Food Porn

Posted on by feministfiguregirl
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Having just received the following e-mail message, I read it aloud for everyone in the computer lab to enjoy:

‘Hi Lianne, I am going to get a penis at 11:30. Want to come along?’

‘Of course,’ I immediately reply. ‘How much does that sort of thing cost in Cortona?’ It is high time that I splashed out for quality penis, having spent the past 27 nights alone, tucked into a narrow convent bed. ‘God damned auto correct!’ my friend replies. She had initially typed pedi, being in dire need of a pedicure after stomping around Italy for the better part of May. ‘In that case, I will pass,’ I confirm, finding the foot scrub invitation less tempting than the initial offer. Porco miseria!

Woman cutting pork that is not miserable at the Cortona market.

Grande Porchetta at the mercato di Cortona.

I realize, carissima readers, that you can only be disappointed with my story, thinking ‘so much for the porn, or rather lack thereof. I may as well stop reading now.’ Wait!’ I plead, ‘don’t go, for I have a few other things to offer, and I consider them somewhat pornographic, aesthetically if not literally.’ Given my recent lack of pedicure treatments, I have redirected my excess energy stores toward such activities as cooking. Naturally since living in Tuscany, I have become quite passionate about fava beans, vin santo, eerily green olive oil (best in December but I am not that picky), and cinghiale—that’s wild boar to you non-FFG facebook fans. It is easy to eat clean, healthy food with a certain degree of moderation here. All of the produce for sale in the randomly opened and then suddenly closed shops is organic, glowing, and delicious. Warning: non toccare! Don’t even fucking think about touching it yourself, much less prodding it for freshness. Please leave that to the experts. In any case, I have found that the best way to prepare food here is to avoid messing too much with its pre-existing perfection. Add a little salt, a little garlic, and mangia bene.

Me at the Saturday morning Cortona market.

I will now include gratuitous photographs of some of the fantastic food that I have either prepared, eaten, or seen being eaten, all for your viewing pleasure. After all, pleasure and food go hand in hand, right? Or at least they used to according to Ken Albala, author of Eating Right in the Renaissance, 2002. Within standard humoural theory—bodies are composed of differing quantities of black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood—healthy foods are nourishing because they are easily assimilated and thus directly incorporated into the body, becoming part of one’s visible identity. These healthy foods will also taste good. Hot and moist food will appeal most, for instance, to someone with a sanguine body replete with blood (like me), whereas a person with a phlegmatic temperament will find most delectable the hot, dry foods liable to correct their cold and somewhat unfortunate temperament. Hippocrates or one of his many followers affirmed that when deciding between two foods, you should choose the one that tastes better over the one that is technically speaking better for you but disagreeable. Dieticians, physicians, and other medical practitioners advised clients to consume what pleased them, without advocating dietary anarchy. During the early modern period, health and pleasure went hand in hand. When did this wonderful situation change? Well, around the middle of the sixteenth century in Europe, nutritional authorities began to demand that people eat what was good for them, not necessarily what tasted good. From then on, the body’s urges and preferences were to a large degree considered something to be overcome rather than acknowledged. Achieving health required, and still requires, personal sacrifice as well as the negotiation of bodily desires. A superior physical status has became something to be earned, linked with the moral qualities of discipline, self-control, and denial.

I think that it is high time we returned to a more straightforward conflation of food and pleasure, don’t you? To that end I am following the current foodie trend of posting pictures in a pornographic mode, that is, with close ups that focus on moist detail, zooming in far closer than is really necessary, offering up an alluring glimpse of that which you do not currently have but might well be having later.

It’s been a while; cut me some slack.

Whenever I am visiting another country, I make an effort to learn about the local ingredients and traditional recipes. While in Cortona, I have made soup from farrow, an ancient grain that is like barley but with an earthier taste. After noticing bright orange flowers in all the shops the other day, I asked one vendor how to cook them, receiving a list of instructions in Italian, which I more or less understood. After opening the flowers pictured below and checking them for bugs, I added a spoonful of ricotta cheese mixed with fresh chopped basil to each one. Then I twisted the flowers shut before dipping them in a vague mixture of ‘some egg and flour.’ Yesterday I lightly fried the coated flowers for my current guests, MW and DO, to enjoy for breakfast. Feast your sinful greedy eyes on the pictures below, cretini!

Breakfast is served by FFG. Note the farrow on display at the front right of the plate.

Bean and egg salad made by DO.

Last night, the three of us returned from the shops and open-air market with bags of scented produce and chicken breasts, which we grilled on an ingenious machine that I found in the cupboard. No batter, topping or oil required. Not even Pam. Take note Fitbabe! Where can I buy one of these shiny silver heat rod trays?

Despite my efforts to eat clean during my trip, I must admit, darling followers, that I have fallen off the wagon a few times, having the most delicious gelato served to me by a man-scaped young man down in the piazza, and purchasing panforte, a Sienese speciality while in my second favourite medieval town. Though dense, chewy and spiced like a British Christmas cake, panforte is more subtle and sophisticated, with hints of citrus and crunchy nuts throughout. I will most definitely be recreating this dolce when I return to Canada, though the traditional method requires a coating of unblessed communion wafers. Where on earth can I get those? Down at the Hosts ‘N’ More shop on Jasper Ave perhaps?

