April 2011 – Page 2

Standardizing Sizing

In one store, you’re a Size 4, in another a Size 8, and in another a Size 10 — all without gaining an ounce.

It’s a familiar problem for many women, as standard sizing has never been very standard, ever since custom clothing gave way to ready-to-wear.

So, baffled women carry armfuls of the same garment in different sizes into the dressing room. They order several sizes of the same shirt online, just to get the right fit.

Now, a handful of companies are tackling the problem of sizes that are unreliable. Some are pushing more informative labels. Some are designing multiple versions of a garment to fit different body shapes. And one is offering full-body scans at shopping malls, telling a shopper what sizes she should try among the various brands.

This is such a frustrating problem for women of all sizes. I understand the purpose of vanity sizing — if someone who is usually a size 6 fits into a size 2, she’s perhaps more likely to purchase that garment. And I’ve certainly hesitated to size up because the number seemed too high. But vanity sizing makes size tags virtually meaningless, and makes shopping much more challenging (especially if you don’t want to spend an hour trying on clothes at the store, or if you prefer to shop online):

Take a woman with a 27-inch waist. In Marc Jacobs’s high-end line, she is between an 8 and a 10. At Chico’s, she is a triple 0. And that does not consider whether the garment fits in the hips and bust. (Let’s not get into length; there is a reason most neighborhood dry cleaners also offer tailoring.)

There’s a class aspect to this as well. Higher-end brands, I’ve noticed, are sized much smaller than middle-market and mall-store clothes. The cuts, too, are different — mall-store brands like Ann Taylor, Banana Republic and J Crew are not only wildly over-sized as a general rule (especially Ann Taylor, sweet Jesus), but also cut wider in the waist. I am by no means a tiny person, but I don’t even attempt to go shopping at the Gap (or a lot of similar national stores) anymore, unless it’s for an over-sized sweater, because I’m going to waste my time trying on a million different ill-fitting items. Talking about this stuff can feel a little bit whine-braggy (“Ugh don’t you hate it when you don’t even fit into a size zero?”), but really, tiny sizes should fit tiny people (and I am not in their ranks). At the same time, a lot of these stores don’t advertise or adequately stock plus-sized clothes, so larger women aren’t going to walk in, either. And as the Times article details, pants that fit my short legs and big butt and thick thighs and smaller waist are not going to fit my friend’s long skinny legs and straight waist; so why are we both trying on the same size and the same cut?

Stores should be able to cater to larger people by adding additional sizes, not just by cutting garments larger and calling them size 10. It goes back, in part, to how size is tied not only to perceptions of attractiveness but also to social class. Carrying sizes in the 16+ range can add to the perception that a store is down-market; if the store is Chico’s then it’s no biggie, but if it’s J. Crew, that’s going to be a marketing problem. Instead of offering sizes for a wide range of bodies, stores will cut a size 14 to fit a size 20 so they don’t lose the larger customer (and in turn, the size 8 customer fits into a size 2 and feels great and buys more clothes). But stores also can’t afford to lose their smaller customers, so Size 2 items in a particular store have wildly different measurements. The small (but not too small) woman can usually find something and the large (but not too large) woman can usually find something too, but neither of them can walk in to any given store and grab their size and be reasonably confident it will fit.

And despite vanity-sizing and cutting clothes larger and larger, women who are size 20 plus (and there are a lot of women who are size 20 plus) are generally out of luck when it comes to shopping at stores that don’t advertise themselves as “plus-sized.” And since there are so few plus-sized stores, there are not only fewer options generally, but far fewer choices when it comes to cut — and a pear-shaped size 24 is going to fit clothes very differently than a size 24 who carries her weight at her waist. At least if you’re a size 6 (even if that means your clothing tags list sizes that range from 2 to 10) you can try on 15 different pairs of pants at 6 different stores; if you’re a size 20-something, you’ve got Lane Bryant and maybe one or two others.

It would be nice if women’s clothes, like men’s, were sized in inches and were fairly standard; it would also be nice if so much value weren’t assigned to the size on your pants tag.

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Do your thing.

Also, happy Easter! I’ll be brunching hard with lots of champagne, and toasting to Jesus (“thanks for the soul-saving!”). Anyone else?

The Evangelical Adoption Crusade

Go read this article by Kathryn Joyce. Be horrified.

