The Feminine Mystique: Chapter 1

"The Problem that Has No Name"

Betty Friedan

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night--she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question--"Is this all?"

For over fifteen years there was no word of this yearning in the millions of words written about women, for women, in all the columns, books and articles by experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire--no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity. Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool with their own hands; how to dress, look, and act more feminine and make marriage more exciting; how to keep their husbands from dying young and their sons from growing into delinquents. They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights--the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for. Some women, in their forties and fifties, still remembered painfully giving up those dreams, but most of the younger women no longer even thought about them. A thousand expert voices applauded their femininity, their adjustment, their new maturity. All they had to do was devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children.

By the end of the nineteen-fifties, the average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20, and was still dropping, into the teens. Fourteen million girls were engaged by 17. The proportion of women attending college in comparison with men dropped fro m 47 per cent in 1920 to 35 per cent in 1958. A century earlier, women had fought for higher education; now girls went to college to get a husband. By the mid-fifties, 60 per cent dropped out of college to marry, or because they were afraid too much education would be a marriage bar. Colleges built dormitories for "married students," but the students were almost always the husbands. A new degree was instituted for the wives--"Ph.T." (Putting Husband Through).

Then American girls began getting married in high school. And the women's magazines, deploring the unhappy statistics about these young marriages, urged that courses on marriage, and marriage counselors, be installed in the high schools. Girls started going steady at twelve and thirteen, in junior high. Manufacturers put out brassieres with false bosoms of foam rubber for little girls of ten. And on advertisement for a child's dress, sizes 3-6x, in the New York Times in the fall of 1960, said: "She Too Can Join the Man-Trap Set."

By the end of the fifties, the United States birthrate was overtaking India's. The birth-control movement, renamed Planned Parenthood, was asked to find a method whereby women who had been advised that a third or fourth baby would be born dead or defective might have it anyhow. Statisticians were especially astounded at the fantastic increase in the number of babies among college women. Where once they had two children, now they had four, five, six. Women who had once wanted careers were now making careers out of having babies. So rejoiced Life magazine in a 1956 paean to the movement of American women back to the home.

In a New York hospital, a woman had a nervous breakdown when she found she could not breastfeed her baby. In other hospitals, women dying of cancer refused a drug which research had proved might save their lives: its side effects were said to be unfeminine. "If I have only one life, let me live it as a blonde," a larger-than-life- sized picture of a pretty, vacuous woman proclaimed from newspaper, magazine, and drugstore ads. And across America, three out of every ten women dyed their hair blonde. They ate a chalk called Metrecal, instead of food, to shrink to the size of the thin young models. Department-store buyers reported that American women, since 1939, had become three and four sizes smaller. "Women are out to fit the clothes, instead of vice-versa," one buyer said.

Interior decorators were designing kitchens with mosaic murals and original paintings, for kitchens were once again the center of women's lives. Home sewing became a million-dollar industry. Many women no longer left their homes, except to shop, chauffeur their children, or attend a social engagement with their husbands. Girls were growing up in America without ever having jobs outside the home. In the late fifties, a sociological phenomenon was suddenly remarked: a third of American women now worked, but most were no longer young and very few were pursuing careers. They were married women who held part-time jobs, selling or secretarial, to put their husbands through school, their sons through college, or to help pay
the mortgage. Or they were widows supporting families. Fewer and fewer women were entering professional work. The shortages in the nursing, social work, and teaching professions caused crises in almost every American city. Concerned over the Soviet Union's lead in the space race, scientists noted that America's greatest source of unused brain-power was women. But girls would not study physics: it was "unfeminine." A girl refused a science fellowship at Johns Hopkins to take a job in a real-estate office. All she wanted, she said, was what every other American girl wanted--to get married, have four children and live in a nice house in a nice suburb.

The suburban housewife--she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife--freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of.

In the fifteen years after World War II, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture. Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. They baked their own bread, sewed their own and their children's clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day. They changed the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once, took the rughoolag class in adult education, and pitied their poor frustrated mothers, who had dreamed of having a career. Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions. They gloried in their role as women, and wrote proudly on the census blank: "Occupation: housewife."

For over fifteen years, the words written for women, and the words women used when they talked to each other, while their husbands sat on the other side of the room and talked shop or politics or septic tanks, were about problems with their children, or how to keep their husbands happy, or improve their children's school, or cook chicken or make slipcovers. Nobody argued whether women were inferior or superior to men; they were simply different. Words like "emancipation" and "career" sounded strange and embarrassing; no one had used them for years. When a Frenchwoman named Simone de Beauvoir wrote a book called The Second Sex, an American critic commented that she obviously "didn't know what life was all about," and besides, she was talking about French women. The "woman problem" in America no longer existed.

If a woman had a problem in the 1950's and 1960's, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn't understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself.

For over fifteen years women in America found it harder to talk about the problem than about sex. Even the psychoanalysts had no name for it. When a woman went to a psychiatrist for help, as many women did, she would say, "I'm so ashamed," or "I must be hopelessly neurotic." "I don't know what's wrong with women today," a suburban psychiatrist said uneasily. "I only know something is wrong because most of my patients happen to be women. And their problem isn't sexual." Most women with this problem did not go to see a psychoanalyst, however. "There's nothing wrong really," they kept telling themselves, "There isn't any problem."

But on an April morning in 1959, I heard a mother of four, having coffee with four other mothers in a suburban development fifteen miles from New York, say in a tone of quiet desperation, "the problem." And the others knew, without words, that she was not talking about a problem with her husband, or her children, or her home. Suddenly they realized they all shared the same problem, the problem that has no name. They began, hesitantly, to talk about it. Later, after they had picked up their children at nursery school and taken them home to nap, two of the women cried, in sheer relief, just to know they were not alone.

Gradually I came to realize that the problem that has no name was shared by countless women in America. As a magazine writer I often interviewed women about problems with their children, or their marriages, or their houses, or their communities. But after a while I began to recognize the telltale signs of this other problem. I saw the same signs in suburban ranch houses and split-levels on Long Island and in New Jersey and Westchester County; in colonial houses in a small Massachusetts town; on patios in Memphis; in suburban and city apartments; in living rooms in the Midwest. Sometimes I sensed the problem, not as a reporter, but as a suburban housewife, for during this time I was also bringing up my own three children in Rockland County, New York. I heard echoes of the problem in college dormitories and semiprivate maternity wards, at PTA meetings and luncheons of the League of Women Voters, at suburban cocktail parties, in station wagons waiting for trains, and in snatches of conversation overheard at Schrafft's. The groping words I heard from other women, on quiet afternoons when children were at school or on quiet evenings when husbands worked late, I think I understood first as a woman long before I understood their larger social and psychological implications.

Just what was this problem that has no name? What were the words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a woman would say "I feel empty somehow . . . incomplete." Or she would say, "I feel as if I don't exist." Sometimes she blotted out the feeling with a tranquilizer. Sometimes she thought the problem was with her husband or her children, or that what she really needed was to redecorate her house, or move to a better neighborhood, or have an affair, or another baby. Sometimes, she went to a doctor with symptoms she could hardly describe: "A tired feeling. . . I get so angry with the children it scares me . . . I feel like crying without any reason." (A Cleveland doctor called it "the housewife's syndrome.") A number of women told me about great bleeding blisters that break out on their hands and arms. "I call it the house wife's blight" said a family doctor in Pennsylvania. "I see it so often lately in these young women with four, five and six children who bury themselves in their dishpans. But it isn't caused by detergent and it isn't cured by cortisone."

Sometimes a woman would tell me that the feeling gets so strong she runs out of the house and walks through the streets. Or she stays inside her house and cries. Or her children tell her a joke, and she doesn't laugh because she doesn't hear it. I talked to women who had spent years on the analyst's couch, working out their "adjustment to the feminine role," their blocks to "fulfillment as a wife and mother." But the desperate tone in these women's voices, and the look in their eyes, was the same as the tone and the look of other women, who were sure they had no problem, even though they did have a strange feeling of desperation.

A mother of four who left college at nineteen to get married told me:

I've tried everything women are supposed to do--hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn't leave you anything to think about--any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home. There's no problem you can even put a name to. But I'm desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I'm a server of food and putter-on of pants and a bed maker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?

A twenty-three-year-old mother in blue jeans said:

I ask myself why I'm so dissatisfied. I've got my health, fine children, a lovely new home, enough money. My husband has a real future as an electronics engineer. He doesn't have any of these feelings. He says maybe I need a vacation, let's go to New York for a weekend. But that isn't it. I always had this idea we should do everything together. I can't sit down and read a book alone. If the children are napping and I have one hour to myself I just walk through the house waiting for them to wake up. I don't make a move until I know where the rest of the crowd is going. It's as if ever since you were a little girl, there's always been somebody or something that will take care of your life: your parents, or college, or falling in love, or having a child, or moving to a new house. Then you wake up one morning and there's nothing to look forward to.

A young wife in a Long Island development said:

I seem to sleep so much. I don't know why I should be so tired. This house isn't nearly so hard to clean as the cold-water Hat we had when I was working. The children are at school all day. It's not the work. I just don't feel alive.

