Signifierbucks

A certain coffee company has been in the news lately for encouraging discussions about race between baristas and customers. While this has inspired some thoughtful and interesting articles - see especially those by Conor Friedersdorf and Tressie McMillan Cottom - I've been reluctant to join the conversation, essentially because I keep coming back to the sense that this is a brilliant ad campaign. What could be wiser for a company that sells spaces where you can surf the internet than to launch a thousand think-pieces with its name and perhaps logo throughout?

But the story is interesting. For a conversation that was meant to be about race, it's quickly become one about class. About the labor baristas already must provide, and now there's this, but also - less obviously - about the class of the chain's typical customer. The 'bucks customer is thus - much like "middle-class" - an archetype that can mean just about anything. The old cliché - from long before McDonalds had started serving kale - was that lattes were for the rich. This still gets repeated - Ijeoma Oluo refers to the chain's customers as "people privileged enough to spend $5 a day on their coffee." Elsewhere one finds the implication that the $5 is a splurge for poor people. Chain coffee as fast food and all that. Because... clearly you don't need to be rich to sometimes spend $5 on breakfast, and with debt an option, doing so daily is even a possibility. Rich people are, by this estimation, either thriftily making their coffee at home or super-splurging on single-origin and third-wave made by hipsters who've been trained in the Barista Arts in Sydney or wherever. So perhaps the customers somewhere in the middle - the whole "basic" thing? Rich enough to spare the $5, but not upscale enough to make their way to Williamsburg, or to know that it's cool to avoid - rather than seek out - brands?

Student scrappiness as class signifier

A little while back, the NYT ran an exposé about today's spoiled college students. How spoiled? So spoiled that in anticipation of beginning their freshman year, they bought shower caddies at Target. Sorry, their parents bought them stuff at Target. So fancy! Also: so schmancy.

I had trouble reacting with appropriate horror to these trips to big-box stores, given the scale of the cost of college and the drop in a bucket this represents. Also given how unremarkable if not modest this kind of spending would be if done by adults for themselves or their under-18 children. People buy towels and stuff. Curtains are now sometimes a part of "stuff"? Yeah, fine, not when I was that age, but so it goes.

But a shrug was clearly not the response one was meant to have. Which, to some extent, fair enough. I mean, outrage - or at least annoyance - seems a fair response if your parents weren't able or willing to put a cent towards shower caddies, upon realizing that your roommate's parents had gone all out. Still, it seemed a bit disingenuous for a NYT lifestyle article. There are no doubt kids being shipped off with $300 shower gel. Was this the best target for generalized rage?

It's for whatever reason easier to rage at more middle-class decadence. Maybe because that's meant to signal a generational shift - this might be kids-these-days, in a way that the schmanciest 0.01% are not. Or maybe it's because there's a certain amount of respect granted to those who spend gobs, but not at a place as shabby as Target, because that's supposed to be chic. It's that second possibility that concerns me.

*****

We now meet the similarly fancy and schmancy students of the University of Missouri, Columbia, who live in "luxury" apartments. What is luxury, though, in this context? Luxury is, these are apartments, not dorms. They actually cost less than the dorms, but are nicer. Key paragraph commenters seem not all that keen on reading:

The monthly rates for the modern units in Columbia generally start at $700 per student for a spot in an apartment, about twice the cost of older housing in the area. Yet they are on par with the price of on-campus housing, which equates to about $1,000 a month per bed, meals included.

So this does sound kind of steep either way. (Dorm food: world's biggest rip-off, unless Alice Waters is somehow involved.) Fascinating, really, that people are paying more to live in Missouri off-campus housing, however luxurious, than one could not that long ago to live in Greater Park Slope.

These apartments are "luxury," though, because they have flat-screen TVs, instead of professors giving lectures. Which is... apparently something we're to believe is a normal thing that happens in a dorm? I went to a somewhat intellectual college (understatement) and lived in its dorms. No one was giving any lectures, unless you count the occasional midnight mansplaining among the undergrads.

"Luxury," though, seems to be mostly code for things that weren't ubiquitous back in the day, but have become so. Or things that didn't exist, period. College students today are mighty luxurious with their smartphones, but note the lack of record players, records/tapes/CDs, video cameras, regular cameras, address books... Similarly, various accoutrements of an earlier age that haven't been replaced with smartphones are also obsolete. How much formalwear are students bringing to college, for example, and no, we don't just get to compare this with whichever peak of hippieishness from the 1970s.

The article inspired what might well be the most mean-spirited comment in newspaper comment history. One college student is interviewed and explains that she's covering some of the cost of living in one of these evil luxury buildings herself, and is not - as the journalist clearly wants to portray her as - a brat. Which gets this response:

Ironic that the bearer of such an infamously aspirational, tacky and upwardly-mobile-stock-broker-fave name as "Courtney" would dispute the notion that student residents of these upscale off-campus resize denies are entitled and spoiled jerks. 

And when she says "I wouldn't say I'm spoiled by any means," methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Charming!

Further complicating things from an amateur-sociology perspective: there are a) the dorms, which sound like the biggest rip-off, but which have some kind of implied academic atmosphere, and b) the new "luxury" housing, with their "stainless steel appliances, granite countertops and balconies," but there is also c) the Niedermeyer Building, which is apparently old, quaint, and in far better taste than dorms with their own tanning salons. The Niedermeyer Building - furnished, one imagines, by Karl Farbman himself - is clearly for a better class of person. A recent grad who lives there refers to Option B as "mass-produced, soulless luxury." So is it that some students are too poor for in-house tanning, or that some are sufficiently lowbrow as to seek this out? (Both?)

And another commenter has this to say:

My own kids go to top colleges and stay in dorms that are austere and basic. [....] I'd be interested in finding out if there is a direct inverse relationship between the status of the college academically and the luxury housing and other perks they feel compelled to offer. If you are secure in your status, you don't need bells and whistles.

Never mind that it's not the college offering all this. But this commenter may have a point. Student scrappiness is its own class signifier - sometimes the result of a badly-funded school with working-class students, but sometimes the very height of posh. (If you want to make this international, check out the dorms at Sartre's alma mater in Paris.) Maybe those raging against the One Percent would want to look somewhere other than at state-school kids in Missouri, granite-countertop-having or otherwise.

Tigers

The Princeton reunions - some of which I observed intentionally, but it was kind of omnipresent from Thursday on - are really quite something. Are people as excited to have attended any other college? I mean, yes, we've all encountered people whose time in Euphemistic Boston must come up within 10 seconds of conversation (and others whose fear of being that guy makes them outrageously evasive about their educational history), but they tend not to be wearing crimson while dropping that information. The Princeton version is something else, seemingly unrelated to discussing time in Euphemistic New Jersey with the uninitiated. And then there are the things where people are huge fans of college sports teams, but it doesn't seem to be as much about their own non-athletic presence at these institutions, however many years ago.

What struck me the most was not just that everyone was in orange and black. I mean, fair enough. It was that people clearly purchased special orange accessories. Not throwaway stuff, or items purchased at the event itself. Not the reunions costumes, which are also a thing. I mean things like orange leather purses and matching shoes. Nice dress clothing in orange, or orange-and-black. I'm not entirely sure there weren't more orange cars on the road than there are normally. People may well buy orange items year-round because they went to Princeton. Or, it appears, in some cases, because their spouses went to Princeton. And, I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

One of the classes had some kind of extraterrestrial theme, complete with star antennae. 

