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]

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.