Monday, December 28, 2020

Sexy Annoyance


I didn’t like Queen’s Gambit. There, I said it! I could tell, within minutes, the show was written by men. The main character is not Emma Stone, but some other skinny red-head with fetal alcohol syndrome. She is a chess grandmaster whose brilliance is a divine result of taking copious amounts of drugs and staring at her ceiling. 

I understand that TV shows get to take some liberties, like Carrie Bradshaw’s weekly Village Voice column funding her Dolce closet and NY apartment, but I could forgive the unexplained wealth thanks to Samantha’s generous serving of dick-jokes. In Queen’s Gambit there wasn’t a counterbalance to the unexplained intelligence, and my tolerance was worn real thin by the repetition of close-up shots of pursed lips and doe eyed Not-Emma-Stone demonstrating she was thinking real hard. I actually screamed at the TV, “You’re playing chess bitch, not taking a selfie!”


The desperation for a diverse cast lends itself to some pretty cringeworthy recycled tropes. However, it was the childhood best friend character that made me move the box of See’s chocolates off my lap so I could get my notebook and write down her great line, “Fuck em’ if they can’t take a joke.”  


In case you’re wondering if the Queen’s Gambit is based on a real life woman, Google says no, but her mannerisms are taken from the racist hermit Bobby Fischer, so the show’s motivation of advancing female roles on TV bitters since they decided to just slap a vagina on a man. It reminds me of Ms. Monopoly, the board game adapted for young girls who prefer a business suit over a princess costume. I felt a burning rage after reading the tagline on the Ms. Monopoly box, “The first game where women make more than men.” 


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My kids and I were sitting at the table doing our work, when they started bickering. Kiki turned to G and yelled, “YOU SEXY ANNOYANCE!”

I tried not to laugh. They picked up the word listening to Top Pop, but have no idea what it means. I didn’t know what to say, so I told her to be nice. I will figure out what to say if I hear it again because “sexy” is the last thing she wants to be screaming at the boys in her class who annoy her.


Kiki is a huge proponent of “Girls Rule, Boys Drool.” She takes in a lot of hyper-aggressive-girl-empowering content, but I have to remind her that it is sexist to say you don’t like someone because they are a boy. I advocate, ”Girls rule AND Boys rule!”

Then G chimes in, “No, actually Girls drool and Boys drool.”


Even though there's a lot of music about Girls ruling the world, reality is falling short at the moment, especially here in California where female dominated industries are shut down because of coronavirus. Construction is in full force, but hair stylists are being snuck in the back door. Local coffee shops and restaurants are closing down, yet Starbucks has a line wrapping around the block. The elementary schools are closed, but the NFL and NBA are underway.


Gavin Newsom is out eating Foie Gras while the children of California are acting like they’ve been eating paint chips. I can’t help but assume it’s strategic that women industries are shut down because someone has to keep the kids off the paint chips. High school and college students are capable of distance learning, but little kids cannot without assistance, and this should be prioritized over the National Football League. But I don’t know if it’s Napoleon Newsom or our country's crippling litigiousness because now we’ve opened the floodgates of liabilities that could keep everything closed forever. Everything but the NFL and Starbucks.


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Back to Queen's Gambit and this Girls-Rule-the-World entertainment narrative. Maybe it’s manifesting a brighter tomorrow, the same way I have a “Harvard Mom” bumper sticker and my kids are seven and nine, but currently girls aren’t even ruling their own industries. If this were a TV show, a scientist would find the cure to coronavirus after getting eyelash extensions and her butthole waxed. There would be no need to demonstrate a culmination of knowledge through education and practice, rather the cure would come to her in a psychedelic daydream after eating mushrooms. 


In reality, we just have to wait this out. Even though women's jobs were the target of Newsom’s corona cure because there aren’t lobbyists protecting them by paying him, in a couple months the country will be vaccinated. The little kids can get back to school and everyone back to work. It’s going to be a long road to recovery for the economy, but at least we know, we will always have football. That's a really sexy annoyance!