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Saturday, April 30, 2005
Are You a Cool Girl Feeling the Heat?
This may sound ridiculous, but I've recently noticed a phenomenon among women roughly belonging to my age group.
Basically, we've seen our grandmothers and our mothers -- and sometimes other girls our age, or chicks on Lifetime -- scraping in subservience to their husbands, or holding fast to ideas of Feminity and Respect Due to Woman that causes them to fit into the kinds of stereotypes that make me puke as they live and breathe on shows like "Everybody Loves Raymond" (not everybody, trust me) and on any of those cloned 'family man' shows that feature whiny wives forever having to corral and control their fat, childish, brutish husbands. We've seen these attempts at keeping to the image of the Woman as Pure Saint trying not to let Man dirty her gloves -- and we've disallowed the opposite, the Whore, as a term at all.
We fall in-between. We're cool. We don't mind our boyfriend's porn, we drink and smoke and swear with the best of the boys. we like walking in mud, we like ESPN, we don't ask if we look fat and we don't fuss about needing to go to the bathroom in pods of two or three. We're the best girlfriends our boyfriends (or husbands) have ever had. "You're not like the others," they tell us, leaving the toilet seat up, because we won't complain. "You're not a nag. You're not high -maintenance. You understand me. You're cool."
We blush with pride. Secretly, of course, some of the slovenly behavior gets on our nerves; and we get to the point sometimes where we're ever-so-slightly jealous of the not-cool girls, the ones who pussy-whip their boys into cleaning up and coming home on time and taking out the trash. We begin to wonder: are we cool, are we just really, really lame? Are we compromising, or are we comprising our identities? Are we letting our boyfriends be themselves, or are we letting them get away with murder? It's easier to be complacent instead of demanding. Or do we really not care?
I was visiting my friend Fena, and she started to give me shit about my pregnancy, and my situation. "There's a baby coming," she said, slapping her palms together. "Where's the money? What are you doing? What's the fucking plan?"
"I don't know," I shrugged. "Things are up in the air."
"Up in the air?" she repeated, angrily. "Up in the air?"
I told her my boyfriend was starting his own business.
"What? It's not time for all of that," she practically yelled. "You need to tell him what's what."
She made me feel rather small and stupid and weak. Was I being walked over? Should I make him go get a regular, steady job, instead of supporting him, believing in his dream, hoping he would make it, because I truly believe that happy parents make a happy baby? Am I idealistic, or just relaxed and trusting, about everything working out in the end?
Sometimes it's hard to tell in situations like this. Relationships are all about negotiation and balance, and we have typical ideas about the proper ways these should be realized. What is weakness? What is strength?
To be honest, I don't mind being the main breadwinner of my family. It's the way things have worked out. And I don't mind the toilet seat being up. It's not a sign of disrespect to me -- if men were women, they'd be crying about our constantly putting the seat down, making them have to bend over all the time to put it back up!
I should note that the friends to whom I'm referring, including myself, are smart, educated, strong women in our lateish twenties. And we're not alone. I recently read a book by a Japanese-American author whose main character is a hip, pink-haired postmodern tv producer who cares little for settling down. When she hooks up with a guy similarly roving in nature, a guy she can't predict or pin down, and falls for him, she finds herself wanting that dreaded word that she never wanted to foist on anyone, including herself -- commitment.
I want him just to want me, she thinks to herself in horror -- echoing the sentiments of some googly-eyed B-rate bimbo on a channel I was flipping through the other day, who tells her friend, "I want to believe I'm worth being the only one he wants and looks at and needs."
I should also add that my other friend, the above-mentioned Fena, is not alone in her heated condemnation of what I'm calling here "cool." (I'm not cool in any other sense, believe me.) Every hair coloring commercial touts 'strength' in the form of drawing firm lines about what you as a woman will and will not accept from 'your man.' It's the subject of movies like Waiting to Exhale... though I"m sure Fena would balk at me putting her in this category -- she is a black woman with an afro down to her ass who pumps iron, dates other women, and sends her strombolis back when the cook hasn't defined the pastry correctly. Fena is the kind of person who puts her foot down, and it doesn't matter whose pinky toe is in the way.
