Archive for the 'Clothing and Fashion' Category

The male teacher’s body and propriety

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2005
in Body, Clothing and Fashion, Men and Masculinity, Modesty, Pasadena City College, Teaching and Vanity
. 71 Comments

Four new Matilde pictures are in her photo album. 

My post below on propriety and display has me thinking.  More specifically, I’m thinking about a question Tyler had in a comment on Jenell’s blog yesterday:

On the same note I was wondering your opinion on what us men do to
distract the body as well? by that I mean is there something similar,
but gender opposite, that men do to affect men and women from genuine
worship?

My post below was focused entirely on asking men to take ownership of their responses to sexually attractive women and revealing dress.  But though I briefly acknowledged that women are also visual creatures, I didn’t address the flip side, largely because it doesn’t immediately seem to be as consequential a problem.  But it’s worth thinking about. 

Men, in general, underestimate how often women do "look."   We like to assume that women aren’t visual creatures,largely because if we acknowledged just how visual women are, it might make us fellows feel decidedly insecure.  I am not suggesting that all women are equally visual, or that they are visual in the same way as their brothers.  But women do look, they do lust, and presumably, they can get distracted.  Beyond those general remarks, I’m not going to dare and presume any more about my sisters’ libidos.  Perhaps in the comments section below, a few women will volunteer some reflections on how women’s "visual sexuality" is similar to and different from men’s.

I’m going to put myself at tremendous risk of embarrassment here.  (What else is new?)  Judging from my evaluations and "rate my professor" reviews and other remarks, I acknowledge that for whatever reason, I am often regarded as a "hot" professor.  I’m not suggesting that I am magnificently handsome, just that I tend to get more such responses than many of my colleagues.    Presumably, this will begin to be less noticeable as I age.  It certainly has been more embarrassing than flattering.

It’s difficult to write this without first overcoming the fear of
appearing narcissistic!  But all of this talk about women’s bodies and
women’s dress means that it is right and proper that we focus on how
men’s bodies and dress affect those around them.

I know that when we teach, we bring our whole selves into the classroom.  I bring my maleness in, a point I am quick to acknowledge in my gender studies classes.  I bring in my whiteness, I bring in my Christian faith, I bring in many components of my culture and background.  (Of  course, I am always struggling towards that elusive objectivity!)  I also, clearly, bring in my body.   But what I try very hard NOT to bring is sexuality!  All of us who teach (or preach) do our public work as embodied beings.  It is natural that others will consider our bodies just as they consider our words. Sometimes, how our bodies appear may even enhance our words — or distract from our message. 

I don’t dress up much for class.  The tie makes a brief appearance the first week and then disappears.  As the semester wears on, I head quickly for the realm of jeans and t-shirts.  I don’t wear my old holey jeans, of course.   And though my jeans are made to fit me (I loathe the baggy look), I am careful not to wear anything absurdly tight that might be construed as flagrantly sexual.  I want to look good because I want to send the message that I take what I am doing seriously enough to be presentable.  But I am aware that like all human beings, I have that unfortunate desire for validation!   I have to be very careful not to allow that desire to affect my clothing choices.   Praise and validation should be a one-way street in the classroom — it’s not their job to respond to my embodied self.  The classroom will be safest when the teacher’s body is acknowledged but does not constitute a distraction.

As I’ve written before, I no longer buy leather belts or shoes.  I still have some old leather belts and shoes I wear to class. When I was younger, I went through a very heavy "designer" phase.  I had my Ralph Lauren year, my Donna Karan year, my Kenneth Cole year, and — naturally — my Hugo Boss year.  (I was single and living in a small apartment and not yet in tithing mode.)  I stopped spending so much on clothes a few years ago for three reasons.  One was financial: as I bought a home and began tithing, my discretionary income for expensive clothes dropped.  Two, I didn’t want to arouse envy — labels have a way of making other folks uncomfortable, and I didn’t consider that I could do that in good conscience.  Three, some of my favorite clothing styles tended to be quite tight and relatively revealing (leading to much speculation about my sexual orientation).  I realized that in the classroom, that distraction was not helpful.

I still care about clothes.  I care a lot, frankly, about the health and fitness (and yes, the appearance) of my body.  I don’t work out six days a week on trail and treadmill, bike and track and weight rack just for my own well-being!   But what I really care about is not using my body to make others uncomfortable.  I don’t want my clothes and my flesh to arouse others, I don’t want them to scare others, I don’t want them to inspire economic envy, and I don’t want them to distract others.  There’s only so much I can do, of course.  As I stressed below, we are all ultimately responsible for our own reactions to others’ bodies.  But we can take reasonable steps to make certain that we don’t cause others to stumble in lust or fear or envy, and I am trying to take those steps today.

 

Monday afternoon odds and ends

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 8, 2004
in All Saints Pasadena, Athletics and Fitness, Chinchillas, Clothing and Fashion and Links
. 4 Comments

Some random Monday notes:

…My fiancee is out of town for the week, travelling abroad with a friend.   Matilde the chinchilla and I both miss her very much.  This morning, while I had Matty out for her "morning time" in the bedroom (I read from my psalter and the LA Times), she kept standing on her hind legs by the door, looking quizzically at the handle, waiting for her "mom" to walk through.  Fortunately, my beloved phoned just before I put Matilde back in her cage, and our girl was able to listen to her mother’s voice for a moment.  She indicated her excitement by nibbling the antenna on the cordless handset.

…In other Matilde news, we have taken to giving her a tablespoon of organic raw oatmeal three times a week.  She loves it, and it — along with her hay cubes –helps her constipation.  (Chinchillas are notorious for their delicate digestive tracts.)

