The delegates, age 19 to 25, are collected from and represent cities towns and regions all across the nation. They are themselves very different people, and they didn’t always get along with perfect congeniality. I was there helping the digital media coordinator, taking pictures and video and helping him propel participants through a complex web of daily attractions, all the while keeping silent about the real stories happening all around me.

Contestants from other pageants pay no admission and will be encouraged to pose with the winner.

Shall we start by asking the question about why this traditional West Coast pageant, which had been held in Vancouver British Columbia since the late seventies, is now suddenly happening in Toronto? The answer: politics.

International politics is what brought the Miss World Canada beauty pageant back to Toronto in 2017. The Vancouver based organization lost their license last fall when their freshly crowned National Titleholder was blocked from entering China because of her politics. Her choice to protest China’s civil rights abuses was admirable, and the Canadian organization’s decision to support her was the right thing to do. But in the end, it resulted in the UK governing body making the decision to move the pageant to Toronto, and try MTC-W (a company that produces pageants) which is run by Michelle Weswaldi, with help from her mother and brother Ryan Weswaldi.

Modern Makeup’s Jennifer Taylor helps each delegate look her best all week

If you read the Miss World Canada blog you’ll see the pageant experience is much more than just an evening or a weekend affair; competing in a ‘World’ license beauty pageant takes a week or longer (and is by all accounts life-changing). Each day is spent training, getting gifts from sponsors, doing photo shoots, and learning how to dance the opening number. The assembly also traveled around and had different experiences at sponsored events all over the city. That was our job, and my role was making them share it, which was also intense as they have many followers and together, four and half dozen delegates’ Instagram marketing potential is incalculably enormous.

The 2017 Search for Miss World Canada blogged about their Opening Sponsor Party at the Edward Village Hotel. That was followed by Fitness Test Day at Mayfair Clubs, an Interview on Breakfast Television, Exploring the Harbour on Mariposa Cruises, Preliminaries at the Great Hall, and a Bikini Fashion Show at Cabana Pool Bar. The amazing ride ended for fifty-six of the competitors when Cynthia Menard was selected to wear the silver crown as 2017 Miss World Canada on Saturday 22 July 2017.

On stage, the Top 20 delegates at the 2017 Miss World Canada pageant listen as a prepared video broadcast plays aloud their biographies for the live audience and nine judges.

One of the most intense days for us behind the scenes was at Mayfair Clubs Lakeshore fitness gym in downtown Toronto conducting the Official 2017 Miss World Canada – Fitness Day testing. The gym even blogged about it on their own site, Miss World Canada Fitness Day at Mayfair Clubs because the sharable moment center we made was underwater. Delegates had to swim wearing crowns and pause under the waves for a #saltwaterselfie. Like all our ideas, it was smart but under-adopted in my opinion – more on that later.

The videos were cut and delivered to the delegates by Alec Glover, an intern at KPDI Digital Strategy Agency in Toronto. Although super-skilled, the Herculean task of cutting three dozen clips still took him six and half hours.

The #SaltwaterSelfie attraction at Mayfair Clubs Lakeshore paid out six Snappy Towels as prizes for the best videos published on Instagram.

The camera, a HERO5 GoPro could have made Alec’s job very easy, but sadly the camera’s WiFi components do NOT work underwater. That means the team had to shoot blind and hope the subject was in frame and performance was complimentary. But the surprise of finding ‘gold’ later could add initiative to each delegate’s task of publishing, tagging and promoting etc.

Here’s one of the Instagram videos that won the #SaltwaterSelfie challenge. This is Kesiah Papasin, Miss GTA World Canada 2017

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWtOxYGgyFc/?taken-by=_kpaps

You can see more #SaltwaterSelfie videos on the Miss World Canada – Fitness Day at Mayfair Clubs blog post.

Five winners received Snappy Towels microfibre cloth beach towels as prizes and that’s a thirty something dollar gift and a decent prize because I’m sure it’s something they’ll use everyday.

