I Have A Thinking Problem

 A few days ago I sent myself an email that said "Is thinking about things ruining my life?"

You know what they say: "The first step is admitting you have a problem."

So yes: I have a thinking problem.

As the offspring of a chemical engineering professor dad and a letters-to-the-editor type mom, I probably started off with a genetic predisposition for problem thinking, and a lot of my youth was spent pursuing a more non-thinking lifestyle. Mostly that was through the classic methods of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.

In college I studied math, and I might have been OK if I'd been able to stick with that. Because even though math is thinking, it's not thinking about anything. It's like the mental equivalent of wholesome but pointless exercise: you do it, it's fun, and when you're done, you're pleasantly worn out and ready for rest.

But as we all know that didn't happen. And opting for philosophy -- well, it's like a sugar addict committing to life in a candy store. Thinking thinking thinking, and then when the day is over, you just can't stop. A movie? Food? Music? Ooh, I have some thoughts!!!

The other day I happened to pick up a book by Colette -- the first of the wonderful Claudine books, Claudine at School. You know about Colette? Belle époque writer and music-hall performer, celebrity with a complex and varied romantic life.

When I was in my late teens I was a maniac for Colette's writings and I was especially crazy about the Claudine stories, which begin with the story of teenage small-town Claudine and her crushes and romances with other girls, her flirtations with teachers and adults of both sexes, her intellectually sophisticated jokes, and her ultimate seriousness about life. The Claudine stories get more complicated, but always, they are books that make me feel at home.

When I picked up Claudine at School last week, I began with Colette's Preface, and was reminded of the fact that her famous wit and charlatan first husband Willy (full name Henry Gauthier-Villars, he claimed to be a fancy aristocrat) had told her to write the stories and had told her to "spice them up."

And because my thinking is now out of control, this led me into a spiral of reflection. Were the things I resonated with in Colette partly there because some guy wanted to sell more books? If they were did it matter? How did feminism come into play?

My friend assured me that there was really no cause for concern. The things I loved in Colette were the things she continued to write about for the rest of her very long life, during and after her other two marriages and her many other affairs and her many romantic friendships. Even if Willy  had prompted her thoughts on that occasion, they were her thoughts, and they were of a piece with the way she wrote about life and love and sex for the rest of her life.

Though I'm persuaded by this answer, I feel something in this thought process has not been good, that the thoughts themselves dampened or mediated something that had been bright and unmediated, in a wonderful way, before I started thinking too much about them. I feel I used to be able to access that brighter more immediate relation to the world, before my thinking got out of control.

There is no real answer to this problem. Like eating, thinking isn't the kind of thing you can just give up cold turkey. And it's not like I can reimmerse myself in the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll lifestyle. Because as we all know, the way of the adolescent, though it's not wrong, is just not sustainable.

The Nature of Fandom in the Age of Social Networking

Being a fan is a pretty one-sided relationship.  Up until recently  -- and I'm going to get to this in a moment -- it was almost completely one way and non-reciprocal.  There is no mutual recognition in being a fan. 

Fandom is based on things like buying records and things, showing up at huge arenas and stadiums, and being an anonymous admirer.  Being a fan of Cheap Trick does not mean they're going to call you up to consult on song lists or invite you to hang out and talk music -- you pretty much have to be content to admire them from afar.

I don't know if I'm some kind of narcissist, or stuck in an adolescent phase of celebrity relationships, or what, but this non-reciprocity has always bothered me, and truth be told, I always wondered why it didn't bother other people. 

Like if you're talking about some creative/artist fan object -- a musician, filmmaker, writer, whatever -- for me love and admiration for the artistic object (the song, the book, the movie) immediately makes me want to spend some quality time with the fan object -- the creator.  Doesn't it for you?  Don't you find yourself thinking that person has some special insight into life?

Well, I do.  And it makes me want something back.  It's not always easy to sort out what this "something back" is supposed to be, but sometimes it's more like friendship and sometimes it's more like parenting; sometimes it's like romance or sex; sometimes you just want to know they're there, listening to you, thinking you're special and awesome. 

Often I try not to be a "fan," and to stick to just liking things -- this is an essential difference.  For example, I read a lot of novels, and with novels I make a point of trying to read and enjoy them without becoming a fan of the author.  Because it's necessary for the proper experience of a novel that you don't know too much about the novelist.  Otherwise, you're just constantly like "oh I bet that character was based on her awful first husband!" and so on and so forth and then forget it, you are just not reading the novel in the proper way.  This is, of course, itself getting harder in the age of social networking. 

With some things, though, it is really hard to like the thing without becoming a fan.  Do you know that NPR news comedy show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me?  I love that show.  I tried to stick to loving the show, but it was impossible for me to avoid becoming a fan -- of Paula Poundstone, of Maz Jobrani ... and most of all, of Peter Sagal, the hilarious over-caffeinated host. 

