If you’re familiar with basic feminist theories, or possess any amount of media criticism or literacy, you’ll see right through these ads: they transform people into objects by focusing singularly on mere body parts; portray feminine passivity as normative behaviour for women; convince you that Product X will get you the man; shame women into believing their bodies are inferior (and that the product can fix that); sell the notion that you CAN remake yourself into the perfect woman if only you buy this.

Partway through her speech (regretfully I didn’t take down the timestamp, but if I watch it again I’ll amend this post), Kilbourne shows an ad for flavoured douches that she remembers from her youth in the ’70s. The utter ridiculousness and garishness of the ad, seen today, seems more appropriate for The Onion than a teen mag, but I felt comfortable knowing that an ad like this wouldn’t fly in the year 2010 — that we had created a safe distance from the insanity of 1970.

That must have been a premature thought, however, since today I see Women’s Day magazine has run an ad for douche-hawker Summer’s Eve. In the year 2010.

(Click to enlarge.)

Maybe I shouldn’t expect so much — that really, advertisers will continue to use the same, 40-year-old messages to coerce women into accepting these harmful products, under the pretense that they’re healthy, and can have a transformative effect on one’s self-esteem or professional/personal life. They’re the same tropes, again and again and again.

Even women who should know better still perpetuate these ideas. Last year, an ayurvedic spa opened up inside my hot yoga studio. The spa owner set up a display case selling various facial creams, cleansers and cosmetics — and a line of vaginal washes and wipes for $20 a pop.

Now, yoga to me is interesting, because as much as yoga as an industry commercializes the female form (Lululemon selling stretchy pants to transform one’s ass into a globular marvel is another post altogether), yoga as a practice encourages people to accept their body and its limitations. You learn to be and accept how far you can stretch and for how long you can hold poses, but in an indirect way, yoga also teaches you to love your body. You stare at yourself in a mirror for 90 minutes, after all. And though yoga is dismissed as a pansy’s activity, I’ve seen hockey players (as in, Toronto Maple Leafs) and MMA fighters crumble in warrior pose long before I even began to trembled. So you learn you body has strength, more than you know. It’s quite empowering.

When a yoga studio teaches its students to love their bodies, but its spa partner sells douches, people like me get mad. After a few weeks of staring at the glass case, I finally brought it up with one of the studio’s employees. I explained the incongruity of selling self-acceptance and vaginal insecurity under the same roof, and that vaginas are actually self-cleaning, and that in the relatively uncommon event that one’s vagina needed an intervention, its owner is better off consulting a doctor, not an ayurvedic spa technician. She got quite offended, and huffed, “Well, if women want to buy them, they can. You don’t have to.” Of course! Because it’s a free market, baby!

The studio has since done away with the display case (though presumably the spa still sells them from behind closed doors), but the point is, even women who should and do know better sometimes fall into these traps. Which is why women’s magazines and hawkers of beauty (e.g. spas) have a responsibility not to encourage these myths, and yet they do.

Hat tip to dailykos.com and to @repo_mandy for this.

I love fruit. I also love fruit-picking, and I especially love it when both of these things are free. It’s my second year as a volunteer for Not Far From the Tree, a wonderful group that seeks to share the bounty of the many backyard fruit trees within downtown Toronto. My experience with them has shown me how expensive and narrow our produce choices are in a grocery store. To wit, most everything at a Metro, Sobeys or Loblaw comes from outside Canada, often even at the peak of our local produce season. Peaches and cream corn is in full swing now, and yet I’ve see “Product of U.S.A.” on more than one basket of ‘em.

Once you’ve tasted a cherry clafoutis made from cherries picked that same day locally (as in, from a backyard in the city’s east end), it’s hard to go back to buying tasteless, mushy, scarily huge black cherry imports from Argentina. You pay nothing for the former, and though they are smaller, they are vastly superior in taste to the latter, and pesticide-free to boot. Once I had that revelation, I started seeing the telltale signs of urban fruit trees (stained sidewalks, wasps and flies, that sweet smell) everywhere, and I couldn’t turn off my radar: Saskatoon berry bushes on Ryerson’s campus; a mulberry tree in the parking lot across from my yoga studio; the crabapple tree at the bus stop near my boyfriend’s work.

