The M Word

Photo by GraceChon.com

I discovered meditation initially as a coping mechanism, a form of cheap therapy unattached to any religious or spiritual label. When I could feel curiosity kicking and screaming during my novice meditation practices I gradually started turning to the study of Buddhist philosophy - the dharma, and then to other Buddhists - Sangha support, for advice, connection, and understanding.

It’s a classic tale of how the spiritual practice ball gets rolling: My friend introduced it to me, she was introduced to it by her husband, he was introduced to it by his therapist, his therapist was introduced to it by the monks he lived with in India, I introduced it to my friend, and she introduced it to her boyfriend. We all practice it in different ways, we all have our own spiritual gurus, and we all have our own reasons for doing it. For the most part it’s shameless yet very private: like flexing in the mirror.

There are countless articles written about meditation and if you have time I’d read the ones that debunk the myths of meditation. Taking on the heavy task of writing about the meaning of meditation is daunting, so kudos to them for even trying. I’ve decided to simply and gently share what meditation has taught me:


1. I am very rarely ever present during my waking hours.

The presence of presence is so short-lived, as if going extinct, and to me, prevails only on the faces of babies and animals. Anyone meditating just one time knows how difficult it is to just sit down, be completely in the now and be aware of what our body and hearts are experiencing at the moment. Being present -- like really here, without thoughts or intentions on what we’re going to say next or do next, without wishing we were somewhere else, or reliving moments, or deep in concentration, or stuck in our judgments, or planning, or with stories drifting in and out– is really truly radical and difficult. Meditation helps me become aware of how much I am not present in my day-to-day life. Having this awareness through meditation teaches me how to tap into presence in my normal waking hours, if not for a few minutes of every day, allowing more connected, more amplified experiences. And that’s when the magic happens.


2. Feelings have feelings.

I tend to be the most enthusiastic about meditation when I am triggered. I often only meditate on the heavy stuff: frustration, guilt, anger, disappointment, betrayal, fear, loss, blame. I sit with the particular feeling, without thoughts or stories attached and commit to being with it for an amount of time all while exaggerating it from head to toe. Doing this I become better acquainted with it – and most importantly, less scared of it. What this practice does is it familiarizes and prepares me for each emotion when they unexpectedly creep up in my life, acknowledging them, and then letting them go. Like most people I have a tendency to react before properly identifying what it is that I am feeling. Now, I recognize fear, I recognize control, I recognize burnt out - they all have a clear sensation (and taste and texture and smell). The magic happens when I'm comfortable sitting with the pinching of resentment and the coolness of shame without acting out and without repressing.


3. There are no unwanted emotions.

This one may be the most eye-roll-inducing but it surprisingly was the easiest concept for me to grasp: I learnt to stay with the hurt and self-doubt that arouse when I was sitting cross-legged in solitude on a cushion. Meditating is not escaping or distracting me from the difficult. I don’t go off to zen-land and meditation doesn’t put me in a hypnotic, psychedelic trance. It’s quite the opposite: I see exactly what’s really here. What’s really underneath the shrug, the smirk, the jazz hands. What I’ve been pushing down since before lunch. I learnt to ignore the friend who said “Don’t be sad. You should be happy!” If I am paying attention, difficult emotions can indicate what’s really going on, especially if they keep creeping up. I don’t always leave mediation “feeling better” but at least I’ve learnt to stay with what is. The magic happens when everything is welcome.

“Instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”- Pema Chödrön

4. It’s the only place I can be completely honest.

Like most people I have an unconscious-sometimes-conscious pattern of dishonesty and wearing armor to self-protect and to protect my children, flawed as I know it is. During my private meditation it’s an opportunity to really look and be honest with my experience no matter how ugly. Cultivating honesty in my relationships and refusing to accept lies from other people can only happen if I have a private space to practice honesty. I suppose this is the Buddhist version of the Catholic Confession. However, there's a serious intention to not judge during meditation. We’ve been brought up to judge emotion: Joy is good. Jealousy is bad. We've been brought up to judge experience: I'm not doing this right. It's not supposed to be like this. Whatever the experience is when I meditate is as the Buddhists say: no big deal. It’s all part of the package – no judging on why it happened, how I got here or what emotions are likable or unlikable. The magic happens when I admit that I still find this one extremely difficult and I’m still trying to get the hang of it.


