Dunkle Materie

Ich bin very impressed!

Oh the misogyny

I just finished Paula Hyman's fantastic Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. Although this was technically orals-lists reading, it ended up having more immediate relevance: helping to understand why all three of the sample Jewish jokes in a NYMag feature on the End of Jewish humor are less about Jewish self-deprecation than about hatred of Jewish women. As someone who's appreciated much of what the Roth-Allen monster has created over the years, that I should be insulted by it doesn't, for me, disqualify a joke. But these particular jokes are not winners. Joke 1: The Jewish wife would rather let her husband die than give him a blow job. Joke 2: Marginally more clever than the previous. The Jewish husband wishes to extend his wife's jail sentence, so as to get rid of her. Joke 3: Makes the previous two look brilliant. The punch line is that an elderly woman has saggy breasts.

As Hyman explains it (and of course I'm oversimplifying), mid-20th-century anti-Semitism led to Jewish men being perceived of as feminine by the dominant culture. Frustrated by this, they turned on the Jewish woman, who by definition represented both the feminine (understood as a flaw) and the Jewish (given the role, considered admirable in earlier generations, of Jewish women as, in some contexts, guardians against assimilation). So the common explanations for the Portnoy-era Jewish male dislike of Jewish women - no man wants a woman like his mother, or, Jewish women were less likely to meet conventional standards of beauty in a 1960 Connecticut-country-club-type setting - tell part of the story, but the fact that anti-Semitism had a gendered dimension is what actually explains the phenomenon.

What this also explains is how radically different images of 'the Jewess' were at times when Jews had negligible influence on popular culture (or the 'popular culture' equivalent in mid-19th century France) than when Jews - men in particular - have been the main ones providing the representations of Jewish women that are available to the general public. This isn't about 'Jews controlling the media', but about the fact that of those in the entertainment industry, it's only natural that Jews should be writing more often than others about their own group.

Anyhow. It would be interesting to analyze what influence 20th century Jewish male depictions of Jewish women have had on the way non-Jewish writers, filmmakers, etc. portray 'the Jewish woman' in their work. Examples that come to mind: 'The Brothers McMullen', or Gilles by Drieu la Rochelle. One might be a 1990s American movie and the other a 1930s French novel, but in both, the Jewish woman is presented exactly as in the internal-Jewish stereotype. Now, one approach would be to say, Jewish women are just like that, and perceived of as such by men, regardless of their backgrounds. But another possibility is that some non-Jewish men - artists or otherwise - have adopted the clichés Jewish men created of 'the Jewish woman.'

Racists, carbon monoxide, and other unpleasantness

The powers that be clearly, clearly do not want me to ever finish up my last semester of coursework. I'm a few edits away from done with my last term project of grad school, so of course the jury duty gods should pick this as the time to drag me to downtown Brooklyn. Which isn't so bad. What is so bad is the mysterious carbon monoxide presence in my apartment. Dashing firefighters aside, not fun.

There was going to be a weekend roundup of crazy racists reported about in the Times - the segregated prom in Georgia (in which white racists worry about whatever might happen if their pure, innocent daughters - some of whom look remarkably like Vegas showgirls - were permitted to attend a formal dance with black male classmates) and the American Girl Jewish doll that has to have light brown rather than dark brown hair because apparently to give a Jewish doll dark brown hair is akin to posing it hunched over, grasping for a coin with a claw-like hand, so harmful and stereotyping it is to depict an Ashkenazi Jew with the coloring they themselves admit is typical of Ashkenazi Jewry... but that's all the roundup I can muster. People=big racists. My apartment=bad news. Jury duty=at least near some good grocery shopping.

Best search leading to this blog, to date:

'phoebe college wild parties', no-quotes.

More running do's and don't's

Do: end your run at Bouley Bakery's new, spacious Tribeca café, the one with mysteriously reasonable prices (and pitchers of iced water and cups just sitting there, for your post-run hydration). But beware the no-lock restroom. A blonde Eastern European woman very near caught me trying to extract the cash I'd brought (to pay for my pain au chocolat) from my running shorts' weird inner pocket. I hope she recovers.

Don't: follow up with a trip to the Whole Foods nearby, where summer fruit has just arrived, and where, in your post-run state, buying a checking-account's worth of plumcots, apricots, and whatever other -cots they're selling seems like a good idea. (I want to swim in a sea of these plumcots, so I suppose I don't totally regret the purchase.)

Do: run from one borough to another - it provides a nice, arbitrary sense of accomplishment without the need to run 26.2 miles.

Don't: take the Brooklyn Bridge. It has two lanes, one for elementary school field trips and slow-moving Northern European tourists, the other for racing bicyclists, and only those two. You can try to create a third lane in the middle, but in vain.

Do: get one of those stupid-looking early 1990s fabric headbands to keep your hair back during the run.

Don't: exit the train besides a woman you recognize from your department but don't know well, but know to be French, and whose French well-dressed-ness makes your 1991-aerobics-instructor look appear all the more ridiculous.

There are no words...

...to describe the amazingness of these photos. (Wait a moment after clicking on the link for the right page to load. You'll know when it has.)

The Fitness Flâneur

Recently, an unnamed European and I were discussing how it used to be the case that Americans looked upon Europeans as the epitome of unhealthiness - favoring cigarettes over advances in dentistry, wine over Aspartame, meandering from café to café rather than jogging in place in treadmill... and yet now, Americans look to Europe (and not only France, with its famous Paradox) as the health capital of the developed world. Europe! Where food is always local (except when it isn't), and where no one ever has to worry about weight.

While I mock Europhilia, I share in it to some extent. The great flaw of the American approach to health-consciousness is that it is all-or-nothing: you either Care, or you've Given Up. Once an American admits that he does drink/smoke/eat sugar-coated fried dough, these activities might as well be engaged in as continuously as one's job and need for sleep allow. If we Americans don't go for moderation, it's not because we're gleeful, guiltless over-consumers, but because we believe once the line has been crossed, there's no difference between one glass of wine and eight. That is, until New Years, the unofficial start of a Gwyneth Paltrow-inspired regimen of soy-kale smoothies and over-exercising, one that will last for a week at most, except when it succeeds, culminating in one or another of the various eating disorders. But in most cases, it's back to the couch and the sleeve-having blanket.

This is what struck me about Tara Parker-Pope's "Well" post, which reads like just that sort of New Years Resolution. She intends to get herself from completely out-of-shape to running a marathon in under five months. Although her goal is no doubt realistic, in the sense that someone with legs or equivalent can, history has shown, make it 26-plus miles without vehicular assistance, it's unclear what about the plan is a good idea. (Obviously, people should do what they want, but she's explicitly offering her own choice as a model for others looking to get in shape.) If Parker-Pope's goal is fitness, not a tearful 'I did it!' followed by decades on the couch (a bit like 'training' for one's wedding photos), wouldn't a better approach be to, say, run 2 miles at a time, several times a week, and, if this seems to easy, to keep increasing mileage until reaching a reasonable distance for a near-daily run?

While 'marathon' sounds more noble as a goal than 'Gwyneth Paltrow's thighs', both amount to the same thing: possible with sufficient time/money/obsessiveness, but not worth the bother, and detrimental to the goal of getting from where you're at to a similar but improved place. Which is what I like about Mark Bittman's approach to veganism. (Yes, still starstruck.) He acknowledges that for most of us, swearing off animal products is too radical a move, and so suggests simply cutting back on meat and the like. Along those lines, why not run rather than sit, without claiming that that run will take you some epic length we've arbitrarily decided is worthwhile?

All of this interests me as an on-again, off-again runner myself, a former member in good-enough standing of my high school and middle school track teams, who's in an on-again phase since the end of the semester and of an endless winter, and whose longest run ever was 8 or 9 miles, ending where all runs of that length should. It doesn't exactly qualify me to give fitness advice, but they say anything's better than our current national fitness level, so now, without further ado, the tips! (Not medical advice, obvs, lest some poor soul think an MA in French Studies has anything remotely in common with an MD, or confuses me with one of the many Drs. Maltz.)

-A big iced coffee before, a big iced coffee (pastry optional) after. This is key.

-All that advice to run on soft surfaces? Forget it. Soft surfaces are more tiring to run on, and, more importantly, tend to be more boring to run on, because they tend not to correlate with window-shopping, people-watching, and other activities cherished by the fitness flâneur. Whatever marginal benefit on your knees running through a great open field might have, the boredom of running through a great open field surely cancels out.

-However interesting your surroundings (and you want interesting, but not, as I learned today the hard way, a Canal Street level of congestion), you will need a good podcast, preferably one that goes a good hour, but if you're not one of those crazed runners who refuses to stop for two seconds because that will ruin who knows what, you can always stop or slow down a moment to move to a new one. I highly recommend the Savage Love podcast, and guarantee that you will not be thinking about running while a caller is defending pig fetishes or whatever the one I just listened to was about.

