Let's pass a hat for the poor, poor investment bankers

This article from the New York Times is endlessly frustrating. Basically, it's trying to make a case for the massive salaries Wall Street Types make and denouncing the idea of Obama's proposed $500,000 salary cap. The most frustrating bits of the article for your reading pleasure:

"Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover."

Here we're taking it as a given that these MEN have a God-given right to live that extravagant lifestyle... sure, I'm not going to say it's not their right to, but in light of what they've done to the economy, I think they can stand a little frugality, too. Also, prices will only stay that high as long as the market can bear it, surely. So wouldn't it be good for everyone for the number of people who can afford that lifestyle to dwindle and drive prices down? I know, I know, then the RABBLE would get in.

"The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.” Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000."

I guess it goes without saying that the man in these couples is inevitably going to be buying the dress for his wife or girlfriend who is busy hanging out with society types and working on charities and is obviously not earning a living. This brings me to my biggest gripe with this article and with the whole system behind it. These Big Wall Street Men are allowed by our society to expect this kind of coddled existence, including a big pay check to pay for all these completely unnecessary things and it is just accepted as the state of affairs that one of these things is a trophy wife of varying intellect who doesn't work and doesn't contribute to the exorbitant bills their lifestyle kicks up. How is this shit still going on? Don't these people realize that if both people in the couple were earning $500,000, then they'd be back up to their precious seven figures and then they'd maybe have a good reason to hire a nanny? Ugh. I hate investment banking/bankers/the society that still allows this kind of shit.

This is what a feminist looks like

Oh, Hillary.

Read this and tell me she isn't great.

Thinking about Drinking

It's always a bit puzzling to me that I have such a hard time defining something that I so clearly identify as, but an article on New York Magazine .com and a response on Jezebel made me stop and think about what constitutes a Feminist in a pretty remarkable way today. I'm by no means close to an answer myself, but the following really bothered me. A few choice quotes from "Should Gender Equality Extend to Drinking."

"My point here is that the closing of the gender gap isn’t about men—needing to compete with men or wanting to feel like men. It’s about women going after the things they want and feeling that alcohol, variously, can help them. If men come into the picture at all, it’s only because what women sometimes want is sex, the final frontier of gender equality..."

This quote sounds a little unrealistic when read side-by-side with the next one, about the author's friend Kate, who works in the hyper-masculine investment banking fast-track:

Going out with them meant drinking, usually heavy drinking, which suited Kate’s mind-set at the time. “I felt like I deserved it,” she says. “I realized I can work crazy hours, I can work just like anyone else, so I can party just like anyone else.” Soon she had an agenda: If she could finish her work by 2 a.m., she would grab a guy from the office—“I had no girlfriends, it’s such a male- dominated industry”—and they’d hurry to a bar, order a few rounds of shots, and try to catch up with the people who were already drunk. “I drank almost every day,” she says. “But I thought it was normal because I was always going out, and when you’re out, everyone else is drinking.”

The part of this that bothers me is the "I had no girlfriends" and the fact that she felt like she had to go out [drinking] with "the guys" to be accepted and get ahead in her career of choice. No, none of that is explicitly stated in the article, but yes, that is the (not very hidden) subtext of this particular drinking anecdote. I think PilgrimSoul put it best in her response (on Jezebel.com) to this passage:

Also maybe ambitious young women drink more because the frontiers for ambitious young women are pretty depressing. You all know me as a bit hardcore now, but before I ended up in the "high-end" job I'm in now I thought workplace sexism was something of a myth. I thought, hey, I will never find myself in discussions where superiors are joking about prostitutes or making awkward and ill-timed remarks about what I'm wearing or people at my same level are telling me to answer the fucking phone for them because clearly by virtue of my possession of ovaries I want nothing more than to be their assistant. I never though that I would be convinced, as I am now, that, "I will always be the bitch in the corner who doesn't find your hall-soccer-playing, chest-beating masculinity impressive or something to emulate." I thought, I will never see an acquaintance hired and fired by a person who claims to care about gender equality while simultaneously justifying said firing by way of the phrase, "I tried to tame a mustang." About all of this I was, however, wrong.

So I'm not really going to fault ambitious young women for drinking, nosiree, I am not.

And then there's this one:

For the bulk of history, women have skewed toward the teetotaler end of the spectrum; not until the middle of the last century did a burgeoning relationship with alcohol coincide with Second Wave feminism and a general impulse to close the gender gap across the board. “As women ‘immigrated’ into the culture that was once unique to men,” says Grucza, “they picked up a lot of the same mores and attitudes and behaviors and ideas about what is socially acceptable that men had previously held. We call this acculturation—people adopt the drinking attitude and behaviors of the dominant culture.” Which explains why researchers have found that women in the demographic closest to being dominant (young, white, middle-class, educated) are leading the charge in terms of increased alcohol consumption. The trend is so pronounced that in Britain, home to the Bridget Joneses of the world, public-health officials launched an ad campaign picturing a grizzled man in drag (or a very mannish woman) with the caption: “If you drink like a man, you might end up looking like one.” But no public-service announcement is likely to turn back this tide, especially among the very young.

