The Late Cider Day

Benedict Ambrose and I spent the weekend we probably should have made the cider painting our front door and railings. Thus, we did not get to the cider until September 16, which I note in bold for future household discussions. In reality, we should probably take our cue not from the calendar but from the apples themselves. 

In the end, I collected 104 apples from the tree as B.A. sterilized the equipment, and we turned them into 6.5 litres of delicious pink-brown juice. Now they are living in large fermentation bin, having been robbed of their natural yeast (and any evil bacteria) and given new yeast from a packet. 

Yes, this September we have been distracted from our cider-making by many things: making apple crumble, the wear-and-tear of B.A.'s second course of radiotherapy in five years, a delayed bout of house decoration, and--of course--the Michaelmas Dance. 

The rental place I consulted about tableware proposed to charge me £40 for pick up and delivery. Thus, I threw my minimalist values to the winds and bought enough wineglasses, plates, cups and saucers to refresh a squadron. I now have enough of the above to last me the rest of my life. Tablecloths, though, are still an issue. 

I am also the proud possessor of many little pencils on strings and an equal number of dance cards of my own design. I picked up the latter at the printer's yesterday and did a little waltz before the counter. It has occurred to me that organizing a dance is as creative as writing a novel and probably more satisfying and definitely less work. 

Before and during the design of my dance cards, I consulted many articles about--and many photographs of--them online. I noted but did not read the essay condemning them as a patriarchal tool for oppressing women. The women I have consulted think dance cards are delightful. Meanwhile, I have enough for the men, so everyone can keep track of their dance partners and have a nice souvenir afterwards. Perhaps these cards will be offered for sale on eBay or its descendent in a hundred years ("Dance cards dating from the Early Restoration--authentic and rare").

Dancing on Lá Fhéile Michíl

It is September, and our tree (see photo) is spangled with red apples. Saturday will be cider day. COVID killed our local brewery shop, so I hope we can find new yeast in time. I didn't like last year's yeast; I like my cider sweeter. 

Meanwhile, Michaelmas approaches and with it a dance. I'm organizing this event for Catholics in Scotland who love the Traditional Latin Mass and for those who like the former. It's the first time I embarked on such an undertaking since I came to live in Britain, and I am learning a lot. The most recent lesson is that I must establish with owners of a hall--even a church hall--that they supply glassware, silverware, and crockery before I sign on the dotted line. 

I think this quite serious because I have sold tickets to people as far west as Greenock and as far north (so far) as Dundee. Coming from such a distance, they deserve something special when they arrive at a dance. I don't want to foist plastic upon them. Thus, I am now the purchaser and guardian of dozens of metal cake forks and coffee spoons, and I will soon sally forth and acquire dozens of wine glasses. I'm still contemplating what to do about the crockery. Finding a tea set for 50 is a special kind of First World problem.

Car-free, I've sent out an S.O.S. about transporting all this to the hall. There will obviously be food and drink, including wine, to carry, too. 

"On a Friday?" asked a Polish lady in Dundee, looking at my flyer, and I was swift to explain that Michaelmas is traditionally a very important feast in Britain. This was once particularly true in Scotland; I am discovering many different customs that have certainly died out on the east coast, if ever they were here. In the Hebrides there were for centuries Michaelmas horse races and digging up wild carrots and the baking of the struan.

There will indeed be carrot cake on offer; I'm not sure yet about the struan. The latter was often given three corners to represent the Blessed Trinity. Spanakopita triangles, replacing non-Friday sausage rolls, could be our contemporary substitute.

Amusingly, the Sunday before Michaelmas was once known as Carrot Sunday. I shall call it Carrot Sunday from now on and peel piles of our orange friends for soup, salad, and cake. 

Another seasonal foodstuff is blackberries, which in England have to be consumed before Michaelmas when they go sour. The growing season in Scotland is later, so there will still be millions of sweet and juicy brambles in the hedgerows when I go out to get them for my chocolate cupcakes with blackberry frosting. 

