"Harvard Law School lists one lone Native American faculty member on its latest diversity census report" but won't say if it's Elizabeth Warren.

LOL. If it's someone else, why wouldn't they say?

Last night, we were talking about that column in the NYT where lawprof Kevin Noble Maillard — who identifies himself as an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma — informed us that for "the Cherokee Nation, Warren is 'Indian enough;' she has the same blood quantum as Cherokee Nation Chief Bill John Baker." He said:

For non-Natives, this may be surprising. They expect to see 'high cheekbones,' as Warren described her grandfather as having, or tan skin. They want to know of pow wows, dusty reservations, sweat lodges, peyote and cheap cigarettes. When outsiders look at these ostensibly white people as members of Native America, they don’t see minorities. As a result, Warren feels she must satisfy these new birthers and justify her existence.

He also portrayed Native American lawprofs as such a small group  — 0.5% of all lawprofs — that they'd all know about it — and enthuse about it — if one of them had gotten appointed at Harvard, and that didn't happen.

There are so many issues here. Instapundit brings up 2:

1. "The whole blood-quantum thing is a white man's criterion." (More on that here.)

2.  "[T]he interesting part isn’t that she checked the Native American box; it’s that she unchecked it once it wouldn’t do her any more good. And that’s not a fake controversy"

Let me add some more issues:

3. These days tribes control the standards of who gets in, but what are their purposes? There are ideas about sovereignty, connected to political power and autonomy, but how can this definition carry over to other contexts and support affirmative action? A technical, genetic standard isn't narrowly tailored to notions about the benefits of "diversity," especially if no one can see or is even informed about who's supposed to be bringing the diversity.

4. Having a Native American faculty member is a point of pride for Harvard. It claims credit. But maybe it doesn't really have anyone behind that claim. Note the potential for collusion between a law school and faculty members who can plausibly be claimed to beef up the diversity statistic. The school may not really know or want to know the truth. It just hopes to get away with reporting a number that works to its credit. It's like the way law schools want to hear from their graduates that they have law jobs with good pay. They want to report that information to U.S. News to get better rank on the "Best Law Schools" list. If it's good for them, they'd rather not have to look into whether it's true. It's good. Who cares if it's true?

5. Elizabeth Warren claimed that she had herself listed in the AALS directory as a minority lawprof because she was hoping to get included in group of people like her. Professor Maillard assures NYT readers that Native American lawprofs are a close-knit group who know each other and support and take pride in each other. With such warm and welcoming arms outstretched, how is it that Warren never found her way into that group? One cynical theory is that Warren didn't really want to have to face them, because they might have questioned her authenticity. But that would mean she really did go on the list to make contact with appointments committees who would pull her up to a higher ranked school. And of course, that theory connects neatly with the point made at #2, supra: She unchecked the box once she got to Harvard.

6. Why did Maillard gratuitously insult those of us who are trying to figure this out by bringing up "high cheekbones, "tan skin," "pow wows, dusty reservations, sweat lodges, peyote and cheap cigarettes"? The abuse of affirmative action is a serious issue, and people who worry about it are not trading in old-fashioned stereotypes. It's more like Maillard is stereotyping us as backward and dumb. If that's intentional pushback, it ought to motivate us to look more deeply into the problem at hand. I'm not pushed back. That would be dumb.

"All you’ve got is a girl with high cheekbones."

Said Joni Mitchell, scoffing at the idea of a biopic about her with the impersonation done by Taylor Swift.  Joni doesn't like the story of her life as a material either:  "It’s just a lot of gossip, you don’t have the great scenes. There’s a lot of nonsense about me in books, assumptions, assumptions, assum­p­tions."

So, do it like "The Rose." Make it a fictional character and use the best of the nonsense and assumptions and punch it up even more. Taylor with her cheekbones will provide some allusion to Joni for those who care.

Personally, I loathe all these musical biopics. They should have stopped at "Coal Miner's Daughter" (1980), as far as I'm concerned. But actors seem to get extra credit for impersonating someone recognizable, especially where they do the singing themselves. But movies aren't made for people like me, who rarely if ever go to the movies.

Using makeup to create the look that you've been up all night engaging in dissolute behavior.

"It’s a look you get from being out all night, sweating — without looking too undone."

