Kristen Stewart Cheats, Millennial Women Weep
People actually care that someone cheated. Twilight fans wanted to believe in the real-life version of their perfect romance, two people bound together by a love so searing that infidelity is a laughable impossibility. A love that’s always fresh, always passionate, never worn-in and never changing. One endless blissful union, in which every moment is like that first tingle up your spine when you realize He might like me.
it was like awesome whatever
That tells me two things. First: my generation hasn’t been brainwashed enough to give up on the idea of lasting monogamy. If you think all love is doomed and lifetime partnership is just a shackle on female self-fulfillment, you wouldn’t be that upset to hear Kristen Stewart was embracing her sexual liberation with another man. If we’d given up on monogamy as a lost cause, there wouldn’t be the cultural phenomenon of Twilight’s success, an epic story of eternal love if ever there was one.
The second thing the outrage directed at Stewart tells me is that a lot of women of my generation are complete adolescents when it comes to love. I’m no expert either. At 24, what have I got to tell you about lasting partnerships and maturity? Though I’m still working out the details in practice, I have learned one thing: love comes in seasons.
The blissfully exciting moments of discovery, the deep wells of warmth found in recognition and mutual respect, the pride for another’s achievements, the gratitude for his apology or forgiveness. Love isn’t a continuous ecstatic moment. Teenage girls will be foolish about Twilight-style love for as long as there continue to be teenage girls, bedroom doors, and moments stolen from homework to daydream. And grown women will continue to secretly indulge in these fantasies too, as long as we have nightstand drawers and gal movie nights and moments stolen from the unrelenting chores of being an adult.
But what are we missing?
we’d all like to think Kristen Stewart had been given the gift of a lasting, true love.
I’m not sure that comparing a book that has both a wedding, camping trips in the cold, life-threatening pregnancies, highly involved in-laws compares in any fashion to Jane Austen, who ends her books with engagements. Not even marriages- engagements.
where do you get that Twilight is a candy-colored dreamscape? the supporting characters have issues like- oh, gang-rape, suicide, war depradations, gang violence in Seattle, serial killers, stalkers….oh- and probable mental health issues- bipolar disorder, anomie and so on.
I’m more worried about the very morally unserious books about women shopping, drinking apple martinis and picking up strange men for one night stands. or the books that seek to normalize divorced parents, cutting, drug use, random sexual encounters amongst high school students, abandoning children in parking lots- and those are the books my poor children are required to read in junior high, and some even in elementary.
Or, say, Hunger Games, that somehow, every last reviewer manages to note that the Colorado mountain complex- home of the totalitarian communist-style regime- is now NORAD- but not that the peculiar habits of starving people is what happened in the Ukraine. And not reported in the New York Times- which the poor author, somehow, thinks is a guide to life. How on earth does any reviewer miss mentioning the Ukraine famine? It happened there, to them, and that’s what NORAD was supposed to prevent.
Or that odd little series of books sold at the grocery store, again, set in America, where third children are verboten? and,again, not one single reviewer mentions that that’s what communists and barbarians do, not Americans. They get assigned these books in school as “big think” books. Without, you know, any history, any context. Russian kids ought to be having nightmares, not mine. Mine can have different, happier dreams, and, well, different nightmares. How about nightmares involving the FDA denying them life-saving surgery?
Steph Meyer wrote a terrific set of fantasy books with a strong set of subtexts, and a profound set of western civ allusions. Kristen Stewart, a fairly average Valley Girl actress had the privilege of making the film. She’s not Steph Meyer. She’s a veteran actress. Honestly, I’d expect her to be a director by the end of it. Penny Marshall is a director, not a dim-witted factory hand. I think I’d be more upset if Steph Meyer’s family cratered. In grief, not in judgment- she’d know what was lost. I don’t know that KS has any idea what a long-lasting, deeply happy marriage looks like. As close as she can get is that predatorial director. Entitled greed and lust are what she’s seen.
And, goodness. They weren’t married. That set of vows hadn’t been said. Being single and stupid is what being young and single is about. If Mr Pattinson had wanted to lock that up, he shouldaputaringonit, like, the day they shot the wedding scene. cart out the actor, cart in a real pastor.
and, wasn’t Mr Pattinson spending a bit more time in strip bars than possibly Ms Stewart would care for? I know that one boyfriend’s trip to a “massage parlor”- even though he swore up and down that nothing happened, it was just for business- meant that I spent the following night at a male’s house, and then said ” nothing happened- you’ll just have to trust me.” Ms Stewart might be driven by the same base rage, that can’t quite be spoken- strip bars are legal, and supposedly clean and theoretically very socially clever- nobody is shunning Dita von Teese when she goes out in public, for instance. Mr Pattinson’s trips were chronicled in gossip magazines, too.
I do wish both of them the best in their career, and in their private life, however it might fall out.
Thank you, ari. And, I totally agree that if Pattinson wants Stewart to act like a wife, he should marry her.
Thanks for sticking up for the Twilight Saga.
Hmmm, I expected my wife to act like a wife before we even got engaged, just as she expected me to act like a husband.
Yes! That is why men don’t propose to a woman the first time they get a warm fuzzy feeling.
Really? You expected her to have sex with you and have your babies before you got married?
Marrying her would have been the worst mistake of his life. At least this way there won’t be months of legal strife before it is completely over.
And don’t worry TOO much about the future teenage girls reaction. She (Stewart) is already ‘Old (Stick) News’ to them. She’s like ‘so 2 years ago’.
Once upon a time, the husband of a person dear to me, started going to ‘peeler’ bars, in the middle of the day of all things. The wife ( a mother of 2 infants) had to go into the bar to communicate with him.
The problem is, and this goes back to Feminism’s great failure: today, guys with guy friends, sitting in peeler bars drinking beer, is no longer nasty, it is ‘edgy’, and ‘cool’, and a girlfriend/wife really no longer has any ‘right’ to object, not if she is to also be ‘cool’. But, as you mention, Ari, there is that rage, underneath it all.
I had no idea that Rob frequented these places. I suppose he likes the grunge. But now, I hate that Kristen has grovelled and wept.
and here’s where my habit of picking up gossip magazines when any of the twi- cast is on the cover pays off.
Mr Pattinson attended a stripper bar in Germany. The following week ( night? weekend?) he invited his father along to the same bar, to meet one particular girl. Now, what wasn’t mentioned in the piece was- was it an A bar? a B bar? a C bar? Did it have champagne service and a VIP section? Any of these would mean the difference between conversation, teasing, zipper- polishing with her behind, fondling, or the legendary hands inside her panties, to sex in a chair. Ingenuity, and legal codes, and total guy hot-ness..
Anyway, the girls in the place are treated as some form of roller-coaster ride- you pay, you use, you leave. It might possibly be the most relaxed bar environment the guy has been in, in years, since bar girls don’t particularly cherish hope about being taken away, for one, and for two, are likely very blase.
I lived in the French Quarter for a while, and I must say, checking famous people’s tonsils with one’s tongue was sort of what most people I knew did for a living. It’s hard to get excited about, say Famous Actor A, when you know he’s willing to grope a skanky ho in public, in a state of near incoherent public drunkenness. Honestly, I liked Nic Cage more when I found out he went out and got drunk with his wife, rather than leaving her up in the hotel, and sneaking out. He got arrested for a drunken argument with her. That sounds more real than a gauzy night out drinking watered champagne with strippers complimenting him.
Sidney Biddle Barrows mentioned that famous guys would buy her girls’ services b/c the girls weren’t impressed with the fame- they’d seen it before. That’s my personal guess what happened.
And, really, yeah. I do think Ms Stewart acted out, b/c there’s no real acceptable way to say ” hey, it’s legal. stop doing that.” without, you know, sounding married or insecure.
And, really, the 41 year old director took her seriously, flattered her intellectual pretensions, and let her along on complicated shoots and explained what he was doing. No other director has taken her seriously in that capacity. She was friends with Catherine Hardwicke- it’s how she got the job. She’d been an actor for years, making small films for her friends. Obviously she’s interested in the artistic process.
Mr Pattinson is still a work in progress actor. I haven’t read anything that says he might even a little bit be interested in directing. Like I’ve said before, nobody expects anyone to marry a male stripper. They might see marrying a choreographer, but not usually a dancer. There’s a difference.
And, again, how is she supposed to have any language for disapproval? Or longing? Or jealousy? Or judgment? She’s from LA, from Hollywood. She grew up in the company town. It’s like asking a Detroiter to condemn unions. Hollywood had ?? in the fifties?? Truman Capote’s friend ( daughter chatting, can’t think) Hollywood invites Dita von Teese to private parties, and she performs, and it’s all clever. She married a rock star, while a starlet could only manage living with him ( marilyn manson, and rose mcgowan) Or,say, all the movies about clever to saintly strippers? Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, that other m.monroe movie, demi moore in striptease, the movie about huey long and his stripper girlfriend.
So, fear and grief and rage and longing, and frustration and no outlet or signifier or sign? Was she supposed to agree and smile and then go along while he married her and then she’s pregnant and he’s out with the lads? Or, could she get upset, and do something public and a little insane for no clear- to- her reason?
and, he was “getting ready to ask her to marry him”? Isn’t that what guys do for years upon years upon years? I know I’ve been called ruthless for telling girls- two years and out. close the deal in six months to two years or cut bait. I know one guy proposed b/c his girlfriend said ” It’s 22 months. I’m going to let you go find the right girl, b/c unless youputaringonit in the next two months, you’re wasting time for both of us.”
They’ve had five years. She was legal during filming. Everyone they knew was at the final wedding scene. She had a great dress. He didn’t even bother meeting up with other long-time married actors for advice and counselling. They’ll do that, I’ve read. Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, ??? Alice Cooper and wife??? Ed Begley, Jr. I don’t know- I’m going off bits of magazine mentions. So how serious was he? And how substantial? A lonely guy sitting in a hotel-room drinking from the minibar isn’t so attractive a package. A guy who’s brought in weight, basically, friends, family, acquaintances…a vision of the future…a ring. even a soda can pop-top….
I wish them both happiness and long careers. I don’t expect them to live in a glass snow-globe for decades on end.
Your comment of “And, really, yeah. I do think Ms Stewart acted out, b/c there’s no real acceptable way to say ” hey, it’s legal. stop doing that.” without, you know, sounding married or insecure.” hits a major point home regarding this fad of “shacking up” that is now mainstream. Women seem to think it provides them with the same relationship as a marriage while men still seem to think they can live the single life.
This post is a bit confusing in places. You appear to equate being ‘just an actor’ with being a male stripper and therefor unmarriagable while also blaming him for their not being married. If her directoral ambitions put her that far above him in the Hollywood pecking order then marriage would be disadvantageous for her, no?
“So, fear and grief and rage and longing, and frustration and no outlet or signifier or sign? Was she supposed to agree and smile and then go along while he married her and then she’s pregnant and he’s out with the lads? Or, could she get upset, and do something public and a little insane for no clear- to- her reason?”
Alternately she could have ended the relationship without competing with him for the title of’Biggest Jerk of All’ She won so decisively that her career might not survive it.
Calling the Twilight series “a terrific set of fantasy books with a strong set of subtexts, and a profound set of western civ allusions” might be overstating it a tad bit. These books use a castigated form of a demon and an utterly ridiculous Mary Sue to tell the story of an unrealistic romance that will likely retard an entire generation of girls’ understanding of what love and relationships are all about. Not to mention that they are neither well-written nor particularly well-plotted, and the only way they can be considered “fantasy” is if you’re talking about the kind of fantasies a fifteen year old girl holds about her future husband, and not the actual litary genre.
I’m not saying you can’t enjoy them, but defending these books solely based off that “no sex before marriage” theme ignores the larger, more insideous problems.
Another female Millenial here with a slightly different view on this subject.
In response to Leslie’s point about why girls don’t like Kristin Stewart, I’d have to say this is a common feature among fangirl populations. There’s always that one female character who just rubs the fans the wrong way. It’s really, really hard to find a female character that the female fangirl audience actually likes – the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Elizabeth Burke from White Collar. Usually, female characters are greeted with some degree of scorn. It’s hard to pin down exactly what causes this, but I suspect it’s got something to do with the way female characters are written to be these forceful, arrogant, hyper-aggressive, alpha types. We seem to like female characters that behave like ladies, which often does include (sorry!) a girl not being sexually promiscuous, but rather dedicated and loving to the main male character (like Elizabeth Burke). It’s a bit more complicated than that, of course, but generally speaking, this is what I’ve seen cause it in friends and classmates over the years. (TVTropes.org has a pretty good breakdown on fangirls for anyone who’s curious)
If we take Twilight and things like it (True Blood? 50 Shades of Gray? erotic fanfiction written by women?) to be a kind of emotional pornography (which it is), then it’s a little easier to understand where all of this is coming from. These stories aren’t a deep, thoughtful, insightful look at human relationships, but purely emotional female fantasy about what a relationship might be. Edward and Jacob behave not as real men would (or should), but as an immature girl might want them to. Bella is a badly-written Mary Sue, onto which a reader can project herself and her own emotions. I call these pornography because they’re little more than wish fulfilment for the reader – except, instead of barely-there dialogue leading up to idealized sex, it’s implausible plot developments that further the fantasy of a committed, dedicated, intimate, perfect relationship. I know a lot of women for whom their favorite fantasies about movie and TV characters involve weddings, marriage, kids, domesticity… all that. We enjoy two characters committing to each other in that “forever” kind of way.
This all, IMHO, has to have been factoring in to the way the fans (and women in general) have been looking at the Patterson/Stewart relationship. It’s almost an extension of their on-screen relationship. We pass the same kind of judgments on other women in real life as we do on fictional female characters anyway, and with this extra layer of expectation, is it really any surprise that everyone’s got an opinion on Stewart’s behavior? When Stewart goes “off-script”, so to speak, and ruins her idealized, fantasy, “forever” romance, how are we not supposed to have those reactions? What woman is going to applaud Stewart for having that casual affair over condemning her for ruining not one, but two, “happily ever after”s. That’s just my view of it, though.
(Additionally, as stated above, my issues with Twilight run more into thematic territory. It seems like everybody is willing to give these books a pass or a stamp of approval based on one thing – the abstinence message. Personally, I don’t think that justifies everything else that’s in there, namely, the further adulteration of a once-horrific, demonic creature into something soft and cuddly and safe, merely in the service of female wish fulfilment. It almost constitutes a denial of the existence of evil, and I find it perplexing that a woman who claims to be religious could write a story that does that. The main theater company in my city ran a fantastic play a few years ago based off Dracula, and most of the audience was comprised of teenage girls and their moms/dads, who were almost certainly there because of Twilight. The play pulled absolutely no punches with its source material, ie, there was none of this modern moral relativity crap in it. It represented Dracula as evil and his love/attentions as a corrupting influence on the female characters, and as something that needed to be destroyed. At intermission, the discomfort and unease among the girls in the audience was palatable – how, you could see them asking themselves, could a vampire possibly be like that? They had absolutely no conception of the actual origins of their fantasy man, and when faced with the truth of it, they found themselves horrified. That’s why I dislike Twilight – you’re gaining the rather superficial message of abstinence at the cost of losing your sense of what good and evil are.)
(sorry, this was meant to be in response to the primary post!)
Erin, you are killing my morning, in a good way, but I had other things to write so I will try to be brief, especially since you are hitting a the root of at least a third of my outlines for stuff to write once school starts.
“It’s really, really hard to find a female character that the female fangirl audience actually likes…Usually, female characters are greeted with some degree of scorn. It’s hard to pin down exactly what causes this, but I suspect it’s got something to do with the way female characters are written to be these forceful, arrogant, hyper-aggressive, alpha types. We seem to like female characters that behave like ladies”
Then explain Buffy. I’m with you on we tend to write forceful, aggressive, men in women’s bodies female characters, but those are the ones we idolize. Or at least those are the ones that Gen X and Y idolize. I’m working on over- and underrated pop culture heroines and this is the main fracture point: the disconnect between the characters created and what women actually are. If Millennials go more for the traditional lady, I want to see/discuss that. Send me the TVTroopes link, please, and any other thoughts on the matter. After 5 years abroad and 8 of motherhood, I’m short on American 20something female perspective.
