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Warning! This is going to be a whiny, self-indulgent, screaming-into-the-void type post, and it’s going to be about something really superficial: shopping.
Someday on this blog I plan to write more about my relationship with my body, and how my body and I became enemies, and how we’re trying hard to come to terms with each other and find a way to occupy the same space without killing each other, and what I’m doing to make that happen. But for now suffice it to say that I have forsworn dieting and restricting and food obsession and am trying to love and accept and be kind to my body, for a change. Aaaaand of course as a result I have gained some weight (but I was gaining weight anyway, but with a heaping helping of daily self-loathing, so this is certainly better) and ergo, my clothes don’t fit me any more. I currently have five work appropriate outfits that I try to mix up as much as I can, but since four of them are dresses, there’s not much mixing to do there.*
So I find myself in fairly dire need of professional clothes. The first obstacle between me and my Ultimate Professional Wardrobe was terror of trying things on and subsequently discovering what size I wear these days. I’m not a big weigher (outside of the Weight Watchers context) because I always seem to weigh heavier than I look (or feel - perhaps I truly am “big boned.” Or my bones are of normal size but are made of dark matter. I do remember asking my mom once if I was a fat toddler and she said that I was very “dense”) and I’m really not emotionally capable of seeing the hard numerical evidence of my corporeal growth, so the only quantitative measurement of exactly how much weight I’ve gained is my pants size. And oh my how I dreaded facing that quantitative measurement.
I have such conflicting feelings about the Chicago Sun-Times. On the one hand, it’s a union paper, and that is good. It’s also supposed to be the more liberal of the two big Chicago papers, and being a progressive who likes to read the daily news, I feel like I should support the paper that has the best chance of being anywhere in the ballpark (hell, universe) of my politics. (In contrast, the Trib officially endorsed GWBush for both elections in which he ran, despite consistently publishing articles that were extremely critical of the administration, because it’s supposed to be the Republican paper and thus, is obligated to mindlessly support the Republican candidate, no matter how absurd and insincere that support may be.) The Sun Times is also published in convenient tabloid format, making it much easier to read on the train (although harder to divide between two people over breakfast).
But then on the other hand, the Sun-Times is a piece of shit paper. The writing is sensationalist, and the headlines aspire to make the NY Post look like the Financial Times. For example, on Monday when the Sun-Times led with the story of Bears linebacker Lance Briggs’ smashed-up and abandoned car, the headline read: Silence of the Lamborghini. Funny? Sort of, admittedly. But come on! This is a supposed legitimate daily, not the freaking Red Eye.*
What motivated me to write this post, however, were the second and third headlines that appeared in my Sun-Times feed reader today, leading me to believe that it’s not the Post that the Sun-Times seeks to emulate, but the dearly departed Weekly World News:
Baby born healthy with 12 fingers, 12 toes
Giant spider web engulfs Texas park trail
*Free commuter paper that deserves it’s own derisive post for it’s sexist articles and vapid reporting style.
I continue with my inexplicable busyness (although I think it’s less inexplicable now), but I wanted to say that I am deriving huge amounts of knowledge, information, and reading pleasure from two blogs that I’m fixin’ to add to my blog roll: Racialicious, a site that explores the link between race and pop culture, and another of author Carmen Van Kerckhove’s companion sites, Race in the Workplace. Really good stuff!
1. Dehumanizing graphic of a headless fat (female, natch) torso.
2. Alarmist introductory statements about how WE ARE GETTING SO FAT!!!!!!!!!!!11
3. Characterization of obesity as deadly disease.
4. Placement of blame on fat people for not just rising health care costs but also for the US’s poor economic performance in foreign markets.
5. Common sense call for more sidewalks, more geographically and financially accessible grocery stores, less junk food in schools, safer neighborhoods, and individual food subsidies that actually provide sufficient support for the recipients to, you know, buy food. Oh wait - I totally agree with all of that.
