first prescription drug for growing eye lashes

The makers of Botox now bring you Latisse, the first federally approved drug for growing longer eye lashes. The New York Times reports:

The product has the same formula as Allergan’s eye drops for glaucoma, called Lumigan. It is one of several drugs in a category known as prostaglandin analogs, which are meant to reduce dangerous pressure in the eyeball. But as a side effect, the treatment tends to make the eyelashes of many patients longer and fuller.

Some medical experts say they worry that cosmetic customers may occasionally experience some of the glaucoma drug’s other side effects, which can include red, itchy eyes and changes in eyelid pigmentation. Some financial analysts, meanwhile, wonder how many people will want to spend $120 for a monthly dose of lash-lengthening Latisse.

But other analysts predict that in a world where people spend about $5 billion a year on mascara, Latisse could be the biggest thing to hit cosmetic medicine since, well, Botox. Sales for the cosmetic use of Botox were $600 million in 2007.

oh, the "fitness" industry

As I focus on framing food in terms of health, calorie-counting, carb-phobia and the like have no place in my life. I know what my body needs to be full, I know what my body needs to be strong, and I know what I enjoy eating. It truly makes me happy to eat things that grow from the earth in their natural and unprocessed forms.

Along those lines, I also like to push my body to its physical limits because a) it feels good, b) it maintains my cardiovascular system and rejuvenates my body and mind, c) it's the only way to alleviate my anxiety.

Recently at the gym, I was offered a free personal training session in an effort to get me purchasing packages again. I gladly accepted, having fond memories of my old trainer.

Then I met "Mr. T"--who has to walk with his legs unnaturally spread apart because his behemoth leg muscles are in the way of an ordinary gait. He might as well have had "steroid junkie" tattooed on his ass.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciated Mr. T's friendly personality and challenging weight-lifting regimens. But then it crept up--the ubiquitous and dangerously self-deprecating attitude toward "health" and "sex-appeal."

My favorite quote was "You could stand to tone your outer thighs."

What is more intriguing to me is that he views this "honesty" as being a good trainer--as if through policing the contours of my body and pinpointing my perceived weaknesses, he could offer me the golden keys to perfection, improve my life, and boost his commission.

Bitch please. I am so sad for that drug-popping, bench-pressing addict who likely spends hours every day pumping iron to make sure every single muscle in his body is grossly over-developed--not to mention he likely suffers from male body dysmorphic disorder. The sad and petty misfortune of obsessing over the exterior only indicates internal unfulfillment with life and self.

More to point--I am as healthy as they come. I live a life of of fresh vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains and nuts, with some fucking fabulous vegan cupcakes to get my goat when I so desire. I am very fit, and you know what? I'm incredibly intelligent, ambitious, and extremely sexy. In fact, my thighs have their own natural, healthy and strong shape, which if they were to change significantly (smaller and toner, as Mr. T would like), that would only be an indication of unhealthiness.

Newsflash: all bodies are different. Real health looks different on everyone. I have a fabulously round ass--I will never wear an itsy bitsy pair of jeans.

This warped idea of "health"--the hard and ripped size 0-2 that all women "should" have who work out and eat well--is statistically false and realistically ignorant. It's so sad to watch people chase around bull shit instead of enjoying their bodies and their lives.

Not to mention, if a person is unhappy with my outer thigh (how lame does that sound? I laugh even writing it), that person has no place in my life--and especially in my bed.

There was a time in my life when Mr. T's comments could have devastated me--but now, I feel proud of myself, proud of my body, and sad for the people who suffer the way Mr. T (and our culture at large) surely does.

Needless to say, he is not my new trainer.

better to be fat and fit than skinny and unfit

Great post in the New York Times.  Here's the juice:

Last week a report in The Archives of Internal Medicine compared weight and cardiovascular risk factors among a representative sample of more than 5,400 adults. The data suggest that half of overweight people and one-third of obese people are “metabolically healthy.” That means that despite their excess pounds, many overweight and obese adults have healthy levels of “good” cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose and other risks for heart disease.

