You Might Be a Zombie . . . (26 page)

Luckily, her father managed to get her enrolled at the lesser Académie Colarossi, a place dedicated to the free and unbiased exploration of penises.

Claudel thrived until she fell in love with Auguste Rodin, and it all went to
le toilette
.

Buried by the boobs

She became Rodin’s lover and muse, influencing and reportedly even working on some of his greatest works. Meanwhile, her sculptures were shunned by the public, since no one could stomach the idea that a female might be responsible for their favorite rock penises. In fact, artistic genius in women was believed to be a form of mental illness.

After Camille broke off their relationship, Rodin switched to shafting her metaphorically, blocking all funding for her future sculptures. Claudel’s own brother decided to have her committed to an insane asylum, despite the hospital’s protests that Camille was totally sane for the next
thirty years
. Sadly, convinced that she would never gain recognition, Claudel ultimately destroyed the vast majority of her works. Those that survive are lauded. In the words of Ludovic Chanzy, cultural director of the Nogent museum: “That Camille was shunned by the art world, despite her beautiful work, can be explained by the fact that she was a woman. It was just not acceptable that a young lady could sculpt erotic pieces showing men and women in the nude.”

That’s right: People turned down free, publically viewable porn because it was made by a woman.
How far we’ve come . . .

2. LISE MEITNER

Lise Meitner was the physicist who, working with Otto Hahn, pioneered the principles of nuclear fission. Meitner also discovered the Auger effect two years before Victor Auger. To add to her list of chal enges, she was also an Austrian Jew in Hitler’s Germany. The odds were against her, to say the least.

But Meitner’s biggest problem wasn’t even the Nazis (that’s a hel of a Jew who can say that): Berlin University was so sexist that she was only all owed to conduct experiments in a carpentry shed in the basement.

In 1938, when the Third Reich began sending subtle signs that she might want to flee for her life, she reluctantly abandoned her research with Hahn.

Buried by the boobs

Despite Meitner’s crucial role in every stage of fission research, her erstwhile partner Hahn won the Nobel Prize all alone. Some of the blame in this must be apportioned to Hitler, since he drove her out of the country, but it’s not like the Nobel Foundation didn’t know she existed, seeing as she had been jointly nominated with Hahn
ten times
previously. But she would have been the first woman to win a Nobel Prize without her husband, and the committee had a policy to uphold.

1. BEATRIX POTTER

Beatrix Potter was a children’s author, most known for the Peter Rabbit series. That sounds about right; that’s a charming, nonthreatening, non-emasculating and totally, quaintly appropriate career for a woman.

But the bit you probably
don’t
know is that she was also an absolutely brilliant mycologist, someone who studies fungi and their effects.

Since she was excluded from universities, Potter was forced to assist Scottish mycologist Charles McIntosh, illustrating his fungal specimens (which is either exactly what it sounds like or sexual innuendo was a much more dense and terrifying thing back in the day).

She became a pioneer in her field, proposing that lichens were a mixture of algae and fungus living in a symbiotic relationship, a revolutionary idea in the 1890s. She also noted that some fungi produced antibiotic chemicals, a discovery so important it shook the world . . . when it was discovered
again
by Alexander Fleming! And, hey, we just discovered it right now! And so did you! Man, science is cake!

Buried by the boobs

In 1897, Potter contributed a paper on mycology to the Linnean Society entitled “Germination of the Spores of the Agraricinae
.
” It didn’t get published.

The Royal Society followed suit, scientifically cock blocking Potter at every turn. In 1901, a disheartened Potter wrote and illustrated
The Tale of Peter
Rabbit
as a means of keeping her drawing skills alive. The book’s unexpected success, along with the collective and multitudinous shafting from the entire scientific community, persuaded her to drop her groundbreaking work in the sciences. In 1997, the Linnean Society publicly apologized for its treatment of her. Perhaps they owe the rest of the world an apology too: Because Fleming didn’t “discover” penicillin until 1928 (see page 103), a full thirty years after Potter first identified it. If Potter’s work hadn’t been rejected, countless lives would have been saved. On the other hand, the world would have been denied the soothing balm of Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail. And, really, when you lay it all in the balance, which is the more effective antibiotic?

Penicillin? Fair enough. Just trying to make a point.

HEY,
that banana you’re eating? It probably kil ed somebody! well, sort of. Bananas don’t kil people; people kil people . . . over bananas. And soda. And a bunch of other stuff you buy at the food store. For example:

5. CHIQUITA BANANAS

In 1975, Chiquita president Eli Black left the company by leaping out the window of his forty-fourth-floor office in the Pan Am Building in New York. His replacement, upon taking the reins, was quoted as saying, “It’s important that I don’t get too knowledgeable about the past.”