5. Gratitude

There have been countless times I’ve sat down to meditate but instead wanted to get up, turn the lights on and go check my Facebook (and believe me I have). In those times on my cushion, I have learnt to practice simple breathing in and out with feelings of gratitude for all that I have and all that I am. I don’t express gratitude enough during my waking hours, so during this meditation it brings clarity and perspective. I have so much to be grateful for. Most of us do.


6. Self-Advocacy

I’ve become a self-advocate -- which is not to be selfish or self-absorbed, though I have my moments -- but to not give up on myself. The root of everything is compassion; and the root of compassion is self-compassion. If nothing, absolutely nothing arises on that cushion; no thoughts, no emotions, no physical sensations, then at the very least I can put my hand on my heart for 10 minutes and devote to being kind to myself. Not everyone loves themselves, I get it. Even when I believe I do I still treat myself in ways that say otherwise. So I take time to give kindness, love, and compassion to myself for no reason. I don’t list all the wonderful things I did today, or check off my good deeds. And this magic-inducing gentle reminder: Go easy on yourself. Take care of yourself.


7. I can always find my way back (home) to it.

No matter how much something hurts or how long I’ve gone without meditating I can always come home to it. Paradoxically, I knew meditation was working for me when something traumatic happened and I couldn’t bear to face meditation. I abandoned it for weeks. I felt if I sat with it, the hurt would creep up and the thought of having to “look at it” would be too much to bear. Instead I turned to music, cigarettes and writing -- harmless as they seem. It takes a lot of courage to want to crack open. Meditation is always here when I’m ready. Even if it’s been a season’s passing, even if I’ve changed my mind and back again. I can have as many chances as I like. I can never fail and I can never truly master it, which means the path is limitless. There’s no end result, there’s no resolution.  So I suppose I’ll just keep going. The magic happens when I can feel my heart opening up a little more each time.

***

Lastly, I don’t claim to be enlightened, not in the least, I’m still striving for improvement, I know we’re all a work-in-progress.  Pema Chödrön, a popular guru and my most cherished, wisely and best states it this way:

"Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.”

If anyone reading this feels they want to connect with me on any of the subjects broached, please know messages are always welcome, throw rocks at my window, knock on my door, smoke signals, whatever. And for those reading who believe they could never learn anything from meditation, I say that's cool too.

Does This Ambiguity Make My Butt Look Big?

It’s a quiet, lifeless Wednesday night at the downtown sex club (hey, we know the dj) and my boredom leads us across the street to the gay bar known as Zippers where we accidentally stumble on the city’s one and only weekly Drag King event. I plant my feet firmly in the first row of the show. It’s a combination of curiosity and envy that won’t let me leave.

After watching three of the most convincing women-dressed-as-men lip-sync and cavort to my favourite pop songs, their hips gyrating, their bow-ties bobbing, my friend pulls me out the door by my arm as I plead with her to stay a bit longer.

“No way!” she grumbles. “There’s no hot guys here. We’re leaving.”

“Hey, I want to do this someday. Do you think I should try out?” I ask as we get outside and light our cigarettes. She smiles affectionately and assures me if any woman would be amazing at this, it would be me. 

Drag Kings: It’s not only the macho stage name and "clothes that make the man" but facial hair, breast-binding, crotch-packing and crisp, strong movement 

My first taste of an audience’s big-eyed reaction to gender play was when my twin sister played macho biker boyfriend to my blonde bimbo role in the grade six performance of The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf. I was told in rehearsal to not play the bimbo so well. Too convincing, the teachers say. On opening night, Hayley rode in the school gymnasium on a real motorcycle in her leather jacket and sang and flirted with my character with the suaveness of Uncle Jessie.

