Marina Keegan
A talented journalist, playwright and activist died last weekend in a car crash shortly after graduating from Yale. Marina Keegan was 22. Before she died, she wrote an essay for the Yale Daily News urging her classmates to keep alive the sense of possibility they brought with them when they first arrived at college:
We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. …
What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. … We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.
Over on the Spearhead, W.F. Price notes her death, and quotes these words, and more, from her essay. His point? That she was wrong.
By the time you hit 25 or so – just three years out of college – your life is pretty much set, he argues, and “your future can be fairly well predicted by your life at that point.” And this apparently goes double for women. Price titles his post: “After 25, Women Are Just Wasting Time.”
And why is that? Because if they’re not married to a good earner by then, or at least with the guy they plan to settle down with, they’re fucked. While an “average girl,” as Price puts it, should have snagged her future husband by age 21, non-average college girls buy themselves only a few more years.
As Price explains it:
Four years of college buys women precious little time in the mating market. … I’d guess … about exactly as much time as it takes for them to complete it, because their pool of future mates tends to go through the same process … That’s to say that she has her best shot to land a good match up to perhaps 25.
There are a few, well, let’s just call them plot holes in Price’s story here, but let’s hear him out:
The problem with young women today is that they internalize this “anything is possible” attitude and don’t lose it until it really is too late for many of them. They think they can do better at 30 than at 22, which, in most cases, is simply wrong. Some might say that family and men are not a priority for these girls, but women for whom this is really true throughout life are an insignificant minority. In fact, most women are holding out precisely because they think they can get a better man later, perhaps when they have a better job and work with more powerful men.
But these girls are not going to change fundamentally, and in their early 20s are at the peak of their beauty while still retaining an innocent charm. Nothing about their looks or personality is going to make them more appealing at 30 than at 22, and the men available to them are not going to get any better, either….
The point is that neither men nor women change fundamentally past a certain point, and the same guys young women have available in their early 20s are generally the same guys that will be available at 30, only they will be older and, due to marriage, there will be far fewer of them.
Yep, we’re back to the hoary old story of the bad boy cock carousel once again. Better grab hold of a good hearted beta while the getting is good, ladies – because by the time you finish off your slutty dalliances with the bad boy alphas your looks will be gone and no man (alpha or beta) will want to have anything to do with you.
Price continues, cranking the melodrama up to eleven:
Time tends to accelerate past a certain age, and the 25-year old woman soon finds herself 30, and then 35, and at that point she’s got precious little of it left. Perhaps at 22 she was laughing about the “comical” notion that it could ever be too late, but after a certain point it is no longer comedy, but tragedy, and her laughter turns to tears.
Now, none of this is original, and none of it is true. What’s interesting is just how badly misogynistic manospherians want it to be true. They must, because they tell this same story to themselves over and over and over, like small children requesting their parents to read their favorite bedtime story “again!” They (the misogynists, not the children) love the idea that the women who turned them down – or who, at the very least, rejected their brand of patronizing patriarchy – will get their comeuppance in the end, the more humiliating, the better.
Price at least pretends to care about the women he’s trying to scare straight (into marriage). But some of the commenters on his site can’t be bothered to contain their glee at the notion of spurned thirtysomething women collapsing into tears.
The Contrarian Expatriate turns on the sarcasm:
But why shouldn’t women feel this way? Women “can have it all.” They are “fabulous.” Women rule. Women first. Women are 20 when they’re 30, and 30 when their 40. Women, women, women.
Screech, crash, halt! (Then comes reality when the cuteness wears off and the pounds set in….).
Eximio shares a “shit that never happened” story of a high school reunion he went to:
[M]en do age better than women. I looked around at the women and they all just looked old to me. I could not imagine myself with any of them. They had lost whatever charm they had and I found attractive the last time I had seen them. Almost all of the men that were there with their spouses were with younger women. …
As for the women specifically, while they all seemed old, I noted that the happiest of the lot talked about their family. Some of them were married, some of them divorced, but in both cases they talked about their kids. They were clearly the most fulfilled. Many of the other women than I knew had pursued consuming careers were not at the reunion. Those that were, and who did not have children, had a whiff of pain on their faces. They seemed to be looking around and suddenly forced to face the consequences of their choices.
Or maybe they noticed that a patronizing douche was giving them the once-over, and shot him a dirty look.
Ode apparently finds it all so hilarious he is unable to maintain his balance:
The problem with college today is that it teaches a woman that she has an IQ of 115 so naturally she spends her time chasing after men who she perceives to be her “equal”, the top 15% of the men within society. Or to put it another way, a college educated woman thinks she’s better than 85% of everybody else.