In 1960, the problem that has no name burst like a boil through the image of the happy American housewife. In the television commercials the pretty housewives still beamed over their foaming dishpans and Time's cover story on "The Suburban Wife, an American Phenomenon" protested: "Having too good a time . . . to believe that they should be unhappy." But the actual unhappiness of the American housewife was suddenly being reported--from the New York Times and Newsweek to Good Housekeeping and CBS Television ("The Trapped Housewife"), although almost everybody who talked about it found some superficial reason to dismiss it. It was attributed to incompetent appliance repairmen (New York Times), or the distances children must be chauffeured in the suburbs (Time), or too much PTA (Redbook). Some said it was the old problem--education: more and more women had education, which naturally made them unhappy in their role as housewives. "The road from Freud to Frigidaire, from Sophocles to Spock, has turned out to be a bumpy one," reported the New York Times (June 28,1960). "Many young women--certainly not all--whose education plunged them into a world of ideas feel stifled in their homes. They find their routine lives out of joint with their training. Like shut-ins, they feel left out. In the last year, the problem of the educated housewife has provided the meat of dozens of speeches made by troubled presidents of women's colleges who maintain, in the face of complaints, that sixteen years of academic training is realistic preparation for wifehood and motherhood."

There was much sympathy for the educated housewife. ("Like a two-headed schizophrenic . . . once she wrote a paper on the Graveyard poets; now she writes notes to the milkman. Once she determined the boiling point of sulphuric acid; now she determine s her boiling point with the overdue repairman....The housewife often is reduced to screams and tears.... No one, it seems, is appreciative, least of all herself, of the kind of person she becomes in the process of turning from poetess into shrew.")

Home economists suggested more realistic preparation for housewives, such as high-school workshops in home appliances. College educators suggested more discussion groups on home management and the family, to prepare women for the adjustment to domestic life. A spate of articles appeared in the mass magazines offering "Fifty-eight Ways to Make Your Marriage More Exciting." No month went by without a new book by a psychiatrist or sexologist offering technical advice on finding greater fulfillment through sex.

A male humorist joked in Harper's Bazaar (July, 1960) that the problem could be solved by taking away woman's right to vote. ("In the pre-19th Amendment era, the American woman was placid, sheltered and sure of her role in American society. She left all the political decisions to her husband and he, in turn, left all the family decisions to her. Today a woman has to make both the family and the political decisions, and it's too much for her.")

A number of educators suggested seriously that women no longer be admitted to the four-year colleges and universities: in the growing college crisis, the education which girls could not use as housewives was more urgently needed than ever by boys to do the work of the atomic age.

The problem was also dismissed with drastic solutions no one could take seriously,. (A woman writer proposed in Harper's that women be drafted for compulsory service as nurses' aides and baby-sitters.) And it was smoothed over with the age-old panaceas: "love is their answer," "the only answer is inner help," "the secret of completeness--children," "a private means of intellectual fulfillment," "to cure this toothache of the spirit--the simple formula of handling one's self and one's will over to God."1

The problem was dismissed by telling the housewife she doesn't realize how lucky she is--her own boss, no time clock, no junior executive gunning for her job. What if she isn't happy--does she think men are happy in this world? Does she really, secretly, still want to be a man? Doesn't she know yet how lucky she is to be a woman?

The problem was also, and finally, dismissed by shrugging that there are NO solutions: this is what being a woman means, and what is wrong with American women that they can't accept their role gracefully? As Newsweek put it (March 7, 1960):

She is dissatisfied with a lot that women of other lands can only dream of. Her discontent is deep, pervasive, and impervious to the superficial remedies which are offered at every hand.... An army of professional explorers have already charted the major sources of trouble.... From the beginning of time, the female cycle has defined and confined woman's role. As Freud was credited with saying: "Anatomy is destiny." Though no group of women has ever pushed these natural restrictions as far as the American wife, it seems that she still cannot accept them with good grace.... A young mother with a beautiful family, charm, talent and brains is apt to dismiss her role apologetically. "What do I do?" you hear her say. Why nothing. I'm just a housewife." A good education, it seems, has given this paragon among women an understanding of the value of everything except her own worth. . .

And so she must accept the fact that "American women's unhappiness is merely the most recently won of women's rights," and adjust and say with the happy housewife found by Newsweek: "We ought to salute the wonderful freedom we all have and be proud of our lives today. I have had college and I've worked, but being a housewife is the most rewarding and satisfying role.... My mother was never included in my father's business affairs. . . she couldn't get out of the house and away from us children. But I am an equal to my husband; I can go along with him on business trips and to social business affairs."

The alternative offered was a choice that few women would contemplate. In the sympathetic words of the New York Times: "All admit to being deeply frustrated at times by the lack of privacy, the physical burden, the routine of family life, the confinement of it. However, none would give up her home and family if she had the choice to make again." Redbook commented: "Few women would want to thumb their noses at husbands, children and community and go off on their own. Those who do may be talented individuals, but they rarely are successful women."

The year American women's discontent boiled over, it was also reported (Look) that the more than 21,000,000 American women who are single, widowed, or divorced do not cease even after fifty their frenzied, desperate search for a man. And the search begins early--for seventy per cent of all American women now marry before they are twenty-four. A pretty twenty-five-year-old secretary took thirty-five different jobs in six months in the futile hope of finding a husband. Women were moving from one political club to another, taking evening courses in accounting or sailing, learning to play golf or ski, joining a number of churches in succession, going to bars alone, in their ceaseless search for a man.

Of the growing thousands of women currently getting private psychiatric help in the United States, the married ones were reported dissatisfied with their marriages, the unmarried ones suffering from anxiety and, finally, depression. Strangely, a number of psychiatrists stated that, in their experience, unmarried women patients were happier than married ones. So the door of all those pretty suburban houses opened a crack to permit a glimpse of uncounted thousands of American housewives who suffered alone from a problem that suddenly everyone was talking about, and beginning to take for granted, as one of those unreal problems in American life that can never be solved-like the hydrogen bomb. By 1962 the plight of the trapped American housewife had become a national parlor game. Whole issues of magazines, newspaper columns, books learned and frivolous, educational conferences and television panels were devoted to the problem.

Even so, most men, and some women, still did not know that this problem was real. But those who had faced it honestly knew that all the superficial remedies, the sympathetic advice, the scolding words and the cheering words were somehow drowning the problem in unreality. A bitter laugh was beginning to be heard from American women. They were admired, envied, pitied, theorized over until they were sick of it, offered drastic solutions or silly choices that no one could take seriously. They got all kinds of advice from the growing armies of marriage and child-guidance counselors, psychotherapists, and armchair psychologists, on how to adjust to their role as housewives. No other road to fulfillment was offered to American women in the middle of the twentieth century. Most adjusted to their role and suffered or ignored the problem that has no name. It can be less painful for a woman, not to hear the strange, dissatisfied voice stirring within her.

It is NO longer possible to ignore that voice, to dismiss the desperation of so many American women. This is not what being a woman means, no matter what the experts say. For human suffering there is a reason; perhaps the reason has not been found because the right questions have not been asked, or pressed far enough. I do not accept the answer that there is no problem because American women have luxuries that women in other times and lands never dreamed of; part of the strange newness of the problem is that it cannot be understood in terms of the age-old material problems of man: poverty, sickness, hunger, cold. The women who suffer this problem have a hunger that food cannot fill. It persists in women whose husbands are struggling intern and law clerks, or prosperous doctors and lawyers; in wives of workers and executives who make $5,000 a year or $50,000. It is not caused by lack of material advantages; it may not even be felt by women preoccupied with desperate problems of hunger, poverty or illness. And women who think it will be solved by more money, a bigger house, a second car, moving to a better suburb, often discover it gets worse.

It is no longer possible today to blame the problem on loss of femininity: to say that education and independence and equality with men have made American women unfeminine. I have heard so many women try to deny this dissatisfied voice within themselves because it does not fit the pretty picture of femininity the experts have given them. I think, in fact, that this is the first clue to the mystery; the problem cannot be understood in the generally accepted terms by which scientists have studied women, doctors have treated them, counselors have advised them, and writers have written about them. Women who suffer this problem, in whom this voice is stirring, have lived their whole lives in the pursuit of feminine fulfillment. They are not career women (although career women may have other problems); they are women whose greatest ambition has been marriage and children. For the oldest of these women, these daughters of the American middle class, no other dream was possible. The ones in their forties and fifties who once had other dreams gave them up and threw themselves joyously into life as housewives. For the youngest, the new wives and mothers, this was the only dream. They are the ones who quit high school and college to marry, or marked time in some job in which they had no real interest until they married. These women are very "feminine" in the usual sense, and yet they still suffer the problem.

Are the women who finished college, the women who once had dreams beyond housewifery, the ones who suffer the most? According to the experts they are, but listen to these four women:

My days are all busy, and dull, too. All I ever do is mess around. I get up at eight--I make breakfast, so I do the dishes, have lunch, do some more dishes, and some laundry and cleaning in the afternoon. Then it's supper dishes and I get to sit down a few minutes, before the children have to be sent to bed. . . That's all there is to my day. It's just like any other wife's day. Humdrum. The biggest time, I am chasing kids.

