by Sheila Heti
ELIOT: . . . as if she didn’t care.
BARBARA: Really didn’t care. And she chopped her hair short as if she didn’t care. I did see her with makeup on once, and I thought, “Oh, that’s so cool, she does have that side to her.” I saw her once in a green silk dress that she’d gotten at a thrift shop—I forget what that was all about, what occasion that could have been. She liked flowers. I would sometimes go and help her with her kitchen garden, and she would say, “I’ve let the poppies come in,” or “I’ve let the lupines come in. Scott would never have let me do that.” She was quite constrained by his severe socialist aesthetic and lifestyle.
HEIDI: Talk to me about your farm, about how the land looks.
ELIOT: This land was all wooded when I came here in ’68. I had a blank canvas and I was able to do anything I wanted with it. We’ve often thought about some of the farmers of the past whose operations were described in France as ferme ornée [ornamented farm]. It wasn’t that they were frilly—they were practical farms that were beautiful. The decorations weren’t pasted on, they were integral to farming well.
BARBARA: A lot of the English estates did the ornamented farm, but they would glue on the cupola effect. Thomas Jefferson wanted the true ferme ornée—instead of making the farm estatey, he made the estate farmy. Here’s my take on it: Any beauty our farm has comes out of its utility. Everything we do to make the crops grow better at the same time makes it more beautiful. The rows are straight because it’s easier to grow that way, easier to harvest, everything. All of our choices are completely practical, and because we adhere to them religiously, there’s a uniformity to the farm. It’s not haphazard. It’s never haphazard. There’s never any distinction between beauty and utility at this farm.
HEIDI: Do you have any meaningful or special tools that you use?
BARBARA: I have my pet tools. I have one that Eliot designed—he made it for me with an extra-long handle and a pistol grip, and the hoe itself, the blade, is sharpened on both sides. It’s lost. The other one is a trowel that has a nice wooden handle and a very strong cupped narrow pointed blade. I love that trowel. It’s also missing.
HEIDI: Oh no! (laughs)
BARBARA: I still have my favorite little snips, for when you don’t need the strength of a pruner. I love those.
HEIDI: Can you see any connection between how you dress, how your garden looks, and what you cook?
BARBARA: I don’t know, earthy and pleasure-loving? A lot of people think the way we eat is a little decadent because we tend to make a big deal of meals. We have a fairly substantial meal in the middle of the day. None of this “Grab a sandwich.” Everything else about our life is sort of frenetic—and that’s the one still point in the turning world.
HEIDI: Are there any clothing rules you follow around animals? I know you’re not supposed to wear red around bulls, for example.
BARBARA: The only time I ever thought of anything remotely like that was when I was researching which colors biting insects are repelled by or prefer. One day in the garden, Aubrey said, “They hate beige.” I would certainly wear a beige hat if I thought bugs wouldn’t bite me.
HEIDI: Otherwise you haven’t really changed your color palette for the sake of bugs?
BARBARA: For the sake of bugs, no.
SURVEY Do you ever wish that you were a man, could dress like a man, or had a man’s body?
If I were a man, I would want to be a very specific type of man—a twink, I guess, is the word. I would want dark hair and olive skin and big dark eyes. And I wouldn’t want it to last very long, maybe a week. —ELEANOR WEST • Yep. About once every couple months or so I decide it’s a boy day, and I’ll wear trousers and a collared shirt buttoned all the way up, and often a vest, too. Just escaping, a little bit at least, being a woman, for a little while. I think it’s a seriously sad thing that men can’t do the same thing without stigma. —EMMA HOOPER • Not really. I guess maybe a boy who is slim and has a flat stomach, but I wouldn’t want any of the other parts belonging to a man. —ALEXANDRA KERN • I would like the ease that a man has. —CHRISTINA GONZALES • I never wished to be a man or have a man’s body. To be a woman who can be in love with men and women is the best of both worlds. —FELIZ LUCIA MOLINA • I think that if I were a boy, I would be the most stylish guy in the world. They have it so easy! It’s only a choice between tops and bottoms—not skirts or dresses or tights. —IMOGEN DONATO • I do own clothes that men typically wear. —NICHOLE BAIEL • All the time. I aspire to be a lanky, skinny dude constantly. —ARIEL GARFINKEL • I’ve wished that I could dress like a man, although I’ve never wished to be a man. —ARIEL N. KATES • No. —MEGGIN HAMMILL • I have sometimes wished I could be a man so that I could act as aggressively as I wanted and not be judged for it. But I really have never wanted to dress like a man or wanted a man’s body. Women’s clothing is so much more fun and varied. —CHIN-SUN LEE • I’m not envious of men’s clothes so much as men’s lack of curves. I would like to sometimes feel that a shirt was hanging on my shoulders rather than on my breasts. —SASHA ARCHIBALD • I objectively prefer women as a crowd. I have never looked at a man and thought, “That’s it, I want to be that, that’s what’s wrong.” That would have been so easy!—KARI LARSEN • Freshman year of high school, I mistakenly thought that if I dressed like the boys I found attractive, they would realize how much we had in common and fall in love with me. I wore a lot of denim vests. This is not a successful mode of seduction. — CAMILLE CAMPBELL • Why wish? Gita Bellin has a great quote that I like to think about: “If you know you want it, have it.” In other words, I don’t wish for a male form because I contain the male form—my body is home to both. I think this is true for everyone. I have rejected my “maleness” in the past out of fear that I would be seen as less attractive. But now that I honor this aspect of my beauty and being, I feel more whole. —KATHARINE HARGREAVES • Sometimes I wish I could walk down the street like a man and not be scared of other men. Which is not really wanting to be like a man. I just don’t like men staring at me on the street or making comments. I would probably dress sexier if men didn’t exist. —RACHEL ANDES • Not really. The only thing I would like about wearing men’s clothing is that it’s often better made than women’s. —SHELLEY LONG • My first conscious memory was of wishing I was a boy so I wouldn’t have to give birth. I’ve always wanted to get my little girl body back, but I’ve never felt any particular affinity to the male form, more just a slight aversion to being a woman. —SARAH WHIDDEN • I would like to try everything! —LUISA B.
COLLECTION
ARIA SLOSS’s white nightgowns
CONVERSATION
THE FACTORY COLLAPSED
Reba Sikder, an eighteen-year-old garment worker and survivor of the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, talks to Sara Ziff. Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, translates between Bengali and English.
SARA ZIFF
Can you tell me from the beginning what happened at Rana Plaza?
REBA SIKDER
So on that day the 23rd of April, I came to my work, and after doing two hours of work I saw my coworkers rush to escape from the factory, and then our general manager said that we have to leave the factory now. I didn’t even know why—then I went outside. When I was outside I came to know that some workers saw a crack in the building, and sand and concrete had fallen on one worker’s hand. The factory managers said that we should go home and come at two p.m. to the factory again. We went home, and when we came at two p.m., our factory managers said that the building owner told the factory owner that the engineer has inspected the building and it’s fine. It’s safe for running the factory, we can work. So the management told us to go home and come the following morning.
The next morning when I came, I saw that many of my coworkers are standing outside the building and everyone is in fear—whether they should go inside or not. I was standing with them outside, too, and some of them were going inside and
then our middle management, they started screaming at us, yelling, “Just go inside! Why you are standing here? You have to go inside.” One of our production managers was slapping female workers—Go inside—and they’re threatening us that if we don’t go inside, we will lose our job and they will not pay our salary. And then we went inside, and I saw that nobody even started work because the people were talking more . . . What is going to happen? There was a crack in the building. Then our general manager announced that everybody should go back to their machine and start work because there is a rush for shipment—the buyer is putting pressure. He says that we have to hit our production target, then we can go home. We start work because, you know, they’re shouting at us, and I think I worked twenty minutes and then the power was gone. And within two or three minutes they start the generator, and when they start the generator I hear this huge sound, like BOOM, and everything collapsing. My coworkers ran to the stairs and I was following them, and then I fall, and I’m stuck under a machine.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious—and when I got conscious, I was feeling that somebody’s head was on top of my head, and my whole body’s wet because the blood is coming from him. He was stuck under a beam and column. And I found my feet were stuck under a machine—maybe there was a stool or something—and he was asking for help and screaming for water and to save his life, and he was pushing me, too—he could move only his hands. He was my coworker who was working beside me. When he was pushing me and asking for help, I said, “Brother, I cannot help you. There’s no way I can help, because my feet are stuck, too.” He was able to speak to me for a few minutes and then he died. Aminul—my colleague’s name was Aminul.
So when he died, I got unconscious, and I don’t know how long it’s been, and when I got conscious, I thought, There is no hope that I can escape. But still I wanted to give all effort to escape from that place. And I started kicking the stool, but my feet were stuck. I was able to free my leg. And then I saw there is a tiny place, and I start crawling toward the screams I was hearing from my coworkers. A kind of room or pocket had been made, when this beam and column had fallen. And when I went there, I saw another thirty workers trapped, many of them dead, injured, and everyone is screaming. I saw my other coworkers stuck—many of them thirsty and crying for water—and I saw one of my coworkers drinking her own blood from her injured area, because she was so thirsty and there is nothing she can get.
I got unconscious many times, and when I got conscious I felt I am so thirsty, and I was crying and screaming for water. Then my coworkers replied that they cannot give me anything because there is no water, and I said, “Whatever you have, please give me, because I’m dying.” And one of my coworkers, she gave her own urine, which I drank. And I found that, meanwhile, it is two nights and two days since the factory collapsed—it was through my coworkers I came to know. Then I know that we’re all stuck, but four of us among all these survivors, four of us who are skinnier than others, we try to find a way to escape. So we were crawling every single way. We saw there is a tiny way to go. But wherever we would go, it was dark. And when we were crawling to the other area, we saw one of the female workers, she is stuck under a machine, and she said, “Please help me—please save me,” and we replied to her, “Sister, there is no way we can help you, because the way you’re trapped, it is impossible to help you, the ceiling is coming down every single second.” And then she said, “Maybe I will not survive, maybe you cannot help, but I can tell you how to escape from here because I saw—many of the workers went through this area, and I believe they escaped from this building.” Then we started crawling toward that place. But we haven’t found any way to get out, so there is one dark place, four of us sitting and crying, and we thought, There is no hope that we can get out. I cannot tell how big it was—maybe we just crawled in the same place many times because we don’t know where we are going.
So when we were sitting without hope in a place in the dark, and thought maybe we will not survive, suddenly one of my coworkers felt some air that is coming from outside, and then we thought, There is hope. We started crawling to that place where air is coming. And when we’re close to that place, there is a huge sound. We are hearing that people are breaking the wall, breaking the rubble or the concrete. So we started screaming and asking for help. Finally he heard our voice, and he saw us, and he said, “Please stay here—I will not be able to rescue you, because I don’t know how to, but I can call the army, who are doing rescue.” So he called the army, and after half an hour or so, the army came and they rescued the four of us. One machine has fallen on my back, and my neck has been cut up, so there is a screw in my neck; in many, many places in my body there is a screw, and both ankles were injured.
I wanted to say that I worked for this factory and this company, and I was making—including my overtime—$90 a month, but I had to work eight a.m. to ten p.m., sometimes overnight. That was seven days a week, thirty days a month. I want to say that I didn’t receive any compensation. Moreover, I cannot say how many coworkers I left in that building, how many of them I lost. It was more like brothers and sisters, because we worked together. I can remember one whole line of sewing workers, they were just trapped—I saw them falling. I lost many, many of them. So I want compensation, and I want a safe working place for our workers. Just think about those workers who lost their limbs—how they will live. And think about those families who had only one person to earn, and they lost that person.
