u mad sis?

[metaphortunate]

I remember one time when I was a teenager I destroyed everything in my room. I had a shitload of posters on my walls when I was a teenager, art prints I loved and heavy metal bands, which I had collected over years, and in many cases cut up and reshaped into collages, and one day I ripped them all physically down and destroyed them and tore up a bunch of my drawings and broke a bunch of shit because I was beyond furious and there was nothing else I could do about it. I remember thinking at the time, even as I did it, that I was doing it because I had finally learned that whenever I got angry and I tried to do something about my anger to the source of my anger, everything just got worse for me. And if I could not keep my anger unexpressed, finally it was best to just turn it at myself and destroy my own things. It was all I could do.

Cat Marnell is the acceptable face of female anger. She's cute and skinny and white, but most of all she's self-destructive. She's very open about hating herself. We're comfortable with that. Requires Hate is extremely not comfortable. She does not let us know whether or not she's cute, whether or not she's skinny, she's definitely not white, and she very definitely hates you, not herself. Very much not the acceptable kind of female anger. I don't like Ms. Hate, and I do like Ms. Marnell* - hey, I'm as much a part of this culture as anyone. But if I had a daughter, I'd rather she grow up to be like Ms. Hate than Ms. Marnell. Keep those crotch kicks aimed outwards, love. There will be plenty of people to beat you down without you joining them.


*In talking about these women I'm talking about their public personas as inferred from their writing. I don't know anything about what either of them are actually like as people.

Comments

[kore]

Cat Marnell is the acceptable face of female anger. She's cute and skinny and white, but most of all she's self-destructive. She's very open about hating herself. We're comfortable with that.

....whatever else she or you or anyone else thinks about her apparent life-as-performance art schtick, Cat Marnell is an addict. That means, basically, there is no there there. According to what she admits she's been a hard-core pillhead since at least 15. That means, basically, 90% of her personality? is DRUGS. Drugs and how to get them. Drugs and how to get more of them. Drugs and how to get the most of them ever. That's it. It's useless to talk about feminism or self-hatred or performance art or anger or WTF-ever until she _sobers up._ There is no person there. There is just Need.

So it's kind of inappropriate to use her as a Glamour Don't.

[sparkymonster]

She's really open about being a drug addict.

She is also someone who uses her skinny glam white girlness to be a ridiculous public drug addict and never suffer consequences.

There is a person there along with the addiction. I find your description "there is no person there. There is just Need." to be dehumanizing. She's a person with an addiction.

[kore]

I find your description "there is no person there. There is just Need." to be dehumanizing

As someone who has been sober since 2002, and who was an active addict from 1988 on, and who might just know a little bit more about this topic than you, I respectfully disagree with you.

[sparkymonster]

I can accept that.

[kore]

Thanks.

[merielle]

As someone with two alcoholic parents, one of whom was also addicted to pills (I started to say "raised by," but that really gives them too much credit), I respectfully disagree with you, with some anger behind it. They weren't drunk or high all the time. When they were, they chose to be that way. My father, who was a lawyer, did not get drunk before he went to court. That was strategic. That was a choice. His job meant something to him, so he made deliberate choices aimed at protecting it. He did start drinking when he got home, and his drunk self chose to beat and terrorize his kids but not his wife, who had told him when they got together that she'd leave him if he ever hit her. That was strategic. That was a choice. He valued her. He did not value us - or at least did not value us enough not to beat us. So he slapped us around but not her.

There was a self who made those choices and who also eventually chose to get sober. The idea that "there is no person there" strikes me as a bullshit excuse, a way to dodge responsibility for what one did in the throes of addiction. There might have been diminished capacity, but capacity was still present.

I respect that your experience of addiction might be different than theirs, or than mine as an outsider victimized by it. But your experience of addiction != the defining experience of all addiction everywhere by everyone.

[kore]

They weren't drunk or high all the time. When they were, they chose to be that way.

That is just not how addiction works. It just isn't.

[metaphortunate]

If all there is there is drugs, why aren't all pillheads such good writers? But, eh, I'm not really most interested in Ms. Marnell; I'm interested in how much buzz she earns. Whether or not people SHOULD be giving her that buzz is irrelevant to that we ARE.

[kore]

You seriously think she's a good writer? I'm amazed. Her stuff is terrible. That's even before it descends into drug-addled incoherence.

[metaphortunate]

I'm not so into her Vice columns, but yes, I think that what she did with beauty writing (of all things!) is at its best clever, funny, and sometimes powerful. Not always that good, of course, but no periodical writer is ever at their best.

[jae]

I don't keep up with celebrities very well, and had never heard of either of those women before this post. But I followed the links and read them, and...wow, if Marnell is the acceptable kind of female anger, we are even more fucked up than I thought we were. Because man, do I ever not like her at all, and I'm baffled about why anyone does.

I'm not saying that I feel drawn to women like Requires Hate, either. Anger doesn't motivate me, it incapacitates me, and so reading her and others like her just makes me want to crawl into a hole and never come out, no matter how right she may be. But if you're going to force me to have a beer with one of them? Well, I sure know which one I'd choose.

-J

[pantryslut]

I find Cat Marnell unreadable.

(And I adore Requires Hate.)

[marahmarie]

Both are duds. One is without personality, the other can't decide which personality she should use. Blech.

[brainwane]

Would you mind if I linked to this publicly?

[metaphortunate]

Sure, why not?

Linked

[brainwane]

Thanks. Done.