I'm no expert, it's true, but dating is something I've done, and actually done well. It's different from having a boyfriend or girlfriend - it's the preamble, when you're getting to know each other and deciding if maybe, one day, y'all want to be exclusive. Confusingly, if you do eventually make it a one-on-one thing, that's also known as "dating," so for my purposes here today, that'll be known as Dating, or DATING if things get really serious.
If Generic Teen Girl Magazine approached me to write their dating advice column, where generic teen girls wrote in and basically asked me to read their crush's mind re: does he like me?, I would shrug and say yes, but only because I like generic teen girls. I always wanted to shout, "Teen letter writer! Quit being such a wet noodle and just talk to the guy! Stop writing in to magazines!" But I also understood the letter writer's dilemma: how do you conceal your vulnerable heart long enough to have a mundane getting-to-know-you conversation?
I do, however, have some dating experience. People can hit it off from the very first moment, and the first time a future couple hangs out might be a laff riot, culminating in a whisky-soaked conversation at 5 a.m. about favourite bands. On the other end of the spectrum, one party might set their hair on fire half-way through the date (ME. I have done this). In my twenties, a lot of my friends got embedded in LTRs, but I got a different education. I missed the master lessons on "how to not throttle your partner when you come home and the garbage is still a festering mess and that was the ONE THING you asked her to do this morning," but I got the community-college equivalent in "how to feign interest in someone's exquisitely boring hobbies just so you can get through the end of this glass of wine and then fake an emergency and leave."
So! Dates! Man, dates are fun. That's actually the whole point of a date: for you to go out and have some fun with a person whose genitals you might want to see later on (confidential to my mom: way, way later on. Sometime after you have your first child together). In this regard, don't shortchange yourself. For some reason, people have decided that "date" = "dinner." Dinner is boring! Take your date to the dog park and look at the puppies. (Aww.) Take your date on a brewery tour. Rent a paddleboat, browse in bookstores, get a vegan cupcake, watch a fire dancer. Fight the urge to drink loads to avoid awkwardness. Do stuff that interests you, and your potential suitors will be forced to a) bring their A-game and b) bust out the stuff that interests them on date #2. What sounds more enticing: dinner and a movie, or, "Hey, do you want to get falafel sandwiches and then go bowl a few frames? I know this bowling alley that serves crazy strong drinks." The subtext there is, "...because I am awesome."
There are some no-nos as well. I once had a date who drunkenly came home with me, made a failed pass, and then fell asleep on my couch. At some point, he sprinkled a thin layer of his belongings all over my apartment, in a crafty attempt to have a reason for another meet-up: a magazine, a book, and an expensive watch. We had an incredibly awkward second date, where he was supplicating and I was resentful, and we never saw each other again. Don't be that guy. This is also the safe-date PSA time: if you're meeting someone new, tell a friend where you're going and how to get in touch, and maybe offer a soothing check-in phone call if your friend watches a lot of sex-crime procedural shows. Most people are fine, especially if you're diligent in your douchebag filtering, but it never hurts to have a safety net.
Let's say you've introduced each other to your favourite dive bars, you've maybe had a sleepover or two, ran into some friends on the street and been totally awkward about status ("This is Eddie, my uh....This is Eddie."). Terrific. But maybe things aren't going 100% awesome, or maybe things are going better with Kyle than they are with Eddie - one of the perks of dating is that you're not exclusive until you say you are - and you need a conversation. This can be so stressful, because the are-we-aren't-we nature of going on dates. Look, you can't just drop out of someone's life, so call them up (it's fine to do it on the phone if things aren't serious/long-term) and say, "Thank you for the time we've had together lately, but I don't think we're clicking as well as we could, and I don't think we should hang out any more."
Memorize this. Tattoo it your arm, Memento-style. Let it wrap itself around your soul, if you're a hippie. My friend Suzanne recently pointed out that people will often date someone because the other person likes them, not because they like that person. Being liked is cool, and super-exciting, but if you don't dig what the other person is bringing to your table, you're not, like, contractually obligated to date them. There's no crime in realizing that you're not clicking with someone you're seeing, liking someone else better, or being bored. I have girlfriends who go back to the same guys, not because they're so in love, but because they're afraid of being alone, don't like ending it, or think the dude will change into something more desirable. Cut your losses, be the bad guy for a day or two, and move on.
One final thing: you may have to go on dozens of dates, but if you want an actual boyfriend or girlfriend, this is your tempering process, making you stronger and more knowledgeable about what you do/don't like. Pay attention! There'll be variations in age, body type, income, parent and marital status, gender, sexuality, kink, weight, height, location, and agenda. Follow your heart (barf!) and think critically about the things you want. You may discover a secret weakness for bears, or that you can't date a non-smoker, or that baristas are pretty boring when they're not feeding you coffee. Shrug. Cool. It's all part of the education.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Mini-Me
Hipster parents are all over the damned place these days, and it's starting to make me a little crazy. Not because my own biological imperative is counting down - it sort of is, but not with any real urgency - but because all these parents are, like, my age. If not a little younger. It's like all the hipster babes are having hipster babies. The cycle continues, and hipsters, if nothing else, are a little boring.
The same way I take umbrage at the now-passe "Storm, the genderless baby" debacle, the idea of hipster children is both fascinating and a little repulsive. Where you fall on that continuum can likely be predicted by where you live, how old you are, and how big your dress-up box is. Babies are among the most helpless creatures in the animal kingdom, requiring constant care and attention; as a result, they rely on their parents for everything from changing their faux-denim diapers to spoon-feeding them organic homemade vindaloo sweet potato puree. Besides, in theory, there's nothing wrong with swaddling your kids in Hanna Andersson and riding them around on the Zapp. One doesn't need Dora the Explorer emblazoned on an article of clothing to make it child-friendly.
