Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2001-12-20- 12:03 a.m.

Why Are We Men Such Fucking Children?

Our lead actress arrived yesterday and has been in the read-throughs for the last two days. So far, there has been a lot of debate about the quality of her personality (i.e. is she an awful bitch); she aroused the ire of Mr. SuperBig’s assistant on her first day by using a tissue to blow her nose and then handing it to SuperBig’s assistant to throw away.
Note to self: If I should become an award-winning type person, do not treat the assistants of people even more award-winning than myself like chattel.
Note to self the sequel: Just don’t do that. You’ve eaten dry cereal out of the box for dinner before. You’ll never be too fucking big to toss out your own dirty tissues.
Ms. de Havilland seems to be running a little hot and cold; sometimes, like this morning, she’ll turn on the charm and I’ll understand completely why her mantle is all golden and shiny. Other times, she seems like a petulant and popular child, and the rest of us are all in the fifth grade again, too far beneath her for words. Time will tell I suppose. I’ve worked with lots of actors who charmed you off the bat just to try and make you their slaves for the course of the shoot, and I’ve met lots of actors who are like normal people; slow to warm up but kind and loyal when you get to know each other. But the truth is, I don’t care that much one way or the other. We’re not going to be friends and I don’t want to be friends. It’s nice when actors are easy, but that’s about it.
One thing is for certain though, Ms. de Havilland is awful purty. Not Monica Potter pretty (or my dear Renee Zellweger adorable), but pretty fucking pretty. Not that that matters, and not like every lead actress on TV isn’t.
Oh, shush, this is so going somewhere.
Today we had to move the read-through to a new location, so we brought in Dave, the office P.A. And Dave hadn’t met Ms. de Havilland yet. So this morning, we’re doing the meet and greet out front, and after we take her up to the rehearsal space, Dave turns to me and goes, “Well, she is pretty. I hear her tits sag though.”
Ok, my immediate reaction was “from who?” Because it doesn’t keep that Dave the office P.A. knows a lot of people who’ve seenMs. de Havilland naked. And I don’t think she’s ever done any nudity in films (not that I’m the sort of guy who would… oh, who am I kidding, I so am). But lets leave that question aside for the moment.
Ms. de Havilland is in her mid-thirties. She looks much younger I might add, but even so, she’s far more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever dated. She’s very thin, but in a healthy sort of way that doesn’t make you think she’s in the bathroom hurling up her craft service each morning. She’s also talented as all get-out.
So my first question is, who cares if her (pardon my use of his language please) tits sag? Look, I’m only twenty-five years old, but I have scars and stretch marks and little hairs in my ears that I need to trim already. And I’m not going to get any better; from here on out it will be all about more hairs on my back and less hairs on my head. And if my dad is a good indicator, I have about a decade before I start going gray. Will all that make me less attractive? Probably. Is there much I can do about it? No. And will any reasonable woman who would want to date me like me less because I’m not immune to age?
I think that’s doubtful. So why do we judge women that way? Why is a woman who would be unnaturally gorgeous at any age but is even more remarkable due to her youthful beauty in her mid-thirties made somehow less attractive because of something nature will do to every woman in the world? Look, I’ve never dated anyone as pretty as Ms. de Havilland, and I doubt I ever will. But if I did, the last fucking thing that I would ever do is get upset because gravity has had its way with her breasts. I hope that I shall age somewhat gracefully to be sure, and I hope that whomever I end up with does too. But I’m not so stupid as to hope that she won’t age.
I’ve never found supermodels or most movie starlets that attractive, and although that sounds like something I’d say because it sounds winning, it’s true. It isn’t because I think they’re ‘too skinny’ (although they are) or something clichéd sounding like that. But to me they’re unrealistic; the concept of women that I became attracted to as an adolescent doesn’t include them. I like women who look like real people, not like a mannequin in the window of Barney’s. People like those creepy models in the new Victoria’s Secret commercials don’t look like women at all to me. They’re like those oversexed images of women in japanimation cartoons; some sort of hyper-realized image of beauty that doesn’t actually exist. And frankly, who would want it too?
I don’t look anything like Brad Pitt, and I don’t expect that I ever will. But to me, the funniest moment in all of Fight Club was the scene where he’s on the bus with Ed Norton, and they make fun of the guy in the Calvin Klein ad. Because that is Brad Pitt all over, he’s like some sort of scientifically created masculine attractive archetype. There isn’t anything real about him either, he’s just some artificial design intended to make us all try harder to be prettier and find someone else who is prettier, like the rabbit the dogs chase at the track. But I’m not interested, and could care less that I don’t look like Brad. I wish I bore a stronger resemblance to Hugh Jackman, but that’s something else entirely.
