Birth Tourism: The Newest Red Herring in the Anti-Immigration Arsenal

First published on Global Comment on July 23, 2010. Read the original with comments here.

Earlier this year, The Marmara Manhattan, part of a Turkish hotel chain, began offering a package to expectant mothers. For between $5100 – $15000, visitors got a two-month stay, prenatal consultation, crib, and items for both mother and newborn. They say they’ve already sold 15 such packages. This is the cutting edge in birth tourism, the practice of visiting countries to give birth to children who will then be citizens. And though it involves a tiny number of women, it’s about to be a big deal, if the anti-immigration crusaders of The Tea Party have their way.

In late May, Rand Paul told a Russian news program that America is “the only country I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen.” While it may be true that we are the only such country Paul knows, we are far from the only country with birthright citizenship laws. Yet as anti-immigrant sentiments become more common in developed nations, that list of countries is shrinking. It’s been suggested that recent changes in the birthright laws of England, India, Australia and other countries have been undertaken to prevent birth tourism. In a contentious 2004 referendum, 80% of Irish voters rejected birthright laws over concerns about “citizenship tourism.”

And more and more American politicians are beginning to share their fears. State Senator Russell Pearce, best known for sponsoring Arizona’s draconian immigration law SB1070, has proposed a state bill that would deny citizenship to any child born in Arizona unless one parent can document their US citizenship. Randy Terrill, a Republican Representative from Oklahoma, has introduced a similar bill in his state. Under current laws, Terrill told NPR, “children of invading armies would be considered citizens of the U.S.” Fear-mongering at its best.

The media, it seems, is following their lead. Just last week, The Washington Post published an article entitled “For Many Pregnant Chinese, A U.S. Passport for Baby Remains a Powerful Lure.” The “many” of the title is questionable, however. The article admits there are no hard numbers, and the company they spoke to estimated they had helped 500-600 women in the course of five years – not quite the flood of wealthy Chinese birth tourists the title conjures up.

In April, ABC News carried an almost hysterical segment on birth tourism, which used rampant speculation in the place of facts. “Of the 4,273,225 live births in the United States in 2006, the most recent data gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics, 7,670 were children born to mothers who said they do not live here. Many, but not all, of those mothers could be ‘birth tourists,’ experts say.” [emphasis added] By their own admission, that makes birth tourism responsible for a whopping .001 percent of all births at most.

Using the tiny number of birth tourists as a front, birthright laws are coming under a full-frontal attack by the Tea Party. And why shouldn’t they? Isn’t this just an easily exploitable loophole in our immigration policies?

In short: no. Birthright citizenship is an incredibly important part of the social contract that is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Without it, the stage is set for the creation of a permanent underclass of workers that have no recourse for citizenship, even down through generations. It was designed to ensure that slavery could never again happen in the US. The citizenship laws that have replaced explicit birthright laws in much of Europe require an ancestor with citizenship for a child to gain citizenship of their own. This creates a situation where immigrant populations can be trapped as resident non-citizens forever.

In fact, attacks on birth tourism are simply red herrings designed to mask a larger assault on immigrants in this country. The image of rich foreign families coming over to give birth is easy to demonize. As The Washington Post article put it, “these Chinese parents fly in on first-class seats.” It is simpler to attack these families than it is the true face of birthright citizenship: the children of poor, hardworking immigrant communities in the US.

For Paul, Terrill, Pearce, et at., the real fear is not the small number of women who may come to visit the U.S. to give birth (and, in eighteen years, have their family sponsored for citizenship), but rather the women and families who are already in this country.This is but one small part in a larger Tea Party initiative to chip away at the rights of all immigrants in this country, legal and illegal.

Thankfully, amending the Constitution is a difficult and unlikely process. But as more and more state level officials jump on the anti-immigration bandwagon, we can expect to see an uptick in local bills that require proof-of-citizenship to access pre-natal care and birth-related services.

My Country, My Train, My K-Hole

First published in The Morning News on June 30, 2010. Read the original here.

The train from Chicago to New Orleans passes through Kankakee, Homewood, and Yazoo City; names that evoke images of wagon trains and episodes of Dr. Quinn. I don’t know most of this country.

Were I to draw a map, the Northeast would be ponderously detailed; Chicago would float in limbo; and California would consist of San Francisco and L.A. smooshed together between beaches and pot farms. The rest would be a mess, cartography by way of Cubism.

