Beast and the Beauty
February 10th, 2007 ~ Movies I liked or didn't, Culture gone mad
Channel-flipping yesterday, I happened across the movie “Hitch.” Though it seemed like a pleasant-enough bit of fluff and probably a good vehicle for Will Smith, I found I had to change the channel again after a short time, because the plot that was unfolding touched on something that’s becoming a bit of a pet peeve — ordinary or sub-ordinary men getting extraordinary women. That may seem like a stupid thing to get annoyed with, but it’s the fact that it’s becoming a bit of a trend both in and out of the movies that makes a sore spot.
In the movie, dumpy, inept Albert the accountant gets a crush on rich, famous, beautiful Allegra Cole and secures the services of “date doctor” Alex ‘Hitch’ Hitchens to win her. I didn’t stick around to the end of the movie, but judging from what I did see, Albert will end up with Allegra. And why not, right? It’s a good romantic comedy and that’s what happens in them. It’s simple escapism. But can you imagine a movie where a dumpy, inept woman goes after a stunningly handsome guy, and actually gets him? (No, “Muriel’s Wedding” doesn’t count. She didn’t get to keep that guy.)
And it’s not that I think it’s sexist or that Hollywood is creating a false impression. As near as I can figure out, it’s not a false impression at all — it’s just the way it is now. Men who used to have to wine and dine now only have to show up and not pick their teeth too much, and women I know who are lovely, interesting, funny, marriageable people have no prospects.
Why is that? We don’t have less men around than we used to. Or do we? I’m starting to suspect that the problem is that while we have the same amount of males, we have a much higher proportion of boys and a lot fewer men.
That sounds kind of tacky, so I better give some examples to show why I say that:
- Some years ago, a fun, bright Orthodox woman I know went on an arranged date to meet an Orthodox man with similar interests. They were about the same age and had a lot in common, so mutual friends had thought they might hit it off. The date didn’t turn into a love connection — oh well, that’s the way it goes. But I heard through the grapevine that when the man in question had been asked what he was looking for in a woman, he said, “I want a gorgeous redhead to pursue me.” Now, not to get personal, but this guy was well out of proportion on the old height/weight ratio, and not in a good way. He had a violently ruddy face, no neck to speak of and a haircut that looked like it was done with a pocketknife. Is it reasonable for such an individual to be waiting to be judo-flipped by Rita Hayworth? No, it’s the fantasy of an immature person. I thought the guy was an anomaly, and he might have been when that happened. But I don’t think he is now. And, maddeningly enough, he might have gone with several Rita Hayworths by now and dumped them all.
- A lady I knew showed up at a gathering with a new boyfriend. I was looking forward to meeting him — since the woman was cute, smart, fun and great company, I knew he had to be pretty cool. Nope. He was not cool. He was a complete jerk. I mean like the kind of guy who argues with children, steals extra food, tries to cheat at Trivial Pursuit. He was actually so obnoxious that the host and hostess called afterwards to apologize. I was wondering how she would break it off. Next thing I heard they were engaged.
- A friend of ours is a young non-Orthodox woman who is so clever it’s hard to keep up with her and so darn cute you’d think the Keebler elves had concocted her. Recently single again after a longtime boyfriend decided he couldn’t commit, she went on couple dates with a guy that is quite a bit older and should by all rights have been doing whatever it took to make sure she was swept off her feet. Instead, when he came over to her house on the second date, he absentmindedly engaged in personal grooming along the lines of cleaning his ears with a ballpoint pen and then looking at it. (I won’t say what he actually did because it’s grosser than that, if you can believe it.) And this was not just a moment of forgetfulness — it was protracted, self-absorbed and the kind of behavior that clearly says “I’m not trying to impress you, because that takes work.”
I’m sorry, but these sorts of guys should not have anywhere to go on a Saturday night. They should be the ones sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and reading self-help books. They should be going on diets and fitness programs, spending money on better clothes and making efforts to make themselves more attractive. If they have boyish notions of nabbing a super-model, they should be so soundly disappointed that it will begin to occur to them that a normal, non-super woman can be warm, gentle, loving and wonderful to get to know.
So while I should think it’s great that Albert the accountant will end up with the drop-dead gorgeous movie star, I’m wondering if there isn’t an Alberta working in his office wondering if he’ll ever notice she’s alive.
Why would this be happening more now? Well, part of it is downhill slide of morals that is the sad legacy of the “sexual revolution.” You only have to hear the expression “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” to know where the sensibilities of the “natural man” are, and it stands to reason that if more and more women are promiscuous, cattle futures grow dismal.
