Weird Sex Books Can be Art, Too

 I was listening to my Play Later queue on my favourite podcast app - like my Youtube Watch Later playlist, it's rather unwieldy and extensive - and as usual, I ended up adding a recent episode that caught my fancy. 

This one happened to be about what might be the most notorious Canlit book, or even the most notorious Canadian book, of all time - Bear. 

Yes, I'm talking about the book where a woman falls in love with and has sex with a bear. That book. 

Content warning for sexual subject matter and allusions follows - if you couldn't tell by the title. Read at your own risk. There will also be spoilers for this and a few other books. As an additional note, I refer to "men" and "women" in this post, but it does not encompass the issues faced by fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community - although those issues are most comparable to the ones faced by those society perceives as women.

In case you want to follow along, here's the podcast.

Source.

Wait, come back

First off, I'm not going into any of the really explicit details. Here's the thing about sex - although many people, particularly Americans, have been trained into puritanical instincts of shock and fear at the mere mention of it, it's part of life. And sex on the page and in media isn't just about the physical act. It can show you things about the characters' relationship to each other. Masturbation or fantasies, solitary sex acts, can be used to show a character's mental state, self-esteem, or even frame them in the societal perceptions of others. 

One thing that's interesting is that - the entire thing is consensual. Yeah, yeah, I know, bestiality - but there isn't a sexual assault or aggressive force. Modern Amazon erotica, fanfic, and Litererotica certainly include more forceful encounters, as well as accidental ones, but this particular book takes a rather gentle approach.

(I am not endorsing bestiality in real life; animals cannot adequately consent. But it's okay for books to do weird, transgressive things; the issue of consent in fantasy and fiction is a thorny one that I won't get into here because it's so lengthy. The too long, didn't read version is - it's fine, because it isn't real life.) 

That said, the leisurely pace and naturalistic descriptions, as well as the exact use of the bear's tongue that you're expecting, lend a focus to female pleasure. That's somehow still a taboo topic even in this post Fifty Shades of Grey world; the MPAA has different standards for female and male bodies - to say nothing of nonbinary and trans bodies. 

But the world of literature has always smuggled in strange, weird, kinky things in the name of art. That might partly be because of the titillating thrill, but these peculiar pecadilloes are usually meant to show something about the world and characters, as I said previously.

So what's the book really about? 

The issues of settlers versus the Indigenous people, accommodating nature, the constructed world versus the natural one; gender differences, fantasy, fairy tales (Indigenous versus Western) - there's so much in this book. 

It's not even the first time I've noticed weird sex things in a literary fiction work - or Canlit in general. Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle had weird, kinky waltzing in an attic, with a taxidermist; Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood include some creative descriptions of dancing sex workers dressed like bird and lizard girls, as well as more disturbing child-related content (which is, of course, never condoned). Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion, from the English Patient series, includes a vivid description of snowballing. Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers includes both explicit and implied allusions to - well, the kind of sexual acts that one imagines when writing a novel during a summer of heat stroke. Anal sex, threesomes, forced masturbation - there's a lot. The poetry of Leonard Cohen and Shane Koyczan also spare few details. Timothy Findley's The Wars has a very, very specific description of gay pony play involving a scarf, as well as a sexual assault.

And that's just Canada. We're not even talking about Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath breastfeeding scene or the fact that Lawrence of Arabia (the first book, apart from Bear, that I haven't read) included lengthy descriptions of sexual assault that - allegedly - were the author's fantasy, and did not happen. But why are all of these books not considered smutty or derided as "trashy" romances? 

Not like other girls 

One thing about the interview, and about literary fiction in general, is that there is a sense of disdain directed at works intended to titillate women, or rather, political women (i.e. those who are perceived as women by society, whether or not they identify or are such). Somehow, it's fine to talk about sex as long as you don't get too turned on. In practice, of course, this means that men can write about pretty much whatever they want and still be considered Literary or Respectable. But if a woman(+) strikes a certain tone or is anything less than documentarian or even sneering in her interests - Lady Oracle's dismissive attitude towards romance comes to mind - then surely, it is but the frippery of feminine creatures. (More about this can be found in Dangerous Books for Girls, an excellent work.)

