Papa Ne Prêche Pas!

I’m not going to rehash the entire tale of Rachida Dati’s return to work five days after giving birth. Everyone has made their various opinions known: from the defenders to the outraged to the plain stupid. But here’s a little background: the French Justice Minister, 43, gave birth to her daughter Zohra on January 2nd, was photographed leaving the maternity clinic five days later, and an hour after that - in stilettos and a tight, black suit – appeared at the weekly Cabinet session.

Apparently, how dare she? Dati has been flagellated in the press and elsewhere for setting a bad example for women, abandoning her daughter, undermining the feminist struggle that fought and continues to fight for maternity rights, and numerous other transgressions. But there are several things wrong with this crucifixion scene.

First, one of the prime tenets of the feminist doctrine is choice. By opting to forego maternity leave, Dati has not made an indictment on all women who find it necessary, or sent a message to employers that truly committed employees find a way to return immediately. She has merely exercised her right to make her own choices regarding her formal market work (government) and her informal/domestic market work (home), and she decided that at that time, she was willing and able to return to the business of government. And quite frankly, she had to. With a reshuffle imminent, a new judicial plan being announced, and a reputation as an undeserving and wildly unsuccessful justice Minister, Dati likely felt pressured to defend her position. But one gets the sense that even were she the Princess Di of French politics, she would not have spent much time convalescing. Love her or hate her, Rachida Dati appears to thrive on public life. And if eager to return to it, she does not then owe her constituents proof that her daughter is not suffering from neglect.

Second, we are forgetting that the analysis of women’s rights is not a discrete exercise. It is connected to class, race, age, income level and other variables. Women are not a homogeneous group with identical sets of rights and opportunities. Most women will need maternity leave in order to recover in a way that their resources will allow and to adjust to their new family life. Ms. Dati, as the first senior French minister of North African origin, no doubt feels she has a lot more to prove, and arguably has the resources to make her transition to family life a much smoother one. Any employers who take her case as the exception rather than the rule are simply looking for an easy escape, and all eyes should be on them, not on the Minister.

Furthermore, and picture me yelling these next words, what manner of modern-day, anti-feminist witch hunt is this? If this were a man who had returned to work five days after the birth of his child, no one would bat an eyelash. In fact, chances are no one would even know he had reproduced. Women’s own choices about their reproductive health belong in the private domain. The furor over this ‘incident’ has even obliged Dati’s good friend Bernadette Chirac, wife of the former president Jacques Chirac, to reveal that Ms. Dati “is breastfeeding her baby, which is a guarantee of very good health for an infant, it's a natural thing". Because if she had dared to pump or use formula, she would be an abomination and probably the secret bride of Satan. Are we still stuck in that practice of reducing even the most accomplished and influential of women to their value as wet nurses and incubators?

Well yes, we are. Because even before this nonsense became a public debate, the justice Minister was being pressured to reveal the identity of the father of her child. Claude Askolovitch, the editor of the Journal du Dimanche called her “… a solitary character, [who] even in happiness, [she] often inspires a little sadness.” I’m not sure why Mr Askolovitch would be sad about Dati’s solitary nature. I hope (but frankly doubt) it has more to do with her struggle as a North African woman in politics and less to do with her being a single woman over 40. And a single woman over 40 who dares to have a child with no paternal source in sight! Well, that’s just crazy talk.

Some people naysay her return to work as another in a series of Ms. Dati’s attempts to court the press and public in matters wholly unrelated to her performance as a government Minister. She’s a drama queen, they say, and they’re tired of it. This is a separate argument. The Minister has made some questionable public image decisions, chief among which was the one to pose for Paris Match in a Dior dress and stiletto boots at a time when her ministry was experiencing severe job cuts. But whatever the reason for objecting to this last, private decision, stripping bare the sexual and reproductive choices of one woman, laying them open to judgment and simultaneously burdening her with the responsibility for the maternity choices of all the women in an entire country is as anti-feminist as you can get.

