The Perils of Academia

April 20, 2011

As I prepare to enter academia as a student for the first time in over two decades, I am full of trepidation. I grew up in academia; I know its pitfalls. I know the departmental political in-fighting; I know the petulant rants and tirades of academics, which would get them fired in the business world; I know the petty territorial skirmishes, as savage as in the wild yet unacknowledged by the supposed aesthetes engaging in the battles. At least in the business world this competition is open and acknowledged; in academia it is denied under the veneer of culture and thus infinitely more vicious. I know that departments are, after all, microcosms of high schools with their dramas, cliques, and side-taking. Faculty are often polarized on both theory – understandable, at least – and personality – rather unforgiveable, to my mind. Lord, I am hoping I left high school far behind…

Some of the pitfalls of academia were so aptly expressed in Muriel Barbery’s book The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In this novel set in France, one of the narrators muses thus on the oh-so-intellectual thesis written by a resident of her haute bourgeois apartment building: “but intelligence, in itself, is neither valuable nor interesting. Very intelligent people have devoted their lives to the question of the sex of angels, for example.” I agree. Call me a pragmatist, but I disdain purely intellectual play with no thought of contributing to humanity’s betterment. I know. I’ve been there.

I wrote my MA thesis in Linguistics on “The Relative Nouniness and Verbiness of Gerunds and Infinitives”. Yikes – it pains me to write it. Do you even know what gerunds and infinitives are? Most people don’t and are none the worse for their ignorance. Now, I did enjoy the intellectual game, but let’s face it: who cares? Through what stretch of the imagination could the relative nouniness or verbiness of anything count? In what way might it conceivably matter? How on earth could anyone be bettered, uplifted, enlightened by this thesis? Yet I passed with flying colors, my thesis advisors and committee praising my innovative approach to analyzing gerunds and infinitives. Wow. An innovative approach to analyzing gerunds and infinitives. Now that’s what the world needs. My thesis was like taking a microscope to a very tiny corner of human knowledge and further dissecting that minuscule corner. The light shed on that little nook will never filter up to normal human beings, you and me. So I consider it a futile effort, and even then I knew it was. It is no wonder I escaped from academia as soon as I graduated, despite my professors’ entreaties to begin a PhD. I needed to reconnect with the real world, with real problems, and with real people.

In another passage, Barbery brilliantly picks apart the basic strategy of academics as they desperately try to ‘publish or perish’, often scratching out meager little corners in their field that could hardly be of wider interest just so they can publish something, anything (and the plethora of academic journals only adds to this syndrome), pad their résumés and thus earn tenure. Apparently this is universal, or at least rife in Europe as well, as Barbery states in the field of philosophy:

…if you want to make a career, take a marginal, exotic text that is relatively unexplored, abuse its literal meaning by ascribing to it an intention that the author himself had not been aware of…, distort that meaning to the point where it resembles an original thesis, [and] devote a year of your life to this unworthy little game…

I’ve been there, too. I remember my friends who were earning their Master’s in English dissecting a text to a molecular degree that the author was unlikely to have imagined in his or her wildest dreams. I, too, kept publishing after I started working, squeezing one micro-insight after another from well-worn, hackneyed material just to publish it and be able to list it on my résumé.

I was climbing the professional ladder then. At some point, I hopped off. I just lost interest. That’s someone else’s game, and I have no interest in playing it. Publishing when I actually have something to say is a worthy goal; publishing just to stay ahead of the game (or barely tread water, as the case may be) is a bore, a futile, self-serving end in itself. As Barbery, my new intellectual heroine, says, “What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others?”

I hope that as I start my new degree, a PhD in Anthropology, I can find a way to avoid trifling office politics and make a contribution that will enrich all of us. To serve others, as Barbery says. I hope I can avoid the perils, pitfalls, and politics of academia and instead find its rich vein, then mine it for my and the world’s edification. What a hopeless idealist, after all this time. Still, if you ever feel a pressing urge to explore nouniness and verbiness, you know who to ask. Good to know!

