Americans today have access to more food, more choices and more eating. The result is that they invite more scorn from abroad
THE first sign of summer ebbing? Khaki sales. They are the greatest giveaways. Americans call the pants and shorts — summer’s staple dress — ‘kakis’ and wear them to work, to parties and to lounge in.
It looks like yesterday that summer came calling. Last winter was particularly punishing with the snowstorms permanently taking hold of our psyches. It used to be an effort to get outdoors and now, with the lush around, it’s uplifting to see people with golden tans and flowers with dyes of the rainbow embroider everyday life.
But soon, the sun will lose its lustre and the breeze buckle under the cold Canadian air from across. Khakis are not the only item retailers want jettisoned. The latticed and lovely outdoor furniture with all its trappings and the BBQ grills too seem to have fallen from grace and are no longer things of desire. They lie around like junk discards in the huge shopping malls with no one really wanting them.
Typical of a skewed sociology would you not say? America gets impatient not only with things but with its superstars as well.
Remember Britney Spears? America’s golden girl who sang Oops, I did it again and got everyone turned on. Well, the 21-year-old is missing from action currently! “The industry picked up the sexually precocious-looking young woman, lifting her out of obscurity and elevating her to acclaim far exceeding her talents, only to drop her — that says something. Business and sociology speak a language as do style and culture, that people under 35 are speaking,” says the newly-sacked executive editor of The New York Times (NYT), who wanted to profile Spears’ story on page one of his paper “to know a world that the sophisticated reader needs to know.”
Meanwhile, the newly-named NYT editor, Bill Keller, who knows that Americans tend to glamorize the materialistic side of life featuring SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicles — which we in Pakistan call Pajeros); the-bigger-the-better homes; and super-size meals — advertised ad nauseam with ‘all-you-can-eat’ syndrome where the servings are unbelievably gigantic — wants his staff at NYT to do a “little more savouring” of life by spending “time with their families or viewing art.” Oh, by the way, The New York Times has flipped yet again! When Bob Hope died, plunked in the middle of its front page under Hope’s photo was a two-column story by a guy called Vincent Canby. No quarrel with the man. Except Canby does not exist anymore — I mean he is dead! The poor guy died three years ago, hoping against hope that Hope would predecease him. But no such luck — he died in 2000. What is most weird is that NYT tried conning its readers by not even telling them that the writer of the lengthy piece (continued on a full page inside) was no longer among the living!
But back to food. In the “gorge-yourself environment”, Americans today have access to more food, more choices and more eating. The result: they invite more scorn from abroad and civilized people of the world look upon them as being “very, very ignorant”, who talk “loudly” (that indeed is true — go out to eat and hear people around you yapping or travel by train or bus and hear a full one-hour conversation being conducted by the person in front or the back who is either on the cell or talking to his fellow passenger), who look out for good deals, especially something that says ‘free’.
Buy one and get one free is even better!
America is derided for its large corporations “sucking up the world’s resources through a straw so as to slake up its own Big Gulp thirsts”; it’s ridiculed for its movies and TV shows that are trite and is blamed for its fast-food chain that “debase global palates.”
True and false.
Upscale Americans have pretty normal eating habits and lifestyles that definitely does not call for laughter from overseas: “People will watch their carbs (carbohydrates) and palm their proteins, unless it’s really good steak or triple crhme brie, plus also smoke a little, skip days (or weeks) here and there at the gym, totally have some jelly beans — and be much better dinner company than any tiny army of die-hards. And that’s the zone I’d like to live in anyway,” says a health nut.
You see, the current summer fad is the “The Zone Diet” and the “jelly beans” that health-conscious Yanks are roundly swallowing in the form of pellets called Omega-3 fatty acids derived from fish.
Their worth?
According to the diet’s author, Barry Sears, fish oil is meant to help ward off cancer, heart disease, depression, dementia and other degenerative conditions. And guess what, an ugly monster crab chain called the Red Lobster just barged into New York’s Times Square, providing all kinds of fishy stuff to its 600 clients. More importantly, the new eating empire shines a sad light on the jobless rate in the US — 10,000 people applied for jobs to wait tables that would fetch them a $3.30 an hour plus tips and benefits. Five thousand were short-listed and screened, out of which finally only 300 made it!
This backs statistics already floating around. In Chicago alone there are over 100,000 young people from 16-24 who are out of work, while in NYC there are more than 200,000. Across America, according to Northeastern University in Boston, the number of unemployed is 5.5 million and rising.
Outdoors — that is this summer’s key word. And by golly, you don’t have to be rich to enjoy the summer. However, research now shows that “more money actually does make people a bit happier” who are trying to beat the Jones’s in today’s zero-sum status game.
They even have to brag about the number of Broadway shows they went to and what fun they had touring Europe, apart from showing off their latest SUV or Mercedes. However, according to travel agents, most Americans this summer stayed in their country, opting to make shot hops to the shore or the mountains.
And yet, there are some who say they love doing nothing during the sultry summer, except sit out on their decks or leafy yards and stare into space. “As I age, and my career stabilizes, I no longer feel guilty about the work I could be doing on weekends...so if you called me to join you to see the latest blockbuster movie or take a spin thorough a museum — nothing doing!” says a suburban socialite, happy with just hanging around her home with her cat on a hot summer day.
The television, meanwhile, is getting more and more audacious. Bravo, a terrific channel, recently aired a shocking programme, Boy meets boy, during prime time. It had all the undertones and innuendoes of Boy meets girl!
No wonder President Bush is vowing to block gays from marrying each other. Says he, “I am mindful that we’re all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take speck out of their neighbours eye when they got a log in their own...it does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on issues such as marriage.”
Will he get votes for his re-election from the growing and influential homosexual community?
Americans today have access to more food, more choices and more eating. The result is that they invite more scorn from abroad 
