I have rather soft spot in heart for girls who dress like sluts this morning. Well, for one of them in particular.
I was coming out of church last night. I was well dressed in flannels, blazer and tie and my favourite tassel loafers and an olive-green trench-coat and grey fedora. I had just missed the10:08 bus. The next bus was at 10:38 so I started walking up Bank Street. As I came under the Queensway and there she was at the Bank and Isabella.
Monday, May 9, 2011
The obligatory SlutWalk comment
There is a well-established legal principle that says my self defence has to be proportional to the perceived threat. If the punk comes running at me with a knife screaming "Die you capitalist scum," I can shoot him with impunity. If he is running towards the door carrying the bottle of Scotch he has snagged out of the liquor cabinet I cannot fire a warning shot into his back.
So it seems to me that any reasonable assessment of the SlutWalk phenomenon must begin by acknowledging that that the police officer who made the stupid suggestion that women not dress like sluts to avoid being assaulted was speaking to a group of only ten people, has long since apologized and that the outrage at his remark came long after the apology and is still being ginned up via social media. The response is clearly disproportionate to the tiny threat.
So what gives?
Well, like all social phenomena, it's probably over-determined. It gets media attention and it's funny how protests that get media attention will always trump other possibly more worthy protests. It has also been an opportunity for a largely moribund feminism to try to connect with young women and girls. And there are probably others.
But let me suggest that there is one thing that really drives this: girls and young women in their teens and early twenties really, really, really love dressing like sluts. They love the feeling of sexual power it gives them and they love it a whole lot. And they look around and see nothing but what appear to them to be scolds and busybodies trying to stop them. There is a huge amount of defensive anger out there in girlie-land and that defensive anger has been like a dirigible full of hydrogen looking for a spark for a long time now.
What to do about it? Here are some useful suggestions:
So it seems to me that any reasonable assessment of the SlutWalk phenomenon must begin by acknowledging that that the police officer who made the stupid suggestion that women not dress like sluts to avoid being assaulted was speaking to a group of only ten people, has long since apologized and that the outrage at his remark came long after the apology and is still being ginned up via social media. The response is clearly disproportionate to the tiny threat.
So what gives?
Well, like all social phenomena, it's probably over-determined. It gets media attention and it's funny how protests that get media attention will always trump other possibly more worthy protests. It has also been an opportunity for a largely moribund feminism to try to connect with young women and girls. And there are probably others.
But let me suggest that there is one thing that really drives this: girls and young women in their teens and early twenties really, really, really love dressing like sluts. They love the feeling of sexual power it gives them and they love it a whole lot. And they look around and see nothing but what appear to them to be scolds and busybodies trying to stop them. There is a huge amount of defensive anger out there in girlie-land and that defensive anger has been like a dirigible full of hydrogen looking for a spark for a long time now.
What to do about it? Here are some useful suggestions:
- Keep calm and carry on.
- Repeat after me: no one is forcing these girls and young women to dress the way they do; they are doing this because they really like it.
- Remember that there really are more important things to worry about in life.
- Don't let the scolds and busybodies get you worked up about this.
- Pray for a long, hot summer.
Sort of political Monday
The youth vote (and introducing a whole week of self love posts)
Over at American Catholic Jake Tawney noted an NPR story about supposed narcissism in modern music. If there is one phrase in any news story that ought to give is us pause these days it is, "there is a study that says". And, well, NPR has a found a study that says pop lyrics are getting more narcissistic:
But here is the thing that Tawney and I agreed about in the comments; wasn't "We are the World" a pretty narcissistic song all by itself? Thing about it "we" are the "world". Who says a thing like that? Who seriously believes that that watching a video featuring a bunch of music stars and buying their song is enough to solve hunger in Africa? Self involvement? Painfully unrealistic notions about their ability to change the world? More interested in the outward expression of correct attitudes about a moral issue than actually doing anything about it? Easily bored by the actual issue and moves on to other trivial subjects immediately afterward? I don't think it gets more narcissistic than that and "We are the World" had all that and more.
