Tag: feminism

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Cauliflower with Indian Spices

Jane Bauer

Ingredients
1.5 tbsp light cooking oil
1/3 onion finely chopped
1/2 tbsp finely chopped ginger
1/2 tbsp finely chopped garlic
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1/4 tsp red chilli powder
1/2 tbsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp amchoor powder
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/3 head of cauliflower cut into small florets
water as needed
salt to taste
finely chopped fresh cilantro and yogurt for garnish

  1. Heat oil in a large non-stick pan on medium high heat, add in onions, ginger and garlic and fry for a few minutes till onions soften and lightly brown.
  2. Stir in the spices and tomato paste and mix well. Now add in the cauliflower florets and mix to coat well with the spice mixture. Cover the par and cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally till the cauliflower is cooked through.
  3. If you feel the spice blend is too dry and starts to stick to the pan, add a splash of water and mix well. Season with salt and give it a final stir.
  4. Garnish with fresh cilantro and yogurt, serve warm.
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Don’t hide away on International Women’s Day

Jane Bauer

Back in 2020 some feminist associations in Mexico called for a “Day Without Women” on March, 9 to denounce femicide, inaction by the authorities and, more generally, sexism in Mexican society.

While this tactic was used in the campaign and film ‘A Day without Mexicans (2004), to highlights the idea that the American economy is dependent on Latinos- gender inequality is not the same. The main point of the film was to show what would happen if Latino immigrants took the day off. Basically, the economy would take a massive hit.

However, I would argue that the last place women should be, to show an impact, is staying home. Home is already the domain of many women. The space we, as women, need to claim is public space. 

When I was in college we had ‘Take Back the Night.’ The first Take Back the Night event began in England in 1877 as a women only protest against the violence and fear women encountered walking the streets at night. The first Take Back the Night March in the US was held in San Francisco in 1978 to protest violence against women, particularly sexual assault.

Ranked as the second-highest nation for femicides in Latin America, just below Brazil, Mexico’s cases show a sustained rise, recording over 920 in 2022. This count is perceived as even higher by most of the population due to the substantial number of unreported and uninvestigated instances.

According to the WHO, globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner.

Given the space we need to claim for ourselves is public space, I plan on celebrating my ability to go to work and move freely through the world, hopefully harassment free. Stand tall and take up space to show we will not hide away.

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Walking Across the World

Jane Bauer

If you have not ventured to the highway around Huatulco lately you may not have noticed the growing number of migrants on their walk towards a better life. Many months ago on the south side of Copalita an immigration kiosk was erected and manned by immigration and army personnel. They pulled over buses and vans and had a tented area where I occasionally saw people who had been pulled off the buses and vans, for not having the proper documentation, waiting. When I happened to be standing next to a man in an immigration uniform at the bank, I asked him what they did with the people and he told me they sent them back to their country or at least to the border of Mexico.

In the last couple of weeks the number of migrants has steadily grown and in the past couple of days I have seen at least a few hundred people walking on my fifteen-minute drive home. A path just before the immigration kiosk has been forged so that they can avoid it altogether. 

Yesterday I stopped and asked a group where they were from just before they got on the avoid-immigration kiosk path through the bushes. 

“Haiti” one man responded.

“où allez vous?” I asked

“Les Etats-Unis” he said.

This morning while driving back in to work, moving in the same direction as the walkers, I stopped for two women. They climbed right in my car with a small baby and a few meters later we picked up a young man. I asked if they were from Haiti and they said they were from Guinea. 

The immigration kiosk was just up ahead but we weren’t stopped, to be fair the two soldiers standing in front of it looked resigned to their inability to do anything.

We stopped just off the highway in Copalita and had breakfast. Guinea is 9345 km from Huatulco. Over breakfast we exchanged names and phone numbers. 

Mari Assi, a robust young woman with a burn scar covering one hand and forearm was wearing sandals and carrying her 19 month-old daughter Fati. Her traveling companion was Aminata who had left her 13-year old daughter back in Guinea and the young man was Osmane. While French is the primary language in Guinea, due to its colonization by the French, their speech was also peppered with words of a language I didn’t know. They flew from Guinea to Nicaragua and had been walking/taking buses/ hitchhiking for 12 days. Their final destination goal: New York.

If you watch the news it will tell you about the atrocities happening in other parts of the world- military coups, crime, instability, places where women being raped is a regular occurrence. I don’t need look at the news to understand the why of what brought Mari Assi, Aminata, Fati and Osmane to be on the same road as me. I only need to look at their inadequate footwear, their clothes that have leaves sticking to them from sleeping in the bushes, to know they deserve more… more help… more humanity… and more compassion.

