Black Swan & B-fast Club: Popular Girls & Perfectionism

I believe in peace/I believe in peace bitch/I believe in peace
~ Tori Amos "Waitress"

"Why didn't he just make one? Another angel. I mean, he's GOD after all, why didn't he just MAKE another angel?!" ~ Nicole Kidman in the movie "Rabbit Hole"

God sometimes you just don't come through/God sometimes you just don't come through/Do you need a woman to look after you?
~ Tori Amos "God"

"I just want to be perfect." ~ Natalie Portman in the movie "Black Swan"

I remember yes/in my peach party dress/no one dared/no one cared to tell me/where the pretty girls are/those demi-gods/with their nine inch nails and little fascist panties stuck inside the heart of every nice girl
~ Tori Amos "Precious Things"

I'll never forget the group of "popular girls" at my grade school. Ask any grown woman about this type of thing and - where ever she fell in the social rankings, part of this coveted group, on the fringes, or so far out of range it was just never-gonna-happen - you are bound to get an earful. They weren't always the prettiest, the skinniest, the richest or the smartest (though they often were all this & more), but they had something (charisma? being like-minded? just knew the fucking secret hand-shake?), that set them apart and got them entrance to this world that seemed so very desirable to me, at one time. That was the age (8-12 maybe?) when I pretty much would have sold my soul if I could have just somehow been one of them.

I was a fringer...sort of acceptable in certain ways (I played soccer with them, would help them with their math), but ultimately a little bit too weird to be fully let in. I was the girl who got invited to spend the night with one or two of them...but then I must have done or said something wrong, or perhaps we just didn't "click"? Because I never got asked back a second time.

This was actually EXTREMELY painful for me back then, but you can't really MAKE someone want to be your friend, as my mother probably tried to explain. I remember her telling me that even though I thought they and their lives were perfect, they still had problems and worries, just like anyone else. A pretty astute comment and absolutely dead on, I realize now of course, but sadly I don't think it helped a ton at the time. A friend's mother took a little bit of a lower road by telling her daughter something like "all those popular girls from when I was your age are fat & ugly now so don't worry you'll get the last laugh."

And this was just GRADE SCHOOL - for some I think it only got worse in later years. It's all right there in "The Breakfast Club" when Molly Ringwald's character basically says that she & Andrew (the wrestler) couldn't acknowledge the others when back at school next week, because the fallout from their group of friends would be cataclysmic. And that for Brian (the brain), for instance, he of course would want to acknowledge her & Andrew because well, they're in the popular group, everyone wants to be them! The brain (sweet Anthony Michael Hall) says something like "God Claire you're so conceited!" but she had a valid point he couldn't deny.

Man that movie is full of great quotes! I found three whole separate websites where they're compiled for the viewing pleasure of all us children of the 80s -
http://www.liquidice.co.uk/quotes/breakfastclubq.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/quotes
http://www.retrojunk.com/movie/quotes/7-the-breakfast-club/

And later on Claire says: "I hate it! I hate having to go along with everything my friends say!" John Bender (the exquisite Judd Nelson) has some choice words for her on this topic also, but I won't go into it - you can click on hyperlinks above if you want that trip down memory lane.

For me personally, by high school I had somehow managed to embrace my weirdness and gone off in other directions (not all of which were good - see the "dangerous boys" blog post from a couple years ago), where those "popular girls" sort of no longer existed (starting public school after 8 years of catholic was a big part of this). But I guess I thought of them again recently while watching "Black Swan" because, man, those ballerinas could be some serious bitches!! Is that how some people really are?!

Silly question, I know they are, I'm just lucky enough to not be around women like that much at all these days. (Although there was one piece-of-work I encountered in Milwaukee, I will never forget her, she taught me some great life lessons!) And also fortunate to not be in such a cut-throat competitive profession. I wonder if it's just part of that world and maybe similar to what it's like for actresses and other types of performers? But for ballerinas in particular, the drive for perfection seems inherent - I'll never forget how the main character in that book all us girls read back then, The Best Little Girl in the World was a ballerina, starving herself & throwing up just like Natalie Portman did, and also striving for the impossible.

For it is impossible really - perfection, so it's kinda silly to even try for it, I am starting to think. Only GOD is perfect after all, even if he does seem to make some questionable decisions that make us pretty angry (as depicted in the movie "Rabbit Hole").

What a gift to let go and just do your best. This is especially true for me lately with trying to write better & better software requirements in my now 1-year old "new" job. If those damn requirements could have been perfect by now through sheer effort, believe me they would be! And anyway, I'd really rather be writing blog posts (or my new idea: writing for T.V.! hellooooo Grey's Anatomy) or anything else more interesting.

I gotta admit there is a catty part of me that wonders if any of those "popular girls" are fat & ugly now (I did see one of them later on in high school and was a little, um, surprised by where she was going with her look). Or at least I just wonder in general, "where they are now" - those little "demi-gods," especially the ones who weren't particularly nice to me (for they weren't all evil, truthfully).

But the further truth is, removed from that cut-throat-girlhood world (NOT all sweetness & light, as some might think, obviously), they are probably just regular women these days, no longer the "anointed" like they seemed to me, way back then. Just women taking care of their families, working in offices, sleeping, loving & grumbling, growing older, and making the best decisions they can for their lives now. Normal women muddling through, just like me & just like you.

My Friends, by Dar Williams

I really love this song. Especially "She's found a common balance/Where you do your work, and you do your love/And they pay you, and praise your many talents." AND "She says 'You know I think you remember every part of me.'" Enjoy!

