A talented journalist, playwright and activist died last weekend in a car crash shortly after graduating from Yale. Marina Keegan was 22. Before she died, she wrote an essay for the Yale Daily News urging her classmates to keep alive the sense of possibility they brought with them when they first arrived at college:
We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. …
What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. … We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.
Over on the Spearhead, W.F. Price notes her death, and quotes these words, and more, from her essay. His point? That she was wrong.
By the time you hit 25 or so – just three years out of college – your life is pretty much set, he argues, and “your future can be fairly well predicted by your life at that point.” And this apparently goes double for women. Price titles his post: “After 25, Women Are Just Wasting Time.”
And why is that? Because if they’re not married to a good earner by then, or at least with the guy they plan to settle down with, they’re fucked. While an “average girl,” as Price puts it, should have snagged her future husband by age 21, non-average college girls buy themselves only a few more years.
As Price explains it:
Four years of college buys women precious little time in the mating market. … I’d guess … about exactly as much time as it takes for them to complete it, because their pool of future mates tends to go through the same process … That’s to say that she has her best shot to land a good match up to perhaps 25.
There are a few, well, let’s just call them plot holes in Price’s story here, but let’s hear him out:
The problem with young women today is that they internalize this “anything is possible” attitude and don’t lose it until it really is too late for many of them. They think they can do better at 30 than at 22, which, in most cases, is simply wrong. Some might say that family and men are not a priority for these girls, but women for whom this is really true throughout life are an insignificant minority. In fact, most women are holding out precisely because they think they can get a better man later, perhaps when they have a better job and work with more powerful men.
But these girls are not going to change fundamentally, and in their early 20s are at the peak of their beauty while still retaining an innocent charm. Nothing about their looks or personality is going to make them more appealing at 30 than at 22, and the men available to them are not going to get any better, either….
The point is that neither men nor women change fundamentally past a certain point, and the same guys young women have available in their early 20s are generally the same guys that will be available at 30, only they will be older and, due to marriage, there will be far fewer of them.
Yep, we’re back to the hoary old story of the bad boy cock carousel once again. Better grab hold of a good hearted beta while the getting is good, ladies – because by the time you finish off your slutty dalliances with the bad boy alphas your looks will be gone and no man (alpha or beta) will want to have anything to do with you.
Price continues, cranking the melodrama up to eleven:
Time tends to accelerate past a certain age, and the 25-year old woman soon finds herself 30, and then 35, and at that point she’s got precious little of it left. Perhaps at 22 she was laughing about the “comical” notion that it could ever be too late, but after a certain point it is no longer comedy, but tragedy, and her laughter turns to tears.
Now, none of this is original, and none of it is true. What’s interesting is just how badly misogynistic manospherians want it to be true. They must, because they tell this same story to themselves over and over and over, like small children requesting their parents to read their favorite bedtime story “again!” They (the misogynists, not the children) love the idea that the women who turned them down – or who, at the very least, rejected their brand of patronizing patriarchy – will get their comeuppance in the end, the more humiliating, the better.
Price at least pretends to care about the women he’s trying to scare straight (into marriage). But some of the commenters on his site can’t be bothered to contain their glee at the notion of spurned thirtysomething women collapsing into tears.
The Contrarian Expatriate turns on the sarcasm:
But why shouldn’t women feel this way? Women “can have it all.” They are “fabulous.” Women rule. Women first. Women are 20 when they’re 30, and 30 when their 40. Women, women, women.
Screech, crash, halt! (Then comes reality when the cuteness wears off and the pounds set in….).
Eximio shares a “shit that never happened” story of a high school reunion he went to:
[M]en do age better than women. I looked around at the women and they all just looked old to me. I could not imagine myself with any of them. They had lost whatever charm they had and I found attractive the last time I had seen them. Almost all of the men that were there with their spouses were with younger women. …
As for the women specifically, while they all seemed old, I noted that the happiest of the lot talked about their family. Some of them were married, some of them divorced, but in both cases they talked about their kids. They were clearly the most fulfilled. Many of the other women than I knew had pursued consuming careers were not at the reunion. Those that were, and who did not have children, had a whiff of pain on their faces. They seemed to be looking around and suddenly forced to face the consequences of their choices.
