I do not swear. I use moisturizer for fun. I sit on a barrel-shaped decorative stool when I use my computer. I have used up several notebooks scribbling away. This dress can’t make me look fat.
Like Hoby, I also tend to get unnecessarily polemic. In the face of all the clichés and contrived narratives rampant in the divorce genre against "chimerical men," it's important to think realistically and remember that we're living after the sexual revolution, where patriarchy exists as something desperately trying to reel in what has already burst from its seams. Personal liberation is indeed not quite the same as it was for our literary predecessors, and marriage doesn't hold the same meaning as, perhaps, the kind of thing I'd see mirrored in dramas from the 60s. I think there is a need to fight against thought-terminating ideas and dogmatic thinking, but this commitment would indict Hoby's central argument for exactly why it comes off as a scathing critique at all…
The pivot toward taking personal responsibility and looking outside oneself to discover life after marriage would work better if, perhaps, "the distant enemy" and "the near enemy" weren't so obviously partners-in-crime. I don't think needless self-monitoring is all to blame for why all these divorced women find eating after marriage so liberating, and sometimes, yes, a husband may directly regulate what their wife can eat. Abuse can be complicated, and divorce can get thorny. I wouldn't dismiss the intricacies of that altogether simply because these issues no longer tend to be glaringly monochrome. And in light of how women are increasingly fantasizing about returning to the home as the Vice President of the United States dreams out loud about eliminating no-fault divorce, I think it's important to consider who really is living in a fantasy of the past. It's one thing to liken oneself to Hardwick et al. in the Hot Divorceés Club, but I worry that "living in real life" isn't a sufficient answer here. After all, perhaps I’m really being hyperbolic. But I’d like to think I’m just being realistic.
Like Hoby, I also tend to get unnecessarily polemic. In the face of all the clichés and contrived narratives rampant in the divorce genre against "chimerical men," it's important to think realistically and remember that we're living after the sexual revolution, where patriarchy exists as something desperately trying to reel in what has already burst from its seams. Personal liberation is indeed not quite the same as it was for our literary predecessors, and marriage doesn't hold the same meaning as, perhaps, the kind of thing I'd see mirrored in dramas from the 60s. I think there is a need to fight against thought-terminating ideas and dogmatic thinking, but this commitment would indict Hoby's central argument for exactly why it comes off as a scathing critique at all…
The pivot toward taking personal responsibility and looking outside oneself to discover life after marriage would work better if, perhaps, "the distant enemy" and "the near enemy" weren't so obviously partners-in-crime. I don't think needless self-monitoring is all to blame for why all these divorced women find eating after marriage so liberating, and sometimes, yes, a husband may directly regulate what their wife can eat. Abuse can be complicated, and divorce can get thorny. I wouldn't dismiss the intricacies of that altogether simply because these issues no longer tend to be glaringly monochrome. And in light of how women are increasingly fantasizing about returning to the home as the Vice President of the United States dreams out loud about eliminating no-fault divorce, I think it's important to consider who really is living in a fantasy of the past. It's one thing to liken oneself to Hardwick et al. in the Hot Divorceés Club, but I worry that "living in real life" isn't a sufficient answer here. After all, perhaps I’m really being hyperbolic. But I’d like to think I’m just being realistic.