…I am rejoicing in Paula Radcliffe’s fine win in yesterday’s New York Marathon.

…I’ve been moved by these two posts from Astarte and Amanda, and recommend them highly.

…I attended a "stewardship tea" at All Saints yesterday afternoon.  Tea, finger sandwiches, harp music, and pledge cards; an authentic Anglican afternoon indeed.   I suspect that the disastrous election results may help make this a banner year for our stewardship team — what better way to "fight the right" than increasing one’s giving to the flagship church of progressive Episcopalianism?  I did indeed pledge more for 2005 than I had intended to, motivated by a moving morning service (featuring Mozart’s Requiem) and by no fewer than seven small watercress sandwiches.

…I’m feeling a most un-Christlike urge to go on a shopping spree.  I told myself I wasn’t going to be buying new clothes again this year, given my recent extravagances.  Lately, I’ve been obsessed with jeans.  I have eight pairs in my closet in heavy rotation, but I want more.   In all colors.  And here’s a true confession: three of the pairs I own are women’s jeans (from Lucky and Diesel).  Whatever it is about my build, they tend to fit me better, if I can find them long enough.

…Of course, I need to purge my closet before I can buy one more item to put in it.  Wouldn’t my beloved be thrilled if she came home to find out that I had gotten rid of all of those things I haven’t worn since the first Clinton Administration?

The Tiara and the Thong

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 17, 2004
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Sexuality and Youth
. 10 Comments

I’m moving from blogging about South America, Hugo Chavez and race to write about princesses.

The LA Times has an interesting piece today on the popularity of “princess” culture. Here’s some of it:

In Los Angeles, Disney Princess teas held in conjunction with the release of “Princess Diaries 2” on Wednesday at the El Capitan Theater sold out their Saturday and Sunday spots weeks before the movie premiered. Those teas and other princess-themed events have become popular permanent additions to Walt Disney World attractions. In Japan, princess classes, which began in Tokyo three years ago as an attempt to introduce the new princess brand, have spread to five cities — last year, more than 15,000 girls paid $150 a pop to learn from Snow White how to love animals or from Ariel how to sing.

Recent movies like “Ella Enchanted,” “The Prince & Me,” “A Cinderella Story” and now “Princess Diaries 2″ have hauled out all the time-honored symbols of the mythology — the jewels, the dresses, the handsome boyfriend and, of course, all that dancing.

The films, like the books many are based on, all have slight post-feminist twists, but they still adhere to the basic princess ethos: You may think for the moment that you are a normal, powerless girl plagued by mean friends and nagging parents/stepparents, but really you are a princess, with liberation and a truly excellent wardrobe just a few plot points away.

“Whether feminists like it or not,” says Gary Foster, spokesman for Disney consumer products, “at some point in their lives, most girls want to be a princess.”

I haven’t seen the Princess Diaries 2 yet. I saw the first one back in 2001, and thought — seriously — that it was one of the best films of the year. I’ve rented it twice since.

As a pro-feminist concerned about young women, I’m not particularly troubled by the resurgent popularity of “princess-ness”. The Times article explains my reasons why:

Wish-fulfillment story lines fuel many of the books and films aimed at tween and teen girls, which gives princess culture the staying power it needs to transcend the fairy tale reading years. In the preadolescent and adolescent years, many girls are beset by self-doubt, and they look to transformative narratives to give them hope and confidence.

The “rags-to-riches story is everywhere these days,” says Rachel Simmons, author of “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls.” “All the teen and tween movies are about girls who go from being unloved and uncool to being incredibly popular. Which is what happens to princesses.”

Simmons, who works with the Empower Project, a Washington, D.C., group devoted to improving the lives of girls, says she has been surprised by the number of princess T-shirts and paraphernalia she has seen on the streets of New York and wonders if it isn’t a response to the tough skate-board girl mentality that has also fueled fashion and attitudes among teens. “The princess is the last frontier of acceptable girliness,” she says. She applauds any arena that allows girls to access playfulness and protects them from sexualizing themselves before they are ready. “It points to how crazy our times have become that I, as a feminist, am promoting princess culture because, hey, at least you don’t have a 12-year-old wearing a thong.”

Rae Dubow, a Los Angeles drama teacher, tried to show her 5-year-old daughter the other side of the fairy tale myth by reading her “Cinder Edna,” a retelling of the famous tale by Cinderella’s sensibly shod, eco-friendly neighbor. Cinderella, by contrast, is made to seem vain and silly. “My daughter was not at all interested in Edna,” says Dubow. “All she wanted to know was why Cinderella didn’t have a bigger part because she is so pretty.”

Parent Erika Schickel has mixed feelings about her role in providing the items necessary for a modern princess. “As a feminist, I think, ‘Of course they’re obsessed with princesses because princesses are being crammed down their throat and not just from Disney, but from all these tweener movies.’ But then I remember as a little girl just craving really pretty things too.”

The bold emphases are mine.

Schickel is quite right when she implies that the story of the princess is deeply imbedded in our culture, and perhaps, in the psyches of a great many young girls. It would be absurdly ahistorical to give 20th-century Hollywood the credit or the blame for creating the popularity of the princess archetype; even a casual student of folk culture knows that “princess stories” (often with a rags-to-riches theme) go back many centuries in European culture.

