On Cougar Town – ABC’s new show

OK. I watched the debut of this show the other night, and I have to say that I, like Judith Warner at the NYTimes, disliked it. I thought the show itself was trying too hard and I found myself wondering if anyone who still looked as great as Courtney Cox over the age of 40 would really have as many insecurities and anxieties. I doubt it, but maybe I’m wrong.

Something the show did get right, I think, was the sense of loneliness that Cox’s character feels after she gets a divorce. That is all-too real for most women. There’s the sense of relief that you’re out of that dull or horrible marriage, to be sure, but then follows the crushing realization that you are no longer young and you are spending your nights alone with your book or the latest reality television show. Even a bad marriage insulates a woman from having to feel old and alone. So that hit the right note for me.

But, then, I just don’t believe that someone like Courtney would be alone for that long. Her odds are upped, aren’t they? What about the rest of us? With our sagging boobs and dimpled butts? If we have a scintillating personality or a fascinating life, then maybe we will do well on Match.com. But, if not? Ouch.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing things about the show was Christa Miller’s face. Is she in the running to become the new Joan Rivers? She used to be so cute on the Drew Carey show, back before all that face-saving surgery. Yikes.

This is the photoshopped version.

Her smile here reminds me of the Joker.

If you watch the show, you’ll see what I mean. Her face barely moves and her lips are ridiculous.

This is exactly what I hope NOT to be like when I’m over 40. To my friends out there, if I go overboard someday on the silicone and botox, please set up an intervention and show me a tape of Christa Miller on Cougar Town. I’ll understand.

I think modern, upper-middle-class American parents are crazy.

There. I said it.

A good friend of mine (who is a dad) posted a blog entry from the New York Times’ “Motherlode” column. It details the results of a survey of 1000 ‘normal’ women who are members of an online mothers’ community. Basically, women are mad at the fathers for not taking enough responsibility for parenting or for doing chores around the house. The writers – both at Parenting magazine and the blog – make it seem like this is an epidemic of anger, corroding the American family.

The writer details the problem thus:

We carry so much of this life-altering responsibility in our heads: the doctors’ appointments, the shoe sizes, the details about the kids’ friends. Many dads wouldn’t even think to buy valentines for the class, for example, or know when it’s time to sign kids up for the pre–camp physical, or that curriculum night is next Thursday at 7:30 and you need to hire a sitter and bring a nut-free vegetarian appetizer that can be eaten without a fork. Even moms who work full-time take it upon themselves to store all this data in our already overstuffed heads. We’re the walking, talking encyclopedias of family life, while dads tend to be more like brochures.

What to do about it?

I proffer an unpopular solution: Moms and Dads both need to stop making their kids the absolute center of their lives. 

Seriously. No one should have to worry about self-making “a nut-free vegetarian appetizer that can be eaten without a fork” and bring it to a school function. Or obsess about their children’s schedules or the details of their children’s lives and friendships.

Really, middle-class and upper-middle-class moms? No, really, really? 

How did we get here? 

When I was growing up, my mom knew who my best friends were (count three names here, maybe), whether or not I did my homework, if I needed new socks and underwear, and if I seemed healthy and happy – and that was it.  She had absolutely no interest in elementary or middle  school drama, or PTA meetings, or baking me a 19-tier cupcake tree for my birthday party (a tradition which, by the way, didn’t even begin until I was old enough to remember them).  

My mom had a life.

Admittedly, sometimes I wish she had been less dramatic and crazy, but I actually appreciate the fact that I did not grow up with an endless litany of “activities” and “playdates” and “extra-curricular classes”. No, I don’t know how to play the piano. But I did learn how to play the clarinet in school band.  No, I didn’t take soccer. But somehow I remain thinner and in better shape than some my friends who did, so go figure. 

Years ago, I visited Newport, Rhode Island, and took a tour of several of the old Vanderbilt and Astor mansions. You know, the ridiculously luxe “summer” homes of the fabulously wealthy during the late 1900s and early 20th century. In the Vanderbilt home, I learned that Mrs. Vanderbilt obsessed over her children’s education and up-bringing. They were, after all, the future of the Vanderbilt name. In particular, she erased the line between herself and her oldest daughter. Her daughter’s life was the property of Mrs. Vanderbilt herself, and she managed it with military precision. To the point that the girl grew up in a gilded cage of her mother’s fashioning. In the end, she married a man with a “title” that she didn’t even like, all because her mother planned it. 

