I’m not sure what to penalize this author for more: her misuse of the word ‘fembot’ or her ability to write a deeply introspective two-pager about how isolated she is from her feelings.
I’m at a sake bar watching a man get drunk on an ice-cold woman. He shamelessly admits he can’t stop thinking about her. “Really,” she says, devouring a fat slice of tuna in one tidy bite. “That’s interesting.” Her raw beauty recalls a young Debbie Harry. He soldiers on: Why in God’s name is she single? What brought her to New York City? She smiles coyly. “You know all you need to know . . . for now.”
“CUT!” said the director, and the raw beauty returns to the dressing room muttering ‘who writes this crap?’ It wasn’t supposed to be this way, she’d aimed for Broadway and ended up doing commercial work, just to pay the bills, you know…but this is not her story, this is the story of an eavesdropper at a bar, a little drunk, a little talkative. Yes, this is night in the big city…where you’ll never know who you’ll meet. (*cue music*)
Another eavesdropper might have made the assumption that this tight-lipped minx reads dumb-and-dumber books on seducing men.
I like my version better.
But I prefer to see her as proof of a new kind of woman, one who isn’t fighting the urge to prattle on about her feelings. And though I don’t know this carnivorous vixen, a part of me wants to shove my fist in the air and cry, “Atta girl!”
You’re a dork. Seriously. “Atta girl”? Pumping your fist in the air? Who does that? Someone watched way too many made-for-TV sports dramas in the eighties. Now everyone at the sake bar knows you’re not cool enough to be there.
I came of age in the gut-spilling ’90s, a time of Ally McBeal, “female bonding,” Lilith Fair, and the explosion of the self-help section at Barnes & Noble. A decade has passed, but women still seem bent on suffocating themselves with an endless supply of self-indulgent hot air. We’re due for a backlash, and I think it has arrived in the form of what I like to call the fembot: the cool, together, emotionally unavailable girl one cube over.
Ah, television! It’s like a window through time. Is there a post WWII era, or a person who lived in it, that can’t be accurately reconstructed simply by returning to the television shows of yore? Not only does TV provide a context-free way to find out what went on in the past, but you can compare yourself to and define yourself by other (real!) women today through the magic of current popular dramas.
Take a look around, and you’ll notice that more women are having their sensitivity chips removed. On Grey’s Anatomy, an overachiever played by Sandra Oh cringes when friends ask for a hug, while Courteney Cox’s equally ambitious character on Dirt shoos away men in favor of her vibrator. This fall, NBC is remaking the classic ’70s show The Bionic Woman — she of the rational mind and superwoman body, an early-model fembot.
Above: Early-model fembots. If they had a hammer, they’d smash the patriarchy. Too bad all they have are killer bouffants and bras that shoot bullets.
I was totally wondering what happened to Courteney. And she used to be so nice. It’s like she’s a whole different person now. Also, (*psst: Theresa: in the episode of the Bionic Woman that you’re thinking about, the Bionic Woman was fighting the fembots. Just a detail.*)
Looks like it’s time for another episode of “The Girl Who Used Some Shit She Made Up and Called Feminism to Justify Her Own Personal Pathology.” In this season, the Cold Fish learns to love a man as much as she loves herself. This is different from last season, where a different type of strawwoman learned to love a man as much as she loved herself.
The problem: girls who are boys who like boys who are girls. I’ll spare you the part where she takes us on an emotional journey through her fascinating life and get right to the point.
We can narrow the pay gap, outpace men in earning degrees, helm a company, run the House of Representatives, choose to raise a child on our own, and match a man’s sexual appetite thrust for thrust. But there’s an unspoken disclaimer: We’d better not forsake our nurturing instinct while doing all of the above. Yeah, well, some of us are saying screw you to the fine print…
When time isn’t an issue, it may come down to control. In a binge-prone world, fembots are emotional anorexics. Maintaining a safe distance from your feelings can be liberating (and anytime we co-opt a traditionally male attribute, we give ourselves a little pat on the back), but anyone who made it through Psych 101 knows that too much compartmentalizing will have its consequences. Feelings ignored can come back to haunt you. Worse still is another side effect of fembotism: numbness.
You know what will fix this problem? In 22 or 48 minutes and will be a sure hit with the 18-35 female demographic and sponsors alike? A man.
Running after someone was too exhausting, and no one was ever worth catching. So I spent the better part of my 20s in clipped, casual relationships — until I met my husband two years ago. He was a 21st-century emo-boy who looked like Jesus Christ.
(*cue popular, already vanishing into irrelevence music bed* He doesn’t loook a thiiiiinnnnggg liiikkkeeeee Jeeeeeeessuuussss! But he talkslikeagentleman justlikeyouimaginedwhen yoooouuuuuu weeeerrrrreeee yoooouuuu-uuuunnnngggg!)
On one of our first dates, he figured out what was making my sound system so temperamental. We sat Indian-style on the floor, the guts of the amplifier splayed across my living room. “I love complicated things,” he confessed. Good thing for that, I thought.
Don’t think so highly of yourself, Theresa, because in a cliff-hanging season finale, we find that Mr. Emo Christ (Savior of the Narcissists) was actually simply talking of electronics, and is eager to show her what he did to make his RealDoll even better than the real thing, assuming that his real thing is a self-professed cyborg, who like totally didn’t cry at the end of that movie all the girly-girls were crying at.
Actually, it turns out she’s just perfect. Really, don’t you ever change!
Like a puppy, he followed me into my office. I told him I needed to be alone, to work, to hear my own thoughts. He smiled, gave a wink, and shut the door behind him. It was a small gesture that showed there’s one thing he does know: giving me space gets me wetter than Seattle. What can I say? Fembots have feelings, too.
And they lived happily ever after.