September 2011 – Page 5

Dating Advice for the Modern Lady and Gentleman

This dating guide from 1938 is pretty amazing — ladies, you should wear a bra, don’t talk too much, don’t put on make-up in front of men, focus entirely on what he wants to discuss and don’t get so drunk on the date that you pass out. As someone who has made every single one of those mistakes on a date, let me tell you, the more egregiously you behave, the more likely it is that the modern man will call you back and ask you out again. It’s one of those bizarre rules of the universe, like how when you go through a long celibate streak and you make an effort to consistently look great and shave your legs and wear cute lingerie you will not find a single person who has any interest in seeing you naked — until you decide to quit showering and you’re wearing graying period-stained underwear and you didn’t even bother putting on deodorant and you’re out at a bar only because you cannot take one more miserable night on your couch watching the Real Housewives and drinking wine from the $10-and-under table, and that’s when you’ll meet a super-hot dude who wants to lay you right then.*

That’s how the universe works for everyone else, right?

Anyway, this is all very good advice for the modern woman in 1938. “Don’t tug at your girdle” is definitely crucial to not blowing a date. But it’s a little unbalanced. Modern ladies get so much great dating advice (don’t talk too much, but make sure you talk some so that you aren’t boring! ask him questions but don’t badger or interrogate him! have a job, but make sure you don’t reveal that you make more money than him! wear make-up but not too much! wear a short skirt but not too short! wear heels because they make your legs look great but don’t wear heels because then you look high-maintenance!), and modern men get very little. So allow me to assist. From my own dating archive, my advice to the modern man looking for love from the modern woman:**

Do wear clean clothes to the date, but probably not your favorite over-sized fur coat.

Women don’t like men who leave their iPhones or Blackberries on the table during dinner.

If she’s dancing, get up and dance with her, for when a woman dances, she wants to dance.

Driving stick is sexy. Manage to hold her hand AND drive stick and the lady-boners will be poppin’.

Don’t discuss your bitch of an ex-wife.

If you take her to a dive bar and a drunk possibly homeless man hits on her, do not fly into a rage, and especially do not fly into a rage at her.

That story about how you once pooped your pants on the Jenny Jones Show? Save it until you know each other better.

It’s ok to mention that you also date dudes, but hold off on the part about how you primarily enjoy sex with men and only date women because you want to get married and have babies.

If you have an awkward sexual experience, you will not make her feel better by saying, “It’s ok, it’s definitely not as bad as the time I got puked on.”

Babies are nice, but a first date is not the time to mention that you want many babies, and you want them yesterday.

Pleat-front khakis? Burn them.

“I know this great little Italian place” is a great way to get a date, but the Olive Garden is not a great little Italian place.

If you ask her to dinner, don’t pick a place you can’t afford and then expect to split the check. The Modern Lady doesn’t mind paying half the bill, but she does mind an unexpected $200 dinner tab.

“What is this thing?” is not the proper response to a silk Isabel Marant body suit.

Be sure to mention your serious girlfriend before the end of the date.

Read books, or at least pretend to.

If you get a call during the date, don’t answer it. If you do answer it, don’t disclose that it’s a debt collector harassing you because you went on too many Barney’s shopping sprees.

Take off that gold chain.

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*And if you’re me, you will not lay him right then because one-night stands scare you, so he’ll get your number and he’ll call and text you a dozen times and you’ll respond once before starting to ignore him because you’re embarrassed he met you in such a dilapidated state with your matted hair and probable body odor and oily t-zone, and you will also conclude that something is clearly wrong with him if he likes that sort of thing, and you’ll talk yourself out of going out with him by deciding that it will be extremely weird for you to show up to any potential date with clean hair and mascara on, because no matter what basic effort you make it will look like you are trying Extremely Hard next to the Garbage Pail Kids version of yourself that he initially met. And as you pet your cat and drink your wine and watch Bravo, you will wonder why you are single.

**This is heteronormative as all hell, but I primarily date dudes. Non-heteros, feel free to add your dating tips in the comments.

