Men Behaving Badly…And Then There Are the Women

The last post I wrote was about the Sex and the City movie. I did see it, finally, although in a much different environment than the last one. I expected to hate it, I really did. But I found that even though it is many things the critics say it is (long, ridiculous, heavy-handed), it is also very, very enjoyable, and quite funny. And of course, I was captivated by all the articles denouncing the terrible reviews, defending the movie, even as they acknowledged it wasn’t good.

But time passed. I watched two movies I actually had wanted to see for awhile, and planned to write a joint post on: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, both stories based on books about terrible, awful men and their terrible, awful behavior. No apologies were given. Both books were bestsellers.

And then I realized, even though I have seen all three of these movies spaced out over the course of the last month, that all three were touching upon the same issues. Here I try, not very well, to make sense of it all.

******

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is marketed as the raunchiest, craziest bacchanal, a road trip/buddy movie to rival The Hangover. Based on a true-life account of a womanizing law school grad, the movie tries to give shape and story to the book’s outlandish episodes, including redemption for the movie’s central character, Tucker Max. It’s not funny, though trying to figure out why is tough. It’s not a bad movie; it’s certainly watchable, but no, it’s not even remotely close to The Hangover, save for plot.

Matt Czuchry is the quintessential charming rogue, always with an answer for the ladies, yet back with his friends, he can charmingly degrade ‘em all. He’s always on the lookout for the next lay, the next sexual experience, ready for a new story. His appeal is his outlandishness, as girls are always ready to nail his sexist attitudes to his face. His comeuppance in the film is supposed to be gratifying for the audience—he’s not supposed to get away with calling a girl a “cum dumpster”—but instead it’s trite, predictable. Let the guy roam free; nobody believes he’s real anyway.

Czuchry was Logan on Gilmore Girls, a deceptively similar character to the one he plays here: another charming, rich playboy, who glided through school despite all his professors wanting to strangle him. What’s glaring obvious in the movie is his pedigree, though it’s not mentioned: Tucker is able to toss money at everything. If the stripper, girls or his friends have problems, he throws money at it. A row of 10 special shots is $80? No problem. He doesn’t flinch, and while his buddies, being law students, are conscious of money, he isn’t. Nothing fazes him, and he has the smarts to outwit anyone. He is a lawyer.

What was realistic was the dialogue with his friends. The stories are lifted from the book, and possibly some of the dialogue, but while Czuchry isn’t funny, I did believe that a law student like him, who had a comeback for everything, would talk as intelligently and offensively as he did. The movie sags as the movie reaches its denouement, since we know where this is headed. Of course, things end well—the bitter buddy has found a new love, Tucker learns his lesson. The biggest, and what’s supposed to be the funniest scene, completely falls flat in a way that’s appalling; it’s so much better in the book. It’s kind of sad to see I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell bow down to generic story, missing the no-holds-barred tone of the book, to try to garner an audience that didn’t materialize.

However, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is what the title promises—a depressed, mopey grad student (Julianne Nicholson) conducts brief interviews with men about sex, love, and relationships. It’s all dark and cruel. She says almost nothing throughout the movie, recording these monologues. She is constantly followed by men telling tales of conquest and lust, or they just happen upon her as she’s studying in Starbucks, and her tape recorder is always present. The story is told nonlinearly, and we find out her reasoning for conducting this research—all in the name of feminism, she says.

This movie is largely lifted from the novel, with entire sections of the movie nearly word-for-word. Some of the editing and setups are very postmodern, in fitting with David Foster Wallace’s work, with odd jump-cuts and characters in and out of scenes they’re narrating. It’s very arty and quite pretentious, with a lot of preeny intellectualism that each character affects. Partly because of the setting (and the fact that the book was published in the ‘90s), it doesn’t feel contemporary; there’s talk of rape and love and fantasies and the cruel way that men treat women, but nobody talks like this, in long, artfully constructed sentences.

I’ve read both books, and the wide spaces both stories occupy seem to posit men as these awful creatures. Brief Interviews is not a story that should be seen when in a bad mood, like after a breakup. Nor, really, is Beer in Hell, as both will give ammunition to the phrase “men are cowards”, uttered in the former film. Both stories namecheck feminism, and the men go out of their way to talk about it, how they view it, how they view women—trying to discover what they want, give them what they want. It’s all syntactical gymnastics, and following the logic of most of the monologues gets a little confusing at times. All the men purport to be “honest” in the films, but in Beer in Hell they’re routinely emasculated (especially the groom at the center of the story, but his was the weakest plot), while the men in Brief Interviews are aggressive and gregarious. Sara, the grad student, just takes it all in.

She barely reacts, and her passivity works against her. It’s hard to watch her, especially in some of the more confrontational moments when she is hijacked by monologues by her ex-boyfriend and an interview subject on rape, and not wish her to say something, to scream out in anger. At least in Beer in Hell, the women have their say. They all routinely attack Tucker, spouting off how sexist he is. Tucker will perform his own syntactical gymnastics, but with less snooty intellectualism. And they do have their comeuppance, since the audience is meant to understand that Tucker does really care, that he just wants to have fun, and that (by the end) he’s slowly learning to grow up. That’s not the pat ending in Brief Interviews: Sara is still sad, and her project is merely reinforcing the terribleness of the world, the awfulness of men—even when they care, it’s all wrapped in layers and layers of self-loathing and fear. These men just need to get a grip on themselves. Nothing much really “happens”; the movie is an excuse for a lot of excellent actors to act, though the dialogue often sounds stilted and too actor-y. John Krasinski, the director, is also Sara’s ex, and he is very much the opposite of his nice-guy persona on The Office. Frankly, even he saying the word “bitch” just sounds unnatural.

