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Mixed signals

These days, actresses are too thin. This just in from Captain Obvious.

OK, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to gather the empirical evidence (Kiera, more than one Kate, Angelina, more than one Nicole — and now even the previously bodacious Kristen Johnston is looking rexi).

The media at large and Hollywood make their bread and butter (ahem) in part by (overtly or not) encouraging actresses and models to “diet” themselves to the verge of malnutrition (how many jobs would Kiera get if her spare frame added 30 lbs? How many covers of top magazines would Nicole Ritchie — whose resume is as thin as her post-partum wasp waist — appear on?) and cashing in on the lucrative advertising, movie, god help us singing and modeling gigs they generate. Not to mention the controversy and increased exposure (and bigger, juicier paychecks) their increasingly wraith-like jutaciousness.

Living in a society where starvation is an issue for very few of its inhabitants, where walking down any city street you’re bombarded with images of bony divas juxtaposed with ads for 700 calorie coffee drinks and muffins could only lead to a justifiably addled perspective on food consumption. So you’ve got your average obese American who hates him/herself (my lanky, hot husband who is the last person who I would expect to fall victim to body dysmorphic disorder just last night referred to himself as a willowy marshmellow when I asked why he was comparing the pros of various local gyms), your American who’s perfectly svelte but lives in fear of becoming obese and obsesses over every last calorie and the miraculous few who are too smart, clueless or genetically blessed to give their love handles a second thought.

I do know that our coverage of dangerously thin models and actresses has to change. I love New York magazine — it’s witty, smart, cool but not overly so — and I rarely disagree with its tone. But a recent review of Get Smart struck me as oddly offensive precisely for those reasons.

Here’s a snippet:

“Like most young actresses, [Anne] Hathaway has dropped too many pounds — in a couple of shots her cheeks have sunken so deep that they can barely hold her giant teeth. But the sleekness, hard lines, the blacks and bright green against that ivory skin — yowza. I also like the scene where she wears a tousled jacket and loosened tie: It says ‘Okay, boys. Deal me in.’ After this and The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway must have designers camping out in front of her co-op.”

Let me get this straight: Hathaway is so skinny, all of the lovely, womanly fat on her face has completely disappeared; in fact, she looks like a horse when she smiles — her scrawny cheeks can “barely hold her giant teeth.” “Yowza.” I don’t know how David Edelstein got from point A to point B, and I’m not even going to address the “Okay boys. Deal me in” bit.

Just out of curiousity, after reading the piece I googled actresses anorexic. I got 459,000 hits. actresses too thin. I got 303,000 hits. actresses skinny beautiful. I got 1,060,000 hits. Boo.

Today, news of a model killing herself was reported — she may have had emotional problems. Surprise.

Fox News showed footage of her shattered body post-jump.

Pissing contest

Warning: Penelope has launched a borough-wide whiz-bang war against unknown (and possibly imaginary) foes. No fence, grass-patch, fire hydrant, trash bag, flower or front step is safe from her all-consuming pheromone-spritzing effort. She periodically insists on making rounds around various neighborhoods to gather information and assess the enemy’s (enemies’??!) progress.

As a General in her ruthless tinkle army, she often (pretends to) consults me (she’s a political animal and she knows better than to completely snub her second-in-command). Sniffing a suspicious blade of grass or hydrangea bush, Penelope will turn her laser-like attention to my pallid, unworthy visage.

She doesn’t need me to tell her that her pee pee’s in charge.

Lalalalalalala! I can't hear you!

Taking denial to a whole new level (is the entire staff secretly Catholic?) The White House opted to refuse to open a missive from the EPA detailing the negative effects greenhouse gases have on the environment. The policy, known officially as “high-tech peekaboo” put the e-mail in limbo (Catholicism again!) rendering it officially null and void.

The EPA sent the e-mail to The White House in December — in response to a High Court ruling that tasked the agency with determining if the gases pose a danger to health or the environment.

From The New York Times:

“Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.”