But what I really appreciate about princess culture is that it offers young girls (and not-so-young ones) the opportunity to celebrate the feminine without having to cope with dangerous, exploitative, premature sexualization. Princesses, at least as portrayed in the first “Princess Diaries” film, aren’t merely pretty girls with nice clothes (though the clothes are important). Princesses are also expected to be brave, kind, thoughtful, and, yes, independent. (The “queen” in both films, played by the incomparable Julie Andrews, is a widow; clever, witty, and very strong.) If the popular “princess classes” mentioned above are teaching young girls how to love animals (though most young girls don’t need to be taught that) and how to enjoy a proper tea, than I say “hallelujah.”

The culture of the thong (which I’ve written about in other contexts here and here) revolves around the sexualization of young girls. “Thong culture” teaches girls that the attention and the validation that they crave can be had easily, both by displaying flesh and by being sexually accessible to young (and sometimes not so young) boys.

For all of its silliness, “tiara culture” seems far less bound up with the urgent pursuit of male attention. Look, when and if I have a daughter, my first choice would be to have her in track spikes and soccer cleats from the time she can walk. But if faced with the choice between having her walk around with a tiara on her head or in a thong that rides up out of her low-cut jeans, I’m pretty clear on the fact that I’d pick the former.

Perhaps I’ll go to Target and buy a whole bunch of plastic tiaras for the girls in my youth group at All Saints.

Vaccines, Hot Modesty, and more on Lance

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 30, 2004
in Clothing and Fashion and Modesty
. Closed

I’m off to run errands, including getting vaccinated before our trip to Colombia next week. I need shots for yellow fever and hepatitis A, as well as pills for typhoid. (Mom, if you’re reading this, take a deep breath and relax!)

But in addition to posting more about coming home to the Episcopal Church immediately below, I wanted to take note of a couple of things.

Jonathan Dresner, fellow Cliopatriarch, sends me a link to this New York Times story on Mormons in Illinois; it includes the brief mention of a t-shirt slogan that connects to my entry on t-shirts earlier this week. In Nauvoo, one can buy shirts that proclaim “Modest Girls are the Hottest Girls.” You’ve really got to love that. Jonathan asks in an e-mail:

Is it me, or is the attempt to associate modesty with hyper-sexuality self-defeating?

I’m with you, brother, I’m with you. But what I like best about the t-shirt is that it addresses a fundamental truth (the erotics of the concealed) with an obvious contradiction — advertising that truth so blatantly undercuts all of its real power. Really, one could spend hours working through the layers of meaning here.

Please do go and read the latest updates on Sam Carrasco’s battle with leukemia here. Even as he undergoes surgery, Sam is waging battles with his parents about food — he wants his McDonalds. I think we can take that as a good sign.

Go and read Jen Lemen this morning, because no one I’ve found in the blogosphere has her mastery of prose. Sample from today’s post:

autumn is coming, i remind myself. which always quickly brings me around to christmas. this is a clear defining moment of the planning personality type. that the hottest day in july can fill you with sadness that summer will fade. that the thought, the mere thought of summer fading, can fill you pure delight that christmas will come again at last! just thinking about cranberry breads and clove pierced oranges makes you sigh.

And any number of people have been asking about how I reconcile my admiration for Lance Armstrong with his troubled personal life. I tend to go on and on about personal responsibility and masculinity. And Lance is away from his three small children for much of the year, divorced from their mother, and living with a rock star (Sheryl Crow). I know that I can’t possibly know all the details of what transpired in his marriage to the mother of his children. (I hear from many sources that his wife left him, rather than the other way around.) Judging other folks’ divorces is dangerous, not because we ought never make judgments, but because if there is one thing almost impossible to truly understand, it is other people’s marriages. Do I believe that all things considered, it is better for a father to stay married to the mother of his children, and be devoted to her and to them? Of course. Do I wish Lance’s children had been with him on the podium in Paris? Of course.

But I don’t need my sports heroes to be perfect. I don’t look to a Lance Armstrong to show me how to live in every aspect of my life, because that is both an abdication of my responsibility and an imposition of an impossible burden on his shoulders. He’s a remarkable athlete and an inspiring figure, and I can admire him and still surmise that beneath all of that dedication and talent and brilliance is just another flawed human being like everyone else. I honor his commitment to excellence, his commitment to survival, and his decision to spend so much time and energy on inspiring others to battle cancer. Surely, those are reasons enough to honor a man, even if in his private life, he falls short of the mark.

Okay. Off to get a haircut, to the gym, and to the market. And to get those shots.

Waterparks. And the T-Shirt.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 27, 2004
in Abortion, Clothing and Fashion and Feminism
. 15 Comments

Am home and tired after a day at the water park. What an extraordinary place a water park is. So much water. So much sun. So many diverse people in various states of undress. I went on one particular ride and ended up with a great deal of water up my nose.

Annika and XRLQ have been blogging today about this Planned Parenthood t-shirt (Candace noted it in the comments below.)

The shirt’s logo is simple: “I Had an Abortion.” The language at PPFA’s site describing the shirt:

Planned Parenthood is proud to offer yet another t-shirt in our new social fashion line: “I Had an Abortion” fitted T-shirts are now available. These soft and comfortable fitted tees assert a powerful message in support of women’s rights.

Though my view of the t-shirt is not all that different from Annika’s or XRLQ’s, I’m going to try and take this in a different direction. And, for the record, let me reassert my reasonably solid pro-life bona fides. (I’m a monthly sustaining contributor to Feminists for Life).

It was about 1997 or 1998 when I began to see the most remarkable slogans showing up on the fitted t-shirts of my female students: “Porn Star“. “Juicy.” “Real American Bitch.” “I Just Slept with your Boyfriend” (I’ve seen gay men where these too, but I see ‘em more often on women; I’ve seen other verbs besides “slept” as well.) “Too Hot to Handle“. “You Know you Wanna Touch.” There are probably others (you can mention them in the comments section) but those have lingered in my memory. I associate all this with the banal and infuriating “girl power” movement; largely a creation of advertisers, it sold young women a message of empowerment through shock and sexuality. Adolescents love to upset adults; this adult initially found it difficult to know how to deal with female students whose t-shirts read “You Know you Wanna Touch”. (I do a splendid job of affecting blindness in such situations nowadays.)

