Well, with all those posts that were on the angry side, I figured that the best thing to do would be to write about something completely and totally different. So you will get a lesson from me about the wonderful Magic of Love! Yes, that's right! Loooove! So put away your Cosmopolitan magazine and ditch your old novels because the revel's gonna learn ya better than school in the arts of love.
Okay, you're probably wondering, "But why are you doing this?" or "What could an old, cold cynic like yourself know about love?" Good question! You're absolutely right, I have for the longest time been the biggest old cynic around. But now I will turn my act around and dedicate this post in all its entirety to LOVE. And that's not all! Any good academic (or grant manager) knows, you must absolutely cite your sources, so I will tell you the font of wisdom from whence I quaffed to get these pearls of wisdom.
So this is the revel's post about Love. As taught to me by the countless chick flicks and romantic comedies I have been forced to sit through by my friends and accomplices.
Revel's Guide to Finding Love
1. If someone creepy is stalking you, don't give him a restraining order, give him a chance at a relationship with you!
Think stalkers are scary and creepy? Think again! It's not stalking, it's romantic! That creeper is only so concerned about your well-being, so give the poor thing a chance. Never mind that it might be bad for your well-being to worry about being stalked. Look at Twilight. The pasty vampire dude with the fwoopy hair is always stalking his human love interest, Bella. And look where that gets him! Tons of teen girls thinking he's like the greatest thing ever, not to mention the love of Bella. So if you find yourself in that situation, consider yourself lucky!
2. You must be a middle-to-upper-class white, heterosexual female. Your wisecracking sidekicks don't have to be, though.
Look at all the leads in the chick flicks that have come out over the last five years. You'd be hard-pressed to find a minority woman as the lead role. You'd be even harder-pressed to find one that was either underemployed or had another woman as her love interest. It's all the same old, boy-meets-white-straight-girl story. Then take a look at the secondary roles. Wondering where all the gals who don't fit that category get to go?
3. You must also be conventionally thin and beautiful. If you're not, then you must become that way.
Observe how all the middle-to-upper class, white, hetero ladies who are cast as the leads are all conventionally attractive. Consider yourself average or geeky-looking? Well, don't worry, you can always get a makeover to show people that your outer beauty matches your inner beauty! Observe how the protagonists in The Princess Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding all shed their geeky image and wind up getting the love of their lives. Romance is for the pretty! Don't feel like going the distance? Don't worry, I hear that they might still have open slots for the wisecracking sidekick role.
4. There are only two kinds of guys that matter. The guy you are dating who turns out to be totally icky and the icky guy you wind up dating. The guy friend does not exist. Observe the countless films made with a sharp, motivated female lead and a total dunderhead of a date for her: Knocked Up, The Ugly Truth, and The Proposal. Think your guy is great for you? Don't be an idiot! He will soon will wind up having some awful personality flaw, and you can't have that! Now think about that icky guy who gave you some lame pickup line in the dive bar. THAT is your future husband. Go find him now before he passes out in his own vomit at the dive bar.
5. "Career Women" are total harpies.
Note how all the women in the films mentioned in #4 are strong and motivated and have jobs they like. Well, that's why they can't find a man and are thus utterly pathetic excuses for females! They might as well turn in their second X-chromosome! Oh wait, that's why there's the icky guys they must fall in love with to keep from turning into and staying total monsters! Don't believe me? Well, you don't have to read this post to hear it! See my 2008 post, "Why You Should Marry a Doormat" for added info.
6. You must be tamed. By that icky guy who can rescue you from the harpyness you are becoming.
This one goes without saying. And there are many ways to tame you, too! You can learn to love his ickiness and realize that he truly is, deep down, an icky guy worth loving. Or you can wind up accidentally getting pregnant by him and learning to love that. After all, isn't that what happens in these tales, otherwise there'd be no story. But hey, it's what people in love do, right?
That is all. Revel has spoken. Now follow those rules and you will have the mens eating out of your manicured hands! (And you might just find a ring on the left one in due time...)
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Same old song and dance
So, by now I'm sure you've all heard the story about the fake prom that was held in Mississippi. After Constance McMillen, a senior at the Itawamba County High School, wanted to bring her girlfriend to the prom, the school cancelled the prom altogether. She later was invited to a private prom with her girlfriend...and discovered that there were less than 10 students there (and some of those students had learning disabilities). The rest of the school went to a prom that was held in secret by the parents, and that the 10 students at the "fake prom" were not invited to.