I am planning to host a large dinner party a few weeks after my glorious reunion with Muffalo and my LSP. Maybe it would be best held on the rooftop patio of MW and DO? In any case, this meal will begin with some lovely bread and cheese, fine olive oil and vinegar for dipping, followed by the flowers described above, a primi of handmade ravioli, and hopefully a secondi of wild boar, along with contorni of spinach or greens cooked with pine nuts, delicately seasoned fava beans, and porcini mushrooms, topped off with a salad composed of delightfully bitter arugala and fresh tomatoes. For dessert there will be, of course, cantucci dipped in the vin santo that I just purchased from its maker, a few kinds of panforte, lots of coffee, wine and fizzy water.

Get ready i miei amici: You will soon receive an invitation to Tuscan Epic: Part I. If you are on my recently updated top ten friends list, that is.

Collared greens with walnuts (made by FFG), grilled chicken (made by MW), and tomato mushroom sauce (made by DO).

Death Drive

Posted on by feministfiguregirl
8

‘Holy shit!’ we shout in unison, as a truck suddenly barrels towards us on the sharply curving 1.5-lane highway. Me, Glam Pro, and her partner are somewhere in Tuscany—who the fuck knows where, really—in a Fiat 500. Luckily this zippy car is equipped with vomit bags which, like air bags, pop out of the doors during hairpin turns (in other words, every five seconds or so). After collectively hurling we find—or at least think we have found—the turn-off to Colle. ‘Ouch!’ I shout when a branch enters the open window and scratches my cheek, just missing my eye. ‘This is a fucking goat path,’ declares the partner of Glam Pro, a fabulous cook who has already made me, among other things, a delicious meal of scampi and shrimp, before plying me nightly with grappa. At this moment, however, I am having a childhood flashback to the Great Canadian Mine Buster. You know, that bumpy, loud, roller coaster at Canada’s Wonderland, just outside of Toronto? ‘Goat path’ is actually a compliment, for the twisting up-and-down trail barely accommodates our small vehicle, much less the tour bus now rushing at the dashboard. The proficient Glam Pro immediately throws it into reverse and backs up relatively blind to a distant pull off, allowing the bus to pass. ‘That mother fucker didn’t even wave,’ fumes the other member of what I call the Glam Pro Power Couple, something of a stickler for rules. ‘Jack ass!’ I scream in participation, for I am otherwise a useless object in the backseat, sitting alongside clanking bottles of wine. Finally seeing signs of habitation, we clambour out of the Fiat, not caring if this particular vineyard is the one we were hoping to visit. Glam Pro needs a drink—or five—pronto-like. Much to our joy, we see a small poster indicating that we are indeed at the Donatella Cinelli Colombini estate, that of a female winemaker with an all-female staff. Once inside, we sample the wares and learn that signage is a point of dispute in the region. Government officials decided to remove all directions at the crossroads, lest people slow down to read them, encouraging accidents. Now drivers simply stop dead in their tracks on the highway to engage in lengthy debates about which of the six or so possible routes to take, eventually choosing the wrong one and then pulling a sudden u-turn. Much safer. [Aside: we enjoyed this Italian auto-experience some eight times]. Grazie.

Death is one of the reasons I came to Italy, but I would prefer to approach it less directly. Just this morning, for instance, I climbed to the top of Cortona to see the mummified remains of Santa Margherita, resting in a glass coffin—kind of like Snow White—in front of the altar. I am rather fond of this thirteenth-century saint, for her life story is something of a fairy tale. After her mother died, the eight-year-old Margherita was mistreated by an evil step mother. At age 16, the young peasant girl escaped her unhappy home, easily seduced by a rich nobleman who promised to marry her. After moving in with the apparent scoundrel, Margherita had his baby and waited for the wedding day, which never came. When Margherita’s deceptive lover died under mysterious circumstances—she found his body under some branches on the road—the distraught mother renounced her worldly life, devoted herself to God, and performed a few miracles. When she died at age 50, Margherita’s sweet smelling corpse did not decay, a sure indication of divinity. I took a snap of her intact wrinkly face for your viewing pleasure.

Here is her coffin and her convent.

Convent of Santa Margherita

My death drive is not strong, no matter what Freud says. Those bikers who ride on Tuscan highways, however, should have had the last rites before pulling on their tight scrotum-destroying pants and tossing aside their protective helmets. Oh how we cursed them. I have nevertheless also done a few dangerous things since arriving, flagrantly breaking the law in order to pursue fitness. While conducting a boot camp in Cortona’s public park, for instance, I brazenly invited everyone to perform pushups on the grass instead of the gravel. While we were trampling the precious herbage, the park police pulled up in a white truck. Instead of explaining the rule or asking us to exit the small grassy area, the two men simply adopted aghast expressions while lifting both hands questioningly in the air. They retained this posture until we removed ourselves from the petite parkland. You can imagine my daring, then, when I returned the next morning to fill empty water bottles with parkland gravel, creating makeshift dumbells. As I was hurridely filling them—it took some time as you can imagine—I glanced around fearfully. The enforcement truck was approaching! Tossing my now-heavy bottles into a sack, I sprinted to the Vicolo Panzani, a medieval short cut to my home. ‘You’ll never catch me coppers!’ I exclaimed, unsatisfyingly in English. Stay tuned for more of my exciting Italian adventures, unless I am thrown in recreational misuse jail. I’ve heard that it is pretty crowded.

