So one of the things that I like most about myself is how well I know myself. I think I have a pretty low self-deception rate. This isn't an accident, either; I do it on purpose. I've always been self-possessed. Some of it is because I'm bookish and shy with strangers, some of it is because I'm a writer and reader and I'm able to analyze myself the way I might a character in a book I'm reading or a story I'm writing. A lot of it is probably just my nature.
In this context, I'm explaining because one of the things about pregnancy and motherhood that I was warned about, or heard a lot about, was this propensity that people have for offering unsolicited "advice". I braced against it, feeling like I know myself and my husband well enough to know what we want and need when it comes to parenthood. There hasn't been a constant stream of untoward encounters as expected. There was a lady in the grocery store who told me oh so kindly that there's some padded thingy you can use in the carts to protect your baby, since my daughter was just sitting in there, only protected by the little seat belt and the fact that she can sit up and hold onto the front of the cart for balance if I happen to careen around a corner at 90mph. Surprisingly, no one's been bitchy about me being a working mom or for weaning my daughter at barely eight months or whatever.
But the other day, I felt judged not as a mother, but as a person, and I was blindsided by it. I must have gotten pregnant and assumed that from then on, people would only judge me in the motherhood context.
Since mid-pregnancy, I've been involved in a non-profit program where pregnant women / new mothers can meet with a nurse, because we were new in town and were too broke for things like birthing classes. The nurse I meet with asks a lot of general questions about me and my life and my marriage that I consider entirely a therapist's arena. I didn't mind at first; frankly, I was lonely and happy to talk to anyone. I found her a tad condescending sometimes, but she was otherwise helpful and I appreciated the extra opinions and advice, backed by training and experience. Who cares if she was irritating or condescending or whatever when it comes to parenting things? I'm okay with that, since that is why I see her; it's my prerogative whether I ignore her or listen, but I'm not going to get pissed when she answers a question I ask in a way that I don't like or doesn't make sense for us.
But during the last visit, she focused on several things about me: How anxious I am about things like money; how I don't seem to accept any suggestions (even when I've asked for them); how I act like there's nothing I can do to change my circumstances; and how I seemed like I wasn't taking some of her suggestions seriously. I think I did a good job of calmly replying like this: When she asks, "What's been going on? How did it feel?" then I'm brought back to that thing and so I'm emotional. Sorry about that (not). Sometimes it seems like I'm vetoing everything because I'm talking about problems that I had in the time since I last saw you, but we've already found a solution, but I listen because it can't hurt. And when I say that "Some of the time" I blame myself unnecessarily, it's erroneous for a conversation relating to motherhood since I've always done that.
Oh yes, I am anxious; it's part of my neuroticism. I worry about shit more than I should, and I know it; I simultaneously worry and am aware that I'm doing everything I can (within reason and sanity) to solve whatever I'm anxious about. It seems like I feel like I can't change things about my circumstances because I can't. As I said to my husband after the fact, if I made a $100K a year, I'd still worry about money. No underlying psychological reason, I'm just a weirdo like that.
But asking me if I've ever tried to change my thinking regarding my anxieties about money or my stance that there's some things you can't change, and implying that I need to, that's not cool.
So, in short, I wanted to get that off my chest, since I won't ever be rude to the woman, I will just calmly explain myself though I really don't have to justify anything to her, perhaps with a bit of an edge and almost always without being able to meet her eyes lest I am unable to stop giving her the stink eye.
Really, the point here is that I didn't appreciate what she said to me because I do know myself. I wonder how a woman who has said to me that she can see that I'm intelligent and introspective (thank you verra much) could possibly imagine I'm unaware that it's stupid and counterproductive to be defensive about receiving advice I've solicited, anxious about money, and borderline-melodramatic when I explain how I felt about something? My point is, I am perfectly aware that knowing myself isn't the same as always being right, isn't the same as knowing everything, and doesn't mean that I'm perfect just the way I am.
But it does mean that I'm allowed to be skeptical about the wondrous effects of vitamin B complexes.
And it does mean that I know that I am perfectly within my rights to tell this woman that I appreciate all the help, but I'm not finding her "Is-this-suffering-from-post-partum?" questionnaires beneficial anymore. Will I? Experience and self-knowledge says no. Room for improvement: What's life without it, right?
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Indie Love Story vs YA Fairy Tale
A couple of days ago, I finished reading a young adult fairy tale and I watched an indie love story.
The book is Enchanted by Alethea Kontis (and isn't that an amazing name?) and the movie is Like Crazy starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones. Enchanted is about a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter named Sunday who meets a talking frog, and unbeknownst to her, turns him back into a man, an old enemy of her family's. Every part of Sunday's family and life are pieces of recognizable fairy tales, but the story isn't overcrowded or obnoxiously self-aware, it's sincere. The characters are cleanly defined in an effortless way, and the relationships are both simple to understand and not simple at all. Like Crazy is about two college students, Jacob and Anna, who fall in love in a lovely montage of simplicity, but Anna, a British student in L.A., overstays her student visa. Their love story is about their separation and how and when they come back together over a span of several years. The actors were natural and the balance between the silent montages and the scenes with dialogue was well-done, but there were very few moments of visibly heightened emotion.
Both the book and the movie are simple, and I mean that in the best way. Their creators didn't succumb to any pressures to turn simple love stories into something larger or unwieldy. Don't mistake me, I love complicated and extravagant stories, but these stories are driven by the characters, and they didn't require anything fancy. The chapters in the book and scenes in the movie flow one into the other, although they switch from following the male to the female and to them both when they're together.
Enchanted has a sweetness and a sincerity that pulled me in and endeared me to (almost) all of the characters, and even if I was sure of the ending, I enjoyed all of the ins and outs of the storytelling, the way the myriad pieces of existing fairy tales were woven together to form the ending. But while I enjoyed the realistic relationship, look and dialogue, and the progression of Jacob and Anna's love story, Like Crazy didn't show me enough of the characters for me to really care how their story ended.
Like Crazy was watchable and the sort-of-melancholy texture of the storytelling stayed with me, and I was grateful that it didn't fall prey to some of the typical pitfalls of the indie love story, like grandiosity or an overpowering soundtrack. But neither the characters nor the plot had enough weight for me to take it seriously, while Enchanted, intended for young adults who are often treated as emotional featherweights, touched me with its clever use of classic fairy tales to tell an engaging romance.
The book is Enchanted by Alethea Kontis (and isn't that an amazing name?) and the movie is Like Crazy starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones. Enchanted is about a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter named Sunday who meets a talking frog, and unbeknownst to her, turns him back into a man, an old enemy of her family's. Every part of Sunday's family and life are pieces of recognizable fairy tales, but the story isn't overcrowded or obnoxiously self-aware, it's sincere. The characters are cleanly defined in an effortless way, and the relationships are both simple to understand and not simple at all. Like Crazy is about two college students, Jacob and Anna, who fall in love in a lovely montage of simplicity, but Anna, a British student in L.A., overstays her student visa. Their love story is about their separation and how and when they come back together over a span of several years. The actors were natural and the balance between the silent montages and the scenes with dialogue was well-done, but there were very few moments of visibly heightened emotion.
Both the book and the movie are simple, and I mean that in the best way. Their creators didn't succumb to any pressures to turn simple love stories into something larger or unwieldy. Don't mistake me, I love complicated and extravagant stories, but these stories are driven by the characters, and they didn't require anything fancy. The chapters in the book and scenes in the movie flow one into the other, although they switch from following the male to the female and to them both when they're together.
Enchanted has a sweetness and a sincerity that pulled me in and endeared me to (almost) all of the characters, and even if I was sure of the ending, I enjoyed all of the ins and outs of the storytelling, the way the myriad pieces of existing fairy tales were woven together to form the ending. But while I enjoyed the realistic relationship, look and dialogue, and the progression of Jacob and Anna's love story, Like Crazy didn't show me enough of the characters for me to really care how their story ended.
Like Crazy was watchable and the sort-of-melancholy texture of the storytelling stayed with me, and I was grateful that it didn't fall prey to some of the typical pitfalls of the indie love story, like grandiosity or an overpowering soundtrack. But neither the characters nor the plot had enough weight for me to take it seriously, while Enchanted, intended for young adults who are often treated as emotional featherweights, touched me with its clever use of classic fairy tales to tell an engaging romance.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Here's Hoping!
It occurs to me that my last post could be viewed as negative and disappointed.
Best to counter that by saying that, yes, I am generally disappointed and annoyed with the romantic comedy milieu, but I'm not giving up. Some of why these movies don't exist undoubtedly has to do with very mundane cock blocks like studios won't buy scripts that don't strictly adhere to some chauvinistic, patronizing idea of what women like, so not very many people even attempt to write higher-quality scripts, so very, very few get made, so I end up feeling negative and disappointed.
But these movies should exist. For one thing, there are a lot of women out there who are sick of going to see some half-assed girl movie they were really, really hoping would live up to the potential of their trailer. In terms of sheer numbers, there are quite a lot of us. Sure, data shows that teenage boys go see the most movies, but isn't that a vicious cycle? They're the ones going, so they're the ones who get oodles of quality movies made for them, so they all go, so the movies make tons of money, so... Studios have gotten savvy in some ways, capitalizing on movie adaptations of wildly lucrative books with massive, mostly female audiences, like Twilight and The Hunger Games.
For every Twilight, there are dozens of better written, more fully realized, more widely appealing romances, and I love a lot of them and acknowledge that a lot of others appeal to other sorts of women at other points in their lives. The most successful romance novels, the most touching and memorable, in my opinion are ones that involve more than just romance; they're also about friendship, starting a new career, letting go of the past, or acknowledging or realizing or pursuing a dream or goal, and the funnier and the sexier, the better, too. Come on, out of those dozens, one (at least) would make a delightful, low budget smash hit. I love big-budget, high-tech, explosion-heavy action flicks as much as the next dude, but all the explosions I need in my romances take place in beds. Um, or cars or showers or picnic blankets or...
Sorry, momentarily distracted myself there. What I'm driving at is, if lots of romance novels can do this, movies can, too. More importantly, movies can do it because romances (funny or melodramatic or tense) happen in real life. All around me, my friends and family (and billions of strangers, of course) are living their own romances. They're at all stages of romance: the first few dates, discussing what it would mean to live together, trying to make it work long-distance, getting married, making babies, and even the hard heartbreaks and breakups that hopefully will form the background for a lasting future romance. They're cute, frustrating, confusing, exhilarating and surprising, and any one of them would make a great romantic comedy. Okay, there would have to be editing, montages, probably some rewrites of fumbled monologues and jokes that didn't quite work, but the raw material is there.
And, more prosaically, television is already doing this with great success. Romance and comedy are mixed with career problems, family issues, complicated backgrounds, hilarity, melodrama and so much more in shows as varied as The Newsroom, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Rizzoli & Isles, Saving Grace, 30 Rock, Castle, Damages, Californication, In Treatment, Mad Men, New Girl, Parenthood, Revenge, Political Animals, Mildred Pierce, Downton Abbey, and Homeland.
All of this is to say, here's hoping!
Best to counter that by saying that, yes, I am generally disappointed and annoyed with the romantic comedy milieu, but I'm not giving up. Some of why these movies don't exist undoubtedly has to do with very mundane cock blocks like studios won't buy scripts that don't strictly adhere to some chauvinistic, patronizing idea of what women like, so not very many people even attempt to write higher-quality scripts, so very, very few get made, so I end up feeling negative and disappointed.
But these movies should exist. For one thing, there are a lot of women out there who are sick of going to see some half-assed girl movie they were really, really hoping would live up to the potential of their trailer. In terms of sheer numbers, there are quite a lot of us. Sure, data shows that teenage boys go see the most movies, but isn't that a vicious cycle? They're the ones going, so they're the ones who get oodles of quality movies made for them, so they all go, so the movies make tons of money, so... Studios have gotten savvy in some ways, capitalizing on movie adaptations of wildly lucrative books with massive, mostly female audiences, like Twilight and The Hunger Games.
For every Twilight, there are dozens of better written, more fully realized, more widely appealing romances, and I love a lot of them and acknowledge that a lot of others appeal to other sorts of women at other points in their lives. The most successful romance novels, the most touching and memorable, in my opinion are ones that involve more than just romance; they're also about friendship, starting a new career, letting go of the past, or acknowledging or realizing or pursuing a dream or goal, and the funnier and the sexier, the better, too. Come on, out of those dozens, one (at least) would make a delightful, low budget smash hit. I love big-budget, high-tech, explosion-heavy action flicks as much as the next dude, but all the explosions I need in my romances take place in beds. Um, or cars or showers or picnic blankets or...
Sorry, momentarily distracted myself there. What I'm driving at is, if lots of romance novels can do this, movies can, too. More importantly, movies can do it because romances (funny or melodramatic or tense) happen in real life. All around me, my friends and family (and billions of strangers, of course) are living their own romances. They're at all stages of romance: the first few dates, discussing what it would mean to live together, trying to make it work long-distance, getting married, making babies, and even the hard heartbreaks and breakups that hopefully will form the background for a lasting future romance. They're cute, frustrating, confusing, exhilarating and surprising, and any one of them would make a great romantic comedy. Okay, there would have to be editing, montages, probably some rewrites of fumbled monologues and jokes that didn't quite work, but the raw material is there.
