i. letbetter - creativity breeds frustration

Creative people are often the most frustrated people because the more one tries something new the more likely it isn’t going to work

Most days, the right-brained business-oriented lines of thinking don’t necessarily mesh well with the left-brained creative directions we want to take. This morning was the exception, though, as I watched a video of Ian Bremmer, President and Founder of Eurasia Group, giving advice to his 20-year-old self. One of the first and most important things he says, and something I’m certainly going to incorporate into my compendium of advice, is this:

Most things don’t work— who cares? … Most things you try, most things I’ve tried, haven’t worked! And even when they do work it’s only because you tried them eight different ways and then finally someone says, “Okay kid, go away, I’ll give you a buck.” You have to not allow failure to affect your sense of self.

If there were ever a piece of advice necessary for every creative person I know, it is that last sentence: “You have to not allow failure to affect your sense of self.” Write that down. Etch those words on your brain. This is something you need to know merely know, but to understand and feel at your deepest levels of being.

Frustration is so very common for creatives because we do try things so many different ways so many different times and the vast majority of those times we fall flat on our faces. While we’re hopefully smart enough to not keep trying the exact same thing over and over when it doesn’t work, trying different things one after another and still not finding what works leads to a level of frustration that has many of us ready to bang our heads against walls.

Perhaps this is why creative people so often go insane, or, at least, are perceived as such. Repeated failure wears down our self-confidence. We like to think we know what we’re doing. When standing before a client we have to present ourselves as though we know what we’re doing. But when it comes to the actual act of creating something new, something different, something we’ve never done before, the greater portion of our efforts don’t work. They might come close, but if we’re not satisfied with the outcome, or if the client isn’t satisfied with the outcome, we feel we have failed.

There are actually many points of frustration for creatives. People don’t always take us or our ideas seriously. Not everyone looks at what we do as work. Because being creative often means long periods of contemplating, thinking, mulling over options and their potential outcomes in our minds, non-creative people often get the impression we’re not actually doing anything. Creative people, including Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein, understand the benefit of a nap, but to our non-creative friends we’re just being lazy. So, they interrupt us, ask us, or perhaps insist upon us, to do different things that have a greater appearance of productivity. All these things lead to huge amounts of frustration.

Resources, or a lack thereof, are also a frequent point of frustration. For example, let’s say I have a concept that requires 30 yards of chiffon; not tulle, mind you, because tulle and chiffon have different opacity levels, reflect light in different ways, and require different support systems and methods of stitching. The concept might be wonderful, but where am I going to find 30 yards of chiffon around Indianapolis and even if I do find it how am I suppose to pay for such an expensive material? Even when materials and resources are not especially expensive, they can be difficult to find or one may simply not have the knowledge base and tools to work with them appropriately.

Our frustration levels eventually become disabling. After so many failures, we give up. Why keep wasting our time, we think. There’s always someone pushing us to, “go out and get a real job.” After all, we still have to pay bills, buy food, keep a roof over our heads. Creativity doesn’t always pay the best and the gas company won’t accept your latest painting as payment.

How do we cope with such frustration? How do we keep going until something does finally work? Some drink until the pain goes away. Folks in creative states such as Washington and Colorado smoke until the haze in the air matches the haze in their minds, and sometimes in that haze they find clarity. Everyone has their own way of coping, but unfortunately, not all those mechanisms are positive. When our sense of self has been defeated we lash out, we say stupid things, we do stupid things, we behave in ways we later regret, we do things that ultimately are counterproductive to being creative. We grow all the more frustrated.

I can’t prescribe a solution for you. We each have to wrestle our own frustrations, our own demons, and find what works for us. Maybe it’s long walks.  Maybe it’s traveling and taking in new scenery. Maybe it’s spending time with someone who understands. Whatever it is, we have to find that thing, that solution to our frustration, before it drives us mad. Take comfort in knowing that we all share in these frustrations, even if one runs a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Frustration is part of the human existence.

Not everything you may do today will work. That’s okay. You’re being creative. You’re trying, and the solution will come. Until then, keep trying. Survive. Continue.

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Quality Or Quantity
March 3, 2016
charles i. letbetter - quality or quantity

Respect the masterpiece. It is true reverence to man. There is no quality so great, none so much needed now. —Frank Lloyd Wright

 

charles i. letbetter - quality or quantity

How many masterpieces should one have? Quality that is so high cannot be so frequently repeated.

There are 16 images to the set from which these pictures are taken. I had difficulty choosing two. While the whole set is creative, the quality isn’t there and I know why: I rushed. These images come from a point in 2010 when I was doing nothing but shooting during the week, saving all the editing until Saturday, and publishing everything on Sunday morning. Looking back, the whole schedule was a bit insane. I would hit Saturday afternoon having anywhere from six to twelve sets of pictures waiting to be processed and struggling to find both the creativity and the time to get them done. I was pounding energy drinks and coffee and making poor judgement calls in the interest of time.

If we are going to improve the state of creativity, we have to simultaneously improve the quality of what we produce. One of the mistakes we made when everything first started going digital was assuming that we could now mass-produce art of any medium. Because the production seemed easier and appeared to take less time, we mistakenly assumed that meant we could and should produce more. For photographers, that meant shooting 200-300 frames per set and then processing up to 100 of those. I remember looking at the back of a camera and thinking, “Wow, that’s not going to need any processing at all. This is great!” In hindsight, the level of our stupidity seems obvious. Unfortunately, we are still paying for those errors. Too many clients think we can turn out new material overnight, if not sooner, and do so in large volume. Doing so, however, means sacrificing quality.

More is not better. A certain rapper released a new, heavily anticipated album online last month. He allowed the album to be sold for 24 hours, then took it down. Now, he’s saying he has another new album coming out. What does that say about the quality and content of either album? Granted, I’m a bit biased in that I’m not a fan of this particular artist, which is why I’m not using his name, but I don’t know any artists who could turn around two new albums in less than a year, let alone two weeks. Quality inevitably suffers.

Fashion is making a similar mistake, constantly churning out new, cheap, inexpensive clothing so that stores can, in theory, completely turn over their inventory in eight weeks. This is the disease known as fast fashion and it has done a very good job of killing off mid-level retailers, undercutting their prices with cheaply made material. Quality is non-existent with these brands and, ultimately, one ends up spending more on their clothes than if they had purchased high-quality luxury brands once.