Adoption has long been the province of religious and secular agencies, but in the past two years evangelical advocacy has skyrocketed. In 2009 Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of the 2009 book Adopted for Life, shepherded through a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) resolution calling on all 16 million members of the denomination to become involved in adoption or “orphan care.” Last year at least five evangelical adoption conferences were held, and between 1,000 and 2,000 churches participated in an “Orphan Sunday” event in November. And in February, the mammoth evangelical adoption agency Bethany Christian Services announced that its adoption placements had increased 13 percent since 2009, in large part because of the mobilization of churches.

“We expect adoptions will continue to rise as new movements within the Christian community raise awareness and aid for the global orphan crisis,” Bethany CEO Bill Blacquiere said.

One result has been the creation of “rainbow congregations” across the country, like the congregation Moore helps pastor in Louisville, Highview Baptist. An active adoption ministry has brought 140 adopted children into the congregation in the past five years. These children don’t recognize the flags of their home countries, Moore proudly noted at a 2010 conference, but they can all sing “Jesus Loves Me.”

Adoption can be a good thing for children and families, but only when it’s done ethically — and that’s not what’s happening at a lot of these organizations that serve Americans who feel entitled to “orphans” from all over the world. When desperately poor parents are being paid to place their children for adoption so that American families can have babies, that’s not ethical and it’s not best serving children. When the rules are fudged because this is the Lord’s work, that does not serve children. Read it all.

Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss

Admission: I love wedding shows. LOVE THEM. Say Yes to the Dress is my favorite because even though I do not particularly endeavor to get married and the idea of wearing a wedding dress makes me nearly break out in hives, I love wedding dresses on other people. They’re so pretty and lacy! And the ladies in them are so happy and everyone cries! And I love weddings, as long as I do not have to be involved in any way other than watching and drinking champagne! It is just great.

Vera dress — Admission #2: I would consider marriage if I wore this dress. MAYBE.

But what in holy hell is Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss? As far as I can tell, it’s the exact same show… for big girls. Which seems kind of unnecessary, no?

Oversimplifying Sex Slavery: Demi, Ashton, and Badvocacy

This is a guest post by Jessica Mack. Jessica is a global feminist and reproductive rights advocate. She enjoys exploring, making trouble, speaking out, and learning languages. She’s very tall, so that makes her extra scary. Jessica is an editor at Gender Across Borders and currently lives in Seattle, planning her next adventure.

If you haven’t yet watched the “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” campaign from Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s DNA Foundation, do. And be prepared to scratch your head, or maybe weep a little bit.

Others have already have already pointed out the confusing and offensive messages of the campaign, which feature hunky celebs delivering messages of what real men do (i.e. laundry, cook, iron, read directions, etc.) to suggest what they shouldn’t (i.e. buy girls). Sadly, what surely began with good intentions has become an even better example of what is wrong with celebrity aid today.

Even before the launch of the “Real Men” campaign, the DNA Foundation, launched in 2007, rubbed me the wrong way. I first came across them last year, while doing research on anti-trafficking efforts. Their mission is to “raise awareness about child sex slavery, change the cultural stereotypes that facilitate this horrific problem, and rehabilitate innocent victims.” So how will they achieve their goals? The action center offers “three steps to end child slavery” (ready?): 1) Make your own “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” video; 2) “report” any suspicious activity on Craigslist; and 3) buy a tee-shirt.

Wait, and it’s feminists who hate men?

Wow Liz Jones, you are something. I am sorry that your marriage ended and that your husband cheated on you, but uh, just because you have a particular experience doesn’t mean that your life speaks to some sort of universal truth. As an example, I don’t really like donuts all that much. I like basically every food, so it’s not that I hate donuts, but they’re low on my list. So clearly, women just don’t like donuts. We just have better things to eat. Right?

I don’t believe women are like characters in Sex And The City. We don’t shout and writhe and pursue sex as heartily and relentlessly as men do. It does not occupy our every waking moment.

The truth is: we don’t really enjoy sex that much. And we definitely don’t want sex as often as men do. That is a cold, hard fact. And women most definitely, incontrovertibly, do not want sex once they have children — or so my friends who have children confess to me. Particularly once their stomachs develop a texture akin to cold porridge.

The only reason we do have sex is to get a man, keep a man, steal his sperm and flatter ourselves that we are attractive.

Once we have a man, his children, his name on a piece of paper, his youth and his house, we no longer want to indulge in that ridiculous, time-consuming, horizontal dance.

