The book store in the mall near me likes bringing authors in for book signings but no one ever shows up. The author just sits at a table by themselves and I just feel all horrible and awkward for them so I want to go up to them, but at the same time I don’t know who they are or what their book is about. So I guess what I’m asking is: how do I approach them? Or if you were in their position would you not want some person who doesn’t know who you are showing up? Help me, Auntie MJ!
Dear, sweet, kind krystalkairi,
I never expected to be asked this question, but when I was, I felt a spirit rising inside of me. Like a song I needed to sing. Like I dance I needed to dance. Like an itch I needed to scratch.
THANK YOU FOR NOTICING THE LONELY AUTHOR.
Signings can be rough. Rougher still are the all-day author stations. In stores in England, especially, I have seen this. I have seen the little table reserved for the author, or the extremely small desk, or the chair, or—and in this case I simply ran away crying—A SMALL CIRCLE PAINTED ON THE FLOOR. The author comes to the store in the hope of selling books and becomes some kind of living warning of the dangers of trying to do anything at all.
I don’t know what people think author events are like. I think people might assume that when they write a book and have a signing that it will be some kind of great, complete triumph. This is the moment in which all who doubted you will burn! This is when great crowds will line up and whisper each to each, “Is it…? “Could it really be her?”
I am sure there have been some people who have experienced that on their first signing, but those people were already famous somehow. They were on TV, YouTube, or had an online following for their writing—or they did something exceptional, like be an astronaut or president or someone who once waxed a Kardashian or something.
The majority of people who write a book will have a vastly different experience. Unless you have the signing in a place where you can guarantee large numbers of people will come see you (i.e. you are a Duggar, you have run your mom through a cloning machine, you have kidnapped many people in the local area and made your signing the condition for their release)…you are likely to be alone a lot.
I have been this author. So has every author I know.
Let me tell you about one of my favorite appearances early in my career, just to give you an idea of just how glamorous it can get.
My publisher sent me to a bookstore appearance in a state just north of New York.* I was sent an Amtrak ticket and set off on a snowy day. I stepped off the train in this strange New England town and looked around for the person who was supposed to meet me, but found no one. I started walking around the parking lot in circles until someone yelled, “ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?” I admitted I was. A car pulled up and the driver asked me to get inside. She was swearing mightily about someone else and apologizing to me for something, but I wasn’t quite sure what. I only knew that something was wrong.
We drove to the bookstore, where the person who picked me up ushered me inside and called for someone. The owner of the store came out of the back and said, “Oh, hey. Are you Maureen? Here’s the thing. When I made the posters for your event I put the wrong date on them. So probably no one is going to come.”
All of this was said in the flat aspect of someone riding the aftereffects of dental anesthesia. No further information was offered.
“So…” I said.
“Well, no one is going to come. I mean, you can stay if you want. You might as well. You came all the way here. We own the coffee shop next door. You can sit there.”
I was taken next door, to a large coffee shop. It was closed, so she had to unlock it. It looked like it only opened at night, which seemed like a strange time to open a coffee shop, but I wasn’t asking too many questions at this point.
“I’ll be back for your signing,” she said. “But no one is going to come. So I’ll just drive you back to the train then. If you want a sandwich you can take one from the…” She waved at a refrigerated section at the coffee bar. Then she left, locking the door behind her and me inside.
The signing was three hours away still.
I had my computer with me, so I used the time to write a bit. The snow fell, and no one came. Night fell, and no one came. The time of the signing came and went. I pressed my face to the window. Finally, someone came to open the coffee shop for the night. She looked surprised to see me there.
“Um, the owner?” I said. “Left me here? And said she would be back for me?”
And the barista said, “Oh, she went home about an hour ago.”
So I walked back to the train station by myself in the snow. This was just before smart phones, so I sort of had to guess where it was. I wandered the town, brushing flakes from my eyelashes, just looking for anywhere a train might go, wondering how it was I had just spent the day locked in an otherwise unoccupied building. It seemed like there may have been fine line being doing a signing and being kidnapped.
After the signing.
If you are sitting in public, yet you are alone, sometimes someone will come up to you and start talking, because you are fair game. I’ve been told life stories, been hit up for contacts, been on the receiving end of rants about how things were being run in this country, and gotten entire lectures about everything under the sun. All of that being said? I have had great signings where only two or three or four people came. One of my favorites was another one where the wrong day was announced, but two people caught the mistake and came and we just talked for two hours. It was great!
But those are signings, and those have a beginning and end. Those are hard enough. The open event where the author sits in the bookstore all day is a different and more alarming beast. Those authors are treated like PATIENT ZERO. People avoid them by instinct, because there is something in our reptile brain that tells us that if one of us has been forced to stand in a weird little circle on the floor, something must be wrong. Even I avoid authors in this position because I believe on some level that if I approach them they will grab me by the head and pull me into the little circle on the floor and say, “HAHAHAHAHA! ANOTHER AUTHOR HAS COME I AM FREE!” And then I will be locked into the circle by some strange gravitational pull. The other author will leap out and run off and I’ll be left there to die. Or until Nicholas Sparks wanders past. By that point, I will have had time to make a rope out of my hair and clothes and will be able to lasso him from twenty feet. Then the author of The Notebook and other works will know my pain and HE will have to stare at Hot Topic for months on end, until Jonathan Franzen finally gives in to his deep, unconscious craving for a mall pretzel. And so, the cycle continues. Ever wonder why some authors are so reclusive? WONDER NO MORE.
