Posts filed under ‘quotes’
I Have Boobs, Deal With It.
Sing it, Meghan McCain!
So by now most of us are already over the non-controversy regarding Meghan McCain and a certain chesty twit pic. However it is her response today in the Daily Beast that really intrigues me as it seems to encapsulate the struggles that all well-endowed women face. So McCain posted a picture of herself on twitter sporting vaguely porny looking cleavage. She claimed it was in preparation for her big night in that involved a good book and some takeout. Now I don’t know a 20 something female who would post and unflattering or dowdy picture of herself on the internet and as Broadsheet pointed out, “What do they think young Republican women wear to bed? Lanz of Salzburg?” OK, so posting a megaboobs shot of yourself online might be vaguely tacky (however again, I challenge you to find me a 20-something female who doesn’t have at least one vaguely saucy pic of herself on Facebook) but to be called a slut over it? What century are we in?
McCain says she has, “struggled to accept the fact that the way I look in a tank top comes off more “sexual” than a flat-chested woman.” I can totally relate here, there are some styles smaller chested women can wear without stares that I just can’t pass off without looking like Marilyn Monroe. Although it can be a nuisance at time, I’ve always ultimately thought of it as a nice problem to have. I do my best to dress appropriately for the situation I’m in, try to keep it all “tucked in” and not flash people in public, but in the end… I have boobs. They’re big, sometimes people are going to notice them. I’m not going to go around wearing turtlenecks every day or uncomfortable chest minimizing bras just because some people can’t handle the sight of a fully grown woman.
What’s up with people behaving as if having large or noticeable breasts is a sign of promiscuity? Last time I checked, there was no correlation between cup size and number of sexual partners and if there is… boy did I miss out when I was single. It doesn’t work the opposite way, people don’t look at women with small breasts and think, “Oh, she must be such a prude.” Why do we look at a woman who has larger breasts, breasts that are often more visible than the breasts of a smaller woman and automatically think that she’s a slut just because her body’s doing what it does naturally?
Although breasts are highly fetishized in our culture, the fact is that they serve a very practical evolutionary purpose; feeding human babies. Unless you have a lactation fetish, that’s just about the least sexual thing I can think of. Having large breasts is not an invitation for people to stare, comment or think ill of my character any more than having a large nose or ears would be. Living with the body I was born with and feeling comfortable in it, comfortable enough to not want to hide behind boxy clothing doesn’t make me, or Meghan McCain a slut. And while we’re at it, I’m so done with slut shaming. What’s a slut? Anyone who’s had more sex than you have? I’m tired of the word slut. I’m a slut, you’re a slut, we’re all sluts. Why in this day and age do we really think it is our business to comment on who or how many people anybody else is sleeping with anyway?
Meghan McCain says she’s proud of her curves, but like so much of her other writing, I feel that she gets close to making a great point and then backs off it in the end. She says she’s not perfect and that she’s still “making mistakes” and that she says she’s, “learned a valuable lesson about the internet and boundaries” and hopes, “other girls can learn from this episode.” Learning to draw the line between the internet and real life is a valuable lesson for sure, but in the end is this a lesson about being who you are, critics be damned, or covering up and shutting up when a few assholes pull out the S word? After all, McCain did threaten to take down her twitter page after the whole incident, something she has never done when the media has repeatedly called her fat. Why is it that a tiny four lettered word like slut has the power to make a confident woman like McCain consider silencing herself? Why is it that we use the word slut so often to defame, discredit and shut down young women?
It’s something to think about. In the mean time, don’t you even think about calling me and my C cups slutty. Unless, of course, you mean it in a good way.
Wake Up America
The following is my final paper for my graduate class in Urban Education. The assignment was to define problems and solutions in urban education. I decided to write it blog style, cuz that’s how I roll.
Our schools are racist. America’s educational system is not a meritocracy where success is open to all who work hard, it is a factory attempting to crank out one size fits all education that ignores the individual talents, needs and backgrounds of our students. Our students are not mechanical cogs, they’re people and when we deem them deficient, or “failing” we’re leaving them behind, doing the exact opposite of what all this educational reform is supposed to do. Think I’m just some ranty liberal bringing in the Bush administration on trumped up charges? Think again. Test fraud, creative number crunching and ignoring the children who need help the most (as well as allowing our most talented children to languish) in favor of pushing the “bubble” kids to pass the test is well documented. No Child Left Behind is not working. Even Fox News agrees with me on this one.