Ye Gods, what do I do with my time? Well, I get up at six. I get my son dressed and then give him breakfast. After that I wash dishes and bathe and feed the baby. Then I get lunch and while the children nap, I sew or mend or iron and do all the other things I can't get done before noon. Then I cook supper for the family and my husband watches TV while I do the dishes. After I get the children to bed, I set my hair and then I go to bed.

The problem is always being the children's mommy, or the minister's wife and never being myself.

A film made of any typical morning in my house would look like an old Marx Brothers' comedy. I wash the dishes, rush the older children off to school, dash out in the yard to cultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in to make a phone call about a committee meeting, help the youngest child build a blockhouse, spend fifteen minutes skimming the newspapers so I can be well-informed, then scamper down to the washing machines where my thrice-weekly laundry includes enough clothes to keep a primitive village going for an entire year. By noon I'm ready for a padded cell. Very little of what I've done has been really necessary or important. Outside pressures lash me through the day. Yet I look upon myself as one of the more relaxed housewives in the neighborhood. Many of my friends are even more frantic In the past sixty years we have come full circle and the American housewife is once again trapped in a squirrel cage. If the cage is now a modern plateglass -and-broadloom ranch house or a convenient modern apartment, the situation is no less painful than when her grandmother sat over an embroidery hoop in her gilt-end-plush parlor and muttered angrily about women's rights.

The first two women never went to college. They live in developments in Levittown, New Jersey, and Tacoma, Washington, and were interviewed by a team of sociologists studying workingmen's wives. 2 The third, a minister's wife, wrote on the fifteenth reunion questionnaire of her college that she never had any career ambitions, but wishes now she had. The fourth, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology, is today a Nebraska housewife with three children.. Their words seem to indicate that housewives of all educational levels suffer the same feeling of desperation.

The fact is that NO one today is muttering angrily about "women's rights," even though more and more women have gone to college. In a recent study of all the classes that have graduated from Barnard College, a significant minority of earlier graduates blamed their education for making them want "rights," later classes blamed their education far giving them career dreams, but recent graduates blamed the college for making them feel it was not enough simply to be a housewife and mother; they did not want to feel guilty if they did not read books or take part in community activities. But if education is not the cause of the problem, the fact that education somehow festers in these women may be a due.

If the secret of feminine fulfillment is having children, never have many women, with the freedom to choose, had so many children in so few years, so willingly. If the answer is love, never have women marched for love with such determination. And yet there is a growing suspicion that the problem may not be sexual, though it must somehow relate to sex. I have heard from many doctors evidence of new sexual problems between man and wife--sexual hunger in wives so that their husbands cannot satisfy it. "We have made women a sex attire," said a psychiatrist at the Margaret Sanger marriage counseling clinic. "She has no identity except as a wife and mother. She does know who she is herself. She waits all day for her husband to come home at night to make her feel alive. And now it is the husband who is interested. It is terrible for the women, to lie there, night after night, tiny for her husband to make her feel alive." Why is there such a market for books and articles offering sexual advice? The kind of sexual orgasm which Kinsey found in statistical plenitude in the recent generations of American women does not seem to make this problem go away.

On the contrary, new neuroses are being seen among women--and problems as yet unnamed as neuroses--which Freud and his followers did not predict, with physical symptoms, anxieties, and defense mechanisms equal to those caused by sexual repression. And strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework--an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life. Educators are increasingly uneasy about the dependence, the lack of self-reliance, of the boys and girls who are entering college today. "We fight a continual battle to make our students assume manhood," said a Columbia dean.

A White House conference was held on the physical and muscular deterioration of American children: were they being over-nurtured? Sociologists noted the astounding organization of suburban children's lives: the lessons, parties, entertainments, play and study groups organized for them. A suburban housewife in Portland, Oregon, wondered why the children "need" Brownies and Boy Scouts out here. "This is not the slums. The kids out here have the great outdoors. I think people are so bored. they organize the children, and then try to hook ever' one else on it. And the poor kids have no time left just to lie on their beds and daydream."

Can the problem that has no name be somehow related to the domesroutine of the housewife? When a woman tries to put the problem into words, she often merely describes the daily life she leads. What is there in this recital of comfortable domestic detail that could possibly cause such a feeling of desperation? Is she trapped simply by the enormous demands of her role as modern housewife: wife, mistress, mother, nurse, consumer, cook, chauffeur, expert on interior decoration child care, appliance repair, furniture refinishing, nutrition, and education? Her day is fragmented as she rushes from dishwasher to washing machine to telephone to dryer to station wagon to supermarket, and delivers Johnny to the Little League field, takes Janey to dancing class, gets the lawnmower fixed and meets the 6:45. She can never spend more than 15 minutes on any one thing; she has no time to read books, only magazines; even if she had time, she has lost the power to concentrate. At the end of the day, she is so terribly tired that sometimes her husband has to take over and put the children to bed.

Thus terrible tiredness took so many women to doctors in the 1950's that one decided to investigate it. He found, surprisingly, that his patients suffering from "housewife's fatigue' slept more than an adult needed to sleep -as much as ten hours a day- and that the actual energy they expended on housework did not tax their capacity. The real problem must be something else, he decided-perhaps boredom. Some doctors told their women patients they must get out of the house for a day, treat themselves to a movie in town. Others prescribed tranquilizers. Many suburban housewives were taking tranquilizers like cough drops. You wake up in the morning, and you feel as if there's no point in going on another day like this. So you take a tranquilizer because it makes you not care so much that it's pointless."

It is easy to see the concrete details that trap the suburban housewife, the continual demands on her time. But the chains that bind her in her trap are chains in her own mind and spirit. They are chains made up of mistaken ideas and misinterpreted facts, of incomplete truths and unreal choices. They are not easily seen and not easily shaken off.

How can any woman see the whole truth within the bounds of her own life? How can she believe that voice inside herself, when it denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she has been living? And yet the women I have talked to, who are finally listening to that inner voice, seem in some incredible way to be groping through to a truth that has defied the experts.

I think the experts in a great many fields have been holding pieces of that truth under their microscopes for a long time without realizing it. I found pieces of it in certain new research and theoretical developments in psychological, social and biological science whose implications for women seem never to have been examined. I found many clues by talking to suburban doctors, gynecologists, obstetricians, child-guidance clinicians, pediatricians, high-school guidance counselors, college professors, marriage counselors, psychiatrists and ministers-questioning them not on their theories, but on their actual experience in treating American women. I became aware of a growing body of evidence, much of which has not been reported publicly because it does not fit current modes of thought about women--evidence which throws into question the standards of feminine normality, feminine adjustment, feminine fulfillment, and feminine maturity by which most women are still trying to live.

I began to see in a strange new light the American return to early marriage and the large families that are causing the population explosion; the recent movement to natural childbirth and breastfeeding; suburban conformity, and the new neuroses, character pathologies and sexual problems being reported by the doctors. I began to see new dimensions to old problems that have long been taken for granted among women: menstrual difficulties, sexual frigidity, promiscuity, pregnancy fears, childbirth depression, the high incidence of emotional breakdown and suicide among women in their twenties and thirties, the menopause crises, the so-called passivity and immaturity of American men, the discrepancy between women's tested intellectual abilities in childhood and their adult achievement, the changing incidence of adult sexual orgasm in American women, and persistent problems in psychotherapy and in women's education.

If I am right, the problem that has no name stirring in the minds of so many American women today is not a matter of loss of femininity or too much education, or the demands of domesticity. It is far more important than anyone recognizes. It is the key to these other new and old problems which have been torturing women and their husbands and children, and puzzling their doctors and educators for years. It may well be the key to our future as a nation and a culture. We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: "I want something more than my husband and my children and my home."

Kenny Rogers - "Lucille"

In a bar in Toledo across from the depot
On a barstool she took off her ring
I thought I’d get closer
So I walked on over
I sat down and asked her name
When the drink finally hit her
She said I’m no quitter
But I finally quit living on dreams
I’m hungry for laughter
And here ever after
I’m after whatever the other life brings

In the mirror I saw him
I closely watch him
I thought how he looked out of place
He came to the woman
Who sat there beside me
He had a strange look on his face
The big hands were callous
He looked like a mountain
For a minute I thought I was dead
But he started shaking
His big heart was breaking
He turned to the woman and said

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille
Four hungry children and a crop in the field
I’ve had some bad times
Lived through some sad times
But this time your hurting won’t heal
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille

After he left us, I ordered more whiskey
I thought how she'd made him look small
From the lights of the bar room to a rented hotel room
We walked without talking at all
She was a beauty but when she came to me
She must have thought I lost my mind
I couldn’t hold her, the words that he told her
Kept coming back time after time

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille
Four hungry children and a crop in the field
I’ve had some bad times
Lived through some sad times
But this time your hurting wouldn’t heal

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille
Four hungry children and a crop in the field
I’ve had some bad times
Lived through some sad times
But this time your hurting wouldn’t heal
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille

The Blade is running the TARTA bus crash story today.

