Ramani Durvasula's Blog, page 3

Sexting and Second Helpings

Bet you didn’t know that your super sized burger and electronically cheating on your spouse are likely connected. There is actually a logical connection between Anthony Weiner’s antics and that oversized slab of cheesecake.

The obesity epidemic is a controversial issue in the US, but the one thing we cannot deny is that portion sizes have gotten WAY bigger in the last 20 years and so have we. As I discuss in my book You Are WHY You Eat – we were taught to clean our plates when we were young, and if someone puts more food in front of us – we just keep eating it (even if we are not hungry). Americans, as a rule, aren’t good at saying no – especially to good stuff. It’s too easy to eat too much.

So how does that oversized portion relate to your cheating heart?

In our electronically infused world – it’s too easy to be unfaithful. Either virtually or literally.

Once upon a time, in order to have an inappropriate dalliance outside of a marriage or a committed relationship – it took LOTS of logistics –pay phones, cheap motels, back seats– it wasn’t easy, and society didn’t support it the way it does now. And because of that – people likely worked hard and worked through their relationship issues. Back in the day when you were feeling frustrated by a spouse? You couldn’t just pop on Facebook and chat with an old high school girlfriend, or text a lusty coworker. And with cell phones, email, texting, FB, and numerous dirty apps that let you find interested trysters who may be nearby – it’s too easy – just like a 99 cent cheeseburger. With all these options – it’s easy to not do the heavy lifting in a relationship, it’s easy to get ego stroked by equally empty people on the other side of the keyboard, and let the consistency and virtues of an otherwise healthy relationship wither on the vine. Sadly, it also allows people to stay in broken relationships long after their shelf life. Getting by on a steady diet of “electronic quickies” a person may decide to stay in a busted marriage – trust me, you aren’t doing your kids any favors by raising them in a household of antipathy.

Can you imagine back in the day your dad getting a bikini picture of a coworker sent to his telephone or even worse – dear old dad sending a picture of his dick to the enticing young lady across the cul-de-sac? Gross – yes – but it is happening all the time these days.

In the case of a tool like Weiner – the ingredients – a nerdy sociopathic narcissist is able to get the girls who he couldn’t get in high school via sexting and power– certainly technology facilitated it, but he would have found a way to behave badly even without such weapons. But for many of us – the ease of these electronic gateways means you just eat the chips out of the bag without thinking about it. And the hurt that can ensue is real.

Just like it is too easy to gain weight in our culture – it is too easy to “play” outside of our relationships. To fight back the temptations at the table, the restaurant, or the drive-through requires MOUNTAINS of discipline and mindfulness. To fight back the temptations of ex-boyfriends who send flirty instant messages, sexts and bawdy BBMs, to be able to sit in the living room at night while your wife is asleep and computer chat with a liaison met in a bar on a business trip, while dealing with what the monotony of monogamy –– requires MOUNTAINS of discipline and mindfulness.

Increasingly, relationship scholars are acknowledging that this new world of technology is rewriting the script on relationships, fidelity, and communication. Call me old fashioned, – but I think that just like a goodly chunk of folks in past generations were able to keep it together and not turn to the empty comfort of another when the going got tough – we can too.

In both cases – cheating and cheeseburgers – dopamine and the Jedi mind tricks it plays on the brain makes this a tall order. This is about learning to say no to quick fixes like second helpings and sexting. Bottom line – Facebook and French fries are empty calories. In moderation – they are fine, but when they become your “go-to” – then not so good.

And you may find that as you learn to become more mindful, that your relationship and your real life may start filling you up again. Because when our hearts are full, and our lives purposeful, we tend to eat less. When we are living honest and authentic lives, we don’t need to use food (or creepy texts) to numb ourselves.

Put down the phone and the fork – and start paying attention to what is in front of you. It may save your waistline, and your soul.

Stand By Your Man

It’s hard to watch uber-educated, power holding, game changing women living out a Tammy Wynette song.

