Babies + Weddings + Facebook = My new happy place

• Feast countdown = 44
• Sunday's craving = Figo's Salmone con piselli
• Sunday's craving distraction = Elle Macpherson's 1990s workout video (no joke)

Given last week's post, I thought there couldn't be a more fitting opportunity to concede my latest hobby: browsing half-friends/half-strangers' wedding and baby albums on Facebook.  Welcome to my life of contradictions, or at least those involving gender stereotypes.

At a party several weeks back, I remember sitting around chatting with a group of friends, both guys and girls, and the topic of an old college administrator came up who had recently had a baby.  I'm thinking to myself, I probably know everything there is to know about this little kid even though I haven't met him, because I've opened nearly every newly-posted baby photo album on Facebook.  This is the creepy information that I plan keeping to myself... at least until a girl across from me blurts out, "I follow his baby blog religiously -- my favorite post is about his love of shoes!"

And just like that, the creepiness barrier vanished and I was free to admit my own habits: "I know!  I especially love his obsession with a tiny basketball that he sleeps with every night... and have you seen his latest tuxedo outfit?"

For all my time on Facebook, I'd guess that I spend at least 75% of it looking solely at updates about pregnancies, newborns, weddings, bachelorette parties, baby/wedding showers, honeymoons, a couple's first house, home decorating, and just about anything else remotely domestic.  It's especially worth noting that none of these things are prevalent in my life, yet I'm still strangely drawn to them, even if it means browsing through my old high school classmate's sister's wedding album (this is no exaggeration).

There's no big insight to draw from this, really -- just like anyone enjoys flipping through a good US Weekly once in a while, I kick back to the happy, fluffy stuff of other people's lives.  Specifically, I love watching from afar those people that I halfway know, because there's no personal drama to distract me, no pressure to get involved, and I get to be a truly passive observer.  Call it pure escapism from the everyday grind...

Did the bridesmaids look hotter than the bride?
How many times did Junior lose it during the Easter Egg hunt?
Where do they find the time to cook gourmet duck every night?
Why did he propose right in front of her whole family?

The juicier the details, the better.

So for all the proud moms, newlyweds, and cutesy couples out there in cyberspace, thank you for providing diversions during the afternoon workday slump.  Also, fair warning that I may copy your trendy style someday.

What if men had to breastfeed?

• Feast countdown = 45
• Sunday night's craving = Pretzels and M&Ms, the classic combo
• Sunday night's craving distraction = Researching campaign donors

If it's not already apparent by now, I'm fascinated by gender differences and their role in society.

Specifically, do men and women inherently, by nature, behave or think in different ways?  Or is it mostly chalked up to the way we're raised and the social norms of the time?  A classic example is men crying in public: hypothetically, they may be as apt to do this as women, but society has long taught them to suppress these feelings, so it's hard to know what would happen in a social vacuum.

I talked about this idea in depth with several guy friends one time.  Surprisingly, I was the one who defaulted to the argument that women are inherently more sensitive, nurturing, emotional, etc., but all I could really use to back it up was a woman's physical qualities.  My thinking was that women have babies, babies immediately rely on their mothers to survive, so women naturally take up the role of caretaker.  And then I threw in the whole bit about hormone levels.

Looking back, I find my position pretty flimsy.  I didn't even begin to account for the many women who choose not to have children, can't have children, or haven't yet had children -- does this mean that they are all inherently less sensitive and nurturing?  As for hormones, modern contraceptives have allowed us to control estrogen levels and its effects almost entirely, not to mention the fact that women who have had their ovaries removed do not report a sudden change in behavior.

No, I started to think more seriously about the notion that men and women may not be as inherently different as we assume -- except for that minor issue of physicality, which may be the sole reason that women have been subjugated under men throughout the majority of history.  The woman is weaker, bears the children, rears the children, so she stays in the hut.  But if there was a way to control for some of these physical differences, to split up the work of child-rearing, I was curious to think of how it would affect the world.

