Over Thanksgiving weekend, I was talking with my brother, and we were bemoaning something I’ve bemoaned with other men on many occasions: the bloody impossibility of convincing the women we love that they’re beautiful.
Those with a woman that they love know how it is: she’ll get it into her head that her weight or her hair or her skin or something is flawed and unacceptable, and she’ll be down on herself, unhappy and self-hating and trying one regimen or another to fix herself. And meanwhile we just stand there, startled and embarrassed, loving her no less than we did before she seized on this flaw, no less attracted to her, and unable to persuade her of that. You can say that you don’t see a difference, that it wouldn’t matter even if you could, even if she were disfigured, that what you love about her isn’t what’s on the surface anyway, and nothing you say will matter. The Beauty Myth she was programmed with as a girl has its teeth in her, and she’s convinced that if she’s not pretty enough, she’s worthless as a human being.
Right now, a lot of the guys and a certain percentage of the women reading this are nodding their heads ruefully. Y’all know what I’m talking about.
The even more fucked-up part is the converse: the Success Myth that men only have value insofar as we are successful in terms of money and power and competition. And guys, I don’t know about y’all, but that bullshit has its teeth in me DEEP. Over and over the women I love tell me that they don’t really give a damn how much I make, that what matters is who I am as a person, and all my other less tangible qualities. And what do I do? I do the same damn thing: I ignore them, I make up reasons why they’re just being polite or don’t really mean it, and I go on beating myself up for being worthless.
Right now, most of the women who weren’t nodding ruefully two paragraphs ago are nodding ruefully.
Ozy’s Law acknowledges that not all cases of linked misandry and misogyny will be perfectly symmetrical, but damn, in this case misandry and misogyny are doing this shit. (I think Groucho is the Success Myth and Harpo is the Beauty Myth, but read it how you like.)
Now, those who get off on defending the status quo or blaming women for things will leap to point out various examples of women expressing a preference for successful guys, and sure, that’s fine. It is also only useful or interesting if you can prove two other things: 1. There are no equivalent pop-cultural examples of men only being into women fitting a conventional “pretty” model, and finding anyone outside that model disgusting. (Hint: You will lose.) 2. Plain women and poor men don’t find love despite being proverbially unlovable. (Good fucking luck proving that one.)
I think there is another evil factor at work here, though: our old friend the subject/object distinction. Men are supposed to love, not to be objects of love. This is a deeply-encoded assumption, one that’s almost never spoken out loud. It’s just built into every goddamn love story we tell. Stack up how many narratives you’ve heard in your life wherein a man must prove that he really loves a woman vs. how many where a woman must prove that she really loves a man. Coming into focus now, isn’t it?
A woman’s job, we all vaguely assume, is to be loved, to attract and receive love. A man’s job is to do the loving, to be the actor, the one who gives love TO the woman. I think when this myth was being made up, someone misspelled “penis” as “love”, don’t you?
Thing is, once again it just ain’t so. Straight and bi women, by and large, love men. They fall in love and go all goofy and blather to their friends about how great he is, and even after years together and fights and troubles, they look over at him and think Well, damn. At least I got that going for me.
Then, of course, they think If only I wasn’t so fat and gross-looking and we start back at the top.
About Noah Brand
@Daisy Deadhead:
And about societal expectations, he is making a feminist point (booyah debaser! come and git me!) about childbearing. I often wish I’d had more babies, not because I wanted the extra work ((screams for emphasis)), but because of the way the world is age-segregated: young people and old people are not often friends, and our relationship to the next generation usually comes through our children or surrogate children. It would be nice to have more of these now.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but surely there are other ways to tackle the young-old divide other than establishing more parental roles? Speaking from my own experience, when I was teenager I was capable of hanging out with people my own age and felt as comfortable hanging out with people who were a couple of decades older than me. Not that I want to detract from your wish that you’d had more kids, but perhaps relations could be improved by not just “merely” repeating more of the typical family dynamic that exists between young and old.
Hope I’m making sense!
Arses, how does one quote things on this site? I’ll try again, mods feel free to delete my previous comment….
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@Daisy Deadhead:
“And about societal expectations, he is making a feminist point (booyah debaser! come and git me!) about childbearing. I often wish I’d had more babies, not because I wanted the extra work ((screams for emphasis)), but because of the way the world is age-segregated: young people and old people are not often friends, and our relationship to the next generation usually comes through our children or surrogate children. It would be nice to have more of these now.”
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but surely there are other ways to tackle the young-old divide other than establishing more parental roles? Speaking from my own experience, when I was teenager I was capable of hanging out with people my own age and felt as comfortable hanging out with people who were a couple of decades older than me. Not that I want to detract from your wish that you’d had more kids, but perhaps relations could be improved by not just “merely” repeating more of the typical family dynamic that exists between young and old.
Hope I’m making sense!
It’s also important to note that even successful women themselves, their parents, their friends, still view her success as “deserving” of an equally successful man. Not a very friendly environment for Average Joe to have a loving relationship in.
Yes, and this is absolutely horrible, one of the things I most hope will change for my generation. I had two serious boyfriends who worked in technical trades, while I was finishing my Bachelor’s degree in a more “serious” profession and clearly gunning for my Master’s degree as well.