I have been assured that not everyone who goes to this college reacts in this way to having done so, and my anecdotal evidence tilts heavily towards people having that affiliation and not having that approach to it. But I'm not aware of this existing as even a substantial-if-marginal phenomenon at other places. This could, I suppose, have something to do with my own affiliations - two universities with a lot going for them, but especially little in the way of that kind of rah-rah, and with particularly cynical/non-sporty/alternative student bodies. UChicago is (or was, when I was there) more tweed than Maroon fleece material. And NYU is... well, everyone in the city has some sort of affiliation with the university. It's unavoidable, because it's not just a college, but a trillion different grad programs, continuing-ed classes, medical facilities, etc. Which I remind myself when the tangentially NYU-affiliated do ridiculous things that make the news. So maybe straightforward, non-ironic school pride is the default at American universities, and I've been living in some kind of Darias-and-foreigners bubble where I've missed that?

On those who died for your $4.95 tank tops

Earlier, I sat in my office, a half-block or so away from the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and read about the modern-day equivalent. Too horrible to contemplate. I'm not sure what can be done, and can only make naive, obvious points about the need for Western companies to check up on the factories they use abroad.

Maybe - and PG, this one's for you - this is a case where raising consumer awareness could be helpful. But not so much in the sense of shopping with one's dollars at off-the-beaten-path, high-end all-ethical clothing stores as, if it's clear that consumers object to this sort of thing, companies that make a point of checking up on their factories will do better than those that do not. Realistically, this is about reforming how clothing gets produced in the countries currently producing it, not switching to all-Made-in-the-West. There's only so much (US-made) Hanky Panky underwear to go around, and I believe that sample sale has ended.

What this doesn't need to be about is a) the specific greed of the American consumer, or b) the unwillingness of said consumer to pay a fair price. Re: the first, it appears that this factory was partially (primarily?) producing clothes for the European market. Yes, that special, artisanal, can't-get-it-at-home sweater you bought on vacation or study-abroad (and boy do I include myself in this) probably just comes from a chain we don't have in the States, but with the same labor conditions, the same quality construction/material, etc. This isn't about where suburban American Walmart shoppers get their clothes. It's where everyone gets their clothes. It's like I said re: food, but more so: it's not as if there's some significant caste of American or Europeans whose clothes - as in, all of 'em - come from ethically-sound sources. Me personally, I have this one super-artisanal (and not even that expensive!) made-in-France handbag, and a few this-and-that made in the States, and some thrift (a ton if you count hand-me-down) but otherwise? Like the bulk of what I own? Who knows.

Re: the second, I know I repeat myself for a change, but we need to be clear how consumer demand works. In the aggregate, we demand $5 tank tops. But as individual consumers, we have, in our minds, from previous shopping experience, a sense of what's normal for which items to cost. As in, that a cheap tank top is $5, an average one $10-20, and anything above $30, say, had better be special for some reason. We don't know what the true cost of a tank top would be, and more to the point, we have no reason to think that if we opt for the $40 one, the difference goes to labor conditions, as opposed to better-quality materials, better designs, snootier store ambiance. We can't just reveal our willingness to generously pay a bit more, and expect conditions in factories to magically improve.

Oh, and we need to get past the idea that all consumers are hyper-fashion-conscious and getting to Zara ASAP so as not to seem so-five-minutes-ago. What happens is, clothing costs less so we don't care for it as well, plus it may be not-as-well-made, so it falls apart more easily... so we buy more of it. I really doubt if trendiness accounts for all that much waste. More likely - and I back this up with no concrete evidence whatsoever - trendy young girls/women make for an obvious scapegoat.

The neurosis Facebook invented

Emily "Prudence" Yoffe (and bear with me even if you're not a Prudie fan, this is merely the point of departure) recently got the following neurotic letter, signed "Hurt Guy":

Two of my dear friends from college got married to each other last weekend. I haven't seen them in four years, but we communicate from time to time on Facebook. I can think of three possibilities why I wasn’t invited: 1) My invitation got lost in the mail. 2) They forgot to invite me. 3) They chose not to invite me. I feel stung, left out, and hurt. Thanks to social media, I have seen photos and video from the rehearsal dinner, wedding, and reception. The event was not small; there were banquet tables for college classmates. For nearly two years, the bride and groom and I were among a tight-knit group who spent hours working together on the college newspaper. Outside of school we had parties at each other's apartments and long conversations over pitchers of beer. Is there were a tactful way to find out why they didn't include me?

Prudie responded with a nod to social-media weirdness, but concluded, "[U]ltimately it’s your problem if you feel you were robbed of a slice of the wedding cake." Which is on the one hand true, and on the other not quite right. I didn't think she was fair to the guy, because as neurotic as he does come across, Facebook has a way of bringing these neuroses to the fore. If you have these neuroses at all - and not everybody does, but I suspect most do - Facebook will magnify them.

Well, not so much magnify them as distort them. Facebook has brought us a form of neurosis that may not have existed before: the fear that people who you aren't close with, maybe hardly even know, or were close with ages ago, are hanging out without you. Whereas we all know that Facebook highlights preexisting anxieties - X is going to Yale Law School, X is engaged, X ran a marathon, X looks awesome in a Speedo - Facebook might well have invented this other problem. OK, maybe not invented - there have always been hyper-neurotic egomaniacs - but this was not among the normal human insecurities. Now, it has joined the more everyday - and rational! - anxiety about social exclusion from actual people in your life. That, too, can be magnified by Facebook, but this is something else. It's about feeling excluded from people who are not in your life, who you don't especially wish were in your life.

Facebook, in other words, gives you a warped sense of who you know, and how recently you were in touch with them. You may find that the people who feel most present in your life aren't the ones you actually see on a regular basis (friends who, for example, may not be on the site, or may not post much, or much that's personal), but the ones who amply document every social engagement. The whole if-it-isn't-on-Facebook-it-doesn't-count phenomenon. Wherein the people you actually hung out with last night feel less present than the ones who put 500 inexplicably captivating vacation photos. (Always in Greece, for some reason.)

The Prudie letter may not seem to fit the bill, because the guy says these were his close friends in college... or does it? Were they his close friends who've since abandoned him, or are they the acquaintances he remembers best, because they dominate his news feed?

The reason I feel for Mr. Neurosis is that I've totally had twinges of this, where, however momentarily, I find myself wondering why some people I haven't actually seen in person since I was 12 are hanging out without me. And this isn't even a neurosis I had at that age, when I was intensely concerned with friendship dynamics. I can't remember ever caring at all that a people not in my own circle presumably hung out on weekends. It wouldn't have occurred to me. I had all the usual clique anxieties of a middle-schooler at a Manhattan girls' school, but this, alas, wasn't one of them.

But Facebook distorts your concept of who your circles even consist of. These people who are your friends (who are, if you paused and thought about it for a moment, no such thing, but they keep appearing under that heading every time you sign on, and anything repeated enough times sounds reasonable) are hanging out without you. How dare they! Never mind that you would not in a million years have invited them to go do something, or indeed remembered that they existed if it weren't for the news feed. It can still feel, in that instant, like a rejection.

Obviously, the pro-sanity approach is to be self-aware, to allow the moment to pass, not to write a letter to an advice columnist, and most definitely not to angrily confront someone who maybe "liked" something you posted a year ago regarding why they didn't think to include you at BBQ held in a state you've never even visited. The great life lesson of adulthood is that other people are far more wrapped up in themselves than they are in you, and that's even the people who are, in some meaningful sense, in your life.

