Bits and Bobs

I moved flat this weekend - for the fourth time this year! But this time it's for good (at least for a very, very long time). All this moving is exhausting. I'm glad to have moved in time for Christmas though - it means I can enjoy Christmas day with my family without worrying about flat stuff. The new flat doesn't have the internet though which is pretty painful for me. How am I supposed to know what's going on in the world without the internet?

Well, here's what I've been reading this last week:

- This live, worldwide wind simulation is pretty awesome (and oddly therapeutic). Position the globe so that the Antarctic is in the centre of your screen and it looks pretty cool.

- Here's a fascinating article about putting a sculpture on the moon. It's a shame that the whole endeavour became marred with politics, money and scandal because I love art and I love the idea of art being a part of the space programme.

- Life-size Origami elephant?! Yes please!

- This article articulates what I have thought for a long time regarding the Lord of the Rings and, more recently, the Hobbit films - New Zealand, while beautiful, doesn't look like the Middle Earth that I had in mind when reading the books. Peter Jackson should have stuck with the landscapes that Tolkien had in mind when filming: the dank and old countryside of Yorkshire and Ireland.

- I love this article about writing about women in science. By focusing on their gender, we do a disservice to their contributions to science. This is obviously applicable to women in all male-dominated fields but this article is wonderfully argued.

- I've often heard/ read that Marilyn Monroe was a size 14. Usually this little factoid is trotted out every time someone wants to say something about body acceptance or the need for greater diversity in Hollywood or fashion. However, as someone who has seen numerous Marilyn outfits at assorted Hollywood costume exhibitions, I know that this is a lie. Marilyn Monroe was tiny! Here's an article looking at the myth of Marilyn's body size and why her love of books is more important than her dress size.

- There are so, so many articles every week about Millenials. However these articles are always about the Millenials living in the Western, liberal world (mostly America) and lack any kind of global context. This great (and somewhat depressing) article tries to remedy this oversight by looking at the Millenials coming of age in Syria.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Bits and Bobs

This last week has been pretty grim but I'm sure next week will be better. I have my first ever Office Christmas party, which I think will be fun (free food!), and then I've taken the second half of the week off so I can frolic in London's fairy-light festooned streets. I am yet to start Christmas shopping - beginning to panic a little.

- Want to see famous art galleries recreated in gingerbread? Yeah you do! Traditional gingerbread houses will now forever disappoint you.

- Check out these amazing photos of the Grand Canyon filled with fog - apparently a pretty rare occurrence requiring very specific weather conditions.

- Here's an interesting article about fact checking online media and whether we are seeing a drop in journalistic standards now that new sites are just copying stuff off twitter rather than carrying out traditional investigative journalism.

- I thought this was an interesting comparison: over at The Cut they have photos of women draped and camouflaged in their homes whereas at The Guardian, they have photos of women hidden behind curtains to get their children to stay still for photos. I thought it was interesting how very similar these two sets of photos are despite having two very different intents. Maybe it shows that homes and children are both equally capable of making women invisible.

- You have to see these photos of monkeys relaxing in a hot spring in Japan - genuinely made my week.

- Why are computer games the domain of men? Slate looks at home limited marketing budgets in the early days of computer consoles forced companies to focus on only one demographic and so they emphasised the masculinity of games. Now that women are increasingly playing computer games, marketing is having to change to accommodate this change.

- This report about so-called 'natural' differences in the brains of men and women has been popping up all over the internet this week. This article is probably the best critique of the report I've come across. It's always good to remember not to just accept scientific reports as fact just because we put a lot of stock in the infallibility of scientists.

War Between Women

 Don't be fooled by the smiles; we all hate each other...sluts...

A study was recently published in the journal, Aggressive Behaviour, which apparently shows that women will act bitchy towards other women they see as promiscuous. Several websites have reported on the study but, disappointingly, haven't pointed out how epicly flawed it is. In the study, 86 participants were left in a room with another woman (either a friend or a stranger) and told they would be contributing to a study on friendship. Instead they were interrupted by another woman. Half the women encountered a pretty, blonde woman in a blue t-shirt and sensible chinos. The other half encountered the same woman in a hot-pink, low-cut top, mini-skirt and knee-high boots.