Okay. You’re at a signing, or you’ve spotted an author trapped in some way in the bookstore. There are two basic positions the captive author can take. This will tell you a lot.
POSITION ONE: THE AUTHOR IS LOOKING DOWN AT SOMETHING
One of the key coping strategies of the captive author is: LOOK BUSY. Do something. Do anything. The first line of defense usually involves checking your phone, with occasional glances around the room. These authors are probably bored and maybe sad. Sometimes authors may pull out their computers and write, which I always applaud. That’s good thinking. Same for reading. The problem is that readers are often afraid to approach a writer who looks like they are working or reading or on the phone.
The lonely author may choose to look busy.
POSITION TWO: THE AUTHOR IS LOOKING UP AND MAKING EYE CONTACT WITH EVERYONE AND HOLDING OUT THEIR BOOK
I always admire people who do this. I admire them as much as I fear them. I like their positivity and confidence in their work—or at least their willingness to put on a smile in a tough situation. It’s often a natural instinct to speak to people who are passing by. That’s one kind of reaching out. However, some people REALLY reach out. Physically. They reach out with their book and even follow people around the store and demand you have a look. I instinctively dislike having a book shoved at me and being told I will like it, even though the author knows nothing about me. I have come to the bookstore to browse and be with my thoughts and to smell the lovely smell of books. If someone jumps out from behind the biographies and thrusts a book at me and starts yelling, “HEY I WROTE THIS BOOK, TOOTH MAGIC, IT’S SO GREAT YOU LOOK LIKE A READER READ THIS BUY IT HERE I’LL TELL YOU THE ENTIRE PLOT IN A FORM LONGER THAN THE BOOK ITSELF…” …my likely response is to punch them, punch anyone around, punch myself, and then escape through the vents. Hard sells make me nervous under the best of circumstances.
Some authors will look more confident. This confidence may or may not be a ruse.
It’s tough, you know? It’s tough for all of us. It’s hard to know what this social exchange is meant to mean. It’s hard to go out there and stand next to your work and try to interest people in it. Authors are often shy. We usually work alone. For many of us, being set out in public is really, really hard. It may be a nightmare. I’ve seen people throwing up at the prospect of a signing. Sometimes we can’t figure out if we want anyone to talk to us, or if it would be best to be left alone to sink through the floor. Some people love it, though. To each their own. It’s impossible to know unless you approach the person, and even then, you are unlikely to know what’s really going on.
For me, I like it, generally. But that’s after years of doing it, building more of an audience, growing more of a thick skin, being able to sit there whether I have a long line or not. But it took me a while to get there, and I still get nervous sometimes.
My best advice is this: if you are interested in the book, go over and have a look and a chat. If you aren’t, smile, say hello if you like. You can also talk about other things. You can talk about the weather. General politeness applies here. If the author looks at you and you aren’t interested, don’t hiss and throw a copy of the closest George R R Martin at their head. Just say no thanks and smile. If the author won’t leave you alone, you are perfectly within your rights to spray them with a fire extinguisher. (Or just walk away. Maybe that’s better.) On some level, we accept it when you just walk by. We have to. But a smile and nod never hurts.
Also, I encourage other authors to share their stories of being the lonely one. It feels good.
Thank you for noticing us. THANK YOU FOR CARING.
Love,
Auntie MJ
* This store no longer exists. This is not the store you are thinking of. It really isn’t.
Thinking a lot about this quote in light of some discussion of two interviews done by the actors in Avengers that I’ve seen. (For those who didn’t see the discussions: Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner made some sexist comments and were criticised, they apologised. There was another interview where Mark Ruffalo was given the questions usually directed at a lady, and Scarlett Johansson the questions usually given to a dude.)
I’m glad the two actors apologised and glad they were forgiven, but I did wonder if a lady would’ve been. I did notice people didn’t bring up other mistakes the actors had made, whereas I saw people discussing mistakes actresses had made years before in other circumstances. I also saw a ton of ‘I LOVE MARK RUFFALO!’ commentary around the second interview, and thought ‘Well, why is he getting more credit than Scarlett Johansson?’
I hadn’t thought about it before, that I see dudes making mistakes and not having past offences thrown in their faces–getting more credit for their good behaviour and less flak for their bad.
I am not a celebrity obviously, but I bring myself up because I get nervous discussing other women making mistakes without being clear that *I* make mistakes all the livelong. When I do think about speaking up, or when I do make a mistake (happens all the time!) I do consider that I won’t just be criticised for the current mistake, but called up on the carpet for a) something I wrote in a book in 2009, b) something I failed to write in a book in 2011, c) something I said in 2005.
It’s much easier to act if you know that when you make a mistake, you’ll be apologising for one thing you did, and not end up being asked to apologise for a bunch of things you did–which ends up feeling a lot like being asked to apologise for existing.
I know singer Meghan Trainor is going to be criticised for saying she doesn’t consider herself a feminist for yeeeears, even if she decides later she does consider herself one, even though there are lots of valid reasons not to identify as a feminist (for the record, I do consider myself a feminist, which I do not think will come as a shock to you guys ;)).
I’m not saying: give ladies (or anyone) a pass on their past behaviour, especially if their past behaviour indicates a still-ongoing pattern. But I am saying, as ever, consider the difference between the way different people are treated, and as ever, if possible, err on the side of being kind.
I don’t know how many school assemblies I’ve done over the past 12 years. 200-300 is my best guess. Something I’ve found is that boys feel okay booing and mocking things they see as “for girls” but that girls never mock the “boy” things. Here’s an example. This exact scenario has repeated at every elementary and middle school assembly I’ve done in the past year and a half - at least 30, maybe more, in over a dozen states.
Me: I went to Mattel headquarters. Mattel is the largest toy maker in the world. They make Thomas the Train, Justice League Figures, Matchbox Cars—
Boys: Yay!
Me: Barbie—
Boys: BOO!!!
Me: I was going to write a book for their new toy line, but it was so secret, we had to put in a security code to go down a secret hallway, into a second locked door where on a table under a shroud they had the prototypes for the new toys. I lifted the shroud and this is what I saw: (switches to slide of Ever After High dolls)
Girls: Yay!
Boys: BOOO!!! BOOOO!!!
Notice the girls did not boo Thomas or Justice League or cars. Many cheered those things too. But the boys booed Barbe and EAH in unison, loudly, as if it was only natural, expected.
I’ve put up with it for awhile. And all this booing is after I’ve even talked with the kids about how unfair it is that people claim there are boy books and girl books. How untrue. Why can girls read anything but boys are told that they can only read half the books? And we’ve talked frankly about this. Still, the loud, fearless, angry mocking of any mention of “girl” media.
I’ve stopped putting up with it. When they boo, I stop them now. I demand respect. “I don’t know who told you it was okay to boo anything that you think girls like, but it’s not okay with me. That will stop. Girls, you don’t have to put up with that. The things you like deserve respect. You deserve respect.” I don’t know if they listen. But I’m going to say it all the same.
I think that by being “polite” and pretending to ignore the boos, I was actually reinforcing their opinion that this was okay. Tolerating something out of civility sure looks like complicity if you’re a girl in the audience. I won’t be complicit anymore. Which is “kinder”: ignoring the boos or calling them on it?
New video! With closed captions! And me dressed as a mechanic? I guess?
I remember you mentioning the thing about distances before, and I think about that a lot because same. Also, I feel like we’ve gotten a celebration (collective noun?) of hayleyghoover videos lately, which is fantastic.
i was 14 and i was walking through a mall by myself at 12am after my shift at coldstone creamery lol and a bunch of men started whistling and meowing and getting really close to me and they kept asking me questions and i kept not answering until i didn’t know what else to do so i said “i’m only 14” and almost in unison they said “we don’t care” i was so fucking scared i didn’t know what to do and they kept talking about how i looked and how my body looked and what they would do i was on the verge of tears i was all alone in a huge mall i knew i couldn’t outrun them all i felt totally hopeless until a maintenance worker came up to all of us with a huge industrial broom in her hand, i thought she was going to yell at all of us for being in the mall after hours bc she probably thought we were all friends but instead she cursed all of them out in spanish, threatened to press a panic button on her belt and then proceeded to walk me to the basement garage and waited with me until my mom got there to pick me up she had a death grip on her cart the whole time and a face of steel she looked so strong and i just kept saying thank you and she kept saying not to thank her because she had to stop them.
that was the moment i realized women were the most important beings on this planet and we have to protect each other bc nobody else is going to, she didn’t even know me, we couldn’t even communicate that well because of the language barrier, she could have lost her job for waiting with me in the parking lot but she looked out for me when she didn’t have to, she had nothing to gain from it, i’m 21 now and i tell everyone this story even though it happened 7 years ago, what she did that night helped me form and shape lot of my beliefs early on.
i was at a grocery store really late one night and some old guy kind of eyed me as i walked out of the store next to this other lady. She and I made eye contact and i knew she was scared too. we loaded up our groceries into our cars as fast as possible and I had way more bags than her so she got done faster than me. I panicked because i was sure she was going to leave so i just hurried faster, shaking a little, and then i noticed she sat in her car, watching me and making sure nobody came near. She waited not until all my groceries were loaded, or until my cart was put away, or until I got into my car. No, she didn’t drive away until I drove away.
And that was the moment that I realized how much women need other women. That we can’t win this war without each other and we have to be looking out for each other, every second.
my last year in new york city, i got off the subway around 9 or 10p.m. i only lived about 5 blocks from the f train, but i hadn’t gotten more than two before a woman’s hand suddenly touched my arm.
“that guy behind us is following you,” she said. “he was watching you leave the train car and followed you up.”
i hadn’t noticed him, or at least not noticed him following me. when we stopped outside a grocery store, he stopped half a block back and loitered. the woman linked her arm with mine and walked me several blocks out of her way to my front door and made sure i got inside safely.
another time, nocigar and i were walking home and at a stoplight a stranger grabbed my arm when i wouldn’t respond to him and tried to physically drag me over to him. she—who is, by the way, not a very physically imposing girl—ripped his hand off my arm and snarled, “don’t fucking touch her.”
protect your friends. protect strangers. there are good men in the world, but don’t wait for them to do something if you can do it yourself.
