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Saturday, October 22, 2005
The Music Of The Icosahedrons: Love In The Time Of Combat
Fran here. Today's subject isn't one suited to the Curmudgeon's voice, so today you'll get me unfiltered by his circuitous yet grandiloquent bombast.
The stimulus was this post by the esteemed Charles Hill of Dustbury, long one of my favorite citizens of the Blogosphere:
Just friendsAlicia at LOOK@OKC distrusts the term:
I have decided that it's possible for men and women to be friends if neither of them want anything other than friendship. Of course this mutual lack-of-nookie & love-seekin' is rare. I spoke with an older male friend of mine who admits that many men will lurk about waiting for their chance ... yet after knowing a female for years, he finally accepted that nothing would happen. In a way, he accepted his role as a friend to her.I have also decided that men and women can be friends if one or both of them is ugly and non-sexual. In my opinion, men find it hard to be on platonic terms with a female they'd want as a bedmate. Women may find this situation equally frustrating, but speaking from experience, there is a line one can draw between "friend" and "other" that is fairly easy to ascertain and respect.
So, I think men can be friends with women they find unattractive. And vice versa. However, once sexual desire and want come into the picture, the rules change ... as do many of the motives.
Well, maybe. I haven't run up against this particular wall, but this is only because my acceptance "that nothing would happen" usually falls within the first twenty seconds of meeting someone.
And I'm not prepared to argue, as Laura does, that "men do not have a clue how to behave around a woman"; surely some of them must, or the species presumably would have died out years ago.
(Apologies for lifting the whole thing, Charles; I didn't see a reasonable way to excerpt it.)
There's a great deal of contempt hidden in the articles Charles references and links. Contempt for men, of course; that's the only sort that's currently permissible in discussing inter-gender relations. A man who expressed the inverse sentiments would be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of the Blogosphere on a rail, wouldn't he?
Well, we shall see.
First, a couple of prefatory remarks. (Yes, I know that's a redundancy.) I speak for no one but myself. There may be persons with similar views, but they can be trusted to express them for themselves. Also, please remember that generalizations of the sort you're about to read will normally have numerous exceptions, just as the statement that "men are taller than women" doesn't insist that there are no five-foot men or six-foot women. Also, please consider the following contentions confined to American men and American women; my knowledge of the behavior of other cultures is more academic than direct.
Finally, for the gentleman who asked, in reference to this post, why I styled it "The Music Of The Icosahedrons": Well, mostly because it tickled me. But also because of the imagistic play against the well-known cliche: "as smooth as the music of the spheres." Spheres are smooth; it's a defining characteristic. Icosahedrons are not. I'll make use of this meta-title for essays about social, cultural, and philosophical matters where I perceive a certain roughness, or where the introduction of a little roughness to what appears to be a "settled debate" strikes me as likely to do good.
Consider yourselves warned.
The typical American woman, of whatever age, height, weight, race, color, creed, or walk of life, is a profoundly confused creature. This is inescapable; most women don't have the intellectual horsepower or the strength of character to deal with the barrage of conflicting dictates and desiderata to which being an American woman in the year of Our Lord 2005 subjects her. Therefore, the typical American woman lives a life marked most plainly by incoherence and bafflement. In short, she's out at sea, with no buoys nor moorings in sight.
Women would like to blame this on men, but it's at least as much their own fault.
When a creature rebels against that which has been pre-programmed into it by genetics and reinforced by natural selection, it will be badly stressed. If the rebellion is conscious, some of the stress will be intellectual and emotional. Here is the foundation for American female malaise, and for its low-grade hostility toward American manhood.
The syndrome manifests itself most visibly in single women, whether never married or divorced. Married women, if they're to make a go of married life, learn to thrust it out of their conscious minds, to bury it as deeply in their subconsciouses as possible. Those whose marriages succeed have done an adequate job of interring it; it's a necessary condition. Those whose marriages fail have often allowed it to rise again. Like the South, this is a cause lost well in advance.
Our typical case should have a name; let's call her Mary Smith. For starters, let's imagine her to be single, self-supporting, and living on her own rather than with a husband, lover, or any other variation on that theme. Let's have a run-through of typical Mary's typical day.
She rises early, as do most working Americans, and heads for the shower to bathe and groom herself. What to wear? Well, dress codes, except for a very few customer-contact-intensive businesses, are all but extinct, so she has her choice. But here's where her conflicts begin.
Glamorous clothes tend to be less comfortable than not-so-glamorous ones, but there's that nice Ben over in Marketing, whose eye she thinks she might have caught. She'd like to explore that possibility further, and dressing attractively might help. But it might also bring more of the attentions of Larry, her pantingly overeager coworker in Accounting, and that she definitely doesn't want. Also, her work involves some to-and-fro in a largish building, so form-flattering clothes and high heels have some practical negatives attached.
But she's thirty-two, unmarried and childless. Her job, her fitness regimen, maintaining her apartment, and practicing her pastimes have sharply limited her social opportunities. If she doesn't snag a mate at work, what's she supposed to do? Sleep alone forever? The bars are no help, and don't even think about the lonelyhearts' ads.
She decides one way or the other, agonizes in the same fashion over makeup and perfume, and heads out to her car to drive to work.
Oh damn, the car won't start. It won't even crank; she's left the driver's door slightly ajar, and the cabin lights have drained the battery. Well, at least it isn't raining.
She unearths the battery charger her most recent boyfriend urged her to buy, and pops the hood on her car. There's the battery, those are the terminals: red for positive, black for negative, just like the color codings on the charger leads. Just clip red to red and black to black, plug the charger into the extension cord, and plug the extension cord into the wall. What could be simpler?
