November 28, 2007 @ 2:06 pm | Category: body, work
The other day I walked by a nail salon, and through the window I saw an Asian man on his knees messaging the feet of a white affluent woman. My instant reaction was how demeaned that man must feel. I must confess, I am not one taken to manicures, pedicures, facials, and wax jobs done by perfect strangers. I have only felt comfortable with one massage therapist simply because she really enjoys her work, and has economic independence to go with it. It’s hard for me to enjoy this luxury when the worker can hardly speak English, but insist her name is Jennifer. It feels exploitative.
Many of my feelings and gut responses are confirmed by this New York Magazine article. The author explores the booming business of Salon treatments and the workers who provide the bulk of the work force. What use to be a luxury for the few, or a shared experience among friends who gave each other facials at home, is now perceived as a need to sooth our stressed out lives. There are many things to unpack here. Our need for human touch, our willingness to have strangers in intimate proximity, and our sense of entitlement. On the other side, it’s the workers. Mostly female, poor, immigrants with few choices. The article goes as far as comparing it to prostitution. The answer for us who are in a position to indulge ourselves is simple. Get a grip! The answer for the workers is more complex. People need to work to feed their families. I am not sure bigger tips would help when the operators of these establishments can change the pay rules overnight and defraud the worker. How do we make this body work pay while allowing the workers to keep their dignity?
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November 27, 2007 @ 11:50 am | Category: food, global issues, social justice
I have been thinking about how to best comment on the wild spending spree our society goes into at this time of year. I could point out the cultural belief that we can shop our way to happiness, the loss of meaning in the Christmas season, or how a green consumer is an oxymoron. In some way all these observations sound too familiar. Today, I got my Heifer International shopping catalog. Instead of selling me something to impress a friend, it challenges me to give a cow to a woman, a child, or a displaced man. It’s a simple idea. Provide people in underdeveloped parts of the world the chance to make a living and feed their families through a gift of livestock. What really brought it over the top for me was this:
“In most of the developing world, it is women who have the primary responsibility for feeding their families. The task of harvesting and preparing food, finding water, cooking and even tending to family farms are primarily the obligations of women…in fact, it is estimated that in Africa, women are responsible for 80-90 percent of the total food production. Yet women own just one percent of the world’s land.”
Additionally, I’m a believer in localism. That’s the idea that what works best is what is closest to the people. For us living off big-box stores, livestock is the furtherest thing from our minds. To many people in the world a cow, a sheep, or even a hive of bees can mean the difference between starvation or abundance. Think about giving the gift of God’s abundance. It’s a great way to support micro-enterprise and acknowledge God’s greatest gift.
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November 17, 2007 @ 7:09 pm | Category: Pop Culture, politics
Recently Time magazine featured a story about China’s up and coming me generation. These are the young people who are profiting from China’s new market economy. Reading the article they sound like any educated and affluent person in the West. They like good food, travel, fashion, and consumer culture. They also demonstrate a complete disengagement from politics. As long as they are free to consume what they like, and have the money, they don’t really care about the nature of the government they live under. Even if that government is a source of oppression for millions less well situated than themselves.
This week there was another story on the web noting a survey that measured the willingness of NYU students to sell their votes in the next presidential election. According to the survey, “Only 20 percent said they’d exchange their vote for an iPod touch. But 66 percent said they’d forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they’d give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.” What a relief, at least they weren’t willing to exchange their votes for a Prada bag.
I don’t know if we have ever seen this before. Somewhere the stuff became more important than intangible values like freedom, justice, and compassion. It reminds me of Esau who was willing to sell his birthright for bowl of lentils. It does seem the price for a person’s soul has dropped significantly and that the common denominator among the elites is not intangible values but the stuff. The difference between one person and another is no longer politics, values, or even race. It’s the stuff, who has it or who doesn’t.
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