Forget those situps and laps, give me a downward facing dog! Army recruits are training under a news set of physical fitness guidelines these days and, “That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded,” reports The New York Times. The new whole body routines are meant to reduce injuries, strengthen overall body performance (including core muscles) and prepare soldiers for more physically demanding combat zones including Afghanistan. But the main enemy in this battle is obesity. “Between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physicals each year because they were overweight rose nearly 70 percent,” a group of retired generals and admirals concluded in a report released this year:”Too Fat to Fight.”  The news physical training program isn’t Army-wide yet (only a few bases are experimenting) but many of the new recruits simply aren’t up to par. Army officials cited high sugar diets and lack of physical fitness as well as video games as the cause. “What we were finding was that the soldiers we’re getting in today’s Army are not in as good shape as they used to be,” Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, told The Times. “This is not just an Army issue. This is a national issue.” At some bases they are also putting in healthier eating options as well. While most commanders are still old school in their approach to physcial fitness, the enemy is a lot leaner and more agile than the average Army recruit. And 20 jumping jacks, 50 situps and a two mile run don’t exactly cut the mustard in Afghanistan. Downward dog may look weird but if it means a better prepared soldier, it’s a necessary change the Army needs to make.

Being a good housewife used to be the expected role for women (and from my experience abroad is still the role for many women) but the stigma of a stay-at-home wife or housewife is a “near-extinct species” in places like Norway, according to The New York Times. But stay-at-home wife/mom/husband isn’t a role many are proud to claim The Times reports, ”Today it’s mostly the other way round, pitting women against one another along the fault lines of conviction, economic class and need, and, often, ethnicity. Across the developed world, women who stay home are increasingly seen as old-fashioned and an economic burden to society. If their husbands are rich, they are frequently berated for being lazy; if they are immigrants, for keeping children from learning the language and ways of their host country.” And for those who do want to be stay-at-home moms or who want to work but are struggling with balance it’s even more difficult, “In countries where mothers still struggle to combine career with family and quit work less out of conviction than out of necessity, they are often doubly punished. In Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, most schools still finish at lunchtime, and full-time nurseries fit’s or children under 3 are scarce. Yet in this generation of young mothers you are more likely to find women saying they are on extended maternity leave or between jobs than admitting they are housewives,” The Times reports.

By default, I am currently a stay-at-home wife as I am at home, not working full time or even part time through the rest of the summer until the next teaching semester starts. And as a writer/blogger my working time is hardly traditional. And I feel GUILTY! I’m not contributing financially and find myself feeling lazy and judging myself for not being out there in traffic with other girls my age, for not rushing to Subway for a quick lunch break, for watching an entire marathon of Gene Simmons: Family Jewels yesterday instead of going to the office (otherwise known as my converted dining room). I used to work like a dog all the time. And when I teach and lecture and grade and write, I do work like a dog. I just don’t have to 9-5, Monday through Friday stuff. I chose, with the support of my husband, to have a non-traditional working life. And to compensate for the guilt I carry, I have contributed more and more to “housewifey” tasks: laundry, cleaning, cooking etc. And sometimes I have to ask for money from my husband which just makes me sick to my stomach–not that he says anything. He says it’s “our” money. But I’ve always had “my” money. And now I’m in a dry stint. And I don’t want to be called a housewife or homemaker (I think of women like Hillary or those “Real Housewives” that are ridiculous or “Desperate Housewives” that are, well, desperate and they are not the kind of women I ever want to be). I feel a stigma–maybe one of my own creation–but to me it’s like I’ve made a choice to be a stay-at-home wife and not work. And I have by default but that was never my intention. I feel trapped by these walls a lot. And I hate that I smell of cleaning products some afternoons. And that today my “to do” lists includes cleaning the oven. It makes me feel like I went to school and had big feministic dreams for nothing–like I was just waiting for a good man to come a long and sweep me off my feet. I do have a good man, and I am a wife at home, but the fact is I’d rather be called unemployed, lazy or worse but not a housewife. And that makes me feel so judgmental but women who do choose to work and who don’t want to stay and raise their kids at home are often equally judged.