I’d like to say riding the train taught me something about this country; that my seatmate (probably, to ensure maximum movie potential, my elderly, black, female seatmate), told me about growing up on a farm in Yazoo City, or the first car to come to Homewood. But she slept most of the ride, and the only words we exchanged were a cordial “Have a safe trip,” when she got off at Jackson.

The train cut through towns at dawn and dusk. I saw dirt roads and business districts, stretched my legs in Memphis, and watched the moon rise through the snack car window. Sans context, without my mythical seatmate’s ur-narrative of rural childhood, the Mississippi—that long north-south axis of Americana—sprawled alongside me, meaningless.

Just the way I like it.

I don’t love trains because they teach me about America. I don’t love them because they connect me with a country I have never known. I love them because they disconnect me from everything else. When the train pulls out of the station, it’s like a plug being yanked from a socket. There is a moment of psychic tightening, as the invisible tether of responsibility pulls taught.

WAIT! I should be online! Connected! Accounta—

A silent snap, and I’m free.

* * *

Pop Quiz!

If you read the above carefully, absorbed each word, didn’t skim or skip a single line, you read 286 words (or 285.5, depending on how you count “accounta—”). Over the course of those 286 words, how many times did you check your email? Look at Facebook? Send a text?

Divide those two numbers, and you’ve got your attention index. Mine is measly. Even while editing my own writing, I got distracted 4 times, which means I can pay attention for an average of 71 words. That’s about as long as the chorus of your average pop song. Lady Gaga’s “Telephone,” perhaps the current definition of pop song, comes in a little long at 81 words, and an uncountable number of auto-tuned noises. One imagines those extra words enable her to get across the post-modern Derridean influences she mentions so often. “Out in the club / and I’m sippin’ that bub / and you’re not gonna reach my telephone.” Take that, you hidebound structuralist motherfuckers.

According to a survey by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 4.1 percent of American adults have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Yet according to an informal survey of People In My House (PIMH), 100 percent of American adults claim to be “totally ADD” all the time. Don’t dismiss PIMH because it consists of three stoners and a mouse. I think they have a point.

Like money, attention is something we must pay. Perhaps the 4.1 percent of us recognized by the NIMH are simply those who exist below the attention poverty line. The rest of us have more, but rarely an inexhaustible supply. Our wallets bulge and thin depending on the day, and we use Adderall like a game show lifeline. By choice or accident of birth in the contemporary U.S.A., most of us are living far beyond our attention means. The blips and bleeps of our phones and computers, the necessity of working far from home, the number of people we know or, in the case of celebrities, feel like we know—we pay for all of it.

I am as profligate with attention as I am spendthrift with money. I am a freelance writer, which means I am constantly hunting for the next story, the next job. My necessary evil is networking—that vile word that calls up whitened teeth in bad suits, executives drinking expensive wine and orgiastially congratulating themselves. Also, I move constantly. In the past year, I’ve resided in three different places in New York City, three in Puerto Rico, one in New Jersey, and one in New Orleans. I’ve also gone on eight road trips, lasting between three days and two weeks, during all of which I’ve worked on my laptop, on my iPhone, and (in moments of true desperation) on paper. Currently, I’m packing to move back to New York. I might be the extreme end of the curve, but I’m not alone. According to a Census Bureau report in 1993 one in six Americans moved every year.

Focus is something I experience mostly via its absence. On a daily basis, I mine the furthest extents of my mind for a little bit more. When it comes to paying attention, I’m like that person on line at the grocery store, trying to buy toilet paper with pennies. I am a dry well, a clear-cut forest, an overdrawn checking account.

A long train ride is the equivalent of being in debtor’s prison. There is no internet, and for vast swaths of the country, no cell phone reception. Changes of scenery are limited. I went to the bathroom to put on pajamas and fart before bed. Around sunrise, snoring drove me to the lower level of the snack car, where my only company was the woman who sold coffee and the man with whom she was flirting. She called me “sugar” and “honey” and “baby,” all within a conversation that couldn’t have lasted a minute. I basked in refracted endearments while a sullen teenager wandered in, looking for a dark place to play her Nintendo DS. I watched an old woman walk a colicky baby back and forth through the cars; one full lap took about 10 minutes. That was the extent of my world, a limited set of choices as lulling (in its own way) as the rhythm of the wheels beneath me.

