I will lightly hijack this thread by asking for help with some new music:

What was the best song you heard this month?

Grazi.

As a woman, I have the same problem as everyone (including Nice Guys, non-Nice just plain quality guys, etc.): I’d like to have the kind of relationship/sex I’d like to have with the kind of person I’d like to have it with.  The options that actually come my way are another story.  There’s always some kind of mismatch: they want to get serious while I want something casual or vice-versa; they live far away; they’re married; they’re nice except for some kind of dealbreaker (which is not about looks or money, more like brains or logistics).  The kind of romance we’re all supposed to want, the romance a quality piece of flesh like Liz Lemon is supposed to be highly eligible for, is just elusive. It requires sacrifices and compromises that not everybody can or wants to make.

Re: Liz Lemon

I thought having Liz start dating Carrol the Pilot was a great idea, because his being out of town meant that they could stop fussing over Liz’s love life and get back to the more fertile comedic grounds. Liz IS clearly happier single, and DOES sabotage her relationships. I don’t see a reason why she has to be with someone at all.

But I am confused as to what to think about the long running “Liz is unattractive” runner. I’m somewhat inclined to think it is, as Friedman’s friend says “a wink for how Tina Fey’s been objectified in the entertainment business”.

But the “Liz is Ugly” jokes started in season 1, before Tina Fey really “made it”... Or maybe I’m misremembering?

If the “Liz is Ugly” jokes were only made by, say, Jack, that would mean something about that character. But the jokes are made by EVERYONE, including Liz herself. Of course, 30 Rock is in a weird alternate universe… maybe in that universe the old Hollywood stereotype of “Glasses (code for smart) = ugly” is true…

It seems to me that they aren’t quite comfortable with portraying Liz as smart, funny, successful, attractive AND single… so they are playing into the misconception discussed above that attractive women are always “neck deep in dick” by declaring Liz ugly by authorial fiat.

But their analysis fails, because they think of dating as men buying and women selling, and they figure Lemon’s a quality product and so would have been purchased by now.  One of them stabs closer to the truth by also castigating Lemon for having high standards, but both of them still buy into the idea that singleness is a curse upon a woman and that relieving it is just matter of having the right marketing.

The way these male commenters forget that in the market of dating, there are two sides to the supply/demand equation, reminds me of how “Fear of Failure” works with “Fear of Success”.

In a patriarchal culture women are assumed to want men, while men aren’t assumed to want women. Therefore if a woman doesn’t have a man, there must be something wrong with her. The fact that a woman might not want a man is too outre to be considered.

In an ultracompetitive culture, people are assumed to desire success and fear failure. We are actively encouraged to fear failure from a young age, and also to worship success. But fear of failure doesn’t explain all our fear… the less considered possibility is that people fear success, and enjoy failure. Because “failure” and “success” are totally subjective.

Also, I think a lot of these men are kidding themselves about how success can hamper a woman’s attractiveness. Yes, even in the 21st century, I would say the majority of men are incredibly threatened by a successful woman. Whether it’s actually due to “omg I need to be the breadwinner because that’s what a man’s role is” or because if she’s successful it’s likely she has a pretty good bullshit detector and isn’t generally afraid to use it. Yes: Simple male gaze of looking at Tina Fey and declaring “she hot. Me want to stick penis in” doesn’t really take into account whether or not she takes home more than you do, but when men start really looking at a relationship dynamic and trying to determine if the woman is mate-worthy, whether or not they will be the one in the position of power is a big factor.

@Comment #5: Mighty Ponygirl on 02/25 at 11:31 AM

Also, I think a lot of these men are kidding themselves about how success can hamper a woman’s attractiveness. Yes, even in the 21st century, I would say the majority of men are incredibly threatened by a successful woman.

Also very true.

I really enjoyed this post and I think it’s pretty much spot on. One point I’d make is I think Liz is supposed to be conventionally unattractive even though Tina Fey obviously isn’t. The main characters seem to universally agree that Liz isn’t very conventionally attractive. It’s like in other shows, when they choose a character from a bunch of very attractive cast members and make them exceptionally attractive by saying they are.

Penn, yeah. I’m always a little weirded out by how the “plain” people on TV are better looking than I will ever be.

Or, Liz Lemon is a <u>fictional</u> character, and taking away this plot tic would burn vast tracts of comedy grain Tina Fey is intent on harvesting.  @^@

One point I’d make is I think Liz is supposed to be conventionally unattractive even though Tina Fey obviously isn’t.

