According to Powweb, my service provider, October 2010 was my busiest month ever here on the blog. I fell just short of 1 million hits, and had over 153,000 visitors — all records since I began posting regularly in January 2004. I’m grateful to all who have come here — and of course, I give special thanks to those who link here or offer a comment.
I love blogging, and I look forward to many more years of doing so. Thank you, my dear readers, for your encouragement.
On Monday, Marie Claire posted this short piece from Maura Kelly: Should “Fatties” Get a Room? (Even on TV?) Superficially a review of the new CBS sitcom Mike and Molly (which features two overweight actors in the title roles), the article was a festival of fat-loathing and body-shaming. Because it may well be triggering for someone to read, the rest of this post is all below the fold. Continue reading
I’ve had a few poems up from the great Hugo Williams, and here’s another. A keen and unsentimental observer of “how we love now”, he’s near his best in this short offering.
The Couple Upstairs
Shoes instead of slippers down the stairs,
She ran out with her clothes
And the front door banged and I saw her
Walking crookedly, like naked, to a car.
She was not always with him up there,
And yet they seemed inviolate, like us,
Our loves in sympathy. Her going
Thrills and frightens us. We come awake
And talk excitedly about ourselves, like guests.
A son is your son ’till he gets him a wife,
but your daughter’s your daughter
for the rest of her life.
– Old English Proverb (16th c. or earlier). Bold emphasis is mine.
Last week, I reprinted this post about fathers, daughters and emotional incest. Several folks commented or wrote in that they’d like to see me touch on that same issue, just with a focus on mothers. With the obvious and whopping caveat that I am not a mother, I’ll oblige as best I can.
My own mother is flying into L.A. tomorrow for her annual visit with her older son and his family, so I’ve got mama on my mind. But my regular living arrangement gives me plenty of opportunity to reflect on mother-daughter relationships in particular. My wife and I live with her mother and our daughter. We’ve got three generations of women under the same roof, interacting every day. I’m an intimate witness to my partner’s relationship to her mom, and the relationship of both of these grown women to our little Heloise.
Teaching women’s studies to a predominantly female student body means that I hear and read lots of stories about mother-daughter relationships. It is axiomatic that reflecting on feminism involves reflecting on one’s own mother. The conflict between Second Wave feminist moms and their Third Wave feminist daughters has been well-covered, and I dealt with that issue at length in this 2008 post. (Jessica Valenti — herself the mother of a newborn daughter — had a great piece in The Nation last month on this topic, and Naomi Wolf is hosting what looks like a fabulous panel of young feminists talking about intergenerational conflict next month in New York. And those really interested in this topic must check out Astrid Henry’s Not my Mother’s Sister, which I reviewed back in 2007.)
For many of my students who weren’t raised in feminist households, whose mothers — like my Colombian-born mother-in-law — grew up with deeply traditional values about gender roles which they then passed on to their daughters, embracing feminism is almost always emotionally fraught. For my large number of Latina, Asian, and Armenian students whose mothers were born abroad, “claiming the name” of “feminist” frequently involves a complicated and delicate rejection of their mothers’ values. I note that the most emotionally charged classroom discussions that I’ve ever facilitated in a women’s studies class revolved not around abortion, or body image, or sex — but about mother-daughter relationships.
If there’s one narrative that has the potential to do tremendous damage in mother-daughter relationships, it’s the one in which moms give the “Don’t make the same mistakes I did” speech to their growing girls. This discourse isn’t quite universal among women, but I suspect it’s not far off. Generation after generation of young women come of age, hearing warnings from mothers, aunts, and older sisters about the many perils that lie ahead. Occasionally, the discourse takes a positive tone: “My darling, I’ve found a great deal of happiness and fulfillment in my life by doing x, y, and z. Though I’ll support you whatever you do, I think doing x, y, and z is a very good idea. It certainly worked for me.” Far more frequently, the message is negative: “Don’t be a fool like I was! I got married too young/married for love/didn’t marry for love/slept around too much/slept around too little/focused too much on school/focused too little on school/took too many risks/played it too safe/had kids too early/waited too late to try to have them.” Continue reading
We had a team last week recording my Beauty and the Body lectures and making them available for download. Thanks go out to two great students.
Dan recorded and posted my “Fat Talk Free Week” lecture from Monday October 18.
And Mon-Shane did her usual stellar duty by recording and putting up last Wednesday’s lecture on the male body and the “five Ps”: Pot, Porn, Poker, Playstation, and Privilege.