The train is a liberating K-hole, a moment of suspended animation where it’s entirely acceptable to not answer phone calls, not check your email, not speak to anyone, not go outside, not finish that proposal, not order new checks, not call your father, not work out, not shower, not change.

There are an endless number of things you can not do.

* * *

Some time in the night, the woman in front of me turned and tapped me on the knee.

“Do your sockets work?” she asked. Every seat in the train comes with a pair of electrical outlets, another way in which trains are infinitely superior to cars or planes. Except in this case, my outlet was dead. The entire car was without power.

I was seized with panic. Stalking electrical outlets is the closest I get to regularly hunting for sustenance. Access to electricity is a necessity in my life. I move through the world with a portable shackle, always looking for the next place to tether myself.

Then I realized that for a rare day, I didn’t need to plug in anything. Not even—or perhaps especially—myself. Let my computer die, my iPhone power down. The world wouldn’t end simply because I couldn’t read about it on Facebook.

So between Chicago and New Orleans, I read a book. It was a silly, poorly written piece of science fiction, but I read the entire thing from start to finish. I read my way through Kankakee, Homewood, and Yazoo City, from Illinois down through Tennessee and Mississippi. I took a few breaks: to nap, to start this essay. Mostly, however, I just read. Pages slowly drifted by as some passengers exited and others boarded.

For the first time in a long time, I never once stopped to question who a particular character was, or why they were calling their mother. I never needed to flip backwards to find the spot where my attention had drifted. With every page, it felt easier to keep my focus in one place. The lingering desire to respond—to my phone, to my email, to my surroundings—dissipated. Nineteen hours drifted by slowly. No, “slowly” isn’t the right word. “Leisurely.”

I’m no Luddite. By the time I landed in New Orleans, I was desperate—desperate—to check my email. Given the option, I have the internet close at hand 24/7, to keep up with friends splashed around the world, jobs with no physical location, and Lindsay Lohan’s every move. Which is why I need those places where I have no choice, to limit the lizard-brain that wants constant stimulation. The three, or four, or six hours it takes to traverse the country by plane simply aren’t enough to quiet the desire to multitask. For city-dwellers like me, there are few other moments in life when we are outside the option of cell phone or Wi-Fi service—an option that feels more and more like a requirement every day. Having your phone off is seen as a moral failure, an antisocial tendency that is suspect at best, if not a downright indication of psychosis. I live in fear of the day I get reception on the subway. I dream of the Orient Express, of Atlantic steamers, of camping trips in remote forests—places where my reserves of attention can be filled, so that I can return refreshed to Twitter and Facebook, the subway and CNN, all 14 of my magazine subscriptions and the innumerable blogs in my RSS feed.

I leapt off that train like a Vegas rookie, pockets bulging, ready to be fleeced. Without a doubt, I’ll soon come crawling back, twitching, Tweeting, and bleeping like an epileptic robot desperate for respite. The train will be waiting to pull my plug and set me free.

In New Orleans, New Life By the River

First published in The New York Times on June 27, 2010. Read the original, with photos, here.

For residents of the blue-collar Bywater-Marigny area of New Orleans, access to the Mississippi River has been blocked for years by decaying industrial buildings. But it won't be much longer, thanks in part to R. Allen Eskew, an architect whose firm has been hired to turn a mile and a half of piers and wharves into a riverfront park to open in fall 2011, Step 1 in the nearly $300 million Reinventing the Crescent plan.

The park is one of many projects, small and large, growing in the fertile soil around the Mississippi. Amid colorful shotgun houses (left), tucked away on streets named Piety, Desire and Independence, a wealth of cafes, boutiques and bars offer a calmer alternative to the excesses of the French Quarter, just upriver.

Satsuma Cafe
3218 Dauphine Street
(504) 304-5962

Satsuma, which opened last year, takes its name from a popular local citrus fruit. The menu changes regularly, but you can't go wrong with their pancakes of the day ($5) and a cup of smooth chicory coffee ($2).

Cake Cafe & Bakery
2440 Chartres Street
(504) 943-0010
nolacakes.com

Nothing says New Orleans, city of excess, like a boozy cupcake. This cafe has multiple varieties - flavors include Champagne, mimosa and Sazerac - which can be ordered by the dozen ($25). Or drop in for a nonalcoholic version ($1.75), in flavors like wedding cake and red velvet.

The Lost Love Lounge
2529 Dauphine Street
(504) 949-2009

For some relaxed night life, head to this dim and sprawling dive bar, which opened in March. Lost Love features $2 High Life specials and a small Vietnamese snack menu. Five dollars will buy a sizable shrimp spring roll.

