Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 77

Gender Masquerades: Patrick Jane/Teresa Lisbon

This is a new series of blogs that harks back to my grad school days. I wrote my dissertation technically on male and female Bildungsromane of the late 18th century (Goethe and LaRoche). What I wanted to write was a defense of LaRoche as a real, literary writer. Ah, well. One of the interesting results of this was finding an interesting similarity between the two gendered versions of Bildung, and that was a specific masquerade as the opposite gender, which is eventually given up. I ended up trying to explain my interest in this topic by bringing a photo of myself in 4th grade that is androgynous and talking about an event in which I went to a roller skating rink and tried to get on during the "all girl" skating time, and was told to get off because I was a boy. I then had to try to "prove" that I was a girl and found out that it was, in fact, impossible. I had a "kissing stick" in my pocket and was willing to walk into the girl's bathroom, which was all I could think of. But neither of those were sufficient.

I continue to be interested in stories about gender masquerades in modern day stories, whether they are intentional or not. Patrick Jane from The Mentalist is a character I think is playing with gender in a really interesting way. His name is the first tip off. "Jane" is the stereotypical name for a woman. A "Jane Doe" is a woman without a name or identity. So why give a man "Jane" as a last name, unless he is meant to be seen as a man who is involved in a gender masquerade?

Some other female traits of Patrick Jane? His concern with his appearance. His hair is always done in a perfect, careless coif. He is also careful to wear a dressy three piece suit rather than the more standard attire for police officers on TV, or the more casual attire of detectives who are not policemen. It is as if he is always on stage, always performing. Like the women of most TV shows, he is dressed far above seems to me to be comfortable or normal. He dresses for success.

Patrick Jane's primary skill is a classic female one, as well. What is he known for? Reading people well. And deceiving them. What is a better description of what women are thought to do well? Because they have no power of their own traditionally, they must hone their personal skills and figure out how to get what they want through tricks, through hints, through convincing others that they want to do what the women want them to do. Women read body language far better than men do. Not because, in my estimation, it has anything to do with a natural inclination to do so, but because their lower position in society demands that they become savvier. They have to be more careful about how those around them see them. They can't simply demand what they want because they have no power to do so. I would argue that, like a woman who wants to be successful in a man's world, he draws attention to himself by extreme tactics and he also has to be twice as successful as anyone else in the same position because he does things the "wrong" way. He is flamboyant and he gets results, but no one likes him. He has secrets and he doesn't tell the truth unless he feels like it. He doesn't fit into the proper heirarchy of the police world. He is also a tease.

On the other hand, Teresa Lisbon is far more masculine in this pairing, which is part of the fun for the audience. She is courageous, non-nonsense and often sarcastic. She is also the one who has a gun. Jane is not only physically weaker than Lisbon in every situation where his life is threatened, but he is visibly frightened by guns and tends to hide behind Lisbon or anyone else who is nearby. He uses his wits and his words to get him out of difficulty if he can, but otherwise he has to wait for rescue by the more cautious Lisbon and her team. In addition. Lisbon is rather oblivious to the relationships around her. Like a man, she has to be told what is going on with the romantically involved Van Pelt and Rigsby. She needs everything to be stated in clear terms. She has no interest in learning to read body language and other less open signals.

I am not sure exactly what will happen between Lisbon and Jane. I am afraid that at some point there will be a reversal which will "prove" that Lisbon is really a woman and Jane is really a man. He will have to rescue her somehow and she will have to faint or some such nonsense. And then, the romance will begin. As it is now, any romance between them I think is simply too uncomfortable for a modern American audience which, for all our talk about equality between men and women, still clings to very stereotypical views of what is feminine and what is masculine. I wish that I believed that we would come to accept that labeling certain behaviors as "masculine" or "feminine" is just silly and ultimately confining to both men and women in the real world. We should not choose our behavior based on what is allowable to our gender, but on what is authentic to our feelings and to the person we want others to see us as. All gender, in my view, is in the end, a masquerade.

More later.