The Nelly Furtado song is about sex, on the other hand, and I can see a certain amount of that. in the last couple of minutes leading up to orgasm, there is nothing more attractive in a woman than the sorts of attitudes Furtado expresses above. And some suggestion of it seems appropriate to me in female dress and public behaviour. I'm enough of a fogey to go along with the NPR types that there is something excessive about what pop stars do. But that is a subject for Friday.
All that said, as much as I would like to see some more restraint in Nelly Furtado (for her own good among other things) I can't say I find the sort of self love expressed above terribly surprising or disturbing.
But the notion that kids can change the world by making some trivial gesture disturbs me greatly. And I can't figure out why it is so important to some people that everyone, including youth, should vote. It seems to me that if someone doesn't care enough to put down their Red Bull and Vodka and totter off to a polling station that is closer than the bar she was at last night, then it probably isn't a terribly bad thing that she doesn't vote. And, as Milton Friedman would say, she already has voted by making the choice to do what she is doing instead of marking her ballot.
Anything else is encouraging narcissism in kids.
Over at American Catholic Jake Tawney noted an NPR story about supposed narcissism in modern music. If there is one phrase in any news story that ought to give is us pause these days it is, "there is a study that says". And, well, NPR has a found a study that says pop lyrics are getting more narcissistic:
On this very day in 1985, the number one song on the Billboard Top 100 was...Given the demographic that listens to NPR, it's pretty tempting to read that as "kids these days ...."
(Soundbite of song, "We Are the World")
Mr. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (Singer): (Singing) We are the world. We are the children.
NORRIS: Fast-forward to 2007 when Timbaland's "Give It to Me" featuring Nelly Furtado topped the charts.
(Soundbite of song, "Give It to Me")
Ms. NELLY FURTADO (Singer): (Singing) ...love my ass and my abs in the video for "Promiscuous." My style is ridiculous.
NORRIS: So more than two decades ago, we were holding hands and swaying to a song of unity, and these days, we're bouncing to pop stars singing about how fabulous they are.
But here is the thing that Tawney and I agreed about in the comments; wasn't "We are the World" a pretty narcissistic song all by itself? Thing about it "we" are the "world". Who says a thing like that? Who seriously believes that that watching a video featuring a bunch of music stars and buying their song is enough to solve hunger in Africa? Self involvement? Painfully unrealistic notions about their ability to change the world? More interested in the outward expression of correct attitudes about a moral issue than actually doing anything about it? Easily bored by the actual issue and moves on to other trivial subjects immediately afterward? I don't think it gets more narcissistic than that and "We are the World" had all that and more.
The Nelly Furtado song is about sex, on the other hand, and I can see a certain amount of that. in the last couple of minutes leading up to orgasm, there is nothing more attractive in a woman than the sorts of attitudes Furtado expresses above. And some suggestion of it seems appropriate to me in female dress and public behaviour. I'm enough of a fogey to go along with the NPR types that there is something excessive about what pop stars do. But that is a subject for Friday.
All that said, as much as I would like to see some more restraint in Nelly Furtado (for her own good among other things) I can't say I find the sort of self love expressed above terribly surprising or disturbing.
But the notion that kids can change the world by making some trivial gesture disturbs me greatly. And I can't figure out why it is so important to some people that everyone, including youth, should vote. It seems to me that if someone doesn't care enough to put down their Red Bull and Vodka and totter off to a polling station that is closer than the bar she was at last night, then it probably isn't a terribly bad thing that she doesn't vote. And, as Milton Friedman would say, she already has voted by making the choice to do what she is doing instead of marking her ballot.
Anything else is encouraging narcissism in kids.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Every tub
The following is from a post and has been attracting all sorts of search engine interest lately. It's from a much longer post about Rob Roy so I've pulled it out here so people can read it in isolation from a lot of talk about a novel they probably have never heard of.
"Every tub has to sit on its own bottom." That was a line Count Basie picked up from one of his musicians and it became a business principle for him. When Bailie Jarvie and Owen are having a discussion about Scotland's economic state in the novel Rob Roy, the very same expression comes up. "Na, na sir, we stand on our bottom ...." What it means in both cases is that everyone earns their own way.