Dining for Women

Another great event in NYC: Dining For Women, a movie screening and reception to benefit the Fistula Foundation. From their press release:

NEW YORK CITY – The two New York City chapters of Dining for Women are partnering with Mount Sinai’s student chapter of Physicians for Human Rights to host a movie screening and reception to benefit Dining for Women and the Fistula Foundation on Friday, September 23rd, from 6pm – 9pm at the Goldwurm Auditorium in Mount Sinai Medical Center’s Icahn Institute (1425 Madison Ave @ E. 98th St.)

This event features the New York City screening of the documentary, A Walk to Beautiful, which tells the story of five Ethiopian women suffering from obstetric fistula: the incredible struggle the condition entails, and the arduous journey the women undertake to seek a cure and to reclaim their dignity and their lives.

The film features the work of the Fistula Foundation and Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The mission of the Fistula Foundation is to raise awareness of and funding for fistula treatment, prevention, and education programs worldwide. What is obstetric fistula? It is the most devastating of all childbirth injuries – an internal injury caused generally by days of unrelieved obstructed labor. Without timely medical intervention – such as a c-section – to relieve the pressure of the baby’s head against the mother’s pelvis, tissue dies and the woman is left incontinent. Founded in 2000, the Fistula Foundation has grown to help women in 13 countries.

The NYC chapters of Dining for Women are proud to host this event and especially pleased to welcome Marsha Wallace, Founder and President of Dining for Women, and Gail Smith-Peay, Executive Director of Dining for Women. Marsha Wallace founded Dining for Women in 2003 with one chapter in South Carolina. Since that time, it has developed into an international, nonprofit organization of over 200 chapters. Dining for Women is a dinner giving circle, which meets monthly to fund grass-roots programs in education, healthcare, vocational training, micro-credit loans and economic development. These programs are aimed to improve the living situations for women and their families, by providing the tools they need to make changes.

The event doors opens at 6pm, and the keynote addresses will begin at about 6:15, followed immediately by the screening. After the film has screened, there will be a short Q&A featuring members of the production staff—one of whom is a DFW chapter member!—and additional guests. A suggested entry fee of $10 will go to benefit DFW’s operating costs, and additional donations will be accepted to benefit the Fistula Foundation. To reserve your spot, please visit http://benefit2011dfw.eventbrite.com/ and RSVP by Friday, 9/16.

For more information about the Fistula Foundation, visit www.fistulafoundation.org.
For more information about Dining for Women, visit www.diningforwomen.org.

It will be a fantastic event for a fantastic cause. Learn more about Dining for Women and the Fistula Foundation, and then RSVP for the event.

Dealbreaker: He Has An Asian Fetish

Love this piece by Lena Chen:

Though I could excuse his penchant for cultural appropriation, I couldn’t overlook his peculiar dating history. All of his exes, I soon learned, were Asian. A handful of data points aren’t enough to constitute a trend, but even my 18-year-old self realized that there was a very low statistical probability that this could have unfolded in an arbitrary or unconscious fashion. Pierre, who didn’t exhibit much self-awareness to begin with, claimed that his dating disposition could be explained by the qualities he sought in a partner. Asian girls just happened to be more likely to possess his preferred traits: According to him, we weren’t nearly as loud, crass, promiscuous, or out of shape as white women.

Luckily for Pierre, my dating history was beginning to exhibit a pattern, too. In fact, Pierre was emblematic of the spectacularly bad taste in men I’d cultivated in my young adulthood. Prior to meeting my now-boyfriend of three years (my fluke success story), I dated several serial cheaters, at least one confirmed homophobe, and way too many Asian fetishists to count. I cringe at the memory of each of these illustrious gentlemen, but years later, it’s the latter group that continues to make my skin crawl. An enthusiasm for Asian folks might not seem so bad, especially next to an irrational hatred of gay people. But my personal experience has taught me that even “positive” stereotypes are frustratingly reductive.

