Is Dara Torres your mom? … No, right?

Pregnancy, giving birth and the consequential events after that does not cause some sort of permanent disability. Women have been popping out children for millenniums and guess what, they go back to doing the same shit that they were doing before. Also, she isn’t the only parent in the freakin’ Olympics! So stop it!

New York City lacks supermarkets and accessibility to quality food. According to a new report from the NYC Department of City Planning, three (3) million NYC residents live in neighborhoods, primarily communities of color, that have a high need for supermarkets and grocery stores.

Many NYC residents finds themselves having to buy food from local convenient stores and drugstores that do not supply fresh produce or meats. For many, the nearest supermarkets or fresh food markets are a significant distance away. Modes of transportation and one’s ability to transport bags of groceries by one self, particularly the elderly, affects one’s ability to obtain quality food and groceries. Food shopping and preparation is still viewed by many as a gendered task, so this disproportionally affects women as well.

Supermarkets in NYC are closing down at alarming rates:

In one corner of southeast Queens, four supermarkets have closed in the last two years. Over a similar period in East Harlem, six small supermarkets have closed, and two more are on the brink, local officials said.

Supermarkets disappear as real estate developers comes crashing through looking for those large enough lots to put luxury residential buildings, and as landlords deny lease renewals in order to seek something more profitable, or want to raise rents by ridiculous amounts:

Executives at Pick Quick Foods, which owns the supermarket, say that Vornado Realty Trust, which bought the shopping plaza for $165 million last year, wants to double their rent to $50 a square foot. They fear the landlord wants to push them out.
[…]
“We’re at a point where landlords do not feel any concern that they are taking supermarkets out of communities,” said Pat Purcell, the union’s director of special projects. “They just want to maximize their profit. I get that, up to a point. But food is different. It affects your health.”

This also obviously affects the employment rate in the respective neighborhoods:

At stake at the Bronx store are more than 100 jobs, many of them filled by local residents, including teenagers and single mothers.

(Quotes are from the NY Times Article linked at the top).

And with no competition in town, remaining supermarkets have raised the prices of the products. I find myself having to go into Manhattan’s East Village to an Associated Chain Supermarket or the Trader Joe’s, whose prices are much more reasonable than my neighborhood’s C-Town-oops-I mean Billy’s Market (hey, they gotta appeal to hipsters some way or another). However, many people do not have the same ability or time as I do, to go into a different borough, buy food, and carry home 4-5 bags loaded with food at 10:30pm.

We had one supermarket shut down last year in South Williamsburg. Fortunately, it was taken up by another management company and there’s another supermarket again, with prices lower than the C-Town for the most part. Yet, the quality of produce is subpar and the store hours are shorter.

Lack to quality and affordable food has many consequences. A NY Times chart shows, as supported by studies, that obesity and diabetes rates are higher where there are fewer fresh food suppliers/markets. The New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) states that 1 in 5 NYC children live in homes without enough food; that’s 417,000 children! In total, approximately 1.3 millions NYC residents face food insecurity.

For more information, please click on the hyperlinks throughout the blog post.

For examples of health disparities particularly within communities of color and its connection to unequal access to food, read NYCCAH’s report “Hunger and Obesity in East Harlem” Environment Influences on Urban Food Access.” Please pay close attention to the charts at the end, for a compare/contrast (more of the latter) analysis between East Harlem and the Upper East Side.

Update: In connection to this issue with a more-in depth gender analysis, please also look at the following posts on the global food crisis:
Diary of an Anxious Black Woman: “Food is a Feminist Issue: Keeping the Third Horseman at Bay”
Feministe: “Food is a Feminist Issue”
Feminocracy: “the Rising Cost of Food = Very Real Hunger, Part 1″

It has to be Byron Hurt’s 2007 documentary “HipHop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes”. The front of his website and other sites simply identifies the film as a “riveting documentary that examines representations of gender roles in hip-hop and rap music.” Gender and Hip Hop, of course, is a topic that needs to be urgently addressed and tackled. However, the film goes beyond that. Considering that it is just under 56 minutes long, it comprehensively looks at multiple factors that is affecting the Hip Hop culture and community: homophobia, hypermasculinity, the glorification of violence in all facets of society, the big corporations controlling Hip Hop and that being a factor as to how Hip Hop appears now in mainstream media, and the breakdown of the actual consumers of mainstream rap. As noted in the documentary, 70% of the consumers of mainstream rap are young white males. Therefore, he raises questions on how the black community and other people of color are viewed and classified by white consumers, based on what is presented to them in mainstream media.

Another interesting topic that Hurt raises, that I have seen, as well as others, is the homoeroticism that is presented in mainstream Hip-Hop. However, I think hints of homoeroticism can be easily seen in anything deemed as hypermasculine and ultraviolent (and ironically homophobic), but that alone is a whole other discussion that should be given its own airtime.

Hurt continually screens his film in universities and centers throughout the country. If you are in the New York City area, he will be at New York University on Friday, March 28th, 12pm. Please go and watch!

Jessica over at Feministing.com is already writing up a second book (awesome!), this time looking at and analyzing double standards. If you have a vagina, then you know all too well how that process works (Man A can do this and it will be fine, but if Woman A does it, then she’s a *insert derogatory term here*). And not to say that men don’t face it as well (example, a woman can order a cosmopolitan, but if a man does, he must be gay). But, let face it, women are swimming in it, since the day they pop out of their mother. I know I have.

Jessica has asked Feministing readers what are the weirdest, most infuriating, or silliest double standards that they have encountered or heard. And I asked myself, “Jeebus, where the hell do I even begin???” So, here’s what I posted over at the post:

I think the weirdest childhood one I’ve heard was from my dad when I was about ten or so. I was whistling and he told me to stop, that girls shouldn’t whistle; that it’s not “ladylike.” Yeahhh, I sure wouldn’t want to look like his pervy old friends who whistle at every damn thing that moves.[/sarcasm]

A friend, who when he speaks, every other word out of his mouth is either sh*t, or a variation of fuck, had the nerve to tell me, that oh “it’s nasty when a girl curses” and that I need to fuckin’ stop.

The virgin/whore dichotomy is applied in this scenario: “sit with your legs closed/crossed, what you want people to think of you” (even though I’m wearing pants?!). Yet, these fuckers on the train occupy three seats because “well, they’re men, they need to let their boys breathe.” Yeahhh, they are just that BIG…my ass.

And my mother last week, in regards to the deteriorating tiles in the bathroom: “it’s a shame that neither you (my father) nor your son (who’s only 19 and never fixed a damn thing in the house, well in his life), the men of the house can’t fix the tiles.” Me: “umm, why can’t you fix it, or why don’t you ask me to fix it?” Mom: “that isn’t our job to do, women don’t do that.” …A few minutes later, after a short heated debate…Me: “you do realize that women work in carpentry and house remodeling, etc, right?” Mom: “well, they took a course for that.” Because apparently, male carpenters/plumbers/etc, never, ever had to acquire some sort of instruction. It’s just natural. (Mind you, I’m the one who has fixed/assembled 90% of the things in the house. The missing 10% accounts for the bathroom, including the crappy tile work)

I’m an amateur weightlifter. The general philosophy at the gym is “no pain, no gain.” As most of us know, pain is not pretty. I’ve had a few people comment on how I never smile, that I look too aggressive/angry when I lift. Ohhhhh yeahhh, try crackin’ a smile when you’re squatting with 175lbs on your back, running out of breath and your heartrate goes over 170 beats a minute. Yeah, try to crack a Colgate smile, dipsh*t.

Oh, and apparently sarcasm isn’t too desirable in a woman either.