Leslie Knope’s character on Parks and Recreation is an interesting one.  She is more likeable than any of the antiheros of Arrested Development, slightly more multidimensional than the characters of Girls, and less funny or original than anyone on 30 Rock.  The character is allowed to breathe and do uncharacteristic things, not entirely well defined.  Her notion of “caring,” working hard, and leadership, is a different one than I’m used to.  To bolster her leadership and cultivate solidarity in her team, she clings to Girl Power clichés like Hilary Clinton and the portraits of female leaders on her wall, women’s sleepover type celebrations (Galentine’s Day), girlish sugary food like candy necklaces, and one hit wonders like LEN.  Her trite tastes and uneasy mythology of female leadership like girl power and the love of sweets, her fallibility and mistakes in trying to lead her team, and other quirks make her ostensibly effective and hard working personality less intimidating and easier to relate to.  It is known that she works hard both because she cares about building up and making use of her team and buys into the patriotic mythology of her exhurban town of Pawnee.  The reasons for her effective leadership and work are those of care and service, but what she is serving is a variety of naïve clichés.  She directs her patriotism to a town with a clearly bloody and racist past depicted humorously in the murals and one that is a flyover that has little to offer but obesity.  The show focuses more on her fallibility and quirks displayed in how she navigates her friendships and romantic life.  To give us an idea of the challenges and daily tasks of a female leader, to show us just how hard she works would make the character less cute, less relatable, and less filled with the feminine skills of caring, negotiation, and compromise that make her seem not like a feminist bitch.  The show ironizes about her gauche, small town mythologies of female empowerment while demonstrating what an instrumental leadership role she takes.  Ordinarily, someone who relies on boring saccharine clichés of girl power would be too annoying for me to follow, but her character is allowed to breathe through her interactions with people, through her mistakes, and how she treats others.   It is a show with looser storylines and less comedic punch than 30 Rock, but with a more fluid and easier to follow dynamic between characters than Arrested Development.  

The town setting of Parks and Rec informs the belief system of the characters.  The low culture of a small city in an American flyover state combined with the threadbare rewards of bureaucratic office culture set the tone for the characters' values and actions.  The show satirizes the Midwestern town's stereotypical obesity problem,  bored teenagers, meth labs, mom n pop waffle diners (and trashing of salads), age old family emporiums vs. new conglomerates, cyclical town entertainment like festivals, and small time local entertainment radio and news of present day Pawnee.  (The townspeople are earnestly excited to debut Lil Sebastian, a small horse, at the festival.  Young boys toilet papering a statue becomes a big issue for Leslie and her team to deal with.)  Its murals also gain the best jokes gently satirizing a quintessentially American history of violent suppression and subjugation of minorities (Native Americans, women) for personal gain as well as Puritan-style mores.  Characters like Tom Haverford or Donna attempt to rise above a low culture inland surrounding and end up looking even more affected and bourgeois doing it.  Haverford looks outward toward some sort of urban PUA luxury of exclusivity.  It is a pale reflection of what actually goes on in Jay Z's NY.  Like Emma Bovary, he tries to rise above his milieu and looks more maudlin, affected, and bourgeois doing it.  Donna's love of luxury reflects itself in gaudy velour cheetah print monogrammed robes with fake fur pink trim and her love for the Benz.  A beautiful woman like Ann is a workaday nurse who wears LOFT style clothes to dates.  Ron Swanson is a humorous archetype of the American conservative states' rights man who is allowed to be awesome.  In moments of imperfection or compromise, his walrus-like old time masculinity becomes more loveable.

Leslie Knope disdains none of Pawnee's low culture traditions.  She celebrates the waffle diners as "salt of the earth" establishments and the dopes who attend the public forums as "good hearted small town people."  She joys in adding her own spin to Pawnee traditions like creating an all female scout troupe to rival Ron Swanson's.  She is also not afraid to embrace the more girlish aspects of girl power, unquestioningly idolizing women like Janet Reno and Nancy Pelosi with her overly earnest wall of powerful women frames.  Her saccharine ideas about girl power (Galentine's Day) reflect her love of childish sugar treats like candy necklaces and Sweetums bars.  The Parks and Rec department, must, in effect feel the most "town spirit" for the schmaltzy community based events they create.  Thus, Leslie as a proactive, service-oriented leader must be upset about a rich woman leveling a gazebo.