I held a Waltzing Party last Sunday, and I invited everyone in our local TLM community who is going to the Michaelmas Dance. Thus, for the first time, an infant cast a baleful eye on our proceedings and, as I expected, distracted two of the dancers. I would love to come up with a solution for parents of very young children who want to come to dancing parties, but our usual hall has only one room.  (That said, it does have a kind of sliding shutter that could presumably close, and I could work out a rota of parents to oversee the wee sprogs. Watch this space.)

Through prayer and training, I have stopped panicking about the male:female ratio before every dance. I breezily leave it up to the Lord, as there is really nothing I can do about it, and the younger generation doesn't seem to believe in RSVPs. On Sunday, we had 10 men and 8 women, but one of the men was Benedict Ambrose, and he had no wish to dance. Instead he counted out ONE-two-three for me as I inexpertly led a review of the waltz. Somewhere in Canada a ballet mistress turned gracefully in her grave.

The world's most unlikely dance instructor, I studied an online dance lesson for hours last week and made notes. Unfortunately, the YouTubers were teaching the American Waltz, whereas we have been learning the English Waltz and the Viennese Waltz, and there was a murmur of rebellion from our best waltzer that it was wrong for the man to start with his left foot. 

How sadly I regretted the disappearance of our usual instructor, a 100% authentic Austrian. When he appeared, fresh from the airport, at the After-Mass coffee, it was as if St. Michael himself had appeared before me. However, it turned out St. Michael hadn't had more than 5 hours of sleep a night in days and was even contemplating taking a taxi home. Thus, maintaining the Viennese flame was still left up to me.

I fear I have done harm as well as good. Nevertheless, everyone got in some practice, and then we were led through the figures of three Scottish country dances by a much more confident teacher.

Incidentally, I had an amusing exchange with a newcomer to Scotland who--when at After-Mass Tea I hopefully asked another potential waltz instructor if he were staying for the party--remarked that the dance would need all the men it could get. 

"Ha!" said I. "Not in this community"--and swept her away to a table of young men to be entertained. If you are a young woman who likes young men who love the Traditional Latin Mass, I highly recommend coming to the diocesan-approved Edinburgh TLM for we have at least a dozen of them. 

Wrongmove

I suspect there comes a time in life when you set down roots like a dandelion and just do not want to pull them up. If so, I think I have got there. 

It was humbling to discover that when, during the COVID years, I began to bake bread and grow vegetables, so did hundreds of thousands of other women. It was mortifying to discover that I might not be a totally autonomous being, or that under certain circumstances I just do what most other women do. 

And let's face it, when the BBC first reported on COVID as if we were all going to die, I was as terrified as almost everyone else. I even once wiped down our groceries. Indeed, if I hadn't been assigned to watch the Yellow Card (i.e. British reports of vaccine injuries) scheme, I might even have got the jab. 

What brings on this bout of introspection? It was Benedict Ambrose suggesting, last week, that we go look at a property he had seen on RightMove. (RightMove is a real estate website, online crack for middle-aged Britons.) This house is in our price range, it is in a neighbourhood of beautiful houses, it has a conservatory. It is also an ugly, semi-detached, tan pebbledash squab of a thing, a poor relation of the gracious stone houses around it. 

Okay, it's not that bad, and I acknowledge the wisdom of "the cheapest possible house on the best possible street." However, the mere suggestion that we see this property brought me to the edge of depression. 

This was obviously an over-reaction, so I examined my problems with the place. Was it the colour? (I grew up in a pretty white pebbledash house, so it wasn't the texture per se.) Was it the location across town? Was it the distance from Tesco? Was it the absence of trees across the street? Was it the complication of getting a higher mortgage than the mortgage we already have?

