Category Archives: America

Watching Boston in sadness

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Watching the manhunt unfold on Twitter, I’m struck by the fact that I have nothing clever to say.

When I first heard that a policeman had been shot at MIT, there was no impulse to tie it to the marathon bombings. I thought these guys would be smarter, somehow, and that they would have left the city right now.

I keep coming back to that photo of Martin Richard, a little boy watching the marathon – one of the alleged bombers looming behind him.

These guys were kids themselves recently, is what I keep thinking. They most likely cried over scraped knees and took lunchboxes to school. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in 1993. He’s a 90s kid, for God’s sake.

I keep thinking that having a city on lockdown is normal and reasonable. No one is questioning that decision and I don’t question it myself. But background checks for weapons, though? Totally irrational and out-of-this-world.

As a P.S. to all of this – while everyone was watching Boston, a coffee shop bomb in Baghdad killed 27 people.

There’s nothing good to report. Days like this make me want to do nothing – just shut off the phone and sit on a park bench somewhere with Lev, and watch him chase pigeons around. It’s finally warm in Moscow, and he is wearing his new little keds.

“On All Fours.” (Hokay. So. Did the new “Girls” episode feature a rape scene?)

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For a recap of what happened, and more, please see Amanda Hess on the subject.

This episode made a lot of people very uncomfortable, with good reason. I thought this was excellent television, because I fully believe that TV *should* make us uncomfortable. Obviously, I cringed as well.

What I took from it is a nice reminder that consent doesn’t necessarily equal great sex. The elephant in the room here is that sometimes, sex sucks. Some people are bad lovers. Others have the capacity to be good lovers, but, at one point or another, reveal themselves to be capable of seriously messed-up behavior.

Bad sex can be violating. It may not necessarily cross over into sexual assault in the legal sense, but it can be more than just unpleasant, it can be profoundly hurtful. It can leave emotional scars, physical scars, you name it.

I didn’t see a rape scene in the latest “Girls” episode, but I did see a woman clearly unhappy with how her new boyfriend was treating her. And I saw said boyfriend using her body to prove something to himself. It was very ugly, and it was very real. This stuff happens, even if people hardly ever talk about it. Who wants to admit they were treated like dirt by someone they had trusted?

The fact that Adam is an alcoholic who has just had a relapse is a crucial factor. He seems disgusted with himself, and it’s as if he is trying to make his girlfriend feel similar disgust. The scene starts with her making a few light-hearted, but somewhat critical comments about his apartment. He clearly seems insecure about having her over at his place. Insecure enough to punish her for it, in fact.

Dude, you have no idea.

Dude, you have no idea.

For me, the key to this scene comes immediately after Adam is done. His girlfriend, Natalia (a “cool girl name,” obviously) tells him that she “really didn’t like that.” What does he do? He gets sad and angry. He’s concerned about whether or not she will leave him now. It’s all about him, you see. If he gave a crap about her in that moment, he would comfort her, or at least apologize. But he isn’t thinking about her. He was trying to work on his insecurities through her, and that has failed, and all that worries him is possible rejection.

That’s the other thing about bad sex – it happens, and you can’t take it back, but there are different ways of confronting it. If your lover complains to you afterwards – something that Natalia did immediately – you listen and discuss, understanding that they just did you a favor. If your lover is in distress, you comfort them, or give them space, should they need space. You absolutely do not get to make it all about you, jackass.

Emily Heist Moss wrote that “On All Fours” was a reminder that most men are way more physically powerful than most women out there - and terrifying things happen when that power is not used for good.

For me, that has always been just another dull fact of life to contend with, but lately, I’ve been thinking about how little is actually said on the subject. We tend to gloss over the amount of trust a woman puts into them every time she allows herself to be vulnerable with a man. And in many ways, we set women up to lose. Too vigilant? She’s obviously a “psycho” then. Get hurt? Well, clearly, the bitch had it coming – stupid enough as she was to trust the wrong person.

I hate to go all “Spiderman” on you guys, but great power? Great responsibility? Hello?

