We all love Jumanji. That’s a given. Jumanji is one of those movies that is the perfect cinematic experience. And by Jumanji I mean the Robin Williams film from 1995. I don’t mean the recent 21st century films with Dwayne Johnson. Don’t get me wrong, I have no quarrel with those Jumanji movies, but they’re definitely not the same as the 1995 film. Jumanji, a movie about a haunted board game that brings violent jungle-themed monsters from its own dimension over to our world, is the perfect Father’s Day film. No, seriously. Jumanji doesn’t exactly hit the viewer over the head with its message about fathers and sons but the emotional core is there. In fact, for a movie full of rampaging stampedes of animals trampling a mid-90s New England town, Jumanji can be surprisingly complex in some of its themes on family. Child psychiatrists would have a field day with the character of Russel Van Pelt, a murderous British hunter in a pith helmet who is devoted to killing the Robin Williams character Alan Parrish. Van Pelt is played by Jonathan Hyde, the same actor who plays Alan’s emotionally distant father Sam Parrish. One thing that has struck me rewatching Jumanji with my son is how well the special effects have held up. Jumanji is almost 30 years old and watching Alan Parrish get sucked into a haunted board game is still kind of horrifying. It’s a huge contrast to Twister, which was made a year after Jumanji. Twister, unlike Jumanji, has not aged well in its visual effects. Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) did the effects for both Twister and Jumanji. The beginning of Jumanji, where two children named Alan and Sarah start playing the board game, is absolutely freaky. We see Alan roll the dice. The board game shows the words “In the jungle you must wait/ ’Til the dice read five or eight.” We then see Alan watch with curiosity and then horror as his finger tips stretch out thinner than a sheet of paper. Alan Parrish’s arms follow his fingertips. They stretch out like long snakes and finally his whole body squeezes out in a torturous way and whirls above the game as Alan screams in terror. “Roll the dice!!!” we hear him shriek at Sarah before he disappears. He already knows that the dice must be rolled to five or eight or he is doomed. That scene is scary. And it’s still scary watching it almost 30 years later. Jumanji is a testament to how well-crafted effects which are imbued with the correct emotion can stand the test of time. Even the massive lion that Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter (Bradley Pierce) unleash from Jumanji still impresses. I also love the running gag of the disintegrating cop car belonging to long-suffering police officer Carl Bentley (a hilarious David Alan Grier). Bentley’s car becomes more and more damaged by the Jumanji game’s shenanigans throughout the movie until it’s finally eaten by a large carnivorous plant. Other effects have aged less gracefully (the less said about the fuzzy digital monkeys the better) but overall Jumanji’s CGI has held up surprisingly well. The practical effects of Jumanji are a bit more hit-and-miss. I loved the large elegant Parrish mansion festooned with jungle plants and flooded with monsoons. Less convincing were the large plastic spiders that attacked Alan (Robin Williams) and Sarah (Bonnie Hunt) towards the end of the film. And we can still see the rubber flexing around Robin Williams’ face when he is stuck in the wooden floor. Another problem I have with Jumanji is the ending. It’s a kids movie so obviously it’s going to have a happy ending. The problem I have is that the ending to Jumanji is a little *too* happy. *Spoilers* After Alan wins Jumanji, he and Sarah are immediately transported back to 1969 when they both started the board game. He and Sarah are children again. Alan’s parents are still alive. Alan and Sarah get to re-do on their childhoods without any of the Jumanji-induced trauma that spoiled their first childhoods. It’s just a bizarre message to send to kids. Hey kids, as long as you play by the rules all the bad things will totally go away! Your trauma will disappear. Your dead parents will come back to life. You’ll get a do-over on all the parts of your life that damaged you during the first time around. It’s all good! But of course that’s not true. Trauma is often permanent. Time does not reverse and give you a second chance. Dead parents do not come back to life. You don’t get do-overs. A lot of bad things that happen are permanent and you just have to manage them or work to persevere despite the past.
The lesson that sometimes bad things happen and there’s nothing you can do about them is a hard lesson for children to learn. And Jumanji kind of whiffs on that. Plus at the end we see Alan and Sarah as adults again. This time however they are on the second timeline and are happily married with a baby on the way. Which made me wonder a bit. Alan had been stuck in Jumanji from 1969–1995 in the first timeline, but Sarah had been in the real world. She would have known about stuff like the Challenger explosion and the Loma Prieta earthquake and Jeffrey Dahmer and all of that. Did she warn anyone while growing up again during the second timeline? Or maybe she did warn people about other disasters and since we’re all living in the second timeline, we don’t know about those disasters because she prevented them. And the disasters we do know about Sarah couldn’t warn us about because they didn’t happen in the first timeline. Whatever. I don’t know. It’s just a movie. And a good movie. I love Jumanji. Even if it still freaks me out.
