All The Time I've Wasted Watching Better Versions of Me
December 10, 2018 11:40 AM   Subscribe

“I feel so crowded,” I wrote to a friend, “so many people are trying not just to be a person — but trying to be the exact person I want to be.”
posted by perplexion (45 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
.....Okay, I have to wait until I get home from work to more fully react to this, but I can already tell that the bulk of said reaction is going to involve me sitting in a slowly-darkening apartment and thinking a lot about "oh shit that was me".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:51 AM on December 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


WHOA

This is something about myself I've been afraid to put into words for years. Gutpunch.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:57 AM on December 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


I just looked through the "I hate"s in my gmail account.

I might not be the audience for this piece, but I think she's looking for "I hate myself", so she can delete it.
posted by wellred at 11:58 AM on December 10, 2018


Apparently I hate gmail auto-send, Woodstock NY, the film "Metropolitan" and the USPS. Probably FedEx, too.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:09 PM on December 10, 2018 [3 favorites]


We want our pets to be friends with each other, not only because it is cute and untroublesome but because we have love for them all. But when I am around other people who are just a little too much like me, I feel like a cat must, and like a cat, I head for the bedroom and endeavor not to be found for a while. I have this dull sense that if there's another one of me, it must be a better one, because I can't possibly be best at anything, and that there is some danger that even my self, my femmy little voice and my precious little jokes, has been reprinted in a better edition.

And then I wonder why I have trouble connecting.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:20 PM on December 10, 2018 [37 favorites]


The essay mentioned in the piece "On Pandering" is very well worth a read as well.
posted by Grandysaur at 12:25 PM on December 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


I'm not a religious person but someone said something once that really resonated: "The reason they're called the '7 deadly sins' is because they. can. kill. you."
posted by sexyrobot at 12:35 PM on December 10, 2018 [29 favorites]


Some of the most disorienting events of my life were becoming aware that someone was envious of me.
posted by thelonius at 12:39 PM on December 10, 2018 [24 favorites]


Yeah to so much of this. I don't want to be the girl the boys notice, but I am really, really prone to being overwhelmed with joy at sharing something with an older male mentor-figure, even if he's not actually my mentor.

Also:
For it is an embarrassing fact that my envy focuses not necessarily on writers whose work I admire, but on those whose performance of the writer’s life I find convincing. This performance includes bylines, yes, but it also includes photographs of writing desks — four blooms in a clear vase atop a blond-wood table, light streaming through a window, photographs pinned, in artful disorder, to the wall — of perfectly manicured nails below an underlined sentence in a book. There are moments when the work, terrifyingly, seems to recede into the background; when what obsesses me is appearing, to the world, like a person who might create that work.

YEAH.
posted by PussKillian at 12:43 PM on December 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


I think my reaction is more fear than envy - more "oh she'd never want to talk to the likes of me, she's so cool and together and I'm entirely a hot mess..." while at the same time I'm very much aware that people would be well justified in feeling that way about me. From the outside I do appear to "have it all."

For me, I think the gender dimension in these feelings is that I just assume when men have a cool job, that job is implicitly closed to women. In my field, that's often basically true? There's room for a small handful of women in most organizations before the men start asking questions about the "hiring bar", stealth quotas, etc. Sad but true. So I just assume "oh, that sounds so prestigious/exciting, they'd never hire a woman for that." But if a woman has demonstrably BEEN hired, I'm like, "ugh, she must be the most superhuman badass alive."
posted by potrzebie at 1:09 PM on December 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


This part resonated with me:

In this state of mind, being published does not help, not because there is always someone else who has published something better (though that is also, definitely true), but because, whatever I publish, I remain the person whose dresser is covered in dust and detritus and whose jeans are coming apart at the crotch; the person who writes in bed and bites her fingernails and hasn’t showered in days; the person who procrastinated for weeks before sitting down to write so that she could blame the deficiencies of her eventual piece on not having had the time to get it right. I remain, in short, myself; and I know myself to be inadequate.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:11 PM on December 10, 2018 [14 favorites]


One of the only good things I've gleaned from being an endless faildaughter and creature of envy is learning to pick apart that envy (and inexplicable dislike, shadow-self style) and figure out why it exists. My best guess, anyway. Whether or not I can act on it.

