Trashed!
A young woman eats her breakfast on the subway platform waiting on the train. She is dressed appropriately for a day at the office; she carefully leans over the tracks to peer down the tunnel. She brings a muffin, some tea and a few white napkins out of her deli bag. The muffin is pulled apart bit by bit as she sips liberally from her tea. Finished, she stuffs the cup, muffin wrapper and dirty napkins back into her paper bag. She then tosses the crumpled lump onto the tracks and peers again for the train.
What is in the mind of person that would eat a meal in public and proceed to drop its wrapping on the street? Why does the subway have a litter problem and not the museum? Why is it that when the real estate is poor there is no compunction to find a trashcan? The answers to how and why a place is ‘trashed’ are answered if we look at the conflicts of social classes and the beliefs about the ownership of these spaces.
The Conflict Theory provides a useful perspective to begin the discussion and I believe points to the solution. Conflict theory originated with Karl Marx, (1818-1883) the German activist and philosopher. Conflict theory divides society into two basic halves, the property owning class (bourgeoisie) and the workers (proletariat). The owning classes make the rules and the working classes follow them. Put another way when a person has ownership they behave one way and when they do not have ownership they behave in another.
Those owning a place have interest in its appearance and how it is used. One needn’t actually possess the item to have this interest. One need only believe in one’s ownership, however small. When even this little bit of ownership is not seen as valuable the environment suffers. Nobody would flick a cigarette butt into a corner of their living room or throw gum on the floor of their bathroom. I think that a belief in ownership is the key to ending litter.
Can we make everyone an owner with interest in the environment? If the young woman felt in possession of the subway platform she may not have littered. Why didn’t she feel any ownership here? Because she doesn’t believe she has any influence on it. She does, but she’s likely never exercised it.
Again and again others like the Straphangers or the MTA themselves have sent out mail, made calls and passed out literature to acquire accurate public opinion. Public service announcements, posters and commercials are aimed at this person.
How can she litter? Because she believes that ownership takes something from her.
We can continue to go down this path of ownership, but what we’re ultimately left with is changing minds about what influence they possess. We live, work, and pays taxes for these services. This young woman is influential, but she doesn’t believe it.
Most of us are familiar with the Broken Window Theory from Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book The Tipping Point in which he links increases in crime to the environment in which they occur. When enough graffiti and litter are present it can create a tipping point where a person who didn’t usually litter is willing to break the law. This theory only works when we’re speaking about areas where economically disadvantaged citizens congregate.
What must happen to create a tipping point in which littering is unthinkable? Wall Street has arguably more devastating crime, but there are no graffiti sprayed halls and litter strewn corners. There are no broken windows to fix, graffiti to remove or even much litter to pick up. The proletariat of the financial district of New York City is very proud of this fact.
Pride, I would argue, is a characteristic of ownership. Our subway woman is not proud of her place, literally and metaphorically. What can we fix for this gal to get the biggest impact? Litter is a social problem that can be understood when we look at the conflict of social status and the value placed on the immediate physical environment of the persons who inhabit that environment. When ownership can be felt as shared, and this sharing has influence and value, change occurs rapidly.
Can we value public places that have different inherent and incomparable functions equally? When everyone has esteem in their neighborhoods and public places there will be no trash to sully their enjoyment. But littering and its impact on one’s own neighborhood is where this idea must begin and can be most effectively taught.
If we are to address the problem on litter as a whole we must continue to expand our gaze. We start with our own broken windows. We begin in our backyards. This enlightened gaze of ownership of one’s surroundings soon takes over our public spaces and eventually our national regions and even our planet. The place we occupy in society according to Karl Marx’s analysis will like determine if we ever get out of our own backyards.
The Great Garbage Patch is a swirling sea of debris comprised mostly of plastic litter. The litter came from boats that dumped their trash directly into the ocean, but also rivers that brought the trash to the sea. There is no life in the Pacific Gyre and there is currently no effort underway by any government to deal with this swirling heap of a trillion tiny acts of misbehavior.
The tipping point here is the same as the woman on our subway platform tossing her breakfast bag into a corner. Can we make the evolutionary jump and turn Karl Marx’s philosophy on its proverbial head? Can we evolve from the proletariat to the owning class of the bourgeoisie? Our ocean must be seen as belonging to all of us and it must become our responsibility and fall under our collective care as much as our parks and front lawns. We will get out and pick up the trash and garbage that accumulates on our patch of grass, but want someone else to pick up our parks and our filter our oceans.
