observations of a girl in a black dress

Part One:

Overview: Subject is a female, young 20s, medium height. She is Caucasian, with brown hair and blue-grey eyes.

Physical Appearance: She has tanned skin, with a few freckles on her arms. Her hair is wet, except for her bangs which are styled and side-swept. She is wearing little make-up, but it appears there is a little mascara and eyeliner. There are numerous bruises on her shins, and several scars on her legs. She also has a 2 inch long scratch on her right arm that looks pretty recent. This could signify abuse, but due to the lack of bruises on her upper arms, probably is just a result of clumsiness.

Clothing: She is wearing a black dress, short sleeves, cotton knit fabric. It fits loosely from the empire waist downward, and stops just above the knees. It has a relatively deep scoop neck with button closure, and some ruching at the bust. It looks as if it were chosen for comfort mostly, and also to go along with the style of wearing dresses in the springtime.

Accessories: She wears no jewelry except for a small silver chain bracelet on her right wrist, but is wearing silver strappy sandals. They have no heel, though, so were also probably chosen for a mixture of style and comfort. Her toenails are unpainted, as are her fingernails. There are no idealogical symbols anywhere on her person, such as political buttons or religious jewelry.

Items: She is carrying a backpack, and has a wallet, keys, cellphone and computer charger in her hands. It is strange that she does not put any of those things in her backpack to carry them. Her wallet is large, black and rectangular, with red accents and interior. This may suggest a slightly racier side. Her cellphone is very large; it looks like a pda device of some kind. Her keychain has at least 15 keys on it, signifying that she has access to a lot of place. The computer charger she is carrying is for a Mac, so that means that she probably owns a Mac, which means she is doing fine financially. The backpack is blue and grey and is a Jansport bag. It has a lot of pockets and looks well used, although it isn't particularly full on this occasion.

Part Two:

So, I'm wearing the dress, because I made a pact with myself to not wear pants except for on days that I have to: namely, Tuesday and Thursday when I have organic lab. However, it's been about 3 weeks since I've done laundry, and I'm running out of dresses and skirts to wear. I can't really remember when was the last time I wore anything, so I'm hoping that it was long enough ago that it is socially acceptable to wear this dress again. It's really comfortable and is decently cute. I wore it to work the other day at the Gap, and some girl asked me if I got it there, cause she wanted one. (It's not from the Gap.) I could have gotten it in other colors, but I'm not sure that I'd want to wear a bright magenta version of this.

I'm in love with my shoes. I bought them in both silver and black and they're really comfortable for strappy sandals. Really, I bought them because we're not going to be allowed to wear flipflops in Rome, and I needed to find some cute shoes that I can walk all day in.

For some reason, I'm not a big jewelry fan. I have a silver bracelet that I'm always wearing, but I don't really like earrings. They give me migraines and make my ears itch. And I don't wear necklaces because I don't want a tan line from the necklace.

I don't have painted finger or toenails because my best friend hates chipped nail polish, and I'm so rough on my hands and feet that polish usually doesn't even last a day with me. I try to keep them nice looking, though.

On the subject of my tan... It was really nice this weekend, and I wanted to wear shorts, but I never wear shorts, but I bought a pair of shorts, but I wasn't going to wear them unless I got a tan, so I went and got a fake tan, and then proceeded to get as much sunshine as was possible.

I'm not sure why I was carrying all my crap in my hands when I had a perfectly good backpack on, but I think my thought process was something along the lines that I needed my keys to lock my apartment door and my cell phone to check the bus schedule, and my wallet for my upass, and I forgot my computer charger, and had to run back in for it, and I was too lazy to take off my backpack and put them in. I was going to catch the bus, but I missed it, so I ended up walking to school anyway, with all my crap in my hands. It was a nice walk, though.

Oh, and by the way, I'm bruised and scarred because I am the absolute klutz of klutzes. I bang into things so often that I don't even know where my bruises are from. The cut, though is from the wall at the Gap. It got me.

Anyway, comment if you want me to explain anything else.

research question and conceptual framework

Research Question: (still somewhat tentative - Emily and I need to discuss and narrow down our topic, which we'll be doing at tonight's meeting)
In the Netherlands, do Muslim women receive a different quality/quantity of care than non-Muslim women? How does culturally appropriate/sensitive care affect perceptions of the care received? What is being done to overcome this gap?

Conceptual Framework:
Cultural Traditions: Examining interactions between these conflicting (or not) traditions
Western v. Eastern
Gender Relations
Intersection of Liberal v. Conservative

Also, I've been thinking a lot about assumptions that Muslim women do have problems with access to health care that do give them adverse health outcomes. I've been doing some reading about fertility rates, and there's a "Bible Belt" in Amsterdam with orthodox Calvinists (a Christian sect) that has very high birth rates. I wonder if a bigger issue would be fundamentalism - not Islam itself. However, this raises a lot more questions.

Methods:
Case studies - talking with women about their healhtcare experiences with the intention of finding out how they've been treated.
Looking at how religion affects relationships - both patient-provider, patient-spouse, provider-healthcare system

Also see my previous blog, which addresses a lot of these issues.

Scholarship

scholarship : Knowledge resulting from study and research in a particular field.

It's always interesting to look at how information is gained, but the key really isn't in finding out information - it's in putting that information to work. The idea of information dissemination is especially key in health and health promotion. People can know about health risks (and that knowledge is important) but until they can (and do) something about it, there is no difference in their outcome.

This idea is especially important for our group. If we're looking at access to care by women in the Netherlands, that care needs to be accessible. Women can have knowledge about what they should be doing, but if there aren't culturally appropriate clinics available, then quality care isn't possible. Taking it back a step, if women don't have culturally appropriate information, then they can't know.

I feel like the most useful way for us to present our information would be on a pamphlet or info sheet, giving statistics and useful practices. This could be a quick way to illustrate what is being done.

Reflecting on our project- I feel like it's going to take two focuses. Emily, as an anthropologist, is really interested in the differences of knowledge about health, and how the cultural practices of our focus groups interact with and affect health and health knowledge. This would best be researched by surveys. My interests lie more in how health care can assimilate and respect the differing beliefs, while still maintaining the integrity of the care. This would be best researched with interviews with professionals. What is being done? Is it effective? What are they thinking about doing in the future? How can a healthy society be formed when there are so many factors that go into creating health in general.

I think that these two focuses will combine well together to create a good overall picture of health care and knowledge in Amsterdam. Obviously, there's way too much information to present and learn it all, but maybe we can use our interests to focus our question.