The Bargain Center
3200 Dauphine Street
(504) 948-0007

Down the street, a hodge-podge of antique furniture, paperbacks, and vintage costumes sprawls on the sidewalk like a life-size Joseph Cornell diorama. Welcome to the Bargain Center, a cavernous thrift shop that sells everything from Jadeite teacups ($10) to a handmade "Cajun camp style" dollhouse ($200).

Chemisière Louisiane
3811 Chartres Street
(504) 948-9989
chemisierelouisiane.com

In May, David Dartnell opened this 3,000-square-foot boutique and studio, which houses his new clothing line of the same name. Designed for "women of the South," the fashions feature loose, lightweight fabrics and bright colors. Most items range around the $200 mark.

Storm King Turns 50

First published in The Daily Beast on June 4, 2010. Read the original, with photos, here.

In putting together Storm King Art Center’s 50th anniversary exhibit 5 + 5, David R. Collens faced a difficult task: designing a show that celebrated the sculpture park’s storied history, while also laying out a road map for Storm King’s next five decades.

Collens, who has been the director and curator of Storm King for more than 35 years, admits to not having done many group shows. For the anniversary, however, Collens worked with 10 artists—five with major exhibitions at Storm King already under their belts, and five mid-career sculptors whom he hadn’t shown before. The resultant exhibit, on view now through November 14, is filled with work by some of today’s most well-known outdoor sculptors.

Alice Aycock , Chakaia Booker, Mark di Suvero, Andy Goldsworthy, and Ursula von Rydingsvard represent the park’s history. To anyone acquainted with modern sculpture, their names conjure up distinct images: Booker’s repurposed tires and wearable pieces; di Suvero’s large-scale steel constructions. But it took more than just name recognition to secure a place in 5 + 5.

“I selected those five artists to represent people who really understood the landscape at Storm King and did something very different,” says Collens. With 500 acres of manicured grounds in the rolling Hudson Valley, Storm King offers a wide variety of sites for installation, yet many artists go no further than the area around the museum building. Collens looked for those sculptors who would do something more innovative.

Goldsworthy has taken one of the park’s existing stone walls and used it to create one of his natural compositions. Visitors are invited to walk the length of the wall (which Storm King calls a “sketch in stone”) and observe the way in which Goldsworthy seamlessly blends natural dilapidation and ephemeral construction.

But Collens’ curatorial vision shines brightest in his selection of the five new artists—John Bisbee, Maria Elena González, Darrell Petit, Alyson Shotz, and Stephen Talasnik. “It was time to pass the torch to a younger generation,” says Collens, an idea with which all of the more experienced artists in the show agree.

5 + 5 brings in not just new sculptors, but ones who embrace daring forms, innovative uses of the space, and original concepts for what outdoor sculpture can be. The show is stretching the dimensions of Storm King and playfully changing the ways in which works on display can coexist.

Sixteen platforms were designed by González to be arrayed throughout the grounds. When viewed from one, visitors on another will look to be part of sculptures in the permanent collection. For instance, from the vantage of platform three, visitors on platform four will look to be perfectly balanced atop Menashe Kadishman’s Suspended sculpture as González incorporates observers into the roles of artist and art.

In Stream: A Folded Dream, Talasnik has created a 12-foot-high, 90-foot-long structure made of more than 3,000 bamboo rods. Throughout the exhibition, it will serve as a backdrop for both music and dance performances, something Storm King hasn’t done before.

“It’s quite a counterpoint to stone and steel and other materials we have,” says Collens. In curating 5 + 5, he wanted to avoid just bringing “more metal into Storm King—[as] we have plenty of it.” The 10 selected artists use everything from metal nails, cedar, and granite to reflective plastic, rubber, and earth.

5 + 5 is as diverse for its sculptors as it is for its works. Talasnik, a visual artist by training, has only been showing sculpture since 2000, while di Suvero had his first museum pieces in 1959. And while the recent documentary Who Does She Think She Is? laments the woeful underrepresentation of women in most major museums, half the artists in 5 + 5 are female.

When asked if this gender parity is purposeful, Collens says: “From my perspective, I’m trying to find the best I can in terms of sculpture, male or female, national or international.” Though if there is one way the exhibit is lacking, it is in terms of geographic and ethnic diversity. All of the artists are American, Canadian or European (though di Suvero was born in China, and Gonzalez in Cuba), all but Goldsworthy live in the United States, and only two are people of color. Storm King, like the art world in general, still has some distance to go.

“I think we need to adapt and change like all institutions,” Collens says. If 5 + 5 is any indication, Storm King’s next 50 years are up to the challenge.

Storm King Art Center is located in Mountainville, New York. Visiting hours are Wednesday-Sunday, 10:30 a.m.—5:30 p.m. More information is available at www.StormKing.org.

Pigs' Blood in Cigarettes?

This gallery was originall published on The Daily Beast on 5/25/2010. Read it in its entirety, with comments, here.

As Vegetarian Week kicks off in the U.K., it’s more difficult than ever to observe it faithfully. From horse fat in fabric softener to crushed insects in fruit juice, Hugh Ryan locates animal products in 11 unlikely places.

1) Fabric Softener
What could possibly make your sheets feel more Downy fresh than a nice schmear of rendered animal fat? Dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride—a roundabout way of saying fat from animals like horses and sheep—is used by some commercial fabric softeners to coat your clothes with a soft, fluffy layer of lipids.

2. Pink Drinks
Cochineal, natural red 4, crimson lake, carmine, carminic acid—call it what you will, but the additive that gives many drinks their distinctive pink color, from wine coolers to ruby-red grapefruit juices, is made from crushed South American bugs. The female cochineal insect has been harvested for dye since the era of the Aztecs. Depending on the way in which the insect is killed (methods include boiling alive, exposure to sunlight, steaming, and baking), it produces a range of reddish tints. It takes approximately 70,000 insects to make one pound of dye.

3. Wine & Beer
Some people drink like fish. Others just drink fish—or at least, the dried, ground-up swim bladders of fish. Isinglass, derived mostly from sturgeon and cod bladders, is used to clarify and remove impurities from many varieties of wine and beer. Small amounts of isinglass remain in the products when finished. For thirsty vegans, the website Barnivore maintains a list of animal-friendly wines, beers, and spirits.

4. Flu Vaccine
A variety of vaccine rumors and conspiracy theories abound. One true one, however, is this: flu vaccines aren’t vegetarian. Fertilized chicken eggs in the embryonic phase are used to cultivate the inactivated flu virus that is injected into millions of people every year. The vaccine was originally developed by the U.S. military for use in World War II, to help prevent a recurrence of the Spanish Influenza that killed 50 million people in the wake of World War I.

5. Cigarettes
The multitude of sins that can be hidden under the phrase “processing aids”—a catchall term for ingredients used to control tar and nicotine content in cigarettes—apparently includes pigs’ blood. New Dutch research from March of this year has found traces of porcine hemoglobin in the filters of some brands of cigarettes. In blood, hemoglobin bonds to oxygen to transport it throughout the body; in filters, it bonds to passing toxins and removes them from the smoke before it enters the lungs.

6. Lipstick
Some shimmery lipsticks owe their twinkle to a rather lowly source—fish scales. According to The Straight Dope, a syndicated question-and-answer column published in over 30 newspapers nationwide, herring scales, a byproduct of commercial food fishing, are processed into a product called “pearl essence,” which can be found in lipsticks, nail polishes, ceramic glazes, and other sparkly stuff. The fish are caught in giant nets and pumped into boats, a process that flenses the scales from their bodies, often while still alive. The scales are then sold to cosmetic companies.

7. Sugar
When it comes to sugar, the phrase “bone white” isn’t a metaphor. According to the non-profit Vegetarian Resource Group, cane sugar is often bleached using bone char from horses and cows, a.k.a. “natural charcoal.” Bone particles don’t end up in the final product; rather, the bone char is used as a filter, like a piece of cheesecloth made from ponies. An average sugar filter contains about 70,000 pounds of bone char from approximately 7,800 animals. To avoid bone char entirely, buy sugar derived from beets, not sugar cane.

8. Hormone Replacement Therapy
Premarin, the popular estrogen-replacement drug for menopausal women, takes its name from its main ingredient: PREgnant MARes’ urINe. Since 1942, female horses have been impregnated and fitted with the equine equivalent of colostomy bags. These gather their urine, which is then processed to produce estrone, equilin, and equilenin. Historically, the foals were eventually sent to slaughterhouses, though today, many pregnant mares’ urine (PMU) operations also act as traditional horse breeders.