Are we killing off the masterpiece?  Not everything an artist does, even the most creative of artist, is a masterpiece. To count as a masterpiece, a work has to achieve not only in terms of creativity but in matters of quality as well. Imagine what would have happened had Frank Lloyd Wright built houses that fell down; it wouldn’t matter how many of them were built nor how incredibly creative they were, without quality they would be worthless. The same holds true for every genre and every medium. We do better to take our time, be diligent, and perfect the one rather than trying to take the Wal-Mart approach of profiting from volume.

By over-creating works of poor quality, we reduce the overall value of all our work. When the world is flooded with readily available photography from every possible source, then it stops valuing photography. When YouTube can deliver chains of “experts” on every conceivable topic, we stop valuing experts. When iTunes makes it possible for anyone to release a new album, we stop valuing new music. When it comes to matters of artistic content, the volume approach simply does not work.

Our culture needs a creative revolution to be sure, but we must be careful that in doing so we do not overpopulate the earth with that which is too hastily produced and manufactured in such volume that we sacrifice quality. Creativity and quality must go hand in hand. Anything less is just landfill fodder.

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Creative Risks And Sacrifices
March 2, 2016
charles i. letbetter -creative risks and sacrifices

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. —Albert Einstein

 

charles i.letbetter - creative risks and sacrifice

Being genuinely creative means upping our risk factor and being willing to sacrifice our standing in the status quo

Once upon a time, I was very open to taking risks while out shooting. I’ve stood on the most narrow of ledges. I’ve allowed myself to be dangled from the tops of high walls and cliffs. I’ve shot in situations where the threads of a safety harness were all that stood between me and certain death. Each of those shoots was thrilling and exhilarating at levels that are difficult to describe. The adrenaline rush one gets from such an experience is almost more exciting than the photograph itself.

Those days, unfortunately, are gone. Taking physical risks takes a toll on one’s body and mine has decided that it no longer wants to participate in that game. If I want thrill and excitement, I’m going to have to find it elsewhere. My risks are going to have to be more creative if I’m going to take them.

Creative risk taking may seem rather benign. After all, mixing disparate media is hardly life-threatening and misusing Photoshop tools to create a different effect is not likely to land one in the hospital unless one gets so excited by the outcome that they spill hot coffee onto bare skin. Yet, to generate the real, new, view-altering creativity that our culture needs to get it kicked off high center, artists of every genre need to take on a level of risk that is going to be uncomfortable.

Being creative, in of itself, is not especially difficult, but rather a matter of changing how one chooses to view their art. There is a quote from the late Steve Jobs that I think fits this situation quite well:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

People who are creative, regardless of medium or genre, are naturally inclined to see things differently, to put together pieces that no one had put together before. We see it perhaps most often in fashion where, just in the past two days, two different designers have put dresses on the outside of other garments. One worked better than the other, but the fact remains that both saw something put together in a way that no one had attempted before, and both were willing to take the risk of putting those looks on the runway.

What is it we’re risking? More than anything, creative people have to be willing to put their reputation on the line. When we do something different, something unexpected, there is always a very high chance that no one else is going to like it. For that matter, we may not like it ourselves once we’ve had a few days to sleep with our work. The risk has grown in this digital culture when we are pushed to put something new and different online several times a day. If one wants to be an Instagram star, one has to actually put material on Instagram. What happens when you put something out there you later regret?

When one is creating something in which one believes, though, it is worth potentially sacrificing one’s reputation in one area in order to build it in another. Consider that 40 years ago the whole of my reputation was in music. After several years of struggling, trying to go back and forth, I finally had to make the difficult decision that if I was going to be committed to photography that I needed to sacrifice what I was doing in music; not that I’ve abandoned music entirely, but I had to let go of my reputation there so that I could more firmly establish one where I am known as a photographer.

Any risk we take, anything we sacrifice for the sake of creativity, is likely a temporary matter. In many cases, a respected artist can creatively shift their work and any hit to their reputation be temporary. For example. Steven Tyler’s latest album is full of country music, not rock. He’s taking a substantial risk both creatively and may yet end up sacrificing a bit of his reputation if the album doesn’t sell well. His risks are mitigated, though, by the depth of his experience and the presence of a fan base that pretty much doesn’t care what he does. Not every artist enjoys having that kind of creative capital to throw around.

The older we get, the more risk-averse we naturally are. We have struggled for what we have and the thought of possibly losing it doesn’t set well because we know we may not have the luxury of time to rebuild what we might potentially lose.  Yet, if we are to continue to be creative, if we are going to genuinely do something that makes a lasting difference in our culture, we have to take those risks and be willing to make those sacrifices. Anything less is a creative copout.

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Perfection Fails Creativity
March 1, 2016
charles i. letbetter - perfection fails creativity

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it. —Salvador Dali

 

charles i. letbetter perfection fails creativity

By pursuing perfection, we cut ourselves off from creative options we might otherwise explore

Please pardon me for name dropping, but this story loses significance without it.

Standing next to the late Helmut Newton one day, he reached into his bag and pulled out his old 35mm camera, sans lens cap, checked his film, and started shooting. After having taken about a dozen shots, he turns the camera around and looks at the lens; it was covered in dust. The whole camera, for that matter, was somewhat less tidy than one might expect. Worn, obviously well-used, there were smudges and dirt on the body as well as the lens. Helmut sighed, took out his shirttail, and quickly rubbed it over the face of the lens.

One of his long-time assistants ran over with a different lens and said, “Here, this one’s clean.”

Helmut replied, “But this is the one I want; it’ll do.” He then proceeded to finish the set, creating wonderful images with an interesting touch of texture in the shadows.

Some have called Newton’s photography perfection, but I was there; it wasn’t. While there were things he would fuss about, especially regarding composition relative to light, there were plenty of other issues he let slide. He was always more concerned with the creative aspect than he was perfection.

By contrast, anyone who has worked around photographers in general, especially younger photographers, has met that one who is never quite satisfied. They’ll mess with lights for hours, fuss over the slightest wrinkle in a backdrop, scream about whether there is enough white showing in a model’s eyes, and complain that everything on the set is not perfect. They produce technically accurate photos, but their images lack any passion or creativity.

I’m not saying one shouldn’t strive for a certain amount of excellence in their work. By all means, whether one is taking a picture or writing a song or painting a landscape there is a given standard of excellence below which a work is not considered viable. To be so consumed with the ultimate perfection in one’s work, though, achieves only technical excellence and results in work that is ultimately boring.

