I have absolutely nothing exciting to report, which is why I haven't posted in nearly two weeks. What's to say? Okay, well, I could tell you that I might buy a house. It's a tiny little thing, but built in 1950 and so solid as a bomb shelter. I'm having trouble getting a mortgage, as I make pitifully little money as a public radio lackey and have a mountain of student loans (for that MLIS, which has so far turned out to be useless, but I'm not bitter AT ALL), so my debt-to-income ration is crap. I'm still working on it, though, and am cautiously optimistic. I'll certainly be posting a lot more about that if it works out.
I've been indulging my trashier self and listening to Outlander, the 28-CD audio book that's the first in Diana Gabaldon's series of the same name. The book is generally a lot of fun, but it's a bodice-ripper of the type I haven't paid much attention to since high school. I got the idea from Knitting Outside the Lines, wherein either Ann or Kay suggests that listening to the series could get one through quite a bit of knitting. That's an understatement! No one mentioned, though, that I might have a terrible problem with wanting to speak in a Scottish accent, though, after listening to Davina Porter's reading of all the Highlanders. Och!
I got some awesome yarns last weekend when one of my local stores was having a pre-inventory sale, and promptly made a hat for The Boy out of some beautiful (but still cool enough for him) Malabrigo, but I keep casting on too many stitches and making the damned thing too big. I've ripped it out twice, and am hoping the third time will be the charm. Otherwise I'm going to accept that fact that the yarn is some kind of magical, cursed, GROWING yarn, and use it to knit a skirt that will grow along with my ass. Sigh.
Oh, speaking of sighs (and curses and shouts, but that's just me and my anger), have a look at this Salon article about Courtney Cox's new show if you have a chance. I haven't watched the show, but reading the article filled me with a lovely Red Rage of Righteousness, which should pretty much carry me through the day. Why so angry? Well, because the show is just as patronizing and insulting as its stupid Cougar Town title indicates. Here's the beginning of the article, by regular Salon writer Heather Havrilesky:
"If aliens learned about our culture by watching our newest television shows, they might assume that planet Earth was terrorized by predatory middle-aged women with hairless, bony bodies and the same blank expression on their overly Botoxed faces, a look of creepy awe at the joys of 20-something tenderloin.
"They're addicted to those botulism injections, which make them jittery and sick," the aliens might hypothesize after watching shows like "Cougar Town" and "Eastwick" and "Accidentally on Purpose." "Their lives are so addled by substance abuse that they pace and second-guess themselves with their googly-eyed, like-minded friends, then giggle and high-five like schoolgirls at the sight of some well-defined abdominal muscles, which are apparently a sign of inner purity."
"Why don't the other humans just snuff them out?" some young alien would interject, but no one would answer him because in the galaxy of Zoron, young men are seen as hopelessly naive and confused and are generally ignored until they hit 35. Besides, all of the older aliens would already recognize that these "cougars" clearly serve as some sort of cautionary tale for female humans, a moralistic narrative that humans refer to, strangely enough, as a "guilty pleasure" -- "guilty" in this case meaning "it makes you want to stick your head in the oven" and "pleasure" referring to the feeling humans get from having their fingernails ripped off one by one."
Sweet Jesus! It makes me absolutely livid to think that this show's writers (two men) are taking the opportunity to further the idea of grown women having sex into a cartoonish joke. It's a cruel bait and switch: A show about a 40-something woman who is confident about her sexuality! She's into younger guys! It's about time the tables are turned, when older men have been praised for scoring young chicks for generations! No, though. That's not how it is. Really, women who want to sleep with hot guys are sad, desperate, frantic, and laughable. It makes me sad. And mad.
The weird thing, though, is that I don't think most men feel this way. I think most men want woman who's relaxed and happy about sex and her own skin . . . right? Real, actual, run of the mill men who live outside of NYC and LA don't want a woman who's Botoxed and Brazilian-ed and starved/exercised into a tense, tight version of herself in high school. Right? That's just a trope, isn't it? If that's the case, who keeps supporting it? Is it really commerce that's doing it? Are the corporations who sell make-up and hair-dye and diet pills and Spanx and gym memberships and Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers and manicures and pedicures and waxing and anti-wrinkle cream so vested in our collective fear of aging and insecurities about our appearance that THEY are the ones with the power? Has The Patriarchy been replaced with . . . what? The Market? If so, that's going from bad to worse, because it means women are more complicit in their suppression that they ever were.
Okay. Enough. Sorry. It just . . . chafes a little it all.
I have to get back to work.
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