Perhaps one test for the Cool Chick is: do you have any boundaries, any lines, at all? If you're not sure, how well do you know yourself? LIfe is situational, you might say. And I might - might! - agree with you. It's the nature of this time in our culture that things are still in flux -- post-post -modernism has yet to rear a new baby bald head, and I'm not sure anyone cares anymore if it does or not. Whatever Ratzinger says, it's a relative world, truths and perspectives abound, and drawing thick lines around our decisions, our identities, our justices, our penal codes leads to the kind of harm that made the century of my birth a bloody mess of technology screwing ideology through people's heads.
Because when it comes to being a Cool Girl in a relationship, it's one thing to chill with the guys on poker night; it's another when you have to deal with the question of Other People - attractions, crushes, friendships. And while on the one hand I acknowledge and accept both my own and my partner's humanity in this respect, and have no wish to pee on the parade of honesty about hormones and blushes and flirting episodes -- there is a part of me who, like the characters I've mentioned above, longs to be so gorgeous, so ultimate, so absolute, that whomever love me will do so completelly, exclusively -- kind of like a parent or a god...
The question is, is this desire childish, is it unrealistic, is it conditioning? or is it my self-respect speaking?
[please note that all of these comments attempt to accurately reflect thoughts, not actual circumstances]
The book mentioned above is My Year of Meats. A great book, highly recommended.
Basically, we've seen our grandmothers and our mothers -- and sometimes other girls our age, or chicks on Lifetime -- scraping in subservience to their husbands, or holding fast to ideas of Feminity and Respect Due to Woman that causes them to fit into the kinds of stereotypes that make me puke as they live and breathe on shows like "Everybody Loves Raymond" (not everybody, trust me) and on any of those cloned 'family man' shows that feature whiny wives forever having to corral and control their fat, childish, brutish husbands. We've seen these attempts at keeping to the image of the Woman as Pure Saint trying not to let Man dirty her gloves -- and we've disallowed the opposite, the Whore, as a term at all.
We fall in-between. We're cool. We don't mind our boyfriend's porn, we drink and smoke and swear with the best of the boys. we like walking in mud, we like ESPN, we don't ask if we look fat and we don't fuss about needing to go to the bathroom in pods of two or three. We're the best girlfriends our boyfriends (or husbands) have ever had. "You're not like the others," they tell us, leaving the toilet seat up, because we won't complain. "You're not a nag. You're not high -maintenance. You understand me. You're cool."
We blush with pride. Secretly, of course, some of the slovenly behavior gets on our nerves; and we get to the point sometimes where we're ever-so-slightly jealous of the not-cool girls, the ones who pussy-whip their boys into cleaning up and coming home on time and taking out the trash. We begin to wonder: are we cool, are we just really, really lame? Are we compromising, or are we comprising our identities? Are we letting our boyfriends be themselves, or are we letting them get away with murder? It's easier to be complacent instead of demanding. Or do we really not care?
I was visiting my friend Fena, and she started to give me shit about my pregnancy, and my situation. "There's a baby coming," she said, slapping her palms together. "Where's the money? What are you doing? What's the fucking plan?"
"I don't know," I shrugged. "Things are up in the air."
"Up in the air?" she repeated, angrily. "Up in the air?"
I told her my boyfriend was starting his own business.
"What? It's not time for all of that," she practically yelled. "You need to tell him what's what."
She made me feel rather small and stupid and weak. Was I being walked over? Should I make him go get a regular, steady job, instead of supporting him, believing in his dream, hoping he would make it, because I truly believe that happy parents make a happy baby? Am I idealistic, or just relaxed and trusting, about everything working out in the end?
Sometimes it's hard to tell in situations like this. Relationships are all about negotiation and balance, and we have typical ideas about the proper ways these should be realized. What is weakness? What is strength?