-For those who think of running as a time for quiet contemplation in nature, not cable TV if at the gym or podcasts and urban life if outside, you are people I fundamentally don't understand, at least on this issue. Quiet contemplation of paper topics and whatnot is for the shower after the run. The run itself is about not thinking about the run, which is what you will be thinking about if running alone, podcast-free, through an open field.

-Accept that running will not make you lose weight, and may well do the opposite. Just as they say that living in France makes Americans lose weight, yet I spent three months in Paris and left the heaviest I'd ever been thanks to flan with a side order of flan, I have found that running makes food more appealing, and causes me to eat more of it. Running will get your body more 'fit' (whatever that means - varies person to person), and is, within reason, good for your health, but it is primarily a socially-acceptable way to take time off from more productive activities. Accept that, and enjoy.

"Is this friendship worth salvaging?"

Lucinda Rosenfeld's friendship advice column looks promising. The tagline: "Boys are easy. Friendships are hard." An oversimplification, but not untrue.

The first letter to the column ends with the question that on some level underlies all that will be sent in in the future: "Is this friendship worth salvaging?" My first thought when seeing that question was that there's really no route to take if it does not. This was something I hoped Rosenfeld's answer would address, but alas, no such luck. What if a friendship isn't worth salvaging? Need this ever be put into words?

The main reason one must end a romantic relationship, firmly and definitively, rather than allow for a drift-apart-over-time, is that one and eventually both parties will want the option of exclusive, romantic relationships with other people. The dumped party knows this, so even if the dumping isn't directly for another person, it's for the idea of other people, which is enough to cause not only hurt but jealousy, and whatever other neuroses apply in that situation.

Since one lousy friendship doesn't prevent other, more solid ones from forming, the obvious answer should be, when a friendship isn't working out, to just see that one friend less and the more appealing ones more. After enough unreturned calls, enough bumping-into's ending abruptly in the phrase, 'We'll do coffee,' and what may have once been a close friendship dies its quiet death, with no assumption that anything but civility will ensue, should the ex-friends find themselves in a room together (office, party) at some point in the future.

And this does, in a sense, work. Outside the realm of Sex and the City, people tend not to be as passionate about their friendships as they are about their romantic ones - in part on account of having more friends than serious beaus at any given time, but also because of hormones and whatnot. While a 'dumped' friend may occasionally stop to think, 'It's been ages since I've seen X,' or, 'Hasn't X been flaky lately?', rejection is far more likely to be met with likewise than with tearful pleading to return to a BFFdom that is no more.

But the ignoring method is, well, rude. The need to free up both parties to date others isn't the only reason romantic ties must be cut in such a way that both exes know they are exes. It seems like the right thing to do is to be upfront, within reason, about when you genuinely don't have time to meet for drinks, and when that's simply not where you want your time to go. Or not. Who knows.

So basically, if this column is to be all I imagine it to be, it will have to address not only what to say to a friend when she does X, but also how to start and end friendships respectfully.

Worst use ever of "empowering" in reference to women

The NYT Style section reports on "a new fad" in wedding photography: "intimate photographs of the bride." I am hoping this is one of those "fads" that exist only in the mind of the journalist looking for something, anything, to fill a word-count with, because...

-Aren't 'intimate photographs' to be taken either by one lover of the other, or by one's self and then handed over to the intended party? Isn't that what makes the images 'intimate'? Wouldn't bringing in a third party (except in cases of 'bringing in a third party') kind of ruin the point?

-Why no intimate shots of the groom? No, not all shirtless men look like this, but nor do all women in lingerie look like Victoria's Secret models, and yet sexual attraction among mere mortals persists. Assuming a given marriage is based at least in part on mutual lust, why is this supposed to be something a husband would want to see, but not a wife?

-"[...] playful shots of a bride, wearing, say, nothing but her fiancé’s favorite sports jersey [...]"

Can people be more clichéd?

And, the bit that speaks for itself:

-"Much of the appeal of the boudoir sessions, [wedding photog] Ms. Swales said, is that the brides want pictures of themselves in the best shape of their lives after the pre-wedding regimens of dieting and exercise. 'It’s empowering for these women,' she said."

Ghent is a terrible place to go vegetarian

Mark Bittman's coverage of Ghent and vegetarianism reminded me of my own trip to Ghent, and that the main attraction in that town is an image of a lamb, one whose religious significance I don't fully grasp, but that looked, to a suggestible non-Catholic non-vegetarian such as myself, mighty tasty.

Silly French word of the day

Lepénisation: the influence of far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Sounds just as silly in French as in English, or would, if it didn't mean the resurgence of quasi-fascism. Although I suppose the double-entendre works in the sense of France being screwed when this man gains power, and less so when he does not.

E-gripes

-People who use Facebook to promote their (presumably mediocre, but I've never bothered to find out) bands, inviting everyone they ever said hello to in high school to their band's every show: Seriously people. Not that you care, dear musically-inclined acquaintances from high school, but defriending may ensue.

-People who use Evite RSVPs to self-promote: It's already unfortunate that we the (potential) guests must know who is, isn't, or might be coming to a party before the event. But is it really necessary to know that Person A can't come because she has five other parties to attend the same night, or that Person B's job is so important that he has to work Saturday nights, making him a "Maybe"? Or Person C, whose fiancé is in town, or Person D, who will be at Cannes.... It's always something glamorous. No one ever says "Maybe" because "I'm kind of excited about what just arrived on Netflix." Even when you know that's what's behind 99% of Maybes and Nos.

-Token Non-E gripe: My apartment, after a pre-summer preventative extermination, smells horribly of that which is meant to kill any would-be exoskeletal residents. The window's open, the fan is on, and I still think working at home today might not have been the best idea. If there aren't any more posts here, it will be because I'm on my back with my legs and antennae in the air.

Bittman, Zola, and the "myths" of slimness (3 unrelated items)

-After Anne Hathaway, I was sure it would be downhill for some time as far as celebrity sightings are concerned. But no! On our way to dinner, Jo and I spotted none other than Mark Bittman, near NYU, which was super exciting. I was starstruck, as Jo can attest, all the way to the falafel place, where everything we ate was vegan, and after 6PM, at that. Bittman would have been so proud. (Granted everything I ate - eggplant, falafel - was fried and drenched in tehina, but to my knowledge, no cows were harmed.)

-In what counts as a busman's study-break if there ever was one: "Au Bonheur des Dames", a movie based on the Zola novel of the same name. It felt so wrong going out on a school night, during finals at that, but this seemed too good to miss. Still, much as I love the book from which the movie was "inspiré", I think to enjoy silent films, you have to be a more sophisticated person than my Apatow-appreciating self, or to live at a time when Apatow was not an option. But the movie must have made some impression, because I woke up to quite the anxiety dream about a paper I'd just turned in (in awake-life) on a different but related Zola novel.

-Today is catch-up-on-email-and-practical-things day, so, though tempted, I will refrain from a full-on take-down of "6 myths about slim people", brought to me by an angry commenter to my post about the utter nonsense that is the expression "naturally thin." (Unsurprisingly, those who take pride in identifying as "naturally thin" are not pleased.)

My favorite of the slimness "myths": "Life is easier for thin people." Will someone explain to me in what way, shape, or form that's a myth, and not merely a blunt way of pointing out that the overweight are discriminated against in our society? And the author of the article really couldn't come up with a better example of someone who's "genetically thin" than a friend of hers who's an "exercise enthusiast"? Really? But whatever. At least some people understood what that post was getting at, and I appreciate it.

Not under my roof

-How much do college students 'owe' parents who pay (some or all of) their tuition, room, and board, in terms of acting in accordance with their rules/principles/values/hopes (on issues including but not limited to: what to major in, whether to drink, under what circumstances if any to have sex, whether to go to church, and whether to live in a coed dorm room), even when not literally under their roof? Because that's what parents say, right? 'Not under my roof.' How far does this metaphorical roof extend? PG and I began discussing this in the comments to my post about roommates, and I'd like to continue the discussion in the comments here.

-Related question: why are college programs for students not just out of high school referred to as for "adults"? What does that make 18-22-year-olds? Less mature on average than 35-year-olds married with jobs and kids, fine, but are undergrads children? (No snide comments from grad students, please.)

-Hmm. A commenter claims that Birthright Israel trip leader Momo's promise to pay for the Israeli honeymoon of any couple that meets on one of his trips went unfulfilled. Anyone know anything about this?

-Know how I failed my first driving test? Today was my first lesson after the unfortunate day, and turning the car has started to seem slightly, but slightly, less daunting. After failing the test, I started thinking about my ability to turn corners as a pedestrian. And - as Jo, who's watched me do this, prompted to look for skill or lack thereof, can confirm - I am hopeless at that as well, always overshooting the mark, getting squeezed out of my lane, swerving when utterly sober. If one needed a Walker's License to navigate crowded New York sidewalks, I'd have failed that one as well. Of course, a small woman walking around in ballet flats cannot, like a car, inflict damage by jerking in the wrong direction. That said, I do have hope about the driving, and think it might well exceed the walking, because my main issue as a pedestrian is that 85% of humanity (99.99% in Belgium) is taller and just generally bigger than I am, and can't see me coming, making cars something of an equalizer. Not that it felt like that today in Chinatown, surrounded on all sides by trucks, one of which was, according to the sign, filled with Scandinavian fish. But in normal traffic situations, there is hope.