My friend “Cyril” and I are no longer speaking. After more than a decade of friendship, we stopped talking recently. We didn’t get too busy for each other; we didn’t have a misunderstanding. We stopped talking because of abortion and sexual ethics.
Cyril and I met at a time when I was first coming back to Christ at the very end of the 1990s. Infatuated with progressive evangelicalism, I found a natural ally in Cyril, who was slightly to my right but still deeply committed to social justice. For years, we met for breakfast to talk theology and politics — and to talk intimately about our personal lives. He was the first person I told when I started dating Eira. Cyril and I drove half-way across the country together many years ago — to his wedding. We ran together, lifted weights together. For the better part of a decade, Cyril was my best male friend.
In 2004, when I left the Mennonite Church, I also abandoned the “seamless garment” position on the life issues I had taken since my conversion. A staunch pro-choice advocate from the cradle, a fourth-generation Planned Parenthood supporter (my great-grandparents gave money to that fine organization back when it was still the Birth Control League), I briefly turned in my religious enthusiasm towards an anti-abortion position. It was always nuanced; I never favored making abortion illegal, but did regard the termination of pregnancy as deeply tragic and problematic. I soon came back to the more emphatically pro-choice position, and that caused tension with Cyril.
We agreed to disagree about abortion, about gay marriage (he favored civil unions only), and about pre-marital sex. We were so fond of each other, and found each other’s company so refreshing, that we made our friendship work despite those differences. As I moved back to the left and he skewed more and more to the right, we each remained the other’s loyal interlocutor, debating enthusiastically over vegetarian burritos and guacamole each week at our favorite hole-in-the-wall.
But then came my post on Dr. Tiller’s assassination last year: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and dieâ€: of a doctor, an usher, and the answerer of a call. Writing in explicitly Christian language, I compared the martyred doctor to the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Cyril and I had read Bonhoeffer together and discussed his influence. For a staunch pro-lifer like my friend, the post (every word of which I continue to stand behind) created deep cognitive dissonance. Cyril loved me, but couldn’t comprehend how I could speak of a man whom he saw as a murderer as a martyr. Though Cyril repudiated violence against those who perform abortions, he had grave doubts about the state of Dr. Tiller’s soul. I made it clear that I thought the doctor had been doing God’s work. And the gulf between us, Cyril realized, had now grown too vast for even a history of deep friendship to span.
We didn’t speak for several months. I had moved to West L.A. and was busy with my expanding family; Cyril and his wife had also just had a child. My calls weren’t returned, but I figured he was just incredibly busy. Finally, I sent him an email, and got a kind, serious, thoughtful reply. Cyril explained that he loved and respected me and was grateful for our years of mutual friendship. But, he said, ideas have consequences, a view he knew I shared. None of us agree with one another on everything, but there are certain core issues that are so central that the absence of a common view can strain even the best of friendships.
Cyril suggested, and I agreed, that to smooth over our differences over abortion for the sake of friendship would do violence to the seriousness with which we held our positions and to our long history of mutual respect. We would still be cordial when we happened to speak; we are both men for whom civility is an important value. But we are also people for whom there are higher values still. And because of those higher values, our friendship has ended.
(Parenthetically, we both agreed that this was where friendship and family relationships differed. Neither of us would ever abrogate a relationship with a relative over even this issue.)
I miss Cyril. But I honor both what we had and why it ended. Politics is not sports; it does have consequences. Our beliefs should never be so passionately held as to render us incapable of decency and empathy. But our core beliefs shouldn’t be worn so lightly that they can be tossed aside for the sake of amiability. I’ve lost friendships in the past because of my reckless behavior (sleeping with other people’s spouses, for example). If there is a good and honorable reason to lose a friendship, it’s the way Cyril and I lost ours. I love him and his family very much, and they remain in my heart. But my commitment to justice (as I prayerfully understand justice) trumps even friendship.
I’ll post this again in a week, but as a reminder, here’s a link to my California election endorsements.
If California can buck the nationwide trend to the right, and elect Jerry Brown, re-elect Barbara Boxer, and beat Prop. 23 (which, if passed would do in our landmark global warming law), I’ll count myself a happy guy.
I linked last week to this post from a year ago: Princesses, princes, daughters and dads: a reprint against emotional incest. I stand by my thoughts in that piece still today. But reposting it reminded me that I haven’t written recently about Heloise (or HCRS, as we affectionately abbreviate her).
