Yes, Esquire, yes.
Now it's my turn. Let's talk women.
While society constantly critiques what the modern man has become, why doesn't anyone have a problem with the modern woman? In fact, we do nothing but glorify the modern woman for her adaptation of traditionally masculine roles and her rejection of traditionally female roles.
How the fuck does that make sense? I mean, if for nothing else for the sake of efficiency. You do this? Great. I do this? Great. You can't both be hunters, because someone needs to gather!
Don't get me wrong, both of my chosen professions (for those new to the blog, concert production and entertainment photography) are incredibly male dominated, I'd say 90 to 1, so that is not at all my frustration. I'm not saying women shouldn't be able to do these things, but what I am saying is that they should be doing whatever they choose to pursue professionally as well as learning the necessary skills to run a lovely home. I don't care how you feel about marriage, about having a family or about living alone with nothing but your staunch feminism to cuddle with, but I do know that you don't want to be ordering in and living in a hole the rest of your life. Learning and appreciating skills of the home are necessary to your personal well-being, ladies. Man or no man. This isn't about cooking for him or cleaning for him, it's about being a skilled human.
So I look around me and what do I see? A bunch of giggling ex-sorority girls in halter tops in the middle of winter. They can't cook, they can't clean, they can't stop giggling, but damn are they good at studying! Trouble is, they aren't in college anymore and well, that isn't really a lucrative skill post-institutional education ye - ohhhhh thhaaaaattt's whhhhy you went to grad school....
But all of that nonsense is ok! Because you are a doctor! Because you are a lawyer! Because you are a consultant, gosh darn it! Because you, wonderful you, are a working woman. You go girl! You are no longer just confined to a future in homemaking, but you, yes, again! you! are making your own money and filing your own tax return (maybe).
And that apparently is something to celebrate? That you can pat yourself on the back because you are showing the world that you can roar just as loud as the next, but then still act in all other realms like you are still in college? I get it, oh I get it. It's less embarrassing to pretend you never graduated than to dry your sad tears every night at the thought of the real world. That, or it's a lot easier than leaving your comfort zone and LEARNING ABOUT THE WORLD.
Really, it makes me sad, but you know what? Good riddance to the modern woman who lives off mommy and daddy. Good riddance to the modern woman who traveled abroad for a semester college and now knows the world. Good riddance to the modern woman who feels she needs to fight roles of domesticity, because she either doesn't know any better, or mommy told her to. Good riddance to the modern woman who went to law school because daddy told her to. Good riddance to the modern woman who went to grad school because she had no other aspirations to pursue. Good riddance to the modern woman who went to either, solely because mommy and daddy will pay for it. Good riddance to the modern woman who cheats on boyfriends, because it is empowering. Good riddance to the modern woman that wants to have sex like a man. Good riddance to the modern woman who is confused at the slightest notion of love and loyalty. Good riddance to the modern woman who has never been on her own.
Gooood riddance!!
Ladies, in being a modern woman, balance is of the utmost importance. You can do anything you want, but in ignoring responsibility, it makes you just as much at fault as the modern man who is driving you mad. Let me tell you, it takes a woman, in the most basic sense of the word, to love that man just as much as you love being entirely independent.
And riddle me this, gentlemen, if and when you decide to settle down, do you want a girl who can't stand in the kitchen and cook with you? Who doesn't want to ruin her nails pulling weeds as you mow the lawn? Who hasn't the first clue how to run the dishwasher, let alone efficiently hand-wash dishes? Who won't squirt you back with the hose when she's watering the flowers and you are washing the car?
No! You don't!
So now, my favorite and final question... can your girlfriend run your backline?
Haha, don't worry, I didn't think she could either, dude - but you can dream, right?
Disclaimer: This entry is not intended to suggest that a modern man should not be cooking and cleaning. Just trying to focus on one gender, so we don't have a novel here. Yes, gentlemen, if you don't already know how, you should learn to cook/clean/be professional alllll at once too.
And I was going to make an analogy between relationships with people and relationships with the iPhone about reliability and functionality, but I creeped myself out before I could finish it.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Marche has some years on me, but I'll get there someday...
