Dear Ms. Tolentino,
Thank you for your collection of insightful essays that is Trick Mirror reflections on self-delusion.
For me, each essay provides is a little twist, a bit more understanding of a topic about which I had seemingly heard everything. Your prose reads easily, and I slip along on your meander through history and literature and what appear to be tangents, surprised when you connect the dots and snap back to your point. In the rare instance I do not agree with your analysis, I am at least intrigued by your idea, interested in your point of view.
It is only at the end, in the essay “I Thee Dread” that you most clearly come to the subtitle of your book and blame yourself for your millennial woes. You write, “I can feel the low, uneasy hum of self-delusion whenever I think about all of this,” in an essay about your ambivalence toward marriage. Every topic you broach in Trick Mirror describes an effort to reconcile the belief that you can achieve cultural ideals in spite of the realities of American life. It seems to me that your self-delusion might instead be the confusion that results from endless gaslighting.
Take “body-related matters,” the subject of “Always be Optimizing.” I, myself, cannot let go of thinking that I’m not doing enough to improve myself, my body, with the reference points being women whose job it is to be perfect. Look! J. Lo shows us what 50 is today! Vanessa Friedman in “J. Lo and the Power of 50” (New York Times February 3, 2020) describes Ms. Lopez in her Super Bowl half-time performance as “glorifying in her own physicality.” Ms. Lopez is as rare as an Olympic athlete.
Jennifer Weiner in “I Feel Personally Judged by J. Lo’s Body” (New York Times February 4, 2020) points out that women watching J. Lo will be inspired–or shamed!–and think, “This can be yours if you just work hard enough,” while it will not occur to men to compare themselves to the athletes on the field. These body-related matters are not new, they’ve just escalated. Olympic athletes used to be weekend warriors. Now they’re on the job full time. Although I obviously cannot be J. Lo, I still think I should be. Is this self-delusion? No. Something in the zeitgeist confuses me: the internalized idea that if I don’t succeed, it’s my fault, regardless of my circumstances.
How did we get on this treadmill, the bar constantly rising? It’s been happening in every aspect of life. “[C]ultivating a ‘personal brand’ has become a matter of prudence” (Jia Tolentino “Where Millennials Come From” The New Yorker November 27, 2017), and a pleasing body is insufficient. You need to sell yourself with convincing marketability. Fifty years ago, we were encouraged in the same vein, but our “personal brand” didn’t go much beyond a favorite perfume and it wasn’t necessary for our economic survival, unless, of course, this “personal brand” was meant to catch us a better husband, marriage having been a middle-class necessity about which I feel even more ambivalent than you, Ms. Tolentino.
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1 response so far ↓
1 Boo Boo // Feb 21, 2020 at 2:04 am
I think you have misappropriated the concept of Gaslighting here because gaslighting typically implies physical proximity and an established relationship between two parties, the abuser and the abused, for example a coworker, a spouse, a sibling, an employer, a mentor, etc. can potentially gaslight another person, as a form of psychological manipulation, over the course of weeks or months in an intimate setting. But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a very pretty pop superstar like J-Lo performing at a halftime show is gaslighting. Gaslighting implies that the manipulated person is convinced by the abuser that they have genuine problems that are in reality imaginary and fictitious. But in this case we have the issue of female (and we could include men as well) middle aged body positivity, sexual seduction and attractiveness, which is a very tangible real issue for many people. It’s not fictional or imaginary. Given that the average American woman is 5’5”, 175 pounds (40 pounds heavier than 40 years ago) and has a 38” waistline, and Americans, both male and female, are struggling with obesity, perhaps more so than any other country, and more so than at any other time in American history, physical health and attractiveness is a real world problem for many people with real world consequences if not managed properly. So it’s not gaslighting. It’s a legitimate real issue many people have and we could list many examples. Women fear losing their looks in middle age and the husband leaves the marriage to be with his young secretary. Men fear losing their looks in middle age and the wife leaves the marriage to hook up with the young stud personal trainer. We have all seen examples of pretty people getting showered with attention and praise and promotions and opportunities both sexual and career wise while less attractive people get ignored and passed over. I personally know a few very attractive women who have gotten by in life, not with a genuine career, but because they are way above average in the looks department and are able to continuously snag rich men for dating and relationships. I follow a girl on YouTube who wrote a book called “Too Pretty To Pay Bills,” and she tries to help other girls improve their looks so they can snag a rich husband like she did and not have to work anymore. She has 85,000 followers. The thing is, like J-Lo, she’s way above average in attractiveness and her techniques might not work for many women who are not as sought after. These super attractive women can be triggering for other women who are not able to get the same opportunities and thus become resentful or depressed or spiteful.
But I also take issue with this idea that men are not facing insecurities as well. The commercials on professional sports like the Super Bowl are all blatantly preying on male insecurity. If I watch any professional sports broadcast, I will be bombarded with commercials like Ford telling me I need a bigger truck so I can feel more masculine, Just For Men says I need to hide my grey hair so I look better to women, I will be pitched Viagra so I can last longer in the bedroom, I will be encouraged to ask my doctor about “Low T” (testosterone) because I’m portrayed as lethargic and lazy, I will be sold deodorants and shampoos so I can smell better for the ladies, and I will be made fun of in countless other commercials, there are car commercials where the the wife shows off how much room she has in the back of her new station wagon as she dumps his belongings on the driveway and drives off after filing for divorce, the wife cleaning up after her messy husband spills pizza and beer on the carpet, the wife using On Star service in her new Cadillac because the husband is afraid to ask a stranger for directions, in other words half the commercials are pitched at me showing how I’m inadequate, and the other half of the commercials are pitched at HER while the husband is ridiculed and shown to be inadequate.
The rise and normalization of of online and app based dating as also greatly increases the pressure on men to become more physically attractive as women have been shown in studies, like the famous okcupid study, to think that 85% of men are of below average looks, which means the bottom 80% of men are basically invisible to women. Women’s increased levels of workforce participation, education and earning power, as well as the trend to postpone marriage and family and substitute “hookup culture” instead, means they are less likely to be interested in men as providers and more interested in which men are “hot.” It’s been shown in studies that women are all swiping right on the same 10-15% of men whereas men are swiping on 50-80% of women.
Other topics you bring up like ambivalence towards marriage and the general feelings of malaise and detachment younger generations are going through are also worthy of discussion but maybe each deserves a deeper dive in other, future essays. These are complicated topics for another day.
There are other economic reasons for the “escalation” but we can save that for another day, too. The bottom line is that in the last 50 or so years the tide has changed significantly away from the average male and female agreeing that they need each other to now the average male and female wanting nothing to do with each other. The average woman in America is going to greater lengths than ever before to avoid the trauma and embarrassment of being saddled with the average man. Many average men and women now would rather be gay than risk associating with the opposite sex. Traditional family life feels like a massive gamble not worth the risk for many people. Polyamory is on the rise as well. Many women would rather share an unloyal high-status rich and abusive alpha male than be stuck with a nice friendly loyal middle class beta male. That’s why you see people like Dan Bilzarian living with 25 women in his house. The prettiest girl I ever dated admitted to me that she was side girlfriend like #19 to a professional athlete. That was more fulfilling for her than to settle for the average man.
Average people 50-60 years ago needed each other. Now they hate each other.
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