The characters also have "the spirit" for various planned work retreats, small corporate rewards, and the various town events they must plan and cheer for.  They seem like the type of people to be genuinely excited by the free frisbees handed out on a drive time radio show.  Free work sandwiches do taste better when you factor in the fact that you get time off work to consume them.  Donna may unironically put up a fireman calendar and Jerry or Andy may compliment a Kincaid, Tom may wear a pair of gaudy top siders or air force ones defunct on both coasts. 

Chris Traeger uses Ben Wyatt as the Jorkins in Spenlow and Jorkins.

Their value system and patriotism as citizens of a theoretically forgettable town in Indiana is a backdrop for moments of pathos in the comedy show.  Leslie is moving when she acts in sacrificial compromise out of earnest love for her underdog team or her underdog town.  Tom Haverford is for a moment palatable when he swallows his pride and reveals the human insecurity beneath the annoying bluster.  The characters' interplay as a team allows them to demonstrate their earnest cooperation, their vulnerability, and humanity.  The job description requires rooting for and beautifying the underdog, shabby even compared to the neighboring town of Eagleton. The characters move in gauche small town tastes and enjoyments and show how human they can be.  

I watch Girls and wanted to defend it because I see some verisimilitude in the way the characters are portrayed.  I identify with it viscerally, basically.  The thing I mutter the most when watching it is like "Oh, Hannah don't do that shit.  Don't do it.  She did it."  Whether kissing the junkie who was following her, making a move on Patrick who she doesn't know, allowing herself to buy into Adam's humiliation thing when he goes to town on himself while she's in the bathroom, when he doesn't even want her to be in on it.  He rides the bike with her in front of it, she asks him to stop, and she face plants.  This sort of humiliation is a good barometer of their relationship and what she allows herself to go through.  So many breaches of her own boundaries, concessions to a dangerous situation to feed a bottomless hungry self esteem.  How Marnie sleeping with Elijah for a few moments years after they dated cracks a dent in her already fragile self esteem.  The baseness and embarrassment of her behavior and some of her situations is sometimes pushed for extra humiliation (even small details such as, many of us do grab snacks or cupcakes when we shouldn't, but few eat them in the shower... in fact it is hard for me to identify with/get into the show because of the depths of humiliation covered in episodes that describe their situations, sometimes it seems to want to pillory the characters' many ugly qualities and bad choices.)  All of this is meant to bring into view and exorcise the demons of people in their 20s who are figuring it out through making mistakes, specifically liberal arts hipster transplants.  But, I'm sure some of the unhealthy relationships or self esteem issues are relatable to people at varying levels of privilege.  Sometimes her actions are so ugly, as though she lives in a vacuum that there appears not to be a shred of her that is likeable and can be identified with.  I understand her overwhelming jones for validation when, after breaking up Marnie and Charlie and causing a huge scene, she asks "...but, if it weren't my journal, just as a piece of writing, would you think it was good?"  But, I find it selfish in a way that mostly ruins her status as a good friend when taking sides first with Charlie, then with Marnie and forcing both to stay during an awkward dinner party.  The desire is to punish her suffering friend with awkwardness, but asking Charlie to choose, then telling them to enjoy the dinner party when he leaves is taking it too far.  So many things she does are at a plausible extent of self humiliation and the prostration of one's personal pride.  Sure, we can picture ourselves sleeping with the junkie who is following us, but this does nothing for her other than breach her safety.  Her style is structured as a screenplay, but I recognize the relentlessly confessional nature of a free verse poem.  The desire to continually expose her ugliness and hurt to an audience, or the lowest points and humiliations of Hannah's character, and somehow communicate the state of her age group grandly, or absolve her own pains and pecuniary compromises of being a girl.  People rag on the characters for not being paragons of self esteem, "having it together," or making use of their privilege.  The characters are not meant to be role models.  They are somewhat full fledged, but also canvasses meant to expose some of the uglier conceits and shared experiences of one's 20s.  There is something I facilly call "lack of boundaries," the inability to assert one's own tastes or nature, but kowtowing to what the other person wants or likes just to keep them around.  Not being fully aware of your own motives and getting into a sleeping situation in a way that hurts you.  "Figuring out who you are," as in the career path that you take and how to remain stable and happy in a relationship requires this period of bouncing around and butting against mistakes that hurt and teach you what not to do.  That teach you not to engage with people just to receive a shot of validation, not to hypocritically not want them to move on, or that others don't fill some sort of void.  I guess so many things Hannah does make me cringe in the "baby girl, don't go there" way, don't do that, don't get involved in that, you're prostrating yourself or going to get hurt.  I've made similar mistakes in different situations, made myself look stupid, sought out the wrong type of people, wanted attention, ate for the pleasure of it and ate too much, felt fat, felt ugly, felt like no validation was enough.  I continue to make mistakes like this, but I look at her from above because she is in a different or more extreme situation.  Doesn't mean that I don't understand the compromise of my comfort for the ego validation of getting an article published on a website (in exchange for being forced to do Coke), getting it with a glamorous together/older dude (who is a total stranger and wasn't making a move on her), it seems like more of a 23 or 24 thing to do.  I've gone through a small crucible, a very small crucible of dearth and attempting to mold myself in the image of what other people like, to earn a corner of a very small inch of self esteem.  It doesn't mean that I don't now want to change the horrible, intractable things about myself that are unfeminine and hard to deal with, my messiness, my tendency to pick fights, my laziness, my lack of ability to get myself together... interesting that earning the opportunity to vulnerably face to face someone requires standing your ground on being who you are, and the vulnerability of union requires you to start to compromise. 

