Is Elizabeth Wurtzel the Ghost of Lena Dunham Future?

Lena Dunham has a new book out. A collection of essays called Not That Kind of Girl describing her charmingly rocky road to adulthood. It’s a road we’ve been down before, via her first feature film Tiny Furniture her hit HBO show Girls and in the odd New Yorker article. As Alice Jones writes in her review of the book for The Independent: “Her life is her art. Always has been. Everything that happens to her is near instantly processed as fodder for a story.” Lots of people find themselves fascinating. The millennial generation is full of over-privileged naval-gazers with creative aspirations. Not That Kind Of Girl is surely far from the only memoir of its kind. It is, however, the only one that received a $3.7 million advance from Random House.

Part of the magic of Lena Dunham is how she refuses to spare herself. She’s been subject to some vicious critiques – entitled, narcissistic, not pretty enough - but they all fall flat because she’s already incorporated them into her act. On TV, the character she plays is a walking exploration of everything that can and has been said about the actress that plays her. She also lets herself be filmed naked on the toilet. Not even “lets” – insists. It’s her show, she’s the one making these choices. And it works. We are as transfixed by her compulsive honesty as we are by her wit.

If she were a hack, I would dismiss her as a novelty. A by-product of a generation raised on voyeurism and nurtured by (false) assurances that they are uniquely magnificent. But she’s not a hack, she’s talented. Which makes me excited to see where her career will go, and more than a little bit worried as well.

I worry because I don’t know if obsessive self-examination is enough to sustain an entire career. I do think it’s worthwhile. As they say “write what you know” and it’s arguably impossible for a writer to write well about any other subject until she truly understands herself. That said, I think that early success as a memoirist can stunt the growth of a young writer. Case in point: Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Elizabeth Wurtzel published “Prozac Nation” in 1994 when she was 26-years old. The parallels between Wurtzel and Dunham are significant: the New York upbringing, the frankness bordering on exhibitionism, the struggle with mental illness. Both women, in their time, have been crowned the “voice of a generation.” In Wurtzel’s case, it was Generation X.  Her memoir about depression and self-destructive behavior struck a chord with America’s gloomy youth when they were reeling from the suicide of their idol Kurt Cobain. Suddenly she was living every young writer’s dream. By her own account, she celebrated by getting heavily into drugs and sleeping with a different man every night. Which was her prerogative. But the trouble is, she never quite pulled off the same trick again – of cataloguing her own experiences in a way that resonated widely with her peers.

Fran Lebowitz has said that while experience is essential to being a writer, some writers can only write about being young. “Once they’re no longer young, they can’t do it anymore”. Elizabeth Wurtzel made a name for herself writing about what it was like to be “young and depressed in America.” She has stayed true to her self-as-subject ever since, with ever diminishing returns. She has described the indignities of aging, the burden of being conventionally pretty, the thrill of sleeping with married men. In January 2013, New York Magazine published her piece “Elizabeth Wurtzel Confronts her One Night Stand of a Life,” a periphrastic whine/brag about how the writer managed to reach her 40s without accumulating any of the conventional trappings of adulthood. Now, at 47, she has found love at last. The world knows this now, because of her essay in this Sunday’s New York Times entitled “Getting Married Is Easy” where she announces her engagement by describing what a disaster her dating life was for decades before meeting her now-fiance. Wurtzel is still dealing with themes that people can emotionally connect with, but it’s almost irrelevant because she has so thoroughly cordoned herself off from any audience she may still have.

Swimming against the tide of social expectation isn’t easy. It’s understandable that twenty years of it has given Wurtzel a “me against the world” mentality. But I think her writing suffers from it. When she briefly turns her focus towards the people around her, she tends to make sweeping generalizations that don’t always ring true. Observations along the lines of “everyone else is doing this” or “most people feel this way” are seldom substantiated, and it often feels like she’s only interested in the general population insofar as it proves how removed she is from it. A harsh critic of her times, she revels in her status as outcast. Because if society is so debased, then there is a kind of purity in failing to conform, right? “In a world gone wrong, a pure heart is dangerous” she writes with zero irony. The reader is then antagonized by default. You may feel like an outcast, or a failure, or a “difficult personality” but you’re not Elizabeth Wurtzel. Therefore, you can’t relate to what she’s going through. You can only stupidly think that you do.

It’s a shame really, because she’s not a hack either. She’s probably almost as smart as she thinks she is, which is impressive. But she crossed a threshold somewhere. Self-scrutiny is a window into the outside world. But taken too far it can also become a dark, locked room.  

I don’t believe that Wurtzel is the Ghost of Lena Dunham future. For some reason, I see the latter staying grounded and adaptable where her predecessor spiraled off into self-aggrandized oblivion. Why would that be?

An article on the blog The Pessimist called “Ugly: The Problem with Elizabeth Wurtzel” suggests that the memoirist’s career was doomed by her, well, hotness. This may be partly true, but only because she insisted on making such a big damn deal about it. It’s hard to be on board with anyone who waxes poetic about their own beauty. Conversely, Lena Dunham has probably benefitted from the accessibility of her looks. She’s extremely cute, she’s got a rock star boyfriend, and she’s been on the cover of Vogue. But in the Twilight Zone of Hollywood, she does stand out for looking a bit more like the rest of us. Her arrival on the scene was heralded as “refreshing” and “real” which helped fuel her meteoric rise. Will it help her career in the long run, in the same way that being moviestar gorgeous hurt Wurtzel? Maybe. But I think that Dunham’s salvation will be more a matter of intellect than looks.

I was introduced to Dunham (like many people) through Tiny Furniture. That movie was the story of her fictionalized self, but the other characters were fully realized as well. The same applies to her costars on Girls. I think that her talent is strongest in her dialogue, which bodes well. Because writing dialogue forces you to step out of your own perspective and inhabit someone else’s. You don’t have the option of relating to the whole world as a monolithic foe (the way Wurtzel so often does) when you’re writing a screenplay. So the fact that Dunham has such a knack for that particular art form gives me hope that her work will continue to resonate even when she and her cohort are no longer young.   

Rejected Princesses is My New Favorite Tumblr

Sorry, Kittenstache.

Former DreamWorks animator Jason Porath has a new Tumblr dedicated to some of the baddest bitches of all time. He presents the weird, wild, and often horrifying facts (taken directly from history and myth) about these women’s lives, alongside cartoon renderings of them in the familiar Disney style.

I love this idea because it draws attention to two important facts: 1) The stories that Disney tells about women are consistently disappointing, and 2) history is full of amazing stories about women that barely get told at all.

Consider the classic trifecta of Disney princesses: Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White. All three are borrowed from traditional fairy tales, and afforded basically zero personality or autonomy. They’re just pretty, and in a terrible situation because some older woman is jealous of how pretty they are. They yearn to be rescued (see: Snow White’s signature ballad “Some Day My Prince Will Come”) and after some series of events totally outside of their control, their handsome saviors show up and rescue them by turning them into wives. Cringe. Yawn.

Then Disney evolved a little bit, and started giving us heroines with a little moxy: Belle was a bookworm, Ariel was adventurous, Pocahontas was strong-willed, Jasmine was disobedient. All of these women started out feeling restless, eager to discover the world outside of the confines of their sheltered lives. But every damn one of them finds her destiny in some man. Every one of them ventures just far enough to discover her soulmate and then settles back in, satisfied that her love story (and therefore her entire story) has reached its happy ending.