9. Bloody Marys
Sometimes it’s the ingredients in the ingredients that make a product not vegetarian. Bloody Marys, the reliable brunch standby, are usually made with tomato juice, vodka, celery, and Worcestershire sauce, which contains anchovies, making it literally bloody. Some Bloody Mary recipes also call for beef consommé. There are vegetarian Worcestershire sauces out there, so just ask to see the label before you order.

10. Heparin
The anticoagulant drug heparin is derived from the slippery mucosal tissue found in pig’s intestines and cow’s lungs. Used to treat blood clots, it was originally isolated in dog livers in 1916, and has since been found in a long list of animals, including sand dollars, humans, camels, whales, mice, fresh-water mussels, lobsters, and turkeys. Its natural purpose in the body is still not fully understood.

11. Green Motor Oil
“Green” doesn’t always mean animal-free. Some companies have taken to replacing traditional petrochemical-based motor oil with cow fat. Companies claim to be able to make as much as one barrel of oil per barrel of tallow, as compared with the three barrels of petroleum needed to make one barrel of traditional motor oil.

The Books Powerful Women Love

Originally published on The Daily Beast on 4/27/2010. Read it in its entirety, with comments, here.

In a few days, one of America’s most beloved teens turns 80. Nancy Drew, girl detective, first appeared in print on April 28, 1930, in The Secret of the Old Clock. With her two best friends, George Fayne and Bess Marvin, she tooled around River Heights in a dark blue roadster, solving crimes, exploring secret passages, and foiling bad guys.

Three hundred books, a dozen video games, five films, and two TV series later, Nancy’s still at it. These days, she drives a sky-blue hybrid and carries a cell phone, but River Heights still depends on her to prevent everything from identity theft to political assassinations. Her books don’t follow any of the hot trends in young adult fiction: Nancy fights no zombies, owns no designer clothes, and lusts after nary a vampire. Yet each new book has a print run of 25,000 and, cumulatively, the books have sold more than 200 million copies. It’s hard to imagine another cultural icon that could bring together Sonia Sotomayor and Laura Bush, both of whom cite Nancy as an inspiration.

What is it about this octogenarian detective that keeps girls coming back, generation after generation?

“Nancy Drew is chicken soup,” laughs Emily Lawrence, associate editor at the Aladdin imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. For the last two years, Lawrence has been the woman at the heart of the Nancy Drew machine, overseeing the current series, Nancy Drew Girl Detective. She’s in charge of keeping Nancy contemporary. To this end, the books are now written in the first person and published in trilogies, to give modern readers the sense of character growth and story line they’ve come to expect. Like another longstanding crime brand, Law & Order, they use a “ripped from the headlines” approach to modernize the stories, which include crimes set in reality-television shows and social network cyber-bullying. Lawrence attributes many of these plot advancements to the variety of writers who have written Nancy Drew over the years (spoiler alert: Carolyn Keene never existed). But Lawrence believes Nancy remains popular mostly for the ways in which she hasn’t changed.

“People know what they’re getting,” says Lawrence. “You’re visiting your old friends every time you crack open a book.” This consistency has created what Lawrence calls “megafans”: women (and some men) who are almost evangelical in their love for Nancy Drew.

Jennifer Fisher, writer and president of the Nancy Drew Sleuths Fan Club, is perhaps the queen of the megafans. For the last decade, she’s organized an annual Nancy Drew convention that has drawn upward of 100 fans from around the world. This year, to celebrate the 80th anniversary, she also put together a “Sleuths at Sea” cruise.

“Nancy Drew’s a good role model,” says Fisher. “She was always very kind and good to others—unless they were criminals.”

In a word, Nancy is wholesome, a concept that rarely equals popularity among today’s mainstream tweens. But for parents, educators, and megafans, this means being able to pass along the books—even ones they haven’t read—without worrying about the content.

Everyone agrees that part of Nancy’s continued popularity is this legacy effect. But many things, from Peter, Paul & Mary records to Mary Jane shoes, have been passed down without catching on. What makes Nancy different is that she is one of the last bastions of innocence. As young adult fiction becomes more R-rated with each passing year, Nancy remains resolutely asexual and noncommercial.

“Ned and Nancy just hug. That’s a conscious choice. Her character was never about boys or clothes or makeup. She’s always been the smart girl who uses her head,” says Lawrence, commenting on the lack of sex and product placement in the books. An effort was made in the 1980s to tart Nancy up, in a series called Nancy Drew Case Files, which Lawrence regards as a failure. “It’s a great cautionary tale,” she says. “Don’t mess with the formula.”

