unfffffffff oral history of laurel canyon eeeeeehhfhffhfhfhfhfh:
DAVID CROSBY: Cass was such a funny and vibrant person and somebody you definitely wanted to hang out with and talk to. She knew everybody and everybody liked her.
MICHELLE PHILLIPS, singer-songwriter-actor, the Mamas and the Papas: It was very lax at Cass’s house when she moved to Woodrow Wilson. Ashtrays were overflowing. She would let people write their phone numbers and messages on her walls with felt pens. She smoked a lot of pot. I wasn’t into food at that point in my life, but there were a lot of grown men there, so there must have been food. They probably called down to Greenblatt’s Deli and had 20 different platters of sandwiches brought up.
wasn’t into food at that point in my life
*
l.o.l. life is hard and fleeting, sorry dude:
…I draw the line when it comes to daily worship at the temple of your own body. I don’t advocate the metal hair comb my father used, or burning your face with cheap astringents, yet I feel certain that something in masculine solidity is lost with the enforcement of beauty regimens. What do I mean by “masculine solidity”? I mean the suavity that comes as if by accident, without noticeable effort. Simple as that. Men exfoliate every day if they shave properly and that’s enough — and a little cream won’t harm. But surely there is only room for one oscillating microdermabrasion brush in any happy heterosexual bathroom. I don’t care if you think it’s sexist: It’s not a man’s job to pluck his eyebrows or plump his lips. People must do as they wish, of course, but to my mind (and according to my prejudices) male beauty loses its essence with premeditation. It’s a failure of natural elegance for a man to seem beautified, and the pressure on him to be so may be the biggest sexual category error of our times.
*
I hope you are reading Millihelen! Jane Marie has set up shop over at Jezebel, and her beauty advice remains utterly perfect. She is also finding fashion deals again! Basically, that hole in my life is filled now, after a long hiatus.
*
The Guardian‘s investigation into Chicago’s corrupt and terrifying and illegal policing is an absolute jaw-dropper. However low your expectations may have fallen about the racism and violence endemic in many spheres of law enforcement, PREPARE TO LOWER THEM STILL FURTHER:
Three attorneys interviewed by the Guardian report being personally turned away from Homan Square between 2009 and 2013 without being allowed access to their clients. Two more lawyers who hadn’t been physically denied described it as a place where police withheld information about their clients’ whereabouts. Church was the only person who had been detained at the facility who agreed to talk with the Guardian: their lawyers say others fear police retaliation.
*
I was really moved by this piece by Andrew Solomon about the suicide of a close friend, which is also about identity and youth:
Spring break, freshman year, I panicked. I did not want to be gay; I was not going to be gay. If I roomed with Terry Kirk, people would think I was gay. If I roomed with Terry Kirk, there would be wild parties in my own room, and I would never be the faux WASP prepster I had planned to be. I knew that histrionic people were fake, and that real people were restrained and moderate and focused on their grades. I would fail if this went ahead. My parents had asked me about the person I was going to room with, and I had decided that since both Terry and my father were great opera buffs, it would be a good idea to invite Terry to come and see Madame Butterfly with my family. We were to meet at my parents’ apartment and have drinks, then go to dinner at my mother’s favorite restaurant, and then proceed to the Met for the performance. Terry arrived a half hour late, which was not an acceptable opening gambit in my family under the best of circumstances. He showed up, also, in the green cape and the hat, wearing white pants tucked into knee-high boots from Charles Jourdan that had most likely not been intended for men. He cut what might euphemistically have been called a dashing figure. My mother was seething already about the delay, and I watched with a churning stomach as Terry turned on a flow of charm that simply refused to wither under her withering glare. Now that I’m old and wise, I can see that my mother, too, thought that I must be gay if I were going to room with Terry Kirk, and she wasn’t very happy about it, but at the time, I just remember being relieved when what struck me as the comparatively happy and untheatrical story of Cio-Cio San began to unfold on the stage.
*
This is a lovely interview with Anne Tyler, who I admire so greatly, and if you have never read her luminous and generous and brilliant work, start with either Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant or Breathing Lessons. I think Tyler gets slightly dismissed because of her subject matter (family, relationships, widowhood) and her gender (SHE IS A WOMAN YOU NEVER SEE THAT HAPPEN) and she is ACTUALLY one of the greatest American writers, so. And she is full of wisdom, I think:
Has Tyler had another partner since Modarressi? She sighs. “I tried having someone else in my life. It seemed very clear to me there’s a stage when you can make allowances for people, where you can adapt and change and a stage where you feel, ‘I’m beyond adapting.’ I gave it a chance. Now I’m on my own.”
And staying that way, it sounds like. “I would absolutely like to stay that way,” Tyler says, laughing. “Years ago John Waters told me it would be nice to have somebody in his life, but he thought that after about two days [his partner] might say something like, ‘How about I hang this one picture of mine over on that wall?’ and that would do it. Out you go.”
*
I’ll read anything about otherkin, tbh.
*
Like many parents, I have one thing with every kid I lie to my pediatrician about. It keeps things EXCITING. In my case, it’s just that my son likes to sleep in his Rock ‘n Play, this glorious, cushioned, vibrating invention here, whereas your baby is supposed to sleep flat on their back on a bed full of nails in an empty room with only a framed photograph of Bruno Bettelheim in it. So, when my pediatrician said “and he’s sleeping on his back?” I said “yes!” (not a lie) and “we have one of those co-sleepers that attaches to the bed!” (also not a lie, I just use it as a bedside table, see below:)
And then I said “he…likes to take naps in his Rock ‘n Play” (not a lie) and she said (o frabjous day!!!!):
“It’s fine if he wants to sleep in it at night too, I always tell moms that the silver bullet for sleep is swaddling that kid, putting them in a Rock ‘n Play, popping a binkie in, and enjoying the result. Once they’re rolling over, you can move them to a crib.”