And then it hit me that what I was feeling was the primal fear of losing my home. For, as small and humble and 1930s-factory-worker our flat is, it is home. It also gets a lot of sun, it has beautiful views, and  it has an apple tree. The street is not particularly crime-ridden but also not so respectable that neighbours called the police on each other for COVID infractions. In my opinion, there is really nothing wrong with our flat that some clever DIY wouldn't fix. 

I began by giving the place a thorough hoovering, weeding the veggie trug, sending away our most battered chairs, buying a guest bed, and researching door paint. In the evenings, I look at online advice for redecorating narrow hallways. 

What happened to the woman who got married and moved over 3,000 miles to be with B.A.? Now I won't even move across town. I must be getting old--but I don't care. I'm not budging. I've grown a taproot, and if someone tries to pull me out, I'll break up the concrete. 

Stand by your man

I had a bit of a shock from Facebook today: it presented me with some "memories" from 2017.

Here is something I wrote on August 24,  2017:  

Once again,[Benedict Ambrose] passed all the little tests they give to make sure a hospital won't have to find a bed for him. None of these doctors seem particularly concerned that he now weighs 97.5 lbs.

And here is something I added:  

A doctor explained to me that although [B.A.] is underweight, he is not dangerously underweight, so he doesn't have to be in a hospital. I'm sorry for having frightened people. I was quite frightened myself.

Happily, concerned friends chimed in to ask for more information. Here's one of my responses.  

This particular doctor didn't see [B.A.] at all. He was the on-call emergency doctor at the clinic, and he was the one who phoned back when I called to ask why nobody had given [B.A.] a recommendation to the hospital. (There is a strict hierarchy here or who gets what service when, and you have to go through the right channels--unless you can get a string pulled.) He took my word for it that [B.A.] weighs 97 lbs (which he called 50 kg), and noted that according to the records Mark weighed 60 kg in 2011.

And then a very helpful friend said:   

In oncology there is something called cancer associated cachexia (CAC). Notwithstanding that cancer is not B.A.'s diagnosis,* CAC is often defined as 5% loss of baseline body weight. [B.A.] has lost over 15% (60 to 50 kg), as an underestimate. I would be concerned. They can insert a nasogastric feeding tube, or a G-tube (surgically implanted right to the stomach), if nothing else. I don't know the case, but I would be pushing for more testing and/ or intervention. Who cares if you are Nightmare Wife. Its your role as [B.A.'s] advocate in the health care system. +

[*B.A. actually did have cancer, but nobody admitted this until after his final brain surgery, when the surgeon snapped, "It's all cancer." We had been allowed to think that non-malignant tumours weren't actually cancer. I suspect there are studies arguing that the fastest way to kill someone with brain cancer is to tell him he has brain cancer, which is why everyone left us in the dark. But on with my story. ]

The next day, the one family member who is a medical doctor sent me, by email, a letter to take to the hospital. I carefully bundled B.A. into a taxicab and took him there. Thanks to this letter, he was admitted. And thanks to my family member's qualifications, B.A.'s surgeon returned her telephone call.  

It is very possible that had this person not married into my family, Benedict Ambrose would have died. This is called class privilege or social capital. And believe me, I was using every scrap I had. 

Naturally, history has moved on, with new shocks and alarms.  Here is something I wrote on Facebook on August 24, 2021:  

People complained about 2020, but in 2020 I travelled to Poland twice and lived in Italy for a month without invasive tests, inoculations or quarantines--until our return to Scotland, when we did quarantine, not a hardship as we work from home. Now it's 2021 and the world has gone completely insane. 

I'm of two minds about the "On This Day" feature. On the one hand, it's good to remember that doctors don't know everything, that you owe a family member a huge debt of gratitude, and that the world went completely insane in 2021. On the other hand, what an exhausting start to the day.  

Women's Sports and Life Insurance

These are not necessarily related! It just happens that this week I have fielded both concerns about women in sports and questions about life insurance. 

