Ranthropologist

Category: Culture & Society

  • Shifting Perspective: Word Power

    Shifting Perspective: Word Power

    Consider the following brief life histories of two 18-year-olds:

    A was a sullen, withdrawn child. She seemed predisposed to depression early in life, and caused her parents concern when she would run through their house claiming she was being chased by invisible monsters. She had school friends, but at different times in her young life she considered a doll she made out of leaves; a rock; and a small glass bottle to be her closest friends and most prized possessions. By the time she reached sixth grade, her parents were divorced. A lived closer to the working class part of town than the upper middle class areas many of her classmates inhabited. At 13 she was smoking pot with older kids in the neighborhood and was busted at a local discount store for shoplifting. In high school, A held her own but had some difficulties. Math in particular gave her trouble, and she nearly failed freshman algebra, chemistry, and geometry. She participated in very few extracurricular activities and seemed to shift deeper into depression. At one point an incident with a kitchen knife and a suicide threat caused her parents to seek professional help for her. By 15, A had a boyfriend who was already out of school and spent most of her time with a group of older boys, staying out with them until the morning hours. As high school drew to a close, A’s guidance counselor told her that she would not gain entrance into the state university system because of her poor math grades. A did not apply to any colleges during her senior year. After high school graduation she found a low-level job as a receptionist.

    B was a precocious child who was reading adult fiction by second grade. In fourth grade she was allowed into the school-wide spelling bee – typically restricted to 5th and 6th grade students – because she had already completed the spelling and reading lessons through the 6th grade level. Junior high school saw B widening her circle of friends but also maintaining a reputation as an exceptionally bright student. In 8th grade she missed making the county spelling bee by just one word. By high school B was enrolled in honors courses and did well in them with little effort. She was one of only 3 students to earn the highest possible grade on the Advanced Placement exam in English. B was also an accomplished athlete, earning MVP honors for her performance on the swim team during her sophomore year. She participated in clubs as well, including the French Club, Key Club, and Oceanography Club. Her friends were mostly honor students who spent their free time enjoying board games and role playing games. During B’s senior year, her guidance counselor called her to his office to tell her that her score on the verbal portion of the SAT exam was the highest one of his students had ever achieved. At graduation, B chose to spend a year working at a local art gallery and saving money before starting college. She was accepted into a small but prestigious private college the following year.

    Now that you’ve considered the stories of A and B, where do you think they will each end up in life? A sounds troubled, while B sounds accomplished. A has been involved with drugs, crime, and older boys, while B spent her school years studying and participating in extracurricular activities. A was a mediocre student who was discouraged from college by a guidance counselor. B was an honors student who was praised by a guidance counselor and admitted to a prestigious college. Yet, A and B are so very much alike – so alike, in fact, that they are the same person: me.

    That probably wasn’t much of a twist for those of you who know me. The point I am illustrating here is the power of words. The details you pick out of a person’s life story can cause you to view them as a hero or as a villain; as a troublemaker or as a model student; as having a dead end path in life or as being on the road to a successful future. As I’ve said before, humans are pattern-seeking animals, and we don’t often look for all the contextual information we need to flesh out our first impressions.

    The power of words to change our views is something we should be very aware of. It is relevant to so much of what we hear, see, and read in the world today, particularly in news reporting. I bring this up because of the different ways in which people are represented and how subtle those word choices can be. This pertains, in the moment, to the case of Michael Brown (and a few years ago, the case of Trayvon Martin). What we read is what we see, and both of these dead black teenagers have been portrayed as potential thugs and gangsters (and also as angelic innocents). There are multiple examples of how the power of words shapes our perception of events. If you want to find them, there are many articles and commentaries you can read about how people of color are portrayed more negatively in the media than white people.

    I don’t particularly feel like dissecting the racial divide that still exists in our society in this post. Mostly I wanted to engage in the exercise of writing about my own life in two different ways. I challenge you to do the same, and to ask yourself how you might be portrayed if you were the subject of media attention. It behooves us to remember that every single person is more than a single event, a single photograph, a single conversation. They say there are two sides to every story – I say that’s the minimum. Let’s try to consider as many of those sides as we can.