Was this poor, little rich girl priveleged? Yes. 

Did she have everything that money could buy her, including the best education? Yes.

Was she any happier? No. By all accounts, she was one seriously depressed young girl.

I’m glad that my mom and dad didn’t pore over my life looking for ways to make it “better” or to give me a “head start”. Somehow, and without a single extra class or tutoring session, I made it into the top medical anthropology program in the country. I think it’s because my parents did something great for me – they made it very, very clear that I needed to take responsibility for myself. 

In the end, I learned to craft my own life.

I learned how not to be bored, how to entertain myself, how to self-soothe.

Maybe the reason modern mothers are so angry is that they are giving too much to their children in the first place. Maybe they are angry because secretly they want to be the dads for once, to take it all less seriously. Maybe they are angry because they can’t give themselves permission to be less-than perfect as mothers.

Scale it back, I say. Don’t do some of the “stuff” you are doing – the “stuff” that you think is absolutely integral to your child’s future happiness or intellectual capacity. It isn’t, and that I can promise you. 

This is from an article in the London Times:

In her book No Two Alike, Judith Rich Harris, an American psychologist, writes that children just want to fit into the popular culture in which they are being raised, which might not be quite what their parents have in mind.

“In the long run, it is what happens to them outside the parental home that makes them turn out the way they do,” she says. And while most parents know this instinctively, we carry on resignedly making arbitrary rules, labelling things “good” or “bad” with a randomness that reflects our prejudices but baffles our children.

And I’ll leave you with this, an old article from the Boston Globe, to ponder:

Leave those kids alone

The idea that adults should be playing with their kids is a modern invention — and not necessarily a good one

(Illustration/ Aaron Meshon)

By Christopher Shea  |  July 15, 2007

WHAT COULD BE more natural than a mother down on the rec-room floor, playing with her 3-year-old amid puzzles, finger-puppets, and Thomas the Tank Engine trains? Look — now she’s conducting a conversation between a stuffed shark and Nemo, the Pixar clown fish! Giggles all around. Not to mention that the tot is learning the joys of stories and narrative, setting him on a triumphal path toward school.

A “natural” scene? Actually, parent-child play of this sort has been virtually unheard of throughout human history, according to the anthropologist David Lancy. And three-fourths of the world’s current population would still find that mother’s behavior kind of dotty.

American-style parent-child play is a distinct feature of wealthy developed countries — a recent byproduct of the pressure to get kids ready for the information-age economy, Lancy argues in a recent article in American Anthropologist, the field’s flagship journal in the United States.

“Adults think it is silly to play with children” in most cultures, says Lancy, who teaches at Utah State University. Play is a cultural universal, he concedes, “but adults aren’t part of the picture.” Yet middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans — abetted, he says, by psychologists — are increasingly proclaiming the parents-on-all-fours style the One True Way to raise a smart, well-adjusted child.

There is now a concerted effort to spread adult-child play beyond its stronghold in the upper- and middle-classes of wealthy countries. To this end, many cities and states support programs of some sort. Massachusetts will give the Parent-Child Home Program, which has 33 sites in the state, $3 million this year (up from $2 million last year). Through the program, staff members visit the homes of low-income residents and offer tips not just on good books for toddlers but also on “play activities” for parents and kids. Likewise, the eminent Yale psychologist Jerome Singer has partnered with a media company to devise imaginative parent-child games (examples: “My Magic Story Car” and “Puppets: Counting”) that librarians and social workers can teach to low-income parents.

Lancy is concerned that specialists behind the movement — psychologists, social workers, preschool teachers — are too aggressively promoting this intense, interventionist parenting style to low-income parents, and that they are are too quick to claim that adult-child play is crucial for human development. He doesn’t quite rule out that some interventions may improve literacy — though the data are murkier than the psychologists admit, he insists. But the programs, with their premise (as he sees it) that a whole class of people is simply parenting badly, leave their advocates “open to charges of racism or cultural imperialism.”

. . .

One inspiration for the article, Lancy says, was that he kept coming across accounts of parents who felt guilty that they did not enjoy playing with their children. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman and the economist Alan Krueger, both at Princeton, have found that parents routinely claim that playing with their kids is among their favorite activities, but when you ask them to record their state of mind, hour by hour, they rate time spent with their children as being about as much fun as housework.

In his article, Lancy draws on decades of ethnographic work to show how rare parent-child play has been in the world. The Harvard anthropologist Robert LeVine, for example, observed in a 2004 paper that among the Gusii people of Kenya, “mothers rarely looked at or spoke to their infants and toddlers, even when they were holding and breast-feeding them.” (So much for the universality of peek-a-boo.) On Ifaluk Island, in the South Pacific, tribespeople believe that babies are “essentially brainless” before age 2, so there is no point in talking to them.

The goal of the Yucatec Maya is to keep babies in a “kind of benign coma,” through bathing and swaddling, so that parents can leave them and get work done. As recently as 1914, the US Department of Labor’s Child Bureau advised parents not to play with babies, for fear of overstimulating their little nervous systems.

Sometimes it sucks to be a girl. . . . literally.

I hate advertising. I hate that hot women that don’t even get most of the jokes from “That 70s Show”are supposed to sell me clothing. I hate the pervy men (and women) that make these marketing/PR decisions.

This is a new ad for American Apparel:

Um, OK.

This is about cotton underwear, right?

Then why does this look like porn?

She’s licking his dick?! Seriously?!

Maybe this is just a more honest version of the advertising we are already used to seeing, making a girl literally looking like a porn star, instead of just simulating it. Rumor has it that the guy in the photo is the owner of the company. Gross. Double gross.

I hope that if I ever have children I have boys, so that I don’t have to explain to young girls that this is ridiculous nonsense. Or dissuade them from trying to emulate what they see in advertising, like God knows I did at a young age. (It was easier when the role models were just wearing blue mascara, neon, and shoulder pads.)

I hate being a woman sometimes.

Except when I look at this:

If we’re going to have sexist advertising, for Christ’s sake, at least make it involve equal opportunity ogling. And ditto for the attendant body image problems.

Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair Pics vs. Pictures of Underage Models: What’s the diff?

[Is this also a 'sick' or 'sexual' photo? I suppose it's what we make of it. You could see a loving father/daughter or incest. I, personally, see a picture of two beautiful people who happen to be related.]

The backlash against Miley’s pictures in Vanity Fair should have been timed with a stopwatch. The reaction would have been fast, maybe even a world-reactionary record (where the ‘world’ is mostly confined to the United States, natch). The problem? People seem to be outraged that a 15-year-old girl is draped in a sheet, looking all ‘post-coital’.

Um. Yeah.

It is definitely disturbing, but hasn’t anyone been paying attention for the past 30 years or so? Fashion models are often naked, and barely 18. Other models, under 18, are scantily clad ALL THE TIME in fashion ads. But, maybe ‘fashion’ gets a pass. I’ve always been a little suspicious of the barely legal girls, looking dead sexy, trying to sell me a bra, or jeans, or whatever. You rarely see, however, any real backlash against them. Perhaps because they aren’t on the Disney channel, hardly anyone thinks of them as ‘role models’, and none of them are easily recognized except a few big names. And anyway, can you imagine your daughter worshiping Kate Moss as a role model? What would the Kate Moss merchandise look like? A small pile of cocaine, a meth-ed out boyfriend, and a fashionable bag and hat to match?

These photos are beautiful, no matter what you think they mean. Meaning is applied by the viewer. You’d have to ask Leibovitz about the intent. And who knows? Better yet, who cares?

Why is this ad any less disturbing? To some – especially in fashion – it was a direct strike at what the media and marketing/PR companies promote to us as ‘beauty’. This women is naked, but she isn’t half as sexualized as Miley.

How young do you think the girl in the middle of this ad is? Does it matter if she is actually 23, but looks 16? Isn’t it the looking 16 that the advertisers are really after?