My escape route.

My escape route.

My illicit stash.

My illicit stash.

Italy is My Boot Camp

Posted on by feministfiguregirl
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I can see binario 2 est in the distance, about two miles away. The race is on. A marathon-sized crowd rushes to get seats on the train from Rome to Florence, likely a rare commodity since the earlier train was cancelled, without explanation. ‘My fitness will pay off today,’ I confidently reassure myself, noting that half of my competition consists of old ladies, including one nun in full navy habit. Despite her short legs, she is moving at quite a clip, with shapely calves bulging through opaque white hose. At a disadvantage with a 50 pound suitcase to pull and a 20 pound backpack to carry, I renew my efforts, making a steamboat like huffing noise as I pass the sturdy Sister. After clumsily heaving my Swiss Gear luggage into the second-class car, I push toward and then collapse into one of the last seats, sweat dripping down my neck. ‘The gym is my religion, bitch!’ I think triumphantly, while the red-faced nun stands in the aisle. This arrogant act will no doubt cost me more time in purgatory, but it was worth it. Bring on the cleansing hell fire, I say, as I ease the seat back and start peeling a hard boiled egg.

Italy is a continually challenging obstacle course, and I have lost 5 pounds during my first week here. I have also been eating moderately and deliberately working out, following Fitbabe’s plan. Yesterday, for instance, I did ten 20-second high intensity interval hill climbs up by the University of Georgia campus in Cortona and then the back and bi regime pasted below, using my inflatable balance ball as a bench and filled water bottles for weights (thanks to a facebook fan for that suggestion!):

TRI-SET

1/ Dumbbell bent over row (light) 3 x 20

2/ Exercise Ball dumbbell pullover 3 x 20

3/ Band face pull ( attach to something) 3×20

4/ Burpees 3 x 30 seconds

(do 1-4 and then repeat 3 times)

SUPERSET

1/exercise band curl 3×20

2/exercise ball incline dumbbell curl 2×20

3/mountain climbers 3×30 seconds

(do 1-3 and then repeat 3 times)

For the most part, however, simply being in Italy is keeping me in shape. I work my quads by regretfully hovering over fetid train toilets, adding some core work by simultaneously holding the unlockable doors shut with both arms. My upper body is improved by hand washing clothes in the sink, and then by the motion of wringing them out with all my might. [Aside: Unused to the art of air drying, today I was forced to blow dry a thong. Hopefully I will not be paying extra for electricity]. I have no fears about losing leg muscle while in Cortona. Here is the street leading up to my apartment, one of the less steep inclines in town, though it does not appear as such in this photo. I often find myself bent over at a 90 degree angle, grunting ‘meh, meh, meh’ as I carry groceries home or pay homage to the hilltop corpse of a medieval saint.

In short, I love it here. My rented flat is amazingly large and I look forward to welcoming three sets of guests, if they can actually find me in this medieval maze of unmarked streets. I am posting some images of what they can expect, in addition to the continual glute burn:

Jesus is saddened…

By what you are thinking of doing in this bed. He can’t even look at you right now.

The Madonna forgives you…

but asks that you reside in this more chaste arrangement.

Pope Giovanni XXIII suggests that as penance for your manifold sins, you pray for world peace, alongside Bobby and John.

You do that. In the meantime, I will be skipping rope in the piazza. Salve.

View from the sad Jesus room.

FFG in Roma

Posted on by feministfiguregirl
4

There is something about Italy that makes me more conservative. After arriving yesterday, for instance, I donned a long flowing skirt and body concealing t-shirt before heading over to Santa Maria Maggiore to attend mass. Since I was raised Catholic, I joined right in with the genuflecting and self crossing. My secret motive, however, was to revel in the atmosphere and scrutinize the fifth-century mosaics adorning the triumphal arch and nave, about which I wrote an undergraduate research paper. They are still fabulous.

Today jet lag woke me up early, and I considered going upstairs to work out in the well equipped gym, one of the main reasons I booked this hotel near the Termini station. I bet it does not even open until 7am, I chuckled to myself, thinking of the Italian internal clock. But I was wrong. It opens at 9. So my shoulder burn was delayed, and instead I went downstairs to the breakfast area in my tank top and lulu ass bra, where I dined on fresh peaches, prunes, and museli. Although I am in Europe, I am not on holiday, and in any case I will not use travel as an excuse to avoid exercise and clean eating. As I stashed two hard boiled eggs and an apple in my purse, I noted that I would not normally consume so much fruit, my one concession to Italian deliciousnes. Plus some wine. But I will not be indulging in pasta or bread or dessert (sorry Kimbers, that includes tiramisu). I do not even want these foods any more, to be honest. During my meanderings yesterday, I noticed that several restaurants were advertising gluten free pasta, which made me smile, thinking that PDDs would be pleased to see that her dietary needs were being addressed by the Italian tourist industry.