…which is why lesbians just cuddle, and hetero women never have more than one child.

The story, basically, is that Jones married a lout who cheated on her a bunch of times. She wasn’t interested in sex and stopped having sex with him (which does not give someone carte blanche to cheat, obviously, because come on). But she apparently never really liked sex that much, and didn’t disclose that at any point, because she was trying to “steal his sperm” to have babies and make sure she lived in a nice house. He started cheating on her basically from the beginning of their relationship, because he is terrible. He admitted sleeping with a sex worker before they met, which she found “refreshing.” And when they finally got divorced, she felt sorry that she hadn’t just looked the other way when it came to his indiscretions. (Instead of, you know, talking about it and working out a plan if they wanted to stay together but he wanted to have sex with other people).

Jones talks about how she would scream at her husband for watching porn, and how he cheated on her repeatedly but her biggest regret is that she wasn’t “forgiving” enough. So: She hates sex (because she is a woman and all women hate sex), but believes that men have to have sex constantly, so when her husband cheats on her (with all kinds of other women who also hate sex?) it’s not really his fault. And now their marriage is over and it’s because she wasn’t forgiving enough — not because she married someone who she didn’t want to have sex with and who is also a cheating bastard and ran around behind her back over and over again.

Which is sad, but what?

For a lot of people, sex is important (I am one of those people, actually). For people who feel that sex is necessary for a happy life and for whom sex is nearly as necessary as eating or breathing, sexless relationships can feel like torture or emotional manipulation. It can be incredibly heartbreaking to feel like the person you love, who is supposed to be your lover, isn’t sexually interested in you anymore. For some people in relationships, withholding sex (or demanding sex) is emotional manipulation. If you know your partner has a high sex drive and you dislike sex, and you’re only having sex to get them to marry and then impregnate you (after which you’re no longer willing to have sex with them, and not willing to let them watch porn or have sex with other people), it is manipulative to not disclose that plan, and it lays the foundation for a very screwed up relationship. It will also screw up your relationship to demand sex constantly from someone who doesn’t want it, or to assume that someone who tells you straight-up “I have a low sex drive” or “I don’t like sex” is going to change because you are just so great. That does not happen! And relationships are all about compromise, but you can’t really compromise until you have all the facts laid out on the table, which neither Liz Jones nor her husband did (Liz didn’t seem to disclose that she was using sex purely as a tool to get wifed, and her husband didn’t disclose that he is a cheating piece of shit who was planning to use the “men just need sex constantly!” excuse to bang a bunch of other women). Which isn’t to say that people with differing sex drives can’t have functional relationships; of course they can, because people compromise all the time. But if you aren’t willing to come clean about your own desires, and especially if your view is “women hate sex and men are animals,” you’re going to have some problems.

Of course, your relationship is also going to have problems if you’re a terrible person, which is maybe the issue with both Liz Jones and her sleazy ex-husband.

via Jezebel.

It also doesn’t help that I picture Hulk Hogan’s face every time I get close.

Rich Santos on why your boyfriend can’t orgasm (your boyfriend is Rich Santos):

I’ll be completely candid here: I don’t orgasm often during oral sex or intercourse. What is the cause of this phenomenon? I’m not sure, but I have a few theories about my affliction:

Too Much Self-Stimulation. I satisfy myself quite often. All this self-stimulation not only tires me out, but it creates a high standard for physical pleasure because I’m the only one who knows exactly what I want. Masturbation is isolating: I am more comfortable orgasming by myself than with another person.

If you are masturbating so much that other people are unable to bring you to orgasm, there is a pretty simple solution: STOP MASTURBATING SO MUCH RICH SANTOS!

(Or maybe start dating people who aren’t your ideal “innocent” 16-year-old girls? I know dirty snow is a bummer, but sometimes it’s fun to be with people who have actually experienced some things, even if they are “tough to control.” Or just quit having so many issues with women (girls)?)

(Also please stop the masturbatory Marie Claire posts. You are the worst, Rich Santos).

via The Hairpin.

