Archive for the 'The Beauty Ultimatum' Category

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Spinster aunt conducts own damn survey

Published by Twisty on March 4, 2009. 76 Comments

The Twisty Institute for the Study of Heterofemininity (TISH) invites women with boyfriends, husbands, and/or fathers to answer the following questions as honestly as possible. The raw data will be tabulated, collated, analyzed, duplicated, dipilated, notated, submitted, cited, misinterpreted, misquoted, and thrown away next week.

On special occasions, or when he’s seeking your approval, does your boyfriend or husband dance provocatively in lacy satin lingerie and a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps, the price of which would shock you?

In school, were most of the assigned books written by poor women of color?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father spend a lot of time and money on beauty?

Are some women sluts?

When you go deer hunting, does your boyfriend or husband visit the spa for an herbal wrap, a facial, and a pedi?

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father afraid to walk alone at night?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father yearn for shiny hair with “luscious volume”?

Would your boyfriend or husband continue to raise your kids and keep house for you if you stopped putting out?

After the presidential inauguration, when your boyfriend, husband, or father had a light lunch with the girls, did the subject of Michelle Obama’s outfit come up?

Is there a fair representation of women in authoritative positions in government, organized religion, media, or business?

When you see a professional sports event, are the athletes usually women?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father take steps to eliminate his “feminine odor”?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father ever try to appease you by tilting his head and giggling?

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father expected to wear makeup and heels to work?

Are the bosses at your job mostly women?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father think it would be good to have “glowing skin”?

Does your boyfriend or husband constantly nag you to leave the seat down?

When it’s time to buy a new car, are you the one who negotiates with the salesman because you’ll get a better deal?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father carry a can of pepper spray in his purse?

Does your husband thank you for babysitting?

When your boyfriend or husband buys a cute new bag, is he crestfallen when you fail to notice?

Do your fiance and his father eagerly look forward to planning your wedding?

For Valentine’s Day, do you give your boyfriend or husband a sexy nightie and a box of chocolates? Or, if you forget, does he feel hurt?

Has your boyfriend, husband, or father undergone breast augmentation surgery? Tummy tuck? Liposuction?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father accept with a resigned sigh that the women in his office are usually given higher salaries and better promotions than the men?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father wait tables at Hooters?

Are you OK with it if your boyfriend or husband gains a little weight, because curvy men turn you on?

When your boyfriend or husband would rather just cuddle, do you pick a fight?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father clean the toilets with harsh chemicals?

Do you love the way heels make his legs look longer and sexier?

When dudes on the street whistle or make suggestive comments to your boyfriend, husband, or father, does he photograph them and send the pictures to HollaBack?

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father a primary school teacher, a nanny, a maid, or a stay-at-home mom because he finds it so gratifying to make personal sacrifices for others that he doesn’t mind the low or non-existent pay?

Do you send your boyfriend, husband, or father email forwards describing rape avoidance techniques?

Does lipstick scientifically formulated with ginkgo biloba, licorice, and tea tree oil give your boyfriend’s or husband’s lips a fuller, plumper, more kissable look?

Posted in Femininity, Junk Studies and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

I feel so dirty

Published by Twisty on February 26, 2009. 61 Comments

Blamer Belenen sent in a video clip the other day with the note “check out this animated tribute to sexism.” It was a cartoon called “Only in a Woman’s World.” Four young female characters obsess about femininity, particularly body image and food, in that glib, self-depracating-but-psuedo-edgy way that hot young empowerfulized women are popularly imagined to talk.

“Sex and the City with lower-paid actors,” I wrote back. “Pah.”

I thought it was a trailer for an actual TV series to be aired on the Oprah Lady Channel or something. But it turns out it’s a new ad campaign ad for Frito-Lay. Blamer feral hipped me to this piece in the New York Times outing the thing. The characters are “fab, funny, fearlessly female,” and, sure enough, the obvious rip-off of “Sex and the City” does not elude the Times.

The gist of the article is not a cartoon review, though. It explains how advertising is using “pop neurology” and “neuromarketing” to get inside women’s brains in order to sell us shit snacks that taste like shit, i.e. Baked Lays.

They’re analyzing anterior cingulate corteces and hippocampuses and making women test subjects keep self-hatred journals, all of which reveals the astonishing scientific conclusion that women feel guiltier than men about, well, everything. Frito-Lay’s new ad campaign, featuring “characters [women] could empathize with,” is designed not to “trip” women’s guilt.

