Monday evening roundup: women, stars, and food

In some states, being subject to a restraining order doesn't mean you can't have guns.

In other f*ed up news, here's what a regional Indian official had to say about the sexual assault in Agra:

Over the weekend, a senior official in Madhya Pradesh told the Times of India that the Swiss couple erred by staying in a place where there is a higher ratio of men to women. “They apparently lost track and took a wrong turn and decided to halt for the night by the side of a village brook little realizing that the district with 85:100 men-to-women ratio is not the safest place for women,” he told the daily.

 
Zimbabwe arrests its opposition activists and human rights lawyers.

Ladies, is your tablet too androgynous for your needs? Would you prefer one customized for your special lady-habits, like dieting and make-up?

I love Heather Havrilesky's article on TV's new heroines, even as I'm not sure I agree with it. Some excerpts:  

Yet here, too, an alarming number of accomplished women are also portrayed as spending most of their waking hours swooning like lovesick tweens — whether it’s Emily on “Emily Owens, M.D.” (a knowledgeable doctor who loses focus whenever her super-dreamy crush enters the room), the title character of “Whitney” (a garrulous photographer who is nonetheless fixated on her looks and her ability to keep attractive romantic rivals away from her man), or Mindy of “The Mindy Project” (a highly paid ob-gyn who’s obsessed with being too old and not pretty enough to land a husband). Even a classical comedic heroine like Liz Lemon on “30 Rock” is frequently reduced to flailing and squirming like an overcaffeinated adolescent. The moral of many of these shows doesn’t seem so far off from that of those fatalistic female-centric magazine features that seem to run every few months; something along the lines of, “You can’t have it all, ladies, and you’ll run yourself ragged if you even try.”

Maybe it's just me, but I find Mindy and Liz very relatable (except that they're a whole lot more successful than I am; if success is their excuse for having a mess of a personal life, what's my excuse?) So I can't agree with this assessment:

Time and again, we, the audience, are cast in the role of morally superior observers to these nut jobs. At times we might relate to a flash of anger, a fit of tears, a sudden urge to seduce a stranger in a bar, but we’re constantly being warned that these behaviors aren’t normal. They render these women out of step with the sane world.

But I do really like the personal note on which she ends the piece:

“All smart women are crazy,” I once told an ex-boyfriend in a heated moment, in an attempt to depict his future options as split down the middle between easygoing dimwits and sharp women who were basically just me with different hairstyles. By “crazy,” I only meant “opinionated” and “moody” and “not always as pliant as one might hope.” I was translating my personality into language he might understand — he who used “psycho-chick” as a stand-in for “noncompliant female” and he whose idea of helpful counsel was “You’re too smart for your own good,” “my own good” presumably being some semivegetative state of acceptance which precluded uncomfortable discussions about our relationship.

Over the years, “crazy” became my own reductive shorthand for every complicated, strong-willed woman I met. “Crazy” summed up the good and the bad in me and in all of my friends. Whereas I might have started to recognize that we were no more crazy than anyone else in the world, instead I simply drew a larger and larger circle of crazy around us, lumping together anyone unafraid of confrontation, anyone who openly admitted her weaknesses, anyone who pursued agendas that might be out of step with the dominant cultural noise of the moment. “Crazy” became code for “interesting” and “courageous” and “worth knowing.” I was trying to have a sense of humor about myself and those around me, trying to make room for stubbornness and vulnerability and uncomfortable questions.

But I realize now, after watching these crazy characters parade across my TV screen, that there’s self-hatred in this act of self-subterfuge. “Our future depends on the sanity of each of us,” Rich writes, “and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”

That I can definitely relate to.

Telescopes have been around for a long time. You may be thinking, "you've jumped themes here! how is this supposed to make women cringe?" Well, did you know that the Ancient Greeks explained the Milky Way as Hera's spilt breast milk? One story has it that Heracles bit down too hard, which is what woke her. Ouch. Other mythological explanations here.

While we're on the topic of the heavens: solar flares have the potential to wreak havoc on earth. 

While we're on the topic of physical sciences: particle physicists are really f*ing up-in-arms about the whole "God particle" thing. They really hate that $hit. 


Surprise! Industrial food lacks flavor. One unexpected takeaway from that article is that TVP (what they call HVP, which I'm guessing is the same thing) can be more flavorful than animal meat. I don't use TVP a lot--I'm a genuine fan of real food--but sometimes it hits the spot. Similarly, I don't use isolated gluten a lot, but I don't eschew it, as this guy recommends. The bigger issue with that advice is the very concept of "never" foods: apart from, say, cyanide and polonium, there is really no such thing as a 'never' food. Rice cakes may not be great for you, but the occasional one is certainly not going to hurt you. I find this "never" concept fundamentally damaging--and this is coming from someone who never eats meat and only eats dairy when she can't help it, i.e., when traveling. But go ahead and eat seitan; don't fear it. I don't make it often because it's one of those foods--along with popcorn--for which I have no sense of portion control. I can dispatch four of five servings in one sitting. Just yesterday, to indulge my seitan craving without making myself vulnerable to the temptation of eating it all at once, I made the chickenless nuggets as chickenless patties (without the crunchy corn-flake coating). This was more because I wanted to have them for lunch for the workweek, and the coating would get soggy. Anyway, they turned out deliciously. All this to say, don't eschew the gluten.

Are you f*ing kidding me? Just make your own baby food. Take 15 minutes to cook your own organic quinoa. Or your own organic sweet potato.

While we're singing the praises of plant foods: type-2 diabetics can eat fruit.

Lastly but not leastly: why people write.