Both these movies about men behaving badly were supposed to be fun, in a way, just a general romp through awful actions we’d never dare to do ourselves. That’s the selling point. But the Sex and the City movie, also marketed as a fun romp, actually was—though you wouldn’t believe it from the press.

I loved the movie. Yes, I did. I laughed. I had a smile on my face nearly the entire time. It’s ridiculous, sexist, and most definitely offensive. And yet, I enjoyed it mightily.

It is not the Sex and the City of the television show, but I knew that already. The emotional stakes were low, and the Aiden storyline was stupid. Carrie herself was dumb—and most of her storyline could have been avoided had she just told Big outright how she felt. But the nibbles were there—Carrie’s struggle to find a way to make marriage work for her, done her way, felt true. All of the other women were as one-note as possible. I cringed at Miranda being the peppy tour guide, at Samantha loudly being as crass as possible, and at Charlotte because she had nothing better to do. Surprisingly, what none of the reviews mentioned, in between lambasting the movie for every possible offense, was that the movie did try to put the story in context. One of Carrie’s friends gently reminds her of the days when she couldn’t even get Big to stay over, and now she’s mad that he’s always around (“A little perspective is always good”). They do mention the recession, how things have changed since the last movie, and refer to events in both that film and in the canon of the television show. That meant a lot. I also appreciated how the movie tried to bring home the message that life is always hard, no matter the stage. This, unfortunately, was largely lost through the ostentatious outfits and accessories, and the silliness of the plot.

I found the movie beautiful. All the actresses looked fantastic. The colors! The clothes! They looked like what they were—women in their 40s and 50s, well-dressed, with money. Comparing them to younger versions of themselves is unfair. Yes, the movie went over-the-top, but that was part of the show; it was just more of it in the movie, just like the screwball sensibilities that have always underlined the humor of the series.

I completely understand the anger. If I was a mother, the scene between Charlotte and Miranda discussing parenting (“How do they do it without help?”) would be ridiculously condescending and offensive, even more so than it is. Yet I felt that that line was supposed to be a sendup, as sometimes the over-the-top hysterics of nearly every character was portrayed. Maybe it was on us because we took it so seriously.

Maybe that’s another failure of this genre. The backlash to the backlash repeatedly pointed out that some of the vituperative criticisms were unfair, that men’s movies do this all the time…not just The Hangover and Hot-Tub Time Machine, but James Bond. Frankly, The Hangover is an apt comparison to both I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and Sex and the City 2. It too was filled with a stupid plot, slapstick humor, and a helpful heap of sexism, in both obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Yet because Sex and the City 2 had the balls to showcase a completely different side—and do it on their terms—it raised a lot more ire than the usual entries in the genre.

All three of these movies—Sex and the City 2, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men—are variations on a theme. Yes, two are supposed to be popcorn, but all three purport to have Statements. All three movies were written and directed by men, a not-insignificant fact. It’s a tossup whether Brief Interviews is supposed to be revelatory about men, or just another dark comedy on the subject, or even trying to make a statement about women. It’s clear, though, from watching these movies, even as they claim to be about (and for) one sex, it’s impossible not to include the other in some form. Sometimes it’s trite, or boring, or pretentious, or so ridiculous that it’s impossible to believe anything. But all know there is humor in the subject.

Further reading:
What Went So Horribly Wrong with Sex and the City 2? A Critic and Fan Debate the Demerits
Now, In Defense of SATC 2
Un-Innocents Abroad: The Drubbing
Why the SATC 2 Reviews Were Misogynist
All of the reviews I read of Brief Interviews (three, after I watched) were very accurate, but this one's perhaps the best.

Not So Sexy Anymore

I'm going to see the Sex and the City movie. It's one of those things. It's not that I'm dying to see it, not that I expect it will be great, it's not that I think it's worth the $10+. I'm going because, I guess, it's one of those "events" things, though I'm really looking forward to seeing a bunch of friends I don't see that often.

I was (am) a big fan of the television show. I wrote a paper focusing on the season finale, and then retooled it a year later for a conference that I ended up submitting something else to. And when the first movie came out, I was super excited, and I went with a big group of girls, and we laughed and gasped and took it all in. It wasn't until later, on rewatch, without the audience and the expectations, that I realized that the film truly was not good.

I've seen the trailer for the sequel. There's not much to it. I've seen the ads, and the critiques with the photoshopped arms, legs, and hips. I kind of dread where the story will go, but I had that feeling when the movie was over--where else can they go? Women's lives, at least in story form, seem to follow the same trajectory of men and kids, and I didn't want to see Carrie pregnant. But what else will they do? I lamented to a friend, and we bitched. I don't want the movies to be part of my memory of the series.

Neither does Hadley Freeman, who posted her own response to the movies (Spoilers):

But the truth is, the show was fantastic: smart, funny, warm and wise, a far cry from the "middle-aged women having embarrassing sex with various unsuitable partners" cliche that the above writer used. It was about four smart women, three of whom had no interest in getting married. Candace Bushnell's original book on which the show was based was good, but the show was great.