Despite critiquing the sexual prudence and hypocrisy of the Victorians, it would seem that Bear is not above the same snobbery. Victorians and their earlier counterparts panicked at the thought of women fantasizing, perhaps - gasp! - demanding more from their husbands, or worse, not marrying at all! Alexandre Dumas (pere) alluded to this in The Count of Monte Cristo, when Eugenie Danglars runs off with her lover, another woman, though he was fairly sympathetic to the character, who he described as "Sapphic." Victor Hugo even ridicules "The Thenardiess," Cosette's abusive mother, for "reading too many trashy novels" in Les Miserables, because her daughters get "ridiculous" names. 

Misogyny. It's just misogyny.

It's so tiresome. As I explained to my partner when sharing the podcasts, "when men write weird sex books, we accept them as transgressive legends; when women do it, we point and laugh." That's not to say we shouldn't accept and enjoy humour - Bear is intended to be humourous in tone at times, for example. But if we don't recognize the inherent absurdity of artistic situations, we can't fully appreciate their gravity. In folklore, "animal wives" and even "animal husbands" are a specific subcategory of the Arne-Thompson index.  Fantasy and science fiction offer the suspension of disbelief that allows authors to get away with sometimes terrible things - Piers Anthony's depictions of grown men having sex with youngish teenagers and his many, many sexual assault scenes come to mind. 

But what's perhaps worse is that concepts which would be labeled as romance if they were written by a woman completely fly under the radar when a male author is involved. Boy, are there a lot of litfic books about A Younger Attractive Woman (who is either Terrible or Perfect) who Revitalizes the Life of an Older Man. It's Manic Pixie Dream Girls all the way down. 

Is this an actual problem? 

Well - frankly, people can write whatever they want, and one can choose whether or not to read those books; that's not censorship, that's just personal choice. But I would encourage readers to try and think about how they talk and think about books, and try to take down the internal double standards we hold. This is a big problem for men - they can often recognize creepy behaviours from others, but not themselves, as a formerly male friend of mine verified. 

And of course, this lack of respect also affects women's literary careers. Men, and white people more broadly, not only get away with more, they get more money. And after a year of, to put it mildly, massive disruption in the publishing industry, we need to demand better for our PoC peers and ourselves going forward. 

And as another friend put it, "Explain why you dislike Twilight, and if the reasons are The Wrong Ones...Byeeeeeee." 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their two cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

Being Goth is Self-Care

 So, I've had a thing for distressed sweaters and knitwear since childhood - between The Matrix (1999) and my love of Dickens and his orphans, I've always had an appreciation and fascination for things falling apart. Growing up in an upper-middle-class household with parents from lower working-class backgrounds (a farming family and a military family respectively), having to really wear things out before I got a new one wasn't much of a problem. (Yes, I realise how frustratingly privileged that statement will sound, to many people. I know.) 

But I grew up with my fashion sense somewhat circumscribed. For one thing, being a fat child in the 90s and 2000s was not especially easy. That is putting it mildly; for a variety of reasons, it was hell, and has left me with lasting body image issues and struggles with disordered eating ever since. Add on a hormonal condition, PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and you have a recipe for body dysmorphia that no physician will ever pick up, and self-loathing that's been hard to shake. 

Over the years, I've managed to chip away at it bit by bit. There are still body parts I hate, resent, and fear - but I don't always hate them all the time, and what's more, I actually like other parts of my body. Learning how to look all right while not smiling in photos has also been useful. I like taking pictures of the world around me, my friends, and myself to capture a mood, a moment, or a memory - and frankly, I don't like faking happiness or calm. I was rather good at it for a long time, but it certainly wasn't good for me. 

 

How do you solve a problem like self-loathing? 

Well, in my case, with fashion. I always designed and drew dresses in my childhood, and learning to knit and sew by hand, and later, re-learn to sew with a machine, has enabled me to alter my clothes so they either fit or are more comfortable. I'm not great at it all the time, but just doing it is very validating. 