Cynthia Menard holds Snappy Towels pink beach ball beside Miss South

The delegate who won the overall beauty contest is on the left holding the Snappy Towel pink beach ball and Miss Photogenic is on the right.

I was also present at the Mariposa Cruises Toronto Harbour boat cruise where we set up the #VelagoSofaSelfie challenge on Instagram. The Delegate who published the most aesthetically pleasing photo as judged by the CEO of Velago Patio Furniture would win the $600 model that was aboard the Oriole. The winning photo is below.

The #VelagoSofaSelfie attraction yielded a new outdoor sofa to the delegate who posted the most aesthetically pleasing self portrait with the City of Toronto in the background.

Some secrets from the boat cruise day include.. two stowaways, a cigarette smoking delegate, and a slippery manifest. Yes, I can tell you with some certainty that eight or more would-be passengers and two very important sponsors were left on shore. Dahlia DeSouza from UptotheTime watches and Lily Liao from StreetChic missed the boat. Meanwhile there were two mysterious stowaways on board. They even ate the free lunch! The video by Cognition Productions in Toronto nicely outlines the entire experience and you can see the mysterious men in several shots.

The Bikini Fashion Show at Cabana Pool Bar was one of the highlights of the 2017 Search for Miss World Canada.

Two other events that week, the Fashion Show at Cabana Pool Bar and the Grande Finale were also mind blowing, as was the party at REBEL night club afterwards.

Read, Inside the 2017 Miss World Canada beauty pageant in Sharing Toronto magazine if you want more.

Congratulations Cynthia Menard, 2017 Miss World Canada!

Photo Credits

The Bikini Fashion Show – photo courtesy of Miss World Canada

All other photos by Rob Campbell – All Rights Reserved

Besieged by idealized body types and unrealistic aspirational figures, most people feel ugly, no matter what their actual appearance.

In part, this is thanks to celebrity magazines like Hello! and OK! Magazine. Their eye-poppingly offensive headlines criticize celebrities for their cellulite or harangue them for their “cankles”, as though gaining a few pounds over the winter season was a crime worthy of the Hague.

But these magazines are symptomatic of a wider problem.

The appearance of most celebrities (women, in particular) is scrutinized more than their talent, while what they wear on the red carpet is viewed as more important than the event they’re attending. These people look virtually perfect, yet even they seem like failures when placed under the media’s microscope.

And it’s making people feel as though they’ll never achieve their ideal figure. The malleable minds of teenagers, in particular, suffer from overexposure to unrealistic body representations.

In extreme cases, this insecurity can lead to something far more serious – body dysmorphia.

Real body paranoia

Body dysmorphia is a mental illness in which the sufferer believes they are irreparably ugly, no matter what their weight or general appearance. This illness can lead to extreme outcomes, from anorexia to major cosmetic surgery overhauls or, in worst-case scenarios, self-harm.

2.4 per cent of the UK population suffer from Body Dysmorphia, and it’s gaining an increasing prominence in the media. In a society fixated on beauty, the illness has become a symbol of the dangers in our quest to look good.

Chances are you’re a concerned parent reading this, so we’ve got a few tips to help you discover if your teenager is struggling with body issues, and how you can help them.

How you can help

First off, don’t worry too much about a teenager’s general discomfort about how they look. Remember when you were their age? You probably pruned and preened in front of the mirror for hours, but you turned out alright.

Have the same level of empathy for your child as your parent had for you. Provide them with mineral makeup or specialist moisturizer, if they ask you, and be openly complimentary about their appearance.

However, don’t be pushy or interrogatory. An overly worried parent runs the risk of pushing their child away. Gentle nudges about how they’re feeling is enough.

Although the appeal of celeb rags might be insatiable to you, leaving them around for your teenager to read might not be the best idea. Hide them away and try not to be offensive about the appearance of others.

With these soft strategies in place, you’ll be able to communicate with your teen more easily about the beauty industry and any insecurities they might have.