That is an important line of demarcation between an honour and shame society and a guilt innocence society. In an honour and shame society honour is shared. I cannot have honour without sharing it with everyone in my in-group. If I try a phenomenon sometimes called tall poppy syndrome kicks in although that is a bit of a misnomer as tall poppies are encouraged so long as they remember that they are poppies and that their tallness is supposed to reflect glory on all the other poppies.
The reverse is also true. Any shameful act I perform will also bring shame on my entire in group. In an honour-shame culture the members of the in group will punish anyone who they feel brings shame on them. The most heinous example of this in our world probably being Muslim honour killings.
In an innocence-guilt society, everyone stands and falls alone. Count Basie came from an African-American subculture that still was predominantly honour-shame based but he broke with it when he set up his band. Every tub must stand on its own bottom is a rejection of the honour-shame culture Basie grew up. This was not without resistance from some other black musicians who saw this as selfishness.
No society is, as I've noted before, purely honour-shame or purely guilt-innocence. Every honour-shame society will trade with outsiders. So, for example, biblical laws that seemed to ban lending money at interest didn't apply when trading with outsiders. Even in a guilt-innocence society relations between very close insiders will have honour-shame aspects. If a married person commits some flagrantly outrageous sexual offence they drag their husband or wife down with them and innocence will not protect that husband or wife.
One of the ironic things about this is that the way to freedom is that the Basie band was justly famous because of its ability to function as a unit. It had the greatest rhythm section in all history and the leader of the band chose to be a part of that rhymn section instead of being a soloist.
Update July 12, 2011: Basie liked the idea so much he named a song "Every Tub". Here it is:
"Every tub has to sit on its own bottom." That was a line Count Basie picked up from one of his musicians and it became a business principle for him. When Bailie Jarvie and Owen are having a discussion about Scotland's economic state in the novel Rob Roy, the very same expression comes up. "Na, na sir, we stand on our bottom ...." What it means in both cases is that everyone earns their own way.
That is an important line of demarcation between an honour and shame society and a guilt innocence society. In an honour and shame society honour is shared. I cannot have honour without sharing it with everyone in my in-group. If I try a phenomenon sometimes called tall poppy syndrome kicks in although that is a bit of a misnomer as tall poppies are encouraged so long as they remember that they are poppies and that their tallness is supposed to reflect glory on all the other poppies.
The reverse is also true. Any shameful act I perform will also bring shame on my entire in group. In an honour-shame culture the members of the in group will punish anyone who they feel brings shame on them. The most heinous example of this in our world probably being Muslim honour killings.
In an innocence-guilt society, everyone stands and falls alone. Count Basie came from an African-American subculture that still was predominantly honour-shame based but he broke with it when he set up his band. Every tub must stand on its own bottom is a rejection of the honour-shame culture Basie grew up. This was not without resistance from some other black musicians who saw this as selfishness.
No society is, as I've noted before, purely honour-shame or purely guilt-innocence. Every honour-shame society will trade with outsiders. So, for example, biblical laws that seemed to ban lending money at interest didn't apply when trading with outsiders. Even in a guilt-innocence society relations between very close insiders will have honour-shame aspects. If a married person commits some flagrantly outrageous sexual offence they drag their husband or wife down with them and innocence will not protect that husband or wife.
One of the ironic things about this is that the way to freedom is that the Basie band was justly famous because of its ability to function as a unit. It had the greatest rhythm section in all history and the leader of the band chose to be a part of that rhymn section instead of being a soloist.
Update July 12, 2011: Basie liked the idea so much he named a song "Every Tub". Here it is:
Friday, May 6, 2011
Reader-recommended links
Do girls dream of being a princess because they want to be sheltered?
An essay from the time of Princess Diana's death by a writer named Marjorie Williams has gotten some attention lately. There is some praise of it here and a particularly good take down here.
But there is something weird about the essay that neither its critics or fans seem to have noticed. There are two key parts here. First there is the confession:
The part about Princess Diana not growing up is right. She was always a little girl. But an aspiration for shelter? What does that have to do with a woman who was, if you'll pardon my bluntness, the very worst sort of attention slut. The road from Princess Diana to Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan is a very short one.
