This piece on campus suicide and perfection is a really great, really tough read, and also, do better, Kathryn’s parents:
Expectations were high. Every day at 5 p.m. test scores and updated grades were posted online. Her mother would be the first to comment should her grade go down. “I would get home from track and she would say, ‘I see your grade dropped.’ I would say, ‘Mom, I think it’s a mistake.’ And she would say, ‘That’s what I thought.’ ” (The reason turned out to be typing errors. Ms. DeWitt graduated with straight A’s.)
Richard Bernstein, a Man Who Owns Two Day Spas, had things to say about the nail salon expose. People had things to say about what he had to say.
I definitely did not know this had happened:
Predictably, activity trackers have raised privacy concerns. In 2011, many FitBit users discovered that the profiles that they had created on the FitBit website turned up in Google searches—exposing a ton of private information, including sexual activity they had logged (“15 min passive, light effort”; “3 min active and vigorous”). Since then, the company has taken steps to prove it cares.
Jaya, you’re gross, also, I too have pooped in that Barnes & Noble:
I have a mental map of everywhere in New York City I can freely do my business outside of my apartment in relative secrecy. There are the bathrooms halfway down the stairs to the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, where the stall doors are too squat but everything smells decent. There’s the 4th floor of Century 21, where nobody will find you amid the hoards of tourists ripping through discount prom dresses. There’s the door behind the children’s book section of the Union Square Barnes & Noble, and the basement of the Old Navy in SoHo, and Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station and the Port Authority. Of course there are plenty of diners and Starbucks’ where I could order a coffee in exchange, but this is not Urinetown. I have a volatile stomach and I should not have to pay to relieve it.
Matt and Jaya are here! We got tacos. We blog. It good.
Naomi Wolf, no.
I Feel Bad About My Knees, the book Nora Ephron never got to write.
beginning to think that men believe us to be humorless scolds only bc they cannot sense humor in the wild (also, he favorited his own tweet):
John Leavitt reading a piece he did for us:
Are height and weight really subjective? Is that how measuring things really works?
I’ve been puzzling over that too! Maybe the dude meant “variable” instead of “subjective?” Like how height can vary with the shoes you wear? Or the time of day (we all wake up shorter and get up to 1/2″ taller during the day, e.g.)? I dunno. Weight can vary if you take a big poop, or drink more water from one day to the next…
But that isn’t subjectivity, it is just variability. So I have no dang clue what he was on about.
I mean, my really bad high school physics education was just robust enough that I remember there’s a difference between weight and mass, but, I mean, no one’s cycling on the surface of the moon, and even if there was a moon stage of the TdF we’d still be talking variability, not subjectivity.
Moon stage of all sporting events, please. It’s 2015, what are we waiting for?
Now that Boston’s pulled out, maybe we should all get behind Moon 2024?
With all my heart.
“Moon 2024” has gone in the gmail draft email titled “pitch list”. I have not actually pitched anything on my pitch list (although I have occasionally mentioned one or two of them to my nearest and dearest). But this one, I think, will nearly write itself. Perhaps this will be the first to make it to an actual pitch email?
Maybe he meant continuous instead of discrete? So you have to start by choosing your precision–which is not the same as subjectivity, but w/e.
Well no more dieting for me!
Yes the whole purpose of measurement is clearly subjectivity and certainly not some sort of objective standard by which qualities can be compared. Someone make the Scientific community aware of this I think they missed it.
But Mr. Twitter egg probably means something else, something else about cycling, about which I know nothing.
In other news, NIST bitterly gnashed its teeth and cried out, “Foiled at last!” as its century old fraud was finally brought to light. A dark day for metrologists indeed.
I’M SO FUCKING TALL
When did height and weight become subjective????
I can honestly say that my weight is the least subjective thing about me.
that’s just, like, your opinion, man
Maybe he visited that planetarium that will tell you your weight on different planets?
I’m wondering if what he means is that two people can be the same height and the same weight but have radically different builds and athletic abilities? Which isn’t the same thing as them being subjective.
If I am being charitable, I think perhaps the character limit on Twitter made him less clear than if he had had more room, but millions of people use Twitter every day and manage to make themselves understood, so…
Maybe he meant jokes are subjective and got confused.
Americans, if you are jealous of the Canadian map, you might find this exhibition interesting: http://americanindian.si.edu/nationtonation/ (highly recommended if you’re in/around DC.)
I just saw that exhibition this past weekend! I’ve not been impressed by the depth/sophistication of the Smithsonian history museums’ exhibitions in the past (you lose a lot of interest when trying to avoid pissing people off), but “Nation to Nation” and the NMAI were great. The deadpan tone of the written narration was perfect: WRT the promises made in one treaty, my favorite line is “that’s not how it turned out.” No kidding. <3
I can’t speak for NMAI and have no connection to them, but I very much suspect that “not pissing people off” is waaaaaaay far down on their list of concerns. I mean, some people are going to be pissed off that the museum exists at all, you know? Or that actual real live Native people are talking about “sovereignty” and “treaties” and “fishing rights” and “a nation-to-nation relationship” and so on.
Also the last time I was there, the cafe was selling brownies baked in muffin papers, which is freaking genius.
The NMAI cafeteria is the best food in all of DC.
I was jealous! Thank you!
Pretty sure this Graham fellow begins a lot of sentences with “ACK-tually…”
It’s just a feeling I have.
It’s really emotions per kilogram.
And I hope that joke works.
I’m picturing him as the “not all men” guy from Matt’s cartoon.
I strongly feel like we should ban the word “actually” because it causes me to immediately stop listening to whatever the speaker says:
See I think we should keep the word, for that exact same reason! Similar to “I swear I’m not a racist, but – ” or “No homo, but – ” … makes it easy for all of us to stop listening and start thinking about Nightvale or SYTYCD or whatever.
This makes me want to autoreplace “actually” with “no homo” in all jerk comment uses… though I’m sure I’d just be saving some actually-ers typing time.
I strongly feel like we should ban the word “actually” because it causes me to immediately START listening to whatever the speaker says.
#AshleyProblems
WELL, TO BE FAIR…
MARY POPPINS
MASHA POPPINS
I remember Jane getting trapped in a bowl in one book, but I don’t remember if there was a boy who wanted to keep her there? I think it was in one of the sequels. Those books got pretty dark, so I 100% believe it was probably in there.
I read that campus suicide article yesterday and MAN did it hit hard. I went to a college where there are suicide clusters relatively frequently, but at least they’re addressed on campus and people know about them. My current university just doesn’t acknowledge if any happen, and I highly doubt there’s been zero since I came here five years ago (other than the one in my program). I’ve recently gotten involved in trying to improve the mental health resources on campus, but sometimes it feels like trying to plug a fire hose.
Trapped in a bowl? What?
There was a drawing on a bowl? And she got trapped in it? It’s been ages since I’ve read them, so I don’t remember the details.
Those books are REALLY WEIRD. But man, did I love them.
Yes! Trapped in a Royal Doulton bowl I think, and it turns into a terrifying nightmare where she has to serve an old man or something. Pretty sure it was the scariest Poppins story.
