Concise summary of true love for my demographic

This quote from very funny, newlywed fashion blogger Man Repeller perfectly sums up exactly what I’m looking for:

“Leandra: [S]eriously, I’m married to the most understanding human on this planet. We don’t have fights about these types of things and that’s why I keep pushing him because I feel like we’re at this stage in our lives where we can be so wholly selfish without having to wonder what’s going to be because, at the end of the day, we come home to each other. It’s not like I’m working really hard on the blog and also wondering what’s going to happen to my personal life.”

From Into the Gloss.

Isn’t that EXACTLY what calm is: predictability?

Nonna

I love this photo and this post, from The Sartorialist:

To me, my grandmother, Françoise Gerondeau, is the most elegant and the funniest woman in the world.

In fact, that photo was taken during the Algerian War, in the late fifties. My Grandfather, who is French, had been mobilized. And just before his departure, he told my grandmother (they were dating for a year) that he didn’t love her and that he would never marry her.

But she’s very stubborn, and she asked her brother to take photos of her during their vacations, so that she could send them to my grandfather, and he would fall in love again.

The photo you see can testify.

Isn’t it childish? To me that story defines exactly my grandmother.

That photo must have a great power, since when my grandfather came back, they got married.

I wish I had a picture of my grandfather, he was very alluring and elegant too. I think that my aesthetic taste comes from the observation of my grandparents. Both of them really represent a model to me.

Feminism and Inverse Evolution

To anyone who didn’t grow up in a comically-traditional household (did your Italian parents spank you w/ a wooden spoon?), word on the street is that men want a chase, while women need possession.  Also, ladies?  No one will buy the cow if you give away milk for free.

In some ways gender roles are set deeper than culture.  It’s not of habit that men hunt while women gather; men are physically more capable of throwing a spear and chasing game.  Women, with our vision more attuned to detail, with our ability to scatter focus, should spend our time collecting foods that don’t fight back or flee.

Feminism turns that instinct on its head.  As a community evolves we tend to lose our single-minded drive for efficiency, and begin delving into innovation.  It doesn’t matter that males traditionally hunt mastodons better; perhaps if some women join the hunt we’ll revolutionize the method.

Indeed, as a community evolves its members demand ever-higher needs on Maslow’s hierarchy.  Where 200 years ago it was enough to feel protected from the elements, now we want equal pay for equal work.

This par-raising instinct — like the drive to venture into art, to divide into social castes, etc. — represents a sort of cultural apex.  Here individuals have the best opportunity to experiment as individuals.  But abandoning efficiency as primary social drive arguably becomes a sort of harbinger for a community’s first move towards decline.

Three blog posts this week explored the sort of boundaries to this “inverse evolution” theory:

Remember that “go ahead and settle” article The Atlantic published last year?  Julia Baird rails back in Newsweek:

“I know this is an unpopular thing to say,” [Gottlieb, author of “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough“] writes, “but feminism has completely f–ked up my love life.” Um, I know why it’s unpopular: because it’s completely unfair. Feminism is a centuries-old social movement, not a self-help book—we can’t blame it for bad decisions we make about men. The problem, as Gottlieb sees it, is that women were told they could have it all, which meant not compromising in any aspect of life, including dating (which is odd because people who can’t compromise aren’t feminists, they are just generally unpleasant people). Then women got so fussy that they “empowered themselves out of a mate.”

Baird does not go so far as to argue that feminism has helped daters (not like Christine Whelan’s “Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women”).  But she defends feminism from accusations that deviating from traditional mores make traditional relationship models impossible.  Our parents’ generation taught us how to date, after all, and when we start rejecting some of their values it’s hard to know where to stop.

So feminism, while unnatural, doesn’t hurt potential partnerships.  From that defensive baseline, today’s blogosphere offers perspective on how beauty differentials affect an established relationship:

[I]n contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses’ satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners’ levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives.

Doesn’t this remind you of that advice from my Italian father, that men prefer the chase?  When wives are more attractive — more desirable to their spouse as well as to other people — everyone is happier.  On its face this suggests that men are in fact happier when there remains an element of competition in their established relationship.

On the flip side, perhaps women simply need more physical reassurance than men.  Three years in a sorority house taught me a lot about feminine insecurity.  More attractive women need perhaps more active reassurance re their sustained beauty than the average gal.

