Category Archives: Marriage & family

Women’s mags apologize and miss the point

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Two women’s magazine’s recently issued profuse apologies for offending their readers, totally missing the point with their mea culpas.

Maura Kelly, a blogger for Marie Claire, wrote about the TV show “Mike and Molly,” which features a couple who met at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Kelly didn’t like having to look at fat people; she doesn’t think they should be on television. She wrote:

'Healthy model'? from Marie Claire's web sitewww.marieclaire.com Typical photo from Marie Claire’s web site 

I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room – just like I’d find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.

When she was flooded with emails she wrote:

I would really like to apologize for the insensitive things I’ve said in this post. Believe it or not, I never wanted anyone to feel bullied or ashamed after reading this, and I sorely regret that it upset people so much…I was talking about a TV show that features people who are not simply a little overweight, but appear to be morbidly obese. (Morbid obesity is defined as 100 percent more than their ideal weight.) And for whatever it’s worth, I feel just as uncomfortable when I see an anorexic person as I do when I see someone who is morbidly obese…

OK Kelly, first of all, you work for a site that glorifies extremely skinny women; I have a hard time believing anorexia makes you uncomfortable. But say it does, let me explain something: criticizing women for being too thin doesn’t mean it’s okay to criticize them for being too fat. In fact, it’s actually the exact same thing! The issue here is judging women’s bodies– and human character in general– based on appearances. You’re assuming there’s some perfect body type and you can tell if its been reached just by looking. Guess what? You can’t! A person may look like she’s at a ‘perfect’ weight but she could be bulimic, a smoker, a cocaine addict. Plenty of thin people are unhealthy and plenty of fat people exercise and are disease free. Your apology should not be about attacking fat people but for acting as if it’s perfectly okay to judge a book by it’s cover. Most kindergartners learn that’s an inaccurate way to look at life.

Temptress LeAnn Rimeswww.popeater.com Temptress LeAnn Rimes 

Next up: Valerie Latona, Editor-in-Chief of Shape Magazine who aplogized for putting LeeAnn Rimes on the cover. Her readers were upset about it and she was very sorry; she didn’t mean to glorify a “husband stealer.” Are you serious? Is this the year 2010? Men are not helpless creatures, objects capable of being stolen by wicked women. Affairs are symptoms, not causes. Marriages are complex and mysterious. No one just walks away from a happy one for anybody. Demonizing women for tempting men is an age old stereotype based on fear of female sexual power. I wish Latona had responded to her readers that labeling and shaming LeeAnn Rimes is reductive to women and men.

Wouldn’t it be great if the media aspired to recognize women and men for the complex and varied creatures they are instead of reducing them to two-dimensional cartoon characters?

What is responsible procreation??

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SF Gate reports:

In court documents filed this morning, Prop 8 backers say same-sex marriages harm the state’s interest in promoting responsible procreation through heterosexual marriage.

These people are so desperate, its sad. I feel sorry for them.

When I think about responsible procreation– and responsible partnerships– one word comes to mind: love. That’s the main thing a kid needs; heterosexuals don’t have any kind of monopoly on love. In fact, there may be evidence to the contrary– gangs of homosexuals don’t have much of a record for beating people up just for being heterosexual.

Good parents are patient, tolerant, and not violent, kind of like how Jesus preached people should aspire to be.

For more on Walker’s historic ruling read my post here.

Is Viagra ruining marriages?

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Just when men are reaching the age where they are maturing sexually, around 50 or so, finally understanding women’s bodies and how they work; how to really make love; that women prefer a “slow hand” (as the Pointer Sisters asked for so eloquently twenty years ago) instead of growing up, they’re medicating and regressing. Viagra is making sex worse, not better, and a lot of women wish that men would stop taking it.

Viagra

Lucinda Watson, who blogs about single life for the over 50 set, posted about the trials of dating men in the Viagra demographic. Though she also writes that WEB MD reports that men under 40 are the fastest growing demographic of Viagra users. Watson blogs: “”Pfizer, the makers of Viagra, state that this is understandable as younger men want their sexual performance to be superior.” Watson warns this is exactly the wrong direction to go in to create better sex and better relationships.

