Posted by katie ett on May 17, 2012 – 1:00 pm
Sometimes I feel more powerful than most women. Sometimes I feel like I’m more capable, that I’m stronger and better able to handle myself in tough situations. That I’m quicker-witted and slower to get used or walked on. Sometimes I think that being sharper, better at arguing, funnier is the most important thing. Sometimes, when I look at really snarky, dry, biting women like Gena or Sandy or Ellie, I think about how lucky the world is that all women aren’t cutesy. They’re not all “girl power”, unshaven-armpits-exposed-as-they-sway-their-arms-back-and-forth-over-their-heads-at-Lilith-Fair, either. And these women are intimidating. They require “keeping up” with and “being on” with; you don’t just leave any old comment on their Facebook posts, because their cleverer other friends have already said cleverer things than you were going to. I’d be scared to date either of the Mean Kims, as much as I love both of them. And if I feel that way, how must nice, normal girls feel about them?
Sometimes I feel much less powerful than most women. Sometimes I feel like I’m so busy being sharper, better at arguing, stronger and better able to handle myself that I forget to just be nice. There’s a moment in “Friday Night Lights” where Coach Taylor says to Jason Street, “You lift up everyone around you.” That line hit me so hard in the place in me that was raised by the sweetest, kindest mother who never said a bad word about anyone and was still considered by everyone to be hilarious. She never said anything shocking. She never cursed. She never made fun of someone just to get a laugh. (Mrs. Bachelor Girl reminds me of her in that way.) I know that people respond better to positivity and cute pictures and women in frilly lace dresses with shining hair and winning smiles than to uppercuts to the vagina, but I don’t know how not to point and jab! And I worry that the alternative to snarkiness for me is lameness.
I have a friend who has approximately 2.6 million friends on Facebook and never says anything remotely interesting but is “spunky” and “full of life”. If she’s not posting a motivational quote, she’s posting a motivational typographical image. And people eat. that. shit. up. I post mean things about Jason Segel? I lose a Like on my Unapologetically Mundane Facebook Page. She posts the picture of the cat on the rope with “hang in there!” written on the bottom? She gets 200 Likes and an award for Krazy Kool Friend or something.
I want to die.
But in a way that will lift up everyone around me.
Posted by katie ett on March 14, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Isn’t it funny when you’re so close to something that other people’s lack of knowledge about it seems preposterous?
Like when your co-worker comes up to your desk in the year 2010 and asks, “Have you heard of this band Radiohead?”
Or when you overhear a guy dining at the finest restaurant in the city ask the waiter if the oysters can be left off of their signature dish.
Or when you read a blog post in which a woman goes to see the movie version of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, one of your favourite books of all time, and writes:
I was tearing like a silly woman at some point whereas my hubby was holding up his chin and trying hard to keep himself awake with the pop corn. The story about a boy who lost his father in 911 is sentimental but rather slow moving. I think it’s probably not a movie for men who usually enjoy comedies and action.
Have you ever seen someone so entirely miss the point?
Yes, I have a superiority complex.
Posted by katie ett on October 6, 2011 – 11:00 am
The only sad part about Steve Jobs being dead is that now I’ll never get to tell him personally how awful the iPod earbuds are.
Seriously, is there anyone out there who regularly uses his or her iPod or iPhone and hasn’t bought separate in-ear earbuds for it? And if you haven’t, is it only because you’re cheap and don’t believe that you should have to purchase new ones when you already paid for the sucky ones that come with every Apple purchase?
Kamran bought me some of the in-ear ones a couple of years ago, and the moment I put them in, I was like, “HOW HAVE I SPENT THE LAST THREE YEARS IN MISERY WHEN THESE EXIST?” Because the Apple earbuds are miserable. When my earbuds from Kamran started only half-functioning last week, I pulled the crappy Apple ones out of my old Nano box–I had clearly hung onto them because I anticipated wanting to punish myself for something later in life (maybe this post?)–and was immediately reminded that they almost seem engineered to suck.
Not only are they way too huge for my delicate, feminine ears, but because they don’t actually fill my ear canal, I now have to actually, like, hear children talking about the nonsense they always do to their parents on the bus. I had to listen to a kid complaining about wanting her hair brushed for TEN ENTIRE MINUTES the other day. Why are you not brushing your kid’s hair, mothers? And why are you letting them audibly complain about it during my morning rush hour commute? AND WHY DID YOU THINK THE WORLD NEEDED YOUR SPAWN IN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Anyway.
Apple earbuds are the very worst, and here are ten much better alternatives I found in five minutes of Googling:
bullets
Jelly Bellys
rubber ducks, which Tracey bought for me, because rubber ducks are of course my favourite animal
Care Bears
Mickey Mouse
Mario
Domo
Superman
M&Ms
cupcakes
I win this one, Jobs.
A salon in Downtown Brooklyn:
So, then, what is white elegance? Is it too racist if I say “spelling things correctly”?
Sometimes I pass the one black lady with natural hair on our floor at work and think about that sign I put up that one time on the bathroom door about going to stall #4 “if you want to see the longest pube ever” before I knew there was a long history of black people’s hair being compared to pubes, and even though it could’ve totally actually been a pube, it probably was her hair, and she never says hi back when I say hi, and I kind of understand why.
