This conversation in which western feminists are debating the significance of the Muslim veil for women brings up many issues. It points to the historical meaning of women’s bodies and the battle over who ultimately controls them. It’s easy to romanticize the veil or to condemn it off hand without consideration of the degree of veiling and the wider context. A head scarf is a very different thing than a burqa. Degree and context in this case is everything.
This story from the New York Times discusses how dermatologists are increasingly more interested in their Botox clients than patients with real skin diseases. With a world health crisis and many here at home with no health insurance, it’s decadent for physicians to devote themselves to people’s vanity instead of real suffering. But I guess in a day of glitzy media, old and unattractive is its own form of suffering.
See this excellent column by Nancy Gibbs at Time magazine about the moral cost of reproductive technologies.
Another story in the New York Times about surrogate mothers. This time it’s poor Indian women earning their living by renting their wombs to affluent westerners. The industrialization of human reproduction dehumanizes everyone involved. Talk of rights, choice, and economic necessity are code words that the affluent use to exploit the weakest members of the human race, poor women and children. The view of women in many third world regions allows them to be thought of as little more than a communally owned natural resource. The dignity of all people remains in peril. Yes, it’s dismaying and depressing to think that we live in this kind of world.
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?
Here is a story from the BBC about young girls in India who are sold into temple prostitution. This ancient practice remains alive and should prompt us to dismiss any contemporary claim that the ancient goddess cults are good for women or girls. Historically, sacred sex, sacred virgin, and fertility rituals are code words for sacred exploitation.
Here is the cover story “(Rethinking) Gender” from this week’s Newsweek magazine. The story about transgender people illustrates the cultural belief that your true self is something other than your body. It also reflects a belief in some innate masculine or feminine nature that is beyond the body. Something on the order of a female soul that causes you to like pink, make-up, and frilly clothes. When those desires are trapped in a male body, then the body must go. Vice versa included. There in nothing here that re-thinks our assumptions about gender. What the new questioning of gender does is allow a deep loathing of our embodied humanity. Does this not sound completely retro in some perverse way? I thought we were trying to allow women and men to be free individuals, not demand that they change themselves (under the knife and through chemical assault) to fit some idea of what each gender means. Like I said before, it’s a topsy-turvy world. It has theological implications that are begging to be engaged.
There are many things that the infertility industry (yes, it’s a business) doesn’t tell you. Here is an article from Slate. One thing that they don’t tell you is that your womanhood or manhood does not depend on whether you have biological children. They also don’t tell you that if you want to nurture the next generation there are plenty of orphans and cast-offs who need loving parents. What they are not able to treat is a deeper infertility that does not allow us to embrace any one other than our own flesh and blood.
Having said that, I can hear some of you thinking, “she doesn’t understand what it’s like not to be able to get pregnant.” Maybe I don’t, but I do understand that women are under incredible pressure to bear children to legitimate their lives and marriages. It’s about men too.
Here is a story from NPR about abortions in China. The one child policy is driving government forced abortions. Some of these are being performed even into the ninth month of pregnancy. The practice of abortion has never been and will never be a walk in the park for women. Guess the sex that is being aborted most often? Another reminder of the international war being waged against the bodies of women and girls.
Working hard to look like your favorite star? Here’s a few lines from Kate Bechkinsale’s interview in Glamour magazine.
“What’s considered ideal in Hollywood is completely different than anywhere else in the world. I don’t think you can aspire to it, nor can I. Everybody is retouched, stretched, lengthened, slimmed and trimmed. I could look at a picture of myself from the past and think, why don’t I look like that now? It’s because I never have!”
Aren’t you relieved?
