The Muses Killed Apollo

Procrastinating from work, I spotted that Jezebel was looking for interns. I expected the entry requirements to be written in a sassy tone, but I wasn’t expecting to get mildly depressed from reading it.

Aside from the fact that the prospect of working with a bunch of snarky, sassy, and savvy ladies and gentlemen is somewhat daunting, what really got to me was that the direct and personal tone of the call for application, while doing away with cold heartless corporate-speak, essentially became a guise for telling prospective interns to their face that they’ll be exploited as an intern and should be grateful for this because they’re vying for the opportunity to do something they “love.” This excerpt gives an idea of what I’m harping on about:

“Do you find yourself getting up early and obsessively sifting through headlines? Do you love being assigned random tasks and errands? Do you dream of fourth-floor walkups and a tidal wave of email? Most importantly, do you want to be schooled in the art of whatever it is we do?”

Wouldn’t it be clearer and more efficient if they’d simply written “Do you really really, and I mean really want to be our little bitch?” The call for apps then goes on to tell the reader that “You will be compensated (barely)“  - yeah, very cute - and that you should “Also include detailed information regarding your location and availability — mornings, afternoons, certain weekdays, ‘round the clock, whatever.“  I have to love the bold text. Reading the “‘round the clock, whatever” part, I wondered if this was plucked from the world of The Devil Wears Prada…at least an Anna Wintour would make you do these things without wasting breath to tell you how wonderful it is to do them.

I guess it’s nothing new that the journalism world is full of over-worked and underpaid ppl who are “passionate” about what they do, and that without this passion, you don’t have what it takes. But just because the profession works on exploiting passion, does it mean we have to celebrate this exploitation?

I feel that our generation has been bombarded with messages of fulfilling yourself through work - women in particular. Unlike those before us though, we’re usually not quite content with this rhetoric - we want a balance of working at something we consider meaningful, developing close relationships with those around us, and simply being able to be at leisure and do whatever the heck we want or do nothing at all.

Working oneself to oblivion in service of a profession just seems to be such an archaic and barbaric principle. Perhaps I’m sounding like the decadent and indolent European that I am and am not; but seriously, passion gets you only so far. Living gets you the rest of the way.

So, as an educational researcher (correction: Currently-pseudo-employed-wannabe-looking-for-jobs-in-educational-research. Er.), I tend to look at a lot of sociopolitical issues from an educational  perspective. I was volunteering at this foundation fundraiser the other day, when one of the panel discussants, Kyle Beckham, said something very interesting. The panel was discussing funding for California education, and the conversation swung towards the reality that much of the funding distribution tends to be heavily controlled. Teachers have very little discretion, and are absolutely not trusted to make intelligent and honest decisions concerning school funds. This was contrasted with countries like Finland that are performing educational circles around us—countries in which teachers are well-trained, trusted, and treated as consummate professionals.

Kyle Beckham’s insight was that teachers are micromanaged within an inch of their lives because teaching is a feminized profession. In the United States, teaching used to be predominantly male, and teachers were respected professionals. (The history of the gendering of the profession is not my area of expertise, but I could probably track down a more credibly cited timeline of this, if people are interested). Now, teachers are largely women and, at least nowadays in the United States, are underpaid, undervalued, and trusted about as far as a kindergartener could throw them. 

Interesting insight. While chalking up (pardon the pun) all of our educators’ PR problems to rampant chauvinism is certainly an oversimplification of a complicated issue, it threw a new light on it for me. While not the whole story, I do wonder if the indisputable facts that A) the profession is feminized, and B) the profession is severely undervalued, may have some causal connection.

I never thought I’d appreciate Lily Allen. But I have to say these lyrics are apt and poignant. Maybe I’m getting sentimental after 14hrs of straight work, but I do believe I’ve previously misunderstood her brattish irony.

—

22

When she was 22 the future looked bright
But she’s nearly 30 now and she’s out every night
I see that look in her face she’s got that look in her eye
She’s thinking how did I get here and wondering why

It’s sad but it’s true how society says
Her life is already over
There’s nothing to do and there’s nothing to say
Til the man of her dreams comes along picks her up and puts her over his shoulder
It seems so unlikely in this day and age

She’s got an alright job but it’s not a career
Wherever she thinks about it, it brings her to tears
Cause all she wants is a boyfriend
She gets one-night stands
She’s thinking how did I get here
I’m doing all that I can

It’s sad but it’s true how society says
Her life is already over
There’s nothing to do and there’s nothing to say
Til the man of her dreams comes along picks her up and puts her over his shoulder
It seems so unlikely in this day and age

It’s sad but it’s true how society says
Her life is already over
There’s nothing to do and there’s nothing to say
Til the man of her dreams comes along picks her up and puts her over his shoulder
It seems so unlikely in this day and age

Alright ladies, let’s get this blog thing kicked off. So, Ming and I already had a quick convo about the article above.

Since the piece is somewhat tediously long, I’d recommend skipping to the paragraph about Hairpin (Ming’s fave website!) and the final paragraphs starting with “The appeal of women’s magazines.”

My immediate feelings - this piece brings me back to all the things that used to irritate me about irrelevant attempts at critique during literature classes. It basically covers the evolution of various female-oriented blogs (ladyblogs) like Jezebel and Hairpin in order to dismiss them as mainstream propagation of non-feminist ideology masquerading as third wave ironic feminism. It proposes that these blogs, for all their women-centricity, in fact seek to do little more than to please, pandering to stereotypes of giggly girls providing silly advice during slumber parties, ultimately doing the ultra non-feminist thing of telling their readers how to belong.

First off, it never fails to amaze me how people think they can “win” an argument by basically interpreting what you say with utter inflexibility. The author of the article is on a mission to prove the ladyblogs as non-feminist, citing whimsy, frivolity, and general female chatter as evidence. My only conclusion is that the author lacks all sense of humor. Which of us seriously believe that being cute and naive is the way to go ALL the time? Yeah, we all put on that ditziness for a while, but we’ve all got a cynical modern edge whether we like it or not.

Secondly, why is it that so-called “soft” traits are always coded as feminine and BAD? What’s wrong with the need to belong and to exchange small intimacies like make-up tips and advice about crushes? It’s actually what makes women so competent at relating to each other and holding a social structure together. Why is it that being hard-nosed, aggressive and damn unapologetic is the strong female thing to do? These are the classic traits of the alpha male (though I prefer the term “alpha challenged male”); why should women compete with each other and with men by rules that define maleness as superior? Talk about not playing to your strengths.

Personally, I think that being an adult is about fully knowing yourself and learning to be comfortable with that. Depending on the approval of others doesn’t cut it; but devaluing certain traits for being too girly falls equally short. For us lucky women in the modern affluent West, where formal equality’s been attained, I think militant feminism is no longer relevant. We represent a new feminism that is less about fighting to be exactly the SAME as men, more about appreciating our DIFFERENCE from men and nourishing them as our strengths. Jezebel and Hairpin do just that; the fact that they’re mainstream indicate that the female voice finally no longer fears to be female.