Trend Piece Tuesday: The Paleo Diet

Heard of the Paleo Diet yet? It's a diet that's been around, well, forever, technically, but is gaining a larger following in recent years. From Wikipedia's page on the Paleolithic Diet:

The modern dietary regimen known as the Paleolithic diet (abbreviated paleo diet or paleodiet) [...] is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various human species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic—a period of about 2.5 million years duration that ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture. In common usage, such terms as the "Paleolithic diet" also refer to the actual ancestral human diet. Centered on commonly available modern foods, the "contemporary" Paleolithic diet consists mainly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts; and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils.

That's the real gist of it; you eat what can be hunted or picked, excluding anything that requires processing in order to safely ingest it.

This eating trend is alive in well here in my neck of the woods. While I only know one person who is officially on the Paleo diet, many people I know tend toward a similar way of eating that consists primarily of whole foods, while avoiding foods that are overly-processed. We do this because it's healthier, and feels more natural to eat things that are minimally or unprocessed. More and more people I know are cutting dairy and all refined sugar out of their diets and spending the money saved on more vegetables, CSA boxes, and high-quality, organic produce. It's produced a trend of posting pictures of everything everyone cooks on Facebook, which is both fun and a little annoyingly self-righteous. Contrary to most popular diets, though, the reasoning behind the Paleo diet isn't necessarily weight loss so much as achieving optimal health in the most natural-seeming way possible.

The New York Times has caught on to the Paleo "lifestyle" and interviewed a group of 20-something New Yorkers who are avid Paleo dieters-- or, as they like to call themselves, "cavemen."

Like many New York bachelors, John Durant tries to keep his apartment presentable — just in case he should ever bring home a future Mrs. Durant. He shares the fifth-floor walk-up with three of his buddies, but the place is tidy and he never forgets to water the plants.

The one thing that Mr. Durant worries might spook a female guest is his most recent purchase: a three-foot-tall refrigerated meat locker that sits in a corner of his living room. That is where he keeps his organ meat and deer ribs.

Mr. Durant, 26, who works in online advertising, is part of a small New York subculture whose members seek good health through a selective return to the habits of their Paleolithic ancestors.

Or as he and some of his friends describe themselves, they are cavemen.

The caveman lifestyle, in Mr. Durant’s interpretation, involves eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Vegetables and fruit are fine, but he avoids foods like bread that were unavailable before the invention of agriculture. Mr. Durant believes the human body evolved for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and his goal is to wean himself off what he sees as many millenniums of bad habits.

Interestingly, the Paleo diet is immediately described as something masculine and manly, or at least, not womanly. A woman might be afraid to see a large freezer in the apartment of a potential mate (whose last name the writer assumes she will be taking upon marriage). "Ahh! Meat frightening!"

These urban cavemen also choose exercise routines focused on sprinting and jumping, to replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon.

In a city crowded with vegetarian restaurants and yoga studios, the cavemen defy other people’s ideas of healthy living. There is an indisputable macho component to the lifestyle.

“I didn’t want to do some faddish diet that my sister would do,” Mr. Durant said.

No, because in the store of diets, where you wake up one day and think, Gee, I think I'd like to go on a diet today, which one should I pick? faddish diets are for girls.

Only, if we may consult the Almighty Wikipedia,

Belief in fad diets by adherents is often irrational. Many individuals who adhere to fad diets will not consider recommendations made by nutritionists and dietitians.

There are three categories of food fads. Some food fads incorporate a combination of categories:

1. The virtue of a particular food or food group is exaggerated and purported to cure specific diseases, and is therefore incorporated as a primary constituent of an individual’s diet.
2. Foods are eliminated from an individual’s diet because they are viewed as harmful.
3. An emphasis is placed on eating certain foods to express a particular lifestyle.

Extreme faddist diets often lack the energy, suitable protein, fat-soluble vitamins, and some minerals that are essential for growing children. Parents forcing children to adhere to fad diets to the point of severe nutritional disorders is considered a form of child abuse.