We live in a world where beauty is seen as a treasure to be hoarded. Don’t let your teen be corrupted by it.

Photo Credits

Photo by Fixers on Flickr – Some Rights Reserved

Guest Author Bio

Kevin Fullerton
Kevin Fullerton is a travel fanatic with a thirst for the finer things in life. He is an English & Film graduate who lives on a diet of films, music, writing, books; and boring people with chatter about films, music, writing and books.

The beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar business. By setting the trends of beauty, it shapes and defines the culture of beauty itself. While I was growing up looking at magazines, movies, TV shows and ads, beauty was identified as someone who had big eyes, was tall, blond and Caucasian. So how does a dark haired, slanty eyed, not-so-tall Asian even compare in the beauty market?!?

I have dealt with that question my whole childhood through to my high school years. Coping with my adolescent perception of beauty I often found myself wearing coloured contacts to get away from my dark “almost black” brown eyes and trying to go blond with a box of Nice n’ Easy shade 104 Natural Medium Golden Blonde but instead, always ending up with a shade of atomic tangerine! It’s also no wonder why you see almost all Asian women wearing four inch heels because there are no short models out there. Then try having to explain to your friends and strangers what a double-eye lid is! (For those who don’t know, most people have a crease in their eye lid giving them a double-eye lid). Me, I have a mono-lid making my eyes small and squinty.

The double-eye lid surgery is one of the biggest, if not the most popular surgery in Asia. Mama Nguyen has even suggested that I get my eyes done to have the sought after crease in the my eyes to make them bigger and beautiful. In South Korea, plastic surgery is a rapidly growing industry. Girls coming out of high school are getting surgery to make their eyes bigger, noses smaller and legs longer. Parents are giving plastic surgery to their daughters as gifts in order for them to succeed and compete with others in finding a husband and a job. When submitting a resume in South Korea most companies ask that you submit a picture with your application. Interesting.

When first looking into this topic, I was questioning if people in Asia are really trying to mould themselves into the “Americanized” idea of beauty. After some self-reflection and talking to others about the topic, I came to realize maybe it’s not about looking more Caucasian but more about increasing your “value” in the world. People all seem to agree that being attractive gives an advantage in life and in most Asian countries the US is seen as a symbol of success; plastic surgery could be a way for them to boost their “beauty currency” in society.

If more people continue to turn to plastic surgery to build the perfect person they want to look like, how would we measure beauty if we all look alike? If you study the 2013 Miss South Korea contestants, they all resemble each other and it’s quite hard to tell them apart. How do you judge a beauty contest if all the contestants had plastic surgery? Is it equal to an athlete taking steroids to enhance his/her performance in competitions? This brings me to a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode where Will is stuck in the basement with a girl and he sings a little song….

“I’m stuck in a basement,
sittin’ on a tricycle, girl gettin’ on my nerves
I’m goin’ outta my mind,
I thought she was fine,
don’t know if her body is hers.”

… I can’t help but think with the growing turn to plastic surgery – how will we know if her body is really hers?

On the flip side, it’s interesting to mention that when I asked some of my friends, family and a few strangers what beauty is, people answered in a way that did not touch on physical traits, but more so about inner beauty. Beauty was defined as having confidence in yourself, the courage to be comfortable with yourself, being happy with who you are, beauty being everywhere and ” beauty as something that is unique to every person”. When I asked a five year old little girl if it was more important to be smart or pretty, her answer was smart. Maybe this gives us hope that the world is not only about vanity after all.

Photo Credit

Photo by Lien Nguyen – All Rights Reserved

Guest Author Bio

Lien Nguyen
I’m currently a student with Royal Roads University working on my Masters in Intercultural and International communications. My parents came to Canada as refugees and because of that I have always been interested in doing “small” things to change the world in some way.

