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New Girl Order
By lakshmi
In the autumn issue of the City Journal, Kay S. Hymowitz eulogizes the rise of a new international role model:
"Yes: Carrie Bradshaw is alive and well and living in Warsaw. Well, not just Warsaw. Conceived and raised in the United States, Carrie may still see New York as a spiritual home. But today you can find her in cities across Europe, Asia, and North America. Seek out the trendy shoe stores in Shanghai, Berlin, Singapore, Seoul, and Dublin, and you'll see crowds of single young females (SYFs) in their twenties and thirties, who spend their hours working their abs and their careers, sipping cocktails, dancing at clubs, and (yawn) talking about relationships. Sex and the City has gone global; the SYF world is now flat."
And why is this a good thing? Because it points to a "New Girl Order" where, one, women are getting married and having kids later in their lives. Two, this is because "today's aspiring middle-class women are gearing up to be part of the paid labor market for most of their adult lives; unlike their ancestral singles, they're looking for careers, not jobs." And three, their leaving home to live in big cities to do so, which in turn implies greater economic and personal freedom.
(0) CommentsNovember 14, 2007
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The New Prohibition
By lakshmi
Reason magazine offers a stinging critique of a new crop of increasingly draconian DUI laws titled, "Prohibition Returns!" One example: In Washington DC, cops can arrest you for any blood alcohol reading above 0.01, even if you are not legally drunk.
David Harsanyi writes, "Neoprohibitionists aim to muddle the distinction between drunk diving and driving after drinking any amount of alcohol. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) endorsed the idea at a Senate Environment and Public Committee hearing way back in 1997, contending that we 'may wind up in this country going to zero tolerance, period.' Former MADD President Katherine Prescott concurred, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, where she stated 'there is no safe blood alcohol, and for that reason responsible drinking means no drinking and driving.'"
Now, that's crazy talk, and much like the recent push to ban people from smoking in the privacy of their own apartments, it's a classic case of our puritanical instincts run amok. We seem unable to maintain the distinction between between a personal vice and a legal crime. People do and should have the freedom to do things that are not necessarily good -- even outright bad -- for them. They don't however have the right to be a hazard to others. So it makes sense to ban smoking in public spaces due to the dangers of second-hand smoke, but not to designate cigarettes a controlled subtance so you can get the FDA to essentially ban it.
(50) CommentsNovember 5, 2007
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Aliens in America
By lakshmi
Most fish-out-of-water stories are told at the expense of the poor fish. But not so with Aliens in America, which may well be the best television show you're not watching. Well, you'd first have to find that misbegotten offspring of the WB/UPN marriage, the CW channel.
Your efforts will be well rewarded with a very funny comedy that takes on racism, the war on terror, Islam, and that most hallowed of American institutions: high school. How can you resist a show that throws together a devout Pakistani teenager and small-town America?
Hollywood is usually at its excruciatingly racist worst when it comes to any plot that involves foreign exchange students of the non-white variety -- think Long Duk Dong slobbering over Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles. The joke is always at the expense of the "fish."
(9) CommentsOctober 29, 2007
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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
By lakshmi
Rebecca Solnit, as usual, offers plenty of food for thought in her essay, "Finding Time." As often with Solnit, I was both impressed by her insight, and impatient of her tendency to draw tenuous connections to all her pet issues/peeves, irrespective of the subject at hand.
Who can resist a piece that begins, "The four horsemen of my apocalypse are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out. These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together our lives and expand our horizons."
Solnit offers some wonderful insights into the ways in which our lives are shaped by the tyrannical regimen of these four values, but the only downside is that much of it leads inexorably to a litany of the standard complaints against automobiles, commerce, McMansions, consumerism etc. There's even the obligatory admiring nod to those darned Europeans.
(63) CommentsOctober 22, 2007
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The Moral Dangers of Adventure Tourism
By lakshmi
The best read this morning is this amazing piece by Rolf Potts titled "Death of an Adventure Traveler" (via Arts and Letters Daily). The narrative traces his decision as a writer for what he describes as "a Major American Adventure Travel Magazine" to abandon his trade. The immediate reason: the disappearance, and perhaps death of a beloved Burmese friend.
The article delineates the stark and shameful contrast between the faux adrenalin-raising thrills sought by adventure tourists and the very real dangers faced by the people who call these "exotic" destinations home.