The friend who's like the version of me that my parents could have loved. The friend who's like the version of me who is rewarded and not punished for making mistakes. The friend who has the skill/gift I have struggled my whole life to develop, without success. The people living particular kinds of lives that I'm a trillion miles away from, but wish I could have.

It's never their fault. It's a clue. What to do about it is the next step. Usually I run from that person first, because I don't like hurting. Unfollow mute block delete. Sure, that's cowardly. Doesn't matter much; if they want a cheering section that bad, they can find another failchild.

Next, though, I have to root out and deal with whatever made the envy. Not the other person -- wherever the hole is. Find it. Deal with it. Or whatever cool person or Instagram post you find next is just going to trip you up again. The call is coming from inside the house. We all know that, and yet it's hard to stop.

So yeah, it sucks, but as a key it's useful. Lemons, lemonade, I suppose.

This is beside and around and through the whole tangled mess of being raised to see other women as competition, and male attention as the prize that validates us. Hooray, patriarchy.
posted by cage and aquarium at 1:13 PM on December 10, 2018 [21 favorites]


Some of the most disorienting events of my life were becoming aware that someone was envious of me.
posted by thelonius at 2:39 PM on December 10 [2 favorites +] [!]


Huh, this would... blow my mind. I can't actually imagine anyone envying my life even though it's pretty okay. I hadn't ever thought about it like that. Why is this such a weird feeling?
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 1:13 PM on December 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


Why is this such a weird feeling?

I assume because we spend our entire time on this Earth comparing our inner lives to the outer lives of everyone else, with exposure to more people's outer lives than ever before in human history, and with those outer lives curated to a larger degree than in the past... And never talking about it to those people we observe and envy. For someone to reveal their envy is both a reversal of the normal observation points and a shocking transgression of the perceived social norm that keep us from expressing our own envy.
posted by davejay at 1:22 PM on December 10, 2018 [13 favorites]


Example: perceiving that someone was envious of my career, which, to me, feels like a failure, and settling for time-serving and a paycheck. I didn't become an a professor, I never even got a PhD.....I write web apps for accountants. But that is, as they say, pretty distorted thinking. A lot of people would want my job!
posted by thelonius at 1:26 PM on December 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


I did meet a freelancer who expressed wanting to have my exact job recently. She said she had to beg for assignments at her job and still didn't get much (her job isn't writing, I do writing and that's what she wants to do.) I debated internally whether or not to tell her that was my exact scenario too (needing more work and just not getting it).

Also happy to see Sarah Manguso name dropped. She taught a class I took and was awesome.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 1:33 PM on December 10, 2018


Might be worth noting that when people do express that they're envious of me, I can't receive that information directly, but instead read the sentiment in one of two ways:
1) passive aggressiveness, i.e., the back-handed compliment
2) thinking that the person must be in a depressive state or going through issues of some other sort and actually is seeking advice or a sympathetic ear more than feeling envious

The brain is very good at fitting all available facts around how it sees the world/self.
posted by naju at 1:34 PM on December 10, 2018 [2 favorites]


This is the problem that eats my brain when I'm most depressed. Of all the new feelings that have come with the information age, I think the worst is that of redundancy. This is especially true for creative people, but I imagine it affects everyone. There are no more small ponds; we are all swallowed in a giant media sea. We can all instantly find proof that multiple people are doing what we do better somewhere. We are not needed. And as the economy relies less on labor and our society struggles to create jobs, this feels even more true of every type of endeavor.

As someone who consistently deals with suicidal ideation, it is harrowing to be constantly faced with the fact that I am simply not necessary in a very real and logical sense. That even if I could achieve all the things I wished to, I would be doing something that would have been done by several other people eventually.

The two upshots of this: it has caused me to focus more on trying to do good and do work that helps people, if only selfishly, because it's the only thing that I can be sure will matter. Also: I've listened to a lot of creative folks having conversations about the #metoo era and a theme has emerged: no one is indispensable. We can more easily let go of our heroes and idols, because we know that this work will be done without them. Louie and Cosby and even Picasso were brilliant, gifted and hardworking, but so are a thousand other artists who won't treat people terribly.
posted by es_de_bah at 1:38 PM on December 10, 2018 [37 favorites]


Oh, and let's not forget the socialization pattern where someone says they're envious of you and then you say NO get the fuck out of here, i'm totally envious of YOU and then both people feel slightly cheered up in a hollow way before moving on to other topics
posted by naju at 1:39 PM on December 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


I would be doing something that would have been done by several other people eventually

I can relate so hard. I’ve been trying to retrain my way of thinking, because I think that sentiment is true in a very broad sense, but false in very important ways. I don’t know if it’s just the way people talk about stuff on the internet, but I bristle at the suggestion that one person’s work is interchangeable with another’s.