And, more prosaically, television is already doing this with great success. Romance and comedy are mixed with career problems, family issues, complicated backgrounds, hilarity, melodrama and so much more in shows as varied as The Newsroom, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Rizzoli & Isles, Saving Grace, 30 Rock, Castle, Damages, Californication, In Treatment, Mad Men, New Girl, Parenthood, Revenge, Political Animals, Mildred Pierce, Downton Abbey, and Homeland.
All of this is to say, here's hoping!
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Identifying with Rom Coms
The plan to do a series of posts on romantic comedies / chick flicks / movies designated for women has been floating around in my mind for probably years, but I could never figure out how to approach it. There is a lot out there on this subject and while (of course) I'll retread some ground, I wanted to find a way to approach the discussion that wasn't just me melting down about The State of the Genre, or whatever. So I did something super duper dorky: I made a spreadsheet of every rom com, chick flick and the odd tearjerker I could think of, and then I added any other movies I found on the bajillions of lists of "the best X" and "the worst Y" that seemed to fit. The result was a chart of 275 movies.
On the chart are two columns with oversimplified headers: "Good Things" and "Bad Things." For me, "Good Things" would be complex characters, a clever premise, funny, and so on, easy stuff. The "Bad Things" column has two elements: a) general bad movie things like an ending that's ridiculously pat or awful dialogue; and b) bad things relating to this topic, so things like one-note characters, unlikeable leads and incredibly stupid premises. I only made it through movies that start with "C" before I started taking notes on something else, abandoning this method of delineating between the good pieces and bad pieces of movies which, generally speaking, aren't that great.
I considered trying to smooth out this article, but let me just transcribe here the notes I took: Rom com article: Point is recognizing myself. Most protagonists in "rom coms" or "chick flicks" I can't identify with or if I do with the character I don't with their actions choices or partner. A lot are tangled up with unhealthy female relationships: mother/daughter best friends ex best friends sisters or stepsisters. Why? So often have two men as possibilities and one is always the teach her something wrong guy and then the clear right guy. How often do I like each guy? How often do I think the girl should be single? How often is the chemistry real? Why are most over a really short duration? Why does "growing up" always make me mad? Are the ones from male perspective (Forgetting Sarah Marshall for one) so often better more relate-able funnier and oddly more romantic? Are ones written and directed by women overall better than those by men?
When I came back to this today, the part of my notes that struck me as the most significant was the unhealthy female relationships piece. I can acknowledge that there is a lot of fun to be had watching movies with ridiculously over-the-top antagonistic relationships between people or where at least one of the main character is a caricature of some type of personality or another. By way of an example: Cruel Intentions. Oh, yes. It's not a rom com or a chick flick, but I'd say it's definitely for women. Beautiful people with fucked up morals who may or may not have legitimate reasons to be users who think life is a game they want to win. Innocence lost, a bad boy trying to reform himself meeting a tragic end. Bottom line, it's a melodramatic, rather operatic kind-of-romance, and let's call it a guilty pleasure.
But on the romantic comedy / chick flick front, why are there all of these unhealthy relationships among women? There are movies about so-called best friends who sleep with each other's fiances, treat each other like shit, and don't seem to have more than the barest shred of reason to even talk to each other. Bride Wars comes to mind first, along with fellow offenders Something Borrowed, You Again, My Best Friend's Wedding, Monster-in-Law, America's Sweethearts, Heartbreakers, and to a lesser extent Laws of Attraction and Hairspray. Of course, women do have complicated relationships with other women, especially when we're talking about family members or girls who became friends during adolescence when there's this feeling that you've somehow survived something together. While I think it has a broader appeal than just to women (as it wasn't marketed solely to women or intended just for us), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has several complex relationships among the leading women. In the rom com / chick flick genre, a good example is In Her Shoes. A one-dimensional sibling rivalry characterized by two women who seem to be polar opposite in looks, temperament and quality becomes a deeper, more three-dimensional exploration I'm not saying the movie is perfect, but it treats this relationship as more than a simple, petty rivalry and doesn't give in to the temptation to deviate from a story about sisters into one about sisters falling in love at the same time. (Practical Magic would be a campier example here too.)
As a sort of off-shoot of this thought about unhealthy relationships, there are movies made for women which have women who have incredibly strong bonds with each other in ways that I recognize. The Jane Austen Book Club has women who are friends, who love each other, who listen to each other and offer advice that makes sense for their characters to offer, and who support each other but not blindly.
*
Two men! Both who want to be with her! I suppose on the surface this seems pretty bitchin'. Because the two men are always very different from each other and they both want her for slightly different reasons or because of slightly different parts of her, what I think women in the audience are meant to envy about the leading woman is this: This woman is so complex, so awesome, so interesting and so sexy that she appeals to all men; she could have any man. To name but a few: Bridesmaids, Heartbreaker, It's Complicated, John Tucker Must Die, Moulin Rouge!, Moonstruck, Reality Bites, Runaway Bride, The Holiday, The Notebook and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (* An aside: I really like most of these otherwise.)
But of course, she picks one. To be fair, a lot of the time it's not the rich, urbane man who treats her like a queen, but the guy who sees and appreciates her passion and quirks, like in Sweet Home Alabama and Leap Year. And sure, I guess a lot of women find at least the fantasy of being fought over by two guys awesome, so I can see how it became a common set-up. But I don't know many women who regularly find themselves in this sort of position. For me, I can't imagine a scenario in which I would get fairly deeply and emotionally involved with more than one person at the same time. And that's really what bugs me about this type of premise. It's almost always blindingly clear from the start that the woman is only really feeling a true connection with one of them. I hope it's not just to avoid the audience thinking the woman is a big whorish slutty slut. The movie that comes the closest to a woman getting in deep with two men at the same time and having to pick, in my mind, is This Means War... and that whole movie, I just kept wanting the two men to confess their love to each other and dump her so they could be gay spies together. (But that's just me, maybe.) Okay, and Bandits, but I don't know as I'd categorize that as a rom com... exactly.
Ah, and what about movies that might seem like rom coms except the protagonist is the man? Let me name some so that you can get them in your mind: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Take Me Home Tonight, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Crazy, Stupid, Love, (500) Days of Summer, 17 Again, Chasing Amy, Definitely, Maybe, Four Weddings and a Funeral, High Fidelity, Wimbledon, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Notting Hill, Knocked Up, Wedding Crashers, Shakespeare in Love, The Girl Next Door and The Vow. Some of them not seem necessarily like they fit in with the other movies I've mentioned? Too true. A lot of movies that are in fact both romances and funny that star a man are about more than the funny romance. How strange... They just wrap love and humor up in other things? But my feeble female brain can't handle a movie that's about love and is funny and is about figuring out what I want to do with my life, interacting with my child, or growing up!
Ha.
