#For gods sake he is married to SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR

[dancergurl3000]

For the idea of “cruelty” and the reason for why every single young person needs to actively fight it with kindness in their life look no further than the film “Cruel Intentions.” An essay.

Let me start out by saying this as a overall liberal Democrat: I HATE CANCEL CULTURE. Cancel culture gives he who must not be named (ehem # 45) so much ammunition to just continue to fucking bully Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham into compliance. If we as liberal Democrats are to move forward as a group of individuals then we would be remiss to not learn from our painful past. Look no further than the 90’s teen flick: “Cruel Intentions.” A 90’s film that would make any #Metoo activist shudder. Enter the most popular white actors and actresses of the 90’s: 1. Ryan Phillipe, 2. Reese Witherspoon, (they were married for gods sake!) and 3. Sarah Michelle Gellar and 4. Selma Blair. They are all intertwined in the fact that Ryan’s character is a rich douche bag who in the movie makes a bet with his stepsister and if he loses he loses his car and would be forced to fuck his....ummmm step sister? The bet is that he needs to be able to screw the headmaster’s daughter aka Reese Witherspoon’s character, a virgin in the film who is “saving herself for marriage.” The whole film is problematic on a realistic scale, but I think Sarah really wanted to prove at least to the Hollywood Foreign Press that at least on film she can play the “bad girl.” What I find so vexingly problematic is the premise: Ryan’s whole goal throughout the film is to get a rich virgin to sleep with him. He seduces her and seduces her while his stepsister taunts him from her bedroom. The crazed sibling pair also destroy a rich teacher’s daughter and her relationship with her music teacher, retribution for something that happened with the stepsisters EX, not even someone that the daughter and the teacher even really KNOW. What does it say about a decade where women were literally forced to sleep with men they didn’t want to (and it was at least OK to depict this on film), and I sincerely hope that Witherspoon’s children don’t watch this flick until their 18th birthday because that sex scene is well, a little graphic, and makes me blush every single time I see it. I find Ryan’s character problematic, he’s a total bad boy bully, who makes it known to everyone in Witherspoon’s family that he wants to see her and see her and see her. So what should we as women take away from that? That if a guy is just persistent as fuck we should just give in to him? And when sex is just a game, what happens when sex isn’t just sex and a game? Where you actually fall in love with the other person but a troubled sibling makes you ashamed of that? It makes no sense to me. And young people should realize that we should do the opposite. Because cruelty as an idea will nevertheless only hurt you, as Sarah Michelle Gellar’s “Kathryn” found out the hard way.

[mytherapistthinksimfunny]

2019: Who the Hell is Grace Michaud?

By Grace Michaud

Last night at dinner, while my Dad was talking about his frat boy days, I chimed in with: “That’s like in Buffy when they go to the frat house where they’re all sacrificing girls to a Lizard God thing, and then Buffy goes and kills it.” My parents just stared at me, quite used to these completely useless facts about a 20-year-old show these past 2 months. My mother finally sighed, looked at me, and said: “Grace, when I was going through a rough time, all I did was watch 90210. I was so obsessed that I would try and fit it into every conversation I could. That’s what you remind me of right now.” I couldn’t think of a witty response. I’ve always been obsessed with some piece of pop culture. It’s when I feel most like Grace Michaud. Now my mom is throwing some cold water over me. 

It was like whenever I’m so engrossed in something, whether it be binge watching a show, reading, or going down a rabbit hole of Star Wars memes, I look to the left of my bed at my mirror. I just stare at myself, realizing, “oh shit, that’s me.” It’s like I’m seeing myself for the first time in a long time, an old friend who I haven’t seen since school days. I just stare. I look so different to whatever I was thinking about. I’m not Buffy, I’m not Sarah Michelle Gellar. That’s when reality sinks in, that this is my face. I can’t change my face, not really. But who is underneath that face? Suddenly I’m Mulan and I’m wondering: “Who is that girl I see?” 

Then I make my chin go super deep towards my chest so I look like a monster. Then I get back to googling “James Marsters in 2000.” 

I’m not a vampire slayer, or a hacker, a radio psychiatrist, or even a woman who has the ability to seduce a hot priest.

