George Michael is everywhere. In the cafe at my school, in the grocery store, in the pivnice I go to after classes to drink cheap pilsner and eat pickled cheese. "Freedom '90" in particular, a song I enjoy, but not as much as "Faith" or even "Father Figure."
I wrote it off as "one of those things," the aftermath of jokes about "being big in Europe"; the inexplicability of why some acts take off in foreign lands. Jerry Lewis in France, David Hasselhoff in Germany, The Eagles in Vietnam. George Michael in the Czech Republic, why not?
It's funny what stands out in a culture that's foreign to us. For me, in Prague, it is things like: the number of people who get on escalators and just stand there. The crazy burgundy hair color on what appears to be one of every five women over 40. The oddity of how in a country known for its beer, you're lucky if a place offers more than three varieties, draught or not. The funky eyewear. I absorb it, and then eventually, through conversation and reading and deduction, the cultural reasons behinds these little "huh" moments become clear.
In the Czech Republic, those reasons often circle directly back to the communist era. The escalators: Time is much less useful as a commodity when your activities are restricted or you're literally forced to do a job that has nothing to do with your interests; why not stand on the escalator, and why give up space to those uppity types who are in a hurry? The hair color: The chemical industry would go through times in which they wouldn't have the supplies to make any kind of hair dye other than--you guessed it--burgundy. The fashion stuck. The choice of beer? Fairly obvious. (The funky eyewear remains a mystery. I chalk it up to that European je ne sais quoi.)
I've never known anything but utter democracy, so I'm fascinated by these stories. The details of day-to-day life in the Bolshevik era rivet me. All a Czech person has to do is say the word communist and I'm a puppy-dog at their feet, waiting for morsels of life under that exotic era, that time when our schooltechers told Americans that "people 'over there' have to wait in line eight hours just to get a loaf of bread." I can't get enough of hearing the places my teachers' visions intersect with reality and the places in which they wildly diverge. "The old women at the grocery stores will look at you like you're a low-life if you tell them you didn't bring your own bag. In the communist days there weren't bags; why should there be bags now, they think," my landlady tells me. A classmate on the blander parts of the Czech diet (i.e. knedlicky): "Under communism, food was just something you ate to get by. You didn't want to be seen taking pleasure in it--that was decadent. That would get you noticed."
I'm a good listener; I'm not the sort who will top your tale with one of my own, eager to make the conversation all about me. But in my head, eventually that's exactly what it becomes: I immediately contrast these exotically grim experiences with my innocence of democracy. I picture my classmate growing up eating stale bread dumplings in shades of gray, while I remember slumber parties at which we'd sort M&Ms by color before funneling them into our mouths by the handful; I imagine how his bread dumplings affect him to this day, and how my overfed rainbow youth affects me still. I like to think that I'm respectful of people's experiences, but in my reverence of What It Must Have Been Like, and trying in my paltry way to compare and contrast my own experiences with those of whose culture I've only skimmed--well, I know I can't deeply research every culture on the planet, but let's face it, I'm sort of playing cultural hopscotch here.
I went to the Popmuseum, which is dedicated to Czech rock and pop music. "We made the best guitars," the long-haired, aging rocker dude manning the place said to me. "George Harrison's first guitar was Czech." He fires up his computer and finds a photo of the Beatle playing a Futurama. "The Bolsheviks think rock was shit, though." He grins. He's showing me around the exhibit--a punk-rock-style collection of photocopied images and cut-and-pasted captions of the rock music of 1990. Every Western musician wanted to hit up the newly freed countries. In 1990, Prague saw: Paul Simon, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Frank Black, Joan Baez, Michael Stipe, Iggy Pop. More; I can't remember them all.
The exhibit was well-done, if low-tech, but I was amused by what seemed to be a secondary showpiece of the exhibit: a wall listing dozens of albums of the era, no commentary. Jesus Lizard, Pure. Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas. Fine Young Cannibals, Young Raw & Cooked. Girl You Know It's True, Milli Vanilli. I laughed inwardly, picturing this curator--whose English was broken but who still managed to liberally sprinkle his speech with slyly enunciated expletives--printing out lists of albums of 1989 and 1990, cutting them into strips with his scissors, gluing it onto construction paper. It seemed charming in its simplicity.
So today, when "Freedom '90" came on while I was looking at the enormous variety of yogurts in the Albert supermarket, I laughed again, noting that I couldn't escape this damn song. And only then did it hit me: This song is from 1990. This song has Freedom in its title. This song is important. I blinked, looking at the yogurt, spoiled for choice--hazelnut, passionfruit, espresso, pear, cream top or no cream top, mix-ins or no mix-ins, rice-based, for kids, chocolate, tiramisu, strawberry, blackberry, kiwi, pineapple, peach, cinnamon, banana, Balkan, plain.
But you can't buy a roll of paper towels.