A fairy tale princess doesn't live a sheltered existence. She lives in a world where shelter isn't necessary because she is after all a princess. It's a world where the princess is the star and everyone else is just playing a supporting role.
And it's probably a harmless little fantasy most of the time. Fantasies tend to be harmless no matter how much some moralists claim otherwise. But it is something women should be much more embarrassed of than they apparently are.
But there is something weird about the essay that neither its critics or fans seem to have noticed. There are two key parts here. First there is the confession:
But Diana's entry onto the scene in 1981 launched a far more visceral phenomenon. Diana meant something to women from the first time we saw her. ... Many women of Diana's own generation, schooled in feminism, wallowed a bit ruefully in the fantasy being enacted before our eyes, yet still we wallowed.And then there is the analysis and my question is this: Does the analysis below really explain the response described in the confession above?
Note, though, that it is the rare little girl who wants to grow up to be queen. To wish to be a princess is not simply to aspire upward, to royalty; it is also to aspire to perpetual daughter-hood, to permanent shelter. To dependency. And this is where Diana's grip on our imagination grew more complicated.I don't think so. Or, to be more precise, I think it gets close but then ricochets off the target. And from that point the whole essay is just pointless.
The part about Princess Diana not growing up is right. She was always a little girl. But an aspiration for shelter? What does that have to do with a woman who was, if you'll pardon my bluntness, the very worst sort of attention slut. The road from Princess Diana to Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan is a very short one.
A fairy tale princess doesn't live a sheltered existence. She lives in a world where shelter isn't necessary because she is after all a princess. It's a world where the princess is the star and everyone else is just playing a supporting role.
And it's probably a harmless little fantasy most of the time. Fantasies tend to be harmless no matter how much some moralists claim otherwise. But it is something women should be much more embarrassed of than they apparently are.
Womanly virtues Friday
How not to be vain?
Readers may have noticed the appearance of a new blog in the news feed called Betty Beguiles. Her motto is "Marriage, modesty and moxie with a vintage twist". A lot of her stuff is about being a good wife and that means, as she sees it, looking good. This leads to the inevitable question from one of her readers named Morgan:
And there are people who spend a lot of time trying to be good in ways that don't give them a good feeling. Giving more than you can afford is a great way to do this.
Except that you'll eventually come to the point where you are busily congratulating yourself for only giving in ways that make you suffer and that seems rather, what is the word I'm looking for here, well, it seems rather vain doesn't it?
So here is hint number one for Morgan, when it comes to analyzing these things, your inner feelings are useless. They tell you nothing at all. That you feel vain one day is just as likely to be a fluke of brain chemistry or some guilt-inducing remark you heard or read somewhere. It has nothing to do with anything at all worth considering.
If vanity means anything at all, it has to mean something with an objective correlative. There has to be something outside your head that can be pointed at and evaluated.
What is vanity anyway?
In a famous Bible translation that most of us know, vanity means futility. That is one definition. When women worry about whether they are being vain they really mean something else. My Oxford Dictionary says that something else is "being excessively concerned about appearance" but I'm not sure that's quite it. Certainly it would be wrong to be excessively concerned about anything but there are an awful lot of people we use the word "vain" to describe who really ought to be much more concerned about their appearance rather than less so.
I think the real fear is being concerned about your appearance for reasons that are illegitimate. And for nice girls like Betty's reader Morgan the primary illegitimate reason is something she let's slip in the way she words her question above. Can you spot it? Here it is;
What is bothering Morgan here—and this is something that neither Betty nor anyone in the comments thread in the original post never address—is that she knows that one of the reasons she dresses well is because she wants to be desired sexually. And she wants the desire apart from any actual sex she may or may not be happening. That is what she means by "vanity" here. And that's not crazy. You can see how that might feel illegitimate.
At the same time, you don't have to be incredibly observant to notice that rather a lot of women want to feel desired apart from any specific sexual relationship they have. Anyone who was surveying human behaviour in a scientific fashion—as opposed to moral—would probably conclude that while not universal, this behaviour was common enough in women to be called normal.
So why does it bother Morgan? There is more than one possibility. It may be that walking around with her body dressed to look good gets her aroused and she feels guilty about this. Or maybe she doesn't feel guilty about this but there is this niggling sense that she ought to feel guilty about it.
Or it may not actually be about the sex per se but rather about the sexual status. It's far from unheard of for a woman to dress in ways that attract sexual attention while actually being little interested or even repulsed by actual sex. Often the real purpose of sexual dressing is to demonstrate superior sexual status to others and that sounds about as vain as vain gets. (There are millions of lonely, love-starved men who look longingly at the way their wife dresses to meet her best girlfriend or for the office and wonder why she never does that for him. )
But before we get too worked about this, let's consider the woman who dresses in ways that conceal her sexuality because she looks at the way some other women dress and thinks ill of them. You want to say: "She thinks she is better than them! How vain."
Or how about the woman who dresses in ways that conceal her sexuality because she believes that women's sexual power is evil? Do you prefer her?
And how about the woman who dresses nicely for some kinds of social situations because she feels it is expected of her, and worries that others will think less of her if she doesn't, but hates actually doing it? If it were up to her, she'd wear the same jeans shirt to everything. If anything is vanity, that is vanity.
The whole project of defining "vanity" seems like vanity; as in futile. And it seems futile because it is futile.
Worrying about what you are and what you are trying to become is a legitimate project (it is the moral project) but this particular fear of vanity is a pseudo problem. To be a woman (or a man) is to be a sexual being. It means to play a part in a binary relationship involving two sexes and any moral person will strive to play that part well. It means to play that part well both publicly or privately. And yes, your appearance is part of it. When a woman presents herself publicly, she presents herself as a sexual being and that is not only okay, it is good.
And, quite frankly, there are far, far more "vain" women and men (including me more often than I like to admit) for whom not putting nearly enough effort into looking good is a bigger problem than the reverse. Caring about your appearance isn't a marker for vanity.
Vanity regarding appearance looks like a moral term but it cannot be made to do anything useful in moral life. Just toss it. I'm serious. The next time you see something that looks like a clear-cut case of vanity, try describing it in other moral language without using the words "vain" or "vanity". If you can't make a convincing moral case one way or another without those words, there isn't any moral argument to be made.
(This, by the way, is true of any moral concern. Our language has an incredible wealth of moral terms. If there is a real moral case to be made, you should still be able to make it without what seems like the key moral term. If you can't, it isn't really a moral problem to begin with.)
Readers may have noticed the appearance of a new blog in the news feed called Betty Beguiles. Her motto is "Marriage, modesty and moxie with a vintage twist". A lot of her stuff is about being a good wife and that means, as she sees it, looking good. This leads to the inevitable question from one of her readers named Morgan:
“Does anyone else struggle with wanting to look nice vs not being vain? Or is it just the perfectionist in me that thinks it's impossible to do both?
Before going anywhere with that, I want you to stop and consider an argument that a very devoted libertarian who was at high school with me used to make. She'd say that the fact that you get a good feeling when giving to charity proves that it's really a selfish gesture. You instinctively know that argument is crap as soon as you read it or hear it. Among other things, the person using it wants to justify never giving. But if you had to explain why it's crap you might struggle a bit.
For some reason this is a hard one for me. If I am dressing so that my body looks nice, am I inherently being vain?”
And there are people who spend a lot of time trying to be good in ways that don't give them a good feeling. Giving more than you can afford is a great way to do this.
Except that you'll eventually come to the point where you are busily congratulating yourself for only giving in ways that make you suffer and that seems rather, what is the word I'm looking for here, well, it seems rather vain doesn't it?
So here is hint number one for Morgan, when it comes to analyzing these things, your inner feelings are useless. They tell you nothing at all. That you feel vain one day is just as likely to be a fluke of brain chemistry or some guilt-inducing remark you heard or read somewhere. It has nothing to do with anything at all worth considering.
If vanity means anything at all, it has to mean something with an objective correlative. There has to be something outside your head that can be pointed at and evaluated.
