Monthly Archives: May 2008

Agency, ambivalence, and desire: some preliminary thoughts on the Miley Cyrus kerfuffle

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I met Ruthie Kelly at WAM 2008; she’s the opinion editor of the San Diego State Daily Aztec and a rising feminist voice. I haven’t had much to say about the whole Miley Cyrus photo controversy, and I’m glad I haven’t, as Ruthie has gone ahead and said much of it for me, and said it better. Ruthie writes:

…like the other pop teen queens who came before her, Cyrus was sexualized long ago. That isn’t the real problem. The upsetting part is that her sexuality used to be innocent because she was sending signals with miniskirts and makeup but didn’t really understand what those signs meant. The symbols are meant to be understood by adults who aren’t part of her actual fan base. Her appeal lay in her inexperience – her powerlessness. Her appearance has always been suggestive, but she wouldn’t really know what to do in a sexual situation, so it was a type of make-believe.

But Cyrus is 15 years old now and is starting to grow up. She’s beginning to take control and embrace her sexuality, and use it the way she wants to, as opposed to the way she was directed. Being sexual on any level seems so monumental, new and powerful at age 15. But just when she matures to the point of wanting to embrace and explore that side of herself is when she becomes the most dangerous because then she is the one who takes control.

It’s an interesting point. Though I worry that Ruthie may be overselling Cyrus’ own sexual agency just a tad, I think she’s making a powerful and important point. Part of the discomfort we have with the Miley Cyrus images lies in our recognition that we’re dealing with a young woman who is very publicly asserting her sexuality. Whatever the designs of the photographers in Vanity Fair (or of those who leaked Cyrus’ private pics onto the ‘net), it’s clear from her meteoric rise that Miley (also known as “Hannah Montana”) is a remarkably driven, poised, and thoughtful young woman. And yes, she’s still fifteen. Continue reading →

Called to a higher allegiance: the welcome new evangelical manifesto

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My father’s former student Richard Mouw (president of Fuller Seminary, philosopher, theologian and blogger) announces the release of a very fine statement that deserves more attention than it has yet received: The Evangelical Manifesto, a Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment. The full text is on the website in PDF, a summary is here. Signed by Dr. Mouw and many other leading evangelicals, it is a most welcome manifesto.

In the introduction, it says We Evangelicals are defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally. Amen, amen, amen. When I continue to describe myself as an evangelical — one who is pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, pro-environment — I am regularly accused of misrepresenting the “evangelical” brand. This splendid manifesto reminds us that to be an evangelical is to believe a few key things about Jesus of Nazareth and His role in our lives and the redemption of Creation; there are no litmus tests — not even on abortion or homosexuality — that define the movement. Continue reading →

Mother’s day with Juanes

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I’m a little bleary-eyed this morning after two back-to-back nights of five hours of sleep. Eating a vegan diet does enable me to cut back a bit on the number of hours I need, but I still seem to do best when I’ve had a minimum of six. Given how busy our lives are without human children, the real question we both have is how it is that we will adapt to having a kid. What does it look like when two Type A personalities who want to go-go-go 18 hours a day suddenly have a small child? No, we’re not announcing anything, folks — just musing together. Some things will have to give, and that’s a prospect that fills me with considerable ambivalence.

We’ve had some of my wife’s family in town, and last night, my wife, brother-in-law, and I took their mother to see Juanes at the Nokia Theater downtown. Juanes is, as most of my readers will know, one of Colombia’s two most famous rock stars (the sublime Shakira is the other). We’ve been fans of his for years, and even though I have only a limited understanding of his lyrics, I’ve always found his pop hooks to be particularly infectious. It was a delight to see so many multi-generational groups in the audience last night; though my wife and I brought her dear mother, I saw several grandmother-daughter-granddaughter pairings enjoying a Mother’s Day evening out together. The audience was, of course, overwhelmingly Latino, but not exclusively so.

When Juanes dedicated one number to the Afro-Colombian people, my wife and mother-in-law exploded with delight. My mother-in-law was born into an African-Colombian family in Santa Marta, on the northeastern Colombian coast; she bequeathed to my wife that marvelous mixed heritage of West African, Spanish, and indigenous American influences. Too often in Colombia, “whites” ignore or malign the sizable Afro-Colombian minority. To have Juanes, the consummate Colombian rock star and perhaps, after Juan Valdez, the nation’s most recognizable male export, celebrate the African influence on his country and his music was welcome indeed.