Both relationships imploded at least partly to some toxic success myth, “provider role” thing – the first guy simply refused to to take my focus on education and my profession seriously at all and belittled my work all the time, while the second one remained convinced throughout the relationship that he was just my “second choice” and I was somehow idling with him while waiting for a more successful man to come along.
This has to end. I would’ve paid either man’s way, if it came down to that, for years and years without blinking an eye. I wasn’t ashamed that they worked with their hands, I thought it was awesome. And yet the question was always there in the back of their minds. It’s awful.
For the record, f, it has ended with me and my wife. I am a stay at home dad. I measure success in the fulfillment I derive from my parental and household duties. My wife, also has rejected the ‘success myth’. She sees value in me in other ways, not just how much money I bring home, or how much social status I bring. We have both already said, “fuck that shit”. Times are already changing. Most people are accepting with our arrangement. Just saying. And for people who have a problem with this. Fuck them.
Stack up how many narratives you’ve heard in your life wherein a man must prove that he really loves a woman vs. how many where a woman must prove that she really loves a man. Coming into focus now, isn’t it?
And that romantic-comedy trope of “the man has to apologize at the end”. This was even in 40 days and 40 nights, where the man was raped by another woman and his girlfriend walked in. No equivocation, his ex broke into his apartment, found him handcuffed to the bed and asleep, and rode that pony. Just to win a bet. And then the protagonist apologizes to his girlfriend, and seems just fine. Doesn’t even talk to the ex.
OirishM: Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but surely there are other ways to tackle the young-old divide other than establishing more parental roles?
Sure, but in my experience, that isn’t usually how it works. We invariably get cast in that role anyway. (i.e. I am introduced as someone’s “surrogate mom” and I had no clue that is what I was to them!) I enjoy young friends, but I think young people prefer to have friends their own age, unless you read their tarot or something (which I do).
I certainly wish there were more people (0f all ages) who felt like you (and me), but I think we are in the minority.
Daisy: I’m 26. I hang out with a couple other young folk and a roomful of aging hippies once a week. I chat things up with both age groups about equally. Would you like to be my Boomer friend?
@Daisy:
“Sure, but in my experience, that isn’t usually how it works. We invariably get cast in that role anyway.”
I appreciate that. I just wonder if it’s something that can be resisted and redefined. I’m probably superimposing my recollections of my younger years onto your point somewhat, but I feel that on the whole a lot of people belonging to the previous generation try their best to be relatable and I feel that the younger generation have a tendency to needlessly throw that back at them or resent them for it. I know people need to go through a growing process, but I don’t know if that’s sufficient reason to not challenge this even when it happens among those who are still developing.
I don’t know, maybe I’m being overly cynical of the younger generation here (I’m 25, for the record).
OirishM, its embarrassing, but usually I am suddenly valued by younger people if I say something that they think is cool or if they find out something about me that is considered cool. Mind you, not *trying* to do that, it just happens naturally, and what is cool to one person will inevitably be regarded as dorky and dumb to another. Example: on my last job, one of the cooks told some young people in the kitchen that I had seen Bob Marley on tour in 1978, and suddenly, it was like I walked on water. Likewise, smoking pot w/Allen Ginsburg, which by the way, most of lower Manhattan could have made that claim at one time, it was hardly a fluke among deadheads! :p Among the Republican/Jesus youth, this would of course mark you for life as One of Those.
These are just some examples I’ve noticed. Its like there is a test, and you might pass it or fail it, depending on that person’s values.
Also, some young people like my stories. Like, I tell a good one about seeing an electric keyboard short out and blow up at the Emerson Lake & Palmer show, and (punch line) we all thought it was part of the show and applauded madly.
I figure you either like that kind of dorky 70s story or you don’t!
The_L — well of COURSE I will!
@Daisy: Heck, I’m 34, and I experience the opposite effect. I tell old-hippie Baby Boomers that my father founded the Whole Earth Catalog, or if they’re Deadheads I say he set up the Acid Tests at the Fillmore, and their eyes just light up. The convenient thing about using my real name online is I can tell that story and not worry about outing myself.
Noah, I think I met your dad! SMALL WORLD! The ongoing Facebook Deadhead joke is that we all know each other under other names, like “Sparrow” and so on. “I didn’t know you were —!”
Some of us used so many aliases, we have forgotten them ourselves. :p One I used was Agnes Waterhouse, and wrote articles and made mix tapes (legendary ones!) under that name.
Confirmation! Did your dad belong to NORML? If so, met him at a NORML conference. (I used to get him mixed up with Stewart Mott) Did he go to the famous one where Hamilton Jordan snorted coke at the party in Georgetown and somebody ratted him out to the Washington Post? That one.
Good times!
Confirmation! Did your dad belong to NORML?
You know, I have no idea. He never talks about the past much, being a futurist by trade nowadays. Much of what I know about his actions during the 60s and 70s, I’ve gleaned from books like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and What The Dormouse Said. But if you’re confusing him with Stewart Mott on the basis of his name, that’s the guy.