What's in Your Food?

This week's documentary Banana Land: Blood, Bullets and Poison that focused on the banana industry really resonated with me. I wasn't the first time I have heard of the issue, as my father works in agriculture and is pretty up to speed on what is going on. He also has made a point in educating my family on where our food comes from, and how it was acquired. My mother is an animal science major so she also pride herself in educating my brother and I were we get our meats and the life cycles of animals. Over all, I had a pretty fascinating childhood. Plenty of visits to farms and fields, but there is still many things that are kept in the dark about our food and the unethical ways we obtain it. This isn't the first time ethics have been questioned in the food industry.

Fair trade is something that has been mentioned numerous times throughout the quarter in this class and I think it is a more imperative practice than ever. Massive corporations shouldn't continue to suck and drain away and unfairly compensate, as well as take advantage of developing countries and its inhabitants. The profits earned should help them turn into a developed country, not drain their resources further. No man should be rendered sterile from the abuse of pesticide regulations on banana plantations. No family should have their child's health and their own be at risk from these chemicals as well. The abuses need to end and human life needs to always be prioritized over the greed of corporations. I will now go out of my way to avoid Dole products as well as Chiquita bananas. I saw both of their products in Fred Meyer this weekend and I got a little bit sick to my stomach remembering the documentary. I have made a vow with myself to try and look for fair trade items more closely. It is easy to purchase commonplace, multi-billion dollar industry products out of the sake of time, money and convenience, but it is really important to remind yourself that every item has a story. Even something as seemingly cheap and meaningless as a common banana.  

Children, Not Brides

This week we have discussed what defines childhood and what a child needs in order to have a fulfilling and ethical experience. In particular, we started the documentary Girl Rising. All three girls whose stories have been shared so far break my heart, but none more than young Yasmin from Cairo, Egypt. Yasmin was violently attacked by an older man and she had to fight for her life. She calls herself a superhero, and I'm inclined to agree. It would've been far easier for her to give up, but instead this young woman fought for her life, making choices the no one that young should ever have to consider.

The thing that struck me was that Yasmin, who was 13 years old when she was last contacted, was engaged and to be married. According to the official website of Girl Rising, "...despite our partner organization’s efforts to enroll Yasmin in literacy classes, her mother considered a marriage proposal to be a more secure investment in her daughter’s future." 

According to http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/ 15 million girls are married before the age of 18 years old. When we discussed what defined a healthy childhood, we stated things like proper health care, food, shelter, being able to play and be a child and education. While child brides may be getting food and shelter, they are deprived of their childhood, their basic human rights and their safety is put at risk. These little girls are not only deprived of a proper education, but they are forced into a marriage and then more often than not pregnancy soon follows afterwards, which that and childbirth are the leading cause of death in low and middle income countries.

Yasmin is a superhero, one who is worth an education and not to be a child brides. They need time to be children, and not be forced to become a wife and mother far before they should. These girls deserve an education, and to discover their self-worth. They deserve to find love and marry who they love, not just because they are obligated to marry as soon as possible because of their gender. These girls also shouldn't have to go through with pregnancy before they are ready or face the overwhelming fear of death from complications.

Child brides are what their name implies; children. I write this post with angry and frustrated tears in my eyes and my heart aches for the girls who don't have the voice to say no and became or will become child brides. If there is no reduction in child marriage, 1.2 billion more girls will be married by 2050. 1.2 billion more girls deprived of a proper education, who won't be able to play and enjoy their youth, and instead be thrust into the role of a wife and mother that puts their safety at risk. Let children be children instead of trying to mold them into nothing more than a shell of and obedient wife, married too young and was stripped of her youth and independence.

