Salon.com > Alex Jung

“Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?”: America’s misguided culture of overwork

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:26:00 +0000

Since the start of the recession, the number of unemployed in the U.S. has doubled. Those who are fortunate enough to still have jobs are often working longer hours for less pay, with the ever-present threat of losing being laid off. But even before the recession, American workers were already clocking in the most hours in the West. Compared to our German cousins across the pond, we work 1,804 hours versus their 1,436 hours – the equivalent of nine extra 40-hour workweeks per year. The Protestant work ethic may have begun in Germany, but it has since evolved to become the American way of life.

According to Thomas Geoghegan, a labor lawyer in Chicago and author of "Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life," European social democracy – particularly Germany’s – offers some tantalizing solutions to our overworked age. In comparison to the U.S., the Germans live in a socialist idyll. They have six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free university tuition, nursing care, and childcare. In an attempt to make Germany more like the U.S., Angela Merkel has proposed deregulation and tax cuts only to be met with fury on the left. Over multiple trips spanning a decade, Geoghegan decided to investigate how the Germans were living so well, and by extension, what we might be able to learn from them.

Why do Koreans eat hot food to cool down?

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:30:00 +0000

One August, at the tail end of monsoon season, I walked the streets of Seoul in search of a bowl of hot chicken soup. It was 101 degrees. I wanted to be a good Korean and a good foodie, engaging in the tradition of eating samgyetang -- a stuffed chicken served in steaming broth -- on the hottest days of summer. But as the heat and humidity threatened to overwhelm me, I had to wonder why my ancestors put me up to this.

Koreans revere their traditional foods, ascribing to them medicinal properties (some scientists floated the idea that kimchi could inoculate you from avian flu). Michael Pettid, professor of Premodern Korean Studies at Binghamton University and author of "Korean Cuisine: An Illustrated History" explains that the food philosophy is based on the idea of balancing one's ki, the flow of energy that courses through your body. "In East Asian cosmology, the idea of regulation of one's ki is vital to overall health. Food is an important means to keep one's ki properly attuned to the external environment," he writes.

Korean summer chicken soup recipe (Samgyetang)

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:17:00 +0000

Serves two

Ingredients

2 cornish game hens
1/2 cup of sweet rice (often marked "sweet glutinous rice," it's pearly and cooks up sticky, and different from regular short-grained rice)
4 pieces of dried ginseng (if you can find it and afford it, fresh ginseng is highly prized)
8 cloves of garlic
8 dried jujubes
4 green onions for garnish
salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

Wash the rice in several changes of water, until the water runs clear, and let it soak for about an hour.
Clean the hens, inside and out. If present, remove the innards. Rub salt and pepper on the chicken.
Stuff each chicken with half of the the sweet rice, ginseng, garlic and dried jujubes, and either sew the cavities shut with twine or use a skewer to close them.
Put the chickens in a pot like a Dutch oven, big enough to fit them comfortably but not so big they are swimming around. Fill it with enough water to cover the birds by an inch and bring it to a boil.
Turn the heat down, and simmer it on low, partially covered, for 2 hours, or until the meat is nearly falling off the bone. Skim any fat or foam that appears as it cooks and add water as needed, keeping the bird covered.
Serve immediately and set out sliced green onions, salt and pepper for diners to garnish and season according to their taste.

“The Body Shop”: The decline of the American muscle man

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:01:00 +0000

Where have all the muscle men gone? Just a few short decades ago, men like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan and Sylvester Stallone, with their glistening bodybuilder physiques, were not only movie stars but the embodiment of the 1980s American zeitgeist — pumped up, ripped and always ready to take off their shirt and start flexing. Nowadays, hyper-muscular physiques are more readily associated with a hard-partying subset of gay men and the cast of "Jersey Shore" than with conventional notions of sexiness (the Village Voice went so far as to conflate the two by putting the "Jersey Shore" stars on the cover of its queer issue). It's a change that telegraphs the ways in which our ideas about masculinity — and sex — have changed since the early '70s.

Muscle culture and the politics of masculinity are two things that are awfully familiar to Paul Solotaroff, contributing editor at Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone. His new memoir, "The Body Shop," recounts his own tortured relationship with steroids and weightlifting — an obsession that simultaneously built up his body and broke it down. Coming of age in the '70s, he was saddled with a slight frame and father issues, but when he began injecting steroids as a freshman in college, he went from anxious beanpole to muscle-bound hulk in a few short months. This change led to a career as a stripper, coke-fueled orgies and a lifetime of health problems.

French Vogue’s delightfully subversive nude

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:01:00 +0000

When Givenchy's head designer cast his personal assistant, Lea T., in a print ad for the brand, it sparked a frenzy of interest. Calls for interviews and modeling gigs began pouring in. Now, French Vogue, the hipper sister of American Vogue, is running a profile of the Brazilian model alongside a nude portrait in its upcoming issue. But this isn't your typical tale about the feverish discovery of a new face in high-fashion -- because Lea just happens to be a transsexual.

Of course, that makes the nude all the more provocative. Her gaze is calm and direct, and the casual placement of her hand clearly reveals that she hasn't had gender reassignment surgery. Unlike in the buzzed-about Givenchy ad, she doesn't wear ostentatious makeup or strike any of the dramatic poses that usually mark high fashion editorials. She is simply, arrestingly bare. With her long hair draped over her shoulders, Lea looks straight out of the Garden of Eden -- and that is perhaps what's most subversive about the photo: its ability to make us re-conceive of what we think of as "natural."