Remember that classic Craigslist ad comparing the declining and appreciating aspects of men and women’s respective assets?  Women know men are visual, competitive creatures.  The “traditional” — as opposed to feminist, or “inverse” — urge suggests that wanna-be-wives focus on the parts that mates appreciate, while abandoning what might evoke more competition than warmth.

Another “inverse evolution” parallel might suggest that even banal urges may not come from potential mates at all.  Future breeders have to look wayyyy down the line to where they will be ready to settle down.  Today’s competition has less to do with landing a mate right now and more to do with fitting in with a girlie clique, avoiding the mean girls, etc.

Finally, Newsweek also published a “nature v. nurture” approach to Elizabeth Edwards’s plight:

If Elizabeth Edwards were behaving as evolutionary psychology says she should, she would not be separating from her philandering husband, former senator John Edwards. He, after all, merely slept with the help; he never pulled a Mark Sanford, who called his mistress his “soulmate.” Women are supposed to find only emotional betrayal upsetting; they’re not supposed to care if their mate shtups anything in a skirt (Elin Woods is therefore conforming to the stereotype of women being forgiving of sexual but not emotional infidelity if she, as reported, stays with Tiger; the very fact that his mistresses numbered in double digits suggests there wasn’t exactly a deep emotional commitment there).
Of all the ways men are from Mars and women from Venus, this supposed sex difference in jealousy is one of the most amusing. But an intriguing new study suggests that the gender gap in jealousy may be the result of something that is not at all hard-wired: the different ways boys and girls are raised.

Genetically it makes sense that respective genders react the way we do:

[I]f a woman sleeps around, then her partner might (unknowingly) be deprived of her reproductive services for at least nine months, and could wind up raising another man’s child—both of which hurt his own chances of reproducing, which is the currency of evolutionary success.  A man should therefore become much more upset by his partner’s sexual infidelity than by her emotional infidelity (developing a crush, for instance, but not acting on it).

In contrast, if a man falls in love with another woman, he might abandon his wife and children, putting them at risk, but meaningless extramarital sex is unlikely to lead to such a drastic outcome. A woman should therefore care more about her partner’s emotional infidelity than his casual hookups.

So approaching this from the “nature” (genetic hardwiring) point of view — the traditional perspective — politicians’ wives are doing what’s best to protect their investments.  Jenny Sanford should be more angry than Hillary Clinton.  Does a deviation from nature to nurture change anything?

Well, there’s pride.  Helpless women of yore would have found better incentives to forgive and forget, bc the alternative would have been devastating.  Today women crowd tomorrow’s trophy husbands out of graduate school.  Our rejection of traditional roles provides indignant leverage to reject old caveats attached to outdated mores.

Which begs the question: Has marriage followed mores down this inverse path?

Perhaps it’s because gender roles have evolved in a more inverse — or merely quicker — way than community’s relationship formulation (i.e., marriage, domestic partnerships, but certainly formalized) that so many couples diverge again from tradition.  Or perhaps one rship-member’s helplessness was a critical element after all in the formulation traditionalists know and love.

Formalization helps everyone though.  Formalizing forever-ship protects against the perils of balding and late-onset unattractiveness.  It ensures childrearing help.  And, if nothing else in this modern world, it tamps the spread of disease.

As usual everything comes down to pragmatism.  If you would like to participate in traditional roles — including parenthood — then traditional models work.

They may well be “caveman” instincts.  But it’s pointless to deny the community benefits that accompany the traditional model.  Instead, postpone the social apex and accompanying inevitable decline.  It doesn’t matter whether we’re moving forward or backwards; why reject nature for nurture at the expense of comfort?

It may prove satisfying to intellectualize the whole enterprise, but when it comes down to it everyone benefits from the same perks that benefited our grandparents.

Tuesday on the Internets

Ray’s empire expands, including the most exciting expansion of all:

Joining Glass next month will be Ray’s: The Game in the original, “pre-Obama” home for Hell-Burger (1713 Wilson Ave.), with cooks grilling burgers made from custom-ground venison, wild boar, elk, antelope, wild duck and ostrich. Why game? “No one else is doing it,” says Landrum, who sees the exotic burgers as “a great way to expand the repertoire.”

Tiger: Looking for validation, not variety?

Women’s feelings for women: Lust as envy, envy as lust, or maybe neither?

