Such a Pretty Face

The other night, I was having drinks with my writer friend Megan Gilbert. I can’t remember how it came up, but I mentioned Eat, Pray, Love. Megan rolled her eyes.

“I haven’t read it, but I hate it,” I said.

“I haven’t read it either,” she said, “but I hate it, too.”

There we were, two writers, hating a book neither one of us had read.

Which got us talking. What could this beloved story, this worldwide phenomenon, this book turned vehicle for Julia Roberts’ elastic grin have done to make us such haters?

Well I’ll tell you. (And Megan will tell you, too: here, on her fantastic blog, It Hardly Matters.)

First and foremost, there’s the culture-porn aspect, the idea that a woman can travel to Italy (where she eats!) and India (where she prays!!) and Indonesia (where she loves!!!) and somehow gain enlightenment. I suppose this could happen—and Elizabeth Gilbert and those who adore her would argue that this has happened—but there’s something about it that strikes me as the high-brow equivalent of celebrities strapping on a red kabbalah bracelet or getting cupped. It reads like exoticism. Maybe this is my own limitation—not being able to see transformative power and possibility is my problem, not hers—but there it is: I simply don’t believe it, not (as Tim O’Brien would say) with my stomach.

Something about the process seems inherently inorganic. Knowing that Gilbert sold her book on spec (and good for her—I have to fess up to some writerly jealousy), that she sold the idea of finding enlightenment before she’d actually found it, cheapens the experience for me. As in, well, of course she came out the other side a changed woman—how could she not? Her livelihood as an author depended on it. This is different from say, going off and having an enlightening experience and then selling a book about it. Seems like a nitpicky difference, but to me it’s significant. (And if I’m incorrect about the order of events, please tell me. I’m open to being wrong. More on that in a minute.)

And then of course there’s the business with the film. (This is the least fair point, but if you option your book for the big screen, I think you leave yourself open to this kind of critique. It’s worth noting, though, that a friend who loved the book finds the film commercials infuriating: “This is not a romantic comedy,” she says.) The ads for the film are joyous. They are exhilarating. The first time I saw one I stood rapt in front of the TV with a big, stupid grin on my face, kicking myself for getting drawn into what I was so hell-bent on despising. The use of Florence + the Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over” was a brilliant choice to promote a movie about a very pretty woman who decides to grab life by the meatballs and ride around on a bike and touch an elephant and meditate (unsuccessfully) and then meditate some more (successfully!) and get involved with a very hot young man but then decide that her life has always only been about being with hot men, so she leaves him but then happens to find a better, hotter, older man, and then she’s happy. She is content. She is enlightened.

Blech.

Now, let me say this. Everything I’ve said is unfair. All of it. Because I haven’t read the book. It could be a lovely book. It could be a wonderful, organic, moving book about a woman who is miserable in her life and seeks a way to become unmiserable. And I don’t want to seem glib. There’s no room for glibness when it comes to writing, which is precisely why the idea of Eat, Pray, Love makes me angry. It feels so glib. But Elizabeth Gilbert could be (and almost certainly is at least a little bit) suffering from the power of the backlash, from the cruel nature of the summary and the sound bite. I have no way of knowing, because as I said, I haven’t read it. And I will acknowledge that there is a sadistic joy in hating something that so many people love, seeing what is superficial and shallow and easy when others don’t and calling bullshit. (I felt that sense of satisfaction about the movie Crash all those years ago. It sounded terrible, and then I watched it and it was even more terrible than I could have imagined. I felt vindicated, smug and powerful knowing I was so much smarter than all those who felt like they’d learned anything interesting or profound about racism by watching two hours of very good actors spouting some of the worst expositional, on-the-nose dialogue in the worst faux-deep wannabe allegory I have ever seen.)

So.

To atone and (ahem) enlighten ourselves, we are embarking on the Eat, Pray, Love Project*. We are going to read the book and then reconvene, right here, to see if we were right (perhaps with some updates from the road). I hope we’ll be pleasantly surprised—though I doubt it! (Ha ha, JK, you guys—I’m totes keeping an open mind! For reals!)

I am not excited about this. There are better-sounding books that I would rather read, but if I’m going to be a hater, I want to know that I’ve earned it.

Here we go! Weeeeeee!

*Update: Megan is now trying to back out of her promise to read the book. I am working on her. Stay tuned.

So, I finally saw The Kids Are All Right. Let me say first that Annette Bening is one of the most talented actors around. I have never seen her not be fabulous and mind-blowing. Ok. Now that that’s out of the way….

The movie. I liked it. But it also made me angry, and here’s why (this is your one spoiler alert, so if you haven’t seen the movie and want to, do with it what you will): I resent that Julianne Moore’s character, Jules, a monogamous lesbian with two kids, gets together with Mark Ruffalo’s Paul, the donor whose sperm helped create those two kids. I’m not angry because it’s such a huge betrayal to her kids (which it is) and her partner (which it is). I’m angry because Jules is a lesbian.

Now, before you start: I am not saying this couldn’t happen. I’m not even saying it doesn’t happen. What I’m saying is why can’t a lesbian just be a lesbian?

Filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko (my sister in kick-ass enko-ending Ukrainian surnames) plays a lot with the theme of sexuality in her work. She does it well in High Art and even better in Laurel Canyon, one of my very favorite movies ever of all time ever ever. (High Art addresses it in reverse of Kids, with an up-until-now straight woman falling for a lesbian photographer.) I get that sexuality is fluid, perhaps more so for women. (Whether that’s nature or nurture—or worse, simply because it’s what men prefer to watch—I couldn’t tell you.) I certainly get that people sometimes connect because of external factors—art in High Art, a life so unlike your own in Laurel Canyon and, apparently, literal possession of the seed that brought your children to life in Kids—and that can supersede what has until now been your orientation or taste.

In fact, when I told a few friends that the movie made me angry, they said it didn’t bother them, that it was clearly more about Jules’ connection to Paul through her kids than any actual sexual urge; it was, as she says, the fact that she keeps seeing her kids’ expressions on his face. My response to that is, um, ok, maybe. But when she stares at his package and moans ecstatically before they have sex for the first time, I’m pretty sure it’s not her kids she’s thinking of. I’m pretty sure she just really, really wants to fuck him. And that she does. Repeatedly.

There’s a moment right before Jules and Paul first kiss when they sort of hesitate. I felt relieved, like, “Oh thank god they didn’t go there.” But then they did. I was astonished—That’s what this movie is about? I drifted off for most of the rest of the film (I was won back at the end, due to a semi-satisfying resolution and the standout performances of Bening and Mia Wasikowska). But more than anything, I was mad.

Part of what makes me angry is that the addition of Ruffalo as a love interest makes a still-sort-of-alterna story more mainstream accessible, and it’s hard not to wonder if that’s intentional. These lesbians are somehow less scary because guess what—one of them actually likes sleeping with men! But really guess what: Just as not all of us straight women hook up with our female friends (sorry to burst your Girls Gone Wild bubble) not all lesbians want to screw men. (I mean, right? Can somebody please back me up on this?)

When Paul calls up Jules at the end with his whole, “C’mon, let’s do this, let’s run away together and be in love” thing, she barks, “I’m gay!” and then hangs up. “Um, yeah,” I thought. “But then, you know, you got really, really excited when you saw his junk, so like…are you? And if you’re not, can we explore that? Because that’s a movie I’d like to watch.”

As a writer, I don’t think filmmakers or artists or any of us are responsible for creating work that is politically correct or makes us feel all happy-gooey inside. The best art is complicated, subversive, challenging. (Ayelet Waldman’s now infamous piece on parenting and desire in the Times a few years ago fascinated me as a writer while repulsing me as a human; as the former, I absolutely support her right to say what she wants, even if I don’t necessarily, y’know, what to have dinner with her. Just an example. But I digress….)