Both mulberries and saskatoon berries were in season in early July. My friend Chantal was kind enough to share a goldmine of a mulberry tree with me, and we picked everything our arms could reach. I ended up culling about 5 or 6 cups of berries, which I froze until I found a recipe that fit. Mulberries are sweet on their own, but lack that berry tartness or deep flavour that makes them good candidates for snacking on. They reportedly do well in baked things, or situations where you can add a bit of lemon juice to give it that bit of needed oomph.

Then, I remembered Smitten Kitchen’s wonderfully adaptable Boy Bait recipe — so named because of its reported effect on the guys. I wouldn’t know — I bake all kinds of fruity stuff during the summer, but my boyfriend seems to hate everything except for bananas and apples. But I love this cake something fierce, especially because of its dense, finely crumbed texture. Ontario freestone peaches are in season, and I would eat those all day for the rest of my life if someone would pay me, so why not? Peach and mulberry boy bait it is.

Recipe after the cut.

I’ve adapted Deb’s recipe just a smidge: added some almond flavour here, doubled or tripled the fruit there. Certain fruits could benefit from some lemon zest, others from cinnamon. But it is addictively good, just as she lays it out. I halved this (using two eggs) and filled a 12″ round pan nicely.

Peach-Mulberry Boy Bait
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Cook’s Country

2 cups plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
16 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 tsp pure almond extract (or vanilla, if you prefer)
1 cup milk or buttermilk, if you have it
2/3 cup diced peaches, about the same size as your berries (I left skin on because I’m lazy)
2/3 cup mulberries, fresh or frozen (do not defrost)
* You could also substitute with blueberries, raspberries, almost anything your little heart desires.

For the cake: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour 13 x 9 baking pan.

Whisk two cups flour, baking powder, and salt together in medium bowl. With electric mixer, beat butter and sugars on medium-high speed until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until just incorporated and scraping down bowl. Reduce speed to medium and beat in one-third of flour mixture until incorporated; beat in half of milk. Beat in half of remaining flour mixture, then remaining milk, and finally remaining flour mixture. Toss fruit with remaining one teaspoon flour (you do this so it won’t sink in the batter while it bakes). Using spatula, gently fold in fruit. Spread batter into prepared pan.

Bake in middle of oven until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool for 20 minutes if you’re going to slide it out of the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature. (Cake can be stored in airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.)

———-

With good reason, many berry pickers (like mushroom foragers) keep their best locations a well-guarded secret. Besides, part of the fun is tracking down your own spots, but here are some resources to get you prepared for next July:

• Unusual Fruits of North America
• Veg.ca — Foraging for wild berries in the city
• Now Toronto — City ripe for picking
• urbantoronto.com discussion on mulberry trees
• Toronto’s messy mulberry sidewalks

Writing a feminist column, I got the occasional irate reader. Most of them are nitpicky and miss the point, while others are straight up incomprehensible. Up until this point, my favourite one was a rambling, angsty Facebook message from a first-year male, white, university student from Calgary, who said there should be men’s studies if there are to be women’s studies, and then argued that feminism was actually a deep conspiracy to overthrow men because some feminists “would like more equality [than men], which is by no means equal.” Equality ≠ equal? Then, oblivious to the fact that humanism has already been invented (maybe that doesn’t come until second year philosophy?), he suggested we call feminism “humanism” and focus on men AND women. Brills!

Anyway, it was my favourite letter, until I received this one from Brett Lovett — or rather, from his email but penned by his “daughter” who wishes to shame me for my sinning ways. All bold-face emphasis is mine:

Subject: Feminist relationships

Your column is full of bad choices and bad advice. [Ed's note: I really liked this column.]

