Pretend It's A Couch

And a city.

Feb 21, 2021

If you’re a responsible citizen, you’ve probably become pretty acquainted with the objects in your home by now. We notice what gets the most daily love, what’s collecting dust, what comforts us, what irritates us. As a stoic who hasn’t bothered to decorate in the two(!) years since moving in, I thought I could survive lockdown without letting my possessions inform my emotions. But after a year of frustration, I’ve surrendered. The reality is, furniture influences the daily flow of our lives, in turn shaping our mood, our choices, and ultimately our identity.

Think for a moment about your couch. Unless you’re in a studio apartment, you probably have one. How often do you use it? Do you eat on it? Sleep on it? Work on it? Is it the centerpiece of your home? The invitation to guests to stay a while; a symbol of your social life? Or does it more realistically represent your solitude; as the sacred place where you binge on Netflix and get your revenge bedtime procrastination? The uses of this one hunky piece of furniture say so much about your habits, values and aspirations.

A few nights ago I called 1800-Got-Junk at 10pm (apparently junk collection is a 24-hour business) to inquire about having some of my furniture removed. Before I knew it, they’d pressured me into scheduling a pick-up in two days. Right after my mom died, I had no hesitation throwing out her stuff. But the furniture that remains has become cemented in time—the couch being one of the hardest to let go of. The seat cushion on her side remains flattened from all the years she sat there. The left armrest is worn from doubling as a plate holder throughout my adolescence. The corners are frayed from Emma, our beloved cat who has since died, using it as her personal nail salon. This one piece of furniture holds so much, but do I use it? Barely. The pillows I’ve strategically placed over mom’s spot, as if to keep it reserved for her, collect dust.

Why is it so hard for us to let go of the things that we rarely use? “Stuff maintains the status quo: nothing awful can happen if everything stays the same,” writes Lee Randall. By holding onto our objects, we remain assured in our sense of self and find grounding in the familiar. “Objects give concrete evidence of one’s place in a social network as symbols, of valued relationships,’ says psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as quoted by Randall. “They stabilize our identities, giving permanent shape to ourselves, by providing foci of involvement in the present and signposts to future goals.”

My grandpa used to tell us purchases should always be out of need, rather than want. While his advice leans a bit masochistic, there is some logic to it. How much of what you buy is stuff you actually need (like, when you get home there is some task you can’t accomplish without it)? The objects we buy signpost an image of the person we want to be—it’s called aspirational consumerism. We buy the Peloton because we want to exercise more, to be a “healthier” person; the brand name cookware because we want to become better cooks; the fancy dress for that party we’ll go to one day. In this way, holding onto stuff we never use actually keeps the door open for change.

But closing that gap between the person we strive to be and the person we actually are, isn’t as easy as a few clicks on Amazon. Psychologist Angela Duckworth explains this as “false hope syndrome,” when we set goals that are unrealistic, and then the objects we buy to reach those goals become reminders of our failure to meet them. In this way, keeping stuff can hold us back. I’ve kept the couch because I tell myself I’d like to photograph it for a documentary project on grief. But in two years, I’ve only photographed it once. I aspire to be more artistic on the regular, just as much as I hope I’ll glance over to her side of the couch one day and see mom smoking a cigarette.

Whether it’s a sentimental object that preserves a memory or an aspirational purchase contributing to a goal—a minimalist would say we shouldn’t fix any emotional attachment to our stuff. If the cluttered home creates a cluttered life, then an empty space clears the mind, creating mental space for us to be more intentional about who we want to be, and how we plan to get there. “By owning fewer things, we might be able to construct new identities through selective curation instead of succumbing to consumerism,” writes Kyle Chayka.

But the smooth, resolved façade of minimalism is deceptive; it tricked me into thinking I had emotionally moved on. I thought I was being practical, economical, by not buying new things; and strong, by not letting the sentimentality of what remained affect me; but the reality is, even when I’m behaving as a minimalist, I’m as emotionally stuck as a hoarder. I thought I was above it all, floating in the hollow space. But my indifference has been dissociation. My hesitation to re-decorate isn’t minimalism, it’s denial.

Whether we’re clinging onto the person we want to be, or the person we left behind, or the person who doesn’t rely on any object for emotion—our design choices are inevitably shaped by an idealized projection of the self. Maybe keeping my mom’s couch will help me process my grief. Maybe keeping my mom’s couch will prevent me from moving on. It could go either way; I could completely overhaul the apartment and be just as emotionally stuck 10 years from now.

The objects are the physical constant, but it’s us who change. They can’t fill us up emotionally any more than their absence can guarantee clarity. The work—whether that looks like processing a loss or building a new habit or making a lifestyle change—falls on us.

So, do you think I got rid of the couch?

Best,
Anna

Published 📝

Forbes - Three Body Confidence Crusaders On Finding Self-Acceptance In Fitness, Fashion And Everyday Life

The first ever virtual conference on body confidence, The BodCon, takes place today. In anticipation, I interviewed three body confidence activists—plus-size model Hunter McGrady, fitness trainer Chelsie Hill, and dancer-meets-designer Chelsie Hill—on cultivating self-acceptance in a fat-phobic, ableist world.

