First, this article, "Television Without Pity" explores the repercussions of the case brought against the writers of "Friends" by a disgruntled former writer's assistant. I'm really new to collaborative writing, but from what I've seen and participated in, the writers are absolutely right. If your sensibilities are easily offended, you have no business attempting to work in a creative collaborative situation. It's cases like this that keep women out of writer's rooms. This chick should have tried for a job at Oprah or on Lifetime: Television for Victims instead.
Speaking of things that make me ashamed of my gender, this article by Jack Marin on the new bestseller "He's Just Not That Into You" , written by former Sex In the City writers is right on the money in its proposition that maybe, just maybe, he's "not that into you" because there's something wrong with you:
"Any single guy will tell you there aren't that many good women around, either. When he finds one, he marries her if she will have him. Let's agree that neither sex is exclusively to blame when things don't wind up in wedded bliss.
There is something wildly condescending about the image of women as helpless creatures standing around minding their own business until men come into their lives and break their hearts. This, after how many waves of feminism?"
Right on! I don't think the writer goes far enough, though. (Though maybe his harsher opinions were edited out. Being, for better or worse, my own editor, I'm happy to step in and express mine.)
I have a lot of guy friends, and from listening to them I know there is just as much of a dearth of "good" women as "good" men. From my own experience and from observation, it seems like women fall into two categories: either they're successful with guys or they're not. Either guys fall for them hard and right away, or not at all. Either they always call, or they never call. And there's no way of telling who is going to fall into which category - it certainly seems to have nothing to do with looks. When Jack Berger told Miranda that the guy who didn't call her back just "wasn't that into" her, he should have added "Because you and your friends are desperate, painfully un-funny, materialistic cunts who have nothing to offer conversation-wise but lists of things you've recently purchased and no interests of your own and no curiosity and no motivation but snagging a rich husband as soon as possible."
That applies to the four women of that awful show, but they're just archetypes. What about real people? What makes some girls sought-after and others not? I'm going to get reamed for this, but why do I keep having the same conversation in hushed tones in ladies rooms about the Chick Lit Myth, that unquestioned accepted wisdom that men are jerks who never call the next day, that it's so hard to find a good guy...when this is the exact opposite of our experience? And nobody ever talks about it!
In my experience, this city is is chock full of "viable" guys. They're everywhere! I honestly think that any girl who thinks otherwise is just not interested in being friends with straight men - or she has no common ground on which to relate to them. The girls I know who are most successful with guys are the same girls who have a lot of platonic straight male friends. There has to be a connection there.
So, I'm asking what makes you pursue one girl over another? (And let's leave looks out of it, since we're assuming you were initially attracted to her enough to go out with her.) Email me at lindsay(at)lindsayism.com and I'll tally and post the results of this unscientific survey later this week.
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