What I disliked about these shirts was not so much their brazenness as their rank commercialism. Nothing genuinely radical, edgy, or dangerous is sold at Abercrombie and Fitch or Urban Outfitters (two known sources of said shirts; no doubt, there are others.) Newsflash, kiddies: The fact that it horrifies your parents doesn’t make it any less a product of the very same corporate America in which your parents are investing. What these places sell is the cleverly marketed opportunity to outrage the older generation while simultaneously offering a superficially feminist message. The message is “Only a bold, strong, brave young woman who doesn’t care about conforming to stereotypes would wear a shirt like this. Thus if you wear this shirt, you bear witness to your fiery, indominatable, wild grrl soul.” Please. What you bear witness to, darlin’, is nothing more than your own socially constructed insecurity, and any sensible person over 25 is abundantly aware of that.

I write all this because this all came to mind the moment I saw this Planned Parenthood shirt. On one level, giving PPFA the benefit of the doubt, the shirt makes sense. A truly effective pro-choice strategy involves breaking the link between guilt and shame on one hand and one’s own abortion on the other. Just as the t-shirts I refer to above advertise the wearer’s sexual confidence, so too does this shirt advertise the wearer’s refusal to feel remorse for what, after all, was an important and empowering choice. (Perhaps I shall start to see the “I Just Slept with Your Boyfriend” shirts in the autumn semester, and then the “I Had an Abortion” shirts in the spring. The wearer could thus keep us all updated, and, helpfully, indicate the all-too-frequent consequence of out-of-wedlock sex.) Planned Parenthood is borrowing from the cynical strategies of good corporate citizens like Abercrombie and Fitch. Just as A&F and other t-shirt manufacturers used an image of bold sexual assertiveness to market clothes, so Planned Parenthood is using a message of unrepentant, unremorseful pride in abortion both to market t-shirts and to trivialize the emotional consequences of terminating an unwanted pregnancy. If the stigma of abortion can be removed, than the pro-choice movement can win a major battle.

As I write this, I am imagining every woman in America who ever had an abortion wearing the shirt on the same day. I am sure Planned Parenthood would love that, hoping that it would send a powerful message about the absolute necessity of defending women’s access to that particular procedure. I’d like to go further, and have other t-shirts printed up for my sex: “I got a woman pregnant, and refused to marry her. She had an abortion.” Or: “I told her I’d pull out in time. She just had an abortion.” What grim fun we could have thinking up still more slogans. By the time we had put t-shirts on every man and woman and teen in this country to whom they could apply, we’d have an awful lot of folks dressed in soft and comfortable fitted tees. But knowing who has had an abortion, and who has been responsible for one, doesn’t change the basic truth of what abortion is.

In Las Vegas on Sunday, while leaving our hotel, I saw a pretty girl of about 15 standing with her parents. She had on a brand-new hot pink tight t-shirt. It read “Real American Bad Girl.” She was looking around the way young teenagers will, trying to affect a sophisticated world-weariness while obviously eager to see who was looking at her. Her outfit proclaimed: I’m hot and bold and devil-may-care. Her stance proclaimed: I just want some attention, please look at me, please like me, please tell me I’m okay. I knew better than to believe the words emblazoned across her chest.

When I see girls like that wearing these shirts with overtly sexual messages, I know damn well that the vast majority of them don’t want random sex; they want validation. And when, some day soon, I see a woman on the street with the new Planned Parenthood t-shirt, I will be absolutely certain down to the core of my being that she too, regardless of her age, is looking for validation that her choice was okay. But that validation is not mine to give.

All of these posts about Amy Richards here and elsewhere have humbled me. I’ve been reminded, yet again, of how different this issue of abortion is from all other issues. Nothing else, not even same-sex marriage, inflames passions and exposes divisions like this one. Add in a hotly contended political season like this one, and it becomes difficult not to give into blustering self-righteousness. In 1992, I walked precincts for NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) on behalf of Bill Clinton and Barbara Boxer. The folks I walked with were good, loving, kind people who had thought long and hard about the abortion issue. In more recent years, I’ve met with and walked with folks from a variety of pro-life groups. Though there were many social and religious differences between the two groups, the sincerity and decency of both sides was very, very clear to me. In this week of the Democratic convention, as we come closer and closer to this pivotal election, and as we write about some fairly emotional stuff, I say again, people, let’s be committed to seeing the best in our opponents, even as we hold strong to what we think we know to be right.

End of rant. Matilde is ready for her dust bath.

Monday morning, Elton John, and thoughts on Las Vegas

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 26, 2004
in Addiction and mental illness, Class, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Marriage, Modesty, Music, Race, Sexuality and Traveling
. 9 Comments

First off, thank you to all who issued congratulations in response to my news about the engagement. I am very excited. Though a few folks have asked for details about she who will become Mrs. Schwyzer, I am committed to protecting her identity in the blogosphere. I am very public, obviously, blogging under my full name. (Tenure allows me to do so, and I see no reason for a nom de plume.) But I don’t want anything I write and post to reflect on my gal; she has her own life and her own privacy. As tempting as it is to do so, I’m not going to share details of our engagement and our wedding plans on the Internet. Some things, I think, can stay personal.

The weather in Las Vegas was searingly hot — 108 degrees on Saturday. Elton John’s show was terrific, but also disconcerting. I know he was playing in Las Vegas, but the video monitors behind him kept displaying bare-breasted strippers; during his rendition of “The Bitch is Back”, a Pamela Anderson look-alike writhed around a pole. During other songs, huge inflatable breasts appeared, suspended from the ceiling. Confetti streamed from the “nipples.” I didn’t find it funny; I found it troubling. The objectification and fetishization of women’s bodies is expected in “sin city”, but I didn’t expect it from one of my musical heroes. It left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s beyond me why Linda Ronstadt was thrown out of a casino for making a political reference, while no one sees the exploitation of young women in those very same casinos as problematic! It will be a while before I feel the need to go back to Las Vegas.

As we walked through the oppressive heat along the strip, young men and women (every one of them with a Latino face, looking like a recent arrival) tried to thrust leaflets advertising strippers and prostitutes into our hands. What on earth must they think as they do this? All I could see was one group of exploited folks (migrant workers) risking heat exhaustion to promote the services of another group of the similarly exploited (female sex workers), all for the enjoyment of predominantly white, middle-class tourists. The outfits the cocktail servers (who aren’t formally sex workers) wore in the casinos were (to my mind anyway) stunningly revealing to the point of leaving me discomfited and embarrassed. I know damn well just how hard and cold so many of these young women must have to become in order to endure the harrassment they surely must receive. The whole thing was absolutely obscene.

I’ll confess I have a strong censorious streak within me. Perhaps it comes from my own past experience of living near the opposite end of the moral scale. But what viscerally upsets me about Las Vegas is the commodification of human fragility, something of which I am keenly and constantly aware. The cocktail waitresses brought sexuality and alcohol to the customers at the slots and the gaming tables, creating what seemed to me to be an unholy trifecta of addiction. Gambling offers false and illusory hope to folks of all social classes, but most obviously to those whose own circumstances are marginal. It’s instantly addictive, as I was reminded. Mennonites aren’t supposed to gamble, but I put plenty of money into quarter slots, letting the excitement overwhelm me. The thrill of winning something — even a few dollars — was stunningly strong. It wasn’t just the smell of cigarette smoke in the casinos that left me feeling unclean; it was the sense (quite strong on this Monday morning) that I had participated in (and relished) an activity that at its core isn’t really fun at all. Playing the slots touched something dark and grasping inside of Hugo. Like most bad things, the pleasure was fleeting and the regret enduring.

What saddened me most was the many, many small children I saw in Las Vegas. Some were even in the casinos, oblivious to the signs insisting that one had to be 21 to gamble. (That was a rule more honored in the breach than in the observance, judging from the teens I saw at the slots in the Aladdin and the Paris casinos). The local newspaper told me that tourism in Vegas was expected to hit an all-time high in 2004, as were profits from the hotels and casinos on the Strip. My fiancee (how happy to write that) and I contributed our share. The hotel was very comfortable, the food splendid, the music of Elton John sublime. I did have a good weekend. (To be with my gal to celebrate our engagement would have made a weekend in Barstow seem equally delightful, of course). But I’m damn sure our children aren’t going to Las Vegas while they are under our care, and our visits back will be few and far between.

Random Saturday notes on fraternal books, sex scandals, Amish TV, Colombian soccer, cosmic American blues, and one very hot shirt.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 10, 2004
in Books, Christianity, Clothing and Fashion, Mass media, Music, Older Men & Younger Women, Politics and Sports
. 9 Comments

Since I wrote two lengthy entries yesterday (both of which took a bit of time), I’m going to keep Saturday’s post brief.

My brilliant younger brother’s first book is out, available for pre-order on Amazon. All those interested in reading about Literature, Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales should order at once. It won’t be shipped until October, but I can hardly wait! I am immensely proud.

Thanks to a link from Brian, I’ve been reading up on Willamette Week’s interesting coverage of the Neil Goldschmidt scandal (the former Oregon governor who had a sexual relationship with a 14 year-old girl in the 1970s.) It’s disturbing but compelling reporting; scroll to the bottom of the first story for additional reports.

Despite many protests from the pan-Anabaptist community, the UPN network will debut their ridiculous “Amish in the City” show on July 28. The Center for Rural Strategies is leading the fight to get the show cancelled; their site is here. The show is widely expected to ridicule our Amish brothers and sisters, and cast traditional religious faith in a negative light.

The Copa America soccer tournament is underway. I’ve gotten over the disappointing exit of England from Euro 2004; my gal is over Croatia’s failure to advance. But though my girlfriend is half-Croatian, the other half is Afro-Colombian; thus we are madly rooting for Colombia in the quadrennial South American soccer championship. (And my two favorite teams are Colombia and whoever is playing those blasted Brazilians.) We are off to Colombia on August 6 — our second visit in just over a year.

And tonight, we’re going to see the Gram Parsons tribute concert at the Universal Amphitheatre; Keith Richards, Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams, and my beloved Steve Earle will all play. This kind of music is now called “Americana” or “alt country”, but Parsons called it “Cosmic American Blues”… I can dig that.

When it comes to the whole country-rock thing, I like the clothes too — the lowcut, tight jeans; the boots; and the really cool shirts. I bought this one yesterday just for the occasion. It’s not very Mennonite, but it looked too damn good not to buy.

Dress code and names

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 7, 2004
in Clothing and Fashion and Teaching
. 12 Comments

I’ve been thinking today about what I wear in the classroom.

