Precious

I finally got to see the movie Precious this weekend, and all I have to say is WOW!
I read the book it was based on, Push by Sapphire, before seeing the movie so I knew that the subject matter would be hard to take. The acting in this film was just phenomenal. I mean really really so much talent. Mo'Nique was amazing, she displayed such raw emotion and could really take on this monster of a character. She definitely deserved her Academy Award.

If you haven't seen this movie yet, rent it!!

Some final (for now) thoughts on marriage

I finished the book Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert recently and I really liked the book. I felt like it explored topics and questions regarding marriage in a way that I have never seen before in other books that I have read. By the end, I was anxious to finish the book because I found that it was kind of beating a dead horse. I was happy at the end when she seemed to realize that marriage is what you and your partner want it to be.

Here are some of the interesting points and facts that were raised in the second half of the book:

• Marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men, this is called the marriage benefit imbalance. Married men live longer than single men, they accumulate more wealth than single men, excel at their careers more than single men, ect.
  
• Women on the other hand, married women do not live longer than single women, they do not accumulate more wealth than single women, they are less healthy, do not thrive in their careers to the extent that single women do, and they are more likely to die a violent death than single women (usually at the hands of their husbands).
• A poet, Jack Gilbert, said that marriage is what happens between the memorable, in the parts that are the same everyday. "Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over some two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel."
• A Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman said that couples were all trying to find balance in their marriages. People are trying to have their marriages "empower without disempowering, enable without disabling, fulfill without burdening."

In the end, Gilbert realized that it was couples that have the control over marriage. I really enjoyed this part, it felt like she was reclaiming the power of marriage that she had obviously felt that she had lost or had never had.

"It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage; rather, it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around us."

I think that I am still not ready to get married, but at least while reading this book I was able to explore so many interesting things about marriage and realize some of the issues that I had with it. I agreed with Gilbert in the end, that we are in control of our own relationships. Marriages are all different. That is kind of comforting, knowing that there isn't really a normal and that we can all stop comparing notes with each other because its an individual thing. So, read this book. I think you would enjoy it!

Earth Day!

Eat Pray Love

I can't wait to see this movie! I loved the book and I LOVE Julia Roberts.
Comes out August 13th!

The History of Marriage

I thought that my post on marriage was getting a little long there, so I decided to break it up a bit. I do want to put some information on here about the history of marriage because it is so interesting and had such unexpected twists and turns (at least I wasn't expecting them!)

Perhaps you can tell just how much I am actually enjoying this book, Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, since I feel so inspired to share the information in the book with my friends and family and the people who read this blog (Hi mom! Hi Sean! haha)

What is so interesting about the history of marriage is how much it has changed throughout the years. Gilbert says, and I really really hope that she is right about this, that because marriage has constantly been evolving and changing, this means that gay marriage could some day definitely be legalized. YEA!!! Can this happen sooner rather than later people haha!!

Gilbert says, and I agreed with her, that legalized same sex marriage is coming to the U.S., because it will eventually become a federal court decision, which means that it will be up to American courts, not churches to settle the gay marriage debate. She also says that gay marriage could actually save marriage, which is on the decline everywhere because straight people do not trust it anymore.

So onto the history of marriage, here are a few points that I found to be very interesting.

• Christianity once condemned marriage because they did not see it as holy and sanctified and instead called for celibacy.
• Marriage was used as a form of wealth management and social order in the Middle Ages
• It wasn't until Queen Victoria walked down the aisle in the 19th century in a white wedding gown that women started to have big white romantic weddings.
• It wasn't until 1215 that the church got involved in marriages and divorce became illegal.
• When coverture came into existence women's individual existence became erased the moment she got married. She had no legal rights and no property rights.
  
• In 1975, women in the U.S. could not legally open checking accounts and take out loans without their husbands written permission
• It wasn't until 1984 that New York overturned the legal notion called martial rape exemption, which meant that men could do anything sexual they wanted to their wives because they legally owned their bodies.
• In 1970 a law was passed that said that any American woman who wanted to marry a foreign man had to give up their citizenship, but this did not apply to American men
• In 1967, interracial marriage became legal. Before that, couples could be arrested and jailed.
• The 2010 census is documenting same sex couples as married.

Seriously, if you enjoyed these facts, read this book. There are many many other interesting ones in the book!

An Examination of Marriage Part 1

I am more than half-way through reading Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. I have been reading it much slower than most books, because I have been trying make sure I absorb all of the information and give myself time to think about it as well. I have been enjoying the book a lot, there is a lot of fascinating information in it and the topics that it explores are very interesting.