The tipping point will come when each of sees our own behavior as contributing to this vortex of trash. The oceans are our back yards and can be seen as our gardens at least as much as our farms are.
Where is that tipping point?
I believe that there are several areas ripe for changing this dilemma. I believe education about what exactly litter is and what costs it brings to a community are crucial. Most of us know that plastic takes a very long time to decompose yet do not think twice about not recycling a soda bottle. Here in New York, when you buy a soda bottle, you pay an extra five cents to clean it up. These bottles can be gathered up and sold to recycling centers. Many of the homeless in our community are the largest recyclers.
Styrofoam is still manufactured when we know that it takes over a million years to degrade. Most of the searchable studies show that the average person who litters is male, between 16 and 24 and smokes. This should be a population that can be reached. If we can tip this fellow we’ll have a way of doing real damage to landfills. Smoking rates are continuing to go down. Education was the key to turning youth tobacco use around. So there is hope that littering will reach a similar tipping point.
Every morning I grab a plastic bag from under the sink and walk to the subway. I don’t always pick anything up, but I have the means to. I can be seen on the platforms of the New York Subways picking up after my fellow straphangers because I believe that is the best response to what I now know. I throw away the trash and I recycle what I can. Sometimes people will actually offer to put their trash in my bag. Sometimes they will help; it’s usually a child making a game of picking up after adults. Sometimes I am thanked or complimented; it’s usually an old woman.
I’m not going to wait for anyone else to lend a hand at tipping this issue. I’m doing my part to approach the tipping point.
This issue is fraught with paradox. On one hand we must all be seen as owners of this planet and all our individual environments for sustainable change to happen. For this ownership to occur we must educate those that feel the least ownership, young people especially post puberty and pre-adult males. Teach the young that they own more of the earth than we do. When that is exactly the opposite of what it looks like.
We must act like the proletariat, working for the good of all, while believing we are the bourgeoisie, so we can behave as good stewards. We live on one planet and it contains enough food and shelter for millions more than currently occupy it if we can learn to live and teach these paradoxes.
A young woman ate her breakfast on the subway platform waiting for the train. When she finished her muffin she wiped away the crumbs with her handkerchief. She replaced the lid on her thermos cup and put it in her tote. She leaned out over the tracks to see if she could see the train coming. When there was no train she pulled a book from her tote and read in the pleasant space until the subway arrived.
A Joker’s World !
The editors at the Economist wrote The New Terrorism: Coming Soon to a City Near You in 1998. He offers for sale a story about Nihilism and New Terrorism. Nihilism has basically two points. The first is that you do not like what I like the same way I like it, so we can’t get that close to an understanding. The second part is: So I can kill you. How many people do you know like this? This sounds to me like Hannibal Lector. It sounds like the definition of a sociopath. The New Terrorist is the Joker!
I do not believe we are breeding more sociopaths. I do think the United States is being itself rather nihilistic when it predicts its own doom. We are not the likely target of the next terrorist attack. Most attacks happen in places the government does NOTHING to stop it. So in a way all terrorism is government sponsored, directly or indirectly.
I am not going to live in a world that I have to worry about the right wing zealots of another country coming to get us because we neglected to keep our right wing religious zealots out of white house for 40 years. I not saying we asked for it, but we did allow it. But it is late for the kettle calling the pot black.
The next generation of terrorists will wake up in a world that has few recruits. Nihilism is best left to comic books where it is most attractive. Feel the pull of mortality all you like. It is no reason to kill others. Even the article waxes nostalgically for the P.L.O. and the Red Brigade.
Ten years later the world is so different. I think we’ve crossed over something.
Market Damage
According to Kornblum & Julian in their essay Problems of Work and the Economy the free market created capitalism and that gave birth to corporations and they’ve grown so large that they cause unemployment. If we are to believe Kornblum & Julian these multi-national corporations cause three basic types of unemployment; The Intermittently and Chronically Unemployed, the Frictional Unemployed and Permanent Displacement, and the “Invisible” Unemployed and the “Discouraged” Worker.
Kornblum & Julian also tell us in their essay that the unemployed feel isolated, friendless, incompetent and worthless. We learn this from studies of workers in Detroit in the late 60’s and from white collar engineers in the mid 70’s. Kornblum & Julian offer no solution to lessen any social or psychological damage caused by unemployment. They conclude the essay noting that people die at work.