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Warning: Huge spoilers for the movie “Hopscotch.” It’s a forgotten classic. Please watch it and then come back to this article if you haven’t seen the movie already. Hopscotch is a movie of its time and consequently a bit old fashioned. Released in 1980, Hopscotch received bad reviews and flopped at the box office. Part of the reason for the movie’s failure was its terrible tagline: “He’s about to expose the CIA, the FBI, the KGB… and himself!” It was a dumb, gross joke that completely mis-marketed one of the most intelligent movies of the decade. National Lampoon’s Animal House, released two years earlier, had suddenly redefined comedy into a cruder, more obscene format and the early eighties already had Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds and a whole bunch of grosser stuff waiting in the wings. The creators of Hopscotch, an intelligent espionage comedy full of older actors and a complicated international plot, made the mistake of trying to cater to the National Lampoon crowd. They saddled the film with a salacious tagline and an “R” rating (purely for language. Glenda Jackson’s bare shoulder is all we get for nudity)…. and nobody came. Hopscotch, in a nutshell, is a movie about taking revenge on your boss. The starts out with CIA agent Miles Kendig (played by Walter Matthau being peak Walter Matthau) hanging out at German beer halls and genially intercepting a Russian intelligence agent named Yaskov (Herbert Lom.) Kendig shakes down Yaskov for some microfilm and the two men part ways with no apparent hard feelings. They’re both old spies set in their ways, driven more by their love of routine than their love of country. Alas trouble is brewing for Kendig. A younger man named Myerson (Ned Beatty) has been promoted to Kendig’s supervisor and Myerson is a complete prick. When renting out his summer house, Myerson specifies to the realter “No kids, no pets, no Democrats.” Myerson, irritated by Kendig’s complete inability to be intimidated by him, angrily demotes Kendig to a desk job. Kendig refuses to take the demotion lying down and instead shreds his personnel file, quits the CIA and goes dark. That was apparently easy to do in 1980. Myerson is furious. He immediately sets forth plans to find Kendig and eliminate him. Kendig’s CIA protegee Joe Cutter (played by a young Sam Waterston pre Law & Order) is more amused than angered by Kendig’s stunt. Cutter, nevertheless, has to follow Myerson’s directives. The rest of the movie is basically Kendig playing a cat-and-mouse game with the CIA while in the process humiliating Myerson to the utmost degree. In the end Kendig does not appear to escape the long arm of the CIA. Kendig tries to fly away in a vintage WWII biplane but is shot down by Myerson. We never see Kendig’s body, just the faces of Myerson, Cutter and Yaskov as they see the smoldering remains of Kendig’s plane floating in the sea. “Sonuvabitch is dead finally,” Myerson says, turning away from the sea and heading back towards the CIA helicopter. “Sonuvabitch better STAY dead!” Cutter says. “Pity,” Yaskov replies, walking towards Cutter, “I shall miss him.” And here’s where things get interesting. My family and I absolutely love the movie Hopscotch. We have watched it together ever since we first got a TV and a VCR. The videotape of Hopscotch we rented from the video store put the movie in TV format with both ends of the screen chopped off. It was no big loss for most of the film. Missing the full majesty of late seventies fake wood decor and box TVs was hardly a tragedy for cinematic history. The TV format, however, becomes a huge problem during the climax of the film when Yaskov and Cutter are looking at Kendig’s plane. We are meant to see both Yaskov and Cutter in that moment. Yaskov and Cutter know Kendig well and at that moment they both believe Kendig is dead. In the TV format, however, we only see Yaskov. Cutter’s expression when he yells “Sunovabitch better STAY dead!” is absolutely necessary for his character arc. He’s yelling because maybe he wants to be heard above the helicopter rotor blades, but it may also be because he is in shock that his friend Kendig is now dead…. and Cutter actively participated in Kendig’s death. We can’t exactly tell what Cutter is feeling in the TV format because the power of the moment is muted. We can’t see Cutter’s face. Fortunately Youtube has provided a fully — restored cinematic version of Hopscotch that anyone can watch for free. In that version we see the entire screen as it was originally shot…. including the moment when Yaskov and Cutter stare at the wreckage of Kendig’s plane. Yaskov fully believes Kendig is dead and his expression is of resigned melancholy. Pity that Kendig is dead but he- like Yaskov- did not work in a career where there was a high likelihood of a peaceful retirement. They both knew the risks. Cutter, however, looks like he is about to laugh. Cutter, with the exception of Glenda Jackson’s character who plays Kendig’s girlfriend, knew Kendig the best. Cutter knows that Kendig would never paint himself into a corner or get himself into a situation that he would not be able to get out of in the end. It’s a game for Kendig. It’s as simple as hopscotch, whether it be grabbing a suspicious pack of cigarettes in Germany or faking his own death over the white cliffs of Dover. “Sonuvabitch better stay dead!” Cutter yells. Well-played Kendig, he’s thinking, well played…. but stay down. Stay down. Cutter’s expression in that moment oscillates between him wanting to cry and him wanting to laugh. Cutter knows that Kendig isn’t dead, but he also knows that he will never see his old friend again. Old CIA spooks who fake their deaths don’t usually reappear. You won’t see Hopscotch except on Youtube or possibly the Turner Classic Movie channel. And if you have reached this paragraph I hope you truly have already watched Hopscotch before starting my spoilerific essay. If you haven’t, however, you are in for a treat. I have deliberately not mentioned some amazing scenes.