In prying the protective cover back from the red terminal, her grip slips and her hand flies into the propped-open hood. She bruises her hand and breaks a nail.
Crap! That manicure was only five days old. Money is tight; she hasn't the thirty bucks she'd need to get her nails redone. To say nothing of the swelling, which looks as if it might blossom into an impressive bruise. She'll just have to hope no one notices. She certainly hopes Ben and Larry don't notice, albeit for different reasons. Unfortunately, some of her cattier coworkers are odds-on to spot it and mention it in public. Competition never ends in the single career woman's world.
Thirty minutes later, the car starts, and she's off to the Place of Little Appreciation where she earns her daily bread. Traffic is no worse than usual, but the usual is quite bad enough. Unfortunately, the alternative is moving into the city, or the quasi-urban belt around it, and that's something she just can't afford. The combination of traffic delays and her automotive mishaps puts her forty-five minutes late in getting to her desk. Heads come up as her coworkers note her tardy arrival. She doesn't see The Boss, but he'll know as well. He has his ways.
Work is, well, work. There's too much of it, and little of it is rewarding apart from the salary she gets for it. She keeps to her desk, straining to maintain her concentration as the life of the office swirls around her. Some of the girls are sporting flattering new outfits and hairdos. Suzie, that transparent trollop, came to work in a tight silk blouse, skin-tight leather toreador pants and five-inch sling-back stilettos. All morning she parades around as if demanding admiration -- and she gets it. Mary can't help but notice the comments: barely polite lust from the men, unconcealed resentment from the women. Suzie bathes in it. Mary wonders about her own relatively conservative habits of dress, and whether she'll have to modify them to have a chance with Ben, or with any of the office's other single men. Whatever else she might say about Suzie, at least the girl is never alone.
To avoid having to stay too late, Mary declines an invitation to join her coworkers for lunch and works through her lunch hour, munching a vending-machine sandwich as she ages trial balances and projects exposure ratios.
The afternoon is just more of the same. Ben doesn't stop by to chat her up, but then, neither does Larry. At least no one comments on her bruised hand or her broken nail...in her hearing.
By the time Mary's ready to leave, it's dark out, and there's no one else on her floor. She's moderately frightened of the dark, as most women are, but she'll be damned rather than ask the male security guard to escort her through the parking garage. However, she makes it to her car without incident, gets in, and heads off.
Let's see: is this a Yoga night? No, not on Wednesday. But she's low on several staples, so she can't go directly home. Damn. A stop at the supermarket means she'll miss tonight's episode of Survivor: Buried Alive In A Manila Landfill. Well, it's that or not eat.
At home, she discovers that her cat has knocked over her amaryllis plants and peed into the soil. Damn cat. She ponders yet again whether having something to love is worth all this trouble.
There's a message on her answering machine. Her mother wants her to come home for dinner on Sunday. Except when the invitation is for a holiday, that's a sign of trouble. Trouble meaning a set-up with one of her friends' unmarried relatives. They're all so dull, so earnest, and so conventional. Granted, they're all employed, they all make decent livings, and she can't imagine any of them being actively dangerous, but where's the thrill in that? They'd all want her to give up her job and stay at home with the kids, and what's a woman without a job? Just a homemaker. Mom is much too ardent for grandkids. She's being a Thirties throwback with these introductions. Mary can do her own penis-hunting. She decides not to return the call.
Half an hour later, the groceries are away, the mess has been cleaned up, and Mary is perched on her sofa before the television, her Caesar salad made from packaged, pre-shredded lettuce and packaged, pre-cooked chicken strips, dressed with bottled raspberry vinaigrette from a socially conscious maker, nestled in her lap. There she'll while away the two hours she has available for leisure and personal maintenance.
The shows are all about glamorous single people with glamorous lives, pursuing and being pursued by other glamorous single people with glamorous lives. They seem to spend all their money, time, and energy on sex and clothing. It's unrealistic, two-dimensional, even bizarre to imagine that these are representations of real lives she's seeing...but the faces, bodies and clothes are so beautiful, the settings are so appealing, and the lifestyle so magnetic...
That's what you want, whispers a tiny voice in her backbrain. She's heard that voice many times over the years. Indeed, what she sees on the screen is a refined, upscale version of the life she lives...set out to live. Maybe she hasn't gotten anywhere lately, but there's still time.
At ten o'clock, she shuts off the TV, undresses, removes her makeup, and slides into bed. She has no alternatives: she has to get up at six to make it to work on time, after all. She notices on her nightstand the book she'd been reading, but that she'd neglected for three nights running: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. Lots of good stuff in there about men's oppression of women through fashion and popular standards of attractiveness. It has to go back to the library by the weekend, so she'd better get cracking.
Mary's too tired to read with attention. A page or two is all she can manage. But the book stirs her thoughts and pulls her away from the threshold of sleep. Even after she's masturbated, she can't relax enough. Men are exploitative, dictatorial thugs. Why should a woman have to primp and preen and decorate herself to catch a man's eye? Why should she have to strain to be attractive and desirable to fit into the happenin' world? Why should it make a difference whether she looks young, fit, and vital, or like a puddle of dissolving flesh? Doesn't she have a right to a passionate, exciting marriage, children, and relief from all this pressure? Doesn't she have a right to be happy?
Where are her answers to come from?
Mary marks her place, puts down her book, and turns out the light. She falls asleep with tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.
Mary Smith might be a composite, but she's important nonetheless. She's an American Everywoman: determined to Have It All, clueless as to what that really means, bombarded with conflicting desires and enticements, and seriously underequipped for the life she's set out to live. All women are.