For the record: women are sexual beings and enjoy sex. The challenge here is not that women are asexual, frigid, or that women need to be in love (or even like) to enjoy sex. It’s almost the opposite: much of women’s bodies qualify as erogenous zones– hair, shoulders, back, neck, and contrary to popular belief, breasts. Breasts are not in fact, purely decorative, only around for visual pleasure of men (or feeding of babies.) Breasts are secondary sex characteristics, and exist in part for the sensory pleasure of women.

While men’s erections are slowing down (or even before that happens if they’re smart) it would be great if they tried to become less genital/ intercourse/ self focused. It’s an opportunity for sex to get more incredible, rather than taking a little blue pill to transform themselves back into the not-so-great penis/ intercourse/ self focused teenagers they always were.

Lift the curse, change the shape

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After watching Joy Behar’s show on the Oscar curse, and hearing a male guest suggest that when actresses are “given this giant gold ballast, men get insecure.” Also, feeling that the curse is another way of letting women know they can’t have it all, I decided to start a movement.

Lift the curse, change the shape.

New Oscar Statuette

Can’t Sandra Bullock Have it All?

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The latest reports of Sandra Bullock’s husband cheating on her may not be true, but remain depressing nevertheless. Stories of Sandra’s husband’s affair burning up the internet as she simultaneously celebrates worldwide public recognition for becoming one of the most powerful women in Hollywood sends an ominous warning to women: don’t rise too high, because if you do, you’ll probably be alone.

Just a couple weeks ago, Sandra seemed to have it all: critical acclaim with her best actress Academy Award win and financial success, her films were also top grossing movies. Many were calling this Hollywood’s “year of the woman.” When Bullock gave her acceptance speech, she thanked her husband, Jesse James, whose love, she has said, made her a better actress, giving her the courage to try new kinds of parts because she had him to come home too. James watched Bullock claim the Oscar with tears in his eyes. Viewing the show I was thinking: it’s so great and so rare to see a man publicly love and admire his woman, sit in the audience and watch her while she shines, so different than the scenario we’re used too of the wife being the cheerleader for her guy, the wives of female politicians always clapping and grinning by their husbands’ sides.

Sandra BullockSandra Bullock 

Bullock isn’t the only actress to have her marriage break up after reaching new heights of success.

Reese Witherspoon’s family famously fell apart after her Oscar win for her incredible performance as June Cash in “Walk the Line”. Supposedly her husband, Ryan Phillipe was jealous. The same thing happened after Julia Roberts’ won for “Erin Brokovich.” She was with Benjamin Bratt. Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes also ended their marriage after her win. Other successful actresses whose marriages supposedly broke up because they surpassed their husbands include Hilary Swank and Jenifer Garner, who didn’t win an Oscar but also eclipsed her husband’s TV fame.

Of course, we don’t know why these couples really broke up, but the rumors themselves perpetuate a dangerous myth that becomes real female fear: if a woman reaches too high, she will become unattractive to her partner. Women as a group are permitted one kind of power in our culture: sexual power. But in order to really win at that, they mustn’t get too much of other kinds including money, intelligence, acclaim etc. This is the same philosophy behind the idea that still persists: women can be pretty or smart, the stupid barbie or ugly feminist dichotomy, breast size has an inverted ratio to brain size.

While for a man, just the opposite is true. His intelligence makes him appealing. And the higher he climbs– in sports, in business, in the arts– the more women want him. Sexual desirability is a highly motivating factor to achieve, but too often, it works in reverse for women.

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan PhillipeReese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe 

Before all the social Darwinists claim females seeking out powerful males to protect them is in our DNA, that’s just a convenient way to justify the current power structure. If a woman appears weak, it’s easy for a guy to appear strong. When women are told their main power is sexual, and if they try for anything else, that will take away from their attractiveness, it’s an effective tool to keep women in their in place. Allowing women to be smart, rich, and pretty is too threatening– what else might those women do?