But it's no good for me, being a fan of Peter Sagal.  Because now I want him to be my friend, to crack his wisecracks specially to me over a glass of wine, to listen to my problems in life, and mostly just to think, reciprocally, that I am really special and interesting and awesome.

Sorry Patricia, that is not going to happen.

Now, you might think that in the age of social networking this problem is going away, or getting better, or something. Because it is no secret that social networking, and especially Twitter, are eroding the one-sided nature of fandom.  Now anyone can aim their tweet at anyone else, and anyone can engage with anyone, and armies of fans have, if not access, at least a way of getting the attention of the fan object.

Is it the end of one-sided fandom?  Does the fan concept now become reciprocal and mutual, the fan concept of my dreams?

No, I'd say the opposite is true.  Now, the fan concept is more troubling rather than less.  Because now, the one-sidedness of fandom isn't just built into the space-time continuum, like it used to be -- instead it results from actual choices of the participants.

Now, if you're a person with Twitter-wit (a Twit?), who can pack a paragraph of cleverness and humor in 140 characters, you might be able to get that reciprocity.  If you could craft the perfect fan email, with the perfect combination of humor and emotion and narrative peaks and valleys, you might get the attention of that fan object.  It can happen.  The possibility of reciprocity and mutual recognition is there.

But that means if you're just some ordinary person, some humble blogger, some everyday looker-at-pictures-of-cats-on-the-internet, you're still basically SOL.

Which just brings home even more the essential sad truth of fandom for the rest of us:  you're not special; you're just a fan.

Femininity For Everyone

 "A Rally" by Sir John Lavery, Irish artist (1885), via Wikimedia Commons.

I have mixed feelings about femininity.  I guess that's not a bold and wild statement.  Probably most people who've ever thought about it have some kind of ambivalence.

But overall I think femininity gets a worse rap than it deserves.  What I mean is, there's nothing basic and essential to femininity that makes it problematic.  Sure, it's a problem when it's mandatory or compulsory and you can't opt out.  It's a problem when meeting its demands gets in the way of other things.  But outside of those problems, I think instead of always trying to change femininity to suit the world, we might do more to make the world suit femininity. 

One of the main knocks on feminine clothing, physicality, and general style is that they're impractical.  So my first question is, impractical for what?

Sure, they can be impractical for certain kinds of physical work and certain kinds of fun physical activities.  But for other kinds of work and fun they're just fine.  If your job involves mostly using your mind, and reading writing talking and figuring stuff out, feminine clothing, physicality, and general style aren't really a problem.

There's a hilarious Mindy Kaling essay in The New Yorker where she talks about the strangeness of the way women are depicted in movies. One of the things she talks about is how working women are portrayed:

"I regularly work sixteen hours a day. Yet, like most people I know who are similarly busy, I’m a pleasant, pretty normal person. But that’s not how working women are depicted in movies. I’m not always barking orders into my hands-free phone device and yelling, 'I have no time for this!' Often, a script calls for this uptight career woman to 'relearn' how to seduce a man, and she has to do all sorts of crazy degrading crap, like eat a hot dog in a sexy way or something. And since when does holding a job necessitate that a woman pull her hair back in a severe, tight bun? Do screenwriters think that loose hair makes it hard to concentrate?"

Yeah, news flash:  many contemporary jobs are compatible with femininity and even loose hairstyles. 

Yes, you may not have one of those jobs.  If you don't, and you want one -- well, that's what I mean about making the world suit femininity rather than the other way around.  The problem there isn't the femininity, it's the kind of socio-economic world we happen to live in.  If you don't have one of those jobs and you don't want one -- great!  That is what I mean about the importance of femininity not being mandatory or compulsory. 

Closely related to the impracticality thing is the fighting back thing.  Feminine clothing makes it harder to fight physically, and so makes women vulnerable.

This is true, and it's important.  But again, isn't this a case where the world should change, not femininity?  It would obviously be better if no one had to fight physically in order to protect their safety. 

I mean, I get it that there's a problem, that a violence-free world is not in our near future, and that therefore it's a problem that femininity leads to vulnerability.  I just think it's important to remember the real problem is with the way the world is and is not something to do essentially with femininity itself. 

Finally, though it's a real pain that femininity gets put on women the way it does, I think the answer isn't to get rid of it but rather to expand and mix it up a little -- to make it so that men get to experience the pleasures of femininity.

These days masculinity is pretty out of control.  It seems harder than ever for a guy to do what we think of as girly things without the gender police cracking down hard. 

But femininity can be fun.  Most basically, as I wrote about in this previous post on Being Vs. Doing, some of the pleasure of femininity are the pleasures of Being instead of Doing:  pleasures that have to do more with the way others respond to you than to something you're doing or achieving, some effect you're having on the world.  The pleasure of beautiful and delicate clothes:  everyone should have it. 

But I would go further than this, and say that even the vulnerability of femininity is something positive, something men would enjoy, something they ought to get to enjoy once in a while.

