Vanity Sizing and the American Psyche

( from: madisonbootcamps )

Sometime between 1999 and 2004, a miracle happened to me: 

I shrank.

In 1999, before I moved from the U.S.A. to Turkey,

I went to the doctor, and weighed in at around 148 pounds,

 5' 10" tall.

When I went to the mall to buy some pants for my move,

I bought a size 12.  I have wide hips.

The width of my hips was always a bit of an issue with me,

and as a younger woman I did stupid things to slenderize,

but then I decided that I had to accept that

my bone structure can't be changed.

And that was that: size 12 pants,

size 10 dress.

A comfortable, but slightly tall

Medium.

Out the door, I carried clothes made of real cotton

that I still own.

And then I moved away.

In Turkey, I did not shrink,

I remained the same size,

and my skin became paler.

But the first time I bought clothes back in the States,

about a year later,

I was amazed that I was buying

size 10 pants.

A few months later, in the USA, I was a comfortable

size 8, and by 2003 or so

I actually bought a size 6 pants in the USA.

I wish I could show them to you,

but they were really flimsy and feel apart.

America, you see, is the land of miracles:
as long as I was buying my clothes in the States,
I was shrinking.

I could ignore the scale, 

which hadn't budged,

nor had a shrunk in any other proportion.

It was all perception, after all.

I was shrinking.

The closet proclaimed it to me defiantly,
on every tag declaring my new size:

my ass was narrower,

my boobs more modest,  my waist

wasting away.

( from: listxsadist )

Well, if I wanted to be delusional,

I could believe that, but

I've never been one to favor

that frame of mind.

I prefer

the raw, cold truth,

even if it means acknowledging

things like my increasing varicosities.
In the end, I feel it makes life

a little easier.
At the time,

I suspected that there was a conspiracy afoot

to maintain America's delusion

that they weren't getting fatter,

and this morning as I woke up again

to my trusty radio, 

I heard a story that confirmed 

precisely what I had been thinking.

(photo and story at 

NPR )

Vanity sizing:

the latest, greatest

American tall tale,

designed to keep the clothes

moving off the racks.
This is what one of the women said
on the radio, in her lilting, lovely
Indian accent.
When Americans kept getting fatter,
and the sizes remained the same,
well,
the clothes stopped selling.
The clothing industry, then,
came up with this brilliant idea:
make a size 6 bigger, and
make a size 6 a size 00,
and lead the consumer to believe
they were still as svelte as a model,
even if they no longer fit
into normal-sized movie theatre seats.

I guess the statement that put me over the edge, though,
was this:
the interviewer asked the woman
with the lilting, lovely Indian accent
if this was ethical:
aren't we lying to the public?
And she replied:
It's not really a lie,
if the public wants to be lied to.

Ah, indeed, the logic of it sent my mind reeling,
because,
because
among other things, I thought:
is this the attitude that the rest of the world  has
about the average American?
That we are complacent, stupid, fat people
in denial about what we really are?

And then I thought:
yes, of course.  That is what the world thinks of us.
I've lived abroad;
I've traveled a lot;
I've seen the attitude towards Americans change,
and that change began when the American public
voted George W. Bush into office
a second time.

It's not really a lie,
if the public wants to be lied to.

( from nmnnewsandviews )


Just minutes before this story,
on NPR this morning,
I had listened to a speech from Mitt Romney,
given in Ohio.  Mitt Romney, declaring
that he will make more jobs, trim down the government,
and be a better international face for America ~ ~ ~

It's not really a lie,
if the public wants to be lied to.

It's the logic of the cheating lover
as he hands his spouse some flowers
and tells her that he loves her
before slipping off to see his concubine ~ ~ ~

It's not really a lie,
if the person wants to be lied to.

It's the logic of the boss,
who gives his employees a modest raise,
telling them that he would love to give them more,
but the firm is struggling so much,
and then buys himself a new private Leer jet ~ ~ ~

not really a lie. . . 
they wanted to be lied to. . . 

