"I’m witty, I’m bright, I’m loose, and I wear feathers."
Just caught a little showcase about Phyllis Diller--made me think she deserves to be highlighted as a style maven. When she was a kid she would design her own clothes and her mother would make them. As a comedian she orchestrated her image to get the most attention. She wore gloves because "clowns wear gloves," and always had the cigarette holder in her hand because it allowed her to have her hand up all the time, as though to say "Pay attention to me!" She also started her career in her late 30s, to help support her 5-children family. What a dame.
"What I don't like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day."
I few years ago I completed a Masters in Political Science, specializing in developing areas, the Middle East, and gender in these areas. So my little eyebrows having been rising higher and higher as I've listened to the news each day upon waking up. What a week!
I've made a Tunisia/Egypt? Mixtape--take your pick of romantic protest songs before things in Egypt take a turn for the worst. [ Patti Smith "People Have the Power" - will.i.am "It's a New Day" - Arrested Development "Revolution" - Eddy Grant "Electric Avenue" - K'Naan "Wavin' Flag" (Egyptian football team video) - "Get Up Stand Up" - Bob Marley - Janelle Monáe "Mr. President" (had to upload it myself) ]
My friend wrote a great article about how we're so used to revolutions and protest movements turning out badly, we don't know how to talk about Tunisia and Egypt.
Words like “freedom” and “justice”—so hollowed out and meaningless for so many—are imbued with new meaning and substance throughout the Middle East as many thousands assert a new and surprising political enfranchisement. Whatever happens next, these achievements in themselves suggest cracks in the dominant political malaise. They require those on the outside to reexamine our entrenched opinions—and to reconsider the import of an engaged, active citizenry. (Kristin Rawls at Global Comment)
I was thinking about this again as I chose the songs. I love Smith's "People Have the Power" but it's no nakedly 1960s in its sentiment, it's almost embarrassing to someone of my generation and age (and I guess education.) In light of actual, spontaneous, anti-authoritarian protest movements it holds meaning again. Take this line: "and the armies ceased advancing/because the people had their ear." How the military reacts--that's the knife edge this whole thing is sitting on.
In other Egypt news... Kristin also shared a link on facebook to a woman who's compiling an ongoing album of photos of Egyptian women taking part in the protests. They're pretty awesome so if you're on facebook I highly recommend you take a look.
Here are a few.
This remind me of the very cynical Watchmen movie and comic. It perfectly connects into what Kirstin is talking about. In The Watchmen the protesters placing flowers in guns are shot, and the times "are a changin'" but not the way we hoped.
Someone commented under this photo on facebook: ' She has seen an Egypt without Hosni Mubarak!! "Yes we can" ' That made me smile, and that's why I chose the will.i.am song for my music mix. If there was any movement that showed an unusual optimism in a hope for change, it was the movement surrounding Obama's election--not just in the US, people felt it elsewhere too.
I follow the blog of a romance author, around whose blog a spontaneous community of really smart, feisty, political, raunchy, funny women sprung up, in the comments to her posts. She calls this community the "Betties" and some of these photos look like Betties to me.
THIS ONE TOO. Talk about K'naan's Wavin' Flag. She's gonna wave it where the sun don't shine if that guy doesn't get out of her face.
There's so many young women in these crowds, God willing I'd have this courage in their place. I had to include a Janelle Monáe song in my mix for that reason.
Dear Mr President...
So much disappointment in many faces
Use your heart and not your pride
We can’t go on and keep pretending
And finally, I had to put up these pics of these women with covered faces. Who says a woman in a niqab doesn't have a voice? Looks like they're communicating just fine.
Added advantage: You don't need to bring a tear gas mask.
Don't stand in the doorway don't lock up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
The battle outside raging
Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a changing... we hope!
As an early adopter of the British Office... this was nice. (Early adopter, I tell you. NO ONE was watching it. And NO ONE LISTENED TO ME when I told them to watch it. No one. No one outside my family believes my fantastic television recommendations. It took my friend Gilby going and living in London before he saw The Office, and then tried to TELL ME about it. !!!!!!! To this day he still hasn't watched Blackadder, though I lent him the box set at one point. That's just wrong. Can I accuse him of sexism? But I don't think my female friends listen to my recommendations either. So... computah says no.) (But my family are cool.)