Kinda like how David Carradine in Kung Fu was clearly supposed to be instantly recognisable as Chinese (and was to everybody in the show) without actually looking Chinese at all. ‘Cos, you know, we couldn’t actually employ one of those people in a leading role…

Liz Lemon sabotages relationships because Lemon doesn’t want relationships.  Yes, on the show she’s always bellyaching about being single, but that’s characterized as part of her neurotic obsession with doing things the right way, filling out a checklist in life.

It’s totally possible to both crave and fear something at the same time. I’ve (generally) given up bellyaching about being single and never getting laid because I’ve come to realise that I do it to myself and I’m really quite happy that way, but unfortunately it still doesn’t make the basic human craving for physical intimacy go away.

I always assumed the “Liz is fat/ugly/nasty” dynamic was a commentary on the hyper-competitive class and social dynamics of Manhattan.

It was certainly my experience there that the window of “beauty” is extremely narrow, due to the high volume of supernaturally attractive people. (See how Liz went to Cleveland (or Cincinnati?) in that one season, and everyone asked whether she was a model.) By a certain kind of Manhattan standard Tina Fey is meh at best. This standard is particularly a standard of monied culture there—note the frequent comments made about her teeth, namely that they reveal her lower-class origins.
 
(Manhattan is also the only place where I ever felt literally enormous at 5’3” and 110 pounds, mostly because everyone around me felt the need to point out how, well, ginormously huge I was.)

Where the gender factor comes in, of course, is how her male coworkers can revel in their nastiness backlash-free, while she pays dearly for falling short of Heidi Klum perfection.

“One point I’d make is I think Liz is supposed to be conventionally unattractive even though Tina Fey obviously isn’t.”

It’s a character written for a conventionally unattractive woman that they couldn’t actually swing casting a conventionally unattractive woman in.  The best they could do was giving her hair that’s not always perfect and clothes that aren’t great and stuff they don’t show like her messed-up foot.  Though even without living in a universe in which Tina Fey is universally agreed upon as not a really attractive lady, you have to blow right past a lot to look at that character and say “Pretty, smart, good career?  Count me in for the long haul!”.  It’s like the fact that her personality and habits are pretty horrible, when viewed through the lens of a potential long-term partner, doesn’t even register.  Because, you know, pretty! Smart! Good career! Clearly nothing else could possibly matter! She is a lady who meets the following criteria and is consequently acceptable to any man, whose judgment is the only thing in play!

An aside…give me the BBC any day, where people look like humans. I can barely watch American TV anymore, the actors all look like CGI.

Well, I think it’s certainly true that Liz Lemon’s unattractiveness - which does not follow her to the Cleve, remember! - is a jab at the social pressures Tina Fey needed to conform to in order to get on-camera at SNL, and that women in general need to succeed in show business.  BUT, as someone who has some pretty serious self-esteem issues (stemming from depression, more than causing it) that are way out of proportion with objective reality, there is something that makes me cringe sometimes, in the way the it can feel like Fey is carrying out a nonstop nationally televised character assassination on someone who is, in many people’s minds, basically a slightly exaggerated version of Tina Fey.  I would really like to believe that Fey is happy and well-adjusted and has crafted the show the way she has because she thinks it makes for good comedy to center it around a character like Lemon, etc., etc., and that’s probably true.  But sometimes I feel like I’m picking up a kind of sympathetic vibration of self-loathing.  With standup comics you can sometimes pick up this vibe that the jokes about themselves aren’t just for fun; the person up onstage actually is a terribly unhappy person.  Since Fey’s more explicitly a writer of scenario and character you don’t get quite the same “insight” but I wonder sometimes.  (And, as I said, I hope not.)

I think Well, What has it: It’s not that Liz is supposed to be ugly.  The joke is way more subtle.  It’s that she’s nerdy, and in the corporate/entertainment world she moves in, that’s the same as ugly, just as right wingers claim all feminists are “fat”, even if they’re stick thin. 

But she’s repeatedly shown as sexually attractive to men who move outside of that world.  Her writers actually don’t mock her for being ugly, just awkward. And she is that.