To be honest, I don't mind being the main breadwinner of my family. It's the way things have worked out. And I don't mind the toilet seat being up. It's not a sign of disrespect to me -- if men were women, they'd be crying about our constantly putting the seat down, making them have to bend over all the time to put it back up!
I should note that the friends to whom I'm referring, including myself, are smart, educated, strong women in our lateish twenties. And we're not alone. I recently read a book by a Japanese-American author whose main character is a hip, pink-haired postmodern tv producer who cares little for settling down. When she hooks up with a guy similarly roving in nature, a guy she can't predict or pin down, and falls for him, she finds herself wanting that dreaded word that she never wanted to foist on anyone, including herself -- commitment.
I want him just to want me, she thinks to herself in horror -- echoing the sentiments of some googly-eyed B-rate bimbo on a channel I was flipping through the other day, who tells her friend, "I want to believe I'm worth being the only one he wants and looks at and needs."
I should also add that my other friend, the above-mentioned Fena, is not alone in her heated condemnation of what I'm calling here "cool." (I'm not cool in any other sense, believe me.) Every hair coloring commercial touts 'strength' in the form of drawing firm lines about what you as a woman will and will not accept from 'your man.' It's the subject of movies like Waiting to Exhale... though I"m sure Fena would balk at me putting her in this category -- she is a black woman with an afro down to her ass who pumps iron, dates other women, and sends her strombolis back when the cook hasn't defined the pastry correctly. Fena is the kind of person who puts her foot down, and it doesn't matter whose pinky toe is in the way.
Perhaps one test for the Cool Chick is: do you have any boundaries, any lines, at all? If you're not sure, how well do you know yourself? LIfe is situational, you might say. And I might - might! - agree with you. It's the nature of this time in our culture that things are still in flux -- post-post -modernism has yet to rear a new baby bald head, and I'm not sure anyone cares anymore if it does or not. Whatever Ratzinger says, it's a relative world, truths and perspectives abound, and drawing thick lines around our decisions, our identities, our justices, our penal codes leads to the kind of harm that made the century of my birth a bloody mess of technology screwing ideology through people's heads.
Because when it comes to being a Cool Girl in a relationship, it's one thing to chill with the guys on poker night; it's another when you have to deal with the question of Other People - attractions, crushes, friendships. And while on the one hand I acknowledge and accept both my own and my partner's humanity in this respect, and have no wish to pee on the parade of honesty about hormones and blushes and flirting episodes -- there is a part of me who, like the characters I've mentioned above, longs to be so gorgeous, so ultimate, so absolute, that whomever love me will do so completelly, exclusively -- kind of like a parent or a god...
The question is, is this desire childish, is it unrealistic, is it conditioning? or is it my self-respect speaking?
[please note that all of these comments attempt to accurately reflect thoughts, not actual circumstances]
The book mentioned above is My Year of Meats. A great book, highly recommended.
What's the Fuss: I'm having a child. Now give me a reason why.
Somewhere between the suicide clubs of Japan and the “culture of life” stranglehold of western conservatives exist people like me who vacillate along a smaller spectrum of apathy, confusion, disappointment, and delight about being alive.
I've been aware since I was fifteen – perhaps you have, too – that everything is falling apart. Perhaps it's the legacy of the Christian apocalyptic mythos that every generation believes itself to be the last true representative of humanity's good side, dying off and leaving the world to its progeny of evil wolves. And perhaps this ideology extends to our culture as a whole, buoyed by the disturbance and dissonance caused by the rapid technological changes in the last few centuries with which our tiny conciousnesses haven't caught up with yet. I could be biased – I'm speaking very squarely from a vision of history I received in high school when the substitute teacher drew chalk lines on the board to represent dominant civilizations that have come and gone, including a downward arc representing ours. It was the end of the 20th century-- a hundred years of genocide as a byproduct of scientific advance. Whatever the horny capitalists and politicians praised about the children and the future, everyone of us knew that we were doomed. Ideology or reality, my peers and I have an identity constructed of mutually assured destruction – we certainly are not our parents, growing our hair to celebrate the dawning of the age of Aquarius.