I've only seen the first season, but it was so good I bought it on DVD. It's just a wonderful little Victorian village ruled by iron fisted ladies in shabby genteel lace, living on the verge of poverty, trying to make it through life while still upholding the old values. They gossip, they're catty, but when the chips are down they're there for each other. The very line "You're in Cranford now" sends shivers down my spine.
In an interview I came across (Telegraph), some of the actresses point to the unique aspects of the series:
The main characters are older women: "I think programme-makers have realised that people would like to see characters of their own generation. It's taken an awfully long while. Here, the younger characters are on the periphery." (Julia McKenzie)
They're not sexy-Helen-Mirren-older-women: "I don't think we'd have got the parts if we'd been Botoxed. Or had no lips. It's interesting that these are women who've got history in their faces. You can't do that if you're an actress who messes around with your mush." (Imelda Staunton)
And they're tough: "it wasn't lightweight, and it wasn't particularly soppy. These were hard women." (Dame Judi Dench)
Can we all move there? But first my husband and I have to finish our residency at Downton Abbey.
Nice article in the Globe and Mail re. the 1st Canadian Summit on Weight Bias and Discrimination, recently held in Toronto. Here are some bits. Just don't go and read the comments because they are chock full of the (see below) Typical Protestant Work Ethic Answer. The ignorance is astounding.
Dr. Puhl ... noted that increased attention on the health impacts of obesity has, paradoxically, resulted in increased weight-related discrimination. ... The more a person is singled out for weight-related ridicule, the more difficult it becomes to lose weight. Part of the problem is that a common reaction to stress is to eat and drink – and our comfort foods don’t tend to be carrots and broccoli.
...
People who are obese don’t relish their predicament but they tend to avoid seeking professional help – from physicians, dieticians, personal trainers, etc. – because they are often stigmatized and hectored, not supported. “There is a perception that stigma may be a good thing, that it will encourage weight loss,” Dr. Puhl said. “In fact, the opposite is true.” The stigma begins at a young age. About one-third of overweight girls and one-quarter of overweight boys report being bullied because of their weight.
...
Bullying the fat guy is not limited to the schoolyard; it happens in the workplace and the home. And one of the most common protective mechanisms is for overweight people to be self-deprecating, but it is humour tinged in pain.
...
Regardless of social circumstance, family members are one of the most common sources of teasing and put-downs, again on the mistaken belief that people can be shamed into thinness and good health.
The Protestant work ethic – the notion that individuals can achieve anything through hard work and discipline – is pervasive in Canadian society and it colours our attitudes toward people who are overweight/obese.
...
We can’t tax and shame our way out of this public health problem like we did with smoking. We live in a society that is essentially crafted to facilitate weight gain. We have engineered activity out of our daily lives; built cities that are designed for cars not people; made food – particularly unhealthy food – available in abundance and relatively cheaply; placed the greatest value on work and play that is sedentary not active and; put all our health dollars into sickness care rather than prevention, and then wrapped thinness in a veneer of moral superiority. “We need to move beyond ‘eat less’ and ‘exercise more’ to more comprehensive social policies that make it easier to be healthy,” said Dr. Puhl.
CBC News has a great page where they post odd news stories. They recently had one about a piano that appeared on a sandbar in Miami's Biscayne Bay. A charter boat dude says he saw a boat full of people filming a music video out there the day it appeared, so he thinks they realized it was too heavy to lift back in the boat and left it. Can't wait til that video comes out and we all go: HEY! YOU FORGOT YOUR PIANO!
But really I love this. I love the image of a piano sitting out on a sandbar. It's beautiful. If I was a poet I could say something lovely about it, but alas I'm not.
Someone was killed in my building yesterday--apparently two guys got into a fight and one died. It's sad, cause we're right next to a hospital, but he wasn't able to be rescued. The guy who did it was still there when the police arrived, and I believe was also brought to the hospital with injuries.
So, it makes me think of two things.