People who treat the word Girls as meaning that this is a portrayal of all girls and they must therefore be role models in power suits misunderstands the nature of this show.  Yes, they represent some girls (the universality being in the humiliations, foibles, and opposite gender experiences), but the fact is that they are just girls.  A show about a group of girls.. becoming women, without any additional descriptor attached like "career" girls or "family" girls.  The name of the show also explains the fact that there are so many unlikeable male characters.  The male characters are this way because they are what these women find, accept, and want, they are the reaction to the womens own self image, their foil, and general examples of the type of men girls meet on the way to becoming women.

I found the end extremely affecting.  Not only is Hannah often told she's selfish because she vents her emotional garbage and insecurity about her body and craft on people when they are dealing with their own problems, she has also had problems with anxiety and OCD in high school.  This flare up, I can understand, is due to trying to suppress a complex of unpleasant emotions, mostly fear.. and stress.  Bringing up the safety and anxiety of these measures.  Adam calling her triggers it, along with the pressured e-book deadline that has the empty stigma of being an e-book, but is still too tight and adult for her to make.  She feels unsafe because of Adam's stalking, compromised by the stress of doing something she's unable to do, assailed by the insecurities and doubts that trailed her during all the seasons, and now she has a chance to prove herself, hence the rising stress and fear crests and breaks.  Like hippie ideas of toxicity induced acne, something that the skin eructs after several years of toxic lifestyle, OCD surfaces after an undertow of ignored stresses and fears.  It is mostly about uncertainty, fear, and the lack of safety.  

Intercourse is a different thing for both sexes.  I thought of this because a man doodled a whale spewing sprm out of his phallic head.  For men, intercourse seems a thing of progressive abandon, of adventure, and irresponsibility.  Surrendering to a physical rush that ends in spewing all over the place.  To get to that point, haste, irresponsibility, persuasion are required.  After that we pick p the pieces.  But before hand, building focus on that member, which frenzies and wants more until it finishes by spewing everywhere.  After that we sleep or eat.  Feed the self.  A woman has to open and cautiously admit a foreign member, bring someone in with their threat of contagion, their threat of pregnancy, to envelop someone who is a foreign body and accept them, accept the consequences of their entry.  Rather than spewing everywhere, the woman's end is often one of somewhat tiredness, but a lack of their own dizzying end and the desire for communion, to reunite with the person they allowed to enter so the passport to entry was not a mistake.  To have allowed the irresponsible swelling and building and spewing wasn't a mistake.  Someone they enveloped, who momentarily became a piece of them to eat and pursue their own tryptophan forever, pointing at things.  When we allow someone into our domicile, our home, our vestibule, the clean up when thy leave it empty is on us.  Dealing with the fallout of their dropped dishes, their pacing boredom, their careless entry and release.  In movies, after momentarily letting someone in, we cut to the woman walking defeatedly in a parka down a street with trees and brownstones, weather appropriate to the season.  She is bowed with her parka and ipod, adolescent and pinched.  Scenes of people walking away, riding off backwards in trains to inspiring Beach House-like getaway music typically connotes freedom, "getting out of Dodge," a turn in the road which, due to the person's eye opening journey, would augur a bright and new future.  The post intercourse picture of a woman walking, to a clinic, from a clinic, out of an apartment, is the breaking of a promise of connection, intercourse being the symbol of connection and the heavy responsibility of meeting someone on the inside, to share one's life with them.  Intercourse is like playing house, containing some physical symbols of a spiritual communion, like buying a ring as a joke, or taking a trip to Red Hook IKEA as a joke.  Playing with the symbols of relationship or cohabitation, each scary burdens, but physical communion creates an implicit connection, though apparently for one person. 