A letter to my high school classmates

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On my 10 year high school reunion I flew East, not West. I said “marhaba” to the Emirates border guard at passport control – perhaps even as the party wound down. I worry about the things that Homeland Security will say to me when I do, indeed, have a chance to go home. I worry about lots of things – when I have the energy to do so.

Maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t go to a bowling alley with my old classmates, to engage in (moderate) drinking and small-talk, or big-talk, for that matter.

I was an unhappy child. Lots of immigrants with big ambitions make for unhappy children. We always want too much, maybe because we have understood that the world is so much bigger and stranger than first meets the eye. My unhappiness started elsewhere of course, but in Carolina, I had the time to catch my breath and consider it. In freshman year of college, a professor called depression “middle-class.” It struck me as patronizing – but then again, depression is what actually happens when you have a chance to reflect on how being chased by the saber-toothed predator has made you feel.

I considered other things, of course. I understood this plane of existence has more stage exits and entrances than meets the eye when sitting on the warm asphalt in Krishma’s driveway once upon a time, a decade ago. There were too many stars to bear. How is it that we were allowed to live these lives, I wonder, some of the best lives in this dark world and wide, and not pay a price – whether it be leaving, or living past some point of no return, or even dying soon enough for it to be considered a proper tragedy?

I know all of my classmates. The ones who rock a silk tie, the ones whose amiable nature hides a long distance between their smile and their secret core, the ones who have occupied big houses where you curl up like a fish before the current takes you, the ones I miss, and the ones who miss me. I have always tried to be more like them, although which one I can never tell – just the general “them,” I guess, and that was probably smart. Because otherwise, when you stand on the raggedy edge long enough, you become raggedy yourself.

There was so much unexpressed love in me when I graduated from Charlotte Latin School. It’s why I married a man who can love me like a boy should love me, on occasion. And it was my classmates who taught me that love and who inspired it, like Jane Morris with her seriously wanton curls (except not destitute). I’ll always be grateful for that, unless dementia overtakes me in my old age and I forget.

I live in a lovely garret, if garrets can be lovely, and from there I can look out onto the world and consider it, and wave down occasionally, when I am not busy. I watch your lives unfurling from afar, like banners in the wind. I am often pleased with what I see – although we’re in that age, when we can make each other smile as opposed to shake our heads, no? I think too much on most days and sleep too little, but I am very happy – and glad that the planet has gotten small enough for me to still hold on to the illusion of knowing you guys. My son is blubbering again in his sleep, and my husband is in the Urals, ice rain is pounding cheerfully and mercilessly on the cornice, and this letter should probably be over.

Be good to yourselves. Live now – not tomorrow, or yesterday (maybe you already do, and this advice is totally misplaced – but for some reason, I learned this bit the hard way, and am over-eager to share it, the way over-excited poodles are over-eager to share their affection). And take a minute to pause in the dark every once in a while and say “thank you” to whoever is telling the story that is the world and all of our lives in it to himself.

Maybe Elizabeth Wurtzel is not OK after all

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Or maybe she’s just being consistent with her role as a “everyone’s favorite beautiful mess.”

Really now.

She thinks she’s bashing “slovenly” people (which is kind of silly in and of itself, unless said “people” are actually your brother, who just showed up to your black-tie wedding with beer-breath and flip-flops), but she’s just bashing the underprivileged, a.k.a. women who can’t afford weekly Gyrotronic sessions and lip balm that costs over 20 bucks a pop (Because I’m a real journalist, I’ve checked). Women who are working three jobs and, when they have time to eat, must eat burritos on the smelly bus that ferries them between said three jobs. Women whose evening yoga sessions are interrupted by a screaming kid who would love nothing more than to bash them with his toy airplane while they’re trying to do the goddamn dolphin pose (ahem).

Long-time readers of this blog know that I am not in favor of bashing The Pretty. I like The Pretty. I think it gets a bad rap in certain feminist circles. I’m also someone who enjoys performative femininity, sparkly charm bracelets and all (a predilection that often results in my husband, a scary-looking, bearded Russian guy with tattooed fingers, standing in some shop, picking between a Hello Kitty charm and a charm featuring a cartoon whale).