I was at a club once and my friend left with her boyfriend so I finished my drink and was heading out to the parking lot when three girls came up to me and basically surrounded me.
“Those guys behind us were talking about following you. We can walk with you.”
I have MMA training but have never in my life had been offered the protection and sanction of my own gender. This is so important.
One of the most important posts I’m trying to boost on everyone’s dashboards.
A few years back a friend was being harassed by some gross dude at a restaurant. He kept trying to touch her and make friendly conversation while she refused to respond. Honestly, it was one of the most infuriating things ever because the other people we were with stayed silent and didn’t say anything (seriously, fuck you if you are a bystander and don’t defend your friends). I was so angry I straight up told him to fuck off because she obviously wasn’t interested. He poured salsa on me.
It was the best salsa bath ever and so worth it. Men like that are such trash and women need to protect each other from them. Please, if you see something happening that is making you or another person uncomfortable, scared, or hurt… DO SOMETHING. Do not wait for another person to step in. Be the action. You could save someone from a fucked up situation.
Dear Auntie MJ, senior year of high school has a lot of accompanying feelings. Prom is coming up and it’s looking like I’ll be the only one in my friend group without a date. However, I think I might be catching feelings for someone I barely know. Is it worth trying to strengthen that connection, even though we will part ways for college soon? And how can I make the most out of the prom situation? Xoxo
Dear Emberia,
There are two questions here, and they require two distinct answers. Let us divide and conquer.
Question one: Is it worth trying to strengthen the connection with someone you barely know right before you leave for college and ask this person to prom?
Answer: Sure. Why not? Going to college is not like going off to the Hunger Games. It’s just moving to a different place. Sometimes it is not even that. Yes, things get shaken up, but that’s okay. I think the implication here is that asking someone to the prom is a Big Deal and if you have feelings, what happens to those feelings when you move to a new school? I don’t know. But I think you should go for it. Don’t use college as an excuse not to get to know someone. We have the internet now. And even without the internet, people did this kind of stuff all the time. Auntie MJ sees no downside to taking a chance on this. If you need inspiration to take a chance, watch this and be inspired by their sweaters.
Question two: How can you make the most of the prom situation?
Answer: Auntie MJ had to sit back and take a deep breath before answering this one. She thought of her own prom. She wrote about this prom back in 2006, but that is long enough now (and the post has been partially eaten by a web publishing service that shall remain unnamed but is Wordpress). I managed to dig up a copy of what I wrote, and I think it bears reprinting here, in the hopes that you can gain Wisdom from my experience.
See, our prom was about rules. It was about obedience. It was about training. And they started us early.
From our first days at school, we were taught that as formless, breastless freshman*, we were way too clueless to be allowed to wear things like heels. There was a complicated order to things relating to yearly dances, and each year it was reinforced in our heads. It went like this:
FRESHMAN YEAR
NOT A PROM. A freshman dinner dance. Party dresses only, knee length minimum. Heels at a maximum of one inch. No limos. No tuxes.
SOPHOMORE YEAR
NOT A PROM. A Soph Hop. Slightly more fancy party dresses, knee length minimum. Same heel height. No limos. No tuxes.
JUNIOR YEAR
A PROM. Tea length dresses permitted, knee length minimum. NO FLOOR LENGTH DRESSES. Two inch heels. No limos. No tuxes.
SENIOR YEAR
THE END OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. THE KING OF PROMS.
Now, it got complicated.
Floor length dresses were permitted. Tuxes were permitted. Limos were permitted. Heel length remained constant at two inches. The main thing to know is that we weren’t permitted to wear strapless dresses. No way, no how. That went for any dance, and this fact was drummed into our heads on every possible opportunity. However, every year the faculty actually voted on whether or not seniors could wear spaghetti strap dresses. This was such a huge deal that it merited a yearly discussion.
It was vetoed for our year.
We also had, like I mentioned previously, prom classes. This is when our senior year religion class was taken over for a week or two, and we were taught things like plate settings. This is when we had the mysterious Kleenex discussion, and when we were told not to get out of the car until our date opened the door.
And we also learned the schedule of how our prom was going to go down, just in case we were even thinking of having any fun.
Our arrival was to take place between 8 and 8:30. NO EXCEPTIONS. Failure to show up by 8:30 could result in the holding of our diploma.** Departure could not be before midnight, but could not be after twelve thirty.
The school brought in a “beauty expert,” a truly odious woman who taught us things like an exercise to keep our chins from getting flabby (slapping them) and that the cure for acne was more makeup. She was so insidious that at least two of my friends managed to walk out of the assembly, which was no minor feat. At my school, that was basically the equivalent of setting fire to your chair.
I bought a white satin dress for the prom. In retrospect, this was a strange choice, as I am pretty white myself. I am the color of porcelain and whole milk and daisy petals, if you’re romantic, and like someone in need of a transfusion if you’re not.*** I loved my white dress and white gloves. My dresses for the other years had all been a bit tragic****, but this one, this one I loved.