But here we are again.

Fact is, Hilary Clinton is NOT a cautionary tale. Clinton stuck by her husband, who has likely been philandering since day one, and spun the political capital into gold – as secretary of state and now as a serious contender for first female president. She is smart, savvy, political, and deserving of the positions she has held – but I would not turn to her for dating advice.

Apparently Huma Abedin did take marriage lessons from her mentor Clinton. One can just imagine then sitting over Cosmos and talking about how “they all cheat” and the last laugh they will get when they demote them to the couch in the Lincoln Bedroom.

What happens in a marriage is private. In my role as a psychologist and researcher I have seen that the glue that binds a marriage is often as mysterious as the origins of the universe. Some marriages fall apart after an errant text message, others endure decades of infidelity. Marriage is not about romance, it is functional – and clearly these two women, and many other political wives, actually embrace a model of marital utility that we typically only observe in the aristocracy or in the third world. In these marriages, the marital bond isn’t about roses and poetry – it’s about economics, continuity, and expediency. It is very likely that Ms. Abedin is wise enough to see Gracie Mansion as a good next step for her – and in that way, Weiner becomes her bitch.

Many women would have shown Mr. Weiner, his virtual weiner and his Twitter account the door. However, perhaps none of us know what we would do in that situation until faced with it.

There is a larger issue though – and that is his behavior. I love the seemingly high minded folks that try to argue “his private life is private” . Nope – sorry, not when you are a public figure and your decision making impacts MY life. You want a private life? Get a private career. Brain science would suggest that a person does not make impeccable decisions in one place and sloppy ones in another. I don’t care if Weiner screws the entire freshman class at Vassar and then videotapes it. However, his poor judgment, his entitlement, his lack of impulse control, his lack of empathy – how could these variables NOT affect critical decision making while running NY – a city struggling with income disparities, a fading middle class, ongoing issues with crime, and the myriad struggles of an enormous city.

Do we all make mistakes? Yes. Have we all made mistakes in our relationships? Yes. Do we all change our behavior? No. Some certainly do – they either clean up their act and learn that Twitter and Facebook aren’t the best place to carry on an affair and go old school with their infidelities in hotel rooms and untraceable phone calls. Or they actually embrace that second chance like water in the desert. But few folks who are sociopathic or narcissistic learn from their mistakes. Those qualities are often why they did this nonsense in the first place, and they are rampant in our politicians today. Fund raising, special interests, and the general sleaziness of the American political process are attracting the smarmiest ones to the well -and their bad behavior with them.

As a feminist I am all about women taking opportunities to get ahead when they can – as a woman, I would have never let a critter like Weiner in the door in the first place. If Abedin can spin this Tammy Wynette Stand By Your Man mess into good for her career – more power to her. However, I hope the voters of NY have enough good sense to know that bad judgment in a personal life provides insight into potentially sloppy decision making in public office. I don’t care if my plumber cheats on his wife on a daily basis – has no bearing on my clogged sink. I do care if my elected officials can’t follow basic ethics. There is a difference.

Life imitates life.

Wireless Witch Hunts

In just a 5-minute span of glancing at the newspaper today I read two very different accounts about the dark side of our unfettered ability to put information out there whenever we see fit. The internet sometimes feels like a latter day Salem.

The first was about Reddit offering up an apology for its role in the “witch hunt” that followed the Boston shootings. In short, highlighting the lost and at times dangerous souls who spend time on Reddit playing at being CSI investigators and outing innocent people who had nothing to do with the Boston tragedy. Reddit at times is basically a playground in which disaffected, typically angry, bored, and paranoid people can have a field day putting out paranoid manifestos, angry rants, and play at being renegade journalists and detectives. Easy to do when you don’t have to check facts or follow protocol.