Regarding fanfic as emotional pornography, I tend to agree. I recently posted at Ricochet, that fanfic is written mostly by women because they can write their wishes anon and discuss things about love that are not acceptable for post-feminist discussion. Re the “fantasy of a committed, dedicated, intimate, perfect relationship. I know a lot of women for whom their favorite fantasies about movie and TV characters involve weddings, marriage, kids, domesticity… all that. We enjoy two characters committing to each other in that “forever” kind of way.”. It isn’t a fantasy. It is hard to achieve in modern culture in large part because our cultural assumptions undermine development of such relationships. It is attainable, just not if you listen to your 20something inner voice or popular advice. Your best bet is to find a few older women who do have this relationship and ask, watch, and learn.
“It seems like everybody is willing to give these books a pass or a stamp of approval based on one thing – the abstinence message.” Among the many Gen X fans that I know, none is focused on the abstinence message. To the extent it is mentioned, it is ridiculed as unrealistic. For a typical though much more in depth take of much Gen X reaction, see Caitlin Flanagan’s review of the first movie.
“Personally, I don’t think that justifies everything else that’s in there, namely, the further adulteration of a once-horrific, demonic creature into something soft and cuddly and safe, merely in the service of female wish fulfillment. It almost constitutes a denial of the existence of evil, and I find it perplexing that a woman who claims to be religious could write a story that does that.” You are definitely killing my morning. 1. I think I linked to an article on the development of vamps in my post Dusting Edward Cullen at my blog. If not, well the post will interest you and email me and I will track the vamp link down. 2. It makes perfect sense that a Christian would write such a story about an inherently fallen character. The vamp aspect just magnifies and highlights the Christian belief about Fallen Man. In this line, I contend that your female audience members at the Dracula play were only superficially reacting to an evil vampire, but we’re really disturbed by the presentation of pure evil. In our post-modern relativist world, evil does not really exist at all.
If you are going to screw around, be you man or woman, have the grace to break up with your boyfriend, husband, girlfriend or wife. THEN you can be a free agent to make your next mistake.
Thanks again, Ari. That is splendid.
1. Love the tag teaming. What women think about this is very informative, far more interesting that the gossip details. In addition to your point about your generation still believing in love, I note that my generation, X, has surprised me with how many think KStew is more to blame, usually because they just don’t like her. I find this odd for a post-feminist generation, both that they don’t like the independent, career oriented, straight talker woman and that they have no qualms about blaming her for sexual misconduct. If they advocate a system where women can sleep around like men, then why is the woman more blameworthy when she does so?
2. Seconding Ari’s first post, why do you see Twilight love as not-sensable love–aside from the obvious fantasy plot elements? Ari is right, Bella and Edward’s relationship is full of compromise and partnership. To take another angle, you are correct that much of your generation has immature views on love, and you make progress noting that love comes in seasons, but it is more than that even. What we, all generations post Boomer, have forgotten is that love takes work. We have this idea that if you find The One, then love will always be easy, the sex will always be hot, compromise will always be straightforward, and temptation to stray will never come up. We think we will Know when we’ve met that person. We think if we have doubts, that maybe he isn’t The One for us. That this is all folly, how this is all folly, that’s some of what I’m writing in the coming weeks.
As an unofficial spokeswoman for GenX, did it ever cross your mind that maybe we find her more culpable for the following reasons?
1) She was messing around with a married man. This wasn’t a case of her NOT knowing that he was married, which has happened to us (or someone we know). She knew, and didn’t care. Not exactly the kind of behavior that gets someone a lot of sympathy, you know?
2) Many of us in our generation are married, and can see that a hot little number on the side, even as a one time fling, just might be a threat to our own marriages.
3) Many of us grew up as children of divorce. Lots of divorces either start with, or include, some adultery. We just might have a suspicion of how that can turn out for the innocent children caught in the middle, based on our own experiences. Pardon us if we don’t feel particularly sympathetic to a potential homewrecker in this instance.
4) She could have sown her wild oats with any number of single guys out there. No one would have cared much, with the possibility of Mr Pattinson. (That’s how plenty of us worked that out of our systems in our younger years….hooking up with other single, unmarried, available people. I take it that option is still available out there, yes?) I’m sure any number of them would have happily fulfilled her desire to get her freak on in a parking lot, just like the cad in question.
5) Maybe we’re just still a little attached to the old-fashioned idea of NOT cheating on your spouse or significant other. There’s this quaint thing called fidelity out here in flyover country that some of us still regard highly. Yeah, even callous, cynical GenX’ers who haven’t stepped inside a church in years can still hold that as an ideal.
6) And yeah….we’ve seen her face all over every magazine at the checkout counter. We probably wouldn’t know what the cad in question looked like. Sucks to be the more famous person in this instance. I guess not all publicity is good publicity after all.
But, hey, stick to your narrative about how we don’t like women who are career-minded, because as we all know, no female GenX’ers ever worked outside of the home, had independent lives, or know anyone who had done any of that. The very idea of a sexually assertive woman makes us want to faint and clutch our pearls, of course.
Yes those occurred to me and were dismissed because they aren’t logical. Those reasons about the importance of marriage and commitment are all more significant for the one who is married. If the other woman is really more culpable for home wrecking, then exactly what kind of commitment do these women expect from their husbands? Following your logic, not much. You seem to assume that if a man is tempted, he will cheat, that men as a group have no honor or maturity. It is a bit of contempt for men that is far too common in modern marriage. Furthermore, if it is so important that women avoid messing up other’s marriages, how can that be achieved without standards for women’s behavior of the kind that feminists so shun, most notably, sexual restraint. You can’t tell a woman she’s free to screw like a man and then hold her more accountable for the results when she does so.
As for my narrative, it is not that we don’t like career oriented, sexually aggressive women. My narrative is that we laude those women, we encourage those women, and then blame them when it all goes wrong.
Logic? Look….if logic was what most people used to guide their sexual behavior, we wouldn’t have so many unwed mothers, rampant STD’s, and broken homes. Girls wouldn’t chase after the “bad boys”, and on and on. Yet, all those things happen, and give you lots of fodder to write about.
Quite frankly, your insistence on looking at this logically….is in itself illogical. I don’t know what their motivations were for this sorry episode, but I doubt they were thinking logically when they pulled these shenanigans.
If she was as smart and career-minded as you seem to think she is, she should have been able to guess that most of the outrage would be aimed at her, deserved or not. She gets the lion’s share of the outrage because she’s higher profile than he is, much like Bill Clinton got more of the outrage than Monica Lewinsky, or Tiger Woods did as opposed to his countless honeys on the side. (I mean, in all your pontificating about this affair on PJ Media, I don’t think you’ve even bothered to state Mr Sanders’ or his wife’s names once. If that doesn’t illustrate my point, I don’t know what does. You want to get attention for all you’ve written on this, and mentioning his name would get a big ol’ “Who dat?” without mentioning Kristen Stewart in the same sentence.) She’s known, even to people who have never watched a Twilight movie. Him? Not so much. I never heard of him before this, and most of the readers here hadn’t, either. Sucks to be in the limelight sometimes, doesn’t it? But I guess admitting that would blow your “wimmen get it worse!” narrative.
BTW, did you ever consider that maybe….when a wife expresses her disgust at this behavior to her husband…..she’s signaling just how unacceptable this behavior is to her, and is giving an indication as to how she would react if he strayed? Or vice versa, should a man discuss this with his wife? Nah, a woman could only want to beat up on men in general, using another woman as a scapegoat, because she thinks men are all cheaters.
Please stop overanalyzing this. There was nothing logical about their actions, there’s nothing logical about the public reaction to this hot mess, and whatever action Mr Pattinson and Ms Ross take in response also will not be based 100% on logic. That’s life, even if you don’t like how unreasonably it all plays out.
Actually, I had a lengthy comment about Sanders, complete with reason why I hadn’t mentioned it, in response to Heathermc in one of my posts.
When two commit adultery and the unmarried paramour (if there is one) knows the married one is married, they are equally culpable.