Wasn’t there an evil twin who made up a poem for her about how she’s a bouquet of red roses and he’s gonna pin her to his heart because he loves her so much? I am REMEMBERING
OMG I don’t remember that. There was a Jaya Catches Up about Mary Poppins, and there are a lot of commenters trying to remember odd Poppins stories in it, including the bowl story: http://the-toast.net/2014/03/18/jaya-catches-up-w… Basically the grandfather who lives in the plate tries to get Jane to stay there to replace his dead granddaughter. :/
I FOUND IT!!! it’s in Mary Poppins Comes Back, chapter called “Bad Wednesday.” there are triplets; two boys and a girl and one of them entices Jane to jump into the bowl with the following poem:
My love, thou art a nosegay sweet,
My sweetest flower I’ll prove thee,
And pleased I pin thee to my breast,
And dearly do I love thee.
and i haven’t read on, but in the russian version one of the siblings is definitely the one who won’t let her go and i vaguely remember something about an old dude but not really.
also i should note that i googled the poem and it’s def not by Pamela Travers, but I guess that’s implied
edit: the triplets are boys and there’s also another sibling named christina. so much happens in that bowl!
I do remember the story about Maia very well, mostly because that’s my name (though I spell it with a -y- instead of an -i-) and I insisted on spelling it that way for AGES after I read it and one of my teachers asked me if I was going through an identity crisis (I was 12).
Yes! Royal Doulton! I remembered that clearly because I had absolutely no idea what a Royal Doulton bowl was.
My mom’s china set read “royal doulton” on the bottom, which made eight-year-old me very happy because it was kind of like Mary Poppins. Ours didn’t have images of people on them, though.
Trapped in a picture ON a bowl! THAT ONLY RAISES FURTHER QUESTIONS
*gets on knees, folds hands in prayer*
Dear Lord, thank you for the Toast and Toasties, spending their mornings/afternoons/nights getting into an involved thread recovering repressed memories about dark-as-hell Mary Poppins stories. Amen.
When I was in undergrad, every time there was a student death and the official university press release / obit in the student newspaper didn’t reference a cause of death, you knew. We didn’t have any clusters when I was there, but there had apparently been one in the business school a few years before I started, so my business school friends had to go to mandatory counseling twice a year.
Then, almost at the end of my final year, there was a case where a student called health & counseling services to make an appointment about his depression and they told him there was a three-week wait to talk to someone. He was dead the next week. I think that was the first time that officials actually came out and acknowledged that it was suicide, and that the campus mental health resources were overwhelmed. It was a pretty awful time. But there was some good to come out of it, in terms of a lot of awareness raised/new volunteers recruited for the peer counseling program and their crisis hotline, and issues of depression and mental illness being discussed much more openly on campus.
Did you guys read the Daily Beast piece about marital rape allegations against Trump/his lawyer’s absolutely batshit responses? I’m so grossed out – the level of violence in both Trump’s actions and the lawyer’s language is breathtaking. And Trump is a leading GOP contender? Are they only polling 4chan trolls?
I’m going to watch that sheep gif until my brain feels better.
I read it and I was extremely horrified and grossed out. For some reason I don’t think I ever realized the extent of Trump’s extreme awfulness until the past four months, so now I feel vaguely guilty for even having neutral/slightly positive feelings about him.
Poor Ivana.
I feel like he’s always come across as a bullying oaf, but yeah. I didn’t realize the extent to which he’s actually a violent and foul human being. Too bad that doesn’t seem to matter much to the voters polled so far? Yeesh.
I was honestly confused as to how he was polling so well. And then…and then. A lot of my family are conservative evangelicals, with most of the stereotypes that go along with that. Because they don’t communicate in any way other than Facebook, I haven’t defriended any of them. It is fascinating to see what they post about Trump, because it’s almost as if the news that we all see/sometimes take for granted about his awfulness just doesn’t even exist in their world. These are people that use the internet! And somehow their circles remain so closed off, they genuinely have no idea about different points of view or some (very pointedly some) breaking news items. It boggles the mind.
That’s really interesting – I can see how whatever trait it is which makes you conservative also compels you to shut out news you don’t want to see/hear. And of course the peddlers of conservative faux-news don’t want to report things which don’t fit their spin. It’s truly surprising to me that there are people in real life who say they would vote for him, but I guess it shouldn’t be!
I think what’s going to fuck him with evangelicals is that Rupert Murdoch is going to make damn sure they know Trump was never religious or even socially conservative, at least until he started to covet the GOP nomination. This Trump boomlet is going to dissipate in a hurry as establishment conservatives get sick of his schtick and bolder about attacking him head-on.
I’m sure there are people who don’t realize that Donald Trump has never been a religious man, but how? How do people not know that?
I just read some selected excerpts over at Shakesville and oh my fucking god. That lawyer! If someone wrote that dialogue in a fiction piece nobody would buy it! Poor Ivanna, too — it was noted at Shakesville that her divorce also included a gag order on her talking about her marriage to Donald without his permission (shudder), so her statement should be taken with all the salt.
The very concept and term “gag order” makes me shudder, ugh. How is it that legally separating yourself from someone can come with such a string, that you aren’t allowed to speak of things concerning them — especially without their permission?
In exchange for a large sum of money. She did not have to agree to the gag order. But she had to agree if she wanted all that money. And, given the state of divorce courts, it may be that it was her only financial asset.
Right? A coke-binging gangster lawyer seems believable but you give him that dialogue and people are like, naw, naw, that shit’s unsubtle, 2 of 5 stars.
I can’t even imagine a lawyer* truly believing and SAYING OUT LOUD that marital rape doesn’t exist, or is totally legal if it did exist. Like, did you hire your lawyer out from under Bob Kelso or George Bluth Sr.? Does he have a degree from a for-profit online university?
*a real lawyer, not Rob Lowe in that new series he’s in with Fred Savage where he plays an actor who played a lawyer then wants to become a real lawyer… but I cannot wait for that series to start, it looks ludicrous.
I think he found his degree under a rock when he was oozing out of the dank sewage-filled hole in which he was born. :/
“It’s not possible to rape your spouse!” Where did you get your law degree, the university of dumbass?
I hope the University of Dumbass regrets their affiliation with him and comes to get their degree back.
Based on pretty much everything that’s happened on the internet over the past year, 4chan trolls are apparently the GOP’s primary constituency.
If only troll-talk weren’t infectious. It seems like it is, sometimes – you take people with unquestioned assumptions and introduce ’em to troll comments, you get new trolls. Ugh.
Whoa, this certainly provides more context for his comments about Mexicans all being rapists. A little projection goes a long way. It will be interesting to see white MRAs show up to defend Trump against an alleged false accusation when they had nothing to say about his own racist generalizations about Mexican men.
I wish the MRAs would just jerk each other off in private. A new rich white man to defend? I can hear the fapping already. >:(
“Slate notes that older men (ie those in power over young women) find it intensely annoying.”
This seems like a really good reason to use vocal fry as much as possible tbh.
Not only because it annoys older men, but because it annoys Slate.
THIS.
Things that women do to annoy older men would be a great blog piece.
My contribution, related to my time in IT:
Consistently demonstrate competence.
(God they hate that.)
They really REALLY hate that! SO MUCH.
Oh man, one could totally write that in the style of a Slate thinkpiece. “Women, stop holding yourselves back by demonstrating competence!”
Oh man I swear I read one similar over at Reductress but my google-fu is failing me 🙁
“Don’t flirt back. Just ignore it as if the had passed gas.”
Ooh! the older guy (retired annuitant) who talks over women like that’s his actual job belched really, really loudly yesterday after lunch and didn’t excuse himself! He also used to try to sneak up on me to shake my chair whenever I was focused on something. I have great peripheral vision so I’d turn around just as he’d start to do it, which took all his fun away. I finally told him I didn’t like it because it made me dizzy (I have vertigo) which worked but, ugh, so annoying.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to turn this into an “older guy in the office” vent, but it just happened.
I had to hold back on telling stories about Older Men Who Hate Competence in Women. So please, vent away!