Is dressing your kids like a short version of yourself a good thing? The adorableness runs high for toddlers clad in Sonic Youth teeshirts (oh, irony!), or little girls in Nine Inch Nails onesies, for sure. Better yet, hipsters didn't even invent the kids-as-adults fashion; they're just following a retro trend. Children were often clothed in the fashions of their parents: think of those grim-faced children posing a hundred years ago. They're not wearing rompers and Disney tee shirts - they look like tiny versions of the grim-faced adults propping them up.
Then came the 1950s, when kids started having their own TV shows, merchandise, concerts and movies. Em Oh You Ess Ee, right? When we were kids, it was Sesame Street, Ninja Turtles and the Planeeters, plastered on duotangs and lunchboxes and party plates. It was easy to see what was for kids, and there was serious industry in selling me that branded merchandise. The same way that today's children get Cars backpacks, and their parents get to buy them.
But as we grew up and had some kids, the lines were suddenly blurred. Because we're still wearing our Ninja Turtles tee shirts. We're listening to Florence and the Machine and the babies are loving it, and there are dance playlists by kids, and American Apparel has infant's clothes (even as they reluctantly branch out into the plus sizes). It's become easier and easier to just scale down our tastes when we shop for the babies. And businesses are happy to oblige: most fashion houses have pint-sized versions of their lines, and others cater exclusively to the stroller cabal.
Only time will tell if I'll have hipster babies. My "aesthetic," if I can be assy enough to say that I have one, is pretty second-hand and DIY, but not to the point where I preserve my own beets or anything. If someone gave me a Beastie Boys toddler shirt, though, I would lose my mind (and blame the pregnancy hormones) and promptly dress my chilluns in the clothes of my choosing. When they're of outfit-picking age, I'm sure they'll be excited about branding and I'll roll my eyes at their choices, but banning the little moppets from picking something they like? That's not very hip, is it?
The same way I take umbrage at the now-passe "Storm, the genderless baby" debacle, the idea of hipster children is both fascinating and a little repulsive. Where you fall on that continuum can likely be predicted by where you live, how old you are, and how big your dress-up box is. Babies are among the most helpless creatures in the animal kingdom, requiring constant care and attention; as a result, they rely on their parents for everything from changing their faux-denim diapers to spoon-feeding them organic homemade vindaloo sweet potato puree. Besides, in theory, there's nothing wrong with swaddling your kids in Hanna Andersson and riding them around on the Zapp. One doesn't need Dora the Explorer emblazoned on an article of clothing to make it child-friendly.
Is dressing your kids like a short version of yourself a good thing? The adorableness runs high for toddlers clad in Sonic Youth teeshirts (oh, irony!), or little girls in Nine Inch Nails onesies, for sure. Better yet, hipsters didn't even invent the kids-as-adults fashion; they're just following a retro trend. Children were often clothed in the fashions of their parents: think of those grim-faced children posing a hundred years ago. They're not wearing rompers and Disney tee shirts - they look like tiny versions of the grim-faced adults propping them up.
Then came the 1950s, when kids started having their own TV shows, merchandise, concerts and movies. Em Oh You Ess Ee, right? When we were kids, it was Sesame Street, Ninja Turtles and the Planeeters, plastered on duotangs and lunchboxes and party plates. It was easy to see what was for kids, and there was serious industry in selling me that branded merchandise. The same way that today's children get Cars backpacks, and their parents get to buy them.
But as we grew up and had some kids, the lines were suddenly blurred. Because we're still wearing our Ninja Turtles tee shirts. We're listening to Florence and the Machine and the babies are loving it, and there are dance playlists by kids, and American Apparel has infant's clothes (even as they reluctantly branch out into the plus sizes). It's become easier and easier to just scale down our tastes when we shop for the babies. And businesses are happy to oblige: most fashion houses have pint-sized versions of their lines, and others cater exclusively to the stroller cabal.
Only time will tell if I'll have hipster babies. My "aesthetic," if I can be assy enough to say that I have one, is pretty second-hand and DIY, but not to the point where I preserve my own beets or anything. If someone gave me a Beastie Boys toddler shirt, though, I would lose my mind (and blame the pregnancy hormones) and promptly dress my chilluns in the clothes of my choosing. When they're of outfit-picking age, I'm sure they'll be excited about branding and I'll roll my eyes at their choices, but banning the little moppets from picking something they like? That's not very hip, is it?
Friday, September 16, 2011
Gym Bo Ree
I'm not a gym bunny. Up until recently, my Lululemon sweats were my "eating ice cream and watching TV" outfits, not for yogic flying or striding around Yorkville wearing mirrored sunglasses and looking scrawny. My running shoes were pristine, practically out of the box, and my hand weights gathered dust next to my TV. I despaired, as the lazy often to, about my expanding waistline and inability to touch my toes, but did I do anything about this? I did not.
With my new two-week free membership to the West End YMCA, however, I've stepped on a new treadmill. As an added bonus, the gym is a great place to get over things like the desire, or even ability, to dress stylishly.
Work-out gear is not, by any definition, en vogue. It might be flattering, or comfortable, or stretchy. It might breathe well. It might have little pockets for earphones, or a built-in pedometer, but it is not designed to be worn outside the gym with any degree of style. All the companies that market fashionable gym wear are lying to you: no such thing exists. If you've spent enough time at the gym to confidently pour yourself into leggings, you are well aware that most people exercise in ratty tee-shirts with the necks stretched out, basketball shorts from 1996, and fleecy jackets. That's because most people at the gym, including myself, are shlubby messes who are just trying to look and feel a little better. The idea that everyone there is wearing sleek black Matrix-inspired getups while they sweatlessly tone is a lie perpetuated by prime-time dramedies. I myself wear electric-yellow running shorts.
There is "designer" gym clothes, but that costs hundreds of dollars and was never designed for actual movement in an actual gym. That was made for wearing with expensive complicated sneakers and sitting in uncomfortable chairs on small patios, drinking coffee out of comically small/large cups and talking about how training your dog is going. It's for wearing home from the Botox clinic. It's for day-walking through Machu Piccu on your 18th wedding anniversary trip. It's not for wearing while you slog on the treadmill for 35 minutes. It is for lattes and picking your stepkids up from circus camp. Do not be fooled. The women who wear these outfits are the same people who own driving shoes and expensive single-use detergent. Do not be like them.
Once we've dressed ourselves horribly and warmed up with some half-hearted stretching, we can enter the actual gym. Not being a person who wears running shoes every day, I always feel especially bouncy when I step into the exercise area, but that soon passes. I use my time on the machines to do the following: obsessively monitor my pulse for evidence that my heart is going to explode; stare vacantly at the name of the company that makes the machine ("Fitness Forever!"); count calories burned, strides, time, and distance traveled; and silently judge others based on clothes and hairdo.
Ladies who get really into the gym thing freak me out. I know they're getting older and maybe aren't as taut as they once were, but frankly, that's kind of a good thing. It's cool to gain some weight as you age. Not a ton - I'm not saying y'all should make friends with a bucket of fried chicken - but too-skinny is freaky on the young and unflattering on the old. But it is cool to be a gym lady. Get some muscles! Lift some weights! Get your stretch on! Understand that you will be wearing a technical fabric that will make you look like a background extra in a training montage! Accept your fate! Young women who use the gym awe me with their early-life dedication to health, plus they always seem to have voluptuous bodies and shiny hair. They're also likely to dress in black and wear eyeliner, which intimidates me and my yellow shorts and grade-school french braids.
The whole point of wearing the gym clothes, and putting yourself through the pain of the gym (and the hideousness of the outfits) is so that when you put on your civilian clothes, you feel and look better. Muscles are a great feeling, losing weight is a great feeling, setting goals and reaching them is a great feeling. The gym clothes aren't so much a great feeling, but, like with the exploding heart, they're a rung on the ladder to feeling good. So, in one way, my electric yellow shorts will never go out of style.
With my new two-week free membership to the West End YMCA, however, I've stepped on a new treadmill. As an added bonus, the gym is a great place to get over things like the desire, or even ability, to dress stylishly.
Work-out gear is not, by any definition, en vogue. It might be flattering, or comfortable, or stretchy. It might breathe well. It might have little pockets for earphones, or a built-in pedometer, but it is not designed to be worn outside the gym with any degree of style. All the companies that market fashionable gym wear are lying to you: no such thing exists. If you've spent enough time at the gym to confidently pour yourself into leggings, you are well aware that most people exercise in ratty tee-shirts with the necks stretched out, basketball shorts from 1996, and fleecy jackets. That's because most people at the gym, including myself, are shlubby messes who are just trying to look and feel a little better. The idea that everyone there is wearing sleek black Matrix-inspired getups while they sweatlessly tone is a lie perpetuated by prime-time dramedies. I myself wear electric-yellow running shorts.
There is "designer" gym clothes, but that costs hundreds of dollars and was never designed for actual movement in an actual gym. That was made for wearing with expensive complicated sneakers and sitting in uncomfortable chairs on small patios, drinking coffee out of comically small/large cups and talking about how training your dog is going. It's for wearing home from the Botox clinic. It's for day-walking through Machu Piccu on your 18th wedding anniversary trip. It's not for wearing while you slog on the treadmill for 35 minutes. It is for lattes and picking your stepkids up from circus camp. Do not be fooled. The women who wear these outfits are the same people who own driving shoes and expensive single-use detergent. Do not be like them.
Once we've dressed ourselves horribly and warmed up with some half-hearted stretching, we can enter the actual gym. Not being a person who wears running shoes every day, I always feel especially bouncy when I step into the exercise area, but that soon passes. I use my time on the machines to do the following: obsessively monitor my pulse for evidence that my heart is going to explode; stare vacantly at the name of the company that makes the machine ("Fitness Forever!"); count calories burned, strides, time, and distance traveled; and silently judge others based on clothes and hairdo.
Ladies who get really into the gym thing freak me out. I know they're getting older and maybe aren't as taut as they once were, but frankly, that's kind of a good thing. It's cool to gain some weight as you age. Not a ton - I'm not saying y'all should make friends with a bucket of fried chicken - but too-skinny is freaky on the young and unflattering on the old. But it is cool to be a gym lady. Get some muscles! Lift some weights! Get your stretch on! Understand that you will be wearing a technical fabric that will make you look like a background extra in a training montage! Accept your fate! Young women who use the gym awe me with their early-life dedication to health, plus they always seem to have voluptuous bodies and shiny hair. They're also likely to dress in black and wear eyeliner, which intimidates me and my yellow shorts and grade-school french braids.
The whole point of wearing the gym clothes, and putting yourself through the pain of the gym (and the hideousness of the outfits) is so that when you put on your civilian clothes, you feel and look better. Muscles are a great feeling, losing weight is a great feeling, setting goals and reaching them is a great feeling. The gym clothes aren't so much a great feeling, but, like with the exploding heart, they're a rung on the ladder to feeling good. So, in one way, my electric yellow shorts will never go out of style.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Issues With Friends With Kids
Friends With Kids! Oh my god! This movie has woken up a maelstrom of feelings I wasn't even aware human beings could feel! It was all rage-related Lamaze-breathing and flashbacks to Kissing Jessica Stein! Maya Rudolph was there! That was nice! And ever more ludicrously gorgeous and affordable Manhattan/Brooklyn apartments!
Okay, seriously: Friends With Kids. Can we please talk about this? It premiered at TIFF last week, but it hasn't been picked up yet, so let's just talk about vanity projects, thesis statements and hating on Brooklyn.
For the 95% of the population who is not aware of this movie, let me set up the conceit: a New York City social circle in their 30s starts hitting that life-cycle milestone, the child, with differing degrees of success. Maya Rudolph and Chris "The Irish cop from Bridesmaids" O'Dowd couple up and have some kids: she turns into a screaming, nagging shrew who publicly criticizes the me-time her hoodie-wearing husband takes on the john. Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig play a couple who are slowly driven apart by his half-hearted participation in parenting, and their joint affinity for red wine. And finally, Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott play long-time friends who, after watching their friends' post-childbirth relationship with horror, decide to have a kid together, but without all that couple-y stuff. Their unusual set-up allows them to keep the focus on staying in the dating game and eventually landing their hotter life partners, and side-steps the degeneration of romance that their friends have suffered.
