Jenny and Zooey

• Tomato growing is a totally acceptable, quirky substitute for dating. 
• Really blunt bangs don’t make you blind. 
• Nobody likes an interrupter. 
• Dating the crazy Russian roommate is not the right decision. 
• Tap dances are the best way to diffuse divorce-tension at age 7 and age 30. 
• “Mic Mouse” is not an understandable substitute for “Mickey Mouse” but anything with “sex” in it definitely is. 
• Passive-aggressively talking to the ex-wife about passion between your boyfriend and her is not such a good idea. 
• Also, picking fights about coasters is not mature. 
• Best friends love mutual depression. 
• “Sandwiches and sex” is the perfect combination. 
• Passion is overrated. But maybe not? 
• Don’t sleep with the girl you like’s roommate. Ever. 
• And that old, rom-com standby, arguments are foreplay. 

Golly, you’re swell. Would you like to be my special flower? 

Nice is my least favorite adjective. 

It’s what describes boring people. People who had nothing to talk about but how cute they thought your bag was, or how, you hair is shiny. “Cuddly” and “affectionate” and “sweet” are close runners-up. Those were adjectives for stuffed animals, not humans. 

Strangely enough cynicism, a dark, slightly bitter sense of humor and an acerbic edge aren’t usually associated with femininity. Especially not the doe-eyed, child-like wonder glow of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who believes that the world is an infinite ocean filled with fish. And no, the ocean is not polluted. 

It’s probably some indication of the number of films featuring Woody Allen and Chris Eigeman (and sometimes I fear, they are also my role models) I’ve consumed that I’ve only realized recently that people, in fact, like nice people. Even brooding, angst-ridden creative types (as a quasi-creative girl living in Brooklyn, this is, of course, my type).  

This is all a long-winded way of saying that this is going to be a month of me attempting to be filled with light, to be sweet and affectionate. Nice, if you will. Because I’m giving that a shot. Because Zooey likes that. 

And my self-correcting interactions started on GChat, the communication format of our lives. Half because it’s convenient and half because, it’s a lot easier to stop yourself from saying things when you type them out and have to hit enter, than when things just spill out of your mouth. 

A recent GChat conversation, annotated for your reading enjoyment (and edited to protect the harmless and the innocent, and for clarity’s sake): 

Friend: i need a fourth class. I‘m registering for fall. right now I’m enrolled in ‘Data Structures,’
‘Spectacle and Mass Media’

me: YAY! (<— While spectacles, mass media and the two together are some of my favorite topics, this amount of enthusiasm does not feel natural. Though it does feel good. It’s nice to be excited about things.) 

Friend: ‘Beyond Picture Perfect: Personal Choice in a Digital World”

me: hahaha
sounds enlightening. though, how do pictures relate to personal choice? (<— My cynical default would normally insert something snarky. Perhaps making jokes about the play on a cliched phrase. Or how “personal choice in a digital world” sounds like the basis for bad, conceptual art.) 

Friend: I think it’s about how to convey personal choice through using highly abstracted forms of art production. like photography…where you’re just manipulating a couple parameters and that’s basically what my major is.
yeah I guess it’s just a photography class..with a bunch of academic pretensions (<— this is a nice, meaningful, thoughtful response. Most likely, a much nicer one than if I mocked its academic pretensions and how unilluminating “choice in a digital world” sounds.) 

me: oh. it’s a photo class. I get it more now.
the title just made me think sociology class. (<— Playing dumb or sweet? Sometimes I can’t tell the difference.)

Friend: yeah well it seems like sociology is a part of it
dunno…it sounds good to me

me: no. it sounds interesting.(<— encouragement, not usually on the menu)

Friend: I think my education looks pretty awesome on paper

me: hahaha. when do you ever list all your classes?
though, I guess that gives you lots of interesting things to say in interviews. (<— more niceness. This is true. This is the plus of being in sociological-ish classes because it’s not like learning how to engineer things.)

Friend: right. because my major is just ‘individualized study’
so that essentially demands explanation

me: couldn’t you just bring in a flower and say you’re a special flower just like that one? (<— whimsical references.)

Friend: ooo creative (<— whimsy equals creative?)

me: you could bring in a unicorn plushie, too.
you’re a special unicorn!
adorable. (<— adorkable, if I may say so myself.)

And, while that was less confrontational than my default, it didn’t feel inauthentic. It felt like me saying the nice things that came to mind and keeping the critical ones to myself. 

Perhaps it would have been different if the issue at hand was more important. My friend didn’t need my snark about liberal arts classes and how ridiculous they often are. Hell, that’s why I love liberal arts classes, because they are ridiculous. (When else do you get to read books on gender politics, the epistolary novel form and 18th century France because you’re taking a class centered on Les Liaisons Dangereuses? True story.) 

At the moment, “nice” doesn’t seem like the worst. Maybe being all flowers and light isn’t the worst? 

I heard an ice cream truck roll by and I got excited. Zooey might be getting to my head. 

What I learned from this week’s New GIrl: 

• Birth control becomes like a plastic BBQ cover in a hurricane if it’s too athletic. … what fucked up kind of birth control is this?
• The grossest thing you can say to a woman is “magnum-sized diaper.” 
• Everything becomes much creepier when you say it without pants. 
• Continuing to call someone your husband after a divorce is weird. 
• “Animal style” sex is how to get older men. 
• In cases of panic, play bridge 
• In what has been well-established as a television teaching, never tell children they can ask you anything? 
• “Partner” is a gross way to describe the person you’re having sex with. 
• Saying “I want to rub my face on his face” is also not sexy. 
• Making pasta is a good baby-sitting activity. 
• Men can be “dirty and weird” and prey on much younger girls but still be good people. 
• Bunny-ear iPhone covers is totally acceptable for grown women. 
• Golden Girls is Gossip Girl where everyone is old and poor. 
• Sex advice: Just find someone who’ll make you laugh. 
• Don’t believe the guy even if it’s tantric sex. 
• Being numb is bad and causes people to date 18 year olds. 
• Zooey D grew her bangs because she didn’t like her forehead. 
• Don’t propose to women through writing in the sky. 
• “I want to love what he loves.” Is in fact not how you get a man? 

Could that be me with Pooh? 

I have a lot of problems with femininity. Sure, there’s all those social conceptions of femininity.

But, I also don’t see myself as a feminine human being. At all. 

I’m loud and abrasive. I compulsively correct people’s facts and grammar. (I’ve been called out on it by bosses. Know it’s pointless and annoying. Have tried to stop. I. just. can’t.) I drink coffee black and whiskey neat. I have an unnatural fondness for old man loafers and oversized sweaters. I can’t give a compliment without giggling at the end—even if it’s completely genuine—because I feel absurd performing the act of giving compliments most of the time. 

An ex once called me a “dude in a small Asian girl’s body” and that description was really illuminating for me. Or, at least, it was something I’ve repeated as a way to understand myself and explain myself to others. And while pushing gender notions is great and all, that description is also reductive. 

Basically, it all comes down to this: I’m shit afraid of being “a girl.” 

Every week I catch New Girl, my experience undulating between hate-watching and watch-watching. And Zooey D’s character of Jess often feels like this perfect encapsulation of things that I wish I were: quirky without being horribly self-aware about it, being sweet without feeling gross about it and constantly emoting empathy. Or just, being able to emote empathy, sometimes, maybe. 

And then, there are the aspects I can barely conceptualize: having maternal instincts (because of course her character is a school teacher) and being chipper all-the-fucking-time. 

So in many ways, Jenny and Zooey is an attempt to claim a particular brand of femininity. Or at least be forced to try it on and shimmy around a bit in it.

The project: Live a month like Zooey Deschanel—as compiled via New Girl, profiles, Google Images and Hello Giggles—would, and write about it. 

I tried in October but work got in the way. Now, I’m in a new job and I’m giving this a second, more serious shot. 

Let the Manic Pixie Dream Girl games begin! 

Oh, hey.

I’m Jenny, by the way.