Balancing Jane

Individualism v. Collectivism: The Victim-Blaming Edition

2012-02-27T16:58:00.000-06:00

A St. Louis nightclub held a beauty contest last week titled "Battle of the Complexions." Here's the promo:

The Crunk Feminist Collective has a great post on the contest looking at just how destructive it is. In particular, the post examines what impact a contest like this has on a greater sense of community:

In these moments black girls turned women forget about the beauty and diversity of skin tones in the family, they dismiss their light or dark skinned sister or best friend, and find themselves needing to prove their worth—their beauty—on a stage where only one can win, and in fact everyone loses. Why does one person’s beauty have to be at the expense of someone else’s?

Several of the commenters on the Daily Mail place the culpability for this performance on the women who participate. This anonymous comment is representative:

If the women want to compete that's their problem, they should have more respect and not agree to take part in things like this.

It reminded me of some of the conversations following Pete Hoekstra's Debbie-Spend-it-Now fallout.

The ad, which aired during the Super Bowl, features actress Lisa Chan speaking in stereotypical broken English and thanking Hoekstra's opponent for spending so much money that the US government must borrow more from China and give Chinese citizens American jobs. The critical response to the ad was overwhelmingly negative and pointed out its blatant racism. Some of that criticism was heaped on the actress who participated, allowing her physical image and voice to stand in for a racial stereotype.

Lisa Chan, a San Francisco resident and former Miss California competitor, has since apologized, calling her decision to participate in the ad a "mistake" and "not in any way representative of who [she is]."

While the overall criticism has never solely focused on these individual participants, it has for some critics. The argument seems to be that if there were not people willingly participating in racial victimization, then the people in charge of the systems that victimize them would have no option but to stop.

In a similar move, the online world has exploded with responses over the news that Rihanna and Chris Brown are working together on some new songs. Articles speculated on the impact their reunion could have on perceptions of dating violence, especially among teens. (And considering the flurry of tweets from young women declaring that Chris Brown could beat them anytime he wanted during the Grammys, there's legitimate cause for concern). This Colorlines article includes the news of their collaboration and juxtaposes it with a disturbing infographic on teen violence.

However, at the center of this controversy rests a whole lot of victim blaming. As Justine Gonzalez points out in this post, it's not our place to force survivors of domestic violence to behave in the way we'd prefer:

We live in a victim-blaming society. If Rihanna isn’t getting blasted on Twitter for ‘causing’ Chris Brown to hit her, bloggers are getting mad that she’s not speaking out about the violence. If people aren’t infuriated at her singing about bondage, they are mad that she’s even in the same room as Chris Brown, nonetheless making a song with him.

Rihanna has actively rejected the image of victim and I respect that about her. She is a young woman who is exploring her sexuality through her music like many artists have done before her. As a woman and especially as a survivor of domestic violence, she isn’t obligated to sing about self-empowerment. It would be nice to have an advocate with such influence on the younger generations of women but it is as much of an injustice to require her to do so.

I'm inclined to agree with that point of view, though it is complicated by an earlier quote from Rihanna (following images of her vacationing with Brown a few weeks after the assault) featured in the Colorlines article:

“When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that . . . I couldn’t be held responsible for telling them to go back. Even if Chris never hit me again, who’s to say their boyfriend won’t kill these girls. These are young girls and … I just didn’t realize how much of an impact I had on these girls live until that happened. It was a wake-up call for me - big time."

Does that change anything? Does Rihanna recognizing and publicly declaring herself to be a role model for young girls give her an extra dose of responsibility?

I'm not sure of the answer to those questions, but I am sure that things like complexion-based beauty contests, racist political attacks, and the prevalence of domestic violence are bad for our society as a collective. These individuals who participate in these systems are products of that collective society, but they--just like each of us--are also producers of it. While there may be a grain of truth that their individual decisions are part of the problem (as they do, ultimately, contribute to the collective culture), it is almost certainly not the largest part of the problem.

Sure, there would be no Battle of the Complexions without the women willing to participate, but they weren't the ones who printed promo fliers, made a promotional video, purchased space in the night club, and created the concept for the event (promoted as a Black History Month celebration, of all things).

Without a willing actress who identified as Chinese, Hoekstra's ad would have been a lot harder to pull off, but Chan was not the one who wrote it, filmed it, edited it, or financed its placement during the Super Bowl.

Yes, Rihanna's collaboration with Chris Brown may send the wrong message to young girls about the acceptability of domestic violence, but not nearly as clear of a message as the perpetration of that violence sends in the first place. She did not give herself that black eye.

I'm all about turning a critical eye onto the way we promote negative societal norms, but turning a critical eye cannot mean blaming the victim to give ourselves a pass.

Helpless Generation? A Response to Mickey Goodman

2012-02-25T10:51:00.001-06:00

I just read "Are We Raising a Generation of Helpless Children?" by Mickey Goodman over at HuffPo. The basic argument is that Gen Y students are self-centered, overly dependent upon their helicopter parents, and strangers to failure.

From odolphie

She sums it up with four major problems: 1) telling these kids to dream big has left them unable to recognize the small steps it takes to get there 2) these kids have heard they're special without that specialness being attached to any qualities 3) these kids grew up with "every comfort" and now expect instant gratification and 4) these kids focus on happiness as a goal instead of the fulfilled life that produces happiness.

Then she offers some solutions including letting kids fail when they're young, balancing autonomy and responsibility, and not doing children's homework for them.

I'm not saying that I'm against Goodman's entire argument. She opens her article up with some stories of entitled children: a girl who calls her mother in the middle of a college class when she receives a C- and the mother demands to speak to the teacher, a kid who was accompanied by a parent on a job interview and the parent is upset that the kid didn't get the job. As someone who teaches college students, I've had some encounters that left me nodding my head as I read this section.

I once had a student who missed class nine times in the first half of the semester (which is technically enough to fail for attendance alone). His midterm F woke him up and he worked really hard the second half of the semester. Then he cussed me out and threatened to get his parents involved when he ended up with a B- for the year. He argued that his A work later in the semester should cancel out his F work at the beginning. Sigh.

But I do have an issue with Goodman's assertion that all Gen Yers are recipients of this overprotection and entitlement.

Technically, my husband and I are Gen Y. The article defines it as being born between 1984 and 2002. We were born in 1985.

We were talking after looking at this article and remarked on how this has very little in common with our upbringings. We were certainly encouraged when we were young, but we were never led to believe that we couldn't fail and we were never led to believe that success was a guarantee. We are both first-generation college students, and our successes were celebrated, but not seen as a given. And I cannot even imagine a situation in which my parents would have done my homework for me.

But maybe since we are so early on the spectrum we didn't get the full brunt of this helicopter parenting phenomenon. Still, I work with dozens of students every day. For every student who demands I give them an A when they miss nine classes, there is a student who is working so hard it makes my heart ache.

I've met students who are in college against their parents wishes because their parents see college as a waste of time. They want these students back home working in the family business instead of out chasing some pipe dream, even when those students are getting straight A's and doing graduate-level research as sophomores. I am not exaggerating.

I've met students whose parents are caring, but who grew up in such poverty that helicopter parenting was simply not a possibility. I've met students whose parents worked three jobs and were rarely home, students whose parents were also raising nieces and nephews and couldn't helicopter for lack of physical resources, students whose parents' definition of "dream big" meant staying out of prison, where many of the children from the neighborhood ended up.

I've also met students whose parents were not caring--parents who ignored their children or abused them. For these students, college is an escape, a fresh start.

And I've met plenty of students whose circumstances were not extreme, but who were taught the value of hard work and that success was no guarantee. I've had many students who approach me after getting a D and say not "how dare you?" but "how can I do better?"

All that to say that Goodman is probably pointing to a real phenomenon, but pretending that it is "a generation of helpless children," focuses only on a narrow segment of the American population. Perhaps this phenomenon is more pronounced among suburban, affluent families (though I'd be willing to bet there's more variation there than we think) but I do not think this model of parenting is very common outside of that demographic, and acting as if that narrow segment makes for a whole "generation" pushes the rest of us into invisibility.

What Chrysler and Chipotle Tell Us About Ethical Consumption

2012-02-24T16:32:00.000-06:00

I tend to point out the negative in advertisements. Maybe I'm just a grouchy pessimist. Maybe it's just easier to point out negatives.

Whatever it is, I'm setting that aside to look at two commercials through a different lens.

First is the famous Chrysler commercial from the 2011 Super Bowl:

This ad garnered a lot of praise. It won an Emmy for best commercial of 2011 and scored five awards at the Cannes Lions 58th International Festival of Creativity. It was widely hailed as a successful attempt to re-brand Chrysler and has been attributed for increased sales, especially of the Chrysler 200 featured in the ad.

Next is the recent ad from Chipotle:

This ad first aired during the Grammys this year. Though it has been the subject of some controversy from agricultural groups who don't like their portrayal, it has largely been hailed as a success and is enjoying many views with positive feedback.

Both of these ads deserve thorough rhetorical analyses in their own right. The Chrysler ad is a remarkably well thought-out and masterfully executed display of rhetorical tropes. From the use of the hand imagery as synecdoche for America's work ethic to the choice of Eminem as a metaphor for Detroit (and Detroit as a metaphor for America) to the style of the narrator's gravelly, everyman voice to the combination of Eminem's angry, defiant rap music with the classy, moving music of the choir, this ad delivers.

Likewise, the Chipotle ad does an excellent job of using simplicity to break down a complex argument. Choosing stop animation cartoon makes what happens to the pigs possible to show without distracting from their argument (you couldn't have shown this ad with real pigs in real factories without turning it into a completely different message). The choice of Willie Nelson and the lyrical selection of Coldplay's "The Scientist" are superb. The use of the farmer as a stand-in for Americans that allows the viewer to take responsibility for changing the future of farming and consuming without having to feel guilty for the past is a brilliant move (because guilt makes people defensive, and defensive people don't buy your products or listen to your message).

All that aside, though, I am most interested in what these ads indicate about consumership and public ethos. In both of these ads, the primary narrative has nothing to do with the product. The story of the Chrysler ad is the story of an American city that has been written off as a failing has-been that comes back to prosperity through the American dream of hardwork and ingenuity. The story of the Chipotle ad is a farmer who embraces scientific advancements and gets caught up in a whirlwind of rapid changes that ultimately leaves him depressed and without control over the highly technical (and morally questionable) process of farming until he decides to do something about it. Both of these ads feature a prominent protagonist (Eminem-as-Detroit/the farmer) who stand up to adversity (recession/technology) that works against their moral imperative (hard work/sustainability). Ultimately, these final moral imperatives become the overarching themes of the commercials. We recognize this problem, but we--just like the protagonist--can overcome by embracing our morals.

But what does that have to do with the viewer? Assuming the viewer is not a farmer or a rags-to-riches rap star, there's little that s/he can do to enter this story, to be a part of the change. But the ads give them an in. Buy the Chrysler 200. Eat at Chipotle. You too can be part of this transformation, and all it takes is opening your wallet, making the right purchases.

Sure, this message is harnessed to directly benefit the companies that produced these ads. That's evidenced by the high economic investment they were willing to make in creating these ads and then buying time in very costly venues to premier them. But it does something else, too.

Ads like these make the connection between purchase decisions and the larger culture apparent. I'm not judging the merit of the claims (I don't know if buying a Chrysler 200 actually helps Detroit (and thus America) recover or if buying Chipotle actually helps sustainable farming overcome big agricultural businesses), but I do think the point that these commercials make is a very important one that we don't think about often enough.

What you buy impacts the world around you. Consume ethically.

Gender Stereotyping with a Side of Product Promotion

2012-02-23T17:37:00.001-06:00

I know that my pop culture junkie-dom (junkie-hood? junkie-ness? addiction.) suggests otherwise, but I actually don't watch television very often. We don't have cable (we're some of those Netflix defectors) and we have pretty busy schedules.

I normally run around the track at lunch, but today when I got there the treadmills were open (a rarity). So I hopped on one and stuck my headphones in to listen to the TV. Now, I'm running and Let's Make a Deal is on, so it's not like I'm really in my scholarly critic zone. Nonetheless, the commercials were so blatantly full of gender stereotyping that I really couldn't ignore it.

First I saw a commercial for Fiber One 90 Calorie Brownies:

In it, a woman pushes aside a bouncer in front of a red curtain and goes through to join a horde of women dancing around with boxes of brownies. The voiceover tells us "They've been off-limits to dieters since time began. Not anymore." When the woman bites into one of those brownies, her face lights up and the scene around her moves in slow motion. Meanwhile, a couple of young men peer through the red curtain at the dancing scene with looks of amused confusion.

So, what's going on in this ad? Well, the bouncer who's keeping this woman out of the fun-filled brownie rave is represented by a very muscular, hyper masculine white man. All of the women dancing in the brownie room meet the same narrow standards of beauty: they're thin (though, admittedly, more realistically thin than many portrayals); most have long, flowing hair, and--as far as I could tell--they're all white (at the very least all of the prominently featured women are white).

So, here's a traditionally attractive woman who has been denying herself brownies "since time began" to meet those standards of beauty. That denial has been maintained by a hyper masculine bouncer (representative of a male dominance on those standards). While her casual pushing aside of this male gatekeeper might be seen as a power play, she's not actually working against the standards to keep her in her place; in fact, those standards are the whole selling point of this product. "Don't eat a brownie! My god! Oh, it's only 90 calories? Go ahead."

Let me ask you something. If a pre-packaged, foil-wrapped, 90-calorie brownie facsimile is good enough to make the world move in slow motion and literally light up your face, then how good is a real brownie? And if they're that good, why can't a woman (or a man--I'm not discriminating little curtain peekers, go ahead and come in) have one now and then?

So, as I'm running and telling myself that was a pretty narrow portrayal of women, I'm met with this gem for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese:

Here we see a bickering couple and then a little boy on a couch informs us that "Dad's in the doghouse again" because he brought home a client for dinner without telling his wife. She, being the perfect model of domesticity and grace, is prepared. She whips up a box of Homestyle Mac n' Cheese that she keeps on hand for just such occasions and they sit through an awkward, tense dinner. The little boy then turns to the camera and whispers "Dad really screwed this up."

What a horrible promotion of gender stereotypes from both sides. Women are shrewish nags who have to keep the home together while their absent-minded provider husbands bumble around and mess things up. The little boy doesn't seem upset by his parents' fight. In fact, he seems to take joy in seeing them so miserable, indicating that this family dynamic isn't very healthy.

Finally, what's the selling point supposed to be? Always keep Kraft on hand so that you can have sub-par, awkward dinners with guests who clearly don't want to be witness to your Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf-esque meltdown? Not selling it.

On a plus note, Kotex Natural Balance has an ad that parodies traditional maxi-pad ads by laughing off the notion of women on their periods gleefully exercising in all-white clothes and pointing to all all-male panel of "experts" while sarcastically saying "these maxi pad wizards really get me."

Then again, that ad might be a little too prescient for comfort:

All-male panel at the hearing on birth control

How My View on Affirmative Action in Higher Ed Has Evolved

2012-02-23T17:03:00.000-06:00

Source

This week, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear the Fisher v. Texas case, a case about affirmative action in higher education. Abigail Fisher, a white woman, alleges that the Texas public university school system discriminated against her because of her race when she was denied admission.

Currently, under the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case, institutions of higher education are not allowed to use race as a point-based factor in direct admission decisions, but they can use race as one of the contributing factors in choosing applicants to ensure diversity.

Reading about this made me reflect on my own feelings about affirmative action in higher education which have been complicated.

First of all, I work for a program that uses race-based selection (which I've written about before). The program I work for (which I love, and whole-heartedly believe in) helps students who are first-generation college students (so neither parent has a degree) and who meet certain income guidelines. It also takes a smaller percentage of students who are from racial groups underrepresented in higher education. Often, these populations overlap, but we do have some students in our program who meet the underrepresented requirement but not the first-generation one.

Since most of our students are first-generation, low-income students, our work focuses primarily on serving this population. We aim to make up for the cultural gap in knowledge about the inner workings of college systems and how to succeed. Having been a first-generation, low-income college student myself, I empathize with these difficulties. I was always a successful student, but learning how to navigate the collegiate landscape was difficult. I had no one to talk to about admissions decisions, scholarships, or career paths. My family supported me in the goal of getting into college, but no one had any idea what to do after I met that goal.

Some have suggested that an economic-based affirmative action (privileging first-generation, low-income applicants) would still help racially underrepresented applicants without having to use race-based selection. At one point, I thought this was a good idea. But I've changed my mind.

These letters from New York Times readers over such a suggestion point to some of the benefits and problems with using economic-based selection criteria rather than race-based ones. Here are some of the problems:

Economic disadvantage and race may overlap, but they are not the same. Substituting economic-based criteria may ignore the fundamental, equality-based reasoning behind affirmative action.

"Poverty is not a proxy for race, and to pretend that it is ignores the initial foundation for affirmative action: to correct for demonstrable biases against minorities in attaining higher education. Colleges and universities should be engines of social change, equalizing students (as much as possible) across old lines of race, class and gender."-Brian Farkas

Race-based affirmative action aims to address racial inequality, and racial inequality (regardless of socioeconomic status) persists.

"The recurring debate over race-based affirmative action often avoids the central question: Has structural racism in society diminished to such an extent that social engineering mechanisms like affirmative action are no longer necessary?

Unfortunately it has not, and there is ample data to support this conclusion. Recent studies confirm that unconscious racism continues to be infused in nearly every aspect of society. Every student of color, whether inner-city or suburban, well off or poor, continues to face this burden."-Victor Goode

My reason for believing that economic-based selection criteria doesn't fill the same role is connected to those two reasons, and it came to me not through reading and reflection, but through real-life illustration.

A few years ago, some horribly racist incidents took hold of the campus where I work. There were lynch threats made, racial epithets were casually thrown about, and the atmosphere became increasingly tense. Some of the more formal efforts to ease concerns seemed to backfire; instead of demonstrating an overall space of tolerance and acceptance--one that would have relegated those incidents to the status of isolated and unwelcome--much of the community at large came across as well meaning but out-of-touch.

Working in the role that I do, I was in close contact with many students of color who felt personally attacked and even unsafe. Some considered transferring. Some were angry and wanted to find a better course of action for the university as a whole.

I know that this was only a small part of the overall process that eventually worked toward rectifying those wrongs--a process that can be attributed almost entirely to the dedicated and equality-minded members of the student body who took it upon themselves to make their voices heard and change the campus culture--but I think that my program helped those students. This program gave students a space where they did not have to feel out of place. Though the program is made up of students from multiple racial backgrounds (including white students), it is overwhelmingly a place of inclusion and acceptance, a space where individual effort is bolstered by community support.

Economic disparity had nothing (at least directly) to do with those incidents. Those incidents grew out of racial intolerance. I agree with Farkas' comment above. Universities should be "engines of social change," and creating an atmosphere where intolerance is tackled and dismantled is a core component of that change. Students from many different backgrounds face a myriad of obstacles in attaining equal opportunities. Yes, economic-based initiatives address some of those concerns for some of those students, but race-based obstacles require race-based solutions.

I dream of a day when race-based affirmative action will truly be unnecessary because that day can only come when racial equality is a reality.

Maintenance

2012-02-22T22:20:00.002-06:00

Remember way back when I said one of my New Year's goals was to redesign this blog? Well, I'm finally getting around to it. I'm going to be testing a few things out, so if things break, it's because I don't know what I'm doing. Hopefully I'll be back soon!

The Contraceptive War, or, What Year is It Again?

2012-02-21T22:12:00.000-06:00

A friend sent me a link to this post from the Feronia Project and suggested that I blog about it. I've been wanting to say something about the ridiculous spectacle that's been made of of women's rights and reproductive health over the past week or so, but I haven't really been able to wrap my mind around it. Plus, many other writers have done a great job of summing up much of the insanity. In case you've missed it, here's a (probably incomplete) round-up:

Kelly over at How I Learned to Wear a Dress talks about watching the Issa panel on "religious freedom" over whether or not religiously affiliated companies should be required to offer birth control coverage to their employees. This panel discussing contraception coverage had no women. You can also see some responses to the panel at the Twitter hashtag #Issacircus
Rick Santorum, who actually has a shot at the Republican nomination, has said that women might not belong on the front lines of combat because of their "emotions involved," suggested that women who are fulfilled in work outside of the home have been brainwashed by radical feminists, and denounced all prenatal testing as a horrific effort to cull people with disabilities through abortion.
A proposed law in Virginia would require transvaginal ultrasounds against women's will in order to obtain an abortion. As Feministe explains, that's rape.
Personhood amendments, like the one in Oklahoma, are placing unequal focus on women's responsibility in reproduction and forcing them to deal with obstacles to their reproductive health and freedom without adding obstacle's to men's. Amendments like the "spilled semen" one point out this inequality.

So, back to the Feronia Project post. In it, we're reminded that women's freedoms are not that old. In fact, they're a pretty recent phenomenon:

They say we can look to the past to predict the future. If this is the case, I assert that women’s “stronghold” in exercising their power and autonomy is only a blip in our timeline that can be easily wiped away by legislation riddled with “traditional” values. The FDA only approved the first birth control pill in 1957, around the time my grandmother was getting married. There are women around us who remember what it was like before we had the reproductive freedoms we do now.

I want to say that that's fear mongering and alarmist. I want to say that it's ridiculous to think that we could backslide so drastically on an issue that directly affects half of the population and indirectly affects every single one of us. But I can't say those things.

The past week has shown me too many people in power who are batting around basic freedoms like a cat with a mouse.

As the Feronia Project post posits:

If I’m left without contraception, how can I plan my pregnancies? If I can’t plan my pregnancies, how can I plan my life? If I can’t plan my life, how can I own my life? If I don’t own my life, who does? Riddle me that one, Newt, Rick, Mitt.

My own views on abortion are complicated and certainly don't fit into a neat label of pro-choice or pro-life. My own life actually falls into some pretty traditional roles. I am married. I was married when I got pregnant, by choice. Sure, I work outside the home and pursue educational goals, but does that make me so radical as to be outside of the constructed reality that we're operating within when we have these conversations?

Control over my reproductive health is an imperative part of my life. It was an imperative part of my life before having a child, and it is an imperative part of my life now that I have one. I am a better mother and wife because of my ability to plan my life. How someone could work so hard to derail that simple and life-changing reality is beyond me. Truly. Beyond me.

Parenting Myth(o)s: Just You Wait

2012-02-20T16:59:00.000-06:00

When I was pregnant I wrote a couple of posts about maintaining the mythos of motherhood. Basically, I noticed that part of the cultural norm surrounding pregnancy seems to be complaining about it a lot. That's not to say that it doesn't suck sometimes (it does), but it just seemed interesting to me how much we were encouraged to point out how much it sucked: encouraged by media, by friends, and--perhaps most of all--other pregnant women.

I think that some of this might to be to combat the potential trivializing of motherhood in general and pregnancy in particular. Pointing out those swollen ankles, annoying doctor's visits, the constant need to pee, etc. ensures that other people will recognize the difficulties of pregnancy. Pregnancy is a physically, emotionally, and culturally taxing job--but it can also be thankless.

