Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 10 Editor's Choice: 5
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WW
[Read the article: The Fix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How strange a feeling, to see news of Wendy Wasserstein's passing as an addendum to the celebrity gossip sheet. The world has lost an incredible talent.
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a woman scorned
[Read the article: She is JT LeRoy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's with the naysaying? I can't understand how anyone wouldn't be fascinated by the long, strange road Laura Albert traveled before ultimately creating JT LeRoy. Party poopers. The real interest now--for me, anyway--rests not in unmasking LeRoy, but in unmasking Albert.
I am especially fascinated by women who "join" subcultures, only to feel sidelined and thwarted by matters of gender, and then counter that friction by dressing androgynously. Flora Jan Belle, a flapper and writer in the 20s, might be one example, and semi-fictional "Mardou Fox" (from The Subterraneans) is most certainly another.
It's fitting, then, that Albert, empowered by a sexual transience and fluidity, would assemble an alter-ego--not a masculine one, but rather, an androgynous one--to gain literary acceptance. It's even more interesting that she would take on that alter-ego with such permanence and conviction. Historically, plenty of female writers have published under a masculine or nebulous pseudonym, so that the work itself might be accepted on its own terms. And, historically, plenty of writers have fabricated their own memoirs. Fine. But Albert/LeRoy is so different, and therefore so fascinating, because the work of fiction didn't stop when she pulled the pen from the paper. With every phone call, she was still fictionalizing, she was still writing.
I think Jack Boulware asserted that very nicely, and far less ham-handedly than I just did. It's a fine deconstruction, analytical without judgment, insightful without babble. And considering the silence Mr. Boulware must have met with during the article's research, it's a good piece of detective work, to boot. The connections Boulware drew, the implications he made, they all ring true to me. You've got Albert's need to create narratives, her need for contact and support and affirmation, and her willingness to get her narratives out there by any means, medium, and conduit necessary. Anyone who reads critically knows to ask of the material at its close, "So what?" And in this case, the "material" is the life--the real life lived by a semi-fictitious person--the life of LeRoy and its divergences and coincidences with its maker. That is to say, it's never a question of who, but instead, why. Boulware's snapshot, however grainy, seems valid and truthful. And it's a striking one.
Frankly, I find JT LeRoy more interesting, and more real, now that he's finally been uncovered, and better yet, revealed. So thanks, Mr Boulware, for this narrative about Laura Albert; it was a great read.
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The body of the matter
[Read the article: I enjoy men until we get to the bedroom]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I really feel for the author of the letter. There is real joy in the chase, the crush, the desire, the butterflies in the stomach. How painful when the act--the conclusion of the chase, in a way--doesn't live up to its slow, delicious build. There is also an aspect of sex that is repugnantly animal and uncivilized; it is often jarring when sex is less romantic, chivalrous, or exciting than its months and months of physical, intellectual, and emotional foreplay.
Beyond that, I would agree with Sandra's assessment. I very recently read somewhere, and I can certainly believe it, that women of a certain age very frequently lose interest in sex not because of a hormonal change, but because they are no longer attracted to their own bodies. If such is the case, and this is really a matter of cultural pressure and anxiety, I might suggest that the author of this letter try intercourse with her own clothing on. Let her partner remain dressed, too! Or why not simply dim the lights? Or, if those suggestions feel too tawdry, why not study herself in the mirror, and come to love her skin, however changed she might find it? For that matter, it is surprisingly easy, after a little study, to come to cherish and relish in the body of a partner, its frame, its idiosyncracies, however "dumpy" the body might initially seem.
Of course, these suggestions are probably all wrong. I think Mr. Tennis' final diagnosis--that she might come to enjoy intercourse once she feels permitted to enjoy absolutely nothing about it--is not only sound, but likely.
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Oh, what young harlot wouldn't love it?
[Read the article: Who's the sexiest 6-year-old?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Little girls were always encouraged to grow up too quickly. In the Victorian era, parents were urged to treat their children as "miniature adults." Baby dolls that require feeding and diaper-changing, Easy Bake Ovens, Mystery Date, non-functional kitchens made by Fisher Price, Pretty Pretty Princess, Glamour Shots, Tinkerbell cosmetics--these are all bits and pieces of a bigger game of girlhood dress-up, where the child assumes not just the persona of a "princess," but of an independent adult. It might be partly born out of an antiquated parenting technique, preparing a young girl for marriage by age thirteen or whatever, but it’s also part of that childhood fantasy of adulthood, absolutely. Marketing products toward that desire is nothing new.
Unfortunately, the childhood fantasy of adulthood is now farther removed from reality than ever. There are no more "princess" role models--Grace Kelly, Jackie O, well-read and articulate women who know how to deliver speeches in French while rocking a sweet Oleg Cassini ensemble--for girls to look up to. There are no more Harriet-the-Spies, unless you count the movie costarring Rosie O’Donnell. Live action Cinderella Stories now mean transforming an ugly, bookish girl into, not Audrey Hepburn, but into Sandra Bullock or some pop-star drone. And why not? The only rags-to-riches stories in the mainstream seem to involve ordinary Southern girls who finally prove themselves first to Disney (or Fox) and then to the world beyond. What little girl wouldn’t be misled into believing that the key to her own rags-to-riches tale is a hot bod and bedazzled spandex?