At the YMCA, I stepped up on the elliptical machine to start exercising. To entertain myself, I brought along a radio receiver and headphones so that I could listen to one of the five TV channels playing. I am not for sure why, but one of the TV programs caught my attention and I decided to listen to it for a couple of minutes.
When I turned on my headset the first thing I heard was, “I want to introduce you to one of my friends who has just wrote a raunchy book.” Laughter emitted from the other two panelist seated around the table. The young woman, who had written the book, also laughed. . .I will come back to the interview in a moment.
The Book
After listening to the interview, I decided to go online and read more about the book. According to reviews the book is a memoir about the author’s life, and it opens with the loss of her grandmother. The author writes about how she used excessive drinking and chain smoking to grieve her loss. Then as one reviewer writes, the rest of the book is about her transformation. “But out of the darkness that threatens to overwhelm her, she begins a powerful and transformative journey through crazy one night stands and ill-advised hookups with friends; band benders mixing margaritas and marijuana…an encounter with a man who finally shows her that the chance for love never disappears.”
Another reviewer praised the author for being gutter-mouthed…having no fear…appearing naked on the cover of her first book…starting a political t-shirt line with sayings like ‘If It’s Date Rape, Do I get Dinner.’” The last reviewer I read glowingly refered to her as a female Howard Stern.
The Interview
The reviews of the book were definitely reflective of the author’s hubristic attitude as she talked about her book. From my perspective, the author’s responses were “narcissistic” or at the very least had an “all about me” tone.
Here are some excerpts from the interview (I was able to find it again online).
Panel member: (speaking to audience) I tried very hard to find an excerpt from the book that I could read to you but it was way too raunchy, I will let her tell you about it…
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Author: My biggest challenge is trying to get everyone as interested in me as I am in myself.
Panel member: It is a very self-absorbed gesture, a memoir.
Author: I think I am very self absorbed.
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Panel member: You write about your parents in this also.
Author: Fair game, everyone knows that I am a writer; I don’t pretend that I am a scientist.
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Panel Member: …[your book] focuses on a post-feminist world where young woman have potentially more freedom than their parent’s generation. There is a lot of talk in your book about how you get from there to meaningful relationships. Why are a lot of young people looking for commitment, while people in marriages wish they were younger or freer?
Author: I think it is the advice that young girls are given and the rules that they are suppose to follow. I think the rules are just made up.
Panel Member: What is the most important rule to break?
Author: I think all of them… You should do what you feel like doing because you feel like doing it.
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Panel member: With a child on the way is this going to change your raunchy writing persona?
Author: I hope not.
Panel member: (jokingly) Don’t let this kid get in the way of your adventures.
Author: My mother is really concerned about his (the unborn baby) well being. I think there are a lot worse things I could be doing. He’ll get on board. He will be okay. He doesn’t have a choice.
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I didn’t feel any better about the interview the second time I listened to it. Though in fairness to the author her book does question the thinking that the only way a woman can have a good life is by being with a man. And, she does talk about the importance of having a meaningful relationship, though I am not for sure how she would define one.
The Peep Culture
As I was ruminating why a young woman would want to write about her successions of one-night stands and her ill-advised hook-ups, I came across another interesting book, The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors by Hal Niedzviecki. Niedzviecki posits that we have entered into a “peep culture” where people feel free to tell-it-all and show-it-all. He points out that this, along with the rapid emergency of digital technology, is radically changing our culture and society. According to the review, Niedzviecki uses the latest sociological research to look at this trend. His book “captures the shift from pop to peep… [and] reflects the aspirations and confusions of the growing number of people willing to trade the details of their private lives for catharsis, attention, and notoriety.”
I may have to purchase Niedzvieck’s book. Maybe, from a sociological perspective, it will help me understand why as a society we need to tell-it-all and focus on self. Frankly, I find this type of behavior kind of scary.
Oh yeah, I didn’t tell you the name of the young woman’s book did I. Since we are living in such a self-absorbed world, I have decided that I have no desire to promote her work. So, I am not going to because I don’t want to.
After Thoughts
The more I thought about the peep culture, I couldn’t help but wonder how much I am contributing to it. After all I write a blog sharing my thoughts. What makes me think anyone else would care? Isn’t blogging a bit egotistical?
I also belong to Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. I have to admit that I am more of a voyeur on these, but isn’t voyeurism part of the problem with the peep culture. Hmmmm, something to think about – I never thought of myself as a “peeper” – oh my!
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What is a Think Through? it is an idiom that conveys the meaning of carefully considering possibilities and outcomes of a situation.
Today’s Think Through: What do you think about our culture’s tell-all and show-all attitude? How do you view social media’s contribution to society? Your contribution to it? Is it changing our culture for the good or bad or having little effect?
Picture: Thomas Leuthard / Foter.com / CC BY
Living as a woman 
Thanks for your insightful comments about culture.
Thanks also for summarizing the book so we wouldn’t have to sludge through the muddy gutter with her.
Also, I would agree that we are accelerating into a peep culture where we use social media and camera phones to see and be seen. This is a huge issue within media ecology. I believe we are going to see detrimental results throughout our voyeuristic and sensate culture.
Technology is a wonderful thing, but with every new invention there is a downside. And yes, we are certainly beginning to see how it can be used responsibly or irresponsibly.
I don’t know if I’m really supposed to leave comments here as this blog is entitled “living as a woman” and I’m a guy but I got tired of being merely “voyeuristic” and decided to become participatory (of a sort). Anyway I agree that our culture has become too “voyeuristic” but I think this is only symptomatic of a much larger problem which is the immediacy of our culture. Being able to get pretty much whatever information or products we want at lightning speed has trivialized the value of pretty much everything. When you can get pretty much whatever information you want at the speed you can type it into google it makes all information seem the “same” and does nothing for the discretion of the person choosing to look at the information. When you can ask questions of a million different “ministers” of a thousand varieties of “faith”, participate in on-line discussions, take classes on-line, watch movies on-line (often for free if you know how to work the system), access every kind of pornography, every kind of political discussion, every kind of information about drugs and different kinds of belief systems it makes everything take on a veneer of “sameness” to where you can excuse yourself as an observer while you take part in numerous kinds of activities that are often in conflict with one another in some kind of ethical way. It is like we have all become aliens from our own culture watching ourselves and others say and do things that often seem very surreal and bizarre. The sort of surreality and bizzarity that used to be in the life of a “good man” visiting a brothel or an opium den – the oh my God, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, is this actually me?” has crept into the lives of pretty much everyone nowadays to some extent but most people aren’t even aware it’s happening to them. The real technological revolutions that would truly make our lives better – the revolutions in medicine, energy, transportation and robotics that we always seem to be on the cusp of but not quite there are not here yet, but the communication and information revolution has already occurred and if we don’t learn how to handle it no further technological revolutions will really help us very much. It is sort of man’s sinfulness (or lack of intellectual and emotional comprehension) meeting his technical brilliance. I don’t think it’s a certainty that man is doomed but it definitely seems dubious that technology can save us from ourselves. The only chance man has to actually really learn from technology is if technology can teach itself to become aware of its own existence, its interdependence with us for its own survival, and then value its own survival enough to teach us about “our” interdependence” with all other living beings. It’s doubtful we’ll actually learn the lesson at all. Technology can’t survive as an entity if it blows us all up or kills us all off but it could override all decisions we make that it interprets as coming from selfishness and will probably do so when it gets to that point as pretty much every decision we human beings make is too myopic and near sighted and coming from too limited a perspective to ever be anything but “selfish”.
A man’s point of view is always welcome and appreciated. I appreciated your thoughtful response.