What was so bad about 1976?

That's the teaser on the front page of the NYT for an article with a different headline, "The Conservative Conspiracy Against Women’s Progress Is Real" (by Jessica Grose).

The article says nothing about the 1970s. I do see a reference to the 1960s: "The report’s authors know they can’t tell all women to be stay-at-home mothers (returning the country to 1960s employment levels for women) because that would contradict their other goal, to dismantle the welfare state and put even more work conditions on parents receiving government aid." The 60s were 60 years ago, and the article does call the report "a curious set of guidelines for the future, since it seems mired in culture war battles from the 20th century, unable to face the past 60 years of change."

Usually the 1950s are selected as the era of the traditional wife and the 1960s represent the exciting period of changing gender roles. The 70s were the heyday of feminism. These decades feel quite distinct from each other to me, a person born in 1951. Jessica Grose was born... when? Maybe to millennials, the 50s, 60s, and 70s seem like one big chunk of boomer oldness. 

Only?

I'm reading this NYT column by Jessica Grose: "Kennedy’s Comments on Circumcision Are Only Going to Confuse and Shame Parents."

The headline makes it sound as though human beings cannot be trusted with information. We'll only get confused or descend into shame.

What's the issue here?

On Thursday, Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, said in a cabinet meeting, “There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol.” Was he trying to persuade parents to avoid circumcision, Tylenol (the most popular brand of acetaminophen) or both?...

Why not read it for exactly what it is, an observation that you can take into account when deciding whether to have your child circumcised and, if you do, what form of pain relief do you want? What's confusing or shameful about that? Health info often comes in this form — studies find that a substance is associated with a health problem. It might not be causal, but don't parents have the right to decide if they should take the risk?

"Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I’m sure that will poll well…."

Tweeted Ted Cruz, quoted in "Ted Cruz is latest to defend Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad ripped as 'Nazi Propaganda'" (NY Post).

I already blogged Sweeneygate yesterday, and I wouldn't bring it up again — certainly not just because Cruz weighed in — but it resonates with this New York Times "Opinions" podcast I'm in the middle of listening to this morning:

"Thin, White and Right: The Ideal Christian Woman/How skinny became a conservative calling card."

That's a gift link that goes to the NYT page with the audio and a transcript. Keep in mind that there's an idea that there's something right wing/Nazi about beautiful white women. The NYT isn't quite saying that. The columnist Jessica Grose, interviewed at the link, is working on something (presumably) more sophisticated):

"The women’s hair is in Utah curls, long waves with straight ends, popularized by Mormon momfluencers. Their makeup is heavy..."

"... the content creator and comedian Suzanne Lambert called it 'Republican makeup,' which she explained to me is 'matte and flat': thick eyebrows and lashes, dark eyeliner on the top and bottom lids, a bold lip, lots of bronzer. 'Inappropriate unless you’re on a pageant stage. And in that case, I would still do it differently,' she said. Their clothes, whether casual or corporate, are form-fitting and often accessorized with giant crosses. They are always thin and almost always white. To each her own. But it is also undeniable that this hyperfeminine and overtly Christian look offers a stark contrast to the often blunt and even brutal language they employ. Another glaring example of this is the horrifying video of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at CECOT, the tropical gulag in El Salvador where the Trump administration has sent migrants. She stood there before a group of shirtless prisoners and declared, 'If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,' while wearing a $50,000 Rolex.'"

Writes Jessica Grose, in "MAGA Beauty Is Built to Go Viral" (NYT).

"If you’ve heard about delaying your morning coffee, the cognitive benefits of creatine supplements, the popularity of cold plunges..."

"... or the stamina-boosting effects of moderate exercise, you know what I’m talking about. These ideas can fall somewhere on the spectrum of scientifically untested to scientifically pointless. Sometime last year, I realized that bro science was no longer just for the bros. A friend asked if I’d heard of Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford who hosts a popular health and science podcast called 'Huberman Lab.' He’d heard about it from his mom. Bro science has always run parallel to big wellness brands aimed at women, like Goop....  If you’re worried about your husband or your mom getting medical advice from a muscled guy with a mic, let me explain something: Being into wellness isn’t always about health.... In fact, wellness is probably healthiest when it’s treated like a hobby, or even as a spectator sport."

Writes Ashwin Rodrigues, in "Bro Science Is No Longer Just for the Bros" (NYT).

For more of the NYT fascination with Andrew Huberman, here's a piece by Jessica Grose from last August: "'Huberman Husbands,' 'Bro Diets' and the 'Masculine' Branding of Fitness Culture":

A NYT columnist wonders about "Eminem’s endorsement, and the way he made it" and it makes me question whether Eminem did endorse Harris.

I'm reading "Could Eminem Snap Gen X Voters Back to Reality?" by Jessica Grose:

Obama casually rapping a few bars of “Lose Yourself” got a lot more attention than Eminem’s brief speech. But in this tight election that could be decided by a few swing states — including Michigan — I wonder if Eminem’s endorsement, and the way he made it, will be the most consequential one that Vice President Harris receives.

What was special about the way he made what Grose is calling his "endorsement"? Reading the transcript and rewatching the video, I realized that Eminem did not make an endorsement at all — not of a candidate anyway. What Eminem endorsed was freedom of speech. That's where he put his Michigan clout:

"So look I wrote down a few things I wanted to say...."

He's a wordsmith, and he tells us he wrote it down. That means these words really matter. This is text. It's been crafted.

"I'm here tonight for a couple of important reasons."

There will be 2 reasons stated. Let's find 2 reasons and not hallucinate additional reasons.

"Sean Combs was able to stay relevant for many years, in part because he used his power to intimidate people in the industry, particularly women, who might say no to him."

"In an article for The New York Times Magazine in July, Danyel Smith, who was the editor of Vibe Magazine in the late 1990s, wrote about the 'menacing encounters' she had with Diddy. He threatened he would see her 'dead in the trunk of a car' if she didn’t show him a cover before publication. Smith describes the ethos of the music industry at the time: 'To report sexual misconduct — whether it was to attorneys or law enforcement or even your supervisor — often meant losing your job. Being ostracized. Or being a girl that just didn’t "get it," or didn’t know how to fend for herself.'"

Writes Jessica Grose in "Sean Combs and the Limits of the 'Family Man' Defense" (NYT).

I didn't excerpt the references to the "family man" defense. I don't think that's necessary, but I would like to quote the last sentence of the column so you can click on the link it contains, which will get you to a high-impact photograph: "There are limits to the ‘family man’ defense no matter how many photos you take with your kids wearing matching pajamas."

I'm less interested in Combs's groping to defend himself now than I am in how so many people supported and protected him for so long.

"A very liberal man in New York who said he doesn’t even consider dating people who put 'moderate' in their dating profiles..."

"... said, 'It’s probably unfair, but with such a deep left-leaning dating pool, there’s no scarcity mind-set forcing us to interact and test that assessment.' A very liberal woman in Denver had the opposite perspective because she felt that liberal men were scarce: 'I was in a pretty bad relationship, but I stayed in it so long in part because I worried I wouldn’t find another man who is a Democrat,' she said."

Writes Jessica Grose, in "When It Comes to Dating, Ambition Might Matter More Than Politics" (NYT)(free-access link).

If you live in a big city that has lots of people who are politically like-minded, you can afford to filter out the people who don’t align with you very closely. If you live in a smaller or more politically mixed environment, you can’t afford to be so choosy without severely restricting your dating pool.

This is phrased in terms of the person doing the choosing, but the same kind of "scarcity" thinking must influence the person writing the profile. That very liberal New York man sees a "deep left-leaning dating pool," but isn't it full of people who figured they'd better say they're on the left? But maybe that's all New York man is himself and all he wants. 

"I don’t know how this would ever happen or what would have to happen to get this to change, but just as a whole, the parents, the community in general, just need to trust the teachers."

Said Allie Pribula, who taught elementary school in Pennsylvania from 2019 to the end of the last school year, quoted in "No One Wants to Be a Teacher Anymore. Can You Blame Them?" (NYT).