Now in my opinion, the best romantic comedies do the obvious and have the male and female leads actually CO-STAR, as in, share things fifty-fifty, the way (one hopes) we do in real life. I think they are the most successful because the idea is that women and men can watch them together. The women in the audience can make fun of the male star and the men in the audience can make fun of the female star. They can all laugh at the funny things. They can all be happy at the happy ending, even if they show it differently. It's extremely exciting. Here are some I think do a stellar job at this piece of the puzzle: Zach and Miri Make a Porno, 10 Things I Hate About You, French Kiss, Going the Distance, Griff the Invisible, Hitch, How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days, Life as We Know It, Look Who's Talking, Love and Other Drugs, No Strings Attached, Friends with Benefits, The American President, The Break Up, The Princess Bride, and What Happens in Vegas. Of course, not all of these are as successful overall as others, but I think the more even approach makes for a better piece.
To end, I'd like to take a second to lay out a few more that I think are just plain crimes that I haven't mentioned yet: 27 Dresses, As Good as It Gets, Because I Said So, Beastly, Made of Honor, Failure to Launch, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Killers, Must Love Dogs, New in Town, Post Grad, Eat Pray Love, Someone Like You, The Bounty Hunter, The Heartbreak Kid, Two Weeks Notice, and You've Got Mail. They're lame, I don't like the protagonists or worse don't care about them, they make stupid choices and the films as a whole feel just forced, like they all knew they were making crap but did it anyway.
Now some of my favorites I haven't had the chance to mention yet because they didn't best illustrate a positive or a negative point. These I'm going to take a little more time with, and I know that this type of movie is way more subjective than others, so feel free to argue with me later:
On the chart are two columns with oversimplified headers: "Good Things" and "Bad Things." For me, "Good Things" would be complex characters, a clever premise, funny, and so on, easy stuff. The "Bad Things" column has two elements: a) general bad movie things like an ending that's ridiculously pat or awful dialogue; and b) bad things relating to this topic, so things like one-note characters, unlikeable leads and incredibly stupid premises. I only made it through movies that start with "C" before I started taking notes on something else, abandoning this method of delineating between the good pieces and bad pieces of movies which, generally speaking, aren't that great.
I considered trying to smooth out this article, but let me just transcribe here the notes I took: Rom com article: Point is recognizing myself. Most protagonists in "rom coms" or "chick flicks" I can't identify with or if I do with the character I don't with their actions choices or partner. A lot are tangled up with unhealthy female relationships: mother/daughter best friends ex best friends sisters or stepsisters. Why? So often have two men as possibilities and one is always the teach her something wrong guy and then the clear right guy. How often do I like each guy? How often do I think the girl should be single? How often is the chemistry real? Why are most over a really short duration? Why does "growing up" always make me mad? Are the ones from male perspective (Forgetting Sarah Marshall for one) so often better more relate-able funnier and oddly more romantic? Are ones written and directed by women overall better than those by men?
When I came back to this today, the part of my notes that struck me as the most significant was the unhealthy female relationships piece. I can acknowledge that there is a lot of fun to be had watching movies with ridiculously over-the-top antagonistic relationships between people or where at least one of the main character is a caricature of some type of personality or another. By way of an example: Cruel Intentions. Oh, yes. It's not a rom com or a chick flick, but I'd say it's definitely for women. Beautiful people with fucked up morals who may or may not have legitimate reasons to be users who think life is a game they want to win. Innocence lost, a bad boy trying to reform himself meeting a tragic end. Bottom line, it's a melodramatic, rather operatic kind-of-romance, and let's call it a guilty pleasure.
But on the romantic comedy / chick flick front, why are there all of these unhealthy relationships among women? There are movies about so-called best friends who sleep with each other's fiances, treat each other like shit, and don't seem to have more than the barest shred of reason to even talk to each other. Bride Wars comes to mind first, along with fellow offenders Something Borrowed, You Again, My Best Friend's Wedding, Monster-in-Law, America's Sweethearts, Heartbreakers, and to a lesser extent Laws of Attraction and Hairspray. Of course, women do have complicated relationships with other women, especially when we're talking about family members or girls who became friends during adolescence when there's this feeling that you've somehow survived something together. While I think it has a broader appeal than just to women (as it wasn't marketed solely to women or intended just for us), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has several complex relationships among the leading women. In the rom com / chick flick genre, a good example is In Her Shoes. A one-dimensional sibling rivalry characterized by two women who seem to be polar opposite in looks, temperament and quality becomes a deeper, more three-dimensional exploration I'm not saying the movie is perfect, but it treats this relationship as more than a simple, petty rivalry and doesn't give in to the temptation to deviate from a story about sisters into one about sisters falling in love at the same time. (Practical Magic would be a campier example here too.)
As a sort of off-shoot of this thought about unhealthy relationships, there are movies made for women which have women who have incredibly strong bonds with each other in ways that I recognize. The Jane Austen Book Club has women who are friends, who love each other, who listen to each other and offer advice that makes sense for their characters to offer, and who support each other but not blindly.
*
Two men! Both who want to be with her! I suppose on the surface this seems pretty bitchin'. Because the two men are always very different from each other and they both want her for slightly different reasons or because of slightly different parts of her, what I think women in the audience are meant to envy about the leading woman is this: This woman is so complex, so awesome, so interesting and so sexy that she appeals to all men; she could have any man. To name but a few: Bridesmaids, Heartbreaker, It's Complicated, John Tucker Must Die, Moulin Rouge!, Moonstruck, Reality Bites, Runaway Bride, The Holiday, The Notebook and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (* An aside: I really like most of these otherwise.)
But of course, she picks one. To be fair, a lot of the time it's not the rich, urbane man who treats her like a queen, but the guy who sees and appreciates her passion and quirks, like in Sweet Home Alabama and Leap Year. And sure, I guess a lot of women find at least the fantasy of being fought over by two guys awesome, so I can see how it became a common set-up. But I don't know many women who regularly find themselves in this sort of position. For me, I can't imagine a scenario in which I would get fairly deeply and emotionally involved with more than one person at the same time. And that's really what bugs me about this type of premise. It's almost always blindingly clear from the start that the woman is only really feeling a true connection with one of them. I hope it's not just to avoid the audience thinking the woman is a big whorish slutty slut. The movie that comes the closest to a woman getting in deep with two men at the same time and having to pick, in my mind, is This Means War... and that whole movie, I just kept wanting the two men to confess their love to each other and dump her so they could be gay spies together. (But that's just me, maybe.) Okay, and Bandits, but I don't know as I'd categorize that as a rom com... exactly.
