Food and Sex

Shorter George Will: everyone who is uptight about the first should really be uptight about the second instead. Oh, and people didn't have sex outside of marriage in the fifties.

I get paid to read this shit!

Oh, and also, I know it's a few weeks late, but PETA can kiss my vegetable-loving ass for this. For those looking for non-sexist food porn, I suggest Nigella Lawson.

This post may or may not signal a return to regular blogging.

My elevator speech

My objective, with this site, with my career, is to help advocacy organizations use communications as a strategy to leverage change.

Food is...

It will come as no surprise that my first post here in forever is about food. I ran across this at the Ethicurian. The Accidental Hedonist outlines her food beliefs, which match up pretty closely with my own:

1. Food is Life - This is pretty straightforward. You need to eat to live.
2. Food is Cultural - What you eat represents who you are as well as the environment in which you inhabit.
3. Food is Class - What you eat is defined by the allotment of resources available to you.
4. Food is Politics - The food choices you make within your resources give credibility to the producers and suppliers of said food.

I'd probably add "Food is Medicine" based on my own personal experiences recently, but this list pretty much saves me from having to think of my own. That and Michael Pollan's "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants" make up my elevator speech on the topic.

"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless." -Salman Rushdie

I'll show you my danelions if you show me your industry credentials

Okay, kids, we're going to talk about breast feeding versus bottle feeding again in framing class today, so no giggling (you know who you are).

I was looking over someone's shoulder on the Metro today and reading an article titled "HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads", which reads like a continuation of the administration's meddling in public health:

In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.

-snip-

The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity.

According to the article, the formula industry didn't block the ads "but helped shape their content." Um, huh? Isn't there a slight conflict of interest here? I'd say that this would be like the candy industry giving input on diabetes prevention, but baby formula isn't harmful- it's just slightly less beneficial than the real thing. As for "shaping" the content:

But the campaign HHS used did not simply drop the disputed statistics in the draft ads. The initial idea was to startle women with images starkly warning that babies could become ill. Instead, the final ads cited how breast-feeding benefits babies -- an approach that the ad company hired by HHS had advised would be ineffective. The department also pulled back on several related promotional efforts.

I think it's obvious why this pissed me off. I was all ready to slam the ad changes themselves, from a framing standpoint, until I went back and looked at gain/loss framing theory, which basically says that loss-framed messages ("If you don't do this your child will get sick") work best for screening behaviors, but if you want people to take preventatives steps, gain messages work better ("If you do this, your child will stay healthy"). Breast feeding is a preventative measure, so positive messages make sense, and the new ads should have worked better, right? But apparently they were entirely ineffective: "The milder campaign HHS eventually used had no discernible impact on the nation's breast-feeding rate, which lags behind the rate in many European countries."

The more I look at the revised ad, the cleverer it gets. But it's so subtle, no wonder it didn't work. If I were paging through a magazine, even a parenting magazine, I would have glossed right over it, thinking it could be an ad for fabric softner or something.

I heart George Lakoff

With Elyzabethe over at YellowIsTheColor writing all about The Political Brain so much lately, I thought it might be a good time to blog about the Rockridge Institute, which I've recently re-discovered. Anyone who talks to me for more than two minutes about communications or policy knows my affection for George Lakoff. Rockridge is a think thank founded on his work on cognitive linguistics and progressive policy. It's goal is the same as Drew Westen's: reframe the public debate.

The Rockridge Fellows put out some great essays on all sorts of topics, but what really got me drooling was their interactive Rockridge Nation. Framing examples galore! What I especially liked, because it's an issue near and dear to my heart, is the ongoing dicussion about the fallacy of a left/right linear political spectrum, and why moving towards the "center" isn't a good political strategy:

In reality, there are basic progressive and conservative worldviews, and many people have both but apply them to different issue areas. The people "in the middle" actually have many different combinations of progressive and conservative thought. There is no ideology of the middle, no unified worldview that everyone in the "center" agrees on, and no linear ordering of the issues. Something much more interesting is going on.

Another post that might be of interest to those of you throwing around sterotypes about right wing nutjobs and leftist radicals is this one, Too Far Left to be Progressive?"

Who says liberals don't have a sense of humor?

How many global warming videos start with "In 1975, two boxes of wine were consumed, one condom broke, and nine months later, a legend was born..."



It's a short film (in five YouTube sized acts) calling for increased fuel efficiency standards. Unfortunately, it kind of falls flat on the call to action part--
I don't see why it needed to be a half hour. I think it works better as an inspirational video for environmentalists trying to get out their message across, since it basically just follows one guy trying to make what, in the end, is your typical celebrity-faces-the-camera-and-tells-us-to-call-congress PSA. I needed to get people's attention, so I...made a PSA? It started out so promising in Episode 1, with Ben Affleck running around in a corn suit and Joshua Jackson threatening to break a baby's arm if Congress doesn't listen...

I agree with this guy that all the celebrities are unnecessary. It would have been funny anyway, and it doesn't help combat the environmentalists-as-liberal-blue-state-Hollywood-elites frame. So I guess my point is, if you've got five minutes, watch the first clip. If you've got fifteen, watch this. I have gots to get myself to a TED conference someday. It makes the thought of going to work tomorrow insanely boring.

Busy signal...