First, just as women have always worked, women have always taken part in games of one kind or another. In the Middle Ages of Britain, I have discovered, women of all classes played ball games--throwing the ball, batting the ball, kicking the ball. I was amused to read that in Scotland sides of single women would take on married woman at football (soccer). I am in no doubt that women would have running races against each other at village fairs; they were certainly doing so in Britain by the 18th century. Wealthier women rode horses, participated in archery, hunted with dogs and/or falcons. They played tennis and an early form of golf. 

Of course, what activities women were permitted to do by their parents or brothers or husbands were very constrained by custom and whichever ideas about women's roles, deportment and health were current. The first woman to participate in a public horserace in England appears to have been Alicia Thornton in 1804. She had challenged her brother-in-law, and her husband placed a bet on her. Sadly, Thornton lost the 4 mile race but--dear heavens--she was riding side-saddle. The modern-day Olympics first allowed women to compete in 1900, but then they were permitted in only a handful of sports: croquet, equestrianism, golf, sailing, and tennis. The first woman to win in the Olympics was sailor Countess Helene de Pourtales (pictured above). 

Incidentally, some women boxed alongside their husbands in mixed-sex competitions in England in the 1720s. That's not really to my taste, I have to admit. I'd rather go lolloping after a rolling cheese or play football against the maidens of the parish.*    

Local women lolloping

Regarding life insurance, I still don't have it and Benedict Ambrose still doesn't have it, but we have no dependents and our mortgage is small. We are both employed, and one could still pay the bills if the other shuffled off this mortal coil.

Our situation is different from that of the happy young couple looking forward to raising a family of children, let alone that of the masterful man who has intentionally married a featherbrained beauty whose total lack of marketable skills renders her completely dependent on him. In both these cases, I think the main breadwinner (who is almost always going to be the man here) should take out term life insurance renewable every 5 years or so. (I am no expert, so here is what looks like sound advice for the UK.) 

Naturally, the breadwinners should be socking money away towards their eventual liberation from wage slavery. Depending on the style to which their families have become accustomed, they can stop paying insurance (and working) after they have amassed enough of a fortune to support their dependents' annual expenses. (Check local laws--especially tax regulations--about who gets the lolly when the breadwinner dies.) If a breadwinner's bread baker is itching to get back into the workforce after all dependent children have grown up, then the breadwinner can stop paying insurance premiums. If, however, the last child isn't out the door until the bread baker is 50 or more (or  unemployable), then I think the breadwinner should keep on buying life insurance--if, of course, he hasn't got a fine fortune to alleviate his bread baker's savage old age. 

I am conscious that I talk about the breadwinners' salaries as if they belonged to them/us. They don't, of course. The salaries belong to them, their spouses, and their dependent children. All my worldly goods I thee endow. When I get a raise, Benedict Ambrose gets that raise. 

When B.A.'s payday came around during my years of underemployment, he always said, "We got paid today." I appreciated that very much, for it saved my dignity in this money-conscious world. It was also in the good old Scottish (and Scottish-Canadian) working-class tradition of handing one's wife an unbroken pay packet. (The good Scottish [and Scottish-Canadian] working-class wife extracted some bills for her husband's personal use, and then bought the groceries, paid the bills, and banked whatever was left.)

Anyway, that's my thought for today. If, God forbid, B.A.'s adventures with cancer become so absorbing he can no longer work, then I we will take out term insurance on my hardworking yet mortal self. But right now, I think we're okay as we are.

*Actually, I think we could get a pretty good Matrons vs. Maidens game of 5-a-side going. How amusing--and traditional--that would be! I'm picturing it in the green sward behind the church, and the (English) parish priest looking on astonished. 

Traditional (Latin Mass) Catholic Life

Traditional Catholic Life is not lived on the internet, let alone the-platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter. 

In fact, Traditional Catholic Life is too enormous a subject for any mere blogpost, so I will talk only about Catholics whose lives revolve around the Traditional Latin Mass. 