Amanda I was thinking more or less the same thing you were about the Neko Case article but you put it into words a lot better than I was able to.  At the beginning is the weird assumption that geeky indie-pop guys are all living the Led Zeppelin rock star high life, and then the article just got even less perceptive from there (also the female musicians she was talking to seemed to be joking around quite a bit and the author took them way more seriously than I think they meant to be taken).

Yeah I think medrawt @14’s reference to the social pressures is part of it too, because it is clear from looking at old Second City videos that Fey had to basically glam herself up quite a bit and reinvent her whole look in order to become an onscreen SNL cast member.

My mother, who was born in 1913, didn’t marry until the incredibly ancient age of 30.  Before that, she had to put up with a lot of patronizing and advice from married friends.  Her takeaway?  “Anyone can get married if she sets her standards low enough”.

As someone who could potentially be interested in Neko Case, there are two things keeping me from proper fulfillment:

1) I’m married.
2) She’s got a gnarly case of nice-guy syndrome. As someone who fought/fights that internal demon for the greater part of a decade, I’d rather not have to deal with it in a bed-bumpin’ partner.

Sorry, Neko. At least I didn’t chuck a CD on stage, right?

I think you are exactly right about Liz Lemon, and that the show is consciously portraying her as someone who doesn’t really want a relationship.  At one point Jack says to her, “You can either let go of your precious autonomy, or you can teach your cat to dial 911.”  (to which Liz responds that she has life alert).

As a woman who prefers being single, I actually think it’s awesome to have someone like me on television.  Sure it’s a very self-deprecating and occasionally problematic portrayal, but I still love the character and the show.

Is the Lemon character supposed to be divorced? Because I’ve known real life women who, having been married, are not at all eager to repeat the experience. Men are supposed to be fun, not work.

Hector B—there isn’t anything in the show about Lemon having been previously married. Jack has been through a few marriages though.

And this has been another edition of, “well MY penis thinks…” brought to you by the number 22.

Don’t forget that Liz is depicted as insanely sexually repressed. I don’t think she’s depicted in-universe as ugly, just as unglamorous. I’m thinking of a recent-ish episode where Jack had to pretend that he was in love with Liz to break up a relationship she was in. The humor in the scene is Jack having to describe how attractive Liz is while she’s basically pratfalling and spilling food out of her mouth.

Jake, the Dropkick Murphys have advance released Take Em Down on their website in support of the Wisconsin labor action.  Speaking as someone who is knee deep in labor action in Ohio, I love it.

It’s that she’s nerdy, and in the corporate/entertainment world she moves in, that’s the same as ugly…

And not nerdy hot, either, because nerdiness is hot if the nerd is already hot. If you’re Abby on NCIS, your faux-Gothness makes you hotter. But the plus-size (for Hollywood) blonde (Garcia?) on Criminal Minds is never portrayed as hot, even though she’s more or less the exact same character. The one time you see her being sexual (with Xander Harris, no less!), it’s played for laughs that someone desires her. I think one of the critical choices made in building the Liz Lemon character was to make it almost impossible for anyone to regard her as a hot nerd, and it’s because Fey herself is lovely that this generates so much dissonance around the character, which in turn makes her an interesting subject for discussion. Holy cow, do I need to watch less TV.

Oh God yes felagund—the “enormous” probably-like-size-14 Garcia.  Who was shot and almost killed because she was silly enough to think some guy she met at a coffee shop might like her so she went out on a date with him.

(Manhattan is also the only place where I ever felt literally enormous at 5’3” and 110 pounds, mostly because everyone around me felt the need to point out how, well, ginormously huge I was.)

Totally off the point, but when I was taking the BTS from Nana to Siam, I noticed I could see over the heads of everyone in the car.  It felt a little odd.

Jordan, one of the most common errors a guy will make on a feminist blog is to express your attraction to this or that person in response to some implication they are not hawt/attractive/beautiful.  New to this blog?...

...and I look down and see an ad on this thread:

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Does the advertiser’s ad placement algorithm know something about Pandagonians that we don’t know ourselves?...

Jordan—no one cares what your penis thinks. Amanda didn’t write that post so that a bunch of men could loudly declare that they would totally stick it in Tina Fey.

Jordan,

No, she wouldn’t, and neither would you offer the info if you had a vagina.  But that’s kind of the point—your entitled sense that what your penis likes adds anything to the conversation. 

Thanks!

Whether any given man finds Liz Lemon attractive is, of course, not the point.  But when using her as an exemplar of this idea of attractive women not getting any, it seems downright weird to be upset that people contrast their own opinion of her attractiveness with the “received” opinion given by characters on the show.