96% of our nation’s teachers are white. The overwhelming majority of us went into our profession with the desire to do good and educate children from all walks of life. We’re not white supremacists who enter the classroom with a desire to subjugate those who are different from us in fact, many of us take offense to the idea that our schools and our teaching styles are based on racist assumptions.
Whether or not our schools and teachers purposely support educational policies that are harmful to students of color, we are a part of a complex, invisible web that tells us “white is right” and that an individual’s ticket to success in life is dependent on her ability to acclimate to the white middle class world. The widespread misconception that white middle class culture is the ideal to aspire to is not isolated to the school system. This invisible web is all around us, in our school systems, our political systems, our job market, entertainment, the arts, everywhere imaginable. Yet for those of us who grew up white and middle class, it goes largely unnoticed and undiscussed. It is accepted that the end goal of all who are not like us is to be more like us. We may even feel passionately that it is our job as educators to help our students to gain access to this world so that they may live in prosperity. There are so few examples of successful people who have retained their non-white cultural identity that we assume that a non-white cultural identity is a hinderance to success that must be shed. Very few people living in this invisible web of privilege see the fact that it isn’t the individual that’s the problem, it’s the system. Even if educators can see the problem, we feel very little power to be a part of the solution. How are we supposed to be effective teachers of minority children in a political climate where we can be sent to jail for speaking a child’s native language to them?
The biggest hinderance to today’s educational system is that educators are not in control of our educational system, politicians are and they rely on knee jerk reactionist rhetoric to rally their bases and get re-elected. Think racism isn’t an implicit norm in our culture? Check out the new these days. Consider the following clip of Pat Buchanan on Rachel Maddow blasting Sotomayor for “learning English by reading children’s books” as if it disqualifies her from her supreme court nomination and talking about how America was “built by white men” so therefor white men deserve a larger slice of the power and privilege pie (check out Maddow’s eloquent response to his douchebaggery here):
Um, Pat? Did you forget the millions of African slaves who helped build this country? (including the white house!) Or how about the Chinese who aided western expansion by building America’s railroad? Or the leigons of Eastern European immigrants who became the workforce of the Industrial Revolution? What about the farm workers from South and Central America who keep our plates full today? Their work is feeding the people of our country, keeping our factories humming, building our roads and our bridges. I would say that counts as “building America”. According to Pat, they don’t deserve a slice of the pie. Because people of color and those who speak English as a second language aren’t “real” Americans, “real” Americans are white guys in suits with corporate jobs. Yeah, just like Bernie Madoff or those guys from Enron. They were doing a service for the American people, right? In a world where these types of racist assumptions often go unquestioned how can we build an equitable education system?
What’s the solution to this problem? Number one: Put educators in charge of education, not politicians. This is not an easy task. For the best of our nation’s teachers, the classroom is where the heart is. They’d rather be in the trenches with their students every day despite this broken system, than battling it out on Beacon Hill. Well my fellow teachers, we’re just going to have to go outside our comfort zone. It is unacceptable that a businessman like Ron K. Unz, could help get a law against bilingual education passed that was not based on any research about how the human brain aquires language and develops fluency. This law has seriously impacted the job that we teachers do in the classroom every day and we were powerless to stop it or give input on how we believe bilingual students should be taught in the first place. This has to change.
More teachers need to run for school committees, city council and local and state government. We need to be there when the decisions are being made. As teachers, we need to see ourselves as vital in the shaping of policy, not simply as civil servants or people who are not in the place to decide what’s best for “other people’s children”. We need to view our profession with pride. Teaching is an art and a science and we must approach it at as such. Our level of training and education qualifies us to call the shots, not special interest groups. Until we feel entitled to shape policy and take steps to do so very little will change.