I don’t share very much in common with Kornblum & Julian. I do not believe the free market or capitalism caused unemployment. What is capitalism? Most agree it’s the private ownership of resources, like wood, knowledge or sweat, and a market to sell them (and it’s been around longer than anyone can document). We understand that this implies that the most useful resources will sell at the highest price in the marketplace.
Not true.
The most desirable resource is sold at the highest price. That is why we have the type of capitalism we do. We tend to blame the system itself when it’s us that do the valuing.
So what do companies have to do with it?
The laws of the land favor soulless corporations. We have given them rights and spend money to persuade our lawmakers to favor them and their survival because we value what they provide. Many of these corporations provide us with very little practical use (would we need an FDA if this were not so?). They do provide us with ways of competing against each other for value. Our laws support this way of constructing and maintaining this type of marketplace.
Is this where you want to do business?
When the market places greed and difference at the center there will be those left out. We must have unemployed, poor, uneducated, minority, fill-in-the-blank, OTHERS to help us feel better. After all, how can we be worth anything if we’re not worth more than somebody? Half of what makes anything a luxury is that somebody else doesn’t have it, right? That’s what irresponsible corporations do; feed our worst instincts, not support our best.
What would a healthy marketplace look like?
This is where solutions come along. This is the place where social and psychological damage can be addressed. I believe that if we value the potential of individuals and not their limited purchase power or their perceived market share. This market place would value fulfillment and education. I think this marketplace would look more like the social business models that are being explored by Harvard and others.
Solving problems to our needs is the highest good. I am working for myself. I am working for solutions. This is the marketplace I want. We can change the market because we can change ourselves.
Family Men
Richard J. Gelles quickly synopsizes six theories to reveal how the society of 1993 views domestic violence in his article ‘Through a Sociological Lens: Social Structure and Family Violence’ from Current Controversies on Family Violence.[i] He offers us a system, gives us an economic explanation, and tells us violence is its own subculture, perhaps is a psychosis, and believed by most to be the result of patriarchy. I think it is likely a collection of all of these theories that describe the social problem of family violence. I believe it’s likely a result of more than the collection of theories referenced above. I do know that men are socialized to live in a violent world.
A culture of violence is a system, otherwise how could we speak about its parts and its members? Humans have never created a culture without violence. The eight characteristics in General Systems Theory explain how a family must be structured for violence to be stabilized. I think that this also could translate to a business. Economic stresses have been proven over and over again as major contributors to domestic violence. Although no social class is exempt from family violence, the victims and perpetrators are over represented in the poor and uneducated; violence occurs in predictable neighborhoods. A violent family is a subculture by definition; poor and socio-ethnic minorities congregate together and are over represented in reported family violence. I’ll delve very specifically into this aspect further along. Resource Theory and Exchange/Social Control Theory explain how an abuser understands an environment and interacts with it. Family violence occurs because of the abuser’s beliefs; when violence a method of resolving perceived conflict. This conflict is perception because surely these scores of wives and girlfriends could not be threatening great harm to abusive men. All of these circumstances and attitudes contribute to psychological disorders of many kinds for victims and perpetrators alike. I will go one step further. I will collectively call these theories patriarchy.
I cannot possibly address violence in the home without talking about patriarchy. Patriarchy needs the system, the subculture and psychosis to keep it together. The economics structure of today supports it because capitalism as practiced today is based on greed and fear.[ii] We need a portion of the classes uneducated and without perceived recourse. We must believe in the scarcity of resources for this to go unchallenged. I don’t think it’s any wonder that some are dissatisfied and frustrated with family life and what fulfillment society has to offer. Violence needs patriarchy to sustain itself because it is not the natural reaction of parents to turn violently on members of its own family. Surely this can be seen as a diseased state. Patriarchy’s first victim is infection of the patriarch.
In King’s County, New York, population 2.5 million[iii] there were 226,272 domestic violence incidents and 68 family-related homicides in 2005.[iv] This equals about 11% of the population involved in reported domestic violence and 3% of those were fatal. These figures are not out of the ordinary when looking at the statistics around the United States. They fall well within what we see as the standard domestic violent rates that haven’t significantly changed for over ten years in that one in ten violent crimes are committed by family members.[v]
Last August 10th District Congressman Ed Towns gave a speech dedicating a domestic violence support center. He spoke eloquently to those gathered about victims of domestic abuse. He reminded them that 1,500 women are murdered a year by boyfriends and husbands. He also reminded them that most of this abuse occurs in the home.[vi] He was offering service and support to these abused women and their caregivers. This is something that we would hope tax dollars would fund and politicians would gladly support.