Today I joined not one, but two social networking sites--Pownce and Ravelry. I'm geeking out, even though I'm on dial-up, and am probably going to end up spending the entire weekend adding my knitting projects to Ravelry. Oh, I didn't mention is was a knitting network? Yeah, I meant it when I said I was geeking out. But not before I finish Harry Potter...

I didn't want to read this...but I did.

Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory

Okay, it was appropriately filed under "fashion" but is was on the front of the WaPo website. I cringed. Then I clicked on it:

There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.

The article goes on to talk about how sartorially conservative and masculine the Hill is, and Hilary's uncomfortable relationship with fashion as the First Lady, and her adoption of the black pantsuit as her uniform. Until now, apparently. There was the requisite "really, this isn't just about women, we swear" observation:

It's tempting to say that the cleavage stirs the same kind of discomfort that might be churned up after spotting Rudy Giuliani with his shirt unbuttoned just a smidge too far. No one wants to see that. But really, it was more like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!

And the requisite "oh, America, we're so prudish" observation:

Not so long ago, Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary, spoke before the House of Commons showing far more cleavage than Clinton. If Clinton's was a teasing display, then Smith's was a full-fledged come-on. But somehow it wasn't as unnerving. Perhaps that's because Smith's cleavage seemed to be presented so forthrightly. Smith's fitted jacket and her dramatic necklace combined to draw the eye directly to her bosom. There they were . . . all part of a bold, confident style package.

And then ends with:

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding -- being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable. And in matters of style, Clinton is as noncommittal as ever.

Huh? Cleavage equals confidence? Cleavage equal provocation? Confidence equals provocation? I don't really know what to take from this. I mean, I like the part about being confident that sexuality will not overshadow her intelligence, etc. We can bring up the Edwards $400 haircut here, but remember, Hillary had her own overpriced haircut scandal back when she was in the White House. And those articles focus on the price, not what Edward's haircut says about him. Obviously, Hillary shouldn't have to dress like a nun to be president. But this author seems to be setting up a damned-if-you-do, dammed-if-you-don't dichotomy for her: show too much cleavage, we're going to be uncomfortable; show too little cleavage, we're going to think she's not confident enough to lead.

Excuse me while I go Google "Margaret Thatcher" and "cleavage."

Mad Men

Any of you other comm geeks going to watch this? Hell, I'll watch it just for the costumes, but maybe we should start a drinking game--take a shot every time someone mentions Edward Bernays or Ivy Lee? No?

"If you use a frying pan to hit someone over the head, you don't call that cooking."

I don't know how this hasn't made the evening news. Then again, I had to hear about it from the Yarn Harlot, so maybe it has been. I'll let Stephanie explain:

Tory Bowen says that she was raped. Actually, Tory Bowen, was pre-law at college when she had a drink at a bar that was the last thing she remembers until she woke up in a strangers bed, with a stranger, who was doing something she hadn't consented to. (That would be the rape.) She went to the emergency room, was treated and had a rape kit done and called the police. The police charged her attacker with 1st degree sexual assault and a trial was set. That's where things got weird.

The judge decided that many words around this issue were too inflammatory. That they made the defendant sound guilty, and that they implied a crime...."Rape" is a legal conclusion- he thought. We cannot call it rape until a jury says it's rape. (Hear that women? You can't know something is rape until there's a vote. I suppose being there doesn't grant you any special insight.) So he banned some words. Nobody in his courtroom may use these words, when it comes to this trial:

Rape.
Sexual Assault.
Victim.
Attacker.
Assailant.
Forced.

No one can say that the hospital did a "Rape Kit" and they can't say that at the hospital she was treated by the "Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner." In fact, inside the courtroom no one can even say that the defendant is charged with 1st Degree Sexual Assault.

So what, if anything, was allowed?

Ms. Bowen is allowed to say that she and the defendant had "sex" or "intercourse", which she complains (and very rightly so) implies the exact opposite to a jury, that the acts were consensual and non-traumatic.

The whole thing got laid out from a legal perspective by Dahlia Lithwick in a June 20 article in Slate:

Nebraska law offers judges broad discretion to ban evidence or language that present the danger of "unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues or misleading the jury." And it's not unheard-of for judges to keep certain words out of a courtroom. Words like victim have been increasingly kept out of trials, since they tend to imply that a crime was committed. And as Safi's lawyer, Clarence Mock, explains, the word rape is just as loaded. "It's a legal conclusion for a witness to say, 'I was raped' or 'sexually assaulted.' … That's for a jury to decide." His concern is that the word rape so inflames jurors that they decide a case emotionally and not rationally.

The real question for Judge Cheuvront, then, is whether embedded in the word sex is another "legal conclusion"—that the intercourse was consensual. And it's hard to conclude otherwise. Go ahead, use the word sex in a sentence. Asking a complaining witness to scrub the word rape or assault from her testimony is one thing. Asking that she imply that she agreed to what her alleged assailant was doing to her is something else entirely. To put it another way: If the complaining witness in a rape trial has to describe herself as having had "intercourse" with the defendant, should the complaining witness in a mugging be forced to testify that he was merely giving his attacker a loan?

Since the jury wasn't told particular words words were banned, the first trial, unsurprisingly, ended in a mistrial. Stephanie again:

Can you imagine being a juror at a trial where a man is accused of not even sexual assault, but just sex? A trial where the victim (oh, crap. Forgot we can't call her that.) the "complainant" can't say she was forced? A trial where the victim never accuses her attacker of rape? If you were a juror, how seriously would you take a woman who testified about what happened to her for 13 hours without ever using a single word that implied that she thought what had happened to her was a crime?

Before the second trial, and to prove a point, Tory's lawyer tried to get "sex" and "intercourse" banned from the court as well. To which I say: heh. Dahlia did too:

The judge denied that motion, evidently on the theory that there would be no words left to describe the sex act at all. The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they'll just have to read the witnesses' eyebrows to sort out the difference.

Apparently, the second trial has been declared a mistrial by the judge, becaues he fears all the media attention will get in the way of jurors unbiased opinions. Seriously.

A reader of Stephanie's posts in the comments about a psychiatrist in Canda who studying how language events, especially those implying violence against women aren't just semantics, but create reality, a

"real-live reality where perpetrators don't go to jail for crimes they've committed because the language that's used has consent embedded in it. This is absolutely the most egregious example of this that I've heard...One of the examples Allan Wade gives is the problem in calling something 'sexual' that isn't 'sexual' at all. He says, 'If you use a frying pan to hit someone over the head, you don't call that cooking.'"

Okay, ladies of the blogosphere, let that be our rallying cry. Let's let out a collective "WTF??" loud enough for everyone to hear.

Markets are conversations and...

Okay, by now you know the Cluetrain Manifesto: Markets are conversations.

Today at work I stumbled across a great definition of marketing, courtesy of Seth Godin: "Marketing is an act that starts a conversation."

Real Food, Fake Entertainment, and Framing a Movement

The Ethicurean's Dairy Queen had a post today titled Truthiness and Real Food: Hellman's, get your paws off our framing! The title alone referenced, Steven Colbert, food and framing, so I had to read it. Turns out it touches on a lot more of the issues we've been covering this year in class. Hellman's Mayonnaise is starting a "real food" web campaign, and was trying to get bloggers to join in. I can't quite figure out what it all entailed, but apparently Unilever attempted to pitch an integrated marketing show (ie, "infotainment") to the Food Network, which turned them down, so they've now developed a "In Search of Real Food" website on Yahoo where people can share recipes and thoughts on "real", local, and fresh foods--and Hellman's mayonnaise.

What’s keeping me up so late with annoyance is the insidious way that Hellman’s/Best Foods is trying to co-opt the idea of real food by velcro-ing their manufactured "foodlike product" to it in this smarmy marketing campaign. It’s factory food: sterile, shelf-stable, and the "natural flavors" it mostly tastes like come from another factory, one that makes chemical compounds that mimic real food.

To emphasize her point, she posts the ingredients list for Hellman's. The fifth ingredient is high fructose corn syrup, and it gets worse from there. Now, I'm no snob. I think there's a place for Hellman's mayo, and I'm pretty sure one of those places is in my refrigerator. But "real" is never going to be an adjective I'm going to use to describe mayonnaise. Just like no one has ever described McDonald's and "good food." I've heard it described as many things--fast, convenient, addictive--but no one's ever going to confuse it with home cooking. It's a stand-in for when we're too tired/busy/poor for the real thing.

I refuse to link to the actual site, but I think it's worth a laugh to look at the original press release on PR Newswire.

You know you've made it when your frame is being co-oped by Unilever. I think "real food" is a good frame--the folks over at Farm Aid call it The Good Food Movement. Simple and effective. I've been struggling with framing this issue for a few months now-"organic" and "local" don't encompass it all; "slow food" is elitist. And although "sustainable" works as a concept, it's not a word that works with the public. I never even bothered with epicurean or agrarian...

And now for something completely different.

I'll admit the new Disney cartoon Ratatouille looked cute, but with the combination of being broke and still feeling well enough to look at food, I figured I'd pass on it for awhile. But according to Eating Liberally, I really should go see this movie. Its message?

Yes, even a lowly rodent can learn to cook, but just like the rest of us, his culinary endeavors will succeed or fail depending on the quality and freshness of his ingredients. Am I the only one who finds this message pretty radical
for an animated film supposedly aimed at kids? And it seems all the more astonishing when you contrast it to Pixar parent Disney’s Shrek the Third, with its endless tie-ins to processed foods that target toddlers’ taste buds.

Apparently the villain in the movie sells junk food. How awesome is that?

Now, I'm not naive enough to believe kids are going to trade in their popcorn for carrot sticks at the movie theater, especially after the Associated Press recently reviewed 57 programs aimed at encouraging kids to eat healthier, and found that all but four of them were complete failures. Apparently, one program flat-out bribed kids to eat healthy. To absolutely no one's suprise but the idiot who thought up that program, the kids stopped eating healthy when they stopped getting rewarded for it. I'd be willing to put money down that at least one of the four that didn't fail were grounded in some strong social marketing research.

I'm 28, for the record.

I had forgotten until today that I had posted my picture on The Age Project, in order to prove my suspicion that most people think I look younger than I am. Well, I was disproven. The average guess was 27, which is close enough. For those friends curious enough, the photo I posted is the same one I'm using for my Facebook profile.

Framing food

I came across two great posts this week that brought together food, feminism, and healthy choices. Freelance writer Jennifer Jeffrey wrote a pair of posts entitled The Feminist In My Kitchen. The question: is the sustainable food movement women-friendly?

I wonder if our little blogsphere sits here debating the provenance of our nectarines while the larger community of women – most of whom have no time for surfing blogs, let alone writing one – head out to work feeling more guilty than ever before, as the mountain of expectations and unattainable standards grows ever higher.

Can we call ourselves feminists (simply defined here as people who desire the equality of all women, everywhere) and still suggest that an ideal dinner consists of handmade ravioli and slow-simmered marinara from vine-ripened, hand-picked tomatoes and a salad composed of vegetables that (let’s be honest) are Not Available at Safeway?

By pointing out that convenience has been a friend to the working women, she could have easily turned this into one of the many 'local food is elitist' essays that seem to have sprung up lately. But she doesn't. In a second post:

The System is Broken. It’s not the fault of the farmer’s market that I feel overstressed. Rather, the game itself is rigged. The workforce rewards people who are willing to put in ridiculous hours and disregard personal health and long-term wellbeing. It does not reward self-nourishment or play or rest.

Over on the Cleaner Plate Club, a post titled "You Shouldn't Have to Be A Hero to Eat Well" picks up the conversation. Points out that personal health and diet matters are always framed as ones of individual responsibility, despite the fact that the prime factor in what people buy is what's available. She wonders why we force people to go to extraordinary lengths to eat healthy, why it isn't the default choice? Why isn't healthy convenient?

Think about what people say when someone’s lost weight: “how did you DO it???” Think about how people frame their relationships with food: like doing battle with the enemy. Think about how people talk about someone who’s actually able to be healthy in this world: “She’s my hero." (or worse: they say “I hate her,” because she’s accomplished the seemingly impossible).

It shouldn’t take heroic efforts to the things that every doctor recommends — to eat right, and move more. If it does take heroic efforts, then something is really, really f%$@ed."

She points out examples of people trying to make healthy convenient--starting a farmers market at a hospital campus, fighting to change the farm bill and changing school lunches:

Whenever people talk about trying to make people healthier, trying to create healthier environments, they get accused of taking away choices. Or lifting all of the responsibility from parents and individuals. They get accused of…I don’t know. A kind of negativity and blame that doesn’t fly with most Americans.

They’re not trying to remove people’s choices. Rather, they’re trying to increase people’s choices — by improving people’s access to nutrient-rich options, where they might otherwise be greeted by only a fast-food world. They’re actually creating a better, richer, more colorful world, while they’re at it.

Inspiration

So I ran across a tribute to Paul Simon by the Library of Congress on PBS tonight. Now, I've finally gotten over my theater-degree habit of dissecting theatrical production values, but I think my pr/marketing/communications training has taken over. Let me explain.

First off, the whole concert consisted of beautiful interpretations of Paul Simon's songs, illustrating exactly why he was recieving the Gershwin Award for Popular Song. Yes, there were big name artists performing (The Muppets doing Feelin’ Groovy? Awesome!), but many of them weren't so famous--like Allison Krause singing Graceland. So the show was really well curated. But then they handed it off to an event coordinator to run the show. I respect event coordinators, but they are not directors. It was obvious the show was produced in DC, not in LA. Instead of a host, there was a disembodied voice-over. Then Bob Costas (huh?) introducing a video that is obviously destined for a Library of Congress museum exhibit on the Library's archives narrated (badly) by Tom Brokaw. Artists were unceremoniously shuffled on and off stage with no transitions and the backstage crew swarming around (Seriously--they almost pushed Paul over once). There were no reaction shots of Paul, so I didn’t even know he was there until they introduced him. There was, of course, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. (Oh, and Art Garfunkel) (Good. I was starting to feel sorry for him.) (Though its pretty obvious why Paul’s the famous one.) (Yes, they sang Bridge over Troubled Water).

The whole thing couldn't help but remind me a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald that was on PBS a few weeks ago. Like the Paul Simon tribute, the music was spectacular. Unlike the Paul Simon tribute, the whole production was impressive, interspersing musical performances with videos of Ella, reminisces from people like Qunicey Jones. The first part was a kind of chronology of Ella's career, starting with Little Yellow Basket, of course. Then there was a section that seemed to cover all the different facets of Ella’s voice. It was a tribute to her that they needed so many people’s voices to cover her range- the young ingénue, scatting with a jazz band, show tunes, the grande dame of popular song, etc. Anyhoo, my point was it was a well-designed show, not just a well-sung one.

Maybe I’ve been lingering on the arts specials so much lately because working in an office has set it in such stark relief. I'm secretly wondering, if I'm ever going to get to be creative again? I’ve always felt an affinity with artists--artisans, really--the ones who work long hours and only rarely get famous. Whose job it is to be creative. Even though I’m no longer passionate about theater like I was when I was younger, one of my fondest memories is still the feeling of being backstage. Someday I want to do it again, amateur-style. I do, however, still want to Write the Great American Novel. It’s gonna happen one day- but not yet. If I tried to go off and Be A Writer, I would fail miserably, every time I’ve tried to Be A Writer. I want it to grow out of my work, out of my life. Which really, blogging is good for. Hmm.

This post was a whole long longer and more emotional an hour ago...

First off: It's sad that I get better wireless reception in my backyard than in my apartment, right?

Sigh. I normally try to stay out of the quagmire that is the abortion debate, but as usually, elyzabethe wrote something insightful about feminist issues that I had to comment on. Actually, I had to comment on the framing war that was going on in the comments section between elyzabethe and another friend. Then I ended up emailing back and forth with her for awhile. Then someone at work mentioned how the "choice" frame is starting to lose ground, even though advocates don't want to admit it. I started scribbling notes, sighed, and thought, "well, I'm gonna have to blog about this."

Elyzabeth rants often against anti-choice organizations and legislation, as is her wont as a libertarian feminist. She’s particularly good at teasing out how anti-choice (A, if you’re reading this, bear with me, I’m referring to ‘anti-choice’ as more than just the abortion issue) rhetoric consciously or unconsciously portrays women as too ignorant or too flippant to make their own informed decisions, which is what this particular post was about. A friend on the other side of the political spectrum called her out on disrespectfully using "anti-choice" instead of "pro-life," and numerous points were made:

1. She wasn't trying to be disrespectful of anti-abortion advocates, but of anti-abortion advocates that show disrespect for feminist choices in general.
2. Using "anti-choice" instead of "pro-life" is an attempt to re-frame the debate, however much an uphill battle that may be, and thus was not disrespectful, per se.
3. "Framing just a strategic form of name-calling." That deserves to be on a t-shirt.

This led to me ranting over email to elyzabethe about framing. Yeah, in a way framing IS just strategic name-calling. But not if it's done well. And there is no such thing as an issue not being framed: if it's an issue, it's being framed. It's a common mistake for advocates: their terminology is neutral, while anything else is clearly wrong/misguided/mean.

Then, about two hours later, it led to me ranting over email to elyzabethe about abortion. My big pet peeve? Pro-life advocates' impression that we pro-choice people want women to have abortions. THAT'S ABSURD. WHY would anyone WANT women to go through such a difficult thing? It reminds me of the whole GLBT joke, "just one more and I get a toaster." Planned Parenthood doesn't earn points for every abortion it performs.

The framing problem for pro-choice advocates is that "choice" instead of implying "more than one option" has been positioned by the opposition as synonym for "selfish or uninformed." We're partly to blame for that, but that's neither here nor there. The question is now, can we take back our definition of the frame? Or do we have to take on the hard task of re-framing the debate again?

Up until now, I haven’t really paid much attention to the (Red) campaign. I mean, I think it’s a great thing, but it just seemed a little close to charity/white man saving Africa. But this week I got a hold of the Vanity Fair issue on Africa (guest edited by Bono!), and I came across a (Red) ad that just said “Meaning is the New Luxury” in black on a background of, wait for it, red. For any student of advertising and PR, this was basically like saying “Hi, blog about me.”

Because it’s true: we don’t buy products and services anymore because they work, we buy them because it makes us feel good about ourselves, our lifestyle. See: Persuaders, The. We know this. I just had never seen it spelled out so blatantly. It was kind of refreshing--no, really refreshing--after an entire magazine of tastefully-designed celebrity-endorsed socially-responsible product ads, including Kimora Lee Simmons for her own jewelry line, Natalie Maines and Terrance Howard for Gap(Red), David Beckham for Motorola(Red), and Eve for Mac Cosmetics... Totally unrelated, how did Jennifer Anniston’s people let her non-charity-related ad for bottled water appear in a magazine filthy with pictures of Brad Pitt talking politics with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in full Deep, Concerned Celebrity mode? Awkward.

Anyhoo. The next page declared “Be a good-looking Samaritan.” The page after that featured the (Red) manifesto, which I was all ready to read by this point:
Maybe this caught my eye because I spent most of yesterday afternoon researching social entrepreneurs: “(Red) is not a charity. It is simply a business model.” And now it hits me: it all goes back to transparency. Will I buy their products? Depends. I don’t like being a walking billboard for anything, so no to the Gap t-shirts. I would have bought a (Red) cellphone, though, if they’d been around when I renewed my contract.

As for the magazine itself, I was all ready to be critical about it, but it’s actually a really well-edited issue. I’d write more, but I’ve read Binyavanga Wainaina’s essay How to Write About Africa and it was so damn funny I’ll just demand you go read that instead.

"Good Food is Elitist" Frame Must Die

Time has a great special report on its website, called The Food Chains That Link Us All. I've only scanned it so far, but so far it's drool-worthy for a geek like me. The beginning of Mark Kurlansky's opening essay was awesome:

C.L.R James, the great Trinidadian essayist, once wrote of his favorite sport,"What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" The same question
should be asked of food. To write about food only as food misses the point, or
the many points, about the great universal human experience between birth and
death. Food is not just what we eat. It charts the ebbs and flows of economies,
reflects the changing patterns of trade and geopolitical alliances, and defines
our values,status and health—for better and worse. The famous dictum of the
early 19th century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "Tell me
what you eat and I will tell you who you are," should be expanded. Tell me
what you eat and I will tell you who you are, where you live, where you stand on political issues, who your neighbors are, how your economy functions, your country's history and foreign relations, and the state of the environment. By looking at food, the age we live in is better understood.

I was all set to stuff this in the overflowing "What I wish my thesis would have been" file, but then he got all patronizing...

Originally a movement to take control back from corporate industrial agriculture, these markets, serviced by local farmers trucking in their goods,are a most fascinating collusion of small-scale farming and wealthy consumers. There is almost no limit to the price such farmers can ask for their produce...