With age, the freedom to frown

Today I have: sat next to the smelliest person ever to sit in the NJ Transit quiet car; heard a slender female passerby of a certain age telling her male companion, "I feel like I weigh 300 pounds"; seen a homeless man in a "Team Goldman Sachs" t-shirt; bought groceries at the Greenmarket as if I live plausibly near Union Square (but at least the late-season basil may cancel out the smell should I get the same seatmate as during the morning rush).

What hasn't happened today - but used to happen all the time - is the following: "Smile, honey!" That strange men on the street or, worse, on public transportation no longer ask me to smile has to be the best thing about getting older.  Autumn links to a post complaining about this very phenomenon. What's so off-putting about "smile"? Maybe that it's a catcall disguised as a first-world-problem or whambulence accusation. It's unlikely that someone sobbing, or with an expression suggesting genuine woes, would get a "smile" - just someone stressed about upcoming midterms. (There is some class specificity here - more than other catcalls, I found, this tends to be the lowest-socioeconomic-status men harassing higher-socioeconomic women. But I have not formally studied it, folks.) So there's this element of, is this a catcall or is this someone telling me to get over myself? Because who among us shouldn't get over herself? Or maybe just that it's a catcall that's a criticism - "neg" avant la lettre. Or maybe this is entirely subjective, and because "smile" is the one I got constantly, it's the one I found the most irritating.

Whatever the case, if you're going to holler something at a young woman, "looking good" is probably preferable to "change your facial expression to suit my preferences."

Nails and intersectionality

Bisou - who, let it be known, is fine now - timed her worst-yet gastrointestinal woes for just as my husband had to leave to go give a talk elsewhere in Germany. After schlepping a queasy poodle via tram to a not-quite-English-speaking (but oh so effective - what was in that shot?) veterinary office, then spending a day feeding her this special anti-upset-stomach food six times as instructed, and giving her electrolyte powder mixed with water via oral syringe throughout the day, and otherwise watching her intently and taking her on many short walks during which I did nothing but make sure she didn't eat anything bad off the ground (the likely cause of the initial problem), and examining her every movement and sound to make sure she wasn't about to start throwing up again, and getting some work done in the breaks between this, I felt some kind of reward was in order. But what?

I decided the time had come to rationalize a purchase I'd previously deemed ridiculous. 19 euros later, and I have the perfect sheer bubblegum pink, glossy and not peeling immediately despite lack of base or top coat. This pointless expenditure fits with my overall cheapness philosophy, which is to only buy things I've been thinking about for a while. (A pair of ballet flats will maybe require six months to track down, and another six to decide to purchase.) But this isn't about cheapness. It's about nails. Why is nail polish the ultimate treat?

Tracie Egan Morrissey of Jezebel recently argued that the nail industry is a form of female empowerment:

When historically female-centric practices—like cooking, baking, hair styling, clothing design, etc.—have been legitimized into celebrated careers, men typically end up being the stars who dominate those industries. Look at Emeril Lagasse or the Cake Boss guy or Vidal Sassoon or Karl Lagerfeld. Whenever there is money to be made or creativity to be applauded, men have managed to establish themselves as the authority on things that women had been doing thanklessly for centuries. That is, until nail art, the increasingly-popular, rapidly-expanding field that has almost exclusively remained all-girl.

She also notes - and this seems more relevant - that nail artifice "might just be the only form of primping and grooming that isn't rooted in making oneself more appealing to men or exploiting women's insecurities." True enough. Other beautification can be justified as being about snagging or keeping a mate. Nail polish... not really. Maybe slightly - how you wear your nails might indicate your subculture, and numerous choices might turn certain men off. And the choice to do something rather than nothing indicates conventional femininity (yes, even if your nails are blue - remember the gender-bending implications if a man does the same), which is of course a loaded thing to indicate when it comes to male-female relations. But overall, point taken.

It seems even relevant, though, that the more complicated your nails, the more of a statement you're making about your willingness to scrub the kitchen floor, or to bake bread from scratch. It's telling men (or, in this case, miniature poodles) that you take care of yourself, and aren't looking to pick up after them. Which could be why it's so appealing as an antidote to stressful domestic tasks.

"Nail art," though, is its own thing within the nail industry: designs on the nail itself, as opposed to simply painting all the nails one shade. Readers already know that I'm ambivalent about this phenomenon. (If painting your ring finger to highlight your engagement ring is problematic, where to begin with doing so in such a way as to match your iPhone case.) Glitter, metallic, neon, holographic, yes. Shatter or magnetic, whatever that is, no. I appreciate - yeah, I'll admit it - some French manicures, as well as the more socially-acceptable adventurous takes, but because I don't get professional manicures, my own nails tend to be painted a solid color or not at all. I have no interest in using my nails as a canvas.

In terms of why that is, I suspect it's for the same reason as why I don't like patterns or designs on clothing, either, but there's a whole politics to this question as well. As Jezebel commenters and others point out, "nail art" used to be derided as something done by working-class women (with possible racial connotations, although it depends where you grew up), and it's only now that fashion editors are giving rich white women permission to join in the fun. Granted, the new "nail art" is generally done on short, natural nails, but call it "Japanese," and even long acrylics can become part of socialite pampering.

Nails-as-a-canvas seems like a fine example of something some in the upper- and lower-classes share, but that isn't ever going to fly for the middle classes. If you're someone who needs to look appropriate for work, and who has so internalized bourgeois office-attire aesthetics as to only find work-appropriate styles attractive, you're not pressing on three-inch leopard-print nails. If you feel that you're a paycheck or two away from getting a job as a cashier, you may be less inclined to re-appropriate a style commonly associated with women in that profession. Super-complicated nails on a rich woman announce a kind of invincibility; on a woman on the other end of the spectrum, resignation or simply acceptance that no interviews for higher-brow jobs are forthcoming.

Equal-opportunity romance

Amber brings our attention - and Dan Savage brought our attention - to a post by Jos about why women who say they only date women or transgender men (for my stodgier readers, this means men who were born female) are a problem.

Jos makes two arguments. One is something barely comprehensible about how women with this preference are afraid of "trauma" (rape? the idea of rape? catcalls? the abstract patriarchy?) coming from The Phallus. Convoluted and obtuse.

The other, which is more straightforward, is that it's offensive (as in, basic manners, not simply a violation of PC) to imply that trans men are any less male than their biologically-male (cis, for my less stodgy readers) counterparts. Which it is. But does that mean everyone who dates trans men must also date cis men?

This is a sensitive topic not only because of the typically-assumed and true-in-nearly-but-not-all-cases relationship between sex-at-birth, current genitalia and gender, but also because not all trans people who wish to do so "pass" as the sex with which they now identify. So even in an ideal world of sensitive pronoun usage - which, it should be noted, we don't live in - some who are trans would continue to be referred to with the incorrect ones by acquaintances who didn't have the full scoop, and who, however apologetic the might be afterward, may have brought out whichever anxieties. (A policy of calling every narrow-shouldered, small-boned, short-haired, bare-faced individual "he" is going to end up offending a lot of women, who are no less women for not handing over X% of their paychecks to Sephora.)

On the surface, this seems like an incredibly complex and touchy issue. Is it OK for women who identify as "queer" (as vs. "lesbian") to date cis women and trans men but not cis men (what about trans women?) as though it's somehow "queer" to date someone who's changed sex? Doesn't this depend on how the trans man in question identifies - i.e., as someone who's transcended the stifling limitations of gender labels and wishes to remain active in the "queer" community, or, conversely, as a boring ol' straight dude who happened to be born in a woman's body and just wants to be done with it once and for all? Is a woman with a preference for masculine-looking individuals with female genitalia, who uses pronouns impeccably but who perhaps ultimately, in her heart of hearts, doesn't see a huge difference between a very masculine-presenting woman and a trans man who hasn't undergone much in the way of reassignment, in part because some of the people she's dated have been both, perhaps in the course of their relationships... is such a woman a bigot for subconsciously denying the female-ness of very masculine women and the maleness of the male-identified androgynous, and if so, what can she do about it? And what on earth would yours truly, a straight, cis woman, have to contribute to such a complicated discussion?

