the women of Redmond
ByMen notice womens breasts enthusiastically and gratefully but mostly they notice them involuntarily. Attention is drawn. You are sitting in Starbucks in Redmond, Washington, thinking about nothing in particular, when the world reaches up and tugs sharply on your halter. (Is this why they call them halter tops, perhaps?)
Social delicacy, cultural rules and simple decency then intervene. A gentleman does not wish to be obvious about it. Still less does he wish to be caught in the act. But whether you like it or not, and however discretely you do it, noticing is going to happen. (If an anthropologist cant talk about this, who can?)
Which brings me to the women of Redmond Washington. The halter is rarely still. Within the last 6 weeks, I have lived Montreal, Connecticut, Boston, Seattle and Kansas City, and I can say that the women of Redmond, Washington are exceptional.
The question is why? Are these women husband hunting? If I am right to think that Redmond is a company town, what kind of husbands do you hunt here? Guys who write code? Guys whose heads swim with numbers the way the rest of us carry the latest top 40 tune. Perhaps, a girl has to reach for heavy artillery. (This is cheap humor. “Geeks have blessed us with the wonders of a technological age, and this is how we reward them. Besides which, more shameful for the up-to-date anthropologist, this is a 1950s “rockets metaphor.)
But I am assuming, in my hearty, sexist way, that these women are abundantly breasted for men. Perhaps they are speaking to other women. Perhaps, in this community flush with millionaires, this is part of a competitive consumption in which the wealthy mark their difference, or the not so wealthy try to close the gap.
Or perhaps women are talking not to men or other women, but to themselves. I couldnt help noticing that Eddie Bauer dominates the little mall here in Redmond. This is an archaeological remainder from the Preppie era in which gender differentiation was dialed way back. Corporations, especially tech heavy corporations, may perhaps insists on a gender non specificity of their own (before skewing thoughtlessly to the male). Perhaps surgical enhancement has a way of reasserting gender or femaleness. As if a girl, or her sexuality, might otherwise vanish.
Thoughts only.
grant,
glad to hear you’re working hard out in the field. i have spent some time on the redmond campus and it sounds like things have changed. but then again i have a friend whose brother works in a restaurant on vancouver’s “trendy” robson street and he tells us that 1 by 1 the waitresses are purchasing breasts and making no bones about it. are you suggesting that the women of msft have adopted this food industry behaviour? i’m guessing the women of redmond you’re referring to are not the computer scientists but the “support staff” (interesting double meaning there…hmmm) and yes they probably are hunting for rich guys. may they enjoy themselves. also interesting that many of those borderline asperger’s rich guys are the same ones who couldn’t get girlfriends until they had 7 and 8 figures in their bank accounts. so i guess it is revenge of the nerds…interesting to me that women are so happy to comply. or is that just same old same old. also interesting that some of the ‘older school’ microsoft millionaires like paul allen and charles simonyi (to name just two) are long time seattle bachelors. how can there be long time bachelor zillionaires in a city where the women are so ardently showing their wares? and what about the women millionaires of msft? why do we hear so little about them? how are they being pursued, if it all (if they in fact exist)
ps does anyone else remember jerry hall dating paul allen for a few wks in the late 90s? i’m sure mick was really really jealous.
Leora, all well said, and much more ethnographically nuanced than my original. Thank you. The world awaits the ethnography you could write about Microsoft if only you have the several executives assistants you deserve and that are, by the sounds of things, in the pipe line. It’s a good question: when you do for Vancouver what Gates and co. have done for Redmond, you can set dress and breast codes of your own. And someone will write an ethnography about you too.
Michelle,Thank you very much for your bravery and candor. It does make you wonder what feminism accomplished. We are right back where we started from. Best, Grant
hi grant,
last time i checked still no assistants, just several versions of me, each more frazzled than the next. but thanks for projecting them on me nonetheless. since your post, two things occurred to me. one that in your post you equate “exceptional” with large breasts, and then play the ‘male as dog’ card as pre-emptive strike and second, i recalled the playboy interview with bill gates talking about his then newly married status. the excerpt of the transcript speaks for itself. there are too many classic lines to point out. enjoy.
>>
PLAYBOY: You recently got married, an event many of your competitors have fervently wished for. Now, they say, you’ll concentrate less on work.
GATES: They’re just joking. If they really think I’m going to work a lot less just because I’m married, that’s an error.
PLAYBOY: Isn’t there a kernel of truth in any joke?
GATES: Married life is a simpler life. Who I spend my time with is established in advance.
PLAYBOY: You were one of the world’s most eligible bachelors. No doubt there are many women who would love to be in Melinda’s place.
GATES: What? They want to do puzzle contests with me? They want to go golfing with me? How do they know its interesting to be around me? They want to read the books I read?
PLAYBOY: What was it that attracted you to Melinda?