  • Bikini Bodies

    Bikini Bodies

    In my last post, I wrote about tolerance of other people’s beliefs. I want to continue that line of thought but focus this time on tolerance of other people’s appearance. I have gotten into the habit of calling myself on my initial, gut reactions to how people look. It’s a sad truth that people react immediately and viscerally to how others appear, and will form a snap judgement of that person based on what they see. That initial judgement may not last, but it is always there, and we seldom, if ever, pause to unpack the unconscious, culturally dictated assumptions that undergird our reactions. In anthropology, we call this ascribed status.

    Ascribed status is technically defined as a status that one cannot help possessing, like gender, race, or age. It is something we cannot change. This contrasts with achieved status, which is, as the name makes clear, a status you can achieve. This can be good – earning a degree – or bad – earning a criminal record. Ascribing status is exactly what we do when we unconsciously size somebody up just by looking at them. The problem is, the status we may ascribe to someone may not be a status they actually have. Some stuff seems so obvious – of course that person is male, obviously that person is Black – but we often make mistakes. How many of us have been mistakenly ascribed with the wrong racial or ethnic category, the wrong age, even the wrong gender? When I was a student at Humboldt State, many people assumed I was a lesbian because I had short hair and wore nothing but hiking boots, jeans, and flannel shirts! This kind of automatic ascription becomes quite problematic when you add in all the assumptions and stereotypes that accompany it. So, for example, if you see a dark-skinned person, you ascribe to them the race of Black, which in turn may make you come to some other conclusions about this person – for example, that the person is socioeconomically disadvantaged, likely uneducated, probably criminal, and potentially dangerous. Now, I am very deliberately choosing inflammatory examples, but the reality of the way our society enculturates us means that stereotypes – especially negative ones – can be very deeply imbedded. Even if we don’t consciously realize or acknowledge our reactions (and I think many of us don’t), they are there. It doesn’t mean we act on those reactions, but we have them nonetheless. We make similar assumptions based on a person’s assumed gender, age, and many other aspects of their physical appearance. In fact, I think it might be more accurate to rename ascribed status to assumed status.

    We have come to a place in our culture and society where we have been taught that certain ascribed aspects of a person should not be subjected to assumptions and stereotypes. For example, we are not supposed to judge a person for their race or gender. Yes, racism and sexism still exist, for certain, but people are now routinely called out when they engage in racist and sexist behavior. It is not socially acceptable to make racial jokes or use racial epithets, and it is illegal to discriminate based on race (or gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc.). The same is becoming more and more true of disability and sexual orientation as well. Yet if we are honest with ourselves, I think we should all – and I mean ALL – admit that we still harbor unconscious reactions to people that, if we make ourselves aware of them, should probably cause us to feel embarrassed or ashamed of ourselves. I know that when I see someone and have an automatic reaction, if I stop to examine my reaction I am often surprised at the stereotypical assumptions I will still, unconsciously, make.

    As always, I believe there are important evolutionary underpinnings to this type of reaction. I’ve said before that humans are pattern-seeking animals. It is beneficial to categorize situations that might be harmful or threatening so that we can recognize them if they occur again. Both individual and group survival are enhanced if people learn to recognize and avoid danger. This extends from things as simple as avoiding poisonous plants and dangerous animals to things as complex as learning how to speak and interact with others in social situations. As animals we are always striving to keep ourselves out of trouble. As humans, we recognize that trouble can easily be caused by other humans. Unfortunately our pattern-seeking propensities can lead to mistakes, where we see patterns where no pattern actually exists, or where a situation may be perceived as more threatening than it actually is. This is a nutshell version of how stereotypes are formed: we see an apparent pattern of behavior by a few people, and based on their appearance, group membership, culture, or any number of other characteristics, we ascribe those behaviors to every perceived member of that group. Thus, some Black people are criminals; therefore all Black people are criminals. Of course, none of this stereotyping takes account of the myriad and complex cultural and institutional systems that contribute to the stereotyped behavior in the first place; that’s too nuanced for a pattern-seeking reaction that evolved in a paleolithic time when other groups of humans could, indeed, be extremely dangerous to your own group’s survival. In that time, better safe than sorry could have mean the difference between life and death, so it’s better to mistakenly think a safe thing is dangerous than the other way around.