6. Random, unsubstantiated diet tips (here, low carb good, low fat bad).
7. Kooky libertarian distrust of government intervention in any way, shape, or form.
8. And of course, the finger-wagging admonition to “Eat less, exercise more.”
I really think there is an “Obesity Epidemic Generator” on the web somewhere, because all these articles say the same thing.
Once again via Lifehacker (or so I thought, although now I can’t find the original link), obnoxiously male-oriented tech mag Wired offers advice on it’s wiki on how to “Make Friends at the Office Who Really Count.” The advice is characteristically entitled and self-important, basically boiling down to “Don’t be an asshole, but don’t get too friendly with the help, either.”
As someone who has worked as a receptionist, a secretary, an ad-hoc IT support person, and the “gal in the next cube,” I would like to offer some advice that does not assume that the value of non-team members or bosses is mainly as pawns in a pitiful little game of “My personal life is devoid of real meaning so I like to manufacture drama in the workplace to make myself feel important.”
Do: Be nice to people, regardless of who they are or what you perceive they can do to help you. Look people in the eye, smile, and use words like “please” and “thank you.” Don’t yell or snap at people. Don’t assume that the receptionist, secretary, mail room employee, maintenance person (or anybody else, for that matter) is stupid; that person might very well be not only smarter than you, but more well educated than you. And therefore, don’t talk to that person with a tone that assumes your intellectual superiority because you might end up looking like not just an asshole, but a very stupid asshole.* Ask people about their weekends. Notice when people are ill or have been absent. Ask people about their families (if they provide you with an opening to do so, obviously). Remember their names. And if, as the Wired piece warns, somebody gets chatty with you (because, of course, that receptionist has just been eagerly waiting for you to say hello to her so she can talk to you, that patronizing jackass in QA who never speaks to her unless he wants something, about the minutia of her day), then chat back! You might learn something, like how to treat your coworkers like equal human beings.
Don’t: Be a sanctimonious, condescending prick.
In potentially related business news, “Trust issues can creep up in the workplace.”
* Here’s a story: I once worked as a receptionist for an executive career counseling service (which led directly into my becoming an ardent labor activist for a living, but that’s another story) where a male coworker repeated insisted that Delaware is a New England state,§ even after I told him that, being originally from Delaware, I probably had a better idea of its geographical regional classification than he did.
§ It’s Mid-Atlantic.
How wonderful when doing something good for the environment coincides with doing something good for your sanity… Gina Trapani at Lifehacker links to this handy page with info on how to unsubscribe from all those stupid, wasteful catalogs.
As someone who lives in a tiny apartment, I can attest to the overwhelming clutter potential of just a couple days’ worth of unwanted catalogs. As someone who is inexplicably busy*, I can attest to the attention drain that these catalogs place on my free time, whether it’s time spent corralling and disposing of them or time wasted reading them while I put off doing something else.** And as someone who lives in a city with an abhorrently inadequate recycling program, I can attest to the importance of focusing on the reduction third of the reduce-reuse-recycle equation.
So sleep with one eye open, Lands End and Winter Silks because I’m coming for you. I’ll keep my Ikea catalog, though, since they only send one a year and it provides endless bathroom reading enjoyment for the whole family.
*I have a 9-5 M-F job and a once a week volunteer commitment and yet still feel like I’m always running three steps behind everything that I need or want to do. And yes, I’ve read Getting Things Done and even have my own geeky little GTD system in place.
**It’s time wasted because living in Chicago, I can almost always buy what I want at a brick and mortar store and avoid the packaging and pollution of mail order, not to mention the hassle of hauling whatever it is home on the train.
As careful as consumers may be about revealing personal information to product companies, few take the same care when it comes to volunteering private health information to third parties who aren’t their doctors or healthcare providers. Yet, online health risk assessments, offered by growing numbers of employers and insurance companies, ask for even more personal information about lifestyle habits, medical histories, and health. The information is compiled into electronic medical databases and used to identify people to be targeted for health tests, monitoring, education and health care management.
Many are promoted as online medical records to make it easier for consumers to put all of their records and health information in one place for ready access wherever they are. In return, besides free tote bags or discounts on their insurance, participants are given targeted health information to guide them to healthful behaviors. Growing concerns are being raised about these electronic databases, including how personal information is being shared, sold and used, especially as the marketing interests behind them are becoming better recognized.
