Laying low

I appear to have come down with my customary case of Olympic Fever.

Only once every four years, for 16 days, to I give myself the freedom to embrace the ignorance necessary to believe in the possibility of global unity, fair play, achievement, and general happy-making embodied by the ideal Olympic games. This includes, but is not limited to, believing in the amateur athlete (which I've been informed is a very old-fashioned manner of looking at the Games), believing in the purity of the competitors and the unimpeachable judges, believing in an even playing field, believing in the noble intentions of both international bodies of sport and nation states, and believing in the goodwill of all countries towards others. It means knowing but choosing to then ignore things like, oh, the maximum amount of coverage for female athletes dictated by the governing body of beach volleyball; the troubling interlocked economic policies and environmental legacy of the host nation; the, as friend JS puts it, confusion of the ersatz and the real often seen in China; the dismaying possibility that the Iranian swimmer chose to plead sick rather than get into a pool with an Israeli; Russia invading Georgia; the US President then running his mouth off about a sovereign nation's territorial integrity; the treacly, oversentimental and massively jingoistic American television coverage of the games; Usain Bolt's borderline showboating at the finish line, the machismo of which makes me think of his home country's high danger for homosexuals; and the very real questions of the Chinese women's gymnasts' ages and what that means for children's rights, for women's rights and safety.

So I know it's out there, all of it. But I only get 16 days to pretend the world is what I want it to be, with all competitors supported by coach and country, competing on a level playing field without advantages of a first-rate first world training system or of drugs. I only take a few weeks--and it's always in an election year--to tell myself the very comforting lie of global peace and pleasantry, of the sageness of presidents and prime ministers, of the universal acknowledgment of and fight against inequality and suffering for all. This is my romantic global moment, in which I see no wrong in My Beloved, in which I ignore all flaws and abuses, in which I am sure *I* can change My Beloved for the better.

So I guess I'm saying I'm still on vacation. And that I sure do geek out over the Olympics.

Can You Build a Life from $25**

I want you to read this article from the Christian Science Monitor before we go on. It's the prerequisite before today's session of "Nora's Bile: Let Me Show You It."

It's short, and I can wait.

Done? How interesting, right? In the vein of Nickel and Dimed--with its renunciation of one's so-called station to explore how another group lives (or struggles to live)--a young man named Adam Shepard decides to take twenty-five bucks, a rucksack of physical things, and nothing else; leave his home with his parents; and step to "the wrong side of the tracks" in Charleston and "[start] his life from scratch" (sort of) as a homeless man to "test the vivacity of the American Dream."

Right.

The conceit that Adam brought "little else" with him than $25 and the clothes on his back reflects a willful blindness to so much about Adam as a person and American society in general that I don't even know where to begin picking this bit of indulgence apart. It is so full of unacknowledged advantages and self-satisfied "discoveries" about self and life and America that a cranky cultural critic and feminist such as myself feels like a kid in a veritable candy store. A candy store of assumptions.

So I'll start at one of my favorite jumping-in points: white privilege. Recently on an alumni network to which I belong, a white man put forth that he didn't believe in it and that it didn't matter if he believed in it or not, it didn't have any effect on him. And it is indeed difficult to convince someone dead-set against acknowledging something troubling to their personal position of power that there is an unseen aspect of their power. But in my view of the world, white privilege exists whether you want it to or not, and that's all I'm going to say in response to someone who said something ignorant a few months back.

Anyway.

The article/interview doesn't really bring up race at all, but the interviewer does skim the issue of Adam being white, asking "what if you were on probation?" I don't think one can ask this question without the weight of the imprisonment rate of black males in America behind it. The astonishing disparity between white incarceration and black incarceration means that any discussion of Adam's 'ability' to 'succeed' after 'starting' with 'nothing' must acknowledge that not being a black man on probation factors into his success rate. But no such acknowledgment comes. Adam's answer to the interviewer is revealing (emphasis mine): "The question isn't whether I would have been able to succeed. I think it's the attitude that I take in: 'I've got child care. I've got a probation officer. I've got all these bills. Now what am I going to do? Am I going to continue to go out to eat and put rims on my Cadillac? Or am I going to make some things happen in my life...?'" In other words, Adam seems to think that just thinking that he had impediments was enough to give him the psychological burden of those limitations--a burden he shouldered by thinking positively and 'making things happen' for himself. He also puts forth a false dilemma, establishing that his basic choice as he scraped together his earning and made budgets (and therefore the choices of the homeless people around him) was either to eat out and pimp his car or to save money. This is not just reductionist, it's willfully blind. It's blind to the fact that Adam is coming from a socioeconomic world that teaches its children--its college educated children, no less--how to see money and how to consider a future in which success is so likely that it is a sure thing. It's blind to the fact that he had the advantage of lacking certain expenses, including but by no means limited to critical medicine.