    This is all a long introduction to my real topic: the ascribed statuses that come along with people’s bodies. We aren’t just concerned with skin color, age, or gender – we are concerned with overall appearance. What characteristics do you ascribe to a fat person? What is your visceral reaction when you see an overweight person in public? Is it a kind one? I doubt it. What about when someone is skeletally thin? How about if they have funny hair, or unfashionable clothes, or a bunch of piercings and tattoos? What are your assumptions? I think that physical appearance is one of the last things it is still acceptable to ridicule publicly – especially when it comes to people of size. That is why I titled this rant “Bikini Bodies.” We have assumptions about who should be allowed to wear a bikini in public. We roll our eyes and complain about being visually assaulted by an obese person who dares to wear spandex. There are websites dedicated to ridiculing people for what they wear or how they look (I won’t link to any because I refuse to support them, although in the interest of full disclosure I will admit to having visited them in the past – and I did it purely for the entertainment value, before I started to examine my own reactions). We get a guilty, schadenfreude-inflected pleasure from celebrity paparazzi photos that reveal cellulite, wrinkles, and stretch marks. We insult and criticize when a celebrity – especially a female – is too thin, or too Photoshopped, or too made up. Why have we learned that it’s not acceptable to criticize a person’s race, gender, etc. but it’s still okay to assume that because a person is fat or fashion-challenged, they are somehow morally suspect? These are other human beings. Why is it so easy to forget that? They love and are loved by other human beings. They have feelings, lives, experiences, worlds we know nothing about, but to us they are just a symbol of things we’d rather avoid.

    Some of the people I love most in this world are fat. I’m sure some of the people my readers love most in this world are fat. We turn to attribution error to tell ourselves that for our loved ones, it’s different – they aren’t lazy or lacking in will power, and they aren’t moral failures – they are good people who just let eating get the better of them. But for the rest of the overweight, it’s a different story – it is their fault they are fat, and we judge them because of it. I don’t write this to shame anyone. I write it because it’s time for us to examine our ascriptions and change our assumptions. It’s time for us to recognize that body stereotyping – and the real, documented discrimination that comes with it – is just as bad as other forms of stereotyping. It’s time for us to put down the magazines that tell us “How to Get a Bikini Body!” You want to know how to get a bikini body? Put a bikini on your body – and wear it proudly and without shame.

  • #YesAllWomen, #StillSomeMen

    #YesAllWomen, #StillSomeMen

    When I was 13 and in 8th grade, I went to a sleepover at a friend’s house. Her parents were not home, and she invited some boys over. While she and the other girl present went into separate bedrooms with their boyfriends, I was left alone with three other boys. I didn’t feel any fear, and I flirted innocently with the boys, thinking perhaps one of them would like me and ask me to “go” with them – our youthful term for being a couple. It never occurred to me that what I was doing might be seen as an invitation to sexual activity; although my two friends were more worldly, I was still naive, and I thought that the most that might happen would be one of the boys trying to put an arm around me or even kiss me. So I was shocked and alarmed when the boy with whom I had been doing most of the flirting suddenly lunged at me, grabbing at my nightgown and growling “I’m going to fucking rape you!” I pulled away from him and raced to the bathroom, where I managed to slam and lock the door just as the boy caught up with me. He pounded on the door, shouting at me to “fucking open” it. Then I heard him move away from the door, and with horror I realized he was heading for the balcony. The bathroom window overlooked the balcony, and I ran to make sure it was locked as well as the boy slammed into it and howled at me to let him in.