(What I found far more off-putting and derailing was Jordan’s injection of his dating life.  The story about the executive not calling him back doesn’t even touch on the topic.)

Jordan,

My guess is that its because: 1) felagund made a generalized statement about how Tina Fey is perceived by most, rather than saying “I find Tina lovely”; 2) the idea of “lovely” has a broader application than mere sexual attractiveness; and 3) felagund’s comment was not accompanied by a seemingly irrelevant personal anecdote about his(her?) luck with the laydeez which didn’t put the “lovely” comment in an overall awkward context.

And probably some other factors I’m neglecting.

I don’t think she’s depicted in-universe as ugly, just as unglamorous.

Correct. She’s not as obsessed about her self-image as are the show’s “A-listers” like Jack and Jenna and Tracy. As a woman, however, she’s not allowed to get away with that lack of concern as are Frank or Pete. In the NYC media-industrial complex, that means that Liz is basically screwed.

As a result, she’s pressured by the “A-listers” into compensating by getting into a relationship, which she doesn’t really want. She’s as gleefully selfish and self-indulgent as the A-listers, but doesn’t channel it an “appropriate” and “cool” manner. She also knows she’s smart, successful in her career, and “Cleveland hot” so the only suitable mate in her mind will be a self-confident, respectful, sensitive feminist male who can accept her. Unfortunately for Liz (or fortunately, if it’s self-sabotage) such men are eventually going to be turned off by her selfishness instead of accepting it (as do the romantic interests of the “A-listers”).

If I were a women, would you care what my vagina thinks?

I don’t know about her, but I’d care about as much as I care about your comment at #22, which stands as a textbook example of “irrelevant.”

How does a description of your personal preferences (and nothing else) add anything of value to the discussion? Were you expecting a cookie for stating your attraction to successful women?

Then what about the non-negative reaction to felagund saying Tina Fey is lovely?

Felguland put it into a context beyond his own personal preferences. You didn’t.

While I’m not going to offer a what my penis thinks because I don’t really watch 30rock (parks and recreation is better, FACT) and only know Tina Fey as the woman who did the Palin jokes (and I’m told she wrote mean girls even though I never imdbed that to check) isn’t the fact that when Tina Fey turns up as a topic loads of guys are like “I totally would” kind of a confirmation about what Amanda said about the Liz Lemon character not really wanting to be with someone. I mean like if you take it that if everyone who says they totally would, would in fact ask her out on a date and maybe 50-90% of the people she decided to go on a date with was a dick that still leaves us with a 10% of a lot of people who are totally ok and if she decides to end things that’s a liz lemon thing and not a Tina fey is hot why isn’t she with anyone thing. Also I totally would (care about 30Rock if it felt like anything other than sketches stapled together)

What I found far more off-putting and derailing was Jordan’s injection of his dating life.  The story about the executive not calling him back doesn’t even touch on the topic.

Ha ha, yes, that was weirdly creepy. It’s amazing how quickly he made me deeply sympathetic to the non-responsive executive… ^^;

It might have been a different story if his penis’s opinion had segued into discussing the post, or analyzing how Fey matches conventional standards of attractiveness but is said not to (a sort of real-penis vs. fictional-penis difference of opinion) but following up with “My Penis - Further Adventures!” didn’t endear him to me. I wouldn’t have loved a story about a judgmental vagina leaving too many stalk-y voicemails either, frankly.

By the way, I have to give Tina Fey credit for one of the funniest bits I’ve seen in a while: the awesome combination of Little Edie Beale, Jackie Kennedy, and UES socialite that came out of left field in the episode a few weeks ago.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/01/so_how_good_is_tina_feys_grey.html

It’s amazing how quickly he made me deeply sympathetic to the non-responsive executive

I hope for his sake that the executive doesn’t work in the same office as he does. He may be surprised to learn that not all 44-year-old career-focused divorcees are slaveringly grateful for ardent pursuit by younger subordinates.

The irony is isnt Alec Baldwin an MRA and Tina Fey a feminist?

@ Jake #1: The Dirtbombs, Sharevai.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxSX9-Z5V14

Your comment actually exemplifies why I am attracted to successful women: the challenge.

That’s convenient; I imagine that the more you open your mouth the more challenging getting a woman becomes…

LOL Bagelsan! Def worked here!

