The Privilege Thing

"Lena Dunham talked about that in her book - " I said, during a recent conversation about with a coworker. Before I could continue, I noticed her flinch.

"Ugghh. I HATE Lena Dunham," said my coworker. My heart sank, and I coached myself to stay calm and try to learn more instead of crying. Then I casually asked her why.

She immediately listed a litany of complaints: she's pretentious, she's over-privileged, she grew up in Brooklyn, her parents were rich artists, and what could she know about the real world. It also annoyed her that Lena claimed to be the voice of her generation.*

I'd heard similar arguments from others. I had an evening with a friend ruined when she literally recoiled at the mention of Lena Dunham. When I asked why, she said something to the effect that the only reason Lena is successful is because her parents were wealthy artists.

Another of my closest friends is uncomfortable with Lena's propensity to be naked on screen, to discuss matters of sexuality frankly and to "over-share" in general. I can sympathize with this position more easily. Despite being an over-sharer myself (I once delivered a monologue about my history of eating disorders while stripping down to my ugliest underwear), I understand that most people aren't eager to be confronted by the less glamorous aspects of the human experience. Not that it's going to stop me from compulsively revealing the flaws that others try to hide.

Before these relatively recent conversations, I had been blissfully unaware of the Lena controversy. The intensity of my friends' reactions to her came as somewhat of a shock to me. I might have expected it from men, who have been hand-fed the illusion that women should only look and act in accordance to their world view. But I didn't expect my fellow (liberal, feminist, ambitious and intelligent) women to respond to Lena with the kind of vehement disgust that I typically reserve for pants, bigots and other forces of evil.

And because I'm ridiculously sensitive when it comes to my personal heroes, I haven't delved too deeply into the world of online opinion-sharing to learn more. I believe that she creates art that is important, brave, original, thought-provoking, emotionally challenging, empowering and sometimes just downright entertaining, and I don't need to convince you that I'm right about that. Her art makes me feel less crazy and less alone in my craziness, and that's really all that matters. She's a grown up with a ton of fans and friends, and she doesn't need me to defend her.

But it bothers me enough that I feel I have to write about it. Because it's not just that I consider Lena a hero. It's that people hate her for circumstances and personality traits that I also share.

If you know me at all or have read anything I've written, you know that self-revelation is like a religion to me. Ask me how I'm doing, and I'll tell you. Tell me how you're doing, and I'll tell you an embarrassing story about myself to make you feel more comfortable and safe. Invite me to perform in your variety show, and just make sure you tell me if the venue has a strict policy on wearing pants and cursing.

So I get the impulse to "transform the energy life throws at you into the folded bows of art," as Lena's father's admonished her. I don't mind the criticism that this tendency inspires nearly as much as the other argument against Lena. The privilege thing. The topic I avoid at all cost, because I don't want people to dismiss me or envy me or resent me. But I've been recently inspired to confront my privilege, so here we go.

I'm a white girl with wealthy parents. I grew up in an affluent suburb, sheltered from violence, excluded from racism, untouched by poverty or hunger. I always had food on my plate, clothes on my body and a roof over my head, but worst of all, I had parents that loved me and supported me and instilled morals and values in me. They also bought me a car when I was sixteen and paid for my college education and helped me buy my home.

If you're not hating me by now, probably you're at least resenting me. If you're not, you're a bigger person than I am. Because the resentment my privilege (and Lena's) provokes is the same kind of resentment I feel for people who had friends in high school, who genuinely enjoyed their college years, who have old friends they've known forever in lieu of a decade-long void in their social and psychological well-being. We think, "if only I'd had [insert advantage], things wouldn't be so hard for me." It's especially hard when we see someone with advantages we lacked succeeding in something we'd like to be doing.

I somehow doubt that Lena's parents, as fine artists, got her a show on HBO. It's easy to assume that wealth can afford you anything, because it does make life easier in a lot of ways. But it can't give you ambition or talent or a strong work ethic or a reprieve from incurable illnesses. It can't guarantee you a stable home life or meaningful relationships. I'm not saying it's hard to have money available to you. I'm just saying it doesn't make everything easy.

Lena had plenty of advantages, but I suspect that her greatest advantage had less to do with the financial status of her parents than with the emotional support they provided. Since I can't speculate about the nature of their relationship, I'll explain this in terms of my upbringing.