In fact, while these issues are certainly complex, the issue at hand isn't all that complicated, nor does it require any particular knowledge of gender theory, correct terminology (which doesn't hurt to know regardless), etc.:


When it comes to choosing partners for romantic relationships - which is a euphemistic way of saying relationships with a sexual component, without specifying which acts, if any, are taking place or might soon - there's no such thing as bigotry. By this I mean, if you wish to date only men or only women, or only Thai men and Finnish women, or only those with a certain set of anatomy, and that's that, so it goes. 

And there's no other way it could go, because we-as-a-society deem it wrong to force someone to be romantically involved with someone against their will. If you feel that all someones who meet whichever criteria are not ever ever ever of romantic interest to you, there's no ethical way for someone or some entity to intervene and ask that you become an equal-opportunity dater. It's fundamentally not like hiring someone, or running a country club, because of just how wrong we believe it is for someone to be forced into a romantic situation with someone they don't see in that way. Society impacts individual romantic preferences, but individual romantic choices simply aren't the arena in which justice in terms of beauty standards and the like is to be achieved.

Happily, society influences but doesn't determine desire, allowing the vast majority of people not attractive/conventional-looking enough to ever in a million years get paid for their looks to experience, at least at some point in their lives, a choice between multiple interested parties. But it's certainly possible to have preferences that are self-defeating, as the plain-looking, low-earning men who'd only be happy with a swimsuit model can attest. But dude doesn't owe dates to the women of the world who aren't swimsuit models, and is in fact doing them a disservice if he dates them out of the principle of the thing.

Now, what can be offensive is how one voices one's preferences. This is especially the case if you have preferences that happen to line up with something likely to hit a nerve. It's one thing to only date six-foot-five blue-eyed blonds (a pattern your friends may pick up on, or not, if you live in the Netherlands), another entirely to announce that you 'only date Nordic types.' One to only date those 30 years your junior (assuming you're at least 48), another to announce your unwillingness to date anyone closer to or above your own age. Along the same lines, evidently, it's one thing to only date cis women and trans men, another to make that preference known.

But what if you want your friends to help steer you to the right people? What if you're constantly being set up with the wrong ones - wrong for you, that is - and don't want to waste anyone's time? To stick with the original example, given that the vast majority of men were not born female, if those who were are the only ones you date, but you identify merely as "bisexual," you're... I suppose functionally not so different from someone who lives in a place with very few Syrian Jews, but will only date a Syrian Jew, but thinks her friends will find her closed-minded and so defines her romantic interest as "guys." Technically true, and enough information in many situations, but not an efficient way of finding a partner.

Where offensiveness really enters into it is less in what the preferences may be (because as much as society influences desire, there somehow ends up almost being someone out there who likes everything) than in their presentation. If you present your subjective preference as a universal, as in, 'only X are attractive,' this is offensive even if your preference is something as seemingly inoffensive and fixed as, say, preferring men to women romantically. If you hold forth on what screeching nags women are, then you've turned an otherwise innocuous announcement - that you're a straight woman or gay man - into something objectionable. Along the same lines, if a woman announces that she dates only women and trans men, and does so in such a way as to imply that these two groups are part of one category, if she elaborates that trans men are OK in her book because she doesn't think dating them makes her any less a lesbian, then this, yes, would be a problem.

Busybodies or gun control

-In light of the discussion below, it perhaps bears mentioning that the latest perpetrator-of-American-tragedy is 24, and so a child according to the new science of brain development. Or experiencing the onset of severe mental illness, which even the old brain science acknowledges can happen at that age. Or - and please, no more of this explanation - a burnt-out PhD student.

-As I know I'm not the first to point out (but can't link to Facebook posts), it's wrong to say that all that we can do at this point is mourn, or that it's somehow crass to try to think of the broader implications. It would seem that, for those of us who didn't know the victims, our concern is precisely how to prevent things like this from happening in the future. It's because we feel for the victims that we want to prevent massacres, but also because the tragedies in our own lives, should there be any, are not the Aurora one specifically that we can jump ahead from "how horrible" to "how do we prevent this?" relatively quickly. Maybe it's "politics" in a sense when different people have different ideas how to stop massacres, but not generally in the opportunistic, politics-as-sport sense.

-Every time something like this happens, we get the reports about how the killer, in his pre-killing days, was not the most extroverted, popular person of them all, how he wrote fiction that wasn't upbeat enough for his creative-writing teacher, etc. He had friends, but not many, which is oh so ominous. In this case, the description of the killer in his younger days, pre-psychotic-break-or-whatever-it-was, makes him sound like a scientist. I live in a community of scientists, and this is not a profession big on making small talk. And yet, a peaceful bunch. But we're meant to believe the problem here the existence, in our society, of people who don't greet neighbors with sufficient chipper enthusiasm, and not, you know, the readily-available access to guns.

-There's a cultural relativism discussion - or is it a regionalist one? a YPIS one? - that comes up whenever the topic turns to guns. The idea being that unless you grew up around Gun Culture (not hunting, but guns as theoretical self-defense should the government take a turn for the worse, should you be wronged one too many times), anything you say about gun control is evidence that your life is like the show "Friends," and you're fancy cityfolk using gun control as a pretext for being snooty. Organic kale, triple soy lattes, and gun control. (What gun lobby?)


It's an effective silencing technique, for sure, but it doesn't need to be. Because yes, it's necessary to consider - whether the issue is anti-circumcision, anti-veiling, or gun control, or anything else - that a do-gooder movement might be just a pretext for cultural domination. It also might not be that at all. Is it really "Blue"/"Fake" America's lust for hegemony that compels some of us to point out that even if the problem is illegal weapons (although not even, in this case), the presence of a great many legal weapons throws more onto the black market? There are certain issues where this kind of relativism ceases to convince, and they tend to be matters of life and death. Honor killings, for example. 

-The vast majority of gun-owners are upstanding, responsible people? I don't doubt it. But a society in which guns are around is one in which the evil-lunatic tiny-minority can inflict major damage. The point isn't that if a gun just happens to be available, any of us might snap at any time and go on a rampage. Most people with access to guns behave themselves. Rather, it's that there are a few out there who are so inclined, and there isn't any effective way of determining who they are ahead of time and keeping them - and them alone - away from weapons. 


-Since it would be nothing but cosmopolitan elitism to suggest that ordinary citizens not have access to weapons, we're left with the nebulous 'but what about mental health?' alternative. Most weird people don't commit murder, nor do most gun owners, so if guns are sacred, addressing weirdness is the only option. The problems are that a) not every killer even meets psychiatric/legal definitions of mental illness, and b) it's asking for a great deal of surveillance on behalf of non-experts, aka intrusion, aka busybody-ness, for everyone to be expected to be constantly on the lookout for unusual behavior, lest that unusual behavior indicate that someone is likely to make use of his Constitutional right to buy as many bullets as are sold on the Internet. The guy down the hall failed to deliver the desired, "Hey!"? Didn't seem interested in discussing last night's game? Warning signs! But I suppose it's cosmopolitan elitism to suggest that anyone has a right to be eccentric or socially awkward in peace.