Julia Roberts and Benjamin BrattJulia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt 

I’m not attacking men here, by the way, but the power structure. The gender power gap in our society, or taken to its extreme as in the gender apartheid of the Taliban, doesn’t make any one happy. Men are imprisoned by these roles too because pigeonholing is limiting for everyone. Duh. Being competent, doing something well, is super-attractive in everyone. The world will be so better off when the other half is allowed to shine.

Jezebel responds to my post on Auntie Briagde

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Anna S. writes on Jezebel after reading my post on the “Auntie Brigade” (inspired by Elizabeth Gilberts new book Committed) that she agrees childless women should be more valued in society, not necessarily for taking care of or inspiring others but also for their own accomplishments. Commenters tell Jezebel stories of important aunts in their lives.

Anna S. writes:

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I grew up really close to a childless aunt. She introduced me to the Archie McPhee catalog, let me stay up late while she told embarrassing stories about my mom, and taught me why they don’t send donkeys to college (nobody likes a smart ass). She’s been a pretty huge influence on my sense of humor and on my cultural tastes (though her tendency to remember only the one funny line from an otherwise shitty movie means I no longer go with her to Blockbuster), and she had a big enough hand in my brother’s and my upbringing that my mom used her to explain the concept of an allomother. That’s an animal who provides some care for other animals’ young, which seems to be sort of how Magowan understands aunts.

But: my aunt has also spent much of her life not caring for anybody’s young. She works, she plays with her dogs, she has a big network of friends and cousins she often travels to see. Helping raise us has certainly been part of her history, but she has many other identities besides “aunt,” and she deserves recognition as a person in her own right, not just as a contributor to my family. As Magowan points out, childless men are often “admired, or even envied, as the self-sufficient bachelors they are.” Childless women deserve to be admired for themselves too — not just for what they can do for others.

Are childless women happy?

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Best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert says childless women are just fine

The husband, the kids, the picket fence, you know this scene. Women’s biological clocks are desperately ticking. We’re on a quest to secure a man so we can reproduce, because becoming mothers will make us truly happy and fulfilled.

While childless men manage to find a respectable place in society, often with a few publicly recognized achievements under their belts, admired, or even envied, as the self-sufficient bachelors they are; childless women remain suspect, if not total freaks. They’re often pitied; people wonder at what point in their lives they veered off onto their unnatural, unfeminine paths, becoming lonely “spinsters” or crazy cat ladies.

Best-selling, childless author of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert introduces a radically different theory in her new book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage. She writes that childless women have historically served a crucial role in society, not yet publicly recognized. These women should not be scorned but celebrated for their contributions to bettering the human race.

Gilbert writes:

“If you look across human populations of all varieties, in every culture and on every continent (even among the most enthusiastic breeders in history, like the nineteenth-century Irish, or the contemporary Amish), you will find that there is a constant 10 percent of women within any population who never have children at all. The percentage never gets any lower than that, in any population whatsoever. In fact, the percentage of women who never reproduce in most societies is usually much higher than 10 percent- and that’s not just today, in the developed Western world, where childless rates among women tend to hover around 50 percent.”

Gilbert speculates that female childlessness is an evolutionary adaption:

“Maybe it’s not only legitimate for certain women to never reproduce, it’s necessary. It’s as though, as as a species, we need an abundance of responsible, compassionate, childless women to support the wider community in various ways. Childbearing and child rearing consume so much energy that the women who do become mothers quickly become swallowed up by that daunting task- if not outright killed by it.”

Elizabeth GilbertElizabeth Gilbert

Gilbert points out that childless women have always taken on the tasks of nurturing children who are not their biological responsibilty as no other group in history has ever done, in such vocations as running schools, hospitals, and becoming midwives.

That’s all fine and good, but won’t these childless women be desperately unhappy in their old age?

Gilbert says no. Recent studies of happiness levels in America’s nursing homes show the indicators of contentment in later life are poverty and health. “Save your money, floss your teeth…you’ll be a perfectly happy old bird someday.”

Gilbert concedes that without descendants, childless women are often forgotten more quickly, but that the role they played when alive was vital. Gilbert calls these vibrant women the “Auntie Brigade.” Here are some examples she lists of their influences:

Jane Austen was a childless aunt.