We usually think of vulnerability in really negative terms, in contexts in which something or someone poses a threat to you and you could get hurt.  But if no one is posing a threat and you're not going to get hurt, vulnerability is just a kind of openness to things happening to you that you don't have to initiate and control. 

Maybe "vulnerable" isn't the right word for that since it has such negative connotations.  It's more like a "susceptibility."  Having things happen to you, instead of always making them happen.  Whatever you call it, it's an aspect of femininity that, in a hostile world, can be a real problem, but that in itself, can be a delightful and fun thing.  Like femininity itself.

Now that you're done listening to me pontificate, reward yourself by going and reading Mindy Kaling's essay about the movies.  It is funny and great, and it is not behind the New Yorker paywall!

Modernity Boot Camp, Or, When One Lives Among Madmen, One Should Train As A Maniac

Over the weekend I went to see a classic Bollywood movie:  Kal Aaj Aur Kal (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) from 1971.  It tells the tale of a family, a grandfather, father, and son  -- played by a real life grandfather, father, and son from the famous Kapoor family -- in which the son and the grandfather clash generationally, and the father is caught unhappily in the middle. 

Among other things, it's a movie about modernity.  The son and grandfather fight over food, clothing, music, parties, religion, the caste system, individuality, tradition, sex, love, and marriage.  Are these or are these not the flashpoints of modernity the world over?

In the central battle of wills, the grandfather insists that the son marry the pious daughter of his friend from the village.  The son wants to marry the elegant and super-modern Monica, whom he met, of course, on an airplane.  Here's the young couple getting to know each other:

Cute, huh?  The sixties were so much the sixties the world over.

Anyway, although she's modern, Monica is a good girl.  She comes from a respected family; she gets yelled at by her mom for not being ready for dinner on time; she's shocked when a mutual friend turns up pregnant by her fiance.  The grandfather's only substantive complaint seems to be that she doesn't know how to cook.  So this isn't so much a movie about marrying outside your cultural circle as a movie about marrying a woman you chose yourself.

For most of the movie, I assumed this conflict would resolve itself through mutual recognition of Monica's essential status as a good girl.  There's a touching scene where Monica serves the grandfather some food, and I thought "Oh, surely he'll see now that even though she's not his choice, she's a good girl, and he'll relent and let the grandson marry her."

And that, I figured, would be the lesson about modernity:  that underneath it all, the things we value aren't all that different. 

But no.  I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, but instead of commonsense and compromise, there is drama, self-sacrifice, and secret plotting.  If there's a lesson about modernity in this movie, it's not underneath it all we're much the same but rather modernity:  it's a fight to the death.

And the more I thought about that the more it grew on me.  Individuality and choosing for yourself -- they're just not the kind of thing about which there are compromises.  Either you choose for yourself or you don't.  And we've gotten into a habit of -- of kind of sugarcoating the difference.  Of treating modernity like a kind of increase in common sense rather than a radical experiment in human life. 

Because promising and lovable as it is -- and let's be clear, no one loves modernity more than I -- modernity creates conditions that are destabilizing, dangerous, and wildly unpredictable. 

The idea that we should make decisions for ourselves, in the absence of bowing to tradition, it's an extreme idea for beings like us -- beings that are impulsive, emotional, and fragile.  Think about how dependent we are.  We're easily carried away.  We crave happiness and warmth.  We're so physically delicate we need food and water every few hours.

And now you plonk us down, rudderless, in the middle of consumer culture and expect us to thrive?  We're supposed to figure out how to fight temptation and laziness all day every day?  To walk calmly past a million displays of baked goods, candy, cigarettes, and just say no?  To delete the spam that offers better bods, better sex, instant cash?  To decide how to save for retirement, to select a mortgage, to pick insurance packages?  To decide to go to the gym, day after day, after eight hours at work?

Not easy. 

Given how hard it is, you'd think that there would be some training program for modernity.  Like a modernity boot camp.  They'd teach you how to have massive self-directedness, endless self-control, and an imperviousness to small sufferings.  Maybe you remember this post on ego depletion?  Well modernity boot camp would give you huge muscles of willpower alongside your huge pecs and six-pack abs. 

When I was young I had a daydream of modernity boot camp, and I thought I might satisfy it by joining the actual real life military.  You know, toughness, discipline, getting it together.  That didn't work out for me because of the whole having-to-kill-people aspect, which was a deal-breaker.

Weirdly, not only don't we have modernity boot camp, it's almost like we have anti-training for modernity.  Young people are more left to their own devices than ever; the crime of being "late to dinner" has been erased in a world of sports practice and music lessons; and it's become elitist to go around saying you don't watch Mad Men or whatever because you were busy reading a book.

I don't know what form modernity boot camp should take, exactly, but perhaps we can take as a starting point for reflection the real life story of the actress who played Monica in the movie -- Babita Kapoor.  She and the actor who played the son really did get married in real life.  And what do you think happened next?  Her new family told her she had to quit acting, because women in their family weren't supposed to act. 

