I completely understand the anticipation and subsequent satiety of those females. In 2008, I went to theaters with a single gal friend to see the first SATC movie as soon as it opened in theaters in London. The audience (of mostly females, obv) also started clapping and cheering as the movie began. Two years later, and with a boyfriend reluctantly accompanying me, I attended the SATC 2 movie today. This time, I could wait to see it until a couple weeks after it premiered. Still, I went despite the reviews trashing it.

So, verdict? I must admit — I was pleased with it.  !  Yes, I rolled my eyes into astigmatism on multiple occasions when the ugly Americans would say and do embarrassing things in Abu Dhabi, including a misplaced-in-time-and-place show of feminism via a classic Helen Reddy tune (Hey clueless, veiled Muslim women, you can be as liberated as we are in America! Um, where’s my black diamond ring, Big?). However, it was refreshing to see where these four women are in their journey of self-discovery.

Contrary to the opinions of my younger work colleagues, I think they look fabulous in their 40s and 50s — not old and tacky. I continue to abhor Carrie and find Sarah Jessica Parker’s tongue overly deployed in a desperate effort to appear sexy and relevant. But still, I take comfort in their enduring, two-decades friendship and enjoy checking in on their ridiculously insular, NYC navel-gazing lives.

Love,

Nilanthi

I recently caught the Sex and the City 2 movie premiere in Chelsea,  a fashionable part of West London. On entering the theatre, I was overwhelmed by a throng of females dressed in Carrie Bradshaw uniforms: glittery tops, mini-skirts, vintage dresses with brooches, leggings and stilettos.  It was an estrogen explosion, dotted by a few wary men who had obviously been dragged into the SATC fervor by girlfriends and wives.

In the theatre, I sat with women from Russia, Lebanon, Japan, and Canada. The far corners of the world represented, all brimming with excitement about the premiere. The commercials finished, and the opening scene was met with cheers and screeches of excitement from the audience. Something about these characters translated across cultures and managed a hold on these diverse imaginations. It didn’t seem to matter that the the charm of the original SATC was extinguished in the film, and that the characters were one-dimensional vessels for designer dresses and shoes. Neither did it matter that there was more lifestyle porn than plot, or that the part of the story that takes place in Abu Dhabi was rife with offensive Arab stereotypes.

For all the stinking, horrible reviews of the film, for the cheap story, and garish drag-queen behaviour of the characters, it seemed the people in the theatre that night were moved. So Nilanthi, tell me what about SATC  translates to all these women?

Best,

Julia

Dear Julia,

For the last few days, I’ve been suffering from London withdrawal. While intellectually, I recognize that city will never be as it was during grad school — filled with all the wonderful characters we had a chance to know — sometimes, my love of the city overwhelms and until I can visit again, the only way to subdue my longing for London is through film.

So, in case you were suffering from a case of the post-London blues, I thought I’d prescribe a few films. Here are my faves; some of these even inspired me to live in the city, which makes you wonder at the power of film and media to influence people…

1. Howard’s End
2. The Remains of the Day
3. Miss Julie
4. Sense and Sensibility
5. Velvet Goldmine
6. Absolutely Fabulous (This bbc tv series is the definitive reason I knew I needed to live in london)
7. Coupling (Another bbc tv series and how I’d imagine my post-LSE life in London)
8. The Winter Guest
9. Shirley Valentine
10. Trainspotting
11. Little voice
12. About a Boy
13. Blow Dry
14. The Triple Echo
15. Metroland

Love from not-London,

Nilanthi

I know we’re still supposed to be basking in the afterglow of our collective victory with a woman finally winning the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture, but I’m troubled. Why do our feminist pioneers have to be so damn attractive? Manohla Dargis posed the question, “Would [Bigelow] have been nominated if she was a very ugly woman?” But now I’m wondering whether we need these women who break down barriers to be hot while they do it? Perhaps their beauty helps to win hearts and minds? 

