Senator Craig will, I suspect, be gone within 48 hours. The scandal is above the fold not simply for the usual reasons -- "gay sex!" "sex in the Senate!" "pages (again)!" "Republican hypocrisy on all this faith-and-values nonsense!" "Republican hypocrisy on Clinton!" -- but also because the sex, or the promise of sex rather, was located in an airport bathroom.
First we're back to the fear of bathhouses: it's 1987 all over again. Cue all our phobias about the transmission of AIDS, anonymous sex, and gay underworlds unlegislated and seemingly unaffected by all the social mores so rigorously enforced in our public discourse.
We have heard this summer about sexual solicitation in park bathrooms: remember Bob Allen? That story did not have the traction I predict this will because there are fundamental differences between a bathroom in a public park and a bathroom in an airport. Park bathrooms are already disconcerting, even taboo, for the middle classes, places one frequents only if absolutely necessary, only as a last resort. The very existence of public bathrooms is highly contested as we know, as is the case for most public institutions in our neoliberal era. Public bathrooms are apparently not to be supported any more than the parks themselves: is it still Santa Monica's claim to fame that it provides facilities for the homeless? Thus is it the case that public bathrooms seem rarely, if ever, to be attended, cleansed by hosing, and of course devoid of toilet paper. Think of the "dangers" associated with public bathrooms: needles, waste, an actual encounter with a homeless boogeyman. So it's somehow less scandalous to be caught soliciting in a park bathroom: these spaces are contained, cordoned off, already coded as dangerous and illicit.
Airport bathrooms, on the other hand, are most often steps away from Starbucks and thus in the very heart of the American consumer soul. They exist where we eat and drink; they are integral to the lives of nearly everyone who passes by. Does not everyone use the airport bathroom before a flight? The alternative is of course worse: the airplane bathroom. Airport bathrooms are places to frequent as often as possible precisely to avoid the alternative. Parents can be seen letting their kids go in alone: we're all one big happy family now that the DHS has screened out the bad guys and made airports protected spaces. Is it not the case that we surrender our water bottles and submit to full body searches so that we can regard airplane terminals -- and their bathrooms -- as safe, quasi-domestic public spaces? They contain all of the comforts of home and many comforts not at home: you can after all get massages in terminals now. And let us not forget the shopping for goods for our homes.
To have such a space punctured by sex seems slightly shocking. We expect and even accepted that airplane bathrooms are places for sex. Any mention of the "mile high club" gets the old wink-wink, nudge-nudge. But this might be because they are contained, encapsulated. Airport bathrooms, on the other hand, while they may be part of the general capsule that is the airport itself, are not so enclosed. We think of them as safe and protected spaces and I am even inclined to think they have a bit of that good will and friendly feeling one associates with the public square in a Capra movie: we are all sharing the same experience of travel after all and all the frustrations and joys that come along with it. We're all late, tired, too early, harried, annoyed, delayed, especially delayed, and a certain commiseration and even community, however tenuous, results from this shared experience. There are always kids and grandparents; within a certain class, and even beyond it, there is a significant cross-section of the population on the move. For the bathroom, the one place you can go to wash off the grime of the plane, to be permeated, punctured, for some violated by the thought of sexual solicitation is going to be too much for the American psyche. Janitorial closets in the airport (Six Feet Under) are one thing; the bathrooms another. To think that there is a whole subcultural communicative code at work right at our very feet will be just too much. In fact, there's the thing: straight America is going to have to confront the fact that there is such a code, that gay networks operate, literally, next door.
If Senator Craig had solicited sex in a park bathroom, I'd be inclined to say he could hold his seat and then retire in 2008. Because it was an airport bathroom, I give him until the end of the week, with a resignation timed to coincide with the Labor Day weekend.
28 August 2007
Administered improvement
Of course, there is another way to think about the exponential growth in the cosmetic surgery industry: not in terms of self-help but in terms of administered improvement. Extreme makeover programming -- whether it be for body or home -- provides a perfect instance of teamwork culture. I do not have any one network or show in mind; the Extreme Makeover teams are the most obvious perhaps but the old show The Swan had the same structure ('meet the team of makeover specialists!), as do all the home improvement shows on Bravo, HGN, and so forth. Also, let us not forget Queer Eye, a makeover team Village People style.
My sense is that extreme makeover programming is illustrative of a new expert culture no longer legitimated by professional institutions and disciplines and by specialized knowledge but by results. This new expert culture is determined not by the individual (or, lone ranger) but by the team and thus emphasizes collaboration, interaction, and performance management. In Extreme Makeover itself, the entire team comprised of doctors, lifestyle coaches, aestheticians, consultants, and media workers assesses its object and prescribes the course of treatment that would realize the collective vision of a final product. However, the noted moment of the final unveiling of the remade body in front of friends and family functions as the substitute for the real outcome, which is the reinforcement and reproduction of the new expert culture. Essentially, Extreme Makeover is outsourced self-help, simultaneously voluntary and interventionist. The women and occasional man seem to have a vague idea of their “problem,” which is written under the sign of beauty, but require the team’s diagnosis of the problem’s precise components. This is not self-fashioning, but expert and administered improvement, paradoxically illustrative of both the logic of mass production, with its emphasis on sameness, and the logic of post-industrial production, with its emphasis on individual tailoring and customization.