But unlike in the films, that's not all there was, and that wasn't all the characters cared about. What elevated the show way above the normal chickflick tat, and way above the films, was that it had genuine emotional truth. It sang with lines that you knew had come from real life ("How can I have this baby? I barely had time to schedule this abortion" being quite possibly my all-time favourite) and plots that went beyond the limiting convention of cliche. Samantha's breast cancer, for example, showed not only how scary and sad cancer (obviously) is, but also how boring, sweaty and plain inconvenient it is, too.

My thesis in my Sex and the City paper was that the show was so successful because it stuck to this emotional truth. The movie, despite trying for it with Miranda's storyline, completely missed the mark. The men were barely involved, and when they were, they were out of character. The movie was just plain bad; there was nothing there, and spent too much time on things no one cared out (Mexico) and drew out what was unnecessary (Big and Carrie's roller coaster wedding).

There's been a lot written how the show increasingly focused on fashion and the "luxe life" in its later years, especially in the movies. Michael Patrick King, as a response to both the recession and the first movie, has purposely made the sequel light and airy, with the escapist trip to Abu Dhabi the centerpiece of this theme. Yes, it made it easier to shoot, and was different. But it was also a big "huh? ...ok" for the audience.

The fashion was fun, sometimes. But I always maintained it wasn't about that for true fans--they connected to the emotional issues the show brought up, the questions, no matter how serious or frivolous. They could connect to the women's tribulations, no matter what their actual lives were like.

Hopefully I will enjoy the movie, and it won't be a total waste. But I wonder: Do all women's entertainments have to be this way? Do they have to be like Eat Pray Love, an escapist journey, a fantasy that most of us won't be able to experience?

Another Reason Why Lady Gaga Is Awesome

I love a lot of things about this picture of Lady Gaga. I love her hair, the waves, and the color. I love the dark lipstick, the open mouth. I love her crossed arms. I love the metallic contraption “top” she’s wearing, the sparks flying from her nipples. But most of all, I love the fact that Lady Gaga has arm hair.

It’s subtle. It’s noticeable in the full picture in the magazine (Time 100 Most Influential People), the faint brown hairs. I love that Lady Gaga, who is a very Italian brunette when she is/was Stefani Germanotta, did not get rid of her arm hair. I love that she didn’t feel forced to wax it off or bleach it or otherwise hide the fact that’s what her arms look like.

To me that’s what’s most remarkable about this picture, not that she has sparks flying out of her nipples or that the contraption looks cold and uncomfortable, not even wondering how in the world that thing was made or how it works. I’m not shocked by that, nor her orgasmic expression. All of these things have been seen before, whether on her or by other pop stars. It’s the fact that we see what her arms normally look like—no artifice—in a picture promoting artifice. Lady Gaga’s mode, throughout all the wacky, weird costumes, is to show off who she is, that people should uniquely be themselves, and she makes statements through her art. Having her arm hair just existing, not photoshopped out, is just another way of saying, this is who I am, and don’t try to change me. Don’t try to make me conform to unrealistic and silly and costly beauty standards. I am who I am, and I happen to have hair on my arms.

That Rivers Cuomo Thing...

Empathy is hard—especially, sad to say, when you are fucking someone and it's not going quite so well as you'd planned. If you add in the whole gender thing, it gets even harder. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together. They do. And then they call each other bitches and cunts and dumb motherfuckers, assholes and alcoholics and overprivileged Ivy League elitist shits, failed writers, failed people, people with daddy issues and mommy issues and control issues and abandonment issues, just Issues, horrible Issues, Issues that cannot be forgiven; they accuse each other of crimes against God and nature and political engagement; they accuse each other of being just like their mothers (never satisfied) and their fathers (2 bold). And some of them have recording careers, so they take it public. Is that so wrong?

My favorite paragraph from this excellent piece.

I know the basics about Rivers Cuomo--the Japanese girl fetish, the weird sex obsessions, his pathetic emo songs. I never was a fan, purely because I didn't like the music. Some of the stuff here is old, some of it is new, a lot just hasn't been posted in this fashion or in such a high-profile (to some) way. But her points are substantial. The essay does speak to a very specific period/demographic. If I had been older, or a different girl, I might have related to it more.

Very well-written article. My favorite of Sady's. (And she links to Emily Gould! Automatic plus.)

We need more criticism like this, more female-specific criticism. I'd like to be the female Chuck Klosterman (I don't even want the idea of female version to be included here, even though music/pop culture critics desperately need some women in their ranks), but Sady Doyle is on her way.

Really? Glamour? Magazine of the Year?

Glamour was recently named magazine of the year.

I'm not quite sure why.

I've subscribed to Glamour for the last year. I only did so because of their 75th anniversary promotion, where I could get a year's worth for 75 cents. Yep, 12 issues for less than a dollar. What the hell? As far as women's magazines go, I actually like Glamour, detesting their nearest rival, Cosmopolitan. Glamour was more real, and I liked that they incorporated recipes and real advice, at least in the back. They had the obligatory "serious story", addiction or do-gooders, now with Katie Couric interviewing some notable female. All well and good.

But after a few months, it was wearying. The topics were the same, of course: men, relationships, food, eating, exercise, fashion, beauty. I wondered how those working at the magazine didn't get bored of the repetition. The advice was usually sound, but repetitive, and occasionally contradictory. I waded through the "girl with the belly bulge" and the Crystal Renn spreads; meh. Crystal Renn is beautiful and not plus sized in the least, as I've noted before. I no longer felt that the magazine was the exception to others in its category; maybe I just got used to it, maybe the novelty wore off. But I also wasn't looking at other young-women magazines, either, so it became just another Glamour. I knew I wasn't going to renew my subscription when I subscribed, but now I didn't care.

But besides the sameness, I was saddened to see that women's magazines "cleaned up" certain celebrities:

































Lady Gaga and Rihanna are known for dressing explicitly, in wild getups, but they are stripped of their individuality; whitewashed, you could say. There's no crazy makeup, no funky fashion choices, nothing that should be exposed covered up and nothing covered up that should be exposed. They're not even in fun colors: Lady Gaga is uncharacteristically in all white, or off-white, as if to appear pure, but she looks out of place and strangely bland, since she blends in with the background. It's the text that speaks, not her. Rihanna at least looks happy, if girlish, a woman full of spunk and personality. This might be to offset the serious interview inside, promoting her album Rated R, both which explore her dark and volatile year. But her hair is gelled back; we are not to notice her funky, unconventional style choices, just like we aren't meant to view Lady Gaga as she wants to be seen. Maybe that explains her detached look.

I see this as suppressing both women's natural personalities and style to favor a more acceptable form of female expression, both in beauty and personality. I can understand why a cover picture of Lady Gaga wouldn't have her face covered, but I don't see why she has to appear in such an awful getup, one she would never wear anywhere else. I don't see how prettifying Rihanna makes her ordeal any better, except take away her right to express herself as she chooses.

So Glamour, magazine of the year? You might talk the talk of inclusion of expression, proudly showing off your Crystal Renn glamour shots, but until you really show how real women are, capturing their life as they live it (not as you wish them to see it), you don't deserve this title.

Cross-posted at Dissection and Introspection.

I Know Christina Hendricks is Sexy. Stop Telling Me.

I have nothing against Christina Hendricks, but articles like this make me mad.

The majority of attention Christina Hendricks gets revolves around her figure. Even when she graced the cover of New York magazine, the shot focused on her chest, and the piece inside the magazine was little more than a few paragraphs below an enormous picture of her torso. The pieces on the actress usually mention little more than her role as “the curvaceous secretary Joan Holloway on AMC’s Mad Men”, continuing to extol her beauty and wonderful body.

And of course, she has a wonderful figure, one that, as these articles continue to tell me, isn’t celebrated in modern culture, but was in the halcyon days celebrated in the show she appears in. Her figure is also accentuated very nicely by the character she plays, a sexy woman who is known by her sex appeal, and by the period clothes her character requires. Those foundation garments were made for women like Christina Hendricks, relegating the other females in the cast to look poor and skinny when compared to her.

But the more I hear how wonderful and beautiful Christina Hendricks is, the more sad and disappointed and annoyed I get. I’d like to read more about Christina Hendricks the actress, the person behind the body. I’d like to hear about Joan. But I’d also like to stop hearing about how she makes everyone else look paltry and unattractive by comparison. Even in her Esquire photos (where she is close to unrecognizable), it’s clear that they make her boobs pop even more than what should be considered normal, squeezing her into a smaller size. And Hendricks also has one of those figures that isn’t that common, since she has a near-perfect hourglass figure, perfectly proportioned waist and hips. Of course many girls want to look like her.

Aside from the fact that the Esquire survey in discussion is completely unfair, articles that tout Hendricks' size always have to mention “the competition”—those models and actresses that aren’t built like her, those “thin” ones that apparently get all the attention. I’m not suggesting that thinner girls don’t get their share of attention, but there is always the constant, insinuating put down apparent when one is lauding Hendricks’ body:

Winning one for shapely women everywhere, Hendricks is not an anorexia-induced size two. In the accompanying Esquire article she waxed poetic about pork and deep fryers–when was the last time you heard Kate Moss talk about beer battered anything?

“Anorexia-induced size two.” First of all, as someone who was in the mall today, in fact, looking at some of those “size twos”, I can tell you that they are often bigger than you think. Size twos might be tiny, but it is clothing designers who have consistently made sizes bigger than they should be, causing what is known as “size inflation”. Size twos might be stick-figure thin for models, but in department stores, they really aren’t. By using such a loaded term that connotes disease, the article writers imply that small sizes are automatically bought by women who are sickly. Hyperbole? Maybe a little, but the distinction made—that “curvaceous”, at least the curvaceous that Hendricks embodies, is the antithesis of being skinny—and therefore diseased—is harmful and untrue. Nor is adding that Hendricks is a fan of such unhealthy foods going to bolster the argument that she is practically perfection. If she waxed about cheese or arugula, would that be noted? We’re supposed to take away that Hendricks eats “like a real woman”, and her body reflects this diet (which I seriously doubt. I'm sure she does like those foods, but I bet she doesn’t consist on them, or she wouldn't look like she does.) Is eating pork and beer-battered foods supposed to mean that’s what real women eat, and that the women who don’t (those "anorexic-induced sized twos") are less worthy? That there is automatically a connection, that thin women must be starving themselves if they choose not to eat such “men-approved” foods?

To further add insult to injury, Kate Moss aside, there are plenty of articles about thinner actresses and models that mention what they eat, in these same proud tones. GQ, Esquire’s rival, published a cover story on Hendricks’ costar January Jones a few months ago, and the story opens with Jones professing her love for Chili’s queso, beer and football—all signals that she’s a girl for Real Men. Readers are supposed to note that Jones, like Hendricks, is a fun, unfussy person to be around, and their food preferences obviously showcase this.