To achieve that perennial party-girl look, Nars kept skin clean of foundation and concealer, instead opting for a touch of greasy shine at the eyes, cheekbones and under the eyes. (“Vaseline is the best,” he said.) With a touch of shadow, he added some darkness under the eyes for a messy, day-after makeup effect....

This is the sort of thing that keeps coming back because it's something only young people can do, and anything "young" will always seem like an option. It made me think of the big "heroin chic" trend of the mid-90s ("a look... characterized by... dark circles underneath the eyes... emaciated features and androgyny... a reaction against the 'healthy' and vibrant look of models such as Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer.") I was already reading the NYT, so I searched the NYT archive for "heroin chic" and came up with a Maureen Dowd column from 1996 — from the height of the presidential campaign:

In this fast-paced, channel-surfing, gigabyte blur of a world, Bob Dole wants to slow things down. Way down.... Mr. Dole presents himself as the avatar of a better time, a time of moral rectitude, unlocked doors, clean movies and Glenn Miller...

[H]e decried ''Pulp Fiction,'' though he hasn't seen it, and ''Trainspotting,'' though he hasn't seen it, for encouraging ''the romance of heroin." ''A fascination with risk and death,'' he said, denouncing heroin chic. ''The attraction of self-destruction -- if you can believe it.''

Dole was portrayed at the time as hopelessly old, a veritable corpse. Oddly, it's 19 years later, and the man is still alive (and joking about running for President).

ADDED: I'm seeing a connection between this and the earlier post today quoting 70s-era feminist Susan Brownmiller cautioning women about drinking too much and getting "trapped in sex situations."

"The reality TV ordeal of a Russian who joined a Chinese boy band show by accident – and made it to the final despite urging fans to vote him off – has finally ended..."

"... after nearly three months. Vladislav Ivanov, a 27-year-old from Vladivostok, was kicked out of the Produce Camp 2021 on Saturday after viewers ignored his pleas to leave and backed him all the way to the final. Ivanov, who speaks Mandarin, joined the show as a Chinese translator. But he said he was invited to sign up as a contestant after the directors noticed his good looks.... He appeared to regret his decision almost immediately but could not leave without breaching his contract. His lack of enthusiasm played out in half-hearted singing, rapping and dancing alongside the other, more eager contestants. 'Becoming a member of a boy band is not my dream as I can’t sing and dance,' Ivanov said in Chinese on the show.... 'I hope the judges won’t support me. While the others want to get an A, I want to get an F as it stands for freedom.'... 'Don’t love me, you’ll get no results,' he said on one episode. But viewers took to his dour persona and kept him in the running for nearly three months....  Ivanov appears to have struck a genuine chord as an anti-hero for Chinese audiences. Fans, some earnest and some ironic, called him 'the most miserable wage slave,' and celebrated him as an icon of 'Sang culture,' a popular concept among Chinese millennials referring to a defeatist attitude toward everyday life. 'Don’t let him quit,' one viewer commented on a video of a dejected-looking Ivanov performing a Russian rap. 'Sisters, vote for him! Let him 996!' another fan commented, using the Chinese slang for the gruelling work schedule that afflicts many young staff, especially in digital startups."

The Guardian reports.

I feel challenged to attempt to understand the Chinese through this story. What? Are they excited by the idea of forced work — titillated by slavery? Did they like it because he was not Chinese? Because he was Russian? Was his unhappiness — his "dour persona" — fun for them? 

Did they somehow think it was an act — a comic persona — and enjoy playing along? Was it like the way Americans, watching "American Idol" would target contestant who wasn't too good and keep voting for him? Why did we do that? The prank was called "Vote for the Worst." I wrote about it in 2007, when Howard Stern was openly promoting ruining the show by voting for the worst contestant. I actually liked this person, a sweet young man, Sanjaya Malakar, and I think many viewers voted for him because they genuinely liked him.

Charlie Hebdo appropriates the death of George Floyd to mock Meghan Markle and the Queen.

Via The Sun:

1. The headline translates to "Why Meghan left Buckingham...." and the speech bubble says "because I couldn't breathe anymore." 

2. Now, for the first time, I'm thinking about whether the Queen shaves her legs.

3. Is the image outrageous? But Charlie Hebdo wants to be outrageous... so it is immune to any criticism people might choose to lob. Still, the question remains: How outrageous is it and what are the elements of outrageousness?

4. The most outrageous part — if I consult my own sensitivity — is the appropriation of the pain surrounding George Floyd for a comical presentation. The second most outrageous part is connecting Markle to Floyd because she is black. 