Now, I know that most people who have been calling Miley a whore will also think these girls are whores, too. And, because of my own picture above, I’m probably in the same bag. But before we cast stones at Miley, shouldn’t we analyze the culture in which she exists? Shouldn’t we look at what we take to be normal in 2008 and ask some questions? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves some hard truths?

Sex sells. Until it doesn’t, this is just going to be ‘business as usual’. As a feminist, I waffle about my own sexuality, wearing bikinis, and trying to look good all the time. But, then I think, why not? Why can’t a woman be beautiful, celebrate it, and also be savvy or smart about how she uses it? Certainly, women in Rome wouldn’t have blinked at this picture, if they had had pictures back then. And, Greeks and Romans did provide the model for all the freedoms we so passionately support.

Maybe this is just all to do with our Puritan ancestry. We just can’t escape from our own prudery. And the irony is that prudery leads to more underground perversion. The more you make sex into a big deal, the bigger problem you will have. Which is great for the advertisers and anyone selling us anything. It’s a vicious cycle, and I can’t see it disappearing anytime soon.

These are my two cents. But, then again, what do I know? I’m just a cultural anthropologist trying to make sense of how we see China. And that’s a-whole-nother can of worms.

Paris Hilton is boring, and I’m not going to take it anymore. . . .

I used to frequent gossip sites. You know, those nasty, vituperative sites that catalogue absolutely everything that a celebrity, or quasi-celebrity, does, then mocks it? (For those of you who do not frequent, here is a sample.)

Now, I’m no stranger to judgment. It’s my favorite game. Especially when it comes to women.

Except that recently, I’ve realized that being bitter or happy about other people’s successes or failures is probably the stupidest waste of time ever. Basically, it means that I procrastinate – one might say it is a symbol of my larger procrastination problem – and I don’t actually have many successes or failures of my own. Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus, and Angelina Jolie are ruining my life.

Or, rather, my obsession with checking out DAILY what is going on with THEIR lives is ruining MY life.

So, no more.

I am throwing out my trashy magazines (you know who you are), and I am not going to be clicking on any gossip sites from now on. Because what do I really care if Angelina is pregnant or no? Is my own life so boring that these people seem more interesting?

Hell, I have friends more messed up and interesting than these people. Maybe we should start blogging about real people, since their lives are completely more complicated, intense and fascinating than “fake” lives being lived out in NYC or LA.

Plus, it might make us all feel better about ourselves. We’ve lost all touch with what ‘reality’ is, with all of these psuedo ‘reality’ shows. I, for one, live in reality and there are no TV camera crews here.

Now, I’m not going to stop watching Rock of Love II, because that’s just good TV. But everything else? Going.

I’ll have to find another way to procrastinate not living my own life or doing my own work. And I’ll have to stop fantasizing that if I were (pick one or any that apply for yourself), rich, skinny, beautiful, had a hot boyfriend, traveled to Bali or Hawaii whenever I wanted – that i would be happier.

Um, have you seen how “happy” these people are?

To All the Men Out There – Why Women are Catty

It’s every man’s wet dream . . .

or maybe

This is actually more like it, with Lois from Malcolm in the Middle:

Women pulling each other’s hair out in a hissy fight. Women tumbling all over themselves, punching and kicking and biting each other until there’s blood. This is, in effect, good entertainment.

Why do we do it?

I’ve had several boyfriends over the years simply baffled by women’s behavior toward each other. About the cattiness that starts before puberty, intensifies, and then never really lets up until WAY after menopause. (I’ve actually heard tales of women verbally fighting in nursing homes, long after there is anything at stake besides a good death.)

Let me try to describe and to explain it.

First, we can hate another woman instantaneously – without anything more to go on than what she is wearing. You’ve all heard it or seen it before. The way a younger, more attractive, smarter, funnier, prettier, sexier woman (it only has to be one, but can also be a combination of these traits – the more she has, the worse the reaction) walks into a room and the other women all turn to look at her. It’s like we have a sixth sense just for knowing when competition is in the room. “Look at her,” we think, “she thinks she is hot stuff.” Then, the deadly venom: “But she’s not.”

From this point, the woman is our enemy. We go into battle mode, but it isn’t like men. We don’t just start something right away. No, we are like cats. We stalk our prey through many hours, days, months. Hell, I’ve carried grudges for YEARS. (There’s still a girl from high school that I would punch right in the face if I ever saw her again.)

