A Future in Plastics

God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson:

Today we are talking about plastics.

Specifically, the plastic encasing case estrogen meds. I took these for decades and the package originally was a pink plastic circle, then evolved into a rectangular blue case and I never once paid a lick of attention to either the shape or the color, just tried to keep track of the daily-ness as much as humanly possible.

Now my hormones come with a blue applicator. This only changed last month - it was earlier a pink applicator. I would like to know….why?

Just a kind of global “why”?

I want to sit in on the room where the drug company made the marketing decision to change the pink plastic to blue plastic. I can hear the decision-makers now, arguing that meds for women must be packaged in pink - and the rebuttal that if the meds are for women and we want to prove we are not sexist, they must be blue,

Some quiet person would raise a hand and state that the meds are for anyone who needs them and therefore maybe we should choose a nongendered color.

Then the board room breaks out into a fight over whether color inherently has gender.

Isn’t blue the number one favorite color of young teen girls by the numbers? (Yes, it is, followed closely by purple and then green. Here are the numbers.)

But setting that aside, why not encase these meds in silver or gray? Or just leave them to be their natural color.

What is the natural color of plastic?

Everything has a color before you dye it.

“Come to NYC, Do the Dishes: a review of Clinamen (v.11)” just came out yesterday in CounterArts Magazine, on Medium.

ICYMI - TRANSLATED INTO LITHUANIAN by Irena Alperytė:
“Still Life with Summer Cherries” in the bi-weekly Šiaurės Atėnai
“Cineplex,” in the monthly Kultūros Barai.

If you don’t read Lithuanian and would like to read those stories, you can get them here in English.

Also: everyone in NYC area is invited to come hang out with me at an After-Hours social (I may even do a reading from my forthcoming novel!) on August 21 from 6:30 - 9pm at ART TO WARE, a very cool artist-forward wearable art shop on street level in the Fulton Center. Social, wine & cheese, mingling. Like the old days. 15% of all purchases will benefit Pen Parentis.

I hate having a broken foot. It makes me unproductive not to walk. I went to A Winter’s Tale outdoors in Central Park before I realized my foot was broken (the production is so traditional that it feels shocking) and marvelously the play was performed in a light rain that never stopped for the entire two hours—proving the power of live theater. Too much fun.) Afterward? All I did was write a grant and do some paperwork. And visit doctors. Lots and lots of doctors. Ugh.