The New York Times had a feature on how French women age gracefully and it was an interesting insight into the world of beauty. P.S. Yes, they do cosmetic surgery, relish in creams and wonder potions that lift, tuck, conceal or eat away cellulite, they consider pampering a necessary part of life not a duty (and their universal health insurance foots the bill for some spas), they use diet pills and sunscreen, and consider pale en vogue, they use minimal makeup and abuse diet fads, and simply “won’t get fat”.  I loved that part of the piece. I tell myself that all the time, “Thighs, I refuse to watch you expand and ooze together when I sit down.” They maintain their physique by walking a lot not working out (sacrebleu that’s torture) by dieting and eating tiny, tiny portions. And everything else is done in moderation including cosmetic surgery.

“The objective of plastic surgery in France, according to Dr. Michel Soussaline, a Paris surgeon with more than 30 years of experience, is “to keep the natural beauty and charm of each individual woman, not to fit some current ideal of beauty.” After all, trends change. In the United States, he says, women who spend a lot of money on face-lifts want to show off their investments,” reporter Ann M. Morrison. I couldn’t agree more. There is so much bad Botox walking around Dallas these days it’s obscene and so is the tanning–cute when you’re 23, a leather belt when you’re 33. It’s as sad as watching a 50 something man with blond highlights and a too tight screen print-T shopping for distressed jeans at Macy’s in North Park (saw it on Thursday). The obsession for “youthful beauty” is so misplaced here. Because people will go to drastic measures for an image they see as beauty–or an age in their head they think they looked the best–and do whatever it takes to attain that again rather than be the figure, size, and beauty they are now. And if I see one more mom in skinny jeans I’ll scream! Give them to your daughter. Take them off now! You may fit in them (and I say that nicely) but that doesn’t mean you should wear them.  And for that matter the halter top maxi dress needs to go too. You need a bra! Wear it. Thick straps are better than saggy girls. 

Why is aging so horrible anyway? Last month, a 22-year-old college girl thought I was 24. She couldn’t believe I was almost 30 (in three months). ”Your’e 30?!?” She freaked. Like I was lying to her. Somehow 30 meant what? Old, warts, stretch marks? And I watched as she sucked on a cigarette and didn’t have the heart to tell her that if she keeps that up she’ll look 30 at 24 and so will her already yellowing teeth. I hope I gave her something to look forward to though. At least when she gets to be my age she’ll remember she doesn’t have to look it! But the real secret to French aging is simple, “For Frenchwomen, aging seems to be a matter of mind over makeup. If women feel good about themselves, right down to their La Perla 100-euro panties, they look good, too. Françoise Sagan once wrote, “There is a certain age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and then there comes a time when she must be loved to be beautiful.” And many Frenchwomen seem to be well loved as they get older — by their tight-knit families, their friends and, perhaps most importantly, themselves,” wrote Morrison. There’s a lesson for the ages and for me. Thighs, I love you just the way you are! And, husband, I need some extra money to French myself up!

Great article in yesterday’s New York Times on Miley Cyrus’s transformation from teen queen to sex icon and how it’s so not cool with her fans or parents. Even Miley’s most loyal fans don’t understand why she posed practically nude on the cover of Vanity Fair two years ago or why she used a stripper pole in her routine at the Teen Choice Awards (she also gave a lap dance to a 44-year-old film director) and the sexy corset in her new music video “Can’t be Tamed“ is just too much said Perry Hamm, 11. “I don’t know what was going on in her head,” Perry told the New York Times, “I feel like she acts 25. She looks so old. She is too old for herself.”  (I like how Perry assumes 25 means sexy, super slut activity. She’s not too far off.) And her record sales reflect the growing discontent within her tween base of support–a recent survey showed her favorability rating among those ages 13 to 17 had dropped from 45 percent to 24 percent. But Cyrus says she’s looking forward to the new changes in her life–and is skipping college for now to pursue her own career, “I’m super excited for this new chapter of my life to begin!” she wrote on her blog. But the boon, Megan Calhoun of Ross, Calif., told the New York Times, is that teen icons don’t get how their ”growing up” is a turnoff, “I’m just impressed with kids picking up on the change and saying it’s not that interesting and they don’t relate.” But haven’t we seen this all before–Brittney Spears and Lindsey Lohan to name two prime example. One got married and had babies and went temporarily insane. The other was just recently sentence to 90 days in jail. And we always ask, “Where are her parents?” Unfortunately, they’re right behind their daughter. Watching as people paint her face like a hooker, letting her wear corsets and use stripper poles and pose nude–who lets their daughter become an adult woman so fast? What kind of parents are OK with that kind of exposure? But it’s her right to be successful, they say. She’s talented. Yeah? Look at where ”success” and fame have landed other young women her age–jail, probation, nude on the cover of Playboy, or dead from a drug overdose. Yes, there are examples of young actresses who aren’t totally freak shows featured on TMZ every night but thus far Miley hasn’t been the most upstanding little girl on TV. I don’t blame Miley for stretching her limits, she is 17 afterall, but she’s headed down the path where so many have gone before and girls never, ever learn that it’s the wrong damn path!