1. You’re living with your boyfriend outside of marriage is a sin against God and the Bible.
2. You’re a liar when you say Canadian society has left behind housewives and made breadwinner. This is a Bible Directed and God given pattern for society.
3. Your assertion that finding cuts to Pride Toronto is not a good thing. On the contrary homosexuality is evil according to my Bible and we’re instructed not even to think about what these people might practice.
4. Being pro-choice is evil, i mean killing unborn Canadian boys and girls. According to the Bible it is God who gives life. Abortionists will one day have to stand before God and give an account.
5. Over coming gender role is against God, and the Bible. He made male and female and commanded in the Bible not to mix up these roles.
6. Commitment and marriage are not ideas, but Commandments in the Holy Scripture.
7. You disagree with March for Life Protesters: Pro-life versus your pro-death policy—again evil and sin in God’s Bible.
8. A woman’s right over her body does not include killing her unborn child who is a distinct person separate from the mother not apart [sic] of the mother.

Your opinions are against God and God’s Word. Your battle is against Truth, the Bible, and the Lord. Jesus came that we may have life, Satan comes to kill, steal, and to destroy. Your need to repent from your sin and turn to Christ for salvation!

Esther Rose Lovett
Grade 6 student

Touche, Esther. In response, here is a list of things I believed in when I, too, was a 12-year-old girl in an evangelical Christian church, but no longer do:

1. That morality is dictated, not self-determined. The thing about religious folk is that they rely on someone else to give them a moral compass. It’s a difficult task, having to rationalize why you believe in the things you do, isn’t it?
2. That the Christian church can still function as a moral compass for society. Y’know, not just a group of shrill hand-wringers seeking to involve themselves in people’s lives despite Biblical teachings that tolerance and leading by example is how to teach the gospel, not shaming practices. Does the term moral relativism mean nothing anymore?
3. The circular logic of Christian morality: Because Christianity happens to espouse some moral concepts (don’t lie, cheat, steal), the church claims ownership of these, and uses it to stoke the argument that because society already uses these concepts, it must therefore continue to be that way. I should call this ‘theocratic creep.’ Oh, and no other religion (Islam, Judaism) or prevailing common sense can haz credit for telling people to be decent human beings. You’re either with us, or are totally anti-moral, abortionist savages.
4. Same thing as above, but replace “lie, cheat, steal” with “gender division of labour/domestic roles.” Oh, and other religions (Islam, namely) are evil for repressing women! But it’s cool if we do it, right?
5. That Christians are immune to Canadian legal definitions! Which is to say, by golly, it doesn’t matter if fetuses are not people under Canadian law, Christians are going to keep calling them distinct people! You can’t kill something that, until it’s about 7 or 8 months, can’t survive on its own, OK? Go make your own micro-nation in Alberta, already.

Canice Leung
Grade 6 feminist

P.S. I don’t feel bad mocking a 12-year-old girl because, as is probably not even necessary to point out, it’s her dad who wrote half of this (or maybe she’s one of these Jesus Camp types?).

When it came time before fourth year, my eligibility for the editorship of the Ryerson Review of Journalism was in the air because of my concurrent editor’s position at McClung’s. Until that point, I don’t think anyone had ever run a student publication in addition to running the RRJ masthead, because of the amount of work it involved. But she vouched for me, a tardy, narcoleptic girl who slouched in the back row, and for that I’m really thankful, because I’d likely be on a radically different career path and in a less stable job if it wasn’t for her seal of approval.

I last saw her at the National Magazine Awards last year, when she received a much-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award. Got a couple words in with her outside the bathroom, while I sat on a couch stuffing my face (so elegant!) with mini slider burgers. By that point she was bald-headed and walked with some difficulty, but she seemed genuinely thrilled to be there, not just to accept her own award, but to see that her past students (self included) and many colleagues had been nominated. When she accepted her award later that night, she read from her prepared speech too fast, and flapped her hands, and was self-deprecating as she accepted her award on behalf of all the copy editors and fact-checkers in the industry.

I don’t do much copy editing or fact-checking these days, but her little “Are you checking sure?” voice always comes to me instinctually. Her brilliant blog chronicling her treatment (her cancer reappeared around the same time my dad was going through his treatment) was immensely comforting and helpful to see how it was from a patient’s perspective. Maybe that’s why I got so teary when a friend called me when the news: my dad’s cancer is in remission, which makes it all the more difficult to understand the random nature of the disease… who it takes, who it spares.

You should watch this uncut, two-hour Q&A on showstudio.com with Lady Gaga.

