Rhetorical Questions: 26 February 2011

Tony Green asks:

“The thinking woman’s guide to fashion” (Cover, 19 February). Surely the most oxymoronic headline yet, given that the point of fashion is to mindlessly spend money on whatever you’re told you should be wearing?

Not at all! So many things are “in fashion” at any one time that spending money on them mindlessly would be impossible for all but the very wealthy. For most people, it’s necessary to make choices about particular trends and decisions about how to respond to them, which intrinsically requires a degree of thought.

If Tony wants evidence that it’s possible to think deeply about fashion, he might like to have a look at the work of  historians like James Laver and Heather Vaughan, philosophers like Malcolm Barnard and Lars Svendsen, and novelists like William Gibson.

Emma Smith asks:

Re Which royal are you? (19 February). Carole and Pippa Middleton – royals? Are you kidding me?!

It doesn’t seem that the Guardian set out specifically to kid Emma, or anyone else for that matter, but their flowchart certainly uses an unorthodox definition of “royals”: roughly “people who are at least slightly well-known, and loosely connected to the royal family”. In a more formal context, readers could certainly expect them to be more rigorous with the term!

Katherine Schofield asks:

Want to play our Yotam Ottolenghi game? From the title of the recipe, guess which impossible-to-buy ingredient will be included. Last week, verjuice and sumac. This week…

Sure! When we gave the game a try,  we guessed that Blood Orange and Anchovy Salad would include a fermented anchovy sauce, and that Crunchy Root Vegetables would include a particularly arcane type of squash. Unfortunately we lost both games: the first recipe suggested a particular, and slightly hard-to-source, type of anchovy, but gave details of a website where the brand could be ordered; and the second included kohlrabi, a cabbage cultivar.

Rhetorical questions: 19 February 2011

Helen Keall asks:

My heart sank when I saw the cover asking, “Would counselling improve Tim Dowling’s marriage?” (12 February). If it did, that would mean the end of his column. What a relief to find it business as usual. Now they have been reassured they have a sound relationship, I’m looking forward to the next instalment. But will we ever find out Mrs Dowling’s first name?

It’s unlikely! Dowling is extremely consistent in referring to his wife as “my wife” in all public fora including his column, his articles and interviews. Even the biographies in his books don’t give her name; and the Hackney photography studio that shot pictures of the pair for the article mentioned above is careful to refer to them, in their record of the shoot, as “Tim Dowling and wife”. Her anonymity therefore seems to be deliberate, the result of a decision on both their parts that it is best not to name her in public.

Of course, working out her name would be possible for a sufficiently dedicated investigator; but to do this when she and Dowling have so clearly chosen not to make it available would be unkind.

Harry D Watson asks:

Why do chefs tell us to buy dried chickpeas, soak them overnight, drain, place in a large pan, cover with water, boil and simmer for an hour, etc (The New Vegetarian, 12 February)? I buy mine in a tin, drain and rinse them, then boil for a couple of minutes, after which they’re ready for use. Also, why do chefs assume that normal people know what they are going to eat the following day?

Dried chickpeas are generally considered to taste nicer than tinned, and to have a slightly higher nutritional value. Many chefs and recipe-writers therefore recommend them over the alternative. This is similar to the way that recipes usually recommend, for example, fresh asparagus over tinned – though the difference in taste with chickpeas is not usually held to be quite this marked!

As for Harry’s intriguing second question, it is certainly the case that some normal people habitually plan their food a day or more in advance, and that others will sometimes do so if it’s necessary for a particular recipe.  It is for these people that recipes are provided that involve – for example – soaking chickpeas. The recipe-writers and chefs in question do not necessarily assume that all readers will plan ahead, just as they (for example) provide recipes including lamb or bacon but do not necessarily assume that all readers eat meat.

Rhetorical Questions: 12 February 2011

Celia Pardoe asks:

Why does your All Ages model Valerie always seem to wear her own shoes – does she have bunions or size 10 feet?

Valerie’s feet aren’t a size 10, but they’re close: a size 9. This is unusual even among the taller-than-average model demographic – she is one of only two models with her agency, Close Models, to have size 9 feet (as opposed to, for example, 41 models with size 6 feet, and 47 with size 7).

For this reason, as Celia suggests, it seems that Valerie often needs to use her own shoes for shoots, though there are occasional exceptions.