Gloria Steinem made feminism palatable to both men and women en masse. With her long-flowing hair and statuesque physique, her beauty was a fact as she was famously a Playboy bunny who did an exposé about this profession. Onlookers unfamiliar with the feminist movement could take comfort in knowing she was not some ugly lesbian whose sole purpose was to rally against heterosexual men.

Gloria Steinem, left

Fast forward forty years, another statuesque beauty with long-flowing hair walks up the Academy Awards steps to receive the Best Director Oscar. 

Kathryn Bigelow, Best Director, "The Hurt Locker"

Despite my deep love of “The Piano,” perhaps Jane Campion could not have been the one to break down the celluloid ceiling in 1993 when she was nominated for Best Director. She was certainly not “a very ugly woman,” but maybe she just wasn’t attractive enough to convince a plurality of Academy voters to make her the first female Best Director? 

Jane Campion, Oscar-nominated Best Director, "The Piano" (1993)

Like I said, I’m troubled. But maybe it no longer matters once the walls have been broken down. The point is, the rest of us can now finally come in.

Love,

Nilanthi 

Dear Nilanthi,

I wanted to share with you a new article by our correspondent Aiyan Bhutta in Lahore. Published today in an English-language newspaper in Pakistan, this inspiring piece rails against the use of torture as a means of interrogation among the Pakistani police force. I think it’s interesting that at a time when the Canadian government investigates its complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees, we have this from inside neighbouring Pakistan — a reminder of the nearly universal abhorrence of the use of torture:

The latest report of police torture — an all too common occurrence in police stations throughout Pakistan — comes from Chiniot, where seven individuals were victims of extreme police brutality. The policemen in this case were said to be furious after being confronted by the relatives of the accused who alleged that these individuals were falsely implicated. As revenge, the law enforcement officials took the law into their own hands by publicly punishing and humiliating the accused men.

The policemen who committed acts of torture have since been suspended and jailed – but that was only after a video of the incident was shown on the internet and broadcast in television news. These police officials should consider themselves unlucky to have been caught on video since such incidents happen in Pakistan everyday without ever being brought to the attention of the public.

Torture, whether it is physical or psychological, is a widely accepted practice adopted by the police forces. Article 14(2) of the Constitution of Pakistan makes it clear that “No person shall be subjected to torture for the purpose of extracting evidence”. Additionally, the Police Order of 2002 prescribes a punishment of up to five years for a police official who inflicts torture or violence to any person in his custody.

However, it is a sad fact that while undergoing training, young policemen are rarely informed about the legal implications of soliciting evidence by means of torture. They are also not made aware of the penalties and repercussions of using torture to do their jobs. Today in Pakistan, the recovery of evidence in criminal cases is mostly based on ‘confessions’ obtained through torture, which is a clear violation of the law of the land. Police officials also regularly receive monetary incentives from the complainants of a case to use excessive force against the accused which further exasperates the situation.

As a result, inflicting torture on prisoners has gained acceptance and has become a part of police culture in our country. It is an open secret that the use of torture as a means of interrogation, intimidation, and humiliation is a practice both explicitly and implicitly approved by the police hierarchy while also being tolerated (if not outright encouraged) by the political leadership of the country. The legal community also ignores this practice as issues pertaining to prisoner abuse are rarely brought up in criminal trials, perhaps because it is taken for granted that such abuse is common and a normal part of the investigative process.

In addition to local laws prohibiting torture, Pakistan is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) along with the United Nations Conventions against Torture (CAT) which it signed in 2008. In the CAT, torture is defined as physical or mental pain or suffering inflicted on an individual for the purpose of obtaining a confession or intimidation, punishment or coercion. Most importantly, it implicates public officials under whose consent or acquiescence such acts are carried out. Therefore, international law clearly holds senior police officers and political figures responsible if acts of torture are being carried out under their watchful eyes.

