Thinking Out Loud

I was watching the newest episode of Black-ish, a sitcom about a black, American, upper-middle class family with four children and their trials and tribulations. In this episode, the wife discovers Facebook and sets up a dinner at her home with her old college friends, whom she intends to impress at this very dinner with how great her life is. Some of her husband's work friends are also in attendance, and as they linger around in the kitchen drinking Scotch or Whiskey or something the first couple arrives. What follows are two minutes of manly appreciation for the wife having lost a lot of weight (going from "fat" to "phat"), but now looking really good. A bit later in the episode, one of the colleagues comments that the women he sleeps with have all been recently dumped: he waits for the ones with the smeared mascara next to a food truck in front of clubs, so that when they drunkenly and sadly stumble towards a burrito he is there to catch them, so to speak, and tell them that they deserve better, just "not tonight" as he adds.

This may seem just like ordinary sitcom scripting. Haha, the joke is on the drunken, dumped girls. Or the fatties who are now phat. But for all this show could be, this episode just made me angry.
Ask yourself:

• Why is it ok to spend 2 minutes of a 25-minute sitcom on the male description of a female body? 
• Why is the conversation by the colleague not seen as extremely creepy? Irrespective of how drunk a girl or how much she is crying or what she looks like, it should not be ok to imply that any girl is "easy" and does not deserve to be treated respectfully. 

Here, I am not being oversensitive. I am asking you : what is popular culture teaching the next generation of of young people about how to interact with other humans? 

Consider this scenario: a young woman sends the guy she has been dating a text, saying "It has been nice knowing you", and next thing you know he is standing in her bedroom, surprising her, and they have sex. How did he get into her house? How does she not call the police and say a stalker is in her there and instead reacts overjoyed by dropping her panties?

Well, this is a scene from the box office hit 50 Shades of Gray. I realise this is a fictional story. But considering the audience of millions that the books and film(s) have, I cannot help but wonder why women have to regress into these subservient, superficial roles and why society (through portrayals of women in the media) seems to encourage this? 

Dove has been campaigning for years to 'real' women to accept themselves as beautiful. Always tried empowering young girls through its #LikeAGirl campaign, where doing things "like a girl" equals doing it well as opposed to weakly. Beyoncé sings about women being 'flawless' ("I woke up like this"). There are so many women fighting for gender equality, and yet as soon as the word 'feminist' is mentioned people seem to lose their minds. Feminism does not mean that one gender is better than another, feminism wishes to promote the quality of the genders (if that was not clear). I certainly have to read up more specifically into the history and objectives of the various waves of feminism, but that is the central argument: we are all equal. 

Why then, in 2015, is it still a contested idea? Understandably, there are numerous cultures across the world with a strong history of patriarchy that is hard to erase. But I think that that is exactly the problem: what is the point in women fighting for equality when men do not do the same? 

I dislike being seen as a strong woman. The reason I believe I can cope with anything, the reason I chose to think that I can do anything, is because there was no one else. There was no man to save me, so the only option was to do it myself. Women are not stronger for having had to fight, for having had to do everything on their own. Women are not intimidating for having opinions, for standing their man (so to speak), for living proudly. Instead of falling into a trap of binary oppositions of gender and strengths/weaknesses, I think one person's belief in him/herself should be encouraging to others to do the same. 

Recently, a friend posted Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDTalk We should all be feminists, where she recounts how a friend asked whether she was not afraid that men would find her intimidating. She replied that she had never thought about it, because she had no interest in men that would see her that way. 

I would dare to take it a step further even: rejecting gender stereotypes, we should (idealistically) not be afraid that anyone might find us intimidating, and instead see it as the opportunity to learn from someone who has more knowledge in a particular field than oneself does. 

Smoke without Fire

via Morley's site

I'm listening to some Billie Holiday and searching for good street art as a reward for writing today. Two more exams to go. I don't really mind when my knowledge is tested(haha that sounds slightly arrogant), these exams just feel redundant after assignments and presentations and so on. I'd much prefer everyone coming prepared, sitting around a round table (we're just eight people in the group) and then discussing the theme.

One of the articles was on how our perception now is based mainly on what we see, because we equate vision with truth, reality, objectivity and reason. But throughout history, people have chosen to split the body from the mind (Cogito ergo sum and so on), to make it separate entities. This is not the thing that interested me most though. The writer, Coleman I think, stated that the belief that we can separate our consciousness from our bodies (for instance Moravec's idea that in the future our consciousness will be downloadable to some supercomputer and we'll be able to live forever) is similar to the Christian belief, or probably belief of most religions come to think of it, that after death our soul transcends its earthly bounds, leaves the body behind and can live forever in Heaven. I wonder if it is not all just a fear of death, of not living before or after this, that makes us believe in both God and technology.