Raised by childless aunts:

Leo Tolstoy

Truman Capote

the Bronte sisters

Edward Gibbon (famous historian raised by his Aunt Kitty)

John Lennon (Auntie Mimi– convinced him he would be an important artist)

F. Scott Fitzgerald (Aunt Annabel offered to pay for his college education)

Frank Lloyd Wright (first building commissioned by Aunts Jane and Nell who also ran a boarding school in Wisconsin)

Coco Chanel (Aunt Gabrielle taught her how to sew)

Virginia Woolf (muse was Aunt Coraline)

Marcel Proust (memory set off by Aunt Leonie’s madeleine)

Gilbert writes that when J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, was “asked what his creation looked like, replied his image, essence, and spirit of felicity can be found all over the world and hazily refelected ‘in the faces of many women who have no children.’ That is the Auntie brigade.”

Marcel ProustMarcel Proust

I’ve always wondered why people get in such a tizzy about gay people, justifying their bigotry because: “It’s just not natural.” How do we know what’s natural? Is everyone supposed to pop out babies like the Duggar family and their 20 kids? Is that “natural”? And is every “natural” thing good anyway? Death is natural. Cancer can be natural.

Women without children are perfectly capable of being happy; what they’re often missing isn’t kids, but a society and a culture that values and respects them.

To all the moms out there, thank you for working hard to continue the human race. And to the “Auntie Brigade,” thank you for working hard to continue the human race.

Read my post on New York Magazine’s biased coverage of childless women here.

More on girls and food

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I got so many comments on my earlier post on girls and food, many of them direct message or to my personal email account, that I wanted to add a little more public info.

To re-cap, I basically let my young kids eat what they want, when they want. They have food shelves they can access full of food they choose. The idea is they learn the skills to tune into their own hunger and how to satisfy it.

So first– buying organic. I think that’s great for your kids if you do that. (My father, by the way, worked for Safeway for years and thought the whole organic thing was overused– he’d say “Do they know what organic means? It’s all organic!”) I do buy organic with much of my food but not all, and I don’t go crazy. The reason is because I used to be an insane health nut and it was the most unhealthy time of my life. I was in my late teens/twenties; I smoked a  pack of Marlboros a day; my favorite liquid was a Bloody Mary (organic tomato juice); I often threw up after consuming my curried tofu and kale, but hey, I was vegetarian! I did yoga. I also carried around a book– I’m not kidding here– it was called The Sexual Politics of Meat. I don’t know if this book is still in print but it was all about how eating meat is anti-woman.

Basically, since I got healthy, I just can’t mix up food with ethics like that ever again. This is why I can’t get all worked up when my kids waste food (thank God for composting.) Some people with a different personal history can go all organic or vegetarian and I respect that, but its just not my personal cause in this lifetime.

As far as comments that I can’t control what will happen when my kids are teenagers, I totally agree. I haven’t go a clue what wll happen. But as far as the freedom they will be getting, I have tried to give them that freedom as much as possible right now– kind of like how God put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden; he told them not to eat from it (which I don’t do) but it was there, because they had to have free choice in order to be truly free. Yes, my kids are only 3 and 6 (9 month old still eats what I feed her) and they don’t have their own money yet, but they are allowed to pick out whatever they want at Safeway or Whole Foods, in abundance. They do have sugary cereals etc but most of the time, really, they do not choose to eat those, but having it there gives them freedom and a feeling of being in control,  I think, I hope.

Before my kids eat I always ask them (book’s instructions) How does your tummy feel? Are you hungry? What deoes hungry feel like? I tell them their tummy is the boss, not me, not the food on their plate. Not their eyes and what they see. When they eat, sometimes I ask them to describe the foood: Is it chewy? salty? crunchy? The idea is that later they will be able to identfy if they feel like eating something warm or cold, sweet or savory etc.

And I think I wrote this in the last post, but its really important not to get the kid involved in anyone else’s eating, kid or grown up. A major origin of eating disorders is when kids are trained to feed/worry about the well being of other kids or adults. Kids have enough to worry about just focusing on learning how to take care of themselves.

Read my interview with www.fitwoman.com here.