Rugged Individualism

April 13, 2011

Every country has its national myths, stories about itself that shape and define its identity. Catalans have the myth of seny, meaning wisdom or sensibleness, and rauxa, or impulsiveness. Most foreigners I know living in Catalonia would be hard-pressed to identify specifically wise or impulsive traits among the natives, but scratch the surface, really ask a Catalan about his or her national traits, and seny and rauxa are always mentioned.

We Americans have our own myth of rugged individualism. You know, the brave pioneer family – or individual – striking out on their own, into the wilderness, conquering the land (um, not to mention the people that were there before them… but that’s another issue). The individualist who thinks for himself doesn’t want government (Big Brother, that is) messing with his life. Our heroic icons: successful people who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, the self-made (wo)man, the Marlboro man. Do your own thing. March to the beat of your own drummer. Our language is rife with words and images that express our exaltation of individualism, and we can thank Herbert Hoover for coining the term ‘rugged individualism’, as he put it, “those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life”. Yikes! Sounds like a scary, overly self-righteous super-race to me! Sounds tiring, too.

We contrast this to more collectivist cultures, ones that value the group and make decisions based on the community. We disparagingly refer to herd mentality, to following the pack, drawing on animal metaphors to show the inferiority of this kind of society. We view this as weakness, as a lack of moral, intellectual, and/or physical strength. We pity their weakness, spinelessness, lack of self-reliance compared to our super-evolved culture of advanced individualists, monoliths uniquely capable of weathering the storms of life on their own. I am a rock; I am an island. We write self-help literature to counter this social disease: “codependence” is a bad word, and anyone who is simply dependent deserves our pity, not to mention disdain.

Yet this myth is not only belied by the history of mankind; it is also belied by the history of America. Banding together has always been a survival strategy for humans; how else could we have outwitted all the other animals we competed, and essentially still compete, against? We are, after all, the naked ape – a pretty harmless, almost laughable, specimen compared to our mammal brethren. Think about the covered wagons of those pioneers. Rarely did a pioneer family strike out on their own, and if they did, they rarely survived. Instead, groups of pioneers travelled together, and when evening fell they drew their wagons into a circle to protect themselves against any external threats.  When they reached their destination, neighbors pitched in to help each other build houses. The pioneers relied on each other.

We all survive because we rely on each other. We form societies to lean on each other. Humans don’t live in isolation, except the occasional crazy – or spiritual – hermit, or perhaps the uniquely American phenomenon: the survivalist, individualism taken to the nth degree. Also the exception that proves the rule. While thinking for oneself is undoubtedly a virtue, why do Americans glorify individualism to such an extent? We are so afraid of being engulfed by the group that we make life harder for ourselves. Why do we see relying on each other as a sign of weakness instead of strength, not to mention simply a sign of our humanity, or our humanness? Why isn’t reliance viewed as a human need… as well as a wonderful opportunity to generously give the people we rely on the chance to grow by helping us? I suppose there are occasional freestanding people of genius who manage to achieve greatness without anyone’s help, but I dare you to name one.

I don’t advocate blind adherence to the group, mindlessly conforming to what some randomly-chosen ‘leader’ says we should do, listening to ignorant hype and believing it to be the truth. I believe in thinking for ourselves and informing ourselves about the world. But I also believe that there is strength in numbers, and that self-reliance is hugely overrated. Why is alienation such a uniquely American ailment? When asked to share their first impressions of Americans, my students from more collectivistic cultures say ‘lonely’. I defend Americans – we like to be alone, we choose to be alone, I tell them. And that’s not a total lie, yet there is some truth in the loneliness of Americans.

My students are also horrified by the idea of feeling pressured to move out of your parents’ house at age 18. Let’s face it, now that we’re older we know that an 18-year-old is a child. Few have the wherewithal to make wise choices. On top of it, if they are going to college they’re probably already in debt from student loans, so why dig them deeper in the hole? For what? The much-vaunted independence? Living in squalor to prove their strength? That’s cruel. I did it – we all did. We had to or risk shame at our immaturity. I got in debt for doing it. And I got myself into hairy situations – which fortunately worked out well – that I wasn’t mature enough to handle. The situation in Spain where adults live with their parents well into their thirties isn’t the idea either, but 18 is awfully young to throw our offspring into the cruel world. Independence? They’ll get there… we all do.