Jordan, verily you are batting 1.000 here this afternoon.

Good luck on Sunday, Jordan.  I assume that IRL your name isn’t Jordan but the stuff about female executive, younger male receptionist (whose penis has opinions), voice mail, e-mail, and age 44 are for realz.  So, let us know if it turns out the executive reads this blog.

Bagelsan FTW!

So, I don’t watch 30 Rock often enough, but I do know about the “Liz is ugly” meme. It always makes me think about how USian television characters who are supposed to be unattractive are always played by people who are actually very conventionally attractive. So being that 30 Rock is so meta, maybe the constant reminders of Liz’s supposed ugliness are actually a commentary on that? 

And whenever I do watch the show, I always see Liz sabotaging her relationships. I always get the sense that she’d like a relationship as a sort of affirmation of her all-around success, because a successful modern feminist woman is supposed to have it all, but she doesn’t really want to be in an actual relationship. The expectation is that she should be desperate to be in a relationship, as a successful but single woman. So she’s either playing along and pretending to want a relationship, or has really convinced herself that she wants one. But again, I don’t watch the show often enough, so I could be completely wrong here.

Does nobody know the First Rule of Holes anymore? ‘Cause there’s at least one person on this thread who should look it up.

She’s not as obsessed about her self-image as are the show’s “A-listers” like Jack and Jenna and Tracy. As a woman, however, she’s not allowed to get away with that lack of concern as are Frank or Pete.

Lemon is the smartest kid in that group—I wonder if the message is that smart people (or smart women, anyways) shun relationships.

I think the character of Liz just doesn’t work if she’s in a happy, satisfying, healthy relationship.  It would be like Jack quitting GE to pursue a career in social work.

#61: I am ded of irony.

“Men who push for one-night stands in bars tend to be more confident if they are hitting on someone they don’t sit around fantasizing is their girlfriend.”

OK, I’m honestly confused by the situation that statement is describing.  I’d offer a theory, but it’s 5am so my brain’s not getting it.  Apologies.

Also, Neko Case and Nick Cave might be hurting, but Noel Coward was knee deep; knee deep.  Jordan be jealous, yo.

OT 1:  Tons of Wisconsin Solidarity protests Saturday at noon.  Chris Bowers, now of Daily Kos, has the details.

OT 2:  I don’t remember.  Did I mention it’s 5am?

I’m really late to this thread (yay, loss of internet :/), but @medrawt @14, happy people don’t generally make the best comedy, in my opinion.  The only comedian who I find pretty funny who doesn’t seem pretty unhappy is Brian Regan.  If you list some of the most influential comedians, they all lived pretty troubled lives.  Also, while I don’t watch 30 Rock I would think the most likely explanation for all of the comment’s about Liz’s appearance is that it is a critique of unrealistic expectations of beauty in show business.  It just seems to me that if Tina Fey actually experienced that kind of treatment that she is smart enough to recognize it for the judgmental bullshit that it is.

(On an unrelated note, it looks like the Mabus troll is making his comments even longer!  How does he even find time to write that much drivel?  He must be unemployed…)

Well, What: and the butthurtness follows as night does day.

Jordan, offering your penis’s opinion is offensive, because this is what you’re saying:

“Dear ladies who have objected to media portrayals of women as only valuable insofar as they are fuckable, please fear not!  I, a man you don’t know from Adam, feels strongly that I would totally validate your existence by spraying semen on your stomach.  So don’t worry.  You aren’t Unwomen.  I, a man, have declared your worth right here and now.”

The point is that we don’t actually need reassurance that someone will stick it to us even if we wear glasses/have big asses/are tomboys.  Feminism isn’t a club started by women who believe male attention validates us and are simply seeking men who pride themselves on “alternative” tastes.  Imagine if I said, “It’s okay that most women think you’re a dork, Jordan. I’d totally date you.”  It’s not a compliment.

What I found far more off-putting and derailing was Jordan’s injection of his dating life.  The story about the executive not calling him back doesn’t even touch on the topic.

But it certainly was illuminating.  After all, he—-a bona fide owner of a penis—-validated a woman by deigning to offer his penis to her.  And she, for reasons that make NO SENSE AT ALL, has yet to gratefully fall on his offer like the lifeline to acceptance as a human being it is.  It’s almost like she wants something more than a man to say, “I am a man. I validate you.”

