July 2014 – Page 65

Are Middle-Age Women More Desirable These Days?

Tom Junod thinks so. He announces, on behalf of Esquire, that 42 in particular is so hot right now:

There are many reasons for the apotheosis of forty-two-year-old women, and some of them have little to do with forty-two-year-old women themselves. In a society in which the median age keeps advancing, we have no choice but to keep redefining youth. Life lasts longer; so does beauty, fertility, and sex. And yet forty-two-year-old women are not enjoying some kind of scientific triumph but rather one of political and personal will. A few generations ago, a woman turning forty-two was expected to voluntarily accept the shackles of biology and convention; now it seems there is no one in our society quite so determined to be free.

Conservatives still attack feminism with the absurd notion that it makes its adherents less attractive to men; in truth, it is feminism that has made forty-two-year-old women so desirable.

Sarah Miller, 44, expresses tongue-in-cheek “relief” that she might still make the cut:

Young women may still be perfect physical specimens. They can put on a bustier and high heels and arrange their legs, as 42-year-old Sofia Vergara has here, in a pose that’s not quite open and not quite closed, but they just don’t have, according to Junod, my “toughness, humor, and smarts.” He doesn’t come out and say that they don’t, but he definitely doesn’t say here, “Oh, the reason 42-year-old women are hot is because of what they look like.” No, it’s because we have a certain gravitas combined with what remains of our beauty. Young women don’t have that gravitas. So we sort of have the best of femininity.

I guess this is supposed to make me feel good.

Update from a reader:

Why would anyone be surprised that 42 turned out to be the magic age for women? After all, Douglas Adams told us years ago that 42 was the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Creepy Ad Watch

Ugh:

No, that is not a cynically-crafted Photoshop job. You can see the whole thing right here. Publimetro is the Latin American branch of the Swedish Metro media company (no relation to UK’s Metro). What you’re looking at here is indeed their coverage of the escalating conflict on the Gaza strip plastered with a full-page ad for the newest Transformers movie. Perhaps Publimetro has the scoop on Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense system (ACTUALLY AN AUTOBOT, PERHAPS IRONHIDE) or maybe it’s some kind of ironic commentary on the commoditization of war… or maybe it’s just a sad statement about the struggles of print media in a digital age.

Who Will Lead The Reformicons? Ctd

Chait and Vinik recently addressed Paul Ryan’s apparent split with reform conservatism. Douthat lends his perspective:

I think both writers raise useful points, but also possibly exaggerate the discontinuity between Ryanism and the reformist tendency. Chait and I have gone so many rounds on the True Nature of Paul Ryan over the years that I don’t think it’s worth re-litigating those issues; I’ll just say that from the point of view of conservative reformers, the Ryan who matters (and yes, like all politicians he contains multitudes) has always been the Ryan who did more than any other Obama-era politician to save the G.O.P. from policy unseriousness (and often tried to do still more), rather than a Randian Ryan or an apocalyptic Ryan or any other interpretation of his record Chait prefers. And in this sense, many aspects of Ryanism are pretty clearly foundational for reformers:

The wisdom of his basic vision for Medicare reform is taken for granted by most people in our camp (and, happily, by most prominent Republicans), his 2009 alternative to Obamacare, which failed to win over the party at the time, looks a lot like the health care alternative proposed in the recent Room to Grow compendium, and the broad goal of his famous budgets — reforming the welfare state in order to keep the federal government’s share of the economy within its post-World War II bounds — is a broad reformocon goal as well.

But Beutler expects that, should the GOP obtain real power, a more radical GOP agenda will rise from the dead:

The GOP’s 2011 and 2012-era hysteria didn’t disappear completely. But its legacy is confined to the hardline faction that shut down the government last year and continues to paralyze legislative politics. It also, as Chait notes, has transformed into an equally pitched rebellion against Obama’s supposed lawlessness. I expect this legacy will be well represented in the next Republican presidential primary. It’s just that the prospect of unified GOP control of government—which seemed so very within reach just two and a half years ago—has faded, and taken the strategic allure of doomsaying along with it.

If it returns, Republicans will be lying in wait to do what they had hoped to do over the past year and a half. And the reformocon version of those plans isn’t much different.

American Teens And Common Cents

Roberto Ferdman charts the findings of a new report on financial literacy:

A comprehensive study carried out by the OECD (pdf) has unearthed yet another lagging indicator for the American education system. The study, which examined the results of a financial literacy test that quizzed some 30,000 students in 18 countries around the globe, found that 15-year-olds in the U.S. aren’t all that good with money. In fact, they’re pretty mediocre with it. America’s youth are, according to the results, “not statistically significantly different from the OECD average.”

Laura Shin notes that the top-scoring kids came from Shanghai:

There, students scored 603 points on an assessment run by the Programme For International Student Assessment (PISA) by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The average was 500, and the United States’ mean was 492. That put it slightly below the average of the the 13 OECD countries and economies assessed; among all 18 countries and economies included, the U.S. ranked between 8 and 12. The other countries and economies whose students, in addition to Shanghai’s, scored above the OECD average were Australia, the Flemish Community of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, New Zealand and Poland.

