Archive for the 'Vanity' Category

Vanity posting

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 16, 2006
in Body and Vanity
. 8 Comments

I’m home from the gym and a quick nine-miler in the hills around the Rose Bowl.  I’m happy to report my body has now adjusted to the vegan diet quite well; I’m grateful for all the wonderful recipes that a number of folks e-mailed me.  Thank you!

I’m supplementing my diet with Vega, and it’s really helping. I’m eating the bars and drinking the meal replacement stuff, and it gives me the energy I need.  My weight has stabilized in the high 160s (I’m guessing, because I’m sticking to my commitment not to weigh myself).  That’s the lowest it’s been in years, and fifteen pounds below where I was when my father died.   I’m still taking in the occasional non-vegan thing or two; I had some ice cream the other day and I had a few bites of a veggie lasagna last night at youth group.  I’m not interested in being fanatical about avoiding all animal products when I’m out; I’m "vegan in the house, vegetarian in public", and that works for now.

Boxing is good.  We’ve been doing tons of plyometrics lately. Plyometrics build power and explosiveness, and I can certainly use both.  It’s a great supplement to my marathoning.  All my long runs build lots of slow-twitch muscles; it’s nice to work on building up some speed and power.  And if I keep doing enough squats, I might rebuild my now nearly non-existent backside.  Still, it’s nice to have a much better body at 39 than I did at 19 or 29.   How long I’ll keep it, I have no idea.

One long-term goal of mine: I want to help develop low or no-cost work-out programs to offer to working adults, stressed college students, etcetera.   Really long-term goal: open a summer camp for teens — and adults.  Teach fitness, teach basic life skills, spirituality, the whole thing.  I’m just putting it out there… give me a few years, let me write a book or two, raise some chinchillas and human children, and raise the funds. 

In the meantime, plenty of work to do.

“Hugo hasn’t clued in yet”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 24, 2006
in GLBTQ, Pasadena City College and Vanity
. 12 Comments

Since I posted about gay youth this morning…

After my 10:25AM class this morning, I was walking back to my office and ran into one of my colleagues, a popular and handsome professor about my age.  He and I were dressed similarly today; and we greeted each other briefly.  My  colleague is publicly out as a gay man.  As we separated, I heard an older student say to another, apparently referring to us, "Yeah, both of them are, but only one of them knows it.  Hugo hasn’t clued in yet."

I am the fat, badly-dressed devil incarnate, droning in a monotone

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 18, 2006
in Men and Masculinity, Ratemyprofessors, Teaching and Vanity
. 46 Comments

I posted yesterday that the MRAs are "attacking" my Ratemyprofessors site to drive down my overall rating.   A student just emailed me this gem:

Schwyzer is the devil incarnate. He is cruel, vindictive, deeply unattractive, manipulative, uncaring. His lectures are boring beyond words,he drones on about irrelevancies in a flat monotone. He wears awful clothes. He looks fat. Avoid him at all costs!

And with that, I promise to stop linking to the humourously nasty things said about me in other corners of cyberspace. 

The rest of it I get, but a monotone?  Really?

Another long one about waxing, bodies, class, privilege and OKOP

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 17, 2006
in Body, Class, Feminism, Sexuality and Vanity
. 37 Comments

During the great big "fun feminists" internecine conflict of last week, there was much discussing of "feminist credentials" and whether such behaviors as waxing, wearing heels, and delighting in make-up vitiated one’s commitment to the ideals of the broader cause.  It got to be quite an intense discussion that took in at least a dozen blogs, if not more.

I thought I wasn’t going to post more on this subject, and then I read this long, fascinating piece at Mind the Gap Cardiff: How do I look?  Thoughts on femininity and white middle-class feminism.  I read it hesitantly, worrying it would turn into another Jill-bashing frenzy.  But instead, I found it challenging, and it’s got me thinking about a point that I know BitchLab (not work safe for all) has been making as well:  many of us tend to see everything through the lens of gender, and tend to ignore the class implications of what it is that we’re writing about.

From Mind the Gap:

When we have fights about waxing for example, are we assuming that all women can afford waxing, that waxing is expected of all women in the same way, and that waxing has the same significance for all women? The way in which women experience, or take part in feminine beauty practices, is enormously tied up with class, race, and also sexuality.

The construction of white middle-class femininity and its practices define my experience of oppression, not least because my own family has, over the last two generations, been in the process of achieving middle-class status. My father comes from a working-class family. His mother was a milliner and later a caterer, his father was a merchant seaman, and he was the first in the family to go to university. My mother’s parents were also both from working-class backgrounds and were obsessed with becoming middle-class. My maternal great grandmother drove herself crazy trying to convince everyone that she was white and middle-class (she was neither, but that’s a story for another day), and so the feminine beauty practices encouraged in my maternal grandmother and mother had a lot to do with the pursuit of a middle-class white identity and with erasing marks of race and working-classness.

For example, waxing has clear ethnic implications.  One of my favorite former students, "Armine" (not her real name) reads this blog, and she came to see me yesterday.   We talked about waxing, and about my post two days ago on men’s hairy chests.  Like many of my students, Armine is of Armenian ancestry.  As she herself remarked (her words not mine), "My people are known for being particularly hairy!"   Armine talked about the tremendous cultural anxiety she had been raised with about hair.  From the time she hit puberty, she’d been removing hair from her forearms, her lip, and elsewhere on her body — and she had been encouraged to do this by her mother and older female relatives. She’d also seriously considered rhinoplasty to reduce the size of what she called her "stereotypical Armenian nose".   Her older sister has already had that surgical procedure done.