“Only laugh at jokes when those jokes are funny”
Smile too much
Don’t smile enough
Use the word “just”
Behave too assertively
Breathe air
Bear children
Don’t bear children
Have skin
My existence, going from the vocal fry piece to the bit on knee-lift surgery:
She is a master of the side-eye
Especially that one in the lower-right-hand corner; I imagine that that’s her side-eyeing America for the past couple of years.
Lower left hand is even better!
This is mesmerizing.
i know! i didn’t look away for almost a full 20 seconds…
I feel we should all feel bad for disappointing her so much.
The Spitalfields Life blog has a beautiful piece about the grave of a Roman woman in her 20s that was discovered during redevelopment in the 1990s. Isotopic data confirm that the woman was actually from Rome itself, so she died a long way from home. “‘People were so mobile,’ Rebecca [the curator] explained to me, ‘We found a fourteen-year-old girl from North Africa but her mother was European while her father was likely to be African. A legion from North Africa was sent to guard Hadrian’s Wall and we have found tagine cooking pots that may been theirs. I pity those men – how they must have suffered in the cold.'”
That’s such an interesting story, thanks for the link!The ancient world was pretty effed-up in many ways, but one thing it was refreshingly free from, (as far as I can see, correct me if I’m wrong) was racism. You’d be looked down on and discriminated against if you were a slave or a non-citizen or various other reasons, but not because of your race.
I’m always flabbergasted by people who say things like, “There were no black people in ancient [insert European country/empire here].” Like, for real? You do realize that Africa is RIGHT THERE, and people had boats back then, right?
This is my go-to: medievalpoc.tumblr.com
I have progressive historian friends who don’t like that tumblr because it apparently uses really shoddy (slash nonexistent) scholarship, but it’s useful when taken with a grain of salt.
I was just coming here to say, the scholarship is . . . pretty laughable (identifying a Post-Impressionist painting from 1890 as “Regency”) and she’s also known for being shitty to Jewish and Roma bloggers. There’s a good breakdown here: http://historicity-reblogs.tumblr.com/post/937510…
Oh damn they’re even worse than I thought. I figured it was just, yanno, a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs making amateur mistakes but being too filled with self-righteousness to recognize their amateurishness.
But no, that shit is actively, deliberately deceptive. Shame on them.
It sucks because that kind of thing is super useful. Ugh, people.
It’s the kind of thing that drives me nuts, because I have a minor in history, and whenever I bump into a blog that’s trying to be helpful by insisting that homosexuality was totally normal and accepted in ancient Greece, I have to resist the urge to bang my head on a table. NO NO NO the erastes/eronemos relationship is not the same thing!
yes yes yes yes yes, oh my god, absolutely not the same thing!! Classics major here, hi, clearly I have Opinions about this as well…
If you feel like explaining, I’d really like to learn more 🙂
I would love to explain more!
It’s really difficult in general to map socially sanctioned romantic/sexual relationships that took place in history to the ones we experience now, because they carry completely different interpretations of what gender roles are, and what your place in society is. When people describe the eronemos/erastes relationship as “gay,” they’re correct in that it involved two self-identified males, but miss the fact that it wasn’t a relationship entered into by two adults on equal footing. The idea behind ancient Greek pederasty (as they called it) was that an older man would take a “youth” (i.e. someone not yet considered a full adult, with fully adult privileges and rights) under his wing and essentially teach him how to be a man. The standard for “youth” varied, but often the beloved/eronemos would be, by modern standards, not much more than a preteen. The reason it was socially acceptable for the erastes/mentor to act sexually on his beloved (AND NEVER THE OTHER WAY AROUND) was that being penetrated was the domain of the social “lesser-” so women, boys, and slaves. This concept still lingers, obviously- being a “bottom” is often associated with being more feminine, less powerful, etc- but in ancient Greece, it would have been wildly taboo for the younger man to penetrate the older one. Once men aged out of these relationships, they would go on to marry women and produce children. It wasn’t a lifelong partnership, but a stepping-stone in a young boy’s transition to manhood.
Of course, having said all that, the same can (and should) be said of past heterosexual relationships. If, in the twenty-first century, Edmund Tudor married preteen Margaret Beaufort and got her pregnant, we would never legitimize that as an actual marriage! (And it should be noted, she was an unusually young bride even for the fifteenth century.) But marriages- in particular aristocratic marriages- didn’t take place in the same social context that we experience now. There were different expectations of what marriage is and should be, different roles for men and women to play, and different social codes holding all this in place. Honestly, I wish we approached historicity with the attitude that NO ONE was “straight” or “gay” (especially because categorizing sexuality based on desire rather than action is a relatively new way of thinking) but looked at how they moved within the expectations of their society and the ways in which they diverged from them. It’s easier to understand someone’s actions when you look at them in the context of “they were expected to do/say this, and chose to coordinate themselves in these ways in response to that” rather than “that historical figure’s experiences map precisely onto mine!” Because the latter is nearly impossible.
(It should also be noted that the erastes/eronemos relationship varied regionally, since “ancient Greece” was actually a loose collection of independent city-states. Men in Sparta had very different expectations placed on them than men in Athens.)
Very interesting, thanks!
I visited Hadrian’s Wall once, and I remember they had some very touching letters from soldiers translated in the museum there (of the “Dear Mom, please send socks” variety). It definitely sounded like a cold and miserable place to end up.
I refuse to feel bad about my knees.
(but I did compare my knees in the mirror to pictures of celebrity knees and I’m feeling smug about my knee game, tbh.)
Wow, suicide and that Fitbit piece and knee lifts all in one day.
I’m done with the world this morning. I would like to go home and retire to bed out of spite.
I just love the phrase ‘vocal fry’
fish fry
stir fry
deep fry
spanish fly
vocal fry
have a try!
don’t ask why!
if you feel like growling,
Naomi Wolf is scowling
Kardashian-speak
is now on fleek!
and CNN is prowling
searching for the latest thing
whereupon their chyrons cling
Fox is blaming the left-wing!
So end your sentence with a rasp
the older ones will never grasp
Your existentialist ennui
let your vocal fry fly free!
Definitely picturing Titus singing this Pinot Noir-style. It’s fantastic.
Me, too!
A+
There are a lot of emotionally charged topics today, but the one about bathrooms really got to me personally.
I was a mail carrier for a year and a half, and because I was entry-level I was on different routes all the time. “Where to use the bathroom” was a frequent concern.
(My faves were churches. Quiet, usually reasonably nice, and they were always friendly.)
Does hating the way many young women speak make you anti-feminist?
Not necessarily. But it does make you anti-youth. This is sad. Young people these days are terrific! Have you noticed that big bookstores have given over a huge chunk of floor space to Young Adult? Young people read! Actual books! Young people are articulate and thoughtful and goodhearted. So what if some of them gurgle a bit.
It’s the selective focus on women that gives away a misogynist bias. EVERYONE at NPR has ‘vocal fry’, but only women are criticized for it. That’s not a coincidence.
Terry Gross discussed this subject just the other day. It was FASCINATING.
on the one hand: props to terry for managing to have an all woman panel for that discussion
on the other: it’s pretty clear where she came down on that debate (which is fine! moderators/interviewers should have firm opinions – even ones who normally go out of their way to almost completely remove their subjectivity…); but it’s interesting to think about given how you can hear how much she’s changed the pitch of her own voice compared to earlier interviews. and i know she’s stated before that she thought her younger voice was too “girly”
also – the linguist/professor (who was my favorite panelist) said that english men use vocal fry and i have been watching a LOT of british crime series (thanks, netflix!) and since this weekend it’s all i can hear…
I wish I could have heard more of the discussion. The youngest panelist talked about modeling her voice depending on the situation and I wanted the professor to discuss that subject in more depth. When I think of women modulating their voices and accents, I always think of Oprah and her mastery of that kind of behavior on a seemingly unconscious level.