Which is the first reason why Porath’s Tumblr is so awesome. I can’t think of a pop culture trope I am more eager to see turned on its ear.

The second reason is that it reminds readers of some amazing people who should never have been forgotten in the first place. Some of them are admirable, some controversial, some downright sinister. But all of them are complex and powerful, and all of them serve as a reminder that the so-called “fairer sex” is a whole lot more interesting than history has given it credit for.

Reading this Tumblr, I was happy to learn a lot of new names, and to see some familiar ones that I do not see very often. Here are a few personal favorites:

Ida B. Wells: Journalist, activist, and early hero of the civil rights movement, Ida B. Wells is an all-around inspiration. She dedicated (and often risked) her life for the cause of spreading truth as an instrument of social justice. At a time when the horrific practice of lynching was common and widely misunderstood, she wrote about its brutal reality in works like her book Southern Horrors.

Pasiphae: Although she is totally fictional, I loved seeing Pasiphae on there because the story of the Minotaur is my number one favorite story of all time. I just love the characters, including the Minotaur’s mother Pasiphae, who is often omitted when people tell the tale of this famous hybrid monster.

Wu Zeitan: While studying Chinese history in college, I remember reading Wu Zeitan’s story and wondering if she was a full blown psychopath or just a product of her times. She was the only female emperor ever to rule in China. Remember that speech in Macbeth where Lady Macbeth vows that she would kill her own baby if it secured her in a position of power? Yeah, Wu Zeitan actually did that. But it begs the question of whether a woman who was anything short of a cold blooded child killer could have done what she did, given the attitude of the time.

Elisabeth Bathory: History’s most prolific serial killer. With a title as incendiary as that, you’d think she’d be more widely known. Twilight brought pop culture’s love affair with vampires to new extremes. But even that couldn’t raise this “Blood Countess” (whose story served as inspiration for the original Dracula myth) from the coffin of history.

Even though these are some of the most impactful women (and/or intriguing stories) of all time, none of them are household names. Sure, they’re documented, and some people know about them. But if you mentioned any of them at a party it would never get the same reaction as mentioning, say….Benjamin Franklin. Or Napoleon. Or Alexander the Great.

Why is that? Maybe it’s because they’re hard to like. The three dudes mentioned above were all profoundly flawed, but we would never let those flaws overshadow their historical significance. With women, if we can’t root for them every step of the way, we can’t handle them. 

A Disney princess may be sulky or stubborn or mischievous, but beyond that she’s utterly unobjectionable. Just like she always has Barbie-esque proportions to match her perfectly symmetrical face. Mulan is something of an exception to the mold outlined above. But for all her genderbending badassery, her character presents no challenge to the viewer. She is consummately virtuous. She never does anything that might complicate how we feel about her.

Not so with most of the women on Porath’s list.

We’ve all heard Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s charming adage that “well behaved women seldom make history”. This is true, but even badly behaved women struggle to make the cut. A lot of people, when confronted with a difficult woman, will awkwardly avoid her. Historically, we tend to put them off to the side where we don’t have to deal.

That’s why it’s so important to pay tribute to the outliers, who managed to write their names in ink (or blood) in a world that didn’t expect them to make an impact. And if we can do that while making fun of a cultural powerhouse that promotes antiquated gender stereotypes, so much the better! 

What can we learn from the "Fappening"?

Jennifer Lawrence is a victim. All of the women included in the recent mass celebrity nude photo leak are victims, just like someone whose house is robbed is a victim of robbery. Outside of the statements released by various PR and legal teams, that word “victim” hasn’t come up much. Partly because it is sympathetic, and a lot of people decline to sympathize with rich celebrities as a matter of principle. But also because it is exculpatory. Much of the coverage of what the internet has saucily dubbed “the Fappening” has been laced with judgment. Judgment that a bunch of public figures were foolish enough to store their naughty pics online. And more than that, judgment that they took the naughty pics in the first place.  

The iCloud leak should definitely serve as a cautionary tale, but the celebrities’ actions are far from unusual. All over the world, millions of people use the internet every single day. Many do so with a false sense of security, assuming that their passwords and “friends-only” filters are sufficiently protecting their private information from malefactors and thieves. The rest of us, to varying degrees, are gambling. We know that should some hacker somewhere decide to access say, our social security numbers, bank statements, addresses, phone numbers, and any personal photos that may be floating around, they would be able to do so quite easily. We knew the risks involved when we made that information available online. We decided it was worth it, given the remarkable convenience we enjoyed as a result. In much of America, to opt out of such risks is downright eccentric, perhaps even impossible. The moment we fill out the paperwork necessary to open a bank account, or start a new job, it will be archived in an online database and vulnerable to hacks.

This is all to say that anyone criticizing these women on the grounds of technical naivete is probably a damn hypocrite.

Some have made the argument that they should have been more careful, given their celebrity status. To that, I would like to point out how obnoxious it is when a celebrity acknowledges her fame, and how refreshing it is when she carries on as though she were an ordinary schmo. Like when an actress is photographed leaving the gym looking a sweaty mess because she can’t quite believe that a bunch of paparazzi would actually be interested in documenting her workout routine. Furthermore, many of the pictures are several years old, and pre-date big time fame.  

But this isn’t really about hating on someone for not understanding the Cloud. As Jason Segel says in “Sex Tape” (or at least in the trailer for Sex Tape, I didn’t watch that mess) “No one understands the Cloud. It’s a fucking mystery”. This is about punishing famous women for exploring their sexuality and having the gall not to share it with us.

We feel like these actresses transgressed, and as a result we are now entitled to these images whether they want us to see them or not. It’s the same principle as revenge porn. Revenge porn is a serious problem which is being addressed somewhat but not nearly as actively as it should, because of the same biases affecting the victims of the leak. We are still a long way from living in what Dan Savage would call a “sex-positive” society, and as a result, we can’t quite rally around a woman who displays her naked body in that way. We waver on the line, saying “yeah, it was shitty that her ex-boyfriend exposed her like that, but what was she doing taking those pictures in the first place?”

What she was doing was appreciating her body. She was seeing her naked self in the mirror, liking the way it looked, and capturing the moment on film.

A lot of people have taken naked selfies. A lot of people have sent those naked selfies to a significant other using a technology that would make it possible for an obsessive creep to intercept them. And I would wager that a lot of the people who so proudly haven’t might just change their tune if they woke up tomorrow morning looking like Jennifer Lawrence.

These pictures were taken privately, and saved, which means that in a lot of cases they probably had a positive association for these women. They were reminders of a moment of self-esteem, or of feeling sexy and desired by someone they liked. Like all pictures they preserved a memory, in this case a memory characterized by confidence, arousal, fun, and trust. The leak took all of that and turned it into something that they needed to be ashamed of. That’s a fucking bummer.

I think that we can all learn from this incident in the sense that we all learned from the Snowden leaks: information that is saved or shared digitally is never really secure. But there is another important lesson here, and I fear that the puritanical coverage of the event will serve only to obscure it: just because a woman is comfortable with her sexuality does not mean that her sexuality belongs to anyone who wants it. A woman’s sexuality belongs to herself, and whoever she consents to share it with. When these women took these pictures, they did not consent for them to be publicly available. The fact that they took naked pictures in the first place does not count as consent, nor does it deprive them of the right to make that choice. These are simple ideas, which we ignored the moment the pictures became available, because we are a society that still believes that a woman’s body (especially when she has the audacity to appreciate it on her own terms) belongs to us. Let’s all take a moment to reflect on how fucked up that is and try to keep it in mind the next time a bunch of private photos get hacked.