Sorry honey the only thing your degree in liberal arts or communications tells me is that you have IQ above 100. Which means you’re better than the bottom 50% of society. No other conclusions can be made. Of course most women will never understand this. They will spend the rest of their bitter lives believing the reason why they couldn’t get Mr. Right is because men are afraid of a strong and smart women.
Falls over laughing!
Rmaxd offers a somewhat different explanation for Marina Keegan’s optimism; I’m not quite sure I even understand it.
What Mira [sic] is expressing, her not needing a man, that precisely because she doesnt need a man she can get everything she wants, well into her 50′s …
She’s accepted her feminist brainwashed idiocy & tried to turn it into a social norm
Her fantasy entails her getting an education, & competing in cut-throat environments designed for men … which require a male intolerance for anything not rational or logic
All the while her fantasy involves a child as an accessory & strong alpha thug, who’ll rescue her instead of pumping & dumping her to kingdom come …
Her vagina also gives her magical powers to screw over sex hungry beta’s without game, as a backup plan, if the jamaican thugs from her sex tourism never get round to playing captain save-a hoe, when she hits 30 …
Beta’s, a deranged feminists insurance policy, for when her vagina no longer cashes cheques she cant write …
Our old pal JeremiahMRA (a.k.a. Things Are Bad) suggests, in a series of comments, that we should push the whole timetable up a few years, forcing girls to get married to whomever their fathers say shortly after puberty. No, really, that’s his actual argument:
Honestly women shouldn’t be going to college at all. It’s a complete waste and takes away from people who can actually get something from education: men. The only reason they do it is to inflate their egos….
[I]t’s more accurate that after puberty, women are just wasting time. Wasting time slutting around, going to school, working, when they should be getting married to whomever their fathers say and having children, which is really all women are good at.
Today women choose mates based solely on lust and greed. Women don’t love, the only thing they love is getting fucked hard and being provided for by a man or the government. This is why in any sane (patriarchal) society a girl’s father decides who she is to marry.
Lovely.
Most of these comments got dozens of upvotes, with only a handful of downvotes. Jeremiah’s comments, a bit reactionary even for The Spearhead, got more than a few downvotes, but still only a fraction as many as the upvotes they got. Only Rmaxd got more downvotes than up, perhaps because his comments made no fucking sense.
So nice that The Spearheaders have taken the time from their day to honor the memory of a promising writer whose life was cut short.
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This post contains some:
RE: Argenti
The best use for the crappy webcam we got (at the time, we were Skypeing with our folks overseas) was now we have a folder of us posing doing stupid faces and gesturing. It’s obviously not the best image quality, but the important thing is, we don’t have to hold the poses for long periods! GENIUS! (Of course, mirrors also work. Use them too.)
Enh, visibly trans body? Going to get that commentary anyway. They don’t like it, they can draw the wall.
Spearhead tells the truth about feminists and their “future”. A future (for the most part) of increasing loneliness, bitterness, and frustration, with nobody to blame but themselves–after all, it is absurd to continue to blame men for problems in your stupid lives when you haven’t had a relationship (or even sex) for twenty years–being either childless, or the fashionable one child (who probably hates you), and having long since hit the “glass ceiling” your kind of woman(?) has always been whining about.
Mothing left but a coterie of goofy girlfriends who are even more unsexed and bitter than you are, along with the occasional cat, who will put up with you as long as you feed it, pet it, and clean its litterbox.
Cat to feminist–“Mew, mew, meow…purr”– Translation: There, there, poor, lonely she-person. Even I will keep you company as long as you care for me, and nobody any better comes along…”
Being a feminist is nothing to brag about, but being an AGING feminist must be AWFUL!
Um meller, I don’t know how to break this to you but cats don’t talk…..
Dolls, on the other hand…
Haven’t seen you in a while, Meller! Blast from the past, in more ways than one this time.
Meller, I hate to say that to you but… my life is getting better each year so far.
How the fuck are we supposed to take taunts about “hahaha you’ll all grow old and lonely because you don’t want to think like me” seriously from you? I mean, c’mon son
Gee, how dare you call us a hate movement? We don’t hate women, we just want EQUALITY! All we’re saying is that women who aren’t dependent on men or fulfilling traditional women’s roles are pitiable human beings who are sad, lonely, bitter, and stupid! All we’re saying is they’re a monolith who all think and act a certain way that we can all surely agree is sad and unproductive! All we’re saying is that women’s friendships are stupid, that their choices about family and children are generally ridiculous and based on fashion, that their critiques of unfair business practices are “whining,” and that they will get old and be worthless with no one to love them but cats! (Though even the cats are humoring these pathetic women!)