Inked

I just stumbled across a report that nearly one in four Americans between the ages of 18 and 50 has a tattoo.

What’s up with that?

My concept of what tattoos signify has evolved over time, and I wonder if my experience parallels a general pattern in America. (Granted, tattoos date back about 5,000 years – but for most of modern history, tattooed folk were peered at with the same kind of squinty-eyed suspicion one currently summons when listening to Dick Fuld pratter on.)

Now maybe it’s just me, maybe it was the times, maybe it was my age or my conservative upbringing, but when I was little, I associated tattoos with saggy, pallid biceps; prisoners; Wonder Wheel operators; evil-ass grannies; chain-smoking truckers with gnarled hands, orange-leather skin and a scary dash of ’tude.

I don’t have any tattoos and I don’t plan to be inked up any time soon. But now I associate tattoos with two of my favorite blond who happen to be sleek, sophisticated and fashion-forward.

And as globalization flattens the world and renders it into a single Brobdingnagian, weed-choked, patchy asphalt-paved, bullet-proof glassed strip mall and American’s cherished illusion of living in a nation of rugged individualists and exotics dissipates faster than Bush’s favorability rating, a tattoo does seem like a simple, fast way to differentiate myself from the roiling hoi polloi.

A deeply personal work of art on my left big toe/belly button/right butt-cheek in about an hour? Sign me up! (Except don’t: I don’t have a burning desire to commemorate a person or event with indelible ink on my bod – besides, getting a tattoo seems as unique as my own chosen vehicle of “self-expression” aka my chock-a-block, high-low, glitzy-drab, salvation army-barney’s warehouse sale, salvaged plastic bracelet-classic Tiffany’s necklace thanks Uncle Jim wardrobe. Everyone wears a uniform, from Wall Street i-bankers to emo boys.

(Except for a truly special short-bus select. The rest of us can only aspire to wear all-green all-day every day – or dance through the city to a salsa beat with a blow-up doll.)

Two of my best friends (the aforementioned blondes) have a bunch (okay — one has two, I believe soon-to-be three-in-one and the other has more than a dozen. I’ve lost count). Both ladies also have multiple piercings – a state of affairs that tends (empirical evidence only, no stats) to go hand in hand.

Also: both ladies enjoy shiny things. From glinting metallic bikes to sparkling diamonds to ocean water the sun throws a glinting ticker-tape parade upon …

Bottom line: they are bedazzled and bedazzling and enjoy bedazzlement. And their tattoos (and peircings) are lovely, unique and tasteful. The reasons each work was selected may elude me, but I do know they were all carefully considered, highly personal and enthusiastically received (by the ladies, not necessarily their parents or preppier cohorts).

Sprawling, complicated tattoos are becoming as common a sight now – and as bald an attempt at rebellion and/or general sassiness — as greasy long hair on men or singed bras were in the 60s.

A recent piece in Marie Claire explored the issues of tattoos and dating. Would a tattoo on your beau’s “upper left arm of a vibrant, crazy, and most unmistakably skinless man” make you think twice about getting horizontal? The tattoo was “Not a skeleton, mind you; a man with no skin—just organs, graphically rendered in sickly red, orange, and yellow swirls.”

It probably wouldn’t make me blink more than thrice, but then again, I dated a man who lived in a smelly garage in Billyburg with four other “artists”; he had a chicken as a pet. The chicken died about the same time as our relationship. It croaked after ingesting turpentine. Whoops. But I digress.

Christopher Hitchens may be right…. Is Bohemia as we know it dead or on the cusp of squawking to a halt as suddenly and sadly as our erstwhile chicken friend?

So here we are … living in a plasticized ungrungy Panopticon where all of the inmates, er, citizens are forced to attempt to differentiate themselves by submitting to a series of painful pricks? (Insert bad dating in NYC joke here).

I think I submitted myself to enough pricks for a lifetime, thanks … But if my whole snazzy librarian look starts to get stale I may just follow in Queequeg’s steps and express my existential and contradictory need to differentiate, lose and clearly define myself with an inky labyrinth.