I don't know how exactly how Babita Kapoor responded to this, but whatever she did was effective, because her two daughters have become highly successful actresses and stars of Bollywood.  So as far as I'm concerned, Ms. Kapoor can be first headmistress of our new training school.

And for a school motto, we can't do better than to follow the Count of Monte Cristo, who said,

when one lives among madmen, one should train as a maniac.  

I For One Welcome Our WTF Overlords: Marc Maron And Modern Life

Marc Maron

I recently became obsessed with the podcast "WTF with Marc Maron."  I knew as soon as I heard Maron as the celebrity guest on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me (another of my obsessions) that I would have to check out his podcast, and I knew as soon as I'd finished listening to my first episode that I would be obsessed with it and would have to listen to every episdode, in chronological order.

In the WTF podcast, Maron interviews comedians.  But saying that the WTF podcast is a comedian interviewing comedians is like saying that The Wizard of Oz is about a spot of bad weather.  Because these are not so much interviews as mini-plunges into the darker and scarier parts of human nature.

These plunges are made more bearable by the fact that it's a "comedy podcast" -- so you never really know to what degree the performers are joking, embellishing, exaggerating on purpose.  In fact one of the most squirmy moments I had listening was when one interviewee said something sad or mean or something and then said "I'm just kidding."  Thus immersing me into the possibility that the rest of what she'd been saying was just true.

Maron says being a comic is about being "autonomous, angry, truthful, and funny."  He prods, pokes, bribes, nudges, and aggresses his guests 'til they, too, are being autonomous, angry, truthful and funny -- often about subjects like love, lust, envy, neediness, and despair that people just don't discuss in public, and maybe don't discuss at all.  I've always thought the great thing about comedians is that they will say things other people will not say, and here it is true.

The "I'm just kidding" moment comes during a frank discussion of the horrors of marriage:  married couple Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn come in together to talk about the day to day misery, anger, envy and moments of petty revenge that come from living with and parenting with another person.  Maron opens episode one by talking about stealing from Whole Foods in an act of rage against everything they stand for.  In episode seven, a comedian confesses to using made up stories of the deaths of loved-ones to get girls to have sex with him, and there's an in-depth discussion of the way marital counseling is set up to fail.

That whole "truthful" thing -- it shows how close this kind of comedy is to philosophy.  Long time readers will recall that I've commented on the parallels before, writing about Tina Fey.  Actually, I think we professional philosophers would do better if we talked more about things like stealing from Whole Foods.

And indeed, Maron says he's "tackling the most complex philosophical question of our day - WTF?"

Note that WTF? isn't the most important philosophical question of all time, it's the most important philosophical question of our day.  Doing a little inspired cultural and intellectual history, Maron says in episode one that the great philosophical question once was, "What is the meaning of life?"  Then for a long time it was, instead, "How am I being used and am I okay with that?"

"How am I being used and am I OK with that" --that's brilliant.  It's Kantian respect for autonomy, Lockean individualism, and the dismal science, all rolled into one.

Maron says the question for the coming era is going to be WTF?  Actually, he says, WTF is two questions.  It's the WTF of shock and indignation, like, what do you mean you're proposing that people with no health insurance be allowed to just die? WTF?!!  But it's also the WTF of "Whatever" or "Yeah, Why The Hell Not?" As in, should I eat this whole carton of ice cream right now? Yeah, sure, WTF.

Can I just say that this sounds like a huge fucking improvement?  I mean, the how-am-I-being-used-and-am-I-OK-with-that era has been really grim.  The possibility that it's going to be replaced by WTF -- I don't know what that'll be like exactly, but it sounds like it could be OK.  In fact, it's a possibility that makes me feel more hopeful about the future than I have in a long time.

If that's what's coming, bring it on please.

Fathers In The Public Eye

Han Han, this week's Mister Interesting, and a father

Do you ever have this experience?  You're reading something about a "Mr. Interesting" -- an art guy, or a surfing master, or a crazy world traveler, or a double-agent.  Maybe in a magazine. And you're thinking, Hm, wow, that's kind of an interesting guy. Pretty crazy life that dude has, though.

And then smack in the middle of the story, or even toward the end, you read something like "Mr. Interesting has two daughters who live with his wife in Southern California."  And you're like, Wait, this man has children??

Because, really, whenever you read about "Ms. Interesting," either she doesn't have kids, or the whole article is about Wow, how do balance being The Most Interesting Woman in the World with being A PARENT?? And indeed, the answer is always pretty complex and detailed, because being Interesting and being A Parent are things that it's not easy to combine.

So you'd think now with the whole, like, feminism and equality thing going on, that being Mr. Interesting and being A Parent would also be pretty tough.  Like, who is picking these kids up from daycare at 5?  Who is making sure they eat five servings of vegetables every day?  Who is cooking dinner, washing dishes, all that crap?  Who is watching over the endless piano lessons, soccer games, and swimming classes that characterize modern childhood?

But somehow with Mr. Interesting, it doesn't come up.