In Nancy-land, a girl’s first priority is justice, with friendship a close second. Ned Nickerson, Nancy’s boyfriend, is a distant third—if he’s even in a particular book at all.

This asexuality attracts a different kind of reader from, say, the girls who are picking up Private, a popular modern series about young women at boarding school. Like many titles aimed at girls, it focuses primarily on sex, clothes, and backstabbing. It’s the anti-Nancy, and its prevalence goes a long way to getting at the heart of why Nancy is still popular.

“Reading itself is an outsider activity,” says Carolyn Dyer, author of Rediscovering Nancy Drew and professor emeritus at the University of Iowa. “Girls who read, especially voraciously, are not the girls most focused on popular culture.” And this is even truer, she believes, for the girls who read Nancy Drew.

Although Dyer and Lawrence dance around the subject, they see the girls drawn to Nancy Drew as emotionally younger than their counterparts, perhaps more naïve, and markedly less interested in sex and relationships. The Nancy Drew novels are kids’ books written for kids, not for tweens who long to be teenagers or teenagers who long to be in college. For these girls, Nancy Drew is one of the few mainstream, grade-level-appropriate options out there.

“They’re going to turn to Twilight when they want one thing and they’re going to turn to Nancy when they want something else,” says Lawrence.

That something remains, as it has always been, the adventures of a young woman and her friends, fighting for justice, having fun along the way, and not giving a damn what the boys think.

You Can Buy Gaydar at the Apple Store

Written with Brian Joseph Ferree and originally published in Details' March 2010 issue. Read it online here.

Jared had just locked himself out of his Brooklyn apartment. As he stood on the street waiting for his landlord, he launched a new app on his iPhone. Minutes later, the blond-haired, blue-eyed grad student was pants-down in a nearby courtyard with the proverbial Boy Next Door. Thanks to Grindr, a GPS-based mobile dating service, the savvy stud was back on his stoop in time to meet the landlord.

"The streets were empty, Grindr was full," says Jared (who asked that his last name be withheld). "I didn't think it would be that easy." Ever since the long-forgotten days of the 300-baud modem (24,000 times slower than your iPhone), guys like Jared have been hunting for the ultimate gaydar—high-tech devices that streamline the search for sex. Grindr is the latest incarnation. When you open the application, you're greeted with 100 Chiclet-size photos, each representing a nearby John Doe. Sorted by proximity, they include names, ages, and short bios. See someone you like? Text him to arrange a rendezvous. "The first guy I talked to was 1,000 feet away, which seemed close," jokes Jared, "until I saw someone 602 feet away." Released a year ago on iTunes, Grindr was an instant success. "We're at a little over 300,000 users and adding about 1,500 every day," says creator Joel Simkhai. The service is now available in 77 countries, including Iran, Israel, and Kazakhstan, proving that wherever you find gay men in search of companionship, you'll also find the latest in technology.

On a balmy October afternoon in New York City's Greenwich Village, a trial run on Grindr produces a UN diplomat between sessions, a retail clerk on his lunch hour, a graphic designer working from home, an on-shift bartender, and dozens more predominantly young, affluent iPhone owners all looking for a mand8t. With their 24/7 connectivity, their fondness for tailor-made software, and even their own porn site (GuysWithiPhones.com), they are nearly a culture unto themselves. Now, with Grindr, they have a safe, easy way to hook up at virtually any place and time.

It is, one might say, a giant leap forward from the mid-eighties, when AIDS hysteria had shuttered many gay bars and sex clubs. Back then, the dial-up modem seemed like a godsend. "This was a revelation, that you could use your computer to connect with other gay people," recalls Jon Larimore, who created an early online social network in Washington, D.C., called the Gay & Lesbian Information Board. In 1986, the year after Rock Hudson died from AIDS, GLIB had thousands of subscribers dialing in from the comfort of their homes, many from inside their closets.

AOL took the success of boards like GLIB and stretched it coast to coast. "I was able to type I'M GAY before I could say it," says the 33-year-old Simkhai, reminiscing about his early forays into the company's M4M chat rooms. In 2000, Timereported that 20 percent of the service's 21 million subscribers were gay.