I mean, it’s not like men ever age–well, I mean they DO, but when MEN age they’re becoming better somehow and they aren’t losing the only valuable asset they have (youth and beauty, obviously).
Honestly, we just can’t see how you paint us as a hate movement when we’re just saying you’re useless and ridiculous and that we laugh at you and consider you beneath us.
. . . I really need one of those blinking “sarcasm” gifs.
In the meantime you can try to master the html quotes:
</sarcasm>
(i tested it before posting)
I know about . I still want a gif. They’re pretty.
Oh hey Meller! About your little rant?
For realzies. I know my opinion is not valid by default of my being a woman (a 27 year old, unmarried feminist woman at that) but in a lot of ways so many things are so much better for me now than they were in my early 20’s. I’m nowhere near where I want to be, but I’m miles away from the angst of my younger years. And feminism is a huge part of why I’m so much happier and more at peace with myself. Hell, I didn’t even become sexually active with anyone until I started identifying as a feminist. Feminism made sexytimes sound fun instead of terrifying to me. Feminism is what made being single actually pretty good for me, instead of the supposed miserable state of cat-hoarding it’s supposedly supposed to be. And feminism is what made me realize I have a right to my standards, without which I wouldn’t have held out for my current boyfriend, a wonderful guy who makes me deliriously happy.
So, yeah. Anyone who thinks unmarried women over 25 and/or feminist women are unhappy by default, and if they aren’t now, they sure will be (dun dun DUN!) can go lick a frozen metal pole. My only regret is not realizing that at 25, my life was only just getting started.
Meller, what about bitter old men with extensive doll collections? Somehow I think they might be the unhappiest.
@LBT, Argenti — Well, admittedly I’m not so hot at spotting golden rectangles, but they’re basically a rectangle with proportions such that, if you remove a square section, the remainder is itself a golden rectangle and I just stop thinking about it at that point because fractals make my head hurt.
They’re supposed to be aesthetically pleasing when used as the basis for design layout. Lord knows why. Last time I checked I had a monkey brain, not some anal computer brain thing. And I know that because there wasn’t anyone else at the Cylon meeting who looked like me 🙂
My life models were a mix of men and women. It was the first time in my life I had seen a naked woman in person. I dropped my box of charcoals a couple of times. Not a great memory 🙁
Taking reference photos is a great use of a camera.
I’ve got Making Comics. I’ve also got some of Will Eisner’s books about the art form. McCloud is mostly theory, Eisner is mostly practice.
The how-to-draw-comics books from DC are actually interested in teaching sequential art. There are some how-to-draw books from Marvel but they’re all “here’s how you draw our characters” and are practically useless for the more complicated stuff.
RE: Falconer
Three-dimensional shapes in general are really tough for me; it seems to be a system-wide issue. We were those kids who went NUTS trying to figure out how to drive a car in reverse, because the mirror reversed our view of everything, which meant backwards car AND backwards view so our brain had to keep it all straight and ARGHLEBARGHLEHEADSPLODE.
We are also possibly the world’s rottenest players of Portal, and rely more on the level design than actual understanding of 3D space.
Yeah, some of the DC ones are all right. I’ve heard great things about Eisner, but haven’t had a chance to yoink any of his books. McCloud remains my little tin god.
Oop. Early key hit.
Generally, I’ve found that the most valuable thing for me has just been observation. It took me a while to be able to see in 3D (one of my more spatially adept friends taught me a kindergartner’s finger-pointing trick and I was like ZOMG THIS IS AMAZING), and color also required a bit of a change in how I observed, but so far, that’s helped me most as far as drawing things.
Comics layouts and stuff, of course, are kinda a learn-as-you-go, far as I can tell.
Meller seems to think that male feminists don’t exist. Or maybe don’t matter.
Weird.
You know what made me the happiest I’ve ever been in my life? When I finally let go of all that reality-denying patriarchy-think. Then suddenly I could be me, and screw stereotypes. I could just be me. And I was free to find a partner in life who liked me for just me. And, most importantly, I was free to not find a partner in life either. Any choice I made was suddenly okay–it was my choice! I didn’t have to conform to norms or ideals or any bullcrap gender lens!!
I could love cats. I could achieve as much or as little as I wanted to.
I mean, whoa! The matrix fell away and there was reality and it was FUN.
And part of that fun was it suddenly being all okay that I had a coterie of goofy girlfriends.
