“Cherokee Hair Tampons” and Miss Information Teach about Western Fetishization of the East

I absolutely love this episode. At first, I wasn’t entirely keen on it, but after realizing the extent to which it was illuminating western misconceptions about eastern culture and religion, I couldn’t help but love it.

Note that the stupid, hippie, holistic moron named Miss Information is actually “misinformation.” It seems obvious but it’s amazing how many times you can watch the episode before getting that….

Is this whole episode to say that there is no value in holistic medicine? No, but it is to say that many westerners don’t really get what they’re talking about when they refer to it and they conflate ideas like “spiritual” and “natural” with “eastern” and in this case, Native Americans!

We greatly oversimplify these traditions and assume that Indians (corn Indians, not rice Indians) have some magical powers that the rest of us don’t and that they’re in touch with things spiritual and natural and the earth and blah blah blah. We assume that their religions are all nature and so simplistic, but they are, like other religions with which we are familiar, quite complex. They include rituals, beliefs and traditions far more complicated than we give them credit for because we like to fetishize them and make them into something that we can idolize for what we consider ourselves and our religions not to be.

This misguided and unhealthy approach leads to misconceptions about Native American and eastern religions and slights them rather than honoring them, as we assume. Miss Information encapsulates that element of American society and reminds us that we shouldn’t be self-righteous hippie douches when it comes to other cultures that we just don’t understand. There are many ways to learn more, but hers is not one of them.

What did you think of this episode? What do you think of holistic medicine? What do you think of eastern religions and western fetishization of them?

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Eszter’s Birthday and Curbing Writer’s Obsession

In addition to a review of The Happening which is coming later this afternoon, I am going to share something a little different than I usually do today. For you see, yesterday was Eszter’s birthday. Unfortunately, we were not able to spend the entire thing together because she was on a retreat for her job in Miami (Prophet, a consulting firm, brings together everyone in their company from all over the world for 48 hours of learning and fun) and didn’t fly back into Atlanta until 7 p.m. yesterday evening. Since she had a flight out of Atlanta (to Hungary) this morning at 7 a.m., and still had some packing to do, I decided that the best plan was not dinner reservations.

So, I made dinner myself. Eszter’s favorite foods are mango, asparagus, salmon, avocado and corn. Thus, I made Eszter’s Favorite Foods dinner. We had grilled corn on the cob, guacamole, mango-avocado salad, and salmon-asparagus fettuccine. Most of the recipes came from The Joy of Cooking which is available on my website, click here, under Lisa’s Pics. In addition I gave her a pearl bracelet (which matched pearl earrings and necklace I had given her two years ago). For dessert, there were homemade chocolate covered strawberries and a scrapbook that I made with photos of us around the world.

Now, it may sound like this was simple and easy, but let me tell you, I spent the day running around like crazy. I dragged my sister out of bed to help me pick out the bracelet, and the idea for the scrapbook was hers. She helped me grocery shop, assemble the book, and keep me calm. I owe the day’s successes to her. Fortunately, it was a great success and Eszter loved the whole thing (despite her exhaustion and oncoming cold). My stepmom also helped with some of the cooking and gave me good advice about order and technique.

So, it may sound like I did a good boyfriend thing but let me tell you, I walk around obsessed with my book every day and I thought that for putting up with me, Eszter deserved an evening of total attention and everything that she likes. As a writer, and many of my writer-readers understand this, it’s hard to think about anything else and stop being so egocentric. But it’s exceedingly necessary and having someone in your life to ground you and remind you of what’s really important in life is quite valuable. So treat that person, whoever he or she is, right.

Did I do good boyfriend work? What’s the nicest thing your significant other ever did for you? Did it make a difference?