Mo'lasses

I Was Groped on the Subway

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:07:06 -0400

Why hadn’t I yelled, or elbowed him? The truth is, I thought for a moment I might be crazy, that I was making it all up.

This kind of thing happens to women all the time, be it physical groping or a sort of verbal groping. When I worked at a coffeeshop, one customer consistently commented on my body until one day I excused myself to go cry in the office upstairs. My employer suggested we not respond to comments like those in case we lost those customers, but my coworker stood up for me anyway.

“You have a wife and children,” she told the man. “Stop saying disgusting things like that.” Sure enough, he never came back.

After leaving customer service, I didn’t really hear those kinds of comments anymore (at least, not in a civilized setting; the occasional disheveled and most likely dirty passerby yelling “Who wears short shorts?” sucks, but it’s easier to pass off because, well, they’re probably crazy). The other week, however, it happened when I went to Tekserve to get my computer fixed.

I asked the gentleman who was giving out tickets where the bathroom was, and when I came back, I asked him where I should wait until my number was called. ”In my pants,” he said, smirking.

His friend was standing next to him, and I kind of laughed, not really registering how offended I was. It was only after I walked away that I thought to say something. But I wanted to appear easygoing, not like the rabid feminist that can’t take a lyric like Ludacris’ “She’s a lady in the street/ But a freak in the bed.” Plus he had really nice eyes, so I permitted myself to think it was okay. Maybe he was flirting.

Seriously, though, what made him think it was anywhere near appropriate to say something like that to me? The worst part is that I felt bad for being offended and then I felt worse for not responding when my friends reacted, saying I should have stood up for myself.

The subway perp in the article was arrested, but less extreme harassment in supposedly civilized settings is still all too permissible. We need to find a balance between telling a woman there was nothing she could do, as the officer told the subway rider, and telling women that yes, there is something you can do.

Women's work

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:01:52 -0400

Today, one of my classmates read aloud a feature she wrote about women who start families later in life. Basically, professional women, gay and straight, in New York City are waiting until their early to mid-thirties to even think about having kids.

When I heard that women in the rest of the country start having kids at age 27, I realized that I’m 26 and nowhere near ready to have kids; but lately, I have been thinking that it would be nice to get married. (Incidentally, as part of this class we also had to create a blog, and the author’s focused on how she wanted to get married but her partner didn’t. I think it’d be pretty great if she published this article and it landed her a column about marriage conversations with her partner. Of course if she did that, she probably wouldn’t have a partner anymore.)

Watching a married couple like Kevin and Jenny on The League— I know, it’s The League, but still—I crave security I’ve never needed before. I think it all started when I visited my boyfriend’s family in Florida a few weeks ago. We stayed with his sister and her husband in their house in a gated community in Plantation, FL, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. Marble tile floors, casual and formal dining room, pool. Must have been $6 million maybe, but I haven’t inherited the real estate gene my father so desperately wants me to have.

Anyway, the husband was a lawyer and my boyfriend’s sister worked maybe two days a week as a physical therapist. The rest of the time, she stayed in that magnificent house and took care of the kids. Even though I saw how brittle her and her husband’s relationship had become, and knew that one of her sons was already seeing a therapist, I kind of wanted that life. Sacrificing the constant excitement/anxiety of a freelance writing life for a kind of boring, consumptive existence with plush wall-to-wall carpeting and a Saturday afternoon pool parties seemed okay to me.

But now I think about my mom, who went to UNC Chapel Hill to become a doctor, did her residency in the Bronx, and wound up with an associate professorship at Harvard and a position at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Despite the possible complications of having a baby after 35, she waited to have me until after she was 41 because she didn’t want to regret having me. Even after that, she managed to balance a work life with a home life, even though I had a babysitter and when my mom was around, she was usually stressed out.

There’s an article on The Huffington Post about why older moms are better, which I thought was going to be a great point to end with. Instead, all the points are about some variation on how older moms a) know that Kraft-based diets are seriously the best, y’all, b) know how to teach their kids manners, and c) don’t need to compete with their kids but still look pretty hot for their age. None, none of the points are about having a career before kids. Because that’s the best part.