    After a little while, the house was silent again. I slumped against the bathroom door and held my breath, wondering if I could sneak down the stairs and out the door to my own house, which was just a few houses away. My heart pounded in my throat – I can still feel it – as I cautiously opened the door to peek, then scrambled down the stairs and out the front door. I made it to my own house and fell on the living room sofa, still feeling the terror, confusion, and shame coursing through me. I fell asleep crying on the couch and was awakened in the morning by my mother. I didn’t tell her exactly what had happened, only that I had decided to come home. I thought about the boy who had threatened me – he was a year younger than me, in 7th grade – and wondered what would happen when I saw him at school. Fortunately, he pretended he didn’t even know me.

    I don’t often think about that night, and I don’t feel as if it has had a lasting impact on me – but in retelling it here I feel the ghost of that night’s terrible fear. I was so young, and the boy was so young, yet neither of us was so young that we hadn’t absorbed some of the more egregious lessons in gender relations that are taught by our culture. He felt he had the right to sexual activity with me. I felt ashamed that I had somehow sent the wrong message. I should have been angry but instead I was humiliated and frightened. I lost track of the boy – he was not a member of my regular group of friends – but I wonder now if he ever tried to take what he felt was his from any other girls.

    This all comes up in response to the #YesAllWomen hashtag that has trended on Twitter in the days since a disturbed man took out his frustrations against women and men he perceived to be sexually successful in a shooting rampage in the community of Isla Vista, California. Elliot Rodger believed that he deserved the attention and sexual availability of women, and because his needs were not fulfilled he wrote a terrifying 141-page manifesto and then set about killing the objects of his rage. This tragedy is a mix of cultural hot potatoes: mental illness, gun control, victimhood, and misogyny. I do not believe for a minute that any one of these things alone is responsible for the killer’s rampage, any more than I believe that violent video games automatically turn players into killers. What I do find most interesting about this event is the light it is throwing on male privilege in our society.

    I can already sense some of you rolling your eyes and scoffing. “Male privilege? Come on, give me a break! It’s tough to be a man! Every woman automatically thinks you are an asshole who is just waiting to assault someone!” Calm down – that’s not what I mean by male privilege. What I mean is that men have the privilege of not having to deal with things that women deal with on a regular basis (and yes, men probably have to deal with things on the regular that women don’t, but that’s not the subject of this post nor is it the point – just because men deal with their own issues doesn’t make women’s issues any less valid). I mean the privilege of not feeling uneasy about walking alone at night, or being afraid to open the door when someone knocks, or lying to a man about having a boyfriend because past experience has taught you that if you just say you aren’t interested, some men will keep bothering you anyway. This is not the same thing as being spoiled, which is how some people tend to interpret privilege. In fact, I would rather call it something like “things men get to take for granted” but that’s cumbersome. So again, I’m not saying male privilege makes men spoiled or unaware – it just means there are things they can take for granted about their safety and how society will treat them that women can’t.

    This idea comes to a head with the #YesAllWomen hashtag. Some men have responded with a hashtag of their own: #NotAllMen. That is absolutely correct. Not all men harass or assault or demean or attack or condescend or otherwise make women feel unsafe and disrespected. But the point is, SOME MEN STILL DO. If you are not one of them, that is wonderful, and I understand if you feel defensive, but instead of reacting defensively, stop for a moment and think about why women feel this way. It is not meant to be a blanket indictment of all men. Instead, I read it as an indictment of a culture in which a person like Elliot Rodger can find a community of men who truly, horrifyingly believe they are owed the sexual attention of women. And it is an indictment of a culture in which YES, ALL WOMEN have stories about being harassed or bothered or afraid. We are so fast to blame the victim or say she should toughen up, pull up her big girl panties, and put a stop to the harassment. Why aren’t we asking instead that the men who still treat women in this way pull on their big boy panties and act like civilized human beings who treat others, no matter what their gender, with dignity and respect? Why aren’t we asking our culture to grow up and start teaching boys as young as the 12 year old who attempted to assault me all those years ago that men and women are equals with autonomy, individuality, and the right to feel safe? This is not about not being a victim – this is about not being a perpetrator.