The array of opportunities and enticements offered by the Official Portrait of the Glamorous Life contains a number of important contradictions. Mary simply cannot Have It All. The parts conflict. Until consciously admitted, the conflicts seriously strain a woman's psyche. In particular, she becomes incapable of a relaxed relationship with the opposite sex.
That's bad enough, but there's worse. Much worse. The emphasis on sexual desirability trumpeted by the entertainment media and our popular tastemakers applies almost solely to women's presentation of themselves to men. Men's appearances, within a relatively generous envelope, don't matter that much to women. Women sense that men are far more relaxed about their dress and grooming than they, and they resent it. Why us? seems the most common reaction, as they do all they can to stoke the mostly-visually-triggered fires of men's lust.
The ongoing myth about male oppression of women and the continuing insistence that a woman must maximize her sexual allure to get and keep a man's love are mutually immiscible. These things require that a woman simultaneously believe that a man is an elusive prize to be won only by daunting, unceasing effort and self-discipline, and an enemy, sworn to break his woman to his will, who should be fought with every weapon to hand.
Torn by these conflicting dictates, many American women -- millions, if not tens of millions -- go quietly, undetectably insane. They simply haven't got either the intelligence or the emotional fortitude to work their way through to the truth. Worse yet, their strongest traditional bastions in times of trial, family and faith, have been excoriated by the very taste-and-opinion-formers who promote the conflict from which they suffer. The family is a source of traditional wisdom about a life well lived. It's so five minutes ago! And you'll never see our Mary at church on Sunday. It's unfashionable. The characters on television don't go to church! Besides, one of her coworkers might see her. She wouldn't want that. She might get a reputation as...as...as one of those Christians.
We're creating a womenfolk peppered with lunatics and child murderesses.
Men are under far less stress from the influences outlined above. This makes quite a lot of women hate them.
I've been there. Whatever you might think of me from my writings here, I'm a laid-back sort, disinclined to press myself or anyone else. I've been blessed with reasonable looks, reasonably good health, and enough charm to get away with a modest degree of roguishness without being murdered in my bed. Those gifts have served me adequately well in my dealings with women. As a single man, I didn't obsess about anything. As a married one, I'm content. Apparently, so is my wife.
My experiences appear to be typical of American manhood. We simply don't ask that much. Oh, certainly we know what we like. Certainly, given the opportunity, we can overdose on it. But we focus better than women do. For one thing, it's hard-wired into our genes. For another, we know what women really respond to most powerfully: comfort, security, and status. (And shoes. Lots of shoes. The C.S.O. insisted that I throw that in.) So we concentrate on amassing those things, mostly by striving for advancement financially and in our occupations.
A woman under stress might denigrate men for their "simplicity," but she envies us as well. What, after all, does it take to make John Doe happy? A bit of sex, some time and space to call his own, and a firm grip on the remote control! Compare that to the endless list of things Mary Smith needs for her pursuits, and tell me which would be easier to satisfy.
Envy converts to hatred with appalling speed and efficiency.
You might think I've overstated the case. (If you're a woman, you almost certainly think so.) You'd be wrong. If anything, I've understated it. Look at some of the things I haven't mentioned:
- The female horror of aging.
- The female fear of male infidelity and sexual caprice.
- The numerous publications marketed solely to women, all of which promote some consumption- or glamor-based approach to achieving love and happiness.
- The endless lists of products pressed upon women for beauty or glamor enhancement, all of which carry a subliminal message.
- The pressures upon women to emulate male sexual aggressiveness and male proclivity toward polyamory.
- The pressures upon women not to have children, against all the urgings and needs of their bodies.
- The insistence by various cultural elements that, despite women's yearnings for male companionship, support and protection, "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" -- that women owe it to themselves to be independent of men, and that any compromise on that "ideal" is a form of self-betrayal, and the betrayal of the female sex.
The synergy among these pressures could unhinge any woman. That we have as few female lunatics and child murderesses as we do speaks to some hidden reserve of endurance in the American woman's psyche.
Men understand perfectly well how to relate to women. That's really what women fear:
- Is she a "nice girl," unlikely to drop her drawers prior to marriage? Then marry her or let her be.
- Is she a "liberated woman," who'll sleep around just to prove it to herself, regardless of what that might do to her? If it's just sex you want and you're willing to bear the costs, take her.
- Is she a "career woman," who's decided that ascending the slippery pole of success justifies anything and that nothing else can take precedence? If you can offer her an increment of career altitude, she's yours; otherwise, forget it.
- Is she a "castrator," out to prove that she can beat any man at any game and revel in the victory for that reason alone? Cross the street and walk quickly.
- Is she a "total loss," too erratic to conform to any stereotype and too flustered to adopt any role, whose attitudes and behavior fluctuate with company, pharmaceuticals, and the phase of the moon? Look for her in a forthcoming Ken Russell movie, but otherwise keep clear.
Men, no matter who they are, all want the same things:
- Sex.
- A mother for our children.
- A calm and stable home.
No, we don't want all these things from every woman we meet. The only things we want from every woman -- from every man, too -- are respect and some space in which to maneuver. And we understand that these are not going to be conceded to us by right; we have to earn them.
When a normal, more-or-less sane man meets a woman he regards as attractive, he ponders, at least for a moment:
- Whether she's sexually and / or matrimonially available;
- Whether she's worth the effort;
- What the costs and the consequences would be.
