Archive for April, 2006

Friday Random Ten: neither rhyme nor reason edition

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 7, 2006
in Friday Random Ten
. 0 Comments

No rhyme or reason to these; I love every one of these songs, most of which are mine rather than my wife’s.

1.  "December 1963 (Oh what a night)", Four Seasons
2.  "Past the Point of Rescue", Hal Ketchum  (Reminds me of my obsessive mid-20s)
3.  "The Letter", Macy Gray  (Cried the first time I heard it)
4.  "It’s a Shame", Third Day
5.  "Loving You Sunday Morning", Scorpions  (High school!)
6.  "Cry Love", John Hiatt
7.  "Shake You Down", Gregory Abbott  (Um, this is my wife’s)
8.  "I’ve Always Loved You", Third Day
9.  "Better Off in a Pine Box", Doug Stone  (Another good obsession song)
10.  "Happy and Satisfied", Toshi Reagon

Bonus Track:  "Breathe (2 AM)", Anna Nalick  (My new favorite song.  I’m a sixteen year old girl in my other life.)

Thinking about revival, ambivalence, and the Holy Both

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 6, 2006
in Christianity and Faith
. 13 Comments

I’ve got lots on my plate this month, but I’m thinking of getting to a couple of the events associated with the Azusa Street Centennial celebration later this month here in Los Angeles.  Tens of thousands of folks associated with various branches of the Pentecostal movement will be coming here to L.A. to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Azusa Street Revival, described in quick detail here.

In a very real sense, Los Angeles is the birthplace of both modern Pentecostalism and modern Fundamentalism.  The latter term goes back to the first decades of the 20th century, when the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University, from the acronym)  issued a series of pamphlets called "The Fundamentals" — a rallying cry for Christians worried by encroaching modernism and liberalism in the church.  (In case you were wondering, the five fundamentals are absolute inerrancy of Scripture; the divinity of Christ, substitutionary atonement; Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead; and His return at the Second Coming.  Depending on the day, I can sign on to two, three,or even four of these.)

When I think of my calling as a progressive pro-feminist, I remember that one of the things for which I have a real heart is reaching out to my more conservative Christian brothers and sisters.  And while my true fundamentalist friends are often hostile to the notion of women in leadership, I’m happy to say that most Pentecostals have a much more open-minded understanding of the issue.  The Assemblies of God and the Foursquare Church, two of the largest Pentecostal churches in the world, both believe women are called to teach and preach, just as they were in the early days of the Azusa Street Revival. 

Of course, I’m also interested in reaching out with the Gospel to feminists. One of the things that bugs me about my secular feminist friends is that they can’t make basic distinctions among conservative Christians.    They use terms like "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" as if they are interchangeable (they are anything but); they aren’t aware of the huge divisions between the strict Reformers in the Calvinist tradition and the exuberant Revivalists in the Azusa Street tradition.  I spend a lot of time explaining these sorts of nuances to folks who are mystified as to why John Ashcroft (a Pentecostal) embraces the idea of women in the pulpit while Jerry Falwell (a Southern Baptist) rejects the same notion.

Of course, I get equally piqued when my conservative Christian friends make sweeping generalizations about feminism.  There are as many feminisms as there are Protestant denominations in this country, with as many significant doctrinal differences as there are among contemporary American Christians.  My conservative Christian friends look at me with bewilderment when I talk about liberal feminism, radical feminism, and Marxist feminism — they like using the terms interchangeably.  To most of my conservative mates,  liberals are radicals are Marxists, and the differences don’t count. 

I spend a lot of time with two different groups, trying to explain the subtleties of one to another!  And man, the more I run back and forth between and betwixt, the more the fundies on both sides start to resemble each other. 

As I think about going to the big Azusa Street celebration (to be held at the Coliseum on April 29th), I’m filled with a huge outpouring of warmth for my Pentecostal friends.   Strict, dour Reform churches have held little appeal for me in my life.  But I love hanging with the charismatics!  I love worshipping with folks who believe that Jesus is right here, right now, in this space, and in the next few minutes if we all pray real hard, we’re going to have a miracle!  The politics of liberal Episcopalianism match my own — but the raw emotionalism and the passionate certainties of my spirit-filled friends in Pentecostalism touches my heart like nothing else.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, if I’m not careful I fall prey to a kind of paralyzing ambivalence about almost everything.  Too often, as the old saying goes, I worship the Either, the Or, and the Holy Both!  My mind runs so fast; my interests are so disparate; my friends so diverse.  I can’t stay with the Pentecostals for too long — their certainties enchant at first, and then terrify. But for an afternoon a few Saturdays from now, I think I’ll worship with a hundred thousand or so of them.