The Dangers of Humor in a Pre-Post-Sexism World

I’d like to propose a new expression. This expression refers to the phenomenon wherein someone makes a joke based on the assumption that we live in a post-sexism world, and ends up pissing everybody off because we do not actually live in a post-sexism world. Such a misstep shall heretofore be called: a Spinning Vergara.

Example: “At the Christmas party, Dan pulled a Spinning Vergara when he attempted to guess Michelle’s bra size. He argued that since he was only kidding and truly respects her as a coworker and an equal, that it wasn’t really sexist.”

I am talking, of course, about the much pilloried skit at this year’s Emmys where Sofia Vergara was displayed on a spinning platform as a sexy adornment to some executive’s speech about how far television has come in terms of gender and racial diversity. It was meant to be ironic; the Television Academy congratulating themselves on their progressiveness while displaying a woman of color like a brainless prize. More than that, it was supposed to be amusing. The public (as embodied by the Twitterverse/blogosphere/mainstream media in that order) was not amused. People were shocked and appalled by what they perceived as a tasteless, sexist, disgusting stunt.

I am constantly mystified by the choices made by the entertainment industry. Rarely do I watch an awards show without asking myself “oh God, what were they thinking?” several times. Strangely enough though, this was not one of those times. I’m not saying it was a great bit. But I can kind of see what they were going for. I can see why they thought it would be funny to jazz up a boring speech with some good-natured T&A. I can see how the repeated instances of the term “platform” in the speech led to the idea of using an actual platform. I can see how they discussed who could sell the bit best, settling on the one woman who had the measurements of Christina Hendricks, the hammy comedic chops of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and was a past Emmy winner to boot. I can totally imagine how they came up with this idea, and I also can see how they hedged their bets and concluded that most people would appreciate the humor. After all, it’s an overt send up of sexism. That’s why it’s not sexist. Right?

                For whatever reason, I feel the need to play devil’s advocate on this one. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because the subtext of the skit (“Hey! Look at Sofia Vergara! She’s hot! It’s funny because she’s hot!”) is also the subtext of pretty much every scene that she’s in on Modern Family. And if there is one thing that the Emmys LOVE it is Modern Family. One way or another, Vergara’s fabulous curves are being exploited to comedic effect. And to celebrate that exploitation in one context while chastising it in another seems a mite hypocritical to me.

                I also genuinely believe that Vergara liked the idea and wanted to do it. She responded to the first round of haters, saying the skit was “the opposite” of sexism, going on to say “it just means that someone can be hot and funny and make fun of herself”. Her defense didn’t seem to change anyone’s mind, which I find kind of surprising. It’s almost like they’re suggesting that Vergara, silly naif that she is, simply failed to recognize that she’s being objectified. This is not giving her anywhere near enough credit. She is the highest paid woman on TV. More importantly, she is a 42 year old, curvaceous Latina owning an industry that is still overwhelmingly biased towards scrawny 22 year old white girls. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s totally in control of her own image. So if she’s doesn’t see a problem with it, why should we?

                I’m not saying the skit was a good idea, because it wasn’t. It grossly misinterpreted the times. It’s like when a joke is considered “too soon” except in this case it’s more like “not yet.” Hopefully there will come a time when the objectification of women of color in entertainment is such a foreign concept that a skit blatantly lampooning the practice doesn’t leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth. But we don’t live in a post-sexism world yet. At best we live in a pre-post sexism world. The goal is in site, and we’re all working towards it, but the reaction to this skit was a powerful reminder that we’re not there yet. In the meantime, many more Spinning Vergaras will occur. And when they do, we need to take them as a chance to reflect, reassess, and communicate with each other.

Feminism is finally in the spotlight - now what?

Feminism is everywhere these days. It’s become such a buzzword that one would think it had only recently appeared in the lexicon, flanked by “selfie” and “YOLO.” But of course, the word dates back to the nineteenth century, and since then many books have been written, university departments have been established, and multiple “waves” have ebbed and flowed. So why does it all of a sudden feel so fresh? So fresh that it stole the show at the trend-obsessed VMAs? 

During her performance of her hit “Flawless” Beyonce (aka Queen Bey) projected the word FEMINIST in towering lights on the screen behind her, while a monologue from author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie played in the background. Beyonce has made it clear that her identity as a Feminist (like her identity as a mother) plays a major role in her uber-brand. She’s not the only one. Taylor Swift and Katy Perry have jumped on the bandwagon, after nimbly avoiding the term for years. Joseph Gordon Levitt recently identified himself as that rare and controversial creature: the male feminist. The rapper Brooke Candy (whose music videos make 2014 Miley Cyrus look like 2008 Miley Cyrus) expressed both support and skepticism about this new trend in an interview with Bust Magazine, stating “I just wish it had happened earlier, and that they weren’t so afraid back then. I guess maybe now they’re not afraid anymore.” 

Candy doesn’t specify what “back then” refers to. But since she is 25 years old it’s likely that she’s referring to the mid-nineties to early 2000s, when millennials were first becoming aware of popular culture. “Back then” there was a sense that overt feminism could be detrimental to a female artist’s career. That it would make her seem too serious, too intense, less fuckable. And by extension, less marketable. 

Feminism “back then” had a very strong presence in the music industry, just not in the most lucrative part of it. That was the heyday of Ani DiFranco and the Lilith Fair crowd. The riot grrrl music scene – thanks to Kathleen Hanna and her contemporaries – was a dominating force in the 90s. As were musicians like Courtney Love, who allowed themselves to be loud and messy and complicated. They were opinionated in their lyrics, confrontational in their stage performances. Being a lust object for teenage boys, as often as it happened, was never the top priority.

But that was the alternative crowd, and the early 2000s were all about TRL dominating pop stars like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Jessica Simpson. Women whose public personas were shaped by record labels, who would never ascribe to any idea system that hadn’t first been market tested and deemed acceptable.  For a female performer hoping to achieve super mega stardom in the mainstream, the term “feminist” was too heavy a load to bear. Fortunately, the industry had a solution, a phrase that was pro-female without all that icky baggage: Girl Power. 

The term “Girl Power” was originated by Bikini Kill, but passed on to the Spice Girls who turned it into Feminism’s bubbly little sister. This cute, non-threatening alternative evoked no thoughts of bra-burning or head-shaving or state-smashing whatsoever. Geri Halliwell (aka Ginger Spice) sometimes elaborated her catchphrase with “Girl power: equality between the sexes.” So really, the two terms meant exactly the same thing. Only one had intellectual, historical, and political implications, and the other could be written in sparkly letters on a tube top sold at Limited Too. The “Girl Power” trend coincided with another trend of decorating tween garments with 60s hippie iconography (flowers and peace signs, etc.) creating a weirdly neutered homage to a revolutionary time gone by. 

So maybe this was the fear that Brooke Candy referred to. This idea that in order to be desirable, bankable, and universally loved, a woman had to sugar coat her demand for equality. Now we’ve got Beyonce announcing herself as a feminist with the same showmanship she used to announce her pregnancy at the 2011 VMAs. No one is sexier than Beyonce, and no one is more of a feminist than Beyonce. There is no better way to broadcast the message that Feminism is sexy now.   