It doesn't matter whether he's married, single, or in any in-between state. That's his natural reaction, just as deeply graven into him by genetics and natural selection as is a woman's desire for a protector, a provider, and children. With the exception of criminals, we learn to control it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
Women have been indoctrinated into the belief that this natural reaction is somehow a threat, or a denigration of their "strength," or both. This might be the worst of all the deceits the cultural engineers have put about. Strength is confident before desire. It doesn't run and hide. It doesn't pretend insult where there's an implied compliment to be savored. A mature, sensible woman will understand that, but sadly, their numbers are declining.
Women's ever-deepening ineptitude at dealing with men is drawing near to crisis levels. As an illustration of this, I offer a snippet of a conversation I had some time ago with a beautiful young colleague, as best I can reproduce it. It began with irrelevancies, but she later steered it into a stock gender-war condemnation of men -- "present company excepted, of course."
I: Why do you except me? What makes me somehow different from all these generic "men" you condemn?
She: Well, you're nice, and you're settled, and you don't undress me with your eyes whenever you see me.I: (laughing) You need new glasses, kid. It's all I can do to keep my hands off you.
She: (badly flustered) But -- aren't you married? You've never done or said anything like that!I: Yes, I'm married, but I'm still a man, and you're a very attractive young woman.
She: So you're saying you want to sleep with me?I: Well, what I'd really enjoy is the stuff that comes before sleep, but you've got the general idea.
She: But you've never --
I: And I never will. I'm married. But why do you assume the desire isn't there? What makes you think I don't share the sexual aggressiveness you've found in all the other men you know? I'm not that old![A long silence followed.]
She: I guess I don't understand you.
I: No, I think you're bright enough to understand me, or any man. You might not want to, though. Why do you dress and make yourself up as you do?She: I want to look nice!
I: And you want to look nice because...?
Gentle Reader, she had no answer. As God is my witness, she could not, or would not, tell me why she wanted to dress, make up her face, and style her hair attractively. Take my word for it: her efforts in that direction were both considerable and very successful. That was an intelligent twenty-six-year-old woman pursuing a career in military engineering, a field that's 95% male.
Perhaps time will allow her to become more candid with herself about what she wants and what she does to get it, but for the present, she's following a script -- and the dialogue between her and the male half of her species is composed strictly of typeset condemnations of everything we are and do.
I could wind this up in a number of ways, but the point I'd like to press home is the overwhelming importance of being honest with oneself about one's desires and fears.
The typical American woman of today is so thoroughly confused about what she desires and what she ought to desire, what she fears and what she ought to fear, that honesty even in the privacy of her own skull comes at a terrible price. The mutually contradictory directives from her body, from her peers, from her family, from feminist "leaders," and from the entertainment media pull at her with extraordinary power. Such is her desire to conform -- women are far more sensitive to social pressures than are men -- that even to inquire of herself what she really wants, and what she's willing to do to get and keep it, is a struggle. What if the answers aren't acceptable to her parents, to her coworkers, to her friends and acquaintances, or to Gloria Steinem and Helen Gurley Brown? How can all these demands, all this stress, or this welter of mutually exclusive goals be fair?
You won't often see me write this, so look sharp: It isn't fair. But then, neither is life. Some women are given perfect skin or teeth. Some are given beautiful faces or figures. Some are given high intelligence. Some are born into wealth. Each of these is a currency with which some of the good things of life can be bought -- but not the same goods, not in the same amounts, and not forever.
The woman who wants to improve her relations with men will first clarify her own appreciation of what she wants, including (of course) what she wants from a man. That and only that will make it possible for her to be honest with men -- and to know how to deal with them not as enemies, and not with contempt, but from a position of strength.
Gentle Reader, if you're a woman, and if the above offends you, or if you consider it ridiculous, incoherent tripe from one whose possession of a Y chromosome has handicapped his thinking, well, you're entitled to your opinion. Just remember that reality is indifferent to your opinions...and, come to think of it, to mine as well.
That is all.
Comments
You captured social engineering and its induced behaviorial response programmes quite well with your study of Mary Smiths.
But I wonder how many will press on to benefit from your insights after 1) reading your first non-prefatory paragraph (warning—my father loved it!); 2) or noticing that you would go on for nearly 4500 words total!
Thanks for all of it, but I know my audience doesn’t have the attention span of yours. I will pass along pertinent parts of it to those I feel will benefit and only reveal the entirety if I am (I could only pray) asked for it.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 10/22/2005 at 03:28 PMCurt read this earlier today, and asked me (as I was coloring my hair, no less) to read it and share my opinions.
Wow, Francis - talk about hitting the nail on the cultural head. You are a brave man for speaking so plainly. Thank you.
My freedom began when I stopped reading Cosmo, Glamour, New Woman, Self and all the other “women’s” magazines out there. I read them all. For years. I kept clippings, and because I’m organized, I kept them in folders and sorted them by theme. How to have thinner thighs. Beautiful hair. Better sex. The list goes on. What a pile of self-glorifying crap I lived in for my late teens and most of my 20s.
I was a type of Mary. Not quite as independent - but certainly as disillusioned. I have never been happier with myself or my place in this world than I am today. Why? Marriage, most likely, and marriage to the right man - very important. I’ve seen lots of marriages where the husband and wife are trying their darndest to live life a la Sex and the City or the O.C. Sad. Life is far more mundane, yet profoundly beautiful and thrilling. Television, magazines and popular fiction can’t compare.