I'm in love

My eternal quest for the perfect dachshund, led me, indirectly, to the blog of a woman who appears to be an interior designer from the South, whose life is, as I imagine it, a real-life incarnation of the show I watched most during high school. But rather than having a pet pig, ala Suzanne Sugarbaker, she has the absolute cutest dachshund in the history of dachshunds. My escapist fantasy of the moment is that I am no longer a grad student living in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, but instead able to read and write about French Jews and whatnot from somewhere that looks exactly like this.

Against college room-sharing

A scandal has erupted because the mother of a Stanford student (herself bearing degrees from Yale and Harvard, no less) wrote an article in the National Review about how her daughter had been placed, against her will, in a coed living situation. Not a suite, but a dorm room, just one room, with boys. Lo and behold, turns out the young woman, a senior, was happy to be in a coed dorm room, was not placed in one at the whim of Stanfordian PC police, and wants nothing more than for her mother to leave well enough alone:

"This conflict has very little to do with Stanford and gender-neutral housing. Is has everything to do with my parents having a hard time adjusting to the fact that I’m out of the house (I’m the oldest), I’m 3,000 miles away, and -especially- that I’m a liberal agnostic while they are conservative Catholics."

This is an expression I never use, but here it seems about right: Oy.

But you know what? While I feel for the Stanford student now forced to take out loans because her mother's stubbornness overrides her desire for her daughter to get a degree that will help her immeasurably later in life, I don't think putting men and women (or girls and boys - what does one call college students?) in the same rooms is the best idea. I also don't think same-sex room-sharing with strangers who just happen to attend the same college is advisable.

The way out of the gender-neutral housing mess, the one thing that would successfully address the fact that for a not insignificant part of the population, sharing a room with someone of the same sex is in fact the more erotic alternative, while also addressing the fact that most people are straight and not blasé enough to share a room with a member of the opposite sex with no weirdness, would be to challenge the notion that college students must share rooms, period.

After all, why, when space is not an issue, is there the expectation that starting college means sharing a room with a complete stranger? (And is it ever really about space? As anyone who's lived in a typical New York apartment knows, a 'bedroom' need only be a bed with walls around it and enough space to climb in.) I want answers.

If I had to guess, schools' prefer shared rooms over, say, suites, for the same reason as our nation's high school students have to play team sports: It Builds Character. Just as a child who grows up with his own room is often assumed spoiled, a college student wishing to live alone his first year of college is presumed to think that he, a child, deserves to be treated like a king. That, or it's assumed he either has strange personal habits or trouble making friends, choosing a single room so as to avoid all human interaction.

It also, I'm guessing, comes back to this idea of selective colleges as Utopian, intentionally-planned Communities, in which every last student is There For a Reason, hand-picked for his special qualities. On the micro level, this means each roommate situation is imagined not only to involve two or more (but not too many more - it's not an orphanage or a military) members of the Select, but also to be its own intentional community, the street-smart kid from the Bronx and the corn-fed Nebraskan, shoved into a tiny space, learning to Expand Their Horizons. Once grown, these two men will help each other get high-powered jobs, and will be grateful to their alma mater for introducing them to their Best Friend for Life.

And sometimes, that's just how it works. But often, the mere fact that Roommate A's college process brought him to the same place as Roommate B, that their grades and SAT scores were comparable, does not mean the two appreciate sleeping and dressing in the same room. There's a reason most room-sharing occurs between people presumed not just to tolerate but, on some level at least, to love each other - siblings, lovers, spouses. Without that bond, room-sharing is often not the most pleasant of experiences.

Often, the pairings, however well thought out, do not go as planned. The gay roommate meant to teach Life Lessons to someone well-meaning but ignorant gets placed with someone who turns out to be an unrepentant homophobe. (This happens.) The Jew meant to enlighten by her very presence a roommate who'd never met one might turn out to be a disappointment when it's revealed that she fails to live up to stereotypes. (Um. Yes, this too.)

Oh, and the forms students fill out specifying their 'lifestyle preferences' - morning person or not, loud music or not, partying or not - are based on the way adults whose lifestyles are relatively stable choose apartment-mates, but are all but pointless for 17-year-olds yet to live on their own. The National Review-writing Stanford mother wrote with obvious pride that her daughter had "said she wanted a room with no smoking and no sex in the room," as though any college student would tell a parent they'd requested otherwise. But parents aside, who wouldn't want a sex-free room, in the sense of one roommate's sex not happening while the other roommate's two feet away? In fact, I'm not sure at all what a sex-free room even means - assuming the roommates have different beds, what would it matter what happened when one of the roommates was out? The 'no sex room' seems like a way students, when requesting housing, can assure their parents they'll be 'good'. And while a senior requesting a non-smoking room seems reasonable, this question is also asked of entering freshmen, for whom it is not. The chances a freshman-year roommate will start smoking - tobacco or otherwise - in the course of his first year not living at home; even those who were at a pack a day at 15 may have filled the forms out with their parents looking over their shoulder, and may not have been honest in their box-checking. The proximity meant to discourage weird habits, unhealthy habits, and freshman-year sexual activity leads only to roommates witnessing whichever proclivities apply, because for each of the roommates, this is their only personal space on campus.

What all of this ends up meaning is that college bureaucracies have to busy themselves with a roommate version of "Can this Marriage Be Saved?," shuffling students mid-semester to fix everything from 'I just don't like him' to the creepy and criminal. With single rooms, in suites or monastic dorm-rooms, the administration would not have to deal with the inevitable flow of students who simply can't live with their assigned Best Friends For Life.

Ah, one might say, but to capitulate to that demand with single rooms would spoil the undergrads. To which I will respond: and the fancier-than-possibly-necessary gyms, complete with cable TV and lounges, dining halls with more options than many medium-sized American towns, do not? There are endless ways colleges could encourage students to escape the proverbial suburban coddling that do not involve altogether denying students small rooms in which to sleep and do their homework - and whatever else - in peace.

Thoughts of the moment

-It's a library, people! I will come at you soon with my Duane Reade umbrella if it doesn't stop soon. (I kid. But please, stop.)

-Anne Hathaway, star of the nausea-inducing but chic-haircut-inspiring film, "Rachel Getting Married," spotted yesterday in that no man's land between the East Village and the Lower East Side. Looks quite like me (including the frightening pallor) but taller, better, which is reasonable, considering that she's a movie star and I'm a backpack-wielding grad student. (Incidentally, a friend of mine named Rachel is soon to wed, and I cannot refer to this event without that movie's title coming to mind.)

-Wish you were thinner and more productive? So does Judith Warner. So does everyone. Thus the appeal in this day and age of drugs that increase productivity while decreasing appetite. You know what also increases productivity while decreasing appetite? A giant and perhaps too strong iced coffee and a raspberry muffin. Highly recommended.

-Who are these people, and how did they come to be so fabulous? Zana Bayne, whoever you are, you are also American? Around my age, yes? How did this world of minimalist Berliners (or is that the pastry?) come to be your life?

And he's smart, too!

Yay! Jo just passed his candidacy exam! It's all over the blogosphere! As preparation yesterday, I thought I should ask him some physics-related questions, but all I could come up with was that there is an inclined plane, and a ball rolls down it, and friction and, gosh, who knows. But anyway, congrats!

Quote of the day

"One presumes, had the opera been cast as a metaphor of Flemish-Walloon conflicts in Belgium, rather than Palestinian-Jewish, that the local reaction might have been different."

Another blog post by a New York Jew

Reading Belle's post about the latest in women-shop-the-recession lifestyle articles, I was reminded of this video tour of a sample sale from New York Magazine, in which fashion reporter Aja Mangum has this to say of a decent if uninteresting handbag: "$525. Now it's, like, $125. You could actually, like, buy this in different colors, they're so cheap." Which they aren't, really, but which they are compared with the dresses shown earlier in the clip. Mangum urges us to buy trendy clothes that were once in the four-figures and now 'merely' three, even items we sort of know you'll never wear, because OMG discount! When confronted with a "dress that was $1,325 is now $129.90," a discount of over $1,000, buy up!

Which is truly terrible advice. Sample sales - sales generally - can be fun, but the first rule of them is not to go if you swoon every time you see a tag 'proving' an item once cost five times its 'sale' amount.