Armine is quite clear that there is a specific goal to all of this: "We want to look white, not ethnic."  Armine feels that the ideals of feminine beauty she grew up with were primarily white women with "cute little noses" and little or no hair on their bodies.   Here in Pasadena in 2006, she’s engaged in the same practices that the Welsh great-grandmother was in the Mind the Gap post above: pursuing a middle-class white identity and erasing marks of race and ethnicity.  Armine points out that within her culture, it’s possible to balance an intense pride in Armenian heritage with an equally intense contempt for how women from her backgound naturally look.  To paraphrase something she said, "At the same time we were being told to make our noses smaller and our bodies hairless, we were told we could only date Armenian men and we had to never forget the genocide."

While I think that Jill — and other pro-waxing, pro-heels feminists — were rudely and unnecessarily savaged last week, I get the point that Armine, Mind the Gap, and BitchLab are making in different ways.   Brazilian bikini waxes aren’t just something that women do — they are something that women who can afford them do.  And while we generally have no idea how much hair a woman might have in her pubic region, forearm and lip hair (a big concern of Armine’s) is visible.  Its removal is at least moderately expensive and moderately painful, and certain ethnic groups (whose DNA carries the genetic material decreeing that body hair shall be abundant) thus have to work harder, pay more, and endure more discomfort in order to meet an ideal that is still set largely by the white middle class.

This still doesn’t mean that I think anyone, white or not, affluent or not, ought to be racked with guilt over the decision to remove hair from the pubis, climb into stilettos, or apply really good make-up. But not all shoes look the same, and not all make-up looks the same.   A $400 pair of heels often look like a $400 pair of heels; the make-up at an upscale department store is generally better than the Maybelline one buys at the corner drug store.  And a really first-rate waxing job isn’t cheap.  This doesn’t mean that only rich women buy nice make-up or get waxed or wear great shoes.  It does mean that for women on a budget, the decision to spend on these things means less money for something else.  And it also sends a signal to other women about what is appropriate, acceptable, and expected.

Ultimately, all of this raises the difficult question of communal obligation.  To what extent are feminists responsible for the signals they send to others?  To what extent are those signals even under our control?  Jill Filipovic attracts intra-feminist hostility more than most, frankly, because she is a young, pretty, law student living in New York.  She takes trips to Europe.  She goes to parties and has great hair.   Some of these things are within her control, some aren’t, but she gets singled out time and again because she’s both an immensely articulate young feminist and an easy target for envy.  (Flame away, but let’s be candid here.)  Jill has done the vital work of acknowledging her privilege, even while she has pointed out that she is — like so many of her generation — under a mountain of debt.

Folks seemed to take special issue with Jill because it’s clear that she comes closer than virtually any other feminist blogger to a particular middle-class, white ideal for feminine attractiveness.   Unlike her co-bloggers, she does post pictures of herself (in a Flickr account).  She leads a more "visually public life" than many other feminists, blogging under her full name and with many details of her private life laid open.  So when a pretty, young, white female law student talks about getting a bikini wax, it’s going to produce a strong reaction from some quarters.  It’s hard for some people to separate what Jill does from who Jill is.

Though Jill and I are very different, I recognize that perceptions of class and attractiveness function in my own life and work as well.  When I’ve posted about my own body anxiety, for example, I usually get some annoyed comments talking about how "I have nothing to complain about."  When I talk at length about the fact that I work out anywhere from 15-24 hours per week (including private Pilates and boxing lessons) that sends a stark, even grating message about privilege.  My increasingly lean and toned flesh is a testament to my physical work ethic, sure — but it’s also a testament to discretionary time and discretionary income, both of which are associated with tremendous amounts of privilege.   That doesn’t mean I am going to stop running, lifting, Pilate-ing, boxing, or cycling any time soon.  But it does mean that I am going be cognizant of that privilege just as I know Jill is cognizant of hers.

******

On a tangential note, talking about class reminds me of another aspect of growing up WASP in OKOP culture.  One key rule that OKOP follow: talking about class is prima facie evidence you don’t have it.   I remember when I was in junior high school, and I repeated something at the dinner table I had heard earlier in the day. I  can’t remember what I was describing, but I said something was "classy."  An older female relative whom I love very much said to me gentle, "Hugo, please don’t say ‘classy’.  It’s vulgar."  (For OKOP WASPS, few things are worse than being "vulgar.")  The point became clear to me quickly: the people who talked about things being "classy" or about "having a lot of class" were the "anxiously aspiring" who were all-too-eager to try and signify that they belonged in a certain social stratum.  Those who had already "arrived", as it were, practiced a careful, elegant pretense of ignoring the whole idea of class.  Thus the use of the term "classy" was, as far as OKOP were concerned, proof of its absence!

Just how nice the Nice Guys are…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 16, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness, Blogging, Circumcision, Feminism, GLBTQ, Men and Masculinity and Vanity
. 84 Comments

The boys at the Nice Guys Forum (registration required, a pity) have been their usual sweet selves lately.  They linked to my post about circumcision last week, and were predictably aroused.  One keyboard therapist named Patr writes:

This is beyond feminism, gender studies, whatever; this is mental illness. It is not so much what he did but his attitudes toward these things and the ways he chooses to describe himself. I think he has serious mental issues. I don’t just say that because I am looking to put down Hugo, I really believe he has serious problems that require treatment.

I suppose my second wife might agree with Skeptos, who wrote:

Hugo Schwyzer is living proof that narcissism and self-loathing are not mutually incompatible. Creepy.

These are among the nicer comments from the "Nice Guys."

There’s also a thread about my post yesterday on chest hair.  Steve writes:

I’m pretty easygoing for the most part (though not in the moral sense of that term) and pretty damned tolerant, too, but this is some seriously weird shit. The dude is posting like a high school girl and claims to be having conversations with high school girls that make it seem like he is trying to be one of their girlfriends. Is that f-ed up or what?

And Burton:

It is a bit disturbing that Hugo, who is the big mangina (man-vagina, the awfully clever term of opprobium for male feminists) on campus, would be talking to teenage girls about this stuff. Perhaps he and Mark Fole (sic) double date?

