Aug 15, 2011

Your Becoming

This is absolutely beautiful.

I can't write anything else here because it will distract me from that column, and that'd be a disgrace. I'm just sticking the article here so that I can read it later, where I know where to find it.

"The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming."

Aug 12, 2011

Sex in the City

My mom idly put the tv on Sex in the City 2 this afternoon. We were waiting for my dad's imminent arrival so we could partake of her spaghetti (mine consisting only of noodles, making my waiting kind of pointless...). Though it didn't dawn on me then, that we were even doing such thing a rang of the patriarchal society of the past, born from ideas that produce such things as Sex in the City.

I've watched bits and pieces of the show over the years, never even a whole episode. I only watched thirty minutes or less of the movie. But these small snippets told me everything I needed to know: this show is one of those female-empowerment movies that aren't really about female empowerment at all.

On the surface, the four privileged ladies own New York City (or Abu Dhabi, the movie's setting), strutting around, checking out young male models, and generally being what a mainstream male lead would be. This could be construed as progress.

But that is only on the surface. Yes, the women choose to sing karaoke to "I Am Woman." But they were singing the powerful words to impress a supposedly sultry man staying at the hotel. They change into new sets of elaborate, expensive clothes every scene. They ogle a sweaty men's rugby team in the pool. They perpetuate the common myth that women must either be frivolous and slutty or subservient and boring. Their kind of "feminism" means using sex as a bartering tool, manipulating men with the promise of their bodies. Then sitting around drinking Cosmopolitans and complaining about that very quality in men. Double standards are not broken by simply flipping them around.

This false sort of feminism is everywhere, and it's learned young. The summer before sixth grade, my male cousin and I were rooting through all the random junk collected in the nooks and crannies of my grandma's house when we stumbled upon a small collection of what I assume were my grandfather's Playboys.

I flipped through them, intrigued by the novelty of the things; I read some of the articles, even laughing at the desperation ringing through the questions posed in the advice column. But my cousin sat spellbound. The naked images swarmed his consciousness; his hormones glazed his eyes over with a creepy kind of hunger. He asked me for some scissors. I helpfully pointed out pictures that seemed the most practical to remove and conceal, but many were rejected for focusing too heavily on one half of the body or the other.

As he expertly chose the money shots of women draped suggestively over chairs, lying on their backs wearing nothing but stilettos, cradling their boobs like they're precious cargo with faked innocent faces, I began to squirm in my under-developed flesh. I knew I hadn't the power of those pictures, but thought one day I might, but even then, so young, it just felt so wrong.

It wasn't the general society-frowned-upon conscious catching that weirded me out. It was the nature of the power of sexuality, something I hadn't really contemplated before. It seemed somehow unfair, to both the models on the page and eyes feasting upon them. The awkwardness of being an impartial observer to the interaction (and implying the future of the relationship...) made me see how powerful sexuality can be.

Sex and the City tries to show that, but they only really portray superficiality and manipulation. I think maybe a more genuine feminism respects an equal sexual dynamic. It's a powerful tool, and we're not right to give it completely to one sex or the other.

Nor is feminism completely tied up in sex, In the City or elsewhere. Soon, Mom realized that the first preseason football game had started, and we flipped the channel and observed the game with an enthusiasm usually reserved for men. It's this small give and take, realizations that no qualities should be masculine or feminine. That is what a true feminist show would promote. Not snagging the pool boy with the most impressively filled Speedo, as Samantha Jones might think.

Aug 11, 2011

Ready

I've never felt more ready to go off to college than I do right now, sitting here in my bed, typing on my laptop at five in the morning. Five in the morning isn't usually when anything productive happens or people feel especially prepared, but somehow, in this moment, I finally think I'm absolutely ready.

It isn't about the piles of stuff heaped haphazardly in the guest bedroom, or the half-read summer reading book waiting to be finished, or the completed textbook order forms, or the move-in plans made, or anything you can check off on a to-do list.

You can prepare logistically to move out of your parents' house forever, but I don't think that's the most important part. It wasn't until this moment that I began moving, consciously at least, all the people in my life from actively affecting me to have affected me. That is not very clear, I realize, but it's a hard concept to force into the limitations of the English language.

I think most relationships reach a point where the people can simply no longer glean anything from each other, whether it's as important as life lessons or as insignificant as lunchtime company. Perhaps it's a bit callous to view people like tools that can outstrip their usefulness and call for replacing, but I can't help but feel that's what is happening to me right now.

Every conversation feels useless and strained, like everyone is just going through the motions because we've all grown accustomed to things going a certain way. There's no joy or relish, no excitement or fervor. All habit, tired routines. We've all been nailed into the caricatures formed by years of familiarity. We rely on the predictably we've created; while this once was comforting, so comforting the thought of leaving it was terrifying, it is now boring and limited. I feel stuffy and confined.

Most dangerously, I feel annoyed. The smallest things get to me. I want so badly to live a new life that things that belong distinctly in this old one are infuriating. All of this is coming from a self-professed hater of change. Nothing is more persuasive to me than the fact that I yearn for change, so often my mortal enemy.

Of course I love dearly all the people that have shaped my current life, and I always will. But I have to get away, or I will kill someone. I need newness, fresh faces that don't know anything about me. People that won't keep secrets from me because they fear judgment that doesn't exist. People that trust me because they haven't time to formulate prejudices. People that are willing to accept changes because they never knew the past. This is what I need now.

So finally, I think I'm ready. Things tend to be over-dramatic at five in the morning, but I'm grateful for these late night "epiphanies." Sometimes they give me the strength to face the oh-too-soon morning.


"I've lived in this place and I know all the faces/each one is different but they're always the same./They mean me no harm, but it's time that I faced it/They'll never allow me to change."