I had parents who taught me the difference between right and wrong. Money was never something my siblings and I felt entitled to. "Get a job" was one of my mom's favorite refrains. If we weren't on a team or in a club after school, we were expected to work (which is how I ended up at manning the register of a butcher shop for my first non-babysitting job).

We had dinner as a family pretty much every night, and I can't remember playing a basketball game or performing in a dance recital without my parents in the audience. When I got sidelined by depression at 15, my mom took me to doctors and made sure I got to school and took me to my dad's hockey games to get me out of the house. Eventually, they took me to treatment, too, and did everything in their power to keep me from destroying myself. I didn't make it easy. But they loved me at my sickest and supported me as I got well, and I never have to fear being abandoned because of them.

From what I've read and heard in interviews and podcasts, Lena had the same advantage. She also had something that is even more valuable to an aspiring artist: two living examples of people who made their living as artists. She had proof that it was possible to succeed in art and parents who nurtured and validated her creative ambitions. Maybe that's where her audacity comes from. Maybe that's what the haters resent. And I couldn't argue with that kind of anger. Everyone deserves to have parents who love, nurture and support them, and it's absolute bullshit that so many are deprived of that experience.

So if you're going to hate Lena Dunham, that's fine. I'm not writing to convince you that she's great.** But I would challenge you to re-examine your position. Dislike what she creates. Disagree with what she says. But work harder to have a more thoughtful answer to "why do you hate her?" than "her parents were rich." That's lazy, and you're better than that.

For my part, I'll work on forgiving you for having fond memories of high school.***

*Lena did not say that she is the voice of her generation. Her character said that. Her character says a lot of egotistical and self-involved things that reveal, through the power of hyperbole, the egotistical and self-involved thoughts anyone with ambition or human frailty sometimes harbors. It's uncomfortable to watch her and listen to her if you lack the ability to laugh and roll your eyes at yourself for having unflattering features. But if you watch and listen with a sense of humor and a willingness to endure discomfort for the sake of provoking thought, it's pretty interesting.

*Of course I really, really want you to love her. I'm trying to not care, but I can't help it. So maybe just keep your opinion to yourself, and I'll do the same, and we'll continue walking and talking about anything else until I calm down enough to remember that Lena is not your surrogate for everything I represent. And everything will be okay.

**You bastard.

On (everything but) feminism

That title alone will alienate a lot of readers. Fortunately for me, I don't have a lot of readers anyway. But the people-pleaser in me still worries about losing my audience. It's not just people pleasing (a trait the feminist in me is not proud to possess). It's also that I don't want to be like Michael Moore, preaching to the choir and alienating the very people whose opinions I'm hoping to change. I'm wary of self-righteousness in political discourse because there's nothing more off-putting, condescending or indicative of a closed mind. Progress necessitates open minds.

I'm trying to be more open-minded. I consider myself an open-minded person, just as I consider myself a feminist. But the more I read and learn about other people's perspectives, the more I question whether I truly make an effort to understand arguments I don't immediately agree with.

I'll admit to being a lazy thinker. In the age of information, it's easy to skim the surface of the issues. To my chagrin, I've discovered great difficulty in completing any article that isn't boiled down to a Buzzfeed list with snarky bullets and plenty of gifs. I've never enjoyed reading on a screen, and my predisposition to anxiety only makes matters worse.

My struggle to focus, to maintain a train of thought, is evident in this post itself. It's frustrating to meander when you're as high-strung as I am. This is no lazy river. I am no falling leaf. This, my mental process, requires the kind of persistent effort that herding cats requires. And it often feels as futile.

The other day, I walked past the room where my boyfriend was writing. He's been working on a novel for a few months now, with a dedication that both impresses me and fills me with envy. As I walked past, I noticed how calm his face looked, his brow unfurrowed and his lips in a slight upward curl, a hint of a smile. It was the face of someone who was enjoying the writing process.

The outrage that welled up inside me in response to his serenity surprised and shamed me. What kind of monster am I that my first reaction to my boyfriend's contentment is anger and jealousy? An angry, jealous monster, obviously. Or, if we want to be all enlightened and healthy about it, a person in the grip of anger and jealousy.

