It Takes Two to Tango?

As a beginner tango dancer, I am fortunate enough to be instructed by a dance teacher who emphasizes the gender roles and partnership communicated by the dance form as well as he does the techniques. I recently stumbled upon a blog post about the "gender roles" in tango, which represents a more traditional view on the roles of each partner collaborating in a tango dance. This view is very much at odds with the feminist culture, and tends to evoke biased opinions on tango as a dance form. The blog suggests a very patriarchal stance of the art form, in which the male is solely responsible for the situation and "protects" the female, while the female "completely surrenders". This is not only misleading in terms of the concept behind tango, but may also result in erroneous practices of techniques, where the follower leans her weight on the leader and the leader's movements are robust and rigid. In reality, the follower, generally performed by women, balances on her own feet, sets boundaries between herself and the leader, and controls the pace of the dance. My instructor makes a very vivid analogy between leader-followership in tango and the magician and his female partner. The audiences sees that the magician "makes" the girl disappear and reappear, when the whole show is an illusion. She is the one who does all the work, and he gets all the credit. She willingly surrenders the applause to him while she gets the thing that she wants the most--beauty. This is precisely the beauty of tango. The leader leads with no more effort than standing on his two feet and walking, but the audience sees that he makes the dance happens. She, who can dance just as effortlessly without him, is made beautiful by altruistically dethroning herself.

Credits to: Daniel Trenner

Short Story Recommendation

Tenth of December is a collection of brilliant short stories by George Saunders, where characters are put in complicated situations in which their raw humanities are exposed. Perhaps the most proclaimed or controversial story from the whole collection is "Escape from Spiderhead", in which the protagonist Jeff, a prisoner, is used as a lab rat to test out chemicals that can generate some of the most powerful emotions like love. The story explore the question of whether there's a force more powerful than love within us, and the answer is positive: the protagonist's will to do no harm is stronger than his love for his own life, it transcends any individual personal bond. Saunders choose to tell the story from a former convict's point of view perhaps to show that the love and sense of responsibility for humanity, especially after one's witnessed his own potential for violence and evil, is more powerful than any emotions.

Read the story here and share your thoughts. 

The "Feminism" in "50 Shades of Grey"

Being in a liberal arts college that encourages diversity and open conversation, I found that the opinion on some subject matters are pretty one-sided. For example, almost all of us deem romance novels as trashy and useless. The chintzy colors of the covers signal a section of the bookstore that a member of the academia want to avoid. Romance novels are looked down upon because the subject matter is women-oriented, and it often reflects a traditional, sexist gender dynamic. But media scholar Janice Radway have done serious research on this literary genre that's devalued as not so serious. (p. 278, Croteau and Hoytes, Media/Society)

In her book "Reading the Romance", Radway explores the act of reading romance novels. She found that the readership of romance novels mostly consist of women who're small town housewives, who abide by the more traditional gender roles. For them reading romance novels is a way to take breaks from housework as well as their realities. These women are rooted for the fictional heroines emotionally and finds comfort when they live vicariously through characters who get all their emotional needs satisfied. Reading romance novels is therefore an expression of women's dissatisfaction of their role as mothers/wives. It is not entirely an outright protest against their roles as much as a literal as well as figurative escape.

Beau Sia and the Authenticity of Place

This poem by poet Beau Sia reminds me of the concept of "the authenticity of place" that my friend had introduced me to a while ago. She explained to me that information about a memory are stored in our brain in nodes that connect with each other, so a place where we went on a date with our significant other is always going to be a part of the memory associated with the relationship we have. A place is a witness of my relationship with my boyfriend, and it is also the witness of other people's relationships with their loved ones. By acknowledging our individual memories as part of the collective memory, we feel as if the memory was more real, more tangible, and we feel connected to the big picture.

Beau Sia came to my school a couple of weeks ago to perform, he was very humorous, talented and his works touched us with honesty and tenderness. One of my favorite things that he said during the performance was: "The power in a relationship does not come from dominance, it comes from connection."

