Now Featuring Social Commentary

By 2040, there could be a lot more Metro stations.

In my book, Paul Ryan is good people.  Ted Cruz is still on my naughty list.

Is there some way to exchange this "cultural cachet" for money?  That said, I agree with the second paragraph.

The Chipotle model is spreading to the world of pizza.

On RG3's benching.

Responses to "The Long Awaited Return":

1. I get the cognitive dissonance thing, but I agree that it does not apply to the Redskins situation.  It is fairly pervasive, though.  One reason that I have so many liberal friends is to try to combat it.

3. It probably was from me - in any case, I've been following this for a few years.  A little while ago, there was a proposal to take facemasks off of helmets in order to discourage football players from leading with their heads.  To be sure, it would probably also lead to more bloody noses and lips, but I'd rather have a broken nose than memory loss, brain degeneration, mental problems, and early death stemming from multiple concussions.

5. No.  Ayn Rand posed a hyothetical about art that might be relevant:  If you paint a picture of a beautiful woman and represent her as flawless, you're celebrating beauty; but if you paint that same picture and feature some defect, however ordinary, then you are in effect highlighting that defect in a negative way, even if a real woman with that same defect might be viewed as beautiful.  I view magazine covers as art in this sense - the women on the cover are just idealized versions of people, whether the idealization comes from makeup, false hair, expensive clothing, or digital manipulation.

If I had a daughter, I would tell her to aspire to be better every day (whether it's doing better in school, mastering a skill, or getting in better shape), but it would be in the context of having good self-esteem, i.e. her knowing that she has innate worth as a person.  The problem isn't that Photoshopping these actresses is ruining girls' self-esteem or body image.  The problem is that girls' self-esteem and body image are in such a bad place already, and these Photoshopped actresses punctutate the problem.

After all, let's take the issue to its logical conclusion.  Presumably the initial (non-Photoshopped) picture of Jennifer Lawrence shows an attractive woman.  But to a girl with body image or self-esteem problems, doesn't the initial (non-Photoshopped) picture generate the same problem?  Lawrence is still more attractive than the average woman, and her "realistic" image (i.e. her actual image pre-Photoshop) is still unrealistic for many girls.  The solution for the anti-Photoshop crowd doesn't seem to be getting rid of Photoshop, but rather getting rid of models or aspirational images of women in general.  Just look at the Dove ads or the "regular women" campaign.

As a final note, at some point, I do think that the anti-idealized woman campaign and the anti-obesity campaign are going to be in tension.  Maybe they're doing it with kid gloves still, but the latter ("you're not fine just the way you are") is saying the opposite of the former ("you're fine just the way you are") with respect to overweight people.

B