The cost of growing up on porn
By Pamela Paul
Sunday, March 7, 2010; B05




Guess what, guys? Turns out pornography -- the much-maligned bugaboo of feminists, prigs and holy rollers -- is nothing more than good, not-so-dirty fun.

The proof comes from the University of Montreal, where recent research showed that connoisseurs easily parse fantasy from reality, shudder at the idea of dating a porn star (what would Maman think?) and wholeheartedly support gender equality. "Research contradicts anti-pornography zealots," gloated a column's headline in the Calgary Sun.

So, I've been contradicted. Presumably, I'm one of the zealots in question. My anti-porn fanaticism took the form of a 2005 book, "Pornified," in which I dared to offer evidence that all is not well in the era of Internet porn. Today, 20-somethings, teenagers and even -- sorry to break it to you, parents -- tweens are exposed to the full monty of hard-core pornography.

Wasn't it time someone asked some obvious questions? What will happen now that the first generation of men raised on Internet porn is making its way onto the marriage market? What influence does the constant background blare of insta-porn have on their ideas about women and monogamous relationships?

The answers I found to those questions were less than cheering. In dozens of interviews with casual and habitual porn users, I heard things such as: "Real sex has lost some of its magic." "If I'm looking like eight or 10 times a day, I realize I need to do something to build my confidence back up." "My wife would probably think I was perverted and oversexed if she knew how much I looked at it every day."

In the years since I wrote the book, I have heard from dozens of readers who described the negative effects of porn. One was a student at Berkeley, who observed that "ever more deplorable acts needed to be satiated" and noted: "As a child, we are exposed to things that we may not realize have formative effects. As adults, many times we simply continue without questioning." (Women, it seems, also turn to iVillage.com, where a board devoted to "relationships damaged by pornography" contains more than 32,280 messages to date.)

Yet there's still so much we don't know. Perhaps we can learn from the skintillating news out of Montreal. Let's have a closer look at that -- oops! -- turns out there is no study. Simon Louis Lajeunesse, a postdoctoral student and associate professor at the university's School of Social Work, has yet to publish a report. His findings, such as they exist, were based on interviews with 20 undergraduate males who detailed their views on sex, gender and pornography in one to two lickety-split hours.

Granted, it's qualitative, not quantitative, research, but the brevity of the interviews is concerning. While reporting "Pornified," I felt the need for more than four hours with many of my 100 interviewees. Of course, my guys could talk anonymously to a disembodied voice on the phone; the poor fellows in Montreal had to sit down and look a male social worker in the eye before confessing a penchant for three-ways. Lajeunesse asked 2,000 men before he found 20 willing subjects. Most of them, he said, were referred by women in their lives. Hmm.

And just how did Lajeunesse learn that pornography hadn't affected their views of said women? Why, he asked and they said so! "My guys want to have equal relationships, equal income, equal responsibility domestically," Lajeunesse told me. Color me dubious, but I hardly think most men would own up to discriminating against women, spurred on by porn or not.

To be fair, researching the relationship between men and pornography isn't easy. My methods had flaws, too. The most methodologically sound study would involve gathering a sample of men, scheduling regular sessions to view online porn, and comparing their subsequent sexual attitudes and behaviors with those of a control group that did not use pornography. Through a series of measures -- interviews, questionnaires, observations -- the data would be collected and analyzed by a team of objective academics.

That's not going to happen now, though it once did. Back in 1979, Jennings Bryant, a professor of communications at the University of Alabama, conducted one of the most powerful peer-reviewed lab studies of the effects of porn viewing on men. Summary of results: not good. Men who consumed large amounts of pornography were less likely to want daughters, less likely to support women's equality and more forgiving of criminal rape. They also grossly overestimated Americans' likelihood to engage in group sex and bestiality.

Yet Bryant's research (conducted with colleague Dolf Zillmann) was carried out long before the Internet brought on-demand porn to a computer screen near you. So why no update? Other than a spate of research in the '80s and '90s that attempted to link pornography with violence (results: inconclusive), nobody has looked at the everyday impact of hard-core porn. "That's a catch-22 with most studies about media effects," Bryant told me. "If you can't demonstrate that what you're doing to research participants is ultimately beneficial and not detrimental, and you can't eradicate any harm, you're required not to do that thing again."

Every university has a review board for the protection of human subjects that determines whether a study is ethically up to snuff. "It is commonly the case that when you get studies as clear as ours, human subjects committees make it difficult to continue to do research in that area," Bryant explained. "Several graduate students at the time wanted to follow up, but couldn't get permission." In other words, the deleterious effects were so convincing, ethics boards wouldn't let researchers dip human subjects back into the muck.

No matter -- people will take care of that on their own. As one young man explained, after mentioning that "porn may have destroyed my relationship with my girlfriend" in an e-mail: "I always feel that I'm over porn, but I find myself keep coming back to it. There seems to be an infinite number of porn sites with limitless variations, one never becomes bored with it. . . . It's a very difficult habit to break."

Or as one 27-year-old female lawyer noted recently: "All of my girlfriends and I expect to find histories of pornographic Web sites on our computers after our boyfriends use it. They don't bother erasing the history if you don't give them a lot of hell." The implications troubled her. "I fear we are losing something very important -- a healthy sexual worldview. I think, however, that we are using old ideas of pornography to understand its function in a much more complex modern world."

Of the many stories I've heard revealing the ways in which young men struggle with porn, I offer here just one, distilled, from a self-described "25 year old recovering porn-addict" who wrote to me in October. "Marc" began looking at his father's magazines at age 11, but soon, he wrote, he "turned to the Internet to see what else I could find." This "started off as simply looking at pictures of naked women. From there, it turned into pictures of couples having sex and lesbian couples. When I got into watching videos on the Internet, my use of porn skyrocketed." At 23, he began dating a woman he called "Ashley." "However, since Ashley's last boyfriend had been a sex/porn addict, I was quick to lie about my use of porn. I told her that I never looked at it. But after 5-6 months, Ashley discovered a hidden folder on my computer containing almost a hundred porn clips. She was devastated."

Marc and Ashley broke up, got back together and spent several months traveling in India. He continued to look at porn behind her back, and on a trip to Las Vegas, he got lap dances despite promising not to. Ashley broke up with him again. "I had never thought about the adverse effects of my use of porn. . . . I want to change. I want to be a respectful human being towards all human beings, male and female. I want to be a committed and loving boyfriend to Ashley."

This is hardly solid lab research. But it is one of many signs of pornography's hidden impact. And flimsy "if only it were true!" research isn't an acceptable substitute for thorough study. An entire generation is being kept in the dark about pornography's effects because previous generations can't grapple with the new reality. Whether by approaching me (at the risk of peer scorn) after I've spoken at a university or via anonymous e-mails, young people continue to pass along an unpopular message: Growing up on porn is terrible. One 17-year-old who had given up his habit told me that reading about porn addicts "was like reading a horrifying old diary, symptoms, downward spirals, guilt, hypocrisy, lack of control, and the constant question of to what degree fantasy is really so different from reality. I felt like a criminal, or at the very least, a person who would objectively disgust me."

Let's not ignore people like him, even if it's tempting to say, as one headline did, "All men watch porn, and it is not bad for them: study."

That's just one more fantasy warping how we live our real lives.

Pamela Paul is the author of "Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families."
 
 
Emily Post Would Be Rightly Appalled
Long gone, for most adolescents, are the elegant dances and cotillions whose disappearance Emily Post was already lamenting in her 1922 book "Etiquette." In such environments, modesty and public decorum had been required "because people were on exhibition, where now they are unnoticed components of a general crowd."

Her exalted reputation aside, Mrs. Post had no illusions about human propensities. Unsupervised teenagers would grapple in the dark. It was to everyone's benefit, especially youngsters on the brink of adulthood, for society to insist on restraint.

"Don't allow anyone to paw you," Mrs. Post advised debutantes, perfectly aware that scoundrels would try. She was censorious about young people who flaunted romantic conquests. "It is not considered a triumph to have many love affairs, but rather an evidence of stupidity and bad taste," she wrote.

The revered arbiter of manners would probably be pained by the writhing spectacle of contemporary high-school dances, but not surprised. What might amaze her, though, is to see her name affixed to an etiquette guide counseling teenagers to ask themselves, "Am I willing to buy and use condoms?"

This disconcerting query appears in "Prom and Party Etiquette," a just-published volume written by Peggy Post and Cindy Post Senning, manners mavens who, through the Emily Post Institute, perpetuate their famous relative's legacy with books, lectures and seminars. The authors lay out basic rules: Always send a thank-you note after a party; put soiled dinner napkins on the table, not the chair; converse with dinner guests on either side of you. The modern Posts have no qualms in specifying what's expected, procedurally. Yet on morality, suddenly it all goes squish.

In a subchapter entitled "A 'Special' Act for a Special Evening?" the authors note that "some teens talk about prom night as the night they might have sex for the first time because the night feels special and significant." Without making any ruling as to the wisdom of such a practice, they invite young people to consider whether to bed their dates by asking themselves: "Will I be able to look this person in the eye the next morning and talk about the experience? If we break up afterward anyway, how will I feel?" The authors conclude: "Sex is the most intimate act between two people, so you should take the time to consider all these questions and answer them coolly and honestly."

It seems startlingly passive advice, even in an era in which, as a newly retired school principal ruefully told me, "Girls save themselves not for marriage but for the prom."

Well, of course sex is intimate. It's also profoundly consequential and, you'd think, something the heirs of Emily Post would be unafraid to tell young people to delay. ("Don't allow anyone to paw you!") Alas, no more.

"We're not prudish by any stretch; we're more realists than anything else," Peggy Post explained by phone. "We really made a conscious decision not to try to lecture teens or tell them what to do, but instead give them the tools, questions for them to ask themselves, so that they don't feel pressure."

"We didn't want to preach to teens," Ms. Post told me, although, she conceded, "We could have gone one step further."

Eve Grimaldi finds this exasperating. As dean of students at Georgetown Visitation, an all-girls high school in Washington, she's a tireless warrior for decorum. Every year, come dance time, Mrs. Grimaldi sends out humane "Do's and Don'ts." She encourages parents to embrace their inner authoritarian: "DON'T let your daughter go off to a dinner party or restaurant . . . if you have an uneasy feeling about the location or substance of either." She carries sweatshirts to every dance, to cover the scantily clad, and periodically wades into the throng of dancers "like the grim reaper." And she has no patience with moral neutrality when advising the young.

"Are the writers [of "Prom and Party Etiquette"] too cool to draw a line?" Mrs. Grimaldi wonders. "Shouldn't adults be helping teenagers to avoid just those kinds of far-reaching caprices?"

Undoubtedly so. Here's the problem with morally neutral sex advice for teenagers: It isn't neutral. It can't be. The very discussion of coital practicalities creates a moral framework, a matrix of what is reasonable and acceptable.

Oddly, Cindy Post Senning and Peggy Post don't mind telling grown-ups what to do. In the 2004 edition of "Etiquette," for instance, they advise adults: "It's perfectly okay to say, "I'm sorry, but until we know each other better . . . we just can't get involved in a sexual relationship. There's just too much at stake."

Quite right! You'd think that's exactly what "Emily Post" and every other adult should tell teenagers, who need guidelines far more than do their elders. A dance ought to be an occasion to enjoy youth's frivolity, not to become mired in adult complexity. There's just too much at stake.

Mrs. Gurdon is a regular contributor to the book pages of The Wall Street Journal.
 
 
The Kids Will Be Alright The coming U.S. population boom will bring new economic vitality; the resurgence of Fargo

By JOEL KOTKIN America's population growth makes it a notable outlier among the advanced industrialized countries. The country boasts a fertility rate 50% higher than that of Russia, Germany or Japan and well above that of China, Italy, Singapore, North Korea and virtually all of eastern Europe. Add to that the even greater impact of continued large-scale immigration to America from around the world. By the year 2050, the U.S. population will swell by roughly 100 million, and the country's demographic vitality will drive its economic resilience in the coming decades.

This places the U.S. in a radically different position from that of its historic competitors, particularly Europe and Japan, whose populations are stagnant. The contrast between the U.S. and Russia, America's onetime primary rival for world power, is particularly dramatic. Some 30 years ago, Russia constituted the core of a vast Soviet empire that was considerably more populous than the U.S. Today, even with its energy riches, Russia's low birth and high mortality rates suggest that its population will drop to less than one-third that of the U.S. by 2050. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has spoken of "the serious threat of turning into a decaying nation."

Douglas JonesAn equally dramatic and perhaps more critical demographic shift is taking place in East Asia. Over the past few decades a rapid expansion of their work force fueled the rise of the "East Asian tigers," the great economic success stories of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Yet that epoch is coming to an end, not only in Japan and Korea but also in China, where the one-child policy has set the stage for a rapidly aging population by mid-century.

Within the next four decades, most of the developed countries in both Europe and East Asia will become veritable old-age homes: A third or more of their populations will be over 65, compared with only a fifth in America. Like the rest of the developed world, the U.S. will certainly have to cope with an aging population and lower population growth, but in relative terms the county will boast a youthful, dynamic demographic.

As many other advanced countries become dominated by the elderly, the U.S. will have the benefit of a millennial baby boom as the "echo boomers" start having offspring in large numbers later in this decade. This next surge in growth may be delayed if tough economic times continue, but over time the rise in births will add to the work force, boost consumer spending and allow for new creative inputs.

The differing demographic trajectories create a diverse set of issues for 21st-century America than those facing its rivals. The key challenges the European Union, Japan and Korea will contend with in the coming decades involve coping with a rapidly aging population, filling labor shortages and finding ways to invest in growing economies. In contrast, the U.S.'s greatest priority will be to create opportunities for its ever-expanding population. The New America Foundation estimates the country needs to add more than 125,000 jobs a month simply to keep pace with population growth in 2010. What the U.S. does with its "demographic dividend"—that is, its relatively young working-age population—will largely depend largely on whether the private sector can generate the incomes among the young to meet the needs of a larger aging population.

Entrepreneurialism and America's flexible business culture—including the harnessing of entrepreneurial skills of aging boomers—will prove critical to meeting this challenge. Many of the individuals starting new firms will be those who have recently left or been laid off by bigger companies, particularly during a severe economic downturn. Whether they form a new bank, energy company or design firm, they will do it more efficiently—with less overhead, more efficient use of the Internet and less emphasis on pretentious office settings.

"People are watching their companies go under. Therefore you get three vice presidents who get laid off but know their business," says Texas entrepreneur Charlie Wilson. "They start a new company somewhere cheap that is more efficient and streamlined. These are the new companies that will survive and grow the next economy."

It is here—at the grassroots level—that you can best glimpse the essential sources of American resiliency. American society draws most of its adaptive power not from its elite precincts but through the efforts of communities, churches, entrepreneurs and families.

You can see this in the resurgence of once-declining Great Plains cities like Fargo, N.D., where high-tech now joins agriculture and manufacturing to form one of the country's strongest local economies. Or you can visit the emerging immigrant hotbeds, such as the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles or the Sugarland area, just west of Houston, with their plethora of new churches, temples, companies and ethnic shopping malls.