Well, vocal fry puts strain on the vocal chords if you use it very much. I’ve had chronic problems with vocal fry and going hoarse. It’s sexist the way people allow themselves to react to vocal fry in young women, but having as a goal a rounded resonant voice that is pleasant to hear (whatever the pitch) and healthy to produce is not a bad aim. Maybe she’s against vocal fry in part because she’s experienced herself how it can harm your voice & throat.
(NB: I didn’t hear the whole NPR episode, only part – so I am extrapolating a little bit about what she actually said).
Ugh. The youth these days. They just go around being so…young, and full of life, and excited and emotional. I was never like that as a youth, I tell you, I sat quietly and contemplated the Great Books for days on end.
Hating the way young people speak doesn’t make you anti-feminist. Hating the way young WOMEN speak does.
“Surgery that targets knee fat…”
Knee fat
Knee fat
Nope, still doesn’t make sense however you say it.
You might try calling them “love kninkles” instead.
“Do these socks make my knees look fat?”
I can’t really see that much difference on the knees post-fat melt, in that knee article. I also can’t really hear vocal fry. What other current trends and think pieces are my senses oblivious to?!?
SAME i always thought it was just ME– #WhatArePeopleAnxiousAbout ?!
I don’t seem to be able to smell pot. Most people seem to think that pot has a very distinctive smell. I’ve been in a room when pot was being smoked at least twice, I’ve lived above a pothead, I still wouldn’t be able to identify the smell in a smell lineup.
This wouldn’t be that odd except for the part where in most other situations, I’m pretty much the smell version of a supertaster. I can tell if bleach was used somewhere 12 hours ago, I can smell the skunk well enough in advance to change the air settings on the car so that no one else smells the skunk at all, etc.
Although I admit that “marijuana” isn’t exactly a “current trend”.
I was in school in the 70s. That means I don’t need to know what pot smells like. If I ever get a sudden flashback to my high school’s girls bathroom, I know I’m smelling pot. Happens every time.
The smell gives me flashbacks to folk festivals I went to as a little kid, so sometimes I think I smell big open hay fields that were just cut for people to camp on. And also college. I smell college.
I can sort of hear vocal fry if I’m specifically listening for it, but listening to people is so hard already–I’m trying to understand the words they are saying and the way they are saying them and how they feel about what they’re saying and how I feel about it all and how I want to respond, probably plus observing their body language…I can’t be paying attention for vocal fry, too!
Vocal fry, like bad posture, is a thing people mostly only notice/react to on a subconscious level. And yeah, it’s a real thing. But the recent thinkpiece trend of calling out young women on it is still misogynistic hot-take bullshit.
But that’s the thing! If it were only percieved subconsciously (like, idk, microexpressions?) no one would be writing annoying think-pieces about it. In order to write them and complain, the writers must be percieving vocal fry consciously. Otherwise, it’d just be something that annoyed them that they can’t put their finger on.
Well, did you know height and weight are subjective?
Haha! Toast link round up injokes! Best jokes.
Hi guys! I just got back from a wk long wedding in India and I am still GLOWING about it and drinking masala chai wistfully in my office w no concept of time / space!
Was it fabulous?
IT WAS SO FKING FABULOUS AND EVERYONE WAS SOOOO NICE AND I WANT TO WEAR SARIS EVERY DAY
Yet another reason I refuse to use a fitbit… My company actually does the “discounted health premium” thing for people who use them, but they already are way too much in my business, I don’t need them knowing about the things I do in my minimal time off the clock.
A bunch of my coworkers got Fitbits when they first became a thing, and before Fitbit changed the way it displays profiles. They all friended each other (or whatever it’s called) and learned WAY too much information – who wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, who has sex when, etc etc. It made for some pretty hilarious office gossip.
I actually have a Fitbit now and none of that information is displayed anymore.
“Tears rolling down his face, he said, ‘Kathryn, the reason I’m living is to pass you off to your husband.’ ”
vom
I read this out loud to my husband over breakfast and told him if he ever says something like that to our daughters, I will visit great violence unto his balls.
I’m not gonna say that her parents are the cause of Kathryn’s depression, but they sure as fuck aren’t helping anything.
Yeah–the part quoted here in the Link Roundup would point to that as well.
“When Ms. DeWitt’s mother came to visit her in the hospital, one of the first things she brought up was the readmittance process.”
That’s the hospital to which Kathryn was committed after her roommate found a stack of suicide notes. Cool, cool, cool.
yeah, this is the one that knocked the breath out of my throat. how the fuck did that conversation go? “hi honey, oh my god, i can’t believe you were considering suicide to the point where you wrote letters! so, how are we gonna get you back in school?”
Oh my sweet mother of mercy. Way to go, Kathryn’s Mom.
Yes!!! I was just like, HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING?????
I read this as “piss off your husband” and thought that sounded vaguely reasonable (depending on the husband).
Does anyone want to do me a huge favor and email me a pdf of that piece? Because I really want to read it but I’m out of free articles for the month….. I know, it’s almost next month anyways…
It works if you open it in an incognito window (in Chrome)!
Yeah, you just need to clear cookies.
Ohhhhhh, thank you!
At my co-worker’s wedding, her father gave a speech to the effect of, “I was proud when you graduated from college and law school, but that’s nothing compared to how proud I am of you now that you’re [finally?] getting married.”
My co-worker is extremely smart, a hard worker, and an excellent attorney. Nothing compared to finally landing a dude, tho! Way to focus on what’s really important, dad!
*slams head on desk* What. The. Fuck.
I am uncomfortably certain my dad is going to give a similar speech at my sister’s wedding this fall. So that’ll be fun.
You have time! Prepare a toast for when you leap to your feet the instant your dad concludes his speech. Enumerate your sister’s accomplishments as why you are so happy for her *groom*. You’re sure he’s proud to be known as Sis’ spouse.
Er. Her spouse. Might not be a groom. My bad.
Eeeugh!
I remember a Miss Manners thing about how traditionally one did not say “congratulations” to a newly engaged/married couple because congratulations were reserved for accomplishments one had to work hard for, and it conveyed “oh hey, you overcame the odds and found someone who puts up with you.” Obviously the word is just fine these days, but she is so right about not equating those things.
Actually the traditional etiquette on this is kind of gross: you’re supposed to say “best wishes” to the bride but it’s all right to say “congratulations” to the groom. It’s implied that the bride didn’t have to work for/win her groom; there’s meant to be an assumption that she would have had other offers. But in this traditional view you could still wish the groom “congratulations” because he’d “won” the bride and convinced her to marry him. (Source: Gilmore Girls).
aaaaaaah
well, if I’ve misremembered that etiquette thing, I like my version better :/
I just realized that I’ve unconsciously adapted that gendered advice without really noticing (or, probably, being very consistent about it): I tend to say the “best wishes” “how wonderful” “how exciting” kinda stuff when someone announces they’re getting married and save “Congratulations!” until after the wedding…
… and I think that’s because any wedding, even a two-person City Hall wedding, is a lot of work to pull off. Wow, good job, my unconscious!
Yes! I actually congratulated both the bride and the groom at a wedding I just attended because 1) I’m not very good at remembering proper etiquette of any culture, 2) the beginning of their marriage, and 3) I was genuinely happy for them and the fact that they don’t have to be in wedding-planning land anymore.