The relationship of the past to the present is difficult enough to figure out in your native culture. Maybe in some ways it's harder; how am I to notice the things we Americans do that are peculiar? Europeans used to spot us by our jeans; yesterday in my class, all the Czech students but two were wearing jeans. But at least I always have a wealth of knowledge to turn to. Friendly, suspicious pioneers, we are, eager to save the world but too interested in getting somewhere bigger and better to bother with the skills to do it properly; at ease around foreigners--after all, they've invaded our country, right?--but wearing our money belts because you know how those people are. (And they are, at least in our country--look at our crime.)
Here, I don't have that information. I try my big, floppy, Muppet-like American best to get it right. I'm trying to understand whether the people in the apartment above mine play the same song over and over and over again because once upon a time they didn't have options, or because they're just those kind of people.
The Czechs say that Prague was founded by Princess Libuše, when she stood at the fortress of Vyšehrad and had a vision: I see a great city whose glory will touch the stars. Archeaological evidence shows that the timelines don't correspond; the princess was nowhere near Vyšehrad. It didn't even exist during her reign. But it's legend, therefore it stays. So when I read of the Velvet Revolution and think of the students being beaten but showing up again day after day to fight for their freedom, I see Princess Libuše pointing skyward. And then I talk with a classmate who tells me that her husband was one of the protesters. "You want to know what Velvet Revolution was? Velvet Revolution was a bunch of students in the pub, going to visit a bunch of other students in the pub, then doing it again the next day. They were beaten, yes, but they came back because they knew that Communism was on its way out. Every year my husband goes out and drinks to mark the anniversary," she says, then rolls her eyes. Archaeological evidence.
At first this makes me sort of laugh, thinking of how my history books are just like me: wanting to take this Second World story and make a sort of darkly romantic tale, when it was really just the wheels of history chugging along. But then: To her, the fact that her husband was beaten and went out again the next day to protest all over again was a sign that it wasn't a big deal, because "Communism was on its way out." She thinks that because during the time of the Velvet Revolution, she implicitly knew--at age 14--that not long ago there were people who had protested and had much worse things happen to them. Just a beating? Why wouldn't you go out again the next day?
Shall I believe the legend or the evidence? Or is the legend unfinished, waiting to be impressed upon by the living evidence at hand? Perhaps it's not a legend at all, just a collection of bits and dates and hair-dye boxes, Princess Libuše nowhere in sight.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Estonian Tech Wizards and Universal Access
Given that in the States we have people arguing that receiving basic health care isn't a human right, it's a relief to read that most people globally feel that another sign of developing civilization--Internet access--should be a right.
But what really caught my eye here was that Estonia, of all countries, is one of the places that has already ruled that it actually is a human right and has wired the whole country (including mobile access). I know next to nothing about Estonia, but one of the facts I do know is that it ranks extraordinarily high in its proportion of women in technology. Nearly 70% of those employed in science and technology in Estonia are women. I don't exactly think that the high proportion of women in tech is the cause of the advanced thinking on global information access...or, well, maybe I do. It makes sense that a country that sees technology as not being gendered would see it as being plain old human, much as our need to drink water and transport ourselves. By not having vague implicit ideas of restricted access by gender (which most of us in the States have--when was the last time you heard "tech gal" instead of "tech guy"?), restrictions are lifted across the board.
There's also a chance that the very notion of universal access in places that place a premium on gender equality in tech is shaped by the actual women in the field. Most of the open-access zealots I know are men, but then, I'm American. Despite this field of advancement, Estonia is far from a women's paradise, so I can't help but think that women in comparatively privileged positions (tech) would feel strongly that global information access is a necessity, for very concrete reasons in addition to tech-utopian ones.
But what really caught my eye here was that Estonia, of all countries, is one of the places that has already ruled that it actually is a human right and has wired the whole country (including mobile access). I know next to nothing about Estonia, but one of the facts I do know is that it ranks extraordinarily high in its proportion of women in technology. Nearly 70% of those employed in science and technology in Estonia are women. I don't exactly think that the high proportion of women in tech is the cause of the advanced thinking on global information access...or, well, maybe I do. It makes sense that a country that sees technology as not being gendered would see it as being plain old human, much as our need to drink water and transport ourselves. By not having vague implicit ideas of restricted access by gender (which most of us in the States have--when was the last time you heard "tech gal" instead of "tech guy"?), restrictions are lifted across the board.
There's also a chance that the very notion of universal access in places that place a premium on gender equality in tech is shaped by the actual women in the field. Most of the open-access zealots I know are men, but then, I'm American. Despite this field of advancement, Estonia is far from a women's paradise, so I can't help but think that women in comparatively privileged positions (tech) would feel strongly that global information access is a necessity, for very concrete reasons in addition to tech-utopian ones.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
"We Are They": The Blame Game in Unrealistic Images of Women in Fashion
Fascinating rundown at Jezebel of a panel for the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Health Initiative, started in response to the eating-disorder-related deaths of three young models. (And having little result, per Anna Wintour.) Jenna and the commenters bring up pretty much everything I have to say on the issue, so I won't comment too much except to say that I'm relieved to read that so many people called bullshit on the neverending blame game.
