Kindness Porn

I’ve started watching the Tidying Up show with Marie Kondo, not because I’m actually planning to follow her method at the moment, but just because she’s such a delight to watch and listen to. I also loved her book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and would highly recommend it as a very relaxing read. It’s an excellent bedtime book.

In spite of all the totally legitimate criticism of the minimalist movement, Marie is really nonjudgemental and seems to be purely motivated by a desire to help people make their own environments comfortable for themselves, not to make them fit into any particular image. If that box of Star Wars memorabilia makes you happy, she wants to help you display it, not guilt you into throwing it away. She really strikes me, above all else, as a person who has completely leaned into who she is, her own unique view of the world, and what matters to her. I think that’s pretty special.

I have a slowly growing little list of shows that are both positive and relaxing, and Tidying Up is going on it. The Great British Baking show and Queer Eye are also pretty high up there. I never realized how starved I was for just seeing basic kindness on TV until I first found myself watching a baking competition where the contestants would often stop work just to help each other. Even the comedians on GBBS give out hugs and encouragement in equal measure with their kindhearted teasing and jokes.

Queer Eye offers something even more rare, which is a group of men doing emotional labor for other men. Many straight men rely almost entirely on their female partners for that kind of emotional processing and support, and it can be terribly isolating. The men of Queer Eye are gentle and encouraging, and they provide a great image of non-toxic masculinity. Plus, the show offers a lot of body positivity for men, another rarity.

Side note: There was a great discussion I saw a while ago about how this heavy reliance on their female partners can encourage men to believe in the mythical Friend Zone. Men tend to view any kind of emotional labor as something you only exchange with a romantic partner, whereas women usually also give and receive that kind of support from friends. Thus, basic supportive friendship for a woman looks, to a straight man, like a relationship. This is not a good thing. It wears women out, trying to keep up with the needs of a person who isn’t getting emotional support from anyone else in their life, and is part of why older men tend to die soon after losing their partners. They have no emotional support networks to take up the strain, unlike most older women. Plus, it encourages men to ruin perfectly good friendships by putting their female friends in The Girlfriend Zone. Knock this off, dudes. Being friends isn’t a consolation prize, y’all just need to learn how to do it right.

Here are some of the shows on my kindness porn list:

• Great British Baking show
• Queer Eye This is the remake, not the original. I’ve just never watched the original show, so I can’t comment on its tone.
• Tidying up
• This one is not a TV show, but Jessica Kellgren-Fozard has a youtube channel, Jessica Out of the Closet, that is pretty much like distilled sunshine. She’s a disability activist, vintage beauty vlogger, and she shares stories about her life with her wife and their two dogs. Sometimes she also talks about her beliefs as a quaker, and about queer and disabled historical figures. She’s one of the most positive and intentionally kind people I’ve ever seen in my life.
• Big Dreams, Small Spaces is a British show about renovating small gardens so that they’re more functional and beautiful for the families who need them. They often feature disabled people, with a focus on accessibility and tailoring those spaces really well to the people who will use them.
• Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is a short one, but very fun to watch. The host, Samin Nosrat, is incredibly passionate about good food, with none of the usual quibbling about calories or creepy talk about guilty pleasures. She enjoys herself, teaches about the important basic elements of flavor, and she goes out and talks to people who make amazing food around the world. She also has a book.

If anyone has any suggestions for more shows I should add to this list, I’d love to hear them.

I had to rescue this orchid from Safeway, because they had sprayed all the other orchids with glitter paint and it was sad.

This is my weird hairless dog in pajamas giving me a hug. Granted, she was doing this to stop me from working so I’d pay attention to her instead, but still.

Writing days this past week: 2

Fire’s Comfy Magic

Well, this Halloween was our first in this neighborhood, and I learned that we don’t have very many kids around. Three very cute and well-disguised children showed up and took a few candies each, and then… Nothin’. Nobody else. So, I have a giant purple bowl with a cute spider on it that is still filled to the brim with candy. Oh, well. Such is my dreadful fate.

I am a little bummed that so few people got to admire my candle display on the waterfall, though. It wasn’t particularly impressive, but it was sparkly, and I enjoyed putting them out. I’m definitely gonna do more of that next year. I even used scented candles, because I have a lot of them, so the yard also smelled pretty. You’re welcome, neighbors.

Even though we didn’t get much traffic (or maybe partly because of that) it was super nice to just sit by the kitchen window and write with the pretty flickering candles outside in the garden. A little atmosphere never hurts when trying to get the creative juices flowing, and the sight of flames glowing in the night definitely has a certain emotional power to it. A lot of power, actually. Even a very tame bit of fire can transform an environment completely.

One thing I love about being at my boyfriend’s place is that he almost always has a candle burning, and that small flame instantly makes the space feel warm and welcoming and extra special, like it’s secluded from the outside world. Fire is comforting in a sort of primitive and instinctive way, and as someone who absolutely hates the cold, I can’t help loving all the homely little forms of fire. I used to toast marshmallows and read Nancy Drew books by the light of my grandparents’ hearth as a kid, and occasionally my grandpa would let me jab the glowing logs with a huge iron poker that was probably not entirely safe in my rather excitable hands. The only thing I was a tiny bit disappointed about in our new house, even though it’s a wonderful place, is that it doesn’t have a fireplace to read and write by.

It does have space for as many candles as I could possibly want, though, and I need to remember to pull some out the next time I’m feeling creatively stuck. The only way out of writer’s block is to write, but there’s nothing wrong with setting the mood while you do it.

You can’t tell from the photo, but the moving water reflected the light, and it looked way cool.

Writing days this past week: 2