Emily Richmond isn’t surprised by the results:

The ranking of U.S. students in the new assessment is consistent with the nation’s stagnant performance on the most recent PISA for math and reading—two skills that track closely with financial literacy. And it’s in keeping with prior findings. In a 2008 national survey by the JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, high school seniors gave correct responses to less than half – 48.3 per cent – of the questions on the basics of finance.

Allie Bidwell breaks down the findings further:

[M]ore than 1 in 6 American students – 17.8 percent – did not reach the baseline level of proficiency, meaning they could not correctly answer a “level two” question. At best, those students could determine the difference between needs and wants, make simple spending decisions and apply basic numerical operations, according to the report. Conversely, about 1 in 10 American students scored as a top performer, meaning they were able to answer the most difficult “level five” questions on the exam that focused on analyzing complex financial products and demonstrating an understanding of topics such as income-tax brackets and the benefits of different types of investments.

Presumably it’s harder for teens to develop financial literacy when they can’t find a job.

Cartel Coyotes

Caitlin Dickson connects the current border crisis to the Mexican drug cartels, who have taken over the business of smuggling migrants into the US:

Under the cartel-run migration model, migrants typically make arrangements to cross from their hometowns and are told to find their own way to a certain point where they will meet the coyote. The city of Altar, for example, about 112 miles from Nogales in the Mexican state of Sonora, is a popular launching point for border crossers, and as such, it has become a center of immigration commerce. Here, smugglers often tell migrants to wait for days before they cross, during which time they are nickel-and-dimed into buying stealth desert-crossing gear—camouflage backpacks, black water bottles, and carpet booties—from vendors who set up shop around town.

For those coming from Central America, just getting to a meeting place like Altar often means riding buses or atop freight trains from southern Mexico where they may be subjected to robbery, beatings, and getting thrown off the train by cartel lackeys. Those who make it will continue to encounter crippling fees at practically every leg of their journey to the border. Refusal or inability to pay may result in migrants being forced to carry backpacks filled with marijuana, getting kidnapped in order to extort money from their families, or being murdered on the spot.

The cartels are also partly responsible for the gang violence driving these children out of Central America in the first place. Ongoing Dish coverage of the ~~migrant~~ refugee crisis here.

Flexible Work

Ned Resnikoff defends his coverage of yoga instructors’ labor concerns:

Nobody asks why a story about, say, school teachers or truck drivers counts as news. But for whatever reason, yoga instructors don’t count.

That seems a little odd to me. It’s a skilled service profession, typically requiring some form of accreditation. People do get paid, albeit not very much, for rendering the services in question. So what makes it not-work? To flip the question around, why are stories about yoga instructors not considered to be labor stories?

I can think of a couple possible reasons. One is the widely held perception that yoga instructors are pursuing a hobby, despite the money involved. Another related reason is the casual, precarious nature of the work, which differentiates it from a full-time, salaried position. And a third, less charitable explanation, has to do with the gender breakdown of yoga instructors. Most of them are women, and feminized labor is often dismissed as not being “real” work.

Another reason yoga instructors may not register as suffering workers is that yoga is seen as something largely by and for rich white people. As Rosalie Murphy demonstrates, the stereotype isn’t entirely unfounded. On the racial component:

A 2009 study in the Journal of Religion and Health found that 63 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of Hispanic Americans pray to improve their health. Only 17 and 12 percent, respectively, reported relying on an alternative spiritual practice like meditation or yoga to stay healthy, and almost everyone in that group also prays. In contrast, twice as many white Americans identify with alternative spiritual practices and don’t pray at all.

“It’s easier for someone who’s not committed to anything to do yoga,” [researcher Amy] Champ said. “Ethnicity is connected to spiritual practice. Culturally, African-Americans and other ethnic Americans have their own [spiritual culture]. To get buy-in from those communities is pretty heavy lifting.”

And on the cost:

[O]ften, yoga is a privilege of the upper class. An average one-hour yoga class in Los Angeles costs $17. Most require students to bring their own equipment. A mat costs around $20; lululemon yoga pants, $82.

(Photo: Noriko Moser, of Pasadena, California, competes in the semifinal round of the 2003 International Yoga Championship-Ghosh Cup July 12, 2003 in Los Angeles, California. By David McNew/Getty Images.)

Get Moving, Already

Physical inactivity is the main reason we’re getting pudgier:

Researchers crunching data from the massive National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) have found that American obesity (as in the epidemic) might not have much to do with calories at all. In fact, over the past 20 years, calorie consumption mainly stayed flat, while daily physical activity went through the floor. We’re gaining weight because we don’t move as much as we used to, according to the investigators.

Specifically, the percentage of women reporting no daily physical activity jumped from 19.1 percent in 1994 to 51.7 percent in 2010, while the same for men jumped from 11.4 percent to 43.7 percent during the same period. The average body mass index spiked for both groups.