Want: Furniture made from reclaimed wine barrels.

WSJ Letters: Of Breasts and Shoes:

The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force feels that mammograms are a waste of time and money because of false-positive exams, and anyway, the risk is evaluated at a meager 0.05% (Letters, Dec. 2). If, indeed, mammograms for women under 50 are not cost effective, and only save a few lives, then why are we taking our shoes off at every airport in the country?

Lee Mundy

Ellensburg, Wash.

Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project: The Three Great Interests of Man:

[T]he great interests of man: air and light, the joy of
having a body, the voluptuousness of looking.

Murdoch: You get what you pay for, incl in press:

[People who rewrite, without attribution, in the name of “fair use”] are not investing in journalism. They are feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others. And their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not “fair use.” To be impolite, it’s theft.

This is spectacular:

And finally, just because I love Hannah Arendt:

“For Hannah Arendt, the autonomy of politics is an attempt to preserve a space for human spontaneity, the freedom to act in unexpected ways absent the constraints of economic needs or social conformities.” [Harpers]

Sexist Newsweek Cover Inspires Frum’s Latest Opinion: “She Asked for It!”

And now, an entirely new argument for sexism: She asked for it! Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Sarah Palin complains that her Newsweek cover is sexist. The magazine borrowed a photo from Palin’s Runner’s World interview last year, showing the fit governor in running shorts next to the question: How do you solve a problem like Sarah? Journalist David Frum scorns Palin’s complaints, claiming that “she brought it on herself.”

Where have we heard this one before?

For such a smart guy this is a remarkably tired argument. This smacks of all the flaccid-minded men who have long attempted to control women by demeaning them, justifying their actions because “she asked for it.”

This has nothing to do with Palin’s politics. This has everything to do with an old-fashioned Salem-style witch trial. Frum’s claim that Palin “brought it on herself” attempts to pigeonhole the governor into a prefabricated conception of women that comes from Frum – not Palin.

Frum told The News Hour with Jim Lehrer Nov. 18 that “[Palin] is a woman who has got into a position of leadership by sending very powerful sexual signals. And we see that in the way that men like her much more than women do.”

Or perhaps men like Palin much more than women do because she is a Republican. Men tend to lean right at the polls, while women lean left. Perhaps the gender disparity in Palin’s fan base comes from her politics, not her person.

Frum wants to inject Palin’s public persona with a Salem witch trial mentality. She must be a witch, your honor; she came to seduce me in my dreams! But the only “powerful sex signals” Palin sends come from the base fact that she’s a woman. Once, last year, she showed a little toe cleavage. But really, David, what would an attractive woman have to wear that could spare you from discomfort?

Society has long understood that insecure people impose those insecurities on the people around them. Folks eager to be perceived as the smartest person in the room treat every conversation like a competition, talking over their colleagues and only about themselves.

Similarly, insecure men have long objectified the women around them. You need only look to how Rodrigo and Iago, and finally Othello, objectify Desdemona in Othello to see how deep this particular vein runs. Perhaps a more modern man than Othello should be able to engage with an authoritative woman without determinedly reducing her in his mind to one of those laughably-outdated sexist paradigms long after women shed those old pigeonholed roles.

It does not take a feminist to be offended by such intellectual laziness. Frum’s claim that Palin has forced sexuality on us reflects his own uncreative “scholarship”. This cheap attack is the punditry equivalent of a schoolboy dipping a compatriette’s pigtail in ink. It’s unnecessary. It’s weak.

It wasn’t Palin who sent “sex signals,” in the form of fit thighs on the cover of Newsweek – it was the magazine. Former White House press secretary Dana Perino notes that Newsweek’s decision to run this revealing cover without Palin’s permission was “worse than sexist”:

I think it is demeaning and degrading and Newsweek knew exactly what it was doing. They made sexuality a part of her performance. And this is something that if it had happened to someone on the left, the feminist organizations would be screaming about.

This is not a question of sexism versus feminism. This is a small-minded ad hominem attack by a man made uncomfortable by Palin’s femininity.

Says Perino:

There is a special burden for women in politics. And we saw that even for Hillary Clinton. And especially if you’re an attractive woman and a conservative woman, then that burden is even greater. But the great thing for Sarah Palin is she’s having a wonderful book tour, she’s done some great interviews. She’s going to tour the country.