The second was far more farcial, but also problematic. An opinion piece detailing the policies of the website Yelp. The down and dirty there is that there is the question of whether participating in “advertising” on Yelp may facilitate certain kinds of reviews getting through etc. ANYONE who has ever read Yelp, TripAdvisor or any other kind of public restaurant, hotel or other sort of review know that they fall squarely in two camps. The angry, embittered reviews that are often generated from entitled folks who cannot fathom why a $75/night hotel room was not the Ritz, or the candy coated confections that talk about “Amazing hamburgers” and “Pasta that changed my life”. But overall, since the bulk of the lengthier and detailed reviews are negative, these reviews can be damaging to small businesses who count on word of mouth, and can lose new business and old customers on the basis of bad reviews from people who may simply have an ax to grind with the world in general, and have found the ultimate bully pulpit in crowd sourced reviews.

Perhaps going after a restaurant doesn’t feel like a “witch hunt” per se – but the sad upshot of the Wild West of crowd sourced reviews and pseudojournalism is that it’s open season on everyone and everything, and you can say anything you want with little fear of reprisal.

As a psychologist, crowd sourced reviews and news to me are often a bit unfiltered –and while entertaining – like listening to drunken rants in a bar, definitely do not drive my decision making or information gathering. In general, people who take the time to go on an online diatribe or speculate conspiracy theories are not always the healthiest voices and typically the voice of people who are often seeking attention, revenge, or validation. And in general, not likely to share my taste in food, hotels, or politics.

Journalism, due process, science – all of these things take time. And these processes are often getting rushed in our internet fueled, crowd sourced, noisy electronic worlds – where bad facts often trump truth in the name of ratings. Even legitimate journalistic agencies come under fire for putting out “bad facts” too soon so they can stay ahead of the game and the ratings. Bottom line – a histrionic rant is much more interesting to listen to than a reasoned argument. But we need to take a moment and become skilled consumers and listeners in this noisy world. And to teach our kids, students, and young people to do the same. History shows us that witch hunts don’t work, are dangerous, and are usually based on the ramblings of some noisy folks who are a few cards short of a deck.

The internet is our town square, where we share ideas, gossip, argue, and listen. But once upon a time, that town square and the people inhabiting it were real, we knew them, and perhaps we took a moment before saying things or believing them. Word of mouth once came out of a mouth, and not an iPhone. So before you take your afternoon stroll to the electronic town square – take a moment and be mindful. Those electronic echoes can hurt real people and real businesses.

Feminist Leanings………

Marissa Meyer, Sheryl Sandberg – we don’t play in the same sandbox by any stretch – but their wealth and visibility give them a chance to make noise about an issue that the rest of us continue to struggle with daily.

Women getting ahead. Women having it all. Women leading.

So why don’t we “lean in?” Lots of folks are weighing in on why we do, why we don’t, and, then come the old school debates on moms at home, moms at work, moms who have money and help, moms who don’t.

The psychologist in me wants to reduce this to its essence. People do what they are rewarded for. And are we incentivizing leadership in women? Does leaning in turn out to be a painful yoga pose that doesn’t work out for most women who are trying to juggle careers, marriages, kids, finances, households, and the mother-porn demands of perky breasts, and clean homes as well as organic-produce-consuming-athletic-star -straight-A-musical-prodigy kids? We are caught in an ideational shitstorm of Donna Reed meets Kim Kardashian meets Golda Meir. And because women are so vulnerable to their stakeholders – and raised to please others, guilt is almost wired into the X chromosome. Ultimately the question isn’t “Can women lean in” but rather “Can women lean into broken structures?” Structures that don’t have female leaders, that don’t provide family leave, that offer little guidance on how to tough it out and become a leader with less than a multi-million salary or a nursery next to your office.

This idea of “leaning in” to leadership can’t be an aftermarket add-on. We can’t start having these conversations at the age of 30, we need to start having them at the age of 3. We need to scrap the animated Disney princesses and replace them with animated warriors and leaders. We need to scrap the Honey Boo-Boo’s and The Face and the “Housewives series” of every stripe and raise kids on stories of women who build skyscrapers and do surgery and change their communities. We need to stop talking to girls about happily ever after and instead raise them with the expectations we give our sons.