These violent offenders, these boyfriends and husbands, have quite different caregivers. Males comprise 77% of family violence offenders arrested in 2000. Domestic violence amounts to approximately 11% of total violence, but only 3.5% of spouse on spouse violence. Overwhelmingly the perpetrator is male and the victim is a spouse, child or elderly parent.[vii] We have one type of focus and attention for the victims while incarcerating the perpetrators. Every domestic violence hotline, halfway house, or call center would like to have access to the tax payer budget of a prison. The government spends its resources on caregivers for the perpetrators of violence, not on their survivors or families. We build community centers for women and children as victims of abuse and prisons for the perpetrators without much attention to changing it.
We call domestic violence a women’s issue or a family issue, and it most certain is, but I believe it is first and foremost a men’s issue. Of men incarcerated, 14.4% were abused as children.[viii] 49% of the prison population has not completed high school.[ix] Men chose violent solutions to stressful situations. Men believe they are threatened in ways that make violence a learned seemingly logical answer. The overwhelmingly common factor in family violence is one man’s behavior.
I’ve thrown around a great deal of statistics and they do begin to gain a monotonous drum beat. When paired with others a pattern emerges. Some additional statistics from New York Office of Children and Family Services state 13% of Brooklynites only have a 9th grade education. 11% of its population makes less than $25,000.[x] We’ve already learned that 11% of arrests are for domestic violence. Is it any coincidence that these figures mirror each other? Approximately ten percent of the population is poor and under educated. Approximately the same percentage is involved in domestic violence and about four percent of its men are going to prison. What we can do for the lowest ten percent of the population is what we can do for the crime associated with it. What we do for men in this category we do for their families and the futures of their children.
Men are violent because they are socialized to live in a violent world. Men are raised by violent families. This cycle of poverty and substandard education perpetuate a violence that shows itself in domestic violence first and spills out to the community. Where ten percent of the violence stays at home, ninety percent is in the community. When we are willing to socialize men differently we will have less domestic violence.
Understanding why a man chooses violent action to solve a problem is a worthwhile endeavor. Educating the public about how this sort of violence occurs and what to do about it is equally valuable. Providing help for those victimized by family members is the appropriate action of a caring community. Changing the violent lives of men is a necessity. It must be done if we are move out of the destructive cycles of patriarchy.
[i] Gelles, Richard J. (1993) Through a Sociological Lens: Social Structure and Family Violence, Current Controversies on Family Violence. Pp. 31-46
[ii] Gaffen, David. February 27, 2007. Fear and Greed in the Markets. Retrieved February 16, 2009, from Wall Street Journal Website: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2007/02/22/fear-and-greed-in-markets/
[iii]United States Census Bureau. (2007). Brooklyn Population Info. Retrieved February 16, 2009 from Welcome to Brooklyn Website: http://brooklyn.com/population.html
[iv]Center Against Domestic Violence. (2005). New York Statistics. Retrieved February 16, 2009 from Center Against Domestic Violence Website: http://www.centeragainstdv.org/what/statistics/index.html
[v] United States Department of Justice. (2005). Family Violence Statistics. Retrieved February 16, 2009 from Bureau of Justice Statistics Website: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fvs02.pdf
[vi]The Congress. (2008). Representative Towns Honors Agencies for Life-Saving Work in Domestic Violence Prevention and Intervention. Retrieved February 16, 2009 from United States House of Representatives Website: http://www.house.gov/list/press/ny10_towns/DV.html
[vii] United States Department of Jusice. (2005). Family Violence Statistics. Retrieved February 16, 2009 from Bureau of Justice Statistics Website: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fvs02.pdf
[viii]ChildHelp. (2006). Child Abuse in America. Retrieved February 16, 2009. From Child Help Website: http://www.childhelp.org/resources/learning-center/statistics
[ix] National Center for Educational Studies. (1994). Literacy behind Prison Walls Retrieved February 16, 2009 from United States Department of Education Website: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs94/94102.pdf
[x] NYS Children and Family Services (2007) Community Snapshot 2007. Retrieved February 16, 2009. from New York City Government Website: http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/downloads/pdf/cd_snapshots/brooklyn_cd2_fortgreene_brooklynheights.pdf
Giving Love
I just read Rosemary Radford Ruether’s article, Diverse Forms of Family Life Merit Recognition, from the National Catholic Reporter, Vol. 3, 6/16/2000.