Perfection is not just a creative problem, but a psychological issue. A 2008 article in Psychology Today states that, “… perfectionism is a crime against humanity.” Our society requires flexibility, adaptation, and accepting ambiguity if we are to survive. Being a perfectionist makes one a slave in addition to creative a level of psychological stress. Perfectionists equate mistakes with complete failure and who can stand up to that kind of pressure?

 has written a three-part article on the perils of perfection wherein she states:

At the core, perfectionism is about fears of failure and rejection and trying to keep ourselves protected. Perfectionism is a defense that tricks us into believing that it protects us. If we perceive the possibility of an attack, we get back into our shell to protect ourselves. When we engage in this never ending cycle, we self-sabotage and set ourselves for failure.

Creativity defies perfection. Being creative means taking risks, breaking rules, stretching outside one’s comfort zone and taking sometimes severe risks. Perhaps one of the biggest risks is  that other people may not like your work. Again, that’s not to say that there aren’t standards, but when we’re being our most creative we are also most susceptible to criticism. We are always targets of criticism for those who just don’t “get it,” but we should never let that keep us from trying something different, something new.

I look back through my archives at various attempts to do something different. Some I absolutely abhor and shudder to think that I ever shared them publicly; they no longer meet my standards for which is acceptable. I look at others, though, and wish that I could maintain that same level of creativity in everything I do. Yet, one of the challenges of being creativity is that it is not a constant. As new ideas pass through our mind some are inevitably more viable than others. Sometimes we don’t have the resources, in other instances we don’t have the time. With such fluctuating variables, attempting to impose perfection on top of it all  simply opens the door to what we perceive as failure.

I wrote yesterday how frustrated I am with the boring state of the arts and how popular culture has imploded. Our drive toward perfection has led to a sameness that is void of passion. There is a lack of experimentation and no one is ready to take risks. Too often, even when one does take risks and tries to buck “the system,” they get shut down, de-funded, or otherwise ignored.

The solution requires more than just changing our personal attitudes toward perfection but simultaneously rejecting it from the media we consume. Avoid the boring. Stay away from the movies that are just like all the other drivel you’ve seen. Avoid the music that sounds exactly like all the other drivel you hear. Don’t accept digitally driven perfection that compromises true creativity.

Perfection is the enemy because it cannot, ever, be achieved and our drive toward that unattainable goal blocks our ability to be creative. Let your creativity run free, let mistakes happen. We’ll all be happier for it.

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Popped Culture Implosion
February 29, 2016
charles i. letbetter - popped culture implosion

Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it’s produced the most extraordinary results in human culture. —Ken Robinson

 

charles i. letbetter - popped culture implosion

There is a lack of truly defining moments in contemporary culture that dooms us to boredom

No, I did not watch the Oscars last night, and no, it wasn’t because of any boycott, though the issue of racism in Hollywood needs a lot more than just platitudes thrown at it. I didn’t watch the Oscars last night because there was absolutely nothing about the show worthy of holding my interests for three-plus hours after a long day that started at 3:00 AM EST. To have stayed up that late would have required feeling passionate about some element of the show and there was nothing deserving of my passion. I had a much better time putting my head on my pillow and going to sleep.

2015’s Oscars views were off by 18% from the previous year, hitting a six-year low. Last night’s numbers aren’t in yet (7:00 AM EST), but I will be tremendously surprised if they’re all that much higher, if any at all. And while it might be tempting to blame things such as #OscarsSoWhite, the reality is that popular culture has popped, imploded into a pile of monotony that is about as exciting as the underside of a dog house. There was no reason to stay up and see what won the Best Picture award because I hadn’t bothered to see any of the nominated films. Spotlight, the film that won, hadn’t even managed to cross my radar before last night. What is it about? Apparently journalists at the Boston Globe, from what I’m reading, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who think it is a very good film, but am I going to drop $20 and an afternoon to see it? Probably not.

This period of cultural boredom isn’t just limited to film, unfortunately. I have spent the past three weeks totally consumed in covering ready-to-wear fashion for Pattern magazine. Earlier today, we finished up the shows in Milan, which should have been one of the most exciting weeks of the year. It wasn’t. If anything, it was anti-climactic at a level that I don’t remember having seen before. Worse yet, this has been a five-year trend that isn’t showing any sign of improving. An article in Business Insider this morning addresses the problem that such complete and total boredom with fashion is a leading cause of declining sales at department stores. Why shop when what we see on the rack is not substantially different from we already have in our closet?

Is music any different? Regrettably no, and music is the one place that our culture should be constantly reinventing itself. This year’s Grammy awards, which should be the biggest night in music, lost a half-million viewers from last year, which wasn’t exactly the most stellar statistic in the first place. With autotuning and digitally precise engineering, all new music has begun to sound too similar for anyone to care all that much about buying new albums. Scream all you want about how streaming services are cheating artists, what really matters is the fact that no one is buying the latest album because it sounds exactly like the one before it and the one before that and the one before … you get the idea.

What has happened to American culture? Where are the distinguishing artists that once shone out like beacons, names like Elvis, Hank Williams, Three Dog Night, or Ray Charles? Where are the icons of culture such as the Dorsey Brothers, Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, and Norman Rockwell? Who is replacing Edward R. Murrow, Huntley & Brinkley, Bob Woodward, and Norman Mailer? Where are the underpinnings of our culture that give definition to this second decade of the 21st century? So far, all we have are hipster beards and oversized eyeglass frames and, quite honestly, both of those have lost their panache. We need more. We need something new to help define the next four years.

Why is our current culture not more significant? I have an interesting example. Tonight begins a new season of The Voice. Approximately 40 outstanding vocalists will be given a chance to work with experienced professionals, presumably to help get their music career jumpstarted. This is the tenth season of the show, which is a ratings hit for parent network NBC, but when we look at its actual impact on our culture, what have been the results: Nothing. Zero. Why? Because by the time the contest works its way down to the final four artists, the unique voices that started the show are gone. In their place are packaged, over-produced, tightly managed singers who are fed into a corporate music machine and promptly spit out on the other side having had little to no affect on our culture at all. Everyone sounds the same.

American Idol closed under exactly the same fate. While finalists from the first two seasons have done well, no one from this decade has managed to even get a glimpse of the Billboard charts. Nada. Zip.

Why was the literary world so wildly excited about what was ultimately a disappointing new book from Harper Lee, one which she had, presumptively, never wanted to be published? Because even contemporary literature is in the doldrums. We were wildly hopeful that a writer who had set culture on fire back in the 1960s might possibly be able to thrill us where more contemporary authors have failed.