I recall the expression on my friend’s face that night at Zippers was being witness to some sort of anarchy. On the mom-and-dad faces in the school audience twenty-two years ago it was an expression of delight. 

A huge part of me gets drawn to drag because of the necessity to parody and play with gender fluidity and to cause the audience to question gender and its boundaries. Because gender so importantly needs to be played with.

I’m not only talking gender identity -- one’s private sense of which gender one identifies with -- I’m talking expression; the way in which we externally convey our sense of identity to others. It’s in the form of communication; mannerisms, clothing, haircut, makeup, voice, scents, and accessories.

I've learned the hard way to never assign gender identity to others, to never assume sexual preference because of the way one is dressed or the way one flips their hair. Gender expression and gender identity gives no indication of a person’s sexual orientation. Got it?

As fluid as I think we should get, I’m still learning there are firm boundaries with the binary system: Butch women, a culture of females who display masculinity should not be confused with the kitschy and campy performances of Drag Kings pretending to be men for eight minutes.

My whole life I’ve observed society's reaction to Butch women as females who are "ugly", "undesirable" or "failed": “I just don’t get it. It's like they're trying so hard to NOT be pretty.” we’d say with our expressions of arcane. Perhaps we didn’t know that men don't own masculinity and women don't own femininity.

The misunderstood perception of Butch women is that they are trying to be men. They’re not. Their style of masculinity is intentional, baby, and it's what makes them attractive and appealing. Butch is not to reject womanhood, nor are Butch women in the process of transitioning, or confused about who they are. It’s an expression. It may not be your version of what “pretty” is but it’s a type of beauty, it just happens to be in a minority.

"Butch women are beautiful because they carve into our culturally empty space a different and powerfully confrontive way to live as women.” (photo and quote from Butch: Not like the other girls, SD Holman ) 

With gender expression I’ve realized sometimes a subtle adjustments makes all the difference: growing in my thick eyebrows, wearing men’s deodorant and throwing away the push-up bra. The same works in reverse; asking a hetero- cisgendered man to wear vanilla-scented perfume, or a delicate pink bracelet under his cuff or to grow his hair just 2 inches longer may make him feel uncomfortable. It’s not always about how you look or what message you’re trying to convey -- it’s how it makes you feel.

“To recommend that women become identical to men, would be simple reversal, and would defeat the whole point of androgyny, and for that matter, feminism: in both, the whole point is choice.”  

-- Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, American author

I am an example of someone whose gender expression has become more fluid as the years have gone by: having long hair, plucked manicured eyebrows and femme attire is something that feels a bit like 'drag' these days and I can feel myself moving towards androgyny. I still use my looks to attract men. It’s just now the types of men I attract are the ones who are more suited for me. As far as who I am attracted to, it took me a while to realize I am attracted to androgyny.

I identify as a woman but I feel very comfortable when I can express gender as male. And I hope for more pop-cultural gender-benders like Jagger, Bowie, Prince, Madonna, Annie Lennox, Grace Jones, Ruby Rose and Lady Gaga to finally start normalizing androgyny without it being a “quirk” of their character. Does it really matter that people like Caitlyn Jenner and me speak up about our right to express gender? Can’t we just shut up and keep it to ourselves?

Yes, it does matter. 

Because if you get to wear your pretty dress out to a party or wear a tie to work then I want to too.
Because like everyone else, I want to belong.
I want what I feel inside to reflect what shows on the outside.
I want to attract a partner who sees me, who understands my individuality, who likes my style.

Choosing to pose for a Vogue magazine spread transcends attention-seeking. Caitlyn Jenner’s reasons may be as simple as the reasons you choose to pose for a family photograph or make a music video. Because I bet when she finished her shoot and she saw her image on the playback screen of Annie Leibovitz’s camera she thought: Hey, that’s me. That’s finally me.