It got me thinking. What is a family?
The Sisters’ Sledge has a line in their song We are Family! that sums it up for me. When asked “Can they be that close?” she responds “Just let me state for the record, We’re giving love in a family dose.” So how do I define family? I did what I always do and headed for the dictionary or dictionary.com in this case.
Here are my thoughts.
Mother: to exercise protecting care over something else; origin or source. From Mater, female parent.
Father: to exercise care over other persons; paternal protector or provider. From Pater, male parent
Parent: to raise and nurture. From Parere, to breed.
Family: a group of persons who form a household. From Famulus, slaves.
Interesting no? So a family is a group of people who serve to care and protect each other. I think that this is the point that Ms Radford Ruether is attempting to make. Does anyone else find this remotely interesting that you can take out the gender in parents get the same answer? Does anyone else think its funny that the family comes from a word meaning slaves? When you said your famulus in latin, apparently, you were talking about the slaves you owned, that lived in your home.
In her article she proves that Bible literalistists do not advocate Biblical families, but post industrial families. (If they did, they would be pro slavery and pro polygamy, which they are not.) My question is why is she attempting to get merit from social conservatives? Why is 70% of society asking 30% for merits? I find this insanity. I hope that in 2009 we’re past asking anybody who claims to speak for G-O-D for anything but grief!
No amount of sermons on hate and division are ever going to convince me and my friends that we are not a family. We care for each other. We serve each other. Twisting the Bible around to say its opposite is an easy a trick and a very old one.
I grew up in one of the households Ms Radford Ruether documents as the majority. I had a two earner household with one male and one female parent (34%). Because my father was career military we moved often and my mother had many different types of jobs from teacher to counselor to administrator. I started a new school almost every two years. Our family had to be tight! We had to rely on each other to assimilate quickly! We were a family. We parented and raised each other. We had to pitch in with whatever we had.
And that’s why I have the friends I do. We all pitch in. We support each other; sometimes with money, sometimes with words. I found all my jobs through friends. I met my partner through friends. I found my church through friends. We’re a family. We’re giving love in a family dose.
We’re all family though. And that is what all the great teachers have been attempting to teach us. We have the same parents, we live in the same home. We certainly fight like siblings. We are responsible for how our home looks and what happens in our back yards. We are responsible being a supportive member in the family. This is the mystery of mysteries.
Another quote from We Are Family! says: “Have faith in you and the things you do, You won’t go wrong. This is our family Jewel.”
Good Advice from a Sister!
STUFF YOURSELF
“Interaction over food is the single most important feature of socializing,” says Sidney Mintz, professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. “The food becomes the carriage that conveys feelings back and forth.”[i] I believe that what we eat is only one factor in the obesity epidemic that our children are inheriting. “By the time children go to middle school,” says anthropologist Marquisa LaVelle of the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, “many families have basically stopped eating together.“i So children by the time they are in middle school and are able to feed themselves had better have good eating habits. Our government has not made it any easier for families and schools to make healthy decisions. Speaking about the Farm Bill passed by Congress in 2007, Michael Pollan had this to say: “We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket.”[ii] How we socialize children about food and what it can and cannot do, what food is and what food is not, is at the root of passing on obesity to our children.
I would like to propose a program to be implemented in the public schools. I would call this program “STUFF YOURSELF!” or “Stuff It!” for short. Worldwide, a billion people are now overweight or obese, including 22 million children under the age of 5.In the United States, 64.5 percent of adults and 15 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are overweight.[iii] This is because they are not eating good food, nor are they absorbing useful information about that food and/or activity. For this program to be successful it needs a square meal approach. At the center of the meal is a safe school. Delivering this meal are trustworthy teachers. Also on the plate are balanced portions of Problem/Solution Identification and Goal Setting/Achievement Strategies. “Stuff Yourself” would emphasize what needs to be put into a growing mind and body.
