Being a Woman

There has been a lot of talk lately about women and their role(s) in society, and I've been watching with a lot of interest.  I haven't done much participating, except in hand-gesturey rants to the wonderfully understanding dude late at night.  This "war on women" is hazy at best.  Because it's such a grey area, it's easy for either side to suggest that it's not real (or that it is).  Every attack is from the side, and every barrage is really just a suggestion.

In the recent political campaigns, women have been reduced to numbers, which are quite black and white.  99% of us use some form of contraception.  We make seventy-seven cents to every dollar that a man makes (or do we?).  We make up 46.7% of the workforce, but are CEOs of only seventeen of the Fortune 500 companies.  Sixty-six of us rank career high on our list of life priorities (and have been duly warned by men that we'll have to make tough decisions as a result).  Maybe the key to untangling all these numbers is to actually ask women what their experiences have been.  I thought I'd start by sharing mine, because if there's one thing I'm qualified to write about, it's my own life.

My family is 5/6ths women.  I didn't grow up feeling less-than within my family, but I grew up in a generation of girls who saw a weird kind of feminism- the sex-as-power, girly girl movement.  The message aimed at us as we came of age at the Millennium was that the only kind of dependable power was the power that came from our bodies.  If we couldn't be everything that a male could be, we could at least dominate them with our feminine wiles.  This message came from the media, from the music.  Susan J. Douglas has an in-depth discussion of this in her fantastic book, and when I read it, my entire young adulthood made sense.

My late teens and early twenties were clouded with mixed messages.  As a flute performance major, I was surrounded by women flutists- but I was told to take off my shoes at an orchestral audition so that the committee behind the screen wouldn't know my gender.  As a practitioner of yoga, I was simultaneously practicing among women and studying a lineage of male teachers.  My professors told me that women were more powerful than ever- but a female president was (and is) a pipe dream at best (and at worst, a joke).  Every sitcom featured a female lead who could be reduced to rubble by her PMS, and at least for that week, was more of a laughingstock than her male partner.  My classmates and friends habitually referred to women (myself included) as "sluts," especially for no-nos like having a late-night conversation with an opposite-gender friend, or going home early to make a phone call to a long-distance relationship.  I was an invitee to a party thrown by a well-known older male musician, because he wanted to have a party full of "young women."  (I did not attend, and heard later that several women had been groped by the man.)  One of my male employers offered kindly to go do my job for me (my first day, with no history of failure on my part to do my job), as he wasn't sure I had the "clout" to get a pianist to rehearsal; another asked if my relocation plans involved "moving for one guy, or are you just going to sleep around?"

Are these major things?  No, not really.  Have I ever been a blatant recipient of gender-related unequal pay?  Not that I have direct evidence of (although I strongly suspect that I was, at one point).  Have I ever been fired for something gender related?  Nope.

But it's the suggestion.  It's that little grey area where enough people hint that you might be unstable because your hormones could be running rampant.  That your physical attributes determine your ability to do your job.  That you are invited to participate not because of your work, your expertise, your ability, but rather because of your butt and chest.  It's that little suggestion that gets in there, and after a few hundred times, starts to make women unsure of themselves.  This is quiet warfare.  This is a subtle, constant barrage of hints that we are not the same, we are not stable, we are not good enough.

In my lifetime, "feminist" has become a dirty word.  "Feminist" has become an insult.  Half the time, "feminists" refers to a group of loud-mouthed, pushy, bitchy women who believe that they should be afforded every opportunity without putting in the work (or having the brains).  Before I go on with my defense, I have to say that feminism has its issues.  I'm writing from a position of racial privilege, and feminism hasn't been kind to women of color.  There are lots of angles of feminism that I don't understand, don't support, or haven't researched adequately, but I do know that the systematic tearing down of the word "feminist" (at least in this way) is an attack on women- at least a good chunk of a part of us, if not all of us.

The Stuff I Should Do

I've been thinking a lot lately, and that's the trick of a blog, isn't it?  Getting your thoughts out.  It's so hard!  Because that thought is there, and then another thought that comes along and is like "naaaah.  Nobody will be able to relate to that first one."  So then you forget, or repress, or whatever happens.  And that's dumb, because if every great author had thought that nobody would be able to relate to the crazy stuff they were writing, we'd have nothing in the way of literature.  Even so, blogging about what's actually in your head is definitely an exercise in confidence.

