Momshaming

One of the advantages of not being an academic, or at least of not being an untenured academic (being a dog means having tenure) is that if you want to go three years without writing anything, well that's fine. Sometimes three years go by and you don't have anything worth sharing with total strangers. From what I've read of academic writing (don't ask...sometimes I'm just curious about how my mom spends her time), that's true of a lot of academics too, but they keep writing and publishing anyway. I understand that academic departments need to measure the productivity of the people they are paying money, but I don't see why dog videos don't count for tenure review. I mean look at the number of page views, the number of comments, the amount of happiness created, on any dog video, and then compare it to the positive impact generated by anything about "biopolitics" or Agamben, and I think you have a pretty clear idea of how "humans" are screwing up the humanities.

Anyway. Now I have something to say. If there is one thing in life that seems simple to me, it's food. When it's there, you eat it. If it's not quite there, but by digging for a while or squeezing under the dumpster or doing the ASPCA face you can get it, then you eat it. If it's going to make you sick, you don't eat it, unless it's reaaaallly yummy and then you probably do eat it. So why do humans have such trouble with this food thing? Why does my mother let her life be dominated by her struggle to--get this--NOT eat? This is a woman WITH OPPOSABLE THUMBS. She could have anything she wanted. And yet she wastes it all --thumbs, time, money--on vegetables, on sugar free candy, on stress. People post videos on dogshaming.com about how their dogs got onto the counter and ate [insert food for humans here]. Someone needs to put my mom on momshaming.com about all the food that she hasn't gotten into. Do I still love her? Yes. But truly, perplexingly shameful.