Obviously this is a conversation we need to keep having. Which is why my classmate needs to try and get this piece published.

I blocked out the names in this Twitter screenshot because I...

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:57:00 -0400

I blocked out the names in this Twitter screenshot because I don’t want to incriminate anyone, but I am interested in examining the semantics of this argument. For your reading purposes, these unlabeled tweets read like a conversation (i.e. one tweet per person).

As you can see, last night a music website tweeted “The majority of people are ‘sleeping around’ with music… not falling in love.” To me, it wasn’t a particularly inventive metaphor, not was it applicable to the situation, so I dismissed it. Another music writer, however, accused the site of slut shaming. Naturally they got defensive and the whole situation got out of control, down to the barely concealed sarcasm of both parties telling the other to “have a good night.”

As the child of two separated parents, I have a compulsive need to mediate, so that’s what I’m going to do now. While I don’t agree with the website’s thought process, I think it was just a dumb tweet; it did not warrant such loaded mudslinging.

Unfortunately the OED doesn’t have the etymology of “sleeping around,” but the Free Dictionary equates it with promiscuity, “casual and indiscriminate sex.” First of all, sleeping around is only applicable to sex, so it doesn’t work in the original context (seriously, it’s such a stupid metaphor); however, “casual” and “indiscriminate” are accurate terms for how many people consume music. For example, at a panel I recently attended, it was pointed out that many EDM listeners don’t know who sings their favorite songs, which are more often than not chart-toppers. “Indiscriminate.”

But the music writer makes a good point, one that my professor constantly hammers into our heads: writers need to be careful about their word choices. If this website author really, truly thought about his word choice (I’m assuming it’s a male), either he wasn’t thinking very hard or is simply out of touch with conversations about sexuality.

As for accusing him of slut-shaming, well, that’s an entire conversation unto itself. So let’s take a break and tangent into exhibit A, that of Danny Brown receiving oral sex from a fan at a concert. According to reports, this female fan pulled his pants down and proceeded to perform fellatio (we’re nothing but scientific here at Mo’lasses, folks) on him. And he, not the girl, was slut-shamed (if we can extrapolate slut-shaming, which usually refers to women, to men) when she was the one that initiated the questionable sexual behavior.

For the purposes of my argument, Kitty— a rapper who immediately afterward defended Danny’s actions— pointed out that she was accused of being a slut-shamer when she wrote that she had no respect for a female concertgoer who would pull a man’s pants down onstage. While that’s arguably a case of Girls Blaming The Other Girl Before The Man At The Heart Of The Matter, the takeaway is that the act of calling someone out for slut-shaming is on the verge of becoming another scarlet letter as potent as the act of slut-shaming itself. She was slut-shamed for slut-shaming, essentially.

Pointing out slut-shaming when it appears can be a powerful tool to reclaim female sexuality; but after the events involving Brown and this recent Twitter spat, however mild it may be in the light of day, come dangerously close to the boy who cried wolf. There’s a very fine line between mounting a real campaign to end slut-shaming in all its forms and reducing it to just another hashtag. So, let’s try to keep it on the right side of that line by not using it unless it’s entirely necessary. Was the music website slut-shaming? Not really. But I do agree that the metaphor was sloppy and a perfect example of hit-baiting, and should have been called out on that front.

uncoolmag: 100 feels like a nice number for a #1 issue. Thank...

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:00:42 -0400

uncoolmag:

100 feels like a nice number for a #1 issue. Thank you.

agreed.

Taking a Second

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:33:07 -0400

dynamofire:

i just realized how many stories i’ve written in 2013 that i’ve truly, deeply cared about. it’s a big number. despite the fact that i’m still pretty broke, i had to take a long moment to just feel purely good about my work. i’m doing what i love. fuck everyone who’s trying to make this impossible for people in the future.

Especially after Spinner shut down. Apparently that’s not the first time their parent company walked in and fired everyone involved in their music section. Huge bummer, and loss for anyone who cares about the future of music writing.