But make sure you are watching the cinematic version of Hopscotch and not the TV VHS version. I’m a huge TERF and I do not like Lia Thomas. I don’t like how Lia Thomas cheated female athletes out of their medals and their swim records. I don’t like how Thomas thinks it’s okay for individuals who had the athletic advantage of passing through male puberty to compete against women. I don’t like how women athletes are being gaslit by AMAB trans athletes that a slight fall in testosterone levels puts individuals with a male-sized heart, male-sized lungs, male-sized shoulders and male-sized musculature on an equal playing field with women. We all know that’s not true. I also don’t like how Lia Thomas disrespected women’s boundaries by insisting on changing in a women’s locker room. There have been no reports of Thomas acting inappropriately towards Thomas’ other teammates. That being said, the mere act of insisting on using a shared space with women when you know you present as a 6'1" masculine presence with a broad shoulder breadth and a penis is an act of offense. It’s meant to intimidate women. So no, I don’t like Lia Thomas. That being said, I really can’t stand by and let current attacks on Lia Thomas pass without comment. If you have been on Twitter lately (and God bless you if you have because the Bird App is horrifying) you may have noticed that Lia Thomas is trending again. The transphobes are out in force and they are finally going to EXPOSE LIA THOMAS!!! How are they going to expose Lia Thomas? Is Lia Thomas gonna de-transition while saying “Thanks for the gold medals ya stupid bshz?” Have there been accusations of illegal activity made against Thomas? Nope. Lia Thomas just got “exposed” for (wait for it) BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH ANOTHER TRANS WOMAN!!!! Um. Okay? Yeah, so, um, that’s the big scandal. Lia Thomas has a girlfriend named Gwen Weiskopf. Weiskopf is a trans woman like Thomas. Weiskopf is also a consenting adult, like Thomas, and yeah. They make a cute couple. Huge scandal guys. And that leaves me scratching my head. Like…. at this point, how is Lia Thomas supposed to live her life? Trans women already get a lot of grief if they try to date cis lesbian women. Some of that is justifiable because frankly pressuring women who have made it explicitly clear that they do not want to be sexually intimate with people with penises strays dangerously far from the concept of consent. I’ve talked about this before, but I should also say that plenty of cis lesbian women do date trans women willingly.
Either way though THAT’S NOT WHAT LIA THOMAS IS DOING HERE! Apparently Lia Thomas is not allowed to date trans women. That’s the argument the transphobes on Twitter are making right now. What? Look, at this point people need to leave Lia Thomas (a consenting adult) and her girlfriend (another consenting adult) alone. Just leave consenting adults doing non-illegal stuff alone. Seriously. Lia Thomas has upset a lot of people, but she seems to make Gwen Weiskopf happy. And the rest is none of our business. It’s “Aro” or Aromantic Spectrum Awareness week.