HIPAA is not my area of expertise. Does it only apply to care providers and pharmacies? Why not on-line medical records repositories? That certainly seems in line with the purpose of the law.
Edit! I have access to a HIPAA expert, and here is what she had to say:
The only entities that are required by federal law to comply with HIPAA are health plans, health care clearinghouses and health care providers, if the provider transmits any health information in electronic form. That means that Google, Microsoft and these state networks cropping up all over the place to provide health information statewide, generally do not have to comply with any privacy laws.
. . .
At this point there are no safeguards on the system. There are no audits of access. . . . I would not use anything on the Internet to collect any personal information about me, especially my health information, and I would tell all my friends and families to forgo that opportunity as well. Those businesses are not required to provide any privacy protections for health information. Depending on the state in which you live, they may be required to protect your personal information like address, phone number, date of birth and social security number.
I think the answer is to assimilate all of my health information on my personal password protected jump drive that I can then carry with me, and have available as I need it. Of course there are problems with that as well. If I get hit by a car, and I’m the only person who knows the password, it’s useless.
So there you have it. Avoid these on-line repositories of healthcare info, get a jump drive, and tell your BFF your password in case you get hit by a car.
No doubt due to being a lifetime of horror/mystery/suspense/sci-fi, when I read things like this, my first thought is always, “What did he know that we don’t?”
I, along with my kitties, believe that every day is Caturday, but regardless…
Three is the magic number. Sunny days, happy cats.
In the six years that I’ve known her, she’s never curled up in the sink like that before. Normally she just drinks out of the faucet. I guess an old cat can teach herself new tricks. That one-eyed Popeye face is courtesy of a cat cold she’s getting over.
Via Jezebel via Wired, comes news of a platform shoe designed for sex workers* that contains a gps device that can contact the police or a sex worker advocacy group in the event of trouble. The shoe is part of an art exhibit from The Aphrodite Project, and is described as “a social sculpture: an interactive, wearable device that is a conceptual homage to the cult of the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, a practical object for contemporary sex workers, and a vehicle for public dialogue.”
I’m extremely skeptical of anybody who romanticizes modern prostitution, and frankly I would bet that in deeply misogynist ancient Greece it was no picnic for women either, no matter how hard we may wish it to be otherwise. Although the artist claims that these shoes are “designed to meet the needs of today’s sex workers,” I’m thinking that maybe if they put this technology in a nondescript sneaker (because I’d bet most johns bent on harming a prostituted woman are going to find a way to part her from her fancy high-tech shoes before they can do anything useful, and I’d bet a sneaker is a more common and practical footwear choice for women trapped in street prostitution. I notice that “comfort” was not a concern here, either) and handed it out for free (because most prostituted women don’t have their own disposable income to spend on their own safety needs), or better yet put their energy into creating a society in which it’s not okay to brutalize and murder women based on patriarchal assumptions of ownership and dominion of women’s bodies, their efforts might be a little more useful. And given the level of control that pimps exert over prostituted women, what’s to stop them from using this ridiculous shoe as yet another way to limit their movement and prevent them from escaping him?
Ah well. I don’t suppose I should be surprised that something created and designed by a prostitution apologist as an art project should be ultimately impractical for prostituted women.
*I intentionally use “sex workers” instead of “prostituted women” (which is my term of choice because 1) advocates for prostituted women, many of whom have escaped from prostitution themselves, prefer that term and I respect their experience; and 2) I believe it to be more accurate (you’re not a worker if somebody else gets your wages - you’re a slave)) here because the woman who embodies the conception of “sex worker,” whether realistic or representative or not, is the designer’s intended end-user for this item.
