the camp of woman-centered punditry
In the LA Times this week, Meghan Daum looks at the literary genre that tries to dissect contemporary American womanhood (Laura Kipnis's The Female Thing being her touchstone). She asks if these books that present "complicated personal issues dressed up as trends" are helping or hurting us.
Relevant to us here, Daum writes of marriage: "...hasn't it always seesawed between mildly amusing and downright stultifying? Who are we to assume that things should be any different because it's 2007 and couples can talk to each other about all the fascinating blogs they read? [For] every marriage that looks like a tour through hell, there's one that looks like stratospheric bliss - sometimes these poles can exist within the same marriage on the same day."
Are generalizations about marriage - or being single for that matter - a way to unite us with others or another standard of comparison designed to torment?
1 comment:
Being single, I've found that generalizations about marriage help me feel satisfied that I've avoided experiencing that kind of frustration in regard to one other person. However, generalizations about being single leave me feeling frustrated with an entire group of people. Here's a generalization: I sense that singles more often or more strongly long for what they don't have but still hope to find than marrieds long for what they used to have when they were single but wouldn't necessarily want to return to. Is it because hoping for connection in the future seems more productive than regretting what is lost to the past?
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