At the 21:30 mark, Mario Testino asks: “Your looks are so extreme. Is this a reaction to something? Are you questioning or altering the status quo of women’s style?”

Yes, yes I am. I am a feminist.

I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women — the beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile; women are beautiful and ugly; we are soft spoken and loud — all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we’re taught to view women, and my work is both visually and musically a rejection of all of those things, but more importantly, a quest. And it’s exciting because all of the avant garde clothing and the lyric and the musical style, which was a certain time at once weird or odd or unattractive, uncomfortable, shocking… it’s now trendy. So perhaps we can make women’s rights trendy; make women’s rights, feminism, strength and security, and the power of the wisdom of the woman, let’s make that trendy.

… Mario always wants me to be naked in our photoshoots. We have a room of couture and I always end up naked.

I’m not much of a baker — I’m constantly fucking up even basic cookie recipes. Luckily for me, I have mastered the recipe for the only cookie that matters, a.k.a Pierre Hermes’ fleur de sel and chocolate sables from foodbeam. Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve picked up his macaronage expertise, but I digress.

I signed up to bake foodbeam’s so horribly fluffy s’more cupcakes for the second annual CupcakeCampTO, which happened yesterday. Aside from getting to stuff your face, the proceeds go to the Daily Bread Food Bank, so it’s win-win-win (except for this morning, when I struggled to button up my jeans). Most camp bakers tend to be professional ones, and I thought I’d be outmatched in technique and taste. But lo and behold, I won in the “Best Twist on a Classic” category, so there’s hope for my pathetic not-baker ass yet. Thanks judges!

For those that feel inclined to recreate that campfire goodness in their own kitchen, my adaptation of Franny’s recipe is after the jump: a sweet-salty graham cracker crust and cinnamon-scented, brown-sugary cake, piled high with Italian meringue and a just-right amount of gooey chocolate.

This recipe is weight-based. Since I have been converted to this more accurate, consistent method, I refuse to offer measurement alternatives but instead beseech you to buy a food scale:

S’more Cupcakes
Makes 12 regulars or 24 minis

Graham crust:
1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp fleur de sel

Mix everything together.
Spoon mixture into cupcake liners in pan — a heaping teaspoon for minis, a heaping tablespoon or more for regular-sized.
Press evenly into bottom of pan — I used a small rolling pin that resembles a drink muddler. A shot glass would be dandy too.

Cake batter:
160g flour
3/4 tsp fleur de sel
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp cinnamon
60g butter, at room temperature
85g light brown sugar
one egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
160g milk

Preheat oven to 170°C/340°F.
Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon in a bowl.
Cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in egg, until fully incorporated; then add the vanilla extract. Add flour mixture in three parts, each time alternating with the milk, until mixed.
Divide batter evenly among the paper cups (fill below the top of the pan — you want a relatively flat, slightly domed cake to allow for lots and lots of delicious fluff, right? For minis, I found an even tablespoon was the perfect amount). Bake for 20 minutes (13 for minis), or until a toothpick inserted into centre of the cupcakes comes out clean.
Cool on wire rack before frosting.

Italian meringue:
one egg white
75g caster sugar (though granulated worked fine for me as well)
2 tbsp water

Beat the egg white with a pinch of salt at low speed until it foam throughout. Gradually increase the speed to high, and beat to soft peaks. Turn the machine to slow as you complete the sugar syrup.
Bring the sugar and water to 115°C/240°F. (My burner maxed out at 200°F, but I had no problems with “cooking” the whites adequately.)
With the mixer at medium speed, pour the boiling syrup into the whites in a thin, steady stream. Increase the speed to high, and beat until the bowl is no longer hot (it should still feel slightly warm).
Pipe the meringue onto the cupcakes with a round tip. From here, you can keep the swirl, or smooth it into a neat dome with a spatula. Chill while you make the ganache.

Ganache coating:
150g double cream
150g dark chocolate

Bring cream to a boil on the stove.
Pour over chocolate in a big bowl and stir until smooth.
Dip cupcakes. I had to double-dip these suckers, because it was quite thin and the meringue was showing through.

