Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Robynne - Interesting...I'd like to see that study. I'd be curious to
know how the men were selected, based on what criteria?  Because I
think a certain "type" of man prefers the Jeneane Garofalos of the
world - but maybe this study is saying most men do?  My personal
feeling is you can't generalize these things.  And at the same time,
most men I've talked to aren't particularly attracted to the women on
"Friends" and all their cosmetic-looking sisters. 

The problem with studies like that, I think, is that then you'll have
all these women trying to make themselves look like Janeane Garofalo!
  

    
"I'm enjoying this discussion even if I haven't organized my thoughts
enough to contribute anything."

Frako - ah, but you just contributed.  Thanks for joining us!

Gail - I'll read your very helpful explanation tomorrow - I'm bleary
eyed and sleepy but on first glance, it seems far more comprehensible
than the manual that came with my interview tape recorder gismo. So
thanks!
  

    
Lori, I too am hoping you'll stick around. You're a natural online
community person, and I for one am pretty fond of this particular
community. And it rather suits you!

A few thoughts here, first on the techno thing: I think it might've
been Don Norman in "The Design of Everyday Things" who pointed out that
when men have problems with technology, they tend to think the
technology is stupid. When women tend to have problems with technology,
they tend to think they're stupid. Some of this might be the types of
attitudes with which we grow up (insert "math is hard!" argument here
in a whiney voice). 

This stuff gets pounded into our heads. Did you know that girls and
boys under age eight tend to like the same computer games (and play the
same games), but then around age eight, boys get more grownup games
while girls get productivity programs (Learn to Type with Mavis Beacon
and such)? This is a little parallel in some ways to what you were
talking about as an 11 year old, Lori -- you did like math. You played
chess. Other girls in your circle didn't, from what I surmise in your
book. 

Another thought on the attractive front, and not getting anywhere
unless you're attractive: the company I used to work for had a
reputation for having great-looking people. (A number of folks at this
company went to the same dentist, and she'd say, "Oh, it's the people
from the beautiful company!") Strangely, some people who were larger or
not conventionally attractive weren't hired. Was it their skills? Was
it a matter of not being a good "cultural fit?" Or was there something
else at play there? Not to say everybody was a clone of everyone else.
There was some diversity. But it makes me wonder.
  

    
Oh, and this just got emailed to me: does this help matters? Geez,
this makes me want to vomit.

http://www.alloy.com/winprizes/midol/index.html
  

    
<lori-gottlieb>: "no one will find out how fabulous you are because
the attractive people are spoken to first"

Darn right. Here are some firsthand observations I have made along
those lines. One summer during high school, I woke up one morning
severe facial paralysis due to undiagnosed Lyme disease. I could not
smile and my face had a funny lopsided look to it. I also had a very
visible rash from a sun allergy due to my medication. This literally
happened to me overnight.

The change in public reaction to me was instant as well. I went from a
normal, cute and outgoing teenager to someone that was avoided and
stared at. There were no overt incidents, but a general attitude of
unfriendliness and disdain from many people I encountered. (I often
find that often overweight people experience this as well.) It was very
uncomfortable, I remember wanting to tell people that what they were
seeing wasn't the real me. But looking back, it makes for an
interesting side-by-side comparison. When I reread my journals from
that summer (which happens to kind of bring us back to the original
topic), I see my observations about how a smile is used to communicate
in so many ways and how the absence of one left me outside of that
communication. And comments about how good looks are important to get
your "foot in the door" with someone before they'll take the time to
find out what a fantastic person you are.

wow, that was longer than I intended it to be.
  

    

I find it interesting that when I am at the thinner end of my weight
range, people tend to believe what I say and seek me out for advice.

When I am at the higher end, I have a harder time being believed about
just about anything ranging from how I feel about things to good places to
have lunch.

The only exception I have ever noticed to this is when I worked in a
company that was largely made up of Chinese people and Indian people.  In
that case, where I was mostly at my heaviest, everything I said was taken
(or seemed to be taken) very seriously, and very respectfully.  I'm not
sure what role, if any, my appearance played in this.

Thinking more about it, perhaps my appearance was just accepted since
nothing about me really fit into the norm of either culture, so I might
have been exempt from any sort of "ranking" that they might have reserved
for each other.
  

