Plastics and Puberty

Here's a link to my favorite story about plastics and puberty. There are plenty of references to news stories and scientific findings online, but this article:

http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=380&p=1

has a nice personal angle to it, and also illustrates a dramatic single case rather than overall trends.

For more on BPA specifically, here's your basic wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A

Diamonds are (at least) a Little Bit Gross

Top 3 reasons why that's the case:

1. They're not that rare; the idea that they are is basically a PR coup:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond#at

(that article is from 1982, but a great overview). I don't know about you, but after reading that, I'd just feel like a dumbass paying for an item that's ultimately kinda worthless.

2. While the industry has taken steps to stop this, the diamond industry is implicated in war and political murder. This is a random choice of links, but hey, the History Channel is legit, right?


http://www.history.com/content/blooddiamonds/about-blood-diamonds

3. Workers who mine and otherwise produce diamonds are often highly exploited. For example, there's a lot of child labor related to diamond production. And yeah, workers are exploited to get us food, and we should be trying to stop that, but at least we need to eat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_the_diamond_industry

Wheelchair Fashion

I was in a doctor's office reading O Magazine a couple of weeks ago and ran across this story:

Apparel for People with Physical Challenges.

On some level, it's nothing special: a reader recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, who will be using a wheelchair, writes in for advice on what to wear that will be comfortable and stylish, and Adam Glassman gives her advice. On another, though, it was totally eye-opening for me. I have friends and relatives who use wheelchairs, and they care what they look like. I also have my own very limited experience of using wheelchairs, during a pregnancy-related disability, and although on one level I was too preoccupied with being pregnant, disabled, and in pain to care what I looked like, on another level I was more self-conscious than I'd ever been before. There's an extra level of scrutiny you endure when you're sitting in a wheelchair, but it's a weird one. On the one hand, it feels like everyone's trying to figure out what you "did" to get to where you're using a wheelchair (and, strangely, whether you "deserve" a wheelchair, like when people assess how "handicapped" the person using the "handicapped" parking space is). On the other, it feels like you're outside the normal bounds of what's physically attractive.

So of course if you found out you'd be using a wheelchair regularly, wouldn't you, like anyone else, want a wardrobe that was comfortable and user-friendly for your particular situation and that was also really flattering? Why don't we see people talking about this sort of thing more? Are there disabled people on those "makeover" reality shows? (That's a real question; I haven't watched them.)

It's one of those things that's illuminating precisely because it's so obvious that it makes you wonder why it's been invisible. And then it makes you realize how broad and deep invisibility is in our culture.

Caster Semenya and the meaning of gender

We’ve been talking a lot about Caster Semenya—and I've been thinking a lot about her—so I thought I’d post links to the pages we looked at in class.

HHMI’s BioInteractive—Gender Testing of Female Athletes

BBC—Gordon Farquhar blog: Semenya’s sex test explained

David Zirin interviewed on MSNBC about gender testing: "MSNBC Exposes Our 'Twisted, Sexist, Racist, & Heteronormative' Track & Field History"

YouTube: “Caster Semenya … is a MAN?!”

Also, Qua from the 11am section sent me this link, which shows the “feminizing” of Semenya:

Embattled Track Star Caster Semenya Gets New Coach, New Look

If Caster Semenya had larger breasts and "dressed up" more, would people have wondered whether she was "really female"?

I’ve been talking with folks about this whole “scandal,” and one conversation turned to Serena Williams. No one questions whether she’s female, but why? I think it boils down to 2 things: (1) she has what I'll call "noticeable" breasts and (2) she chooses to code herself as female via the hairstyles, clothes, etc. she wears. If she were more flat-chested and didn’t adorn herself in “female” hairstyles, clothing, makeup, jewelry, etc., would people be wondering the same thing about her?

And ... is that an offensive question? If so—to address our topic of interconnected identity—and given what David Zirin said about the history of female Black athletes being considered "not female enough" (his word is "hermaphroditic")—is it offensive because of gender, or race, or both?

Why We Bother

Liz Canfield, who also teaches Intro to WMNS (and other classes) here at VCU, sent me this article. When I threw out the syllabus and went back to the drawing board this semester, it was with this kind of thing in mind—though at the time I hadn’t read this article. It was a great example of a time when what you're thinking in a kinda vague, unformed way is given voice by someone else.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/learn-as-you-go/higher-education

I'm not sure how tacky this is, but since people aren't always good at following links, I'm just pasting the text of the article in here:

You won’t find “takes honors classes,” “gets good grades,” or “attends only Ivy League schools” on John Taylor Gatto’s list of qualities of an educated person. Gatto taught in New York City schools for 30 years and was named New York State’s Teacher of the Year, but his experiences convinced him that what students need is less time in classrooms and more time out in the world. Building character and community, Gatto argues, is more valuable than learning from tired textbooks and rigid lesson plans. 

Really educated people ...

1. Establish an individual set of values but recognize those of the surrounding community and of the various cultures of the world.
2. Explore their own ancestry, culture, and place.
3. Are comfortable being alone, yet understand dynamics between people and form healthy relationships.
4. Accept mortality, knowing that every choice affects the generations to come.
5. Create new things and find new experiences.
6. Think for themselves; observe, analyze, and discover truth without relying on the opinions of others.
7. Favor love, curiosity, reverence, and empathy rather than material wealth.
8. Choose a vocation that contributes to the common good.
9. Enjoy a variety of new places and experiences but identify and cherish a place to call home.
10. Express their own voice with confidence. 
11. Add value to every encounter and every group of which they are a part. 
12. Always ask: “Who am I? Where are my limits? What are my possibilities?”

Initial Thoughts

My kid is finally napping (well, actually, he’s in bed singing the Tigger song to himself ... the nap may or may not “take”) so I have a couple of minutes to write.

I have all kinds of course announcements to make, but I thought I should start with something other than “do your reading, folks!” So, instead ...

Why is this blog called Women’s Studies Test Kitchen? A couple of reasons. First, I wanted something that sounded kinda experimental because this blog is experimental on so many levels:

• it’s my first blog;
• it’s the first time I’m using blogs in my teaching, and I want to emphasize the experimental quality of the whole endeavor (for me and students too);
• though I've taught like 6 different WS classes, this is my first Intro;
• it’s my first foray into teaching after leaving academia for two years, and an experiment in where teaching—and academia more generally—fits into my life.

Second, kitchens have a long history in terms of my relationship to Women's Studies and feminism.

• My mother was a Home Ec major in the Fifties. She is All About The Kitchen. And, just like most folks, I learned a lot about gender from my mother.
  
• There are many things about my mom that I did not inherit; I did, however, inherit her love of cooking. Although the amount of pleasure I take in cooking moves in cycles, there have definitely been times in my life where cooking did all kinds of things for me: relaxed me, fed my intellect, allowed me to give back to my friends ... 
• I have a little kitchen fetish. I love kitchen design. I have randomly drawn kitchen design plans on graph paper since I was about 10 years old. I want to say it's my geekiest habit, but that's just because it's the only one on my mind right now ... there are plenty of others.
  
• I wrote my dissertation on kitchens, or more specifically how images of the kitchen were used in public discourse between WWII and 1992. It was a bit too “cutting edge” as a topic—which means that there wasn't any existing research that was really helpful, so it kicked my a$$—but it did enable me to think and write about most of my academic interests, like gender (of course), race/ethnicity, futurism, popular culture, design, and, of course, food. And I still like kitchens, and I'm still interested in what and how they mean, which is a miracle.
  

So given all of that, test kitchen seemed like a better metaphor than, say, lab.

We’ll see where it goes from here.