Cholodenko’s only responsibility is to herself as a filmmaker. But to me, the twist felt like an inorganic deus ex machina moment. Maybe it’s a question of performance—I wasn’t as drawn into Julianne Moore’s character as Annette Bening’s. Her hippy-dippy persona felt removed and somewhat false; ultimately she just never felt as much a part of the family. Bening’s Nic was much more present for me. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what makes what happens happen.

Anyway, there you go. I’ve trolled the internets to see if anyone else has had even a shade of this reaction to the movie (which, I iterate, I liked, just not as much as I wanted to). So far I’ve found one gay male friend who was flustered by the twist, and Cholodenko herself, not criticizing the choice but at least acknowledging it, in a New York Times piece about the film from earlier this year: “[Cholodenko is] aware that it is ‘politically incorrect,’ as she put it, to show a lesbian character caught up in a torrid heterosexual affair.”

So what do you think?

This Friday, I’m headed to scenic Rochester, Minn., to read my essay, “What the Guys I Date Don’t Know,” originally published in Marie Claire magazine and to participate in a panel discussion. I feel really honored to have been included, so if you find yourself near Rochester, come on by!

(Oh, and no, the Mall of America is nowhere near Rochester. I asked. That image right there is just wishful thinking on my part.)

Hello, bunny rabbits. Do you remember a few months ago I was all excited because I was featured in Time Out New York’s Most Eligible Bachelorettes issue? It was pretty rad, and…ok…I didn’t love the picture of myself that ran with it (nobody to blame but me), but all in all, cool! Here’s what’s weird: 50 of us were featured (all of us online, 43 in the print mag–yours truly did NOT make the print mag. C’mon, TONY–how hard would it be to cram in 7 more girls? I mean, REALLY! Anyway…digressing). So, right, 50 people featured and I don’t even make the print version.

Now, cut to a few months later. Google the words “time out new york most eligible bachelorette.” Click on the very first link that comes up. Watch what happens. No really, go ahead. I’ll wait. Y’see??? How did I go from being Bachelorette No. 44 (um, that’s optimistic–I may actually be No. 50) to the eligible-iest bachelorette around? Why on earth would this happen?

I’ll tell you what, chickadees–I don’t get it, but I LIKE it!

xo c.

I come to you live from New Jersey, soon departing work for home (Brooklyn), where we are currently experiencing the LARGEST snowflakes I have ever seen! Think good thoughts, people, for 30 or so of us are about to attempt to traverse numerous bridges in a single bound. It’s gonna be dicey, but I’m always up for an adventure! The real question is, do I go to the gym or just curl up in my new super-comfy chair and watch reruns of Gilmore Girls. How does one decide such things?

Ah, what’s up with that picture to the left you ask. Well I’ll tell you! My friend Jessica and I recently participated in a photo shoot for the uber-talented Sabrina Faith Weisbrod, makeup artist extraordinaire. If you find yourself in New York and in need of some super-fly face-doing, get thee to Sabrina! (All shots by fabulous and very sweet photog Duffy.)

…and I haven’t responded, I’m sorry! How obnoxious is that? Between all the regular day-to-day busyness of life (work, spending copious amounts of time watching various shows on drug rehab as well as all the reruns of Gilmore Girls I can find), I get a little lost. BUT…if you are on Facebook, please friend me there and I’ll make sure to write you back! (Somehow my Facebook in-box is a little less unwieldy. I don’t know why–the mind is a funny thing.) Otherwise, I’ll do my best to get back to you–and please keep the comments coming! You have no idea how much they mean. 

xo c.

Not to belabor this point, but disasters like the one in Haiti always seem to bring out the best in people. So please, whether you can give a lot or a little, help! Huffington Post has a good roundup of organizations that need our support. You can check it out here.