It's rather embarrassing to be a woman in her thirties going through a goth phase; most of the time, it's relegated to the province of teens or young adults. But frankly, life does not end at age 30, as I am discovering, and neither does self-examination. Certainly, I hope it is less navel-gazing and circular than the decidedly shallow, valid stuff that fills many a "man pain" Literary novel - but the truth is that middle-aged people exist, and are not always complacent. 

As relationships mature and the haze of crisis dies down, it's not a bad idea to reevaluate things and consider what causes one pain and what brings relief and comfort - and to seek more of the latter, while resolving the former. But in the same vein, avoiding pain and wallowing in it are both traps. The only middle ground of peace is acceptance. And sometimes, being a little sad for a while feels nice. 

Where does the goth stuff come in to this? 

The thing about wearing clothing that is flamboyant and artistic and expressive is that in addition to pairing things that look nice together in a satisfying way, it also lets me communicate nonvisually. I've loved distressed sweaters for ages - but frankly, the last four years have been particularly distressing, and there's really something refreshing about feeling like shit because you look like shit, but make it fashion.

And sometimes, non-verbal, even non-spoken communication can be really powerful. With the toll 2020 has taken on me, being able to throw on a dark, gloomy sweater, and feeling its weight, being able to pet the soft knitted fabric and pluck the loose threads or smooth them back into shape, has been viscerally cathartic in a way. Sometimes, one has articulated all they can about one's feelings, but a mood still remains - and for that, wearing black or a big, glum, clouded-sky grey scarf can be awfully comforting. It's a way to signal one's mind state without having to say it out loud. 

And this is not to say that my depression has come back - oddly, I think my mental health is better this month than it's been in years. There are two very big problems I've been struggling with for more than a decade (which I'll talk about more later; they're difficult) - and I've finally cracked them. But of course, sometimes I'm still sad, especially as I work on things and grieve the loss of them.

frankly, the last four years have been particularly distressing, and there's really something refreshing about feeling like shit because you look like shit, but make it fashion.

Now, that's not to say that I'm always wearing black distressed sweaters, stockings or socks, and black shorts/distressed denim skirts every single day. In fact, it's been kind of a good motivation to wear more colourful clothes at other times. The difference between sadness and depression is, in a sense, consent. To be less glib, however, depression washes the colour out of everything; sadness has plenty of value. 

Clothes can be feelings

The thing about wearing dark clothing is that it's been allowing me to basically validate my own feelings and express them without having to, I don't know, walk around making declarative sentences at all times. I am not, after all, an NPC in a video game. 

But clothing can be used to express joy, or madness, or a desire for comfort as well. If there's one thing I've learned from this, it's that improbable things that feel inaccessible sometimes work better than we might expect. So, for my readers - maybe you're a mother in a van feeling overwhelmed. Sometimes this sort of thing takes hours, but it's not as though the only way to be goth or express another alternative fashion sense is to spend hours upon hours doing one's makeup. (That is also fine, of course, but not everyone has, wants, or needs to do that much makeup or preening.) Wearing all black and putting on some extra eyeliner might be enough for you - and it doesn't make you inferior. 

Alternatively, purple pants and an insane 80s sweater might evoke the hectic madness someone is feeling. Does something appear to clash? Well, try it anyway. People, myself included, often worry about "pulling off" an outfit, but the key to doing that isn't just confidence - it's comfort. If something is comfortable, or makes one's body feel good (say, a tight belt on a loose shirt dress, or a corset, or pants with just the right texture) then it's going to look so much better than that stiff, awful chiffon on that disappointingly cute cottagecore blouse. 

And finally: phases pass. Some of them become a normal part of one's life, losing their intensity; some just end unexpectedly one day. But giving oneself permission to just try something for a while is terribly important. And at the very least? It's going pretty well for me. 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their two cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

New Year, Same Me - But Different

 Well, the good news is that I'm not dead, as you can tell from this post existing. The other good news is that I've been writing a lot. Book 3 of the Meaning Wars is done, Book 4 is also now done and out to beta readers (but if you're interested, I can always use more!), and book 5 is 2/3rds done. In addition to that, I also am 60K of 100K into a coauthored book with a friend of mine, Anna Lewis, set in her series about a nigh-immortal pirate who's about to get his first taste of therapy in five hundred years. 

That probably sounds like a lot more writing than I've done in the last few years, and that's completely correct. However, I haven't been running my online text-based D&D game, and as you all know, my blog's been on hiatus. 

2020 Bad

But the last few years has been A Lot - Trump's presidency and the related empowerment of authoritarian leaders across the world, issues around trans rights and especially Black and Brown lives and existence - it's been hard, especially over 2020, to feel as though my words have any merit, weight, or meaning. Stepping aside and letting PoC talk is rarely a bad thing, but self-doubt latching on to that was maybe not great.

I mean, in 2016, two artists I value deeply passed away - Leonard Cohen and David Delamare. People die, that's just how that works; I personally don't want to die ever, if I can help it. (Blog post upcoming; yes I've thought this through extensively, shush.) Other artists died, too. Britain and India and Brazil empowered disgusting right-wing leaders. There were more incidents of racist, transphobic, misogynistic, and homophobic gun violence than I care to list here. But as much as Trump's inauguration and the resulting ripples up here in Canada have felt like living in a state of war, the pandemic has been closer to living under war than I've ever expected to feel. None of us were prepared. And yet, somehow, 2020 had a lot of personal development bright spots for me. 

So why now? Why not just write a farewell post and give up blogging, for example? Well...

I never stopped having things to say

2016 to 2020 has been a disruptive period for the world, and from late 2014 to 2020, it was pretty rough on me as well. The fact that a hard period in my own life synced up with global events just made everything going on sort of more relatable in a way. 

For example, I often fall asleep to politics podcasts because a) sometimes mildly boring things and comforting voices are great, and b) knowing that bigger problems than my own exist is oddly soothing. And c), knowing what's going on in the world gives me a sense of agency, whether illusory or valid. 

However...

A lot of the posts I started to write were rather short. Because I've primarily written my blog posts and articles in a full-length format, I sometimes wait far too long to actually express them. This might also be the cause of something else I dislike - the tendency for people to read my work, but not reply to it, perhaps because it's *too* complete and exhaustive. 

So this year, I want to try something different. I will be putting out more posts again (certainly more than once a month; I'd like to go back to the weekly post schedule I had/aimed for previously). But my posts might be scattered-sounding, less comprehensive, and messier. Above all: probably shorter and less complete. We'll see how it goes; if I hate it, I'll probably try something else, but I've been thinking about it for a few days, and I feel surprisingly good about it. I might also go into more personal topics than I have in the past - but the probability of this turning from an analysis/commentary/writing blog into, I don't know, a skincare and lifestyle blog, is extremely low. I might even stick some more poetry up here, since for some reason, people don't seem to hate it.

Sometimes, Productivity is Self-Care

This is a tricky topic at the best of times, because capitalist propaganda/training says that we should only feel good about ourselves if we're doing things and making money. But as many writers about "self-care" have observed, there's also more to self-care and building good mental health habits than buying heavy blankets and colouring books, making overnight oats, or taking baths with artisanal bombs and essential oils. Those things are all fine, great, and can be part of recovery too - but for myself and many others. 

Towards the end of 2020 - especially after the election in the US brought in a change of power, and a light seemed to break through the clouds - I finally started to kick some bad habits and feel like perhaps, maybe, the world is not doomed after all. I started the process of kicking some deep-seated bad habits as well, and that's already shaken my world at its foundations.

I have so much more to write about this, but I'm going to let this content breathe and start on my next post instead. 

Hope 2021 is off to a survivable start for people! Let me know in the comments how you got through 2020, and what you're hoping for in 2021. 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their two cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

What Is Even Happening Right Now?

So, astute readers will have noticed that I've been completely silent since February. Where'd I go for three months? This is going to be rambling and less focused than my usual posts, but perhaps my readers will forgive it.

