Okay, I've run out of patience. What's it going to take? I'm young and single and write a blog. True, it's not the Gawker, but still pretty popular and lively. I don't live in New York, but I still live in a pretty trendy city stock full of creative types. I am not shy about frank sexual jokes. I have tattoos. I have a book out with lots of that frank sexual talk in it. I humiliate my loved ones* by telling embarrassing stories about them on the blog. I've dated rock musicians and writers. I drink alcoholic beverages. I own material goods that I've paid cash money for. I totally sleep in my make-up sometimes. I use first person pronouns. I'm ready and willing to become the girl everyone loves to describe as materialistic, self-centered, and oversexed.
Sure, I'd never describe fighting lovers as having "wild eyes and clenched jaws", but that's a minor issue. I'd be happy to describe myself as needy and/or vulnerable,** if that's what it takes. So come on, where's my big league profile in New York Times Magazine? Vanity Fair? Surely I've managed to check off all the requirements on the list.
Thankfully, Rebecca Traister has stepped in with an excellent article about the "set 'em up so you can knock 'em down" school of profiling female writers, which clued me into the missing ingredient:
In the same week that Gould was covering this "SATC"-critical terrain, she graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine -- tank-topped, tattooed and lounging upside down in mussed bed sheets......
More annoying -- and twisted -- is that those meager spots for women are consistently filled by those willing to expose themselves, visually and emotionally.....
When magazines feature stories about writers like those smart young men over at N+1 (as the Times magazine did a few years ago) those men are not typically photographed blogging in their beds; when, as the Observer suggested, we read a first-person confessional by Philip Weiss (who wrote recently for New York about his extramarital sexual yearnings) we are not treated to a bare-limbed image of him, or any image of him at all.
Well hell, if that's what it takes, I'm game. And I can prove it.
For those who're impressed with my ease with the boudoir shot and would like to give me huge features in your glossy magazines, {encode="amanda.marcotte@gmail.com" title="you can contact me here"}.
*Well, if you count how much I make fun of my cats by bestowing nicknames like "Lady Crapsherself" on them.
**Who isn't?
