Number of the Day

by Shaker BrianWS, who may or may not become a full-time contributor someday based on a variety of circumstances and considerations and planetary alignments, which is sooooo myseterious and let's all enjoy the mystery!

$20,000: The amount of pocket change you'll need to follow Gwyneth Paltrow's awesome recommendations for an "authentic" trip around New York City, via her new iPhone app, "City Guides by goop."

Yeah.

Now there's an on-the-go companion to her regular goop newsletter, equally steeped in privilege, aspirational consumerism, and body policing, but with the added bonus of reminding you that you're poor while you're standing directly outside the window of a shop featuring goop-approved wares that you cannot afford to buy!

It's City Guides by goop: New York Edition. ("London, Los Angeles....and many more" coming soon!) From the app's description:

Built off the success of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle website, goop.com, this app is the first of a series of goop City Guides, bringing you an in-depth and authentic guide to New York City. Taking the site's popular series of "GO" newsletters to the next level, this city guide sends you to even more of goop's much-loved and often undiscovered spots. This is goop's take on New York. goop finds you the ultimate nail salon, the most fantastic food cart for a quick snack, the best boutique to find a unique piece for your wardrobe, a beautiful salon where you can get your makeup done, the coolest playground to take your kids to, and the person to call for an at-home blow dry. A resource for first-time visitors and city dwellers alike, the app is filled with all the new and under the radar places that goop has discovered over the years. This is the city as you'd never known it before.

Starting with the fact that "undiscovered" tends to mean great, affordable, neighborhood holes-in-the-wall that local people regularly enjoy but aren't "discovered" until A Person of Importance broadcasts their existence via, say, their pretentious iPhone app, this is just an amazing display of privilege and classism.

"A resource for first-time visitors and city dwellers alike," this new app gives you a new, easy way out for all of those times when you're sitting at home thinking about taking a shower and then making Red King Crab for dinner, but realizing there just aren't enough hours in the day to blow dry your own hair and still make it to the local fishmonger before closing.

Of course, as we know from past editions, you're already a fool if you're not having your favorite fishmonger make deliveries to your home, no doy. But let's say you're just now catching up with goop's lifestyle suggestions and you're still stuck retrieving your own fish, at least now you can save time by calling someone to come over and blow dry your hair for you.

I do understand that a ton of time goes into doing hair for red carpet events where hundreds of photographs will be taken of her, and the least-flattering ones used to drag her down, and I also understand that not everyone is physically able to blow dry hir own hair. But this isn't an app designed for famous actresses, or people with disabilities; it's an app designed ostensibly for a general audience.

And that's the problem: Paltrow offers this app as a resource for tourists and residents, without any caveat that many of the residents of New York City—like those quirky characters who frequent "undiscovered" establishments—are impoverished. As Liss observed when we were talking about this: "There's a long and unfortunate history of treating 'Manhattan' and 'New York City' as synonymous entities, which is not merely a clueless expression of profound privilege and wealth, but a perpetuation of that ugly history which disappears entire boroughs of people, many of whom are poor, many of whom are people of color, and many of whose 'classic New Yorkery'—their accents, their culture—are used to deny them access to the halls of power in the city that trades on their 'colorfulness'."

I don't begrudge Gwyneth Paltrow (or Mitt Romney, or anyone with a shitload of money, regardless of how they wound up with it) their right to go spend that money in whatever manner they see fit, as long as it's legal and consensual. But I do have a problem with someone who is as privileged as Paltrow disappearing the real-life struggles of people who don't have her money and means, without so much as a nod to the classes for whom her app is really applicable. The result is the implication that we could just all eat better, shop better, and live better if we did it a bit more like her.

Yep, Paltrow shares her tips with us because her life is so perfect and she wants ours to be better. And of course, her life is so amazing because she simply discovered the time-saving, smart-shopping, golden secrets to life. It's definitely not because she's white, able-bodied, famous, conventionally beautiful, straight, cisgender, and totally fucking rich. Nope, it's definitely that the rest of us are just too lazy or stupid to get with the program.

