From: rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari)
Subject: Re: equality of despair (was: Why are many low-income women fat? (was Re: Separate but Equal?)
Summary: One smart women on alt.feminism--still waiting for number two.
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 01:40:44 GMT

In article <BzqFqr.8ty@news.cso.uiuc.edu> levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine) writes:
>rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari) writes:
	[katchung--culture is a beauty pusher deleted]
>>        I can't agree because we obviously define appropriate
>>        differently.  The culture defines "appropriate" and thus
>>        the *media* might be said to overly encourage
>>        a fixation on beauty, but a *culture* cannot do such a thing.

>I said that such ideas are overly encouraged in this culture. The media
>is not the whole culture, but it is certainly a part of this culture.
>But this is just semantic. To address your main point, I do not think
>the editors of Redbook would include this garbage if they thought no one
>read it, or was influenced by it.


	It has been studied and claimed  a number of times that advertisements 
	don't do much good.  People who buy soda, for instance, buy 
	what is on sale -- coke or pepsi.  Brand name, despite all the
	pushing (Paula Abdul and Cindy C(something--escapes me at the
	moment) and all the computer-generated ads in the world) is
	meaningless among the big two--it's price that counts.

	An ad, primarily, familiarizes the public with your product.
	If someone is not already going to buy something, all of the
	adsin the world wont make a whit of difference.

	Marketing and advertising don't do as much as some people
	like to think.  No amount of marketing will sell a product 
	to responsible people.  It is only the irresponsible, or the
	stupid, who get completely taken in by advertising.  (i;.e.
	"New diet pills lose 50 lbs in thirty days!"  "New magic
	sphere tells the future, past and answers questions about love!"
	"There are lots ofbeautiful women like me waiting to talk 
	to you at 1-900xxxxx") 


>>        I think that the source of most divorces is basic incompatibility--
>>        most divorces happen too early on to be the result of a change in
>>        looks, simply because it takes >5 years (at least) for any really
>>        significant change (other than, say, rapid weight gain, crippling
>>        injury, whatever).  
>
>You may be right, that change in appearance most affects later divorces,
>not the early on ones. But it does affect the later divorces. And,
>specifically, I think that much too many older women, in this
>culture, live in fear that their husbands are going to dump them!


	I'm disappointed, then.  Any marriage that lasts more than
	5 or 6 years that's based wholly on physical appearance, 
	to me, seems a little pathetic.  (Whoops, I'm going to get
	flamed for calling women pathetic).  I would venture to
	suggest that marriages after that amount of time that break up
	for such reasons are really breaking up for much deeper reasons--
	and the teller is just altering it to avoid the real, painful
	reason (loss of interest in sex, mate had an affair, alcoholism,
	whatever).  

	In any case, the number of divorces among the >5 year crowd is
	pretty darn small next to the extreme numbers we see in the <5 yeatr
	crowd.  


>Don't believe me on this; believe Gerry Trudeau, who has addressed the
>subject in his Doonesbury comic strips.


	With all due respect to Doonesbury, GT is not particularly 
	objective.  (I love his anti-smoking tirades, though, because
	I can't stand smokers) 


>>        To contrast this:  In classes that serious people take, that
>>        is, classes other than psychology, sociology, WMST, 
>>        and the other voodoo "I really shouldn't be in college
>>        anyway so I'm taking emotion stuff" classes--women
>>        that I've met have been some of the most serious and
>>        dedicated students out there.  Many of the hardest workers
>>        have been women.  This is not my complaint--my complaint
>>        is their approach is both time wasting and ineffective.  They
>>        have the dedication, just not (from my point of view) the
>>        willingness to commit/hard-hittingness necessary to do
>>        the job right.
>I am not a voodoo teacher! You should wash your mouth out with soap!
>I am a graduate student in mathematics, and I teach calculus!


	By definition you're not a voodoo teacher--WMST, psyc, socy 
	and (sometimes) american studies are voodoo subjects.  When
	I was in socy, I kept waiting for out chicken-delipping
	class, 'cause whatever it was they thought they were doing, it
	sure wasn't science.  It wasn't even logic, or accurate data
	collection.  Since WMST and American studies are just watered
	down socy, they're even worse.  

	As for psyc, it always struck me that a number of people were 
	taking it because they were defective and/or had some delusion 
	that since they were empathic they would make good counselors 
	(and a lot of money).  the next biggest segment was the bunch
	that were taking it so that they could learn to better manipulate
	their fellows (mostly because there were utterly inept at it) 
	and the smallest proportion were serious students who had
	genuine interest in cognition.

	So you're a stereotype exception--math, huh?  Well, so am I:
	I can't do math to save my life.  Languages, tho...


>(By the way, at least as many of the *men* in my classes, are not
>serious. 

	True.  

>But it particularly breaks my heart when the women are
>not. 


	Well, you have the benefit of hindsight.  I, myself, actually
	find it rather comforting that a lot of my classmates aren't
	serious--to me it means that I'll have an easier time finding
	a job--or at least make more.


>This is *not* an intellectual reaction, or a serious suggestion
>of policy. This is an *emotional* reaction.) 


	Nothing inherently wrong with an emotional reaction
	as long as it doesn't cover up more important issues:
	The problem isn't that young women don't take their
	future seriously, the problem is that yound people 
	don't take their future seriously.



>>        Good thing we voted for a democratic president to expand
>>        benefits, huh.
> 
>At least he is not forcing these individuals to continue pregnancies,
>against their will.


	Neither was Bush.  

	(He may have tried, but, unless you believe NOW, it was
	never really in "dire risk")



	[delete bucket scraping]


>>        <read: this doesn't change the fact that it's depressing,
>>        but it does seem to say that there isn't much that can
>>        be done to correct the situation any more than you can
>>        teach people to be purely logical or whatever>
>
>These eating disorders were much less common in the past; and therefore


	*eating* was much less common in the past.


>they may be less common in the future.


	Not unless we switch to either flavorless or calorie-less
	foods.  Most people just cannot control their eating--
	50k years of evolution (uh-oh, mentioned darwinism) 
	pretty much ensured the present situation.

	Bolemia was widely practiced in two well known 
	"high cultures" of the past--how many people wouldn't
	guess that others were practiced elsewhere?  

	Japanese women used to eat arsenic and starve themselves
	to look attractive.  Eating disorders aren't all that there
	is to the compulsive need to be attractive--abuse of the
	body happens (-ed) all over (all the time).

	Don't see too many women shooting up with 'roids, but only
	about 1/2 of the men on them are doing it for sports.



>I think that at 43 I'm a little more aware how social conditions can
>change; how they can change much more quickly than expected, and
>in ways that cannot possibly be foreseen. I suspect *any* social
>injustice can be minimized, though none can be eliminated entirely. 


	Perhaps.  We all have dreams of utopia.  And different
	paths to them.  The problem is, most of the paths (socialism,.
	communism, eco-fanaticism, mono-ethnicism, multi-culturalism)
	have been tried before and failed miserably--leaving the 
	world with the single most innovative and fair system 
	humanity has seen on a wide scale.  Any improvements should
	look away from the old and to something new (equality through
	technology is one thought).  

	Most people don'tunderstand this.  You can keep trying to
	get the yolk out without breaking the shell, but that doesn't
	mean you'll pull it off.

-- 
       "If you can't eat sand, why the hell are you living in a desert?"
     Equality is a delusion, suffering is a fairy tale and God is a fantasy.
                 Buy American as if your job depended on it.
       Blaming society for inequality is like blaming the sky for rain.
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