Then it hit me -- what if men had to breastfeed?

(Yes, this is Daniel Craig apparently wearing a bra)

Before you write this off as Shel Silverstein meets Three Men and a Baby, just follow me in this thought experiment for a moment.  Imagine a world with two main assumptions:

• Women and men share completely in the child-rearing process
• Neither sex is physically superior to the other

The exercise lends an interesting perspective on leveling the gender field, primarily by exposing our largest biases...

Let's start with the family.  A woman becomes pregnant, she carries the baby for nine months, and after delivery, she hands the baby over to Dad for the next year of feeding.  Suddenly, Mom is free of immediate responsibility and simply supports Dad as he keeps the little one alive.  Dad can't stray far from the house without a babysitter, and he grows intimately in-tune with the baby's every need.  In this new scenario, Mom and Dad are equally critical to the baby's survival and development.  On an even broader scale, bad fathers are less likely to bolt, knowing that their baby can't live without them; teen fathers now share the full burden with teen mothers; children grow up with a strong connection to both parents; and children see Mom and Dad as equals.  There's no predominantly male boss of the household.

Next, we look at the workplace.  Who's to say that Jane can't be CEO instead of John?  Both of them have to sacrifice long periods of time to have kids, so it's not a give-in that one gender will end up staying home more often.  Women study the same fields as men in school, set the same kinds of goals, and climb to success in the same way, because no one is encouraging either sex in particular to pick a "family-friendly" career path.  White collar executive suites are filled 50/50 with men and women, employees respond similarly to male or female bosses, and no company feels the need to create women's "empowerment groups".

Then comes modern society as a whole.  Women are just as likely to be breadwinners and major leaders.  There is no stigma associated with a strong, dominant female whose husband may stay at home with the kids -- in fact, there's no stigma for strong women at all.  For example, wealthy, successful females on Wall Street are targeted with the same eagerness as male bachelors.  A young girl beating a boy in the school math bowl or tennis match is seen as no big deal among peers.  Female U.S. Presidents are run of the mill.  Similarly, boys are raised no differently than girls (trucks and easy-bake ovens are interchangeable), men are comfortable showing affection and uncertainty out in the open, and they have no problem serving under a woman.  Parents don't shelter their daughters more than their sons.  On a darker note, women don't worry more about walking alone at night, and people fear female criminals just as much as males.  

Finally, we examine the ripples back through history.  Starting with the earliest civilizations, men and women have equal authority within the family and among peers.  Like people of varying races or ethnicities, they look different, but their abilities and behavior are indistinguishable.  Religions form around both male and female figureheads, marriage requires both parties to present dowries, kingdoms and property fall to the eldest child (regardless of gender), women fight alongside men in wars, and if gender discrimination exists at all, it subjugates men just as often as women.  A woman's contributions to society are no greater or no less than a man's.

Exercise over.

This is the closest I can get to picturing a gender-neutral world.  In my mind, this is what it would feel like to erase a troubled past and to treat the opposite sex exactly the same, despite any physical differences.  I readily admit that the assumptions are ludicrous, but the outcomes, in my mind, are not entirely so.

I don't want to get too philosophical or pedantic, but it's an interesting game to play.  At least it makes you wonder, are our differences just limited to body types?

The problem with social inertia

• Feast countdown = 46
• Current craving = Pretzel chips and hummus
• Current craving distraction = A trip to Wal-Mart (along with the rest of Rolla)

Today, Maureen Dowd zeroed in on an idea that I've been mulling over lately, that is, the overwhelming tendency for societies to overlook their own problems and affirm the status quo.  This mindset of "it's just the way things are" is incredibly powerful, as evidenced by the historically slow pace of social revolutions.  Each of us grows up learning a certain way that the world works, and unless something or someone drastically interrupts our way of thinking, we continue to reinforce our own narrow perspectives.

In Maureen's case, she points to her unquestioning acceptance of the Catholic Church's policies toward women.  While quizzing Muslim women who accept their subjugated status in certain societies, she suddenly wakes up to the reality that she is guilty of the same -- why had she not bucked against the Church's misogynist ways much earlier?  She laments, "I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world."