YESSSSSSSS. He honest-to-God will do a midnight to 7am stretch in that thing! HIGH-FIVING A MILLION ANGELS.
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I love it when dudes happen to think that the way things are in 2015 North America is some kind of biological imperative. That all human culture has been leading up to this moment, when things are perfect. “Natural elegance” is fouled up when men beautify themselves! So I suppose the many thousands of years of human history where men did beautify themselves and use beauty treatments and implements were….A fluke, right? A mistake?
Wait, I forgot the most important part, which is of course that I don’t give a crap what some whiny white dude in the NYT has to day about theories of masculinity because I’m tired of hearing about Sad White Rich Man Feels.
I know that the NYT has a ton of male writers who think that writing articles that demean others make them seem awesome and manly, but I cannot understand how they think “wordy and mean” equals “intelligent and insightful, with something to offer the world.” This Andrew O’Hagan piece was just the latest in that vein. In reading it, I felt sorry for any partners this sad bastard has or may have had. It sucks to spend your time apologizing for the one you are with, and he definitely seems like That Guy.
Ancient Egyptian hotties and all their kohl would like to have a word with this clown.
Was that article not satire? I thought it was satire. Please tell me it’s satire.
I was sort of with him until he blamed the whole thing on women. My ex is trying to get me to go Vegan, and it’s irritating.
On the other hand, when we were going out, he’d use my facial masks and otherwise didn’t give a shit if something wasn’t completely “masculine”. Why do women get to have all the pampering? he’d ask.
It’s true – fashion was just invented in, like, the 1980s, dontcha know!
It’s great because these guys always seem to develop these elaborate theories of masculinity from a great distance, like Pliny the Elder trying to figure out how a hippopotamus must work
Yes of course Humphrey Bogart just rolled out of bed in the morning looking like that, that’s how being suave and manly works, yes. Marlon Brando, a man who made his living being pretty for the cameras in a ‘less complicated era’ where you’d probably never work again if you showed up to the office in jeans and a wrinkled buttondown, never paid any mind to his appearance and if he had his muscles and brooding expression would have withered to dust in an instant
I’m sorry, but His Majesty, Charles II cannot hear you over his magnificent wig and legions of beauteous mistresses.
I used to use the co-sleeper as a nightstand too! I have this fantasy about talking back to a pediatrician (or any doctor really) and saying, “Who wants to know?” or “Mind your own damn business.” But I get that that wouldn’t be super productive.
Also, you got Pioneer Woman? Mine’s been back-ordered for months! Months, I say! What gives, I wonder?
So the initial print run of Pioneer Woman was super small, only maybe 10,000 copies or so? They didn’t anticipate so many people wanting it since it’s essentially a scholarly work from a historical society, rather than a big publishing company. So they’re basically having to print a ton more now and they’re supposed to be delivered around March.
Try the historical society directly! I was complaining that my pre-order from August hadn’t shipped yet and MrKat found out I could order it directly from the source. They did a reprinting in January and shipped them out like, the third week of the month, I think? Worth a shot.
Co-sleeper = NO-SLEEPer. ROCKABYE 4 LYFE.
re: “effortless suavity:” Dude, you van’t claim to be a manly heterobro who scorns oscillating microdermabrasion brushes and say that men who take care of themselves aren’t attractive.
Huh, it’s like the “No-Makeup Makeup Look (25-Step Tutorial!)” for men.
I mean, I’ve always been frustrated by the no-win situation for women where if you’re not attractive, you’re gross, but if you put any visible effort into being attractive, you’re vapid and worthless, but I’m not entirely convinced the answer to that is to start sending men the same message?
ITT the effortless suavity of a True Man who scorns the modern life of exfoliant
ladies
I SEE THE NEW SARAH WATERS. When anyone else has finished it, I would like to discuss everything. Because WOAH.
I liked it at first but LORDY was the middle too long. That’s about it on my feelings. I was not blown away.
Ahhhhh! I had forgetten there was a new Sarah Waters, and I AM GOING ON VACATION NEXT WEEK.
“I don’t care if you think it’s sexist”
And I don’t care if you get shot into the sun on a rocketship full of bees.
Hedwig, you are completely correct. It would indeed be easier to shut him up in a cage, cover him with bees, then hoist him into a giant wicker statue and set it alight. A rocketship I think would just be money wasted, and even with the price of gasoline coming down, in this day and age, who can really afford to just waste rocketships?
I approve of this plan – satisfying AND frugal.
Plus, then we have a good harvest and we can have a celebratory feast!
Thrifty, satisfying, AND eco-friendly. It’s a win-win-win!
I thank you for the joyous laugh that line just elicited.
I wish I could “thumbs up” this comment 40000000 times. Also, I’m stealing this phrase for use at work.
someone please post that gif of Oprah giving everyone bees because that is so appropriate right now
this is my favorite gif ever
Beads?
I think this requires a Jupiter Ascending gif of space assassins getting attacked by bees.
Not fair to the bees 🙁
Robot bees, maybe?
Tracker Jackers!
Yeah I don’t want to waste perfectly good bees on this dude
Actually I do care if he gets shot into the sun on a rocketship full of bees. I care very much because I would like to see it happen as soon as possible.
I don’t care if you think it’s sexist:
What is the purpose of these words
Aside from making me groan
for five minutes
Mallory the world would be beholden to you if you responded to this piece a la I’d Love To Help My Wife Do The Dishes (but of course only if you are inspired and freely willing)
” I wasn’t into food … ”
I remember back then that looking like Twiggy persisted into the 1970s. Androgenous, no curves at all … .
My mother told me I would never be skinny, as fashion demanded, so I basically stopped eating. I weighed 100
pounds at the time and got down to about 90 pounds. She still called me fat, told me I was too “curvy.”
Not into food? Yeah, a lot of us curvy girls quit eating back then.
Yikes, screwed up my metabolism.
Ugh, exactly. That line made me wince too. Also I’m really sorry she put you through that.
