Matador Network's Blog, page 2313

Vibrators and abayas in Dubai

Photo: Éole's photostream (2,262)

“Miss. Please bring your bag over here,” says the customs agent.

Those are not the words you want to hear. Ever. Even if you know there’s nothing of a suspicious nature in your bag. There’s still that brief moment when you start to wonder…Is there something? Could a kilo of heroin have hopped into my suitcase?

“Miss, please. Your bag,” she says again. I take my suitcase off the x-ray scanner and roll it over to the special inspection counter. Is it the bottle of vodka I just purchased from duty free? This is a dry Muslim country. Although, since I did buy it in the airport, it does kind of feel like entrapment. The shifty sales clerk encouraged me to take more.

“Oh, miss. Just one bottle?” he’d taunted.

It’s not like booze is hard to come by in Dubai. Even during Ramadan they serve alcohol, albeit secretly, at night, with a guard keeping vigilant watch on the door. Dubai is the most liberal of the Emirates. I have this theory that Sheikh Mohammed once visited Vegas and thought, Yeah. I can build this in the desert too. I sincerely doubt one measly bottle of passion fruit vodka will be a problem.

It’s not. Rummaging through my bag, she cruises right past the vodka. That’s a relief. I wait patiently, and then I wait some more. She’s taking an unusually long time for such a small suitcase. It appears as if she’s actively searching for something in particular. Is it the heroin? Oh, great, back to that.

“Is there something you’re looking for?” I ask tentatively. She pauses. Then whispers, “Toys.”

Toys? I don’t have any toys, and so what if I do. Is this a country with no children? Seeing my confusion, she tries again. This time she looks directly at me, willing me to understand.

“Toys.” Her eyes grow big, conveying more than her words can. Her left eyebrow arches. Then it hits me — oh, those kind of toys. I remember packing yesterday, opening my sock drawer, and catching sight of the item in question. I chucked it in as an afterthought.

“Pornography is illegal in the UAE,” she says, casting her judgment on me as a woman of ill repute.

She seems relieved we’re finally on the same page. That makes one of us. I’m feeling far from relief, more like mortified terror. At least I was fortunate enough to get the lady agent. Then I realize it was planned that way. They’d both watched my bag go through the x-ray, and when they spotted my vibrating companion, I became her domain.

I fish out the culprit and surreptitiously hand it over. She slips it in a brown paper sack. I try to make light of the situation to mask my embarrassment.

“So, you must see this a lot, huh?”

“Not really,” she responds.

That’s not comforting. Am I to believe I’m the only person to ever bring a vibrator into the Middle East? This is going to be one of those situations I later confide about to my friends while they stare at me dumbfounded. “Of course you can’t bring a vibrator there,” they’ll say knowingly, like I’m some kind of naïve pervert. It’s not like this information was listed in my guidebook.

“Come with me, Miss,” orders the agent. Uh-oh.

“Is this is a problem?” A tiny note of fear cracks in my voice. I compose myself and try to play it cool. “I mean, is it really that big a deal?”

“Pornography is illegal in the UAE,” she says, casting her judgment on me as a woman of ill repute.

Whoa. Suddenly, I’m a pornographer — a lascivious porn peddler infiltrating a country of high moral standards with my whore-wares. This information really ought to be included in a guidebook.

We begin the long trek from the special inspection counter to the special room for sex fiends. It takes forever. Not because it’s all that far, maybe 100 feet, but because we’re clocking Emirati speed. Shway shway is the term used. It means, s-l-o-w-l-y. Just speaking the words conjures an accurate image. Emirati women glide through a room as if time were irrelevant, just a silly invention so people could wear designer watches. Their long black abayas float around them as they sashay from side to side: shway shway. I can’t help but feel bad for Adul, the driver sent to fetch me. He’ll be waiting a while.

I sit on a cold metal chair as I await my verdict. My customs agent is across the counter whispering with two other abaya-clad ladies. If you were imagining a country of modest, humble women, subjugated to long black identity-concealing frocks, you’d be wrong. Women are women wherever you are, and while practices vary from culture to culture, this constant remains true: Girls like to feel pretty.

The three women across from me wear abayas embroidered with silk thread and embellished with sparkling jewels. Their delicate silk chiffon headscarves drape elegantly around their faces. Intricate swirling, curving henna patterns dance across their hands. Then there are their eyes. Arab women know how to give a smoldering glance, all the while feigning an aura of innocence. So much is said in the subtext of those thick, smoky, kohl-lined eyes accentuated with jewel-toned shadow.

I’ve always found it easier to hang out with guys, yet it’s the acceptance of girl groups I really crave. I like wearing an abaya. Not only are they surprisingly light and airy, but when you have one on you instantly feel part of a sisterhood. You’re granted admission into the shway shway club. Plus, it’s the perfect thing to wear after a huge Arab feast, a magic bulging belly-be-gone sort of garment.

Am I imagining things, or did she just wink?