6 hurt when TARTA bus hits car, downtown bar; accident is under investigation

By MEGHAN GILBERT and DAVID PATCH
BLADE STAFF WRITERS

Six people were hurt, one seriously, last night when a TARTA bus crashed into Caesar's Show Bar at Jefferson Avenue and Ontario Street in downtown Toledo, police said.

The bus, with six people aboard, was eastbound on Jefferson just after 6 p.m. when it swerved to avoid a car that was southbound on Ontario, did a rolling stop at the intersection, and pulled into the path of the bus, police said.

The bus hit the car's passenger side, then struck an old fire pumper truck belonging to the bar's owner, which was parked in front of the bar. The fire truck was pushed into the car's passenger side as the bus crashed through the front entrance of the bar, 725 Jefferson, police said.

The bus driver, Glenice Jones, 51, was trapped inside for about five minutes and needed to be extricated. She was taken to Toledo Hospital with a cut on her leg and possible broken bones, said Jim Gee, the transit authority's general manager. She was in fair condition last night, a hospital spokesman said.

Willie Bellamy, 83, of 649 Western Ave., the passenger in the car, was flown to the Medical University of Ohio Medical Center. The driver of the car, Mary Jarvis, 58, also of the Western address, Ms. Bellamy's daughter, was taken to MUO Medical Center by ambulance. Ms. Bellamy was admitted in serious conditon; Ms. Jarvis was treated.

Two bus passengers - Kenneth May, 27, of 3279 Glenwood Ave. and Brittany Pointer, 25, of 1920 Collingwood Blvd. - were treated at Toledo Hospital. Another bus passenger, Kenneth Blake, 34, of 2110 Chase St., was taken to St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center, where he was undergoing treatment last night.

Chris and Angela Murphy witnessed the crash.

"We were getting ready to get on the bus, but we decided to walk instead," Chris Murphy said. "We were a block away. We saw it. It sounded like a big explosion."

Joseph Wicks, the nightclub's owner, said about 15 patrons were inside at the time but none in the smoking lounge, also known as the VIP room, at the front of the building when the bus crashed through the wall. Nobody inside was hurt.

Considering the damage, Fire Chief Mike Bell said all involved were lucky. He estimated damage to the bar at about $20,000.

But Mr. Wicks said it could cost him up to $300,000.

"It's an historic building and the truck was a historic truck," he said. "It took out the whole entranceway."

The club was made famous by the Kenny Rogers' song "Lucille" as the "bar in Toledo across from the depot" and was one of the city's first opera houses, Mr. Wicks said.

The bus remained lodged in the building for about two hours until a city building inspector could determine whether the structure was sound enough for it to be removed. A TARTA tow truck slowly pulled the bus from the building about 7:45 p.m. revealing a hole where the main doors used to be.

But the damage wasn't as bad as Christina Mlynarek, a Whitmer High School junior, thought it would be. She comes to the club often to take photos every time there is an event there and rushed downtown once she heard what happened. "I was expecting a giant gaping hole," she said while watching from outside. "It looks worse inside."

Inside, the walls of the front lounge were buckled in, Christmas decorations were toppled, and the inside of the bus could be seen.

Authorities said the helicopter was called because the closest hospital emergency room, St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center, initially was unavailable because it had too many patients.

The chopper landed in a parking lot adjacent to the crash scene.

Mr. Gee said Ms. Jones is a seven-year TARTA veteran with a clean driving record.

The bus was on an inbound trip for Route 26D, which follows Douglas Road, Berdan Avenue, Collingwood, and Jefferson into downtown. The crash remains under investigation, police said.



Clarifications:

This bar was not written about by Kenny Rogers. It is true that the bar is across the street from the Greyhound Bus Depot. There are other depots in Toledo, though (such as Amtrak). Additionally, as a nutty native Toledoan whose grandmother was a Kenny Rogers fan, I know that Kenny Rogers has said that the song has nothing to do with this city...it was simply a matter of rhyming "Toledo" with "depot." It's a nice bit of urban folklore to imagine that Caesar's Show Bar (read: drag bar) was immortalized in a popular tune but nonetheless untrue.

I'm totally sexist regarding the eye candy! Here are some pictures of my favorite actress, Gong Li, for you guys/bisexuals/lesbians.

The world's favorite newlywed, Julian Casablancas of the Strokes, live on Zane Lowe's BBC radio programme.

Casablancas Interview

A big TARTA bus just smashed into Caesar's in downtown Toledo. I guess I won't be having a fag hag birthday bash this weekend. On-the-scene reports have my bartender pal rushing to get the hell out of there before the news cameras arrive. Another friend, embittered at the semi-destruction of her favorite watering hole, is labeling this a hate crime, or at least a stupid one.

Didn't TARTA get rid of their bad drivers last year after a TV news show investigated the company's hiring practices?

That reminds me...I totally missed "Shenikwa Solves It!"

Where can I find a functional filing cabinet for $50 or less? I'm at the age where I have amassed a lot of paperwork from my job, education, finances, etc. As far as organization goes, I'm a person who needs everything readily available yet compulsively neat. A file cabinet...the simple metal kind with two drawers and metal frames for hanging files...seems like an obvious purchase. Yet searches of the websites of Office Depot, Target, Wal-Mart (*gasp*), etc., have yielded nothing that is within my budget. Please help me.

All the folks who *love* crazy Peter (Libertines, Babyshambles) have a message board to go to. Sweet! Must. Visit. Soon.



Bala Chadha

Good grief...this junk mail came from my sister. Stop it already! Here's my homage to junk mail (read: reprint).

GOD WANTED ME TO TELL YOU

It shall be well with you this year. No matter how much your enemies try this year, they will not succeed. You have been destined to make it and you shall surely achieve all your goals this year. For the remaining months of the year, All your agonies will be diverted and victory and prosperity will be incoming in abundance. Today God has confirmed the end of your sufferings sorrows and pains because HE that sits on the throne has remembered you. He has taken away the hardships and given you JOY. He will never let you down.

I knocked at heaven' s door this morning, God asked me... My child! what can I do for you? And I said, Father, please protect and bless the person reading this message... God smiled and answered... Request granted.

Send this prayer to seven persons and the one who sent it to you.

By doing this you have succeeded in praying for eight people today.

AQUARIUS
(Jan. 20-Feb. 18). The distance between you and a loved one will close up this week -- hugs heal all. Of course, you can only get there by forgiving the pettiness that friends have subjected you to recently. Your big-hearted efforts inspire others to mature. Your philanthropic efforts catch on, too -- you could start a movement.

PISCES
(Feb. 19-March 20). You win gracefully this week -- and lose with just as much poise. It's exhilarating to be in the game, whatever game you're in. The latter week requires one of your famous morphing moves. You'll see the world from someone else's point of view and enlighten others as to what to do about a difficult situation. If you would like to write to Holiday Mathis, please go to www.creators.com and click on "Write the Author" on the Holiday Mathis page, or you may send her a postcard in the mail. To find out more about Holiday Mathis and read her past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

ARIES
(March 21-April 19). As the warrior of the zodiac, you sometimes bear arms against wrongdoing before you consider: Is this my battle to fight? Do I know all the facts? Is there another solution? This week, it's vital to find the answers! The philosopher Nietzsche said, "The man who fights too long with dragons becomes a dragon himself."

TAURUS
(April 20-May 20). As far as words go, you're plum out. It's your week to act. Maybe you won't be "selling" yourself so well, but when you show the world what you can do, that's all the salesmanship you need. The weekend is about rest for a change. You need it! By spending more than the usual eight hours horizontally, you'll stave off illness.

GEMINI
(May 21-June 21). Ideas are much bigger than the brain cells they occupy -- but it may take the inspiration of a creative collaborator to convince you to do the work needed make something real happen. The shift in your personal life over the weekend has you itching to gossip, but refrain! You'll regret anything negative you accidentally say!

CANCER
(June 22-July 22). Stick to your values this week, but be flexible about their rank and order. After Wednesday, you experience interesting shifts -- your No. 3 priority becomes your No. 1, etc. There will be so many gray areas to navigate, but you sail gracefully by feeling your way through. Being a little bad is good on Saturday.

LEO
(July 23-Aug. 22). No matter what age you are, this week is about growing up. Fear of aging has kept you repeating an immature habit, but you're strong enough now to let it go. Stellar role models are all around you midweek, especially a Capricorn and an Aquarius. Follow their advice, and they'll take you under their wing for a wild ride!

VIRGO
(Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your rock-solid work ethic is a rarity in these times, but even more remarkable is your commitment to that illusive state called "perfection." When you can do an ordinary thing extraordinarily well, your soul sings! Celebrate who you are all week long. The people who, as they say, "get it" will join in your revelry.

LIBRA
(Sept. 23-Oct. 23). This week, you will be accused of romanticizing, or at the very least, not seeing things as they truly are. In this you are not alone! In fact, you wouldn't be an artist if you did see things as they really are. Choose your company carefully late in the week when you are strongly influenced by the circle you "roll" with.