OTHERKIN THO.
I read that and it was pretty fascinating. The only otherkin I’ve stumbled across on Tumblr is one run by two roommates who feel they are a deer and the planet Pluto, and their blogs are…something. I try not to be judgmental of people and their identities but…planetkin. Okay.
Also, they’re vegans and obsessive about it.
A thing about otherkin that I think is pretty interesting — I have a friend that wrote a big ethnographic study on people who believe they’re vampires and I think it’s kind of the same thing — is that, if you sort of discount the possibility that souls are real real, like if we assume (as I do) that there isn’t really any kind of indestructible ephemeral spirit housed in the body and that can move around or contact deities or something like that, is thinking you’re the planet Pluto actually that weird? I mean, is it any weirder than thinking you’ve got an immortal body inside you, or that you share a soul with a fox, or that you’re the reincarnation of a Tibetan Lama or something?
And if there isn’t an actual soul in there, then this process of sort of find a tutelary spirit for yourself, or a totemic identity spirit or something, that’s got to be a psychological process that has some kind of useful quality for human beings for us to keep doing it universally and across cultures. It makes it seem to me that the “otherkin” phenomenon is a lot like what might happen if this pyschological process kept going on in a cultural environment where there wasn’t a specific historical tradition to channel it.
I actually think that a lot of the phenomena that you see in certain kinds of fandom is related to it, it’s pretty interesting to me.
It’s really interesting to hear it put this way. Obviously appropriating the “spirit animal” terminology is problematic in a lot of ways, but I guess that’s kind of the way I’ve been thinking of the otherkin connection to whatever they feel connected to. Most of the stuff I’ve seen that connects fandom-ish movements to a lack of cultural environment has to do with the concept of a third gender, but I can totally see how otherkin would fit into that as well.
Right, and I want to make it clear that I don’t think that this is the same as the cultural tradition of spirit animals or totemic animals — I just think that if that tradition isn’t wholly traditional, like if it’s based on a universal psychological function (and I think you can make a case that this psychological function manifests itself in similar, though not identical, feaures even of cultures that don’t have totemic traditions), then this phenomenon could be a manifestation of that sort of mechanism.
I think we’re totally on the same page here- there are these recurring cultural traditions that are very distinct and well-established, but fall along the same lines of fulfilling a specific function. And since the mainstream culture of most of the people who identify as otherkin doesn’t have those traditions, they have to create their own and find their own name/terminology/explanation for it.
Man, if I wasn’t already in grad school for something completely unrelated, I would so want to dig into the literature on this stuff.
That description of Jessie prowling around her room as a wolf, and the way she describes it as calming and feeling like “put[ting] myself into another place”, certainly resonates with me as a weirdo whose coping method when anxious/panicky is “become a Jedi.”
You know! And a thing that’s of particular interest to me, this idea that the arts (books, theater, storytelling, &c.) as wholly entertainment, that’s a really recent idea, a product of the commercialization of entertainment that happened in the last couple hundred years (a long time to me, but not very long compared to Human History). And I think this has a tendency to obscure what some of the driving forces of creating ficitonal narratives were in the first place: among them, providing the building blocks for members of a cultural group to build an identity for themselves.
The thing is that even though we know that the intent of Star Wars is essentially nothing more than providing a diversion for a couple hours and making George Lucas obscenely rich, I think a lot of times we still subconsciously try to use it in this more primal or essential way, which is to give us a kind of framework or scaffolding for who we are or who we want to be, and there’s a lot of ways in which I think “Jedi” (or “Wolf”, or maybe even “Pluto”?) is a perfectly reasonable tool to do that with.
What archetype does Pluto signify, tho
Like that kind of analogous thinking serves a real social function in cultures where the symbol has a shared, understood meaning and there’s a framework to fit it in (Coyote, that rock that looks like a face, Jedi) but if you just declare you’re Pluto or a chairsoul tomorrow and that by your personal definition nobody else shares means you have the personality trait of being socially awkward and liking anime a little too much that’s kinda just nonsense
Well, there’s two things — the first is that I think it’s only nonsense if the requirement is that it’s ONLY a social phenomenon. If it’s got merit as a tool for individual guidance — like, for example, if I think of Pluto as being a certain way, like a chilly mysterious figure of unwavering honesty and grim determination in the application of its duty, it doesn’t necessarily matter that no one else thinks of it that way if what I’m using it for is as a form of guidance for my own behaviors. If that is the person that I want to be, I can use this notion as a framework for how I want to act.
And the second thing about this is that even if it is mostly social, the reason that it’s sometimes nonsensical isn’t necessarily because the individual person is doing something wrong, and has more to do with the fact that there’s no existing framework in which to house it.
So, I know that I feel a certain way and believe certain things and want to be a particular kind of person, that I feel alienated from myself in a particular way, but I live in a society that doesn’t give me sufficient archetypes in which to house those feelings, I’m not necessarily doing something wrong by looking outside those archetypes and making up something on my own.
Oh actually wait a third thing: a third thing that’s interesting to me is that you often run into otherkin in small groups or (if you see Pear’s comment down the way) people who are desperate to include people in this narrative framework. Now, I think on the one hand this could be read as people reinforcing each other’s delusion, and actually I definitely do think that there’s a line that’s too far in terms of this kind of…uh…I guess I’ll call it a mythic schema?…where it absolutely becomes too much, and so it’s sure reasonable to say that three people who believe they’re Plutokin or something are just reinforcing a potentially hazardous delusion.
But on the other hand, the act of adopting an “otherkin” identity carries with it certain commonalities with other otherkin, even if the specific details are different. A Plutokin isn’t the same thing as a Wolfkin, and obviously they have very different ideas about who they are that aren’t necessarily shared — but a lot of the key elements, like a sense of personal alienation, a feeling that society is trying to disrupt their identity, and a feeling of satisfaction at having adopted a new identity — are in common, and so in that sense there is a shared, useful meaning.
just wanted to say that this is the best discussion of otherkin i’ve ever seen on the internet A++ carry on, I love all y’all Toasties.