“Obese children reported scores [on a quality of life survey] that were as bad as cancer patients in each and every domain of life,” says Jeffrey Schwimmer, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Diego. “We were surprised it was that bad.”[iv] Although we could argue about which came first, the obesity or the negative self image, we still have a health issue that must be addressed. Why are our children eating themselves to death and shortening their lives? According to Joanna Poppink, a Los Angeles therapist specializing in eating disorders “People don’t have eating disorders because of food. They binge, starve, compulsively eat and purge as a way of self medicating themselves. There are feelings they cannot bear to experience. Often they don’t even know this. But when they eat to the point of emotional numbness, starve to an ethereal high, fill themselves up and get rid of it through vomiting or laxatives or excessive exercise, they are fighting off a terrible despair.” [v] I believe that if we address the issues that drive the unhealthy habits we will see healthier, better developed children. Improve children’s lives and you improve their health.
I would use as my template for “Stuff Yourself!” the common sense found in Dieting for Dummies by Jane Kirby. She lays it out very simply. She encourages healthy food eaten in a healthy environment. Healthy food would be information about all food, not demonizing one type of food over another. Food phobias and stigmas are how we got unhealthy eating habits in the first place. Healthy environments would mean eating sitting down, and perhaps around a dinner table without a television going. Too often we don’t just eat. We watch television and eat or read and eat instead of eat with our friends and family while enjoying their company. She would request that parents and teachers be credible examples and to never use food as reward or punishment. Lastly she would ask that we listen to a child about how they are feeling.[vi] I would add in my program an emphasis on academics to complement the body portion. Stuff your head with knowledge and stuff your body with health and you’ll be a success.
Adults have to model better behavior. These children are attempting to solve a problem through food that cannot be addressed through eating. Children will learn from adults they trust in a safe environment in which tough feelings can be addressed. A child in this environment will plan for the future and set goals. With the support of family and teachers they can achieve anything. Although this might seem on the surface a fairly complex problem, a simple look at basic behavior around socialized eating offers some extremely simple solutions. Are we willing to implement them? The solution doesn’t require much money nor training programs to implement, but these concepts must be engrained in our children. Gently. Like we would want them delivered to ourselves, because that’s where we have to start, after all. After we get our fill of information and have changed ourselves, we will be ready to: STUFF OUR CHILDREN WITH EXCELLENCE!
[i]Time Magazine: Why We Eat; Kluger, Gorman and Park; June 07, 2004 from: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994388,00.html
[ii] New York Times: Weed it and Reap; Pollan, Michael, Novemeber 4, 2007. From: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/opinion/04pollan.html?scp=10&sq=Michael%20Pollan&st=cse
[iii] New York Times: Why We Eat (and Eat and Eat); O’Grady, Denise; November 26, 2002 from: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE1D81E39F935A15752C1A9649C8B63
[iv] Psychology Today: Sadness and Overeating; Lawson, Willow; May 30, 2003 from: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20030530-000001.html
[v] Joanna Poppink, M.F.C.C., licensed by the State of California in 1980, is a Marriage, Family, Child Counselor (License #15563) from: http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/articles/eating/other/basics.html
[vi] Dieting for Dummies 2nd Edition; Kirby, Jane RD (2003) from the chapter: Honor Your Child’s Body
ARE YOU BUYING?
I can’t help it. I was perusing my issue of W and I had thoughts. Thoughts I would like to share with you. The major houses spend a fortune on adverstising in W and other magazines, that I’m sure you’ve seen. If you seen Vogue, W, Vanity Fair, GQ etc you know what I’m talking about.
Let me give you some thoughts about what I’ve seen and see if they don’t jive with your thoughts as well.
Cue achingly hip chill-lounge-music (which I love, by the way). Minus 8, Cafe del Mar, Brazilian Girls, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Mylo, Sofa Surfers, Portishead etc
Louis Vuitton is the first add. She seems to be atop a semi-collider in construction. She is sporting fantastic handbags and a very hairy fur vest. She stands in the sky no less. In one she seems to be using the handbag as a water bladder from the stomach of a goat, as in days gone by. Is Vuitton telling us they are the water of life, the sustenance that we crave?
Dior: The model here is one of the most gorgeous women in the industry, in my opinion. We see her looking directly as us in a timetravel vintage coat. She of course has a handbag that is the oversized black plastic shoping bag we’re all trying to avoid, but in patent crocodile. The background is a blur of lights, perhaps from the timetravel machine. (Coco Rocha, I believe is the one channeling an iconic Jackie.)
Prada: All I’m seeing here is the shoes. I am so in love with these shoes, I cannot stop myself! Very clean environment in cool blues and blacks. Again we’re in the past, but this past looks like the future. The shoes have wings! Two more shots of beautiful feet in extraordinary shoes. Louboutin-you got the shape as usual, but Prada has something here. Where will this go? I’m excited about that.