They do this by packaging everything in beige bags with pictures of herbs on them.

I consider myself pretty media-savvy, but the fact that I couldn’t tell the difference between a stupid TV show and a stupid advertising campaign makes me fairly queasy. But of course, every single thing on television sells something nasty, whether it’s Baked Lays or boob jobs.

Posted in Femininity, Mass Media and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

“New” feminism: plump, luscious, and kissable

Published by Twisty on December 25, 2008. 79 Comments

An acute reader once informed me that “the ideas on this blog are not new,” which remark I was apparently expected to interpret as a real take-me-down-a-peg zinger. Old ideas? Bo-ring. Entertain me with some new analysis. Preferably something more fun.

This sentiment is echoed by a bunch of “new” feminists profiled in the lifestyle section of the December 21 Sunday Times.

Screw political activism. “New” feminism is a lifestyle.

The “new” feminists are embarrassed by the old-school feminist protesters at a beauty pageant; those old bats “looked a bit silly, a bit like a stereotypical idea of what a feminist should be.” The beauty pageant in question, a new feminist maintained, was not about men. It was for “girls.” I mean, what were those protesters thinking, pointing out that sexist bullshit? Those “girls” were in the pageant of their own free will.

You’re hardly gonna fall off your chair when I aver unto you that the feminists in this article don’t, alas, live up to the hype. They’re not “new.” They’re old, so old, so painfully, oldly old. They were old when they were Tallulah Bankhead, and when they were Madonna, and when they were Suicide Girls, and when they were on “Sex and the City,” and they’re not getting any younger.

That’s right. They’re choice feminists, the gals who say “I choose it, and I decided I’m empowerful, so it’s feminist!” They’re fun feminists, the gals who say (and I quote from the article) “As a woman, you can’t not buy shoes and wear dresses. Plus all of that stuff is fun — it doesn’t take away from your power as a woman.” They’re 12-step feminists, the gals who say “Take what you want and leave the rest.”

Seriously! It’s all there in the soon-to-be-published The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism. Quoth author Ellie Levenson, “In the past, you had to subscribe to a whole set of beliefs to be a feminist, including how you should look and behave. But Noughties women have made it their own. It’s like a pick-and-mix feminism, where you can choose the bits you care about yourself.”

Like when you choose an outfit! For yourself!

Scratch a “new” feminist, and you’ll find an empowerful girl whose lipstickin’, shoe-buyin’ ideology springs fully-formed from her immaculate, politically-neutral, sexyfun, patriarchy-free choice-lobes. Her “choices” are her very own brilliant ideas. Her behavior proceeds from her own empowerful personal desires. Her rights, including the right not to call herself a feminist because it’s too embarrasing, revolve chiefly around her right to resemble a male fuckfantasy to whatever degree she “chooses.” The “new” feminist weltanshauung seems a little light on political theory, a little insouciant about the global ramifications of femininity, but you know what? Us old radfem prunes should just respect that and quit being so judgmental already.

Hence the sub-headline: “Yes, you can wear lipstick and be a feminist. The F word is being rebranded.”

Rebranded, apparently, as a cosmetics marketing gambit (again). If it doesn’t involve lipstick, you can count these hipster chicks out. Because lard knows a political movement should have glowing skin if it wants to maintain its market-share in this day and age.

I wish they would rebrand funfeminism as “I Heart Patriarchyism” and be done with it.

Posted in Femininity, Private Business of the Secret Feminist Society, The Beauty Ultimatum and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today. Bite me, Chad.

Asinine NPR story of the week

Published by Twisty on August 23, 2008. 68 Comments

It was inevitable that, while listening to the radio during my semi-annual shower, I would hear an NPR analysis on the outfits worn by the presidential candidates’ wives. Ever on the cutting edge of popular culture, NPR hauled Jackie Kennedy’s ancient stylist out of cryogenic storage to canvass her edgy up-to-the-minute views on politics and women.

Jackie Kennedy, you’ll recall, was the last genuine hottie to inhabit the First Lady title. Among her other dainty attributes, Jackie possessed, according to the stylist, “good” arms.

Is it sexist to analyze firstladyal fashion? Not at all, says Jackie Kennedy’s stylist. Their husbands are men of action in blue-suit-red-tie uniforms, but first ladies are symbols.