Programs often considered fad diets:
Cabbage soup diet
Grapefruit diet
Fit for life
Fruitarianism
Israeli Army diet
Macrobiotic diet
Nutrisystem
Paleolithic diet
South Beach Diet
Gerson therapy

The Paleo diet is easily described by each of those categories. But, to be fair, so are really reasonable, medically-recommended dietary changes, like moderate exercise and a low-fat diet.

What makes most fad diets fail are the strict, unnatural regimens. The Atkins diet eliminated, or at least sharply reduced, a huge number of counter-intuitive food from what was to be considered healthy. Some people may rejoice at the thought that eating pounds of bacon and saying no to broccoli can help you lose weight, but everyone I know whose been on it lasted about a month, and craved bread so bad they were going crazy. There's also the "negative calorie soup" diet, in which you eat nothing but soup made from vegetables that are supposedly so low in calories, that you burn more calories eating it than the vegetable itself contains (which isn't actually true). That diet is intended for short-term weight-loss goals, but according to the above site, is rarely finished to completion due to the lack of variety in flavors, and poor physical health due to the lack of nutrients.

What makes the Paleo diet (and even the South Beach Diet, to some extent) different from these others are two things. One, our ancestors actually used to live on this diet. Two, eliminated are foods that are already known to be bad for you, and as you still have meat, fruits, and most vegetables, the dieter is less likely to "cheat" due to lack of variety. But the thing is, any pattern of eating is a "diet." Changing the way one eats with the goal of weight loss isn't the first, second, or even third entry in Merriam Webster.

But no, the Paleo diet isn't a "diet," because diets are for girls. The Paleo is a lifestyle. In fact,

Mr. Le Corre, 38, who once made soap for a living, promotes what he calls “mouvement naturel” at exercise retreats in West Virginia and elsewhere. His workouts include scooting around the underbrush on all fours, leaping between boulders, playing catch with stones, and other activities at which he believes early man excelled. These are the “primal, essential skills that I believe everyone should have,” he said in an interview.
[...]
Instead of eating three square meals a day, many of New York’s cavemen fast intermittently, up to 36 hours at a stretch. Fasting is a topic of banter at the Union Square West apartment where Matthew Sanocki and his brother, Andrew, live and run design-related e-commerce Web sites.

How very tough of them. Durant's Paleo group does have one female member, though. Her name is Melissa McEwan. She gets about two sentences' worth of coverage.

Besides my annoyance with the framing of diet as prohibitively "manly," I'm not convinced that women aren't into the diet as much as men. And since, as Jill so aptly describes the authors of these trend pieces in a recent post on Feministe,

Clearly, most of their contributors are just writing about their own friends in small-ish New York media circles that revolve around the Upper West Side, the Village and Brownstone Brooklyn, where chicken coops and pet choices are breaking news,

I guess makes me qualified to say that I think that lots of hipster-ish, late-twenties and early-thirties folks in the city with design and media jobs, and also psychology students and nomadic landscapers, as well as bored bank employees, and disgruntled liquor store clerks, and scores of other people who like to stay on top of how to be cooler than everyone else, are taking the "green" trend to its next, natural level and changing their diets and exercise habits.

Fascinating.

Trend Piece Tuesday: Men Are Scary

Since trend pieces -- particularly of the New York Times variety -- tend so be so laughably presumptive and over-generalizing, I think we ought to dedicate Tuesdays to making fun of, ripping apart, or hell, even expressing enjoyment for them. If you see one that you'd like to see highlighted, feel free to send 'em our way at ethecofematgmaildotcom. Today's Trend Piece Tuesday will be dedicated to yet another manifestation of the belief that all men should be viewed as a potential danger to children.

Nicole Sprinkle, a guest poster on the New York Times parenthood blog, used an entire article to relay a story about how she discriminated against a young man for being a male. In Seeing All Men as Predators, Sprinkle explains that she was searching for a part-time babysitter or nanny for her small child, a 3-year-old girl. There were few candidates available for part-time work, but she had found the perfect candidate:

...[T]here was also this 23-year-old young man who responded to my ad on our neighborhood’s Listserv. He was well spoken and exuded a quiet friendliness over the phone. He was studying to become a paramedic (great to have around in case of emergencies), lived his whole life in the neighborhood, had a mother who owned a local daycare, and worked as a summer camp counselor at the very preschool my daughter was now attending – and got rave reviews from his supervisor there.

She's afraid, though. Because he's a male. And males abuse and rape children.

Wait, what?

Sprinkle makes it clear that she knows better, that she knows deep down inside that it's rather ridiculous to assume this of all men, but that her emotional reaction, rather than her intellectual one, was the driving force behind her ultimate decision not to hire this young man, who was, as she said, the best candidate for the job.

I also told him that I felt really awful about having to feel this way, and that it was such a shame that society forced us to discriminate against kind, competent men as caregivers for our kids. Yes, I know that statistically a man is far more likely to molest a child than a woman but, really, what is the likelihood of it happening to your child when the potential caregiver comes replete with recommendations that you trust and a personality and career path you admire? I told him I needed to think about it for a day or two.

He very kindly told me he understood and would wait for and respect my decision. Two days later I called him to tell him I was so sorry but I was going with the local mom. Again, he pleasantly told me he completely understood but to feel free to call him if it didn’t work out. I hung up the phone feeling sheepish.

(emphasis mine)

The young man was incredibly understanding of her hesitation to hire him due to his gender. This is very kind of him, considering that he was actively being discriminated against by a potential employer. And I know guys just like that, who are kind and understanding about our society's widespread belief that children are dangerous when left with men. My husband and I live in a townhouse complex with a bunch of families with small children. A couple months ago, we were watching our niece (who we live with, along with my sister and mom) at the playground in the courtyard, playing with other children between 3 - 5 years old, and a 4-year-old girl asked Jesse to help her reach a horizontal bar-thing that she was too short to reach herself. In order to help her, he'd have to lift her up. He told her that he wasn't sure if that would be okay with her parents. She went and asked, got the OK, and helped her. Of course, if it were me, I'd have just lifted her up, and no one would have been suspicious of anything. But as we'd just moved in, he wasn't sure if the little girl's parents might freak about a "strange man" touching their daughter.

On the one hand, I understand the concern. A stranger of any gender in close proximity to a child without visible caregivers can look suspect, and since men are primarily the gender who gets the (public) bad rap for being child abusers and molesters, it's easy to see why many women (and even many men) might be more afraid of seeing their child with an unknown male than female. On the other hand, when my husband and I have kids, I don't want him to get suspicious looks, or have people questioning his right to be alone with our children simply because of his gender.

Which brings me to my next point. Sparkle's confident and un-cited statistic that she whipped out of nowhere about men being "far more likely" to molest a child than a woman isn't even accurate. For one thing, recent studies have shown that women are more often the perpetrators of violence against children than men are, and the majority of the cases of child abuse (80%) are perpetrated by parents of the children. While Sprinkle admits that she acted in an unfair manner and felt "sheepish" after turning the young man down for the job and that, as a result, her daughter may have "missed out on a chance to have a great caregiver and our family a friend," she maintains that she acted in a way that made her feel more comfortable.

Additionally, she tries to give herself an out by saying that it's a shame she has to feel this way, and that society forces us to discriminate against men like him. Here's the problem: she is a member of society. She feels bad about the way that the society that she is a part of discriminates against men in this situation. What is she waiting for? All the other mothers to stop treating them this way first? Ending this kind of discrimination is her responsibility, too. How many other parents in her circle of friends and elsewhere will read this article or hear her story and feel a renewed dedication to discriminating based on gender? How many more children will grow up afraid of males alone with children because this message is drilled into them growing up? And how will women ever stop being expected to be homemakers and full-time parents if we as a society refuse to allow men the same opportunity?

I want to give Sparkle credit for being frank about her prejudices. It's difficult to admit a bias against and generalized group of people, and she risked a great deal of pushback and criticism, which she has thankfully received in the comments on the post, and elsewhere in the gender-thinkers section of the blogosphere.

But, credit for candidly admitting her prejudice against men and admission of guilty feelings about said prejudice aside, this is seriously problematic. We as a society, and we as feminists and people committed to equality between men and women cannot continue to turn a blind eye toward discrimination against men in the domestic sphere. As Archivist of the False Rape Society blog wrote in response to my comment on his post,

Women have made a lot of progress breaking down barriers that once confined them to the domestic sphere. Women will never be able to truly "have it all" unless men are freed up to move from the work world to the domestic sphere. Right now, there is a terrible social stigma for men to adopt a significant role as nurturer. (A woman who tells her fiance that she wants to take time off from work when they have children is called a normal woman; a man who tells his fiance he wants to take time off from work when they have children is called "an ex-fiance.") This sort of thinking is scarcely consonant with the notion that women can do what was formerly considered men's work, and men can do what was formerly considered women's work.

While the priority of any parent is surely on doing everything in their power to keep their children safe, the idea that men are inherently more likely to molest and abuse children is false, and, just as I'm not about to go around telling people it's totally okay for me to be afraid of black men who walk past me or get into elevators with me (or men in general who talk to me, period) and expect sympathy and understanding, it shouldn't be okay for her to feel justified in making decisions based on an unsupported and demonstrably irrational fear of the entire male sex. We can't expect to gain equality to men in all areas of life, but save domesticity for ourselves. This isn't fair, it isn't right, and it's damaging to everyone involved.

It does seem, though, that her piece, sympathetic as it was, has gotten a lot of attention and sparked necessary discussions. For this, perhaps it was a good piece for the Times to post.

h/t Jim.

Free Choices

The Innocent Smith Journal recently featured a couple of thought-provoking pieces discussing choices, as they relate to Muslim women who choose to wear a hijab, burqa, or niqab, and how those choices may influence how women are perceived in general worldwide. A further discussion ensued in the comment thread about whether the choice to wear a hijab, burqa, or niqab is really a free choice. The first post was in response to the recent criticism the creators of South Park faced in their decision to censor the image of the Prophet Mohammed in a recent episode, and Bill Maher's reaction to the ordeal:

Before I conclude, it should in fairness be noted that, in speaking of Muslims, we realize that, of course, the vast majority are law-abiding, loving people, who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace.

InnocentSmith responds:

Notice that the punchline (Muslims just want to “subjugate their women in peace”) undercuts the distinction Maher purports to make between the “vast majority” of Muslims and Muslim extremists. Not only are most Muslims are just as wacko as the violent fringe, Maher insinuates, it would be laughable to think otherwise.

While InnocentSmith approaches the controversial topic of Islamic culture promoting the subjugation of women with a great deal of respect and tolerance for a topic so widely misunderstood in Western culture, a few questions remain. As I asked in the discussion thread:

...Of course the “regular” Muslims aren’t the same as jihadists; the remark, though, applies to most practicing Muslims. The idea that a woman should be more modest that a man, for example, is, quite simply, perpetuating misogyny.

Do most Muslim women wear a hijab, or more? I'm not sure; I admit to having only a basic understanding of Islamic cultures, and as a non-Muslim, I can hardly claim to speak on behalf of Muslim women. But as far as making the choice to cover oneself in a way that is dictated only to women, I remain unconvinced of the insistence that to do so is a free choice that is without misogynistic influence.

A simple Google search will yield many convincing arguments made by Muslim women for why wearing a hijab, or even a burqa, is less oppressive than the expectation that women in Western cultures wear clothing that is considered sexually attractive to most men. In a poem titled Object of Despair, Fahim Firfiray (Abu Omar), in observing the differences between her Muslim character, Aisha, and a non-Muslim fellow attorney, Emma, in regards to their attire, writes from her colleague Emma's perspective:

Aisha is in full hijab
With a loose all over suit
Emma's in her business wear
With accessories taboot

Emma's really quite bemused
At Aisha's godly ways
She looks Aisha in the eyes
And very firmly says

You're a smart girl Aisha
Why do you wear that across your hair?
Subjugated by "man"-kind
An object of despair

Take it off my sister
Let your banner be unfurled
Don't blindly follow all around
DECLARE YOUR FREEDOM TO THE WORLD

It's an oft-cited argument that many associate with Western feminism: To cover yourself is to be oppressed, censored, enslaved. The objection to hiding ones hair seems particularly reminiscent of the Spice Girls days-- embrace your femininity! Short skirts and tall shoes and long hair! Be smart, powerful, and sexy!

