Many little girls dream of being a princess. They dress up with a tiara in their hair on prom night, design their wedding dress to emulate Grace Kelly, and set their alarms for 4 a.m. on a workday to not miss a single second of Royal Wedding television coverage. As democratic Americans, we have to live vicariously through the lives of monarchs in other countries, but luckily we have Disney movies to condition little girls to believe that Princess is the ultimate title to strive for, rather than Chief Executive Officer or President of the United States of America. When commoners like Diana and Kate Middleton ascend to noble status, our hopes are kept alive that one day Prince Charming will actually appear on a white horse (or in a Rolls Royce) and carry us off into the sunset.
Like so many things with glamorous mystique, closer inspection of the history of the Royal Family reveals that the closets in Buckingham Palace are actually filled to the brim with centuries old skeletons, and years of tradition have placed rigid expectations on anyone granted a regal title, that extend well beyond perfect curtsies and daintily sipping (not slurping!) tea with pinkie finger extended and saucer in hand. In the midst of the hoopla surrounding the recent nuptials of Catherine Middleton to His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, Baron Carrickfergus, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Master of Arts, enough information has surfaced to confirm that besides the ridiculously long name on your marriage certificate, marrying a blue blod would royally suck in many ways.
First, you have to contend with all the creepy uncles and aunts you’re gaining from his half of the family tree. Like Uncle Richard III who imprisoned his nephews Edward V and Richard, Duke of York in the Tower of London in the summer of 1483, and subsequently had them murdered, or possibly left to die in the Tower to avoid any competition for the throne. Or Aunt Elizabeth I who suffered baldness and terrible scars all over her face due to smallpox, and insisted on wearing bright white cake makeup and garish wigs at all times, even in her sleep. As a new princess you must also be wary of incest, adultery, closet homosexuality, alcoholism, gambling addictions, and spies among your in laws. Congratulations!
If that isn’t enough to deter you, the royal treatment also includes rules about basically everything that is fun and awesome. For example, you will no longer be allowed to have questionable friends on Facebook. Picture links that include anyone smoking pot, defacing public property, or dancing in various stages of undress will be severely frowned upon. Commence the de-friending! Additionally, you yourself are no longer allowed to get rip roaring drunk in public, use profanity, or blink in photographs. As a Princess, anywhere you go including the doctors office or to the loo, is now considered PUBLIC. Expect paparazzi at every turn, also expect that you are never allowed to get a zit or have a bad hair day for the rest of your life. No pressure! In addition to acting and looking perfect at all times, as a Princess you are no longer allowed to work, and your only access to money is in the form of an allowance. Good luck squeezing enough dough out of Grandma for those Kanye West tickets you’ve been wanting (Grandma is definitely afraid of black people, especially those outside colonial borders). Also, kiss your kinky sex life goodbye. The only reason a Princess is allowed to have sex is to make babies, and babies are no fun at all.
Cheers!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
More, Now, Again - Review
Anyone who ventures to write a memoir must posses some degree of narcissism. If not, why would they consider their particular life journey worthy of public consumption? Some writers choose to portray themselves in the very best light possible, while others include all the gory details, winning their audience over through personal expression and sometimes pure shock value. Although writers frequently pull from their own personal history for material and inspiration, Elizabeth Wurtzel has enjoyed a literary career based solely on talking about herself: her depression, her genius, her beauty, and now, her drug addiction.
More, Now, Again chronicles Wurtzel’s self destructive path from casual prescription drug overuse, to full blown cocaine addiction while writing her second book Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. Following the success of her first memoir Prozac Nation, Wurtzel finds herself well behind on her editor’s deadlines for finished pages. Her doctor prescribes Ritalin to help boost her motivation and curb her concentration problems. Having struggled with substance abuse in the past, Wurtzel quickly finds creative and excessive ways to up her Ritalin dose and catch a much needed buzz. She starts crushing and snorting the pills, going from two pills per day to three pills every half hour in record time. After using up every excuse and connection to secure more pills, her habits follow a predictable pattern to harder and harder drugs, until she is having eight balls of cocaine Fed-Exed to her apartment several times a week.
Although her addiction story is hardly unique, her literary talent is undeniable. Unfortunately, she often uses her writing powers for evil rather than good, spending paragraph after paragraph shucking responsibility for her own actions, criticizing her friends, family, and colleagues, and generally over sharing every intimate detail of her thoughts and feelings with the reader. As a Harvard educated, beautiful, healthy, obviously smart young woman, the incessant whining is hard for many people to swallow. I am not one of them.