Magazines say they "can't" feature models whose bodies are above the sample size (which is very small), because designers don't provide them with sample sizes in, say, size 8. Designers say they "can't" make their samples larger because they are responding to the norms of the industry. Which is dictated by...magazines and other designers. Model agencies say they provide prepubescent girls as models because that's what the industry demands, and hell, there's just so many of them from countries with shaky economies (unsurprisingly, often the same countries where sex trafficking is an enormous problem for this same demographic). The models themselves say they are powerless to stand up for their bodies' needs, because they often have families back in their native country to feed, and there's always another girl who will live on cigarettes to fit the norm to take her place.
I wish I knew the identity of the female fashion designer who said during the Q&A portion of the panel: "Trends start by agreement. We keep saying 'They started it,' but we are 'they.' We are they." I'd buy her clothes in a size 8 minute.
Magazines say they "can't" feature models whose bodies are above the sample size (which is very small), because designers don't provide them with sample sizes in, say, size 8. Designers say they "can't" make their samples larger because they are responding to the norms of the industry. Which is dictated by...magazines and other designers. Model agencies say they provide prepubescent girls as models because that's what the industry demands, and hell, there's just so many of them from countries with shaky economies (unsurprisingly, often the same countries where sex trafficking is an enormous problem for this same demographic). The models themselves say they are powerless to stand up for their bodies' needs, because they often have families back in their native country to feed, and there's always another girl who will live on cigarettes to fit the norm to take her place.
I wish I knew the identity of the female fashion designer who said during the Q&A portion of the panel: "Trends start by agreement. We keep saying 'They started it,' but we are 'they.' We are they." I'd buy her clothes in a size 8 minute.
Binge Eating Disorder: It Officially Exists!
The American Psychiatric Association recently announced their officially proposed updates to the DSM-5. The mental health professional community had already let it be known that the addition of binge eating disorder would likely be among the changes--it's the APA's rationale that's news to me. (In the DSM-4, BED was listed as a variant of eating disorder-not otherwise specified; this change would make it a discrete diagnosis.)
*BED tends to run in families yet is not a simple familial variation of obesity.
*BED has a greater likelihood of male cases and a later age of onset than other eating disorders.
*Compared with obesity, BED sufferers have greater concerns about shape and weight and a higher likelihood of mood and anxiety disorders.
*BED is associated with a lower quality of life than obesity.
*BED has a greater likelihood of medical comorbidities than either other eating disorders or obesity.
*BED has a lower level of diagnostic stability and a greater likelihood of remission.
*Individuals with BED have a more positive response to specialty treatments than to generic behavioral weight loss treatments.
I’m hoping that BED’s inclusion helps with the last two items in this list. If mental health providers are more aware of BED and know that it is a treatable condition, it makes sense that patients will get care more swiftly--and that the care will be more effective--than they would were they to follow standard medical advice given to those whose primary issue is that they’re overweight, not that they suffer from BED. I wonder if the “later age of onset” for BED is actually “later age of diagnosis.” Of BED sufferers whose personal histories I know, their behaviors began in childhood, even if they didn’t reach clinical frequency until adulthood.
The proposed change is important for another reason: It would lessen the frequency of ED-NOS diagnoses. Right now, ED-NOS is the most fatal eating disorder, yet is the least-known—and, because of its breadth, perhaps the least understood. Given that BED has a greater likelihood of medical comorbidities than other eating disorders, this could shed some light on the actual risks of ED-NOS. Right now, ED-NOS is a sort of catch-all diagnosis; it’s actually the most common diagnosis at the Renfrew Center, a leading treatment facility. An ED-NOS diagnosis can mean anything from a binge-starve cycle, to chewing and spitting, to food rituals that disrupt one’s life, to purging disorders (purging without bingeing). It can also mean anorexic, bulimic, or binge eating behaviors that do not meet the criteria for frequency or severity: for example, someone who binges and purges twice a month as opposed to twice a week (required by DSM for a diagnosis of bulimia), or someone who restricts her food, has an intense fear of gaining weight, and has body dysmorphia but has not dipped below the 85% of appropriate body weight, as specified by DSM for a diagnosis of anorexia. (It’s noteworthy that another proposed DSM change removes the requirement for amenorrhea for being diagnosed with anorexia; this criterion “disqualified” a lot of anorexics from being diagnosed as such, and I’m glad to see it removed.)