One night stands

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:04:00 -0400

I have mixed feelings about my subscription to GQ. Usually, I tell people, “I get it for the articles,” which is true. Their fashion is nice to look at but don’t really apply to me, and at one point their travel spread recommended Stockholm because the women were easy. Frequent contributor Wells Tower is one of my favorite authors and the writers are usually spot-on with their arts coverage, even if there’s an article about EDM every other month.

For a while part of me felt like it was just my version of a desperate attempt to be one of the guys. Like the dude that reads Pitchfork not because he’s actually interested in music, but because he needs something to talk about when he goes out with his friends. Once I talked to a male musician who also couldn’t really explain his attraction to GQ, I was relieved. Women have to worry about the naked shaver at the gym, too.

One of the things I most like about GQ is Siobhan Rosen, their presumably female sex columnist. I’m sure every one of the magazine’s readers has a crush on her. She writes flippantly and knowledgeably about sex for men from a woman’s perspective, and her recent guide one-night stands, fittingly titled The Gentleman’s Guide to a One-Night Stand,is no different. And it’s mostly gender-neutral, save for the point, “Do Not Take a Picture of the Woman You Slept With Getting Dressed and Send It To Your Friends.” That type of language places women and men on an equal playing field as opposed to putting the man in the position of power.

Today, Complex Media, another publication (albeit solely online) that caters to a young male demographic, published their own 10-step guide to one-night stands. And, okay. Obviously it’s not meant for me. Dr. Ava Cadell is a sex therapist for the stars, after all. But still! Some especially irritating excerpts:

“Stock up on the latest clitoral and G-spot vibrators. Let her see they are brand new in their packaging so that she knows they have never been used before.” First of all, it’s expensive for the dude to keep buying lady sex toys that he can’t use by himself. And second, maybe it’s just not my style, but I would be a little unnerved if a man brought out a sample tray of pocket rockets like an assortment of cheese cubes.

“Give her lots of physical compliments as you slowly kiss and caress her body for at least 20 minutes. This will help give her more sexual confidence.” I don’t need a man’s permission to feel good about myself! Sure, compliments help, but I don’t need a “You’re beautiful, you know that?” in order to enjoy myself during sex.

If she has an orgasm before you and then leaves, “she may be testing you to see if you deserve being her boy toy. Women often reward a guy after he has satisfied her sexual needs.” Because women only use orgasms as a power play. Those succubi only care about male pleasure insofar as it lets them have their own.

“Know She Calls the Shots.” I guess this one is okay, but it also suggests that men need a reminder to give women permission to wear the pants in bed. That they need permission in the first place.

Ranting about Complex’s opinions on women is a like shooting fish in a barrel, but they make it so easy. It’s just too bad that most men out there will probably read their breakdown of one-night stands before they’ll read GQ’s. We don’t need more men who think the key to a successful one-night stand is massage oil.

Grimes, the Waif With a Tumblr

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:35:15 -0400

Yesterday, Canadian electronic pop experimentalist Grimes, a.k.a. Claire Boucher, posted a missive to her Tumblr. She wrote about a lot of things (you can read her entire statement here) but mostly she talks about: being infantilized for refusing to be sexualized, enduring condescension from other male musicians, and message board users talking about “fucking” her. It was a thoughtful best taken as is, so it’s unfortunate that SPIN’s Marc Hogan saw fit to analyze it.

“Of course, it’s not all perfect, but that doesn’t detract from the overall impact,” he writes, pointing out that being “cute” can and should be ascribed to her music if not her person, and that everyone, not just her, is usually forced to compromise their morals to make a living. It’s a far cry from Jezebel’s unapologetic celebration of her “epic feminist manifesto,” which if anything suggests Boucher shouldn’t have felt the need to justify her complaints with a smiley face emoticon.

