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By pigwhisperer, January 28, 2012

Oxum, the goddess

I recently read “Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.” It’s a book about how and why little girls are systematically bombarded with Disney princesses, the color pink, sexualized dolls like Bratz and Monster High, baby beauty pageants, and the like.

Emília is only three months old and yet I felt compelled to read this book. Why now? It might be because we are already faced with questions about her femininity, and she is barely out of her newborn-looking-like-a-bald-alien phase.

Here, it’s common to pierce a baby girl’s ears at birth. So common that hospital nurses often offer their services (for a small fee) to do the piercing. I have pierced ears. I have nothing against earrings. But my husband and I didn’t want to pierce Emília’s ears. It’s not that I didn’t want my daughter to suffer the pain of piercing–as a newborn she’d never remember it. I simply wanted her to be a baby. No jewelry. No make-up. No accessories. Just a chubby, temperamental, lovely baby. This has proven difficult to explain to the many well-meaning people who comment on why our baby’s ears are not pierced. “Why not?” they ask in a shocked or reproachful tone, as if James and I had announced to them that we’d decided never to bathe our daughter.

So, I was thinking about femininity when I read a reference to Peggy Orenstein’s book in the New York Times. The book is a quick read. It’s interesting, at times funny, and at times a little preachy and over-the-top. There are many moments when Orenstein’s conversations with her own daughter rubbed me the wrong way, in that I felt she overvalued the masculine: Tonka trucks and dragon bike helmets are good while fairies and princesses are bad. But overall Orenstein makes some really valuable points about how, over the past 20 years, Disney princess culture has been aggressively and strategically marketed to little girls, how oftentimes shopping is the only path to intimacy between mothers and daughters, how “wholesome” dolls like the American Girl collection are often too expensive for most little girls to own, and how associating the color pink with little girls is a relatively new phenomenon.

“In the era before Maytag,” Orenstein writes, “all babies wore white as a practical matter since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them…when nursery colors were introduced, pink was actually considered a mire masculine hue, as pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary…symbolized femininity.”

There is a photo of my grandfather from around 1903. In it, he must be about three years old. He wears a dress and has long hair. Back then, androgyny was the norm for children of a certain age. Now, even hospital bracelets in the maternity ward are pink or blue.

I have not banned pink from Emília’s nursery or her wardrobe. Why would I? Our house on the farm is painted dark salmon pink. We have some lovely and fragrant pink tea roses outside of our door. I own pink shirts and a hot-pink purse. I like to shop, wear nice clothing and make-up, have mani-pedi’s, get my hair cut and styled, wear jewelry. But I do not believe that these things make me feminine–they do not define me as a person or as a woman. But how to communicate this to my daughter? There are so many mixed messages for girls (and women) today: Cherish your body, but don’t obsess. Looks don’t matter, but you have to work-out. Clothing is superficial, but take pride in your appearance.

In her book, Orenstein cites studies saying that children are vulnerable to long-term, consistent influences of marketing and advertising. If little girls are constantly bombarded with make-up kits, princess garb, dolls called “Bratz,” purses that have the words “spoiled” and “fashionista” scrawled across them, will this mean that they will grow up with a warped sense of femininity? Will they believe that that being a girl means being a spoiled fashionista? According to Orenstein, the answer is yes. In our modern culture, Orenstein writes, little girls “learn how to act desirable but not how to desire, undermining rather than promoting healthy sexuality.”

If we buy Emília a Barbie, are we promoting unhealthy sexuality? If we tell her she is beautiful, is this wrong? What girl, or woman for that matter, doesn’t want to be called beautiful? If Emíla wants to be a fairy princess for Halloween, should we force her to be a pirate? What if she genuinely likes princesses? What worries me about Orenstein’s anti-princess sentiment is the following: if, as parents, we constantly assume our daughter is falling prey to some Disney marketing scheme, and that her desires are not her own, then I’m not trusting her ability to know herself or to express her own likes and dislikes.

