Sarcastic, sharp, honest, in-your-face, witty, thought-provoking and impossible to dismiss. No, this time, I'm not describing myself. I'm in love with a book that almost speaks to me. A feminist insight: Bitch-In Praise of Difficult Women. I'm not even halfway through, and it's so amazing. It's so me. I love it... I'm in love with this book. Quotes from the book are below. Enjoy!
Wurtel, E. (1998). Bitch: in praise of difficult women. New York: First Anchor Books.
...So we'll "adjust"- the word Betty Friedan used over 30 years ago in The Feminine Mystique to describe how intteligent Seven Sister types learned to accept the notion that Mop & Glo was intellectually stimulating- and if we're from Venus and they're from Mars, we'll learn to speak Martian. We'll follow The Rules:
We won't call them, we won't ask them out, we won't talk about ourselves, we won't make snide comments, we'll be good.
Well, I for one am sick of it. All my life, one person or another has been telling me to behave, saying don't let a guy know you're a depressed maniac on the first date, don't be yourself, don't show your feelings. And the truth is, this is probably good advice, men probably don't like overbearing hotheaded women who give blow jobs on the first date...
...but if we really had come a long way, baby, if men's perceptions of women had transformed fundementally and intensely so that we were accepted as full-fledged sexual creatures and romantic operatives who were free to chase or be chased, and if this expanded dimension of women's sexual personae were not frigtening or overwhelming to them, then we would not need The Rules. we would truly be free...
...it is amazing that the smallness we've been told to squeeze into has meant that we don't even know how to ask or what to want. Everything tells us to stop, to not talk to that guy first, to not have a thousand lovers if that's what feels right because one man is enough. Everything says we don't need another piece of chocolate cake, we don't need another Gucci bag, another dime-store lipstick, another Big Mac, another night on the town, another spin on the Rainbow Room dancefloor...
...There were other problem women in the Bible, the main problem being that their sexual existence could not be denied, and while everything about a woman can e controlled and regulated- right down to whom she is or isn't allowed to sleep with- her elusive, effulgent sexual anima, her ability to project lust and allure, cannot be contained by any set of rules. It just is. Sexual energy, like the warmth of sunshine or the green color of grass, is an indigenous characteristic with exogenous manifestations that can't be stopped, can't be helped and should not be blamed- though all those things often are (for sunburn, for grass stains, for rape). [I] certainly noticed that even at this late date, women perceived to be sexual- never mind sexually powerful- are scary...
...If women are granted so much responsibility and credit and blame for the behaviour of men that they sleep with, then that means we really do believe that any guy with a hard-on has truly cut off the blood flow to his brain- which I have to say is pretty much true, but usually men do come to their snses at some point...
... But that is life and the beauty of life. People surrender to love- they do it reluctantly and with trepidation, but when they give in, it is sweet surrender as well as sweet victory. It is a part of life, that potential hurt, that fearsome thrill, but women don't have to seem to have really as hard a tme with it. In the end, in the final tally, who knows who has brought the other down more or the most- we only know that this is life's rich pageant, and we all have to take responsibility for our own feelings, for wishing to succumb and letting it happen...
... One of the more interesting passages of The Rules occurs when the authors discuss how to handle rejection: "Just move on." This is, of course, good advice along the lines of just buck up and snap out of t. It is particularly good advice for the overwrought, the overreacting, the downright hysterical, for the people who feel every heartbeat is a heartache, and every breakup is the end of the world. The types who brood over 1 night stands as though it's the end of a ten-year marriage. It is good advice, but bad philosophy. Bad philosophy because it fails to account the value of human experience in and of itself...
...But the thing that the book misses is that most of our emotional truimphs occur on the margins of life, at the moments when we least expect them, at points when we've been so hardened that our hearts feel like petrified wood and it seems perfectly impossible that we'll simply turn to stone, turn to a pillar of salt like Lot's wife looking back at Sodom & Gomorrah every time we shudder to think about how many times we've been wronged by love. At for whatever reason it's at those precise times when things could not be worse and it seems like there's no man from here to the Southernmost tip of Tasmania who has not already proved disappointing- to put it mildly- that life surprises us, that some nice person comes along and makes us feel four years old and walking in a field of daises all over again....
Now, anybody dare tell me this book wasn't written for me? Tell me this book isn't so me? Jesse, thanks so much for lending me the book. You know I'd take longer than I usually do. It would even be better if you got me another copy as a bday gift! *insert big fuzzy grin*
posted by Fuzzy @ 19:42
Comments:
Post a Comment