Expert advice below*:

1) You don't really know that Item X ever went for the alleged retail price. Or maybe it did, but for five minutes. (See: Banana Republic.) Or maybe there's as much truth to the 'original' price as there is to the 'designer' labels on consignment clothes. The question you ask yourself at the sale should be whether an item is worth the amount for which it's being sold, not the amount once (allegedly) asked. There's often a good reason the asking price is asked no more. But even for items clearly worth $100 ('worth' defined as, looks like the kind of thing that would go for $100, not as in, should cost $100) going for $5 a pop, remember that you are not earning $95 through your purchase, but rather spending $5 that could have otherwise gone to a bagel and a mocha, say, or a beer, or whatever other carb-filled alternative comes to mind. Face it - you're going to wear the once-overpriced delicate-knit cotton t-shirt, not sell it immediately. And once worn, no t-shirt is worth $100, so attempting a resell once your shirt has mocha and beer all over it - which it will, in time - is basically out of the question.

2) Be careful with 'quality.' That an item is expensive, or was once expensive, is no guarantee that it will in fact 'last for years.' Nor do you know, when buying a dress or jeans, that you'll even want the thing years later - when I went nuts buying girls' t-shirts at the Paris Petit Bateau back in 2003, I didn't do so in order to still wear them today, but lo and behold... Whereas what a mistake - the dust layer is now about as thick as that shoe's sole. Where you should consider quality is in the opposite direction - a pair of clearly one-wear earrings at Topshop, $30? Reconsider.

3) Choose brand loyalty (not to be confused with label whority): The best sale is one on items like one(s) you already have and wear all the time. Which means it pays to get off the high horse of 'oh, but I don't want to be that girl who pledges allegiance to J.Crew.' The best guarantee that you'll wear something time and again, and that it's not on the verge of falling apart, is past experience.

* If I were to start (another) group blog, it would be called Cheapness Studies, and would feature strategies of how to not spend any money, ever. Although I fear I'd be readily outdone.

Another novel about New York Jews

Disclaimer: Of all the possible uses of my non-orals-related reading time, I can't say a novel about 20-something Jewish college graduates of a Midwestern liberal arts school who've resettled in Brooklyn is high on my list, simply because no navel is that fascinating. So, this post is about the review of a novel I have not read and don't plan to. But the book itself doesn't really enter into it.

So.

There's something about Liesl Schillinger's review of Joanna Smith ­Rakoff's "A Fortunate Age" that I find a bit strange. In the text version, Schillinger laments the absence of gays among the main characters; in the accompanying podcast, she does the same re: the lack of non-Jewish ones. While I agree with her that it's unlikely a group of Oberlin-to-Williamsburg friends would include neither gays nor gentiles, a novel about a group of friends is just that, a novel about a group of friends, not a perfectly representative cross-section of a segment of society. While my own straight, Jewish post-college existence probably includes more non-straights and non-Jews than vice versa, I don't find it so hard to believe things might arrange themselves otherwise, whether out of intentional insularity or things just falling as they did.

But what I can't tell is if Schillinger's critique is a pro-realism one - that such a group would not exist - or a moral one, that such a group should not be put into a novel In This Day And Age, particularly one selling itself as a modern-day version of one nearly a half-century older. In the podcast review, Schillinger suggests that Rakoff's choice to go the all-Jew route was either for political reasons or because an all-Jewish environment what she (Rakoff) knew. It seems to me that if Schillinger is willing to consider the latter, Rakoff can hardly be accused of painting an unrealistic portrait of the demographics of the social circle in her novel. The monotonous copying of details of one's own life into novel form might be tiresome, but it still counts as a realistic portrait of Life Today. But if Rakoff were making a political statement by making her novel all-Jewish and all-straight, what statement might that be? Is there a Hetero-Judaic Power Movement? No one's invited me to the meetings. I mean by this, if it's not clear, that one could perhaps accuse the novelist of failing to think beyond the obvious in her choice of making characters members of one marginalized group but not another, but not, it seems to me, of motives more involved than that.

My sense is that Schillinger is the one making a political statement. Or, if not a political statement, a politically-charged aesthetic one. An all-straight-and-Jewish novel is by definition provincial, I think is what she's getting at. But is diversity, in the college-admissions sense of a utopian community with representatives of each possible, recognized group, needed for a novel to be interesting? I mean, maybe Rakoff's novel is as dull as Schillinger seems to be implying. But would the addition of some gay ex-Mormons (or ex-gay Mormons) have made all the difference?

Multiple fashion personality

It occurred to me, when thinking about how I shop, that it never comes down to something as simple as, 'Oh, that's cute.' Nor, however, do I try to match the potential clothing with already-owned items, as in, 'this shirt would go with those pants.' I mean, I do that, but it's a bit more involved. I have several visions for what the perfect outfit would be, which are explained, in more detail than needed, below. While in practice, I mix and match according to what's clean and on the top of the pile/drawer, in theory, each time I leave the apartment, it's as one of the following. In no particular order:

1) The Swiss or Northern Italian tourist, from back when European tourists weren't everywhere. She's upper-upper-class, heiress to a mozzarella fortune. Her look is a bit Upper East Side matron, but distinctively European. (No yoga pants or puffy white sneakers.) For this look, I wear white jeans, my green plaid fleece jacket, my (mother's) dark-red elbow-patch blazer, my new flats from the Repetto sample sale (these, but dark brown leather, not blue suede). Items I do not own, but that would fit with this look: a dark green or navy quilted light jacket, a thin tortoise-shell headband.

2) The Marais denizen circa 2003: There was this one street in the Marais, when I studied in Paris way back when, where the color scheme in all the glowingly unaffordable boutique windows was black-gray-neon. Everything was black or gray, mostly black, but with neon-pink, usually, accessories. It made quite the impact: for this look, I wear my H&M (circa 2004) motorcycle jacket (black fabric, not leather) with black or gray pants, zipper-in-front-and-back black leather mini-boots (more boot than bootie, but between the two), hot-pink or bright-blue nails, and my Uniqlo neon-pink jersey scarf. I love the color pink, but am very particular about which shades. (For this look, think Zana Bayne, but with occasional flashes of neon-pink, -blue, or -purple.) And silver-colored jewelry, if any. Of all the looks, this is probably my favorite.

3) The glamorous Woman. Meaning: the pencil skirts, the turtleneck dresses, red nails, black leather boots (the tall ones without weird zippers), and avoiding wearing The Backpack, a huge, fast-disintegrating relic of Eastern Mountain Sports circa 2005, typically filled with library books and papers, half of which I didn't really need to bring to campus. Tights (better yet, Spanx), not leggings.

4) The Minimalist (Mark Bittman, don't sue me): jeans, white t-shirts or tank tops, black t-shirts or tank tops, gray t-shirts or tank tops, and ballet flats or boots, depending the season. This is how I actually dress, 80% of the time.

5) The 2009 conformist: What can I say? I like some of today's trends. Not all, but some. For this category: black leggings (which I wear, yes, but not as pants), my Uniqlo plaid flannel shirt. What I used to wear of this look, but either thought better of or lost track of: gray skinny jeans (realized they were a bit too low-rise, so, so much for that), black-framed St. Marks Place wayfarer sunglasses (congrats to whomever ran off with that $6 pair two summers ago; or, I lost them).

6) The space-age lunatic: This is where Shiny trumps all. In this category: my silver Pumas, my space-age dark blue Japanese Pumas (the one good thing to come of all my visits over the years to Barneys Warehouse Sales - they're probably six years old and still amazing), the silver lamé leggings I wore exactly once, the shiny silver leggings I've worn slightly more than once, silver-glitter nail polish, silver-colored... you get the idea.

7) The High JAP: You know how there's High Femme? Why can't there also be High JAP? If money were no issue, I'm not totally sure I wouldn't get the occasional French manicure and Japanese hair-straightening treatment. However, I'm hard-pressed to think of anything I currently own/do that fits this mold. (Using a hair iron on a DIY haircut doesn't count.)

8) The looks I like but never follow through with: These include: Mod, Japanese pop star, gigantic-pants-wearing Tel-Avivian (and again), and many more I'm now forgetting.

So, um, is this weird?

In theory

The latest installment in Your Humanities Degree Means Nothing falls into the category of things I'd rather not deal with, like studies telling you that everything seemingly innocuous in your life (the occasional steak! that one glass of wine!) will give you cancer. Plus, Rita already addressed the key points.

Mark Edmundson's take-down of the "readings" method of teaching literature courses, however, this I find interesting. What are readings? Explains Edmundson: "By a reading, I mean the application of an analytical vocabulary — Marx's, Freud's, Foucault's, Derrida's, or whoever's — to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art."

Edmundson would be pleased: somehow I managed to get a BA in French Literature from a reputable college without once being asked to read a book through the lens of someone else. The Chicago Way, as I understood it, was to read each book, whether by Marx or Foucault, Flaubert or Proust, through your own lens. Meaning, it's not that we weren't introduced to critics, we just weren't told to mimic them in our own thinking, but instead to read them as we would read the authors themselves. (Or maybe the readings approach was the norm in all the French classes I didn't take? Of those, there weren't many...)