Like everyone else I suppose, I want to end up with someone pretty. But I’m not such a fool as to want to end up with someone perfect, and if I wanted to date girls with the breasts of high-schoolers, I’d date high school chicks. But guys, we do this all the time. We take a perfectly gorgeous woman, and we rip her to shreds over the tiniest of defects. It’s cruel, practically abusive, to watch and sometimes even participate in the slow roasting of a girl at a bar who is all decked out for a Saturday night. We reduce her to the sum of her blemishes, brutalize the loose thread at the hem of her fabulous Betsey Johnson skirt or Max Mara top. And it bothers the shit out of me.
I’ll admit to the Rob Fleming character trait of wanting girls to be girly. I prefer a girl who will wear a skirt, or a pair of shoes with a heel every once in a while. I’m not a fan of too much makeup, but I like a girl who owns some and knows how to put it on. I like to date a girl who can wrap a present better than I can, and who knows how to bake cookies. And if that’s sexist of me, well then fine. I feel like an asshole because I can’t change the oil in a car, or bench 200 pounds, and if I have to live with inadequacy issues because I’m a bloke, I’m willing to allow myself to have some issues with what kind of women I prefer.
But to me, “girly” doesn’t mean “Penthouse Pet”, and it doesn’t mean the Venus de Milo either. Frankly, I’m not interested in dating someone perfect because I’m not perfect, and I don’t want to feel like I’m not good enough as I am. Who wants to even be with someone like Gwyneth Paltrow if it means I have to be Ben Affleck? Not to mention the even bigger cliché that the beauty of people is in their imperfections. Seriously, how many of the people you have been with and cared for and perhaps dared to love do you remember mostly for their small idiosyncrasies? I remember one of the first girls I ever slept with even now, less for any of her more obvious qualities but more for the fact that there were only two albums she could listen to while having sex. I get a smile on my face sometimes, thinking of long afternoons spent skipping seventh period trig lounging around at her father’s house listening to those records over and over. Wherever you are now dear, should you happen to be reading this, best wishes.
I’m sure that part of Dave the P.A.’s comments can be excused a bit because we’re a couple of underpaid guys, busting our ass sixteen hours a day with our out-of-shape bellies hanging over our belts next to people who are beautiful and revered and rich. But what I’m talking about is more insidious than that. I see it everywhere; in my friends when we’re out at bars or when we can’t get the girl at the party to talk to us. Standing around dressed in two-year old barely pressed chinos, we rip girls’ outfits that cost four times what ours did to shreds.
But it isn’t the hypocrisy that I loathe most. What disgusts me is how we manage to reduce people to the sums of their parts. The truth is that beauty is on the outside, and that lots of people are more beautiful than others. The stupidity of people who go around saying that “beauty is on the inside” makes me go nuts. Camryn Manheim isn’t beautiful folks; she may be cool, and radiant, and right with herself just the way she is, but that isn’t the language of aesthetics people. That doesn’t mean she isn’t attractive, in fact she’s a lot more attractive (to me anyways) than a lot of the people on People Magazine’s list. But there is two thousand years of philosophy about the meaning of beauty, and she isn’t it by any one of them. So stop messing about with that word.
But the larger point is who the fuck cares? John Goodman isn’t empirically beautiful either, but why should he get a free ride? Because we’re never going to get rid of rape and spousal abuse and shit like that until we as men can stop reducing every woman the moment we meet them into some dumbass masturbatory fantasy. At moments like the one this morning I’m ashamed of myself. And it’s easy to see that when it’s a lovely and talented woman like Ms. de Havilland, but that’s simply mental laziness. Because the normal, everyday manner in which we behave this way is so much worse.
Liberal people like me are always saying things like “I don’t like your opinion, but I respect it.” And it’s time we say bullshit to that. The fact is that words and views are real and tangible things with consequences. Do you want to stand up and say that homosexuals aren’t a real minority, and that they don’t deserve protection under the law or the ability to get married like other people? Fine, but I say that the intolerance that led to the murder of Andrew Shepard is on your head. His blood is on your hands. Do you support random stop-and-frisks by the NYPD? Ok, then I’m going to hold you responsible for the forty-one shots that tore apart Amadou Diallo. These things that we are willing to tolerate because we believe other people are somehow different or less than us, they make us responsible for what lousy people do in the name of the cause. Freedom of speech doesn’t equate freedom from the responsibility for what you do or don’t say.
And even so, I didn’t say anything to Dave the P.A. about it. I’m the worst sort of moral hypocrite today I suppose. I knew better, and I knew it was wrong, and I didn’t say a word. It’s time for me to grow up, and hopefully for the world to grow up with me.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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