Another aspect: you capitalize the “One”. In a secular age, we grasp at anything, including finding Heaven in a Relationship, a Relationship that is not bound by a mundane ‘ceremony’, overseen by anyone who will not remind you of the hard part of the traditional vows (like, in sickness and in health, til death do us part), which are so grim. Better a poem written by the 2 principals…
And of course, all this shacking up is just that: the guy knows he isn’t married, the gal thinks they sort of are…
And then the bottom line: pregnancy, children, without any legal protection aside from punitive regulations aimed at the father, who is quite clear that he never ever planned on THIS. Of course, that is where abortion comes in. (I have a friend who had an abortion while in college… she and her family didn’t want her to interrupt her important path to a College Degree… and now, a decade later, is married to a man who had his own tubes cut after a number of not very pleasant episodes, and she wants a child and now it’s invitro time.
In Twilight, Bella gets pregnant. Against all pressures, including that of Edward, she maintains that you have to accept what is. And she dies so her child can live.
Not so cotton candy.
What the Teutonic Titwillow said… as a fellow Gen X type, I concur. KStew jacked-things up, Rob should’ve changed the locks and thrown her stuff out on the lawn. May not be suffciently logical, but that’s what it is.
“In addition to your point about your generation still believing in love, I note that my generation, X, has surprised me with how many think KStew is more to blame, usually because they just don’t like her.”
And you think your gen is unique in this? Unlikeable = wrong is universal. A doctor’s biggest risk factor for malpractice lawsuits is a poor bedside manner, not ineptitude.
Ahhh ladies, ladies. It’s all so simple.
Pattinson = placating beta chump
Sanders = alpha male
Chicks prefer bad boys. End of story.
If you want some hard truth that will melt your eyeballs, read this Manosphere take on the Stewart business. They nail it completely.
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/comment-of-the-week-11/
And KStew wanted to “trade up” to a married guy who’ve never leave his wife/kids in exchange for what she had w/ Rob… not only hypergamous but “rationalization hamster”-unsensible, too. (At this rate, she better be learning the secrets of Friskies and clumping litter because cats will be her only company after 30.)
There will come a time — and please God, may it come soon! — when we realize just how foolish we’ve been about…well, about just about everything connected to romance.
You’re unbound by vows, she’s unbound by vows, and you want to make love? Go ahead. Until you’re bound by vows, you’re…let me see, what was the word? Ah, yes: free. But it would be prudent to make sure you both understand that little word the same way.
What’s that? You don’t want to exchange vows but you want to form a joint household? Risky. Quite a large segment of your neighbors will disapprove if they find out. Besides that, a joint household implies nearly all the behavioral obligations of marriage, despite your unmarried state. Watch out for indications that she doesn’t entirely accept them…and watch out for indications that you don’t quite accept them either.
But what about those who have vowed fidelity to one another? Well, unless you actually married one another, it doesn’t mean a lot, except to God. If you do marry one another, all sorts of questions that seem rather unromantic will lie before you, including work, children, where to settle, relations with in-laws, how to budget, and what fraction of your income should be saved for contingencies such as retirement. If you can’t achieve substantial, sincere agreement on all that stuff, I’d put off making church or honeymoon reservations just yet.
None of this is particle physics. Generations prior to the Baby Boom absorbed it all and understood it thoroughly without undue mental effort. As for today’s young folks, explanations for their resistance to such obvious wisdom remain lacking. Perhaps this is one of those situations Keith Laumer pinned in one of his Retief books:
Food for thought.
Hokay. No, as a matter of fact, Twilight is not literary fluff. It is NOT written in a contemporary fashion. It is written, VERY KNOWINGLY, as an entry in the Western Civ female novel for all time sweepstakes. It has references that start (!) at the Iliad, and continues on, up until the present day. It uses literary devices that fell out of favor in 1955 in America, and during Virginia Woolf’s regnum in England.
The very, very, very first page of the very first book acts like a face-up card in literary poker: it’s critiqueing the statement by Foucault- the “to die for” bit that he’s famous for- and every last single little bit of the “existential” philosophical project. Which would, you know, be the biggest, most respectable, influential set of ideas during the Post-War period. Ever wondered why it’s ” Last Tango in Paris”? Rather than “Last Tango in Munich”? Ever wonder why abortion is so important? Nobody gets intense about murderers, all things considered. Nobody tries to flash bill-boards about heart surgery. Honestly- have you seen one single book, ever- since John Steinbeck in the 30s- where the character is seen as cold and selfish for getting an abortion? Yeah, me neither- there isn’t one. Why not?
And the Mary Sue. Is a stupid little short story about a heroic girl who goes in to work and has her two bosses fall in love with her- subordinates where she’s the direct report. Last time I checked, that’s the life story of, oh, Melinda Gates, Jack Welch’s trophy wife, the trophy wife in general. Which has been cleared off the table as acceptable examination in fiction. There’s a general who is getting sacked for performing a mary sue maneuver. Do you think it helps, particularly, that this scenario is not played out fiction, like a business gaming retreat? Or is this a leaving of the field? Female writers admit to not submitting any stories with female characters, b/c they fear the “mary sue” sneer. Where’s the place at the table? Somehow, a feminine and desireable voice isn’t allowed to speak up in the palace of fiction? A starfleet engineer can’t be loved in a straightforward fashion? Highly competent women are un-admirable? unloveable? no subordinate can get a bosses’ attention in an unruly emotional way? Workplace fiction is a boys club? You want to stand by that? Really?
And, nope, I’m not seeing a series of books that has negotiations about marriage as candy-floss. She didn’t even agree to get married for three books. She’s surprised it makes her happy. Last time I checked, any number of modern women are surprised that marriage makes them happy. Even Lydia Netzer? With the fabulous essay on marriage? sounds surprised.
Bram Stoker is not the be-all and end-all of vampire stories. Varney the Vampire came before,for one. Dr Polidori, arguably the wretch in Wuthering Heights, Anne Rice, the silent movies, the hollywood mythos, the romanian folk traditions covered by Dr Barber…I’m leaving stuff out- the etruscan ghost stories that scared the Romans….I’m leaving stuff out. Ms Meyer references just about all of them. The movies hit the hollywood contributions. It’s a sturdy sandbox of a story. Lots of people can play in it.
And, grrrrr….edward WANTS Bella to consider remaining human so that she has a chance at heaven and transcendance. Why do you think she’s best-ish friends with Angela, the preacher’s daughter? Bella wants the grey, miserable half-life she can have with Edward. He wants her shipping off to Heaven at the end. Rosalie wants Heaven. Carlisle struggles with finding grace- he’s the son of a preacher. It is a morally serious work. It is taking considered statements about grace. Self- denial in the service of human life leads to possible joy. The maternal figure? Is a suicide turned vampire. She kills herself during a time when people thought suicide let directly to NOT heaven. This is as good as it gets, for her, in her world. Rosalis’s husband ( and yes, they do disagree and negotiate) thought he himself was going to hell, and yet was rescued. It’s not sweetness and light.
The start of the article began by saying something about Jane Austen. JA herself wrote books that squared circles: Elizabeth Bennet refuses two marriage proposals that would have provided her with, you know, food and shelter- neither of which were guaranteed after her father died- and was rewarded by a final understanding with a wealthy man. choosing only to marry for love and regard? Was not on the table for women at the start of JA’s life. Her books very likely shifted that perception. Fay Weldon, no fan of tradition, is very clear about this- JA shifted society by writing good books that had a moral imagination that women could live in, and work out their emotional state. Men went along, too. The Prince Regent had a set of her books in each of his castles. He was reading and talking, and his court, and then society.
I know it’s fashionable to cite Rousseau’s novels of emotion as shifting the landscape. well, JA’s did, too. Steph Meyer is very much working in the tradition of JA. We don’t notice JA’s influence b/c she wasn’t LOUD. Emerson detested her, for instance. Emerson gets cited in textbooks and history books and so on, but nobody inquires into the joy and peace of his wife. I read him, and wonder- did the man remember to brush his teeth? Did he wear deoderant? Did he let his audience escape and go to bed at a decent hour so they could go labor at their jobs?
