Jezebel has about an article in this month’s Allure, purporting to address a new “syndrome” plaguing the privileged: Acquired Situational Narcissism.
The greatest narcissism, I think, is propagating the myth of infinite social decline. As if the sixteen zillion “sexual revolutions” and eras of various “enlightenments” never happened, Judith Newman seems to be doing a little hand-wringing over another one of those ‘disturbing trends’ she’s noted in the ultra-WASPWAIF club. This is, of course, all according to Jezebel, since I’d sooner drown myself in a bubblebath than pick up any “lady mag.”
Must confidence always be coupled with entitlement? Why is failure treated like a natural state and not a transitory condition, or even a useful lesson that drives one forward? The tyranny of ironclad codes of conduct for MEN and WOMEN could chokehold a fucking moose right here: women are less and less bound by the messages of biological inferiority they’re assaulted with since day 1, the kind that says Men Are Doctors and Women Are Nurses, etc. How old is this story? To disregard this implicit understanding of what it is to have a vulva between your legs is like, so unladylike; believing you can accomplish anything despite all material and experiential evidence to the contrary is encroaching on the province of men, obviously, not to mention their salaries and executive corner suites.
Failing that, an insistence on being first the caretaker of your own world rather than the caretaker of everyone else in the whole world makes you a self-obsessed, unfuckable bitch. Even if caring for yourself is a means to care for others, such is the case for all three of Newman’s examples in the public sphere, Hillary Clinton, Oprah, and Paris Hilton (whom I’m including here because she’s , wants to , and last Halloween, even dressed as , explaining “I’m wearing this for the troops because I know they’re having a hard time right now and don’t really get to celebrate Halloween.” Some of us are better at this game than others.)
Conversely, of course, this sort of assholism is a double bind for men, too. Any chord of self-doubt openly struck can emasculate a man in seconds flat. Anything below the superhuman, omnipotent lumberjack who knows the correct answer to every question and is never hysterical in the face of fear is sub par, my friend.
Newman seems like she’s doing a bang-up job of reinventing the wheel, though, bemoaning all these butch broads not buying that they’re relegated to the private sphere alone, a nation of lonely spinsters who will die alone for having set up shop outside the home and in the public sphere, the man’s sphere. You know which other writer also had some really fresh and exciting takes on overly-ambitious women? Your friend and mine, !! In 1839! Here, she tells all of us where we can best apply that MBA we just killed ourselves for, which is in the interest of men, obvs.
I feel that some apology, or rather some explanation, is necessary for the manner in which I have…been compelled to speak of the extraordinary ambition manifested by my countrywomen, in the present day, to make themselves mistress of every possible variety of intellectual attainment that can be acquired at school…Thousands pass away from the scene of their labours, but the labour still goes on; for the laws of nature change not, and the principles upon which the labour of man is carried into effect, remain the same.
What we most want in education, then, is to invest material things with the attributes of mind, and we want this more and more, as commerce, and arts, and manufactures increase in importance and extent. We want it more and more to give interest to our familiar and necessary occupations ; and we want it especially, that we may assist in redeeming the character of English men from the mere animal, or rather, the mere mechanical state, into which, from the nature and urgency of their occupations, they are in danger of falling.
Except while Newman was like, totally swamped writing obsessively fixated articles on Eva Longoria of a phantom fetus that didn’t actually exist swelling inside of her big fat size 0 uterus, consulting plastic surgeons about (“they’d always been pleasantly dimpled, but now, as I got older, they were undeniably pudgy,” she explains), or making us all uncomfortable by asking the leading question of “” with the apparent intent of scalding us with her stunningly off-key fantasies about screwing Dick Cheney, even Sarah Stickney Ellis still holds it up for the ladies.
It is a curious anomaly in the structure of modern society, that gentlemen may employ their hours of business in almost any degrading occupation, and, if they have but the means of supporting a respectable establishment at home, may be gentlemen still ; while, if a lady does but touch any article, no matter how delicate, in the way of trade, she loses caste, and ceases to be a lady. I say this with all possible respect for those who have the good sense and the moral courage to employ themselves in the business of their fathers and their husbands, rather than to remain idle and dependent ; because I know that many of them are ladies in the best acceptation of the word — ladies in the delicacy and propriety of their feelings, and more than ladies in the noble dignity of their general conduct. Still I doubt not they have had their difficulties to encounter from the influence of public opinion, and that their generous feelings have been often wounded by the vulgar prejudices prevailing in society against their mode of life.
Actually, Ellis sorta seems to believe that women are totally just superior in all ways to men, who may as well be cro-mags in her assessment of their function in society, which was basically relegated to commerce, which was basically the pursuit of beasts. She was sort of like, anti-capitalist. Which kinda rules since it reveals that paternalism in all its forms, be it from men or women, is totally about being “naturally” more valuable than whomever is being ‘cared’ for.
But seriously, when a Victorian manifesto about a woman’s place makes you look like a fat-knee’d dinosaur, maybe it’s time for both Newman and the ladymags to reassess how relevant their content is to whomever it is they’re ostensibly writing for (who is it they’re writing for, anyway?). But I guess how much can you ask of a lady who actually wants to f?