Sometimes, I need to lay down my pride, my breeding, my intellectual suspicions, my fears, and my doubts.  Sometimes, I need to raise my hands in the air and lose myself again in the kind of ecstatic worship that leaves me breathless and amazed and electrified.  I need to feel the Spirit again, the way I did in the early days after my conversion. I live so often in the midst of delicately balanced contradictions, and those contradictions will be there for me when the worship and praise are done.  But for a few hours, I need to go home to the place where the eithers and the ors and the ambiguities all disappear into the great big all-encompassing YES of Jesus and His sweet touch on my skin.

Come on out and join me at the Coliseum, April 29, 1-5PM.

Raising Malawi

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 6, 2006
in Faith
. 0 Comments

Here’s the text of a letter my wife and I are sending out.  If any readers have corporate contacts that can supply the sort of items listed her, we’d be grateful to know about it!

We are working with the Raising Malawi: Orphan Care Initiative that is part of the larger Spirituality for Kids Foundation, a registered 501(c)3 educational non-profit organization committed to providing at-risk children and their families tools for overcoming life’s challenges. This Youth Initiative was created to provide 32,000 orphaned children in Malawi with direct physical assistance. The South Central African Republic of Malawi has an estimated population of twelve million, of which one million are orphaned children battling HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, poverty, famine, and so much more. On June 5, 2006 we will inaugurate our SFKF Malawi Youth Initiative by touring the area in question and distributing thousands of "gifts" to orphaned children. To accomplish this task, we need a great deal of assistance. We only have one month to gather said "gifts" so that they can be shipped out in time to arrive in Malawi by June 5th. We are asking for in-kind donations of any of the following items:

Games, quantity 2,000 (Memory, Connect 4, Chess, Backgammon, etc.)   

Jump ropes, quantity 1,000

Toothbrushes and toothpaste, quantity 7,000

Children’s clothing, quantity 7,000 (any brand, any size, t-shirts, dresses, shorts, caps, coats)

Children’s shoes, quantity 7,000 (any size, any brand)

Soccer balls, quantity 1,000

Blankets, quantity 7,000

Toys/Dolls, quantity 3,500

Hair accessories, quantity 2,000 (such as barrettes or scrunchies)

Musical instruments, quantity 1,000

If you would be so kind as to forward this information to anyone that may be willing to assist, we would be most grateful. I would be happy to provide any additional information at your request, or at the request of any interested parties. Please know that we will also be providing full documentation as to the distribution of these gifts along with a detailed report of the success of our program. Thank you for your time and consideration.

If you have any leads or suggestions, email me here.

Men, women, homosociality and weight

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 6, 2006
in Body, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Relationships
. 66 Comments

There are so many wonderful carnivals in the blogosphere these days, I have a hard time keeping up. I did check out the latest Big Fat Carnival, dealing with a variety of blog posts on weight and culture.   As a result, I found this article at AskMen: 6 Ways to Tell Your Girlfriend to Lose Weight.

The six tips range from the asinine (buy her an outfit that’s too small for her and inspire her to try and fit into it) to the manipulative (tell her you have a new female trainer at the gym, and she’ll show up just to keep tabs on you.)  My first reaction, reading through them, was to make certain that it wasn’t satire.  I’m fairly confident it’s not.  I’ve run into many, many men who complain about the weight that their wives or girlfriends put on over the course of a relationship.  Some of these guys are crass about it, while others are clearly guilt-ridden.  One of my friends, "Joey", sought me out a few years ago on this very issue.  "I feel like such an ass", he said, "but my wife’s weight gain is bugging the hell out of me. I love her and don’t want to hurt her — how do I talk to her about it?"

Meloukhia has an impassioned response at her place, one that begins:

First let’s start with the premise that it’s your responsibility to tell your girlfriend to lose weight as though it’s some sort of moral obligation. Clearly, you wouldn’t want to be seen dating a fat girl, so as those pounds creep up, you’ve got to take decisive action…or dump her. And you wouldn’t want to dump her, now would you? This premise also assumes that it’s totally socially acceptable and ok to tell your partner to lose weight, albeit in oh so clever and devious ways. As a self respecting man, you’ve got to take a stance somewhere, right?