And nobody cares. Which is fine because nobody should care. Giving any voice to this nonsense is bolstering a stupid movement that seeks to appropriate from both LGBTQ and Autism awareness activism. So what does it mean to be on the “aromantic spectrum” … at least according to @stonewalluk? Well, to quote the Stonewall twitter account, “Aro is an umbrella term used by people who don’t typically experience a desire to have romantic contact or interaction with an individual.” So you’re unable to experience romantic desire at all? Well, no. It’s a spectrum y’all, EXACTLY like Autism. “Others may feel attraction occasionally, or varying levels at different times.” So aro people don’t feel attraction except during the times that they do, and they can experience romantic feelings at varying levels. As one Twitter user said, “Isn’t that -like- everyone?” Yeah, it pretty much is. But hey, everyone wants a piece of that LGBTQ attention pie. Now cis het people finally have a reason to post a striped flag next to their bios. Oh, but they’re not cis het people anymore! They’re on the aro spectrum, which means they’re queer too! Where were all these queer people back in the days when LGBTQ people were fighting in streets for rights, getting denied medical care because of the AIDS scare, and being forced into conversion therapy? Sorry, I’m being a bit bitter. Maybe I’m being a bad ally to aro people. But speaking as someone who usually does not feel romantic desire except during the times that I do, I too am on the Aro spectrum. So I can criticize too pal! I am heartened, however, that very few people are taking this “Aro Spectrum Awareness Week” nonsense seriously. “Aro” seems to be a symptom of too much internet. At best, it’s harmless attention-seeking nonsense, like a fifteen-year-old coloring her hair purple. At worst, it appropriates from actual groups that need help, like people on the Autism spectrum, and gives a false definition for what it means to have a spectrum disorder. More worrying, there’s evidence that nonsense like “aromantic spectrum awareness” reclassifies trauma symptoms from past sexual assault as a person simply being “aromantic.” When I researched “aro awareness” I found that far too many people who classified themselves as “aromantic” or “asexual” had a history of being sexually assaulted. And let’s be clear. A trauma response is NOT a sexual orientation. Period. It’s a mental health problem that requires medical treatment. Reclassifying trauma as a simple sexual orientation that does not need intervention risks a psychiatric crisis and is linked to higher rates of suicidal thoughts. So let us celebrate “Aro Spectrum Awareness Week” the way it should be celebrated: by ignoring it completely. Be happy and single. Be happy and slightly single with occasional flings. Be flirty, be romantic, be only slightly romantic, be non-romantic, be in love, be only slightly in love, be not in love at all and just have fun. Just be yourself and be honest with your partners. And please stop appropriating from actual marginalized groups. There’s a cafe downtown that’s perfect for first dates. The food is good, the coffee is excellent, and the seating is uncomfortable. That last part is crucial because it means you’re not stuck with a bad date for hours. After 45 minutes you’re both gonna want to get up and leave. First test of a relationship: Does it pass the tiny metal chair challenge? Last month I unfortunately witnessed a REALLY cringe first date between two young guys at the cafe. Yesterday it happened again. I got to the cafe, opened my laptop, took out my earphones…. and just couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to my antibiotics lecture. I kept getting distracted by the couple sitting in front of me.
They were so much more interesting than studying the differences between macrolides and beta-lactase inhibitors. The couple were definitely on a first date. Their conversation was following a “getting to know me” pattern while at the same time being very flirtatious. The guy was cute, maybe late twenties. The woman he was talking to also appeared to be in her twenties though she was seated with her back to me. She got up once to get her coffee and I was a little surprised, once I saw her face, to see she was at least 50 years old. She looked GREAT for 50, don’t get me wrong. Great figure, lovely long hair, stylish jacket and a sort of posture that made me wonder if she had been a ballet dancer. The guy she was on a date with was clearly into her so yeah, get it girl! Ballet dancer came back with her coffee and she resumed her conversation with twenty-something guy. They were talking about their kids. Her kids were in college. His kids were still small and living with their mom. The date was going so well. It was such a difference from muffin guy and phone guy. And then- then!