When the miners in Chile were trapped, the news reported the following: “Though some miners have requested them, personal music players with headphones and handheld videogames have been ruled out, because those tend to isolate people from one another.  With earphones, if they're listening to music and someone calls them, asking for help or to warn them about something, they're not available. What they need is to be together." (http://www.gmanews.tv/story/202026/chiles-trapped-miners-get-brad-pitt-not-nintendo) Togetherness equals survival. Standing alone is for the strong; togetherness is for the weak. But don’t we band together as a society precisely for the strong to help the weak, and for the whole to be stronger than its parts? Aren’t we all weak at some point in our lives? Or is that just a liberal view of what a society and community should be?

To my mind, collectivism is the very definition of society. We band together, work together, survive together, flourish together. We take care of each other, help each other, give to and take from each other. We are each other’s biggest responsibility. This is a sign of our higher consciousness and humanity. Viciousness, competition, and survival of the fittest are the law of the jungle. As humans, haven’t we risen above that?

The Red-Eye

April 3, 2011

Saint Louis, MO – Chicago, IL

6 a.m., March 11, 2011

We are bleary-eyed like everyone. Six a.m. Who can deal? But we line up, check our bags en route (a very circuitous route) to Spain. We board, settle in, look around. The plane is filled with mainly businessmen (some businesswomen). I note the men. Big, hearty Midwestern guys. At least six feet tall, bulges around the midriff. Dress shirts half-tucked in, half-untucked. Ties askew. Jackets rolled into balls and used as pillows for the duration of the flight or jammed into the overheads. Oblivious to their surroundings except to sleepily greet whoever is near them with a good-natured comment. Hair haphazardly cut and combed. Totally unaware that they might be making an impression, that anyone is looking at them. Tired, slightly sweaty already. Decent fellows (almost said “chaps”, as my British friends might).

Barcelona – Madrid, Spain

6 a.m., March 21, 2011

We are bleary-eyed like everyone. Six a.m. Who can deal? But we line up, check our bags en route (a very circuitous route) back to Illinois. We board, settle in, look around. The plane is filled with mainly businessmen (some businesswomen). I note the men. Trim, neat, stylish. Five-eight to six feet max. Well-ironed shirts (ironed by their wives or cleaning ladies, if the wives are lucky; if not, they’ll stay up ‘til one in the morning to make sure their husbands – and children – are well-pressed). Ties neat. Jackets carefully removed, folded lining-out, neatly stowed. Aware of the impression they’re making; perhaps a curt nod and “Buenos días/Bon dia” to the person next to them. Hair well-cut, neatly combed, sometimes slicked back, old-style, with “gomina”. Subtly looking around the cabin, noting who is there, who is worth noting, what impression they’re making. Tired, perhaps, but polished. Attractive, knowing men.

The American guy. He’s a good guy, a simple guy, a man’s man. Feminine side atrophied, if it ever existed. The Spanish guy. He’s clever, perhaps too clever by half, philosophical and therefore not at all simple, a woman’s man. Feminine side well developed, enough to wield when useful.

The other night I was out with two friends, Spanish and Ecuadoran women, married to Americans. They know all about Latin men, love them, but prefer to marry the decent American lug. Me? I know that decent American lug. I miss the witty, knowingly charming, polished Latin man, the one who knows what to say when. My friends say, “Yes, they sweet-talk you but behind your back who knows what they’re up to, while my American guy may lack in the graces but he’s solid and faithful.” So right. Damn… where’s my hybrid?!?