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6 comments:
We all., each of us, regardless of gender have choices to make. This diatribe is, in itself, a justification for the choices you have made as judged against the backdrop of other realities. Speaking as a male, and recognizing that I have not been elected to speak for the entire gender, let me offer my own view. (actual results may vary) There is a need for hunters and gathers in every society, but the trick is that each of us should be able to do both equally well. It would be better said that there is a difference in a life LIVED and a life endured. To take big bites out of life and let the juice run down your chin, each drop staining the virgin fabric of your white slip with its crimson passage and to not mourn the symbolic loss of innocence because you know how to get stains out of a cotton night gown… that’s sexy. The two posts when taken side by side however speak not to the facts of the existence of men and women who are somehow less than they should be, but to the acceptance of the false posture for those who know better but have taken this façade as a means to swindle the general populace into loving them. Take the bubble head blond who pretends to be incompetent to attract a mate. The young woman out of collage who is afraid of making a choice so she limps through life faking an emotional injury and demanding that we accept her excuse as reality. Ayn Rand said: “Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.” When we choose not to accept the façade in ourselves we can break the first barrier. Let the wolves in sheep clothes ply their trade as they wish and let the feminine mystics cuddle cold ideals in the night. But for me, I see who they are and choose to turn away instead of giving them the value of my consideration.
It's true, both articles were about the glorification of such stereotypes by society on a whole. Don't you think it's strange, however, that man is constantly criticized while woman plows on, envisioning herself strong as ever? I don't know, good sir, how these people can be elevated without the masses even blinking an eye. How what they are has just become so common that is has simultaneously become, not only beyond accepted, but ideal.
It's like the "Tickle Me Elmo" craze back in the mid-nineties. All these girls do is giggle and every modern man has to have one. Oh, but, it's ok, this Tickle Me Elmo went to law school.
Everyone does indeed have choices, but that doesn't mean writers can't reflect on mass patterns of choice. The only chore around the house that I refuse to do is mow the lawn. Haha, and that's solely a personal choice. It's not that I can't, but I won't. Every other role that is traditionally male, I've got covered, because that's the way I grew up. Heck, I can wax a car better than all my past boyfriends, but that's because everyone helped around the house... or because I have terrible taste in men, I'm not really sure which yet.
And yes, as mentioned, balance is key. Absolutely imperative. This article wasn't about going back to domestic wives and working husbands, but partially about the unnecessary rejection of the domestic just because of gender or simply, because someone always did it for them. If cleaning a house is degrading, call me the Queen of England.
Haha, I of course, knew this was coming and again, it comes from someone whose ideals I already admire. I know you see, but how do they not?
I'm not going to say anything other than iPhones suck. and I own one. sad face.
-kell
The whole concept is as you say stereotypes. The images we are presented are quite often not based in reality at all. Reality is subject to change anyways... constantly. I say ignore the stereotypes no matter which way they are going. They are barely skin deep. Some men like arranging flowers some women like fixing cars. And emotionally things vary just as drastically. Even if the humans in question don't show it for all to see on their sleeve.
Well this is simply too intriguing Miss Harvey, I believe a synthesis is in order to take it past speculation. And also, If you would as well sir read on…
While your affinity for household tasks and the honor involved is quite known, at least to me, I feel that since it is just another skill, they can’t necessarily be focused on so heavily. Just as I wouldn’t expect everyone to be well versed in quantum physics, even though I could perhaps give some justification…..
I think the main point of your argument is that they are lacking what it means to be a woman… or perhaps further what it is to be human. It is not their choice of career, but their lack of purpose, meaning, pleasure, and notoriety in the choice.
