Lifestyle
Dear Life Kit: I resent that my WFH partner has more free time than I do
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Have a question you want to ask Dear Life Kit anonymously? Share it here. For our next episode, we’re looking for your queries on crushes or drama in the workplace.
Dear Life Kit is NPR’s advice column, where experts answer tricky questions about relationships, social etiquette, work culture and more.
This question was answered by marriage and family therapist Moraya Seeger DeGeare. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Dear Life Kit,
I’m having trouble respecting my husband because of his work habits.
We’ve both been working from home since the pandemic. I pride myself on my work ethic, and I have a good reputation at my company. My husband makes a substantial amount more than I do, but he doesn’t work nearly as hard. He spends his morning doing personal things. He often signs off early or runs around during the day when he should be at his desk.
While he’s slacking off all day, my work has been so stressful that I’m considering leaving my position after more than 20 years.
My husband and I get along very well in every other aspect of our lives, but this pesky 9-to-5 situation is driving me up the wall.
—Cranky co-worker
Moraya Seeger DeGeare is a marriage and family therapist.
Photograph by Nick Di Giugno
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Photograph by Nick Di Giugno
Even though your partner is bringing in a nice income, you’re seeing him behave in a way that doesn’t align with your values. His output isn’t there. You’ve lost respect for your partner because work is how you respect yourself.
So talk about self-worth with your partner. How does he define his value? For you, that’s work. For him, it probably isn’t. You have to respect that too.
Concerning your job, there’s a lot of self-work to do. Your unhappiness with your partner may have to do with your unhappiness at work. In reality, you could probably work a little less. But it’s scary to leave a job. Most of us will try very hard to avoid a big career move.
Next, take a look at your domestic workload. One partner is so burned out, and the other has so much time. Is the workload balanced between you two? Or do you have issues around gender roles at home and things getting done?
If you’re overworking at work, you’re probably overworking at home and in your relationships. Overworkers don’t tend to ask for help at work — and probably don’t ask for help at home either. So on top of a stressful job, you may be doing all the grocery shopping and the laundry and carrying the mental load.
There’s a game called Fair Play that a lot of my couples in therapy play. You divide up all the household chores. You put all the things that need to get done in front of you. And you talk about them with your partner.
That could be an amazing place to start. Then the partner who wasn’t seeing the work that needed to be done could realize, “Oh, I have time to knock these couple of things out in 30 minutes and still have all my free time.”
Listen to Seeger DeGeare’s full response to this listener’s query, plus more questions like these, in our podcast episode “Dear Life Kit: I’m at my breaking point.”
This story was written by Beck Harlan. It was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is Beck Harlan.
We’d love to hear from you. Email us at LifeKit@npr.org. Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or sign up for our newsletter.
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The 76th Primetime Emmys Awards are on Sunday night, hosted by father-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy, creators and stars of the hit TV series Schitt’s Creek. Nominees and stars hit the red carpet on Sunday evening outside of the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Here are some of their looks.
Andrew Scott
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Ayo Edebiri
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Dan Levy and Eugene Levy
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Da’Vine Joy Randolph
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Quinta Brunson
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Meryl Streep
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Selena Gomez
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Jennifer Aniston
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Bowen Yang
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Janelle James
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Maya Rudolph
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Nicola Coughlan
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Sofía Vergara
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Sheryl Lee Ralph
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Lisa Ann Walter
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Elizabeth Debicki
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Amber Chardae Robinson
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Idris Elba and Sabrina Elba
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Anna Sawai
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Paul Rudd
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Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern
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Tyler James Williams
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Ella Purnell
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RuPaul
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Christine Baranski
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Lily Gladstone
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Jeremy Allen White
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Saoirse Ronan
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Mindy Kaling
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Chris Perfetti
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Eiza Gonzalez
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Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor
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Dakota Fanning
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Skye P. Marshall
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Carrie Coon
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Hannah Einbinder
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Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer
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Nava Mau
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Rita Ora
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Jon Hamm
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Viola Davis
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Greta Lee
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Taylor Zakhar Perez
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Diego Luna
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Liza Colón-Zayas
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Ramy Youssef
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Catherine O’Hara
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Aaron Moten
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Kristen Wiig
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Niecy Nash-Betts
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Billy Crudup and Naomi Watts
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D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai
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Brie Larson
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Juno Temple
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Richard Gadd
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Molly Gordon
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William Stanford Davis
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Ilona Maher
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Isabella Star LaBlanc
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Alan Cumming
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This story is part of Image’s September Image Makers issue, celebrating some of the most daring and innovative artists working in fashion today.