The only time it occurred to me that the 'what do you make of the book' method might cause problems was when I took a class where I was the only undergrad. The whole way through, it seemed as though there was some different language everyone else had been taught, above and beyond French, that I had not been let in on. I figured grad school orientation was a great big bang-you-over-the-head with 'This is Derrida and what you're to say when his name is mentioned.' I wrote a paper, I remember, in which I misspelled Lukacs, throughout. ('Lou Koch.' Just kidding. I hope?) The part of the paper where I read and wrote about Zola novels went OK, I guess, but the Language of Grad School remained a mystery. Since at that time I had no intention of going to grad school in French, I was not overly concerned.

Then, hello. Apparently at other schools, people are taught these matters as undergrads, and there is an assumption once you get to grad school that you Know. I'd learned heaps at Chicago, but the Names remained a mystery; I've been piecing them together, through classes and outside attempts, ever since.

Still, I like the Chicago approach, that just because a book is Great doesn't mean an 19-year-old can't read it and say something intelligent about it, or at least learn how to do so for next time. The readings approach is, for someone just starting college, potentially intimidating, since what you're essentially looking at when you read the Great Critics is what a Hum or Soc paper would look like if written by a god. Who needs that?

And, along those lines, I think Edmundson makes some great points.* However, he couldn't make those points were he not himself versed in the Language. Case in point:

"Thus Blake, admirable as he may be, needs to be read with skepticism; he requires a corrective, and the name of that corrective is Karl Marx. Just so, the corrective could be called Jacques Derrida (who would illuminate Blake the logocentrist); Foucault (who would demonstrate Blake's immersion in and implicit endorsement of an imprisoning society); Kristeva (who would be attuned to Blake's imperfections on the score of gender politics), and so on down the line."

Is the answer, then, to raise a generation of literature scholars who haven't a clue what the sentences above are getting at? Is Edmundson advocating that literature scholars not have the skills necessary to say what a Marxist view of Novel X? If the switch he suggests were to take place, how would there ever be any kind of conversation among scholars? If we ignore what's been written about books, why would anyone, then, write about books under the new regime?

Theory, as I understand it, is basically a lesson in humility, saying to the collective That Guy of humanities students that, 'Yes, genius, someone has thought of that before you, that, plus so many other things you'd never think of in a million years.' Then again, on this matter, I haven't a clue.

* However, here's where I'm not on board with Edmundson: He writes that someone who reads literature "sees that there are other ways of looking at the world and other ways of being in the world than the ones that she's inherited from her family and culture." Why is leaving one's culture of origin seen as the only true way to be 'converted' via literature? I ask because French literature turned me into a raving Zionist.

Oh, Jezebel...

From a post re: new plus-size lines for teens: "So is accommodating plus-sized customers actually reaching out to overlooked teens? Or just a savvy business decision?" (Emphasis theirs.)

I'm confused. How is this even a question? Are stores that only stock smaller sizes "reaching out to" smaller women and girls? Does a woman buying a 4 at a store that only goes up to a 10 think to herself, 'Gosh, this store must think I look fabulous, which was why it went to the trouble to make me this new outfit'? Such a woman might understand that society thinks along these lines, but the store itself? Does one ever expect good will of this sort from clothes shops? Isn't reaching out to "overlooked" markets - teen and otherwise - what "business" is all about?

This question - this post - isn't even about body issues, women, or Young People Today. It's about the uselessness of asking whether companies care about our self-esteem. I mean, they'll pretend to care if that's what they think will sell their products (ahem, Dove).

(A vaguely-substantive, academics-related post, having nothing to do with this one, is next up.)

Wanty list

These sandals.

These sunglasses. Anyone know where they come from?

This elbow-patch plaid shirt, if it came in a size smaller than Men's Medium.

A drivers' license. (Sniff.)

Against 'naturally thin'

Having made the case against 'natural beauty', I'm going to attempt the same with regards to the concept of 'naturally thin,' a subset of the category already discussed, but one that poses its own set of problems.

****************

Every women-oriented thread about fashion models, once it passes the 'she should eat a cheeseburger' stage and the 'eating disorders are no laughing matter' one, includes someone pointing out that for all we know, many of these models are 'naturally thin.' Some people are just built that way! Who are we to judge?

This brings up the question: what is 'naturally thin,' anyway? Sometimes it's presented as including all thinness resulting from healthy or moderate measures (salad versus fries with dinner, yes; cocaine and bulimia, no). But, as it's usually understood, 'naturally thin' refers to any and all thinness not the result of intentional dieting or weight-maintenance. A woman who is naturally thin, the thinking goes, simply can't gain weight. Even if she wanted to. But why would she, now that even those famous pockets of the world where fat was considered desirable are giving way to pro-thinness norms? Which brings us to the problem.

So, here's my theory: despite the popularity of the expression, there are almost no 'naturally thin' women walking around these days. Moreover, the expression, 'naturally thin', misused in 99% of cases, should be abandoned, because it does more harm than good. Here's why:

1) There is no such thing as 'natural' food consumption in our society.

The 'naturally thin' woman is thin despite her 'natural' approach to food - eating what she wants, when she wants, without intentional restriction. A 'natural' approach to food is free of neurosis - no binge-eating out of anxiety, but also no choosing the salad over the fries if the fries appeal to you more. Alas, if you have an uncomplicated, eat-when-you're-hungry attitude towards food, you're far more likely to be overweight, given the availability of food today, not to mention the existence of foods specifically engineered to be extra-tasty and extra-fattening, than were your equally non-neurotic predecessors. A healthy attitude does not necessarily, in this case, lead to physical health, and only rarely leads to thinness. Making a conscious choice to eat foods marketed as 'natural' (or Pollan/Waters/Bittman-approved) might have some advantages, but it is not eating 'naturally'. What would natural even be, anyway? What people ate in 1850? Cavemen? Where would we draw the line?

2) The 'naturally' emaciated are often naturally not-big, but are rarely naturally as thin as they appear before you.

This is to answer the question re: models, the one so preoccupying women everywhere. My point here isn't that models would be average-sized if it weren't for eating disorders, or that all women, if they didn't watch what they ate, would be overweight. There are certainly women who, eating only pastries, are small. Call these women the naturally not-big. But 'naturally thin'? It's been known to happen, but above, oh, age 11, there's not a lot of it going around. Yes, models are young, but not that young. They look prepubescent not because they are in fifth grade - in most cases, they're not - but because they are paid to take their naturally tall and thin bodies (remember, I admitted that some women are naturally thin, just exceedingly few, but models are among those few) over the border into emaciated. Of all models, there are, again, surely some who are just 'like that', but if the level of salad-and-cigarette consumption by this demographic around Union Square West is any indication, that's not the usual situation. Point being, it's not that models aren't naturally thin, or that we're all just one eating disorder away from looking like a model (we're not), it's that they aren't, generally speaking, naturally that thin.

3) Much like 'natural' beauty generally, 'natural' thinness is used to describe the opposite.

Just as various allegedly subtle shades of eyeshadow and the like are marketed as 'naturals', Google "naturally thin", and you'll find a wide array of diet books and websites with that title. Which seems strange, given that by definition, 'natural' thinness can't be gotten from a diet book. What these programs appear to have in common is that they are all being marketed as alternatives to diets. Given that diets are rarely referred to as such by those selling them, this is unsurprising. But the programs promising "natural" svelteness go further. And, as with the makeup-free Elle France cover, the decision to switch from calling diets 'diets' to calling them 'anti-diets' gets called heroic by those incapable of realizing that nothing has changed. "Thank god. I am so tired of dieting books!," writes one commenter... who goes on to list two diet books she likes, and a third she intends to buy.

4) Of those who are indeed naturally very thin, 'naturally' as in, without intentionally restricting calories, there's a good chance what's keeping them that way isn't something you'd want.

Dire poverty, stomach ailments, life-threatening illnesses, serious drug habits, or an inability to eat enough when depressed (depressed, in this case, about something non-weight-related), these are not things anyone looking for a way to shed those last ten pounds is signing up for.

5) As with other forms of 'natural' beauty, 'natural' thinness is about a posture of effortlessness, not about an actual lack of effort.

No one wants to be 'that woman' at lunch, admitting that she's ordered a salad because she doesn't like the way her hips spill out over her jeans. Which is why so many extremely thin women claim they are 'naturally' the way they are, as thought the basic calories in - calories burnt formula does not apply to them. Thus the clichéd interview with a model, in which she makes a point to eat, say, a cheeseburger, so that the interviewer can comment on how genetically blessed this woman must be. Yet very thin women often do eat tiny amounts, even openly so, for reasons they attribute to health (convenient allergies to all densely caloric and tasty foods, perhaps alongside a 'fitness'-inspired daily 20-mile run) or to morality ('I'm not eating this cake, not because it's fattening, but because eating animal products hurts the environment!'). It never comes as an immense surprise when someone with a thinner-than-model physique turns out to be a vegan. (I am, however, always shocked to see vegans who are any size other than emaciated. What, other than Camembert, are these people consuming?) Women in Category #5 thus pretend to be in Category #4, thin despite their best efforts otherwise, leading to some, but not many, truly ambiguous cases. Further confusing matters, 'naturalness'-wise, there are women thin for reasons of health or poverty who still watch what they eat for getting fat. But, the thinking goes, you're allowed to be particular about food, but only if it's for a cause more noble than your attempt to go from a 4 to a 2. (A hint: the quickest way to go down a dress size is to try something on at H&M, then go try on a similar item at the Gap. Much better than worrying all waking hours about your weight.)