Though she doesn’t expand on it, Meloukhia is dead on right that much of the issue here revolves less around issues of sexual desire and health and more about men’s homosocial status.   And this reminds me of my reaction to Joey’s query.  Before discussing strategies for tactfully approaching our partners about their weight, men need to cop to their real reasons for wanting their girlfriends and wives to be slender.  Many men are reluctant to admit the degree to which their partner’s perceived attractiveness in the eyes of other men bolsters their confidence and their sense of status.  Put bluntly, having a trim girlfriend or wife boosts one’s standing among one’s male peers.  In this culture, men are taught from an early age that being with a "hot chick" conveys real and tangible benefits in the eyes of other guys.

For many American men raised to see women as a yardstick with which to measure their own masculinity quotient, a partner’s weight gain is going to be perceived as a very real threat to their own standing.   We all know men who get turned on when they realize that their wives or girlfriends are objects of desire for other men.   One key question we need to challenge men with: is your partner’s weight gain really turning you off, or are you worried about how other men are reacting to her as a result? Do you miss being able to use other men’s sexual desire as a crutch to stimulate your own libido?

Men are taught to find "hot" what other men find "hot."  The whole notion of a "trophy girlfriend" is based on the reality that a great many men use female desireability to establish status with other men.  And in our current cultural climate where thinness is idealized, a slender partner is almost always going to be worth more than a heavy one.  For men who have not yet extricated themselves from homosocial competition, their own self-esteem and sense of intra-male status may decline in direct proportion to their girlfriend’s weight gain.

Let me stress that this is absolutely not women’s problem to solve!  My goal is not to make women who gain weight feel bad; protecting a fragile male ego is not a woman’s responsibility.   The key thing men need to do is get honest about their own desire to use female desireability to establish status in the eyes of other men.   And here’s where pro-feminist men can do a terrific service by challenging one another and holding each other accountable for the ways in which we are tempted to use our wives and girlfriends as trophies.   When I confronted Joey with this, he admitted that he still found his wife attractive — but he was embarrassed by her when they went out with his friends.  He realized that he was angry and frustrated because he was scared of what others would think, even though he still responded sexually to his spouse.  Our conversation didn’t stop his anxiety entirely, but it helped him see it in a new perspective.

Some of my friends who know my wife will point out that she is a toned, muscled triathlete/boxer/cyclist, and this it’s easy for me to come down hard on men who are upset at their wives’ weight gain. But without getting into much detail, I’ve been married to women who were considerably heavier than the cultural ideal.  Though my past marriages ended for a variety of reasons, my wives’ weight gain was not ever one of them!  I was fortunate to learn early on to separate my own love and desire for a woman from how other men see her.   Whether or not other men think my wife is "hot " or not does not add to my longing for her, because she is not a tool that I use with which to compete with other guys!  Like all of us, my wife’s body goes through periodic changes.  Together we gain and lose weight (though not always in harmony).    I’m grateful that I’ve learned that real sexual desire in a committed relationship is not linked to these inevitable fluctuations.

I’m glad my wife works out. I love her strong, powerful physique.  But mostly, I like that she and I share the same passion for fitness.   We don’t work out merely to live up to some ideal, we work out because we get high on the endorphins and on the exuberance that exercise produces.   I’m glad we share that.  But if my wife were to stop her exercising and gain weight, that wouldn’t be about me.  If she gained weight thanks to depression or some other crisis, I would of course be gravely concerned — not with the weight gain but with what precipitated it.   But while we each own each other’s body in the sense that Paul discusses ownership in 1 Corinthians, neither of us gets to demand that that body look or feel a certain way.  And both of us, I’m fairly confident, are able to separate our very real physical delight in each other from the way that others perceive us. 

In the end, our bodies will age and weaken  — nature is nature, and perfection will slip further and further from our grasp, just as it does for everyone.  If our longing for each other is built on the way in which our bodies match a cultural ideal, than our love is not worthy of that name.

Thursday Short Poem: Berryman’s “Keep Your Eyes Open”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 6, 2006
in Poetry
. 4 Comments

I have a category of poets called "Poets I Normally Don’t Like Who Have One Good Poem I Love".  Sylvia Plath is in it for "Lady Lazarus", and so too is John Berryman for this one.  It’s a definite "read-out-louder", and the structure infuriates and seduces and amuses all at once.  This poem — and only this poem of his — works for me.

Keep Your Eyes Open When You Kiss

Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when
You kiss. All silly time else, close them to;
Unsleeping, I implore you (dear) pursue
In darkness me, as I do you again
Instantly we part .. only me both then
And when your fingers fall, let there be two
Only, ‘in that dream-kingdom’: I would have you
Me alone recognize your citizen.