Of what? Of male dominance. Of the nuclear family, of the dutiful wife, of the absolute necessity of womanly beauty practices, of the unquestionable heterosexuality of the president. First ladies must exude, in perfect balance, femininity, self-sacrifice, motherhood, a gentle, quiet respectability, and the notion that they are fairly intelligent, but not more intelligent than the president. They do this, not just by looking the other way when their husbands can’t keep it in their pants, but by selecting their fashion designers and plucking their eyebrows with utmost care. For presidential spouses, dressing symbolically is both a science and an art. It’s “walking the fashion tightrope,” says NPR.

What the NPR non-story neglected to mention is that, while first ladies get more news coverage, the fashion tightrope is not their exclusive purview. All women are symbols who are expected to prop up patriarchal myths by exuding perfect balances of impossible, degrading, bogus constructs.

Meanwhile, men are free to roam the countryside, without shaving their legs or contemplating the social implications of the plunge of their necklines, doing stuff.

Posted in Femininity, Mass Media, Politics and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

Aussie mining town seeks ugly women

Published by Twisty on August 20, 2008. 90 Comments

The seriously impaired mayor of Mount Isa is marketing a dude-heavy gender ratio disparity in his Australian outback town as an opportunity for “beauty disadvantaged women.” His idea is that female “ugly ducklings” can utilize the 5-to-1 male outnumberment to “transfer themselves with love and devotion” from hideous lesions on the face of eternity into things that somebody actually wants. Because those Mount Isa guys are desperate, man; they’ll fuck anything at this point, even ugly chicks. Which, maintains the mayor, the ugly chicks should take as a compliment.

Naturally, when some women staged a rally to protest the mayor’s Neanderthal misogynist hate speech, his response was to suggest that they were all “beauty disadvantaged” themselves and only wanted to take it out on him.

Also noteworthy, but certainly not surprising, is the outcry from Mount Isa’s male element. Sterling examples of their species all, they take great exception to the mayor’s suggestion that they would even consider settling for receptacles that did not sufficiently exhibit patriarchy-approved bodaciousness. The men of Mount Isa have their standards, dammit, and they are precisely in line with the Hollywood pornocracy’s femininity mandate. They resent the implication that they would be willing to sully their glittering, top-shelf dongs with sub-par meatsocks.

The Twisty jaw is agape.

[Thanks, Slashy]

Posted in Lobe-blowing, Men Hate You and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt wipes tear from eye

Published by Twisty on July 24, 2008. 60 Comments

Over this morning’s coffee I had the pleasure of reading about the arrest of a Nova Scotia groper. And by “pleasure” I mean “blechy feeling.”

Oh, this groper isn’t any different from all the other gropers I’ve read about during my long career of groper-blaming: young Doug Schrader flits about the countryside feeling up women and jerking off in public. Gross, yeah, but what really curled the Twisty lip was this comment by prosecutor Christine Driscoll, who is apparently crippled with ambivalence on the subject of what to do with the little perv:

“We really want to see what’s going on with him, what’s leading to this behaviour.”

I’ll help you out, lady. Here’s what’s leading to his behavior: Schrader merely acts on the patriarchal mandate to view all public women as receptacles for his dudeliness. He is the logical result of rape culture.

Taking his cue from the slew of public Spitzeresque figures who’ve been busted for antisocial pervitude and are surprised to discover that they don’t live in a personal rape-is-OK bubble, Schrader has “apologized,” claiming, despite some rather damning evidence to the contrary, that he’s “not that type of person.”

Apologies have nothing to do with actual remorse anymore. Nowadays, when criminals apologize, what they mean is, “Fine. I got caught. Please don’t put me in prison.”

It’s the systemic misogyny exemplified by douchebags like Schrader that makes me weep brokenly for the tragic earnestness of women such as these, who are desperate to convince themselves that “all women’s bodies are beautiful and richly fantastic no matter what shape, size, age, race, or background.”

The 100 Idaho women to whom I allude have organized an exhibit of women’s self-esteem “art.” The project consists of plaster casts of their torsos, which they have decorated and put on public display “in celebration of all who choose to express their own unique selves through art.”

The heart bleeds for these women. Their task — like that of all who struggle against monolithic oppression — is of Sisyphean proportions. They may yearn to demonstrate that, with their painted boob-casts, they are “the subject, rather than the object of art,” but in our porn-based society — where the behavior of a common groper mystifies authorities — they haven’t got a spinster aunt’s chance at a Suicide Girls convention.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Men Hate You, Sexploitation and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

Yeah, I watched TV again

Published by Twisty on July 5, 2008. 51 Comments

You know how spinster aunts love to lounge around on or about the TempurPedic eating Cool Whip and watching TV. Today I saw a series of programs on the E! channel. The E! channel, for those blamers who obstinately decline to monitor world misogyny via American television, consists, even more transparently than most other channels, entirely of antifeminist celebrity idolatry/hatred. Whose dress is ugly, who drove her celebrity man into the arms of another celebrity woman, that mouthy slut Amy Winehouse in rehab, etc.

This morning there was a show called “Soup” where a smirking motherfucker cuts famous people down to size by screening embarrassing video clips of them attacking their fans or being fat.

This was followed by a show starring a young hottt woman named Denise Richards. In this show, a camera crew follows Denise Richards around while she goes about the grueling business of being hottt. What? You’ve never heard of Denise Richards either? I looked her up, and here’s the summary: she was married to and divorced from a couple of other famous people, and appears to be made almost entirely of flowing hair. In today’s episode, Denise explains to her 13-year-old nephew why she did a spread in Playboy and starred in some patriarchy-affirming pornographical films. She did not do it for the money, apparently. No. She did it to prove that a hottt young woman who was married to and divorced from a couple of famous people can still be sexy, dammit. Any 13-year-old boy ought to be able to respect that.

Then there was a show where a camera crew follows Lindsay Lohan’s mother and teen sister around while they go about the grueling business of being related to a famous person with a drug problem. The sister is 14 and is recording a CD in Las Vegas. The skin crawls when the words “Vegas! All right!” squirt like Astroglide from the teenager’s mouth as she plops into a limo. Her entourage tells her what a genius she is and how she’s going to be the next big thing. She has a lot of eyeliner on.

I need not describe the stomach-churning details of the show entitled “The Girls Next Door,” where a camera crew follows around a few of Hugh Hefner’s interchangable 19-year-old blonde bikini “girlfriends” as they go about the grueling business of being prostituted in a brothel built to glorify a famous septuagenarian perv’s exceptional sexploitational success.

What all this programming has in common is the combined fascination/abhorrence that afflicts all modern media characterizations of women. Particularly of women who have bought into the patriarchal myth to the extent that it has rewarded them with the only thing that counts in this world: attention from men with money. It blows the Twisty mind that the subjects of these “reality” shows never seem to get that the whole point is to make them look like morons so their insatiable public can more devoutly despise them. Why this obvious truth universally fails to expose Hollywood as ground-zero for American misogyny I cannot say, but watching Hef protrude his grotesque liverlips at his teenage girls certainly seems to generate a lot of ad revenue from cosmetics corporations who have convinced a nation that female skin can and should “glow.”

Posted in Femininity, Mass Media, Men Hate You, Sexploitation and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

Manure

Published by Twisty on April 9, 2008. 44 Comments

eva.jpg
“Actress and humanitarian” Eva Longoria philosophizes, in return for money, on how great it is to be beautiful.

Seen the commercial celebrating the heartwarming accomplishments of that woman who hooks up disabled people with service dogs? It’s so nice, because service dogs are expensive, and although it may surprise you, not all disabled people are millionaires who can afford them. So the dog lady wins an award. A Woman of WorthTM award.

That’s right. Women of WorthTM. Most women aren’t worth anything; that’s what makes this award, just for women who are worth something, so distinguished. Guess who hands it out? Nope, not the California domestic violence crisis center of the same name. I allude to L’Oreal Paris, of course, the cosmetics multinational whose slogan is “It costs a little more, but I’m worth it.”

The slogan was written in 1973 to cash in on a “social revolution and a new spirit of feminism.” Clearly, the phenomenon of “pinkification” — by which I mean the corporate co-opting, commodification, and misogynist repurposing of women’s social and political issues — is nothing new. The slogan “Because I’m worth it,” L’Oreal Paris says with a straight face, has “become part of our social fabric” because it proceeds “strictly from a woman’s point of view.”

Which point of view, thanks in part to a femininity industry that preys on women’s fears of worthlessness, bypasses all “social revolution” and “spirit of feminism” to revert straight to equating self-esteem with lipstick-caked self-loathing.

“Worth” is an interesting word choice. Among those words which indicate meaningfulness or merit, “worth” stands out with some pretty strong connotations of pecuniary value. “Worth it” is an idiom describing the satisfactory outcome of a personal sacrifice, often monetary, given in trade for some improving circumstance. Like when you save up to buy a new toilet. Objects, like toilets and, apparently, women, have worth, but they rarely have merit.

Here is the de-patriarchalized translation of L’Oreal’s slogan: “My value is equivalent to the financial commitment I am willing to make to the performance of submissive femininity behaviors which benefit me materially only insofar as they enhance my ability to appease my oppressor.”

Or, “I recognize that it’s better to be high-priced than cheap.”

When L’Oreal, a corporate entity which exists solely to profit from women’s oppression, isn’t doing everything in its power to leverage women’s self-hatred into a preoccupation with drugstore wrinkle cream, it’s “celebrating” women who are “worth it” with, what else, philanthropy.

L’Oreal’s philanthropy involves getting do-gooders — the Women of Worth TM — to perform in print and TV ads in exchange for national exposure and $5000 charitable contributions. To further cleanse its blackened soul, L’Oreal donates another 5 grand each to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

I don’t know anything about the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, but if their website is any indication, they appear to subscribe to a Crunch For the Cure/Komen style of product placement/nebulous “awareness”/plucky volunterrorism that really rankles the Twisty lobes. How transparent is it when corporations glom onto chick-cancer? They can look pro-woman without having to look pro-feminist.

Anyway. You might be wondering what it takes to have “worth” in this world. According to L’Oreal a Woman of Worth TM is “a beautiful person” whose “devotion” to stuff like “children’s initiatives” is “endless.” She sounds just like one of those plucky Komen cancer survivors.

L’Oreal, by the way, tests their unnecessary beauty products on animals. They don’t come right out and admit that animal testing is bad, but they do explain, somewhat defensively, that they are pretty much forced to do it, because beauty is that important, and, remember, you’re worth it. In other words, the magnanimous beauty industrial complex is willing to endure the suffering of untold thousands of sentient beings on your worthy behalf in order to protect its own even worthier bottom line. But buy that lipstick with a clean conscience: L’Oreal is “contributing significantly” to a European cosmetics “directive” that will end animal testing “for the complex tests” by 2013. Meanwhile, they’re working on “Refining” the torture so that it doesn’t cause the animals to spontaneously combust in clots of cancerous bloody gore. As often.

By the way, when I said that the word “worth” means “pecuniary value” I wasn’t being entirely forthcoming. In 17th century usage it meant “manure.”

Note: I got all the L’Oreal info from their own website.

Posted in Femininity, The Beauty Ultimatum and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Pose of the week

Published by Twisty on June 8, 2007. 190 Comments

A mainstream music magazine has put a naked chick on the cover. This stunningly unremarkable event in the pornulational continuum induced not the slightest blip on my obstreperometer. Magazines put naked chicks on their covers roughly 82,697 times a day; it’s all part of the general background noise created in pop culture by the constant crushing of women’s dignity in the giant trash compactor of oppression.

But wait! The naked chick on the mainstream music magazine cover is Beth Ditto, who is fat! Suddenly everyone’s talking about this cover (and by ‘everyone’ I mean here and at Big Fat Blog). It’s so transgressive to pornulate a fat chick instead of a skinny one! It’s so empowering for fat women to be able to look up to a pornulated role model! It’s an act of feminist rebellion; way to go, Beth, for daring to show Dude Nation that fat women exist!

Oy gevalt.

1. Porn isn’t transgressive; it’s de rigueur. No one in Western culture has drawn a porn-free breath in decades. This means it’s the norm.

2. Pictures of naked women empower nobody but the men who pimp’em out and the voyeurs who consume’em. A woman may elect to reap the benefits of her capitulation to her oppressor, and she can even call it “empowerment” when she does it, but that doesn’t mean she’s not full of shit, and it certainly doesn’t mean that it’s doing any other women the least bit of good.

3. Dude Nation is already well aware that fat women exist. And I guaran-fucking-tee that they’ll continue to hate fat women just as much as they hate skinny ones, no matter which pop star shows up weighing how much on what magazine cover.

Girls, the dominant pornsick culture is crapping on you. Get hip to this: the ability to titillate men is not a high moral purpose. Being sexually manipulative is not a high moral purpose. Posing naked on the cover of NME isn’t empowering, its emposeuring.

[Thanks, Frumious B]

Posted in Femininity, Mass Media, Sexploitation and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

A geek’s story

Published by Twisty on March 13, 2007. 214 Comments

FindX.jpg

According to blamer Metamanda, somebody commenting on a recent thread, perhaps swept up in the frenzy of the moment, typed this:

“Is there anything about being a geek that makes a person more attractive?”

There were apparently other unfortunate statements, such as “no social skills” and “can’t get dates.”