- the stupid twenty-something guy had to start talking about his ex. Guys, never do this on a date. Never trash your ex. It’s not gonna reassure your date that you’ll never choose your ex over her. It will just make her nervous that one day you’ll be just as angry with her as you are with your ex. I could see the vibe shift. Ballet dancer sort of withdrew a bit (“uh-huh, uh-huh…. okay…”) while twenty-something guy went on about his ex. And it was awful. Twenty-something guy talked about how his ex had been mad with him back when they were married because he had made his ex pick up his mom from the airport while his ex was two days overdue with their second child. And also watching their four-year-old daughter. Yeah, he made his heavily pregnant and exhausted ex pick up his mom from the airport. And he was trying to portray her as the villain for being angry about this. And oh boy did it get worse! After his total bitch of an ex got his mom settled at a hotel, she returned home and five hours later went into labor. “She woke me up,” Twenty-something guy said, “ She was like ‘You have to drive me to the hospital,’ and it was like 3 am! And I hate being woken up. HATE IT! Like, do NOT wake me up at that hour. I just can’t take it.” I saw ballet dancer stiffen in her chair. My heart went out to her, having to listen to this toxic garbage. Listen, if an attractive guy is single there is usually a reason. Period. The cooling of the atmosphere of that date was so dramatic that I think even twenty-something guy noticed. “Um, I mean, I did take her to the hospital. I did. I was just pissed,” he said. “Oh, okay,” Ballet dancer replied politely. But he had lost her. I could feel it. There was some more stuff about how awful it was for him to stick around at the hospital while his ex gave birth to their son. He hates hospitals and needles make him faint and his ex was ungrateful etc. etc. Oh lord, this date was awful. My antibiotics lecture was looking better and better in comparison. I scraped my chair back a bit and went to the restroom. The sound of my chair may have broken the awful spiral of that date because by the time I returned to my table both ballet dancer and twenty-something guy were gathering their things. “…. and I should be there by 12,” Ballet dancer was saying, “But thanks for the coffee!” “Yeah….” Twenty-something guy responded. He looked a little crestfallen. “I should go too. These chairs are kind of doing a number on me.” Round of applause for metal seats! TW: Descriptions of domestic abuse, anti-LGBTQ slurs, and the sense of female helplessness in the face of male aggression. I’ve listened to the first two episodes of “The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling.” I would have binged the whole thing but only two episodes are currently available. “The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling” is a podcast that was created and narrated by Megan Phelps-Roper. Phelps-Roper is a former member of the horrifying Westboro Baptist Church (the infamous “God Hates Fags” institution). Megan Phelps-Roper’s own story about how she was able to break away from Westboro despite being raised in that hate church is fascinating. The first two episodes of Phelps-Roper’s podcast have been made public. The episodes are bracketed by people talking about how much they hate JK Rowling because of Rowling’s statements about trans rights. The episodes themselves, however, are mostly a quick background and retrospective on JK Rowling. The first episode talks about JK Rowling’s life. The second episode is a blast of 90s nostalgia where Phelps-Roper describes the world when Harry Potter first rose to prominence. The Columbine massacre, the Clinton impeachment, the teen goth lifestyle, and loads of other fin du XXe siecle events are featured prominently in the second episode. For those of you saying “C’mon! Cut to the chase! Talk about the trans stuff!” well… you’ll have to wait. The first episode opens with Phelps-Roper talking to a bunch of Harry Potter fans. She asks them what they love about Potter. The answers are sweet. One man talks about his difficult past (“I had not such a great childhood”) and discusses how he felt “akin” to Harry Potter’s own troubled beginnings. When these Harry Potter fans are asked about JK Rowling herself, they are hesitant. Rowling is too controversial. “Um…” *uncomfortable silence* is the usual response. The fans just want to talk about Harry Potter. Which is great, in my opinion. We are then treated to an interview with JK Rowling. Rowling talks about how she had been in an abusive marriage during her twenties. Her then-husband Jorge Arantes frequently beat her. Rowling described how she had been writing the first Harry Potter book at the time and Arantes also threatened to burn her manuscript if she ever left him. Rowling described sneaking pages out of her manuscript — a few at a time so Arantes wouldn’t notice any missing- and photocopying the pages so that she could have an extra copy. This part is very difficult to listen to, especially if you have ever been in an abusive relationship. Arantes has been on record admitting that he abused Rowling and he has no regrets about the violence. The most heartbreaking part of the podcast so far, in my opinion, was Rowling’s description of how frightened she was of her ex husband even AFTER she became rich and famous. Rowling described how Arantes followed her to Edinburgh and broke into the house she bought with money she received from publishing the first Harry Potter book. She and her daughter had to flee. That resonated with me so deeply. Even when you escape abuse, you never really ESCAPE abuse. You’re still peeking around corners. You’re still looking over your shoulder. You’re still setting social media accounts to private and scrutinizing friends, wondering if they’re still in contact with your ex. You never truly escape. Seeing abusive men violate a space that you once considered safe is triggering.