Happy Feast Day, by the way. Today is the Feast of the Assumption, which is a holy day of obligation in Scotland (as in the USA), so to Mass I will shortly go. But I will not be going to the TLM because I work afternoons and evenings, and thus cannot get to the Edinburgh TLMs today. 

And this illustrates two things about TLM Catholic Life as it is not lived on Twitter: some (many/most) TLM Catholics go to the N.O. at least occasionally out of necessity, and some (many/most) married TLM Catholic women have jobs-outside-the-home. 

Of course, if we had been blessed with children, I might not be working-outside-the-home. That said, Catholic boarding schools in France do not pay for themselves. Or, as one fellow parishioner of unbridled optimism and prestigious education once told us, "Don't discount Eton." (We were living at the time at the Historical House, which fact may have hidden from our friend from the realities of our finances.) Traditional Latin Mass Catholics do not necessarily homeschool; it all depends on what we think is the best option for our children and/or what we can afford. 

Another illustration: the TLM Catholic Life as it is not lived on Twitter is also not always lived in the United States. It is lived in Canada, Scotland, and England, in Poland, Italy,  Germany, and--especially-France. TLM Catholic Life is, in fact, catholic, and I mention only those seven countries simply because that is where I have seen it, or met Traditional Latin Mass Catholics. It never ceases to irk me when one (now former) TLM Catholic (still current) internet personality writes that Americans are the leaders of the TLM world. He might not think so if he could read French. 

But of course there are many TLM Catholics in the USA, of whose 331.9 million population about 25% are at least nominally Catholic. Thanks to my work, I am in contact with at least one or two every day. They seem to have the same concerns TLM Catholics have in Britain: where to go to Mass if they can't get to the TLM,  how to save their local TLM from episcopal machinations, how to educate their children, how to ignore ersatz leaders of TLM Catholicism. 

Offline, TLM Catholic leadership is actually very simple. The official leaders are the Pope (the current one is not ideal) and the local ordinary (every diocese a crapshoot) and then bishops and priests who say the TLM. Practically speaking, our day-to-day leader is a TLM priest, and not--for example--Dr. Taylor Marshall.  

There are, of course, official groups of TLM Catholics who have lay leaders, like England-and-Wales' Latin Mass Society and Una Voce Scotland, but these leaders don't have the standing of clergy. Members of the groups vote for them. They may or may not be household names. Ordered suddenly to name the leading TLM Catholic in Britain, I would probably forget the clergy's superior claims and just stammer out "Dr. Joseph Shaw." 

But certain online Catholic personalities are definitely household names in Scotland. (I suspect they are largely unknown in France.) I have heard Dr. Taylor Marshall and John-Henry Westen mentioned in the parish hall, and I'm pretty sure most adults there have at least heard of Michael Voris. Popular among the prelates are Cardinal Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, as well as less internationally known tradition-friendly bishops, whose names it would not be politic to record online. 

So it would be wrong to claim that the internet plays no role in TLM Catholic Life. It most definitely does--on the level of info-tainment, education, and the dissemination of news. What I do claim is that Twitter spats, never mind such lame pronouncements that a man having ever changed diapers suggests there is something wrong in the order of his household yadda yadda, have little to do with the daily realities of TLM Catholic life, let alone our religious faith. A presumptuous lady on Twitter/X is just some dame; it is our flesh-and-blood neighbours beside us in the pews who count. 

That said, some unhelpful ideas creep in by way of plausible self-taught theologians, just as not all households are proof against being machine-gunned by Hollywood and its accomplices, the government schools. The ones I am thinking of play to some men's fears about being abandoned, robbed or otherwise mistreated by their wives. Happily, these ideas get short shrift in my house, for my husband learned the excellent philosophy "Anything for a quiet life, laddie" at his grandfather's knee. Meanwhile, he is a peaceable and loveable chap, so I do my best not to disgrace him in public.  