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd says the struggles women face in places like Saudi Arabia mirror the inadequacies of the Catholic church she describes as, ” an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity,” that has, “remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.”  Dowd’s piece on “Worlds Without Women” in this weekend’s New York Times come after a visit to Saudi Arabia. Dowd asked a small group of women, “why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation.” Naturally, they responded somewhat defensively and defended the slow steps to improved rights for women. Still Dowd wondered,  ”How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?”

“To circumscribe women, Saudi Arabia took Islam’s moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Muhammad; the Catholic Church took its moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus is surrounded by strong women and never advocates that any woman — whether she’s his mother or a prostitute — be treated as a second-class citizen,” wrote Dowd. Still I had a hard time making the connect between Saudi Arabian women in Islam and Roman Catholic women unable to stop the continued pedophilia in the church (what most of Dowd’s piece was dedicated to). In a general sense, I get that men are responsible for both, but Dowd stretches her connection, “I, too, rationalized as men in dresses allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity.” But that’s not necessarily true said Gloria from Philadelphia, “There have always been strong women in the life of the church who have admonished popes, founded orders of religious women to minister to the strays of this world, written books, and otherwise led by example. I also do not think it is fair to compare the treatment of women in the church with the way women are treated in the Islamic world. We do not get stoned to death for committing adultery, for example.”   Whhoooaaa there Catholic sisters. First of all, the cultural inconsistencies in Saudi Arabia–no where in Islam does it say women can’t drive cars–do not mesh with the reality of modern Muslim women in most of the Middle East many of whom do work, are educated, whose father’s, as Dowd writes, are in “dresses”, and do stress education for their daughters. And let us not forget that many of the conservative customs a Catholic woman may consider restrictive–such as covering ones head or dressing modestly in public–are practiced by strict Catholic women and many Muslim women choose to cover their head and to dress conservatively for the same reasons many Muslim women choose not to. It’s not only because a man told them to. And while women in Islam can’t be Imams (and women in Baptist churches can’t be preachers), sisters (what Muslim women call each other) do lead other sisters in prayer rituals, they share devotional time and mentor one another. There are many strong Muslim women just as there are many strong Catholic women. Saudi Arabia is not the entire Middle East. It’s a country with religious and cultural customs that to other Muslims and outsiders–especially a Catholic New Yorker–seem backward and absurd. But so is kissing the ring of a man who calls himself the Pope and turns a blind eye to child abuse.

I’m officially nominating myself for the Texas State Board of Education. Hell, anybody can do a better job than the group of conservative idiots who’ve struck Thomas Jefferson from its list of important thinkers because of his stance on the separation of church and state. I’ve spent more of my life in school than out. And I know first hand the damage–yes damage–that is done to students who did not get the educational foundation they needed. My students struggle with basic writing techniques like putting more than two sentences together to make this thing called a paragraph. And I incorporate my political science background, journalism and literature in my classes. And most of them struggle with basic information like naming our  two U.S. senators!  And this semester most of my students are recent high school graduates. It makes me so angry to see how very far behind they are. They shouldn’t have to waste years in remedial classes or fail history to 1862 because they don’t know who Thomas Jefferson is! Or can’t name Hispanic leaders like Oscar Romero or that Hip Hop is a cultural movement.

