Oh god it's about a lady it must be about lady-things that my manbrain can't handle get it awaaaayyyyy!
So last semester I took British Literature II, and one of the novels we were assigned was Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Stuff you need to know about Persuasion if you’ve never read it, know nothing about Jane Austen, or live under a rock: it’s about a lady. A lady who, through the course of the novel, falls in love. It’s a really beautiful, universal novel that deals amazing with human emotion (and happens to be incredibly sensual and passionate to boot), and it’s pretty much one of my favorite books ever.
Anyway, we read Persuasion, and the day comes to discuss it in class. The prof asks us what we think of it, and a girl raises her hand and says,
“I didn’t really like it. It was such chick-lit.”
Let me define “chick-lit” for you, reader: “genre fiction within women’s fiction which addresses issues of modern women often humorously and lightheartedly.” Persuasion, admittedly, fits this definition pretty well—I’m not faulting my classmate for that. I’m faulting how the fact that Persuasion could be considered chick-lit was apparently, for her, reason to dislike it. I didn’t notice her complaining about how she didn’t like Jude the Obscure because it was all about Jude’s problems and emotions.
But that’s the thing—Jude the Obscure isn’t considered “dude-lit” because “dude-lit” doesn’t exist. Or, rather, it exists, but instead of calling it “dude-lit,” we call it “literature.” And books about ladies don’t count as literature, they count as chick-lit—which, even by nature of the diminutive, cutesy term, codes these books asinherently not as good, and not for the rest of the world (aka, men). Because stories about women are for women only, and guys can’t relate to them—while stories about dudes are universal.
This isn’t restricted to books and literature, either. Check out these posts by Silvana and K, respectively, over at Tiger Beatdown last week, dealing with the same devaluing of women’s voices (quite literally) and experiences, but this time in the music industry:
The number one thing I learned from being in a band and hanging out with a lot of guys who were Very Serious about music is that basically the worst thing that can happen to the music you love is for too many women to like it, or for one woman that you know to like it real hard. Music that is good is not music that women go crazy for. If women go crazy for it, it must suck, because women have terrible taste and like all that chick shit and like shave their legs and stuff but oh my god it’s disgusting when they don’t.
Did you get that? You are a shitty music-lover because you do not like all the same music that they do. But if you start liking it, then the music is shitty and they stop. I remember when I started liking a Pavement album a real lot. It suddenly became the least favorite Pavement album of my fine dude friends.Back to Le Tigre. One summer I made a wonderful friend who happened to be dating a guy who, magically, did not hate women, and he had made her a mix CD with some Le Tigre songs on it. She went crazy for Le Tigre and bought all the albums. And then she made me listen, and I went crazy for Le Tigre and bought all the albums. Oh my god. Women making music. Women screaming. Women kicking ass.
I brought the albums, and Sleater-Kinney, who I also discovered through my same friend, to my dude friends. They were unimpressed. They couldn’t say why. They weren’t stupid enough at that point, or even self-aware enough, to say that they didn’t like it because it was made by women. They just happened to not like it, even though they liked ALL THIS OTHER MUSIC THAT WAS LIKE IT. I don’t know, it just doesn’t do it for me. It’s boring. It’s whiny. It’s screechy. Oh, it’s repetitive. Or is it derivative?
Whatever it is, it sucks.
If you recall, just a second ago, we talked about how “Fuck and Run” is about the speaker’s feelings in relation to casual sexual encounters. Spoiler alert! “Tired of Sex” happens to be about… the speaker’s feelings in relation to casual sexual encounters. Right down to the eventual yearning for a conventional relationship. Phair wants a boyfriend, “the kind of guy who makes love ’cause he’s in it.” Cuomo wonders, “Why can’t I be making love come true?”
Here are some additional facts for you: Both of these songs have been publicly acknowledged as being about the personal experiences of the songwriter to some degree. Both of these songs were products of the early/mid-nineties alternative pop and rock scene. And both of these songs appear on albums that are generally understood to be concept albums — Exile in Guyville being about Phair’s experiences in the male-dominated Chicago alt/indie rock scene, and Pinkerton being about Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo’s experiences finishing his degree at Harvard in the wake of his recently realized pop superstardom. And – here is the thing that I find most interesting – they are (more or less) that same song, except (and be sure to follow me on this) one is written from a lady’s perspective, and one is written from a dude’s.
But when we talk about Liz Phair, and when we talk about Weezer, we talk about them in very different ways. Weezer’s music — even their most intimate, specific work, the songs most deeply and truly informed by Cuomo’s private and, sometimes, sexual experiences — gets to be linked to a larger body of work. I know a lot of Weezer people; people who have, like, informal PhDs in Weezology. And no one, I mean no one, defines Weezer’s career based on “Tired of Sex.” Weezer’s career, for the curious, is based on the video for “Buddy Holly” and (more recently) the fact that they are selling a Weezer-brand Snuggie.
But Phair? Phair’s entire career has been linked to this idea of her personal, sexual experiences and the role that they play in her songwriting. As a female solo artist, Phair finds herself in a peculiar place, a place where her work is described over and over again as being “intimate,” as being born out of personal experience, as being a wholly intentional artistic expression of the artist’s self. But Cuomo? Cuomo gets it both ways. His songs (the better ones, at least), while widely acknowledged as being informed by his personal experiences, have somehow been allowed to transcend their Cuomo-ness and become crushing power pop anthems. In other words, he gets to write about himself without people fixating on the fact that he writes about himself. Phair, however, is going to forever wander the territory of female singer/songwriter who writes intimate, personal songs.
The same goes for movies, and television shows, and any and all kind of media at all: dudes are the norm. Or, rather, straight, white cis-dudes are the norm. Because, think of the last book you read about an LGBTQ person? When was the last time you saw a black musician in a rock band? The last movie you saw with a female lead, was it a chick flick?
When straight white cisdudes talk about their feelings~ it’s universal and everyone else can totally relate (or, at least, that’s the expectation). But when anyone else tries to do it, well, it’s too girly, it’s too gay, it talks about race too much, and you really can’t expect the straight white cisdudes to listen or care. And seriously, it’s probably not as good as what the straight white cisdudes do, anyway. And for me, it’s gotten to the point where I can’t crack open a book or turn on a tv show or play some music about straight white cisdudes and all their problems without feeling a little, well, distaste. It’s not that I have anything against straight white cisdudes, it’s just that, honestly? I’d rather read Persuasion than Jude the Whiny Whiner-pants.
- Katie
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