My attention is brought back to the immediate situation when one of the ladies enters something into a computer. You never want to be in the computer system. I was once deported from Korea, and every time thereafter, when I applied for a visa, my name would appear with a fat nasty black mark. Now in the UAE, I will be known as a porn trafficker. A scarlet ‘P’ forever seared on my record. I can’t imagine this is going to go over well with the school that hired me.

“Miss, come here,” says the one at the computer. They intimidate me, like mean girls in high school. I walk my wanton self to the counter with my head down.

“You must sign this,” she passes me an official document. It’s a form releasing my property to be destroyed. A pang of sadness shoots through me. We’d had some good times together. It seems so extreme.

“Can’t you just keep it in a holding cell?” I try.

“No,” she answers.

I nod, accepting my fate, but I still don’t want to sign the form. “So, I suppose I have a record now?” They don’t seem to understand what I’m so concerned about.

“No. Just sign the paper and you go.”

“But is there something in the computer that says I bring stuff into the country?” I lower my voice, “You know…’toys.’”

The three girls look at each other. Their composure still cool and aloof, but are those tiny smiles creeping on their faces? Then I see it. They are smiling, not outright, but their eyes are smiling. Maybe they hadn’t been judging me. Maybe it is a sisterhood thing. Even in a Muslim country where a woman’s sexuality is kept hidden away, there’s still an unspoken understanding.

“Miss, it is no problem. No record,” my original customs agent assures me.

I let out a huge sigh of relief, and sign the document. I watch longingly as one of the ladies picks up the brown paper sack to deliver it to its final resting place. I imagine a burning inferno in the back. Goodbye, friend.

She pats the bag. “We’ll take care of this.”

Am I imagining things, or did she just wink? I look at her, my eyes full of questions, hers full of secrets, as she turns and leaves the room. Well, whatever becomes of my previous travel companion, the secret is safe with me. That’s what being part of a sisterhood is all about.

We say our goodbyes and I’m free to go. I take my time in full slow-blown shway shway mode as I exit the airport under a sign that reads: Welcome to Dubai. [image error]

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6 reasons not to work at a hagwon

Photo: Seoulful Adventures

Korean private academies, also known as hagwons, are widely known to have a dark side. I landed my job at a hagwon six months after graduating from university, and I’ve had moments of pure frustration, cried pitifully after horrid classes, and still struggle with my working schedule at times. After ten months, somehow I’m still going strong.

Here are some annoyances of a hagwon, and why I won’t be returning.

1. The teaching hours suck.

It’s not necessarily the amonunt of hours you’re at school that can get to you, it’s the amount of hours you’re expected to teach. Forty hours at work is normal, like any full-time job — but 30+ teaching hours? Some might call that insane, but that’s exactly what I deal with at my school.

Twenty-five hours of teaching a week was something I was expecting when I first arrived at my hagwon. That gives me enough time to plan and prepare for each of my lessons. But with the hagwon hours I have, preparation and planning have become something of a myth. Instead, I’ve come to excel at planning and teaching off the top of my head.

2. You get minimal holidays.


I always thought the one great benefit of being a teacher, other than being an educator to the leaders of the next generation, is the amount of holiday time you get — not in a Korean hagwon. Most of us get just one week off in the summer, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get another week off for Christmas, which is rare because it’s not a hugely celebrated holiday in Korea. With the long hours that we work, you’d think we’d be rewarded with better holiday schedules, but I’m afraid not.

3. They put intense pressure on the kids.

The Korean education system is notorious for putting their students through long days at school. According to the 2012 PISA results, this has made for a country with the unhappiest of students. Korean students are worked to the bone. They attend their normal comprehensive school during the day, and then attend various other private classes after school.

A few years ago, the government in Seoul put a curfew of 10pm on hagwons to discourage late-night cramming sessions. Parents protested, claiming that the policy favored the rich, who can afford private tutors to help their children study outside of hagwons.

An elementary school student of mine once told me, “Teacher, I go to school in the morning to study, then I go to academy after to study. After, I go home to eat, then my mother tells me to study again — I just want to rest and play with my friends!”

I couldn’t agree more, yet there’s nothing I could possibly do to help the situation, other than make my lessons the most fun and engaging they have all day. I don’t wish to add to the workload, or to the stress my students already experience at their comprehensive school and other hagwons they attend. It’s just a never-ending circle they can’t seem to leave, and it tears me up inside to watch it.

4. If they go bust, so do you
.

Most of the time, I forget that hagwons are private institutes who get no help from the government. A lot of these schools have top-notch interiors and learning resources for their students. My school is actually nicer than any school I’ve ever attended back home in London. Fees to attend academies can be quite high, and so schools can afford to splurge on their kids, and parents expect it.

That being said, you can still feel it’s a business from the daily running of the place, and because of that, I quickly realised that if the business collapsed (like so many do), then my job would too. I’ve heard countless stories from teachers who’ve had their hagwons close and had to end their contracts early. Suddenly, you’re in a foreign land with no job, no income, no place to stay…and that bonus you were looking forward to at the end of your contract? Not happening.