I was a little surprised at how upset I became listening to that first episode of “The Witch Trials of JK Rowling.” It brought me back to a lot frightened places in my mind when I was in an abusive marriage. The second episode of “The Witch Trials of JK Rowling” is somewhat less traumatic. The 90s nostalgia is welcome after all the heaviness of the first episode. We hear from David Hogue, a Christian lawyer who argued that children in Arkansas public schools should not be allowed to read Harry Potter books. Hogue lost his case. When Phelps-Roper interviews Hogue for the podcast, Hogue confesses that he had not read Harry Potter when he had argued that the books were dangerous for children. He had only read excerpts. Hogue read Harry Potter a few years later. He tells Phelps-Roper that he has completely changed his mind and is glad he lost the case. “Some cases need to be lost.” Will trans activists feel the same way about Rowling in a few years? That she was right about preserving female-only spaces, tightening up gender ID laws, and not erasing women from core parts of women’s healthcare like pregnancy? I hope so. Already I am seeing movement among cis women friends who considered themselves staunch trans allies only a few years ago. The disregard for female fear of male aggression that too many AMAB trans activists demonstrate is alienating women. When women object, their rhetoric is considered “unsafe” and “harmful” and in need of censorship by even mainstream outlets like CNN. Burn the witch! David Hogue has shown that minds can be changed over time. Witches, however, cannot be unburned. If you grew up in the 90s, you probably had an American Girl Doll. The American Girl Dolls are overpriced dolls with LOADS of shiny accessories. All the dolls come with their own stories detailing their time during American history. When I was 12 (BACK IN THE DAY!) there were only three American Girl Dolls: Kirsten (who lived in the 1850s), Samantha (who lived in the early 1900s) and Molly (who lived during WWII). Nobody liked Molly because she had the plainest clothes and accessories. Her family pinched pennies to support the war effort. Each doll came with six stories: “Meet Kirsten (or Samantha or Molly),” “Kirsten Learns a Lesson,” “Kirsten’s Surprise,” “Happy Birthday Kirsten!” “Kirsten Saves the Day,” “Changes for Kirsten.” Each girl had the same books with the same titles and the same illustrations. Each girl had the same long luscious brushable hair and the same price tags that could easily make Mom spend half her month’s paycheck buying clothes for a fucking doll. I really can’t explain why American Girl Dolls were so hypnotizing for me. I didn’t want to play with them. I just wanted to dress them. And style them. And pose them on my dresser while I read those insipid yet strangely comforting American Girl books. They were safe books with safe titles and safe stories. All the girls would learn a lesson and save the day and have changes happen. No surprises. Anyway now us Millennials are getting a bee in our bonnets because the American Girl Doll company has come out with a couple of American Girl Dolls who live in the 90s. When I heard the news, I was a little surprised that the American Girl Doll company was still in business. I mean, kids don’t really play with toys anymore, do they? They’re all on computers these days. Toys-R-Us went out of business for this reason. How can an obscenely overpriced doll-and-book company still be roaring along during this digital age?
It has to be Millennial nostalgia keeping the American Girl Doll company flush. That’s the only explanation. And here’s the American Girl Doll trolling us Millennials by making a ’90s American Girl Doll. And they will be sold next to the Revolutionary War American Girl Doll presumably. I mean, I get it. A quick perusal of past American Girl Dolls shows that the American Girl company may be running out of decades of American history. There’s already an ’80s American Girl doll, a ’70s American Girl doll and a ’60s American Girl doll. And ’90s nostalgia is huge right now. The thing is that the ’90s were also kind of dull. It was an uneventful era. It was fun, don’t get me wrong! The post-Cold War peace was an awesome time where America was on top and nobody really worried about anything. Will Nicki and Isabel, the 90s girls, have books discussing the challenges of not being able to log onto the internet if your mom had to make a phone call? Or how the nation was coping with a president getting a blow job in the Oval Office? (Ooff… try to explain THAT one to your pre-adolescent readership!) Honestly I would be more interested in an American Girl doll growing up during the 9/11 era or the COVID era (hm, a bit too soon for that). At least those were times of genuine national turmoil! Oh well, that will probably happen in 2040 or so when the American Nonbinary Person Doll company releases the 2000s dolls. I’ll be grumping about that too when that happens. But I’ll probably buy them anyway. Biden does not demand our attention. He does not want our “views.” He does not care about “ratios” on Twitter. He does not break into hives if his name has not trended on social media. Biden grew up in 20th century America. He cut his teeth in an era that pre-dated the attention economy. It is soothing to have a president who does not need eyeball and heart emojis to motivate him. I’m just gonna say it. You can tell that Biden knows how to do his job slowly. He has an attention span that has been unravaged by smartphone-induced jitters. Biden’s campaign promise was that he would make the news boring again if he were elected. That hasn’t exactly been true internationally (hello Ukraine war!) but when it comes to Biden the news has been refreshingly dull. After an era of Trump tweets and DeSantis craziness and snappy “like”- hungry tweets from AOC it’s been nice to have a president who doesn’t constantly scream for our attention. “Pity the Bored Political Journalist” David Harsanyi snarked last April. “Gone are the tweets that sent newsrooms scrambling.” Wrote Max Tani in Politico, “So long to the five alarm Friday news dumps that had editors frantically rearranging weekend plans. Bye-bye to the massive TV budgets for White House specials and the firehose of publishing deals for books about the administration.” Boo hoo. The news may have loved Trump but we the average Americans are so glad we do not live under that constant stress anymore. Biden is an old man. He has played this game for a long time. He has seen food prices go up and down. He has seen gas prices rise and fall. He has seen his wife and baby daughter die. He has seen one son succumb to a brain tumor while the other son fell into addiction. He has seen people love him, then hate him, then become indifferent to him and then vote for him again. As long as you punch your card in and out at the end of the day and work through the mistakes while taking credit for the successes, you’ll be okay.