The Joys of Netflix

March 8, 2011

Ah the joys of Netflix! After months of being prodded by friends, I recently gave in and signed up after the local Blockbuster shut down. As it should. Natural selection. After all, why actually leave the comfort of your home to venture out into the scary world, drive a car and possibly be killed, enter a Blockbuster store and run the risk of catching a pernicious infection carried by some ill person who forgot to slather their hands in anti-bacterial gel before touching the door handle, perform the desultory task of trolling the aisles for videos, perhaps next to some perv in the you-know-what aisle, engage in chit-chat with the unsavory clerk, and then have to risk your life all over again just to get home? I mean, why do all that when you can sit in your jammies at the computer, click and watch?

Yes, the joys of never having to leave home, never having to see the outside world, never having to put ourselves at risk of crazy drivers and lethal bacteria, never having to engage with anyone outside our own cozy circle! And imagine the perfect Saturday night: why bother getting dressed up, maybe even putting on make-up and heels, going through the effort of actually going out, perhaps somewhere different…? Why actually interact with other people and run the risk of meeting someone new, hearing a new story, getting a new viewpoint, being challenged in yours, actually connecting with another human being…? I mean, really. Why bother when your very own couch beckons you into its comfortable, womblike embrace and you can vicariously live someone else’s life on the TV screen and never, ever have to deal with the messy, scary world outside?

Ah, this American life… this is the life!

On Llufes and Pets

March 4, 2011

If you find farts distasteful, stop reading now.

Um, let me rephrase that. If you find farts disgusting, crude, rude, nasty, stanky things… No, that’s not it either.

The third time is the charm: If it doesn’t bother you to read about farts and other earthy matters, keep reading. You see, the Catalans are fart masters. I’m not saying they issue more gas than anyone else, but I am saying that their vocabulary for talking about farts is more refined and descriptive than ours, similar to the way the Inuit have countless words to talk about snow. They perfectly capture the glorious taxonomy of farting with two words that encapsulate the two very different kinds of burps in the pants. Sorry? What is a burp in the pants, you ask? Well it’s what our parents told my sister, brother, and I that farts were called in our childhood because ‘fart’ was a bad word, until, that is, Mark, the older boy who lived across the street, burst out laughing when he heard us say ‘burp in the pants’ and quickly straightened us out.  Humiliated by our naiveté yet secretly thrilled with the forbidden word, we quickly adopted ‘fart’.

Now, it’s not like English doesn’t have its own synonyms or euphemisms for farts, and especially for the act of farting: breaking wind, cutting the cheese, and tooting on the more colloquial side, along with the Southern-girl classic, “Who pooted?”, and flatulence on the more medical side. But the Catalans make an essential difference: the llufa versus the pet. Yes, pet. More on that below.

A llufa is what we call in English an SBD, silent-but-deadly. In English we need to cobble together three words to describe it, just the way we have to say ‘falling snow’ where the Inuits say qanik, and ‘snow on the ground’ where they say anijo. Circumlocutions don’t count – words, solitary, freestanding words, tell all about what matters to a society. A llufa is the stealthy, foul kind of fart, the kind that creeps up on you, engulfs you, and makes you cry out “WHO FARTED?!?!” The other kind of fart, the kind you hear, is called a pet in Catalan. Of course this leads to no end of mirth when Americans and Catalans find this out about each other’s lexis (“How many pets do you have?” “Oh, honey, an endless supply…”). A pet is a more innocent fart, the kind that you – I mean, someone else – “lets rip” but that causes no serious olfactory harm.

If a society has several words for the same phenomenon, it’s because that phenomenon weighs heavily in their collective consciousness.  Catalans actually have somewhat of a scatological obsession, and I think farts would fit into that category. If you doubt me; if you think I am overgeneralizing or propagating negative stereotypes, I challenge you to go visit Catalonia at Christmastime. There, the Christmas markets are filled with caganers, usually male (although sometimes female) figurines that Catalans place in their beloved – and quite impressive and elaborate – nativity scenes at home, figurines with their pants down, squatting, with a thick, curly pile of turds under their butt. Uh huh, I kid you not. Look it up. You can almost see the steam…

The other scatological Christmas item is the cagatió, a wooden log with sticks attached as legs and a face drawn on one end. A traditional red barretina – a hat remarkably similar to Santa Claus’s, now that I think of it – is placed on the cagatió’s head and then, because we appreciate his need for privacy, his rear is covered with a blanket. The children then feed the cagatió (which, incidentally, means ‘Shit Log’), and of course, after eating, the guy’s gotta do his duty. So the kids beat the cagatió with a stick as they wait for him to put forth (the effluvium is presents for the kids, no less), singing:

 

Cagatió, avellanes i torrons,                                                             

Si no cagues bé

et daré un cop de bastó.                    