5. There’s no room for progression.


As with any job or career path, you expect to have some sort of opportunities for progression — not in a hagwon. This is one of the main reasons I won’t be renewing my contract at the end of the year. Although it can be a great job and I’m learning a ton, I’d rather do all that in a job where I can progress further up the ladder.

A chance for progression gives you motivation and something to work towards. I couldn’t stay in the same job year after year knowing I won’t be able to advance. To own and run a hagwon here, you’d most likely have to be Korean or speak Korean. It’s not completely impossible, just rarely heard of. Even when a foreigner does own and run their own hagwon, that still doesn’t mean you can progress from an ESL teacher to a director. Hagwons are like family businesses, and it’s tough to infiltrate and make your way to the top.

6. That TEFL qualification you paid for will come in no use whatsoever.

After I graduated from university, I knew I wanted to teach English abroad — and I wanted to be great at it. There was a lot about teaching that I needed to learn, so I signed myself up to do a 120-hour TEFL course. I learnt about classroom management, how to plan lessons, and brushed up on my English grammar.

I soon realised after arriving at my hagwon that none of that really mattered here. Nobody planned lessons, and there was no curriculum to work with. Everything was heavily book- and test-based. I spent more time learning how to create tests for my students than putting to use an ounce of the skills I learnt from my TEFL course. [image error]

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Notes on Australia's asylum policies

SERIOUS QUESTIONS have been raised about Australia’s responsibility to protect asylum seekers held in offshore detention centres after news broke that one person has been killed and 77 injured in a riot in Australia’s controversial offshore refugee processing centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG).

The rationale for Australia’s offshore detention and resettlement policy – and, in particular, the use of PNG as both a temporary and permanent destination for asylum seekers arriving by boat – is that it deters people from undertaking the risky maritime journey to Australia, which regularly results in drownings.

Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, is using the location of Manus Island – on PNG soil – to deflect responsibility away from Australia. This is an intended consequence of offshoring: the diffusion of responsibility when things go wrong, making accountability and investigation that much more difficult. In what seemed like an Orwellian inspired speech, Morrison stated that “if you behave in an unruly way and in a disorderly way then you subject yourself to the response of law enforcement.” In a candid haze he carried on, saying that “the extent and nature of the subsequent events and perimeter breaches is still being verified.”

The Australian government has referred to the violence as a ‘tragedy,’ ultimately placing accusation on the refugees themselves who “decided to protest in a very violent way, to take themselves outside of the centre and place themselves at great risk.”

Organisations and NGOs’ reports from the ground render a very different perspective, stating that the detainees did not spark the violence but have been facing an onslaught of attacks by PNG locals and police from over the fences.

Australia has a duty of care toward those it detains. Once people begin dying and being seriously injured while in their custody, that undermines the bipartisan policy rationale of seeking to prevent deaths. A transparent inquiry into the circumstances in which these violations occurred is critical for providing accountability. It seems “out of sight, out of mind” has become a morally acceptable position to take on this shared, international catastrophe of asylum seekers needing protection.

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Connections we make when we travel

Photo: Daniele Zanni

Traveling gives me a sort of stimulation I can’t find elsewhere. I love the way people dress in airports — in business suits and sundresses, in hoodies and pencil skirts. Some are traveling for work, others for pleasure. You’ll never see these people again, but for a moment you share a brief window of their existence.

You might be in Paris, New York, Memphis, or Detroit, but the location doesn’t really matter because the airports nearly all look the same. It’s up to the travelers to make the human connection if they so desire.

I like the surge of excitement that flows through me when I catch someone’s eye. There’s that moment of wonder. Who are they? Where are they going? What’s in their luggage? How many stamps have they collected on their passport? I check the hand. No wedding ring. I scan their face for an indication of age. Divorced? Single? Is their trip for fun, work, or something more complicated like finalizing a divorce or attending their mother’s funeral?

When I was 18, I was sitting alone in an airport waiting for my flight to Tucson. I was moving there, I thought. I kept stealing glances with a handsome traveler. I stood up to board my flight. He came up to me and said, “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” then walked away. I never saw him again, but I couldn’t get the experience out of my mind.

Last week I flew to Houston, and due to layovers and exchanging a later flight for a $300 travel voucher, I ended up visiting four airports in one day. At the bar I met a businessman named Luke. We bonded over dry martinis and similar music tastes. He was wearing an expensive business suit and Nike dunks.

“I usually never talk to anyone when I travel but this — this is exciting,” he said as he programmed my number into his iPhone. We said farewell as I left to find my gate. Every time I travel, I long for something similar.

On the plane I got to thinking. I thought about the other travelers I talked to in the 24 hours I was traveling from the hotel to the many airport bars I sat in. I thought about the street performer from San Francisco who told me my horoscope. I thought about the woman who asked me to pray with her before her flight. I thought about the grad student on the way home to see her parents, the 60-year-old female artist who told me at 28 I was in the prime of my life, and about the engaged couple that was headed to Mexico City on a backpacking trip before eloping.