The other element, which you touched on briefly, is church. I went to church as a young woman, but still read my magazines. It is only since becoming Catholic that I am much more aware of guarding what goes past my eyes and into my head, into my heart. I’m not perfect - I still occasionally watch TV mindlessly, but that doesn’t happen much. I’ll flip through a woman’s magazine, but they are much tamer - Woman’s Day, where you’re likely to find prayers and encouragement scattered throughout, or Martha Stewart, because frankly, she has great ideas. Mostly, it is in embracing Christianity that I have been able to shed this shell of feminist propaganda that my generation has been raised on. It’s garbage, and needs to be seen for what it is.
Thanks again for the wonderful post - keep it up!
Posted by Rebecca on 10/22/2005 at 06:43 PMYou sound a lot like Phillip Wylie in A GENERATION OF VIPERS.
Good read.
Hope you don’t share his fate…
Posted by on 10/23/2005 at 12:36 PMInteresting read.
I’m curious. Has the C.S.O. read your article? If so, what does she think? Did she have any input?
Posted by on 10/23/2005 at 09:07 PMIt’s all true. Too many women get bad advice, have unwholesome or superficial companions, and are starving in mind and spirit, without education or culture. Many are so lonely and alienated they are in trouble with money and drugs.
Family may or may not help (they often have their own barbarous agendas); and church without a lot of maturity, can subject you to the banal and, again, barbarous.
I prayed a lot 28-33. Didn’t get what I thought I wanted, but got what it turned out I needed. Be honest with yourselves, ladies, and keep trudging on looking for God’s provision, and finding something to be grateful for, however small. It will be there. But don’t believe what you’re being told about life. Open your eyes and draw your own conclusions.
Marvelous work, F.!
Posted by on 10/23/2005 at 09:49 PMExcellent post, Fran. I savored every word of it.
Random thoughts as I was reading…
The minute I got engaged, I bought a book by Laura Doyle called The Surrendered Wife. Look at the wildly negative reviews on Amazon.com to appreciate how much fear and confusion is inspired by the mere idea of women attaining happiness by surrendering the illusion of control and “having it all.” One thing Doyle points out that resonated with me is that any time a woman is feeling envious or resentful towards her man, it’s because she is not satisfying her own needs. A deeper problem, as you point out, is that women aren’t even acknowledging what those needs are.
Maybe it’s because I have been sheltered by academia for the last decade, but I never felt pressure by men to conform to any kind of appearance standard. I definitely sense that pressure coming from other women, but never from men. I managed to attract a good husband with my plain clothes, plain hair, minimal makeup, and no manicure. Plus, I was 40 lbs. overweight. Yet one of the first things he ever told me is how beautiful I am, and he was very sincere. He later told me that it was instant attraction, not because I was a sex-bomb, but because I had a “warm, motherly glow.” I was charmed. You know something? Women set and enforce beauty standards, not men.
WRT Rebecca’s comments: I haven’t had television for about eight years, so I didn’t know what Sex and the City was about (except that there was probably sex and it was taking place in a city). My curiosity piqued, I rented some DVDs; by the end of three episodes I was unspeakably depressed. This show presents such a terrifyingly hollow and purposeless vision of life that it had me weeping in despair. Yet it’s the kind of life that women like Mary aspire to. If anything bespeaks the general decline of women into mass insanity, it’s the popularlity of that damned show.
My mother was a homemaker, and she absolutely loved it. Taking care of the family and keeping a home was all she ever wanted to do, and that set my standard for the feminine ideal. Growing up we watched her favorite shows from the 50s and 60s, and I remember thinking that the lives of Laura Petrie and June Cleaver were like a little slice of heaven. As an undergraduate, I was fearless in expressing this view in front of my feminist professors (maybe I’m a sadist, but I relished watching them go apoplectic). One of them told me that my view would set back the “progress” of the women’s movement by decades. I told her I certainly hoped so.
Posted by Sarah on 10/24/2005 at 12:07 PMPandora’s daughter wrote: My curiosity piqued, I rented some DVDs;
But because you, Sarah, had viewed it coming from where you’re a veteran defender of the traditional, SATC induced the response by the end of three episodes I was unspeakably depressed that, nevermind their original intentions, may please its social engineering producers were they to see it. As although you’re out of their influence, you are perceived as not a threat if you’re depressed.
For whether your depressed or abandoned to their designs for you, either response adds to the burdens the statist eagerly seek to exploit.
Now along comes our Curmudgeon to help explain the onslaught upon your sisters and daughters, and I think you now have some very good lines with which to add your counterpoint to those who are defaming such books (as this one you favor) at Amazon.com.
I’d be very much interested in reading what you might subsequently introduce there.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 10/24/2005 at 03:58 PMOne other thing that I have seen that is pretty much designed to keep people single is the idea that everyone is trying to “box above their weight class” when trying to get a date. So if someone express interest they are clearly not worth the effort. The idea that you can do better then *everyone* who expresses interest is truely stupid.
Posted by on 10/24/2005 at 05:13 PMIn love, you don;t know your weight class until you try.
Posted by Doug_S on 10/24/2005 at 09:10 PMIt was largely watching SATC and realizing “this is what women of my generation are using as a model for life” that convinced me that voluntary celibacy was the best course.
Of course women all seem to be nuts. The only reason men aren’t all crazy is that our pressures don’t conflict as much and most of us are better at resisting the ones that do. If men lived the emotional lives women live, we’d be nuts too.
Posted by Matt on 10/25/2005 at 08:09 AMFor some reason, I’m hearing Bobby Vee singing “Come back when you grow up girl”. The only difference seems to be that wide-eyed innocence has been replaced with wide-eyed anger/cynicism.