Fat?

Diabetic? Got Cancer?

You have no one to blame but your Mom. Thanks, Science!

If you’re anything like me, you already blame poor Mom for your rapidly receding gums (srsly, thanks – I’m literally long in the tooth at 31), unsightly head of frizzy wannabe red but no cigar hair, more than generous dash of crazy-pants, affinity for dirty martinis and preposterously vertiginous heels.

I’m sure my Mom would react to this news like a napping tiger who’d just been nipped on her velveteen paw by a ballsy mouse – in one languorous but fatal move, she’d roar, snap, crackle and pop that mouse before it had a chance to explain itself, but here goes:

A high-fat diet during pregnancy (side note: what kind of deadly dull, self-abnegating sicko doesn’t enjoy a high-fat diet during pregnancy?) leads to an early onset of puberty, adult obesity, insulin resistance, teenage depression and breast cancer. That’s from Deborah Sloboda, a researcher at The Liggins Institute of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I’ve got my eyes on you Debbie Downer.

Space rock: chicken little's triumphant return

I heart chicken little. His neurotic, furrowed brow … his whining petulance … his self (and erroneously) cast role as Modern Times’ Cassandra … his boundless fear of imagined doom … he’s a chicken after my own heart.

I love him SO much I named my favorite stuffed animal after him (except it was a cat, so “her” name became Kitten Little. KL survived many an actual onslaught from very real enemies, including, but not limited to, semi-feral border collies and corpulent labs — and most notably, my mother, who in her zeal to make KL’s injuries “better”, quickly affixed brass buttons to her forehead with the intention of reconstructing her eyes but only succeeding in lending a crazed, pet-cemetery style gaze to her begrimed little face. Mom also sewed up her violently slashed stomach and  hip area with such vigor — and thick black thread — that I can’t recall poor KL without thinking of the also well-meaning but woefully misguided Frankenstein. The terror he unleashed on the world could be likened to the quakings KL inspired in visiting school pals.)

Atlantic Magazine eggheads and geophysicists can also relate to Chicken Little.

It seems about a decade ago, it occurred to Dallas Abbott – a Columbia University geophysicist – that geologists erroneously estimated the number of deadly comets and asteroids that have hit earth in the past and could hit earth in the future. (They were leaving out strikes from space that hit water, which seems laughable in hindsight, but then again, so does my four-year stint as an avid Phish fan).

The Atlantic (and Abbott) conclude that the odds of a “potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth this century may be as high as one in 10.” So why is NASA not preparing for the impending attack of killer rocks from outer space?

After all: “Abbott believes that a space object about 300 meters in diameter hit the Gulf of Carpentaria [a mere skipping stone compared with other objects that have hit the ocean], north of Australia, in 536 A.D. An object that size, striking at up to 50,000 miles per hour, could release as much energy as 1,000 nuclear bombs. … Still, the harm was mitigated by the ocean impact. … If the Gulf of Carpentaria object were to strike Miami today, most of the city would be leveled, and the atmospheric effects could trigger crop failures around the world.”

Congress asked NASA to mount a killer-comet busting plan in 2005. “Last year, NASA gave Congress its reply: an advanced search of the sort Congress was requesting would cost about $1 billion, and the agency had no intention of diverting funds from existing projects…”

Stay classy, NASA. Just keep on churning out diaper-wearing murderess wannabes and failed rocket launches. I’ll just be under my bed.

Really? Fascinating ...

I usually just crush to death the myriad bees buzzing around my tight, rumpled, scuffed up li’l bonnet by banging my head against a wall … but this one won’t die and it’s making for a twitchier than usual Friday afternoon.

Whether or not Obama and Clinton are my dream team is totally irrelevant here (and just for the record: they’re not). BUT I am going to be forced to take psychonazilezzierambo physical action against the next pundit, co-worker, random dude with halitosis and a bad wig on the subway reading The New Yorker over my shoulder and muttering to himself, family member, friend or neighbor who blithely declares that “America isn’t ready for a black president and female vice president.”