Content warning: pet death, current events

Well...frankly, I haven't been able to figure out how to write about what's been going on. Despite years of editing and writing science fiction, including stories about or related to pandemics, actually enduring one myself was not something I seriously considered. I mean, I grew up in the era of both SARS and H1N1, the latter of which I actually contracted. It was a bit scary, and it sucked, but the deaths were relatively few in number, and fewer still, those who developed serious complications.

Now, I realise the case was different for those living in Hong Kong and China and South-East Asia in general, but that was my experience as a Canadian. I trusted the medical system to handle a disease of significant scale. 

How fact and fiction differ

For starters, the contagiousness of a disease is inversely proportional to its ability to spread. This is something that sci fi usually gets completely wrong - diseases are portrayed as both easy to catch and very deadly. But an extremely deadly disease usually burns itself out. Bubonic plague was an exception to this in part because the way diseases spread in the ancient world is different from the way they spread now - there were a lot more vectors back then because of the lack of knowledge about hygiene. There may be more opportunities to spread diseases now due to the increased population size and contact methods, but human beings have far less contact with blood, other animal species, and each others' bodily fluids than we used to. We know that washing our hands is even a thing we should do, rather than just a cosmetic or convenience factor, and we have functioning sewage and water lines (in many parts of the world, though not all, of course). The world is a lot less gross than it was in earlier eras, and frankly, that's protecting us more than we realise. 

Not enough, of course, to keep us from contacting new bacteria and viruses, and global warming is also increasing our risk of contracting ancient illnesses for which we no longer have immunity. 

The practical upshot

Of course, all of this is intellectually interesting, but living through a pandemic is still flat-out terrifying and hard to deal with. I was already following the news avidly, fearful and concerned about the world, and then...this all happened. 

But that wasn't all. On April 4th, our cat Maxwell Maximilian Maximus passed away, having a heart attack at the age of about 12. We rushed him to the vet's office, but were told it was too late, and he was in heart failure. I'll skip the painful details, but his sudden death shook both my partner and I quite badly. We later realised he'd had his first heart attack in late November, and had actually been in heart failure for some time, but the benefit of hindsight is a sad one. 

Still, having a cat for almost his entire life was a privilege and a joy. Because I hysterically demanded that we fill the "cat-shaped hole" in our home as soon as possible, with tears still on our faces, we went to the non-profit Humane Society to have a look at their cats. I can't recommend that enough for anyone grieving a lost pet - the joy animals have and their appreciation for human company is immense. After a few more visits and some discussion, about three weeks later, we brought home Alfred (Alfred Sylvester Codworth) and Chester (Chesterfield Archer Chestermere), a dignified 4yo tuxedo Ragamuffin-mix and a bouncy 10mo shorthaired tuxedo respectively, both with light green eyes. They get along wonderfully, and although new pets absolutely never replace the old, they made grieving a lot easier. 

Cat pictures, because of course. Top: Chester; bottom: Alfred.

Alfred, named for his calm and butler-like solicitiousness, even seemed to figure out what happened to Maxwell. Of course the house still smelled of Max (to the cats), and coming fresh from the shelter, they started investigating to see where the other cat might be. On Alfred's first day at our home, he sniffed the area by the bookshelf in the bedroom where Max had spent most of his time crouching, and seemed to follow the scent trail to the closet where Max hid in fear (an unusual place, one he never spent time in) when the heart attack was happening. Animals instinctively know the smell of death, and Alfred must have recognised it at some point. He somberly padded from the closet to myself on the carpet by the bed. I burst into tears and hugged him, and the calm creature patiently let me sob into his luxuriant black fur. 

Since then, of course, things have been markedly less glum, and less painfully quiet than during the two weeks and a bit before we brought them home. It seemed like things were looking up. With a 290K fantasy novel to work on, I had professional occupation aplenty to boot. I even re-started my online D&D campaign, feeling that it might help me stay motivated and connected to the world. 

But the world had other plans. 

Current situation, protests

Although I've been planning a blog post on Things I've Been Wrong About, such as police reform, I am in many ways not especially well-equipped to speak on the epidemic of police violence and decades of racial injustice that has provoked Black Lives Matter's triumphant resurgence. Suffice to say for now that I fully support these efforts, and I now understand why merely reforming police is inadequate. I will be writing more about some of thoughts about this and other leftist issues in the future, so I'll keep it short for the time being. 