Exhibit A:The author of this piece and her friend Laurie (in green), on the way to prom. Laurie is, quite fairly, questioning the expression on my face. I think she sensed that I might be going into this thing with a less-than-enthusiastic attitude. This dress *looks* sleeveless, but what I did was pull those sides up over my shoulders so it had the appearance of sleeves. This would be a key factor in my arrival at the prom.
A group of us all went off to the prom together, after driving from house to house and picking everyone up, getting 200 pictures taken. Then we divided up into cars. I got into the one with one of my best and closet friends in the whole world. Her name is Kirsten. We left in plenty of time to get there by 8:00 or 8:30.
Kirsten’s boyfriend was driving us. She was up in the passenger’s seat, and I was in the back with my date. I remember it being a fun ride, right up until the time we got stuck in a massive traffic jam at 8:10. But we weren’t that far. We still had more than enough time.
Except that we hadn’t moved at 8:15. And not really that much by 8:20. Or five minutes after that. By now, Kir was getting seriously, seriously nervous.
“Re,” she said, leaning into the back seat. (My nickname is high school was Re. Only people who went to high school are allowed to call me this. It’s kind of a personal rule.)
“Re,” she said again, drawing me back from my own parenthetical interruption. “It’s 8:25.”
I looked at the clock on the dashboard. She was right.
“Well,” I said. “How far are we?”
“About seven or eight blocks,” her boyfriend said.
“We’re almost there,” I said to her.
“Yes. But we’re not there yet. And we might not be there in five minutes.”
I saw her point. We were going to graduate. We were going to get out of high school.
“We can go seven or eight blocks in five minutes,” I said nervously. “Right?”
Wrong. By 8:28 we had gotten about two blocks closer.
“Re,” she said, leaning back again. “This time, seriously. We have to go.”
“Go how? We still have five or six blocks left.”
“I know. That’s why we have to go. Now.”
She opened her car door and got out. I followed.
“What are you doing?” I said, following her to the sidewalk. “We have two minutes.”
“If we don’t go,” she said. “They’re going to hold our diplomas.”
“And so, what? We run?”
Instead of answering this question in words, she responded in action. She started running down the street. And I ran right after her.
I’m not sure if you’ve tried to run in heels and a floor-length dress down a city sidewalk before. You probably haven’t. I don’t really recommend it. Especially if you are trying to preserve you hair and makeup and not get anything on your stark while dress and shoes, and if you are carrying long-stemmed roses and a purse. I didn’t spend a lot of time in heels back then. Our days were spent wearing our fabulous and sensible school shoes, so I wasn’t all that steady at normal walking pace. So running on a sidewalk (notorious surfaces on the best of days) was really a lot more than I was ready to take on. Also, we were the official show of all that stopped traffic.
Exhibit B:Our actual school shoes. They float in the clouds because wearing them is like being in a dream.
Bizarrely enough, this may have been the one physical act that my school had truly prepared me for. Since we didn’t have showers, we were always told to try not to sweat in gym. This doesn’t seem like something you can normally request or control, but we had actually learned to do this.
So we ran. We ran because we actually believed that we might not graduate high school if we didn’t. Kir and I, aside from being the non-Catholics, were both honor students. We weren’t at the very top, but we were far from the bottom. And yet, we were still afraid that we might not be able to go to college or ever, ever leave our high school just because we got stuck in traffic.
We arrived, out of breath, at 8:32. Our dates had no caught up with us. We barged into the hall on our own. Our principal was waiting there, clipboard in hand.
“Running a little late, are we?” she said.
It had to have been completely obvious that we had just been running. Our hair was all blown around, we were breathing too heavily to answer.
“And where are you dates?” she continued.
We heaved for breath and pointed at the door, indicating that they were somewhere in the world.
“Girls,” she said, in a warning tone. “You were told when to arrive.”
“We got stuck in traffic, Sister,” Kir said.
Sister shook her head and wrote something down.
“Bring your dates and go and greet everyone,” she said. “Everyone has been waiting for you.”
That last bit was meant to sting. See, it wasn’t over yet. At our school, there was a receiving line at the proms.
“Receiving line?” you ask. “What do you mean by that?”
I mean that you had to walk around and introduce your date to every single faculty member that turned up, and they ALL turned up. An entire WALL OF NUNS. I’m talking about twenty-five or so. Seriously. And you had to say hello to every single last one of them and have your date shake their hand, and if they wanted to talk, you stood there and talked.
And here’s the really important part of this: the lobby area of the place where we had our prom? Mirrored on all sides. So it looked like THOUSANDS OF NUNS. I think this is the same trick they used in that last scene of Star Wars, when they go and get their medals, and there are millions of rebel alliance fighters all lined up. And not just thousands of nuns … thousands of nuns that had been denied the pre-dinner snacks because Kir and I were “late.”
Exhibit C:Let’s go to the prom.
In a class of 125 girls, having twenty five to thirty dedicated chaperones patrolling the edges of the floor, ready, willing, and able to bust in to any couple making out for more than 30 seconds (the limit) … it all makes for a fairly controlled experience. Kir and I spent the whole night not really knowing what had been written on the clipboard, and it was a while (weeks, really) before we were convinced that we were in the clear.
