Curls and Caffeine

I’m Not A Pit Bull With Lipstick

Last week, a co-worker asked if I had a boob job. I have three brothers, and very few female friends, so I’m always surprised by this type of bluntness. It reminds me of how I felt watching the few episodes I’ve seen of Sex and the City: I couldn’t relate. My life isn’t about finding a rich husband and buying more shoes. Some women act as if Sex and the City is reality, that we’re all part of some runway walking cohort who love to dish about sex, periods and makeup.

Sarah Palin’s decision to liken herself a pit bull with lipstick is equally troubling. It’s not wise for women to say, “We’re just like men, but with skirts and high heels and glitter.” Femininity is not achieved through wearing makeup or giving birth to recreational hockey players. I know Palin hunts and drinks beer. That seems like an attempt to appear “just like one of the boys,” in hopes that it will gain her credibility among men. That too is flawed.

Women are different than men in more than just their appearance and they deserve serious political representation. By using makeup as the thing that makes her a woman, Palin is allowing all the wrong notions about womanhood to continue. Not all women are obsessed with clothing and shoes. And others don’t take on so-called “manly” traits to try to gain respect. Yes, some women run around with two silicone balls bobbling around, as if that makes them more womanly. But I hope that there are others like me, who don’t consider themselves men with skirts on and who aren’t going to vote based on gender alone.

Oh, and they’re real.

How Writing For Yourself Pleases No One 

In anticipation of seeing David Sedaris speak in Princeton next month (birthday gift from Andrew!), I’ve been reading his older books. Barrel Fever, a collection of stories and essays, is disappointing compared to When You Are Engulfed in Flames and his more recent New Yorker articles.

I enjoy parts of it very much; Sedaris is a talented fiction writer and his love of words is apparent. But that is it, in fiction, sometimes we write in a vain way, to show off how gritty we can make the details or how distinctly we can build our sentences. But sometimes it turns out we’re just surfing the skin of our characters, we’re not making them vulnerable or memorable. We end up sacrificing depth of meaning for a sentence that sounds cool. The result is a piece that is enjoyable but not likely to be remembered.

I started a new job earlier this summer at an upscale corporate office. The building is massive–it has its own laundry service, car detailing, convenience store and full restaurant. It also has an atrium with a 15 foot waterfall. “There are trees growing inside the building.” I said to Andrew after my interview, “Trees!”

For the first few weeks I sat in the atrium for lunch, surrounded by palm trees and granite-everything, reading When You Are Engulfed in Flames. His work felt so honest and simple. It seemed natural. It made me want to write. 

Atriums are beautiful architectural accomplishments, they give the illusion that the space held by the building is actually outside. But, they are also a fire hazard, as they allow flames to spread to the upper floors more quickly than in a normal structure. I find this a fitting metaphor for surfing the skin of your characters: when you favor flair over honesty, you compromise your piece. Those fancy words and shocking plot points all fade away once the story is over.

I know I’ve done this in my writing, a good example is the short fiction piece Leon Strathmore. I see now that I was showing off more than I was writing. I tried to create a quarky character but left the story with little substance. The result is a piece that quickly catches fire and falls away from the reader’s memory.

Writer’s Block and Living Honestly

I’ve revised my short fiction piece, All In. I would not feel comfortable calling this a final draft, but I think it is worth posting.

I wrote the piece as a part of my fiction workshop class at John Jay. The original draft received some praise. Mostly, people said they didn’t think anything happened in the story. I wasn’t insulted or troubled by this. I wanted the turn in my story to be subtle and drawn out; I didn’t want to have a “Eureka” moment where everything fell into place.

The story was meant to be a simple one about honesty in art: How can we write honestly if we don’t live honestly? The narrator, Rea, is a twenty-year old college student, who is very guarded in all her interactions (she lies, is sarcastic, rude, cold, etc.). The story follows her as she tries to deal with writer’s block. I was trying to deal with issues involving authenticity, that is, the idea that when one is so unwilling to interact genuinely in their day to day life they cannot interact with the blank page successfully.

Here’s a link to the original post I wrote about this, that explores some of these topics more.

Shakira, Stamps and the Circle of Life

Yesterday marked the official end (hopefully) of my time at John Jay College: I received my degree in the mail.

As I sit at my desk at work, stuffing envelopes full of recruiting materials, I can’t help but love the cyclic nature of things.

You see, this is exactly how my whole college life began. The summer after third grade, my neighbor Gweneth and I made a decent income from our lemonade stand (and we were even pictured front page of the newspaper!). Having spent all of my money on a set of journals from Price Club, I accepted the offer of the strange guy who lived in Gweneth’s basement to stuff envelopes for him.

I’m pretty sure I got paid $4.00 for this task. I’m also pretty sure if my mom knew I was in the basement apartment of some stranger stuffing envelopes with dance brochures she’d be very unhappy.

Regardless, basement man turned out to be Randy James, a local dancer who had just opened up his own dance company. My $4.00 probably went towards a new rock from the Rock and Fossil store around the corner (yes, I paid for rocks).

Fast forward to my freshman year of high school. My gym teacher brought in a dance instructor, Matt, to keep us busy through the winter months. Matt was awesome: a great happy personality who was very patient with us. He taught us an elaborate number to Shakira’s “Whenever Wherever,” and invited us to a performance he was doing in New York City.

New York City! To freshman Gina that sounded exciting, so I went with a friend. What do I find when I get to the performance? Matt is a member of Randy James’s dance company. He’s moved out of the basement and has established an impressive dance company. I still remember a lot of the show; it was “View From the Hudson,” a piece that allowed members to give their impressions of 9-11.

The performance was held in this beautiful Baroque building, I remember walking up the steps and looking up to see JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE illuminated on the front. It seemed perfect for me.

For the rest of high school, I didn’t look at other colleges. Come senior year, I applied only to John Jay, got accepted and after a failed attempt to escape, finally graduated with my Bachelor’s this May.

And now, with my gold and blue diploma hanging proudly, I sit stuffing envelopes.

Andrew made a good point about internet stalking. His idea is that if someone from your past looks at your site but doesn’t comment, it is the same as staring through someone’s window and not waving at them if they notice you.

I wish this was true, but Andrew and I have both had crazy unwanted people commenting on our sites or sending emails through them. There is a certain type of nut that thinks there is nothing wrong with initiating conversation after purposeful non-contact. Couple that with social networking sites, text messaging and email, and you have a big problem. People that normally wouldn’t have the balls to say something to your face are now sending you rambling poems, commenting on pics of you and providing useless anecdotes about their similar experiences. I would definitely consider these people stalkers.

Digital messaging makes it too easy for creepy people to make contact. And no matter how much you may want them to respect your privacy, there will always be some who feel entitled to contact you. Repeatedly. Through various mediums.

I do think Andrew’s idea works as a general rule (the majority of visitors to my site fall into the category of stealthy silent stalkers), but never underestimate the delusions that these people have about their right to maintain contact or their dedication to it. The people that use my site as a means to monitor me are definitely stalkers, and those that use it as one more way to attempt to contact me (when I’ve made it clear that is not appropriate) are just as bad.

I suppose this is going to be an ongoing battle. I still love the way Molly Piper dealt with visitors on her site. Her policy stays true for all of you that haven’t had a falling out with me. I should clarify that there are people I’ve lost touch with that I’d like to reconnect with. But for the others, I just have to wonder, are you finding what you were looking for on here?