And Roissy.is.an.unmarried.man.who.doesn’t.want.children. He can go on dispensing advice to unmarriageable, unsuitable men all he likes. We’ve always had fools and knaves- but we don’t pretend they are sages. He has, at various times, advocated grooming young girls for sex, he’s smirched the character of women by insisting they are in porn videos when they aren’t, he’s posted information about young children of women he doesn’t like. None of those are legal. Any one of those actions would get most men a police visit. I’m not sure why anyone willingly admits to reading him. Is it like consulting Larry Flynt? I looked him up b/c Dr Helen cited him. I know when I worked in a bar we were told to stay away from degenerates- lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas. ( Ironically- this did happen to one poor guy-Lyme disease) I wonder why normal people even listen to him, or cite him. Does anyone cite Charles Manson as an advisor? I thought listening to criminals for advice is what liberals do- tookie smith, mumia al-jabar, the central park rapists, that child-killer in ann coulter’s book—
Typical feminist blather. Roissy does what works. What gets women into bed. Which is acting like an asshole. Women love jerks, crave them, will do anything for them. See the women throwing themselves (often beautiful and well educated women) at Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. Both Petersons, Drew and Scott. Joran Van Der Sloot.
Your argument is that Roissy is a bad person because he lacks your morals and is not Alpha enough to arouse desire. Women don’t really care much about morals, see the desire for James Holmes “Holmies for Life” and heck, Chris Brown, whose beat downs spurred teen female desire.
Roissy’s advice gets guys laid. Yours?
And if you don’t like that, well what part of a feminist revolution did you not understand?
I want to be clear. Destruction of traditional society and gender roles means you get ONLY the amount of respect and niceness that you EARN from Joe Average. Who is as a beta male either invisible or hated by most non-obese women.
You are as disposable and a piece of meat just as much as the beta male. You have to earn whatever you get from men, and remember just as for men social dominance and assholery is the key to men being Alpha (think Edward Cullen), for you it is your youth, beauty, and lack of sex partners. As disposable as the beta male is, so are you past your sell-by date. No one who is not sleeping with you will care about you much, and even that will be a function of how much sharing, how hot you are, how young, etc. for women.
Brutally honest but there it is. “At Will” romance contracts make YOU as disposable as Elizabeth Edwards. Just a useful reminder.
“Brutally honest but there it is”
Yes, there it is, so perfectly -and obviously- true! Very well put indeed!
hey, heathermc, my gratitude to you posts are getting eaten. let’s hope this one goes through. I feel like you and I are talking, with other people chiming in. It’s nice carrying on a conversation with you. sorry if I’m going on and on and on and on….
Frankly, My Dear, I don’t give a damn.
The tag team of thoughts, esp Leslie’s and Ari’s, have brought me face to face with my abiding weakness: seeking the bad guy. There are no evil guys here, there is a very messed up culture that leaves 20′s people wandering through life hurting themselves and others. Sanders should have known what he was doing, but I think (a) he had no idea of the popularity of the Twilight Franchise: Kristen was a pretty girl who could be kissed in the back seat of a car, and (as his father noted), ‘these things happen’ and (b) he is amoral (which is, ok, pretty close to evil. I wonder if this was his set-up, but the photographer knew where the real $$$ was???)
Kristen was raised within the hollywood culture. Her idea of ‘cool’ is a role where she plays a daughter in a sexual relationship with her father. Yummm. But, she really, at this time, loves Rob. That is not acting. She is heartbroken. She is abasing herself.
Rob loved her. She was his ‘squeeze’ (a term of one of his friends), but he wasn’t ready to marry her. Not yet. Marching out in high dudgeon is not the act of a mature man, though.
For both of them, the work, the publicity, must go on, and all the cameras… What a way to learn some hard lessons, eh?
No there are bad guys. They are the culture wardens who created our modern relativist standards (a bit oxymoronic) and steadfastly refuse to learn as those norms wreak havoc.
okay, so the other thread at pjlifestyle got old-filed…
Hollywood is a company town run on piecework. Absolutely everyone runs on terror of never working again. Not once has Kristen Stewart said anything about “loving” the director. She’s said she “respects” him. Okay, well all sorts of folks “respect” Roman Polanski as a director, but they surely do not ship their daughters over to Europe for a screen-test. She “respects” this director, but doesn’t even unbutton her shirt? She doesn’t suggest they go to his office- I’m pretty sure it has a lock on it, and I bet it even has a couch. She remains fully dressed in public and she remains driving from place to place. This, to me, sounds like someone trying to calm down a raving, lust-filled lunatic without raising a scene. Can you imagine the publicity photos of that? I can. I bet she could, as well.
And, well, Mr Pattinson is off being physically used onscreen as a Ken-doll by Reese Witherspoon. As anyone perusing this month’s edition of Bust magazine can tell you, open relationships take communication. If they are having their reunion at the back of the auditorium at the Teen Choice Awards, they aren’t communicating enough, by far. Not even enough for a regular relationship, much less one that is open-ish. Ms Witherspoon, when interviewed, commented about the makeout scenes with RP- he was grimy, he didn’t clean his fingernails. She wasn’t talking about captured images- she was talking about an unsatisfactory lover, even if clothes- ish were on-ish. She wanted her cake- a makeout with Edward Cullen- and she wanted her marriage, her career, and her movie. Poor Mr Pattinson and Ms Stewart haven’t the language of boundaries, communication, integrity- none of it- nor even the time to come to their own accomodations– and yet, they expected so much.
In very real ways, movies prey on a sort of predatorial visualizing, near adulterous voyeurism, these days. Catherine Hardwicke used it to elicit great makeout scenes in Twi. I don’t know that Mr Pattinson has the chops to fake something. I’m guessing his hormones took a ride for Ms Witherspoon. Ms Stewart could have been reacting without realizing her own jealousy. She has photo-shots near mimicking what Rob went through, without taking off her clothes.Kissing, groping, talking? Fully dressed?
They were supposed to be the Paul Newman/ JoAnne Woodward style relationship. Well, Mr Newman and Ms Woodward built in several safeguards. Even Kirk Cameron put safeguards in his relationship, while remaining in Hollywood.
I don’t know that she could be mindful and break up early. I don’t know that ‘sin’ as a category is necessarily on her mind. The first self-conscious in a modern sense work is St Augustine’s Confessions. I know she’s got sort of a muddly dialogue going. But again- she’s in Hollywood. I literally have no idea what sort of culture they have their. I know the commonplaces for my town are very different than any of my friends’ places of residence. Mindfulness is more of a thing taught in catechism, or at meditation. When I read interviews with the other actors from Twilight- they mention close, conservative families. KS mentions work and directors. That’s not sounding like the most stable, conventional background. She likely might not have thought through even the icky feeling of when the guy was done with her that day. She wasn’t smiling when she dropped him off. It didn’t look like a gleeful romp, at all.
They were living together. Not married. We’d like to wish them permanent happiness, but I don’t know that either are capable of that, at this point. I don’t know this would have happened if he’d put a ring on it. He didn’t. She behaved like a single woman, which she is. Renting a house together is not married, not by a long-shot.
Do they close out comment threads? I tried to comment on the Raising Wild Boys (the good kind of wild) yesterday and couldn’t. Anyway Ari, I’d like to welcome you to the Think Like Hoyt Society. I have a hunch that you can relate. http://americanhousewifeinlondon.blogspot.com/2012/04/i-didnt-leap-i-took-tiny-step-there.html
well,howdy, hi, and how are you? Thank you. I’m feeling welcome!
What all are you writing about?
Married isn’t married any more, not like it used to be.
And if this really is ‘how single women behave’ it might also explain why they find it hard to become married women. I read the outcry against her as single women trying to signal to single men that ‘we’re not all lke that’. Whether its true or not.
Ari, I do not understand your ring obsession. A brief ceremony invoking a God most people don’t believe in anymore isn’t going to change anyone’s basic character. The people who value their relationships will protect and nurture them while the cheaters will cheat regardless. A ring doesn’t lock up anything.