A while back he ran a blog on older men-younger women relations. Perhaps he was testing the waters? But that is what we suspect is his real agenda in ratting out other men, eh? Get the feminists to flop on their backs for him?

And Nigel:

This person should truly be on the sex-offenders’ register and be denied association with those over which he has authority without appropriate supervision.

And khankrumthebulgar:

Does his wife know he’s a closet Homo? This is such a cliche. I really think Hugo hates himself.

So, there you have it, boys and girls.  The MRAs suggest I’m

a.  insane
b.  a pedophile
c.  self-loathing
d. gay
e.  just using a guise of pro-feminism to get laid

These are the "Big Five" insults traditionally thrown at men who do pro-feminist work; I got ‘em all in less than one week.  I am flattered indeed.

Some of the lads who post here at my blog also post at Nice Guys.  They vary their language, mind you, but I’m afraid that the relatively tame discourse I’ve put up here is fairly typical of what goes on "behind the registration-required doors."  And though at times it’s tempting to retaliate in kind, I think it’s nice to let the boys hang themselves with their own ugly, hate-filled words.

Running report, and a note on hairy chests

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 15, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness, Body, Men and Masculinity, Sports and Vanity
. 22 Comments

Mark, Caz, Magnus and I had a glorious, tough fifteen miler today, running in the cool and the mists of the Angeles National Forest.  (If there are any of my readers who know the San Gabriel Mountains, we ran from Chantry Flats to Newcomb’s Saddle via First Water and the Sturtevant Trail.  After years of running, those very names reek of sweat and excitement to me.)  Four tired and happy men we were at the end.  I ran shirtless, the other lads wore tights and long sleeves.  There were a few chilly gusts, but nothing I couldn’t handle.   Of course, I just got over a nasty cold, so this probably wasn’t the brightest idea I’ve ever had.

We ended up at Noah’s bagels.  For a decade now, I’ve ordered the same thing over and over: cinnamon raisin bagel toasted with sun-dried tomato shmear.  I have no idea what anything else tastes like there.  (And yes, New Yorkers, I know, your bagels are better.  I concede.)

We’ve got quite a good (and mostly civil) discussion going in the comments section below Friday’s post about feminism and loneliness.  I’m grateful that Amanda Marcotte discussed it at length yesterday, and offered some interesting insights (and sent lots of welcome hits this way.)  If you don’t already read Pandagon, read my post and hers as well as both comments sections.

And as anyone who has been doing any reading this week in the feminist blogosphere knows, we’ve all been obsessed with hair.  Mostly, we’ve been interested in how women groom — or don’t — the hair below eye level.  I posted here, Happy posted here, Jill posted here (and was ripped here), Zuzu posted here,  Lauren here, and if you poke around elsewhere, I am sure a dozen other feminist bloggers have weighed in on issues of waxing and plucking and related strategies.  It may seem silly, but it isn’t, not really, not when we’re all convinced that we have an obligation to live lives of integrity and we disagree passionately about whether or not our most intimate grooming habits are or aren’t consistent with our core values. 

It’s been pointed out in many corners that women are not the only ones who remove body hair.   While in an earlier era, only athletes in certain sports (body building and swimming, for example) regularly removed chest and leg hair, within the past ten years the number of men "going bare" has increased enormously.   Pick up any men’s magazine (Men’s Health, etc.), and the chances are good the bare-chested model on the cover will be completely or nearly hairless.  Many folks assume that the focus on hairlessness has to do with the tremendous increase in body anxiety among men that we’ve witnessed in recent years.  It’s widely argued that men are more and more likely to be judged on their appearance these days, and as a consequence we’re seeing an upsurge in male body hair removal.  Men are, perhaps, beginning to suffer from the same concerns from which women have suffered for considerably longer.

One key difference, however, goes unremarked most of the time.  Classically, the reason why men remove chest hair is that hair obscures muscle.  A rug, or even some wisps, may make it more difficult to display one’s pecs.  Taking off the hair immediately makes the chest look bigger and makes the upper body appear more defined.  Trust me, I know this first hand.  When I was lifting a lot of weights about a decade ago, I "Naired" my chest a couple of times.  (I had one brief experience with waxing at the hands of a helpful but not very skilled female friend.  Yikes.)  The "Nair" burned, particularly around my nipples (which were pierced at the time), but it got rid of all the hair from my throat to below my belt line. 

The visual results were instant — my chest looked manlier, which struck me as oddly paradoxical.  The hair (which I’ve had on my chest since I was 16) "should" have been the primary signifier of masculinity.   After all, we’re all familiar with the the exhortation "Come on, do it, it’ll put hair on your chest" — which is usually said about something dangerous or "manly".  But in our world, pectoral muscles are an even more powerful signifier of manliness, particularly because their appearance is more likely to be the result of effort rather than genetics.   In order to enhance my masculine appeal, I "had" to remove what was quintessentially masculine.  As I washed the stinging Nair off in the shower, the contradiction did not escape me!

Male porn stars generally have very closely cropped pubic hair, if they have any at all.  (Their female co-stars increasingly have little or none.)  Many women who wax claim it enhances their comfort, or their sense of pleasure, or — and this seems to be the most frequent — their sense of cleanliness.  (Even when they know intellectually that body hair is not inherently dirty.) But the reason for a man to remove his pubic hair is radically different — as with the chest, hair "down there" obscures.  An erect penis automatically looks bigger when there’s little or no hair about.  In porn, where "size matters" tremendously, there’s little doubt that a male actor can enhance his attributes by removing his pubic hair.  Of course, while both men and women have pubic hair naturally (and most women, and some men, don’t have chest hair) men and women are removing the "hair down there" for radically different reasons.   For many women, anxiety about cleanliness is at least one factor — while for men (even outside of the porn industry), the old anxiety about being "too small" is the primary motivation.

