Wednesday Martin's Blog, page 8

Primates Cartoon by New Yorker Cartoonist

OMG my book has a cartoon by New Yorker cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto!

Fashion Friday

Who doesn't like Fridays? For many Manhattan parents, Friday is a "partial day" or even a "half day" — because lots of Manhattan private schools have noon dismissal every Friday. At my sons' nursery school, we used to refer to Friday as "Daddy Drop Off Day" because that practice is so common at that particular school — and so many others.

Many of the families I study have weekend homes and leave as early as they can on Fridays to get there. If you're staying in town, your kids may have lots of weekend activities and classes and a birthday party or maybe even two to attend. But you're still likely feeling pretty relaxed about having survived the week of early morning runs to school before working out and work. The idea of "casual Friday" — Friday being a day of the weekend really, with its own, toned-down, comfortable uniform--is one of the few "mass" ideas in fashion and culture that New Yorkers have embraced as their own.

Many moms wear exercise clothes to Friday drop off here, and then might stay in them all day long. Lulu Lemon is the brand of choice by overwhelming consensus. It is extremely form-fitting, almost an exoskeleton or whole-body girdle, and an intrinsic part of Upper East Side mommy body display culture. Manhattan Geishas, as I call them, expend great energy on the maintenance and improvement of their bodies, which are in themselves signifiers of privilege. A Lulu-Lemon sheathed fit physique says "I have the leisure time to do this" and is as coveted a status symbol as the latest Hermes bag. In poverty cultures, curves and fat are valued as markers of health and wealth. On the UES of Manhattan, it's just the opposite.

Above are some photos of my younger son's typical school outfit. Obviously his school does not require a uniform. Of course his aesthetic is an extension of my own and also his caregiver' and my husband's. But my son has always been something of a free spirit, making many of his own choices. These have included pink princess socks from Duane Reade, Hello Kitty socks, purple flowered socks, and overall mashups of plaids and stripes. Recently he has reported that boys in his class tell him "purple and pink is only for girls." I tell him to tell them they are WRONG. Obviously those kids are unaware that until the mid 1900's, pink was STRICTLY FOR BOYS because it was a "stronger and more decided color and so more suitable for the boy. Blue is more delicate and daintier and so appropriate for the girl." Everywhere you looked until mid-century, boys were in pink and girls were in light blue. Manufacturers changed that up in the late 1940s.  Food for thought this weekend, perhaps.

Rich, Full and Anorexic Lives: for some Manhattanites, not having anything is the new having it all

What does giving up drinking have to do with billionaires who pledge to give away half their wealth? Or the Kwaikiutl potlatch ceremony in which chiefs set their most prized possessions on fire or give them away for show?

I haven't had a drink in ten months and ten days. But who's counting?

My decision to stop drinking for “a while” came after a close encounter with a bottle of organic (of course! It’s good for you!) vodka. But it had more to do with the habitual glass or two or three of wine that every single woman with young children I know in Manhattan drinks every single night (except maybe Monday night, when you’ve spent the day juicing because you're detoxing from the weekend). You will drink more or less, probably, depending on what’s going on. Kindergarten notifications, after a whole fall and early winter of Kindergarten applications, are the main thing going on now. Please pass the vodka. Or in my case, don’t.

Manhattan mommies and other mommies across the country drink, most often wine, because it’s what we do. That is to say, while our drinking may be personal, or physiological, or psychological, it’s also deeply, and to my eye mostly, tribal. It’s nothing, nothing at all, to go out with girlfriends here (and elsewhere) and have three or four glasses of wine at a “mom’s night out.” Particularly if you don’t have to drive yourself home, as none of us do here — we’re a walking town, and a town of cabs and drivers and Uber — it’s virtually comme il faut.

The tribe I study would rather drink than eat. More than one friend who has gone to a nutritionist or holistic MD has reported to me that she agreed to give up X, Y, and Z but refused to give up alcohol. As Richard Kirschenbaum observed in the Observer recently,  “I’ll have a couple of almonds” is the new motto of privileged Manhattanites. I might add that, while you will hear a wealthy Manhattanite say “a Martini, no olive” you will never, ever hear the reverse from a privileged Manhattan mommy. Drinking is something we won’t give up, most of us.