The participants' reactions to this interloper were assessed according to a 'bitchiness' score of 1-10.  The authors of the study, Vaillancourt and Sharma, found that the participants were more likely to be bitchy when the 'sexy' woman walked into the room and that their bitchiness was more pronounced when the participants were with friends, rather than strangers. The authors concluded that women stifle each other's sexuality through indirect aggression, bitchiness, because women use sex to negotiate with men and it is therefore in their best interest to punish promiscuous women to maintain a limited supply of sex. Vaillancourt's study is small but supposedly demonstrates slut-shaming in an experimental context.

To me, the first, and most obvious, criticism is the very concept of a 'bitchiness score'. Observing someone's reactions and placing them on a 'scale of bitch' seems preposterously unscientific, even by psychology's standards. Is an eye-roll more bitchy than a laugh? Is a smirk more bitchy than a glare? And facial expressions may not always accurately portray someone's opinions. A participant may have an excellent poker face - that doesn't mean she's not thinking bitchy things. Given psychologists' propensity for questionnaires, why not use a carefully crafted questionnaire to quantify the participants' opinions rather than the far less rigourous method of observation? Of course observation can be an invaluable tool for scientists in experiments but you can't arbitrarily assign numbers to vague observations and then think you can make meaningful conclusions from an analysis of those numbers. 

I also question whether the woman's differing outfits really convey what the authors want them to convey to the participants. 'Sexiness' is an incredibly subjective attribute. I don't think her outfit looks sexy, I think it looks immensely unflattering (hot-pink is no one's friend). And even if we were to decide that there is only one universally recognised standard of 'sexiness', sexy is not coterminous with promiscuous. I can think that someone is sexy and not think of them as a potential home-wrecker.

Even if we were to accept that bitchiness can be objectively measured, and that 'sexiness' and 'promiscuity' were both coterminous and universally recognised, the study still fails to show that women slut-shame other women because it excludes men. Various news sites have picked up on this study to conclude that there exists a war between women. But if men also show this same behaviour against people they perceive to be their sexual rivals, clearly we don't have a war between women but just war between people. Other studies have in fact shown that both men and women display competitive behaviour, using strategies of self-promotion and competitor derogation. This experiment is only half of the story and any conclusions about female behaviour, as separate from human behaviour more generally, are completely unfounded.

Tips for Women

Me as a Parliamentary intern, brazenly sporting long hair.

Law firm Clifford Chance recently sent out a 163-point memo entitled 'Presentation Tips for Women'. Its contents are both hilarious and immensely depressing. Advice ranges from the mundane ("don't use a draggy pace") to the bizarre ("move your mouth when you speak" - how else does one speak?). But mostly the document is patronising and offensive; women are told not to giggle, not to wear party dresses, and to lower the pitch of their voice (those shrill, inappropriately-attired harpies). Well thank goodness the women of Clifford Chance now know to put their cleavage away and "watch out for the urinal position" - I can practically hear the glass ceiling breaking from here.

Reading this memo reminded me of when I attended a training session held as part of the Lib Dem Party Conference entitled "What to Wear as a Woman in Politics". Alas, the men were not privy to a similar training session and their sartorial blunders are undoubtedly thwarting their political careers as we speak. 

Candy, the Lib Dem image consultant, imparted us with such timeless words of wisdom as "no knee-high boots" and "no animal print". She also instructed us how best to tie a scarf depending on the situation (use the Slip Knot while canvassing door-to-door but the more flamboyant Ascot Wrap for a hustings) and which colours to avoid (pretty much anything bright).

After giving general advice, Candy then went around the room and pointed out the myriad ways in which the women in attendance were wrong. I was praised for my deployment of opaque tights (never go below 70 denier) and sensible flat shoes. Unfortunately I undid all my fine work in the tights-department by being in possession of long hair which I - foolishly! - was wearing loose around my shoulders. I was told that I should either get a haircut or tie my hair up or else men would be encouraged to stroke me. If the male denizens of the Houses of Parliament are so devoid of self-control that they are powerless to resist stroking young, female interns, might I suggest that we have bigger things to worry about than my hair.

I obviously found the suggestion that my hair was an invocation for gentle petting from my male colleagues utterly hilarious. But at the same time it's disheartening that the conference organisers thought that a training session on female politicians' fashion-sense was necessary. I can understand the thinking behind it. I once had a conversation with former Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather in which she complained that whenever she said anything in Parliament, the media only ever reported on what she was wearing, not what she was saying. This was undoubtedly very frustrating for her and it makes me angry to think that female politicians' sartorial choices are being given more media attention that their opinions. But I don't think opaque tights and a pixie cut are the solution. 