GATES: Oh, I don’t know. That’s probably too personal. Even before I met Melinda, if someone asked me a question like that I’d always say I was interested in people who are smart and independent. And I’m sure I’ll continue to meet lots of interesting, smart, independent people.
PLAYBOY: Something about Melinda must have made you turn the corner. Don’t tell us you’re just getting older and it was time.
GATES: There’s some magic there that’s hard to describe, and I’m pursuing that.
PLAYBOY: Can you describe how she makes you feel?
GATES: Amazingly, she made me feel like getting married. Now that is unusual! It’s against all my past rational thinking on the topic.
Enormous, pert (perhaps artificial) breasts = exceptional? Ooookaaay. I guess it proves I’m a middle-aged woman.
I see women of that physique and I think of R. Crumb,
http://www.fantagraphics.com/artist/crumb/csketch/crs8_gal/csk4.html
Although his women tended more toward the bodacious heiney.
Eddie Bauer’s origins were in Seattle and in military and expedition equipment–once women started venturing into the Alpine wilderness (in 1967, Outward Bound couldn’t offer mixed sex expeditions, and only had a women’s expedition canoeing in the Boundary Waters; by 1971 they could offer both co-ed and women-only expeditions above treeline in the Sierras), demand increased for clothes that actually fit women.
Women-only expeditions started becoming popular in the early 1970s
Eddie Bauer had a manufacting plant in Bellevue (westwards of Seattle), in the early 1970s. We used to go for seconds when I was associated with the Cascades National Outdoor Leadership School (whose base was in Bellevue).
There’s not as much sales potential in expedition clothes as every-day clothes, so Bauer (after being sold to General Mills) shifted the company’s sales focus to retailing “casual”, using the expeditionary background to position the clothes.
But, back to why bodacious breasts in Redmond? Why are breast augmentation surgeries for teens becoming both accepted and popular?
http://www.ym.com/privatelife/newsypage/jun2204.jsp
What Happened to Gift Certificates?
High school graduation gifts have changed a lot over the years. Back in the day, parents used to reward their kids with money or a car (if you were lucky) for earning a diploma. Nowadays, they’re offering a new pair of boobs instead.
The New York Post reports that more and more teens are getting breast implants as presents. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, breast augmentation skyrocketed among girls, from 3,872 in 2000 to 11,326 in 2003. Medical experts say the trend is due to all of the images of busty teens like Jessica Simpson and Lindsay Lohan in the media and popular plastic-surgery-promoting shows like Extreme Makeover and The Swan.
More
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1861/context/archive
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/0704/11implants.html
http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?70/73800
Maybe you are just noticing it more in Redmond?
But it was a Redmond preteen, Ella Gunderson, who is the poster child for a return to more modest fashions:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,121608,00.html
“We like to call this new girl Miss Modesty,” said Gigi Solif Schanen, fashion editor at Seventeen magazine. “It’s such a different feeling but still very pretty and feminine and sexy. It’s just a little more covered up.”
Liz, thanks for the comments, data, background, and the URLs. This post does indeed tie back to the one on the bare mid riff several weeks ago and it may well be that it takes Seattle a couple more months (years?) to get the news. The trouble with plastic surgery is, of course, that it isnt revocable in the way that fashion is. Or, again, it may be that Microsoft men need special pointers.
grant,
plastic surgery, particulary the nature of which we are talking about here is entirely revocable. see anderson, pamela and the various volumes she has experimented with. it now seems to be an economy in which fluctuation between plus and minus is fairly straightforward… in true body part as commodity fashion.
Leora,
revocable in fact but not with ease.
Which is why fashion will be the preferred transformational medium until we can tune our own dna with a screw driver.
The telling contrast:
cost in money, time, effort, initiative and advice to change the color or fact of a halter top: 3 minutes and 30 dollars.
cost in same to change plastic surgery: many days and 1000s of dollars.
Grant:
I’m a bit late with this comment, but I just got around to reading your blog.
You wrote “…Montreal, Connecticut, Boston, Seattle and Kansas City, and I can say that the women of Redmond, Washington are exceptional.”
Just for the record: Connecticut is not a city.
Schwejk http://tickets.gelago.de/cat3544/Klassik-&-Kultur/Theater/Schwejk/
I am completely shocked and disgusted by these comments of yours. how stupid can one person be. I am a teenage girl of redmond washington and am completely shocked by these thoughts. I have lived here my whole life and spend every weekend at redmond town center. Our women dress conservatively, and there are a miniscule amount of people with implants. And by the way, nobody here wears halter tops, this is redmond sweety, it’s 40 degrees alomst year round. I would love to here what college you went to for anthropology because they will obviously give a diploma to anyone. Are you a blind person? i just don’t understand. I am outraged that aperosn would spread such ignorant rumors about my innocent city on the internet. you should be ashamed of yourself.
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