Posted by on 10/25/2005 at 12:41 PMPascal, the ultimate purpose of a show like SatC is to win converts. It is a slick, aggressive campaign to convince young women that this is the ideal lifestyle. I don’t know if the producers realize that the lifestyle is impossible, and therefore their goal is to destroy a generation of young women, or if they honestly believe that this show represents the pinnacle of existence for a young woman.
Obviously, I am not the show’s intended audience, as there is no hope of converting me to that lifestyle. Nor, really, is a woman who has already bought into the idea. The intended audience is impressionable young women like my cousin, Jennifer, who as a teenager was happy, bright, studious, and chaste, and has emerged, after years of watching and emulating this trash (with the complete indifference of her mother), into one of the most dismally unhappy and unhealthy people I know.
I want to be the enemy of the producers of this show—I intend to be a threat. The way to do that is not to object to their material, not to stir controversy over it, but to aggressively compete—to offer the opposite moral message in a compelling way. Everyone is motivated by selfishness, by the pursuit of their own happiness. You just have to convince them that the long-term rewards of a healthy life FAR outweigh the short-term kicks of a SatC life. That’s what I intend to do.
Posted by Sarah on 10/25/2005 at 07:42 PMReading this, I was reminded of the movie, When Harry Met Sally. Sally is trying to understand under what conditions men and women can be “just friends”. She tells Harry, if the woman is not attractive, can’t you just be friends?
He answers from the heart “Naw, you pretty much want to nail her.”
I loved it - it had the ring of truth.
I, too, watched Sex & the City (2 episodes only), and was bewildered by all the attention it received. It just wasn’t that interesting or funny. I finally decided that the target audience was women without men, and gay guys. The women bought into the fantasy about living without need for men, the gay guys just fantasized about the clothes.
Posted by Linda F on 10/25/2005 at 10:55 PMInteresting post. I can tell you watch a lot of TV. One need only watch three or four episodes of “Sex and the City”; “Desperate Housewives” or “Six Feet Under” to get the same impression. Also, with books like “He’s Just Not that Into You” and “It’s Called a Break Up Because it’s Broken” out on the market, you don’t really need to be a rocket scientist to know what it means to be an unmarried American woman these days.
You do, however, need to actually BE a woman.
What is that? Rule #1 in any halfway decent writing class? “Write what you know?” No offense, but you don’t see me chiming in and writing about what it means to be an American male these days.
You don’t see me waxing poetic about Sundays in front of the game with my buddies and beer in a can, or all the time I spend trying to download internet porn before my live in girlfriend, with whom I refuse to make a commitment, gets home.We’re all a lot more than the one-dimensions that the media would have us be. Some of us buy in to the myth of being programmed, some not.
In the future, given your clearly advanced and highly perceptive writing skills, perhaps you SHOULD, in fact, stick to the familiar. Either that or adopt a feminine nom de plume, in which case you’ll probably get comments with the name of a good shrink.Posted by Deirdre on 10/26/2005 at 01:58 PMDear Deirdre,
It’s far easier simply to assert that someone with whom you disagree doesn’t know what he’s talking about than to frame a substantive, coherent argument against his contention. But then, it’s plain from your comment that you didn’t understand my thesis, since you 1) misstated it and 2) veered off into petty sarcasm, so I suppose it would be unfair to expect a meaningful response.
Perhaps you should try reading it again, slowly this time. Try to see the words that are actually there, rather than your pet peeves.
Have a nice life.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 10/26/2005 at 05:05 PMDoug,
What I am talking about is the decision that I have observed by many people of both sexes, but with a higher concentration in women, that anybody who approches me I can do better then. The reason for this is that they think you are not approaching someone who you think you have a chance with you are approaching someone you *WISH* you had a chance with. So why should they bother with you since you just told them not to, by coming over.
Posted by on 10/26/2005 at 05:22 PMSarah, I appreciated your comments so much - especially about not knowing about SATC and renting the DVD’s and only making it through 3 episodes. Makes me think that those of us with televisions are really numbed to the amount of garbage being poured out on the airwaves. Anyway, good news is that I spend more time here and lately, in books, than in front of the TV. And absolutely true, Sarah, about women setting the standards for beauty. Most men don’t like stick figure women, but a lot of girls sure try to weigh 80lbs soaking wet, don’t they? We have the modeling industry to thank for that.
One quick note of interest - Desperate Housewives, by far one of the most talked about and watched tv shows lately (and I’ve never watched an episode - something about it just seems so very… desperate!) is made so popular by a team made almost entirely of gay men. So, there’s yet another agenda being pushed - if it isn’t women’s “liberation”, it’s sexual permissiveness for all. Otherwise we’re all a bunch of prudes.
Would have loved to have been in the room with your feminist profs, Sarah; must have been a hoot.
Posted by Rebecca on 10/26/2005 at 11:41 PMRebecca, you said what I neglected to say: a lot of the depressing drivel on television is driven by the gay culture and its hollow obsession with appearance and youth.
You are correct that the standard for beauty isn’t something that appeals to straight men. A quick look in any men’s magazine will tell you that. The ultra-thin, despondent heroin-chic look or whatever you want to call it is a lie, because it’s virtually impossible for a woman to maintain it. As an undergraduate I was acquainted with a nice young woman who was a fashion model—she modeled for Victoria’s Secret, among other things. She was 5’10” and a very thin 125 pounds. When I met her, she was about to leave for a trip to Japan for a photo shoot and was lamenting because she was told to drop 15 pounds. Fifteen pounds!! There isn’t a man alive who would find her appealing at that weight. She told me that for some of the shoots she was locked in her hotel room with nothing but a bag of cocaine and a carton of cigarettes. Is it any wonder these girls burn out so quickly? And for what?
