Beauty Without Borders

We watched a movie in Gender and Women's Studies today about a group of American beauticians who opened a beauty school in Afghanistan in an attempt to empower women. I think it's great that they are helping women find economic opportunities, but do they really think they are making groundbreaking social change? I mean, call me a bluestocking, but I tend to think it is more important to provide Afghani women with education and quality healthcare than to rescue them from their eighties hairstyles and unpolished nails. Perhaps I'm just an enemy to all that is fabulous.

Interviews are silly, but Japanese movies are not

So I still can't figure out if the point of the interview process is to find out more about the applicant and their interests or to see if they can actually talk to people at some sort of basal level. If it is the former, why are there interviewers who seems stiff and uninterested in what you are saying, who look at their notes while you are talking, and who seem to want to hurry from question to question rather than asking you to elaborate further upon what you are saying? If it is the latter, why are there interviewers who focus in on specific content from your application, who listen well to what you have to say about it, asking questions to lead you in a specific direction?

Really, the second type of interviewer will get a more perceptive view of you than the first, who could perhaps intimidate you into not speaking as much as you should. Right now, I feel I had one very good interview and one rather bad one at the same school. I have no way of gauging what the overall reaction will be, and it's driving me crazy! But there's nothing I can do about it in the meantime, so I'm just going to try to enjoy myself as much as possible.

To that end, yesterday I watched the third movie based upon the manga Death Note, called "L Change the World." It immediately follows the story told in the first few Death Note movies; L has a month to stop the spread of an unbelievably devastating epidemic before he dies. This movie explores a different moral problem from the first two, but there is still the one side that believes in its moral superiority and believes it has the right to arbitrate who lives and who dies. The only difference is that L races about on bikes and hangs off of planes far more than he did in the first story.

Karate

I went to karate club yesterday. The black belt who was teaching us spent some time introducing the purpose of the school and answering any questions we had. The other person who was new to the program asked all of these intelligent questions about forms and styles; I felt bad because I know nothing of the history and practice of martial arts; I just want to gain strength and learn how to fight.

The teacher made no bones about the fact that martial arts is used primarily to hurt people, that even the more artistic aspects of it (the forms, for example) have a practical application that is meant to cause pain. If art is a form of self-expression, I wonder if karate can be reconciled with the term. On the one hand, it is a very practical thing to learn; if you become skilled in karate, you can defend yourself against nearly anybody. On the other hand, you don't really need to go through that level of discipline and focus to defend yourself. You could just carry around a weapon; it would be much easier to learn how to use it. Perhaps the act of exploring what your body can do and training your mind to be alert and focused falls into the realm of art.

But I can't wait until they let us start fighting people.

My Week

1. Hydropathy values! Amino acids! This is what we're all about in biochem at the moment. That is why I am making flashcards.

2. INTERVIEW! OMG!

3. Have you heard of Sora Juana? She was a Mexican nun in the seventeenth century, and she was a YOUNG SOUL REBEL. More on this as I research my paper.

This blog post was rather boring. I apologize. I'm not in a super mood at the moment.