5. Those outrageous things are not, however, purely gratuitous, so it's not just a case of laughing at George Floyd and finding it worth pointing out that Markle, too, is black. What's not gratuitous is the radical contrast between what happened to Floyd — suffering and death on the street, under the knee of a cop — and what happened to Markle — palace life insufficiently pleasant.

6. It's important that Charlie Hebdo avoided using stereotypical features in drawing Markle, but unfortunate that the drawing doesn't look much like her. I'm interested in the window pane image on Markle's cheek. I believe this is the classic cartoon way to signify shininess. I guess Markle indulges in the makeup convention of dabbing shiny highlighter on the cheekbones. It would be a real stretch to connect that to the racial slur "shine." The slur has to do with the occupation of shining shoes — though Markle's face is right next to the Queen's shiny shoe — and not to some notion about how black people look. 

7. It's important to be able to make fun of public figures. Markle is actively using accusations of racism to fend off criticism. This might work, for her and for many others, if the fear of these accusations is too intense. In that light, Charlie Hebdo is doing us a service, taking the heat, and — if you think about it the right way — contributing to racial progress.

"In gold jewelry and luxe-looking riffs on traditional businesslike silhouettes like the suit, cardigan and turtleneck sweater, her hair loose and makeup modest..."

"... Paltrow has effectively split the difference between demure propriety and power glam. She has simultaneously telegraphed two messages that very well could have been at odds: 'Look, I’m just a mom who tried to take her teenagers on a nice ski vacation,' and 'Yes I am wealthy and famous, and I shan’t be wasting my time on this.'... Paltrow’s soft, gentle silhouettes also presented a subtle contrast to the allegation that she had crashed into another skier and then bolted away. On Thursday, Paltrow wore a soft-looking relaxed-fit gray double-breasted suit over a thin scoop-neck shirt of the same color. Friday, when Paltrow sat listening to witness testimony in a collared, dark long-sleeved top with slight puff sleeves, lips pursed and cheekbones jutting, she looked pleasant and non-threatening — if also mildly annoyed to be missing a Goop staff meeting, or a farm-to-table vegan lunch reservation, or a crystal sound bath...."

 
Such are the subjective observations of Ashley Fetters Maloy, writing in WaPo, in  "At trial, Gwyneth Paltrow is dressing for where she’d rather be/The Goop founder’s clothes have telegraphed two messages at once: She was just a regular mom on a ski vacation, and she is too famous to waste her time on this." 

The question in the case is who skied into whom — that is, who was uphill. The plaintiff sued Paltrow for $3 million, but it got reduced to $300,000. Why didn't she just settle? She counterclaimed for $1 plus attorney's fees. I think it's because she's telling the truth.

I watched this clip of her testimony on TikTok, and I predict she'll win — as one commenter says, "I'm with bone broth lady":

Fashion focuses eyes on women's chests.

Upper chests, that is. It's all about the clavicle, the clavicle that you've etched out through hardcore exercise and stringent dieting.



Because what could be sexier that a woman who is shockingly, graphically demonstrating how thoroughly she has excluded all pleasure from her life?

Toned shoppers who want to show off their self-discipline in the face of dessert are choosing dresses with a low, but not plunging neckline, a look that is transforming the area above the breasts into an unlikely new subject for women to obsess over....

Why the new emphasis on a body part most women — and more men — have paid little attention to in the past? Credit a swing of the fashion pendulum, and a malaise over “Girls Gone Wild” style.

Yes, we're bored with breasts now. Haven't you heard? We've had enough of "Girls Gone Wild." We want "Girls Gone Abstemious."

[The clavicle is] an area whose prominence is unlikely to be enhanced surgically (at least for now).

Come on, you slacker plastic surgeons. Get on this, now. Where are my clavicle implants? Figure out how to add bony-looking bumps all over the body. You've been limiting yourself to cheekbones and chins for too long.

This region has been emphasized by the skinny celebrity acolytes of the stylist Rachel Zoe, including Nicole Richie and Keira Knightley. Their ubiquitous deep V-neck tops show off sometimes skeletal frames, and other actresses have taken their cue and sized down as well, to the point that the Internet teems with fashion and celebrity bloggers and message board posters carping about protruding A-list clavicles.

Talk about me, blog about me, say what you like but talk about me. How frighteningly must I cause my bones to protrude to get you to talk about me? Blog about me, dammit!

