Join the most opinionated women at Chatelaine for a virtual coffee date as we weigh in and mouth off on everything from politics to pop culture and science to sex.
Y’all know about my inner conflict over the TV show Glee. (I still tried to watch this week’s episode last night, but I only got through half of it before I could no longer deal with the stop-go-stop-go-stop-go of my crappy Internet connection. I’ll try again this weekend, so no spoilers!)
But as torn as I am over liking the show, I don’t feel even slightest bit uneasy about one thing — the best thing — about Glee: Jane Lynch. In my humble opinion, the actress, who’s been in pretty much every TV show ever, is a repeat player in Christopher Guest’s movies and recently portrayed Julia Child’s sister, opposite Meryl Streep, in Julie & Julia, is brilliant. (And I’m in good company: Nora Ephron has called her “a genius.”) In Glee, she plays Sue Sylvester, the tyrannical cheerleading coach. Here’s a typical exchange:
Reporter: Sue, a lot of our readers at Cheerleading Today…
Sue Sylvester: I’m cutting you off. Is this a cover story?
Reporter: Yes.
Sue Sylvester: Okay, this is all your readers need to know. I’m all about empowerment. I empower my Cheerios to live in a state of constant fear by creating an environment of irrational random terror.
Last week, Double X interviewed Lynch about stardom, her own inner Sue Sylvester, coming out to her parents at age 31, politics and fashion (specifically a pair of men’s parachute pants that “haunted her dreams”). When the interviewer asked her about the murmurings of an Oscar nomination for her Julie & Julia performance, Lynch adorably replied: “I can’t even talk about it. I can’t even go there in my fantasies of fantasies… and I have a wicked imagination.” Let me just say that if Lynch is nominated, I might actually watch the Oscars for the first time in years. (Hopefully, my crappy Internet connection will behave.)
— Jacqueline Nunes
That’s a photo of Kilimanjaro. The latest word on Africa’s highest peak is that all of its snow will be gone by 2030. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calculates, for the first time, the volume of ice lost from Kilimanjaro’s snow fields. Between 1912 and 2007, the mountain’s glaciers have decreased by some 85 percent. Since 2000, 26 percent of glaciers have melted away. The scientists are pretty sure that global warming is to blame. They point out that shrinking and thinning of the glaciers is “unique within an 11,700-year perspective.”
Reading news like this always makes my heart ache. There’s been so much of it over the past few years that I’ve had to start avoiding it. (Not a good solution, I know.) So it took me a few weeks to get to Guardian columnist Mary Fitzgerald’s take on global warming: that it’s a feminist issue and that, to conquer it, we simply need to give women all over the world control over their bodies. She writes: “Wherever women have adequate access to contraception, education, the right to work, equality before the law, the birth rate plummets.” Fitzgerald is peddling an extension of the population-control theory. Fewer babies equals no more droughts, no more floods and no more shrinking glaciers. “You don’t even have to call it feminism. You could call it calculated self-interest,” she adds.
In practice, I don’t disagree with her, obviously. (All women should have access to education, have control over their bodies and be granted equal rights, environmental destruction notwithstanding, obviously.) But in theory, I’m just a little dubious. Let’s try flipping Fitzgerald’s view: Global warming is worsening because women are having too many babies. By themselves? Where are the men? (Where’s the sperm?)
Thankfully, another Guardian columnist, Elizabeth Kirkwood, countered, few weeks later:
“One obvious danger lies in making the burden of tackling population control — and by implication climate change — the accepted and sole responsibility of the world’s female population. Have all these ‘uneducated’ women been single-handedly overpopulating the world via a process of amoeba-like fission of which I am unaware?”
She goes on to argue that eco-feminism “tends to divide rather than unite,” which isn’t going to help any of us repair the damage or find a workable solution (if there is one) to climate change. Kirkland’s directive: “We need to stop thinking about the environment as ‘mother nature’ being abused by men, which in turn will be saved by women exclusively.”
Take the genders out of global warming completely, I say. Also: Stay away from the crazies who insist that it’s feminism that’s destroying the planet. (Alright, they’re just being cheeky. But don’t miss the ridiculous graph showing CO2 emissions in relation to the ratio of girls-to-boys attending school in different countries.)
— Jacqueline Nunes
Nov
19
With the Giller and the GG wrapped, and the Writers’ Trust doled out next Tuesday, you’d be forgiven for thinking the literary award season had drawn to a close. But, readers, it isn’t so, and yesterday brought us the shortlist for a very prestigious, very competitive prize: The Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award!
I confess: I wait all year for this list, which was established by Auberon Waugh (son of Evelyn) with the aim of “gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels.” (So British!) And then the list comes out, and I immediately read the passages highlighted for attention, and I feel squicky. So that’s your fair warning. Here are the nominees — surprise! Philip Roth’s on the list! — and they will make you feel squicky. Seriously. That is some bad, bad sex.
(Actually, could I just make brief mention of The Guardian’s amazingly fantastic headline for this article, please? It is: “Bad sex award pits Philip Roth against stiff competition.” Oh, HA, Guardian!)
But the prize raises an interesting question: Why is it so difficult to write a good sex scene? Recent nominees include some very skilled authors, like John Updike, David Mitchell, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith. British novelist Sarah Duncan takes up this question in The Guardian, as well, concluding:
“The solution to these problems is for the writer not to be too specific about what the characters are doing, but very specific about their reactions. The reader has to use their imagination, make their own connections, project their own private fantasies onto the characters. “Are they doing what I think they are?” Whatever it is, yup. I’ve been staggered by some of the deductions people have made about my sex scenes, but I’m quite happy to take the credit so long as they liked it.”
Does that sound about right to you? (It does get around the vocabulary problem; as Duncan correctly points out, “There isn’t a single word for a penis that doesn’t sound daft.”) And which books, in your opinion, bring sexy back? I’ll start: A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter is both a very sultry and superbly-written read, which means it offers big literary bang for its smut. (Oh, HA!) Now over to you.
— Danielle Groen
All right, full disclosure: I once, very briefly, tried to play by the Rules. (I’m speaking, of course, about that bestselling book by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, which insists that if you act totally uninterested and unavailable, men will be tripping over themselves to hand you a giant diamond sparkler.) Some years ago, my best friend and I were both single at the same time. I was running through a list of dating grievances — my general awkwardness, the nine hours it took me to compose a single email, the absence of any blueprint for correct behaviour. Here my friend perked right up. “The Rules! You need to do the Rules!”
Let me step back a moment and say, on my friend’s behalf, that she is a terrifically smart and talented woman who has long been my go-to girl for advice. So while any number of feminist synapses were firing and flaring and begging me to stop, I still found myself opening my mouth to say, “Tell me more about these Rules.”
You know the deal. Don’t call him back for three days. No call lasts more than 10 minutes, and you end the call. Don’t accept a Saturday date after Wednesday. You end the date. And for the love of all things sparkly, DON’T PUT OUT. (I’m still a little fuzzy on when putting out becomes acceptable. I am, however, pretty sure it’s after a while — a long, long while. Which is fine, because in the Rules universe, women love diamonds but hate sex.)
Fast forward a few weeks from this conversation. I had gone back to school, and I was at some faculty/student meet-n-greet, gulping down glasses of wine. (I was poor; the wine was free.) Lo and behold, there was a fine lookin’ fella in the corner, and I figured it was an opportunity to bust out my new behaviour. It began poorly: I initiated conversation. (That’s against the Rules.) I then went with him to a bar that was not in my neighbourhood. (Against the Rules: ladies, let him come to you.) I allowed him to buy me a couple more drinks. (While the Rules do insist he pays, I suspect they look down on excessive alcohol consumption.) There was some smooching. (What?) There was some more smooching. (NO.) I don’t believe I ended the date.
I knew I had veered way off course, so I attempted to right the ship. He told me he would call the next afternoon. “That’s fine!” I responded airily. “I’ll call you back in three days!”
It probably does not have to be said, but much like Fight Club, the first rule of the Rules is you don’t talk about the Rules.
I did call him three days later, but we talked for an hour and he ended the call and — OMG! — we’ve been together ever since. And you know what else? Chatelaine’s girl crush Kate Harding has written a great essay for Salon about how she broke all the rules and her husband married her anyway. And you know what else? My friend threw out the Rules handbook and pursued a guy and they’ve been together ever since, too. So haven’t we, as a society, arrived at a place where we can agree that all women are NOT obsessed with marriage, and that all men are NOT obsessed with the hunt, and that in this bright, beautiful 21st century, we can behave whatever way we damn well please?
Evidently not. Because this week, in the Huffington Post, along comes a woman named Jag (that’s right: Jag) telling us that if we hew very closely to her principles, we too can have an engagement ring by Christmas!
I give up. Will we never be rid of the Rules? And do you think they’re necessary? Have they ever worked for you? Tell us below!
— Danielle Groen
This morning, Edward Cullen – I mean, Robert Pattinson – was interviewed by Matt Lauer on The Today Show. And while watching said segment, I’ll admit that I sighed – involuntarily and rather embarrassingly - “Ohhhh, Edward,” prompting my boyfriend to ask whether I knew this was the twentysomething British actor being quizzed by Lauer about his love life and not the 108-year-old vampire. (Um, yes, thanks for clearing that up.) And as the camera panned to the screaming masses outside of 30 Rock, I retorted, “Well, at least I’m not as crazy as those people!” Or am I?
Twihards – more specifically, the grown-up ones – have been a topic of much discussion this week. Details takes a condescending, “look-at-all-the-freaks” tone in its superfan feature, which includes this memorable excerpt:
“I dream about him,” says Tanna Noble, a 46-year-old Twihard from Eatonville, Washington. Dangling from her neck is an ancient-looking pendant that represents the Cullen family crest. “I dream explicit dreams about Edward. You can’t put down what I dream about Edward. It is very, very erotic. It’s not Rob Pattinson. It’s Edward.”
The writer argues that middle-aged women turn to Edward and Bella’s crazy love due to a lack of angst-ridden romance in their own lives - he just might have something there, I’ll concur – but completely lost my respect with this gem of a comment: “Attending a vampire festival brings new meaning to the phrase morbid obesity.”
Moving along, superfans get far more respect in features by Salon and New York, both of which focus on the number of smart, well-read women who happen to be obsessed with the Twilight saga. Both also include interviews with members of Twilight Moms, a popular community for adult fans. Interestingly, Salon writer Sarah Hepola reports that the group is a lightning rod of sorts for Twihards, many of whom want to distance themselves from this brand of unabashed superfandom:
“Many women I spoke with for this story defined their fandom according to their allegiance, or lack thereof, with Twi-Moms. (”I’m not one of those crazy Twilight Moms,” one interviewee said. Whereas another bragged about opening her own local chapter.)”
Which brings me back to my own “Well, at least I’m not as crazy as those people!” comment. Am I secretly embarrassed by the fact I like such a populist, low-brow series? Quite possibly. Do I have more in common with the women who camped out all night to see Robert Pattinson on the Today Show this morning than, say, a Dostoevsky or Nabokov devotee? Most definitely. I may not dream explicit dreams about Edward, but, hey, I’d be open to it. What’s so crazy about that?
- Maureen Halushak