These articles, though, at their core, do nothing but make women feel bad about themselves. Women can’t win, as they never fit one standard, and whatever preferences they have about virtually anything can be twisted. I’m tired of hearing, even jokingly, how small sizes are ruining America, of being made to feel like I am less than because I am thin, or that I’m expected to uphold some sort of ideal because of what I look like. I don’t like that I have to go on the defense on this topic, and I don’t like that Christina Hendricks can’t get much press outside of her body. She is a great actress, but we don’t hear enough about that; she is relegated to her fair skin, her red hair, and her breasts. Sure, she uses it to her advantage, and I have no problem with that; I would, too. But let’s stop pretending that she is a womanly ideal and that her very presence demolishes or diminishes all the others who don’t look like her. She is as much of a victim of retouching and the capricious whims of the zeitgeist as anyone else.

Notes on Blogging, Gender, Technology, House and Julie & Julia

(I posted this here because of the lengthy discussion of Julie & Julia and House. Unfortunately, the House episode is not available online yet, or I would link and quote from it.)

I had a very bloggy week, between watching Julie & Julia and Monday’s episode of House, which both revolved around women whose blogs got the better of them.

Julie & Julia received a lot of press for its portrayal of supportive husbands, on both women’s side. The Times gleefully wrote of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci’s portrayal of middle-aged passion, but Julie’s husband was a “saint”, so much so that he objected to the label. Much is made of the Childs’ marriage, how passionate they were, but I found Paul Child to be supportive, but distant; in fact, both husbands in the movie were quite bland. Maybe that’s the point—they both were supportive characters, meant to prop up the leads, so they usually are less developed than the protagonists.

But other than that observation, it was Julie’s bloggy passion that stood out, in comparison to this week’s House episode, concentrated on a blogger who goes a little too personal with her diagnosis. Both women get caught up in blogging about their lives, neglecting their significant others, who come to resent their girlfriend’s hobby. (Tip: Get a boyfriend who blogs, or who at least likes the medium as much as you do.) This is reminiscent of Emily Gould’s fantastic bloggy piece in the New York Times nearly two years ago, where she recounts how blogging about her personal life wrecked her relationship and her life. All three women had successful blogs, the real-life ones turning into successful writers. All three were transformed by their hobby, sharing their love with others and eventually having their own audience. Both Julie and Laura Prepon’s Frankie worry too much about their audience; Julie, about actually having one, and Frankie, about what they think. She uses her blog as a crowdsource of opinion, on both the large and small decisions of her life, including the many major medical ones she faces in the episode. Their blogs become their lives, their reason for getting up in the morning. Julie’s Julia Child obsession is fueled by her blogging, and without it the structure of her project would fall apart, as she is documenting her progress. Frankie, too, is obsessed with documenting her life, and despite protestations from her boyfriend, feels she would be lying if she did not faithfully record or retell everything. Julie does not feel this way, though she does consent to not publicizing a fight she has with her husband (though by it being in the movie we presume that it is retold in her book).

The issue here, of course, becomes privacy. Sure, on the surface, Julie Powell’s project sounds fun, if daunting, and not particularly invasive; she is in charge of how much she chooses to reveal, and on the surface a cooking blog would not be one to draw readers.

But of course, that’s too simplistic. One of the women mentioned in the film who actually makes an appearance is Amanda Hesser, a New York Times food writer who made a name for herself (at least to this writer) by writing a column in the Times Magazine in the early part of the ‘00s, “Cooking for Mr. Latte”, about her meals and dates with a certain Mr. Latte, later revealed to be the New Yorker writer Tad Friend. “Cooking for Mr. Latte”, a kind of Sex and the City meets food, certainly had enough dish and romantic intrigue to make it more than just another food column, and, though it was on paper, had a bloggy feel to it, as it chronicled their burgeoning relationship. (The column also became a book.)

So why are all these bloggers women? Why is it that women feel the need to emotionally reveal themselves online, to chronicle their lives? Men seem to go about it in a much more analytical, data-driven fashion; Nicholas Felton has designed a number of what he calls “Personal Annual Reports”, yearly compilations of the minutia that makes up his life, and it’s fascinating: all the restaurants he ate at, the countries he visited, his most played songs on iTunes. Every year, the charts and graphs, not to mention what he actually records, get increasingly complex. (The MIT Media Lab has done similar projects, recording and analyzing personal, daily data of students.) Sure, I already know all the comments, the criticism: even a friend of mine, when I showed him Feltron, responded, “I know the irony of what I'm about to say as a man that [sic] Tweets but that's kind of self absorbed.”

Sure, it’s self-absorbed. But it’s a whole other form of diary, a multimedia one, life writ large. The data aspects makes it so much cooler, because it’s objective, and it’s a form that you can’t argue with; maybe that’s why men like it. There are so many ways to tell a story, and neither is completely right, for each time it’s told, it’s done a little differently, and they all give different sides to the same one.

The Internet, in all its lovely possibilities, has also given us a way to be anonymous and solicit anonymous opinions. That comes across in blogging—again with the choosing to reveal what we want. But there’s also the new ChatRoulette and Formspring.me, services that flip anonymity on its head.