1. Whenever my husband hears any odd noises in the hallway or the nearby apartments he silences the TV and listens, not from curiosity but in case he needs to do something. After a bit I'm all "Come on, I wanna watch my show!" and he's all "Shh!" He's a much better neighbor than me. (Hey, I've been known to rescue hallway-and-balcony-abandoned cats!) But reminds me of the importance of butting your nose in. The cops came because a neighbor called when they heard the sounds of a fight, and though it wasn't soon enough, I'm still glad someone called. At the very least the other guy was caught/treated.
There was a story earlier in January about a confused old woman in Toronto who wandered out in the cold, and froze to death because she couldn't alert anyone to help her. One neighbor admitted to being awoken by her screams, but he figured it was someone coming home drunk and went back to sleep. (Hey, give him props for honesty--who knows who else woke up.) In the comments to the article one woman remarked on once having fallen hard on the ice, she hit her head, and no one asked her if she was okay. One guy even--the old cliché--stepped over her.
Another woman replied that she's embarrassed when she falls and doesn't like to be fussed over, so she ignores other people as she'd like to be ignored. I think that's probably true to some extent. But at least LOOK and make sure the person's okay, or ASK. I fell in public twice this past year and not a single person looked at me or at least asked if I was okay, which was weird cause usually someone does.
So come on, folks. I'm not the best neighbor in the world but we need to keep up some minimal standards!
On the flip side, some people left some very nice stories in the comments. Like a couple of guys who were coming home drunk at four in the morning, and helped out a confused old man who'd wandered out in the middle of the winter in his pajamas.
2. The second thing is: You know all those stars who say--don't believe the news stories about them? They're right. It was pretty funny to see one of the news channels trying hard to spin my apartment building as a Den of Iniquity. These apartments are the cheapest in this area, but we're surrounded by wealthy middle class people. Doesn't mean there isn't domestic crime etc, but I don't think this murder is the reflection of what one reporter called a "disturbing trend." They interviewed one kid who was all "there's cops there all the time, and kids smoking weed..." ya, those would the teens from the two local high schools? On their way to the public library across the street?
Last night I watched the premiere of Blackstone, a new Canadian series by a couple of Métis guys, filmed in Alberta--it's being shown on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and Showcase.
It's about a fictional First Nation, and its corrupt chief, and a group of people trying to change things around. There wasn't a single white person in the first episode--not even the "outsider" reporter--and it definitely passes the the Bechdel Test (2 women, who talk about something other than a man.) At least half the characters are women, including the person who's going up against the corrupt gangster-style chief. And the chief and his cronies are very consciously portrayed as "good old boys." I was not expecting something so female centered (and it's not even, like, Mohawk! Though I don't really know what religious experience/language it's based on, I just assumed Prairies.)
I gather the show has garnered some criticism for negative portrayal of native reservations. But every show can't be everything to everybody, and this one just seems to be about the politics. Also, even from the first episode it's very much focused on the agency of the people in the community.
It's really, really interesting to see the inner working of the band council. These kinds of inner-reservation political stories pop up in relation to the Mohawk communities around Montreal, and I always wish I understood the ins and outs a little better.
I saw this on The Daily Show tonight, and my jaw literally hung open before the television. Some Fox news affiliate reporter went out on the streets of Indianapolis to find another Hidden Talent, like "Golden Voice" Ted Williams. You can watch the video on Gawker.
But I warn you, it is très très le painful.
While I can picture the stereotype (forgive me) bimbo/himbo reporter coming up with this idea--The Fresh Prince's Hilary comes to mind-how could some producer not have stopped it?
Note that the story originally appeared on the Fox59 news site (still in Google) framed as a heartwarming story...
... and can no longer be found.
You can't find the original full video either, which must be even more painful, according to the AlterNet article:
To make matters worse, Lewis made it a point of noting that “the sisters say they are drug and alcohol free,” coming across as if she thinks all homeless people are on the streets because of substance abuse issues.
The story actually happened in early January, and the news director issued an apology:
“We hear you and understand…The intention wasn’t bad — it was to show there are many good people with legitimate talent who have fallen on hard times and just need a break, like the one Ted Williams got…Unfortunately, the execution of our story came across the wrong way…The good news — after our story aired, several businesses came forward, offering both of the women jobs, as long as they pass a background check…We are keeping viewers updated on the help for these two women and, hopefully, our story, in the end, helping them…Again, we didn’t mean to offend any one or do any wrong — and we apologize for how it came across…Lee Rosenthal”
Tisha "Hilary de Bel Air" Lewis' bio is no longer found on the staff page, and the link to her bio, from her Twitter and Google, comes up as dead! Hm!
