Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Mean Girls

Last night I read a handful of pages from a blog so horrible it burned itself right into my eyeballs. This is the blog of a woman who thinks she’s better than all the women in the world—based on what she describes as her undeniably hot physical appearance, her level of education (four years of college), strong libido, financial stability (six months worth of savings), and interest in guns, gambling, and science fiction—and also better than the vast majority of the men, which makes it woefully hard for the poor girl to date, she says. “Quality dates quality,” she says, so she offers as a dating tip that most of the men who try to court her would be better off approaching fat, desperate, single mothers in need of U.S. citizenship—women more on their own level, she says.

This attitude would be quite bad enough if she didn’t also include many references to things that disprove her personal theories of greatness. I give as evidence this picture—which she self-selected and supplied as evidence of hotness—cropped tight on her chunky, unstylish, officey, suitable-for-wear-with-nude-pantyhose shoes. (I’m avoiding linking to the blog itself, because the last thing this miserable hussy needs is more support—and it seems she somehow makes her living through hits from her blog.)

Anyway, the point is, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize (contrary to my belief, say, in college) that I’m not better than anyone else. Matter of fact, no one is better than anybody else. Certainly not celebrities. (Simon Doonan says in Wacky Chicks: “We’ve done something silly…In the 1980s, for example, a collective screechy hysteria infected popular culture, and everybody rashly decided that movie actors were really, really, really important…We chose show biz folk. And then we sat there like puddings and inhaled all this drivel about the supposedly squintingly brilliant glam lives of these celebs, and we actually started to believe the hype.”) Certainly not homegirl with the blog. Certainly not rich people, or very attractive people, or even people who live on the coasts. (Although of this it has been admittedly hard to disavow myself.)

So the point is, I hope I never write anything here or anywhere that comes off as self important in the way that the lady miss Chunky Shoes writes hers. (Add this to the existing set of new blog anxieties.) This girl just wants a life filled with good words, a good man, family and friends, her lamentably undisciplined cat Cali, Raiders football, some cute home wares from Anthropologie, very tall shoes, Court TV, and so forth. So please, forgive me in advance, if it reads any other way.

9 comments:

mexi melt said...

props for honesty.
it's one of my most favorite facets of this www, and psuedo anonymity.

i am a mean girl, too, and my friends area always calling me out on it.
sure, i may come back in my next life as an overweight bus driver but at least it's an honest job.

Megan said...

It is so, so hard not to come off as self-important when you're writing about yourself all day. And thinking that maybe people are interested. But trying really hard not to is a good start.

I don't suppose I could request a white background/dark font, now that I've been here for ten minutes and all?

bobvis said...

1. I maintain that some people are better than others.

2. Thinking that you are better than someone else leads to very bad things. (Looking like a stuck-up buffoon, discounting the perfectly valid thoughts of one's "lessers", etc.)

3. Saying out loud that you think you are better than someone else is just demonstrating that you don't understand the prior point.

Jeff Brown said...

It might be useful to try to define "better". Better equipped to give advice? A better candidate for a friend? Better to see on the street with a gun? Better to be robbed by (e.g. government vs. others)?

I'd like to say there are some constants, such as that we're all equally entitled to our civil rights. But even those get the squeeze, for some people legitimately.

Jeff Brown said...

Also, contra Megan, I much prefer white on black. I find it easier to read, easier on the eyes, and easier on my laptop's battery.

Macneil Shonle said...

She is also mistaken to believe that her masculine qualities (guns, gambling) improve her attractiveness to men.

See, straight men want to see some femininity in the straight women they date.

To be sure, I'm sure some men would find the guns and gambling combination appealing. But I'd be willing to bet most straight guys are looking for a female to complement what they lack. Not another buddy to drink beer with.

M.C. said...

When I read it, I felt kind of sad for her living in the constricted, rigid, judgemental, cold and unfeeling box she had drawn for herself to live in.

Someone so alienated from life, I wanted to come up with something to say to break through the walls of her self-invented prison. The person who wrote that blog post was once a little girl who knew how to be full of joy, how to be conscious without being self-conscious, how to read a story and imagine herself inside it. And now she believes she has all the answers, while utterly bereft of the soft and beautiful music playing within life.

Richard P. said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Richard P. said...

Life's too short to waste your time on stupid people. She should have checked S.D. before she posted. The internet is there so you don't look stupid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

Not 97.5 hun, 95. I'm guessing she didn't score well on the GRE, and that is why she is not in grad school for Econ. What a hack.