Courtney E. Martin, the author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body” (Free Press, 2007), said that many of the girls and women she interviewed for her book “talked about how far their collarbone stuck out” with pride, as an indicator of their skinniness.

Ms. Martin contends that a generation of young women raised after Title IX and the women’s movement pursue slender figures with the same rigor as they pursue admission to an Ivy League university.

Title IX?! See what happens when you make women competitive? They're just choosing their sport, the extreme sport of thinning.

When Jessica Braff, who works at an advertising agency in New York, lost 15 pounds in her freshmen year of college, the first thing she noticed was that her clavicles were more pronounced.

“I loved it,” she said. She continues to wear clothes that show off her collarbones, which she calls the “easiest and least controversial expression of a kind of sex appeal.”

Yes, it's a kind of sex appeal. The kind that says there is not the slightest thing luscious or sybaritic about me.

On the pro-clavicle side, the most interesting voice is Consuelo Castiglioni, a fashion designer:

[Her] label, Marni, incorporates chest-baring necklines into tops and dresses. The brand has long been a favorite of women seeking clothing that isn’t expressly made to attract men, including skirts with bustles and tops that flare out to obscure any semblance of a waist.

“I think it is clear from my designs that deep cleavages, tight silhouettes, visible tummies or behinds are not part of my aesthetic,” Ms. Castiglioni said in an e-mail message. “What I try to express is elegance and femininity and a more cerebral, hidden sensuality.”

Don't you see? It's intellectual.

Observing "the gradual emergence, among professionally beautiful women, of a single, cyborgian face."

"It’s a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips. It looks at you coyly but blankly... distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic.... 'It’s Instagram Face, duh. It’s like an unrealistic sculpture. Volume on volume. A face that looks like it’s made out of clay.'... There was something strange, I said, about the racial aspect of Instagram Face—it was as if the algorithmic tendency to flatten everything into a composite of greatest hits had resulted in a beauty ideal that favored white women capable of manufacturing a look of rootless exoticism. 'Absolutely... We’re talking an overly tan skin tone, a South Asian influence with the brows and eye shape, an African-American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, a cheek structure that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern.... People are absolutely getting prettier... The world is so visual right now, and it’s only getting more visual, and people want to upgrade the way they relate to it.'"

From "THE AGE OF INSTAGRAM FACE/How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look" by Jia Tolentino (in The New Yorker). Nice animated illustration at the link.

That made me think of "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" — summarized, with clips, perfectly in less than 2 minutes, here:



"I don't want to be transformed! I want to stay ugly!"

"For the Cherokee Nation, Warren is 'Indian enough;' she has the same blood quantum as Cherokee Nation Chief Bill John Baker."

"For non-Natives, this may be surprising. They expect to see 'high cheekbones,' as Warren described her grandfather as having, or tan skin. They want to know of pow wows, dusty reservations, sweat lodges, peyote and cheap cigarettes. When outsiders look at these ostensibly white people as members of Native America, they don’t see minorities. As a result, Warren feels she must satisfy these new birthers and justify her existence."

Writes lawprof Kevin Noble Maillard, who is an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, who says that if Warren had "tout[ed] herself as American Indian" to get on the Harvard faculty, the small community of Native American lawprofs — 0.5% of all lawprofs — would have heard about it.

"She recalls an airline employee who glanced at her driver’s license and said, 'Oh, Jennifer Grey, like the actress.'"

"When Grey said, 'Actually, it is me,' the woman responded: 'I’ve seen Dirty Dancing a dozen times. I know Jennifer Grey. And you are not her.'... In the two hours she sat on a blue banquette in a Beverly Hills restaurant, matter-of-factly scooping a soft-boiled egg, spreading butter on rye toast and chatting about her memoir, only one person appeared to recognize Grey. The woman’s face lit up, then softened as if she’d spotted an old friend who’d survived a terrible ordeal."

From "Don’t Call Her ‘Baby.’ At 62, Jennifer Grey is Taking the Lead. In her memoir, 'Out of the Corner,' the 'Dirty Dancing' star opens up about rhinoplasty gone wrong, the implosion of her career and why she’s telling her story now" (NYT).

