Good question.
It was lost in a pile of irony the last two months.
See, a few weeks before I launched The Newlybed, I took a job at a luxury travel startup. The recession decimated the luxe travel industry and that, my friends, is what prompted the owners of the company to shut it down in mid-March. Their decision was telegraphed long before that, meaning that there wasn’t that much to do at work. Except blog, of course.
And there you have it: when you’re working at a company that’s sinking, you can afford to spend your days writing pithy posts and reviewing raunchy research. But when you’re looking for work, sparing the hour it takes to craft a column seems wasteful.
But, this morning, I accepted a new job. And The Newlybed is back!
A few weeks back, I promised some changes at The Newlybed.
They’re here! We’ve got a new look, a new blogging platform and a new url (kinda).
Readers of the old site will be automatically redirected. I’ll also be migrating content over.
In the meantime, let me know what you think of the new look!
Yes, it’s hard to believe, but the leading romance novel publisher is 60 years old this month.
The purveyor of pulp fiction has weathered storms of social upheaval, grown alongside women through empowerment movements, and continually found ways to balance realism, escapism, relevance and desire.
Says a thorough and compelling article on CBC, “Harlequin was an early master of brand identification, and the Harlequin romance is undeniably a commodity. At one point, some series were standardized at 192 pages per title, so they could be efficiently printed, packed, shipped and shelved. The company’s website, which courts writers as well as readers, spells out punishingly exact writers’ guidelines for each sub-genre. These rules specify not just manuscript length but also seemingly subjective matters like the qualities of the hero (”while he may be harsh and direct, he is never physically cruel”) and the heroine (”realistic, capable and as committed to love as she is to her career”). Some even give percentage breakdowns for the novel’s point of view (”60% heroine and 40% hero,” suggests one).
It’s a formula, but then, romantic love is formulaic. After 60 years, Harlequin knows that a kiss is still a kiss; a sigh is just a sigh. The novels have changed in their details, factoring in real-life issues like working mothers, single parents and even condom use. But they’ve kept the fundamental arc of relationships, from attraction to misunderstanding to the requisite happily-ever-after ending. And readers wouldn’t want it any other way”.
The question that continues to elude the curious: what is love? Is it an emotion, a choice, a steady drip of neurochemicals, an evolutionary adaptation for childrearing, a biological imperative shared by other animals?
Maybe, says new research which argues that kitties express love and affection for you. And you for them. In fact, one expert on the matter - Jonathan Balcombe, author of the best-selling book “Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good”- goes as far to compare it to the parent-child bond, saying: “That is the sort of love that likely exists between you and your cat. The relationship probably isn’t one-sided, either. “Love, warmth and caring seem to be expressed by cats,” Dr. Balcombe says. Your most loyal love could then very well be your feline friend”.
Maybe this explains why my preferred pet name for Mr. Abraxas is kitten?
Location: Somewhere in America
The set-up: A Nigerian green card scam gone wrong
The explanation: This story from Ghana News online, describes how a Nigerian couple that migrated to America in search of a better life and a green card.
“First, the man introduces his betrothed wife to his American darling as his sister to pave way for his marriage to the American lady. When the marriage crashed, his wife marries an American to secure the life ticket. So how did it fail? Attempt by a friend to sleep with his pseudo sister (Nigerian wife) foiled the deal. His ‘oyibo wife realized she was a guinea pig and quit the affair.”
The stuff of urban legend, right? Perhaps, although the news article details many more cases which prove the enduring popularity of the green card scam myth.
What is more telling (and more reliable) however, are the official sources who verify these rumors as fact.
ILW.com - a web newsletter for immigration lawyers - recently published its own research on the phenomenon, stating that more than 2.3 million foreign nationals gained lawful permanent resident status by marrying an American between 1998 and 2007. Two notable bullet points:
- An overwhelming percentage of all petitions to bring foreign spouses or fiancés to the United States illegally (or to help them adjust visa status if they are already in the United States on non-immigrant visas) are approved — even in cases where the couple may only have met over the Internet, and may not even share a common language.
- Marriage to an American is the clearest pathway to citizenship for an illegal alien. A substantial number of illegal aliens ordered removed (many of whom have criminal records) later resurface as marriage-based green card applicants.
And the analysis beyond the anecdotes shows that marriage fraud isn’t new, nor is it going away:
“Although the idea of importing foreign “catalog” spouses dates back to the 18th century, the concept of “mail-order brides” didn’t really take off until after the end of the Cold War and then exploded in popularity after the advent of the Internet, which has done more to facilitate cross-cultural relationships than any other event in human history.”
Cherry Blossoms alone claims to have match-made over 100,000 international couples since its inception in 1974; thousands of other services have got in the game since.
There are cultural biases at play, too, namely that foreign femmes are more likely to feel comfortable in traditional homemaker roles. Enter, GoodWife.com to point out that radical feminazis (their words, not mine) have polluted the potential spouse pool which requires men to look abroad. But there’s more to it, argues the ILW: marriage for money, arranged marriages and harbouring terrorists, also factor prominently in these international relationships.