When I first came to Pasadena City College in 1993, I was a twenty-six year-old adjunct. I taught two courses (one each on Tuesday and Thursday nights). I was a very nervous fellow, and I was insecure about my age. In my night courses, a third of my students were older than I was! As a result, I tried to dress as differently from my students as possible. I had three or four pairs of nice khaki trousers, and I rotated them loyally. I had some basic blue and white oxford-style shirts (from Land’s End and J.Crew) and I mixed and matched them with various ties. I would never have dreamed of teaching in those early days without a tie on — I felt an overwhelming need to establish my legitimacy as a professor, despite my youthfulness.

Once I got a full-time post the following year, I began to experiment with one casual day a week. It took me a while to work up to jeans, but I allowed myself a day or two without a tie. (Lots of polo shirts and khakis with penny-loafers — it was heavy on the preppiness.) I tried to pay close attention to my students’ reaction to my clothes. Did they seem less respectful when I was more casual? Or did they seem more at ease?

Of course, the community college being what it is, I got both reactions. Some students really do seem to appreciate seeing their profs “dressed up”. For these folks, more business-like attire helps them to feel comfortable in their role as learners. Some seem to feel that if I am dressed seriously and soberly, than that gives my words extra “gravitas”. Other students seemed alienated by my “dressy days.” They were less likely to ask questions and more likely to remain silent in classroom discussions when I was dressed differently than they were. Clearly, some college students want their profs to be remote “authority figures”; others want us to be warm “buddy figures.” Ain’t no way to please ‘em all!

One thing I have figured out: my students are more comfortable when I appear to be comfortable. And frankly, I’m a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy. (Yes, I do care about the brand of jeans and the brand of t-shirt; I spend far too much money on both.) When I am at ease, they seem more at ease. I still have some senior colleagues who have made it clear that they wish I wouldn’t wear jeans so often, or wear t-shirts that reveal some of my tattoos. I’m aware that there are a few of my students who may also be uncomfortable with my more casual dress. But I’m unlikely to go back to the ties and khakis anytime soon.

I also am (I confess) one of those profs who really encourages the first name thing. I HATE being called “Dr. Schwyzer”. (Where I come from, the only folks who get to be called “doctor” are those with a medical degree. I was raised in a family where the use of “doctor” by a Ph.D. was considered vulgar and showy — and I have to admit, I still think that way.) I’m not big on Professor Schwyzer or Mr. Schwyzer. I still want to be called Hugo. I know that some of my more conservative students from other cultures really have a hard time with this. We compromise on “Dr. Hugo”, which just seems ridiculous to me but seems to meet their psychological need for hierarchy.

Interestingly, I only became rigidly insistent on first names after becoming a Mennonite. West coast Mennonites wouldn’t dream of calling ANYONE by their last name. Our pastors are “Jim”, “Bert”, and “Jennifer”. How on earth can I expect others to call me by my surname (with a title) when I call my spiritual advisors by their first name?

Dr. Hugo is teaching the rise of 19th century Nationalism today in a grey t-shirt, blue Lucky jeans, and my favorite pair of really cool Pumas.

More on Islam, dress, peace

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2004
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Modesty and War
. 29 Comments

Lately, several right-leaning bloggers have (in the aftermath of recent beheadings) been on quite an anti-Islamic bent. Going through some old articles of mine, I came across one of my favorite Mennonite pieces on Muslim culture: One Face of Islam, by Sonia Weaver, a Mennonite missionary who lives in the Gaza Strip. It’s a terrific essay on gender relations and Islam. Here’s what I (not surprisingly) liked:

In light of the perception that women in the Muslim world are more oppressed than their Western Christian sisters I offer my own limited yet heartfelt experiences in one Arab and Muslim context.

Islamic dress often strikes Westerners as one of the most discriminatory aspects of Islam. After living in North America where women and men of all ages, shapes and sizes unthinking show their hair, arms, legs and sometimes more in public, arriving in a country where most women cover arms, legs and hair in veils and loose fitting garments comes as quite a shock! When women who add gloves and face veils are thrown into the mix, it easy to understand why most Westerners conclude they are dealing with major patriarchal oppression. Given the huge gap in language and culture between North America and the Middle East, a cultural element as external, nonverbal and immediately obvious as dress quickly captures the attention and often provokes the indignation of international guests. I think many of the folks who conclude that the veil and other aspects of Islamic dress automatically denote oppression of woman would be surprised to learn the variety of perspectives that Middle Easterners themselves hold toward these garments.

Virtually all of the many Muslims with whom I have discussed Islamic dress stress that adoption of such attire must be the woman’s own decision. Kifayeh, one of my most devout friends who herself wears gloves and a face veil, believes it is wrong for anyone to force a girl or woman to cover her hair or dress a certain way. She herself has taken on these clothes in order to assert that she wants to be viewed as a person and not as a sexual object for the visual enjoyment of men. Kifayeh pities rather than envies scantily clad western women. To her they are victims of sexual objectification rather than symbols of personal freedom.

I have many friends who have worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams (my second favorite charity behind this one) in Iraq, Israel, and Palestine. Many of them have lived with Muslim families for years. They are adamant that groups like al-Qaeda are generally intensely disliked in the Islamic world. But the experiences of Westerners who live with and among Muslims are drowned out by the rage-filled voices of those who see beheadings and bombings and refuse to separate the murderous actions of a few from the heartfelt beliefs of the many.

Soccer, modesty, sex, Islam

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 17, 2004
in Clothing and Fashion and Modesty
. Closed

I’m in the office, writing quizzes, eagerly awaiting updates from the England-Switzerland Euro 2004 match about to take place in Portugal. I know my girlfriend is equally interested in the outcome of the later game, Croatia-France.