What a terrible mistake it is to think that your off-the-norm feature is dragging down the rest of your good looks rather than what's making you stand out! I was just having a conversation about Gene Tierney, the 1940s actress with an overbite, who said it was in her contract that they couldn't make her get her teeth fixed. Here's her NYT obituary: 

"For the young, social media filters that smooth skin and inflate their eyes’ proportions are almost ubiquitous, like a popular 'Pixar' filter on Snapchat..."

"... that made its users look like the cartoons of their youth, or the popular Facetune app. It is a short leap to 'Facetuning' in real life. Patients used to approach surgeons with photos of celebrities; now it is more likely of their own filtered face. 'It’s exceptional now to see a photo on social media without a filter,' [says Dr Olivier Amar, one of London’s leading cosmetic surgeons]. 'Patients are comparing themselves to something that doesn’t exist. And because they may only ever see themselves on a phone, using their phone as a mirror, they may not even recognise themselves in a real mirror. If they get these treatments they feel they can have the life as people seem to have online.' Why, then, has this 'bug-eyed' face emerged ahead of all the other cultural standards of beauty? David Bainbridge, a reproductive biologist at the University of Cambridge, wrote in his book Curvology that females are more evolved than males: humans have smaller teeth, flatter faces, smaller chins and less hair than primates, especially females. Many of these qualities are emphasised in 'Instagram face,' the distinctive narrow-nosed 'heart-shaped' face. 'We do not know why women should be more "modern-looking" than men,' Bainbridge writes, 'but it has been suggested that many of the characteristics men find attractive are the same as those which make them look distinctively human.'"

From "Love Island and how young people fell for cosmetic surgery/A surgeon says women want an ‘alien’ face: sharp cheekbones and big lips. Why?" (London Times). "Love Island" is a British reality TV show. 

The term "alien face" is used in the article. It's a reference back to cheesy 1950s movies and has to do with "diagonally pulled-up eyes... narrow nostrils and a glazed, expressionless stare" or something like "the image on the front of Space Raiders crisps, this kind of overbuilt cheek, overbuilt temple, skeletonised, sharp features that just didn’t look correct."

It's interesting to take that observation and extrapolate a reason why so many people would decide that's the most beautiful look. So Bainbridge offers his theory, that we somehow aspire to more and more evolution and are projecting into the future, trying to look like humans a million years from now. How do you know where evolution will take us? 

It seems as though you take your cliché image of a caveman, imagine what is needed to get from that to standard human being of today, then whatever you just did to the caveman, do it again to the person of today, and that's the ultra-evolved human being. Or — to follow Bainbridge's idea — you accept that a woman of today already has that "more evolved" look, so you plot a straight line from modern man to modern woman and keep going. What do you see? Now, get a plastic surgeon to translate that fanciful vision onto your actual face. 

Won't you look weird? Not if you've been using your phone as a mirror.

"In 1961, Vogue magazine said that 'almost every famous female head in the world has gone or will go' to Kenneth..."

"... the hairdresser who created Jacqueline Kennedy’s legendary bouffant and softened the golden locks of Marilyn Monroe.

In 1954, Mrs. Kennedy, newly wed, arrived at the salon and asked for Lawrence, who usually did her hair. Lawrence was not around, so the receptionist paged Mr. Battelle.

Mrs. Kennedy had what was called the Italian cut, which he felt was too short, layered and curly for her tall proportions and big bones, he told Vanity Fair in 2003. He decided to stretch it out by setting it with big rollers. But rollers as big as he wanted did not exist then, so he had some specially made, out of Lucite.

After John F. Kennedy became president, Mr. Battelle perfected the bouffant style that became associated with Mrs. Kennedy. He thought the look would lengthen her head and balance her broad cheekbones. He used some hair spray, but allowed a few wisps to fall away to make her look less “set.”

Goodbye to Kenneth Battelle, who had so much to do with the way women looked in the 1960s. He was 86.

"She makes her entrance in the first act and freezes with the unyielding stiffness of an industrial lamppost...."

Julia Roberts is in a Broadway play.

Ms. Roberts often gives the impression that she is parsing her lines, leaving lots of dead air between fragments.

And yet, and yet. I found myself fascinated by the way her facial structure (ah, those cheekbones!) seems to change according to how the light hits her. In repose, her face seems impossibly, hauntingly eloquent.

Well, maybe that is exactly what works in film: having an amazing face and giving people lots of time to gaze upon it. Loving the film idol, you're drawn to the theater where you can be in the presence of the star. Does that ever work right?