The XX Factor: What women really think.

A Blog Worth Reading

If you're interested in adding another woman-authored blog to your list, I recommend Sarah Scott's Mayday Productions. A former Martha Stewart employee, Scott ended up "tits-up in a ditch," as she put it to me once in a line borrowed from the title of an Annie Proulx short story, when she was in a cycling race accident in 2005. "I don't remember if the EMT woke me up, or I just came too on my own, but I remember looking down at my thighs and thinking... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com)

Yoga Gone to the Dogs

Hanna, I see your insane Martha Stewart interview and raise you this utterly ridiculous New York Times style article about doing yoga with your dog. I don't think I need to unpack the absurdity of paying to gently stretch with a canine (nor do I need to point out this definitely falls in the bogus trend story category), but I did heartily enjoy this comment from a dissatisfied Doga attempter:

"It was lunacy,” Ms. Apro recalled. “Peanuts, my retired racer greyhound, didn’t participate at all. Instead, I did downward-facing dog while he ate the most treats he’s ever had in a 60-minute period.”

Water Dog Splash!

The Cat Restaurant Next Door That Sabotaged My Relationships With Pets

Today at the deli while waiting for my egg-and-cheese I found myself speaking in affectionate tones to the obese white cat that resides by the cleaning products. It was a strange moment, because for the first thirty years of my life I had a sort of borderline autism (Catberger syndrome?) regarding my relationship with pets. I've lived with many, but never, I am not proud to report, really loved them, even during the three years I didn't eat meat (for environmental reasons, but mostly because of a boyfriend.) Reading today's Washington Post story on the Chinese protests over the cat meat smuggling trade it finally dawned on me why that was: 

"Cats have a strong flavor. Dogs taste much better, but if you really want cat meat, I can have it delivered by tomorrow," said the butcher, who gave only her surname, Huang.

It was just this attitude that outraged about 40 cat lovers who unfurled banners in a tearful protest outside the Guangdong government office in Beijing. Many were retirees who care for stray felines they said were being rounded up by dealers.

 It is not uncommon for people (like myself) who once lived in China to read news stories about modern-day China that describes a nation that strikes them as thoroughly unrecognizable, but still: when I lived in Guangzhou as a kid in the early nineties I lived next door to a cat restaurant. We knew it was a cat restaurant because the window was adorned with a large cartoon of a cat in a frying pan. I found this kind of gross at first, but having never had pets (allergies) the idea of eating cats did not bother me on a level much more visceral than the idea of eating bird vomit or tripe, especially once I started learning about the innumerable tragedies (see, for instance, here)  that had befallen the Chinese people. Well…

The protest was the latest clash between age-old traditions and the new sensibilities made possible by China's growing affluence. Pet ownership was once rare because the Communist Party condemned it as bourgeois and most people simply couldn't afford a cat or dog.

Well what do you know? I guess the Chinese Communist Party succeeded in indoctrinating at least one expatriate kid with the notion that pets were for the bourgeois. (Admittedly at ten I was, myself, a little bourgeois.) Because it still mystifies me a little to know that the cat protest story will drive a few hundred times more internet traffic than, say, Tuesday's story about the much larger (and um, arguably more important?) protest movement in China targeted at getting the government to rein in exploitative employers and crippling inflation.

Although, to be sure, I suppose their concerns are pretty bourgeois as well:

Drivers shared plans for the strike by text message and word of mouth. Taxi driver Liu Mingsheng said the purpose of the strike "spoke to my heart."

"With my salary, I can have an ordinary life. I can buy books, toys and have medical treatment when I need it. But I can no longer have money to pay the bills and to go to dinner and drinks with friends," said Liu, 38, who used to work as a chauffeur for a state-owned company.

 Break my bourgeois heart! You know how I feel about drinking with friends. And come to think of it, the last time I got really drunk I ended the night practically spooning a friend's dog. There's a bestseller in there somewhere.