I cringe at the implication that Beyonce is more influential than her radical predecessors, but it’s hard to argue with those numbers. As Roxane Gay (author of the brilliant Bad Feminist) tweeted “What Bey just did for feminism on national television – look, for better or worse, that reach is WAY more than anything we’ve seen.” 

Fact is, militant feminists have been risking their lives and livelihood for the cause for many years, but the idea was never meant to stay on the fringes of society. It was meant to gain traction over time until it became the norm. It’s great that the superstars of today can proudly say that they support gender equality and female empowerment without having to duck behind some floral scented euphemism. 

The challenge now, is to make sure it sticks. The problem with being “of the moment” is the fact that moments pass quickly. Monster trends like metallic lipstick and partially shaved heads tend to sour and turn passe within a matter of months. This was the fate of Girl Power – it ossified as part of a moment in time, without inciting a long term paradigm shift. No name stays in bright lights forever. We need to ensure that once feminism is forced out of the spotlight it can still find a permanent – albeit less glamorous – home in our social consciousness.  

Blake Lively's Preserve.us and the Desperate Quest for Authenticity in the Digital Age

Blake Lively’s lifestyle website Preserve was released last week and the internet - right on cue – ripped it apart. Some amount of giddy opprobrium was to be expected. Even Lively saw it coming, predicting “plenty of people who will say horrible things” in her interview for the August issue of Vogue. But she was referring to the public’s love of ridiculing celebrities. That accounts for part of the abuse, no question. But I’m sure we could have found a way to forgive Lively her stardom and acknowledge that she’d made a good website – if she had made a good website. Unfortunately, she made Preserve.

Where to begin. There’s the writing, which is overthought, overwrought, and under-edited. Most of the copy reads like it came from a thirteen year old (or a beautiful, famous 26 year old) who has never been told to scale it back. There’s also the weird tone deafness of the site’s philanthropic side. It’s good that the company wants to do nice things for those in need, but there’s something uncomfortable about dedicating an entire section (one of only three tabs at the top of the homepage) to the fact that somewhere out there people are starving and they intend to kind of help. A classier move would be to mention in a discreet footer that a percentage of the proceeds were going to a specific charity. Speaking so blithely about human suffering while reminding us that they are a for-profit company (I’m sure we’re supposed to be refreshed by the transparency) is somehow callous and sanctimonious at the same time. The bleeding heart capitalist asking for absolution so that she can sell $40 sea salt with a clear conscience.

But all of that could be overlooked if the site was showing us something new. If it had tapped into some nascent trend, and was ready to introduce us to our future tastes. And if it had been released ten years ago maybe it would have done so. But it came out in 2014, and hipsters everywhere have been doing the whole upscale rustic thing for a good while now. “Artisanal” has replaced “organic” as the fastest way to get cool young folk to pay a premium for something they don’t need. The aesthetic was well enough established in 2012 that Portlandia was able to flawlessly mock it with the sketch “The Dream of the 1890s.”

Preserve aims to introduce the past (as personified by a dude in a bowler hat writing poetry on a typewriter) to the future (e-commerce websites). Thing is, these two worlds have already met. In San Francisco, the heart of the tech boom, pretty much every business catering to the Google Glass set is lousy with hand-carved tables, small batch goods, and vintage light fixtures. And every stand at every flea market has an Instagram account and Twitter handle RTG.

It’s no surprise that the Gossip Girl star’s tastes are not exactly cutting edge. Trends are invented by outsiders, creeping inwards until they can be tamed and mass produced for maximum profit. Now that the stylized nostalgia craze has reached the point in its lifecycle where a Hollywood starlet believes she came up with it herself, perhaps it is time to retire and move on. There are other signs: on August 4^th the New York Times published an article about a recent spike in barn weddings (weddings held – often by rich city folk with a yen for the pastoral – in a barn) and how annoying they are to the actual farmers next door. Articles like this one remind us of what we really are: posers. Posers who crave the authenticity that we associate with the past, while becoming increasingly reliant on modern gadgetry.

Why is this? Perhaps we feel like our attachment to the days of yesteryear when everything was simpler and faintly sepia tinted (right?) is the only thing keeping us from a full-blown sci-fi dystopia. If we don’t keep buying Polaroid cameras on Amazon and decorating our apartments with rusty (sorry, oxidized) 50s Coca Cola advertisements, then we may as well surrender to our robot overlords.

Or not. According to the site’s description, the creators of Preserve “believe that nurturing a better tomorrow upholds the yesterday we cherish”.  Maybe so – but they skipped a day. Is it me or has the present been getting the shaft recently? We’re always either distracting ourselves from immediate reality with our phones, or drooling over how great some other era was (20s, 60s, 90s, pick a decade). Maybe it’s time to pay a little more attention to the here-and-now, instead of waiting for the retroactive rosy glow to set in. Maybe for once we could try knowing what we’ve got before it’s gone.

Or we could drop $20 on a wooden cocktail muddler because Serena Van Der Woodson wrote a free verse poem about it. Either way. 

What #YesAllWomen reminds us about "no"

It’s easy to find men who don’t think of themselves as misogynists. It’s not difficult to find men who will argue that misogyny is all but eradicated in America. You’d be hard pressed, however, to find a female-identified person whose life is not impacted by that thing that doesn’t really exist anymore.

That such a massive discrepancy could happen in the age of communication is why we need the #YesAllWomen campaign. The idea behind #YesAllWomen is that sexism in all its forms (notably the sense of entitlement to women’s bodies and attention) is alive and well and affecting all women everywhere all the time. It is a gesture of support, as well as a wake up call to well-intentioned men who have been complacently patting themselves on the back for not being part of the problem.

It was a wake up call for me, too. Reading through the tweets and articles, I have run into a lot of what I’ll call “Oh yeah, what the fuck?” moments, where something that I’ve come to accept as normal suddenly hits me as the bullshit that it is.

I had a big OYWTF moment while reading Amanda Hess’s article in Slate, “Why It’s So Hard For Men to See Misogyny“. She describes a man who had recently barged in on a conversation she was having with a friend at a party. Taking their politeness as encouragement (as people who barge into conversations often do) he asked for the friend’s phone number. She declined, explaining that she had a husband, even though that was (as Hess later observed) “like the sixth most pressing reason she wouldn’t go out with him”.

This is a strategy that many women – single or spoken for, straight or gay – have employed at one time or another. The old, “I have a boyfriend” maneuver. Why? Because it’s fucking effective. “I’m not interested” tends to inspire follow up questions, or denial, or even anger. But “I have a boyfriend” sends them on their merry way. Because, as Hess says, “aggressive men are more likely to defer to another man’s domain than accept a woman’s autonomous rejection of him.”

There’s no denying that “I have a boyfriend” gets results. But this quick fix deepens the bigger problem. To tell a man that he is trespassing gives credence to the notion of women as property. Furthermore, it contributes to the idea that “no” coming from a woman, is not a red light, but a yellow one. Not “go away,” but “stick around, and maybe I’ll change my mind.”

A woman doesn’t need a reason to not want to date, or sleep with, or even talk to someone. But these reasons are demanded of them, and flat out rejection does not always suffice. On a certain level, I understand why guys would get the impression that a bare “no” is negotiable. We are surrounded by assurances that rejection from a woman is really just a playful invitation to try harder.