Off

I approached both of the recent articles - Rachel Aviv's in the New Yorker, and Scott Anderson's in this week's NYT Magazine - profiling men who had, as 14-year-old boys, killed members of their immediate families, only to be tried as adults, with the same thought going into it. The one you're expected to have, namely that it is unfair to hold an adult responsible for a crime committed before the age of reason, whether that's 18 or not.

Yet the actual information provided by both pieces suggested something quite different from the reconsideration both authors advocate for. Not so much that such individuals [said "men" before, fixed] should be tried as adults, as that the arguments against doing so don't add up.

I'll focus on Anderson piece, which is fresher in my mind, and which doesn't advocate for a legal change that's since taken place. Anderson profiles a man whose reasons for killing his parents were that his father was distant and the silent type, not effusive with praise, while his mother nagged him too much. Not an abusive or violent home. The scrappier end of the white middle class. 

It's understandable that the boy's grievances ring true to many, precisely because they are the everyday grievances of so many adolescents. Their banality is what ought to clue us into the likelihood that something was incredibly off - depraved? ill? evil? sociopathic? as a non-expert, I'm going with "off" - about this particular boy, to react to having run-of-the-mill flawed parents by murdering them. He felt he wasn't appreciated for who he was? With the exception of the small subset of adolescent boys whose parents spend maybe too much time telling them they're god's gift to humanity, this is adolescence.

What's striking isn't just the crime, given the facts, but also that upon reflection, this is what the prisoner decided explains his crime. He doesn't seem to understand the sheer number of people who feel misunderstood and under-appreciated at 13, 14, and don't kill anybody, even in households with guns lying around. (Guns not lying around would be a plus, but is a separate, if related, issue.) In the case Aviv profiles, the murderer was upset that he'd been dumped by text message. It might be possible to point to what had made an off person most upset that day, but normal woes themselves don't explain anything.

Anderson provides further background information, some relevant, some not. The kid's mother had had an unfortunate childhood, which may have played a role. Appalachian migrants to the Midwest evidently stick to their own kind, and this particular family didn't have many friends. Are we to believe that the introverted and provincial are more likely to be shot to death by their offspring? That his parents' failure to entertain a cosmopolitan crowd was as much a factor in his murdering them as was his own off-ness?

Both of these articles are the kind of real journalism someone who's blog-crastinating can't sneeze at, and the authors are clearly better-informed on this issue than I'll ever be. But what's missing from both of these accounts is, I suppose, the counterargument. Some explanation of why anyone might support these laws other than, Americans are barbaric, blood-thirsty outliers in the Western world. Some acknowledgement that murder is a really big deal. That this isn't, bleeding-heart-wise, like humanizing those who fall into gangs and drug-dealing in environments where other options are few.

The fact that it's so easy to sympathize with being 14 and miffed at one's relatives, 14 and impulsive, is precisely why we shouldn't readily understand how - even at a young and careless age - someone would think murder was the answer. That's not even within the realm of what was once called juvenile delinquency. (Meanwhile, the latest research is telling us that the "child's" brain only finishes developing at 25, meaning that we should also be having this conversation about criminals who, at the time of the crime, are probably long since out of school and their parents' homes.)

Goes without saying, but I'm no authority on what should be done with/for juvenile murderers, which sentences are appropriate, whether the Supreme Court's rulings thus far have done enough. Nor, for that matter, do I have any particular opinion on exactly which sentencing makes sense for adults convicted of murder. And, as I said, I don't know how to classify the quality that leads certain people to snap, how anyone, expert or not, is able to say which possibly-drug-addled off person is or is not "insane" - even within the world of constructs and legal definitions, this is a tough one to wrap one's head around. I just found the journalistic unsettling in both cases, and, like I said, in conflict with the very story being told.

United in studiousness and lactose intolerance

-As someone who both is intermarried and studies intermarriage (the backstory), I read with interest this account of a couple, Helen Kim and Noah Leavitt, who study the very form of intermarriage they're in - Jewish-Asian. Of the seven (mostly) well-known couples of the past half-century mentioned in the story about their marriage and subsequent research, all are Jewish men married to Asian or Asian-American women. 


While the academic paper itself addresses gender, it seems worth noting that the Styles-audience-oriented summary does not. The omission might be read as political correctness - if we don't articulate what's indicated by the data provided, we need not open that particular can of worms. Instead, we learn that Jews and Asians both value education. Leading one to wonder, if we are to accept the 'model minority' label... are Jewish women and Asian men raised in families that value waking up in the late afternoon for a day of pot, video games, and staring at a wall?


My only semi-informed hypothesis is that the somewhat higher rates of intermarriage for Jewish men (as opposed to women) and Asian women (as opposed to men) only partially explain why popular culture has deemed only one variant of Asian-Jewish (hetero) intermarriage a thing. I think it may also relate to popular (and offensive, and false, let's be clear) assumptions that when Asian women or Jewish men marry out - with each other or otherwise - they're somehow moving up in the world. That they've transcended the limitations of their backgrounds and bravely set out to make their own ways. Whereas the corresponding assumption is that when Asian men or Jewish women do so, it's only because they've failed - after trying and trying and trying some more - to snag a mate within the community. For this reason, I suspect that the visibility is not proportional to the reality. But... yeah, this isn't the era or variety of Jewish intermarriage I study, and is based mostly on impressions backed up by Googling around and finding whichever hundreds of blog-commenters have had the same impression, so for deeper analysis, look elsewhere.


-Speaking of Asian-Jewish affinity, Mark Bittman informs us that 90 percent of Asian-Americans and 75 percent of Jewish-Americans are lactose intolerant. Another estimate for Jews (not the first one mentioned) is higher still. I'm reasonably up on the Ashkenazi genetic failings, but I must say I'd ever heard of this. Still, my complete lack of anecdata for Jewish lactose intolerance doesn't mean this isn't ravaging my community, if not my stomach in particular. (I also haven't heard of adults, Jewish or otherwise, drinking several glasses of milk a day, or being encouraged to do so, but maybe this is a regional thing. I figured "Got Milk?" was the dairy industry luring kids away from soda, not adults away from water.) 


What I don't follow about the broader debate about whether we should drink cows' milk (or, by extension, the even broader one about whether any number of commonly- and long-since-eaten foods are intended for human consumption) is the argument that because milk is designed for calves, humans - adults especially - shouldn't be drinking it. Are any naturally-occurring ingredients designed for the express purpose of consumption by human adults? Isn't it all just stuff with some other purpose that we happen to be able to extract nutrients from? Doesn't the fact that cows' milk is intended for calves mean that we, unlike calves, couldn't survive on that alone?

The myth of the "elite" diet

One reads a great deal about how these days, "we" (as in, the author and those like the author, in the author's estimation) care where our food comes from. How well-educated, high-income or high-cultural-capital Americans are living off kale and turnips, while "they" down fast-food, processed meats, etc. See for example Elizabeth Cline, in a story about "fast fashion" I may respond to some other time:

Over the past decade, image-­conscious American consumers have adopted two contradictory impulses. When buying food, they will pay a premium for the sustainable and artisanal, and they are careful to always recycle the glass jugs that their farmers’-market milk is sold in. It is fashionable to eat this way—even as a whole category of actual fashion is treated as disposable, with no thought given to craftsmanship or provenance.

While it's certainly true that something "artisanal" will cost more than its styrofoam-packed equivalent, my anecdotal - but like heaps of anecdata - sense is that a) very few people, even in the class purportedly doing so, are eating this way, and b) even those who are are doing so for a tiny % of their food consumption, a few garlic scapes picked up at the farmers market, and it ends there.