And then I go and read crap like this:

Obviously not everyone is born beautiful, but absolutely everybody can become so. I miss the un-Holy Trinity, meaning, of course, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell. I long for the impossible standard of female beauty as a daily chore for all, not because I want the world to look better — I want it to bebetter. I want everyone to try as hard as I do to please be gorgeous, because it’s not that hard, girls. Looking great is a matter of feminism. No liberated woman would misrepresent the cause by appearing less than hale and happy.

Right.

What’s remains delightful about Wurtzel is how much of her writing is essentially a personal ad dressed up in whatever rhetoric is guaranteed to get her the most attention in a given week. As an editor concerned with circulation numbers and online hits, I bow down to this clever practice. As a woman and a feminist, I sneer at it.

Pretty women often do a fabulous job of “selling” the issue of women’s rights – or human rights in general. For many of the dudes, a pretty woman is a kind of “gateway drug” to srs feminist bsns.

I don’t really know how the hell any of that justifies compulsory femininity. Well, unless you couldn’t really give a crap about social justice to begin with. And hey, why should Elizabeth Wurtzel care about social justice? Unless it involves exciting causes such as Making Elizabeth Feel Good About Herself, that is.

I think she’s entitled to her views – God knows, I get tired of the “we are all beautiful as we are” crap from time to time (because let’s face it, a lot of the people who say it are practicing what is known as emotional populism) – but why tie it to feminism? To liberation? I mean, it doesn’t even fit in with the personal ad routine.

And then there’s also this,

Even with my Harvard degree, when I ran out of money while writing my first book, I was happier to serve cocktails in high heels than to get money from my mom. And now I walk miles in Marni’s five-inch platform T-straps.

Yeah, yeah, clothes are important:

But now, Elizabeth, you’re just showing off. And for someone of your stature and age and publishing experience, that just seems odd. Almost as if you have way too much to prove. At 45. While looking better than 25. And that sucks way more than “giving up” on your looks in your 20′s, I believe. These are not the words and actions of a woman “trying to be happy.” This is just dispiriting.

And now look what you’ve done. I has a sad now. Seriously.

A “proud student borrower” writes me. Needs to withhold opinions until she is in repayment

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Every once in a while, I’ll get an e-mail such as the one below:

Hi. My name is [redacted]. I am a junior, attending [redacted]. I just want to write to challenge you about the misinformation you are spreading about the student loan industry. Without the student loan industry, I would not be in college right now!

Mine is just a tale of one individual working hard in pursuit of her aspirations, but it must also be pointed out that student debt horror stories are completely overblown. The media just happens to highlight them the way it highlights any “horror story,” creating trends where there are none.

Here is a fact: most student debt defaulters are addicts of some kind. I know a couple myself so I know what it is I’m talking about.

[Long, boring paragraph on addiction I've decided to cut. Basically, the author seems to think that some people are just "weak," though she doesn't "want to judge."]

You blame your student debt problems on your health, but that seems fishy, especially since you say you recently had a child. Anyone who took a basic science class knows that unhealthy mothers don’t carry their babies to term! Sorry if I appear suspicious, but I have simply known too many addicts and deadbeats to not immediately question your story.

Also I think it’s very telling that you would move to a country like Russia. I don’t know much about Russia, but this much is obvious to me as a young person who cares about the issues: nobody values hard work like Americans do. If irresponsible borrowers want to leave, then this is probably a good thing – you don’t serve as a good example for my own generation.

In just a few years, I will be in repayment and I am committed to making good on the promises I made when I signed the loan documents. Taking responsibility is something that makes our society great is what I firmly and truly believe. I am very sorry that a journalist of your stature would not be committed to our shared values, and would instead help spread the lies and misinformation that are contributing to harming our economy.

Sincerely,

[redacted], a proud student borrower.

It’s like being e-mailed by a bad Ayn Rand rip-off (though I have no idea what would constitute a good Ayn Rand rip-off).

Go ahead and talk after you’ve spent a few years in repayment, babe.

Until then:

P.S. I love the bit about Russia. She doesn’t know anything about the country, yet would criticize people for living and working here. Though perhaps Russia is also “for the weak.” I guess. (Also, LOL)