Same old story. Rinse and repeat. Now call for a blow dry.

Debate-a-Thon 2012

So the Republicans had yet another debate this weekend, this time in Iowa, and, with Herman Cain having bid his presidential aspirations adieu (or something less Frenchy and traitorous), and Jon Huntsman off fucking around in New Hampshire because his poll numbers were too low to qualify him for participation in the debate (whoops!), there were a modest six participants in the ABC News debate on the campus of Drake University in Des Moines: Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Michele Bachmann.

I'm sure there's a transcript somewhere, but who cares, amirite? Taxes, Reagan, illegals, Jesus, bootstraps, taxes, Obama stinks. Even if the Republicans' rap weren't already as predictable as my response to a Jay Leno monologue (boom!), I think we'd all sufficiently have gotten the picture after fully 500 debates during this interminable primary.

Anyway! There was one vaguely notable incident during the debate: Mitt Romney challenged Rick Perry to a $10,000 bet (like normal people do all the time) over Perry's contention that Romney's position on healthcare mandates has flip-flopped. (It has.)

Naturally, people took notice of Romney's proposed wager, not just because he is wrongity-wrong, but also because it's maybe not the smartest idea he's ever had to flippantly bet 20% of the median US household annual income as if it's pocket change, while the country is in a virtual depression.

But Mitt Romney is nothing if not a deeply awkward campaigner whose unexamined multi-layered privilege makes him so cringe-inducingly clueless that he can make exponentially worse even the most minor controversy surrounding his extreme wealth. So, in New Hampshire the following day, Romney recalled how "his experience as a Mormon missionary in France had given him an appreciation for the privileges of his upbringing."

Living on no more than $110 a month in France – which Romney said was the equivalent of $500 or $600 in today's dollars – the former Massachusetts governor said he learned to live simply when he left for France in 1966 at the age of 19, stretching those dollars to cover food, clothing and rent over two and a half years in France. He lived in a series of apartments with little or no plumbing or amenities like refrigeration.

"You're not living high on the hog at that level," he said. "A number of the apartments that I lived in when I was there didn't have toilets – we had instead the little pads on the ground – OK, you know how that works, pull – there was a chain behind you with kind of a bucket, bucket affair. I had not experienced one of those in the United States."

Romney said he and his fellow missionaries showered once a week at a facility where you could pay a few francs to bathe – "Or if we were got lucky, we actually bought a hose and would hold it there on the sink … and wash ourselves that way."

"I lived in a way that people of lower middle income in France lived and I said to myself, 'Wow. I sure am lucky to be born in the United States of America,' " Romney said, adding that he began to appreciate "the freedoms and the gifts that come by virtue of having been in this country."

Okay, first of all, if you want to be president of the United States of America, you should probably indicate some awareness that there are still lots of the people in the United States of America who are living in extreme poverty.

Secondly, it's gross to talk about living simply while doing voluntary missionary work in Europe as if that was experiencing real poverty. Real poverty is like walking a tightrope ten stories up with no safety gear; Romney might have spent a minute on a highwire, but he had the secure safety net of his parents' multimillion dollar fortune stretched beneath his feet the whole time.

I believe the great social commentator Jarvis Cocker said it best: "Rent a flat above a shop / Cut your hair and get a job / Smoke some fags and play some pool / Pretend you never went to school / But still you'll never get it right / 'Cuz when you're laid in bed at night / Watching roaches climb the wall / If you call your dad he could stop it all, yeah / You'll never live like common people / You'll never do whatever common people do / Never fail like common people / You'll ever watch your life slide out of view / And then dance and drink and screw / Because there's nothing else to do."


I can't wait to hear Raconteur Romney tell us about the time he got a profound understanding of homelessness by going camping.

Rebuilding Privilege

Speaking of Newt Gingrich (ugh, this job, where I have to write things like "speaking of Newt Gingrich," because I have to speak of Newt Gingrich), the candidate has released his first television campaign spot, which will begin running in Iowa today. It's called "Rebuilding the America We Love," although, as per the usual conservaspeak, that's just a dog whistle more honestly translated as "Rebuilding Privilege."

String music. Amber waves of grain. A white picket fence, and a porch with a US flag blowing gently in the breeze. Newt Gingrich: "Some people say the America we know and love is a thing of the past. I don't believe that." Majestic purple mountains. A white dude in a factory. Lots of sparks. (Did Michael Bay direct this shit?) "Because, working together, I know we can rebuild America." US flag. Ma (a white lady) sweeping porch of her white-shingled ma-and-pop business. "We can revive our economy and create jobs—" Steel mill. Sparks. "—shrink government and the regulations that strangle our businesses—" Young blonde white lady arranging flowers in her flower shop window. "—throw out the tax code, and replace it with one that is simple and fair." The Marine Corps drill team (just a sea of white dude faces) practicing the exhibition drill. "We can regain the world's respect, by standing strong again—" Statue of Liberty. White church in the countryside. "—being true to our faith—" Four young corporate types—two white women, one white man, and one black man. "—and respecting one another." White cowboy in slo-mo, lassoing steer. "We can return power to the people—" Statehouse. "—and to the states we live in—" White man's hand drifting across the golden tops of wheat in a field. "—so we'll all have more freedom—" Little white boy in classroom being taught by young white lady teacher. "—opportunity—" Silo backlit by sunrise. "—and control of our lives." Newt's face. "Yes, working together, we can and will rebuild the America we love." STRING MUSIC! "I'm Newt Gingrich, and I approve this message." (Oh, I bet you do.)

[Via Andy.]

The Bluest Eye

[Trigger warning for racism; colorism.]


[Image from KTLA news segment; post title from Toni Morrison's novel of the same name.]
Because in this age of Impossible Beauty, no one can ever be beautiful enough, Dr. Gregg Homer of Stroma Medical in California is developing a laser procedure that will turn brown eyes blue:

[Homer] announced on KTLA-TV that he had come up with a laser procedure that removes the brown pigment, known as melanin, in the iris. Once removed, the blue color underneath is revealed, giving the person blue eyes. Homer said the procedure takes about 20 seconds.

"We use a laser that's tuned to a specific frequency to remove the pigment from the surface of the iris," he told KTLA.

The change is irreversible because, once removed, the melanin cannot grow back.

Sound scary? Homer says he's been working on the science for 10 years. He told the news channel that he and his team had 15 ranges of "sophisticated" tests to make sure there is no eye tissue damage during or after the procedure.

Despite Homer's assurances about the safety of the procedure, which may be available within two years, Dr. Robert Cykiert, associate professor of ophthalmology at NYU Langone Medical Center, told ABC News that the laser treatment is "risky" and "very likely to cause a high pressure in the eye, known as glaucoma," which could be temporary or permanent, and can cause permanent vision loss.

Taking extreme risks to one's health in pursuit of beauty is not new, of course; there have been several high-profile deaths from plastic surgery procedures in recent years. And, like other procedures developed to facilitate conformance to a kyriarchtypal beauty standard, the bluing of eyes reinforces privilege. Homer is unabashed in his privileging of blue eyes:

"The eyes are the windows to the soul; [there's] this idea that people can actually see into it—a blue eye is not opaque. You can see deeply into it, and a brown eye is very opaque, and I think that there is something meaningful about this idea of having open windows to the soul," Homer told KTLA.

Silly narratives about blue eyes being more "readable" are nothing more than codswallop used to justify the privileging of blue eyes, which are associated with whiteness, though not every person with blue eyes is white.

