Populating

This is in part what I mean when I say it is not how many people we have on earth, but how we treat the people we have on earth, that matters for the survival of our species:

http://www.rwjf.org/en/blogs/new-public-health/2013/07/commission_to_build.html?cid=XEM_A7340

And some Boston love

This morning I am going on a run with the secret agents of Boston running, otherwise known as the Llamas or The Most Informal Running Club Ever.

This is an attempt to get more communal with my running, and, truth be told, find some way to trick myself into keeping it up after the marathon in October, when I'll retire my 12-year-old Adidas shoes and declare myself in need of proving nothing ((running-wise)) to no one.

I saw these guys at the Tufts 10K and think they're great. Also, they run and then eat. They're my kind of people.

I also saw this on their website and it made me tear up.

I love our city.

And now I must write about this

First, I'll point out that I'm always hard pressed to find things in this world that I think about in black and white terms. Perhaps most notably, I'm not wholly convinced time exists. More than that, I get that my opinions needn't be "right"...and that others needn't be wrong to make my thoughts valid enough. I especially feel this way about issues like race, religion, class, gender, etc. With that:

Blurred Lines.

The beat is fun. I feel like I'm listening to Millenium Funk Party all over again, with a tempo-ed up, pitched down Ohio Player or two.

The music videos are also fun, whimsical, the one with the clothes more so. The director of the videos calls them meta, Mr. Thicke purports he's existential, but I think everyone's just being a clown. Pretty clowns in a circus, inspired by over-sized and shiny things plus topless photography. This is all okay with me - as social science research icon Brené Brown might point out, as adults, we too have to play.

Some of the lyrics are different. While the title of the song, confounded by the album title and the song's lyrical content, is going to be deemed anything from benign and honest to insulting and dangerous depending on interpretation, it's undeniable that, overall, the lyrics take an extreme power position in favor of men.

There's no point in comparing these lyrics to those in any other song; this is an original creation, and it can stand on its own to critique. Here the female video director goes ahead and calls the words misogynistic, but not sexist. Another place I can be clear is in my disagreement with her - it is impossible for something to be misogynistic without being sexist. The actual silliness of the videos and even the frivolity of the beat, which I like, are compensating for often demeaning, controlling lyrics, clouded in a guise of silliness. Some these words/string of words are truly offensive, objectifying, and/or imbalanced ("Just let me liberate you"/"You the hottest bitch in this place"/"Yeah, had a bitch"/"I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two"/"So I just watch and wait for you to salute the truly pimping"). All sung in a very cutesy way.

Overall, I feel the best term for the lyrics is chauvinist. Michael Korda describes male chauvinism as "blind allegiance and simple minded devotion to one's maleness that is mixed with open or disguised belligerence toward women. It is also usually associated with an unconscious ritual to ward off anxiety engendered by these same women (emphasis added)." The fact that this associated and unconscious anxiety-based ritual is being written up in the lyrics and dolled/dressed up by beat and videos is reinforced in my mind by Robin Thicke when he retweets Pharrell's quote of François Truffaut (did I just write that?): "In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs."

Mostly, honestly, I listen to the few lyrics I like plus the melody, and I hope I forget the rest. There's a tension to this. To me, the only way to see the lyrics to this song with any dignity is to view the whole of this work as a parody of anxious, aroused men provoking false notions of power concerning the women about whom they fantasize, and women who are truly provoking their own equally-false notions of coyness. The these sentiments are engaged with very playfully, and I find myself being simultaneously being happy and sad about it. I can be happy that flirtation is part of the dance of romance, and I can be sad that we live in a world of extreme sex-and-gender stereotyping.

Other things I feel I can do as I listen to this song this summer: I can also want Robin to apologize for his egregiously flippant - and just plain egregious - comments about the pleasure of degrading a woman, I can sigh at people who don't get why feminists are upset (by the way, reading through comments sections is my personal standard of hell), and I can understand that it's mostly about making money.