Immigrants represent a critical component of our next wave of new dynamism. Between 1990 and 2005, immigrants started one quarter of all venture-backed public companies. Large American firms are also increasingly led by people with roots in foreign countries, including 14 of the CEOs of the 2007 Fortune 100.

But much of the energy will come from more obscure enterprises. Recent newcomers have already distinguished themselves as entrepreneurs, forming businesses from street-level bodegas to the most sophisticated technology start-ups.

What drives immigrants is their optimism in America's future. California developer Dr. Alethea Hsu, in explaining why she opened a new Asian-oriented shopping center in Orange County, cited the entrepreneurial energy of both affluent and working class immigrants which, she said, will allow them to thrive through the recession and beyond. "We are leased up, and we think the supply of shopping still is not enough," Ms. Hsu said in early 2009. "We feel great trust in the future."

This entrepreneurial urge also extends beyond the immigrant community. In 2008, 28% of Americans said they had considered starting a business, more than twice the rate for French or Germans. Self-employment, particularly among younger workers, has been growing at twice the rate as in the mid-1990s. In the most recent Legatum Prosperity Index, the U.S. ranked at the top among all countries in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Most important of all will likely be the rise of the millennial generation—a group of Americans who will start reaching their prime earning years late in the next decade. Surveys identify them as strongly family- and community-oriented. The millennials will be America's new entrepreneurs, workers and consumers in the coming decades. They will provide the kind of resource our major competitors are destined to run short on.

The millennials also will help shape an increasingly culturally diverse America which by 2050 will be roughly half made up of ethnic minorities. This emerging post-ethnic future contrasts dramatically with the ethnic politics common among the nation's chief global rivals. Even famously politically correct nations as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands have turned against immigration. Switzerland just banned the construction of minarets, while France is considering banning some forms of Islamic garb.

Our prime Asian rivals—China, Japan, and Korea—remain even more culturally resistant to diversity. Chinese xenophobia, in particular, is deeply entrenched, notes Martin Jacques, author of "When China Rules the World." A Chinese world superpower would be both racially homogenous and far from tolerant of newcomers. Recently the appearance of a mixed-race Shanghai girl on a national talent show sparked a surge of racist invective.

The very diversity of the emerging America makes many wonder what ultimately will hold the country together. Ultimately, this unique society will find its binding principle in the notions that have long differentiated it from the rest of world: a common belief system, a sense of a shared destiny and an aspirational culture.

As the British writer G. K. Chesterton once put it, the U.S. is "the only nation…that is founded on a creed." This faith is not, and was not initially meant to be, explicitly religious; rather, it is a fundamentally spiritual idea of a national raison d'être.

Of course, this optimistic scenario depends on intelligent and energetic actions by central and local governments, as well as community organizations. But the road to the American future will be primarily laid not by the central state but by families, individuals and communities. During the industrial age Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, "The age has an engine, but no engineer." Much the same may be said in the coming decades.

—Joel Kotkin is a distinguished presidential fellow at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London. This essay was adapted from "The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050," due out next month by Penguin Press.
 
 
Marriage Needs and Builds Maturity I read with interest "Matrimony: Eat, Pray, Love, Then Commit" (Weekend Journal, Jan. 2). Author Elizabeth Gilbert advises people to not "get married when you're 20 years old," and she says that marriage requires that we "check at least a few of our most idealistic youthful dreams at the door before entering."

My husband and I were married when I was 22 and he was 25. Our union has been tried in ways I never thought possible, and we have dealt with each of the "Big Three" issues that marriage counselors say often lead to divorce: sex, money and in-laws. Now, 2½ years into the marriage and almost one baby later, we are closer, more in love and more committed than we were when we married—without a prenuptial agreement but with a commitment to work out problems and stay happily married. We married the old-fashioned way: young and for life.

I think the grandest "idealistic dream" that 21st-century Americans need to check at the door is the idea that 30 or 40 years of living with few responsibilities and little accountability will prepare them for a stable, happy marriage. Upon graduating from high school I did something few people my age do any more: I moved out of my parents' house, got a job, worked my way through college and lived in cheap, crowded apartments with several roommates and without a car, cell phone, or any money from my parents. More so than 30 years of partying and "finding myself," these experiences helped shape me into a woman who was ready for marriage. If we want to make peace with marriage we need to grow up enough to accept the responsibilities it entails.

Nicholette Lambert

South Jordan, Utah
 
 
Can the Recession Save Marriage? more in Opinion » By W. BRADFORD WILCOX Judging by recent press reports, the family fallout associated with the Great Recession has been severe. Take the Bachmuth family, profiled last month in the New York Times. After Paul Bachmuth lost his job at a Texas electric consulting firm in December of last year, his life and marriage took a turn for the worse. Often dejected, he would spend hours surfing the Internet or watching television.

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Grant Robertson Paul and his wife, Amanda, fought over money. She also resented the part-time job she had to pick up at a day-care center to keep the family solvent, especially since she continued to shoulder the bulk of the family's cooking, cleaning and laundry. "She kind of had something in the back of her mind that it was partly my fault I was laid off," Mr. Bachmuth told the Times. The couple is now seeing a counselor.

The Bachmuths' experience is by no means unique, according to "Money & Marriage," a report released this week by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values. As the report notes, the financial pressures associated with the Great Recession can lead to a downward spiral of marital recriminations, tension and conflict as spouses struggle to pay bills, adjust to the loss of a job or find themselves forced out of their home. This downward spiral is especially likely to unfold when a husband loses his job—a particularly salient reality in the current recession, where more than 75% of the job losses have fallen on the shoulders of men.

In some cases, this spiral leads directly to divorce court. In recent years, couples who report disagreeing about money matters once a week are about twice as likely to divorce compared with couples who disagree about money less than once a month, according to the report.

But there may be a silver lining in all this financial pain. For most married Americans, the Great Recession seems to be solidifying, not eroding, the marital bond. The divorce rate is actually falling. It declined to 16.9 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2008 from 17.5 divorces in 2007 (a 3% drop), after rising from 16.4 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2005 (a 7% increase).

To be sure, some couples have simply postponed a divorce until the economy rebounds, when they expect to have a better shot at starting new lives. A recent Wall Street Journal story, for example, profiled an Alabama couple, the Brewsters, who have put off their divorce until they can sell their home for a reasonable price.

But anecdotal evidence suggests that other couples have responded to the recession by rededicating themselves to their marriages. "I had one couple who started to file for divorce but put the proceedings on hold because the husband lost his job," Florida family attorney J.J. Dahl told the Orlando Sentinel. Eventually, the couple decided to remain married. "They said, 'We made it through this tough time, and we learned how to compromise, so we've decided to stick it out.' "

Two factors seem to be particularly important in fostering this ethic of marital dedication and family togetherness. First, the recession has encouraged Americans to rediscover the virtue of thrift. After running up a record $988 billion in credit-card debt in 2008, Americans have cut $90 billion from their bills. They are also eating at home more often. The National Restaurant Association reports that inflation-adjusted restaurant sales fell in 2008 for the first time in about 40 years.

All this is good for marriage because debt corrodes the marital bond, whereas assets solidify it. According to research by Jeffrey Dew at Utah State University, newly married couples who ran up their credit cards spent less time together, fought more and had significantly lower levels of marital happiness compared with couples who did not accrue such debt. By contrast, couples with financial assets (savings, investments, and the net value of a home) are markedly less likely to experience problems, largely because wives are happier and more likely to stick with their marriages when they share such assets with their husbands. Mr. Dew found, for instance, that couples without assets were 70% more likely to divorce than couples with $10,000 in financial assets.

Perhaps more important, the Great Recession is leading some spouses to develop a renewed appreciation for the social and economic solidarity engendered by marriage and family life. While it is true that the recession has been a source of harmful stress for many couples and families, a recent Pew Research survey found that about four in 10 Americans report that the recession has brought their "family closer together." Thus, today's "tough times" seem to be reminding a large minority of couples that marriage is not only about an intense, continuing emotional connection.