This has nothing to do with politics. Women should not have to wear ugly clothes because attractive suits make men like David Frum blush. Old-school misogyny stems from insecurity and will thrive in a community that does not rebuke Frum for comments like this.

Lashing out at Sarah Palin because she dared to leave the house with her face uncovered is outdated and inappropriate. Of course, if Frum would feel more comfortable around women to whom he is not attracted, that remains entirely his prerogative.

At The New Agenda.

Modeling Sexism: The Eyes Have It

When asked if she considers herself a feminist, Cindy Crawford says, “I guess, in some ways. But I also feel like people in my generation, we didn’t — I didn’t grow up thinking I had to prove I was equal with boys, I just assumed I was. Because of feminists before me. I never felt like I had to do that. Do I feel like women should earn the same amount as men, for the same jobs? Absolutely.”

This is smart and frustrating at once. In fact, Crawford’s sentence encapsulates precisely what bugs me about feminist mentality: Many feminist themes start from the presumption that women are somehow less than men, and we need to prove we’ve risen to the occasion.

Cultural factors support this peripherally. Women’s income remains statistically lower than men’s salaries; our shoes are less comfortable than men’s shoes; we are still more susceptible to quasi-physical indicators of esteem decay like eating disorders (3x more susceptible, it turns out).

But — hello — we do this to ourselves. It wasn’t men who bought more couture when Twiggy modeled it in the ’60’s.  And it’s not for men that many women prefer to work shorter hours for slightly less pay.

In fact, the first thing you learn in business school is that it’s not because of sexism that women make less money; it’s because women prefer not to negotiate.  It’s a trade-off: an awkward negotiating conversation in exchange for higher salary.  Lily Ledbetter may have faced some marginal sexism, but frankly the fact that she never picked up on her salary disparity over all those years suggests that perhaps she was not as attentive, ambitious, or aggressive as her colleagues pulling in higher rates.

Crawford’s statement wasn’t completely offensive.  But I get <em>so frustrated</em> by that tendency to start the “equality” inquiry by presuming there’s a gap already firmly in place.

Question Time: Cindy Crawford [Guardian]

Femme Mafia

I’ve been playing in girlie lit an awful lot recently; it’s subsumed a bit more of my consciousness than I like to admit.  Frankly it’s a little bizarre to hear so much chatter and realize there’s still so much animosity among folk who pretty roundly agree.

This morning I posted at The New Agenda that the iPhone app for “scoring chicks” — since yanked — is a little disgusting.   But realistically there’d be no market for the app if women really found it disgusting.

If men were pretty sure they couldn’t get away with “that” behavior (and, frankly, I can think of many more piggish things than using this app) then no one would buy it, right?  So while it’s men who make up the purchasing demographic, it’s women’s choice not to put our collective foot down that perpetuates such market.

It doesn’t matter why we choose not to get involved — we have many bigger fish to fry, or smart women don’t find themselves meeting men who might use a line like the app’s gross suggestions — the point is that we make a choice to shrug it off, and maybe enough women respond positively that men are intrigued enough to buy.

That’s the tension with feminism.  It’s about opportunity.  Look at the numbers.  Women have opportunity.  We have the opportunity to make life choices, and we make them. When other women or employers don’t respond to those choices with open arms it seems silly to blame them.  Willingness to assume a “victim” mentality irritates me in general, and there’s a really fine line between being objectified and objectifying oneself.

The ad clipped below captures the whole of that tension:

None of my female Muslim friends are close enough friends for this kind of disclosure; my experience with Hijab-ed sexuality is limited to books in the Reading Lolita in Tehran vein and one traumatic, fiercely-intimate massage in Morocco. That is to say: I have no idea how much an abayah is choice, tradition, feminine, and how much of it is oppression.

The ad itself is sexy and effective — I want to be more like that woman, from the skivvies and kohl out.  But is there any more perfect symbol than the abayah to represent that tension between what we want and what is imposed on us?

For the same tension closer to home, see this Dove ad:

It’s a fine line indeed.  I’m absolutely not suggesting that women experience no objectifying pressure.  What I’m suggesting is that the pressure is not entirely external.  And I’m suggesting that, to some degree, we embrace it.

Or maybe not.  Again, the tension.  Every time I encounter street jeers I want to ask the men whether that’s ever scored a date.  To some extent it really is just objectifying women, and it’s not about hope or interest.  Maybe it really is just about striking back against repressed feelings of rejection.