Here’s the rub. Women CAN’T have it all. We want families, careers, aspirations, meaning, health, connection. But we also want to do this without being judged. I have met women who have healthy marriages, wonderful children, successful careers, clean homes, healthy finances, good social support networks. That’s having it all – right? For them, even if they have all of this, but are met with the castigation of people who think they shouldn’t work outside the home, the castigation of bosses who think they shouldn’t telecommute, the castigation of coworkers who resent them missing days due to a child’s illness – then it can somehow detract from having it all. Our need to please our stakeholders makes the very debate about having it all impossible. You can craft the life you want – but don’t expect that other people will congratulate you – they will judge, that’s what our mean spirited world does – it judges. So perhaps every one of us can have it all – create authentic lives for us and our families, some of us will work, some will not, some will have nannies, some will not, some will have messy homes, some will not – but if you craft a solution that works for you and yours – despite the criticism of others – isn’t that having it all?

I am on trains, planes and automobiles for the next week in NY and then to DC – to promote a book that represents a lifetime’s work and then to discuss issues of women, leadership, policy and health with a group of feminist scholars in DC. Because of this, I am missing my daughter’s 13th birthday. What’s the choice in this case? Some will sneer that I am letting my daughter down and that I am being selfish, others may feel that I am modeling a professional identity. Ultimately, it is between her and I. The kudos comes with the criticism – and none of it should really matter.

Many of us can try to “lean in”, most of us will fall down, and hopefully all of us will dust off, silence the stakeholders, and keep trying.

Marijuana and Milkshakes

How much regulation is too much?

(a) do we regulate ALL vices – including potato chips and alcohol, and make them inaccessible?

OR (b) do we make ALL vices available – alcohol, drugs, burgers, gambling, sex (sounds like Vegas to me……)?

The problem is that we do a hybrid and since we aren’t transparent about what gets in (e.g. alcohol and tobacco), what doesn’t (e.g. cocaine and heroin) and what sometimes does but not really (e.g. marijuana) – everyone is confused on who the real villains are.

What constitutes a vice? Stuff that is bad for us? Then wouldn’t high fructose corn syrup and fast food qualify?

There’s the rub. The American people feel like a tribe of adolescent kids, at one level screaming for freedoms (don’t take away my cigarettes and donuts) and at another craving and needing rules (you can’t legalize cocaine).

Two events on my radar led to this blog. The first is a symposium to which I was invited to listen about whether the government should be regulating unhealthy foods (e.g. milkshake and fried chicken prohibition). What if the government stepped in, identifying obesity as the health crisis of our time, and said – we MUST stop the madness – all sugar sales are regulated, you need a special card to purchase a hamburger, and all cakes are kept locked up so you can’t just purchase a limitless supply. Is it the government’s job to regulate this?

The second is tonight’s premiere of Weed Country, Discovery Network’s provocative new show about the battle between marijuana growers, sellers and law enforcement in California’s “Emerald Triangle.” Those who are believers in the “good” of weed hold fast to the notion that marijuana is a game changer with powerful medicinal benefits as well as a fantastic business model. Law enforcement cites the risks of marijuana to public safety. Regardless of which side of the fence you are on – you will find someone with whom to agree (and disagree).

Milkshakes good, cocaine bad; french fries good, marijuana bad; alcohol good, heroin bad; gambling good, fried twinkies bad. Who decides? Right now it seems these decisions are being made by lobbyists and big donors rather than good science.

Why do we want these things? Reward and escape. Cake tastes good and numbs a broken heart. Weed relaxes and distracts. Reward and escape distract us – and so we want things that help with it. Because we are not willing to learn how to face down our fears and tolerate stuff that doesn’t feel good.