I was just reading the great story in The New Yorker about Han Han, who -- I just learned -- is a writer, activist, general famous person, creator of magazines, extremely popular blogger, AND successful race car driver.  Race car driver! And he's only 28.

Halfway through the article you learn he is married and has a daughter.  The daughter is maybe a year old.  There isn't the tiniest suggestion about how Han Han is able to make all this work.  The reporter never asks, "Ooh, how do you juggle it all!" There's no information, and no suggestion that the lack of information is strange. 

The only time the daughter comes up later is when the reporter asks about her, before the start of a car race, and Han Han says, "I've accomplished my job as a human being ... I don't feel any pressure any more, even if I knew I was going to die in this race."

Well, WTF? I mean, I'd have thought when the kids a year old you're just starting, not finishing.

But I'm willing to give Han Han the benefit of the doubt, that somehow the reporter twisted his words or took them out of context.  Who knows?  The weird thing is there's never any, Wow, who is taking care of her while you travel around to car races?  How often do you get to see her? Do you miss her?  Questions that, if Han Han were a woman, would have been the first eight questions and the last ten questions with just a few things in between.

I had this same experience reading about Julian Assange.  You're reading along and you're like, Wow, hacker, then political guy, travels around in deep secrecy, geez, Mr. Interesting. Then outta nowhere you find out Assange has a kid, that he had a huge custody battle over.  I mean, doesn't having a kid get in the way of being Mr Super Secret Government Rabble Rouser?  And most importantly, if not why not?  

Often when things are different for men and women it's the way it is for women that is weird.  But in this case I think it's weirder not to ask Mr. Interesting these questions than it is to ask Ms. Interesting.  Because really, you got billions of people out here, trying to live interesting lives and trying to raise their kids.  Any practical tips you got on doing them both effortlessly, inquiring minds want to know.

Critical Notice: RuPaul, Workin' It

The full title of this work is Workin' It: RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style.  I bought it after hearing RuPaul as the celebrity guest on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!

I didn't know much about RuPaul, but I found his philosophy of life very appealing (his? hers? from what I understand, they're equally appropriate).  Basically, that philosophy combines a kind of insistence on living in the moment -- not as "mindfulness" but more as "fabulousness" -- together with a healthy dose of "also, don't be an asshole."

Not everyone appreciates the important distinction between being "sassy" and being "bitchy," but RuPaul puts it front and center, explaining in Chapter One of the book how, early in his career, he had to rewrite the whole script for the VH1 fashion awards in 1996 because the writers thought a drag queen had to be bitchy and mean.  I'm committed to anti-meanness, so I'm all over this.  I also liked the way, on the show, he talked about the politics of drag, and how he got into performing that way as a transgressive political act, which I thought was sophisticated and smart. 

So I bought the book, thinking it might have some real life advice for me on living fabulously.

Results:  overall, a little mixed, but definitely some great and intersesting moments:

Most Mom-Like Advice

Be punctual! When you're late you're disrespectful of others and disrespectful of yourself.  Also, stand up straight and don't smoke!


Most Surprising Intimate Moment 

This would be the description of RuPaul's first colonic irrigation.  OK, I wasn't surprised a discussion of this weird trend appeared in the book, because there's lots of "health" advice of the kind you typically get from celebrities, and who knows why, but celebrity health is all about removing everything from your intestines in whatever way possible.  

What surprised me was that in the middle of a description you would almost call "family friendly" in its blandness, we get the following:  "She then instructed me to insert the tip of the hose into my rectum.  Well, I'm no stranger to ass insertion.  'Just the tip?' I asked." 

It's pretty much the only reference to sex in the whole book, which makes it awesome.  You go, RuPaul.


Most Actually Useful Advice

The most actually useful thing in the book is the reminder that you can't be fabulous without being healthy, and health is often boring.  OK, she doesn't put it like that, but it's the same idea.  Go to bed early, get plenty of sleep, eat right, and don't drink too much.  Only then will you have the basic materials you need to put on a pair of huge false tits and two huge wigs (yes! two!) and get through the day.  Or do whatever other difficult thing you need to do in life.

Also useful is the emphasis on effort that is worth it.  If you love beauty, it's worth it to work at making yourself and your surroundings beautiful.  It may be kind of a pain, but most good things are kind of a pain. 

This view of things is, I think, important in its contrast to the "harmony" view of life, in which all the good things are sort of similar and fit together.  I've never bought that.  Some things are bad, but you do them because the outcome is so good.  That is not mysterious, so I don't know why it's so often denied.

Anyway, if things are a pain, you can count yourself lucky that, unlike RuPaul, you don't have to get up at 4am, wear super-giant false eyelashes all day, and get regular colonics.

Also, stand up straight and don't smoke!


Most Depressing Detail for Femininity and Feminism

I was distressed to learn that RuPaul never eats in public when she is in drag.  Not distressed because of anything this says about RuPaul, but distressed to think that femininity involves ideals that are actually incompatible with basic activities needed for survival.  This is shocking, but I think it is true.

