Topic: Personal
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Bruce and I took Austin to the San Diego Zoo on Saturday. I took some videos of the animals being active (the polar bears one is the best IMO) on the visit and posted them to YouTube.
Polar Bear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRnoETK9sxU
Hippopotamus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDpRaUfGJDw
Panda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwoPbjLhj4k
Peacock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI5wDQqlphw
This, and other body-modification schemes humanity has heaped upon our women over the centuries and across the continents, were never about 'beauty'. They were always about control.
In spirit, foot-binding is no different from the European corsets that broke the ribs, crushed the organs, and stunted the growth of women for hundreds of years; no different than the burkhas hard-line modern Islamists use to cover and anonymitize their women; a woman with a bound foot cannot walk far out of the family home, and a woman in a burkha can hardly go anywhere at all. These were measures put in to control women's movements and consequently subjugate their lives. Sure, you read literature about how 'golden lillies' were considered beautiful in old-time China, but such literature were always written by men, who determined a woman's worth through a standard that can only be achieved through artifice. Pallid, weakened women with artificial (not to say dangerous) 18" waists were also considered beautiful in old-time Western societies, but who determines these standards of beauty anyways, and why do we women perpetually fall for it? Why do I wear spiky high heels and think I look fantastic when barely able to hobble perilously from the curb to a restaurant door?
Speaking as a Chinese-American woman, I can tell you that foot-binding is no longer done (note the extreme age of the woman in the pictures) in China. My grandmother had feet that were bound by her mother, but she came of age shortly after the revolution in 1911 and her feet were 'liberated' and allowed to return to a more natural form. They did straighten back out, but never grew to normal adult size, instead remained small enough to wear child-size shoes all her life. Feet on Chinese girls were bound starting at about age 6-7, and were ostensibly a sign of affluence (the whole reason of 'control' notwithsanding and certainly unspoken) - a girl with bound feet will do no hard work, and certainly no peasant work like farming. In this, food-binding shares another commonality with European corsets - a corseted woman can't bend at the waist, run fast, or even turn around quickly; thus only ladies wore corsets, starting with 'training corsets' when pre-adolescents, and their servants did not. In modern ages, our equivalent might be tanning, or eating disorders; they are beauty-regimens of the affluent, and just as the olden days, such beauty can kill us so easily, much more galling because we do it to ourselves.
NPR Story on footbinding in China: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942&sc=emaf
Spotted on the west side of Azusa Blvd, in West Covina, between Vine and Merced streets.
Bruce took me to the South Orange County Chambers of Commerce Ball last night and we had a really good time. Bruce knows absolutely everyone, of course, and I met some of his friends and colleagues and heard some very nice things about him. People really think very highly of him and his work, and did not hesitate to tell me how wonderful it was for the region to have him and what a great job he's doing. It was very heartening.
Although I myself had made a little splash...Someone mistook me as the newly elected First District county supervisor (another Asian woman about my age) and was about to congratulate me on my recent election victory before he stopped himself short to confirm my identity. I joked with Bruce that come Monday there'll be rumors in the county that he was canoodling with the newly elected supervisor all night and was seen leaving the party with her, even. Qu'elle scandale!
We saw a seafood restaurant called "Legal Sea Foods", and being us - lots of fish puns ensued. He was quite finny. We debated whether they served poached fish (ah ha ha, poached). It was off the scale, but you know we just did it for the halibut and not on porpoise.
This morning we went to the Capitol and had a tour led by a squeaky keen intern from the office of Ken Calvert (R-Ca). From his work, Bruce knew a lot more about everything we were looking at than the intern, so I actually learned far more about government and the history of DC than I got from the "official" tour.
We went to the National Portrait Gallery, where I had visited alone on Wednesday when Bruce had been at the conference. I attended a tour led by a docent who is a retired history teacher, so it was very informative and engaging. I couldn't wait to bring Bruce back with me today and give him the same (well, as much as possible) tour. Did you know the guy who patented the Singer sewing machine had five wives, some of whose tenures overlapped? Or that President Taft was stuck in the White House bathtub 3 times? Or that Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first newspaper publishers who printed poetry written by a black man? Neither did I until the tour, and we had a really good time goofing off with some of the statues as well.
We didn't make it to the Smithsonian today, but we did have a very illuminating afternoon in the Phillips Gallery where they have the original of the Renoir " Luncheon of the Boating Party", one of Bruce's favorite paintings, as well as quite a collection of impressionist works. The Phillips also had a considerable collection of modern art for us to snark over. We neither of us really seem to feel modernism.
Incidentally, about impressionism - in the movie "Clueless", one of the rich high school girls in the story is described as a 'Monet' - "She looks fine from a distance, but close up, it's a mess."
Now back to the blog entry.
We went to Second Story Books after the art gallery, and if I wasn't growing faint and crabby from hunger, we might still be there. Bruce added to his collection of reading materials, being as how his apartment can not quite pass as a used book store. Yet.
We have been walking everywhere, the weather's nice and crisp, Bruce likes pointing out interesting views and landmarks to me, and I enjoy his company. Although there's plenty of cabs and the Metro, we still prefer the physical immersion (and the exercise) we get from walking through the city streets, through the parks, and through traffic circles trying to get out without getting killed by embassy cars (which they could do with immunity if they wanted to).
Bruce pointed out to me that DC license plates say, on the bottom, "Taxation Without Representation". I love that open, expressive, and justifiably dour attitude. It's all about the free speech, no?
About today's photos:
(1) Pink and Blue: Magnolias against the sharp blue afternoon sky, a flash of color in winter
(2) Magnolias against the red-brick of the Phillips Collection building
Of all the ways one could have headlined a story about the slave/slaveowner ancestry-link between Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond, the San Diego Union Tribune chooses "Who's Your Daddy?"