How could we? Even illiterate journalists go out of their way these days to quote Yeats about the best sitting on their asses while the worst of full of passionate intensity. The earth is on its last legs. And it's not solely the fact of global warming – it's that no one can agree whether or not it exists, to avoid doing anything about it. At least if we were all on the same side we could feel optimistic about our relationship to the truth. But even Daniel Quinn becomes a popular novelist with college students, instead of the rabble rouser with an aggressive following that would affect any change. Governments lying – in and of itself, that's nothing new; what stings the needle of indifference and dissipation is that they don't even try to hide their lies anymore. We know that power corrupts, and corrupts absolutely; but what are we supposed to do about it? And even though we've all memorized the dictate that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, I think most of us would agree that even those who know history end up going through the rinse cycle. We're complacent to our own evils, our doom our greed. We read Chomsky, shudder, and shrug. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. They cancel each other out. Africa dies of AIDS, and we don't even put out or clamor for We Are The World II – and not just because Michael Jackson is on trial for sexually abusing cancer-ridden poor boys, either. Or because it was a horrid record. It was symbolic, at least, of the idea that something could be done-- we don't even have the energy to imagine that anymore. We know better, we say. We know too much. The thrill is gone.
Even yesterday my best friend confessed she doesn't, she can't, believe in romantic love. " I'm really finding it hard to believe any theory which says that romantic love is real,” she wrote. “I can't see that it is. I want to believe that it is real, but I see again and again, in myself and others, that it isn't. It is chemicals that need to balanced and neuroses that crave feeding and it is knowing that another person can give you something you want or need at the time. I can't deny, however, that it feels real and goodwhile it lasts.”
Doesn't she sound reasonable? A woman facing up to facts? How nice it would be, we sigh, if God and love and Santa Claus all really existed. But they don't.
Against this backdrop of pointlessness and angst, I accidentally got pregnant. Within the context of a world overcrowded with sick and miserable people clawing each other's eyes out for resources and religion, orphans in the millions wanting food while rich people genetically engineer progeny in their champagne flutes, cells in my innards got together to form the beginnings of a separate, a new, life. An avid pro-choice feminist who herself feels dissatisfied with world's dampened shine, an idealist-pessimist whose attempt at realism have been impeded by a desire for the missing magic and mystery my childhood books had promised, I found myself with child. I got pregnant, and though I had all the evidence in the universe to justify aborting the poor thing, just as my body keeps breathing even in the smog and my legs run me away from oncoming traffic that causes the smog, despite the obvious facts that there's no Larger Point or Meaning Left With a Factual Leg to Stand on – my body wanted its creation to live. The survival instinct trumped my 'higher' reasoning. Despite all the material witnesses to the assured collapse of all the reasons to do so, I'm having the kid.
But now that decision has been bodily made, without any satisfactory logical reason (much as the child itself was formed) (and my friend Craig would tell you that none of our decisions, however well-thought out we believe them to be, are ever formed by the factors we conciously tell ourselves) my brain wants answers. And this is why I turn to you. I'm due October first. I've promised myself that by the time the baby appears I will have at least enough evidence in the pro column to issue the child reasons why it is alive and should try to remain so. To keep my conscience clean and my instincts happy will not suffice. They don't even work for me.
So, there it is: why live? What's to live for? Why are you still here? Why not drink the Koo laid? Why propagate? Humans are by and large dumb and mean. Why make more of them?
I'm sure some of you will rush to love or god. That's fine. But I'm hoping for concrete reasons. Please feel free to jot lists, silly or funny, because these can be just as true and essential those that are as deep and serious. Feel free also to expound and expand. Do me one favor – don't flippantly relegate it all to biology or 'for the hell of it.' Help me help this child into this world, welcome him or her properly, justify the innate desire in my blood to keep on keeping on – not just myself , but my genes, the whole race.
Perhaps my baby will not be the only one to benefit.
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