The height of philanthropy

-There was a girl in my high school class whose stomach really did go in, or at least not poke out, even when she sat down. Perfect skin and hair, gorgeous in a feline, Olivia Wilde kind of way. It was what it was. Which is why I'm still not at all on board with the choice of anti-Photoshop as an all of a sudden central feminist cause. If anything, the knowledge that there's such a thing as retouching allows those of us who don't live in a fashion capital (she says, reporting from the Princeton Public Library) to imagine that it's all totally fake, that we too are a mouse click away from perfection, although there's presumably that girl at every large-enough high school. More artifice, I say! And show your daughter pictures of Liz Lemon's two paramours, the guy from SNL and the one from Mad Men, alongside their real-life girlfriends. You just never know.

-Finally! A bit of recognition that the individual meals consumed by upper-echelon yuppies are not what will make or break the national or global food system. The sooner we get past the idea that a $150-for-two meal at an agriculturally-themed restaurant is the height of philanthropy, the better.

-Speaking of the height of philanthropy, and in keeping with this post's theme of "persistent motifs," I genuinely wish to know whether it is now a thing that one must tip a dollar in coffee shops as one would at a bar. Is this about whether you get a complicated drink/get it to stay? Is only for complicated drinks? Never? Social norms change, and if this is now one, I'll maybe get coffee out less (which is to say, once a month rather than every two weeks), but won't leave without paying, which is effectively what it is to get a beer and pay for the beer but not leave that extra buck. Today, I splurged on foam, to-go, and tipped the change plus a quarter, so 35 cents, and got a how-dare-you look from the guy ringing me up, same as if I'd left nothing at all. Now, if this is a matter of caring whether people who work in coffee shops like me, I'm not concerned. But I want to have paid in full. And because no one I know actually tips a dollar at coffee bars, while plenty of people I see in coffee bars do just that (perhaps plants by the establishment???), I must turn this all-important question over to the WWPD readership.