I can't remember the last time writing made me feel happy or peaceful or pleased or amused. I know I've felt those things. I've certainly been pleased with myself, mostly when I'm writing something comedic and frivolous. But the vast majority of my writing leaves me drained, dubious and, at best, relieved to have it finished. I approach the page like a poor swimmer approaches a stormy sea. Unwillingly and by necessity only. What is the danger in writing? Existing in my mind for any length of time. Confronting the self-doubt, the jealousy, the chaos and the judgment is an unpleasant task, to say the least.

It doesn't help that, after spending over an hour there, I find myself eight paragraphs in and nowhere near the topic I set out to tackle.

I meant to write about feminism. That will have to be for another post. I will publish this anyway, because it helps me feel like I accomplished something. I need to validate even my sloppiest attempts at creative self-expression, lest I give up trying.

An afterthought: I only got angry at my boyfriend because I want to be a good writer, a prolific writer, a confident writer. Because I fear that I will never be. And because his success, his discipline, his creative output reminded me of my insecurities as a writer. So I've got that to work on. Little monsters in a field of static.

Holiday cheer

It's difficult to title a blog that's as aimless as this one. I think I started with the idea that I would combine elements of comedy (cheer) with the more serious subject matters to which I am drawn (philosophy, though tbh nothing bores me more than philosophy, at least in the academic sense of the word). The result has been more of a verbal and emotional vomit, an expression of the inconsistency of my mind and mood. Sometimes ironic, silly, superficial and light-hearted, but more often earnest, angry, indignant, pleading and above all, inconsistent. I write when I need to bleed; when the guilt of not creating makes sitting still an impossibility. Perhaps this is why so much of my writing feels angry.

It's the day after Thanksgiving, a decidedly gray Black Friday. It's dreary outside, wet and cold and bleak. I woke with an entire day stretched out before me, which sounds like the beginning of an exciting adventure, if my life were a children's story. But since my life is not a children's story, it was just the beginning of a long battle between opposing impulses. My body wants to sleep, but my mind reels with noise that is more sensing than articulating. A sense of dread that is linked to the things I ought to be doing today (writing for work, writing for art, cleaning the oven, working out, organizing the stack of papers in my office). An impulse towards mutiny against the inherent lack of fun there is in behaving an adult. An awareness of social commitments and an instinctive formulation of excuses that will allow me to avoid wearing pants, leaving the house and interacting with some fun and interesting people. A physical discomfort that I can now, upon reflection, identify as the unconscious muffling of the urge to eat myself into oblivion.

Being a sober person, free from drugs and alcohol, is in many ways easier than being a recovering anxious-depressive-bulimic. Not that any of it's easy, especially during this festive time of year, but if I had to rank my destructive tendencies in terms of how difficult they are to resist, I'd say drugs are the easiest, followed by alcohol, followed by bulimia.

Here's a thing you should know about bulimia, because as soon as I say the word, I cringe knowing you are probably stereotyping me as the privileged white girl who is obsessed with being skinny. And while that's not altogether false, it's hardly a holistic description of who I am. Binging on food is just a way of reaching oblivion. It's a drug, in other words. And to someone who suffers from anxiety, or at least to me, oblivion is an ideal state of mind. One which I never reach unless I am sleeping. The trouble with being abstinent from all mind and mood altering drugs is that there is no reprieve from my mind or mood. And my mind, which dictates my moods, often tortures me.

Drugs would take considerable effort (for an introvert) to obtain. Alcohol less so, but that drug still easier to avoid than food. And I can avoid food more easily than I can avoid anxiety and depression. But that's a different animal. You'd think by now I'd have learned that I can't avoid these things, be them impulses, obsessions, desires, cravings or tendencies. But somewhere behind the noise of my mind there exists a belief that not only can I control my urges to behave badly, but that I have to. When the truth is, I can't and don't. I can only account for my actions, and that erroneous belief reveals another belief: that I am incapable of resisting urges.

Understanding that doesn't make it easier. I dated a guy who loved the cliche, "knowledge is power" and used it to justify his obsession with diet fads and nutrition advice. But he was overweight. None of that so-called knowledge empowered him to stop overeating. In Nichiren Buddhism, there is a saying that a sword is useless in the hand of a coward. What I need is not a better understanding of why I'm so stressed out and irritable when I have a day off and all should be well, but the courage to act in a way that will relieve that stress.