This marks a departure from the past four decades, when many Americans came to see marriage largely as a chance to pursue a "soulmate" relationship, where couples focus on emotional intimacy, sexual satisfaction and personal fulfillment, rather than as a chance to share childbearing and childrearing and economic cooperation with an extended family. A 2001 report from the National Marriage Project found that more than 80% of young women thought that it was more important to marry a man who can communicate his deepest feelings than earn a good living.

But the recession has made the soulmate model look impoverished. Today spouses are rediscovering the value of a husband with a good health-care plan, a wife with a good job or in-laws who are willing to provide free child care or a temporary rent-free place to live. In other words, Americans are rediscovering the power that family ties have to carry them—financially, socially and emotionally—through tough times.

—Mr. Wilcox is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Institute for American Values.
 
 
Boldly modest declaration of faith
For a Fairfax County teenager, middle school represents a major test of her decision to wear a head scarf as a sign of her devotion to Islam
By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 15, 2009




Smar Abuagla steps out her front doo r at 7:20 a.m., her shoulders slightly hunched, her eyes watchful.

Last year when she made this walk to the bus stop on the first day of school, she was wearing black skinny jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt; her hair was in braids. But this year she's a different Smar. In addition to looser, more modest clothing, her hair is completely hidden under a head scarf.

It is a look that not only sets her apart from most girls at her Reston middle school but also proclaims her as a Muslim, a religious minority in a country that sometimes associates her faith with terrorism and acts of violence.

Most of Smar's friends and classmates have never seen her in the scarf before. Smar, 13, has no idea how they will react.

It's drizzling as she reaches the bus stop, where she huddles under an umbrella. The eighth-grader is normally chatty with an impish grin, but today when a couple of girls she knows slightly walk up, she mutters, "Hi," and rolls her eyes self-consciously. Omigosh, I probably look horrible. Omigosh, everyone's staring at me.

She closes the umbrella.

"Hey, Smar, if you're not going to use that, can I?" one of the girls says. "My hair's getting wet."

Smar silently hands it over.

At her middle school, plenty of the 960 students are from Muslim families. But only three or four of the girls wear head scarves.

Some of Smar's friends didn't even know she was Muslim until she mentioned one day that she spoke Arabic.

"They're like, 'Why? Only Muslim people do that,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, you don't get it?' "

Today, when she arrives at school in her green and black head scarf, they'll get it.

Badge of faith
Smar hated the scarf when she first put it on.

Hijab was required for Saturday Islam classes at her family's mosque, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS). But the scarf itched. It felt hot. Smar whipped it off as soon as she got outside.

"I was like, 'This is America. You can't make me wear it!' " she recalls.

Although she was born in Sudan, her parents brought her to the United States when she was 3 months old. She speaks fluent Arabic, and her faith is a central part of her life. She follows the requirements for fasting and praying, and she would like to go to Mecca one day.

At the same time, she loves the Jonas Brothers (especially Nick) and vampire books. Her Facebook page declares her admiration for Michael Jackson, fries, her mother and Barack Obama, and it is strewn with pictures of herself, scarfless, hamming for the camera.

For a long time, the question of hijab, worn by many Muslim women to fulfill a religious requirement for modest dress, hovered in the blurry future, along with prom, college and marriage. There is no set time when a girl has to start wearing it. Some start as adolescents; some never do.

Smar's mother, Taysir Ali, who grew up near Khartoum, has always covered her hair. She didn't give it much thought, she says, until after her arranged marriage to Jamal Abuagla, who had been living in the United States since the 1980s. When he brought her here in 1996, she was confronted with all the temptations that Americans face.

"Seeing the kissing, the hugging, I was sweating," says Ali, a vivacious mother of four.

She has never been harassed for covering her hair, she says, not even in the tense days after Sept. 11, 2001, or in the wake of the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., where an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a Muslim, is charged with killing 13 people.

People have always seemed more curious than hostile, Ali says.

But that hasn't been the case for everyone. After the World Trade Center fell and the Pentagon burned, mosques were vandalized, and women in hijab were spit on and cursed at. In a few cases, Muslims were killed.

Eight years later -- even as the Muslim population in the United States has soared to as many as 7 million -- it still can take real courage for a girl to put on a head scarf and venture into a public middle or high school.

"Young boys go to school, and nobody knows they are Muslim, but young girls, with a scarf on their head, it shows clearly that she made a decision to stand out as a Muslim," says Mohamed Magid, the imam at ADAMS. "They suddenly become ambassadors of Islam."

Smar didn't embrace that role until her mother took her and her younger siblings to Egypt this past summer to visit family. Smar noticed immediately that all the women and girls there wore hijab. People stared at Smar's shoulder-length dark hair.

"It felt awkward," she says. "I felt so left out."

She decided to try wearing a head scarf. Her aunt, who lives in Cairo, showed her different styles: double layers of color that frame the face, tight cloth that gathers at the neck or blooms into a floret behind one ear.

Smar returned to Virginia in early September with a rainbow assortment of scarves and a changed attitude.

She had grown used to wearing what she calls "my badge of faith." It was new and exciting, and it made her feel, she says, "modest and confident at the same time."

She knows it makes her parents proud, especially her mother. "She's my rock; she's my base," said Smar, a few days after mother and daughter had returned from Egypt with their fingertips dyed black with matching henna treatments.

In America, the scarf makes her unusual. Smar has never been a follower. "I like being my own person," she says.

Now, with eighth grade starting, she feels ready to show off her new look, regardless of how her classmates might react.

Glad to be green
The long yellow buses pull up to Langston Hughes Middle and deposit hundreds of adolescents. In the sea of uncovered heads, Smar's stands out like an emerald. She hugs friends she hasn't seen all summer.

Eman Kurtu, a skinny Muslim girl with pink braces and frizzy hair, looks at her in amazement, Smar will recall later, and asks, "You're going to wear that for the full year?"

Yes, Smar says.

"Well," Eman says, "at least you can pull it off. I could never do it."

The girls disappear inside the school.

At 3 p.m., Smar bursts back into her family's townhouse. Her mother is stirring a lamb stew that infuses every room with the aroma of cinnamon and cardamom. Smar hasn't eaten today -- she's fasting for Ramadan -- but she doesn't seem to notice the food as she breathlessly reports on the first day.

"For science, I have Miss Love, and I have to write a paper about hurricanes. And you have to sign these papers." She pulls out a sheaf of forms for Ali to fill out.

Only when prompted does Smar recall the effect the head scarf had as she navigated the crowded halls on her first day.

"Oh, yeah, my friend Joey, he saw me, and he had to do a double take." Another boy "actually didn't recognize me, which was kind of shocking. I'm like, 'I was in your second-period Spanish,' and he's kind of like, 'My God, it's Smar. You look really . . . green.' And I'm just like, 'Thank you.' " She got called a leprechaun and a snake charmer, but the teasing was affectionate. Several friends told her she looked great.

Smar is in high spirits as she heads to the bedroom she shares with Smah, her younger sister.

Smah is practicing Beethoven's Ninth on the recorder. Ten years old, she still has a child's body, and when Smar started wearing the scarf, she wrinkled her nose and pronounced herself "out" as Smar's maid of honor.

But now, as Smar sifts through a colorful pile of scarves on her bed, Smah brings out her own outfit, a smock with a matching scarf from Egypt. Soon, Smah declares sassily, she is going to one-up Smar and adopt the hijab in sixth grade.

Smar rolls her eyes. She wishes she could hang out with friends more, but her parents won't allow her go to the mall or to movies unchaperoned. She has never attended a sleepover.