Gunners or death

Some obnoxious nudging from my good friend B’more has forced me to acknowledge that my beloved Arsenal are now fifth in the league tables, while B’more’s boys Liverpool are managing to hold on to the top spot. It is insult added quite literally to injury after Fabregas was maimed and forced out of action by Liverpool’s Alonso in December. And while it was reassuring at least to see Arsenal’s win over Bolton on Saturday, that 2005 FA Cup trophy is getting smaller and smaller in the distance as we get further away from their last major title win, which was against Manchester United nearly four years ago.

Still, I have faith in the Gunners. It isn’t blind faith. I do believe they’re coming back to form. But it started me thinking about how we assign our loyalties - especially in sport - and why.

I remember when I started my love affair with Arsenal. It was 1997, I had just started university, and I had the temerity to join up with a women’s squad to play inter-faculty football. It was, after all, a time for new beginnings, new interests, and as it turned out, new ways to feel stupid and inadequate. Women’s football on the campus at that level was hilarious. Most of us knew nothing. And the few who did were right snots about it. We found a coach with a sense of humour, and started in earnest with early morning, late evening and weekend practice sessions.

Our first match was demoralizing. Picture twenty (the goal-keeps at least had the good sense to stay put) petrified but aggressive women all charging after one ball, getting to it, and then each having no idea how to deal with these other nineteen women before them. It was greater comedy than the theater department could ever have produced. I hate not being good at things. When I encounter things I am not good at, I promptly stop doing them. Of course, this is a ridiculous habit, since it means that unless you have some inherent genius in this area that rushes to the surface, you’d never learn anything or discover any latent talent. What kept me with the team was the determination of the women and my newfound interest in the game. This interest prompted me to start watching the league matches that year.

So I turned on the television one day and encountered a dejected Arsenal leaving the field after a 3-1 trouncing by Blackburn. It had been, I was told, the latest in a series of defeats that season. But I liked the look of them. I thought they moved magically as a team; I was drawn to watch Bergkamp, Vieira and Petit; and I decided at that point to root for the underdogs. I think I was the good luck charm. That year saw a legendary resurgence. An embattled Arsenal took the Premiership trophy and went on to their second league and FA Cup double. I went on playing football. When campus play ended, I joined a community team, developed a decent left foot, and settled into my position in the middle. And I became an Arsenal fan for life.

Photo: www.sporting-heroes.net

Who let Marchesa into the good stuff?

Award season has begun! We just had the People’s Choice Awards, which I don’t imagine anyone cares much about; and the Critics’ Choice Awards, which are perhaps slightly more important, at least in theory; then this past Sunday, the Golden Globes, which we all sit up and pay attention to as portenders of the Oscars. But the Globes this year were important not just for their subversiveness (my homegirl, the oft-overlooked Kate Winslet took home not one but two of the statuettes, and the decidedly unHollywood Slumdog Millionaire won in four categories), but for the gowns! It was as if everyone said “Listen, we get it. There’s a recession and we shouldn’t seem insensitive. But it’s a new year, we have some money, and we’re going to forego the barrels and feed sacks in favour of the big sparkly things that people watch us to see.” And how right they were. The hits were in overwhelming majority this year, even the misses were crazy and entertaining, and there was that one gown that got everyone whispering: Jennifer Lopez’s gold Marchesa dress.

Various people have pointed out fat and folds and puckers of different varieties that are of little interest to me. The woman just made two whole human beings and isn’t 20 anymore. She’s still gorgeous. But…the woman just made two whole human beings and isn’t 20 anymore. This is not the dress for her. Not because of her body, but because of her fashion history. She has already done that scandalous green Versace. Should she not have evolved a little by now? This dress is beneath her. The fabric looks cheap, the construction sloppy, and it begins to cast the term ‘Jenny from the block’ in a whole different light from the source-of-income perspective.