In the story about Mitt Romney they interviewed
a woman in rural Ohio,
who I'll bet is a size 6 or maybe even a 4,
and she said her only gripe with Mitt Romney is that
he isn't coming down harder on President Obama:

He should be saying it more like it is, and saying it loud,
she said,
Romney's been too polite;
he should not be so polite to Obama!

In other words, she would like to hear Mitt Romney screaming
that Barack Obama has done nothing for America,
that the woes of America are Obama's fault,
that Obama was born in Timbuktu,
that his mother wasn't a white woman from the mid-west,
. . . . .
She wants to hear it again and again,
and she wants to hear it screamed loud and long,
because she wants to be lied to,
because that will help her confirm her own beliefs
that a smart black man should not remain
in the highest office in the nation.

It's not really a lie
if you want to be lied to.

And if she and all the rest of working or
middle class G.O.P. America want to believe
that a wealthy millionaire businessman
really cares for her goodwill,
she can and she will,
as she sits in front of her 48" wide
flat screen TV,
watching the Simpsons,
which she feels comes closest to being like reality to her,
and eating burgers and chips,
in her size 6 jeans.


. . . not really a lie . . . 

(Oh, Romney assures us,
don't worry; we'll still have
Medicare . . . )

Vanity sizing, in the end,
sums up what is wrong with America.
And we hear about vanity sizing,
but still nothing is done about it.
Because we want to be lied to.
Because the truth might mean
that we have to do something about it.

( from runsleeprinserepeat )

I guess there's one good thing we can say about this:
as long as people are still lying,
the world will not end
anytime soon.

Or else that's what we want to believe.


Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet. What's the news?
Rosencrantz: None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
Hamlet: Then is doomsday near.

( Hamlet II:ii )

Antietum: Bloody Road

I woke up this morning to a story on NPR about

The Battle of Antietum, which occurred

September 17, 1862.

As I listened, my mind began to compose

some loose lines and contemplations:

(picture from NPR website; entire story at the link.)

~*~

(tablewarefare)

Antietum --

your innocent lands

still recall the

men whose blood you drank 

when they collided, driven by devotion to each

his own's belief in personal liberty:

Some, believing in freedom to all,

                               no matter their color

                                        or vessel for arriving

                                                     on America's shores.

Some, believing that the dark and enslaved

                                     were less than men,

                                                       and, as such,

                                                   deserved to remain so as they served

                                                  the economy of tobacco.

                                                          Oh,

Antietum --

two forces clashed in a 

Bloody Road, each force driven

by his own idea,

a whisper,

a thought.

Thousands lost

their lives; the idea

of equality ruled,

and history turned

towards liberation.

(from: old-picture.com )

So sad we no longer care

for history.   So sad

we no longer require

our youth to learn

to embody the lessons

of our heredity.  Instead,

we barely teach them

to get by; we teach to take a test,

then hurry home filled

with forgetfulness, anticipating

for the next episode of Jersey Shore,

or the next gossipy tweet.

( from: blogofshame )

History cannot be tweeted,

but history MUST be known,

as we stand today on the brink

of another ideological fissure,

right now embodied in

a battle over who should run

this land:

a Black Man

or

a Mormon;

a Son of Slaves and Idealistic Liberals,

or

a Son of Those Who Believe America is

The Promised Land.

But what promise is this?

Where guns are hidden and

(from National Park Service )

divisions are bitter,

the Bloody Road may be

just beyond the bend.

Our history can tell us how

to avoid it, and recent memory

of murdered diplomat,

a murder driven by 

insensitivity

to detail can stand 

as omen.

We have 

no time to lose;

the only answer is to restore

our public memory,

and with it, our ability to choose, 

and our integrity.

Garbage Bin Women (Living in the 3rd World America)

~ ~

Prelude:

My cat Pişi

(who has her own blog, by the way)

came home from me when I returned to the States

after living for four years in Turkey.

Pişi was born in the streets of Ankara.

While I did not remove her from the streets,

I adopted her when the people who snatched her out of the streets

moved on.  As you can see, Pişi moved on with me, and now,

at the ripe old age of fourteen, lives comfortably

in the U.S.A.