Or maybe they noticed that a patronizing douche was giving them the once-over, and shot him a dirty look.
Ode apparently finds it all so hilarious he is unable to maintain his balance:
The problem with college today is that it teaches a woman that she has an IQ of 115 so naturally she spends her time chasing after men who she perceives to be her “equal”, the top 15% of the men within society. Or to put it another way, a college educated woman thinks she’s better than 85% of everybody else.
Sorry honey the only thing your degree in liberal arts or communications tells me is that you have IQ above 100. Which means you’re better than the bottom 50% of society. No other conclusions can be made. Of course most women will never understand this. They will spend the rest of their bitter lives believing the reason why they couldn’t get Mr. Right is because men are afraid of a strong and smart women.
Falls over laughing!
Rmaxd offers a somewhat different explanation for Marina Keegan’s optimism; I’m not quite sure I even understand it.
What Mira [sic] is expressing, her not needing a man, that precisely because she doesnt need a man she can get everything she wants, well into her 50′s …
She’s accepted her feminist brainwashed idiocy & tried to turn it into a social norm
Her fantasy entails her getting an education, & competing in cut-throat environments designed for men … which require a male intolerance for anything not rational or logic
All the while her fantasy involves a child as an accessory & strong alpha thug, who’ll rescue her instead of pumping & dumping her to kingdom come …
Her vagina also gives her magical powers to screw over sex hungry beta’s without game, as a backup plan, if the jamaican thugs from her sex tourism never get round to playing captain save-a hoe, when she hits 30 …
Beta’s, a deranged feminists insurance policy, for when her vagina no longer cashes cheques she cant write …
Our old pal JeremiahMRA (a.k.a. Things Are Bad) suggests, in a series of comments, that we should push the whole timetable up a few years, forcing girls to get married to whomever their fathers say shortly after puberty. No, really, that’s his actual argument:
Honestly women shouldn’t be going to college at all. It’s a complete waste and takes away from people who can actually get something from education: men. The only reason they do it is to inflate their egos….
[I]t’s more accurate that after puberty, women are just wasting time. Wasting time slutting around, going to school, working, when they should be getting married to whomever their fathers say and having children, which is really all women are good at.
Today women choose mates based solely on lust and greed. Women don’t love, the only thing they love is getting fucked hard and being provided for by a man or the government. This is why in any sane (patriarchal) society a girl’s father decides who she is to marry.
Lovely.
Most of these comments got dozens of upvotes, with only a handful of downvotes. Jeremiah’s comments, a bit reactionary even for The Spearhead, got more than a few downvotes, but still only a fraction as many as the upvotes they got. Only Rmaxd got more downvotes than up, perhaps because his comments made no fucking sense.
So nice that The Spearheaders have taken the time from their day to honor the memory of a promising writer whose life was cut short.
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This post contains some:
ronalon42: Do they go around telling young men that there lives are set in stone by their early 20s? That nothing ever changes or gets better for them? Seriously what the fucking fuck?
Yes, yes they do. It’s a big part of the schtick: Life is set in stone based on how “hot/alpha/beta” you are. A guy who can get rich enough can compensate, but by 21, life is patterned, and only the really lucky few (men) can ever beat the odds and “improve”.
Argenti: (My CV would not fit on my face. I expect lots of people have this problem. Just saying.)
Very small type, from the forehead back. I could do it… 10/11 Times, two one inch columns, and use my spine as a gutter (might as well take the time I spent to learn layout and put it to work).
Then again, no. I’m not letting one of these fuckers stand that close to me; much less behind me.