A few notes about the coating: You’ll have extra ganache — use it as a dip, whip it into a frosting, or make truffles. In retrospect I would have used a ratio closer to 2:1 or even 3:1 of chocolate to cream. As delightful as it is to recreate the texture of melted chocolate, it was far too runny and sticky, and never hardened in the slightest. Next time, I even might try a tempered chocolate coating instead of a ganache dip — I think a crisp coating would be really nice.

In a test batch a few weeks ago, so as to be completely authentic, I tried adding wheat germ and bran to the recipe, in the proportions called for in graham flour. Do not do this. You end up with whole wheat muffins with meringue and chocolate.

Thanks again to Michelle and Monica for all the fun, and the sugar coma. Can’t wait to try another recipe for next year’s.

You’d think the title of this post is an exaggeration, but I’m not lying. Her name is Ellen Joyce Loo. See? She even has a Wikipedia page.

When I was nine, we were three — Jamie, Ellen and me. We shared one of those best friend necklace sets you could buy at Ardene’s; ours were puzzle pieces that fit together. If I’m not muddling memories, mine said “Best”; Jamie’s “friends”; Ellen’s “forever.” Not too long afterwards, Ellen moved to Hong Kong.

Of course you eventually forget these things; you forget about people. A few years back, my mom mentioned that Ellen was now a musician in Hong Kong, in a band called at17. Oh, that’s novel, I thought. Didn’t think much of it, because I don’t remember Ellen being particularly musical — Jamie was that stereotypical Asian kid whose parents enrolled her in Kiwanis competitions and made her practice four hours a day. Ellen and I were just tomboys with bowl cuts that fucked around playing Lego and Power Rangers, or whatever. I remember she had a raspy voice.

Then at dinner a few weeks ago, at some hole in the wall in Scarborough, I noticed her on the television screen. It was at17 in concert, but a karaoke version with her vocals blanked out. They were playing in a huge 10,000-person stadium on a round stage. Like friggin’ U2 — and even U2 don’t have their own karaoke disc.

That’s Ellen on the right, with her bandmate Eman Lam, via xooob.com

So apparently they are a big deal. I downloaded some stuff, and they don’t suck. They even write their own music, which, if you know anything about Hong Kong Cantopop, is an extreme rarity. The band’s Wikipedia page describes their music as folktronica; the term sent my sister and me spasmodic laughter, but it does seem oddly fitting. Lots of acoustic guitars; folky, harmony-heavy vocals; sometimes veer into bossa nova and jazz sometimes; layered with pop beats. Alas, they also throw in breathy Mandarin ballads, which is, like, basically a requirement to be a Chinese singer.

Here’s one of their songs. My grasp on emotive Cantonese words is weak, and when it’s set to music my comprehension is straight-up atrocious, so I don’t really know what they’re saying:

at17 – Never Been Kissed (Acoustic)

Oddly enough, Mark McKinnon, the Chinese correspondent for the Globe and Mail, wrote a feature on Beijing’s burgeoning music scene not too long ago. It’s funny — for the longest time Hong Kong and Chinese music was known for being completely homogenous, and now bands are playing SXSW.

Like most everything else in China, the music scene moves at hyper-speed. When I was in Hong Kong for the summer of 2005, I found only one indie music store — it was a little basement hole in Tsim Tsa Tsui, around the corner from the Star Ferry, that sold mostly metal, punk and rock CDs for ridiculous import prices. I knew of one metalcore band, King Lychee, which is made up of ex-pats and locals and has now been around so long they’re considered a grandaddy of Asia’s metal/hardcore scene. There were no straight-up hardcore bands.

When I visited Shanghai in December, my boyfriend and I looked into catching a show while we were there — most of the bands are in Beijing, but oh, there are a lot more of them now than there were in 2005. They have lots of hilarious Engrish names, such as “Unregenerate Blood.” (My doctor sister says in medical terms, this would mean they have a congenital blood disorder in which they lack plasma to produce blood, or something.)