In the decade that followed, Simkhai and his AOL "buddies" became digital-age pioneers, boldly going where no man had gone before. They built websites (PlanetOut, Gay.com, Manhunt), invented shorthand (BTTM, BBBJ, PnP), explored the full potential of the Craigslist personal ad, and quickly mastered the use of instant messaging, emoticons, texting, and video chat.

This is not to say that they left their heterosexual brothers in the dust. Today, of course, there are matchmaking sites for every conceivable taste (not to mention a vast smorgasbord of online porn). In fact, Simkhai has fielded so many inquiries from salivating straight guys that he's thinking about developing a Grindr-like service for them.

And so, with smartphone dating apps like Grindr, Boy Ahoy and Twinkleboi, gay men have charged ahead into the world of mobile. Is it the male sex drive alone that makes them such early adopters? Not really. Is it the means to spend lavishly on new gadgets—the lusty, inveterate-trendsetter consumerism you see on the shopping strips in Dupont Circle, Chelsea, and the Castro?

Not exactly. Contrary to public perception, gay men earn less on average than straight men. But they are more likely to vote with their wallets, and technology firms have often led the way in their support for gay rights. In 1993, Apple flexed its muscle in Texas to preserve the domestic-partner benefits for its employees. Ten years later, gay men were twice as likely as straight men to own the company's computers. But Josh Rubin, founder of the Cool Hunting website, posits yet another theory. "Out gay men are familiar with taking risks," he says. "Trying a new phone is pretty easy compared to coming out of the closet."

Not long ago, it was enough to dream of technology that could help a man take that brave first step. Today the goal is to free him from the tyranny of the computer terminal. Wi-Fi-enhanced sex toys may let you stimulate partners thousands of miles away, but you can't as of yet e-mail pheromones, which makes the guy in the lunchroom far more appealing than the hottie halfway around the globe. "In the firm I was working in, I couldn't figure out who might be gay," says Antonio, a twentysomething grad student at the University of Arizona. "So I'd turn Grindr on to see if I could find myself another homo in the building." Alas, the pickings were slim. "In Tucson," says Antonio, "it starts loading people in Phoenix." Give it a few months—there aren't a lot of dance partners when you're early to the party.

36 Hours in Vieques

Originally published in The New York Times on 2/21/10. Read the full text here.

THE mascot of Vieques seems to be the coquí, a tiny frog whose image adorns everything from T-shirts to hot sauce bottles. Yet, given the island’s rapid metamorphosis from Navy testing ground to upscale beach resort, perhaps a tropical butterfly would be better suited. Since the United States Navy ceased military operations in 2003, this small island just off the east coast of mainland Puerto Rico has seen a boom in restaurants, galleries and hotels, including a new W resort expected next month. It’s a testament to the island’s natural beauty, with its white-sand beaches, coral reefs and bioluminescent bay.

Friday

4 p.m.
1) LIFE’S A BEACH

Vieques has spent the last year improving many of its beaches; access to some were in shambles when the Navy left. Red Beach, along a wide-mouthed cove on the island’s warmer Caribbean side, reopened last December, though it has since temporarily closed for road work, and features open-walled wooden cabanas and ample parking. The beach gets a little crowded in the afternoons but in the evenings the crowds are gone, and it has some of the clearest azure blue water on the island — and terrific snorkeling along the eastern end.

7 p.m.
2) TROPICAL FLAVORS

Dinner in the Caribbean should be about three things: local seafood, fresh air and good drinks. The recently opened Cantina La Reina (351 Calle Antonio G. Mellado; 787-741-2700; cantina-lareina.com) in Isabel Segunda has all three. Decorated with Catholic iconography, posters of Mexican revolutionaries and old photos of banditos, La Reina may make you forget what country you’re in — until you take a bite of the fresh catch with mango salsa (market price) or the Baja-style shrimp tacos ($18). The rooftop patio also offers fantastic views. Dinner can be a little slow, like the general pace of life on the island. As the bumper stickers say, “What’s the hurry? You are in Vieques.”

10 p.m.
3) FROM BUNKER TO CLUB

Another sign of how fast things have changed? A decade ago, the old naval base near Green Beach was home to military bunkers. One of those bunkers was recently transformed into the 10,000-square-foot Club Tumby (Antigua Base Naval, Barrio Mosquito; 787-399-7142; clubtumby.com). The mega-disco, which plays bachata, salsa, bomba, merengue and reggaetón, draws local 20-somethings and visitors almost literally to the middle of nowhere.