There are two types of women who hate other women (which is, quite literally, almost every woman on the planet): the woman who kills them with honey (and stabs them in the back), and the woman who is a straight-up bitch upfront (who will eventually, given enough time and booze, start one of the above fights).

My mom, she was a classic category one, with a sugary voice and a bitter memory for slights. I’m a two. I react first, ask myself questions later. I’ve actually been in physical fights before, where I literally punched a woman in her eye. And this was a FRIEND of mine. (Sorry, Robin!)

Neither way of dealing with other women is terrific, and both methods lead us to increased risk of heart attacks and ulcers.

In other words, women just can’t seem to get along. (Look at the Hilary debacle, the way women judge her, not on her policy, but on her person, as just one potent example. It took the woman publicly breaking down for women to show her any sympathy, for Christ’s sake.)

For some reason, I’ve only had ‘hate’ mail from other women on this blog. Men who read it have tended to disagree with me, but with my points and my arguments, not with how I look or what picture I put up. It’s sad to me that women are like this with each other – catty and silly, and not about substantive topics, but about how we look, what we are wearing, and who is ‘better’ than someone else.

This is probably why women still make much less money than men – we waste too much valuable time on each other.

“A year after they graduate from a four-year college, women earn 20 percent less than their male counterparts, according to a study released in April by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. And it widens to 31 percent less 10 years after college.”

That is just a sad statistic.

I found another writer on this topic, and I basically agree with her points:

“Why Women Hate Other Women” by Cassandra George Sturges

Women compete with each other at a societal level, the criteria for winning is usually set by others and the results are subjective and intangible. Women are usually judged by characteristics that they have little control over; something that they did not create, and that exist outside of themselves such as their physical appearance. Her success is based on subjective, biased, external validation by others. She can’t see how to beat her rival because her rival is in no more control of the outcome than she is. How can you really be more beautiful than another woman, when the decision is nothing more than someone else’s opinion of beauty?

How can you change someone’s personal preference for a certain body size and shape, a particular eye color or a fondness for blondes? How many people are needed to think that you are beautiful before it is a valid or meaningful judgment? Who do you need to tell you that you are beautiful before you can believe it to be true… construction workers, truck drivers, the man walking down the street, your pastor, the Pope, your boss? Women compete with each other for male attention and compliments as if it feeds their self-worth and self-esteem. Women try to dress sexier and have shapelier bodies than other women.

Women instinctively know that men have little power when it comes to sexual intercourse in male and female relationships. Women know that if a platonic relationship exists between a male and a female, ninety percent of the time it is a platonic relationship because the woman does not want to have sex with the man instead of visa versa. Most women do not feel that men are psychologically or biologically capable of resisting another woman’s sexual prowess because of their undying love, loyalty and respect for their committed relationship with them. If a man does not engage in a sexual relationship with a woman who is drop dead gorgeous, most women believe that it is because the other woman was in control of the outcome of the type of relationship. Women intuitively know that most heterosexual males find extraordinary beautiful women sexually irresistible and if that extraordinary beautiful woman wanted her man, he would be hers for the taking.

Women are so busy competing with each other for male attention that they do not have the psychological, intellectual or emotional insight to change the social climate that is causing them to suffer from low-self esteem. Women think of men as being promiscuous, unfaithful, lying, cheating dogs. But what most women need to come to grips with and understand is that research shows that a man is most likely to have a sexual affair with a woman’s best friend, relative or neighbor… a woman whom she trusts, loves and respects. One of the reasons that men who cheat are so successful at it is because women allow them to because they are in competition with each other.

Women believe that they are superior to other women if they are physically more attractive. In a commercial for a diet pill a woman bragged, “I am now smaller than the woman my husband left me for.” This statement leads me to believe that she felt that she deserved her husband’s infidelity when she was over weight. Her motive for losing weight was to be physically smaller than the other woman that her husband left her for. She viewed the other woman as competition more so than feeling betrayed by her husband’s disloyalty. The wife’s motive for losing weight was not to improve the status of her health or increase her self-esteem but be smaller than her competition__ the other woman. The weight control commercial is blatantly telling women that they need to look a certain way in order to earn their husband’s love and fidelity. It doesn’t matter whether or not you cook his meals, raise his kids, and support his dreams… what matters most in a relationship is whether or not you are physically attractive enough to keep your man at home. There is an assumption that it is natural for a man to cheat on a woman who he feels is no longer sexually appealing. Many women believe that it is their fault when their husband or boyfriend cheats on them because they are not attractive enough to keep him faithful.