The experience of meeting strangers and waiting together to head to unknown departures creates a feeling I long for outside of the airport. If only I could find that human connection beyond the glass windows overlooking the incoming flights. [image error]

This post was originally published at Thought Catalog and is reprinted here with permission.

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29 things about drinking

I love drinking. Like, to the point where I really don’t want to become an alcoholic so I can continue to enjoy drinking for the rest of my life. There are many problems that come along with alcohol consumption, though, and usually, our way of fixing or preventing them — whether they be hangovers, blackouts, or turning into complete douchebags when we drink — are based on lies, myths, and misconceptions.

I, for example, believed for years that, as long as I only drank one type of drink, I would not get hungover. It turns out that this is absolutely not true. Severity of hangovers, sickness, and drunkenness are not based off of the kinds of alcohol you are drinking so much as the amount. No more nights of drinking only PBR for me.

That, and 28 other misconceptions, are cleared up in this excellent video by the YouTube channel Mental Floss. Watch it and never be hungover, or out of control again. [image error]

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How to avoid an editor's trash pile

Photo: Neal Sanche

1. Don’t be vague in your opening sentence.

“We soaked up the warm sunlight.” Who? Where? Your reader is immediately irritated and bored.

Do be precise.

“The late morning sunlight melted across the parking lot of the quiet little motel in Yucca Valley, California. My best friend Ev and I took our coffee and sat on the back of the truck.” (More on why this sentence works in #3.)

2. Don’t address your reader directly.

“You’ll love it in Moab, Utah. Bikes, babes, and bars. Check it out, dude.” It was trendy for a while, but not anymore. It makes you sound like a college newspaper columnist. And, these days, it’s likely your slang is going to be out of date before the editor starts to read your piece.

Do keep it simple and in first person.

“I pulled into Moab, Utah just as the sun dropped behind a burnt orange ridgeline. I was headed for a solo trip through Stillwater Canyon on the Green River. My old buddy Chris had told me that Tex’s Riverways was the way to go — and that Eklecticafe had coffee that would rip your heart out.”

3. Don’t use only one sensory system to observe and report.

“The sky over the mountains was bright blue. Ravens flew above our heads. I could see trucks loaded with gear jammed up at the stoplight.”

Do use sound, sight, touch, smell, and taste to draw your reader in.

“Ev and I rolled up our windows. The exhaust reek from the gear-packed trucks idling at the stoplight made the street a deathzone. The roar of a phalanx of motorcycles just behind the trucks was deafening. The middle-aged bikers looked like well-groomed beetles.”

(Note: The example in #1 includes what we saw, heard, felt, and tasted.)

4. Don’t assume your reader is going to be fascinated by your trip to Santa Fe, Telluride, Costa Rica (the list of fashionable places to go is endless) just because you are.

“It was our first morning in Costa Rica. The air was fantastic and the natives really friendly.”

Do (even if you’re writing about a common tourist location) dig deep.

“Ev and I never expected to find a cheap place to camp outside of Telluride. After all, it was the weekend of the Telluride Mushroom Festival in the middle of a sweetly cool August. Ev saw the sign before I did. ‘Park here. $5. Breakfast $5.’ The owner of the little chartreuse house was an old woman in jeans and a flannel shirt.”

5. Don’t forget whatever you learned in basic English composition and DO NOT send in your first draft.

“Standing on the corner of some streets in Prescott, Arizona, my hat flew of my head in a strong wind. irritating.”

My earnest grammar and spell check program raced in to correct this before I could. This sentence would cause any self-respecting editor to not only trash your piece, but to put you on his or her Delete Immediately list. The writer has used passive voice (Yawn) and embellished it with spelling errors, a hat that is irritated, and a sentence fragment.

Do check out any of the good online sources for professional writing.

I like Super Teacher Worksheets and EnglishForEveryone.org. I never send out a piece that I haven’t edited at least five times — and sometimes had a friend look at.

6. Don’t gush.

“Blue Willow is the most charming and unique restaurant in the sun-drenched, up-scale, and fascinating Sunbelt city of Tucson.” Your piece could be a travel brochure, and while Blue Willow is indeed a great place to eat, there are plenty of unique restaurants in Tucson — which is anything but uniformly up-scale.

Do the hard work of writing the details.

“I was so bored with camp grub that I would have eaten fast food. I was spared. My Tucson pal, Shawnee, took us to the Blue Willow, an airy, soft-lit restaurant on Campbell. The first thing I noticed was the scent of spices.”

When you write details, rather than generalizations, the reader is right there with you — at the Blue Willow or anywhere else.

7. Don’t piss on the locals.

“The waiters and waitresses, even the bus drivers in (any little rural town or big city all over the world) seemed surly. I wondered if it was because of the filth in the streets and the fact that there didn’t seem to be an unbroken light bulb in any of the street lamps.”

Whoa, ‘scuse me. You went on your big brave world travels to experience something other than your nice safe world back home. Wherever you go, you are in someone’s home. Write with respect. (I live in a tourist town and have listened to visitors whining about how Flagstaff is not like back home.)

Do write differences without judgment.

