An Inaugural Blogging Post: Discussion Of A Thing That Annoys Me, Among Many

I graduated from college two weeks ago, which, with the current economy and the oil spilling into the ocean and the general breaking open of the earth's crust and releasing of hell-demons ringing in the oncoming apocalypse and feasting on the flesh of innocents, means that I have moved back in with my parents, back into the same room I was living in at seventeen. And boy, what a whirlwind that has been. Really stings the eyes with a sense of endless possibility. Of course, I'm not alone. I would say a solid seventy five percent of my graduating class (this is based on serious scientific statistical data) is currently unemployed, dining with their families and praying for a merciful death. Those that do have jobs are weirdos. Overachievers. Nerds. No one likes nerds; they smell weird, probably from handling all the money they earn at their unholy “jobs” selling babies to the aforementioned hell-demons. And we all know what those demons do with innocents. In any case, here I am, doing what any uselessly educated loser does: blogging. And watching “2001: A Space Odyssey” at three in the morning, a film that, from what I can tell, is a lighthearted comedy about monkeys in space.

Obviously, then, I have an abundance of time on my hands, time I've been using to catch up on some music blogs, digging through mp3s of boring remixes and leaked tracks from upcoming hip-hop albums. The other day I stumbled upon a She and Him cover of the Smiths' “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.” She and Him as in the band fronted by Zooey Deschanel. Covering the Smiths. After my initial dizziness and nausea wore off, I thought about what, exactly, my reaction meant. It's a response I often have to encountering Zooey, one that's hard if not impossible to explain to most people. There is, to me, something fundamentally unsettling, something incessantly grating, about the actress. “But why?” I asked myself as I was wiping the sweat from my pale brow, “Why so visceral, so nasty, a reaction to a girl who is, by all accounts, cute and talented and not nearly so offensive as any number of other figures active in the world today?” And, well, all of those things are good arguments for Zooey. Though I may personally find her music to be as exciting as warm milk and Klonopin cocktail, she does have a good voice. She works with M. Ward. He's talented! She even writes her own songs. She's talented! And she's not a bad actress, not really. So why so much hate? Why can't I choke down my bile when it comes to her?

First, I should make it clear that my disgust isn't personal. I mean, Zooey Deschanel the person doesn't exist so much as Zooey Deschanel the idea. She's quirky! She has nice hair! She wears cute little dresses! My problem is that she has become the representative, in the minds of many, of what the ideal “alternative” girl is. And that's the core of it. The whole point of there being an “alternative” lifestyle is that it's different from the mainstream set of standards, so what does it say that there are so many people who seem to feel they deserve applause for having the sophistication and openness of mind to be attracted to this very beautiful, very conventionally beautiful, woman? And, again, allow me to stress my awareness that there are far worse people to praise, that Zooey at least has interests and talents and all that jazz, but I do question how much interest the people who love her have in her actual output. Further, Zooey seems representative of a larger trend in the idea of what even the ideal “different” girl should be. Elfin, giggly, deemed “interesting” but never seeming to express any particularly strong opinions about anything. And isn't that just a little bit scary? Is there no outlet where girls are allowed to be as sassy (or not) as they want to be? Where the hell is the arena for girls to be strong and funny if even in the outfield, when once we saw Courtney Love on MTV and Janeane Garofalo in movie theaters, the zaniest option we can come up with is a woman from a Hollywood family who is traditionally beautiful and relatively soft spoken, whose craziest moments come from the occasional vintage dress? And don't mistake me, soft-spoken, beautiful girls: I want every lady to be precisely what she is, nothing more or less.

What's unsettling about Zooey's popularity is that it seems prescriptive. It seems like a lot of girls these days, girls who are considered squarely in the “alternative” category, manufacture a persona that's quiet of voice and precious in presentation. Manufacture being the main word, here. Being quiet and precious is just fine if it's genuinely who you are, but Christ, can't we give girls a break from absurd standards even in counterculture? There seems no corner where a gal can be weird and truly outlandish without being simultaneously being deemed unattractive. And it's about enough. Let's see some dames being praised for being chill broads for a change. Let's try, just for a minute or two, not briefly mentioning a lady's talent and skipping quickly to the list of all the reasons she gives us a boner. Let's give Zooey a rest, and find some other interesting women to admire. And, dear god, let's avoid covering the works of Morrissey. You're giving me acid reflux.