So why not drop all the rules? “Vice Supermarkets” would be great sources of revenue – instead of Wal-Mart there could be Vice-Mart. Marijuana in the garden department, cakes in the bakery, cocaine in aisle 4. Perhaps these things have some of their appeal because we “aren’t” supposed to have them. They are a secret . So if you take the secret away – could they lose their allure? We put the cartels out of business, get tax revenue, regulate quality. What stops us? Make the forbidden permissible – not nearly as interesting – is it?

And ultimately – is the government’s job one of parent? Or do we need to grow the hell up and learn to monitor and regulate ourselves. The US is starting to feel like a VH1 show – a bunch of badly behaved kids (the populace) with lazy parents who sometimes give us what we want and sometimes don’t (the government). In my experience as a psychologist, that means we kids are going to grow up into selfish, poorly regulated and badly behaved adults.

Watch Weed Country tonight and muse on vices and choices. And think about whether regulating marijuana means regulating fast food, casinos and all those other dangerous toys we love to play with.

Perhaps if fast food prohibition kicks in I will see you at a “Milkshake speakeasy” some day…..

Til then…….cheers!

Dating and Dessert: A Tweet Chat on More Love, Less Calories

“Let’s go out for cupcakes,” he said.

Seems innocuous, in fact, downright sweet.

However, my friend was getting pretty bummed out.

She likes the guy, it’s a new relationship, but she also has been working hard on a physical training regimen, and on losing weight. And it hasn’t been easy. She likes him, but would like to take a pass on the cupcakes. And he keeps insisting.

When you are in a new relationship, is it ok to say no to sweet nothings like dessert?

My friend is caught is a classic stakeholder food battle. In You Are WHY You Eat, I talk about the power of stakeholders at the table – in fact I would argue that we easily put away an extra 1000-3000 calories per week (and some people even more) because we eat for other people. We often agree to second helpings, dessert, and high calorie entrees because we don’t want to “hurt feelings.”

This is a dating dieting disaster in the making. When we first meet people and we like them, the last thing we want to do is to hurt their feelings. Enough of our friends are having trouble getting that first date, it feels like hubris to kaibosh the whole thing over a red velvet cupcake.

So what’s a girl (or a guy) to do? This isn’t just about sweet guys trying to push sweet stuff our way. Lots of men trying to lose some of that holiday weight may also find it hard to tell a new partner who made a multicourse dinner “I really like you, but can you pull back on the pasta?” Those first few weeks are so delicate that small stuff matters, but then you set some high calorie precedents.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, and love fests and feasts amping up – how do you say “no” to the cupcakes/pasta/burgers/calories but “yes” to the date?

Dr. Ramani, author of You Are WHY You Eat, authenticity doctor and master of saying no and letting go, and Jess McCann, dating coach extraordinaire and author of You Lost Him at Hello: From Dating to I “Do” – Secret Strategies from one of America’s Top Dating Coaches take on the minefields of new dates, full plates, and Valentine’s Day in a tweet chat on Thursday February 7 at 12 Noon Eastern/9 AM Pacific. Our hashtag is #dietsanddates – just type that in and join the conversation.

By the time we are done with you – you will either have figured out how to have a healthy but highly satisfying Valentine’s Day – together or alone. Either way, this is a chance to honor yourself in a relationship – new or old, and learn how to say yes to love, but no to seconds.

A Weighty Messenger……

At a recent book signing I had an eye-opening experience. I am a first time author, so book signings still leave me with stars in my eyes and good feelings.

You Are WHY You Eat takes on weight loss and health in an iconoclastic way – no prescriptions on what to eat, no magic promises of 10 pounds off in 10 days – but rather a treatise on listening to your body, to listening to your heart, and trusting yourself – at the breakfast table, in a restaurant, in love, in life.

So it was fascinating to me, when I was recently approached by a woman who was cold and somewhat standoff-ish at best. She looked at the cover of my book (which features a lovely photo of me) and says – “oh great, one more book by a pretty skinny woman who tells fat bitches like me how to live our lives and lose weight….”

Yikes.