While embracing this particular brand of femininity can be empowering for many women who feel oppressed by the implications of such an image (for example, the perceived invitation to men to give sexual attention to the woman), it's problematic on a number of levels, and the argument Firfiray gave her Western character was too one-dimensional and half-hearted to take seriously.

Firfiray continues with Aisha's response:

My dear sister Emma,
Why do you dress the way you do?
The skirt you're wearing round your waist,
Is it really you?

Now that we've sat down,
I see you tug it across your thighs,
Do you feel ashamed?
Aware of prying eyes?

I see the way you're sitting,
Both legs joined at the knees,
Who forces you to sit like that?
Do you feel at ease?

I'll tell you who obliges you,
To dress the way you do,
Gucci, Klein and St. Laurent,
All have designs on you!

In the main, it's men my friend,
Who dictate the whims of fashion,
Generating all the garb,
To incite the basest passion

"Sex Sells" there is no doubt,
But who buys with such great haste,
The answer is the likes of you,
Because they want to be embraced......

They want to be accepted,
On a level playing field
Sure, with brain and intellect
But with body parts revealed

Intelligence and reason
Are useful by and by
But if you want to make a mark
Stay appealing to the eye

Aisha's almost got me here. After all, who could argue that looking "sexy" is always in the back of our minds, as women? Who would disagree that isn't always the most comfortable feeling? I certainly couldn't counter the point that men who are given the opportunity to see more of my body than I see of theirs are less likely to take me seriously as a business associate or social equal. The possibility of eliminating that possibility is, admittedly, very appealing.

Via a later article on the Innocent Smith Journal, a Muslim woman discusses how she found relief in her decision to wear a niqab to work:

“I do this because I want to be closer to God, I want to please him and I want to live a modest lifestyle,” said Ms. Ahmed, who asked that her appearance without a veil not be described. “I want to be tested in that way. The niqab is a constant reminder to do the right thing. It’s God-consciousness in my face.”


But there were secular motivations, too. In her job, she worked with all-male teams on oil rigs and in labs.

“No matter how smart I was, I wasn’t getting the respect I wanted,” she said. “They still hit on me, made crude remarks and even smacked me on the butt a couple times.”

Wearing the niqab is “liberating,” she said. “They have to deal with my brain because I don’t give them any other choice.”

The absence of leers, gropes, and harassment that followed Ms. Ahmed's decision to wear a niqab undoubtedly brings with it a feeling of liberation and empowerment. But should it? And was her decision to wear a niqab really influenced in any way by "secularism," or could we be more honest in calling the motivation "sexism"?

This sentiment, the one about how empowering it feels to hide your face and body under layers of cloth so that predatory men don't sexually harass and assault you, is a temporary solution to a huge and systemic problem. Women everywhere are consistently told that they are responsible for the harassment they encounter, sexual assault, and even their own rapes. More often than not, women's clothing choices are the basis for these accusations.

Several months ago, Thúy-Lan Võ Lite from Equal Writes wrote a piece for Feministe about India's new female-only traincars, called Ladies Specials, a new option for women who want to avoid the rampant sexual harassment, leering, and groping that they regularly fall victim to on their daily commutes. While, like Ms. Ahmed's situation, the separate train cars are a good temporary solution to the rampant sexual harassment and assault that occurs daily on public transportation all over the world, Thúy-Lan succinctly concludes:

...It’s great that these trains are giving women a safe space. But it’s also important to note that the Ladies Specials are only a temporary solution; for real social change to occur, something must be done to stop the catcalling men.

Indeed, it must. It's time we stop making women responsible for their own oppression, and start holding harassers and abusers accountable for their oppressive behavior. If a Muslim woman wants to wear a niqab, the reasons shouldn't have to include finally feeling like she's able to be respected because men are prevented from seeing her face and body. For a Muslim woman to take into consideration the sense of entitlement these men feel toward women's bodies takes the freedom from that choice.