This is such a positive and compassionate and logical way of looking at it, and I appreciate knowing it. Thank you.
The merit of a shared social phenomenon is that it can then be used to communicate, to create a social space and understood norms and all those things that we use words for. Absent a shared social meaning to the concepts therein, there’s not a lot of functional difference between writing about how you’re Pluto and just pounding your fist on the keyboard a few times and hitting ‘submit’. While it’s one thing to think thoughts nobody else is thinking and develop personal meanings for things, and it’s great if you can develop and communicate those concepts in a manner that helps other people think about things in a helpful way, the end result of constructing your life and identity around ‘Pluto means honest and I am Pluto’ when that’s not meaningful to anyone else is less likely to be personal healing and more likely to be ending up just that much less able to interact successfully with anyone else. And, y’know, it’s not like non-otherkin have huge difficulties being honest without developing their own personal language and an unhealthy obsession with planetary bodies.
It’s rare for pure self-diagnosis to work out that well, especially for existentially unhappy teenagers educated through the Internet, and while social interaction isn’t the only thing in life reacting to feelings of alienation by deliberately self-isolating and retreating into your own inaccessible private universe seems kinda directly counterproductive to one of those scenarios social phenomena are pretty key to resolving. Society not having a readymade place and framework for you is a real problem (and one that I’ll warrant most people have, many way worse than the folks who wind up becoming otherkin) but it is, inherently, a social problem. Maybe it’d sorta work if you reinvented yourself as Warren Buffettkin.
The root of the thing is basically that I don’t see a whole lot of otherwise healthy and happy otherkin who’ve succeeded through the power of redefining themselves as random objects, and while to some extent there’s a chicken-or-the-egg kind of issue there the accounting for how otherkinism has uniquely enriched their lives always comes down to more or less the same defenses cults get, so I’m leery of treating it as a harmless (let alone helpful) form of self-treatment. The reason living life as though Odin were watching over you is a personal eccentricity and living life as though Obama is stealing your thoughts through microwaves is a mental illness has less to do with their general popularity or relevance to the outside world in 2015 and more to do with that folks who do the former tend to wind up buying ugly jewelry and getting invited to weird parties and the people who do the latter tend to wind up hunkered in their unlit cabin scribbling word salad in a pile of notebooks 24/7. I would not advise you to convince yourself of microwave thought-stealing, even if it might explain a lot in your life.
*shrug*
I’m not saying it’s good, I’m saying that I think it’s interesting, and that I’m interested in where it comes from.
I guess I’m also interested in the possibility that, even if it’s not good the way these guys do it, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t the expression of an underlying psychological mechanism that IS good, or at least useful. In any case, I am no completely convinced that even if the otherkin phenomenon is bad, that a kind of “you kids are just doing a bunch of nonsense” attitude is the best way to address it.
I got to admit that I don’t know a lot of otherkin who went on to be successful at things, but, comparatively speaking, I don’t know a lot of any kind of person that went on to be successful at things.
I guess George Patton thought he was the reincarnation of a Spartan soldier, he was a Spartankin, even if they didn’t have a word for it back in the Olde Dayes.
To clarify I don’t think that analogizing yourself to [mountain, celestial body, animal, etc.] is inherently bad or nonsense, but the approaches grouped under ‘otherkinism’ that drop you in a community of folks writing bad poetry about dragons and growling at customers at their retail jobs are ones that absolutely should not be defended or encouraged to practice in. The folks already far gone down the rabbit hole make for great entertainment tho and you’re probably not gonna fix em so eh, okay
Probably the whole reasoning-by-analogy sympathetic-magic type of thinking isn’t ever gonna get you very far in our current hyperliteral, empiricist society. Whether it has its own strengths or not it’s just Chinese to English-speakers, and you only learned the Chinese you’ve got off the backs of product manuals. It seemed to work okay in some contexts elsewhere but in the West we kinda squashed the last big push of the whole symbolism-heavy romantic thing with, uh, well, fascism.
hoo boy that wound up being a lot of words, sorry
Talking to them always seems like the thin line I never before knew existed between a four-year-old boasting about how they’ll be a lion when they grow up and undiagnosed schizophrenia.
Be a planet, sure why not but please don’t bark at people
Yeah, I’m with you. Except I don’t try not to be judgmental.
I mean, I’m okay with the “I feel a connection to this archetype, it serves a purpose in my life, and who knows?” sort, but the ones who take it REALLY SERIOUSLY and are very public about it and think it excuses them from human behavioral etiquette? (And who mostly seem to be compensating for high school, like I didn’t have a prom date because nobody appreciates my super-special mermaid soul?) TOTALLY JUDGING.
Sort of like the people who keep talking about how they’re for serious Cleopatra/a witch who got burned/the Queen of Atlantis. No, you’re Dwayne from Accounting. Shut up.
“sexual category error”
“nobody wants to hire a person who eats wheat”
The fact that this guy spends his time trying to box everyone into a predefined set of categories says a lot about him. No. It says EVERYTHING about him.
Would someone with too much time on their hands care to explain to me what he even means by “sexual category error”? I think I understand what a category error is, but its usage in the sentence ” It’s a failure of natural elegance for a man to seem beautified, and the pressure on him to be so may be the biggest sexual category error of our times.” makes absolutely zero sense to me.
Is that because it really does make zero sense?
In other words, when he writes “I’m stoned with sentiment,” does he really just mean “I’m stoned”?
Pretty sure it’s not MY job to pluck my eyebrows either, brah. Thanks for all that original wisdom.
(Also, was anyone else not a little bit disappointed at the annotations in Pioneer Girl? It seemed both heavy on the notes and light on actual information.)
It’s not a man’s job to pluck his eyebrows
because nothing says “effortless suavity” and “natural elegance” and “male beauty” like a unibrow, amirite ladies???