So back to not drinking. It seems to go against the grain of my culture to stop. But giving up drinking couldn’t have been easier thanks to what I like to call the New Deprivation. No gluten, no dairy, no soy, no lactose, no processed sugar, no wheat. Deprivation is the new conspicuous consumption. In the same way a group of billionaires have vowed to give away all their wealth, the women I run with have agreed to give up just about everything — except wine. When the good people at the Celiac Center at Columbia Presbyterian told me what would be required of me a couple of years ago, the doctor compassionately observed, "Many people find it very difficult to have so many food categories taken out of their diets and out of their lives. Some people even become depressed." I told him it was a non-issue for me. He looked really, really perplexed. "My kids go to school on the Upper East Side," I explained, "I'm already a semi-professional anorexic." He nodded and said, that Yes, not long ago, another few women had told them essentially the same thing.

It’s not just that the wealthy and uber wealthy are eating less and juicing more. It’s that there’s a new philosophy afoot in town: having nothing is the new having it all.

But this New Deprivation, as exemplified by eating less, isn’t the languid “dieting” our mothers knew, in which you simply don’t have stuff. No, this new deprivation is fueled by an ethos of doing, along with a dash of supersonic entitlement and side of ultra inflated expectations. Now, and here, deprivation is an active state of affairs. You do stuff to your body — Soul Cycle and Core Fusion and Physique 57 — and you also have less to eat, yes. It’s not enough for a bite to be merely low cal or low fat — that’s pathetically passé — it has to be organic, nutritious, anti-oxidant rich and detoxifying. Your food has to work very, very hard for you. Your expectations of your super foods are super high. It has to deliver, or you are just going to do without.

At a “class cocktail party” not long ago, servers offered platter after platter of delicious looking canapés, all designed with our pollution anxieties and elaborate rules about food in mind. But we still said no as we chatted and drank, again and again and again, to the point that I started to feel bad for the food servers (the drink servers, in contrast, were mobbed). “We all know the food is just for show,” I joked to the hostess. A good sport, she laughed and so did all the other women. We laughed big, uncomfortable, relieved laughs. It’s not that I’m funny — it’s that it’s titillating when someone has the bad manners to actually speak the deep cultural script that we all live and read from and don’t generally discuss.

Giving it up is way too easy around here. In poverty cultures, curves and flesh are status symbols. On the UES, the opposite belief prevails. Less is more. Much, much more.

What does the New Deprivation mean for our sex drives? Ah, that's for another post.

Playground Partners Luncheon

The annual Playground Partners Luncheon took place at the Boathouse in Central Park recently. It was a snowy day, but that did not reduce turnout at this popular event. Like grooming behaviors among female  papio cynocephalus (savannah baboons), attending events is an affiliative, pro-social behavior that promotes group and dyadic cohesion. We're weren't picking bugs off each other, but we may as well have been. In attending these events, talking to one another and eating and drinking together, asking about outfits and kids and work, we are essentially reassuring, connecting with and touching one another.

We are also affirming our tribal affiliations, and shoring up the rites and rituals that define our tribe. Members of the tribe I study get involved with certain causes, many of them extremely worthy, and then invite friends to attend events. You may buy a ticket, or be asked to be a guest at someone's table, or buy a table yourself. There are breakfast, luncheon and dinner events. The evening ones often have an auction, which raises even more money for the cause. The luncheons harken back to the days when the women who attended these types of things didn't work. The luncheon tradition prevails today, even though many women who go have jobs.