I gently smiled at her, and silently opened the book to page 2 – right after the introduction, and handed it to her. The page featured a picture of me, the skinny bitch author, weighing 205 pounds.

She stepped back, sat down and said “that changes everything…..now I’ll listen”

The book was the same, but my backstory changed it for her. And I get it. There are few things more galling than a toned trainer or nutritionist putting out a weight loss or fitness book, and to learn later that they were serial consumers of liposuction or used dangerous methods for their own weight control. The world is photoshopped enough – we don’t need photoshopped messages too. My flabby bits still dog me – but they are honest.

Most relationship books aren’t written by people who necessarily have good relationships (or any relationships). I have seen parenting books written by people without kids, books about mothers and daughters written by men without daughters, books about drugs written by people who have never even sampled them, and books about raising a family on a budget written by well heeled housewives.

But in the world of weight – I am now seeing you have to have walked the walk.

Her entire countenance changed – in her eyes I went from enemy to member of the sisterhood. I get it – I struggle with food EVERY day. The idea that one day you lose the weight and wake up and want to go to the gym and eat boiled chicken and kale is absurd. Every meal remains a struggle, weight maintenance is a fight for me, I would rather sit in the woods and read a book than hoof on a treadmill and I miss pasta and rice. I still want to go for the sweets when I am frustrated, lonely, angry, bored or sad.

The 200 pound woman is still me – and I remain protective of her – she is one of my many avatars and each one is a teacher. But the 200 pound woman did not listen to her instincts and this one does. That was the change, that is the message.

I also understand the cruelty of our culture toward the overweight. We treat overweight and obese people as though they are incompetent or invisible. I still remember that feeling of invisibility – it never fades. Sadly, overweight-ism remains an allowable prejudice in our culture. And that results in shame and anger – health must be found at any weight.

Weight, obesity, food, and our complex scripts around all of this are challenging – and I find it interesting that my message resonates because I was once carried the weight, and in fact still am. Struggling with food, fighting the demons, hating the gym.

I believe that the message of You Are WHY You Eat goes way beyond the table. A person who doesn’t struggle with weight can still learn lessons from this book about walking away from a broken relationship or job. And the rest of us can learn the hundreds of little lessons that shave off hundreds of pesky calories.

I did walk the walk and now I get to talk the talk. If my being heavy gives more “weight” to my message – then so be it. I would love nothing more than to bring every person out there back to the beautiful machine that is you – at any weight.

Steroids for the soul…..

As a psychologist and psychology professor who has been teaching Abnormal Psychology classes for over a decade – the Lance Armstrong interview and subsequent coverage reminded me of how naïve we are as a culture and how the media loves both demonizing and profiteering off of the diagnosis of our time.

Narcissism.

It’s so simple, so easy, so textbook (in fact I would use Lance Armstrong as the easy essay question on one of my exams). The grandiosity, lack of insight, lack of empathy, entitlement. My 9 year old could have diagnosed him.

He also had the subtle stuff, the stuff that has everyone pissed off- but which is a standard part of the narcissistic picture. They CAN’T take responsibility – even when they TRY to take responsibility.

Armstrong was going to win at all costs. And he was a hell of an opportunist, even harnessing his cancer as a means of more exposure, more endorsements, more Lance. I honestly think though his handlers and what remains of his camp tells him that “the jig is up bike boy – own it and tell the world WHY” – he can’t.

That is why his Oprah apology was so anemic, why his confessions are so unsatisfying. They are empty calories – there is no there there.

At a YOUNG age athletes are taught to win. It is typically a zero sum game. Pop Warner coaches and gym teachers talk a tough game of teamwork, leadership and honor – but Nike endorsement deals go to the athlete that hogs the ball, woos the agents, and wins the race.

And that requires a fairly high dose of narcissism. Selfish wins the race. We want them to win, we need them to win – we are a world that CRAVES heroes. And so we ignore the grandiosity, the coldness, the aloofness – think those are the traits of a winner.