The concept is a little smug. But hey - we can live with smug! But as the film gets going, it becomes clear that Westfeldt, who does not have children, is convinced that two friends could baby-share. There's a rant by Jon Hamm that asks the questions the audience must have wondered: what do you a tell a kid who knows his parents were never in love? How can you have the hubris to think your parenting styles and needs will overlap without talking it out in advance? How do you justify gambling with someone's life, and their understanding of what it means to love and commit, when you demonstrate that having a child together takes a backseat to finding a super-hot sexual playmate?
The super-hot sexual playmate, played by Megan Fox, obviously doesn't want kids. Kids, she says, tie you down, make you slow and fat, and limit your ability to implausibly star in a Broadway musical. Fox's role in this movie is to play the hedonistic slut: she can put her legs behind her head! She's hot. But she she won't touch him when he's sprayed nostrils-to-nipples with baby diarrhea, all but strangles a toddler in a bistro, and Scott is duty-bound to break up with her. She's not The One after all. (But! Legs! Behind her head!) By assigning Fox the childless role, the choice to remain childless is dismissed by the film as an indulgence of selfish and young people, a decision that would be impossible to sustain into your thirties.
Despite their separate, rocky dating scenes, Westfeldt and Scott are totally united and on par in their parenting abilities. There's no resentment when she calls him at 3 AM to rock their colicky offspring. He's able to make the little bastard instantly stop crying after she's been dealing with the screaming for an hour, a move that would have me questioning my sanity. They agree to split everything, time included, down the middle, so they can keep dating and having their own, non-parenting lives. Obviously, this is insane, but Westfeldt is firm in her conviction that friends really would be better than couples at raising children. Her characters demonstrate an unworldly geniality to childrearing. Even the most mellow parents occasionally feel like they're going to freak out: these parents never do. The gender parity is taken for granted, despite the fact that in the other two couples - like most couples - the woman is charge of the screaming, the cleaning, the silent crying and the feedings.
The movie relies heavily on Westfeldt's talents: she wrote, produced, directed and starred in thie film, a power play that means her fingerprints are on every frame of the film. I'm not going to lie - I disliked her. Westfeldt is blonde, about 95 pounds, and talks in a breathy Minnie Mouse voice. The movie runs a little blue - the seduction line is "I'm going to fuck the shit out of you," (also said by: date rapists everywhere!), and it's jarring to hear her utter it in an oopsy-cutesy voice. Scott is slightly miscast - he looks like a grim Eagle Scout when he's mad, and Megan Fox is way out of his league. But Westfeldt is, by far, the biggest dud... but, you know, this was clearly designed to be a breakout role for her. It's her show.
The supporting cast is great: Hamm convincingly plays a louche dad and Wiig, his long-suffering wife. Despite their friction, the relationship between O'Dowd's and Rudolph's characters is solid and enviable, and O'Dowd is affable and charming - I would date that guy, for sure. When Jon Hamm has his drunken what-are-you-thinking rant, the characters all freeze in horror, but Rudolph and O'Dowd make sure they clutch hands first. I loved that. (Meanly, I would guess Westfeldt had nothing to do with that moment, either.) I feel like this movie was trying to teach me something about being a woman, or a mother, or a New Yorker, or something. Like, it's fine to be a mom, as long as you're hot? Or, like, your husband will grow to hate you, so you might as well fray his last nerve and be done with it? Kids are sweet? Romance is needed in childrearing? Love is extraneous? Baby poop will get on you? Brooklyn is a wasteland? WHAT IS IT?! Jon Hamm always plays a jerk? TELL ME! Because, while Maya Rudolph is my movie-star girlfriend right now, and New York is awesome, this movie is NOT GOOD in a way that I have very strong feelings about. Don't see it. Or do see it, once it's in wide release, and then we can talk about it in loud voices on the bus.
Okay, seriously: Friends With Kids. Can we please talk about this? It premiered at TIFF last week, but it hasn't been picked up yet, so let's just talk about vanity projects, thesis statements and hating on Brooklyn.
For the 95% of the population who is not aware of this movie, let me set up the conceit: a New York City social circle in their 30s starts hitting that life-cycle milestone, the child, with differing degrees of success. Maya Rudolph and Chris "The Irish cop from Bridesmaids" O'Dowd couple up and have some kids: she turns into a screaming, nagging shrew who publicly criticizes the me-time her hoodie-wearing husband takes on the john. Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig play a couple who are slowly driven apart by his half-hearted participation in parenting, and their joint affinity for red wine. And finally, Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott play long-time friends who, after watching their friends' post-childbirth relationship with horror, decide to have a kid together, but without all that couple-y stuff. Their unusual set-up allows them to keep the focus on staying in the dating game and eventually landing their hotter life partners, and side-steps the degeneration of romance that their friends have suffered.
The concept is a little smug. But hey - we can live with smug! But as the film gets going, it becomes clear that Westfeldt, who does not have children, is convinced that two friends could baby-share. There's a rant by Jon Hamm that asks the questions the audience must have wondered: what do you a tell a kid who knows his parents were never in love? How can you have the hubris to think your parenting styles and needs will overlap without talking it out in advance? How do you justify gambling with someone's life, and their understanding of what it means to love and commit, when you demonstrate that having a child together takes a backseat to finding a super-hot sexual playmate?
The super-hot sexual playmate, played by Megan Fox, obviously doesn't want kids. Kids, she says, tie you down, make you slow and fat, and limit your ability to implausibly star in a Broadway musical. Fox's role in this movie is to play the hedonistic slut: she can put her legs behind her head! She's hot. But she she won't touch him when he's sprayed nostrils-to-nipples with baby diarrhea, all but strangles a toddler in a bistro, and Scott is duty-bound to break up with her. She's not The One after all. (But! Legs! Behind her head!) By assigning Fox the childless role, the choice to remain childless is dismissed by the film as an indulgence of selfish and young people, a decision that would be impossible to sustain into your thirties.