I would love to see more research into ED-NOS, for a variety of reasons. Because of its breadth, it can be more difficult for sufferers to recognize themselves and seek help. (What I listed above—someone who restricts her food, has an intense fear of gaining weight, and has body dysmorphia without going below 85% of her appropriate body weight—applies to a lot of women who wouldn’t think of themselves as having eating disorders.) I’m still wrestling with the question of biology, and whether eating disorders are on a sliding scale or on an on/off mode—like, is a woman who perpetually diets actually a woman with a mild (or not mild) case of ED-NOS, or is there another factor--possibly a biological one--missing from the plain old dieter that she’d need to be considered an ED patient? (Carrie Arnold wrote about this much more clearly here.) And is ED-NOS actually, depending on the symptoms, a “touch” of anorexia or bulimia? (I don’t think that’s the case, but if the sliding-scale theory is correct, that’s a logical conclusion.)
What the DSM-5 proposed changes do for BED is begin to legitimize it. I’m sure that eventually the fat-haters will laugh at the diagnosis (“Put down the potato chips, honey, that’s your prescription!”) but I’m confident that it will encourage more sufferers to recognize that they can seek appropriate treatment, and that with time even some of the haters would see that treating BED as a psychiatric diagnosis instead of as mere obesity (all the better if more non-overweight BED sufferers speak up) is a better cure for both the symptom and the cause. I hope that eventually these changes will lead to the same for ED-NOS as well.
*BED tends to run in families yet is not a simple familial variation of obesity.
*BED has a greater likelihood of male cases and a later age of onset than other eating disorders.
*Compared with obesity, BED sufferers have greater concerns about shape and weight and a higher likelihood of mood and anxiety disorders.
*BED is associated with a lower quality of life than obesity.
*BED has a greater likelihood of medical comorbidities than either other eating disorders or obesity.
*BED has a lower level of diagnostic stability and a greater likelihood of remission.
*Individuals with BED have a more positive response to specialty treatments than to generic behavioral weight loss treatments.
I’m hoping that BED’s inclusion helps with the last two items in this list. If mental health providers are more aware of BED and know that it is a treatable condition, it makes sense that patients will get care more swiftly--and that the care will be more effective--than they would were they to follow standard medical advice given to those whose primary issue is that they’re overweight, not that they suffer from BED. I wonder if the “later age of onset” for BED is actually “later age of diagnosis.” Of BED sufferers whose personal histories I know, their behaviors began in childhood, even if they didn’t reach clinical frequency until adulthood.
The proposed change is important for another reason: It would lessen the frequency of ED-NOS diagnoses. Right now, ED-NOS is the most fatal eating disorder, yet is the least-known—and, because of its breadth, perhaps the least understood. Given that BED has a greater likelihood of medical comorbidities than other eating disorders, this could shed some light on the actual risks of ED-NOS. Right now, ED-NOS is a sort of catch-all diagnosis; it’s actually the most common diagnosis at the Renfrew Center, a leading treatment facility. An ED-NOS diagnosis can mean anything from a binge-starve cycle, to chewing and spitting, to food rituals that disrupt one’s life, to purging disorders (purging without bingeing). It can also mean anorexic, bulimic, or binge eating behaviors that do not meet the criteria for frequency or severity: for example, someone who binges and purges twice a month as opposed to twice a week (required by DSM for a diagnosis of bulimia), or someone who restricts her food, has an intense fear of gaining weight, and has body dysmorphia but has not dipped below the 85% of appropriate body weight, as specified by DSM for a diagnosis of anorexia. (It’s noteworthy that another proposed DSM change removes the requirement for amenorrhea for being diagnosed with anorexia; this criterion “disqualified” a lot of anorexics from being diagnosed as such, and I’m glad to see it removed.)
I would love to see more research into ED-NOS, for a variety of reasons. Because of its breadth, it can be more difficult for sufferers to recognize themselves and seek help. (What I listed above—someone who restricts her food, has an intense fear of gaining weight, and has body dysmorphia without going below 85% of her appropriate body weight—applies to a lot of women who wouldn’t think of themselves as having eating disorders.) I’m still wrestling with the question of biology, and whether eating disorders are on a sliding scale or on an on/off mode—like, is a woman who perpetually diets actually a woman with a mild (or not mild) case of ED-NOS, or is there another factor--possibly a biological one--missing from the plain old dieter that she’d need to be considered an ED patient? (Carrie Arnold wrote about this much more clearly here.) And is ED-NOS actually, depending on the symptoms, a “touch” of anorexia or bulimia? (I don’t think that’s the case, but if the sliding-scale theory is correct, that’s a logical conclusion.)
What the DSM-5 proposed changes do for BED is begin to legitimize it. I’m sure that eventually the fat-haters will laugh at the diagnosis (“Put down the potato chips, honey, that’s your prescription!”) but I’m confident that it will encourage more sufferers to recognize that they can seek appropriate treatment, and that with time even some of the haters would see that treating BED as a psychiatric diagnosis instead of as mere obesity (all the better if more non-overweight BED sufferers speak up) is a better cure for both the symptom and the cause. I hope that eventually these changes will lead to the same for ED-NOS as well.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Spinning Is For Crazy People
I hereby withdraw everything I wrote about Zumba. (Inauthentic re-creation of the joy of dance; robs us of both discipline and the state of non-disciplined flow; etc. etc.) Because I just did spinning for the first time. Spinning makes Zumba look like a Grateful Dead show, as far as authentic expression of joyful movement.
