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I woke recently to find a simple and polite message from Fish, Grumble's editor-in-chief and resident whip-cracker waiting for me, Godfather-style, on the foot of my bed. Was it a horse's head? No. A wombat's head? No. These are not the dear despot's style. It was -- and I shudder to recollect this -- a mangled rubber fish. Now there are those who would say that leaving a mangled rubber fish is jumbling the Godfather allusion, that horse heads belong in beds and fishes arrive by delivery boy. To them I say, when someone breaks into your house and leaves you a threat, don't play the critic. Some would say that a rubber fish is not that dire, as threats go. To them I say, do not underestimate the fish. We all know about the piranha, but do you know of the mighty candirú? It's a very small catfish, rarely wider than 4 mm, but it has sharp spines and is, as they say in scientific circles, urophilic. Which means that if you're swimming in the Amazon and decide to answer nature's call, you may find that it has swum up your urethra and dug in. I'm told the pain is considerable. Extraction requires surgery.1 There are also those of you who would say that by no means did Fish come all way to Brooklyn, break into my home and deposit a rubber fish on my bed when a simple e-mail would do. To you I say, an editor may be forced to go to great lengths to wring articles from his recalcitrant staff. Ms. Wombat says that Fish gave me the fish long ago as a gag gift, that it fell on the bed in the middle of the night and our dog used it as a chew toy. She may be on to something. Nevertheless, I am taking it as a warning to get back to work, because I deserve one. I have come to realize, dear Grumble readers, that I have failed you. And not only you -- I have failed the entire community of advice column readers. How have I failed? By leaving unchallenged and unanswered the shoddiness, stupidity and pure evil has crept into the advice genre. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I'm the best, or even close. There are some phenomenal people out there on the advice circuit. Dr. Drew tends to have good things to say, even when he's surrounded by celebrity guests who wouldn't know Xanax from Xerox. None can compare to the legendary Cecil Adams when it comes to great answers for obscure questions. And we all worship at the feet of Dan Savage. But hoo boy is there some bad stuff out there. I came across a copy of Mademoiselle the other day2, and was stunned by the sheer idiocy of its "advice" columns. It had to be a fluke, I thought, so I found another issue, hoping its advice would at least be tolerable. It wasn't. So I found another, and another, and my horror grew. I knew Fish was right; it was time to act.  You may have noticed that I called some of the bad advice "evil." That's a strong claim to make, and I know that Grumble readers -- possessed of the most keen minds and skeptical natures -- won't take any of my critiques seriously until I back that one claim up. And so I bring you "ask Millie3" from the May 2001 issue: |
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Q: Last night I went out with friends, and one of them brought a couple I'd never met. The couple ordered three $50 bottles of wine and four courses each. I had an entrée, dessert and two drinks. When the check came, they said, "Let's split it," even though my total was a quarter of theirs. Infuriating! How could I have handled paying only my share graciously? A: We've all been in a similar situation. Perhaps you're in a healthy phase or working within a budget, so you decline the "communal" wine. When you suggest paying only your share, your friends roll their eyes, as if to suggest you go find pliers to open your wallet wider. When you meet your friends -- or friends of friends -- for a meal, you're not paying solely for the food. You're paying for laughs, conversation, flirtation, networking and the promise of more of the same at a later date. By that measure, everyone should split the bill evenly, since you all participated in the evening's festivities. Yes, the champagne gulpers might get more for their money, but it's often those with more expensive tastes who bring a lot to the table (metaphorically speaking). |
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Let's all say that together. "It's often those with more expensive tastes who bring a lot to the table." Makes you want to take a shower or wash your mouth out with soap, doesn't it? If I were a cynical fellow, I would point out that Mademoiselle gets its money not through subscriptions and newsstand sales, but through advertising revenue. Advertisers want magazines to promote a consumerist culture. Magazines like to train their readership to be consumerist so they can claim to advertisers, "look how much money our readerships spends on things. Don't you want to reach these people?" And so, the editorial staff finds ways to subtly -- or not so subtly, in the case above -- convince us that people who spend more money on things are inherently superior. But I'm not going to be cynical. "I was only following orders" didn't cut it at Nuremburg, and doesn't cut it here. The idea that those who consume more are society's elite is just plain wrong. It's those who produce who keep the world going. The chef and the vintner are the exemplars of artistry in this story, not the showy schmoes. And the person asking the question, who is