"There is no greater risk than matrimony, but there is nothing happier than a happy marriage."
-Benjamin Disraeli, 1870

Gilbert says that she first got married at the age of 25 without understanding anything about the institution of marriage or thinking much about it. (I am sure that this is true for a lot of people.)

During the book, she speaks with some Hmong women and finds that they have very different marriages than Western women. They don't expect their husbands to be their best friends, intimate confidants, emotional advisers, intellectual equal and comforter during their times of sorrow, instead they get a lot of their support from other women. Hmong women also do not put their marriage in the center of their emotional biography the way that Western women do, Gilbert says in the book.

Gilbert also says that because women have so many choices they live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision and are often terrified that every choice they make might be the wrong one. (I know that I definitely suffer from this!)

"There is one critical gift that a traditional Hmong bridge almost always receives on her wedding day which all too often eludes the modern western bride, and that is the gift of certainty. When you have only one path set before you, you can generally fell confident that it was the correct path to have taken," the book says.

Another point made in the book which I found interesting is what women expect from their marriages. Gilbert says that women ask for and expect happiness from their marriages (which is actually a really big request if you think about it.)

A recent study actually found that women want to be inspired by their husbands. So, are we asking too much of love and marriage?

"Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work," the book says.

I think that maybe women do sometimes expect too much from their marriages. That is something that I never thought about before reading this book. We all kind of expect to get married and then live happily ever after. No wonder every one says that marriage is hard work. Perhaps we should instead have our husband be just a part of our happiness. We need to find our own inner happiness and rely on friends and family for emotional support and inspiration, so that it doesn't all fall on one person. It seems like asking for all of that could let you down and lead to failure.

Another topic that is very interesting in the book is about the failure of marriages. Gilbert says that marriages based on love are just as fragile as love itself, and anything that the heart chooses, it can unchoose later.

In the mid-1800s social conservatives were saying that the trend towards expressive individualism in marriage would be the breakdown of society. They predicted that allowing couples to make life matches based purely on love and the whims of personal affections would lead to astronomical divorce rates and bitterly broken homes. The fact that this has actually played out today is pretty eerie I think.

The Holmes-Rahe stress level scale actually says that the death of a close family member is less stressful than a divorce. Divorce is second on the stress list, only behind the death of a spouse.

The divorce statistics say that the younger you get married, the more likely you are to get divorced. You are two to three times more likely to get divorced if you marry in your teens or early twenties than if you wait until your thirties and forties. However, 25 is the magic cut off point, if you get married before the age of 25 you are more likely to get divorced than if you wait until the age of 26 to get married, the book says.

"An old Polish adage warns: Before going to war, say one prayer. Before going to sea, say two prayers Before getting married, say three."

Some other interesting things raised in the book:

• In the Symposium by Plato, there is a mythical story of why humans have such deeps desires to be in a romantic relationship with others. The story says that humans used to be two people joined together, seamlessly united into one person. Zeus punished the humans for their neglect to the gods by cutting these humans into two, so for the rest of time, people have been born sensing that they are not whole and have spent their lives searching for their other half. "This is the singular fantasy of human intimacy: that one plus one will somehow, someday, equal one."

• Gilbert also examines the difference between infatuation and love, stating that infatuation leads to "intrusive thinking" where you can't concentrate on anything but the person you have fallen for. She even says that scientists have recently found that the brain scans and mood swings of an infatuated lover look similar to the brain scans of a cocaine addict. Infatuation is an addiction.
  

• "Real, sane, mature love - the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school - is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect."
  

O Magazine Story

I saw this recent story in O Magazine, it was written by Elizabeth Gilbert, who I am a big fan of, and its all about how women should not be afraid to make mistakes in their lives.

Reading this story, I related to the issues she was raising, especially women who feel that they are not doing enough with their lives. I am guilty of always feeling like I could be and should be doing more.

Read the story here: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Elizabeth-Gilbert-on-Failure-and-Living-Well

The moral of the story was women should not be afraid of failure. She also advised women to lighten-up because no one can be perfect all the time!

The Business of Being Born

I am just going to preface this, by saying that I am not pregnant haha. That being said, I do plan on having children one day and am interested in learning about child birth and have a general interest in all women's issues, that is why I minored in Women's Studies in college haha. So, that is why I was interested in watching this documentary.

The Business of Being Born was very good, and very different from what I was expecting. I thought, based on the title that it was going to be about how expensive it was to have a child, but it was actually about midwives and the experience that women have when they give birth in the hospital.