This, too, seems to undercut the notion that the increase in women's drinking is not about men. The quote about acculturation also underlines the assumption (apparently un-challenged) that male culture is still the dominant culture. The other thing that bothers me about this article in general is the comparison of women drinking more (as much as men) to any of the other feminist-driven gender-gap-closing projects of the past. i.e. "I want the right to vote" is roughly equivalent to "Another scotch, please." If we are meant to worry as much as this article tells us to about the negative repercussions of drinking, is it also telling us that our other progressive leanings are subtly dangerous as well? (This reminds me of a much-beloved teacher I had in high school who said the fall of all great empires was foreshadowed/caused by the merging of roles between men and women in a given society. In other words, the narrowing of the gender gap in our country must presage the great Fall of our Civilization. In other words, stay down and stop wearing pants, ladies!)

Also, about the ad mentioned in the quote above [see horrific image, above], why does Britain (home of famed "Effed Feminism" find it so deplorable that England's fair roses are drinking more now? Why is there a public service announcement-style campaign targeting women drinking and not one about men drinking? Even if you say that yes, Britain does have plenty of anti-drinking-in-general ads, the fact that they think women need their own, personal (beauty-standard-motivated) ad campaign (not health-related, mind you, because women -- and society in general -- only care about their looks and not the state of their livers) excludes them from mainstream society. It's just a new stripe of separate but equal, in my opinion.

And finally, this article takes a pretty heavy-handed swing at my favorite website out there:

This conversation is from a posted IM exchange (with tidied punctuation) between two editors at Jezebel.com, a Website that is an avatar of a certain of-the-moment brand of feminism appealing to women too young to remember the heyday of Ms. magazine. Jezebel is very pro-alcohol.

Jezebel is not pro-alcohol. The Jezzies talk a lot about alcohol. But they also talk a lot about health concerns, sex, careers, Feminism, and the economy, entertainment and politics, politics as entertainment, etc etc etc. What Jezebel provides, (beyond a non-judgmental (in most cases, but notably not in the case of this article's comments), supportive, progressive, feminist community at a time when I feel a good feminist is hard to find) is a forum for women to discuss what happens in women's lives. For all their immodest disclosure about bodily fluids and sexual encounters as well as bad credit and shitty jobs, why should they not talk about the cocktails they enjoy and the hangovers they suffer? It is a full disclosure website and I, for one, find it refreshing in a time when post-feminism seems to have ushered back into style some more traditional feminine (anti-feminIST) values.

To take a part of Jezebel Jessica Grose's quote out of context “You know, the whole point of Third Wave feminism is that individual choice should not be judged." While I don't know if that's the whole point of 3rd wave feminism (I've yet to find a definition of the Third Wave that doesn't grate on me), I do applaud the sentiment that we are not here to judge other people's actions or choices. At the same time, though, when a woman tells me that she's choosing to be a stay-at-home mom, my inner Second Waver gags a little, which the Third Waver in me wouldn't be allowed to do. (I also thought it was a tragedy when Charlotte quit her job to get pregnant.) I guess what bothered me most about this discussion was some of the comments on Jezebel... so many of the women there were saying some really retro/misogynistic things about women drinking being sluts and using standard conservative scare tactics about getting trashed/getting STDs. It was just so negative and unproductive, not like Jezebel usually. All of these women, the ones saying "Yes, drink!" and the ones saying, "A feminist models herself on the Virgin Mary" were all flying the flag of feminism. So what is a feminist these days? Is it someone who feels she has the choice to do whatever she pleases or someone who bristles at other women choosing more traditional roles because their very progressive feminist values tell them it's okay to not want to be CEO? Does considering myself a feminist give me the right to question other people's decisions? Or is it specifically anti-feminist to judge, no matter what your motivation is?

In the interest of clearing up any confusion, I drink, not heavily, but regularly (I am getting a Ph.D., as you know, and the article drives home the point - mentioning it twice - that the more educated a woman is, the more she drinks -- ergo, less education = better for women in general, since drinking is so bad?), I do not think that drinking is feminist, but I think that women feeling like they have the choice to and that it's not specifically forbidden them is a sign of progress. (Also, many of the more inflammatory comments on the Jezebel post have since been deleted based on the rules of Jezebel posting etiquette.)

Is everyone some shade of anorexic?

First of all: required reading if you want to completely understand why I'm so worked up:

Margarita Bertsos - Glamour Magazine "Shape-up" Blogger introduces herself.

More from Margarita - The one where she brings her own food to restaurants.

Jezebel's commentary on diet blogging. They've already done it better than I will, but I'm going to go ahead and rant.

