petty Internet irritant of the day

[rm]

http://www.committment.com/creativewomen.html

Well, this is nauseating. Tips for women on expressing their creativity. Nauseatingly trivial ones like buying a doll to dress up, encouraging you to send cards to your friends or experimenting with different colored frosting on the same cake! Oh the horrors! The risk! The feminine daring!

Have a party themed around the era you should have lived in -- my ass! Wear whatever you want. Pick up historic dance. Or a sword. Fuck you.

I'm not even addressing that thing about salad.

via the equally-appalled magicwoman.

Comments

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

i know it sounds trivial and appalling, but those non-threatening exercises can be the first time some woman gets to experience her creative self since her mother told her to colour in the lines and daddy told her not to sing so loud at church. it's easy, from our perspective, to find that message puerile and demeaning. that's because we don't need them. i've lived my life in the presence of women for whom putting a tablecloth in THEIR favourite colour on the table (as opposed to the husband's or mother's and so on) is an act of liberation. i don't think we should kick messages like that. what we should be doing is making sure we're living an even stronger message in the presence of our peers, so that they have a good act to follow out of the box. i think some compassion for those women for whom those things are daring, even frightening, is in order. subversion and liberation start in tiny places.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Okay. Processing that. I don't really have any experience of any bit of the world that's like that.


But the thing about the peanutbutter and jeally salad is still gross.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

i know it is weird, but seriously? some people are at that stage. still. maybe not women your age or mine (though i know a few) but women my mother's age and so on.

my partner works with women (in middle management at a large corporation, where the CEO is a mother of three) who were talking at lunch last month about how they went hungry or without meat as a matter of course, as the daughters in their families, talking about it as though it were pretty much the way of it back then and now nice it is you don't see it so much now. he came home and looked at me and said, "all that feminism stuff you kept telling me about? i get it now." his co-workers have lived in a world where the very basics of life were denied them because of their sex, in favour of the opposite sex. my mother lived in that world. one of my good friends lived in that world.

the wrong colour napkins? the wrong colour icing? using your imagination to alter the meat and potatoes expected by your spouse on time every night? when you've gone hungry, food taken off your plate by your own mother, just for being female, every other liberty you take is huge.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

i have to say, i do find the whole thing appalling. but i find it appalling because i know there are women for whom it is a necessity and for whom that will be the sum and total of their personal expression in this lifetime. that and their perfume. i don't see it as appalling in the "this is all women should want and all women can do" way, because i know that's just bunk and i have hope that a woman who puts mini jubejubes in the ambrosia is one bumpersticker or 'daring' party away from getting liberated.

[telesilla.livejournal.com]

but i find it appalling because i know there are women for whom it is a necessity and for whom that will be the sum and total of their personal expression in this lifetime. that and their perfume.

That was my thought about the whole thing. It had a very "baby steps" feel to it that made me sad to think that there are grown women out there who need that kind of thing. It also made me incredibly grateful that, as a 42 housewife, I'm not one of those women and that neither of my parents nor any of my various partners have ever expected me to be one.

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

I was thinking something similar.

What the suggestions are asking most of all is to take some time for yourself and figure out what you want to do instead of catering to husband/children/extended family and their expectations of what you should be doing. Most people are used to always seeing and always wanting more of the same so you have to start from next to nothing.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

I haven't even read it yet, but wtf is up with the misspelled URL? Is that supposed to be creative too?

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm not even addressing that thing about salad.

That's where I snapped and just said a very loud, rather vulgar word in the middle of my office.

Gods, what a saddening and scary article that is...

[fuyukodachi.livejournal.com]

One of the shows we do has a segment where they go! into the streets! (which means Times Square, because, somehow, Times fucking Square is representative of New York City in any way other than tv) and get real people! (tourists) to get! creative!

The last one I did, they handed people a clipboard with a headshot of the segment host and some pieces like colorforms of stupid clothes and stupid hats and such to creativelY! decorate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! her headshot.

Oh, my god.

"OoooOOOoooooooo yOU ARE SO CREATIVEE!!! XDDDDD"

I barely survived.

PB&J salad idea made me lose my appetite, and I was very hungry.

[redwitch.livejournal.com]

Oh, good lord. Lovely. I knew I had an uneasy pull toward that build-a-bear store. Now I know why.

geez.

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Oh, good lord. Lovely. I knew I had an uneasy pull toward that build-a-bear store. Now I know why.

geez. <head..desk..head..desk>

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I read some of their other stuff and they have a 'ways chronic illness helps us grow' list that I thought was interesting. That 'creative' list is pretty sad but yeah, some people ARE there. I liked the 'photocopy passages from books you like and put them where you can see them' suggestion as something someone might not think of right off.

The food ones were a little icky-sounding.

[sethg]

Me (reading off the http://www.committment.com/ headline): "Committment -- the #1 women's magazine on the Internet."

My wife: "Men fear it..."

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

Women who need help expressing their creativity are boring wimps. Men who are intimidated by creative, expressive women are boring wimps. *impish grin*

I actually had a woman tell me that a dysfunctional sit-com described her life perfectly. I was so horrified by the notion that I was speechless.