At a party I attended several years ago, someone told me I looked like Drew Barrymore. I thanked her. As the night went on and she drank more, she kept telling everyone else how much I looked like Drew Barrymore, and people would look at me, cock their heads, squint, and agree or disagree. The party eventually dwindled down to five people surrounding the kitchen sink, gulping water out of plastic cups, talking about ways in which I looked like Drew Barrymore. I was being studied by these strangers, who were talking about the size of my eyes and the shape of my upper lip, in this sort of detached but warmly appraising way. Is it terrible to say I loved it?
Since then I’ve been told I resemble various others, all of whom look so different from one another that the comparisons are void. What I realized somewhere between Catherine Zeta Jones and Jeanne Tripplehorn was that it didn’t matter who the comparison was; I was being complimented. I took an inordinate pleasure in being told I looked like these women, even if I didn't agree--it meant someone was taking notice of how I looked and drawing an association with someone more familiar, if less intimate, to them. Actresses and the like have been given a sort of official stamp of cultural approval: Nicole Kidman may not be your cup of tea, but she’s certainly someone’s; ergo, to be told you resemble Nicole Kidman is an endorsement of your looks, a way of saying that you’ve been sanctioned as pretty, without the speaker having to risk saying something inappropriate. It can be awkward to tell a woman straight-up that she’s beautiful--if you’re a man, it’s assumed you’re hitting on them (which you might be, but you might not be); if you’re a woman, there’s this unspoken sort of question left hanging in the air (“you’re lovely, now what about me?”), an awkwardness resulting from having testified to someone else’s beauty.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been with a group of people and someone will point out someone else’s resemblance to a celebrity, and suddenly the room is taken over by Julia Roberts and Bridget Fonda look-alikes. To report to others whom you’ve been compared to is a chance to talk about our striking features without appearing as though we’re bragging; hey, I didn’t come up with this comparison myself, you came up with it (or a stranger on the street, or a woman at a party, or a lookalike generator program), so it’s not like I’m saying I’m all that, right? To say forthrightly, I am beautiful is taboo. But remove it a bit—Yes, as a matter of fact, I have been told I resemble Charlize Theron—and you’re just stating a bare fact, reporting an incident, most likely with a mildly self-deprecating eye roll. Best yet, there’s a safety involved: If someone retorts that no, you do not indeed look like Charlize Theron, you’ve risked nothing. You laugh it off, saying you didn’t think so either. You haven’t risked actually saying, You know, lots of people think I’m beautiful; you’ve said something smaller, more innocuous.
It’s notable that this happens to women much more often than it happens to men. Men might be told that they look like a celebrity if they genuinely do (one sharp-featured man I know was eminently thankful when the Pulp Fiction era passed so that he wouldn’t have to hear anymore how much he looked like Quentin Tarantino), but a quick survey of some male friends told me that most of them had been told one or two celebrity look-alikes, if any, and only rarely.
The biggest, and most obvious reason, for this is that we’re all simply more used to assessing women’s looks. But another reason comes to mind, one involving a man: Several years ago, I was walking with a white man in a predominantly black neighborhood. We passed a black man a bit older than us who turned to my companion and said, “Hey, it’s Ben Affleck!” We didn’t get that he was talking to us and kept walking. He shouted it louder this time: “Hey, Ben Affleck! Check it out! It’s Ben Affleck!” he called out to nobody in particular. Now, my companion looked like Ben Affleck only in the most cursory sense: a lean-jawed white man with dark hair. He didn’t look like Ben Affleck; he looked like a generic white guy who was momentarily in this fellow’s consciousness, a stand-in for every lean-jawed white man with dark hair on the planet. In other words, he was a type.
I don’t actually look much like Drew Barrymore, but I do give off a candid warmth. I’ve heard Jeanne Tripplehorn--rather, “the other chick from Basic Instinct”--twice now from strangers while wearing a red trench coat; it’s not my face, it’s the femme fatale signifier. A cynical, wisecracking, bespectacled friend of mine used to be told she looked like Daria, as in Daria the cartoon character. It’s not about what we actually look like; it’s about what we stand for, what vibe we put out into the world--or rather, what vibe is received from the viewer. There was an edge to the stranger’s voice as he walked alongside us, urging other passersby to come check out “Ben Affleck.” In a country as racially divided as America, it’s not hard to imagine that my companion became, for a moment, the embodiment of the establishment that kept this neighborhood in poverty; by singling out the only white man on the street as being one of the most successful people in Hollywood, a division between the haves and the have-nots was clearly drawn.