How does this help you, my dear Emberia? I admit I am not sure. It proves a person can run in heels and not sweat. That’s something, isn’t it?
I guess the best lesson is that the prom? Is a dance. It’s not the be-all, end-all of anything. Anyone who thinks that the prom is somehow a measure of what the rest of life will be like has either not left high school yet (and thus has no idea that they are wrong) or are people think life is high school. Which it is not. Dance if you want to dance or sit around and talk if you want to talk. If it’s extremely fun, great! If it’s boring, no big deal! If it’s a disaster, you will have a story to tell FOR YEARS AND YEARS. If it is a weird list of rules and you have to run down the street to get to it and there are millions of nuns there, you will become a YA author and live in my house.
Good luck out there. I will be thinking of you.
Love,
Auntie MJ
* Our chests were measured in the gym a few weeks before Freshman year in order to order our vests. The highlight was that we had a Breast-Size Guessing Nun who could just look at us and predict how much we would grow, chestwise, in the next four years and she would SHOUT THESE RESULTS across the gym, because the person writing down the sizes was across the gym for some reason. So people would be evaluated by the BSGN and she would say things like, “THIS ONE IS FLAT AS A BOARD. GET HER A SMALL. THAT’S ALL SHE’LL NEED.”
** They really hammered this home.
*** Recent events and blood tests have shown that I am exactly the kind of person who needs a blood transfusion. The pale skin is due to very low iron. We didn’t know it then. We just knew I was the one person who never really seemed to tan.
**** This is an understatement. The other dresses were all J.C. Penny closeouts from the bridal department. I’ve lost all records of the first one. The second one is a massive floral print, like something designed to attract sight-impaired bees. The nicest thing I can say about the third one is that it looks extremely flammable.
The design of that shoe is both a mystery and an answer.
This is speaking to me, though I don’t know the language.
I’m going to keep listening until I understand, because something like this has to pay off if you really spend some time with it. It’s like meditation in that way.
My roommate/best friend and I have the serious issue of not understandingwhy menstruation is something that we’re supposed to be ashamed of oruncomfortable with when we have zero control over it. I don’t understand whywe’re supposed to be grossed out by the fact that we have no control of when we start, how much we bleed, or how long it lasts. Why are menstrual products so expensive when condoms are often free or very very cheap and very easily accessible?? It is something that makes me very angry and frustrated. Like my roommate is 20 and only just started having her period regularly and she gets made fun of all the time because she never had to deal with it before so she’s just now learning….This is just something that I know a lot of girls struggle with and the struggle doesn’t end when you grow up. I’m 20 and it’s still a problem.
Be of good cheer! Auntie MJ is here and she is MORE THAN HAPPY to discuss this. This entire answer is going to be full of period facts and period fictions and personal period stories.
The history of menstruation-hate is long. I am not an expert on the subject, but I know it goes WAY BACK. Certainly there are instances in the Bible referring to it, and explaining that that is the time of the month when women are “unclean” and have to go sleep in a different tent. There are, I am certain, places in the world where even now women are made to go somewhere else to sleep when menstruating. But it goes far beyond where we rest. It’s seen as (one of our many) weakness and problems and something that makes us unfit to old certain jobs and is generally used as an excuse for prejudice against us. Also jokes. Except the jokes are not funny if we make them because gross, right? How dare we. (Tina Fey tells a story about this in Bossypants. She had a lot of trouble getting a sketch about classic pads into the show because a lot of the men were just very, very uncomfortable and didn’t understand why it was HILARIOUS. Which it is. You can see it here.)
When you first get the news as a kid that this is about to happen to you (if you are one of the people it will happen to), it can be a bit of a shocker. My reaction was something like, “Wait, what now? Every month? Actual blood? What?” The reason is actually awesome. People who menstruate have at least some of the required equipment to make other people. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you can, or that you have to or want to or anything like that. It just means that some or all of the parts are there and that the factory is doing its thing.
Periods cannot be compared. Every one is its own unique thing. While there aspects that are generally the same from person to person, there are many variables as well—frequency, duration, amount, pain, tiredness, hormonal changes, emotional changes. The range of what is healthy and normal is vast. If you have questions about what is healthy and normal, speak to your doctor. Some weird period behavior can be a sign of a problem. I found this out when I was diagnosed with endometriosis. I had no idea what I was experiencing was not normal, because I’d always had my period, and my period was its own thing. “Do you bleed heavily?” I was asked. I shrugged. I’d never measured it. “Well,” he said, “do you have to put down a towel or a blanket at night?” I laughed and said, “Doesn’t everyone do that?” Not everyone does that. But a lot of people do! (My most recent breakthrough: our dog is now fully housetrained and we had a huge pack of puppy wee-wee pads just sitting around. I was wondering what to do with them and then I had a Lightbulb Moment and now they go right into the bed. I feel like a true household pioneer for working this one out. THIS WORKS. TRY IT FOR YOURSELF.)
My point is, as long as your doctor says that medically what is going on is fine—it’s fine. And even if it’s troublesome, it doesn’t make you weird. There is no judgment on this. There is no Ms. Period Contest in which your period will be judged. Who are these people making fun of your friend for getting her period at twenty? I have serious questions about this. Send them here. I need to Speak To Them.