Before who wanted eyes, making love, so?
I do now. However we are driven and hide,
What state we keep all other states condemn,
We see ourselves, we watch the solemn glow
Of empty courts we kiss in .. Open wide!
You do, you do, and I look into them.

A long post about white privilege

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 5, 2006
in Class, Ethnicity and Race
. 31 Comments

I was home last night in time to watch the exciting end of the women’s basketball national championship game.   While I have never been a fan of Duke’s men’s basketball team, I’ve always liked Gail Goestenkors, the Blue Devils’ women’s coach.  I like her intensity and her passion, and I am chagrined that she can’t seem to "win the big one."  (Then again, folks used to say the same things about Mack Brown in football and Roy Williams in men’s basketball, and they finally broke through.)   Duke’s 6′7" center Alison Bales was my favorite player in the tournament this year, and in my heart, succeeded in replacing my idol from last season, Liberty’s Katie Feenstra.  (No, don’t get all analytical on me and discuss my admiration for very tall, muscular women who can dominate in the paint.)  In 2007, my favorite will probably be the scarily good Courtney Paris, who I thought had a chance to lead Oklahoma all the way this year.

Anyhow, I want to return — more seriously this time — to the subject of race.  Last Friday, I posted this rather flippant (but partly sincere) ode to my WASP upbringing.  In the comments section, Aldahlia reposted some provocative questions (written originally by Lauren from Feministe) for those of us who acknowledge our whiteness:

1. what does it mean to be white? what does it mean to be White?
2. how has whiteness affected your worldview?
3. how has whiteness affected your educational experience?
4. how has whiteness affected your experience with authority?
5. how has whiteness affected your experiences with people of other races and ethnicities?

Asking the first question with and without "white" in capital letters is a good and provocative start. I’ve understood the lower case "white" to refer to external perceptions about my race and heritage.  Folks look at me, and they see a man who is, unquestionably, white.  They may not be able to tell I have a mix of English, German, Jewish, Scots-Irish, and Welsh ancestry, but my facial features instantly identify me as looking like the same sort of folks who traditionally have power in this country.

I wrote about some of the specifics of my WASPiness last week.  Yes, class and geographic location played a role in my upbringing.  I have cousins in South Carolina and Virginia who share my ethnic background, but grew up with slightly different cultural signifiers than I did.  (For one thing, in my California family, the first alcoholic drink any of us ever have is white wine; for my southern relatives, it’s bourbon or Irish whiskey.)  But when folks look at me on the street, they can’t tell whether I was raised in Carmel or in a trailer park; whether my parents were professors or plumbers.  What they can tell is that I’m a white man, and that gives me certain privileges.

When I was in college, all of my advisors looked like me.   With the exception of the Chicano Studies courses I took with Norma Alarcon and Cherrie Moraga, every single professor I had as an undergrad or a grad student was European or European-American.   In grad school, I could easily have passed as the son of most of my faculty advisors, all of whom were white men (with the exception of the wonderful Marilyn McCord Adams, about whom I must post soon).  Thus it wasn’t hard for me to imagine myself becoming just like these men and women someday — and it wasn’t hard for them to see me as a younger version of themselves.  Did that have an effect on my confidence?  Hell yeah.

When I walked around the Berkeley campus (or the UCLA campus, or anywhere else), no one ever looked at me with a querying "what are you doing here?"  People who shared my sex and my skin color founded these universities and run them to this day. I felt an absolute and unerring sense of entitlement whenever I walked through the quads or under Sather Gate. It wasn’t arrogance, but rather a kind of confidence that came from always being seen as someone who "belonged".  My friends of color could not report the same set of experiences!

In countless ways, my white skin (as well as my sex and my class background) have opened doors for me.  In my life, I’ve been insecure about many things (my neurosis about working out and staying trim gets well-documented ’round here).  But I’ve never, ever, doubted that I belonged anywhere that I went.  I’ve had many "encounters" with law enforcement over the years, ranging from speeding tickets to getting 5150ed a few times in my late adolescence and twenties.  Even when my own behavior was self-destructive and bizarre, even when I needed handcuffs, I was always, always, always, called "sir."  (The last time I drank, many years ago, I remember being briefly handcuffed by a young deputy.  I slurred something along the lines of "I’m not gonna hurt you, buddy"; he laughed and said with remarkable and memorable gentleness, "Sir, we just don’t want you to hurt yourself any more.")  I’ve had black and Latino friends whose self-destructive behavior approximated my own — and they report very different stories of often violent (or at the least, rude) treatment at the hands of the police.

