I’m your nerd host, Chris Hardwick
Nerdist is a place where we nerds come together and share the nerdery that we find. It's also my home to various elements of the Nerdist Empire. You might recognize me from TV. You don't realize that's where you know me from, but it is. You think you went to college with me or I look like your cousin's friend, but that is not the case. At one time or another you stumbled upon me on your moving picture box in such cerebral gems as MTV's "Singled Out" and Noam Chomsky's "Shipmates." and so much more...
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As a man and once a boy, I didn’t have anyone in my HS career whom I wanted to Be Like to that degree, even among my best friends, nor anyone who tried to become me, nor worked with me to become a third person together. But, then, I was the kind to highschooler who was flabbergasted (as I was reminded by the discussion in today’s episode) to learn that anyone jockeyed for position through whom they dated. Even gold-digging made vastly more sense than that to me.
Similar to the notion of beautiful v. handsome baby boys, I remember (while in HS) observing on the city bus a young father playing with his infant son, slightly roughing the baby boy up–briefly rubbing his face a little hard, things like that–and the infant was clearly puzzled as to why his parent was doing this, but since the father was beaming at him while “playing” thus, the infant smiled back while trying, very clearly, to figure out what the hell was going on. I could only take that as anecdotal evidence for environmental factors playing into the differences in how boys and girls were raised, since I strongly suspected (and still do) that would not be something the young father would do with an infant daughter.
The film HEAVENLY CREATURES, and the situation it was based on, comes to mind, both in the personalities merging notion as well as the notion of serious threat in junior high. I certainly was made aware of how quickly things could get Real even in my “elite” private high school when some friendly acquaintances were mocking one of the more Unusual of their senior classmates, and his response was to pull a knife and come after them…their response to this was run around behind me, and I was unaware of any of this till I looked back in the direction they were looking and saw this wild-eyed stranger to me advancing with a drawn knife. There are certain disadvantages to being one of the larger people around at a young age, and this could be one of them…not quite the same sort of awkwardness that Erin Gibson faced in being so tall so young, but perhaps not altogether incongruent.
Oh gosh, I have so much to say! I love love loved the feminism talk, and figuring things out. I spent so long just trying to navigate the different groups of feminists to figure out what I believed and how I could contribute. I tried to remember everything I wanted to say but I’m gonna have to listen again before coming back!
Thank you so much for giving us these episodes. I know for sure they are an amazing bright spot in my week.
One thing I feel I have to mention that you guys brought up at the end of the podcast, is that once you graduate high school, you then have the power to do/be what you want, and my immediate thought when that was said was that that might not be true today. I’m 19 and in college, and I feel like in many ways, these days at least, that sort of power and freedom isn’t something you can fully obtain until you’ve graduated college. A college degree has almost become a minimum requirement for a lot of jobs, and so it’s hard(though not impossible) to exert the true financial independence you may need to live that life, at least until you’ve graduated from college. In these ways, college has kind of become the new high school.
I’m sure you’ve already had a ton of people say this on Twitter or whatever, but I feel compelled to comment on the Girls thing you mentioned. I’ve actually just been catching up on Girls very recently, and the moment you mentioned is something that made me unsure too. Because in one way I totally agree that women shouldn’t dictate to other women how they ‘should’ act. But I felt like maybe the character took the principle to the extreme.
I guess with any kind of self-help type book, for me it comes down to the fact that women go looking for advice in them, or at the very least are just interested to hear a new approach. The fact that women are seeking out advice of their own accord and not having certain ideas or behaviours forced upon them makes me feel that they’re just as free to follow the advice in any book as other women are not to follow it. As much as I do agree that self-help books can turn into a bit of a never-ending cycle of ‘whose advice do I listen to?’ if you get carried away, I also think that they can really help people, and to make people feel like they’re somehow less of a feminist if they get something positive out of one of those books is an equally bad side of the same coin.
I guess the difference for me between a self help book and something like, for instance, politicians or religious leaders trying to dictate how women should act or feel, is that you have that choice about whether to follow them or not. But then I guess the key is that even when I’m searching for guidance, I still have enough of a sense of myself that I wouldn’t be ‘persuaded’ into following certain advice if I didn’t feel it resonated with me, and maybe some people don’t have that same sense of themselves and as a result can get caught up in ‘advice’ that doesn’t necessarily have a positive intention.
I think male friendships are very different but equally intense. There seems to be the dynamic of the responsible but maybe too cautious guy paired with the more reckless buddy. You see it in movies a lot, but its definitely there in real life.
While girls make seek out someone to imitate/emulate to feel more secure about themselves, boys make seek someone opposite to separate themselves from the pack.
Wow. SUCH great feedback on this episode. I LOVED your thoughts about Girls, self help books, and intense female friendships (and male ones!). How do I have the best and smartest listeners in all of pod-dom?