I would like to see a grassroots organization that uses technology to help activate a base of teachers, students and concerned citizens to take action on issues that are relevant to our schools. Sort of like a moveon.org for education reform. With this as a tool it would be simple to attend meetings of like minded people, circulate petitions, start letter writing campaigns to our elected officials and attend rallies. Teachers and their allies need to be empowered to take action together on matters of importance and we need a structure to do this in. Web based technology moves fast, is cheap to set up and maintain, and makes it easy to get a message out to a large group of people instantaneously. In addition, teachers need to network with other teachers of like mind. We need to set up an online resource that helps us disseminate best practices in urban education, share lesson plans, and visit each other’s classrooms. We should take inspiration in this from the Obama campaign, the first political campaign that motivated it’s base primarily through online tools such as facebook, twitter, text messaging, email, etc.
Additionally, in order to make school systems more equitable for children of color, we need to change the face of teaching. It is unacceptable that 96% of our nation’s teachers are white. Universities with established education programs need to do a better job of recruiting and retaining teachers of color. If a traditional four years of college plus a master’s degree and an unpaid student teaching internship is not financially realistic for a future teacher of color we need to develop alternative paths to degrees and certification that do not bar people who need to work for a living from higher education.
Teacher certification programs should be set up in colleges that are close to high need areas so that aspiring teachers do not have to relocate from their communities to get certified. Teacher colleges should develop courses, concentrations and certification tracks that specifically address the unique challenges of urban education. Every student majoring in education should have to take at least an introductory course in multicultural education.
In my Master’s of Education program the needs of urban students and the realities of working in urban classrooms that are often overcrowded, saturated with high need students and bereft of what most teachers consider basic resources (even things like books, paper and pencils), was not discussed. We were taught to teach under the ideal circumstances, not real circumstances. As a result, my first year teaching ended up to be a crash course in urban education. Receiving little support or training, I often felt frustrated and discouraged. Half of urban teachers quit within 5 years. After my own experiences I believe this is because we do not feel empowered to be the best teachers we can be in this crumbling and defunct system that turns schools into holding pens for society’s “undesireables”. When there is no heat in your classroom, the principal keeps ignoring your counseling referral for the troubled student who spends class repeatedly running full force into a brick wall and you are trying to protect that child from bodily harm while simultaneously teaching 22 other students with no books, no papers and no pencils (true story!), the outlook can seem pretty bleak. How are we supposed to attract the most talented, driven and intelligent people to teaching when we throw them into these situations to sink or swim on their own?
In The Dreamkeepers, Sucessful Teachers of African American Children, Gloria Ladson-Billings asserts the need for special support for urban educators in the form of team teaching, longer internships and mentoring connections that actually help new teachers develop effective skills. Knowing that I wasn’t alone would have done measures to make my first year teaching more productive. Instead, I decided that I couldn’t in good conscience be part of a system that was allowing students in need to languish, so I left hoping to find another school system that was actively helping their neediest students, not just detaining them. In my leap between my first job in the poorest city in our state and my next job in a large, well funded urban district I saw a big difference. The kids weren’t all that different, I was still working with a large proportion of immigrants and students of color but just about everything else was different. What did my new school district have have that my first school district lacked? In a word, money. This brings me to my final point of education reform.
Money. It’s an ugly word. People don’t go into teaching for the money. Maybe that’s part of the problem, as teachers we are uncomfortable in the money-getting world so we don’t know how to best advocate for more resources being allocated to us. There is that tired old adage that it will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the government needs to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber. Call me airy-fairy, but I agree. The city I teach in was bashed by my old pal Mitt Romney (affectionately known as Mitler) for spending more per student than any other district but still having low to middling MCAS scores. Despite this fact, we’ve still been lauded as having one of the best public high schools in the state. Part of this is because we spend money on our schools and our students. Teachers here have more money available for professional development than any other school district I’ve ever heard of. Our classroom sizes are small and I know if I had a student as emotionally disturbed as my wall-thrower at my first job he would be able to access services immediately. Because of the resources and environment here, I am more than just a warden keeping my students in line, I am an educator. People can talk about test scores all they want but educators know that what makes a real difference is smaller classroom sizes so that teachers can get to know their students individually and more access to better teacher training and support, not just a “teacher proof” curriculum. If we want to hire more (and better trained) teachers to keep our classroom size down and move to a “small school” model where every student matters, we need money, plain and simple.