Marchesa is a young label, but hit the ground running dressing celebrities for the red carpet. Launched by British-born Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig in 2004, it won the Britain’s Best Business Award last year and reports annual sales above $30 million. The duo has dressed Reese Witherspoon and Thandie Newton; and has designed countless red carpet gowns for JLo in the past. They don't always hit it past the boundary, but this year something went horribly wrong. And while the wearer is sufficiently lovely to not make it a total disaster, the dress itself is a shocking wrong turn for the label. Below are some of its more successful efforts:


Hopefully, the Oscars will provide an opportunity for the well-dones to do well again, and for those who seem to have slipped into the good liquor cabinet before sketching to redeem themselves.
_______________________________________________
Favourite televised clip from the Globes: Kate Winslet calls Angelina Jolie “the other one” in her acceptance speech. Not meant to be hateful but hilarious nonetheless.

Favourite dress that not everyone liked: Maggie Gyllenhaal's Lanvin was one of the many dresses that featured large, asymmetrical, statement pleating. (Two of the others’, Eva Mendes’s and Kate Beckinsale’s were also among my favourites.) The shoes looked a little orthopaedic on the red carpet, but the print and styling of the dress were perfection.

Favourite crazy, Tim Burton hair: I think Drew Barrymore has always secretly wanted to wear her hair like this, and now that a suitable role has apparently surfaced, her dream has come true. The blue, romantic-style chiffon is bold but subdued. And as much as I want to hate the hair, it is too wonderfully insane not to love. I can’t stop looking at it.

Renee Zellweger earns a close second for the hair, and gets extra wtf points for a poor choice of foundation garments.


The rest of the best:



The rest of the worst: Everyone loves Samantha Who, especially since the actor's struggle with breast cancer. But she's much too cute and interesting to look as if she stitched up her own dress to wear to graduation. And Cameron Diaz just looks bored and wrinkly.



Photo sources
Marchesa gowns: People.com/Beimages; ElleUK; Spreadit.org
Golden Globe coverage: fabsugar.com

More than one way to skin a mango

I hang out on this brilliant message board where I’ve made quite a few friends. Well, no, I don’t ‘hang out’ there. That would suggest indolence, or free time of any sort, which would in turn make me unfashionable. Rather, I stop in periodically in between taking meetings in the city (read: watching Danger Mouse) and doing research (read: tossing up different styles of underwear and seeing which ones hit the ground first.)

I love the women there. They’re generous, interesting and very entertaining. But every now and then, they help me put my cultural background in perspective and realize the pure common sense of how I was raised.

Recently, someone at my beloved message board re-posed an enduring question: how do you eat a mango? It’s not the question itself that makes me chuckle. Presumably, as a tropical fruit, a mango is not that easy a code to break, although I have seen them in supermarkets far and wide. But we’ll concede that the mango is tropical, and with this knowledge, you and I are not to look down our noses at the mango-inept just because we had the luxury of having the things growing in our backyards. Alright. But it’s the treatment of the problem that amuses me.

Person 1: How do you eat a mango?
Person 2: Check out the Williams Sonoma mango slicer. I got mine there.
Person 3: Oh or if you like, here’s the link for a video tutorial. It’s long but worth it!
Person 4: See, this is why I don't buy mangoes.

Now, the above really reflects a dilemma of privilege. I like kitchen gadgets as much as the next woman, but a mango slicer? An online video tutorial? People, it isn’t that serious. I’m always tempted to yell “BITE A HOLE IN THE TOP OF THE THING AND SUCK IT!” But I fear that would be misunderstood. And probably a little unfair.

But a mango isn’t a little neon fruit covered in hair and scales that scuttles off when you chase it, and then, once you’ve caught up with it and cracked it open, is filled half with little hard seeds and half with a slimy paste. If a desperately hungry woman happened upon a mango tree and picked a fruit, she wouldn’t be frantically seeking out a Williams Sonoma for some guidance on how to eat it. I’m pretty sure she would bite into it. If something hostile spilled out, she would toss it aside and move on. If it were delicious, she would keep eating, find there was a seed, eat around it, and then cease to be hungry.

Granted I’m a little insane when it comes to my mango loyalty. They’re my favourite fruit. And I’m convinced that what Eve really ate in the garden was a pawee mango. (Surely no one would accept disinheritance and eviction all for the sake of a boring little apple. A mango on the other hand…) I know we live pampered lives, but let’s not make them ridiculous. Let’s submit to some experimentation. You don’t have to get as complex as a bullet. Just bite the mango.

Patria o muerte

I was walking along the platform in the train station one day when a figure rose up alongside me. It was the kind of presence that felt awesome, but familiar, as if you had been awaiting it for some time, even if you didn’t know it; and now that it was here, it seemed right, even though you hadn’t yet laid eyes on it. It was grand. And true. It was..

a giant movie poster of Steven Soderbergh’s Che: Part One, depicting the only known actor they could dare to cast in the title role - and my secret luhvah - Benicio del Toro.

Like most people, my first experience of Benicio (which I lovingly call him by virtue of him being my luhvah) was as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects. But probably unlike most people, this prompted me to doggedly seek out every one of his screen appearances up until that point. Yes, even including “Kid sitting on car” in Madonna’s La Isla Bonita video. (And since I hadn’t noticed him as Dario the henchman in Licence to Kill, I of course had to watch it again. I am surgical in my admiration.) My love for him was complete after his brilliant work in Traffic, and was cemented with 21 Grams.

Now, I’m not a fan type. I don’t want to see photos of actors getting coffee or know that they hate terrycloth robes and will only wear suede. When I discover talent I admire, I’m only interested in the talent, And in the case of Benicio, even before I saw him cast, I knew he was Che. I was waiting for it.

Che: Part One is the story of the Argentine Ernesto Guevara’s influential role in the Castro-led Cuban rebellion that overthrew Batista in the late 1950s. The film unfolds exactly as it should: as a peek into the evolution of a revolutionary. By the time it ends, we know that we have seen only one story and one layer of the making of the man who would become a symbol of justice and ideological rebellion for generations. Soderbergh’s treatment is a subdued, matter-of-fact telling of the events between the meeting of Che and Castro in Mexico and the taking of Havana that led to Batista’s ouster. Interspersed with scenes from Che’s addresses to the UN General Assembly and his interviews with American journalists is a shot by shot account of the war with Batista’s troops. In doing this, the film tries to reconcile the mythical image of the man on which many anecdotes are based with the simple strength of Che as a tactician of guerrilla warfare, as a doctor, disciplinarian, teacher, thinker; a diplomat with great passion but great patience.

The telling of the story is half the success of the film. The scenes of the rebels planning their strategy in the mountains take us immediately to Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls. It is as if Soderbergh and (screenplay writer) Buchman have transposed Hemingway’s narrative of a Spanish (language) revolution to the screen. The intimacy is the same - we feel as though we are in the trenches and sleeping in the rain – although the urgency is not. Hemingway’s account benefits tremendously from the stories of the horrors committed against the people under Franco’s regime, and from the unrelenting sounds and signs of explosion and attack. The film does not. But it doesn’t suffer too much because of it. It also shares with Hemingway the sense of camaraderie among those fighting desperately for an ultimate good, and in this portrayal, the rest of the cast shines. Outstanding among them is Santiago Cabrera, who plays Camilo Cienfuegos, a wise-cracking comandante who shows great love for his brothers in the revolution. Less impressive is the portrayal of Fidel Castro, perhaps less a function of the actor than of the parts of the man they chose to portray. The director was right not to give too much importance to the leader - after all, this is not Castro’s story – but they failed to depict a man who could inspire the birth of a new Cuba. And this they could have done, even with the little exposure which they rightly allowed him.

The other half of the success of the film is Benicio. He is Che. And not in the way in which Jamie Foxx ‘was’ Ray Charles. Not in that kind of Saturday Night Live impression way by which we seem to be so easily impressed and are so eager to reward. By the end of the film, Benicio’s face is a different one from when he meets Castro in the beginning. It carries the burden of responsibility for freeing the people of Cuba; the worry of perishing from asthma before the job is done; the concern for his column of fighters and the pain of seeing the peasants’ struggle. By the end of the film, Benicio’s face is the face of Che Guevara. And you leave the theatre anxious to see that face again, and to continue the journey in Part Two of this inspiring film.

