Generation Meh

Psst…did I mention exclusive Facebook-only content? Consider it mentioned.

If you’re into that sort of thing, Generation Meh now has a nifty Facebook page. This baby is brand new, so feel free to get in on the ground floor with your liking.  I often have things to post that don’t merit a full discussion here, but are also too long or involved for Twitter, so Facebook will now be home to all of the brain dumpage that I’ve previously been bottling up. You will be edified and I’ll be (slightly) less repressed. That’s what I call a win-win!

*It makes me sad how few of you will probably get the reference. Also, old.

I remember telling a friend years ago that she lived life as it were a movie and she were the star and the rest of the world were just extras inserted to fill in the background of a given scene (I’ve become a much better friend since those days, obviously). I was reminded of this conversation when I read this piece about the popularity of Eat, Pray, Love style pitches to literary agents. It seems everyone wants to land a fat advance to document their voyage of self-discovery, Bali or bust, y’all.

But it isn’t just aspiring writers who believe that they have an audience-friendly story to tell. We all subscribe to this mindset to some degree. And strictly speaking, we all do have life stories, it’s just that the vast majority of them aren’t the stuff of bestsellers or blockbusters. That doesn’t stop popular culture from encouraging us to believe otherwise, of course. Reality tv (one day you’re just another nameless party girl and the next, you’re Snooki, America’s sweetheart), social media (you can have 150 000 Twitter followers hanging on your every tweet and still grocery shop in anonymity) and the logic of personal branding convince us we’ve all got something to tell or sell. Elevator pitches, Messageboard rants, talk radio, Craigslist Missed Connections, a hundred and one outlets to share your triumphs, tragedies and insights with the world and the eau de narcissism in the air that convinces you that such sharing really is caring.

I’m as guilty as the next person, bien sur. I’ve just figured out that most of my stories aren’t that interesting. Do you really care about how I came this close to having a sniveling, toddler-worthy meltdown in the middle of the children’s section of Barnes & Noble five minutes before closing because I couldn’t find a copy of Brown Bear, Brown Bear and because they were playing Tiffany over the PA and because I haven’t slept in six months? Probably not. Doesn’t stop me from stockpiling or mentally transcribing anecdotes such as this, though.

And framing our lives as narratives isn’t just the result of human ego. We’re also attempting to  assign meaning and purpose and gravity. We want to believe that we’re getting smarter or stronger or making better decisions, that there’s something relatable, enviable, teachable,  something poignant that can be culled and offered up from our experiences. Something bigger than just one little person and their own private pain and individual epiphanies. There has to be be. It happened and it matters. We matter. Here are the Facebook photo albums, the blog, the book and the MTV series to prove it, to prove us.

Nope. The title isn’t a typo. So, I haven’t been in the best mood lately. Just scuff your foot in the dirt bummed out more or less. Heave a big sigh and throw your bag on the chair instead of hanging it up because the world is mean, so why should you bother with niceties? down.  But I don’t have the time or energy to be bummed out. I’ve had writing to churn out, several important meetings for which  I needed to be in decent form (cross your fingers in my direction, kiddos), a panel presentation on social media to deliver, etc. The option to sit around brooding was, well, not an option.

Photo by Brad & Ying

There are times when you want to get to the root of what’s eating you (aphids?) and there are other times when you just need to get going, stick a bookmark in and plan to come back to it later when time allows. So what helps you shake off your slump and re-energize? My prescription is pretty simple. What makes you happy when you’re doing it? Okay, got that in mind? Start doing more of it. Don’t worry about fixing the blues (there will be time for that), focus on increasing the happy and then, like a vampire, feed off those good vibes and use them to get you out the door to tackle your to-dos. It doesn’t have to be what makes you happy in the grand, philosophical sense (actually, it’s better if it isn’t; creating more world peace would be kind of a headache), just the everyday I AM HAVING FUN RIGHT NOW happy. Is it playing with your dog? Stop reading this and take him to the park. Then come back and finish reading. Maybe it’s knitting? Start cranking out scarves and don’t stop until you feel all warm and fuzzy Zen. In my case, it’s new ideas and new projects and sweating out my frustration, so I started sending emails, throwing around possibilities, brainstorming my brains out. Oh, and going to the gym seven days a week.

And you know what? It was the equivalent of an emotional Red Bull. The temporary high I got from reveling in my favorite activities gave me the burst of intellectual energy I needed to bang out my presentation and to put my best foot forward when schmoozing. And that’s really all I was asking for in the moment.

