In her very interesting piece in Salon about Michele Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, Kate Harding challenges the decision to frame it as a mission to "'solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation,' rather than to improve health and well-being across the board." She’s worried about "whipping up fear and disgust of the very fat children you're supposedly trying to help," and she cuts some of the panic-inducing statistics down to size. (For example, parse that terrifying phrase about "nearly a third" of American kids being obese or overweight, and you discover that obesity rates are actually much lower: 12.5 percent for preschoolers, 17 percent for 6-11 year olds, and 17.6 percent for adolescents up to 19. Kids' laziness gets exaggerated, too; according to some studies, inactivity is above all a high school problem.)

Harding’s point, which is well taken, is that alarmist rhetoric may get people off their butts, but it can cloud their heads. The effect can be to undercut a public health cause like this one, which she argues would more constructively focus on fitness for all sizes. There’s just one problem: Clear-headed analysis aimed at a broadly inclusive audience doesn’t so readily get people moving, or generate the kind of targeted strategies that are likely to be helpful. Ever since Eisenhower got worried about American "softness" more than half a century ago, The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports has been tirelessly exhorting citizens to exercise—and see where that’s got us. But if the Obamas’ mission can stir up some vigorous debate about how best to tackle this issue, that’s a good step. As JFK, a real enthusiast in the fitness cause, emphasized, “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”

Tags: Michelle Obama, obesity

When are you going to have kids? So you're still single then? How's the job hunt? Sometimes strangers ask the darndest questions. What small-talk topics are too annoying to bear?

Dana Stevens: I don't like when people ask you financial details about the place you live—Do you rent or own? How much do you pay in mortgage/rent?—which, rude as it sounds, happens surprisingly often, at least in New York. This kind of grilling is OK in some circumstances, like if a good friend is embarking on an apartment search and gathering information, but as party chat it too quickly devolves into competitiveness and schadenfreude.

Nina Rastogi: The one that always gets me is when new acquaintances, upon discovering that I'm biracial, casually ask me if I "feel more Indian or more Chinese." I'm happy to talk about that, but for Chrissake, do you think you’re going to get a 30-second answer?

Jessica Lambertson: I think every college student and recent graduate dreads the question, "What are you doing after graduation?" Every time an acquaintance or family friend starts asking about job prospects for May, I get completely stressed out. In an attempt to not sound like a total bum, I usually make up some nonsense that will get me out of the conversation ASAP. For young people, thinking about the future can be exciting, but more often than not it's just scary.

Amanda Marcotte: I used to hate having to tell people what I did for a living, but since I've moved to Brooklyn, it's become much easier. Now people don't stare at you in disbelief when you tell them that you're a writer, nor do they pepper you with a million questions about how that's even possible.

Jessica Grose: Well-meaning acquaintances often ask me what my next professional move is going to be, i.e., Got your next idea for a book? Any big articles in the works? I know that those questions are usually asked out of earnest curiosity, but except when they come from my closest friends, these types of inquiries always make me anxious. What if I don't have anything coming up? What if I have a big idea, but you think it's stupid?

June Thomas: When I told people I was moving from Seattle to New York, a surprising number asked, "Is Rosemary going with you?" I know there are heterosexual couples who live in different cities, at least for a while, but that wasn't what they had in mind. They obviously didn't see us as a couple, despite our having lived together for nearly a decade at that point.

The other one is, "Are you a vegetarian?" It's not offensive, but why on earth do people confuse lesbians and Hindus?

Jessica Grose: I know it annoys some, but actually doesn't bother me when people ask me if my fiance and I want kids, or about when we plan on having them. Because I am confident in my responses and don't care what people think about our decisions, giving out that sort of information doesn't irk me.

Kerry Howley: But you don't have to be insecure about your plans to be made uncomfortable by questions about future children. If you do not want kids, the conversation immediately turns to why, exactly, you do not want them. Are you selfish? Insane? Out of touch with your essential womanhood? You become compelled to justify your choice, and what starts as small talk stops seeming comfortably trivial.

Rachael Larimore: Speaking of pregnancy, breeders can get their share of untoward questions. My all time favorite: I was at a visitation for a family friend who had passed away. One of the workers—at a funeral home, where you would think that tact was a job requirement—comes up to me and asks, "Oh, when are you due?" In four months, I tell her. "My goodness! Is there more than one in there?" (Not twins, mind you, "more than one." As in, "Are you carrying a litter?") No, I tell her. Just one. "But, but ... you're so big!"