Food, Living, Mexico

5 Ways you will Benefit from a Retreat in Huatulco

Jane Bauer
  1. Heat! Huatulco has sun 300 days a year. This means you will get your dose of Vitamin D which helps regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body. These nutrients are needed to keep bones, teeth, and muscles healthy. The warm climate will also help relieve arthritis!

2. Healthy Food! An abundance of local fresh fruits and vegetables. Huatulco’s clean ocean also means fresh locally-caught fish!

3. Nature. Even just looking at the ocean or a light walk through the jungle will lower your blood pressure and stress levels. We will be surrounded by marina life, waterfalls, and birds.

4. Movement- Our retreat includes daily yoga and meditation adjusted to your level and needs. Reconnecting with your body is an amazing tool to heal your mind.

5. Cleansing- Our itinerary will lead you through a series of activities to bring flow into your life both physically and emotionally.

We Are Water Retreat: Unlock your inner strength and learn to flow
March 20th-25th, 2023

Huatulco, Mexico is the perfect backdrop to reconnect with yourself.

Join Jane Bauer and Kary Vannice for an oceanfront 5-night women’s retreat in paradise. This retreat includes daily yoga and meditation, gourmet healthy meals, excursions into nature for all fitness levels. Facilitated workshops and connection with other participants will help you come closer to your true purpose and allow you to embrace more joy.
You’ll return home feeling relaxed, restored and ready to move forward.

Jane Bauer has been teaching yoga since 2006. She is a restaurant owner and cooking school instructor.

Kary Vannice helps women with personal transformation, a positive mindset, and self-acceptance at Get Your Vibe Right.

Cost 1400 USD
(300 USD to reserve your spot)
Includes: 5 nights accommodation
All meals, excursions, and activities.

http://www.YogaHuatulcoMexico.com

Food, Living

The love of good food

Jane Bauer

“The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.”  

E.M. Forster

This is my editorial from the August 2019 issue of the magazine The Eye.

http://www.TheEyeHuatulco.com

It’s our annual food issue! This month our writers explore lesser known ingredients and share their experiences of new food in new places. If you know me in person you know how important food is to me. I embrace the ethos that the best way to learn about a culture is through it’s food. So when I want to learn about people I ask ‘what are you eating?’

I just got back from a foodcation where I baked croissants in Paris and drank Pouilly Fume in the Loire Valley with a vintner whose family has been making wine for generations. I eased into long afternoon lunches of foie gras, leeks and red wine. Instead of post-meal siestas I took my cues from Paris’ best flaneurs and sat by the fountain in the Tuileries Garden people watching and enjoying the spectacle that is Paris.

Next I went to Delhi, India, where the chaos could not have been more different from the refined precision of Paris. I made butter chicken with chef Neha Gupta (www.saffronpalate.com) and while we made rotis we discussed what it is like to be women in business. This was especially interesting as very few women work in restaurants or hotels in India and the chance to interact with women was limited. Later in my journey, in Rishikesh, I was invited to join a home cook, Rashmi, while she prepared a feast of lentils and rice that was mouth-watering. It was an honor to be invited into her home and to participate in her everyday life.

There are many similarities between Indian and Mexican attitudes towards food as well a crossover of ingredients. Both cultures have a welcoming spirit and there is always enough to feed unexpected guests- the more the merrier. Ingredients seem to expand as you cook them and a small bag of groceries miraculously makes enough to feed a crowd.

While you may not be able to coordinate your own foodcation to Paris and India, you can have one right at home. Get together with friends, cook, explore new cuisines and new ingredients- invite the neighbors you never speak to over for paella or curry or tacos. Expand your palate and you will expand your circle of friends and knowledge of other cultures.

Happy eating and cooking!

Jane

Living, Mexico

Women in Politics

Jane Bauer

The editorial from this month’s The Eye magazine.

“For me, a better democracy is a democracy where women do not only have the right to vote and to elect but to be elected.”—Michelle Bachelet, head of UN Women, former president and defense minister of Chile, in The New York Times

Most people are astounded at the giant leap humanity has taken with regard to technology in the past 100 years. Equally astounding are the small steps we have taken on the status of women. 

Yes, women now have the vote (since 1918 in Canada, 1920 in the US and 1953 in Mexico) and can own property, in North America at least. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent US organization, 

When it comes to property ownership, women are not equal in the eyes of the law. According to the World Bank, close to 40 percent of the world’s economies have at least one legal constraint on women’s rights to property, limiting their ability to own, manage, and inherit land. Thirty-nine countries allow sons to inherit a larger proportion of assets than daughters and thirty-six economies do not have the same inheritance rights for widows as they do for widowers.” 