Traditional ideals of femininity and feminine beauty involve a certain kind of delicacy that's impossible to combine with anything that verges on being a little gross.  Indeed, RuPaul says part of the problem is if you're trying to talk and eat at the same time, it's kind of disgusting.  Just so.  And it seems to me that somehow it's OK for masculinity to be a little disgusting -- indeed, if current movies are any guide it is part of masculinity to be a little disgusting.  But not for femininity. 

Now that women live in the world, this is a problem.

I don't know what the answer is.  I'm not ready to give up on femininity altogether.  I take it the very existence of drag shows femininity has interest and appeal beyond functioning to harass women who want to do things and eat in public. 

So maybe a combination of changing ideals and more workable compromises.   Certainly we can say that with respect to changing ideals, having someone in the public eye who is six foot four and buff and wearing a dress can only help. 

Women's Sexuality Makes People Believe Peculiar Things

Stephen Fry

Maybe you followed the kerfuffle prompted by Stephen's Fry's saying recently that women don't like sex.  Excerpt from the Guardian story:

"I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want," he said. "Of course, a lot of women will deny this and say, 'Oh no, but I love sex, I love it!' But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?"

I try to ignore stuff like this because it's stupid, and because it's annoying, and because if you think long enough about what set of mental attitudes prompt people to say it, you just get annoyed and depressed.

Keith Richards

But I was amusingly reminded of his saying that when I read the recent discussion of Keith Richard's memoir in The New Yorker. Keith, discussing girls at his show:

"They nearly killed me.  I was never more in fear for my life than I was from teenage girls.  The ones that choked me, tore me to shreds, if you got caught in a frenzied crowd of them -- it's hard to express how frightening they could be.  You'd rather be in a trench fighting the enemy than be faced with this unstoppable, killer wave of lust and desire, or whatever it is -- it's unknown even to them."

Keith also claims he's never "put the make on a girl" in his life.  They just come to him.  Not just girls but women in general.

Certainly Fry's view is not so idiosyncratic.  Lots of people think women don't want or like sex.

On the other hand, I hope we can all agree on one thing:  no one, of any age, is seeking out sex with Keith Richards because they're hoping for happily ever after.  Actually, you could write a whole blog post just on the issue of why, exactly, Keith Richards is attractive -- cause obviously he is, but the reasons are somewhat mysterious.  It seem evident no evolutionary biology explanation is going to be forthcoming.  But let's leave that aside for another day.  As I say, the point here is just, if you're throwing yourself at Keith Richards you're not hoping for When Harry Met Sally.  You're looking to have sex with Keith Richards.  And evidently, wanting that can make you crazy.

So which is it, kids?  Are women sexless or oversexed?  Bored or out of their minds with lust? 

Probable there's a respectable and intelligent conclusion to draw about this, like women-are-different and you-can't-overgeneralize -- obviously true.  And yet, I feel a more interesting and more disturbing explanation lurks in here somewhere.

The disturbing explanation is that what women are interested in isn't always what the guys in their lives have to offer; what they are interested in is something more along the lines of ... well ... Keith.  Or Mick -- Mick would surely do just as well. 

Then the image of women as not-really-wanting-or-enjoying-sex would then be the sort of thing people come to believe not because it's true, but because what women want isn't always what every guy is offering, and people just draw the wrong conclusions from that.  I remember reading Simone de Beauvoir a couple of years ago, and how she said that one thing about sexism is the way men have constructed an idea of women that is what they want women to be.  I thought it was interesting and apt.

Indeed, part of what's so annoying about the whole evolutionary biology thing is how often the "explanations" it comes up with fit the image of women that's just what would suit men best: oh, gee, women are naturally sort of monogomous! men are naturally really not! hm, interesting!

Anyway, as I've probably mentioned in this space before, Richard Russo pretty much gave the final answer about women in Straight Man.  What do women want?  "Everything," just like men do.   The interesting thing is what they'll settle for.

Against Authenticity

 When J. D. Salinger died early this year, the accounts of his life in places like the The New York Review of Books described a man desperate to live some kind of life he could believe in.  Reading about it you get the feeling that, like his protagonist Holden Caulfield, Salinger couldn't stand phoniness, and thus couldn't stand the possibility that he, himself, would be leading an inauthentic, fake sort of life.  In Salinger's case, this seemed to have manifested itself primarily through a rejection of the life of literary fame in literary circles in literary cities like New York, in favor of ordinary life in simple towns like Cornish, New Hamphsire.

I've always had a complicated relationship to The Catcher in the Rye, and reading about Salinger made it feel more complicated.  When I first read it as assigned reading in high school, I was indignant:  "What a BOY'S BOOK this is," I thought.  "So, at 14 years old I'm considered to young to see racy movies but I have to read a book about a guy visiting prostitutes??"  I'm no prude, and I wasn't one then, but it really bugged me that so few of Holden's problems or adventures seemed to carry over to my female adolescent experience.  As I got older I came to like the book a lot, perhaps because it's actually easier for the grown-up me to identify with Holden's problems than it was for the 14 year old me to do so.