Preferably, I can to all of this while dancing.

Of course I'm a feminist

Warning: This whole post has no thesis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jul/03/ellen-page-interview-the-east

I've liked seeing this article around the internet recently, and that both Feminist Frequency and MissRepresentation have brought it to light.

I like EP's youth, her willingness to say what's on her mind without a plan or agenda, and I like the fact that she's a feminist!

I find myself talking about feminism here more than I would think, not because I intend to, but because this stuff comes up all the time. Whether it's....are women allowed to play video games, or speak, or be ugly, or be mad, or walk down the street, or disagree with one another, or be here?, gender issues are some of the most alive issues on the planet. So I keep bringing this stuff up, because this is the place where I do that, and this stuff just keeps coming up.

While I boil my own ideas down, it comes to this for me - My connection to God and my ability to  know that my worthiness comes from God makes me a feminist. I am worthy, not because of my gender, or what society prescribes for me, but because of who I am in my Creator. It's as clear as that, and it's as rebellious and as counter-culture as that, I suppose.

So, when Ellen says, "...If I played those other kinds of roles I would just die a slow death," I am right there with her. I am not my true self when I don't love myself as a woman, love other women for being themselves,and want a world to be shaped by both sexes and by those who don't affiliate on a binary. I die to the God who created me as I am when I don't bring my womanliness to bear on situations, or when I accept less than respect for anyone out there based on sex or sexuality. It's so simple, but it gets pretty deep pretty quick, because being a feminist does mean maintaining self-identity and basic respect in a world ruled by other things.

One of the main problems I hear in Beyonce and others' responses to feminism, or the new feminism, is answered by Page - "People always attribute being a feminist to hating girls being sexual, and that's not it at all." I felt like I was reacting to this when I wrote about Miss America and Legally Blonde, Clueless and Pretty Woman (great movies) way back when. We all at times want to say we're feminists or we believe in equality, but...

But what? But I love my husband? But I love men? But I shop at Victoria's Secret? My personal insecurities would perhaps bring out the phrase, "But I love feeling womanly, feminine and protected by men." I do. That's true. It's just not mutually exclusive of my feminism, and it says nothing my ability or lack of ability to protect myself, express what masculine features I might have, or toggle back and forth at times.

I'd love to agree that this is all a U.S. problem, but we all know it's absolutely not. This is a people problem. This is an - experiencing issues with strangers, colleagues, friends, family, media, doctors, all human institutions and self-perception - problem. Ultimately, feminism is both alive and well, growing in ways it wasn't in the 60's-70's, and in a heap of trouble at the same time. My only recourse is to be authentic to the core about it. And to keep bringing it up.

Stuff that makes me happy

"Physical Fitness in Youth Curbs Suicide Risk in Later Life"

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/80721

 

...Because I blindly assume that I'm still in my "youth," and willfully ignore any signs to the contrary.

At any rate, let's keep moving. The study cites heightened belongingness and increased coping skill reserves as some of the adjunct benefits to exercising just to look and feel good.

And even if none of that's true, now that I've kicked my coffee habit, endorphin dependence is all I've got left.

Yes, this is funny

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/06/congress-bros-vs-hipsters

But, and I know I sound old, how is this helping us run the free world effectively?

Sheesh.

Back

Back from vacation. Already feeling more productive in the last 30 minutes than I'd been in the prior two weeks before celebrating the fourth with family and friends.

Already reading stuff like this and getting all excitable about it:

 What they found is a correlation between a high rate of diagnosis and state laws that penalize school districts if not enough students pass standardized tests. While all public schools face financial pressures to improve test scores since No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001, some 30 states had passed similar laws before them, and those correlate very strongly with states that have high rates of ADHD diagnosis and medication.

It's the researcher's mind in me. Apparently reading in a reclined position in the sun, taking pictures, dancing, and eating lots and lots and lots and lots of food doesn't completely do it for me. I need data, people. Explore more here:

http://childhealthdata.org/browse/allregions?q=2482