Look again at the Dove commercial.  Inasmuch as objectification stems from an aggressive defense mechanism it doesn’t come from men. It comes equally from women.

This is no novel conclusion. My takeaway?  It’s the residual willingness to assume a “victim” mentality that does the objectifying. It just seems so pointless to keep talking about a “glass ceiling” when in fact we should embrace the opportunity we have to make choices, acknowledge that there’s no single valid choice, and move forward.

I adore debate. There’s nothing I love more than moving the ball down the field. But this taste of gendered debate gets tiring quickly. I can’t help but feel like it’s just as sexist to pledge merit-blind support for someone because of her gender as it is to discriminate along the same lines.

It should be about being the change you want to see in the world. I will always resist the temptation to replace merit with simply card checking the right cache.

Today’s Quick Letter

In “Tax Dollars Shouldn’t Fund Abortion,” (Opinion, Oct. 15), Charmaine Yoest states that the Capps Amendment “would make abortion coverage a part of the public option, funnel tax dollars to private health plans that cover abortion, and ensure that every area of the country will have at least one health insurance plan that covers elective abortion.”  Ms. Yoest worries that the federal government is poised to enter “the business of funding the destruction of unborn human life.”

We’re already there.  Planned Parenthood performs sixty-two abortions (305,310 abortions in 2008) for each adoption it facilitates.  And the lion’s share of the cost of those abortions comes directly from taxpayers’ pockets.

Planned Parenthood survives on tax dollars and government subsidies – subsidies that pay directly into this abortion giant’s operating fund.  In the 2007-08 fiscal year, $350 million in “government grants and contracts” – those are our tax dollars – padded these controversial coffers.

This is not a question of “choice” versus “life.”  Federal funding for abortions does not require mere moral considerations when dealing with private decisions.  Instead, this begs a discussion of the very purpose of government and the role it should play in our lives.

Whatever individuals think about abortion, we all recognize that this topic is controversial.  For the government to treat such a controversial topic –to fund this controversial practice! – disregards those fundamental protections of private decisionmaking.

Government exists to protect those fundamental freedoms inherent to its citizenry.  Whether or not our government permits citizens to make the kind of “choice” at issue in abortion discussions should incite discussion.  Whether the federal government should rob Peter to pay for Pauline’s choice should not.

Rose-Colored Glasses

At The New Agenda:

One of the best parts of my tiny, rigorous law school is the spiritual generosity of its affiliated community. Last year one evening I spirited myself away to a secluded restroom to freshen up before a late interview. I ran into my Property professor similarly composing herself; for a moment we leaned together towards the mirror over the sink and gossiped like sisters.

In that brief conversation my professor taught me two important lessons:

First, it is possible to be powerful and to be feminine.

Second, and perhaps more importantly: Women control the happiness factor in relationships.

When I say “feminine” I mean the way I’ve internalized the word. “Feminine” like my father’s mother, who rolled meatballs between her palms and kept her five kids tidy and respectful at the tail end of the Depression. “Powerful” then connotes the ability to command a room without being aggressive; without resorting to cheap ploys or wiles.

From time to time I am struck with the realization that we have bastardized the concept of femininity. Rather than appreciate and enjoy those fairer instincts to nurture, many women follow the Old Male Lead and assume Old Roles. Coquettish, apologetic, and cute. Or strong, aggressive, like our fathers. Finding balance proves difficult as each generation promptly outgrows our role models, and few female role models tend to bridge that generational gap.

Indeed my professor’s two critical notes of advice come hand-in-hand. The path to powerful femininity requires a woman to exhale, relax, and realize that she is already in fact powerful. No role playing necessary.

That exhalation becomes critical. We live in a time of gender flux. There is little need to burn our bras or march for suffrage, but this generation’s Lily Ledbetters do suggest that we are not yet accustomed to choice.

Choice represents a sort of responsibility conundrum. In this flux time women encounter glass ceilings only as high as we permit. We find statutory relief in equal pay for equal work. Key to that formula remains the requirement that we work as hard as we’d like to be paid.

Similarly, my professor suggests – and studies support – that both of a relationship’s parties’ happiness rests in the woman’s choice to be happy. Yesterday yet another study surfaced showing that not just a man’s happiness but his life span improve dramatically when a woman knowingly, intentionally determines that we will be happy.