So let's call this entry a courageous thrust of the sword. Mostly ineffectual, sure, but a valiant attempt. And I do feel a bit better. Happy holidays!

Important and Interesting Updates

I haven't posted in a few days, so here are all the things I thought of but didn't share:

1. I had a dream that I won the volleybaskethockeyball game, bringing us back from a 3-0 deficit.
2. Two nights later, I had a dream that I hit a home run and earned $1M.
3. I have thus surmised that I am in the wrong business.
4. Since my real-life athletic skills continue to be limited to running moderate distances at a moderate pace and occasionally talking about the good old days when I was a baller, I have decided to keep my day job.
5. Lately, I feel like everything I do is not quite good enough, or not quite right in some way. Perhaps this is the lack of feedback I get in my job, or the lack of creative expression I've been demonstrating, or, most likely, it is the lack of sunlight contributing to a lack of serotonin in my brain. This is also why I've been spending too much money trying to find the perfect pair of boots and being altogether unsatisfied with my appearance. These are the days of overeating and underachieving, of being cooped up and bottled up and irritably anxious. Needing stimulation, but numbing out on Netflix. Needing an outlet and seeking distraction instead. These are the days of not rising above, but settling into the baser impulses of my nature (finding refuge in consumption and solitude; my memoirs shall be called Eat, Shop, Stay Home and sell millions of copies, mostly to hipsters who mistakenly think I'm being ironic or parodical and not literal). Shirking the noble path of productivity and spiritual growth, I resist what is good for me, and dream of athletic achievement and instant gratification.
6. I'm thinking about learning a martial art, but I'm intimidated by things I'm not good at yet.
7. I tried to decorate for Christmas, and this is what happened:

Clearly, I'm a master of interior decorating. I will be keeping my day job regardless.
8. I don't like ending lists on an odd number, unless it's 11. 11 is a magical number. I will name my first child 11.
9. I should never be allowed to reproduce.
10. There are 3 more days until Thanksgiving, so here are 3 things for which I am grateful: my family, my boyfriend and my health. Here are 3 less boring things for which I am grateful: the squeaky noises Norm makes when I pick him up and squeeze him, people who shovel their sidewalks, the hilarious way little kids waddle when they are wearing their little snow suits.

Fin.

On marketing and naïveté

I'm writing this on my phone because I can't bring myself to open my laptop. It's an instrument of distraction. Or it was today. Confined to a cubicle without pressing deadlines, I find myself indulging in the most accessible drug there is. Facebook, Buzzfeed, the steady stream of promotions in my inbox. It's irresistible, the allure of consumerism. And it embarrasses me to no end. 

I work in marketing. I know the tricks, the psychological manipulation at work behind every word and image. 

Sidebar: When I first started copywriting, my boss told me to use the words "America's best" to describe either recipes or brands. I asked him what made them the best. It was a classic demonstration of my incredible naïveté. I wanted data to back up my claim. It didn't cross my mind that marketing claims could be arbitrary. One of the side effects of being raised by fair and just people, I suppose. I continue to marvel at others' ability to lie with ease, without guilt. It's a skill that would have come in handy, back in my troublemaking days. I  worry I sound self aggrandizing, but I think less so than a refined sense of morality, my inability to lie reflects a predilection toward guilt and shame, and a limited imagination. I'm too good for my own good. Moral boundaries are still boundaries, and artists need to color outside the lines. Not that I haven't broken the rules. I just wish I'd been able to enjoy it more, but see my note above re: guilt and shame. 

Back to the point, like I was making one. I'm tired and ready to shit off. But I wanted to say that I fall for marketing despite knowing better, and it makes me hate what I do. I feel terrible when I spend hours shopping online or seeking immediate gratification (in the form of relief from boredom and stress) that Facebook and buzzfeed provide. I feel disgusted, frankly. I'm too sensitive, I know. But all this noise, all this candy, is deadening in a world that suffers already from a lack of consciousness. Or so I perceive it to be. I want to be awake, alive, engaged, but I understand how difficult that is to maintain, especially when you need to keep the wheels of the machine turning. 

