"Since college, I have had an 'obese' to 'morbidly obese' body mass index — a measure that is at best inaccurate and at worst racist."

"Created by a Belgian mathematician, its average is based on the height and weight of white European men. I was what some in the body positivity movement would call a 'mid fat.' For a woman, that’s a size 20 to 24. There are differing opinions on how many 'fategories' there are, but they go up to 'infinifat' or 'Death Fat,' which is writer Lesley Kinzel’s term, mocking the also-very-suspect concept of 'morbid obesity.'... I still haven’t escaped my own fat shame.... Nearly everyone, except maybe sociopaths and Peloton instructors, goes through this world with some self-loathing...."

Writes Courtenay Hameister, in "Were We the ‘Fat Couple’? If that’s how our friends saw us, I couldn’t bear it" (NYT).

Here's a Fluffy Kitten Party post from 2019: "Fategories – Understanding the Fat Spectrum" (updated in 2021 to "remove[] the 'White Fragility' framework because WOW that did not age well)(original version here).

"A fantasy persists, in the popular imagination, of sperm as Olympic swimmers, racing toward an egg that passively awaits fertilization."

"Clancy and Hazard are both keen to complicate this simplistic picture of conception. Sperm are drawn in by uterine waves, Clancy asserts, 'a special type of muscle contraction that helps control the speed at which sperm reach the egg, propelling them on a journey that would otherwise be too long for them to make on their own.' Hazard also emphasizes the organ’s strength. 'The womb is a muscle,' she writes. 'We can compare it quite accurately to a clenched fist, not only in size, but in power.'"

 
From "What We Still Don’t Know About Periods/The stigma surrounding menstruation may have had severe consequences for research into reproductive health" (The New Yorker).

What simplistic pictures are you keen to complicate in the name of womanly self-esteem?

What I love is the self-esteem.

They related? pic.twitter.com/zx028riWfC

— Rudy (@RudyLTX) January 20, 2023

It feels like a preview of Season 3 of "The White Lotus."

"In Sinema’s 2009 book... she described giving up shrill partisanship, which was making her unhappy, for a vaguely New Age ethos..."

"... that prized inner tranquillity. One chapter was called 'Letting Go of the Bear and Picking Up the Buddha,' with the bear representing fear and anger. 'Picking up the Buddha (becoming a super centered political actor) makes you a stronger, more effective you,' she wrote. 'To be your most fabulous political self, you’ll need to learn to recognize the bear and learn to let go of it in your work.' Transcending fear and anger is an excellent spiritual goal. But becoming a more centered and fabulous person is a political project only when it’s directed toward aims beyond oneself. With Sinema, it’s not remotely clear what those aims might be, or if they exist. (Another chapter in her book is 'Letting Go of Outcomes.')"

Writes Michelle Goldberg in "Kyrsten Sinema Is Right. This Is Who She’s Always Been" (NYT). 

I had to look to see if Sinema is a Buddhist. She's not, so I'm giving this post my "cultural appropriation" tag. "Picking Up the Buddha" — is that an expression, some New Age cant? Or did she come up with this image of picking up and putting down entities that are not, if real life, picked up and put down?

 

Here's a NYT article from 2012, "Politicians Who Reject Labels Based on Religion"

Although raised a Mormon, Ms. Sinema is often described as a nontheist — and that suits the activists just fine....

But a campaign spokesman rejected any simple category for Ms. Sinema. “Kyrsten believes the terms ‘nontheist,’ ‘atheist’ or ‘nonbeliever’ are not befitting of her life’s work or personal character,” the spokesman, Justin Unga, said Thursday in an e-mail. “Though Sinema was raised in a religious household, she draws her policy-making decisions from her experience as a social worker who worked with diverse communities and as a lawmaker who represented hundreds of thousands.”