I mean, there are some differences - such as, voluntarily stay-at-home parents probably do home-cook more meals, and it takes a certain household income to have that set-up - but my point isn't that everyone across the nation eats identically. Rather, it's that there's now this myth that the "elite" is eating in this farm-to-table manner, something above and beyond home-cooked, and that this is who the "elite" is thinner, healthier, whatever. That the secret is local/seasonal produce. When this is not something anyone but hippies was attempting until approximately five minutes ago. Basically, I suspect that what was true when I was a kid - wealthier people eating fancier-seeming but often nutritionally equivalent foods as everyone else, but in smaller portions because of the far greater pressure to be thin - is, in my experience, still the case.

And I love a good farmers market, wish there were more of them, wish this were a viable way to shop for food and not a Thursday-afternoon procrastination. But the impracticality of shopping at these - which, even if held at convenient times, are cash-only and time on top of trips to the supermarket - combined with the fact that even in spring and summer, even Whole Foods isn't selling more than a couple local fruits and vegetables, should be enough to tell us that exceedingly little of what's consumed even by the class in question meets such qualifications. Growing your own food, unless this is really a big part of your life, probably means that you can garnish some dishes with herbs from your garden, or toss in the odd home-grown tomato. While gardening probably correlates with better food habits overall, I seriously doubt that the actual food consumed from the backyard is making a significant nutritional difference in many lives.

But back to the trove of anecdotal evidence. By all accounts I ought to know a great many people who eat in this manner, given that at this point most everyone I know is a grad student or postdoc, some professors, given that I did that recent-college-grad-in-Brooklyn thing. And yet, virtually no one I know does this. Not no one at all, but close. I can think of two people who stick with frozen pizzas, many more who eat along those lines.

The only possible counterargument I can come up with is that the people I know tend not to have kids, and that maybe this manner of eating is something that arrives when you realize that your baby will thrive only on a kale-rich diet. But it seems just as likely that having kids would make it that much harder to find the time to make separate grocery trips for locally-grown vegetables.

Anyone with data, anec- or otherwise, by all means.

On the Charles Murray op-ed

Yes.

No.

Kind of.

Kind of.

Slightly longer version: Murray suggests four ways to bridge the gap "between the professional and working classes in white America." 

His first suggestion is one I can get behind: "get rid of unpaid internships." I'm not sure he's thought through the fallout from this - even if we fixed the unpaid-internship-accessibility-issues end of things, there's also the fact that employers at "real jobs" would rather hire potential permanent employees than rich kids on "summer vacation." As I remember it, coming from an UMC family and trying to get that kind of work, one either had to lie about significant details (such as: off to college in August - how a friend of a friend was hired at a clothing chain) or to take jobs designed for college students (such as the one I ultimately ended up with: shelving books at the university library). It's not that it's impossible for kids on vacation to do stints in more working-class lines of work, and it certainly varies by locale. (Live in Manhattan? Forget it.) But with the exception of a few specifically seasonal jobs (lifeguard, camp counselor, ice-cream scooper), no one will take the kid seeking beer money over the single parent needing to make rent. But in terms of Murray's specific gap-bridging goal, the fact that some people now grow up thinking work-work isn't for people like them is, I'd think, a problem.

His second one, scrap the SAT, is problematic for reasons I also get into here, but let's first look at Murray's own language. "The test has become a symbol of new-upper-class privilege, as people assume (albeit wrongly) that high scores are purchased through the resources of private schools and expensive test preparation programs." If the SAT isn't something one simply purchases a high score on, and the public is mistaken in thinking it is, wouldn't the better approach be to raise awareness of this, thus helping to demolish the test-prep industry, whose very existence perpetuates the belief that scores can be bought? The whole point of the SAT is to compare students from different high schools, something grades alone wouldn't accomplish. The alternative Murray proposes - "achievement tests in specific subjects for which students can prepare the old-fashioned way, by hitting the books" - already exists in the form of SAT II and AP exams, and would end up being, I'd think, a measure of how good a high school is, or how well it tailored its curriculum to the tests, which would dilute its capacity to measure student achievement.

His third, "replace ethnic affirmative action with socioeconomic affirmative action," is not a "no-brainer," but is in fact something about which reasonable, intelligent, well-meaning people have been disagreeing since forever. Racial and socioeconomic disadvantage are not mutually exclusive. And there's the issue of representation - once whichever influential institution ceases to be an all-white (or zero-black) entity, it will de facto become an institution that's open to blacks. And, more to the point, if what Murray wants to do is to bring about solidarity between whites of different classes (and we'll assume he means this in a non-exclusionary sense...), it's hard to imagine that if the children of plumbers were labeled a disadvantaged category, and known to get into college with lower grades and scores, this despite any history of systematic discrimination against plumbers and their families, that this would, I suppose, go over well. And if the issue is more (as becomes apparent with the fourth point) that it should be possible to make a living with a blue-collar (which is to say, college wasn't a prerequisite) job, then why should we care if children of blue-collar families are proportionately represented at elite colleges? Why shouldn't it be enough to make sure that elite colleges are accessible to them? Why would affirmative action be needed?

Murray's final point - that the BA shouldn't be required of job applicants if the position doesn't specifically require it - sounds appealing at first, but is impractical. Most obviously, a liberal-arts education doesn't prepare you for any particular job. So if it's ridiculous to ask a plumber to have a BA, it's nearly as absurd to ask this of a journalist. Also, I'd think, obvious: entry-level jobs virtually never require the skills acquired in Philosophy 101. The BA is required because if one is to ascend whichever ladder and be in more of a decision-making position, whichever "critical thinking" skills might come into play. (As for his bit about how the BA "has become educationally meaningless," this kind of unsubstantiated nostalgia for a Golden Age of when everyone left college a distinguished Aristotle scholar, I will simply ignore.) Point being, if no job could draw a direct connection between skills needed for the position (again, not the career, the position) in question and a BA, this would mean eliminating college for all, not just opening up fields where demanding a BA feels preposterous.

Acknowledgement

Jacob Levy points me to a gold mine of YPISdom - YPIS being the acronym I use for "your privilege is showing," the preferred insult of a certain sort of (typically plenty privileged) person. (Banal example: you can tell someone who finds it sad that some must buy their pink polos at Banana Republic and not Lacoste that his privilege is showing.) Writer Joan Didion's privilege is, evidently, on show, and everyone - a Slate writer (David Haglund), Slate commenters, the pieces Haglund links to - is enjoying a good hurling-of-YPIS at the evidently oh-so-aloof author, who evidently responded, in her latest book, to those who've criticized her as being unaware of her privilege.

If I was reluctant to post about this at first, it's because of those "evidentlies." I have never read anything by Didion, and thus have no thoughts on whether or not she comes across as defensive about her privilege. (Didion is not among the authors on my pile of books about the history of the Jewish family I need to read for Chapter One. Sorry.) I had to Google her to see what the privilege in question was referring to, beyond that she's a writer with name-recognition.

But there is a whopping YPIS angle here, and one that has approximately zilch to do with Didion's writing.* What we can glean without knowing how much brilliant and/or snooty the relevant original texts convey:

1) Privilege-showing is now ranked among the offenses a writer may have committed such that you have to ask those difficult 'but does the Great Art mean we can still appreciate this evil person's writing?' questions, like you would of a Céline. As in, insufficiently-apologized-for socioeconomic privilege is now akin to having been a Nazi sympathizer. This is not entirely new - remember the stuff about "dead white males"? But what's at stake now isn't Didion's identity - rich, well-connected, white, and what the Daily Mail would enviously call "worryingly thin" - but rather her apparently failure, by the standards of some, to apologize for, at least, the wealth. An accusation she made the grave mistake of addressing. Why a mistake? Because it's no fun to hurl a YPIS unless it's going to sting, and evidently sting it did.