When I walk into a store in a nice neighborhood, even if I’m in jeans and a t-shirt, clerks ask "May I help you, sir?"  I don’t have security guards following me around, wondering if I’m going to shoplift.  When I walk down the street at night, women don’t cross over to the other side to avoid me.  Is all of this because I’m such a swell guy?  Of course not.  I’m a reasonably clean-cut white man, and my skin color opens doors and puts people at ease without my having to say a word.  That’s unearned privilege.

I’m not ashamed of being white.  I would not renounce either my skin color or my background, even if I could.  (Though I wish I wasn’t as prone to skin cancer as I am!)  As I wrote last Friday, I love my family and my heritage very much.  I love the particular traditions and rituals that I associate with growing up the way I did.  I have no patience with those who say that in order to be effective allies to people of color, whites have to entirely renounce their whiteness.  But while I won’t apologize for my upbringing, I can take positive action to renounce my privilege.  There’s a huge difference between being ashamed of one’s family or skin color (which I’m not) and working actively to end one’s own unmerited advantages.

The most effective thing white folks can do, I think, is admit that privilege actually exists.  I have no idea how many doors opened for me because of what I look like, and because of my family background.  When I was first hired at PCC, several people actually said to me "You’re lucky to have gotten that job, Hugo!  I’m surprised they didn’t hire someone of color using affirmative action.  At least you know you got this on your own merits!"  On my own merits?  Puhleeze!  I looked like two-thirds of my hiring committee!  I looked like the professors who had mentored me and looked out for me!  I went to the same university that my parents, grandparents, and great-grandfathers did!  Any unearned advantage conferred by affirmative action pales in comparison to those unmerited privileges bestowed upon me by my appearance and my background!  Of course, I was also hired for my teaching skills and my academic preparation.  My color and class would not, in and of themselves, have canceled out actual incompetence.  But they may well have tipped the scales in my favor when I was given this job I love a dozen years or so ago.

I’ll say it again: I’m not ashamed of my ancestors, my family, or my skin color.  But I don’t deny that these things gave me advantages I didn’t earn.  What whites need to do is stop perpetuating the myth that our personal successes are entirely unaffected by these privileges.  Whenever possible, we need to cop to the reality of these unearned benefits.  We need to embrace programs that seek to level the playing field (such as affirmative action) without complaint or bitterness.  And we need to stop insisting that all of our achievements were based solely on the content of our character, and not also in part on the color of our skin.

Nothing today…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 4, 2006
in Stuff
. 0 Comments

No serious post today — I’m still thinking about the issues of body image and a double standard I raised in my most recent posts below.  Besides, I’ve got letters of rec to write and midterms to design and plans for Spring Break to firm up.  Something more thoughtful tomorrow, I promise.  In the meantime, thanks for all the good and challenging comments.  And click on some of the new additions to my blogroll!

A very candid note about contradictions, sexuality, and self-discipline

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 3, 2006
in Body, Men and Masculinity and Vanity
. 31 Comments

Catty writes to say that she now has 100 letters of support for Jane Doe, the survivor in the infamous Orange County Gang Rape case.  Get caught up on the case here, and then send your letters of support to ihiroe@yahoo.com

At Feministe, Piny and Jill both have terrific posts up about eating disorders.  And I’m in the process of realizing that this subject still brings up a great many contradictions for me.   As Sophonisba pointed out in the comments below my post on masturbation last week, I sometimes struggle with a double standard when it comes to pleasure and self-control.   When it comes to both food and sex, I am positively passionate in my conviction that women have a "right to pleasure".   Whether that pleasure comes from eating or masturbation, where women are concerned, my reflexive feminism leads me to advocate guilt-free self-indulgence.  (Though not, of course, compulsive or dangerous behavior).

But I tend to treat men, and particularly myself, quite differently.   On the same blog where I compose defenses of female masturbation, I make it clear that I also embrace the virtues of radical self-restraint in my own life.  In a sense, as Sophonisba pointed out, I’m guilty of a profoundly sexist framing of sexuality: even after all this time, I tend to see male sexuality (including my own) as dangerous and powerful while seeing female sexuality as less threatening.  The implication, perhaps, is that I don’t really see the full capacity of female sexuality.  The "men are dangerous and must control themselves" while "women’s sexuality ought to be freely indulged" dichotomy can’t stand for long, at least not if I want to be a coherent and thoughtful voice in the classroom or the blogosphere.

