This week I've indulged in a rather alarming quantity of The Real Housewives of Orange County. They are vain, wealthy (though this season saw several of them "downsizing," the biproduct of which is undiluted weapon-grade scheudenfreude, let me tell you) and oh so fragile. Those psycho hose beasts are nothing but bundles of tequila, bravado, and silicone, all wrapped in tissue paper hide. Accordingly, the show is at its core about conflict between women, specifically in that they have it, lots of it. Their conflict is too mighty to be contained in just one TV show so it spreads, like a particularly insidious mold, over to the mainstream media, the internet, and blogs, where the housewives work steadfastly to take one another down a few pegs.
At one point in the last season, the foxy unmarried/childless "housewife" (WTF?) Gretchen was consumed by her conflict with another cast member and her mother told her, "Just rise above it." This mirrors what my mother has always said about conflict. In fact, I think it's a pretty widely held ideal for dealing with conflict and part of my fascination with the "Real Housewives" is (spoiler alert!) their repeated failure to "rise above it." Though the ladies rarely actually accomplish anything with their snarling and scratching, mostly because they are all just too delicate to admit that they are anything other than hot, rich women with the best taste in men, clothes, jewelry and cars of all their frenemies. That's just not a great headspace for taking criticism into consideration.
But can we question this oft repeated advice to "rise above" conflict, or "stay out of it," or "just ignore it," or however it's phrased? What does that really teach women and girls about defending boundaries and dealing with criticism? I've lost several friends of the years to conflict. It turned out we just weren't good enough friends to survive a fight. Rather than resolve our issue, we just stopped talking. Or alternatively, I've stopped talking to friends because the issues I had were too uncomfortable to address, so instead I just avoided them (and I'm sure others have done the same to me). There is only one person in my life with whom I freely discuss and resolve differences no matter how grizzly: my husband. This is the downside to "rising above it." My family of origin "rises above" conflict and thus considers raising any issue as "starting a fight," so guess what? We're not that close. It's hard to tell what came first: our culture-wide inability to deal with conflict, or the equation of conflict with irreversible destruction, but we have choked ourselves with decorum. (And by "we" I think I mean middle and upper class white people, but I'm not sure. I welcome your thoughts on this.)
Though my impulse isn't towards gendering this issue (as above, I see it having much more to do with culture), Rachel Simmons in The Curse of the Good Girl, makes the case that I am among the many girls and women damaged by the ideal of the "good girl." Her central argument is that we raise girls to be "good," to behave well, to get along with everyone, to "rise above" conflict, to do what is wanted of us. The downside of that is that girls internalize the idea that they must be perfect, and thus can't admit fault or take criticism. We prefer being polite to being direct, and thus we "politely" play out our disagreements behind one anther's backs or passive aggressively. We won't ask for raises, we'll hint that we could use more money. We won't speak up when we've been hurt, and thus we all carry on hurting one another without knowing it. We'll lie to defend ourselves. We'll villainize women who don't like us. We'll become powder kegs of insecurity that blow up into anorexics, cutters or self-hating sluts (whom I very intently mean to differentiate from self-loving sluts). I don't disagree with Simmons, but I do feel that our cultural phobia of conflict (lest we look like those backbiting hos of the OC) also affects boys and men, albeit differently.
I have been halfway through Simmons' book for two months now. The ideas are fascinating and the writing is good, but it would be better conveyed in a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation or a 5,000 word article in The Atlantic. It's not enough material for a 288 page book so Simmons relies upon excessive and boring examples to draw out her points. The other problem is that it gets me all worked up. I just have so many damn feelings about what she's writing about that I can't work it all out, so here I'm going to be thankful that I'm writing for a blog and not an actual edited publication and can get away with not provide an ending to my review.
(Ooh! But can I add that I think this is also related -- somehow -- to our culture-wide fear of "burdening" other people with our problems and thus we create the expectation that people suffering from maladies that range from disappointment to a bad break-up to bona fide mental health issues can only unload upon professional psychologists? Like, we're just that unwilling to be tangled up in each others' problems that we all must consider manifesting anything other than complacency and graciousness as "private"?)
Thoughts?
jjk
2 comments:
There is so much social conditioning for women of a certain class. I was well into my 30s before I realized that I had "a right to raise issues". (*raises fist in solidarity*)
Yep. Right. On my way into my 40's and I'm still so busy being nice. Worried about being perfect, lovely and everyone else's feelings. Boy does that slow me down!
So I wonder about the 'rise above' - I mean in one way less drama = better for me. But on the other hand if I internalize and the bitterness comes out in excessive chocolate cravings, I'm not doing myself any favors. It's tricky biz.
I guess my current plan and hope is try to to stay clear in my communications and if other people have feelings based on my doings that I don't enjoy - that's part of the game. I must suck it up while doing my best to be genuine and fair.
Post a Comment