Despite their separate, rocky dating scenes, Westfeldt and Scott are totally united and on par in their parenting abilities. There's no resentment when she calls him at 3 AM to rock their colicky offspring. He's able to make the little bastard instantly stop crying after she's been dealing with the screaming for an hour, a move that would have me questioning my sanity. They agree to split everything, time included, down the middle, so they can keep dating and having their own, non-parenting lives. Obviously, this is insane, but Westfeldt is firm in her conviction that friends really would be better than couples at raising children. Her characters demonstrate an unworldly geniality to childrearing. Even the most mellow parents occasionally feel like they're going to freak out: these parents never do. The gender parity is taken for granted, despite the fact that in the other two couples - like most couples - the woman is charge of the screaming, the cleaning, the silent crying and the feedings.
The movie relies heavily on Westfeldt's talents: she wrote, produced, directed and starred in thie film, a power play that means her fingerprints are on every frame of the film. I'm not going to lie - I disliked her. Westfeldt is blonde, about 95 pounds, and talks in a breathy Minnie Mouse voice. The movie runs a little blue - the seduction line is "I'm going to fuck the shit out of you," (also said by: date rapists everywhere!), and it's jarring to hear her utter it in an oopsy-cutesy voice. Scott is slightly miscast - he looks like a grim Eagle Scout when he's mad, and Megan Fox is way out of his league. But Westfeldt is, by far, the biggest dud... but, you know, this was clearly designed to be a breakout role for her. It's her show.
The supporting cast is great: Hamm convincingly plays a louche dad and Wiig, his long-suffering wife. Despite their friction, the relationship between O'Dowd's and Rudolph's characters is solid and enviable, and O'Dowd is affable and charming - I would date that guy, for sure. When Jon Hamm has his drunken what-are-you-thinking rant, the characters all freeze in horror, but Rudolph and O'Dowd make sure they clutch hands first. I loved that. (Meanly, I would guess Westfeldt had nothing to do with that moment, either.) I feel like this movie was trying to teach me something about being a woman, or a mother, or a New Yorker, or something. Like, it's fine to be a mom, as long as you're hot? Or, like, your husband will grow to hate you, so you might as well fray his last nerve and be done with it? Kids are sweet? Romance is needed in childrearing? Love is extraneous? Baby poop will get on you? Brooklyn is a wasteland? WHAT IS IT?! Jon Hamm always plays a jerk? TELL ME! Because, while Maya Rudolph is my movie-star girlfriend right now, and New York is awesome, this movie is NOT GOOD in a way that I have very strong feelings about. Don't see it. Or do see it, once it's in wide release, and then we can talk about it in loud voices on the bus.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Breast Of All
As I was leafing through Entertainment Weekly a few days ago, I was struck my a collage of images from the upcoming fall television season. Nothing special going on: a few waitresses transposed over someone posing with a handgun: the usual pappy "look at us!" kind of schtick that ensures that, by the time the pilot is aired, we're all vaguely aware of what we're going to be looking at here. Waitresses? Yeah, I'd watch that.
But one of those waitresses is the luscious Kat Denning, and guys? She has boobs.
I know most woman of reproductive age have 'em, but let's face it: there isn't a lot of diversity amongst the TV breasts. They're usually high and small, with a little bit of jiggle if you jog (and a little bit of pointiness if you're watching a Friends rerun - they must have kept that set at, like, six degrees), but a lot of the time, the "cleavage" is about as sexy and voluptuous as a frying pan. If you're a little older, or not quite in the bell curve, you could adjust them: either "naturally" through over-exercise, which gives you that alluringly bony sternum, or go discreetly under the knife to pump up your basketballs. Young women, as they're represented in the TV demographic, aren't as likely to be weird-skinny. Their assets just haven't really had time to be anything other than perfect, but their coltish figures take very well to a regimen of baby carrots and elliptical machines if they don't quite conform.
I check out women...constantly. As my (very patient and and slightly amused) boyfriend pointed out today, if I was a dude, I would be one of those construction workers who sexually harass attractive women. I'm a fan of legs: long, lean gams where the short-shorts are short and the thighs don't touch. At 5'1", my legs are muscular, well-shaped, toned and strong. I love my legs, but I don't think of them as luscious, and they certainly aren't long. The same can't be said about my chest: I am very well endowed there. I get a classic hourglass shape when I'm working out, so it ends up being very va-va-voom. Lots of deep v-necks in my wardrobe.
The thing about large breasts is that they don't often work in the real world. I'll give you a for-instance: I hate being warm, so tank tops are de rigeur in my wardrobe. With big boobs, "tank top" equals "revealing." Culturally, large breasts are understood to be sexy, sometimes over-sexed. They're seen as relatively low-class. They're often the hallmark of an ethnicity that white people think of as "other," like Latina. Revealing small breasts is artful; revealing large breasts is pornographic. Think about Dolly Parton and Pamela Anderson. Now think about Gwyneth Paltrow and Natalie Portman.
In my quest for body acceptance, I'm trying to come up with some role models I can turn to when I start feeling like I never see myself on the screen. Kat Dennings is totally foxy: she's got an pre-anorexia Angelina thing going on, which I like very much, and her face belongs on billboards. But is she a stick? Nah. She's got curves, man. It's nice to see curves on TV. Just like, when Maw Whitman shows up in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, she's got a shadow of a double chin. Because, you know, she's a human. Doesn't mean she can't kick some serious ass.
Please note that I'm not talking about the carefully curated curves of Jessica Biel or ScarJo: those women, though undoubtedly beautiful, aren't regular humans. Or the "large breasts" of Megan Fox, who, in her newest movie, is the thinnest woman I've ever seen onscreen. Seriously: look at this woman's midsection. Where is it? I recently read an article about why No Doubt didn't put out more music. Between her kids, her fashion line, and her workout routine, she explain, Gwen Stefani just didn't have the time to record new music. The day my workout becomes my actual job is the day that I crawl into bed with a tub of cream cheese icing in order to spend some serious time realigning my priorities. Some exercise is good and it's a great feeling to be fit, active and healthy.