I danced in the aisles. While my wife and in-laws moved their hips with easy and rhythmic abandon, I danced in that traditionally self-conscious white boy way. When it comes to distance running, I know how to center myself in my core. When it comes to dancing, however, my center seems to be located in my trapezius muscles, and I scrunch my shoulders and rotate them while shuffling my feet. I was teased good-naturedly by my family and by others around me, but I was happy as a clam. The fact that I understood about 50% of what Juanes said from the stage struck me as a special triumph.

Friday Random Ten: welcoming the new Volvo edition

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I’m really, really diggin’ the new Volvo that came to live at our place this week. It’s name, of course, is Ingmar. I know two other people with Volvos named Ingmar, and one with a Volvo named Ingrid, but damn it all, it’s just right.

A very busy weekend with family in from various places, and lots of grading and running to do. And I make no apologies for loving #6 on this list. I sang it in my junior high school choir.

1. “Come On, Come On”, Mary Chapin-Carpenter
2. “Malibu”, Hole
3. “I Bid You Goodnight”, Aaron Neville
4. “Over the Hills”, Lucy Kaplansky
5. “Postcards from Mexico”, Girlyman
6. “Annie’s Song”, John Denver
7. “Strong Hand” (for June), Emmylou Harris
8. “Walk Forever by My Side”, The Alarm
9. “Foolish You”, Kate and Anna McGarrigle
10. “Polyester Bride”, Liz Phair

Bonus Track: “Underneath your Clothes”, Shakira

On “Warrior Girls”, knee injuries, and the tangible costs of adolescent perfectionism: some thoughts on Michael Sokolove’s article

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The New York Times has a preview up today of a long article coming out on Sunday in their magazine: The Uneven Playing Field. It’s by Michael Sokolove, and based on his forthcoming book Warrior Girls: Protecting our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports. (I’ve pre-ordered the book, and will review it this summer when it comes out.)

In this lengthy adaptation on the Times website, Sokolove writes about what he sees as the extraordinary number of knee (ACL) injuries that are being sustained by female athletes, soccer players in particular. His thesis:

(the epidemic is) part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women’s college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever.

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger. The influence of estrogen makes girls’ ligaments lax, and they outperform boys in tests of overall body flexibility — a performance advantage in many sports, but also an injury risk when not accompanied by sufficient muscle to keep joints in stable, safe positions. Girls tend to run differently than boys — in a less-flexed, more-upright posture — which may put them at greater risk when changing directions and landing from jumps. Because of their wider hips, they are more likely to be knock-kneed — yet another suspected risk factor.

The rate (of ACL injury) for women’s soccer is 0.25 per 1,000, or 1 in 4,000, compared with 0.10 for male soccer players. The rate for women’s basketball is 0.24, more than three times the rate of 0.07 for the men. The A.C.L. injury rate for girls may be higher — perhaps much higher — than it is for college-age women because of a spike that seems to occur as girls hit puberty.

At this point, my heart was sinking. Was this going to be anti-feminist ideology dressed up as professed concern for the health of young women? Was Sokolove trying to scare parents into pulling their daughters out of competitive sports? I even wondered if Sokolove was some sort of shill for the anti-Title IX crowd, trying a new tactic in their never-ending crusade to roll back a policy of equal funding for women’s sports. As a passionate sports fan, married to a former club soccer star, I have a deep and abiding commitment to women’s athletics — particularly the “beautiful game” of what the rest of the world calls football.

Happily, reading the article to the end (it is ten pages long) makes it at least fairly apparent that Sokolove is committed to women’s sports. Rather than imploring parents to pull their daughters off soccer teams, he writes sensibly and knowledgeably about the causes of what is undeniably a common problem: catastrophic ACL injuries among young female soccer players. The chief culprits have nothing to do with inherent feminine weakness. Rather, they are two-fold: poor bio-mechanics and the exhausting “club” system in high school and college that leaves many talented girls playing a demanding sport literally year-round. Continue reading →

Of cell phones and the Pill, tuition and travel, wealth and diversification: some random economicky thoughts

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My splendid cousin Ted, a marketing major at CSU Chico, comments on the increasing recognition that the current economic slowdown impacts the poor and the middle-class more than the wealthy.