Both of those analyses slightly miss the point. A few months ago, Grimes deleted her Tumblr, and then reactivated it, and then deleted it, and then reactivated it after critics started tearing down her pop-heavy best of 2012 list. That’s an oversimplification, but the point is that she didn’t want to deal with people decontextualizing what she said, by making fun of her for liking Mariah Carey or calling her music— or her— “cute.” Rich Juzwiak incorrectly argued that someone with a viral music video should understand “how the internet works,” so essentially she should have expected and been prepared for this feedback.

Which suggests that Grimes is beholden to everyone else’s opinion of her. The thing is, she wasn’t asking for anyone’s opinion. She wasn’t writing “A Poem for Dzhokar,” which was an easy target because a) it was in poor taste and b) it seems like an attention ploy from Amanda “Fucking” Palmer, but more importantly, c) it was just poorly written. In that case, Palmer seemed to be solicit attention with a controversial piece of art that warranted criticism on multiple levels. The point of Grimes’ post, on the other hand, was not to have holes poked in it.

As a music critic myself, I understand other music writers’ need to dissect a musician’s entire output, both musical and non-musical. But as a band I recently interviewed said, “Don’t read too much into it.” And of course, when she feels the need to clarify what she said and assuage people who were offended, Jezebel says she’s backing down. Boucher just can’t seem to win in this situation.

dynamofire: I wrote the first essay in this, the first issue...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:08:26 -0400

dynamofire:

I wrote the first essay in this, the first issue of Uncool: “a reader-supported music publication for curious people.” I defend Something Corporate and talk about getting made fun of & feeling like less of a feminist for loving them.

There are a bunch of other awesome essays in this issue (a couple of my favorites are Harley Brown’s “Repeat Offenders: Pressing Play Over and Over Again” and Jill Mapes’ “Why Bother? Talking to Myself About Weezer”), so I’d recommend that you snag a copy.

thanks for the kind words, bb. everyone should read this great publication with superlative contributors.

NYT video on Martin Richard vigil

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:32:48 -0400

NYT video on Martin Richard vigil:

Usually the New York Times’ videos are well-done, and I understand they’re hurting for revenue, but it was a poor decision to have a life insurance ad beforehand.

My Dad, the original hipster

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 23:34:13 -0500

In retrospect, I feel a little foolish asking my dad for old photographs of himself. I wanted to submit them to Dads Are the Original Hipster, forgetting my dad — who was born in 1925 — was wearing short shorts and Oxfords before your dad and killing it back in the day. He might be a contender for Scott Schuman’s pictures of old styles on The Sartorialist. At any rate, it’s a good thing I got more than I bargained for because he sent me reams of war photographs.

My dad served in the navy during World War II and the Korean War, which is a fun fact to drop on unsuspecting listeners. I’ve already seen a few other pictures, which are compiled in a book and dominated by black-and-white palm trees and bikini-clad babes with captions in old-fashioned typeface like “Maxine. YUM YUM.” At this point, I only have a few other scraps of information: he fought under General MacArthur, split his head open when he longboarded in Hawaii, and he brought his tennis racket.

That gets me every time. The idea of a young recruit thinking he would have time to play tennis, never mind the possibility of being blown apart, makes me indescribably sad. Like a more intense version of when you re-visit a particularly pathetic diary entry and want to go back in time and hug yourself. I don’t know if my dad feels the same way because I haven’t really gotten the chance to talk to him about it, which is another thing that makes me sad but at least something I can change.

For one of my classes, we read excerpts from Ernie’s War, a compendium of soldier Ernie Pyle’s dispatches from WWII. The fact that he’s named Ernie is almost as sad as my dad’s tennis racket, until you read his prose and wonder how he could face down the terror of an empty page with such clarity. (Probably in the same way he faced down the Germans at D-Day, but no matter.) At one point he writes,

“The most ironic piece of equipment marking our beach — this beach of first despair, then victory — is a tennis racket that some soldier had brought along. It lies lonesomely on the sand, clamped in its rack, not a string broken.”

When I read that, I felt the way women awaiting their husband/son/brother/father’s returns, hearing about each new death with that painful stab of adrenaline that subsides, like a bad dream, when you realize it’s not yours. But I should still get these stories from my dad before it’s too late.

On another note, pictures forthcoming.