    

Lori said in <104>:

>Hex - losing weight to achieve a media-appropriate look at ANY age won't
>create adventure, possiblities, opportunities...that's a total myth.  Look-
>ing like that doesn't create happiness or open up a world of fantastic pos-
>sibilities.  And second, you're so YOUNG.  At whatever weight, you're only
>45.  Go follow your dreams! That has nothing to do with how much you weigh.

She's right, you know.

So says the 47-year-old novice troubadour!


(I'm still catching up -- I'm a couple dozen responses behind but gaining on
you :^)
  

    
Castle, you were probably just non-Chinese and non-Indian enough that you
didn't fit into their notions of what a "heavy Chinese" or "heavy Indian"
meant.
  

    
And I wonder what a "heavy Chinese" or "heavy Indian" might mean in
those two cultures as well.
  

    
I'm in China right now and most of the people are very willowy and
thin.  Part of this is genetics, and some diet.  I say this because I have
eaten the best food here and lost 5 lbs. so go figure.  Lots of stir-fry,
some raw vegetables, bean curd, lots of meat, a little rice here and
there.  I can't explain the food or why it seems to not cause weight gain
on my body.

There are definitely fat people here--or rather what you and I would call
overweight.  I don't know how they're treated or how they feel about
it.  I can tell you that on TV, I see some overweight people in the soap
operas, but not very many.  Most of the people I see on the street who are
overweight are older.  The people who are really thin are in their 20s and
30s.  So maybe this is a natural progression for them as they mature.

One acquaintance I have has a weight problem.  He is very rotund for
Chinese.  His wife told of an incident where people made comments about
his weight and stared.  I couldn't tell if this was a frequent occurrence,
or a one-time thing.

On TV, there is a show where young women have lost weight.  They show
pictures of before and then introduce her now that she's lost
weight.  They make a life-size photo paper doll of her when she was
"fat" and she stands next to it.  I can't understand Chinese hardly at
all, but I think she tells how she lost the weight and how happy she
is.  I think there may be a contest-slant to this, like maybe the best one
wins...I don't know because I always turn it off after 5 minutes.
  

    

How much difference between before and after, hex?
  

    
You know, it's not that much--I'm guessing 30 lbs at the most.  these
people are not fat, but chubby.  The fat face and a bit of chub around the
middle is what they seem to be losing.

It looks to me like most of them are just losing 15-25 lbs.

But maybe this is actually a lot of weight, if you're 105 lbs, 25 lbs is a
lot so maybe I'm wrong on my estimations.  

The point is, they are not fat.  They're what you and I call
overweight.  There are no men contestants, although one of the hosts is
male.  All of the contestants are young women, no middle aged women.
  

    
What's the difference between fat, chubby and overweight? (to you or
to your culture) Is it a specific poundage or clothing size? A 'look'?
Just curious.

Anyone... anyone... Bueller?
  

    
<taragl> posted:
What's the difference between fat, chubby and overweight? (to you or
to your culture) Is it a specific poundage or clothing size? A 'look'?

In STICK FIGURE, there's a passage in which my friend's mom tells her
daughter that she doesn't want her (my friend) to become "chubby" as a
teenager, because it will make her "sad."  I remember reading that
passage in my diaries when I first found them and wondering if her
mother had actually used the word "chubby," or if she had used the word
"fat" and I transcribed it or processed it, as an eleven year old, as
"chubby."  Because as an adult, I hadn't used that word in years (or
heard it used in the context of a woman's body).

Actually, it was my friend relaying what her mother had said, so my
friend might have switched "chubby" to "fat" already.  So it could have
been my friend's words, and not mine.

ButI bring this up because to me, "chubby" is such a baby word or a
"kid" word - like, a cute baby is chubby.  Or a cute kid is chubby. Or
chubby cheeks are considered adorable -- but only in a child.  How
often do we hear people say, "Oh, look at that adorable, chubby baby"? 
Can you imagine saying about a woman, "Oh, look at that adorable,
chubby woman"?  And even then, if this WERE to be said, it would have
the connotation of "cute" or "childlike" -- definitely not feminine or
sexy.

In my diaries, I mention something about chubby being "a little fat"
as opposed to "fat-fat."  That was my eleven-year-old take, for what
it's worth.
  

    
Hey, everyone, check out my hyperlink, above!  Many thanks to <gail>
for the eloquent but easy-to-follow online tutorial.  