Evidently a man’s education proves less determinative to his longevity than his partner’s education. This study’s authors postulate that the difference lies in educated women’s ability to sift through and find the best health messages available in our media-saturated age, or possibly that women’s greater responsibility for the household results in a cleaner, more livable environment for their men.

These hypotheses resonate, but I can’t help linking all of these case anecdotes together. Women, not men, initiate the lion’s share — more than 70% — of all divorce filings. Women, more than men, struggle with timely gender flux and a dearth of appropriate cross-generational role models. Greater even than the effect of tidiness on health lies the effects of stress.

That choosing an educated partner permits greater longevity suggests that powerful femininity leaves both partners happier in the long run. Indeed:

The general consensus of sociologists is that, whereas a woman’s marital satisfaction is dependent on a combination of economic, emotional and psychological realities, a man’s marital satisfaction is most determined by one factor: how happy his wife is. When she is happy, he is [happy].

Feminism isn’t about getting what we want; it’s about having equal opportunity in the pursuit of happiness. Powerful and feminine models ebb and flow; it remains to us to decide what will make us happy and then pursue it.

I, for one, would trade a fat male Ledbetter Act paycheck for flexible hours at home with my family. This choice may invite derision from the Winifred Banks types who marched for my choice in the first place, but here we are, and, frankly, I choose my choice.

And that is the interesting part. Flux comes not from external pressures, but from my generation’s own inner turmoil as we learn to exercise that grave responsibility, choice. Happiness, health, longevity. It may fail thresholds for both romance and sex appeal to choose a thousand times a day to remain powerful, feminine, happy, and yet that choice proves solid. Strong. Sustainable.

Employers pay women less because women seldom demand more. Failed relationships flounder at least as frequently in her restlessness as in his. Health, wealth, and longevity all rely on this simple co-dependence between women’s decision to exhale, to trust our instincts, and the less stressful, divorce-free environment (ideally) fostered by it.

I search frequently for a better word for equal opportunity than “feminism.” Until I find that term I’m grateful to my professor and to the female role models who remind me that the key is not to analyze, but to enjoy. There is something satisfying in accepting that the pursuit of happiness absent gendered caveats represents a profoundly noble goal, even as a young woman, even in flux, even for free.

Those Nobel Dames

For all of the controversial statements we’ve heard in recent years about which fields are best suited to the lovelier sex, today women may rightly celebrate headlines filled with female scientists’ achievements.

No, Not Whistler's Mother; It's Marie Curie

Since 1895 when Alfred Nobel established the Prize to honor outstanding achievers in the fields of science, literature, peace, or medicine, 754 men have been awarded alongside 35 female laureates. While many more men than women have taken these prestigious awards, women have long held their own in the Nobel arena. Marie Curie became the first female Laureate in 1903, only two years after the Foundation’s came to be. Inasmuch as women have been involved in scientific endeavors, the Nobel Foundation has acknowledged our achievements.

Women have also contributed to the expanding Nobel Prize tradition. Czech writer and baroness Bertha von Suttner influenced Alfred Nobel to establish a Nobel Prize for Peace, which she won at its inception in 1905. Indeed, Economics remains the only Nobel field still bereft of that blessed abundance of X chromosomes.

Enter today’s women scientists. Honored lady researchers fill today’s news with their achievements. Dr. Ada E. Yonath represents the first female Israeli Nobel Laureate honored in tandem with her team, while MIT scientist JoAnne Stubbe will receive a National Medal of Science from the White House this afternoon.

Both Drs. Yonath and Stubbe work with DNA. Their work contributes to critical modern research useful not only to advancing our understanding of the basis of life itself, but also as a tool for developing needed new antibiotics.

The New York Times describes Dr. Yonath’s study:

If the sequence of lettered amino acids in the DNA forms the blueprint for life, ribosomes are the factory floor. In a news release the Swedish academy said the three, who worked independently, were being honored “for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level.”

The ribosome research, the academy said, is being used to develop new antibiotics.

Similarly, Dr. Stubbe’s research touches the very fabric of improved quality of life for our aging population:

Stubbe’s work unraveling the mechanisms of enzymes has had significant impacts on fields ranging from cancer drug development to synthesis of biodegradable plastics.