But the conservative members of the Texas State Board of Education especially those on the Committee on Instruction–their addresses and phone numbers are listed on the site–have made a mockery of history in Texas as Mark Morford points out in his column, “Dear Texas: Please shut up. Sincerely, History.” Writes  Morford, “Nearly every change is a rather ridiculous rewriting of history and the language surrounding it, all tending to favor — can you guess? — white privileged capitalist males, a bitter Christian God, and a whitewashed version of history that never actually existed?” And the sad part is that Texas is the largest buyer of history books and many states follow the Lone Star’s lead and purchase the same books.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.” So the SBOE instead included, “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association,” reports The New York Times, ( a liberal rag the SBOE will be striking out next probably.)

Mavis Knight

Democrat Mavis B. Knight of Dallas introduced an amendment that would have required students to study why, “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”  After it was defeated on a party line vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda,” reports The Times.  Knight later said, “I cannot go back to my community and say I participated in perpetrating this fraud on the students.”

LatinaLista.net

And Latina Lista points out, “In a state where the District Attorney of Dallas, in reviewing past convictions of minority inmates, has been able to exonerate and gain the release of numerous wrongfully imprisoned because of a notoriously prejudicial system against people of color, the idea that students should not know how to analyze a situation to determine if an outcome is based on institutionalized racism or not is pathetically ignorant.” Amen.

“I have a pretty good marriage. It could be better. There are things about my husband that drive me crazy. I’m no saint of a spouse, either. I hate French kissing, compulsively disagree and fake sleep when Dan vomits in the middle of the night. Dan also once threatened to punch my brother at a family reunion at a lodge in Maine. But in general we do O.K.,” wrote Elizabeth Weil in her piece Married (Happily) With Issues  for Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Weil and her husband Dan tested their mediocre marriage to see if they could improve. They tried a series of therapies to learn how to be better married and both the results and journey are interesting read to anyone who is married or is thinking about getting married. For so many of us marriage is just that thing we do when he says I love you and you feel it back. Then kids or careers or stress enter into the picture and you find yourself lying there in bed at night thinking about and asking yourself, “Am I really happy in my marriage?” Some may have taken the  Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Test to see if you’re compatible before “I do,” but soon enough you’ll find yourself asking, “Why did I?” And for many of us (myself included) admitting to those spousal fears or what some call “the marital ghetto” is healthy. I thought getting married would be it for me, but now I’m realizing how hard being a wife is, how much I thought I knew what it meant and how I see myself in that role and he sees me in the role.  And I constantly find myself comparing our marriage to others: she looks happier, they go out more, how do they stay so nice to each other etc. But the bottom line, the dirty little secret ladies (for those of you married or thinking about it) is that marriage will not make you happy! Marriage for some will seal the commitment on a relationship, will be that personal, financial, spiritual step you take with a partner–a commitment. But you’ll find the honeymoon ends, the socks still don’t get picked up, you’ll end up cleaning the kitchen, doing the laundry and cooking and still be expected to raise three children and look good. Happiness in marriage comes in moments. And if you work hard together those moments are more frequent and a marriage can be more happy than others. But you’ll also find “sad” marriage, “angry” marriage, “you dirty slob” marriage, “come to me daddy” marriage, “why won’t YOUR mother stop criticizing” marriage, “we’re broke” marriage, “I hate you” marriage and “I couldn’t imagine my life without you” marriage too.