I was initially sad about leaving my partner and friends for six weeks, but then happy to realize that I finally have close friends in Edmonton, and wish that they were all coming with me. Well, PDDs and Fitbabe will be visiting me in Paris for a week in early June, so stay tuned for a hot photo essay of us rocking the French gyms. I have blogged about friendship before, so you already know how important it is to me. Workout partners are a specific kind of friend, something that I have been thinking about after spending a few hours with PDDs almost every day for the past ten months. Before leaving for my sojourn, I told PDDs that she is the perfect workout partner because she is always eager to train, texting me plans, or simply ‘Rawr! Looking forward to killing your legs later.’ She has never once cancelled a session, bringing her best even when feeling ill or tired. Our relationship took a while to develop because it began on a purely physical level—not like that you pervos—and did not involve much talking. We lifted to failure, and when we chatted in between sets, it was about working out. That has now changed, and I tell PDDs more about my private life than she would no doubt like to hear. I trust her, something the dictionary defines as a ‘reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, and surety of a person or thing.’ When my determined workout partner remarked that she never thought she could lift so heavy—think 55 pound dumbbell presses—I responded that she was super strong and also relied on me to spot properly, allowing her to take risks. Because of our mutual trust I am not afraid to try anything at the gym. (Get out of the gutter, I was talking about weighted bench jumps).

The truth is that I am not afraid to try new things in general, especially while travelling. I wander around by myself, getting lost. As a single woman, I try to avoid dodgy neighbourhoods and staying out too late at night. Why do you think I have time to blog, despite being in this urban paradise? And with that I am off again, removing the drip-dried skirt from the shower stall, and moving my ring from my right hand onto my left wedding finger. That is a necessary precaution in this town. Trust me.

Food Diary, or The Ugly Truth About Competition Prep (Another Photo Essay)

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IMG_6352

This gallery contains 19 photos.

I fucking hate diaries. Could any literary form be more tediously self-indulgent? ‘Dear Diary, How are you? I am fine, doing laundry after cleaning out my walk-in closet, ready to distribute size 3, 4, and 5 jeans to skinny bitches at the gym. On the … Continue reading →

Offensive and Retarded

Posted on by feministfiguregirl
3

Dear FFG,

I found your blog last year – loved! As a fellow workout geek, loved reading about the journey to physical transformation. My current conundrum, and the reason for this message: I am seriously contemplating entering a show in the bikini category. It’s partly motivated by vanity, the fact that I have a phenomenal trainer who’s well versed in this field, my hairdresser would be tickled pink to create a big mountainous ‘do; and as an Asian 46-year-old suburban mother of three, this is the last thing I should be considering. Like you, I like to subvert expectations, give the middle finger to social norms and dictates. But…how does one rebel while conforming to even more fucked up expectations? I’ll be judged on a toned but not too striated physique, my hair (no worries here), presenting myself as ‘classy’…how does an intelligent, educated, independent woman engage in something that’s inherently offensive and retarded? 

Sincerely, Delicate Asian Flower [DAF]

Bikini contestants at the 2010 Olympia in Las Vegas.

Dear DAF,

First of all, thanks for your adulation. I am not sure about giving advice, but I am definitely prepared to tell you exactly what to do. In my opinion, you should: 1) grow your ass; 2) shine it up; and 3) shove it in the judges’ faces while glancing coyly over your shoulder, perhaps adding a saucy wink to set yourself apart from the other girls. In other words, you should go ahead and do the fucking bikini not-so-much gun show.

Sometimes in life, smart, stunning people like us have to be both offensive and retarded. We need to see what it feels like, to try on the dunce hat for once, instead of always finishing our math worksheets early and then helping the teacher pin up the social studies bulletin board. Let the stupid kids in the class figure out fractions without your assistance; let them learn to tie their own fucking shoes. It’s time to be selfish. It’s your time.

Though in my experience drinking seven bottles of beer can accomplish a similar dim-wittedness, becoming stage-ready is much harder work, and is thus more memorable. Plus it provides you with glossy pictures that you can carry in your purse for years on end, eagerly displaying them to relative strangers without warning. I enjoyed this activity at an academic conference this past week, and let me tell you, yummy mummy, that it was a big hit, producing expressions of shock, confusion, and overt adoration. Why not take credit for pushing your diet-shrunken breasts into sparkly shell casings; for being entirely shorn of hair from the neck down? Those feats will garner you more attention and admiration than any other worthwhile thing you have ever done, like performing the endlessly grueling labour of raising healthy, happy kids. No one is going to stand up and cheer for that, my fertile friend. Luckily you have other options. But wait, there’s more! As a bonus you can become extra bitchy and demanding during the final diet down period, using such phrases as: ‘I am so tired that you will have to sex me while I just lie here. How about we start off with a nice back and glute massage?’ Oh yeah, it will be like a dream come true. Later on, when it is ‘payback’ time, just pretend that you don’t remember anything from the four weeks preceeding your show. Trust me. It will work.