Anyway, I've been thinking about why it's so hard to do the stuff that we know is good for us.  Not the stuff we HAVE to do; like I've heard myself saying to young children, "it's not a choice we can make."  I'm talking about the stuff we don't have to do but should do.  For me, the top three are as follows:

1.  Practicing the flute.
2.  Not eating crap.
3.  Getting on my mat.

First things first.  If these things are hard to do, I must not like doing them, right?  Right?

Praaaaaaactice meeeeeee.

Oddly, no... I thought maybe that was the case for a while, but if I only like the easy stuff in life, that means that all I like is drooling onto the futon while I check my facebook over and over to see if anybody I knew in high school has just gotten pregnant.  I like doing all of the above-listed things.  I feel good while I'm doing them.  I feel good after I've done them.  So that's not it.

I have a difficult relationship with 1 and 3, both because I get very self-destructive when I'm doing them and they are not perfect.  Now, I'm not often perfect, but I realllllly like when I am.  I like when I do things right the first time and never have to work at them.  I like being a "natural."  If I ever had any natural talent on the flute, the expiration date was up a long time ago, and probably about ten years ago I started having to work at it.  So I work at it, and that makes me self-conscious, and that makes me mentally very harsh with myself.  Same with yoga.  I want my body to do stuff automatically, without me putting in the hours to learn the balance, or build the muscle, or stretch the joint.  When I find that I actually suck at a pose, it's really difficult for me to get back on the mat and try it again.  None of this is much of a surprise to me, unfortunately; my nickname growing up was "Perfectly Margaret" because of my obvious superiority disruptive perfectionist tendencies.

So do I not wanna do this stuff because I'm lazy?

Short answer: yes.  Long answer: yes.  I am absent from my home from 8AM until 6PM.  I often come home tired, with aching feet or back or both.  I eat lunch at 1:30, which is not the best for my bio-rhythm, and as a result, often don't eat dinner until an hour or two before bed.  I also teach yoga and flute after hours, and play in a gamelan with a three-to-five-hour practice requirement per week.  I've also been sick so many times this year that one runny nose has blended into the stomach bug and cough that came after it, so I can't tell where one ended and the next one started.  So... I might be lazy.  I might also be overbooked.

I also wonder about self-sabotage.  Eating right is a constant issue for me.  I LOVE vegetables, don't eat meat, and am reasonably okay at getting all my required nutrients, but I have this sweet tooth that will not quit.  And then sometimes the sweet tooth does quit, but I eat sweet stuff anyway, just to be like HA!  Take that, BODY.  You thought you were doing so well, well enjoy your INSULIN SPIKE!

So what's the answer?  How do we start loving the things we should do?  I don't know, but I have some ideas.

1.  Boundaries.  Kids need them and I'm convinced that I do too.  No cookies before 8AM.  Stop it.
2.  Time for rest and time for not rest.  I'm convinced that not feeling guilty while resting is the key to making it productive, so I can move on when it's time.
3.  I heard this in my lesson last week: Nike.  Just do it.

When the going gets tough, the tough...

Stop writing?  Hmm.  Seems like it shouldn't be that way.

Getting older is very different than being younger.  I have to make my own decisions.  I have to pay my own bills.  And, most startlingly (for me), I don't live in a dorm surrounded by people who are always ready to hang out, consume beverages, and watch movies.  In fact, even if I did live in said dorm, I wouldn't have time for any of that.  Those were days when my friends worried about boys instead of mortality and we questioned professors' motives, not god's.  I know we all hit this point, and it's a comfort to know that I'm not hitting it alone.

The last few months have been a sometimes-epic, sometimes-disastrous clash of my work (which I have to do) and my flute (which I want to do).  Mostly I have been depressed, and have sometimes [personal revelation alert] spent hours sitting on the foof staring numbly at CNN Health stories about children with cancer.

No joke.  Who does that when they're depressed?