I was sent a link to this interesting interview with Mohja Kahf, a professor of comp lit at the University of Arkansas and an observant Muslim woman. She’s also a blogger, and writes what can only be described as a rather racy blog on Islam and sexuality. The interview itself is at Nerve.com, a site that may be offensive to some, but it’s worth linking to.

What I found interesting was Kahf’s take on modesty and sexuality, a topic that generated a lot of heat when I posted about it last month. Here’s an excerpt from the Nerve interview:

Q: Do Muslim women seek to change their role?

A: I don’t claim to speak for all Muslim women, but I think huge numbers of Muslim women feel that the problem is not Islam but how men have interpreted and practiced it. But there are even larger numbers of conservative Muslim women who want to live in a world where Islam is practiced conventionally. The main proponents of barriers in mosques are women.

Q: Why?

A: Because they just feel more comfortable back there, behind them. We can lie down, we can breast-feed our children, and we don’t have to be seen by the men. Conservative women are very comfortable with where Islam is. They feel that Islam gives them a lot of authority and respect. It’s like if you go to a church and everyone knows who you are. You don’t want to rock the boat. You get a lot of respect wearing the hijab [headscarf], for example.

Q: Do you wear one?

A: I’ve worn one since I was twelve. But starting about five years ago, I wear it and I don’t wear it. I wear it out of pride in my heritage, but I don’t wear it in the required Islamic way anymore.

Q:Do women feel sexier when they take it off ?

A:Women who are covered up feel very sexy, let me tell you.

Q: Really?

A: (laughs) Yes! There is such a sense of feeling enveloped and private, like sitting by a cozy fire. Like no one else has access to this warmth, no one else can see you. No one can see your thong underwear hiking up your back! (laughs) There are boundaries clearly demarcated between inside and outside, private and public, and for many women and men that is more conducive to a healthy sex life. (Emphasis Hugo’s)

From Professor Kahf’s blog, I clicked over to the Muslim Wakeup internet site, and found lots of good things about what’s happening in progressive Islam these days. Given that the phrase “progressive Islam” is almost as much of an oxymoron these days as “socialist evangelical”, I thought it was definitely worth the visit. Check it out.

Oh, and I am feeling fine after yesterday’s little accident. I’ve also crawled out of the little whole of self pity into which I had briefly disappeared.

Teens and justice; the minimum wage

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 27, 2004
in Class, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Politics, Race, Working and Youth
. 3 Comments

Thanks to Dry Bones Dance, I went to this article in yesterday’s LA Times; it tells the inspiring story of the teenage daughters of immigrant garment workers in Oakland, and the revolution in ergonomics that they brought about.

For nearly a decade, Kwei Fong Lin tolerated numbness in her forearms. Like a great many Chinese immigrants who work in this city’s cramped and poorly equipped garment factories, her neck and back ached from long days spent hunched over a sewing machine while perched on rickety folding chairs, stools or even crates.

“We just took the pain as it came,” the 52-year-old Hong Kong native said in Cantonese. But an unlikely revolution has taken root here. Today, dozens of women work in relative comfort while seated on customized ergonomic chairs. Most surprising in an industry synonymous with powerless and mistreated workers: The women made it happen. They did it with the help of a group of teenage girls tired of seeing their seamstress mothers suffer…

Christy put it well:

You know, if they’d put stories like this in Seventeen, young women in this country might discover that they have more to contribute to the world than their fashion statement. It’s amazing how fighting for justice makes the size of your hips or your breasts seem a little less important.

In somewhat related news, the California Assembly passed a bill yesterday to increase the minimum wage to $7.75 an hour. It will surely pass the senate; Governor Schwarzenegger’s position is unknown. What I do know is that so many of my tired and stressed community college students work for that minimum wage in restaurants and retail businesses. I know how carefully they count their pennies (three of my best students are sharing one textbook to save money). And I know what a difference an extra dollar an hour could make in their lives.

Beauty, culture, hot profs, the need for an endgame, and the importance of “being something different”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 5, 2004
in Body, Christianity, Clothing and Fashion, Ratemyprofessors and Teaching
. 3 Comments

What are we trying to accomplish?

Jonathan Dresner asks this question in response to my Monday rant on women and choice. Here’s his larger point:

…one of the things I think has been missing from the discussion is a sense of the direction in which this movement is pushing: what is the endgame, and how will we know if we are winning?

For example, I have never heard a colleague (male or female) comment on a students’ (male or female) attractiveness or lack thereof. Surely this represents progress, even if only within the oddities of academia. (On the other hand, I just heard of a colleague who recently married a student; I know, it may or may not be problematic, but it’s still questionable.) But ratemyprof.com includes a checkbox for “hot” profs.

(To pick up on Jonathan’s tangent, let me say parenthetically that the whole notion of evaluating professors on their “hotness” doesn’t strike me as problematic, largely because of the absence of a power dynamic. Perhaps I am naive, but I can’t imagine that students actually decide which courses to take based upon their professor’s looks, nor are they likely to de-legitimize what he or she is saying merely because he or she is “hot.” Honestly, I’ve always believed that those kids who thought I was “hot” were merely attracted to the fact that I was — and still am — relatively young. On the other hand, for a prof to comment on a student’s attractiveness — when the student is at a clear disadvantage — is inherently more problematic.)

But seriously, if we confine discussion of the “endgame” to the classroom, I’ll say that I long for an academic culture where women and men can come together and do their work in an atmosphere free from anxiety about their appearance. I wrote last week that “sisterhood is easier in winter“, because I noticed that the more clothes that my students wear, the more comfortable everyone seems to feel. When our bodies are more concealed, we are — perhaps paradoxically — liberated to focus on “what really matters”. What do I really want? I suppose I want the classroom to feel year-round the way it does when the weather is chilly (or as chilly as it gets in Pasadena): safe. How we do that without imposing impossible or absurd dress codes is beyond me, but I know it is, emotionally speaking, the “endgame” in terms of clothing in the classroom!