Even though we vote there is still a great disparity of representation of women in political spheres. It just doesn’t make sense. Women represent half the global population and in several studies it has been shown that women have a higher tendency to make decisions that benefit the community rather than just themselves. This is why organizations that give out small business loans favor women. Making decisions that benefit a community, organization and accountability are all qualities that make me think women are ideal politicians.

In 2019, women are still under-represented on the international political stage. We earn less than men and are at a higher risk for physical assaults and human trafficking. I don’t know how if we have come so far in the past 100 years; tv, cars, the internet, mobile phones, MRIs, ultrasound machines, cardiac defibrillation- with all these inventions to improve our quality of life, how have we lagged so far behind in our humanity? Why is it taking so long for women to be equally represented in politics?

It’s also not as simple as electing women. Why are fewer women running for office? Is it lack of opportunity, poor education, cultures that limit women to staying home and having babies? Is it the tolerance of misogyny from world leaders and super stars or the acceptance that our bodies are branding and marketing tools? I don’t know.

This progress is too slow.

Jane

Living

You’re pretty… now be interesting.

Jane Bauer

“We won the minute they started doing pole dancing for exercise.” Ryan Gosling as Jacob in Crazy, Stupid, Love on the battle of the sexes.

When I was in college, Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth was the mainstream feminist text of the day. It posited that as women gained more power in the world, so did the pressure to adhere to unrealistic social standards of physical beauty and because of commercial influences on the mass media women were more objectified than ever. Personally, these ideas gave me pause to evaluate my own self-image and consider the role the media had played in shaping my standards of beauty.

Flash forward 25 years and not only are women’s bodies still being used to sell everything from deodorant to cars, we now have access to more images than ever before through social media. Each of us is curating a story about what we want the world to know about us; pics of our dogs, our lattes, selfies. There used to be great debate about the dangers of television but we have so evolved beyond that, that television seems benign compared to the image-based world we are living in today. It is impossible to avoid being constantly bombarded by images, day in and day out. No matter where you are, there is a television, an advertisement, a magazine, a logo, computer screen or phone in your hand to deliver ideas and standards of beauty.

Of course we all want to be pretty and admired. However, one scroll through my Instagram feed is enough to make me cringe. Smart women with feeds showcasing their bodies in hyper-sexualized ways that would be worthy of old-school Playboy. Then there is the argument that it is our choice. The idea that we have achieved such freedom and equality that women have the choice to do what they want with their bodies. I get it but I am baffled.

It seems to me that we have turned self-objectification into empowerment and it does not seem to be in an ironic way.  I recently had a frustrating conversation with a man who told me that he thought women wanted men to look at them with lust- he even went so far as to suggest that women who worked in the sex industry were seeking male attention. I tried to make an argument that our society has turned women’s sexuality into a commodity and that for many women it becomes the only currency they have, especially when they have not had access to education and opportunity.

However, what about the educated women? Women who are talking about their boob photos and perfect moist pouty lip selfie as empowerment? Maybe it is empowerment- if they believe it. Or maybe the brainwashing has gone so far that we are our own worst enemies.

Living

A Woman in the Oval- only on T.V.

Jane Bauer

I am a little embarrassed by how excited I was when I turned on my Netflix and saw that Season 6 of House of Cards is available. I had pretty much come to terms that it wasn’t going to have a sixth season after the whole Kevin Spacey scandal. I am only a couple of episodes in but I couldn’t be more impressed. Robin Wright, as Claire Underwood, as president, is a force and the writing is spot on with poignant lines like “Playing incompetent is so exhausting” and “The reign of the white middle-aged men is over.”

I couldn’t help but draw comparisons with Scandal’s final and seventh season which has Mellie Grant fighting to keep her presidency, while also lamenting on how wielding so much power has complicated her sex life. Her vagina monologue is a fine piece of writing and is delivered with humor and truth “I’m not just POTUS. I am a single female POTUS. Do you know what that means? It means I’m a human chastity belt, there is a famine in my lady bits! My vagina is beautiful, she is welcoming, but she is getting treated like a murder house. I can’t get anything in there!”

Is there any country in the world whose Presidency is portrayed in so many fictional accounts? As a Canadian, I am not sure I would tune in to a show based on the drama of Ottawa. As entertaining as it has been to watch Justin Trudeau, I don’t ever think of Canadian politics as glamorous. 

What does it mean when two prominent shows portray a woman running the Oval? Is it a Hollywood backlash against the misogynist who currently holds office? Whatever it is I am loving it and I hope it is a sign of things to come. 
Living

Tits Up

Jane Bauer

A few days ago I posted a collection of photos on my personal Facebook page titled ‘Houston Food and Art – a perfect weekend getaway!’ A few hours later I received a notification that one of the photos ‘violated the Facebook Community Standards’ which has rules on nudity, sexual and violent content.