My Friends
~ Dar Williams

"He's a quiet man," that's all she said
And he's a thoughtful man
It's just he likes to keep his thoughts up in his head
And we finally meet, and she tries to draw him out a bit
She says "He's writing something,
Hey now, why don't you talk about it?"
And he doesn't make a sound
He's just staring at his coffee
And I know there's all this beauty
And this greatness she'll defend
But I think it's in my friend
I have a friend in a bright and distant town
She's found a common balance
Where you do your work, and you do your love
And they pay you, and praise your many talents
Well I'm passing through, and we know we won't sleep
She laughs, puts up the tea
She says "You know I think you remember every part of me."
And the water starts to boil
And if I had a camera
Showing all the light we give
And showing where the light extends
I'd give it to my friends
Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness
And I like the whole truth
But there are nights I only need forgiveness
Sometimes they say "I don't know who you are
But let me walk with you some"
And I say "I am alone, that's all
You can't save me from all the wrong I've done."
But they're waiting just the same
With their flashlights and their semaphores
And I'll act like I have faith and like that faith never ends
But I really just have friends

Grief and Grey's Anatomy AGAIN

Grey's Anatomy inspires me to write on this subject again.

It was another powerful season-ending finale and I had a lot of feelings while watching it, but interestingly one of them was ANGER. I couldn't help but flash back to when I found out about the sudden death of my father, years ago (for details read http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2009/07/day-music-died-part-one.html).

There was no staff of concerned-looking doctors (and they are all so attractive aren't they, so pretty, it's amazing!) ready to take me to a "grief room" to break the news gently, there was no world-renowned grief counselor on hand to help me, there was no other people in a waiting room to share the experience with, there was no free coffee!!

So, not entirely sure what THAT is about except maybe after recently posting my "Daddy" poems I'm still processing some level of grief, and still mad at him for dying or just how it happened. Whatever, I'll get over it but I had to share cuz it was that powerful.

Still I loved this episode, the moment when the woman stands up to her husband urging her to leave & says "I would like to stay." And the moment when the distraught woman with the daughter in surgery says "that's incredible" about the people who stayed in the waiting room to pull for her daughter, the one survivor, the "unaccompanied minor" from the plane crash.
http://www.greyswriters.com/2011/05/debora-cahn-on-unaccompanied-minor.html

What some humans will do for another person, it's as beautiful as the shiny shiny people who are the doctors on this show.

And I loved when Meredith says "I am going to get it together and we are gonna figure it out" - her bravery in the face of being alone with her new baby for the first time, being totally responsible for Zola all by herself, just wow. (I'd be completely terrified.)

And what he says to her about being a bad mother - frickin Derek, what the hell?! The writers have to do it for drama, I get that, but what she did is no reason to leave her like that.

I would love to write for Grey's Anatomy but have no idea what I would invent for these characters. Better just to watch and feel whatever feelings I have, I guess. :)

Breathe & Live Wide ~ inspired by Erica Jong

For Claudia, Against Narrowness
From Loveroot
Narrowing life because of the fears,

narrowing it between the dust motes,

narrowing the pink baby

between the green-limbed monsters,

& the drooling idiots,

& the ghosts of the Thalidomide infants,

narrowing hope,

always narrowing hope.

Mother sits on one shoulder hissing:

Life is dangerous.

Father sits on the other sighing:

Lucky you.

Grandmother, grandfather, big sister:

You'll die if you leave us,

you'll die if you ever leave us.

Sweetheart, baby sister,

you'll die anyway

& so will I.

Even if you walk the wide greensward,

even if you

& your beautiful big belly

embrace the world of men & trees,

even if you moan with pleasure,

& smoke the sweet grass

& feast on strawberries in bed,

you'll die anyway--

wide or narrow, 

you're going to die.

As long as you're at it,

die wide.

Follow your belly to the green pasture.

Lie down in the sun's dapple.

Life is not as dangerous
as mother said.

It is more dangerous,

more wide.
© Erica Mann Jong

Breathe & Live Wide
I have always wanted to
"live wide" and be free
to breathe

but

the world is so dangerous

and it only seems to get
more so as I age
inevitably

for it's a thin and narrow life
that finds me going from
home-to-work to-grocery-store

for beer & cigarettes, back to this balcony
where I'm putting the damage on
and don't breathe, at all, or just barely

it's a thin and narrow line
I walk, from here to the
fear, guilt & shame I feel, almost daily

that my mother
taught me, so eloquently
my father too

they sat there saying
"we can't control you"
but what did they try to do?

my 21 year old boyfriend
when I was 16, was only going to
help me live more wide (I thought)

they tried the priest, one time
but he didn't know what to do, or understand
a teenage girl and her parents begging for help

and then, when I confessed
to my mother that
I was having sex

she merely said
"you're going to do what you want
but I can't condone it"

my father just raged
and felt helpless
as fathers do

but if he had only looked me
in the eyes and said
Sweetheart, baby girl

that I love - I can't stand to see you hurting yourself

I'm so worried about you

maybe I could have come
to my senses, made different choices and
not be where I am now

but that's all in the past and
I'll die anyway, as we all do
I never did get pregnant, as they probably feared

I went to college, kept playing soccer somehow
was a "good girl" and graduated, so they did a
"good job" and everything is fine

actually, now

it's just that I'm going to die
much faster, with more fear, guilt & shame
and way less "wide" than I could do
otherwise