If you’ve ever agonised over a haircut, just think what would happen if you lived in North Korea. There, women can choose from one of just 18 hair styles, while men have 10 options. All are supposed to ward off the “corrupting effects of capitalism.” And while I believe in the power of a good trim, that seems like a lot to ask.
Interestingly, I note that none of the multi-hued ‘dos favoured over the years by basketball star-cum-diplomatic envoy Dennis Rodman made the, er, cut.
Go visit Mom — or go to jail. That’s the new mandate for Chinese sons and daughters.
Chinese lawmakers have approved a measure allowing parents to sue for neglect if their children don’t visit them “often.” How often “often” is, however, is not defined. In my experience, it’s not regularly enough for parents and too frequently for the kids.
So, what came first: negative population growth rates or falling sperm counts?
It’s well-established that as nations become more industrialised, wealthier, and better educated, their birth rates fall. See Western Europe, Japan — the American population would be falling to if it wasn’t for immigration. Women work, people no longer need a dozen children to plough the field, yada, yada.
But what if population declines actually were the result of the assault by chemicals and other pollutants on our bodies, that it’s not so much that we don’t want babies but that we have fewer because of a dearth of healthy sperm? That’s the argument of French researchers, who studied the sperm of more than 25,000 men whose partners were being treated for infertility. They found that the average sperm count of French men fell by a third over the last 15 years and only about half the sperm tested were properly formed.
Of course, aside from pollution, there could be other culprits, and I’m sure you’d get a earful of theories on both sides of the Atlantic. Too much wine and cheese, the Americans would say. McDonald’s is to blame, the French would retort.
Not since being included in the Axis of Evil has such a honour been bestowed on North Korea: The Onion, tongue firmly in cheek, has declared Kim Jong-un the Sexiest Man Alive. But the tone seems to have been lost on our Communist friends — People’s Daily Online ran a slideshow takeout. But maybe it’s some meta-parody we can’t even appreciate.
I’ve always thought of Beijing as particularly smoggy, the air heavy with the legacy of willy-nilly industrialising China. But then I arrived here in Delhi. Step outside and it is biting and sulphurous; my eyes are burning and I’m getting nosebleeds. By mid-afternoon, the air has grown so heavy with pollutants it looks like nightfall. The sun, when it pierces the haze, is a hot, shiny orb, glowing dangerously. It looks a bit like end days.
Until yesterday, the papers insisted this wasn’t smog but fog, an idea that I, as one who spent much of her childhood socked in by the fogs that roll in off the Atlantic, find laughable. This is choking and noxious and 100-percent man-made, the haze deepening as more cars pile on to Delhi’s choked arteries. This is the worst of globalisation.
For all the complaining people do about McDonald’s, it’s Starbucks that has become the pervasive American brand. The coffee chain opened its first outlets in India this week, to great fanfare. Yes, that’s a rope line (and an armed guard).
It’s always interesting to me that there are “bad” brands — one that are seen as cultural imperialism, and tacky at that — and others that people lap, slurp, and sip up with barely a murmur.
I spend a lot of time overseas and frequently take the opportunity to escape the bleating talking heads who populate American cable news and tune into the BBC’s international service. Mostly, this is a very satisfying experience. However, for the last four or five years I have seen, on average once a trip, a story about poor, ignorant, misbegotten Americans struggling with the economic crash. Which is always fascinating to me, because I never have in any American city encountered the shuttered storefronts and recession-related fire sales I have in London (which is, I hasten to add, my favourite city). It’s always a pot-kettle moment.
That’s all to say, I was intrigued by this Atlantic post that posits that British journos’ scathing coverage of American politics engenders anti-American sentiment. Yes, agreed that the reporting can be simplistic and occasionally verging on hysterical (Oh my gosh, look at crazy America where a bunch of backwoodsy hicks who think Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim are taking over!!). Still that’s no reason to go all poor-us-Americans tack. First off, virtually all reporting in the UK is subjective in a way that would get me fired immediately in the U.S. What’s more, depending on how posh (gag) one’s publication is, articles can be dripping with the kind of condescension that would, again, get me fired in the U.S. And that condescension is hardly reserved for Americans.
