January 17, 18, 19: apparently a little red ribbon goes a long way

Yesterday at the gym, while listening to Aretha Franklin on my MP3 player, I watched a captioned snippet of James Beckerman talking about his new book, The Flex Diet. He lists hundreds of ways to lose weight and get healthy, tips and tricks for the trade that thousands and thousands of Americans live into during the month of January. One of the tips he suggests is taking a photograph of all your food. He promises that if you take a picture of everything you eat, you’ll lose five pounds in a week. Hm. Not sure about that one. The theory is that it’s a quick-and-dirty 21^st-century way to keep a food diary. Often the prospect of committing to paper something you ate—or, apparently, taking its picture—can be a deterrent toward unhealthy food choices. Food for thought (so to speak).

That is not, however, why I took this picture last night. Readers who regularly frequent Pix Patisserie will recognize this as the Concord, a delectable chocolate concoction of chocolate meringue, chocolate mousse, and chocolate ganache surrounded by meringue and held together by a single red ribbon. After a strenuous day and a late but lovely Vietnamese dinner with dear friends, I had neither guilt nor shame about eating a significant portion of this beauty.

I took its picture not to document my guilt-free pleasure, but because I’m several days behind on my January Artclash project and couldn’t resist the red ribbon. The January plan has been to photograph something every day that includes a red cord and tying it, however loosely, to the ever-expanding conversation in our city and around the world about sex trafficking and the anti-slavery movement.

My friend Melissa is one of the most prolific and disciplined bloggers I know—an important combination. She has written eloquently about New Year’s resolutions and the documented pattern that most people either lose or have already lost most of their New Year’s resolve by the third Monday in January. So I am right on schedule in running out of photos and drive on January 17, although my fervent hope is that this multi-day slip in my January blog project is actually, in the larger scheme of things, only a momentary slip.

So what on earth does all of this—and particularly that decadent chocolate dessert—have to do with the plight of sexually exploited women and the anti[sex]-slavery movement?

The red cord here is the reminder, contained within that whimsical red ribbon of today’s photograph, that the myriad details of my life that I take for granted—including the little guilt about January’s daily blogging or the guilt-free enjoyment of Tuesday’s decadent dessert—are undreamed-of luxuries for the women whose lives and bodies are in the control of another person and of a whole system that profits from them.

I long to tie up all sorts of delicious luxuries with whimsical red ribbons and hand them out on 82^nd Avenue. Want to help?