Maybe Elizabeth Wurtzel is not OK after all

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

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)

Nobody owes you love and explanations

I wrote this extremely personal post for Feministe this week – about what it’s like to deal with some of my husband’s more rabid fans.

It’s not some huge problem most of the time – but there were a couple of episodes recently  that really got under my skin. In dealing with them, I realized how easy it is to slip into the familiar vernacular of sexism. Because if someone’s calling you an “ugly slut” on the Internet, your first response is not to analyze the meaning and context of that statement within the framework of, you know, the patriarchy. Your first response is to want to call them an ugly slut right back.

Of course, someone showed up to defend the women that have stalked me online to punish me for being married to someone they really dig. And in a typical fashion, this knight in shining armor related her own story about a beautiful friendship with a musician – and how his jealous girlfriend got in the way. Well, she actually has no proof that the girlfriend got in the way, but that’s obviously what happened.

It made me think back to ten years ago – and how I was dropped like a hot potato by a male friend I had really cared about. We had been pretty close (though he meant more to me than I meant to him), and I had confided in him, sharing some of my Deepest, Darkest Seekrits (of the variety one has when you’re 18 years old and a college student). And he very much Did Not Approve (I seem to have a thing with male friends who Do Not Approve of my personal life, for reasons it is best not to dwell on). And he cut me off. Very suddenly and with no explanation.

Facebook got popular among college students some time later – and he totally wouldn’t friend me back, ya’ll.

We never spoke again. The only explanation I got was his ex-girlfriend vaguely saying that “X wanted to stop talking to a lot of people. I guess.”

I decided that although his Disapproval of my Wild Ways probably fueled his initial decision to cut me off, what happened then was that his new line of work possibly got in the way. As well as my background.

I didn’t love him like I’ve loved some guys, so there was none of that heartbreak stuff. But I still think about him when re-watching old Kevin Smith movies, or when someone quotes Eddie Izzard’s “Dressed to Kill” at a party.

When it happened, it would have been easier to move on had he told me why. Explanations always make it easier for the person who’s being cut out of someone’s life – but they don’t come easily to the one who is doing the cutting. I’ve done the cutting myself before, I know what I’m talking about.

Trouble is, if there is someone out there who wasn’t meant to be your friend in the first place – they don’t owe you a damn thing. Certainly they do not owe you affection or explanations. I’ve learned to assess people this way – if someone thinks they can disappear from your life, then they weren’t really a part of it to begin with. One of you, or both of you, were kidding themselves all along.

There are people out there whose approval and attention you want – and sometimes get. Doesn’t make them your friends, in the end.

One of the most frequent accusations I hear from my husband’s fangirls is that I have taken Alexey’s “freedom.” Even though he probably still goes out and travels much, much more than your typical young father would. Because it has nothing to do with his actual freedom, of course – and everything to do with their fantasies of him. It’s an issue of who gets to have him as property.

A lot of people think that the person who charms them – who makes that one movie, stars in that one show – owes them something. “You’ve introduced me to something beautiful – and now I want more.” And what that actually means, in the end, is that they don’t see the object of their affection as a person. Instead they’re a very attractive monkey who is supposed to dance for their eternal amusement.

That’s not what he is, though. That’s not who my Izzard-quoting friend was. No one owes you a thing, in the end. And nothing should be done out of a sense of duty – and everything should be done out of love.

Comment gold: on Russia, “lousy women” and Darwin

I see no point in responding to some comments in the actual comment box. Some comments are so wonderful, they deserve to shine all on their own. This was a comment to a post about honor killings in Jordan, and how “traditionalism” in traditional society is a one-way street – i.e., men get to do whatever the hell they want, while arbitrary moral judgments apply to women.

This fine, wholesome gentleman is operating under the false assumption that I still live in Jordan. Somehow, it doesn’t retract from his eloquence or his erudition:

If you don’t like jordan go back to russia ok.
I studied in petersburg, and I’m 100% honest, the situation in russia is so much worse for women, the typical day of the russian man is: sleep till 2PM, go out with the fiends, drink, sleep with some lousy russian girls, drink, go back home at 1AM, kick the hell out of your wife/GF.
What you are talking about is not a problem in jordan, it is not a even a problem. This how the man and women are and will be forever, men don’t like lousy women(sluts) because they fear cuckoldry, women don’t like poor/weak men because they want protection. Even my friends in the west don’t like feminists or very free girls, and actually many would love to marry a virgin. Men are women are not equal, but no one is better, men want pure women, women want strong men. We should not care to give the same freedoms for men and women because that is against nature, but we must set laws that prevent lousy women and worthless men.
The way you imply that sex is not a sensitive subject in the west is wrong too, sex IS sensitive subject in the west, east south and north, sex is the primary arena of conflict for sexual creatures, sex shapes our minds and even bodies (have you heard of sexual selection), sex is a sensitive and complex subject. If you don’t believe this take biology 101 or read some darwin.

This is so beautiful that I can only respond with an equally gorgeous gif: