We Love The Bad, The Stupid, The Vapid, The Obsequious

A poster for the movie "Tilt," starring Brooke Shields.  Who knew?

What's the Parisian equivalent of a "dive bar"?  I don't really know, but I was in one the other day.  This being Paris, it wasn't so much a dive bar in the sense of being dark, noisy, and full of drunks.  It was more a place for drinking, buying lottery tickets, placing bets on things, watching sports, and pretending to do all these other things while really flirting with the cute Chinese waitress.  It was also a place for playing pinball. 

You remember pinball, right?  Its heyday was just before PacMan, back in the paleo-agonic era.  Pinball machines are endangered now, but maybe you've seen a few of them tucked away in their modern sanctuaries: hipster bars.  Instead of a "screen" they have an actual ball that bounces around; instead of a "joystick" or "game controller" there are these flipper things. 

I always try to avoid saying things that make me sound like an old man, like "You kids with your Wiis and your X-boxes and your games of war and shooting-up-prostitutes, you don't know nothing."  But in this case what else can I say? 

I could go on and on listing points in favor of pinball.  The main one relevant here is that it is possible to be sexy and cool while playing it.  Video games, not so much.  Using a joystick looks ridiculous, and the new machines, where you have to wave your arms around to make the motion of a tennis racket/baseball bat/fist/whatever -- they're even worse.

Part of the appeal of pinball is that you have to interact in a masterful but gentle way with a 300 pound machine.  Nudging the machine a bit:  essential strategy.  Nudging the machine too much:  TILT! your ball is over.

Anyway, in my dive bar there were these guys playing pinball.  And one guy had on a nice suit, and nice shoes, and he had a nice haircut and a reasonably intelligent look on his face.  He also had -- what's the equivalent of road rage for pinball?  He had TILT RAGE. 

He could barely contain his anger.  Every time he lost it was like a new tragedy.  He hit the machine; he stomped his feet; he swore at the people around him.  I don't think he every really technically tilted the machine.  He was just really pissed off about losing.

And now we're finally getting to the point of this post, which is that I found this an attractive quality.  I didn't find it an admirable quality.  I think getting really upset about a pinball game is stupid.  This is a case where a quality I find attractive in a person is not a quality I find sensible or good, and isn't even a quality I'd be looking for in a friend.

I think this situation -- that what's attractive isn't always what's good -- is more common than people would like to admit.  When people date the Bad, the Stupid, the Vapid and the Obsequious ... it really gets under everyone else's skin. 

In particular, when a woman dates a Bad or Stupid Guy, there's often a whole narrative about it: Oh, She Must Have Been Mistreated As A Child and That's Why She Likes Him. She needs to regain her self-esteem.  The implication is that the normal healthy person finds attractive in the opposite sex the qualities of goodness, patience, and generosity.  But isn't this contradicted by the facts?  As I've mentioned before, Keith Richards has to fight them them off with a stick.  Nothing against Keith, but it's not because he's a Good and Virtuous Man.

This whole problem had been much on my mind before seeing Tilt Rage Guy, because I'd been thinking about it as it arises in the books of Anthony Trollope.  I've just been rereading The Palliser series.  Because they concern the English aristocracy, these novels contain a lot of plot elements having to do with the marriages and marriage-longings, suitable and unsuitable, of various young persons. 

In The Prime Minister, poor Emily Wharton is swept off her feet by one Ferdinand Lopez, a man we know ahead of time to be fast-talking, good looking, and easily angered, and a man we later come to know as truly despicable.  Of course Emily's family is deeply mystified by her choice, and also angered by her rejection of Mister Suitable, a long standing family friend.

I was talking over Emily's problems with my friend and he pointed out how many of Trollope's heroines were in the same situation.  They love the scapegraces, the smooth talkers, the passionate lovers and the cutters of fine figures.  The upstanding and quiet young men everyone else approves of for them?  Meh, not so much. 

It drove everybody crazy then, and it's driving everybody crazy now.

Sexism And Misogyny Are Not The Same Thing

What would a post on women and France be without a picture of Catherine Deneuve?

I just returned from a short trip to Paris, France.  To me, one of the most puzzling things about Paris is that even though it's a bustly city with a ton of people, crowded subways, and -- let's face it -- somewhat uncomfortable and cramped interiors, being there is somehow relaxing.  Why is this?

There are a few obvious things.  Like, Paris is well-organized and beautiful.  Signs tell you not only when the next subway train is coming but when the one after that is coming as well.  Just walking along one of those tidy streets, with those lovely building facades, all a little different but sort of the same -- very relaxing.  When there are a lot of people somewhere, you can guarantee that someone has thought out how it should work.

The ads are interesting, and pretty, and they aren't everywhere.

There are things that are less obvious, though, and I think one of them is that while French culture may be sexist, it isn't really misogynist.  That is, while men and women are treated and regarded differently, and women do a lot of the domestic duties (often in addition to working) and there are the same kind of gender imbalances we have here in North America, in France, people basically like women, feel warmly toward them, and enjoy having them around.

This liking of women -- it's something that seems on the wane here in North America.  There's this whole guy thing here that I don't really understand but that seems to catch us in this double-bind.  If you're a woman who doesn't put a lot of effort into pleasing men with your appearance, then men are hostile on grounds that you're not pleasing them -- or, sometimes, you're just invisible.  But if you're a woman who does put a lot a lot of effort into pleasing men with your appearance, then you're either some kind of tease -- and men are hostile over being baited -- or you're a slut -- and men are somehow even more outraged by that than by being baited.

Talk about a no-win situation.

Now, I don't mean "all guys" or "most guys" do this -- certainly not.  But there's enough guys expressing these views, in the right contexts, for it to be a real thing.  Think about women who are on TV.  If they're not dressing up, forget it.  But if they are dressing up, forget it on the other side:  they're "inappropriate" or "slutty" or whatever.  And if you're dressing up and you look really good and you're unavailable, that's it:  you have to be brought down a peg.

Actually I was thinking about this the other day when that annoying article came out in the New York Times about how these studies had "shown" that attached men find women who are ovulating less attractive than non-ovulating women, even though for unattached men it's the reverse.  This was based on attached men rating some woman questioner as less sexy if they were attached and more if they weren't.  The conclusion the researchers came to was something like, See how mother nature makes it possible for us to be in long term steady relationships!

I'm always so irritated by articles like this.  I mean, consider the very first paragraph of the article:

"The 21-year-old woman was carefully trained not to flirt with anyone who came into the laboratory over the course of several months. She kept eye contact and conversation to a minimum. She never used makeup or perfume, kept her hair in a simple ponytail, and always wore jeans and a plain T-shirt."

Are you seriously telling me that these guys think that being quiet and keeping your eyes down can't be a way of flirting?! Do they live under rocks, these people?  I mean, I get that for the purposes of the study, all that matters is that she acted the same way with each guy, but honestly, can't you just say that?  And that jeans-and-a-simple-ponytail business.  As if the whole Playboy empire wasn't based on the sexiness of the girl next door.  How stupid.

And then the conclusions, geez.  I mean, sure, maybe that's what made the guys rate the woman lower.  But couldn't there be a bunch of other hypotheses?  Like, they found her more attractive, but because they felt not free to flirt with her, they wanted to take her down a peg?  "Meh, big deal, she's not so great."  Really, who knows? But isn't this at least as plausible?  How come we always have to leap to these stupid conclusions about What Mother Nature Intended?

OK OK back to the theme.  My point is just that you can have sexism without hostility toward women, and that for whatever reason, we seem to have some hostility toward women 'round these parts.  I haven't even mentioned the most uncomfortable hypothesis lurking here:  that we have more hostility because we have less sexism, that somehow it's the demand for equality that is making everyone so mad.  I haven't discussed it because I don't know if it's true, and I don't even know how one would figure out whether it's true. 

But as to the hostility itself, trust me, if you're a woman, it kind of wears you out.

Trois Sourires (Three Smiles)

You know what I'm sick of? I'm sick of listening to people complain. Since I'm visiting Paris just now, I'm particularly sick of listening to people complain about Paris: waah, it's crowded; waah the bathroom's dirty; it's hot; the line is too long, waah waah waah. But it's not just Paris I'm sick of hearing about; it's everything.

The worst part of it is, the person I'm most sick of listening to is ME. Complain complain complain.

So in the interest of shutting up about everything I don't like in the world just now, I thought I'd write about three things I saw in Paris today that made me smile.

First: the Solferino metro sign.

I have a soft spot for all the metro signs in Paris: they're big and blue with nice bold white letters. But the ones I love best are the old ones. They're ceramic tile, and the letters are really big and really blocky. When I see these signs, instead of a soft voice saying "You're now at the Solferino station," I hear a voice like James Earl Jones's booming out, "SOLFERINO." Isn't this sign just so pretty?

Second: some weird art.

I love the Pompidou museum, and I often go to the cafe there. The Pompidou isn't just an art collection; it's a whole complex commitment to public space. There's a huge open area in front outside that anyone can use -- and there are performers and homeless people and little kids and everybody all hanging out there. There's free wireless access for anyone. There's a spacious and low-key cafe. There's even a place to buy stamps and mail letters. It's like a tiny tiny town all in itself.

Anyway, I went today and there was this crazy funny work of art that is a giant gold plant holder. I don't know why I like this so much but I do.

Third: plastic ants in a window display.

This is the window display of a little pharmacy near my house. I don't know what the point of the ants is exactly, except maybe it's to say, Hey Guys!! It's Summertime!