Easy to Love
Hello, ladies!!
If we are not careful with little girls, it is easy for them to take away the impression that they should spend their whole lives being as beautiful and perfect as possible so someone will eventually Notice them.
Choose them.
In fairytales, it’s a man. In religion, a god (and then, usually, a man also)1. And once she is Chosen? That’s where the story ends because we tend to think of anything less than “forever” as a failure.
But what I have learned is this: time is never wasted when you learn something about who you are or what you want. From your career, a hobby, a partner, for your life. The trick is knowing what you want, and that can be a strangely slippery thing.
The Crane Wife
The myth, in its variations, is about that most basic thing society wants from women: for them to destroy themselves in the name of a greater calling. Pluck your feathers out to remain a human woman, no matter how exhausted you are. Pluck your feathers out to make something you can sell. Sell your body if you have to. It doesn’t really belong to you, anyway. It never did. It always belonged to the invisible audience; an internalized gaze of man or god or both.
This is the ideal form of love; it demands sacrifice.
To reach perfection, you must be completely subsumed by your new identity: wife, mother, someone who can truly love. The trick is to strip away every bit of yourself so you have no more wants, no more needs.
You are the Cool Girl.
You are easy to love, the perfect Crane Wife.
“He said he wanted to be with me because I wasn’t annoying or needy. Because I liked beer. Because I was low-maintenance.”
“Low-maintenance” is a trick, though; an optical illusion. Above all else, the effort put into becoming any flavor of Cool Crane Wife must remain invisible. The desire is for soft, smooth skin with no thought to the time and expense needed to achieve it, along with thick, glossy hair, a smooth, poreless face, and a body that must be eternally coaxed into the closest achievable approximation of a very narrow ideal.
To acknowledge the process required is to admit to being frivolous, a bimbo, a complainer. If you’re easy to love, you’ll pluck your feathers out and never make a peep about it2.
Simpler Times
The hot book of the moment is Yesteryear, about a tradwife influencer who wakes up in 1855, forced to actually live the lifestyle she spent years cosplaying on Instagram. Gone are the modern conveniences, carefully hidden away in the pantry. Gone are the two nannies, the ranch hands, the life where money could be thrown at any problem.
She locked herself inside the gilded cage willingly, and now she’s paying the iron price. She worked hard her whole life to be Chosen — by her husband, by God — and she got everything she wanted.
Everything she thought she wanted. Everything she was supposed to want3. Why then does Paradise feel more like Hell…or at least purgatory?
The trouble with getting everything you want is that you will still feel hollow and unmoored if you do not have an anchor in yourself first. I don’t think that money or power necessarily corrupts a person outright; I think they act as amplifiers on existing qualities.
I also think the reason this book is so popular right now is that it hits a nerve it isn’t so obviously about: the deal has unraveled. Natalie was promised that if she were just a Good Little Christian Woman, she’d be Chosen by God and by her Husband and then she would be taken care of forever.
E t e r n a l l y !!!
But the property is in her husband’s name, and the money is all his. If he goes? She’s a broke single mother of six kids with no more help for the housework. Bleak. That couldn’t possibly be God’s will!4
The thing is, all the deals are unraveling, and trying to time-travel via “traditional5” marriage isn’t going to change that. Employers don’t even pretend to care about their employees anymore. Neighbors cannot countenance a single inconvenience in the name of community support. You can work hard and be so very, very good and still have a very, very bad time of it.
But if you’re easy to love? That you can control, at least, and maybe you can buy yourself a few more years before things unravel further. Good luck not snapping first!
Get Rec’d
What I’m reading, watching, being haunted by.
What I’m reading: Aside from Yesteryear, I’m working my way through The Hitchhiker’s Guide because a little universal absurdism is a balm for the soul
What I’m watching: The Devil Wears Prada 2 was so much better than it had any right to be. I expected a phone-in sequel. It hits.
Reality: Related to that, Defector once again gets it: Even In The Movies, Journalism Is Fucked
Escapism: For some, it’s a nightmare. For others, a fantasy. If Social Went Down, Would You Survive?
Wildcard: Maybe thinking about things in terms of geologic time scales can fix your time-blindness, too.
Until next time.
There’s a darker throughline here about trying to get their caregivers to notice them if they’re children of emotionally immature parents
And look gorgeous doing it, obviously
It’s increasingly unclear if she actually wants anything for herself or if she runs purely on spite
This time, the god in question is NOT Dionysus
Only one tradition is being observed here SO CURIOUS HUH what about traditions from other cultures oh no silly me those are heathen cultures White American Jesus does not care about them !!! BLESS THE DOMESTIC BEERS AMEN !!!