Women and Anxiety

Women are twice as prone to anxiety as men — but girls don’t start out more anxious than boys, and it’s not because women are “natural” worriers:

When it comes to our preconceived notions about women and anxiety, women are unfairly being dragged through the mud. While women are indeed more fretful than men on average right now, this difference is mostly the result of a cultural setup—one in which major social and parenting biases lead to girls becoming needlessly nervous adults. In reality, the idea that women are “naturally” twice as anxious as men is nothing more than a pernicious illusion.
…
In my book Nerve, I call this the “skinned knee effect”: Parents coddle girls who cry after a painful scrape but tell boys to suck it up, and this formative link between emotional outbursts and kisses from mom predisposes girls to react to unpleasant situations with “negative” feelings like anxiety later in life. On top of this, cultural biases about boys being more capable than girls also lead parents to push sons to show courage and confront their fears, while daughters are far more likely to be sheltered from life’s challenges. If little Olivia shows fear, she gets a hug; if little Oliver shows fear, he gets urged to overcome it.

The result of these parenting disparities is that by the time girls grow into young women, they’ve learned fewer effective coping strategies than their male counterparts, which translates to higher anxiety. The sexes learn to deal with fear in two very different ways: men have been conditioned to tackle problems head-on, while women have been taught to worry, ruminate, and complain to each other (hey, I’m just reporting the research) rather than actively confront challenges. These are generalizations, of course; the fact that I have always been an Olympic-caliber worrier offers us just one example of how men can fret with the best of them, and everyone knows at least one woman who appears not even to know what fear is. Still, these differences in upbringing clarify quite a bit about the gender gap in anxiety.

And it’s not just that women are actually more anxious because of cultural factors; they’re also perceived as more anxious even when they display the same emotions as men:

We have an odd tendency to label women as anxious even when they aren’t. A recent, highly revealing study showed that even in situations in which male and female subjects experience the same level of an emotion, women are consistently seen—and even see themselves—as being “more emotional” than men. It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that this bias holds for anxiety as well; we buy into the fretful-women stereotypes far too often. Another report, for example, found significant differences in the way doctors respond to patients who report common stress symptoms like chest pain: Whereas men get full cardiac workups, women are more often told that they’re just stressed or anxious, and that their symptoms are in their heads.

It should be pretty clear by now that the claims about women being far more innately anxious than men are suspect, but before I depart in a blaze of justice, one final point is in order: Men are getting off much too easily in the anxiety discussion. Probably the most significant reason why women get diagnosed with anxiety disorders twice as often as men isn’t that they’re doubly fearful. It’s because anxious men are much less likely to seek psychological help.

Some people deserve bad reputations.

Andrew Wakefield is one of them. He’s the guy who promoted faulty research that implicates vaccines in the onset of autism, and encouraged parents not to vaccinate their kids. As a result, diseases that were nearly eradicated have returned, and are putting kids at risk.

Although Wakefield did not claim to have proved that the M.M.R. vaccine (typically given to children at 12 to 15 months) caused autism, his concerns, not his caveats, ricocheted around the world. His belief, based on a paper he wrote about 12 children, is that the three vaccines, given together, can alter a child’s immune system, allowing the measles virus in the vaccine to infiltrate the intestines; certain proteins, escaping from the intestines, could then reach and harm neurons in the brain. Few theories have drawn so much attention and, in turn, so much refutation: a 2003 paper in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, which reviewed a dozen epidemiological studies, concluded that there was no evidence of an association between autism and M.M.R., and studies in peer-reviewed journals since have come to the same conclusion. In Britain, the General Medical Council revoked Wakefield’s medical license after a lengthy hearing, citing numerous ethical violations that tainted his work, like failing to disclose financing from lawyers who were mounting a case against vaccine manufacturers. The Lancet, which published the original Wakefield paper, retracted it. In a series that ran early this year, The British Medical Journal concluded that the research was not just unethically financed but also “fraudulent” (that timelines were misrepresented, for example, to suggest direct culpability of the vaccine).

Andrew Wakefield has become one of the most reviled doctors of his generation, blamed directly and indirectly, depending on the accuser, for irresponsibly starting a panic with tragic repercussions: vaccination rates so low that childhood diseases once all but eradicated here — whooping cough and measles, among them — have re-emerged, endangering young lives.

I can understand the desire, on the part of parents, to try to target the cause of autism (and when it’s something like vaccines, it allows parents to blame themselves just a little bit, which I imagine for some people is a burden they want to bear). But the idolization of Wakefield seems to happen primarily because he is so sure of himself and he gives parents an answer, where the more widely-accepted medical truth about what causes autism is “we don’t know yet.”