Furthermore, Ms. Sinema “is a student of all cultures in her community,” Mr. Unga said, and she “believes that a secular approach is the best way to achieve this in good government.” In rejecting not only religious labels but irreligious labels, too, these politicians resemble the growing portion of Americans who feel that no particular tradition, or anti-tradition, captures how they feel about God, or the universe, or what the theologian Paul Tillich called “ultimate concern.”

"I woke up at 6 a.m. feeling the kind of ambient half-hunger that I always tolerate for way too long."

"Not to be dramatic, but this is something I genuinely hate about myself — I always wait too long to eat, and I inevitably get into a bad mood before finally fixing the problem. My wife Alice rescued me with yogurt. She put all kinds of stuff in there that would never occur to me, like honey, almond shavings, plum slices, and a syrupy jam made out of sour cherries....  I got hungry for lunch around noon, but again waited like 90 minutes to do anything about it. Once I hit a breaking point, I needed something fast and potent, so I made myself three soft-boiled eggs using a Japanese device my friend David gave me...."

 
From "Leon Neyfakh Always Waits Too Long to Eat/'Not to be dramatic, but this is something I genuinely hate about myself'" (NY Magazine).

"I started talking to my belly this year. Blowing her kisses and showering her with praises."

"I used to want to cut my stomach off I hated it so much. But it’s literally ME." 

From "Lizzo talks to her stomach in empowering self-care video" (NY Post). 

Sometimes, the belly talks back:

You could say, the hardest part of everything is other people.

I'm seeing the NYT headline: "The Hardest Part of Having a Nonbinary Kid Is Other People/A mother recounts the pushback she received from her own family in raising a gender-nonconforming child."

Just remember: You are somebody else's "other people."

I have my problems with other people. Maybe try, if you can, to live in a way where you depend on yourself and draw on energy from within. If you keep demanding that "other people" rearrange their beliefs and behavior to smooth your way in life... 1. They're only going to go so far, 2. You've made yourself dependent on them, and 3. You're the "other people" too.



For the impatient or music-averse, here are the lyrics. (Key phrase:"We are the other people/We are the other people/We are the other people/You're the other people too.")

And what did Jean Paul Sartre mean by "Hell is other people"?

"An affected or simpering smile; a silly, conceited, smiling look."

That's the definition of "smirk" in the (unlinkable) OED. I looked up the word because it was used over and over to refer to the smile on the face of the Covington Catholic schoolboy the media singled out to destroy over the weekend.

When is a smile a "smirk"? The dictionary says, when it's affected or simpering or silly and conceited looking.

But I'd like a deeper psychological explanation of what is supposed to be in the mind of the smirker and how observers of smiles decide they have a window into that mind. My hypothesis is: People see what they want to see. That means: When people tell you what they think they see about the inside of another person's head, they are opening a window for us to peer into their head.

And, of course, that means that if we talk about what we think we see in the mind of the observer of another person, we too reveal ourselves. We express misunderstandings and expose ourselves to being misunderstood. That's human life. I think it's quite wonderful, but it can be dangerous and painful.

Here are some the OED's examples of the use of "smirk":

?1570 T. Ingelend Disobedient Child sig. D.ivv Howe many smyrkes, and dulsome kysses?
1601 B. Jonson Fountaine of Selfe-love Palinodia sig. Mv From Spanish shrugs, French faces, Smirks, Irps, and all affected Humors.
1675 W. Wycherley Country-wife iv. 56 He has the Canonical smirk, and the filthy, clammy palm of a Chaplain.
1718 Lady M. W. Montagu Let. Sept. (1965) I. 439 A jolly face and a stupid smirk in his countenance.

My son John had a couple tweets yesterday pushing back against Slate:

How is it OK to make a national news story out of not liking someone's smile? Mocking someone's smile is as bad as telling someone they have to smile more, and we're all supposed to think the latter is blatantly offensive, right?

— John Althouse Cohen (@jaltcoh) January 21, 2019

Slate's Facebook post of this article calls the kid's facial expression "the smirk of evil." I don't know how adults can sleep at night after publicly trashing a kid and calling him "evil."