My Annie Leibovitz came in the form of a talented Toronto-based photographer named Robert McGee. He didn’t know it at the time, but he played a profound role in this time of my life when I was ready to show the parts of myself that have always been a mystery. And for that, he will always have my grace and gratitude. He captured something no one has ever captured before, something I can only articulate as “self-recognition”.

Ah, there you are. Pretty + Handsome. (photo by Robert McGee)

The friend who dragged me out of Zippers that night sees my recent photographs and calls me up on the phone:

“How’ve you been Ponyboy? You gonna do your Drag King night, or what?”

I chuckle and promise I will get around to it someday. I thumb through my closet with my phone nestled between my ear and my shoulder as we continue chatting. I touch that great pair of ripped jeans from an ex-boyfriend, the cut-up muscle tee from my boss and a quick glance in my mirror shows my underarm hair has been growing in pretty thick these days.

My reflection still shows deep mystery that I'm elated to explore. So if the stage-name Ponyboy isn’t already taken, then I think I’ll go with that.

Namaste, Selfie Police

The Greek God Narcissus was a beautiful man whose parents ensured that in order for him to live to a ripe old age he must “never know his own true self”. Thus denying him to ever see or know his own reflection. One day, Narcissus was walking in the woods when a mountain nymph named Echo saw him, fell deeply in love upon the sight of him, and followed. Narcissus grew irritated being followed by an unknown and shouted: "Who's there?". Echo repeated: "Who's there?". Echo revealed herself and tried to embrace him. He stepped away and demanded she leave him alone. Heartbroken, Echo spent the rest of her life in the solitary hills until nothing but an echo sound remained of her. Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, heard about the incident and decided to punish Narcissus by luring him to a pool where he saw his own reflection. Narcissus didn't realize it was only an image and fell in love with it. When he realized that his love for himself could not come to life, he committed suicide.

...Or so the legend goes. I’ve heard other versions. But where am I going with this?

Oh yes, Narcissism.

A person who is excessively preoccupied with personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity and who is cut off from shared emotional life suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

Narcissism is NOT the same as healthy self-love, it’s not the same as self-esteem and it’s not the same as enhancing one’s own joie de vivre.

It’s a very misunderstood term and (*) FUCK (*) does this term ever get thrown around a lot.

Mostly by the patriarchy. Mostly towards women. Mostly on social media.

Notice the "voice" of each. Men are condemning. Women are the condemned.

It seems these days, people like to hate on people who take Selfies for being "narcissistic, braggy, slutty, too sexy, crying out for help, seeking out validation" or sadly used as yet another way for women to judge each other.

Yes, the hatred of selfies is about misogyny. The reaction to Selfies is an eye-opening crash course in sexism, but most significantly, it teaches people (particularly girls/women) to always expect and even accept a certain degree of misogyny.

And it’s a very methodical, slow erosion of women’s sense of autonomy.

And since when is liking what you see a problem?

Comparing a woman to Narcissus - Ha! -- I doubt any woman has immediately fallen in love with their reflection so much that they’ll die to have it. For me, it took years to love and accept my body, and to unlearn everything I have ever been shown about what “beauty” is, thank you, patriarchy.

Loving yourself and feeling good about yourself is NOT a problem. The problem is that if we all start loving ourselves they won't have any more shit to sell us. 

This is sexist and misogynist. How are these two scenarios even comparable? Someone created this meme to degrade and put down women, plain and simple. We don’t know that woman’s occupation or passions in life. Who gets to decide how many photos a specific gender gets to take and for what reason? He went to the moon? She just passed her bar exam.

Girls are taught from an early age that they can only feel good about themselves through the approval of everyone else, especially men. And for some reason, if a person senses this vulnerability in women, they are taught to respond by pulling out an arsenal of shame and ridicule.

Hugely popular songs like One Directions' What makes you beautiful,  Ne-Yo's Let Me Love You, and Bruno Mars' Just the way you are romanticize self-loathing in young women as an indicator of extreme virtue. Girls who have low self-esteem are allegedly desirable because they’re vulnerable. (read: don't worry, you may not love yourself but you can find a man and HE will love you.)

And if a person is posting selfies to receive external validation, well, that's their prerogative. That's their issue to work out, and besides, seeking validation from external factors isn't exactly a new phenomenon.

People who construct all the "rules" for how you should behave are not free.  I have personally been guilty of judging the fuck out of someone's behaviour and it feels shitty being a condemner. It feels tight and it feels emotionally enslaved. In my humble opinion, true clinical narcissists running amongst us are NOT the ones posting selfies, anyways. Narcissists cause harm. Your selfies are not causing harm.

Before the modern-day Selfie you paid a guy to come to your home and paint
a portrait of yourself surrounded by all your fancy processions.

You do not have to apologize for being here, for taking up space, for believing you look and feel good today. Never feel guilty for announcing your presence. Your body belongs to you. So go ahead, honey, post your Selfie.

Woman takes Selfie. Same woman gives birth to two children.

Man-made sculptures in art history were for the male gaze. This photo had a phone Photoshopped to it and suddenly she was seen as vain and conceited. That’s why I’m 100% for selfie culture because apparently men can appreciate a women's beauty but when we realize how beautiful we are, suddenly we're a narcissistic asshole.

“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.” ― John Berger, Ways of Seeing

I once heard an alternate version of the Greek myth that goes like this: Narcissus tries to embrace and kiss the beautiful mountain nymph (Echo) who confronts him in the water but Narcissus instead sees his own reflection. "Narcissus recognized himself and lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour. Narcissus rejoices in his torments: knowing at least that his own self would remain true to him, whatever happened". But hey, maybe I got it all wrong.

And now enjoy the tune where Lily echoes my sentiments exactly.

Paper Bags and Bums

As a child growing up in the 80’s, my copy of Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess, shared officially with my twin sister was more mine than hers and I would lay in bed studying every word and picture, no doubt with my dirty feet pressed up against the wall leaving marks, and my finger up my nose.

It also happens to be my youngest son’s first official book that is truly his -- not from the book collection passed down from his older brother. My 9 year-old and 4 year-old sons and I occasionally read it before bed if the mood is right, with our fingers up our noses.

Unlike traditional fairy tales that model gender roles in which female characters are passive princesses waiting to be rescued, cared for, and protected by men, The Paper Bag Princess is radically alternative with a feminist-spin.

The Radical, Feminist Plot

Princess Elizabeth is a beautiful, rich, pre-pubescent princess with fine clothes and is set to marry the equally pristine Prince Ronald. A dragon burns down her castle, including her clothes and carries off the Prince. Elizabeth puts on a basic brown paper bag, chases down the dragon, outsmarts the beast, and rescues the Prince. The Prince upon being rescued takes one look at her and tells her to “Come back when you are dressed like a real princess”. Elizabeth calls him a bum and walks off. And they don’t get married.

He thinks she's a disgrace...she thinks he's a Bum

I may have been young, but Munschs’ themes and metaphors opened the floodgate thereon in for my habit of “reading into things”. The very basic concept of a princess, *gasp*, SAVING a prince was so radical, it’s being blogged about right now at this very moment for the purpose of reminding ya’ll that this type of fairy tale is still considered “alternative”.

The herstory of the idea for Princess Elizabeth goes like this: At a daycare in Ontario, Munsch came across a young girl called Elizabeth who would walk in and throw her coat on the floor expecting someone to hang it up for her because she had a slew of brothers who did everything for her. Her nickname amongst staff was “Princess”. Sexist perhaps, but I digress. Robert Munsch told two stories each day to the children, and he often changed the plots of stories each time and was “doing a bunch of dragon stories” with a prince always saving the princess. His wife Ann, who was the director at the center pointed out that most of the women who brought their kids to daycare were single moms and most children did not have princely role models at home. Ann asked, “Why can’t the princess ever save the prince, Bob?” So he obliged. It became “a story that the MOTHERS liked,” explained Munsch, “and it stopped changing and became a story that was asked for again and again.”

stunned and shirtless, Elizabeth is still a princess

As a child, and now, I love that the princess raises above vanity -- a theme that is THE focal point of every single fairy tale forced down my throat as a young girl. I love that she was drawn shirtless with an un-sexualized body. I love the symbolism of the charred, mutilated crown that remained on her head throughout her journey. I love the air of dignity and industriousness of the paper bag.