[There's a] crisis of teachers quitting because they were pushed to their limits by children’s pandemic-related behavioral and emotional setbacks, staffing shortages that forced them to take on roles beyond their normal remit, including lunch and bus duty, and... culture war vitriol.... [And f]ewer college and university students want to become teachers, and the new teacher pipeline is drying up....

"The more uncertain you are about your sense of self, the more likely you are to join a group, which can give you guidance on 'what to think, how to feel and how to behave'...."

Writes Jessica Grose, in "I’m Not a Joiner. Was I Born That Way?" (NYT), quoting a psychology professor who studies group behavior.

Grose mentions book clubs but her focus is on joining religious groups:

"Brown fat is 'a specialized fat, whose primary role is to generate heat'.... A gram of brown fat produces 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body...."

"The proportional amount of brown fat a person has decreases as they get older.... You can build up your brown fat by spending more time in the cold. A study of Finnish lumberjacks was the first to find that outdoor workers who spend time in the cold have more brown fat than office workers, and [there is]  research that shows sleeping in cooler temperatures (66 degrees, in his study) may also increase your levels of brown fat."

From "Why Your Kid Wears Shorts in Winter/While you freeze in cold weather, they have a secret weapon" by Jessica Grose (NYT).

It's absurd to think that sleeping — and only sleeping — in a room heated to 66° is comparable to working all day outdoors in Finland. And what temperature do you think Finnish lumberjacks keep their houses? I'm no Finnish lumberjack, but I do live in Wisconsin, and I go out when the temperature is, say, 8° but I don't artificially heat the house up to 66°. We keep it at 62° in the daytime and let it drop to 50° when we're sleeping. Occasionally, when I feel chilly, I bump it up to 64°, but never 66°, which would generate complaints that it's stifling in here. People who think they're sleeping in a cool room when they've got it at 66° are baffling. 

So, yeah, build up your brown fat. That sounds great, but overheating your house to the point where you think it's hardy to endure 66° when you're under the covers shows seriously distorted thinking. Also, there's no discussion of carbon footprints and climate change here. Where did that all-important concern go?

By the way, the article is padded out with material about children's birthday parties (though, strangely, given that headline, nothing at all about shorts).

"I began to evaluate what I really enjoyed doing and what I valued about interactions with friends."

"I did not like standing for prolonged periods of time, for almost any reason. I did not like waiting in line for food. I did not like anything that included the word 'networking.' I did like getting drinks or dinner in a place where we could really talk, or lounging in someone’s living room, or going to a party if there were going to be lots of people I knew there and ample seating room.... Especially now that people are making plans with frenzied abandon, saying yes to all manners of activities without a second thought because they are so starved for socializing. Yes to that group sound bath! Yes to the wine-cooler tasting! Yes to the early morning rave! Oh honey, no. No. No. Be honest with yourself. If you like the energy of a big crowd, say no to that intimate coffee and parry with a trip to a concert. If you hate going out, invite people to come over. Tell people the real reasons you’re saying no for things you say no to. This has two benefits: it will give you deeper intimacy with friends who will know you for the true crank you really are. And it will mean that they stop inviting you to things that you really don’t like to do."

From "If You Don’t Want to Go, Say No/Most social obligations would be best left in the Before Times" by Jessica Grose (NYT).

I had to look up sound bath — here ("I Tried a Sound Bath — Here's What This Meditative Practice Is Really Like" (Allure)).

Anyway... Grose gives some good advice. It's advice I figured out for myself — half a lifetime ago, when I was in my 30s, and at the time, I was rather amazed that I hadn't noticed the precise problem earlier. But I realized that I had mixed together what people in general tend to like and what I specifically liked. You get a strong message from the culture that there is fun to be had and that group activities are highly gratifying. You may need to force yourself to ask, yes, but do I like that? 

Grose speaks of "deeper intimacy with friends who will know you for the true crank you really are," but that might be too rosy. What if these friends/"friends" decide they don't like this new crank you've revealed yourself to be or they decide you don't really belong in their group? You don't like parties. You're not fun-loving.

