I was reading somewhere that Lindsey Lohan has a recent article in which she talks about her struggles with bulimia and body issue problems. This article was published in the same week as the Us Weekly magazine that featured Lohan along with a few others in an article on "Celebrity Diet Secrets Revealed!"
This illustrates a problem that I see in many magazines edited for women. Each issue seems to include an article about eating disorders and the importance of developing good body image and self-attitudes, and then they pair it with a diet article conveying the impression that you have to attain an unrealistic physical ideal to be happy, loved, and successful. As an example, there was a brief paragraph discussing my own research on eating disorders in Allure magazine a couple of months ago. Now, the limitations of this particular researcher aside, it’s probably a good idea to let women know about emerging research in this area. But they put the paragraph about my work on the same page as a sensationalistic “study” implying that you have to be very attractive to get a good job, complete with a picture of a very beautiful, very seductive woman in an office. This editorial strategy may sell magazines but it does not seem to be in the best interests of the readers.
It’s kind of like the way that these magazines often have a relationship column that explains why women should avoid men who are jerks, and then later in the issue they have a romance story where the woman meets a guy who is a jerk but transforms him by the power of her love. It’s self-perpetuating. If you take the story seriously, you will soon be in the market for another issue that promises to tell you how to avoid jerks.
No, no. As a culture, they've earned it.
My experience has obviously been different.
I think it's certainly possible to dislike the best cooked foods of any ethnicity.
Sure, of course, I guess I am taking issue with the descriptor of "grey"
I don't doubt they're great, but I see Irish food as food that's different from day to day fair in the UK.
I think Irish bacon is different. But I could well be wrong. Sausages, who knows, there are a zillion permutations, in and out of the British Isles. The cusine through the Isles I think are more or less the same.
This review of Al & Beas burtito place in the LA Weekly notes something I was unaware of:
If your only encounters with burritos have been at taquerias specializing in sesos, San Francisco–style joints that stuff their tortillas with black beans and grilled steak, or at mini-mall fresh-Mex places that happen to flavor their tortillas with sun-dried tomatoes and basil, the plainness of the food at Al & Bea’s may come as kind of a shock.
Are San Francisco Burritos a separate sub category? I know they do tacos a lot more in LA than SF.
My experience has obviously been different.
Wha? That's unpossible. You're dangerously close to the Jesse-ian Heresy of "Different people like different stuff."
I enjoy the Irish food. Food cooked poorly sucks no matter what cuisine it is. Yell at the individual cooks, don't cast aspirsions on an entire culture.
This.
The "overcooked grey food" stereotype was true in the 1950's, and it was true in the US as well. It's old and tired and annoying.
Are San Francisco Burritos a separate sub category?
I think so.
Have you ever had a steak burrito at, um... this place in Noe Vally (on 24th, across from a grocery store, not too far from Castro IIRC)?
that stuff their tortillas with black beans and grilled steak
Yes. Nummy.
I guess I am taking issue with the descriptor of "grey"
I see that as a different issue. If the food's not grey, that is.
People can like whatever they want. . .except bacon, which is of the Devil.
Also, now I am starving, but I don't know what to eat. None of the cafeteria food downstairs. I am getting the hunger headache, too. So sad.
re Irish food:
Now I want curry fries, which I've only ever encountered in Irish joints.
And there's nothing wrong with cabbage, until you boil it into a noxious grey slime that lingers like skunk in your kitchen.