You'd think that writing about revolutions would equip me to handle living through one to some degree, but I don't feel especially well-prepared. If I am better prepared than I would have been otherwise, it's hard to say. The truth is, the world's been in a rough spot for as long as I can remember, and by the world, I mostly mean "America," the loudest part. I also am considering a post about what it's been like to grow up as a Millennial, for the purposes of contrasting it with the Gen Z experience, so look for that in the coming weeks. 

Do I think this is the apocalypse? 

Well, the apocalypse is never the end of the entire world, because that's meaningless - if by "the world" we mean "our experience and lifestyle up to this point," then yes, this is an apocalypse - but we've had those before. The start of the Cold War, the First and Second World Wars, the invasion of North America by Europeans - all of those were apocalypses. 

But I also believe that these painful contractions are spasms of death for some of our worst beliefs. The fact that people can even demand justice and be listened to is a significant step forward. However, not resting on our laurels or being content with crumbs is of vital importance, and any momentum gained from demanding either the abolition or restructuring of the police has to be used to demand the restructuring and abolition of prisons and other measures for creating equity. 

There's a lot of work to come. We have to stick together, forgive each other sometimes, keep learning, and take time to rest, because the world just won't stop. 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their two cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

The Art of Destruction: Distressed Aesthetics

A belated happy new year, my dear followers!

So, I have a neat idea for a new series coming up. But after the holidays (which were pleasantly busy) and some interpersonal scuffling in January (which was not nearly as lovely, but came to an all-right enough resolution), my idea bank was absolutely flat broke.

A nice chat with friends has filled the bowl up, but while I work on those posts, here is something I stashed off to the side after a Facebook conversation last year.

I often reference fashion and clothing to help get in the right mindset for my writing projects. Whilst working on Poe's Outlaws (Book 4 of The Meaning Wars series; book 3, The Meaning Wars, is ready for beta-reading and edits now!) I indulged in my usual technique of sifting through Dolls Kill and Pinterest to look at various bits of outre, fun, futuristic fashion.

Of course, when working on Monsters and Fools and planning for After the Garden's sequels, I also like to look at post-apocalyptic and distressed clothing. I like distressed clothing anyway, but it tends to get a lot of flack.

On an episode of a podcast called Minion Death Cult, the hosts discussed some common reactions of tradespeople and Boomers to distressed and some faux-muddy jeans. (Not unsurprisingly, there were a lot of tired jokes about just selling people old, worn-out jeans from "real" tradesmen.) But not a lot of people understand how distressed clothing works, or why it's somehow different from their dad's old, grimy jeans and tattered denim jacket, so I'm going to break it down.

Note: all images in this article came from the Nordstrom website. Most or all are designed by PRPS.



 

I'm gonna take the unusual stance here of defending distressed jeans, because I've been studying and making distressed knit clothing and other types of distressed clothing for a bit. Why? Because I like post-apocalyptic fashion, and I think wrecked things are often beautiful.

You may be familiar with the term "wabi-sabi," which sometimes passes in and out of vogue for decorating trends. The term is comprised of two Japanese words - wabi, in a nutshell, refers to the beauty of simplicity; sabi, to the beauty of age and use. There's a bit more to it, but that's the quick explanation of these beautiful and imperfectly translatable terms. Wabi-sabi is usually used in reference to home decor, but it totally applies to clothing, too.

Anyway, getting on with the point - the thing about dirty jeans is that they're gonna leave dirt on wherever you sit. Fake dirt still captures the same look, the rather beautiful way the brown stains and fades into the tightly woven blue threads, but it won't leave big ol' scuffmarks on your leather car seats.

As for the distressing, the interesting and beautiful way that denim falls apart tends to happen in less sexy areas - the knees, the thighs, the crotch. Distressing clothes on purpose lets you get the look without impairing the wearability and structural integrity of the clothes. Sometimes that doesn't work at all, like with the cheaper distressed jeans that are all holes and have a high spandex content, but that's still the idea.