The authors freely admit “there is no way of knowing what percentage of the 300,000-plus spouses who gain green cards each year through marriage to American citizens or LPRs do so based on a fraudulent relationship, but consular officers interviewed for this Backgrounder offered estimates ranging from 5 to 30 percent.”
While a list of action items for immigration officials concludes the piece, ultimately, opines the writer, ““if the American believes the relationship is real, then it is.”
The research on sexiness, lustfulness, committedness, and marriage-ness this week is a mixed bag of good, bad and ludicrously ugly. See if you can figure out what’s what, and which ones span all three.
Sweat is sexy: Women can differentiate between men who are turned on and men who aren’t by sniffing their sweat, reports the New York Times.
A survey, reliant on self-reported data we assume, shows that Polish pairs get it on the most of any Europeans, with over 10% of them having sex every. single. day.
That big old study by Larry Young et al just won’t disappear from the news cycle. The latest tidbit? Kissing feels nice because it causes the brain to unleashes stress-reducing chemicals.
The ridiculously uncritical Times of India is reporting on another wrinkle in this research - that Supersmart Scientists will create drugs to make us fall in or out of love. Wrong. We debunked that one a month ago.
But wait! Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, says that kissing is all about mate selection and pair bonding. The cool thing about her research? Her next study “will take place in a secluded room at the back of an academic building with flowers, candles, a sofa and jazz music playing in the background”.
Women’s likelihood of marrying is shaped by race, education levels and economic class. 42% of black women never marry; onyl 21% of white women remain single throughout their lives. The black marriage rate dropped by 34% the last few decades.
Yes, it’s not just the cascade of neurochemicals from physical contact that help couples feel good. There are other, albeit less understood, plusses that come from dating and relating.
According to a Barbados Advocate interview with Harry Reis, PhD and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Human Relationships, married people [and others in close relationships] can expect to experience:
- Less depression and substance abuse
- Lower blood pressure
- Natural pain control
- Longer life
The biggest surprise? Faster healing: “researchers at Ohio State University Medical Centre gave married couples blister wounds and among spouses who interacted warmly with each other - theirs healed nearly twice as fast”.
I have something to admit. I swoon over Josh and Fergie.
I don’t follow their careers, and I definitely don’t consider myself a fan of either of their work.
But I adore them, probably because they strike that hard-to-find balance between the fantasy of fame and sweet mundane-ness of ordinary life.
By some rights, they are the typical Hollywood couple: the pop star diva and the small screen hunk who fell in love on set.
By others, they defy celebrity convention:
- They had nothing to gain politically or professionally by allying themselves in matrimony. [Just like regular people!]
- They dated for years before their engagement, stayed engaged for 13 months, and had a relatively traditional wedding and honeymoon. [The type of sustaining and sustainable romance everyone envies!]
- They did a luscious spread on newlywed - dare I say newlybed? - bliss for next month’s Elle magazine. [Fantastic famous people glamour!]
And here they are, on vacation again, looking pretty normal.
*sigh* Don’t change, kids!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a handful of senators in Georgia who engineered a grass-roots campaign to, ahem, liberate professors who study human sexuality from their state-university posts.
Today, two professors - Dr. Mindy Stombler and Dr. Kirk Elifson - are testifying in front of the Georgia Senate to hold onto their jobs. The reason? Their expertise in queer theory, oral sex and male prostitution.
At first, it was all about the money: reducing payroll by eliminating professors who weren’t engaged in bottom-line enhancing research. But, as I pointed out in an earlier post, a search of the University’s expert guide, however, yielded just 11 other sex-focused professors, hardly sufficient for the widespread conspiracy Byrd suggests, nor would the elimination of their salaries (even a very generous $100,000 a year X 12 is only $1.2 million) be sufficient to reverse the financial fortunes of an organization as large and complex as a University.
But it didn’t take long for this initial dust-up over salary to whip into a veritable tornado of moral outrage. State reps Charlice Byrd, Calvin Hill and John Brown wouldn’t let go of the sensationalist minutiae: “How do I go back and explain to the 7,500 veterans of this state that we have money to pay for male prostitution experts and oral sex experts, and queer theory?”asked Brown. “How do I go back and explain to the 7,500 veterans that we have money to pay for these things but not for veteran housing?”
For starters, by explaining that expertise in oral sex didn’t mean delivering instructional Tristan-style lectures, but instead engaging in long-range studies focused on harm reduction and disease prevention.
Then you can mention that the so-called expert in male prostitution aims to “assist community based organizations to implement HIV/STD interventions for incarcerated men and women, and to gain insight into the health related consequences of substance abuse.”
And finish up with a few facts on impacts and outputs: Dr. Mindy Stombler and Dr. Kirk Elifson’s work has contributed positively to the community by helping policy development, increasing harm reduction measures and garnering research funding from the National Institutes of Health.
CBC’s always excellent Quirks and Quarks tackles the question many have been asking this month:
“Tired of all that mushy nonsense that comes with Valentine’s Day - the schmaltzy cards, the heart-shaped box of chocolates, the earnest whispers and secret nothings? It’s about time someone took a cold, harsh look at love and expose it for what it really is: chemistry.”
Four scientist folks answer the call. Click the heart to download the full show.
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