At the same time, about one out of four slim people — those who fall into the “healthy” weight range — actually have at least two cardiovascular risk factors typically associated with obesity, the study showed.

weight is not a reliable barometer of health

New research reaffirms what has been apparent all along--weightism and image in western society obscure ideas of "health" to the detriment of being healthy all together.

Many overweight and obese people are metabolically healthy, while large
numbers of slim people have health problems typically associated with obesity, a
new study shows...

While it’s long been known that it’s better to be fit and fat than
being thin and sedentary, the new data are believed to be the first time
researchers have documented the unreliability of body size as an indicator for
overall health.

Study author MaryFran Sowers, a University of Michigan obesity
researcher, told The Associated Press that the results show that stereotypes
about body size can be misleading, and that even ‘’less voluptuous'’ people can
have risk factors commonly associated with obesity.
Dr. Sowers said that
when it comes to weight and health risks, “We’re really talking about taking a
look with a very different lens.'’ (full
article)

Barbie-pink nails

I have been meaning to post about my nail polish for the past week. Yes, I said nail polish. Sounds so trivial, but represents much more to me.

For the first time in years, my nails are painted Barbie-pink. Although the corvette color had been my favorite since I can remember, once I began to realize how I had lived my life blindly accepting culturally imposed mandates for socially idealized women--and began to understand how this had severely disenfranchised my sense of self and autonomy--I cursed the color. It was everything that I no longer wanted to be: senselessly girly, self-unaware, dependent on others, and a typically socialized and oppressed female.

Thus began my abhorrence of Barbie-pink as the very symbol of my oppression and the years I had wasted being terribly misguided and ultimately superficial--and so I traded it for shades of burgundy, brown, black, white, red and the like. I let my polish chip, and would skip manicures all together. But more importantly, I began to avoid the color because I found it shameful and embarrassingly indicative of attributes I did not wish to possess, a lifestyle I wished I had never had, and felt the color would overall mark me as ditsy and otherwise inferior. There I was, a scholar of gender and sex theory, advocating a humanist framework where all are equal and respected--but at the same time, detesting the notion of being "one of them."

These days, I am in a completely different place. My transition from being politically apathetic and self-unaware to discovering that the personal is political, understanding social hierarchies, identifying frameworks of sex and gender, as well as completely rejecting many compulsory cultural mandates first caused a period of self-loathing and confusion. As I kept on learning, discovering, processing, and analyzing, my transition further developed and I understood all parts of my life as critical steps in reaching all of my goals.

Now I am comfortable enough with myself to realize that my nail polish color means nothing about my intelligence, my goals, or who I am as a person. What is more, my sense of shame in associating myself with a particular form of culturally encouraged femininity indicates my own internalized misogyny and sexism in not wanting to be one of "those girls"--essentially that "those girls" are inferior, something to detest, and something to avoid.

A person may look, seem, or act culturally "girly"--but watch out, "girly" means nothing substantive beyond an external descriptive. And once you approach a person with a set of assumptions based on image, you will be disarmed.

Weightism and Size Acceptance

great. blame global warming on obese people.

Obesity as a cause of global warming?

The "Soy Belly" is not a vegan urban legend

As a vegan newbie, I was confused about the factual validity of the "soy belly"--awkward tummy-excess related to mock-estrogen accumulations from too much soy.

I took on my own independent research project, but found no credible science to back this midriff mystery--and so I brushed it off. It must be like women who are unhappy with their bodies and blame it on birth control.

Even so, I tried to moderate my soy intake. The thing is, virtually everything has soy or soy byproducts in it--just look at the ingredients. Cereal, bars, cookies. And most vegan options are just exploding with soy (mock meats and the like). Plus, I like my cappuccinos, and it ain't like Starbucks is brewing with almond milk.