I'm no longer pregnant, but I've noticed that this mythos maintenance extends to parenting as well.

From Aaron E. Silvers

Posts like this one from STFU, Parents, this follow-up post on the subject of mothers who expect special treatment, and debates over banning children from restaurants or airplanes all illustrate the problematic intersection between parents' and non-parents' perspectives on the world. Parenting can be all-consuming, and it can make you recognize that the lens of raising children makes you look at the world distinctly differently than those around you--or than you did in the past. Sometimes this is an inspiring and refreshing view; other times it is a frustrating feeling of isolation.

And I think it's that feeling of frustration and isolation that leads us to make sure that we're pointing out the negatives of parenting. It can range from a snarky response on a Facebook post ("You think you're tired now? Just wait til you have a colicky baby!") to a full-blown group rant about the horrors of diaper changes.

I'm not judging, and I'm guilty of it, too. I'm sure it even serves a purpose--community building, legitimizing our efforts as parents. (For the record, I also don't think this is limited just to parents. Us grad students like to complain about our plight--when my husband gets together with lawyer friends they lament their legal woes. I think that group complaining can play an important role in bonding.)

But this game of one-upmanship can get exhausting. When I was pregnant, the slightest negative comment would often be met with a "just-you-wait." I'd say my back was sore. "Oh, just you wait. Once the baby gets here you'll be so exhausted you'll wish you just had a sore back."

And once my daughter was born, a complaint about--say--her refusal to sleep would be met with another one. "Oh, just you wait until she's mobile!"

Now that she's a toddler, if I say how frustrating it is to try to change her diaper when she's doing jumping jacks on the changing table, "Oh, just you wait until she can talk back."

I can imagine this goes on forever "Just you wait until she's a teenager." "Just you wait until she goes to college." "Just you wait. . ."

I didn't talk about this much at the time, but some of these comments in the early days of my daughter's life sent me into a near panic. She was jaundiced and had to go back to the hospital after her initial release. It was terrifying and overwhelming. There I was, two days postpartum and still recovering physically, sleeping on a hospital cot and watching my tiny new baby squirm under those eerie blue lights. Then, once we got home, she nursed constantly. She nursed for forty-five minutes at a time every two hours. She was physically attached to me almost half of the day--literally. I was exhausted. I missed my job. I felt really alone.

And whenever I tried to talk to someone about it, all I could hear was those "just-you-waits." I'm sure that people said other things. Encouraging things. Lovely things. But those just-you-waits loomed large. They made me feel like if I couldn't hack it now, I was doomed. It only gets harder.

I'm happy to say that isn't the case (or at least it isn't the case for me). For me, parenting a toddler is a lot easier than parenting an infant. It's not a breeze. It takes work. And I still get frustrated and overwhelmed from time to time, but having a mobile kid who can interact with me is way easier than feeling like this tiny, immobile, completely dependent creature is waiting for me to attend to her every whim.

All that to say to anyone who might be feeling overwhelmed at the moment, "Just you wait. Things will change. It will get better."

The Good, The Bad, and the Curious (Links)

2012-02-19T18:19:00.000-06:00

Things that made me happy, sad, and perplexed, feel free to add to the list in the comments.

The Good

Republican Representative Maureen Walsh's speech to the Washington House supporting gay marriage:

Over at Good Enough Mother, the black mother of a biracial daughter talks about getting a call from her 72-year-old mother-in-law asking her, "Uh Hill, are you going to raise the baby Black or White?" Her question was to determine which doll to buy in the store, and the fact that she was considerate enough to ask a question about race when she didn't know the answer rather than being too uncomfortable to approach it inspired the mother. She reflects on her own childhood dolls that were often white and made her feel "a little like the nanny" because she didn't relate to them. It made me smile because it reminded me of a wonderful birthday present my daughter got from a great family friend: a biracial doll that came from Pattycake Doll.

Ceridwen has a post on our birthing war that says "Maybe Home Birth vs Hospital Birth is the Wrong Question?"

"Even if home birth was a real option for a segment of the population in the US, we still need to work on improving hospital care and outcomes! Fewer women would be opting out of hospital births if they didn’t feel their births would be overly medically managed to the point of introducing new risks from medications and surgery. Hospitals have much to offer in terms of emergency care, and a lot less to offer a low-risk mom who would prefer a birth with few interventions."

The Bad

Santorum says that women women in the front lines of combat concern him because of "other types of emotions that are involved." Elsewhere, he had this to say about prenatal testing:

"One of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing in every insurance policy in America," Santorum said. "Why? Because it saves money in health care. Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society."

The Huffington Post reported on "Thinspiration" blogs, anorexia-promoting blogs that are popular among some groups of teenage girls.

Some infant formula has tested with arsenic levels up to six times higher than is allowable in drinking water, prompting some to call for arsenic regulations in food, which currently don't exist in the U.S.

The Curious

The American Life League has a (in my opinion, hilarious) video demonstrating Planned Parenthood's real agenda of hooking kids on sex through the "gateway drug" of masturbation and cartoon penises. (Video probably NSFW.)

What have you been reading lately?

New Report on Interracial Marriage in the U.S.

2012-02-17T18:48:00.000-06:00

There's a new Pew Poll report on interracial marriage in America. The report is very involved and looks at a variety of different measures. Some of their key findings:

Interracial marriages are on the rise. About 15% of new marriages are between people who identify as different races, compared to 6.7% in 1980.
States in the West have higher rates of interracial marriages (22%) than the South (14%), Northeast (13%), or Midwest (11%)
On the surface, people who "marry out" have similar educational and economic attainment as those who "marry in," but differences arise when looking at the racial identification of the pairings (for instance, a white/Asian couple has a higher median income ($70,952) than a white/white couple ($60,000) or an Asian/Asian couple ($62,000).

The part that was most interesting to me was the Public Opinion section.

"Nearly six-in-ten liberals (59%) think that more people of different races marrying each other has been a better change for our society, nearly half (48%) of moderates agree, compared with less than one-third (32%) of conservatives who say so."

Of the questions designed to gauge public opinion on the impact of social decisions on the larger society, interracial dating is viewed favorable by the most people and unfavorable by the least people.

The percentage of people who say that interracial marriage is acceptable is at an all-time high (83%). Among adults ages 18-29, that rate is 93%. It is lowest among adults 65 and older (67%).

Does anyone know what caused the huge jump from 1990 to 1991? I'm really curious.

The saddest finding was the prejudice within subcategories of some of the findings. I was especially frustrated--though not particularly surprised--to see that people were more willing to accept their family member dating someone who was Asian or Hispanic than they were to see their family member dating someone who was black.

Also, since these items were not asked of people who were of that particular race, these responses demonstrate that people of color are more likely to accept interracial marriage of their group members with white people than the other way around.

So, what's the hope for the future? If 93% of young adults find interracial marriage acceptable, what will a survey like this look like in twenty years? Will they maintain that point of view into later adulthood? Will their children adopt their open-mindedness? I am optimistic that these trends will continue and that interracial marriage will be viewed with more and more acceptance. Still, my optimism is a little crushed when I think about it a broader context:

As this question posed to Yo, Is This Racist? points out, perhaps the saddest part is that this is an issue that need to be polled in the first place.

PETA: An Equal Opportunity Exploiter

2012-02-16T17:31:00.000-06:00

Perhaps you've seen or heard about the new PETA ad promoting veganism that suggests violent, painful sex that hurts women is somehow a good thing:

The woman in the ad is shown in a neck brace and has trouble walking. She gets home and takes off her coat to reveal that she's only wearing her underwear. Her boyfriend asks if she's "feeling better" after he painfully wounded her during sex. PETA suggests they can prevent accidents like this from occurring by giving you advice on how to go "go vegan" safely. This obviously tongue-in-cheek phrase ignores the fact that the ad centers on demonstrating a man's increased sexual aggressiveness as a great thing, regardless of what that means for the woman on the receiving end of that aggression.

I wasn't even going to comment on this video because (as I've talked about before) PETA's continued degradation of women has ensured that I won't be taking anything they have to say seriously anytime soon.

But then I watched last night's Daily Show and saw this:

PNot

The Daily Show
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Not content to just completely ignore women's rights in their campaigns, PETA demonstrates that they are equally willing to exploit racial injustice for media attention. They filed a lawsuit on behalf of five SeaWorld orcas that said they should be freed under the 13th Amendment's abolishment of slavery.

As Wyatt Cenac cleverly displays through mockery (around the 4:00 mark), this argument is ridiculous. (Cenac points out that the PETA representative herself has a dog who she walks on a leash, which would clearly be a violation of her dog's freedom. He then brings in his lawyer to file a complaint on behalf of all of the animals pictured on PETA's website because they were photographed without their consent.)

While I appreciate the humor Cenac used to derail this argument, it's not enough to make me ignore how insulting the lawsuit (which was thrown out) was to begin with. It belittles the impact of slavery and makes a mockery of the countless people who died under that oppressive mark on our history. It also trivializes attempts to alleviate current racial inequalities and attempts to dehumanize people who were slaves and--by extension--people of color by equating them with animals.

I am against cruelty to animals, and I support legitimate attempts to address those concerns. I see nothing legitimate in what PETA does other than to support current systems of racial and gender oppression.

Another Day, Another Problematic Facebook Meme

2012-02-16T17:29:00.000-06:00

I've seen the above image floating around on Facebook and it reminded me of some other problematic Facebook memes that have been going around.

This picture has been circulating and appears to be a call for women to accept their bodies regardless of whether they fit the "ideal" or not, but as this blogger points out, the image still portrays women's bodies as objects deemed worthy based on physical ideal (especially the one marked "Men's Ideal Size") and privileges a very narrow view of beauty: white models; long, flowing hair; hour-glass figures. In short, it doesn't really accomplish what it seems to accomplish on first glance.

Likewise, Sociological Images took on the Marilyn meme that ostensibly promotes a healthy body image. They point out that we are still objectifying women's bodies and we're still valuing one type of body at the expense of another (in this case, we're pointing to thin women as unattractive). We're also referring to women as a "this," using synecdoche in a way that makes a woman's physical appearance stand in place of her self as a whole person.

So, let's go back to the photo that I want to take a closer look at:

What's going on here? This image has a lot of similarities with the Marilyn one. It uses nostalgia to harken back to "better times." It compares people in different eras in similar, but not identical, poses. It uses comparison to make a critical evaluation of society's norms. And, like the Marilyn meme, this image may at first appear to be taking a positive stance, but is actually damaging.

First of all, both images use nostalgia in a way that ignores historical context. As Sociological Images points out:

Marilyn Monroe was, to put it mildly, very sad, very often. She was a sex symbol, and thus, stopped existing as human being, a regular girl. Almost everything that fucked up Marilyn’s later life had to do with being “adored” by men. Men used her, or deified her (and that’s a hard come-down for those dudes when they found a human being in their bed the morning after). Political brothers purportedly passed her around like a toy. Conventional wisdom, political conspiracy aside, has it that Monroe killed herself. Being “adored by thousands of men” didn’t stop her demons from consuming her.

Glorifying her physical image without taking into account what that physical image meant for her life as a real, actual human being is an oversimplification that ignores reality.

Likewise, looking at the image of those black men from the 1950's and placing it next to an image from contemporary America ignores the bleak reality of racial interactions during the '50's. Yes, those men on the left are better dressed, but they also lived in a time when schools were segregated, black Americans were relegated to the back of busses, racist practices like redlining limited options on housing and mobility, and the threat of racial violence was a potent presence. To ignore that reality oversimplifies the image and removes its context.

Finally, just as the image of Marilyn and the three women of different sizes still limits women's value to their physical appearance, these juxtaposed images of the black men limits their value to their clothing. Clothing can be an important form of non-verbal communication. It is unlikely, for instance, that those men on the right are going to get hired if they show up at a job interview in those outfits. However, just like all other kinds of communication, clothing is a fluid part of our expression and not a marker of our inherent identities. The way we choose to communicate is a rhetorical act, and it can be conscious or unconscious. It can be effective or ineffective. But it cannot stand in for our full character and sense of being.

These men are more than their clothes just as those women are more than their bodies. Reductionist perspectives that try to boil people down to an at-a-glance value judgment promote stereotypes and limit our abilities to see beyond them.

Burlesque, Lady Gaga, and Sexuality: What's Feminist?

2012-02-15T18:30:00.000-06:00

Fair warning, I'm about to ramble a lot. I know what you're thinking, "How is that different from any other thing you write?" Touché, hypothetical reader, but this post is going to be particularly rambly because I really haven't figured out what I think about this one. But what better reason to write than to figure out what I think? And to hear from all of you smart folks on the subject?

Can Burlesque Be Empowering to Women?

The Delphiad Blog has a post that starts by examining the claim that burlesque is "empowering" to women, moves into an exploration of a personal anecdote (visiting a nude beach with a boyfriend didn't go as he had planned) and ends with this declaration:

I can have fun when I want to, if I feel free, if I don’t feel pressured, if I do it for me first and if I don’t feel someone is shilling their agenda with ulterior motives that don’t mesh with my best interests. Whether this is the case with every instance of “fun” that gets pushed at women is another story. Only each and every woman can tell for herself, of course.

I can see where yes, burlesque can exercise your imagination, involve your sense of play and perhaps help you claim or reclaim your body and sexual self when you need to do this, or just plain want to.

That, indeed, is empowering. There are just so many things we get thrown at us that are not.In the end, no one can label me as a loser or a weakling for not embracing their definition of “fun”, “liberation” or “empowerment”, instead of respecting my choices and quite-considerable experience in deciding what, in fact, I truly consider “empowering”.

I agree with that conclusion, and I feel confident saying that women viewing their own bodies as sexy and enjoying expressions of that sexiness can be feminist. But I can't help but look at that conclusion and the introduction to the post as never-ending circles of a vicious cycle. In the beginning, the post had this to say:

My initial reaction, I admit, is to cringe and/or roll my eyes when I hear that word spoken in connection with anything that sounds so obviously centred around male pleasure. Let’s just say burlesque is one of those things… along with pole-dancing lessons; bunny ears; having a threesome you don’t really want, for the “higher purpose” of “liberating your sexuality”; watching lesbian porn with a boyfriend when you’re completely straight, etc.

Obviously, she started with this question and ended with some version of "but it can be empowering to an individual who finds it empowering" but we could just as easily start with that conclusion and end up with "but it isn't empowering to women who are pressured into it by societal standards."

From John-Pa

The problem becomes in distinguishing where societal standards and pressure end and individual desires and expression begin. And, to some extent, they don't begin and end. We are products of our society. I can't separate myself out from the culture that's shaped me. Even when I step into different cultural contexts, I am a product of my past experiences. The people I've known, the books I've read, the movies I've watched, the relationships I've had--that's all part of me. On the flip side, our culture is a product of us. The music we create, the blog posts we write, the words we say, the products we buy, the art we paint--those are all part of our culture. The question of "is burlesque feminist" is so damned frustrating because it's really a question of identity.

Yes, It Can Empower

Chloe Emmot has an interesting post over at The F Word that asks the same question: "Can burlesque be feminist?" Here, Emmot talks about her experiences in a burlesque class:

One of the first things I remember from class was being told that any negativity regarding our body image was not to be tolerated and that burlesque was about showing off your beauty, whatever your size, shape or colour. It may sound trite, but, as a young woman who, no matter how hard she tries, cannot fully escape the pressure to be thin and 'beautiful', a message that left me walking home noticing how my 'fat' thighs, stomach and bum wobbled - and felt so goddamn-sexy - is one worth celebrating. We were not taught to please men, we were taught to enjoy ourselves, to revel in our bodies, to enjoy our sexuality, the thrill of the tease and the sensation of being in the spotlight.

For her, then, burlesque was a way to claim authorship over her definition of sexy. While she admits to still having some reservations about burlesque (and its intertwinement with strip clubs and pornography), she ultimately believes that burlesque can be a way for women to decide what they think is sexy rather than always playing the part of what (they think) men think is sexy.

No, It Can't Empower

To be fair to this debate, I have to consider viewpoints like this one from Jill at I Blame the Patriarchy. She takes to task the notion that women can be claiming their own sexiness because she sees that "sexiness" as ultimately controlled and created by a patriarchal system of oppression:

Today’s feminist, empowered by all those articles on vibrators in Bust magazine, chooses choices of her own free will. These choices mirror her own unique sartorial, sexual, and philosophical personality. That these unique choices happen to align precisely with standard male porn fantasies, and that they are therefore rewarded with positive attention, is purely coincidental.

Such a viewpoint is a luxury of youth. It is the great tragedy of the women’s liberation movement that fully-realized feminist consciousness is too rarely achieved by women who are still young and fit enough to take on Dude Nation in a knife fight. Too often, it’s only when a woman ages out of pornosity, and is too old to do anything but take pictures of cows, that she discovers what the world really thinks of her.

She goes so far as to decry femininity itself as degrading:

It would be many years before I would understand that femininity, the practice of femininity, and the fetishization of femininity degrades all women. That femininity is not a “choice” when the alternative is derision, ridicule, workplace sanctions, or ostracization.

Many of the comments on the post demonstrate that feminists (young and old alike) have ascribed to this viewpoint and recognize femininity as a degradation to women. At this point, we're clearly getting into the murky waters where second-wave and third-wave feminism clash.

Trading One Set of Rules for Another?

I see a mini-version of this debate play out in the toy crusades and gendering of children. While many people recognize that ascribing narrow gender roles to children through toys is problematic, the answers on how to deal with that problem are complicated.

The Fisher Price Brilliant Basics rattle teaches infant girls that diamond rings are most important.

In her book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, which critically examines "Princess Culture," Peggy Orenstein notices that her daughter was getting the message a little too clearly. Her daughter saw that her mom was reacting negatively to the princess paraphernalia lining the stores and interpreted it to mean that there was something wrong with glitter and pink and lace. Orenstein realized that her message needed to be more nuanced. The glitter wasn't the problem; the problem was the lack of other options. The problem was the way that cultural influences told little girls they had to have the glitter or run the risk of being ostracized by their peers. But isn't rejecting glitter in and of itself just as damaging? Isn't saying that you have to choose the non-glittered option or risk being ostracized by a group of people who see glitter as insulting just as limiting? What if you really, truly like glitter?

Of course, Jill's argument is that you can't really, truly like glitter. You are just programmed to like glitter because society tells you so. I'm not rejecting that argument out of hand, but doesn't that seem a little too narrow? There's no merit to glitter? Nothing redeemable? For anyone? Ever?

Patriarchal Bargaining

And then (you knew there was going to be an "and then" didn't you?) there's this: "Lady Gaga's Patriarchal Bargain." Guest blogger Sonita Moss wrote in this article for Sociological Images that bounces off of Lisa Wade's look at "Serena Williams' Patriarchal Bargain."

A patriarchal bargain, according to Wade is defined as follows:

A patriarchal bargain is a decision to accept gender rules that disadvantage women in exchange for whatever power one can wrest from the system. It is an individual strategy designed to manipulate the system to one’s best advantage, but one that leaves the system itself intact. Williams is making a patriarchal bargain, exchanging her sex appeal for the heightened degree of fame and greater earning power we give to women who play by these rules (e.g., Kim Kardashian). Don’t be too quick to judge; nearly 100% of women do this to some degree.

It's not quite "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," but it's close. Something more like "if you can't beat 'em, trick 'em at their own game." The problem is that this doesn't do much to dismantle the oppression in place to begin with. In fact, because the women who are making these patriarchal bargains often do so to gain power and prestige, they are in positions of influence and may actually be furthering that oppression.

Source

Moss explains how Lady Gaga falls into this system:

Throughout her body of work there is a thread of what we know all too well: ass-shaking, barely-there nudity and conspicuous consumption, just in an offbeat fashion. Gaga is bonkers, but Gaga is sexy. Gaga is political and outspoken, Gaga is skinny and [often] blond. Indeed, “Mother Monster” may uplift her fans because of her affinity for oddness, but lest we forget, she is a lady and must inhabit the flesh that adheres to gender norms and restrictions, she reminds us:
“I would rather die than have my fans see me without a pair of heels on. And that’s show business.”
If you want to ride the ride, you have to pay the price. And that price is patriarchy.

Expression and Language

So, with all of those complicated views bouncing around in my head, I'm trying to figure out how I feel about this. I don't know the answer, but it does remind me of a different (and equally contentious) debate: the use of the n-word.

As you may know, I don't use the n-word. Ever. If it's in a quote (like in song lyrics or a book), I'll type the word, but in my own language I do not use it. I don't feel like I have the authorial rhetorical positioning. I don't have the ethos. The history of the word is too steeped in hate, violence, and degradation. I don't feel comfortable participating in it.

However, I also don't think it should be banned (like it was in this "symbolic" ban in NYC back in 2007). While some (like Richard Delgado, for instance) maintain that some words are always designed to wound, destined to be fighting words, that view ignores the fact that words do not have innate meanings. Words' meanings are created by the people who use them. Language is fluid, constantly changing, and overlapping. Finally, banning a word doesn't ban the thoughts, and the thoughts are what worry me. If the n-word were suddenly wiped from everyone's vocabularies, I have little hope that racism would be equally wiped from everyone's minds. After all, it was racism that created the most popular meaning of the n-word to begin with, not the other way around.

I feel like banning the n-word gives too much power to the people who have used it with negative connotations. While I don't suggest we ignore those connotations and the cultural realities surrounding the word (which is why I don't use it myself), I see negative effects from fixing that definition for all time, for saying that the word can never have any other possible use. When we do that, we give the people who have championed a racist use of the word immense power. No other word gets a fixed definition that never changes. Why should these people have the power to destroy a word forever? Why should these people get the position of permanent authorship? Doesn't that just imply that the current system of oppression is forever set? The people who wield the power over the n-word and its current meaning will always do so? I can't accept that.

I likewise can't accept that women are destined to always be objectified. If we say that burlesque or lingerie or stripping or pornography are always and inherently objectification, we give the patriarchal oppression that can make them objectifying too much power. We deny the opportunity for those expressions to have alternate authorship. We fix them in a time and space in a way that denies the fluid reality of human communication and give too much credence to oppression as it currently exists. The patriarchy doesn't have ownership over sexuality.

Thoughts?

What do you think? Can burlesque be feminist? Have you participated in a patriarchal bargain? Am I participating in a patriarchal bargain by writing these words? Have I been had? Can't glitter be nice, too?

Liz Trotta on How Military Women Should "Expect" to Be Raped

2012-02-14T16:59:00.000-06:00

The mind. It boggles. (Full transcript here).

Liz Trotta argues that a staggering 64% increase in violent sexual assault against women since 2006 is somehow evidence of the "sleeping giant" of a problem that women are in the military to begin with.

To her, it is somehow further evidence that "the feminists" (because you know, we speak with one monolithic voice) have misstepped in pitting themselves as both victims and warriors. Because you can't be both a victim when you're being raped and a warrior when you're--you know--fighting in a war. You have to choose. Or something.

At one point, she says this about the increase: "Now what did they expect? These people are in close contact."

