The naked poster girl

In which a National Post journalist has a
year-long flirtation with going green

by JULIET WATERS

I’m a sucker for a good blogoir. My favourite is still Julie & Julia, based on the blog by Julie Powell in which she vowed to cook one recipe a day from Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking. My guiltiest pleasure was Save Karyn: One Shopaholic’s Journey to Debt and Back in which Karyn Bosnak used a daily blog to both brainstorm and panhandle her way out of $20,000 worth of debt. Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged her Fridge, Sold her Car and Found Love in 366 Days by Vanessa Farquharson falls easily into this genre, although I never found it quite as endearing as the first two.

There is a Bridget Jones factor at work here. The most successful bloggers tend to have a spontaneity and openness that makes you both cringe and root for them. Farquharson was already an arts reporter at the National Post when she started this, so she’d kind of lost some of the natural charm of a really talented newbie blogger. Essentially, the blog challenge is to books what reality shows are to TV. Bring in a pro and you lose some of the magic.

Unless it’s something that the pro isn’t actually a natural at, like Dancing With the Stars. Here Farquharson scores some entertainment points for the awkwardness of feeding a social conscience while working for Canada’s most right-wing daily. And occasionally this is even a plus. Eco-cynicism is probably the hardest part of going green, and Farquharson is at her best when she’s applying her journalistic skepticism, or discovering an out-and-out scam. It’s also impossible to write or read about 366 days of green challenges without learning something. Still, there’s a sense throughout this book that blogging, like living green, is part of a year of slumming.

Some of her challenges are fairly small and inconsequential, like switching to a dishwashing liquid without phosphates. After much research, she chooses a phosphate free dishwashing liquid that sucks (which is too bad because there are a lot that don’t). And I’m still not clear how giving away your toxic newspaper swag cosmetics on freecycle is going to accomplish much. But it’s a nice thought.

Some are more consequential, but gross. Like giving up toilet paper and deodorant. And some are pretty big and quite admirable: Selling her VW bug, so that she can commit to reduced driving. Turning off her fridge, which starts as a way to save electricity, but turns out to be a path towards eating fresher, simpler food.

Some you really believe she’s going to maintain. Like doing some research into humane farming and slaughtering methods, because she’s honest enough to know she’s not going to be giving up beef. Anyone can be vegetarian for a year. But if you go back to supermarket meat, you’re still a huge part of the problem.

But then there is the really massive non-green thing she does on a whim one day that kind of makes you lose hope that this is anything beyond a yearlong flirtation with eco-consciousness.

One day on the urging of her waspy mother (and I’m guessing a parental downpayment offer) she up and buys a house. This all takes place in roughly 48 hours. Uh…. a house….for one person? And from all the pages devoted to wishing for a boyfriend and hoping for a baby that permeate this book, it’s hard not to suspect that Farquharson will soon be filling this house with more than her green share of babies (which, according to most calculations is more than one. And do two people and a baby really need a house?)

Sometimes it’s not the 365 decisions you make in a year that really count. It’s the one decision you make in your life. So I can’t say I finished this book feeling any less cynical than I was when I started it.

SLEEPING NAKED IS GREEN BY
VANESSA FARQUHARSON,
WILEY, PB, 268 PP., $18.95