Of course, since I don’t actually have a striking resemblance to any celebrity in particular*, it’s easier for me to pick up on the meta-message being sent by these comparisons. I wonder what it’s like to actually resemble someone--my best friend from high school actually is a dead ringer for Nicole Kidman, and has been compared to her ever since Days of Thunder, even winning a local lookalike contest as an adult. We’re not in touch anymore, but I wonder: Does she take this in and feel good (“Hey, I’m constantly compared with a woman who’s been on People’s Most Beautiful list eight times!”) or resentful (“Can anyone ever just tell me I look good and be done with it, without this Australian chick coming into the picture?”)? Does it ever backfire--does she wonder on off-days if there’s a constant …except not as pretty lurking in the air, given the much-recorded beauty of her famous counterpart? Or is her self-image intact enough to simply take it for what it is: a statement of fact, a reportage from others—you have red hair, you have fine features, you are tall and slender—and not much else?
*Except for Laura Kightlinger, whose brief reign on taxi-topper ads for The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman assured that for a period of four months I was told biweekly, by strangers, that I resembled “that comedian who’s on the taxis,” only to have disappeared from the public eye, ending my single bona fide celebrity resemblance.
Cross-posted from The Beheld, a blog with perspectives on beauty, in development.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Welcome to the Dollhouse: Men and Cosmetics
I don't know what the answer to healing the relationship so many women have with beauty is, but I've long maintained that the answer decidedly is not to invite men into the pool along with us. So I read today's New York Times story about men's cosmetics with interest. What jumped out, though, was this quote from the founder of a men's personal care line:
One glance at the makeup counter shows that women's products "enhance beauty" in a dizzying number of ways, including everything from peacock jewel-tone eye shades to Day-Glo nail polishes--that is, colors not found in nature, much less on even the most beautiful of human bodies. But to so firmly divide the covering or correcting of imperfections with the enhancement of beauty seemed odd. I feel this immense pressure to not only be beautiful but to appear as though it's utterly effortless, as though I just happen to have skin that's entirely unmarked by adolescence or hormones. "Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline"--the company's winking ad let us know that if we used their products, the world would assume the latter while they played knowing big sister behind the scenes.
I've always sort of envied women whose use of makeup is obvious--green eyeliner, turquoise shadows. Some might see them as kowtowing to the beauty imperative; I do see that, but depending on its wearer I also see a sort of fantasy space, a sort of storybook land in which we have jade eyelids instead of pearlized fairy wings. It's saying: I am unnatural; I am parading; I am painting myself; I am artist and subject at once. It's taking
But I don't think that Hewryk is restricting his comments to outlandish, playful colors when he refers to women using cosmetics to "enhance" their beauty. I think he is referring to things like mascara that makes our eyelashes appear dark to their tips, lipstick that makes our lips appear just-bitten, blush that makes us look like we've just been engaging in some particularly blush-worthy activity. These things indeed enhance our beauty. And yet, when I read Hewryk's words, I immediately thought of my pale-tipped lashes, my deadened cheeks, and thought of those as imperfections to be corrected, not beauty that merely needs to be enhanced. This is the effect of the beauty imperative: normal becomes imperfect, not a baseline. One of the prime tools of any woman's makeup box is called, after all, concealer.