Pecunium — I don’t think you’re replying to me there. Seconding this though — “Then again, no. I’m not letting one of these fuckers stand that close to me; much less behind me.”
Stand back people, but I think I’m glimpsing what scented-candle-hating-woman is trying to get at.
In their world, choosing to be a woman who delays having children, or decides not to have kids at all, is making a very bad lifestyle choice. Not just for herself, in which case Andie would only be writing a kindly warning instead of a screeching rage-filled diatribe, but for the whole of society, because …
Well, I’m not too clear on this bit, but I think because she thinks women who decide to delay children trick other women into thinking that it’s a good idea and then making bad choices for themselves. She also seems to think that it’s dangerous because she sees the decision not to have children as part of a wider ideology, and that ideology also supports e.g. a woman’s right to divorce, which in her world is equivalent to encouraging women to divorce for petty reasons regardless of the impact on their own children.
So the scented candles bit, I think what Andie is trying to say is that these women, who decided not to have kids, and whose ideology did all of this destructive stuff to the fabric of society, made it all the worse by doing it for purely superficial and meaningless reasons. Like to have more money, which apparently they just waste on trivial crap like scented candles.
Because you know, that’s why women go through the pain and uncertainty of divorce, for more scented candles …
Absolutely.I have wanted to adopt, if anything, for my entire life. I don’t get sentimental over sharing genes with a child, and most of my nurturing goes towards my friends and significant others. I don’t need children to be a care taker. I was the type in my early 20s to take touring bands home and give them a good meal and a place to sleep in town. That’s how, I used my “maternal instinct.” Some bands even labeled me “band mom” when I was younger than them. The contribution I give to this world is not counted in babies, but in good deeds, artistic endevors, generosity, and humor. In my personal opinion tons more babies aren’t really necessary.
Also agreed. I have seen enough kids completely disrespect their really awesome parents to know that giving birth is a crap shoot. This mentality is sadly really similar to that of the teen mom who appears on the Maury show who just wants a baby so she’ll have some one to love her unconditionally. That’s not why you have babies!! If the only reason you want to have kids is so that you can have a little mini you who is gonna worship the ground you walk on, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Well, when we take into consideration the current system where for profit colleges, or degree mills, churn out graduates whose hard work is basically laughed at and completely nontransferable, they really were not honest with us at all. The completely unnecessary inflation of the cost to attend college in and of itself is just morally reprehensible.
How is youth a strength and also how do men not have youth? WTF are you talking about? Also, sweet sexism. You think claiming that women cannot compete with men is not sexism and is poignant? What planet do you live on?
And if that’s what the scented candles thing was all about, I can’t help but laugh and think of the ironic sexism in Darkplace
http://youtu.be/9T4-N1jRuQA?t=11m44s
“I’ll pay you though. It’ll make it bonafide and you could probably use the extra pocket money for clothes and makeup.”
(couldn’t find the clip by itself but this is the whole episode, start at 11:50ish)
Oh and
http://qkme.me/3pjsyt
Emma: Wow, can’t believe the rage… You shouldn’t rage so much, it’s bad for you. He used her writing, not her death.
Right. Her dying, and so the writing being more widely seen, and the sad irony of her death’s juxtaposition to her essay’s content was completely immaterial. He’d have written that anyway.
Well then, he could have done it without mentioning her.
He used her death, to make a point. He’s a callous asshole. That, of course, was plain to us some time ago. I can’t believe the denial… You shouldn’t deny so much, it’s bad for you.
My favorite scent is Spermjack Jasmine. Alimony Aloe is a very close second.
Really, all the False Accuse Fragrances can’t be matched, except by each other.
I think my favorite is, “Easy Money”, a delicate combination of soiled diapers, baby-puke and Johnson’s “No More Tears” to remind us all of the easy life which comes from getting that monthly child support check.