Fernando and I have been watching the DVD of The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. I read the first two books awhile back, and the series is great.
Two of the many things I like...
That they didn't thin out Precious Ramotswe's "traditional figure," which she is proud of in the books.
[Still from trailer]
Gorgeous Jill Scott had to gain weight for the part-more than she may have counted on, cause she turned out to be pregnant. After years of not being able to conceive! Awww. I wonder if that's why we haven't heard anything about a second season yet.
[HBO US]
Second fave thing: That Mma Ramotswe, as in the books, is so kind. Here's what the author Alexander McCall Smith says, on the HBO site about the show:
"If it somehow manages to persuade people that a gentle approach to life is possible, is feasible, that that exists, then that's fine. One of the things i suppose I do feel quite strongly about is that Mma Ramotswe has great attachment to the value of forgiveness. She doesn't believe in punishing people and making like difficult for people. She tries to win people over -- to use the power of forgiveness, the healing power of forgiveness. I would very much hope that people might pick that up."
Last week 1980s one-hit-I-Think-We're-Alone-Now-wonder Tiffany accidentally outed New Kid on the Block, Jonathan Knight.
She was being interviewed on a Bravo show, and when asked about any romances with NKOTB boys, talked about a romance with Jonathan, and how she'd worried about turning him gay.
I guess in their circles it's sort of known, but on the downlow? She only realized later that she'd outed him, and immediately apologized on Twitter.
When I read the story I went to his Twitter to see what he'd said about it. ...Killed a squirrel in his attic... he's Oprah's half brother... skiing at Sundance... ah, there --
"Tiff, please don't lose any sleep over it! I know you weren't being mean and I found it to be funny!"
"I'd also appreciate it if the people talking trash about Tiffany and Deborah knock it off and stop being nasty"
Aww, that's nice. So then I headed to her Twitter...
Now this impressed me. This is an apology that Tiffany wants people to see. Twitter events get quickly lost in time, they can be hard to find. I love that she's temporarily removed her Twitter activity to showcase just the one thing she wants people to see. In this new and mysterious world of online etiquette, I think she's set the standard.
Take note, next celebri-fuul. Take note.
(And to anyone who thinks it wasn't an accident... oh my days that's totally the kind of slip I would make. Forehead-thump.)
Oprah just had a show revealing she has a half-sister, given up by her mother at childbirth, that no one in the family was told about.
Here's what I found sweet about the story. The new sister, Patricia, apparently looks/talks/acts a lot like her deceased full-sister Pat--everyone who meets her is astounded by the resemblance. But Pat had a drug addiction that eventually killed her; whereas Patricia appears to be a fairly happy, well-balanced woman.
So for Pat's family, meeting Patricia has been bittersweet, because it's been like meeting The Best Version of Pat. Their mother/sister if she hadn't had the issues she had,
shniff shniff
Just wanted to share. Cause it's happy. My husband and I sat on the couch being weepy.
According to the New York Time she's a yoga rebel! They posted a story on January 21st about a yoga instructor who doesn't follow any one yoga school of thought, and tries to be more down-to-earth in her yoga language and methods.
The overall tone of the article commends Stiles for making yoga comfortable for people who may not find it welcoming:
She rejected the city’s yoga scene as exclusive and elitist — it reminded her of the mean girls in high school, only with incense and bare feet.
"People need yoga, not another religious leader." Ms. Stiles is not trying to appeal to the yoga elite or to the purist.
She is going for the firefighter from Long Island who feels intimidated by “oms” and New Age music. The African-American 30-something from Brooklyn who is looking for a little diversity on the mat. Or the cashier from Morris, Ill. — the river town of 14,000 where she grew up — who drives to McDonald’s for dinner several times a week.
Ms. Stiles' attitude towards all the yoga-rule-makin'-naysayers is apparently: "Who made these rules?"