Here in Brazil there is an African religion called Candomblé that is quite popular, especially where we live in the northeast. According to one Candomblé origin story, when the great god Oxalá made the world, he initially created 17 lesser gods or orixas. One was a goddess named Oxum. The other sixteen gods ignored her, not knowing that when Oxalá “chose all good things/ He also chose their keeper/And this was a woman.” So, as long as Oxum was ignored, nothing the other sixteen divinities did on earth was successful. There was no rain, no birth, no health, no love. Eventually they went to Oxum and asked for her help, and her forgiveness. Like a princess, Oxum wears a gold crown and a beautiful yellow gown. But she is also worshipped for being a loving mother, an old crone, a seductress, a coquette, a guardian, an angel of mercy, a laughing nymph, a feared and respected goddess. Oxum carries both a mirror and a knife. On a superficial level, the mirror is a symbol of her vanity, the knife of her capacity for vengeance. But looking deeper at the goddess, the mirror is a symbol of self-knowledge and honesty. The mirror is also a way to look behind her, to see her enemies. Or her past. Apart from self defense, the knife serves many functions–cooking, skinning, hunting, cutting hair and cloth. If only the Disney princesses could be as versatile as Oxum. This is what I hope to communicate to Emília–femininity takes many forms. Femininity can be powerful.

By the end of her book, Orenstein gives good advice. Stress what your daughters body can do rather than how it is decorated. Praise her accomplishments, not just her looks. Make sure she is media literate–that she understands what is an advertisement and what is not. Make sure she knows which women are real and which are fictional.

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By pigwhisperer, November 2, 2011

So, I’m a mother now. James and I welcomed a fat, healthy, and lovely baby girl who we named Emília, after my grandmother.

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By pigwhisperer, August 13, 2011

I just finished reading three nonfiction books. I read them all at the same time, alternating between them depending on my mood. The first was “Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century”. I read an article in Vanity Fair about Elizabeth Taylor and became mildly obsessed with her. (Other famous women I’m mildly obsessed with- Laura Bush and Ruth Madoff. If anyone writes anything about these two, I’m reading it.) The Burton-Taylor book wasn’t an incredible piece of writing, but the story of their relationship was intense and completely engrossing.

The next book was “The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.” about the Madoff Ponzi scheme saga. I never fully understood the Madoff scandal, and this book details the scheme from beginning to end. There were some dense sections explaining OTC trades and derivatives, which made my brain hurt. (Whenever this happened, I’d switch back to reading about Elizabeth and Richard, and their days aboard their yacht and their quests to buy the world’s biggest diamonds.) Overall, the Wizard book was interesting and well-written. But I wish it had focused more on Madoff and his family (Ruth! Where are you!), and dug deeper into why and how Madoff lied for so many years.

The third book in my nonfiction binge was “Truth and Beauty” about the close friendship between Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy. This was a haunting and, at times, frustrating portrait of a friendship.

I liked reading these books together; they were a nice compliment to one another. As different as they seemed at first, all three books explored the ideas of obsession and human frailty. We often lie to ourselves, and to others, in order to love and to feel loved. In Taylor and Burton’s case, the obsession and lies centered on each other (and alcohol). In Madoff’s case, the obsession was with perpetuating a lie, and with being seen as a trusted man. And in Patchett’s case, the obsession was her friend Lucy, and the lie she told herself was that she could protect Lucy from the world, and from Lucy herself.

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By pigwhisperer, January 24, 2011

“If you write a story today, and you get up tomorrow and start another story, all the expertise that you put into the first story doesn’t transfer over automatically to the second story. You’re always starting at the bottom of the mountain. So you’re always becoming a writer. You’re never really arriving.”
–Edward P. Jones

Every day lately it feels like I am at the bottom of this mountain, looking up. Most days, I’m not confident I’ll make it. The story in my head is never what actually appears on the page. In my heard the story is perfect. On the page it is a mess.