Top Triathlon Moments of 2011:

1. Tweeting Ironman St. George (and taking off an hour from last year's time)
2. Winning Bountiful Tri Overall (for women)
3. Taking an hour off my best time for annual 50 mile run
4. Taking 30 minutes off my best time for annnual Half Ironman (Utah Half)
5. Taking 20 seconds off my best time for annual 1650 yd swim
6. Taking 2nd place in April at annual showdown with favorite nemesis
7. Taking 3rd place overall at Kokopelli, one week after a bad bike crash
8. Making All American for the USAT for my age group
9. Running a 23:37 5k at the end of a sprint triathlon

Things that helped me to accomplish these goals:
1. Changing to bra top and shorts for workout and race attire
2. New running shoes that increased my turnover by 5-10%
3. Realizing that I have to overshoot race distance to be competitive (even really long distances)
4. Realizing that I have to run slower in training to be faster at racing
5. Computrainer with Ironman St. George interactive video
6. Weight lifting twice a week
7. Eating less real food while running (essentially, only gus) and drinking more
8. Small, achievable goals
9. Less interval training
10. No injuries (which is partly sheer luck)

Top Family Moments of 2011:

1. London with 17 and 16
2. The Utah Shakespeare Festival with 12
3. Running the 10k of Jordanelle with 17 after I finished my own race in record time
4. Teaching 9 to ride a bike
5. Watching my kids more excited to give presents at Christmas than to get them
6. Listening to 16 record an album of all new music in recording studio
7. Snuggling in the morning with my kids whenever possible
8. Reading aloud to 9 and seeing him catch the book bug with Animorphs and Wimpy Kid
9. Tasting the best biscuits ever made—cooked by 14
10. Writing training plans for husband and kids

Top Writerly Moments of 2011

1. ALA in New Orleans
2. WFC in San Diego
3. Barry Goldblatt's annual retreat in Illinois (despite food and Jesus sparkle lady)
4. Sirens in Vail, Colorado (with Justine Larbelestier, Nnedi Okorafor, and Lani Taylor)
5. Working on Two Princesses with Ruth Katcher at Egmont
6. Getting a blurb from Janni Lee Simner
7. Job offer (More later).
8. The words "best-selling" attached to my name, however erroneously
9. Asked to teach at WIFYR in 2012
10. Giving myself the freedom to write books I feel like writing, even if they won't sell.

The Best in TV for 2011

Top TV shows I watched in 2011 (Yes, I know I am a little--or a lot--late on these) in no particular order:

The West Wing
Veronica Mars
Bones
House
The Closer
The Mentalist
The Guardian
Dr. Who
MI-5
Sherlock
Downton Abbey
Inspector Lynley Mysteries
Jericho
Flash Forward

I am also enjoying what I have seen of Blue Bloods

Top Books of 2011

For the last week of the year, I am going to list top 10--more or less--lists for lots of categories. Today, it's books:

Favorite MG Books of 2011:
A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood
Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis
The Inquisitor's Apprentice by Chris Moriarty

Favorite YA Books of 2011:
Huntress by Malinda Lo
The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal
Plain Kate by Erin Bow
Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
Pearl by Jo Knowles

Favorite Picture Books of 2011:
Lost and Found by Shaun Tan
Drawing From Memory by Allen Say

Favorite Adult Books of 2011:
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin
Dead Air by James Goss (audiobook)
Among Others by Jo Walton
The Executioness by Tobias Buckell
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht
Cold Magic by Kate Elliott
The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card

Favorite books in a continuing series read this year:
Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
The Demon's Surrender by Sarah Rees Brennan
Red Glove by Holly Black
Careless in Red by Elizabeth George
Ghost Story by Jim Butcher
V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
Darth Paper by Tom Angleberger
Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever by Jeff Kinney

metteharrison @ 2011-12-23T11:51:00

When I tell waiters at many restaurants that I am vegetarian, they will helpfully point me toward salad items on the menu and say that they can leave off the meat (which they often forget to do). This annoys me to no end. There is nothing wrong with salad. I like salad and eat salad almost every day. As a side dish to my regular meal. But salad has no calories. And I am not on a diet. In fact, I need calories. Lots of them. I am a vegetarian for health reasons, which to me means that I want my calories to pack as many nutrients in as possible. I don't mind my food touching meat. I just have found that being vegetarian with an occasional once a month fish meal is a good way for me to get in all my fruits and veggies. And when I go out to eat, I don't want to have to go home to get some real food before I can go to bed without being painfully hungry. Is that too much to ask for?

I am perfectly happy with my weight, which I have come to my eating what is healthy until I am full, and occasionally making myself eat a little extra if I am recovering from a hard race. I suppose that there is an understandable confusion since so many women my weight and height are that way because they have starved themselves to look like that. Or something like what I look like, when I am wearing normal clothes. If people saw me in my normal workout wear, maybe they would be less confused, since I actually am quite well built in the shoulders and arms and--unlike most women at the gym--do not ignore the upper body machines completely. (The men tend to ignore the lower body machines, but not as much as women ignore upper body, in my experience).

Talking to my girls this morning, I remember 17 complaining that for men, dressing up means putting on a nice suit. For women, dressing up means putting on your face, doing your hair, wearing painful high heels and hose, and usually wearing a dress that you can hardly move in and which she is uncomfortable in because it shows so much. I told her simply that this is because women still get their power mostly from being attached to men who have power, and they become attached to men who have power by being seen as desirable objects. I know, our society has made lots of progress, but so long as women are equated with their bodies, I will continue to believe that sexism is alive and well.