Now, I’ve deluded myself before (no one with Rosacea should ever highlight their hair, no matter how gloriously golden the shade; homemade beaded shower curtain – need I say more?; live cats never make good pillows; etc.) and I do live in and love Gomorrah, but really? REALLY?

Because even the Mesopotamian City-State of Ur could handle a female leader in 2500 BCE.

And after WWI, things really started taking off what with the Peoples’ Commissar of Social Affairs Aleksandra Michailovna Kollonta in Russia in 1917 kicking off the Party. In 1960, the first female premier was elected in Sri Lanka; in 1974 Isabel Peron became the first female president of Argentina.

In fact, the only two countries in the world that have never had a female member of government – in at least a sub-ministerial post, are Monaco and Saudi Arabia. Even the Vatican’s had one!

Out of the 192 members of the U.N., 19 have female leaders right now. (The presidential line-up is in Argentina, Chile, Finland, India, Ireland, Liberia and The Philippines; the premiers rule Germany, New Zealand, Moldavia (Designated), Mozambique, The Netherlands Antilles, Ukraine and The Åland Islands). There are also reigning queens in three countries.

In 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation freed about 4 million slaves. In 1870, blacks were given the right to vote. In 1920, women were given the vote.

Legislation can’t free minds though — as centuries of race riots, sexism and gaps in wages and education levels sadly prove. But if we’re not ready – as a country – to elect a black man and a white woman, on principle alone, it’s time to re-examine our country’s roots and cut out the rot.

Besides, if culturally conservative countries (not to say they’re more essentially conservative than the U.S.) like India, Ireland, the U.K. and Argentina have been able to handle it, we can too! I realize that the woman/black man double whammy may be a lot to handle for the classic (read: stereotypical) Rust Belt demo, but they wouldn’t vote for EITHER anyway. And other countries (esp. the ones mentioned above) have also had extremely visible, volatile struggles with racism and sexism.

Sitting back and staring mutely at people who drop the “America’s not ready!” bomb just helps perpetuate a pathetic, totally unproven myth, that like anything else, if it’s repeated mantra-like too many times, will become an unshakable belief.

For your protection

Stephen and I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Seattle (my faves: not climbing the Space Needle, drive-through espresso huts, Mt. Rainier mountain, Pho Soup, bikers bikers everywhere, Belltown punk rockers, yoga mats wedged under every armpit in sight, anarchist book stores, Moose Drool Beer, Pike Place, Mt. Rainier beer, gourmet pizza that isn’t excessively so, Pioneer Square, more Pho Soup, gargantuan seafood platters you get to beat with a mallet, Ballard’s dog-filled bars and cafes, Snoqualmie Falls’ beauty and surprisingly ass-busting half-mile hike, more yoga mats, Seward Park’s old-growth forest in the middle of the city!, super-funky white people dreadlocks, etc.) to see if we could live there. Short answer: YES!

On our last night, we dramatically threw up our hands and abandoned our quest to see more! do more! explore MORE MORE MORE! (okay, so Stephen wrestled me to the ground, sat on me, put me in a headlock, bounced up and down, burped, giggled, and solemnly pledged to lick his ring finger and stick it in my ear until I ceased making plans since we had to get up at 4 a.m. to catch a plane etc.)

So we explored the super-classy Sea-Tac hood near our super-classy Best Western Executel. The fanciest place we could find was called the BullPen Bar & Grill — it offered a happy hour from 6 am-10 am, fried turkey gizzards, Texas Hold Em tourneys, karaoke, a sign that reads “We don’t serve women, you have to bring your own” and of course, fake bathroom doors put up to fool tourists that I totally fell for. 

Also: the creepiest condom machine in America. Their offerings include: Fingers of Passion; Midnight Stalker; Ultra Rib (how Adam&Eve-esque! sehr Old Testament with a snazzy evocation of creation/protection/boning wrapped in one!); Du-O-Glo Stick Extender.