Anyway, so it just goes to show how out of touch I really am with my second home, and how quickly the arts scene there has matured. Ten years ago, no Hong Kong musicians wrote or performed their own songs. They were gussied-up vocalists with photogenic looks and the physicality of lithe little fawns. Ellen seems like the kind of girl I’d still be friends with: her band is named after a Janis Ian song; she published a book of photography (shot with a Revue 35CC); her favourite actors are Cate Blanchett and Maggie Cheung (張曼玉); she covered “Hallelujah” in the style of Jeff Buckley:

Suggested reading/viewing:

• Sexy Beijing a.k.a. Anna-Sophie Loewenburg’s video essay on DIY culture at some Chinese outdoor rock fest in 2006
• Ranked No. 4 in Timeout Hong Kong’s top 20 HK musicians in 2008
• Another Time Out Q&A from February
• A bunch of videos on NME
• China Covered on at17’s gwai-lo influences — with lots of YouTube live performances
  ]]> http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/04/my-childhood-best-friend-the-cantopop-superstar/feed/ 2 http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/03/more-on-women-hockey/ http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/03/more-on-women-hockey/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:13:55 +0000 caniceleung http://blog.caniceleung.com/?p=180

  ‘Cause I’m beating this horse good and dead before I move onto another topic to rage about, I wrote about hockey again, this time for my Metro column:

  Both our hockey teams struck Olympic gold in Vancouver. The next day, hockey fever raged on for the NHL. But whither the women after the podium is packed away? Is there support for women’s hockey beyond the Games?

  I polled a few hockey-obsessed friends: The answer was no. For one, there’s no high-profile league; even if there were, the game lacks speed and finesse, one said. Another said women don’t excite the way pugilistic NHLers do. Wait, where did that fuzzy feeling go? I thought we were proud of our golden girls.

  Despite limited interest in the game itself, I love women’s hockey. The players push the envelope of what’s seen as acceptable for “the fairer sex.” Look no further than the constant chortling about lesbian players and coaches, and about Team Canada’s cigar-and-beer-fuelled celebration (which I maintain was a tongue-in-cheek jab at how male players celebrate) to understand its place in our social fabric.

  Female hockey players have always been a bit subversive. The sport began with men, and as a result, fans have come to see the boys’ version as the way it ought to be played. Now, women are adopting it, but with a style that’s all their own. I must be among a minority of those who would welcome that kind of play — if this wasn’t the case, a North American league like the NHL would exist by now.

  There are some examples of women in men’s hockey: Hayley Wickenheiser in European leagues; Manon Rheaume in NHL exhibition games — but one league said Wickenheiser shouldn’t play with men, while Rheaume was dismissed as a publicity stunt. Still, everyone rubbernecked — eager to see if these gals could overcome that unspoken notion that men always outclass women, and actually beat a guy.

  It’s a difficult pill to swallow, acknowledging that some spectators will never be inspired by women for their sheer athleticism; that she will always be good … but only for a girl.

  Add to that the talk that women’s hockey ought to be removed from the Olympics. Supporters cried foul, citing limited opportunities and underfunding, maintaining that it will just take time to establish the sport and develop a deep talent pool. I hope that’s the case. That would be golden.

  What I didn’t have room to add was an observation that when it comes to women’s sports — not just hockey — we tend to love it with our minds, in a cerebral, affirmative sort of way that says, ‘Yes! We support your right to play any game you please (but I don’t have to watch it, right?)’ while we will always love men’s sports more intensely, elementally, and we will feel that love with our hearts — from the very core to the tips of our raggedy-ass, blue and white Maple Leafs clown wigs. No one ever sits on the edge of their couch in double overtime, hands locked in prayer and brow furrowed, fervently in prayer to the hockey gods, waiting and hoping their bunch of breathless and exuberant women to hoist a silver-plated cup, y’know?

  I suppose you can’t force anyone to feel a pure sense of joy and passion for something if it doesn’t strike you that way, but I wonder how much of it is manufactured by a celebrity-driven, money-soaked, extremely powerful league and sponsor system, and how much is rooted in the athletes themselves and their willful determination. I don’t believe female players feel their love for their sport any less than male players do, nor that they are limited in passing on that sentiment to their audience. If you do, you should read Roy McGregor’s first hand account of the cigar-and-booze celebration, which made me love the women’s team all that much more.

