On Generosity

There was an interesting, albeit tantalizing short, column in Sunday's New York Times Magazine entitled The Generous Marriage. The social value of generosity is well known and well-documented, but a new study about the value of generosity in intimate relationships was just released, and the column touches briefly on most of the conclusions therein.

Those conclusions are exactly what you'd expect. There are no surprises here: couples that both rank highly on the generosity scale are far, far more likely to both report being very happy in their relationship.

Duh, right?

But as the researchers point out, it's hard to be generous with a romantic partner. The lead researcher for the study had this to say about the difficulty of generous romanticism:

"In marriage we are expected to do our fair share when it comes to housework, child care and being faithful, but generosity is going above and beyond the ordinary expectations with small acts of service and making an extra effort to be affectionate."

And he's right: that's hard. There is so much expectation about what a partnership between two people is that you can get lost in all of that and never ever go above and beyond. And that would certainly make me feel unloved. But I would submit that generosity, true generosity, is making those extra efforts without expectation of return. Much like altruism, generosity requires a negating of the self to be genuine, real, and have the intended effect.

And I realized: my generosity is not genuine. When I do nice things for people, I want them to do nice things for me in return. Perhaps that's fair, but generosity is not about fairness. It's about the above and beyond.

I've been being a bad Buddhist. I have not been being truly generous.

I think that what I need to find true generosity in my soul is first a much, much greater sense of self-sufficiency. I need to be much more self-contained. I need to be much less of a selfish mess, in other words. I've not been doing so great at my resolution not to be selfish in my messiness. I think it's not possible not to be selfish when you're a personal mess on the inside.

So, I need to clean up. I need to not be a mess. I need to be able to satisfy all my own needs. I need to identify what those are, and which of the things I'm currently classifying as needs are actually wants, and having them satisfied would fall into someone being generous with me.

But mostly, I need to be more self-contained and self-sufficient. I need to need less. I need to make do with my own internal resources. No one owes me their time or attention or energy. It is nice to get, sometimes. It's nice to be cared about, and it's nice when people are generous with me. But it's not to be expected. It's not my due.

And I think, perhaps, this is the greatest personal breakthrough I've had in years, because it rather neatly resolves the tension I've always struggled with between being open and generous and being cold and closed off. I can be open and generous, truly generous, without needing anything, or becoming needy. In fact, the only way to truly be generous is to not be needy.

New resolution: clean up my insides. Scrub my soul. Neat, tidy, self-contained. And then, truly generous with the people I meet.

Aging

I think being old has snuck up on me, and then jumped me in a dark alley and forever left its mark on my life.

I'm 27. True fact. I've traveled the world, been married and divorced, given birth, been abandoned. Now I've got a job and a 401(k) and I drop my daughter at kindergarten every morning on my way into the office. She takes dance classes on Saturday. I schedule phone calls with my best friends. I shop online because it's easier. I have a cocktail or a beer after work. I'm in bed, asleep, by 10:30 most nights.

This is what old people life is like, isn't it?

I mean, I could still go out on Wednesday nights if I wanted to, but getting five hours of sleep and being slightly drunk when I wake up is hardly worth it when all that's going to happen is I'm going to go to a bar (alone), sit there (alone) and then go home (alone). Plus, I'll probably end up spending more money than I ought to, considering I really want to figure out a way to rationalize the purchase of a ridiculously expensive dress that I have nowhere to wear, and it's really hard to do that when you just dropped $25 on craft cocktails.

So basically, it's not worth it to go out and be wild and crazy and young. I don't want to go out unless I have guaranteed sparkling conversation. Which means plans made in advance, and I am so horrible at asking people to do things and most of the time it doesn't work out anyway. So why bother? I can watch Netflix in bed or write about theater events I haven't seen or read 10,000 word articles about Dominionism instead.

I'm old, guys. I'm a fuddy-duddy. A spinster.

It won't be long until my jowls start to sag and my tits are around my knees and I wear support stockings and complain about my knees. (Actually, I already have some serious wrinkles and I am more apt to complain about my cartilage-less hips. For real. They hurt.)

I'm old. It's pretty terrifying. I'm shallow, and so being old also means no longer being pretty, and that's really, really scary. I honestly don't know if my self-esteem will be able to handle the blow of no longer being looked at by men.

But it also means that nothing I accomplish between now and my death will be as notable as it might have been. I am not a prodigy. I am not a wunderkind. Even if I manage to publish a book or write for the New York Times or really just about anything that I might want to do, it won't be the kind of show-stopping accomplishment that it would have been if I'd done it young. Somewhere in my head, I wanted to be Tavi Gevinson, and now I have to deal with the fact that I'm not. I'm not that great. Even if I manage to accomplish great things eventually, I'll not be great-great, just normal-great.

Nothing will ever come ahead of schedule. Now I'm stuck in the local lanes, slogging my way through all that detritus.

I'm old. I'm scared. I guess this is growing up.

The Implications of Living in a Rape Culture

Last week, when news hit that the prosecution in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case had requested that charges be dismissed, I will admit that I was a little upset. Ok, I was a lot upset. There was some swearing on Twitter, and there may have been a phone conversation with a lady friend of mine that included some top-quality f-bombs dropped at the top of my voice. In my cubicle. In the middle of the day.

