Monday roundup and ramble

We all agree that "it must stop," but there's no need to judge or pile it on when a baby dies in a hot car.

Bill Keller parses the immigration bill (and some misguided reactions to it) so you don't have to.

Will diesels surpass electric cars as the sustainable vehicles of choice?

All joking aside--and I do love "Idiocracy"--I very much frown upon making statements about who should and shouldn't reproduce. Until people who can't put two sentences together in a comment  make those kinds of statements. An example: "in vitro isnot ok with me, because these women r uncapable for a reason.. maybe its not just the fertilization process, but in fact, tjeir body blocked them for reprodution because they got someting else.. sorry ahahaha." Yeah, let's make her the arbiter of what's okay.

Wow:

NOPE. NO WAR ON WOMEN HERE. #MoveAlong #NothingToSee RT @ConnieSchultz Good Lord. pic.twitter.com/AO2oyHBFAf
— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) July 8, 2013

Two mysteries, the more complicated of which is resolved (while the more mundane remains). I, too, have wondered about the lack of hotel toothpaste (and about floating astronauts, of course).

***
"Happy" started out strong but could have been better. It got lost in anecdotal evidence--and those stories were very inspiring (a South Asian rickshaw driver who lives in a shack is as happy as the average American) or depressing (there's a Japanese word for people who died from work), but after half an hour, I didn't feel like I was watching a coherent movie. Which is too bad, because the movie makes some excellent points: happiness is internally driven (strong relationships (family, friends, etc.), personal growth (learning, getting better at our skills, etc.) and giving back make us happy; chasing status and superficiality (appearance, money--after a certain threshold) does not). The film also talks about the importance of how we react to adversity: it hits all of us, to varying degrees, and it's how we handle it that determines how happy we are.

I can buy into all of that, or almost all of it, but I have to address one thing: they should have made the same nuance they made about money--some matters--about appearance. I know people who are miserable because of the way they look. Now, the film was making the point that buying more makeup to get the perfect painted face is a lost cause (at least I think it was, based on the images on the screen when they talked about it), but I would have appreciated a more thorough discussion.

I feel the need to get into this because beauty, like fat, is a feminist issue. And women who self-identify as feminists often feel bad feeling bad about weight (and appearance in general), which is even more self-defeating than merely feeling bad about the weight or appearance. So I'm going to come out and admit, again, that I feel better--I am happier--thin. Not because I think it makes me more attractive to men (we've discussed that, too: men are attracted to all kinds of body types) but because it feels right for me. If all the dudes in the world all of the sudden decided that size 10 was the new hotness, I would still feel better as a size 0, because that's what feels right for me. I'm not saying anyone else will (or should) feel the same way; if you are happy at whatever size, more power to you. Really. I probably think you look awesome at your size. I just don't think I look awesome above size 0-2. I. am. happier. thin. F* you if you think that makes me a bad feminist. I don't care what you think. (Especially) if you're a guy, I don't care if you would have found me more attractive when I was a 4-6. It didn't feel right to me, it didn't feel right for me. I tried to get used to it and I just couldn't. Of course, I'm happier at a size 0 largely because I can eat whatever I want and stay a size 0; if I had to, say, eat paleo, I'd be miserable (I'd rather be a size anything than eat paleo). But I get to eat pasta and chocolate and oatmeal and tofu and fruit, and drink wine, so I am happy. Come to think of it, it was when I became vegan--and ate whatever I wanted within the confines of vegan--that I felt happier. And it was then that the pounds started sloughing off.

All this to say, appearance can make you happy or unhappy. I mean, I'm sure obsessing over appearance will make you unhappy. But what it probably comes down to is looking yourself--and myself, in my head, has (have?) always been 0-2 rather than 4-6 (and that's a 20-pound difference, the upper limits of which still isn't overweight). It's what looks and feels right to me, and I'm not going to feel bad about feeling good about it.