I don't want to decry the world of commerce and business. It pays my bills, and there are worse ways to earn a living. I'm just not cut out for it, despite the aplomb with which I can pull off business casual. Which is not too much aplomb, but just enough. Did I mention I'm tired? 

On ambition and pets named like people

It feels like all I do lately is write. Go to work, write. Come home, write. Sleep poorly from too much mental exercise and too little physical exercise. It's weeks like these that make me fantasize about making my living differently. A barista, perhaps? The only writing required is what will fit on a paper cup.

When I was little I wanted to be a veterinarian. I also wanted a German Shephard, which I would name Samantha. I was watching a lot of Rin Tin Tin and reading American Girl books at the time. Instead, we got an inbred Maltese and named him Mike. That's not even a joke. Now I'm a copywriter with a cat named Norm. So things have turned out pretty much exactly the way I envisioned them.

In pre-adolescence, my career ambitions shifted to Harvard business school or maybe law, mainly because my mother said I'd be good at those things, and I liked and trusted my mother. Later, my ambitions grew less focused and more near-sighted. The closer I came to actual adulthood, the less prepared I felt to do anything but what was required of me.

That's the thing about adulthood. No one tells you what's required. Get a job, pay the bills, change the batteries in the smoke detector. I've successfully fulfilled two of those requirements in the course of my adulthood. So I'm doing alright, as long as I don't leave any flames unattended. But there's so much I don't understand. Little things, like where to put my purse at a fancy restaurant, or how anyone successfully wears those stupid no-show socks that either show or fall off entirely. But also big things, like what happens if I don't do anything with my 401K after becoming self-employed, and what even is a 401K?

Now, a non-sequitur: there was a point when I wanted to be the President's wife. This was around age seven, before I realized women could be President. Now that I know better, I think I'd stick with First Lady. Or better yet, regular lady. I loathe politics. I just like the title, First Lady.

I still don't know what my dream career is. But I know I can write, even if the only kind of writing I've been doing lacks creative value. So I push myself to write, and in doing so, maybe I'll stop shrinking from ambition in the only field that really inspires me. And maybe one day, I'll be a full-time writer/performer/artist/creative genius. With a cat named Norm. Because while ambitions may fade, Norm is forever. Yes, that's the lesson I'd like you to walk away with. That, and don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't end a sentence with a preposition.

In lieu of a decision

I can't settle. Indecision seems inevitable. Whether I'm contemplating a career or the day's outfit, a name for my blog or a name for my business, I'm wracked by indecisiveness. A wavering, a buzzing, a sense of regret, or a projection of regret. Is it possible to feel regret for decisions we haven't made?

At the center is my self-consciousness. I don't want to be obvious, but I don't want to appear to be trying too hard to be oblique. I want to be authentic, above all, but how can I commit to a self that is constantly in flux?

There is a distrust of identity, in that question. Rooted in my life's quest for a solution to existential angst. A desire to fix what was broken when my brain turned against itself, if we're looking at things from a biological perspective. Which I rarely do, but it's easier than trying to explain trauma in emotional or experiential terms.

Trauma. I don't feel entitled to the word. Technically, medically, even, it applies. But it feels disrespectful to those who have suffered trauma at the hands of another, whereas I was merely the victim of bad brain chemistry, a combination of nature and nurture that will inspire no pity in those who have suffered true hardship.

I was sheltered, provided for, loved, given opportunities in education and emotional development. In other words, I was privileged. So to talk about mental illness as a handicap in any terms other than clinical - well, it's something I've done. Again and again. So what, if, in this moment, I happen to feel conflicted about my self-pity, the seriousness with which I regard my own suffering?

In another frame of mind, another mood, I would chastise myself for minimizing my own pain. Suffering is relative, after all. It is not exclusive to the economically disadvantaged. It's important to validate my experience as difficult, as traumatic, just as it is important to acknowledge that, in terms of trauma, I could have it a lot worse. At least I was privy to resources. If I had to choose between battling demons that exist in my own mind and the horrors of poverty, hunger, abuse or war, I'd choose my fucked-up mind every time.

No matter how deeply I delve into the philosophical meaning of my experience, or how hard I try to quantify, negate, or justify my suffering, I get no closer to comfort or enlightenment (the latter being a euphemism for the former). It's an exercise in futility, one I find pretentious in others. I am embarrassed about my predilections toward melodrama and grandiosity, and even moreso about the position of privilege from which I write about hardship.