When I realize someone is taking a picture of me

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:58:16 -0500

i laughed so long and so hard at this

whatshouldwecallme:

Expectation:

Reality:

Manorexia and Pot Psychology

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:54:00 -0500

This post has been edited from the original version.

This morning, the New York Times published an article about manorexia, reminding us that men are just as obsessive about their bodies as women. Tracie Egan Morrissey, torch-bearer and author of Jezebel’s column Pot Psychology, wrote a response that I found infuriating at the time. While I don’t think it’s quite as offensive as I initially thought, Morrissey’s article might still have benefited from some more thought beforehand.

I wasn’t exactly predisposed to like her in the first place from that time she joked, visibly drunk on-screen, about rape. And then she titled the article “Men May Have Body Image Issues But They Don’t Even Come Close To What Women Go Through,” which isn’t much better than NYT author Douglas Quenqua’s opening sentence (“It is not just girls these days who are consumed by an unattainable body image.”) Both trivialize very real problems based on gender, shaky ground given the fluidity of sexual definitions “these days.”

For most of the article, Morrissey does a good job invalidating with proof the NYT author’s assertion that this is a new phenomenon. But in the last three paragraphs, she stumbles onto some shaky ground.

Suddenly six seasons of The Situation has more sway than hundreds of years of hot-bodied Renaissance statues from whence the term “chiseled” actually originated? Psh. If anything, those sculptures and paintings indicated how media images of male bodies haven’t really changed that much, and certainly not in comparison to how often the ideal body for a female gets a revision. From Botticelli to flappers to Marilyn Monroe to Twiggy to J. Lo, the expectations of women’s bodies drastically change. Women will never be able to keep up with how we’re supposed to look because the connotation and definition of “fat ass” seems to change almost yearly.

Again, the first two and a half sentences of this paragraph are the strongest because they directly refute Quenqua’s point that this is a new phenomenon. As soon as she gets starts with “certainly not in comparison to how often the ideal body for a female gets a revision,” she’s changed the tune of her argument. Quenqua isn’t trying to say that men have it more difficult than woman. That’s what she’s saying.

None of this is to say, however, that men don’t feel pressure. Our culture values the thin and the muscular, not the fat, and this applies to men, too. But hardly to the same degree; you’re certainly not going to see fat sitcom wives anytime soon.

So while we can empathize with young men dealing with the anguish that can come with not liking what you see in the mirror, most guys will could never even begin to scratch the surface of understanding the widespread, crazy body image shit that goes on in girl culture. Until the extreme focus on one’s physique becomes an inherent part of “boy culture,” there’s no comparison.

I don’t even know where to begin. The first paragraph is fine, because it’s a throwaway acknowledgement to the counter-argument and true, at that. As Vulture recently pointed out, similar to Matthew McConaughey’s David Wooderson, “Male actors keep getting older; their female counterparts stay the same age.” And it’s true: men are more often allowed to get older and less attractive onscreen while women are not.

But to even suggest that one type of body image disorder is better than the other is just ignorant and unfair. She doesn’t know what men go through, just as they don’t know what women go through. Quenqua isn’t claiming that it’s easier to be a man with a body image disorder than a woman; all he’s saying, however erroneously, is that this is a new phenomenon. Stick with the facts, please, Morrissey.

“Don’t you love the New York Times?” my mom...

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:07:00 -0500

“Don’t you love the New York Times?” my mom asked me recently. I hesitated before responding even though I do, I really do, love the New York Times. Maybe I even hedged my response, like “Yeah, I guess” or “Usually.” I do this other times, too. The Beatles, for instance. I took pride in being the person that crushed Beatles fans (even though they didn’t really give a shit whether I liked the Beatles or not because it’s not like they need any more acolytes) by saying, “I never understood what was so great about them.” Of course, I came around when I heard the White Album in a coffee shop and realized the Beatles were pretty amazing. The same thing happened with Dostoevsky: I didn’t want to fall onto the Russians-are-the-best Siberian POW camp either. But then I read The Brothers Karamazov and I grudgingly acquiesced. Maybe I’m a little ironic?

