Month: December 2011

A female version of this rant:

Listen, I’m not trying to insult anyone, since they’re at the gym to stay healthy and we’ll all get wrinkles, but I really don’t care to see ALL of that full-frontal nudity in the locker room. I’m indifferent to people seeing me naked when I change and indifferent to the women around me who are my age (and changing just as quickly … why waste time?). However, older women, like older men it seems, luxuriate in their nudity. Maybe they just have more time to kill. Doesn’t matter: I’m still not a fan of being accosted by unruly amounts of grey pubic hair and saggy boobs while they walk around naked when their clothes are two feet away. Shower, but pick it up, ladies. Walk around naked in your own home.

Another writes:

Your most recent post on the subject ended with a question about women’s locker room experiences. I can’t speak for all ladies, but here’s mine.

As a teenager, I remember locker rooms were fairly modest. No female classmate or teammate, myself included, would go completely nude in the locker room – not due to any fears about perceived homosexuality, in my opinion, but because we were afraid the other girls would judge our weight or our body hair. Adult women (in the community locker rooms of the local swimming pool, for example) did not seem to worry about stripping down. I took this as a signal that the older you became, the less you should care about locker room nudity – a lesson that carries me through to today. Now that I’m a grown woman, I no longer worry about whether a woman is looking at my naked body in a locker room, whether in a judgmental or sexual manner. If they are getting an eyeful, good for them, I say. I’m not ashamed of what they might see.

I’ve seen other women run the gamut between nonchalant nudity and painfully complicated modesty in the locker room, and age doesn’t seem to be a determining factor. And as a queer, I can say that I’m not getting any thrills if I happen to see these women naked. It’s a locker room. You’re in there for maybe ten or twenty minutes, tops. Just get over it, men, if you are all as sensitive about it as these posts make it seem.

Another:

I’m a 54-year-old female and I walk to and from the showers naked at my gym. I did it when I was a hot 30-something and I still do it. Maybe now I’m a cautionary tale to the young ones: “As I have sagged you one day will, too … no matter how much you work out.”

So do you think the discomfort is in seeing what time does to the human body? I think it’s pretty healthy to realize that we are going to get older and saggier and just learn to deal with it. We used to live in multi-generational homes where young people helped care for the old ones, but we are shielded for all that now … except maybe occasionally at the gym?

A younger woman writes:

The generational thing definitely exists for women too. One of my first memories of being a freshman in college (in 2002) is waiting in line for a shower stall with a group of girls my own age while the seniors aquatic fitness class showered happily in the open. Nine years of gym attendance later, I’ve either aged or just seen the advantages of not worrying about it. When I’m exhausted from working out, worrying about how well I’m holding up the towel while I search from my other sock is besides the point.

To the extent that I do worry about it though, I will say lesbians are the furthest thing from my mind. Mostly, I don’t want other (presumably straight) women to see, and potentially judge, what kind of underwear I’m wearing, what kind of shape I’m in, what sags or doesn’t sag without a bra, or whether I put a high priority on shaving my armpits when it’s winter I’m not going to be wearing anything sleeveless anyways.

Actually let me amend that; the fear isn’t really of being judged. The time my two female coworkers and I all decided to go to a dance class together, we split like a bunch of billiard balls the second we entered the lockerroom to avoid having to take our shirts off in front of each other. I really don’t think it was because any of us suspected the others of being catty bitches. Seeing each other topless was just more personal and intimate than we wanted to be – not in a homophobic way, but more in the way that you don’t tell everyone about your love life either.

An older woman:

In my generation, college seemed the time when women made a conscious effort to get past nudity.  I don’t know if this was a particularly ’70s thing,  but being willing to walk around alocker room (or dorm bathroom) naked seemed to have an almost political “I’m not ashamed of my body even if I could do to lose a few pounds” feel.

One more reader:

As I get older, I care less and less about how other women see my body.  Old women don’t seem to care very much about who sees their saggy heinies.  It’s kind of refreshing, actually.  I’m looking forward to not caring at all.

Jaswinder Bolina grapples with how people perceive his writing:

Race is simply too essential to the American experience to ever be entirely overlooked. As such, I can’t actually write like a white guy any more than I can revise my skin color. This, however, doesn’t change the fact that if a reader were to encounter much of my work not knowing my name or having seen a photograph of me, she might not be faulted for incorrectly assigning the poems a white racial identity. This is a product of my language, which is a product of my education, which is a product of the socioeconomic privilege afforded by my parents’ successes. The product of all those factors together is that the writing—this essay included—can’t seem to help sounding white.

Rapper Mac Lethal – creator of "Texts from Bennett" – covers Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now":

Here's a passage to make you stop in your tracks:

Everything is going to have a price. It is true that if we cut off Iran’s economy entirely or if we impose, as the Europeans, or some of the Europeans, are suggesting, an embargo on Iranian oil you might get an increase in the oil price. But think how the cost will pale compared to the cost of what is inevitably going to happen if nothing is done, which is an Israeli airstrike, which would cause the outbreak of a regional war, which could cause the closing of the Straits of Hormuz, which would cause a doubling of [oil] prices.

