Off the clock with The Checkout Girl: Purple is the new pink

Sporting a magnetic ribbon on your car? Drinking from a coffee mug with a strong social message? Now, did you obtain those things without participating in, volunteering for, or donating to any cause, whatsoever? Congratulations! You’re an inactivist!

October 25, 2010; 11:50 AM • by The Checkout Girl

Retweet if you have a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered friend in your life that you love & accept unconditionally.

On Wednesday, Wear Purple and Say no to hate!

Please put this on your status if you know or love someone who is gay. My wish for 2010 is that people will understand that being gay is not a disease nor a choice – people who are gay are not looking for a cure but ACCEPTANCE and EQUAL RIGHTS… 93% won’t copy and paste this. Will you make it your status for at least …one hour? …Promote LOVE & Acceptance, not hate!

Remember the Facebook game last year where women would post about what color bra they were wearing? The purpose was to draw attention to October being Breast Cancer Awareness month, and it was a tremendous success: we had men wondering “What’s with the colors?” for days, and it even made it to the news.

This year’s game has to do with where we put our handbag the moment we get home. For example “I like it on the couch”, “I like it on the kitchen counter”, “I like it on the dresser”… you get the idea. Just put your answer as your status with nothing more than that, cut and paste this message and forward to all your FB female friends to their inbox. The bra game made it to the news. Let’s see how powerful we women really are!!! REMEMBER – DO NOT PUT YOUR ANSWER AS A REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE- PUT IT IN YOUR STATUS!!! PASS THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

ac-tiv-ism
–noun
1. the practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc.

in-ac-tiv-ism
-noun
1. discussing the practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc. as if one might participate in such a thing. Ultimately, though, there is no action or involvement.

Sporting a magnetic ribbon on your car? Drinking from a coffee mug with a strong social message? Wearing rubber bracelets that state your beliefs, rather than the sexual acts in which you’re proficient? Now, did you obtain those things without participating in, volunteering for, or donating to any cause, whatsoever? Congratulations! You’re an inactivist!

And, thanks to the Internet, we have to do even less than go out and buy those ribbons, mugs, and bracelets in stores that also sell pork cracklins and cigs. The World Wide Web makes it easier than ever to be a true blue, dedicated inactivist, without ever leaving the house. We mindlessly forward emails about “awareness” of one thing or another. We retweet something in “support” of some cause. We copy and paste a Facebook update that says “do something!” without actually doing anything. We are outraged. We are radical. We are pushers of buttons.

Is there anything wrong with pushing buttons? Of course not. There’s nothing inherently evil about sticking a few feel-goody shout-outs that say “We love you, people who are struggling!” between Farmville updates and pictures of your children, but it’s so easy to fool ourselves into thinking we’ve helped a cause with these things when, in reality, we haven’t at all.

I wore purple to work last Wednesday. Because it was easy. And I had it. And it was easy. And I didn’t see one teen in the store, gay or not. And lots of people I know wore purple to the offices where they work where they see the same coworkers every day… who are not gay teens. But I did it just in case — just in case someone came in who might, by chance, need an ally, someone to talk to, hug, or just exchange a smile with. And it was easy. But I didn’t tell myself I’d done something big. Instead, I went home, having been completely impactless, made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then went online and gave the twenty bucks I could have easily spent on dinner to Gay Community Center of Richmond (GayRichmond.com), an organization that, according to their website, “serves Central Virginia’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities with cultural and social programming, events, and information.” Do I think I changed the world? Or saved someone in crisis? No. Do I think it was more effective than a purple cardigan? I don’t see how it couldn’t be.

And, instead of playing the sexually-charged “Handbag Game”, supposedly geared toward raising awareness about breast cancer, that dominated my Facebook News Feed a couple of weeks ago with “I like it on the microwave” (which really, really doesn’t sound at all arousing or safe), I called a friend who just finished radiation treatments. Besides, answer me this, why would something created to “raise awareness” also boast that last year “we had men wondering for days”? Breast cancer affects the men who love us, as well. Our husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers deserve to be aware, don’t they? Why be coy about cancer? Isn’t pinkifying everything sort of shutting them out in the first place? Shouldn’t we welcome them as our allies and respect that they experience pain when their loved ones suffer?

Speaking of awareness, aren’t we aware? We are aware that gay teens are bullied, mercilessly, and about 30 percent consider suicide. We are aware that the chance of a woman having invasive breast cancer some time during her life is about 1 in 8, and the chance of dying from breast cancer is about 1 in 35. We are aware. Can we move on from awareness to action? Even action so small as to have a talk with our children about why it’s important to be kind to others and defend those that feel powerless. Even an action so small as to ask our doctors to show us how to do a breast self exam and performing it monthly. Even an action so small as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I’ll bet that if we each found a cause we felt passionately about, button-pushers could change the world.

The Checkout Girl can usually be found with either her laptop or blackberry attached to her fingertips, updating her twitter feeds as @thecheckoutgirl and @fyeahmotherhood. She also shares adventures beyond the 140 at fuckyeahmotherhood.com. She is writing both a book about her experience as an “adult entertainer” and a show based on her column 100 Bad Dates which will be debuting in a living room near you. Some day. If you met her, you’d never know, because she is secretly nice. And not blond or hot.

October 25, 2010 11:50 AM 4