    So this is my response to the #NotAllMen hashtag: #StillSomeMen. I know many warm, wonderful, caring, loving men. I am lucky to always have had good, close friendships with men. I am incredibly blessed in my relationship with my father. I do not blame all men for the actions of some. But it is still important to fight against the men and the culture that still gives #YesAllWomen stories to tell about their experiences with misogyny and fear.

    In closing, I want to recommend two of the several articles that have commented eloquently on this phenomenon. There are many, many more, but these two particularly resonated with me.

    Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds, Arthur Chu. This article is a stunner. And I was surprised and gratified to see Chu describe two movie scenes that have always bothered me. They both feature what can only be called rape, but both scenes are played as victories for the nerdy guys who finally get to sleep with the hot girl because the girls are either tricked or too drunk to know the difference.

    I Am Not An Angry Feminist. I Am A Furious One., Madeleine Davies. This one inspired me to start using the #StillSomeMen hashtag on my own Twitter account. Davies is more eloquent than I am about why the #NotAllMen response is upsetting.

  • Shifting Perspective: The Economics of Privilege

    Shifting Perspective: The Economics of Privilege

    Just over a year ago, I decided to start indulging my creative side by crafting objects like lamps, clocks, and even furniture out of vintage, found, and second-hand objects. I even turned my little projects into a business of sorts, and started a website to showcase and write about my creations. As I learned how easy it is to make things that I thought would be difficult – like wiring lamp sockets, cutting, sanding, and finishing wood, and drilling through glass and metal – I started experimenting with other things I realized might be easier than they seem. This led to experiments with making food from scratch. As it turns out, ice cream, fruit jams and preserves, soda, and nut butters are easy to make and generally taste better than what you can buy at the store.

    At first, I felt smug about my new-found insights into the relative ease of the DIY lifestyle. It made me wonder how consumers got so easily fooled into believing that paying full price at the store was better than making their own bread and jam and peanut butter and ice cream and soda. But then, when I was sifting flour into my bread machine one evening, I suddenly thought about my Grandma G. Grandma G. made bread for her six kids and her husband every day. She did it by hand, and though by my father’s account Grandma’s cooking wasn’t great, it was serviceable. I pondered the innovation of the bread machine that allowed me to spend five minutes measuring ingredients into a pan so the machine could spend three hours mixing, kneading, and raising the dough which I would then transfer to the oven. I didn’t have three hours to spend mixing my own dough on a regular basis, which is why I had the bread machine. Bread making from scratch has become a luxury, and as such, it has also become a marker of status. In other words, it is a privilege. That is, if you are making your own bread, that probably means you have the luxury of time and resources – ironically, resources Grandma G., who was raising a large family on Grandpa G.’s meager salary, didn’t have. Her bread making was a necessity, not a luxury. She didn’t have a bread machine and access to hundreds of fancy bread recipes; she just had flour, yeast, salt, water, and her own efforts.

    This line of thinking shouldn’t have startled me, but it did. I had to admit that I am privileged to indulge in DIY cooking of the staples most people buy at the store. I have the resources to buy organic produce, free-range chicken, hormone-free milk from pasture-raised cows, and the myriad tools that make it easy to bake your own bread and make your own nut butters and jam. I own a fancy, high-powered food processor that whirs nuts into butter in just a few minutes. I have giant stock pots that I can use to boil fruit and sugar into jam, and tools for canning it. I have a fancy ice cream attachment for my expensive countertop mixer. I spent hundreds of dollars on bottles, caps, strainers, and funnels, and roots, herbs, and special yeast for making soda. Somehow in all that frenzy of DIY activity, I lost sight of the fact that what people used to have to do has become what most people can’t afford to do.