Though Pierre clearly meant what he said about “white women” as some sort of compliment, I was far from flattered. Actually, I was confused. At age 18, I shared more in common with the flighty, unkempt women of Pierre’s nightmares than I did with his geisha girl fantasy. I was, in fact, the very embodiment of all of the things he supposedly hated—loud, crass, promiscuous, and out of shape. Somehow, my race managed to obscure all of these qualities. There are many faults for which I administer free passes (timeliness and hygiene, to name two), but I’m rarely capable of overlooking generalizations about my race, no matter how positive. My heritage, though a part of my identity, hardly says much about me as a romantic partner.

Feministe and Planned Parenthood Are Hooking You Up

On September 22nd, “The Daily Show” co-creator Lizz Winstead is bringing her benefit tour for Planned Parenthood to NYC, and she’s bringing Sandra Bernhard and Lisa Lampanelli along with her. It is going to be awesome and hilarious, and friends of Feministe are getting a $10 discount on tickets. So click here for $10 off regular admission prices, go have a laugh, and help Planned Parenthood.

The discount is only good until midnight on Friday, so get going.

Cat About Town

This is pretty amazing: A cat got lost in Colorado in 2006, and was found yesterday in Manhattan.

Goodbye, Courtney, and thank you

Today is Courtney Martin’s last day at Feministing. I’m sad to see her go, but very excited to see what she’ll do next. Courtney has long been one of my favorite writers on and off the internet — and what she does, I think better than almost anyone else, is write with a compassion, openness and empathy that is too often lacking in online spaces. Courtney is, basically, a big ol’ hippie with a heart of gold, who writes from a place of love — and so consistently putting love first is extremely difficult to do, especially in feminist spaces. When I find myself near flying off the handle, or frustrated, or worn down, Courtney’s work and her point of view is what I channel (it doesn’t always work, obviously). But her ability to write generously and to take care of herself and to afford others respect and kindness even when she disagrees or she’s hurt or she’s angry is inspiring.

She leaves us with some thoughts and open questions which are well worth a read. And I am so looking forward to see what she does next. Thank you, Courtney, for all your work.

A Question.

Imagine of woman on a fainting couch, saying "Oh! My delicate, precious nerves! Don't make me clutch my pearls!" — A couch in the New York Observer newsroom.

Why is it TMI and uncouth for a woman to say she got HPV from her husband? Would it be equally TMI for her to admit that she got, say, chicken pox from him? I ask because Ayelet Waldman posted a few tweets today about HPV, in the aftermath of Michele Bachmann whining that HPV vaccinations intrude on parents’ rights (sure, enjoy your polio and measles also). Waldman said she got HPV in a monogamous marriage, and ended up with cancerous cervical lesions. The New York Observer called it “a new height in oversharing.”* New York Mag’s Daily Intel also covered it. And people on Twitter were like, OMG TMI BE A LADY YOU’RE BEING PUNISHED FOR BEING SUCH A SLUT SO BE QUIET ABOUT IT.

But… why? Why is this the height of an over-share? If someone says, “I had precancerous skin lesions that could have developed into melanoma,” no one is like “OMG HEIGHT OF THE OVERSHARE PLEASE STOP I AM EATING.” If I told you that when I was little I got chicken pox from a kid at school — which I did! — no one is going to flip out about it. If a well-known writer tweets, “I got the flu from my husband and it fucking sucked and if I was older or didn’t have decent medical care or had a complicating health condition I could have died from that infection, and anyone who tries to block flu shots is an irresponsible fuckface,” people would be like, “Yeah.”

But Ayelet Waldman says she got one of the most common viruses in the United States from her husband and we’re all disgusted because… it’s sexually transmitted? And what, we’re all shocked that a mother of four who writes about how much she likes having sex with her husband has had sex? We think it’s way worse to transmit a disease sexually than by kissing or holding hands or touching a subway pole?

Here is some shocking news: People have sex. And when people have sex, body fluids sometimes mingle, and skin touches skin, and things get passed on. HPV, as it turns out, is a wily little fucker that gets passed on a whole lot. At least half of all sexually active people have it. By the age of 50, at least 80% of women will have HPV. And not that it would be ok to shame Ayelet (or anyone) about a disease that was less prevalent, but it looks especially silly when the OMG TMI!!! stuff is coming in response to a disease that a huge portion of the population has or will have.

