perpetuity

hey look.

this was drawn for me. just because!

attack of the empowered female

there's been some chatter lately about this new breed of young-adult men (males in my age-bracket: mid-20s to early-30s) we've got on our hands, and it's driving me mad! the argument is something along the lines of: today's young adult male is stuck in a boob-obsessed, video game-playing adolescence while today's young adult female brings home apple-smoked bacon after smashing crazy-high glass ceilings.

give me a break, people. adolescence was a marketing creation. prolonged adolescence is the same. i don't believe it is a gendered phenomenon. why not?

BOYS AREN'T THAT DIFFERENT THAN GIRLS. we all want to live a prolonged adolescence. we all like sex and beer. we're all scarred by our childhoods. in the same vein, we're all unique. we're all individuals. some of us are more motivated than others. some of us are more creative than others. some of us soar and some of us flounder. some of us are the result of feminism (/misogyny/homophobia) and feel an intense need to show that we're just as good as (maybe even better than) our supposed superiors.

so why all this talk about the rise of young women and the stagnation of young men? are we worried that men might not be in control in 30 years? does it really matter what's between our legs? is there nothing else socially important going on in middle-class america right now?

women still earn less than men. these articles note that women in my age-bracket are out-earning and out-acheiving (academically) men in the same age-bracket. who cares? on the whole, females are still getting the shaft (see what i did there??).

the implied "problem" these articles hint at is: we're all waiting too long to get married. and once we do get married (because we're all heterosexual, of course), if the woman outearns the man, how will that affect the relationship?

as a chronically single person who loves first dates but has trouble with the idea of incorporating a new person with her beautiful and perfect (predominantly male) friends, this all annoys me. i'm not always so sure i want a boyfriend, but i feel a great amount of social pressure to find one, nonetheless. and if it happens, i don't care what his occupation is (or isn't, given the current job market).

as an over-ambitious young woman, i resent all of this bullshit. i wish i didn't downplay my strengths. i wish i didn't feel the need to tackle grad school and entrepreneurship simultaneously. i wish i didn't have a heavy grey cloud of guilt following me around in anticipation of my future break from grad school. i wish i was accepted as jeff's equal by our landlord and other people we encounter as a business. i wish the bulk of my therapy sessions didn't center on me working through my fear of eternal spinsterdom.

ultimately, i wish it didn't come down to boys versus girls.

i'm not immune from this line of thought. i totally favor men. just look at my friends -- pretty much all dudes. i think it's because women have so much baggage, and i can hardly carry my own. but it isn't our fault! it's society, dudes! let's all get over it and get along and stop breaking everything down as his and hers.

it's 2011. that is crazy. let's do something futuristic and drop our hang-ups. when you make a big deal about this stuff, it becomes a big deal. let's just be friends!!!

me 'n my domestic partners, just another night at home:

"kewpie dolls and urine stalls will be laughed at the way you're laughed at now." crossing my fingers: