Registry, Schmegistry

When I moved away for college, one of the things I missed the most was easy access to my mom's Kitchenaid mixer. The women on both sides of my family, for generations back, were fabulous bakers and I had grown up helping my mom make cookies and cakes in her stand mixer. So when my mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas that year I told her that truthfully, what I wanted most was my very own Kitchenaid.

"That's a wedding present," she told me. "I'll give you one of those when you get married."

Which was kind of a ridiculous answer. I mean, Kitchenaids are expensive, and I knew that, so it's not like I was feeling entitled to receive one for Christmas. But her idea that the appropriate time to acquire a Kitchenaid (and, apparently, any other well-made, high ticket kitchen item) was to wait until you got married and then to register for it... Well, let's just say that seemed somewhat odd. I wanted that mixer now, not at some nebulous date in the future. I wasn't even dating anyone at the time. Was I really not supposed to have anything that didn't come from Target or Goodwill in my kitchen until then? And let me tell you, my mom would have been pissed if I'd gotten married at 18 just so I could have someone else buy me a kitchen appliance. And I told her so, and she laughed. And she didn't buy me a Kitchenaid for Christmas. (My teasing must have made some difference. Eventually, years later, that was my parents' very thoughtful law school graduation gift to me even though I was very single at the time. And I have used it for innumerable awesomenesses since, my spinsterhood notwithstanding.)

Anyway, my lust for a Kitchenaid was my first real familiarity with the institution of wedding registries. I like puttering in the kitchen, so every time I would fall in love with a kitchen-related toy that I really couldn't justify spending the money on, I would think, "man, I can't wait until I get married, I am totally putting this on my registry." It was like the wish list I never had to save up for. I have about three hypothetical kitchens worth of All-Clad, Le Creuset, matchy-matchy snack plates, Vitamixes, cast iron teapots, all waiting to go on my hypothetical wedding registry. I would privately critique my friends' registries when I was out buying them wedding presents. I would stalk around kitchen stores, muttering to myself, "Clearly they haven't read Alton Brown. Don't they know ceramic is an slow heat conductor and this Le Cruest ceramic bakeware will only break their hearts?" I knew I wouldn't make any such rookie mistakes.

I am getting married in four months and I can't bring myself to register for any of it. Meg, over at A Practical Wedding, refers to it as Registry Ennui, which is not a bad descriptor at all, though sometimes I feel a little closer to "Registry Angst."

From what I see, a lot of people who are relectant to register think they have everything they need already. They're combining two households, so they already have everything they need, want, or have space for. That's not us.

It's not that I don't want any kitchenware. I am using most of the same pots and pans I got as an open item at a big box store when I was 20. The saucepan is so discolored it looks powdercoated, and several of the others weren't that hot to begin with. My cheap springform pan has rusted, so cheesecakes and flourless chocolate cakes are no longer in my repertoire. I have mixing bowls, but not the ones I want (stainless steel with a pourable spout--do people even make these anymore? Are people actually relying on double boilers for melting chocoloate?). Several useful but not strictly essential measuring spoons and cups have vanished. Shiner's blender, which replaced in my kitchen the blender my mom received off her wedding registry in the 70's, only works on things that are already pretty liquid. So while this is not a major quality of life issue--obviously, I can and do feed myself in spite of these daunting obstacles--these are things I'd like to have, that would make my life easier or cheerier in some way, and that are normally the type of thing one could expect to find on a wedding registry.

No, my issue is not that there aren't traditional registry items I could legitimately use and truly enjoy. It's that a bunch of our friends are broke, or at least are seriously budget. In fact, the ones who live farthest away, whose expenses would be the greatest if they were to travel to attend our wedding, are also for the most part our guests with the lowest incomes and the highest costs of living. I don't know if some of them will be able to make it to the wedding at all given the expense, which bums me out but which is totally understandable. After all, things are looking kind of scary these days. But I know that a lot of people, consciously or unconsciously, look to the registry list to tell them what they are expected to spend to "cover their plate" as a guest. Even when you're close friends with the people getting married. Maybe even especially if you're close friends with the people getting married. I don't want my friends, who I am already asking to put down a chunk of change to get themselves across the country to our wedding, to think they have to drop another $120 on a saucier to make me feel sufficiently loved as an individual. I want them to come. A lot. I don't care if they bring us anything. So I just don't want to start down that road.

Even if all our friends were wealthy, I don't know if I'd feel much different. Now that I am in the position of doing the asking rather than the buying, it seems kind of crass. I think this is mostly my personal issue. I know the pro-registry people have a very good point when they say that most people will buy you something because they want to. I know I always did. I must have escaped this phenomenon I've heard described of being invited to the wedding of people you barely know in order to pad their haul. And I also believe that most people enjoy shopping from the registry, secure in the knowledge that whatever they buy is something the recipients actually want. Unless I know someone extremely well, I prefer to shop with an eye to the registry for this very reason. But still I have been feeling awkward about asking people to buy me this specific thing from this specific place with the knowledge that it will cost this specific number of dollars.

The other thing nagging at me is that we are really fortunate in our job situations and our lives that we have the means to buy this stuff if we really want to. Not all at once, but over the course of a few months or a year we could buy it all if we decided to allocate our money in that way. And the fact that we haven't done so maybe means that it's not all that important to us.

Bascially, I want other people to register so that it is convenient for me, but I don't want to register myself because I don't want to be, or feel, greedy. It's kind of messed up. I don't have this issue when people ask me what I want for Christmas or my birthday. Probably because I'm not also asking people to spend a ton of money traveling to a city not of their choosing at a time not of their choosing before they can give it to me.

We are splitting the difference, not registering in a traditional way but putting together a list of items, ideas, and charities at the Center for the New American Dream's Alternative Gift Registry. And we're not putting very many things on there. There will be far fewer items than guests. The hope is that the few material items on there will spark people's imaginations if they want to shop for us, the charities can be donated to over and over again, and the non-purchasable things (for example, I'm trying to figure out how to word a request for a letter containing advice to a newly married couple) can be done by anyone, no matter what their budget.

There's a possibility that Shiner's mom will host a small party for us later in the spring or summer. Our wedding will be pretty small, so this will give her the opportunity to celebrate marrying off her oldest child with all her friends and coworkers. Those people won't know us at all, so the case for the traditional registry is somewhat stronger there. So we may not be out of the woods yet.

What do you think? Buyers of wedding presents? Receivers of wedding presents? Those who have been both? Did you feel weird about the registry, and how did you manage any weirdness that came up?

Best Dressed List

Looking cute does not come cheap. In fact, if you are Sarah Palin, it costs about $150,000. Recent financial disclosures from the Republican National Committee show that since McCain announced her as his running mate in late August, the RNC has spent, among other things:

- $49,425.74 on purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York
- $75,062.63 on purchases at Nieman Marcus in Minneapolis, which is across the river from the nominating convention in St. Paul
- $9,447.71 on purchases at Macy's in Minneapolis
- $5,102.71 at Bloomingdale's in New York
- $4,716.49 on hair and makeup for September (McCain must be an easy groom, since no such expenses were reported for August, back before Palin was named).

I will let other people address the legality of such expenditures on behalf of the campaign. But holy jeebus, $150k. My first thought, embarrassingly enough, was "That's 30 episodes of What Not To Wear!" If you are not familiar with this show, it gives guests (almost always women, but as a longtime closeted viewer, I think I remember some men in the early seasons) five grand to trash their ill-fitting, threadbare, or otherwise unflattering clothing and to buy themselves a new wardrobe according to certain rules laid out by the two hosts. I always thought that seemed like an awful lot of money.