First off, there’s the cool guy cred that comes from being able to win a girl over. The more fervently she refuses, the more awesome a guy is for convincing her to go back on her word. It’s a major ego boost. Like when Richard III yells victoriously “Was ever woman in this humor won?” after convincing Lady Anne to marry him shortly after he’s murdered her husband and brother. Or when Pitbull boasts in the 2013 hit 'Timber' “I’m slicker than an oil spill. She says she won’t but I bet she will.” A no from a woman is an opportunity to prove oneself. If you’re really smooth, she’ll come around eventually. 

Of course, it’s not always about proving how worthy a guy is. It’s also about proving how worth it a girl is. There’s the episode of “How I Met Your Mother” when Ted gets a crush on Stella the dermatologist. She says no. He asks the early rejection trifecta: Husband? Boyfriend? Lesbian? And upon receiving three more no’s, he demands to know why she won't at least try going out with him. The rest of the episode then revolves around his efforts to “turn a no into a yes.” He eventually does, through creativity and persistence. Because Ted is a romantic. The kind of guy who will really go the extra mile to score the girl of his dreams.

That’s the guy who won't take no for an answer in romantic movies. He’s not menacing at all. He’s John Cusack holding a boom box. He’s Ryan Gosling in the Notebook, hanging one-handed from a ferris wheel until Rachel McAdams agrees to go out with him. Imagine if men always took “no” at face value. We’d be robbed of some of the greatest movie romances of all time.  

So there’s the “cool guy” reason to reject rejection, and then there’s the “nice guy” reason. This is where it gets murky. Because persistence is romantic in real life just like it is onscreen. And playing hard to get is a real thing. But I do think we should be careful about what kinds of “nice guy” mythologies we build in TV and movies. Some of the most sexist statements I’ve ever heard have come from the mouths of self-proclaimed “nice guys.” You know, nice guys. As in “women are crazy, why don’t they just want a nice guy like me?” kind of guys.

With this in mind, perhaps its time to re-think hard-to-get. Not that we should do away with this old courtship chestnut altogether, just that we should make a clear distinction between “no” and “not yet” so that the authority of the former is not undermined.

Someone inclined to take rejection badly will probably take it even worse if persistence doesn’t pay off. There are two ways to take rejection badly: to internalize it, and allow an isolated incident to diminish one’s entire self worth. Or to externalize it, and direct the negative feeling towards another person. Generally the person doing the rejecting. A certain type of man will lash out at a woman who has spurned his advances. A certain type of that type will do so in a way that is violent or threatening. No, this is not all men. Not even close. But a woman turning a random guy down at a bar has no way of knowing whether he fits into this category or not.  

Which brings us back to why a woman indulges her overly aggressive suitor. Why she answers his questions, laughs at his jokes, and assures him that she’s only turning him down because another man has already claimed her. She’s protecting herself, just in case.

The #YesAllWomen campaign was sparked by the May 23^rd Isla Vista killings. While the terrible crimes of Elliot Rodger demand a discussion of everyday misogyny, I am hesitant to link the issues too closely. Rodger believed that women deserved violent retribution for rejecting him all his life. And although he was a member of society, and influenced by the same cultural mores as everyone else, he was also profoundly disturbed. I do believe that the behaviors glorified by the entertainment industry can sometimes bring out the worst in normal people. But the worst in normal people is not Elliott Rodger. He was a severely sick person, living in a country where mental illness is stigmatized and guns are easy to acquire. To suggest that his actions were the natural end result of popular culture, to scramble for a scapegoat to rationalize a privileged white kid’s brutality, is missing the point.

Washington Post film critic Anne Hornaday wrote a piece in response to the massacre stating that Rodger’s mindset was “influenced, if not created, by the entertainment industry”. The article, which specifically called out filmmaker Judd Apatow, received a lot of well-deserved criticism. First of all, I personally think that Apatow should be commended for bringing nuanced female characters to the cro-magnon stoner comedy genre. And I don’t even know if Rodger was a fan of those movies. But even if the movies were sexist, and if Rodger was obsessed with them, artists cannot be held responsible for how psychotics interpret their work.

While she should not have carried it into the mind of a murderer, I agree with Hornaday’s observation that movies “powerfully condition what we desire”. We’re surrounded by media. Of course it’s influencing us. It can do so most effectively when we don’t even notice it happening. For example: if a TV character uses the words “woman” and “kitchen” in the same sentence, our sexism alarm goes off, but a male character undermining a woman’s decision to reject him might go unnoticed.

#YesAllWomen puts our warped culture of “no” in the spotlight. Hopefully, it will inspire more “oh yeah what the fuck” moments in daily life. And when they occur, we can all (men and women) make the decision to acknowledge them, and speak up.

The one character Mad Men can do without

Mad Men, now at the middle of the beginning of its end , has encountered a personnel problem. It has too many characters to keep track of. Most of the above the line players from season one are still around. But they’ve been supplemented with so many spouses, rivals, and new hires that the stories we’ve followed from the beginning often have to take a back seat.

The show has looked closer at once-minor figures like Margaret Sterling, and fleshed out more recently introduced ones like Dawn Chambers. In episode 3, the appearance of Betty’s old gossip buddy Francine was a signal that any lost character is liable to reemerge as a sign of the times (if Matthew Weiner is taking requests, I’d love to see a vindicated Dr. Faye Miller, or an out-and-proud Sal Romano). Back at the office, things are going well for Peggy and Joan (professionally, at least) but they are so lost amidst the window dressing of catty secretaries, smirking creative and irascible executives that it feels like we’re not getting the whole story. Things have gotten so crowded in New York that Mad Men has had to relocate some of its principal characters to the West Coast. Pete, Megan, and Ted languish in sunshine, now painfully aware that what may have seemed like an opportunity was actually an exile.

I don’t mind the size of Mad Men’s cast. I like that its world has expanded and I am genuinely interested to see what happens/happened to all of these well-written folks. In fact, there’s not a single character I’d be happy to see go.

Oh wait, yes there is.

At the end of season 6, SC&P sent Don Draper on a mandatory paid leave. He was supposed to take it as an opportunity to walk out with dignity, face his demons, and seek employment elsewhere. And yet by episode three they had taken him back, albeit with some ground rules. Sterling invited him back in an impulsive, memo-less way, and the partners capitulated for mostly financial reasons. But it wasn’t all numbers. There was perhaps a sense that while SC&P had been chugging along smoothly in his absence, some of the magic was gone. I assume the viewer is supposed to feel the same way about Don Draper. That despite his many faults, Mad Men isn’t Mad enough without him. That’s what they’re selling me, but I’m just not buying it anymore. I think it’s time for the man in the foreground of the opening credits to finally stub out his cigarette, get off the couch, and stop obstructing the view.

Don Draper has been a great lead. And Jon Hamm is doing his best acting yet in showing what a sad bastard his character has become. It’s just that the show has gone in a new direction, and I don’t see why he has to go with it. It’s not personal, it’s Darwinian. Don has failed to adapt. In Season 1, his biggest problem was that he was not really Don Draper. Now, he is too much Don Draper. He has fossilized into the persona he created for himself.

We should have seen this coming. As his favorite drink reminds us, he’s always been old fashioned. He’s dismissive of young people’s ideas. His second marriage began to crumble when he realized that Megan was not content to be the subservient, stay-at-home wife that Betty was. His drinking and smoking is viewed as a sign of weakness in a somewhat more health-conscious society. And he’s terribly nostalgic. In season 1, when Paul Kinsey pitches him a campaign featuring an astronaut, he rejects it, suggesting he try a cowboy instead. In Season 3, Conrad Hilton asks for the moon, and Don gives him a hamburger. Now it’s 1969, there’s about to be a man on the moon, and Don is not ready for what the world has already become.