A woman’s perception of self-worth is validated outside of her self from others and this affects her internal psychological concept of her own value as a human being. Women compete indirectly with other women because they have not learned how to recognize and channel their internal desires, feelings and goals into physical, tangible realities. Once women learn that they can not control or live vicariously through their children or the man in their life; they will stop hating each other and focus on their individual unique gifts, talents and assets.

Why do women hate other women?
1. Women feel that their biological prime-time is limited. She can easily be replaced by a new younger, more beautiful woman. Youth is a woman’s fair-weathered friend.
2. Women feel that other women control their man’s sexual fidelity.
3. Women feel that their level or degree of physical beauty is based on luck as opposed to something that she controls.
4. Women feel that other women can take something that they have worked hard to earn by using their beauty on the job, school and the legal system because men will be taken by her beauty.
5. Women feel that other women can not be trusted. They gossip too much, they are phony and they would take your man right before your eyes.
6. Women feel that other women divert attention away from them.
7. Women feel psychologically competitive with other women to be more attractive.
8. Women subconsciously believe that if they merely looked like another woman, they could inherit her life, her diamond, her man, and people would look at her with the same admiration.

Basically, women need to stop worrying about other women and get on with their own lives. Maybe we’ll begin to be competitive about things that count: like our careers, how much time we spend on ourselves and our families, and how much self-esteem we have. Maybe we’ll stop trying to be better than each other and start trying to be the best possible version of of ourselves – whether or not we’re wearing Prada, or have an IQ of 146, or have a rich husband, or the best boob jobs, or wear a size 0.

Hating other women is exhausting. I spent the larger part of my life doing it – from age 13 to 35. This year, I’m turning 36, and I’ll be damned if I waste one single second more of my life on worrying about what other women think of me. I don’t care if it costs me $4000 in therapy bills to do it, I’m kicking the habit for good.

Because, just like my grandmother once warned me, if I see life as a competition, I’m bound to lose. Someone is always going to be prettier, smarter, funnier, taller, shorter, skinnier, faster, richer than me. With 6 billion people on earth, I expect she was right. I’ll never be the “best” at anything. But maybe, just maybe, I can learn to be OK with that fact.

Go, Hilary, Go!

I really think Hilary Clinton would be a great president. Basically, she’s been training for this moment her entire life. She’s been involved in government, politics, or public service her entire adult life (and by adult here, I actually mean over the age of 29). When she was first lady, she traveled around the world on a goodwill mission to help women, which exposed her to the international scene and how hard it is to get anything done – even when everyone agrees that something needs to be done and it’s a good cause.

Plus, she’s tough. Which is, I realize, why some women do not like her. Women are uber-competitive with each other and have been for eons. Basically, if Hilary shows too much emotion, then men will argue that she isn’t tough enough and not vote for her. I can just hear the complaints over PMS and how a woman would run the White House. However, if she’s too unemotional, women want to throw her under the proverbial bus. This is discounting, obviously, how much people just hate her for being Clinton’s wife; Republicans will never, ever like her.

However, one has to stop and ask the question why some Republicans are backing Obama. My own family, who is notoriously Republican, think he is better than Hilary because he is tougher on immigration issues. For those of you simply mesmerized by the continual chants of “change” and “non-establishment” while you stare at that nice smile, Obama actually has a fairly conservative record on immigration. Like thinking that the huge fence between us and Mexico is a good idea. Seriously. (I’m sure he would never admit this now, but there it is, staring back at him from the Congressional record.) I hate to admit this, but my family simply doesn’t like Mexican immigrants. I’m from farm country, and people don’t actually tend to think things through there, they react. My family members will look you in the eye and swear they are not racist and then, in the next minute, tell you something about “that Mexican down at the gas station”. For real. So, whomever tells you a polite, closeted racist wouldn’t vote for a black man, think again.