But coming to terms with that shadow of double chin, or absentmindedly rubbing your belly while you wait for the bus, can be a powerful moment. Knowing that other women are out there doing the same thing, even women in an industry that has powerful forces demanding that the chin and the belly shrink away, is reassuring and empowering. I don't know if the Dennings's new sitcom is going to be any good; it's just nice to know that her "normal" body isn't holding her back.
But one of those waitresses is the luscious Kat Denning, and guys? She has boobs.
I know most woman of reproductive age have 'em, but let's face it: there isn't a lot of diversity amongst the TV breasts. They're usually high and small, with a little bit of jiggle if you jog (and a little bit of pointiness if you're watching a Friends rerun - they must have kept that set at, like, six degrees), but a lot of the time, the "cleavage" is about as sexy and voluptuous as a frying pan. If you're a little older, or not quite in the bell curve, you could adjust them: either "naturally" through over-exercise, which gives you that alluringly bony sternum, or go discreetly under the knife to pump up your basketballs. Young women, as they're represented in the TV demographic, aren't as likely to be weird-skinny. Their assets just haven't really had time to be anything other than perfect, but their coltish figures take very well to a regimen of baby carrots and elliptical machines if they don't quite conform.
I check out women...constantly. As my (very patient and and slightly amused) boyfriend pointed out today, if I was a dude, I would be one of those construction workers who sexually harass attractive women. I'm a fan of legs: long, lean gams where the short-shorts are short and the thighs don't touch. At 5'1", my legs are muscular, well-shaped, toned and strong. I love my legs, but I don't think of them as luscious, and they certainly aren't long. The same can't be said about my chest: I am very well endowed there. I get a classic hourglass shape when I'm working out, so it ends up being very va-va-voom. Lots of deep v-necks in my wardrobe.
The thing about large breasts is that they don't often work in the real world. I'll give you a for-instance: I hate being warm, so tank tops are de rigeur in my wardrobe. With big boobs, "tank top" equals "revealing." Culturally, large breasts are understood to be sexy, sometimes over-sexed. They're seen as relatively low-class. They're often the hallmark of an ethnicity that white people think of as "other," like Latina. Revealing small breasts is artful; revealing large breasts is pornographic. Think about Dolly Parton and Pamela Anderson. Now think about Gwyneth Paltrow and Natalie Portman.
In my quest for body acceptance, I'm trying to come up with some role models I can turn to when I start feeling like I never see myself on the screen. Kat Dennings is totally foxy: she's got an pre-anorexia Angelina thing going on, which I like very much, and her face belongs on billboards. But is she a stick? Nah. She's got curves, man. It's nice to see curves on TV. Just like, when Maw Whitman shows up in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, she's got a shadow of a double chin. Because, you know, she's a human. Doesn't mean she can't kick some serious ass.
Please note that I'm not talking about the carefully curated curves of Jessica Biel or ScarJo: those women, though undoubtedly beautiful, aren't regular humans. Or the "large breasts" of Megan Fox, who, in her newest movie, is the thinnest woman I've ever seen onscreen. Seriously: look at this woman's midsection. Where is it? I recently read an article about why No Doubt didn't put out more music. Between her kids, her fashion line, and her workout routine, she explain, Gwen Stefani just didn't have the time to record new music. The day my workout becomes my actual job is the day that I crawl into bed with a tub of cream cheese icing in order to spend some serious time realigning my priorities. Some exercise is good and it's a great feeling to be fit, active and healthy.
But coming to terms with that shadow of double chin, or absentmindedly rubbing your belly while you wait for the bus, can be a powerful moment. Knowing that other women are out there doing the same thing, even women in an industry that has powerful forces demanding that the chin and the belly shrink away, is reassuring and empowering. I don't know if the Dennings's new sitcom is going to be any good; it's just nice to know that her "normal" body isn't holding her back.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Gevinson Me A Break
It's weird to wake up one morning and realize, at the age of 27, that I'm over the hill. Tavi Gevinson, who came to the public eye as a prepubescent style blogger, has grown boobs and launched a new website. As a result, I'm feeling a bit irrelevant. (Taking it personally is kind of my thing.) She's getting major coverage for her new venture - New York is blowing up over it.
I'm fond of Gevinson in a distant way - she's become an unlikely minor style icon, and while I believe that civilians shouldn't have access to designer clothes until they can vote, she clearly started out with a child's fanaticism for the dress-up box. Now, she's got her mitts on some of the designer clothes she gushed about in her more youthful projects, and she's a bona fide influence. Her aesthetic is often the gauzy look of an Instagram photo crossed with the obsessive love of the girls who make shrines to fictional characters. Her love affair with The Virgin Suicides, and J.D. Salinger books is endemic in teenaged girls across the continent (maybe, you know, I was one of those girls?) and she knows how to pose.
Gevinson's focus is apparently going to incorporate some nostalgia pieces, specifically for the 1990s. This is...what's that word? Dispiriting? Infuriating? Am I old enough to remember years that teenage girls now long for as "a simpler time"? Are Empire Records and Hole albums legitimate cultural touchstones? Woe is me. Full disclosure: when I was in high school, roughly the time Gevinson was born, I was making elaborate collages of 1980s pop culture touchstones, obsessively watching Back to the Future, and listening to the Romy and Michelle soundtrack. In short, I was just as annoying.
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not ready for '90s nostalgia. The frumpy silhouettes alone are going to kill me - dudes, have you seen first-season Dana Scully lately? It's all belted/pleated/pegged in there. Or Friends? God, does this mean high schoolers are going to start getting The Rachel? The hairdos of the '90s, which were sleek to the point of self-parody, did not allow my self-dreading curls to thrive. Grunge, which is the early-90s alternative to the CK One thing, flatters no-one: plaids upon plaids and boxy jackets. I'm going to cry. I know the best vintage-inspired looks update "the look" without returning to the crappy parts, but that doesn't leave a lot left to be inspired by.