Also, what kind of jackass actually says that one of the biggest changes from living home'd to living in the continuum of homeless-to-merely-poor was no longer going out to eat? My rent, student loan bills, and utility bills currently equal just over half of my monthly earnings after tax, and I also pretty much no longer go out to eat. It stopped being a sacrifice or change and started being the way I live now a long, long time ago--before I even had a paycheck in Boston, in fact.

An additional shockingly naive story Adam relates in his interview is that he made up "this great back story" of how he ended up where he 'was.' His excitingly tragic tale is a little flight of fancy, a little indulgent method acting: my mom drugs, my dad booze, me leave her for him and here I am. He takes pride, it seems, in having a "great" story, but his great story is not given the kind of praise or even attention from his 'fellow' homeless people that he seems to feel it warrants (emphasis mine): "The interesting thing is that nobody really cared.... It wasn't so much as where we were coming from, it was where we were going." This is remarkably self-centered. Did it ever occur to him that his story was not interesting to others he met not because they were each so focused on adjusting their individual attitudes to ensure future success ("...but where we were going.") but because, well, his story is real for some and might be seen, by others, as no big fucking deal compared to their problems?

I should acknowledge that Nickel and Dimed, a book I enjoyed, was also incomplete in its analysis. Based on this interview alone, I'd have to argue that that book did not wear blinders as large as Adam's. Barbara actually fights a bit with the advantages that she has whether or not she chooses to use them. Adam, on the other hand, just doesn't see that being white is an advantage in and of itself, or that having the kind of attitude that one gains just by soaking in the stew of college is a tool that you use without knowing it. He even has the gall to say that college was a disadvantage in his experiment with strife: his "thinking was inside the box." Inside the box, apparently, of knowing that saving money is a thing that one should do. It is beyond his imagination to think that there are populations out there who do not see the future the same way that he has been cultured (like a pearl in a shell) to see it. There are people whose futures in America do not have the same potentials that his future does by the simple virtue that he is white, comes from a certain background (two parents, comfort, schooling), speaks English, is male, is not unhealthy chronically or mentally ill, does not have babies. Being white, being male, being born to such parents, speaking native English, being healthy: Adam did not make these choices, yet he benefits from them every day.

(And here also, your humble narrator indulges in a little editorializing: Adam, just try being everything I've just mentioned *except* male, and see how different your experience is. If it's not different, I will eat my hat. Also your hat. Also the hats of anyone who mails me one after I return to my "real life," job, apartment, cat, family. In fact, I think I have my own book deal right there: woman attempts to duplicate success of pretend homeless book writer; finds that his rate of success cannot be duplicated simply by Attitude and Determination and may, in fact, have an element of several aspects of unacknowledged privilege to it; woman bogs down the postal system in her ZIP code with the return shipments of many, many hats sent to her by smug white dudes. But really, the story I'm telling is the story of the can-do attitudes of the mail carriers on my block...)

His book had better be more insightful than the interview he gives. Because he just sounds like a naive, ignorant Pollyanna, here--and beyond that, his uninsightful and unthinking endorsement of the whole "bootstraps" thing is very, very damaging. Forgive my failure to find citations and research to back up the following statement, but this attitude--that the poor just don't work hard enough, that the homeless just have bad attitudes (Adam, emphasis mine: "Then there was this other guy who could walk and everything was good in his life, but he was just kind of bumming around, begging on the street corner. To see the attitudes along the way, that is what my story is about."), that all it takes is just, oh I dunno, Pluck or Moxie or Whathaveyou--has been rejected pretty roundly as a valid base for making public policy.

Does Adam know that the fastest growing population of the homeless is families? Because per American Government and Politics Today, published by Thompson Learning this year and supplemented by yours damned truly, it is and they are. The implication in his interview that these families just need to make better decisions is insulting and dangerous.

It's easy and fun to poke holes in Adam's ideas--he's a regular fraking Candide up in here, except with less critical thinking. But his gloss (ha ha, get it?) can damage more than just my afternoon productivity, and that ain't right. His words live in a public sphere and will be used by readers to inform attitudes, and I wish he'd thought of that before he went out there scrounging for a book deal.

I could be wrong, of course. This interview might not actually reflect the level of insight in his book, and I haven't read the book. For all I know--or am likely to find out, since I don't think I could stand reading more tripe from an indulgent white man--his little book might start with a series of disclaimers: this is the inspirational story of me and only me; at the end of my self-imposed year of living dangerously I'd attained all of my goals and could use my magical get-out-of-homelessness free card; and your mileage may vary!

But I fucking doubt it. I do indeed doubt it.



A note: Standard double quotes in this screed indicate content I am quoting from the article. Single quotes should be read as my own 'air quotes,' implying that I, as the screed's author, find something amiss about the application of the term.