  ]]> http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/03/more-on-women-hockey/feed/ 0 http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/03/okay-so-not-quite-fulfilling-my-new-years-resolution-to-blog-once-a-week/ http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/03/okay-so-not-quite-fulfilling-my-new-years-resolution-to-blog-once-a-week/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:38:57 +0000 caniceleung http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/03/okay-so-not-quite-fulfilling-my-new-years-resolution-to-blog-once-a-week/ At least not here. But I did, for This Magazine last week, on how hockey is, in its modern incarnation, an elitist and un-Canadian sport. Saying as much is apparently is a kind of controversial thing to do while the nation is stoking its Olympics-fuelled sense of patriotic pride and the men’s Team Canada hockey team is on their way to a gold medal win. Oh, well.

  Any sport that requires such a money sink is self-stratifying. It’s a terrible social phenomenon happening not just in amateur sports, but also in skyrocketing university tuition, extra fees required even in public school, laptops and other technological gadgets that are now virtually mandatory in academic and professional spheres. It also means at the highest level, the NHL, as in many other places in life, those that succeed are the ones that can afford it. It’s disheartening that all these opportunities are moving further and further out of reach of low-earning Canadians families.

  …

  When [hockey is] put on a cultural pedestal, it demands a fairness and accessibility that befits the morals of the country it represents. I think most Canadians believe we are a fair, free and equal country. Hockey, if it ever did represent that, doesn’t anymore.

  The spirit of a nation comes from its people, emblematic of their shared experience, ethnicity, history or culture. Our spirit is that we lack all these, and instead take polite pride in them all. We are not one dish, one national dress, one language, one music (I would defect if Anne Murray or Celine Dion were our national chanteuses). How, then, can Canada reduce its sport to just one?

  Read the whole thing here. I plan on elaborating a bit more on growing up in Hockeyville Richmond Hill later on this blog.

  ]]> http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/03/okay-so-not-quite-fulfilling-my-new-years-resolution-to-blog-once-a-week/feed/ 0 http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/02/quick-thought-about-the-new-love-covers/ http://blog.caniceleung.com/2010/02/quick-thought-about-the-new-love-covers/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:20:20 +0000 caniceleung http://blog.caniceleung.com/?p=164 Quick blog post this afternoon, as my CMS at work is down and thus have been handed a free extended lunch break.

  So, have you seen this?

  

  Well, this, 8x.

  Love Magazine (y’know, the one that put the outsized, in girth and personality, Beth Ditto on its cover for its first-ever issue) is putting eight naked supermodels on its “Fashion Icons” issue, due Feb. 8.

  On its own, it’s not much of a crime. Fashion editorials in which clothes are out of frame are pretty par for the course, so there’s not much to be offended by at this point. (Though I still contend there should be — replacing fashion’s primary concerns with aesthetics, form, art with that of the human body, etc. etc.)

  But then Katie Grand had to open her big fat yap and try to explain what was a mostly innocuous, kinda cool cover concept:

  “For this issue of LOVE, we took eight women who are generally acknowledged as the most beautiful in the world, got them to show off their bodies — widely regarded as the most perfect in the world — and photographed them all in exactly the same position for the cover,” LOVE’s editor-in-chief Katie Grand told VOGUE.COM. “We did this to show how much they differed physically from one another, which is why we also printed their measurements.” (via The Cut)

  Oh, okay. So you’re taking the eight most beautiful, genetically blessed women in the world, whose jobs are to fit sample size clothing (and thus, more or less have identical bodies), and comparing the minutiae of their forms? Yeah man, Kate Moss’s legs are stumps (or is that only because she’s a mere 5′ 6″ compared to her giantess peers?). Or maybe that youth is so fleeting that Moss — who was discovered TWENTY-TWO years ago — scarcely looks like a decade has passed, or that Naomi Campbell — who was discovered 25 years ago — looks better than my not-yet-24-year-old self. If you want to bring out the sociological hand-wringing, yeah, it’s problematic because readers could see this as some distorted signal that average resides somewhere between the two-inch difference in Moss’s and Lara Stone’s hip measurements.

  Mostly, though, it’s just proof that PR spin has either reached a new low, more proof that journalists can’t do PR, or both.

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