— John Althouse Cohen (@jaltcoh) January 21, 2019

So I clicked through to the Slate article, "The MAGA Teenager Who Harassed a Native American Veteran Is Still Unnamed, but We’ve Seen His Face Before." This is by Ruth Graham, from January 19th and with no update, and it's really creepy. Here are the last 2 paragraphs, which tell us so much about what's inside Ruth Graham's head:

But I think the real reason the clip has spread is simpler: It’s the kid’s face. The face of self-satisfaction and certitude, of edginess expressed as cruelty. The face remains almost completely still as his peers hoot in awed delight at his bravado. The face is both punchable and untouchable. Many observers recognized it right away.

The face is in this photo of a clutch of white young men crowding around a single black man at a lunch counter sit-in in Virginia in the 1960s, and in many other images of jeering white men from that era. The face is the rows of Wisconsin high school boys flashing Nazi salutes in a prom picture last year. The face is Brett Kavanaugh—then a student at an all-boys Catholic prep school—“drunkenly laughing” as he allegedly held down Christine Blasey Ford. Anyone who knew the popular white boys in high school recognized it: the confident gaze, the eyes twinkling with menace, the smirk. The face of a boy who is not as smart as he thinks he is, but is exactly as powerful. The face that sneers, “What? I’m just standing here,” if you flinch or cry or lash out. The face knows that no matter how you react, it wins.

"It wins." It. There is no person anymore. No "he," just an "it." There is no human, just an empty mask, as Ruth Graham sees it.

Looking into her mind, I think — and I show myself in saying this — that she believes she is and loves herself as a person of great empathy for human beings, and she is simply oblivious to the humanity of the teenager who she fears is harassing and mocking a person who looks to her like the kind of person she thinks of as Victim. She doesn't realize that she, a good person, could engage in victimizing, and when she looks in the mirror and smiles at herself, the expression on her face is never a "smirk."

"If McCain retires before May 30, an election to replace him would (likely) be held this fall; if not..."

"... Arizona’s Republican governor will be able to appoint a reliably pro-Trump senator who would hold the seat until 2020. Which is to say: If McCain wishes to 'battle' Trump politically (as opposed to merely rebuffing him personally), he will give the voters of his state a chance to weigh in on his replacement in November."

From "Hatch: It’s ‘Ridiculous’ That John McCain Didn’t Invite Trump to His Funeral" (New York Magazine).

It's very strange — these statements coming from a dying man about what he wants at his funeral. I can't remember ever hearing anyone talking about his own funeral with the assumption the President of the United States wants to attend and then taking a shot at the President saying don't attend. I mean, how do you get to be the sort of person who, facing death, imagines everyone clamoring to attend your funeral and then telling some of them you don't want them there? It's similar to a Bridezilla, thinking everyone's so interested in attending her wedding and then being dictatorial toward these people.

I don't understand it, but then I'm the sort of person who would refrain from staging a big (or even a small) wedding because I can't imagine people genuinely wanting to participate in a Festival of Me. And a wedding is a happy occasion. But a funeral... good Lord! What would possess you to think your funeral is going to be such a hot ticket people will be put out if they can't attend and then letting it be known who you want on the outs?

I'd like to see more dignity and privacy around McCain as he plays his final scene. It's his brain that is wrecking him. Shouldn't his family enclose him and protect him?

Self Day at the OED.

In the OED side-bar this morning, 3 out of 4 newly published entries begin with "self-":

"Self-applause" — the meaning is self-evident — has been around since the 1600s:

1625 Robert Bolton Some General Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God 126 To proclaime many times with great noise, and selfe-applause, their owne idle malignant forgeries and fancies.
1678 Andrew Marvell Remarks upon a late disingenuous discourse, writ by one T.D. under the pretence de causa Dei, and of answering Mr. John Howe's letter and postscript of God's prescience, &c., affirming, as the Protestant docrine, that GOd doth by efficacious influence universally move and determine men to all their actions, even to those that are most wicked by a Protestant 74 It's Insolent Boasting and Self-applause upon no occasion.