Elizabeth

When Specialist Leydi Mendoza,22, returned from Iraq three months ago after 10 months in Iraq with the New Jersey National Guard, she looked forward to seeing her toddler daughter, Elizabeth, 2, again. But as 300 members of the New Jersey National Guard embraced family members and children in tearful reunion at Fort Dix, Specialist Mendoza’s daughter was no where in site. During her deployment, Specialist Mendoza kept a picture of little Elizabeth tucked in her patrol cap. But since her return, her ex, Elizabeth’s father, Daniel Llares, 22, hasn’t allowed her access to her daughter because Specialist Mendoza is, “a mother[Elizabeth] doesn’t really know or recognize that well,” said his lawyer, Amy Lefkowitz in a New York Times article yesterday. ““I wanted Elizabeth to grow up and be proud that her mother had served her country,”Specialist Leydi Mendoza told the New York Times. She’s attending Montclair State University in New Jersey and studying to be a math teacher. “And we needed the health care and the military benefits and the help paying for my school.” Before leaving she and Llares agreed on joint custody.  Master Sgt. Minnie Hiller-Cousins helped Specialist Mendoza draft her family care plan but now Llares wants primary custody arguing he’s shown devotion to little Elizabeth while her mother was overseas–Specialist Mendoza granted him temporary custody while she served in Iraq. Llares and his attorney argue that an abrupt change in Elizabeth’s life would cause her harm. A judge has since allowed Specialist Mendoza daily visits and sleepovers and the two are now in a legal struggle over custody. “I left my daughter, and they told me that when I got back, she’d be with me again. But now, it’s like I’m on my own,” Specialist Mendoza told the Times.

In a Sunday op-ed, public editor Clark Hoyt kind-of-sorta-not-really apologized on behalf of the New York Times to its readers following a highly unpopular Critical Shopper column by Cintra Wilson. Hoyt writes, “ The lesson, I think, is that it is O.K. to have fun with your readers. It is not O.K. to make fun of them.” So are you sorry it was written or sorry the Times got called out by its portly, poor, Middle America readers? Ghastly? The corn fed folks read the Times!  In case you missed her piece, Hoyt sums up Wilson’s assessment of the Penney below:

“Why would this dowdy Middle American entity waddle into Midtown in its big old shorts and flip-flops” without even a makeover of its logo, asked the columnist, Cintra Wilson, a virtual sneer seeming to drip from her keyboard. She said Penney’s “has always trafficked in knockoffs that aren’t quite up to Canal Street’s illegal standards”; “a good 96 percent” of the clothing is polyester; the racks are full of sizes 10, 12 and 16, but not Wilson’s 2; the petites department has plenty of clothing “for women nearly as wide as they are tall”; and the store “has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on.”

Wilson defends the piece saying the column is, ”almost wholly neglected on our snobby, self-obsessed little island. New York boutiques tend to cater to the stress-thin morbidly workaholic, Pilates-tortured Manhattan ectomorph,” she wrote Hoyt. In her online apology she wrote, “Because of my personal beliefs as a Buddhist, I very much regret that my JC Penney article in the Times caused any wounded feelings whatsoever, particularly to people who already feel they take more than their share of abuse from our very shallow and ridiculous society. I was not sensitive enough to this, and the extent to which my article exacerbated these feelings is a very real failure on my end for which I sincerely apologize.”

 Nice try Miss Snotty Pants. You got called out for offensive writing. There’s a point where being edgy cuts both ways, at your readers and at you. Anticipate to be fired Wilson. Even Executive Editor Bill Keller, said the column shouldn’t have run. His own momma shopped at the Penney! This, “would make a fine exhibit for someone making the case that The Times has an arrogant streak,” he told Hoyt.  Course no one caught on to snobbish streak–not Wilson, her editor, his editor, the copy editor, managing editor etc. until one person and her friends and her friends fired off some emails and letters in defense of the store, their budgets and waist lines! Cue “We Are Family.”

“”Don’t take it personally”" when your husband tells you he no longer loves you, sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do,” says Laura A. Munson in her New York Times piece Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear. Munson says she stuck with her marriage, through her husband’s mood swings and hateful words like, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.” Continues Munson, “ This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hearing your husband say “I don’t love you anymore” and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.” Obviously, a lot of people aren’t happy with the commentary. But it does raise good questions. Are you weak for staying with your husband if he tells you he doesn’t love you? Are you strong if you divorce him? I don’t know if I would have had the strength she did to put up with him (she set a limit of six months of crap) but it does show the effort it takes to make a marriage work. Really work. Through those hard times that we vow to stay through but often quit at and choose divorce instead.