Sometimes, you need open heart surgery and sometimes, you can get by with a band-aid. It ain’t perfect, but life goes on and often you have to go on (the best way you can) with it.

Despite my own documented inadequacies in the moving-in-time-with-music arena, I can’t resist the summer guilty pleasure that is FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance? Actually, the fact that I’ve had the idea for a post about the show’s illustration of social gender norms on my mind for a couple of weeks now clearly takes SYTYCD? out of the realm of bubble gum entertainment and into valuable research, yes?  Or so I tell myself as I pout about the impossibility of ever executing a perfect jete in this lifetime.

The show  has undergone multiple format and judging changes this year, but the most interesting part of the season for me has been the gender disparity, the recalibrations this has prompted and the subtle but important object lesson about masculine behavioral norms that’s been evident in the voting. The female dancers were picked off quite quickly (Lauren being the one holdout), but this isn’t particularly surprising. Although, with fewer finalists this year, the drop-off seemed more dramatic and has made for some interesting choreographic challenges as it relates to developing guy/guy routines that are intended to be firmly heterosexual at all costs (to varying degrees of success). The popular assumption when it comes to reality shows involving audience voting is that it’s young female viewers who hold the sway and that said young female viewers largely prefer attractive male contestants to ones from their own cohort. The results don’t always bear this out, but the trope persists. In the case of SYTYCD?, front runner Kent seems almost as if he were custom-manufactured in a lab (the same one that produced Justin Bieber perhaps) to appeal to young female voters in just the right way – cute, but not too cute, wide-eyed, from a wholesome small-town family, respectful of the judges and tooth-achingly earnest.

While Kent’s popularity surprised no one (thankfully, he’s a decent dancer), the judges seemed downright baffled by the inability of other male contestants to find a similar following. When early fave Billy was eventually dismissed, judge Nigel Lythgoe (he doubles as the show’s executive producer) speculated that America never warmed up to his “androgyny,” as if he were a dancing David Bowie and not simply a very talented but not overtly masculine performer of which the show has had legions over its seven season run. The judging panel was more stymied by the failure of contestant Robert to catch on with the audience. A great dancer, ridiculously handsome by any conventional standard and seemingly a hard worker and generally nice guy. How was this not a recipe for success? And yet, Robert ended up in the bottom three for weeks on end, leaving the judges scratching their heads at why America wasn’t voting for the hot guy with the right moves.

Eventually, their lavish and obvious praise paid off and Robert managed to pick up steam with the voting public*, but, by then, I’d had the source of the audience disconnect pegged for weeks. Robert wasn’t playing his part. He wasn’t  treating his good looks with the self-awareness and gravity that we expect from men of his level of attractiveness, straight or gay. Instead of comporting himself in a manner that acknowledged his genetic good fortune, he acted like your goofy 12 year-old brother who forgot to take his Ritalin and this both confused and annoyed America. It’s obvious that he knows he’s possessed of a matinee idol appearance and takes some care in his grooming and presentation, so why the hell won’t he just man up and get with the script? Good-looking men aren’t supposed to duck the power that their looks afford them, they’re supposed to inhabit it, embrace it, if not wield it as a tool of outright social assertiveness (George Clooney is a total pro at this). To do otherwise, isn’t simply flouting convention (for that we can look to Brad Pitt’s penchant for hobo beards or Joaquin Phoenix’s penchant for hobo everything), it marks the perpetrator as one who  lacks canniness, shrewdness, a mature sense of how the world is and the ambition to use all of his assets to conquer it. And who’s gonna vote for that?

Of course, it’s exactly the opposite for women. If men assert, women must signal. You learn to embody or approximate the traits that encapsulate heterosexual female beauty at this moment (always subject to change, bien sur)  and wait for that tag to be bestowed on you for a job well done.  It’s not only perfectly acceptable for a woman to be seemingly unaware of her beauty, it’s actually the societal preference. Recently, someone told me I was cute and not only was I cute, but that the cutest thing about me was that I had no idea how cute I really was. In essence, I was being lauded for not only conforming to a socially acceptable standard of attractiveness, but, more importantly, for appearing to be ignorant of this standard and my conformity to it. Exactly what doesn’t fly for the menfolk. And if you are rewarded for ignorance (in that it adds to your demure allure), you are punished for knowingness, both when it comes to beauty and to the assertion of other power traits (intelligence for example). I could (and did in the first draft) go into a long-winded discussion around the media treatment of Angelina Jolie and Hillary Clinton as typical of this paradigm, but in the interests of brevity, just name-dropping them more or less allows you to connect those dots for yourself.