ChatRoulette, memorably introduced to many (including me) via this New York article, is a basic service that automatically turns on a user’s webcam and randomly beams you into someone else’s browser, and they you. The only options are to engage, move on, or turn off. Most outlets have connected it back to the days of the “wild, wild Internet”, before it became safe for minors, where everything and everyone was searchable. Here, it doesn’t matter if your name or your face or your home really belongs to you, as you are only known by your face, and there is no tag—there’s not even a record of who you’ve been connected with. There’s no way to track, no searching, no user names, no login information, no password. Glorious freedom. And yet it’s scary and incredibly intimidating, a party game to play.

Formspring.me is a site, a meme if you like, that lets people ask questions of a particular user. The person can use his or her real name, or a version of it, if the person desires, and those asking the questions can also identify themselves, though they usually stay anonymous. People asking the questions are strangers and friends; maybe you’ll get something good. It’s a version of a Facebook application known as the honesty box, which always got someone in trouble; that’s what honesty tends to do. And yet it’s addicting, in a way, to say too much; God knows in this era of TMI that it’s hard to put a lid on. Lying is contagious too, but it’s confusing as hell; being openly honest, too openly honest, can be about connecting or prolonging the awkward, having something to say, maybe just making a funny.

So we have two sides of a coin here: a site where we are expected to divulge secrets to those asking, and another an interface where we are personally faced with random strangers, no accountability. The first is implicitly about accountability, though we aren’t supposed to be pegged; the second, an escape route if we wish it to be.

But of course, we often occupy on the assumption that more information is better, and that notion led to ChatRoulette map, where users’ IP addresses are tracked to see who is using the service at any time. You do not need to be engaged on ChatRoulette to use ChatRoulette map, as I discovered this afternoon. There’s an option to turn this off, for it ruins the fun for some people. Exposing IP addresses always has a whiff of creepiness, as it feels like Big Brother is coming down to watch.

There are plenty of people that say that both will be a fad, and in Internet world, there are few things that have escaped this designation, one being Facebook. The Internet is both a blessing and a curse, causing us both to escape and feel trapped by our past, and we eagerly take up the call whenever we need to do so.

P.S. I have a formspring.me account. Ask questions, readers! Also cross-posted on Notes on Popular Culture.

A Lack of Imagination

She's nothing like a girl you've ever seen before
Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood [girl]
I'm tryna find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful
The way that booty movin' I can't take no more
Have to stop what I'm doin' so I can pull her close
I'm tryna find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful

--David Guetta, featuring Akon "Sexy Chick"

Countless songs describe a wondrous, appealing female, one who moves the male singer. Most try to describe, no matter how crudely, the girl in question, why she is so spectacular. Sometimes the descriptions are trite. Occasionally they are beautiful.

Akon not only does not try (though he professes to), he can’t even fathom words that wouldn’t cause the girl to slap his face in indignation.

Clearly, listening to only misogynistic booty-shakers renders one incapable of seeing a girl as anything other than a whore—the word that replaces girl in the unedited versions of the song. For every neighborhood chick is a whore, every woman is automatically debased: these men have to struggle to be respectful when they actually meet a woman who intrigues them.

So “Sexy Chick” is really a cautionary tale: men, make sure you know how to talk to a woman. Because if you struggle to say something that’s not a gender slur, you’re not going to go too far.

Time to Criticize Another Sady Doyle Post!

Who the hell is shamed of liking Aimee Mann?!?!?

Ahem.

Sady Doyle’s new post was on the return of Lilith Fair. Now, while she does bring up good points, mainly about the history and cultural significance of the concert in its time and how its message was co-opted by the time, she denigrates the acts that played, referring to music from performers like Sheryl Crow, Natalie Merchant and Sarah McLachlan as “that shit”, not only implying that they play crappy music but that they aren’t worthy of being headliners for such a landmark event. Doyle’s post smacks of snobbery, and she criticizes the concert for not playing the type of riot-grrl music that was popular in the earlier part of the decade, like Sleater-Kinney and PJ Harvey. Every scene is a product of its era; Lilith Fair brought out the folk-rock girl-wave that was happening at the moment, making it really visible as a movement and it really was empowering for many young women at the time. Sady’s right; according to Wikipedia, Ani DiFranco did not play any of the shows the three years the concert ran, but we do not know if any of the bands she mentioned wanted to or were able to play. I doubt that McLachlan and co. intentionally left out these performers.

Now, I agree that the music of the original Lilith Fair was very hippie-dippie and adult contemporary, and presumably, 2010’s newest version will have a different feel and flavor to it, if only because the scene has changed. Sady criticizes Jewel, Gwen Stefani and Liz Phair for changing—mainly going more pop, though Jewel has hit the country route (mediocre at best)—but, in some ways, that’s to be expected. Any artist with a long career will hopefully change, often moving in different directions, and it’s unfair to expect artists like those three to retain their exact sound and perspective with an additional ten years of life on their résumé. What she might be angry about is that these artists, including Alanis Morissette, have mellowed out in the intervening years, gotten married, had children, migrated to acting, and their music—their loud, angry music—wasn’t at the forefront of their lives and careers anymore, and that is a disappointment . And true, there isn’t an artist remotely like Alanis Morissette in popular music anymore, and that is lamentable. Maybe Lilith Fair 2010 will bring out an undiscovered talent, one who is fiery and has stuff to say. Just because we’re in Lady Gaga territory now doesn’t mean she will rule forever.

