a footnote on gesture.

In a city that is generally celebrated as diverse and cosmopolitan, the ubiquitous instances of uniformity in behavior stand out all the more starkly for their frequency. In remarkable numbers, younger white women walk around sporting amateur scowls while clinging silently to cell phones pressed against their left ears. This naively desperate gesture is meant to convey the fact that their presence is required elsewhere and that they are not yet convinced enough to pay attention to the moment - here, after all, is not where they ought to be.

Rather predictably, on the other hand, white men are rarely compelled to display such elaborate pantomimes of positioning. Their overall attitude is at best reducible to wearing flip-flop thongs in public, a gestural mode which merely captures the sense that the world is their bathroom.

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