Georgio Armani: Pubescent prostitutes in blurry Polaroids. Please tell me what I’m not seeing.
Chanel:The environment is a 1940’s crack house, complete with a stained mattress on the floor. We are shredded. The model looks high on heroin and is in what looks like rubber sequins. She even has her arm extended like the needle is just out of camera shot. Next is a black lace dress against a machine lace curtain. Opulence before the decay. We are in a decline here. Decaying, fraying, shredded elegance.
Bottega Vaneta: Two pages of the same dress, same model in a smokey blue and white back ground-why does this look so much more hopeful than the cool blues of Prada? She is wearing essentially a belted toga. The power of the simplicity of the garment is fantastic! This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we will be wearing in future. It certainly looks like the past, but is much more than the past. It is the lessons of the past and the best of it we can use to build the future. Mr. Maier. Thank you for your intelligence.
Marc Jacobs: Girl in grey leather pants and pumps looks at you in a blurry photograph skipping through what looks like vomit.
Dolce & Gabanna: Resistance is Futile! Three identical women walk down the street in nearly identical outfits of jeans and western inspired shirts. Please someone knock them over. Please someone tell them that resistance is very easy, we’re not all 14.
St. John: I think there are five maybe six models featured in the next several pages for St. John. We stand in Poet’s Way in Central Park, walk down the library steps, lounge around a leather and steel basement and strut the wet streets of Hell’s Kitchen. The basic message? We ate the men. The men were here; we liked them; they were delicious so we ate them.
Donna Karen: The setting seems to be a 1940’s train station. Our blond model is in a throw back coat and exquisite leather bags/totes. She’s got the same color on her mouth as the coat. Black silouette of a fedora’d man walking away. This is the glamourous depression. Lots of tecture, her skin, the leather and nubby coat. She is tired and waiting. Aren’t we all? the next page she’s draped over another oversixzed bag in a gray velvet/velour dress. Is some one comming for the bag. Never mind her body, she must protect the bag!
Calvin Klein: Android. Cold mannequin female with plastic expressions model black on black on black in triangles of shadows and corners. Seems she can’t find where she left her car in one of those huge underground garages. The clothes are unremarkable. The android is an extraordinary beauty, but she overpowers them. Easy when it’s Calvin Klein. I didn’t even like the shoes.
Yves Saint Laurent: Naomi Campbell is the print face of YSL now. We have one of the most beautiful women of our era standing on a black box in an empty Upper East Side apartment photographed in essentially men’s clothes. She looks at us. Shiney black over-sized handbag. Naomi on a pedistal. Hmm. Discuss.
Burberry: A young couple, photographed in black and white, stand in a park looking into the distance. I can speculate about the conversation. “I’m sure my dad will be here soon.” “I’m cold! It’s getting dark!” Or “Do you think we missed the bus?” “I hope it gets here soon!” Someone forgot the children in the park. The bag she carries is an excellent take on a very old dress making texture (the name escapes me). The texture on her coat is nice too. I’m worried about them though.
Michael Kors: “Exuse me Madam! Were you planning on paying for that item you slipped into your bag?” Man in sunglasses grasps the elbow of blonde in animal prints and a tan patent leather crock print bag with gold hardware. Her expression seems to be “Huh?” In the next photograph we have the two of them in new outfits, though she has retained the furred scarf from the first picture. We’re on a private runway dealing with a privae driver and a pilot. The theif has seduced the officer. Nice. Wear black and tan.
Gap: Six pages of nothing new. Mall wear. Lots of Khaki. Thanks for the check. You can say “Have you seen our spread in W?” “Um, no. I rip that right out, first off.”
Nordstrom: Thank the Gods for these folks. Same for Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus & Takashimaya. We get a shot of the blonde photoshoped to the Nth degree. Iconic and idealized. She takes on a trip through YSL, Halston and Lanvin. The back drop is expressionistic naturure. We’re not decayed so much, but we do blur (which would be decay in another way, but it seems to be resisted somehow). Why does YSL’s black on black look simple and light when Calvin Klein’s seems cold? Then two pages of Halston. THe simplest of patterns. The bag is an over-sized black plastic bag, just like Dior, only this one is in chocolate suede. More watercolor back drops. I love these back grounds! Last photo is of our swan in Lanvin. She is on the pedistal before ocher, maroon and black back drop. This is a power dress in blcak with one balloon sleeve. Lanvin is the top! Simple Simple Boom! The little black dress you have to earn?