Love is NOT Color Blind

http://cholakovv.com/en/blog/2450

This article discusses a topic that me and my fellow Asian women sometimes shy away from talking about. I've heard many comments along the lines of: "I've only dated white men." But that was usually quickly backed up with: "I went to a boarding high school in a town that was predominantly white." None of us are willing to surrender to the idea that we are part of a social phenomenon that's becoming progressively visible. Junot Diaz had concluded this phenomenon in a bitingly honest way: "We'd like to think that we just fall in love, when in fact, we often fall in love along the terms of the racial economy." His statement may cause different levels of discomfort, but I don't think his intention is to shame us. It's important to keep in mind that like those black children choosing between black dolls and white dolls, we weren't making convoluted calculations when choosing to who to fall in love with. The rule of attraction is cultivated within us before we are given the power to make decisions. The cultivation theory in media studies suggests that the longer one spends to watch TV, the more likely he/she is prone to believe the social reality portrayed in the television. It's worthy to note that the theory is not talking about any particular TV show, it is talking about the long term effect of being exposed to the TV world. For viewers like us growing up in a media environment where very few TV shows portray Asian men as masculine and desirable and most heros are men, it is not surprising how our personal taste is gradually altered. While it's very hard to change what kind of people we're attracted to, I suggest that we can start the change with watching TV shows that has a more realistic and tolerating standard of beauty, and we can also be more conscious when choosing TV shows for our kids.

We're All Cellmates in the Prison of Love

Here's a song worth contemplation by the band The Civil Wars, made up with duo partners Joy Williams and John Paul White. I absolutely love the lyrics to this song, in the second verse, Joy sings:

I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back, 

And then John follows:

The less I give, the more I get back. 

A lot of people relate to these two lines, and what I found interesting is that this is one instance where the "prisoners' dilemma", one of the most well-known game theories comes into play.

For those of you who are new to the prisoner's dilemma, I'm going to briefly explain it in the context of this song: Joy and John both love each other, but there's no way they would know if the other shares reciprocal emotions. Here's John's rationale: if him and Joy both confess their loves, they fall in love and live happily ever after; if he confesses his loves and gets rejected, he will suffer intense heartache and Joy will triumph in the tugging war of love; if neither of them confesses, they will part ways brooding over what could've been. Suppose that Joy has the exact same rationale, the two of them will eventually choose to stay silent in attempt to protect themselves even though confessing their loves for each other will make everyone better off. In other words, in such a situation one will always come to the conclusion that the more less one gives, the more one gets back.

I hope my off-the-topic analysis hasn't ruined the song for you yet. This is one of my favorite songs, enjoy!

It is More Than Kissing

I have to disagree with one of the commenters of this article: "Kissing is one of those things, the more you think about it, the less appealing it becomes." In my humble opinion, the more you think about a habitual, mundane practice, the more bizarre it seems. Think of any practice we perform everyday: brushing our teeth with a minuscule cleaning brush, and disposing our wastes on seats with an open hole, in the same room where we cleanse ourselves... This is one of those article that breaks a familiar subject down to tiny pieces and putting each of them under microscope lenses so that when you eventually zoom out to look at the whole picture, it's completely contorted. I could never look at kissing the same upon reading this article, but it doesn't mean I'm any less into it. What about you?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/11/231458850/what-humans-can-learn-from-a-simple-kiss

Interesting Piece about Human Sexuality

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/is-monogamy-unnatural3f/5516302#transcript 

 

Click "download audio" to listen to the piece or click "show transcript")

This is an interesting cross-cultural/species examination of human sexuality. Although I am a little critical about some of the points he made: 

First, although monogamy is a social construct, it is as deeply engrained in us as our nature as a species. Our nature as a species and our "nature" as a product of the society usually come hand in hand. My professor has told us to be very careful when using the term "human nature" for that reason: it's very hard to draw the lines between "human nature" and "cultural nature". So while saying it is our species' nature to be highly sexual, we should also keep in mind that abiding by social rules is also natural to us since it increases our chances of survival. It is perhaps equally as hard to disobey monogamy as it is to practice it. (the level of difficulty measured by different units.)

And I think the reason women tend to cling to a relationship while men tend to easily give it up is more or less a product of the patriarchy. I hope don't need to explain that one...

Lastly I think the idea that family is the most stable unit of society is changing now. People like to have certainty about their partners' sexual and emotional availability. But if that solidarity is wrecked we can always go out and find other people to sleep with. It'll just take more work. I would like to promote empathy among every sexually frustrated individual because the rest of the world is on the same boat as them, desperate of getting laid.  

The take home message should be get over yourself instead.