by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

Most of us no longer engage in conspicuous consumption to signal what class we are in. But we do engage in inconspicuous consumption, and conspicuous production, and conspicuous leisure, to achieve the same ends. To briefly define each of these: inconspicuous consumption is spending more on health care, insurance, kids’ educations, and in-home help. Conspicuous production is emphasis on where and how things are produced. Conspicuous leisure might be breastfeeding and attachment parenting.

It’s different from the days when someone used silver cutlery or drove a flashy car to signal how upper-class they were. Now, an NPR tote bag does the same thing, according to the author. It doesn’t signal that we are rich, because anyone on a barista or artist salary can and does afford such a thing; it signals us as members of a particular class, which she dubs the “aspirational class.”

I had a hard time keeping my head wrapped around how “aspirational class” is different from “liberal.” Also, a lot of this book was a big “ouch” for me. But I LIKE buying overpriced organic vegetables, and supporting local businesses wherever possible! I genuinely like it! I’m not just “signaling” something. I like it because… why? I feel somehow it improves the world, right? Do I really have to start shopping at Wal-mart and buying supermarket brands of everything in order to be “genuine”? Won’t that just be signaling a different thing?

Sayeth the author: “Does being different from others, being better than others at acquiring possessions or the perfect heirloom tomatoes, or making the decision and investment to breast-feed or feed your family organic produce really advance society at all?” When we remember that none of these thing are options for huge segments of society who lack the means, we ought to be honest and recognize that to really make the world a better place, we would do better to work towards flattening out the economic inequality around us.

So, ouch, and touche, and point taken. But it still doesn’t mean people sport their farmer’s market produce in public in order to engage in signaling that they are of the ‘aspirational class’. If they (fine, WE!) are signaling anything, it’s that we are on Team Liberal. It does make me uncomfortable. Food for thought.

by Barry Estabrook

First, the takeaway: “You should lead a diet, not follow one.”

The author is a former editor of Eating Well magazine and a Vermonter (yay). He goes on the Ornish diet, the South Beach diet, the Mediterranean diet, Weight Watchers, and some others. No, not all at the same time, a la Bridget Jones! He eventually does lose and keep off some weight. Here’s what he concludes:

“I will never go on [a diet] again.”

But seriously, the reason is: “You should lead a diet, not follow one. What you eat and how you do so are deeply personal activities, right up there with sex. They’re nobody’s damn business… For me, successful weight loss began when I examined what I ate and how I ate it, then started making changes…”

I will always have a place in my heart for WW; and while doing a post-mortem at book’s end, Estabrook concludes: “Although I dropped out of Weight Watchers after a couple of months, the point-tracking app… made it abundantly clear that I would never lose weight unless I cut way back on how much cheese I snacked on.” WW left me also with life-altering insights and habits. Now I munch on apples & carrots every single day; and for me, it wasn’t cheese, but french fries and pie crust I learned were unsafe in any dose. “The point is,” he continues, “there are useful weight-loss tips between the covers of diet books,” or in a point-tracking app.