Body of Work--and Gumbo

First, a food report. I spent about half the weekend hanging out at Friend's house with him and his cat, and one of his self-appointed tasks for the weekend was to rack his beer, and a second was to make a vat of gumbo. He started that batch of beer (a stout, which I typically like to taste but of which I do not want a whole glass) on New Year's Day, which I got to observe, so, relatively uneventful though racking is, I was entertained to see the next step in the process. Turns out that racking basically involves moving the beer from one large container to another, leaving behind the dead yeast sludge. It also resulted in a pitcher of cloudy and not-quite-mellowed stout.

On Sunday, we'd taken a bunch of wild turkey legs that had already been cooked and started taking the meat off the bones. This is a long, tedious process, because there are lots of natty bits in wild turkey--tendons and the like. He had done a lot of it, and I pitched in at the end, resulting in a couple of pounds of meat. So yesterday he wanted to make a batch of gumbo, using said wild turkey. He started with onions, okra, carrots, and a turnip (he also had a red and a green bell pepper, but, knowing how I can't eat them, he sauteed them separately). Once that stuff had cooked a bit, he added a can of corn, two cans of black beans, a Mason jar of tomatos his mom had canned, a small can of tomato paste, and a small can of tomato sauce, as well as the turkey and some venison ring bologna. And? Some of that pitcher of stout, as we had concluded that this would be a good addition to the mix. It all simmered a bit, then he took out a panful for me and added the peppers to the larger batch. He simmered it a while longer while the brown rice cooked, and then we had at it while watching "Nobody's Fool."

Dear readers, that gumbo rocked the house AND the house next door. There was a serving or so of mine left, and while I would normally not take leftovers, I did not hesitate for a second in this instance. I'm getting all drooly again just thinking about it. I didn't eat it today (because tonight is the drink-good-beer-and-get-free-food night; I am in fact sitting in that bar as I type this), and I likely won't tomorrow, because I'm meeting a pastry school friend for dinner, and I expect the mellowing process to do nothing but further improve its taste. Oh my, was it good.

Okay, now for a change of subject.

I have Comcast cable, and, in case you've been living in a cave, said service enables you to watch some network television whenever you want. In a fit of bored rummaging around last week, I watched the first episode of the show featuring Carson from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy wherein he helps women love their bodies. Yeah, I know; kinda strange premise there, but I was actually kind of impressed by the show. The woman in question was what many would describe as "full-figured," but, as the show pointed out, that's partly because the relentless display of models distorts our individual and collective senses of women's bodies. In the early shots of this woman, it was clear that she believed what she was saying, i.e., she believed that she was fat, dumpy, and unattractive.

Carson basically (1) said no you're not unattractive, and most people would agree with me on that; (2) took her shopping, including for well-fitting foundation garments as well as for clothing; (3) took her to the spa, where she got a haircut and so on; (4) got her to pose naked for a photographer (the shots we saw were definitely naked but not particularly revealing; and (5) had her picture displayed on the side of a building so she could ask passersby if they thought she was sexy. The episode had started that way, too, where Carson had projected a picture of her in bra and panties, though headless, without her knowledge, and asked passersby what they thought. She was shocked by this, of course, but not least because people were talking about how attractive she is. She did not believe this.

In some ways, the most revealing bit was one that did not feature her at all. Carson was showing her three videos of headless women walking down the street, and asked the woman to talk about who was the most attractive, who was heavier, etc.--and it turned out they were all the same woman (even I hadn't seen that one coming right away, and it really was striking). I think that did more than anything to convince her that a lot of it really is how one presents oneself.

Yeah, I know we could critique the whole thing with regard to the male gaze, with regard to women as objects, blah, blah, blah, but I actually really liked it. It was short--a half-hour program--and it sure was to the point, and I really did like seeing this woman come to realize that she was and could be this attractive, confident woman, and that it didn't have a whole lot to do with her size. It was kinda touching, if you want to know (either that or I'm turning into a sap). Without heading into the realm of the empowerful or the realm of the "sports corset," it was great to see someone owning who she is, and liking it. It's gotta start there, I'd say.

Which brings me to my sister-in-law.

Okay, first let's talk about her tanning addiction. She continues to utilize a tanning bed, and in the summer she lays out in the sun. As a result, her skin is downright leathery. Although she is almost exactly ten years younger than I am, and I am decidedly fair-skinned, her skin looks significantly older than mine does. There is no possible way this is healthy.

Second, she has some kind of body dysmorphic disorder, IMHO. She doesn't really eat--as my dad observed, she pushes food around on the plate more than she actually eats. She does eat some, though, as she must, because she works out obsessively. She teaches spinning classes, I think, or some kind of class, and she also has a number of private training clients (though I don't know that she does stuff with them so much as coach them), and she is way too thin. She's very muscular, though, and she doesn't wear a lot of tight clothes (classic, that), so it's difficult to see just how thin she is unless you pay attention. Basically, a significant portion of her life is dedicated to working out, though a bunch of it is under the guise of working, so I think the dysfunctionality of it is invisible. She's not going to the gym to work out, she's going to earn money! If she worked out that much without getting paid for it, bells would ring and red flags would wave.

I realize that I've just spent most of this post discussing women's bodies--as if the media doesn't do enough of that. I know I want to draw a distinction between the media version and my version, but I'm not sure on what it could rest. We don't spend nearly as much time discussing men's bodies, that's for damn sure, and men's bodies aren't subject to the male gaze all the damned time, or evaluated in light of said gaze, and here I am jumping in. So I don't know. I don't think bodies are purely instrumental, and I don't think they'd become that way, even in a post-patriarchal world. We might broaden our ideas of attractive, we might focus less on the perfect, we might pay less attention to the sex of the bodies; I don't know. Those would probably all be steps in the right direction.

I guess, as with other things, I'm looking for a balance, between the instrumental and the decorative, perhaps. We all want to decorate ourselves, and all such decoration isn't merely a display of wealth or youth or sexual availability. At the same time, endless focus on appearance, on the surface, takes time and attention away from the content.

Eh; that's not what I wanted to say, but I realize that I'm not entirely sure that I had a point, so much as stories I wanted to tell. Guess you'll have to be happy with that today--with that and the gumbo.