Smar complains that sometimes she feels caged.

"I know I'm going to thank them for this someday," she says gloomily. But for now, "it's kind of bad, like when my friends go to skate night at the mall. I can only go on family outings, which I really hate. At my age, it's not that great because everyone else does their own thing, but I'm stuck being the child that stays at home."

Taunts and tears
The taunts come during the second week of school.

Smar is sitting in her first-period Tech Exploration class, chatting with friends, she will recount later, when she feels something hit her forehead. She looks down and sees an eraser.

"Who did that?" one of her friends demands.

A few seats down, a group of boys snicker. Smar glares at them and flings the eraser back.

"Hey, chill," the guys say.

"No, you don't do that to me," she says.

"Okay, okay, fine," they say, and she lets it go.

But later that day a boy in gym class asks if she is hiding a bomb under her scarf. Another calls her "raghead." Someone throws a pencil at her head; she can't tell who, so she just snaps it in half.

At the end of the day, she comes home and collapses in tears. "I think, like, five things got thrown at me," she says, her voice breaking.

None of it hurt, not even the zucchini hurled at her head by an eighth-grade boy as she got off the bus. But Smar is devastated.

"It's the thought that no one did that to me last year that bothers me," she says. "I don't care if it's a feather or a 50-pound rock; I don't care. No one did this to me last year, and last year I didn't have a head scarf."

If they had tried something like this last year, she says, she would have retaliated. "I can hit just as well as any other boy. My father signed me up for boxing when I was 5."

But this year Smar doesn't know what to do. She doesn't want to tell her closest friends because it will upset them. And if she tells the teachers, she says, "then they'll put out an announcement saying, 'Don't judge people with head scarves,' " which will only make things worse. "I don't want the girls with a head scarf to be hated by everybody."

"My mom said: 'Stick it out. You're going to meet people like this all your life.' But my mom wouldn't know how it is because my mom's been raised in a Muslim country." Smar melts into sobs.

For the first time, she thinks about taking off her head scarf. No one is making her wear it. Her father says he is proud of her decision, but "if today she comes and tells me, 'I'm tired; I just want to be without hijab . . . I'm not going to force her."

Taking it off would offer momentary relief, like sneaking a bite of lamb during Ramadan. "But I know that I'm not going to," Smar says. "I know who I am and I know who I always will be."

Her mother is furious. Tomorrow, when Smar goes to the bus stop, she says, she is going to watch from afar to make sure nothing happens, and if it does, she plans to march over to the school and complain.

But the drama is short-lived: The next day, people are nice to Smar again.

Fear of ridicule
"We're not going to allow skinny jeans this year."

Gasps of horror. A girl jumps up on her chair and points at her denim-clad legs. "See, they're not skinny!"

The ADAMS teachers, young women robed from head to toe in capacious abayas, smile. It's the end of September, and the first day of weekend Islam classes since summer break.

The girls, wearing head scarves along with brightly colored plaids, are asked what they hope to learn about in class. Islamic marriage! The hajj! The Day of Judgment! But the conversation circles quickly back to hijab.

Smar is one of the first girls in the class to become a "full-timer;" the others wear it to the mosque or on special occasions.

"I bring it to school, but I don't wear it," says Rayan Salih, 14.

Shahd Salaheldin, 13, says her older sister was called a terrorist when she put on the scarf. "I was thinking about wearing it, but I heard my friends, people I really do care about, saying, 'There go the ragheads, the towelheads.' I don't have enough self-confidence to do that, you know?"

After class, as the muezzin calls people to prayer, the girls buy a plate of rice and chicken kebab from the mosque's Ramadan holiday bazaar and continue the discussion.

Hijab can't be pushed on a girl, they concur.

"My dad wants me to do it," says Sana Rauf, 14, but her parents are leaving the decision up to her. "They see people who were forced to wear it" and rebelled. "It's like a journey, and a way of life, but you have to find it all by yourself. "

Shahd can only think of a few friends who would accept her in a scarf. "The rest of them would be like, 'I'm not going to talk to you any more because you're Muslim.' I know if I wear it they're going to be like, 'Terrorist! Bombs!' " It's a dilemma. "I know inside that I have to. It's just" -- tears fill her eyes -- "I want to make my parents happy."

Smar tells them about her bad day at school. They are indignant. "You should demand your respect," one tells her. But they don't say how.

Ambassador's burden
On another Saturday at the ADAMS center, Smar hears people talking about how a Muslim man in Texas has done something terrible. The mosque has already denounced his actions, but the news hasn't trickled down to all its youngest members. Smar's mother would like to have kept it that way. The community is horrified by Hasan's actions, Ali says, but she doesn't want Smar to know the details.

No one at school has said anything to her, but the vague information Smar hears at the mosque is upsetting. "Everyone was sad about it," she says. "People lost their lives that day."

She adds: "Islam is a peaceful religion, and it's really sad that people call themselves Muslims" who do such things.

Now, more than ever, she feels the gravitas of her role as an ambassador of her faith.

"It's important for me to be proud of myself and my religion," she says. "It just makes me proud that I get to wear a head scarf and show people."
 
 
What Would Jane Do? How a 19th-century spinster serves as a moral compass in today's worldBy JAMES COLLINS Jane Austen is very funny. Her characters are vivid. The poise of her sentences is perfect. Her plots are pretty good—at least, they keep you reading. However, to write brilliant novels was not Jane Austen's foremost goal: What was most important to her was to provide moral instruction.

Getty Images An engraving of English novelist Jane Austen.

In their essence, Austen's books are moral works. "Northanger Abbey" is really about Catherine Morland's moral education: She learns that the world does not operate on the principles of a gothic novel. As the title indicates, "Sense and Sensibility" is a moral tale: It is the story of Elinor's self-command and Marianne's self-indulgence. The central event of both "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma" is each heroine's discovery of her own moral weakness. "Mansfield Park" treats any number of moral issues, from the propriety of engaging in amateur theatricals to the consequences of leaving one's husband for another man. The premise of "Persuasion" is that Anne Elliot once sacrificed her happiness by doing her duty and obeying the admonishment of her moral guide, Lady Russell. Moral concerns are not only reflected in the large themes of the books, however: They are pervasive. Even the smallest act or the briefest dialogue or the mere description of a character's manner of dress is freighted with moral content.

Today's readers tend to appreciate Austen despite her didacticism rather than because of it. She can be positively priggish, and that is an embarrassment. The contemporary reader who loves Jane Austen sort of blips over the moralizing sections and tells himself that they don't really count. It is possible to ignore this aspect of her work, just as it is possible to discuss a religious painting with hardly any reference to the artist's religious intent. But this seems absurd: Ignoring a writer's central concern is a strange way to attempt to appreciate and understand her.

The question arises, then, of how to reconcile Austen's moralism with modern sensibility. To address this problem, it would be useful if we could find someone with this modern sensibility who actually reads Austen for her moral instruction (in addition to the literary pleasure she provides). How convenient that we have someone who fits that description available to us: me.

I find that reading Jane Austen helps me clarify ethical choices, helps me figure out a way to live with integrity in the corrupt world, even helps me adopt the proper tone and manner in dealing with others. Her moralism and the modern mind are not, in fact, in direct opposition, as is so often assumed.

To say that one values Austen's moral instruction may produce skepticism because, after all, she was a spinster living in provincial England 200 years ago. But our worlds aren't so very different. We see Austen's characters—vain, selfish, naïve, compassionate—in our own lives every day. Her time and place are actually an advantage. In her circumscribed world, the problems of life may be examined with clear-eyed precision.