I haven’t removed any body hair from the vast expanses below my neck since early in the second Clinton Administration.  I enjoyed the visual effect of hairlessness, but hated the stubble as it came back in.  And though I found that some women liked a bare chest, I found — and here I step into dangerous territory — that the women I was most likely to actually want to be with were those who liked men with hair. Somehow, there was something suspicious to me about women who liked their men too smooth.  Perhaps it was — and here I psychoanalyze without a license — a sense I got that women who were turned off by chest hair were in some sense intimidated by or frightened of certain aspects of male sexuality.  (Bring on the flaming, but so help me, that was my experience.  I agree that my anecdotes, no matter how numerous, do not in any way constitute data!)  I will note that when my teenage girls in youth group talk about what they like and don’t like in guys, most are enthusiastic about hairless, smooth chests.  Given that those are what the chests of most of their peers look like, it makes sense.  But the connection between eroticising hairlessness and a kind of adolescent view of sexuality does seem to be logical, if nothing else.

I don’t trust Esquire Magazine with much.  (They named the no-doubt talented and lovely, but very young Scarlett Johannson the "sexiest woman alive" earlier this year, a decision which mystified me.  In my mind, she falls into the category of "much younger women I would set up with my college-age nephew, not my best friend.")  But they do report this month that "chest hair is back", which, if true, I find quite encouraging.  Of course, the linked article implies that it’s all a backlash against metro-sexuality:

The area rugs popularized by Hugh (Jackman) et al. are more than just decorative statements; they’re welcome beacons of masculinity in a too-calm sea of feyness. They’re a rebuttal to the androgynous Jude Law pretty-boy aesthetic and the skinny-pantsed Strokesification of our time. In short: Your chest hair is hot. Own it.

Uh, my chest hair is not a rebuttal to anything. It is what it is — a tribute to my DNA, which decreed (thank you, ancestors) that I would naturally have hair on my head for life, hair on my chest in moderate abundance, and very little hair on my back.  (That constellation of gifts almost makes up for the hopeless nearsightedness.)   Praise be to God that my wife loves every last little sprout and tuft!  (Especially, bless her heart, the increasing number of white ones.)

Note: After further reflection, the photo that was here of said chest hair has been removed.

Circumcised at 37: a personal story and a rebuke to the MRAs

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 11, 2006
in Body, Circumcision, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Men and Masculinity, Music, Relationships, Sexuality and Vanity
. 144 Comments

In January 2005, at the age of thirty-seven, I was circumcised.   I’ll get to the reasons why later in this post, but I figured I’d start by getting your attention.

Below this post, a men’s rights advocate (MRA) calling himself "ballgame" (!), offers a long comment that concludes with a reference to male circumcision as Male Genital Mutilation (MGM, a play on the term Female Genital Mutilation, which refers to a genuinely dreadful practice performed primarily in North Africa.)

One particular strand of the men’s rights movement that I find especially distasteful is the group that insists that the removal of the foreskin of the penis is equivalent to the removal of the clitoris.   The best known anti-circumcision lobbying group is NOCIRC.  The explicit equivalency between male circumcision and female genital mutilation is made by the folks at (get ready) the International Coalition for Genital Integrity. 

No one denies that there are "botched" male circumcisions.  But the NOCIRC and ICGI folks, and their men’s rights advocate supporters, fail to recognize that male circumcision is performed for radically different reasons than is female genital mutilation.  While the latter operation is designed to safeguard women’s purity (and make pleasure nearly impossible), circumcision is done for a variety of reasons, including increasingly legitimate health ones.

Though it is problematic to quote President Clinton in regards to this part of the male anatomy, the Guardian reported in August that

Bill Clinton called for the world to prepare to tackle the cultural taboos surrounding circumcision yesterday if, as many expect, trials show that it protects men and the women they sleep with from Aids.

Though a fuller study will not report until next year, a preliminary South African study released in 2005 made the compelling claim that male circumcision is a vital weapon in the fight against HIV.  Francois Venter, the head of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, described male circumcision as "what may be our most important HIV-prevention strategy ever."

No such medical benefits to the infinitely more barbaric practice of female genital mutilation have ever been reported.

Though the findings remain controversial, many doctors do believe that circumcision also reduces the risk of cervical cancer in women.   Warning: if you google about for information on this topic, you’ll note that non-medical anti-circumcision groups have had remarkable success in getting their results to the top of the queue of answers.  Much more will be known when we get the results of the first truly large scale study on circumcision and health from Africa next year.

My brother and I were not circumcised.  I was born in 1967, my brother in 1970; we were born in the United States at a time when virtually every baby boy was circumcised.  My parents had to be quite emphatic with the physicians at Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara, to prevent what was a routine operation from being performed.  For my late father, the reason to avoid circumcision was linked to religion, ethnicity, and the Holocaust.  My father’s father was raised Jewish, but married my Catholic grandmother and converted.  When my father was born in Vienna in 1935, he was the first male Schwyzer in the family line not to have the foreskin removed.  My grandfather saw not being circumcised as a sign of assimilation, something he wanted very much for his family.  In Austria in the 1930s, only Jews were circumcised.  With the gathering clouds of anti-Semitism already clearly on the horizon, it was thought best that my father "not look Jewish" down there.

My father was of course no anti-Semite.  But like many Europeans, he retained the association between Judaism and circumcision.  He didn’t understand the post-war American custom of circumcising all boys routinely, regardless of their faith.  And quite understandably, he wanted his sons to look like him "down there."  Many fathers, I am sure, feel the same way.

It wasn’t easy being the only uncircumcised boy growing up.  Junior high locker rooms (where we had open, communal showers) were brutal.  I was teased relentlessly.  One memorable comment that has stuck with me since about 1979: "It looks like a pistol, instead of an apple like it’s supposed to."  My mother explained why I wasn’t circumcised with a simple "Your father is European, and it’s not done over there."  That explanation was all I got until I was in college, and it did little to ease the sense of being different.