Does anybody actually enjoy being told to visualize that they're making a right turn on an imaginary bicycle (well, a stationary bicycle, but its motion is imaginary)? I felt like I was in crazy-person-land. Merely by going to the gym, I'm conceding a nice chunk of my humanity: I'm acknowledging that I'm so far away from the life the human body was meant to live that I am going to put on special clothes, pay money to repeatedly lift heavy objects, get on a machine that makes me run but doesn't let me go anywhere, and maybe even imagine making a right turn on my imaginary bicycle.
I do go to the gym, though, and I even sort of enjoy it. It's my place to simultaneously zone out and tune in; I don't follow a punishing routine; I feel fantastic afterward. When I first started going, I was on guard for being hit on by men--I'd imagined that it would be one massive meat market, full of grunting men ogling women in purposefully revealing Spandex unitards. And while I've occasionally been approached at the gym by men, that's far from my usual experience there. (Why do men think that a nifty way to hit on a woman at a gym is to correct her form? Is this related to the insult-her-then-build-her-up routine in the Player's Handbook?) I can do my workout in peace, slipping in and out of the shared, sweaty space with nary a peep to the people lifting around me. I don't talk to anyone, male or female. And they don't talk to me.
Today, for the first time, that began to seem, well, weird. I don't know if it was going on a fake bike ride with a bunch of strangers or what, but suddenly I started to feel sort of antisocial for sharing space with these people, doing these intimate things eighteen inches away from them, and having absolutely no clue with whom I was sharing that space. The original gymnasiums in ancient Greece were places of not only physical exertion, but intellectual exercise--formal education actually took place in the gymnasium, in addition to sports training. I know a lot of people would be disgusted at the thought, but I sort of wish that we could make a return to that. There's a lack of options for adults to just hang out in public without paying a lot of money or screaming at the top of their lungs (a bar that learns that not all customers like the music at top decibel, that's my bar). When you're exercising, there's a focus point; when the conversation wanes, you can quietly retreat into your chest flys, or talk about them if you're grasping for small talk. (Maybe that's what the dudes who correct my form are after.) A vague sort of intimacy can develop when you're working toward a common but highly individualized goal--my boyfriend and I began as running partners, not partner-partners.
Group sports seem to be the immediate antidote to all this. But, see, I hate group sports--maybe it's leftover gym-class phobias of fifth-grade jock boys yelling YOU CAN'T BE AFRAID OF THE BALL when I'd run away from the kickball, not toward it, but the thought of other people depending on my physical prowess in order to have a good time terrifies me. Group sports introduce a whole other dynamic of community--one that I theoretically welcome, but in practice dread. I'm happy doing my individual activities, and I will always love the times when I'm wholly focused on nothing but my body mechanics. If we had more shared spaces maybe the idea of social gyms wouldn't seem as appealing to me. Maybe I just need to go to parks more.
Does anybody actually enjoy being told to visualize that they're making a right turn on an imaginary bicycle (well, a stationary bicycle, but its motion is imaginary)? I felt like I was in crazy-person-land. Merely by going to the gym, I'm conceding a nice chunk of my humanity: I'm acknowledging that I'm so far away from the life the human body was meant to live that I am going to put on special clothes, pay money to repeatedly lift heavy objects, get on a machine that makes me run but doesn't let me go anywhere, and maybe even imagine making a right turn on my imaginary bicycle.
I do go to the gym, though, and I even sort of enjoy it. It's my place to simultaneously zone out and tune in; I don't follow a punishing routine; I feel fantastic afterward. When I first started going, I was on guard for being hit on by men--I'd imagined that it would be one massive meat market, full of grunting men ogling women in purposefully revealing Spandex unitards. And while I've occasionally been approached at the gym by men, that's far from my usual experience there. (Why do men think that a nifty way to hit on a woman at a gym is to correct her form? Is this related to the insult-her-then-build-her-up routine in the Player's Handbook?) I can do my workout in peace, slipping in and out of the shared, sweaty space with nary a peep to the people lifting around me. I don't talk to anyone, male or female. And they don't talk to me.