Follow Lien: Twitter | Facebook

The first thing that strikes you is the happiness – the genuine “I’m so glad to be here doing this!” look on everyone’s faces. Are some people staring in disbelief? Absolutely. Are the people participating really caring about that? Absolutely not. How many times have we decided not to use a certain gym or partake in a certain activity because someone might watch and we think they’d be judging us for not being able to use the treadmill at more than 4km/hour, or mentally point and laugh at how we look in our swimsuit?

Now, thanks to that first, wonderful, happy man and the reporter who saw something worthy, an idea has been set on fire. It has been spreading around the world because not only is it not “exercise,” it is an embrace to all that is fun, silly and social. You are supposed to laugh, you are supposed to make other people laugh… *with* you.

Dance Walk like everybody’s watching. And love it.

Photo Credit

Feature And Thumbnail  Images – Screen Cap From Video

Guest Author Bio

Jodie Gastel
Jodie Gastel lives and plays in Victoria, BC and is frequently followed around by noises that usually sound like “What is she up to now?” Not content with sitting still, Jodie has taken part of life’s smorgasbord and has experienced as much as possible including traveling around France, running business libraries, getting a mohawk, owning businesses, writing books, doing things interesting enough to be written about in magazines, becoming a mother and donning steel-toed boots while learning to drive a Bobcat.

Currently she is planning the next adventure. Preferably one that involves Yurt building.

Blog / Website: Dance Walking Victoria BC 

Follow Jodie On Facebook

In response to “I’m fat” comments, I have offered compliments. Or flat out rejections of the statement. Or sometimes have simply said “I love you as you are.”

No doubt it’s good to have a partner who isn’t harping on you about weight, but at the end of the day, you have to believe it internally.

At the same time, there are powerful social biases which make this internal self acceptance challenging. It’s easy to find pseudo-scientific articles in magazines and newspapers defending the status quo of attractiveness. Which tends to revolve around white bodies in general, and with women in particular, tends to revolve around being young and thin. In other words, there are cultural reasons why black women in general tend to struggle to get dates, for example, and why women with larger, curvier bodies tend to get rejected or tossed into the friend-zone. And it’s not just a heterosexual thing. These same pattern can be found, at least to some degree, amongst gay, lesbian, trans and queer relationships as well.

On the other two blogs I maintain, I have been writing a lot about the general disconnect so many of us have with the Earth. This disconnect manifests not only in how we humans treat the planet, but also in how we see and experience our bodies. Body hatred is intimately tied to both the oppression of women and rejection of Earth as the source of life, abundance, and creation.

And so, a larger woman might be able to find a partner who loves her for who she is, but if she hasn’t unpacked the internalized oppression around body image, she might do everything in her power – usually unconsciously – to undermine the relationship. On the flip side, if the partner has chosen her mostly for her personality, he or she might end up undermining the relationship with body shaming, or associated negative behaviors. Sometimes, it takes years for this kind of stuff to emerge. Couples can be seemingly happy together, only to wake up one day to an outburst of anger and confusion that slowly, or rapidly tears them apart.

While I fully believe that our desires shift and change over the years, and that sometimes we naturally drift away from partners, it’s also true in other cases that busted up relationships become that way primarily due to unexamined assumptions and views. Because we live in our bodies, and literally store unprocessed experience in our bodies – there’s no way around it. In order to have conscious, thriving relationships, you have to learn to love your body, and feel the flow of life coming through you. Learning to love includes everything from choosing to lose weight if necessary, to standing tall and proud as you are, today, regardless of what others might think. It also means learning to liberate your desires from the narrow confines of the “proper” or “expected,” while also balancing that with a deep commitment to non-harming.

Image Credit

“Fat Bottomed Girls Again” @ Flickr

And, this is precisely why I’m so fired up by the response to the recent photo shoot instigated by Plus Model Magazine and featuring Katya Zharkova.