That part of it is a decades-old story, unfortunately. But there’s a new wrinkle that is affecting the Gen-X and -Y crowd more. In one of his recorded lectures (sorry, I don’t remember which one), John Mark Reynolds says that young men aren’t dating young women anymore because they’re busy dating themselves. Why bother with dinner, conversation and all the trouble of either “wooing” or just plain seducing when you can make a phone call, send a text message, write some e-mail or just plain look through a dizzying array of pornography in the privacy of your own room? Sure, these aren’t women you know. Sometimes they’re more the work of airbrush and Photoshop artists than anything else. But there’s no danger of rejection, no need to be charming, personable or subtle (or even civilized) and no troublesome human being whose needs and wants you might have to consider. And what real woman could compete with the image of Woman that comes out of that kind of habit or addiction? I can imagine a lot of young women who are struggling to be more and more sexy for their guy and ask less and less in return, just in order to try to keep his attention.
I don’t mean to generalize too much. I know there are a lot of really good, decent men out there who wouldn’t want anything to do with the world’s cheap imitations of companionship. And I’m guessing there are quite a few good Orthodox men out there as well. Hey, if there are, I know some nice Orthodox girls I could set you up with.
But behave yourselves, because if I find out you were waiting for a movie star to scoop you up, I may come after you with a farm implement.
I just get a little testy, that’s all.
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February 11th, 2007 at 12:08 am
Ah Grace… From a man’s POV (well, not a Man’s, but a Boy’s), it used to be “You don’t keep running after you caught the bus”, which means you wine and dine until you get the girl. Now it is why run if the bus comes to you? Desperate or women with low expectations or willingness to settle for chaff are Female’s own worst enemy. Boys will do as little as possible to get laid if they know they can get it with no effort. Yes, I agree, there are damn few Men around any more, but I think there are few Women left too. I wouldn’t want to be either a single man or a woman in this day and age. I think the media and culture has systematically scorned and dismantled respect, integrity, and gentility between the sexes. I don’t know what it will take to turn the boat around, but it is on the wrong course.
February 11th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Man’s POV welcome! (Greg wasn’t ticked off by the entry, so I know I wasn’t being too mean.)
I absolutely agree that there are a lot of girls and less women. And so it’s a chicken and egg thing, and it doesn’t really matter which came first. As you say, it’s more important to know how to stop it. And I haven’t a clue about that.
February 11th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Dare I interject that there is also no sense of “singleness”? Even in the Church. Our Bishop wasa asked by a young at our parish (inquirer) if the Church expected young women to get married. Bsp. THOMAS essentially said that in the Church the options are marriage or monasticism, thats it. He went on to say that we all need a cross to bear, and if a single person isn’t sure which one is theirs then they need to follow the Virgin’s example and tie themselves to the Church until it’s made clear.
The correlating point I’m drawing is the Cross to be born and the lack of it among our culture’s singles. It’s not even on the radar. I’m probably not doing a good job of it, though… Anyway, perhaps I’ll inflame someone with that comment and you’ll get a nice discussion going. :)
BTW, that young, pessimistic, feminist girl shortly became a catechumen. I don’t think she was accustomed to someone speaking so directly and assuredly to her.
February 12th, 2007 at 10:53 am
The only problem that I have with the bishop’s comments is that it doesn’t provide for the situation where a woman wants to get married but can’t find a guy. (and of course it happens to men too, but not as much, it seems). In that case, they are necessarily single, but not volitionally, and I’m not sure there would be monasteries enough to hold them all. But saying that you’re either married or celibate is totally on-target, and it’s light-years away from the world’s conception of “singleness.”
On the whole, I try to take it easy about telling unattached men and women to be joyful about the cross that they have to bear, since it’s not mine. But I know it’s important for all of us to strive to do the right thing in our situation.
February 12th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
First of all, I love “Muriel’s Wedding” because in the end she gained self-confidence. This plays to my long-standing theory: you have to love yourself before you can let someone love you. Everyone has insecurities, of course, but I am referring to the “in the end, I’m okay” kind of self-love. And the guy she couldn’t keep - totally hot.
Second, as one of the nice Orthodox girls you could (and have) set up, I find the cattle call highly amusing! Greg threatened, but I didn’t think you would actually do it. Have you been speaking to my mother?