Playground Parnters is  a "junior committee," the little sister, if you will, of the Central Park Conservancy, whose spring event is a comme il faut luncheon of ladies in hats. Often NYC charities have a "junior committee" to bring a younger generation into the fold of charitable work. The sex segregation at these events is comprehensive. I believe there was one man in attendance. Coalition building and establishing and affirming social rank and hierarchy happen in many ways at a luncheon or event like this one. Who you talk to, where you sit, whether you are a guest of someone who bought a table, or bought a table yourself are all factors that help establish your rank. Reciprocal altruism is in full effect in the tribe I study--"I'll go/give to your charity thing if you go/give to my charity thing!" This is one of the ways we build relationships in Manhattan. It is also a way to give to a cause, while showing that you can give to a cause.

I enjoyed seeing the rituals and uniforms that prevailed at this winter event. There were great big tote bags at the coat check, so that women could check their great big boots and put on something dressier. It was winter outside, but summer inside. Ah, the benefits of living in a state of ecological release. The weather doesn't matter!

An Open Letter to Glamorous Mommies Everywhere: Eat something. Please. I dare you.

Peaches Geldof died, possibly of starvation. Maybe something else was going on, too. But her death, which leaves her family bereft and two little boys motherless, is a springboard for thinking about high pressure, glamorous motherhood and the standards that stress women with kids and even put them in danger. Messing up your electrolytes can give you a heart attack. Did you know that?

Like so many privileged women with kids in Manhattan I know and study, Peaches Geldof was into juice fasts, juice cleanses, juicing, juice as food. I've written about the Manhattan elite's juice obsession before. In major metropoles of the industrialized west like New York, the beauty bar is high, and alpha men and women go all out to look good. They binge on exercise. They count calories. They deprive themselves. They do juice "cleanses." They say they are "detoxing." Many of the women I know juice and "detox" for days at a time. Guess what? For many women here, and men too, juicing is nothing more than a socially acceptable way to have and talk about and normalize an EATING DISORDER. It is the newest wrinkle in "disordered eating," a syndrome particular but not exclusive to WEIRDos (those living in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic worlds).

Self-deprivation is an expression of privilege in certain rarified circles in Manhattan and LA. But replacing meals with juice isn't healthy. And evidence suggests that intermittent fasting may be beneficial to men, but presents potential dangers for many women. Eat something. Eat something, because your juice fast diet is making you BITCHY and unhealthy: insomnia, impaired fertility and increased stress hormones and anxiety are just a few of the unwanted side effects of fasting and calorie restriction women have experienced in studies in England and the US. A 2005 study published in Obesity Research of women of healthy weight who fasted intermittently for three weeks found they had zero insulin improvements and worsened glucose response. Meaning the fasting increased their risk of diabetes. And if you take it too far, which might be faster and easier than you think, it could kill you.

The ugliest, most self-destructive form of conspicuous consumption currently on the Manhattan menu is pissing away your health in the name of "health." Binge exercise, juicing, just not eating. Obsessive calorie counting. Fixating on what you eat, constantly, because you can. Women and mothers here are especially susceptible. The bar is high to look beautiful, youthful and thin in Manhattan as perhaps nowhere else in the US. Just about every woman I encounter in my day-to-day life here is on some sort of diet or regimen pertaining to her eating. Restriction is a way of being, almost as natural as breathing, among the tribe I study. But your kids need you to stay alive, at a minimum. Energetic and happy would be nice, would't it? And your daughters, especially, need you not to be a neurotic, self destructive, self loathing mess about food.

Do you have an eating disorder? Here's a quiz that might be the first step in finding out and getting help. There's no shame in having an eating disorder. In Manhattan, where it's business as usual, you're in good company.

Modelling. Ballet. Being a Manhattan mother. Three professions in which anorexia, deprivation and wrecking your body are occupational hazards. Fire your boss. Meet me at Rotisserie Georgette. We'll eat something. It'll be delicious. And good for us.

Further reading

Stefani Rupert 

Jane Symons

When will the rain stop?

The tulips in the median of Park Avenue are back, a sure sign of spring. And a reminder that Park Avenue was at one point actually a park (before that, Park Avenue was actually a route for the New York and Harlem Rail Line. When Grand Central Depot opened in the 1870s, the rail line was sunk and covered with grates and greenery). To me the careful tending of this median — begonias in the summer, Christmas trees in the winter, sculptures in the fall — speaks volumes about the Upper East Side — its careful tended-to-ness and embrace of the traditional and the immaculate.