I don’t know about you, but my ideal of masculine beauty is the old-school cave man models at natural history musems.
Are you alluding specifically to “Prehistoric Man” in On The Town? … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qb-Dxw9pMk
It’s not anybody’s job to pluck their own eyebrows! No one has that job! If someone was paying me to pluck my eyebrows, I WOULD BE SO RICH.
If someone was paying me to pluck my eyebrows, I would have no eyebrows.
Well, me neither, but that’s why I’d be rich!
I used to work with a woman who shaved/plucked off her eyebrows and painted new ones on her face using black liquid eyeliner. It was a very severe look and I always wondered why she did it. Maybe because someone was paying her to! That makes sense, sort of.
Jane Marie! I hope she brings back her tutorials, those were my favorite. But also it’s her site/she can do whatever and I’ll still wear bright lipstick in her honor.
Christ, I couldn’t get past the first paragraph of the male grooming article. I don’t care if it is satire (which I’m unsure of tbh), but either way it was fucking insufferable.
the sidebar articles on the Otherkin piece are p great too!!! http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/head…
I get otherkin, to a certain extent. The concept initially chafed against me when I first encountered it a few years ago; but when I take a step back and look at it figuratively rather than literally, it does make sense to me in a lot of ways, and in fact resonates with feelings I had myself when I was a kid that may have prefigured my understanding of myself as transgender, or may have been something completely distinct.
To me, it reads as a manifestation of alienation – not on an interpersonal level, but rather an existential one. Alienation is something I’ve experienced deeply as a trans person, and the further I get into transition, the more I realize that, for me, it’s not about fitting myself into this box or that box, or even constructing a brand new personalized box for myself, but about feeling deeply and profoundly alienated from the entire concept of boxes. If I approach the concept of otherkin in a similar way, I can see it as a form of existential homesickness, a feeling of being disconnected from the ease with which most people relate to their bodies and the world that finds some small relief in the unattainable longing to be a creature that exists in that easy relationship. And that’s something that I can personally identify with, albeit in different ways.
I hope that doesn’t sound dismissive, because that’s the last thing I mean for it to be. In fact, I see the idea of otherkin as poetic and direct. As far as I’m concerned, we could do with more poetry and figuratively-expressed longing in our daily discourse. And I’m encouraged that we’re seeing young people gravitating intuitively towards those forms of expression. Too many adults today are astonishingly and disconcertingly literal, about everything.
(Edited for clarity.)
This is an excellent explanation and clarifies a lot of thoughts I have about otherkin and contemporary subcultures in general.
Gosh, that middle paragraph is genius. And gorgeously written.
This is a perfect comment.
“Existential homesickness” is very precisely the story of my life. Thank you for this.
The subtitle of the Andrew O’Hagan piece:
“One writer argues that the rise of over-grooming may be neutering his generation of men.”
Yeah, man, unless you’re literally grooming your balls off, I’m not sure there’s anything to worry about here.
Lol, this guy… “People must do as they wish, of course… but I’m right and they’re wrong!”
Okay, pal!
“I consider fashion and well being to be fairly recent hobbies, but I AM a writer, which is why I’m 100% confident acting like I’ve figured this whole thing out already.”
“I hope you all noticed my nod to T.S. Eliot. I’m a very well-educated masculine man, and I believe men should just naturally exude a quiet confidence and elegance, not unlike Cary Grant or Don Draper. If men were allowed to simply exist, we would all do that.”
I Once Tried to Shave My Balls Because Society and Wound Up Literally and Figuratively Castrating Myself: The Andrew O’Hagan Story
Ahahahaha THANK YOU, my favorite acolyte of Jupiter Ascending, for bringing laughter to both my and my coworkers’ mornings. (I shared the line and your response with them, rather than suffocating myself with laughter.)
“Mr. O’Hagan? There’s a Mr. Abelard here to see you.”
Maybe he’s nicked himself with the razor one too many times while shaving his nether regions and is afraid of a more drastic injury.
I’m reminded of that story John Oliver covered about the judge who was thrown off the bench because he sent dick pics to a co-worker, and the court decided that “the judicial penis” had been “intentionally groomed for photography.”
Is the Judicial Penis a legally defined part of court regalia, like a backup gavel or something
A smooth, Ken doll-like groin is the newest fashion sensation
whereas your baby is supposed to sleep flat on their back on a bed full of nails in an empty room with only a framed photograph of Bruno Bettelheim in it.
This legit made me let out a bark of laughter.
Ha, me too. Glob bless anything that encourages a midnight-7am sleeping schedule.
My daughter wouldn’t settle in her crib as a newborn and we didn’t/wouldn’t co-sleep, so we stuck her in her car seat at night for 2 weeks. Then we moved her to her crib with a blanket bolster. Worked like a charm.
There is no sarcasm in my tone when I say, You’re doing parenting right. whatever works
Also, sorry, I can’t get over this, here’s another little bit that I like:
Welcome to the male condition. Welcome to the fresh hell of new choices.
The “male condition” apparently is a constant anxiety that you don’t look good enough or you’re not clean enough or you’re not thin enough, and this anxiety now expresses itself in the need to consider and buy a whole bunch of beauty products.
“Yeah, sure,” said Andrew O’Hagan, “Obviously women have been suffering from this condition every day of their lives since literally forever, but did you know it’s starting to affect MEN, too? That is a bridge too far!“
That’s always what I feel when I hear men complain about this horrible new thing where they have to worry about how their bodies look and spend time and money on their appearance to feel like they fit in. On the one hand, it’s true that I don’t think think the ideal solution to the sexist beauty requirements for women is to make things just as shitty for men, but on the other they can just fuck off with their whining over needing to shave because I’ve never see one of these guys suggesting that maybe women shouldn’t be expected to shave either.