That last one is so, so real and warrants another party.
Aha, I learned that best wishes/congatulations rule from Pete Campbell, of all people.
I remember that! To the groom, you say “Score!”; to the bride, you say “I wish you luck.”
aha, found it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/24/congratu… (ha ha ha you all can tell just how great my workday is going from my number of comments today, ha ha ha)
Miss Manners is a national treasure.
All of the wedding announcements on my FB lately have been from same-gender couples, so I don’t even have to worry about the distinction!
I like to tell myself that if I ever get married and something like that happens, it is My Day and as a bride I will receive no criticism whatsoever for shutting that shit down. I suspect I’m wrong, but I like the thought of telling people to shut up and receciving nothing but approval nonetheless.
I KNOW UGH THANK YOU, I was coming here just to say that! Blegh barf vomit.
Yeah, that’s fucking weird. And yet I guess there are a whole legion of conservative Christian dads out there taking their daughters to proms and stuff with just this kind of thing in mind… freaky and disturbing.
Wait, to PROM? I’ve heard of father-daughter dances (I think I attended such a thing around age 10 or 11… it was luau-themed?) and charity ring balls… but I cannot even begin to imagine, as sheltered and conservative as my upbringing was, knowing ANYONE who would be ok with bringing their dad as a date to their prom.
Like… what? on multiple levels, what????
even BESIDES the gross paternalism and the heteronormativity and other patriarchal issues, (a) this makes ZERO sense as a response to her getting into her first-choice school (b) I certainly HOPE he can think of other reasons to stay alive than that (c) it makes it sound like he just really wants to get rid of her. “the reason I’m living is to pass you off to someone else, good riddance”
and and and what does that say about HIS life? Gah, if I thought my parents had nothing better to live for than my marriage…well, honestly, I probably would have gotten hitched to some dude I kinda liked ten years ago.
It’s so gross. As if the only reason for her to go to Penn was to meet the right kind of man to marry. No other reason at all. Though my aunt once said something similar, about why my cousin shouldn’t go to college down south because then she would marry someone from Georgia or wherever. Which is possible, but not the number 1 reason to decide on a school!
“As if the only reason for her to go to Penn was to meet the right kind of man to marry.” >> OH, I hadn’t even made that connection. I was like, “How did he get from college to marriage? Was he thinking in terms of milestones in his daughter’s life he was looking forward to?? She’s like 17??? What’s happening?????”
hahaha I was thinking about that conversation as well! just because 3/4 of our family met their future spouse at BC…
Because the only reason to send a girl to college is so she can meet a man and get her MRS, why care about the BA after that…
But yeah, if I heard that the only reason my dad had for living was to see me get married, I’d be pretty worried about HIS mental health, in addition to my own. That’s a lot of pressure!
My mom & I went to the same college, 28 years apart. Half of her class (’64) dropped out to get married. She got her BA and worked the whole time I was growing up.
Her one requirement when I was in college was that I wait until after graduation to get married. “If you get married during school, you can pay for the rest of it yourself.” So, like, the anti-MRS. 🙂
I was reflecting on this while riding my bike today. My parents had their shortcomings, but they never ever implied that marriage was their long term goal for me. Self-sufficiency, kindness, and education were. Marriage and children were considered an ‘if it’s what you want, with a good person’ option.
The father’s comment gives me huge shudders. But I am glad that awful couple was able to produce such a loving and kind person as Kathryn appears to be, in spite of themselves.
I was honestly trying to think how I would react if either of my parents had said this to me. Probably thank them for their selfless service and raising of me, say that my door is open for a well-informed apology, and tell them that we were done here, goodbye.
My sophomore year of college, Harvard had 6 suicides and I think MIT had 3 or 4. It’s such a huge disappointment that in the 20 years since then (yeah, I’m old) mental health care doesn’t seem to have improved at all on campuses.
I know all of the public places to pee in Boston/Cambridge and Glasgow.
Can you tell me about the Cambridge ones? I know the Porter Exchange, JP Licks in Harvard Square, the library in Central Square, and a bunch of the MIT buildings. I’d love to have options in north Cambridge so I don’t have to rush over to Somerville or Arlington (or Porter.)
A Toast to the Arizona Cardinals! They have hired a coach who is a WoC! A first for the NFL. Let’s raise our glasses to the success of Dr. Jen Welter!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/…
a key thing in being an urban dweller is knowing where the good bathrooms are. I live far enough outside the city now (boo) that once I go home, I am done for the night. I leave the house once in the morning to go to work, then I go home, get ready for bed, and I’m done. There is no going home to shower or change before a night out, there is no swinging by to drop things off, etc. (especially since I don’t have a car and it’s a 15 minute walk from my house to the Metro). I know where the good bathrooms are (the ones that are usually clean, the ones that are free, the ones where I don’t have to get a code or a key from the cashier, the ones that are big enough to change in if necessary), plus I still have a passport membership to my gym, which means in a pinch I can use any of their branches to shower, change or just use the bathroom. When I was a tour guide and I would do night tours, I always made sure to tell my tourists where the bathrooms were, because there are good odds that someone will need them at some point.
Agreed. I also carry a mental map of clean toilets with me.
The Nordstrom in downtown SF has EXCELLENT public bathrooms, especially the ones on the (I think?) 2nd floor women’s “fancy” section. The stall doors GO ALL THE WAY DOWN.
Deborah Cameron wrote a really excellent response to that Naomi Wolff piece:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18241/naomi-wolf-…
Dear Naomi,
A few years ago, when you were in Oxford finishing your thesis, you came to one of my lectures on language and gender. So I was disappointed when I saw your latest piece in the Guardian, exhorting young women to stop using “destructive speech patterns.” Evidently I did a poor job of explaining the basics of my subject. Professional pride compels me to give it another try.
What a fantastic rebuttal!
Wow, Deborah Cameron really made me look at this from a different perspective! As an older lady lawyer who supervises young lawyers, I am constantly telling these bright, talented young women that their vocal fry and uptalk makes them sound like they lack confidence in what they are saying and in themselves. I am always urging them to embrace their power and speak with confidence – am I totally misinterpreting what is going on? What a mindf***!
I really can’t think of a more insidious way to make people doubt themselves than to tell them they sound like they’re doubting themselves.
I had someone tell me that when I was a young chemist at a pharmaceutical company and it crushed me. Didn’t speak up in meetings for a long time afterwards. It was a more experienced woman who, I’m sure in her mind at least, helped me.
Thank you for schooling me, no snark. I will avoid doing this in the future!
Hooray, I am so glad I linked that! I hope it makes a difference to your mentees!
(I’m a careers adviser and I have Thoughts about this: I work with students who come from less affluent and non-professional backgrounds, and we have to tread a line between teaching them how to present themselves “professionally”, which in some cases means telling them they have to conform to a ton of expectations about gender, class, race, religion etc which are narrow and oppressive. But when you’re talking about people in very junior positions in a conservative industry, “just be yourself!” isn’t helpful advice. What I try to do is let them know that these standards exist, that they are unfair, and that it is work and it takes energy to conform to them, and that they get to decide how much energy they want to put into, say, changing their accent or having a high maintenance look versus reading the relevant professional journals or whatever. I think it is empowering to understand that these standards exist and that they are being judged on them, rather than it being invisible, but incredibly disempowering when it is presented as “you should be like this”, as if the standards are objective and they themselves are wrong, rather than that they are operating in an environment which privileges particular forms of expression.)
so waitaminute the rebuttal to the nails expose was based on…wages listed in classified ads? Like…raise your hand, everyone here who’s answered a job ad and found out the pay was not the same as the ad said. I dunno what’s more irritating, that grasping for dubious facts or that it’s SO FAR BESIDE THE POINT.
Like, awesome if your spa doesn’t exploit workers, but this reads like protesting too much….
same. i kept skimming it hoping for something to happen and it’s just… this dude blathering on about jobs ads in Chinese language newspapers??? that’s hardly bone-crushingly tight evidence.
RE: The suicide article
““Tears rolling down his face, he said, ‘Kathryn, the reason I’m living is to pass you off to your husband.’ ”
For the love of Moloch, where do these lunatics spring from?
Stanford, apparently. For random reasons that don’t involve me actually going there, I get Stanford’s alumni magazine. The letters to the editor and class notes sections are truly special places. I will believe anything that comes out of Palo Alto at this point.
I knew there was a reason I had a bad taste in my mouth at the thought of applying there years ago.
I GOT TO THAT, AND I WAS JUST
“Remember, be a high achiever! So that you’ll make a good wife to whichever man I decide to pass you off to as a trophy.”
Thanks, I am saving this gif for future WTF moments.
I personally prefer to believe that Emma Woodhouse would not be okay with this sort of nonsense, even in 1815.
(Of course I also believe that if any of Emma’s friends ever came out to her, she’s one of those people who would immediately start showing up to every PFLAG meeting with rainbow-sprinkled cakes, attempting to set them up with every single lesbian or bi woman she could find, and marathoning every season of Queer as Folk and The L Word, the better to Understand The Experience.)
Emma would really excel at throwing lgbt+ally picnics.
I have those baby-face knees. What are you gonna do…I mean, other than plastic surgery.
The knee article references knees being “age betraying areas.” Isn’t….isn’t your whole body an age-betraying area?
Unless you got a new liver or something, then I guess it might have a different age from the rest of you. BUT STILL.
Do you think when you get a new liver or kidney or something like that, the new organ has to put up with the rest of your body regaling it with stories of, “Back when I was YOUR age, blah blah blah” and such? Like your gall bladder won’t even speak to new organs because she’s so ageist.
I know when I had to decide whether to card someone buying alcohol, I’d look at the knees first.
Oh man I haaaaaaate that mentality. I don’t want to engage on yet another rant about how the media pushes perpetual youth and shames anyone with wrinkles, but God, they are in such a BUBBLE if they think everyone else has the same hang-ups as they do about aging. NOT EVERYONE CARES, and no one should be given a complex about a new “age-betraying area.” Fuck off.
Once, when I was drinking and watching TV, an Oil of Olay Age Regenerist bullshit commercial came on, and I called my mom to tell her she’s beautiful and I love her wrinkles and laugh lines.
I keep seeing adverts on the side of buses which start with the words, “When your skin tells a story” and I always automatically assume that it’ll say something positive. It’s an advert for cosmetic surgery/laser treatment or something along those lines to remove any marks on one’s skin. Because if your skin tells a story, better cover that up as fast as possible!
I was baffled for years by the “love the skin you’re in” tagline, because I kept thinking that if you do love the skin you’re in, why would you buy a ton of products designed to make it look different? Then I realized that they meant “make sure the skin you’re in is suitably lovable.”
To help the unsubtle spot humorless scolds like us in the wild, I’d like to endorse this shirt.
I have one in green. Wearing it in public is FASCINATING and you learn SO MUCH about people.
Man, I didn’t realize Redbubble had so many solid feminist shirts. I should pick up one or two.
or 20. i just spent ALL of the imaginary moneys.
Even if you accept Arthur Two Spas Jackson’s argument, which I don’t, it only addresses part one of the series. I found part two, about the sickness and miscarriages that arise from the constant exposure to chemicals, and no industry regulation, equally harrowing.
‘Arthur Two Spas Jackson’ hahahahhahahhahahaha <3
That deep cut Monty Python reference was elegant. Well done 🙂
Arthur Two Spas Jackson!
If only I could upvote this more than once!
I’m feeling better about my parents’ failure to care at all about my college education.
OH MY JESUS GOD IN HEAVEN WE’RE SUPPOSED TO WORRY ABOUT OUR FUCKING KNEES NOW? Misandry Goddess strike me down, I am DONE. Every time I think they’ve run out of body parts to make women feel bad about so they can sell us shit, they come up with something else. Knees! Underarms! “Cankles”! The size of our goddamn LABIA, for fuck’s sake! What’s next, I wonder? The length of our toes? The size of our earlobes? The pointiness of our elbows? What a fun fucking game!
We’re already meant to worry about our toes -gotta show off that Toe Cleavage! That’s not marketed to appeal to a tiny percentage of the population and makes shoes fit weird at ALL!
What does the diameter of a strand of your hair say about you? Men don’t like fine hair. Or coarse hair. Or medium hair. Or hair that has not been made into a brush to paint swagger portraits of their egos.
Oh, I have excellent elbows. 😉
I have a friend who has described an older female relative’s arms as “armadillbows.” He has given DOZENS of women self-conscious elbow-lotioning complexes. The elbow struggle is real.
I have apparently been vocal frying it for forever. I didn’t realize it until I watched the video in the guardian article and I was like fuuuuuuck that’s my voice! I always thought of it as a kind of Californian drawl that I picked up somehow. I mean my voice is kinda deep anyway but I have been told by random people that they could fix it (thanks no I’ll sound like Gaston if I want to) hmm.
I still do not understand what vocal fry is.
It is a tone of voice that is somewhat deeper and more resonant than vocal laurie.
This is me trying not to make unspeakable snorting noises while I suppress my laughter in the communal open-plan office space.
A+
Don’t worry, it’s not real. It’s like taxes and knee droop – they want you to worry, but it’s actually a pretend thing.
Man, people worry so much about taxes, and I haven’t ever had a tax return that took me more than an hour and didn’t give me a huge refund!
That clarifies things immensely for me, thanks.
Oof, that college article. When I was in my second year and going through a depressive episode (there were a lot of environmental factors- a really bad/creepy professor, a family member who’d just been admitted to the hospital, etc) my mom called me to ask why my grades weren’t up to snuff. She didn’t understand why I started sobbing hysterically.
My mother once *gently* made fun of me for being on antidepressants, and I completely flipped my shit at her. She has since denied the incident ever happened, but has also loudly commended family friends et al who have pursued treatment for anxiety or depression, so…
Yeah, I was originally perscribed Celexa in tenth grade (again, situational depression combined with SAD) but my mom refused to fill out the perscription because “your cousin’s on Celexa, and have you noticed how much weight she’s put on?” Whenever I bring it up these days, she insists “I didn’t mean it like that!” Funnily enough, I did end up on Celexa years later- for OCD- and she wasn’t happy about it then, either.
I’ve already gone ahead and exoticised Americans once this week, so I’ll just keep going: there’s a weird part of language learning where you’re finally able to understand most of what people say no matter which accent they use, but you haven’t yet learned the stereotypes. I know them now, of course (impossible not to, sad to say), but whenever a new linguistic trait appears in English, I get to listen to it without judgment before I accidentally learn the stereotype.
Creaky voice? “Americans on TV, high status celebrities”
Southern twang? “Witty, melodic, rhythmic, smart”
African-American Vernacular? “generic American everyday speech, clear, logical and easy to understand” (it took me a while to notice that not all Americans used this)
If you don’t know that the twang is stereotyped as stupid, AAV as illogical and ungrammatical or creaky voice as less authoritative, you may not hear it that way at all!
