natalia ilyin

Since the inception of design, the myth of the black-clad, chain-smoking, heavy drinking, overworked designer has been the Romantic ideal. Where I went to school, these slumped, hung-over, chain-smoking designers perched on studio stools all over the design building. We called them Art Balls. Gender didn't factor in. Sometimes a studio looked like it had been taken over by these black blobs with four metal legs.

Designers-- graphic, game, motion, apparel, architectural, or interior-- have amazingly sensitive antennae that pick up the smallest social indications about what they should act like, what they should emulate and how they want to be perceived. In response, they become semiotic semaphores, signaling their hipster-ness, their nonconformism, their sensitivity or, alternatively, their conservative modernism, their neo-modernism or their eclecticism through their clothing and their actions.

Is it a left-over pose from the myth of the Romantic Hero-- the wild-eyed painter swashing away at his "Liberty Leading the People?" Is it a feint at the garb of shamanism? At dividing oneself from the "average" person in order to retain mystic connection to powers greater than Self? Is it a hangover from the avant-garde of 100 years ago, a monk-like resistance to the luxury and lures of the comfortable bourgeoisie? Or is it the stance of the basement guitar hero who knows, deep inside, that no girls will ever scream for him?

Embracing and living the Art Ball life of chain-smoking, energy-drinks and alcohol may be a pleasant way to form an identity at 19, but if you're living that way at thirty you're going to have all the mental freshness of a Goodwill sofa. By 40 you'll be enjoying a Thorazine highball daily between managing hacking cough-spasms and auto-dialing your ex, begging for permission to see the kids. Rock stars don't need to come up with new ideas all the time. Like restaurant chefs, they perfect perhaps 40 standard recipes and spend their lives repeating them to different audiences. Not so the designer. Every pancake is a new pancake; every song a new song, sung once.

So here's an idea. Design could start to value the idea of the happy, balanced designer. I know. It sounds so wrong. The entire structure of design is against happiness and balance in its practitioners. What would we talk about if we didn't talk about how tired we were, how overworked, how busy, how stressed? Imagine knowing a designer that wasn't hurting himself in some way. Such a designer would turn the whole mythology of design on its head. Which needs to happen. Because, let's face it, if a designer does not understand what it takes to sustain Self and spirit, do you really want his taking on designing sustainable things? For sustainable things, at this point, are really the only interesting design things.

And so I press you to take heed of the Committee for Happy American Designers at www.happydesigners.tumblr.com. They've had enough of the old Art Ball paradigm. They're swimming upstream, relearning how to eat, sleep, design, play and connect with other people--not just machines----all in the same 24-hour period. Shocking, I know. Radical. And it's an uphill fight, what with most of the art directors in the world having been schooled in the old "hurt yourself" mythology. It could be crushed or it could be the beginning of something better than what we've got now. Sustainable design must start with teaching designers to sustain their own lives, their heart. I'm with them: It's time we say goodbye to the Art Ball.

Something snapped today. As usual I walked into the restroom on the ferry, and, as usual, a stranger mentioned it and so I smiled and went through the whole routine--again. Later in the day, I went to get a burrito. A stranger mentioned it, and, as usual, I smiled and made a joke. I crossed the square and went into Sephora for a brief whiff of Jardin Sur le Nil-- and there the small, plump and 20-something salesgirl piled the last wispy straw upon this fifty two year-old's camel's back.

After 40 years of smiling and laughing off the comments of complete strangers, forty years of Italian waiters climbing on chairs to give me my coat-- oh, the exquisite humor!-- of old ladies being aghast and pressing themselves against the wall in fear of attack, of people pointing it out at parties and on escalators, of Asians being downright embarrassed for me-- after forty years of this daily exercise I am at the bitter end of courtesy.

So listen up, because I am only going to say this once.

Yes, I am tall. Yes, I am extremely tall. How tall am I, you ask? I am 6' 2". Yes, both my parents were very tall. No, I do not have a hard time:
a. fitting under doorways.
b. hitting things with my head.
c. finding men.

These are questions strangers have asked me every day of my adult life.
Every day of my adult life.
Every day.

Strangers so regularly ask me these personal things that you would think I would be used to it. But I am not used to it.

Tall people NEVER get used to the rudeness of thoughtless people. When you tell us we are tall as though we do not know it, we are exercising restraint when we don't hit you. How would you feel if a two or three strangers a day said to you, unbidden and without preamble, "You are fat. You are really fat. How fat are you, anyway?"

Yes. We are bored by your questions and we are bored by answering them and we are not public institutions or statuary. You have no right to talk to us. We do not know you. So leave us alone.

If you tell people they are tall, stop doing it. If you have ever told a person he was tall, regret it. How do you talk to a tall person? Start by never, ever mentioning height. Ever. Not once.

I have recently started to realize that one of the things all my friends have in common is that they have NEVER talked about my height unless I brought it up.

I have also noticed that men rarely--very rarely-- comment on my height and that the people who get all het up about it are short, usee-looking women with dark hair who often saw their best years in high school. And now we know why.

I've never written about my height on this blog and I don't plan to, again. It was just that last bovine look of stupidity that caught me off-guard, that last, "You're SOOOOOOO tall," uttered by someone who to whom intellectual strain consists of reading the instructions on a hair iron.

An old boyfriend used to say, "Her height is the least interesting thing about her." You'll find that true about most tall people. So, how do you talk to a tall person? Just remember not to state how tall she is. Don't squawk about it loudly in public places. Don't ask if he played basketball. Don't make jokes about tallness that are funny to you because-- trust me, they are not in the least funny. Don't tell a tall person that you know another person the same height. Remember the fat analogy. Just keep your mouth shut or mention the weather. By not stating the overwhelmingly obvious you just might make a friend for life.