Terry Brinton asks:

I sympathise with the women in your cover story, but I can’t help wondering if the number of competent elder women who are being discriminated against on account of age is greater or fewer than the number of young, incompetent women who get jobs purely because of their good looks?

This is an interesting and very complicated question. There have been a number of studies looking at the question of attractiveness and employment, and findings have often been contradictory, but to summarise:

• People who are more attractive are often perceived as more competent, regardless of whether this is really the case,  and they therefore probably find it easier to get a job.
• There is no widespread agreement on whether attractiveness is more of an advantage for men or for women, in employment contexts – different studies have produced different results.
• There is evidence that attractiveness can actually harm women’s chances in applying for certain jobs. These tend to be jobs that are often seen as “masculine”, in fields such as security, finance, hardware, and mechanical engineering. However, this effect has been observed primarily in laboratory settings, and is disputed by some.

So, it’s by no means straightforward! One thing that’s worth noting, and may help to address Terry’s question, is that the benefits of attractiveness in employment-seeking contexts have generally been found to be incremental: attractiveness may make someone seem more competent, or lead to higher pay, but it is unlikely to conjure perceptions of competence from nowhere.

Paul Treloar asks:

Doctor, Doctor: “How can we prevent our children from being car sick? Even on short journeys they feel queasy.” Surely the answer is stop driving everywhere and start walking a bit more?

Paul may be surprised to know that the drive-or-walk question has come up in the Weekend letters page before. It seems to arise when a writer mentions a “short drive”, or driving to somewhere “close by”, which naturally prompts questions about why the drive was necessary in the first place.

The answer lies in the fact that average driving speed in the UK differs significantly from average walking speed, and a “short” drive may therefore equate to a quite long walk! A drive of five or ten minutes is generally deemed short, and yet it can easily equate to a walk of thirty to sixty minutes – even more if children are involved (as they are in this case).

Additionally, most cars keep their travellers dry even in rainy weather, and allow them to carry bulky or heavy objects with ease; whereas keeping dry in the rain or travelling with large objects is more difficult for walkers.

Helen Keating-Old asks:

Can anyone explain why Patrick Stewart and Liz Hurley call non-actors “civilians”?

Yes, we certainly can. It’s a common usage among actors in both theatre and film worlds, and this is doubtless where Stewart and Hurley picked it up. The Oxford English Dictionary dates it from  at least 1946, when From Gags to Riches included the line “Show gals are smarter and keener than most ‘civilians’.” The OED also cites a Scientific American article of 1975: “The listening public—civilians, we call them—its composers, critics and conductors are indeed fortunate that so many excellent instrumentalists spend so much time practicing and producing music.”

In fact, the OED suggests that “civilian” is used by a variety of groups to refer to non-members: by football players talking about people who don’t play, for example.

Rhetorical questions: 5 February 2011

Robert Boon asks:

“Frogs’ legs are a lot like chicken” and a trip to Jim Morrison’s grave at Père Lachaise: well done to Julie Myerson for getting to the heart of Paris. Can we look forward to further travel pieces from her – the tulip market in Amsterdam or beer drinking in Munich perhaps?

It’s great that Robert enjoyed Myerson’s article – but unfortunately for him, she’s unlikely to publish any more articles along the same lines. Myerson is not primarily a travel writer; instead, her non-fiction tends to concentrate on her experiences of motherhood and family life. In fact, even her Paris article was as much about holidaying with her son as it was about the city itself!

Gillian Jones asks:

Lucy Mangan’s column almost exactly replicates the angst-filled rant my friends and I indulge in down the pub. What can we do? Take to the streets? Man the barricades? It may yet come to that. In the meantime, Lucy, keep giving voice to our rage.

The column in question addresses Mangan’s frustration at class divisions in the UK, and the extent to which people with blue-collar backgrounds are underrepresented in British politics.  In addressing this issue, there are currently no barricades for Gillian to man;  she might have better luck looking into a charity devoted to increasing social mobility in the UK.

The Social Mobility Foundation, for example, welcomes assistance in the form of donations and volunteering. The Sutton Trust has similar ends, and though it has only limited volunteering opportunities it does produce regular studies on social mobility. These are an excellent starting point for investigating the issue further.

Phoebe Rixon asks:

Lucia Hrda’s poignant photograph of her grandfather awaiting the cortege on the day of his wife’s funeral brought me to tears. It’s a shame you didn’t treat it with more respect. Was it really necessary to place it right across the fold? A little more care might have been appropriate.