Our culture has become far too boring. We, as creatives, have become too risk adverse, too unwilling to rock the boat, and the corporate entities that now control most everything we consume have choked the life from our movies, our music, our literature, and our life. We don’t need more Jackson Pollock, thank you. We need the next iteration of Pei Wei. We need people who can turn Banksy on its ear. We need people who give Giorgio Armani a reason to retire.

As I sit here ranting, of course, I have to ask myself what I’m willing to do to become part of the solution. I have some ideas. Who’s willing to help? Our culture is deficient of creativity. You and I can make a difference. Start now.

 

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Partial Truths, Whole Lies
February 28, 2016
charles i. letbetter - partial truths, whole lies

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. —George Orwell

 

charles i. letbetter - partial truths, whole lies

When all we see is a sliver of the truth, do we assume that everything else is a lie?

I’ve spent the better part of two hours this morning looking through headlines and newspapers and magazine articles. Through all of it, the lyrics to Don Henley’s 1989 hit, Heart of the Matter, keep running through my mind:

The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again
I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the Heart of the Matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness

  Bonus points if you just sang that in your head as you read it.

For all the bulk of information available, I can’t help but have the feeling that I’m not getting the whole truth about anything. I know some articles, especially those shared on social media, are outright lies. Snopes helps weed out some of the most blantant attempts at deception, but their focus tends to lean toward simply outing the lies; they don’t necessarily bring us that much closer to the truth.

So, there’s a story this morning where the headline reads: Police: Virginia Officer Fataly Shot Day After Swearing In. My heart wants to break; the female officer had left the force for a few years, one would presume perhaps to start a family, and then returned. The story is tragic. Oh, but buried in the article is the fact that a “civilian,” also a woman, lost her life in the event as well. She may have been dead before police even arrived. Her name is not mentioned. The condition of the two other officers shot during the same altercation is not mentioned. A partial story, woefully incomplete. Tragedies on both counts, to be sure, but we don’t have the truth, which makes us susceptible to lies.

Anywhere there is a shadow of doubt, where there are questions not adequately answered, where the truth is not plainly evident, we are open to lies. People, and media, can tell us anything when there is an absence of known truth and even if the pieces to the story don’t fit well, there are always those inclined to believe, no matter how obvious the lie might be to those who stop and think a moment. This is why we have conspiracy theories, because in the absence of complete truth, our minds can imagine anything they want.

We can blame the Internet only in part. Granted, the fact that, once something happens, anywhere in the world, there is a rush to get information online, seems to inevitably lead to stories like the one above. When there is pressure to say something so that a media source does not appear out of the loop, even incomplete information seems to suffice. Yet, long before the Internet, there were shadows in the information we receive.

Don’t believe me? Tell me, who shot John F. Kennedy? The depths of the shadows surrounding that case cause us to question whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Sure, that is the official account, but even in Congressional testimonies there were enough lies and attempts to obsfucate the facts that we have reason to doubt official sources. Minus a sense of the truth, we make up our own: the FBI was behind it, the CIA did it, there was a monkey with a pea shooter on the grassy knowel. Anything might be the truth when we don’t know what the truth is.

Partial truths are foundational in advertising. Would you still buy a product if you know that doing so directly contributed to the deforestation of the rain forests, or that the product had blown up in 57 of 58 lab tests? The only place where “truth in advertising” really starts to have any meaning is with prescription medicines. I know everyone has seen the ad where 20 of the 30 seconds is spent telling you all the possible, horrible, death-inducing side effects. Yet, somehow, for some reason, those ads still work. If the truth that a medicine may cause “premature anal leakage” doesn’t keep us from wanting the product, why doesn’t the truth work elsewhere?

Because sometimes we would rather just believe the lies. When the truth runs in opposition to what we want, we’re willing to compromise. If we want to see a conspiracy, we’ll find one, even if it is totally fictional. A perfect example of this is the anti-GMO crowd. Guess what: GMOs are not only not killing you, they’re probably saving your life. Without GMOs, global food prices would sky rocket, making everything unaffordable, even the most basic of grains. Hunger, which is already a significant issue, would more than triple. Some foods would simply cease to exist. Yet, because we thrive on drama and enjoy believing that “they” are out to get us, millions of people choose to believe the lies about genetically modified organisms, totally ignoring the truth.

I won’t even start on how politicians contribute to and thrive upon partial truths and whole lies. No matter what I say, no matter what anyone says, we make up our minds based on emotion, not fact. We vote for the candidate that makes us feel better, not the one who might actually help the country the most. For that matter, we dont’ really have a clue what would help the country the most. All we have are partial truths and whole lies.

And conspiracy theories.

Watch, the next tme you see someone post a statement on Facebook in hopes that, by doing so, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or Warren Buffect might give them money, see how many people buy into the lie, “just in case.” We know those stupid games are not true, but yet they spread like wildfire. We don’t want to believe the whole truth. We know the billionaires are rich and have a history of charitable giving, so we’re willing to take just that tiny sliver of partial truth as a basis for believing a wholesale lie.

The more I know, the less I understand.

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Saturday Morning Illiteracy
February 27, 2016
charles i. letbetter - saturday morning illiteracy

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them. —Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

 

charles i. letbetter - Saturday morning illiteracy

Illiteracy is the one problem that doesn’t require an act of Congress to solve

I am very much aware that I am a person of privilege. Not only am I white and male, two factors in which I had no choice but still give me advantages that are, unfortunately, not yet available to everyone, but I also have a superpower that puts me ahead of roughly 87% of the U.S. population: I am proficiently literate. Not only can I read and write, but I can comprehend material intentionally written at a severe academic level. To that end, I am one of the most privileged people on the planet.

Growing up, I thought everyone knew how to read and write. Reading and grammar were emphasized heavily even before I started school. My mother, a teacher herself, made sure I started kindergarten already reading at a basic level, and this was in a day when preschools only existed in the largest of cities and were the domain of the elite. Right there, though, was my first advantage. By the time I was five years old, I was already reading better than 32,000,000 adults in the United States. If anything, the numbers were probably higher back in 1965 than they are now.

Illiteracy is one of those problems you may not ever consider if you are capable of reading what I write. Most days, for most articles, at least 60 percent of adults can read and comprehend what I write. I’ll admit, I am sometimes frustrated by having to re-write whole paragraphs to bring the readability rate into line; I want everyone to read at the same level at which I am most comfortable communicating. However,  one-third of the US population cannot read this paragraph.