So then I get manic, and this month I did a few manically productive things.  I applied for a local masterclass with a well-known flute player, and by some miracle and some kindness on the part of the organizers, I was accepted.  I committed to a sort of minor orchestral audition (because even a minor one is major for me), and I started learning some pieces that have left gaping holes in my rep list, like the Dutilleux.

So now every day is a small, labored step on this larger path.  And music and yoga and anything in life sometimes seem to merge together into this giant journey upon which I'm only allowed to make slow and steady progress.  Breakthroughs come with setbacks, and setbacks require resolution.  So every day requires a new and different resolution than the day before.

And that's life right now, and sometimes it doesn't look very pretty to me.  Luckily, I have a partner who makes every day feel like a reward, and great friends and family to hash it out with when everything feels too gritty.  And a season like this makes a great stage for new yoga poses.

Oh, The New York Times.

I was concerned about a lot of things in the New York Times' article on why yoga can be oh-so-dangerous. I was concerned about the scary stat that in 2002, forty-six people went to the emergency room for a yoga related injury- I worry that people will think that number is statistically significant. I was concerned that the examples were extreme and outdated (one was from 1972). I was concerned because the Times' concerns were anonymous: "One specialist noted that ligaments — the tough bands of fiber that connect bones or cartilage at a joint — failed to regain their shape once stretched out, raising the risk of strains, sprains and dislocations." Who? When?

The only thing this article needed to feel complete was a picture of people doing bad yoga.  AND looking freaked out.

Now, there are some yamas, some things that, especially for the purposes of avoiding injury, yoga is not, and I think this is a great opportunity to talk about them among ourselves and to the newly yoga'ed. We, as teachers, try to make sure that everybody understands that

a) yoga is not a competitive sport. See that woman on the mat next to you? The one who has the grace of a ballet dancer and the hamstrings of Gumby? No you don't. Because you're not looking at her. You checked your ego at the door, so it's not telling you that you can rest your head on the floor in uttanasana.

b) yoga is not about stretching. Yes, working out kinks in your hips can be a very nice side effect, but yoga is (at least for me and many other practitioners that I know) about breathing through anything, practicing mindfulness, learning to listen to and love your body, and de-cluttering your mind. So are you trying to lay your whole palm on the floor when your body is cold? Nope. You are breathing.

c) yoga is not where you go to tell your body what to do. Using the statistical methodology of the Times, I would say that telling your body what to do when your body is screaming in pain actually does cause injury about 74.38% of the time (66% of statistics are made up on the spot). I can't say it enough: your body is your best teacher. No yoga instructor in front of a class can tell you what only you know. If your body is telling you to stop twisting, are you pushing to impress the betighted yogini in the front? Nay, good sir. You are listening to your spine.

d) yoga is not about ego. I'm sure Glenn Black is a wonderful teacher, but I was confused by much of what he said, including this:

“It’s ego,” he said. “The whole point of yoga is to get rid of ego.” He said he had seen some “pretty gruesome hips.” “One of the biggest teachers in America had zero movement in her hip joints,” Black told me. “The sockets had become so degenerated that she had to have hip replacements.” I asked if she still taught. “Oh, yeah,” Black replied. “There are other yoga teachers that have such bad backs they have to lie down to teach. I’d be so embarrassed.”

Um.

I have to say, it would be a big lesson for my ego to have to teach flat on my back. But if the point is to get rid of the ego, why be embarrassed? Shouldn't we be bringing our experiences to our students to help them in their journey? And that brings us to the next troubling question for us yoga teachers: if we are ashamed to have pushed our bodies to breaking, and we don't share that information with our students, what's to stop them from doing the same thing?

Dear New York Times, the yoga community isn't sniffing disdainfully because you let us know that people get injured in yoga.  Of course they do. We're mostly concerned because it's an article full of old science, outdated human interest stories, irrelevant statistics, and concerning contradictions.  But since many of these things are readily apparent, I guess my biggest concern is that there wasn't anything more exciting for the Times to print.  