She's pretty, eh?  The thing with Pişi, though, is that

she's deaf.  I won't tell that story here, but you can go elsewhere

and read it.  She's also a little bipolar.  She can turn on you when you least expect it,

and when she turns on you, she turns into the wild cat she was born to be.

She's downright nasty, and fights to kill. 

She's the kind of cat who has a little skull and bones drawn on her file

at the Vet's office.  The last time we had her there, even the vet

was afraid of her.  They covered her with a heavy towel, and gave her

her rabies shot, and she was like a wild cat.  They told me never to bring her back.

I believe Pişi is going blind.  I'm really afraid that if she goes blind, she will become wild again.

Not because she wants to hurt me, but because she will feel her  power is gone,

and all she can do to protect herself, when she has lost the control of her major senses,

will be to attack.  It will be her last attempt to control and have power.

She is a very powerful presence.   She is the dominant cat in my house.
I treat her with love and respect, and hope that when she reaches
a point where she can't see, she remembers that, and gives that
back to me.

*

from: gpbtelevision

As I said in my last entry, I believe

we are living in Post-First World America;

we are living in America in decline.

It's not that we are being replaced by 

another greater power.  We are being replaced

by our own child:

a global, profit-driven economy

that at its best emulates 

the values America has represented 

for several centuries:

freedom of speech (via the internet)

freedom of belief

equality of gender and race

openness,

honesty

and a basic belief 

in the goodness of humanity.

In the meantime, though,

our power has waned,

our workforce has been emasculated,

our trust in authority, evaporated.

My students are so scarred from the abuse

they have suffered at the hands

of frustrated, equally scarred parents,

of a misguided education system,

of an entertainment world

that promotes instant gratification.

. . . .

from: unrealitymag 

This nation is ill,

and every now and then something happens

that is a glaring symptom of the depth of our illness:

Yesterday, in Niagara Falls, New York,

a five year old girl was found dead, in a garbage bag.
She was murdered by a teenaged boy,
who killed her with his bare hands,
then got a friend to help him dispose
of her body.

And dispose they did,
just like, in 2008, in a young woman was found,
folded in half, stuffed in a garbage bag
and then put out in the trash.
At first, the police ruled her death "accidental,"
the result of an overdose.  They claimed that
she had turned to prostitution to maintain her very
expensive drug habit, and put the the story away.
But everyone knows (and I've written of this before)
that no one who dies accidentally then climbs into
a garbage bag and puts themselves in a garbage bin.
A more recent autopsy has found this woman was strangled,
in a violent rape.
Her murderer has yet to be found.

I do not mean to claim that the same person
is responsible for both of these sad, sad, sad murders.
They have the guilty young boy who committed this week's
crime.  The look in his eyes chills me.

I cannot help but feel that there is a tragic
similarity between these crimes
that ends up being a glaring symptom
of the sickness that permeates America today.

Whoever put these women into garbage bags,
then into garbage cans clearly had no feeling
towards their fellow humans.  They treated them
like something to use,
then throw away.
Those killers
are not human either -- for one reason or another,
they have been led to a point where they
are like cornered animals, like my cat
trapped in a bag, and they are killing
irrationally.  Like wounded wild animals,
they practice whatever potential for power or strength
they have left, and they tend to take it out
against the powerless, the weak, those who
make them feel stronger than they really feel.

No, they should not be forgiven,
but when something like this happens
more than once, I think it's time
for us to consider what this says about us,
the U.S. of A.

Land of the Free.
Home of the Brave.



I'm not sure what the answer is,
though I heard a good idea
at a meeting I went to last week:

it's time for us to create an Adult Culture
in America and in the world
that is kind, compassionate,
wise, human --
true role models for our young,
as we move from a stratified globe
of multiple worlds,
to a single globe
where every individual is respected,
and no one
is put out
in the trash.

from artinwetlands

Surviving Third World America, Part One: Grain Elevators

Now, before I get started, I have to admit:

I have never read Arianna Huffington's book

on Third World America, though perhaps I should.

It's just my own private, personal interpretation

that I now impart: 

The U.S.A. is rapidly becoming 

a former First World Country.

