I Piss On Your Grave.
A Black Eyed Review of The Total Woman & 80s Primetime Dramas
Last fall, I bought a used copy of Marabel Morgan’s The Total Woman. Sometimes, in order to write about horrible things, you have to read all about the horrible foundation beneath the things. So often that foundation is cemented forever between the covers of a book. I feel the need to explain this to you because the last thing I’d want is for someone to see Ms. Morgan’s book (I’ve decided I’ll call her Ms. Morgan because I figure the bra-burning honorific that adorns the cover of a popular feminist magazine must make her roll over in her grave, and I’m not above taking a cheap shot at the souls of the long dead and buried)… as I was saying, the last thing I’d want is for someone to see Ms. Morgan’s book nestled amongst my stacks and shelves of books as if I’d chosen it to be a faithful companion, special and beloved. Never.
Find an audio reading of this Black Eyed story above.
Turns out, the book was as dear to me as a pencil shaving after a long day of work. I tossed it in the garbage. And I was probably furious when I did.
I’m sure that the minute I turned to the following passage, I did the opposite of what the author asked and screamed my head off:
“The biblical remedy for marital conflict is as stated, ‘You wives must submit to your husbands’ leadership in the same way you submit to the Lord.’ God planned for the woman to be under her husband’s rule. Now before you scream and throw this book out…”
Unfortunately, I didn’t (yet) throw the book out, but continued to read Ms. Morgan’s words:
“First of all, no one says you have to get married. If you do not wish to adapt to a man, the negative implication is to stay single. If you are married and not adapting, you probably already know that marriage isn’t the glorious experience you anticipated… Unless the wife adapts to his way of life, there’s no way to avoid the conflict that is certain to occur… Man and woman, although equal in status, are different in function. God ordained man to be the head of the family, its president, and his wife to be the executive vice-president. Every organization has a leader and the family unit is no exception… Allowing your husband to be your family president is just good business…”
And so on, and so on, I read. I read as many of Ms. Morgan’s words as I could before losing my voice from all the screaming and ranting and fuming I did after each and every sentence. I hated this book. I loathed it. I loathed it so much that when I went to search for my copy I couldn’t find it anywhere, which means that, knowing myself, I threw the book in the trash.
I’m sure I wanted to set it on fire, but as a bibliophile, I’ve made promises to resist such theatrics. I still hate this book. I still think this book is trash, but my feelings here don’t matter because this piece of trash sold over 500,000 copies the year it was released. Since then, it has sold well over 10 million copies. It’d be foolish of me to believe that 10 million copies were purchased by folks like me who needed it for research. Could you imagine the sound of 10 million of us screaming? No? Well, go to YouTube and watch any footage of the Women’s March of 2017. I think that would be the sound.
“And isn’t negative attention just as powerful and validating in our culture?”
A couple of weeks ago I posted a series of 80s magazine covers featuring Donald Trump as a debonaire, real estate mogul and billionaire. I included these captions: Friends, the 80s were dangerously weird, and In the 80s, the world adored Donald Trump and men of his kind, quoting a recent essay I wrote for Black Eyed Stories. And people did what people do in hindsight and left comments saying:
I hated him then (in the 80s) and I hate him now…
I’ve never heard anyone who has known him say that they didn’t hate him…
No not the world. Not me. Repulsive men. Nope.
I vividly remember being aware that he was a creep beginning in the fifth grade…
In the 80s living in NYC, he was a buffoon… now a dangerous buffoon…
He’s a con and always has been…
Look, I get it. Nobody wants to admit that they saw the tsunami coming but thought it was harmless, or that it wasn’t a tsunami but just a wave, or that they welcomed the coming disaster because they were dazzled by its recklessness.
I believe the people who left those comments were being earnest. Really, I do. But I don’t think they were being entirely honest with themselves. Sure, they may not have liked Donald Trump or J.R. Ewing or Gordon Gekko, but didn’t they love to hate them? And isn’t negative attention just as powerful and validating in our culture?