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman"'-Simone de Beauvoir

I was reading Caitlyn Moran's book on How to be a Woman, just the beginning.  She talks about how at the age of 13 we begin to try to become women.  This isn't a natural transition, as Simone de Beauvoir's quote claims, to some extent we have to fit ourselves into the image of women.  The behavior of a "good woman," a "successful woman," a "wise" woman is learned and requires self supression.  I don't mean suppression of sideburns, ear gauges, pubic mustaches, and identifying as a "stud," I mean something else, maybe the suppression of the desire to fight, to sulk, to be vindictive, to complain and be sad.  The suppression of many things.

I'm a late comer in some ways to trying to be a woman, it is something that I find we reflect on intellectually, an unnatural shock to the system when we try to perform the art of being a good woman.   

I remember naturally and emotionally reacting to twirling in a romantic haze to "All the Way to Reno," or "Imitation of Life," I remember a blue darkness of lustful mystery when listening to Interpol's "Obstacle 1."  The realm of feminine fantasy, crushes, and the resentment of unrequited desire came to me easily as a teenager, in my "No Shirt No Shoes No Service" shirt mooning hazily with my Rio player that my brother gave me.  I performed a bare display of adulthood walking home on a local road with the slip of a barely existent sidewalk, as if distance from family and being my own transportation affected an imitation of being myself by myself.  I dreamed some abstract semblance of romance, some far facsimile of intercourse with the help of Interpol that didn't involve men or women, or crying to "Imitation of Life" imagining a 90s college rock high school or college experience set to a grunge bohemian autumn.  Rap was energizing.  The simple act of intercourse and the plastic dull imagining of prn was somewhat buzzkill to the red and blue scenes of Wong Kar Wai and the vague imaginings brought on by suggestive music and my ignorance of mechanics.  

I didn't need self reflection or laborious thought to have romantic thoughts, then again, I didn't have to belabor thinking about being a more enticing woman of substance.  High school had a different iron clad checkerboard structure entirely, the social strata of the cafeteria grew organically and had a mostly inflexible structure, like it often does.  Of course girls had crushes, some girls had things and boyfriends and the exploration/dramatic gestures that come with it.  (I find that long term relationships in high school both tied people down and confused them about the future, or set them into doomed high school sweetheart scenarios, I'm a great proponent of dreaming in high school, but not running a gauntlet of codependent scenarios.)  The interplay of the romantic relationship was a far flung desirable alternative and likely without the dances and courtships of adulthood, also without the bitterness of being older in a patriarchal society.  The mechanical act of intercourse or even wacking off was still somewhat disapproved of, thus we fetishized, pursued, focused more on the physical-romantic stuff.  We didn't think we'd get to the dull "preserving a relationship part" and so didn't get the numerous dispiriting self help nonsense that takes up books. 