Palin (or probably more accurately, her stylist) has spent about 30 times that amount to dress her for the national stage. And why are such extravagant expenditures deemed necessary? I think it's pretty obvious that it's because she's a woman. Indeed, she is a woman who has chosen to use the fact that she is very conventionally attractive to her professional advantage.

I have a couple of thoughts on this:

First, now I know why I have been digging her outfits so much. I can't stand the woman or her politics, but I do love her shoes and jackets. I can also now spend somewhat less energy admiring them, since I know there is no way they are in my Jane Wine Box future.

Second, I have to disagree, to a certain extent, with responses to the wardrobegate story by top Democrats:

Beyond the political tit-for-tat, however, the revelation of the clothing expenditures offers what some Democrats see as a chance not just to win several news cycles during the campaign's waning days but to severely damage Palin's image as a small-town, 'Joe Six-Pack' American.
"It shows that Palin ain't like the rest of us," Tom Matzzie, a Democratic strategist told the Huffington Post, when asked how the party would or could use the issue. "It can help deflate her cultural populism with the Republican base. The plumber's wife doesn't go to Nieman's or Saks."

Sure, not like the rest of us in that most of the rabble don't have the resources to spend the equivalent of $2500 a day on designer clothing. But she's just like the rest of us if you mean "the rest of us women who realize that we are expected to play by rules men don't in terms of how we present ourselves to the world." Depending on the situation, men always look presentable in a dark suit and tie, or in dark slacks and a white or blue shirt. Men are presentable when they by and large blend in. Women are presentable if they are cute. Cute means, among other things, varied. Noticeable. But not too noticeable, you wouldn't want to be all Pretty Woman, scene 1. But, you know, cute, somewhat sexually suggestive but not overtly so, and above all, ornamental. That must be especially so for woman in the public eye who makes appearances and is photographed every day. Playing by those rules means parting with some cash. It is not cheap to be cute.

I struggle with this pressure toward ornamentalism in my job. Partly because I don't generally enjoy shopping, and I don't love spending money on clothes, but I want to be taken seriously even if that means playing up cuteness qualities that, objectively speaking, have nothing to do with my professional accomplishments. And although I am not photographed every day (thank god) I do have a job where my appearance, at least on some days, really really matters. If I appear in court or at a negotiation and I look sloppy, I am setting myself up to be disrespected or discounted even if I am the best prepared person in the room. That sucks, and it is sexist, but it is also true.

I am never more acutely aware of this than when I am representing low-income clients who the judge, for that reason alone, may be predisposed to distrust. I was once in housing court fighting an eviction and my client, prompted by my instruction to wear her best clothes, wore short shorts and a very small halter top. I will sing it loudly from the rooftops that it shouldn't matter what she chooses to put on her body, but that did not mean we weren't starting out a little farther in the hole than we would have been if she'd made a different choice in getting dressed that morning. And my client has the right to wear what she likes (even as I am debating whether I can or should position myself as I'm speaking to obscure the judge's view of her), but I have an obligation to present myself, physically and professionally, in a way that is most advantageous to her. I hate heels, I hate nylons, I hate blowdrying my hair. When I am in court, I am sporting heels, nylons, and a blowout. You can never tell who you're going to offend for some asinine reason, but I'm not going to screw my client because I don't look the part of competence.

Sarah Palin is on a months long job interview (well, maybe "interview" is not exactly accurate, given her unwillingness to speak to the press...). She's done a lot of fantastically stupid and unprincipled things in her life, but I don't blame her for not wanting to add "alienated potential supporters by not looking cute enough" to her list. It's bullshit that it matters, but it does still matter. Remember, Hillary Clinton went with the functional and decidedly not "cute" pantsuit week in and week out and she was derided for it. I am also not surprised that people are jumping on the dollar amount--it's a pretty extravagant outlay and the RNC was probably not he right pocket to reach into to cover it. But I would love it if some commentator other than me could swallow their indignation to point out that what we're really looking at is not just a story about extravagance, but the story about what it costs women to play by the rules, whether they want to or not.