Mrs Metaphor

I was listening to my old Kate Bush CD yesterday. The song was “Sat in your Lap” and the words that struck me:

I see the people working,
And see it working for them.
And so I want to join in,
But then I find it hurts me.

And of course it brought my mind to my oft mentioned obsession, Mary Kay Sucks, which now has been reborn as PinkTruth. Truly, I was sad to let go of the name Mary Kay Sucks. Shock value, I suppose, was what was so appealing about the name. The newly christened Pink Truth, however, shows a shift of sorts in some ways. There is a professionalism about the site now that may have been lacking before, perhaps it is a renewed sense of the pursuit of justice, a higher sense of purpose. It is still appealing, it is still intruiging.

And on the heels of this change I receive a postcard in the mail from my friend Trudy, who does not know I am Mrs Metaphor. She invites me to my very FIRST Mary Kay Party. I am stunned, do I go and ask hard questions of the consultant? Do I tell everyone there about Pink Truth? Do I leave little pink business cards on all their cars with PinkTruth.com? Do I stay home out of respect for my friend whom I like quite a lot?

In the end I decide to go. Two other friends are also invited and KNOW of my blogging on this subject. They are suprised that I would attend but I just needed to see what the experience entailed. I had to go.

The day of the party I had even more questions. Do I wear makeup, something I usually reserve for weddings and funerals and the occasional date with my husband. Do I bring a checkbook? Will there be dessert on hand?

I discover not long before I am to leave that the consultant is a very sweet woman whose husband works with the husband of our hostess. Jane, the consultant had called me before the party and asked if might be interested in coming to their weekly sales meeting the following monday. She did say that there would be a demonstration of how to apply false eyelashes. This was before she knew the age of my mascara. To her credit when I told her that I would not be interested in that she let it go and did not bring it up again.

I decide to reserve judgement and commentary about the idea that Mary Kay Sucks. I decide that in the very least I will have had a night out with friends and a mild taste of the Mary Kay worldview. I brought my checkbook. I had heard the lipbalm was good.

I consider myself an anthropoligist of sorts in this situation; digging for clues to the secrets of a mysterious civilization. I am relieved to find that there is indeed food available and help myself to a plate of sweet and savory delights, Trudy never fails.

We spend a few moments getting to know one another and gabbing about life in general before our consultant, Jane turns the subject toward skin care. She asks questions about where we buy cosmetics, what our skin care system entails, if we had ever attended a Mary Kay function in the past, who has a Mary Kay product in our purses…things of that nature. I sat quiet, mostly, except when making jokes about the absence of a skin care system in my life and the degree of maturity that my clinique foundation has gained by sitting in the drawer half full for the last couple of years.

I do tend to cling to the rebellious youth in me which would rather dye my hair a brilliant eggplant to accent the unnaturalness of that process than dye my hair to cover the gray. Wearing makeup has not often been about making myself feel or look more beautiful historically. Often it has been about making a statement, so I actually take a degree of pride in admitting that I buy cosmetics about once a year, if that. To even begin to broach the subject of “anti-aging” skin care products means quite a paradeigm shift frankly.

Jane told us all about the main products upon which Mary Kay Ash founded her company, a brand called “TimeWise.” This “age fighting” product is meant to turn back the clock, reduce wrinkles, fade age spots, tighten sagging skin. I found myself transfixed with the idea of it and then I looked at the pricetag; $104 for what they call The Miracle Set. I asked how long this miracle would last and was told that it would last me about 2-3 months with daily use. So every 2-3 months I am spending $104 for The Miracle.

I already knew from PinkTruth that if I wanted the product I could buy it on Ebay, often from consultants who were knee deep in inventory and credit card debt but did not want to close the door to MK yet. You see, Mary Kay Corp offers a buy back on inventory at 90% of cost. The clincher though is that if you do this buyback you must sit out as a consultant for one year. You can rejoin at a later time but the buyback takes you out of commission. For some, it is a rather delicate struggle, do I stay or do I go?

Consultants are encouraged to keep inventory on hand. One reason that is often stated about why a consultant might have inventory available is an old adage I believe that is attributed to Mary Kay Ash, “You can’t sell from an empty wagon.” Mary Kay Ash knew a little something about the “immediate gratification” that comes of leaving a party with a pink bag filled with newly purchased goodies.