Pissy pants self-satisfaction aside, there are some seriously good reasons to do a bodybuilding, figure, and/or bikini contest. I guarantee, my fecund follower, that you will learn a lot about yourself and your abilities. No doubt, you will have to conform to gendered expectations, something that I imagine would be challenging for an Asian woman saddled with extra layers of bullshit sexist stereotypes. I wonder what strategies you will use to subvert them, you sly fox? I can’t wait to find out. At the same time, I suspect that you will discover most of your enlightenment off stage, during your training and posing sessions. For me, the sheer physicality of contest prep was enjoyable. As you know, I did a figure show to undertake embodied research, but quickly found that the other competitors had a myriad of equally interesting reasons for hitting the stage. Pleasing men was not one of them, for that is, in the end, not very difficult. Some of these ladies’ incentives included: developing a measured relationship with food while recovering from anorexia; forging an independent identity after a particular disappointment, such as a bad break-up; attending to the self as a remedy for the ridiculous demands of contemporary constructions of motherhood; proving self-worth and ensuring future success by accomplishing something difficult. You might like to sit down and list the pros and cons of participating in a bikini competition. If you decide to go ahead, I recommend that you then explain fully to your family what kind of support you will need. After describing the mechanics and purpose of a hack squat, for example, you will want to show your partner how to press a clenched fist into your subsequently sore buttocks while making a slow, twisty motion. You might have to demonstrate the perfect pressure, movement, and duration the first few times, but we women are used to that, right?

So, in closing, dear DAF, I hope that you do the show, and then write about it in your own blog, or else send us regular updates. Despite the self-awareness to be gained, there will likely be a host of surprising and unforeseeable results. For me, they have included world wide fame and regularly being mistaken for a gorgeous superstar. Here is a recent story that I hope will inspire you: 

‘I have many friends who look something like Celine Dion, but you are spot on. She is, of course, a much older lady. Whatever you are doing, keep on doing it.’ I remain silent, waiting for the strangely accented man to check me into the hotel. He clearly has a French Canadian singer fetish. ‘Yes, you have Celine Dion eyes, and that is quite a compliment!’ he affirms, sensing my dubiousness. ‘Thank you,’ I say, before grabbing my mini-fridge key and making a dash for the elevator. Once inside the ocean-view room, all unpacked and wified up, I google ‘Celine Dion,’ only to discover that she is actually one year younger than me. That guy is super smart, I decide. ’Could my life get any better?’ I ask myself, humming a catchy tune as I put on running shoes, ready to jog around the marina. Thank god I did that figure show last year.  

I can go on, DAF, because you loved me, because you loved me.

Why I Suck (aka please don’t send me dirty pictures)

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‘You are a shitty girlfriend,’ declares my partner. I can hardly disagree. After returning from a week-long research trip to England, I have explained that I will shortly depart for another conference and then leave again for six weeks of teaching in Europe. ‘I hope you will still make the bed and clean the bathroom when I am away,’ I say wistfully, knowing that my house will soon be covered in man arm-hair and tiny cat litter crystals. Still, he does not merit such neglect. Openly admitting that I deserve punishment, I suggest the following: ‘Why don’t you recite all of the things that suck about me? I promise to listen silently for ten minutes.’ In a surprising move, my partner declines this offer, noting his well honed will to survive. 

relaxo fur

My soon-to-be-lonely fur-bearing roommates. At least they have each other.

So as usual, I will have to do it myself. I suck at the following: 1) changing lightbulbs; 2) pretending to like arm day; 3) operating expensive espresso machines; 4) using fast forward buttons; 5) sitting still long enough to let nail polish dry; 6) modesty. I hasten to add that I am pretty great at every other fucking thing you can imagine. ABT and I discussed this topic at length while I was visiting him in London last week. We got along swimmingly, drinking wine and agreeing that we are both incredibly talented, hard working, and intelligent people. So why are we not more successful? More famous?

According to many well educated ‘personal development’ coaches, highly successful people are decisive and never procrastinate; they are positive, live in the present, seek out the unknown, and are relentlessly curious. Both ABT and I fit the bill so far. To continue, successful people also ‘network‘, a term important enough to require bold font. Hmmm. Here is where I might be failing, for I do not have a rolodex, much less a ‘rolodex full of people who value the successful person’s friendship and return their calls.’ Oops. Maybe this diagram will help me to improve in this area:

Social networking at the meso level. So pretty.

Social networking at the meso level. So pretty.

Nope. I still suck at networking, in person and online. While at the University of London conference last week, for instance, I should have first identified and then chatted up the most influential academics present. In fact, I received lessons at my American grad school about how to hand-shake firmly and eye-contact directly anyone who might be of future use to me. But what did I do instead? I skipped the lunches, dinners, and final banquet to workout and blog. I suck. ABT sucks too, admitting that instead of indulging in self-promotion while at gigs or DJing, he befriends the lowly doorman or buys drinks for beautiful, stupid women. He is indeed—and I say this without prejudice or bias—one of the most musically talented people in the world, able to play any instrument, engineer any song. He takes risks and works hard. Unfortunately, like me he neglects to kiss the right ass. ‘We are simply too smart and have too much integrity to become famous,’ we affirm, laughing until we cry and then laughing again.