Paradoxically, it may be the very poignancy of the photograph that led to its placement. Generally the “Your Pictures” feature shows a selection of pictures, with one particularly compelling contribution printed larger than the others. In this case, the picture selected for large-scale display was Lucia Hrda’s.

However, because “Your Pictures” spreads across one-and-a-bit pages, at least one picture has to be placed across the fold – and historically, this has always been the largest-printed photograph, perhaps because the pictures that are printed smaller are less able to withstand the treatment.

Hrda’s photograph is however available online with no fold.

Dee Patton-Statham asks:

What I See In The Mirror with Sandra Bernhard was beyond irony. Did anyone else splutter their coffee all over the page on reading that she “obsessively avoids toxins in the food chain” but has Botox injections?

We’re unable to find a record of anyone else spluttering coffee over the page in question, whether through astonishment at Bernhard’s perceived contradiction or for any other reason – it looks like Dee might be the only one!

Theo Stickley asks:

Wash flower pots in the dishwasher; sieve and microwave compost; water seedlings with camomile tea… Does Alys Fowler realise how bonkers her advice sounds?

Fowler explicitly acknowledges that some readers may be appalled by the use of a dishwasher to clean pots, warning: “if this horrifies you, never come to tea at my house”. In the case of microwaved compost and tea-watered seedlings, however, she simply provides the advice with no further warnings, so she may not have considered that anyone would find it “bonkers”.

Fowler will, however, undoubtedly have read Theo’s letter, and will now be aware that her advice sounds unorthodox to some readers.

David Smith asks:

Am I the only one wondering where the column answering readers’ rhetorical questions has gone?

You’re certainly not! In fact, several people have contacted Their Questions Answered wondering the exact same thing.

Rhetorical Questions: 29 January 2011

Nathan Davis asks:

Carey Mulligan the new Audrey Hepburn? Have you sat through Wall Street 2?

The article on Carey Mulligan was written by Xan Brooks, who has indeed seen Wall Street 2. He thought it started out “pretty good” but that there was “something flawed in the concept and reckless in the handling”.

Cilla Dearing asks:

We have a recession. Floods everywhere. Bankers getting bonuses, despite everything. We need cheering up. And what do we get? A Weekend cover of Cancer: The New Normal (15 January). May I suggest a cover for next week? Divorce – It’s Inevitable; or Poverty Is Coming Your Way; or Does Your Partner Have Halitosis?

Cilla certainly may make suggestions for next week’s cover, as the publication of her letter indicates! However, it’s unlikely that they will be put into action. The Weekend goes to print quite early in the week, and there would therefore be very little time for the editorial team to get a new article and cover ready; even themes as winning as “Divorce – It’s Inevitable” are powerless against the tyranny of print schedules.

Charles Baker-Benfield asks:

Why has Tim Dowling, after years of marriage, not yet realised that the first place to look for any missing key is in his wife’s coat? The second is the kitchen worktop, next to the phone. The third is more difficult – try the front door (on the outside), or the fridge (inside – not unknown). But on the hall table? No chance.

It’s possible that Charles is over-generalising from his own experience! Our guess would be that Dowling hasn’t learnt the suggested key-finding technique because it simply wouldn’t work for him. For example, when he has lost his keys previously, they turned out to be in his wife’s car, and not in her coat, the worktop or the fridge at all.

Greg Hurst asks:

While I admire Diane Abbott, surely her son’s private education was more expensive than his laptop?

Abbott’s son was educated at the City of London school, whose fees are famously around £10,000 a year, so it is indeed likely that her son’s education cost more than his laptop.

There are two possible explanations for this seemingly anomalous answer. Firstly, Abbott may have named the laptop as the most expensive physical object that she’s bought. The precise question she was responding to was  “Property aside, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought?”, and the tendency is for interviewees to answer this with a thing in the sense of something you can touch, rather than a service paid for over time.

Typical recent answers include a car, an antique chair, a racehorse, and a cast-iron bath.  There are exceptions – “the concept of New Labour”, “a divorce”, and indeed “both my daughters’ educations” – but it seems reasonable (and certainly not unusual!) for Abbott to go with a physical object.

Alternatively, Abbott may have decided that the Q&A column was not an appropriate venue to discuss her son’s education. As Greg may not be aware, her decision to educate her son privately was controversial, and one she has since described as “indefensible”. It’s possible that she didn’t want to bring it up in a lighthearted interview in which she would not have space to address the issues attending that decision.