But then maybe this goes back to what Fran was saying. A woman who is attractive to men will look like she is capable of bearing healthy children. This means she will have curvy hips and be somewhat padded with body fat. If a woman is denial about one of her main functions—to have babies—then she will naturally want to deny any physical representation of that. And, on top of everything, you have a fashion industry that is dominated by gays, and what you end up with is models who look like young boys. Women buy into this crap, because they’re confused, and when they realize the impossibility of meeting these ridiculous standards for “beauty” they blame the average man, who’s had nothing to do with it in the first place. It’s pure cognitive dissonance.
Posted by Sarah on 10/27/2005 at 01:31 AMFran,
You’re my new hero. The visceral and definsive attitude of women like Deirdre is quite commonplace when presented with data, no matter how accurate, that doesn’t fit with their preconceived worldview. It’s the same with people who have their religious convictions shown as false, and with a lot of Radical Feminists(tm), this *is* a religion.I have no problem with a woman who is primarily career oriented. We all make our choices. #1 I wouldn’t and didn’t marry one. #2 medical studies have shown that those who embrace non traditional gender roles (that includes men too) have a statistically significant increased risk of health problems, including heart attack and stroke.
Keep preaching it, brother.
PS: Rebecca, you know me from another blog. A more “bedding” oriented one.
Thanks for turning me on to this blog entry. IT’s a keeper.
Posted by Tony on 10/27/2005 at 10:48 AMI enjoyed this article very much, and I think it speaks the truth about quite a few women out there. By the grace of God and the good sense of my parents I was given a healthy and directed upbringing which steeled me against many of the messages current culture is sending to women.
By the time I was in my twenties there was a few things I knew for sure: I wanted to be married to a man who could provide stability, affection and comfort, I wanted children, and the kind of man who would provide me with a lifetime of these things would be harder to discern if I made myself into a sex object via clothing, hair, etc. Men regularly found me attractive regardless of what I was wearing, and I grew in confidence. In my mid-twenties a male acquaintance of mine commented to me that I was the only one among his friends who actually knew what I wanted out of life. I only wish more women could escape from the insanity!
Posted by on 10/27/2005 at 12:57 PMI cannot disagree with a word of the Curmudgeon’s analysis of women, I can only ask why he has seen fit to let men off so lightly? We all have reason to be confused these days.
Posted by Kate on 10/28/2005 at 12:00 AMKate, that was the only detraction from the post that my husband and I saw - but it could easily be a Part 2 to this one, eh Fran?
Tony - re career oriented women - I agree about that. I work full time but would give it up in a second to raise children. Because we aren’t able to have kids biologically, the expense of getting a family off the ground is quite a bit higher; the likelihood is that I will continue to work even then. However, we’ve made adjustments to our lives to make a better situation; my mom lives with us and is eagerly awaiting little ones; I work in a Christian, very family friendly environment where there are options available to me for hours of work, etc; I already spend my workday happily entertained by at least 2 if not 4 little boys a couple times a week when the boss’s wife and sister come in to get some work done. And we all work with the distraction too - it’s a great reminder that life is more than work! We do what we can. What bothers me most about working women is when they think they can work 60 hours a week, move up their career ladder, and think that their children will be raised just fine. Yes, but raised by other people; the more people we have depending on us, the more we have to let go of our own agendas and need to think about their welfare.
Posted by Rebecca on 10/28/2005 at 10:08 AM"I can only ask why he has seen fit to let men off so lightly? We all have reason to be confused these days.”—Kate
“[That] could easily be a Part 2 to this one, eh Fran?”—Rebecca
No, ladies, I disagree. Quite strongly, in fact. Indeed, the immediate implication of the essay’s main thesis is that men are on average far less confused or flustered than women. We have less excuse for being confused.
1. Men are far less susceptible to pressures to conform to group and social preferences than are women.
2. Men’s desires, being fewer, stronger, and more focused than women’s desires, are less “steerable” by outside influences than women’s.
3. Men’s narrow focus on specific kinds of achievement allows us to ignore a wide range of social messages. They literally go past us without being noticed.The evidence is plentiful. The many fashion thrusts at men, all intended to open us to the influence of a constantly changing fashion industry guided by tastemakers in commerce and entertainment, have all been repelled in favor of simplicity and classicism. The whole “metrosexual” gambit has been laughed away. There’s been little interest among men of working age in adopting the homemaker / child-caretaker role. Entertainments aimed at men have been remarkably constant in their orientations: sex, toys, and sports.
Women are (and have always been) the juicier targets for the social engineers, regardless of the covert motivations. But this, too, could have been predicted: though men run the worlds of industry, commerce, and politics, women run the larger society upon which those things are founded and on which all order ultimately depends.
But perhaps I should stay close to the original subject, which was communication and relations between the sexes. What women want from men—that is, the things they hope to get by incorporating men into their lives—has ramified greatly these past fifty years, whereas what men want from women remains what it’s always been: sex, a stable home, and hegemony over the TV, at least on Sundays during football season. When one wants many things, and when those things conflict, which is the case with many of the things women are being told by numerous voices that they ought to want, one will have a much greater propensity toward disorderly thought and conduct.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 10/28/2005 at 12:03 PMRebecca:
Absolutely. I didn’t mean my comment as an indictment of woman who are career oriented, I simply stated that would not be a woman I’d choose as my mate.
Reminds me of a funny story:
When I first started my new job, I was there a week eating lunch with my new co-workers. I was commenting on how my lunch was always a pleasant surprise because my wife makes my lunch for me every day.
