Faded Literature

I recently watched a video where a reported mother and daughter team started with a full shelf of books and systematically removed all the books with 1. male protagonists 2.no female characters 3.  female characters with no speaking parts  4. books where the female character is rescued. There were only a few books left which contained a female protagonist with goals and aspirations. The reported solution was to make a book about famous women in history.

I suppose I haven't thought much about how I feel about women in literature. However, I find myself agreeing with whomever said, "most female protagonists are either overconfident windbags or unrealistically shy lessons-in-a-box. I like characters that are believable." Trying to come up with a likable, believable female protagonist in a book is rather difficult for me, despite having read many books. 

I'll give you a hint of what I'm looking for. 

Adjectives that are abhorrent when describing female characters in books:

• sexy
• shy
• cute
• flat-chested
• confident
• embarrassed
• flushed
• breathless
• bubbly
• clutz

I find it unnecessary to describe the overall physical appearance of a female character. I don't much care if she is physically appealing or has insecurities about her appearance. I am also sick of female characters that say something stupid and immediately become ill-tempered when called out on it. The word "confident" seems sort of out of place on that list, but I included it because if the author has to explicitly say "she was confident" rather than describing the character doing something in a confident manner, it's both bad writing and trying too hard. 

Phrases that need to stop showing up in relation to female characters:

• She stopped to think (an action that everyone could benefit from doing more often, but is often used to show how "slow" the woman is, rather than able to take quick, decisive action).
• She checked her appearance in the mirror (sure, we all do this, but not always to make sure we look as attractive as possible. Sometimes we just like to be sure there isn't spinach in our teeth).
• She hated how that part of her looked (so? Just once, I'd like to read about a female protagonist who is quietly comfortable with how she looks, not admiring or hating certain aspects of her body throughout the story)
• She was distracted by how hot he was (This is very much a romance novel thing, but occurs in other more interesting books as well. I'd like to see a female character who doesn't have to remind herself to be committed to her goals, regardless of the physical appearance of the other human beings around her).

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'd like there to be more characters in books that are like the strong, real women that I know from my daily life: thoughtful, decisive, willing to apologize, comfortable, adventurous, capable, intuitive, inventive, skilled, funny, noble, kind. Realistically all women have flaws, but can we avoid writing characters that are sulky or brash, addicted to romance, obnoxiously judgmental, militant feminists, stupid or clumsy. Above all, I think we should abolish the caricature of the female protagonist in romance novels.

As I consider all the dumb women in books, I can't help but wonder how they came to be. There are a lot of amazing female authors who probably haven't made a goal of creating the most irrational, unrealistic characters imaginable. Probably. Where does this obnoxious character come from? 

Perhaps it's simply difficult to portray a well-rounded woman within a book consumed with many other characters, a plot, and a fantasy world. Except the protagonist should be getting a lot of attention from the author's pen, right? Perhaps the author is trying to prove a point with all these idiotic characters. If so, point taken, can we move on please? Perhaps no one knows how to create a likable strong female character. If that is the case, what business have we in continuing to write books like this?  

This isn't to say that I've never come across female protagonists that I like. It's a struggle to think of them through that muddle of bad ones I was describing above, but they do exist, and I hope to find more of them. 

The Most Probably Way to Get a Job

Step one (1)

Have skills. If you do not have skills, you'll need to go and get some. This tends to be both time-consuming and expensive, and there is a chance you'll starve or go homeless long before the skills are actually marketable.

Step two (2)

Have experience. "Experience" is a noun (n.) that will appear on a lot of job listings. It is code for "something you do not have and cannot gain without first having it." The best way to obtain the experience that you do not have is to become an intern, which is code for "someone who has a lot of experience, but no money."

Step three (3)

Use your skills. You'll note that this is impossible because you are not currently working in a field wherein your skills are useful. However, if you do not use your skills, you basically don't have them, which means you should go back to step one.

Step four (4)

Market yourself. The most common way of selling off hours of your life is to send out resumes and job applications. If you have no skill at this, no one will ever notice you and you'll be starving and homeless for such a long time that no one will see you for an interview because you'll look scary. There are other ways of marketing your skills, but unless one of your skills is marketing, you'll probably fail at this.

Step five (5)

Make yourself marketable. Some people go about adding new skills or brushing up their appearance, but the most common way of making yourself marketable is lying a little bit so that you actually fit into the very narrow job description that will provide you with enough income to pay off all the debt you acquired while you were obtaining skills.