My incomplete art minor (somehow I missed the ceramics requirement) has proven rather inconvenient to me when I try to make comics. I find I have to fight past all the fine-art, life-drawing training and let the frakking line define the volume.
Plus I wasn’t taught all that much about dynamic poses or layout. Perhaps I ought to have looked out for a sequential art course at another college or uni.
My deep intellectual contribution to this discussion:
http://m.quickmeme.com/meme/3pjvx2/
I’m turning 57 in a few months, and having the time of my life (well, except for these five program assessment reports which won’t write themselves which is why I’m at work today sigh).
I can remember being young and ignorant to think that anybody over 21 was over the hill and should just retire to some alternate universe……..
Now, I cackle gleefully to myself when people spout off this sort of ageism because one thing I know, they’re all going to get older which beats the alternative all to hell.
*cackling*
Who is this dipshit?
Why “obviously”? Is it really such a given, in that wacky world in your cranium, that men and women are necessarily adversaries, and are perpetually contemptuous of other’s thought processes based solely on gender?
And by “women’s theorized thought processes”, you mean “what this dipshit imagines that all women (who are, according to the voices in his head, an incomprehensible monolith) think and believe”. Talk about a recursive process of dumb.
Absolutely every woman who, by definition, waited until her thirties to settle down is happier than she would have been in her twenties. Because THAT WAS HER CHOICE. To WAIT. And, yes, you often make better choices when you’re older and know more about what you want in a partner.
Women who didn’t wait? Some are still happy. Some regret not waiting until they knew themselves better. Guess what? Some MEN regret not waiting, if they didn’t. Some men are glad they did. Again, this is about human beings who decide not to find a permanent partner NOW NOW NOW the minute the hormones say so. With their brains.
(But most women who didn’t wait and are unhappy are unhappy because they listened to a bunch of bullshit about how they’d never find anyone they really wanted, ever, so they’d better settle for a guy who was handy).
What phenomenon are you talking about? The one where the author is wrong and deluded? I’d say that head he lives in need a flush. I can’t explain why that’s the case, though. I could speculate, and extrapolate from the world we ALL live in, that women are magically to blame for every-fucking-thing, all the time, so he feels justified in indulging in lazy thinking and saying, “gurlz r dum, y dun they want meeeee?”
Oh. And this nonsense. Sheesh.
Dude. You are not “we men”. You are you. Men are men.
You (since you include yourself in the subset “men”) are ONE man (unless you’re a cheeto-eating 12 year old, that is). Out of between 2-3 billion of them.
And objectifying people might not make you a “villain”, but it sort of makes you a sad, stupid shit who’s missing a lot in relationships.
Again, kiddo, the voices in your head are blocking the message and mistranslating it for you. Also, speaking of reactionary, I think you are your own AV squad.
It’s obvious to my two-year-old that the lawn mower eats the grass. But that’s not what really happens.
That depends on whether the man’s words are bullshit or not.
Quick somebody tell me how the fucking way to tell a man’s theorized thought processes from a woman’s!
And does he fucking mean the WRITING?
Because, shit, there’s scholarship on people not being able to tell the sex or gender of an author from the text (once the name is taken off).
Ha! I know, Shaenon. Who knew that scented candles were such a blight on the world?
I agree, their lives must be pretty awful. But how much of their pain is self inflicted is anyone’s guess.
Because, shit, there’s scholarship on people not being able to tell the sex or gender of an author from the text (once the name is taken off).
My casual survey on the subject found that people were slightly worse at identifying the gender of the writer than if they’d guessed at random.
Translation: Let’s play Calvinball, where anything women do is automatically a weakness, even if it’s something men point to as “manly”, like working. You’re a woman, you lose, now go make me a sandwich so I can complain that you didn’t put the mustard on the right side.
Tl;dr–Uncle Elmer, you’re a moron.
