Skyphenomenon

An old favorite

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

—Mary Oliverg your place
in the family of things.

A Little Background on Beauty

The desire to understand and analyze what makes an object, person, or experience beautiful is the pursuit of both philosophy and sociology with different and conflicting answers.

            Western philosophy understands beautiful, the ‘aesthetic’ that manifests itself as an object, judgment, attitude and value. Francis Hutcheson, an Irish philosopher of the 1700s was the first to explore how people sense beauty. He was the first of many advocates of the ‘immediacy thesis’ that saw beauty as a straight-forward, innate sensory judgment “antecedent to all custom, education or example”[1]. Many egoist philosophers of the time rejected these ideas of naïve and untainted judgment of beauty. The egoists saw all human judgments, including those about beauty as self-interested. The aesthetic is self-interested because things innately seem beautiful, just, or true because they somehow serve our conscious or unconscious interests. Emmanuel Kant, a German aesthetic strongly disagreed with a self-interested aesthetic and any connection between beauty and morality. He pioneered the ‘disinterest thesis’ which advocates that pleasure in beauty is completely disinterested or disconnected from egoistic needs and wants.

            From these essentialist roots developed some more sociological about beauty and aesthetics. For example, in Kendall Walton’s theory about art, judgment and appreciation depends on the category and intention of the artist. For example, to judge a Jackson Pollock in the category of renaissance art would lead to dissatisfaction with Pollock’s lack of precision and form. Within the category of modern abstract art, however, a Pollock painting is inspired and emotionally powerful. This theory however has flaws when applied to the beauty of the natural world, or the principle subject of this study, women. How can beauty be subjective to categories when the creation of the natural world and humans defy simple categorization? Some natural aesthetic philosophers use biological classification as a natural equivalent for art categories.  That is to say, whales have aesthetic properties when judged as mammals that do not exist if when judged as fish. This theory logically follows into judging human beauty; aesthetics for women are not the same as for men; for adults and child; and more controversially between races and cultures.

            While not based on social science, philosophical ideas of beauty have real implications for understanding beauty. These theories question how ‘natural’ or ‘innate’ is our judgment of beauty? What interests if any do beauty standards serve? And finally are there multiple standards of beauty? How do these multiple standards, react, interact, dissipate and dominate?

            Various studies investigate more specifically how Latin American women judge beauty in themselves and peers. In contrast to philosophy’s conception of the body as the origin of judgment and taste concerning beauty, sociology analyzes the body as a site of social control, a tool and a victim of ideology rather than a source. Three different studies examine the effects of media and globalization on images of beauty in Colombia, the Ecuadorian Amazon and Guayaquil, Ecuador.

            In Reinados de belleza y nacionalización de las sociedades latinoamericanos, Ingrid Johanna Bolívar Ramírez discusses how the National Colombian beauty contest plays a role in constructing national identity. She shows that the beauty contest is an appropriate metaphor for most womens’ everyday experience. Latin American women are constantly being judged on their physical appearance with personality and skills as a secondary category. Furthermore the idea of beauty is deeply influenced by class, racial undertones and to ‘perform’ properly for an upper-class white latin-american woman is critical to national identity and pride. Bolívar Ramírez asks in her discussion of the beauty contest,

            “¿Quién está dispuesto a aceptar que la supuesta descripción de las reinas en             términos de “gallardía”, “altivez”, “nobleza”, “elegancia”, “boca fina”, “cuello             de cisne”, “ojos de ensueño” revela valoraciones y normas sobre lo deseable             además de valores morales convertidos en rasgos físicos?”[2]

Thus the traits valued in a beauty contest, are more than physical values, they, in direct opposition to the ‘disinterest thesis’, reflect moral, racial and gender norms of the national psyche.

            In Napo Communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Blanca Muratorio examines the changing beauty ideals by interviewing indigenous grandmothers about the changes they see in their granddaughters. This study is a local manifestation of a global process of cultural change and loss within previously isolated communities. The grandmother’s testimony contrasts ideas of femininity from their generation, which emphasizes physical strength and a social process of body adornment, with the new western ideals of beauty and femininity that reach the younger generation through television. The grandmother’s central disapproval of new western beauty standards is that it antisocial in practice. Women receive these ideas not from elders but from a television in which communication is one-sided. Furthermore makeup and other western beauty practices are not performed ritually by other women in the community, like traditional face-adornment, but instead alone with a mirror. Thus indigenous grandmothers in this study see new conceptions of beauty and femininity and a type of indulgent individuality that threatens cultural reproduction in their communities.

