It’s a gray, gray day, and it’s one of those where the to-do list feels daunting.
We can do it.
Before we do anything, though, thank you so much, Heather Moon, for the coffee! You’ll think I’ve already downed it when you read the rest of the post. I truly appreciate your support and your being here. Thank you!
Today I’m thinking about how much of reality is shaped by the people who get to define it. Take, for example, the idea that men “age like wine,” that they get more handsome as they age.
Is that reality?
Or something that is said by men who get to control the narrative?
It’s reflected in popular culture, in novels, in movies, in TV shows where younger women fall haplessly in love with men their fathers’ ages. Teen girls throwing themselves at adult men; the men faultless yet understanding.
All flights of fantasy, fiction, written by men, produced by men, spread out into the world by men.
I’ve never held the faintest interest in a man my father’s age. I’ve never found them attractive or alluring.
Had plenty of them hit on me though.
Men are the ones who bring life to this notion, who give it concrete structure. It is not a universal truth.
Nor is this idea that women age poorly, that women “curdle.” That women have a shelf life, that women’s value is only tied to youth.
Men spin that one too, largely because it, in their opinion, tips the scales in their favor, creates a ticking clock and a myth of scarcity. Fuel, they hope, a desperation that will make the first one true.
But it’s woven into the fabric of everything.
I was watching Psych for the I don’t know how manyth time, and Justine Bateman was in the episode. On a whim I googled “why did Justine Bateman get weird,” and Google immediately assumed I was talking about her appearance.
“Justine Bateman did not get weird,” it chided me, or close enough thereto, “she’s chosen to age naturally.”
Of course I was talking about her being relieved at the 2024 election results and the return of “free speech” or whatever other nonsense she spouted, and I was sure there were other things but I couldn’t remember what.
But the Google AI, trained on men’s views of women, could only presume I meant how she looked.
Maybe that’s what a lot of people are asking about, I think she looks the same as she always did, just further along in her life.
But it’s about constructing that reality. The AI only predicts what you mean, and frankly that one doesn’t do it that well, but by returning answers as “fact,” which it does authoritatively, unescapably, it shapes the underpinnings of how we see the world.
Anyway, that’s it for me on this Thursday, I hope you have a wonderful day in which you challenge some basic cultural assumptions.
A Bit to Read 
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