Oh, the titles they had then!

There's also "self-applausive":

“I have nothing to declare except my genius" — said Oscar Wilde.

Or maybe he didn't say that, but, whatever. It's one of the best-loved Oscar Wilde sayings.

So I wouldn't be so sure I knew "How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves." That's the title of a piece at The Atlantic by James Fallows, who's implicitly talking about himself, implicitly assuring us that he is a smart man who knows the smart people. That is, he is one of the elite who got snookered in the last election.

But the people Fallows talks about in his article are scientists and computer people. Wilde was a brilliant humorous writer, famous, especially, for short, hilarious sentences. Trump is much more like Wilde than like Bill Gates and that guy who won the Nobel Prize in medicine when he was in his 40s.

Here's Fallows:

Virtually none of them (need to) say it. There are a few prominent exceptions, of talented people who annoyingly go out of their way to announce that fact. Muhammed Ali is the charming extreme exception illustrating the rule: he said he was The Greatest, and was. Most greats don’t need to say so....

Once you admit there's an exception, you've got to say Trump is not like the exception. But Trump is like Muhammad Ali. He's making his reputation in large part by speaking entertainingly to the public. And, like Oscar Wilde's declaration of genius, Ali's proclamation of greatness felt like exuberant, extroverted fun to those who loved him. What Trump is doing feels like that too. If you hate Trump, you'll balk at that, but you need to know that there were many people who reacted negatively to Ali's "I am the greatest." I remember it very well, because I loved "I am the greatest" at the time, and I remember why I loved it. It was liberating. You could throw off your inhibition and proclaim your greatness.

"We live in a culture that reveres self-confidence and self-assuredness, but as it turns out, there may be a better approach to success and personal development..."

"... self-compassion. While self-confidence makes you feel better about your abilities, it can also lead you to vastly overestimate those abilities. Self-compassion, on the other hand, encourages you to acknowledge your flaws and limitations, allowing you to look at yourself from a more objective and realistic point of view. Both have merits, but many experts believe that self-compassion includes the advantages of self-confidence without the drawbacks.... Dr. Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas, [says] 'Self-compassion is treating yourself with the same kindness, care and concern you show a loved one.... We need to frame it in terms of humanity. That’s what makes self-compassion so different: "I’m an imperfect human being living an imperfect life."'"

From "Why Self-Compassion Beats Self-Confidence" by Kristin Wong (in the NYT).

ADDED: Etymologically, "confidence" has the prefix "con-" (meaning with) and the root based on fidere (meaning to trust). "Compassion" has "com-" (which also means with) and root based on "pati" (which means to suffer). These are just words, and as you go forward taking advice from psychologists, you can use them any way you want. It seems to me that you can have too much or to little trust in yourself or sympathy for yourself. The trick is to get the right balance (or at least not to be too delusional about where the right balance is).

"How the Self-Esteem Craze Took Over America."

By Jesse Singal in New York Magazine. Excerpt.

The self-esteem craze changed how countless organizations were run, how an entire generation — millen[n]ials — was educated, and how that generation went on to perceive itself (quite favorably). As it turned out, the central claim underlying the trend, that there’s a causal relationship between self-esteem and various positive outcomes, was almost certainly inaccurate. But that didn’t matter: For millions of people, this was just too good and satisfying a story to check, and that’s part of the reason the national focus on self-esteem never fully abated. Many people still believe that fostering a sense of self-esteem is just about the most important thing one can do, mental health–wise....

"I usually enjoy Ms. Weiner's contributions to the Times. But this is one of the most blatant 'humble-brags' ever."

"Poor Jennifer: she went to Princeton, published a book (or books?) and writes for the NYT, but she's still learning to feel sufficiently good about herself. Blech!!!"