Aaron Schock, gay hero? Hardly

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:01:00 +0000

Don't let his abs fool you: Rep. Aaron Schock is no friend of the gays. Schock first gained Internet notoriety lounging poolside by flashing his six-pack in front of a buxom bathing beauty. After making the rounds at the straight-acting men's magazines -- like Details and GQ -- Schock made his way into today's New York Times Style section. In the article, writer Ashley Parker comments on another photo of Schock that elicited supposedly unwanted attention because of how, ahem, dapper he looked. Schock paired a neon turquoise belt with form-fitting white jeans, making him look more appropriate for a day trip to Fire Island than a politico's picnic. Gay staffers, obviously tickled purple, sent the picture around to one another, and Parker felt this warranted Schock entrance into the Gay Hall of Fame.

Best of “Twilight” fan fiction

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:02:00 +0000

"Eclipse" continues to break box office records, but the ballad of Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and the six-pack abs isn't confined to the screen or the page. Thanks to the proliferation of fan fiction (and its erotic sibling, slash fiction), Twihards can rip open the corseted bodice of Stephenie Meyers' coy gothic romance to create their own stories of chance encounters, alternate universes and, of course, smut. And boy, have they ever.

We offer a taxonomy of popular "Twilight" fan fiction below, with excerpts of the most fascinating and raunchy entrants (much of it culled from the fan fic site Twilighted, which requires registration). Be warned: Some of these tales are not for virgin eyes. But they do offer a clue about the enduring mega-success of "Twilight": These characters inspire the imagination.

Mindsexing Edward Cullen

“The Real L Word”: A real straight male fantasy

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:32:00 +0000

Ads for "The Real L Word" display six women in full-length body shots, powdered with Photoshop and wearing nothing but the shadows of palm trees. It's a straight man's fantasy for skinny, long-haired women to frolic together. In fact, I think I've actually seen a porn flick with a similar cover design. The website promises, "Follow a group of six real lesbians in their daily lives at work and play in Los Angeles." Real life, nonfictional lesbians! The question was: Would the show just be playing to the fantasies of straight men?

Last night's premiere episode introduced us to Tracy, the requisite eye candy, whom the camera shows performing everyday acts wearing nothing but her underwear. Then there is Rose, who howls at strippers. Mikey demands her girlfriend cook her dinner while she watches. Whitney, the resident player, provides the most scintillating drama of the premiere episode when she drops off a woman she just slept with at the airport … only to pick up another one at baggage claim. It is male wish fulfillment in lesbian form.

“Extra Lives”: Are video games the next great art form?

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:01:00 +0000

Video games have come a very long way since the 1980s, when we were all still blowing into our Super Mario Brothers cartridges and admiring the graphics in Metroid. Over the past three decades, they've gone from a geeky and often-ridiculed kid-centric pastime to a cultural juggernaut with a massive adult consumer base. The average gamer is now 30, and the gender ratio is approaching equilibrium (the male-female ratio is roughly 60-40). Video games are now the most consumed medium ever, with annual sales topping $20 billion.

But it's not just the audience that's changed. As Tom Bissell, a journalist, former Salon writer and lifelong gamer, explains in his new book, "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter," the graphics, storytelling and interactivity of gaming have all made tremendous leaps forward in recent years, allowing players to intermingle with nuanced, fleshed-out digital characters in near-photo-realistic environments. Among the most notable recent examples is Rockstar's "Red Dead Redemption," a game the New York Times hailed as a "tour de force" for its ability to submerge players in a complex and believable world. In his book, Bissell argues that it's finally time to take video games seriously as an art form, and give them the formal analysis they deserve. (He also describes what it's like to play "Grand Theft Auto 4" while high on a cocaine binge.)

Queer imagery in Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro”

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:09:00 +0000

Lady Gaga, like her predecessor Madonna (to whom she pays homage -- or is that rips off? -- in her latest video), also owes a great deal to the gays. The latest Gaga epic, "Alejandro," opens on the image of a strapping young officer asleep at his desk wearing fishnet stockings and black pumps, with an AK-47 at arm's length. The next scene cuts to a fleet of shirtless men in black spanx (though they clearly have no need for them), sporting black bowl cuts, marching in black boots -- perhaps realizing conservatives' nightmare when DADT is repealed? But men in heels and carrying assault rifles aren't a contradictory image in the context of queer sexuality, fetish and kink. So exactly how queer is Lady Gaga's new music video? Oh, let us count the ways ...

1. Gender bending. Gay men wearing heels is nothing new, of course. But this isn't just about boys in girls' clothes; it's also about exploring feminine movement. One gentleman slinks around on the bed like calendar pinup. The dancers move behind Gaga in a synchronized mass, wave their arms out like tentacles and then draw them back in to do an update of the bend and snap. And there is a great deal of attitude in those snaps (most delightfully, the one to Lady Gaga’s left).

“Wide Awake”: How we all became insomniacs

Sun, 23 May 2010 15:01:00 +0000

It seems that now, more than ever, Americans suffer from an array of sleep disorders, some of which almost seem like fanciful products of the pharmaceutical industry: restless leg syndrome, jet lag syndrome, shift-work sleep disorder. According to a 2009 poll done by the National Sleep Foundation, 64 percent of Americans report sleep problems at least a few nights a week, making them crankier, more likely to crave sugary snacks, less likely to exercise, and less likely to have sex. And our national sleeping woes are getting worse: The same study found a 13 percent increase in sleep problems since 2001. And in 2009, physicians prescribed over 56 million prescriptions for sleeping pills, a 7 percent increase from 2007.