One of the best and most redeeming things about people is that they’re idiosyncratic and weird. Off the top of my head, one of my favorite songs ever is Graveyard by Forest. As a band, Forest is mostly remembered as an obscure folk rock band trying to imitate some of the more successful and innovative bands like the Incredible String Band. But that song! I’ve heard so much music like this, and that song hits me in a way that few things ever have. It evokes so much for me.

My taste is idiosyncratic, but so is everyone else’s. If Forest had never existed, there were still dozens upon dozens of bands playing remarkably similar music. But that one song would never have existed.

I think it’s very hard for those of us accustomed to devaluing ourselves to realize that we can have the same effect as that song, or that painting, or that book. It’s never just about quality, it’s about something that hits the right marks, and no substitution will do. It’s not that the thing is perfect, it’s that it does something nothing else has done. It’s as true for people as it is for art. To someone who doesn’t get it, you may be interchangeable with hundreds of similar people (and often we don’t get it ourselves), but the truth is that you aren’t, and even if it’s just one song or poem or painting, you have the capacity to do something literally no one else would do. And it may not mean success or fame, but it can mean the world to the right audience.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:57 PM on December 10, 2018 [44 favorites]


She doesn't elaborate on it or give a very full analysis, but she's talking about internalized misogyny in this piece, and a couple of the different ways that it manifests. Like, there's some overlap with other contexts of envy, but I don't think that's the main point.
posted by eviemath at 2:09 PM on December 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


If anyone wants to know about the CVs of fellow junior scholars in my academic field (when their first book came out, with what press, how many years out from their doctorate, alongside how many articles), I am one of the world's greatest experts. Irritatingly, my students tend to want to know about the actual arguments and research programs current in the field, topics about which I am far less well informed.

Luckily, I have conferences, where I can talk to people just as envious as I am.
posted by sy at 2:29 PM on December 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


I think it’s very hard for those of us accustomed to devaluing ourselves to realize that we can have the same effect as that song, or that painting, or that book. It’s never just about quality, it’s about something that hits the right marks, and no substitution will do. It’s not that the thing is perfect, it’s that it does something nothing else has done. It’s as true for people as it is for art. To someone who doesn’t get it, you may be interchangeable with hundreds of similar people (and often we don’t get it ourselves), but the truth is that you aren’t, and even if it’s just one song or poem or painting, you have the capacity to do something literally no one else would do. And it may not mean success or fame, but it can mean the world to the right audience.

That's very true. Like, when I consider the stuff I really, really enjoy, it often isn't the best stuff. Almost always isn't the "best" stuff, in fact. I would be sad if all the secondary figures whose work I really, really like had just given up since they felt unnecessary.

And I think we devalue the local far too much. Maybe on strict technical points someone from one of the great cities is going to be a better musician or painter or chef or whatever than someone from Minneapolis, but there's something to be said for being able to see someone live, or read about your own city or have your own local restaurant rather than have only semi-annual pilgrimages to the real cities where the real stuff happens. There's something to be said for immediacy and presence and actual experience, even if you know that the Very Finest experience is to be had elsewhere (usually for lots more money).
posted by Frowner at 2:45 PM on December 10, 2018 [21 favorites]


Also, on that note, my three favorite professors have made very little mark in the world - I think one of them never even published a book. They're not great scholars, and I wouldn't even say that they're earth-shatteringly great interpreters of scholarly work. But each of them was absolutely irreplaceable for me. I'm not myself a genius or someone who will make any real kind of mark, but I'd be stupider and worse if it weren't for them.
posted by Frowner at 2:50 PM on December 10, 2018 [11 favorites]


Somehow, as a small, ambitious child, I absorbed the notion that being envious was being a loser and then compounding it by blaming the wrong person. While I have a heaping helping of all the other vices, envy has never really penetrated my skull. My vicious self-criticism is entirely self-focused. I don't know if that makes me worse, or better.
posted by praemunire at 3:02 PM on December 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


to want not merely to write but also to be seen

Sometimes when I write on this site, or any site, it's with an intensity that my mother before me shares, this pouring out of words that, as someone recently reminded me with some candid feedback, makes it so no one wants to read any of it, because it's too much, it's a torrent, it's a wall o' text. By its nature, this force has to be held back—I have to hold myself back. (That said, my mother's writing is worse, because it's almost all in notebooks full of virtually unreadable cursive. The only thing that finally enabled me to read her handwriting was the better part of a decade reading editors' scrawl of all kinds on printed proofs.)