Not that it makes much difference as to how horrendous her comment is, but I am curious as to who this "they" refers to. Are "they" the women themselves who should have known their service to their country came at the expense of being brutally attacked? Are "they" the people who foolishly recognized that keeping women out of the military is a sexist act of bigotry?

She also says that after looking at the attacks, the Pentagon report has "actually discovered there is a difference between men and women." This, apparently, is further evidence of the wrong-headedness in allowing women to join the military to begin with. So what's the difference? That women are more likely to be raped? That men are more likely to attack a woman? How do those differences point to a problem with the mere presence of women and not with a culture that excuses and allows rape? You know, the type of culture that would green light the online publication of a rapper giving "fatherly advice" to young men on how to rape girls?

Finally, she calls the support systems in place for women who have been assaulted in the military--which, again, the crazy feminists have insisted we have--"bureaucracy upon bureaucracy." When co-anchor Eric Shawn suggests that we should protect all military members from anything illegal, she scoffs and says "nice try Eric."

Yes, Eric. Nice try indeed. We won't be having any of that talk on "rights" and "protection" and "legality" around here.

Then and Now: My New Approach to Health

2012-02-12T19:51:00.000-06:00

As I've blogged about in the past, I've been really struggling with how to feel about the intersection between feminism (and the rejection of narrow definitions of beauty that come with that) and weight loss (especially when weight loss and health are often correlated, and frequently wrapped together in the messages we receive).

I can't say that I've got all of the complexities unwrapped, because I definitely don't. But I can say that I'm in the healthiest place I've ever been when it comes to being happy with my body while focusing on making healthier choices. In fact, looking at the way that I used to approach being healthier and the way that I do now has really helped me understand more about the process it took to get to this place and the progress I still hope to make.

Then: I defined "health" almost entirely as weight loss. If I didn't see drops in the numbers on the scale or looser clothes, I considered the whole thing a waste. And my expectations for the speed in which I should see those changes was completely unrealistic.

Now: I can't say it's been easy, but I've really been shifting away from thinking about the weight loss. I measure my success in how long I can run without stopping, the distance that I clock at the gym, the number of times I opt for cooking in instead of eating out in a week. These measures are harder to quantify, but they are more real to the thing I really care about, living a healthier life.

Then: I weighed myself every day, sometimes more than once a day. As much as I would tell myself that my weight was going to naturally fluctuate, weighing a half pound more one day than the last was enough to put me in a bad mood for the whole day.

From chickadeeacres

Now: I weighed myself on the first of January and the first of February. I'd lost five pounds. I'm not weighing myself again anytime soon--maybe the first of March. I hate having to think about the numbers constantly. As long as I'm making healthy choices and other measures of my health (blood pressure, mobility, etc.) are working for me, then I'm good with that.

Then: Workouts were sporadic and often torturous. I would make a schedule for the week and if one day got messed up, I'd be inclined to call the whole week a wash, as if not working out on Friday somehow made it impossible to workout on Saturday, or--you know--later on Friday.

Now: With the exception of the days when I was sick last week, I've worked out every weekday for over a month. Sometimes that workout is an hour long, and sometimes it's thirty minutes. On days when I'm in a real crunch, it's been twenty minutes. When I got the cold and couldn't work out, I didn't feel like a failure. I just looked forward to the days when I would be feeling better and could get back in the groove. When I had planned to work out over my lunch break at 2 and then a meeting came up, I didn't decide that I couldn't work out that day, I took my lunch earlier and made it work. When the weather's cooperating, I walk everywhere I can on the weekends. My daughter gets to play in the park, and I get to be active and outside. I never would have thought to count these little things as healthy habits in my "old" mindset because they don't really translate into rapid weight loss, but they do translate into a healthier mentality.

Then: Food was my enemy. I starved myself for half to the day only to overcompensate later. Breakfast was typically Slim Fast. Lunch was some dry Special K cereal and a piece of fruit. I'd chug three cans of Diet Pepsi during the day, and then I would come home and maybe cook dinner. Often, I would convince myself that cooking dinner would take too long and we would eat at Applebee's or grab a rotisserie chicken dinner from the grocery store. At times, I counted calories obsessively. I rarely enjoyed what I was eating.

From o5com

Now: We still eat out every once in a while, but usually only on the weekends and only at a place where I'm guaranteed to actually enjoy the meal. I've stopped drinking soda and juice, and only have water with meals. Breakfast is usually Greek yogurt, fruit and granola. Lunch is leftovers from whatever I made for dinner the night before or something like hummus, black beans, and spinach on tortilla. I'm very rarely hungry, and I like the food that I eat. How many calories are in it? I don't know. I look at labels to make sure that I'm okay with the ingredients and amount of sugar in them. And I know that if I'm not okay with feeding it to my daughter, I shouldn't be okay with eating it myself (with the exception of wine, yummy, yummy wine). If I know that all the food I have is good for me, I spend a lot less time stressing over it.

This isn't to say that I've got it all figured out. There are still times when I get down on my body and wish that my clothes fit me differently. There are still days when I really, really don't want to go to the gym and I have to force myself to go. There are still times when I pass a freezer full of ice cream and salivate over the Phish Food. But, overall, I feel like every change I've made is a sustainable change. I'm not worrying about how much longer I have to do this until I reach some magic weight. I feel like these are changes I'm making for life, and if I slip up, I still have a lot of life left to get it right.

When I heard people say things like that before, I always thought how overwhelming it sounded to make a longterm change. For life, you say? Pshaw. I just want to do this for a month until I drop my 15 pounds like the people on Biggest Loser.

But it's not overwhelming me at all. It's pretty freeing.

Oh the Layers! Tavis Smiley, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer talk about The Help

2012-02-10T18:55:00.000-06:00

Tavis Smiley brought Academy Award-nominated actresses Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis onto his show to talk about the film The Help.

As I previously wrote, I recently watched The Help for the first time and was pleasantly surprised by my response to it. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't recognize the problematic aspects of the film.

That's why I was so interested to see Smiley's interview with Spencer and Davis, an interview that gets right to the heart of the issue and tackles it head-on (with respect and nuance). You can watch it and read the transcript here.

Basically, Smiley admits to having ambivalent feelings about the film (though he hopes that both women win the award in their respective categories). Davis jumps in with a pretty scathing commentary of her own, telling Smiley that his viewpoint "is absolutely destroying the Black artist" by limiting their roles to only characters deemed "fit" by the collective rather than allowing them a full range of expression. She goes on to explain her view by saying "We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth-tellers."

Ah-ha. This is a fight over truth. Who gets to tell it? Whose version will prevail? Who gets to decide how truth is determined?

And this particular debate highlights a lot of the problems with truth. See, if we are talking about a single text, truth may be debatable, but at least the space in which to find it is somewhat contained. If there is a single text, we look at that text through the lens of its author, its audience, and its content. We determine what message the author intended to send, what message the audience received, and how that message was conveyed. We make judgments about the success or failure of that message, and we decide whether we believe the text to be valid. As complicated as that process can be, it is much, much simpler than what is happening in this piece.

For one, we're talking about a lot of different texts, each with their own audience, author, and context. Though this is not an exhaustive list, here are some of the texts I see in play in this interview:

The book The Help

As Spencer points out in the interview, the fact that the source text is written by a white woman is problematic for many people.
The source text has also been problematic for its treatment of dialect.
Davis also talks about how the book establishes a much richer character in Aibileen: "Her life is internal dialogue, if you’ve read the book, and you know, internal dialogue, by the time it reaches the screen, most of it is cut" and how that impacted her work as an actress.

The film The Help

The film in and of itself is where I focused my criticism for my personal reaction, and--in my opinion--the film is very well done.
The film brings problems like dialect and physical stereotypes into a new realm by giving them visual and audio representations.

The performance of the actresses

The actresses make clear in this interview that they see their individual performances as texts in their own rights. These are performances that they're adding to their career repertoires. Every part that they play shapes the way they will be viewed by their audience as a whole.
As Spencer points out, the text of actress is impacted by race, gender, body type: "There is a limit of roles that are out there for African American women, and women of a certain size, women of a certain age. There are so many different categories that we have to contend with." Davis adds that skin tone also plays a role.

The Academy Awards as text

The awards ceremony is a text of its own. These women winning awards for their performances means something beyond their performance in the film (which is why Smiley roots for their wins even as he criticizes the film itself).
The audience for the Academy Awards is different than the audience for the film, and even when the audience members overlap, their purpose in watching is different.
The Academy Awards comes with its own history and context. As Smiley mentions when he talks about Denzel Washington winning an Oscar for his performance in Training Day, that history is racially problematic. (Black actors and actresses are often awarded for performing in negative roles and rarely awarded for performances in positive ones.)
During the interview, the actresses spend a lot of time talking about white actors and actresses who have won playing characters with flaws (Charlize Theron for Monster and Anthony Hopkins for Silence of the Lambs, for instance). The women use this as evidence that requiring only noble characters from their performances is limiting and unfair.

Black cinema in general

The history of black cinema also contextualizes this film. Which films have been critically acclaimed, which have been ignored (Smiley cites George Lucas' inability to get funding for Red Tails), and which have been poorly received all play a role.
Davis also criticizes contemporary black writers and producers as propagating stereotypes: "I’m a dark-skinned African American actress, okay, and I would say that I have had so many African American artists in my house having the same conversation. I’ve read all the scripts that they’ve given me, young writers saying, 'I’ve got the ultimate role for you, Ms. Davis, because I see you.'I would say 99.9 percent of them are all urban ghetto mothers who look highly unattractive and they all speak Ebonics. They are probably far more insulting than even some of the roles given to me by white industry people."

I think that the reason Smiley, Davis, and Spencer disagree is because they're actually evaluating different things.

It seems like Smiley's main analysis lies within black cinema and the Academy Awards. The authors of those texts are primarily privileged people (largely white men) who control what gets funded, what gets distributed, and what gets awarded.

Davis' primary text seems to be the roles that she is given to perform. She sees herself as limited by a view that says she must act as a representative for an entire race of people by only performing in noble roles, and she sees those roles that are deemed acceptable as stilted, drained of humanity, and devoid of the truth and "messiness" of real life. They don't push her to test her acting abilities or allow her to grow as an artist.

Spencer's primary text is--similar to Davis'--the roles she is given to perform as an actress, but unlike Davis (who admits to agonizing over taking the role because of how it would be received and what her responsibility was to the audience), Spencer shifts the responsibility of interpretation almost entirely onto the viewer: i"if I’m going to go to law school, who’s going to tell me what case not to take? If I’m going to be a doctor, who’s going to tell me what patient not to take?

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny, and hope that whatever your art is that you’re putting out there, if it’s received, great, I respect you for receiving it.
If it’s not received, great, I respect you for not."

Personally, I respect and see merit in every single one of those positions. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to talk about the actual "text" that's being examined in this interview because it would have to include all of those different texts (and texts I haven't even identified). It would have to include multiple audiences (the readers of the book, the viewers of the film, the viewers of the Academy Awards, the viewers of previous Academy Award winners, the viewers of previous films in the black cinema canon, etc.). It would have to include multiple authors (Kathryn Stockett as author of the book; the writers, producers, and directors of the film; the actresses who starred in the film and thus "wrote" their performances; those in charge of production and distribution companies; writers, producers, and directors of previous Academy Award winners, etc.). That's too large to handle. It doesn't even make sense to try to talk about all of that at once. In order to make it manageable, we have to rope off some piece or pieces of the text and claim it as the territory we're examining for a certain type of truth.

But at the same time, there will always be someone else who has roped off a different set of texts. Someone else will have a very reasonable challenge based on that different text.

So how do we decide? How do we decide which texts to examine? And how do we make sure we're looking at the places our readings intersect to make sure we're talking about the same thing?

Who's at Fault? Some Thoughts on the BYU Video

2012-02-09T10:48:00.000-06:00

Perhaps you've seen the following video of students at Brigham Young University answering questions from a white man who donned "black face" to see what the BYU crowd knows about black history. If not, you should watch it.

As you can see, the students interviewed are woefully uninformed about black history. Very few of them could name what month is Black History Month. Everyone could name Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X as historical figures, though they didn't seem quite sure of what those people did. Others named Samuel Jackson and "Fifty Cents" as black historical figures.

Most depressing to me was the insensitive racism that these students didn't even seem to notice they were falling into. One student says that he celebrates Black History Month by eating fried chicken and drinking grape juice. Another calls the people he interacted with in Alabama "colored people." A couple of people refer to white girls dating black guys as having "jungle fever." Several of the students do "black" impressions that fall into stereotypical speech patterns and slang, demonstrating the surface-level analysis of what it means to be "black."

After I watched this video, I felt sad, but not surprised. I also didn't have much to say about it. Yes, these college-educated young adults should know more about black history. Yes, these students should know better than to mock people based on stereotypes. But who's to blame when they don't know more? Who's to blame when they do mock? Who's at fault here? And, most importantly, how do we fix it?

I may be an idealist, but I truly believe that most of the people in the world are good. I believe in my heart that most of the people around me know that racism (and oppression in general) is bad. I believe that they don't want to hurt other people by putting them down and lumping them into stereotyped categories. I believe that they see people as individuals when they actually get to know them. And I believe they are capable of facing the oppression that they participate in when it's shown to them.

I may be a cynic, but I also truly believe that our systems of oppression are so intertwined into our daily lives that having to face our complicity in those systems isn't very likely. When we are surrounded by sexist images, racist stereotypes on television, homophobia in our legal systems, and a general acceptance of the status quo, it's easy to overlook our own privileges.

That's why, as frustrated as I am with the students in the BYU video, I didn't know how to respond to it. Do I yell at those kids for not seeking out more information about black history? Based on what? When we live in a culture that hasn't demonstrated the importance of having that information, how can I place all of the blame on them for not doing it? Do I dismiss them as racists that I have no use for? Based on what? The fact that they act like many other privileged people who haven't had to think about the impact of their thoughts and actions in any systemic way? What good does dismissing them do when it ultimately means I'd have to dismiss large segments of the population, large groups of people I'm around every day?

And am I so much better? I've worked very hard to face my white privilege. I try to call out racism when I see it, and I definitely could have answered those questions a lot better than those students did. But what other systems of oppression do I silently participate in? What other systems have I not even known to question?

That's why I am happy to see a project like the Unfair Campaign, which I read about on Racism Review.

With the tagline "It's hard to see racism when you're white," the Unfair Campaign targets a majority audience by calling out white privilege and calling upon readers to "See It," "Know It," and "Stop It."

I like that this campaign aims to inform without blaming and then give people an avenue to actually do something about it by becoming an active participant against racism when they see it without aggression.

Too often, facing privilege means facing feelings of inadequacy and the sense that the world is crashing down around you while you watch, defenseless. Sometimes it can be easier to just refuse to see that injustice for what it is. By giving people a path to action, this campaign addresses that in a positive way.

How have you dealt with privilege? Are there privileges you know you have but haven't figured out how to face?

Book Review: The Weird Sisters

2012-02-09T07:02:00.000-06:00

When I began reading Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters, I sensed the familiar pattern: the siblings of an educated, quirky American family each stake their claim to their own particular brand of identity and then come together in the end. Images of films like The Family Stone, In Her Shoes, and Our Idiot Brother came to mind. Indeed, many of those go-to character tropes circulate here as well. Three sisters--all near thirty--have reconvened in their hometown, a college town where there father enjoys near celebrity status as a professor specializing in Shakespeare. Their mother's battle with cancer acts as a hinge that holds them in place long enough to face their differences and find their similarities.

Both burdened and blessed with the weight of their father's craft, these three sisters each inhabit a Shakespearian world of drama of their own making. The oldest, Rosalind (Rose), has the perfect plan and will never leave their sleepy college town. She has her PhD in mathematics and is just waiting for the perfect opening so that she can enjoy a life of quiet luxury with her perfect academic fiancé. But when he gets a job offer in England, she has to make decisions she's never thought of facing. Bianca (Bean), the middle child, has slunk back from the fast life in New York with her tail between her legs. She has secrets filled with shame and regret and is trying to find a way to make the pace of her new life match the lust of her old one. The youngest, Cordelia (Cordy), has spent her adulthood as a vagabond following folk bands and sleeping on couches. She's never home for long, but big changes in her life have her questioning setting down some roots.

The perfect one. The sophisticated one. The wild one.

What saves this story from the cliche, however, is Brown's skillful writing and unique perspective. The typical tale is that the feuding siblings find their commonalities in the end, but Brown's writing both complicates and simplifies that tried and true tale.

In those other examples of this trope, the story is told either through the eyes of one sibling or from a disconnected, third-person point of view. Brown manages to place us inside of the minds of all three siblings individually but also in the mind of the collective whole they learn to become. Take for example, this passage:

We had sent Bean to the store--Rose was helping our father move furniture in the bedroom for our mother's impending confinement, and Cordy was too unreliable to be trusted.

Notice that each sister is mentioned individually--and therefore separate from the "we" who tells the story--but they are also represented collectively within that "we." They are, simultaneously, separate and together.

Brown is amazingly skilled at controlling this unusual narrative voice. The narrative "we" seems to know how the story will end, speaking to us with wisdom and a hint of optimism on things to come. The individual sister's perspectives, however, are dense with the pathos of their individual woes, caught in the moment and full of jealousy and short-sightedness when it comes to their siblings.

In this way we are able to see the sisters in their weakness and their strength at the same time. We know both hints of their futures and glimpses of their pasts. They becomes something more than their individual selves without losing their identities.

Near the end of the book, a secondary character who represents the voice of wisdom says this to one of the sisters:

There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future.

Ultimately, that's what the story is about. These sisters find a new version of their stories, a version that allows them to speak as a united voice without losing the quirks that make them unique. Isn't that the battle we all wage? The chance to stand up as an individual but fall back upon a collective? The ability to both belong and stand apart?

Join in on the BlogHer conversation about The Weird Sisters and share your view of the book.

Disclosure: I received compensation from BlogHer for this review, but the opinions and ideas expressed in this post are fully my own.

Black Baby with Blue Eyes as Advertisement Lead-In

2012-02-08T19:55:00.000-06:00

I've been paying more attention to my Facebook ad suggestions, mainly because I'm convinced that Facebook is spying on me. No, I don't mean spying on my online life (I know it's doing that), but spying on me in the real world. How else do you explain an ad for Liquid Plumber mere hours after I said (out loud, in my hallway, not even in the same room as the computer) that we needed to call a plumber about our stubbornly stopped bathtub drain? I digress.

So, I've been looking at the ads to try to figure out how it determines what to show me, and today I saw this:

After poking around on the internet, I found out the photo came from this collection by Terry Green. The little boy in the advertisement is Laren Galloway. His parents are from New Orleans and had to flee the city during Hurricane Katrina.

Apparently, Laren Galloway became quite an internet sensation after this photo shoot. There are YouTube videos of these pictures, a blog from the photographer called Little Blue Eyed Brother, and follow up posts showing Laren as he aged. There's even a Twitter account with one of the baby pictures. The description of the account says "Laren Galloway is one of the most striking examples of a black person with blue eyes." The account links to yet another blog featuring "updates" about the boy and tweets Bible verses.

In the short amount of time I spent looking at this, I saw posts discussing how the pictures must be fake, references to this being the most beautiful baby in the world, and discussions about genetic "mixing" that must have occurred to allow the child to have blue eyes.

I also found this blog post that suggests negative reactions to Galloway's picture have demonstrated racial bias in both black and white commenters.

I was initially looking into this because I was confused by the lead-in for the advertisement. What does half of a baby's face have to do with looking for financial aid to go to college (which is what the advertisement was trying to convince me to do)? Shouldn't there be a picture of a collegiate building? Some smiling co-eds? A graduation cap? A stack of books? Even a stack of money? What does a close-up of a black baby's blue eye have to do with going to college and getting financial aid?

But once I started looking into the origins of the picture, it became clear that the advertisers were using the picture because so many people were drawn to it. The plethora of comments and attention these pictures have drawn make the picture a lead-in whether it is relevant or not.

And that disturbs me.

It made me think of those interchangeable billboard signs (like at gas stations or fast food places). One of the tactics to get people to look at them is to intentionally reverse one of the letters or numbers. People notice the "flaw" and their eyes are drawn to it.

Is that what they're doing with this child? Capitalizing on his physical appearance? Making a commodity out of an oddity?

I agree that the child is beautiful, but I don't think that's why there are dozens of websites devoted to his face. There are lots of beautiful children. Placing this child's picture in advertisements for products that have no contextual connection to a baby's face suggests an exploitation.

The comments on the YouTube video (which I do NOT suggest you read, as they are--well--comments on a YouTube video), fall into two basic camps:

"Oh my God. He's so beautiful."
"What an abomination to race purity."

Obviously, people who look at this picture and immediately feel the need to defend the "purity" of their "race" have deep-seated issues and racist ideologies.

But what about the people who are going out of their way to point out how beautiful this child is? Isn't that still objectifying him based on purely physical attributes? Isn't that still a race-based judgment (as it is the contrast of blue eyes with dark skin that draws their attention and the factor that is used to promote this child on the blogs and in search engines)?

And I can't help but wonder who's profiting off of these images by selling them to advertisers. Is it the boy's family? The photographer? Someone else?

And what does this obsession say about us as a society? How far away is a fascination with a black child's blue eyes from the disturbing racial histories of the tragic mulatto myth or the Hottentot Venus--other examples of focusing on a race-based portion of someone's identity at the expense of recognizing full humanity?

Can a comment that someone is "beautiful" really just be a veiled way to point out difference?

Hey, Did It Get Easier? I Think It Did!

2012-02-08T08:47:00.000-06:00

Today I was thinking about how much I don't have to think about equally sharing parenting anymore.

I went back to look at a post I wrote this time last year on the topic: Equally Shared Exhaustion. At that point, I had a two month old. I had just gone back to work. My daughter was nursing every two hours. My husband and I were dealing with the way our whole lives had been upended by our new responsibilities, rhythms, and interactions.

I tried really hard to stay positive, but there were times when I honestly wondered if we were cut out for this parenting thing.

It was so important to me, philosophically, for us to equally share parenting responsibilities that I sometimes felt like I was keeping a running tally in my head. Two loads of laundry: me. Two loads of dishes: him. Three pumping sessions: me. Three trips to take the trash out: him. Of course, I wasn't literally keeping track, but when you're exhausted, overwhelmed, and at your wit's end, you are bound to see inequities whether they exist or not.

From DanielJames

Which is why I suddenly found myself thinking "Hey, I don't know what the tally is anymore. Isn't that great?"

At some point, my daughter stopped needing to eat around the clock. Much, much later, she also started sleeping longer than two hours at a time. She became an interactive little toddler, and things got easier.

The change wasn't all in her, though. We changed, too. We fell into new habits. We tried out new methods, discarded what didn't work, kept what did, and developed a system that works.

I'm not naive. I know that things will change over time. The toddler will decide she's not going to sleep anymore (I can already see her plotting this one out). One of us will have to go out of town for work and everything will get thrown into upheaval. The dog will get sick. The car will break down. The dishwasher will stop running.

And this doesn't mean that I'm just a bright little ball of sunshine who loves getting up in the morning and sprinting through a routine in the hopes of keeping it all together.