Other important provisions of CAT include prompt investigations of any allegations of torture, ensuring that victims of torture must have an enforceable right to compensation and banning the use of evidence produced by torture in the courts. Unfortunately, like many other international treaties that our successive governments have signed over the years, these provisions have not been incorporated in our local laws. This is in part because both the ICCPR and CAT have not been ratified by our legislature, which has been preoccupied with other issues of ‘public importance’ such as the NRO and judicial appointments. Our leaders have shown lack of political will to address issues pertaining to human rights, especially those in relation to the rights of prisoners, many of whom are languishing in jails on frivolous charges.

Apart from the fact that torture is explicitly outlawed by local and international law, it is important for our decision makers to realise that prohibition against torture is a peremptory norm which means that it is a fundamental principle of international law from which no derogation is ever permitted. Therefore, even without specific provisions relating to torture in our local laws, torture would still be a prohibited practice open to judicial scrutiny by local and international courts.

In these times of war, the torture situation in Pakistan seems to have exacerbated as myriad reports surface about terrorist suspects who have been victims of torture. Moreover, recent news reports have emerged regarding the Punjab Police operating 150 private torture cells in Lahore. If accurate, this is indeed a worrying development as this seriously questions the resolve of the government to protect its citizens from state sanctioned brutality.

War and a high crime rate should not be used as reasons to justify such extreme measures. Accountability of police officials — including those at the top of the hierarchy — needs to take place whenever incidents such as the one in Chiniot take place. The Chief Justice of Pakistan has recently taken suo motu notice of this occurrence. It will be interesting to observe if any judicial precedent in this area is set.

Our courts should develop a practice of awarding compensation to victims of state torture. Public pressure also needs to be mounted on the government for the ratification of the ICCPR and CAT. Torture should have no place in our society in the twenty-first century.

So now that Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar for best film and director, I’m sure we’re not going to hear the end of her womanliness anytime soon. She is, afterall, the first female to win best director in the 82 years since the awards began. But despite the proliferation of articles about Bigelow’s gender, it’s interesting that she doesn’t acknowledge her unique status as a female first– neither in her acceptance speech nor in the many interviews that have come since her big night last Sunday.

Johanna Schneller in the Globe and Mail pointed out that skirting the gender issue is nothing new for Bigelow: “‘I try to distance myself from gender distinctions,’ she told me when I interviewed her in 2002. ‘They seem arcane to me. I suppose it [being a woman director] is seen as a novelty, but it’s also a ghettoization.’”

In the New York Times, a comprehensive article on Bigelow’s role as a female first notes that she won for a macho film and not a love story,  but that, “[Bigelow's] insistence on keeping the focus on her movies is a quiet yet profound form of rebellion. She might be a female director, but by refusing to accept that gendered designation — or even engage with it — she is asserting her right to be simply a director.”

For Bigelow, it seems the way to shatter the celluloid ceiling is to wriggle out of being pigeonholed as some feminist martyr. So in ignoring her unique status, perhaps Bigelow is suggesting a way forward: to break through glass ceilings, we must simply ignore them.

Yours,

Julia

Tonight on 60 Minutes, I watched Kathryn Bigelow, the director of The Hurt Locker, a dark film about the plight of American bomb-squad technicians working in Iraq. I enjoy 60 Minutes tremendously for its penetrating analysis of contemporary issues, so I was surprised when Lesley Stahl took the easy angle on Bigelow (one that many in the media have been going after): that it’s surprising or astonishing that a woman directed a violent war film.

I hate to be the umpteenth person to rumble about how annoying it is that Bigelow be asked such inane questions as, how could she– a woman — be attracted to a macho subject like war. So instead, I will illustrate the absurdity of her media treatment by asking you, dear reader, to  imagine these questions being directed at a male film director:

It is tough to be a male director?

Why does violence play such a big role in your films?

How did it feel to direct a film about war?

What do you say to people who have pointed out that you may win that (blank) award because of your gender?