On body image:
“If you’re not in a space where you love your body, maybe the goal is to get to a place where you feel neutral about your body.” - Chrissy King

“I love my hips, I love my stretch marks, I am enough, I am worthy, I am valuable.” I’ve said these five things to myself every day for the last 11 years.” - Hunter McGrady

“My body is not what makes me who I am, it's what allows me to have this human experience. I have specific magic that I'm supposed to create in this world and it doesn't have anything to do with what I look like.” - Chrissy King

And working out:
“People with disabilities know what they can and can’t do physically. Don't tell us what we can't do, find a way to work with what we can do.” - Chelsie Hill

“It has to be a diet culture-free zone, focused on movement as a source of nourishment, not to change the way we look or burn off what we just ate. Our relationship with our body is the most important relationship we have because we're the only person that we spend our lives with. So how do we nourish our relationship with movement in a way that is filled with compassion, not guilt or judgment? - Chrissy King

Reading 📖

✊🏿 This new project from The Atlantic on Black American history and the resilience of memory.

🧔🏿 Leave it to Wesley Morris, one of my favourite culture critics, to transform a small subject like his moustache into a revelatory examination of what it means to be a “good” Black person.

🧘‍♀️ We’re all about self-love and mental health awareness but we’re still incapable of tolerating the ugly parts of others.

“We can be a hard worker, but we can’t be a hard worker who’s putting so much pressure on herself that she is making herself physically sick to cope with the stress of it,” writes Meghan Palmer.

👵🏻 Why do young people say they feel so old? As someone who describes myself as an elderly person living in a millennial body, this was incredibly validating.

💇 Or maybe I really am old, if I part my hair to the side.

💻 Always reading Anne Helen Peterson take on our obsession with productivity.

“We’ve reached the point of diminishing returns. You can see it explicitly manifest in anti-hustle culture, in the renewed embrace of unions and the labor movement, in the popularity of books like How to Do Nothing and movements like The Nap Ministry.”

🛋 The next frontier of escapism: ambience rooms, they provide a respite from the “hyper-mediacy of the internet.”

🇺🇸 Do Canadians miss American tourists? Our wallets do—pre-pandemic, American tourists accounted for half of Joe Beef’s weekly income of $150,000.

🥡 Speaking of Montreal, this chef is gaining worldwide attention for giving self-deprecating reviews of his own food. Apparently the menu’s directness “is calculated to appeal to the squeamish, spice-phobic palates of some Canadians.”

🗽Sex and the City is getting a reboot (albeit without Big or Samantha), so naturally I’m fiending a few days in the life of Sarah Jessica Parker.

🧛‍♀️ Cancel Joss Whedon, but please don’t cancel Buffy. “Buffy was a powerful show, not just because it was about girl power, but because it was about women’s voices.”

Watching 📺

I considered devoting a whole newsletter to Fran because I’m obsessed with Pretend It’s A City. Fran is everything I aspire to be—a brutally honest solo-dweller who has made a career out of being cynical and critical. I’ll admit, I love the show but I wish I didn’t, it’s too much of a good thing. I’m afraid it’s mainstream-ifying Fran—it won’t be long before she’s commodified, printed on tote bags and stickers slapped on MacBooks.

Watching the critic explore NYC of the before-times is nostalgic escapism; her thoughts on city-living feel melancholic amidst an uncertain future for big cities. But it’s her hot takes on other topics—from making art to the subway to wellness (what she criticizes as “extra health”)—that are the real magic. "How would I describe my lifestyle? Well, I can assure you, I would never use the word 'lifestyle’,” she says.

If you’re a fellow Fran fan, check these out:

SNL highlighting just how much Martin Scorsese milks Fran in the show.

How Fran lives in quarantine. “Last night, I was peeling a cucumber and I was infuriated. Like, why am I peeling this cucumber? Why am I not in a restaurant, where they know how to peel a cucumber, and where I’m not doing it?”

On loving living alone, “The only upside of having to stay in my apartment was at least there was no one else there. I would find that unbearable, I mean, truly unbearable.”

“Alone” at 70 but she doesn’t feel lonely or believe in marriage.

Metropolitan Life (if you’re lucky enough to find a copy), I’m nursing every page.

“There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behaviour.”
“Very few people possess true artistic ability, it is therefore unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. Your life story would not make a good book. Do not even try.”

Who gets to be a real New Yorker: Fran Lebowitz or Andrew Yang (aka “grouch versus tech bro, lifer versus poser”)?

“Fran Lebowitz might not be on the Internet, but she embodies the Internet’s practice of playing a version of oneself, a curse and a privilege once afforded to celebrities that has now trickled down to the common man.”

Imagine Fran’s one-star Amazon reviews:

Ultimate Foodie Cookbook (Hardcover): “I despise the term ‘foodie.’ I mean, how is this a personality? ‘I like food’—how original. Do you also like air? Water? Shelter?”

Welcome Mat (Seventeen Inches by Thirty Inches): “I don’t like welcome mats. They set an expectation that a guest in my apartment will actually be welcome.”

Listening 🎧

COVID-19 has revealed all the shortcomings of our built environment. This episode of On The Media dives into how pandemics shape architecture; people with disabilities can inform redesign in a post-pandemic world, and distanced learning is creating new opportunities for marginalized students.

“We are facing what our wheelchair-bound neighbours have been facing their whole lives; an infrastructure that just doesn’t work for us anymore,” says host Bob Garfield.

Disability is not “something only to be pitied or avoided,” says Sara Hendren, the author of What Can A Body Do? “You enter the world dependent on other people, in the latter part of our lives we experience greater dependence on other people—disability concerns are genuinely universal.”

Best,