Ironically, we as Americans do this sort of thing all the time.  One commenter on the column exposed the phenomenon outright: 

"Americans fancy their own churches, corporate silos, and consumer niches as empowering zones -- but thanks to your column today, perhaps more will question how too many yet live in massive denial, massively abetting the powers that be."

I see it here in southeastern Missouri very clearly.  As one of the 10 poorest districts in the entire nation (and dead last, at one point, when considering women), MO-8 represents a region that seems resigned to the present state of affairs, unaware of the potential for real progress.  No one wants to admit that they're being had or that they're falling behind, so it's easier to just point to the rest of the world's problems and turn a blind eye to the growing crisis at home, as many of their politicians do.  I hope to help shift that mindset in the coming months.

As a final thought, I went on an amazing hike yesterday in the Mark Twain National Forest, about 2.5 hours southeast of Rolla by car.  It turned out that I enjoyed the drive almost as much as the hike, as I passed tiny towns of 1000+ people and rolling cow pastures (see pictures below).  This part of the country is truly captivating.  In the midst of it all, though, I forced myself to take note of the alarmingly low living conditions in these rural areas.  It was almost too easy to ignore the broken-down trailers scattered across the idyllic landscape, but once I noticed a few, I couldn't stop noticing.  

I know I've written about this before, but I like to play with the concept of breaking social inertia.  So few people in the world do anything about it -- the process of removing ourselves from our own societies for a moment, taking an unbiased view, and uncovering the disturbing conventions that we've come to accept.  As Maureen discovered, we're all guilty of it, but only a fraction of us realize it or even act on it.

Life's medicine: Giving others a leg up

• Feast countdown = 47
• Past Sunday's craving = Pint and Plate's buffalo chicken sandwich (the one my boyfriend was eating at the time)
• Past Sunday's craving distraction = Packing my life into a Honda Civic

Apologies for the late post, but I assure you that I still resisted eating dinner last Sunday.

These past few days have simply been a blur of activity and culture shock since my move out to Rolla, Missouri, including my drive of roughly 650 miles in 11 straight hours.  After rushing from one errand to the next, I'm finally taking advantage of this brief pause at the campaign headquarters to reflect on my new situation here.

One thing is certain -- whenever I take a risk, I inevitably have a big uh-oh moment afterward where I doubt everything about myself.  (Sadly enough, this can even happen after a big shopping splurge, aka serious buyer's remorse.)  I faced that same, familiar sinking feeling in my stomach today, after sitting around without much to do for these first couple days.  Questions circled: Can I even be helpful here?  Will I ever become an integral part of the team?  What does it take to do that?

Self-doubt and comparison are big battles for me, and I often give in to them too easily.  The only thing I find that loosens their grip on me, though, is remembering the simple goal for my life: serving other people in a meaningful, selfless way.  This idea forces me to take the focus off of myself and put it on others, and it roots me again in what's most valuable in life.  My constant reminder to put pride and recognition aside.

I think back to the strong women of My Sister's House in Atlanta, who took shelter in order to start over in life, and my memories with them re-emphasize the joy of humble service.  Spunky Edith will forever stick out in my mind -- a woman in her mid-fifties who came in off the street and struggled to learn, but broke into a huge smile whenever a lesson clicked.  There was also Teresa, the hungry reader who ate up stories about Rapunzel and Sojourner Truth, and whose eyes lit up when she saw you across the room.  Catherine was the jokester of the group -- also very clever -- and Vicki poured herself into her lessons with unrivaled dedication and intensity.

My ladies at AUM's GED class

No amount of prestige or public praise can fulfill me like those women did.  Now, I face a very different opportunity to serve people through the political process, some of the poorest in the nation, and I'm once again called to swallow my pride.  Whether printing labels, putting stamps on postcards, or feeding the campaign dog, I remind myself to do it with a full heart.