In my defense, the reason I don’t always love The New York Times is a little hypocritical. I love Sunday Styles articles about thing I don’t know much about, like Brooklyn artisanal chocolates or the pool at the Wythe Hotel. I do have a problem, however, when they come out with articles that hit a little too close to home, like fathers with half-sibling children or, most recently, this article about hipsters.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to add to the growing comments section with gripes about how slightly older people “just don’t get it” or how hipsters really care, you guys. I might point you to my favorite commenter, who says, “The 1990s were ‘relatively irony-free’? Somewhere, Jerry Seinfeld is rolling his eyes.” The first thing I can’t help from pointing out that recent NYT articles about hipsters don’t even get the fashions right. I know what a hipster looks like, and he would not be wearing that tie-dyed bag with those high-tops and that Justin Bieber t-shirt. Nor would Exhibit B be wearing those round glasses with that baseball hat. (And be bald, I might add.) Like the article itself, most of the set pieces are all there, they just haven’t been assembled with the knowledge of what an IRL hipster looks like.

A good friend directed me to L’Hote’s well-written response, which gets to the heart of the issue with the “cult of the trivial,” trivializing that which is actually important to us. One of the most seemingly inconsequential example of this is the inability to gracefully accept compliments, minimizing acknowledgement of something we cared enough about to do well (“What, this old thing?”). And it’s not our fault. There have been a lot of articles recently about how pathologically unhappy we are as a society because we train ourselves and are bombarded with stimuli to be continually striving for better, dissatisfied with what we have.

Recently, a woman wrote into The Awl’s advice column about missing her ex-boyfriend despite being in a happy, fulfilling marriage.Heather Havrilesky, a.k.a. Polly Esther, wrote, “We all hear about how spoiled we are all the fucking time, without any consideration for the fact that our economy (and our culture) are constructed around instilling discontent.” Do we trivialize the things that are important to us and that make us happy, like family and the work we do, with dismissive and pithy remarks- this advice-seeker finished with, “Do I just need to be slapped and reminded that I am extremely lucky to have the life I have? Go ahead, slap me”- that are the calling cards of irony, all so that we can be malcontents? It’s something that seems to apply to all of us, hipsters and non-hipsters alike. As “Freddie” says, “So many people I know feel hostage to their self-defense.”

That’s why Wampole picked the hipster as a scapegoat. She’s acting in the ironic self-defense she decries, trying for cultural cache with safe commentary regarding a tired conversation about a generation poised to succeed her. In her defense, she acknowledges that she sees herself in hipsters and that’s why she wanted to examine it; but then she runs far away from her comparisons with the back-in-my-day copout that the ’90s were defined by New Sincerity (David Foster Wallace? Okay, but have you read his essay on the Oscars of Porn?). It’s just hypocritical. If hipsters are as narcissistic as she makes them out to be, wouldn’t they in theory regularly conduct the “honest self-inventory” she suggests? I do. Woody Allen did. I’m sure John Stewart does every night before he engages in largely ironic conversation, as he did before he honestly tore apart Tucker Carlson.

Maybe someone should have told her watch the Hipster Olympics. And yes, I’m listening to The Smiths.

Get ready guys.

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:28:51 -0400

Get ready guys.

I wrote about Hot Chip's new record.

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:08:42 -0400

I wrote about Hot Chip's new record.

Photo

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:49:05 -0400

Strangers with candy

Fri, 04 May 2012 00:05:00 -0400

There must be something about me that screams like a neon sign, “Strangers! Talk to me.” I have been approached by no less than four people on the street, while I’m walking, headphones in, with no provocation except for possibly wearing a shorter skirt than I should have been (but then we’re getting into the “she asked for it,” and I think that’s bullshit/just don’t want to go there right now.)

Once, a guy approached me to compliment my backpack as I was speed-walking down 8th Avenue and just kind of kept walking with me. Another time, I left the library and had just set foot in my favorite vintage store when some pony-tailed man accosted me, “You were just at Bobst, right?” Creepy, right? And then, I had just gotten off the train in Williamsburg and was trying to get service by waving my iPhone in that awkward figure-eight shape when a woman asked if I could direct her to Kent Street. Turns out she was going to a Burning Man party. “Isn’t it a little early?” I asked her.