While it’s usual for females to direct “chick flicks” and men to tackle violent war films, it’s unfortunate that we can’t seem to move past this dichotomy and accept that a woman may be attracted to the war genre, and even excel at depicting something that is as “masculine” as war.

As Bigelow says in the 60 Minutes interview, “The journey for women no matter the venue — politics, business, film — it’s a long journey.”

Best,

Nilanthi

PS: Today, I’ll leave you with this final thought by the one New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis on The Daily Beast:

I honestly think that women have to present themselves better in public, because they are more viciously critiqued. When you’re a cultural, social minority, you’re held up to a higher standard, including a physical standard. Would [Bigelow] have been nominated if she was a very ugly woman? I don’t know. But I don’t know how I’m to even think about that.

In an interesting piece in yesterday’s paper, Naomi Wolf wrote about women’s sleep deprivation as the next feminist frontier to conquer. After  juggling work and families, we dedicate spare time to “self-imposed perfection” by preening and organizing our lives into spreadsheets, instead of simply sleeping. Getting more sleep would make us happier, healthier, and, the argument goes, would allow us to do more in our waking hours. But Wolf questions whether women really need to do more and criticizes what she calls feminine “hyperperformance”:

What’s up with this? I observe this trend not with judgment but with compassion. I believe that successful women — the ones with the most privileged lives of all — often feel a gnawing existential guilt about their very abundance and power. Someone has to be punished. The ones they punish are themselves.

This guilt is the result of an engrained belief that “… if [women] have too much of a good thing, there has to be a cost. Hence the impulse to show we are good girls, we are hard-working, we truly deserve this good fortune with our over-performance.”

Wolf’s advice: Embrace imperfection, run a bath, stop trying to do so much, and hit the sack.

At this moment, as I sleepily gaze at my bed, I appreciate her advice. And while I have a wealth of anecdotal evidence that supports the argument that women who work and have families are sleep deprived, I don’t think sleep deprivation is a female-only  issue. Men and women alike lose sleep because we are a hyperperforming society, and information is washing over us at an ever-speedier pace. This week’s Economist, for example, carried a special report that examined today’s “data deluge“:

Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analysing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still.

We feel we have to manage this flood of information, and for many of us, work demands that we do — perhaps at the cost of sleep. I met with a radio producer a couple of weeks ago who noted that 20 years ago, he had to learn one sound editing program every five years or so. Now, he masters a new program every few months.  Similarly, I met with a magazine editor who confessed to being so overwhelmed by all the information “out there”, that she longed to simply slip away. She felt this need to stay on top of the latest news and trends keeps her up at night, searching on blogs and websites, soaking up so much information she’s rendered numb. “I can’t even bring myself to join Twitter,” she said, “because I know it’ll only drive me mad.” So I say hyperperformance and the resulting lack of sleep is a male and female issue.

Before I crumble into my bed, I’ll offer an alternative view: instead of bourgeois guilt, maybe the anxiety that keeps over-performers of both sexes up at night is caused by something else, something Douglas Coupland wrote about in Generation X:

You see, when you’re middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.

Sweet dreams,

Julia

A piece by Tanya Gold in the Guardian, entitled Why I hate fashion has caused a stir among fashionistas the world over. In particular, a friend of mine in London, England — who recently traded her job as an accountant at a prestigious financial institution for a career in fashion marketing — wrote a scathing response to Tanya, which I’d like to publish below.

First, a bit from Tanya:

A confession – it’s been stalking me for years now, this crawling ­disdain for fashion; the certainty that it is not an ally but an enemy. The older I am, the more disenchanted I am with what is meant to make us beautiful. Now, at 36, I believe it is one of the ultimate evils in the universe, along with yoghurt. It should have its own Death Star…

I like food and men and comfort. It is just that at some point, the unceasing prattle of fashion has become a scream in my head. I ­cannot ignore its idiocies any more. I walk past a shop that sells 6in heels and I am angry. Banana ­Republic? ­Angry again. Selfridges and its ­loathsome “I shop therefore I am” adverts, a manifesto for morons? Don’t even go there. I have had it with this tyrant-fool throwing darts from every billboard and magazine and TV screen. I want to hurl a spear back at it.