In the situation you described in your initial post would you rather it had been your husband instead of your boyfriend? The breakup would have lasted a lot longer and you would have had to pay tribute to the divorce lawyers before you were allowed to leave.
alrighty then……
first off, I’m trying to figure out what happened, or didn’t, same as anyone. I’m still not convinced that she was a willing party to the much older, presumably “safe”- since he’s married and has kids- physical attentions. It’s very much out of character for her, at least what’s been presented to the public via gossip magazines. Also, via fans of the series who have met all the actors. Pretty uniformly, everyone describes them as decent, humble, reserved, grateful, good human beings.
So imagine someone you knew, or cared about, or heard of, acting in an unexplained, out- of- character sort of way. I know there was a “b***** be crazy” when Britney Spears went off the rails, that wasn’t helpful to anyone at all, while saying “this is out of character for a very disciplined, hard-working performer” was helpful. She was diagnosed as seriously post-partum, and got treatment with anti-psychotics. She’s back to being a hard-working performer.
And, second, I don’t sneer at Hollywood performers. I don’t think they are messed up in the head drama queens. I think Hollywood is built on piecework and temp work, and that builds in a lot of fear and instability into peoples’ lives. We’ve managed to offshore most of the piecework industries in America- 4% of commercially made clothing sold in the USA is made in the USA, and I’m not sure that amount doesn’t include Guam. That was a piecework industry. Fruit-pickers are piece-workers, and they are “doing the jobs Americans won’t do.” Actors, directors, costumers, makeup artists are all piece-workers. When you see a documentary about Star Wars, the only guy who looks like he’s having any fun at all is the producer. Everyone else has that controlled panic, and that near breathless gratitude that they are on a big project for a while.
So I think poor Mr Pattinson signed on for Water for Elephants, and didn’t really think through what he was doing. Or, Ms Stewart took on SWATH without thinking about what she was doing, and that whole not-thinking bit, and communicating only in tweets, has desperately tripped them up.
Ms Stewart will still have a career, b/c her career has been doing low-budget movies. The first Twilight movie was budgeted for less than a fast-food commercial campaign. Nobody in Hollywood expected lightning in a bottle. Edward didn’t take off his shirt in one scene b/c they, quite literally, didn’t have enough money in the budget to buy a full torso of sparkles. (yes, you can laugh now. you have to admit its pretty funny)
As for your conversation, well, yes. There is a huge, huge, giant series of differences between dating and married. At least where I live. But I’m in Texas, home of the Baptist marriage machine. The two founders of the atheist society in town started it up hoping to meet atheist women. They’d been dumped, repeatedly, by women who weren’t going to marry or have kids with an atheist. They are both, 20 years in, still single.
So when I read a rant from a guy who is an atheist who is complaining about the quality of women- it makes sense to me in this context. And why I wonder about the “of courses…” that both Ms Stewart and Mr Pattinson carry around in their heads. I mean, I don’t know a single atheist who is married. I know a lot of religious guys who are happily married.
I really have no idea how an atheist gets married. It sounds like a near impossible project, from where I live.
Sorry, Ari, Christopher Hitchens, head atheist of the West, was married a couple of times.
He left his first wife who had just produced a baby, because he had fallen in love with another woman, who became wife #2. But, he was in love, so that was OK.
Honestly, I have looked at those photos and it doesn’t look like Kristen was too enthusiastic at all.
Hi, Heather! What are you up to this morning? I’m about to stick a pizza in the oven for lunch for the kids. Frozen pizza has been the biggest hit so far this summer. something about teen boys…
Okay, so Mr Hitchens, who behaved abominably to his wife..
really, I can’t picture an atheist getting married, but, like I said, I’m in a religious-majority state. And, apparently when you’re the majority, you get can get eccentric and individual enough that people really don’t need to stray off the path? I mean, I read other blogs where christians get all bent about other christians- “oooh-they aren’t real”- when, last time I checked, they’d pass muster here?
I mean, I know they have a society, and they have a club on campus at the big Uni, but really? Four fat kids at a folding table? and nobody walking up to talk to them? And the girl had the thickest mustache of all of them? There was more traffic at the LBGT table. With, you know, a physically fit, really nice grad student running it. He’s a good teacher, very professional. I can’t tell about the atheists, but they didn’t look like anyone else around them.
I’m trying to think of the trip-line, and I can’t, really. The manager of a giant topless bar goes to church with his mama. His day manager is christian, married, hard-working, decent. most bar-tenders I know go to church. most strippers, too. the preachers’ convention came to town, and went to the bar for soda-pops afterwards. the manager of the nearest head-shop goes to church with his wife and three kids. that’s at the scurfy end.
there’s at least three churches specifically aimed at gay kids around the campus, and others which are very tolerant. there are churches-nice ones- where there are guys still in their prison denim, and part of it all. there’s a whole church under an underpass downtown for the homeless guys who don’t want to sit inside, and regular people attend it, as well.
at the high end, it’s most of the tech company founders and their top managers. in the middle- teachers and, well, everybody.
I really can’t quite wrap my head around not being christian, or believing in god, or something. So I’m trying to picture that table full of weeble-wobbles plighting troth, and I can’t, and I’m trying to think why anyone would go out on a serious first date with an atheist, and I can’t, and I think it’s just the environment, not some failure of empathy on my part.
And, yeah, seriously- not one button undone on her shirt. It’s a button-down shirt, right? She knows how to unbutton- we have proof from the proposal scene in Eclipse. She knows how to be discreet- four years of privacy with RP- and now this?
“complaining about the quality of women”?
Yeah, that does sometimes appear; but, the quality of women these days? I would say, they take after, they’re just too much like the men: apparently–if not born with–brought up in sense of entitlement, unthankful, heady, high-minded–did I mention unthankful–attaining at least young adulthood with little or no sense of value for manual effort, allergic to perspiration–yeah, let’s sometime, discuss the quality women these days, . . .
yeah, yeah…youth is wasted on the young, and all that…
Okay, so I went and read Roissy again. He’s very disquieting, but I think maybe he’s perfect for his environment, which is Washington, DC? He sounds like someone signing up for a KKK rally, and he’s really foul and depraved, and his readers- yikes- but then I think of the other people I’ve met from there, and they are all pretty uniformly appalling, too, so maybe they all deserve each other? Is that what I should get out of that?
B/c really, the stuff on the Aurora shooter was pretty touching, all things considered. One guy was mourning the lapse of Cotillion. Except, cotillion and debuting still happen in the south. Black, and white. Hispanics have quinceanera. So, maybe the east coast hasn’t got any social anything?
Or, say, the bit with saying thank you after a date? I’m, like, isn’t that normal behavior? I know Ann Coulter had a big ranting column about how to date, and how she hadn’t dated the whole time she was in Washington. She said, You call up a girl, you ask her out at a specific time, for a specific event. You pick her up. You do said thing. There is some food involved (really- it’s in a math book as one of the problems- food on a date) There is pleasant conversation, some entertainment, and then a kiss at the end- cheek or mouth. The following day you write a note saying how you had a good time, or something to that effect. Then you only say nice things about the guy, b/c you were seen in public with him, and there’s no point in slum-diving, or advertising that you can’t judge character. If you don’t like him, but you know somebody who might- you set up a date with your friend and the guy. And, yes, it’s a big deal.
and the thing is, the guys I knew put work into the dates, too. So, like, I’ve been on scouting trips with guys, to see if the museum is as advertised, if the bar is okay, where to get a table, can you climb to this view in how-many minutes in flats or heels (ouch.ouch.ouch. twice. heels second. ouch) when does the sun set from this bridge compared to the newspaper’s time of splashdown? So, I’m just a by-stander on these dates, but I want them to go well. When I went on dates and they went well, I’d get phone-calls,too
I’m used to seeing print-outs to restaurants- maps and reviews, sitting on the seat, when a guy would pick me up, like-wise. So there’s no call to be anything less than decently dressed, polite, charming and grateful- a lot of work has gone into this, from pretty much any guy.
Neither character nor foresight (only orgasms and “fulfillment”) are held authentic and “liberated” for women (especially the younger ones) today, unfortunately.
While this thread is still open, I don’t know if you saw, but The Daily Mail bought the published pictures. After our discussion, I decided to check them out. The photos strike me as odd. They are in clumps with no context of order. They’ve been visually dowdified. The one with her arm when he is low and out of view is particularly odd. I looks like he went for her pants, or perhaps his own, and she recoiled her fist, probably to hit him. I wouldn’t fall over from shock that this is when she finally said enough and drove him home.