It's June! Time for Intensive Motherhood!!

I have an eye twitch as I write this. I usually focus on the ways the tribe of Manhattan women with kids I study is different from other moms across the country and around the world. But in June I am reminded of the many similarities between contemporary privileged Manhattan childhood and motherhood and regular old childhood and motherhood in the midwest where I grew up several decades ago.

When I was a kid, women with kids who didn't work outside the house were called "homemakers" or "housewives." Today in New York City, a highly competitive ecological niche where certain resources — spots in elite schools and in the practices of excellent pediatricians, for example — are scarce, motherhood has been "professionalized." Women with MBAs, women who have had high powered careers, women who went to very competitive universities and did exceedingly well, bring all that focus to the job of advocating for their children.

And this has changed up motherhood, and childhood, in remarkable ways. When I was a child, a good mother, per Dr. Benjamin Spock's explicit directive, did her own thing in the house for part of every day. It was believed to foster independence in children. Spock urged mothers, in earlier editions of his Baby and Child Care, to play bridge, talk on the phone or watch a soap opera (yep, it was the 50s and early 60s!) for an hour or two every day. Kids could play in their rooms or the basement or the backyard. They could, Dr. Spock said, amuse themselves. And they should. And a good mother left them alone to do just that.

Fast forward to today, when failing to nurture your child on every imaginable measure and enrich him in every possible way is considered neglect. Many of the women I know taught their own children to read; take them to enriching museums and libraries and art exhibits after school; take them to more museum art and science classes and bake with them to teach them fractions on the weekend; and on and on. Is it bad for kids? I will concede that it's probably better for them than being on an iPad all weekend.  But is it extremely depleting for mothers to be adjunct or even primary teachers, OTs, coaches, art consultants and more for their kids? You bet. The sociologist Sharon Hays calls it "intensive motherhood" — a gendered ideology that dictates that women should spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and money on childrearing, and that failing to do so is failing to be a good mother. This cultural shift prompted Jennifer Senior, author of All Joy and No Fun: the Paradox of Modern Parenthood, to observe that children, who once worked for us, are now our bosses.

You feel it here in June. If you have more than one child, you can count on at least a dozen end-of-school year events in the weeks leading up to the end of the school year, usually in early to mid June. There might be an end of year concert, an end of year potluck lunch, an end of year field day, an end of year dance recital or play and an end of year picnic, all in addition to the graduation or "stepping up" ceremony.

I feel I understand my mother a little better when I go to all these things. It's fun and a privilege to watch one's children grow up and fledge from one grade to another. But like all things in Manhattan,  the way we do it is excessive, and it's draining on parents — usually on the mommies  who attend most of the events if both parents can't. Q: What's the difference between a housewife of the 1960s and a "professional mother" today? Or a mother who has a profession and is also a professional mother? A:  One feels guiltier than the other.

It's Summer. Are your kids at camp?

Are your kids at camp? Did you go to camp? When I was growing up in Michigan, sleep away camp was not a big thing. But now that I'm a Manhattan mommy, I'm surrounded by parents who send their kids to "sleep away" for all or part of the summer. Day camp is popular, too. On my Psychology Today blog, I write about why we send our kids away for the summer.....

Why back to school is harder for you than it is for your kids....

The tribe of privileged parents I study and write about in my upcoming book Primates of Park Avenue (Simon & Schuster, June 2015) mostly summers in the Hamptons. But wherever you are for June, July, and August, you may be feeling the Dreads about Labor Day approaching. Anthropology gives us new ways to understand and handle the back-to-school, post vacation, return-to-regular-life Fall segue.... Hope you will have a read!

The Winter Break--How and Why We Do It

Winter holidays allow us to be affiliative and pro-social--anthropology's words for connected and friendly. Here's how the tribe I study in Manhattan does it--and why.