Her studies of ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs), which play a key role in DNA copy and repair, have led to the design of a drug, gemcitabine, which is now used to treat pancreatic and other cancers. She also discovered the structure and function of bleomycin, an antibiotic used as a cancer drug.

Both women contribute lifesaving research to critical fields, and both pave the way for building greater progress in the future. By mapping portions of the human genome these women make it possible to create antibiotics immediately useful against today’s pandemics. More impressively, their research preserves the potential for future scientists to work more closely with the body.

Perhaps the most memorable controversial statements about women’s scientific capacity came from 2005 Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who claimed that “innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers.”

Innate differences, indeed. As long as women have worked outside the home women have worked in scientific fields. As long as women have sought equal opportunity women have enjoyed recognition for the scope of our achievements.

Congratulations to these and other female scientists for their contributions to humanity. Congratulations for allowing not the least of these contributions to rest in encouraging other young women who aspire to science.

At The New Agenda.

Bashert

“Rhoda has rocked her ships to shore. Whether they have anchored, whether they have foundered, she cares no longer.”

I find myself often searching for Inspiration.  In some situations I’ve found myself on fire — totally enthusiastic, engaged.  Unflagging.  Other positions leave me weary from the start.

It’s not hard to identify inspiration; it is hard to commit to it.  It’s hard to discern between character-building inspiration-less endeavors and those satisfying influences that tend to stoke the personal fire.

The quote above comes from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, but more immediately from Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project that I cite rather relentlessly around here.  Woolf’s quote is so evocative because it captures both of the two kinds of inspiration while pointing subtly to the difference between them.

Inspiration can be fleeting.  What I picture for this first variety is the whole of that lovely French film, La fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain, but particularly the scene where Amelie dips her hand in a sack of dry lentils.  It’s completely sensual and it makes my brain run, with all the words that spring to mind at the idea of being immersed in dry lentils.

Connected tangentially to that is the bigger idea of Inspiration — a mission, some goal that refreshes even as it challenges.  This bigger “Inspiration” is the reason for this entry, and the reason I open with that terrific Woolf quote.

Inspiration isn’t critical merely because it blows refreshing life into one’s work.  It’s much more basic than that.  Indeed perhaps the best way to avoid problems like drift is to identify and commit to what inspires in this big way.  Commitment to first order inspiration requires leaving discretionary time to pursuing “second order,” smaller inspiration that won’t act like red herrings and interfere with first-order big dogs.

I recently came across the word bashert, a Hebrew idea of destiny.  Google tells me that “bashert” refers primarily to having found one’s perfect match in a spouse, the test being:

1. Are we attracted to one another?

2. Do we share common goals?

3. Do we bring out the best in one another?

For me the idea of searching for one preordained partner seems like a dangerous fiction designed to keep starry-eyed young girls chaste.  Though of course the question of “is this  meant to be?” haunts every relationship, my more urgent questions have always been: What will I be when I grow up?  I’m in my fifth year of graduate school.  Questioning my path is no small task.

So I fall back to inspiration.  In business school I loved classes like Finance and Economics.  I liked to put things together and see how markets react.  But I remember hating some classes — most notably Accounting — so much that once I crossed a street without looking both ways, reasoning: The worst that can happen would at least keep me out of Accounting class!

Law is completely different.  I adore working on the cleavage between almost-imperceptibly discrete moral arguments.  Every legal question has the propensity to fall into a series of cracks — jurisdiction, standing, mootness, technicalities — but even these “cracks” reflect a much broader pattern.  Every case suggests that there’s rhyme and reason even to the most mundane parts of our lives.  True, Tax is not as sexy as Torts, but reflecting on the funding relationship individuals have with the State still represents an intellectual conundrum worth exploring.

Lately though I’ve been returning to my roots.  I’ve gone back to practicing Rachmaninov.  I’ve stayed up long hours reading the kinds of books that I haven’t made time to read in years.  Lately I’ve been considering this concept of bashert and needing increasingly tangential nourishment to get my inspiration fix.

I ask myself the three bashert questions and I have to admit that I feel a little more like the best version of myself when there’s some poetry to round things off.  Does this suggest that I should quit law school to devote myself full-time to the Rach II?