Top-rated comment at "The Snobs and Me," by Jennifer Weiner.

"In later life Ali became something of a secular saint, a legend in soft focus."

"He was respected for having sacrificed more than three years of his boxing prime and untold millions of dollars for his antiwar principles after being banished from the ring; he was extolled for his un-self-conscious gallantry in the face of incurable illness, and he was beloved for his accommodating sweetness in public. In 1996, he was trembling and nearly mute as he lit the Olympic caldron in Atlanta. That passive image was far removed from the exuberant, talkative, vainglorious 22-year-old who bounded out of Louisville, Ky., and onto the world stage in 1964 with an upset victory over Sonny Liston to become the world champion. The press called him the Louisville Lip. He called himself the Greatest."

From "Muhammad Ali, Titan of Boxing and the 20th Century, Dies at 74."

ALSO: "But Ali had his hypocrisies, or at least inconsistencies. How could he consider himself a 'race man' yet mock the skin color, hair and features of other African-Americans, most notably Joe Frazier, his rival and opponent in three classic matches? Ali called him 'the gorilla,' and long afterward Frazier continued to express hurt and bitterness."

AND: From my perspective, as someone who was 13 years old in 1964 when Cassius Clay emerged in the popular culture, he seemed to have invented self-promoting bragging. My parents' generation held values of modesty and sportsmanship. You shouldn't verbalize your self-esteem, especially in a way that vaunted yourself over others. You should achieve and be admirable and then, perhaps, other people will praise you.

As my parents and their coevals saw it, Clay was teaching the young people the wrong values, including the idea that you can push beyond your area of actual achievement — in Clay's case, boxing — and insult your opponents about something unrelated — such as the way they look. You could not only call yourself beautiful, but the other person ugly. To young people, like me, that seemed very funny and fun and liberating.

(I don't really want to mention Donald Trump in this post, but the connection is too obvious. Who are we? How did we get here?)

"When your child comes home from school with tales of mean girls, aggressive boys and insensitive teachers, you feel for her, and often you let it show, but maybe you shouldn’t."

"Our kids feed off our emotions and get more distressed when we’re distressed. When my daughter communicates her worries to me, only to have me start worrying too, it definitely makes things worse. She needs me to be strong, but instead I inadvertently send the message that anxiety is the ‘right’ reaction to her problems."

From a WaPo article titled "6 ways good parents contribute to their child’s anxiety."

So after years of cranking up our sensitivity to bullying, it's time to deescalate. How about self-esteem? We overdoing that too? Yes. That's another of the problems found in the "good parents" — which seems to mean the parents who've responded to the mainstream media advice of the last X years:

When you constantly tell people your son is on track for a top college, or your daughter is going to be an Olympic gymnast, you feel like you’re building them up, but eventually the positive affirmation turns to pressure. Compliment your kids when they excel, but don’t make their excellence a reason to expect even more from them. Overly high expectations can create performance anxiety where there used to be joy and personal fulfillment.

The hard part is picking the exact right time to stop listening to advice. Or go back to Dr. Spock's page 1 meta-advice: "TRUST YOURSELF. You know more than you think you do.... Don't take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don't be overawed by what the experts say. Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense. Bringing up your child won't be a complicated job if you take it easy and trust your own instincts...."

"We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated."

"We’re the smartest people, we’re the most loyal people, and you know what I’m happy about? Because I’ve been saying it for a long time. 46% were the Hispanics—46%, number one with Hispanics. I’m really happy about that.... We’re going to keep—as you know Gitmo, we’re keeping that open, and we’re going to load it up with bad dudes. We’re going to load it up with a lot of bad dudes out there. We’re going to have our borders nice and strong. We’re going to build the wall, you know that. We’re going to build the wall. And I have a lot of respect from Mexico and you just heard we won Hispanics. But let me tell you Mexico is going to pay for the wall, right? It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. They know it. I know it. We all know it.... We’re going to be the smart people. We’re not going to be the people that get pushed around all over the place. We’re going to be the smart people. You’re going to be proud of your president, and you’re going to be even prouder of your country, OK?"