I recently made a presentation to my Sales Force Management class, where as I played the newly appointed V.P. of sales. I had to convince the CEO that we needed to switch from the low-end market for wristwatches( this is an arbitrary product that was assigned to me) to the high-end market, like Rolex and Bulova. The premise for my reasoning was mainly the impending recession that our country has fallen into, and that only the high-end market will stay profitable at a constant rate. This poses an interesting question of why do the the consumers with plenty of discretionary income continue to have some cash? How could the recession of an entire economy only hurt the low income citizens?

I’m not an economist; in our family, it’s my wife who manages both our money and, in her business management firm, other people’s as well. But I’m fortunate enough to go back and forth between very different economic worlds quite frequently. My students — and I am close to many of them — are, like so many community college students, economically very vulnerable. Most, however, are not homeowners; perhaps more importantly, most who live at home live in rentals rather than “owned” homes. In an odd way, many have been able to weather the worst aspects of the “credit crunch” because for them and their families, home-ownership is often an as-yet unattained aspiration. Though rents have not come down as fast as house prices, they have stabilized in Los Angeles County as the economy tries to absorb the massive increase in housing stock. Purely anecdotally, this has actually benefitted my students who live in apartments more than those whose parents recently (since, say, the run-up of the early part of the decade) purchased a home. In this sense, the “lower-middle” is getting squeezed more than the “bottom.” Continue reading →

Thursday Short Poem: Simmonds’ “The Woman who…”

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The cultural references are heavily English, but the sentiments are nigh-on universal. Kathryn Simmonds describes more than one woman whom I know.

The Woman who Worries Herself to Death

She wasn’t robbed or raped or made a scapegoat of,
she didn’t take ill-fated flights on shaky planes and

no one splashed her house in paint. Kids with hoods
and sovereign rings and hates left her alone. That twinge

she sometimes felt was just a twinge. Her fillings didn’t
leak. At office dos she danced and no one laughed.

Her children didn’t have disorders, fail exams,
take smack. Her husband didn’t love his secretary

or get the sack. But, if you saw her fidgeting
towards the dawn, her breathing playing tricks,

a thousand what ifs snaking in a queue, you’d feel for her,
you’d wish she had something to pin her torment to.

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Economic slowdown anecdotes

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Further signs of a declining local economy. At my boxing gym, attendance at classes has gone down substantially while demand for private training has stayed level. The owner of the gym theorized that those who only attend classes (at $15 per pop) are more likely to be vulnerable to economic fluctuations than those who can afford private sessions ($60-$90 per hour.) The notable drop in class attendance over the past three or four months, and the comparable stability of the private client pool, seems to bear this out.

I called my local tux shop today as well. One of these days, I’ll get around to buying a really nice vegan tuxedo, but for now, I just rent a standard black tie outfit for the three or four annual occasions for which I need one. (I’ve got an event coming up in ten days or so.) I know the fellow who owns the shop, and he lamented that business had been slow. Just as many wedding parties to kit out, but slightly lower attendance at black and white tie charity galas has been taking a toll.

At the Mobil station on Del Mar and Arroyo Parkway (one of my favorites), regular unleaded gas is $4.12. But the streets are as crowded as ever.

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“I’m not here to be anyone’s babysitter”: some reflections on older women, younger men

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Got an email a week or so ago from “Dana”:

I am 40, single and loving it. I am not ready to settle down yet but I realized a while ago that I am starting on that path. I look much younger than I am. Most people think I’m in my 20′s (Thank you Mom and Dad!) and both my age and the way I look have had some interesting effects. Over the past few years I’ve found it harder and harder to find men my age who want a romantic relationship with a woman *my* age. They all seem to want that young under-30 type of woman. I’m at the point where almost all the men I date are 10+ years younger than I am! In general, I have no problem with it (or the opposite scenario). I get along fabulously with people (male or female) who are younger than I am, but I do find the generation gap (and there is one!) to be somewhat irritating at times. They’re fun to date but I can’t imagine settling down with someone who lacks so much life experience. I have no desire to be anyone’s mother or babysitter.

I had a similar conversation recently with an old friend, my age (and Dana’s). Single again after a twelve-year marriage, she’s recently been repeatedly “hit on” by her daughter’s soccer coach — a handsome lad in his late twenties, well over a decade her junior. My friend is flattered and physically attracted, but said essentially the same thing Dana did: she has no desire to be anyone’s mother, teacher, or babysitter. “I’m not here to give anyone experience”, she says. Continue reading →