As a disclaimer, this is meant in no way as a criticism of Margarita's diet OR her blog. I admire her candor and her courage in writing so freely and honestly about things that are typically so wrapped up in shame that people won't admit to even thinking about them. God knows, I wouldn't have the guts to write so in-depth about my issues with food and my body on such a highly publicized stage.

That being said, it seems like a version of something I've done in the past and something I've heard other people planning to do - entering into a semi-codependent agreement to go on a crazy diet with someone else. I call it "keeping me honest" and I guess it is helpful to have someone help you be accountable for your actions (ingestions), but it seems like Margarita didn't necessarily enter into a healthy agreement with her thousands of avid readers (brought to her by the Glamour Magazine publicity department). It seems instead like she was frustrated at not advancing out of her "Executive Assistant" position and saw that in her chosen industry, she would have to be thin to be successful.

And so she volunteered to put her insecurities on parade and embark on a project of precipitous weight-loss (looks like about a hundred pounds in just over eight months, though I don't know her height, so can't really gauge) in order to advance in her work. If diets involved sleeping with her boss, she could level the company with a sexual harassment suit. (And I realize I'm being a little reactionary here, as the company doesn't seem to have approached her and said, "it's too bad you're not skinny, because you'd make a great health editor," but I am, I think, rationally pissed off at the tacit understanding that anyone working at any level in fashion or related fields must be thin. See also the diet Emily Blunt had to go on in order to pretend to work in Fashion for the movie The Devil Wears Prada, as well as the really unhealthy pressure that Anne Hathaway's character succumbs to - and to which she also seems to have bowed in real life... girlfriend is THIN now.)

Anyway. This is all hooked in with my body- and food-issues. The standards for what is overweight these days seem entirely insane. Sizes of clothing keep getting smaller and smaller, while the population's size as a whole doesn't seem to radically be changing. This results in lots of perfectly normal-size women looking for a lone size 10 in a sea of 00s left over at the end of a season and in other women (myself included, in some stores) never fitting into even the largest of sizes that stores stock, (and here the issue is not that they don't make clothes that fit me, but that they don't make them available. I, for instance can't try on a pair of jeans in the Gap store I most often shop in because they don't STOCK a size 14 Long. They stock a size 2 Long, but not a 14 Long. Because THAT'S logical.) without being fat. (And here I don't mean to imply that "fat" women deserve to not fit into any clothes at the Gap... I'm simply trying to point out the illogic and unfairness of the way retail has changed to reflect the radical thinness that is in style in fashion magazines and on runways. It is NOT a realistic ideal, even for the naturally-waif-thin women of this world.) There is also, for the record, a gulf between where "normal" clothes stores cut off and where "plus sized" clothes stores pick up. That's where I live. And while I think I've actually got a pretty great body (at the moment and for the first time in a REALLY long time), I don't look good in almost ANYTHING I wear because I'm in this no-man's land.

I'm a tall woman. 5'11" on a short day and, though I don't know my weight (I step on the scales backward at the doctor's office because the number makes me uncomfortable and I prefer to judge my body by how it feels and not how it measures. This is because some Crazy Person inside of me thinks that I should still weigh the 125 I did just after my 6 inch growth spurt.), I do know that my BMI (Body Mass Index, for those who aren't even a little bit obsessed) puts me just over the edge into Overweight. Though I measure as Overweight, I also think I would look kind of scary if I lost the approximately THIRYTY pounds it would take to put me squarely in the Normal category. (a. I HATE that they label it Normal. b. I understand there are medical theories behind the BMI, but it's supposed to account for men and women equally. I, however, have probably 25 pounds of boobs (I read somewhere that your averabe D-cup weighs between 15 and 20 pounds, and I've moved on past the D-cup, to be honest) but I just can't believe that breast tissue and the accompanying fat can be accounted for in a measure that is also supposed to work for a man who has the same height and weight as me.

But I digress. I'm falling into the trap that Jezebel put thusly:

Even more than that, I wonder if diet blogs can be positive at all. It's good for women to have spaces where they can speak freely about their issues and feelings, but whenever we do posts about weight, discussion always devolves into people posting their heights and weights down to the decimal point.

It's not about my weight or my clothing size or my food issues. It's about the culture of thinness and the pressure put on women to conform to an ideal that, if they attained it, would certainly cause bad health and possibly even death. I just think that our society needs to broaden its understanding of what's thin, doctors need to either explain to me how my boobs fit into their BMI or come up with a system that fairly tells women (who have all the parts they came with) what's healthy and what isn't, and stores need to actually cater to their customers, 95% of whom are NOT shaped like their models.

And with that, Captain Obvious signs off for today.

Yay, women!

This story makes me feel all kinds of positive about the change women can inspire in their communities.

Zombie Feminism

Zombie Feminism. This is a really interesting article about a bunch of movies I've always disregarded out of hand. Pretty fascinating. Now I kind of want to see Zombie Strippers, which I had thought sounded like a bunch of dreck. And maybe it is, but I'm interested in the concept this article suggests. What do you all think?