To celebrate my return home, I have been watching "Arrested Development," which just gets more wacky and hilarious with every episode. My favorite joke is probably the most Orange County thing about it: the family owns a real estate development company, and they live in the "model home," which is this faux-fancy mansion standing all alone on a completely denuded hillside. It cracks me up every time they show it. Oddly enough, a model home is also a plot point in "The O.C." They really know their milieu at these shows.
But one thing I have to say for the O.C. is that people here are really nice. I expect it now when I go other places, and Boston-brusque has started making me crabby. Today, for example, people at the cell phone store (Redpoint Wireless at the Insta-Mall on Bison, if you have any cell phone needs) were super nice after my cell phone turned out to still be suffering the aftereffects of its immersion in MFA beer culture at Gina's. They figured out a way for me to save money on replacing it, even though it involved them making a whole bunch of phone calls and then sending me to another store in a process I'm sure they made no money from. I was happy because I got rid of my Motorola, which I had never really bonded with, and got a cute clamshell of a Samsung instead. And then I took Spacey to get smogged, and not only did we pass--by a hair in some categories, but hey--I had a really nice conversation with the guy who did the smogging. Although I think the whole situation may have been helped by the case of Bud that's still in the back seat from Squaw...
One thing about that conversation, though: I lied about what I do, again. I can hardly ever deal with telling people I'm a "poet," but this time I also sat out the round where I would have explained that I want to teach college, not high school. People, especially nice, chatty men, make the high school assumption all the time. I usually "correct" them, but I also feel weird about that, like, why should I care if they understand the way that the creative arts and academica are structured as professions? But this time, after I felt guilty for my silence, I realized that gendered assumptions about ambition also seem to be playing into these interaction, and that I would be sticking up for others besides my own ego if I didn't shrink back from claiming my actual ambitions. Still, it's hard to decide to wave the flag for gender equality when you really just want to chat about going to the beach.
3 comments:
Not that the struggle for equal rights or whatever you want to call it is not still problematic, but you might be a little harsh on "men" by assuming that they'll think your ambitions are outsized because you're a woman. I tend to think economic class is a bigger issue in the sort of conversation where someone thinks you want to teach high school. Coming from a fairly working class background myself, I didn't really know anyone that had gone to 4 year college, much less grad school, much less had even thought of publishing a book (and a book of poetry? HA!). It just isn't in the vocabulary in a way. If you go to school for English, man or woman, you must be planning on teaching it to high schoolers, because what other earthly (or financially sensible) use does an English degree have. But if you tell people, they'll think you're cool and smart. Unless they're sexist assholes, but that's not an assumption I want to make.
Yeah... I didn't mean to imply that this guy was an asshole, or consciously sexist or anything like that. I just think that I sometimes project "nice girl who's going to be a high school teacher" in a way that confirms people's assumptions about nice girls. I almost always do "correct" people, but I always used to feel like a self-important jerk about it (and they usually react with confusion). Anyway.
hmmm... i guess i am a "nice girl who is going to teach high school." it's funny, because i think hyacinth (my honda civic) is hillariously perfect for this role. she is tan, sedate, and sensible. such a teacher car ... at least she has an exciting inner life, where she imagines herself in extravigant, flowered hats, giving tea parties for the queen.
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