Valuing the Important Stuff

This is an odd subject for a new year's first post, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately: what has value, and what that means, and how much we should be paying for it. I'm especially interested in this since I've been working with kids for the last couple of years, and I also teach yoga and flute. I'm going to call those three things intangible. Tangible things like food (although this is another complicated one- I'll save it for another post), clothing, furniture, or something else that you can hold in your hand would fall into the simply divided second category. I know there are better or cleaner ways to divide services, and I'd love to hear them, but I'm going with this for a minute. Please keep in mind that I know next to nothing about economics (but would love to learn), and these are my thoughts based on observation.

I would imagine that tangible things are a little easier to value because you have them in your hand at the end of the day, and maybe even the day after that. If you buy a futon for a hundred bucks off Craigslist, you'll be sitting on that futon for a while. If you sit on it for one hundred days, the value is a dollar a day. If you sit on it for three years, you've only paid nine cents a day. That's one heck of a deal.

If you attend a yoga class, you're looking at a whole different beast. First, buying a yoga class is not the same as purchasing your CL futon because what you acquire can't be sat on, and has to be maintained with more yoga classes. You might buy one class for $16, loosen up your hips a great deal, and think "wow, that was totally worth it." But if you don't continue to go to yoga classes, your hips will tighten right back up, and you might think "well that class didn't do anything for me. It wasn't worth it." On the other hand, intangible things have the ability to change your life in a way that tangible things might not: you continue to purchase yoga classes, you are more in shape, more comfortable with your body, all of your joints work better, you are more at peace. Heck, maybe you sell your futon because you can finally sit comfortably on the floor. And this isn't just about yoga. It's about zumba or pilates, joining a gym, or getting a massage from an experienced bodyworker.

The reason I've been thinking about this so much is actually because of childcare. Is it important to have quality, consistent care for your child? Of course. Is it the case that many people in this country cannot afford good quality childcare? Yes, and I think that's a huge topic for another post. What concerns me is the reality of people who need childcare paying jaw-droppingly little for someone to care for their offspring. I ran across this post on Craigslist the other day:

i am looking for a full time babysitter for my 2month old. the hours would vary weekly but not much. generally there will be two days that the hours would be 7amish - 12ish and the rest of the week would only be until 4ish. Im looking for someone who has experience and has refernces. pay will be $75 a week i will supply diapers and formula. 

Assuming this is a five-day proposition, the provider would be working thirty-seven hours a week for $75. That's $2.14 an hour. (But don't worry: they're supplying the diapers and formula. If you had to shell out for those, it might eclipse your pay altogether.)

I'm assuming a lot of things here- I'm assuming that the poster can afford to pay for childcare at all, for starters. But offering $5.16 under minimum wage (which I'm reasonably sure is not legal) for someone to either transport themselves to your home to care for your infant, or to use their utilities to care for your infant in their own home... it doesn't strike me as being an offer that would attract someone who would be committed to your child. It also has an effect on the childcare provider, regardless of the provider's strong beliefs about childcare or the value of their work- if her work, or his work, is only worth $2.14 an hour, how hard should they be working? Why is their work worth so little? Why are they even doing it?

The dude and I have been discussing this pretty often lately with regard to piano lesson cancellations. He's changed his policies to reflect a lot of these thoughts, along the line that musical instructors are highly qualified, highly trained individuals, and it's troubling when their time, travel, and energy is undervalued.

There are a lot of things to pay for in life. We're faced with a barrage of material things for which we need to shell out every day. I would love to see some attention paid to the insubstantial things that matter- caring for our bodies, caring for our artistic spirit, caring for our next generation. These things are love, for ourselves and for those around us, and they matter. Even though they are intangible, they are central in our lives, and they deserve to be valued.

New Year

I love the arbitrary (Gregorian calendar) date for New Year's Day, and I think whoever came up with that must have really known what they were doing.  I mean, if you think about it, the year is circular, right?  We orbit the sun and it's not like there's a pause or invisible ticker that's like "ding, new year!"  So the date could be whenever.  Wikipedia tells me that England and Wales celebrated on March 25th, up until 1751- that's quite recent, when you think about it.  Sikhs celebrate on March 14th.  In Bali the new year follows the moon cycle, so it's different each year (but usually in March).  It's celebrated with twenty-four hours of fasting and meditation.  In Punjab, they celebrate on April 14th.  Rosh Hashanah is in the fall, and the Muslim new year date varies, but in 2008 there were two celebrations.