            In a third and final assessment of beauty norms and values in Latin America, Erynn Masi de Casanova investigates high-school age girls in Guayaquil about self-image and beauty ideals in her article “No hay mujer fea”: conceptos de la belleza entre las adolescentes guayaquileñas. Masi de Casanova acknowledges the incredible foreign influence in Ecuador and especially large cities from colonial legacy, high immigrant population and foreign presence in more than half of television programming. From other studies the author recognizes two central reactions to imposed beauty ideals. The first reaction, from a study of young Jamacian women, is an internalization of white beauty standards, and resulting low self-esteem and destructive behavior when the biologically different Jamaican women failed to perform Euro-American beauty. The second, from a study of African-American communities in the United States, is an adamant rejection of white beauty norms in favor of a more personal and culturally appropriate set of beauty ideals. Surprisingly, African American women of a set age and socially class in general have higher levels of self-esteem than their white counterparts, conceivably due to this rejection of white beauty norms.

            With this framework in mind, the author interviewed and analyzed these young women from Guayaquil about socioeconomic status, media involvement, body practices, beauty ideals and body image. She found that lower class women had significantly lower self-esteem but almost identical beauty ideals to their upper class peers. These beauty ideals overwhelmingly favored Euro-American standards of beauty like white skin, petite figures and delicate facial features. However, the actions and behavior of the girls in the interview process stood in seeming contradiction to these beauty ideals. The harsh judgment of white beauty norms were not applied to their own lives or peers. In constructing their own body ideals they favored a similar rejection of thinness attributed to their African American parallels. In this contradiction, Masi de Casanova demonstrates a third reaction to the influx of foreign and usually unachievable beauty standards. These girls remain influenced and changed by Euro-American beauty ideals but demonstrate a critical evaluation and subtle rejection of some media messages.

            From the intellectual framework of philosophy and sociology two major questions arise. Firstly, where do norms, judgments, and standards of beauty come from? This question likely lends itself to more than one answer. There are some understanding of beauty that are probably innate but a great majority, as the three articles demonstrate, come from national and international ideologies of power. Secondly and more importantly for this study, how do these ideologies of beauty modify and change women’s lives? Do Ecuadorian women, like their Colombian sisters, live in a real-time national beauty contest? How do beauty standards change social interactions between generations, genders, and other races?

Esmeraldas, no hunchback

There is very little to report from my daily routine of stretching hours of Spanish grammar and the mind-numbing bureaucracy of an endless moderated tragedy of domestic abuse surveys. According to their five-digit zoning numbers, most of the descriptions of abusive husbands that I read for eight hours a week come from the region of Esmeraldas which I saw for the first time last weekend. My first view of the city was from a bus window in the eerie half-light of dusk and fluorescent lights. I try to image what it must have looked like when the Spanish first landed there, with sandy beaches, a sparkling river and low green hills. This is challenging considering its modern incarnation is mostly cement structures which are debatably half finished of half fallen. From what most Quiteños tell me, the streets are filled with crime and drugs and the surrounding forests have been reduced to patchy scrub. Even though it is a port city, fishing and shipping take a backseat to the oil refineries whose smoky emissions rise from the city even at night. Being probably the least recommended destination in Ecuador, I passed through the city quickly to the rowdy little beach town of Atacames. The beach was lined with thatched roof open-air bars blasting reggaton loud enough to drown out the neighboring bars music. Even more surprising is the population of Atacames which seemed about seventy percent afro-Ecuadorian. I had a few moments where I forgot where I was, surrounded by a stunning and exotic black population all speaking Spanish with a thick costal accent. Naturally I was all enthusiasm and wide-eyes when I cam back to Quito and told my friends and family about my trip. But to my surprise, most of the admittedly upper-class Quiteños that I know regard Atacames with a disgust. They say it is very dangerous, loud, and not a place their parents let them go. An afro-ecuadorian bar tender I met in Atacames exclaimed how kind I was, considering white and mestizo tourists from Quito usually treat him with very little respect. I am still trying to wrap my head around the racism that seems to lie just below the surface here especially toward afro-Ecuadorians. The segregation of neighborhoods and entire regions helps lessen the outward expressions of racism but it was interesting to hear this masked sentiment just by talking about my trip. Although I know it is probably much more complex than my tiny glimpses and snippets. Just when I think I’m overanalyzing the entire racial dynamic, I feel my fairly dark-skinned Ecuadorian friend touch my arm. “You’re so lucky!” she exclaims “you spent all weekend at the beach and your skin is still sooo white, I wish I was like that”

Valentines Day

Through the lemon and peach trees that shade my window, I can see the valley is a patchwork of mostly farmland speckled with the red and white clusters of towns and most strikingly great shiny whit plastic patches like bandaids placed temporarily to heal some unknown flaw in the surrounding nature.