Plus, there's a weird part of me that wants the 90s resurgence to just not happen. You know what I wore on my first day of high school, in 1996? Green jeans, a blue sweater and Sketchers with a sole as thick as a dictionary. I'm oddly protective of that particular brand of ugly: the spaghetti strap prom dresses, the platform mary-janes, the Gap. Style cycles have sped up to an insane degree in the last couple decades - the 1930s influenced stylish women in the 1970s, and some dudes in the 1980s updated the '50s greaser look with leather jackets and sneers. But the early 2000s reached for the 1980s, and now, barely into the 2010s, we're looking at mid-1990s for clues on how to live stylishly. In fifteen years, we'll be living in a state of everything being fashionable and no new influences. See you in 2026! Please, let there be a silver jumpsuit waiting in my government-issued pod.
I'm willing to chalk this '90s thing up to the intersection of teenage girls and their elaborately constructed sense of misplaced nostalgia. I did it. A lot of the women I know who got their start as fashion-conscious little weirdos have done it. Gevinson, with an admittedly larger audience and wielding much more influence, is doing it. It can be comforting to think that "before my time" really means simpler or purer, but as the world speeds along and 15-years-olds become culture magnates, what we really pine for is a childhood - innocence of our world, and a chance to play dress-up in adult clothing.
I'm fond of Gevinson in a distant way - she's become an unlikely minor style icon, and while I believe that civilians shouldn't have access to designer clothes until they can vote, she clearly started out with a child's fanaticism for the dress-up box. Now, she's got her mitts on some of the designer clothes she gushed about in her more youthful projects, and she's a bona fide influence. Her aesthetic is often the gauzy look of an Instagram photo crossed with the obsessive love of the girls who make shrines to fictional characters. Her love affair with The Virgin Suicides, and J.D. Salinger books is endemic in teenaged girls across the continent (maybe, you know, I was one of those girls?) and she knows how to pose.
Gevinson's focus is apparently going to incorporate some nostalgia pieces, specifically for the 1990s. This is...what's that word? Dispiriting? Infuriating? Am I old enough to remember years that teenage girls now long for as "a simpler time"? Are Empire Records and Hole albums legitimate cultural touchstones? Woe is me. Full disclosure: when I was in high school, roughly the time Gevinson was born, I was making elaborate collages of 1980s pop culture touchstones, obsessively watching Back to the Future, and listening to the Romy and Michelle soundtrack. In short, I was just as annoying.
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not ready for '90s nostalgia. The frumpy silhouettes alone are going to kill me - dudes, have you seen first-season Dana Scully lately? It's all belted/pleated/pegged in there. Or Friends? God, does this mean high schoolers are going to start getting The Rachel? The hairdos of the '90s, which were sleek to the point of self-parody, did not allow my self-dreading curls to thrive. Grunge, which is the early-90s alternative to the CK One thing, flatters no-one: plaids upon plaids and boxy jackets. I'm going to cry. I know the best vintage-inspired looks update "the look" without returning to the crappy parts, but that doesn't leave a lot left to be inspired by.
Plus, there's a weird part of me that wants the 90s resurgence to just not happen. You know what I wore on my first day of high school, in 1996? Green jeans, a blue sweater and Sketchers with a sole as thick as a dictionary. I'm oddly protective of that particular brand of ugly: the spaghetti strap prom dresses, the platform mary-janes, the Gap. Style cycles have sped up to an insane degree in the last couple decades - the 1930s influenced stylish women in the 1970s, and some dudes in the 1980s updated the '50s greaser look with leather jackets and sneers. But the early 2000s reached for the 1980s, and now, barely into the 2010s, we're looking at mid-1990s for clues on how to live stylishly. In fifteen years, we'll be living in a state of everything being fashionable and no new influences. See you in 2026! Please, let there be a silver jumpsuit waiting in my government-issued pod.
I'm willing to chalk this '90s thing up to the intersection of teenage girls and their elaborately constructed sense of misplaced nostalgia. I did it. A lot of the women I know who got their start as fashion-conscious little weirdos have done it. Gevinson, with an admittedly larger audience and wielding much more influence, is doing it. It can be comforting to think that "before my time" really means simpler or purer, but as the world speeds along and 15-years-olds become culture magnates, what we really pine for is a childhood - innocence of our world, and a chance to play dress-up in adult clothing.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Short Story
I'll admit it: my attention span is not great. I don't blame the internet, even though it's basically designed to amp up my already spazzy brainwaves. A bespoke befrazzling, if you will. (Please don't.) I actually blame the Babysitter's Cub novels I read as a child, because the second and third chapters were always the same - introduce the characters, introduce the club - and I trained myself to skip right over them. It wasn't like, in chapter two, Ann M. Martin was going to drop some serious knowledge on her readers. "Oh, by the way? Kristy? Totally queer. Just so's you all know."
As a result of my lazy childhood reading habits, I am no longer able to make my brain pay attention to large stories. My sister, who is way more of an internet generation than I am, has nonetheless plowed through a bunch of epic stories (Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, that one about the ring, and so on), but I barely got through three Potter books before throwing my hands in the air and muttering darkly about thirteen year olds riding broomsticks. I read the entirety of the Dark Tower series, but that barely counts - you can skip whole paragraphs in a Stephen King novel and still get the gist. NB: if you live anywhere in Maine, you will eventually encounter a) a giant spider, b) a vampire, c) bullying that goes way past "it gets better" into "why don't these kids call the cops, because clearly those bullies are going to straight up kill them."
Anyway, even though I can read long stories, my eyes get tired, my brain gets bored, and I eventually just curl up into the fetal position for the course of a long weekend and doze through entire chapters. I read 60% of Infinite Jest this way. That book contains, as far as I know, a hilarious fake game called Eshcaton based on tennis and world domination, and roughly three billion footnotes. I still recommend it to friends. I love reading in bed, but mostly because I can read, fall asleep, wake up, and keep reading without missing a beat. Books that require concentration and attention to details - like Dune's plot, for instance - tend to glaze me over, because I really do best when things are a big ol' mess. Enter Infinite Jest.