What makes a better woman?  A competitive woman?  A, um, non gross woman?  Some of my habits while in pursuit of important things like work, a passion, good restaurants, and fun in New York had to change to avoid killing each other.  I find that when separated, the sexes fantasize about each other at a distance and formulate a picture not always correlated to reality.  For example, thinking a woman is made of gauzy lingerie, sugar, spice and everything nice by observing the restaurant hostess or dating the bartender, both of whom have to take time to maintain themselves as an object of desire to keep up customers, might give one a rude awakening if they settle into more than intercourse with, say, me.  I must not be the only one who is still settling into a makeup routine.  Who dresses for work in a certain way and hasn't worked out a style yet, who has bodily functions.  My own separation from many women has caused me to speculate how they hide all that.  

My run in with understanding anything at all spoken of in B Jones was considerably delayed.  In high school, I had a dreamy image of men I had a crush on, in college, I had intimate conversations with men I was friends with.  I had as yet no need to discover dispiriting websites that detail women as pigs that must primp themselves on a "market" for selection of men, to be sweet and sassy, hadn't heard of the Mancession or of the rise of women, or the "why all the good men taken or gay" complaint.  I barely observed my family at a remove.  I had no need to make a case study of women "making it work."  I didn't resent younger women, thinner women, Asian women, more primped women, women with longer hair.... or see men as uncompromising sexists who wanted to milk dates for their sex quotient, double standard holders who go halfsies on a Nathan's hot dog, who are "sexually hypocritical" but seek a woman who in 30 seconds they can recognize as their hot, sweet, fun, quiet, challenging wife.  

It took me til my early 20s to formulate an image of men whose permutations were all negative and oppressive, the imperfect, hypocritical thing looking to level up indefinitely in exchange for his freedom, who lazily avoided giving me what I wanted, the take charge attitude in planning, the dating trial run (construed as a lazy notion of commitment, dating to see how it works), the somewhat romance, the effete hipster, the creepy undesirable, all looking to level up to the same Brooklyn Decker while claiming a host of unreliable traits in return for their ostensible "taking life as an oyster they'll eat raw" (challenging them, being strong, kind, and sweet, loving adventure, taking care of themselves), requesting none of the traits I had or was ever proud of.  I began to try to fit myself to their mold, smart from their dismissal, and grouse that the mold exists.  Despite the fact that I had a very specific type (Josh Radnor) whose own type was Kate Mara the thin, fabulous haired, damaged trendy bar hostess or Elizabeth Olsen the over young co-ed whose tight... ideas on life give them a new lease on life.  Trying to mold myself to another's preferences has always led hilarious results that make me slouchier, more childish, and with more darting glances at strangers.  Outside my romantic fantasy, trying to appeal to hipsters always yielded in disappointment partly due to the fact that I don't want to eat Humboldt Fog or sit around and don't look like a yoga or Zumba instructor.

Being unapologetically myself tends to work in the beginning, but my Diane Keaton-like predilection for black blazers, scarves, and boots starts to wear on men "biologically" disposed to dresses, heels, colors, and non insecure, young, long haired, skinny women.  At the middle juncture of the relationship, my lack of ability to be a woman in the boudoir or living room starts to be found out, my lack of cleanliness, sometimes clothes are not folded but thrown on the floor, sometimes I procrastinate, sometimes I stand around in my coat when I get home, contemplating what I want to do.  Sometimes spontaneous happenings happen before I can embark on a complicated primping routine.  So don't show up at my house while I'm still in the shower, then observe how bad my skin is.  The fact that I get bogged down in one style and one suite of clothes every year starts to wear and I'm not "dressing for the job."  And so I feel that I have to revise my old standard ways, my uncomplicated, unwieldy habits.  There are more bad habits than they know, and they want me to revise more than I can think of.  So I come to think of what it means to be a good woman.  A perfumed, comely woman.  The kind who doesn't get chided.  And the fact is, this transformation is good, it would do me good.  Even my mom who used to eat raw eggs on the counter for breakfast and slivers of raw onion with salt had to learn how to make pastries and presentation dishes.  How long can my refusal to bend be a point of strength?  Until I start to be criticized for my laundry?  For the fact that I never cook, but pay for food as pennance?  The skills I tried to amass and look at to cheer myself up were never interpersonal or other-oriented, I'm not a good mediator, I'm not even a good team player.  I'm not good at hosting people or making them feel comfortable, or at making men feel safe, which I'd like to do.  I am good at entertaining and making children feel somewhat loved, but this is not a skill men want to hear about.  I am a lot more naturally caring and flexible toward children because not being that way to them would violate my moral code.  My skimpy moral code.  Whose contents are: Nurture the minds and lives of children or get out of the way.  Do not harm or obstruct others to the best of your ability.  It didn't occur to me for years to emulate what men think women do, their intricate imaginings of what our upkeep must be, that we are such sweet, clean creatures who don't pee on the toilet seat.  Because my image of what men required me didn't exceed fantasy or maybe what my male friends told me was so harsh (even when I felt strong romantic feelings for them) fell on deaf ears because they were in the same breath as saying "go blow a goat."  And I had gained weight and became more sloppy and less feminine than I had in years.  So I basked in their friendship, their intelligence, their ebullience, and our articulate intimacy.  My adolescence was as beautiful, youthful, and spiritual as my imagination.  My image of men hazy.  