KJ Dell'Antonia: I hate, "So your kids will all be in school soon—what will you do with all your time?" Um—keep juggling work and parenting, just like I have been for the past seven years. Only with less babysitting, and probably more carpooling.

Dana Stevens: Another super-loaded one for pregnant people: "Are you having a natural childbirth?" Never has that question been asked without an agenda of some kind.

Hanna Rosin: I am at the place in life where I wish people would ask me such questions. They look at me and my entourage—husband, three kids—and they think, nothing exciting happening there anymore.

Claire Gordon: Not so much small talk, as they are just questions that suck: "Are you really tired?" No. My face is just crappy today. "Didn't you just eat?" Yes. I just want more food.

Ellen Tarlin: Questions in the past that have bothered me:

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

"What are you going to major in?"

"How do you expect to find a husband if you go to NYU?"

"You have such a nice face; what are we going to do about your body?"

"What are you going to do when you graduate?"

"Why don't you just write a best-seller?"

"When are you going to get married? You are living like married people, so you should get married. I'm telling you this not as a Christian but because it's true."

"When are you going to have children?"

"My friends who are in their 40s have been trying for years to have children. They are having such a hard time. They shouldn't have waited so long."

(Then people stopped asking me that—which meant I was either getting too old or they thought maybe something was wrong.)

"What's going on at work? What's the big news story today?" (Are you really that stupid that you need me to tell you?)

"How's your job? Do you feel safe there?" (Of course not, dummy. It's journalism.)

"What is your husband working on?" (Which I actually don't mind that much—because it takes the focus off of me. Though often I don't know what he's working on or can't talk about it, or I don't know enough about it to make it sound interesting.)

After my husband won an Emmy Award, someone asked me, Where's YOUR Emmy?

Someday I will ask someone: "When are you going to die? Do you really think you want to wait that long? Wouldn't it be better to just get it over with?"

When I was a child, other kids always used to ask me: "Why are you so pale?"

And then there was the time my mother said, "What happened to your stomach? It used to be so flat!"

And ye olde: "Are you pregnant?"

June Thomas: What I have learned from these responses: It is better to be an egomaniac and just talk about yourself than to ask other people questions at cocktail parties.

Ellen Tarlin: Or to find a common enemy to make fun of.

Tags: annoying habits, communication

In his piece for the New York Times Book review on Just Kids, Patti Smith’s new memoir about her long-term relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, Tom Carson writes:

Peculiarly or not, the one limitation of “Just Kids” is that Mapplethorpe himself, despite Smith’s valiant efforts, doesn’t come off as appealingly as she hopes he will. When he isn’t candidly on the make — “Hustler-hustler-hustler. I guess that’s what I’m about,” he tells her — his pretension and self-romanticizing can be tiresome.

Carson’s criticism is well-deserved. At first read, Smith’s memoir tells a pretty romantic story: Two 20-year-old dreamers arrive penniless in New York, find in each other kindred spirits, and build a life together in pursuit of art. The messy little details—like that Mapplethorpe turns out to be gay, or that he eventually dies of AIDS, or that their pennilessness forces them to steal, hustle, and compromise themselves in manifold ways—don’t really get in the way of Smith’s message: that this is a love affair for the ages. Smith is a seductive storyteller. She has at her disposal an enviable range of allusions and references. But her greatest asset as a writer is the clarity with which she sees herself and the people around her—a clarity that is compromised only by a gigantic, Robert Mapplethorpe-shaped blind spot.

Even 20 years after his death, Smith finds herself apologizing for his behavior. When they meet and shack up, Smith is all too willing to support Mapplethorpe financially, claiming: “I had no regrets taking on the job as breadwinner. My temperament was sturdier.” When Mapplethorpe’s pride finally forces him to help out with the bills, he turns to hustling despite Smith’s tearful protestations; the way she tells this story makes it hard to believe his motivation was actually monetary. Mapplethorpe contracts gonorrhea from one of his gay lovers, has sex with Smith anyway, and passes the disease along to her—yet she swallows her recriminations: “My first concern was for Robert’s well-being and he was far too ill for any emotional tirade.” Robert even enters into a serious relationship with David Croland without telling Smith or severing their physical relationship. Smith’s own career only really takes off once Mapplethorpe has broken off their domestic and physical partnership—until then her focus seems to be on his success. She writes, “I felt, as always, a rising pleasure when he used a reference to me in a work, as if through him I would be remembered.”