I digress.

Obama worries me. He is inexperienced, like it or not. Also, I’m suspicious of anyone that squeaky clean. No one, and I mean NO ONE, is that clean in Washington. Hence, my comments about his support of “the fence” around America. All this “change” talk leads us nowhere. “Change” is inevitable. Claiming that you are going to make it happen is somehow like promising to produce rain; eventually, rain just happens on its own and rain gurus everywhere are proud as peacocks that their predictions were correct.

Not that I don’t like the man, I do. I’m just exhausted by the rhetoric he’s using. And I honestly believe that Hilary would make a better policy president, get more done, and be more respected internationally. Countries in Europe (minus France, of course), countries in Asia, countries in South America – they have all had female heads of state. For all our talk about women’s rights, and I was born in the same year that Gloria Steinem started Ms. Magazine, we are seriously lacking on action.

If Hilary loses, which she might, I’m proud of her for the action. I’m proud of her for fighting the good fight.

George Eliot once wrote (and George is a woman, for all of you who don’t know that factoid):

“Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing. That’s my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.”

Toning down the bee-atch . . .

There are days, too many if I’m honest, when I resemble this:

What I really want to be, if I’m honest, is this:

Sadly, it’s been becoming clear to me lately that neither one of these is a good option. Both the bitch and Barbie have bad endings in real life. One has a chronic problem with relationships, and the other has self-esteem issues and is obsessed with the weight scale and Juicy Couture.

For years, I’ve defended my right to be a bee-atch. Bitches were tough, hard-nosed, got what they wanted, didn’t take any guff, were high achievers, got paid decent salaries, and got the best-looking boyfriends. I wanted to defend myself from the onslaught of misogynistic thinking. Really, I wanted to defend myself from both people thinking that I couldn’t do anything and other women who were uber-competitive.

The truth is: Being a bitch alienates you. From your friends, your family, your loved ones, and even from yourself. How could you possibly be who you wanted to be with all of that thick skin continuously getting in your way?

Plus, there is a difference between being tough to take good care of yourself and being a bitch in order to protect yourself at all costs. Now that I’m in a new relationship, I’m beginning to understand the difference. Being cranky doesn’t actually get me anything I want. It’s like being a 4-year-old and throwing a tantrum. The only difference is that our friends and lovers are not our parents, and they don’t have to live with us or love us. They can leave if we’re too bitchy, and often, they do.

This is an open apology, of sorts, for my occasional bitchy behavior. I’m working on changing the default setting, but it takes time. Until then, know that I know that you know I’m a pain in the arse.

Women’s Health in China

There have been a spate of stories related to women’s health in China over the past few days. One of which, in the NY Times, focused on the increasing rate of abortion in unmarried women. Abortion practices in China are not conceptualized as they are here in the US. In a country that has a one-child policy and a burgeoning population, abortions are relatively common and normal.

Abortions are not, so to speak, moralized, and during my time living in Hong Kong, I never heard a debate over the ‘value of life’ as it related to fetuses. Abortion tends to be practiced by women who already have one child and cannot afford the heavy taxes placed upon the second or are afraid to flout the rule (though another recent story pointed out that a growing number of middle-class families are far more likely to have a second or third child than they were even 10 years ago), though they are also practiced by women who would like to insure delivery of a boy (there are no real statistics covering this practice, and I wonder if it has lessened in the past few years as women’s roles in society begin to shift). However, the trend for unmarried women having abortions is, purportedly, new.

As a budding anthropologist, I have to wonder how new this “new” trend really is. However, the story is compelling and the doctors’ testimony that the practice is growing is interesting. It is another sign that China is both modernizing and having unique problems associated with that modernization.

The full story can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/world/asia/13abortion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

That being said, there was an interesting press release out of China today concerning death rates during childbirth. The Chinese Ministry of Health’s deputy minister issued a statement saying that it will be a priority to lower the rate of death during childbirth. The report put the causes down to two things: the choice of women to either stay at home and use the services of a midwife, or the choice of women to go to a private clinic for services. The deputy minister made a statement that promised a crackdown of clinics that do not meet state standards and an effort to do away with any individual, private practice of midwifery. The report said that 50% of childbirth deaths were to be found in Jiangxi province alone.