I landed into the world during a time where the "Mancession" and articles on women's rise/romantic dissatisfaction correlated with a lot of "Love the One Your With" sermonizing, rhapsodizing on commitment, establishing boundaries, saying "relationships are work," breakups that indicated a long standing relationship was crumbling, the engagements of people I knew marking them taking their relationship seriously and to the next level, a dull as toast time to enter the world of dating whose courtship was more codified than ever.  I rapidly caught up to the everywoman heroines of lady fiction and the readers of "Why Men Marry Bitches" by observing current courtship rituals (the first date, the third date, the 30 second first impression, the bone just about anyone and commit to the perfect woman dichotomy, the hook ups, the lack of communication, the dating several women simultaneously) and being filled with 2 years worth of bitterness at the fact that men seem to be getting what they want, which is hollow to women and far from what they want.  (These things meant nothing to me a couple years earlier, nor would I have set food on those the frisky-style advice blogs earlier for fear of being a stereotypical woman.  When did I become the type of person to actually consider what a "retread" meant?  Or internalizing and feeling irritated by the many "isolate and work on yourself before you go out into the market?"  We are all works in progress.)  Fighting to weigh down dating with heavier romantic significance seems to come with the price of reanimating some 50s rhetoric and expressions like "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free."  New Agers try to render this with a spiritual significance that I agree with, that sex aligns people and causes one to take a piece of the other such that you have the potential to harm yourself if you engage in such an alignment (of chakras) with another and just leave it to rest without meaning, to accumulate psychic baggage.  It was better than the oxytocin explanation that doesn't affect all women.  And it was not an entirely shame-based argument for "keeping it in your pants," it averred that sleeping with people and not forging a bond is "not good for the soul."  I came to date in a rather sobering Return to Commitment time when seeing relationships as a contract between two people where burden should be shared equally was experiencing a renaissance.  Where "work on yourself before you think you can complete another" took on particular resonance after the meaningless fumbling after the 60s revolution.  Some of the shame was taken out of intercourse, but women were coming up short on the meaning they craved and finding themselves tugging against men who wanted to sleep with them and keep their freedom.  Online dating was a fresh direct or craigslist ad like pitch in bullet points of what one is doing, what one is good at, and what they like.  It was easy to browse through their pictures and resume quickly, one becomes a ware, the other scans like an HR rep looking for bullet points like 2 years' experience in ETL processing or Java, C++, PHP in the list of competencies.  I tend to see myself as the ware more than the buyer.  This is where I went wrong, but in such a scenario, women's assets are on display and seeing the other people's response as a barometer of your own desireability is a tempting and honest mistake.  One is Fuji apples for sale at $3.99 a pound, but are they organic, are they local?  

The moments I think of how to revise my ingrained habits of being a bit sloppy are when people whose judgment I care about will see and judge.  I am a lot like an exposed scallop, easily cut to sensitivity by anyone's poke.  Or perhaps an oyster.  Theoretically, when you throw sand in the oyster, it begins to defensively coat it in layers of saliva so it doesn't scratch, until the grain of sand becomes a cultured pearl.  I tend to set to work defensively coating the sand or grit of critical input, especially the variety that is not malicious, with my own saliva and others' reassurance until the sand is completely dissolved and the entire thing becomes a gobbet of saliva.  And I continue to be an oyster without a pearl.  Blunt criticism tends not to change me and I tend to go on with my cycle of mistakes.  At rare times it does change me and I acquire a new cycle of mistakes.  I don't know how anyone can effectively get me to culture a pearl.  Nor anyone who would have the patience to coax one out of me.  The fact is, the prospect of living with someone neater than me would mean changing those habits forever.  My mom learned to clean when she had to, also to cook and to manage time when she had to work around a girl.  I think children bend your inflexible will and habits to their schedule because you don't want to starve them and you want them to live and thrive.  Children may bend your ugly inner traits too.  Is the shaming stare of a man looking at a strategically arranged pile in your empty living room enough?  He may not easily understand that you arranged the box, the router, and the coats strategically to make the living room less empty because it's without furniture.