    How did we come to this state of affairs? Why is it now a privilege to get back to the basics that my Grandma G. practiced in her daily life? These are not rhetorical questions, but as of yet I’m not ready to dig too deep into some of the possible answers. At their core, these are questions related to the stratification that is inherent in the structure of capitalism, but they also have a lot to do with our individual pursuits of a better, faster, easier way to get things done. Our pursuit of ease in the interests of freeing up time to do more things has ironically led to us having less time than we used to. Grandma G. made bread for her family every day because she had to, but she undoubtedly would have loved to buy loaves at the store instead. Now, the daily treadmill of making ends meet, especially for those in the lower economic strata, makes buying loaves at the store the necessity, and having the time to make bread from scratch becomes the privilege.

  • Football: Why I Won’t Be Watching

    Football: Why I Won’t Be Watching

    I was raised by parents who are baseball and football fans – not fanatics, but loyal enough to their hometown teams to be regular watchers and attendees at Padres and Chargers games. I would say we were more of a baseball family, and I count going to Padres games at San Diego Stadium (then Jack Murphy, and now, in this era of paid advertisements masquerading as sports fields, Qualcomm) as some of my fondest childhood memories. I followed the Chargers more peripherally, but you knew it was football season when you could hear the occasional shriek from my house indicating to the neighborhood that the game was on and my mom was watching. I started watching football more regularly in college and remained a Chargers fan. In the last few years I even started watching games not involving the Chargers, and I was really enjoying learning more about the strategies, the roles of the different players, and the intricacies of some of the plays. I sometimes felt a little tug of guilt on Sundays when I would schedule the day’s activities around the game, but even though the game might keep me at home I would often just keep the TV on in the background or listen on the radio while doing other things rather than glue myself to the screen for 3+ hours. But make no mistake, I enjoyed my football.

    On May 2, 2012, former Charger and frequent Pro Bowler Junior Seau committed suicide. Seau had been in and out of the news since his retirement for some minor brushes with the law, but his suicide was a blockbuster story and a heartbreak for all football fans, not just fans of the Chargers. Seau shot himself in the chest, and immediately comparisons were drawn to the February 2011 suicide of retired NFL player and four-time Pro Bowler Dave Duerson, who had also shot himself in the chest. Duerson left a note requesting that his brain be used in scientific research, which is why he had chosen to shoot himself in the chest instead of the head. Although Seau left no note, as the investigation proceeded it became clear that Seau’s wishes may have been the same. What was the link? Both Duerson and Seau, and as it turned out, a number of other retired players who had committed suicide, all exhibited symptoms of a condition called CTE – chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

    A few months into the 2013 season, I watched the PBS Frontline documentary “League of Denial.” This documentary explores the link between football and CTE, and investigates how the NFL was dealing with the problem. They found that the NFL consistently denied that football was dangerous to players and insisted that concussions, even multiple concussions, were not responsible for the degenerative brain disease that some former players were developing. The documentary is pretty damning in its conclusions that the NFL brass actively conspired to thwart research, intimidate the researchers, and cover up their lack of disclosure to players about the potential for developing CTE and the seriousness of concussive injuries to the brain. The implication is that the NFL was much more concerned about protecting its financial bottom line than it was in protecting the health and safety of players. I highly recommend watching the show to learn the full extent of the issues.

    In spite of being very impressed with “League of Denial” I was left with questions. Although the correlation between CTE and concussions in NFL players, especially those who commit suicide or otherwise die young, is very high, it’s always important to research cause and effect before drawing conclusions. I believe that much more research needs to be done to truly understand what is going on. A well-designed study of CTE in football players needs to control for multiple factors, such as length of time playing; behavior off the field (e.g. drug and alcohol use, non-football-related injuries); individual and family medical history; non-medical background factors (e.g. money problems, relationship problems, and other stressors); and genetics. It may well be that concussions and CTE are directly causally linked in football players and that there are no other factors involved. But research like this could determine if there are other factors involved, and if so, make the game safer by using those factors to determine an individual’s risk.