Suddenly the avenue for women has been opened up… and all of a sudden look at all these “driven” and “powerful” working women. Well you can see through it… and so can I… and so can the above brother in rhetoric… I think the point is that these kinds of human beings, regrettably most, will do anything for someone to point them in the direction of a cause worth fighting for… history smacks of this in just about every atrocity ever committed. Therefore I believe the crux is that these women were given a movement to rally behind, forgetting that most of them will never have an original thought to push their field along and care little about even being a women… perhaps your strongest argument is that they never quite stopped to ask if really they were just being fooled into emulating the men that already lack any passion for what they do. In other words, they leave behind a task because they say it is unfair for women to be left in realm of no importance… failing to see that they matter even less in their new profession, due to their lack of passion and perhaps talent for it….
I believe men suffer from another digression… one into passionate lethargy, on the contrary to passionate façade or contrived proxy passion of women for a cause they couldn’t even explain… You see men have fallen into a race to be the middle man… The idealization of maybe the only downfall of Aristotle’s philosophy… the golden mean… there is nothing golden about mean compromise. Men, since being a “rebel without a cause” got you the girl, have deteriorated into weaklings that hide and murder there own passions in the middle of the night so that people will never think they care… because caring is not cool… and certainly not sexy. This mutilation began with man truncating his moral extremes, becoming placid, agreeable and “laid back”, taking a stand only against people who care too much; ridiculing them, scoffing at them as products of the “conformist machine”. Notice how the protagonists are no longer heroes whose skill is based off dedication, struggle and pure unbridled confidence… instead they have manufactured confidence given to them by the artist, and have nothing to offer besides cynical wit and disregard for effort. I think People mistake me for “laid back” due to my assurance and relaxed nature, until they bring up something of note…(as you can see I’m rather easily excited)
Men became wastrels and it is killing this country. Now I believe Marche, and believe me… thank you for pointing him out… I think it may be time to wrest my nose from the trade journals and read a little esquire… Marche has pointed out the newest transformation of man… from handsome though purposeless deliverer of wit and “I don’t care” platitudes… to full out wimp with nothing but sardonic self deprecation (CERA) or the brooding pretender… The point is that men have lost in so many ways what once made them great… their passion, intelligence… and stark refusal to compromise until proven wrong. These characters are now the petulant, bothersome side characters who die alone with nothing but greed… hmmm hopefully not
So women are letting others due there caring for them, and therefore haven’t progressed at all from their ancestors who were sentenced to the drawing room when brandy was about to be served… And men have digressed to at best a sophist and at worst a desiccated husk who doesn’t even care enough to fake his own worth.
But hey perhaps there’s a silver lining… these women only go for men who aren’t interested in them, and they don’t really wax philosophical so they aren’t precisely “up” on the game these male descendents of James Dean are playing, so maybe they’ll all just stay the hell out of our way, divorce each other, and remarry their kind. Someday Atlantis will be waiting and they won’t care enough to find it….. I wonder what you think…
Something the above gentlemen mentioned piqued (oh so its not spelled peaked, though mountains=interest…) my interest… Loss of innocence; if I may add sir: presented in a sensual metaphor indeed. My qualm stems from the fact that I believe loss of innocence to be a misguided term in this case, especially since we are talking about life and the procuring of experience or skills.
I am ready to admit that I have a certain prejudice, growing like a contusion from where I was bashed on the head repeatedly with so called coming of age “Masterpieces” all through high school English. And in such experts of “loss of innocence”, the revelations pertain to brushes with evil: lustful or perverse sexual experiences, racism, violence etc. In addition it always ends with the sad delusion and coping mechanism that life in this world is irrational and futile, only to be endured as you say… something that someone who speaks so reverently of Rand could not believe.
I think loss of innocence is something that exists as a euphemism for cowards to blame there blatant lack of purpose… the handmaiden of the problem with men or women mentioned above.
These experiences even if ugly and harsh… should never be more than knowledge one stores to a single effect: that evil is to be disregarded if possible, destroyed if necessary… perhaps that’s two. Therefore, while far less sensual an allusion, I think that loss of ignorance is the more pertinent reference. And in addition I wonder if the two of you believe in loss of innocence at all… except in the literal sense of course… when one acts in conscious evil… (Perhaps to be extended to when one accepts evil as a part of the world, which brings me full circle to those pour souls in the loss of innocence novels, whom we must turn our backs on and realize that they will never be able to help themselves.)
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