This is coolios. I've never thought of myself as a rebel, but I have an intense dislike of arbitrary rules, or the one-way-or-the-highway approach. But I suspect in this case author Lizette Alvarez invented a story, here. THREE PAGES about how different and rule-breaking Stiles is because she wears gym socks, but no really substantive criticism from the yoga world. For example she writes that Stiles "focuses on the physical and health aspects of yoga, not the spiritual or the philosophical. For traditionalists, this is heresy, reducing what they see as a way of life to just another gym class" but never quotes a yoga traditionalist criticizing Stiles for this.
The only yogis she quotes are a couple bloggers sounding off about Stiles' marketing campaign when her book came out. She doesn't go into anymore detail about the campaign, so I was left with the impression that what the yogis really didn't like was Stiles' laid back approach. Until I checked out their blogs that is. Turns out... well it was her marketing campaign.
Here's the ad they all hated. What do you think? (Click the pics to see them bigger.)
I just read about this, and James' comment that 2010 was "the best year of your life." I don't follow celebrity news a lot but... wow. And ouch. I remembered there was a daughter in there somewhere, I thought it was hers' -- but no, it was his'. Either way, that must be one confused kid, to have your father and step-mother breakup because he was cheating, and less than a year later he's happy as all get-out and remarrying?
I was about 9 when my now-step-mother moved in with us. She moved back to her home province after less than a year cause she was homesick, and we eventually followed. I was crazy about her--my mom lived in yet another province, so the step-mommy was the new Female Figure in my daily life. Deprived of both mother and step-mother I was depressed. A little mini 9 year old depression.
I can't even imagine how I would have felt if, on top of this, my dad had been discovered in a high profile way to have been cheating on her like a dirtbag, and was ready to remarry a few months later, and then called that awful time in my life the happiest in his.
Day Zero started out in 2003 as a simple way to collate lists people had created for their 101 Things in 1001 Days projects. Today it has evolved into a community website where people post their goals and get inspired by the ideas and challenges of others.
Here are some examples...
Write a letter to myself to open in 10 years
Donate blood
Watch 26 movies I’ve never seen starting with each letter of the Alphabet
Get a job
Tie a secret to a balloon and let it go
Learn the alphabet in sign language
Learn to identify 10 constellations
Read a book in a day
Listen to every song in my iTunes library
Listen to a live jazz band
Listen to a DVD commentary
Listen to a new artist every day for a month
Listen to every single one of the Beatles songs
Not sure I'm the 101 Things in 1001 Days type... but fun for anyone who likes making lists! Lists! Here's their archive.
I first heard the term "politically correct" when I was fifteen years old. My mother had returned to school and was involved in a couple women's groups. I didn't live with her, but she was in the city for a feminist book fair which she took me to; and she and her friend kept making jokes about "political correctness."
According to wikipedia that's pretty much how the term got started: “Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New Left, feminists, and progressives . . . used their term politically correct ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts." (Debra Shultz) That is, they wanted to keep in mind the "spirit" of what they were trying to do, not create a new letter-of-the-law.
But for the last decade I've seen its use change to something I'm much less comfortable being aligned with. People started using it as a catch-all term, not for "orthodoxy in social change efforts," but for any social change effort. Somehow "political correctness" was turned into this really dirty word, and attached to any effort to make society a friendlier, warmer place for anyone not white, male and straight. It's as though we hit the term "African American" and that was North America's collective limit. "From this day forward, no more language accommodations for any group. It takes five more syllables to say African-American than it does to say Negro, and that's all we can take for one millennium. Ask us for another concession in the year 2090."
People have realized just how powerful "political correctness" is, as an insult, so they level it against things they don't like as fast as they can. Get PC onto an issue early and fast, and its stink is hard to remove because every person who tries to remove it will be conveniently accused of Just Being Politically Correct. It's a cheat.
(Which is ironic. Because using the term is an acknowledgment of how powerful language is.)
I'm not saying there's isn't a push and pull between freedom of speech, art, or comedy and showing respect through language. Reality is full of ugliness, so you can't talk about and represent reality without showing that ugliness. I understand the fear of the slippery-slope, that if you ban A, what's going to happen to BCD and E?
But are those fears so important that we can no longer discuss the sentiments at the heart of "PC"? How do we evolve our language and our culture so that minorities, and women, feel more included? Is this "political" or is it about values like kindness? Caring about the experiences other people go through? Empathy? Looking through someone else's eyes? And can we change language to better reflect reality?