"Enhancing beauty" sounds much more fun than "correcting imperfections," doesn't it? I wonder how many women think of their daily routines as enhancing their beauty versus correcting their imperfections. Hewryk's statement is more affirming than what I'd think of as the standard makeup-hawker's line, and what much feminist theory has us believe of advertising: If our beauty is lacking, and if our beauty is essential, then makeup will always, always sell. It's nearly optimistic in a way, but at its core the idea still makes me sad. In Elizabethan England, women of a certain class wore facepaint made of egg whites; the idea was to create a glazed, porcelain look--an obviously false, even inhuman, ideal. Men wore cosmetics in that era as well, but they were seen as vaguely immoral because of the deception involved: If you look at a woman with a shellacked face you know that she was not, indeed, born with it (maybe it's Maybelline?). If you look at a man who appears to be brimming with vim and vigor, however, you might well feel tricked if you found out he got it from a jar. I don’t wish for men to jump into the beauty myth along with women; I’d prefer that they instead cast about life preservers to help those of us who are mired in it get out. But if they must join, I’m just saddened by the idea that because of the restrictions of manhood, they would still be unable to seize the sort of cultural permission that women have to actually enhance our natural beauty, instead of being limited to correcting “imperfections.”
Cross-posted from The Beheld, a blog with perspectives on beauty, in development.
“Women use cosmetic products to beautify, but men have a totally different approach and totally different goals,” said Mr. Hewryk, who holds degrees in applied chemistry and biology. “Men use cosmetic products in order to cover up or correct imperfections, not to enhance beauty.”
One glance at the makeup counter shows that women's products "enhance beauty" in a dizzying number of ways, including everything from peacock jewel-tone eye shades to Day-Glo nail polishes--that is, colors not found in nature, much less on even the most beautiful of human bodies. But to so firmly divide the covering or correcting of imperfections with the enhancement of beauty seemed odd. I feel this immense pressure to not only be beautiful but to appear as though it's utterly effortless, as though I just happen to have skin that's entirely unmarked by adolescence or hormones. "Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline"--the company's winking ad let us know that if we used their products, the world would assume the latter while they played knowing big sister behind the scenes.
I've always sort of envied women whose use of makeup is obvious--green eyeliner, turquoise shadows. Some might see them as kowtowing to the beauty imperative; I do see that, but depending on its wearer I also see a sort of fantasy space, a sort of storybook land in which we have jade eyelids instead of pearlized fairy wings. It's saying: I am unnatural; I am parading; I am painting myself; I am artist and subject at once. It's taking
But I don't think that Hewryk is restricting his comments to outlandish, playful colors when he refers to women using cosmetics to "enhance" their beauty. I think he is referring to things like mascara that makes our eyelashes appear dark to their tips, lipstick that makes our lips appear just-bitten, blush that makes us look like we've just been engaging in some particularly blush-worthy activity. These things indeed enhance our beauty. And yet, when I read Hewryk's words, I immediately thought of my pale-tipped lashes, my deadened cheeks, and thought of those as imperfections to be corrected, not beauty that merely needs to be enhanced. This is the effect of the beauty imperative: normal becomes imperfect, not a baseline. One of the prime tools of any woman's makeup box is called, after all, concealer.
"Enhancing beauty" sounds much more fun than "correcting imperfections," doesn't it? I wonder how many women think of their daily routines as enhancing their beauty versus correcting their imperfections. Hewryk's statement is more affirming than what I'd think of as the standard makeup-hawker's line, and what much feminist theory has us believe of advertising: If our beauty is lacking, and if our beauty is essential, then makeup will always, always sell. It's nearly optimistic in a way, but at its core the idea still makes me sad. In Elizabethan England, women of a certain class wore facepaint made of egg whites; the idea was to create a glazed, porcelain look--an obviously false, even inhuman, ideal. Men wore cosmetics in that era as well, but they were seen as vaguely immoral because of the deception involved: If you look at a woman with a shellacked face you know that she was not, indeed, born with it (maybe it's Maybelline?). If you look at a man who appears to be brimming with vim and vigor, however, you might well feel tricked if you found out he got it from a jar. I don’t wish for men to jump into the beauty myth along with women; I’d prefer that they instead cast about life preservers to help those of us who are mired in it get out. But if they must join, I’m just saddened by the idea that because of the restrictions of manhood, they would still be unable to seize the sort of cultural permission that women have to actually enhance our natural beauty, instead of being limited to correcting “imperfections.”
Cross-posted from The Beheld, a blog with perspectives on beauty, in development.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Freedom '90
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.
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.
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.
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