SCORPIO
(Oct. 24-Nov. 21). There are many things you would do if they were not considered, well, illegal. This week, if you're brave enough to take your opportunities as they come, you'll enjoy thrills that are surprisingly even better than the sinful sort -- like winning in love, beating the competition at work and earning a nice wad of extra cash.

SAGITTARIUS
(Nov. 22-Dec. 21). Why is it that the ones you love the most are also the most difficult to be kind toward? Your nearest and dearest may anger you this week, and yet, you will feel these relationships are closer than ever. The suggestions of higher-ups figure into your weekend plans. It's all a part of paying your dues.

CAPRICORN
(Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Simple but indescribably breathtaking moments occur this week -- of course all having to do with love, deep, wide and eternal. You sure know how to fill out a moment, Capricorn! Thursday and Friday bring a surge of energy best exerted through physical exercise. Return to that abandoned workout regime.

Courtesy of The Blade.

Finally, the United Way is doing a bit more than cover its own overhead. The Blade has an article on how dialing this number can put one in contact with those who can help with not-so-pressing emergencies, such as utility disconnection, pregnancy, etc.

I can't understand why the band is already going bonkers with press for an album that won't be out until January. Half of the songs have already leaked onto the internet. The other half are soon to follow considering the not-so-secret CD preview shows they're playing outside of the United States.

Here's the latest thing from The Guardian:

Rebirth of the cool
Once they were the hippest band on the planet; then it all went a bit quiet for the Strokes. They tell Laura Barton how they got over themselves.

Laura Barton
Friday November 25, 2005
Guardian

In 2001, the Strokes arrived more like a jolt in the night than a band, shaking awake a world grown drowsy with Hear'Says and Atomic Kittens and Daniel Bedingfields. From the opening note of their first single, The Modern Age, they were compelling. Lead singer Julian Casablancas half-sang, half-sneered his way through their debut album, Is This It, as if he could hardly be bothered to talk to you, wouldn't even deign to look at you. They sounded so cool, they looked so cool, they were so very, very cool.
Every band in the world wanted to be them, and so up sprang a crop of imitators in skinny ties and skinny jeans, and it spread like a particularly virulent garden weed. It seemed the Strokes could not be uprooted. But in 2003, their second album, Room on Fire, received a tepid response. Weary of the hype, the debauchery, the Lou Reed references, the persistent digs that they were over-styled groupie-shagging pretty-boys, and the plain relentless pressure of being the coolest band on the planet, the band ducked out of view.

Now the Strokes are poised to resurface with a new album, First Impressions of Earth. Musically, their characteristic leanness has filled out a little, the sound is less immediate, more labyrinthine, less recognisably Strokesian. It is perhaps more of a cerebral album, after the vigorous physicality of Is This It and Room on Fire, and, as a result, it hits your brain before your belly. Already they have served an aperitif, in the form of the single Juicebox, which carries a sinister bassline and Casablancas squalling: "Why won't you come over here?/ We've got a city to love".

It is a misty Monday afternoon in New York City, and from a suite high up in an East Village hotel one can barely make out the horizon through the layer of despondent cloud. Casablancas, Fabrizio Moretti, Albert Hammond Jr, Nikolai Fraiture and Nick Valensi are variously perched around the room on fluffy white stools, or jostling about on the bed. Hammond is busy chewing gum. "It looks like chewing tobacco," he says with wonder, "but it's gum!" They look healthier than they once did. Less pallid, less hungry, less knackered - much of which may well be attributed to the stability the intervening time has granted them. Casablancas got married and Fraiture became a father, while Moretti and Valensi are in long-term relationships with Drew Barrymore and Amanda de Cadenet respectively.

Today finds them at the beginning of the inevitable press onslaught, and underlying their joviality is a faint unease. The Strokes have reason to be wary of the press; they've suffered more than most at the hands of the media. Casablancas jokingly gets out his own tape recorder and places it on the table, where Valensi is engaged in rolling a large spliff. "I think," explains Hammond delicately, "we know that something is headed our way. We can see it on the horizon and we're not quite sure if it's a canoe or an aircraft carrier. I for one pray that it is going to be positive and nice."

Perhaps this is why, throughout the interview, Hammond remains subdued, yet talkative, and Fraiture nigh-on silent. Casablancas stares vaguely out at his misty city. He speaks drowsily, with an elasticated, gum-chewed twang, and rat-a-tat-tats a bored little rhythm on his thigh, like a schoolboy stuck in detention. Occasionally his attention drifts back to the conversation, with a slow, melancholy smile. Moretti and Valensi, meanwhile, work as an impeccable comedy double-act.

"Last week we did some press for Malaysia," says Moretti, rocking back and forth on a stool. "I find the language barrier to be difficult a lot of the time. They ask what is, I suppose, a fair question, but it's just phrased so bizarre, and in a weird accent, 'You. Are. So. Coool. No?' Whaddya say to that? I was like, 'Yes. The Coolest!'" You can, they say, so easily fall into the rhythm of delivering set answers. "What's your favourite colour?" Moretti asks. "Blue. Obviously." "It has to be blue," nods Valensi. "I actually only see blue," volunteers Moretti, deadpan. "I have a problem with my vision where I can't see any other colour. You all look like Smurfs to me."

They are, understandably, excited about the new album. "I just can't wait for it to come out!" declares Moretti. "It feels like we've been sitting on it for fucking years!" Indeed, they took a positively luxurious nine months to record First Impressions, compared to two months for Room on Fire; the benefits, Moretti feels, are evident. "It's a representation of our renewed sense of values and responsibility and fucking musicianship," he says . "Not just sonically but the depth of the songs."

It was a depth initiated, he says, by a new maturity in Casablancas's songwriting. "Not to dog anything, those two last records they're like ex-girlfriends who you gotta respect and love because they got you to think the way you're thinking now. But I think that this new love affair ..." Valensi wades in: "Is this your current girlfriend, this album?" "Yeah," rejoins Moretti. "This album is my new girlfriend. And she's not only beautiful but smart. It has a little je ne sais quoi."

They say the process of recording the new album has been more akin to recording Is This It, their first, than Room on Fire. "We did it slowly - a song, two songs per month," says Hammond. "It was, 'Here is the song, play around.' We basked in it, ping-ponged it around, and only when it was done was it recorded." "There's another thing, too," pipes up Moretti, "the David Khane aspect."

Though a Strokes fan, Khane was perhaps an unusual choice for producer as he is known more for his work with artists such as Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett and Cher. "From the beginning," says Casablancas, "the production, was the main difference." Certainly, First Impressions sounds glossier, more obviously produced than their previous albums. "We had a boss on this record," Moretti explains. "We had a guy who said, 'That wasn't good enough. Put your tail between your legs and go back to the studio.'" Valensi nods. "He was pretty brutal at times. I mean it really worked for me, but he could be really harsh. I would do a guitar solo or something, and he would look at me and say, 'That was really cheesy. You need to rethink that.' And I would be like, 'What did you just say to me?'" Moretti grins broadly. "And he always referred to other session musicians who were perfect. Like the drummer from this band called Fishbone. I swear to God, if I ever meet that guy I feel like I should get on my knees and suck his dick 'cos it was always, 'If Johnny Fishbone were here he'd be able to do that part in a minute!'"

One suspects that Khane's attitude might have been hard to accept after several years of unrelenting sycophancy. "Yeah," nods Moretti. "I don't feel like it was, 'Everything we do is great,'" protests Valensi. "Aw c'mon man," says Moretti, "that's bullshit." Valensi shrugs. "Personally I experienced a lot of Strokes hatred. I find that walking down the street, people come up to me in bars and fucking antagonise me because of the band that I play in." "But critically and shit like that it got a little annoying how we were this band who revitalised rock'n'roll," says Moretti. Room on Fire, Valensi is quick to point out, wasn't that critically acclaimed.

What is apparent is that Room on Fire has left a few scars on the Strokes. "We were cocky and insecure at the same time," recalls Hammond. "It was like, 'Oh, we're naked.'" He speaks of the bands who rushed in to take their place, of the weirdness of watching bands dressed like them but singing like Limp Bizkit. "The pressure," says Moretti, "wasn't so big in the beginning." "There was no pressure, we were nobodies," agrees Valensi, "we were making it for ourselves. And we haven't made this album for any other reason than to satisfy our drive to make original art and music. It's pretty clear that we're not doing this to be famous or rich or press darlings, or whatever you want to call it." But the fact remains that they are famous and rich and press darlings, and it is notoriously difficult to recapture the growling hunger of a first album once you have wealth and comfort and beautiful girlfriends.

'No, we're not rich," says Moretti firmly. "And we're not famous either," says Valensi. "I think the band is famous. I don't feel famous personally." Moretti is insistent. "The reason why I'm saying this is I want to set the record straight," he says. " 'Cos I hate being these fucking pretty-boy darling kids who come from affluent backgrounds. It's not true. We worked really hard to get what we have. We're very respectful of what we have. We're very proud of being in this band."