I've just lost my hyperlink virginity, and now I wanna keep
hyperlinking, like when you lose your virginity virginity and wanna
keep having this newly discovered thing called sex...
  

    
Molly - you're right!  How ironic that here I am, this math-science
geek in medical school, afraid that I won't be able to "figure out" the
"technology" on a commercial Internet site.  As they say in medical
school, "It's not brain surgery."  (And what you learn in medical is,
even brain surgery's NOT brain surgery.  But that's another story...)

And yes, absolutely, you can see in STICK FIGURE how my passion for
math and chess as a child was squelched because these weren't
considered "feminine" pursuits - or that it was okay if I did them, but
only as a "hobby" - and that, in turn, shook my confidence in my
ability, as a person with a vagina instead of a thingie, to trust that
I had what it took play with the big boys (pun intended).
  

    
<explode> (okay, I'll stop hyperlinking soon - but it's so COOL), if
you really want to see whether companies that seem to consist almost
exclusively of BP's (beautiful people) hire attractive folks because of
talent or "company culture," check out my piece in The Industry
Standard called, "Inside the Cult of Kibu" - a first-person
behind-the-scenes expose I wrote after having worked at a high-profile
Web site meant to "empower" teen girls, backed by Jim Clark and
Kleiner-Perkins.  

After reading this (you can get it online by going to
<www.thestandard.com> and searching for Lori Gottlieb), I'm pretty sure
you'll pick Option B.  

It was nominated for a National Magazine Award, but didn't win - maybe
the BP magazine editors chosing the winners were offended by the
portrayal of this particular media culture?  (Or maybe the piece just
sucked and never should have been nominated in the first place.)
  

    
Gans is back!
  

    
Lori, if you notice something a little strange about the formatting of your
<167>, it's because you enclosed a URL in angle brackets without including
the http://.   The angle brackets aren't needed:  www.thestandard.com is
fine.   If you do use angle brackets, add the rest of the
URL:  <http://www.thestandard.com>.

[I'm glad you're thinking of staying on the Well.  Not only do I not have
HBO, but I switched from Expanded Basic Cable to Basic (the bare
minimum).]
  

    
I was thinking about this discussion today because I'm doing a column
for a magazine in which I choose a panel of female "personalities," ask
them a theoretical question, then write up their responses as a
regular feature.  I got the list of "personalities" from the magazine
to combine with my own personal list, and it made me wonder why people
are so interested in what a model (who, by nature of her job, never
speaks, doesn't have an expertise in speaking or critical thinking or
even comedy schtick) has to say, but (based on this list) not what a
much less attractive and fortysomething feminist thinker has to say.  I
mean, it's not that I'm asking about nuclear proliferation or anything
(I'm asking "Sex and the City" type questions), but still... 

I have nothing against the models on this list as individuals. I don't
know them, so it's possible they're hilariously engaging. It's just
that if I wanted to go grab a cup of coffee and shoot the s***t with a
bunch of really entertaining and funny women, I don't think they'd be
the first people I'd call.  Or am I reverse stereotyping?

It goes back to the allure of physical beauty that Castle talks about
above.  Because a model's beautiful, the public wants to hear what she
has to say.  And although another woman out there may have proven
herself to be witty beyond belief, we're less interested in her take
because she's not as attractive.  

In high school, adults always told me that the "real world" would be
different.  They lied.  Life is exactly like high school, if you ask
me.
  

    
Autumn -- Aha. Got it, thanks!  And if I stay on the WELL, I'll have
to dump not just HBO, but my New Yorker subscription.  Which is fine,
because it gets wet in the tub anyway.
  

    
but if you keep your New Yorker subscription, you can join the fun in
<media.1851>
  

    
I go to a nudist camp and walk around unselfconsciously, and I love to get
massaged. But I've never had a manicure or pedicure, and never will, because
I'm creeped out at the idea of someone touching my hands or feet. I keep my
toenails short and don't care if people are looking at them and thin king
"please put some polish on!" because I find polish on toenails really yucky
looking and am grossed out by theirs. So we're even.

I was at a hospital last week for a pre-surgery appointment, and saw an
intern and a doctor who was supervising her. neither were my regular doctor.
The supervising doctor was a woman who was supersize (the term my friends in
the fat liberation movement use) and had a speech impediment. I was
surprised at my instant dislike of her and the feeling of "god, I"m glad
she's not MY doctor" that washed over me.
  

