Boyl(e)ing Point

Continuing the widespread coverage of Ms. Boyle, the Sunday papers today also have a bit of Boyle. So I might well as provide my comment.

Boyle is routinely referred to as frumpy, ugly, hairy: no one it appears can refer to her without employing one of these terms. Yes its a reality show but like Australia's Got Talent, I assume Britain's Got Talent has loads of ordinary people. Its not the Idol series of manufactured pop stars as much as a weird melange of people who sing well to those who snort water up their noses. Boyle looks pleasant, slightly plump and middle aged. On BGT, she had on the kind of dress that one might wear to the wedding of an acquaintance. She's neatly turned out. In short, she's ordinary like scores of us except that she can sing far better than most. But the papers write as if she is a freak on par with a PT Barnum circus (it might be fair to say though that Britain's Got Talent conceptually is little better). I shall gag if I hear the word makeover, virgin and ugly in relation to Boyle again.

I have a colleague who is always making lists of things that suggest that Western civilization is in definite decline (Big Brother tops the list). To it can be added the fatuous coverage of Boyle. Let's just ignore the pressure and temperature conditions of Boyle's Law and say that the volume of gas is increasing.

This Life: Bodies

My first encounter with the culture of thinness was when I started “proper” work in my late twenties and encountered a whole generation of early twenties who spoke an entirely different language on the suitability of their body parts. Suddenly I was surrounded by women who didn’t just speak the language of thin and fat, but wailed about the fat upper arm, the fat thigh and so on. That the waxing and waning of body parts and its sculpting would cause so much anguish was both astonishing and laughable to the 28 year old me steeped in the idea that having a sculpted mind was the most important object of life.

In the years since, the culture of thinness is now so pervasive that no one gives it a second thought. Women and increasingly, men, are all part of the cult of size zero and parents worry about "chubby" babies. The gymnasium is the high temple of the body. The more literal minded governments amongst us would have it legislated. Indeed thinness has become a medical ideal, the thin are perplexed when they are diagnosed with illness, and the fat are asked to lose a few pounds even when the reasons lie elsewhere.

Thinness has always equated starvation or limited food or increasingly “correct” food. In unfortunate circumstances, it is shorthand for famine, disease and malnutrition. In other circumstances, it suggests self-control and asceticism. Somewhere along the way, in a world which is perceived more and more via visual media, it suggests both self control (the person who eats a “healthy” lettuce sandwich and who is relentlessly physically active) and also an aesthetic ideal.

In the West, the culture of thinness is partially historical, witness the tiny waists that corsets provided or flapper girls or the cult of the ethereal beauty from time to time. There doesn’t appear to be any such corresponding notion in India and at least in recent memory, generations of naturally thin women were routinely asked to stack on weight to raise their matrimonial prospects. Still, in my mother’s family where the women are naturally thin, it is a prized possession and they were very much given to casting an appraising eye over anyone who diverged from this ideal. Perhaps they were an aberration, perhaps it is part of the psyche of simian communities to observe and comment on anything outside the standard deviation. I digress, but I think that provided thinness is not a sign of poverty, it remains valued even in cultures that seemingly celebrate curves and lumps.

Thinness is inextricably intertwined with food. And in the past two decades, the discussion on food is both complex and well, abundant. Increasingly there is a food caste system with its own high priests (Obama himself seems to have more than a touch of gauche hipsterism) and attacks on those well known empires of gluttony are common. It is a culture in which food and size fetishism is seemingly at its zenith.

Historically, a culture’s anxieties rested on the ideal female body, now thinness is slightly more democratic. Completely unstatistically, it would appear that fewer women gym than men. The female response is usually the lettuce sandwich (or the cabbage diet or the tea diet or a weight pill, a whole industry rests on diets). Men tend to gym and nothing is more symbolic of male narcissism. Again, age 28 seems to have been a watershed – my first encounters with men who obsessively gymmed to – yes – sculpt that thigh, that upper arm and so on. Mark Greif’s sharp essay, Against Exercise, assailed the modern gym but it is hardly likely to dent subscription numbers. Gymming is also completely different from an outdoor, physical life – as is obvious from a century of representations of masculinity in cinema. It is artificial, intended to embody a cultural ideal.