In both some white communities and some communities of color, there is a privileging of lighter eyes—blue, green, hazel, light brown—over dark brown or near-black eyes. It's a variation on colorism, which privileges light skin over dark, and has its own legacy of bleaching and lightening and lasering similar to the one Dr. Homer is trying to build for eye color. Light eyes, pale skin, hair that is light and fine and straight—these are all privileged to create a kyriarchetype that treats everything else as "exotic." As other. As less than.

Suffice it to say, I find Homer's "revolutionary" new procedure to be deeply problematic on multiple levels. Discuss.

[Commenting Guidelines: There are lots of women and men who like to play around with eye color using contact lenses, and, should that become part of the discussion, I would ask commenters to bear in mind what I said here: "Quite evidently, we each have a responsibility to think critically about our individual decisions, and not pretend they happen in a void even when we make choices for no one's pleasure or security but our own. Just because one is doing something for hirself doesn't magically turn it into a choice without cultural implications. But it's eminently possible to critique the culture in which individual choices are made, and the cultural narratives that may affect our decision-making processes, without condemning those individual choices. Or the people making them."]

The Tats Were Permanent, But the Hate Wasn't

This is an interesting story about a reformed skinhead who, with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center and an anonymous donor, is ridding himself of the extensive white supremacists tattoos covering his face, neck, torso, and arms.

While MSNBC's headline makes a prominent reference to the "agony" Bryon Widner is suffering with the tattoos' removal, Widner himself is less inclined to indulge concern about the pain he's experiencing: "If anything he felt that he deserved the pain and the public humiliation as a kind of penance for all the hurt he had caused over the years."

Widner's straightforwardness about the depth of his previously-professed "principles" is compelling, too: "I wasn't on any great mission for the white race. I was just a thug."

I would've liked to read more about what brought Widner to reject white supremacy—a movement in which he was so enmeshed that, when he approached the SPLC, their chief investigator of hate and extreme groups, Joseph Roy, described it as "like the Osama Bin Laden of the movement calling in."

It's a profound transformation, and I hope Widner will continue to use the new life he is being given to move ever further from hatred and to inspire others to similar changes of heart and mind.

[Via TDW.]

Quote of the Day

"I thought I was not naïve. But even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed."—Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the New York State Supreme Court, to the New York City Police Department, before rendering his verdict against former detective Jason Arbeeny, a 14-year veteran of the Brooklyn South unit who was convicted of planting drugs on Yvelisse DeLeon and her boyfriend, Juan Figueroa. Arbeeny now faces up to four years in prison.

Being shocked at the scope and nonchalance of police misconduct is, in part, a function of Justice Reichbach's privilege, of course: There are many people of a different race and/or class than Reichbach who would not share his astonishment.

But it's also indicative of a genuine gap in our cultural assumptions about the level of rigorous oversight and accountability in police departments (particularly urban police departments) and the actual level of oversight and accountability.

That disparity between public perception and reality has always existed—my grandfather, a career NYPD detective used to say that the most realistic cop show ever put on television was Barney Miller—but I think the chasm has widened with the advent of procedural shows like the Law & Order and CSI franchises.

Obviously, there are tons of good cops; that's not the point. The point is that both the good and the bad cops are operating within a system that assumes decency equally of all of them.

Number of the Day

Zero: The amount of credibility megapastor Joel Osteen has on the subject of gay people's lives—or any subject, for that matter, with the possible exceptions of "How to Gain Notoriety and Wealth by Exploiting Bigotry in the Name of the Lord" and "I Am a Shameless Fartsack."

Systemic Sickness

by Shaker Erica

I learned a useful new term from a friend the other day—the 'L-curve.' It's that graph you've probably seen around a lot of the Occupy Wall Street coverage, that line that shows wealth distribution across a specific population. A straight line means that the wealth is distributed evenly, and a lopsided, sagging curve means it's not. And these days, obviously, it's really, really not.