As far as how this relates to designing and making clothing, with knitwear (such as the awesome punk sweaters we all may love, or at least have seen before), it's important to know how the particular fibres and yarns work structurally. There's a reason why clothing made to be or look distressed looks so awesome and a lot of actually busted up clothing or "home-made" distressed stuff looks crappy. Knowing where and how to cut fabric in pre-made knits, how to style the runs, or how to make patterns with the runs and holes, is all very calculated. As I've learned myself, if you try to distress a finely-knit sweater, it'll look like crap; distressing needs a chunkier, thicker yarn to be really noticeable. And wet-blocking a ravelled sweater (stretching while wet) is very important - otherwise, the threads maintain their curled appearance, and don't become those straight lines that create contrast with the curving knitted stitches. It's also really important to actually tie off runs in a distressed sweater, or the whole thing will, in fact, unravel.

The advantage of knitting a sweater with a distressed look is that you can control this process. In effect, dropped stitches and yarn-overs create a sort of freeform lace look, and don't destroy the structural integrity of the sweater (which unravelling a pre-made sweater CAN do).

So basically there IS a method to the madness in pre-distressed clothing, and knowing how to distress your clothing well and safely - whether it's for a stage production, Halloween, or fashion - takes more than sharp scissors and boredom!

Predictably, clothes like this inspire retorts like, "I could give you my old jeans covered in cow manure and farm dirt and motor oil for that price!" But that's the point - the "fake dirt" that so baffled the Washington Post and CNN, where reporters appeared unfamiliar with the concept of "p a i n t", will not rub off or dirty other surfaces. The pants don't contain the scent and sweat of another person's work, nor are they worn out and about to fall apart, as those pants probably are. (For example, the wear patterns and distressing and whiskering all appear on the thighs and calves of the jeans, rather than in the crotch, around the bottom cuffs, and etcetera.) 

It's not about pretending you work - it's about exploring the beauty of entropy and things that are lived-in. The way fabric dye fades, the soft whiskering of denim fabric, the delicate feathers of raw-edged cotton - all of these have their own beauty. Repairs can create a contrast from the original fabric or material as well, and it needn't be ugly. People familiar with "that weird gold thing," kintsuogi, may also know have seen it in cases where useful objects are repaired and the cracks are patched with gold leaf to highlight their beauty. 

Here's another example of finding beauty in marks and unexpected places. When I saw an advertisement for Canada Post that featured a very intriguing necklace, I tracked down the artist's work and had a look at her site.

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#fbf to my 30 seconds of fame 😛 I custom made this piece especially for the #canadapost commercial. It took every spare second I had for a month....... and it will be on-screen for a second at a time for three years 😪 💰#lianevazbespoke

A post shared by Toronto Goldsmith (@lianevazdesigns) on May 26, 2017 at 2:22pm PDT

However, to my surprise, most of her jewelry was either minimalist and geometric, or covered in dented and scratched textures, like this!

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HEX textured pendant in 18k gold on a vintage chain ✨

A post shared by Toronto Goldsmith (@lianevazdesigns) on Apr 29, 2019 at 6:17am PDT

There is real value in appreciating things as we wear them out. If we are to shift to a less consumption-driven culture, which is necessary in the fight against climate change, we're gonna have to get used to not having things that look new all the time. Supplies and availability of items may be restricted. Repairing clothing and items instead of just throwing them out has also become pretty popular amongst Generation Z, many of whom are embracing thrifting and minimal-waste lifestyles.

But in addition to that, there's also a beauty in the broken or fraying, the imperfect, the less-than-new. Most of the time we spend with an item will be active. Jewelry gets scratches. Clothes rip. Colours fade. Paper tears. And all of those things expose new beauties and different aspects of the item, revealing its structure and design and suggesting or reminding us of experiences we've had.

After all, our possessions act as anchors for memories. There's a reason why in pre-industrial times, treasured items were passed down through generations or repaired over and over. Our things aren't just pretty diversions or useful parts of daily life - they're parts of our lives, woven or tangled with our memories.

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Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

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