I am now tempted to ask my manager if I can take 4 hours out from work to go to the Feast of the Assumption TLM with my excellent husband, assist at this Mass, and then come home again. Herein lies another reality of TLM Catholic life, which is that TLMs are often far from where we live and it takes a lot of time and planning (and in my case £4 round-trip) to get to them. It is a matter of grief to me that I can't just walk to the very pretty stone church across my neighbourhood and attend morning Mass there. 

Of course, I could, but it will be teeming with the baptized pagan barbarians from the nearest "Catholic" school, and whereas I can resign myself to attending the Novus Ordo with devout Catholic barbarians or baptized pagan gentlefolk, small baptized pagan barbarians all chattering or looking at their phones during Mass are too much for me. So off I go to prepare for the 10 o'clock at the Cathedral--after noting that, yes, there is a certain level of intolerance in my minority-in-a-minority community. We are deeply intolerant of Catholic schools that don't teach the Catholic faith, and we find impious behaviour distasteful in anyone who has attained the age of reason.  

More on the subject of TLM Catholic Life anon.

Theology of the (whole) Body

It comes as no surprise to me that eleven-year-old girls look at the adult female bodies on display in newspapers, magazines, TV, social media, and elsewhere on the internet and say, "That's not me, and I don't want be that." 

Of course they don't. The vast majority of women they see are entertainers, and today's female entertainers, even when they are elderly or enormously fat, wear outfits that would make a 19th century prostitute blush.

Today's commonplace sexual displays are unseemly for adult women, but they are totally inappropriate for 11-year-old girls. Children should not be exposed to adult sexuality; this used to be common knowledge. It is abysmal that, entertainment having become so important in our society, children spend much of their leisure time in the virtual company of hyper sexualized adults. 

What was also common knowledge, when I was a child, was that although girls-in-general have a preference for "girls' stuff" and activities, many girls enjoy "boys' stuff"and activities. As I've mentioned before, when I was a kid traditional boys' stuff and activities were considered innately superior, so it's no wonder my generation of girls at least tried out the magic of Meccano after tiring of Lego and demanded to play street hockey with the boys and whatnot. Girls who said things like "I don't like dolls; I prefer playing with toy cars" obviously thought this rendered them superior to the vast majority of womankind.

Nowadays, unfortunately, honestly preferring Matchbox and Meccano to Barbie and ponies runs girls the risk of being told they're boys trapped in female bodies. This appalling horror is probably also a result of the dumb dualism that divides human beings (but not any other living creature, you'll notice) into minds occupying bodies. As anyone who has lost their temper simply because she was hungry or tired should know, there is no real separation between our minds and our bodies. Our bodies are not spaceships we drive around in (to quote a lady in my Eschatology class 20 years ago); we are our bodies. We are ensouled bodies. 

And the problem with being an ensouled body in the 21st century is that there is a vast overemphasis on our reproductive functions (while, perversely, devaluing actual natural reproduction). Of course, the sexual vulnerability of girls has always been a part of human existence. However, the importance of capturing (instead of discouraging) male sexual attention--or looking like women who could capture male sexual attention--has never been so prominent or exaggerated. No wonder there are 11-year-old girls who would just rather be boys. 

As you could guess, I think I have solutions to this problem. Although my readership may find them problematic, at least they aren't as stupid as bra-burning. (Admittedly, bra-burning might not have been stupid when bras were all padding with wires sticking into you, but it would certainly be stupid now.)

Solution One: Get involved in sports, involve girls in sports, watch women's sports on TV

Yes, I spent my childhood trying to avoid sports, but part of the problem was that nobody ever told me what the rules were. If the girl you're trying to get into sports is a bookworm, give her books about sports, especially helpful books that explain the rules and techniques. If I had known what "offside" was when I started playing hockey, my teammates might not have hated me quite so much. 