February 12th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Interesting stuff. I know both men and women who are single, nice people, want to be married but can’t find someone. If “faithful Orthodox and nice” was the only criteria I think we could hook them all up if people accepted arranged marriages, but unfortunately it just doesn’t seem to be so easy. Celibacy is in some ways I think is self imposed, albeit perhaps not conciously, because singles have bought off on our culture’s media indoctrination of romance, love and passion. Just a stable, faithful, nice person won’t do, especially if they are packing a few pounds or a bad haircut. I agree with Grace, the “monasticism or marriage” paradigm doesn’t work for those who desire marriage but have some issues that keep them from fulifilling the desire.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:34 am
In the Bishop’s defense - and I probably shouldn’t argue for him, esp. since he was first generalizing and then speaking specifically to the girl who asked- I think his ‘tie yourself to the Church’ is a working answer for the single who can’t find someone selfless enough to marry them. Which is a little harsh, but it leads me to another point.
I think perhaps we’re a little too self reliant as a culture, not just American culture but the ‘convert culture’ and ethnic culture colliding in the naves of this country every week. In addition to having the putrid and vaccuous idealized view of romance and ‘love’ handed us by the media, we often appear to think that we really don’t *need* anyone else, especially in the area of salvation. Just last night my five year old daughter asked me if people who love each other get married. I said, “yes, many times people who love each get married; but that’s not *why* you get married. You get married because you’ve realized that you cannot be saved without that person.” (I know that’s a large concept for a little girl, but when she hears it regularly for 20 years with explanation, it will sink in at some point!) Of course I unpacked that a bit with her.
At any rate, my point is that we’re often either so *unconcerned* with our salvation that we can’t see past ourselves to the person in front of us who is capable of effectuating that salvation with us, or we’re *so* concerned with *our* salvation that we can’t see past ourselves to the person in front of us who is capable of effectuating our salvation with us. IOW, we either aren’t loving ourselves appropriately, or we’re not loving our neighbor appropriately, or both, as I think they are symbiotic (?). In essence, we need to change the way we view love. Love is a cross. A cross is suffering. Suffering love is exactly how the Father approaches us, and we should learn to approach each other that way.
At any rate, I think we’re going to have to purposely create parishes where we’re in each other’s business enough to know that Jan and Bob really need each other to be saved. The priest knows, the parents know, the community knows, etc. And that’s not going to happen, I don’t think, until we throw off these damnable, isolated, comfortable lives our culture shoves down our throats. Nobody achieves holiness through a comfortable life, said one of the desert fathers (in the M section… I just read it the other night). Perhaps we’ll have to act like we actually need each other before we begin to realize that we need each other.
I’m rambling, so perhaps I should sum up: Singleness and Marriage are better handled by the community as community issues, not by the individual as an individual issue. Why? Because in the Church, the individual is always referenced to the community. How unAmerican! ;) If the local parish doesn’t have the kind of community to support such a thing, then we need to create it, or recreated it as the case may be. The monastics do already (how well they do it may be another story). And the monastics are keenly aware of something I think we ‘in the world’ often forget or ignore: they absolutely NEED each other to be saved. They understand that because their reference point is the community, not the mirror. In such a community the single can find wholeness while waiting. How do we know? Because the monastics have been proving it’s possible since Apostolic times. The local parish needs that ethos, methinks.
Rant over! Sorry G, didn’t mean to hijack.
February 13th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I know so many Orthodox women looking for a nice Orthodox boy.
I also want to see Hitch but Hubby so far hasn’t put it in the queue.
February 13th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Jim,
Naah, hijack as needed. It’s not my bandwidth. :-)
I was pretty sure that Bp. Thomas wasn’t saying it exactly the way I read it — I’ve seen him at a seminar and he’s a pretty cool guy. I just wanted to make sure it was clear in case anybody else read it the same way.
Boy, I love the idea of people understanding when they get married that true love is always “suffering love.” Or — if that sounds too harsh — “sacrificial love.” I did hear something about that in our priest’s pre-marital counseling, but I was too much in La-la Land to pay attention. And coming up on 17 years together, I can say that things have worked out the way they’re supposed to. But I might have saved myself some hand-wringing at the beginning if I hadn’t been quite so surprised to find out that the dynamic at any given time tended to involve one or the other of us sacrificing what we wanted for the other … or else sacrificing for the union of both of us, the “Us” that was more than just him and me.
As for the communities where we have that kind of closeness, I’m not as sure about that. When I got into Orthodoxy, I was with a very tight band of “journeymen” and “journeywomen” who were on a sort of pilgrimage. It was a very unique situation, and that was probably the most focused, most committed bunch I’ve ever been with, and I’m not sure they could have managed to be so much a part of each other’s lives without some problems. But maybe I’m not understanding how you mean it?