But the fact that I don't have to think about it so much? The fact that my husband and I just kind of make it work? The fact that I really feel like I have a partner who is going to help me figure it out when things get thrown into disarray?

I can live with that.

A Wife's Job is to Take Care of Kids, Feed her Man Steak, and Shop at Victoria's Secret? This Wife Has a Response.

2012-02-07T20:16:00.000-06:00

So, I log into Facebook today and I'm met with a barrage of sexist Tweets (no, I'm not mixing my social media terminology; these were Tweets auto-posted to Facebook). These Tweets were from an acquaintance--a college friend of my husband's. He's a guy I don't know all that well, but a guy I always thought was nice enough and intelligent. I'm having a hard time meshing that image of him with the person who said this:

Y'all don't want me to share my Thoughts on Marrige; I don't have the time for y'all to be dropping bombs in my mentions!.. but I will say..

For you Slow Asses: Marriage should only be for The Finacially Stable.. the Man should be more stable than the female...Head Of the House!

Plus I'm Old school: My Parents have been together for 30yrs..Moms NEVER paid a Bill, Car Note, Mortgage, Light, Electric...NOTHING

Womans Finacial Responsibilties in a Marriage should be to take care of the kids..feed me the best cut of steaks and buy things from VS

We don't need a Pre-Nup when ur Finacially Invisible for 20yrs... ill pay Child Support but you won't fuck with my Real Estate!!!! Lmao

I made a promise to myself a while back that I would stop being a passive supporter of oppression by letting it slide. I want to believe that this man doesn't recognize the sexism dripping from these words, but I can't see how that could be the case. I wasn't in on the actual Twitter conversation, but it was framed as a debate he was willing to have. If that's the case, my response definitely won't fit in 140 characters, but it's a topic I'm willing to discuss. And here's where I'd begin:

1) That Traditional Model Isn't Always So Pretty-
I would first like to say that I had a personal bristling to these Tweets. This guy says that his parents have been married for 30 years and his mom has never paid a bill. Someone responded with what a "blessing" that was. But look at that last Tweet: "We don't need a Pre-Nup when ur Financially Invisible for 20yrs."

I'm glad that his parents have made their model of marriage work, but that model doesn't always play out so well. Take my own parents, for instance. My parents were married for over 20 years. My dad was the sole financial provider, and he worked incredibly hard at a physically demanding job (ironically, I think it was the same place this guy's dad worked, but that's neither here nor there). My mom stayed home, had three kids, cooked dinner (yes, often steak) every night, and cleaned the house. Their marriage, however, was not a happy one. My dad became increasingly abusive, and when she finally left him, she had nothing to fall back on.

She had no work history, she had no contemporary skills, no advanced training or education, and no work connections. She had three kids and a high school diploma. This guy brags that his mom has never had to pay a light bill. Do you know who paid the light bills in my house? Me. At fifteen and sixteen years old I was working and contributing to the household so that we could pay the bills and keep food on the table. And it didn't always work out. My mom got a job in retail paying just over minimum wage. She still works there a decade later. She doesn't have a retirement plan, and what should be minor financial burdens (like a car breaking down or a leaking roof) have the potential to derail her entire life.

And I'm not trying to blame the victim--many of my dad's actions towards my mom are indefensible--but this system was taxing on him as well. He was constantly under the pressure of providing, and he had very distinct ideas about what providing should look like. Many of my memories of him (he passed away a few years ago) are of him trying to find a way to do something bigger, better, more. I can't imagine what that pressure was like.

2) Even When It Is Pretty, It's More Than That
But even when the traditional model of a male breadwinner and female homemaker works out (and I see nothing inherently wrong with this model if it's what both husband and wife want to do), the wife's role should never be reduced to "tak[ing] care of the kids, feed[ing] me the best cuts of steak, and buy[ing] things from VS."

Traditional women's work has been traditionally undervalued. Tasks like taking care of children and keeping a house are often not seen as the physically taxing or mentally involved work that they are. If the division of labor truly does fall along traditional gender lines in a household, that doesn't mean that the respect for those positions needs to be unequal. If the man is doing the work out of the house and the woman is doing the work in the house, each member is contributing equally to the overall function of that household, and each should be respected (by each other and by society) for those efforts. (The flip side is also true; men who are take care of the home while their wives/partners work outside of it should be equally valued for the work that they do).

This list of things that a wife should do: taking care of kids, feeding her husband steak, and buying Victoria's Secret is also telling. All three deny her agency. Taking care of the kids suggest that her role as mother subsumes her role as individual person. The idea that she needs to feed her husband demonstrates that she is subservient to him. The idea that she needs to buy lingerie from Victoria's Secret demonstrates that her primary concern should be playing the role of sexual plaything for her husband. Nowhere in here does the wife's actions reflect her own wants, needs, and desires. And--yes--she has them.

3) Gender Inequality is Rampant, Don't Contribute to It
Women are overrepresented in certain job sectors and underrepresented in others. According to the DPE Fact Sheet, women made up 74.2% of health care practitioner positions, but only 12.8% of architectural and engineering positions. Women still only make 81 cents for every dollar a man makes, and that gap is even more pronounced in women of color (African American women make 72 cents for every dollar and Hispanic and Latina women make 62 cents per dollar).

And even if this guy thinks that he is championing some kind of value system, he is not reflecting a reality. In almost every state (except Wyoming and Utah), one-third of women with children are the primary breadwinners in their families (either because they are single mothers or because they make more than 50% of their household income). When you couple these statistics with the income inequality, it highlights the problem even more.

Not to mention, demeaning women's positions in marriage as subordinate makes it easier to demean women across the board, and our social standards don't really need any help on this account. Representations in movies, television, magazines, and advertisements continue to show women as sexual objects or in equally demeaning caricatured roles.

4) Strengthening the Presence of One System of Oppression Strengthens All of Them
As scholars like Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberle Crenshaw have pointed out, oppressions don't stay neatly contained. Systems of oppression intersect. Markers such as ability, age, class, gender, race, and sexual orientation place us into positions of oppression at the hands of systems like ableism, ageism, classism, sexism, racism, and homophobia. (For an excellent overview of these issues, see this publication from the Women of Color Policy Network).

That publication also includes these charts:

These charts demonstrate the ways that macro-level discrimination (discrimination present in larger societal structures) and micro-level discrimination (discrimination present in smaller, more individual interactions) operate upon an individual in a position of oppression. While intersectionality addresses the way these systems of oppression play into one another, there are also intersections between these levels of discrimination.

These Tweets are examples of micro-level discrimination. These Tweets alone are not really a threat to women's status in America. But that's not the way the world works. These Tweets are part of a larger cultural landscape, artifacts that operate in tangent with other texts and construct a view of women that is oppressive and damaging. Then that system of oppression operates to the detriment of other oppressed individuals as well. Strengthening one system of oppression strengthens them all. Weakening one system of oppression weakens them all.

I take issue with these "Thoughts on Marriage" on a personal level. I am a happily married woman who works, goes to school, and cares deeply for my husband and my child. But I am writing this response out of frustration on a larger level. Perpetuating the oppression of wives hurts us all, and I won't watch it happen without a response.

Just Toys?

2012-02-04T19:09:00.000-06:00

I write a lot about toys as constructed texts that children often consume and use that to justify us being critical about what toys we share with our children and what messages we send. Sometimes people tell me I'm over thinking things. After all, they say, they're "just toys." This info graphic from Frugal Dad shines some light on what an impact "just toys" can have.

Source: frugaldad.com

Something A Little Happier

2012-02-04T18:55:00.000-06:00

Wow, this week (in real life and on this blog) has been a bit overwhelming. I feel like I've been blogging about and dealing with heavy and emotionally draining topics all week long. So, to lighten the mood, I thought I would point out that it's been unseasonably warm in my neck of the woods, and we've been taking advantage of it.

Her most prized find

Which she wanted to share

Going down the slide and . . .

. . . going up the slide

Okay, these next ones are indoors, so they're not strictly "taking advantage of the weather," but it's so seldom that our cat--who we affectionately refer to as "full of demons"--tolerates much play from the toddler, so I had to document it.

Happy weekend!

Follow-Up to the Birth Debate: Of Homemade Bread and Privilege

2012-02-03T19:04:00.002-06:00

Last week, I posted a look at rising home births in the US and discussed how the fact that the majority of the increase is attributed to white, wealthy, educated women is evidence of a problem. I don't think that it's in and of itself a problem that primarily privileged women are having home births, but I do think that it can point to a problem in the way birth options are discussed. Women with less privilege may not have access to the same resources that make a home birth a realistic option. But--and more importantly to my argument--these statistics may also point to the fact that the conversations surrounding birthing options are being dominated by privileged voices, and I'm concerned about what that means for the birthing experiences of those with less privilege.

Inevitably, Amy Tuteur--a notorious internet presence who appears in the comments of virtually every online conversation about birthing options to demonize any woman who chooses a home birth as ill-informed, dangerous, and selfish--showed up to challenge my view. She left a comment on the post, and then today she referenced my post on her own blog where she claims it as evidence that home birth advocates are suggesting "it is the white woman's task to teach her unfortunate sisters of color how they ought to give birth."

She first paints a gross misconstruction of my main point--which was never that less privileged women should be emulating those with more privilege, in fact, my point was and is that hearing from all women is important to taking the birth debate away from polarized language and into a productive space. But that's not even what frustrates me most. What frustrates me most is that her metaphor to illustrate how misguided I am actually dovetails quite nicely into my actual point.

She said this (both in the comment and on her blog):

Homebirth is like following Martha Stewart. It's delightful to bake your own bread when you know that you don't HAVE to bake your own bread if you don't feel like it. Similarly, it seems delightful to privileged white women to avoid the hospital when they know that they don't HAVE to avoid the hospital if they change their mind. For other women, who don't have routine access to high quality medical care, who have medical risk factors, whose home is not a domestic paradise, who have enough unmedicated pain in their own lives that setting themselves the "goal" of enduring more pain without medication is unfathomable, homebirth is an affectation they have no interest in emulating.

And--I'm as surprised by this as you are--I actually agree with some of that. Home birth (as it is currently discussed and rhetorically constructed in American culture) is a lot like following Martha Stewart. That's because home birth (and this was my entire point to begin with) has become (mostly) a--well--privilege for privileged women.

From Tim Patterson

Let's look at this bread metaphor a little more closely.

I believe that many people find pleasure in the aesthetic of bread making. The time that it takes to make the bread, the aroma of it baking, the physical act of putting together the ingredients are all part of that appeal. To me, this has some parallels with the home birth advocacy that focuses on the beauty of labor. Many women say that going through the labor process without medication or interventions is an amazingly spiritual and empowering experience.

But those are not the only reasons people bake their own bread. People also bake their own bread out of concerns for their health. As this post points out, a lot of packaged bread contains ingredients that have either been deemed unhealthy or are questionable. And with reports coming out that sugar is toxic and some researchers are recommending it be regulated like tobacco and alcohol, those questionable ingredients are important.

So some people make the decision to bake their own bread because they think it's the healthiest choice for themselves and their families. Some women make the decision to have a home birth because they feel that it is the best choice for their health.

When we dismiss baking homemade bread--as Amy Tuteur does--as a "delight" indulged in by privileged women with nothing better to do, we ignore the reasons that those women choose to indulge in that delight. In short, we dichotomize that argument as well. This, of course, does not just extend to bread, but to healthy food alternatives in general.

And when we trivialize those decisions, we also trivialize those reasons, dismissing that the benefits derived from a such a decision should be options for everyone.

Which takes me back to my original post. I never said that women with less privilege should seek out home births. I said that "when we turn the debate into HOME="NATURAL" HOSPITAL=MEDICATED and then focus all our energy on deciding who is "right" in that debate, we lose sight of (in my opinion) the real goal: getting ALL women, regardless of their socioeconomic status and regardless of where they give birth, autonomy over their bodies, access to information, and the right to birth without fear and coercion."

So if we decide that the concerns that would motivate someone to bake homemade bread are just privileged trivialities, it becomes easier to ignore calls for changes in our food policy that would make healthier food available to everyone, and I don't just mean by telling people to emulate those baking bread at home. I mean by regulating ingredients used in packaged food, by having clearer labeling policies, and by making healthier packaged options more affordable.

In the same way, dismissing home birth as a fantastical "affectation" that only the ridiculous and privileged would choose ignores the reasons that those women are making those choices in the first place: to avoid invasive and often unnecessary interventions, to maintain agency during their births, to have a more private experience, etc. When we do that, we make it less likely that we will enact policies that would allow more autonomy and fewer interventions in hospital births.

And that hurts all of us. And that was my point.

Alabama Sen. McGill Says Paying Teachers Leads to Poor Education

2012-02-03T18:37:00.000-06:00

You really need to go read this entire article from Dekalb County Times Journal. No, really. Go read it. I can't possibly do the absurdity justice, and you won't believe me if you don't see it for yourself.

Alright, are you back? For those of you who are pressed for time and didn't go check out that gem, let me give you a quick highlight. Alabama Senator Shadrack McGill had the following things to say about teacher's pay:

"To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK? And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

If you don't keep that in balance, you're going to attract people who are not called, who don't need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance."

There's plenty to criticize just in that alone, but to paint a full picture, you need to understand McGill's views on lawmakers salaries, which he voted to raise from $30,710 to $49,500/year:

"That played into the corruption, guys, big time,". . .

McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.
"He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation. ... Teachers need to make the money that they need to make.

It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach."

So, to recap, McGill thinks that legislators need to be paid more because otherwise they will give into the temptation of taking bribes. (Because someone making $30,000/year has no shield against bribes, but someone making $49,500 is completely impervious, clearly). At the same time, he thinks that teachers should not be given pay raises because an attractive salary will draw money-hungry individuals to the profession like moths to the flame, leaving us with completely incompetent teachers.

Teachers, he says, are born to teach, gifted by God to do their calling. They will heed this call no matter what you pay them.

You know what? In some cases, he's right. Some teachers will teach no matter what you pay them because they really do love their jobs that much, they really do feel driven to teach.

That's why you get reports like this one showing that up to 40% of the teachers in Clark County Nevada have to moonlight at other jobs to make ends meet. Consider the sacrifices that this teacher is making so that she can follow her "calling":

Even with a master's degree and a couple of years of teaching experience Ann Marie still makes less than Clark County's median income of a little more than $44,000 a year.
She says, "I could actually go into the corporate world with a masters and make quadruple the money."

But she won't because she loves these smiling faces too much. "I love working with kids. I really like the feeling it gives me at the end of the day and that's basically why I'm here."
So she'll work 18 hours days with three jobs and get by with little sleep.

Consider some of the findings from the Eggers and Calegari's NY Times Op-Ed in April 2011:

"In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible."
"Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet."
"For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift at Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again."

Eggers and Calegari also shed some light on just how greedy those people who McGill knows would pounce on teaching jobs just to make an easy buck really are:

"McKinsey polled 900 top-tier American college students and found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a minimum of $150,000. Could we do this? If we’re committed to “winning the future,” we should."

So, McGill is sometimes right. Sometimes teachers are so called to their professions that they go to extraordinary lengths to make their salaries stretch so they can continue to do it. Sometimes teachers depend on a spouse's salary to get by. Sometimes teachers juggle extremely tight budgets and make personal sacrifices in their purchases. But McGill isn't always right, sometimes teachers can't afford to follow their calling, and they quit.

Take this CNN interview with Linda Deregnacourt who left a very successful 13-year teaching career because she couldn't afford to keep doing it. Or the numerous successful college graduates--many strapped with rising loan debt--that look at the salaries of teaching and opt out from the beginning.

In McGill's world, these people are either turning their back on their callings--and for what? a roof over their heads and food on their tables? How selfish!--or they were never meant to teach to begin with. A true teacher wouldn't care about the sacrifices. A true teacher would find a way.

Like most other professions, teaching takes a combination of talent, training, and learned experience. I will never understand why so many people look at this position as if it should be the role of some dedicated public servant who asks for nothing in return. We don't ask that of other professions. We don't tell lawyers or doctors (who also serve the public) that they should just do the work and be glad that they can follow their passions. McGill's comments are extreme, for sure, but the sentiments are echoed throughout our culture, directly and indirectly, through words and the inadequate paychecks millions of teachers receive.

Teachers do hard work--McGill goes so far as to say they are "raising" our children for eight hours a day. Don't they deserve to get paid for it?

The Revolution Will Be . . . Polite?

2012-02-02T11:54:00.000-06:00

As I've written about before, one of my research interests (and premise behind my other blog, See Jane Juggling) is the intersection between rhetoric and ethical consumption, particularly when it comes to children's media.

What interests me most about ethical consumption is that it is necessarily collective. A single person's decision to consume ethically (by not buying eggs from caged chickens, for instance) doesn't have much of an impact. In fact, when it comes to practical alternatives, a single person making a decision is likely unsustainable. If I choose to only buy eggs from a free-range farm, but no one else makes that decision, the farm will not turn a profit and will ultimately close. My ability to make that decision is dependent upon other people making the same decision. While I could abstain from eggs all together (which would be the only option if there were not sustainable alternatives), many people are unwilling to make that level of sacrifice, cutting what could be a large-scale pushback against caged chicken farms into a much smaller protest--a protest so small that many large farms feel no pressure to pay attention to it.

From key lime pie yumyum

This is where the rhetoric comes in. See, if I truly think that my ethical purchasing decision is important, I have to not only make that decision for myself, but work to get other people to make the same decision. Otherwise, I am limiting my own alternative options and making very little impact on the cultural problem as I see it.

A recent call to action gives us a great platform to see this play out.

SPARK is a "girl-fueled activist movement to demand an end to the sexualization of women and girls in media." They form coalitions with like-minded community organizations, promote petitions and other activist responses, and disseminate news relevant to their cause.

They have recently been doing a lot of work related to the LEGO Friends controversy and--by extension--the de-segregation of gendered toys.

This problem is one that is particularly interesting as far as rhetoric and ethical consumption goes. Many parents--myself among them--feel that it is not enough to simply not buy gendered toys for our own children. Our children are influenced by our culture, and our culture is largely driven by the products and "texts" (of various types) that we consume. When little girls grow up with films, toys, books, etc. that promote a narrow view of girlhood consisting solely of frilly, pink, appearance-centered themes, that influences culture. When little boys are conditioned through media to think that normal behavior for them is centered on strength, physicality, and aggression, it influences culture. Regardless of how we try to combat that in our own homes, our children are part of the cultural landscape.

Going back to the egg example above, people could choose to not consume any eggs if there were no cage-free alternatives. But how do you stop consuming media when there are no acceptable alternatives? Even if you made all of your own toys, didn't allow any electronic media, and carefully screened books for positive messages, your children would be exposed to this cultural reality through advertisements (billboards, magazine ads, radio ads) and interaction with their peers. There is no way--nor should it be the goal to--keep children away from all cultural influences. So, if we see a problem with the culture, we have to think big.

From Josh Puetz

This is where the rhetoric comes in, and it is a very tricky, slippery thing to navigate. In order to make broad, impacting changes to culture, collective buy-in is a must. It's a multi-step process. First, people have to be convinced that your point of view is valid. We spend a lot of time on this step when we teach students of rhetoric (in public speaking or composition classrooms, for example). We talk to them about ethos, pathos, and logos and how to convince the audience that their view is accurate. We talk to them about providing support and credible sources. But this is not the end of their responsibility as rhetoricians.

As Karlyn Kohrs Campbell explains in the book The Rhetorical Act, "Even when beliefs are formulated, action will not follow unless that belief is reinforced, rendered salient, and then channeled so that actions seems appropriate, possible, and necessary" (12).

So, the effective rhetorician must 1) convince the audience that there is a problem, 2) reinforce the problem enough that the audience accepts action must be taken 3) suggest an action that is "appropriate, possible, and necessary" 4) convince the audience to take that action.

Judging from many of the comments about the LEGO controversy (such as on this Yahoo article), I'd say we still have a way to go on steps 1 and 2. Many people don't see gender segregation in children's media as a problem at all, and--even when they are convinced--many say that this problem is not important enough to champion.

That's why I'm interested to see how SPARK's latest project: the Toy Aisle Action Project plays out. The goal of the project is to target shoppers directly (as opposed to trying to enact change through the toy manufacturers, who aren't likely to be persuaded by a small--if vocal--minority).

SPARK's rhetorical call is actually two-fold. It has a small, dedicated group of people who know that gender segregation of children's media is a problem, so they've sectioned off a sub-problem: Not enough people know this is a problem. They have then generated a call to action that is very specific to that sub-problem:

We are SPARKing this movement armed with Post-It notes and cameras in the blue and pink aisles. (Seriously, some stores have actually have colored their toy aisles pink and blue! When will it end?) With your Post-Its, make a note using slogans like “Where My Girls At?” in the blue aisle, “Your Girl Needs Joe, too” on a GI Joe, “This Is An Option For Everybody” and “What About Dads?” on the baby dolls.

Use statistics, too. Here are some we found: women make up only 13% of architects (I wonder why LEGO?), 14% of active US military (Where is G.I. Jane?), and 4% of executive chefs — so, why are all the kitchen gadgets pink when so many chefs are men?

Be creative! Place Post-It notes with stats and slogans on the shelves and toys, snap a picture, and then post it on our SPARK Summit Facebook page. Please do not do any damage or toy rearranging. Your pictures will be worth a thousand words. Perhaps these notes will also make parents, grandparents, shoppers and employees question why there are blue and pink aisles in the first place. Let’s make ourselves heard. We can’t wait to see your pictures!

By harnessing the people they have convinced, they aim to increase the scope of their audience to people who do not yet think this is a problem.

I am further interested in the steps taken to ensure that this campaign remains polite. On their Facebook page, SPARK encourages people to remove their Post-It notes after they take a picture. They say:

lots of us at SPARK have worked retail (and some of us probably will again) so we're trying to make this project as retail worker friendly as possible. We're sure that as this action spreads lots of people will leave the post-its on, but we're trying to encourage people not to make extra work for already overworked and underpaid folks, many of whom are working mothers.

And I don't doubt the genuineness of that claim, but it is also a rhetorical move. The goal is to convince people that there is an issue, not to alienate them further by making them feel guilty the whole time they're in the toy aisle or frustrate retail workers (who are also potential audience members) into ignoring the cause.

Whether or not you agree with the premise behind this particular activist move (though you can tell me about your views on that, too), what do you think of this method? Is this effective? Is being polite and conscientious the best way to go, or do people only get heard when they cause an uproar?

On Punctuality and PhDs

2012-01-31T11:12:00.001-06:00

My mornings are hectic. Part of this is because I juggle responsibilities as a student, wife, mother, and employee, but a lot of it is just because I'm not a particularly organized person and I hate mornings. Getting out of the house is a delicate balance. I have to leave the house early enough to get to work on time and late enough to avoid getting my daughter to daycare too early (leaving me a 15 minute window between daycare drop off and the start of work). Sometimes my husband does drop-offs so I don't have to worry about it. By navigating the complexities of this balance with various degrees of success, I've learned something.