He launches into a burst of Under Pressure. "Have you ever been scuba-diving?" asks Valensi. "That is some serious pressure. That's more pressure than I've ever felt doing an album or anything like that. Forty feet under water, man? Serious fucking pressure." Moretti grins. "I'll tell you what pressure is: fucking sitting in Mr Samuels's class, he picks on you to answer a question you don't know and you need to take a dump. That's pressure. Room on Fire was a very stressful period in our lives, now it seems like we're back in a valley of pressure and what we do is important to get right for our sakes, and not for anybody else's. We feel that we've accomplished that, and hopefully we'll start our ascension up another hill. And hopefully it won't be a pressure hill; hopefully it will be a hill of less bullshit and less fucking hype, a hill of just musical taste."

The single Juicebox is released on December 5. The album First Impressions of Earth is out on January 2.



P.S. Another song from the CD "First Impressions of Earth" has leaked. It's a live version of "Heart in a Cage" from a Brazilian show. Click here.

The Strokes: Back with a great new album

The Strokes have become as famous for their celebrity girlfriends and privileged backgrounds as for their music. But now they're back with a punchier attitude. Craig MacLean meets them in New York.

Another working lunchtime at the offices of Wiz Kid Management in downtown New York. The full-size arcade games flash silently, forlornly unplayed. The giant, wall-mounted TV shows a chatshow on mute. A bored black cat noses round the bags of cat litter stacked by the door. A not-quite-lifesize cardboard cut-out of Chewbacca is on sentry duty in the first-floor window, casting his protective gaze over this quiet East Village street.

On the bare brick wall, opposite a clever collage photograph personally signed by Spike Jonze, a whiteboard details the week's activities, photoshoots and interviews. What isn't pictured are last-minute changes to song titles and album track listing, final approval of sleeve artwork, and the rush to beat the deadline for the completion of a pop video. Here in Strokes HQ this crisp autumn afternoon, all eyes are on computer screens, and on the future.

The band are limbering up to release their third album, First Impressions Of Earth, and a strategy is being hewn out of the last-minute chaos. Everything is being taken to the wire to coordinate a big international push from one of the world's most lusted-after rock bands. I had been able to hear only eight of the new songs before I got to New York, and must listen to the other six (once) in the Wiz Kid office. Ask their manager and "sixth Stroke" Ryan Gentles when we might be allowed to take home a copy of the full album for a proper listen and he whimpers "don't ask me that. You're stepping on a sensitive nerve."

The Strokes have just come back from a warm-up tour of South America. They are massive in Brazil and Argentina - as they were in many places after the release of their 2001 debut Is This It made them the world's sexiest pop act - but until now had never had time to perform there. They are about to head out on a whistle-stop tour of the Far East and Europe, playing one-off "secret" shows in different countries, interspersed with the other promo activities required of jobbing bands.

The Strokes are back and - they will all chorus with conviction - this time they mean business.

It won't be like last time, they say. The 2003 model Strokes, burned out by their hotter-than-hot status, didn't do much to support Room On Fire. They had limped straight into the recording and releasing of that second album, after almost two years of touring following the huge success of Is This It. Everything to do with Room On Fire - which Rolling Stone had dubbed "the most hotly anticipated rock album since [Nirvana's Nevermind follow-up] 1993's In Utero - suffered as a result. The songs were dismissed as Is This It part two (only not as good). The tired band barely toured in support of it. At their last British show, headlining the T In The Park festival in summer 2004 (one of only a handful of UK gigs they committed to), singer Julian Casablancas appeared so drunk he could barely stand up.

"Sure, I remember T In The Park," says Casablancas, 27, not entirely convincingly. Yeah, he was drunk, "but not the mean drunk. Just the two pints of beer and still in a good mood." Well, he was smiling.

"The Room On Fire tour was us parodying ourselves," confesses drummer Fabrizio Moretti, 25. "It was almost comical when I look back at it. We were really living off the fruits of our hard work and self-destructing."

Of course, bands are meant to say they're back and firing on all cylinders. Especially when they're deemed to have cocked-up last time. But if you've heard The Strokes' new single "Juicebox" roaring out of the radio, you'll know there's truth in what they say. It begins with a Peter Gunn-style twang, shifts into the Batman TV theme, before exploding into a huge, swaggering anthem. As comebacks go, "Juicebox" is a monster.

"You sorta have to make a statement with your first single," says guitarist Nick Valensi, 24. "Juicebox is an unavoidable kinda song, you're either gonna love it or hate it but you're bound to have an opinion on it. We wanted to come out and say something. It's slowly evolved into a heavy metal tune," he adds approvingly. "It's the most aggressive thing we've ever done, I think."

The rest of the new album is just as wild. Forget the urgent, simple, classicist rock'n'roll economy that made The Strokes' name. There's an awful lot to take in over First Impressions Of Earth's 14 tracks. It's bigger: instead of Blondie-meets-Sex-Pistols spiky pop there are elaborate songs featuring mellotron ("Ask Me Anything"), prog-rock guitar solos ("Heart In A Cage") and club-friendly rhythms ("Red Light"). It's bolder: it veers from AC/DC-style guitar solos to the artful chamber pop of The Magnetic Fields. It's longer: at 56 minutes it's almost twice the length of both Is This It and Room On Fire.

And it's clearer: Julian Casablancas's vocal style is oft compared to someone mumbling at you through an intercom, but now you can actually make out what he's saying. This won't help your understanding of the songs. His lyrics are as infamously opaque as Casablancas is in person. But at least the new songs have him sounding as if the recalcitrant frontman is actually in the same room as you.

This time, says Moretti, they didn't work "with a gun to our head". First, they built their own studio, a Hell's Kitchen bolthole officially dubbed Red Carpet Studios (although Moretti prefers to call it The Bunker). Ditching the long-term buddy who'd produced most of their previous material, they hooked up with David Kahne, an industry veteran with shiny, big-selling things like Bangles and Paul McCartney records to his name. Whereas up till now Casablancas had written all the songs (although all five of these close friends shared publishing royalties), now they would write as a band. And they would take their time. Almost a year, in fact. The Strokes began work on their third album last November. They finished the final tweak on it this November, just in time for a release smack-bang at the top of the new year.

Now, "we're really gee'd up, especially to come to the UK," says Nick Valensi. It's a mark of the band's newfound enthusiasm that the guitarist is talking at all; previously he's been the most aloof - or even completely absent - Stroke, oozing a manifest distaste for the encumbrance of doing interviews.

Valensi isn't just, as they say, blowing smoke up our ass. He knows The Strokes owe a lot to Britain: they were first signed here, by Geoff Travis of venerable indie label Rough Trade, and the instant British acclaim afforded their debut EP, The Modern Age, released in January 2001, generated a wave that took The Strokes rocking, carousing, wobbling around the world. "We were really neglectful [of the UK] last time," Valensi continues, probably more alert to UK cultural sensibilities than his bandmates on account of his English girlfriend, former Word presenter-turned-photographer Amanda de Cadenet. "So we're ready to come to the UK and do a proper tour of all the little port towns and go up north and just be all over," he says eagerly.

"South America was great, and now we're just excited," chips in Nikolai Fraiture (bass, 26). "We have new music and we're just ready to play our balls off, like we did on Is This It."

"What do we want to achieve with this album?" ponders guitarist Albert Hammond Jnr, 25. He answers in his singular jive-talking manner. "Well, first album we didn't know what we were doing so it went fast. Second one, went even faster and still didn't know that much. This time we kinda put the breaks on - and in that, change happened."

They roll in, one by one, to the Wiz Kid offices. Not just a handshake but a firm hug from each, to each.

These days they lead increasingly different lives: last year Casablancas married Juliet, who works for their management. Fraiture and his wife Illy had a baby earlier this year. After finishing the main recording on First Impressions in June, Valensi left New York and spent much of the summer in LA, where de Cadenet lives. Moretti is also "bi-coastal", because his girlfriend is busy Hollywood actor and producer Drew Barrymore. Hammond Jnr's girlfriend is Catherine Pierce, half of country sister duo The Pierces.

Yes, tensions crept in during the frenetic five years since the release of The Modern Age. The band came close to imploding on tour in Hawaii and Japan. Valensi says they only recently learned lessons from those sticky moments. "Now we're trying to be more communicative with each other and more open. The problem that we used to have was a lot of resentments being harboured. Then we couldn't really be on the road so much because that's sort of a place for those resentments to fester."

But, at core, The Strokes seem solid, with personal bonds that go way back. They're like Radiohead, Franz Ferdinand or the Arctic Monkeys: mates and equals first, a band second. "It's good to know that you're with people you can trust," says Fraiture, "which is important in this business. I can go to sleep comfortably knowing that my band members won't try to dick me over in the morning."