Hey, I am a passionate person, and I can't be expected to reign in those passions simply because I have a job, ok? A job is not a life.

The gist of why I became so angry at this news is as follows. The prosecutor believed, or the prosecutor believed that the jury would believe, that it was more likely that Strauss-Kahn and a hotel maid had consensual, spontaneous, anonymous, rough sex than that he raped her. It is more believable that upon entering his room, she decided to engage in some BDSM role-play fun than that he forced her. Because no one is denying that sexual contact occurred, or even that said contact was "rough." No one denies that there was semen on her uniform blouse or that she was BLEEDING AND BRUISED when she left the room and went to her colleagues.

But, despite all that, it is still more believable that the plot of a bad porno occurred than that he raped her.

Because porno plots play out ALL THE TIME in real life, guys. All you have to do is find a maid or a female police officer or a secretary or a teacher or a nun or a schoolgirl, and you can totally act out your favorite porn, and it'll be totally consensual whether it is actually consensual or not.

Because we live in a rape culture.

I live in a rape culture. That fact is not deniable any longer. And this has serious implications for my life. I am a woman that enjoys wearing pretty dresses and high heels. Some of these dresses are short. Some of them are low-cut. If I wear these dresses in public, and something happens to me, is it my fault?

Probably, says the culture I live in.

I walk home two miles in my pretty dresses. I walk home through the downtown area of an urban environment. There are all manner of colorful characters that I pass on my walk. Most of them are men. It has been my habit for years to smile and say hello when I walk by anyone, because everyone is a human being and deserves acknowledgement and a little bit of dignity.

But on my walk last week, I found myself looking at my feet. What if my smile is an invitation?

This is the reality of living in a culture that condones rape. This is the reality of living in a culture in which a majority of people find it is easier to believe that the plot of a bad porno took place than that a woman was raped.

This morning I woke up in a bad mood. It happens. One of my most effective coping mechanisms for dealing with the doldrums is to dress up even more than usual. So I wore a party dress to work today. I posted on my Facebook about wearing a party dress to work.

An hour later, I got a text message asking about my panties.

This is the world I have to live in. It makes me sick. And sad. And sick again.

Food IS Art.

I think I just have read the only letter-to-the-editor in the history of my reading letters-to-the-editor that has honestly and truly offended me. Two weeks ago, the New York Times Magazine published an entire issue dedicated to food and the ways in which food can build community. This letter was written in response to that issue, and published this week (about halfway down the page):

In dissecting the nation's eating habits, the Food Issue presents a smorgasbord of obsessions that are inevitably linked to the astounding fact that from the early 1960s to the present, obesity in the United States has risen to well over 30 percent, from 13 percent. Worse yet, abdominal obesity has risen in both women and men. These unsightly trends suggest that America's obsessive interest in eating is dangerously abnormal. Typically the plight of our nation's waistline is blamed on low-cost fast food and ever-present junk food. But clearly the malfeasance is broader and extends to more sophisticated, high-priced epicurean foods.

This end of the food spectrum needs to take more responsibility for the weight problem and start warning consumers that the tiramisu and T-bones are injurious to their health. Better still would be recognizing that food is not an art, that eating is not a sport, and that conquering obsession is good food for the soul. [Emphasis mine.]

Well, thanks for that lovely expose on what's really wrong with our eating culture. It's not the abundance of junk food or the high-calorie, high-sugar fast-food that's constantly being shoved at us in advertisements. It's not the fact that most of our meat and dairy comes from factory farms where conditions are deplorable, animals are genetically modified to produce more, fattier, and faster, and antibiotics are as necessary to life as water. It's not the culture of eating without thinking that's to blame for the myriad nutritionally-based problems that people suffer.

No, none of that.

It's those darn foodies and their epicurean ideals. It's those darn people that want to bake their cake and eat it, too. Preferably after having consumed a dinner that they prepared from scratch using fresh & locally sourced comestibles.

What we all really need to do is realize that food is not art, and that we would all be much better off eating nothing but bran flakes, sprouts, and water. Then, we could all be perfectly healthy and painfully skinny models of productivity that have conquered our need for comfort in life. Oh, and we'll be aesthetically pleasing to the fat-phobic.

"Food is not an art." I don't think I've ever been quite this offended. Food IS, in fact, a beautiful, primal, fascinating art form. To cook is play with color like a painter, with texture like a sculptor, with sound like a musician, with mathematics, with flavor. Cooking is the ultimate art form, creating pieces that indulge every single sense we have, not merely one or two of them.

In my kitchen, I am an artist. Forgive me, sir, that my obsession with the creative and curative power of food so offends you, but don't you dare detract from what I do with my hands and my time and my energy and my brain. How dare you denigrate my art form to such a degree. How dare you tell me that my life is unhealthy because I put care and thought into the morsels I put in my mouth, those bites that sustain me not just physically but also emotionally and spiritually? Yes, it's my thought that is the culprit, the root of all evil in the culinary and gastronomic worlds. Thinking is always, always the enemy.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a pie crust. And start cleaning beans and potatoes. Food brings the family together, after all, and I've got 10 to feed for dinner this evening. Ten happy people with a little belly fat between them that enjoy a good meal and appreciate the art that is good food.