Wakefield also listens to parents and validates their experiences, which is too rare in the medical field. One mother of an autistic child says, “I don’t care if my son was overtreated or cured — just the validation that we as parents who knew something was wrong got an answer. Just the fact that someone listened and someone tried to do something — someone said, ‘Yeah, this is not just autism; your son has a real medical issue that we can treat.’ I think that validation is all that parents want — just that someone is taking the symptoms we report and looking at them to see what can we do about it.”

It’s too bad that the person who appears to be listening is more interested in preserving his own star status than in actually helping kids, and telling their parents a difficult truth.

The Baby Next Door

This essay (via Motherlode) about living in the apartment next to a crying baby is actually pretty good. I expected to hate it, since my view of complaining about crying babies next door is, “When you live in one of the most densely-populated cities on the planet, you do not get to whine about the existence of a child in the apartment next to you” (just like you don’t get to complain about me coming and going in high heels or playing my music loudly between the hours of 9am and 10pm). Kids are kids and they make noise, and while I am on record as thinking it is reasonable that some public spaces be adult-oriented (or at least that it’s not unreasonable to think that there are some public and semi-public spaces in which incredibly loud noise and rambunctious behavior are not particularly appropriate), if you live in apartment building in New York it is just a reality that you’re going to have to deal with other-people noise. To the extent that other-people noise is really really disturbing and generally preventable (i.e., blasting music at 3am on a Tuesday), it is fair to complain. But to the extent that other-people noise is just a part of sharing a wall and a hallway, like a baby’s cries or a dog barking once or twice or high-heels clattering or someone having a Friday-night party or me yelling at my room mate to OMG come look at this YouTube video of a funny cat! across the apartment? You have to suck it up (or move to the suburbs or a farm or something).

So I thought this article was going to be great outrage-bait. However! It’s actually kind of a nuanced take on the relationships we have with our neighbors in this incredibly densely-populated city, where we live on top of each other but know very little about the people we share spaces with:

When I moved into my new apartment a year and a half ago, my next-door neighbors, barely seen, names not known, were childless. Together we lived anonymously, in our special urban bliss. I spoke with the husband half of the couple a few times in the hallway, but only in passing. We do not know each other’s names. We will live forever without knowing them.

Because of high ceilings and thin walls, however, I learned certain things about them. She is not a smoker but possesses the deep, husky voice of one. He really likes Vampire Weekend. Once they threw a boisterous party where, as best I could tell, everyone was playing bingo. They are in possession of power tools and are not afraid to use them.

There are certain things they have probably learned about me, too. I spend too much time on YouTube. I like to throw boozy brunches for my friends. I watch American Idol. I have had a few bad moments with customer service representatives from my health insurance company. Sometimes I curse to myself.

I imagined we knew just enough about each other that we wouldn’t want or need to know anything else. We were grown-ups living our separate lives. I am a single woman pretty much all of the time, and they are engaged in something resembling domestic bliss. Never, ever the twain shall meet.

And then, sometime last fall, they had a baby. That’s when I first remember hearing the baby crying anyway. Why do they cry so much? I felt a small sense of superiority that I had somehow made the right choice about not having a child. Babies cry. Listen to that damn baby. You guys are suckers, having that baby.

…

So, when I heard that baby cry, I thought to myself, See what you are not missing out on? High up in my castle on Planet Smart Single Lady. Well, guess who’s the sucker here? Me. Because even though I don’t have the baby, and all the benefits of having the baby (including, but not limited to, a deep, emotional connection with another human being, the joy of parenting, plus a brand new stream of pictures to post to Facebook), I am still living with the crying baby.

The baby does more than just cry, of course. She happily gurgles. Sometimes she has long, nonsensical conversations with herself. Why is listening to all of this any different than hearing “Oxford Comma” at full blast? It’s all just noise. I should be able to get used to it.

The answer is simple. It is a constant reminder of the choices I made — and did not make. And I would like to feel good about where I am in my life as much as possible. At the very least, I should feel good about myself in my own home.

But I believed I had made a certain peace with it. It has helped that I have learned even more things about my neighbors these past few months. I know they love to make their child laugh. They don’t lose their patience, but once I heard her plead softly to her crying child, “Honey, mommy is just so tired.” He still likes Vampire Weekend, but he’s pretty crazy about “Old McDonald” these days, too. Now I know this about them: They are good parents.

The whole thing is a solid read. And for once, someone talking about kids on the internet is not being terrible. Faith in humanity restored.