Here is another bold characteristic of successful people: ‘They do less, and they do it well. Successful people think that it’s highly unproductive to have a lots of projects going on. To contrast this, they get rid of all the projects where they are wasting time and they focus on the few that are providing the highest value in return.’ Ummm. Double crap; this is another quality I lack. Easily bored, I take on new projects all the time, moving away from my work on King Louis XIV’s anus to become a figure girl, teaching revs classes and then writing a book about natural history museums. Although I love to learn and do new things, a little consistency would help, making me more brandable. Even this blog site is too diverse, ensuring that it will never truly become popular, never reach the ‘tipping point’ that ABT told me about. I need to focus on one marketable thing and then deliver that one thing reliably, like McDonald’s. Or that cleverly pissy David Thorne at http://27bslash6.com. He has 150,972 facebook likes; I have 265. One of them is a 17-year-old who called me a ‘MILF.’ I am doomed. ABT is the same way. With his open and curious mind, he tries everything, playing many kinds of music. If he was less engaging and talented, he would find his niche and then beat it like a dead horse, making a shitload of cash in the meantime. With a sigh of self-respect, ABT admitted that this was unlikely to happen any time soon. Or ever.

On the bright side, I definitely value the friends I have, even though they cannot further my professional career goals or even give me money. Just the other day one trusted female friend texted to say that she was desperate for a ’lady-chat.’ When we met later at a local pub, she sat down, looked at me with disappointed eyes, and then shook her pretty head. ‘Uh oh,’ I surmised, ‘man trouble?’ For the past few months, my lovely gal pal has been online dating an amazingly promising chap, who is sweet and attentive, undemanding and thoughtful. ‘Yesterday,’ she said ‘he sent me a picture of his cock.’ ‘Oh no!’ I say, stressing the ‘no’ part of this sympathetic response. ‘But why?’ I wonder. ‘That is what I would like to know.’ ‘Maybe,’ I guess, ‘he considers the dick shot a kind milestone, like a two-month celebration. You might get to see his puckered butt hole in four more weeks.’ ‘Ugh,’ my downcast friend replies. ‘On the bright side, at least it wasn’t an image of his hairy ballsack.’ We laugh bitterly. ‘I would like to know what woman in the world actually wants to receive close up views of man cock?’ she questions. It’s as if she can read my mind. ’If women claim to enjoy having such photos on their cell phones,’ I say, ‘they are lying, just like when they fake orgasms in order to protect a man’s fragile ego.’ After a few minutes of silence, my porn-unhappy friend proclaims: ’What’s wrong with sending flowers? How about a box of chocolates? That would show he cares.’ ‘Well,’ I opinionatedly assert, ’he is clearly a cheapskate. He probably learned that it would cost $29.99 to send flowers, and then glanced down at the free contents in his pants. Out came the fucking camera and the rest is history.’ We are giggling like fools and the other patrons are starting to stare at us. 

‘So show me the damned picture,’ I say. More laughter. ’Well, it certainly seems to be fully functioning.’ Good god. We shake our heads, vainly waiting for the flowers and boxes of chocolate to arrive. Yeah. It pretty much sucks to be an old-fashioned girl in this crazy networked high tech world. But I have a plan…

Hungarian Rooster Balls

Posted on by feministfiguregirl
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I know damned well what would cure this jet lag, I think while sitting in a cramped dorm room on the Royal Holloway campus, some 19 kilometres west of London: a good workout. It is midnight and I have suddenly woken up from a gravol-induced sleep, busying myself by sorting receipts and writing this post. I decide to do back, bis, and some cardio at the university sports centre tomorrow afternoon, skipping those potentially tedious talks about dying English monarchs. Fuck yeah; I cannot wait. It is always exciting to wear new tank tops at a new gym. Plus, like many fitness experts, health care practitioners, and researchers, I believe that physical exertion can solve any problem, from chronic pain to insomnia to political tyranny, both at home and abroad. Maybe not death. But studies show, and personal experience confirms, that exercise improves the mind as well as the body, acting as a mood enhancer, diminishing stress, and turning that frown upside down.  How could there be anything wrong with that?

Wait for it: here comes what ABT—love him!—would call my ‘contrarian’ side. Perhaps the pursuit of happiness is actually oppressive; no longer a choice, it is a social imperative. The fitness industry might be part of a gigantic Brave-New-World-soma-like conspiracy to keep us in line, focused on self-improvement and oxygen uptake instead of civil rights and the evils of private property. Yeah baby. Let’s refuse to be cheerful, taking our defiance to the streets. Get stuffed, you dictatorially smiling group ex instructor! Shove that punching bag up your ass, boxing queen with white-strip grin! Instead of measuring my endorphin rushes, I should be participating in anti-austerity protests, like that loud-mouth jackass who sat in front of me on the flight over here. Instead of pondering the state of my adrenal glands or hitting the step mill, I should be analyzing the current political discourse in the United States. [Aside: I have already begun to change my ways, googling ‘Santorum’ to learn from Dan Savage that that the term refers to ‘the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the product of anal sex.’ Now that was a better use of my time.]