That's why facing up to the question what do I really like? isn't that easy. It takes courage. You can lose what you — by merging your preferences with the group's — were trying to keep. I'd say, do it anyway, but if you don't, it's easy to see why you don't.

"There is a sharp, mildly enraging profile of clothing designer and retailer Eileen Fisher in the style issue of The New Yorker this week."

Notes DoubleX blogger Jessica Grose:

The writer Janet Malcolm, concealing a shiv in her “interestingly plain” Eileen Fisher duds, paints Fisher as frustratingly meek, and her business style as passive aggressive. What’s the mildly enraging part? Fisher refers to this business approach as “feminine,” as if women leaders can’t be straightforward about their demands....

Malcolm sits in on a meeting at Fisher Headquarters (in my hipsturbia hometown, Irvington, New York), where the exclusively female workers speak in incomprehensible code about “facilitating leaders” and “delegation with transparency.” Then the meeting ends with the ringing of a bronze bell. “I ring a bell to remind us of timelessness,” one woman says. Then a gourd is passed around and each woman says something when she gets her hands on it, like, “I feel humbled and honored.”

Grose emphasizes the gender stereotyping (which includes joking that the male employees are all in the warehouse, as if everyone forgot, because it's against men, that sex discrimination is illegal). In addition to that, I find the religionish rituals creepy. It's awful — or maybe for some it's great — to have a job that feels like you're in a cult.

This reminds me of some of the comments on yesterday's post about the "Lean In" circles. For example, Deirdre Mundy wrote (using some stereotypes that I am noting, not endorsing):

Actually, "women supporting other women" often just acts as a new iteration of the classic "gossipy office clique." It's why I prefer to work in mostly male environments. The men are happy if everyone does their job and goes home. The women want to make it all about supportive relationships and bonding and over-analyzing every social interaction.

So, if you're an introverted woman who just wants to do a good job and who has a life outside of work... these circles of 'leaning in' are positively Dante-esque.

Slate's Jessica Grose is surprised the internet wasn't cruel after "Queen of the Mommy Bloggers" Dooce announced her separation from her husband.

Grose says "the tone of the response has been extraordinary in its relative kindness."

We think of Internet commentary—especially toward women who write about their personal lives—as full of vindictive bile. Certainly, Armstrong is not immune from such cruelty, and some bloggers are taking her to task for making her every move so public. However, most of the response to Armstrong’s split has been concerned and sweet.

Do we really expect the internet to be such an asshole?

It's just plain upsetting to see this idealized married couple break up... which Grose eventually gets around to:

Many of her readers want and appreciate what she appeared to have—a thriving home business with a “[l]over, business partner, best friend,” which is how Armstrong described Jon three years ago. Her marriage seemed aspirational, yet attainable—particularly because their lives weren’t entirely perfect, given Armstrong’s depression and anxiety, and her husband’s own mental health issues.

It’s precisely because of this notional attainability that Armstrong’s separation is so jarring for her readers. Fans of Seal and Heidi Klum might be sad about their split, but I doubt many of them could imagine themselves in the shoes of an uber-wealthy Teutonic supermodel. But plenty of Armstrong’s readers would love a companionate marriage that meshed work and life seamlessly, and her separation may dash those dreams.

Adorable rickshaw — a terrible or an awesome gift?

According to Jessica Grose at XXfactor ("What women really think"), this is a terrible gift — "completely insane" — because "even if your wealth is at Bloombergian levels, no one in the universe needs a $2,200 limited-edition rickshaw from Anthropologie.... Populist outrage is way too easy to inspire with such fripperies..."

Populist outrage? Fripperies? If that's supposed to be economic analysis... hello! Consumer spending drives the economy. The country needs people to buy things. What's with the Puritanical whining about having fun tooling around town in a colorful rickshaw? And the price is $2,200? Has Grose noticed the prices of normal bikes? This thing is a bargain! In fact, if you click through to Anthropologie, you'll see "This product is no longer available." I'm not surprised. It's totally adorable. I had fantasies of riding around Madison in the passenger seat of this thing. Why, it would be the perfect gift for Meade!

What women really think... You tell me: Who's speaking The Mind of the Woman: me or Jessica Grose?