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And then there are the Monarchs!
So, a woman I know posted a photo of herself on FB w/the following screed (edited because plagiarism = Bad!): A male friend asked: “So when was it that you stopped caring about what you look like?”
Should I have told him about all the times I’ve been groped on public transport because I spent so much time & money on looking pretty? Should I have told him about being stalked, about the many strangers yelling about what they wanted to do to my body when I simply walked by them? Should I have told him about all those people I don’t know who told me, “You need to smile?”
Instead, I told him, “It would be a good idea never to talk to a woman about her appearance again.”
Her response garnered dozens of predictable, politically correct responses:
I don’t owe being attractive to anyone!
When I lived in [name of major metropolitan city goes here], I was sexually hassled 20 times a day!
I admire your restraint! I would have slashed his tires!
Blah, blah, blah.
###
I dunno.
What struck me about this posting was that, in its way, it was just as performative as troweling on bright red lipstick.
I mean, this woman—she’s an ordained Buddhist priest through the (ugh) San Francisco Zen Center, so let’s call her Ajahn—knows her present-tense audience just as thoroughly as she did back in the day when she was a soigné blonde real estate agent called Julie (neither moniker is her real-life name.) She’s good at selling stuff. Sincerity is not a strong point.
Can you tell I don’t like her?
I don’t like her!
A few years back, she made a whirlwind trip to the Hudson Valley because she thought it might be a good place to retire. I spent an entire day chauffeuring her around local towns—Kingston is probably your best bet but Hudson may have more the vibe you’re looking for—while she regaled me with soliloquies: The stepmother who was supposed to die, but against all propriety, insisted on surviving past 90, thus depleting the family fortune & leaving Ajahn in reduced circumstances; the man who’d started out as a friend, ferrying her to cancer treatments, whom she’d seduced except it turned out, he didn’t want to be her lover—
“Sex!” she sighed. “Body on body! Don’t you ever miss that?”
“No,” I said—not altogether truthfully.
As the day wore on, she became more & more depressed.
I was playing music in the car, the Talking Heads: This is not your beautiful wife!
“Turn that off!” she snapped. “It’s giving me a headache.”
When she got back to California, she didn’t so much as send me a thankyou note.
###
Personally, the phenomenon of attractiveness fascinates me. Beauty is a superpower, after all, though standards of beauty are infinitely mutable & like all magic, beauty extorts a price—not just from its possessor but also from its admirers and from the culture at large.
Admittedly, the question was framed clumsily. But Ajahn described the person who asked it as a “friend.” Was this just some sort of hasty synonym for “acquaintance”? Because if the person was a friend, the question—clumsily worded though it may be—could have been an avenue to all sorts of interesting follow-up conversations, given the assumption of good faith (which I at least extend to friends): What do you mean exactly? This question hurts & irritates me—how do you feel, hearing that? Do you want to know what goes through my head when men talk about female attractiveness?
Thing is women talk plenty about male attractiveness! Everything from metrosexual grooming to dick size. I’ve done it myself.
Imposing the attractiveness metric is not something that only men do.
Although groping strangers in subway cars may be something that only men do. 😀
###
Anyway.
Iggy partially redeemed himself yesterday for being a Dick by washing my car—without my asking him to!
It needed washing.
But I wasn’t gonna do it. ‘Cause I’ve never washed a car in my life.
And it rained all night & is supposed to rain all day, so I will likely spend the day inside.
So, a woman I know posted a photo of herself on FB w/the following screed (edited because plagiarism = Bad!): A male friend asked: “So when was it that you stopped caring about what you look like?”
Should I have told him about all the times I’ve been groped on public transport because I spent so much time & money on looking pretty? Should I have told him about being stalked, about the many strangers yelling about what they wanted to do to my body when I simply walked by them? Should I have told him about all those people I don’t know who told me, “You need to smile?”
Instead, I told him, “It would be a good idea never to talk to a woman about her appearance again.”
Her response garnered dozens of predictable, politically correct responses:
I don’t owe being attractive to anyone!
When I lived in [name of major metropolitan city goes here], I was sexually hassled 20 times a day!
I admire your restraint! I would have slashed his tires!
Blah, blah, blah.
###
I dunno.
What struck me about this posting was that, in its way, it was just as performative as troweling on bright red lipstick.
I mean, this woman—she’s an ordained Buddhist priest through the (ugh) San Francisco Zen Center, so let’s call her Ajahn—knows her present-tense audience just as thoroughly as she did back in the day when she was a soigné blonde real estate agent called Julie (neither moniker is her real-life name.) She’s good at selling stuff. Sincerity is not a strong point.
Can you tell I don’t like her?
I don’t like her!
A few years back, she made a whirlwind trip to the Hudson Valley because she thought it might be a good place to retire. I spent an entire day chauffeuring her around local towns—Kingston is probably your best bet but Hudson may have more the vibe you’re looking for—while she regaled me with soliloquies: The stepmother who was supposed to die, but against all propriety, insisted on surviving past 90, thus depleting the family fortune & leaving Ajahn in reduced circumstances; the man who’d started out as a friend, ferrying her to cancer treatments, whom she’d seduced except it turned out, he didn’t want to be her lover—
“Sex!” she sighed. “Body on body! Don’t you ever miss that?”
“No,” I said—not altogether truthfully.
As the day wore on, she became more & more depressed.
I was playing music in the car, the Talking Heads: This is not your beautiful wife!
“Turn that off!” she snapped. “It’s giving me a headache.”
When she got back to California, she didn’t so much as send me a thankyou note.
###
Personally, the phenomenon of attractiveness fascinates me. Beauty is a superpower, after all, though standards of beauty are infinitely mutable & like all magic, beauty extorts a price—not just from its possessor but also from its admirers and from the culture at large.
Admittedly, the question was framed clumsily. But Ajahn described the person who asked it as a “friend.” Was this just some sort of hasty synonym for “acquaintance”? Because if the person was a friend, the question—clumsily worded though it may be—could have been an avenue to all sorts of interesting follow-up conversations, given the assumption of good faith (which I at least extend to friends): What do you mean exactly? This question hurts & irritates me—how do you feel, hearing that? Do you want to know what goes through my head when men talk about female attractiveness?
Thing is women talk plenty about male attractiveness! Everything from metrosexual grooming to dick size. I’ve done it myself.
Imposing the attractiveness metric is not something that only men do.
Although groping strangers in subway cars may be something that only men do. 😀
###
Anyway.
Iggy partially redeemed himself yesterday for being a Dick by washing my car—without my asking him to!
It needed washing.
But I wasn’t gonna do it. ‘Cause I’ve never washed a car in my life.
And it rained all night & is supposed to rain all day, so I will likely spend the day inside.