“At first glance, the Mojave marine base town of 29 Palms looked like any other faded-out desert village. Ev and I were hungry after a long morning of climbing at Joshua Tree. We checked out the street. There seemed to be nothing but jar heads and their wives taking Saturday off to shop. I pulled next to a young couple and Ev leaned out the window. ‘Where’s a good place to grab breakfast?’ The Marine grinned. ‘Check out Andrea’s.’ He pointed. ‘Best home fries in California.’ We did. They were. Later we discovered not just the perfect dessert — a bag of donuts from Jelly Donut — but fifteen miles down the road in the town of Joshua Tree, Joshua Tree Outfitters, where the owner did an emergency fix on one of the zippers on Ev’s ancient backpack.” [image error]

Author’s note: If you are just beginning to travel write — or have been writing and find yourself blocked — check out the MatadorU Travel Writing program, or my Breakthroughwriting mentoring site.

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On Paris as a cultural wasteland

Photo: Adrien Sifre

If at first it sounds provocative to say that Paris — a city that has played host to the writing flair of Hemingway, the exotic dance of Josephine Baker, the modern choreography of Benjamin Millepied, the painterly genius of Picasso, the philosophizing of Derrida — has become a culturally stagnant city, one must only look at some of the latest facts.

Paris boasts few artists of international recognition, it has a Ministry of Culture that seems to do anything in its bureaucratic power to keep Paris from progressing, and French nationals occupy every notable cultural post. The operagoer no longer heads to the Palais Garnier in the 9th arrondissement, but to Charlottenburg in Berlin or to Covent Garden in London. For literature, there hasn’t been one groundbreaking novel out of France in decades. As far as art, Parisian auction houses are suffering, accounting for only 8% of contemporary global sales, and hardly any contemporary French artists compete on an international scale (Jacque Villeglé is the only living French artist on show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and there are only two modern French artworks in London’s Tate Modern). As far as cuisine, classic brasseries still exist, but conglomerates are quickly buying them up. Sushi, hamburgers, and American-style coffeehouses are now the preference of the hippest Parisians.

And, while it’s seen as “cosmopolitan” and “worldly” in other countries to have nationally diverse museum curators, ballet choreographers, art school headmasters, and the like, it would be an outcry against the long-lived tradition of French cultural incest were, say, a Spaniard to take over the Musée d’Orsay. Calling Paris a cultural wasteland sounds harsh, controversial, and provocative. But, cruel as it might be, it is, on the whole, quite true.

I. Funding elitism

For starters, Paris is a city now almost exclusively reserved for the bourgeois. While Mayor Bertrand Delanoë hasn’t pushed rents sky-high quite like former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, Paris is both quite expensive and subtly discriminatory. If you’re looking to apply for a job, you must include a photo on your CV. If you want to rent or buy an apartment, you must provide a dossier. In any case, the final decisions generally help keep Paris homogenized — white, moneyed, and “cultured” in the most bourgeois sense. The cultural ebb and flow has all but receded to Paris’ sounding areas like in Eastern Belleville where galleries like Frac Ile-de-France/Le Plateau (owned by Jocelyn Wolff, a woman who’s been instrumental in mixing eastern Paris cultural palettes with western Paris business savvy) show that the diamonds lie on the roughest edges of the city. Paris proper seems to be slowly atrophying, a muscle that has long ago stopped being able to afford to pick up a pen or paintbrush.

Just as video killed the radio star and gin and tonics killed Fitzgerald, it’s the very cultural policy of Paris that has hurt its culture and bolted the escape door shut. The tightrope between maintaining the “golden era” of Paris and succumbing to modern needs and realities is far too thin, and good ideas have gone tumbling into the abyss.

Like any flushed tourist, the Anglo-American media are all too excited about the (false) cultural history of France.

Following François Mitterrand’s election in 1981, Jack Lang was hired into the new position of Minister of Culture. Immediately, Lang went to work creating new cultural sub-bureaus meant to fund and spur on the great traditions of French creativity, like the Délégation aux Arts Plastiques (Department of Visual Arts), and the Institut National du Patrimoine (National Heritage Institute). The bureaucracy is painfully rigid, and it has only furthered a French-centric viewpoint to any and all creative endeavors coming out of France. With art subsidies comprising about 1.5% of France’s GDP — double Germany’s and triple Britain’s — a surprisingly high-quality life can be had for the French artist who chooses to paint, write, sing, or act. Yet, an artist can only win a subsidy if his/her art is pleasing to France’s elite. That’s to say, this subsidy program deters subversion of the French system or the creation of any sort of unique, revolutionary art.

It’s certainly in vogue to complain about the Americanization and subsequent cultural death of France. The American magazine Time published an article called “The Death of French Culture,” and The Economist, a neo-conservative British weekly, is constantly bashing the French, even devoting a recent issue to a 14-page report on the decline of France’s economy and culture entitled “The Time-Bomb at the Heart of Europe.” Where are these complaints exactly coming from? Well, in France’s defense, there’s a misunderstanding about what French culture used to be.

