I spotted this article in the New York Times which is timely, because I’ve been playing quite the game of chess myself lately. (Note that Kosteniuk, who seems awesome, no longer lives in our Great Motherland but conveniently  resides in Florida, where she doesn’t have to worry about most of her winnings going to fund Russia pressuring Belarus out of cakes and pies not to mention any and all natural resources.)

And, you know, I can relate to the pressures of playing high-profile chess games.  I’ve been playing dozens of chess games lately. Mr. B installed a chess application on my Android phone when he was bored and ever since then I’ve been hooked on winning.

The only problem is that, after two weeks straight of playing at least three games a day, I have yet to win one.   This is made all the more intimidating as Mr. B, a childhood chess champion, stands over my shoulder from time to time and points out all of the wrong moves I make and then, when I offer him to take over the game, wins immediately.  And then when I call him a genius and suggest that he quit his job so that I can manage his genius and make money off of him playing chess full time like that other Jew Weinstein, he modestly demurs and says that he’s very rusty and can’t play very well. Do you understand why more women don’t play chess?

This is all extremely disappointing, especially since Mr. B has previously rejected my plans for him to play tennis for fame and money, create programs to steal fractions of a cent,or become a professional boxer.

The problem here is that, as a Russian, I am expected to play excellent chess to conform to national stereotypes.  And, apparently, also pose nude with extremely large chess sets (this link is surprisingly safe for work).

However,  since I have almost zero logic skills (the kind that would make you consider a career in computer programming and, say, create programs to steal fractions of a cent over time,) I am stuck losing every single time.  So, until Mr. B gets his act together, I will be forced to continuously play the games as depicted below, in hopes that I will be in shape to play for the big bucks.  Someone has to make the money in this family.

As long as I’m covering serious topics like cherry blossoms and libertarians this week, let’s talk about Gabby Sidibe.  This post discusses her success and how people have reacted to it.  There are two very complicated and loaded sides, I think.

1.  She is extremely talented, funny, and self-confident in a way I am definitely not.
2.  She is overweight (over 350 lbs) and possibly risking her health.

Am I finally excited to see a woman who is a different body type and race than 90% of Hollywood?  Yes, incredibly so, even though, it seems like she was typecast for the role of Precious to begin with.

Daniels , who interviewed 400 girls, said, “I had gone to McDonald’s. I looked everywhere for that girl. And I realized once I spoke to Gabby that if I had hired any of those girls – I would have been exploiting those girls because they were precious.”

I think it would have been a bigger success for her if her breakout role was the lead in a romantic comedy, where stick-thin and unrealistic blonde white women (except for Ginnifer Goodwin and even she lost weight) are the norm.  But she was chosen specifically because she was overweight (though, in conjunction with her confidence) ,and that rubs me the wrong way.

Progressive women’s websites are now lauding her up and down.  But, as soon as there is ANY discussion about her weight, they say, hands off.  My question is, at which point does body acceptance and celebration become dangerous?  That we should accept women of all different sizes is a no-brainer, in movies, in real life, and in clothing sizes (as someone who is short for my weight, I can NEVER find pants of the right length.)   But my issue is with why those women are different sizes.  If they are overweight not as a result of genetics, but because of poor diet choices (obviously I don’t know Gaby’s situation and therefore can’tcompletely), how can they be a role model for girls and why is it ok to accept them?  Why is it ok to accept people that are obviously unhealthy?  Would you tell an anorexic that she was doing the right thing?  Obesity is just going in the other direction.

The reason I’m thinking about this issue that I am overweight, and I’m not ok with people telling me it’s ok to be overweight by choice.  In general, we shouldn’t all be fitness freaks and eating kale chips, and people should definitely accept my figure, but they shouldn’t vocally approve of the fact that I’ve gained weight.   After working extremely hard in college to lose weight in college and maintain a healthy lifestyle, I gained all of it back and more after Mr. B and I got married, because I became lazy and I have awful genetics-whenever I eat anything, it immediately translates onto the scale.  Hence the healthier diet and running.  I will never, ever, ever be a size 2, or even a 4 or 6.  This is easier for me to accept now than in college.   And other people should accept it, too.  But not that I’ve gained x amount of weight, just because.

However, According to the commenter from Jezebel below, it’s ok that my BMI is now above acceptable levels and that I am now at more risk for things like breast cancer later on in life.  The following is from a response to a quote that Kirstie Alley made about wanting to lose weight:

What bothers me most about this quote is that I had the same exact experience and, while I don’t necessarily need people telling me I’ve gained weight, I also should have realized I needed to stop and start eating in moderation. Having a body that gets larger over time is ok.  But over how much time? If you are deliberately putting on weight, it’s not ok, and shouldn’t be accepted, and even feminists need to stop jumping all over other people who genuinely are concerned that Gabby is presenting an unhealthy model to young girls.

I guess what it boils down to is this:  While we shouldn’t ridicule people who aren’t within BMI range or have health issues due to obesity or those who gain a few pounds, we need to be very careful about how and under what terms we accept weight gain.

Here’s another post covering it from a slightly different angle.  Thanks to Hannah for the link.

So, yesterday, Mr. B and I went to George Washington University (Motto:so that’s what a $60,000-a-year cafeteria looks like!) to hear one of my favorite economists, Dr.  Tyler Cowen talk on a number of topics.  You may recall that I’d reviewed his book earlier and pretty much hated it, which was the reason I hid my face in the audience the whole time, serial-stalker-like.   In person, he is extremely amiable and can talk about a great deal of topics at length.  Questions ranged from what he thought of the financial crisis (“everyone got overexcited,”) to why his ethnic dining guide was so popular (“It’s not.  I keep it just for me,”) to why gold prices are going up, to why eating at restaurants is like sex, to why we should be surprised there isn’t more war in the 21st century.  That’s how his blog works, and that’s how Dr. Cowen pretty much works, too.  It was really cool to see a blogger I respect in person.  Also, he’s married to a Russian woman, and given that I know a bit about the species myself, I give him mad props.

What really intrigued me the most, though, was the audience breakdown of his lecture.  Given that it was on a college campus, I did expect a lot of people to be students, and given that it was sponsored by the Local Libertarians, I did expect a lot of it to be guys.  But the amount of women in the room was extremely surprising:

and, later on even startling:

I’m wondering why the amount of females was so small?  And what does this say about the Internet as a whole? More importantly, what does it say about me that I’m willing to skip out on Happy Hour to listen to explanations of the financial crisis?

source.

Warning: Spoilers of the latest Alice in Wonderland are in this post.

What’s the last movie you’ve seen where women aren’t objectified or placed into narrow parameters of female stereotypes?   For me, it was Alice in Wonderland, which I saw this weekend with my parents and Mr. B.  Since we are all avid lovers of Lewis Carrol, (especially me, who memorized The Jabberwocky for a high school poetry recitation,) we went to see it.  The actual fleshing out of the story was somewhat hazy and didn’t mesh well with the image of wonderland that I always had.

But the backstory that Tim Burton developed was brilliant.  In his version, Alice is nineteen and about to be married to a count of some sort with digestive problems out of expectation on her mother’s behalf.  But Alice is different, dreamy, and nonconformist, and as he proposes to her, she runs away and goes down the rabbit hole to revisit the characters in the dreams she’s been having since she was little.  In the end, she herself slays the Jabberwocky and, in reality, goes on to reject her marriage proposal and help run her father’s company of trade with China instead.

What I like most about this movie is that it has female characters in almost all of the lead roles and that Alice’s drive is the engine of the women.  And, in the end, she rejects her mother’s expectations of her, turns down the proposal, and goes on to sail to China with the company, which isn’t a message that we get a lot these days in movies, as XKCD showed some time ago.   The movie itself wasn’t anything spectacular, but the fact that Alice was donning the armor instead of a guy knight was so refreshing that I would give the movie a 6/10 just based on that. I love that they left the ending ambiguous. Maybe Alice goes on to head the company, but maybe she also finds love in the process.

Unfortunately, women often get this message to be funneled into domesticity in the real world too. Either you are a homemaker- the stereotypical mom-or you are a sex goddess, or you are a corporate bitch.  There’s nothing in between and it’s impossible for women to take on multiple roles.  I forget where, but I read last week that in this season’s Dancing with the Stars, Kate Gosselin is introduced as “the mom” and Pamela Anderson as the “sex symbol,” even though Pamela Anderson hasn’t been a sex symbol in a long time, and Kate Gosselin is no longer really a mom in her public life.  It’s impossible to have the audience believe a more multi-dimensional approach to either woman.

The thing that I am most upset about is this recent article about a Harvard grad who wrote her thesis on the mortgage crisis in America  by articulately and systematically gathering data from Wall Street firms(which  you can read here if you’re a nerd like me).

We tracked down Barnett-Hart, a 24-year-old financial analyst at a large New York investment bank. She met us for coffee last week to discuss her thesis, “The Story of the CDO Market Meltdown: An Empirical Analysis.” Handed in a year ago this week at the depths of the market collapse, the paper was awarded summa cum laude and won virtually every thesis honor, including the Harvard Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarly work.

“It was a classic example of the innocent going to Wall Street and asking the right questions,” said Mr. Lewis, who in his 20s wrote “Liar’s Poker,” considered a defining book on Wall Street culture. “Her thesis shows there were ways to discover things that everyone should have wanted to know. That it took a 22-year-old Harvard student to find them out is just outrageous.”

Having written, painfully, an undergrad thesis that was nowhere nearly as groundbreaking as hers, as well, with a million things going on around me and not even being at Harvard, I have to give this girl major props. I just wanted to get mine done, even though it was in a topic I was immensely passionate about.  She has enormous balls in creating this thing and putting herself out there in the male world of economics and finance. Sure, it may not be 100% groundbreaking when compared to financial journalists, but, for an undegrad thesis, it absolutely is.

And what kind of buzz is going on around her in the econ blogosphere?

Sure, these were in the minority.  But, as someone working in the same industry as her, it makes me want to bash skulls.  So does this. How do we encourage women to go into non women-intensive fields like engineering, math, economics, etc?  By not having men like this be part of our work culture.  Why can’t Barnett-Hart be judged solely on her economic merit?  What if she were, or masqueraded as, a man?   Can’t she be ostensibly pretty and smart, too? Or does she now fit into one category of Econ Hottie, unable to be anything else?  Maybe that’s why she doesn’t go by Anne Katherine, but A.K.

How can we get to a point where all women experience the same choices as men (who almost never have to worry whether they can take a job that allows them to be a good father and be flexible around their kids’ schedule), and not to be boxed into one role?  When we face the same choices as Alice and are not ostracized for them, we’ll be as good as in the movie.  For now, we just have a bunch of these blog posts (including mine), and Tim Burton’s script.

Working on an intense post which culminates in a dead typhoid parasite living in my arm.  In the meantime, here’s my reaction to watching New Moon this weekend.  Is there anyone who can tolerate the angst?  Here’s an interesting article from last year on why teenage girls do tolerate the angst, and I think it’s pretty spot-on.  By the way, one of my crushes at 13 was Alexander Hamilton. The foxiest of the Federalists.