presumably trying to live within her means and consume less than she produces, is to be lauded for adding to the world's wealth, not scolded as a wet blanket. To suggest otherwise is to place consumption morally above production, and it is a very short step from there to placing destruction morally above creation. And that, by any sensible measure, is evil. And by the way, the answer to the question is this: it's perfectly okay to say that since you're strapped for cash you'd like to pay only your bill. It would have been better to announce that preference at the beginning of the meal instead of the end, but that doesn't mean you should get stuck paying for some moocher's vino. Why aren't you paying for "laughter, conversation, flirtation [and] networking?" Actually, you are. You pay for it with your humor, charm, interest and company. If your friends don't consider that valuable then they shouldn't invite you to dinner in the first place. And if they want cash instead of camaraderie in trade for their friendship then they should be honest about it and start an escort service. Incidentally, in some social circles it's considered de rigeur that everyone pay only for what they eat. Not surprisingly, these groups are composed of people habitually struggling to make ends meet -- college students, musicians and writers foolishly trying to make a living on Grumble commissions4. We move now from the evil to the merely insipid. The March 20001 issue had a little feature called "Q&A Sex." Unfortunately it was not rules for Bedroom Jeopardy, but an advice column written by someone claiming to be named Sandra Hollander. I'm sure the editors picked this pen name so we'd think that the article was written by an in-the-know relative of Xaviera instead of a collection of overworked, twenty-something journalists getting quickly disillusioned about the prospects of ever getting their own by-line. |
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Q: I've gained 20 pounds since my last breakup more than a year ago. I'm seeing a new guy now, but I don't feel comfortable getting naked with him. How can I get over this? A: I'm sure you've heard plenty of "beauty has no size" platitudes, so I did a little reality check: I ran your concerns past some men. Naturally, they don't think you should worry. "If the guy has ever hugged you or squeezed you," says my friend Tim, "he already has a pretty good idea of what your body looks like." "Even if he sees the flaws, naked flaws are better than clothed ones," says my own guy, Gregg, somewhat self-servingly. "Face it," adds my pal Mark, "he's a lot more likely to dump you for holding out than for having cellulite." What all these men are saying (some with more charm than others) is that having sex is sexy enough. And if you don't think this guy will view your flesh in a positive light, then maybe you don't want to see that much of him. Maybe, even, you don't want to see him at all. The thought of being intimate with someone should make you shiver with anticipation -- not fear. |
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Well, now we know the staff writers' names -- Tim, Gregg and Mark. If they had bothered to talk to an actual woman before answering this question, or -- better still -- had paid attention to their girlfriends, then they wouldn't have printed that pathetic, know-nothing answer even on a dare. Firstly, the "if he doesn't like you for who you are then dump him" line is so cliché that even Ask Beth doesn't use it anymore. Secondly, the "having sex is fun and should trump everything else! Woo-hoo!" argument is a male perspective on sex, not a female one. If someone nifty is getting naked in front of a man (especially an overworked twenty-two year-old fresh out of college like Tim, Gregg and Mark here), he'll generally be all in favor of it. A woman's sexuality is a lot more dependent on her emotional state, especially her sense of self-worth. In other words, the reason she doesn't want to get naked with her guy is because she doesn't want to get naked period. She needs to be guided to some self-worth building activities like boxing lessons, transcendental meditation or the arts, not have junior wordsmiths sling refried, half-hearted fortune cookie nonsense at her. Well it seems that a woman executive over at Condé Nast Publishing got wind of Tim, Gregg and Mark's nonsense, because by June the Sandra Hollander pen name had been taken over by a woman. Not that she had any more of a clue than the previous gang had, of course .... |
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The new guy: He's all things. But you're not sure about his sexual past. You'd like to ask him about testing, but how? Three options:
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The person writing this is falling into a self-destructive trap that young women so often get caught in, thus dooming their relationships -- the I Can Change Him trap. Don't think so? Think she's just trying to be subtle about a touchy subject? Read on ... As everyone knows, guys like sex. Ask a guy a question that implies you'd like to sleep with him, and he will not freak out. He will be very excited. He will answer you. It might not be the answer you'd like, of course. He might say, "hell no, baby, but I know I'm clean. I only do it with classy broads like you." If you can stomach that reply then you inform him that you only put out for people who have a doctor's note. If he (1) respects you and (2) has nothing to hide, he'll get the test. If everyone knows this, why would you work at getting into the conversation by the back door? Because you think one of the above qualifiers is in doubt. If you think he has something to hide you probably wouldn't be starting the conversation in the first place. So it's got to be that you think he might not respect you. Why do you think that? There are two possibilities. One: you know he doesn't respect you because he hasn't learned your name after five dates, doesn't want you to speak in public, and he's sleeping with your sister. But you go out with him anyway because if you work on him enough and give him what he wants then he'll Change and see you for the beautiful person you are and then you'll live happily ever after. Possibility Two: you think he might not respect you because you don't respect him. There's something wrong with him. His value system is all wrong, so maybe he doesn't fully value you. But you're so good, so clever and so beautiful that you can Change him. And then you'll live happily ever after. This, of course, is nonsense; no one is Changed by a relationship. If a relationship doesn't gives someone what he wants then he leaves; if it does give him what he wants then why should he change? Relationships founded on a lack of respect are doomed. They'll end at best in heartbreak, at worst in domestic violence. If you have to trick him into the doctor's office then you should just leave. "Q&A Sex" is sometimes joined by "Q&A Love." In June, it was penned by someone who actually sounds like she might have a real name -- Ellen Tien. Let's hope for her sake it's not real, because she made a fool of herself to bored people waiting for haircuts or doctor's appointments5 across the nation: |
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Q: When I first met my boyfriend, he was an articulate person. Now, he can't stop baby-talking, and I hate it. What can I do? A: Uh-oh! Me sinks someone has a wittle pwoblemy-woblemy, ess I do! Still, it's eminently fixable -- I mean, provided you can actually continue to respect a man who's capable of spewing such moronic pap. Anyway. We'll assume that this is an annoying but harmless little tic that your boyfriend wants to control but just can't, as opposed to a hostile act where he's deliberately choosing not to curb a behavior that he knows bothers you, which would then point to a way-larger issue in the relationship, blah blah blah. Your best bet is to jolt him into realizing that all his blather is making him look like the village idiot. Begin by baby-talking back to him. Leave him notes in baby talk, quote his most outrageous babbling to his friends, even tape or (particularly hideous) videotape him. And as a last resort, calmly look him in the eye and say, "The thing is, all this baby talk really turns me off -- puts me right out of the mood." Once he sees that his goochy-g! ooing is interfering with coochy-cooing, you'll be surprised how quickly he'll put a corky-worky in it. |
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You gotta love any advice column that lists honest communication as a last resort to be tried only after deceit and humiliation have failed. Here's a sampling of better things to say: "I know you don't mean it this way, but when you baby-talk I feel like I'm not being taken seriously." "I don't know how to tell you this, but the baby-talk is starting to wear on me a little. I know you're articulate, and you know I am, so would you mind if we raised the bar a little?" "I don't think anyone in Mensa has ever referred to their veal scaloppini and arugula salad with dill-infused beets as ‘lunchy-lunch.'" Or even, "Shut up!! Just shut up!!" That last one might not be as constructive as the first, but at least it's an honest display of emotion, which is a damn sight healthier for your relationship than embarrassing him in front of his friends. Bad advice will be given even by the best of people from time to time. But in the space of four months, the Mademoiselle staff has messed up pretty frequently. And these are just from the last few issues. God only knows what horrible, destructive, morally repugnant stuff has come in the years before. And if the editors were really interested in giving good advice, don't you think they would've replaced Tim, Gregg and Mark with someone competent? Apparently they were not content with the merely misguided, and chose instead to go with someone whose advice could actually do damage. Take that choice, add the "you're a bad person unless you spend spend spend!" philosophy, top off with the photos glamorizing anorexic physiques, and I am led to one inescapable conclusion: Mademoiselle is the book of the devil. Thank you, Fish, for bringing me to my senses. I only hope that I've acted in time... |
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1. Feel free to take a moment to catch your breath and uncross your legs. 
2. Don't ask me why I was reading such a bad magazine. Let's just say the wait was long, I was bored, and I'd
left my copy of The New York Review of Books in my other briefcase. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.
3. You know, Millie. As in "Mlle," the abbreviation for "mademoiselle." Ah, the tangy zest of subtle wit.
4. Memo to Fish: a carton of Tetra flakes makes a great gag payment. The first
time.
5. Does anyone actually reads Mademoiselle under any other
circumstance? |
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