Eric Solis describes his photos as “cyberghetto,” “flow 2000s,” “raver chic.” Models wearing cargos layered with neon mesh shorts, stand among the rims at a car lot, using a purse inspired by one. Remixed plaid jorts. A durag with a blinged-out butterfly bikini top. Club kid platforms accessorized with ripped black tights. The concept: Moda sin fronteras. Solis, an L.A. native who now lives in Mexico City, where much of his family is from, wanted the photos to tell a story about the connection between two brands — L.A.-based Planeta and Mexico City-based Wavey — and in a larger sense, to “blur the lines between how people perceive what fashion is, or how it should look, in both the contexts of L.A. and Mexico.”
For Solis — a multi-hyphenate who works as an architect, event producer, photographer, art director and creative consultant, among other things — this project was an opportunity to capture the conversation he sees happening between Mexico City and L.A. in terms of fashion and style, in a way that felt expansive and not necessarily confined by gender or culture. The models themselves are young people who are mostly from Mexico City (or live there) spanning queer, trans and Indigenous communities that Solis met through fashion shows. The entire team — from the stylist Tuzza to the hair artist Ozmar Báez — was an intentional part of the conversation he was trying to create through the clothes and photos, he says.
Solis was thinking about the dichotomy of the two communities in L.A. and Mexico City, and at least in terms of style, how they were taking from each other and presenting it in new ways. He wanted to take what he was seeing and present it so that it wasn’t L.A. style, wasn’t Mexico City style, but was a hybrid of both.
Genesis wears Planeta neon mesh top and hunting pants, Wavey snakeskin bikini top.
The shoot acted as a catalyst for a pop-up called “No Hablamos Inglés” that Solis is curating on Sept. 21 at Planeta’s DTLA store. He is bringing the work of more than 20 emerging Mexican designers — spotlighting a scene of alternative, young, queer artists who are morphing how we think about Mexican style — including Palida Studios, Tlacuache Muerto and Resurrected. The name is important; for Solis it stands for cultural pride and community: “Sometimes, Mexicans on the Mexico side feel like they should learn English to better their lives or to be better in business, but this is almost like a saying of defiance. It’s almost rebellious: ‘No Hablamos Inglés.’”
This project is also Solis’ contribution to an ongoing conversation artists have been sparking between L.A. and Mexico for years, chief among them artist and curator Anita Herrera. From the beginning, Herrera has infused her practice with the mission of finding the connection and disconnections between L.A. and Mexico. Her ongoing series, “Diaspora Dialogues,” has consistently used fashion as a medium to explore these topics — as has much of Herrera’s work; she went to fashion school and started her career in the fashion industry.
Israel wears Wavey zig-zag top, bejeweled beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom reflector earring.
Solis met Herrera through helping with “Diaspora Dialogues” and met the founders of Planeta at one of Herrera’s exhibitions in Mexico City, “A Través de la Moda,” where she displayed personal pieces from her closet that drew from images and symbols that Mexican Americans hold dear — La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Aztec calendar — “as an exploration of history, myths and novelties between L.A. and Mexico City,” Herrera says. Planeta, founded by designers Hoza Rodriguez and Richard Resendez, has an IYKYK cult-like kind of status among the fashion people, artists and club kids who wear it. Their work is best recognized by the magic they do with upcycling — flannel shirts layered on top of baggy denim become a new genre entirely, something from the future. When they went to Mexico City for the exhibition and were able to see the city through the eyes of Solis and Herrera (Rodriguez and Herrera have been friends since 2009, when they were both starting their careers in the fashion industry), something clicked. “Everything’s unisex,” Rodriguez says of the style he observed in Mexico. “And I learned that they are not influenced by us, we are influenced by them.”
Wavey, a Mexico City brand and store founded by Talulah Rodriguez-Anderson in 2018, makes the kind of things you might wear at a rave on the beach. It’s always been dedicated to communicating its clothing as unisex. Rodriguez-Anderson grew up in L.A. and was inspired by her visual experiences and memories on both sides of the border when starting her brand. The brand’s store, in Colonia Juárez, carries this same energy, with its aesthetic drawing from the cargo trailers that go from Mexico City to the States. A Wavey piece borrows from Chicano silhouettes and images, told through a Mexican streetwear lens — the latter of which Rodriguez-Anderson says is “evolving very quickly.”
Jorge, left, wears Wavey MX* T-shirt, Planeta jersey work shirt and Planeta checkered Dickies shorts. Axel wears Wavey mariposa bikini top, Planeta plaid block shorts.
Solis wanted to highlight Planeta and Wavey because they felt like family in his mind — with a shared ethos, a look that felt like it was drawing from similar references. “To me, they’re like siblings, they’re like cousins,” Solis says. “They sort of talk to each other in terms of their style.” This is shown in the styling of one of the models, Jorge, who wears reworked checkered Dickies shorts from Planeta pointing to an early-2000s L.A. skater aesthetic, and a blinged-out shirt with the initials “MX” from Wavey as a nod to Mexico City. “It’s a new aesthetic,” Solis says. “It’s not California, it’s not quite Mexican. But it’s both, it’s something else.”