Austen lived on the cusp of the 18th-century Augustan and 19th-century Romantic ages. In our own time, nearly every song, advertisement and movie is based on Romantic principles. No matter how much we may enjoy the "felicities of domestic life," as Austen put it in "Persuasion," we still feel the enormous Romantic pull to do something more heroic and intense. Rather than digesting a good dinner while conversing with friends, we should be out forging the consciousness of our race in the smithy of our soul, or some damn thing. I don't really want to forge the consciousness of my race, but at the same time I don't want to miss out on all that Romanticism offers. This is where Austen comes in, for she is an Augustan familiar with Romanticism, which makes her more useful than a modern writer in helping us face the Romantic challenge. Only she can so credibly show us that it is possible to have moderation and deep feeling, good dinners and good poetry.

What, then, are the values that Austen would teach us? Value-laden words and phrases appear again and again in her work, often in clusters: self- knowledge, generosity, humility; elegance, propriety, cheerful orderliness; good understanding, correct opinion, knowledge of the world, a warm heart, steady, observant, moderate, candid, sensibility to what is amiable and lovely.

Austen's moral instruction points one toward a more moral life—where "moral" refers not only to right principles but to conduct in general. Austen's value system can be thought of as a sphere with layers. The innermost core might be called "morals," the next layer we could call "sentiments," and finally the surface "manners." Morals are the fundamental principles: self-knowledge, generosity, humility, tenderest compassion, upright integrity.

Austen's emphasis on good order and propriety can seem dry and stiff. But anyone who reads "Mansfield Park" will feel the same relief that Fanny does at the change from the rackety disorder of her family's house in Portsmouth to the order of the Park. Similarly, Austen's regard for self-control, especially as expressed in "Sense and Sensibility," can seem hard, but it must be remembered how the author clearly regards Marianne's emotionalism with the greatest compassion. Austen is not advocating a suppression of the feelings themselves— despite her faultlessly correct behavior, Elinor undergoes great suffering and feels every bit of it. What Austen is saying, as a modern psychologist might urge, is that one should try to prevent the disintegration of one's personality. Sentiments are built on the foundation of our morals: an amiable heart, sensibility to all that is lovely. Manners, in turn, have to do with behavior, with the way we work in the world: perfect good breeding, gentle address. Surely it is still necessary to have models of good sense and gentle manners held up for us.

How can morals, sentiments and manners help one live in the world? What should one's relations to the world be? Should one reject the world entirely as corrupt and mercenary and hypocritical and shallow? Or is there some other way, where one can keep one's integrity and sensitivity, but live in the world too? W. H. Auden stated the problem well when he wrote:

"Does Life only offer two alternatives: 'You shall be happy, healthy, attractive, a good mixer, a good lover and parent, but on the condition that you are not overcurious about life. On the other hand you shall be sensitive, conscious of what is happening round you, but in that case you must not expect to be happy, or successful in love or at home in any company. There are two worlds and you cannot belong to them both.'"

In effect, Auden is asking if life offers only the two alternatives of "Sense and Sensibility," and one can sympathize with his cry of despair, for when the dilemma is put the way he puts it, the two seem hopelessly irreconcilable.

Austen comes to our rescue, though, for she does manage to modulate between "Sense and Sensibility," rejecting the excesses of both. Her attitude appeals because the combination of morals, sentiments, and manners provides a way of living that allows one both to be in the world and to enjoy the sweets of sensitivity as well. Austen does not write about bohemians and rebels; she doesn't want to change her world—"she would not alter a hair on anyone's head or move one brick," as Virginia Woolf wrote. Her sympathetic characters participate fully in their society and accept its conventions, yet they have exquisitely well-tuned minds and hearts. Good sense does not have to be at war with sensibility.

Irony is not just Austen's characteristic mode of expression: It is her characteristic mode of thought. Austen's irony reflects a perfect understanding of all the ways the world is wretched and the belief that although you can't really fight it, you can at least separate yourself from it. In her ironic sentences, there is movement with stability. She moves toward the object of criticism, then away from it, and then provides a gentle snap of closure at the end. This rhythmic motion serves as an ideal for both accepting and rejecting the ways of the wretched world while maintaining balance.

The irony of Austen's characters also gives those of us who believe in decorum a way to handle hypocrites. "Sense and Sensibility"'s Elinor Dashwood is rarely ironic, but she provides a good example. Recall the conversation when the odious John Dashwood, who has reneged on the deathbed promise to his father to help his half-sisters, suggests to Elinor that Mrs. Jennings will leave them a bequest. Elinor replies, "Indeed, brother, your anxiety for our welfare and prosperity carries you too far." John Dashwood lacks generosity and integrity. Elinor insults him, but she does it in the politest possible way.

If one is to argue that Austen's morality is useful for a person living today, one must deal with three hard cases. First, there is Fanny's objection to the amateur theatricals in "Mansfield Park." Then, in "Sense and Sensibility" there is Elinor's refusal to pursue the man she loves, Edward Ferrars, when she learns that he is oficially engaged to Lucy Steele, a woman who "joined insincerity with ignorance." Finally, there is Anne Elliot's avowal in "Persuasion" that she did the right thing by following the dictates of Lady Russell to refuse Captain Wentworth, even though this led to years of loveless misery for them both. In all three cases, Austen endorses a morality that seems nearly absurd in its strictness. What is the big deal with theatricals? Is the principle of honor worth upholding when it results in mismatches and regret? And what kind of value system puts obedience before love?

Perhaps Austen's strictness is very old-fashioned, but anyone can find merit in the concepts of honor, duty, and obedience. Those strings have gone so slack that there's nothing wrong in their being tightened by a sympathetic reading of this aspect of Austen; they will loosen again soon enough.

To dispense briefly with Elinor and Anne, I will say simply that their actions must be seen in the context of their own sincerely held beliefs. The lesson is that it is sometimes right to sacrifice something we want for the sake of our conscience.

With Fanny Price it almost seems as if Austen set out to create a character that has no manners and no personality, but is simply raw morality. She is famously disliked by readers, but her actions and attitudes can be defended. For all her timidness, she has real courage. She stands up to all the others when they want her to participate in the play, and she even withstands the terrible onslaught of Sir Thomas's disapproval when she refuses to marry Crawford. It is too rarely acknowledged that Fanny is right. The danger of the theatricals is that they bring young men and women together in a sexually charged setting, and, indeed, they do lead to the very outcome Fanny dreads: Henry Crawford and Maria Rushworth run off together. So Fanny is not simply adhering to an arbitrary and silly rule about whether amateur theatricals are proper, she is trying to forestall a circumstance that does end up causing real pain.

Jane Austen's principles are of transcendent value, they are not "priggish," and her novels illustrate and advocate a way of being in the world that is ethical, sensitive and practical. The best representative for the worthiness of Austen's approach to life, however, is Austen herself. The reflection of the first sentence of "Pride and Prejudice" shimmers beneath it: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman of small fortune must be in want of a husband." There is nothing ironic about that: In Austen's time it really was a universal truth. Austen's condition as a single woman without money and no longer young was, as she put it when describing Miss Bates in "Emma," to stand "in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favor." As that very phrase indicates, however, Austen was able to regard her predicament coldly, clearly and without self-pity. The novels convey the poise, balance, forbearance and humor of their creator. By reading them, one is enfolded in her personality, a personality we might wish we could adopt ourselves, for it seems to resolve many of life's problems, moral and otherwise.

—James Collins is a writer and editor whose first novel, "Beginner's Greek," came out last year. This piece was adapted from "A Truth Universally Acknowledged," an anthology of essays about why we read Jane Austen, published earlier this week by Random House. Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

 
 
Washington Post article
Frugality falling out of fashion?
A returning hunger for retail therapy thaws out the credit card
By Annie Gowen
Monday, October 19, 2009




Aba Kwawu vowed she'd buy only one or two classic pieces for work that would last her for years. So what was she doing recently at the cash register of a Washington boutique, credit card in hand, agonizing over whether to buy a flashy designer purse with faux snake trim?