Back in 2005, James and I traveled to Chile’s Atacama desert. From there, we headed up into the Altiplano of the Andes mountains. The weather was not on our side–there were ice and snow storms that prevented our little group from going to the area’s hot springs and seeing the Tatio geysers. We’d brought warm clothes, but none felt warm enough. About three-quarters through the trip, after a few bouts of altitude sickness and one too many ice-cold showers, I was ready to leave. Luckily, the stubborn penny-pincher in me was stronger than the part of me that needed creature comforts; we’d paid for two weeks in the Andes and, frostbite be damned, we would get our money’s worth.

We saw wild vincunãs and, at the end of our trip, spent the night on the edge of Lake Chungará , one of the highest lakes in the world. At Chungará, the air was very thin. While putting up our tent, we had to stop and rest every five minutes. I felt as if my lungs were the size of an infant’s. Dizzy, I sat on a pile of rocks and admired the lake. Chungará wasn’t a comfortable place to be, but it was lovely. As the sun set, the sky and the snow around us turned pink. The view of the twin volcanoes Parinacota and Pomerape was one of the most spectacular I have ever seen. It was exhilarating to finally be at the top of those mountains. But it wasn’t a place we could stay forever. Nor would I want to.

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By pigwhisperer, January 14, 2011

I’ve never been a comic book fan, but I have recently discovered the graphic novel. After reading (or should I say viewing?) Shaun Tan’s incredible and haunting graphic novel, The Arrival, I’ve been on the hunt for similar works. The trouble is, graphic novels cannot be read on my Kindle. Graphic novels need color and hardcovers and big, glossy pages. They are hard to find out here. So, I covet.

I recently read about a graphic novel (actually, critics call this particular book a biography-in-collage) called Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. It looks beautiful. Here’s what Amazon has to say about it:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2010: Lauren Redniss’s brilliant biography-in-collage is an astounding portrait of Marie and Pierre Curie, the husband-and-wife team who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. Broken into seven chapters (introduced with scientific terms that hint at the stories to come), Radioactive fuses quotes from the scientists themselves with ones from the Curies’ own granddaughter, engineering and weapons experts, and even atomic bomb survivors that form a most interesting and informative narrative. Redniss’s styling doesn’t end with the way she tells the story: Radioactive is as visually stunning as it is factually rich. She jumps from black-and-white sketches to vibrantly colored depictions of the young couple’s courtship, collaborations, and eventually Pierre’s unexpected death. Within the stark pages of the chapter titled “Isolation,” the reader feels Marie’s loss; then in “Exposure” we watch as she falls in love again–this time under more controversial circumstances. Despite personal challenges, Marie continued to be ambitious and eventually became the first female professor at the Sorbonne, winning a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In Radioactive, Redniss shows a similar determination. Through her moody, evocative collages, she captures the drama of the Curies’ lives and their contributions to science and medicine, sending the reader on a one-of-a-kind historical and biographical journey that any curious mind will appreciate. –Jessica Schein

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By pigwhisperer, January 1, 2011

I just reread “Time Will Darken It” by the American writer William Maxwell (1908-2000). Every time I read this book, it leaves me feeling unmoored, amazed, haunted, sad, an completely in awe of William Maxwell.

In 2000, Daniel Menaker wrote an article in the New York Times about Maxwell, describing what it was like to work with the author when he was an editor at the New Yorker. A few days before his death, Maxwell told Menaker the following story:

“ ‘When my mother died and I was 10,’’ he said, ‘a man came to the door ostensibly to pay his respects to my father. But my father suspected that the man came in triumph or glee about my mother’s death. It may have had something to do with a sexual secret. In any case, my father opened the door, saw who it was, and slammed the door in the man’s face so hard that the house shook. I had never seen him do anything like that before, and I never knew until that moment that anyone could be so direct and angry in polite circles. And I haven’t forgotten it since.’”