Frankly, though, while American journalism keeps its veneer of objectivity, the kind of critiques written in British publications about Tea Partiers is said at Washington salons all the time by Democrats. And Republicans. And reporters.
In case you ever wondered what happened to those Russian spies — well, who knows what happened to most of them. I suppose they’re still growing prize-winning flowers and carpooling. But not to worry, Capital New York has an exhaustive feature on bombshell secret agent Anna Chapman, who is living large in Moscow, hosting her own television show, driving fancy cars, and flirting with Vladmir Putin. And also with the article’s author:
Russia has a number of national exports. There is oil and there is gas and there are hockey players. Then there are women, without lapse looking their best, engaging in accelerated courtship with the rest of the world. No Russian woman was ever coy. The innocent culture of the West has no defense against the cultural weapon of forthright sexuality. I wasn’t falling for it, though I could see how others might.
Women’s Wear Daily, that foreign-policy bible, has weighed in on the new North Korean leader’s fashion, and while Kim Jong-un may be picking up titles like “Supreme Leader,” one superlative he won’t be earning is best dressed.
WWD gives Mr. Kim a C+, grudgling acknowledging that he has mastered the slimming effect of black and giving him props for a “structured, well-fitted shoulder.” On the other hand, the rag-trade rag chides the newbie dictator for a poorly cut silhouette, suggests his haircut makes him look fat, and snipes, “Chaz Bono wants his neck back.”
The new twentysomething leader of the “Hermit Kingdom” could use some style pointers, although none of his countrymen is likely to say that to his face — or to his back.
Oooh, snap! Yes, he’s no Muammar Qaddafi. (Is there a correct amount of time to wait until after a deposed dictator dies, likely at the hands of his “countrymen” before referencing him in a superficial blog post? Surely, Desirée Rogers would know.) Nor does he seem to have hit on a signature accessory, a la Hamid Karzai. But he’s not awful — he just needs a little advice.
I’m envisioning a What Not to Wear epi, Pyongyang-style. Seriously, can’t you imagine Stacey and Clinton riffling through his wardrobe (Black, black, black — how many black tunics does one apprentice dictator need?!), making puns about his name (Kim Jong-uh-no?), and offering vaguely life-affirming justifications-cum-bitchy asides about how a makeover is necessary to bring him out from under his father’s shadow?
In Tokyo, I finally had a chance to pause for a couple of days, to stop characterising taking taxis or subways or buses between interviews as “sightseeing.” But is Tokyo really a place to catch one’s breath? I’m not so sure.
There’s a cliché of Asian inscrutability, and I think in Japan’s case, it might be earned. On one hand, the society seems incredibly familiar. There are the totems of a modern, consumer society. Japanese food in Japan is, in general, a whole lot more like Japanese food in America than Chinese food in China is American Chinese takeout. There are shops and boutiques and pubs and bars. It’s a thoroughly first-world power.
But, then. Then. First, there’s the language. Go to the Chinese countryside and you’re likely to encounter more English speakers. Go to Indonesia, to Morocco, to impoverished Hindi India. Yes, I’m in their country; I should be able to say more than “konnichiwa,” “arigato,” and “eigo o hanasemasuka?” On the other hand, this is a Globish world we live in; it’s an impediment.
What gets me, though, is the dichotomous society. In many ways, it’s a formal old-fashioned place, full of bowing and -san-ing of names. Ritual matters, respect matters.
Beyond the buttoned-up-ness, though, is such incredible bawdiness. I met up with a Tokyo friend on a Wednesday night at a sashimi place full of besuited businessmen. You’d have thought, though, that I’d parachuted into a restaurant-wide bachelor party, such was the effusive toasting, the frat-boy camraderie.
Likewise, I am somewhat mystified by Japanese women. I don’t know how to reconcile submissiveness with the provocative outfits, the manga cartoonish posing. And don’t let’s get started on the fake food even nice Japanese restaurants display out front. Because what diner isn’t lured in by plastic sushi?
None of this is criticism. If anything, it’s an admission of failing. I didn’t get it. But maybe that’s kind of arrogant, too. Is it arrogant of me to believe I can “get” a place in less than a week? Probably. So, I’m justifiably humbled.