Steroids did to his body what narcissism did to his soul. Made him faster, more efficient, and less honest – it was no longer his body, it was his drugs. In essence his body was in denial – the steroids greased the skids. Narcissism made him slicker, more efficient, and less honest. Narcissism puts a soul into denial, and kills all vocabulary around personal ownership and integrity.

Armstrong will become a post-script – but will have an easier time selling his book than I will. Parents will continue having their kids idolize athletes and celebrities rather than scholars and teachers. And the public needs to stop all the handwringing – he behaved just as he should have.

Narcissism needed a new poster child….have at it Lance.

Half the world……..

As an Indian girl, you figure it out young.

Girls are at the bottom of the food chain, boys get a pass by dint of being boys.  Women should keep their mouths shut or whisper, men can say what they want.  Blind duty and obedience defined a “good woman” and anything else would bring shame.   That’s the backdrop against which the Indian rape case took place, and many more will take place.  This case hit home for me,  I suppose it could have been me – but years ago my parents decided to immigrate and leave behind all they knew, and at the time my mother felt that India was a suboptimal culture for girls and women.  So they stayed because they had a daughter who was born in the US.  I am grateful for that choice – but the picture isn’t always much better here.

Jump a few oceans to the US, where the Violence Against Women Act has didn’t pass the House.  An act that has been kept alive for years across bipartisan Congresses, and afforded some very important protections to vulnerable women and subgroups of women.   People say this shouldn’t be just about violence against women, but violence in general.  But on this one, I beg to differ.

This is very much about gender and gender politics.  Yes all violence is bad, but women bear a unique burden.  And we are sliding further backward every day. As the economy goes south, and globalization commodifies human beings – women are going to get disproportionately hurt.  Human trafficking of girls and women is a growth industry, giving drugs and guns a run for their money.  Girls and women are rendered voiceless and are still socialized to be silent in most of the world. Where we don’t render women voiceless, we sexualize them – we don’t see television shows about girls getting doctorates or building schools, but there are cottage industries devoted to lingerie models.

We have created cultures where baby girls are hated as they come out of the womb and viewed as a liability. The cowards who prey on women see them as a threat – so they use existing and outdated constructs to maintain power structures, and violence to keep them in place. Women are hobbled and terrorized around the world and perhaps a cynic could say anatomy is destiny – but at the end of the day, the collective anxiety of most patriarchal cultures rely on antiquated constructs like forced marriages that render women financially dependent, lack of adequate childcare so that having a child makes a woman economically trapped, cultural constructions of shame, and draconian religious codes that use mythology as a means to minimize women and rationalize their maltreatment.  Violence and particularly sexual violence against women is a global epidemic that is sanctioned in much of the world – and even idolized in some subcultures (listen to some popular song lyrics).

Our legal and law enforcement systems provide minimal protection to women who often have to suck it up because they have dependent children or they are economically screwed because they placed their fiscal and personal trust in a man who subsequently betrayed and harmed them.  In the US, the data show that restraining orders all but guarantee that a woman is going to get the crap kicked out of her or worse.  It doesn’t end there, the legacy of violence against girls and women shape their decision making and sense of identity for a lifetime – with a greater likelihood of future decisions that will not facilitate economic independence, and decisions that even place their health at risk.  Trauma steals the life of the living.

This isn’t just GOP – but the Far Right seems to think empathy has gone the way of the dinosaur – since most old dudes in the GOP aren’t women, why the hell should they protect them?  I have seen too many women’s lives destroyed by violence – beautiful, strong women who were silenced by culturally mandated patriarchy, intimidation, and the attendant lack of opportunity that follows.

I would love to see dignity returned to all women, with no more hiding under anachronism and so called “tradition”.  We can break these archetypes.  Too many generations of women have been silenced.  This has to end now.

We MUST educate girls and women, give them means of becoming financially independent, stop selling them a bad bill of goods that fosters economic dependence via early marriage, create different models of childcare so women can be mothers and maintain economic independence, promulgate shifts in a media that sexualizes girls and women, and socialize boys and men differently.