I really believe that.

And as we plummet, we're becoming

the 21st Century Wild West,

most recently embodied by the armed laid-off worker

who killed his former boss in broad daylight.

It used to be, if there was to be

a dual, that both parties got a weapon.

But no, not in Third World, Wild West America.

Why are so many people going crazy?

Because so many of us have experienced so much wealth 

that we really don't know how to handle it

when it's suddenly gone.

That is, unless you live in an American city

that's been suffering recession longer than the rest of the country.

And that's where the title of this entry comes in,

because

I do.

O.K., I'll finally admit it:

I live in #2:

Buffalo, New York.

No, I wasn't born here,

(remember, I was born over 400 years ago,

in Greece, and have lived in countless places

since then) but right now,

I live in Buffalo.

And like so many other places, Buffalo

is a state of mind,

and for several years after I moved here

it was a state 

of mind

that I desperately wanted to leave.

But, unlike many Buffalonians,

I happen to have a job here, in a field

that it's hard to find a job in.

And it just so happens that Buffalo, NY

is a pretty good place to live

if you happen to have a job. 

There's lots of reasons for that, but perhaps

one of the most intriguing reasons is because,

only 100 years ago,

Buffalo was a very desirable city to live in,

and plenty of people did,

and  because of that, plenty of very famous architects did work here.

Much of it still stands:

Indeed, it's very easy to find a very nice house in Buffalo,

and live very frugally.

Now, I'm not here to convince you to move to Buffalo,

but I will say, it has grown on me.

I've learned to cross country ski

and bike, both of which

are very good ways to get around this city.

And I've been discovering that many of the secrets

of surviving, and living in

Third World America

might be answered right here.

Rather than blast you with a ton of stuff right away,

I'm going to focus on one feature at a time,

and tonight I'm slightly in awe of this:

The Grain Elevator.

Buffalo has plenty of abandoned grain elevators,

because they were actually invented here, in 1843,

by a fellow named Joseph Dart.

At that time, Buffalo was centrally located 

between the midwest

and the water ways that could bring products to the east.

This produced a need for a place to store grain, in particular,

while it was waiting to be shipped; thus, this behemoth.

And they were used continually, as the city grew, thanks 

to the Erie Canal, 

and continued to be used, a little beyond that thoroughfare's demise.

But when I moved here, I found, they just stood empty,

as they had been standing for years:

huge, hulking structures,

ghosts of an industry long gone, like the mines of 

Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, 

the work these monsters housed,

and the workers too,

are gone, long gone, and the buildings left to rot.

~ ~

Now, one of the many admirable qualities Buffalonians have

at a level much higher than the residents of other dead cities,

is a strong sense of historical pride,

and some very bull-headed local grass roots preservation organizations.

I'll write later about some of the preservation work they're doing in this town,

because it's quite remarkable.  Remember,

I've lived in lots of places, and the way this city rallies to restore itself

is pretty admirable.  Well, one of the historical fascinations among

Buffalonians is these grain elevators.  Some of them (the one above, in fact,

photographed by me about a year ago) have been destroyed,

but several have become sites of exploration.  Tours go through them now, 

and last night I witnessed an amazing thing:

a performance in a grain elevator.

My admiration was won a few years ago by an innovative theatre group called

Torn Space, and they got the job of mounting this show,

which included dancers pirouetting above from wires in the high, 

echoing, empty storage chambers,

to Beckettian monologues

to classical minimalism

(all photos from The Buffalo News )

It was, quite simply, transformative.  And when we all walked out,

to watch videos by different artists projected on the largest screen I've ever experienced,

nearly everyone there was seeing this structure

no longer as an eyesore, but rather

as a place of potential.

Knowing Buffalo, they'll keep using the grain elevators this way,

making them another exclusive hang-out spot 

for their abundance of gritty artists and performers and musicians

and cool wanna-be's from the suburbs.

This is, I would say, one of the coolest ways to 

survive Third World America:

turn it into an avant-garde art venue.

Oh, and by the way, did I tell you admission was free?

Maybe it won't be the next time,

but the flame has been lit

and there will be

a next time.