Here's more Morley, check him out on his site and on FB.

via the Facebook site

via the Morley's website. 

Believe (in) me

Yesterday we went to my cousin's farewell because he is moving to Cape Town ( lucky him :). So over the course of the evening everyone was enjoying themselves, drinking, conversing, and having a good time. But at some point some already-over-the-limit guy thinks that it is a good idea to start discussing religion and belief right there and then. I think belief is a very personal thing, and cannot be discussed sensibly in all situations and with all people.

I don't know this guy, but after stating that I was more inclined to an existentialist philosophy, he launched an attack on my morality and was in complete disbelief that I was not a believer of the Christian faith. Does morality automatically link to your religious beliefs? Do the 10 commandments make for the only moral guidelines one needs?

My parents took me to church and Sunday school and I even spent a year in Grade 9 learning about the bible and Christ. But I only went because it was what was expected of me. I have never felt an intimate connection with the Christian God, simply because the way the faith is twisted by each follower and by each parish disturbs me greatly. Everyone has a personal take, which they deem to be right.  What is even worse is the idea that a forgiving God will forgive anything, so it is o.k. if you do something against the moral code, you just have to say "Sorry" afterwards.

Listen, I think everyone has the right to believe in whatever they want, and I think my choice to not believe should be respected. Perhaps it changes, perhaps I will later accept a different faith into my life, but perhaps I will continue to believe in the here and now, in the resistance to a life not lived out of fear, in multiple perspectives, and in the inherent goodness of humanity. Morality is not exclusive to religion.

My friend K and I had this same discussion earlier, and she made a valid point: it is easier to believe than to question it. Again, I am not saying you should stop believing if that is the route you chose, but be aware of what you are going to church or to the mosque or whatever for. Know why you believe, why you chose this, why you need this in your life. Do not simply accept what you were raised with, what your environment expects of you.

Religious freedom is enshrined in our constitution, so please accept non-belief, just as I accept and respect yours.

Wasting away

via Gareth Cliff on facebook

Bites of Happiness

Paris, August 2010. Indian Ganesh festival. *

I wonder if the purpose of life is not very simple: happiness. But perhaps we get lost in pursuit of constant pleasures, we get lost in hedonism, and miss the daily bites of happiness that we could experience. It seems that we are only happy retrospectively, we are only happy when we are reminiscing about past events and parties.

So now, I am trying to find the momentary happiness when faced with a situation to remember. Like today, my friend I. accompanied me to the Pretoria Stadstap Fotoklap, where people get together and walk around a specific part of the city taking photographs. The walk concluded on the top floor of the Hotel 224, which has a 360° view of the city. Everyone else was taking in the sunset through their lenses, and admittedly, I also captured some frames. But the best moment was when we distanced ourselves from the tripods and shutter noises and just looked at the city.

It is a sense of calm serenity. It is a sense of enormity and luck and preciousness of the moment that surrounds you. It is simply standing and seeing and appreciating the view and the company. Simply put, it is a bite of happiness.

The same embracing sentiment was experienced when we were in Wilderness. The others were doing Yoga, so I headed to the stairs that lead to the beach. Because of recent storms, these stairs were dangerous and one could only walk down to a certain bench in the middle of the dune, and not completely down to the beach.

I did not take my camera along, but it was the most marvellous sunset. Dolphin's peak and Victoria Bay disappeared into a mist. The sky was awash with berries, from the ripest gooseberries over to strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and Youngberries, it seemed as though a basket had spilled and Van Gogh had spread out the fruits' lifeblood to form a perfect sunset.

Gerard Manley Hopkins would have killed for such splendour, for "God's Grandeur" in this daily rotation of the world. The canvas of sea and mountain and mist and colour and waves and breezes was merging into one, was forming into a unity of all elements. It was a moment evoking transcendence. I wondered then if this was what Romantics like C.D. Friedrich were trying to paint in their works. If here was where God is to be found. If this is why people believe in more than earthly pleasures.

Perhaps it is not necessarily God. Perhaps there exists a deeper spirituality in nature which we, through years of city living and the stresses of a fast paced life, have lost track of. I do not feel part of these beautiful land/cityscapes, and maybe this adds to the disconnection from happiness. If one cannot sense a symbiosis with the moment of pure joy, there is no way one can appreciate it.

But this moment, this sitting on the stairs and admiring of berry-stained skies was what the being-in-awe of awesome describes, and it was perfect happiness.





* if you are wondering about the image, it is another moment of perfect happiness, when I randomly went to the Ganesh festival in the Indian "quartier" of Paris. Ganesh is known as the remover of obstacles and the Lord of new beginnings and also associated with wisdom. At the festival, devotees break great amounts of coconuts and then people just pick up the pieces off of the street and eat them.