Here are some excerpts to encourage you to click through and read the article:
(32) CommentsOctober 3, 2007
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More Skinny on Fat Cells
By lakshmi
Here are two more interesting articles on the bane of our collective existence: body weight. First up is this New York magazine article, titled "The Scientist and the Stairmaster," which makes the provocative argument that there is very little correlation between weight loss and exercise. That's exceptionally bad news for someone who is pregnant, and required to gain at least 25 pounds.
The article is adapted from a new book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease" by Gary Taubes, who writes:
"This is not to say that there aren't excellent reasons to be physically active, as these reports invariably point out. We might just enjoy exercise. We may increase our overall fitness; we may live longer, perhaps by reducing our risk of heart disease or diabetes; we'll probably feel better about ourselves. (Of course, this may be purely a cultural phenomenon. It's hard to imagine that the French, for instance, would improve their self-esteem by spending more time at the gym.) But there's no reason to think that we will lose any significant amount of weight, and little reason to think we will prevent ourselves from gaining it."
(28) CommentsSeptember 26, 2007
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Good Muslim Immigrants
By lakshmi
Here's an interesting -- and not always in a good way -- article from Der Spiegel on American Muslims. Its thesis is that American Muslims have responded in a positive and potentially empowering way to the challenges of post-9/11 America because the United States has a better immigration policy than European nations.
The article does an excellent job of highlighting the ways in which the American Muslim community has met post-9/11 racism with greater political participation, civic activism, and engagement -- rather than retreating into anger and alienation. The US press hasn't paid enough attention to this angle.
But a some of the language is problematic and just plain odd. Like the bit where the writer claims that "America's new Muslim immigrants now find themselves being associated with [black] people who were traditionally viewed as America's losers" because they now vote almost entirely for Democrats. Huh? There's an odd whiff (or should that be stink) of elitism that runs through the article, as in: Wealthy, educated immigrants are good; working class, uneducated immigrants, bad.
(0) CommentsSeptember 18, 2007
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Beware of Fat People
By lakshmi
There is no doubt that there is plenty to be concerned about when it comes to our unhealthy diets. Yes, a number of us eat too much food, especially the worst possible kind. Why make do with one hamburger patty, when you can have two, and please, please don't forget the bacon, mayo, or oodles of melted cheese. All of it over-processed and drowning in saturated fat. Yummy!
But it's equally true that the shock/outrage/concern over the "obesity epidemic" -- especially as it gets played out in the MSM -- is often a flimsy pretext to beat up on people who aren't thin, and vent the fat-phobia of our inner anorexic/bulemic, much of it masquerading as science.
A great example is the absurd claim made recently in New England Journal of Medicine that fat is similar to a contagious virus "spread from person to person like a fashion or a germ," especially among friends. So my chance of becoming obese is 57 percent higher if my pal gains a lot of weight over a certain period of time -- even if she/he lives on the other side of the country, or even the world.
(68) CommentsSeptember 14, 2007
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Michael Vick Doesn't Need Your Help
By lakshmi
Watching the Michael Vick saga unfold over the past month has been a typically frustrating experience, as a woman, a person of color, and dog owner (or rather "pet guardian," as they insist upon in my oh-so PC hometown, San Francisco).
The entire nasty affair points to the ways in which any national "debate" – usually conducted by talking heads, lawyers, and a couple of celebrities on TV -- on race or gender in popular culture ends up mired in arguments that can at best be described as absurd, and at worst, damaging.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we can't seem to bring ourselves to talk about, say an important issue like racism unless there is a low-life like O. J. Simpson or Michael Vick facing charges for some reprehensible crime. Is this really the ideal context for a conversation that requires open minds, compassion, awareness, and a strong desire to do right?
(0) CommentsSeptember 6, 2007
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Attack of the Raging Chicks
By lakshmi
New York Times columnist David Brooks is one of the more effective conservative commentators, in that he is a master at making outrageous arguments with a professorial elan that suggests careful thought and balanced reasoning. And then you listen to what he's really saying ...
He's at his ludicrous -- and seemingly persuasive -- best when making arguments about gender, as when he blamed feminists for ruining fiction for boys. Slippery as he is, it is exceptionally satisfying when he finds himself wrong-footed by those inconvenient little things we call facts.
The most recent example was a July 10 column titled "The New Lone Rangers," where he argued that a recent rash of pop songs -- Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats," "U + Ur Hand" by Pink and "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne -- suggested an alarming new cultural trend toward feminine rage:
(0) CommentsJuly 24, 2007
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