Music, like most things, is cyclical. Ani Difranco could play Lilith Fair in 2010 and have a resurgence; maybe you will hear her on the radio. It’s not impossible, and stranger things have happened.

Sady also laments that Meredith Brooks' "Bitch", a massive hit in 1997 (a song she does not bother to look up its exact title), was “in context, not rebellious, but predictable”. In 1997, though, that song was anything but predictable. It was rebellious. At the day camp I attended at the time, we were forbidden from playing that song because of its title—but we tried to anyway, many times. I was always amazed at this looking back, as the misogynist, sexual and explicit music that became popular in subsequent years (think Eminem) was every bit as offensive as this single was not and was far more insidious then that one song could be. For a 12 year-old, it was very much a big deal. Sady’s perspective, as usual, does not consider anyone else’s viewpoint or experience, and condemns those who differ from her taste.

PS. By the way, it's Alanis Morissette. One r.

And Another Thing, Beyoncé...

As if women don't have enough problems, we should expect a man who will do all these things:

[...] what I deserve

Is a man that makes me then takes me
And delivers me to a destiny, to infinity and beyond

Dear Lord, Beyoncé, a man is going to exalt me to such new heights that I'll go beyond infinity? That orgasm sure must be powerful.

I deserve a man who's going to take me to my destiny. Which means that my destiny can only be achieved by such a great man. So then that great man must arrive, right? The logic of this gives me a headache.

So does this mean that if this unbelievable man with unbelievable charms doesn't fit into this unbelievable package, then "like a ghost, I'll be gone"? I shouldn't accept anything less than infinite magic?

What Beyoncé Should Sing...

...Is "Angel". Natasha Bedingfield's "Angel."

Now this is a song about respecting your man. It's the complete opposite of practically everything Beyoncé sings, even as a member of Destiny's Child. Natasha wants her man to be disrespected so she can rush to his defense and show the world how proud of his she is. She wants women to stand up to prove there are good guys out there. She's tired of the Beyoncés of the world, constantly bashing their men.

"Angel" even fits into the retrograde values that Beyoncé & co. espouses. Although there are elements of the "Cater 2 U" philosophy, Natasha Bedingfield doesn't intend to pamper her guy or bow down to his every whim. She does, however, put herself aside so her man can have the spotlight. That's a bit worrisome. But she'll do whatever he wishes. There are no strings--she just loves the dude.

What struck me the first time about "Angel", though, was that the sentiment of the song--wanting to protect one's lover "from the pain"--is something most commonly heard from males. Men sing about protecting women all the time. Women, not so much. It's the verb that changes the sentiment slightly, since it's men who are the stereotypical protectors and saviors. Men will sing promises of keep their lady "safe from danger", not the other way around.

But she's still a woman. She'll guide him home and provide shelter, as images of hearth and home are traditional to females. Even the title of the song, "Angel", tends to be associated with women, though guardian angels can be either gender.

"Angel" continues the trend of spelling out the title (see Stefani, Gwen; "Hollaback Girl", and Fergie; "Glamorous"). The video has multiple Natashas singing in multiple outfits (like Beyoncé's current video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"), but it's done in front of black-and-white drawings in panes, like comics, a style I really like. Also, her green dress reminds me of the one Carrie wore in the Sex and the City finale.

Overall, Natasha Bedingfield is a woman who's had lots of positive messages in her music. She even released a song, "Single", about how great being single is. It wasn't sarcastic; unfortunately, it was dreadful. So dreadful that I won't link to it and I'm embarrassed to mention it. Her songs are positive, and from what I've seen, she's a pretty upbeat and down-to-earth person who seems to have some semblence of what she's singing about. Now that's the kind of women pop music needs more of.

Wanting It

Last week, watching the season premiere of House, “Dying Changes Everything”, I was struck by the patient of the week’s philosophy. Wanting something for her wasn’t attainable, and she single-handedly shot down Thirteen and the popular conception that Americans, but women in particular, have, about wanting something.

Like Thirteen, I was taken aback by this woman’s attitude. She was a minion to a woman who didn’t care a whit about her, but the woman didn’t care how terribly she was treated. Thirteen’s attitude isn’t wrong, per se; it’s a very ingrained notion to the last two generations of women. But the more I think about it, the patient is right in a way. We can aspire—want—whatever we want, but we shouldn’t expect that we will get it. But she fails because she’s given up; she doesn’t even want to try.

Wanting something has become this big catch-all. We are supposed to want more and more, and increasingly, expect to fulfill those wants, whether they are monetary, romantic, consumer, or status-oriented. Aren’t we supposed to teach children that they can’t have everything they want? Yet why do we believe so ardently that we will eventually win the life lotto?

The core of the American dream seems to be boiled down to if you work hard, you will achieve. If you achieve, you get what you want: money, status, the family and kids and great job. Somewhere along the line this idea beefed up; now it’s just the idea of fervently wishing, of praying and working and imagining the success, of putting a plan in motion and believing that it will succeed. There is no realization that it may not work, because it will.

This idea is rampant in books like The Secret, those self-help tomes of visualization, of “positive thinking.” Positive thinking can be delusional, but nobody wants to call it that. We’re conditioned to want more. More ice cream please!

I tend to fall under the very Housian quote, first mentioned in the pilot, to borrow Mick Jagger’s line “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.” The problem being that you often don’t realize what you need, and knowing that you won’t get what you want is a very depressing thought. There’s no way to get around this.