If we had more teachers out there on the front lines of the decision making, we could get our voices heard and have money and resources allocated to educational approaches that have the best interests of our students at heart. If we had a grassroots network of activists, teachers, parents and concerned citizens we could vote with our feet on political issues and make our voices heard. We don’t have to accept this broken system as reality. We can mobilize. The changes can be small ones we make in our classrooms, and large ones that are made on a national agenda. The push has got to come from both directions, in the little things we do each day, and the big things such as how we vote and where we spend our money. The road is long and frustrating but we can do it. In the immortal words of Clash frontman Joe Strummer calling youth to rally against the status quo in the song, “Working for the Clampdown“, “Anger can be power d’y know that you can use it?”
Let’s mobilize.
For Further Reading:
The Real Ebonics Debate, Power, Language and the Education of African American Children
The Dreamkeepers, Successful Teaching of African American Children
Food For Thought
This was just too good not to share…
I just adore this 1891 advertisement. It amazes me how much the ideal body has changed in the last hundred years. These days the girl on the left would be considered healthy and the one on the right would be woefully obese and thought to suffer all sorts of weight related maladies from diabetes to high blood pressure and chronic pain.
It also speaks to our idea of what’s considered healthy. One of the three sisters in the inset is quoted as saying:
“In four weeks professor William’s famed FAT-TEN-U FOODS increased my weight 39 pounds, gave me new womanly vigor & developed me finely. My two sisters also use FAT-TEN-U and have gained much needed fleshiness. because of our newly found vigor we have taken up Grecian dancing and have leading roles in all local productions.”
Similar wording could be used in one of those modern day diet advertisements in which the happy customer exclaims how much more energy she has now that she’s thin and how now she’s happy to jog and wear a bikini to the beach… you know, which would have been impossible when she was fat!
100 years ago were the fat girls the belles of the ball? Were the skinny girls the ones making excuses to stay home? Would I have spent my adolescence being proud of my curves instead of fighting a constant battle with them? Would the skinny girls have been jealous of ME?
More importantly, why has what we consider the portrait of health been completely inverted in the last hundred years? Clearly plump women in Victorian times were thought to live fuller, happier, healthier lives. Back then being fat was a sign of vitality, clearly it wasn’t thought to cause illness or slow people down, after all, the FAT-TEN-U Sisters are prancing about doing Grecian dancing and starring in local theater productions!
Judging from the enthused women in the advertisement, being fat wasn’t just thought to make you more attractive, it was thought to be healthier too. Clearly women back then weren’t worried about diabetes and other weight related problems. Did anybody even get diabetes back then?
This just goes to show that all the heath related anti-obesity saber rattling is just that — a lot of unnecessary noise. Some fat people get sick, so do lots of thin people. What we see as healthy and attractive has a lot more to do with our culture than anything else.
Here’s a some free advice for the public: Eat good food, preferably eat things that grew out of the ground or grazed on it. Get fresh air and exercise. Whatever size you are, you’ll be healthy, no tonics, elixirs or potions required.
This Just In…
So I just found out this week is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.
Even though I don’t need ribbons and buttons to be aware of things that are important to me, I couldn’t let it pass without recognizing it in some way. Nearly every adult woman I know has struggled with an eating disorder or body image issues at some point in her life. Finding your body unattractive or inadequate regardless of what size/shape you are seems de riguer for most American women these days. I wonder if other cultures have the same problems with eating disorders as we do?
It took me until my late 20s to be more accepting of my appearance, and I still have my good and bad days. There is so much misinformation out there about what constitutes healthy and attractive, no wonder why so many people have have fucked up relationships with their bodies and food.
Anyway, it’s time to go to work so I’m not gonna preach at ya. Here are some links to a few resources about healthy body image that offer some alternatives to punishing your body and hatin’ on yourself, or just some reassurance that no, you’re not crazy to love your body just ‘cuz you aren’t a size 2:
Every Woman Has An Eating Disorder (Lots of great links to other interesting stuff there!)
And of course, Shapely Prose , where you’ll find a huge network of body-positive blogs and web sites.
Happy reading and happy eating, kids.
