So I started this book for English (that I read four years ago and forgot about… but don’t mind that!) and I finished it in the same night. I thought it needed a post.
The book, which I thought was going to be whiny feminism, was about an African American woman who married very young.
All her life, she fantasized and idealized love. It was something that swept her away; it was something that was sacred in nature and, frankly, perfect in every way, shape, and form. And then, she got to the marrying age. Her grandmother (mother figure) in the book married her off to some financially stable bloke and she was treated like a pack mule. Always complaining, she did not notice the good he was providing. The shelter, the food, the water were all ignored because she didn’t love him. But a love like that doesn’t exist. The perfect relationship doesn’t exist.
She ran away from husband number one for husband number two. He was a dreamer who treated her like a princess. But that wasn’t good enough for her. She needed to be respected, to be a part of everything, to be the center of attention. She stayed in her self-inflicted misery for twenty years until husband number two, a rather prosperous man, died. Then she went to husband number three.
It was the story of a woman who dreamed too much as a child and whose unrealistic ideals screwed up the rest of her life. This is the classic situation I bitch about daily. Is we aren’t realists, if we are optimists or even idealists, we will be screwed up. We will never be happy; we will never have the ability to be happy. The world will not become that fairy tale we’ve always hoped for because life actually sucks. Idealists are the worst.
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There is a male that lives in this household who does not wash his hands after using the bathroom. I know this for a fact, seeing as my study and general “hanging out” area is very near the bathroom. Countless times have I seen him enter the commode, heard the toilet flush, and in a matter of nanoseconds he is out of there. Now, I’m no scientist, but I am fairly certain that the time in between the toilet flushing and the door opening leaves absolutely no possibility of a proper handwash taking place.
Pardon my French, but that is fucking sick.
I wash my hands every time I use the restroom- with soap, warm water, and for a good 30 seconds. I do it mostly because of the frightening thought of who has been there before me and touched all the handles. However, if I regularly had to hold my dirty, urine-spouting penis every time I used the toilet, I’d be washing for a whole different reason. But nooope, not with this one- he could probably take a crap on his hand and he’d just be like, “Eh, it’s just poop. Let me wipe it off on the door handle and call it a day.”
Argghhh, men! Why do you have to be so yucky?
Ok, so I may be a tiny bit of a germaphobe (which isn’t a word by the way, and therefore my auto-corrector has suggested ‘hermaphrodite’ as a correction), but what’s so bad about that? Maybe if there had been a few more of us germaphobes about back in the day, perhaps the Black Plague wouldn’t have wiped out 1/3 of Europe, hm? Well, that’s a pretty horrible supposition, but you see where I’m going with this. Humans have had to develop germ-paranoia because it has been [and still is] incredibly deadly.
In conclusion (<— one of the worst ways to begin a conclusion), I’d like to ask all the men and women and babies and dexterous animals out there to make a conscious effort to wash your motha flippin hands/paws/cyborg arms. Do it after you use the restroom, before you prepare food, and whenever else you feel like it!
Good Day!
The weekend passed I spent in Oslo at the Rød Ungdom “Red Youth” film-festival, ProgFilm. I learned some, met some cool and nice people, some old friends, and two of our fellow-authors: Bjørn and Vegard. Huzzah.
The lecture I will focus this entry on was about feminism and sexual harassment. The movie was the sweedish “Hip hip Hora!” (Loosely translated: Hip hip Whore-ay!, but it’s more funny in sweedish…) and the speaker was Hanna Helseth, author of the book “Generation Sex”.
The lecture, and the book, is about sexual harassment, how young girls and women are expected to act a certain way, and how girls who have one-night-stands, or at least are said to have one-night-stands, easily gets labelled as a whore, of cheap. And it’s about sexual assaults, and how they are easily labeled as “reciprocal sex” if the girl/woman has a rumour for sleeping around.
These kinds of lectures always leave me thinking a lot, mostly about how terrible the world is. Middle- and High-school teachers tell their female students that guys pinching their asses is just a childish way of flirting, and that it’s meant tp be a compliment. And girls who dare speak up against it gets labelled as lesbian, “tight” (not in the good “ay, we tight, bro”-way…) and boring. Sometimes even a-sexual, meaning not having any interest in sex – Anti-sexual.