And yet no one really talks about it from a personal perspective, because it’s sex-related and therefore shameful.

Not everyone gets cancer from HPV. Not everyone with HPV will even see an irregular pap smear in their lives. A lot of the time, HPV does absolutely nothing.

But sometimes it causes cancer. And that’s no joke. And putting a real face on an incredibly common, sometimes cancer-causing disease is important. It shouldn’t have to be brave — it shouldn’t be any more brave than saying you had chicken pox or the flu or melanoma — but it is. And it’s shameful that in the face of what should be a fairly benign statement — “I contracted one of the most common viruses in the United States” — the media response is “eew” and “too much!” and “stop talking you slut.”

You guys all realize that this is the reason folks like Bachmann are able to use a totally responsible HPV vaccine policy as a political battering ram, right? You guys all realize that this kind of shame-based response to the statement “I have HPV” is why too many women sit alone in a gynecologist’s office lacking a support system when they find out they have a potentially cancer-causing virus, and why a lot of men don’t even realize they can get it, putting them at risk for anal and penile cancer? You guys all realize that the implication that you get HPV from being slutty and people who make “bad decisions” don’t deserve respect, let alone health care, is why social conservatives are winning the battle when it comes to every social program from food stamps to social security to welfare to abortion rights to basic health care coverage to unemployment?

This isn’t just “Ayelet Waldman mentioned she has a cervix, everyone grossed out.” This is why, culturally, we are losing.

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*UPDATE: So, re-reading the Observer article after some yoga and a few deep breaths, I now recognize that Foster was criticizing Waldman for tweeting the chain of how she got HPV, which outed others as having the virus (a tweet she has since deleted). Which is a fair criticism — I can see how it was an oversight on Waldman’s part and not an intentional violation of privacy, but that’s ultimately what it was, and she did the upstanding thing of removing the offending information. What’s not cool — and what other commentators have done, and what I initially read Foster’s piece to include, even though he didn’t actually mean it this way — is suggesting that it’s inappropriate to discuss having HPV, or that having HPV is gross or shameful. At the end of the Observer piece, Foster is pretty clear that he doesn’t think anyone should be shamed for having the virus; I got stuck on the “height of overshare” part, which he intended differently than I read it. All of which is to say, a lot of these responses are totally fucked up! But the Observer isn’t the only (or by any stretch the worst) target, and my vitriol against them was misdirected.

But still fuck the “eew TMI I’m eating” people. You people are assholes.

Suing for Looks Discrimination

Pretty people finish first — that’s a well-documented phenomenon. Folks who fall outside of cultural beauty norms — who are fatter or not white or less white or older or whatever else — make less money over their lifetimes. Economics professor Daniel S. Hamermesh suggests that people who are discriminated against because of their looks should be able to sue if they can show that their employer demonstrated a pattern of looks-based discrimination.

Now, suing over discrimination isn’t exactly new, especially where physical appearance is involved. Women have been on the losing end of those battles for years, and courts have held that women can be fired from their jobs for not wearing enough make-up or not wearing revealing uniforms (women have also been fired for being too sexy or too fat or too-whatever-else). But Hamermesh isn’t really concerned about women — he’s worried about men, of course:

Another scintillating point argued by Hamermesh is that while women often bear the brunt of looks bias in the mating arena, men are more affected by looks discrimination in the professional world, since their gender still comprises the majority of the working population.

“Most men will work, regardless of their looks. Women still have some choice about whether to work for pay,” says Hamermesh. “If a woman is bad-looking and she knows she will be penalized in the workplace, she will be less likely to work.”

Hamermesh backs up the bold assertion with study statistics he published in the American Economic Review in 1994 with co-author Jeff Biddle, Ph.D.

In the study, women ranked as the most unattractive seventh of the female population were five percentage points less likely to work than average-looking women. Meanwhile, women who ranked in the top third of attractiveness were five percentage points more likely to work than the average.