Today, for the first time, that began to seem, well, weird. I don't know if it was going on a fake bike ride with a bunch of strangers or what, but suddenly I started to feel sort of antisocial for sharing space with these people, doing these intimate things eighteen inches away from them, and having absolutely no clue with whom I was sharing that space. The original gymnasiums in ancient Greece were places of not only physical exertion, but intellectual exercise--formal education actually took place in the gymnasium, in addition to sports training. I know a lot of people would be disgusted at the thought, but I sort of wish that we could make a return to that. There's a lack of options for adults to just hang out in public without paying a lot of money or screaming at the top of their lungs (a bar that learns that not all customers like the music at top decibel, that's my bar). When you're exercising, there's a focus point; when the conversation wanes, you can quietly retreat into your chest flys, or talk about them if you're grasping for small talk. (Maybe that's what the dudes who correct my form are after.) A vague sort of intimacy can develop when you're working toward a common but highly individualized goal--my boyfriend and I began as running partners, not partner-partners.
Group sports seem to be the immediate antidote to all this. But, see, I hate group sports--maybe it's leftover gym-class phobias of fifth-grade jock boys yelling YOU CAN'T BE AFRAID OF THE BALL when I'd run away from the kickball, not toward it, but the thought of other people depending on my physical prowess in order to have a good time terrifies me. Group sports introduce a whole other dynamic of community--one that I theoretically welcome, but in practice dread. I'm happy doing my individual activities, and I will always love the times when I'm wholly focused on nothing but my body mechanics. If we had more shared spaces maybe the idea of social gyms wouldn't seem as appealing to me. Maybe I just need to go to parks more.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Women and Men Eating
Criminy, I hate lazy scientific conclusions. Researchers at McMaster University found that when college students eat together, women eating with men consume fewer calories than they do in the presence of only other women, whereas men's caloric intake remained unaffected.
The Guardian's take on this somewhat unsurprising finding is that women are choosing to eat less in the company of men in order to appear more sexually desirable. The study hints at that too, citing research about how minimal food intake is viewed as feminine, and the correlation between thinness and desirability. I'm not disputing those supportive theories wholesale, but I'm surprised at the lack of discussion and citations for other reasons that women might eat less in front of men.
Even though much of our focus on food is at face value--nutrients, taste--it will hardly surprise you to read that food has potent social value and can easily function as a stand-in for emotions or actions. Food means that you’re taking up space: your body, your plate, your palate, your scent. Food means that you are fulfilling your own needs, which pushes others out of the way for the time being. Food means sex, food means submission and rebellion and lust and awareness. And not all of those things are necessarily encouraged in women.
Women talk less in mixed groups--not because we don’t have anything to say to men, but because we're more self-conscious. While for some women this might lead to eating more (their mouths aren't otherwise occupied), for many, like me, a decreased caloric intake correlates to the same self-consciousness that silences us. Women's caloric intake went down with the number of men they was eating with, just as my voice tends to get smaller and smaller depending on the number of people around me who have rarely gotten the message that what they have to say might not be taken seriously.
When I was being treated for an eating disorder and was forced to examine what food really meant to me beyond calories and carbohydrates and fat grams and fat on my body, what I kept hearing from myself was: I don't have the right to eat. I repeatedly heard this in treatment from other patients too. Somewhere along the line, we had learned that food was something we had to earn--not something our bodies needed in order to function, or a pleasure that was ours to savor whenever we wished. But the thought of having the right to eat what I wanted because I am human had literally never occurred to me until I got help. I remember the first time I bought breakfast cereal (something I'd never managed to "earn") after entering treatment: I felt giddy, dizzy, teary, standing there in the grocery store aisle and realizing I could eat what I wanted. Something shifted--I could literally feel it in my gut, the sense of relief that came with letting go of the idea that every bite I ate was going not into only a caloric exchange, but a moral exchange. When I began to see that food was not punishment or reward for my earthly deeds or thoughts, I took a major step toward recovery.
Now, I had an eating disorder, so my feelings about the right to eat may have been more extreme than the average woman's. But I don't think it's a big leap to think that the women who were being observed were feeling something akin to what I was: That food was something you might not have full rights to, and in the company of people whom, rightly or not, we're told are somehow worth more than we are, you don't exercise your rights to the fullest extent. (The study cited research indicating that women may lift these self-imposed restrictions when they're with intimates, including husbands and partners--presumably, hopefully, the people that women do feel they're on equal footing with.) Also, it's hardly news that eating disorders are rampant; more than that, the overwhelming majority of women I know have some sort of disordered eating pattern going on. That includes imbuing food with values other than physiological need and pleasure…and it includes not eating normally in front of men.
I'm sure there are women who, consciously or not, restrict their intake in front of men in order to either appear or feel more desirable. But I'm guessing that it actually has more to do with feeling desirable (thin, virtuous) than actually appearing desirable: Call it the dietary arm of female chauvinist pigs syndrome. I know I'm not the only one who has eaten conspicuously non-diet food in order to impress a man (and the Times backs me up). Only the most Cathy-comic-strip-minded of women would ever consciously believe than a man would be turned off by her eating a hearty meal; every male-quote roundup about "what men REALLY love about women" inevitably mentions how hot it is when chicks eat steak.
It’s notable that men’s caloric intake was unaffected by either the number or sex of people they were eating with. It’s almost as though they feel they have the right to eat whatever they want. Imagine that.