Biden in his own dull competent way is inspirational. It’s easy to underestimate Biden with all of his stumblings and weird jokes and out-of-touch Grandpa speeches. Bernie Sanders underestimated Biden. Trump underestimated Biden. Hell, Vladimir Putin BADLY underestimated Biden. Don’t underestimate Biden. He’s an old man and that in and of itself is a warning to those who go against him. You don’t grow old in Washington by not knowing how the game works. Biden knows what the American people want. What we want is to be left alone and to not have to pay attention to him. And Biden has given that to us. Biden does not demand our attention. And that’s great. I recently wrote an article about how anti-feminism has failed young Christian conservative women. At the time I had wanted to discuss Jinger Duggar and her recent memoir Becoming Free Indeed where she condemned the specific IBLP conservative Christian ways that had hurt so many women. Now I want to discuss a far less well-known pair of Christian celebrities: Elizabeth and Anna Sofia Botkin. Elizabeth Botkin and Anna Sofia Botkin are sisters in the fundamentalist Christian Botkin family. The Botkin family are affiliated with Vision Forum, a prominent Christian organization founded by Doug Phillips. Phillips, through Vision Forum, preached a controversial pro-patriarchy philosophy of life that was founded on the principle that women weren’t really capable of making decisions for themselves. Vision Forum fell apart in 2014 after a woman who worked as a nanny for Doug Phillips’ family alleged that Phillips sexually abused her. The Botkin sisters, Anna and Elizabeth, have spent their lives discussing how evil feminism is. The Botkin sisters have made videos aimed at young girls talking about how a woman’s only duty in life was to be a housewife and mother. The Botkin sisters also wrote So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God. In their book the Botkin sisters wrote “Why do I have an innate need for male affection, love, and protection? Because that’s how God created women to be. We will not be able to understand our own needs and desires and strengths and how we ought to relate to our fathers until we understand the original relationship God created between men and women.” (Yikes) “We would not exist but for men. Man was our source. Man was formed from dust, but woman had her origin and being from man and for man, and it is because we were created from the rib of a man that we have an innate inbuilt desire to be restored to that side of man…. God created men to be more than just optional lifestyle accessories. He created women to be dependent on them in a good way.” “Complete independence from a man would go against the very order of God’s creation.” “Every woman’s life is built around men and men’s role and leadership in some way.” “This is true for the parasitical women who live like leeches off men and whose lives revolve around attracting men and for the die-hard feminists who dedicate their lives to proving that they don’t need men and for the Godly virtuous women who understand that submitting to God means joyfully submitting to the authority He has placed over them.” And double yikes. This conflation of men, husbands and fathers with God is just so dangerous. Can you imagine being a woman with this type of upbringing trying to leave an abusive marriage? “How dare you leave your husband! That would be like leaving God!” Can you imagine being a woman with this type of upbringing being single and in her thirties? She would probably interpret her unmarried status as being rejected by God. Because, you know, “woman had her origin and being from man.” And Man = God. Fundie Fridays described the Botkin sisters best in her excellent video : “Bethy and Kristen (two similar Christian celebrity sisters also known as “Girl Defined” who preach anti-Feminism) eventually got the Prince Charmings that were promised to them by purity culture thought leaders. In contrast Anna and Elizabeth are in their mid-thirties, still single, and living at home with their family” And yeah, that happens sometimes. And it’s nobody’s fault. Well, it’s nobody’s fault except anti-feminist preachers like Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips who preached to young Christian women that if they followed all the rules they would get the happy endings. As Jinger Duggar said, “All I had to do was deposit the exact lifestyle Gothard advocated, and I would withdraw health, money, a wonderful husband, and a bushel of kids.” That is the false promise of anti-feminism. Feminism tells women that the “wonderful husband and a bushel of kids” is fine but sometimes life doesn’t turn out that way. Getting married and having kids is not like getting a job or an apartment. It’s not dependent on hard work. Marriage is a lucky roll of the dice, not a reward based on merit. Marriage is a lottery. And when you lose the lottery, you are at a higher risk of being financially unstable. This is why feminists advocate for low-cost childcare so single moms can work. This is why feminists ask for reduced stigma on unmarried women or women who marry and have children later in life. Anti-feminists say “Pshaw! Don’t worry girls! Just trust in the plan and do exactly as the patriarch asks! Don’t listen to those feminists! Trust in the plan.” Anti-feminism is like QAnon for young girls. Fifteen years after writing So Much More, Anna and Elizabeth Botkin started a podcast. You can hear the sadness in their voices as they talk about how “a lot of us have grown up hearing phrases like ‘marriage and motherhood are a woman’s highest calling.’ We’ve read books or seen books on Biblical womanhood that were, you know, presenting motherhood and wifehood as what Biblical womanhood means and what it’s all about.” “It can be very difficult when you hit 35 and you realize that you don’t fit into your own worldview.” Ouch. Yes. I can only imagine. Thank God I was brought up a feminist so I didn’t have to hate myself when life happened. Watching Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin wrestle with their “failure” because they are in their thirties, single, no kids, beautiful, financially stable and quite influential in the fundamentalist Christian community is a bit of a trip.
Anna Sofia says that they both have “grown” since they first counseled Christian girls that all girls are nothing but dirt unless married and with child. Thank goodness for that though I can’t see how either sister could NOT have “grown” considering their own personal circumstances. These women may not be feminists yet, but simply being allowed to no longer blame themselves for the uncontrollable aspects of life like being unmarried has got to be a relief. There is so much more to life than hating yourself for losing the lottery. I know what people think when they see a couple where the man is significantly older than the woman.
They think “Ugh, that guy is a shallow creep! Can’t handle a woman his own age!” “Probably left a loving wife and kids for this hussy!” “You give a guy 20 years of your life and he leaves you for a girl the same age as his daughter!” The stigma is real folks. Now don’t get me wrong, if you’re a 45 -year-old guy with a 19-year-old girlfriend I’m gonna judge you. I’m gonna judge the hell out of you. Women who are only two or three years out of childhood should only date people in their own age group. Period. That being said, if you’re a 45-year-old guy with a girlfriend in her mid-to-late twenties, that’s fine. 28-year-olds are adults. They have jobs. Many women at this age are already well on their way to full careers. Many have their own apartments. Many are applying for a house mortgage. That being said, as a 40-something woman I want to bust some myths about 40-something men pairing off with 20-something women. The idea that 40-something guys are leaving women their own age in the dust to chase after younger women is untrue. In my experience most 40-something men looking for serious relationships usually prefer women their own age. It makes sense. Most single middle-aged guys are divorced with high school-aged kids. These men aren’t looking to start new families. They don’t relish the idea of changing diapers in their fifties. They don’t like seeing a blank stare during a date when they ask “Man, remember 9/11?” Here’s the thing though…. forty-something women don’t really want to date. The latest Pew Research says that 71% of single women over 40, (yes, 71%) are simply not looking to date right now. In contrast, 68% of single men over 40 ARE looking to date. Ooof. The disconnect is real folks. And honestly that makes sense. Unmarried women tend to have longer lives and are generally more healthy, according to recent surveys. If you’re forty and the kids are in high school and you can work longer hours and have enough cash to travel a bit … why would you want a husband? Who needs that burden? Unmarried men, on the other hand, tend to be much more stressed, have shorter lifespans and have lower rates of survivability from diseases like cancer than married men. The urge to escape the single life is real for middle-aged guys. They’re literally fighting for their lives. So why not have middle-aged guys date twenty-something women? After all, guys in their twenties are going through a bit of a crisis right now. They are less likely to be in college, less likely to be employed, and more likely to be suffering from mental health problems than men born before 1990. No twenty-something woman really wants to date a twenty-something guy in 2023. So can you blame twenty-something women for looking at older men as potentially better partners? And can you blame forty-something men for partnering with twenty-something women when literally over 70% of single women in their forties just don’t want to date? Just let consenting adults be happy. And leave the rest of us cat ladies in peace. |
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