The problem here is that what's under attack isn't the unfairness inherent in privilege, but rather aloofness, as though aloofness itself should be our main concern. The alternative is rarely presented as, let's open up the field to writers of a more diverse set of backgrounds. Well, lip service is paid to that possibility, but instead, we get privileged sorts writing from a place of sensitivity. Privilege going acknowledged, accusations of aloofness preempted. As if it's fine to have writing be the wealthy taking on the wealthy, as long as privilege has been acknowledged. As if it's indeed more progressive to hear the privileged yammering on about their privilege than to not hear so much from them, period. (See, for example, this piece, linked from the Slate one.)

2) It makes sense, on a population level, to speak of certain categories of privilege and lack thereof. Not necessarily when it comes to individual cases. Some individual rich white men really do have worse than the average working-class Latina, even if these men would be in a still-more-problematic boat (yacht?) if they did not have the various privileges in their favor. In Didion's case, YPIS is being hurled at someone writing about her daughter getting sick and dying in her 30s, because (from the perspective of the hurlers) call the waahmbulance, break out the tiny violins, and remember how much worse it is to be young, ill and uninsured, and not the daughter of famous people. When it's like, fair enough, but think how much better it is for tragedy not to strike, and to live happily to 90 without ever experiencing Didion-level glamor or wealth. Think how much worse it would be to have whichever problems in the developing world. Think of this, think of that, or maybe just accept that what went on with Didion's daughter was indeed tragic, even if they could afford to pay their medical bills.

Basically, there are forms of Bad that are unequivocally worse than growing up without a lot of money (even if these forms, plus not having much money, are worse than these forms with). And these forms tend not to be obstacles as readily-acknowledged as socioeconomic status. While ideally, of course, no one would, some do feel shame at having grown up poor or working-class. But in a meritocracy, it can also be advantageous to remind others that your parents didn't go to college, that you've paid your own way since 15, that you didn't have everything handed to you, etc. Whereas non-socioeconomic forms of disadvantage - health, mental and physical; abuse; drug or severe emotional problems; that which is family-specific and unclassifiable; etc. - are less likely to be casually evoked. For this reason, I don't see the point in responding to tales of suffering not related to socioeconomic status with, 'ah, but think how much worse things are for those dealing with individual-case suffering and systematic suffering.' I think everyone gets that that's the case. But it doesn't follow that individual-case suffering in all cases is waambulence in comparison to a broader form of underprivilege. Or, phrased differently, sometimes "poor little rich girls" actually have it rough. Having gone to school for nine years with girls from families for the most part far wealthier than my own (solidly UMC) one, I'm going to have to say that some things some individual families went through would without a doubt qualify. Not rich-people-problems, just problems that being rich couldn't solve.

3) The Slate commenters coming to Didion's defense seem genuinely confused about YPIS, if they think claims that Didion is out-of-touch are coming from those jealous of Didion on account of being poorer/less famous than she is. It's not "class envy." It's coming from upper-middle-class sorts. It's always about sticking up for those who could, in theory, find such cluelessness offensive.

4) Anyone who's actually read anything by Didion, or anyone else for that matter, have any thoughts?

*There is no doubt, as Levy noted when passing this along, a writing-about-children angle here, Haglund alludes to at the end of his piece. But if the "child" in question was an adult and is, at the time of publication, deceased, I'm not sure the usual issues are at stake - and again, being as far from a Didion expert as I am, I have no idea whether Didion was ever writing about her daughter's SAT scores or first crushes or similar in real time. But for those focused on that sort of topic, this is probably of interest.

Vindications and more

Vindications:

-A prominent fashion blogger declares, wistfully, "Thoughts I ALWAYS think when I look through runway: '(fashion) Life must be SO DOPE when you're flat-chested.'" Another fashion writer greets the royal wedding as an end to "porno chic," which seems to amount to it being socially acceptable for women to have large breasts and not feel terrible about it. A vindication insofar as I'm always going on about how frustrating it is that a woman who wishes to look chic/understated/fashionable/whatever can't have much on top.

-Not to relaunch a debate, but this (via) is what I was trying to get at here, but far better-explained.

More:

In the spirit of Anglophilia and romance... The "Blind Date" feature in the Guardian is spectacular. At least if you're the sort of person who finds the glimpse-into-real-lives genre, in its myriad forms (letters to Dan or Prudie, alumni magazines, wedding pages, 19th C French-Jewish newspapers, Facebook-following the not necessarily fascinating lives of acquaintances, not tuning out when someone starts a cell conversation on the bus... and, sometimes, although it's insufficiently real-person, reality TV.) The gist of it seems to be that the newspaper sets up (willing!) readers at random (or is it a dating site?), and pays for them to have a meal and then answer a series of questions about how it went.

-As with the alumni mag entries Flavia highlights, the parts of these questionnaires about which topics were discussed on the date really do, in the aggregate, paint a portrait of a subset of London society that I wouldn't know how to classify, but that does seem to get at a certain sort of person. This, despite a great deal of professional, racial, and age diversity. I guess The Guardian Reader? There's a bit of a high-cultural-capital, low-economic-capital (or presenting one's self as such) thing going on - "What did you talk about? Books, PhDs, travel, having brilliant sisters, and how posh the restaurant was."

-Who/what are they rating out of 10? How smoothly the date went? How good-looking the person was? And wouldn't it be an odd start to an otherwise fine relationship if one had gone with 8, the other 9?

-The most baffling aspect of this - and is it a British thing? a Guardian-reader thing? something specific to the fact that they're reporting back to a major newspaper? - is that almost invariably, the blind-daters do not feel a "spark," yet when asked if they'd see each other again, say some variant of, "Yes, as friends." ("Sure, as people," says one. "For a laugh, sure," another.) Why, unless they're new in town and don't know anyone, would they go out of their way, in a big city, to see people they'd had so-so blind dates with? Or is it some kind of "manners" thing, where it would be rude to say "no, never," as though it implied that they'd cross to the other side of the street if they ran into the person? A romantic equivalent of female acquaintances insisting they'll get lunch soon, when neither is interested in rounding it up to friendship? Or is it, in some cases, that the person did feel a spark, but is too embarrassed to admit it in case the other didn't, and so is playing it cool while leaving open the possibility of a second date?

-Many of the "awkward" moments stem from what seem to be logistical failures the newspaper could and probably should deal with. If the paper is paying, there should not be mysteries around who picks up the bill, nor should restaurant staff be chasing the couple out for not paying. Unless, of course, the point is to see how the daters will react to this sort of challenge...

Budgets high and low

Expensive jeans are eternal. Whether you wore the wrong brand in the '80s and had to sit at a different cafeteria table (or is this just in movies?) or you bought into the premium-denim craze of 2004 or so, there are perhaps a few moments in between waves of this, when denim marketers can't think of a reason to convince teens or adults that $30 for casual pants is inadequate, but generally speaking, they come up with something.

Jeans, you see, really do have to cost $600. Yes, yes, to each his own, if this gives you pleasure and you have the money, fine. But I almost think the $175,000 closet makes more sense. Below, from an interview with the purveyor of said denim:

"If you’re buying high-end jeans, you’re paying for the fit, fabric, and finish."