I’m about to delight some of my men’s rights advocate critics by agreeing that I do have an unfortunate double standard: too often, I see male experience through the prism of my own life narrative.  I’ve seen how my own misused sexuality caused tremendous harm to a great many people for a great many years; three wrecked marriages and a lot of other associated messes were linked to my own recklessness.  I’ve always had a keen sense of my own agency in all of this; I’ve never once felt (even in three divorces) like a "victim" of a woman.   With my exes — and with too many other women in my family and elsewhere — I tend to construct a narrative in which I am the destructive antagonist and they are the kind and gentle victims of my bad (male) behavior.  So my pro-feminist paeans to male responsibility are heavily tied up with pep talks directed at myself!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my belief in radical sexual restraint (no masturbation, no fantasy, all one’s energy poured into one’s spouse) combines with my intense focus on mastering my own body.   All of the running, the boxing,  the Pilates, the careful attention to diet — all of that brings me great pleasure.  But the pleasure is the pleasure of self-denial, of discipline, of desires conquered.  In my own inner narrative, my own fat is associated with sexual self-indulgence and lack of self-control.  (Other people’s fat, on the other hand, is perfectly okay.  Double standard, big-time).  Intense exercise produces a toned body, and that toned body is an outer manifestation of what I hope is my inner effort to live a life of restriction and sharing.  In order to be of greatest use to others, in order to more fully follow Christ, I discipline my flesh through a variety of forms of self-denial and exertion.

So there’s a big fat (sorry) disconnect between the way I live my life (where I want to approximate a Spartan, or at least a moderate ascetic) and the life I advocate to my students, particularly my female ones.  "Eat without guilt!", I say; "enjoy your body as God’s gift to you."  Knowing that so many of my students come from backgrounds where they’ve never experienced pleasure without guilt, where eating to satiety and sexual exploration are both shamed, I am eager to encourage them to break free of their cultural inhibitions and live a little more selfishly.   But I don’t seem as troubled by the potential consequences of female self-indulgence and exploration as I do by my own — or any other man.   

Perhaps that’s because I still see men as more powerful, more potentially dangerous, and thus more in need of a message of self-control.  At times, I’m overreacting to a double standard which demands self-discipline of women and encourages male irresponsibility.  And as any reader of this blog knows, I tend to filter most things through my own experience — and that leads me both to great insights and to stunning contradictions.

The fact is, the more I grow in my relationship with Christ the more I find myself giving up and surrendering.  The more I work to restrict my impulses, the more I work to share boldly and put others first, the more I push myself physically and spiritually, the happier I am.  Self-denial has been a key factor in helping me to become a loving, joy-filled man.  But I don’t share that story much with either my students or my teenagers.

Most bloggers don’t blog their doubts the way I seem to.  Are you all just much more certain than I am, or do you process through your doubts in private before posting?   Part of me thinks that a man who has been teaching for this long, with this much professional and personal experience, ought to have more certainties.   He ought to be able to do a better job of separating his own personal struggles from his public work.  Rest assured, I don’t share much about myself in the classroom; I am much more committed to balance and nuance in my courses than I am here on this blog.  But here I can wrestle out loud with those areas of my life where I still fall short.  And that’s what I’m doing here.

Folks, feel free to respond and challenge me further.  Sophonisba sent me on quite a journey in the past week with one simple comment!  I have more to say on this subject, but that will need to wait for another post.

Pro-ana websites and abs on the floor

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 3, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena, Body, Eating disorders, Vanity, Youth and Youth ministry
. 13 Comments

Thanks to Jill at Feministe, I read this article in yesterday’s New York Times: Before Spring Break, the Anorexia Challenge.

I REALLY gotta start losing weight before spring break," a 15-year-old from Long Island wrote in her blog on Xanga.com, a social networking site. "Basically today I went 24 hours without food and then I ate green beans and a little baked ziti. Frankly I’m proud of myself, not to mention the 100 situps on the yoga ball and the 100 I’ll do before sleep … Yey for me."

For most students spring break represents the promise of a beer-soaked respite from Northern cold and midterm stress, a time to let go and revive. But for a subculture of students with eating disorders, this annual weeklong bacchanalia, unfolding across Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean during March and April, represents the summit of deprivation and self-denial.

Though not widely discussed — sufferers of eating disorders often spend years in denial about their condition, and therapists treating them can rarely isolate any single reason for these complex psychological syndromes — those who treat eating disorders say spring break is one of the most dangerous times of the year for young women struggling with their weight and eating.