Casablancas and Fraiture have known each other since they were six, at school in New York. Casablancas and Hammond Jnr met in their teens at an expensive Swiss school called Le Rosey. Casablancas had been sent there by his dad, who was the founder of Elite Models; Hammond Jnr by his dad, the English-born co-writer of The Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe" and Leo Sayer's "When I Need You". Later, moving from his hometown of LA to study film in New York in 1998, Hammond Jnr bumped into Casablancas in the street. The singer knew his old school friend was a good guitarist and asked him to join his new band with Fraiture (of French-Russian parentage), Rio de Janeiro-born Moretti and strikingly good looking and natural-born guitar player Valensi. The Strokes were born.

Ryan Gentles, 26, first saw them play at a small venue called The Mercury Lounge, where he booked the bands, on 31 August 2000. "It was like watching a band play and perform the way that I was hoping all the other bands I booked would do," he recalls. "They were cool, and not overdoing it, good songs, great performance, the energy. There were 60 kids there and everyone was going crazy. That sounds theatrical, or cheesy or dramatic, but that's what it was like."

Geoff Travis, played a demo over the phone, was instantly smitten. He raved about their "unmacho quality that embodies grace and love", by which I think he meant that The Strokes might have been rock'n'roll but they weren't boors or pigs. Certainly girls liked them, a lot, in part drawn by the handsome five's effortlessly fashionable boho look.

All of this - the speed with which they became huge, the look, the privileged and exotic backgrounds - led to snarky comments aplenty. The Strokes were so hip it hurt. A fashion moment rather than a proper rock event.

"Yeah, but people are gonna think that [and] I don't care," shrugs Casablancas. "One way or another people are gonna get to know you. If it's not true it won't last. If it's true, then that's who I am, I'm an asshole, what can I do about it? If we stay who we are and hopefully get better people will realise that. The whole rock star thing is not for me where it's at, at all."

The critical orthodoxy is that Room On Fire was the point where the emperor's new clothes were revealed. The Strokes were another faddish rock band whose time had been and gone, just as it was for the bands who came in their wake, The Hives ("The Swedish Strokes") and The Vines ("The Australian Strokes"). But to these ears, it's unfairly maligned. Listened to with two years' distance, away from the hype, it's a great album. Yes, it's more of the same, but in the same way that Franz Ferdinand's new album is the muscular sequel to its predecessor. When "the same" is so brilliantly exciting, who cares?

But Valensi understands the suspicion, and how that worked to the band's disadvantage.

"We had garnered, I suppose, too much acclaim, more than we deserved. We were praised as rock's saviours when all we had ever recorded was a half-hour record. So we felt rushed to get more stuff out there. So this time we didn't want to have the same fire on our asses. We wanted to take as much time as we needed."

As much as I can tell, from one exposure to the whole of First Impressions Of Earth, the new attitude has paid off. I'm not sure teen pop fans will fall for these intense, often complicated bursts of music as quickly as they did "the old Strokes". But Casablancas loosening his grip on the writing and letting his bandmates chip in has certainly helped the songs. There's more to them, and more in them. And that means there is, five years on, more to the Strokes than sharp threads and sharp riffs. They might be in for the long-haul after all.

What does Julian Casablancas make of his band's new album? Is he feeling more relaxed, now that he's sharing the songwriting burden? Was he really trying to echo Johnny Cash on the heartachey "The Other Side", does "Razorblade" sound like some sort of ironic tribute to Barry Manilow's "Mandy", and is he aware that writing about how difficult it is being famous (in the song "15 Minutes") is a bit of a cliché?

Well, it's hard to tell. "Maybe" he feels less pressure. "Razorblade" is "one of my least favourites, but yeah, what can you do, I guess I sorta knew [Mandy]," he shrugs. "Maybe I sort of meant '15 Minutes' as a joke," he says, sticking out a pendulous lower-lip.

That's about as clear as he gets. The singer is notoriously hard to understand, literally. Words escape his mouth, but trying to marshall coherence out of them is like trying to corral sheep. It seems to be more out of shyness than affectation, and is so extreme it's funny. But still.

Eventually, having declined to say what the suggestive "Juicebox" is really about ("it's a metaphor for bloodsucking," he lies) or to explain the album title ("it's not extra-terrestrial"), Casablancas offers some sort of prognosis of where he, and his band, are at.

"The two first records seem like part one. And with this record maybe there's a part two involved." A sigh, a wince, a ruffling of the hair. "I'm not sure. And maybe after that, move on again? I dunno. That's where I think I'm at. But," he concludes, suddenly brightening, "who knows?"

Over to the hitherto remote Valensi, now revealed as the most loquacious Stroke. "As much of a cliché as it is, this feels like a new beginning. We think differently as a band and as individuals. As much as I hate to say it, everybody is a little more grown-up. We had a different approach to recording the album, we've got a different approach to going on tour now. Basically, we've got a different approach to everything."

"It's gonna make us a better band to see live too," declares Hammond Jnr emphatically. "I think we're about to play some of our best shows."

'First Impressions Of Earth' is released 2 January 2006 on Rough Trade.

Courtesy of The Independent.

AQUARIUS
(Jan. 20-Feb. 18). Caring for others comes naturally to you. You are ultimately the one who will be nurtured by your nurturing efforts. Jump in, and involve yourself where it seems you have much to contribute.

PISCES
(Feb. 19-March 20). Your sense of direction is compromised by dazzling things you see alongside the road of life. Avoid getting lost. Stop and ask for directions! Get input from people who've already arrived.

ARIES
(March 21-April 19). Greater awareness is your goal. Start with your body. How are you really feeling? You're susceptible to being brought down by others with low energy this weekend. Spend less time with negative people.

TAURUS
(April 20-May 20). Being shy is a choice -- not a given personality type. You'll be in tricky social situations that can be made comfortable with more interaction on your part. In other words, speak up! Exert yourself. You're self-assured and powerful.

GEMINI
(May 21-June 21). There's nothing more real to you today than your consistent, long-held dream. It's gloriously fixed in your mind even when everything else in your world is changing.

CANCER
(June 22-July 22). Conflict erupts between you and someone who has the potential to be a great friend. Adopting the right attitude allows you to turn a weird situation into something that deepens the relationship instead of damaging it.

LEO
(July 23-Aug. 22). Optimism is not Pollyanna stuff -- it's practical and essential to getting anything accomplished now. It is impossible to have a positive mindset and still believe your tasks will have a poor or mediocre outcome. Think the best.

VIRGO
(Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Sometimes you show your brilliance by what you say, but today, you show it by what you don't. People you've never met are fascinated by your quiet intensity.

LIBRA
(Sept. 23-Oct. 23). Take terrible risks in art, but play it safe with your physical self. Keep the drama in your imagination where it belongs. Tonight, let nothing interfere with your time to recharge.

SCORPIO
(Oct. 24-Nov. 21). You strive for sincerity in all you do and say, but no matter how deeply felt and truthful you try to be, some people have a hard time accepting honesty. Therefore, be gentle in all human interaction.

SAGITTARIUS
(Nov. 22-Dec. 21). Don't allow your rational mind to dismiss things like magic and luck. Saying those things don't exist only ensures that they stay far away from your door! Be open-minded, and the unexplained happens.

CAPRICORN
(Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Strut your stuff. Invite friends to accompany you as you explore your whimsical ideas and far-out plans. This evening, romance unfolds in unpredictable ways.

Courtesy of The Blade.

I fully support the right of celebrities to use their status to draw support for causes. Decrepit walking corpses like Liz Taylor did a lot in the 1980s to bring diseases like AIDS to people's attention. Bono, narcissistic rock star that he is, has done a lot to make people aware of the tragedies that have occurred in Africa. Bill Gates has put his money on the line and is basically the biggest health insurance provider in Africa today. Good for all of them. Regardless of whether or not we are individually annoyed by these people, most of us haven't done crap for anyone in our entire lives.

That being said...what the hell is Angelina Jolie up to? I would think that she is simply "doing her part" in her humanitarian efforts but recent gossip reports have her and Brad Pitt shopping for a home in the Washington, D.C., area. Is she considering running for office in the future?


Hollywood Actress and Ambassador of U.N. refugee agency, Angelina Jolie, speaks during a press conference after visited the Pakistani earthquake areas, Friday, Nov. 25, 2005 in Islamabad, Pakistan. The head of the U.N. refugee agency and its goodwill ambassador visited earthquake-ravaged northern Pakistan amid concerns about the fate of homeless survivors as winter approaches. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

AP News Article

Sometimes only flashy, over-the-top, cheesy graphics can display the full range of a girl's emotions.



Thank God some people never go online and would simply laugh harder at me if they did.

What am I thankful for? In no order...

• The opposite sex
  
• This blog which kills time away from real life
  
• My spawn
  
• My new (first ever) cat
  
• Clean laundry
  
• Food
  
• Music
  
• Art
  
• Literature
  
• Friends
  
• My few pleasant co-workers
  
• Dress codes
  
• Sharpies
  
• Falling gas prices
  
• Cheap long distance
  
• Cigarettes
  
• Fluorescent Post-It tabs

Huh? Director's cuts of films are one thing but now they're leaking director's cuts of music videos? Sorry, kids, I don't have one for XTina's "Dirrty" but I have one for the Strokes' "Juicebox."