After reading this, I realized that this could have easily been a scene in “Time Will Darken It.” The story takes place in a quiet Midwestern town in 1912. There are no obvious villains in the book (except, of course, Rachel’s unwelcome ex-con husband, who is a very minor player). The book’s omniscient point-of-view floats in and out of a dozen character’s heads, making them all seem vulnerable and complex. Austin King, the main character, is so outwardly generous and kind that, in the beginning, I always find him a little boring. But this quickly changes. Austin’s need to be seen as a good man is his undoing. He is frustratingly sympathetic to all and, even as a reader allowed into his head and into his thoughts, it is difficult to understand him. It is difficult to know what he loves and why. His layers of goodness and duty make him a mystery to the reader, to his wife Martha, and to himself.

Austin’s pretty cousin Nora believes wholeheartedly that she is in love with him. She is too young to see Austin’s self-deception and only sees his goodness, and her own. There were times that I got so frustrated with poor, chatty, earnest Nora that I wanted to throttle her (which is probably how Austin’s wife Martha felt about her, too). But Nora pays dearly for her misguided feelings; Maxwell doesn’t give her an easy end. Maxwell is a master of dialogue, of ending a scene exactly where it needs to end, of guiding the reader to make crucial discoveries without hitting us over the head with silly clues. Every time I finish this book, I’m left with more questions than answers. But they are really satisfying questions, ones that make me wonder about the characters for days. They haunt me. And I’m certain that each time I reread “Time Will Darken It,” I’ll discover something new.

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By pigwhisperer, November 23, 2010

parceria
(parceiro + -ia)
s. f.
Relação de colaboração entre duas ou mais pessoas com vista à realização de um objectivo comum.

Alimento é vida. É o que nos sustenta e nutre. Além de seus benefícios práticos, o alimento pode também ser fonte de prazer, de camaradagem, e de parceria. É com muito orgulho que Café Yaguara entra em parceria com o Restaurante Picuí e seu chef, Wanderson Medeiros.

Picuí e Yaguara acreditem na ecogastronomia — criar e comer alimentos de qualidade, produzidos de modo sustentável. O Restaurante Picuí é conhecido como um dos melhores restaurantes do Brasil recebendo a estrela do Guia 4 Rodas de melhor comida regional em Alagoas. Em 2009, o Picuí entrou para o seleto grupo da Associação dos Restaurantes da Boa Lembrança,

Amanhã, o restaurante Picuí completará 21 anos de sucesso em Maceió. Para comemorar a data o chef Wanderson Medeiros e mais 5 Chefs convidados irão promover um evento beneficente com foco na responsabilidade social. O café Yaguara será servido para todos os convidados.

Torramos o café para Picuí neste ultimo fim de semana. Amanhã, eu e James, como representantes de Yagaura, iremos a Maceió para comemorar nossa nova parceria com Picuí e Chef Medeiros.

Vou tirar fotos do evento e, assim que voltar, escrevo um novo post dizendo como foi. Espero que todos gostem do café!

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By pigwhisperer, November 14, 2010

Jamonero in Madrid

We arrived in Madrid a little groggy, but resolved to stay awake in an effort to trick our jet lag. We accomplished this trickery by eating. And drinking. We went to Spain to gain an in-depth understanding of cured hams. So our first meal in Madrid was, you guessed it, jamon.

Hams are cured all over the world using slightly different methods. The French have Bayonne hams. The Italians have Prosciutto de Parma, Toscano, and Jambon de Bosses. In Portugal there is Jamon de Barrancos, which is very similar to Spain’s Jamon Iberico. In Spain there are several kinds of cured hams. The Iberico de Cebo (made from an Iberian pig fed man-made feed all of its life), Iberico de Recebo (made from an Iberian pig fed a combination of man-made feed and wild pasture during ts last months) and Iberico de Bellota (made from an Iberian pig finished exclusively with pasture grazing). There are also Spanish hams made from white (not Iberian) pigs that are called Jamon de Teruel, Trevelez, and Serrano depending on their area of origin.

