Generalizations and Hot Girls

Do you remember the friend I told you about, the one that told me that generalizations were indefensible? Wel, he was actually a more-than-friend, that is until I realized he had no sense of reciprocity. So fuck him, let the generalizations begin.

To wit: hotness. Is it important? Not really, at least not in relationships. A guy will treat you the same, no matter what you look like. My proof is a conversation I had with a friend of mine:

B: so I stayed up really late last night…

Me: Hehe, so how hung over are you?

B: No, it’s not that. I had a conversation with a girl yesterday.

Me: Haha, don’t be silly. You don’t know any girls.

B: I haven’t told you about her? She’s worked as an underwear model.

Me: Wow, really?

B: Yeah. She’s hot. Anyway, she gave me the “let’s-be-exclusive” talk last night.

Me: What’d you say?

B: Well, she works sixty hours a week, and she hangs out with her friends a lot, so I only see her for a few hours once a week.

Me: Sounds busy.

B: Yeah, that’s not enough to sustain a relationship. So we had to talk about it. For a looong time.

Me: Did she win?

B: No. She’s too flaky. I’m not saying I’m going to go out and date other people, but I just don’t think she deserves the guarantee.

Me: Ouch. I don’t think you’re wrong, but the language of “deserving” always gets me. If you say “She deserves this,” and “She doesn’t deserve that,” it’s like you’re commenting on her worthiness as a person.

B: Well, I’m not trying to do that. It’s more about my feelings. I like her, a lot, but not enough to do that for her.

Me: But she’s a model!

B: An underwear model, that’s even hotter.

Me: Exactly!

B: That doesn’t make me feel any more serious about her.

If a guy really digs you, he really digs you, doesn’t matter what you look like. A makeover won’t make someone stop treating you like crap. I know this is a pretty elementary observation, but sometimes I guess I miss the most obvious things. Also, some guys don’t know this about themselves. I dated a guy off-and-on for the last two years and we had a lot of rough patches—usually, he would blame this on something I did or some aspect of my appearance. He wasn’t happy with me because my stomach was too fat, and I had hair in awkward places. These comments would inevitably make me cry (I admit it, I’m a crier), and I felt shock. None of the other guys I had ever dated—even the ones that were manipulative in other ways—ever criticized my appearance, but I always had a voice inside my head that whispered such things to me (most women start hearing this voice when they’re eight, when their mothers start telling them to watch their figures). When I heard it come from the mouth of another person, a person that was supposed to love me and accept me as I am, it felt as if were confirmed once and for all. I was unattractive, and my unattractiveness would mean that no one would love me.














Crushing as it was to hear the Ex’s criticisms, I am also a stubborn person, so I never gave in to his demands. I didn’t go on a crash diet, and I didn’t become a compulsive plucker/shaver/waxer. I figured body hair was natural, and having some wasn’t going to kill anyone. Every guy I dated had hairs or birthmarks in weird places, including the Ex ( I just didn’t call him on it because I didn’t think it was a big deal), and I always enjoyed the part of being intimate where we would see each other’s physical quirks and accept them. That’s the whole point, right? If you turn yourself into a model or some kind of specimen, strangers can point and criticize, but if you’re a private person, your flaws are your secrets to share with a privileged few.

Turns out, the Ex would eventually criticize nearly every aspect of my appearance, personality, and beliefs, and after we broke up, he started behaving in ways that were completely antithetical to the way he was before. I realize now that he doesn’t know who he is, or what he wants, and he didn’t have the maturity to realize that, so he fucked with me instead. There is nothing I could have done to make him happy. I could have been a Victoria’s Secret Model, and our relationship would have ended the same way.

Hopefully, the lesson is learned.

Continue reading post...

Ambivalence

A little while ago I saw a movie called Straw Dogs. Dustin Hoffman stars in it as an American mathematician who flees the campus politics of the early 70s to hang out with his wife in an English country house. They're stuck in the bleakest, grayest, most brutal town you can imagine...the American West in Cornwall. The wife, Amy, is from the town, but our "hero," David Sumner, is an American Jewish academic who scoffs at the idea of attending church (he quotes Montesquieu on the subject, to make the priest feel stupid). He also has more money than the English townsfolk, as he employs them to do manual labor around his estate. Also, his wife, the Bra less Wonder, is pretty hot. Needless to say, the guys in town hate David Sumner, and almost immediately they set about harassing him, violating his property, in various ways...

Detailed spoiler....



The plot of this film turns on a seven-minute rape scene that is hard to watch for its violence and the victim's ambivalent behavior. The victim, Amy Sumner, is sexy and youthful, almost disturbingly so...she doesn't look (or act) old enough to be anyone's wife. She reminds me of the twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls I know that have fully-developed bodies but still think like children; for both them and Amy, this sexual precocity brings a sense of vulnerability. Amy is, whether she knows it or not, in danger.




Also, she has boobs:






















I know whenever I have a bunch of Clockwork Orange dudes working on the roof of my cottage, I always undress in front of open windows. One could argue that she is deliberately provocative, but the haphazard way in which she exposes herself to potential attackers suggests to me an ominous naivete, more than anything else.

Amy's attacker is an old flame of hers, but she resists him, and he slaps her around pretty badly. After a while, though, she acts more receptive to his desires, and they end up kissing passionately while having sex. He whispers "I'm sorry." Some less charitable viewers might see this episode as proof that Amy wanted to be attacked, but I interpreted Amy's actions as pragmatic--she doesn't want to have sex with the guy, but if she resists anymore, she'll receive more physical and psychological injuries. So she decides to make the experience not-unpleasant, in order to survive. The fact that she makes this decision mid-act does not negate the fact that the act was a rape, and it does not retroactively change her disposition from resistant to inviting.

Still, her behavior is troubling for the viewer, or at least it is for me. One reason for this reaction could be that a representation of rape in which a female victim expresses an ambivalent response suggests that women enjoy being raped, or that women don't know what they want, which would make consent an irrelevant issue. I don't think that's what's going on--if this scene didn't carry with it a sense of violation, then it wouldn't fit with the general trend of harassment against the Sumners. Instead, this scene plays on your sense of moral outrage, first directed at the rapist, then at the victim. When Amy started acting as if she enjoyed what was happening to her, part of me felt revulsion--how dare she! I admit, there was a part of me that expected her to prove her virtue by kicking and screaming the whole time. Even though part of me felt for her, I also condemned her, and this reaction eradicated once and for any facile notion I might have had about female solidarity.














In any case, the film itself seems uncomfortable with the questions it raises about the victim's state of mind, so it confirms the reality of the rape in the most brutal way possible. As Amy is resting with her rapist-turned-lover, another man arrives, one that she does not know, and he forcibly takes her from behind. This time she resists throughout the ordeal, and two men have to restrain her. This second rape, as awful and tacked-on as it is, suggests that the filmmakers didn't trust the audience to sympathize with Amy.

Other stuff happens in this film, and ultimately it's about a male protagonist finally standing up for himself and defending his property (though in my mind, you could debate the value of his coming into manhood). I found this film interesting because of what it appears to expect of its viewers, and how it dealt with or failed to deal with those expectations.

Continue reading post...

Doldrums

In case you haven't noticed from the lack of updates on this blog, I've been going through a sluggish/downer phase the last few weeks. I won't call it Depression, at least not with a big D, because I've experienced Depression, and it's downright frightening. This is more of boredom/loneliness/apathy combo. At least the weather's nice:


More posts to come soon, promise.

Continue reading post...