If I leave my house at 7:35, I will get my daughter to daycare on time and I will get to work on time.
If I leave my house at 7:40 (a mere 5 minute difference), it's anyone's guess. I may arrive at both places on time, or I may arrive 5-10 minutes late to work (in which case I just make up the time over lunch or at the end of the day).
If I leave the house at 7:45 (10 minutes late), I will arrive to work 5-10 minutes late.
If I leave the house at 7:55 (20 minutes late), I will arrive to work 5-10 minutes late.

Do you see what time does there? It cheats.

It's not actually time. It's traffic. But still. That's a lot of calculating so early in the morning.

From Wyscan

I'm telling you this not-particularly-interesting story to illustrate a point. See, if I leave the house at 7:35, I'm golden. But this is also (for some unknown reason) nearly impossible. When it happens, I am astonished, and pretty much attribute it to magic. Most mornings, I am left with a decision. When I miss the 7:35 mark, I can either rush, rush, rush to try to meet the 7:40 mark (where I might still be on time) or I can accept that I'm likely going to be late and let it slide. If I do that, it doesn't matter if I leave at 7:45 or 7:55 because the impact is the same. I can spend those ten minutes getting stuff together around the house or I can spend them sitting in traffic. I'll still get to work 5-10 minutes late.

Those ten minutes can be glorious. I load the dishwasher, put in laundry, or read a quick book with my daughter. I double check my gym bag and never forget socks on those days. Those ten minutes can be amazing.

This makes me think about my doctoral program.

See, I have always been a punctual person. I hate getting to work 5 minutes late. When I tell friends I'll meet them for dinner at 7:00, I will be there at 6:50 and then start to worry that I'm at the wrong place when I don't see them at 6:59. (I know, I know--they're not showing up until 7:10 and that's perfectly normal. Quit judging me.)

This desire for punctuality carried into my academic pursuits. I was 17 when I graduated high school and itching to enroll in college. I did, and I almost graduated in December because I took the maximum number of credits basically every semester (an advisor talked me out of it because she said it was better to apply to graduate school in the fall). Then, I applied for MA/PhD programs and envisioned myself whisking through the next five years, getting my PhD at 27 and driving off into the proverbial sunset.

I turn 27 this year. I will not be getting a PhD.

See, what actually happened is that I flew through my MA degree on time, and then I panicked about my life. What was I doing? What was I going to do? What did I want to do? These are still questions I examine often--maybe too often.

I decided (with great trepidation) that I would stop after my Master's and try to piece together a living until I figured out if a PhD was really for me.

Then, something amazing happened. A friend told me about a position at the university and she thought I should apply. I did, and I got it, and I loved it. But the position put me in another quandary. One of the benefits of working at the university was tuition remission. I could continue working on my PhD--for free.

All of that hand-wringing and agony over decided to stop at the Master's was wasted. I had convinced myself I had arrived at the right conclusion, but I threw it aside without a second glance and enrolled in part-time coursework.

I now take one class a semester. After this semester, I have one class in my field and one class to fulfill a language requirement. Then I have to take exams, write a dissertation, and defend. I'm still working full-time and now I'm also the mother of a toddler.

I feel like I gave up on trying to get to work on time and now have those ten amazing minutes to get things in order. Because I slowed down from a break-neck pace, I found time to actually analyze what it is I want to study, what it is I should be doing--for me. If I had tried to continue my PhD as a full-time student, I wouldn't have made it. I wasn't sure enough about myself as a scholar or where my passions truly were. It was only by slowing down and taking time to put things in order that I found these things.

I'm not suggesting that everyone quit working on their degrees and slow down their progress. After all, leaving the house at 7:35 and getting to work on time is still my favored option. I'm just saying that a setback can have its perks, and I'm glad I was running late that day.

Rape is Not That Hard to Define

2012-01-30T20:07:00.000-06:00

My heart is heavy today.

Someone close to me, someone I love, was violated. I call it rape. Other people do not, and their refusal to name it for what it is frustrates me. In fact, it angers me.

Here--with permission--is the story:

A woman enters a new relationship with a man that she likes, a lot. They hang out, and talk, and laugh, and get to know one another. They have sex. They have fun and enjoy each other's company. The woman tells the man that they can only have sex if they use condoms. She is on birth control, but she is being smart. The man tries to get her to stop using condoms, but she insists that they are a necessity. He complains, but concedes. Then, sometimes, he does not concede. Sometimes, he takes the condom off after sex has begun. When she tells him no, not like this, he is charming and reassuring. "It will be fine." She is frustrated and tired of arguing. She does not continue to fight.

Weeks later. She gets sick. Her fever is high enough to cause hallucinations. She thinks it is the flu. She takes ibuprofen and tries to sleep. She gets worse. Finally, with a fever over 104 degrees, she heads to the emergency room. There she is given antibiotics and a diagnosis: STDs, potentially incurable ones. Hopefully not life-threatening ones.

She confronts the man, and he immediately apologizes. He does not deflect, he does not get defensive. He apologizes and says he didn't know. He says he loves her. He says he's sorry. So, so, sorry.

But is he apologizing for rape? Because that's what he did. He raped her. She said no, and he kept going.

Some people have already started shaming her. Some people have told her she "put herself in this situation." These are people who are supposed to care about, love her. Other people feel sorry for her, but do not call this crime what it is. It is "unfortunate." Yes, perhaps. But it is also rape.

It doesn't matter if she said yes in the first place; that "yes" had conditions that were no longer met when he took off the condom. That "yes" was void.

And it wouldn't matter if she said "yes" and then decided "no." When one person says no, it is the other person's responsibility to stop.

She does not deserve to be shamed over wanting to have a healthy, adult, sexual relationship. That is her right. She has the right to want pleasure. She has the right to want love. She has the right to have sex.

She also has the right to say no, and that right was violated.

I am so, so angry at the man who did this. I am also angry at those who refuse to acknowledge it.

We live in a culture that excuses and sometimes (like in the video below) glorifies rape and sexual predation.

People say that it's too difficult to call this type of situation "rape" because it's too hard to determine consent. Too hard? As blue milk excellently explains, it doesn't have to be difficult at all, and it can be damn sexy:

I don’t know why the idea has persisted that asking for consent is necessarily a clinical business – what is stilted about – more? do you want to? do you like? Because “mood-killer”? Are you kidding me? That moment when they close the space between you both and ask you to put your cards on the table – is this on or not, can I do this with you – is one of the most heart-flippingly exciting moments in all of existence. Eat those moments up because they are the episodes of your life that you will daydream about when you’re ninety years old.

Do you know what's not sexy? Harboring a potentially lifelong disease because someone could not take "no" for an answer. That? That is rape.

I Finally Watched The Help

2012-01-29T01:01:00.000-06:00

I have a confession. I was scared to watch The Help.

But I wasn't scared to read about The Help, so that's what I did. I read articles about issues that tarnish the book and the problem of white authors writing about black characters. I read about Ablene Cooper's lawsuit claiming that the book was based on her life and its subsequent dismissal for exceeding the statute of limitations. I read reviews from white readers who weren't sure how they should feel about the book and meta-criticism of the film's critics. I saw that the Association of Black Women Historians denounced the film as an extreme distortion of reality. I saw the claims that the film was just another in a long line of feel-good films aimed at white liberals, best summed up by this parody poster:

Source

Then I saw that the film was nominated for four Academy Awards, and I decided it was time to swallow my fear and watch the thing.

I'm a pretty critical person (as my previous posts may have indicated) and I get very frustrated by many of the Hollywood depictions of racial controversy (you don't want to get me started on Precious or The Blind Side, for instance). I was actually pretty sure I wouldn't like this movie, but there was one thing in my mind as it started to play.

We'd been talking about the film in one of my graduate rhetoric classes, and one of my classmates--a very intelligent woman whose ideas I respect--said (paraphrasing) "I went into this movie planning to be critical, but I got so caught up in the story that I don't think I was."

Maybe that's what happened to me, but I was taking notes, so I have to have been at least a little critical. Still, if you tally up all the pro and con checkmarks, I come out liking the movie. I can't completely articulate everything I think about it, but here's some thoughts. I'd love (really, love) to hear what you think of it and why. I probably spent way too much time thinking about this before I watched it, and I realize that liking the story might be blinding me to some issues that I haven't fully thought through. Let me know what you think.

Oh, and for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to focus primarily on the "text" of the film itself. I'm not saying that Ms. Cooper's lawsuit and the conversation over who has the authorial right to tell these stories isn't important, but I want to focus on the film as cultural commentary and as story.

Pros

Facing privilege- One of the problems I had with The Blind Side was that it followed such a narrative of some compassionate white person lifting some poor black person out of the depths of his despair through sheer kindness and selflessness. I was expecting to see a version of this story in The Help, and it seems like some people feel that's what it did. I was pleasantly surprised by the nuance of this narrative, however. Skeeter (the aspiring journalist who collects the maids stories) is not--in my view--the heroine of the film. In fact, I don't think she's even that important of a character. She is a vehicle, and her role is that of a tool that's used to bridge a gap in perspectives. Yes, that bridge is necessary because of horrendous acts of racism, but her role as bridge is not in and of itself racist. Furthermore, her characterization didn't suggest to me that she saw herself as savior. In fact, when she suggested that she couldn't leave the maids to take a job in New York, they scoffed at her and told her to leave, making it clear that this was never her story or her life. Finally, Skeeter is only able to become the vehicle for this story by facing her own privilege--and her own racism. She recognizes the role that she's played in these women's lives by growing up in this town. She is often a passive participant in conversations with the other women of the town that demean and abuse the maids. Throughout the story, she discovers flaws in herself as a representative of her culture. That's work that privileged people need to--and often don't or can't--do. I was glad to see it depicted on screen.

Acting Performance- Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis earned their Oscar nominations. Their work was compelling and brought the story to life. They are clearly talented actors, and their roles were complex enough to demonstrate those qualities. Even the more static roles (such as the women of the town, which were sometimes frustrating in their one-dimensional portrayals as out-of-touch and spoiled rich girls), were cast with attention to talent in mind.

Themes of Isolation and Mobility- Through all that reading, I was under the impression that this would be a simple and entirely pathos-driven account of how one young white woman rallied together a group of black maids and allowed them a path to their dignity (a story I was not looking forward to seeing play out). But that's not what I saw. As I mentioned above, I didn't see Skeeter as a path or even a very active agent in the story telling. The film opens on, closes on, and is narrated by Aibileen. It is her story, and it is not a simple one. It is a story of isolation and the desire for mobility on all fronts. From the maids' accounts of gross racial injustices that they face every day to Skeeter's awkward attempts to remain close to high school friends she has clearly grown beyond to Celia Foote's heartbreaking desires to be part of the town's social scene, we see a series of women looking at life through a barrier. While, yes, the Hollywood ending might wrap that up a little too neatly, it is not the simplistic portrayal I had been groomed to expect.

Problems

Portrayal of black men- The portrayal of black men was simply abysmal. They were nearly entirely absent from the film, and when they did appear it was often as violent, angry caricatures. Though the film is very female-centric, we get characterization and sympathetic views of some of the white men, but none of the black men. Minny's abusive husband, for instance, is only represented through his shouting and the objects he throws at his wife from invisible hands.

The dialect- As the Association of Black Women Historians point out the dialogue in the film is not representative of real speech patterns and it helps promote a stereotypical depiction.

The promotion of the film- I saved this for last because it is the one that frustrates me most. Watch this trailer for the film.

Who looks like the star of that film? To me, the clear protagonist of the trailer is Skeeter. Her story of standing up to her town to write this book looks like the central focus. The maids look like pawns falling into place to help her with her story. That's not how the film unraveled at all. As I mentioned above, the story (of the film) is clearly Aibileen's and the stories of the maids are clearly their own. When they tell their stories to Skeeter, their posture, their tone of voice, and their determination make it clear that they are speaking on their own behalf's, not to help Skeeter promote her dream of journalism. Skeeter may be providing them an outlet, but--again--she's just the vehicle for a desire that is fully theirs, fully owned.

So why was the film promoted so differently? Was it because the film industry thought that selling a white woman rescuing a group of down-trodden stereotypical black maids would go down smoothly?

This is related to one other concern. As much as I liked this movie, I do wonder why this is the version of the story that gets all of the attention. As others have pointed out, there are plenty of black women writing their own stories, but they're not getting this level of attention or Oscar nominations. While I think that it is perfectly valid for a white woman to write through her own perspective on race issues (in fact, I think it's important that she does), I also think it's problematic that those are the only stories that get circulated and promoted. The Help was set amongst the violent backdrop of the 1960's and Skeeter acted as a bridge to get a story that couldn't be told to the dominant society in other ways--why do we still need a bridge to hear this story today?

Home Births vs. Hospital Births: Who Gets Lost in Dichotomizing Rhetoric

2012-01-27T23:02:00.001-06:00

Several news outlets--including CNN, NPR, and TIME--are reporting on the recent rise in home births in the U.S. And they've got something significant to report: home births are up nearly 30% since 2004.

These findings, of course, have fueled the ongoing divide between home and hospital births, which (almost always, in my experience) quickly falls into a debate between medicated and non-medicated births.

These divides make some sense. Obviously, many of the medical options that come standard in a hospital (like pain medication) aren't going to be available during a home birth.

From bettina n

Home birth advocates stress the importance of a woman's autonomy during the birthing experience and criticize the medicalized view of birth in the U.S. as limiting and restrictive to women. My own birth experience (non-medicated in a hospital), while ultimately positive (I got a healthy baby girl, and I didn't have meds), was frustrating because of the limits that were placed on me and the way I was treated as if control over my body wasn't mine to take.

Hospital birth advocates claim that the risks of home births are too high, and that women who wish to birth at home are selfishly putting their own unrealistic expectations before the safety of their children.

Both of these views are reflected in this quote from the TIME article:

A study published in 2010 in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology found that planned home births involved less medical intervention — fewer epidurals, episiotomies and infections and less emphasis on electronic fetal heart rate monitoring — but they were associated with three times the number of infant deaths. “Keep in mind that the absolute risk is still incredibly low,” says Macones. “But obstetrics is a risky business sometimes.”

These results have been disputed, with some saying there were design flaws in the study's meta-analysis approach. Studies have also shown that increased risks disappear for low-risk, second (or more) pregnancies.

While there is plenty to unpack from this argument, I want to focus on the way that these studies and arguments get dichotomized and how that dichotomization hurts women who may not have some of the privileges of those driving the discussion.

Some recent posts on Feministing featured famed midwife Ina May Gaskin. The comments on these posts demonstrated the way that the home birth/hospital birth debate can become ugly in a hurry--and this is among a community of women who self-identify as feminists (and thus pro-woman). Even though many of these comments were respectful and well-stated, they still display the dichotomy in progress. Many of the women on this thread expressed that the home birth movement made them and their ideals feel attacked:

"I do have a problem with some of the home-birth movement’s sense of ideological purity, which sometimes goes so far as to shame women who choose to give birth in hospitals and who choose to have modern pain mitigation." -L. K. Lowe

"Can we please not confound feminism with the naturalistic fallacy? Just because birth is “natural” doesn’t mean it’s safe or de facto good. Kidney stones are natural, I don’t see people feeling they are somehow morally superior for passing those at home without medication or medical supervision." -Petra

I don't want to belittle L. K. Lowe's point that women feel judged for having a hospital birth--in fact, her point is kind of my point, too. However, women also feel judged for having home births. Take a look at this blog post that belittles women's attempts to have control in their births:

Home birth as a way to find a loving supportive environment and fight the enslavement of the patriarchy is absolute, utter nonsense. It’s one of the only medical scenarios I can think of where women place health and welfare in jeopardy in order to feel “in control” and avoid intervention.

And, of course, there's Amy Tuteur whose entire raison d'être is to demonize women who choose births outside of hospitals, demonstrated most clearly on her blog, but also--inevitably--in the comments of nearly every single major article on the subject (including the Feministing ones).

I fully support a woman's decision to have a home birth. I was very frustrated by my hospital experience and felt that I was not respected or treated with compassion. I hated the way the medical community made me doubt my own body, and I hated how much I had to fight just to give birth to my child. I completely sympathize with someone who doesn't want to have that battle and sees avoiding the battleground as the easiest way to do it. I also completely respect people who simply think that their homes are the best environment for birth. I think that women should be allowed to make sound judgments about their own birthing experiences, weigh any risks for themselves, and be informed advocates for their actions. However, I think that the way this conversation gets framed is damaging all of us, and some of us more than others.

When we turn birth experiences into an either-or dichotomy, we miss the opportunity to join our voices and advocate for changes in medical policies and research. That hurts all of us, but it especially hurts women who may lack the socio-economic privileges that the women at the forefront of these arguments are granted.

Looking at the planned home birth statistics, it is clear that most of that 30% increase can be attributed to a narrow demographic: educated, well-off, older, white women.

The NPR article explains that "The increase in home births isn't occurring among all women. The trend appears to be being driven primarily by older white women, according to the report. Home births increased 36 percent among white women between 2004 and 2009."

Other statistics back up this trend. [Edit: I re-worded this section for clarity and added the comparative percentages for hospital births] One study looked at home births (link requires subscription access) across 19 states in 2006. The study aimed to compare the demographics of planned home births, unplanned home births, and hospital births.

90.1% of planned home births were to white women, compared to 5.6% for Hispanic women and 2.2% for African American women (by comparison, the percentages for hospital births were 49.7% white, 32.2% Hispanic, and 11.9% African American)
91.7% of planned home births were to married women (compared to 61% of women birthing in hospitals)
54.9% of planned home births were to women with 13+ years of education (compared to 48.8% of women birthing in hospitals)

It's important to also understand that many of the risks associated with home births are particularly true for unplanned home births. The same study has the following statistics on these kind of births:

For unplanned home births 44.5% of the mothers were white, 25.4% were Hispanic, and 24.1% were African American (note that women of color have disproportionately high unplanned home births compared to the percentages for planned home births and hospital births)
Only 36.2% of unplanned home births occurred in women with 13+ years of education
Only 46.2% of unplanned home births occurred in married women

A similar profile of births in Utah (a state not recorded in the previous study) had the following results about planned home births [Edit: I also added the comparative stats for all births to this section]:

90.9% of planned home births were to married women (83.3% of women were married in all births recorded)
41.8% of planned home births were to women with post-high school education (compared to 37.9% of all births recorded) and 40.9% were to high school graduates (compared to 45.2% of all births recorded) (so about the same percentage of 13+ year education across the board in Utah)

What do these results tell us? They tell us that the women who are likely to choose home birth are more likely to be highly educated, married, and white. In other words, the women who choose home birth are the ones who benefit the most from privilege in our society. To me, this means that these are the women who have the greatest access to information and the greatest ability to go against societal standards for birth through informed self-advocacy. They are also the ones who are likely able to afford the services of a midwife or doula if their insurance doesn't cover it (and they're the ones more likely to have insurance to begin with).

But what about women who do not have these privileges. What about women of color? What about women without a high school degree? What about women who are not married and may not enjoy the benefits of a two-income household? What about women who never even know that they have options on how they give birth?

To be clear, I'm not trying to say that women of color or unmarried women are incompetent and incapable of getting information about their birthing options, as I know many are. I'm just pointing out that privilege makes a difference, and when the privileged people in society (as they so often are) are the ones in charge of the narrative, those who don't benefit from privilege often suffer.

In this case, they suffer because the dichotomy keeps us from enacting real policy changes in our birthing culture. Maybe many women don't feel comfortable with a home birth for whatever reason (it's outside of their cultural norms, they can't afford a doula, they don't have a home suitable for birthing, they don't have a supportive partner to help with the birth and recovery, they prefer a hospital out of safety concerns, etc.) These women still deserve to have options and autonomy in their birthing choices, and when we turn the debate into HOME="NATURAL" HOSPITAL=MEDICATED and then focus all our energy on deciding who is "right" in that debate, we lose sight of (in my opinion) the real goal: getting ALL women, regardless of their socioeconomic status and regardless of where they give birth, autonomy over their bodies, access to information, and the right to birth without fear and coercion.

Something Oddly Familiar: What to Expect When You're Expecting Film Promos

2012-01-26T17:21:00.000-06:00

I know, I know, "never judge a book by its cover." But what about judging movies by their posters?

I'm talking about the star-studded cast for the upcoming What to Expect When You're Expecting. Five new promo posters for the film have been released, and they are . . . interesting.

Images from ivillage

Body Portrayal

First, there's the obvious issue of unrealistic body image. Many of these women are sporting late third-trimester baby bumps, and yet they are all fit, thin, and radiant. This is an unrealistic depiction of pregnancy, and thin celebs may be contributing to the problem of "pregorexia," the dangerous restriction of calories during pregnancy by a mother-to-be who is desperate to avoid weight gain. To be fair, since these celebrities are already much thinner and fitter than the general population, this is really just an extension of the well-documented narrow portrayal of body type (and the damaging effects) in the media. Still, it's worth pointing out that these posters further that narrow portrayal of women's bodies and that the effect it can have on viewers may be exacerbated by the fact that women are already sensitive about pregnancy weight gain.

For the record, I'm not saying that we shouldn't show any thin women on the screen. I don't want to set up a dichotomy that suggests "real women" are curvy and thus thin women are somehow "fake." (See more from Sociological Images on how this kind of thinking damages all of us). But look at those posters again. The range of body type displayed is limited from thin to very-thin. I'm just asking for a more realistic representation.

Stereotyping

I also take issues with the combination of tag lines and clothing for each of these women, which seems to be setting them up to play very narrowly defined characters. From top to bottom:

The Edgy One- Dressed in black with punk-inspired bracelets, Anna Kendrick's character declares "You pee on a stick. It's pretty idiot proof." I look for her character to be the one who's trying to stay cool and disconnected. She'll likely be rolling her eyes at those pregnant ladies going into a panic. Then she'll have some moment of crisis that makes her realize how real this all is. You know the drill.
The Earth Mama- Jennifer Lopez's character is dressed in an earth-toned sundress with her hair pulled back in a casual bun. She has on natural-looking bracelets and is wearing subtle make-up. She's our Earth Mama, and that fits with tagline of "I can't wait to meet my baby." Her plot line revolves around adoption, and I suspect that her character will be a very relatable and sympathetic one that the audience roots for.
The Overwhelmed Housewife- Elizabeth Banks' character is shown cursing ("I'm calling bull$#!%. Pregnancy sucks.") yet she's also wearing traditional pearls and a girly-pink fitted dress with floral lace. Her hair and make-up are pronounced and professional. She is likely going to portray an All-American woman who has been able to handle it all with grace and thought dealing with pregnancy would just be a matter of doing it the "right" way. She'll get her comeuppance when she realizes that pregnancy's not all that it's cracked up to be. I suspect that her character will start out annoying and become more sympathetic when she reaches her breaking point.
The Sexy One- Long, flowing blond locks, a black dress over a feminine-but-not-girly green camisole, delicate gold jewelry, and a come-hither stare: Brooklynn Decker's character is sexy. Just in case all of that didn't make it clear enough, her tagline says "I just have all this extra energy. Plus I'm crazy horny." She's Sex and the City's Samantha--but pregnant.
The Sporty One- Cameron Diaz's character has her hair pulled back in a pony tail. She's wearing athletic gear and very natural makeup. Her arms are toned. Her tagline says "If I knew I'd have a rack like this, I would have gotten knocked up years ago" which demonstrates that even a fitness-focused woman should ultimately be concerned with her physical (sexual) appeal.