Ah, and what about movies that might seem like rom coms except the protagonist is the man? Let me name some so that you can get them in your mind: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Take Me Home Tonight, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Crazy, Stupid, Love, (500) Days of Summer, 17 Again, Chasing Amy, Definitely, Maybe, Four Weddings and a Funeral, High Fidelity, Wimbledon, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Notting Hill, Knocked Up, Wedding Crashers, Shakespeare in Love, The Girl Next Door and The Vow. Some of them not seem necessarily like they fit in with the other movies I've mentioned? Too true. A lot of movies that are in fact both romances and funny that star a man are about more than the funny romance. How strange... They just wrap love and humor up in other things? But my feeble female brain can't handle a movie that's about love and is funny and is about figuring out what I want to do with my life, interacting with my child, or growing up!
Ha.
Now in my opinion, the best romantic comedies do the obvious and have the male and female leads actually CO-STAR, as in, share things fifty-fifty, the way (one hopes) we do in real life. I think they are the most successful because the idea is that women and men can watch them together. The women in the audience can make fun of the male star and the men in the audience can make fun of the female star. They can all laugh at the funny things. They can all be happy at the happy ending, even if they show it differently. It's extremely exciting. Here are some I think do a stellar job at this piece of the puzzle: Zach and Miri Make a Porno, 10 Things I Hate About You, French Kiss, Going the Distance, Griff the Invisible, Hitch, How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days, Life as We Know It, Look Who's Talking, Love and Other Drugs, No Strings Attached, Friends with Benefits, The American President, The Break Up, The Princess Bride, and What Happens in Vegas. Of course, not all of these are as successful overall as others, but I think the more even approach makes for a better piece.
To end, I'd like to take a second to lay out a few more that I think are just plain crimes that I haven't mentioned yet: 27 Dresses, As Good as It Gets, Because I Said So, Beastly, Made of Honor, Failure to Launch, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Killers, Must Love Dogs, New in Town, Post Grad, Eat Pray Love, Someone Like You, The Bounty Hunter, The Heartbreak Kid, Two Weeks Notice, and You've Got Mail. They're lame, I don't like the protagonists or worse don't care about them, they make stupid choices and the films as a whole feel just forced, like they all knew they were making crap but did it anyway.
Now some of my favorites I haven't had the chance to mention yet because they didn't best illustrate a positive or a negative point. These I'm going to take a little more time with, and I know that this type of movie is way more subjective than others, so feel free to argue with me later:
- A Knight's Tale: I don't get why men always do stupid things in the name of "honor," but I love the crazy soundtrack, Alan Tudyk, Rufus Sewell and the chemistry between the leads
- Amelie: a sweet, adorable French love story about shy people
- Bend It Like Beckham: about two girls becoming friends, cultural differences that turn out to be similarities, coming-of-age, and bagging Jonathan Rhys-Myers
- Benny & Joon: an incredibly unique love story that's pure and sweet
- Bridesmaids: a raunchy movie about girlfriends with a side dish of love with a regular guy
- Catch and Release: set against the accidental death of a man and with a kind of unfocused plot, it's a romance between the man's fiancee and his best friend
- Chasing Liberty: completely cheesy and I love it
- DEBS: an incredibly silly, over-the-top, deliberately B caliber romance between the perfect lady spy and the world-class lady criminal she wrote her thesis on
- Imagine Me & You: a great balance of realistic vs romanticized about a woman who falls in love with another woman just after she gets married to a great man
- Monte Carlo: don't laugh, it's awful, but it makes me smile
- My Best Friend's Girl: not that great really, but I love that what makes other women horrified and offended, this girl loves
- Secretary: not really a comedy, but an excellent S&M romance between two awkward people
- She's the Man: bastardized Twelfth Night with cross-dressing, gender confusion, and sneaky awesome quips about high school, high heels and balding
- The Broken Hearts Club: a delightful, simple gay romance within a group of friends
- The Holiday: on the surface it's nothing special, but I love the unfinished ending and its energy
- The Proposal: a perfect dish, funny and touching, with great chemistry and supporting characters
- The Wedding Date: the novel it's based on (Asking for Trouble) was much better and it's far from perfect, but I like the quieter moments and the woman's arc
Oh, I sincerely hope this sparks some arguments!
PS Every single movie mentioned in here I have seen at least once. My list, which wasn't all romantic comedies but included some heavy things like The English Patient, was 275 movies long. Of those, 24 have a female co-writer; 78 have a female writer; 2 had a female co-director; and 37 have a female director. So, 102 out of 275 or 37% had a female writer, and 81 out of 275 or 29% had a female director. According to the MPAA's data (www.mpaa.org) on movie-goer demographics, among adults, Latinos see the most movies, but only 6 of the movies on my list had a Latin lead, male or female.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Aura of Mystery
Something I always wanted to have was an aura of mystery.
The thing is, I'm not the least bit mysterious. Maybe it's because I don't care about reputations or camouflaging myself to fit in. Maybe it's because I'm as honest as you want me to be and I think I'm only ashamed of about two or three moments in my life. Maybe it's because I'm not coy, flirtatious, charming or a deflector; what you see is basically what you get.
Now, I wouldn't change any of this, but I still want to be mysterious, now and then. I could never be the femme fatale or that silhouette of a woman the hero spends his whole sad, hard, honorable life pursuing or impressing or trying to forget. I can't even flirt. But every now and then, it would be awesome to be the stunning, mysterious woman with like only one eye showing through her curtain of tumbling hair, who glides, who has an aura of danger or tragedy or whatever.
Since I got pregnant, I can't even describe how much that wish has multiplied. Not because I wished I wasn't pregnant, or thought it would be great fun to be some pregnant loner wandering through strangers' lives and changing them, but because pregnancy, delivery and new mommyhood pretty much strip away every ounce of mystery a woman has. The whole world doesn't see you deprived of a little cloak of dignity, but your partner sure does, and it's disheartening if you let yourself really think about it.
My body was no longer just this physical thing to inhabit that sometimes seems sexy, it was suddenly like... a vessel. Boobs were no longer fun, sexy decoration. Because I was thrilled to be pregnant, and curious and observant, I noticed every damn infinitesimal change in my body like I never had before, and everything was epic. It was beautiful, but it infringed on my image of myself. There was the ripening, to put it poetically, my body glowing and expanding to match my heart and mind starting to stretch to prepare me for parenthood. But then there was stretch marks and awful gas, hemorrhoids and having to inject myself with medicine every day (not a standard pregnancy thing, don't worry). Later on there was persistent backaches, really sausage-like feet and ankles, and tiny baby pointy edges--feet, elbows, knees--digging into my bladder and ribs. There was peeing all of the time. Like, aaalll the time. For the first several months, I managed to only puke once, but the thought of food disgusted me, and I really, really love food... and then suddenly I was hungry all of the time, but eating didn't bring me any joy, since I felt like a bottomless pit.