It’s unwise to conflate Tina Fey with Liz Lemon.  Tina Fey, the person, seems to be pretty happily married, and for a long time.  I think she made Lemon neurotic about relationships because she didn’t want Lemon to ever have a boyfriend, because she knows the first rule of sitcom writing is that once the single main character stops being single, things get boring. The only reason I think that breaking this rule with Jack will be okay is Jack’s dating life was the stupidest part of the show (except in the first season).  Now it’s over.

Chet, I think this is just another example of you assuming women are dumber than they are, which is the flip of you thinking you’re smarter than you are.  Male privilege!  Fey’s characterization does fly over your head, and I get that, but the problem isn’t her or her writing, it’s you and your dullness.  And that you think I said that Lemon is somehow mentally stable is just another example.  I was far more specific than that, noting that she is both neurotically averse to sharing her space and neurotic about sex, both of which interfere with being in a relationship.  Where Fey is smarter than you—-which isn’t hard, I’ll admit—-is that she doesn’t assume portraying a neurosis means that a writer is required to have that neurosis fixed.  On the contrary, she seems to believe that people become more themselves as they age, neuroses and all. This strikes me as a valid observation.

I don’t really understand all the “but Tina Fey/Liz Lemon isn’t ugly!”  I don’t think the character is portrayed as ugly on the show at all.  I think the only person who regularly calls her unattractive is Jack, who obviously has his own issues and is, generally speaking, ridiculous.

Liz is portrayed as

1) very awkward and lacking self-confidence

2) not spending a lot of time on her appearance

3) having disgusting personal habits

4) being intensely neurotic, especially about sex.

Most of the men she sees on a regular basis find her unappealing not because she is ugly, but because of the features listed above.

But it has repeatedly been shown that men who don’t know her find her attractive, including men who are very conventionally attractive - e.g. Jon Hamm’s character.

Furthermore, several of Jack’s love interests have been threatened by Liz, and apparently consider her a potential romantic rival until they get to know her well enough to see the aforementioned qualities.

I don’t really understand how people have trouble grasping this.

The point is that we don’t actually need reassurance that someone will stick it to us even if we wear glasses/have big asses/are tomboys.

Does that mean I should sell my shares of Clinique and Jenny Craig? How about Spanx?

<blockquote>Does that mean I should sell my shares of Clinique and Jenny Craig? How about Spanx? </iblockquote>

She was talking about feminists, idiot.  Most women, having been repeatedly told since birth by everyone around them that their validation as people rests in their fuckability by men, accept it as true.  It’s really goddamn hard to look around you and realize that EVERYTHING IS BULLSHIT.  The effort of doing so deserves more than your snotty attempts at “wit.”

The effort of doing so deserves more than your snotty attempts at “wit.”

I guess I should have distinguished between feminists and non-feminist women—the enlightened ones vs. those dumb bunnies who have absorbed the patriarchy’s messages—that seems to be OK.

Most women have to make choices in life as to how much they need to capitulate to the patriarchy to get what they want out of life. I wear make-up, do my hair, and wear a skirt to work because if I didn’t, it would be detrimental to my career. I choose to do this knowing full-well it is bullshit and the men in the workplace do not have all of these beauty standards that I have to comply with. I can speak out about it, but in the end, looking at my situation in life (having to need a paycheck and generally liking the kind of work that I do) I have to make these choices.

If tomorrow the patriarchy went away. I’ll be one of many women that would show up to work neat and clean, yet no make-up, hair cut short and easy to manage, and legs unshaven, skirts optional (they are comfy sometimes), heals thrown the fuck out.

Chet - saying that Liz Lemon purposefully sabotages her relationships because she doesn’t really want to be in a relationship isn’t the same thing as saying she’s “well-adjusted” or “an example of fun singlehood.”  You’re attacking a straw man.

Ann Friedman, in the “Neko Case Can’t Get Laid” post cited by Amanda:

“Freddie thinks that a woman’s beauty, smarts, and professional success have something to do with how much sex she has.

Ahahahahahahahahhaaha. [breath] HAHAHAHAH AHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!”

Note how the terms are “beauty, smarts, and professional success” versus “how much sex she has.”

That’s HOW MUCH SEX SHE HAS. Not the degree to which she is regarded as a complete, interesting, fun, full-spectrum human person. Nor is it whether she has, or should have, fulfilling, rewarding relationships with men (or anyone else).