Not being able to read and write at even a basic level is one of the most costly problems in America today, but yet you’re not likely to hear anything about illiteracy mentioned by the politicians running for office. How much does illiteracy cost? Here’s an infographic for those of you already tired of reading:

charles i. letbetter - saturday morning illiteracy

 

Like many of societies problems, illiteracy rates are worse among non-white populations. While a part of that is due to the challenge of immigrants even trying to learn our often complex and complicated language, the majority exists because reading is never encouraged. If one has not learned to read at a basic level by the time they are ten years old, the chances they will remain illiterate the rest of their lives is extremely high.

Pearson, the global publishing behemoth, produces much of the educational material in use around the world. They understand all too well the challenges of illiteracy. This week, they released a new video as part of the #ProjectLiteracy campaign. Produced by ad agency FCB Inferno, the claymation piece titled Alphabet of Illiteracy is a frighteningly clear representation of how illiteracy impacts our society. The campaign’s goal is to make sufficient strides in literacy so that by 2030 no child born is at risk of not being able to read and write.

I encourage you to not only watch the video below, but share it, and then consider how you can help combat illiteracy. Teach someone to read. Encourage someone who is struggling to read. Introduce someone to your local library. The options are many, the benefits are tremendous. There is no better way to spend a Saturday.

https://youtu.be/U0Ezto8HG_8

 

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Unhealthy As An Insult
February 26, 2016
charles i. letbetter - unhealthy as an insult

Big food companies have their priorities, which include selling cheap, unhealthy foods at high profits.— Rep. Jared Polis, (D) Colorado

 

charles i. letbetter - unhealthy as an insult

One’s waist size has never determined one’s health, and never will

I came in from one of the children’s more amusing school activities last night to find that Cheryl Tiegs was trending. At first, I was amused. The former supermodel is 78 years old. I remember her first Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, as well as her second and third. That was a very, very long time ago. Then, I was angry. Ms. Tiegs was trending because she criticised Sports Illustrated for putting plus-size model Ashley Graham on one if its three swimsuit edition covers. Finally, I was disappointed because Ms. Tiegs was using as her basis for criticism on, of all things, Dr. Oz.

Body size and health are huge issues in the United States. We are, after all, the most obese country in the world, despite our so-called fitness craze, the preponderance of gyms in almost every town, and decades of medical advice urging us to take on a more healthy lifestyle. We have all the advantages the world has to offer, and yet we choose to be unhealthy. So, if a major sports-oriented magazine does something to promote an unhealthy lifestyle, then yes, they deserve to be called out for it.

However, putting Ashley Graham on the cover of Sports Illustrated is not unhealthy. Is Ms. Graham at an unhealthy weight? That’s a matter between her and her physician. It is possible to have curves and be healthy. There is no one measure of health that proves accurate or adequate for everyone; not BMI, not other height/weight ratios, and certainly not waist size. If Ms. Graham is active, which she is, does not do anything overtly unhealthy, which she doesn’t, then there’s no good reason for her to not be on the cover of Sports Illustrated or any other magazine.

If anything, it’s attitudes like Ms. Tiegs’ that are unhealthy. Let’s start with this whole Dr. Oz thing and the claim that having a waist size over 36 inches is unhealthy. We do realise that Dr. Oz’s weight loss advice has been thoroughly debunked, right? This is not new news. The doctor has even had to defend his weight-loss advice before Congress and found that, at the very least, there was no scientific evidence to support the majority of his claims, and several were completely WRONG. So, quoting Dr. Oz as an authority immediately puts one in the “misinformed” category.

Furthermore, using the measurements that work for one person may not work on someone else. Even Body Mass Index (BMI), which is the measure most frequently trotted out in these conversations, has been proven to not always be accurate. Good health is sometimes a complicated matter, depending upon what medical challenges one may have. To patently claim that one is not healthy simply because they do not fit within a given measure is inaccurate.

Most importantly, though, Ms. Tieg’s comment amounts to classic body shaming, which is just wrong any way you look at it. Notice Tieg’s backhand compliment that, “Her face is beautiful” (referring to Ms. Graham), which is a classic mean girl move in an attempt to deflect criticism. What Cheryl said is nothing short of insulting and does further harm to the on-going body image battle faced by millions of women, including those whose waist measurements fit within Dr. Oz’s misguided standard. Negative body image issues too often result in eating disorders or other destructive behavior as women of every size struggle to fit what they feel is society’s impossible standards for beauty.

Body shaming as serious consequences and can even result in attempts at suicide. While I will stop short of calling Ms. Tieg’s comments criminal, they are certainly irresponsible. We all want and need to be healthy, but being healthy starts with a good self-image and an attitude that one is valuable as a person regardless of what size they are. There is no room for insults, especially not from a 78-year-old supermodel.

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Editorial  /  Experimental
Editorial Experimentation
February 25, 2016
charles i. letbetter - editorial experimentation

Photography has always been about documentary, the depiction of the instant, a moment, sometimes a place. Each project is somehow an experimentation of a specific context or a character. —Hedi Slimane

 

charles i. letbetter - editorial experimentation

The world of editorial fashion relies on entire teams of creative professionals. Hair stylists, makeup artists, wardrobe stylists, art directors, lighting engineers, and a host of other people all do their thing before a photographer ever picks up their camera. No matter how good a photographer might be, it is the strength of the team that ultimately makes a good editorial picture. Many of the same people work to keep runways sharp and attractive during this Fashion Week season. One is less likely to see what styles are worn on the runway if the hair and makeup don’t match that intensity.

Keeping a good team together is challenging. Creative and talented people are always looking to expand their skills and broaden their horizons, something that is difficult to achieve if one feels boxed in by the team with which they work. Experimentation is key, and that means taking risks that not everyone on a team may not want to embrace. While there are myriad beauty schools always turning out new stylists and makeup artists, only a small precentage understand or even care about editorial work. When we come across one who does, we celebrate and try to help that person grow their skills.

So it is with our friend Owen Tate. Owen is a 19-year-old student at Aveda Fredricks Institute in Indianapolis. Though he won’t graduate for a few months yet, Owen has already demonstrated a willingness to engage in a higher level of experimentation and shows a particular talent for creative problem solving even when plans a, b, and c don’t necessarily work as expected. Owen pushes himself by entering various competions. A recent editorial contest gave us the opportunity to work together with a set of models who really didn’t know what was going to happen. Our time frame was short, which created its own challenges, but Owen proved himself dedicated to the task, working late into the night even after having spent 12 hours at school.