People ask you lots of questions about your body directly, when at any other point in life this would be considered fucking rude. They want to know if you eat anything weird or have cravings, if you can feel your growing baby moving around inside you. The women who haven't had kids yet kind of gleefully whisper questions about your sex life, and ask how much weight you're gaining. For me, my husband, not being a lady, was sort of simultaneously freaked out, horrified by, and totally amused by the crazy stuff that was happening to my body. Even if it made me crazy at the time, his sense of humor and mocking me actually did help make me feel better, but I wouldn't recommend this course of action, generally speaking. I know everyone wanted to understand my experience, or compare mine to theirs, and sharing is wonderful and really, really helpful during that time, but it made me feel in a way that my body was somehow communal as well as a vessel.
Then there was the delivery of my beautiful baby girl. She was almost a month early and I had a blood pressure thing that meant I couldn't have any drugs. My parents had literally moved to town the day before. We had no crib, no diapers, and no bottles, though because of the love and preparedness of our family and friends, we had a car seat, clothes and swaddling blankets galore. I had met every OB in the practice except for the one who was on call that day. I was wearing my glasses when I went in, so I was in essence blind the whole time. But that's just the setting. The decidedly un-mysterious truth is that my husband was there while I was naked, contorted and screaming, gulping ginger ale and trying to remember to breathe, clutching him like a lobster pinching. People could look and poke me practically all the way up to my throat, I lost control of my body, and there was, of course, blood and tears. Oh, and a beautiful, sunny side up, cone-headed, six pounds three ounces of daughter that they put on my belly just above where she'd been swimming around inside me.
Afterwards, there was blood, stitches, a catheter, delivering the placenta (that was like being pummeled after being beaten up), weakness, tears and ecstasy, hardly being able to move, and holding Freya. There was also breastfeeding for the first time, which is not something that human moms and babies instinctively know how to do like most other animals out there. No, you have to have help. A lot of people see your boobs, and it's not as much fun as, say, Mardi Gras. And voila, my body became food. It's not like with your body recovering and your whole being just, whew, in the clouds and freaking out all at the same time you think about reclaiming your body, but still...
I think sex and sexiness was about as far from my brain as it must have been when I was like seven, but somewhere in there--and I can't remember when because I think the first six weeks of Freya's life are like one big muzzy bender--it occurred to me what my husband had witnessed. Duh. I mean, I'd been worried about it before and told him so. But after going through the reality... Even though it was this miraculous experience, I was mortified when I remembered what-all had gone during delivery. Oh my god. Oh my god. And at that phase I was just breastfeeding all over the place with the weird post-delivery stomach situation and like two days between showers of any sort, and my hair... Oh my god.
I was assured and reassured that seeing me give birth to our daughter and breastfeeding her did not in fact horrify my husband. But it's not something he'll ever forget, on a visceral level that has nothing to do with loving me. I know that on a biological level, males feel something like: "Fuck yeah, I chose that woman, and she was so strong she carried my baby and gave birth to it and is keeping it alive with that same body, she is so powerful and I am so awesome because I impregnated her and she chose me!" This should be an empowering thought, and it is on some level, but mostly it just takes forever before you feel like more than a vending machine.
I find it impossible to explain why I've never felt more womanly in my life, but that for long stretches in the last year I've never felt less feminine. My daughter is six months old and these feelings haven't entirely faded, even though I do in fact get sufficient amounts of sleep and shower daily and she's starting to eat mushy baby food. As she's claiming herself, her eyes to see and hands and feet and cheeks to smile with and a voice to scream and babble with, I'm reclaiming myself. As she's discovering herself, her sense of humor and being a ham and curiosity and happiness to meet strangers, I'm rediscovering my energy, a sense of play, and an ability to forget that time exists at all.
But I'm also discovering things. I'm not the same as I was before I became pregnant, and while I was just fine with that self, I'm thrilled at these changes. When I was younger, I eschewed ambition and being challenged if I might fail, and I was scared to admit out loud what I want for my life. Now I look at Freya and I think so many things: How can I ask her to try her best, work for something, shout her dreams out loud and pursue them, dream big, learn life's best and worst and mundane lessons, if I haven't tried? Will she continue to look up to me once she's old enough to employ critical thinking and can see my flaws, mistakes and regrets? Won't I feel like a hypocrite a lot of the time? I think the idea of "turning over a new leaf" is misleading because I think all worthwhile, life-altering decisions have to be followed by lots of hard work and a period of two steps forward, one step back. But that's okay. It's enough that I'm growing and that I know it, and that I know what my dreams are and I'm now brave enough to say them aloud. And it's an unimaginable pleasure and relief to have someone with me, on his own corresponding parallel journey.
... But now I'm definitely never going to have an aura of mystery, and I still really wish I could, even if it was just for one day...
PS I read an article the other day at Jezebel about a romance author, whom I've never read, criticize recently deceased romance author Maeve Binchy's books as being too much about romance and not enough about family, because she wasn't a mother. (That doesn't sound right to me, since Binchy wasn't racy as far as I know, and romantic romance writers tend to deal in family life. Maybe I'm wrong about her, just making an educated guess.) Ugh, bullshit! How judgmental! While it's not always a good idea or done well, authors appropriate other cultures constantly. I write from men's perspectives and old peoples' and orphans' and musicians, and I'm none of those things; my characters are painters, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, princesses and courtesans; my settings are one hundred percent made up or about places I've never lived. Maybe Maeve Binchy didn't want to write about babies or mother/daughter relationships and maybe she couldn't have babies and it was the most painful part about her life. Is this romance author going to read my blog post and judge me because she thinks what I'm writing is that I'd trade in motherhood for an aura of mystery?
The thing is, I'm not the least bit mysterious. Maybe it's because I don't care about reputations or camouflaging myself to fit in. Maybe it's because I'm as honest as you want me to be and I think I'm only ashamed of about two or three moments in my life. Maybe it's because I'm not coy, flirtatious, charming or a deflector; what you see is basically what you get.
Now, I wouldn't change any of this, but I still want to be mysterious, now and then. I could never be the femme fatale or that silhouette of a woman the hero spends his whole sad, hard, honorable life pursuing or impressing or trying to forget. I can't even flirt. But every now and then, it would be awesome to be the stunning, mysterious woman with like only one eye showing through her curtain of tumbling hair, who glides, who has an aura of danger or tragedy or whatever.
Since I got pregnant, I can't even describe how much that wish has multiplied. Not because I wished I wasn't pregnant, or thought it would be great fun to be some pregnant loner wandering through strangers' lives and changing them, but because pregnancy, delivery and new mommyhood pretty much strip away every ounce of mystery a woman has. The whole world doesn't see you deprived of a little cloak of dignity, but your partner sure does, and it's disheartening if you let yourself really think about it.