What bothers me is that everyone just seems lazy. It's easier to hit the Political Correctness button than to actually engage the heart and mind, and have an intelligent or caring discussion. There was a recent story in the news that a group of kirpan-wearing-Sikhs were denied admission to the Quebec National Assembly, and almost every single commentor, who I guarantee you complains 364 days out of the year about Quebec's national identity, wrote: Woo hoo for protecting Canadian national identity, go back home you knife wielding thugs. Only a tiny handful of the people who agreed with the decision also expressed themselves in a thoughtful manner.
And so we return to the story that start this week's PC theme: The CBSC decision that "Money for Nothing" can't be played on its station in unedited form.
When I first heard the decision, I too was surprised, but I took ten minutes to read up on the decision and understand it before forming an opinion. Most people didn't even read the details properly let alone read the actual decision. In the recent kirpan story, one woman wrote in the comments something like "I guess I could research why they wear it, but anyway..." She actually acknowledged her ignorance, and her determination to remain ignorant, before proceeding to give her opinion.
On the other hand, my husband and I enjoyed listening to Rex Murphy's call-in show about the Huckleberry Finn debate. He brought all kinds of points of views into the discussion, and hosted them in a way that combined intelligent discussion and passion for books.
It's time we got past this crying over PC. There's no Political Correctness police officer coming to arrest you, there's no Politically Correct School Teacher standing at your elbow correcting your writing, there's no PC Thought Police camped out in your head. There's your own conscience, and a society full of people--many of them not exactly like you--with whom you have to live. Maybe it would be easier to go back to ignoring them (you know, like that ship full of Jewish refugees we turned back during the Holocaust), but I vote we take the hard road and trudge on forward.
Thank-you for joining me on my journey through happier language. I leave you with a bang-on bit by British comedian Stewart Lee. (I recommend watching the video below, he makes the point really well.)
"The problem is 84% of people apparently, of the public, think that political correctness is gone mad. Now I don't know if it has. People still get killed, don't they, for being the wrong color or the wrong sexuality or whatever. And what is political correctness? It's an often clumsy negotiation towards a kind of formally inclusive language, and there's all sorts of problems with it, but it's better than what we had before."
___________
* This is explicitly not an academic discussion, and I recognize I've simplified topics that entire PhDs have been built on. For the record I'm white, Anglo-Saxon-Norman, Christian, heterosexual, female, middle class, a little overweight, and pretty able-bodied. :-)
In January 2011 the Wall Street Journal posted an article by law professor Amy Chua called "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." It described her mothering techniques, and set off a series of debates in Internetsland, both about parenting, and about race. I don't want to summarize the article or the responses to it--you can read about it on wikipedia.
I don't have kids, but there were a few interesting points in the article that caught my eye, in respect to how we can treat ourselves.
"Chinese parents [...] assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently. ...Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them."
Do we assume fragility with ourselves when we shouldn't? There are going to be a few things we're no good at, but where is that line? At some point in my adult life I convinced myself I wasn't good at learning new languages. Where had I learned that? Because getting through all-French high school was challenging? Learning a second language isn't the same as being graded as though it were your first tongue; and even then I had better grades than some Francophone students. A few years ago I remembered I had once loved learning French and I had to disabuse myself of this I Can't-ism.
"As a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't."
I struggled all my life with math, and dreaded the Empirical Methods course I had to take in order to do Honors Political Science. But I was determined to do Honors (so I could do an MA), so I worked hard, got an above average grade, and did two more Methods courses in my MA. I wasn't great at it, I have terrible retention of what I learned, but I was much more capable than I'd assumed.
Did I feel good about it? Maiz ouiz. Did I learn new things about myself in my 30s? Maiz ouiz!
"What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. "
I don't believe you can become good at everything. I learned lesson #3 because of sports, which I'm terrible at. In Cegep* we got to choose our mandatory gym courses--I took self-defense, golf, archery, and squash. I tried hard, my grades were fine cause I did well on the technical tests--I even did well in terms of form. I just can't hit a target, or make contact with a ball, to save my life. (You could point a gun at my husband's head, and I'd still miss the ball 90% of the time.) I won a prize for being the second worse archer, and I was consistently at the bottom of the squash ladder. But I could see how, if I was just a little better, these things would have been fun! (Hitting squash ball with racquet = fun. Running after missed ball = gets old fast, unless you're a dog.)