In fact it may better suggest that I work harder at law school, so I can finagle a position as a Tax attorney, so that I can afford the time and the Steinway necessary to make Rach sound his best.  All of morality and all philosophy concerning trade-offs centers around this same ends/means disconnect.  As I get older and work harder the more I wonder whether there’s a disconnect at all.  Perhaps the whole point is to find one’s way along through that dichotomy, and trust the chips to fall where they may.

Though I’m not familiar enough with Virginia Woolf’s work to recognize the context of that opening Rhoda quote, the whole thing reeks of destiny.  More often than not in life the goal is to look back and say: It all seemed obvious.  We knew this from the start.  It was always meant to be.

Sometimes it seems that I explore the same concepts over and over, rehashing because I never get to the bottom of things.  Last year I posted an email conversation I had with five of my best girlfriends responding to a very old Atlantic article, “I Choose My Choice.”  We all rehash.  We are all conflicted.  Making and re-making critical choices is simply part of what we’re here to do.

Everything worth having demands some fairly surgical comparison among valuable, mutually-excluding options.  I am frequently tempted to throw up my hands and just determine to “do the best I can,” waiting for whatever is meant to be to happen.  But choice like any other “muscle” requires exercise, restraint, and attention.  The first step down the path of what’s meant to be is making some active choice.

Choice, of course, acknowledges that trade-offs are part of it.  Part of life.  Getting paid to do what you love usually requires some lower pay than you’d earn if you keep your hobby a hobby.  Working longer hours is a kind of toll that permits things like piano lessons for your kids, but precludes that extra time with them.

I suppose that on a quotidian basis it’s just a matter of following the inspiration and trusting that it will all paint the right picture in the end.  I love Borges more than I love Tax, and my unwillingness to forego Borges for Tax will likely preclude a career in Tax law, which will permit reading more Borges in the future.  It’s not signals.  It’s reaping the seeds we sow.

“Rhoda has rocked her ships to shore. Whether they have anchored, whether they have foundered, she cares no longer.”

Woolf’s quote inspired this entry because I too have rocked my ships to shore.  I  am still very much responsible for active anchoring, for preventing floundering.  I accept all of that; I embrace the responsibility.  And yet I am starting to accept that some “floundering” is part of the process.  It, too, is meant to be.

Perhaps this blog entry solves nothing; perhaps I’ve devolved into that detestable category of “diary” blogs.  But there is something worthwhile about embracing what comes.  About acknowledging that even the “floundering” represents direction.  That even an anchor provides only a fluid kind of stasis.

Hillary Clinton: Femme-inist?

I blog occasionally for a women’s group, and what I hope to bring to that table is my own search for what kind of woman I’d like to be: lawyer, mother-of-five, patient and kind, MILF, etc. I write about gender issues a lot just because articulating demographics — racial tension, gender stereotypes, politics that revolve around any of the above — never fail to fascinate me.

Ever since Hillary’s interpreter-flub outburst this summer Hillary has been very much on my radar, perhaps for the very first time. This week I’m thinking about Hillary’s perception as the “Lady Macbeth of Little Rock,” and whether that reflects more discomfort w/ the idea of a woman on top than actual “blood” — even just blood of the “bitchy” variety — on Hillary’s hands.

For that matter, Lady Macbeth was just doing the best she could ambition-wise under the limited circumstances available to her back in the day.

The Clintons-as-Macbeths analogy may be old news, but it’s new enough to stay interesting to me. Hillary’s position and perception as Sec. of State is of particular interest; if we thought she was such a “bitch” during the election season, why are we relying on her to cultivate peace? Why would Obama hire someone he can’t fire without mobilizing the Clinton Machine? Why would North Korea chant a Red Rover for sending Former President Clinton right over, and why would we — and Hillary — comply?

Yes, I’m exploring a bromidic, already-oft-discussed, would-have-been Girlie Studies thesis. I’m sure every college library in the country is flooded w/ feminist looks at Macbeth. Still my heart goes out to Hillary, wearing her ridiculous banana-colored suits (I have a polo dress in the same color). She never smacked a glass ceiling; she just did what many politicians did, and became much too human.

I feel for her, I’m fascinated by her, and for a little while I plan to blog (perhaps annoyingly) about Hillary doing the best she can despite her frequent, unintentional trudges through mud.

For those who read this blog, I welcome your emails/comments on whether and what you think of Hillary, and whether she’s what you’d call “a feminist” or, more importantly, “feminine.”