What you see below are some of the results of that editorial work. Owen worked from a concept of art coming alive, a premise where he felt the models would not arrive neatly coiffed and made up, but rather messy and disheveled from having escaped their canvas-bound prison. We found Owen’s interpretation quite creative and well developed for one still learning. There’s no telling where Owen might land once he graduates and gets a bit more experience under his belt. I feel confident that he has the ability to become one of the best in the industry.

Please join me in celebrating the editorial experimentation of Owen Tate and thank you for supporting Owen and other cosmotology students like him.

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pop culture  /  PotD
Reacting To Reactions
February 25, 2016
charles i. letbetter - reacting to reactions

If you make decisions based upon people’s reactions or judgments then you make really boring choices. —Heath Ledger

 

charles i. letbetter - Reacting to reactions

How we react to others reactions, especially on social media, reveals our character

Almost from the moment Facebook opened participation to everyone on the planet, there was a cry for a “dislike” button to counter the “like” button. After all, not everything people post needs to be liked. Let’s say a pet or a family member dies. We’re not really supposed to “like” that, are we? Yet, pleas for an unlike button have gone unheeded.

Yesterday, the world’s largest social media site introduced “reactions,” a group of emojis that gives one a greater range of options when responding to a post. Guess what: we still don’t have a “dislike” button. Instead, we have love, haha, wow, sad, and angry in addition to the overused like. To access the extra emojis, all one has to do is mouse over the like button on a desktop, or press and hold the like button on a mobile device.

Of course, this is going to cause problems, primarily because a) people don’t pay attention to what they’re doing on social media, and b) people are stupid. Put those  two together and relationship disasters are just waiting. Already, the folks at Mashable released a short list of “How to Use Facebook Reactions Without Pissing Everyone Off.” Unfortunately, their list is short, only five items, and that leaves a tremendous amount of room for error.

So, we would like to offer a slightly more complete list of when one should and shouldn’t use each of the new emojis. You may want to bookmark this page for later reference. Things could get dicey.

First, another look at those famous emojis:

charles i. letbetter - reacting to reactions

When to use “Like”

  • When a friend goes to dinner with their spouse
  • When a friend has a good day
  • When a friend posts a selfie that 147 other people have already liked
  • When a friend posts a recipe that looks good but you’ll probably never actually try
  • When your boss posts to the company profile praising your work

When NOT to use “Like”

  • When a friend goes to dinner with all their friends except you
  • When a friend has a bad day
  • When a friend posts a selfie with your spouse and you didn’t know they even knew each other
  • When your mom posts that one picture from second grade … you know the one.
  • When your boss posts that the company is closing and moving to Mexico

When to use “Love”

  • When a parent, sibling, child, or significant other posts a significant accomplishment
  • When your spouse or significant other posts something gooey and romantic
  • Any baby picture
  • Any picture of small animals playing
  • Pictures of your adult children moving out of the house

When NOT to use “Love”

  • Anytime your ex posts anything. ANYTHING. Not appropriate.
  • When your neighbor gets fined for playing their stupid music too loud at 1:00 AM
  • Any “shared” post that turns out to be a fundraising scam
  • When a politician dies, no matter how much you’re tempted
  • When that kid on whom your child has a crush moves to another city

When to use “Haha”

  • Every time I tell a joke
  • When thieves get what they deserve at the scene of the crime
  • When someone else’s kids do something unexpectedly hilarious
  • Any time cake and face meets
  • When your boss posts a cartoon and it’s not about you

When NOT to use “Haha”

  • When your ex tells a joke and it’s obviously about you
  • When someone gets hurt from doing something really stupid
  • When a politician opens their mouth, despite the temptation
  • When a friend posts something they think is funny but it’s really in bad taste
  • When a rival loses

When to use “Wow”

  • When your favorite team wins at the buzzer
  • Anytime a new world record is set
  • In the event SpaceX actually lands a rocket
  • Every time Niel Degrasse Tyson explains the universe
  • In the unlikely event a politician actually tells the truth

When NOT to use “Wow”

  • When your favorite team loses at the buzzer; not cool
  • Anytime weather rears its ugly head and kills people
  • Every time a politician says something unbelievably stupid (it gets redundant)
  • When someone posts something inappropriately personal
  • When a friend posts a 15-paragraph rant

When to use “Sad”

  • When someone has a death in the family
  • When a friend loses a job
  • When a friend gets dumped by someone they really loved
  • When someone is in an accident
  • Anytime someone posts bad news

When NOT to use “Sad”

  • When an ex or former crush gets married
  • Anytime something good happens to someone you don’t especially like
  • When someone posts a conspiracy theory
  • When someone goes all anti-science or denies obvious fact
  • When a friend’s mom post their bad picture from second grade

When to use “Angry”

  • In the face of obvious injustice
  • When someone hurts one of your family members
  • Anytime someone gets away with a crime
  • When models fail to show up or call
  • When friends are treated unfairly

When NOT to use “Angry”

  • Just because you’re not getting your way, you spoiled little brat
  • Every time someone says something with which you disagree
  • Every time a politician opens his/her mouth (again, redundant)
  • When someone disses you; take the high road
  • When someone tells a joke at your expense and you damn good and well it was funny

There’s going to be some inevitable chaos: Fingers slip and post an unintended reaction, or grandma doesn’t quite understand exactly what the “haha” emoji is. There’s going to be an adjustment period, so we should all be careful to not respond to accidental reactions.

Also, know that when you “love” something, you’re going to see more of it in your newsfeed. Facebook didn’t give you this new tool just to make someone happy.

These new reactions are really a big deal. Use them wisely and carefully, though. The last thing Facebook needs is emoji drama.

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Current Issues  /  PotD
How To Avoid Dying
February 24, 2016
charles i. letbetter - how to avoid dying

If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.—Indira Gandhi

 

charles i. letbetter - how to avoid dying

No one really wants to die, so maybe we should take more care in avoiding that outcome

I was amused when scrolling through my newsfeed this morning to see a brief article with the headline: University of Houston Offers Teachers Helpful Tips For How to Not Get Murdered. Odd, I didn’t realize murdering college professors had reached such epidemic proportions. Maybe it’s just a phenomenon particular to the University of Houston, or perhaps they recently hired Miss Marple in the English department and are anticipating the inevitable. Death does seem to follow that old lady and I’m rather sure dying is not in anyone’s syllabus.