Most of Wurtzel’s detractors (and there are plenty) focus on her lofty education, and her classic good looks as reasons for her to have little to complain about. For those of us who share the human experience of feeling inherently wrong inside, while others make a fuss over how great we look outside, I identify with her anger, resentment, and cynical attitude towards mankind. Just feeling depressed is frustrating, especially when the general consensus is that you’re too smart and too pretty to be sad. Throw in a serious drug problem however, and people start to cut you a little more slack. Personally, you now have somewhere to direct your anger and frustration (these drugs are ruining my life), and publicly people have an easier time reconciling the disparity between how you look, and how you act or feel (don’t blame her, she has a DRUG PROBLEM).
Drugs classically represent a sexier, more dangerous kind of crazy. Prominent, talented, widely loved figures such as rock stars, actors, and politicians struggle with addiction issues publicly. Many different kinds of genius are associated with turning to drugs to cope with reality, and modern media such as music and film help us associate larger than life, attractive, rich people with the drug user lifestyle. Drugs also fit in nicely with everyone’s perception of how a pretty girl should experience the world, because everyone knows that women who are beautiful are also damaged. They are treated differently from an early age because of their appearance, conditioned to value their looks more than other aspects of their identity, and basically psychologically raped by society from an early age. The crazy/beautiful dichotomy is alive and well in More, Now, Again, but Wurtzel's own clarity on this phenomenon offers a refreshing, often biting perspective that eviscerates her literary critics and cements her place as an intellectual force to be reckoned with.
In More, Now, Again Wurtzel succeeds in addressing, and illuminating the very issues she struggled so profoundly with during the creation of Bitch. Her experience as a difficult woman impacts her decisions and the direction of her life through several stints in rehab, many failed relationships, and eventually sobriety. However wavering her commitment to positive self-construction is, her story prevails with an eloquent, simultaneously self absorbed, yet entirely self-aware voice that makes even her most narcissistic comments tolerable.
More, Now, Again chronicles Wurtzel’s self destructive path from casual prescription drug overuse, to full blown cocaine addiction while writing her second book Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. Following the success of her first memoir Prozac Nation, Wurtzel finds herself well behind on her editor’s deadlines for finished pages. Her doctor prescribes Ritalin to help boost her motivation and curb her concentration problems. Having struggled with substance abuse in the past, Wurtzel quickly finds creative and excessive ways to up her Ritalin dose and catch a much needed buzz. She starts crushing and snorting the pills, going from two pills per day to three pills every half hour in record time. After using up every excuse and connection to secure more pills, her habits follow a predictable pattern to harder and harder drugs, until she is having eight balls of cocaine Fed-Exed to her apartment several times a week.
Although her addiction story is hardly unique, her literary talent is undeniable. Unfortunately, she often uses her writing powers for evil rather than good, spending paragraph after paragraph shucking responsibility for her own actions, criticizing her friends, family, and colleagues, and generally over sharing every intimate detail of her thoughts and feelings with the reader. As a Harvard educated, beautiful, healthy, obviously smart young woman, the incessant whining is hard for many people to swallow. I am not one of them.
Most of Wurtzel’s detractors (and there are plenty) focus on her lofty education, and her classic good looks as reasons for her to have little to complain about. For those of us who share the human experience of feeling inherently wrong inside, while others make a fuss over how great we look outside, I identify with her anger, resentment, and cynical attitude towards mankind. Just feeling depressed is frustrating, especially when the general consensus is that you’re too smart and too pretty to be sad. Throw in a serious drug problem however, and people start to cut you a little more slack. Personally, you now have somewhere to direct your anger and frustration (these drugs are ruining my life), and publicly people have an easier time reconciling the disparity between how you look, and how you act or feel (don’t blame her, she has a DRUG PROBLEM).
Drugs classically represent a sexier, more dangerous kind of crazy. Prominent, talented, widely loved figures such as rock stars, actors, and politicians struggle with addiction issues publicly. Many different kinds of genius are associated with turning to drugs to cope with reality, and modern media such as music and film help us associate larger than life, attractive, rich people with the drug user lifestyle. Drugs also fit in nicely with everyone’s perception of how a pretty girl should experience the world, because everyone knows that women who are beautiful are also damaged. They are treated differently from an early age because of their appearance, conditioned to value their looks more than other aspects of their identity, and basically psychologically raped by society from an early age. The crazy/beautiful dichotomy is alive and well in More, Now, Again, but Wurtzel's own clarity on this phenomenon offers a refreshing, often biting perspective that eviscerates her literary critics and cements her place as an intellectual force to be reckoned with.
In More, Now, Again Wurtzel succeeds in addressing, and illuminating the very issues she struggled so profoundly with during the creation of Bitch. Her experience as a difficult woman impacts her decisions and the direction of her life through several stints in rehab, many failed relationships, and eventually sobriety. However wavering her commitment to positive self-construction is, her story prevails with an eloquent, simultaneously self absorbed, yet entirely self-aware voice that makes even her most narcissistic comments tolerable.
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