A woman walking by overheard me and with hands thrust on hips, and in a huffy voice said: “Your wife makes your lunch? You’re lucky you’re not married to me!”. Without missing a beat I said: “Yes, Ma’am. I am.”
The reason that I think my wife and I get along so well is that we both are very “other oriented”. I believe that a woman who puts her career first is very selfish. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but she’s living for herself. There are also some men who live for themselves and are very independent. They are selfish also.
Problem with being selfish, is that generally at the end of your life, you’re left with… well… yourself.
Posted by Tony on 10/28/2005 at 09:42 PMEntertainments aimed at men have been remarkably constant in their orientations: sex, toys, and sports.
You forgot food (and beer), Fran.
Posted by Tony on 10/28/2005 at 09:47 PMMy vote for “Post of the Year”. May I suggest everyone ensure that they link to it and spread it around. Concise and incisive.
Two points:
1)SATC I believe is written (in part large or small?) by homosexuals and
2)Single unmarried men fare worse than single unmarried women psychologically and physically. That’s a statistical reality which we men know intuitively.
Posted by Ronald Van Wegen on 11/05/2005 at 11:12 PMYou made some very good observations. I don’t entirely agree with you, especially regarding men.
As a priest, it is very hard to preach to my generation (I am 31) because they are not at church (I’m not that charismatic). Nevertheless, I try to go out around town and meet some of them. I think your insights are very interesting and similar to what I have seen.
In the area I work, the cost and standard of living is very high. I could not believe my eyes and ears, but there is a standard to which everyone tries to live, often above their means. It was very different lifestyle then I have ever experienced growing up and a lifestyle I would never want.
To get to the crux of my comment, women in my generation want a career, good looks, and good man. Men want a good job, money, a good car, and a good women. Neither really wants to get married or have children, but they will if they think they can benefit from a marriage. And they are not getting married in the Church, but on a nice beach or resort.
I usually come into the picture after their second child is born. For whatever reason, having a second baby is a crisis, I think, because they realize that they have no supernatural wisdom to hand down too their children. I “bless” their marriage and baptize their children. Sometimes they will come to see me when one of them (usually the man) has lost a job. I try to tell them to receive the sacraments (confession & Mass) and build up their domestic church by reading the bible, praying together, staying away from sin, etc. Internet porn is a huge problem among married men. Past abortion(s) is a problem among women. But, I can never keep them around long enough for them to change their lives. As soon as they find a job, grandma moves away, a new ski house in NH, they are back to just dropping off their kids at CCD.
I think the biggest problem is the lack of God in their lives. They never stop and think that everything I have will one day be dust. I will be and all of these things will not be with me on the other side. It will all be over someday. What they need to do is ask, “What does God want me to do?”
Posted by Father Ethan on 11/06/2005 at 08:36 AMThe woman you describe sounds familiar, but it is a middle-class type. That is certainly an important type, but I wonder how working-class women whose jobs are horrible, low status and paying minimum wage compare in their attitude to life and men. I don’t see how they could fit the pattern of ‘Mary Smith’.
Posted by on 11/06/2005 at 04:43 PMOverall, a good post. I will be commenting on my own blog later.
I think you might do well (for the strength of your argument) to admit up front that Mary Smith is a caricature, painted with a very broad brush. This doesn’t mean that she is not an accurate portrayal --- a caricature by definition is recognizable, with certain obvious aspects exaggerated by the artist… but it’s not, shall we say, a fine portrait of any real person. It’s like the old saw that all stereotypes are grounded in reality…
One thing I think you need to be careful of, and me too. I’m not a single woman, I’m a happily married at-home mother, and for various reasons I never really found myself in “Mary Smith“‘s position. For that reason it’s very easy to feel smug and smart that I’m not like her. And because she tempts me to smugness and smartness, I’m more tempted to think of real single women as nothing more than benighted Mary Smiths, dismissing whatever real, human problems they may have. This is uncharitable and probably inaccurate.
Finally, John L. has a very good point. You were correct to mention that you restrict your analysis to American women because your understanding of other cultures is academic. I submit that (for the rhetorical strength of your argument) you should restrict it further to middle- to upper-class, highly-educated women. If you are anything like me, your knowledge of the situations of poor or working-class, less-educated women (say, those who didn’t finish high school or who graduated from a high school that very poorly prepared them) is also only academic. In particular, the vision of “career success” might be unrecognizable to your Mary Smith.
Otherwise, good job.
Posted by bearing on 11/07/2005 at 10:21 AMBullcrap.
I was happy in my work as a single woman, happy I got married and happy I have a son and a good job. I am happy because I make myself happy. Your description of an unhappy woman in America could be anybody, man or woman. We decide our fate and happiness in the seasons of life we are given.
BTW, I have four sisters, one who is married, two who are divorced and and one who has never been married. We’re all happy, thank you very much, and that’s probably because we all have SISTERS who help us get through the daily grind called life.
Yup—we all have men in our lives BUT we have all concluded that it is highly likely that the men in our lives will be dead by the time we’re old. SO, we better find a way to get along and trust each other. You guys just don’t live as long—I wonder why???
Sisters unite!
Posted by on 11/08/2005 at 02:52 PMYou sound a lot like Phillip Wylie in A GENERATION OF VIPERS.
Good read.
Hope you don’t share his fate… drug and alcoholic treatment center
Posted by on 12/28/2007 at 05:02 PMYou made some very good observations. I don’t entirely agree with you, especially regarding men.
Posted by style advice on 11/30/2008 at 02:18 AMBrilliant work! Thanks for sharing with us.
Posted by on 12/01/2008 at 07:03 AM
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