The photo is of a sculpture by Australian artist, Ron Mueck, that is on exhibition at the Houston Fine Arts Museum. ‘Mother and Child’ depicts a newborn on its mother’s belly- and yes, there is a breast!

Facebook led me through a series of hoops, chastising me for posting the photo and essentially making me agree to be more careful before allowing me to access the rest of my account. At the end of the process I was asked to rate my experience and I expressed my distaste for this censorship – sadly I have not received a response, nor has the photo been restored.

Since then, I have heard about Facebook removing several photos of women breastfeeding. It’s 2017- breasts are EVERYWHERE and usually portrayed in an unrealistic and sexualized way. How is it we have created a culture in which posed sexualized photos are deemed ok, but photos of real women are considered offensive? I typed ‘boobs’ into my Facebook search and got a plethora of highly-sexualized images of topless women. There are even several pages devoted to the subject and all the photos privacy settings are public.

It is tempting to go into a rant regarding FBs guidelines however the real issue here is that if Facebook is a platform which is based on user content and these images are being removed- what does that say about the values and morality of the users? Plus, Facebook has the feature that if someone is offended by something I post they can opt not to see my stuff in the future- so if you are the person who ‘reported’ this photo, please feel free to unfollow me.

From an art perspective, one could even use Magritte’s argument and say that ‘Ceci n’est pas un sein’ (This is not a breast)- it is the representation of a breast made out of acrylic, fiberglass and silicone.  And while the museum offered a warning of nudity and graphic images at the entrance to the exhibition, I saw several children there with their parents.  I think good art should make you feel  and do you know what I felt as I saw the detailed and raw depictions of the human bodies in this exhibition? I felt inspired and good about my own human body. The sculptures are a far healthier portrayal than the images that come at us everyday from the culture we usually digest; advertising,  porn, movies and television. Personally, I am exhausted by the false-perfection we have been dishing up as a culture.

imageThe Ron Mueck sculpture ‘mother and child’ depicts the most basic of human experiences; the moment of birth. If you’re reading this- you’ve been there! How can something depicting this universal and authentic experience be censored? It’s been over 25 years since Demi Moore bravely graced the cover of Vanity Fair magazine when she was seven months pregnant.  It was a bold move for a Hollywood star considering they weren’t even allowed to use the word ‘pregnant’ in ‘I Love Lucy’ in the 1950s.

How far have we really evolved?

 

Living

On Technology…

Jane Bauer

april coverEditorial of the April issue of The Eye. Thanks for reading! http://www.TheEyeHuatulco.com

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

Albert Einstein

I am a technology resister- without a doubt more Wilma Flintstone than Judy Jetson. I read books not tablets – I love the smell and feel of paper over the subtle hum of electronics. My daily planner is one of those cumbersome paper ones and it never leaves my office. While some might view this as an inconvenient method to run a business, as I need to be physically in my office to schedule anything – for me it is a luxury.

I was very resistant to getting an iPhone. Did I really need email alerts at the grocery store or to check Facebook when I was out with real people? Eventually I gave in. When the screen got smashed up I continued to use it for months. It still worked – as a phone. Upon seeing my damaged phone, one woman remarked that I deserved a new one and that I should ‘treat’ myself. I responded that the treat was to not be so attached to my phone.

Don’t get me wrong – I think technology is cool, science is cool, talking to a friend on the other side of the planet with the touch of a button on a cordless device is super cool! But most us have become slaves to technology. We are desperately creating electronic scrapbooks of moments that are gone. Filling fake clouds with stuff we don’t even know why we’re saving, or what for. We are living with sound bites rather than substance. Our everyday lives have become a virtual existence rather than one based in reality – most of our communication is via devices and shared moments happen through screens, which capture the aesthetics of a moment but not the emotion – technology has not managed to capture the subtlety of human experience. There is no emoji to capture … all the best moments. The flicker of a feeling you get when you walk on a crisp fall day and for a second you know everything is going to be ok … a flicker of inner peace.

So has technology exceeded our humanity? Has it dumbed us down to communicate our feelings via emojis? Sanskrit has 96 words for love. We have happy faces with hearts for eyes.

Did Albert Einstein even really say that? I wish he had – it would fit perfectly with my beliefs – add some heft to the idea that what we are experiencing is a momentous and scary collective experience. But ironically there is no proof that he even said it. It is a perfect example of the soundbite machine roller coaster we are all on, where it seems if something gets repeated enough it could be true … alternative quotes.

See you next month,

Jane