Fay Weldon on who wears the socks...
Aug. 26th, 2009 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaYou might not find this post about this interview of Fay Weldon as funny as I did, but I thought there was something deliciously decadent both about the first's sincerity and the later's irony.
Several years ago, Weldon stirred the bog of controversy with her What Makes Women Happy a sort of manifesto in reactionary gender roles. Sure it's offensive, but at the same time, there is a kind of ring of truth about much of what she says. (Or the fact that she is hardly the only one toting such dreck. Evolutionary biology and Cosmo have a lot to answer for!) For people who feel their feminist icon has failed them, I dare wonder if they've read her books at all. Weldon's books are scathing criticisms of feminism at large and women more specifically. Most of them feature carping, bitching, or pathetically passive female characters first being screwed over by their men and then being screwed over by their friends who are also screwing their men.
Wry observations and group sex abound along with impertinent suggestions about abandoning your needy progeny with your husband and the nanny and pursuing your own life, pleasures, and career. The question that emerges is not how to win a man, or keep a man, but whether a man is needed at all, at least in a long term arrangement. And whether or not any relationship or ideology is worthy of sentiment when there is so much fun to be had out of life.
By giving outrageous, reactionary, answers, to questions that should be equally as dated, brings attention to both the crisis and the absurdity. The fact that we ask or accommodate these questions/behaviors is almost as outrageous as Weldon's responses themselves.
Her advice, ""As long as you have a sort of semi-good looking, able-bodied, intelligent man, you should have his baby," does not assume a long term relationship, quite the contrary, really. So quit worry about providers, emotional attachments, the One, just have your f**king baby already and shut up about it!
On coffee: "Women are right to refuse to make the coffee [at the office], but when you get home I'm afraid you have to make the coffee." Guess who makes the coffee and picks up the socks (or fails to) at my house. I DO. If you want a clean loo, clean it yourself. If you don't mind living in filth leave it the hell alone. Entirely too much time is spent on housekeeping.
As for the complaint that men don't want to be women's girlfriends, it's true. And, yes, they do like sex and they do grunt. SO SHOULD YOU! (I recommend farting and belching, too. Not just masculine pursuits, alone. Like the good book says, Everybody Poops.)
I take the Weldon interviews at face value, and, yet, having read so many of her books I feel that she is both: 1. honest; 2. satirical; 3. wicked. Some part of me can't help feel like she's winding up both the vagina bloggers (b-chan, could this be 3rd waves answer to 'basketweaving feminists'? I'm sure I'm not the first to coin the phrase.) and the readers of fashion rags as part of her point. After all, she has a 40 year career of writing scathing novels about women issues. I hardly think this approach should disqualify her as one of the satirist of our age. It should also be noted that she has never considered herself a feminist or feminism to be exempt from her poisoned pen.
If Stephen Colbert did it (in her shoes/socks) it would be funny.
(Plus, she's British...)
Now that I have offended EVERYONE READING THIS BLOG I would like to offer up the following:
In looking through my past posts on Weldon, I realized I had never posted about Spa Decameron. It turns out I wrote about it in Paper Journal. I have since transcribed it for my records and your perusal.
Click Here for a Brand New Back-Dated Entry!!!
Also: Weldon now has her own tag:
http://zalena.livejournal.com/tag/weldon
Read In Peace
Several years ago, Weldon stirred the bog of controversy with her What Makes Women Happy a sort of manifesto in reactionary gender roles. Sure it's offensive, but at the same time, there is a kind of ring of truth about much of what she says. (Or the fact that she is hardly the only one toting such dreck. Evolutionary biology and Cosmo have a lot to answer for!) For people who feel their feminist icon has failed them, I dare wonder if they've read her books at all. Weldon's books are scathing criticisms of feminism at large and women more specifically. Most of them feature carping, bitching, or pathetically passive female characters first being screwed over by their men and then being screwed over by their friends who are also screwing their men.
Wry observations and group sex abound along with impertinent suggestions about abandoning your needy progeny with your husband and the nanny and pursuing your own life, pleasures, and career. The question that emerges is not how to win a man, or keep a man, but whether a man is needed at all, at least in a long term arrangement. And whether or not any relationship or ideology is worthy of sentiment when there is so much fun to be had out of life.
By giving outrageous, reactionary, answers, to questions that should be equally as dated, brings attention to both the crisis and the absurdity. The fact that we ask or accommodate these questions/behaviors is almost as outrageous as Weldon's responses themselves.
Her advice, ""As long as you have a sort of semi-good looking, able-bodied, intelligent man, you should have his baby," does not assume a long term relationship, quite the contrary, really. So quit worry about providers, emotional attachments, the One, just have your f**king baby already and shut up about it!
On coffee: "Women are right to refuse to make the coffee [at the office], but when you get home I'm afraid you have to make the coffee." Guess who makes the coffee and picks up the socks (or fails to) at my house. I DO. If you want a clean loo, clean it yourself. If you don't mind living in filth leave it the hell alone. Entirely too much time is spent on housekeeping.
As for the complaint that men don't want to be women's girlfriends, it's true. And, yes, they do like sex and they do grunt. SO SHOULD YOU! (I recommend farting and belching, too. Not just masculine pursuits, alone. Like the good book says, Everybody Poops.)
I take the Weldon interviews at face value, and, yet, having read so many of her books I feel that she is both: 1. honest; 2. satirical; 3. wicked. Some part of me can't help feel like she's winding up both the vagina bloggers (b-chan, could this be 3rd waves answer to 'basketweaving feminists'? I'm sure I'm not the first to coin the phrase.) and the readers of fashion rags as part of her point. After all, she has a 40 year career of writing scathing novels about women issues. I hardly think this approach should disqualify her as one of the satirist of our age. It should also be noted that she has never considered herself a feminist or feminism to be exempt from her poisoned pen.
If Stephen Colbert did it (in her shoes/socks) it would be funny.
(Plus, she's British...)
Now that I have offended EVERYONE READING THIS BLOG I would like to offer up the following:
In looking through my past posts on Weldon, I realized I had never posted about Spa Decameron. It turns out I wrote about it in Paper Journal. I have since transcribed it for my records and your perusal.
Click Here for a Brand New Back-Dated Entry!!!
Also: Weldon now has her own tag:
http://zalena.livejournal.com/tag/weldon
Read In Peace
