A confession about confessions: I don’t like them.
This is why you’ll see few overshares from me on this site, not that overshares are necessarily confessional, but rather because I fear making them so, and so just sidestep the issue by doing very little sharing.
Of course, I don’t think of myself as a particularly reserved or cool or even, hell, dignified person in my daily conduct. So let me be clear that I don’t think this has much to do with decorum. (As a side note: Screw decorum. Be deliberately indecorous in your life; don’t follow rules just because they’re there. Follow them because they’re right. That’ll keep you going.)
Hadley Freeman has a piece on this in the Guardian right now that is worth reading. (Though I’m told she was a ghost writer for Victoria Beckham, try not to let that overrule your interest; she makes sense here.) Although Freeman’s focused on a number of articles that have been appearing in British newspapers lately, what she says could apply to virtually any example of the confessional genre: memoirs, overly-personal blogs, etc.
This genre has nothing to do with journalists opening a window into what life is like for women today. It does women no favours at all. It is entirely about perpetuating an editor’s misogynistic image of what women are like (self-hating, self-obsessed) and making a semi-celebrity out of the writer in the belief that readers like to read journalists whose names and faces (and breasts) they recognise.
Perhaps these narratives are therapeutic for some, but then, I suspect, they belong in therapy. I say this as much for the protection of the speakers as for my own; if you spend any time writing for any audience, you learn very quickly that people can be counted on to see what they want in your thoughts.
Put more generally, and I think she’s right, is that all this Oprahfied™ encouragement for women to spill their guts these days is not a call to identify with women. It is a call to identify with our servitude, if I might be so grand – to identify with some grand narrative of us as helpless.
It’s of course not coincidental that it’s mostly bourgeois white ciswomen who make money off this sort of thing. We have the unique distinction of best fitting the flighty-bird-in-a-gilded-cage archetype that patriarchy seems to imagine as the natural state of being for white women. We are always in need of some kind of smelling salts, delicate and broken (but not broken really, because look at how beautiful the cage is!).
I don’t subscribe to the modern “we aren’t victims” strain of feminist thought. I keep wondering when “victim” became a slur. But I think that the ways in which the patriarchy damages women, keeps us down, don’t align with these sorts of “woe is me, I am a Bad Woman, look at the scars on my arms” narratives. Consciousness-raising was never about reiterating our circumstances; it was learning how to rise above them.
It’s a simple equation really: there’s you, and then there’s the world. Your own life is small and limited, as is everyone’s. You can choose to live in your house all day long if you like, but it will probably leave you unhappy and lost, unsure of what to say beyond what is in front of you. In this culture, you will get more accolades for staying in the house, proving what people already think, than you will by making tentative steps outside. Just don’t let that be the only thing you consider if you’re feeling alone and trapped.
Confessional journalism drives me insane. I actually have a deal with one of the evil papers that pay my wages that I will never ever write them a confessional or personal piece. I’m happy to write features etc but personal crap, no way – for a start I do not believe anyone wants to read about me in a double page spread. And to be honest with a lot of these writers i’m not entirely convinced that they do have problems, I think its so often a case of make a quick buck – at least one of them I happen to know quite well and also know that she tailors her story to fit whatever the sob fest of the week is. That sounds harsh but then again I have to admit that I don’t approve of what she does, particularly as her writing often involves her family.
Oh and also while I think Hadley Freeman’s piece was well-argued and interesting, The Guardian is super disingenous here particularly in the implication that the Mail and the Mail alone is guilty of these pieces. The Guardian employ a number of well known confessional journalists, many of whom have written just those pieces in the G2 section of the paper, for them to imply they are above this in some way is very wrong.
I admit I wrote this thinking, “I know emilyanne will have something to say.”
Yeah, I often suspect these tales of woe are slightly exaggerated. And I am alive to this question of using one’s family and friends in one’s work. I saw some good friends of mine who have been mentioned here and on my real-life blog on Sunday, and they were complaining of misrepresentation. I mean, they weren’t raising a stink about it, but it’s something that these articles don’t seem to consider.
I love this post, especially the last few paragraphs.
“Consciousness-raising was never about reiterating our circumstances; it was learning how to rise above them.”
That says it all, pretty much.
PS, ha it’s one of my absolute bugbears as you know. I’m particularly iffy about the use of children in these pieces not least because of the fact that while I know the mother’s involved generally ask their kids, I’m not sure that teenagers and tweens (the age these kids often are) have the best judgement about whether or not they should be written about. And don’t get me started on the younger children, I just find it a little bizarre that people think oh by writing about how horrible my children are, it will help readers. Will it really? I’m not convinced. I think there is a place for features tackling issues of motherhood but i don’t know that they have to be personalised in the way that they so often are.
Really, there are only so many articles in which women proclaim to be bad mommies that one can read. I think we all learned that nobody’s perfect in kindergarten.
That is my particular pet peeve.
Oh, and SARVIS.