Like any flushed tourist, the Anglo-American media are all too excited about the (false) cultural history of France, and thus depressed when they realize today’s French culture doesn’t quite live up. The truth is, though, the dynamism of France’s cultural history has always been overplayed, fetishized by foreigners who, feeling repressed in their own countries, are looking for a cultural Mecca somewhere else.

As means to compensate for these grandiose expectations, perhaps French bureaucrats have gone too far.

Any sort of cultural egalitarianism — of funding non-French cultural pursuits — is inherently threatening to the elite class, which makes it all but impossible for it to get a political foothold. And yet, if France is to regain its cultural superiority — not to mention live up to the second tenant of liberté, égalité, fraternité — money will have to be funneled to artists who hail from Maghreb to England to India, to creators who didn’t spend their time at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, but spent it working outside city limits. Whether or not outsiders will deride this kind of diversity as “a loss of French culture” is their own foolery, and not the problem of the French.

II. An imagined history

Like most powerful, developed countries, France has a history of oppression, ranging from Nazi collaboration to colonialism; yet they’ve chosen to deal with it by not dealing with it. While Germany, for instance, took a variety of measures to ensure its dark history wouldn’t be repeatable — from declaring it illegal to deny the Holocaust to issuing a multitude of public apologies for their tragic past — the French have taken the approach of not discussing the dark moments of their history at all. When something is off-putting, it is simply not discussed. It’s the same tactic the French use for discussion of race, Algerian colonialism, the Vichy regime, and the protests of May 1968. So, when politicians do try to discuss France’s less-than-perfect past, the apologies invariably come off as more than a little odd.

Paris has erased the dark corners of its history through its museums, architecture, city planning, and monuments.

For example, in May 2007, on the 50th anniversary of the riots of May 1968, and a year before he would run for the French presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy said it was finally time to erase any remaining vestiges of the “most unfortunate occurrence.” That’s to say, rather than dealing with the landmark historical event that began the division of the bourgeois from the common class in the 20th century, Sarkozy proposed that the French should simply use the magic eraser of political rhetoric to do away with France’s past tragedies.

Exhibiting a specific history is a way to deal with the past. The French have done this with their capital city, putting Paris “on show” so to speak. While Venice, for instance, cherishes its labyrinthine waterways and Byzantine bridges as a way to point to its Renaissance past, Paris has erased the dark corners of its history — whether its cooperation with the Vichy regime or colonialism that ceased only recently — through its museums, architecture, city planning, and monuments. In doing so, Paris has altered its past.

Most notably, the Musée Carnavalet, which bills itself as a comprehensive “museum of Paris history” and sits centrally in Paris’ Jewish quarter, never makes reference to the Shoah or the anti-Semitic atrocities that occurred during the Second World War. So too grand avenues lead to monuments showing France’s great might — like the Arc de Triomphe — but nowhere does the city represent its past entirely accurately, for instance with a statue not of war power but of the tragic violence of colonialism. Even the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration, the museum of immigration history, conveys a rosy vision of immigration, where each person who comes to France will be accepted so long as they work hard and try to assimilate. Indeed, this is not the case.

III. An (understandable) lack of action

There is a certain awareness of what Paris is “supposed to be,” and if something seems non-conformist it tends to be rejected by France’s current conservative cultural policies.

Take the city’s architecture, for instance. The Haussmannian structure is still the dominant vision on the streets of Paris. Save for the Marais and a few tiny neighborhoods, Paris is one staid sea of sandstone facades and wide avenues. It’s being kept that way too thanks to strict regulations on new buildings, which are required to fit in with the buildings surrounding it. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. This “unified” urban space makes for postcard-friendly photos and gives Paris a sort of personality — an impossible feat in an intentionally fractured city like New York.

And yet, so much talent and potential beauty is being wasted. The best French architects like Bernard Tschumi and Jean Nouvel are forced to use their beautiful craft in cities like London and Berlin, where architecture regulations on private residences are significantly more lax than in Paris. Should the French government allow their cities to progress in style, or should they keep it just the way tourists want to see it? From a fiscal standpoint, that’s a no-brainer.

For all of Delanoë’s progressivism, Paris’ beloved mayor hasn’t done much to turn around Paris’ stale culture. Why not allow for new styles of architecture? (Likewise, what would be so wrong about funding writers and painters who want to express the complexities of colonialism or the trouble with French bureaucracy?) As one could rather easily guess, the answer is in the numbers.

It’s a shame to see how significantly money influences culture, even if it is not all that surprising.

France averages 78 million tourists a year — more than any other country — and the vast majority travel through Paris. Although Fontainebleau is the top tourist destination in France, the Paris-based Notre Dame, Centre Pompidou, Tour Eiffel, and Musée du Louvre see the third, sixth, seventh, and eighth most tourists in France, respectively. Given the fact that France is never at a lack for tourism revenue, it would not make much sense to pour money into independent galleries, new shops, and individual cultural pursuits when, from an economic perspective, nothing is broke — so why fix it? Instead, Delanoë has leveraged what he already has for more (a lot more), such as recently inking a $1 billion deal to allow the United Arab Emirates to not only open a new “Middle East Louvre,” but also to ransack some of the Paris museum’s key chef-d’oeuvres to be shipped off to the Abu Dhabi-based museum.