My sense is that extreme makeover programming is illustrative of a new expert culture no longer legitimated by professional institutions and disciplines and by specialized knowledge but by results. This new expert culture is determined not by the individual (or, lone ranger) but by the team and thus emphasizes collaboration, interaction, and performance management. In Extreme Makeover itself, the entire team comprised of doctors, lifestyle coaches, aestheticians, consultants, and media workers assesses its object and prescribes the course of treatment that would realize the collective vision of a final product. However, the noted moment of the final unveiling of the remade body in front of friends and family functions as the substitute for the real outcome, which is the reinforcement and reproduction of the new expert culture. Essentially, Extreme Makeover is outsourced self-help, simultaneously voluntary and interventionist. The women and occasional man seem to have a vague idea of their “problem,” which is written under the sign of beauty, but require the team’s diagnosis of the problem’s precise components. This is not self-fashioning, but expert and administered improvement, paradoxically illustrative of both the logic of mass production, with its emphasis on sameness, and the logic of post-industrial production, with its emphasis on individual tailoring and customization.
27 August 2007
9.1+ million procedures
Dermatologist waiting rooms are becoming an interesting site for ethnographic research, what with all of the beauty junkies and the nipping and tucking and feeling bad about necks. Almost 11 million cosmetic procedures performed in the U.S. in 2006, no doubt up a good 6-7% in 2007, unless of course the drying up of home equity stabilizes those numbers. More than 9.1. "minimally invasive procedures" performed, including of course all the peels and the fillers and what not. Even assuming a sizable number of those procedures were part of a comprehensive treatment plan, extreme makeover style, that is quite a few people in the waiting room. Hence, this is a good site for some participant-observer research.
- There are of course those on health plans waiting to be treated for suspicious moles and varieties of skin infections. They tend to be older, or, rather the older people in the waiting room are presumably not there for cosmetic procedures. Unless of course they are wearing pant suits, in which case see below.
- Primarily one sees scores of women of indeterminate age waiting for procedures that seem quite mysterious. The flaws they are there to correct, in other words, are not really visible across the room. Sometimes they come out holding ice packs to their faces; sometimes they come out looking exactly the same as they did when they entered.
- The relatively new thing: men in their 40s clearly there for cosmetic work. These men are are either entirely casual about the whole thing, with no doubt whatsoever as to the significance of their attention to appearance, or somewhat sheepish. In a few months the latter will morph into the former.
What I find remarkable almost above all else is the fact that so many people electing for these procedures are self-diagnosing. The evidence is there in the waiting room: piles of health & beauty magazines for nearly all demographics with some discussion of cosmetic work in all of them; brochures from old and new pharmaceutical companies advertising procedures I had never heard about, all of them meant to be taken home by the patients and discussed with friends and family; the ubiquitous "as seen on" and "as seen in" stickers attached to the OTC products for sale at the desk. It's the old story: first create needs, then help. But it's also a new story: don't trust the experts, trust yourself. Don't visit a dermatologist to ask for help with a skin condition you don't understand but that you suspect might be dangerous in the long term; visit a dermatologist so s/he can perform the very procedure you demand, because you have spent endless hours online researching nasolabial folds and know precisely how your problem is to be cured.
At any rate, shows like Extreme Makeover might lead us to think that an expert culture persists -- what one seems to need is an entire team of specialists working on one's body and face -- but in fact we are deeply skeptical of professionals. We're been trained not to trust institutions, to think that we, the amateurs, are best capable of self-assessment, diagnosis, and improvement. Is this not the essence of self-help? So dermatologists might advise and consult, but in the end I suspect many decisions about cosmetic procedures are made before people even enter the waiting room. Hence, too, the rise of non-medical or even "medical" spas, where one can get any number of non-invasive cosmetic procedures performed by a nurse practitioner or aesthetician -- in other words, by an amateur. If even aestheticians are not to be trusted, there is of course a whole range of products for cosmetic "improvement" available over the counter: DIY cosmetic treatments.
- There are of course those on health plans waiting to be treated for suspicious moles and varieties of skin infections. They tend to be older, or, rather the older people in the waiting room are presumably not there for cosmetic procedures. Unless of course they are wearing pant suits, in which case see below.
- Primarily one sees scores of women of indeterminate age waiting for procedures that seem quite mysterious. The flaws they are there to correct, in other words, are not really visible across the room. Sometimes they come out holding ice packs to their faces; sometimes they come out looking exactly the same as they did when they entered.
- The relatively new thing: men in their 40s clearly there for cosmetic work. These men are are either entirely casual about the whole thing, with no doubt whatsoever as to the significance of their attention to appearance, or somewhat sheepish. In a few months the latter will morph into the former.
What I find remarkable almost above all else is the fact that so many people electing for these procedures are self-diagnosing. The evidence is there in the waiting room: piles of health & beauty magazines for nearly all demographics with some discussion of cosmetic work in all of them; brochures from old and new pharmaceutical companies advertising procedures I had never heard about, all of them meant to be taken home by the patients and discussed with friends and family; the ubiquitous "as seen on" and "as seen in" stickers attached to the OTC products for sale at the desk. It's the old story: first create needs, then help. But it's also a new story: don't trust the experts, trust yourself. Don't visit a dermatologist to ask for help with a skin condition you don't understand but that you suspect might be dangerous in the long term; visit a dermatologist so s/he can perform the very procedure you demand, because you have spent endless hours online researching nasolabial folds and know precisely how your problem is to be cured.
At any rate, shows like Extreme Makeover might lead us to think that an expert culture persists -- what one seems to need is an entire team of specialists working on one's body and face -- but in fact we are deeply skeptical of professionals. We're been trained not to trust institutions, to think that we, the amateurs, are best capable of self-assessment, diagnosis, and improvement. Is this not the essence of self-help? So dermatologists might advise and consult, but in the end I suspect many decisions about cosmetic procedures are made before people even enter the waiting room. Hence, too, the rise of non-medical or even "medical" spas, where one can get any number of non-invasive cosmetic procedures performed by a nurse practitioner or aesthetician -- in other words, by an amateur. If even aestheticians are not to be trusted, there is of course a whole range of products for cosmetic "improvement" available over the counter: DIY cosmetic treatments.
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