What’s this “past” he didn’t want to think about? well, there was the massacre of striking Colombian workers the company all egedly ordered in the twenties. But that was almost fifty years before. He was likely worried about more recent atrocities, like the CIA coup they’d orchestrated in the fifties. Yep, a freaking CIA coup. Orchestrated by a banana company.

The idea gets a lot less ridiculous, and way more depressing, when you know a few things: The head of the CIA in 1951, all en Dul es, had been on the board of trustees of the United Fruit Company, which is what Chiquita was called in 1951. Around this time, Guatemala elected Jacobo Árbenz to the presidency, and Árbenz made the mistake of thinking that meant a damn thing. His plan was to purchase a small portion of United Fruit’s land and distribute it to poor Guatemalan peasants.

When Árbenz hesitated to pay the company $16 mil ion (its own internal documents valued the land at half a mil ion), United Fruit decided this was a reasonable point in the negotiation process to ask the CIA to intervene. And
goddamn
did they intervene, replacing the freely elected Árbenz with a right-wing dictator and starting a goddamned civil war. Guatemala’s brief flirtation with democracy and prosperity was over, but, hey, it’s not all bad. The civil war that resulted from the coup eventual y ended. In 1996.

4. NESTLÉ QUIK

For any youngster who cringes at the thought of having to choke down a glass of plain milk with dinner, Nestlé Quik is a little box of magic. One tablespoon of the powdery goodness can transform that glass of white nasty into a delectable cup of chocolaty awesome. Add to this the fact that every box is emblazoned with an adorable cartoon rabbit, and what you have is a certified childhood dream maker.

At least that’s true for most kids—lazy, shiftless bastards that they are. Some kids, on the other hand, have to work for their Nestlé Quik. The majority of the world’s cocoa supply comes from Africa’s Ivory Coast, where child labor, trafficking, and (oh dear) slavery are not uncommon. But, hey, there’s no way a corporation with such an adorable mascot would let that shit go down on its watch, right?

Well after years of flying under the atrocity radar, word of the unspeakably harsh conditions on Ivory Coast cocoa plantations final y came out in 2001. In the face of an influx of negative publicity, Nestlé valiantly leapt into inaction. After issuing public statements claiming it had no way of knowing who did what, where, or when, the company was final y forced to acknowledge the problem by an agricultural bil that would have created a federal system to certify and label chocolate products as “slave free.”

Finding its hand forced, Nestlé decided to nut up and make a claim it had no intention of fol owing through on: to end forced labor on cocoa farms by 2005. Of course 2005 came and went with little or no change. According to Nestlé, an escalating civil war in the Ivory Coast made it too dangerous to go in and save the children. Amazingly, its team of buyers, presumably a team of crack military commandos, has yet to have a problem getting the cocoa in and out of the region.

3. IAMS PET FOOD

When PETA isn’t being crazy and launching the only public-awareness campaign that people have masturbated to, it’s actually been known to do some good not related to celebrity nudity. In 2002, a PETA official went undercover at an Iams testing facility and found out that, in addition to pet food, IAMS is in the business of making budding serial kil ers look like the kid from
Lassie
.

In case you’re (justifiably) suspicious of anything tofurkeycrazed PETA members tell you, they brought back video footage of the facility that you can find on the Internet if you’re ever in the mood to have your day ruined.

You really don’t want to read about the most horrifying things they found. Among the less nightmare-inducing tidbits were cats and dogs gone stir-crazy from constant confinement and an employee overheard talking about a live kitten that was accidental y washed down a drain. For you statistics geeks out there, one procedure performed at the Iams facility (seriously, you don’t want to know) resulted in twenty-seven dogs being kil ed. Just one more record Michael Vick will never break.

When confronted with PETA’s findings, Iams attempted to turn the tables, claiming the undercover PETA official was responsible for the various atrocities. A review of phone transcripts revealed the exact opposite. The PETA official actually tried to prevent animal cruelty. Iams officials acknowledged this to be the case. And then presumably drowned a bag of kittens out of frustration.

2. DOLE BANANAS

Making their second appearance on the list, bananas are the standard-bearer when it comes to corporate atrocity. Fol owing in the heinous footsteps of Chiquita, Dole has a long track record of bringing the pain to South American countries unlucky enough to grow their shit. And unlike most other companies on this list, Dole didn’t even try to hide its hel -raising ways. Kudos!

When several chemical workers became sterile, tests determined the cause to be a pesticide made at the plant where they worked, called DBCP.

When tests revealed it caused liver, kidney, and lung damage, the Environmental Protection Agency banned its use in the United States. Proving themselves to be a paragon of classiness, Dole made note of the “in the United States” part of the ban and continued to use DBCP overseas. When Dow Chemical informed Dole of its concerns over the safety of DBCP, Dole did what any company concerned with the wel -being of its employees would do. It advised Dow it would be in breach of its contract if it refused to provide DBCP and agreed to take any liability for the resulting damage it may cause.