(or some variation thereof).

(Shit Log, hazelnuts and nougat,

If you don’t shit well,

I’ll hit you with my stick.)

I kid you not. Beat a log, he cacas and you get presents. But it gets better. How do you say two people are so close they're like peas in a pod? Well, in Catalan they say they're like "el cul i la merda", literally, "the butt and the shit". I mean, really: should we lock these people up?

So the Catalans’ interest in farts should come as no surprise.  It took me a good 15 years to be enlightened on the fine distinction between llufes and pets, and I have Gemma to thank. One night when my daughter Cecilia invited her friend Gemma to spend the night – it must have been when they were eight or nine years old – we all crawled into Cecilia’s bed before going to sleep, all three of us, talking and giggling about God knows what, when suddenly Gemma uttered the magical words: “WHO FARTED?” In Catalan: “QUI HA TIRAT UNA LLUFA?” I stopped in my tracks. “A llufa?” I asked her. “What’s a llufa?” When she told me I asked her about the only word I had heard until then: “Isn’t that called a pet?” She then shared with me the insightful and oh-so-accurate distinction between llufa and pet. That kept us up giggling – and holding our noses – another half hour at least… and I’m not going to blow the cover of the guilty party, either!

Of course we Americans, some of us at least, truly do enjoy a good laugh over farts. Please tell me I’m not the only one who with girlfriends at sixth-grade sleepovers would empty a can of Pringles and proceed to… well, I’d better not continue in case my friends and I were weird beyond the pale. If you don’t know how that story ends, please, just drop it…

Ahem.

There are certain words in every language that are so perfect that I believe every other language should have them, words that utterly capture something: a feeling, a thought, a social act, or, in this case, a bodily function. Llufa and pet fit into this category in all their onomatopoeic perfection, and I know that even though we speak English in my home and left Catalonia over a year ago, llufa and pet are two borrowed words that, sorry to say, we utter all too often.

Nata amb nous

March 4, 2011

You’ve had a wonderful meal at a rustic restaurant: thick, crusty bread rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil and then spread with the pulp of a red, ripe tomato on top (pa amb tomàquet); grilled vegetables with pungent allioli that will make your entire body carry a garlickly cloud around it for a few days (let’s hope everyone around you ate it, too!); a big platterful of grilled meats and sausages seasoned only with salt and olive oil; and of course a hearty red wine to wash it all down.

The waiter asks if anyone would like dessert. Of course you do! So he hands out the menus. And there it is, amidst factory-made ice cream sundaes advertised with bells and whistles that look scrumptious on paper but are disappointing in reality, there is the simplest yet the most perfect dessert, perfection on a plate: nata amb nous.

Nata amb nous, literally whipped cream with walnuts. And yes, that’s it. It’s not whipped cream and walnuts on top of ice cream; it’s not whipped cream and walnuts on top of cake or brownies; it’s your fantasy, at least my fantasy, come true. My dream dessert. When you get whipped cream and nuts on top of ice cream or cake or brownies, the ice cream, cake, or brownies are the excuse, the vehicle: the whipped cream and nuts are what you really want. The Catalans have gotten rid of the middleman. They don’t need an excuse; they have no guilt. They get right to the point and eliminate the extraneous details.

The dish arrives, a large one piled high, with real whipped cream of course, and caramelized walnuts sprinkled on top. That’s it, nothing else. That is your dessert: a guilty pleasure right there before you, beckoning you to dig in. You plunge your spoon into the whipped ambrosia like a little kid in a candy shop: pure delight, velvety clouds punctuated by crunchy, candied little bits of heaven, the perfect counterpoint: creamy plus nutty; whipped plus crunchy; mellow plus sweet, a toasted kind of sweet, even better!