Given the fiscal aspects of French culture, the greatest problem facing Paris’ culture today is that its worshippers are the consumers (the tourists), not the creators (the artists). Consumers flock to Paris to see the “Mona Lisa” and experience the gardens of Versailles, but how many foreign creators can afford to stick around the capital? And, given the government’s strong preference to French artists, how many would even want to?

It’s a shame to see how significantly money influences culture, even if it is not all that surprising. The fact that targeted subsidies make it all but impossible for non-French artists or artists who don’t have a great interest in supporting the Fifth Republic to make a living is one thing. But it’s another thing when these policies are so clearly hurting Paris — turning it into a city that can be photographed nicely and quickly consumed, but one that has nothing new to stand on. France has lots going for it, and it’s doubtlessly one of the greatest countries in the world.

Yet, as far as its famed culture, changes need to be made. The days of Pissarro’s paintings of the Tuileries and Balzac’s Paris-set novels are over. French culture simply means exciting art happening in France. It means France being recognized for what it could and should once again be: a place of artistic retreat, of inspiration, of creativity. While many French artists are still seen as some of the best in the world, it’s simply too easy for France to rest on the laurels of its storied history. In the coming years, without change, I fear they will have nothing to stand on at all.

IV. The decline of all cultures

And yet, it’s important to realize that while one might point out France’s cultural stagnancy, it’s an affliction suffered by all world powers. There’s always the up-and-up, where the once weak country becomes a major global contributor to the economy, to the balance of power, to art and creativity. But as quickly as this power comes, it invariably fades away. What is American culture now anyway? Is it hot dogs, baseball, and diabetes, as so many other countries might believe? What is modern British culture? Is it big breakfasts, pubs, and boarding schools where elites are easily reproduced? What is Italian or Spanish or Portuguese or Swiss culture for that matter? Perhaps anti-Frenchness and the assumptions of France’s cultural demise are rooted predominately in the insecurities of other Western countries.

Perhaps the Anglo-American view of France is really just a mirror to our own loss of vitality, our own fears of Chinese power, of other countries coming onto the scene, ready to steal our lines. Perhaps by pointing out the flaws in a former world power, we are trying to insulate ourselves from our own eventual decline. Or perhaps, the City of Light has gone dim, and with all its beautiful museums, it has finally become one itself. [image error]

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Global Sunrise Project kicks off

At the 57th Commission on the Status of Women. Photo: author

I’m Kasha and I’m 15 years old. I’ve been interested in social justice since I was 8. As I’ve grown up, I’ve been learning about serious issues facing our world in a variety of settings — classrooms, textbooks, public presentations, through media and online — but I’ve never had the opportunity learn about many of them in the most important way, which is first-hand.

Last year I got that chance with my very first trip abroad, to Cuba. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I arrived late at night and as I peered out the bus window, even with the little I was able to see, I got a sense that Cuba was very different than what I was used to. As much as I enjoyed my winter break off school and hanging out at the beach, I was more interested in exploring life outside of the resort in the surrounding cities as much as we could. There I got to see people in their natural environments and it was a culture shock for me to see the extremely different way of life compared to the one back home.

Shortly after I returned from Cuba I had the opportunity to go to the UN as a youth delegate at the 57th Commission on the Status of Women. I met many people who gathered at this conference from all over the world. This got me one step closer to knowing more about the world and the issues I cared about but I still hadn’t experienced their world first hand.

I returned from the UN and saw an online contest with GAdventures to pitch an idea that would change the world. I entered my idea Picture the Power of People with A Purpose; (This is where The Global Sunrise Project really got its beginning.) I didn’t make it as one of the finalists, but I came really close and my mom was open to exploring the idea of how I could turn this into a reality. That’s when this huge gathering of travel bloggers and writers (TBEX) rolled into town and my mom and I decided to see check it out. I was so happy because that’s where I met Lola Akinmade Akerstrom who would soon become my photography mentor on the project.

So, what is The Global Sunrise Project? It’s an exploration of what it means to be a global citizen. In March, 2014, I will be travelling with my mom. Our first stop will be the United Nations to attend the 58th Commission on the Status of Women and then hopefully we’ll be off to South America, Africa, and South East Asia where I will film inspirational stories of hope and resilience of people I meet along the way. I want to document the beauty of people and places and show why we need to care more, connect more. I find it important to travel now because the experience could really help shape my path beyond high school. I hope you’ll join me online for that journey.

To support this project, Please visit our website, make a donation if you feel inspired, and help by spreading the word. [image error]

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BREAKING: Chilling livestream footage of the riots in Kiev, Ukraine

THERE IS SOMETHING so haunting about watching a city square engulfed in flames, while a church service is broadcast in the background – that’s what I heard while watching this livestream of the riots currently going on in the Ukraine, this afternoon at about 11:30am EST. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be in Kiev right now, but I am thinking about everyone involved, and their safety.