Wait. I've seen this somewhere before. Like, maybe in 1997. I really, really, really wanna zigga-zig-what?

It's the pregnant Spice Girls!

Anna Kendrick is Scary Spice with her edgy, not-going-to-conform attitude, Jennifer Lopez is Baby Spice with her sweet, gentle nature, Elizabeth Banks is Posh Spice with her sense of style and refinement (gone awry by pregnancy, no doubt), Brooklynn Decker is Ginger with her undeniable sex appeal, and Cameron Diaz is Sporty Spice with her athletic wear and pony tail.

I know these posters are just quick glimpses meant to promote the movie, but I'm not particularly excited about seeing worn out cliches for female identity stuffed with fake belly bumps and primed to be stereotypical lenses through which to view impending motherhood.

I'm willing (even hoping) to be wrong, as I would like to see more pop culture portrayals of pregnancy and parenthood in ways that make us question our assumptions. It's just that--judging from the glimpses they've given me so far--I don't think this will be it.

Here's the trailer:

What do you think? Do you plan to watch it? Do you think it will be good?

Punk Rock Girls v. Manic Pixie Dream Girls

2012-01-24T16:58:00.000-06:00

I was creating a playlist for my new running strategy (which is working!), and I stumbled upon a song I hadn't listened to in a long time: "Punk Rock Girl" by The Dead Milkmen.

I was three years old when "Punk Rock Girl" was released, so I am too young to have really experienced the punk rock movement. But it wasn't for lack of trying. My teenage angst, rural isolation, and publicly displayed family chaos managed to combine with my longstanding outcast status and manifested itself as a Warped Tour-loving, weird clothes-wearing misfit.

Anyway, I (mostly) grew up, but I still hold a soft spot for that elusive image of the "punk rock girl." I started to think more about what this character represents, and I realized that she comes up in several songs that I listened to in my teen years:

The Dead Milkmen's "Punk Rock Girl" (obviously)

Something Corporate's "Punk Rock Princess"

Bowling for Soup's "Girl All the Bad Guy's Want"

So, as I just re-listened to these songs with my now grad-school trained, overly-analytical, have-to-ruin-every-piece-of-pop-culture-from-my-past ears, I wondered if that "Punk Rock Girl" was just another version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

This video from Bitch Magazine does a great job of breaking down the MPDG trope, but it's basically a female character (like Natalie Portman's from Garden State or Zooey Deschanel's from basically everything she does) who "exists to be the inspiration for the troubled, tortured man." The AV Club has a list of films portraying this trope. And this Jezebel article calls them the "scourge of modern cinema" claiming that "Anyone who telegraphs their so-called weirdness so outlandishly is not actually weird, they're merely quirky enough to be vaguely interesting without having their own thing going on."

But what's so wrong with a guy liking a girl because of her quirkiness? Don't we all just want to be able to be ourselves and be loved for it. And--whether I like it or not--I like Natalie Portman's character, I like Zooey Deschanel (except for in The Happening; there was no excuse for that, Zooey). So, what's the problem? Well, Jamie Peck sums it up nicely in her sort-of defense of the MPDG. We can like the qualities and the meaning behind the trope of the MPDG (like uniqueness, and living life to its fullest):

"But at no point in time should you stop being the protagonist in your own story. The true crime of the MPDG is not her failure to adhere to social codes or function in capitalist society, but her lack of agency. She exists solely to help the male character actualize himself. The muse can’t keep any of her inspiration for herself, and that’s a damn shame, because I bet she could make something pretty cool if she tried."

The MPDG is a problem because she's not allowed to be a full person. She exists to further the story for the broody young man, and that man never appreciates her as a complex human being with her own story, problems, wants, and desires. She is a vehicle for him, and denied mobility for herself.

Is that all the Punk Rock Girl (PRG) is, too? (Say it isn't so!) Using the lyrics from these three songs, I decided to take a closer look.

There are definitely some problems:

The Male Gaze- In all of these songs, the "girl" in question is the subject of the male gaze, and the man has the power of speech. Even if the girl gets her name in the title, it is--at the end of the day--the man's song, and clearly his perspective.

Reduction to Quirks- Just like the MPDG, the PRG is frequently reduced to her quirks. She becomes the qualities that stand out about her. This is perhaps most clearly shown in the videos for the songs. For "Punk Rock Girl," we never clearly see the girl's face. We see glimpses of her blue mohawk, her boots jumping up and down on the restaurant table, pieces of her that the speaker is drawn to. Similarly, the girls in the video for "Punk Rock Princess" are highlighted for their jewelry and clothing choices. This is, ultimately, what makes them who they are. We also see this in the lyrics for the songs.

From "Girl All the Bad Guys Want": There she goes again/With fishnets on, and dreadlocks in her hair/She broke my heart, I wanna be sedated/All I wanted was to see her naked!

The Need to Fill a Void- For all of the male speakers, the PRG represents a potential answer to a void in their lives, just as the MPDG does. This is the biggest problem because, when a woman is reduced to "fixing" a man's life, she ceases to have agency in her own. If these PRG's only fill this role, then they are--indeed--no better than the MPDG. And it's clear that the male speakers want them to fill the role:

From "Punk Rock Princess": Maybe you could step inside/Maybe when I look for things that
I can't replace/ I can't replace/I can't replace
From "Punk Rock Girl": One Saturday I took a walk to Zipperhead/I met a girl there/
And she almost knocked me dead/Punk rock girl please look at me/Punk rock girl what do you see?/Let's travel round the world/Just you and me punk rock girl
From "Girl All the Bad Guys Want": And when she walks/ All the wind blows and the angels sing/ She doesn't notice me

Things look bleak for the PRG, but I'm not done yet. See, there's the issue of tone in the songs. Two of these songs are pretty obviously meant to be humorous.

"Punk Rock Girl" takes many elements of "punk rock" identity and parodies them into absurdity:

We went to the Phillie Pizza Company/And ordered some hot tea/The waitress said "Well noWe only have it iced"/So we jumped up on the table/And shouted "anarchy"/And someone played a Beach Boys song/On the jukebox/It was "California Dreamin"/So we started screaming/"On such a winter's day"
She took me to her parents/For a Sunday meal/Her father took one look at me/And he began to squeal/Punk rock girl it makes no sense/Punk rock girl your dad is the Vice President/Rich as the Duke of Earl/Yeah you're for me punk rock girl

Screaming "anarchy" over tea? Rebelling against a successful father by dating a perceived loser? These are silly teenagers, and--even within the fictitious world of the song--that's apparent.

The same theme comes up in "Girl All the Bad Guys Want":

She likes the Godsmack and I like Agent Orange/Her cd changer's full of singers that are mad at their dad/She says she'd like to score some reefer and a forty/She'll never know that I'm the best that she'll never have

And the absurdity of this rebellion-driven lust is doubly highlighted by the obvious parody in the video where the band mocks several other bands of the time for trying to be too (inauthentically) emotional with their music (a point the band will later reiterate with the release of their single "I'm Gay" and it's lyrics "Don't hate us cause we're happy/Don't hate us cause we make you smile")

That just leaves Something Corporate's "Punk Rock Princess," which seems to be a much more serious song. And it's in that seriousness that I find my reprieve:

I never thought you'd last/I never dream you would/You watch your life go past/You wonder if you should

If you should be my punk rock princess/So I could be your garage band king/You could tell me why you just don't fit in/And how you're gonna be something

If I could be your first real heartache/I would do it over again/If you could be my punk rock princess/I would be your heroine

This song is more serious than the first two, but it also recognizes that the PRG is just a phase, a phase brought on by the frustration of seeking identity during adolescence. "You could tell me why you just don't fit in/And how you're gonna be something."

This punk rock princess isn't some stagnant muse that exists to drag the speaker out of his own adolescent funk; she's in transition, on her way to becoming "something." And the speaker recognizes this. He doesn't expect her to remain his punk rock princess forever; he only asks for the chance to be her "first real heartache," a relationship that she can remember long after she's given up her fishnets and mohawks.

In the end, it is this more serious view of the PRG that informs the other two songs for me. All of these speakers know that they are seeing a woman in transition, a phase that can lead to growth. They're not going to be jumping on the table and screaming "anarchy" at 30. The wind doesn't actually blow and the angels don't actually sing when she walks in the room. These aren't songs asking a woman to remain forever trapped in a state of subservience to a male protagonist the way the MPDG is. No, these songs can be the answer to the MPDG problem. We can appreciate that mode of crazy, free falling, carelessness for what it is: transient.

These are songs appreciating the way that this brief phase of identity exploration can create a perfect bubble for a relationship built on freedom and belief in ourselves as unique--a bubble that will soon be burst by adulthood. If we're lucky, we can hang on to some of that magic as we move forward, telling our own stories, remembering those times.

Enjoy it, punk rock girls. You deserve it.

The Good, the Bad, and the Curious (Links for the Week)

2012-01-21T20:02:00.000-06:00

The Good

This Chevy ad shows a little boy playing with a bunch of toys: trucks, super heroes, action figures, dolls, dollhouses. It's a great demonstration of how kids don't need their toys to fit squarely into a gender dichotomy. (Disclaimer: In order to keep this in "the Good" category, I have to suggest you don't read the comments.)

The Bad

Half of Teen Moms Don't Use Birth Control-

"Although the U.S. still boasts the highest teen pregnancy rate of any developed nation, the national teen birth rate dropped in 2010 to 34.3 births per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19, down from 37.9 the year before."

The Curious

The B-word- whose is it, anyway? Zosia Bielski has a very interesting article looking at the use of the word "bitch" in pop culture. Her discussion was sparked by a poem attributed to Jay-Z about how having his daughter made him vow to cut the word out of his songs, but it was later found to be written by a blogger to make a statement about the use of the word in hip hop.

The parents who kept the gender of their child Sasha secret for five years have revealed that Sasha is a boy.

Paula Deen and Real Food

2012-01-20T20:14:00.000-06:00

After my initial post about Paula Deen, I read this post from Civil Eats.

In my first post, I quoted Renee from Womanist Musings as saying this:

How is what Deen doing any more unconscionable than any fast food corporation, or any company that makes pre packaged foods? How many deceptive labels have you read over the years of so called healthy products? I'll say one thing, Deen's food may not be healthy, but at least you can pronounce every single ingredient in it, and that is far more than I can say for the many of the items on todays grocery store shelves. Obviously, I am not advocating that one consume food loaded in butter and to deep fry mac n cheese, but I do have a problem with a single woman being set up to look like the great Satan so that others can sit in judgement of her, when several corporations are guilty of so much more.

Which is an interesting point, and one I am personally interested in as I've been trying to cut overly-processed foods from my diet.

The Civil Eats post, however, stated pretty much the exact opposite about Deen's meals:

The issue that mainstream media has largely overlooked is that Deen uses the processed, packaged versions of these foods, which are full of chemicals, additives and trans-fats. Actual home cooking would require whipping these foods up herself in her kitchen using real ingredients. And that is the real story behind Deen’s diabetes diagnosis: Her health problems are largely due to her reliance on packaged, processed foods that are the foundation for many of her recipes.

Even though her cooking show is called Paula’s Home Cooking, there’s a lot going on in her kitchen that is as far removed from home cooking as you can get. Many of her recipes include “ingredients” like Krispy Kreme doughnuts, biscuit mixes, cans of mushroom soup, and sour-cream-and-onion flavored potato chips. This is processed food cooking, not home cooking.

So, who's right? Does, as Renee suggests, Deen's real food cooking somehow set her apart from the real culprits of fast food and packaged goods? Or does Deen's food, as Civil Eats charges, hide a series of processed, chemically-altered ingredients behind the mask of home cooking?

I took to Deen's website to find out. My method was to go to the recipes section and pick the fourth meal listed in each of the following sections: Appetizers, Main Courses, Desserts, and Side Dishes. Here's the ingredient list for each one:

Appetizer: Tomatoes Stuffed with Chicken Salad

6 large tomatoes 2 cup chicken, cooked and cubed 1/2 cup minced red bell pepper 1/2 cup corn, drained 1 1/2 tablespoon minced red onion 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon chopped fresh Italian flat leaf parsley 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon mayonnaise 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 1/2 teaspoon salt Leaf lettuce or spinach leaves

Okay, so most of that is pretty good. The two bolded items are probably questionable. As Civil Eats notes, pre-prepared condiments like mayonnaise are often loaded with ingredients that aren't actually food.

Of course, Deen doesn't specify what kind of condiments to use, but since her charge against Anthony Bourdain's past criticisms was that she makes food for everyday people, I'm going to assume it's not something too fancy. So let's look at Kraft Mayo. The ingredients:

Soybean oil, water, eggs, vinegar, contains less than 2% of egg yolks, lemon juice concentrate, salt, sugar, dried onions, dried garlic, paprika, natural flavor, calcium disodium edta

I've bolded the ingredients that concern me, calcium disodium edta because that's not any food I recognize and soybean oil because soy has become so prevalent in American diets, it frequently comes from genetically modified crops, and it has been linked to some health problems, including infertility.

Main Course: Wayne's Beef Macaroni and Cheese

1 teaspoon each dried basil, cumin, and dried oregano Salt and pepper 3 cup canned crushed tomatoes2 lb lean ground beef 1 tablespoon chopped garlic 2 cup chopped onion 2 cup chopped green bell pepper 2 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 lb box elbow macaroni 2-3 cup grated cheddar cheese

Okay, so all of the ingredients on this list are pronounceable, but what about the ingredients on the lists of these pre-packaged items? As the Veggie Queen points out, a common pasta brand like Barilla often has a lot of hidden, very processed ingredients that the consumer might not be thinking about and many brands of cheese (including Kraft) contain a "coagulating enzyme derived from either beef or swine."

Desserts: Work-a-holic's Hot Chocolate

Vanilla Custard:
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 1/2 cups milk, divided
1/2 cup sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, or 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Hot Chocolate:
7 ounces (2 chocolate bars) semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup milk, boiled

The ingredients in that chocolate bar?
Sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, milk fat, soy lecithin, vanillin, artificial flavor, PGPR, emulsifier, milk

PGPR, by the way, stands for ployglycerol polyricinoleate and is used as a cost-reducing substance when making chocolate. My spell check didn't even recognize those as words, so I'm definitely not going to be recognizing it as a real food.

Side Dishes: Turkey/Chicken Stuffing

1 loaf of fresh white bread (3 for a turkey)1 small celery bunch diced (2 with turkey)1 large onion diced (3 for turkey)2 large eggs (up to 8 for turkey)1 large pinch of salt¼ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper½ pound unsalted butter (add ½ pound for turkey)¼ to ½ cup fresh turkey stock (optional)

This recipe also includes pre-packaged ingredients. Have you checked the list of ingredients in a standard loaf of bread. Maybe you even went with the "healthier" option and used wheat instead of white. Here's what you'd be getting:

Whole wheat flour, water, wheat gluten, high fructose corn syrup, contains 2% of less of: soybean oil, salt, molasses, yeast, mono and diglycerides, exthoxylated mono and diglycerides, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate, calcium dioxide), datem, calcium sulfate, vinegar, yeast nutrient (ammonium sulfate), extracts of malted barley and corn, dicalcium phosphate, diammonium phosphate, calcium propionate

So, who was right? Well, I agree that many of Deen's recipes appear to be using real foods if you just glance at the ingredient list, but considering that so many of her ingredients are measured in "cans" and "boxes," that's not telling the whole story. As Civil Eats points out, Deen is actually promoting a lot of processed foods.

Hey, Mothers, Have Some Spare Time? We Need You to Stop the Obesity Epidemic.

2012-01-20T20:01:00.000-06:00

This Los Angeles Times article presents the views of Melinda Sothern, a fitness and nutrition expert at Louisiana State University who believes that the current rising obesity rates can be attributed to the parenting practices of women in the 1950's:

The obesity epidemic has multiple causes, Sothern acknowledges. Food has changed in the last five decades. Americans have become much more sedentary. But she thinks that obesity rates soared just when they did — in the 1980s — because a generation of young women decades earlier smoked, spurned breast-feeding and restricted their weight during numerous, closely spaced pregnancies.

From Jeff_Werner

But her theory doesn't end there. See, these women then gave birth to babies who were likely to become large and have large babies themselves:

Over-nourished kids grew up to be over-nourished women, producing large babies. Large babies, just like too-small babies, are at heightened risk of obesity, says Sebastien Bouret, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the USC Keck School of Medicine.

And, since she's dubbed her theory the "obesity trinity," we need a third wave of women to finish it off:

If yesterday's young women may have gotten us into the obesity epidemic, today's must be counted on to help us get out, Sothern said. She doesn't mince words when describing the necessary changes.

"Significantly overweight women should not have babies. Women should be physically active and have a healthy diet for at least a year before pregnancy," she says. "I do think we can de-program, but you have to be very aggressive."

Women should breast-feed for at least six months after childbirth or — better yet — take one year off from work and breast-feed. They should not smoke.

And after those babies become toddlers and enter preschool, they should have 60 minutes a day of recess plus a 40-minute physical education class.

Reproductive-age women are, in fact, becoming attractive targets for change.

Bettina Seigel over at The Lunch Tray responds to this post by scoffing at the amount of responsibility this puts on mothers and mothers-to-be:

There’s a fine line between giving women legitimate prenatal counseling and saddling them with responsibility for a public health epidemic that has its roots in everything from agricultural policies to food manufacturing practices to portion sizes at restaurants. A woman’s weight during her childbearing years is certainly important and needs to be monitored, but bluntly telling significantly overweight women, as Sothern does in the article, that they “should not have babies” and that they “should breast-feed for at least six months after childbirth or — better yet — take one year off from work and breast-feed” (an economic impossibility for many women), is only likely to raise hackles.

Consider my hackles raised.

First, Sothern's entire argument seems pretty circuitous. Yes, many of the things she attributes to a typical 1950's pregnancy have been correlated with obesity (and general unhealthiness), but those are cultural norms that have since changed. Yes, the past does influence the present and thus the future, and I take no issue with looking to our past mistakes to prevent our future ones, but the dots she's connecting don't seem as clearly lined up to me as they do to her.

While I'm skeptical of the rhetoric surrounding the "obesity epidemic" because of the way that it promotes body shaming and bolsters an industry of products designed to tell people how they should look, I'm fully convinced that fitness and eating habits of our culture as a whole could be much, much better. The factors suspected of contributing to these patterns are incredibly complex and diverse: food deserts, artificial sweeteners, sedentary jobs, GMOs, fluoride in drinking water, the rise of fast food, corn subsidies, and so on.

With a list of causes that vast, it's very difficult to tackle them all, and so--when we make individual decisions about our health and our lives--we inevitably pick and choose. This is exactly what Sothern did in her own life. Though she says that her own family is a perfect example of the 'obesity trinity,' she is able to combat the long-term damage of her mother's parenting decisions by making some lifestyle choices of her own:

Sothern, at a healthy-looking 5 feet 3 and 129 pounds, has spent her adult life beating down a tendency to pack on weight by sticking to a diet rich in fruit, vegetables and fish and a regimen of dancing, biking, housework, gardening, sailing and strength training.

So she's focused on diet and exercise, and it's working, even with the burden that the "evil '50s" placed upon her.

To make the recommendation that "significantly overweight women should not have babies" and that women should "take one year off from work and breastfeed" is not only condescending and out of line, it is also elitist, dripping with privilege, and morally reprehensible.

Even if Sothern is right about her claims that the cultural norms of the 1950's contributed to some of today's societal problems, that is a macro-level analysis. To then break that down to making proscriptive judgments on the actions of individuals is problematic. The problems with BMI, for instance, are well documented. So while collective BMI might be helpful in showing obesity trends across the nation, they're not very helpful in determining the health of an individual. A person can have a high BMI (and thus be "significantly overweight") and be perfectly healthy. To then tell this person that she "should not have babies" is misguided and cruel.

Since obesity disproportionately effects minority populations (which would seem to suggest Sothern's theory isn't all that accurate to begin with, but I digress) making such a proscription has highly racialized implications as well.

Finally, to imply that women must take a year off from work to breastfeed their children ignores the fact that women can successfully breastfeed while working, de-emphasizes efforts to create policies to make breastfeeding on the job easier, and--most offensive to me--suggests that women's work is always optional, which both trivializes the work that women do and ignores the fact that many women's incomes are necessary for the sustainability of their families.

I wish Sothern well in her dancing, biking, gardening, fruit-filled life, but perhaps she needs to step outside of her bubble and into someone else's shoes before she places such a burden on the women of the world.

Book Review: The Underside of Joy

2012-01-19T06:01:00.000-06:00

Sere Prince Halverson's novel The Underside of Joy reinvents the Solomon story for our modern times. Two women each claim to be the mother to two young children; of course, only one of them is the biological mother, and no one disputes that Paige carried, gave birth to, and briefly mothered the children. But then she left.

In steps Ella, the other woman, our protagonist, and a loving stepmother who gets the glowing recommendation of an entire town and her husband's extended family as the one who swooped in and filled the void left by the neglectful Paige. When the husband dies suddenly in a tragic accident, though, both worlds are turned upside down.

Solomon's wisdom resurfaces: the real mother is the one who puts the children's best interests first. But what does that mean?

Early in the novel, I became leery of these characters. Told through Ella's perspective, it seemed that both women were going to become simple tropes: Paige as wicked witch, Ella as perfect princess. But I was pleasantly surprised by the complexity of the characterizations as the novel went on. Just as in real life, no one plays a simple part. Ella surprises herself by questioning her abilities and finding the humanity in Paige. There are no easy answers.

The book was a quick, enjoyable read that was easy to follow. The dialogue and in-the-moment action are considerably more skillfully written than the exposition. Halverson is at her best when she trusts her readers to pick up the subtleties of her characters, but there are times when she was too careful to lay it all out in stilted, cumbersome exposition.

Though the crisis resolves a little too quickly and neatly for my tastes, the book is thematically rich and provides genuine insight into realistic characters. I'm excited to see the conversations on the BlogHer Book Club about this piece, as I think there are several contemporary issues in motherhood, femininity, family, and identity to pull from it.

Compensation Disclosure: I was compensated by BlogHer for this review and received a copy of the book. Of course, all opinions and ideas are my own.

Paula Deen has Diabetes: Judgment and Public Personas

2012-01-18T19:20:00.000-06:00

The above video gives a pretty good summary of what's going on with Paula Deen. She announced yesterday--after much internet speculation--that she does, indeed, have type 2 diabetes. In fact, she's known about the diagnosis for three years, which has led many to criticize her decision to publicly announce it only when it accompanies her new gig as spokesperson for pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk and the face of their new Diabetes in a New Light program.