But tonight really takes the cake. I was, again, leaving the library, walking down 3rd Street, thinking I might get some Japanese food, when I feel a poke in the arm. So I turn and there’s a balding young man wearing a purple velour blazer. He says in a Baltic accent, “Isn’t it fortunate we happen to be walking down the street at the same time, going in the same direction?”

“Sure,” I said. I had that sinking feeling you get when you volunteer for something and you get picked, or when you call someone and you don’t get the voicemail.

“Vat is your name?”

“Harley.” I really tried to get over my need to fill awkward silences. “What’s your name?”

“Ilya.” After telling me he’s “terrified” about a new job he got, he says, “You’re not going to the train by chance, are you?” I tell him I am.

“Thank the gods! First we are on the same street, and now we are going to the same train station!” The “thank the gods part” was what really did me in. Why should I continue to entertain this person who thinks it’s acceptable to approach a total stranger on the street and then do nothing to sustain the conversation? Plus, we’re in New York. Like 9/10 of the people on the same street! Headed in the same direction! Who don’t know each other! are probably going to the subway stop at the end of the block.

So I say, “Listen, you seem like a really nice guy, but I’d rather walk alone right now.”

“But we still have two more streets!”

“Well, why don’t you keep walking at the same speed, and I’ll just walk slower.” Whereupon I called my mom. I mean, really.

Womenfolk

Wed, 02 May 2012 01:58:00 -0400

The good thing about having “the most associative mind of anyone I’ve ever met,” according to an ex-coworker, is it’s easy for me to sustain choose-your-own-adventure conversations. The bad thing is that I feel self-conscious when talking about “serious” things, like articles I’ve read or theses I’m writing, because my mind has trouble hanging onto facts as quickly as it picks up new trains of thought.

This is all to say that I had a lot of thoughts about women this morning as I navigated the MTA in a sleep-deprived stupor. Several kind of unbelievably related things were happening at the same time, which I’ll list in an attempt to make sense of them myself:

1. I was reading a book of essays on Joanna Newsom (for a research paper, but thank god the book is unmarked. Yes, I would have been embarrassed if someone saw me reading Visions of Joanna Newsom on the subway), and one author said her song “Peach, Plum, Pear” “is forced to acknowledge the persistence of the unambiguous archetype of women-as-fruit-to-be-plucked-and-bought.”

2. Speaking of womb metaphors, I was on my way to my dermatologist’s office because I’m taking Accutane, which requires the patient to be on two forms of birth control because isotretinoin causes severe birth defects. Not wanting to be on the pill and not having an IUD yet, my dermatologist suggested I take a vow of abstinence. (To get the prescription refilled, you have to pass an online questionnaire that basically makes sure you know how not to get pregnant. And I failed the first time.)

3. I think my doctor’s office building also houses a preschool, because I’ve shared the elevator with parents and the occasional child (one of whom wrinkled his nose pretty adorably and asked me, “Why do you have an earring in your nose?”). Today, a couple of mothers were discussing an incident at school, in which children pretended to use guns. According to one of them, she found out it’s called “power play” and it’s mostly harmless.

4. In the New York Times yesterday, the Room for Debate topic was “Motherhood vs. Feminism.” I read it today, starting with a response entitled, “Good Riddance to Feminism!” So I did a little research on LaShaun Williams and surprise! She’s a raging conservative! Past blog posts titles include: “Welfare, Food Stamps- What More of a ‘Safety Net’ Do the Very Poor Expect?” and “Shame On the Gay Mom Using Her Son as a Political Pawn.”

5. I read a completely inconsequential Glamour interview between Stephenie Meyer and Kristen Stewart in which the latter’s pearls of wisdom to her readership included the relationship advice, “Don’t settle.” Which I thought was rather easy for her to say.