But January works pretty well, for me anyway.  It's right in the middle of winter, so right when things are getting pretty dull and bleak, I'm stuck in a rut, and I need a bit of a break, there's the restart button.

And I know it's symbolic, but lots of good and meaningful things are symbolic, and so are lots of things that really matter.  If symbolism gets me off the couch, cool.  If symbolism causes me to re-evaluate, reflect, and set new goals for the next arbitrary chunk of my life, I feel like it's done a pretty great job.  Plus, it's a rare opportunity to give oneself a well-deserved pat on the back for changes and accomplishments made in the previous year.  I love the New Year because it gives me an opportunity to consider what I've done and what I want to do, and design a plan for what I want to do next.

It's also one of those handy year-markers, like birthdays (or Halloween, the winter solstice, or Bastille Day... anything that we celebrate), where you can see a clear line from birth until the present, and every year there's growth and change.

For example, when I was a kid, my new year's resolutions every year were basically this:
1.  Get skinny.
2.  Write in my journal more.
3.  Obtain a kitten.

Now that I look back, that first one is a little problematic coming from an eleven-year-old... but luckily I've experienced some obvious maturation.
1.  Get into a habit of avoiding processed sugars.
2.  Eat more leafy greens.
3.  Cultivate a frequent yoga practice
4.  Spend lots of time with family and the people I love.
5.  Spend lots of time working toward my own goals.
6.  Write in my Blogger more.
7.  Obtain a kitten.

Why I've Been Talking Politics

(This is a long and confusing post with too many ideas.  I'm sorry.)

I have a lot of stuff I want to write about, but I haven't been able to pick a topic for a few days.  I didn't particularly want to write the "Eleventy Things I'm Thankful For" until sometime later, after the holidays are over (although I have many, many things to be thankful for and I'm sure it will be a massive read, so make sure you grab a cup of coffee and probably a snack, just sayin').  Beside that, all that's been on my mind other than living and stuff are issues that could probably be deemed inflammatory, either positively or negatively (depending on your beliefs/political views).  And I didn't know if I wanted to do that, because I didn't really want to put myself out there like that, all saying what I actually think and stuff.

And since I have a tendency to miss the obvious points in my life, it took me three days to realize that really what I should write about is my thoughts on... my thoughts.  How I got there, why I think that, and how come I feel so uncomfortable saying so.

Speaking my mind has been a life-long battle for me for a couple of reasons.  The first is just that I try to be nice, and I guess my definition of nice has never included running others over with my opinion.  The second is that I genuinely believe that everybody has something to say and a right to say it.  If I don't listen to the opinions of others, why should I expect them to listen to me?

I'm re-reading that paragraph.  It makes sense, and I still agree with it.

The problem might just be that in the last several years, I've gotten "listen to others" confused with "don't say anything back," "hide my own opinion," and "as a result, carry around sub-surface, deep-seated doubts about the things that I believe the most."  This might explain why I shrug apologetically when people ask me if I'm a vegetarian, and other similar scenarios.  But the fact remains that I'm in my mid-twenties, and who I am is starting to solidify thusly: I'm a borderline-hippie vegetarian yoga practitioner who is very concerned about environmental impact, arts education, and feminism/the status of women today and in the future.  Phew.  Even writing that makes me uncomfortable.

I don't want to shout my opinions.  I've never felt at ease around people whose voices were so loud that they overshadowed their actions.  Even peaceful and respectful dialogue can end really poorly, especially if you are trying to dialogue with people who aren't so peaceful and respectful.  That can be much worse than just keeping one's mouth shut, in my experience.

But I'm an adult, or at least I pretend to be.  And that means that I need to stand up for myself and learn to do difficult things like advertise my own business prowess and flute playing, and basically figure out how to convince people that I can do all the things I know I can do.  And I thought a good place to start would be a blog.  I'm not shoving it in anybody's face, and nobody has to read it.  Everybody can start conversations in the comments section, and they don't have to stare at my face while I say stuff they may not want to hear.  But I can practice saying the things that are true for me without constant second-guessing, hence my political/personal posts.

So that's that.  I wonder if other people have these thoughts?