I’m not saying that Don needs to be killed off, as many have predicted he will be. Just redistributed. He’s the new Duck Phillips. A once-promising alpha male with a badly tarnished reputation that some bargain-hunting rival agency will happily scoop up. Let him go out with a whimper, it’s all he can muster at this point.

I guess these are harsh words for such an iconic leading man. And as Don plods towards a comeback in his signature two steps forward and one step back style, he’s clearly not going anywhere. Nevertheless, the show stands on its own without him, which is unusual. There’s a reason why Walter White’s death – foretold in the pilot of Breaking Bad – did not come to fruition until the final moments of the series finale. Because no matter how despicable Walter became, he was still the show’s center of gravity. Everything going on around him was still going on around him. Don Draper, as the credit sequence suggests, has fallen, and is now just a casual observer.

Part of the reason for this difference is that Walter White was never replaced. Jesse Pinkman was always a foil as much as a protegee (he lacked Walter’s self-control, where Walter lacked his morality). But Don really has been replaced. And I’m not talking about Lou. Peggy – excelling at work, unhappy at home – is the new face of the ad man’s dilemma. The fact that she is not a man at all is the most powerful indication we have that the Madison Avenue this show introduced us to is no more.

I want a more complete picture of the industry’s new terrain, with Peggy Olson up front and center as its lonesome pioneer. The agency is modernizing and diversifying. America is entering a new decade and a new way of life. That – not the meandering redemption of Don Draper – is the real story now. 

The Conscious Uncoupling Effect

Gwyneth Paltrow is divorcing her husband of ten years. The movie star-turned-lifestyle guru, who speaks in her own patrician new-age dialect, referred to the separation as “conscious uncoupling.” This makes sense - not the phrase so much, but the decision to use it - as Paltrow is not only a woman but also a brand. A walking advertisement for everything that ordinary women need to perfect their lives, much of which can be purchased on her website, Goop.com.

“Divorce” is an ugly word that invokes all kinds of unpleasantness: family upheaval, emotional turmoil, and of course, stress (a known cause of clogged pores and constipation.) Paltrow knows better than to introduce the toxins of divorce into the immaculate digestive system of Goop. So she opted for an organic, cruelty-free alternative in Conscious Uncoupling. 

The term makes an easy target of Paltrow, who has been called pretentious, out-of-touch, and on one inflammatory magazine cover, “The Most Hated Woman in Hollywood.” Gwyneth-haters, basking in the best schadenfreude they’d had since Martha Stewart went to prison, wasted no time lambasting it on the internet. Still, Conscious Uncoupling (originally coined by psychologist Katherine Woodward Thomas) has potential. Maybe, the goop-ified rebranding of divorce indicates a long-overdue sea change in how the marketing world relates to life after marriage.

In spite of the humble name, Goop is aimed at the tastes and budgets of the elite. This target audience is evident not only in the items for sale (monogrammed napkins for $240, a striped t-shirt for $300) but in the site’s holistic approach to self-improvement. Today’s rich are not content to merely buy things. They want their possessions to reflect a healthy body, a sharp mind, a curated life. There is a common thread between every page of the site, tacitly insisting that your new core-strengthening exercise routine won’t work unless you’re wearing the “Beyond Yoga” Lattice Trim Cami ($99). While you’re at it, try a new recipe (like Persimmon Pudding, or Balsamic Miso Root Salad), and reassess the way you cope with grief. One cannot be truly successful unless they are in peak form physically, spiritually, intellectually, and materially. Of course, such artisanal self-cultivation is out of most people’s reach. Most women can’t afford to wear designer clothes, or cook with only the most esoteric, ethically magnificent ingredients. Most working mothers (as Paltrow has often referred to herself) do not have time to keep their bodies model-thin or read a book a week.

But Goop readers (or at least the ones who take regular advantage of the “BUY NOW” thumbnails appended to much of the upscale merchandise) are already more moneyed, cultured, and sophisticated than the average woman could hope to become. The driving force that keeps this top-tier cohort returning to Goop for guidance and inspiration is the understanding that no matter how fabulous they are, they will never be as fabulous as the demigoddess at the helm. Gwyneth Paltrow is the ever-ascending carrot for which all the readers must strive. The perfect woman. Now the perfect woman is a divorced woman.

It is important for the business that being divorced not detract from her perfection. With this in mind, the site’s “Conscious Uncoupling” post followed up the standard celebrity divorce announcement (great sadness, kids come first, etc.) with an essay by Dr. Habib Sadeghi and Dr. Sherry Sami explaining that the entire concept of marriage has changed. The essay argues that due to the increased human lifespan, people should no longer be expected to stay together forever, and we should all start relating to divorce as a positive transformation.

In a way, this is probably just a public figure covering her own Tracy Anderson-sculpted ass. But the doctors do have a point. Their essay covers a lot of ground – incorporating the Paleolithic period, a “Russian esotericist”, and a lengthy explanation of the difference between exoskeletons and endoskeletons – but nowhere does it suggest we do away with the practice of marriage altogether. So assuming the multi-billion dollar wedding industry can survive without the “til death” part, maybe it’s time to get real about the 50% success rate. For couples, that means trading in “we’re never going to break up!” for “if we did break up, we would do so in a healthy, respectful way.” For the marketing world, that means acknowledging that divorced people exist.

On the “About” page, Goop describes itself as an “e-commerce company” first and an “eminent lifestyle publication” second. If the “Conscious Uncoupling” announcement proves profitable for the business side, than it is likely the idea will trickle down to less eminent lifestyle publications, and influence the world of commerce as a whole. A world that still relates to marriage and motherhood as the be-all-end-all in a woman’s life. If you’re selling something to women, chances are your advertisement will feature a sexy young singleton, or a middle-aged mom (typically played by a sexy singleton in khakis and a more conservative haircut). The assumption is that no one wants to buy a product enjoyed by an older divorcee, because older divorcees are downers. How could a woman who found and lost the Holy Grail be anything but a bitter recluse?

This is nonsense, of course. But maybe, after centuries of being considered a crime and/or sin, it’s impossible to scrub all the grime off the word “divorce.” That’s where “Conscious Uncoupling” comes in. It’s clean, it has no baggage, and Gwyneth Paltrow is doing it. And according to Dr. Sadhegi and Dr. Sami, it is the natural fate of most American marriages today. All the more reason for companies to take notice. 

Advertisements capitalize on peoples’ covetous insecurities by taunting them with an unreachable ideal. This is unfortunate, but it’s still refreshing to see a greater diversity of communities pandered to in this manner. Given the astounding number of happily uncoupled people out there, it would be nice to see the lifestyle celebrated by mainstream material culture. So in that respect, Paltrow’s supercilious rebranding of divorce was a supercilious step in the right direction. 

The Dubious Legacy of Carrie Bradshaw

It’s been ten years since the final episode of “Sex and the City” aired. The dramatic finale left audiences swooning and hungry for more. Hungry people make bad decisions, and their cries were answered by the bad Sex and the City movie, the worse Sex and the City 2, and the pointless Carrie Diaries. But even without these gaudy misfires, the show has retained a place in the public imagination. In female ensembles real and fictional, fans continue to designate the Carries, the Samanthas, the Mirandas, and the Charlottes.