I became intrigued by the history of cheerfulness last week, after reading some informal student evaluations. Apparently I need to put more effort into my ‘cold bitch’ persona because this year only one adorable youngster encouraged me to ‘smile more.’ Fuck that. Of course. As I have said before, I will not perform emotional labour. I think you have already heard my ‘I am not your psychologist, I am not your cuddle pillow’ rant? Yeah. I liked it too. I remain sincerely puzzled by student expectations of a therapeutic university, and by our therapeutic culture in general. Take the current anti-bullying movement, which ABT and I discussed at length. Are bullies really all that bad? Did they not make us better people, teaching us about the ‘real world,’ encouraging us to develop evasive strategies and understand group dynamics? Did they not alert us to the fact that we are not the centre of the universe, that not everything will always go our way, ultimately developing both our capacity to empathize with the weak, and our ability to distinguish sincerely good people from aggressive braggarts? I cannot help but wonder what I would have become without an older brother who put me in a headlock, shoving my nose into his moist armpit. Who held me under thick sleeping bags, making me breathe in his camping farts. Who grabbed my own hand, formed it into a fist, and then punched me in the face with it. I am sure you will agree that without such powerful experiences, I would not have metamorphosed into the amazing woman that I am today. I would in fact now be an even bigger asshole with an even bigger ego. Yikes. Without these and many other soul-suckingly painful experiences, I might even have become a self-pitying whiner. When I indiscreetly asked ABT about his recent relationships, he succinctly recited: ‘cry baby, cry baby, angry witch, cry baby, cry baby.’ As far as I could tell, he had liked the angry witch best, speaking rather fondly about her.

Back to the topic at hand, namely the tyranny of good cheer. Here is what I learned by reading various scholarly articles about the history of happiness, including a survey by Christina Kotchemidova, published in the Fall 2005 Journal of Social History, which charts how the intensity of emotional experiences has been gradually lowered since the eighteenth century.

-during the early modern period, sadness was rather fashionably linked with the nobility of the soul. Such men as Diderot and Voltaire regularly cried in public to display their spiritual refinement. If they tried that today, admiring adulation would be swiftly replaced by 1) tighty-whiteys forcibly pulled into their butt cracks by bullies, and 2) anti-depressants quickly shoved down their throats by physicians.

-in the so-called ‘Age of Enlightenment,’ moral philosophers promoted the concept of self-love, encouraging people to actively seek happiness and avoid misery. Educated English and American men then learned how to manage their emotions, to adopt a middle class personality and ensure social success.

-the symbolic value of good cheer soon penetrated the business sector, for it promoted both consumption and production. According to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), which has sold more than fifteen million copies over the years, cheerfulness is the most effective personal style for business purposes. By the twentieth century, the average American had to construct himself/herself as happy and carefree in order to gain employment. This pressure has only heightened in recent years. Capitalist cartoon translation: think road runner, not coyote.

-the increasing social and economic imperative to be moderately gleeful was most intensely applied to women in the home as well as the workplace. During the nineteenth century, the ethic of cheerfulness was an essential part of Victorian women’s culture; it was another duty owed by a wife to her husband. As women became more prominent in the industrial work place, they were tasked with emotional labour , and by the 1970s, one half of all working women performed emotion management as a condition of holding their job.

I have to say that I found the last point fascinatingly paradoxical: on one hand women are denigrated for supposedly being overly subject to emotions; on the other hand, this emotional facility makes them responsible for interpreting and dealing with the emotions of others, especially men. Which brings me back to that brainwashed student who commanded me to ‘smile more,’ and, more interestingly, to those Hungarian rooster balls so tantalizingly described in the title of this post. Isn’t that what you have been waiting for? Well, during a fantastic Iranian meal the other night in London, the conversation logically turned to the food we had eaten in different restaurants. One woman explained that while at home in Hungary she had been served an aromatic soup, filled with chunks of meat. After draining the bowl, she had asked about the contents of the rich broth. Imagine her surprise when told that they were rooster balls. ‘Oh,’ I interjected, ‘you mean it was ground up rooster meat?’ ‘No,’ she explained, ‘it was the balls, the testicles, the testicles that I had eaten. I almost barfed in my mouth. But then I thought, well, they were delicious. The next day I went back to that restaurant and I ate more balls.’ You can imagine the general merriment. And why am I relating this story to you? Because I am obliged to entertain you, my delightful readers, to cheer you up. So laugh it up, fuzz balls, knowing that you are thereby gender conformist middle class capitalist dupes. Just like me. And now that the gym is finally open, I am off.

 

Excessive Consumption

Posted on by feministfiguregirl
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The scene is domestic. One woman kneels beside a cauldron of boiling water, ready to scrub linen, while another towers over her, offering advice. Other references to housework include a shaken mat hanging on a wooden fence in the middleground, and the water faucet, bucket, and bristly broom occupying the right foreground. Only a few fragile shrubs have managed to survive within this managed urban space; paving stones line a courtyard which is delineated by brick walls and a latched wooden door, currently open to reveal a pristine sidewalk. The image is about enclosure, containment, containers. What the hell is FFG on about, you might be asking yourself. Is she watching an episode of Hoarders? Are the psychologist-maids forcing that crazy lady to wash the dead cats out from under her bed again? Or maybe FFG is referring to another punitive reality TV show, like How Clean is your House?, Clean Sweep, Clean House, or the more inventively titled Mission: Organization? Perhaps our favourite blogger, who has earlier confessed to obsessive tidiness, is reading the latest edition of Canada’s longstanding ‘feminist’ magazine, Chatelaine, its pink cover splashed with the words ‘Declutter!,’ or (god forbid) the March 2012 O Magazine, its pink headline ecstatically promising tips on how to ’De-Clutter Your Life!’ Better yet, maybe FFG is describing the events that took place during last week’s ‘lady’s choice role playing date night.’ Oh no. Did her long-suffering partner really have to wear a dress and do chores outside? 

