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"Too Much Sex Ruined My Life"
The other day I was thumbing through a woman's magazine (shut up, I was bored) when I encountered an article with the above title. I don't know exactly what I was expecting from it -- tales of knackered libidos and mutilated vaginas, perhaps -- but after reading I was appalled at the message it sent out to readers. The article featured three women's stories of regret about their previous actions but the title was a complete misnomer.
Two of the women in question found it hard dealing with the reputation they'd been cursed with following their colourful youths. Yes, "too much sex" indirectly ruined their lives, but looking at it objectively their problems were in actuality caused by the narrow-minded shits who made hell for them because of what they did. This seems less about sex and more about society's hypocritical attitude to promiscuous women, which is a different kettle of fish entirely.
The third story was about a woman who had contracted herpes from her long-term boyfriend... again not so much the issue of "too much sex" as that of "sex with one complete and utter shithead." Apparently his excuse was that he was too "nervous" to let her know of his situation beforehand. Remind me of that one next time I fuck up someone's life.
This seems like a classic "men are studs, women are sluts, it's not fair!" rant but it's more than that. One of the women claimed something along the lines of: "I realise now that I just wanted boys to like me and was going about it the wrong way." Bullshit. Not only are promiscuous women sneered upon, but society seems desperate to pin their actions to some emotional instability or pathetic need for acceptance, as if major problems are the only plausible justifications for casual sex. God forbid such sinful misbehaviour could ever be about pleasure.
The worst thing is that the women in question are buying it!
No doubt due to all the guilt induced by the ridiculous amount of shit they face for their actions, most are only too happy to put their behaviour down to some character flaw or another. They're brainwashed into considering themselves cheap, skanky whores; and the only way to prevent their self-esteem from sinking even lower is to blame it on some petty past trauma*. Then they're able to smile sweetly and plead: "Well, that's not really me, you know. I see now that I was only trying to make up for my dysfunctional childhood...(or something to that effect)"
And so previously powerful females are systematically crushed into insecure, guilt-ridden shadows terrified of ever again pissing off that evil monster "society".
Their crime?
Acting as males have done for as long as they've existed.
But what of the strong women that don't crack under such extreme pressure: the few that society recognizes as assertive, emotionally stable and unashamed of what they do? They can't just be sluts, of course. They're the cold, evil, power-driven, manipulative sluts. Or the female equivalent to 90% of men.
What angered me most about the article was the concluding paragraph -- I've lost the mag, otherwise I'd post it. I took it to mean that this glaring hypocrisy may not not right, but all females should go along with it regardless, and avoid at all costs any lifestyle that may induce the scorn of "society" ie, the narrow-minded individuals that enforce this antiquated opinion. (Of course, in doing this, the readers become the narrow-minded individuals.)
What kind of fucked-up attitude is that?!
Granted, the magazine was targeted at women between 25ish and 60ish: mostly of the generations brought up to sneer upon female promiscuity -- they're gonna want their opinions reaffirmed and not challenged. But surely anyone of any generation should challenge (and especially not reinforce) any double standard, be it sexist, racist, homophobic or whatever? I can't imagine Suffragettes and Suffragists going: "Fair enough, women don't have the vote, but what can ya do? If we speak out against it we'll get a bad reputation, we'd be better off just supporting our husbands."
Maybe it's an over-dramatic analogy, but the sad fact remains that nothing is ever gonna change if people continue to cherish and reinforce such an old-fashioned and sexist view.
"Bridget Jones: The END of Reason"
Bridget Jones -- along with Harry Potter, Big Brother and various others -- is one of those bizarre modern crazes I'd always intended to look into, but never quite got around to. The film was pretty good, my friends reckoned the book was hilarious, and the general consensus is that it's the definitive 'chick' novel. Prelim exam-leave provided me with a lot of spare time (and I was desperate for any activity that might enable me to procrastinate revision) so -- only having the sequel in the house -- I read Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in a mere few hours. It's amusing, it's absorbing and (providing you're of the female persuasion and have a fair few hours to waste) chances are you'll finish it in the space of a day or two.
But is it "a good book"?
I'd have to answer that one with an emphatic no.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it, but it was that uneasy "I know I really shouldn't" enjoyment that you get when watching trashily sexist romance films, and to be honest the amount of irritation felt at the novel's completely anti-feminist stance definitely outweighed any pleasure I got from it.
What's so wrong with it, then?
Bar the Smug Marrieds, all women in the novel are desperate, childish people who consider "Getting A Man" to be their ultimate goal in life. Everything they do and say is influenced by this. Smoking, gossiping, drinking, calorie-counting, literally everything. Even dissatisfaction with their careers is pushed to the sidelines in favour of stressing about relationships.
The novel may have those occasional "female empowerment" moments, but I found them more demeaning than anything. Almost all were triggered by some stressful man-related event, as if assertiveness and independence were only feasible alternatives if everything was less than peachy on the romance front. Many people (men and women) may choose such moments in their lives to reassess their attitude to life, but the implication that any sort of positive reinvention had to be a direct result of the behaviour of the person's spouse was just plain insulting.
Worst of all are the character's pathetic reliance on self-help books, and their endless conversations revolving around shallow relationship psychology:
"Should I call him?"
"Does he like me?"
"You don't want to seem desperate"
How any self-respecting female can plough her way through 400 odd pages of this nonsense without feeling just a smidgen of irritation is beyond me. As was said by Elizabeth Wurtzel, there are an endless array of relationship guides targeting women, but very, very few designed for men. While none of them offer bad advice as such, the general implication is that women are the ones who need to work at and change to suit relationships, while men can just do as they please.
And a lot of men are able to do this.
It's always been the way of things, this novel shows it still is the way of things.
Granted, Mark Darcy ends up with a fair amount of self-help books at the end, but this is just a lame attempt to appease the feminists, something to say: "look, men can be just as desperate for love." In real life this is unlikely to happen. Everyone knows few men would stoop to such levels, simply because they never need to.
Sweeping aside biological clocks, traditional stereotypes, human nature and the like, it's books like this that convince a horrific amount of men and women that men should, do and will always have that power when it comes to relationships.
The saddest thing is that females (myself included on occasion, I have to admit) do act like the characters in this novel, and can relate to them. Why, then, am I so bitter about this book? Why shouldn't women read and enjoy novels like this?
When thinking about this I got the terrible sensation I was becoming a whiny hypocritical feminist who finds fault in anything and everything, or one of those infuriatingly stubborn people who have no sense of humour concerning themselves, and so refuse to joke about anything that isn't 100% politically correct. Luckily, however, I was scanning a Joely Richardson interview when I found a quote that assured me that this was not the case, and which seemed to sum everything up perfectly: "I get annoyed when women are portrayed as Bridget Joneses, sitting by the phone and counting calories and cigarettes. We've all done it, but it's this much (holds up thumb and finger indicating a pinch) of our characters."
In my opinion, this is where the novel's main fault lies, as Bridget herself has virtually nothing else to define her personality. Unfortunately, it seems that most women don't see this huge difference between themselves and the protagonist of the novel, and love her because she shares their weaknesses. So, in the public eye, single women are reduced to simple (and, frankly, pathetic) variations on Bridget, Shaz and Jude.
The first real stirrings of the women's rights movement occurred almost a hundred years ago, and ever since then females have been making great progress towards full equality in virtually every area in life. Why, then, are authors like Helen Fielding continuing to churn out such demeaning and backwards texts? The Edge of Reason serves only to reinforce antiquated female stereotypes, and it's portrayal of women merely undermines the hard work done by many others throughout the 20th century.
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