RE: Argenti
One of my buddies is a studio art major. We write and make comics together. I give him storytelling advice, he helps me with art. It’s neat, because while I do feel I’m studying art perfectly well on my own, I can SEE the difference in how he perceives art and how I do. It’s obvious that his studies gave him a different skill set than mine did, and sometimes I envy him that, because he knows shit about color and layout that I can only dream of. But like I said, my days are over.
Also, speaking of comics: just finished a new one last night! It’s gonna be published in an ANTHOLOGY! 😀 (So not educational though)
RE: Katz
From what I understand, I had a singularly miserable college career. I loved what I was learning, and I loved the access… but between slamming through the whole undergrad mess in two years, coming out, dealing with rape issues, and being completely isolated all at the same time, that love was pretty thoroughly beaten out of me. I’m done. I now have a loathing of formal education that I would never have imagined as a teenager. To think that I put myself through all that pain for poverty line and food stamps… well. I be a bitter bitter bastard.
RE: Pecunium
That sounds like a modern art piece that would look wicked cool on tumblr.
Falconer — “Plus I wasn’t taught all that much about dynamic poses or layout. Perhaps I ought to have looked out for a sequential art course at another college or uni.” — IDK? I wasn’t either, too much work for the human models?
LBT — the color and layout course of my minor made me want to pull my hair out. I might be biased here but I don’t consider looking for golden rectangles in my current utterly abstract paintings to be a good thing, ymmv though. Basically, I know what you mean and it drives me nuts.
This is very sad
I think the kinds of dynamic poses expected in action comics would be almost impossible in real life.
Here’s a collection of superheroes in some very energetic poses (well, except for Superman and Spider-Man, although Clark Kent is very expressive) which are highly exaggerated, but pretty much the kind of thing you find in superhero comics.
Even in non-supers comics it is good to express emotion through body language, and a lot of life-drawing classes just had the model strike a pose (generally lying down or standing pretty much erect) without emotion. But I guess those are more about forming volume and anatomy study, really.
Pfft. Golden rectangles went out the window the first time Pollack laid his canvas flat.
Only one of our models laid down at least, and that was a 10 min long session, so I can’t blame her for wanting to be comfortable for it. The rest were very “strike a pose” though, and the few not just standing there ones were, of course, your stereotypical “sexy pose” >.<
"Pfft. Golden rectangles went out the window the first time Pollack laid his canvas flat." — tell my intro to composition professor that! Or that Mondrian kind of proved that a large red space will not inherently overpower a small yellow space (Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, or what I call “let’s break color theory!”)
RE: Argenti and Falconer
…I actually would like to know a golden rectangle when I see it. <.< I'm only just now starting to figure out Western perspective and the dynamics of color and lighting.
And I tend to do all my modeling myself, these days. I make LOTS of stupid faces in the mirror or webcam–FOR ART. Scott McCloud also has some useful things to show in his book 'Making Comics.' (My hero!) I'll also do image searches for random athletes, because often a photographer will catch them in mid-motion, giving me more of an idea about the dynamics.
One of my system members' goals is to life model before we kick it. We'd probably do lots of ridiculous yoga-like poses, and since we've had surgery and are on testosterone, I bet that our body type isn't a kind you encounter much in life drawing classes.
LBT — you can google a golden rectangle (which I’m sure you know) and kinko’s does transparency printing (which maybe you didn’t know) — and it was cheap the one time I used it. Print one and go find rectangles at the museum?
“I make LOTS of stupid faces in the mirror or webcam–FOR ART.” — I’ll buy that, both my requisite self-portraits make me look like a stoic! The drawn one isn’t as bad as the painted one, but it’s clearly my “wtf why do I care?” face
“I bet that our body type isn’t a kind you encounter much in life drawing classes.” — I had what seemed to be 100% cis women, so yep, you’d be unique…though um…college freshmen alert! Good luck if you do it in that environment, they can be clueless rude (eg “I’m freezing!” “you’re dressed, the model isn’t, STFU”) to just plain mean.