Step six (6)

Apply to jobs that interest you and that you know you could be successful at.

There are about 2 of these in the entire world, and someone else (who probably hates the job and isn't good at it) is already working there. (see step 7)

Step seven (7)

Lower your standards. It may be impossible for you to pay off your debt and live a comfy life working part-time at minimum wage, but 1/16th of an income is more than 0% of an income. Besides, without experience, you can only ever make 3/4 of an income anyway.


*Disclaimer: everything after step 7 is hypothetical and not related to obtaining a job except to give you some home after you complete step 7

Step eight A (8a)

Discover that you actually like working at an entry-level unskilled job, so you do really well and you get a raise because you tend to be good at what you enjoy, and managers sometimes reward you for that. You may eventually work your way into having most of an income in this fashion. Your dreams will be dead, but dreams don't pay the bills.

Step eight B (8b)

Slowly work your way up the corporate ladder by following a succession of jobs which you only work at for a year or two at most. This looks awkward on your resume, but you justify it by explaining that you're searching for a job that really suits your skills. You also now have a wide variety of experience (wide = not deep). By following this method, you may achieve your dream job by the time you're ready to retire. But since you have no 401K because you've never worked at a job for long enough to receive benefits, you can't retire. Enjoy your golden years in the workforce, because let's face it, if you leave your current job, no one will hire you: you're too old.

Step 8 C (8c)

Work at a job (or several jobs) you hate while secretly doing freelance work in the industry you actually wanted to work in all along, but which you'll never have solid references for, and will never make enough of an income to justify the time it takes away from your "real job." But at least you have something to look forward to when you get home from the daily grind.

When the Happy Light Breaks

Sorry, friends. I'm back on the topic of depression and loneliness.

This is  probably because I'm sitting on home on a Friday morning in my pajamas eating chocolate and bemoaning another rejection letter. I might have even cried a bit yesterday. For like the duration of "a River Flows in You." But not like a ton.

Crying is okay though. It means that I'm not too depressed to care about anything. It means I can still hold onto that label of "moderate" depression, rather than graduating to "severe." My Boy told me that it's a good thing I don't have a job because he'd make me stay home and take a sick day ("mental health is health too!"). I'm pretty sure if I had a job, I wouldn't be so depressed though.

It's funny how depression works like that. Sometimes I don't know why I'm depressed. That can get pretty intense because I have no way of getting better. It feels more like a mental illness then because it seems irrational and something that I have no control over. It's pretty normal comparatively to feel depressed because I feel lonely or hopelessly jobless. It almost annoys me when people send me findings about hormonal shifts or weather patterns causing depression, because that implies that there's something I could do about it, and therefore it's not as serious.

You ever think about how weird it is how we treat people differently when we think they're the reason they're in a bad place? Like, if someone gets shot in the leg by a drive by shooter, we hold benefits and bring over casseroles, but if someone shoots his own leg, we just snicker and vow to keep our guns locked up when he's around. The injury still hurts the same amount and costs as much to fix, but it's hard to have compassion on someone who is careless or unwise. We value cleverness and attentiveness at the expense of compassion for a mistake.

It's like I deserve to have suicidal thoughts because I was stupid enough to move across the country without securing employment first. It's like I deserve to be lonely because I didn't invest in a happy light. And if I suffer dramatic mood shifts around certain times of the month, well, I wasn't smart enough to deposit hundred's of dollars worth of synthetic hormones into my body. I don't want to go to a doctor who gives me instructions on how to get better because then it's my fault if it doesn't work; because I'm not good enough and didn't try hard enough.

There's this nice little hugbox philosophy that nothing is my fault and everyone else should bend over backwards so I'm never uncomfortable. I don't want to sound like I'm pandering to that. I think I should put in effort to improve my mental health when I can. Just recognize that sometimes I can't. Please love me despite this.

These days I see homeless people sleeping in subway cars or along quiet alleyways. I still don't know how to take this. I wonder if they're there because of something they did or because of external factors they had no control over. I wonder if I were in a position to help them, how long it would take for them to fall back onto hard times. I wonder if they are capable of making better choices or if the world is just turned against them. I suppose the reason they're homeless is no more important than the reason I'm depressed though. We don't give up on fixing something just because it's liable to get broken again; we don't stop showering just because we know we'll get dirty again. If we did give up, we'd lose something valuable in the process.

A person's value is not in the choices they make.