What is vanity anyway?
In a famous Bible translation that most of us know, vanity means futility. That is one definition. When women worry about whether they are being vain they really mean something else. My Oxford Dictionary says that something else is "being excessively concerned about appearance" but I'm not sure that's quite it. Certainly it would be wrong to be excessively concerned about anything but there are an awful lot of people we use the word "vain" to describe who really ought to be much more concerned about their appearance rather than less so.
I think the real fear is being concerned about your appearance for reasons that are illegitimate. And for nice girls like Betty's reader Morgan the primary illegitimate reason is something she let's slip in the way she words her question above. Can you spot it? Here it is;
If I am dressing so that my body looks nice, am I inherently being vain?So the thing that bothers her is dressing so her "body" looks nice. Just being pretty or even beautiful isn't the issue. What bothers Morgan is that she dresses so that her body looks nice and that makes her feel good about herself and she worries that that is vain. And that's still not quite it because there is a missing element and that is other people. She dresses so that other people will notice that her body looks nice.
What is bothering Morgan here—and this is something that neither Betty nor anyone in the comments thread in the original post never address—is that she knows that one of the reasons she dresses well is because she wants to be desired sexually. And she wants the desire apart from any actual sex she may or may not be happening. That is what she means by "vanity" here. And that's not crazy. You can see how that might feel illegitimate.
At the same time, you don't have to be incredibly observant to notice that rather a lot of women want to feel desired apart from any specific sexual relationship they have. Anyone who was surveying human behaviour in a scientific fashion—as opposed to moral—would probably conclude that while not universal, this behaviour was common enough in women to be called normal.
So why does it bother Morgan? There is more than one possibility. It may be that walking around with her body dressed to look good gets her aroused and she feels guilty about this. Or maybe she doesn't feel guilty about this but there is this niggling sense that she ought to feel guilty about it.
Or it may not actually be about the sex per se but rather about the sexual status. It's far from unheard of for a woman to dress in ways that attract sexual attention while actually being little interested or even repulsed by actual sex. Often the real purpose of sexual dressing is to demonstrate superior sexual status to others and that sounds about as vain as vain gets. (There are millions of lonely, love-starved men who look longingly at the way their wife dresses to meet her best girlfriend or for the office and wonder why she never does that for him. )
But before we get too worked about this, let's consider the woman who dresses in ways that conceal her sexuality because she looks at the way some other women dress and thinks ill of them. You want to say: "She thinks she is better than them! How vain."
Or how about the woman who dresses in ways that conceal her sexuality because she believes that women's sexual power is evil? Do you prefer her?
And how about the woman who dresses nicely for some kinds of social situations because she feels it is expected of her, and worries that others will think less of her if she doesn't, but hates actually doing it? If it were up to her, she'd wear the same jeans shirt to everything. If anything is vanity, that is vanity.
The whole project of defining "vanity" seems like vanity; as in futile. And it seems futile because it is futile.
Worrying about what you are and what you are trying to become is a legitimate project (it is the moral project) but this particular fear of vanity is a pseudo problem. To be a woman (or a man) is to be a sexual being. It means to play a part in a binary relationship involving two sexes and any moral person will strive to play that part well. It means to play that part well both publicly or privately. And yes, your appearance is part of it. When a woman presents herself publicly, she presents herself as a sexual being and that is not only okay, it is good.
And, quite frankly, there are far, far more "vain" women and men (including me more often than I like to admit) for whom not putting nearly enough effort into looking good is a bigger problem than the reverse. Caring about your appearance isn't a marker for vanity.
Vanity regarding appearance looks like a moral term but it cannot be made to do anything useful in moral life. Just toss it. I'm serious. The next time you see something that looks like a clear-cut case of vanity, try describing it in other moral language without using the words "vain" or "vanity". If you can't make a convincing moral case one way or another without those words, there isn't any moral argument to be made.
(This, by the way, is true of any moral concern. Our language has an incredible wealth of moral terms. If there is a real moral case to be made, you should still be able to make it without what seems like the key moral term. If you can't, it isn't really a moral problem to begin with.)
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