My body was no longer just this physical thing to inhabit that sometimes seems sexy, it was suddenly like... a vessel. Boobs were no longer fun, sexy decoration. Because I was thrilled to be pregnant, and curious and observant, I noticed every damn infinitesimal change in my body like I never had before, and everything was epic. It was beautiful, but it infringed on my image of myself. There was the ripening, to put it poetically, my body glowing and expanding to match my heart and mind starting to stretch to prepare me for parenthood. But then there was stretch marks and awful gas, hemorrhoids and having to inject myself with medicine every day (not a standard pregnancy thing, don't worry). Later on there was persistent backaches, really sausage-like feet and ankles, and tiny baby pointy edges--feet, elbows, knees--digging into my bladder and ribs. There was peeing all of the time. Like, aaalll the time. For the first several months, I managed to only puke once, but the thought of food disgusted me, and I really, really love food... and then suddenly I was hungry all of the time, but eating didn't bring me any joy, since I felt like a bottomless pit.
People ask you lots of questions about your body directly, when at any other point in life this would be considered fucking rude. They want to know if you eat anything weird or have cravings, if you can feel your growing baby moving around inside you. The women who haven't had kids yet kind of gleefully whisper questions about your sex life, and ask how much weight you're gaining. For me, my husband, not being a lady, was sort of simultaneously freaked out, horrified by, and totally amused by the crazy stuff that was happening to my body. Even if it made me crazy at the time, his sense of humor and mocking me actually did help make me feel better, but I wouldn't recommend this course of action, generally speaking. I know everyone wanted to understand my experience, or compare mine to theirs, and sharing is wonderful and really, really helpful during that time, but it made me feel in a way that my body was somehow communal as well as a vessel.
Then there was the delivery of my beautiful baby girl. She was almost a month early and I had a blood pressure thing that meant I couldn't have any drugs. My parents had literally moved to town the day before. We had no crib, no diapers, and no bottles, though because of the love and preparedness of our family and friends, we had a car seat, clothes and swaddling blankets galore. I had met every OB in the practice except for the one who was on call that day. I was wearing my glasses when I went in, so I was in essence blind the whole time. But that's just the setting. The decidedly un-mysterious truth is that my husband was there while I was naked, contorted and screaming, gulping ginger ale and trying to remember to breathe, clutching him like a lobster pinching. People could look and poke me practically all the way up to my throat, I lost control of my body, and there was, of course, blood and tears. Oh, and a beautiful, sunny side up, cone-headed, six pounds three ounces of daughter that they put on my belly just above where she'd been swimming around inside me.
Afterwards, there was blood, stitches, a catheter, delivering the placenta (that was like being pummeled after being beaten up), weakness, tears and ecstasy, hardly being able to move, and holding Freya. There was also breastfeeding for the first time, which is not something that human moms and babies instinctively know how to do like most other animals out there. No, you have to have help. A lot of people see your boobs, and it's not as much fun as, say, Mardi Gras. And voila, my body became food. It's not like with your body recovering and your whole being just, whew, in the clouds and freaking out all at the same time you think about reclaiming your body, but still...
I think sex and sexiness was about as far from my brain as it must have been when I was like seven, but somewhere in there--and I can't remember when because I think the first six weeks of Freya's life are like one big muzzy bender--it occurred to me what my husband had witnessed. Duh. I mean, I'd been worried about it before and told him so. But after going through the reality... Even though it was this miraculous experience, I was mortified when I remembered what-all had gone during delivery. Oh my god. Oh my god. And at that phase I was just breastfeeding all over the place with the weird post-delivery stomach situation and like two days between showers of any sort, and my hair... Oh my god.
I was assured and reassured that seeing me give birth to our daughter and breastfeeding her did not in fact horrify my husband. But it's not something he'll ever forget, on a visceral level that has nothing to do with loving me. I know that on a biological level, males feel something like: "Fuck yeah, I chose that woman, and she was so strong she carried my baby and gave birth to it and is keeping it alive with that same body, she is so powerful and I am so awesome because I impregnated her and she chose me!" This should be an empowering thought, and it is on some level, but mostly it just takes forever before you feel like more than a vending machine.
I find it impossible to explain why I've never felt more womanly in my life, but that for long stretches in the last year I've never felt less feminine. My daughter is six months old and these feelings haven't entirely faded, even though I do in fact get sufficient amounts of sleep and shower daily and she's starting to eat mushy baby food. As she's claiming herself, her eyes to see and hands and feet and cheeks to smile with and a voice to scream and babble with, I'm reclaiming myself. As she's discovering herself, her sense of humor and being a ham and curiosity and happiness to meet strangers, I'm rediscovering my energy, a sense of play, and an ability to forget that time exists at all.
But I'm also discovering things. I'm not the same as I was before I became pregnant, and while I was just fine with that self, I'm thrilled at these changes. When I was younger, I eschewed ambition and being challenged if I might fail, and I was scared to admit out loud what I want for my life. Now I look at Freya and I think so many things: How can I ask her to try her best, work for something, shout her dreams out loud and pursue them, dream big, learn life's best and worst and mundane lessons, if I haven't tried? Will she continue to look up to me once she's old enough to employ critical thinking and can see my flaws, mistakes and regrets? Won't I feel like a hypocrite a lot of the time? I think the idea of "turning over a new leaf" is misleading because I think all worthwhile, life-altering decisions have to be followed by lots of hard work and a period of two steps forward, one step back. But that's okay. It's enough that I'm growing and that I know it, and that I know what my dreams are and I'm now brave enough to say them aloud. And it's an unimaginable pleasure and relief to have someone with me, on his own corresponding parallel journey.
... But now I'm definitely never going to have an aura of mystery, and I still really wish I could, even if it was just for one day...
PS I read an article the other day at Jezebel about a romance author, whom I've never read, criticize recently deceased romance author Maeve Binchy's books as being too much about romance and not enough about family, because she wasn't a mother. (That doesn't sound right to me, since Binchy wasn't racy as far as I know, and romantic romance writers tend to deal in family life. Maybe I'm wrong about her, just making an educated guess.) Ugh, bullshit! How judgmental! While it's not always a good idea or done well, authors appropriate other cultures constantly. I write from men's perspectives and old peoples' and orphans' and musicians, and I'm none of those things; my characters are painters, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, princesses and courtesans; my settings are one hundred percent made up or about places I've never lived. Maybe Maeve Binchy didn't want to write about babies or mother/daughter relationships and maybe she couldn't have babies and it was the most painful part about her life. Is this romance author going to read my blog post and judge me because she thinks what I'm writing is that I'd trade in motherhood for an aura of mystery?
Friday, July 20, 2012
Welcome!