I’m quoted in response. You can head over there to read it.

Short History (2)

In my last post, I mentioned that I’d be covering 1940s Detroit next. Specifically, I want to focus on the battle around a housing complex in Detroit.

The Sojourner Truth Homes still exist today. They are public housing, but were built before the stigma of public housing became the norm in the US. They were actually built during a time when even the white public didn’t have a problem demanding that the government do something about housing.

And during WW2, housing in Detroit was a problem. The problems of overcrowding caused by the Great Migration mixed with a desperate need for labor by industry. This was also a time of economic restructuring of the labor market due to the ending of slavery. The Great Migration was the largest movement of people in the US in history–but it was *also* the largest movement of *labor* as well. The US was investing in heavy industry. Which is why you find the fingers industry recruiters all over the Great Migration.

On CNN International at 4:30 EST today

I’ll be debating the Miss Universe pageant, my thoughts on which were outlined here a few years ago. But if you have CNN International, tune in! And if you have thoughts pre-debate, leave them in the comments — would love to hear any information or arguments I may not have thought through. Here, basically, is my position:

The feminist arguments against beauty pageants are obvious, and have been around even before the famous 1968 demonstrations at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, which spawned that impossible-to-kill myth of feminist bra-burning. But in 2007, when women are attending college and grad school in record numbers, when the first female Speaker of the House is in power, and when women have unprecedented access to almost all professional fields, why are we still playing dress-up for money?

Despite achieving simple legal equality, women still lag behind when it comes to the higher-up positions in business, law, academia and politics. Our basic right to bodily autonomy is on the chopping block, as more anti-choice legislation and jurisprudence is introduced every year, sending the very strong message that our bodies are not just ours. Beauty is still one of the most valued characteristics a woman can have, and images of beautiful women bombard us every day. Is it any surprise that, in a culture which views women as objects to look at and vessels for reproduction, women will try to use the emphasis on their bodies to their own benefit?

Women are not stupid. We are rational actors who respond accordingly to our environments. From the time we’re little girls, we’re bombarded with images that reflect a very narrow standard of female beauty, and emphasize the idea that beauty (or at least the attempt to be beautiful) is a basic requirement of successful womanhood. If you happen to be blessed with the features that are culturally idealized (whiteness and thinness, among others), why not use it and make some money off of what so many other women do for free, and to feel good about yourself to boot?

Certainly plenty of women like dressing up, and like the ritual of putting on make-up and doing their hair and feeling pretty. Wanting to be perceived as attractive is no great sin, and isn’t strictly a woman’s concern. The difference, though, is that being attractive is considered much more important for women than it is for men, and women are required to spend much more time, effort and money on their physical appearance. While marketers are no doubt trying to breed male insecurity in order to push more product, women still dominate when it comes to the purchase of beauty-related goods. Women still spend millions on make-up, hair care, and lotions and potions claiming to do everything from eliminate wrinkles to get rid of cellulite to plump up breasts and lips. Women still make up most of the plastic surgeries performed each year. Women still account for the vast majority of people with eating disorders. Women are still the primary funders of the diet industry.

There is no shame in being one of the millions of American women who live in this culture and who structure their lives accordingly. I’m one of them. So are the women in the Miss USA pageant. Feminists have been leveling thorough and valid criticisms at beauty contests and consumer beauty culture for more than 40 years, and yet the contests persist. Women continue to participate in them, and we continue to watch them on TV. It’s no big mystery as to why: Beauty contest participants reap great financial benefits when they win, and American viewers are fully accustomed to evaluating and watching women for pleasure.

Ideally, beauty contests will eventually go the way of the dodo. The Miss USA pageant is not, by any stretch, good for feminism or good for women as a class. But it’s not happening in a vacuum. For 40 years, feminists have been arguing that pageants are a small part of a larger-scale system of oppression which positions women’s bodies as objects to serve others — to give them pleasure, to make them money, to sell their product, to birth their baby. While many Americans have duly noted beauty pageants to be silly and outdated, we often fail to recognize how they operate within a greater context of generalized and widely accepted misogyny.