In my sexual life, I found that some women were fascinated with the foreskin, others repulsed by it, others absolutely didn’t care.   But I did find — and here I’m walking dangerously close to what is known as TMI — that my foreskin did not always retract as easily as I would like for intercourse.  I had one very memorable, very painful visit to an emergency room when I was in college.   I’ve had stitches in my knees, on my scalp, on my arms — but stitching up a little tear "down there" was no picnic.   As I grew more experienced, I learned little tricks to make sure that I never had a foreskin tearing incident again, but it certainly made me worry for years and years afterwards.

The first person to recommend circumcision to me was the doctor at Cowell Hospital (in Berkeley) who took care of my "sex-related injury."  He said that it would make sex much easier, but I was emphatically not interested.  I didn’t consider circumcision again until just a few years ago.  There were many reasons for my choosing circumcision in my late thirties.  Some of those reasons are too private to get into in a public blog.  One reason, of course, was indeed to make intercourse more comfortable.  But there was another, profoundly personal reason as well that I will share (with my wife’s permission.)

I’ve alluded many times to a past of promiscuity.  While I am not ashamed of who I was or of what I did, when I met the woman who is now my wife and fell in love with her, I began to wish that I could offer her something radically new about me.  And it occurred to me one day that getting circumcised would be something tangible I could do to provide an outer manifestation of my sexual rebirth.   My wife would thus be the only woman with whom I had made love with that particular penis, as it were.   It was not her idea, it was entirely mine.  And that desire to create something wonderfully new, combined with the desire to avoid future trips to the ER, led me to call a urologist in early 2005.

The procedure was done outpatient.  It lasted just over an hour.  The application of the anesthetic stung a bit, but the actual circumcision (done by laser) was absolutely painless.  Dissolving sutures were applied, and I was on my way home.   I was running within two days, and my wife and I were intimate again within four weeks.  There was no loss of sensation or any other complication as a result of this minor, safe, medical procedure.  The physical benefits I had sought were exactly as I hoped, and the spiritual benefits were tremendous as well.  Every time I’m naked, my very flesh reminds me that I am not the man I once was.  I rejoice in that, and haven’t regretted my decision for a single second.

So that’s my story.  Hostile comments about that aspect of this post will be deleted, though you are free to take issue with my other contentions about circumcision. I write as a man who has intimate experience with the "before" and the "after", and whose "after" is physically and spiritually better than his "before."  I write as a pro-feminist angered by the "victim consciousness" of anti-circumcision advocates, who equate a quick, safe, beneficial procedure that rarely produces lasting trauma to an operation performed on girls that produces lasting pain and robs them of the opportunity for sexual delight. To suggest that male circumcision is equivalent to Female Genital Mutilation is like comparing the pain of a vaccinating needle to that of being stabbed by a knife.  It’s deeply offensive and indefensible to do so.

Unzipped and spitting

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 1, 2006
in Vanity
. 15 Comments

So I just taught one of my morning classes with my fly partially unzipped.  Didn’t notice until after I’d dismissed them.  Compounding my embarrassment, I choked on my coffee as I was giving final exam instructions; I coughed and a drop of java flew from my lips to land right on the note papers of a student in the front row.  She recoiled in surprise and disgust.  I apologized profusely, others laughed, but really, how do I make up for that?

I need a vacation.

One little sting…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 31, 2006
in Vanity
. 7 Comments

I’ve been running in the local mountains for years.  I have fallen many times, run into bears and rattlesnakes and bobcats and intoxicated hunters.  But until yesterday, I had never had a bee sting.  Half-way through yesterday’s run, as we descended Mt.Zion, we ran into a mule team transporting gear for some campers.  As we passed them, the mules disturbed a beehive — and things got nasty.

I ended up with a single sting.  On my butt.  Somehow, one of the little fellas ended up inside my running shorts and stung me directly on the right cheek.  It hurt like the dickens, as bee stings will, but it mystified me more than anything else.  How did the bee get in there?  Why was I stung nowhere else?  What does it all mean?

Hot

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 24, 2006
in Vanity
. 2 Comments

It is very hot, and the heat seems to have melted my brain’s ability to remember anything blogworthy at the moment.  More soon.

In the meantime, off for coffee.  I’m a great believer in the old theory (no doubt utterly specious) that drinking hot drinks on hot days makes the body feel cooler.  Mind you, I don’t do this when I’m working out.   It’s lunchtime, it’s in the mid-90s, and I’m off to Starbucks for a Venti Drip of whatever they’ve got.  It will power me through my afternoon class, where we’ll be on 1920s feminism and the role of the automobile in transforming American sexual experience.

A brief mea culpa: the confession of a self-improvement junkie

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 21, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness, Athletics and Fitness, Faith and Vanity
. 12 Comments

It’s been a busy Friday, and I haven’t had much time at all to post.  I’m still thinking about modesty and responsibility, mind you, though I promise to be on to different topics next week. 

Despite the heat, I’m moving back into one of those phases of my life where I’m exercising more and paying more attention to my diet.  Whether it’s based on bad science or not, I’m doing well on the "eating for your blood type" regimen..  I feel stronger and leaner; I’ve cut most refined sugars and most white flour out of my diet.  I wasn’t eating meat to begin with, so that sacrifice is not significant.  But I am eating lots of beans and rice cakes and peanut butter and dried pineapple.  Fear not, my diet is more diverse than that — but those have recently become some of my staples.

I realize that one of the things that makes my blog tiresome to read is that I’m so obviously a self-improvement junkie. (I indeed do belong in Los Angeles!)  I’ve married a woman who happily shares my interest in ongoing transformation, and together, we get a lot done.  In a way, we’re distinctly immodest: we’re addicted to more!  Not more things, of course, but "more better". 