“Those are low blows,” responds self-identified geek Metamanda, “of exactly the same sort that reactionary men use against feminists.” [Read her entire post here.]

[Because the spinster aunt's eyesight ain't what it used to be, I am unable to locate the comment in which is nestled the anti-geek remarks quoted by Metamanda, but I will proceed on the assumption that it exists.]

This is not really a personal blog, but in the interest of subsequently enbiggening a broader point, I might as well reveal unto you a little something about myself: I am a geek/nerd/spazz. Or, more accurately, I can be said to possess traits in common with other persons so categorized by the cold, cruel world.

For one thing, I am, when observed through the encrapulated lens of patriarchy, funny-looking; I walk with a limp, and sport a pair of 8-inch scars where my tits used to be. I have stringy, greasy hair, zits, glasses, and a Frinkian overbite. I am said to be “bird-like,” probably because of my emaciated physique and prominent honker.

For another thing, I am uncool. I own a visor and a fanny pack. Just the other day I said “nee” several times. I then translated it into Latin and said it again. I possess the DVD boxed set of Star Trek TOS (actually, the one I have is more ‘encapsulated in plastic space-pods’ than ‘boxed’). I look at bugs through microscopes. I have a fascination for a species of amphibian called cricket frogs. I watch those corny “British Comedies” on PBS every Saturday night (I fall asleep before “Monty Python” comes on, but that’s OK; I’ve got that boxed set, too). I would read science fiction all the time if it weren’t, alas, so incompetently written. While still a child, a freak accident with a subset of negative integers left me almost entirely differentiated by derivatives, and thereafter I lost all mathematical ability. I was in denial at first, but if those math teachers told me (n) times, they told me {(n) + 1} times: I was doomed to infinite regress.

The other nerds cast me out. I was a geek without a gang.

Thus, my own “social skills” developed such that I have been variously diagnosed as afflicted with Tourette’s, with extreme eccentricity, with some sort of as-yet-undiscovered high-functioning autism, with charismatic narcissism, and/or with a low-ish high IQ. I have not matured emotionally or intellectually beyond the age of 17 (some experts disagree, and put the figure closer to 14). On an average of twice a week, fair weather or foul, I am compelled to run across the lawn waving my arms as though I intend to take flight, or to take a stroll on tiptoe with my ass sticking way out. I am physically awkward and have been known to tip over without cause, straining the plausibility of Newton’s Third Law. Sometimes I involuntarily utter strings of meaningless syllables ending in “P”: bup bup bup bup pip pip pip pip. I stutter on telephones. Quite often I am incapable of communicating to people behind counters at coffee bars or pharmacies in anything but preverbal grunts or twitters. Sometimes, when I hear myself make a particularly funny noise, I involuntarily collapse into a state of violent merriment or lunacy, perhaps best described as hysterics, that can span half an hour. If this happens while I am driving, look out, Austin!

Thus am I considered odd by most and rude by many. Often I am taken for an imbecile.

Unlike most of the Brotherhood of Man, however, I find many of my aforementioned deviations from the norm to be pretty agreeable, or at least comical. Like, until you’ve tried it, you have no idea how liberating it is to do the butt-walk in the $700 Extra Virgin Olive Oil aisle at Whole Foods. And that episodic convulsive laughter, from which accrues all the benefits of the conventional orgasm without all the inconvenient effluents, stickiness, appliances, legal restrictions and political issues, is fucking awesome.

It is an asset, not to mention a joy and a relief, to be unencumbered by social skills. What are they, after all, but a set of arbitrarily-conceived customs meant to sort people into classes, the more conveniently to be dominated by those whose mastery of the arbitrary customs is superior? I’m sure I need not point out to you, O my fellow blamers, that the stability of patriarchy as a system of social control relies on the mass assimilation of these customs. Customs are the currency of culture; the more you absorb, the greater your rewards. But closer examination reveals them to be nothing but taboos and commandments designed to restrict human conduct to a finite set of ritualized mannerisms constrained by foul ideals of deference, appeasement, and conformity.

“Attractiveness” is one of those mannerisms. You know what? Fuck attractiveness and the establishmentarian horse it rode in on.

So, back to the question posed by Person X, “is there anything about being a geek that makes a person more attractive?”

I am happy to say, no there isn’t, and isn’t that nice.

By the way, using my highly advanced scientific method, I have determined that 73.4% of the readers of this blog are geek/nerd/spazzes. The sci-fi thread of last week has broken all attendance records.

Posted in Easy Persiflage and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.