**...if you are white, are male, are in good health, and have an outlook on the proper management of money and the potential of your future that is informed by your unacknowledged class and education advantages. This headline, no doubt, was rejected by the CSM...

+ + +

My thanks go to JS for pointing out the article. My dander had been down for a few days and this puts my recent career setback into a better light: at least I'm not as ignorant as this kid! One advantage I gained just from going to college and growing up with two parents who were educated and lower middle class--even if I don't try to use it everyday--is that I know how to think critically. I hope this satisfies her wish that the young writer receive an atomic wedgie. I assure you that every time I vent my spleen, a douchebag's undies get their wings.

ANTM: In which everyone is challenged, more or less

Thanks to the utter incomprehensibility of computers and their problems, we’re up and running at The House of the Rising Somerville. Technological crisis either averted or delayed; either way, we all win.

On to last week’s (and none too soon in advance of this week’s) episode.

+ + +

If tonight’s ep had a theme for me, it would actually be the one I used before, and though I don’t want to repeat myself it really does work best so I’ll say it again: if I can’t have lip service, I don’t want any service at all. In only one hour—45 minutes if you discount the interminable last quarter hour in panel (and of course minus commercial breaks featuring the oddly bloused Jaslene: think matronly pirate as mother of the bride...)—a rather lightweight and ultimately inconsequential television show on a non-network television station is attempting to get on with environmentalism, anti-smoking, and the representation of disability. And all this on top of the eating problems, body issues, facets of female social interaction, and consumerism we always face! Sometimes I wonder how La Banks manages to give so many things such a smooth glossing over in two cycles each year.

First, and most obviously, the girls will be riding in a “green” van. No limo for them! It’s biodiesel all the way for this cycle! I’m always a little peeved when people make huge changes and ignore the small, important, relatively easy, less flashy changes they could be making to be more environmentally conscious. I'm not entirely surprised that ANTM's on this bandwagon, nor am I surprised that their efforts are incomplete at best. (Was that not an eternally flowing waterfall in the Model Home? Wasn't the thrift store challenge from last season more "green" in that it advocated reuse?) Until the Hopefuls are letting yellow mellow; until they're all using non-trash menstrual alternatives (the Keeper, sea sponge tampons, and washable pads); until they're flushing with grey water; until they don't wear anything dry cleaned or tested on animals; until they use dish cloths instead of paper towels and hankies instead of tissues for all that crying I foresee; until they're saving water by showering with a friend (which, to my prurient delight, they kind of do in a brief bathtub riot!)—until they've made and internalized real personal change, I think it's safe to say that the biodiesel van is, unsurprisingly, only a gesture. And with this week's challenge of assembling a "Model" look from Old Navy, I sure would like to hear a little bit about their green practices or lack thereof, their shipping, their materials, and their labour practices! But thanks anyway, Tyra; we do like getting thrown a bone from time to time.

Bones like antismoking messages? Yes, bones just like those. Girls have been shown smoking in previous cycles, and I do assume that as women in a certain industry and of a certain age, it is likely that many of them smoke. But only one girl actually says so: "it's terrible and I hate that I do it." Yep, it's terrible--but there is nothing like a little over-the-top stage makeup to really bring the terribleness home and Take a Stand against something in a very uncontroversial way. Pretty much everyone knows that smoking is bad for you and Tyra is right there, several years into it, making a medium-bold move: no smoking for the Hopefuls. Which is good, and they shouldn't smoke, because that shit will kill them in my opinion. As a photo challenge, though, it was not so great, and it is so early in the cycle that panel is both tough to call and uninteresting. Too bad it's totally drawn out to the point of being painful, with Big T always overexplaining, overanalysing, overeverything. If there is such a thing as Good Tyra, Bad Tyra, then this is definitely the time of Bad Tyra, with the serious eyes and the "the name of the girl who is in the picture in my hands that represents the girl who has the name I am about to call will still be in the running to become America's. Next. Top. Model. Will it be the girl with the *goodthing* who's *limitation gets in the way* or will it be the *limited* girl who *beat that somehow*." But I digress.

