This event happened at least 25 years ago: The Swatch was
new and I had a great big, totally cool yellow one. I was in college, working
at WaxWorks in Owensboro, Ky. A record label rep came in and was shootin’ the
shit with my manager and me and noticed my watch. The two of them—in their late
30s, I would say—started a riff about plastic Swiss watches. I responded that it made my life easier—I said I never
took it off even to shower because it was plastic.
“Oh, she never takes it off, Harold. I wonder what else she
leaves it on for?” the rep said. He may have even nudged Harold and winked. To
his credit, Harold, who had daughters, looked at the rep as if he’d taken a shit
on the street.*
I remember my mortification. I think they continued to talk
and I drifted away, which was the intended effect, wasn’t it? Shutting the
little girl down who had dared to enter into the grown-up’s conversation. The
men’s conversation?
I’d like to think I gave as good as I got and said, “No, not
then either.” but I have a feeling that’s the 46-year-old me stepping in for
the 18-year-old me.
I have never forgotten this minor incident because it was
the first time that a grown man had talked to me that way. Of course, teenage
boys talked that way, but, you know, teenage boys. Until then, I thought that
adults dealt with each other, male and female, with due respect. Ha.
Fast-forward over 25 years of similar incidents that I
laughed off and/or smolderingly resented for sexualizing a conversation or
moment that was completely not sexual. The time I was interviewing the jailer
in Boone County and who put me in a holding cell and said, “Now I’ve gotcha
where I wantcha.” The city councilman who dispensed with flirting and as I
talked to him after a meeting simply asked me over to his place to “watch TV.”
(He had a son my age.)
To be fair, these are the more egregious events. I have
flushed the lesser events because, hey, that’s what it was like to be a woman
back then. Back. Then.
These events came back to me today because I was shocked to read in Jezebel.com that a Connecticut
lawmaker had said he had a snake under his desk for a 17-year-old girl
testifying about what she learned from working with animals she had previously
feared. (http://jezebel.com/5987922/connecticut-lawmaker-makes-dick-joke-to-teenage-girl-during-a-hearing)
Previously, she feared snakes and critters. Now, she may fear immature men, but
how to pick those out? To think after all
these years of pointing out that behavior like his is unacceptable he still
felt that it was perfectly acceptable! IN PUBLIC!
So, when the label rep or the state rep sexualized what
the young women were saying, what were they doing? I think they expected to
shut the “girls” down. In their heads, I think they said to themselves and the fourth wall that we're all performing for, “Girls are
*girls,* amirite? What of value do they have to say? They’re just the people we
have sex with. They don’t have brains, they don’t think about anything except
shoes, right people? And by people I mean other men.”
And, in my opinion, shutting “girls” down is exactly what
Jack Nicholson was doing to Jennifer Lawrence on Oscar night. While others see
charm (and some see as creepiness), I see dominance. I see an old man putting a
young woman in her place.
The light is now shining on her and the light is fading on
Nicholson, so what better way to put her in her place than to remind her that
she is nothing more than a pretty girl? Nothing more than someone a man wants
to have sex with—his “new girlfriend,” as he said. To his credit, the first time he
crashed her limelight he said, “I don’t want to crash your interview.” And, “I loved
ya in the movie.” Had he left it at that, I would have felt that he was paying
homage to a new bright star.
Apparently, ABC/Disney also felt that this opening salvo was
charming so they have shut down the full interview and have only made the edited
the interview available. That’s a nice way to protect a creepy old man who can
still make money for them. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJmhsJ5T5L0)
But, in reality Jack came back to the table twice more. To
what purpose? In my opinion, to pull the attention away from Jennifer Lawrence.
To remind her that she was just a girl. To flatter her? No, I don’t think so. Initially
she was thrilled, but after the third interruption, she finally said, “Now get
outta here.” ‘Cos “girls” aren’t like they used to be. I hope their mothers are
teaching them that they don’t have to be nice to mashers.
No man or woman would have said or done any of these things to a
young man. Shirley Bassey performed at the Oscars that night. She was born in
1937, the same year as Jack Nicholson. Dev Patel was there, too, as part of the
cast of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” He was born in 1990, the same year as
Jennifer Lawrence. Can you *imagine* Shirley Bassey approaching Dev Patel the
same way? What if Shirley Bassey had said, “I’ll be waiting!” over Patel’s shoulder?
Would an older female Connecticut lawmaker say, “I got a
hole for you under this desk!”?
No one, male or female, calls any male over age 10 a boy. But
girls are girls. Even girls call women "girls" which makes my eyes bulge out of
my head when I hear it. Yes, that includes the new show “Girls.” I nearly lost
a job in the ‘90s for saying to my publisher, when he called a 50-year-old
receptionist a girl, “I’m pretty sure she’s reached puberty.” And the 50 year old
receptionist helpfully giggled, “He can call me a girl whenever he wants!” I
didn’t smack her face, or his face, but I sure as shit got my ass out of
Kentucky. (After I got called into my editor’s office and told not to talk that
way to my boss’s boss. ‘Cos “girls” then were not allowed to talk that way to
men.)
So, what’s my point? My point is why are men still talking
to women this way? My point is if you have boys, make sure they know not to
talk to girls or women this way. If you have girls, tell them not to put up
with this bullshit and that they can be rude if they have to be. That man or
boy has been rude to you so you do not have to be nice about calling him out on
it.
And, Jack, behavior that was charming in 1973 is totally not
charming now.
*this metaphor is totally stolen from Bill Bryson