The article discusses the huge number of pro-anorexia ("pro-ana") sites now flourishing on the Internet, including many that offer encouragment and even contests to help readers lose weight and practice ever more extreme restriction and restraint.  As anyone who has worked with eating disorders will tell you, anorexia is a competitive disease — and while girls a decade ago competed against their classmates and nearby peers, the ‘net allows comparisons to go global (or at least national.)  A 15 year-old in Pittsburgh can offer her extreme diet tips to her cyber buddy in Portland, and her cyber buddy can triumphantly list the ways in which she has "topped that."  The potential for dangerous escalation is obvious.

From a feminist standpoint, it’s easy to point out how destructive it is for young women to try to live up to an impossible media ideal.  We can also point out — feminists usually do — that anorectic behavior is sometimes about attaining a perfect body and more about an extreme form of social protest. 

Young women who feel profoundly disempowered by their culture and their families and their peers find a deep sense of control and pride through compulsive exercise and caloric restriction.   After all, if you can control nothing else, you can usually control what goes in your mouth!  By battling hunger pangs and conquering the basic desire to eat, a young person with an eating disorder can quietly but powerfully live out a "heroic" life.  If heroism is about obstacles overcome and about dragons slain, what more visceral way to create a heroic life narrative than to practice radical self-denial?   While women and men in centuries past might have sought religious ecstasy through fasting, young women (and some young men) today can pursue a cultural ideal of physical perfection as well a psychological sense of power and control.

As a youth leader, I have to deal with this in a practical way.  This past weekend, as I mentioned in my first post today, we did a lot of eating on our retreat.   At one point on Saturday afternoon, while we were taking a break from our activities, a discussion broke out among a few of the girls about their tummies.  Like the young women mentioned in the Times article, several of our girls were keenly aware of the approach of swimsuit season.  Though we were bundled in comfy sweats, there was a brief period of lifting of shirts to expose bellies and discuss strategies for flattening and firming.  (Mind you, not much flesh was exposed, and my shirt stayed in place.)  At one point, two of the girls got on the floor and started doing ab exercises.  Knowing that I work out, one of them asked me, "Hugo, can you show us an exercise to do?"

Not thinking it through, I got down on the carpet and began to show them one very simple, safe, basic, Pilates exercise.  It was nothing that could be dangerous to them — really just a simple movement (combined with correct breathing) that is designed to work the lower abs.  As the girls were pointing out, lower abs are the hardest part of the midsection to train — and Pilates really does teach you to work that part of the body safely and efficiently.  So we did a few reps of very simple abs, and I gave some generalized advice.  (Yes, my All Saints friends, I did mention six ways to Sunday that though I have a lot of experience, I am not a certified instructor, and I made sure that the only exercises I mentioned were the very basic and safe ones.  Some routines in mat Pilates, done without training and supervision, can be dangerous.  I didn’t even mention those, but did recommend Pilates for core training.)

Today, reading the Times article that Jill mentioned, I began to wonder if I might have handled the situation in a better way on Saturday.  I’ve led lots of workshops for the kids on eating disorders, but that was not our focus this weekend.  Still, I could have started some discussion about the pressures young people (especially but not exclusively girls) feel to have the perfect "bikini-ready" body for summer.  Rather than question the need for perfect abs, however, I reinforced that desire.  I made it clear that even at more than twice their age, I shared their interest in pursuing an ideal, and showed them (safely and briefly) one way in which I pursue my own goal of a rock-hard core.  Was I being helpful, or was I merely affirming an unhealthy way of thinking about the importance of the body?  I mean, they were going to "do abs" anwyay — wasn’t it better to show them a safer and more effective method for reaching the "target" area?  Or should I have re-directed the discussion?

On a related note, one of the other volunteers (who is also a runner) and I are planning to lead a marathon training program next year for All Saints youth and staff, modeled on the very successful "Students Run LA" program associated with our city’s marathon.  We’ll start in the fall, with a goal of helping as many kids as possible train to run the marathon — and perhaps raise some funds for worthy charities in the process.  (We’ll call it, "All Saints Runs LA" or maybe "Saints Run LA"").   As someone who loves running and loves to spread the gospel of running, I’m eager to do this.  But thinking about my own motives and this past weekend, I realize I will have to be very careful in terms of how I approach this project.  The goal must not be on attaining an ideal body, but rather on setting goals and accomplishing them.  We must be especially careful to lead this program in a way that encourages a love for physical exertion while not reinforcing self-loathing.  That will be a vital needle to thread.

Monday notes, and a reflection about youth ministry and ego

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 3, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena and Youth ministry
. 2 Comments

First off, a dozen new pictures of Matilde in this photo album.  Lots of good action shots; this one is our favorite.