‘unsexed’? Um… yeah. Because feminism is totally anti-sex, and I totally didn’t find out what sex-positivism was from feminists, nope. Never happened.
My future sex life is being forecast by a dude who doesn’t even have sex with PEOPLE. We are amused. 😀
Also, I don’t really see why my ability to have sex will just END in 20 years. I mean, dude, there’s always gonna be stuff like Craigslist.
Also, the literature at this point is rife with studies showing that people who get into long-term relationships tend to have more and more sex as they get older. (although for those who are not in a long-term relationship there may be drop-off) Apparently all those couples in their sixties and eighties are…. well… practice makes perfect, right?
Falconer and LBT — golden rectangles are supposed to be “pleasing” because they’re fractal and nature is full of fractals (I think).
“Taking reference photos is a great use of a camera.” — seconded, I’ve then converted them to B+W digitally before, for charcoal and pencil drawings — auto flatten and color zap in 2 easy steps without my brain having to work!
And you can’t be worse than me at Portal, I’m generally fine-to-great at spatial shit and I’ve never beaten that game.
DKM — so, pray tell, what is the ideal state for women then? Real flesh and blood women Meller, in your world how can they be anything besides miserable, do tell!
RE: Argenti
Fractals make my headsplode. NATURE WHY YOU SO CRAZY NATURE.
RE: DKM
Just for you, I promise the next time I bang my husband, I’ll tell him (while wearing a monocle, no less!) “Sweetie, or sex did not exist. DKM says so.”
I’ll probably be banned from the bed for a while, but IT WILL BE WORTH IT.
I split my gut laughing.
RE: Howard Bannister
My husband and I have a tradition of saying really ill-advised things in bed on a lark.
I think the last one was, “Drop your pants! This is for SCIENCE!”
Ever read the webcomic The Devil’s Panties? (not actually Satanic porn)
@Meller- You do realize that, thanks to the magic of birth control, we ladies get to have sex and not necessarily have babies? And that some of us are doing that RIGHT NOW?
@ Howard- What Not to Say in the Bedroom is genius.
RE: Howard
Alas, I have not!
RE: M Dubz
You’re having sex and typing at the same time? Man, how’d you learn to be so versatile, I can’t even keyboard-smash in that situation…
Re: LBT
Regularly recurring feature: what not to say in the bedroom. I suspect you’re already familiar with much of the advice.
Re: versatility. Practice, practice, practice…
RE: Howard
I am lucky. My husband has a very gracious sense of humor.
(Though sometimes he does laugh so hard that the sex is ruined sheerly by that. But we don’t consider that a loss, necessarily.)
“I split my gut laughing.” — seconded
“Re: versatility. Practice, practice, practice…” XD
“Fractals make my headsplode. NATURE WHY YOU SO CRAZY NATURE.” — idfk, but that that cannot possibly be intelligent design and actually work as an organism is basically what broke my fundie-ism (I’ll post a proper post on that in the forums once I’m done fuming, probably tomorrow given I’m a nocturnal insomniac)
Oh, he knows we exist, we’re just not the ones he has the most interest in hurting.
He’ll still play Prophet of Doom when a male feminist challenges him. But he mostly ignores us when he’s on the attack.
Although in truth, he does seem to forget there are men here sometimes. Or pretends to forget.
… that has the stink of truth about it. I mean, DAMNATION and SUFFERING, that explains so much of his approach.
He knows male feminists exist. He doesn’t understand it, men are all the same, and want what he does.
So we are brainwashed, or something.
@ Meller
MRAs will have “A future (for the most part) of increasing loneliness, bitterness, and frustration, with nobody to blame but themselves–after all, it is absurd to continue to blame women for problems in your stupid lives when you haven’t had a relationship (or even sex) for twenty years–being either childless, or the unwanted one child (who probably hates you), and having long since lost your woman(?) because she was tired of being controlled and abused.
Nothing left but a coterie of creepy manosphere buddies who are even more unsexed and bitter than you are.”
I fixed it for you.
@Fembot
It makes so much more sense with the projection part taken out.
RE: Howard
Last night, I got to hear ALL about DKM and how he disapproved of what we were doing. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to time it so we could scream in his name in the throes of passion.
Probably just as well. “DKMMMM!” is really hard to scream.
–Mac
You could make it a word… D(i)K(uh)mmmmm!
I find it hilarious that people think that you stop changing past your early 20s. On my degree course we have a female student who’s 66 years old. Her life has changed completely since she retired from her job as a primary school teacher and decided to get another degree. My own mother changed careers dramatically in her late 40s.
You keep learning, keep growing, and keep changing as you age. Those who don’t just stagnate and rot.