In fact, as I got older, I began to enjoy all of Salinger's books.  But I was always bothered by something I felt I didn't understand.  These characters all seemed to be seeking something, wanting something, wanting life to be something other than what it was, and I could never tell whether the point was, Hey, These are intelligent, reflective people, reflecting on the meaning of life, or whether it was more like, Hey, These people are in the grip of a massive illusion, that reflection will tell them something about the meaning of life.

For whatever it's worth -- and probably not much -- Salinger's life details sure do suggest the former.  When I read about Salinger's attempt to escape his life of literary fame, and his attempt to live a kind of authentic life, it seemed to me he had immediately created for himself an impossible situation.  I mean, here's a guy who is a famous author. That is his actual reality.  But he's going to go live in Cornish and try to live the life of a guy who is not a famous author?  To try to live a more authentic life? It's almost by definition an inauthentic life.  How can you live as what you really are if you're always pretending to be something else?

The whole story just added to a feeling I've long had, the the problem in such cases isn't the "living as what you are not" as much as the "trying to be authentic."

People always talk about authenticity like it's such a great thing, but I think for all its appeal, it's got a dark side.  For one thing, the whole concept of authenticity implies a kind of essentialism.  If you're just becoming what your social world expects of you, obviously that doesn't count, so authenticity must mean instead something like being the way your really are inside.  But when you put it like that, it starts to seem weird.  I mean, we grow up with families in communities -- are their influnces somehow making us inauthentic? And if not, why would the social world of our adulthood be any different?

Furthermore, as Lynda Barry so memorably puts it, what if your real self is awful?  What do you do then? 

And what about change?  As you know if you're an adult, it's hard to change, even when you really want to.  Pascal, of course, tells us that if you want to change, the first step is to live as if the change has already happened:  if you want to believe in god, he says, go to church, hang around with believers, and do good deeds.  And it's true, if you want to change, just having different habits is the first step.  But obviously that would be forbidden if you were trying to be all "authentic" and non-phony all the time.  What Pascal recommends is like the essence of phoniness.

Anyway, I've got a theory about why people like authenticity, and it's this:  ironically, what people like about authenticity isn't the truth of authenticity but the appearance of authenticity -- even the artifice of authenticity will do. 

This comes up over and over whenever people have occasion to discuss other people's manners at length.  A lot of those occasions are in European novels of the past, where the ultimate praise for others' manners is for how "natural" they are -- and I take this to mean, the person does not seem to be pretending, does not seem to be nervous, does not seem to be acting out a set of etiquette rules, but rather has an simple and comfortable way that suggests confidence.

But it's not just a thing of the past.  We criticize people now for manner that seems not quite natural, not quite at ease, somehow seeking to create an effect.  But I don't think it's because care about people's true selves; I think it's for the same reason Jane Austen criticized these things:  such manners are unpleasant.

The manners of people living who they are can be very appealing.  The sort of characters we associate with authenticity ... they convey a kind of self-assurance that makes you think, Hm, I'd like to be like that.  But the moral of that isn't to try to become those characters; the moral of that is just that self-assurance is attractive, however you go about getting it.

This kind of authenticity is more like the courage of your convictions than it is about being true to one's self, or contrasting one's true self to one's social self.  We like that courage.  Even when it's faked.

If you want this kind of authenticity, you've got to either relentlessly say what you really believe, or you've got to be a really good actor, or some combination of the two.  But either way, it's got nothing to do with true selves, or with living an ordinary life, or with being "some guy in Cornish" rather than "a famous author."

Boring Movies Are Boring

I didn't like the movie but I kind of love Russell Brand.

I went to see the movie Get Him to the Greek a couple of weeks ago.  Guess what? I found it kind of stupid.

I don't mean that it's "a stupid movie" in the ordinary, predictable way that some movies are stupid.  In that sense I went to see it because it was a stupid movie:  a movie with silly jokes, over the top character acting, an implausible plot, and charismatic and attractive stars -- well, one charismatic and attractive star anyway.

What was stupid about it was that it was, aside from the quick jokes and cultural satire, completely boring.  I had kind of high hopes from the initial set up, which seemed to me full of promise:  nerdy young man meets the fading rock star he used to idolize.  So many things could have happened.  Was the guy going to challenge the rock star by being the only person willing to tell him the uncomfortable truth? Was the rock star going to hate him for it? Or was the rock star going to love him for his honesty?  Would the guy be disillusioned by being up close to that which, from far away, seemed so appealing and cool?

The movie kept having weird disconnected moments related to these themes, but they just never added up to anything.  One minute the nerdy guy is sucking up, one minute he's not, you never really understand what is going on with that.  It's supposed to be about friendship, but you never really get why they become such unlikely friends.  It's not Aaron's honesty, because he isn't honest.  It's not because of Aaron's fidelity, because Aaron isn't really loyal.  I think it's just because poor Aldous is so very unhappy and Aaron ... well, he just happens to be around. 

