Tuesday morning roundup and ramble

I was not imagining things; even amid a shutdown, traffic still sucks.

We should be able to talk about religious beliefs the same way we talk about food choices: without having to explicitly articulate that we respect other people's beliefs and choices, because it goes without saying.

I was thinking about this last night, on my way home from interfaith meditation. I've been going, sporadically, over the last two years, and it's always worth it. It always works. One thing that sometimes surprises people--the moderator always asks the participants what surprised them--is how it was a meditation of a different faith that most resonated for them. It really varies; the first time I went, the Jewish meditation didn't work for me at all; last night, it really did, and it worked very well in conjunction with the Christian meditation that followed. Overwhelmingly, it's about connecting to something not only bigger than you but representative of the universe as a whole, and that representation takes whichever form you give it and whatever name you call it.

I have friends of various faiths and of no faith, and those friends differ not only in how strongly they identify with their faith on a personal level, but in the extent to which they make their spiritual beliefs part of their overall identity. A very good friend of mine goes to church every Sunday, but it was probably a year before I knew that she was Catholic.

It's not quite the same with food: you can't keep your eating habits private, on a social level, for long. Social events are often food events. Even though I don't generally call myself a vegan (and I didn't call myself a vegetarian--I just said that I didn't eat meat), not least because I don't like food habits as identity, other people (friends included) will push a food identity onto me. But, just like my very Catholic friend has no problem dating Jews or Hindus, but can't see herself connecting with an atheist on that level (yet, she does not judge; she has atheist friends), I would rather date, for example, an omnivore that loves food than a vegan who doesn't. Erik Marcus, @vegan himself, recently tweeted that "vegan" was a better label for food than for people. There's a fine line between something being a part of your identity and letting that thing define you.

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Adelle Waldman's essay on beauty is a bit rambling, but it's interesting. Toward the end, she touches on an interesting hypocrisy:

Beauty is often treated as an essentially feminine subject, something trivial and frivolous that women are excessively concerned with. Men, meanwhile, are typically seen as having a straightforward and uncomplicated relationship with it: they are drawn to it. The implication is that this may be unfortunate—not exactly ideal morally—but it can’t be helped, because it’s natural, biological. This seems more than a little ironic. Women are not only subject to a constant and exhausting and sometimes humiliating scrutiny—they are also belittled for caring about their beauty, mocked for seeking to enhance or to hold onto their good looks, while men are just, well, being men.

I've blogged about beauty before, twice with the same title--no, three times! And with other titles, too.

I simultaneously understand and don't understand our preoccupation with human beauty. I'm much more obsessed with natural beauty (i.e., mountains, oceans, stars), and I can honestly say that human beauty doesn't preoccupy me much. I like to take in the sight of Jon Hamm as much as the next straight woman, but then I'll move on. Unlike Tracy Moore and, apparently, all her friends, I have walked away from beautiful men whom I didn't want to date for other reasons.

Some of Waldman's guy friends can't seem to put beauty in perspective, but there are so many men who do. Seriously. And let me re-excerpt from my third "On Beauty" post:

I'm not going to go all beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder on you, but take it from these guys:

Mr. Campbell:

Woman is the guide to the sublime acme of sensuous adventure. By deficient eyes she is reduced to inferior states; by the evil eye of ignorance she is spellbound to banality and ugliness. But she is redeemed by the eyes of understanding. The hero who can take her as she is, without undue commotion but with the kindness and assurance she requires, is potentially the king, the incarnate god, of her created world.

 — The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Mr. Bernstein (in reference to his mother):

All sorts of men had rejected her when she was younger as cute but not beautiful. She wrote about it, turned it into a comic riff — everything is copy — but privately, it was heartbreaking for her until this noble man came along and made her feel that she was as fabulous to look at as she was to talk to.

Enough said.