I don’t doubt that real love and devotion existed between Smith and Mapplethorpe, nor is it my intention to begrudge them their unusual relationship. They lived in an age of experimentation, and both reveled in unconventional lifestyles and rejected attempts to define their relationship in any available terms. Nor do I doubt that Mapplethorpe was, in his way, incredibly supportive of Smith; his striking photographs of Smith for her album covers surely contributed in no small part to her success. But given Mapplethorpe’s reputation as a narcissist—and remembering that his photographs have been called exploitative—it should come as no surprise that Mapplethorpe’s relationship with his first model might also be somewhat abusive. As Smith’s stories perhaps unintentionally reveal, even in trying to create a relationship that transcended conventionality, Smith and Mapplethorpe perpetuated a power dynamic that is all too familiar and traditional.

Tags: Just Kids, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe

It's pretty silly that the New York Times profile of New York Senate hopeful Harold Ford's wife, Emily, calls the former fashion publicist "normally publicity-shy." First off, she used to be a publicist. Furthermore, there is a second article about Emily Ford published today, this one in the Daily Beast. As the Beast Points out, Harold did a "softball interview" with the New York Post's Cindy Adams in which he could not stop gushing about Emily and the couple's aged chihuahua, Fabby. It seems like Emily doth protest too much, especially since, according to Harold in the Post, "She's my director of research, checks my daily schedule and the people I'm seeing ... Today she's into marketing so she works from home, our condo in the Union Square Flatiron District, and she is totally involved in this decision." Hardly the shrinking violet, that Emily.

But the coverage of Emily Ford is not entirely irrelevant. Both the Times and the Beast discuss the campaign ad that some think helped derail Ford's Senate bid in Tennessee in 2006—the ad showed a white woman seductively calling Ford, who is black, and according to the Times, it "played to racist fears." But the more compelling subtext of the Times profile of Emily Ford is the recent humiliation of political wives Jenny Sanford and Elizabeth Edwards—both of whom are mentioned in the article. Ford had a reputation as a ladies' man before he settled down, dating Georgetown coeds well into his 30s, and now he seems incredibly concerned with proving how happily married he is.

Considering the recent obsession with politicians' wives, the interest in Emily Ford is understandable—but it doesn't make the articles about her any more noteworthy. The most hilariously banal part of the Times profile is the section in which the author tries to convince the reader that fashionista Emily Ford is just like us:

Despite gilded-class assumptions raised by Ms. Ford’s fashion pedigree and her mother’s wealthy third husband, Anson Beard Jr., a former Morgan Stanley senior executive, Ms. Ford quickly points out that she grew up in Naples, Fla., playing paddleball as a teenager and perfecting her tan. “I am not an Upper East Side heiress,” she said emphatically.

What an impressive rise from a hardscrabble background of paddle ball and tanning! Is "I am not an Upper East Side heiress" the new "son of a mill worker"?

Photograph of Harold Ford Jr. by David Goldman/Getty Images.

Tags: Elizabeth Edwards, emily ford, Harold Ford, Jenny Sanford, Jr., politicians' wives

—Surprise! Blackwater employees are even more depraved than we previously thought. Two former workers claim that the notorious Iraqi security firm billed the U.S. government for a prostitute. [Washington Post]

—When a wife earns more than her husband, who should change the diapers? Babble explores how income affects the division of domestic labor. [Babble]

—Fox News analyst Angela McGlowan announced her plans to run for the House of Representatives in Mississippi’s 1st Congressional district. [Politico]

—The New York Senate finally expelled Hiram Monserrate for savagely beating his girlfriend. [Feministing]

—Thanks to the Great Recession, food stamps now in vogue. [MSNBC]

—Once a fashion faux pas, the socks-and-sandals combo reigns on the runway. [New York Times]

Tags: blackwater, fashion, food stamps, fox news, Harold Ford, hiram monserrate, political wives, politics, recession