Is it that I have so much to say, or that I fear people will misunderstand—or simply miss—that which I do have to say? Probably all of the above. I pour out so much that my words' volume in and of itself conveys an unquenchable need. I have likely several novels' worth of writing I've poured out in correspondence, in comments here, in Ask MetaFilter answers. I find myself with a new theory: Ask MetaFilter is a beacon unto codependents. Let me help you! I find myself wanting to help, to share, in a way that says much more about me than about the asker.

It's true that these are things that codependents do. It's true that I could be more targeted in the words I choose to put out into the world. It's true that part of the discipline of being a writer is killing all your darlings, over and over again. I'm in the second phase of a career involving writing, editing, and helping writers and editors, so these are all things I quite understand.

But it's also true that one thing I want, more than anything, after hundreds of bylines and masthead credits, after a relationship of more than a decade, is to be seen—not to be stalked, please, but for someone to bother to follow me down all the paths, to want to see and know everything about me as much as I want to see and know everything about them. And that's inextricably wound into both my writing and my being. Do people become writers who don't have this need? Probably, but that's not me. And it's probably not the author—I feel that in this piece, too. It's that sense of having so much to tell the world, and needing to be in conversation with the world. It's fear of missing out, but what one is missing out on is being seen, being valued.


I have been competing, my whole life, with and through other women, for the attention of men who have no idea I exist.

Along with that, for me, is that sense of wanting to be deeply seen by at least one person as I am, that desire to be grokked. I don't know if I was always like this, or if years of codependent self-denial intensified it, but that's where I am now. I wonder sometimes: If I were truly seen by anyone, truly cherished, would it ruin me as a writer, because I would pour myself into them and nothing else? A corollary to my first theory: I might just be the kind of person who'd die on the pyre of any cause—or any person—that would have me.

But I keep writing. If the muse chooses to visit herself upon me, who am I to say no?
posted by limeonaire at 4:08 PM on December 10, 2018 [14 favorites]


Some of the most disorienting events of my life were becoming aware that someone was envious of me.

See, I find relief in this. Many people are envious of my life and I know my life is shit so this allows me to not be envious of anyone because I know their life is probably shit, too.
posted by dobbs at 4:13 PM on December 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


While I know the many flavors of imposter syndrome intimately and well, and couldn’t count the number of people whose seemingly-effortless cool I have failed to imitate, when it comes to creative work I have found the concept behind the Two Cakes comic to be incredibly freeing.
posted by nonasuch at 5:24 PM on December 10, 2018 [11 favorites]


when it comes to creative work I have found the concept behind the Two Cakes comic to be incredibly freeing.
Oh, second. Second. And it helps that it is a concept that makes absolute sense as an audience member, so that writing/making/doing me can hear the unshakable certainty of reading/consuming/perceiving me.
posted by sciatrix at 5:45 PM on December 10, 2018


Isn't this just a giant case of FOMO? That's the only thought it left in my mind. "These people I see online, they are displaying being [Ed. note: different from actually being] the person I cannot be. I'm missing out be not being that."
posted by hippybear at 5:56 PM on December 10, 2018


Yeah, this was definitely me, for a long time. But it's not anymore, and a big part was coming out as genderqueer and for some reason--why?!--that gave me permission to be the deeply competitive human being that I am, and the awesome human being that I am and I feel so . . . fully realized and proud of myself now. Just fully embodied--and funny! for the first time in my adulthood I realize I'm funny!--and it used to surprise me when people expressed admiration of me but it doesn't any longer, because I like myself and am awesome ("And humble, too!" my spouse jokes) and the more awesome I feel about myself the more gracious I can be. Being gracious is not rejecting a compliment, you know? It's accepting a compliment and then giving one in return.

