I started mulling over the idea of niceness in women's poetry after three different men -- from different generations, who knew me in different capacities -- read the manuscript of my first book and each responded with some variation of, I really like your poems, but they're not very nice. I can't imagine Eliot's editor telling him that The Waste Land was great, but it wasn't very nice -- niceness is, predominantly, a cultural expectation of women. Case in point: recently, at my day job, a young man who spends week every day meticulously cataloguing his ennui via Facebook status updates told me I "should be friendlier." I don't work for an escort service; it's not my job to be his friend. Evidently, it's his job to ponder pictures of his dog on the Internet, which occasionally makes my job more burdensome. I am, therefore, unfriendly on occasion -- because as Tina Fey so eloquently put it, Bitches get stuff done.
2 comments:
O, or how complete strangers (men) feel completely free to tell women they see on the street/in a coffeeshop/in a bookstore to "smile?" ERG. I need more poems that are anti-SMILE.
I often have random women tell me to smile. Think that one's equal opportunity for us broody types.
(Word verification: carap)
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