Why I don’t eat eggs anymore

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

Video here.

Aside from posting occasional photos of what I love to eat on instagram (how clichéd of me!), you may have noticed that I never talk about what I consider to be moral choices around food. This is deliberate, and this is a rare and unusual share/post for me, but I also have to admit that I find the (much-lampooned) obsession vegans have with drawing attention to their cause understandable; it truly IS difficult not to want to draw attention to the reality of our food industry when you have decided to become aware (and it is absolutely a choice to become aware!) that many of its practices are very far from acceptable, shouldn’t be happening, and are spiritually, emotionally and in all other ways degenerative.

It is hard not to want to spread the facts, not to shout them from the rooftops; but it is confronting to feel judged for your choices and for shying away from the responsibility that comes with the impact that each of us have as individuals on a food industry which is rife with direct and countable victims, who are subjected to pain and suffering and mistreatment at unspeakable levels, needlessly. It isn’t personal choice anymore when there are victims involved. It’s a reality which any of us can choose at any moment to have no part in.

For a very long time I was vegetarian and saw nothing wrong with eating eggs. Continue reading →

One Way of Growing Up

~ ERWhittington ~ 1 Comment

I have decided to decide that there are various ways of growing up.

An instinctive and reasonable way of looking at ‘growing up’ is to see it as a sort of transformation. In ‘growing up’, a person is changing, becoming something else, and becoming something new and ‘other’. In conventional, connotational best-practice, a grown-up life might include the reality (or appearance) of restraint, responsibility and self-control. Such a life trajectory swings towards stability, maturity and relational stability (stability that is both relative and related to relationships). This is usually seen as a necessary and positive, even noble, thing; by embracing what I would like to call ‘serious living’, a person can open up their life to different modal avenues, experience important milestones (promotion/houses/marriage/births, etc.) and better relate to other ‘serious livers’, thus fitting into society more easily. By growing up, then, a person boldly sheds the nonsense of their past and of their childhood, creates a secure future (or the hope of one) for themselves and for those around them, and leaves skittish folly to their offspring or, perhaps, to their nostalgia. Continue reading →

On Facebook and Sleeping Lions

~ ERWhittington ~ 2 Comments

One of the difficult things about Facebook is that it turns what would otherwise be a natural process of fading into mutual anonymity and ‘letting go’ into a conscious decision (the virtual severing of ties) that has to be made; a deviant pomp and ceremony.

A generation ago (I imagine!), you might stay at a hotel and strike up conversation with a couple of people in a bar. It might go well; perhaps you’d write down their address or phone number, and be in touch further down the line, or perhaps you’d forget and go your separate ways. Either way, it doesn’t really matter to either of you; the nice thing was the exchange itself; that moment of company and connection, that space to imagine the fuller details of their life (or perhaps not to) and to then move on back to focusing on the important relationships in your life, and your personal experience, even if that experience was perhaps illuminated or heightened or even forever changed by that particular interaction.

Nowadays, after a pleasant but forgettable exchange, your new hotel acquaintance might happen instead to venture to ask the casual and innocuous (though I think I’ve decided it isn’t always either) question: ‘are you on Facebook?’ Continue reading →

Online dating: great, but actually a little bit rubbish

~ ERWhittington ~ 3 Comments

(I once read that one clear symptom of being British is that it is impossible to intone the word ‘great’ without sounding sarcastic. ‘Great’ is a word most naturally reserved for sarcastic occasion. Ever since, in cross-cultural exchanges, and due to this absolute truth, I have performed a small inward giggle and self-enquiry whenever I allow the word to flutter free from my voice, which isn’t often (but the word is usefully efficient and gleefully positive, so it does get out now and then in emails, etc.); and also, unlike most of the people who self-describe their category of humour on dating sites, I don’t think sarcasm is a particuarly inspiring humble-brag, so I usually err on the side of the gentle, far more British and authentic ‘quite good’ or ‘quite nice’. Therefore, please take my use of ‘great’ in the above title as evidence of my uncertain and unstable opinion on the subject of today’s pondering.) Continue reading →

Meditations (also: Houses, Curtains and Boats)

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

elephantjournal article

Elephant Journal has just published an article of mine:

‘Where God Is: On Home, Travel & Displacement’.

It’s very personal and confessional, a bit silly and a bit serious, and gets to the root of my eternal cravings both to travel the world and to be at home. I could gaze at the beautiful photo they’ve used (above; credited in the article; heaven in sunlight and flaking paint; they even have a sunflower on the door) for ages. Continue reading →

What time is it?

~ ERWhittington ~ 1 Comment

This is quite an exciting question to be asked, when one has a brand new watch with a radical time-telling layout.

For years I refused to wear a watch (far too oppressive) but I was given a beautiful watch for my 21st birthday, which I will always lament and sing eulogies for, having lost it a few years later (it had an unreliable clasp, even if it was otherwise perfection personified on a wrist, and once was delivered by the very concerned postlady, who’d found it on our driveway; little villages have the best postladies). It was white gold, had a mother of pearl face that shone like the moon at certain angles, and was so delicate and fine overall, with tiny seashell-esque links, it was like wearing a slither of pure, understated elegance.

It has taken me the best part of a decade to complete the sulking mourning process and find a replacement watch that I actually like. One could argue that I’m quite fussy about these things. To misquote Cher from Clueless as she likens choosing new shoes to choosing from her several male admirers, ‘You see how picky I am about my watch and it only goes on my wrist.’ Continue reading →

North South East & West; How to be Both, or More

~ ERWhittington ~ 2 Comments

(Note: I found this blog post saved in my ‘drafts’ folder. I’m not sure when I wrote it, why I didn’t quite get around to clicking ‘publish’ and I never actually do a ‘draft’, preferring instead to pour things out in an unthinking flurry of fate and parentheses, but here we are. Its content seems timeless, at least… So I’m giving it an airing.)

…………………………………………………..

you-can-do-anything-but-not-everything-prints Continue reading →

‘Why you don’t like papaya?’

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

‘Why you don’t like papaya?’

He places the plate of fruit salad on the table on my terrace and waits for a reasonable response. I realise I can give none. I shrug apologetically and say I just don’t like the taste very much. (But already I am doubting myself; really, it’s just a bit nothing-y.)

He tilts his head to consider things for a while, then gestures at the watermelon and pineapple I have allowed to remain in my salad; ‘I think maybe you like crispy.’

‘Crispy? The texture?’

‘Yes. You know, like… potato.’ Continue reading →

On Physical Beauty

~ ERWhittington ~ 3 Comments

I was talking to my friend about this just the other day (and forgive me, but it’s a topic I have often wondered about, doing what I do for a living); isn’t it weird that when you feel you look your worst (jet-lagged, ill, hot and bothered, no make up, mosquito-bitten), that’s when you get the most attention from men in the streets (and, er, from waiters…), whereas when you put the effort in, feeling you have really dressed up and look pretty good, that’s when absolutely no one notices?

I’ve also found many times that images which are favourites in my modelling portfolio were taken when I (secretly) know that I wasn’t feeling my best or most attractive. There seems to be very little rhyme or reason to this.

I think it’s quite a liberating thing; Continue reading →