I note that UCLA — my graduate school alma mater — plays for the national championship in basketball tonight.  Here’s what makes me feel old: in 1995, the Bruins won their last national title when I was in my second year of teaching here at Pasadena City College. I had a Monday night class back then, and thus had to listen to the radio during a break to catch the score.  Tonight, I’ll be able to go online during that same break period to get an update — but once again, eleven years later, I’ll miss the entire game with teaching responsibilities.  My Trojan wife has agreed to root for the Bruins tonight (thanks to my willingness to cheer on USC in the Rose Bowl three months ago.)  We both agree that Los Angeles is in its right state when USC dominates in football, and their cross-town rivals on the basketball court.

I’m home, a bit bleary-eyed, from another confirmation class retreat in the San Bernardino mountains.  Here’s my post from last year about the 2005 retreat, and the "creed-writing" process; most of what I said then applies to this past weekend as well.

Having been in the youth ministry game for a number of years, I’ve begun to see some real changes in my approach to teenagers.  When I was first doing this work seven years ago, I was far more anxious.  There’s something about doing youth ministry that can bring back all of one’s own adolescent anxieties!  My first thought, as I’ve written before, was that I wasn’t "cool enough" to work with teens. I feared being exposed as a fraud — or worse, in a sense, as a "geek."   In my nightmares, I saw the faces of All Saints teens (particularly the "popular" ones) transposing with the faces of the poised and the beautiful kids I knew in high school — the ones I both idolized and feared.  But a good friend told me, "Hugo, they’re much more worried about what you think of them than what they think of you"; those words gave me the courage to begin my career as a volunteer senior high school youth leader.

What I love about working as a youth minister is that it does, in a very real way, allow me to stay in touch with adolescent wildness and adolescent intensity.  I may be nearly 39, but teenage emotions (with all their grandiosity, volatility, sentimentality, and vulnerability) are instantly familiar to me.  That doesn’t mean, mind you, that I think of myself as an over-grown teenager! The kids in this year’s confirmation class were mostly born in 1990 and 1991 — after I was already married for the first time.  With each passing year, the age of the kids stays the same (they are perennially 14-16); Hugo gets older.  But as I get older and softer and (one hopes) wiser, I’m happy to say that I don’t ever forget just how intense and pure and overwhelming it can be to be in the throes of mid-adolescence.

The easiest part about youth ministry is loving the kids.  The hardest part — and I suspect most who do what I do professionally or avocationally would agree — is the feeling of powerlessness one often gets in the face of great pain.  So many of our kids are hurting so much! Some of their woundedness comes from family trouble; some of it is a result of their own poor choices; some of it is a result of their own unique brain chemistry.  Though I’ve written before that I believe that the most vital thing we do in youth group is love, I’m also keenly aware that my love is not the same as God’s love.  I can’t rescue troubled and unhappy kids, though I can reassure them and hug them and tell them I do care.  But in the end, the hardest thing I have to do is to step back and point — point the kids towards God, and ask them to take the steps they need to take towards Him.

Teenagers, like all of us but only more so, are inclined to confuse the messenger with the message.  I’ve learned the hard way that it is all too easy for me to seek validation from my high schoolers by trying to make myself emotionally indispensable.  I want them to love the messenger too, of course — but not at the expense of the message itself.   My intentions were always, at least on the surface, very noble: "I want to be there for my kids!", I would regularly proclaim.  Yet at times in my first couple of years as a youth leader, I was too quick to "rescue", to play the role of "white knight" I so love to play. Lordy, I always have to be on guard against the impetuous demands of my own ego! Yes, I want the kids to know I love them; yes, I love that so many of them love me back.  But my job is not to draw kids to myself, my job is to point them and nudge them towards a relationship with God.  Though I’ve dried a lot of tears and heard a lot of stories, in and of myself I have no capacity to transform the lives of these young people about whom I care so much.   In partnership with God, they must become agents of their own transformation.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I’ve seen some of my former high school youth go on to graduate school. I’ve been blessed to see tremendous growth in them — and, I’m pleased to say, in me as well.  I’ve been learning, to paraphrase the St. Francis prayer, that I am called to be an "instrument of His peace" — but I am not the source of that peace.  It’s a distinction I am happier to say gets easier to make each passing year, even as my compassion and love for "my kids" grows and grows.

I got a lot of hugging in this weekend. I also got in a lot of junk food, and will need to be very mindful about my eating in the days to come.