Now. When was the last time you remember hearing about Asperger's in the popular media? Right right: school massacres. Non-experts throw the diagnosis around like they're trying to get a box of free kittens off their hands when young people (usually boys) go bonkers and shoot up stuff. So maybe Asperger's isn't all that well understood, by me or by any other casual television viewer. So how unfair is it that this one young woman is pressed into being the Asperger's ambassador to not only the other Hopefuls and the judging panel but also to the entire viewing audience? What a gift, what a gift it is just to be included! Heather already has what I call a Public Body; by virtue of being a woman as well as by virtue of being a model she has a body that others feel free to not only shape for her through their perceptions and opinions but also judge and police when she, inevitably, falls short. Her diagnosis of mild autism moves her deeper into the realm of Public Body, giving everyone but her more power to determine the kind of person she is. Heather is obliged to educate all of them, all of us, each episode about what does and does not limit her, the things she can and does do. The judges get to say all sorts of soft, tolerant things about how brilliant she is and what a great role model for other people with autism. And the other girls get to say broad, offensive things that essentially boil down to "I don't have any problem with her disability, BUT..." and "I'm totally open minded, BUT..." In many edits this episode, it is implied that Heather can hear every sniping thing they say about her, couched as those things are in euphemism or fake magnanimity. The same thing happened last cycle: "I don't have any problem with plus size models, BUT for reasons completely unrelated to her size, seriously, I just don't think Whitney is Top Model material, you know?" The Brain from Yale can say (or imply) what she will about these girls being dumb, but they're smart enough to know how to take another girl down while sounding like generous, giving human beings. And that's a little too close to my middle school experience for comfort, so I'll move on.

Relatedly, I’ll be interested to watch the development of The Brain. Girl has used the word deserve several times to talk about winning the competition, but away from the judges I get two impressions: that she’s entered into this as a gag and that the thing that she’s leaving unsaid is “these other girls are dumb.” Maybe it reflects a bit of my own bias, my own experience, but my version of her thought process goes a little something like this: “I have never been forced to—or been able to—rely *only* on my looks. I am not like these girls because I am smart and they are not smart and the reason they are not smart is because they've been allowed and told to let their looks carry them along.” This dovetails nicely with a little news item from some weeks ago: Miss Teen South Carolina doing a bang-up job of demonstrating why it is dangerous to tell girls that looks are the most important thing in life. When they all tell you to get pretty first, you either don’t get a fair shake at getting smart ("She's pretty so it doesn't matter") or you just don’t get yourself smartened up ("I'm pretty so it doesn't matter"). As a deeper aside, I was a little disturbed at the way the woman was castigated by the public when her stupidity is completely enabled and encouraged by same.

Under the wire, then, with this wrap up of ANTM Cycle 9 Ep 2, ranging through my theory of the Public Body, my distrust of and mild indignation at the "green" fad, and how much I love to disassemble a bit of pop fluff to see what's in the middle.

The middle is more fluff, incidentally. But aren't we having fun? See you tomorrow.

+ + +

From our corrections department: Sarah, the burlesque dancer from Bostonland, *is* still on the show. I was wrong last week when I counted her out. Will the girl from Queens have as much holier-than-thou indignation about the burlesquer as she does the exotic dancer? If this week's teasers are any indication, that answer is no, but holy crap, girl loves to put down the stripper's choices!

My body, the body, my body

Welcome to the second annual Blog for Choice Day. I'm coming in decidedly under the wire here at 10 PM Eastern. It's the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a Court decision with its constitutional base in the right to privacy--a right that exists not in letter but, in Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas' words, in the "penumbras" of five Amendments to the Constitution: the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth. It is our shadowy right to privacy that, among other things, makes warrantless wiretapping illegal, allows residents of some states to choose doctor-assisted suicide when it suits them, and gives women the endangered and never savoury option to legally medically terminate a pregnancy.

I am pro-choice. I have many reasons. At the core, I am pro-choice because it is my body. I've built it, I've changed it, I've made strong choices with it, and it is mine. I give it as I please and I keep it in the condition that pleases me. If I wish it to bear a child, I'll arrange that hopeful condition; since my body threw me a curveball last year, I may not have that hope, but that does not change the fact that I, as the sole curator of my built body, deserve to choose.

Because it is my body, I deserve the pleasures it provides. This is not limited to sex; this includes my right to tattoo whatever I want where ever I want. I own my parts and I own the metal in certain of them. I should be able to participate in safely administered body rituals if I please. I can wear my hair in whichever cuts and colours are possible and attractive to me. If I wish my tongue split I have the body right to find a practitioner who can provide such a service for me.

I should have these rights no matter what boundaries are forced on me by law or by other people. Because that's what it comes down to: my body is mine and it's not right for others to police the kind of body I am allowed (or the kind of woman I am at all, for that matter). It's nonnegotiable: it's my body.

That is why I am pro-choice. Because no one should issue orders to anyone else on the conscientious care and keeping of their personal meat-n-water bag.

The weakness of my argument is like that of many other arguments for or against abortion: if you do not agree with my basic statement, you'll not agree with the conclusion I draw from it. It's the same as "it's a person already." I'm finished trying to change the minds of people whose views are the exact base opposite of mine. We'll both just end up angry, screaming at each other, and I have far too much proofreading to do to spend my time arguing in that nonproductive manner.

Happy Birthday Roe.
(pun deliciously intended)

+ + +

For other participating bloggers, try the big list here.