The Guardian's take on this somewhat unsurprising finding is that women are choosing to eat less in the company of men in order to appear more sexually desirable. The study hints at that too, citing research about how minimal food intake is viewed as feminine, and the correlation between thinness and desirability. I'm not disputing those supportive theories wholesale, but I'm surprised at the lack of discussion and citations for other reasons that women might eat less in front of men.
Even though much of our focus on food is at face value--nutrients, taste--it will hardly surprise you to read that food has potent social value and can easily function as a stand-in for emotions or actions. Food means that you’re taking up space: your body, your plate, your palate, your scent. Food means that you are fulfilling your own needs, which pushes others out of the way for the time being. Food means sex, food means submission and rebellion and lust and awareness. And not all of those things are necessarily encouraged in women.
Women talk less in mixed groups--not because we don’t have anything to say to men, but because we're more self-conscious. While for some women this might lead to eating more (their mouths aren't otherwise occupied), for many, like me, a decreased caloric intake correlates to the same self-consciousness that silences us. Women's caloric intake went down with the number of men they was eating with, just as my voice tends to get smaller and smaller depending on the number of people around me who have rarely gotten the message that what they have to say might not be taken seriously.
When I was being treated for an eating disorder and was forced to examine what food really meant to me beyond calories and carbohydrates and fat grams and fat on my body, what I kept hearing from myself was: I don't have the right to eat. I repeatedly heard this in treatment from other patients too. Somewhere along the line, we had learned that food was something we had to earn--not something our bodies needed in order to function, or a pleasure that was ours to savor whenever we wished. But the thought of having the right to eat what I wanted because I am human had literally never occurred to me until I got help. I remember the first time I bought breakfast cereal (something I'd never managed to "earn") after entering treatment: I felt giddy, dizzy, teary, standing there in the grocery store aisle and realizing I could eat what I wanted. Something shifted--I could literally feel it in my gut, the sense of relief that came with letting go of the idea that every bite I ate was going not into only a caloric exchange, but a moral exchange. When I began to see that food was not punishment or reward for my earthly deeds or thoughts, I took a major step toward recovery.
Now, I had an eating disorder, so my feelings about the right to eat may have been more extreme than the average woman's. But I don't think it's a big leap to think that the women who were being observed were feeling something akin to what I was: That food was something you might not have full rights to, and in the company of people whom, rightly or not, we're told are somehow worth more than we are, you don't exercise your rights to the fullest extent. (The study cited research indicating that women may lift these self-imposed restrictions when they're with intimates, including husbands and partners--presumably, hopefully, the people that women do feel they're on equal footing with.) Also, it's hardly news that eating disorders are rampant; more than that, the overwhelming majority of women I know have some sort of disordered eating pattern going on. That includes imbuing food with values other than physiological need and pleasure…and it includes not eating normally in front of men.
I'm sure there are women who, consciously or not, restrict their intake in front of men in order to either appear or feel more desirable. But I'm guessing that it actually has more to do with feeling desirable (thin, virtuous) than actually appearing desirable: Call it the dietary arm of female chauvinist pigs syndrome. I know I'm not the only one who has eaten conspicuously non-diet food in order to impress a man (and the Times backs me up). Only the most Cathy-comic-strip-minded of women would ever consciously believe than a man would be turned off by her eating a hearty meal; every male-quote roundup about "what men REALLY love about women" inevitably mentions how hot it is when chicks eat steak.
It’s notable that men’s caloric intake was unaffected by either the number or sex of people they were eating with. It’s almost as though they feel they have the right to eat whatever they want. Imagine that.
Miniature Tales of Resistance
I picked up The Impostor's Daughter by Laurie Sandell, a graphic memoir (as in, memoir with pictures, not as in memoir with heaving bosoms, though there was some of that too) about how she dealt when she realized that her larger-than-life father was a fraud, in so many senses of the word. It was a good read overall, but its relevance to this blog lies in the depiction of a conversation the author had with, of all people, Ashley Judd.
Laurie (a writer for a women's magazine) goes to Ashley's mansion in rural Tennessee in order to interview her about her beauty routine, i.e. what makeup companies she's willing to shill for.
Laurie: So, what's your biggest beauty secret?
Ashley: Serenity.
Laurie: OK, um, what's one beauty product you never leave the house without?
Ashley: My higher power.
Laurie: ...OK, so what would be your go-to beauty tip?
Ashley: Go to rehab for depression.
Leaving aside any question of the liberties Sandell took with the conversation to make it work in her 2"x4" colored panels, it bespeaks one of the paradoxes of women's magazines, which is that they are forced to have content that nobody cares about besides beauty companies. Ashley Judd has largely made a living off of being beautiful (she now has her own makeup line), so I'm doubting that her answers had anything to do with giving the beauty industry the middle finger. Rather, I'm guessing that, just like many a hapless women's magazine editor, she had more interesting things on her mind--maybe including resistance to the magazine industry, which isn't always kind to celebrities.