Donald Trump, on winning Nevada. Full text. Full video:



I'm adding the "pride" tag. His theme is pride — self esteem. I think the message is: Even if you're poorly educated — especially if you are poorly educated — you are smart, and you are American, and you should feel great. All those other politicians look down on you, and they look down on the country. They insult it. They use the worst insults, like "racist." They'd have you believe that it's racist to say "Make America great again" and to want to preserve the benefits of America for Americans and to increase those selfishly guarded benefits. But it's not something to be ashamed of, it's being smart. And he's very smart, and we — you, with me leading the way — "are going to be the smart people."

"Gorgeous. Pretty. Stunning."/"Stunning? Yeah."/"You kill it. You're so pretty. So beautiful."

The extremely repetitious, endlessly affirming things teenagers comment on each others selfies on Instagram... analyzed in a segment of "This American Life" (transcript, as well as audio, at the link). Ira Glass is talking to 2 girls who are 13 and 14 and trying to figure out what he calls "dissecting and calibrating the minutiae of the social diagram."

The girls have "this thing they do all the time" and Ira has the thing that he does all the time, which is find what is surprising and profound inside whatever people are doing in this life.

This is super-affirming language that is applied equally to every girl, universally. You've heard of bullying online? This is the opposite.... So what's it about? Well, the answer to that question is complicated, and it involves going deep into an intricate language that's going on in the comments.... Then, of course, when you do post a comment about a picture, there's the whole politics of whether your friend is going to comment back to your comment. And subtle differences in the wording when they comment back could mean something, even though, to an outsider, the words basically look the same....

"Does this article say anything I couldn't just easily guess?"

I ask Meade after he sends me a link to a MarketWatch article titled "Why men are threatened by smart women/A new study suggests men might not want to date women who are smarter than them."

He says "no," but then explains that it connects to the themes that have been raised on the blog recently. He perceives the article as advice aimed at men, advice that resembles the kind of advice that's been aimed at women over the years. He's read the article. I haven't. So I was skeptical: "Is this really aimed at men?" At the headline level, it looks like more massage for the female mind, and I'm tempted to translate the title uncharitably to: Why men avoid you: You're smart! A new study suggests that the men who don't want you are not good enough for you.

Okay, now I've read the article. In the study, men were prepped for an encounter with a woman by being told that the woman scored higher than he did on an intelligence test. The men then met the woman and judged her to be relatively unattractive.

MarketWatch asked psychologists about how men can overcome bias (if they have it) against smart women.

This supports Meade's perception that it's advice for men. (It is, at least, if you get all the way to the last 3 paragraphs of a 13 paragraph article.) One psychologist tells men to focus on "appreciating" the woman and to "realize that this is an issue with your own self-esteem." Another psychologist says men could try to become more intelligent and to concentrate on other "areas of your self-concept."

This article was really aimed at...

Men, and it worked rather well.

Men, but men aren't going to listen to this.

Women, of course. Seeming to talk to men is an effective angle in talking to women.

Women, but it may lose them by failing to be all about them.

Both! Men who want to work on their flaws and women who want to help them.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"On the merits of the case, I would have identified with the [Renoir Sucks at Painting] people at a time... when I had left the first class of people who like Renoir and had yet to join the second."

Writes Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker. The 2 groups are:

1. "[T]he young, discovering that art might be something they understand. Renoir’s winsome subjects and effulgent hues jump in your lap like a friendly puppy. He’s easy."

2. "[T]hose who have stopped fortifying their self-esteem with pride in their sophistication."

Hmm. I don't know. I detect pride in #2. I think there's a post #2 position. But then, perhaps, there is, somewhere out there, #3.