Okay...not once have a read an interview with a small farmer who didn't voluntarily limit the price they put on their heirloom tomatoes to make them relatively affordable. But then again, most of these farmers weren't selling in New York City (faux news trend alert: something happening in NYC does not a national trend make).

The wealthy, of course, reject industrial farming, which was always intended to mass produce for the poor (and yet has failed in its greatest goal: to end world hunger). To see just how much resistance to industrial agriculture there isamong the rich, travel to rural areas where wealthy urbanites have their vacation homes and watch them pay fees for the privilege of stooping in the field to harvest a crop.

"..of course..."? "...pay fees for the privilige of stooping in the field..."? Not that I disagree with the first sentence in that paragraph- I think it's a good point. But does he think the proponents of industrial agriculture are working class stiffs being put down by the man, that the rich aren't the people making money off industrial agriculture? Obviously, he hasn't seen the Environmental Working Group's Farm Subsidies Database.

And yet, industrial food is out of fashion. Today there is a global market for organic fruits and vegetables, free-range birds, oysters from microbeds.
Technology is in. Genetically modified food offers many opportunities, not the
least of which is crops that are so insect repellent they need no pesticides.
But—to the fury of some farmers—some of the same people who reject pesticides
and call for organic food are now calling for a ban on genetically modified
food. The argument, though a bit murky, is powerful. While there is no solid
proof of the evils of such food, why trust hi-tech food from the same
corporations that brought us industrial food?

Yeah, that's right. The whole food reform movement is just about "fashion." Not health, or the saftey of the next generation. How bourgeosie of us to reject industrial pesticides and fertilizers AND genetically modified crops. Seriously people, why is the precautionary principle so distained in this country? Perfectly acceptable in other modern countries (e.g., Canada), but lest people in California want to ban a chemical from children's toys until it can be proven safe, it's overreacting. "No solid proof of the evils"? How about no solid proof of the good?

Obviously, I get really passionate about this. On the whole, it's a good essay. It's just the tone that makes the caring about food so flippant, so unimportant. He should know better, considering he's made a career of writing good books about the impact of food on civilization. Because "to write about food only as food misses the point, or the many points, about the great universal human experience between birth and death"? Brilliant.

"Cows rise up!" Spokecow proclaims.

At noon on Monday, the Environmental Working Group launched a new farm subsidies database profiling the 358,070 people who've gotten over $34.75 billion in federal subsidies.
Twenty-four hours later, the database was already getting 7,000 hits per hour on the new database. Two days later, the website still took five minutes to load. Why all the interest? Well, why did Microsoft's Paul Allen get $30,687 in farm subsidies between 2003-2005?
Right here would be a great place for a pun about something smelling like manure, but I don't want to offend any cows, especially since they're organizing.

Frame: Revenge of the Industrial Food System...

DairyQueen has a hilarious post on The Ethicurean about the latest E. coli outbreak, which I hadn't heard of. She picked up on one of the frames I discussed in my thesis, the modernization frame:

Another day, another recall of ground beef possible tainted with E. coli 0157:H7, aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System. Actually, this is just an expanded recall, voluntary of course, because the USDA has no power to force the companies it regulates to recall their products. Kind of like being the parents of rebellious teenagers. You just hope you raised them right … so they don’t go out and kill people.

In outbreaks like this the modernization frame--aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System--works against reform for two reasons. Either they're proof of the need for even more industrialization:

As usual, this latest E. coli recall has brought out the proponents of irradiation. Those would be the parents that, having raised rotten teenagers, are fine with packing them off to adult jail once they go on their inevitable killing spree. Tough love, people.

or they are the lamentable, but unavoidable side effects of what's needed (supposedly) to feed the masses. Consult your doctor if you experience dizziness, nausea, a lack of appetite...

The really hilarious part of the post, however, is the transcript of DairyQueen's 'conversation' with the FDA's automated food safety question avatar, 'Karen'. I have to quote the whole damn thing:

Hi Karen. Is American beef safe to eat?

All beef is inspected for wholesomeness. Beef found in retail stores is either USDA inspected or inspected by state systems that have standards equal to the Federal government. Each steer and its internal organs are inspected for signs of disease. The Passed and Inspected by USDA seal insures the beef is wholesome and free from disease.

Then why is beef getting recalled for E. coli?

E. coli is short for Escherichia coli. It is a type of bacteria that normally live in the intestines of animals and humans. There are hundres of different kinds, or strains, of E. coli, some of which are harmful, but most of which are not. One strain, E. coli 0157:H7, produces a potent toxin, or poison, and can cause severe illness, kidney failure and even death.

Why is there shit in our meat?

This is a U.S. Government Web site. Our site is here to address the serious topic of food safety and to answer your food safety questions. Please type in a food safety question or exit this site.

Where did E. coli 0157:H7 come from?

E. coli is short for Escherichia coli. It is a type of bacteria that normally live in the intestines of animals and humans. There are hundres of different kinds, or strains, of E. coli, some of which are harmful, but most of which are not. One strain, E. coli 0157:H7, produces a potent toxin, or poison, and can cause severe illness, kidney failure and even death.

What is the USDA’s role in recalls?

A Virtual Representative (vRep) is an automated information source designed to display answers for questions you type about food safety, food inspection, food storage and preparation, food recalls, and many other topics. Please type a question.