As you might expect, this announcement has been met with harsh criticism. For one, Deen adamantly insists that she's not changing the way that she cooks (even though her Diabetes in a New Light promo does promise ways to make lighter versions of her favorite dishes). She is also shying away from implications that her recipes (which include things like the Lady's Brunch Burger--a hamburger patty, two slices of bacon, and a fried egg sandwiched between two glazed donuts) have anything to do with her diagnosis. She insists that she has always told her fans to "practice moderation" and that--as she told Oprah years ago--"I'm your cook, not your doctor."

The criticism turned ugly in a hurry. Nerdy Feminist gives a run-down of many of the comments Deen has been getting, noting that they tend to fall into two camps: "the first being that Deen got diabetes because she is fat, the second being that she is so gross." Many of the comments in the first camp indicate that Deen deserved to get diabetes because of her lifestyle choices. The people commenting on how gross Deen is tend to fall into standard fat-shaming. But, as both Nerdy Feminist and Renee from Womanist Musings note, we don't know what Deen's personal life is like. We have no way of knowing that she ate the food that she cooks on television at all, let alone on a regular basis. And, more importantly, her personal decisions to live her life and manage her disease are just that, personal. It is not our place to judge people's individual life choices, and Deen has the right to eat how she wants and manage her diabetes in whatever way she chooses.

I want to be 100% on board with this stance because I agree, completely, that fat shaming is wrong. No one deserves to get diabetes, and dismissing someone's diagnosis so nonchalantly because of her body size is mean-spirted. Furthermore, size is not necessarily an indicator of health (Kate Harding has a great overview of this here). And, regardless of whether someone is making healthy choices or not, people deserve to be treated with dignity. Paula Deen is a person, and she has the right to privacy and respect.

But something else that Renee said as well as the timing of this announcement have complicated this view for me. Renee goes on to say:

How is what Deen doing any more unconscionable than any fast food corporation, or any company that makes pre packaged foods? How many deceptive labels have you read over the years of so called healthy products? I'll say one thing, Deen's food may not be healthy, but at least you can pronounce every single ingredient in it, and that is far more than I can say for the many of the items on todays grocery store shelves. Obviously, I am not advocating that one consume food loaded in butter and to deep fry mac n cheese, but I do have a problem with a single woman being set up to look like the great Satan so that others can sit in judgement of her, when several corporations are guilty of so much more.

And I agree with the overall sentiment, for sure. Deen is not the sole contributor to unhealthy food in America (far from it). However, doesn't the fact that we can even compare her to a fast food corporation or a packaged food company mean something? What I'm saying is, I think that these attacks on Paula Deen the person are unwarranted and cruel, but what about the attacks on Paula Deen the brand?

And make no mistake. She is a brand.

You can go into Wal-Mart and buy a box of Paula Deen cookware. She collaborated with Quality Food Brands in 2009 to produce her own line of spices and food items. You can have some Paula Deen coffee that you made in your very own Paula Deen percolator and drink it out of the Paula Deen mug that you purchase from her online store.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If you have any doubts about Paula Deen's identity as a brand, take a look at this clip of her interview with Al Roker on NBC's TODAY show. Around the 54-second mark, she seamlessly moves from talking about her personal diagnosis to talking about the program Diabetes in a New Light. At this point, she directly talks to the audience, saying "you can go to our website. I'm going to be there for you and help you manage everyday of your life with this because it can be done." Bizarre. It's a clip that's presumably about her diagnosis, but she's spending it talking about the help she'll give you in managing your diabetes. Roker, noticing the scripted language she's fallen into, points out that she's a paid spokesperson, at which point she says "Absolutely. I have been compensated just as you are for your work."

All this to say that, while I think that celebrities are entitled to their privacy and space to navigate their personal lives, these lines are blurred when celebrities intentionally create a public persona and then use elements from their personal lives to flesh out those personas.

Deen was chosen as Novo Nordisk's spokesperson because of her familiarity and popularity, but also because of her diagnosis of diabetes. I fully believe that I have a right (and even a responsibility) to criticize products that I feel are dangerous, unhealthy, or misleading. Even on this blog, I've called out sexist advertisements, Lego's gender segregation, food labeling practices, ads that promote unhealthy competition between parents, and more. So, what is Paula Deen: person or corporation? Human being suffering from a private disease or mascot in the public eye? One of those deserves privacy and compassion; the other deserves scrutiny and criticism.

There is probably a way to walk this line, but it is difficult. I think that it's possible to criticize Paula Deen the brand without falling into personal attacks on Paula Deen the person, but this requires a level of nuance and analysis that many people talking about this are simply not going to give. And it leaves us all worse off.

There are some very legitimate concerns to be voiced with Paula Deen the brand. The decision to act as if cutting out sweet tea and taking a few walks is a fine way to combat diabetes as long as you take your daily injection of medication ignores the holistic lifestyle changes that medical professionals recommend. The decision to ignore the fact that a diet high in fat and sugar has been strongly correlated with diabetes contributes to a culture where the disease is on the rise. These are things worthy of criticism when they're coming from a pharmaceutical or food company, and--in some capacity--Paula Deen is now representative of both.

Paula Deen is primarily recognized as the brand that she has created, but the line between brand and person is further complicated when celebrities lend their personal image to a brand for a limited time. Where do we draw the line between personal and brand criticism then?

Consider Jennifer Hudson, who is the new face for Weight Watchers. When she appears on TV and does things like sing to her former (heavier) self, where does Jennifer Hudson the brand and Jennifer Hudson the person disengage?

I don't think we should ever have the right to judge someone else's body. However, it's hard to argue that position when Hudson herself seems to be asking for the judgment. "Look," this commercial says, "I used to be larger, and now I'm smaller. . . and better. Compare the past and present me." When are we no longer allowed to make that comparison? If, in six months or two years or ten years, Hudson gains weight, do we have the right, as consumers of the Weight Watchers brand, to be critical of her life choices because she placed herself into the role of that brand?

A similar complication played out for Kirstie Alley, an actress who has constantly been in the public eye over her weight loss and gain. But did she move that criticism to a different level when she chose to be a spokesperson for Jenny Craig? And what about when she left the company? Does that shut down Kirstie Alley the brand and return her to Kirstie Alley the person?

I don't know the answers to these questions. But I do know that (despite what Mitt Romney might believe) corporations are not people. Corporations should be held to a higher standard of accountability and scrutiny. But what about people who align themselves with (or even become) corporations?

The Good, The Bad, and The Curious (Links)

2012-01-15T09:22:00.000-06:00

Links that made me happy, sad, and perplexed this week. Feel free to add yours.

The Good

Femamom has a post where she reflects on having had both an unmedicated birth and a birth with an epidural. Her thoughts are compassionate, open-minded, and outside of the stark dichotomy we usually see when discussing women's birth options.

The Bad

A video has surfaced of tourists luring naked women from the Jarawa tribe to dance for money. Though the video may be several years old, it is a violation of laws designed to protect the tribe and a horrible display of people enjoying the "human zoo."

Another video has surfaced of four U.S. Marines urinating on bodies in Afghanistan. Two of the four men have since been identified and an investigation is underway.

The Curious

Lisa Duggan of Mamafesto wrote an article about how dads are still excluded (and excused) from many of the responsibilities of parenting.

Janell Burley Hofman, who leads workshops on positive body image and works against the way marketing targets our girls, was at a loss for how to respond to her seven-year-old when she declared herself "fat." After trying to talk it out, she tried a less conventional way to handle the situation. She wonders how long it will work.

Jay Mathews has a WaPo opinion piece about Matt Damon's and his mother's response to the TFA/NEA meeting. Mathews says it's wrong to discourage the two groups meeting and talking because getting a conversation started is exactly what we need.

Melinda Wenner Moyer has a Slate article on "The Truth about Epidurals" in which she examines whether epidurals are really as bad as natural birth advocates say they are. Though I agree with her ultimate conclusion that women should be allowed to make their own choices, I think she grossly oversimplifies the reasons that women would want an unmedicated birth to begin with.

Sharing Too Much Online: Is New Media Really So New?

2012-01-14T21:22:00.000-06:00

Scary Mommy has a post about criticism she's gotten for blogging and writing about her children.

There has been much preaching over the past few days about our right to express these less than admirable feelings about our children. How dare we!? How will they feel in five or ten or 30 years should they stumble across a post or a tweet or a status update? Will their worlds come crashing down? The internet is foreeeeever, you know, and hastily written words can’t ever really be removed. Is it worth the instant gratification of expressing these emotions? Aren’t we selfishly putting our needs before theirs?

Her basic conclusion is that, no, we're not putting our needs before theirs, we are trying to survive motherhood, and "if publishing a post or tweet or whatever helps me or any other mother get the bad feelings off of our chests and be present for our families, it’s worth it." I generally agree with that reasoning, and I definitely (obviously, since I blog about my family) agree that we it's okay to talk about parenting and tell our stories online. But it got me thinking about something I've wondered before: are things really that different?

Don't get me wrong. I study rhetoric and communication, and I fully believe that the way we are using media is impacting our culture, potentially even changing the way our brains work. I've read Ong and Mcluhan. I am not questioning that the medium has changed or that the medium is important. But I do think that some of the fears about the dangers of new media are misplaced and overblown . . . especially since they're serving the same basic purposes media has always served.

Think about the advancements of writing.

From b1gw1ght

Shakespeare's plays were penned using quill and ink; Hemingway used a 1940's Royal typewriter; many modern writers type on their Mac books in wi-fi equipped coffee shops. Undoubtedly, these advances have changed the landscape of writing. More people do it, for one thing. There is more work produced. It's easier to start over. It's easier to reorganize. But none of that changes the reason people write in the first place: to express themselves, to tell a story, to share.

Same with photography. Before there were cameras, people had portraits painted. When cameras were rare and expensive, some people only had pictures of their children taken when they died. As cameras became more common, we developed scrapbooks and covered our walls in family portraits. Now that digital pictures can be taken and shared in a matter of seconds, there are certainly more pictures. We don't have to be as careful about getting the pose right. We can experiment. We can delete that pose that makes our eyes look puffy. But we still take the pictures for the same reason: to capture a moment, to share experiences with people who weren't there, to remember.

From Courtney Carmody

That's what we need to talk about when we consider the dangers of new media: why are we doing what we do?

Is posting pictures to our Facebook wall of our kids doing something cute really that different than local papers? I grew up in a small town, and there was a column in the weekly county-wide newspaper that ran people's photos. One week my mom got one published of me jumping on our little trampoline in the house. The caption said "She jumped so high she touched the sky." It served the same purpose as a Facebook photo with a silly caption: she wanted to show it to her friends and acquaintances. Could someone perverted looked at that picture? Of course. That's always been a risk. And is it (as articles like this one warn us) an increased risk on the internet? Well, just as with the writing and photography, technological advances often mean easier sharing, more widespread access, and more material. We create new guidelines to navigate what that growth means. We shouldn't try to shut it down.

And what of the concern people shared with Scary Mommy? What if our kids find these things we've said about them in five or ten years? Well, we're judging their reactions against outdated norms. Their reactions will be situated in a completely different context. They and all of their friends will have had their pictures posted on Facebook, their first tooth tweeted, their lives documented. Trying to fight that seems to me as pointless as trying to get people to start getting their Christmas card pictures created as individually painted portraits. This is the digital landscape we live within, and we will adapt. We've had a lot of practice.

"No-No": The Body Autonomy of a One-Year-Old

2012-01-12T17:39:00.000-06:00

My daughter had her one-year check-up today, which also means that she had to get shots.

This was the first check-up she's had that she's been able to talk a little. She only knows a handful of words (that I can understand--I'm sure she thinks she knows a lot of words), but one of them is "no-no," and she knows it well.

She knows it when she finds a piece of plastic on the floor. She brings it to me, shaking her head and saying "no-no" so I can throw it away. She says it when she goes over to the bookshelf and points to the books she knows she's not supposed to throw all over the floor. She says it to the dogs when they're barking. And she says it to people who try to make her do things she doesn't want to do.

So, today at the doctor's office, it started with the ear check. As the doctor tried to put the otoscope (yes, I just looked up what the ear-check thingy is called because I felt silly writing "ear-check thingy" into the sentence) into her ear, she pushed her hands away, shook her head, and said "no-no." I had to hold her hands down so the doctor could finish her examination.

Then, when it came time for the shots, she was pretty brave for the first one, not even crying. The second one upset her, and by the third one she was having no more of this. She was trying to get up off the table, kicking her leg to the side, and saying "no-no" to the nurse. Again, I had to help hold her still so the nurse could finish the vaccination.

My daughter calmed down pretty quickly and she left in a good mood, but I couldn't help but think about how her young mind might be interpreting these occurrences. I know that it's important for her to get the vaccines and get her check-ups, so I'm not suggesting that she shouldn't or that the doctor or nurse did anything wrong. I just find this to be a difficult spot: she's old enough to know that she doesn't want it to happen, she's capable of vocalizing that wish, but she's not mature enough to understand the explanation for why it is happening.

It made me think of some other concerns I've read about body autonomy and children.

In "Now . . . Give Your Uncle a Kiss," Yashar writes about the problematic messages we send to children when we force them to hug or kiss relatives and friends against their will:

I acknowledge that some kids are just being difficult, but it’s not about their motivation so much as it is about our reaction. At that moment, we initiate a process where we require boys and girls to have physical interaction when they don’t want to and at that moment, we also tell them to ignore their sense of self-trust. We are teaching kids that adults are in charge of who they should be and are affectionate with. We are telling them that they don’t have the right or power to make their own decisions about human, physical interaction.

Again, it’s the little moments that create a big collective weight over time.

I also remember reading a post from a mom (which I can't find now, so if anyone knows what I'm talking about, please send the link!) who always asked her toddler if it was okay to change her diaper. She said there were occasions where her daughter would say "no," and she would respect that, knowing that her daughter would soon say "yes," and the diaper would be changed. She said that the lesson of other people having to respect her physical boundaries was more important to her than an immediate diaper change.

These are things I had never even thought about before. It is really important to me that my daughter feel in control of her body and what happens to it. I know that she is learning how the world works right now, and I know that I need to be attentive to the little ways she might be picking up that lesson (or not). Sometimes I just don't know the right way to balance this concern for her well-being with other concerns for her well-being.

What do you think?

2 Broke Girls: Let's Talk about Racism on Television

2012-01-12T10:27:00.000-06:00

2 Broke Girls producer Michael Patrick King vehemently insists that his show isn't racist. Maybe he hasn't watched it? Here, kids, try to count the stereotypes portrayed in this two-minute promo clip:

Handing the jive-talking black man his brandy? The Ukranian man not wearing deodorant? The Asian boss talking about his Tokyo-drift style management? Are you losing count? It's okay. King explains that it's not racist because he "find[s] it comic to take everybody down." (You can see the transcript of his confrontation with a reporter over the show's racism here).

So, in addition to racial stereotypes, let's see what other stereotypes are perpetuated in this brief promo. We also have the brunette girl as bitchy ("brown-haired waitress was very rude") and the blonde girl as sex object ("I'd like to ride the blonde waitress like a Tilt-a-Whirl").

So King's basic argument is that because all of his characters are shallow representations of stereotypes, it's okay. He even gets personal, saying that because he's gay and uses gay jokes on the show that the fact that he's not offended means nobody should be offended.

I'm lost in this argument, but I do think it's interesting when King says this:

"If you talk about stereotypes, every character, when it's born, is a stereotype. This show started with two stereotypes: a blonde and a brunette. Hopefully if you have the journey that everybody would like to have on a series, which is time, you get to shape the characters so they become rounded and a little bit more grounded."

Some of this, I actually agree with. At their core, most fictional characters have some element of stereotype because they are not fully fleshed out human beings. It is through character development that move beyond those earliest representations into something more dynamic. However, when you intentionally cast a series of racial stereotypes and then use those characters in play with one another to further promote those stereotypes, you're not challenging assumptions, you're not developing depth, you're seeking out cheap laughs at the expense of complex character representation. And it's not okay.

Most interesting to me is King's argument that his show is actually promoting diversity:

"the big story about race on our show is that so many are represented, that the cast is incredibly, not only multi‑ethnic including the regulars and the guest stars, but it's also incredibly not ageist."

Ah, here's the crux of the matter. See, racism is a complex concept, and it can be portrayed in many different ways. One way is through omission, and that used to be one of the most common ways that racism was demonstrated on prime time television: people of color simply didn't appear on the screen. In 2003, the Fall Colors: Prime Time Diversity Report found that white characters made up 73% of primetime characters while other racial groups—African American (16%), Asian/Pacific Islander (3%), Latino (6.5%), Arab/Middle Eastern (0.5%), Indian/Pakistani (0.4%) and Other (0.7%)—made up significantly fewer. There were no Native American characters portrayed in any of the shows in the report. People of color also comprised fewer of the main characters, and were often relegated to small parts when they did appear on screen (this was especially true for Asian/Pacific Islander characters, who comprised a starring role only 11% of the time they appeared).

But reports like this one and other complaints drew attention to racism through omission, and many networks worked hard to combat it. In 2007, the National Latino Media Council examined the presence of minority characters on several major networks and declared "the NLMC strongly believes that after nine years of assessing the diversity efforts of ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX, that network television diversity is finally taking hold." Similarly, the Screen Actor's Guild Casting Data showed record high numbers of minority characters in film roles in 2006 and 2007.

This seems to be where King's argument that his show is "multi-ethnic" comes from. Yes, it's true that 2 Broke Girls places characters from many different racial backgrounds on the screen together, but is that enough to erase claims of racism?

The tagline for the documentary Miss Representation is "You can't be what you can't see." This documentary deals with the portrayal of women in the media, and the tagline means not only that girls and women can't find role models because they're absent, but also that the role models they do see in the media are severely limited in scope and portrayal.

Context is key. A character's presence on the screen is not enough to mitigate racist portrayals. For instance, the Fall Colors report also found that 46% of all Arab/Middle Eastern characters were portrayed as criminals. The 2001 Fair Play report on video games found that 86% of African American females were portrayed as victims of violence. Simply placing these characters on the screen does little to remove stereotype and racist portrayals. This happens only through their characterization, interactions with others, and involvement in the overall theme of the show.

Make no mistake, the portrayal of characters as empty stereotypes for the sake of cheap laughs is racist, and 2 Broke Girls appears to being doing a good job of giving us an example. As far as I can tell, the show isn't parodying the stereotype (as, say, Chapelle's Show did) in order to question it. It isn't displaying the stereotype through someone else's eyes as a way to draw attention to the problem. It's just using the stereotype because it's there to use. So, on top of promoting racism, it's also pretty lazy.

At one point in his interview, King says that his characters will develop over time: "So I will call you in five years, and you'll have accrued enough time to figure out if these characters became fully fledged out." I certainly hope we don't have to sit through five years of these boring, stereotypical portrayals.

You Put WHAT in My OJ? Some Thoughts on Food Labeling and Public Perception

2012-01-10T17:02:00.000-06:00

I've been making some pretty radical diet changes.

It started small (no artificial sweeteners), moved into what seemed impossible at the time (no high fructose corn syrup), and is an organic process that grows and changes just like my family. At the moment, we're focusing on sending whole food snacks to daycare (the hardest, if you have tips, please share) and cutting out anything with ingredients we don't recognize as food (xanthan gum has been the most difficult culprit). I've also started drinking only water. We don't always get it 100%, but I'm pretty impressed with our progress--plus I feel healthier.

Some people get defensive when I talk about these changes. I think I get it. I have this friend who studies differently than I do. There have been times when he has turned down offers to hang out because he had work to do. And there were times when I started to feel defensive. Maybe I even said to myself "Who is he trying to impress?" But the problem wasn't him, it was me. I was looking at his efforts to reach his goals and imagining that he was trying to get me to reach his goals, too. But he wasn't. And my goals aren't the same as his. We want completely different career paths, for one thing.

So, I don't care what other people eat, and I'm not saying that I've got magic answers. I'm just doing what makes sense to me. So, I'm in no way trying to get people to make changes to their individual lives. We are all just trying to do our best, and my default is to think that people are smart and fully capable of making decisions for themselves.

That said, I've been spending a lot of time reading labels, and I've come to the conclusion that even smart, fully capable people are being misled and bamboozled by the marketing and nutritional information on food. While I think everyone is fully capable of making decisions, I think it is the food industry's responsibility to give us the information to make those decisions. And they are falling far, far short of what I think should be the minimal standard of transparency and clarity. To demonstrate:

From Happydog

Orange Juice- Orange juice sounds healthy, right? In fact, it makes all kinds of healthy claims right on the carton. Just look at this Tropicana homepage. It says in big, bright orange letters "100% Pure & Natural Orange Juice." What could be wrong with that?

When I think "100% Pure & Natural Orange Juice," I imagine someone squeezing an orange into a glass. But maybe that's just me being naive, it's not like Tropicana claimed to be that pure. Oh. . . wait.

Okay, but how far off can it really be? Shockingly. It can be shockingly far off, as this California lawsuit demonstrates. Angelena Lewis is suing Tropicana for their misleading labeling.

video platform video management video solutions video player

This ABC report shows that orange juice from top brands (including Tropicana, Florida Natural, Simply Orange, and Minute Maid) is stripped of oxygen and then stored in tanks for months before hitting the shelf. As you can imagine, that process takes out the flavor, so the companies put "flavor packets" back into the orange juice. What's in a flavor packet? According to Alissa Hamilton (who has a book on the subject of orange juice) in this post at Civil Eats:

Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature. The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice. . .

The formulas vary to give a brand’s trademark taste. If you’re discerning you may have noticed Minute Maid has a candy like orange flavor. That’s largely due to the flavor pack Coca-Cola has chosen for it. Some companies have even been known to request a flavor pack that mimics the taste of a popular competitor, creating a “hall of mirrors” of flavor packs.

Genetically Modified Meat
Again, I'm not staking a claim on whether it's okay to eat genetically modified food. I'm not saying that this science should be stopped, and I'm not saying there's no validity to claims that GM food could be the way to prevent starvation and famine. All I'm saying is I want to know what I'm eating.

And I'm not the only one saying this. The #right2know tag on Twitter has more updates on this movement, but the point is pretty simple; we, as consumers, have a right to know what's in our food. I don't even understand why this is an argument. So, I went looking for an answer as to why we shouldn't label food. I found this press release from Monsanto:

Some might ask what the harm would be in requiring the labeling of products. U.S. labeling laws are based on health and safety. Requiring labeling for ingredients that don’t pose a health issue would undermine both our labeling laws and consumer confidence. Ensuring that such labeling is accurate would also put a huge burden on regulatory agencies.A better question might be: What would be the benefits of labeling products containing GM ingredients? Individuals who make a personal decision not to consume food containing GM ingredients can easily avoid such products. In the U.S., they can purchase products that are certified as organic under the National Organic Program. They can also buy products which companies have voluntarily labeled as not containing GM ingredients. The law allows for voluntary labeling so long as the information is accurate, truthful and avoids misleading consumers about the food. Monsanto supports both options.

Mandatory labeling of food containing GM ingredients might seem like a no-brainer. However, once you consider the facts, it becomes clear there is no sense in mandatory GMO labeling.