On the other hand, Christy (my twin) writes in a comment on today’s post:

Talk all we want - at the end of the day, nothing has changed. I don’t want to confine my choices to complying with or yelling about the system. I would rather work on creating alternatives - small spaces where we value interdependence, empathy, and justice, where we don’t talk or think about our clothes or body image that much because we’re too busy being something different to care.

It’s beautifully put. And it’s a nice reminder to me that part of my work as a feminist must be to help develop these alternatives. She’s right, too, that to build communities where men and women really can move beyond their own narcissistic issues will require that those communities be intently focused on a higher and more important cause. It’s important not merely to do something different; as Christy puts it, we must be something different. Trouble is, I’ve rarely seen that kind of intense community form and remain in place for long. The itinerant nature of our lives, where most of us expect to move away from families and friends, means that few of us will have sustained periods of living within those nurturing small spaces where our bodies are not our identities. Indeed, the less we remain connected to our families of origin, the greater the likelihood that we will spend a considerable part of our young — and not so young — adulthood immersed in the intense pressures of a “beauty culture” without a “safe place” to take refuge.

Honestly, from a Christian standpoint, it’s something we need to work on in the churches. We must ask, to what degree is our own church culture reinforcing insecurity and self-doubt and unrealistic perfectionism? To what degree does our church culture reflect rather than reject society’s larger obsession with appearance? Just because our churches frown on overtly sexualized self-expression does NOT mean that they are free from the very same ills that plague the larger culture! It’s something we need to work on in our small groups; it’s something I’m working very hard on with my teenagers at All Saints. And it’s gonna take a lot of work.

She wore a pearl necklace…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 25, 2004
in Clothing and Fashion, GLBTQ, Marriage and Photos
. Closed

frc_marriage.jpg

This is the logo from the Family Research Council’s website. Love the pearls.

The FRC is not happy with Senator Orrin Hatch and his compromise language on the Marriage Amendment; read their version of the story here.

Odds and ends

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 27, 2004
in Blogging, Clothing and Fashion, Food, Money, Politics and Youth ministry
. 6 Comments

The 30-Hour famine fast began a few minutes ago. After some quality time this A.M. with my gal and Matilde the chinchilla, I went on a quick 14-mile run from my place, traveling down through the Arroyo Seco and up into the Monterey Hills neighborhood of L.A before making my way back. I have made quick trips to Noah’s Bagels and Jamba Juice to refuel, but from noon today until 6:00PM tomorrow, nothing more. I’ll be off to church in a few hours, to help check in the kids (we think we might have over 35 show up tonight), count the money, and prepare for a sleepless night with hungry and rambunctious teens. Whether or not they will have raised enough to shave my head remains to be seen; I’ll report.

I got some nice props last night from Rudy Carrasco; he linked to my post below on my feminist cred, and he wrote:

Hugo is one of the more fascinating characters you will come across. As the self-described only Evangelical male in America to teach Gay and Lesbian studies, he is absolutely and literally in a class of his own.

Very cool. Thanks, Rudy!

As I gather with the kids this weekend, I will be praying for Haiti. Almost no one seems to want to “blog Haiti” this week! Here we all are, Christians devoted to social justice and non-violence, and we are all far more riled up about a movie than we are about this horrific and tragic situation unfolding right here in our hemisphere. Is it because the problem seems too intractable? Is it because there is no opportunity to issue thundering and self-righteous orations? Writing about Haiti just isn’t as sexy as writing about marriage or the Passion. I am as guilty as everybody else. I have no answers. But I do have prayers.

Also, I am praying for the grocery workers of the UFCW as they vote this weekend on whether to accept the latest offer from the supermarket chains. I am definitely looking forward to being able to shop once again at my neighborhood Vons. I am tired of the high prices I’ve been paying at Gelson’s, the unionized (but pricey) grocery store that is just down the street. By the way, I am trying to decide if I want to buy “Union Jeans“, sold on the UFCW website. I like the idea of wearing only union-made American stuff. On the other hand, I love good clothes. I spend far too much on dressing myself (lately, I have been buying a lot of stuff from Lucky Brand), and most of what I buy is not union-made. I think I have some room for growth there.

Time to focus on the famine!

“A tempest in a C cup”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 6, 2004
in Age, Aggression and violence, Body, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Money, Music, Race, Sexuality and Sports
. Closed

It’s always gratifying to have others whom you admire agree with you. On Monday, I wrote this about the halftime incident. In today’s Times, Joan Brumberg (whose books I use in several of my gender studies classes) wrote this about Janet, Justin, and the breast:

… this was not just any breast. This was a single breast that symbolizes a cross-fire of issues that touch the lives of a huge swath of Americans.

Janet Jackson is a black woman. Justin Timberlake, a white male. The fact that both thought it was acceptable to have him rip off Jackson’s clothing suggests that both desperately need a short course in U.S. history. A million rapes of black women by white owners flashed before the eyes of Americans who understand the brutal sexuality associated with slavery. Jackson is also an aging woman in a business that celebrates young bodies. Was the exposure deliberately choreographed to boost sales of her upcoming CD among younger audiences likely to be “thrilled” by her flamboyant sexuality? Jackson obviously understands that images of the female body are used to drive billions in sales of all kinds of goods. Women in this society pay a price for this unrelenting, often violent, objectification.

Excellent. The bold emphases are mine.