Rhetorical questions: 22 January 2011

Lucy Marovitch asks:

The article was intelligent and measured, so why a cover depicting cancer as some kind of fashion choice? Watching my brother dying never felt “normal” to me. Life after his death does not feel “normal”, either.

Lucy is referring to “Cancer is the new normal”, which appeared on the cover of last week’s magazine – a phrase using the familiar format “[something] is the new [something]“. This format originated in the fashion world in the early 1980s; the earliest known example comes in the Los Angeles Times in 1983, with “gray is the new black”, but declarations that a particular colour “…is the new black” quickly became widespread.

Lucy is understandably confused by the use of a fashion-derived phrase format to dicuss cancer; but it’s easily explained: “[something] is the new [something else]” has become extremely general in its applications over the last thirty years. In fact, The Guardian has used the phrase template for everything from Sophie Dahl is the new Nigella and the iPhone is the new IE6 to surveillance is the new democracy and respectability is the new closet. So despite its origins, the phrase doesn’t necessarily imply a connection to the fashion world!

Dr Annette Hurst asks:

Who while on chemotherapy (at the stage of hair loss) is well enough to go supermarket shopping? Who would want to risk exposing their weakened immune system to a potentially deadly infection in such a crowded place? How many people undergoing chemotherapy do you see with no head covering? This bad taste image must have been produced by a chain of people whose lives have fortunately not been touched by cancer.

Only a minority of chemotherapy patients would feel well enough to go supermarket shopping; the NHS reports that 60% of patients experience nausea and 50% experience vomiting, and that extreme tiredness and flu-like symptoms are also widespread. Of that minority, even fewer would choose to go to the supermarket, since to do so would be to ignore the advice of most medical practitioners.

We’re unfortunately unable to answer Annette’s third question. We’d guess that the answer is “rarely”, but when someone on the street has neither hair nor headcovering, there’s no surefire way of telling why: perhaps it’s the result of chemotherapy, perhaps it’s involuntary hairloss with a different cause, and perhaps it’s by choice.

Scott Wallace asks:

Perhaps the blind dates should be rescheduled to non-school nights?

An intriguing suggestion! Scott is addressing the fact that some Blind Daters, when asked if they went on anywhere else after dinner, explain that it was a “school night” and so they had to go straight home.

Scott shows great consideration in trying to come up with a solution to this problem, but it’s possible he’s made a mistake in taking the Blind Daters at their word. In some cases, “it was a school night” may be functioning as a polite excuse – the daters may simply not have wanted to spend any more time together. Taking that excuse away could end up being cruel, rather than the kindness Scott intends.

No rhetorical questions: 15 January 2011

No rhetorical questions were posed in the Letters page of the Guardian Weekend magazine, Saturday 15 January 2011. As a result we are going to spend the next week reassessing our lives and purposes.

Rhetorical Questions: 8 January 2011

Francis Steed asks:

Surely the art of being a food critic is that you are treated the same way as everyone else, so why does John Lanchester expect special treatment? He was late at Purnell’s (18 December) – nearly 20 minutes late – yet they still served him. Isn’t that a positive recommendation?

Two very good questions! To answer them, we need to examine Lanchester’s issues with the restaurant in a little more detail. His problems were twofold:

• He phoned the restaurant to let them know he was running late, and nobody answered.
• When he arrived at 9:18, for a 9:00 booking, he was greeted with the words “I’ll just see if the kitchen is still serving”, rather than something more welcoming.

Francis’s first question, therefore, may be based on a false premise: Lanchester doesn’t seem to believe he should receive special treatment, but rather than normal treatment should have been to greet any 9:18-arriving customer more warmly. Of course, it’s possible his expectations of normal service have become skewed from the norm as a result of his work – he might be used to more cordial treatment, such that normal treatment now feels cold and unwelcoming – but that’s a rather different matter.

The answer to Francis’s second question (“isn’t that a positive recommendation?”), on the other hand, depends on the reader. For Francis, clearly it is a recommendation; for others, it will be neutral; and still other readers will share Lanchester’s view and find it a failing in the restaurant.

Chris Parkins asks:

I’m sure I’m not alone in being unable to tell which of the denim clothes in All Ages are cheap and which are expensive without looking at the text?