The story's gone viral all over the blog community, and for good reason. Most people seem to get it for what it is--a really blatant and incredibly ugly display of discrimination. What really bothers me especially is that this fake prom was created to keep all the people who didn't fit in with the school's desired image out, like a way to remove anyone they didn't see as "worthy." (The original prom was cancelled on the grounds that a same-sex couple would be "distracting and disruptive"--but with a couple hundred kids at a prom, who's really going to be distracted by one couple??) Which is just so disgusting.
People may say that we as a nation may have come far, but in matters of civil rights, we still have a long way to go. As most of you know, I identify as mostly hetero (I use the term mostly because I don't think that anyone is exclusively one orientation or another but that we all fall into a continuum of sorts, like the Kinsey scale), but I am a HUGE ally. That's because I think freedom means freedom for everybody, not just a few.
And I am a huge history buff, especially with the history of social movements. What I have noticed, though, is that many of the same old excuses and the same old hate just keeps getting recycled. It's the same old prejudice, just in different hands. Think about how, as recently as the early twentieth century, interracial relationships were considered societally unacceptable. Many of you would find that archaic, and rightly so. Some states even had "racial integrity acts" (don't believe me? google it) that CRIMINALIZED an interracial marriage or relationsip on the grounds that it would lead to problems with the couple's children and later on, the entire human race. It wasn't until the 1960s, in a case called Loving Vs. Virginia that such laws were struck down once and for all. That's less than fifty years ago! Now imagine some of the opposition to marriage equality. A lot of folks who don't support same-sex marriage use the grounds that it will be harmful to their kids, and later on, to the entire human race. Same old excuses. (Although I know a LOT of same-sex couples with kids, and their kids seem fine to me. That's because it's more about how the couple parents than what gender the couple is.) Same old prejudice.
Some might say a prom might not mean a whole lot, since it's something that happens in high school, but this kind of exclusion is nothing less than discrimination and creating nothing less than a hostile educational environment. If a student is noticeably excluded from something because of their identity, what message does that send? What kind of environment does that create? Really, this kind of exclusion is just the cousin of that institutionalized prejudice I was discussing. Both should have no place in this world. At. All.
Well, I am hoping for the best for Ms. McMillen and for the other kids that apparantly weren't good enough to be at Itawamba County's "real" prom. My heart goes out to them.
The story's gone viral all over the blog community, and for good reason. Most people seem to get it for what it is--a really blatant and incredibly ugly display of discrimination. What really bothers me especially is that this fake prom was created to keep all the people who didn't fit in with the school's desired image out, like a way to remove anyone they didn't see as "worthy." (The original prom was cancelled on the grounds that a same-sex couple would be "distracting and disruptive"--but with a couple hundred kids at a prom, who's really going to be distracted by one couple??) Which is just so disgusting.
People may say that we as a nation may have come far, but in matters of civil rights, we still have a long way to go. As most of you know, I identify as mostly hetero (I use the term mostly because I don't think that anyone is exclusively one orientation or another but that we all fall into a continuum of sorts, like the Kinsey scale), but I am a HUGE ally. That's because I think freedom means freedom for everybody, not just a few.
And I am a huge history buff, especially with the history of social movements. What I have noticed, though, is that many of the same old excuses and the same old hate just keeps getting recycled. It's the same old prejudice, just in different hands. Think about how, as recently as the early twentieth century, interracial relationships were considered societally unacceptable. Many of you would find that archaic, and rightly so. Some states even had "racial integrity acts" (don't believe me? google it) that CRIMINALIZED an interracial marriage or relationsip on the grounds that it would lead to problems with the couple's children and later on, the entire human race. It wasn't until the 1960s, in a case called Loving Vs. Virginia that such laws were struck down once and for all. That's less than fifty years ago! Now imagine some of the opposition to marriage equality. A lot of folks who don't support same-sex marriage use the grounds that it will be harmful to their kids, and later on, to the entire human race. Same old excuses. (Although I know a LOT of same-sex couples with kids, and their kids seem fine to me. That's because it's more about how the couple parents than what gender the couple is.) Same old prejudice.
Some might say a prom might not mean a whole lot, since it's something that happens in high school, but this kind of exclusion is nothing less than discrimination and creating nothing less than a hostile educational environment. If a student is noticeably excluded from something because of their identity, what message does that send? What kind of environment does that create? Really, this kind of exclusion is just the cousin of that institutionalized prejudice I was discussing. Both should have no place in this world. At. All.
Well, I am hoping for the best for Ms. McMillen and for the other kids that apparantly weren't good enough to be at Itawamba County's "real" prom. My heart goes out to them.
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