Yes, I’m deeply interested in being as physically healthy as I possibly can; I like following a healthy and even strict diet and working out daily.  I want to find my optimum level of fitness; I want my body to be as strong (and yes, as aesthetically pleasing) as possible.  But I’m also interested in becoming an ever-better teacher; I fiddle with syllabi and with lectures, always looking to see what can be done to improve my work.  I want to be a better husband; I am eager to become a more complete, caring, loving, partner and spouse to my wife.  I want to be a more effective community volunteer; I want to rescue more chinchillas, I want to reach more kids in my youth group.  I want to write books, and at long last, am close to starting on that process.  I want to make more money, and give more of it away.

I justify the amount of time I spend on improving my fitness by saying I work equally hard on teaching, my volunteering, and my marriage.  But does an increase in generosity in one area of one’s life justify an increased self-absorption in another?

When Christ came into my life, He came into the life of an addict.  Addiction, at its core, is about desire — and for as long as I can remember, I’ve had an abundance of that!  For things good and bad — drugs/women/faster marathon times/success/weight loss/greater spiritual awareness/greater opportunity to serve/what-have-you — my life from adolescence on has been about pushing for "more."  And that essential part of my nature hasn’t changed since I became a Christian.  I’ve switched addictions, mind you!  I’ve replaced self-destruction with self-improvement, and I confess that my commitment to the latter is almost as off-putting to some as the former!

It’s an old story, and my narrative is hardly a unique one.  But to friends, family, students, colleagues and strangers who read this blog regularly, let me take this opportunity to acknowledge that I can be an exhausting and exasperating man to be around, learn from, and read.  I’d say that I’m genuinely sorry, but I am not repentant about my fascination with stronger, farther, faster, better.  But I do sympathize with your annoyance.

I have a feeling that when, deo volente, we have children, lots of this will change.

As and As — short note on blood types and grades

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 17, 2006
in Food, Teaching and Vanity
. 28 Comments

So, I’ve been experimenting with the "blood type" diet.  I’m not trying to lose a significant amount of weight, mind you.  But I am tired of feeling tired so much of the time.  Part of the answer lies in getting more sleep, but part of it surely lies in eating better!  According to this book, peanut butter and coffee are both good for me (I’m an A+ blood type).  Given that those two items are my two staples, I’m very pleased.

My summer classes are going well, though I regret not having office hours in which to meet with my students.  In my women’s history class, I passed back a batch of papers today, and included my explanation of my grading ideas.  It’s attached here: students_often_ask_me_about_the_criteria_i_use_in_grading.doc   Yes, I give more Cs than Bs, more Bs than As.

Invariably, students who get lower than an A ask me "what’s wrong with my paper?"  I always reply that a grade lower than an A is not evidence of wrong-doing.  Students think a teacher should start out with a presumption of an A, and deduct points for errors. But I start out my grading with a presumption of a C, of averageness, and then look for signs that this paper is more distinguished than the others to which it is compared. Bs and As are only given to papers that exceed the expectations.  The C is not a punishment, but an acknowledgement of requirements fulfilled.

I always ask my students "In a class of 40, would you rather be one of five As or one of forty, or does it matter?"  Some students say it doesn’t matter, but most tend to have that pleasantly competitive streak that would strongly prefer the former.  That’s how I always felt as well.  Grades ought to mean something, and in that — if nothing else — I am decidedly old school.

The real meaning of modesty: “coveting” and “kosmios”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 17, 2006
in Christianity, Clothing and Fashion, Modesty, Sexuality and Vanity
. 24 Comments

Looks like another hot and humid day in Southern California.  I have the same classroom for all three of my summer courses, and it is exceedingly well air-conditioned.  Many of my poor students who dress for the heat end up shivering in the freon blast.  I’ve always suggested that they layer a down jacket over swimwear — the only way to be truly prepared for the unpredictable nature of our college’s ancient heating and cooling system.

I’m thinking more about modesty this morning.  I wrote about the topic last Thursday, primarily in response to the pastoral letter from the Catholic Bishop of Amarillo on women, dress, and attending mass.

I never finished the koine Greek classes I started, but I do know enough to know that the word the New Testament uses  that is usually translated as "modesty" is kosmios.  Kosmios generally means "orderly" or "proper", neither of which are helpful words in clarifying skirt length!  Given the subjectivity of what it is that different cultures and different individuals regard as "proper", it’s hard to find evidence anywhere in the New Testament that suggests a clear standard for how much skin women were to reveal.

But one aspect of modesty is well-covered (pun intended) in the New Testament: the importance of avoiding displays of wealth. In fact, the New Testament only explicitly defines immodesty not in terms of revealing flesh but in terms of ostentatious displays of property.

1 Timothy 2:9: I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes…

Gold, pearls, and expensive clothes are set up as the opposite of kosmios; the decency and propriety here is economic rather than sexual. 

1 Peter 3:3-4:  Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

These are the two most explicit references to how women ought to dress in the entire New Testament.  In neither instance is there any evidence of concern with dress as a symbol of sexual impropriety.  In both cases, the emphasis is on avoiding crass displays of wealth — particularly gold and expensive outfits.

But Bishop Yanta didn’t preach a sermon based on the New Testament understanding of modesty. Had he done so, he would have found no support for his position in the use of the Greek kosmios.  What he did is what so many folks across the theological spectrum regularly do: he took a word that had one meaning in the first century A.D. and reconfigured it to fit his own contemporary political agenda.  I’ll be the first to admit that many of us on the religious left do this; we are as sure that we know what the bible means when it speaks of "justice" as the right is when the bible speaks of "modesty."  In many cases, we’re likely flat-out wrong.