You’re certainly not! It can be difficult to tell cheap and expensive clothes apart at the best of times. When you have only photographs to judge by, it gets even harder – and in the case of denim, the advantages that expensive garments may have over their cheaper cousins are particularly difficult to discern at a glance:

• Expensive jeans are often reported to have a better fit, especially for people whose bodies do not have the model-like shape that many clothes are designed for… but since the “All Ages” clothes are modelled by, well, models, this attribute doesn’t necessarily come across!
• More expensive denim is said to be softer and more likely to mould to your body over time – again, attributes that don’t come out in a picture.
• And finally, cheaper denim often loses its colour more quickly – but not until the clothes have been worn and washed repeatedly, so, again, something that is unlikely to come across in a photoshoot.

An additional difficulty comes from the fact that some cheap clothes are as good (whether in terms of design or construction) as some expensive clothes – which is encouraging news for shoppers, but discouraging news for anyone who wants to guess the cost of an item without looking at the price tag!

No Rhetorical Questions: 25 December, 1 January

There was no Guardian on 25 January, and the Weekend magazine on 1 January contained no reader letters. Reader letters are expected to return on the 8 January edition.

Rhetorical Questions: 18 December 2010

Patricia Tricker asks:

Lauren Luke: hydrating moisturisers. Er, isn’t that what moisturisers are supposed to do?

It certainly is. However, many moisturisers also aim to reduce wrinkles or cover blemishes, so the word “hydrating” may have been used to indicate that Luke was concentrating on hydration specifically. Alternatively, its inclusion may have been a purely aesthetic decision by a subeditor.

Victoria Moulton asks:

Why was Dannii Minogue described in your piece as “still” breastfeeding her five-month-old baby? Shouldn’t it be considered the norm to be breastfeeding such a young baby?

To answer Victoria’s second question first: it should indeed be considered the norm, at least according to the World Health Organisation. The WHO suggests that babies should, ideally, breastfeed until the age of two,  with supplementary foods introduced after the age of six months.

To answer Victoria’s first question we need to examine the paragraph in question more closely. It reads:

“[Dannii's] life is now dominated by the show, and by Ethan, her five-month-old baby with rugby player boyfriend Kris Smith, and today, like every day, she is juggling the two. She is here to promote her new dress range, Project D, but every spare minute of the afternoon is spent emailing song choices back and forth to the “boys” she is mentoring. And because Dannii is still breastfeeding, halfway through the make-up session Kris’s mother arrives at the studio carrying Ethan in his car seat.”

Looking at this paragraph, there seem to be three likely explanations for the use of the word “still”:

1. Its focus is on the baby: Minogue is still breastfeeding him, because he is still the appropriate age for this. The approximate meaning in this case is: “because Ethan is still very young and consequently Dannii is still breastfeeding him”.

2. Its focus is on Minogue herself: she is still breastfeeding, despite the fact that many families endeavour to wean their babies onto formula by this age, in order (for example) to make it easier for the mother to return to work.

3. The sentence is merely meant to establish that Minogue is breastfeeding, but the word “still” is included because the phrasing without it  (“because Dannii is breastfeeding”) might be read as implying that breastfeeding is an unusual choice.

Andrew Mathewson asks:

I confess that on 4 December I bought a different newspaper. Thankfully, the letters page on 11 December told me what I’d missed: an interview with Gordon Brown, jokes from around the world, a precis of This Column Will Change Your Life, Lenny Henry’s Q&A, Farrow & Ball paints in Space and a Blind Date that clicked. But where were the letters complaining about the price of the clothes in the fashion pages or the metropolitan focus of Let’s Move To… that you need when you’re trying to catch up?

There weren’t any! “Let’s Move To” on 4 December dealt with Mablethorpe, a small town in Lincolnshire; and the clothes in the fashion pages included none of the £1000+ outfits that dismay some readers. Consequently, the letters Andrew asks about simply don’t exist.

In fact, by relying on the following week’s letters page, Andrew missed out on 85% of the magazine! To fill him in quickly: Tim Dowling looked after a friend’s daughter; Lenny Henry is afraid of losing his voice; Ballet Black has grown since it was founded in 2001; Guy Pearce is less enigmatic than one might expect; homemade sweets make a good gift, as do ties; the 70s are in, animal print remains fashionable, and party dresses don’t have to be black; Bill Bailey has complex feelings about his hair; roses shouldn’t be planted where another rose previously grew; and the solution to the Scrabble problem was STRENGTHEN.