February 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Mimi:
Yep, rent it (or look on the cable channels, if you have cable. It seems to be making the rounds right now). I wanted to make sure that people didn’t take my “pet peeve” issue with it as some general put-down. It looks cute.
February 13th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Hi Jim and Grace,
I know a community that does practice “matchmaking” along the lines Jim is talking about. I don’t know how successful they are yet, but the pastor discourages casual dating and encourages people to look to their elders for wisdom about another person and the possibility of marriage. However, Grace’s point is well taken… we can all TALK about sacrificial love and even truly believe the principle, but when it comes down to it, some people can’t/don’t/won’t sacrifice. I’m the poster boy for that…totally committed Christian and divorced.
Not that we give up the ideal due to failure, but it is doubly difficult as Jim notes when the entire culture runs counter to what should be our foundation for marriage.
February 14th, 2007 at 8:24 am
About the community/marriage thing, I wasn’t advocating that the community make the decision for a person, rather that the community would be the kind of community that already knew Jack and Jill belonged together. IOW, when Jill decided that she couldn’t be saved without Jack, nobody was surprised. On the contrary, they were more like, ‘oh honey, you’re *just now* seeing that?!’ :)
Frankly (looney alert!) I’m all for arranged marriages in the Church, but I don’t think that will fly just yet in American Orthodoxy.
February 14th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Arranged marriages: I’ve heard some people who felt the same, but I’ve also seen a group that came close to that sort of thing and it went badly. They had been a super-tight community and when it was high-time to get married, it was just assumed that they’d all marry each other. Fast forward 20 years to when I saw them — some good marriages, some just nonchalant (which seems like a bad marriage to me), and some that were a bit of a disaster. And when a couple of them ended in divorce, the ENTIRE community got involved just as they had with the marriages, and so it was worse than if they’d have all just minded their own business.
Not that I think they’re always a bad idea, but I think it takes a whole community with an extraordinary amount of self-discipline and focus. Ironically enough, I think it’s possible to *romanticize* this less-romantic option and imagine that one good idea will enable you to navigate all the stormy seas.
February 14th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
(By the way, in case you’re someone who knows me personally, the above example isn’t taken from any of the churches I’ve been in. Just thought I should make that clear.)
February 14th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
I think it’s possible to *romanticize* this less-romantic option and imagine that one good idea will enable you to navigate all the stormy seas.
I agree with this.
I don’t get cable, but maybe if I make some puppy dog eyes and hubby, he’ll rent it for me.
February 16th, 2007 at 9:23 am
I’m not sure. I used to romanticize the arranged marriage idea. But I realized that you just need to keep your eyes open! What bothers me is that there are several good option of men at my church and I hear the girls whining about “never being able to find any good Orthodox boys.” Some women are honestly looking. Some are just hoping it’ll come to them. From my own experience, if I had just kept admiring Sean from afar (or if I had gave up on him) he and I would still not be together.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:34 am
There is an element to how men and women get together that is really a mystery, maybe one of the last ones that the world acknowledges. What is it that Proverbs says?
I have seen both men and women doing what you say — sitting around in an environment where there are eligible bachelors and bachelorettes and acting as if there wasn’t a soul around. But I also remember having people at work not understand why I wouldn’t be married if there were young unattached men of roughly the same age in my church, and I thought that was a bit much. Relationships and marriages don’t happen between disinterested parties, and sometimes there’s just no explaining who you’re attracted to and who you’re not.
And since I started out by being a little harsh towards the type of modern man that just doesn’t ever seem interested, I’ll at least offer that point: that it’s hard to manufacture attraction when it isn’t there. I just think that sometimes there’s a basic element of morality and spiritual wholeness that is missing, with the result that the men and women both have cloudly vision which makes it hard to experience these things in a natural way. I confess that I like watching reruns of “Sex and the City” (though I would never let a young daughter watch it), but the level of confusion, loneliness and sickness of the soul that exists in that kind of supposedly carefree sex-saturated world is patently obvious.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:44 am
Side note: thank goodness you spoke up to Sean — you guys are too cute of a couple; it would have been much too tragic if you hadn’t gotten together!
I had to be a little brash with Greg as well. Though we met at work and there was a definite attraction, he had work duties that kept him from following up in any way. I eventually did one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do: walked in to his newsroom and asked him out to lunch. I later found out two things:
1. When I walked out every reporter within earshot was messaging him.
2. He figured he had missed his window of opportunity, so if I hadn’t done that, we might not be together.
Moral: Occasionally a real woman has to be a little forward. But, y’know, in a ladylike way.