The plus sized modelling industry is relatively new – 1990s. Why there has to be a separate industry for models wearing clothing sizes above 10, I don’t know. Is it new because it’s driven by capitalism and designers are greedy for more clients? Is it new because women are lazy, getting fat and want to assert their completely unhealthy bodies? Or, is it new because the average clothing size and model is 23% smaller than she was 20 years ago, when she was only 8% smaller and not all women are actually this small?  Have we forgotten that one of the iconic beauties in West was a size 12? Nobody said that Marilyn was plus sized.

According to Wikipedia plus size modeling has received criticism. Some commentators believe that plus-size models may be setting a bad example to women on how they should look. They believe that promoting large models may lead to women believing that having an unhealthy lifestyle is acceptable. I’m wondering why the general public is jumping to the conclusion that someone who is ‘overweight’ is unhealthy when the wide-spread image of women is represented by models who may very well have the BMI of an Anorexic person.  It is possible to have two women side by side, one a size 12 and once a size 0 and both are healthy.

It’s 2012.  Let’s start judging health on something other than body shape, size and weight.

And now, I’ll stop my rant because it’s time for my Sunday 10K. 

Further Reading:

‘Most runway models meet the BMI criteria for anorexia’, claims plus-size magazine in powerful comment on body image in the fashion industry.  Mail Online

To see all the photos from this shoot, visit Plus Model Magazine

Photo Credits:

Plus Model Magazine

Rosie is treated to a personalized aromatherapy sugar salt scrub by Kate Shelton of Tonic Spa-tique and leaves not only feeling uplifted but with a wealth of information. Learn about the health benefits of aromatherapy and how scents affect our moods, our memory, and our entire lives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAlbuNiOn-E&feature=player_embedded

Video Credit

Keith Sonic- www.sonicshoots.com

When my boyfriend tells Americans he’s dating a Swedish girl, eyebrows invariably rise. Women flutter a smile, and an “Oh,” tinged with disapproval. Men whoop “Way to go!” and wink suggestively. If American pop culture is to be trusted, a Swedish girl is: blonde, big-breasted, willing, kinky, slutty.

Well, I am blonde, I am big-breasted, and I have been willing to be kinky. I am currently monogamous, and have been for several years, so I don’t think I’m slutty. What is unequivocal, however, is that I adhere to another Swedish stereotype by being a non-practicing Lutheran, supporting the welfare state, and believing in egalitarian social policies.

When I tell Europeans I am dating an “American Joe,” I am not only speaking in cultural cliché. My boyfriend’s name is Joe, and he is about as “American” as they come. He is tall and milk-and-steak-fed, has at least one polyester sports jersey, hails from Connecticut (small-town, not New York suburban), can eat an unlimited amount of BBQ chicken wings, is a fiercely Catholic mix of Irish and Italian, and says, “Whaa?” instead of “What?”

We seem to be as different as it gets: one resolutely Old World, the other decidedly New. This is your cue to ask what we’re doing entangled with one another. As with most relationships, the answer is jumbled and complex, but for us, it has something vaguely to do with food. Food plays a large part in our relationship. We are both mealtime enthusiasts, shuddering at what we assume to be the frigid sexual habits of picky eaters— the cut-off-the-crust set— and falling asleep dreaming of what we’ll have for breakfast.

I make breakfast.

It started when Joe got a television job and I was working from home, labeling my officelessness modern and “mobile.” I was a graduate student, which meant that besides going to class, my work consisted of reading and writing, which I accomplished in bed or at my desk—two feet from the bed. I was also writing reports for an internship with a literary agency and blogging in my role as co-founder of The Lattice Group, a non-profit organization aimed at researching and spreading dialogue about work-life balance issues with a Generation Y focus— occupations that mostly entailed solitary work from my location of choice. Again, this location was my studio apartment. The result was that Joe had to be at an actual desk at a specific time, while I could stay in my pajamas much of the day. Ergo, I became the breakfast-maker.

