Discover more from Close-reading the reruns with Phoebe Maltz Bovy
There is, it would seem an epidemic, and one not brought on by raccoon dogs or pangolins, but rather by clueless heterosexual men. The issue at hand is negging, and it is out of control.
Before I continue, a note about terminology. Remember negging? It was what pick-up artists used to advocate doing, wherein you alert a beautiful woman to a physical flaw, leading her to feel insecure, thereby driving her straight from her pedestal into your arms.
What we’re seeing now is kind of this but maybe not, hard to say. It’s a thing where men seem to think they’re complimenting their female partners (or revealing themselves to be complex, or evolved) by telling them that they’re not with them for their beauty.
I’m thinking of the “Seinfeld” where George responds to a personals ad from a communist newspaper. “Looks don’t matter” says the ad, which homely George finds promising. Jerry, as usual, more on the ball, asks, “Yours or hers?”
But back to the 21st century, indeed the past few weeks. First, there was the Savage Lovecast caller, who had told his now-ex girlfriend that he liked her for her personality. Then there was the conservative pundit (?), explaining that it’s practising bad conservatism to call 33-year-old hags past-it, whereas a good conservative would appreciate a 33-year-old’s winning personality. Next came some sort of Twitter (sports?) figure, who went viral for a tweet that came across (possibly inaccurately, possibly a case of bad wording) as saying that his wife (pictured, of course) might not be beautiful but is a good mother, a good haver-of-personality if you will.
And now there’s the Washington Post’s advice column, doling out reader answers to a letter-writer whose “husband made a totally offhand comment to the effect of, ‘You know, I lowered my usual standards [of attractiveness] when I decided to date you, and I’m so glad I did because your personality is wonderful, and I love our life together.’” Three is a trend? No. Three, here, is a public health emergency.
This is a bit annoying because I’d wanted to blog about a different advice column, the Schroedinger’s political lesbian one here. (From a woman with a crap husband: “I am not interested in being with another man, but sometimes I find myself wondering if I would have a more equal relationship with a woman.”) What was going on there? So many questions.
But no, now I have to pivot as they say and cover the more pressing item.
The advice-givers all take the husband’s side, having set the man-bar so low that his having apologized makes him some sort of saint. “Divorce him. Then give him my number. I want the guy who 1. loves you; 2. loves your life; 3. recognized he was an idiot and immediately apologized.”
Another faults her for having succumbed to “tired, gendered scripts about women, attractiveness and desirability.” As if it would be fine for a woman to tell her husband that she thought he was ugly when she met him. OK wait yes, this is meant to be romantic, but it isn’t, and no man would actually want to hear this.
Another amateur advice-giver reiterates what the husband said, in a way that’s meant to excuse him, but that winds up spelling out precisely why what he said was so unpleasant. “At one point he was shallow and totally focused on looks, and you helped him grow beyond that.” Of all the life lessons to help someone learn, my goodness. ‘I used to like pretty people and then I met you and got over it.’ Could you imagine? I mean!
Most women are not supermodels. Most of us non-supermodel women are aware of this. There are rare—inadvertently amusing, but I’m happy for them—exceptions, women within normal limits (what the kids now call “mid”) who nevertheless believe they look ravishing. But those are the exceptions. Most of us know.
All of these real-life, or real-life-adjacent, anecdotes bring to mind a scene from the episode of “As Time Goes By” that I recently rewatched for bathroom-renovation purposes, the one where Lionel has accidentally seen young (well, by Season 8, maybe mid-30s) Sandy in the bath, leading Jean to have a sad about how she’s no Sandy, leading her to consider an extension that would allow them to build a second bathroom. Jean goes to Lionel for reassurance and gets the following.
As is always the dilemma with this show, Lionel is being awful but this is meant to be charming. Lionel, always threatening to make a political lesbian of me, until I reload Britbox and see the “Inside No. 9” gentlemen and remember that no politics in the world could sway me in that direction.
But as Lionel’s awfulness goes, this isn’t so terrible. He did at least once think she looked great, which ought to be the starting point, in both directions, for all romantic relationships, at least the ones involving people who can see.
There’s a sense in which the best anyone can hope for is to be the pretty young person they once were, forever, in the eyes at least one other human being. An older woman can sell a memoir or whatever as long as the photo on the cover is of herself at the peak of her physical allure. She can market herself as young even once she herself is not. But a normal woman can also meet a man when she’s young and yeah why not when he’s young as well, and they’re both looking as good as they ever will, and that’s what they once saw and still see. It’s not the only way—people meet and find each other visually intriguing at all ages, and some people are plain at 22 but hot at 50, and some men prefer older women, and and and—but it is, I guess, a thing.
Subscribe to Close-reading the reruns with Phoebe Maltz Bovy
All the clothes, interiors, and cultural politics of TV shows very much not of the moment.