As we looked through the products, Jane would produce samples and full size product from a huge supply in the next room. I began to wonder just how much of this she would eventually be able to sell and how much of it would end up on Ebay or covered in dust in a closet when the lines changed each season.

I decide in the moment that I would save my mental shifting on my aging views for another time and order the lip balm, which after being sampled really did have it’s good points. I found, though, that I really wanted to help Jane out. I get into this brain and heart space often, wanting to help out a friend, or a friend of a friend’s husband as it were, so I also purchase a bottle of make up remover and a new mascara. I was told that mascara really only ought to be used for a few months, after that it can carry bacteria and heaven knows I need my eyes and lashes intact so I succumb.

At this point Jane’s “Director” comes to the party to help out. She is a very attractive woman in her early 40’s. Yes, Cindy’s skin is flawless, her makeup well applied, her suit pressed and her shoes, suprisingly, open toed. I was led to believe through PinkTruth that “open toe” was a “no-no” and I desperately wanted to ask Cindy about this. I wanted to ask leading questions and tip my hand, just a little and I almost did. But in the moment the real truth was that Cindy was not unlikable. She did seem “nice” and she did seem to know what she was talking about in this arena. I don’t know how much inventory she had in her basement or what her credit card balance climbed to near each quarter’s end. I wanted to ask but I didn’t.

I have stated before that what is convincing about PinkTruth stories are the women themselves and now I was face to face with 2 of those women. I don’t know on which side of the fence they would find themselves in this whole debate but right then, at Trudy’s house it really was about selling the product. The subject of recruiting did not come up at all. Jane did try to book more parties with each of us but I do not think she had takers on it and she did not press the subject. It remains to be seen if I will be contacted any further on this front. I’m not sure I presented as someone who would be a willing candidate for selling Mary Kay cosmetics!

The evening ended with more cookies and credit card/order form fill outs and tiny pink bags with newly purchased goodies to take home…except for the lip balm. She was out of lip balm.

third in an ongoing series…

There is something I should note going forward; Anna is not the only friend with whom I have had this experience. There have been several friends of mine who have struggled with infertility and miscarriage. I can say that almost each time I was pregnant, including miscarriages I walked with a friend who was also pregnant. Three times I went on to deliver a healthy baby and they did not, three times they went on to deliver and I did not. I have also walked with friends who never got pregnant, never miscarried and never stopped desiring motherhood even so.

I find myself skittish now about how to move with other women. This is sad to me. I think, perhaps, what should have come from this relational distress should be a greater understanding of how to find our common language. It is easy to speak Hope, easy to offer up bite sized helpings based on scriptural references. God WILL grant you the desires of your heart, He DOES have plans for you, plans to prosper you, Remember the persistent widow…blah blah blah…easily said. While all of these moments of Hope are genuine, prayed for, shared, they are not always meant to be delivered by someone who has no need for that particular brand of Hope.

I think what would have been life giving would have been for us to operate with Grace as a mediator, rather than Hope. Grace is difficult to speak because Grace operates so often without words. Grace is quiet and still. Grace does not require action but rather waiting and breathing and listening. When Hope enters the room it fills in the empty spaces like expandable foam, entering into the cracks but Grace, Grace is the air we breathe. It is what fuels this “walk beside me empathy” that is required. Hope may be dashed to the rocks when spoken in the silence but Grace is sweet when given, in noise, in quiet, in grief.

What sells? Controversy, action, intrigue, suprise endings…and cosmetics.
Of all the posts I have read this week on MKSucks, the one I am most saddened by is a woman who boasts that she quit her nursing job to focus on her MK business. She reasoned that she would rather leave her job making $40-50 an hour as a nurse to pursue higher income in MK. She is entirely content with her choice and who am I to argue what is best for her and her family, yes?

Unless I am someone who is in need of a skilled nursing professional, what then? My response to her was that I felt it was a loss to the profession of nursing, the world does not need another cosmetics salesperson but we are sorely in need of nurses.

What is it that drives someone to pursue an endeavor such as MK? From reading the ProMK sites it appears to be just as they advertise; wealth, friendship, love, faith and fun. From reading the stories of the women who have been hurt by their MK experience the song is the same…they were in need of some part time income (wealth), some were coming out of a divorce (love), some were enticed by the idea of working for a Christian company (faith), some were just looking for friendship (fun.)