Does Krauthammer know something we don't? Or is this some kind of blackmail message?

Peter Beinart claims a small victory in the GOP race:

 [T]he person who has made Republican anti-intellectualism uncool is Barack Obama. Republicans believe that Obama’s record makes him vulnerable. But they remember how he eviscerated John McCain in the 2008 debates, and are eager—even desperate—for someone who can match him on stage. What makes Obama formidable is not only his grasp of public policy, but his comfort in his own skin. It’s unlikely that a Republican could use Obama’s policy knowledge to make him look like a self-important know-it-all. To win a debate with Obama, Bush-style folksiness won’t be enough. The Republican candidate will have to be substantive, which is part of the reason Romney has remained the frontrunner all year and that Gingrich has now joined him in the top tier.

Friedersdorf joins the throng and addresses the base:

[I]f any of you felt disrespected by Huntsman for forthrightly saying that he thinks you're wrong about a couple of things, understand that it could be much worse. You could embrace a nominee who just lies to you when he thinks you won't like hearing the truth. And who tells such audacious whoppers that part of him has to believe that we're all stupid.

What shows more contempt and disrespect, telling someone you think one of their ideas is wrongheaded? Or lying to them over and over about your record, your character, and your business dealings?

A reader writes:

You may have missed this in the US (we're used to it, we are a small country after all), but we finally/(almost) got a government here in Belgium! But I know you will be more interested by the fact that our soon-to-be prime minister is actually gay, and that … we don't care.

Honestly, we are more surprised by the fact that he is the first French-speaking prime minister since 1979, or that is the son of an Italian immigrant miner. And you shouldn't be surprised yourself; we are a country with full equality for gays and lesbians: marriage, adoption … you name it, we have it!

That doesn't mean that we are perfect of course; it's not like there is no homophobia here, and I personally met some peoples who were unhappy because he is gay, but still, in large part, we don't care that much. I think the best definition of the general opinion is "somewhat-curious-and-a-little-bit-frightened-but-in-the-end-I-don't-care(-and-don't-take-my-social-security-money-away)".

The first openly gay head of state was Iceland's Johanna Sigurdardottir, in 2009. Update from a reader:

Sorry to nitpick, but neither Sigurdardottir nor Di Rupo are heads of state.  As Prime Ministers they are heads of government.  The Iceland's head of state is a mostly powerless President, while that of Belgium is King Albert II.

(Photo: Socialist Party Chairman Elio Di Rupo attends the French speaking socialist party congress on December 4, 2011 in Brussels. The party's militants are to vote on the Socialist Party's participation in the new Federal Government, known as Di Rupo I. By Dirk Waem/AFP/Getty Images)

Not very:

In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, only 36 percent of independent voters regard Gingrich positively, with 43 percent holding a negative view. Their assessment of Romney is far sunnier—45 percent favorable and only 30 percent unfavorable. Gingrich's high negatives come even before Democratic attack ads begin reminding people of his many shortcomings—including his confirmed ethical lapses as House Speaker and his lucrative Washington influence-peddling. They also come before Gingrich has had months to remind everyone just how volatile and unlikable he can be.

For the Laffer Curve fanatics, the facts:

Between 1958 and 1986, an average of 14% of individual income tax revenues were generated at rates above 39.6 percent, and an average of 6% of revenues were generated at rates above 50 percent. At their peak in 1986, rates above 39.6 percent accounted for an impressive 23% of income tax revenue.

At least 950 people (that we know of) were killed in Syria over the course of November, making it the worst month in the uprising's history. Joseph Farag worries about what will happen if this was, in fact, the first month of Syria's civil war:

While Libya’s uprising also transformed into a civil war, the conflict was ultimately relatively brief. By contrast, Syria’s military has over 300,000 active troops with another 450,000 available on reserve. And while there have been numerous defectors from the military, it is unlikely that large numbers of soldiers will defect en masse. As such, a Syrian civil war could prove to be protracted, particularly as international initiatives, such as the recent Arab League sanctions, do not seem to be stemming the tide of violence.

Whether Assad's acquiescence [NYT] to an Arab League observer force will change this remains to be seen. Interestingly, Hamas – whose exile leadership is headquartered in Damascus – appears to be pulling out of Syria, seemingly out of concern for public opinion. One can understand their thinking after Razan Ghazzawi, a pro-Hamas and anti-Assad Syrian blogger detained by the regime, has become something of an international cause celebre. One can find more information on the #FreeRazan campaign here. In this video, a family in Baba Amr, Homs is forced to evacuate a car under sniper fire:

These protestors in Idlib aren't very fond of Russia and China sheltering Assad internationally:

Finally, here's a large funeral-protest in Deir Ba'alba, Homs: