Thought Catalog

8. Life Was Pretty Sweet For Women At All Moments In History

Man, whether it was 1400′s Baghdad (excuse me, “Agrabah”), mid-18th century rural France, 1600′s Jamestown, or medieval Paris, things were good for the ladies. Sure, there might be an arranged marriage here or there, but they were quick to talk back, mill about town freely, and pretty much do whatever the hell they wanted. It’s an idyllic view of history, sure, but certainly not one that you want to carry with you, rosy-eyed, walking into history class. You remember Jasmine saying, “I am not a prize to be won!” and then you read a book or two and realize that, lol, girl, that’s exactly what you were. Belle? Would have been paired off with Gaston the second she turned 13. Ariel? I haven’t finished my Victorian mer-politics class yet this semester, but I’m pretty sure she and her 18 dancing sisters would have been in some kind of harem. Pocahontas? We all know what happened to her IRL. Mulan? Pretty sure she wasn’t going to get off with a slap on the wrist and a hot night with her former army captain, that’s for sure. Cinderella? Probably would have died of the black lung from cleaning chimneys out all day before she could ever put on a nice dress and go dancing. Life would have been pretty bleak for these ladies, but I guess that doesn’t make for as charming a story.

‘Oversharing’ is a value-laden term, its message being that whatever’s termed as such has crossed some subjective line in the sand, one that denotes ‘appropriate sharing’ from ‘sharing too much.’ The word seems very Puritan and culturally-oppressive to me. And I think it’s becoming redundant at this point. The reality of the internet generation — the generation that will eventually control much of the cultural context — is simply that, as pretty much all previous modern generations, they want to draw their own boundaries. They want to create a world in which they’re OK, and will eventually do so by establishing new norms via continually exerting their influence. The group of people who have contentions with so-called oversharers only seem to want to censor them via shaming, ridicule, and tribal exclusionary behavior. The majority of the group is not positive, useful, or constructive at all.

If you would just read my blog, maybe you would understand how great I am. It documents my myriad intense feelings, YouTube videos of cats, and image macros of Obama. When you watch the video of kittens playing in a Christmas tree, you will say to yourself, “He likes funny interesting things and is therefore, according to the transitive property, a funny interesting person. We must hire him at once!” You will think this because you are a shrewd employer who understands that extensive knowledge of internet memes translates directly into high levels of productivity for your company. Read the poems I’ve posted, the ones about my existential despair and psychological turmoil, and you will understand what a deep person I am, full of feelings, so many feelings, all explicated in complicated nuanced metaphors, with words like “lacuna,” “osculate,” and “turbid.” You probably don’t know what those words mean, but I do — my mastery of SAT words indicates I’m extremely smart. Also, important. And talented. And super cool.

People refer to my, shall we say, studies as “wasting time” or “vegging out” — no! It takes a serious commitment to spend ten hours in one day watching every episode of Game of Thrones. It takes even greater mental stamina to watch an entire season of 24 in one day. Add in multitudes of seasons requiring a long-term daily regimen, and now I must devote myself entirely to the task or live my life with a great Void where seasons 4 and 5 of The Wire would be mentally collated. The Void has a name and that name is Ignorance; it is the king of all demons and those poor fools who don’t know the names of Spider-Man’s two clones (Ben Reilly and Kaine) or John Locke’s alias (Jeremy Bentham) are his slaves. Food, water, bathroom breaks — these are the only distractions from my important TV watching duties. Anything else, and Ignorance will plant its terrible black seed.

If you smoke and you’re around non-smokers, don’t smoke. If you don’t smoke and you’re around smokers, find something to do with your hands. Don’t recount dreams, unless they can be condensed into one sentence. When telling stories about people you barely know, have met once, or invented—refer to them as your “friends.” Buy a round of shots. Buy two rounds of shots.

Memorize jokes. Nod your head, but not too vigorously. Keep your mouth open and slightly smiling. Are you chewing gum? Keep your mouth closed, avoid smacking sounds. Slouch artistically, not lazily. This is done by making sure your neck doesn’t follow the line of your spine. Adjusting your pants too much will make you look suspicious. Point to the left and exclaim “Oh my god,” then pull them up quickly while no one is watching. When people ask what you saw, say “I thought someone was getting robbed.”

The Internet operates on a funny sort of logic, promising active networking and communication yet in reality exacerbating our primal instincts to curl up like a pill bug into a big ball of ourselves. Even in its nascent stages it became an exponentially simpler method of bypassing the usual avenues of interaction. If we wanted to find new people we no longer had to slog through the cocktail party circuit or risk catastrophic blind dates or awkward meetings with friends of friends, friends of relatives, relatives of friends. We didn’t have to expand our social circles one sad little concentric step at a time. We no longer had to run through the checklist of pre-approved small talk bullet points and throwaway questions about who people were, where they were from, what sort of music they were into in the hopes of finding some thread of mutual passion upon which we could capitalize. The Internet eliminated all that bother by allowing us to plug directly into whatever we were searching for. With message boards, chat rooms, and user groups dedicated to specific subsets of culture and technology we were relieved of the burden of having to explain ourselves. The people who cohabitated our little corners of the Web knew why we were there; they became our new friends by default. We didn’t need to swap life stories. It wasn’t necessary to know the why or how of them, only that, in those strange early days of the Net, we found others who liked the same weird crap we liked, and it was enough.

But in weaker moments, you’ll turn to your ex-company for comfort, hoping to find that they’re as miserable as you and are instead greeted by an influx of new fans or a well-executed campaign for which you can’t take credit and in that moment, you’ll be overcome by the stench of your own loserdom. Smells like burning. You’ll know that your name goes unspoken in those conference rooms, that you’ve most definitely been replaced, that the world turns in spite of you. “Who is it? Whose ass is in my Office Star Pro Line II Executive Leather Chair?” you’ll whimper into the lonely night, but don’t expect an answer. This is what you chose.

Guess what I’ve been doing all day — watching Intervention, that’s right. You know me so well, and that’s why I love you. Oh I’ve skimmed through Craigslist job postings a few times between episodes, but, hon, no one’s hiring creative writing majors right now. It’s the economy. The recession is killing all the creative writing jobs, so, you know, it’s really hard for young people right now. If it’s anyone’s fault I don’t have a job, it’s Obama’s — just kidding, I’m sure he’s trying his hardest. It’s the 1% that’s the problem; they’re not hiring right now because they want the economy to crash so the GOP wins the election. Why are you looking at me like that? Hey, guess what? I love you.