                The show has also been praised as a feminist triumph. And at the risk of sounding like a total Miranda, I feel a little cynical about that. I do think that SATC gives us three credible examples of modern womanhood. Lady lothario Samantha who owns her own PR firm, sardonic lawyer Miranda, and even the Pollyanna gallerist Charlotte, who racks up an impressive number of conquests on her quest for traditional marital bliss.

But SATC does not belong to any of those three. It belongs to Carrie Bradshaw. And Carrie is a whole other story. Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte exist in a gilded sliver of Manhattan accessible only to the super-privileged, but at least they live in Manhattan. Carrie exists in a rent controlled fantasy land. That’s fortunate, because in the real world she’d have a lot to answer for. 

                Carrie Bradshaw is a bad person. She just is. It’s not a criticism of the show’s entertainment value. Nor is it a criticism of the actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who portrays her. If anything, Parker should be commended for somehow making a manipulative, irresponsible narcissist one of the most beloved TV characters of all time.

                Carrie, like the cast of Friends, is a beneficiary of television’s wild misconceptions about who can and cannot afford a spacious apartment in Manhattan. But even with the plot point that her building is rent controlled, there is no accounting for her insanely expensive tastes. She is a writer of a weekly sex column that runs in the back pages of a second rate local newspaper. This column funds a dazzling whirlwind of shopping sprees at Prada and Chanel, trendy restaurants, club nights, and spa days. But Carrie has plenty of time to indulge in all these opulent activities, because the column is her only project. (That is, until she takes a gig at Vogue, in an episode where an editor played by Candice Bergen is vilified for daring to give Carrie - gasp! - edits.) Every purchase of a new pair of Manolo Blahniks comes with an offhanded chirp about how she can’t really afford them. In the real world, such outrageous spending habits are a sign of mental illness. In Carrie’s world, they’re a quirk.

                I know, I know. It’s escapist. It’s fun. It’s not supposed to be realistic. But the problem is that Carrie’s material entitlement spills over into her personal life. She is that friend who always finds a way to steer the conversation back to her own issues. She demands that her friends be available to her at all times, but does not necessarily return the favor. She cheats on the most saintly man of all time (I mean, he’s a carpenter for Christ’s sake) with a married ex. When men eventually balk at her needy, manipulative ways, she concludes that it’s because she is too “wild” or too “complicated” or some other romantic excuse for bad behavior.

Take, for example, the episode in Season 4, “Ring a Ding Ding”.  St. Aidan finally reads the writing on the wall and leaves her. Trouble is, he recently bought her apartment for the two of them to live in together. Now she either has to cough up the cash to buy it back, or she’s out on her ass (which, like the rest of her, is miniscule even though she never works out and spends half her life at brunch). Her prince (Mr. Big) and her ladies in waiting (Samantha and Miranda) offer to give her the money outright. Charlotte wisely resists. Carrie later confronts Charlotte for not offering, and essentially bullies her into handing over her old engagement ring for Carrie to hawk for the down payment.

Both the problem and the solution may seem reprehensible, but if no one had bailed her out, it would violate the fundamental rule of SATC: don’t let anything seriously bad happen to Carrie. The other characters deal with divorce, single motherhood, STD scares, and a miscarriage. They also seem legitimately stressed out by their jobs from time to time. Carrie chain smokes her way through the first four seasons, but in the end it is Samantha who is diagnosed with cancer.

Fast forward to the final episode, in which Carrie drops her entire life to live with her new boyfriend in Paris. The Paris thing doesn’t work out, because it’s raining and the boyfriend isn’t paying enough attention to her. Fortunately, Mr. Big steps in and rescues her. The story of Carrie’s fairy tale life ends in classic fairy tale fashion. I feel about as empowered by the end of SATC as I do by the end of Sleeping Beauty (or perhaps Cinderella, given the shoe fixation).

                The negative influence of Carrie Bradshaw is bolstered by her likeability, as well as the lack of comeuppance. SATC gave us a heroine who treats people poorly, who makes consistently bad choices and relies on men to solve her problems. That would be fine, except that it doesn’t give us any reason to not want to emulate her. Why not be just like Carrie? Carrie is darling, and it all works out in the end.

                So here we are, ten years later. SATC’s teen fans are now young professional women (and young professional gay men). What has become of the adolescent idolaters who entered adulthood convinced they could learn something from this woman? Something like, it is OK to max out your credit cards because looking fabulous is more important than the independence that comes with long-term financial stability. It is OK to sleep with a married man because the love between you and him is more sacred than the love between him and his wife. And countless other misguided tidbits that all add up to the conclusion: if you live like Carrie Bradshaw, you’re doing modern woman wrong.

Modern womanhood is about choice, and that comes at a price. Having the freedom to control your own life means grappling with a whole new set of burdens, dilemmas, and possible regrets. Is it worth it? Absolutely. But what is gained when we pretend that the price doesn’t exist? Carrie doesn’t have to answer to the burden of choice any more than she has to answer to all those calories, cigarettes, Manolos, and lies. A woman who works hard, who makes mistakes, who fights back  and takes responsibility for her actions, and is stronger for it – that is a real modern woman well worth looking up to.

In Praise of Pink

I was never a huge fan of Pink.

I had nothing against the public persona of Alecia Moore, or the music she produced. But she was never my favorite. Her first single “There You Go” came out in 2000. It was sassy and catchy, but its popularity caused it to fade into background noise. It became a song that I only half-heard playing on the radio, or faintly emanating from speakers at the mall. Meanwhile, I was eleven years old. Anyone who has ever been or parented an adolescent girl understands the precipice I was on better than I did at the time.

                The following year brought the album Missundaztood. The lead single “Get this party started” was such a staple of middle school dances that to this day it inspires a self-conscious Pavlovian sweat. Songs like “Don’t Let me Get Me” spoke to the oddballs and misfits, and while I considered myself one of their number, I didn’t pay much attention. By high school my friends were getting into more obscure “indie” music, and I struggled to keep up. Oddball allegiance aside, Pink was decidedly mainstream. I filed her away with all of the other top-40 sellouts.

                As my adolescent angst darkened into depression, Pink was not among the female singer-songwriters I turned to for guidance. I felt that my experience was better vocalized by the likes of Cat Power, Joanna Newsom, and Amanda Palmer. The appeal of these gifted, quirky songstresses was enhanced by their lack of mainstream success. How could someone whose face was everywhere, who dominated the airwaves and made millions, understand the alienation of an anonymous high school girl? And even if I did find myself liking her music, I could hardly respond to a friend’s monologue about her vinyl collection with “hey, what do you think of that new Pink song?”

                By my twenties I was enjoying pop music again, or had become comfortable enough with myself to admit that I’d enjoyed it all along. In the meantime, a whole generation of luminaries had cycled through. Wide eyed hopefuls had been afforded their moment in the sun, a half dozen American Idol winners had fizzled out, and a few former goddesses had fallen from grace. Pink, however, was still going strong. She’d been steadily producing the entire time. She was still making it fun to say “no” (“U + Ur Hand is the kind of brazen candor we still need more of in pop music), and encouraging the weirdos of the world to unite and party. But she’d also dealt with a lot of heavier material like family dysfunction, substance abuse, sexuality, and body image.