I spent quite some time this summer wondering about how I felt wearing only a bra top and shorts at races. Normally, I would not be comfortable in this outfit outside (though I wear it inside while I workout every day). Then I decided that I wasn't choosing to wear it show off my body, but because it was actually the most comfortable and appropriate outfit to wear at a race. A longer shirt is annoying because it drips sweat and then I end up trying to take it off during the race. I don't think I have a perfect body, but it functions great and that is what matters to me. I may sag a little in the stomach area, but put me up against most teenage girls and I will run them into the ground. And that is what matters to me.

I don't look good because I want to look good. I look good because I want to feel good and looking good happens to be a side effect of that.

Writing Wednesday: Beginning

A writer friend of mine once told me that he thought the most common mistake beginning writers made was that they started a novel too late. When he said it, I had this moment of revelation. This was exactly what was wrong with a novel I had written a year before and had been puzzling over how to fix. I went home, rewrote it over the next two months, sent it out again, and sold it. It was my first novel, The Monster In Me.

But I can't tell you how many times I have struggled with the same problem in other novels. In The Princess and the Hound, I added about 80 pages to the first 100 after I sold it. I know there are some readers who think it starts slowly, but it's absolutely necessary that it starts that way. In The Princess and the Bear, I had to go back and make the characters less in love in the beginning, so that they could fall in love more. In Two Princesses (or whatever it turns out to be), one of the main revision threads has been to let the love story unfold more slowly.

It is actually the tension of the not knowing what the result will be that makes the reader keep turning pages, especially in a novel with a heavy romance side. Duh! It's what makes me watch shows like Bones for years on end, wanting Bones and Booth to get together, or countless other shows. For me, the romance is actually the main draw, but if they resolved it easily, it would be both unbelievable and less satisfying. In fact, one of my main complaints these days about romantic comedies is that all of the problems which are so realistically depicted are simply ignored or thrown aside for a happy ending (For example, Notting Hill, The Holiday, Kate and Leopold, You've Got Mail). Most rom/coms probably need to be mini-series in order to really work things out.

Another novel that I started writing early this year and set aside I've gone back to and realized that this is the same problem again. I compressed a lot of scenable stuff in the first chapter and have ended up actually stretching it out to about 6 chapters. When you're writing a novel versus a short story, you don't need more cool stuff happening, you need to build it up in a particular way. So some things take a long time to figure out, and beginnings get to be slow.

I personally am annoyed when writers start in the middle of the climactic scene of the book as a teaser and then backtrack to tell from the beginning, because it just seems unnecessary and wrong. OK, I admit I'm probably OCD in this way. I want a story told from beginning to end, the way that it unfolds in real life. I feel much more consciously the hand of the author in doling out information and I end up feeling more manipulated and annoyed at the craft rather than the story. It sometimes works, but what can I say? Writer beware.

Why I'm Not Paying For My Daughter to Go to MIT

This Saturday, 17 found out that she had been accepted to MIT. The countdown had begun several weeks before. Friday night, she could hardly sleep. We all gathered around her computer for the news and we cheered and made phone calls when we found out. My husband and I took the whole family out for lunch and dessert to celebrate. MIT has been her dream school for years. I was so happy for her.

And yet, I have no idea if she will actually end up going. I don't mind her going. I just have no intention of helping her pay for it. If she wants to go, she will have to take out student loans to cover whatever cost the university doesn't. She is not very happy about this, and insists that when she has children, she will make sure that she has a college fund available that will pay for ANY place her children choose to go to. I, on the other hand, have no college fund for any of my kids. They are all perfectly capable of getting full ride scholarships to any reasonably priced university they choose. MIT is not one of those places.

I should say that to me, 17 getting accepted by MIT was nothing more than a validation of MIT's intelligence. I already know how brilliant and capable and hardworking my daughter is. My main goal for quite a number of years as her parent has been to get her to take time off and relax. She claims she relaxes too much and "wastes" time on the internet. She won't go on facebook because she's afraid she will waste more time. Ha! This is a child who has taken 7 AP tests already, will take 5 more this year, and has been taking 2 classes at the local university in addition to her high school work for the past two years. She has a 35 on the ACT and I could go on and on, but the details won't mean anything to anyone not in her field. While I was trying to coach her for interviews, she seriously said that nothing she had done mattered because she hadn't won a Fields Medal or Nobel Prize. Because those are the only measures of real success to her, apparently.So, yeah, her getting into MIT, not a surprise to me. A relief to her, but if they had rejected her, I would have thought there was something wrong with them, not her.

