Saturday evening rambles and roundup

"The Convert" was good, but, like "Motherfucker with the Hat," shearing off half an hour would have made it stronger. It's powerful, important, resonant... in fact, it made me think of "Purge," particularly one aspect of "Purge": what happens when the ideology/religion/system one has plunged into with full faith in all its answers, fails to deliver under trying circumstances. Or is it that the trying circumstances expose the very issue, whether it be communism or colonialism? Anyway, the play was compelling and phenomenally acted (as was "Purge"). It was a great play to wrap up my theatergoing spree before I take a break of several weeks.

While we're on the topic of theater, Nathan Heller has some interesting thoughts on the medium. I'd excerpa lot if the article were copy-and-pastable. I don't have a lot of admiration for Annie Baker--I had no interest in seeing "Aliens," and a friend who did see it positively hated it--but she's not a bad basis for an interesting article about theater and writing in general.

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If only misguided college students had a monopoly on blaming feminism for f*ing up relationships! It's quite the thing. I'm the first to agree that changing gender roles make things difficult, but that does not translate into "feminism is the problem." And, yes, dude would benefit from a writing class; he's not really representing his fellow English majors well.

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Not only are "thin women" part of "the conversation," but it does not serve women as a whole to demonize thin women. Assigning normative value to any one body type--for example, giving larger women a monopoly on being "real women"--does not address the issue. I'll go back to Kate Fridkis' mommy-wars analogy and raise it into a metaphor: just as it doesn't serve full-time moms to demonize working mothers, and vice versa, women of varying body types are not the enemy. The enemy is the idea that anyone set an arbitrary standard of what is desirable. The enemy are guys who think they're giving us permission to weigh a bit more, just like the guys who think they're giving us permission to go outside without makeup. And the guys who think yoga pants are about them (see this morning's roundup).

And absolutely, I think that Rex Reed only paints himself as an ass when he makes rude comments about Melissa McCarthy. Just like that jackass who accused Jennifer Ringer of having a sugar plum too many. I agree with her: as a ballerina, her body is part of her art form, and it's out there for critique. In fact, there's a ballerina at the Washington Ballet who I wish would manage her maniacal smile. It gives her crazy eyes, and she has it on the whole time she's dancing. But I digress.

That digression had a purpose: there are some situations where it's reasonable to analyze other people's physical characteristics, and those situations usually concern professions where looks are part of the art and/or craft. Even then, however, those analyses needn't be crass and dismissive, especially coming from middle-aged men.

It's also true, as Ms. Fridkis goes on to write, that you just don't know how any woman feels about her body. For a million reasons, women are generally unwilling to call themselves attractive. We're still constantly bombarded with reasons to feel inadequate about our faces and bodies. I'll end with an excerpt:

I know, it’s not exactly revolutionary, but I really believe that until we can acknowledge the ways that beauty standards and expectations affect all of us, we can’t get a clear picture of what’s really going on in our culture. Until we can stop trying to tell other people’s stories for them, as in “she looks fine to me, I don’t know what she’s whining about,” or “she looks bad to me, I don’t know why she feels good about herself,” and until we can stop trying to claim body image issues exclusively and start admitting that they’re something too many of us already share, we can’t take the steps we need to give girls and women permission to feel good about how they look, right now, in their current bodies. And guess what? Those bodies look a lot of different ways. That’s the deal with bodies.