Last night, a couple friends, Mama Hausen, and Nigel and I all got together to watch The Apprentice finale. It was a night of debating, wine, and one friend accusing me of being a "liberal, feminist nazi!" Nevertheless, the night was fun, but the outcome of the show weighed on my mind all night and now this morning. Why on earth didn't Jennifer M. win, I keep thinking, she's well educated, has almost the same experience as Kelly, she's tough....
Actually, I came to my answer last night: Trump is sexist. The world is sexist. Jennifer Massey didn't win because she is a woman. Face it. Last night's show should have been called The Kelly Perdue 3-Hour Finale, because for three hours all we heard was unremitting praise for Kelly, interspersed with a speckle of brave souls who spoke up for Jennifer's abilities.
It was disgusting, and I let everyone in my house know that I thought it was sickening what was going on. But no one agreed with me, not even my mother.
Mama Hausen: "Amy, Kelly was more organized, and he's business savvy."
Nigel: "You're looking at with biased eyes. You've been calling Trump sexist through-out the whole show."
Friend 1 (male): "If you think Jen M. deserved to win, then you're out of it."
This went on all night.
You know what bothered me the most? The live boardroom meeting. Jennifer went into why she was well qualified to the job. She recited her lovely education, that she'd went into a very competitive legal market in San Francisco.... And Trump acted inpressed, even chiding Kelly for not having "better" credentials. So Trump asks Kelly why should he pick him over Jen. And the look on Kelly's face said: "Because I am Young, White, and Male." As if that would have been enough. I guess it was.
The YWM degree has way more precedence over an Ivy League education attained by any woman or minority. The YWM degree cannot be...well, trumped.
Friday, December 17, 2004
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
What the Hell are We So Depressed About?
A friend of mine has been given a prescription for Wellbutrin XL, an anti-depressant. And she's been fretting for days about whether to have the prescription filled: "Amy, I didn't think I needed medication," she said during lunch.
"Then don't have it filled." I replied.
"Yeah, but Dr. ______ thinks it will help take the edge off the day."
Yuck. It's that type of mentality that has half of the country medicated. Everyone's trying to take the "edge" off the day. What exactly is the edge of the day, anyway? Is it having to rise in the morning and go pay some bills? Or maybe it's having to look after your children. Is it facing humanity that's so arduous, with all its idiosyncrasies and expectations? I just don't think there is a definitive explanation why so many people are being told they're depressed and that said depression needs medication. Even children as young as ten are being prescribed anti-depressants.
And what the hell are we so depressed about anyway? Is it because we can't live up to other's expectations of us? If we can't keep our weight under 110 pounds or our skin one fine line freer, our children in tip-top academic and filial duty Shangri-la or keep our marriages in the honeymoon stage, then, by GOD, someone medicate us!.
What do we think our grandparents did before anti-depressants? Just fucking killed themselves? No, they got through it. Naturally.
The path of medicating anything that gets in the way of us being a super-human is getting out of hand. Children are on Ritalin and anti-depressants, adults now have AADD and "debilitating" depression, and, guess what, there's a magic pill that will stop the pain of being human and make us all feel better.
And in the midst of it all: humanness. No amount of medicine can change that. Women still bleed every twenty-eight days, we still have to defecate, eat to survive; we still have to be human. So what the hell is all this medicine doing for us? Let me guess: taking the edge off the day, right?
"Then don't have it filled." I replied.
"Yeah, but Dr. ______ thinks it will help take the edge off the day."
Yuck. It's that type of mentality that has half of the country medicated. Everyone's trying to take the "edge" off the day. What exactly is the edge of the day, anyway? Is it having to rise in the morning and go pay some bills? Or maybe it's having to look after your children. Is it facing humanity that's so arduous, with all its idiosyncrasies and expectations? I just don't think there is a definitive explanation why so many people are being told they're depressed and that said depression needs medication. Even children as young as ten are being prescribed anti-depressants.
And what the hell are we so depressed about anyway? Is it because we can't live up to other's expectations of us? If we can't keep our weight under 110 pounds or our skin one fine line freer, our children in tip-top academic and filial duty Shangri-la or keep our marriages in the honeymoon stage, then, by GOD, someone medicate us!.
What do we think our grandparents did before anti-depressants? Just fucking killed themselves? No, they got through it. Naturally.
The path of medicating anything that gets in the way of us being a super-human is getting out of hand. Children are on Ritalin and anti-depressants, adults now have AADD and "debilitating" depression, and, guess what, there's a magic pill that will stop the pain of being human and make us all feel better.
And in the midst of it all: humanness. No amount of medicine can change that. Women still bleed every twenty-eight days, we still have to defecate, eat to survive; we still have to be human. So what the hell is all this medicine doing for us? Let me guess: taking the edge off the day, right?
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