Sooner or later, I came to the realization that while my body has been toning up (yoga addiction), something funny was going on with my stomach. I am not going to pretend that you could have scrubbed your laundry on my abs, but they were still a fairly smooth operation. Except now my tummy was bulging from the moment I woke up (whose abs aren't flatter in the morning?), and I was a good three months preggers all day, everyday.

Enough was enough. I had to figure out what was going on--were all those lattes and vegan what-nots catching up with me, or was this just an exhilarating new change in my body?

So I cut the crap. And by crap I mean soy. Not like I have eliminated it--no, no...that would be impossible. However, I think it is fair to say that I have cut my intake in half, and a few weeks later, my abs are right back where I thought I left them.

So it's true; the soy belly is real--although each body will react differently to varying amounts.

Of course, I could write a whole other blog on why the degree of my stomach protrusion is so significant to me, and how discovering the truth of the soy belly has alleviated such a heavy weight on my chest (This can't be my fault; I work out all the fucking time, I promise). In fact, I even debated writing this post; why should I fuel damaging and unrealistic bodily expectations?

But my blog is about truth--and the truth is, like it or not, the soy belly is real--and like it or not, I care about how my body looks. I will still continue to explore and challenge my own assumptions and values, and share them on The Colonic, but all that oppressive female propaganda--I'm not numb.

I feel a follow-up brewing...

fat bias worse for women--duh

Yet again another example of did-we-need-a-research-study-for-this?

It only takes a modest weight gain for a woman to experience weight discrimination, but men can gain far more weight before experiencing similar bias, a new study shows.

The notion that society is less tolerant of weight gain in women than men is just one of the findings suggested by a new report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, published this month in the International Journal of Obesity.

veganism, food, and framing

Now that I have been vegan for a solid block of time (around 4 months), I have been noticing the frame through which I view food drastically changing.

I was on the metro a few days ago, and an older pair of friends were switching cooking secrets. They began to speak in depth about preparing "legs" versus "breasts." But what was a normal conversation for them, and what would have been very normal for me, was completely jarring. Legs? Casually talking about eating body parts? It was so bizarre. I felt like an anthropologist who had been away and returned home, but home never felt the same. And so the anthropologist began to observing his/her native culture as an outsider--and everything became increasingly subjective, arbitrary and peculiar.

I have "othered" the mainstream culinary culture of my country--and it just feels so strange. I don't understand walking around in the market how people are grabbing and feeling cold chunks of raw, dead flesh in tight, plastic packages. I actually want to vomit when I see rosy-pink hunks of red meat, moist with juices and diluted blood.

Walking home from yoga today, a group of college students were barbecuing hunks of cow, and I wanted to stop and say, "do you know that is a dead animal?" Of course they know. And I always knew that growing up as an omnivore. But now the mental frame through which I previously viewed food has changed so much that I have an entirely new frame, and the old one does not fit, and I the two cannot match up.

Of course, I say this all as a huge hypocrite--but I prefer "work in progress"--because I am still wearing animals products, even if I am not eating them.

I think that most omnivores stomach animals because they do not truly connect food to having once been alive. It was finally internalizing that connection that catapulted me into veganism.

The thing is, my mind is not internalizing this connection with shoes and bags. I am hoping this will progress naturally in time, as my dietary convictions did. To be honest, I think that it will be much more challenging to dress vegan because I have a deep-seated and life-long interlock with materialism, of which I only became aware and began to question/challenge in the past couple years.

I should blog about growing up with strong material- and image-orientations, and absorbing those scripts before ever having the analytical skills to think twice about them or understand the implications--and never having the emotional health and introspection to grapple this matter until the latter part of my life.

Either way, this issue will present interesting and dynamic challenges and understandings to my continual evolution.

Come to think of it, I have not blogged about the dramatic turn-around that completely changed my life and everything I ever thought about my own future. I will have to do this. The Colonic is in need of a discussion on materialism, image-orientation, self-worth, activism, introspection, and the like.