Andrew Marc: Redneck girls don’t have to look awful. Big hair is an asset! It matches the big bags, you know! Wear more leather. Streak your hair. Wear boy’s clothes. It helps.
Victoria Secret: Our young blonde seems to be waiting in a hallway picking at the pleats on her dress. The photograph is a study of blue and gray (better as a painting). The “dress” is a slip with pleats at the bottom. If you are older than eighteen you should not wear this dress unless you live on Ranch. In Nevada.
Neiman Marcus: We’re in a forest! We’re green and new and earthy!
Gold Prada with winged shoes is first out. I keep coming back to this dress. Lace as armour. It seems to speak volumes about where we are right now.
Monique Lhuillier: Olive gathered silkish shif with a turquoise feather and crystal neck?-throw it back.
Dior: Emerald green silk with encrused jewels at the cuffs and hem. Too much. Gucci: Joan Crawford would wear this blood red full lenth gown. Metal holds up the thing with a chain and a tassel belt. Orgy anyone? (I actually like the direction this is going-classical etc-but blood red? chains?)
Giulian Teso: Long hiared fur. short sleeved and tunic. okay. whatever.
Oscar de la Renta: Black lace over a wet green moss strapless gown. Shredded over green. This is the look! Oscar got it. Very nice. (The model is too thin though to get the look across-In my humble opinion.)
Ralph Lauren: Another over the shoulder black velvet full length gown. thank you. cash your check.
Valentino: She lays upon the earth in a strapless blue-green cocktail dress in layers of lace and silk. We seek you, the marriage of strength and fragility. Consistantly good attention.
Chanel: I’d like this gown a lot more if there were less referrences to Sado-Masochism. Why continue the black leather strap below the bust line? I realize that it was a design element for the top half, but what happened? The dress is fantasitc, but I would cut off the lower straps. Ahem!
THE HORROR!
I believe inequalities between urban, suburban and rural schools exist for very many reasons, both social and political. The minorities that go to these ’schools’ are victims and we all agree to feel very sorry for them. We get to throw some money and run some terrible figures once or twice a year, but then do nothing else. We don’t adequately fund public schools because we don’t want public schools to be good. Public schools are low class. Teachers do not have good jobs (max tenure in New York is not that much). We need the public schools to be terrible so we can keep the poor engaged in strife and scuffle.
We send wealthy kids to wealthy schools to be socialized and become citizens. We send minority children to public schools to be criminals and servants.
Even though this is a democracy where one man equals one vote, the poor and minority in this country do not vote.
About 30% of single women,13% single males and around 5 % of the elderly are below the poverty line. They pay the least in taxes and don’t vote.
The government is not going to wake up and say “Wow! I see you over there in the sewage! You want a hand?” The poor and undeserved must vote. And use the law to hold the government to their obligations.
How does this happen? By a lot of people saying how does this happen and nobody doing enough about it.
Inequities exist because they serve some purpose. Find the purpose it serves, rip that out and it will correct itself.
Just an idea. What do you think?
JUST THE CASH, THANKS
Hills and Hirschorn in their article Best in Class: How Corporations Can Help Transform Schools (Earnst&Young2007) say in the introduction “The issues our schools face are so urgent that more companies must do more.” They go on the tell how corporations can do more to create the skilled workforce they’re going to need by partnering with schools to educate children.
These companies aren’t fast food vendors or soda manufacturers. They are technology and economics firms. They want to invest in the next generation of minds to solve the problems of tomorrow instead of using them as fuel for short term profits that we’ve read about in our text book.
Parents do need to partner with anyone that cares about their children. The fast food vendor and soda makers have shown that they do not. Universities have begun to partner with schools. Corporations have partnered with higher education for a very long time in our colleges and they aren’t plastered with garish advertising. It can be done and we already know how!
The schools need the money because we have seen time and time again that the funding models of property and sales taxes are not working. Its too direct. (I personally think this is honest, but I’m in the majority. I voted for every single tax hike and strategy that invests in our future, the children.)
They call it human capital. “Most corporations involved in education reform have focused their energy on improving the quality of human capital through professional development
for classroom instructors.”-again Best in Class. By using corporations to invest in teachers, schools and children we can begin the fulfilling task of reaching the human potential we’ve all known in which humanity was destined.
http://www.fsg-impact.org/ideasitem/503
