Thursday, April 02, 2009 - Posts
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To answer Sam's valid query about what to do when you meet someone new, in a formal or informal setting: HANDSHAKE. Always. Why on earth are we hugging? The last time I hugged a total stranger was at a three-hour spoken-word extravaganza before which the performers worked the crowd and foisted deep, yogic hugs upon innocent spectators. Too crunchy, dude.
And, Hanna, growing up as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants (there, a small curtsy is expected from young women), I was told over and over again that a poor handshake would sully all future impressions, and I had better do it right. Not too firm, said my mother, not too jerky, and smile—with an expression hovering between thoughtfulness and elation. This is the kind of thing I am going to subliminally transmit to my children—with good reason! A solid shake is socially irreplaceable, whether one is "fresh off the boat" or long since assimilated.
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There's been some buzz today about whether Michelle Obama breached protocol by half-hugging the queen during her visit to Buckingham Palace. Given that the answer is a resounding "no," this is likely to die down pretty soon. Still, it's worth watching this CNN clip discussing the nonissue just for the slow-mo, repeated playing of the incident—a treatment better saved for scenes like this.
Buckingham Palace aside, my question about hugging—and maybe this is one for Penny, The Big Money's new advice columnist—is in what work settings an embrace is appropriate. I've often found myself the only female in a conference room, and as we go around doing obligatory hellos, I watch the men give one another hearty handshakes, then reach out to me for a hug. I find handshakes a bit forced and am generally happy to hug. Still, it feels like a slight of some sort not to be greeted by the same professional custom given to the guys. Should I more aggressively thrust out my hand so they grab that instead? Am I reading too much into this? (Judging by today's news coverage, though, it's fair game to overanalyze hugs.)
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The media's obsession with the "opt-out revolution" has become pretty annoying, but Jane Leber Herr of the University of Chicago has some interesting research on which educated women are most likely to drop out of the labor force and why. Fifteen years after graduation, doctors are much more likely to keep working than lawyers, who are more likely to keep working than women with MBAs. Data like those could just tell us something about the kinds of women who choose to pursue medical degrees and the kinds of women who opt for financial careers, but Herr thinks something more is going on. She controlled for "factors that might proxy for a woman's underlying taste for time at home with her children" and the value women place on their professional identities, but she still found the aforementioned differences to be statistically significant. One plausible conclusion is that family-friendly work alternatives generally are more available to educated women with, say, JDs than they are to women with MBAs.
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My old friends at Reason have a short video on a woman being prosecuted for practicing interior design without a license in Alabama. It would appear that the woman in question already has the skill required to competently arrange throw pillows. But the American Society of Interior Designers insists that licensing is a safety issue; indeed, that "every decision an interior designer makes affects the health, safety, and, welfare of the public." In order to get a license, this woman would have to obtain a college degree, complete an apprenticeship, and pass a test.
One could argue that homeowners want some kind of relevant accreditation, but it's not clear to me why that accreditation need be legally mandatory. (Yes, I am dismissing the idea of color-scheme-related injury.) In any case I feel betrayed by Sally Struthers, who made it seem that any of us could become interior designers (or TV/VCR repairmen) without leaving the comfort of our living rooms.
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Meghan, Dayo, Dahlia, the study that purports to show that when women are premenstrual they tend to spend more impulsively sounds like so many of the other specious findings of evolutionary psychology about how women behave during different phases of their hormonal cycle. These researchers seem obsessed with proving that female humans, like other female mammals, actual experience estrus, or go into "heat." They can't stand that that human female ovulation is hidden, and as a result are obsessed with finding clues to female behavior (shopping sprees, dressing more provocatively) to prove that we are actually controlled by our hormones. It doesn't seem to matter that their research (and the silliness of some of these "experiments" is epic) often proves nothing; they always conclude it proves their case. I find the case, however, rather insidious. How is it different from the arguments of a generation ago that women are just too emotional, irrational, and controlled by their hormones to actually be in positions of power? Think of all the women teachers, co-workers, bosses you've had over the years. Have you ever actually been able to tell where any of them is in their menstrual cycle by their behavior? And think of their male equivalents. Is anyone doing research to explain why they seem rational some days and nuts on others?
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Mindy Kaling, who plays the ditzy Indian girl on The Office, was on NPR this morning as part of their series on children of immigrants. As the child of Israeli transplants, I can testify to the accuracy of this rendition of immigrant mom:
Get up. Brush your teeth. Be a good kid. Go to school. Everyone's against you. Go to school. Everyone's against you. Come home. We're all gonna have dinner together. No sex. No drugs. Do your homework. Everyone's against you.
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There's an interesting article in the Times today about a deal the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation just cut with Viacom, which owns CBS, MTV, Nick, BET, etc., to create new, socially responsible programs and to insert lessons on healthy living, AIDS prevention, education, and so on into already existing programs. As the Times puts it, the foundation is now paying for "message placement," a variation on product placement where the benefits of organ donation, not Snapple, are being sold to the audience.
The foundation has already influenced story lines on shows like ER, Law & Order, and Private Practice, the idea being that George Clooney, in character as Dr. Doug Ross, is a better salesman for organ donation than the most persuasive educational pamphlet ever written ever could be. The Gates Foundation isn't the only nonprofit using this method—the Kaiser Family Foundation has worked with the likes of America's Next Top Model—but it has taken the rare step of paying for it. The money is, of course, the best way to ensure the Gates' message "gets out" and is taken seriously by the folks who actually write these TV shows, but it still sets an uncomfortable precedent: If the Gates Foundation can buy a "message" on a prime-time drama, so can some other, possibly lesser, organization. Social health issues are way more complicated than Snapple, which is maybe why they shouldn't be for sale.
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This is a shout-out to our own Jessica Grose, whose fabulous book is out this week. Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages From Home is based on her inspired site, PostcardsFromYoMomma.com. When I was in college, my mom called the dorm room, and I could always pretend not to be there. Now moms have whole new ways to harangue you. They show up in your inbox and on your cell phone and on your Facebook page right up next to your friends. Jessica and her friend Doree Shafrir catalog the results, which range from the cringing to the hilarious. Those of us with small children not yet in college should study and learn. An example:
me: Mom, did you watch the Sex and the City trailer?
mom: Oh, hi, can you see me right now. No where is it?
me: hi! No, this is just instant messaging. I just sent the link to you, check your inbox.
mom: ok, aren't you impressed with me on chat!!!!!!!
me: no, you are way to slow, stop typing and go watch the trailer
mom: Fine, is it goood?
me: SO GOOD
mom: How did you type that back so FAST!
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Meghan, that British study doesn’t surprise me much, either. Any woman who’s ever purchased a Lancôme mascara knows that rationality has very little to do with the ways in which we consume. But I did just have my own strange shopping-based epiphany that I wanted to share: I’ve been home with two sick kids for more than a week now, and it was one of those whomping-awful, sleepless, beg-them-to-drink, feverish weeks in which time stretched out in crazy new ways, and I periodically fell asleep with kid-sick in my hair.
We visited the doctor three times. But we were at Target four times.
Target!! Who knew that when your kids get that sick, Target somehow becomes the only answer? Anybody’s guess why our near-daily treks to seek out better-flavored Tylenol, a more accurate thermometer, or more illuminating Clone Wars coloring books became so cathartic. Maybe it was a cozy place to kill an hour when you couldn’t be in the house for one more second? Or maybe there is something about the immaculate stacks of well-designed kitchen organizers that is soothing when your kitchen looks like you have been robbed? All I know was that every last aisle of the place seemed to feature a woman with mussed hair and gray circles under her eyes, pushing along a cart full of two wheezing toddlers and dozens of items that nobody needed in the first place.
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Meghan, that study on hormones causing wild-eyed shopping sprees among British women might irk those sensitized to stories blaming estrogen for every whimper, whine, or catfight under the sun. But let's not forget that men have hormones, too! And they do even stupider things. The unseemly recessionary splurge on a purse or bangle is nothing compared with this doozy of a story from Florida, summed up as follows:
Cost of undergraduate degree from Georgia Tech: $100,000.
Night of partying at a strip club: $53,000.
Dad’s reaction to son’s $53,000 one-night bill: priceless.
Snap! Nothing like a booze-fueled, grope-heavy graduation night on the town to hammer home the lessons of the credit crunch.
Now, from a strictly scientific standpoint, a sampling of 443 British women has more clout than this random tale of a frat boy gone wrong. But doesn’t this kind of lend credence to the theory of hormones? Casino owners provoke profligacy with mere oxygen—surely the pheromones hothoused in a dive bar full of oiled-up strippers in the Florida panhandle are 10 times more potent.
No one seems to have much pity for the frat boy. Because, duh. The real question is why the dad let his son go out and buy the sexual attention at all? Though I suppose, in a roundabout way, that’s what clothes-obsessed women are doing in reverse.
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A new study conducted of 443 women in Britain found they were more likely to indulge in an "impulse buy" and to "overspend" during the days leading up to their period. As this BBC News story puts it, "Almost two-thirds of the 153 women studied who were in the later stages
of their menstrual cycle—known as the luteal phase —admitted they
had bought something on an impulse and more than half said they had
overspent by more than £25." The psychologist leading the study, Karen Pine, speculates that buying is often emotional. Hmm, really? I haven't read the study yet, so I can't tell how scientific it is. But if there is anything to it, it points to just how complicated budgeting in a time of real belt-tightening is. For years, economists acted as though spending were based on rational ideas about value; behavioral economists have shown that the way people actually make decisions seems to have much more to do with psychology. Are psychologists now going to say hormones at the root of everything? If so, should women all go on the pill for the duration of the recession? Maybe it really is time for the government to make the pill available right next to the Advil.
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