I set the table while Joe showered. Then I served tea, cereal, eggs, fruit and toast. A couple of times a week I fried eggs and bacon that I dished onto his outstretched plate. Before he headed out the door, briefcase in hand, he would kiss my ruddy, unwashed cheek and give my bathrobed bottom a friendly pat. Unsurprisingly, I began to feel like a 1950’s housewife. Joe knew I was working, and hard at that. But I caught myself rationalizing that his workday must be more important simply because it was spent in an office. It was over breakfast that my spiral of self-doubt began.

Because I’m not hot-headed like Joe (the Irish, the Italian), I did not yell out my discontent. Instead, in good Scandinavian fashion, I began to harbor steady and simmering resentment. The more I brooded, the more likely it became that I was somehow, inexplicably, back in my bathrobe by the time Joe came home from work—usually no later than seven pm.

“It’s like you never left bed!” He would exclaim, beaming.

“Chauvinist! Oppressor!” I would think, glowering.

There I was, reduced to the dark corners of a hackneyed male fantasy: the devoted woman, perpetually half-dressed, waiting to serve her man at his every request. Just like that, it was as though I had never been dressed, never gone to class, never written that article. What was even more unnerving is that besides making breakfast, I began to have dinner prepared by Joe’s arrival. I set the table, complete with tablecloth, napkins and candles, and then scowled away the meal.

“How was your day, honey?” He’d ask cheerfully.

“Fine,” I’d spit back.

“Well, I’m working on this new series and…”

There he was, my American Prince Charming, the black-locked fellow I’d snared for my heart. Though I’m genuinely interested in Joe’s professional accomplishments, all I could hear as I stared at his moving mouth across the dinner table was the steady rumbling of my growing resentment. When I scrubbed out the frying pan for the hundredth time I wondered: how the hell did I get here?

I’ve spent a great deal of time entrenched in the issues that arise when people try to balance their professional and personal lives. For The Lattice Group, I interviewed over one hundred Generation Y-ers in five countries about their fears and hopes for future work-life realities. Along the way, I learned quite a bit about lingering traditionalism, which I, quite naively, thought our ostensibly post-post-feminist generation would all but snuff out. Turns out, age-old gender roles are still imprinted on the minds of many of my peers. But I’m different. I’m from Sweden, the world’s number one egalitarian hub. I’m enlightened…right? I’ve blogged about the virtues of shared domestic responsibilities and female economic independence. I’ve railed against the unjust status quo that forces men into ceaseless work with no allowance for private life. Hail partnership! Down with outdated gender roles! After dragging gender issues into every innocent dinner conversation, my friends have dubbed me the Work-Life Police. How, then, did I end up a passive aggressive woman washing dishes in a bathrobe?

My first instinct was to blame my American Joe. After all, the American traditionalism I had discovered on my travels seemed to be playing out at the breakfast table: the small, progressive Swede (that would be me) was succumbing to the coercion of the big-gun American traditionalist (that would be Joe). I knew Joe was raised to expect a groomed housewife— something he admitted early on in our relationship— and here I was, giving it to him. In my bathrobe I wasn’t groomed, exactly, but I was certainly in the house.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that several years of dating me had achieved what lady’s magazines around the world claim impossible: my man had changed—his mind, at least. My insistent Swedish egalitarianism had not only gotten Joe excited about paternity leave and dual-earner households in an abstract sense. His work-life radar had been so sharpened that he could spot a Revolutionary Road before it was fully paved. And he didn’t just brood over it, like his liberated Swedish gal, he actually did something about it.

Enter the meatballs. After about a month or so of me playing the resentful housewife, Joe began to insist that he cook dinner. He wanted to try out his new cookbooks, he said. The next day he dragged out the food processor his mother had given him for Christmas. I eyed the appliance suspiciously. Was his comely offer a trick to push me into some new depth of domesticity?