Porn: it’s what’s for dinner

So porn is the new black. Once it was taboo, then it became trendy, then it should have passed on to that purgatory between trendy and quotidian, to happily coexist with It bags and speed. But something went awry. Instead of becoming an unremarkable hobby, porn went straight to becoming a religion. And I’m not talking the “we were brainwashed by aliens and forbid yelling for blue murder as a whole person is ripped from tender orifices, but are richer than god and therefore expected to act crazy” type of fringe religion. I’m talking the mainstream, Inquisition torture chambers, assimilate or die kind. Apparently, resistance to porn is futile. And dangerous.

I talk to women every day who try their utmost to convince me - and clearly at the same time themselves - that it is perfectly acceptable that their husbands go out for lap dances every weekend and spend hours at night examining the cosmetically enhanced, severely shorn vaginas of porn film superstars.

Men have cleverly tried to silence the old criticisms by turning porn films, strip clubs and lap dances into socially acceptable recreation, and have gone a step further by turning their characteristics – the bodies, the sexual positions, the loud, ejaculatory female orgasms – into minimum, expected behaviour in their own bedrooms. Porn stars are now the standard to which all women are subject. And the message from men is: assimilate or be replaced by more capable machines. It’s the Pornographical Revolution; pornifization: much like the Industrial Revolution or globalization – only with a lot more chafing.

But it’s not just men who are demanding this assimilation. Women don't realize what we have become a party to. We have traded being voiceless on the issue for being forced into having the same voice: one that says "we submit". Because failure to submit means being dismissed as prude, difficult, unsophisticated – by men – and worse and more savagely, by other women. And so, following their partners, hordes of women march chagrined but silent (or with fake enthusiasm that they have convinced themselves is real) to strip clubs, singing the same refrain of "He's just being a man. All men need porn." They do this in order not only to appease men, but to outdo other women who might voice their disapproval, a constant rivalry that men – in both public and private life – encourage and reward.

Now. Before the onslaught begins, let me make the obligatory disclaimer: I am not a Puritan; sex is delicious; women’s bodies are exquisite; and similar things. But decisions about sexual expression should still be ours to make, and if there is anything that gives us pause, insecurity or fear of attack should not force us to submit in silence. You can hate porn. You can like erotic films and hate lap dances. You can have a Brazilian before your holiday, but not feel the need to repeatedly rip every hair from your vulva and surgically restore your hymen. There are degrees. And they’re all up to you.

Sandra Lee is still cooking vomit

I love to cook. I love to do it, read about it, watch the preparation of it, buy the gadgets, compare endless reviews of the gadgets before buying them, create recipes, try others’ recipes, compare endless reviews of the recipes before trying them. You get the idea.

When I lived in the US and enjoyed the basic amenities – namely, cable – I watched The Food Network constantly. FN watchers all tend to use a similar classification when it comes to shows and their hosts: the good; the bad; the annoying but harmless; the pure entertainment even if we will probably never cook their food; and the bizarre. For me, Ina Garten, Nigella, Giada and Michael Chiarello are pure, perfect genius; Mario is pretentious to the point of distraction which makes him a terrible host; Emeril and Rachael Ray are annoying but don’t quite make you want to peel your skin off and eat it; and Paula Deen is lovely to watch and quite cheery and mellow: probably because she is now made entirely of butter and cream after having cooked with just those two ingredients for the past 150 years.

And when it comes to the bizarre, no one occupies that category more wholly and maniacally than the exquisite Sandra Lee. You know Sandra Lee. She’s the tall, blonde, perfectly made-up, Semi-Homemade host who always looks like she’s seconds away from knocking back a shot of something. And she usually is. Never is a show complete without a themed cocktail and a mad, themed tablescape. But the food! The food is the genius of it. The premise of the show is to combine seventy per cent ready-made products with thirty per cent fresh ingredients, thereby allowing the harried, time-poor cook to create awe-inspiring…..