The Strokes - "Juicebox" (Video Director's Cut)

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Personal World Map

I've Visited 7 Countries
Create Your Own World Map

Click here to see people taking "urine therapy" for good health.

Maybe Ben Franklin was right and the turkey should have been made our national bird. After all, an eagle never helped anyone.

Thanksgiving Mystery: Does Turkey Make You Sleepy?

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
November 22, 2005

Thanksgiving feasters take heart. Contrary to popular belief, turkey's tryptophan dose doesn't cause drowsiness. In fact, the substance could possibly aid in the treatment of depression and multiple sclerosis.

Purified tryptophan is a mild sleep-inducing agent. That probably spawned the idea that turkey and other foods heavy in tryptophan cause drowsiness.

But tryptophan can't even get to work in the human brain when ingested as part of a massive Thanksgiving feast—it needs an empty stomach.

"Tryptophan is taken to the brain by an active transport system shared by a number of other amino acids [the chief components of proteins], and there's competition among them—like a crowd of people trying to get through a revolving door," said Simon Young, a neurochemist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Consuming tryptophan-rich foods may cause blood levels of the amino acid to rise. But not enough tryptophan will reach the brain to have a sedative affect.

"Brain levels of tryptophan could even go down after a big meal because of the [amino acid] competition," Young said.

Turkey isn't even unusually high in tryptophan. Many foods, such as beef or soybeans, boast higher concentrations.

"Think about how much turkey you have in a turkey sandwich without getting tired," said Sherrie Rosenblatt, spokesperson for the National Turkey Federation. The Washington, D.C. nonprofit represents the turkey industry.

So why the traditional Thanksgiving nap?

The slumber may be caused by the stressful hustle and bustle of the holidays, alcohol consumption, and the massive caloric intake of the year's biggest feast.

"There have been many studies citing a post-lunch dip in performance, from factory output to single-car accidents," McGill's Young explained.

"These things tend to peak in the early afternoon. A thousand-calorie lunch causes a sedative effect that a smaller meal doesn't have."

Multiple Sclerosis Fighter?

Tryptophan won't put you to sleep this Thursday, but it will break down into several helpful substances, including serotonin, melatonin, and kynurenines.

Serotonin affects mood, melatonin helps regulate sleep, and kynurenines may be useful in regulating the immune system.

A drug called tranilast, available in Japan as an allergy medication, is chemically similar to kynurenines and shows promise for the treatment of certain autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases result from overactive immune systems that attack important cells.

"If what we're seeing in mice is translatable in humans—and that's a very, very, very big if—it could have some quite beneficial effects," said Lawrence Steinman, a professor of neurology and neurological sciences at the Stanford School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California.

Steinman tested the drug on mice with a multiple sclerosis-like condition. He found that it relieved paralysis and other symptoms as effectively as any existing medicines for the condition.

His research was reported in the November 4 issue of the journal Science.

"These compounds have some remarkable qualities," Steinman said of the kyurenines.

"Through a very interesting mechanism, they reduce the strength of the immune signal. In general that is something to worry about, because we need a strong immune system to fight viruses and bacteria," he said.

But kynurenines seem to shut down only "bad" immune responses—responses that degrade the body's ability to defend itself.

But don't expect turkey treatment for such serious ailments. Eating even tryptophan-rich foods would have no effect, as the substance would be broken down in the body.

"I'm a strong believer that your diet is very important, but making manipulations in the diet to specifically improve the immune system is rather hard to do," Steinman said.

"If one wants to elevate the kynurenines in the body, it would be better to develop a drug that happens to look like kynurenines," rather than like tryptophan.

Tryptophan as Mood Booster

Purified tryptophan is available in some countries (though not in the United States) as a prescription drug for the treatment of depression. Another of its breakdown products, serotonin, has been strongly linked to mood.

"Tryptophan is reasonably effective in treating mild depression but probably not major depression," said McGill's Young.

Medicinal doses are three to six times as strong as the amount of tryptophan a person might eat in a day.

Some primate studies have linked low serotonin levels with low mood, increased aggression, and even suicide.

Young's recent studies of humans suggest that tryptophan may be effective in altering behavior.

"We've done a few studies where tryptophan decreased quarrelsome behavior, relative to a placebo, and [subjects'] behavior was changed without their knowing it," Young said.

"More recently we've seen an increase in agreeable behaviors. So tryptophan may not only have effects on mood but some effects on social interaction as well."

Though some holdouts may still cotton to the turkey-as-tranquilizer story, the National Turkey Federation's Rosenblatt has a rosy view.

"I think that there are some people who believe in myths," Rosenblatt said. "But it sure hasn't stopped 98 percent of [U.S.] consumers from having turkey at the center of their table for Thanksgiving."



National Geographic

Cadaver Exhibition Draws Crowds, Controversy in Florida

John Roach
for National Geographic News
August 29, 2005

An exhibition starring real, skinned human corpses arranged in poses—a soccer player in mid-kick, for example—is drawing record- breaking crowds and controversy to a Florida museum.

Fetuses and a cigarette smoker's tarred lungs are among the 20 corpses and 260 body parts on display.

"Bodies: The Exhibition" opened August 18 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa. The bodies in question are unclaimed or unidentified individuals from China. As such, neither the deceased nor their families consented to the use of the corpses in the exhibit.

On August 17, three days before the exhibit was scheduled to open, Florida's Anatomical Board voted four to two against allowing the exhibition to open.

The board regulates the transportation of human corpses and body parts into and out of the state for medical education and for research purposes. It is not clear, however, whether their authority extends to museum exhibitions.

"The bottom-line issue is informed consent. Where is the informed consent?" said Lynn Romrell, chair of the Anatomical Board and an associate dean at the University of Florida's College of Medicine in Gainesville. Romrell voted against the exhibition.

The Museum of Science and Industry opened "Bodies" two days early, on August 18, the day after the board's vote. The museum and Atlanta, Georgia-based Premier Exhibitions, the show's promoter, cited faster-than-expected exhibit construction and high advance ticket sales as reasons for the early opening.

"We did not want the people of Tampa to be denied this unique opportunity," Roy Glover, the chief medical advisor and spokesperson for the exhibition, wrote in an e-mail to National Geographic News.

The Anatomy Board announced on the show's opening day that they would not to pursue legal action against the museum. Instead, the board is seeking clarification of their authority from the Florida Legislature.

"Bodies: The Exhibition" is slated to run through February 26, 2006, in Tampa. More than 12,000 attended the show in its first four days, breaking a museum record set in 2003 by a Titanic exhibition. The first week as a whole saw 21,000-plus visitors. More than a quarter of a million are expected in the months ahead.

Premier Exhibitions, which produced "Bodies," obtained the bodies and body parts from the Dalian Medical University of Plastination Laboratories in China.

The Chinese laboratories prepare the skinned bodies and body parts via polymer preservation, also called plastination or plasticization. In this process body water and fats are replaced with liquid silicone rubber. The laboratory supplies the bodies to human-anatomy exhibits around the world.

The corpses and body parts used in "Bodies: The Exhibition" were "legally obtained" from various medical schools and universities in China, Glover said. In addition to being a spokesperson for "Bodies," Glover is a professor emeritus of anatomy and cell biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

"It is standard legal practice in both the United States and China that unclaimed or unidentified remains are made available for medical education, which is one of the key goals of our exhibition," he said.

But Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is uncomfortable with the practice. Regardless of the law, the use of unclaimed bodies in human-anatomy exhibits is questionable, Caplan says.

"There's a fine line between education and exploitation in these kinds of exhibits. And you only want people to be displayed if you have their consent, not the consent of a third party," he said.

Since the bodies are either unclaimed or unidentified, obtaining consent was impossible, Glover said.

On Display

"Bodies: The Exhibition" is intended to provide visitors with a unique and educational perspective on the inner workings of the human body, according to Premier Exhibitions. For example, the tarred lung illustrates the dangers of smoking.

"Nothing can equal the power of seeing an actual human body in person," Glover said. "There is no substitute for the real thing. Seeing a plastic model or reading a textbook pales in comparison."

Romrell, of Florida's Anatomical Board, agreed that portions of the exhibit have educational value. But many of the bodies are posed to make an impact, not educate, he says. As an example, he cited the soccer player positioned to kick a ball.

"There are other ways to put medical information on exhibit in a museum," he said. Romrell added that Premier Exhibitions has a vested interest in drawing crowds: The exhibit cost 25 million U.S. dollars to produce.

Caplan, the bioethicist, has not personally seen a plasticized-cadaver exhibition. But he has discussed them with colleagues and civic and religious leaders.

"There are people who certainly raise an eyebrow about some of the artistic presentations of the body," he said.

Caplan added that none of the current exhibitions—including the one in Tampa and "Body Worlds" now on display in Chicago and headed to Philadelphia in October—have crossed the line of disrespect in presentation.

Glover, the exhibit spokesperson, says he prefers to leave the judgments to the visitors. "Many people consider the human body itself a work of art. Of course, art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. We leave it to the public to form their own opinions," he said.









National Geographic