The Trib picked up this AP story about the rise of maternal death rates for this morning’s paper. In the US, we medicalize childbirth as an illness. Women give birth in hospitals with IVs and invasive monitors, attended by nurses and doctors, who treat childbirth as an inconvenience that can be addressed through drugs and invasive, painful, dangerous, and unnecessary surgeries. We do all these things in the name of health and safety, whether because we value the lives of women (I’m skeptical) and newborns (or at least the white ones, and as long as the act of valuing them coincides with the act of dominion and control over women’s reproductive organs), or because we fear lawsuits and the rising costs of malpractice insurance.
Although we cry “health and safety!” we continue to employ methods that don’t meet our own goals. We shave women, tilt women on their backs to work against gravity, pump them full of pitocen when their labor fails to conform to timing charts, slice their vaginas, and finally cut them open. And why? If these methods aren’t giving us the results that we claim to want, why do we persist in using them?
Usually when I sit down to ponder these sorts of questions, I follow the money. These procedures are expensive. Doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, medical supply companies, and drug companies make a lot of money off women who give birth in medicalized settings. And when corporations are making bucks, they tend to overlook the resulting harm to people, especially oppressed peoples (by which I mean women, generally, with the recognition that middle class (mostly white) women have the means to pursue alternatives, like birthing centers and doulas, while lower income women (mostly of color) are herded into hospitals, where the obstetrical-industrial complex can continue to make money off the exploitation of their bodies).
If you doubt me, look at how the medical establishment (predominately male) treats the profession of midwifery (predmonately female). Some doctors in Missouri just filed suit against a midwives practice group in an attempt to have a law that would allow midwives to deliver babies without consulting with doctors unconstitutional. This law was passed as part of a measure to reduce the costs of healthcare, but the obstetrical industrial complex apologists see it as a loss of revenue. Of course they couch their objection in terms of maternal and neonate health, which brings me neatly full circle: Doctors’ methods aren’t working. If an existing method is causing harm, how can anyone argue for their continued employment using health and safety as a justification?
And of course, no modern article on women’s health issues would be complete without a little (fat) woman-blaming:
Experts also say obesity may be a factor. Heavier women are more prone to diabetes and other complications, and they may have excess tissue and larger babies that make a vaginal delivery more problematic. That can lead to more C-sections. “It becomes this sort of snowball effect,” said King, who is now medical director of maternal-fetal medicine at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
You hear that fat mamas? It’s not the money or the convenience or the general contempt that the medical profession has exhibited towards women’s bodies since the dawn of fucking time that leads to unnecessary surgery and death. It’s your fat. So please excuse the medical researchers while they wring their hands over the cause of death of thin mothers.
…from briantologist and his “typo of the week”:
… seen while reading a grocery circular. It was an ad for these, the infuriating nature of which I’ll set aside long enough to tell you that they were advertised as “Unscrutables.”
This made me laugh and laugh. I just love the idea of a food that’s marketed based on its mysterious nature. “I ate seven of these last night just trying to figure out whether I liked them or not!” Way to miss an opportunity there, Smucker’s.
“Uncrustables” f’n infuriate the hell out of me, too.
A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is a true story told in 12 parts about six different people — Leo & Michelle, Denise, Hamid, Kevin, and the Doctor — who escape and survive Hurricane Katrina.
I don’t know what the comics-equivalent to cinematography is, but AD deserves the comics-equivalent of an Oscar for it. This is a short-ish comic, but I’m already attached to the characters and tense about what’s going to happen in the remaining chapters. It’s amazing how much emotion a comic can evoke with right combination of art, color, and dialog. AD not only gets that combo just right, it also adds depth to the story with the links to real videos, photos, and stories. It’s a really great example of how webcomics are more than just scanned in paper comics.
Kameelah’s entire article “Making Black Girls ‘Ladylike’” is brilliant, but here are some of the bits that really resonated with me:
Looking at the intersection of race, gender, capitalism and pedagogy, the disciplinary efforts and hidden curriculum are working toward a desired young Black woman — one who does not ask too many questions, accepts the power arrangements in schools and becomes a proper young lady — pink bows and all. Schools since their inception have been focused on the poetics of assimilation and thus are sites of production not only for the ready-made American citizen who does not challenge his government or is a depoliticized consumers, but the “acceptable” Black woman who is docile, domesticated and unchallenging.