That litany that she gives at the end, of all the ways that she feels inadequate, but all of those inadequacies are totally human and minor flaws--I realized that we don't have to do that, to diminish ourselves. There are plenty of abusers out there, and I don't want to be a self-abuser anymore.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 5:58 PM on December 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


One, that even a person who will declare her hatred of most things in ALL CAPS and festoon this declaration with a flurry of exclamation points, even she tries to be coy about the foul competitive gut-punch of a feeling that, in the face of another’s perceived success, cries out, Why not me?

I get this feeling a lot too. I think a big part of the problem is that companies aren't hiring anymore. There are too many of us competing for the same jobs, and we are all turning ourselves into the same person we think they want to hire. That's why it seems like everyone else is a better version of me. That's who I'm trying to be, but they're actually doing it. Am I doing it? Am I doing it well enough? Who knows! Maybe not!

Every time something good happens to someone else, it's hard not to feel like that's one less good thing in the universe for me, and what am I doing to make my next good thing come my way, is it enough? Will I be able to do it? What happens if I can't? Will I still be able to pay rent? Will I still have health insurance? I can't figure out whatever she figured out to make that thing happen for her and that stresses me the fuck out.
posted by bleep at 6:38 PM on December 10, 2018 [8 favorites]


I guess I'm too old. Pretty much everyone I've ever envied, I've either A. forgotten about or B. come to realize that whatever positives they've got going for them, there are negatives I'm damned glad I'm not stuck with.

Case in point #1. [Famous person] I knew when I was much younger and have since come to know (via mutual acquaintances) is not happy at all with their fame. In fact, they view it mostly as a curse and deeply regret some of the decisions they made along the road to achieving it. They now drink too much and have severe insomnia issues. Who would want that?

Case in point #2. [Most popular guy in high school] We were friends, I guess, when it suited him. He had the looks, the charm, the drive, the athletic finesse. He was bound for big and amazing things. But then he got married too young and had a kid and made a botch of it, ended drinking and drugging way too much, alienating himself from family and friends and finally just dropped dead of a massive heart attack around age 45. Who would want that?
posted by philip-random at 6:54 PM on December 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Oh, this is definitely just me feeling like I should have been much further ahead or in a different place now, and wanting the acknowledgement that "okay yes we understand that you've had a shit-ton of bad luck you've had to climb out of and that's why" and the affirmation that "no see it's okay that this person is further ahead than you because they didn't have to backtrack" and being secretly afraid that "no, face it, you're not working hard enough yourself and that's the REAL reason that they're further ahead than you."

And all of that is true. I could work a little more at what I want, and once or twice I have indeed used my bad luck as an excuse to slack off. But not as much as I think. I try to remind myself when the jealousy comes in that I'm seeing things through a warped glass and I need to adjust a bit.

There's a song that I heard some years back, by the Scottish band Dead Man Fall, that super-speaks to this, especially in the second verse:
I am wishing that I was making
A list of all the good things that I've ever done with my life
And everybody thinks I have wasted
Wasted every chance I ever had to be somebody
But then they come back with the chorus: "Keep banging on your drum, and your day will come, and they will hear you."

It helps.

(So does seeing the version that Craig Ferguson did in his last broadcast.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:01 PM on December 10, 2018 [6 favorites]


when it comes to creative work I have found the concept behind the Two Cakes comic to be incredibly freeing.

It's a great comic, but we are living in a world of increasing cake surplus. Youtube, netflix and hulu are so stuffed with cakes that I hardly have time or patience for them. So many bands are making so much great cake that I don't feel I'll ever give those cakes the time and attention they deserve.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:11 PM on December 10, 2018 [3 favorites]


While I know the many flavors of imposter syndrome intimately and well, and couldn’t count the number of people whose seemingly-effortless cool I have failed to imitate, when it comes to creative work I have found the concept behind the Two Cakes comic to be incredibly freeing.
posted by nonasuch


I don't know if it is all that helpful, or even on point, but this concept neatly encompasses what Pete Townshend described what happened after he and Eric Clapton first encountered Jimi Hendrix playing at a small club. Townshend was shaken, but Clapton in the limo ride back home reportedly sunk to the car floor with a bottle of brandy. "Our careers are over! People will see what shams we are!" (something along those lines). "But," noticed Townshend later, "they still seemed to want us around too".
posted by Chitownfats at 11:54 PM on December 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


It's never their fault. It's a clue.