Were the workers afraid that morning when they were told they had to go into the factory?
Yes we were afraid. We knew that this building would collapse. But we had to go because the managers said they will not give us our salary. We need to feed ourselves. So that is why we had to go.
What would be in the rubble?
If you go to the factory area you will see all these fossils, they’re still in there. The rubble might be removed to other places, but people can find all the fossils inside. So it means that the death toll is not eleven hundred thirty-four, it is more. Many families, they’re coming with pictures and say that they didn’t find their bodies. They didn’t find their beloved.
How does it affect you now, almost one year later?
I couldn’t recover from that. What I went through. When I see my coworkers who lost their limbs, that reminds me of so many things. All the time I remember those faces I left behind, and especially when I see those mothers, or the family members who bring their pictures with them, looking for their family members. If I died in that rubble, my mother would be bringing my picture—coming and going around and asking for me.
PROJECT
WEAR AREAS | LITHE SEBESTA
1 I asked my mother for a breast reduction when I was twenty. Her size was from the other end of the alphabet—her old bras were my first. My breasts came from my paternal great-grandmother, a Technicolor Auntie Mame. I didn’t want my chest to announce itself in every room. My parents were ’70s jogging-and-tennis people, and my dreamy lethargy was bewildering to them. My mother agreed to think about surgery. “Do you think it would make you more athletic?” she said, just before she made the appointment with a local plastic surgeon. But in the tiny office, as she sat eye-to-eye with my nipples, and I stood, splay-armed, as the surgeon drew cut lines across my breasts, she started to cry. A fat tear plopped on her peach scarf. The inquiry ended, though not before they took mug shots with my head cropped off.
2 Czech inheritance: cheekbones, slanted eyes, and bunions. (So far, fingers crossed, no potato-y ankles.) Both of my grandmothers had bunions; one had surgery in Malta that worked on only one side and left her right foot with toes like pickled chicken wings. The other had hers done in Chicago, and thereafter wore sensible German shoes. My toes are making a gentle sidestep with the years, the way my eyelids are crepeing like my mother’s, so that even my feet are already horribly familiar. And the bunions themselves now always have little red circles, like the blush circles on a Russian doll’s cheeks.
COLLECTION
MARLENE BARBER’s furs
ON DRESSING
SEAMS, HEMS, PLEATS, DARTS
LISA COHEN
Last night I dreamt a friend was cold; she’s not my mother but I wish she were, so gallantly I draped her with my coat. You know: My coat is unconditional.
Do not tremble. If she had an institution it is the one excluding her mother. Her native land is not beautiful. She likes the poet to mutter.—Gertrude Stein, “Advertisements”
This is a story of grammar and glamour. First: A systematically composed body of words. Then: A systematically clothed body of love. Fascinated and impatient, I watched her anoint herself, make up, and dress. Visions of elegance, brushes with fabrics, fashion circa 1962–79. I wait for her. I do not know what waits for me. I cannot stand that we’ll be late.
Mutter mutter.
A certain instinct, a certain gesture, a feel, a flair, an eye, a rage for femininity.
Sometimes it still causes me to tremble, tremble.
Grammar is a system of basic rules by which words in a language are structured and arranged. Language is a set of basic rafts by which I stay afloat. Clothing and its sentences were her bag, her boat.
Including: what’s right for girls; what’s meant for boys. (“Shirt” or “blouse”? “Pants” or “slacks”?)
Clothes as exhortation and admonishment.
The summer of 1974: Hot, horrible August; the resignation speech. We mocked Richard Nixon—my mother, my sister, and I—as he cried about his mother on TV. My mother (sob, sob), my mother was a saint. It was the end of Our Long National Nightmare. It was just the beginning.