The crazy thing is that here in this country, we don’t hesitate to order a huge ice cream sundae which contains the equivalent of a whole plateful of whipped cream and more, but somehow ordering just a dish of whipped cream seems decadent. We gasp! We couldn’t do that! Not even in the privacy of our homes! Well we might… and then only guiltily confess it to our closest friends. It might be considered a bit… you know… obsessive, compulsive, food-disordered. At any rate, way too self-indulgent. Plus think about your waistline, your cholesterol.

Still, admit it: it’s what we really want.

The Catalans, they know how to live! They know that what we’re really after with that sundae is the luscious whipped cream. They have no compunction about fat and cholesterol; dessert is for enjoying, so if you’re going to eat it, eat exactly what you want. You’ll get back to healthy with your next meal. But for now, get to the heart of the matter; eliminate the incidental stuff. Fulfill every kid’s (and some adults’) dream and go for the gold.

Some indulgent Catalan grandmother must have invented this dish for her grandchild who whined, “Però Iaia, nomes vull la nata i les nous”. La Iaia Maria couldn’t resist the plea and long eyelashes batting, and after all, Grandma instinctively got it since her grandchild was expressing what she had secretly yearned for all along. Thus was born nata amb nous (as I like to imagine it). Heaven on earth. Thank you, Iaia.

So your spoon cuts through the white clouds, the cream sticks on your lips, just like a child, but you don’t care. It melts in your mouth, and then you fish around for a crunchy, caramelized walnut…

Could there be any better way to end a meal?

Silvio vs. Margaret

February 27, 2011

One of my Spanish translation clients is a brash, egotistical wannabe named Carlos. Carlos publishes magazines for posh hotels like the Ritz and for companies selling luxury goods. Translating for him is remarkable easy because any time I Google the first few sentences of any of the articles he “writes”, I can find them readymade; he basically lifts all his content and, of course, never cites sources.

Carlos fancies himself a wealthy, urbane flâneur. Yet every time I send him a bill, I have to send him multiple reminders to pay it, something I hate having to do. And then, to add insult to injury, his emails always say, “Dearest Mary, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.” Unbearable. Yet at the same time he always begs me to lower my fees or translate small texts for free. I don’t know: maybe he is rich and his stinginess is what got him there. But I suspect he’s really what we call in Spanish a fantasma – literally a ‘ghost’, but what it actually means is someone who pretends to be something they’re not. Carlos the ghost. Carlos el fantasma.

Carlos’ magazines always contain the same sections: watches, jewelry, beauty, travel, yachts, and cars (often copied verbatim in his different magazines for different clients), perfect topics for his worldly, well-heeled, well-travelled audience. One day I was translating an article about cars for the magazine of a jewelry and watch shop on Majorca, and it ended with a sentence that jolted me out of my boredom. The sentence translated as: “Inside it’s quite tight, but with a few minor contortions you can climb in, the perfect vantage point for admiring your companion's shapely legs.”

Hmm, now I’m no prude, but I might be a potential customer at this store, and if I read that I would be put off not only by its sexist content but also by the fact that the text was clearly not written with me in mind. After all, I personally can’t imagine admiring my boyfriend’s legs in that car, shapely as they may be. Now, sexism in all its guises is not exactly a touchy issue in Spain the way it is in our country. With a very incipient sense of women’s liberation coupled with the traditional machismo spiced up with the oh-so-French sense of “vive le différence”, comments that would be taken offensively in the United States and England are viewed as joyous celebrations of this “différence”. And there is something nice about this: in the United States we have become so hypersensitive to sexual harassment in all its guises that a simple “You look nice” from a male to a female colleague has become totally taboo, a situation certainly strips everyday life of a bit of zest.

