My Thoughts On Eat, Pray, Love, About 3 Years Later Than When Everyone Else Was Talking About It.

Okay.
I just need to get this off my chest.

It mostly started with a conversation I had with Erica last weekend about Eat Pray Love. Full disclosure? I loved that book (it was so funny, and endearing, and honest, and funny!), and Erica did, too, and we kind of ranted a bit at the backlash it received after the movie was made (mostly, it must be said, by people who didn't even read the book, which, if you've known me at all through the Harry Potter and Twilight phenomenons, makes me want to kick some faces in - you don't actually get to be a critic of something until you've actually read or watched that which you are attempting to critique. Otherwise, you're not a critic. You're a moron.)
But then I found myself flipping through channels yesterday and watching the movie again, and then I tweeted about it, and then some people agreed with me and some people didn't. But the discussion on Twitter brought up a couple of things that I've been turning over in my head for a while now, namely after I had a conversation with Soulless Ginger about it (who, incidentally, tossed all these criticisms and more at the book, despite not even having read it. He didn't have to, though. He just knew what it was about.) And also, I'm sure we're all also aware that my sparkling brilliance cannot be contained within 140 characters, so we might as well hash it out right here.

Much like the thing with Twilight, I get it. It's super cool to hate on something that's suddenly become popular. If everyone loves it, it must mean they're dumb and you're smart, and besides, being cynical about something is funny. Dudes. I'm right there with you. And yeah, it's annoying when the media can't shut up about something. And maybe you didn't like the book. Totally understandable. No one can argue with what you like and what you don't.

But here's what I don't get: Almost every single time I hear someone criticize the book/movie, the same words come up: Self-indulgent, upper-class woman. Why is it that whenever a woman writes about her feelings and experiences, she's considered "self-indulgent" (and yet when Augusten Burroughs writes a totally boring book, it's considered literary)? And let's cut the shit: ALL memoirs are self-indulgent. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most personal writing is self-indulgent. I'll never forget the time when, late one night on Twitter, a follower asked me if I didn't think my last post was just a little bit self-indulgent. "Have you read my blog at all? It's ALL self-indulgent. That's the whole point." Most of us write about our personal experiences, our feelings, our actions, memories, or about the feelings, actions, and memories of the people around us. As they say in psychology, nothing we do is ever truly altruistic. We do things to gain some type of personal satisfaction or acknowledgement, on whatever level that might be. It's often the same with writing. But whatever. People who hate memoirs tend to hate them no matter what they're about (let's not even get into the "if you're under thirty, you haven't lived enough to write a memoir." currently popular snark. It's funny that you think you can tell someone else the worth or breadth of their life experience before even knowing what that is).
And why is it that just because someone is "upper class", that automatically makes their feelings less valid than those who aren't? Being poor doesn't automatically make you enlightened. I know we would like to think this, when we're struggling to make rent and stuffing Ramen down our throats for the billionth time, but to do so is to participate in ill logic. Also, see: Classicism. Narrow-mindedness. Stereotyping. Snobbery.

Basically, everything that lower-class folks typically like to attribute to those who are upper-class. Also - and you know I'm going to flip this coin - I don't see anyone complaining about all these bored upper-class men who are traipsing out to climb mountains and kayak rapids and sail around the world.  It's the same fucking thing. But to our ingrained social sense, those men are daring, adventurous, courageous. Yet something about a woman spending her own money (which she made by...weird, I know...writing her own books) to travel for a year, explore her psyche, learn how to meditate, and do the very thing that she's been doing for the past 10 years (aka, write a book about her experiences) seems to make some people extremely uncomfortable. What a self-absorbed jerk, right? I mean, happiness...everyone is entitled to the pursuit of it, but not you, affluent white women. You're outta the game.