Yeah, especially because as a dude, UNLESS you’re a Game of Thrones actor whose entire career is predicated on having washboard abs, if you want to stop spending every minute caring about your beauty regimen, good news! You can just stop doing it!
Never once do one of these guys say, “Man, it’s pretty bad for me, but what if I was in a position where I couldn’t solve my problem by writing a reflective article about masculinity in T Magazine?”
And for that unnamed GoT star, plucking his eyebrows and going to the gym actually is his job.
Though, twenty bucks says that Game of Thrones actually pays someone else to pluck that dude’s eyebrows.
(Also, I mean: poor Game of Thrones dude, he has to do situps and pluck his eyebrows, but ON THE OTHER HAND, at least he doesn’t have a nude scene every other episode?)
Ok, it’s his job to tolerate eyebrow-plucking and body sculpting. But yeah, he probably gets to spend most of his scenes fully clothed.
I know that the life of a well-compensated celebrity on a successful TV show has its own challenges and hardships, and the pain and anxiety that people in those circumstances feel is a real thing that can affect them deeply, but no knucklehead writing for the New York Times’ knock off of Thought Catalog is going to convince me to have sympathy for them.
Sory, Game of Thrones dude, if it ever gets too much for you just come work at the welfare office with the rest of us.
Let me tell you right now that if I could legit have a shot at looking like Hapfthor Bjornsson, I’d take it. But I’m literally a foot too short. :/
ETA: 12 inches of height, that is. I have both feet.
The secret is to just go back in time and arrange to be born by Hapfthor Bjornsson’s parents — who, based on his name, must have been a descendent of the thunder god Thor on the one hand, and a bear on the other.
It’s easy! No anxiety is required!
it was hard to focus on the article as the voice in my head was continuously screaming “WELCOME TO A WOMAN’S WORLD, ASSHOLE! HOW DO YOU FUCKING LIKE IT NOW?!”.
“People are judging the unruliness of my eyebrows! This is a completely new and horrible experience!”
“Oh, you sweet summer child.”
It’s not like carefully sculpted stubble and fashion designers revising the biker jacket are new things (I guess Marlon Brando was just born in his getup?), high-effort effortless fashionability has been a thing since frills and ruffles on dudes went out, it just takes a thoroughly modern kind of thinkpiece geek to get a media platform on the back of mistaking the movies for reality and the world of living people whose bathroom regimes you might see for its pale shadow.
Right? I feel like a guy has got to be pretty dumb to not realize that “effortless” has been the most effortful effect in fashion since literally forever.
#wokeuplikethis
Did you catch the part where he wonders why men weep in cars? I guess women cry in their cars for the simple, straightforward reason that one’s car is often the most private place available when one is away from home, but men have some totally different reason involving masculine solidity and sexual category errors.
Women cry because their feelings are hurt; men cry because “too many kinds of hair gel” has reminded them of the inescapable anguish of being.
Also, the 18th century happened, so these guys can shut it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOnAo9dvrEw
The Andrew Solomon piece. So sad, so lovely.
Seriously. I had to stop and sit and think for a while and catch my breath a couple of times there. Especially this: “it’s hard to be friends with someone who will never be sad with you.”
I don’t care if you think it’s sexist
(and according to my prejudices)
This kind of shit is the “just being honest” of prejudice. As if the act of announcing your gender essentialism, your misogyny, your racism, your classism out loud actually erases those bigotries!
“Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t think Real Men should be required to act like women or homosexuals. I mean, that’s just how I feel; I guess I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy. *shrug* “
“I haven’t examined my ideas in any depth, therefore it is uncouth of you to do so!”
“…no offence.”
And now I’m imagining him trimming his pubes with a straight razor after a few drinks too many.
that was in reply to braak, which makes it make much more sense.
No, it’s a great mental image in any context!
DON’T MIND ME, I’M JUST CRYING SILENTLY AT MY DESK
It is sweet, except the giveaway “we put their hands together” kinda spoils the whole premise.
I just read the link and I can’t 🙁
So sweet tho
So sweet and sad.
The line “…but we told her that dad had passed away and that he was waiting for her…” resonates–my grandma passed away last month after a long run with dementia, and during her last illness, my mom took her hand and said, “If you see Dad, just keep going–don’t wait around for us.” Grandma wasn’t conscious or coherent at that point, but I so wish that’s how it was for her in the end.
Ughghgh, I’m so sad about this Andrew O’Hagan piece. I saw him give a lecture five years ago about literature and life, and it was joyous and life-affirming and made me want to make art. It was so good, in fact, that I’ve been avoiding reading any of his books because I knew how disappointed I would be if they turned out to be lousy. And now he drops a bunch of dudely whining about gender in the freaking New York Times! I WANTED TO LIKE YOU, DUDE, AND YOU RUINED IT. I mean I can’t claim he’s lost a reader since I already wasn’t reading his work, but still.
to my mind (and according to my prejudices) male beauty loses its essence with premeditation
I’m sorry for Andrew O’Hagan that smelling different or removing some body hair would shatter his sense of his own gender and sexuality. Does he know that masculinity isn’t actually the kind of thing that can be accidentally misplaced? It’s not like an umbrella or something.
In my experience, masculinity is damned fragile.
Like an exquisite teacup.
And you just KNOW Andrew O’Hagan gets grossed out by women who don’t shave their legs.
I really hope someone asks him this and publishes his response. I need to know.
Quick! Everybody email Andrew O’Hagen @ NYT.com a pic of your own unshaven armpit! Subject line: Effortless Elegance.
Well sure, I mean, it’s our job.
My paycheck must be lost in the mail.
“When she was seven, Tyler “decided I could not manage to believe in God. I sometimes think I was smarter at seven than I ever have been since. I remember thinking, ‘Who would watch over you?’ I’m not a spiritual person. I’ve no interest in finding out the meaning of life.””
A woman after my own heart.
“Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant” is one of my favorite books
I like him, but something in our friendship died the day he came round to our house with some almond milk he’d made himself.
