Sometimes, an article seems portentous to me, like one of those wayward birds that the old pagans would take as an omen. When I came across a piece in Salon, written by a woman in her late 20s, that at first glance looks like another one of those hedged confessionals authorettes are so fond of writing, I found a hint of impending change.
Anna Davies, a New York writer along the lines of Carrie Bradshaw, has finally determined to stop detailing her sexual adventures in the big city. In an article titled “I’m done writing about my sex life,” the 28-year-old woman explains how she got her start in the literary world, as many young women do today, by writing about sex.
Ms. Davies admits that she sought out ever more risquée and bizarre sexual encounters to provide grist for the publishers’ mill, sometimes heading home “blackout drunk” with men the same day she met them.
Although Davies characterizes her work as something akin to “pole dancing,” I’d say that’s an understatement; it was more like straight up prostitution. She writes:
In a way, tossing off pithy, 500-word pieces about sex for $100 a pop was beginning to feel a little bit like a one-night stand.
Actually, if you do the math, it appears that she was a relatively cheap prostitute as well, but her clients – various magazine publishers – apparently had the sexiness and prestige to get away with paying her so little for her efforts. It’s a sad and timeless tale: girl goes to big city while young and attractive, wastes her youth as a working girl, and is washed up before she hits 30. By the time she realizes what she’s done, and finally sees that she won’t be rescued at the end of the day by some Mr. Big, it’s already too late — she’s got a reputation that will trail her for years.
What’s different about this confessional, however, is that some of this regret comes through in Davies’ writing, and it was actually published. This is why I see something revolutionary about the piece. Rather than celebrate her “liberation,” the woman admits that people saw her as “young, dumb and déclassé,” and not a serious writer. She looks back at her behavior and cringes; she knows people saw her as little more than some corn-fed, provincial whore.
For years we’ve been reading about how women empower themselves by stripping, promiscuity, and throwing all discretion to the wind. For those of us who still hold onto some atavistic notion of decency, the ceaseless barrage of media promoting this lifestyle and message is akin to a terror bombing campaign that seems almost deliberately crafted to demoralize us. Sadly, though, it probably isn’t deliberate for the most part, but rather a result of greed, apathy and moral laziness. Humans have a tendency to lapse into complacency from time to time. In mass societies such as our own, these periods are magnified to monstrous proportions. And that there are those who defend this behavior should be no surprise — there’s a lot of money in it, after all. It’s no accident that feminists seek to set up a society of pimps and whores; they do have to make a living somehow, and they don’t have much else to offer.
But now there’s a hint of an awakening, a murmur of dissent from within the ranks. As the relentless recession marches on and the shock value of young women exposing themselves to the entire nation begins to wear off, the publishers are stooping even lower than the gutter into the very sewers in an effort to goad an increasingly jaded public into paying attention.
But it’s hardly working. Instead, we’re starting to see something else emerge: a tired, sullen boredom with it all. And it is when the people get bored that you know something is coming around the bend.