Oh No! I Forgot To Get Married and Have Kids!
Ok, so this article has been irking me all over the web this week. I’ve been blogging the crap out of it and Broadsheet’s oh so eloquent response over at my personal blog and I promised myself that I wouldn’t clog up the intertubes with any more banter about it. However, I find discourse on my biological urges (or what other people assume they are) about as irresistible as a delicious cheese blintz as Salon’s Sarah Hepola would say. I’m tucking into another helping here at Fever2Tell, and I’m not scrimping on the syrup either.
Marry Him by Lori Gottlieb , urges me to ignore the advice I’ve gotten from mom, grandma and come to think of it, every female friend I have with more life experience than I do and go ahead and get hitched to that guy I only feel so-so about. Why? because, silly children, didn’t you know that once you hit your 30s your marriageability goes down? And you don’t want to hit your mid-30s or God forbid your 40s childless and without a ring on your finger, now do you? Because every woman who’s not married by 30 wants to be and feels deeply insecure about it, and if you don’t you’re just lying or fooling yourself.
The saddest thing about this is that the author, Lori Gottlieb, isn’t some sort of conservative Anne Coulter wanna-be, she’s a single mom and NPR contributor. Sure, she does give out a few nuggets of decent advice about not holding a potential mate to ridiculously high, Barbie Dream-house standards. After all, if I hear one more girl my age describe her ideal fiance as a Harvard Law graduate with an underwear model’s body who loves kids and makes over 200K a year I’m gonna rip her hair out by the overpriced extensions and toss her into the Charles.
No you shouldn’t discount a perfectly good guy just because he’s short or didn’t go to an Ivy League school or because his socks occasionally don’t match. But settling for someone who as Gottlieb suggests, “makes a cold shiver go down your spine at the thought of touching him” just because he’d make a good father/provider and marriage is essentially a business agreement anyway? Sorry, I just don’t buy that.
Shoot now and ask questions later! So what if you and your mate aren’t all that compatible!? At least you’ll have a baby and combined incomes to support it with! And that’s what’s important, right?
Yes, we all know that the guy you want to hop on the back of a moped with to ride off and have a toe-curlingly good one night stand isn’t necessarily the same guy you want to start a family with, but is it asking too much to want to have chemistry with your partner? She asserts that beyond the negotiations of household life, having common interests with your mate isn’t even all that important because you spend much more of your waking life with your co-workers. If that’s true then isn’t it even more important that the person you come home to be someone you look forward to seeing?
To me, Gotlieb’s opinions seem to be particularly unfair to the males in the equation. She assumes that most people want the same thing out of relationships and that most men are one size fits all. What about Mr. So-So’s feelings? Does he know he’s essentially a sperm donor and somebody to split the bills with? Or does he think he’s found his soul mate?
And what about the child in the situation? She or he is after all, is more than just your genetic legacy and the soft, cooing fulfillment of all your most primal biological urges. No child deserves to grow up with parents who are in a loveless marriage or eventually grow apart, cheat on each other or divorce because they were never fully invested in the emotional aspects of the relationship to begin with. People like to personify childless adults as selfish, but I can think of nothing more selfish than bringing a child into the world with the wrong person because you’re afraid you will have missed out on something if you don’t.
It warrants a mention that Gottlieb is a 40 something single mom who got pregnant via a sperm donor. Much of the article seems to be written from the outside looking in. The challenges of single parenthood are very real, but who’s to say that marriage would necessarily alleviate all of those things? Partnership merely presents a different set of challenges.
Her opinions are a gross oversimplification of married life. Once you find Mr. Generic and he’s on his way to sweater vested Husbandom in the suburbs with you everything beyond is not garunteed to be smooth sailing. Married couples face roadblocks too. What if you hit a rough patch or have to deal with the heartbreak of infertility or the challenges of adoption together?