She finds herself in a post-apocalyptic situation where etiquette and expectations are tossed out the window and we watch her make her own choices. I love how her parents are nowhere in sight. I love that in each beautifuly-drawn illustration by Michael Martchenko her face captures the true emotions of a girl - the anger, the disappointment, the confidence, the smugness, the victory, the adoration, the joy.

pleased princess and out-of-puff dragon

When faced with the intimidating dragon, Princess Elizabeth uses her brain and cleverness as opposed to her beauty/sexuality to problem-solve. I LOVED the reverse gender roles, I loved seeing Elizabeth standing next to a defeated dragon, staring up at the caged, vulnerable prince. In my childhood this was the ONLY fairy tale where a girl wasn't depicted as irrelevant, dim, passive, stagnant and stuck indoors!

Elizabeth rescues Ronald

I asked one of my parents if it was possible that Ronald was mean to her not because he really meant those cruel words but because he was shaken by being saved by a girl. They called this being emasculated and it was “a terrible thing”. I decided that day that masculinity wasn't just a privilege for the boys, but something girls deserve to feel too.

The general reception to this story at the time was confusing, apparently. Bronwyn Davies, Feminist scholar and author, did some research on the impact of this story (she was provoked to search for alternative children’s stories to read to her own daughter for role models to combat the materialistic and highly-sexualized consumer culture that surrounded girls). Davies discovered that children viewed Princess Elizabeth as "bad once she stepped out of her female place” and her findings illustrate the 1980s as a time of changing gender roles in society. Davies found that children who had a mother working outside the home and who had a father who shared in the housework were able to grasp the feminist message of the story.

What does Elizabeth walk away with at the end of the story? Not the prince, not a trophy, not a new status or an elevated hierarchy, not a new outfit or tangible object. 

Aside from feminism, the message of self-love may be the most important concept to discuss with your kids -- boys and girls.

Twins! (Wendy & Hayley)

What I love most about the paperbag princess, is that she makes me think of my twin sister, Hayley, who every single time we went tobogganing during those long Winnipeg winters would pull me in the sled the whole 2 blocks to the hill and the whole 2 blocks home, our parents nowhere in sight. She marched to the beat of her own drum, is both perfectly resilient and perfectly vulnerable and taught me how to stand up for myself. Hayley's a dragon-slayer, but she's a generous and compassionate one. And things that I could never really understand, she always had a way of explaining them to me. 

And I have, like I’m sure every girl has, fallen for that deceptively beautiful man who turned out to be someone who took advantage of my one-sided devoted adoration. Reading the simple last lines from Elizabeth always brings me back to basics:

The Paper Bag Princess is NOT an anti-male sentiment, It simply highlights that unkind, disrespectful behavior from a partner, any partner, is sometimes just unacceptable.

According to Munsch, the moral of the story is: “there are a lot of bums out there and you don’t want to marry one.”

***

Other Readings:

The Princess Who Saves Herself
(as per the book’s Kickstarter): The story of an awesome kid who lives with her pet snake and plays rock ‘n’ roll all day to the huge annoyance of the classical guitarist witch who lives down the road. Hijinks, conflicts, and a fun reconciliation ensue, all showcasing determination, bravery, and understanding.

Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales: Preschool Children and Gender
(as per Google Reads description:) How and why do children become masculine or feminine? The way in which gender is constructed in our society means that in learning to be good people, to be members of our society, children must learn the way maleness and femaleness is done and they must get it right. Gender is a public rather than private category, and children recognize that they are not free as individuals to vary the way gender is taken up. Using children's play, their conversation, and their responses to feminist stories, this study provides both detail of the gendered world of childhood and new insights into the social construction of gender. This revised edition includes the addition of a chapter reflecting on the methodology, as well as detailed textual improvements.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture:
(Wikipedia): The book explores the phenomenon of princess culture and in particular how the concept is marketed to young girls. It expands on the theme set out in the article, incorporating child beauty pageants, American Girl stores, and a Miley Cyrus concert. Orenstein concerns herself with young girls' self-esteem and the sexualization of girlhood.

How to Host a Badass Clothing Swap

People + Clothes!

Right-on. That's basically all you need to hold a successful clothing swap. The guests don't even need to be friends. But chances are most of them will be by the end of the night.

Hostess Sarma who happens to live in a beautiful, spacious, well-located abode on Queen street East wanted to host this event with the help of her sassy friend Tessa and they asked me to throw in my flair and no-nonsense approach.

Hosted by Tessa, Sarma & Wendy (aka: Girls In Your Closet)

We set up our event using Facebook and invited a shitload of people: People with bodies of all shapes and sizes. People who wear clothes. People who like to be with other people. Outside of the obvious "women you are friends with", I recommend inviting men, teenage daughters, your mother, your mother's friends, and people you don't know very well.

  

To draw interest I made up a poster using Picassa and found random Facebook pics of potential guests wearing, you guessed it -- clothes! (leaving out everyone's faces)

Our event started at 7 pm on a Friday night and the guests arrived to Sangria, wine, sushi and desserts. We urged guests to bring as many items of clothing as they wanted, plus additional snacks and booze to keep costs down.

raw fish...maple popcorn....honey balls

Here is the methodology for a badass clothing swap:

• Arrange separate tables or stations for TOPS, BOTTOMS, DRESSES, SHOES, PURSES

Shoes go HERE

• When each guest arrives ask them to count their items and put them at the appropriate station.

• Supply a roll of raffle tickets and a few pens; ask each guest to take the number of tickets per items they brought and have them write their name on the back of each ticket.

Daisy brought 26 items. She gets 26 tickets. She writes her name on the back of each. 

She holds on to the tickets for awhile.

Make sure to try stuff on and provide swappers with plenty of mirrors

• The number rule is simply this: Help yourself to as many items as you have tickets.... Now start hunting!

Labels-Shmables! Everything from Joe to Marc Jacobs at this swap

Your trash is my treasure


Our clothing swap had fantastic ambiance; the vastness of Sarma's apartment was a huge asset, great music, outdoor balcony for smokin', if that's your thing, and the group happened to be a lovely, adventurous murder of women!

• If more than one person has their eye on the same item call the ref! This is the fun part. The individuals need to try it on, strut their stuff and the group decides who it looks best on. Muah!

Jude and daughter Mika go home full-bagged

A party ain't a party without GoGo

Actors/artists Tracy and Shay pick up anything colourful

Anjali has experience with clothing swaps and she deems ours badass

• When everyone has found their desired number of items I suggest you blow a whistle for the end of round one. Close the tables. Guests sort through their piles, putting back any discards. Then round two begins and it's a free-for-all. Take as many as you like. The host doesn't want to be left with a big pile of clothes at the end of the night to dispose of.

This Wendy enjoyed her night out sans kids and contributed some well-appreciated items

This Wendy added a few macho items to her wardrobe: genuine leather Deisel fanny pack and faux-leather Forever 21 jacket

Not sure who ended up taking this skirt home -- GoGo or Shay?

Cinderella....(finally!) These killer heels went to a good home

She found this dress and they look very happy together

• Now, what was the point of those raffle tickets with our names on the back? We tossed them all in a hat and drew a name for a prize at the end of the night.

Shannon wins the bottle of Tequila!

All the best at your next Clothing Swap event....signed, the FeministBuddhist.