It’s telling that most churches in America are so attentive to issues of sexual propriety and deliberately unconcerned with economic display.  Imagine if Bishop Yanta had had the courage to preach a truly biblical homily about modesty!  Building on 1 Timothy and 1 Peter, he could have asked his congregants not to wear gold, platinum, or diamond jewelry to Mass!  He could have preached against the sin of wearing designer labels, or of pulling into the church parking lot in a 7-series BMW.   Such a sermon would have been far more closely based on the original use of kosmios!

In the comments below last Thursday’s post, we’ve been debating back and forth as to whether or not women have a responsibility to dress themselves in a way that will "protect" men from lusting.  For both biblical and psychological reasons, I’ve argued "no".  But for the sake of discussion, let’s suppose I grant the conservative case that women are at least partially responsible for the lust their bodies arouse.  If that’s true, is not the well-dressed rich man equally responsible for the envy he arouses with his Rolex?

Bishop Yanta quoted the Commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife". If you read his sermon, that’s the only kind of coveting he refers to.  But Exodus 20:17 reads:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Bishop Yanta is engaged in the classic modern conservative mistake: elevating sexual sin to a level of greater concern than economic injustice.  The Commandment makes it clear that coveting one’s neighbor’s wealth (symbolized by house and donkey) is as great an offense to God as coveting his spouse.   In modern terms, there is no theological difference between staring longingly at someone’s jewelry or brand-new car and staring longingly at the exposed body of the woman in front of you at the altar rail.  Both are acts of coveting — but the good bishop, like most theological conservatives in this country, comes close to giving a free pass to those of us who want to indulge our materialist fantasies.   The longing for someone else’s body is labeled the sin of lust, while the longing for someone else’s car is refashioned (in the modern American heresy) into praiseworthy ambition!  That’s just rotten exegesis, Bishop Yanta.   If you’re going to preach on kosmios, know what the word means!  And if you’re going to preach on coveting, preach the entire commandment, my brother!

As some unknown wag put it, the great conservative American mistake is to suggest that "the sins of the pelvis are greater than the sins of the pocketbook."  But a close reading of either testament of Scripture suggests that our forefathers and foremothers in faith considered the display of wealth to be at least as egregious as the display of the body, if not more so.  And they considered the longing for material possessions to be as sinful as the longing for one’s neighbor’s partner.  Though a few churches (like the Mennonites) generally preach a holistic understanding of modesty, one that embraces both the sexual and the economic, too many leaders are like the bishop of Amarillo: obsessed with the thongs that creep up over the backsides and out of the low-rise jeans of young female parishioners, and blind to the watches and rings that adorn the fingers of their parents.

“What was she thinking?” A long post on feminism and the “sausage-casing girls”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 5, 2006
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Modesty, Sexuality and Vanity
. 40 Comments

Robin Abcarian had a rather snarky piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times about what she calls the "Sausage Casing Girls", those young women who dress in styles entirely too small and tight to fit their bodies: Letting It All Hang Out.  It begins:

THE Sausage Casing Girls are everywhere this summer, their muffin tops hanging over their hip-skimming jeans, clothes shrink-wrapped around fleshy bodies that look as if they’ve been stuffed — like forcemeat — into teensy tops and skintight pants.

I don’t know about you, but I became instantly defensive and wary after that sentence.

Still, Abcarian does touch on something important:

One is tempted to applaud the Sausage Casing Girls; after all, Southern California is an epicenter of body consciousness, and here they are thumbing their noses at the idea that they must be whippets or Lindsay Lohans to wear the current styles, which for the last several seasons have been exaggeratedly body-hugging and skin-revealing. Perhaps all that self-esteem building has finally paid off.

But this phenomenon does not appear entirely to be about self-acceptance and the conscious abandonment of repressive physical ideals. It is far more complicated than that. Yes, there are plenty of young women who can confidently say that they are happy with their less-than-svelte shapes — and that is to be applauded. But there are many others who in the rush to be fashionable are unable to admit that they are larger than they wish to be, or that their bodies just don’t look good in the clothes they are choosing. Instead of reveling in their big, beautiful bodies, many girls instead are deep in denial, pouring themselves into clothes that are putting them in a python squeeze.

I hear this sort of discussion all the time from my students and my youth group teens.  Call it the "What was she thinking?" phenomenon, after the question that so many young women pose when they see a peer wearing clothes that, to their mind, are much too small for her body.   On this blog, I’ve regularly made the case that "Sisterhood is easier in winter", and yesterday’s Abcarian article is a fine case study of that unfortunate truism.  When the weather turns warmer and clothing styles become more revealing, many women do become more energetic in the "verbal policing" of the clothing choices of their peers!

Whether she’s aware of it or not, Abcarian is engaged in a classic behavior: substituting supposedly objective judgment about aesthetics for the less socially acceptable (but still ubiquitous) condemnation of fat and revealing clothing.  In other words, the progressive Los Angeles Times wouldn’t print a similarly long article in which the author decried miniskirts and tube tops as fashion choices for adolescents; that sort of op-ed might only be found in a conservative magazine.  But the Times is perfectly happy to run a long piece which, in only somewhat sympathetic language, asks again that nasty sotto-voce question: "who does she think she is to think she can get away with that?"  For Abcarian, aesthetic ridicule ("muffin tops?") is an acceptable form of criticism because it’s rooted in supposedly value-neutral fashion sensibilities in a way that moral criticism is not.

Abcarian is right, however, about the dearth of choices that so many young women have for summer fashions.  Tight and revealing clothing, modeled by the likes of Paris Hilton, is easily found in malls and stores from Nordstrom to Wal-Mart.  And it’s certainly true that the social pressure to dress according to these fashions — combined with the sheer unavailability of other choices — means that a great many girls and young women will find themselves squirming and pulling and tugging to get their bodies into clothes that seem, objectively, to be too danged small.