More Ann Friedman:

I agree that men who are turned off by ambition and success are men you don’t really want to know. But … would it hurt to have sex with them occasionally? Like, when you are really hard up? Just askin’.

The “you” she is addressing there is men and their penises (so to speak). So like it or not, the perspective of the penis does belong in this conversation. That’s not the same as saying the penis shall have all the right answers.

For example, men who are turned off by ambition and success are assholes. I know many such men. I don’t like them. I don’t defend them. Frankly, I don’t understand them, and I don’t especially want to. I am NOT asking to be congratulated for this point of view.

One last from Ann F.:

Being objectified doesn’t mean you actually get laid! Worst of all worlds: Catcalls but not cunnilingus. One million sadfaces.

Cunnilingus is a good thing, if nothing else a small compensation for the particular injustices and constraints of being a female ‘rock star.’ I agree. Notice, please, how Ann did not—though she could have—frame ‘serious critical engagement with Neko Case’s musical and poetical oevre’ as a small compensation for the injustices under discussion; nor did she frame ‘adoring and appreciating Neko Case as a fully-fledged adult human being’ as a compensation for the injustices.

It’s fair to ask whether accomplished, brilliant, famous women are getting as much sex as accomplished, brilliant, famous men. If they are not, it’s fair to ask why not. Asking these questions does not necessarily reduce or demean the women in question, if only because women—even famous, brilliant ones—have sexual desires, and when these women are heterosexual, as Neko Case is, these questions unavoidably necessitate, AMONG OTHER THINGS, considerations of the penis’s perspective.

Jordan: Men work out because they want women to be attracted to them.

(“Heart health” and “enjoyment” being for pussies only, I guess? ) Less snarkily, exercise is not a good comparison to non-optional female beauty rituals; working out is good (for most people) even in a sex-vacuum (probably a term I shouldn’t google…) because it actively benefits you even if it in no way makes you more attractive to the people around you. But wearing makeup, wearing heels, or wearing skirts in crappy weather—none of the rigmarole women are generally expected to go through has any kind of objective benefit to it. Wearing eyeliner does not make you a healthier person like jogging does, slipping on some heels isn’t going to improve the amount you can lift, and I’ve certainly never seen any kind of skirt-wearing boost to female longevity.

(PS. You getting laid yet? I’m deeply fascinated by your “dating” strategy of irritating the ranking women around you. ^^)

Chet: But she doesn’t do that. It’s clear from the show that her relationships dissolve because of her intrinsic and funny failures as a person.

Look, do you consider it an “intrinsic failure” that she refuses to compromise and meet boyfriends halfway on things? I personally consider it to be more-or-less purposeful “sabotage” because she knows she does it, she even watches herself do it—think of her recent dramatic airplane breakup with Carol—and she doesn’t change her behavior. She’s a <strike>little bit</strike> lot crazy around relationships but I don’t think she’s crazy enough to think that doing the exact same thing over and over—the sabotage—is truly going to get different results, and yet she still doesn’t change her ways. Having a relationship clearly isn’t as important to her as doing her own thing is, even if she never explicitly states that (or even if she doesn’t fully realize it herself.)

I think that other characters, like Carroll, and Jack (as the exchange quoted above—“You can either let go of your precious autonomy, or you can teach your cat to dial 911.”—shows) are totally aware of it. Plus, remember that Liz’s response is that she has life alert, which suggests that she isn’t totally unconscious of it herself. She is aware, and has addressed the workaround.

She would rather be autonomous than not, even if that means she can’t be in a relationship. The relationship idea is important to her, but not the most important thing evar. She occasionally has optimism that she’ll find someone who can work with her weirdness, and occasionally abandons hope of that. Note that her solution to abandoning that hope, however, is NOT forcing herself to perform better hawtness. It is reveling in her weirdness full-bore. (see the clip in this post.)

Oh. That last para was @ Chet, not that he’ll listen, because he never does seem able to listen to things that ladyfolks like Amanda, Bagelsan, and myself say. Maybe he doesn’t listen to menfolks either (that seems kind of likely), but I don’t see too much of that here.

I knew this black guy in the Marines who was convinced I was racist simply because I was white. Similarly, some feminists are convinced men are sexist simply because they are men.
Comment #83: Jordan on 02/28 at 09:57 AM

From what I can see, the people here who think you are sexist aren’t saying it because you’re male.  They think you’re sexist because of the things you say.