Being in my line of work is excellent birth control. I see the challenges of working moms on a daily basis; from a co-worker who brings her kid to work once a week because she can’t afford full time child care and pumps breast milk while closing business deals, to the woman who hasn’t been on a date with her husband since her four year old twins were born. Despite the dirty diapers and 4am feedings, these women come to work every morning fresh, prepared and energetic even though they probably get as much sleep all week as I do in one night. And guess what Lori, all of those women have husbands. A husband isn’t a magical being that can solve all your problems. He’s another person that has a job and a life just like you do. Chances are that unless you have an unconventional relationship, in addition to taking care of the kid you’d probably be making his dinner and washing his dirty socks too. Maybe you should be thankful that you don’t have to haggle over division of labor with somebody else?
To me, navigating the pitfalls of partnership isn’t worth doing with somebody I’m not totally and completely in love with. Looking at the successful 30+ year marriage of my own parents as an example, your spouse is simultaneously your best friend, your lover, your coach, the person who knows you better than you know yourself and the one person who can drive you up the wall more than anyone else in the world can. You’d have to be crazy to enter into a lifelong partnership like that with somebody you weren’t 100% head over heels in love with, otherwise all the struggles wouldn’t be worth it.
I’ve rarely seen marrying young and having kids early work out well for people. On the other hand I’ve seen people who waited end up with very rich and rewarding realtionships. Just because Gottlieb lost the romantic lottery doesn’t mean the rest of us will.
Most of my middle aged friends, partnered or not, report a deeper satisfaction with themselves and their lives than most people in their 20s do. That sense of assuredness is something that comes with experience.This is perhaps my greatest reason for not rushing into marriage or motherhood.
The strong sense of self I see older women in possession of is not something I had throughout most of my 20s, it is something I feel I’m just starting to develop now. At the age of 28 I feel confident in myself, I have a strong network of supportive friends and I’m just beginning to solidify my career goals. Most importantly, I feel that I’ve only just begun to understand what it truly means to be a good partner. In my early to mid-20s not only did I lack the capacity to be a good partner, I was incapable of making a wise choice in a partner for myself as well.
The only other solution to this quandary that I can provide is one that’s bound to prove unpopular, and that is that maybe some biological urges might not be worth gratifying. If you don’t have the means to reasonably support the baby without a partner while having a decent life yourself, then maybe you shouldn’t have a kid.
As a Friend of mine so eloquently put it, “When you’re single and unhappy every day is a new day, when you’re married and unhappy every day is the same day.”
Fulfillment isn’t something you can buy off the shelf a Target, and if you want a family badly enough, you’ll want to give your children two loving parents who see each other as equals, not as a means to an end.
Rollins vs. Romney
I bring you this brilliance via Boston radio sage Henry Santoro who dropped it on my under-caffinated ass during today’s morning commute on 101.7 WFNX’s new-ish morning show The Sandbox . *
Henry: So Mitt Romney was campaigning in California yesterday and he said this:
And then Henry Rollins bust on stage, grabs the mic from Romney and says this:
Ha! isn’t that perfect!? And isn’t the mental picture of Henry Rollins beating the piss outta Mitler incredibly satisfying!?
Just too damn good not to share.
* No relation to the Edward Albee Play I was in a terrible version of in high school.**
** No really, it was awful. You can ask GeekUSA he saw me in it before we even met and yet he still dates me. Oh hell, just go read his blog.
Don’t Ya Just Love Dita?
Quote of the day:
“When I was little I remember watching Jane Mansfield in The Girl Can’t Help It and making a promise that when I grew up I was going to have curves like that… I’ve never made a secret of having my breasts done. I’m proud of it. The message I want to get out is that anyone can do this. Honestly, without my bag of tricks I am pretty ordinary– it’s just that I have a pretty nice bag of tricks.
~ Dita Von Teese in People
And just cuz I love you people here’s a picture of the magnificent Dita:
I mean really, what alterna-girl worth her docs doesn’t idolize Dita and even sort of see a bit of herself reflected in her glimmering tassles? Think about it. She’s a self made woman who’s risen from Midwestern obscurity. Openly imperfect, she’s even had a shitty ex or two (Marilyn Manson… Ew. What was she thinking?) but she’s managed to make a life and a career for herself doing things her own way. What more could you ask for?
Sometime when I’m not totally busy (ha!) I’ll do some serious blogging about the burlesque scene and how in addition to being an art form I think it is one of the best things to happen to female body image in the media in a long time. Today, however, is not that day.
Enjoy the Dita, kids!
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