Letters to the Editor
A Billion Angry Bees
Published Letters: 476 Editor's Choice: 13
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Are you an Ecomom?
[Read the article: The super-bollworm cometh]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/4713/
Move over Soccer Mom - meet Ecomom
‘Eco-motherhood’, which encourages a morbid preoccupation with waste and guilt about having kids, won’t save the planet – but it might just drive you crazy.
Nancy McDermott
Move over ‘Soccer Mom’, ‘Alpha Mom’ and ‘Slacker Mom’. In the US, there’s a new mom on the block and she’s on a mission to save the planet. Meet Ecomom.
She’s not just a little bit green - after all, we’re all a little bit green in the age of the recycling bin. She’s Green with a capital G, as in knowing-your-carbon-footprint green. And whether she’s hobnobbing with celebrity Ecomoms like Laurie David, Sheryl Crow or Robin Wright Penn, hosting an Ecomom party or simply topping up the compost pile before Pilates class, she’s the new new-mom and her concerns about toxins in the home, organic produce and low-impact living have come to dominate the pages of parenting and lifestyle magazines.
Ecomom even made the New York Times this month in a front-page article entitled, ‘For Ecomoms, Saving Earth Begins at Home’. The accompanying photo showed a room full of affluent women sipping wine and watching a speaker from the Ecomom Alliance holding forth about the beauty of carbon offsets for easing the eco-guilt of air travel.
According to Kimberly Danek Pinkson, the founder of the Ecomom Alliance, there are over 82million mothers in the US who together represent ‘a powerful force for positive change’. All well and good, but who is Ecomom and why would we want to go to her parties?
Again, Kimberly Danek Pinkson is a good starting point. This is no grim, hemp-wearing eco-warrior. In fact the most striking thing about her is she’s just so normal and nice. The words ‘sprightly’ and ‘effervescent’ spring to mind. She leaps into the frame of the Ecomom Challenge video in which she outlines the first 10 steps to becoming an Ecomom. The steps are the usual suspects you might see bulleted in any article on ‘green living’, things like putting in low-energy light bulbs, washing in cold water, unplugging those energy-guzzling cellphone chargers, etc. Buying carbon offsets to make up for airline flights is the only thing that seems even vaguely cutting edge – and just in case all that light-bulb changing was too much, she reminds us to look after ourselves. Play with your kid, have fun! ‘Sustain yourself and sustain the planet!’ Whoo hoo!
Another flavour of Ecomom is the mysteriously nameless mother who writes the blog, ‘GreenAndCleanMom (how being green can be sassy, sexy and fun!)’. Her blog features a photograph of her sleeping children and the caption ‘How could I let them get hurt?’. Who wouldn’t want to protect sleeping children? GreenAndCleanMom (GACM) writes a lot about all the dangerous toxins contained in common household products, and though it’s unclear what makes this sassy and sexy, she can a least point you in the direction of safe alternatives. She even markets a wonderful product herself, and she will gladly send you a sample. And just in case your invitation to the Ecomom party got lost in the mail, it’s also possible to attend an online eco-party with GACM, where you can shop (if you like – no pressure), chat and learn about the poisons in your home. And perhaps, if you really hit it off, GACM will let you in on the Multi-Level Marketing scheme she touts on her other blog MLM Mommy, for, as GACM reminds us in the recorded message on her web page, ‘Green is the color of money’.
Actually, if there’s a common theme running through many ‘Ecomom’ resources it is, ironically, that of shopping – for ‘green, sustainable products’, of course. The website Green Mom Finds is entirely devoted to it. Now Ecomoms can live ‘eco-fabulously’ through the purchase of bamboo onesies, sustainable pencils and eco-kitty litter.
The list of green products marketed to Ecomom is truly staggering. In addition to BPA-free bottles, there are plastic toys without phthalates, organic hemp infant clothing and organic wool mattresses. There are cleaning products, paints, sustainable furniture, organic-fair-trade-local foods and hormone-free milk. And though it all can get rather expensive after a while, you can always make do with less. Mothers wield the power of the household pocket book and it is largely through their role as consumers, we’re told, that they make their greatest impact – that is to say, the least impact on the planet.
This means Ecomom needn’t do very much. In fact, an article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer counsels that ‘the easiest way to add green to your family’ is to ‘stop doing a few things’. Stop driving so much, stop turning up the heat when it’s cold, stop doing laundry in the daytime, stop buying bottled water. It’s really a matter of lifestyle. And yet, one can’t help but wonder: if it’s so easy to be green, and the stakes are so high (melting glaciers, rising seas, dead polar bears), why are Ecomoms’ horizons so low?
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More on Powers (you guys are gonna love her proposal to invade Israel)
[Read the article: Obama advisor calls Clinton a "monster," apologizes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://sandbox.blog-city.com/speaking_truth_to_power.htm
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Kevin C
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was kicked and punched by an Aeroflot 'stewardess' in 1980. Apparently when they say 'keep your feet out of the aisle' they mean it.
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Dear Salon
[Read the article: Attention, all you memoir fabulists!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mein Kampf's been written already. Awwwww. too bad.
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Danon Yogurt
[Read the article: Russian centenarian doesn't need your stinkin' shuffleboard]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]20 years ago Danon ran an ad campaign with lots of 100 year old Russians in it who credited their longevity to yogurt. Problem is they all lied and the oldest of them was about 87.
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prunes
[Read the article: The banality of the surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]you want it both ways. The Federal government is both stupid and hopelessly dull AND super secret inscrutable. It can't be both. fact is they're rather bad at these grand scheme projects, everyone is. but if it makes you more comfortable to be paranoid i wish you well with that.