And finally, we must re-write the myths and the fairy tales.  Dump the blind obedience and the use of fear as a means of controlling half of the population.

I sat at a meeting in Capetown, South Africa this summer speaking about and listening to stories of human trafficking.  The problem was so enormous that it felt unfixable.  All of us grieved – for the girls and women this will happen to today, to whom it has already happened, and for the futures they lost.   Globally, money has supplanted dignity, cruelty has supplanted kindness. They don’t need our grief, they need our help.

As an Indian woman, I still experienced the power of shame as an adult when I made decisions with which my family and culture did not agree – despite my financial independence and freedoms, and it still stung.  I cannot imagine the horrors that girls and women around the world who do not have my privileges face in the name of minimal opportunity and valuation of family pride over the welfare of its members.  It is for these reasons that rape and violence can be used to truncate opportunity for women.  Remove the ancient codes of so called “honor” and set your damned daughters free. Until we change the collective unconscious of these cultures, until women in parts of the world stop heaving sighs of relief when they deliver a boy instead of a girl, until we address poverty so that girls and women don’t have to make ultimate sacrifices to survive- we’re pretty much screwed and these violent acts will continue and continue.

The changes we need in India and the rest of the world will not happen in my lifetime. Hope to heaven it happens for my daughters.

Resolve to Stop Outsourcing You……..

This New Year I want you to take a moment and reflect on how much of your life is really your own and how much your life is being conducted solely in the service of others.  Are you in a job that satisfies you or is it for your father?  Are you in a relationship with a partner that is right for you or is it for your mother?  Are you getting married to your partner because you really want a life with this person or because your friends are all getting married? Are you making decisions in your life that are based on your gut instincts or are you living at the behest of society – trying to drive the “right” car, carry the “right” bag, know the “right” people.  Are you so buried under expectations that you have numbed your dreams?

Basically – you are outsourcing you.

So here’s an idea for a new year’s resolution.  Stop outsourcing your life.

Outsourcing is generally not good.  It benefits a few people, but by and large it results in poorer quality, less control and more blind consumption.

Because guess what?  This outsourcing thing is going to screw up the one resolution that most Americans are making today.

Lose weight.

A long time ago – most of us started outsourcing how we eat.  Many of us were asked to be in the “clean plate club” as kids – and ate everything our parents gave us (how could they know how hungry you are?).  Then as adults, we mindlessly eat enormous restaurant portions because they are put in front of us (how can the chef know how hungry you are?), or follow restrictive diet plans that command us to eat prepackaged meals at prepackaged times- and not taking a moment to actually reflect:  Am I hungry?  Am I full?  And exactly why am I overeating?  How can you sustain a weight loss if you listen to someone else to achieve it but then someday have to live in the normal world? Short answer – you probably can’t.  And the weight comes back because you start eating (and living) for the same broken reasons.

If we can’t listen to ourselves at the table, how the hell are we supposed to listen to ourselves on the big ticket stuff?  Jobs, love, kids, spending.    And all this outsourcing makes us pretty ineffectual at making decisions and makes us pros at second guessing ourselves.

Outsourcing is easy and efficient – it means not making decisions, following the orders of others, (so then you can avoid responsibility when it doesn’t work out) and wondering why we never feel full.  If your life isn’t full – you are going to find a way to fill up – and empty jobs, empty relationships and empty lives can be filled temporarily by double cheeseburgers and new handbags.

This new year, resolve to stop outsourcing your life – take it back. Take a moment before each meal, each snack, each choice, and check in with you – rather than blindly being a company man.  Instead of being blind corporate wonks each of us should be an entrepreneur – blazing our own courses, being brave, taking chances and listening to ourselves. At the table, and in all areas of our life.

Take your life back – start at the table.  Eat slower, listen to your body.  Someone else cannot know if you are hungry or full or happy or sad.

Ask yourself what you want your life to look like.

Then make it so.