If I'm against 'naturally thin', it's not quite for the same reasons as I came down on 'natural beauty'. Here it's really about the fact that the myth of 'naturally thin' both dangerously ignores the inordinate amount of time and energy women waste on weight-related fussing, something that we really should address, and at the same time valorizes a total lack of concern about what we put into our bodies, as though a 'natural' approach is a sign of superiority, the model who eats cheeseburgers winning out over the cheeseburger-eating woman of normal size, as well as the salad-eating model. Because, if this makes any sense, we should care what we eat, just, you know, not too much.

Voluntary track practice

Though an atheist, I do sometimes think I've found evidence of God's plan for the world. Today, for instance, I learned that God does not want me to work out, now that it's no longer a requirement for getting into college. Evidence:

1) Running the 3.3 mile, hilly loop in Prospect Park, not to mention running to said loop? Kind of painful. Will remember not to do it again, at least not pre-coffee.

2) Jo promised to buzz me in, so I wouldn't need to bring keys. A good plan, except that our buzzer is apparently broken. It took my remembering that we can hear every single thing from outside (usually children screaming mooooommmmyyyyy, in that it's Park Slope), so I tried yelling Jo's name and, sure enough, this worked.

3) When I run, inside or out, rain or shine, I turn the color of the vegetable Obama famously will not touch. It's startling.

4) My run finished at about five to ten. The shop near the park selling expensive pastries and cheese opens at 10am Sunday mornings. You do the math.

Fail

Following the shameful tradition of the likes of Cher Horowitz, I just failed my first road test. Didn't hit anything, parked fine, three-point-turned fine, but apparently the seemingly basic tasks of making left and right turns at intersections are beyond what I'm capable of. Not 'apparently' - I knew this, but since I decided to take the test after taking half the recommended amount of lessons, and without being shall we say unusually talented at driving, I did kind of bring this upon myself.

What's frustrating about this is that here I am in my 1,000,000th year of school, so used to studying for tests, and here's one I can't study for! Each 'study session' is a lesson, which not only must be done at a location that's neither my apartment nor the library, with an instructor, but which costs... let's just say it will be a long time before I buy anything non-essential without heaps and heaps of guilt. And this driving school, or so says Yelp, is relatively inexpensive.

All that needs to happen is, I need to drive around the block, many, many times, which doesn't sound like it should be such a production. But does anyone I know in NYC have a car? It's looking like not. (To those who have offered to teach me to drive, but who either do not have cars or do not live in NYC, much appreciation, but lessons it is.)

The jokes write themselves

I just received an email, from a legitimate source, offering a possible $250 if I fill out a brief survey on my Jewish identity. Which of course I did, being both a Jew and - more to the point - a graduate student.

The survey was like a little visit back to Birthright, where a running theme was WILL YOUR CHILDREN BE JEWS?, expressed oh-so-subtly between the lines. As with Birthright, the survey permitted grad students (those born in 1983 or later - now I feel ancient), but was quite clearly aimed only at college students. Thus the many questions about extracurricular activities (does "French Grad Conference Organizing Committee" count?). And thus the option on the Relationships question to put something along the lines of, 'I don't date Jews or non-Jews, I just hook up, and since in the US circumcision's no guide, no matter if you're into guys or girls, casual sex will not tell you if someone is or is not Jewish.' (Would that it had been so phrased. But 'I just hook up' was definitely, startlingly, an option.)

My answers were, I think, a bit all over the place. I am at zero when it comes to religious activity, Hillel participation, and Appropriate Jewish Boyfriend, but the questions about 'Have you read a book on Jewish themes?', I mean, are there any books on French Jews left at NYU's library? Also, I was amused by the question asking whether I felt ambivalent about Israel being the "Jewish" state, because this conflicted with my "pluralistic" values. I could just see the eyes rolling of whoever wrote the survey, as my own do when I see such arguments. "Strongly Disagree", indeed.

I know full well that the results of this study will go towards various articles about ARE YOUNG AMERICAN JEWS TODAY GOING TO MAKE THE JEWISH BABIES?, and I accept that. If my accepting that wins me $250, all the better. But what would be super would be if they would allow you to meet with the others who filled out the survey as you did. I want to know if there are others with crazy academic and Zionistic interest in things Jewish, unambivalent but non-proselytizing atheism, and a desire to see Judaism understood as something other than Semitic pro-natalism. It can't be that uncommon...

The sanctity of marriage in the columns of 'Dear Prudence'

-Case one: A girlfriend describes a generally happy relationship with her live-in boyfriend, but wishes he were a bit more excited about doing chores, and were generally a bit more motivated. Prudie's response? "This is also why I have qualms about people who are so young moving to together. Have you two decided that you are making a lifetime commitment? Or is living together just more convenient?"

First off: nothing in the question suggests either party is "so young" - she works and is in school and says she is "working for a future"; he works, but not with much enthusiasm. That could make them 18 or 38. Also, in terms of "convenience", isn't that one of the reasons people are encouraged to marry, that living in a couple is more convenient? It's not the main or the only reason to pair off, but it's a reason for both official and unofficial couplings.

If what Prudie disapproves of isn't cohabitation, but youthful impulsivity, shouldn't the age of the couple be established before the living situation denounced? Guess not: "Instead of figuring out how to get him to clean up the house, you need to use this period to figure out why you two are playing house."

Good grief. "Playing house"? Adult couples who live together are not 'pretending' to do anything. I'm quite sure I cooked an actual dinner last night, and that my boyfriend - unprompted - washed the actual dishes that resulted.

While I agree with Prudie that cohabitation isn't marriage, it's also worth remembering that neither is 'forever' in our society. Which brings us to...

-Case two: A man describes his "unhappy marriage (which we're trying to work out)", and his Ambien-fueled black-out sex with a sexually forward acquaintance. Prudie's advice? Tell the other woman to stop calling. And, as for the spouse: "And since you don't know what you did, you're hardly in a position to confess anything to your wife."

First off: STDs, hello? This should always be a concern, but especially when the sex was during a fugue state, and when the person it was with calls up later in a way that suggests that casual sex with strangers is kind of her thing. Even if Ambien excuses the moral aspects of cheating, it is not to my knowledge a magical shield against diseases that could well be passed on to someone's wife. Or, for that matter, against getting Miss Acquaintance pregnant - what if she initiated sex with Mr. Sleepy in order to get a hold of some sperm? Or if she didn't want that, but Mr. Sleepy was a bit lax with condom usage, as I'd imagine unconscious people would be?

But the broader question here is why Prudie does not for a moment suggest the guy end his marriage. Is it because of his parenthetical, "which we're trying to work out"? No children are mentioned, so it can't be that. Is it because it's Marriage, which must be respected? On the one hand, I agree completely that, in an ideal world, things should have to go much worse in a marriage for it to end than they would need to in a different relationship. But things sound so much worse for Mr. and Mrs. Sleepy than for Ms. Dishes and her live-in beau. What Prudie should have done is given her stock 'how to get your husband to do chores' answer to the live-ins, and given her stock 'maybe consider leaving' advice to the marrieds. Just a thought.

Conservatisms of food*

Food can be male or female; it can also, it seems, be liberal or conservative. On the conservative front, John Schwenkler defends Alice Waters and other real-food advocates from the criticisms of the National Review Online's Julie Gunlock (and I am ignoring comments about her last name and its aptness given the publication).

So today's question: Is a conservative meal the Big Mac of the hard-workin' arugula-shunnin' Real American? Or is it the locally-grown, home-cooked, and sensibly-portioned meal shared by a family at 6PM?

Just as conservatism can go in different and contradictory directions, a variety of approaches to food can rightly be called right-wing. There is the conservatism of anti-elitism (Sarah Palin conservatism), but there's also the conservatism of elitism (Great Books conservatism). Both are and have long since been part of the American right-wing. Moreover, there is pro-business conservatism (pro-Twix conservatism) as well as anti-modernity conservatism (home-ground buckwheat conservatism). So in a sense, there's a place on the right for kale and for corn dogs. So why can't it be left at that?

Schwenkler makes the case for seasonal-local-organic (otherwise known as 'real food') as the true conservative option, and he does have a point. For one thing, embracing the local over the foreign and potentially tainted is an undeniably conservative idea. Plus, home-cooking goes naturally with, if not stay-at-home mothering, then at least having a family to feed - as Rita points out, recipes for one, or even two, are inefficient. But above all, making quality judgments, as in, Thing A is simply better than Thing B, is arguably best-suited to the right.

Gunlock, meanwhile, wrote a somewhat convincing take-down of Alice Waters and her ilk. Her approach could perhaps better be described as no-nonsense than conservative, although as staid conservative grandfathers everywhere have shown, no-nonsense-ness and conservatism go hand in hand. Then again, her assessment of Waters as a hippie and a coastal-elite places her firmly in the conservative camp. If her categorization of good (as in, healthy, tasty, and ethically-produced) food as only for snobs goes overboard, what I do like about Gunlock's piece is this bit: "There are others, in her [Waters's] view, who are making better choices — namely, the Europeans. Waters gushes over the European slow-food movement even as she dismisses American food sensibilities." Where Gunlock goes on to praise American local cuisines, she could just as easily have pointed out that Europeans consume their own share of mass-produced fake foods, diet foods, packaged foods, and so forth, many of which cannot be blamed - not directly, at least - on America. If Alice Waters were just slightly less enamored of France, the case for her movement as conservatism would gain much ground.

So, which philosophy of food gets the conservative stamp of approval? (As though I had such authoritah, but moving on.) My take is, both and neither. And that the impossibility of pinning the real-food movement to a political bent is a good thing. While Schwenkler is correct to point out that conservatives need not reject the movement outright, brushing it off as just more liberal nonsense, it would be a great shame if the movement were to become fully a part of conservatism. If that were to happen, the farm-is-better-than-city, local-is-better-because-we-can't-trust-creepy-ferners, mom-should-stay-home-and-cook potential to the movement would develop, whereas the eat-less-meat-to-save-the-planet aspect would in all likelihood fall by the wayside.

*Consider this a continuation/revision of this post.

(Possibly) unintentional hilarity

For a while now, Abercrombie and Fitch shopping bags have had on them vivid photographs of the near-life-size head and torso of tanned, blond, body-hairless, flawless (well, of a certain type) male models. The bag leads to some pretty amazing images. For one thing, one implicitly compares the person carrying the bag to the sun-kissed man on it. Just now, in the rain, I saw a haggard-looking woman of about 45 carrying such a bag. Everything about the situation - her age, the rain, the activity of schlepping - made her seem from a different world than the muscular boy in his late teens or early 20s at her ankles. A woman who'd have otherwise seemed upper-middle-class and unremarkable now looked, by comparison, like a bag lady who'd invaded her young son's beach-volleyball tournament to ask him if he'd be home for dinner.

But the best is when someone's on the subway, holding one of the bags. It will, depending on how the bag is being held, either look like the torso of the man is the torso of the person carrying the bag (which, depending on the physique and gender of the shopper, and on the season - say, someone in an overcoat - can look more or less ridiculous, but guarantees ridiculousness in any permutation), or like the shopper is in a sexual encounter of some sort (which sort, again, depending on the angle of the bag) with our chiseled friend.

Germans and Jews

So I considered posting something about Roger Cohen's latest, but Matthew of Stanford, CA pretty much covers it, writing, "I think it's a really obnoxious way to start an article by saying that the perpetrator of genocide has managed to move on more successfully than its victims."

To preempt a possible response to Matthew (sorry folks - looks like I'll have to post after all): Should the Holocaust be evoked as an excuse for everything that goes wrong in Israel? No - just as colonialism can't be blamed every time a formerly colonized but now independent society screws up. But to say, gee, look how wonderfully Germany's doing, after getting past a stage during which it was convinced of its own national and racial superiority, as versus Israel... it's just missing something fundamental about the psychology of the thing. To say that Germans have created "a wonder from the ashes" - it's unfortunate wording. Yes, Germans and Jews were both in bad shape postwar, and yes, there's all kinds of complex stuff going on in the German psyche, then and now, but really, it's not the same thing at all. Which brings us back to Matthew's excellent point.

So this makes me thing of a couple things. One, "Walk on Water", the Eytan Fox movie, in which a macho Israeli learns pacifism from a gay German descendant of a Nazi war criminal, a young man who wants to know why we can't all just get along. There, as in Cohen's piece, the German and Israeli situations are painted as analogous, and we're supposed to see the German way as superior. Germans are, in the film, gentle and tolerant creatures, granted with some 'issues' stemming from their heritage (neither Axel nor his sister has German lovers, preferring Arabs and Jews, respectively - Axel even makes a point in saying he's never been with German men). But it's ultimately the Israeli with the lesson to learn, which he learns, abandoning Mossad for the rearing of a towheaded half-German baby, the great, symbolic Rebirth at the end of the film.

The other thing I'm reminded of by Cohen's 'look how great the Germans are doing these days, compared to the Jews' is how well his column supports the 'oops, my bad' school of nation-building. As in, the Germans got rid of the populations they didn't want, were able to say, 'That was so wrong of us, we'll never do it again', and now get Roger Cohen praising their 'recovery.' One wonders what Roger Cohen would say to a theoretical Israel that had, in 1948 or 1967, gone the 'oops, my bad' route, killing off the Palestinians, feeling really bad about it... and then conveniently rebuilding the homogeneous (OK, there could be some Arabs, just as there are some Jews now in Germany) civilization they'd wanted in the first place. Hmm.

Silliness repeats itself

- The Obama-Beet Scandal of 2009:

Maureen Dowd on Alice Waters:

Her most ambitious vision involves President Obama, who didn’t want beets in his garden. “I would just like to serve him some golden beets sometime that were roasted in the oven, that were not overcooked, that were dressed with a lovely little vinaigrette, maybe even diced in a salad,” she says in her seductive way. “Squeeze ‘em with a little lime. It’s fantastically nutritious.”

Are beets a healthy food? No doubt. Is a person who never has a beet in his life, but who eats well otherwise, on the brink of malnutrition? Doubtful. Again, it's time we allow the President to dislike one vegetable, to refuse it even in its Alice Watersian incarnation.

- Cinematic narcissism and breakfast-in-bed:

Since Netflix means seeing everything eventually, Jo and I recently watched Elegy, a movie based on Philip Roth's worst-ever book (of those I've read, at any rate), The Dying Animal. After breaking up with Penelope Cruz's character, a sensuous Latin lover 30 years his junior, David Kepesh, the Roth alter ego, is served breakfast in bed, on a special tray, by his best friend. Why might this scene have looked familiar? It was like being back in Mexico with Carrie and the gang. So, to repeat: a friend, even a close friend, does not, when the other friend breaks up with the latest in a string of lovers, sit by the friend's bedside as though this were a death-bed situation, spoon-feeding bland food products into the mouth of the recently dumped.

Slurs and self-defense

Does it matter, with discrimination, if the victims are 'really' members of the group bigots see them as representing? What if they are in some cases but not others? Who, ultimately, is responsible for defending those victimized as such-and-such? The members of the group Such-and-Such, or all recipients of slurs aimed at that group?

Example: Judith Warner concludes that insults like 'that's gay', or 'he's a fag', have "almost nothing to do with being gay," because those taunted as such in high schools across America are frequently not attracted to members of the same sex. She sees as the victims not so much gay youth as all young people who, through an artistic bent or an inadvertently glamorous scarf, find themselves accused.

Since 'gay' is not always visible, it's not surprising that homophobia has its non-gay victims, just as anti-Semitism, aimed at another sometimes-visible minority, has its gentile victims. In France a few decades ago, a non-Jewish man had his store ransacked by anti-Semites because he happened to be named "Blum." In other cases, an entire space gets identified as 'Jewish', such as a Jewish community center or synagogue, and anyone in the area is a potential victim of an anti-Semitic attack. But does the fact that some victims are not Jews make the attack one against Humanity, and not against Jews in particular?

When, after a 1980 attack on a Parisian synagogue, a certain French politician condemned the act, because, as he explained, it had hurt both Jews and "innocent" French people who just happened to be passing by. While Raymond Barre's terminology was unfortunate - "innocent" not being the way to go, implying as it does that to be Jewish is a crime - the question itself is an important one. What role do 'collateral damage' victims of bigotry even have? How should they be understood?

With both 'gay' and 'Jewish', there's an internal definition and an external one. For 'gay', it's simple enough: a man who has romantic relationships (or hopes to) exclusively (or almost) with men, and who identifies as gay. For 'Jewish', it's also straightforward, that is, until you start getting the Israeli Orthodox bureaucracy involved. A Jew is the descendant of a maternal Jewish line and identifies as Jewish, or someone who, for cultural or spiritual reasons, identifies as a Jew and has, you know, done something about it, whether or not that something would 'count' by this or that particular rabbi's standards.

Whereas, when it comes to external definitions, 'gay' includes the internal definition - those over 8 yelling 'fag' tend to know what it refers to - but opens the gates, letting into the category of 'gay' boys and men of unknown or known-to-be-straight sexuality who seem any one of the following: stereotypically gay, stereotypically female, unathletic, intelligent, attractive, unattractive, etc., etc. 'Gay' is not just some undifferentiated synonym for 'bad' in the mind of the high school bigot. OK, it might be when directed at an object (as in, 'Man, that field trip was so gay'), but it rarely is when directed at a person.

