« I'm Pretty, Damn It! | Main | The Worst Blog in World History »
the nagging culture
At my gym, which is the greatest gym of all time and also happens to be women-only, I sometimes grab a discarded magazine to read while I sweat. The gym populace is pretty multi-generational, so you get everything from Shape to Cosmo to Glamour to Real Simple.
We all know the typical complaints about women's magazines: the models are impossibly thin and flawless, the clothes are impossibly expensive, they make us feel bad about ourselves, and yadda and so forth. Now that I'm a bit older, I find that I'm more able to tune out all the crap that's supposed to wear on my self-esteem to get me to buy shit. Reading a pile of these shiny rags, however, does leave me with the strong desire to swing my grappling hook up to the roof of the highest building and climb up just to shout:
STOP FUCKING TELLING ME WHAT TO DO!!!!!!!
If a 5th-grader were to classify the sentences in a women's magazine, 72% of them would be imperative, and a good 56% of the interrogatives would be found to imply some form of instruction. Each separate section has its own insidious ways of bossing around the reader. In fashion, it's shop here, buy this, tie that in a sassy bow. In dating and romance, it's dump him, improve yourself, go to this place to meet guys. Even in the section about your home, it's throw fancy parties, make sexy centerpieces, organize your spice rack.
The point is that there aren't many essays or content-driven articles (and most of the latter end in some kind of rapid-fire "Top 10" list of debatably pertinent instructions). It's all nagging, all the time. After reading any one of these magazines, I'm suddenly overwhelmed with all the shit I'm supposed to be doing that I never even realized I'd been neglecting.
Hacky stand-up comics like to talk about the differences between men and women, and one of the canonical complaints about the ladies is that we nag men. Take my nagging nagface wife...please!
Well, if your woman really is a naggy-pants bitch, it's probably because she lives in a culture that nags her all the time. We're always being corrected, always bound to mindful self-improvement by the publications that are supposed to reflect us back at ourselves and the advertisements that convince us that we're all fat, badly dressed slobs with horrifically mildewed showers. In fact, reading women's magazines makes me feel like a woman isn't what I am, but what I must strive ever harder to be, like "woman" is a title bestowed upon some perfect creature who can memorize all the concomitant composting instructions and quick car fixes and make-up tricks.
Then I remember that I have a vagina, so the nag rags and their endless pointers can kiss my ass.
Posted by erinjudge at July 27, 2005 01:50 PM
Comments
how can you afford healthworks??? it's like taking out a mortgage.
Posted by: ceerock ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.erinjudge.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 8, 2005 01:38 PM
This is why, when I go to the gym, I always carry with me a selection of Marxist literature.
Erin, has this situation improved since JULY, when you last updated this goddamn blog?
Posted by: snjoseph at August 15, 2005 11:18 AM
Erin, this is the worst blog in world history. Will you please fucking update it? If I was on the cover of the Improper Bostonian and featured in the Boston Globe Sidekick I would post to my blog like all the time. Just hire someone to do it for you if you're too busy. I'm going to start breaking in with your password and posting myself if you don't do something. I'd speak with you about this personally but you're too Hollywood to talk to these days (this is true). Remember that blogging made you what you are today, don't abandon the netroots!
Posted by: snjoseph at August 19, 2005 09:52 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