I am not sure how much of a problem this is nowadays, but if people tell you (or the girls in your life) that sports are for boys, I suggest telling them that "boys' sports are for boys, and girls' sports are for girls." A girl's sport, incidentally, is any sport that girls--that is, ensouled female bodies--do together. Male and female bodies are so different, the sports themselves--even they have the same name and rules--are at least slightly different.

Naturally there are sports that we associate more with girls, like solo figure skating and rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming. It would be nice, I think, if girls were brought up watching and trying other women's sports as well, like soccer and karate and speed skating. 

Why? Because it would show girls that women are subjects of action, doers of deeds, and not primarily passive objects, there to be looked at, our value determined by how many people admire our looks. Presumably a chap in his 60s might still find 50-something me a cutie; I'd much rather, though, that he admired my newfound ability to waltz.  

Solution Two: Give up artificial beauty

There are women who start dying their roots in university, and I can see that giving that up might be harder than sitting down with a wriggly little girl to watch women's soccer. However, I do not dye my hair, and my husband hasn't yet left me over my grey hairs. I also do not wear makeup, except for lipstick at parties. [Update: A contact lens-wearing reader has very correctly pointed out the unreasonableness of this following remark, which really doesn't apply, as everyone who wants and can have peripheral vision should go right ahead: Oh, and I gave up contact lenses after an infection left me crying and half-blind in an emergency ward in Warsaw. I wear glasses day in and day out, including to parties, and I'm fine]. I'm not suggesting anything I haven't done myself. 

If we all gave up--hear me out here--make-up, wigs, fake eyelashes, hair extensions, and tooth veneers, it would not only save us a lot of money, it would emphasize that what makes women female is not a collection of artificial cosmetic enhancements but our very own unvarnished selves. 

We should by all means strive to become pictures of health through sleep, good nutrition and exercise, of course, and I have no objection to pretty clothes. I would just like to show girls that cosmetics do not make the women; this would be a good lesson for gender-confused males, as well. 

Solution Three: Back to physical exercise 

Competitive sports are no fun if you absolutely dread letting down your teammates, which I so often did. Also, whereas it can be inspiring to watch Simone Biles do astonishing acrobatic feats, girls may need to be reminded that there is a wide and enjoyable middle-ground between couch potatoes and the elite. 

Thus, I would also recommend encouraging girls to do recreational activities like swimming, skating, hiking, folk-dancing, and any other appropriate physical activity that gets the heart pumping, the blood flowing and the endorphins making them feel good to be alive. 

Solution Four: Discourage Prevent your children from using the internet unsupervised

Well, I rarely say this, but do leave a comment if you agree or disagree strenuously with my thoughts.  

Update: Another reader has brought up the issue of body hair. This is a really tough one. In fact, this is a centuries-old tough one. There is no real taboo on not-dyeing and not-wearing-make-up-or-nail-polish. However, there is a massive societal taboo in the West (at very least) on female body hair. And it seems incredibly unfair that female body hair is 100% normal and yet women are now expected to remove it. Hair removal is so common, movie stars make headlines just for not shaving their underarms, a practice that wasn't universal in Europe, by the way, when I was a child. And removing leg hair was not really a thing until hemlines went up. Hair-over-the-lip, though, is something women seem to have always fought, and until this morning (when found an article about it in the Guardian) I thought it was rare in women. 

The point of this post was never to create more burdens on women but to think out loud about how we could, as a sex, make being adult females less scary for pre-teen girls. Body hair is something grown by men and women alike, so it's not a man or woman thing, it's an adult thing. My thinking is that if you want to smash the body hair taboo, and you've got the guts to do it, do it.* If you'd rather not, don't. If your 10-year-old wants to know why that lady has hairy legs, you can do future generations a favour and say, "Almost every lady has hairy legs. Some are brave enough to keep them hairy."  

*Update 2: On second thought, the taboo against female body hair is so strong in the West, I would not recommend trying to smash it yourself, if you can help it. The generations of women who did not shave their legs did not display them publicly either.