The two-definition rule also goes for Jews. Anyone who fits the internal definition counts for the external, but so does anything with stereotypically Jewish looks or behavior (and please, no comments along the lines of 'there's no such thing as looking Jewish' - we're talking about stereotypes), or anyone with a Jewish last name. Thus many people who neither thought of themselves as Jews, nor would have been thought of as such by Jews, were killed as Jews in the Holocaust. Because of this, I never know what to make of Jews today who say that by not intermarrying, or by going the Orthodox route, one is 'sticking it to Hitler'. When, when it comes down to it, simply having Jewish ancestry and not killing one's self is sticking it to Hitler as much as would any more specific behavior. But the fact that Hitler's definition included many non-Jews doesn't change the specificity of the genocide, and in its continued impact on those who are Jewish but who were not direct victims of the Holocaust. But at the same time, asking all who were/are victimized as Jews to unite in Jewish pride is ridiculous, when it means asking non-Jews to deny their own identities. Similarly, high-school anti-gay slurs most definitely are about homophobia, insofar as even if it's a straight kid who's the target, gay classmates feel themselves under attack. Yet I can't imagine asking non-gay kids tormented for being 'fags' to march in a Gay Pride parade, to defend themselves as gays, if they aren't, even if they're being attacked as such.

Confused yet?

If this makes any sense... 'gay' used as an epithet means 'gay' to the people using it, it just doesn't mean the same 'gay' that gays themselves, and that those respectful of gays who thus defer to gays for the definition, would use. But, if we borrow from vocabulary used in the Jewish case, we could say that 'the gays' are those who are gay-as-understood-by-bigots, whereas 'gays' are gays as defined by gay people themselves. 'The Jews' are, of course, that menacing entity acting in concert, claws and horns at the ready, whereas 'Jews' are a collection of mostly unremarkable individuals, living out our mediocre lives. Yet ultimately, the defense of 'the gays' falls on 'gays', because there's really no way for 'the gays' - a group that includes non-gays - to organize. Again, if any of this makes any sense...

Musical exams

Every time I have a stack of exams to grade, the gods above decide it's time for the noise to begin. Last time? A St. Patrick's Day Parade. This time? A domestic squabble - not the call-the-police-omg-are-these-people-OK? kind, just the woman-yelling-man's-name-in-annoyed-voice-and-yelling-in-what-might-be-a-language-from-former-Yugoslavia kind. What is it about the act of removing exams from an envelope that provokes such sounds? Regular grading (essays, homework and the like) sets forth nothing more than the usual car alarm or boisterous Little League Parade. But exams, they're something else entirely.

I suppose that would make this the time to invest in those hideous rubber ear inserts intended to bring silence and serenity to just these situations. But I just invested a whopping $4 in a strap-of-jersey-cloth headband, the kind that were really popular circa 1991, which will prevent me from using 'my hair's now too short to go into a ponytail' as an excuse not to work out. And In This Economy, for this grad student, that's enough shopping for the week.

Against 'natural' beauty

Via Amber, here's a rather pointless article congratulating a French magazine for having the courage to feature women (who just happen to be among the more beautiful models and actresses) with (what they claim is) no makeup. Now, there's something to be said for not taking out loans for liposuction or binges at Sephora. Insofar as some women do risk their lives or spend more time and money than they can afford on beautification, the occasional reminder that you're allowed to, you know, slow down, isn't a terrible thing. But the answer is not to celebrate 'natural' beauty. Here's why:

-'Natural' beauty, as presented in French Elle, isn't natural. It's not just that they chose beautiful women to shoot sans makeup. Take a photo of a stunning - but make-up free! - model or actress, and what you've got is a photograph of the collective results of years' worth of dieting, skin-care regimens, tooth whitening, eyebrow shaping, and so forth. Just because nothing was slathered on pre-shoot (but gosh, did they put moisturizer on Monica Bellucci) or altered via technology after the fact doesn't mean you're looking at how the woman in the shot would look without intentional efforts made towards making her attractive.

-'Natural' beauty is about race, in all kinds of unpleasant ways. Mostly, it's about the woman who does not need to use a hairdryer or relaxer to get her hair smooth, or a plastic surgeon to get her nose into the Grace Kelly mold. A 'natural' beauty is not a woman who accepts herself as is, but one whose resemblance to an undernourished Latvian 16-year-old comes naturally.

As a response, non-white women (black, yes, both others as well) have appropriated 'natural' to refer to the choice not to try to look white. Thus a very complicated, time-consuming, costly-to-maintain hairstyle can be classified as 'natural', not because it's the result of how anyone's hair naturally falls, but because no relaxers went into producing it, or because straight hair is not the result. 'Natural' thus means a lack of racial self-hatred. Which is certainly a worthy goal, but the point of 'natural beauty' is supposed to be that a woman does not have to spend much time and money on her appearance, something this definition of 'natural' doesn't really address.

(Side note: if you are white, do not tell your college roommate, who is non-white or 'ethnic', that you can't believe she spends that much time on her hair. Though white by some standards and, like Amber, pale in such a way that when I wear no makeup, I'm told I look ill, I was on the receiving end of this for my refusal to wash-and-go. Had the roommate seen the result of wash-and-go, let's just say she might have reconsidered.)

-'Natural' beauty means not being able to use one's appearance as a mode of self-expression. Not all things women do to ourselves to look different is aimed at making us look younger, thinner, and whiter. Denouncing artifice means not only chucking nose jobs, relaxers, and concealer, but also glitter eyeliner, neon-blue hair-dye, press-on nails, and other manifestations of artifice designed not to make the average 40-year-old American woman look like an above-average Swede, but to make the wearer, whoever she is, look the way she wants.

This also, of course, goes for those born as men who wish to look like women, or vice versa. There, the natural option is not really on the table. To suggest a 'natural' look in such cases would be both offensive and, well, idiotic.

-'Natural' beauty does not eliminate the question of beauty, it just reframes it in terms of 'what God gave you', a fatalistic approach. With or without artificial enhancements, the societal phenomenon of beautiful people being admired, ugly ones insulted, and the great within-normal-limits majority being ignored will go on. Only without makeup as an option, it will all come down to genetics. If it seems as though I'm speaking of some never-to-come utopia, just think of any subculture in which artificial beautification is frowned upon. Who were the 'hot' hippies, if not the ones with naturally long, blonde hair and delicate features? The same is true today, in the various cult-of-low-maintenance subcultures still around, or in magazines choosing which women to feature without makeup.

From the dept. of Plus ça change

Library, Twix, diet Coke. A texte in need of immediate explicating. If I were looking out on swastika-shaped carrels, and not Washington Square Park, this would be 2005.

Bonus points for a sign on or near a tip jar asking customers to bus their own damn tables

A few weeks back, I urged readers to send me photos of "signs admonishing customers in independent coffee shops across America." No such avalanche followed (perhaps in the future, I should make such requests somewhere other than in the comments), but here's Paul Gowder with some quite remarkable (and photographed!) findings in this area.

So, consider this post Call #2.

"It's very sophisticated"

-Sugar babies, sugar daddies, should we care? The NYT Magazine thinks so, and only so much of the paper can, after all, be devoted to the far more interesting question of pirates.

The gist of the piece is that couplings between pretty young things and men at or near the age for Viagra are more fraught than you'd think. The real takeaway, though, is that the arrangement is kind of brilliant. Men pay for sex, while convincing themselves they are in sophisticated relationships (cue the "he's sleeping with his maid" episode of Seinfeld - do these men not get TBS?). Meanwhile, women get paid for sex while convincing themselves they're the girlfriends of men who just happen to be rich. Whatever ambiguities such relationships might hold if conceived in a natural setting - sometimes someone fabulous in all ways turns out also to be a billionaire - disappear when you consider that the couples profiled met through a website whose stated purpose is pairing "sugar daddies" with "sugar babies". Sorry, folks, a line can be drawn between couples with income disparities who nevertheless have joint bank accounts and arrangements explicitly about the trade of euphemistic "sugar" of one kind for another. If you have to keep telling yourself that, when it comes down to it, all relationships are basically commercial exchanges, then there's a good chance you either are a prostitute or are paying for one. (And if you are a prostitute, remember: 'I'm putting myself through school' garners a lot more sympathy than 'OMG Jimmy Choos!')

-Though not a sugar anything, I did some serious shopping today, by my own Aspartame standards. First off, a dress, from the semi-permanent Chelsea Market sample sale, oh so temptingly placed across from the Thai food to which I am severely addicted. The dress... is long but fitted on top, with spaghetti straps and a v-neck/leotard-type top. I thought the dress was black, but the tag (and Jo) confirms that it is navy, thus confirming my color-blindness. Obligatory, guilt-induced price citation: Although the printed tag says it was originally $148, I tend to think the $25 it was on sale for is at the high end for a dress, however chic, made from t-shirt material. (Ahem, Topshop.)

I also have a Berlitz German phrasebook and CD gotten. We'll see how that goes.