    Research on the incidence of CTE in boxers has established that boxers are at risk of developing CTE due to repeated blows to the head. This seems intuitive, since boxing involves head shots that are intended to render the opponent unconscious. But football, with its helmets and pads, has led to the assumption that it is intrinsically safer than a sport like boxing. Paradoxically, it may be that the more you pad a player, the safer he feels, so he ends up taking more risks than he would otherwise, resulting in a higher number and a worsening degree of injuries. Some people argue that actually reducing the pads and helmets, if not banning them outright, would make football safer. It’s an interesting idea – back in the day of leather helmets and no padding, football players tackled the body, whereas now, shots to the head are commonplace (though the NFL has made certain head-busting plays illegal). Still, if you watch “League of Denial,” you can see that the game has become more and more brutal, and that head- and body-crushing violence is glorified not just on the field and in the locker room, but by the league, the media, and the fans. Yes, beautifully executed passes and running plays are glorified too, but bone-crunching tackles are also looped endlessly on the sports shows.

    After its years of denials, the NFL did finally start putting some money towards research into concussions even though it still continues to deny a link between football head injuries and CTE. Plus, it settled a lawsuit brought by former players alleging that it had actively downplayed the risks of the game and concussions in particular. Interestingly, the terms of the $765 million settlement state that the NFL is not admitting to any guilt; instead, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the settlement was the league’s way to “do the right thing for the game and the men who played it.” While $765 million is a lot of money, in reality it’s a very small sum for the NFL – it amounts to under 8% of the league’s annual revenue of around $10 billion. In fact, the league saw the settlement as a victory because it prevented a lengthy court battle and the risk of having to engage in a discovery process that could bring some very unsavory things to light. If you want to be cynical about it, you could call it a payoff – and for the former players (and their families) who are suffering, some money now is better than a long court fight during which some of them will surely die.

    So why am I writing about all this? Because I have decided that I cannot, in good conscience, support the NFL. After viewing “League of Denial,” I stopped watching or listening to games (although – full disclosure – I did attend the Chargers-Broncos game on November 10, 2013, because my sister bought the tickets for my birthday in September and I didn’t want to let her down). I have brought this up with several people, and every single one has said to me that the players know what they are getting into, and not only that, they are paid millions to take on the risk. I disagree. I think they are only just now starting to learn what they are getting into. I think they are not given the information they need to make an informed decision. Bear in mind, these athletes begin playing as kids. Do you think their parents were aware of CTE in the late 1980s and early 1990s when some of today’s players were in Pop Warner or high school? If they knew then what they know now, would they have allowed their sons to play? Parents today are better armed than the parents of current players, but even now not enough research has been done. That research must happen if players and their families are to go into this game with all the information – and the NFL has to pay for it if they want players to keep taking on the risks. As for the “millions of dollars” argument, it doesn’t sway me at all. How much is your future health worth? How much money does it take to sacrifice your brain? Is there really a number you can put on that? And let’s talk about league minimums. In 2013, the minimum salary for a rookie was $405,000. A 10-year vet makes at least $955,000. A lot of money? By minimum wage standards, you bet it is… but when you consider that the average NFL player’s career lasts about 3.5 seasons, it suddenly doesn’t seem like that much. Obviously not every player makes the minimum, but even if you manage to make $3.5 million for your 3.5 seasons of service, once you are cut from the team in your mid-20s, what comes next? Individuals are responsible for managing their own money and some of the players probably are well-advised and do okay for themselves, but 3.5 years of a low-to-medium six-figure salary (especially, sadly, for men who didn’t give much thought to how they’d support themselves once their football careers were over) will not last forever, and it certainly is not enough to compensate for repeated traumatic brain injuries (not to mention the overall body injuries that can keep many players in pain for the rest of their lives). And let’s not forget that most of these players played in high school and college, suffered the same injuries, and were not compensated at all (my beef with big-money sports in college is a rant for another time). So no, I don’t buy that these players are paid well enough to justify the risk, even if they are one of the few star players with a multi-million dollar contract.