"I don't need anything. I don't need a bag," Kwawu said, and sighed. She barely looked at the pricey but practical gray sweater coat she was supposed to be buying, already wrapped in an elaborate origami of tissue at her elbow. She only had eyes for the $695 green-and-black handbag next to it that looked so cute when she slung it over her shoulder and twirled in front of the mirror a few minutes earlier.

When the recession slowed business at her public relations firm, the Silver Spring fashionista put herself on a strict spending diet. She avoided online retailers and her favorite Georgetown haunts. She unearthed clothes in her own closet that she had never worn, some with the tags still on.

After about six months, however, her virtue has begun to feel like a heavy cloak she longs to cast off.

"I had not shopped in so long I was going through withdrawal," said Kwawu, 34. "I thought, 'I have to get something now. I've been good long enough.' "

Malls and boutiques are filled with people such as Kwawu these days, shoppers who have cut their spending -- some drastically -- during the downturn and are now suffering from what some call "frugal fatigue."

Most ardent shoppers don't seem to be giving in to their cravings yet: Consumer spending was sluggish last month, and credit card debt is waning. But with the Dow topping 10,000 just last week and the air filled with talk of recovery, it's getting harder for some people to keep suppressing the urge.

"I want to shop!" cried a frustrated Gillian Joseph, 42, of McLean, leaving Marshalls in Pentagon City empty-handed last week.

Joseph, a widow and mother of a young son, quit shopping "cold turkey" a year ago when her investments lost half their value.

For someone who used to blow $100 every time she walked into Target, "it was a sad and scary time," she said. "I'm a shopaholic. I love to shop."

She finally broke her fast, walking into Nordstrom after a long absence and buying a pair of 4 1/2 -inch heels in bright floral colors. The experience was cathartic, she said.

"It was like spring -- rebirth, reawakening."

In recent days, Joseph returned to the stores to buy necessities: a new winter coat and boots. But she said she's determined not to purchase what she's really longing for: new furniture for her home and a silver BMW 5 Series.

Not everyone, however, is strong enough to resist. Some of Lynne Glassman's clients have already started falling off the tightwad wagon when they go into stores with the personal shopper and image consultant.

"They're saying, 'I need to watch it; I can't spend this much.' And then they get there, it's like they've been on a diet for a long time, and they're buying more than they intended," said Glassman, who works in the District.

Christopher Reiter, owner of Muleh, the 14th Street NW boutique where Kwawu was agonizing over the handbag, has noticed the same phenomenon. Lately, some power shoppers come into the store, see something they want and initially decide not to buy it, he said. Then they sneak back in a day or two and get what they tried to leave behind.

"I think people over the last six to eight months have been hiding underneath their kitchen tables," said Paco Underhill, author of the book "Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping" and a marketing consultant. "They've climbed out from underneath their kitchen tables and are recognizing the sky is not going to fall."

Some experts say that Americans, still traumatized by hundreds of thousands of layoffs and plummeting home values, might never return to spendthrift ways.

But others say deep and lasting change might prove challenging in a country where the phrase "shop 'til you drop" gets 1.7 million Google hits.

Before the downturn, Americans visited a shopping mall at least three times a month, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Many people shopped for reasons unrelated to need: for comfort, for stress relief, for excitement.

"I don't think we're ever going to go back to shopping as gluttonously as we have in the past, but for competitive sport shoppers, the thrill is waning on abstinence," said Kit Yarrow, a professor of consumer psychology at Golden Gate University in California.

Over the past year, Arash Shirazi, 35, a music agent from Arlington County, saw his income remain steady but his stock portfolio dip. He said "no" to a new MacBook computer, a new Bang & Olufsen stereo and a new Audi S5 -- all of which he would have purchased without a second thought in the pre-recession days.

But now that the stock market is rebounding, he's been itching to buy an Italian diving watch. He has been making trips out to Tysons Galleria to try them on, the heft reassuringly solid on his wrist. It would set him back anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000.

The recession "made everyone sort of take a pause and think about how they spend their money, needs versus wants," Shirazi said. "However, I work all the time. . . . And if you work hard, you like to reward yourself in some capacity."

Exactly, agreed local TV personality Paul Wharton, who cut his maid service and made other economies during the recession.

Wharton recently plunked down more than $1,000 for a pair of python shoes. For him, the shoes are a talisman of better times to come.

"It's almost like I've come out of the recession before the market," he said proudly. "I made a choice! I just refused to be in the recession any longer!"

Kwawu also misses her retail therapy.

"I would have a crazy-tough day with a client, and I'd go to Neiman's. Or on a Saturday afternoon get cupcakes and stroll in here" to Muleh, she said.

In days gone by, Kwawu would think nothing of racking up a four-figure bill in one afternoon at the boutique. But things are different now. When she does shop, she said, she's much more price conscious and less impulsive.

"I want trendy but not ridiculous," she explained. "Now my thought process is: How many times am I really going to wear this? Can I wear it out in the evening?"

Then she saw the olive and black satchel with the gold embossed trim by her favorite designer, Phillip Lim, and her brisk resolve faltered.

"Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry, I have to have this! It's great!" she said, stroking its soft leather. "It's like butter."

She sat on a stool near the counter for several minutes, debating what to do.

"This is where the id and the super ego go, 'Do it. Don't do it,' " she said, mimicking a good angel and a bad angel on each shoulder.

After several minutes of anguish, she handed over her credit card.

The saleswoman wrapped up the purse for Kwawu, who went happily out into the sunlight. The useful gray sweater coat was left behind, forgotten. At least for now.
 
 
Washington Post

Making the Grade Isn't About Race. It's About Parents.
By Patrick Welsh
Sunday, October 18, 2009




"Why don't you guys study like the kids from Africa?"

In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class -- and was constantly distracting other students when he did -- shot back: "It's because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study."

Another student angrily challenged me: "You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us." When I did, not one hand went up.

I was stunned. These were good kids; I had grown attached to them over the school year. It hit me that these students, at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, understood what I knew too well: The lack of a father in their lives had undermined their education. The young man who spoke up knew that with a father in his house he probably wouldn't be ending 12 years of school in the bottom 10 percent of his class with a D average. His classmate, normally a sweet young woman with a great sense of humor, must have long harbored resentment at her father's absence to speak out as she did. Both had hit upon an essential difference between the kids who make it in school and those who don't: parents.

My students knew intuitively that the reason they were lagging academically had nothing to do with race, which is the too-handy explanation for the achievement gap in Alexandria. And it wasn't because the school system had failed them. They knew that excuses about a lack of resources and access just didn't wash at the new, state-of-the-art, $100 million T.C. Williams, where every student is given a laptop and where there is open enrollment in Advanced Placement and honors courses. Rather, it was because their parents just weren't there for them -- at least not in the same way that parents of kids who were doing well tended to be.

In an example of how bad the fixation on race here has become, last year Morton Sherman, the new superintendent, ordered principals throughout the city to post huge charts in their hallways so everyone -- including 10-year-old kids -- could see differences in test scores between white, black and Hispanic students. One mother told me that a black fifth-grader at Cora Kelly Magnet School said that "whoever sees that sign will think I am stupid." A fourth-grade African American girl there looked at the sign and said to a friend: "That's not me." When black and white parents protested that impressionable young children don't need such information, administrators accused them of not facing up to the problem. Only when the local NAACP complained did Sherman have the charts removed.