Bottom line? Whether it relates to beauty, brains or a host of other traits, men are aware, while women are oblivious (but not so oblivious that they don’t make an effort!). And both are punished for defying convention and refusing to play their parts, in the form of reality show vote tallies or otherwise.

*This coincided with host Cat Deeley mentioning that he was celebrating a birthday that week and would be turning 20. Once America figured out that this guy had been  just 19 throughout the majority of the competition (despite looking a heckuva lot older), I think they were more inclined to cut him some slack on not yet having fully grasped the implicit lessons around the bearing and knowingness that masculine beauty demands.

Today’s installment of the American Dream Essay Series comes to us from Brittany Shoot. I “met” Brittany through the comments section of my Bitch blog, but I’m pretty sure there was no swearing involved.

A couple of years ago, I wrote my master’s thesis on young people’s ethical right to privacy online. I was absorbed in Millennial theory for months, but it didn’t hit me that I was a full-fledged member of Gen Y until I realized I no longer cared what adults thought of me. An adult myself by then — if you consider 25 an adult, which by our increasingly confusing standards, you may not — I suddenly stopped worrying about whether people older than me approved of my apparently very adult decisions; examples may include moving abroad, getting married, having kids, or having one’s tubes tied. In this context, the decision at hand didn’t matter so much as my complete autonomy, the joyous feeling of being unburdened by adult expectations and a world in which there was supposed to be one proper course to follow. For the first time in my life, without a nagging suspicion that I would later be denied entry into some boring club for middle-aged conformists, I decided I was done. I might get older, but I didn’t need their approval to move forward.

Photo by 917press

Only later did I realize that even though — or perhaps because — I don’t tend to consider the judgment of those ten years (or more) my senior, I’m completely ill prepared for the niceties that comprise adult relationships. I swear like a sailor, if not a 15-year-old boy, and I generally blurt out whatever’s on my mind. I’m not trying to be rude or make everyone uncomfortable. I don’t need to seek out space in which to act on my weird tendencies; I’m frankly a little weary of being the freak at the party and just want to be myself, without too much hoopla surrounding it, if it can be helped. But I also don’t want to be so old and stuffy that I can’t be myself. I equate adulthood with growing into an intolerable beast of a person more concerned about making the bed than world news. I’d rather speak several languages than fuss over thank you cards. I’d rather do what I love for meager pay than be tied to a soulless desk job, from where I can watch my (and your) youth fade away.

Perhaps it makes sense, then, that I am the non-adult in seemingly every social interaction I have. People look at me with bewildered amusement at first-time gatherings and wonder why my unshaven legs, thrift store wardrobe, and frank admission that I don’t make much money right now doesn’t make me blush or stammer uncomfortably. If anything, they’re the ones who become uncomfortable. What they don’t realize is that their yardstick simply doesn’t measure my standards for adulthood. For example, my partner and I are actively childfree and plan to always be so, which automatically removes us from some of the so-called “adult” discussions about how people have matured and feel complete — though they’re often also interrupted when they have to go do parental things. My partner and I also both work jobs about which we are deeply passionate but for which we are still underpaid. In other words, we opted for the alternate American Dream — in part because my partner isn’t even an American citizen — in a time when this is becoming increasingly normal; yet we have yet to meet anyone else, besides the friends we already have, for whom this is the norm. Instead, we meet thirtysomethings who work jobs they tolerate for an end goal we don’t understand. I don’t question it to their faces because what if they don’t know what the goal is? Is it my job to deconstruct their reality? And am I responsible for assisting in the restoration if I cause the demolition?

A friend in her fifties recently told me that I’m the artist in the family because I feel so compelled to act based on emotion. It felt like a compliment in the sense that I’d just classify myself as a woman-child. In comparison with my friend’s life, my house is messy, my schedule is hectic, and my manners are only on display when necessary. She begins sentences with “Forgive me for saying so but…” whereas I lob curses left and right, no apology offered. She’s an unlikely pal for someone like me, but we click because we both seek a wider world in which we can find meaning in what we do. And, she may be a full-fledged adult by now, but she doesn’t care if I forget to buy curtains and wander around naked, or don’t unpack for three months after a move. It isn’t her life. It’s mine.

-Brittany Shoot

Brittany Shoot is a freelance writer, editor, and critic currently living in Copenhagen, Denmark. Sometimes she writes essays about her supposedly scandalous adult decisions under a pseudonym.