Freelancette

Photo courtesy of Fox Broadcasting Co., 2007, as seen on TV.com
I've always admired How I Met Your Mother's depiction of romantic relationships between twenty-something urban professionals. The newlyweds Marshall and Lily Eriksen (Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan) are goofy, tender, loving, easily amused by one another, and easily distracted from one another -- just like a real New York couple! They were already my favorite husband-wife team on TV, and last night's episode, which dealt with my current obsession (the job/kids conundrum), made me like them even more. A recap:

Marshall, an idealistic law school grad (like some of my friends -- you know who you are) tries to decide whether to take a job with the NRDC, or a job with an evil law firm that represents the NRDC's worst and most despicable enemies. The head partner of the evil firm, Jeff (Harold and Kumar's John Cho, oozing with shmoozery), turns out to be a total charmer that zeroes in on Marshall's financial and familial insecurities. While wooing Marshall with a dinner of Kobe lobster ("lobster fed with Kobe beef") and fine wine, Jeff implies that Marshall must have "family money" if he intends to make a living on the meager, non-profit salary offered by the NRDC. (Sounds like non-profit companies are structured just like magazines –- go figure!) Anyway, when Marshall demurs, Jeff jokes that Marshall must not want to have kids. "I want four," admits the big lug (Awww…). After pointing out that most parents worry about New York public schools, Jeff gamely says, "But the kids who are able to walk out of them, walk out proud."

When do you ever see male TV characters talking about how many kids they'd like to have, and making decisions accordingly? We're used to young female characters factoring family and kids into their career plans, but that never seems to be on the mind of television's young male professionals. Ignoring the connection between work and family, guys in the city, especially, seem to believe that they'll be able to afford as many kids as they want...eventually. Yet here's this cute, smart, ambitious dude, newly married and barely out of his "Me Years," evaluating his job options based on how they synch up with his personal goals. What a guy! What a show!

While Marshall is cursing his conscience (and his much-desired future dependents), Robin is back at the apartment, asking Lily what every viewer of this show has been dying to know. "You're a kindergarten teacher, and you make a kindergarten teacher's salary," Robin says while looking over Lily's latest acquisitions. "So how do you afford such expensive clothes?" After watching Lily parade around in a different, trendy outfit each week, I've been wondering the exact same thing!

Turns out Lily shops like the rest of New York's journalists/do-gooders/teachers/non-investment-bankers: on credit. A big proponent of retail therapy, Lily has used a collection of credit cards to run up an undisclosed (but presumably horrifying amount of debt. That's why she's secretly rooting for her husband to take the job with the evil firm -- not because she doesn't support his values, or his family plans, but because she knows that his ramen-noodle NRDC salary won't support her shopping habit -- or her very typical NYC lifestyle.

I can relate to this. Every time I tally up our monthly expenses, or pay my student loan bills, or peruse the real estate listings, or meet a new friend's baby, I can't help wishing that my boyfriend and I were just a little less "principled."

I should mention here that this was just one of the episode's two main plots. The other story was something about Ted discovering that a famous porn star shared his same name. But as always, the Ted storyline (like Ted himself) was silly and forgettable.

Back to the Eriksens ... the episode ends with Marshall accepting the sell-out job after being promised that he'll only work on one client, his favorite amusement park (he doesn't realize the park is just as sleazy and underhanded as the rest of the firm's clients), and with Lily fantasizing of a future of fabulous footwear. Kudos to Marshall for not making the "right" decision! He'll be much better off suffering under The Man for a few years, after which he can find a new, more satisfying job, and take the money and run... right into his little kids' arms and into a new career. If he takes the NRDC job, the only things he'll be able to afford to nurture are his principles. You can't support a pair of shoes (never mind a pair of kids) on that kind of salary in this city. Trust me.

Posted by Corrie at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love the way Marjane Satrapi (who I interviewed for the upcoming Dec/Jan issue of BUST magazine) cannot stop herself from saying exactly what she thinks. In last week's New York Times Magazine, the Iranian illustrator-turned-director and creator of the Persepolis books denounced the term "graphic novel" as bourgeois nonsense, referred to cartoonists as "bisexuals" (because they like to write and draw), and said that the main reason that she lives in France is because "I can smoke everywhere." When the infamously antagonistic Deborah Solomon tried to get her to say that the Muslim veil is oppressive to women, Satrapi steamrolled right over her. "We have to look at ourselves here also. Why do all the women get plastic surgery? Why? Why? Why should we look like some freaks with big lips that look like an anus? What is so sexy about that? What is sexy about having something that looks like a goose anus?" Satrapi says she became familiar with goose anatomy on a farm in Paris -- wonder where she developed her gloriously low tolerance for bullshit?