To begin, the basics about me: My name is Zoe and I am a woman. I am also an only child, an avid reader, a longtime unpublished writer, a dancer (as a hobby, not professionally), a college graduate, a traveler, a wife and a new mother. I'm Jewish culturally but not religiously, socially and politically liberal, a big fan of swearing, a huge, dorky movie and television buff, and hopeless at finding things that are right where I left them or where they should be. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, went to college in Ohio, moved to San Francisco, and now live in Colorado. I drive, have two jobs, live in a weird apartment with no air flow, I wish I had the time, energy and money to take dance classes or at least yoga, and I occasionally do arts and crafts projects. I'm always worrying and have some neurotic tendencies, but I'm happy and I have dreams and plans, and I'm pretty boring in my day-to-day life.
Everything after that is harder to explain. What do I care about, what I am I passionate about in life? How do I feel as a woman, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend? Do I have opinions and thoughts on politics, history, literature, music, pop culture, fashion and trends, the arts? What are my pet peeves and my favorite things? What gets me going and what shuts me down? What are my goals and dreams and wishes, and why do I say I'm boring in my day-to-day life? I don't really enjoy explaining myself in comparison to everyone else, put myself against other women, wives, mothers, people of my generation, liberals, daughters, writers, and so on. The last thing I want to do is place myself somewhere on each of the trillions of spectra we have, major ones like political affiliation or sexuality, all the way to tiny ones like vanilla vs chocolate or boxers or briefs.
I've always been very interested in the dynamics of societies, towns, families, friendships, relationships and worlds. Some of this is because I'm a writer, and I suppose I'm a writer to some extent because of this. I'm curious and I ask a lot of questions. I like stories, though I have a tendency to repeat anecdotes when talking to people. But I'm fascinated by--and a lot of the time, equally frustrated by, horrified by, annoyed by, and confounded by--the assumptions people make about each other, the theories they have, and the subsequent standards and pervasive attitudes. I always feel inadequate when I'm trying to talk about being a woman in general, or about "women's issues" (body image, birth control, emotions, etc), or tackle more specific topics like a proposed law or book/movie half the country this is empowering and the other half things is sexist.
But then again, I don't believe in neutrality. If someone could achieve it, I would probably be creeped out. I believe in telling where I'm coming from, explaining my position, and girding my loins against attacks so that I'll have the brainpower to form passionate but not disrespectful rebuttals.
So let me lay some things out here. I am not cool, but I'm told I'm not exactly a nerd / dork either, because I'm not tech savvy and I don't play video games. I don't wear make-up, I almost never like high heels, and I'm not obsessed with purses, but I only know a few women who actually are and I love art, jewelry, scarves and lingerie (which I don't have the money to buy). I've never dieted but I should definitely start working out to be healthy, and I have all the same hang-ups as everyone else about my looks and my body. My engagement ring doesn't have any stones in it, precious or otherwise, and I was not a "bridezilla" even if I did have a few moments of hyperventilating. I love a well-crafted and/or totally awful action movie, gross-out comedy or so-called bromance. I see rom-coms but I never really like them; I read romance novels and am generally satisfied as long as they're at least a hard R. I wouldn't know how to flirt if the universe depended on it. I don't understand women who have melodramatic 'friendships' and am often considered one of the guys, not least because I'm the first one to comment on a great pair of boobs. I think making fun of fashion is fair game, so long as fat or great for her age don't ever get used. And my brain can't wrap around how calling someone something YOU consider an insult (fat, gay, going to hell, etc) makes you better in any way.
I think first up will be either a review of Brave or the book I just finished reading, Barefoot Season. Or a first attempt at writing about what being a working mommy feels like.
Yeah, I think that should get the ball rolling. Did I inadvertently offend you? Do you wonder who I think thinks these things? Do you think these things? Have I royally misrepresented myself, or do I have a blind spot about myself? What would you like to hear me talk about or try to explain?
Everything after that is harder to explain. What do I care about, what I am I passionate about in life? How do I feel as a woman, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend? Do I have opinions and thoughts on politics, history, literature, music, pop culture, fashion and trends, the arts? What are my pet peeves and my favorite things? What gets me going and what shuts me down? What are my goals and dreams and wishes, and why do I say I'm boring in my day-to-day life? I don't really enjoy explaining myself in comparison to everyone else, put myself against other women, wives, mothers, people of my generation, liberals, daughters, writers, and so on. The last thing I want to do is place myself somewhere on each of the trillions of spectra we have, major ones like political affiliation or sexuality, all the way to tiny ones like vanilla vs chocolate or boxers or briefs.
I've always been very interested in the dynamics of societies, towns, families, friendships, relationships and worlds. Some of this is because I'm a writer, and I suppose I'm a writer to some extent because of this. I'm curious and I ask a lot of questions. I like stories, though I have a tendency to repeat anecdotes when talking to people. But I'm fascinated by--and a lot of the time, equally frustrated by, horrified by, annoyed by, and confounded by--the assumptions people make about each other, the theories they have, and the subsequent standards and pervasive attitudes. I always feel inadequate when I'm trying to talk about being a woman in general, or about "women's issues" (body image, birth control, emotions, etc), or tackle more specific topics like a proposed law or book/movie half the country this is empowering and the other half things is sexist.
But then again, I don't believe in neutrality. If someone could achieve it, I would probably be creeped out. I believe in telling where I'm coming from, explaining my position, and girding my loins against attacks so that I'll have the brainpower to form passionate but not disrespectful rebuttals.
So let me lay some things out here. I am not cool, but I'm told I'm not exactly a nerd / dork either, because I'm not tech savvy and I don't play video games. I don't wear make-up, I almost never like high heels, and I'm not obsessed with purses, but I only know a few women who actually are and I love art, jewelry, scarves and lingerie (which I don't have the money to buy). I've never dieted but I should definitely start working out to be healthy, and I have all the same hang-ups as everyone else about my looks and my body. My engagement ring doesn't have any stones in it, precious or otherwise, and I was not a "bridezilla" even if I did have a few moments of hyperventilating. I love a well-crafted and/or totally awful action movie, gross-out comedy or so-called bromance. I see rom-coms but I never really like them; I read romance novels and am generally satisfied as long as they're at least a hard R. I wouldn't know how to flirt if the universe depended on it. I don't understand women who have melodramatic 'friendships' and am often considered one of the guys, not least because I'm the first one to comment on a great pair of boobs. I think making fun of fashion is fair game, so long as fat or great for her age don't ever get used. And my brain can't wrap around how calling someone something YOU consider an insult (fat, gay, going to hell, etc) makes you better in any way.
I think first up will be either a review of Brave or the book I just finished reading, Barefoot Season. Or a first attempt at writing about what being a working mommy feels like.
Yeah, I think that should get the ball rolling. Did I inadvertently offend you? Do you wonder who I think thinks these things? Do you think these things? Have I royally misrepresented myself, or do I have a blind spot about myself? What would you like to hear me talk about or try to explain?
Testing One, Two
Testing one, two. "Hello there, universe," she said, "are you out there too?"
Wow, I might like this.
Wow, I might like this.
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