Yes, 100% this. When Daniel Mallory Ortberg's coming-out interviews first appeared earlier this year, I had an enormous jealous stab out of nowhere, like, "but you were already living my best life, and now you also get this...other thing that I didn't even know that I wanted? How is that fair?".

And now it is December and I'm sitting at work in a binder and a men's suit and I don't feel anywhere near as threatened or jealous of DMO's existence.
posted by terretu at 3:21 AM on December 11, 2018 [15 favorites]


I have feelings about this article as a woman. I have never really been one for envy (admiration, sure) as I have been mostly 100% self-absorbed, fairly oblivious my entire life in my endeavors and ambitions. If I wanted something I have been able to get it without a thought to what other people are doing. But the more I interacted with people who were struggling creatives, or just wish they were struggling creatives, expressed toxic envy and competitiveness the more I started to become depressed and doubt myself and my stride seems to be halted. I watched people simultaneously degrade and envy and admire people who simply did what brought them joy and had some modicum of success, as though it were "easy" and that person was given an advantage they didn't (or some other dismissal of their drive and talent, particularly if said target was a woman who is garnering attention). Just the sort of general nastiness and entitlement the author says she experiences.

What I feel now is that I don't want to appear outwardly like these bitter people: someone who wishes they were what they envy, trying desperately hard to appear like someone who lives a certain "successful" life that has been carefully curated via social media or what not without putting in the work or someone who simply is an empty carbon copy of what they want to be. But unfortunately most creative circles are a cesspool of this sort of attitude, or there is always one or two people who believe they were destined to be great while stomping on everyone else, and it's exhausting.
posted by Young Kullervo at 5:21 AM on December 11, 2018 [6 favorites]


I get this feeling a lot too. I think a big part of the problem is that companies aren't hiring anymore. There are too many of us competing for the same jobs, and we are all turning ourselves into the same person we think they want to hire. That's why it seems like everyone else is a better version of me. That's who I'm trying to be, but they're actually doing it. Am I doing it? Am I doing it well enough? Who knows! Maybe not!

Every time something good happens to someone else, it's hard not to feel like that's one less good thing in the universe for me, and what am I doing to make my next good thing come my way, is it enough? Will I be able to do it? What happens if I can't? Will I still be able to pay rent? Will I still have health insurance? I can't figure out whatever she figured out to make that thing happen for her and that stresses me the fuck out.
posted by bleep


I think this comment starts to get at the main point that Popkey was making (albeit not super clearly). We individualize broader social problems. Part of her envy, once she interrogated it, was having absorbed sexist ideas about there only being able to be one successful woman at a time - the Snow White problem. She said that she wasn't envious of men in her (creative work) field; just women. And that's because she implicitly (until she started interrogating the whole situation) saw herself as being primarily in competition with other women.

But in the larger picture, our current economic system puts everyone increasingly in competition with each other in order to extract the most labor at the cheapest rate. So yes, you are not alone in feeling envy toward others who you are forced into competition with, and you shouldn't feel too bad about that. But you shouldn't not feel bad about it because it is common; you should not feel bad about that because it's an artificial situation that you are forced into. And the solution is not more individual effort on your part to become a better person; the solution is organized labor and a different, more humane economic system. (One that also doesn't use up and spit out the rest of the natural world as a disposable resource - which is the same problem as we're talking about with workers here - would be pretty important given the increasing urgency of climate change, too.)
posted by eviemath at 5:38 AM on December 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


And now it is December and I'm sitting at work in a binder and a men's suit and I don't feel anywhere near as threatened or jealous of DMO's existence

Eee, congrats!!

I felt a different envy reading Ortberg's story as it unfolded, as I am still stuck being a woman no matter how much I loathe it. 50 photos of Young Cage in a dress and pigtails can't be wished away. Nor can my disinterest in engines or my predilection for sewing or, you know, childbearing hips. Anyway, we all have to assemble our case, and some are just not enough.

BUT, I am always happy for people who come out and get to be themselves and shine. It's more like "Yay, someone escaped the hell of the closet! One more day closer to a world where no one has to hide at all!" I'll cheer that all day long.
posted by cage and aquarium at 5:51 AM on December 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


I think this comment starts to get at the main point that Popkey was making (albeit not super clearly). We individualize broader social problems. Part of her envy, once she interrogated it, was having absorbed sexist ideas about there only being able to be one successful woman at a time - the Snow White problem. She said that she wasn't envious of men in her (creative work) field; just women. And that's because she implicitly (until she started interrogating the whole situation) saw herself as being primarily in competition with other women.

This. So much this. I have essentially come to the point where I want to eradicate my gender simply because of this phenomenon has made attempting anything (even if the success I want to feel is for ME and not anyone else) obnoxious and I don't want to participate in these mind fucking games. I understand that it is rooted in sociolobiological influences and evolutionary biology but that doesn't help make me less annoyed by everyone involved, particularly as it is projected on me (i.e. my attempts at literally anything from my appearance to my profession to my passions is solely for male attention or at least becomes unfairly associated with it in ways that I have no control over) and the way it has sometimes insidiously crept into my own brain despite my thrashing about to return to being blissfully oblivious. This also conflicts with a grandiose outward display of female solidarity that crumbles the second a given person stands out TOO much or is TOO successful and then you're pressured or literally hen pecked back into being the average of your peers. No thanks.

I am reminded all the time of this scene from the IT Crowd where Jen lies about knowing Italian because another woman is being praised.
posted by Young Kullervo at 6:03 AM on December 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


I found it fitting that the next headline under her essay was “How a Rockette Gets Her Skin So Good - Plus, her stage make-up essentials.” Thanks for making me always feel awesome about myself, American society and media!
posted by Maarika at 8:13 AM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Every single day I'm glad I gave up on being the best at anything.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:27 AM on December 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


I remain, in short, myself; and I know myself to be inadequate.

YUP.

to want not merely to write but also to be seen.

Yeah, but at the same time bad things happen to you when you're a woman and you're seen. For me it's a huge thing between being a showoff and knowing that They Will Come For Me if am found. It's a safety issue, it's the damn Maslow pyramid.

I think a big part of the problem is that companies aren't hiring anymore. There are too many of us competing for the same jobs, and we are all turning ourselves into the same person we think they want to hire. That's why it seems like everyone else is a better version of me.

Yeah, every time I've looked at job listings in the past however many years, they expect absolute perfection in human beings and they are getting it. I am a lameass loser compared to everyone and I have lost out on jobs for pretty slight shit. I can't do it. I suck. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Oh, this is definitely just me feeling like I should have been much further ahead or in a different place now, and wanting the acknowledgement that "okay yes we understand that you've had a shit-ton of bad luck you've had to climb out of and that's why" and the affirmation that "no see it's okay that this person is further ahead than you because they didn't have to backtrack" and being secretly afraid that "no, face it, you're not working hard enough yourself and that's the REAL reason that they're further ahead than you."

My therapist pointed out that not everyone is supported by their family and friends in their goals, and not everyone is born with the super confidence enough to keep plugging along no matter what happens. Likewise, if you come from a disadvantaged background or are otherwise hampered in your progress, you're not likely to be as far along as others who were not hampered.

I haven't been supported all that much in what I wanted to do. I wasn't anointed by the teachers or chosen or anything for what I wanted and tried to do. I didn't get into any school plays and wasn't really considered to have any performing talent. My mom, well, I don't think she's cool deep down with what I want to do because she'd lose me and lord knows she's had moments of "But you can't possibly do X, you don't have what it needs," and I buy it every time, because that is logical and reasonable and the world isn't supporting me in what I want to do here anyway. I'm mildly jealous of those who did, but those who did were also being helped along the way instead of discouraged in many ways. If I could go back in time I'd still do the same things because I don't know how to do it any differently on my own even in retrospect.

That Craig Ferguson video is amazing. Thank you for that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:33 PM on December 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


not everyone is supported by their family and friends in their goals, and not everyone is born with the super confidence enough to keep plugging along no matter what happens. Likewise, if you come from a disadvantaged background or are otherwise hampered in your progress, you're not likely to be as far along as others who were not hampered.

QFT. Confidence is greatly aided by financial security - to be poor is to inherently be less supported, not just financially but often emotionally. If you know that your folks can pay your rent, you're a lot more willing to take a chance on starting a business or even just a hobby. Wealth may not always produce confidence, but it certainly paves the way.

I was vocally encouraged to do what I wanted to do, but without the emotional encouragement and financial support that doesn't always mean much, especially if you don't really have any examples of what success would even be.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:48 AM on December 13, 2018 [6 favorites]


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