Fuck your fascist beauty standards, OR, Nike and my ass

My ass is amazing. It's not really a big ass proportional to my chubby body, but it's not a tight little tiny ass either. My partner's got a nice ass, too, and I think his is cuter. Body image is tricky, and I know no one who has sailed into a positive body image, regardless of our relative sizes or shapes or genders. So when I saw this post when it was shared by a friend on Google Reader, I bristled. Yes, I like images that support women, our body images, our agency, and our needs. But no, this ad doesn't do that, nor does the little bit of commentary around it.

Stop using my body to sell things. When you're saying nice things about my lovely ass, or when you're telling me it's too big, shaped funny, doesn't look good in these jeans, whatever, you're still using my body as an object to pump up your bottom line.

Between the model's skin and hair color and the fact that the ad is about her ass, Nike clearly means for us to assume it's a Latina ass they're objectifying. Great, because women of color don't have enough media attention focused on their bodies? (My mind is a puzzling place, but this called to mind Queen Emily's post from last year about visibility and invisibility, particularly this quote:  "...to whom is one visible, and why? Under what circumstances, and in what light?") Hyperfocused approving attention is not an antidote for hyperfocused disapproving attention. The point is that we pay attention to the bodies of women of color in a way that is overly sexualized, fetishizing, and creepy.

To add more race fail, the model is wearing a cutoff tank top and too-small spandex shorts. If you're so proud of her ass, why is she wearing shorts a few sizes too small? Do you not make them bigger? The cutoff tank top looks like something out of a sexy version of West Side Story, complete with people (especially women) of color wearing clothes that are too-tight, "urban," and torn. Her hands are wrapped like she's boxing or overly prepared for a streetfight. (In productions of West Side Story, including the 1961 movie, the white "jets" wear light, cool colors and are prim and proper with tucked-in shirts and clean sneakers. The Puerto Rican "sharks" wear warm colors, torn clothes, black jeans, and boots.) 

She's standing on her toes. Her shoes are flat sneakers, made for running and jumping and doing athletic things, and she is standing on her toes, as if she's in high heels. What are high heels for? Oh, to make our calves and asses look better. (Or to make us totter like we need assistance crossing the street. I love my high heels, but that doesn't negate the sexism of their cultural significance.)

The post's author opines that this ad is "exactly the type of message that women need to hear and see." Oh, so the author is a woman, perhaps a woman of color as the model appears to be, who has struggled with body image issues and is relieved to see a positive, butt-approving ad, right? No. The author appears to be a moderately sized trim white dude, and his blog is about fitness and being a personal trainer. Please, sir, tell me more about what I need to hear and see. (To be fair, he says it's what he "thought" when he first saw the ad, and he didn't state it as objective fact. Fine, whatever, he can have half a point back.)

At the end of the post, the author writes, "I’m so sick and tired of seeing models with no ass, no muscle, and no shape being touted as the ideal 'look' for women to aspire for.  Why not just get a 2×4 and put a dress on it?" Aside from the fact that the woman in the ad still has a figure that is unattainable for the vast majority of women, why do we have to hate on skinny women? Eating disorders and unhealthy body images are not just the business of fat women. Some of the smartest body image talk I've heard came from a friend who battled an eating disorder for a good part of her life. She told a story about grabbing available food for lunch on her way out of the house to go to her job at a feminist health clinic one day. As she sat down to eat the cheesesticks and tofurky that were the easiest thing to bring with her and eat on a short lunch break, a coworker of hers began bemoaning how she could never eat so little and not be hungry, and she wishes she was as skinny as my friend. That is not a compliment; that is not helpful. It took years for my friend to gain weight, and even more years to be ok with the fact that she did. And clothes shopping is still a trigger, and cooking is a trigger, and eating in front of other people is a trigger. Let's quit with the question of who has it worse. Any "perfect" size is still going to be oppressive for every woman who isn't that size (and is likely oppressive for that woman as well).

I know, I know, it's a Nike ad. It shouldn't be touted as the new perfect ad campaign, but what more do I expect for products made in sweatshops that exploit workers (who are often women and/or people of color)? How about this? "these were made in a cooperatively owned factory" or "we pay a living wage, support a unionized workforce, and would like for you to buy our products, thanks." Maybe "these shorts will keep you from chafing" or "these shoes provide great arch support." That might convince me to buy an overpriced pair of shorts or shoes. But "hey, look! New standard of beauty, complete with new and improved racism and sexism"? No, that's not going to sell me anything.

