Eat the Damn Cake

Some people were saying in the comments the other day that I have an antiquated idea of what it means to be a woman.

Melanie said this: I think you have an amazingly antiquated view of womanhood in general. You have absorbed so many beauty standards. You spend time analyzing why you don’t conform to xxx and what is wrong w. you bc you don’t conform to xxx.

When I read that, I felt for a second as though I’d been slapped. Amazingly antiquated? Oh god. I’m terrible! Why am I so bad at being a modern woman? Is there something wrong with me for not being more confident? Since then, I’ve been thinking about what she said. It really confuses me. Which makes me want to think about it more but also makes me feel like I’m not making any progress when I think about it and after a while I just feel kinda stupid.

I don’t think there’s a big difference between having an antiquated view of womanhood and being an antiquated woman. At least not according to what Melanie says. I have an antiquated view. I have absorbed all of these beauty standards. Now they’re inside me. They’re a part of who I am. I can’t stop thinking about them. I am an antiquated woman.

What does it mean to be an antiquated woman?

Melanie suggests feeling bad about your appearance and overanalyzing it. Here are some of my own guesses (based on what pops into my mind when I hear the word “antiquated”): Cooking, cleaning, being in a marriage where your husband makes a lot more money than you, wanting babies, wearing your hair long and styled, making sure your nails are perfect all the time, reading lady mags, being bad at math, wearing tea dresses with pearls.

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Or, if we’re talking, like, REALLY antiquated: lace-up corsets and therapy sessions where your doctor stimulates your clitoris for you, since you seem hysterical (that really, really used to happen. Did you guys know that’s how the vibrator was born? Because doctors’ fingers were getting so tired?)

I confess– I do some of those things on the first list. Can you guess which ones? Clue: I don’t have long hair.

But I don’t know any women who don’t do some of those things. And I don’t know any women who have never felt bad about their appearance. Which makes me think that probably all of this is part of being a woman right now. Today. In the modern age.

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Back in January, a constable from the Toronto Police  gave a talk at a college, where he advised female students to stop being so slutty if they didn’t want to be raped. “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order to not be victimized,” he cautioned his audience.

And in response, SlutWalk was born.

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It happened in Toronto and Chicago and LA and Boston and London, and on October 1st, it is coming to New York City. Not sure why we’re so late to the game, actually. That’s a little weird.

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I think it’s kind of funny and cute that everyone is still trying to figure out what makes men and women different. I mean, now that boys are wearing pink nail polish, maybe people are starting to think, “What if we’re not that different after all?! Oh my god!”

The Wall Street Journal recently published a piece about porn. That was a fun sentence to write. The piece is about desire, really. About how it’s different in men and women. Women tend to read romance novels and sexy fan fiction and try to learn more about Orlando Bloom’s personal life. Men tend to watch porn. One of the reasons the study is so interesting is that it shows how much the internet age has added to sociological inquiry. And how easy it is for researchers to find out exactly what you’ve been googling. Which is a little embarrassing for me, because mostly I’m googling really obvious words that I’ve forgotten how to spell.

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But it’s true, men and women are different. I know. Because I sat next to a couple on a first date yesterday.

This is how it went:

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Are women taking over the world? Or are they dropping out where it counts?

Yesterday I watched two TED talks. The first was by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. It was called “Why we have too few women leaders.”

Sandberg talks about ways to encourage girls and women to succeed in corporate environments. It’s lonely at the top. She’s made deals with CEOs of important companies who couldn’t direct her to the women’s bathroom, because she was the first woman who had been in that part of the building. Women, Sandberg insists, underestimate themselves constantly. When men are asked to explain their success, they attribute it to their personal awesomeness. When women are asked the same question, they name the people who helped them along the way, and consider themselves lucky. Remember when I was talking about ambition? I’m like a prophet. Kidding (especially since these talks were given a month ago. Being a prophet of the past isn’t nearly as impressive). But really– this stuff is everywhere.

The second TED talk I watched was by Hanna Rosin, the amazing journalist who recently wrote “The End of Men” for The Atlantic. It was called “New data on the rise of women.”

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So while I was reading one of the aforementioned women’s magazines (occasionally I walk by the stack on the couch and get hypnotized by the hot pink bubble letters in the headline and start thinking, “What IS he really thinking about sex every time he sees my hair?”), I stumbled upon an article about women and ambition. Women, said the article, don’t like to admit that they’re ambitious. In fact, the only woman who has ever been known by the editorial staff at this particular magazine to refer to herself as ambitious is Catherine Zeta-Jones. The rest of us just blush and look down modestly when we receive our Olympic gold medals. We say afterward, to the hordes of hungry reporters, “Oh, gosh…I don’t know. I guess I was lucky?”

Of course, I immediately thought, “Yet another way in which Catherine Zeta-Jones and I are soul sisters.” No, not really. But I did think that I don’t know very many women who aren’t ambitious. And it seems to me that they are willing to admit it.

I am ambitious. It drives me crazy. I don’t want to be. I want to be completely content with a delicious sandwich, a decent job,  and a good TV show. Or several delicious sandwiches, a reasonably decent job,  and a few mediocre TV shows. Life would be  a lot easier. I want to be OK with leading a quiet life, surrounded by family, like my fantastic 90-year-old grandmother.

But I’m ambitious. I don’t need to be a celebrity or a world-famous something or other. I have no interest in the paparazzi and I’m incredibly unphotogenic anyway. I don’t feel any need to make a million dollars. But I want to be recognized for what I do. I want people to think that I’m awesome. I want to be perceived as successful. I want to push myself to be better at the things I’m good at. To be better at the things I’m bad at. To be better.

(source)

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Being a nerd has gotten complicated. It used to be that nerds were never cool. It was assumed that nerds secretly wanted to be popular, cool kids. Glasses were bad.

And now the hipsters have taken over Brooklyn, and are spreading throughout the coastal and urban areas like…healthy green algae.

People are buying glasses that don’t magnify anything, just for that sexy black-framed look. People are quoting philosophers they haven’t read and listening to bands so obscure even their members mothers don’t know they play instruments. Everyone is alternative everything. We’re all aware of everything. It’s this magical blend of wickedly sharp cynicism and blatant hope.

But I don’t know that the hipsters can take nerding for themselves.

(source)

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