Until next time, my friends.

challenging the boys' club

I spent my afternoon at a snazzy salon, and was wonderfully reminded of just how much women are challenging traditional power-brokers and avenues of privilege.

As I enjoyed foot exfoliation and a cherry-red polish that could brighten any mood, I began to talk to an older woman across from me whom I would come to learn is a regular, and has been since the 60's.

While she waited for her nails to dry, she told me of her days working in the White House, the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, and of her adventures in the State Department--which took her to 40 countries around the world, a few in which she lived (Peru, Brussels, Costa Rica...). While she is formally retired, she now spends her days active in community work.

And then it hit me. This is the "boys' club" for women. Most powerful women, even with minimum levels of culturally sanctioned femininity, have groomed eyebrows and nails (just because they are nude does not mean they are not regularly manicured), sport expensive haircuts, and likely receive various skin and body treatments.

What does this mean? Powerful women with cash to spare and an appearance to maintain are in pricey salons schmoozing in between a cut and blow, after brows and before nails, and during whatever other interim period.

And no, I am not trying to suggest that all powerful, rich women are bleach-blond with long, Barbie-corvette-pink nails--but the truth of the matter is, that graceful brown shade on that woman in her late 40s? It has probably been chemically rejuvenated. For all the intense heat some heads incur from daily blowing/flat-ironing/whatever, that smooth shine is likely the result of extra-curricular conditioning and a gifted scissor. And as mentioned earlier, those short, perfectly rounded and "natural" nails have likely had their cuticles trimmed to say the least. Those thick, gorgeous eyebrows? Please--they've been cleaned.

What I'm saying is that if we as women regulate and alter our bodies to varying degrees on a continuous basis, we must and have begun to seize the opportunity to create networks and garner power among one another. The numbers of successful women are rising--and the more expensive the salon, the better.

Of course, this "women's club" has retained the crucial element of the "boys' club" that, aside from sexism, has preserved it as an elitist social hub--and that is class privilege.

Yes, powerful women may have a viable avenue to meet and mingle with other powerful women, but there are socio-economic dimensions to who is grooming what, how often, and where. And class, my friends, continues to divide women in ways that truly impede the movement.

white teeth, the microphysics of power, and the skewing of self

Each day that I live my life and as a born and raised Los Angelina, I cannot help but remark at my own internalization of gendered relations of power, my active participation in such relations, and my chronic self-regulation. This is what Foucault means in his concept of the microphysics of power--how we police our own bodies when no one is watching because we have actually absorbed relations of power. Think panopticon.

But what I am most fascinated with, beyond the actual process of internalization and self-surveillance, is how these evolve to skew perceptions of self in ways that are bizarre (and largely gendered)

I was reminded of all of this once more in a heated discussion I had with Monika about the color of our teeth. There are a few points I need to get at:

a) I am one detail-obsessed critter, and I can tell you that Monika has some fucking WHITE teeth.
b) Monika's teeth have become progressively and undeniably whiter over a process of whitening, but she absolutely cannot perceive this. This is why we argue--because I see the difference and she can't.
c) Monika is convinced that my teeth are whiter than hers. I am convinced of the opposite.

And this is the kicker...

d) I explain to Monika that she thinks that my teeth are whiter because she is focusing on my front teeth. I then go into a detailed explanation of the progressive changes of color and contour in my enamel extending backward from my two front teeth.

It really struck me how much I have absorbed image-orientation, to the extent that I can map out nuance in the shades of my chompers. I can do that with every physical attribute I possess.

I am still humored by the passionate disagreements that I have with Monika. We both insist that the other one severely needs help and is desperately out of touch with reality (not that I particularly believe in reality...but that is for another post).

However, as I am the self-appointed authority on the matter, I hereby proclaim in public forum that Monika's teeth are not only one consistent shade of bright white, but also much whiter than mine.

The fact that we continue to debate such reflects our adherence to a culturally sanctioned heteronormative script of femininity that has wound us up in obsessive minutiae and thrown-off our perception of self.