Confessions of a Former Pick Me
In the incredibly terrifying, relentlessly weird year of our lord 2020, the Jeffrey Toobin mini-scandal probably won’t even rate among the top 20 most baffling things that happened. In case you’ve already forgotten, Toobin, a lawyer, legal analyst, and author, whose best selling book about the O.J. Simpson trial was turned into an Emmy Award winning TV series, was fired from The New Yorker after being caught masturbating on a Zoom call with colleagues. Though one could assume that, seven months into the pandemic, this was not Toobin’s first time using Zoom, he claimed he didn’t realize he was on camera.
Balancing the calls for Toobin’s firing were the usual “it depends upon what the meaning of ‘is’ is” pedants who were more interested in litigating whether or not the fact that Toobin was a salaried employee or in his home at the time made a difference. Some took it one step further, like a New York Daily News op-ed that suggested the real problem was not Toobin’s lack of self-control, but that Americans are uptight about masturbation. The minimizing of Toobin’s behavior was not surprising. What was slightly more unexpected was how many women came to Toobin’s defense, claiming that someone jerking off in the presence of his co-workers was simply not that big a deal. YouTuber Liana Kerzner made the unsettling claim on Twitter that numerous friends had “accidentally” masturbated in front of her, and, believing it to be a sign of depression, she simply learned to live with it. It is, she suggested, common enough that perhaps it should just be ignored.
Similarly, Sarah Silverman, in a 2018 interview with Howard Stern, admitted that she allowed Louis CK to masturbate in front of her numerous times, treating it with all the casualness of a child with a chronic nose picking habit, and implying that she (a) did not expect him to be responsible for his own behavior, and (b) accepted that it was part of being CK’s friend. It’s part of a long and rich cultural history of women quietly putting up with negative male behavior, because expecting them to change was too unreasonable. Initially it was domestic violence, then, when that became less socially desirable, chronic unfaithfulness, followed by refusing to do their fair share of housework and childcare, then that most evergreen issue driving a wedge between men and women, sexual harassment. Despite the rise of #metoo, it turns out that very few men have been canceled for their untoward behavior, and, in fact, we’re now seeing a pushback, as people would rather debate what does or doesn’t qualify as sexual harassment, and whether a failure to recognize boundaries (several times) is worth impacting someone’s career when we could just simply go back to not talking about it.
No one wants to be accused of being a victimizer, but isn’t being perceived as a victim its own kind of burden? Or worse, a scold with no sense of humor, who can’t roll with the punches? Isn’t life a little easier when we’re not constantly policing other people’s behavior?
Women my age, Generation X, particularly talk out of both sides of our mouths. Sure, we embraced the angry feminism of the Riot Grrl movement, while also eschewing the trappings of femininity, and taking a misplaced pride in being “not like other girls.” We were who Gillian Flynn was talking about when she wrote the now-legendary “cool girl” passage in Gone Girl, the women who alter their personalities to make themselves more attractive to men who don’t actually like women, “the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain.” This meant laughing off and ignoring a lot of crude jokes, a lot of inappropriate behavior, because to call anyone out on it wouldn’t be “cool.” Often it metastasized into internal misogyny, where we were so insecure about how men perceived that we projected that fear and disgust onto other women, judging them for being overly sensitive, for not knowing how to take a joke.
I know this, because I used to be this person. From age 18 to 22 or so, I was peak asshole, just living up (or down rather) to the very worst stereotypes of the “pick me,” the woman all too eager to throw other women under the bus if it meant getting male approval. I unironically used the phrase “I’m not like other girls,” while rejecting and mocking all the typical benchmarks of femininity. I claimed to get along better with men, because “there’s less drama,” and just typing that out made my right eye twitch. When I talked about movies and music, it was focused predominantly on stuff that men liked. That’s not to say that I was lying outright about what I liked (though I absolutely was about the writing of Charles Bukowski), just that that was only what I liked. I also enjoyed Beverly Hills, 90210 and Dirty Dancing, but kept that mostly to myself. Though it was really just because I was bad at applying it, I was proud of my refusal to wear makeup. I claimed to not care about shoes or fashion, but it was mostly because my feet refused to fit comfortably in trendy shoes, and my clothing budget was limited at best. “Low maintenance” was a backhanded compliment at best, but I happily accepted it.
I also pretended, for a very long time, that the various microaggressions I experienced from age ten on were no big deal. They weren’t a badge of honor, exactly, more like something that I thought made me tough. Sure, my neighbor flashed me when he answered his front door with his bathrobe flapping open, but who didn’t experience something like that? It’s not like he hurt me. So what if, while on a school bus full of other teenage girls, I got to see a guy jerking off in his truck (while driving, no less), leering at us the whole time? It was funny. Wasn’t it? What did it matter if a guy I was casually at best dating told everyone we were already sleeping together? I passed off a lot of things as no big deal, because I didn’t want to be perceived as uptight, or worse, uncool.
Funnily enough, my first truly happy, healthy romantic relationship was with someone who knew me before I was “cool,” and the only other person besides my closest friend that I could be myself around. It was, frankly, a relief to cut the shit, though it took a long time to drop the prejudices I felt about other women, and how they handled themselves around men. The tide turned when I worked at a hotel, and was regularly harassed by a male employee who worked in another department. It wasn’t just me, it was all the women in the office. It was just something he did on his lunch break, hang out (where we were essentially his captive audience) and “flirt” by speculating what our bodies looked like under our clothes. No one said anything. No one complained. No one suggested that perhaps he should find something better to do with his time, even when he escalated his behavior to waiting around until some of us were off of work to “flirt” some more.
Of course, I didn’t say anything either. I didn’t tell him that he made me feel small, like a bug under a magnifying glass, and I regret that. Who knows what happened to him, and how many women he bothered, or worse. I’m as vaguely complicit in that as everyone else who let him get away with it, because, again, I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t take a joke, that I was prissy, that I was no fun. That I was, you know...acting like a girl.
I regret ever playing such a stupid game. As it turns out, it doesn’t attract the best quality men, and why should it? That doesn’t make any sense. “Willing to throw other women under the bus” is not something you’ll often find in someone’s dating ad “turn-ons,” and if you do, you should run away from such a person as quickly as possible. A person like that, they don’t actually like women, and guess what? They don’t like you, either.