With the shoot, and with the pop-up, Solis says he wanted to show a “cross-section of Mexican youth, real Mexican youth.” He chose Colonia Juárez for the location, specifically an area that’s home to many auto body shops, because it felt true to where these looks would actually be worn. The environment and the clothes are in communion with each other, Solis says. “I also wanted to shoot it in a location that was authentically Mexican. Whereas I feel like La Condesa, or Roma, it can feel foreign, almost.”
“For me, that shoot, when I look at it, it brings some sort of happiness and some sort of truth of who we are as Latinos, as the LGBTQ community, and as human beings,” says Planeta co-founder Rodriguez, also the founder of L.A. brand Hologram City. “When I see that, it makes me happy to know what we really are: we’re talented, we’re creative, we look like superheroes, we’re the s—.”
Ellie, left, wears Planeta button-up jersey shirt and biker vest, Wavey skirt, Tuzza custom rim bag. Israel, center, wears Wavey zig-zag top, beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom earring. Li, right, wears Planeta baby button-up shirt, Wavey purple flame dress, pink & white flame dress, snakeskin top, Tuzza custom reflector earrings.
Even as an architect, Solis has always worked in creative or community realms. He was on the team of designers for the 6th Street Bridge — and curated the art, photography and architecture exhibit “Nuestre Puente,” in collaboration with Estevan Oriol, in celebration of the bridge’s opening. He’s also one of the founders of the DTLA Proud festival. When he moved to Mexico City, he wanted to find a way to blend his obsession with fashion, art and culture, and embed himself into the creative community there as much as possible. Solis frequents Tianguis La Lagunilla once a month, which is where he says he came to really understand Mexico City’s fashion youth culture and meet some of the brands he’s bringing to L.A.
“Moving to Mexico City four years ago and really starting to understand by living here and building community here, [I realized] how our communities are not quite as connected as they could be because of those political, policy barriers that separate communities,” Solis says. “I have a whole circle of friends here in Mexico City that are artists, designers. They have their own brands, very integrated in the creative community here, and many, almost all of my friends who want to expose their brand or expose themselves as artists in the United States, they can’t — because they literally can’t go.” He wants to create connections for these Mexican designers, and allow the people of L.A. to experience their work. As a Mexican and U.S. citizen, Solis feels like he’s able to bridge the two sides — bringing Mexican designers to L.A. through their artistry, even if they’re not able to come here themselves.
The collection of designers that Solis is bringing to his L.A. pop-up this month conjures some key phrases for him: “It’s queer as in f— you.” “Barrio bratz.” “Sin género.” “Mexa-core.” The designers include Ese Chico, known for its irreverent graphic T-shirts and slogan: “Locura sin piedad,” or “madness without piety” — Herrera included it in her “A Través de la Moda” exhibition when she brought it to L.A. earlier this year. Another is Squid, a brand “inspired by nature” that transforms garments through upcycling, airbrush and screen printing into one-of-a-kind works of art. It was crucial for Solis that the pop-up captured this moment in Mexico City’s fashion scene, which he describes as “infinite.”
Jorge Líos of Palida Studios — a brand with a style Líos describes as a balance of elegance and deterioration — is a native of Nezahualcoyotl, an area about an hour outside of Mexico City. The spirit of Mexico City’s street-level fashion scene is a mix of “vulgar, atrevido y chido,” he says. “Como que la gente justo está desmitificando esta idea de que lo que debes de usar solamente son marcas gabachas y ya está volteando a ver marcas Mexicanas. Sobre todo, la escena está construyendo o reafirmando la identidad de ser Mexicano.” (That is, people are demystifying the idea that you should only use foreign brands and are turning to Mexican brands. The Mexico City scene is building up and reaffirming Mexican identity.) Since he was a kid, it was Líos’ dream to travel to L.A. or New York. He loves hip-hop and was inspired by the music culture in both cities. The fact that he is now traveling to L.A. through his designs and that they’re reaching a new audience that might be moved by them? “Es una locura.”
The list of L.A.’s sister cities includes Salvador, Brazil; Busan, South Korea; Berlin; and, of course, Mexico City. For Solis, it’s more than just a connection or conversation: there are familial ties. “The shared passion through fashion is something that really connects us and really unites us,” he says. “I’ve begun to see how fashion can actually build an identity that is of neither place, but is of both places.”
Production Eric Solis
Models Axel, Ellie, Genesis, Israel, Jorge, Li
Makeup Beauty Dealers
Hair Ozmar Báez
Production assist Dennis Caasi
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