Our daughter is 21 months old. As of her last doctor’s visit, she’s in the 90th percentile for height and the 20th percentile for weight. She’s doing great on a vegan diet. So far, Heloise is not particularly interested in sports (balls and the like), but is very interested in clothing, and likes to go through her drawers and inspect what she has to wear. Heloise has got a rapidly expanding vocabulary and a great memory for people. She’s clearly social, perhaps even outright extroverted. Like her father, she likes to move quickly from one activity to the next, and is particularly interested in going to see friends and family. Our basic conversations often revolve around when we’re going to see Ruthie (her best friend) or “abuela” again. Walking down the street, she waves at strangers, saying “Hi” in an enthusiastic voice. When strangers don’t respond, Heloise looks confused and crestfallen — and it’s all her father can do not to walk up to those who have failed to notice my daughter’s greeting and tell them “Damn you, pay attention! My daughter said ‘hello!’”
And I notice the compliments she gets. Parents are hopelessly biased, of course. But it is rare that she is out in public without being told by strangers and acquaintances and relatives alike how beautiful she is. Some of that focus on her looks is perhaps due to her very special cuteness; some of it is the way in which we are socialized to praise girls for their prettiness. As a feminist and a father, as well as a professor and a youth leader who has spent much of my adult life working with teens around body image issues, I am acutely aware of how compliments at an early age shape young women’s identity. I am equally aware that as parents, my wife and I cannot entirely insulate our daughter against the most pernicious aspects of beauty culture. But we do what we can.
One thing we do is praise Heloise for things besides her beauty. When she remembers the names of the characters in her “Dora the Explorer” books; when she helps pick up her toys; when she successfully gets herself up and down the slide on her playset unassisted, we respond with wild enthusiasm. I know better than to never praise her looks: when everyone else is telling you something your Dad never mentions, that can make matters much worse (as anyone who works with teens knows.) But Heloise hears far more often how much she is loved, and how much her achievements delight her parents. There will come a time when she will learn that she can’t expect applause for performing routine tasks, but that time is not yet. At this age, I don’t think it’s possible to spoil a child with too much validation.
I also know that having loving and affirming parents isn’t always a prophylaxis against poor self-image. Mothers and fathers play a part, but so too do peers and the culture at large — with each passing year, indeed, our parental influence will diminish slightly as the other two influences grow. There is only so much that can be done to forestall that more or less inevitable process.
Whenever I change my daughter’s diaper, or take off her clothes, or give her a bath, I ask permission. I’ve done that since she was a newborn. “Heloise,” I’ll say softly, “papa’s gonna change your diaper. Is that okay?” Until recently, I got no reply. About six weeks ago, she finally started weighing in, usually with a “yes”. When she says no, I briefly — and I do mean briefly — discuss it with her. “But honey, you’re wet and you need your diaper changed.” That seems to do the trick. (It may not always, and I’m prepared for that.) Continue reading
My younger brother and I are both college professors at public institutions: I at Pasadena City College, and Philip at the University of Exeter in England. I’ve been teaching full-time since 1994, and Philip has been at Exeter since 2001.
California higher education is in dire straits, to be sure. But it’s nothing like what my brother and his colleagues and students are coping with in Great Britain, where teaching budgets are set to be slashed by a flabbergasting 80% by the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government. There had been some suggestion that universities would be able to raise fees substantially in order to offset the cuts, becoming essentially private (similar to the strategy used successfully at the flagship campus of the University of Michigan). That strategy seems to have been dashed by the junior partner in the governing coalition, the Liberal Democrats.
The future is very frightening for higher ed in Britain, particularly outside of the relatively financially stable “Oxbridge” institutions. British universities don’t have strong alumni backing the way universities in the States do. If the universities have their budgets slashed by the Tories in the name of austerity, and then are prohibited by the Lib Dems from raising fees substantially in the name of fairness and accessibility, then things will be very bleak indeed.
My father did his undergraduate degree at the University of Reading and later taught briefly at York. My brother, whose heart belongs to Albion in a way that mine doesn’t, is committed to staying and raising his three kids in England. But it is a sobering and sad thing that is unfolding. And as dark as things have been lately in the Golden State, we are far from the worst off.
And that cryptic title is all you get.
1. “4th of July”, Joe Purdy
2. “Toxic”, Yael Naim
3. “Steeple Full of Swallows”, The Gourds
4. “Wake Up Next to You”, Graham Parker
5. “Mercy Street”, Peter Gabriel
6. “Romeo and Juliet”, Indigo Girls
7. “Loving You Sunday Morning”, Scorpions
8. “Cowboy Angel”, Roger Alan Wade
9. “Beauty Way”, Eliza Gilkyson
10. “Broken”, Tift Merritt