Parliament is woefully devoid of women, particularly young women, and telling current MPs to avoid colour or pattern or anything that might suggest they have a personality is not the way to encourage young women to get involved in politics. If we want the media to stop reporting every time a female minister sports ostentatious footwear, we shouldn't force her into sensible grey pumps, we should flood the Houses of Parliament with so many pairs of fabulous heels that it is no longer worthy of note. When the halls of power and the boardrooms of law firm are replete with leopard-print clad women - expressing their opinions in their shrill, nasally voices - then perhaps we can finally dispense of all the silly advice.

Bits and Bobs

Here are some interesting things I've been reading this week...

- China sure has some bizarre buildings. Click here to see the weird, the wonderful and the downright ugly.

- This is a fascinating piece about women in Afghanistan struggling between modernity and tradition. It reminds me of Escobar's wonderful book, Encountering Development (1985).

Escobar discusses how women in Lamu, Kenya, have been affected by Western music, films and soap operas, leading to a reflexive interpretation of what it is to be a Muslim woman in a modern world. However Escobar points out that there are differences between the liberty that the Kenyan women strive for and the liberty that Western women enjoy. For example, women in Lamu were rejecting the veil, not because they perceived it as illiberal and a symbol of oppression but because they saw it as impractical as a part of a busy modern lifestyle. A must read for anyone interested in international development!

- These children's playgrounds are both incredible and nightmare-inducingly surreal!

- Throwing a lavish Gatsby-themed party might be somewhat missing the point of F Scott Fitzgerald's classic book but here's some reasons why you should throw that party anyway. 

- And speaking of Gatsby - check out this wonderful site looking at Fitzgerald's relationship with fashion.

- Delving into the shady world of the Paparazzi and the Italian elites. 

What the Fashion Industry Could Learn from the US Military

A petition on Change.org, requesting the restriction of ‘thinspiration’ language on twitter, has just reached 1,781 signatures. Thinspiration is a portmanteau meaning ‘inspiration to be thin’, which has become associated with pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia communities on several popular social media sites. The petition argues that permitting thinspiration language and imagery to proliferate on social media sites results in the promotion of unhealthy body types and encourages young women to develop eating disorders. Pinterest and Tumblr have already taken steps to remove thinspiration content; now twitter is being pressured to do the same.

Reading about this petition has brought me back to thinking about the ongoing discussion of the size zero phenomenon. The debate on size zero reached frenzied heights in 2006 when models Luisel Ramos and Ana Carolina Reston died from anorexia, resulting in Madrid Fashion Show banning size zero models. Milan Fashion Week followed suit shortly after, prohibiting models with a Body Mass Index lower than 18. The frenzy seems to have abated somewhat in recent years but the gaunt models, and the followings they have online, remain. 

Those opposed to size zero have long bandied around names of who is to blame. It’s the model agencies’ fault for hiring only unhealthily skinny girls. It’s the fashion magazine industry’s fault for publishing photos of visibly bony models. Now it’s social media’s fault for not banning the language used to promote unhealthy body ideals.

But for me this debate ultimately comes down to design because, at essence, that is surely what fashion is all about. Strip away the magazines, the photographers, the stylists and the model agencies, and what you’re left with is the designers… designing. If we want to ensure that women in the fashion industry are a healthy size, we need to start designing clothes for healthy-sized women. It’s here that the fashion industry could learn a lot from the US military.

Pentagon officials and engineers have historically built a bias against women’s bodies into military technologies through the use of restrictive design guidelines. Military Standard 1472 suggests the use of 95^th and 5^th percentile male dimensions when designing military systems. By using this standard, only 10% of the male population cannot be accommodated by a given design feature. Unfortunately, the gap between a 5^th percentile woman and a 95^th percentile man is vast. A significant number of women are thus deemed ineligible to use a variety of military systems.

The most well-known case of bias against women’s bodies in military design is the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS). Originally, the JPATS specifications included a 34-inch minimum sitting height in order to operate cockpit controls effectively and eject from the aircraft safely. However, at 34 inches, around 50-65% of the American female population was excluded. As a result, a significant number of women were prevented from pursuing aviation careers by prohibiting them from JPATS training.