If you can read Chinese, then the press release can be found here:

http://www.moh.gov.cn/newshtml/18891.htm

If you can’t read Chinese, then I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Why I Am Insecure

I – and almost all of the women I have ever met under the age of 50 – are incredibly insecure about themselves. For years I have struggled to understand the possible causes for this, including the reasons for my own insecurity about my looks. Since about the age of 13, when I started refusing to eat anything other than oranges and cereal in order to look like a supermodel, I have had body issues. And face issues. But am I alone in this – as I thought for the majority of my teenage years?

Hell, no.

In fact, the entire beauty and fashion and modern celebrity industry is based on women like me. We buy the products, we scour the magazines, we watch the TV commercials and the movies and we all think the same thing:

“Why on earth don’t I look like THAT??”

And then secretly, horribly, we all have a secondary thought which goes something like:

“Maybe that cream REALLY DOES WORK.” or “Maybe I WOULD look good in that outfit.” or “How does Halle Berry DO it?”

The sad thing is that most women are by nature competitive with each other, whether or not we want to admit to it. No truthful woman can go into a yoga class without checking out how the woman next to her looks in her spandex outfit. Can she do the splits? Damnit. Is she younger than me? Shit. But most important of all is – is she prettier than me?

Because we have all done the math and it goes like this:

Pretty woman = good life. Or so we tell ourselves. But is that necessarily so? Of course not. But that’s not even the POINT anymore, is it? Because it’s what we TELL ourselves that matters and what we secretly tell ourselves is that the above equation is absolutely, 100% true. This is why we simply CANNOT believe it when a gorgeous woman gets trampled on. Ethan Hawke had the gall to cheat on Uma Thurman? What was he thinking?

And this pattern of thought, my male friends, is what drives women insane.

Because it seems as though no matter what we do, or how good we look, it is never, ever good enough. Nope. Even gorgeous women – and I’ve known a few – complain about how big their stomachs are, how poochy. When in reality you would need a caliper to measure the miniscule amount of pooch they are talking about. It is all in our heads.

But who put it there?

We read an article today (in Chinese – BTW) that said that Hong Kong women spend more on cosmetic products than any other city in Asia. Which, in short, adds up to A LOT. Why? Now I have not gone out on the street and taken a poll, but just from my classmates discussion I can tell that it is basically the same instinct. That we all know in the real world, the better looking, the better the body, the nicer the clothes, the sexier the attitude, the smarter you are, the wittier you are, the raunchier you are, the more fun you can be —- the better the choice of man you’re going to have.

Does it really boil down to this?

I think it does. And even when you’ve got a man – i.e. married – it doesn’t stop. And why? Because 75% of men cheat. That’s why.

As for me, I think I have daddy-didn’t-love-me issues that I couldn’t fill up even if Robbie Williams, Orlando Bloom and John Taylor of Duran Duran were ALL vying for my love at the same moment in time. I kid you not.

I know this because I am a glutton for self-image punishment. I still secretly go out on auditions for modeling jobs here and there – and every once in awhile I get a booking (which if you read my posts I actually turn down). What is all this about? And why – after all these years of modeling or being a model/actress wanna-be – do I still care when I don’t get the job? Because of the competition aspect. Someone, somewhere out there is better than me. And this really burns me up. Even though I know for a FACT that OF COURSE people out there are better looking, more talented, smarter, funnier, etc., etc. Not necessarily all in the same package, but that is the trick, ladies and gents.

We actually want to believe that such perfection is possible.

And this somehow transcends being from a western country. Even Asian women want to be perfect. As if, even if we were, it would make a speck of difference to some of those hateful men that we secretly wish we had. The thing that women are supposed to have for bad boys really does exist on a certain level, much to my own dismay.

Anais Nin and Simone d’Beauvoir are spinning like rotisserie chickens in their graves right now people. Can women ever stop the hidden competition and get down to real business? I hope so. But I doubt it. Not as long as we have the E! network, Vogue magazine, Mac cosmetics and men as incredible as the ones I just mentioned (see above).