There's no parts of the movie that make you feel challenged in anything, or thoughtful, or ambivalent.  Indeed, with respect to themes, the most you could say is that the writer and director want you to know that Taking Drugs Is Bad, Having Casual Sex Will Get You Into Trouble, and You Should Love Your Family Members.

I thought maybe this was just a flukey thing, like you know, sometimes movies don't come out right for complicated unexpected reasons.  That was the impression I left with.  But then there was a New Yorker article profiling Steve Carell and describing the new way of making comedies.  Basically, someone comes up with a basic idea, and then a "bucket brigade" of funny guys like Judd Apatow come around and punch it up with ideas and then the actual dialogue of the movie is just improvised.

I get what these people are trying to do, but you can see how the resulting movies are kind of pointless, because aside from things like "wouldn't it be funnier if you said 'banana' instead of 'fruit'? Ha ha ha, hilarious!!" basically no thought is going into these movies at all. 

I gather the new movie made with this strategy is the Dinner for Schmucks movie.  If ever a plot cried out for a dollop of reflection it's this one:  dinner is a competition for who can bring the most idiotic guest, with none of the guests knowing why they're there.  But The New Yorker describes the creative process as revolving around moments like the one in which Carell changes one line from "She's talking to a lobster" to "She's talking to a manatee" and everyone explodes in laughter.  Ha ha ha! Manatee! hilarious!   

I have to confess, my reaction on reading this was some serious eye-rolling.  These guys are like, Hey, we're funny! We can just say stuff and it'll be funny! Movies Made E-Z.

People, it doesn't have to be this way.  All you need is a script.  You can improvise more jokes after you write it. Do it for me, and do it for Russell Brand, who really deserves better.

Equal But Better

One thing I think about all the time is that scene from The Breakfast Club where the nerdy guy, played by Anthony Michael Hall, confronts the snobby girl, played by Molly Ringwald, with the question of what's going to happen Monday morning.

You may remember that having started out as archetypes from different cliques and teenage modes, they spend that Saturday coming to some kind of shared understanding and fellow feeling.

At that particular point in the movie, the mood is one of "Different, But Equal": they've all realized they have their own problems in life, and they're starting to think none of them is really better than any other of them, that there are just different ways of life and all of them are difficult. But at that point, there's still no sharing. Not yet. It's more like, "Oh, we are all trapped in our own bubble-lives!"

And then the nerd drops his bombshell by asking the snob about Monday. He challenges her to say she'll talk to him on Monday morning, and of course, she can't really say she will, 'cause her princessy friends will castrate her if she does something so uncool and so ridiculous.

She makes some lame half-assed attempt to explain—as least as I remember it, after all these years—and then the nerdy guy says something like, "Well, I guess my friends and I really are better people than your friends and you. We would never hesitate to talk to you. But you won't talk to us. So you're snobs."

And he's right. Sure, there are different ways of life and all of them are difficult. But some ways of life are better than others—not more fun but actually morally superior.

Talk of "cultural relativism" or "moral relativism" always gets people wound up in both directions but when I hear those words I always think about Anthony Michael Hall, 'cause it seems to me his view sums up how everyone feels when they reflect on their own ways of life.

Sure, there are different ways of doing things. If you want to do things your way, I ain't gonna stop you. But my way, the way I do things? It's actually better.

So it's not really "Different, But Equal," but more "Equal, But Better." Which doesn't make any sense, logically, but that doesn't seem to really get in anyone's way.

Britney On The Monotony Of Everyday Life

It kills me that in discussing her life these days, Britney Spears recently said,

"There’s no excitement, there’s no passion. I have really good days, and then I have bad days. Even when you go to jail you know there’s the time when you’re gonna get out. But in this situation, it’s never ending. It’s just like Groundhog Day every day. […] I think it’s too in control. If I wasn’t under the restraints I’m under, I’d feel so liberated. When I tell them the way I feel, it’s like they hear but they’re really not listening."

If you didn't know she was talking about the very particular circumstances of being under her father's "permanent control," you could read this as a totally articulate and elegant complaint about the monotony of everyday life.

"It's just like Groundhog Day every day." It's true! For most people, everyday life really is like Groundhog Day. You wake up, you do the same things you did yesterday, eventually the day ends, and you go to bed.

"Even when you go to jail there's the time when you're gonna get out." There's no denying it. Unlike temporary sucky situations, the monotony of everyday life has no end.

"When I tell them the way I feel, it's like they hear but they're not really listening." Uh-huh. I don't believe in God, myself, but if I were to say something about the forces that control the universe, that about sums it up. It's like they hear, but they're not really listening.

"I have really good days, and then I have really bad days." That really says it all.

Britney Spears, accidental philosopher of everyday life. Who knew?