But things being as they are, the problem was that by translating the magazine, the message would be read by those wealthy, and likely educated, American and British travelers. And therein lay my hesitation. Should I say something to Carlos about the inappropriateness of the parting comment or just leave it? After all, I’m just a translator. Still, I thought it could be interpreted so offensively by some potential guests that I donned my cultural interpreter hat and emailed Carlos about the matter.

“Dear Carlos,” I wrote in Spanish. “You’ll see that at the end of the text I inserted a comment. I wanted to give you my advice on a cultural issue here. Cultured English-speakers tend to be highly sensitive to sexism. It might be reasonable to assume that the readers of this article will be men, but they might be women, too. And your assumption that they will be men who appreciate a reference to the shapely legs of their companion… well, frankly that might be considered insulting not only to women today but also to some men, who might view this comment as disparaging to women, and even as an example of the worst of Mediterranean cultures, that is, the famous machismo. To preserve a positive image of your country (and your client’s company), you might want to get rid of this phrase not only in English but perhaps in Spanish as well. This kind of tone no longer works for a mixed audience. Perhaps for a men’s magazine you could get away with it, but it does sound bad – as out-of-date as caveman talk – and speaks poorly about your culture and country to people from abroad.”

As I tried to convey my alarm and strong recommendation to eliminate it, Carlos, being the fabulous Carlos, could only shake his head in dismay – as I imagine it – at my lack of joie de vivre and a healthy, earthy sense of humor. His response oozed it:

“Oh, Mary, Mary. What good is it for a woman to wear a skirt if no man looks at her legs? Nothing! Well, as the good American that you are, don’t worry. Let’s not get angry at each other. This is a magazine about watches, so 90% of the buyers are men (of course, men are the ones who buy watches and jewelry for their women). This audience is not going to be offended by the comment on legs. On the contrary, they will be delighted. Warm regards, and try to take things a bit more lightly. And I do appreciate your professionalism (despite your sex). A kiss, Carlos.”

My blood pressure went up at the advice to take things more lightly. Ugh! Sexist pig! It’s not about me; it’s about acceptable standards and practices. And the “despite your sex” comment was clearly just bait. But his reference to my anger? I felt no anger whatsoever (until I got this response!). This was not my issue; it was simply a cultural adjustment that I thought would make the text more acceptable for an international audience and save the company some embarrassment. And as for assuming that men buy watches for women: Wow! I’ve certainly known the wrong men in my life! So in my righteous desire to set matters straight, I felt compelled to respond:

“Dear Carlos, I mentioned this not in anger but because I feel that it’s really a cultural faux pas to include a phrase like this for an international audience. It’s not for a lack of humor; it’s a cultural reality that perhaps you don’t grasp. You are only reinforcing obsolete (and quite negative) stereotypes that I personally don’t like to spread. But as the good Spaniard that you are, as you say, it’s no big deal, and it’s your call. Kisses, Mary.”

The kisses part, by the way, has nothing to do with flirting; it’s just a friendly way to end emails in Spanish. Carlos wrote me back immediately, saying:

“Well, Mary, right now I have to go home to make sure that the house is clean, my dinner is made, my child is tucked into bed, my newspaper is waiting for me on the sofa … and obviously that my wife is smiling and ready for a night of fun. And if she isn’t, my mistress will be. Hugs to you, Mary. Carlos.”

I was now riled at his misinterpretation of my intentions and his assumption that I was a dour, humorless prude; how dare he? Me! So liberal and open-minded! Not to mention his chauvinism... Yet I couldn’t help but laugh at his obvious jest, a clear illustration of the cultural gulf between us. My only choice was to respond:

“Well, enjoy your evening, Silvio Berlusconi!”

To which Carlos replied:

“Ha, ha, ha, one more kiss for you, Margaret Thatcher! And try to enjoy yours!”

Perhaps never the twain shall meet, but at least we can joke about it. Carlos probably still thinks I’m a frigid Anglo-Saxon Iron Woman, like my adopted namesake, and I definitely still think he’s a primitive lout, like his adopted namesake. But the humor survives, and even now, years later, in every email we exchange, we still call each other Silvio and Margaret. Vive le (cultural) différence!