This argument makes no sense to me. It's just avoidance and deflection, the I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I trick. It didn't work in third grade, and it doesn't work now. There's no reason that we shouldn't know what's in our food, and there's no reason we should have to work so hard to figure it out. (For more on this topic and its political complications check out this NPR post, or this post from Forbes contributor Michelle Maisto).

Hiding the Sugar

Food labels require companies to list the ingredients of their product by weight. This allows them to sneak in some sugars by using multiple types of sweeteners in a single product, cutting the weight of each individual one and moving it further down the list. Since we're trained to pay attention to the top ingredients in each list and because so many processed, packaged products have tons of ingredients, we might not notice that a single ingredient actually contains multiple types of sugar.

From Uwe Hermann

This article from A Sweet Life (a website for diabetics) analyzes a couple of different products, and shows us a chocolate chip bar with the following ingredient list:

Granola (whole grain oats, brown sugar, crisp rice (rice flour, sugar, salt, malted barley extract), whole grain rolled wheat, soybean oil, dried coconut, whole wheat flour, sodium bicarbonate, soy lecithin, caramel color, nonfat dry milk), corn syrup, semisweet chocolate chips, brown rice crisp, sunflower oil, oligofructose, polydextrose, corn syrup solids, glycerin.

Contains 2 percent or less of water, invert sugar, salt, molasses, sucralose, natural and artificial flavor, BHT, citric acid

If you picked up this package, you might see that granola was the top ingredient. Great! And the main thing in the granola is "whole grain oats." But let's look at that list again, this time with the sugar and sugar alternatives bolded.

Granola (whole grain oats, brown sugar, crisp rice (rice flour, sugar, salt, malted barley extract), whole grain rolled wheat, soybean oil, dried coconut, whole wheat flour, sodium bicarbonate, soy lecithin, caramel color, nonfat dry milk), corn syrup, semisweet chocolate chips, brown rice crisp, sunflower oil, oligofructose, polydextrose, corn syrup solids, glycerin.

Contains 2 percent or less of water, invert sugar, salt, molasses, sucralose, natural and artificial flavor, BHT, citric acid

(Fun side fact: oligofructose is also known as fuctooligosaccharide, which is--all anger over food labeling aside--one of the most fun words I've heard in a while.)

Another way the sugar thing is frustrating is that many people have started to give HFCS the side-eye (and considering some of the research on the topic, they probably have good reason). Marketers are wising up to this, so in addition to lobbying for a name change, they've also started using other products that do the same basic thing but don't have the baggage attached to them: enter high maltose corn sugar, which is also known as maltodextrin and which--I found as I started looking more closely at labels--is in a lot of foods that purport to be healthy and don't have HFCS.

As the Black Girl's Guide to Weight Loss (a website that is very well-written, accessible, and interesting and that I highly suggest you check out if you are interested in fitness or diet advice), points out sugar is sugar. So I'm not trying to unnecessarily vilify HFCS. I'm trying to say that the peaks of health trends might not be getting us to the real problem, and if HFCS is a problem, then HMCS probably is, too. And the way our food is labeled makes it easy to overlook that.

I'm not an expert on food science, but I am a frustrated consumer. For me, getting away from poorly labeled food has ultimately meant getting away from most food with labels. At first, that was really hard, but with some help from recipes and tips from sites like 100 Days of Real Food, Black Girl's Guide to Weight Loss, and The Gracious Pantry, it's coming together.

What about you? Is food labeling ever a barrier to your health goals? Am I just being too picky?

The Concern over Beyonce's Vagina is Worrisome

2012-01-09T18:17:00.000-06:00

A joint announcement by Jay-Z and Beyonce says this about the birth of their child:

Her birth was emotional and extremely peaceful, we are in heaven.
She was delivered naturally at a healthy 7 lbs and it was the best experience of both of our lives.

People have jumped all over the "naturally" part of this announcement. Early speculation had said that Beyonce had an elective c-section; many of these reports were followed by snarky comments about the tummy tuck she probably had, too. It's also being reported--and disputed--that she rented out an entire floor of the hospital and then had NICU patients' parents locked away from their own children. Then, of course, there are plenty of commenters that believe the crazy rumors (which I previously wrote about) that Beyonce faked her whole pregnancy and that this birth ("natural", c-section, or whatever) was by a surrogate.

Look, I've gone on record saying that the portrayal of birth in popular culture is very important because the image of fear and pain that most women see about birth isn't really accurate and definitely doesn't set them up to be informed decision-makers in their own births. For the most part, I meant fictionalized portrayals of birth (like in a television show or a movie), but I guess that also applies to the "reality" birth shows like I'm Pregnant And . . . or A Baby Story. While I agree that high profile celebrities' birth experiences are part of the cultural text that crafts our collective view of childbirth. I disagree that they should be subject to the same scrutiny.

Consider the argument Michele Zipp makes in "Beyonce's C-Section is Bad News for Moms"

I also feel that because Beyonce had a scheduled c-section (for whatever reason) it makes so many other women who admire her think that is the glamorous way to birth. It's not. If it's necessary, then it's necessary and that is a different story, but too many of these diva births will have us ending up like China, where the c-section rate is 50 percent.

But this isn't fair to Beyonce, a real person who just gave birth to a real baby. She is not a television show, and she didn't even (like the women on the "reality" shows) place her birth in the public eye. Yes, her celebrity status is dependent upon people being interested in who she is and what she does, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't deserve respect and privacy.

In fact, this whole conversation has taken a turn for the counterproductive. For crying out loud, it's even provided a platform for the Skeptical OB Amy Tutuer (who inevitably pops up in every discussion about childbirth to remind women that it is "inherently dangerous" (her words) and how sexist it is to suggest that women should labor without pain medication) to further the divide in the natural v. medical birth debate. And while I've never found myself agreeing with anything this woman has said in the past, she has a point when she points out the hypocrisy of women in the natural birth community who are attacking Beyonce's birthing choices.

This divide can clearly be seen on Feministing's recent articles about Ina May Gaskin (a natural birth advocate and midwife). While not all of the comments fall into such a stark dichotomy, many of them do. Some commenters even go so far as to suggest this conversation isn't really a feminist issue and that Gaskin shouldn't be featured on the site.

When we start arguing over whether it's still natural to have an epidural or whether a woman with a breech baby should try to give birth vaginally or whether a woman who births at home is making a smart decision or whether women who want to labor without constant monitoring are control freaks or whatever version of the debate comes up, we stop focusing on the actual problem.

The problem is that women are not getting the respect and autonomy they deserve and need in their own birth experiences. Too many women have to fight to even be heard when they go to give births in a hospital (for some examples, see this post from The Feminist Breeder). Too many women feel pressured into interventions without clear explanations of their options. Too many women feel shamed for making decisions on either side of this debate.

Look, I support and respect any decision that a woman makes. It is my hope that those decisions are informed and thought out, but the default should not be to assume that they are not. Just because people make different decisions from the ones I make does not make them wrong, less informed, or worthy of ridicule.

So, if Beyonce had a c-section, I'm going to assume that she had reasons for making that decision. If Beyonce had a "natural" birth, I'm not going to pick apart what constitutes natural. This isn't because I don't think that the c-section rate is too high or that I don't think that the information about natural birth isn't readily accessible enough for many women, but Beyonce is not a case study or a platform for my cause.

She is a person, a new mother, and she deserves my respect.

Jay-Z's "Glory" Song to His Daughter

2012-01-09T14:43:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I think it's a little ridiculous that Jay-Z and Beyonce shut down parts of a hospital to give birth. And, even though I understand their security and privacy concerns, I think it's more than a little ridiculous that they kept parents from being able to visit their children in the NICU in the process (and, I'm not Miss Manners, but I'm pretty sure (at the very least) an apology is in order right now if that's true).

But I have to set all that aside for a second to say that Jay-Z's song "Glory" (which you can listen to here) is amazingly candid and sweet.

In such a short space, it captures many of those overwhelming emotions of the first fews days of parenthood and reveals some very personal struggles with fertility and pain:

The amazingness of seeing a piece of yourself in someone else ("So a pinch of Hov, a whole glass of Bey") and hoping for that little person to reach every goal she ever makes ("A younger, smarter, faster me")

The overwhelming feeling that all those moments you've been watching through this whole pregnancy ("Your mama said that you danced for her/Did you wiggle your hands for her?") is now just a tiny fraction of this new person's whole life

And the almost terrifying relief of seeing a pregnancy through to a successful delivery if there have been complications ("Last time the miscarriage was so tragic/We was afraid you disappeared/But nah, baby, you magic")

To me, this song demonstrates that no matter how famous or rich you are, becoming a parent is an amazing experience that knocks you flat. I love the sincerity of these lyrics.

Good Fences Don't Always Make Good Neighbors

2012-01-08T15:49:00.000-06:00

Did I handle this right?

We live in an "up-and-coming" (as the realtor described it) urban area. For the most part, it's a nice neighborhood, but it's not without its problems. We live in a city where (like many American cities right now) the population is declining, the housing market is atrocious, and the city budgets are tight. When we bought our house, several other houses on the block were also for sale. Over time, many of them did not sell, and the owners decided to rent them out instead. While I (having recently been a renter myself, among other things) don't have anything against renters, most of these landlords don't seem to be really good at (or particularly care to) screen tenants. It's such a problem that our neighborhood has started a landlord training program. We also have a nuisance property reporting system that has been used to get some tenants evicted because their suspected drug activity, constant noise disturbances, and general disruptions were negatively impacting the neighborhood.

The house next to us has been vacant for a while. Two months ago, a new family moved in. I can't tell exactly how many people live there, but there are at least three adults, two or three teenagers, and four or five young children. When I wave, smile, or say hi to them, I am met with glares. They fight in the street every day, often in the middle of the night. I largely adopt a "live and let live" attitude toward neighbors, and have never called the police for a noise disturbance or anything.

But, in the past week, we've been noticing a lot of trash in our backyard. Our yard has a six-foot wooden privacy fence around it, so it was very unlikely that this trash was blowing into our yard. Yesterday, we noticed that several of the children were outside in their backyard playing with toys, old couch cushions, and pieces of plastic. Later, our yard was filled with (now badly chewed, because we have two boxer mixes) plastic guns, toy cars, bags of trash, and a couch cushion. When I picked up the toys and went to throw them away, I saw that the alleyway with the dumpster was filled with the other stuff they'd been playing with. The Yard Waste Only bin was crammed full of plastic bags and toys. My gate was blocked with an old couch and rolls of carpet.

Since I hadn't seen the kids throw the bags over the fence, I didn't feel like I could go talk to the adults in the house about it. Today, I was cleaning out my car and, when I went to take the trash to the dumpster (which is behind my house, through the backyard), two of the kids were playing in the dumpster (yes, in the dumpster, and one of them was barefoot). These were two boys, about seven and five, probably.

As soon as I came out, one of them got scared and said "Keep that dog in your yard. I'm scared of him." Ah-ha, I thought to myself, so that's why they're sacrificing toy guns and cars--to throw them at my "scary" dog.

"He's not going to hurt you," I say, "and there's a fence. He stays in the yard." Then I throw my bag into the dumpster--which they've now climbed on top of--and pause. "Have you been throwing toys and trash into my yard?"

They freeze. Stare at each other for a second and then start stammering "No, no. We haven't."

"Really," I say, "Because there are an awful lot of toys in my yard. I wonder how they got there. Do you think someone threw them at my dogs?"

"It wasn't us," the older boy said. "It was the little kids. But I'll pick the trash up."

"That's okay," I said. "I picked it up. Do you think you guys could do me a favor? Could you tell the little kids not to throw stuff at the dogs anymore? It scares them."

"Okay," said the older one.

"The dogs scare me," said the little one, "and he bit my finger."

"He did not!" The older one stood up straight. "He's lying, just like he always does."

"Well, he's never bitten anyone, but it makes him sad if people throw things at him." Then I told them the dogs' names, and talked about how they needed the time outside to run and play, just like the boys liked to run and play outside. They told me their names, I told them mine, and I told them it was nice to meet them. This whole conversation took place with them on top of the dumpster.

As soon as I got inside, two women (probably late teens or early twenties) came running out of the house and started talking to the boys, probably asking them why I was talking to them. I don't know if this was the right way to handle this, but these little displays of disrespect drive me crazy, so I felt like I had to do something.

On a semi-related note, I'll eventually be blogging about the very serious debate my husband and I have every day (and we're both torn, so it's not like this is a debate with clear opposing sides) about whether we should continue to live in the city or move to the (sigh) county. I'd be very happy to hear how other people have handled this decision.

The Good, The Bad, and The Curious

2012-01-08T14:19:00.000-06:00

A list of links that made me happy, sad, and perplexed this week. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

The Good

The FDA is limiting the use of some antibiotics in livestock.

A story of a big brother sticking up to his father over his little brother's desire to play with "girl" games.

The Bad

A Georgia school decided to do a "cross-curricular" activity that involved sending eight-year-olds home with math word problems involving slavery. Without any historical context or explanation, the worksheets asked things like "Each tree has 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how many would each slave pick?" and "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week? 2 weeks?"

Tyra Batts, a Buffalo-area high schooler, is facing five days of suspension after getting in a fight for confronting her teammates about using the n-word in a chant before every basketball game. The other girls, who initially refused to stop using the word and didn't understand why Batts was upset, face only two days of suspension.

A woman nicknamed The Human Barbie because of her love for plastic surgery gave her seven-year-old daughter a $10k gift certificate for liposuction for Christmas. She adds this to her seventh birthday gift of a certificate for breast implants and calls the gifts "investing in her future."

Alana, a new contestant on Toddlers and Tiaras, is featured in this video clip. I literally got sick to my stomach as I watched her mom dope her up with "Go Go Juice" (some sort of sugar concoction) and teach her to show her stomach to the judges. Young Alana proves that she is more than willing to "holla for a dolla."

Rick Santorum sees just how many logical fallacies he can commit in a debate with college students over gay marriage. Answer: A lot of them. (Oh, and here's a Rick Santorum "Hey Girl" Tumblr to help the medicine go down).

The Curious

Matt Damon and his mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, declined an education award from the National Education Association because the NEA had recently met with Teach For America. Damon and Carlsson-Paige said that TFA does not offer its students adequate training, that the students are sometimes used to bust unions, and that many of them do not stay in education after their two-year requirement.

The number of twins born in the US has doubled since 1980. Then, just one in 53 babies born was a twin; now the number is 1 in 30. This increase is widespread across all age groups and all parts of the country and is largely attributed to increased in vitro fertilization.

Nothing Else to Say: Rhetorical Choice in Internet Name-Calling

2012-01-07T11:54:00.000-06:00

Margot Magowan has a great post on her blog Reel Girl about name-calling and writing on the internet. She says that she's glad she's writing now as a woman in her forties because she doesn't think she would have been able to keep writing in the face of name-calling in her twenties. She goes on to encourage young women to write despite the things they will be called.

But she does nothing to alleviate fears that they will be called names. In fact, she says:

"Think of the worst, most horrible thing you can ever imagine someone saying to you. Got it? If you want to write or speak publicly, that will be said. Count on it. Multiple times. In ways you never imagined."

But write anyway.

It's no secret that the internet and its anonymity and distance can bring out the worst in people. All you need to do to verify this is go to a random YouTube video and read some comments; don't worry, you won't have to scroll down very far, as Bill Burr explains here (and he's Bill Burr, so there's profanity):

Racism runs rampant across various parts of the internet, as partially explored in this article from Resist Racism.

Or look at this story about a Reddit atheist community that quickly devolved into rape jokes, taunts, and downright sexual threats against a fifteen-year-old girl who just showed a picture of herself holding a book.

Or check out the #mencallmethings Twitter tag, started by Sady Doyle to demonstrate the sexism aimed at women writing on the internet. (Here's another article about it, as well).

Yep. The internet can be ugly.

The thing that struck me the most about Magowan's piece, however, was a line from her former co-worker. When she worked in radio, one of the hosts would get a lot of angry callers:

"When someone lost a heated argument, invariably, they would shout, 'You fat fuck!' and hang up. 'How do you handle it?' I asked. The host, Bernie Ward, laughed, shrugged, and said, 'I know when they get to that, they have nothing else to say.'"

And that made me think. It made me think about a time when me and my husband were walking across my mom's front lawn. My mom was in an altercation with the neighbors that had nothing to do with us (and everything to do with their untrained Rottweiler that had recently charged my nephew while he played on his swing set, but that's a story for another day). When we left her house, their anger was boiling over. They started screaming profanities at me and my husband, quickly falling into repetition of the one word that they spat with more vigor than the rest: the n-word.

Likewise, my Facebook argument over gay rights (which I wrote ab out here) ended with a name-calling dismissal. After the post that I showed, Guy I Don't Know came back explaining that I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about because my "girth" would prevent me from being in the military, so I couldn't possibly have an opinion on DADT. After someone pointed out to him that I had blogged about our earlier exchange, he proudly declared that it didn't bother him because I was just a "fat liberal feminist." Oh, and fat people can't have ideas or thoughts. Sorry. I forgot about that rule. You win.

I don't think that being called fat is the same as being called the n-word--at all. I know that the n-word has a much longer, deeper, and more painful history of systematic oppression, and I'm not trying to compare or contrast racism and sexism.

I do think, however, that in many cases they are both the argumentative equivalent of "Oh yeah, well you're a doodoo head!" They're the things people resort to when they've lost but won't give up. They're the things people say because they're almost guaranteed to get a reaction. While that reaction may vary from a punch in the face to tears, they're words that are almost guaranteed to push some buttons and distract us from the fact that they can't come up with a response based in reason.

So the best response? Recognizing their last ditch effort for what it is. And keep writing. Keep speaking. Keep having ideas. We need them.

A Story About Routine

2012-01-07T09:36:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a spontaneous person, mostly when I am imagining that I am someone else.

Don't get me wrong. I've done spontaneous things. I sometimes enjoy them, but if there's one thing I know about juggling work and equally sharing parenting (and parenting in general, really) then it's that a routine is essential.

And this week, mine did not begin very well.

We traveled to visit my in-laws for the holiday, which was great, but after the four-hour drive back home on Monday night (which my husband and I both had off work), we were exhausted. Bags stayed packed and tossed into the living room, the dogs were restless from having spent two days away from the house, my daughter was wired from having slept much of the ride home.

Then it was time to go back to work. Me after having ten days off. My husband after a four-day weekend. Things did not go smoothly.

Because my husband's been busier than usual, I offered to drop our daughter off at daycare one morning so he could go in earlier (he usually does drop-offs and I do pick-ups), he thanked me, helped get things together, and left. Deviation from routine number one complete.

I've decided that I need to start eating breakfast because I never, ever do, and I know it's not good for me and whatnot. Deviation from routine number two. So, I walk into the kitchen, where of course my little barnacle (which is what I affectionately call my clingy, clingy child) follows me every step of the way. As I'm opening up some frozen raspberries to dump into the blender, I spill a couple onto the floor--literally, a couple, as in two. My daughter, curious barnacle that she is, takes it upon herself to detach from my leg and retrieve them, sticking one on her tongue until she realized how cold it is. Then I turn the blender on, and my daughter freaks out. She runs across the kitchen screaming (not crying, but screaming) and wraps both of her arms around my legs, burying her face in my knees. At this point--besides questioning her survival skills, since I'm the one holding the apparently-terrifying blender and thus probably not a good hiding place--I turn the blender off and reach down to comfort her.

Then I realize that she, in her terror, had managed to hold onto the raspberries (remember, two of them, that's it) and smashed them all over her hands, my pants, her shirt and the floor. Two raspberries, and my kitchen looked like a scene from Psycho.

So, of course, now two minutes away from the time I should be walking out the door, I have to change my pants, her shirt, clean off her bright red hands, and finish making my smoothie. I was only five minutes late to work, but her fingertips were still stained and I spent about half my morning feeling like I'd forgotten something important.

Anyway, routine's aren't so bad. Spontaneity may be overrated.

How Arithmophobia Led Me to Music for Running

2012-01-06T17:37:00.000-06:00

As you may know, one of my goals is to be healthier. As you probably don't know, I'm not big on numbers. Maybe it's the English major in me. Numbers are always so rigid, so foreboding. Yes, yes. I know there's abstract math and numbers are involved in amazingly complex and fluid representations. It's not that I don't value numbers. It's just that I get tangled up in them--sometimes stunted by them.

From Terry Freedman

Numbers, in fact, were contributing to the problem I'm having with figuring out my views on fitness and weight loss. I spent many of my teen years equating fitness to numbers. If I lost 15 pounds, I'd be fit. If I could wear a size 8, I'd be happy.

Those numbers weren't the way to think about fitness (and definitely not the way to think about happiness). I've since revised my goals to be more action-based and less result-focused. But there are still all these numbers.

Take at least 10,000 steps 5 days a week.

Do 3 sets of 12 reps lifting 35 pounds.

Run for 2 minutes, walk for 1 minute.

Numbers. Numbers. Numbers.

I don't want to do away with them entirely, but they do wear me out sometimes. Especially that last one about running. When I set running goals based on time or distance, the number becomes an obsession. I can't help it. If I'm on a treadmill, and I've told myself I'll jog two miles, I watch every single tenth of a mile tick off on the screen. I've tried hiding the screen under a towel, but then I just obsess about what the numbers are doing under there. Slowing down, no doubt. Waiting me out. What if I lifted it after fifteen minutes and still had a mile and a half to go? Numbers are shifty, you know.

When I'm running the track (most common, lately), the numbers are unavoidable. They're hanging on multiple walls, staring me down. I'm in an early stage of increasing my running, so I'm doing a mix of walk/run, and doing it by time (1 minute walking, 2 minutes running) was making me miserable. So I switched to laps (1 lap walking, 2 laps running), but it became so monotonous, so fast.

So, I tried something new today. I made a playlist with a mix of fast and slow songs. I knew I wanted to run/walk for about half an hour, and I knew I wanted to run in longer bouts than I walked. Using that as a guideline, I went to my song library and created this:

1. (Walk) "Lesson Learned" by Alicia Keys 4:14
2. (Run) "Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine 5:14
3. (Run) "Get Rid of that Girl" by the Donnas 1:41 (intentionally short)
4. (Walk) "Que Sera Sera" by Sly and the Family Stone 5:21
5. (Run) "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley 2:58
6. (Run) "All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix 3:59
7. (Walk) "You Think You've Got it Bad" by Lyfe Jennings 4:18

Total time: 27.7 minutes

Then I headed to the gym. The results? Great! I had a fantastic workout. I ran the entire time I intended to and only started to get a little weary at the end of "All Along the Watchtower." I got lost in the music and didn't have to worry about what lap I was on, and I barely even glanced at the clock. A benefit I didn't anticipate was that it also helped me not compare my performance to the other runners on the track. When they passed me or switched from walking to running, I just told myself they weren't on my level (musically, that is--fitness wise they probably still have me beat).

I obviously can't listen to the same seven songs every day, so I'll have to make a few sets of these playlists. I'm hoping to use the different tempos as a way to slowly work up to running the entire 30 minutes and then going even longer.

Want to play? What would your list look like?