I understand why MIT has the scholarship policy they have. They say that every student who gets admitted to MIT is deserving of a scholarship, so they give them based on need. I have no idea what "need" MIT will decide that we have. We're well off financially, but we also have 4 other children, and we may end up with 2 in college next year, depending on what 16 decides to do. I think it's very odd the way that we dole out adulthood to teens. They can marry at 15 in Utah, with a parent's permission), join the army at 17 and can die in a war. They can vote at 18. But they can't drink or smoke until 21. But when it comes to college, parents are expected to pay and are considered part of the financial aid package.

My experience as a parent watching other parents paying for children's education has only confirmed what I thought as a college student myself: If you treat your kids as dependents, they will act as dependents. That means, they will not treat college seriously. And they will not treat themselves seriously, which seems the greater threat. I want my daughter to see how capable she is of living in the adult world, and to me that means cutting the financial ties between us when she moves away to college. Sure, there are ways in which she is not fully adult. There are ways in which I am not fully adult, too, sadly enough.

As a teen, I had a dream college, too. Amherst. When I got accepted, they offered me the same kind of financial need based package. But my parents had 11 children and I was 9th. They had several children still in college. They simply could not afford to give me the $10,000 a year Amherst expected them to. My dad wished he could. He offered to call and see if he could arrange something. But in the end, I chose not to go. I chose to go to the local university where I got a full ride scholarship. I graduated in a couple of years and went on to grad school at Princeton, where they paid me a stipend in addition to a tuition waver to go. And where I taught a year and saw what undergrad life at an Ivy league school is like.

Um, I can't say I was impressed. How many times did students tell me they couldn't make it to class because they were going to an AA meeting instead? Look, definitely the right choice. But they were all underage and it was illegal for them to drink. Their parents were paying $25,000 a year for them to go to Princeton, and they were spending their time drinking. Also, I learned that the university had a policy that if professors wanted to give a student less than a B-, they had to file paperwork for the privilege of doing so. Guess how often that happened? It didn't. Parents who are paying that much for an education want their students to get good grades or what happens? They don't come back. So, I learned that an A=A, an A-=B, a B+=C B=D and B-=F at Princeton. Sure, the students were smart. And some took full advantage of their opportunities. Not most.

I worked my way through college and grad school to pay for any living expenses I had above what the university paid for in scholarships. I worked every summer, at places like Bristol Meyer Squibb, David Sarnoff Research, and Johnson and Johnson, which have headquarters in Princeton. I learned a LOT about the real corporate world, too. I had a whole corporate wardrobe and I had multiple job offers in that world (which I turned down). I was proud of my ability to make my own way.

We got some student loans to pay for my husband's tuition since he didn't have a full scholarship, and those came back to haunt us later. I don't wish those on my daughter, but I won't stop her from taking them out, if she chooses to. This is one of the other benefits of not paying for your children's college education. There is no improper manipulation of choices. I shouldn't be the one to choose where my daughter goes to college. It's her choice, her life. And when she takes charge of funding it herself, then I don't have any say.

I loved college. More than anything I experienced up to that point, I had perfect freedom. I could take any class I wanted and no one told me what to do. I don't want to take that away from my daughter. I love her to death. I'd love for nothing more than to keep her at home for another year or two. She is love and cheer and joy at our house and the glue that keeps the other kids together. I don't know how we'll live without her. But that's what would be good for me. I want to protect her and wrap her in cotton so no one hurts her or makes her think worse of herself. But those are the impulses of parenthood that have to be quelled at 18. She will do well in the world, wherever she goes. And it's because I love her that I won't pay for her college.

Monday Book Recs--Leicht

Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht

A young man is caught in two wars, one between the Catholics and the Protestants in 1975 Ireland, and one between the fallen and the fey. Liam is the half mortal child of a fey man and a mortal woman. He has the power to change into a huge wolf-like hound and a few other tricks. But he finds his own powers terrifying.Even in prison, when he is being tortured and the "monster" inside him escapes and kills, he is tormented by guilt over this. When he ends up killing a constable while on a raid for the IRA, he feels more guilt. But when his own wife is killed, he fights back.

At first, I found this novel a little dark for my tastes, but after the prison scene was over, I fell into it. The language is powerful and clean. There was enough detail to make me feel that I was there, but never so much that I felt like the author was trying to prove her credentials. This is one of those fantasies that does exactly what I think only fantasy can do. It makes us see ourselves and the world upside down, inside out, and yet just right. What is it that makes humans continually fight each other and be unable to make peace? It's the monster inside us.