Matador ran a photo essay by photo journalist Ilya Varlamov back in January; click through to read more about the political unrest in this area of the world, as well as to see his incredible ground-level footage of the action. Whether or not you agree with the cause, this is important to watch.

Live streaming video by Ustream

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How to piss off a feminist

Photo: Melissa Brewer

With all kinds of strong women in the news (Hillary 2016!), feminism has come a long way. In the past couple of years alone, things from feminist digital campaigns to an increase in anti-harassment policies at conferences have made women feel safer and stronger about speaking out. And yet, as if the patriarchy wasn’t enough to be mad about already — I’m still making 78 cents on your dollar, white men! — here’s a list of things that can infuriate anyone interested in equal rights and reducing sexism.

Please note: None of these things are done exclusively by men towards women; sometimes other people do them to women too. Also, I believe anyone can be a feminist. Feminism just means believing that the current system is not very equal and tends to minimize the lives of women (and “girly” men, under the assumption that acting like a lady is bad). If you believe this, you are a feminist. No matter what your sex or gender. (Some people believe men calling themselves “feminists” is another co-opting of women’s space, so please be aware that you might get negative reactions from some feminists if you identify as male and call yourself a feminist.)

Use the word “Feminazi.”

Yes, because equating people who are interested in overthrowing a male-dominated global standard, to the benefit of men, women, and everyone in between, with the perpetrators of a heinous genocide makes SO much sense. Feminazi is a way to belittle women for speaking up too loudly — you don’t want to be one of those strident irritating feminists that talks too much, do you? Yes, actually. I do.

“It’s just a joke! God!”

Ha ha ha, yes, I certainly feel a sweeping sense of relief that you clarified your statement about me getting to the kitchen to make you a sandwich was a joke. I wasn’t laughing because it wasn’t funny. Not because I have no sense of humour.

Sexist jokes, just like racist jokes, are based on belittling and debasing a minority group…which, hey, I thought was classified as hate speech! So, ha ha, thank you for identifying yourself as someone who will engage in hate speech for the sake of making someone laugh. I will make sure to stay very far away from you in the future.

Be a Nice Guy™.

A trope that has now become popular enough to have several websites dedicated to calling them out, Nice Guys™ are those guys who don’t ask a girl out for ages, preferring instead to masquerade as an actual friend, then react negatively when she says she’s uninterested…unlike actual guys who are nice, who would value a woman’s company even if she wasn’t putting out.

“That bitch turned me down!” they might shout. “Women only ever like assholes, but I’m such a nice guy they never go for me!” Easily identified by their fedoras, entitlement to women’s bodies, and frequent use of the word “friendzoned.”

Mansplain.

This helpful portmanteau describes those situations where a man speaks to a woman with an assumption that she knows less about the topic being discussed than he does, just by virtue of her being a woman. Whether conscious or not — and many mansplainers are not even aware of their inherent assumptions…that women can’t know anything about sports, for example — this is intensely irritating.

I once checked the oil in my car and went into a gas station to buy some more; the guy behind the counter looked at me accusingly and said, “What do you need that for?” To put on my toast? “I was going to put it in the car,” I said. He started to shrug into his coat. “You’d better let me do it,” he said. “Women don’t know how to check oil. Are you sure you looked in the right place?”

“Feminism is over! We fixed things!”

Oh, I’m so relieved! I’m so glad that feminism succeeded, so we have lots of women in Congress to help pass bills that are about things women want (you know, like control over our own bodies)…oh, wait. And definitely lots of female CEOs and heads of industry, to protect the rights of female sweatshop workers and ensure that the most powerful corporations in the world are not run exclusively by men…hmm. And newspaper magnates and television producers, so we can see positive images of women in the media…oh. Well, I’m sure glad things are fixed.

Slut-shame.

However a woman wants to dress? Is okay. She’s not doing it for you. Or even if she is, that’s okay too. But calling someone a “slut” or a “whore” because they’re wearing revealing clothing both negates women’s expression of their own sexuality and shames women who work in the sex industry. There’s no need to do either of these things, thank you very much.

Slut shaming contributes to rape culture, which is an atmosphere where harassment and violence towards women are the victim’s fault and not her attacker’s. This has terrible consequences for everybody, including making it difficult for men to speak out about being victims of sexual assault, if you can’t figure out why you should care about something unless it also happens to men.

Fat-shame, or otherwise body-police.

Everybody’s body and the way they look belongs to them, and has as much to do with you as their sexual orientation (hint: nothing). Making “helpful” comments about someone’s weight, the way they look in a bikini, or the way they do their hair is just another way to tell them that whatever they look like is not okay.

There’s no need to ask someone if they’ve “just considered going to the gym and eating less.” That’s incredibly rude. Women are bombarded with messages all day, every day, and even in their sleep about how they’re supposed to look and what they’re supposed to do…nobody needs extra reiteration of that. [image error]

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