On the other hand: The girls who flirt with these guys, maybe even has a couple of boyfriends, or makes-out with guys sometimes at parties gets the blame for it if they get raped or assaulted in any other way.
How is this fair?
I believe in Simone deBeauvoir when she says that you’re not born a woman, you become one. I believe that society tries to shape girls and women to fit in the mould of “The Perfect Woman”. Not too flirty, not too out-spoken, pretty and insecure.
I have never fit into this mould, because my mother told me to speak my opinions, say no if I didn’t want it, say yes if I did want something, and just generally to be happy with the girl/young woman I am. To this I am thankfull, and I believe that it has made a lot of stuff easier for me. Guys learn quickly not to mess with me, I feel free (most of the time), and I wish that all girls could have this knowledge. A mould isn’t a good thing, because we’re all different, and we should let ourselves be different. And society should learn to accept these differences.
And most importantly: We have to respect ourselves and each other, in order for guys to respect us. Don’t call your girlfriends whores, or your “less-masculine” friends gay. Don’t speak down to a girl because she chooses to have sex, the same way you shouldn’t speak down to girls who chooses NOT to have sex. These are individual choices to be made my the individual person.
I think that was it from the soapbox for this time…
-Frida
So, I like reading. And I love sharing what I’ve read. And one of my most recent reads left me very undecided as to whether I actually liked it or not, but I think that it has somehow influenced me. At least the way I read, think, write and talk after reading it.
The book is said to be the most bought and least read american novel in the past half-century, and I can say I understand why. It’s a typical “Oh, I’m so smart, and I totally got it, and if you don’t get it you’re so stupid”-book for all the besserwisser-douchebags of the world, so everyone buys it, starts reading it, and puts it away. (Maybe I’m only saying this because I don’t think I got it? Or because I wanted to put it down and not open it throughout the whole thing?)
The only reason why I bought the book was because I was at a bookstore, and I was buying two books, and there was a 3 for 2 sale on books written in english. And my Language Arts teacher from when I went to American High School always told me that this was a book I would like. And she was always right with me: Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet and Antigone. All books she told me to read, all books I loved. And she always mentioned this one. So i bought it, and figured I’d read it.
I kind of liked the book, but kind of hated it. It’s hard to follow (stream-of-conciousness stuff) and I never managed to feel sympathy for the main-character (stream of conciousness in the mind of a snobby, stuck up, rich teen-age boy in New York. What’s not to like?) but if the goal of the book is to make me feel something then it did succeed. I felt hatred, pity and general dislike throughout the whole thing. And the book kind of made me think, some, and the way it’s written is a bit captivating. Especially the part where you keep wondering “Who the hell is this asshole talking to, anyways?”
Because the book is like a monologue, about the passing of the recent days in this jackasses life, about stuff that happened before, and about how he feels sorry for everyone for being poorer, stupider or in any way inferior to him. And it’s a good analysis of some peoples personalities, I guess.
I don’t regret reading the book (I rarely do…) and I would advice people to read it, I guess. Mostly because it’s such an “important” piece of litterature, but I hate it when people tell you to read books because they are important. Who decides that anyways? But maybe you should read it just to feel the same confusion that I’m feeling towards the book. ‘Cause a part of me really didn’t like it, but I want to read it again to understand it better. And I think it did shed some light on some things.
Maybe you should read it just to explain to me what it’s really about?
So just to end this with a couple of questions (I’m still not sure if I’m writing on this blog to get answers and comments, or just to vent. I think mainly just to vent, but that becomes easier when you get comments, to process things more… Maybe, shit what do I know, right?):
Did you ever read The Catcher in the Rye?
Do you think you will read it?
Did you “get it”? And if so: Can you please explain it to me?
For the readers – With Love and Squalor
-Frida
Tis the season for females to dress slutty and males to compete over who has the best excuse for not dressing up!
Happy Halloween everyone! Remember, don’t indulge in gluttony, that’s one of the mortal sins! Just kidding, consume candy tillst thou dropeth!
Song of the blog: What’s This? (The Nightmare Before Christmas)
Yours truly
Bjørn