Sunday morning roundup, Part I

If you think the political rhetoric on rape is absurd stateside, India's will bring your head to the brink of explosion:

“I think that girls should be married at the age of 16, so that they have their husbands for their sexual needs, and they don’t need to go elsewhere,” the village leader, Sube Singh, told IBN Live, a news channel. “This way rapes will not occur.”

So maybe universities in the US can aspire to handle sexual assault at least somewhat better than Indian villages do. The competition is on. And maybe we can build the political will in this country to get rid of parental rights for rapists, now a despicable reality in 31 states. Don't forget to vote next Tuesday.

Tom Friedman reclaims what it really means to be pro-life.

***
Can we all just lay off the gifs? It's really distracting when you're trying to read otherwise worthwhile articles. In terms of the content of the article, once you get past the annoying gif, I couldn't agree more: anything billed as "one weird trick," whether its' for weight loss or finding love, is BS. I'd never clicked on the "one weird trick" ads, so I can't tell you what it was, but I can still confidently tell you it's BS. I have listened to a lot of "self-"help advice about dating, and I've come to find the "one thing" highly offensive, because it's usually blaming women for not sufficiently catering to men's egos. Search these pages for the review of "Celeste and Jesse Forever," [bottom line: fun movie, hilarious, great lines, but disturbing message of 'woman punished for not accommodating the man-child that is her husband'].

***
Tom Philpott on Ikaria:

The typical American impulse would be to identify some wonder substance driving the Ikarians' good health, concentrate it (if not synthesize it in a lab first), stick it in a pill, market it heavily—and then find out the wonder substance is all but worthless. We've learned that isolating nutrients, stripping away the context of their presence in whole foods, is not a recipe for health, as Michael Pollan showed in his In Defense of Food. Consuming beta carotene in the context of a carrot is good for you; gulping down a beta carotene pill, it turns out, not so much.

He goes on to talk about how easy it is for Ikarians to make healthful choices, because the infrastructure, so to speak, supports them. Everyone else is doing it, and the good stuff is easily available.

On a related note, someone at a party yesterday said to me, upon the hostess' referencing something I couldn't eat, "being vegan must be very hard." I should prepare a more articulate statement, and maybe have cards printed with the response. How much of the question is based on people's not realizing that they eat food that happens to be vegan all the time, without noticing? When the hostess had apologized that there wasn't anything vegan--she'd planned on making something but ran out of time--I reassured her that there was plenty of vegan food on her table (hummus, guacamole, salad, fruit, etc.). 

***

Jessica Bennett's clueless rant makes me roll my eyes, even though it's just a few years old. She entirely misses the point of fashion writing in general, and in particular, the genius of Robin Givhan's fashion writing, which so acutely captures the social significance of people's style choices. You might notice that nowhere in the original article does she criticize Elana Kagan; she just does what a fashion writer does: she observes (and writes up) what's different about her style and body language. I guess my position on this--Bennett's umbrage leaves me nonplussed--reflects the position I articulated yesterday: style matters, and so does body language. It's not the be-all-end-all, but it has an influence that can't be shamed away. It bothers me when people of either gender who command our attention display poor posture. And Givhan is absolutely right to point out that style choices can age you. And otherwise help define you to others. She puts it more artfully:

Tied up in the assessment of style -- Kagan's or anyone else's -- is the awkward, fumbling attempt to suss out precisely who a person is.

I feel the same way about Jezebel's umbrage over Victoria's Secret photoshopping. People selling stuff have been altering images since they could. How many of you have shopped for a house and found that actual houses look little like their corresponding photos in brochures? I'm not suggesting that advertising isn't offensive ever; I've seen all the "Killing Us Softly" films. But photoshopping stray hairs out of a picture and slightly altering the lighting is the least the marketers can do. Is it necessary to remove creases in flesh and make armpits look less unflattering? That's a debate we can have, but do you think anyone's going to get an armpit complex because of it?

And is this really true?

Regular consumers aren't in a position to be privy to that same information; that's the point. Photoshop in advertising is supposed to fool us into thinking that what's depicted is perfect — but real.

Please. Who is this so easily fooled "us"? And is the difference between the 'before' and 'after' photos significant enough to throw an otherwise mentally healthy person into a complex? Even Jezebel thinks not. In Fashionista's own words, "if you’re looking for an ego boost, look elsewhere." I'd add to that--in contextual paraphrase of another Jezebel article, already quoted a few times on these pages, "go read a book or something."

And in the words of a third (already excerpted above), "the commercially minded are selling a fantasy." And an easy fix to all that is lacking, in our minds. People selling us things are going to make it look like, in the absence of those things, we're ugly losers; that's their job. Our job is to roll our eyes and love ourselves the way we are. To realize that there's not 'one weird trick' that'll fix all our problems, not even if it gives us Doutzen Kroes' abs (which, by the way, are more formidable in the 'before' pictures).

And fashion writers are going to analyze the style choices of public figures, which includes putting those choices in context to better convey their meaning to the reader. That's their job. There is so much real misogyny out there to be upset about (see parental rights for rapists, above), and sure, minor cases of objectification do fit into a larger societal message of "women's bodies are not theirs." But let's pick our battles and not stifle reasonable commentary by crying 'sexist,' etc. at every turn.

***
Alright, all: I'd better bring the plants in and stuff. Then I'll get you whatever's good in the Post.