Apparently, some faculty at the University are understandably concerned about a new Texas law that allows students to carry concealed weapons in their classrooms. Among the advice given were the following “bullet” points (extra credit for the irony):

  • Be careful discussing sensitive topics
  • Drop certain topics from your curriculum
  • Not “go there” if you sense anger
  • Limit student access off hours

Now, I’m not sure exactly what “sensitive” topics might be included nor where it is one should not go if sensing anger, but I’m going to guess they might include subjects such as how incredibly stupid it is to allow guns in the classroom in the first place and the simple fact that anyone caught shooting the instructor automatically fails the course. Seriously, if this is the type of instruction we have to give the teaching staff, I’m questioning the overall quality of education one might receive at the University of Houston.

However, dying is genuinely something most of us want to avoid and, it would seem, more than a few people have difficulty with the task given that several thousand will die today, and another big bunch of people will be dying tomorrow, and the day after, and the next, and etc. So, with all sensitivity to the delicateness of such an issue set to the side and filed in the back of a drawer in an unmarked manila envelope, I would like to offer some common sense suggestions for ways in which one might avoid dying. University of Houston teachers please take notes.

  • Avoid interaction with items such as bullets, knives, machetes, bombs, or other objects that might pierce one’s body in a fashion that leads to dying. Note: we’re not talking about the fashionable body modifications to your ears, nose, nipples, or other places your mother doesn’t know about. This strictly applies to those piercings that might do things like remove one’s head, severely displace one’s internal organs, or put oversized holes through vital body parts. Dying may very well be immediate should one encounter such piercings and should be avoided at all costs.
  • If you live in a trailer park during a tornado, move. Growing up in Oklahoma, this was just a given. No one who had any choice lived in or even near a trailer park from March through September. In fact, the rest of the year isn’t necessarily all that safe, either. Apparently not everyone gets handed that memo, though. At least three people died in tornadoes yesterday in Louisiana and Mississippi. All three were in trailer parks. This didn’t have to happen. How does one know if there’s a danger of a tornado hitting their trailer park? There’s an easy test: is it raining? If so, move. Dying by being sucked up into a swirling cloud and then dropped just doesn’t sound painless.
  • Avoid visiting places where dying seems to be a recreational activity. This includes places such as Syria, Iran, the Sudan, or South Chicago. These are places where they serve guns along with the appetizers, neighbors lob bombs at each other just for the literal hell of it, and if the bombs and bullets don’t get you the water will. Odds of surviving in these places is so low you’d have a better chance of getting a presidential candidate to convert to Islam. Stay away.
  • Excessive anything is never good, and dying from excess tends to make one the target of bullying in the afterlife, or so I’m told. These are things you already know intellectually. Eating too much will kill you. Exercising too much will kill you. Mouthing off too much to your wife will kill you. One doesn’t really need to be told such things, but yet, every day, there are hundreds of people who die because they just had to have that one last piece of pie, or the last donut, or run 47 miles. Dying can come in many different forms. Be careful. Use some common sense. Step away.
  • Stop smoking cigarettes. Again, you know this. You knew this when you started the dirty habit. Chances are, you ‘ve even told others not to start, and you’re always trying to quit. Stop trying. Do it. Put the damn things down. If your oral fixation is that strong, roll some bud. Having long conversations with the cat won’t kill you (though it may drive the cat nuts). Cigarettes and dying are buddies. Just stop.
  • Consider a career other than suicide bomber. I’m sure I’m not the only one who questions the mental capacity of people who leave nice, warm, presumptively loving homes in order to join the so-called caliphate. I have one question for anyone considering such a move: ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY? Dying is all they do in the caliphate; they rather seem to enjoy it. Apparently, someone told these incredibly gullible people that there’s a reward for going boom. WRONG! There is no reward! There are only little tiny pieces of you scattered all over the sand. That’s it. No endless supply of Snickers bars or anything else you might have been told. If one is trying to avoid death, this is the worst line of business to consider.
  • One last piece of advice: wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whoever you may be, absolutely, under no condition, should you ever, EVER piss off a United States Marine. Don’t even think about it. Just say “Yes sir (or ma’am),” do as instructed, and go on about your business.

Not having died recently, that I recall, I can’t speak from experience, but the lack of folks recovering from such incidents leads me to conclude that dying is not a great deal of fun. In case you haven’t noticed, we generally cry when people die because they’re not coming back. So, let’s all do our best to avoid dying. I know the Bible says, “… it is appointed unto man once to die … (Hebrews 9:27),” but that doesn’t mean you have to do so today. Be careful out there. We like it so much better when you’re around to annoy, er, visit with us.

Take care.

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Current Issues  /  PotD
Say Something Nice
February 23, 2016
charles i. letbetter - say something nice

I don’t enjoy any kind of danger or volatility. I don’t have that kind of ‘I love the bad guys’ thing. No, no thank you. I like nice people.—Tina Fey

 

charles i. letbetter - say something nice

We have become a mean, vicious, and cruel race of people because there is no one to stop us

Finding nice things to say can sometimes be very difficult. Yesterday, for example, one presidential candidate said he wanted to punch a protester. News the past few days has been littered with claims of one person disparaging another, someone shooting someone else because they said the wrong thing, and people who are supposed to be leaders outright lying about facts that are easily checked.

Social media is even worse. Descriptors such as, “idiot,” “slut,” and “jackass” are commonplace as people respond to topics with which they disagree. Do the people speaking actually know the ones they’re insulting? No, of course not. One thing social media is very good at doing is encouraging us to participate in discussions about which we know very little. In fact, the success of apps such as Twitter and Reddit depend on us not being able to keep our mouths shut when silence would certainly be the better tact.

Fashion isn’t any better. I am trying this season to avoid reviewing shows that I dislike. I’m fortunate to have a choice in which shows I cover and I see no point in putting myself, the designer, nor Pattern’s readers through the agony of discussing something I don’t like. Not everyone is so fortunate, however. Between shows, I frequently listen to the panels assembled at SHOWStudio. Participants are tasked with talking about a designer’s collection not only for the duration of the show (which I ignore) but for at least 30 minutes afterward. When a presentation is good, finding something to talk about for that length of time can be excruciatingly difficult. Inevitably, the talk turns negative, and at times even vicious.