One of the insidious aspects of popular culture is that one is drawn into criticism of it. For e.g., both sides of the fence will continue discussing female thinness (Vogue perhaps supporting it while making soothing noises of empowerment, the feminist making it part of her polemic and likely facing the tag of hairy, fat, lesbian) even though food and size fetishism are essentially trivial in nature. Perhaps my time is better spent elsewhere. I suppose it’s the ubiquitousness of the topic that gets to one; these days one may not begin any conversation without discussions on weight and exercise - which instantly casts a pall of boredom. More seriously, various friends struggle with their weight and it is a source of embarrassment, their relationship with food instantly conflicted. Exercise can become so important that it precedes any kind of interaction – the interaction itself is not validated unless one is present at it gym buffed. I do not write this in praise of fat or the couch (though I am comfortable with both). And the cult of bootylicious and McWhoppers is equally tedious. I only ask that both be banished from public pulpits, the matter is perhaps best left to the individual.

Bashed and Loyal

The papers today report that Rihanna appears to have been "bitten and battered" by her boyfriend. Previously in Australia, at least two sportsmen were accused of the pleasant sport of glassing, inexplicably both girlfriends (see here and here and here) decided to stick by her man in spite of those Australia says No campaigns. Whether Rihanna does so remains to be seen.

If she does, she is likely to have a precedent in the teen set that worships her. I had long chats with my cousin on my last visit to Mumbai and it transpired that at least two girls she knew, both in their late teens, were in abusive relationships. It was hard for me to ascertain if the girls were under any kind of peer pressure to leave. I may be wrong but it seemed to be all par for the course and merely part of girl talk on the agonies of a relationship. Having a boyfriend may after all be more important than having none in the brave new India. On the other hand, if the girls were lying, it only underlines that a violent boyfriend may be the must have accessory.

Time was when it was your bai who turned up glassed. She stayed in the marriage because she didn't have any choices in a society where leaving a husband brought its own stigma. Better to be a victim than a survivor was the underlying thought. And in a number of societies, it was understood that men in love roughed up their women a bit. It happened amongst the upper classes too but was spoken of in hushed tones. Some uncle or the other would be nursing the bottle (it seems to be omnipresent in domestic violence) and kicking the wife but the surface of polite society ran smooth. Any opprobrium was discreet.

Domestic violence has been on the agenda for long enough. There has been much written, much legislation to ensure that women do not endure violence and are not stigmatised by the violence. To disabuse the notion that love equals violence. In the public forum at least violence is not tolerated - Rihanna's boy friend can expect to lose a few contracts. But its hard to predict how the woman in the relationship will respond. Children were beaten too once. Its rarer these days and were it to be public, a person can expect to be ostracised. More importantly, no child sees abuse as a form of love. But at least these few examples makes it clear that women may have 21st century relationships with the freedom it entails but the internal dynamics of the relationship dates back to a more primitive time.

PostScript: Jezebel notes that teenage girls seem to find violence OK.

Mad & Bad, Blame PMS

One of those "what in the weird", wtf news segments. On the plus side, I like it that it is classified as entertainment. As someone who has hardly any pre-menstrual symptoms and never having met anyone with such a clear link, I am perhaps not in a position to judge whether women do suffer from PMS. But linking female behaviour to hormones does not seem that far removed from other charming "medical" certainties like female hysteria. Like female hysteria, it is also an effective tool for putting down women as irrational and incapable of decision due to their specific femaleness. I have had colleagues and relatives asking me in an amused manner whether I had PMS just when I am debating a point with some passion (for the record, amusingly these Qs have happened when I was not hormonally impaired, in so far as anyone of us is not hormonally impaired on any given day given that the damn things are a part of human physiology). The sad thing is that there are legions of women buying into any behavioural diagnosis related to menstruation, whether it be the effects of PMS or menopause. Both these days pass for legitimate illnesses rather than just the nature of things.