Thursday Throwback
Remember when we talked about Kate Bolick a million years ago? She’s coming out with a new book called “Spinster“.
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
Coincidentally, that conversation is one of the OT conversations that’s really stuck with me, not because of anything about the women and her situation, but because of the digression about the M-B and Big 5 personality tests. The Big 5 is still vastly superior (to the point where I’m not even sure the M-B should be considered an actual personality test, just a parlor game), but I think twice when I consider the labels.Report
One of the many, many essays that I need more time to write involves personality testing.
(And, again, the point of Myers-Briggs is its orthogonal traits as well as its non-judgmental categories! And it’s repeatable!)Report
The thing I remember about the original “All the Single Ladies” article is there was a bit where she talked about writing the article while in a friends house in the Hamptons. This was followed with talking about how all her single lady friends were equally successful and houses and apartment in wonderful cities.
My thought was to go through the probability of how many people this would be true for and I decided not that many.Report
One of the big things about privilege is that it provides a cushion. Make a mistake without privilege? You can’t fall without hurting something. Make a mistake with privilege? You can do all kinds of things and have a decent likelihood of standing up, brushing yourself off, and walking away.
The cushions can be easily overlooked if you don’t know how to look for them and it’s easy to see someone fall from an insane height, get up, brush themselves off, then go and write a book about it.
If one thinks “I could do that too!” when one doesn’t have as much cushion as one’d need to do that too, one could find oneself wishing that one had never seen the someone else hit (what was thought to be) the ground so effortlessly.
All that to say: one of the takeaways from the article that I got (and others seemed to get) was “THIS IS NOT A ROLE MODEL”.
I hope that the people who take the advice that Spinster seems to be offering have the cushion they need to walk away from where they seem to be heading toward.Report
@jaybird
I am just curious about what All the Single Ladies would be like as written by somone who lives in rural Montana or who has a job as an office worker that is just ordinary. Nothing bad but nothing good.
My suspicion is that we would not be interested in it and it is being and knowing all these super successful people that makes All The Single Ladies attractive. The audience for this piece either lives like or close enough Bolick. This is where I think my fellow upper-middle class liberals get tone deaf.Report
I remember all sorts of discussions about the article and no one brought up the class angleReport
Rufus did. In his multi-asterisked comment.Report
In re-reading, I would like to cheerfully say that my unmarried friends who were unhappily uncoupled are now happily coupled.
The divorced guy has married a lovely woman and they’ve had a kid and they both seem happy (on Facebook, anyway).
The unmarried gal who needed to read The Rules and then follow them is somewhat pre-engaged to an awesome doctor. She comes home to Colorado every Christmas and we take them out to dinner and ask them about their past year and they shrug and say that not a lot has happened.
Whew.Report
My thoughts on this particular class of book and or article remains, as always, this:
Real life stories of how people love and/or lost and/or never did either presented as personal stories are both real and powerful; they have much to offer.
Real life stories of how people love and/or lost and/or never did either presented as dictates for what everyone else should do with their lives should be tossed in recycling.Report