Know and read everything about everyone, comment on it or criticize it on your Tumblr, but never mention it in real life.
This way we can maintain two separate spheres: one, where we are so honest that we hurt each other, and another, where we are so dishonest that we hurt each other even more.
If you haven’t heard, Jessica Roy is apparently a wonderful person. She wrote a piece on the Thinking and Drinking horror (before almost anyone else, as far as I can tell) which became the center of the conversation about what this meant specifically to young (“fourth wave,” apparently, is a thing?) feminists. Moe and Tracie read it, and responded. She was invited to an n+1 party, along with weirdly terrifying letter-writer and potential bell-tower-shooter Alec Niedenthal (“MY MYSPACE-ADDLED GENERATION WHICH YOU HAVE JETTISONED SHALL LEAVE YOU IN THE DUST! SOON WILL COME THE DAY OF RECKONING!”) as a representative of The Youth Today. She was not pleased.
We plucked up a couple of n+1 interns, underage Lolitas in slutty dresses. They were sucking lollipops and carrying six packs of Blue Moon. These girls seemed like they would fuck anyone for a byline, and the men were even worse, charming them with discussions about Gaddis’ The Recognitions or the glory of the em dash. Everything I had begun to suspect — that n+1 was a place where old guys who never got laid in high school finally have their pick of the fine young crop — felt wholly true.
So, yes, whatever, I read Keith Gessen’s blog, which is how I stumbled upon a blog by someone who worked at n+1 once, who made jokes about how “the female interns get laid a lot more than the guys.” Like, ha! ha! Older men in positions of power taking sexual advantage of very young women who aspire to enter their industry, because they can, and because it’s how things get done! What a merry jest! This made my stomach hurt. It also made Roy’s account something less than a surprise.
I talk about these things, occasionally, with a friend who works in the entertainment industry – which, she says, operates by the same rules. We got into it, one day, over (of all things) Maxim.
“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m comfortable with my body, and just because I don’t want to cover it in chicken grease and put it on the cover of Maxim, that doesn’t mean I’m not hot. I just don’t want to present myself as a product for male consumption.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I won’t show up on a Maxim cover one day, if it helps people to find out about what I do,” she said.
“I think that when women have to present themselves in this sexualized way, just to get some name recognition, it feeds into the idea that all women are only sexual,” I said. “Guys might find you hot, because you obviously are, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to value you as an artist.”
“I don’t know about that. Sometimes I think that most of the guys who have helped me in my career have done it, on some level, because they wanted to sleep with me,” she said. “At the end of the day, I have what I want, which is the ability to keep making my art.”
“Yeah, and I know that people say female sexuality is a tool, and that we ought to be comfortable with using it,” I said, “but it’s only a tool insofar as the dudes who control these industries have made it one. It keeps women in this position of having to service men in order to earn their places at the table. And that stifles female voices, because if you can only get ahead on the condition that the male gatekeepers find you desirable, you have to present yourself in a way that incites desire, and you can’t ever really be honest.”
“Dude, look at fucking Madonna,” my friend said. “She got to the top using her sexuality, and now she has more money than God, and complete creative control. People talk shit about her constantly. She’s always offending someone. And do you think it matters to her? Not a chance. She’s in her enormous mansion, getting serviced by Justin Timberlake, while Guy Ritchie cries in the corner. She does whatever she wants.”
Point taken. The thing is, I don’t think most women get to be Madonna. I know writers don’t. And anyway:
I will not give blowjobs for bylines. I will not laugh at peoples’ unfunny jokes because I want them to be impressed by me. I will not become someone else so that I can be absorbed into this elite, nefarious world where people trade intellect like currency.
The girl sounds young (she is young, a lot younger than me), and occasionally awkward, and is still developing a voice (because she is young), and she’s still managed to capture that shit that everyone sooner or later figures out and then sweeps into the closet because we are all in high school apparently and there is nothing worse than not having a date to the prom.
Oh, my God, she is so wonderful.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: alec niedenthal, angry ladies book club, famesuckers, feminism, fourth wave feminism, i have a lady crush, jessandjoshtalk, jessica roy, new york, new york magazine, publication is the auction of the mind of man, role model behavior, the services of justin timberlake
No Responses Yet to “Blowjobs for Bylines: All Hail Jessica Roy”