In the Wall Street Journal’s website, host Steven Kurutz interviews on video “Julia and Julie” author Julie Powell, seen here.
It is worth a quick view, in which the author and blogger (whose story was turned into the movie “Julia and Julie” by Nora Ephron) talks about her second book, “Cleaving: A Story about Marriage, Meat and Obsession.”
The book details her life, after she became somewhat famous, and engaged in an affair with an old flame. She moved to Upstate New York to become an apprentice butcher. What is interesting is how the author casually acknowledges the new definition of marriage: cohabitation with options. “Growing” in a marriage is where the partner with the most power (mostly but not always as Tiger Woods points out, the wife) has an affair. Neither the author nor the interviewer challenge the assumption that adultery is a normal, everyday occurrence to be expected in most marriages, and no big deal. [Particularly, for obvious reasons, female adultery.]
The interview is fascinating for other reasons too. The author and blogger, Powell, would not turn a single male head with any options. Only 36, according to Wikipedia, she looks at least a decade older. A good deal of weight makes the author’s plain looks into instant haus-frau. Obviously, raw animal attraction was not the marker here in her notorious affair. Given her looks, it is a safe bet knowing men that her lover was no great looker either, unlikely to generate admiring looks from women as she herself was to generate gazes from men.
What is at work?
First, the redefinition of marriage. Note that the author and blogger casually publicizes, and indeed depends on that publicity, of her affair. Quite clearly she does not love her husband, and indeed has ill-concealed contempt for him. Otherwise she would not shame him with publicizing her affair. But just as important is the lack of shame or fear of social condemnation that Powell and her interviewer feel about adultery. It simply is a fact of life in marriage now, socially accepted and about as shame-producing as not taking out the garbage. Particularly for the partner with the most power in the marriage (the most famous or high earning or sexually desirable), which is mostly but not always women, adultery is the new normal. A change this complete will not be undone anytime soon. Even the SWPL crowd, that the Wall Street Journal caters to, no less than the New York Times, accepts casual adultery. [Note carefully the appearance and demeanor of the interviewer, Kurutz. Very SWPL. A more stunning indictment of the "new" Wall Street Journal could not be imagined.]
Secondly, it is the source of Powell’s complaints with her husband. As detailed here in the Daily Mail, Powell lives her life by the maxim of the “bad slayer” Faith in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” : “Want. Take. Have.” This is the line the “bad slayer” (played by Dollhouse’s Eliza Dushku) says shortly before she kills one of the good guys. Indeed, the two-year affair was characterized by S/M sex and endless Buffy references pepper the book.
It’s clear what Powell really had against her husband. She was famous and he was not. Married as High School sweethearts, her husband who supported her while she stayed at home, blogging, and writing, simply failed to excite her and indeed, generated nothing but contempt (and still does, hence the constant publicity about the affair as punishment for being ordinary). Much like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” author Powell takes the message to heart: only someone who is far more dominant and powerful than she is will do for a sexual playmate, and fidelity and family is for suckers. Like Buffy’s non-stop pursuit of more powerful, abusive, vampires, even those who rape her, Powell clearly felt nothing but disgust for the ordinary man who was her husband, once she got a bit of fame. [I must confess, I had never heard of her until the reviews of the movie.]
This has interesting implications for modern marriage. First, even relatively unattractive women will have no trouble cheating, in fairly ickly S/M situations. So much for the song that advises to take an ugly woman for your wife! No social condemnation will be forthcoming, from anyone. Indeed it will be celebrated as female empowerment. [In the case of Tiger Woods like situations, the sympathy will be with the more famous partner.] Secondly, women will cheat the moment they find their relative positions changed to their husbands. A woman who earns more or equal to her husband, or has a modicum of fame, or any attention whatsoever that is greater than her husband’s, will be far more likely to cheat. At a minimum, her desire for her husband will die, never to come back, and she will actively pursue other men.
Third, and perhaps most interesting, is how women even in their thirties have taken junk popular culture to heart. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was filled with as many toxic messages for women as Twilight was, only with better actors and dialog. The same belief that one can be 16 forever, or pursue endlessly the brooding, violent bad boy (even when he rapes you) informs women’s belief systems into their thirties. The idea that female power is encapsulated in “bad-sexy” slayer “Faith” who uses her sexual attractiveness as much as her super-powers is a troubling sign. As is her mantra that was intended on the show to demonstrate stupidity and lack of decency (the character is later shown to be an unrepentant murderer of innocents who enjoys killing).
Women no less than men need stories that instruct them how to behave, how to live, and how to act. With religion a fading memory save faux-pagan Gaia worship in the “Green” movement, church attendance particularly among younger women collapsing, mobile families lacking grandmothers and aunts giving constant moral instruction, women even into their thirties (and probably older) look to junk female-appealing popular culture that tells them to give into their worst rather than better natures.
Lacking in Twilight or Buffy is any feminine restraint, modesty, compassion, kindness, comfort, caretaking, or frankly, womanly strength to endure and take care, of others as well as one’s self. Rather, a narcisstic, forever-16 attitude is part of the cultural instruction. It is “Want. Take. Have.” Which led the Faith character to murder a nice old man who she’d never met before to gain an apartment filled with nice clothes and a Playstation. Doubtless the Twilight-Tween, Teen, and older female audience, including Moms and women in their thirties, embrace the bad-boy chasing, “my boyfriend can beat you up” ethos of that movie and book series.
This is the new normal. The new state of marriage. Affairs simply a fact of life, to be expected by whatever partner has the least sexual market value on the part of the one with the most. Women will want to, and be likely to cheat, the moment their husbands have less social power than they do. Even unattractive women will find willing partners to cheat with. And bad-boy chasing and whatever faded sexual power a woman can muster in her thirties will be part of her (profoundly immature) identity until menopause.
With this redefinition of marriage, it is no wonder that women find fewer men they desire as willing to commit.