I examine the multiple parts of how to become a better, more comely woman.  Because they are the categorical components of another woman, hence I self reflect and reflect on the concept of a woman intellectually, rather than slowly becoming a better version of myself.  I examine them now, I don't know how I slid by before, dressing like Juno, wearing sometimes the same clothes if I had an essay due, procrastinating on laundry, painting my own nails and that rarely, not always folding my clothes, not having a flattering haircut, wearing glasses, having crushes, resenting people.  Men seem to have a mythical idea of a woman's preparations and ablutions, we sprinkle ourselves with fairy mist and salt, we shower three times a day and douche our armpits.  We get our hair did every other week and are so much cleaner than men.  I always believed that beautifully maintained women are high maintenance women, much of whose time and wherewithal goes into maintaining themselves and researching ways to preserve themselves.  Women who listen, women who steer away from or steer around certain topics that cause unnecessary fights, that provide the food and necessaries when their men are grumpy or sick or rendered childish and sullen by some problem.  Women who work to keep relationships going by staying fresh and avoiding pratfalls expertly, suggesting ideas that men take as their own, being light, fun, quiet, and never nagging.  I'm not good at woman stuff, neither the self maintenance of makeup, hair, having a style, nor the being fun and agreeable, the cooking, the cleaning, the making a nurturing and agreeable home.  I'm barely good at the personal abilities of being articulate, succeeding at a job, advancing my own life, making professors notice, interacting with children.  My virtues are personal, not bullet poitns that make me a "ware" on a men's "market." 

The truth is that my early 20s were dedicated to the first three dates, perceiving dating as a "market," picking those three outfits, moving from trying to form myself to them or please them to refusing to be molded and taking a stand.  I resented perceiving myself as a "ware," I saw the preferences of the opposite sex with the clarity of bitter stereotype that exists for a reason, the opposite sex spoke in concise take downs that aren't wrong (as they tend to do), that maybe "off the market" 40 year olds who disdained them in their 20s would beg for the "nice guy" later.  

Being inflexible only takes me so far.  Time together, longer time, requires molding, change, variety, "keeping it fresh," which requires violating or stepping across my things that I don't like, wearing uncomfortable clothing, doing stuff I find silly and some degrading... but requesting stuff of men they might not like.  The fact that I can't cook or clean or dress becomes a wear on them, the fact that I'm jealous, verbose, negative, judgmental, fond of risque jokes based on stereotypes.  Not good at the molding and morphing that requires two people to flow through obstacles, but the clinging to the present that makes being fun and light and quiet in a way that only takes the moment into account impossible.  Just what am I skating across?

The strong pull of outside validation.  Of outside rejection.  The very seeking of which is something that men ridicule as the sign of women with "issues," "sluts," "damaged goods," "the fat women who sit on the sidelines," etc.  As if they don't seek a more outward looking version of the same thing. 

Having the same ways of a "child" or someone who hasn't stepped into the routine performance of a "woman."  Finding what works, what doesn't, but for sure having a daintier and more fastidious routine than our more and more feminine men.  I haven't gone through the rituals of adulthood that women have done, when did playing with makeup become a varied spackling routine?  Not that I ever played with it, but my routine is still not perfected.  

The women, the perfectly beautiful, dewy, gracious, youthful women who deflect lots of unwanted attention gracefully are vulnerable and targets.  Of masculine ego and hatred and spittle when their lust isn't fulfilled, they're vulnerable and fragile and out there with their come hither, quiet beauty with no one to protect them.  Who wants to invite unwanted attention?