Have you heard the audio of a linguist talking about the origin of the Southern twang? I can’t for the life of me remember where I found it (most likely floating around on tumblr), but it’s fascinating to listen to her describe how it came to be – and demonstrate it with her voice. Wish I could look it up and link it, but sadly, I’m at work. D:
Naomi Wolf why do you do this, I love The Beauty Myth so much and all I ask is that you not spoil it for me by going around concern trolling.
I work in a museum and far and away the number one question people ask is where the bathrooms are.
Amusingly, in one gallery, there is a painted crucifix on which Jesus looks like he is pointing to the left and the right. Guess what’s on either side of him? Yep. Bathroom Jesus points the way.
That is very considerate of bathroom jesus! He is my new favorite jesus, for sure.
Whenever I find a new bathroom or make it to the washroom in time during an emergency I am now going to thank Bathroom Jesus. I just love the combination!
please tell me I can buy an icon of Bathroom Jesus
Do the bathrooms have goats and sheep painted on them? Because that would be amazing.
That Fitbit piece…I dunno. It felt akin to a lot of other bad articles about the evils of modern technology; I think that disordered eating and exercise habits existed well before the Fitbit was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, and I don’t really think it’s bad that more people are more interested in tracking their physical habits to improve their health. The data breach is crappy and scary, I don’t deny that at all, but the ugly truth about the modern age is that the idea that your data is secure and private is the greatest lie the tech industry has managed to sell. Some of the other stuff in there though – take the example of the older woman competing with her son on steps:
Sometimes his mother wakes up before midnight and sees that her son has snuck in an unexpected mile or two thanks to the time change; she starts pacing frantically around their small apartment. In the morning she comes into the kitchen, rubbing her arthritic knees, but beaming.
So…she’s getting exercise (which many people at any age find difficult, and which actually helps with arthritis) and she’s connecting with her children and feeling happiness from it (solitude and loneliness are bad for everyone, but they’re literally death for older adults). This is presented in the essay as a bad thing, but that’s a story Fitbit should be featuring in ads. Knowing moms, I’ll bet she crows a little bit to her kid (my mom gives me shit every single day she beats me on steps, which is most of them because she’s active and I am a sedentary programmer) when they talk or text. Or the thing about the couple that chats about steps – my SO and I chat idly about all kinds of dumb shit, and I don’t think there’s much moral or intellectual superiority in talking about steps or Real Housewives, or why people think Wolverine’s such a badass when there are like a thousand people in the Marvel universe who could beat him up and take his lunch money.
Also, this: “Isolation is literally a technical requirement of the FitBit.” Wat. I mean, in the sense that you use it on your own, yes. You could write this same sentence about almost everything – maybe not some vehicles, but I mean, everything else. Books, shirts, chairs, pencils, headphones, they all “literally technically require isolation”. Wearing an activity tracker doesn’t inherently make taking a walk with someone unpleasant and isolated, any more than spending a rainy day curled in bed with your person becomes an isolated experience if you’re reading books separately.
I was wondering if that article on campus suicide would mention the three people that jumped my freshman year at NYU. Apparently there were 2 the following year! I did not realize that. Probably because I was too busy being suicidal, haha :/. I managed to get myself to a therapist instead of off a bridge (my proudest life achievement, no sarcasm- I have never done something so hard and so important), but this is a lot of why I hate NYU. They have NO safety net for this sort of thing, and they push the students so hard. The help I got was good, but it was so difficult to ask for it because their whole attitude is that you should be so GRATEFUL to be attending the school, you’re so LUCKY, how DARE you complain about anything. Plus that time that I asked if I could get any more financial help for books, and they offered me $50. For the semester. It was worse than offering me nothing; I felt like I’d been spat upon for even asking.
….teal deer, I hate NYU with the fiery passion of a thousand suns and will forever regret the vast quantities of money I gave them for one a half years of misery. Hunter 5eva, NYU neva.
I’m so glad you got yourself to a therapist and are still with us. Hugs.
Thank you! Me too! Good job, past me. You made a lot of bad decisions, but that one was aces!
Snark aside, thanks for valuing me even though I am a random internet stranger. It made me feel all a-squish.
Aw, of course. It’s a sensitive topic for me — I escaped depression/suicide personally, but there’s been a lot of it around me, and while it’s been impressed on me how little I can do to help those suffering, I am sincerely happy when I see someone who’s walked that valley and come out on the other side.
Also the majority of my relationships are online and text-based, so it’s easy for me to value a person even when I just see a paragraph they wrote. 🙂
I went to grad school at NYU and I hated it SOOO much! It’s hard even to articulate why; I think it was partly what seemed like a total lack of community feeling or concern about its students. One of my professors refused to let another student reschedule a presentation in order to attend her grandmother’s funeral.
They’re all “the city is your campus!” which sounds cool, but in practice that means “we hand over all responsibility for providing you with a community and a safety net and a general sense of direction to the city of New York.”
Fuck you, Naomi Wolf. I’ve been cultivating this vocal fry since I was thirteen years old and decided to ditch my nasal twang. That was 1983, so you can GTFO with your “young women these days” bullshit, too.
Your voice is lovely! Like, not to get weird, but I genuinely enjoy your voice.
Related to the first story (but way crazier), this is a really insightful, well-written article that I couldn’t help but read aloud to my husband in bed last night: http://www.torontolife.com/informer/features/2015…
Re: Jaya’s bathroom article.
One quotidian exercise of my downtown business-clothes white-lady privilege is occasionally marching into extremely swanky hotels just to take massive dumps.
The suicide piece is disturbing me. I’m not sure I can articulate this very well, but isn’t the main focus of the article a gay woman? Raised in a conservative Christian home with weird gender expectations? It seems like parental and societal homophobia was likely the big stressor for this young woman, not feeling academic pressure, or suffering under helicopter parenting. Gay kids kill themselves all the time, and somehow it disturbs me to have their problems lumped in with bad grades.
I felt similarly. I mean, on the one hand, they interviewed Kathryn DeWitt for the piece, and she herself talked about the pressure that her parents put on her, which is also pretty apparent from some of the descriptions in the article (like how the first thing her mom brought up when visiting her IN THE HOSPITAL after her suicidal ideation became apparent was how/when she could get readmitted to school), and I can kind of see how, if you’re already in an environment where you’re feeling that pressure, being gay could feel like one more way that you’re not living up to the expectations and plans that your parents have for you. But I had uneasy feelings similar to what it sounds like you felt, thinking about people I’ve known who struggled to embrace their sexuality (luckily, for those in my circle, not to the point of suicide, but you’re right it happens far too often), even without that academic pressure.
Yes, and you can’t, like, buckle down and just stop being gay, even if you wanted to.
I also find it odd that suicide among this demographic is virtually always tied to social media culture but there is rarely any mention of the financial anxiety brought on by Sisyphean student loans and the dismal job market etc. It could be that everyone mentioned is incredibly well off, but it seems like a glaring omission.
Excellent point.
Oh yeah — I wouldn’t go so far as to say which part was the biggest stressor for her, but it did seem played down a lot. There was a lot going on for her. I’m glad she’s doing better now.
But this is a good PSA to dads that maybe they should learn to live for something other than passing their daughters off to a future husband, oh my God.
I’m a little nonplussed that people log their sexual activity on their Fitbits. But mostly because I am too lazy to manually enter anything on mine. (I don’t really trust/use its calorie measurements anyway, so it doesn’t matter to me that I’m not getting credit for the ~120 extra calories I allegedly burn by biking to work.)