                Then, somewhere along the line, Pink started incorporating aerial acrobatics into her performances. Most marathon pop stars rely on other people’s talent to keep their live shows feeling fresh. They wear increasingly elaborate costumes, and perform the same basic dance routines against a rotating backdrop of sets. All around them, a younger and more talented cohort of backup dancers deliver the really demanding moves. But Pink went another route, committing to a whole new art form that requires intense training and athleticism. I first saw her skill at the 2010 Grammy Asards. But I didn’t really take notice until the 2014 Grammy when she delivered her single “Try” in similar death-defying form.

                I liked the song “Try” so I looked up the video. It features a seriously ripped Pink sparring with a seriously ripped male counterpart. The two engage in gorgeously aggressive dance-fighting – as sexy as it is stylized. Pink is a perfect match for her partner. When he throws her down, we know that she will bounce back up and retaliate. The choreography represents a turbulent romance – but not an abusive or domineering one. Whatever they do to each other, they do as equals.  

                             To me, this video acknowledges the complexity of hetero-love without edging the woman into the role of powerless victim or cold-blooded she-devil. Pink herself was in peak physical condition. But she didn’t look like she was keeping it tight to retain a man’s attention, or fit into her size-2 skinny jeans. She looked like she was pushing herself to be strong, so that she could endure and thrive. I asked myself when Pink became so cool. Which led me to look back over last fourteen years of her career and realize (like the dumbfounded detective at the end of the crime-thriller) that the answer had been right under my nose the whole time: Pink has always been so cool.

                             Let’s revisit the year 2000 for a moment. Her first album was defiantly called “Can’t Take me Home.” This was a year when the Britneys and Christinas of the world were exploiting their barely-legal allure with coy references to their own burgeoning, untapped sexuality. Female pop songs were invitations. Then Pink hit the Billboard charts with an unequivocal “NO.” As her contemporaries perfected the seduction of girlish indecision, Pink dealt in absolutes. In doing so, she told young women: It’s OK to want what you want. And it’s OK to not want what you don’t want.

                             Over the next fourteen years, she’s come out with a total of 6 albums. The most recent, “The Truth About Love” is aptly titled. Throughout my recent personal Pink retrospective, I’ve been struck by how honest this woman is. She’s truthful about love. And she’s truthful about herself, remaining confident even when facing her demons head on. She speaks her mind. She respects, but is still able to laugh at herself. She is proudly flawed and fearless. I’m glad she has a daughter.

                             Meanwhile, I have faced down my own demons. I have learned that becoming a woman is hard, but that being a woman is worth it. And for the most part, I think that eleven year old girls today have a better selection of mainstream female singers to look up to. The teasing, the pouting, the breathy ballads of devotion have been widely replaced by full-bodied declarations of powerful, libidinous womanhood. I believe that Pink is partly responsible for this positive shift. I also suspect that my own formative years benefitted subliminally from her songs playing in the background. I don’t know how much she’s helped. But it’s gotten better, and she’s been there the whole time. So I want to say: thank you, Pink. Rock on.

I don't care what anybody says, Obama's "Between Two Ferns" appearance was great.

 

This week, President Barack Obama sat down with Zach Galifianakis on the comedian’s offbeat faux-talk show “Between Two Ferns”. His purpose was to plug the Affordable Care Act. Specifically to debunk the notion that healthcare.gov is still malfunctioning, and to encourage jaded young Americans (aka Galifianakis’s fan base) to sign up for coverage before the March 31^st deadline. As an Obama supporter who is not blind to his shortcomings, I thought it was excellent. I thought that agreeing to appear on the show was a savvy choice, and that the idea was well executed and entertaining.

                Still, it was a bold move. And all bold moves have a backlash. The bobbleheads at Fox News were predictably apoplectic, and many others criticized the president for either diminishing the dignity of the office, or simply falling flat. I will now summarize every dissenting argument that I have come across and dispute them one by one: 

1)      With all the shit going on overseas right now, why does Obama have time to appear on a fake talk show?

Shit is never not going on overseas. There is always going to be a crisis abroad. And while the current crisis in Ukraine is severe, it is not Obama’s fight. As much as the right frets about other countries thinking our president is a pansy, it doesn’t make sense for him to neglect his domestic responsibilities in order to go head to head with Putin full-time. Getting people to use healthcare.gov is one of his most important domestic responsibilities.

2)      It is trivializing to discuss health care on a comedy show.

It lightens, but does not trivialize. There is nothing wrong with lightening the issue of insurance, so long as it gets people to sign up. Insurance (like taxes) is important, but boring. A little humor helps to draw people in. And levity gets results, just ask the marketing department at any major home or auto insurance company, who are all in competition for who can have the wackiest ad campaign.

3)      Obama is embarrassing himself by trying to appeal to hipster Millennials.

I prefer to think of it as not giving up on them. Hipster Millennials are a strange bunch. They obsess over of-the-moment memes, while neglecting the news. They spend hundreds of dollars a week on liquor and lattes, but dismiss basic health coverage as a needless expense. By infiltrating their snarky websites and mimicking their sardonic humor, Obama is saying “Hey, weirdos. I understand you better than you think I do. Believe me when I say you need health insurance.”

Conservative pundits (most of whom misinterpret the tenor of Galifianakis’s humor) are trying to paint this as a desperate bid for the approval of an age bracket that he will never understand. If they’re so skeptical of Obama’s ability to appeal to youths, perhaps they should consult Mitt Romney. Too soon? OK fine - perhaps they should consult John McCain.

4)      It would have been more appropriate for another member of Obama’s team to do this.

Sure, Joe Biden could have done it. Or Jay Carney. Or Kathleen Sebelius. But the result would have flatlined, and likely been the end of “Between Two Ferns.” Without the novelty of the Commander in Chief himself riffing with Zach Galifianakis, then the whole segment really does become a lame, out-of-touch plug for healthcare.gov.

5)      This offends the dignity of the office.

Oh please. It’s not like he made a sex tape. He appeared on a comedy show, threw some mild shade at the Hangover franchise, and then delivered a straightforward pitch for healthcare.gov. Comedy and politics have been awkwardly linked for a very long time. Just look at Nixon’s Laugh-In appearance (the liberal counterexample of choice this week) or the cheery rapport between politicians and the people who impersonate them on SNL. And if it was undignified for Obama to school Galifianakis in a scripted skit, I suppose that Rick Santorum was just doing God’s work when he allowed himself to be openly mocked by Stephen Colbert on his comedy show. Politics is about winning people over, and a great way to do that is by making them laugh, and demonstrating your ability to laugh at yourself.

But if you really want to argue that there is a rigid, eternal standard for what POTUS can and cannot do, keep in mind that some of the earliest presidents owned slaves. Acceptable presidential behavior changes with the times. And it’s changing in the right direction.

6)      There’s nothing wrong with what Obama did, he just did it badly.

I guess this is a matter of opinion, but I definitely disagree. The tone of “Between Two Ferns” is tricky. It is reminiscent of Sacha Baron Cohen’s former project “Da Ali G Show.” But while Cohen made unsuspecting fools of his interviewees, Galifianakis invites them in on the joke. Guests are meant to mimic his awkward, prickly defensiveness. Some can pull it off better than others. I think the president – with the additional challenge of balancing satire and sincerity - was pitch perfect.

7)      Lincoln would not have done it.

-          Oh, Bill O’Reilly. An absurd, unprovable speculation is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a “no comment” from you. So…we’ll take it.