    I know a lot of people who read this will disagree with me, and that’s okay. I’m not expecting anybody else to change their behavior, and I do not judge people who continue to watch and enjoy the game. The Chargers managed to squeak into the playoffs this year, and even though I’m not watching I am still happy to hear when my hometown team wins. But until the NFL admits their role in downplaying the risk of concussions and acknowledges the link to CTE, I won’t be watching. Until they put as much money as it takes into researching the correlation between concussions and CTE, I won’t be watching. Until that research either definitely shows that there is no link, or comes up with ways to quantify the risks and applies it to improving player safety, I won’t be watching. Until the NFL fully and thoroughly educates each player on the risks of the game (and if you watch “League of Denial” you’ll see that they currently don’t do much), I won’t be watching. And until the NFL prioritizes the lives and health of players over the bottom line, I won’t be watching.

  • Shifting Perspective: Kiddie Couture

    Shifting Perspective: Kiddie Couture

    On April 24, 2013, a building in Bangladesh known as Rana Plaza collapsed, killing 1,129 people and injuring 2,515. Rana Plaza housed several garment factories, in which workers – including children – were employed in manufacturing clothing for a variety of brands, including The Children’s Place, Benetton, and Walmart. The collapse triggered a wave of collective shock and outrage throughout the developed world as people were faced with the reality that working conditions in Bangladesh were poorly regulated, often dangerous, and beset with bribes, graft, and abuse.

    At the time of the collapse, the minimum wage for Bangladeshi workers was $38 a month. Following the collapse, international pressure and a series of worker strikes led the Bangladeshi government to raise the minimum wage to $68 a month, beginning on December 1, 2013. The real shock to many people in countries like the United States was having to face the fact that the reason we are able to buy $10 t-shirts and $19 jeans is because workers in places like Bangladesh make the equivalent of 39 cents an hour – and that’s assuming a standard 40-hour work week. In reality, Bangladeshi workers can labor for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Of course, the cost of living in Bangladesh is much lower than it is in most parts of the world – but we are fooling ourselves if we believe that this is truly a living wage.

    I bring this up not because I have a solution for the wage slavery taking place in much of the economic periphery – I don’t. I bring it up because I think it’s important for people to have perspective. To that end, I offer the story that made me decide to rant about this topic. ABC news broadcast a story about a new trend in children’s clothing: renting clothes instead of buying them. On the face of it, I think this is a terrific idea. The company offers parents the chance to pay a fee to rent clothes for special events such as weddings instead of having to pay full price for an outfit that will probably only be worn by their child once, and which they will outgrow soon in any case. Great! Sounds like a wonderful way to reduce our impact! But here’s where I got fired up: the company in question, Borrow Mini Couture, only rents high-fashion clothing. They carry brands such as Moschino, Roberto Cavalli, John Galliano, and Fendi – brands that charge hundreds of dollars for a single piece of children’s clothing. The least expensive Roberto Cavalli dress on the website retails for $352 – and it’s sized for a one year old girl. You can rent it for five days for $98 – $30 more than the monthly minimum wage of a Bangladeshi garment worker.

    The ABC piece makes it sound like this company is a boon to parents who want to save money. That very idea makes me want to weep. It’s not about saving money. It’s about aspirational parents being able to say they dressed their tot in couture clothing. Now, I don’t know where these couture brands manufacture their clothes, but that’s not really the point. Even if they are made by workers who are employed in safe, well-regulated factories where they earn enough to make a dignified living, what does it say about us as a society that we would even consider paying hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for a single piece of our own clothing, much less the clothes for our kids? And what does it say about us that there are people who will spend $50 to $100 just to briefly rent a status symbol for their child (or more accurately, for themselves)?

    For the shift in perspective I wish to impart in this rant, I offer this 2-minute video produced by the Toronto Star of children working in the garment industry in Bangladesh. Juxtapose this video with the ABC story and, like me, you might just want to weep – and I hope, want to think about what this means for the world we live in.