Why can’t the USDA tell me where the recalled beef is being sold?

Beef is meat from cattle about 2 years old. A live steer weighs about 1,000 pounds and yields about 450 pounds of edible meat. There are at least 50 breeds of beef cattle, but fewer than 10 make up most cattle produced. Some major breeds are Angus, Hereford, Charolais, and Brahman.

Why is beef with E. coli only being recalled a month after it was sold?

E. coli is short for Escherichia coli. It is a type of bacteria that normally live in the intestines of animals and humans. There are hundres of different kinds, or strains, of E. coli, some of which are harmful, but most of which are not. One strain, E. coli 0157:H7, produces a potent toxin, or poison, and can cause severe illness, kidney failure and even death.

You’re not very helpful. Who created you?

We call our automated information source “Ask Karen”. This FSIS Virtual Representative can answer food safety questions.

Why am I surprised that the USDA is touting a totally useless, toothless automaton as its answer service?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s mission is to provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management. To learn more about USDA, go to www.usda.gov.

Damn, I bet 'Karen' gets lots of dates in Second Life.

The Op-Out Myth

I stumbled across the Columbia Journalism Review yesterday, and there's a lot of good stuff in the latest issue. An article titled The Op-Out Myth discusses the real trend of articles covering the faux trend of professional women turning their backs on the working world to become stay-at-home moms. The author makes a point that always seemed obvious to me when I read these "mommy war" articles: the women profiled are always upper-middle-class women with money in the bank and a well-paid spouse. How many moms does that actual describe?

The moms-go-home story keeps coming back, in part, because it’s based on some kernels of truth. Women do feel forced to choose between work and family. Women do face a sharp conflict between cultural expectations and economic realities. The workplace is still demonstrably more hostile to mothers than to fathers. Faced with the “choice” of feeling that they’ve failed to be either good mothers or good workers, many women wish they could—or worry that they should—abandon the struggle and stay home with the kids.

The problem is that the moms-go-home storyline presents all those issues as personal rather than public—and does so in misleading ways. The stories’ statistics are selective, their anecdotes about upper-echelon white women are misleading, and their “counterintuitive” narrative line parrots conventional ideas about gender roles. Thus they erase most American families’ real experiences and the resulting social policy needs from view.

Here’s why that matters: if journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then the folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution. If women are happily choosing to stay home with their babies, that’s a private decision. But it’s a public policy issue if most women (and men) need to work to support their families, and if the economy needs women’s skills to remain competitive. It’s a public policy issue if schools, jobs, and other American institutions are structured in ways that make it frustratingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, for parents to manage both their jobs and family responsibilities.

The article goes on for four more pages, which I admit I haven't read, but the above paragraphs sum up the important parts for me. A classic case of news media framing an issue as episodic rather than systemic.

New Food Writing

I meant to post on this about two weeks ago, but I got really sick, and am only now getting my appetite back. The Columbia Journalism Review featured an essay a few weeks ago on the new food writing:

In the past few years a raft of reporters and writers have stepped forward with him to answer those twinned queries in all their anthropologically thick complexity. Their work draws together issues of taste, ethics, and politics, bridging the gap between James Beard and Rachel Carson. Much of their writing has an activist tone: last September, The Nation brought together several environmentally conscious writers under the umbrella of a “Food Issue.” But mainstream newspapers, too, now know that their readers expect them to report on the political and ethical implications of food–and to track trends generated, in part, by the new food writers.

I had a lot more notes on this, but that pretty much sums it up. If I have anything to say about it, this kind of writing will take over, but it'll be interesting to see what the backlash is. I plan on looking up that Nation edition. The author of the essay mentions an article in The Economist critical of the local food movement, arguing that the switch to organic "would require several times as much land as currently cultivated. There wouldn't be must room left for the rain forest." There are so many things wrong with that statement, I can't even start. If asked, I will rant.

The essay makes a great overall point that the local food movement can't just be treated like "a trend that can just be tacked on to the American way of life, Kobe beef or a low-carb diet or, for that matter, food grown without pesticide. In fact, it's a radical reimaging of that way of life."

The Guardian UK's food section logo. I like it.

Foodies vs. Libertarians, Round Two

Round One wasn't really a fight, but whatever. Caught your attention, right? Elyzabethe posted about Montgomery County's trans fat ban, which inspired my post last week on the Guerrilla Nutrition Labels, which inspired her response.

Well, over on my new favorite website, Culinate, there is a review of a --I guess you could call it a debate--between food and agriculture writer Michael Pollen, and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Apparently, Mackey impressed the Berkeley crowd with his commitment to reforming the food system. I have no doubt he's genuine, either, but this article points out some of the facts he left out of his (seriously) PowerPoint presentation. What got me especially (no surprise to anyone who heard me ramble on about Spinach and e.coli last semester) was his classification of Earthbound Farm as a group of small organic farms banding together under one brand name, allowing him to say that 78% of Whole Foods produce comes from small farms. I call bullshit. I respect Earthbound, especially considering how they handled the unwarranted attention they got from the outbreak, and yes, if you look hard on its website, you find that

Earthbound Farm certified organic produce is grown on more than 34,000 acres by about 150 dedicated farmers, who use the same organic farming methods on the smallest farm (about 5 acres) as on the largest (about 680 acres).