……why? Is it considered manly to hate almond milk now?!
Eschewing dairy is for gays and people who don’t have the fortitude to stop being lactose intolerant. Real men consume animal products and tequila, with a side of onion rings and regret.
Also bizarrely … don’t know which word applies. Racist? Ethnocentric? Xenophobic? Most people around the world are lactose intolerance. There is no “dairy = protein = masculine” dynamic in Asian culture since most Asians can’t process daity lactose.
Words that apply: fragile, delicate
How you like your “masculine” now, O’Hagan?
Andrew O’Hagan is trying to convince himself he’s superior (excuse me: manlier) because he can’t make a thing with his own hands. Right.
It doesn’t seem to occur to many White Straight Males that they don’t speak for everybody and therefore their boring ideas don’t need to be published, does it?
man what you do at home is your business but things will always be wierd between us if I find out you’re milking almonds
Men need eyeliner. End of.
My idea of a misandrist-ruled utopia includes ALL MEN IN EYELINER. And golden briefs that are a clear homage to Leia’s bikini. Nothing more. Eyeliner and golden briefs.
Eyeliner and golden briefs AND GAGS.
Ehhh Michelle Phillips in the Laurel Canyon piece?? ‘I wasn’t much into food back then’. ‘I broke into Mama Cass’s house, cleaned for three hours and left without saying a word’ ???
I totally need someone to do that for me.
Well, OK, someone cleaning my place top to bottom while I’m not there and not eating any of my food would be pretty great. But STILL. IT’S WEIRD.
Andrew O’Hagan seems to think that, left to their own devices, all men are naturally and essentially Don Draper.
Also, fuck you dude, almond milk is delicious, and making it yourself is cost-effective and self-reliant. These are, I think, supposed to be solid, manly qualities? Or does it only count if you’re making sturdy wooden furniture?
Also: Hollywood is apparently full of sociopaths and hookers, both of which are equally bad and evil and shallow.
Bleh, someone’s hard-on for the masculinity of 1930s detective novels is showing, and it’s making all of us a little uncomfortable here.
Dames and gunslers just, like, everywhere.
I’d LOVE to get Jon Hamm’s input on what he’s done to prepare and keep in shape (bod and face wise) for that role.
you mean he doesn’t just wake up in a pressed suit, rinse with half a bottle of Canadian Club, and walk on set?
Is it terrible I kind of get what “not really into food” felt like? I ate fine and I enjoyed things, but I remember all throughout my teen years, I frequently got bored eating through a meal and leaving half my meals uneaten, frequently, especially when I ate out. I just was like, “Meh.” Now, I enjoy food. Or not enough. I don’t know. I just wolf things down sometimes, and it disturbs me.
It’s not terrible, of course. Perfectly possible to be disinterested in food without being unhealthy. But a lot of the time, a statement like that is a loud alarm for serious eating disorders, and that’s why I wince.
Eudora Peterson of You Need a New Man and Bic for Her fame ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXXcjtskJxCysJI8… has also returned to the internet via Millihelen.
I love her. I didn’t know of her before the Millihelen videos and her work makes me squeal with joy.
She did the three amazing videos that I attempted to link above in 2012 and then mostly disappeared from the internet. I was so happy to see her at Jezebel! This is an even better comeback than D’Angelo!
Here’s a (hopefully!) working link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXXcjtskJxCysJI8…
I cannot make it through that male-grooming piece without needing to swear at EVERYTHING which is a problem because I’m at work. 😛
“My soul is tired.” Shut your yammering pie-hole. Your SOUL IS TIRED? Because it’s a trend right now that successful, admired males groom themselves, they drink coconut water and maybe pluck their eyebrows (God forbid) you feel depressed and put-upon?
The mild peer pressure of actor acquaintances becoming walking towers of perfection is too much for you? HA. HA HA HA HA.
I wish there was a way to make these whining babies realize what asses they sound like. Feeling down because you don’t look like an actor? Ego much? ANY woman on the street knows that actress-like perfection is a collaborative creation with makeup artists, trainers, & Photoshop. Go eat your carbs or whatever, dude, just don’t write a whiny, entitled, angry piece about it. Geez.
Oh dear. Here, read this response to it instead. http://www.refinery29.com/2015/02/82808/male-groo…
That is such a great response. Thanks for linking to it!
His soul is tired because grooming. I mean, species extinction and violence against women and the global refugee crisis, but STRAIGHT MEN CAREFULLY SELECTING THEIR CLOTHES I CANNOT GO ON.
I can’t figure out if that male vanity thing is satire or not?
Sometimes I feel like the entire idea of masculinity is a satire.
Oh my God, that’s a quote to keep.
interview with anne tyler by elanor wachtel, the cbc’s queen of interviewers:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/anne-ty…
People rag on SJ Tumblr, but look at how well the people quoted in the otherkin article are able to articulate the similarities and differences between identifying as otherkin and identifying as transgender. Teenagers going to Tumblr to have fun and find themselves are becoming fluent in the language of public relations at an age early enough to take the lessons about the importance of effective communication to heart, and personally, I’m proud of them.
“fluent in the language of public relations”
that is exactly how my (mostly teenage) students are! They can argue eloquently why they should get a better grade. They can not do any math, ever, apparently. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t care if you “just feel like [you] have a really good point here”. I care if you learn like, some actual chemistry and math.
TL;DR kids these days need to get off my lawn; by “kids” i mean whatever the generation after us millennials is. That’s right, I’m only 28 and I’m already complaining about the next generation!
The Scarlet Pimpernel musical has a lovely song called “The Creation of Man” which is all about how God created men to be dandies in every species. Someone needs to sneak into O’Hagan’s home, conceal a music player and speaker into his walls, and set the song on repeat. “Man’s duty is to uphold the banner of beauty!”
(While I’m at it, I also recommend “The Riddle” and “Madame Guillotine” from the same musical. The first is basically the theme song of King’s Landing, and the second is the most breathtaking mix of bloodlust and eroticism I’ve ever heard.)