On the other hand, when I was a kiddo I took to writing like Yea Aulde Fishe to Waterre and haven't stopped since. Good at it = fun.
Between the effortless fun of Writing, and the never-attainable fun of Sports, there's a wide range of activities that can be fun if I just put some work into them. A few years ago I decided to learn to cook. I bought books, I watched a couple videos, I got better. Fun. Photography: Books, studied, practiced, good = fun.
Like the daughter learning piano in Chua's story, you do have to cross a certain threshold of work to get to the fun stuff. I don't know if we should threaten to burn our children's stuffed animals in pursuit of their greatness (NO GOD NOOOOO!!!!!), but as adults, we can be as self-torturous as we like in the pursuit of new achievements. As my Grandmother says when playing cards: Don't let the fear stop you.
___________
* In Quebec you do 1 year less of High School and 1 year less of University, and two years of government-paid college instead, called C.E.G.E.P.
Years ago I was working and chatting with a colleague who was...
- male
- in his 20s
- tall
- broad shouldered
- white
- middle class
- blonde
- good looking
about the movie Higher Learning by John Singleton. I love Singleton and though Higher Learning wasn't the best of his films, I was surprised when (let's call him) John said he hated the movie. John saw a lot of movies. I asked him why.
He said because there wasn't a single guy in the movie who was sympathetic, who he (John) could identify with.
I'm pretty sure I stopped shelving my books and gaped at him.
Now, if you haven't seen Higher Learning (trailer), you won't know that this is basically true. It's about a white small town guy who goes to college, he doesn't have good social skills and has trouble fitting in. The black kids don't accept him, the girls don't like him, and white Jewish roommate doesn't befriend him cause he finds him kinda weird. One night three white guys approach and befriend our hero, make him feel wanted and liked, and they turn out to be skinheads. This kid doesn't start off as explicitly racist--he's ignorant, but Singleton is careful to show that his values could have been influenced by anyone else on campus who'd chosen to befriend him. He eventually becomes a skinhead and kills a black student.
The closest you get to a nice white guy is the Jewish roommate, and he doesn't feature prominently. The other protagonists are a black gay and a white girl, who is date-raped by the seemingly Nice White Boy.
So yes. It would be hard to find a sympathetic WASP male in this movie.
I gaped at John and I said something like: "But 99.9% of ALL MOVIES have a character you can sympathize with. You can't enjoy ONE MOVIE that doesn't? Now you know what it's like to be everyone else!"
This is what the word "privilege" means, in political terms. As the majority power group in Canadian society, he has been so privileged that he was shocked to come face to face with a film that he didn't fit in with.
As a white woman, I have a lot of privilege myself. It didn't occur to me to question "flesh colored" bandages/dresses/crayons until I read it somewhere. The point about privilege is that it's a huge collection of various items that are skewed in your direction, and they take time and effort to uncover. Peggy McIntosh called it an invisible knapsack that's handed to you at birth.
In the documentary The Celluloid Closet, about the portrayal of gays and bisexuals in Hollywood, many of the people interviewed talk about searching desperately as children for some positive on-screen portrayal that could be construed as being a gay one. I didn't have to do that--almost every romance in a movie is between a man and a woman.
Those are just cultural examples. I strongly recommend reading McIntosh's famous essay "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" to think of more of them. For example:
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.
And the male list from Alas! a Blog:
20. I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented.
22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
25. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability. (More).
36. Every major religion in the world is led primarily by people of my own sex. Even God, in most major religions, is pictured as male.
When a man accuses a woman of "reverse sexism" or a white person accuses a black person of "reverse racism" I think about the history of power relations, and I think about privilege. And I think: Really? ...I mean: Really?
[Pics by barunpatro, mzacha, juliaf.]
___________
* This is explicitly not an academic discussion, and I recognize I've simplified topics that entire PhDs have been built on. For the record I'm white, Anglo-Saxon-Norman, Christian, heterosexual, female, middle class, a little overweight, and pretty able-bodied. :-)