But it never portrays itself as a collective of small, independent farms. At 680 acres, you have to be using industrial methods, albeit organic ones. It's Earthbound Farm, singular, not Farms, plural, a common mistake that even Culinate makes in its coverage. And Earthbound Farm is only one brand sold by Natural Selection Foods, "North America's leading supplier of specialty salads."

You say tomato, I say locally-grown heirloom variety tomato. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm getting hungry.

Feel free to abandon me...

It's 1:30 am, it's Friday night, and for some reason I come home from a party and I get online looking for social marketing sites. Am I in withdrawal from class? Whatever. I've discovered Deborah Schultz, a friend of Hugh's, and she's coined the term I've been looking for in all my digging on transparency, the long tail: "relationship marketing". She also started a del.icio.us account of related links, which I'll have to spend a good many hours exploring. Although her social networking map had one glaring error in that it is missing Facecrack. So on the issue of Web 2.0, I really don't know why I bother writing about it, since the five people reading this blog know more about it than I do. Besides, I need to get back to talking about framing, which is what this blog was supposed to be about.

Why yes, I was trying to get as many links as possible into this entry. I think I'm just giddy from having been able to finally hand out some business cards. Geektastic.

Who is Howard Dean's media trainer?

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Because that person deserves a pat on the back. Dean nailed his appearance on The Colbert Report last night. Okay, it wasn't Face the Nation, but I would argue that makes it even more impressive--it would have been so easy for Dean to just take the lines Colbert was feeding him, but he actually turned them around into key messages. I particularly liked when Colbert asked Dean if he thought the midterm elections were a referendum on the administration--Dean said yes, then Colbert asked if he thought the 2008 elections would be a referendum on the administration. The rhythm of the questions was exactly the same, basically set up for Dean to say "Yes" to the second question--easy answer, easy laugh--but instead Dean said the 2008 elections would show Democrats to have the better candidates. Small point, but hey, that's the major message pitfall of Democrats and Unitarians: defining ourselves as "not the other guy". Is it sad I got so excited about this? Considering studies show that Daily Show and Colbert Report viewers are more informed than Fox News viewers, I think not.

p.s. What is sad is that every time I tried typing "Colbert Report" I typed "Colber Repor" instead. This is what happens to your brain when it crashes after finishing a 45 page thesis.

Guerilla Nutrition

Considering Montgomery County’s recent passing of a trans fat ban I thought this post would be timely. I would have liked to see more education and debate before the ban, since we all have to take responsibility for our own choices about what to buy at the grocery store.

Guerrilla Nutrition Labels are part of a guerrilla art campaign by a Hunter College media arts student designed to raise awareness about what goes into processed foods. For those who want to join in, you’re invited to download and print off the labels yourself and do some culture jamming at your local supermarket.

Cross-posted from Provisions.

"You don't have to be a perfect parent..."

My new favorite commercials are the Ad Council's PSA for adoption. They're hilarious. I'm a huge proponent of adoption, partly because I have a couple of adopted cousins who have basically settled the 'nature or nuture' debate for me. They lack my dysfunctional DNA, but they've got the family sense of humor perfected.

Basically, the ads show parents being inept parents, with the tag line "You don't have to be a perfect parent...There are lots of kids who would love to put up with you." The one that's getting a lot of airplay right now is 'Phone', and I think the kid in that one is pitch-perfect. The first one in this series they launched was 'Gift', which I think was good-you get right away that the kids are adopted, but the situation is so "That's my family!" which is the point. The latest one is 'Hamster':

Building big things out of many small things...

I went to a really fascinating presentation last Friday by the Beehive Design Collective. I was a little wary at first that it would be an all white, Latin American studies crowd, especially since in the ten minutes preceding the presentation I had to listen to some teenage self-described anarchists debate for ten minutes over whether police are just workers following orders, or if force against them is justified because they are the enforcement arm of the fascist state. I’m sorry: you do not qualify as an anarchist if you’re enrolled in a four-year liberal arts college. Luckily, the words ‘proletariat’ or ‘bourgeoisie’ did not make an appearance, otherwise I would have had to leave. But I digress.

The Beehive describes their ‘visual lectures’ as giant comic book posters, but that doesn’t do them justice. Imagine the picture left blown up to about 6 feet wide by probably 25 feet tall, spanning 500 years, and you’ve got a rough idea. The symbolism and detail in their work reminded me of what stained glass windows must have represented in medieval churches. They were storytelling maps, which for someone majoring in advanced storytelling, was reaaaally cool.

The Beehive members giving the presentation (yes, they were all Caucasian) impressed me with their dedication to getting the facts right and not speaking for the people whose story their work portrays. They acknowledged that their job is to educate Americans about the effects our economic and international policies have on Latin America, not save Latin Americans. Besides emphasizing the environmental impact of these issues, this is the other reason why they use insects, not humans, as characters in their stories. Plus, it makes for some kickass visual metaphors.

The content in the pictures comes from traveling to Latin American and getting stories directly to people in Latin America. Scarily enough, this is why one scene in Plan Colombia shows military contractors attacking a village using chain saws, instead of the machine guns they had originally envisioned. The same collective attitude they brought to their work came through in their presentation. They had a very Socratic method style of asking the audience what they thought various pictures meant before telling us what was behind the symbolism. I also really appreciated that as much reverence as they (and I) have for old forms of knowledge, they also realize the possibilities of technology for networking and global activism.