Of course not, you adorable quiz masters. He usually scours the transvestite naughty mat inside the house, while I glower and take photos. [They are currently for sale: $10 each]. I am actually describing a work by the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch, called     

Pieter de Hooch, Woman and Maid in a Courtyard, c. 1670, London: National Gallery.

Woman and Maid in a Courtyard, from about 1670, on display in the National Gallery in London England. [Aside: I am headed to England next Friday and will be blogging from there, but likely not about rubber wear. Sorry to disappoint]. Such images of women doing laundry, polishing floors, and storing linen were incredibly popular during the seventeenth century in the Dutch Republic. According to historian Simon Schama, in his influential but much critiqued book, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987), the Dutch people dealt with the anxiety caused by the clash between their luxurious lifestyles—an average household owned nine original paintings—and austere Calvinist beliefs, by focusing on order. Cleanliness was godliness, and so they washed the streets by hand, while sweeping the pesky guilt feelings caused by gluttony and the lucrative nature of the slave trade under an expensive Turkish rug. After reading his study, I have a new appreciation for Old Dutch powder, and will use it to remove sin rings from my bathtub.  

Women and cleansing pad conflated

Note the standard conflation of women's bodies with cleansing technology. Sigh.

So what do you think of my contemplative rather than pissy mood this week? What’s that you say? ‘Thanks for the pompous art history lesson, jackass, but we are not laughing. Bring on the zombies and the cat poo?’ Yes, yes, all that is coming. But first, allow me to consider the nature of our contemporary hygiene frenzy. Everywhere I look I see storage boxes, file folders, California closets, and tips about how to organize one’s home, body, and mind. What is our major malfunction? Do we harbour Dutch-like remorse about our own excessive consumption? Our current concern with appropriate forms of consuming is to a degree religiously based—cleanliness is still linked with morality, and gluttony/obesity with carnality—but the stakes are a little different. Our anxieties revolve around the growing awareness that the western lifestyles that many (including me) enjoy, both exploit disadvantaged people and destroy natural resources. It is difficult to solve this problem without some major ideological shifts and sacrifices, so instead we are asked to consume better by rearranging our goods and sorting our garbage. We are advised to put our shit away where no one can see it, creating a huge market for storage bins and dresser drawers. Go Ikea! 

This regulation of material items creates better ‘selves’ because identity is associated with interiority. The notion that we have hidden depths overflowing with wonderfulness, revealed only to the intimate few in our lives, dates from—you guessed it—the early modern period. At that time, domestic spaces were slowly recreated to feature rooms with specific functions (consider the exotic ‘bedroom’ reserved for sleeping and other physical indulgences), and stockpiled things formerly pinned to walls or hung from hooks were moved into closeable containers. In other words, private spaces, and thus the concept of privacy itself, were invented hand in hand with the creation of  individual selves in need of cultivation and classification. That is why the chubby unkempt woman cried when forced to throw away fifty ratty blue sweaters, and neatly fold the remaining six. Why Jeri Jo stopped to check the bags being removed by the anti-hoarding team, ensuring they did not toss out her cat-poo infested doll collection. These people literally do not exist without the presence of such material goods. In that sense, they are simply good capitalists like the rest of us, but bad consumers. For our economic system relies on using shit up: ’out with the old, in with the new.’ How else to keep the whole thing going? Contemporary western capitalism depends on continual expenditure, and maybe even on what Georges Bataille would call ‘glorious expenditure.’ He argues that waste is crucial to the economy, requiring periodically glorious or catastrophic expenditures of excess energy. Think World War Two. Or a weekend in Las Vegas. 

Is it just me, or does this scene from Hoarders look a lot like The Walking Dead?

Is it just me, or does this scene from Hoarders look a lot like The Walking Dead?

I was not suprised, then, to find that the recent O Magazine—which I purchased shamefully at a local London Drugs, hiding it amongst a pile of 2-for-1 hair care products—featured wardrobe sorting tips alongside articles about how to consume more stuff, and Dr. Oz’s ‘Two Day Wonder Cleanse,’ designed to optimize your body’s natural detox system, helping it run better by ridding it of pollutants. Waste management is indeed our current bugbear, and signs of increasing anxieties about bingeing and purging are everywhere. Which brings me back to zombies. The Walking Dead is about a catastrophic purge in which accumulated garbage-flesh overwhelms civilization, and forces everyone to recycle. Our worst nightmare.  

Jan Steen, The Topsy-Turvy World, 1663, oil on canvas, 105 x 145 cm.,

Jan Steen, The Topsy-Turvy World, 1663, Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum. Hey Jan, Oprah no likey.