Again, I’m not saying that she isn’t culpable or that she wasn’t romantically involved with Sanders. That is obvious. But I think US Weekly went with ‘Kristen cheats!’ as their story because it is sensational and sells more magazines. I have a hunch that the true story is more like ‘Kristen is tempted, but walks away.’ She’s having a commitment freakout. Older guy seems understanding. Things start happening, but it feels all wrong and is spinning out of control. She eventually manages to put a stop to it and goes home to shower and sort out her head and her relationship. For any normal girl, that’s what would have happened. But she is famous so someone was taking pictures. I have more pity for her now than before I saw the pics.
Women like Kristen Stewart are the reason people like Roissy, the PUA blogger, are so popular with men.
would you mind please explaining to me why Roissy is so popular? Am I missing something? I’m asking, honestly. I’ve got a daughter. I’d like to know if he’s some sort of what is considered a regular guy, these days.
I looked him up when Dr Helen cited him. The first things that came up on Google were the stories of him (1) posting photos of underage girls with sexually suggestive comments (2) posting a porn video, insisting that a blogger that he dislikes was the performer in the video and (3) posting the photo and details about the young son of the blogger he dislikes so intensely.
Is this along the lines of the Kinsey film? So depraved, yet so cutely marketed? Or, say, the white-washing of Margaret Sanger’s racism?
Is there a connection that I’m missing? Or is it a matter of you discount the near criminality and enjoy the spectacle? Is there good advice, in your eyes? I’m really curious.
He recommends violence, sodomy, cheating. This is good advice? Or is this the bad advice mixed with good advice that makes it worth reading? I know people keep linking to him.
Roissy’s blog is a crude man-fest (mostly because of his readers’ comments) but he doesn’t actually advocate said nastiness you’ve noticed… more like lament that guys perpetrating such nastiness are all-successful w/ women these days and discussing how everyone else (decent folk) can fake their way (“Game”) into being as successful again.
Feminism (along with our spoiled-easy way of life and post-1960s collapse of values) has, in Roissy’s general take, inspire what we now see with KStew: female attraction to dominant maleness, unfettered by morals, character, being considerate of another person’s feelings, etc. (marriage, commitment, etc. is today no object, in the larger picture, either). Since marriage and stable families support our way of life (otherwise, mate guarding and stealing would take up all of our time, not to mention mass unsupported out-of-wedlock births is a great recipe for poverty) Roissy isn’t too thrilled about our modern “sexual marketplace” as the dating/mating game is now called.
Ari, I am preparing for an airplane ride to the North, to my home and my own computer.
So, as Agatha Christie, I note that Kristen has apologized, abjectly. She has, then, felt guilty about ‘what happened’. The result is that the Media is busy planting a huge “A” on her forehead; Rob, on the other hand, is ‘devastated’ and “heart broken”.
And those photos are not anywhere like a porno flick. In fact, I could agree that she wasn’a willin’, t’a wench; or not a lot.
I think, also like you, that these 2 infants have not had a chance to talk with each other, at least since he went off to Bulgaria and she went off to make On the Road. I do not think for a minute that he had ever intended to propose either.
So, to solve this problem: they come out dancing, having married, secretly, away from the turmoil; OR they get on Barbara Walters and talk about how they are both moving on, he to Iraq (for that movie), and she to whatever gutter they are making that incest movie…
thank you for checking up!
I do really hope the best for both of them, whatever form it takes.
“Women like Kristen Stewart are the reason people like Roissy, the PUA blogger, are so popular with men.”
Amen.
This article made me think of that scene in the comedy movie, ‘Not Another Teen Movie’ when the nerds are walking down the hallway at school and one of them says something like, “Girls pssh! All they care about is LOVE…” And then all a sudden a naked chick flies up against the window with her legs wrapped around a dude and you hear her scream, “LOVE ME!”
I enjoyed the piece and I am a committed believer in monogamous relationships. I have been married for 16 years, and have two kids to boot. Our still existent marriage was hard work, luck and God’s mercy all rolled into one. Having said this – why is anyone surprised that a Hollywood actor has an affair? Isn’t that what they do? Routinely?
Congratulations!! mazel tov! And blessings on the heads of your children, yourself, and your spouse!
I like to think there is still hope that others will have marriages as rewarding as mine. Thirty seven years ago by the end of our first date, I knew she was the one I wanted to marry. A year later we made that happen and have been monogamous since. To this day, we hold hands while walking in the mall. And when one of us is puking our guts out from the stomach flu the other is there applying a cool washcloth to the face the face. She truly is the wind beneath my wings.
wow! 37 years! Congratulations!
and- eww- funny- but EWWW. very funny, and touching, though.
have you actually tested this? was it before or after a vacation to some exotic somewhere? or just a rancid salad bar flu?
again, ewww! ( I’m laughing while typing- it sounds like true, devoted love!)
Wow, reading the article and comments, wow. I don’t know how some people live their lives without some sort of mental breakdown. Most of these Hollywood types are the last people anyone should be using as rolemodels, except for the drunken/doper/hooker models.
All women may not be batsh!t crazy, but they complain about it for the other 99.99% who are.
Wow, I congratulate myself for making it through the first two paragraphs. That’s 30 seconds of my life I’ll never get back. Who the heck is [hang on, I forgot her name already] Kristen Stewart that we should even remotely care? *Enter chirping crickets* I guess it’s just me. I tend to block out 99 percent of what comes out of Hollyweird. She does work in Hollywood, right?
No, MISS or MS, Kristen Stewart did not “cheat” although living as my grandparents (& I) would put it “in sin,” she WAS NOT in a marriage with Robert Patterson. They were “playing at marriage” but not married, and at any time each was free to leave, no court cases, no lawyers and thankfully no children.
No the CHEAT is Rupert Sanders, (age 41) a married man. Meaning he has a wife with whom he has sired a couple children. What a marriage is meant to do by the way, procreate and raise children.
The star/starlet has not done anything that young women throughout human history have not done. Get involved with a man that has “power” over her living conditions/employment. It happened in Washington D.C. within 16000 Pennsylvania Blvd. with a young woman named Monica. It happened to a former neighbor with the high school grad receptionist too.
The man holds the power, and frankly the responsibility here. HE CHEATED, HE ABUSED or TOOK ADVANTAGE. The young woman (relatively immature at that) thought SHE WAS SPECIAL. How I don’t know. But even with “her true love” someone with “more” comes and she dumps or bails on the first guy.
Not every young woman does this, and a few might be tempted but back-off, still many do, and it is romanticized. You can argue that the older man was just being a “dog” and panting after a “bit in heat.” (But my four dogs would be very upset at the abuse of their species to describe human sinful behavior.)
But come-on, does this man not have any self-control? Self discipline? How the heck did he get to be a director of a couple of major budget movies without it? Or is it the power and fame, that if you worked hard enough, you reach a point where you can have to do anything? No less authority than Machiavelli told those that rule, to keep ruling, they were to avoid sexual entanglements with underlings. That goes for office managers, presidents and directors.
Rupert Sanders – cheater!
the director was not a major movie director. He directed commercials. He had a meeting with Ms Stewart in Vancoucer, likely as not out in public since she mentioned a napkin from coffee- so selective paparazzi stalking, right there- and he laid out his vision for a movie, and she signed on. When she agreed, all the other bankers signed up. He couldn’t have opened a bag of Doritoes without her help.
So, I’m guessing in his first foray into big director-dom, he explained what he was doing on set to Ms Stewart. She’s bright, she was paying attention. We have the photos- she’s looking pretty focussed on the work, not on him. Then he calls her, she goes for what seems like a regular business-meeting, and the next thing you know, he’s breaking out the wolf-man impression.
Hollywood, being piecework- pretty much everyone is diplomatic all the time. People don’t know who is going to work on a project, or not. Studio heads play musical chairs, accountants go swashbuckling, famous stars get fat, supporting actors break big, set designers make a documentary and then move on up. Manners count.
