So, I've read, in a couple places, some scathing commentary of an askmen.com article about how to "subtly" get your girlfriend to realize that she's gained weight (and of course that she's therefore less attractive). Most of it reads as a primer on how to passive-aggressively manipulate someone you purport to care about (um, at least to her) and the rest as out and out emotional abuse.
Now, my ex-husband was good at this. Not that I didn't already have bodily issues firmly implanted in my psyche before I met him, but he knew how to pluck at them in such a way as to optimally make me feel like shit when he wanted to. For example, when I was pregnant with D, I gained 30 pounds, a totally normal and healthy amount that my doctors were pleased about. This meant I came home from the hospital about 20pounds heavier than what I usually weighed in those days. My ex "jokingly" let me know that I had six months to get it off or he was gonna leave me. (Not that he himself wasn't probably 30 or 40 pounds overweight at the time, without gestating another person as an excuse. But that was okay, because guys are allowed to be "big.") Yeah, so obviously, he didn't need askmen.com to teach him to be a douchebag.
But poking around on that website, it's all like that. It's all--at least the relationship advice--a tutorial on how to treat women like shit, aimed at what I am sure is a young adult (male) audience. I don't know. Do any of them need douchebag lessons? Doesn't it come naturally to most of them? (Just like most magazines and websites aimed at young women are self-hatred lessons. Doesn't that come naturally to us?) Why is there a whole industry, a whole media, whose purpose it is to make people worse human beings? Does being nice to other people and having self-respect not sell product? Obviously not!
But why don't we reject it? Why, when I was a teenage girl, did I not read stuff about "the pencil test" or the "five pounds for every inch over five feet" and say, pfft? And why do even people my age--who you'd think would have figured out better for themselves by middle age at least--buy into what you see in the media: that relationships are about winning and losing and getting over on the other person? Why don't, or can't, we reject all the poisonous cultural messages? Why don't we want to? Why do we all sign up happily for douchebag school?
xoxo
2 comments:
Fat guys getting on skinnier chicks about their appearance is definitely the plus ultra of douchebaggery. But what should an honest guy do with a sincere interest in the health and well-being of the object of their affection, observing the goal is to drink beer and eat pizza together on the sofa while watching the Red Sox as far into the future as lifespan and upholstery will accomodate?
I'd also observe there's something similarly disturbing about women who manipulate their appearance in order to attract a steady Saturday night date, only to let it all go to hell in a carton of Haagen Dazs once the deal is closed.
Maybe we could fix the webmasters and contributors of askmen.com up with those yo-yo chicks, so everyone can end up with the people they deserve...
I should add, it took me 9 months to lose the baby weight, by which I mean, as soon as I finished nursing, it fell off itself in a matter of like a month without any effort on my part. (Do you think maybe my body *needed* that extra 20 lbs when I was nourishing your child with what it was producing, douche? Grr.) At which point, I went out and bought myself a pair of acid washed jeans with zippers at the ankles, which, had I only kept them, I could sell for a pretty penny to a vintage clothing store today 'cause that shit's back for the little hipster girlies.
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