I would also point out that college-aged depression isn’t just for perfectionists at elite schools. College was really intense and difficult for me even though I was a B student in high school, raised by laid-back parents and majoring in humanities at an ordinary state university. This should not be a surprise; it was a difficult adjustment to a new setting and mental health issues often arise in the late teens-early 20s. But at the time I didn’t really know what my problem was. When someone is struggling people often say, especially to women, that you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself and you don’t have to be perfect. To which I would say wait, is everyone else aiming for perfect? I was aiming for not-terrible. Somebody tell me how to go from “the only reason I get out of bed is to occasionally buy a pack of cigarettes” to, like, “C average.” I can worry on pulling myself up to an A* once I’ve gotten that far.
*This never happened, but I did allllmost get to a B average by graduation.
I have so many feelings about that college suicide article, beginning with “PARENTS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU” all the way to “Maybe the pressure’s partly due to everyone being aware that this generation will probably do worse than their parents, and in a society marked by constantly-increasing levels of inequality, maybe insane amounts of stress and perfectionism seem like a reasonable tradeoff for a shot at joining the 1% and not having to fear for your uncertain future? SMASH CAPITALISM NOW.”
That article about campus suicide is one of those peeks into a different mindset that I just have a hard time wrapping my brain around. DeWitt “says her parents are not overbearing”, but then there’s that remark about the grade. Even during her leave of absence, she fits an internship in, and “When Ms. DeWitt’s mother came to visit her in the hospital, one of the first things she brought up was the readmittance process.” (!) And then there’s the whole coming-out aspect, which the article sort of dances around. I think it’s probably a bigger part of it than the article generally lets on.
Ditto for the FitBit article. “FitBit recommends walking at least 10,000 steps a day. I aim for 15,000, because what kind of person does only the minimum?” Ha ha ha oh you. Don’t even get me started on logging your fucking as part of your activity.
On the positive side, the vocal fry thing led to this video with Faith Salie, whom I’ve probably heard on NPR but didn’t realize that she was the actress from DS9 because in the one episode she’s completely mute and in the other one she isn’t but I don’t like to think about that ep because WTF Bashir where are your professional ethics dating a patient that you’re doing medical experiments on WTF oh damnit this was supposed to be a positive thing. Well, anyway.
re: the internship thing, I can say from experience that ~elite schools want you to be doing something “productive” with your time away from the school. (as though Not Dying isn’t productive enough!) a SUBSTANTIAL part of my readmittance application and interview involved proving that I hadn’t just spent the entire semester off on the couch- whether that meant taking classes locally, or having some sort of job, or volunteering or whatever.
Which, I get that they want to be sure you’ll be able to physically and mentally handle the workload once you go back. But also, for the first few months after I left, finding a reason to get out of bed every day was as productive as I was capable of being.
That only left me a few months when I was functional enough to take a class or try to find a job. With all the pressure to actually get re-admitted so that I hadn’t wasted all of my parents’ money on 5/8ths of a degree- if they hadn’t let me back in, I would have been back to feeling like even more of a failure, and I was obvs in therapy by then but who knows how long it would’ve taken me to dig myself out of that hole. And that’s with parents as understanding and supportive as they could be in the circumstances.
Sooo that’s what the article meant when it said elite schools make readmittance really difficult and stressful! which is exactly what you want for someone with a fragile, recently-stabilized mental situation!
Jeez.
I’ve noticed that when I try to keep my voice from heading into up-talk (which, as we all know, would undermine all authority I have on technical matters), I sometimes slide into vocal fry. YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE.
Also, can we talk about a more annoying vocal problem? Men who talk exclusively from their vocal cords. Just hearing them do that makes me tense, especially since it seems to often accompany sales talks or other pressuring conversations. It makes them sound both pushy and untrustworthy, and I have to get out of conversations with them (because listening to their voices hurts me). Let’s talk about that.
Do you have a video or audio link for the latter? I don’t have any frame of reference for that.
I’m at work rn, but I’ll try to scare something up when I get home.
https://youtu.be/Gh874Nq6ebg?t=40s<br&…
How does one talk entirely with their vocal chords? What does this sound like? (serious question)
It sounds all…pinched? Or like when somebody’s upset/tense and their voice pitch goes up suddenly and sounds…idk, tense. I’ll try to find a video later.
And the mechanism is that people are trying to get greater volume using the muscles from their lungs up, rather than involving their abs to push the breath out. You wind up really tensing the voice box, and there’s a huge strain on the vocal chords and surrounding muscles. It makes me tense just listening to it, especially in a confined space.
You make a really good point. They sound like they’re moving their voices to a place where they have fewer tells for lies and manipulation
Or they’re moving their voices to a range where they have fewer tells period, and only sad fucking experience makes me think “lies and manipulation.”
This is an interesting topic; you should consider pitching.
Or they’re trying to sound so excited and eager that you get caught up in their pitch and forget to call them on their shit. It conveniently accompanies shuckster-style fast talking. And taking up more space than they actually occupy
I field a lot of sales calls at the office, is what I’m saying. Although it’s awesome, because when dudes do that, I can be the gatekeeper and not let them talk to my boss, who has more than enough work to do already.
I’m being unfair, actually. There are plenty of lovely men with perfectly useful, interesting things to say, who just happen to have obnoxious vocal mannerisms. Those men need some good long thinkpieces to help them understand how alienating their speech is. And also how they’re damaging their voices.
They do. They do. Those thinkpieces are a good idea.
It’s not just you. When pitch goes up at the end of a sentence, that’s uptalk. When pitch goes down, that’s vocal fry. (They didn’t mention it in this article, but obviously if a low-status person manages to keep her pitch perfectly steady it would sound robotic and untrustworthy.)
Reading the words “vocal fry” makes my throat hurt, because it’s such an unpleasant vowel combination. I have no fucking idea what it is, although I do wonder if it’s similar to what my mom talked about when she said I was “straining my voice” by talking at the pitch I found most comfortable (instead of actually straining my voice by forcing it into a higher pitch that was closer to her own voice).
My perspective on that, plus the knee thing and whatever other stupid shit is being thrown around to make women feel bad about themselves, is that it’s sort of like the mean kid on the playground. You know, the kid who would act all cool and tell you about this fun new game they had, but then the game consisted solely of that kid changing the rules every time it seemed like they weren’t going to win. My solution at the time was to stop playing the game and go read a book instead, and it seems to work this time around, as well.
My favorite place to use the restroom continues to be at sports arenas and stadiums. Anywhere there are rows upon rows of stalls. In there, your business becomes anonymous. The line keeps moving, the doors keep opening, and nobody knows how long yours has been closed. And if anyone back at your seat asks what took so long, you can always say there was a wait.
Airports. There are so many people that all self-consciousness melts away, and you know that most of them are going to be in different parts of the world within a few hours anyway. It almost makes me want to fly more.
My mother frequently complains that guidebooks to cities don’t give information about where all the public toilets are; as she likes to remind me, having triplets wrecks one’s pelvic floor. Public toilet provision and signposting is so important, and it makes me angry that it’s not given more attention.
Other things to avoid besides “vocal fry:”
vocal flay
local fray
dermal gray
oral scorch
buccal scutes
cankle slack
kninkle flap
goggle shock
groinal lock
freckle hex
nasal spray
turtle wax
spinal tap
fraggle rock
shake ‘n bake
slip ‘n slide
jackson browne
Good grief, I hope he wasn't married. 🙁
I knew there was a reason I had a bad taste in my mouth at the thought of applying there years ago.
Would it surprise you to learn that he was on his third marriage, and this third marriage was his second to a student.
I imagine it would not, hence the lack of a question mark, but please feel free to prove me wrong.
It would not. It dismays me mightily, though, because I assume that he has acted entitled to the body of everyone he's ever married.