For anyone who has ever played a cello, or knows someone who does. A rant against Pachelbel’s Canon by Rob Paravonian. Even if you never watch these things, check out this one. Awesome.

I’m feeling irreverent today. Here’s a mash-up for the Beatles’ Paperback Writer and The Monkeys’ Daydream I’m A Believer. Oh my ….

I think it’s getting heavy play today because I had some streaming problems the first time through. If it stutters too much, try again later.

While I generally avoid Digg, I do read the headlines via RSS. One came across this morning with this title: Stunning size 12 model branded “too fat” for TV, so I clicked through to see what the story was. It was a link to this Daily Mail (UK) piece about the “Make Me A Supermodel” television show and Jenn Hunter, who, at UK size 12 (US size 10), was deemed to chunky to be seen on the runway. From the article:

Judge Tandy Anderson, managing director of Select Model Management, criticised her for having “stocky” legs while supermodel Rachel Hunter, a fellow panellist, reprimanded her for saying she wanted to prove larger women could be successful models.

Swedish blonde Miss Berglund, 18, who made it to the final with her, was meanwhile praised for having a “sensational” body for modelling despite having a body mass index of 16.1.

It fell well below the minimum BMI of 18 for models taking part in Madrid Fashion Week in September, set after catwalk model Luisel Ramos dropped dead from self-starvation.

11 stone converts to 154 lbs American, a BMI of 22.7 at a height of 5′ 9″ tall. Assuming that MS. Berglund is also 5′9″, a 16.1 BMI would be about 110 lbs.

After reading the story and looking at the pictures (which I refuse to reproduce here - you can see them if you want from the Daily Mail link), I read through the Digg comments, a first for me in close to a year. The vast majority of (male) commenters expressed a strong preference for Ms. Hunter, some in crude terms. (The reason I try to avoid Digg comment threads.) At first I was pleased with this, since I battle my own body image problems and saw the results as vindication. But by the time I finished reading, I’d become very uneasy and felt a bit guilty for my reaction.

Yes, I was bothered by how the males felt free to rate these women and also by the idea that they had set themselves up for this by being on the TV show at all, but I’d like to focus on something different here. The tone of the article, as well as the comments, cast these two women’s appearances as a zero sum competition, with the “winner” determined by the observer. For one to be beautiful, the other must be ugly.

“Who is prettier/sexier than whom” is a game that women are cast into without thought of the person who resides in that body. It’s about allowing our self-worth to be determined by someone else’s opinion, and granting them the right to judge us by their own standards. Too fat, too thin, too angular or too round — all these things are value judgments which imply that the perception and reaction of the observer is what matters, not the health or happiness of the observed. Some of it is male evaluation of women, but we do it to each other, too.

Bodies come in all sizes, shapes and textures. Too often we internalize the judgments of others and place ourselves in competition with other women based on appearance. If she’s attractive, then I’m not. Some would interpret this competition as fighting for male attention; I think it’s more than that. We’ve set ourselves up in a binary world, with everything greater than or less than, with weight a common focus. As long as we can point to someone else and say “she’s fatter than me,” we can feel better about ourselves. That’s harmful to everyone involved.

So I’m upset when I see these type of competitions staged in the press. One woman’s thinness may be a sign of poor health, but this wasn’t about health. It was about beauty, and it encouraged readers to judge by what they see. Whichever way the majority decision falls, someone has to lose, based on their body shape. Judging a woman as lesser for being thin is just as bad as judging a woman for being fat. It’s not a competition.

I think that’s wrong, even when the results come out in my favor. My comfort with my own appearance isn’t influenced by your beauty anymore; I’ve tried to weed that type of competition out of my psyche. I am what I am, and so are you. Don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise.

Let’s hear it for criminals to the north.

RED DEER, Alta. (CP) — A Red Deer man has been jailed after an outraged burglar spotted massive amounts of child pornography on his computer and called police.

The burglar used a video camera he’d stolen from the residence to record the computer images, called police to tip them off, then left the camera and a note with the address on the steps of a church. That was enough probable cause to launch a raid.

Read the whole thing.

• Happy thing: leftover turkey and stuffing - and not having to cook today
• Happy thing: cranberry juice and 7-Up punch
• Happy thing: not having to leave the house on Black Friday
• Happy thing: my maroon Powell’s Books t-shirt
• Happy thing: snow on the mountains but not down here in the valley
• Happy thing: Gonzaga beat #2 ranked North Carolina (!) to play in the NIT Pre-season Tip Off finals tonight (they lost *sigh*)
• Happy thing: snowflake postage stamps
• Happy thing: pajama pants with Tinkerbelle and “Believe In Magic” on the them
• Happy thing: multi-colored Christmas lights
• Happy thing: puppy pictures from Julie - welcome to the family, Max!
• Happy thing: slippers with jingly bells on the toes

Flamingo socks.

(This item for those who don’t read much in the feminist blogs. Better late than never.)

Bush has given us a new asshat, and put him in charge of $283 million in annual family-planning grants which, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”

Dr. Eric Keroack, the new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, is also the medical director of A Woman’s Concern, a “crisis center” whose goal is to talk women out of abortions and into abstinence. And then there’s this:

From the Washington Post:

The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman’s Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts.

“A Woman’s Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness,” the group’s Web site says.

Think about that one for awhile.

Oh yeah, I’ve been demeaned. But not by access to contraception; by sanctimonious pharmacists who tried to shame me out of filling my prescriptions. And that was when I was able to pay for them or go somewhere else. This man will be in charge of services–services including patient education and counseling, breast and pelvic exams, pregnancy diagnosis and counseling, and screenings for cervical cancer, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV–for those who need them the most and can afford them the least. I guess poor women are supposed to “just say no” to loving relationships. “Pursuit of happiness” is only for those who can afford a dozen kids.

This appointment doesn’t require Senate confirmation. He’ll take office in less that two weeks.

More enlightening reading at Pandagon, Feministing, and Tennesseee Guerilla Women.

The Rev. Joel Hunter was recently elected president of the Christian Coalition of America, an organization founded in 1989 by Pat Robertson, but won’t be taking the helm as planned.

From the Southwest Florida Herald Tribune:

Hunter, who was scheduled to take over the socially conservative political group Jan. 1, said he had hoped to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.

“These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about,” Hunter said.

He resigned Tuesday during an organization board meeting. Hunter said he was not asked to leave.

“They pretty much said, ‘These issues are fine, but they’re not our issues, that’s not our base,’” Hunter said.

[snip]

“To tell you the truth, I feel like there are literally millions of evangelical Christians that don’t have a home right now,” Hunter said.

The board accepted his decision unanimously, claiming “differences in philosophy and vision.”

“Philosophy and vision” meaning they’d rather keep a a single-minded focus on fighting women’s reproductive freedom and gay marriage. Does “that’s not our base” mean “that’s not who gives us money?”

How can starving people on a degraded planet compare to that? Those might be “liberal” causes, something supported by those dangerous individuals on the Left, and of course they wouldn’t want to be associated with that. Keeping two women from exchanging commitment vows is obviously more critical than clean air and water, just as ensuring that every blastocyst is baptized is far more important than providing food and medical care to children already here. They’ve got to prioritize.

Now we all know where they stand.

The ultimate classic Thanksgiving Day tv episode. “With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!” from WKRP In Cincinnati.

CNN.com strikes again.

What’s with the patriarchal possessive? Isn’t the baby hers, too? Apparently her contribution here is negligible, being merely the delivery vehicle. What would have been wrong with “Supermodel Heidi Klum and Seal welcome a son?”

I swear, headline writers just don’t get it.