    
Hmmm... just like high school? I hope not, but high school was the
most useless, stupid time of my life. But that's just me. 

Also, one thing to think about in China -- there's less idea of
individuality -- if you're different (or white), you will get stared
at. In the US, that would be rude. There, it's just the way things are.
(This was alarming to me when I visited China a few years ago -- I'm a
pale, redheaded, white woman.) Sounds like a very odd show!
  

    
There's no getting around the fact that people will almost inevitably
form preconceptions based on appearances.

Last summer I met a woman face-to-face for the first time, who was
later to become one of my favorite friends. But at that time, we only
knew each other through print: she had read some articles I'd written
in a Zydeco magazine, and we'd exchanged email. When we actually met,
she screamed and carried on, threw herself into my arms, wept with joy,
etc. Then she stepped back, looked me up and down, and said, "No. This
can't possibly be you." I asked why not, and she said, "Because you
don't look funny." Turned out she didn't mean I didn't look strange,
she meant I didn't look like I could possibly have been the author of
the humorous articles and email.

Why not? We talked about it months later, when we'd gotten to  know
each other better. She confessed it was because I was skinny with
glasses, kind of withdrawn looking, dorky and nebbishy (just like, say,
Woody Allen). Somehow, she had an unconscious preconception that thin
women aren't funny. They're all tense and serious and haughty and vain
and so forth. And maybe women with thick glasses are too scholarly to
be funny, women with bad haircuts are too clueless to be funny, women
who buy their clothes at Wal-Mart are too pathetic to be funny, who
knows. Anyway, it was very enlightening to me. I had no idea that was
how I came off to people, though further conversations with a few
courageously candid friends have born it out.

But I've also come to realize that how people are perceived is also
heavily influenced by how they expect to be perceived. 

I just moved to this small rural Louisiana town from the SF Bay Area a
year ago, and you wouldn't BELIEVE the way people stared at me when I
first got here. I might as well have been from Mars, or Borneo. I
chalked it up to my road-kill hair, my bizarre (i.e. Berkeley
therapist) clothes, my lack of a tan. I admit I did bristle a little
defensively. But now that I've lived here a year and gotten to know the
people and the culture much better, I realize they were staring at me
because to them I looked like some kind of odd stony-faced psychopath
who avoided eye-contact. Yes! I'd previously lived in a culture where
it was rude if not downright dangerous to look at, much less speak to
strangers on the street. But here, nice normal people who have intact
mental health always meet each other's eyes, smile, nod, make small
talk, inquire about families. Now that I've learned to do that, nobody
stares. Not even strangers in other towns who don't recognize me. It's
all very subtle, I can't even quite put my finger on all the little
nuances, but I've learned somehow to carry myself like the locals and
project belonging. It's absolutely astonishing what a difference it's
made, and how easy it's become to fit in.

Finally, I'm reminded of two women I know. Both are what crow's crew
might call Supersized. Both are over 50 and very beautiful. One of
them, W, is perfectly happy with her weight. She loves to eat, she
loves to cook, she owns a very successful little cafe here in town.
She's outrageously funny, outgoing, generous, a shrewd businesswoman,
and perennially good natured (though she can also be the world's
biggest bitch when she wants to, and I say that with love and
admiration). She loves to play with clothes and lipstick, she loves to
dance, she loves to travel and has friends all around the world.
Everybody in town knows her and likes her, and I can hardly stand to go
out dancing with her any more because she has every damn man in the
place flocking around her while I stand there feeling utterly invisible
and left out.

The other woman, P, is the same size and age, or maybe a few years
younger than W. She's smart, talented, creative, and successful. But
she has a chip on her shoulder. She's defensive, she doesn't expect
people to like her, and so she reacts by not liking them first. She
oozes contempt for certain kinds of people: athletes, people who do
physical labor, people who aren't well educated, all women who are
thin. She doesn't exude warmth or humor or confidence. She looks
perpetually angry, or at least irritated. There's something tense and
almost bristling about the way she carries herself. And when, sure
enough, people don't take to her, she blames it on her weight. She sees
herself entirely as a victim of society's unfair prejudices, with no
awareness of her own role in it all.

I'm not trying to say blame the victim. But I do believe there is an
element of self-fulfilling prophecy involved in the way people are
perceived, and that maybe we have more control over it than we think.