So, some director has successfully shot a movie, has explained what he’s doing, and why, and been generally positive, warm and open, calls- you answer the call. And then Mr PositiveWarmOpen begins groping you try to manage and stay calm and maybe change the venue, calm things down, be diplomatic, stay diplomatic, remain calm, and then go home and scrub down when they whole forgettable groping game is over and just pretend it didn’t happen b/c it’s so gross and out of character for the guy. The girl did not unbutton one single button on her shirt. Not One. She remained completely, entirely, totally covered up and all the way dressed. That doesn’t look like a “swept away by passion” moment like I’ve ever seen. It does look like the creepy guy wrestling with the prom-queen.
Mr Sanders, the director, was behaving exactly how he thought big-time directors go about behaving. He was relying on fairly lurid movies and old-studio system gossip. I doubt he’s met a single other big director, ever.
Ari, thanks for your great insight into the Hollywood world. So, can you explain then, why Kristen was so very apologetic to Rob?
And I hope you turn up again in these conversations. I would like to talk with you about the Twilight books, as I have an alternative analysis…
Leslie now has my email. Ask her for it. We can e-mail. I’m pretty sure we’ve bored the snot out of everybody else by going through every little detail.
And- eh, who knows? I don’t know her, so I can’t speak with any confidence about the true state of her mind. I’m betting on a hash of a mix of a over-confident, socially clueless director riven by hormones + Rob is having way too much fun on set with Reese Witherspoon, and RW is all “Oh, it’s just business” which is pretty standard, so she can’t officially get upset, and maybe Sanders’s is an awesome kisser- his wife is smoking, and she loves and supports him like crazy, so he’s got something going on that a way, and maybe staying all the way dressed is a way to moderate the make-out- he can’t go too far, it’s about on the level of what Rob forgot to mention about that topless bar: Who knows?
I mean, really, R&K reconnect and have a big ol’ argument in the back of the auditorium at the Teen Choice Awards? Can you imagine having a big conversation about something awkward in half-public like that, yourself? That’s not a relationship that’s had enough hanging out and talking time. That sounds like it needed to be said but, hey, there are planes to catch right at the end, I need your attention, something happened and I can’t process it, I’m confused,etc etc etc. It’s really kind of sad.
You know the only women who are definite about acquaintance rape are undergraduates at liberal arts colleges? Everyone else is kind of wandery and doubtful. It’s usually a rough interview, they practically need the rape kit, if it’s done at all, b/c the girl isn’t in focus, or clear about what happened, or anything. And, well, again, the first impulse seems to be go home and scrub down. Law and Order and Linda Fairstein novels aren’t documentaries, they’re Public Service Announcements- “Go to Hospital! Do NOT PASS GO! Do NOT Shower! Do NOT FORGET DETAILS! DO NOT stutter when the police question you! ALL WLL BE WELL!!!” Even after what, 20 years of ‘take back the night’ rallies the FBI still says most rapes aren’t reported. I have no idea if that’s to keep numbers up.
My guess is reticence, and pretending whatever horrible didn’t really happen. But I only know one person that went to a rape crisis center, ever, and I think it was more of a phobia thing- this event symbolized all the other crappy stuff going on in her life. Everyone else I know showered, scrubbed and then tried to commit suicide. So, I don’t know that she went home and didn’t have the worst night ever, all alone, even though it was all clothes on, all the way. And Rob wasn’t at home that night.
So I don’t know that it wasn’t some sort of violation from near grooming and flattery and pressure, and lack of guard-rails from her mom…
It’s about like a boxing coach said- the first thing he had to train women to do is STOP apologizing when someone else hit them. Sad, isn’t it?
I mean, it’s not like she’s not put in physically uncomfortable situations on a regular basis. Catholic theologians are the only ones saying to listen to your unease- it’s your conscience whispering. Well, her movie list? Is a bunch of pretty intense physical/moral boundary violations. When Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger were creeped out by the activities filmed in Brokeback Mountain, their director sweet-talked them into violating that emotional/physical sanctity.Heath Ledger was literally not the same actor, after that movie.
Same for Magic Mike- the male actors were pretty freaped out. She’s a veteran actor with ten years of being violated, so she knows to calm down, slow down her breathing, listen to that unease and yet keep going on, no matter what, towards whatever end she’s aiming. Or her director. I’m not sure she COULD say no. That’s why I was wondering about “mindfulness” and “catechism” and what her ” Of course…this, then,that…” It takes training, each way.Svengali? The original? Was a director of a young woman. Roissy is really gross, but I don’t know that he’s wrong, necessarily.
And, well Rob is getting all bent about some guy kissing her when he kissed a guy at the Teen Choice Awards the year before? I mean, I know his was scripted- but still- a kiss is a kiss is a kiss. And the Reese Witherspoon jealous possibility. Reese’s interviews were not one bit of professional. There’d better be some ‘splainin’ goin’ on, on all sides.
I mean, it’s Kristen Stewart, who is private, reserved, and professional. If it were Lindsay Lohan, this would be easy: she was trying to get laid in public near a paparazzi b/c she’s a total train-wreck exhibitionist. And if it were Tara Reid, it’d be because she was too drunk to get her buttons undone, and the director wouldn’t undo them b/c he was scared of getting herpes, or something like that.
Write! We’ll talk! It’ll be fun!
Emails sent. Ari, I’m not sure about your Pattinson analysis–I’ve never read much about him–but I think you are spot on with Stewart. The roles actors pick do have some effect upon them. (One of my “hobbies” is reading smart actress interviews for why they took the edgy and often topless role. Something about all of that keeps trying to occur to me, but hasn’t yet.) Stewart has chosen dark and dysfunctional for a long time. That must have taken its toll.
Heather, alternate analysis? Send that to me. How modern post-feminists view and react to Bella is even more interesting than how they react to actresses like Stewart.
I’m sorry; I’m really sick of all this excuse-making for female infidelity. “She was young”… “she was naive”… “she needed the job”… “her spouse didn’t treat her right”… “she wasn’t fulfilled”, etc. From reading this, apparently no woman ever gets involved with a man because she wants to. All hetro sex is rape!
manjaw’s gotta manjaw
otherwise, tl;dr
Click to read about manjaw
In the days before “hooking up” we dated until we found the man/woman we wanted to spend a lifetime with and we committed to one another. Those of us who were wise practiced romance diligently with our spouses so that, twenty years in, we still got that special feeling when we knew our lovers were near. Thirty years and still in love, forty-four years, we are still holding hands. Promiscuous sex could not compare with the committed relationship based on love and faithfulness. It takes work, it takes a determination to keep a vow. It would crumble if we had not set our hearts to the task and refused to quit. I feel so sorry for women who need to read porn, soft or hard-core, in order to feel alive. A real man is the best investment.
A real man is too much work because all that glitters is gold today.
Perhaps she should marry Jon Stewart (Leibowitz). That way she wouldnt have to change her name and they could give birth to really shallow offspring. Hassan Nasrallah of hezbollah could officiate as clergy
Would someone please explain “alpha” and “beta” to me? I don’t think it’s the same as “suitable” and “unsuitable.”
Do guys self- identify as “alpha” or “beta” ? Is there only one “alpha” in a room, like a dog-sled team?
Is this guys’ gossiping about each other? Do girls think the same? Like, they’d make a bright green “beta!” tee-shirt for their boyfriend?
Some guy would put “alpha” pins on his jacket?
Is this some weird slang used at the nerd table to gossip about everyone else in the high school?
Or is it some way for depressed people to talk about themselves? Like it was popular to be “co-dependent” 20 years ago?
I don’t have the slightest idea who Kristin Stewart is. Maybe she was just looking to get some strange.
And who is Ari? Are you one of those “relationship experts” like the ones who have been on TV for the last 20 years?
Who could possibly care about any of this?
Oops. Kristen. Sorry.
Because I have a teenage daughter, the Twilight films are sitting in my DVD collection.
Someday, when I’m otherwise bored, maybe I’ll watch them.
heathermc>/b>
>i>Thank you, ari. And, I totally agree that if Pattinson wants Stewart to act like a wife, he should marry her.
Thanks for sticking up for the Twilight Saga.
Because getting married stops women form cheating.