I am sad the show isn’t done more often – the score really is fun!
omg, The Scarlet Pimpernel musical is such an underplayed gem. I love Marguerite’s numbers as well, and “Only Love” which is apparently from an older version? Man. Gorgeous.
Also LOL, just subjecting O’Hagan to any form of The Scarlet Pimpernel would be amusing. “It’s like this guy…who everyone underrates because he’s a fop all day long….but he’s actually the most badass of them all. Mind-blowing, I know.” 😛
Ahaha, I didn’t realize how the entire storyline would be his kryptonite! But so true.
Sidebar, I know my family loves me because they have been willing to listen the Scarlet Pimpernel soundtrack approximately twelve thousand times since buying it for me when I was in eighth grade. It was well-timed, too — the voice of the Revolution villain was at least 5% of my sexual awakening.
O’Hagan: Be an example to your sex. Give your boot a dapper strap, and it’s smarter if your garter has some snap!
That is love!
Oh, if only we could arrange for people around O’Hagan to sing snippets of the song at him as he goes about his day. (Draw your britches in quite tight — even more so and your torso will ignite!)
I would pay someone to do that.
That is the most delightful musical 🙂
They seek him HEEYA!
They seek him THERYA!
Those Frenchies seek him EVERYWHERYA!
It has been far, far too long since I listened to this soundtrack; I am remedying this immediately.
Glad to be of service!
Anne Tyler is wonderful. The Accidental Tourist does so many brilliant things with its characters, everyone looking for joy in particular sidelong ways. And the sentiment “Maybe what matters isn’t whether you love someone, it’s who you are when you’re with them” has stuck with me for a long time.
The Laurel Canyon piece has cemented two things for me
1. Joni Mitchell is probably my favorite person in the world
2. I probably should’ve been born in 1949
…I feel certain that something in masculine solidity is lost with the enforcement of beauty regimens. What do I mean by “masculine solidity”? I mean the suavity that comes as if by accident, without noticeable effort. … I don’t care if you think it’s sexist: It’s not a man’s job to pluck his eyebrows or plump his lips…male beauty loses its essence with premeditation. It’s a failure of natural elegance for a man to seem beautified”
Man this is saying a whole lot of things that I don’t think the author intended to say
Though I do think it’s interesting to think about what’s implied about female or feminine beauty, particularly when you look at those “celebrities/porn actresses without makeup” pictures that are so popular. Those women are never described as naturally elegant or suave without makeup, they’re just secretly ugly.
what a world.
I particularly like the “plump his lips” part… like, that is not a thing, outside of getting cosmetic surgery/injections. It’s not part of virtually any woman’s daily beauty regimen. Where did he get this idea? Is he trying to show off how much he does not understand?
“Men have always had secret regimes” looks like this rookie just blew the lid on the underground authoritarian sects I always knew existed. Loose lips sink clandestine dictatorships, dummy.
(Also, who on GoT is making their own almond milk? Author is missing out on free homemade food by not cultivating this friendship.)
Vanity Fair dude: I just purchased some tea tree beard oil and some moisturizer at LUSH, and I’m all about using them and looking great, and I am manly as fuck.
beard oil: what is this for?? Need to know for Mr. Floridagal.
It kinda softens the beard a little, but more than that it just makes it more manageable, easy to comb, and flattens down the flyaway hairs that ruin a good beard’s drape. And Gal Emby says the oil gives it a nice sheen. Also, it makes me smell faintly of cedar and citrus, which I consider to be pretty awesome.
It’s essentially leave-in conditioner for beards, and if it smells good, makes you want to rub your face all over the beard it’s on. Thumbs up!
Google image search has convinced me that Andrew O’Hagan is way more groomed than anyone I’ve ever met in daily life. Look at that haircut! That must need trimming at least every month. And his hair is full of shiny stuff, and is artfully arranged! And his skin is soft and dewy! None of which is at all wrong, it’s just… quite definitely lacking in that certain “suavity that comes as if by accident, without noticeable effort.”
“Men have always had secret regimes” looks like this rookie just blew the lid on the underground authoritarian sects I always knew existed. Loose lips sink clandestine dictatorships, dummy.
I met a new mom this morning who told me that the one piece of baby equipment I should buy (aside from the required things like car seats, etc.) was the Rock ‘n’ Play. Now I wonder if this woman was Nicole in disguise.
a midnight to 7am stretch
Good grief. You think I can put the preschooler in it?
(Seriously: congratulations on SLEEP, that’s amazing.)
Nicole, your pediatrician sounds eminently sensible! Except I can’t figure out how you get a swaddled infant into the Rock n Play’s harness. This will be relevant for me in a couple of months — any tips?
Men, getting all fancy! Not like the old days, when masculinity was plain, utilitarian and subtle.
Dogs Unimpressed by Overcompensating Codpieces
EFFORTLESS SUAVITY
I refuse to read the Andrew O’Hagan piece, because I have decided that he is Walt Whitman and I like that image. “The scent of these armpits finer than prayer”, indeed, Walt.
“Masculine solidity” will be how I’ll be describing my poop (well, a good, solid, poop) until I die.
“…something in our friendship died the day he came round to our house with some almond milk he’d made himself.”
come on, Mr. O’Hagan. your friend is a caring, generous person. do you know how expensive almonds are? dick.
I was hoping it was satire as I read it, but I really don’t think it was.
Apropos of nothing: A manager just announced a new entry-level hire with an email sent out to the entire company (typically this is only done for executive hires). In the email, he mentions that she is: 1. newly graduated from college, 2. married, 3. does not yet have any children.
*sigh*
A relevant piece at The Onion (not as NSFW as the title suggests): http://www.theonion.com/articles/youre-going-to-l…
Women cry because their feelings are hurt; men cry because “too many kinds of hair gel” has reminded them of the inescapable anguish of being.