We went to a great market in Madrid’s downtown and had our first sample of Jamon Iberico de Bellota. We learned that good Jamon should be thinly sliced and served minutes after slicing. It should always be served at room temperature, so that the fat melts in your mouth. Speaking of fat, it should be marbled throughout the ham’s meat—this is a sign that the pig is a true black-hoofed Iberian breed. The ham should be moist, never rubbery or stringy. And the flavors should be strong and nutty. (Much stronger than Italian prosciutto.) The best Jamon needs no seasoning, no side dishes, no dressings. Nor is it used as an accessory to a dish—it is not wrapped around chicken or scattered on pizzas. The best Jamon is served all by itself, and is eaten with your hands. It’s amazing food. And boy, did we eat a lot of it. (My pants barely buttoned by the end of our trip.)

Our first dinner

We visited factories, pig farms, butchers, bodegas, you name it. I even got to try my hand at slicing a Jamon, which is no easy task. (For events and parties, Spaniards hire professional slicers. There is even a ham slicing institute in Guijuelo, one of Spain’s ham capitals.) But I’m getting ahead of myself. More about all of that in the next few posts.

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By pigwhisperer, September 28, 2010

I haven’t posted in nearly 2 months. I’ve been a horrendous blogger. (There are many excuses for this: I was traveling, working, and then my blog’s database crashed and I had to wade into weird and stressful programming jargon like MYSQL and PHP to fix it. But excuses are lame and the truth is, I still feel strange blogging. Many days, I’m not quite sure what to post, or who is interested.) In an effort to redeem myself, here is a picture of a baby rat.

We have country rats here. (They are cleaner and more naive than city rats.) They make nests in roof tiles and try to gnaw into our feed bins. This particular rat’s nest was in a roll of plastic screening in our storage house. The rats scattered. Our dogs went crazy. Oscar ate this blind baby rat shortly after we took its picture. We scolded him, but he wouldn’t cough it up. So the rat is now immortalized on the web.

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By pigwhisperer, June 11, 2010

Wired UK printed this spiffy diagram of an algorithm predicting who will win the World Cup. I hope it’s true!

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By pigwhisperer, March 18, 2010

A wonderful review of The Seamstress in The Independent, a UK newspaper. The book’s paperback version was released by Bloomsbury in February of 2010. Here’s the review’s full text:

“Although this is Frances de Pontes Peebles’ first novel, her prose flows with the assuredness of a natural storyteller’s. Each sentence of her epic narrative is stitched with meaning and insight, and the reader’s imagination is woven into the novel from the very first paragraph

We begin in 1935 in Recife, Brazil, where the married Emilia lives in the largest house in an area of newly built estates. She is living a life which at one time she could only dream of. But dreams, as she will learn, come at a price.

As orphaned children, Emilia and her deformed sister Luiza were brought up in a hillside village under the care of their Aunt Sofia. They worked as seamstresses, yearning to find a thread to take them away to a world elsewhere. Interwoven with their personal adventures is a slice of the fraught Brazilian history of the 1920s and 1930s: the economy is fast unravelling, and unrest and a clamouring for the rights of women are spreading as people attempt to fabricate feasible lives for themselves. The challenge facing Emilia and Luiza is how not to compromise their loyalties to themselves, and, most crucially, to each other.”

Here’s a link to the actual review. Many thanks to Bloomsbury for offering the book in the UK!

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By pigwhisperer, November 2, 2009

Today is Finados. It is a day to remember all those who came before us, to light a candle for them, and to commemorate their lives.

Ancestors

by Harvey Ellis

my ancestors surround me
like walls of a canyon
quiet
stone hard
their ideas drift over me
like breezes at sunset

we gather sticks
and make settlements
what we do is only partly
our own
and partly continuation
down through the chromosomes

my son
my baby sleeps behind me
stirring in the night
for the touch
that lets him continue

he is arranging
in his small form the furniture
and windows of his home

it will be a lot like mine
it will be a lot like theirs