I don’t know, there’s something to the bad mommy thing, if it was done in such a way that the children weren’t hurt and it didn’t reek of exploitation and desperation for attention. Like if it were anonymous.
This particular confessional genre–the self-loathing wealthy white woman–is like consciousness-raising co-opted by the patriarchy and used against us.
Spark, but often even the anonymity thing doesn’t work – see the case of Julie Myerson who wrote an anonymous column for the guardian for years which backfired when she then wrote about her son in a book.
Personally I think if you are general rather than specific it can work but even anonymously I find it bizarre to chronicle your children’s failings in a national newspaper.
The thing about the Bad Mommy confessionals is they just reinforce the notion that Good Mommies are x, y, z (NOT the kind of things Bad Mommy does).
Instead of coming out and saying – hey, the bullshit cultural narrative about motherhood is oppressive and constrictive and damaging, they are perpetuating it by placing themselves in the Bad category for things that are relatively unimportant, and “confessing” their “sins.”
@emilyanne, I’m not familiar with Julie Myerson, but yeah, it’s totally exploitative and weird to write in detail about your kids (men do it too). I was thinking about Rebecca Walker–she wrote about how she didn’t love her adopted child as much as she loved her biological child, which is just a hideous and malicious thing to publish. But at the same time, it doesn’t seem right to tell women to censor/deny their experiences. Well, in Walker’s case, yes she should have censored herself. But in general, there has to be a way for women to express ugly truths without confirming misogynist narratives or destroying their kids.
SarahMC – exactly, that’s what is so wrong about it.
Spark, re the men doing it – agreed and Michael Lewis’s recent stuff is particularly odd. Rebecca Walker’s piece made me very uncomfortable, i agree there should be a way for this be written about but i’m just not really sure how. I suppose I am more inclined towards interviews with women about how they feel – because at least in those the journalist can generally change the names and state that in the article, part of me is squeamish about the idea of making money out of writing about yourself.
[...] today I think I figured out why. The Pursuit of Harpyness had a post today about this article in the Guardian (how I love the Guardian) detailing our cultures recent [...]
Ive been puzzled by ‘oversharing’ myself, in that from my generation these were things you told your best friend, not a troop of blog posters. I don’t get ‘epic fail’ either though, to me epic fail is what caused the recession, not some personal thing! I’m not with the times, my fault (my bad, is that old hat now?) I know some bloggers who micro-blog (overshare), and I’d swear at times they begin looking for controversy in their lives just so they can write about it! Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
I struggled with this myself when I started my blog. When I’m in a certain frame of mind, I’m a fan of reading overshares, but after thinking about for a while I realized that I didn’t want to put the highly personal ones on my blog.
Another thing about Bad Mommy (and Bad Wife) narratives: They never, ever, ever say or even really suggest that it’s okay to be “Bad.” They just say “I’m this way,” perhaps in hopes that readers will think, “oh good, I’m this way, too, I’m not alone.” The desired reaction is not to denounce the entire construct of motherhood as fucked up and repressive and damaging(see: SarahMC), it is to publicly self-flagellate.
I fully agree that these pieces exist because editors want to feed into the narrative of women as obsessed with (a) marriage (b) babies and/or (c) food. Best if you can hit all three: “I got married because I was pregnant, and then I worried that I was becoming one of Those Women who gains weight after getting married!”
Hey, I could make a hundred dollars if I call the Daily Mail and pitch this piece! Maybe $150 if I include a picture of my breasts.
kithkin – add a nought to your numbers and that’s what you’d make. Seriously there’s a reason why these women are prepared to self-flagellate in the Daily Mail.
emilyanne: and you said you suspect they make these up? I wonder if I could get a bonus if I add two full paragraphs on my newfound obsession with chocolate. And Lifetime television. Later, I could write a follow up piece after my “baby” is “born” on how I just don’t feel close to her and actually am quite repulsed by her. And then I’ll have a fake affair.
These are newspapers made of reality television.
KithKin, they are indeed. In fairness it’s not so much made up as exaggerated with the odd embellishment. hmm that sounds like made-up really. But as I said the Guardian’s just as bad – some of the most self-loathing pieces have run on their site.
“Consciousness-raising was never about reiterating our circumstances; it was learning how to rise above them.”
Bingo. I don’t mind confessionals that provide me with some insight into how certain social constructs, stereotypes, or misconceptions play out, and how to overcome them. And I also think the “I am not alone” factor is worth something. But the stories that set forth in intimate detail the hell of being stuck in a circular pattern of self-destruction and self-loathing, but say nothing about breaking the cycle, those just leave me feeling depressed and they ultimately perpetuate the cycles they describe. I’ve never read Elizabeth Wurtzel’s books because I suspect they fall in the later category. Maybe it’s a selfish thing, but it does me no damn good to relate to you if ultimately your story will just make me feel even more shitty and stuck.
As a side note: Screw decorum. Be deliberately indecorous in your life; don’t follow rules just because they’re there. Follow them because they’re right. That’ll keep you going.
Hallelujah! You keep singing it on high!