And, of course, good little lady worker bees ready to unquestioningly accept lower-status, lower-paying jobs. And always arrive to work on time. And never complain about sexual harassment.
In this same paper, Morris argues that there is a desire to have young Black women assimilate to prototypical White middle-class views of femininity that necessitate a certain level of docility and complacency. The GenderPAC report noted that “many teachers described black female students as too sexually provocative in dress and behavior.”
Enter stage left: the endurance of historical stereotypes of Black women and hypersexuality. I am wondering how large the gap is between perception and real life and irrespective of this perceptions, schools should not become informal charm schools for young Black women who haven’t acquired the “proper” accoutrements of “ladylike” behavior.
While the report quickly asserts that “The teachers’ actions appeared to be less the result of conscious racism or sexism than an unwitting tendency to view the behavior of black girls through a different lens than that of their peers,” I am inclined to believe that if these actions are not the result of conscious racism or sexism, then we can look to unconscious racism or sexism.
Damn right. “A different lens,” unconscious racism or sexism… a rose is a rose is a rose, etc.
. . . I have gotten over my guilt about gendered apostasy and asserted that my vagina should not dictate the way I speak or act.
This is where I make that little fist-pumping gesture and loudly whisper, “Yes!” at my desk, prompting a coworker to ask what it is I’m so excited about, requiring me to come up with a way to explain my enthusiasm without actually using the word “vagina.” Good times, good times.
Moreso, how do we disrupt the culture of schooling as a site where students are directed, produced and dealt with en masse? Taneika Taylor, the director of GenderPAC’s “Children as They Are” program suggests that “[i]f our own unconscious stereotypes are prompting teachers to ‘correct’ those behaviors in young black girls, school systems need to look carefully at including this problem of teachers’ perceptions and assumptions in their diversity training.”
Let’s not get me started on “diversity training” or the word “diversity” itself. I am thinking that working on the individual attitudes of teachers is a good start, but disrupting a schooling culture of (re)production and complacency will take more than a weekend retreat at the Hyatt and discussions about celebrating token differences.
Short of a full dismantling, I think the first step is to hire more women of color as teachers, promote more women of color to administrative positions, and appoint or elect (however it works) more women of color to school boards. I don’t mean to be a self-loathing Caucasian here, but all the diversity training in the world can’t impart to a white person, even a well meaning one, the necessary knowledge and experience to make enough of a difference in our perceptions and assumptions to correct the situation within the existing paradigm.
Ellen Goodman chronicles “A year of notable setbacks for women.” Oof. Pretty depressing. Good thing I’m going out for drinks after work.
Let’s just get to it then, shall we?
It’s not as if I fall off my chair with alarm every time a new study comes out discrediting a nugget of time-tested weight-loss or health wisdom, but still this one surprised me:
Women’s magazines and diet gurus have long promised that if you gulp a lot of water, you’ll feel full and eat less, and the pounds will melt away.
If only it were that easy. Unfortunately, that’s one of the biggest diet myths out there.
Setting aside my feelings about the article’s insipid wordplay and tired old reinforcement the “thin = healthy” paradigm (this is MS-NBC, mind you, so I don’t expect much either in the way of intelligent writing or progressive thinking), I am just tickled pink to hear this news. Water as weight-loss tool ranks right up there with “use a smaller plate” and “put your fork down between bites” on the list oft-repeated tactics for diet trickery. I, as a near-lifetime dieter, am subsequently a prodigious water drinker yet never could trick myself into believing that a glass of water was equivalent to a cheeseburger. Of course I attributed my lack of success to my own physiological or mental failings rather than question the validity of water as a substitute for actual nourishment. Which is pretty fucking absurd, now that I think about it.
So it is with great happiness that I learn that I cannot, actually “sip my way to skinny.” And it is with commensurate happiness that I read about all the other ways that water is still good for you, since despite its washout as a weight-loss aid, I’m still a firm believer in the benefits of sufficient hydration and I would hate to find out that eight years of daily admonitions to my husband to “Drink more water!” had all been in vain.