Abcarian is also right about the huge psychological impact that sizes have on self-esteem, even when virtually everyone recognizes that the numbers used in women’s clothing are arbitrary and unreliable:

"Everyone wants to buy a small size, even if it looks terrible," said psychologist Nancy Etcoff, who directs the Program in Aesthetics and Well Being in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. "There is shame in buying sizes that are above 8, which some think is already a big size."

Etcoff said that one of her patients, a 16-year-old girl, was traumatized in front of friends when one held up a pair of her size 7/8 jeans and said, "You wear these? I could get two of me in here."

Both Abcarian and Etcoff suggest that young women’s attachment to numerical sizes is so strong that they will "deny reality" in order to fit into the size they think they ought to be.   After all, though the article doesn’t point this out, young women tend to self-describe using sizes: "I’m a 2" or "I’m an 8". You don’t hear those gals saying, "I generally wear a 6"; instead they frequently say "I am a 6."  The size becomes more than a measure of hips, waist, and inseam; it becomes a key component of identity itself. If a young woman wants to think of herself as a "4", for example, then, as Abcarian and those she interviews suggest, she may do everything in her power to squeeze into a "4" rather than wear a larger size.  The psychological cost of admitting that the smaller size doesn’t fit is simply, apparently, too high to pay.  Physical discomfort and the risk of public ridicule are thus less important than maintaining one’s self-concept as a 2,4,6,14, what-have-you.

So what’s the feminist answer to this problem?  Is it a problem at all? 

As a pro-feminist, I’m aware of the uneasy relationship between feminism and fashion.  There’s a tendency within the loosely organized feminist community to never criticize a woman’s clothing decisions.   The very notion that there might be an objective standard of beauty is one of which feminism is traditionally very critical; we who work in this field are understandably reluctant to judge women’s personal fashion choices.  We tend to save our criticism for the fashion industry and the media, while remaining deeply respectful of the personal sartorial decisions of women.  Hence my anger at the rather nasty (to my mind) way that Abcarian’s article begins.

But feminism does care about women’s physical and psychic comfort.    While we might dispute whether or not certain jeans styles are more appealing than others, we can easily agree that physical comfort for women is a fundamental feminist good.  We ought also to agree that body acceptance and good self-image are also laudable and important goals.  There isn’t a quick-fix solution that can provide young women with these comforts.  Simply encouraging young women to "cover up" and resist the imperatives of Teen Vogue doesn’t get very far.   It’s one thing to ask a thirty year-old woman to opt out of the "beauty myth"; another thing altogether for older folks to ask sixteen year-olds desperate for attention to also opt out and refuse to "play the game."  When we do that, we tend to come across as patronizing old people who "just don’t get" how intense the pressure to be fashionable and desirable truly is.

The first phase of the solution is clear: non-judgmental conversation.  Young women, perhaps particularly the so-called "sausage-casing girls", are not nearly as in the dark about what they look like as Abcarian imagines.  A few may be brimming with genuine self-confidence, but others are anxious and defensive and wary of condemnation, or worse, ridicule.  No matter how well-meaning older folks might be, saying "Honey, that just doesn’t look good on you" is only likely to reinforce that anxiety and defensiveness.  Giving young women an opportunity to open up, safely and without risk of judgment, is key.  Let them begin, as they surely will, by talking about "other girls" and their fashion decisions.  If the environment is safe enough, the conversation can gently turn to a young woman’s own self-image.

There’s a lot in the Abcarian article to discuss and unpack. As feminists, we must be careful to direct the brunt of our criticism not at young women but at the cultural and economic institutions that form and shape their ideals and their self-image.  At the same time, we must work with these young women to help them resist and respond to deeply unhealthy messages about their bodies. And we’ve got to find a way of doing that that will be heard and received.  That will mean doing what Abcarian could not do: suspending our own culturally-shaped aesthetic sensibilities, biting back our own well-meaning criticism, and actively listening to the concerns, desires, and fears of the young women with whose bodies we are apparently all so concerned.

Note on tone

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 15, 2006
in Blogging and Vanity
. 36 Comments

Below this morning’s post, Sophonisba has explained what she finds so infuriating about my writing.  Steve, commenting at Violet’s blog, suggests that I have some sort of saint-complex, of "trumpet(ing) (my) gentleness and sensitivity in self-celebration."  There have been lots of similar comments floating about.

Honestly, I wonder if I would be a more successful blogger if I injected more sarcasm, irony, or even outright anger into my posts.  What frustrates me is that I suspect folks assume that my "blog demeanor" is some kind of pose, and that I am deliberately obscuring a feistier, harsher, cleverer self.  But truly, I blog as candidly as I can.

I’ve never appreciated irony or sarcasm; give me earnestness over subtle wit any day of the week!  (Perhaps it’s why I am so much more at home in Southern California than anywhere else, and why I always feel exhausted emotionally at the end of a visit to England.)  Still, I wish I came across as less sanctimonious and pompous; when I try and be thoughtful and irenic (not ironic) it seems to exasperate and irk the very folks whom I consider my potential allies.

Look, I doubt I can change my writing style (or my personality), but given that I seem to have ticked off an unusual number of folks lately, I’d at least like to acknowledge that I am aware of the problem.  Ultimately, though, I’m going to continue to blog the way I have been all along — by relating anecdotes and sharing stories.  I spent years and years of my life learning to write heavily footnoted academic prose; one published article in medieval English military history later, I was done.  This blog is heavy on sentiment — all that I was forced to exclude from endless papers and theses and dissertations can now flow out here.

But if I’ve been "self-celebrating" a lot lately, I’m sorry.  Pride is a sin to which I am prone, and it is one I desperately seek to avoid.  Sometimes, I realize, my tone is charged with hubris — and for that, I’m sorry.  I’ll work harder to avoid the sanctimoniousness and pomposity that seems so alienating.