Achievement gaps don't break down neatly along racial lines. Take Yasir Hussein, a student of mine last year whose parents emigrated from Sudan in the early 1990s, and who entered the engineering program at Virginia Tech this fall. "My parents were big on our family living the American dream," he said. "One quarter when I got a 3.5 grade-point average, the guys I hung around with were congratulating me, but my parents had the opposite reaction. They took my PlayStation and TV out of my bedroom and told me I could do better."

Yasir said it wasn't just fear that made him study: "Knowing how hard my parents worked simply to give me the opportunity to get an education in America, it was hard for me not to care about getting good grades."

But Yasir's experience isn't what community activists and school administrators at T.C. Williams or around the country focus on. They cast the difference between kids who are succeeding in school and those who are not in terms of race and seem obsessed with what they call "the gap" between the test scores of white and black students.

This year, community groups in St. Louis and Portland, Ore., issued reports decrying the gap. After a recent state report on test scores in California schools, Jack O'Connell, the state's superintendent of instruction, said the gap is "the biggest civil rights issue of this generation" -- a very popular phrase in education circles.

But focusing on a "racial achievement gap" is too simple; it's a gap in familial support and involvement, too. Administrators focused solely on race are stigmatizing black students. At the same time, they are encouraging the easy excuse that the kids who are not excelling are victims, as well as the idea that once schools stop being racist and raise expectations, these low achievers will suddenly blossom.

Last year, two of the finest and most dedicated teachers at my school -- one in science and one in math -- tried to move students who were failing their classes into more appropriate prerequisite courses, because the kids had none of the background knowledge essential to mastering more advanced material. Both teachers were told by a T.C. Williams administrator that the problem was not with the students but with their own low expectations.

"The real problem," says Glenn Hopkins, president of Alexandria's Hopkins House, which provides preschool and other services to low-income families, "is that school superintendents don't realize -- or won't admit -- that the education gap is symptomatic of a social gap."

Hopkins notes that student achievement is deeply affected by issues of family, income and class, things superintendents have little control over. "Even with best teachers in the world, they don't have the power to solve the problem," he says. "They naively assume that if they throw in a little tutoring and mentoring and come up with some program they can claim as their own, the gap will close."

Perhaps nothing shows how out of touch administrators are with the depth of poor students' problems more than the way they chose to start this school year. The Alexandria School Board had added two more paid work days to the calendar, a move that cost more than $1 million in teachers' salaries. So the administration decided to put on a three-day conference they dubbed "Equity and Excellence." We were promised "world-class speakers." If only that had been true. As part of the festivities, Sherman formed a choir of teachers and administrators that gave us renditions of "Imagine" and "This Land Is Your Land." Sherman closed the conference by telling us that if we didn't believe that "each and every" child in Alexandria could learn, he would give us a ticket to Fairfax County.

Now, six weeks into the academic year, some 30 fights -- two gang-related -- have taken place at T.C. Williams. I wish those three days had been spent bringing students to school to lay out clear rules and consequences, and for sessions on conflict resolution and anger management.

Last week, Sherman announced that a second installment of "Equity and Excellence" featuring a "courageous conversation" with Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, will take place at T.C. Williams tomorrow. I am eager to find ways to help my students succeed, but I am afraid that Ferguson -- whose book includes a chapter titled "Teachers' Perceptions and Expectations and the Black-White Test Score Gap" -- may underestimate what it will take to meet the challenges that we face.

There is one moment of those frivolous first days of the year that I do keep returning to: One of the speakers, Yvette Jackson, the chief executive of the National Urban Alliance, made it clear that the lip service and labels Alexandria is putting forward are not going to help children who are what she calls "school-dependent learners." These are students from low-income backgrounds who need school to give them the basic knowledge that other kids get from their families -- knowledge that schools expect students to have when they start classes. To her, the gap everyone is talking about is not a question of black and white but of the "difference between children's potential and their performance."

"No matter how poor they are, when little kids start school, they are excited; they believe they are going to learn," Jackson said. "But unless schools give them the background knowledge . . . so they can connect with what they study and feel confident, they begin to feel that school is a foreign place, and they give up."

For Junior Bailey, a senior in my Advanced Placement English class, school has never been a foreign place, a fact he attributes to his dad. "He has always been on me; it's been hard to get away with much," Junior said. He also told me that hardly any of his friends have their fathers living with them. "Their mothers are soft on them, and they don't get any push from home."

On parents' night a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to see Junior's dad, Willie Bailey, a star on T.C. Williams's 1983 basketball team, walk into my classroom. Willie told me that after seeing how the guys he grew up with were affected by not having their dads around, he promised himself that he would be a real presence in his son's life.

With more parents like Willie Bailey, someday schools might realistically talk about closing the gap between students' potential and their performance.

patrwelsh@gmail.com

Patrick Welsh teaches English at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria.

 
 
The Community Levee Association does not agree with legalizing drugs, the position advanced in the article below.

It's Time to Legalize Drugs
By Peter Moskos and Stanford "Neill" Franklin
Monday, August 17, 2009




Undercover Baltimore police officer Dante Arthur was doing what he does well, arresting drug dealers, when he approached a group in January. What he didn't know was that one of suspects knew from a previous arrest that Arthur was police. Arthur was shot twice in the face. In the gunfight that ensued, Arthur's partner returned fire and shot one of the suspects, three of whom were later arrested.

In many ways, Dante Arthur was lucky. He lived. Nationwide, a police officer dies on duty nearly every other day. Too often a flag-draped casket is followed by miles of flashing red and blue lights. Even more officers are shot and wounded, too many fighting the war on drugs. The prohibition on drugs leads to unregulated, and often violent, public drug dealing. Perhaps counterintuitively, better police training and bigger guns are not the answer.

When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighborhood becomes home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the dealer walks around the block. But if the dealer sells inside, one raid, by either police or robbers, can put him out of business for good. Only those virtually immune from arrests (much less imprisonment) -- college students, the wealthy and those who never buy or sell from strangers -- can deal indoors.

Six years ago one of us wrote a column on this page, "Victims of the War on Drugs." It discussed violence, poor community relations, overly aggressive policing and riots. It failed to mention one important harm: the drug war's clear and present danger toward men and women in blue.

Drug users generally aren't violent. Most simply want to be left alone to enjoy their high. It's the corner slinger who terrifies neighbors and invites rivals to attack. Public drug dealing creates an environment where disputes about money or respect are settled with guns.

In high-crime areas, police spend much of their time answering drug-related calls for service, clearing dealers off corners, responding to shootings and homicides, and making lots of drug-related arrests.

One of us (Franklin) was the commanding officer at the police academy when Arthur (as well as Moskos) graduated. We all learned similar lessons. Police officers are taught about the evils of the drug trade and given the knowledge and tools to inflict as much damage as possible upon the people who constitute the drug community. Policymakers tell us to fight this unwinnable war.

Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.

We simply urge the federal government to retreat. Let cities and states (and, while we're at it, other countries) decide their own drug policies. Many would continue prohibition, but some would try something new. California and its medical marijuana dispensaries provide a good working example, warts and all, that legalized drug distribution does not cause the sky to fall.

Having fought the war on drugs, we know that ending the drug war is the right thing to do -- for all of us, especially taxpayers. While the financial benefits of drug legalization are not our main concern, they are substantial. In a July referendum, Oakland, Calif., voted to tax drug sales by a 4-to-1 margin. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that ending the drug war would save $44 billion annually, with taxes bringing in an additional $33 billion.

Without the drug war, America's most decimated neighborhoods would have a chance to recover. Working people could sit on stoops, misguided youths wouldn't look up to criminals as role models, our overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and -- most important to us -- more police officers wouldn't have to die.

Peter Moskos is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of "Cop in the Hood." Neill Franklin is a 32-year law enforcement veteran. Both served as Baltimore City police officers and are members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.