I think that I learned a lot from the film and now am more sure that I definitely want to give birth in a birthing center, instead of a hospital, as long as I am a low-risk pregnancy. It might be cool to give birth at home too, but that will depend on where I live at the time. I don't see my NYC neighbors appreciating me screaming and crying in pain next door for 15 plus hours or however long it takes for me to pop a baby out haha.

Here are some interesting facts that I learned while watching the movie:

• Midwives attend more than 70% of the births in Europe and Japan
• In the U.S., midwives attend less than 8% of births
• Some women are actually having designer births now, where they schedule a C-Section and then have a tummy tuck, rather than giving birth naturally.
  
• The U.S. has the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world and also has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among all industrialized nations.
• Less than 10% of births take place at home
• Since 1996, the cesarean section rate in the U.S. has risen by 46%
• And finally, midwives generally cost just $4,000, while hospital births can cost around $13,500
• NYC hospitals have some of the highest C-Section rates in the country
  

Hopefully, those aren't too many facts for you, and that you also find them as interesting as I did. Basically, the film said that there was a smear campaign against midwives, so more women started giving birth in hospitals.

Because of the way that hospitals work if a women's delivery is taking too long, the doctors and nurses will encourage the women to speed it up. They first given women pitocin, which makes contractions longer, stronger and closer together. The pitocin makes the delivery so intense, that the hospital then gives a woman an epidural for the pain, but that slows down the woman's contractions. This causes the doctors and nurses to increase and decrease these two drugs back and forth. Another drug used to speed up a pregnancy is cervidil. All of these drugs often lead to a C-Section because they put the baby in distress. Another reason for the high C-Section rates is litigation, hospitals want to say that they did everything they could do to avoid litigation. I never fully understood how important a natural birth was until I saw this movie.

One quote from the movie was: "If you want a humanized birth, the best thing to do is to get the hell out of the hospital."

Reusable Snack and Sandwich Bags

These reusable snack and sandwich bags are very cool. They are hand washable and can help us all cut down on our waste.

From an LA Times Story about them: The Reusable Fresh Snack Pack is a kid-tested, PVC- and BPA-free solution. The packs feature a built-in placemat, come in sandwich and snack size and are guaranteed to last 90 days.

You simply hand-wash it, air- or towel-dry it, then reuse it. Some foods such as carrots and mustard have been found to stain the packs. The snack size (6 by 4 inches) costs $4.50, and the sandwich size (8 by 6 inches) costs $5.50, the LA Times Story said.

Interested? You can buy them here: http://www.freshsnackpack.com/home.html

I think that these would be a good gift for my mom, who is a very Earth friendly person. :)

Billy Elliot Opens in Chicago

So, you might be wondering why I would be writing about the Broadway show Billy Elliot opening in Chicago, since I live in NYC, but my uncle is actually in the Chicago Broadway production, which opened this past Sunday. I am so excited for him and so proud of the experience he is getting in this Tony-award winning show. I can not wait to go see it myself, soon I hope.

On opening night, my uncle told me that both Sir Elton John and Oprah Winfrey, among other celebrities were there to see the show. The Oprah Winfrey show was actually recording parts of the opening night and the rehearsals. The show is actually airing THIS Friday, April 16. WATCH IT!!

The Chicago production has received amazing reviews so far. The Chicago Sun Times even said it was better than the NYC production.

"The Chicago production, in many ways far superior to the Broadway edition, could not be more ideally cast."

You can read the rest of the review here: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/2153192,CST-FTR-Weiss12.article

I would just like to take this opportunity to say to my uncle: I love you! Congratulations! I couldn't be happier for you and I can't wait to see the show. I am going to be screaming at the TV this Friday when I watch the Oprah Winfrey show!

Vogue Interview with SJP

The May issue of Vogue has a new interview with Sarah Jessica Parker, with fabulous photos. She talks about her babies and the new Sex and the City 2 movie!!

You can read it here:

http://www.vogue.com/feature/2010_May_Sarah_Jessica_Parker/?loc=interstitialskip

How deforestation affects your dog

Sex and the City 2

I don't know about you guys, but seeing the trailer for the new Sex and the City 2 movie pretty much made my whole day yesterday. I am so excited and I must say, this trailer makes the movie look really really good. I am a HUGE HUGE Sex and the City fan. A few years ago I actually stalked the NYC movie premier for the first Sex and the City movie at Radio City. I was one of the thousands of girls pushing and shoving my way to the front to see my favorite ladies, and I really did see them and boy was I right in the front row. Sarah Jessica Parker actually came out from the red carpet area to wave to the fans across the street standing in the on and off rain, i.e. ME! I was literally directly across the street from Sarah Jessica Parker. It was like a dream come true to be so close to her. I was screaming and waving. It was ridiculous. Thank god I went by myself! I am glad that I didn't have any friends around to laugh at me...although my friends would probably have been screaming right next to me! haha. After I left, I of course called everyone I have ever known to tell them what I had just seen.

If you haven't seen it yet, watch the trailer below!



I will be in the movie theater when it opens on May 27!!

Pictures from Alabama

These pictures are: my cousin Kara, the beautiful bride. Her new husband Steve. My cousins and I and also some views of Lake Guntersville, where we were staying in Alabama.

Recipe

When I was in Alabama visiting my family, my cousin who got married made really good guacamole that we had one night before dinner at her house. She recently sent me her recipe, so I thought I would share it on here in case others want to try it too. The next time we have people over I plan on trying it out on my own.

Here is what my cousin Kara said:

Guacamole

3 avocados
1 lime, juiced
1/2 t. kosher salt
1/2 t. ground cumin
1/2 t. cayenne pepper
1/2 medium onion, diced (I usually use red onion)
2 Roma tomatoes, seeded & diced
1 T. chopped cilantro
1 clove garlic, minced

Coat scooped avocado with lime juice. Mash avocado, salt, cumin and cayenne pepper. Fold in onions, tomatoes, cilantro and garlic.

I like to make this ahead of time so the flavors get mixed together well. However, even if it's left in the fridge, it doesn't keep for very long.

Enjoy!!

On Marriage

I have just started reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, this morning. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Gilbert, she wrote the book Eat Pray Love, which exploded into a huge bestseller. She has also written several other books and worked as a journalist for a while. One of her journalism articles actually inspired the movie Coyote Ugly. Hollywood has also turned Eat Pray Love into a movie, which Julia Roberts is starring in. It comes out in August.

Anyway, I love to start a new book on the subway, first thing in the morning. I find delving into a new story and new characters to be a treat, like eating ice cream, and I can’t wait to read more tonight after work. I just finished A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, a book that I would also recommend. I am very excited about reading Committed because I am hoping that it will also bring me some peace and help me to understand my own feelings about marriage.

Since I have a serious boyfriend and have recently turned 25, I have been getting more and more “pressure” to get married. I say “pressure” because that is how I interpret it and how it makes me feel when people are constantly asking me the marriage questions. I have co-workers, neighbors, family members, as well as others all dropping the marriage hints and questions from time to time. (One neighbor even told me recently just to get pregnant, then I would be sure to get Shawn to marry me…ugh thanks, but no thanks!)

For some reason, when people bring up marriage I usually just kind of laugh and say, I don’t know what is going on, or not I am not getting married next in the family. The questions always leave me feeling not to great and with lots of questions like, why aren’t I engaged? Does Shawn not want to marry me? Should we be getting married since we have been together almost four years? Since he hasn’t asked me yet, does that mean that he is never going to ask me?

Once some time has passed and I explore all of these questions and more again and again, I always realize one simple thing: I am not ready to get married. Could it be because I am only 25 and don’t see what the rush is? Could it be that Shawn and I have only been together for four years? Could it be that I have only had one job since I graduated from college and don’t feel like I have even begun exploring my career yet? Or is it because my parents are divorced and many of my friends parents have divorced, so I know what its like to go through a divorce and how awful it is for all parties involved. While a breakup are just as hard, it’s got to be easier than having to legally separate yourself from someone. I am always left feeling the same, I want to know that Shawn wants to eventually marry me, but I don’t want to get engaged or married now, and maybe not for quite some time. Who knows, this may change soon or in a long time.

I hope that I am not putting too much faith in this new book Committed, because I don’t want to feel disappointed by it. It may not bring me any peace or understanding of marriage, but I hope it does. I feel like there is more that I want to do with my life before I make that final commitment for marriage. I want to at least have worked at one or more other jobs, I want to maybe go back to school, I want to make more friends and find some more things that I am interested in getting involved in. I also can’t seem to forget something my friends mother told me once. She said not to get married before turning 30, because she said that people change a lot between the ages of 20 and 30. I don’t know if she is right or not, people probably change throughout their lives. I think that some relationships can weather the changes and adapt, while others can’t survive.

I would like to wrap this up, by saying that I love weddings and I respect my friends and family members who are planning on getting married shortly or have been married recently. I hope that they all have a lifetime of happiness together and I am glad for them that they are ready to make that commitment.