The blatant injustice of that is enough to piss off most of us on the face of it, but a recent post by Maia Szalavitz on Time.com's Healthland blog calls attention to a handful of studies that show that this kind of economic inequality doesn't just affect our pocketbooks. It affects our health. Our actual, physical health.

Szalavitz writes: "A growing body of research suggests that such inequality—more so than income or absolute wealth alone—has a profound influence on a population's health, in every socioeconomic group from rich to middle class to poor."

Yeah, you read that right—even that elusive 1% can't escape it.

It all comes down to the inherent stress of a stratified culture:

As studies of wild baboons in Africa have shown, there are certain key side effects of inequality—namely, stress. Baboons have a rigidly enforced social hierarchy in which fights to win alpha status are common and higher-ranking males constantly abuse and bully those below them. Not surprisingly, this results in chronically elevated levels of stress hormones in the lower ranks.

But:

[A] study found that alpha males—those at the very peak of the hierarchy—were actually just as stressed as their lowest-ranked followers.

Tough to be king, huh?

Szalavitz also tackles the inevitable victim-blaming:

In humans, in fact, differences in health linked to social status—which tracks closely with economic status—have often been attributed only to addictions and to the generally bad health habits of the poor, such as eating a lousy diet. But baboons don't have these 'lifestyle factors' and yet increased mortality in the lower ranks is still seen.

Besides, the effects are seen even when the people lower in the hierarchy aren't particularly poor themselves. A researcher in London who spent decades studying civil servants found that the mortality rates for the lowest-paid were three times that of their highest bosses. That's far worse than the baboons, and the baboon-bosses have fangs.

Most of the people reading this blog already know that income equality stinks, and now there's another reason to add to the long list. Worse, we seem to have perfected it:

As Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky, who led much of the research in stress in African baboons, once told me: "When humans invented inequality and socioeconomic status, they came up with a dominance hierarchy that subordinates like nothing the primate world has ever seen before."

Great, so, even the freaking baboons have us beat.

Here in Edinburgh, we have a tiny little occupation doing its bit for the worldwide movement. They have maybe twenty tents pitched in one of the many public gardens, and they haven't attracted much press. I haven't been able to join them, since I'm fortunate enough to have a job where I need to be, so a few days ago I bought about £15 in cheap goods—a couple of wind-up flashlights, a couple of blankets, some bread and peanut butter—and took it down to them.

A student (he said he's studying painting) guided me to the right tents, where I added my loaf of bread to the pile of donated bread, and my blankets to the pile of donated blankets. And then I left, glad to have done something, but nagged by the sense that it was hardly anything at all.

There's this one band of baboons, out there in the Savannah, that's been mentioned on Shakesville before, and Szalavitz brings them up here again. They're called the Forest Troop. Twenty or thirty years ago, the baddest of their badasses fought off big males from another group for the right to feast on some tainted garbage from a nearby restaurant. As a result, those alpha males got sick and died, leaving only the lower-class males and all the females and young. This remainder made a whole new society for themselves, an entirely new culture unheard of among baboons where kind behaviour was rewarded and bullying frowned upon. New males coming into the group learned the new customs, and now, long after the original males have died off, they're preserving this new, more egalitarian culture.


It's no coincidence—not by a long shot—that the first article about them here focused on the way the sexual violence and coercion that's normal in other baboon groups have been all but eliminated in the Forest Troop's new regime. Because, as we see over and over, this shit is all connected.

And according to Szalavitz, amongst the Forest Troop, "rank appeared not to affect stress and health."

All that worry about status? All that bullying and violence? Not much of an issue any more. And everyone—everyone—is better off for it.

As Eric Michael Johnson, author of the earlier article, puts it, "what we're ultimately after is social change."

So I drop off my little blankets at Edinburgh's little protest. The Occupy movements collect and grow like little drops of water, and slowly, slowly, we all start talking about it. People start noticing. Politicians start referring to "the 99%."

And I keep thinking, maybe. Just, maybe.