Oh, I am always told, things will work out. They always do. It seems a rationalization of the way life unfolds, from one bad or depressing turn to something else, unexpected, a different direction. Maybe it is what was needed, though they didn’t know it. But this is something I’ve only heard from women. It’s not that men don’t ruminate; maybe they aren’t as obsessed as finding the right way, or the best way.

The SNL skit does what the best SNL skits do: boil down an issue to its essence, pointing out the truth while mocking the absurdness of it all. Sarah Palin represents that American notion, as indelible as the frontier spirit, of if you believe it, and you work hard, luck will conspire with you to form great things. Hillary Clinton here is the opposite, the underside of the American dream: what happens when hard work isn’t enough, when forces outside your control conspire against you.

Politics especially seems to have that quality, of “if only”. Al Gore is always served as an example. If only he was president! But look, he completely changed his career! He’s now considered one of the most beloved figures in America, and has had a tremendous amount of influence that he wouldn’t have if he became president. But that is what you do. You adapt; you go in a different direction because you must.

(The only reason this wasn’t posted last week was because FOX makes you wait a week and a day for House episodes to be available online. And while I was waiting, the New York Times published an article relating to the topic.)

Will there ever be another movie so exclusively anticipated by women?

A friend pointed out an excellent observation to me tonight: That the upcoming Sex and the City movie is the only theatrical release she could think of that was so highly anticipated by women.

Maybe it's because movies are now marketed to teen boys and young men, maybe it's because traditional romantic comedies have lost cachet, but all the big blockbuster movies that had advanced buzz and expected huge grosses recently were either sci-fi or fantasy franchises (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter) and had a basis in another otherworldly mythology (Spider-man, Rocky). While none of these films had an exclusive male base, it was a given that these were guy movies...and the girlfriends and the kids would come along too. Sex and the City, just like the show, will be enjoyed by some males, but they're only going to say that if they're reviewing it. The funny thing is, when you think about it, Sex and the City does fall into the above pattern: It is a fantasy, an otherworldly mythology, one without trolls or hobbits or robots (at least not literal ones). While some fans undoubtedly know this, and many more profess to understand it, there are so many who unconsciously try to model some aspects of their life on the show. I find this symptom extremely dangerous--and while it's attached itself to this particular movie, there have been other programs where girls tend to model themselves after main characters. Gilmore Girls is one such show--even though Rory Gilmore is a terrible role model, somehow her magical life transcends all that, much like the girls on SATC.

It's not that girls don't like fantasy or sci-fi, but there are many that just don't find allegories fascinating instead of confusing and hard to follow. "Realistic fantasies" are stories that really wouldn't happen, but technically could happen. Most romantic comedies and meet cutes fall under this category. They're based in real life, so there are no intergalactic planets and funky orbital rules to follow. The interpersonal conflicts are generally realistic, if heightened. In reality, Carrie Bradshaw would not be able to afford her lifestyle, financially or emotionally (your columns are based around you and your friends' love lives, and no one ever gets mad that you spill their secrets to the world?). But that doesn't matter, because we could live fabulously in our own world and pretend those shoes we bought cost $1000 instead of $15 at Payless. We can't magically pretend we can shoot spiderwebs from our wrists and jump buildings; somehow we lost that ability in childhood.

My friend compared the Sex and the City frenzy to Star Wars. It's a good analogy--both will have fans camping out before to score exclusive first dibs, and both have cultlike fanbases. But what's more interesting is to see if there will ever be another movie that's so grabbed women in this way even before it was released. More women watch primetime TV than men (they're off playing videogames or glued to their computer, apparently), so it naturally follows that a movie they'd be waiting for on baited breath would be an extension of a television show, even one that ended four years earlier. Nowadays, no movie is going to have an inherent fanbase without having the necessary backstory to propel it through, meaning it is affiliated with another medium, usually comics or books. This hasn't worked for female-centered book adaptations, as that Jane Austen movie a few months ago underperformed and The Nanny Diaries sank. But one can argue that those fanbases were very narrow, and more people have watched at least some SATC than have read either of the books, especially with the DVDs and syndication on two stations as further means of access. And many of the blockbusters mentioned above were sequels, so the original source material (the comic, the book) didn't necessarily matter. Star- or producer-driven movies don't have the same cachet; Forgetting Sarah Marshall will do well, but it won't whip up people the way other defining movies have. It's the story we're after, not the star, and knowing the background, mythology or source material is a way of getting more engaged with the story, of also feeling part of something and having insider cachet, a type of spoiler, in a way--which is exactly how many people want to interact with their entertainment, especially the kind that feed off the internet and follow trends and hype.

Of course, people will say there are no heavily anticipated women's movies because females are underrepresented in the movie industry, and once they begin to get movies made that they want to see the audience will come to them. Perhaps. But the Sex and the City movie is written, directed, and produced by a man, so that argument doesn't work here. Maybe because television is a continuing story, with characters we grow to love and fret over, which demand time and energy that women give freely that the connection is strong, whereas movies are about the loud bang buck, the hustle and bustle and action and one-time out-of-sight-out-of-mind, which is more inclined with male habits. But that's a gross oversimplification. Either way, it's safe to say that the hysteria surrounding the Sex and the City movie--which will only grow more overpowering in the next month and a half--will be a very rare occurrence, until the next generation-defining critically-acclaimed television show about women's lives is made into a movie.