Change was eventually achieved through government interference. Former Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, publicly recognised that women should play a greater role in the military through a directive issued in April 1993. Then, in 1994, the Defense Authorisation Bill was passed, including a provision which prevented the Air Force from spending $40 million of its $41.6 million trainer budget unless the Pentagon altered the cockpit design for the JPATS (Weber, 1997; 245). The Clinton Administration, reeling from the embarrassment of its poor handling of gays in the military and trying to make a stand against an increasingly confrontational Pentagon, was the driving force behind innovation in cockpit design.

Excluding women from air combat because they couldn’t fit into cockpits was deemed unacceptable. Excluding healthy women from the fashion industry because they can’t fit into the clothes should be deemed similarly intolerable. 

Of course the pressures applied to the military cannot be applied to commercial companies. With military procurement, the state is the consumer and thus the issue of design is political, making it open to discussion from interest groups and control from legislation (Weber, 1997; 236). With commercial production, design remains an economic issue, viewed in terms of managerial preference and profit calculus. Thus, commercial cockpit design lags significantly behind the military in addressing problems in accommodating women’s bodies.

But it shouldn’t be assumed that fashion houses are immune to pressure. Prada, Versace and Armani all agreed to stop using stick-thin models when faced with criticism from the Italian Government and general public following the two models’ deaths in 2006. And design innovation can be financially rewarding as well. Todashi Shoji has built his career on designing for all ages, ethnicities and figures. His numerous dresses designed for voluptuous actress Octavia Spencer’s red carpet appearances, including the stunning sparkling number she wore to receive her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2012, are always at the top of best dressed lists.

If we want to combat the idolisation of unhealthy body types, limiting what can be said on social media is only going to achieve so much. Instead, as with combating bias against female bodies in military technology, we need to go to the heart of the problem, and that means compelling innovation in design. 

Bibliography

Weber, R N (1997) 'Manufacturing Gender in Commercial and Military Cockpit Design' in Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol 22/2

If you want to read more about gender and military technology...

Golstein, J F (2001) War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa

Richman-Loo, N and Weber, R (1996) 'Gender and Weapons Design' in It's Our Military Too! WOmen and the US Military, ed. Judith Hicks Stein

Smart, T L (1998) 'Fast Women: Or why women who fly high performance aircraft are fast but not loose', in Australian Military Medicine, Vol 7

Role Models

I recently read a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which stated that young women in the US were now significantly outperforming young men in education. For example, by 25-years-old, 30% of women have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 22% for men. 

Bloomberg Businessweek have an interesting (and short) article in which DiPrete, a sociology professor at Columbia University, suggests a few reasons to explain this performance gap. One of his points suggests that, “unlike young women, many young men try to emulate their fathers or grandfathers, who succeeded in blue-collar jobs without college educations.” Since these jobs don’t exist anymore, this ‘echo of an older generation’ could potentially prove to be a hindrance to men’s eventual success (since college graduates still have better employment, health, and marriage prospects).

In the ‘90s, numerous sociologists started writing about modernity and the ‘modern’ society, characterised largely by the breakdown of traditional structures such as religion, class, the nuclear family and gender roles. In Beck’s Risk Society, he talks about a “social transformation within modernity” which has resulted in people being “set free from the social forms of industrial society.” This detraditionalisation brought about a surge of individualism. Rather than following the path expected of them based on their membership of a particular class, religious group or gender, individuals were now expected to forge their own, unique path.

While this freedom from traditional life-paths was in many ways liberating, it was also disorienting. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, in their book Individualisation, explain how routines and traditional institutions “have an unburdening function which renders individuality and decision-making possible.” By removing the structures of tradition and routine, individuals are left with a bewildering number of options; choice becomes stressful and encumbering rather than freeing.

This burden is, according to these sociologists, exacerbated for women. Young men can look to their fathers and grandfathers as role models for how to forge a life-path through education and career. However for young women, whose mothers and grandmothers were restricted to the house or low-level professions, they are faced with a bewildering world of choice with few individuals to offer a road map. Young women have to make their own projects and work out their own ideas about the future, with little support from any role model.

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim were writing in the ‘90s so it’s interesting to read this Bloomberg article and consider that perhaps the lack of role models has in fact been more beneficial for women than sociologists assumed 20 years ago. Lacking in professional role models, young women have turned to education in an attempt to improve their chances in a baffling world of choice. It will be interesting to see whether women’s increasing success in education translates to increasing success in the workplace.

Bibliography

Beck U (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage

Beck U and Beck-Gernsheim E (2002) Individualization, London: Sage

"We are agents of change, we are drivers of progress"

Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the fourth annual Women in the World Summit. It was awesome.