So, too, if you're choosing among the selection at the Gap. Add in thrift, Levis, and Uniqlo (although the dye on those last ones sure did bleed), and a New Yorker has more fit, fabric, and finish options that she knows what to do with. One is arguably better off not knowing that the entire selection exists at give or take $600.

"For my handmade jeans I source from a really small, family-owned Italian denim mill."

Of course. A time-honored way to get Americans to drop cash on something ridiculous is to explain that an old European man who takes pride in his craftsmanship hand-stitched whatever it is.

"They only have 30 looms and they specialize in selvedge and pure indigo dyes. Basically, it’s the old way of doing things."

Is there such a thing as artisanal Italian denim? Is this really something Italians were doing way back when? Was this the catalyst for the decline of the Roman Empire?

"An inexpensive jean can wear out in six months, whereas I’ve been wearing some of my handmade jeans for a good eight years now."

Assuming you own more than one pair of pants, and that by "jeans" one does not mean "jeggings" which, being closer to tights on the leg-covering spectrum, would, I assume, fall apart, your jeans, whether $60 or $600, will last forever. You won't wear them forever, because your weight will fluctuate, and because they'll start to look dated. But a theoretical individual indifferent to styles, who wears jeans in a size that weight fluctuations don't impact, could, in theory, wear his jeans forever. However, such an individual is probably just the sort of man who'd own only one pair in the first place, and whose pants, even if $600, would indeed wear out.

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On the other end of the spectrum, we have a Peter Singerish suggestion that the reader "Live Like a Grad Student … Forever." Sounds delightful! But it's for charity. Commenters point out that the author, a prof at Oxford, doesn't have the same job stability/social benefit concerns as us 'mericans, who kind of have to (or ought to) save our money, and not give the lot to charity, in case we or our loved ones need some of that fancy schmancy health care. One commenter points out that it's really about asceticism, not where the money goes, which I think gets at the truth. I'm sure part of Toby Ord's decision to give so much away comes from concern for the poor, but there is an undeniable smugness factor: "The things that are most important to me cost very little: such as spending time with my wife and friends, reading books, and listening to music." How nice for him to be immune to material pleasures such as $600 jeans, $175,000 closets, or, heck, discounted Petit Bateau marinières. Some like only books, others only stuff, but as an appreciator of books and stuff alike, I say, good for him, but it's not a sacrifice if stuff does nothing for you in the first place. (Of course, if a grad-student budget is permitted, Ord too can spend 23 euros on a striped sweatshirt.) That, and in certain milieus, such as the one he's perhaps already in, it confers status to be visibly indifferent to stuff. "It's not that it gives me a warm glow, but it does give me a certain peace with myself and a sense of purpose." Fine. One might say, who cares if he's smug if he helps the poor, to which I'd respond, if he turns off others from donating in more moderate amounts, that's itself an issue. 

The other question I always have with this kind of argument, aside from the debate I don't have any great knowledge of regarding whether the type of donation advocated is what's really best for the developing world, is what ramifications a large-scale embrace of this kind of lifestyle would have. If every upper-middle class family donated in this way, not only would all kinds of first-world-ish businesses collapse, but there wouldn't be much motivation for the even marginally more materialistic to go into upper-middle class professions in the first place. Ord goes into work because, presumably, he finds his work fulfilling. What about everyone else, the vast majority who go in largely so that they can pay for necessities and desires? The first world would stop being so first-world, and the bottomless pit of wealth to be donated to those in need would dry up. It seems a better argument would be that those who can should give more, not that those who don't need to live like grad students should play at that lifestyle.

Quote of the day

Majoring in literature or art history rather than economics or biology, never mind hotel management or marketing, suggests a certain privileged indifference to material concerns (even when this rests on actual indifference instead of piles of money). And if you’ve gone into serious debt by attending college, afterward you’ll have noted that it’s the do-gooding NGO or the progressive magazine that expects you to take an unpaid internship, and the publishing house or academic department that offers you a pittance.

From n+1, via Arts & Letters Daily.

Agreed, but not sure I'd have kept that last bit in parentheses. Anecdotal evidence time here for a change, but when I think of those who went into higher-paid professions versus humanities grad school, there's some social-mobility-via-biology-major, but frequently enough, bankers are children of bankers, lawyers children of doctors, grad students children of academics. Do the impractical-sounding majors attract socialites? At the undergrad level, some, sure, but there's also reproduction of a high-cultural-capital, low-economic-capital caste to consider. There are so so many grad students whose parents are not only professors, but professors in the same field - one encounters this phenomenon far more often than 'I never have to work a day in my life, so I figured I'd get a PhD in French.'

The most wonderful time of the year

The holidays are hard for Jews. But we are not alone!

The holidays are also hard for children, who have to gaze, pained, out the window of a room stuck in 1970s, in a sweater and haircut from the same decade.

Schedules, routines and rules can be thrown off at holiday time, which can lead to more behavioral challenges and stress for everyone. Problems relating to feeding, toilet training, tantrums and discipline can worsen and become harder to handle when families are caught up in the seasonal frenzy. [...]

Children can struggle with the transitions from school to vacation and back to school. Holiday travel and house guests can lead to disrupted sleep. And even happy activities like unwrapping gifts can lead to sibling rivalries or disappointment. 

But the holidays are hardest of all for Christians, who have to suffer indignities like the expression, "the holidays."

Christmas is hard for everyone. But it’s particularly hard for people who actually believe in it. In a sense, of course, there’s no better time to be a Christian than the first 25 days of December. But this is also the season when American Christians can feel most embattled. Their piety is overshadowed by materialist ticky-tack. Their great feast is compromised by Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism. 

Keeping the bloodline pure

I have long suspected that members of ethnic or religious minorities are in luck when it comes to ending romantic relationships or rejecting potential partners, because they can always play the 'it's not you, it's your background' card. It's far more plausible than announcing a sudden change in sexual orientation, or than 'I'm not ready for a relationship right now', while accomplishing the same two things: convincing the rejected party that a) it's nothing personal, and b) it's never gonna happen. And an extra added buffer: the dumpee/rejectee is put in a position of feeling culturally insensitive for even suggesting they work things out. (The oops comes later, when the minority's engagement to a different out-group partner is announced.) Prudie's commenters, but not Prudie herself, see it for what it is.

Clinging to intermediaries

Benjamin Schwarz analyzes the nostalgia many feel for a certain type of lively, diverse urban neighborhood, with its mom-and-pop latte shops and so forth, and points out that such areas are by definition transitional. Those whose complaints about "gentrification" are really about blandification (a Subway replacing an old-time stockings boutique; a pricey café closing, that could well be replaced by - god forbid - a cupcake shop; anything, however posh, being replaced by a Starbucks) are interested, Schwarz explains, not in a sustainable form of urban life, but in a particular stage of the gentrification process, one they romanticize into permanence.

It occurred to me that this is the same thing as is going on with the efforts to keep secular/cultural Judaism alive in the US. It's not so much that what's missed never existed as that its presence was so precarious, dependent on factors whose reinstitution no one sensible, when it comes down to it, would support. In the case of quaint Greenwich Village, poverty and crime kept the Marc Jacobs empire in check. One can respectably wish neighborhoods would remain less wealthy, but more impoverished is a tough case to make. To sustain quirky Allen-Costanza Judaism, you'd need to maintain a level of mutual wariness between Jews and non-Jews that would feel like a great step back. As in, there are Jews who regret the intermarriage rate, and who ask that even secular Jews marry in. But does anyone Jewish, however nostalgic, long for a time when non-Jews shuddered at the thought of marrying one of our kind?