But the plastic squares are permanent and house the great majority of flowers imported all over the world. From what Mercedes, my young and constantly working host mother implies, if you don’t have a husband and work in agriculture, you are guaranteed to work in the flower industry. Both of Mercedes’ two sisters work in the suffocating hot and regularly fumigated ‘casas del plastico’. Obviously unable to visit, I experienced the more comfortable aspect of her sister’s occupation; her scruffy wide-eyed three year old daughter who stays in Mercedes house while her sister works long weekend hours. This weekend was particularly bad with Valentines day so close at hand. I imagine all the beautiful roses that have slowly inundated Quito this past week but apparently those are the rejects. All the best flowers are exported to the United States and Europe to supply lovers who pay with a stronger currency.

But how have Mercedes and Milton currently washing dishes and hoing dusty ground, avoide this life so limited and degraded by plastic sheeting? As Milton explains it, his almost subsistence lifestyle of quinoa fields and blackberry bushes is only possible because of the additional income of tourists, which the community as a whole agreed to accept. Thus the details, inconveniences and subtle joys of this town would be secret if every tenth house in this town of nearly three hundred didn’t have a little room like mine, offset from the rest of the house full of laquered wood and purposefully indigenous décor. The introduction of ecotourism into this community brought Mercedes back from cleaning houses in Quito to start a life here. Although there have been sacrifices; she and her family of three occupy one room while I occupy three, including the only indoor bathroom. She struggles to modify her cooking for vegetarians, parasite paranoid tourists and overeaters. But in total, she says it’s a good life for her and her family and that tourist unlike the Quiteños she put up with before, don’t give her strange looks for being indigenous. In this valley, a lazy grassy hammock slung between the mountains of Ibarra and Cotocatchi it is interesting to see the complicated effects of globalization.

School Stuff

DISP: First Ideas

I have been struggling with this idea since I arrived in Ecuador. The act of deciding to live in another country is about being ready for a new culture, new values, and new ideas. Ecuador and Latin America undoubtedly offer those things, but right from the beginning I have been shocked by the breadth and depth of US influence on Ecuadorian habits and culture.

At first it was just commercial, I noticed how many US products and brands have saturated the Ecuadorian market. I am surprised by how many English words I see on my short bus ride home. But as I get to know more students at La Catolica, I am seeing that this cultural influence runs deeper. English has an incredible hold on the life of most of these students. Having studied it for most of their lives, English is changing the grammar and word forms of slang and young people’s Spanish. Furthermore, speaking English seems to almost be a part of youth culture. I have been shocked to find most of the facebook profiles of Ecuadorian friends from Catholica are in English.

From these very basic observations, I have started to project more assumptions and conclusions about what US culture means to people here. In a political context, in which President Correa speaks with animosity about anti-imperialism, I am curious about what Ecuadorians, young and old feel about this ever present cultural cohabitant in their lives.

I have mixed feelings about this project because, I do not want to travel all the way to Ecuador to study US culture. I feel a DISP should be about something uniquely Ecuadorian and culturally foreign. However, I am realizing more and more that no culture develops in a vacuum. What seems uniquely Ecuadorian to me is a product of years of cultural mixing and often dominance with European and indigenous culture. But that cultural mixing and dominance is not only a thing of the past. I think, at least from my limited experience that this process continues to evolve in different ways for the majority of Ecuadorians. With this assumption in mind, I want to explore how Ecuadorians of different ages, locations, and social classes feel about cultural dominance and mixing in theirs. Why and from where does it come? How does it make them feel about themselves and their own culture? How would they describe their own culture and how do they feel it has changed? What kind of rhetoric and activism is there against US culture? How does Ecuador’s indigenous population change its relationship with US culture?

I think that I will eventually need to focus more specifically on one aspect of this cultural mixing and dominance, like language or consumerism. But for now I want to keep it open ended and try not to let my assumptions about US influence overwhelm and distort what is actually there. My biggest concern remains in continuing to make this a project about Ecuador and not a self-reflective study of US culture abroad. Do you have any suggestions for keeping this project focused and without the overwhelming cultural bias that is already so prevalent?

Off the map

After much confusion and negotiation, I had my first two days of community service this week. I think I am starting to adjust to the idea of spending eight hours a week in the dimly lit yellow house just off Los Shides.

CEDEAL (Centro Ecuatoriano de Desarollo y Estudios Alternitivos) is a feminist non-governmental organization. From my jumbled understanding of the thirty-five page description I read my first day working there, this organization has a broad goal of human and women’s rights. They try to develop independent and empowering community groups to run workshops about different issues for women and afro-Ecuadorians. The employees of the organization that I met stressed that they are not teachers. CEDEAL trains community members to lead the discussions and help spread information and support. The projects have a strong focus on AIDS prevention and support.