We have become a society of mean speakers. The ancient advice of, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” is lost on us. Instead, we embrace what we consider the “right” to say anything we want, anytime, anywhere, and we think we should be able to do so without any consequence. Should anyone challenge our comments in the slightest, we fire back with some claim of “free speech.” Never mind that what we say may be hurting someone else. We don’t care. We have a right to open our mouths and let filth and disgust spill from them, so that is exactly what we do.

Body shaming has become a global pastime and photographers and photo editors are among the worst, not only in how we talk about models, but how we rate photographs based on the physical qualities of the model. I can shoot two different models in the same location and the same time of day wearing the same garment and exactly the same settings, but the photo of the thinner model is inevitably rated higher than that of the more curvy model, even when both are smaller than a size 6. One of the reasons I rarely participate in photographer’s forums online is because there are too many who have absolutely nothing civil to say about anyone.

Even church isn’t safe. When the Pope and a politician exchange insults, what kind of example does that set? Pulpits have become dispensaries of hate and aggression rather than sanctuaries of peace and love.

As a result, we are becoming increasingly violent and intolerant of one another. The recent murder spree by an Uber driver in Michigan wasn’t a random act so much as it was the physical manifestation of anger and resentment building up in all of us. This guy wasn’t crazy. He’s every bit like you and me, angry at society and the world. The difference is that he took his actions too far, going beyond words and deciding to use bullets the same way he might otherwise have randomly left mean and inappropriate comments on some website. We shudder at the horror of what he did, but are the rest of us really all that far removed from doing exactly the same thing?

What we say matters. Words do hurt, and the example we set with our words has the ability to destory our entire civilization. We cannot coexist in a situation where we have lot the ability to say anything nice about each other. When our first response is one of sarcasm, belittling, and finding the worst even in other’s good intentions, we pick away at the threads that hold our society together.

I’m guilty. You’re guilty. We have to do better. We have to find more ways to be nice to each other. We’ve been mean and self-centered for so very long, that being nice is going to take considerable effort. Turning around what have become instinctual responses is going to take time. Even more, we need to stop accepting such meanness from others, especially those in positions of authority and those campaigning for those positions. When someone decides to be mean toward another, we need to walk away, withdraw any evidence of support, and go elsewhere.

Being nice isn’t all that difficult. We can be truthful without being mean. We can disagree without being insulting. Our words are killing us. All of us. Say something nice, will you?

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Advertising  /  Fashion  /  PotD
Sexy Is Still What Sells
February 22, 2016
charles i. letbetter - sexy isn't always enough

I don’t know what a world would be like if you do away with sexy images.—Christie Hefner

 

charles i. letbetter - sexy isn't always enough

The advertising mantra has always been “sex sells, ” but today’s market may change how sexy is defined

 

When one spends two months or more out of every year, as I do, watching fashion show after fashion show after fashion show, one can become a little jaded. What might have been considered innovative and attractive at the beginning of the season starts to look boring and over-used by the point we’ve seen it 87 times. We see certain designers try to define, or re-define, what is going to be the look for the next season and sometimes what they might send down the runway intending to be sexy completely changes how we look at women’s apparel. Other times, however, the whole concept fails, miserably. Even the best of designers have off seasons. Getting sexy right can be challenging

“Sex sells,” has been an advertising commandment longer than I’ve been alive and nowhere has that been more true than with lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret. The company has not only dominated the lingerie market, currently holding a 61.8% share, but they’ve successfully changed the entire course of the conversation regarding women’s underwear. Through the 1980s and 90s especially, they defined sexy with lace and silk, a heavy dose of tease, and an out-of-season runway show that is the thing of fantasies for both men and women. All that, however, may be changing.

Anyone paying attention last week was caught off guard when Victoria’s Secret CEO, Sharen Jester Turney, the woman largely responsible for making the brand the powerhouse that it is, resigned without warning. Her reasons were, “to prioritize my family and my personal life and consider what’s next for me professionally,” she said.  Yet, the timing is interesting. The brand just finished its strongest quarter ever. What might Ms. Turney see on the horizon to make her think this is a good time to take a few days off?

Mallory Schlossberg thinks Ms. Turney might not like what she sees coming in the future. In an article for Business Insider this morning, Ms. Schlossberg considers all the social changes taking place that could very well challenge the VS approach to what is sexy. After all, attitudes are changing. Look at the covers of this month’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and on one we see a very fit but definitely not size two Ronda Rousey, while on another we find the very curvy Ashley Graham who is more along the line of size 14-16. Younger women especially are less likely to respond to overly airbrushed and manipulated images of women that are not real. What was considered sexy for previous generations of women isn’t working for Millenials or the Generation Z that is following them. Could this mean that Victoria’s Secret and brands like them, who have largely built their empires on being sexy, are going to have to change their tunes?

Maybe, or maybe not. For all the fret and worry and endless discussion over what Millenials and “Gen Z” shoppers may or may not buy, the fact is we’re just now starting to see the leading edge of their purchasing power. While that power is going to continue to grow, so, too, does their income. What we’ve not yet explored is the degree to which their shopping habits might change as they get older and reach a more mature income status. Granted, their shopping habits as young people are different from their parents, but they’ve yet to achieve the same income level as their parents. They don’t yet have the same level of expendable cash, so it seems natural that they’re a little more conservative with how they spend.

By contrast, let’s look at the fashion styles we’ve seen coming down the runway the past two weeks. Sheer is now everywhere, despite the fact that we’re looking at fall/winter collections. Backs are more likely to be open and necklines are likely to plunge well below the navel. Slits up the side of skirts frequently go all the way to the hip. While layering is still popular and often results in very bulky, shapeless silhouettes, even there, designers have found ways to show a bit of cleavage or flirt with the sight of bare thigh. Sexy is still a very strong look and we’ve yet to get to the notoriously skin-tight styles of Milan and Paris.

Each generation puts their own twist on what is sexy, to be sure, but whatever direction that twist takes, the fact remains that sex still sells. So maybe Victoria’s Secret has to widen the sizes of lingerie they’ve traditionally offered, and maybe they use a little less airbrush in their ads. I don’t imagine women’s appetite for things that are sexy to go away anytime soon. If anything, as the definition of sexy expands, it gives advertisers even more options for reaching out to a new generation of shoppers.

Sexy as your mother defined it may not always be enough, but it is still the dominant force in selling clothes. Sex still sells. A lot.

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