It’s late, I want to publish this, and I can’t think how to finish it right now. When I was still lucid, possible topics include: growing up with a working mother, putting my education and career before relationships, Robert Pattinson, etc.

Have at it, folks!

Saw this at the grocery store. Sometimes, I think food companies...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 18:07:20 -0400

Saw this at the grocery store. Sometimes, I think food companies should hire a young person/narcotics specialist to tell them certain things…

Cankles

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:15:00 -0400

A biology professor of mine once led a lecture entirely on post-modernism. I don’t remember most of what he said- except when he pointed out that any theory that doesn’t stand up under its own definition is bullshit- but one thing in particular stood out to me: Citing his adverse reaction to the theory that invasive species might not be such a bad thing for the environment after all, he said, “If someone tells you something that makes you angry, you should probably pay attention to what they’re saying, because you might believe some of it.” Which, ironically, pissed me off, since at the time I harbored unfathomable rage toward creationists and I did not want to believe that part of me secretly wanted to visit the Creation Museum.

Fast-forward to this year, when quite a few things pissed me off. First and foremost was that article about tUnE-yArDs (I still haven’t quite forgiven Chuck Klosterman), but then there was this (why men insist on writing articles that will never get them laid again, I have no idea), and then the fact that generally sex-positive/progressive Nerve.com lists “Skinny Fat” as a body type category on their dating website… The point is, there are a lot of theories and articles and ideas which make me angry but that I don’t necessarily believe; or at least, I don’t want to think that I believe them enough to make me forcefully not believe them. Right?

And then, there are articles like this gem. Like last time, let’s break this down a little. The column is called Is It Wrong? If you have to ask, you probably already know the answer, which means you’re wasting your own time as much as mine. Second, the article itself is called “Eight Pleasantly Plump Female Musicians We’d Like to Get Down With.” It’s so absurd that my attention goes to the most mundane absurdities first. Like, eight? Is that because it’s the shape of the women you jerk off to and then pretend it’s a “pity bang”? And “we”? Who, you and the rest of your dickwad friends who live in “Bro”-ward? I checked out Ric Delgado- whose name, ironically, means “tiny penis” in Spanish (it’s actually “thin,” but who’s counting)- on Facebook, and he looks like what you’d expect. He looks, as one commentator said, like someone who would “bring up fried chicken and waffles in the paragraph about a black woman or insinuate that Jennifer Hudson would feel better about her murdered family if she got to fuck Ric Delgado.”

This article irritates me, but it doesn’t inflame the kind of collective-righteous indignation that spawns timeless, exciting conversations with an article like this reaction. It’s too poorly written and blatantly insulting to stimulate any kind of vaguely enervating intellectual reaction. Ric Delgado is like that person who yelled at my roommate for accidentally cutting in line at Whole Foods: as she said, “I may have cut the line, but he will always be an asshole.” Ric Delgado may have written an article that has already gone viral (I can hear the typing sounds of hundred angry reaction pieces already), but he will always be a misogynistic asshole.

The problem I have with this article started when I almost Tweeted about it. My finger was on the trigger when I remembered Maura Johnston’s article about Charlie Sheen and SEO, or “search engine optimization” (it’s okay, I didn’t know what it was until more recently than I would care to admit). You should read the whole thing, but the crux of her argument is that the Internet feeds off a single topic, no matter the conversation surrounding the topic. I.e. someone will tweet, “No more news about Charlie Sheen!” and search engines will only pick up “Charlie Sheen” as a buzzword, thus furthering the conversation around that particular word. To wit, if I were to tweet about Ric Delgado’s chauvinistic, self-hating love of curvaceous women, the article would only receive more hits and be deemed a success, at least by SEO standards.

So now what? Are we supposed to boycott things that piss us off instead of opening up a conversation about them, for fear that an exchange will start a vicious cycle that will only further ignorant articles blindly scrabbling for “the many pageviews it will acquire”? (Thanks again, clever commentator!) Or are we supposed to subvert SEO with secret codes? I certainly don’t know the answer. All I know is that this doesn’t make me angry. It just makes me depressed. And that’s worse.