Now, Jamila’s letter, which she co-wrote with a fashionable friend.

Like you, our love of fashion began when we were quite young. However rather than ignorantly following marketing campaigns and dishing out cash to shop, our appreciation of fashion has translated into exploring the context of design, understanding fashion as an artistic medium and appreciating the research and thought that is part of creating each product. The high street that you attack is a profit driven representation of high fashion catwalk creations that have been dumbed down for the mass population. Your rage at their attempt of only promoting superficial spending, shallow quick fixes to happiness, size 0 as the perfect body, sex, eating disorders and the list goes on is well warranted.

However, perhaps the problem is just a reflection of society and not the corporate world, marketers, etc. It is unfortunate that our society seems to be overpopulated with individuals who lack confidence and do not possess critical thinking when they look at the media, advertisements, etc.

Though I agree with Tanya’s argument — that fashion can be a force for the opression of the second sex and has preyed on the confidence and pocket books of too many men and women — I think that Jamila raises a good point, too. She urges us to consider the intelligent side of fashion, including “Designers, who are true artists, [and]capable of creating beautiful pieces and understand that their clients give personality to the clothes rather than vice versa.”

However, to Jamila I’d say that the artistic and high-minded designers are subsidized by the purchasing power of the rabble on the high street. Is it not a truth universally acknowledged that fashion houses now run off the steam of their lower cost merchandise — perfume, purses, underwear? So the fashion high only exists in relation to the low.

The other point — that our collective ignorance is the fault of much of our despair over the images spread in front of our noses on fashion advertisements and editorial — may be true, indeed. When I worked with youth groups in London, I was always surprised to find out how little young women knew about all the manipulation and air-brushing goes on behind those glossy pages. I was also quite relieved to work for a magazine editor who  deplored any kind of photo editing that aims to make the beautiful people more beautiful. Alas, Tanya’s arguments, although sympathetic, are perhaps too black and white.

Yours truly,

Julia

Yes, I too saw David Brooks’ column and thought it was a weird one for him. He is a great thinker who usually elevates the level of discussion and reporting on nytimes.com. However, this column seemed cursory and knee-jerk as opposed to his usual, thoughtful pieces.

It was truly bizarre that he used the word “cultures” in the following sentence, instead of “nation-states”:  “But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others.” Why does the aftermath of this earthquake represent some larger truth about Haiti’s culture as opposed to the governing structures of this nation-state? Brooks might as well get in line behind Pat Robertson in forming ill-founded conclusions after tragedies.

On the other hand, I don’t think that we can largely blame the U.S. because it has both helped and hurt Haiti, as often seen by imperialistic powers. Ultimate blame should we given to France if we’re thinking about the source of Haiti’s problems. Freedom Fries!

Yet, David Brooks should be wary about referencing “culture authorities” like political scientist Samuel Huntington, who built a solid reputation for his democratization analyses throughout the years only to finish his career with a simplistic theory about the role of culture in international relations — the Clash of Civilizations.

I guess I should just be grateful that David Brooks didn’t try to form some larger conclusion about Sri Lanka’s “poverty story” and problems with its economic development after the 2004 tsunami. Perhaps the fact that the tsunami affected countries with populations as disparate as Indonesia and Thailand prevented Brooks from ejaculating a column about his preconceived notions. Or maybe Brooks just feels strongly about voodoo?

Yeah, I didn’t see blame columns like his in the news after the 2004 tsunami. I suppose the larger conclusion that I have formed after the Haiti earthquake is this: Thank god I’m not black and descendant from slaves.

Maybe David Brooks vacations in Phuket, Thailand?

Best wishes,

Nilanthi