Each woman in the MKsucks stories ended up losing much more than they gained. What is striking though are the similarities in the stories…too much time away from the family, an excess of inventory, feeling trapped by not being able to confide their true emotions, being shunned if they spoke badly of the company and most notable, the debt they incurred. The amount varied from one to another, the greatest amount I saw being $40,000. The interesting thing is that the woman who posted this debt incurred from her MK business was NOT disgruntled. She came to post on Mary Kay Sucks to chide them for their behaviour, to tell them how disgusted she was with the site and to say how happy she was with her MK business. She did not respond to the people who posted after her. Many posts were sympathetic, asking her if she really understood that $40k in debt was indeed an incredibly difficult hole from which to emerge.

The women on MKSucks often make comments about having an impact on Mary Kay Intl. Sometimes the comments take a turn for the worse and degenerate into a comical feeding frenzy but the thread is there, the original hope that this tide will turn the course of that ship.

I don’t know if it’s possible to turn this ship around especially when so many ProMk people seem content with the dream that MK offers, I doubt that Mary Kay Intl. really has an interest in changing course. They are, after all, a corporation. Their main goal is to make money for their shareholders. To make sweeping changes would cost a great deal of money. It remains to be seen if this wave of discontent, fueled by MKSucks and other sites like it, is strong enough to cause more than a little seasickness. Time will tell.

choppy waters ahead….

This is why I don’t watch television. Honestly, I don’t watch television. It’s not because I am standing on some high moral ground, spouting long winded diatribes about the objectification of women, the poor treatment of minorities or the immense level of violence, unnecessary nudity and innuendo we see in television programming for the most part. It’s because I become completely immersed in the stories. They could be half hour long comedy programs, hour long dramas, movies of the week, how to shows, infomercials, even home shopping channels…it doesn’t matter. I sit there with the remote in hand and just gaze in awe and wonder at the sheer amount of absolute garbage I can shovel into my brain. And I love every single minute of it. It’s like candy, no, it’s like Godiva chocolates…no wait, it’s like Godiva Chocolate ICE CREAM.

So as I sit at my computer pretending to do my work I keep two windows open in the background; Mary Kay Sucks, Mary Kay Rocks because it has become my new obsession of sorts. Between the two sites I spend most of my time on MKS to be honest. It has the most action basically, I guess it’s Desperate Housewives meets 20/20. Then I check out MKR on occassion. Because they spend most of their time actually talking “shop” over there though it’s hard to find a discussion that keeps my interest. I have learned a lot about the MK thinking on MKR however. I also like to see if I can identify some common monikers while I am there and find the cross talk. It’s Infomercial meets Antiques Roadshow.

I have been posting on both sites, asking questions and again, marvelling at the complexity of the whole thing. I always come away with an intense impression that this goes so much deeper than it seems. My main thought in each post is to try and see each woman or man who is taking time to write their story. I read the good experience stories, I read the bad experience stories and I even read the ones in between good and bad experiences. The posts which get the most attention obviously are the nasty ones and there are nasty ones, believe me. This is where the ratings go up. It’s sweeps week.

What is interesting is that you won’t find nasty posts on the MKRocks site. Their purpose is to be positive, to show the positive side only. I can understand that. This is their work, their business. They don’t want to spend time defending their company on company time so to speak. They do moderate their posts, as MKSucks does, but at MKrocks they remove or do not allow the negative posts to come through. This gives the impression that the negativity does not exist.

MKSucks, however, will allow the negativity. In fact, she seems to revel in it when it comes from ProMK people. Unfortunately for the ProMK people though, these posts tend to be ill concieved, angry to the point of ferocious, poorly written and downright beligerant.

Now, of course, it is possible that, as some ProMK-ers have suggested, MKSucks only shows the posts from ProMK people who fit this template. I don’t know if I believe that. I have been pouring through the site lately and have seen a great many posters who are polite, well spoken (well written) and ProMK. These posts are usually met with a mixed bag of “thanks for posting, glad your experience was good,” or “You are in the Pink Fog, let us know when it lifts,” or “How can you say that when so and so did this…”

If you walk into a room of recovering alcoholics, people whose lives have been destroyed by the stuff and wave around a bottle of Jack Daniels extolling it’s virtues and telling everyone there how YOU don’t have a problem with drinking and that there must be something wrong with them because they DO…then, I guess you’d get a mixed reaction too, but mostly it would be a bad reaction I’d think.

On the other hand, not all people who drink alcohol are alcoholics, just as not all MK Consultants and directors are corrupt. Everything in moderation I suppose.

more to come…stay tuned…

Second in the series….

I have no comparison for Anna’s experience. There is nothing I can compare, any loss or unfulfilled dream I can imagine that can equal the absence of motherhood. I cannot compare it to never having a car or a house or a career because we are talking not about a “thing” but rather about a human and about a transformation of one’s very being. That may seem like an overstatement but I don’t believe it is.

For someone who desires motherhood the experience of having a child, whether by adoption or biologically, brings with it something which changes forever the fiber of one’s being. Well known humourist, Erma Bombeck once said that to become a parent means forever wearing your heart on the outside of your body. There are very few joyful things in life that cause this degree of vulnerability really. A good friend struggling with infertility said recently that “right now my personal need to mother children is right under breathing, eating and shelter.” It would have been easy for me to take that statement to a place of judgement, to “call her to a higher place” and tell her that it sounded like she was elevating motherhood to an idolatrous level and then what she said next was so beautiful that I was floored. She said that what she needed, what she was desperate for in fact was “walk beside me empathy”. When she said this to me I immediately saw how little I had understood.

All this time with Anna I had been trying to either walk ahead, shouting directions on how she should move, how fast she should walk or just saying “come up here…THIS is where Jesus is!” or I was lagging behind and making myself more deserving of grief than she, “Well, yes, but I’VE suffered too! Can’t you see how much grief I have had??” Now what I really wish I had done was stand next to her, walking as she walked, asking once in a while if she would like to stop and rest and just listening and hearing that it was hard. Walk beside me empathy, Christ on the road to Emmaus.
Of course I have had pain, I have had hard experiences too in the field of fertility but that is not really what comes into play when I am walking with a friend who is suffering. We cannot move our emotional furniture to make space for Joy to live because Grief brings with her some very heavy pieces. All the light in the room is eclipsed by the weight of the fabric on the windows, the need to protect oneself from the glaring daylight of reality, statistics and desperation. The only air to breathe MUST come from a third party in the room.

The first in a series of articles about friends and infertility…

“We ought to be able to navigate this,” I kept thinking. It was my second child. It was her first, she was newly married and this baby was a suprise, a honeymoon baby. We were close friends so to be pregnant together was exciting. It was another commonality we had, one more piece of the foundation to our friendship. I remember being at a lakeside vacation house with her and we both ordered fried food for dinner one night to satisfy a craving. Our due dates were about a week apart so I was close to 8 weeks and she was going on 7 weeks.

About a week later Anna began to spot a little. I was afraid immediately because I had recently experienced a miscarriage and the circumstances felt familiar to me. I prayed for God to ease my fears, I prayed for this baby of Anna’s to continue to develope. When the spotting didn’t stop and the morning sickness did stop Anna told me she didn’t feel pregnant anymore. She made an appointment for an ultrasound and I prayed.

When the doctor told her that the baby had stopped developing and that she should have a d&c, I prayed. I prayed that God would show the doctor and the ultrasound to be wrong. I confess that I even prayed the He would give me the miscarriage and Anna the baby. It’s not that I didn’t want to be pregnant, it’s more that I wanted Anna to be spared the loss. It was unfair that she should suffer a loss while I already had a healthy baby.

Anna had the d&c, something I had avoided with my miscarriage because it happened “naturally.” At first we talked about our experience with miscarriage, compared the d&c route to the “natural” route, much as we compared pregnancy experiences. I tried to avoid saying things that used the words “God’s plan” or “Nature’s way.” I tried to be encouraging to her when she was grieving, acknowledging her feelings and standing close when she asked that of me. I tried to not talk about being pregnant anymore even though time and the growing baby I was carrying were a constant reminder, a blinking light in her face.

“We ought to be able to navigate this” was all that came to me, nothing more. I did not know what to say and what not to say. Often I chose to remain silent and she became more silent. I could see the grief on her face as the months wore on just as she saw the joy in mine as my due date grew closer. A wise mutual friend suggested that there had to be room in our friendship for her grief and my joy but I’m not sure we were able to arrange our emotional furniture enough to discover that room.