This is a diary entry, not an essay. It is a way of approaching the page again, after an absence. It's been too long since I demonstrated any consistency in writing. I fear it. I dread opening my laptop or journal (one of a half dozen notebooks half-filled with intermittent to-do lists, lazy poetry and anxiety-fueled word vomit tied together with hangdog declarations of optimism). But then I read books or listen to podcasts or attend readings by artistic heroes, and I get that old familiar ache of the benched athlete. I've never been a cheerleader. I'm lousy at spectatorship. It fills me with either the sting of envy, the urgency of inspiration, the euphoria of delusional aspirations or the ego's irresistible impulses to destroy ambition. Usually, it's a combination of feelings that is uncomfortable even at its most exhilarating.

There is no cure except the doing. No way to start but by beginning. So this is another beginning, another chink in the armor of that self-sabotaging ego. Or maybe it's just a bunch of gunk that needed purging. Whatever it is, it's done now.

False Start

I didn't plan well, and now I have a headache and a disturbing lack of focus at 10 in the morning. It's Monday, obviously. There is a couple to my 10 o'clock who are enjoying an intimate moment in a public coffee house. On a bench, no less. It's really unsettling my nerves. I mean, my nerves are already sensitive due to the series of inconsequential failures that has been my morning, but there's something about two human beings cuddling on a bench in a coffee shop AT 10AM ON A MONDAY MORNING. That is not a time for intimate cuddles in public. What kind of life are they leading that makes them so relaxed on a Monday morning? They are adults. Maybe students? They're gazing into each other's eyes and I can't even handle it. Go to work! Go to class!

Oh good. They left. I must have powers.

Speaking of being generous towards my fellow humans and other ways in which I'm falling short this morning, I should be working right now. But I left the necessary documents at home (though I brought plenty of unnecessary ones), and I'm clearly too emotionally fragile to cope with this catastrophe. Plus I ordered coffee, and I paid $4 for it with tip, so I'm not going anywhere until I drink it. It's some fancy pour-over, I don't even know. I wasn't unsatisfied with my coffee until I discovered there are fancier ways to make it, and now I'm ruined for drip coffee. Which I think is what you call coffee that's made in a coffee machine. You know, the regular way.

My theory is that people who have enough money to not worry about starving create these complicated and time-intensive methods of making coffee because we need to maximize our enjoyment of consumables while minimizing the effect on our waistlines. Instead of fearing starvation, we fear obesity, which isn't a judgment of our vanity so much as a matter of fact. We want to enjoy food, but we also want to preserve our health - or, if we're being really honest, our figures.

So we find ways to make healthy (or in the case of coffee, calorie-free) food more satisfying. The ritual of preparing coffee enhances its enjoyment. I learned that by listening to the Hidden Brain podcast (episode 1), and also through personal experience as a Buddhist and a one-time imbiber of The Marijuana and other recreational consumables (praise be and fear not, for I am now reformed).

I think it's okay that we trick ourselves into enjoying what we consume. Even if it is bougie AF. I'm trying really hard to come to terms with my own bougie-ness. My foodie impulses. But I'm such a crab about it. I just find it really annoying that I have qualities that are un-interesting and ordinary, because my favorite delusion is that I am a snowflake. Vulgar is another way of saying ordinary, isn't that interesting? And apt? What's another word for snob...

At least I'm self-aware. Just kidding, that's the most annoying thing of all. It's such a bother, knowing my motives. But hey, it's 10:30 and my coffee's almost drunk (go home, coffee...). So I better pull myself together and hit restart. Bye for now.

Me being conflicted about my bougie coffee.

Notes from the Beige Cage (A Winter Reflection)

I kind of like these brutally cold days, because no one expects me to wear heels or have perfect hair. Bundling up and looking cute is an easy art form to master. Moreover, the biting cold is a wonderful excuse to avoid exercise and social obligations, opting instead for hot tea, fatty carbs, and book after glorious book.

It is only when I have occasion to wear a dress that I regret these weeks of hibernation. Tights are the brainchild of Satan, and no amount of self-delusion can persuade me that my skin is porcelain-like, not pasty.