While a period can be messy—in the sense that any liquid spill can be messy—it is not dirty. Springing a leak is annoying. Some people feel soul-crushing embarrassment when this happens. I cannot feel you how to feel about this, but I can tell you I certainly will feel nothing but empathy on your behalf. I will tell you something that happened to me only a few months ago! I was AT A REALLY FANCY DINNER and the period came from nowhere like a WEASEL in the NIGHT! I didn’t even know it was happening. For once, it gave no sign. I had a Strange Feeling That Something Was Wrong. I carefully reached around and confirmed my suspicion. I realized that I had likely taken out the chair I was in, which luckily was made of wood. I continued to talk as normal while I made a detailed plan of the room in my mind and figured out how to get from my seat to the bathroom while keeping my back turned away from people as much as possible (try doing this in a crowded restaurant). This involved a lot of sliding along walls to politely stay out of the path of imaginary waiters. When I got to the bathroom, I realized the extent of the damage. Things were bad. My outfit was ruined. I texted a friend at the table and asked if I could borrow her sweater. She came and brought it to me and spent the rest of the night cold. I managed to clean the chair. The cloth napkin, well, that came home with me. I figured it was no longer any use to the restaurant. The skirt was a lost cause. Of course, there is always the matter of making the IMPROMPTU arrangements in the bathroom. We have all had to MacGyver our way out of this situation. ANYTHING WILL DO. (Note to TV executives: one show I would watch FOR SURE would be PERIOD MACGYVER in which someone gets their period in increasingly awkward situations and has to build a pad out of whatever is on hand. You could start with the usual suspects like paper and cloth and build to more exotic items, eventually culminating in someone stopping a bomb from going off by using their period. I would watch THE HELL out of that.)
I continued the rest of the dinner as though nothing had happened, because really, nothing had. I tell this story because I have NO PROBLEMS with this. IT HAPPENS. You can borrow my sweater to tie around your waist. And thank you to everyone who has lent me a sweater or coat to tie around mine.
As to why period items are not free and available everywhere—ask the patriarchy. In the meantime, they are one of the most needed items in shelters and YOU CAN DONATE THEM because they are really needed!
People who use periods as prejudice against individuals who get them are being gross and ignorant. “But!” these ***holes say, “periods make you crazy! That’s why women can’t hold office! They’d blow everything up!” Period-havers, usually women, have been handling business and being rational for millennia while dealing with sometimes major hormonal flux. Warmongers and bomb-throwers and civilization destroyers (often men) are…oh right. No, no. Do go on. I was listening. There was just a wonderful bird over your shoulder and I was looking at it. It’s gone now. Don’t look for it. It flew away.
Some emotional fluctuation is common. THIS IS TRUE OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS.
In some cases, periods can cause serious states of mental distress. Here’s another fact to blow your mind: serious states of mental distress are found in ALL SUBSETS OF HUMAN BEINGS. Many women have been pathologized for their period-having because jerks have also been around for a long time. Much of this prejudice was spread by experts, some of whom also believed that the uterus moved around the body like some kind of spider. Some just thought the period must be bad because…
…because? Period? Because women? Because must be?
Guess what, chumps. The fact that you have a vague sense of unease about my period is balanced out by the fact that I don’t actually care. I wish you well in your travels through your own notions, but I have reality to contend with and a pad to built out of nothing but a wrench, two feet of fishing rope, and these bomb parts.
DearAuntie MJ: I’m living at home with my parents, and while I’m very politically liberal, my dad is the kind of conservative who could have his own show on FOX news. I’ve asked him repeatedly not to talk about politics around me, because it makes it hard for me to have a close relationship to him, but he tells me I shouldn’t get so invested in the conversation. I’ve tried leaving the room when he starts talking politics, but now my family thinks I’m isolating myself too much. What can I do?
My dear fancakes,
Auntie MJ understands what you are talking about quite well. She grew up under similar circumstances. She still gets the email forwards. She knows.
As an adult, you get a whole new set of choices about who you want to deal with and how to do it. When you are a teenager, your home is your home. Your parents are (probably, though not in all cases) in charge and paying the bills. You are a family. How do you deal with this when the calls are coming from inside of the house? And it’s not your phone?
First, a disclosure: Auntie MJ is not of the Fox news persuasion. I am using Fox News as a category because you mentioned it and it is a vehicle that explicitly states certain views in a fairly consistent manner. Individual people and even political parties can vary in their stances. Fox is a mouthpiece with talking points and an editorial style and practice. As a piece of rhetoric, it is quite a marvel—the news equivalent of a party magician in a shiny cape doing some close-up magic learned from YouTube and the back of cereal boxes. Yet, amazingly, people seem to be watching and saying, “HOW DID A QUARTER ACTUALLY COME OUT OF MY EAR? ARE QUARTERS MADE IN MY EARS? IS OBAMA MAKING QUARTERS IN MY EARS?” And the magician says, “Yes, it must be the case that Obama is making quarters in your ears.”