…..piles of mud and vomit.

What prompted this entry, though, was the rediscovery of Sandra’s famous Kwanzaa cake, tweaked for 2008 from an old holiday episode. Watch it yourself above. To make it, she takes a store-bought angel food cake, hacks it apart, fills and covers it with sludge-dyed, canned frosting, and stuffs the center with apple pie filling. At key moments, she cautions us to be ‘careful’ or ‘delicate’ as if she’s using actual cooking techniques. Lady: you aren’t making real food. You could make this thing with your toes and a cricket bat and trust me, it would not turn out any worse.

Then comes the decoration: acorns, pumpkin seeds and giant candles. And there you are: moist, hair-flavoured and partially-hydrogenated on the inside, the salty crunch of the forest on the outside, with a healthy garnish of cultural insensitivity. Happy Kwanzaa. Here’re some Andrew’s salts.

Mar is a B, and she stinging everybody

I’m not quite sure of the blog-starting etiquette. In January 2009, I’m so late in joining the hordes of bloggers worldwide that I imagine there should be some fanfare now that I’ve crossed over. I am now a Blogger. [CYMBALS] At least I imagine that would be the stage direction. I realize that this conversion is not at all interesting, especially given the lateness of my arrival – at a time long after people have written articles and directed documentaries about the advent of blogging.

But for me, this is an occasion. I’ve long held out against blogging, thinking that humankind has really reached fresh and ridiculous levels of narcissism to fancy that anyone cares where we buy our glue, or that a man at the supermarket was oh em gee standing SO CLOSE to us in line that we could totally hear him whistle through the gap in his teeth as he breathed and could feel his hot, grody breath ew ew ew OMGWTFBBQ!!!

But apparently, we do care.

And why should we not? Conceivably, we all desire the perfect glue. Nay, deserve it. And I, for one, am always willing to commiserate with those who suffer at the hands of people who haven’t the slightest clue about the all-encompassing significance of Personal Space. You will likely be hearing more about this.

Besides, these days, I call myself a writer. And I suppose one who calls herself a writer should write things. A blog therefore seems convenient. (I used to – with much coercion – call myself an economist. But I’ve stopped all that silliness, having witnessed firsthand the perils of such nomenclature. My withdrawal hasn’t yet stopped others from continuing to call me an economist, and asking my economisty advice. But hopefully soon they shall learn.)

However, I must warn you of a few things before we proceed. First, I sometimes write complex, run-on sentences. This - I have heard - is frowned upon. But I have more faith in the attention spans of my fellow readers than the writing intelligentsia seemingly do. Some of the smartest and most interesting people I’ve encountered are fans of complex sentences, and manage them quite effortlessly. (They worked splendidly for Obama; not as well for John Kerry.) I don’t endorse them when they’re used just to appear bright, but thoughts are complex. At least some of the best ones are. Sometimes they require more than a subject and verb. And if properly executed, long sentences can be fun. Come. Let’s explore them together.

Second, I love asides. I have a random, meandering brain that thinks in asides, which I must, regrettably, share with all of you. For my asides, I often make use of all kinds of colourful punctuation: dashes; parentheses; semi-colons; and my dear, dear friend, the comma. They’re perfectly friendly creatures. I promise.

I also have what you may by now consider the annoying habit of saying first and second rather than firstly and secondly. This is simply because the former are perfectly good adverbs and for the life of me I cannot fathom why we keep replacing perfectly useful parts of speech with weaker, stupider substitutes. You people who say ‘addicting’, I’m looking at you.

I haven’t even a clue about how these blog things work, since clearly I’m making multiple entries on the same day. And based on limited research it would seem as if one is expected to only have one thing to say per day, and neatly archive these things accordingly. But I am a maverick! (Oh the fear that word now strikes in my heart.) And so we press on, stinging all those for miles around with our newfound B(logger) status.

Don’t worry about the title reference. Unless you’re Bajan, or not Bajan but (curiously) a fan of The Mighty Grynner anyway, you’re allowed to just let it go.