(Photo credit: Christopher Lane for the New York Times.)

Posted by Corrie at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over the summer, I wrote a post about my experience in the Manhattan Half-Marathon. I explained how I’d gone into the race with the impression that women weren’t running as hard as they used to (or at least, as hard as I used to). Although I’d heard a lot about the record numbers of women participating in races, it didn’t seem like women runners were breaking many speed records. However, I finished the race--and my post--on a note of optimism. I had my butt kicked by plenty of serious, speedy chicks, and that made me feel psyched to bury them –- I mean, to compete against them, in future races.

Not long afterwards, an article about female runners appeared in the New York Times. But instead of follow the media trend and focusing on how many women are running, health writer Gina Kolata focused on how women are running. About two years ago, Kolata, a longtime jogger, realized that she’d been running without a purpose (just running to run), and decided to train for a 5k race. The experience apparently jump-started Kolata’s mojo and unleashed her inner Flo-Jo, encouraging her to become a more committed runner. At the races she now regularly attends, Kolata has been surprised to discover that unlike men, women seem to get faster as the age. “At a recent five-kilometer race in Pine Beach, N.J., which drew nearly 1,000 runners,” she noted, “the fastest man was 24 years old and the men’s times increased with each five-year age group. But the women were different — their times were all over the place with older women beating younger women in almost every age category.” Kolata looked at the results for a bunch of other US races, and found that older female runners were outpacing the younger ones. She says that results like this got her to thinking, “Are women really trying in these races and, if they are, why are older women beating younger women?”

Kolata posed this question to several professional sidewalk-pounders, and came up with some theories. Maybe women are shortchanging themselves, suggested Mary Wittenberg, the president of the NY Road Runners, and “are too inhibited to put their full passion out there.” Maybe women are clueless about how to train, said an orthopedic surgeon (she offered to show them the way in her clinics). Both of these women also brought up the insightful idea that perhaps women are reacting to the message that most advertisers present to them, which is that they should “Run Easy” (as Reebok says) and congratulate themselves for simply getting out there.

A male coach who works with elite runners thought that older women may be faster because they’ve recently had an epiphany about their own physical limits. “Most middle-aged women grew up when track and cross-country teams were for men only,” Kolata writes. “Some of those women, who had no opportunity to race when they were young, are just learning to be athletes and are running faster than younger women who may not care as much.” (In addition, these older women probably haven’t had as much exposure to those “tortoise-beats-hare” marketing messages.)

This sounds very empowering -- how exciting that older women are coming out ahead! Running faster may be the one thing we have to look forward to age we age.

However, as I noted in my post, the number of younger female runners (and according to Kolata's theory, slow runners) is surging, and the average age of female runners seems to be tending downward (that was certainly the case at the Falmouth Road Race we ran in August -- I should look up the official stats at home). It's nice to think that these women may speed up with age, but that's still a couple of decades away. And who knows if they'll still be running in their twilight years? I still harbor some worries that the bloated fields of recreational runners ("rec runners") devalue the sport, and women's status within it. Maybe Nike and Reebok and the rest of the sneaker companies should consider encouraging runners to "Run Hard." In the meantime, we women runners can keep repeating that message to each other.

Update:
I just finished reading Carol Lloyd's Broadsheet post about Kolata's article, as well as the accompanying letters from Salon readers. Lloyd (and a lot of letter-writers) were frustrated that Kolata didn't address any of the physiological factors that might explain why older women are faster than younger women, and instead focused on subjective quotes and hypotheses. Lloyd points out that it's well-known that women tend to be more successful than men at super-long races like ultra-marathons than at short sprints like 5ks. She also does her own research, and presents a study that says that "at runs of 66 miles and more, women may actually enjoy a physiological edge because of their superior endurance." Lloyd concludes, "Since older men and women do better than younger runners in ultras, I can't help wondering if there's not some physical change that allows some older women's bodies to pick up their speed and at least leave their younger selves behind." An interesting point, and one that Kolata should have explored further. I'd like to see more about these physical changes as well (some letter-writers suggested that perhaps childbirth can improve women's endurance). However, I still think there's something to Kolata's point that women aren't encouraged or train seriously or commit to the sport, and I don't think it's insulting or unfair to suggest that the reason a lot of younger women aren't running as fast as older women is because they aren't trying as hard.

Posted by Kerry at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)