Even on the internet, the urge to wander off is overwhelming. Right now I have 21 different tabs open. I'm job hunting! I'm blogging! I'm on Facebook! (Honestly, I'm always on Facebook.) I'm reading Cracked.com articles about why old people's brains are faster and that makes them cranky! I'm looking at Google maps listing locations of famous movie shots in New York! I'm doing it all! It's basically like a Virginia Sims ad up in here, only instead of a skinny cigarette and a can-do attitude, I'm wearing sweatpants and haven't talked to anyone in hours. Living. The. Dream.
Being internet savvy has definitely messed with our collective ability to focus. We like things short- to medium-length: enough to get our feet wet, not enough to really go swimming. Anything much longer is likely to result us tabbing over and compulsively checking Facebook. But outside the screen, we should be able to focus, right? Well, my dad and I both tend to fall asleep with books draped over our faces, and I get the aforementioned literary narcolepsy on just about any story longer than 100 pages. Ironically, this has created a boon for people who create lots and lots of shorter media: think about the rise of the TV show on DVD, where once can watch 700 minutes of a story broken up into 43-minute chunks. I've received several messages from readers who have compulsively gone through my archives for hours; it's easy to do.
My gratitude for magazines, short stories, and essay collections knows no bounds. I subscribe to Harper's because it always has something to teach me in 3,000 words or less (including the memorable three weeks I convinced myself I becoming psychotic because they had run an article on women in prodromal psychosis and I, like most women, fit some of the symptoms). Dave Eggers, though he makes me howl, does a great job with the 826 Valencia kids and the Best American Non-Required Reading series, and the Best American is generally a great tool to use if you love reading but hate losing the plot. Short story collections are the spine of literary body, and I use them to audition new authors and to try out new subject matter. Anthologies are also great for this.
We're changing the way we read, which happens all the time - Hemingway and Faulkner shooed away purple Victorian prose with their styles, and we now rarely encounter sentences that begin with "O my pains are the cause of my utmost weariness," because that shit is annoying. We love our epics, but now they're being broken up into shorter stories (that Twilight nonsense, for example). And we still read magazines, even though the push is for us to consume them, not at the newsstand, but though our tablets. But we read: in bed, online, in short and long forms. Even if we get up at each chapter break to check our Facebooks, we read.
As a result of my lazy childhood reading habits, I am no longer able to make my brain pay attention to large stories. My sister, who is way more of an internet generation than I am, has nonetheless plowed through a bunch of epic stories (Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, that one about the ring, and so on), but I barely got through three Potter books before throwing my hands in the air and muttering darkly about thirteen year olds riding broomsticks. I read the entirety of the Dark Tower series, but that barely counts - you can skip whole paragraphs in a Stephen King novel and still get the gist. NB: if you live anywhere in Maine, you will eventually encounter a) a giant spider, b) a vampire, c) bullying that goes way past "it gets better" into "why don't these kids call the cops, because clearly those bullies are going to straight up kill them."
Anyway, even though I can read long stories, my eyes get tired, my brain gets bored, and I eventually just curl up into the fetal position for the course of a long weekend and doze through entire chapters. I read 60% of Infinite Jest this way. That book contains, as far as I know, a hilarious fake game called Eshcaton based on tennis and world domination, and roughly three billion footnotes. I still recommend it to friends. I love reading in bed, but mostly because I can read, fall asleep, wake up, and keep reading without missing a beat. Books that require concentration and attention to details - like Dune's plot, for instance - tend to glaze me over, because I really do best when things are a big ol' mess. Enter Infinite Jest.
Even on the internet, the urge to wander off is overwhelming. Right now I have 21 different tabs open. I'm job hunting! I'm blogging! I'm on Facebook! (Honestly, I'm always on Facebook.) I'm reading Cracked.com articles about why old people's brains are faster and that makes them cranky! I'm looking at Google maps listing locations of famous movie shots in New York! I'm doing it all! It's basically like a Virginia Sims ad up in here, only instead of a skinny cigarette and a can-do attitude, I'm wearing sweatpants and haven't talked to anyone in hours. Living. The. Dream.
Being internet savvy has definitely messed with our collective ability to focus. We like things short- to medium-length: enough to get our feet wet, not enough to really go swimming. Anything much longer is likely to result us tabbing over and compulsively checking Facebook. But outside the screen, we should be able to focus, right? Well, my dad and I both tend to fall asleep with books draped over our faces, and I get the aforementioned literary narcolepsy on just about any story longer than 100 pages. Ironically, this has created a boon for people who create lots and lots of shorter media: think about the rise of the TV show on DVD, where once can watch 700 minutes of a story broken up into 43-minute chunks. I've received several messages from readers who have compulsively gone through my archives for hours; it's easy to do.
My gratitude for magazines, short stories, and essay collections knows no bounds. I subscribe to Harper's because it always has something to teach me in 3,000 words or less (including the memorable three weeks I convinced myself I becoming psychotic because they had run an article on women in prodromal psychosis and I, like most women, fit some of the symptoms). Dave Eggers, though he makes me howl, does a great job with the 826 Valencia kids and the Best American Non-Required Reading series, and the Best American is generally a great tool to use if you love reading but hate losing the plot. Short story collections are the spine of literary body, and I use them to audition new authors and to try out new subject matter. Anthologies are also great for this.
We're changing the way we read, which happens all the time - Hemingway and Faulkner shooed away purple Victorian prose with their styles, and we now rarely encounter sentences that begin with "O my pains are the cause of my utmost weariness," because that shit is annoying. We love our epics, but now they're being broken up into shorter stories (that Twilight nonsense, for example). And we still read magazines, even though the push is for us to consume them, not at the newsstand, but though our tablets. But we read: in bed, online, in short and long forms. Even if we get up at each chapter break to check our Facebooks, we read.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