The only active work I can do in the office is help input the results of AIDS surveys filled out by high school girls. While tedious, it was interesting to read the reactions and answers of these girls written in flowery girly handwriting. Most of the answers were accurate and discussed, in detail, the causes and myths about AIDs. Another Pitzer student and I worked on surveys from different parts of the city. Laura’s survey group had marked differences from mine when it came to accurate information, and Laura was shocked to hear that the girls were in high school because their answers demonstrated a deficiency of basic sexual and health knowledge.  Despite the differences in the test groups, the last question had almost uniform answers. When asked “what do you want to learn more about?” almost all the girls said “embarazado no planificado” or unplanned pregnancy. In these answers I get a glimpse of how life is different for these girls, who I can only know through their handwriting and medical knowledge.

That exercise in data input, interesting as it was, is a fragment of a greater frustration that is growing for me in Ecuador. I am so protected here. Every morning I walk down the hill through my gated community, past the countless guards and at a time when all the housekeepers and maid of my neighbors are walking up. I go to community service and read lengthy articles about the problems for women in Ecuador. I watch the indigenous women selling cigarettes through my bus window disappear into a miasma of bus fumes as I careen past. It is all here but I can’t touch it. Be that because of language, or privilege or safety concerns. So instead, I set my alarm to a comfortable time and spend everyday in Spanish class chit-chatting in a curious and diplomatic way about politics and gender with other foreigners. For me these politics and current events seem both too big and too small to matter and really mean much. I want something that I can touch and connect with. I want to escape of my artfully decorated penthouse apartment, my little whitewashed classroom, and my “community service” activities but I don’t know where I would run. Living in a new country, I don’t quite know where human rights and women’s rights is on the map. Should all the overworked, overqualified housewives run off to become executives? If they did, I wonder how many more maids I would see climbing the hill to my house early every morning. Should all the indigenous women selling things in the streets with their babies bundled in cloth on their small backs return to their villages only to eke a living on land scarred by drought, or the pesticide inundated flower industry or worse, the oil industry? I still don’t know. Overwhelmed with the largess of some of the injustices here, I want something tangible and unfeigned to hope for.

Life in the Valley

The Pinchincha valley in Ecuador that is…

I don’t quite know how to fit this jumbled, confusing, incredible first week into a blog especially since I have never identified as a blogger but this is my best shot.

Starting with my family that whisked me away from the airport only minutes after I arrived, I live in a family of four. They greet me everyday with hugs and kisses, which almost feels normal now. Phrases like good morning, good afternoon, how are you? Consume the majority of my functional but very clumsy Spanish. It’s hard to feel lonely here with people always passing by my room greeting and checking in with me about my day. Also in my house, doors are never closed which I think brings a sense of togetherness even when my 15 year old sister is slaving away at her homework and my 18 year old brother composing and practicing jazz on his enormous base.

While the interactions with my family ran fairly smoothly, dealing with the bureaucracy of the university was an entirely different story. Efficiency doesn’t seem to be the primary goal of any system here. I ran around multiple different offices on my first day of school because there is no central system for class listings and locations. Another slight inconvenience is the power outages both planned and unplanned but they still feel like a quirky novelty to me. There was even one in the middle of the night when I was at a club! Luckily they were equipped with candles.

All these experiences are part of me walking the fine line between being a tourist and a more permanent resident. I live with a family, I attend university, I use the bus system, I help cook with my family. But I also enjoy the clearly touristy experiences of wandering through the cobblestoned streets of old town with its balconies. In this almost European part of the city, I feel separated from the mania of the rest of the city in the silent churches and in the celebratory plazas with tiny old people eating mangoes and chatting. As part of my obligatory tourist experience, I also visited La Mitad del Mundo, the slightly inaccurate equator. This town, built around the equator monument, looks like a movie set of Latin America with brightly coloredtile roofed houses all curiously selling identical souvenirs. However hard I tried to despise its inauthenticity it’s hard to not to enjoy sitting in the equatorial sun eating empanadas and watching the hummingbirds fly around the manicured movie set gardens.

This first week in Quito has been an adventure. After becoming settled with my wonderful family I have gotten to know Quito in a number of different ways. Thus far Quito has been a city of contrasts. Standing in paradox is the modern apartment I live in with my family freshly cleaned by our maid and supervised by armed guards, the suffocating crowds on bus spewing lead filled diesel exhaust into already polluted streets.  I climbed to the top of the seemingly ancient basilica with weathered but stolid stone walls and light fracturing through buckling stained glass windows. Yet in the Mariscal or gringolandia, as my family calls it, the clubs the walls are full of kitschy American football paraphernalia and strobe lights compliment the varied but mostly dated American music. As schizophrenic as Quito is, some things are constant. Wherever I am in Quito, I am surrounded by the dramatic mist-covered mountains that embrace the city. It is hard to have a boring or uninteresting day under the watchful gaze of these mountains.