It got me thinking of those small beats of resistance I've seen in my time at women's magazines, the urges that never manage to make it into the pages.
*A battle between the photo department and an editor when the former wanted to airbrush the skin of a woman who had been severely disfigured in a car crash and had had skin grafts over nearly 80% of her body. The story was about being comfortable in your skin.
*A health editor trying to write about a little-covered eating disorder that is more fatal but less "glamorous" than anorexia and bulimia (ED-NOS, eating disorder-not otherwise specified) and being told by one of her higher-ups that because nobody knew about it, they shouldn't write about it.
*A beauty writer saying "Can't we just tell them to use soap and water?" in a fit of exasperation when the product she was supposed to be pushing cost over $40 and didn't do squat. (The question, we both knew, was rhetorical in that world.)
*Staff members protesting when they were told--not asked--to be photographed to be candidates for "staff makeovers," which showed up in the magazine pages. "I'm fine with the way I dress," said a staffer who lived in sweaters, jeans, and sneakers. "And I don't want millions of women judging me for it."
*A writer who was crushed, and furious, when her editor said that the subjects she had picked for a story about inspirational life turnarounds weren't "relatable" to the reader; she knew it was a superficially kind way of saying "not pretty enough." (I was once featured in a glossy mag, but was only photographed for it after the designer of the page had come by to snap a Polaroid of me to prove to the editor that I was "pretty enough" to be pictured. The article in question? I'd won the staff brownie contest.)
I'm not trying to make excuses for women's magazines; I'm trying to list ways in which I've seen that the very people responsible for stuff I consider damaging are on the right side. (You know, my side.) I stopped blaming the individuals years ago--not just to protect my sanity (by working at these magazines, I'm a part of it too, after all), but because I saw daily, firsthand proof of what Gloria Steinem was writing about in the essay from which this blog takes its name. The machine of women's magazines will never change. The best we can do is move on.
Laurie (a writer for a women's magazine) goes to Ashley's mansion in rural Tennessee in order to interview her about her beauty routine, i.e. what makeup companies she's willing to shill for.
Laurie: So, what's your biggest beauty secret?
Ashley: Serenity.
Laurie: OK, um, what's one beauty product you never leave the house without?
Ashley: My higher power.
Laurie: ...OK, so what would be your go-to beauty tip?
Ashley: Go to rehab for depression.
Leaving aside any question of the liberties Sandell took with the conversation to make it work in her 2"x4" colored panels, it bespeaks one of the paradoxes of women's magazines, which is that they are forced to have content that nobody cares about besides beauty companies. Ashley Judd has largely made a living off of being beautiful (she now has her own makeup line), so I'm doubting that her answers had anything to do with giving the beauty industry the middle finger. Rather, I'm guessing that, just like many a hapless women's magazine editor, she had more interesting things on her mind--maybe including resistance to the magazine industry, which isn't always kind to celebrities.
It got me thinking of those small beats of resistance I've seen in my time at women's magazines, the urges that never manage to make it into the pages.
*A battle between the photo department and an editor when the former wanted to airbrush the skin of a woman who had been severely disfigured in a car crash and had had skin grafts over nearly 80% of her body. The story was about being comfortable in your skin.
*A health editor trying to write about a little-covered eating disorder that is more fatal but less "glamorous" than anorexia and bulimia (ED-NOS, eating disorder-not otherwise specified) and being told by one of her higher-ups that because nobody knew about it, they shouldn't write about it.
*A beauty writer saying "Can't we just tell them to use soap and water?" in a fit of exasperation when the product she was supposed to be pushing cost over $40 and didn't do squat. (The question, we both knew, was rhetorical in that world.)
*Staff members protesting when they were told--not asked--to be photographed to be candidates for "staff makeovers," which showed up in the magazine pages. "I'm fine with the way I dress," said a staffer who lived in sweaters, jeans, and sneakers. "And I don't want millions of women judging me for it."
*A writer who was crushed, and furious, when her editor said that the subjects she had picked for a story about inspirational life turnarounds weren't "relatable" to the reader; she knew it was a superficially kind way of saying "not pretty enough." (I was once featured in a glossy mag, but was only photographed for it after the designer of the page had come by to snap a Polaroid of me to prove to the editor that I was "pretty enough" to be pictured. The article in question? I'd won the staff brownie contest.)
I'm not trying to make excuses for women's magazines; I'm trying to list ways in which I've seen that the very people responsible for stuff I consider damaging are on the right side. (You know, my side.) I stopped blaming the individuals years ago--not just to protect my sanity (by working at these magazines, I'm a part of it too, after all), but because I saw daily, firsthand proof of what Gloria Steinem was writing about in the essay from which this blog takes its name. The machine of women's magazines will never change. The best we can do is move on.
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