A Mother's Sacrifice

This week brought another round of equally interesting and controversial topics, but none quite tugged at my heart-strings like The Care Crisis in the Philippines.  Parreñas talked in depth about how migrant mothers made the ultimate sacrifice of leaving their children behind with relatives so that they could support them financially from afar in a first-world country. All the accounts from the children literally felt like someone was punching me in the chest. I could not imagine being deprived of my mother growing up. On the flip side, it is exceedingly unfair of the Philippines government to place the blame of unruly children on the mothers when they made one of the most difficult choices imaginable. Parreñas said it quite well, "Government officials and the media could then stop vilifying migrant women, redirecting their attention, instead to men. They could question the lack of male accountability for care work, and they could demand that men, including migrant fathers, take more responsibility for the emotional welfare of their children."

I'd like to use this as a segue into a similar vein of thinking; why are women asked to sacrifice so much? Why is it when a woman is pregnant that she's the one that is assumed to be giving up her career to raise and nurture the child. People are so quick to assert because they're the natural caregivers, but I would challenge that way of thinking from a sociological standpoint, because males are just as excellent nurturers as females, given the opportunity. Why is it that when I google verbatim, "How to balance work and family?" the first result is, "10 Ways Moms Can Balance Work and Family" and there are 676,000,000 other results and the first two pages seem to be focused largely on women? Society is a fickle thing. They expect women to be "superwomen," in this case be good mother and raise your children, but also have a good career. But beware! If you work too much, then you'll be seen as a workaholic and not prioritize your children, or if you don't work an "acceptable" amount of hours, you're not a "real" worker, you're just a stay-at-home mom with some spare time on her hands that she could be doing something else "constructive" with or you're not applying yourself professionally to your career and you should step aside for someone who wants it more. You get the picture.

My concluding thoughts are will we ever find a balance? Will men ever be secure enough with idea of being nurturers themselves and sacrificing their careers if asked to raise their children? It seems funny a touch sad to wish for a world where gender identities weren't so rigid that they would cause problems on who would stay at home and raise children. It's unfair to always expect women to make the sacrifices and be a "superwoman" and juggling it all, just because it's what has always been deemed as sociologically appropriate.  

During this week's seminar discussions, my interest was particularly piqued concerning skin bleaching and its ties to globalization.  According to our text by Eitzen and Zinn, skin bleaching can be traced back to "the internalization that 'white is right'" and because white is the dominant standard." As a Caucasian female, I will never understand the struggle that those of different skin tones feel to fit in, especially when we should be praising diversity and not uniformity. The discussion on this topic was interesting to me in particular because even though we live in a country that supposedly praises diversity and embracing your uniqueness, I can still go to drug store and find a lotion with skin lightening agents. Companies can argue that their products are used for for imperfections for those with Caucasian skin tones, but that doesn't stop these products from being abused in an attempt to conform to globalized beauty standards. It also is unfair that makeup companies do not cater to all skin tones, no matter how diverse of range there is. This is also an example of if you don't fit into the spectrum of foundation colors, you are considered a deviant. My group and I discussed how the world has such a vast array of features and looks that make the human race and truly unique, but the idea of beauty is narrowing and it seems to be predominately white. If someone doesn't conform to beauty standards but is still found attractive, she/he is called "exotic," which is kind of a back-handed compliment in a way.

One huge example I can think of how this applies to real world examples would be the epidemic of photo shopping celebrities on the cover of magazines that doesn't reflect their true skin tone accurately (see). Another example was a model who recently called out makeup artists for being unprepared to work with her skin tone (see). These are both great examples of how the global, universal standard of beauty is still very much white and we are still struggling to accommodate for those who don't fit in said standard of beauty.

There is hope, however. There have been small strides such a Victoria's Secret model being allowed to wear her natural hair instead of the traditional angel waves (see). I hope that in the coming years that the world will relax their beauty standards and ideals and be inclusive for all and that no little girl or boy will feel the need to buy skin lighteners or get plastic surgery in order to succeed in life. If I had unlimited resources it would go to getting harmful materials such as skin lighteners off the market and I would focus on classes, starting at early education promoting self-love and acceptance and rejecting the human instinct for conformity. If we are able to instill these ideals in current generations and future ones, hopefully the idea of beauty will change. But it is crucial that we start now or else standards will continue to narrow and get even more impossible to fit in.