Lo mein om nom nom

Knowing very little about traditional Asian foods of any sort, it took some doing not to trip over myself when googling "how to make homemade chinese lo mein noodles from scratch" and various iterations thereof. Since the google* only came up with various recipes that don't involve making the actual noodles, I asked the facebook. And the facebook had an answer. A guy that was a friend of a friend in college sent me a link to the video embedded below. It was amazing. The recipe is also listed, but the woman's technique is interesting to watch. Also, the username is "cookingwithdog," which makes more sense when you note the tiny adorable poodle sitting on the counter throughout the whole video. When the recipe was recommended, I was told that Bread Flour for Bread Machines has the same protein content and count be substituted for the udon flour. I ended up using unbleached all-purpose flour because my bread flour is whole wheat.


You can see the original recipe at the link, so here's how I did it. (Yes, I weighed/measured my ingredients and then poured them into measuring things to figure out the U.S. measurements.)


1 1/2 cups flour (preferably flour with 9-9.5% protein content)
1 tbs salt
1/2 cup water
Corn starch to sprinkle liberally


Dissolve salt into water. Measure flour into a separate container. Add the water about 1/3 c or so at a time. It will get flaky, then the last bit of water should get it into a dough. I was afraid that mine was way too watery, but after kneading it for a bit that took care of itself.


Once dough is doughlike (smooth, cohesive, not watery), sprinkle corn starch on it if necessary and put it in a freezer bag or between pieces of cling wrap. Roll it out with a rolling pin as much as you can, then coil the cough up like a jelly roll, turn it, and do it again. This is basically a way of kneading it. Do that several times (I think I did about 5), then shape it into a ball and leave it in the plastic bag. Fold over the end of the bag, but do not seal it. I let it sit for about 20 minutes (but you'll see the recipe suggests much longer). The dough had a different texture than other pasta doughs I've made, but it wasn't too tough to work with.


After it rests, roll it out again (and be generous with the corn starch). I used my hand-crank pasta machine to make it as thin as I could, then sliced it into strips. Watch her method for this -- it involves folding the dough on itself (with help from more corn starch) and slicing off the ends. This worked well, but they came out more like linguine than I was hoping for.


Boil water for the noodles, but reduce the heat to a parboil (about medium) before putting the noodles in. They cook pretty fast, but I was so occupied making constant batches that I don't really know how fast. I had some dough left over, so I'm going to try to freeze it. We'll see how that goes.


Since I was scooping the pasta out instead of straining the whole pot (I wanted to keep it boiling to do more batches), I dried the noodles out by putting them in a cast iron pan on low heat. Since I was ready to cook with them, I added a bit of oil and soy sauce, and they lost the extra water. I cooked some chicken in teriyaki sauce and a spoonful of garlic-ginger paste, then added the noodles back in. Delish.





*Yes I'm aware of what it's called. My partner's gramma often asks him "What's the google" and I think it's funny.

My fatal flaw

I am utterly unable to do things that I do not enjoy. In rare cases, I can do things I do not enjoy if I really really care about the outcome. These things are rare.


Things that I do not enjoy are:
-dating boring people
-taking boring classes
-writing useless papers
-memorizing things (other than through repeated use)


Things that I don't always enjoy but will do because I see the value
-dishes
-eating meals
-showering
-writing gift acknowledgments (for work)


This affects my grad school plans greatly. At several points in my life, I planned to go to law school. I would make an awesome lawyer, but I would tear all my hair out by the end of my 1L year. I would hate the work, hate the tediousness, hate my classmates, and hate all the things you have to do to be "successful" in law school, like working on law journals and getting internships and stuff. One of my coworkers/mentors keeps telling me to get an MBA. This morning, in an email thread about our jobs' changing descriptions, he wrote: "I'll say it again, with an MBA, you'd be dangerous, in a good way." But I don't think I could make it through a class of Rah Rah Capitalism, let alone an entire program.


I wish that I was one of those people who could get through law school or business school because sometimes you have to know the system to fuck it up. I'm just not interested. I can has PhD in Savetheworld, pls?

The secret to a happy relationship

Today is my two-year anniversary with my fabulous amazing partner Ethan. I just got all teary reading his "happy anniversary to us" post on his blog, so I decided to post my own. There will be more thinky thoughts, but here's what's on my mind to begin with.

-Good relationships are no accident. Sometimes bad relationships are accidents. My bad relationships have often been ones that shouldn't have started or should've ended sooner, and there are a host of reasons people stay in bad (and/or abusive) relationships. But good relationships take work. We're a good match -- our personalities blend well but are pretty different, our politics are very similar, we're aware of the things we love about each other, we have similar levels of and theories on emotional responsibility, and we caught a spark at exactly the right time in each of our lives. We're also buoyed by family and friends who love us individually and together. It's lucky, and there are a lot of happy coincidences, but it's not on accident. We've gotten really good at processing and communicating.

-Neither of us grew up in a two-parent family. My mom has always worried that this will somehow be a detriment to my growing up and having a successful relationship, so she tried to get me to recognize other coupleships and how they work. Of course, that also meant hetero relationships, which E and I are not. I fall easily into housewifery in a way that doesn't work for me. (I get that it's something that works for some folks, and I'm sure parts of it work for me. But I fight with conditioning vs my personal beliefs and abilities, which makes me feel like drowning.) Anyway, two-parent families sounds like there would always be a superfluous parent. It's foreign to me, and I find that funny.

-I think it was almost a year ago when E and I visited our friend Zeek in Asheville. He had gotten out of a relationship a few months earlier and was in a new one that he was really excited about. He asked us what the secret to a happy relationship is. I believe I said "I'm smart enough to know how awesome he is" and E said "chocolate."

-I get anxious sometimes, and I need more reassurance than I'd like to. E deals with this well, knowing when he's not in an emotional place to be convincing me of what I already know. He said something the other day that I should get tattooed to my forehead: "I'm with you because of you, not because you beat out the competition -- which you do. I'm with you because I love you for you."

Damn I'm lucky. Happy anniversaweek to me and my hunny, who's more brilliant than the sun, sweeter than dates, cooler than a polar bear, and hotter than pure capsaicin.

Bicycles and Couple-Friends

Since I moved to Athens a bit over a year ago, I've followed my best couple-friends into half a dozen hobbies. These couple-friends are two guys my partner has been friends with for years. They've been together about 9 months longer than we have, but we have some adorable parallels. My partner Earth is remarkably similar to Gala, making Gala a fantastic person to get advice from and to process with. Gala's partner Kiwi has similar emotional patterns to me, especially being fantastic at worrying. All four of us are crafty, and the three of them have some interest in video games (which have never interested me). Kiwi and I like having projects going all the time, and I've followed him into amigurumi crochet, sewing, house decorating, and other random things.

This summer, the new hobby is bicycling. Earth likes bikes, but we live just at the bottom of a giant hill that leads to pretty much the entire rest of our town. When Gala started diving into bikes, it didn't take long for Earth to trade his odd-repairs-needed vintage cruiser in for a normal-repairs-needed vintage cruiser. Gala and I are similar heights with disproportionally short legs, so when he found a bike that fit better than the one he bought the week before, I was happy to buy it from him for exactly what he'd paid.  Our bikes are almost identical, with his being older and more definitively vintage and mine being from the year I was born. They're Peugeots -- mine is red, his is white. Mine is named Penny Peugeot.

I love riding my bike. It's crazy fun, and it's not as exhausting as it used to be. I think I've gotten smarter about doing what I can and not doing what I can't -- and not beating myself up for it either way. I'm wary of even slight upward inclines because I don't want anything to turn me off of biking. Gala and Kiwi both research a lot when they start getting interested in something, so Gala has been spending a bit of time on biking forums. One is a women's biking forum that he enjoys because it lacks the bravado of macho forums with hardcore bike messengers and whatnot. Another is for fat folks. He told me earlier that the moderator of the latter has started a self-deprecating blog where he can be humiliated into losing weight.

It seems there is no place for people, especially fat people, to talk about being active without talking about weight loss. Places without weight loss talk aren't places where we can talk about things like worrying about looking funny or getting looks from people. Places for fat people turn out like the above. We're toying with the idea of making t-shirts -- possibly biking jerseys -- that say Team Fatty in pink. Perhaps with a clydesdale theme, because apparently people who are tall or otherwise big and ride bikes are called clydesdales.

In any case, there are at least four of us who identify as fat folks and who are riding bikes with no concern for our weight.



*I've decided that first initials are kinda boring, so I'm going to use a word that starts with the appropriate letter instead.

Turtle Crossing!

I'm gonna need to figure out a pattern to make this. It is AMAZING.

Turtle Crossing Hat!

National Macaroni Day

It's National Macaroni Day! Who knew? Certainly not me, but owing to my heritage, I feel the need to celebrate. WOOHOO!

Now go play over here (where all content is obviously not mine, just a cool blog with multi-colored macaroni).

Cupcakes!

I made cupcakes for my friend Emily's birthday/farewell party on Saturday night. I used her grandmother's cake recipe for the cupcakes and a basic cream cheese icing recipe* for the icing. I also got an icing caulk gun for about $9 from Target (a cheaper version of this one) and used princess theme cupcake papers with pink sugar sprinkles. The cupcakes were a giant hit, and everyone got to try a small one before we sang happy birthday and ate the big ones.

The picture is blurry because I accidentally dipped the camera part of the phone in the icing on the ride over...and then licked it off.

Then I cleaned the camera off and took this hilariously intense picture. There are also several pictures of people eating cupcakes gleefully.

Success!


*Beat 8 oz. cold cream cheese (not rock solid, but it means you can use it straight out of the refrigerator) with 5 Tbsp. softened butter and 2 tsp. vanilla until combined. Gradually add 2 c. powdered sugar that has been sifted after measuring. Continue to add more sifted powdered sugar until you reach a consistency and sweetness that fits your taste.

USSF: Day 1

The good--  
I went to the USSF expecting to be the most privileged, conservative person in the room -- in every room. I was likely among the more privileged, but my politics were more progressive. I was happy to find that E was one of the few people to the left of me. My first take-home lesson is this -- having the time and opportunity to organize is a gift, a luxury, and a privilege. Spending time on articulation and vocabulary and shades of gray are important to me, but they, too, are a luxury that people in crisis (and/or people who have limited time/energy/resources) may not want to spend time on. As someone who finds it important to ally to oppressed communities, this is a reason to focus less on thorough articulation, and be willing to move quickly towards action. I'm not saying that people who need to move quickly should be left out of planning -- absolutely not. But we should be aware and careful of constraints people have that could keep them out of a planning/strategy process before it even begins. Not being available for productive navel-gazing isn't the same as not having important things to contribute.

The bad--  

"Consciousness-Raising Strategies for Middle-Class Young Adults" sounded like a way for me to learn about cultivating progressive consciences among my Emory friends. I was wrong. The workshop was run by people who work for Americorps-like programs, the Lutheran Volunteer Corps and the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. The whole thing was "young adults" as recent college grads, "middle-class" as people who can afford to volunteer for a year, and "consciousness-raising" as volunteering with a modicum of conscience. They had us start with thinking about a time when we felt our own consciousness was raised, then they put on a flipchart characteristics that we each identified about those situations. These were overwhelmingly classist, pitied others, denied others' dignity, and were only about looking at people without your particular privileges and thinking that their lives must just suck. When I brought up that it seems like we were all talking about "learning" through looking down on others, they wrote that up on the board with the rest, with no conversation about the theme everyone was working through. The pinnacle was when one middle-aged white guy said that the experiences all seem to be when you can "feel someone else's pain." When the facilitators tried to make that relevant and less fail-ful by saying "when you can empathize" and he insisted that he meant that you could literally physically feel someone else's pain. I was lucky to have had a sharing partner who was just as shaken up by this monstrous fail, and we talked afterwards to try to process. The programs do pretty much what is expected -- pay people very little, make them volunteer, have weekly processing meetings, and promote poverty tourism. It's what's expected. So why were they at USSF? I expected to be challenged and pushed towards a broader and better view of the world, but I wasn't.

Other details--  

• One speaker who works with the Domestic Workers Alliance (not sure of the exact name) made the point that we need to be careful about the differences between how we view people and how they view themselves. Many of the women she works with are immigrant women of color who are exempt from labor laws. They view themselves as independent, upwardly mobile entrepreneurs, making a life in a new country. It is equally true that they are some of the most exploited workers in American and the next hope for organizing workers.
• For an alternate view on movement research, check the Institute for Policy Studies. (I'm just now checking it out, so this is a note, not an endorsement.)
• Storytelling is a way of research and knowledge production
• Zapatista quote: "If you have come here to help us, go home. If you have come because our struggle is your own, let's go."