It must also be said that all parties and all sides use rhetoric tricks and techniques. Someone who has a different political leaning could simply insert the name of a media outlet they assume I must like into the above illustration. I will use the only Latin quote I know and like and carry around in my head: Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. “Why do you laugh? Change the name and the story is told of you.”
All sides in any heavy, bombastic argument think the other side has swallowed a whopper and must be super dumb. This is something we learn immediately if we ever read the comments on any news article, which we shouldn’t do but do anyway.*
So everything I said in the above paragraph is both something I believe and the illustration of me falling into the very trap I am about to suggest should be avoided. Or if these things are impossible to avoid, you just need to know they’re there and know they’re a trap.
So here are my specific tips for living in an ideological game of Mousetrap.
We don’t actually know what other people are thinking, unless they tell us.
Just because someone appears to hold a certain set of beliefs does not necessarily mean they do. Also, you can’t assume people hold certain views, or that they subscribe to every single view that we think are part and parcel of “that kind of person.” So, things may not be all you think they are? Maybe? Leave a space in your mind to be surprised. I have been surprised by some of the turnarounds in my own family.
Okay, but sometimes people do tell us what they’re thinking, and we can’t quite process it.
The discussion in the United States right now (and many, many other places) is about identity. Racism, homophobia, xenophobia, the rights of women (and the nature of gender itself). There are many issues in which religion is used to make laws that change and limit the rights of others. This is heavy, sticky, tricky stuff. It involves serious questions about identity, about history, and about the fundamental nature of right and wrong, about redistribution of power.
It’s also not new, none of it. Humankind seems to be in a pretty constant state of wanting to burn someone or imprison someone or start a war with someone because they disagree about some matter of what it means to be human and alive. So much of it boils down to fear. So much of it boils down to seeing people as other. There’s always a “they” and “they” do things that “we” don’t do or don’t like and “they” can’t do that.
Compassion never fails. Compassion doesn’t mean just “being nice” or “going along with things” or allowing bad things to happen. I believe that all these –isms and phobias cause suffering, so the compassionate thing is to work against those things. How this is done is a matter of intense, ongoing historical debate. (There have always been moderates and bomb-throwers and speakers and warriors.)
A house is likely too small to contain these kinds of actions. These things need to play out over a larger field. Having this all going on in the living room is hard. It doesn’t sound like you are trying to change the world. It sounds like you are trying to change the channel. I have been there, and here is something that can work. Ask, politely, if maybe the topic or actual television channel could be changed, because you find it hard to have a productive conversation. Then, instead of just going to your room—do something nice. Take out the garbage. Do the dishes. And don’t do it angrily. Try to just do them calmly. This shows good faith. Instead of saying “I want you to do this” and then leaving, you present yourself as a loving and reasonable person. This may not work from the very first go, but keep at it. This technique can work and has worked for me. When someone sees that you are really trying to be kind, they will often be more receptive to what you are saying.
We can love someone and not want to be them, exactly.
People are complicated. People make mistakes. Our families are our families. We are none of us perfect. I may not always agree with my family, but I remember that they did not always agree with me, either, and yet they still loved me unconditionally. Love really does trump all. It doesn’t mean you have to agree. When something happens at home you really can’t deal with, look around for a sign of the love. These signs are never as far as you think. Something you were given. Being tucked into bed when you were small. Being taken care of when you were sick. I hope these things happened to you. I bet they did. Think of them for a moment.
You are responsible only for you.
We can’t jump on other people until they agree with us. Right now, you are building yourself and your views. You can channel your frustrations into good things. Take the time to read and educate yourself. Make yourself into what you want to be. And realize that these things that annoy you may be the things that spur you to act. I am almost entirely a product of the annoyances and disagreements that littered my teenage years! (See any of my rants about my high school. If you can’t find one, just come over and I will rant about it for a while.) I am very thankful for these experiences, truly.
Chicken noises also work.
My friend H. Krimble used to live with someone in college that he absolutely could not stand. Seriously. He couldn’t take it. He used to sit outside the building at night and stare bleakly at the windows and consider sleeping in the shrubs outside. Then he discovered that he could just imagine chicken noises whenever the person started talking. His whole attitude changed! I didn’t think anything could be that easy, but I tried it and it totally works. So if you feel something coming for you that you’ve heard before and really can’t take, run the chicken noises in your head. It makes you happy, and when you are happy, you can be more compassionate. When you are more compassionate, you develop stronger relationships. Am I telling you to ignore things? I am telling you that you may simply have to ignore some things, especially repeated things or things you can’t change, like the state of the economy.
Sometimes, you just have to do the chicken noises.
I hope this helps. Good luck out there.
Love,
Auntie MJ
* The job of 24 hour news is to engage, inflame, and alarm. It’s designed to keep people watching. To preserve your sanity, it’s worth learning some rhetorical devices and fallacies. Here is a great chart of the fallacies, which you can print out. This will help you understand what kinds of techniques are being used and see the argumentative forces at work. It gives you something to do when you are just sitting in front of the computer, quietly steaming.
shall i compare thee to a summer’s day? too hot, hot damn
Reblogging on this, the first day of Spring, and elmify’s birthday.
March 17, 2015
I call it feminism instead of equality because it is the feminine traits that men and women are shamed for. It is the feminine traits that society needs to accept.