The Best Of The Dish Today

In a rather weird post yesterday, Jeffrey Toobin argued bravely that it’s a shame that there is a squabble over who gets credit for the extraordinary success of the marriage equality movement. Well: duh. I couldn’t agree more. It’s unseemly and ungracious and ugly. And that’s why you can scour the web for examples of Mary Bonauto or Evan Wolfson or Robbie Kaplan or Dan Foley or me ever claiming that we, and we alone, “changed the world”. It’s a grotesque thing for anyone to claim in such a broad and long and multi-faceted movement.

But Ted Olson, David Boies and Chad Griffin have all claimed as such through the Becker book, the Prop 8 HBO documentary, and the Olson-Boies book. And that‘s why there’s been a fight. They did something no one had ever dreamed of doing before. And that’s why the near-universal response in the gay community to the books has been criticism and derision. It’s certainly not because we begrudge newcomers to the movement, or straight people, as Toobin also bizarrely implies. The very first lawyer who filed a successful marriage equality suit in Hawaii was straight, Dan Foley. I welcomed Olson and Boies with open arms and backed their lawsuit, despite its risks of backfiring. I’ve welcomed every convert to the cause for twenty-five years.

The issue is not between laborers and newcomers; it’s between laborers and a tiny number of newcomers who declared themselves indispensable saviors of a movement that had previously been allegedly “languishing in obscurity” – and then launched on a lucrative publicity tour to cement their place in history (something also that no one had ever done before). So no, Jeffrey, the correct historical analogy of Ted Olson is not to white freedom-riders in the South. They didn’t turn around and claim exclusive credit for the work of African Americans and then bill them over $6 million.

And no, Jeffrey, it isn’t just about the first paragraph. The framing of this lawsuit as “the legal battle to bring marriage equality to the nation” was the central message of the book, which is why Toobin used that exact phrase in his now-embarrassing blurb. It was neither of those things, as Toobin must now know. And as for the first paragraph, you know who doesn’t regret or retract a word of it, even when given several opportunities to do so? Jo Becker. There’s only so much the media establishment can do to keep a lie alive. And I guess Jeffrey just did his part.

Today, I took a long view of Obama’s long game – and didn’t buy the current chattering class consensus that he’s a failed president. We noted more good news for Obamacare; and continued awful news for Palestinians enduring the latest air assault on Gaza. Plus: feminism tackles circumcision; neocons know nothing (again!); a montage of soccer’s high drama in real life; and a mash-note from me to the Millennial generation.

The most popular post of the day was Meep Meep Watch; runner up: Never Listen To A Neocon Again.

Many of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here. You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 19 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish, including my new podcast with Matthew Vines – for a little as $1.99 month.

See you in the morning.

(Photo: The body of eight-year-old Palestinian boy Abdul Rahman Khattab who was killed when an Israeli missile struck his home, is brought to al-Aqsa hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on July 10, 2014. At least 86 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed and hundreds injured in a major Israeli air offensive against the Gaza Strip that began late Monday night, according to reports by the Palestinian Health Ministry. By Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.)

Face Of The Day

Charla Nash, the victim of a mauling by a pet chimp in Connecticut in 2009 and who underwent a face transplant, speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hill on July 10, 2014. Nash joined members of Congress in advocating for changes in federal law banning the interstate trade of primates. By Win McNamee/Getty Images. To get a better sense of how remarkable her surgeries have been, watch her famous Oprah interview here.

A Twentieth Century St. Paul

Ian Thomson details the just-translated Pier Paolo Pasolini screenplay, St. Paul, which the Italian filmmaker, who was killed before he could make the film, intended to be a sequel to his The Gospel According to Matthew. The plot involves the post-Damascus disciple coming to America to preach the message of Jesus:

St Paul champions those who have been disinherited by capitalism and the “scourge of money”. Pasolini believed that the consumerist “miracle” of 1960s Italy had undermined the semi-rural peasant values of l’Italietta (Italy’s little homelands). In the director’s retelling of the Bible, Paul stands as a bulwark against the “corruption” brought to Italy by Coca-Cola, chewing gum, jeans and other trappings of American-style consumerism.

Nevertheless, as the former Saul, a Pharisee and persecutor of Christians, Paul was an ambivalent figure for Pasolini.

After his conversion on the road to Damascus in 33AD, he took his mission round the world and became the founding father of the Christian Church in Rome, with its hierarchy of prelates and pontiffs. So, in some measure, he lay behind the Catholic Church that Pasolini had come to know in 1960s Rome, with its Mafia-infiltrated Christian Democracy party and its pursuit of power and political favour. In the screenplay, Paul is by turns arrogant and slyly watchful of his mission.

The saint’s story is updated, cleverly, to the 20th century. Cohorts of SS and French military collaborationists in Vichy France stand in for the Pharisees. With a fanatic’s heart, Paul oversees the killing and mass deportation of Christians. The action then fast-forwards to 1960s New York, where the post-Damascus Paul is preaching to Greenwich Village “beats”, “hippies”, “blacks” and other outcasts from conformist America (“I appeal to you, brothers . . .”). His attempts to overturn capitalist values in Lyndon Johnson-era America are met with hostility by FBI operatives and White House flunkies. In the end he is murdered on the same hotel balcony where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. Pasolini’s approximation of the apostle of black liberation to the apostle of orthodox Christianity just about works.