Happily, a safe distance was (and still is) maintained between the food processor and me. Joe wanted it all to himself. He tied an apron over his dress shirt, deposited his cufflinks on the counter, rolled his sleeves over his elbows and got to work. I watched with fascination as Joe fed meat and onions into the growling machine. He was making meatballs, he announced proudly. Italian style, not Swedish. While my Swedish meatballs are small, fried and served with potatoes, Joe’s are soft, boiled in a red sauce and poured over spaghetti. I used to dismiss Italian-American meatballs off-hand, claiming the Swedish variety’s superiority (the way we self-satisfied Swedes tend to do about a lot of things, by the way). Maybe, just maybe, I’d been too quick to judge.

Somewhere on our way from Swedish to Italian meatballs, I realized that my boyfriend hadn’t made me into my own worst nightmare, I had. While falling in love with Joe, I had appropriated the things I thought he expected of a mate. All of my preconceptions of what the stereotypical American Joe looked for in a girlfriend were making me forget what my American Joe looked for in his. What I should have known is that when Joe fell in love with me, he was falling for the second half of the Swedish Girl definition, the unfettered socially liberal part, as much as the wink-inducing one. He may have been raised to expect a housewife, but he had grown into a man who sought an independent partner. If not, he would have been mad to throw himself into cahoots with a public gender equity activist in the first place!

And still…I can’t help but wonder. Did I really take on a traditional female role because I thought it was the way to win my American man’s heart? The truth scares me: unprompted, I had insisted on making breakfast, I had scurried about to have dinner ready by his arrival in the evenings, and I was making myself painfully available for his needs. Could it be that there is some part of me, however deeply buried and carefully quelled, that secretly yearns for a feminine role that I intellectually reject? Am I really less egalitarian at heart than I would like to believe? It’s frustrating, not being able to stereotype even myself with any certainty.

There’s another dimension to our story that I’m still trying to tease out. It has to do with the fundaments of sharing. Sharing is built on trust. Trust that if you give something, you will receive something in return— perhaps not immediately, but at some point. Mix that up with social and personal expectations, and putting your trust into a reciprocal relationship, whether it is a romantic partnership or not, can be scary. The Betty Draper in me seemed to fear sharing because I thought shouldering all the home stuff was expected of me. But I may also have been scared that if I demanded we share, my partner would reject the idea, or come up short. When you share, there is the inevitable a risk that one party will take advantage of the other. When you put bigger things on the line than who cooks what, such as sharing monetary resources or responsibility for your kids, that fear just gets more real. Probably, it is the risk intrinsic to sharing that makes people resource-hoarders.

And let’s not forget that sharing compromises ownership. As the House Goddess, I reigned supreme over the domestic sphere. It was embittering, yes, but to some extent also empowering. When Joe stepped up and gently, but firmly, pushed for more equal householding, I lost that Goddess role. I had to share it.

But, as tends to be the case with sharing, if the relationship is based on reciprocity and trust, it’s almost always preferable to hoarding. The result for me and my American Joe was not just that we started sharing chores. The agreement that we could and would share deepened our relationship in much the same way that two neighbors who share gardening responsibilities or car pooling shifts become more connected with each other and their community than when they operate as discrete, isolated cells. Sharing demands trust, yes. But sharing also means connecting, and deeper connections lead right back to heightened trust. And trust, well trust is something we, as romantic partners or simply as citizens of the world, can’t do without.

So, where does that leave us? I still make breakfast. And Joe still pats me on my bottom before leaving for work. But now, most of the time, Joe makes dinner. Sure, dinner is served an hour or so later, but what does it matter? It gives me time to cradle a glass of wine and gaze on those things that make my American Joe so irresistible. Sometimes I still only wear a robe. But now, it has nothing to do with resentment.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

About the Author: Astri von Arbin Ahlander is Co-Founder of The Lattice Group (www.thelatticegroup.org) and The Days of Yore (www.thedaysofyore.com). She lives in New York City.

“Sterotype Me” is reprinted from Shareable.net under a Creative Commons license. Some Rights Reserved.

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Enjoy!

href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-zYdOPG2k