I’m Grace Michaud. 25, single, living in a small room in Brooklyn with no steady job. Most of my friends live in other cities. Those were just facts, but who the hell was I? Why was I only seeing the bad parts of myself, why was I comparing myself to other people, and why was I letting my depression get the better of me?

This month, after the fourth time of sleeping till 3 in the afternoon, I knew I had to admit it to myself what I was avoiding. I was alone, and I was unhappy.

Now before you start grimacing and thinking “oh this is going to get uncomfortable,” remember this is supposed to be a HUMOR BLOG for God’s sake. No, me being alone is not something I’m trying to say to get sympathy out of you. What I’m trying to say is it was just me for most of the year, and I had to deal with that. Every decision had to come through me. All my problems? Only I could fix.

I’ve been on my own before, I’ve always been an independent person. I’ve travelled to foreign countries by myself. I go to concerts alone, bars alone, I really don’t let anything stop me if I don’t have someone to come with me. 

But now, me being alone seemed a bit more frustrating. I spent most of my Fridays and Saturdays binge watching Frasier. It seemed like every time I had a date set up, he would flake on me. I just kept finding myself alone a lot, not even meaning to. I had an apartment, with no regular income to keep me at ease. 

Alone alone alone, nothing was coming anymore, the future was just there and I was in the open water with nothing to look forward to. When I go to my parents for the weekend they sometimes have to tell me to shut up because I just unload all of my talking onto them. I’m not even saying anything remotely interesting (because like I said, nothing has happened) but the act of talking aloud just feels so good. 

Being alone and broke did push me to go out and find an income to survive. I bit the bullet and decided that being a babysitter was my best option, since it was what I was best at and flexible with my freelance schedule. Sure enough the best boy I met all year was a 2-year-old kid who loved the Beatles and the A-train and told me my farts were musical. My best friend became a toddler who was Eloise at the Plaza reincarnated. Sometimes that was the most socializing I got was hanging out with toddlers who couldn’t even hold a conversation. 

Every boy I dated this year flaked on me and once it happened three times in a row. In the new Little Women, Jo rants to her mom that even though she left for New York, she is tired of feeling alone. Sure, she had pursued her dreams, but she was lonely. That maybe she should have just married Laurie because she “wants to be loved.” God, how many times this year had I done that? All year I was holding onto men, men who I didn’t have feelings for or who didn’t treat me well, because I was so scared of not being loved. I was scared that if I didn’t accept a boy showing some sort of affection to me, I would never get this affection again. This weakness made me be in relationships that weren’t healthy, and always, always, set me up for disappointment. 

I’ve been rejected from my dream satire site twice. I’ve been on a lot of job interviews and the rejection has filled me with tears. Because it was just me, I was dependent on me. No one else was going to make anything happen. There were so many times this year where I didn’t even leave the apartment and the only social interaction I had was me talking to the TV. I obsessively watched TV this year like my life depended on it. I fell in love with some great television shows. I think I watched Fleabag over 15 times. I’ve lost count. I watched Mr. Robot and when I finished I started it again, and even took a trip on a cold March afternoon to walk the pier of Coney Island. Then came Frasier which I watched non-stop, and then of course my latest obsession, Buffy the Vampire Slayer which has given me more excitement and emotions than anything else this year. To end the year we got Rise of Skywalker which propelled me to sitting around in my PJs watching Star Wars and lusting after Adam Driver.

Holy crap, my mother was right. 

But I wouldn’t call this pathetic. I just call this life. I didn’t choose to be alone, it just happened. At first I was extremely angry. I felt embarrassed. A loser. I felt like I was 15 again, a freshman in high school. I was in a new place and I felt inferior to all the mature upperclassmen, I was the one who didn’t make the soccer team and watched as my friends went off to be friends with the older soccer players and make out with junior boys. I felt like a loser in a city where you literally have the whole world at your fingertips. 

I told my therapist as much that I felt like this was such a waste of a year. She told me that wasn’t true and listed something that made it not. I did get to go to Portland and Boston to see my friends. I did get a few really good gigs that paid well and were cool. I did meet some boys this year. My little brother and I got to see Vampire Weekend. I got to reconnect with some old friends and even got to take care of a dog. I stayed in touch with work friends and bonded over it. 

And yes, I was alone. But I needed it. I needed to look at myself in the mirror and figure out who the hell adult me was. I had gone through a crisis of this when I was in my high school depression years, and in a way I repeated that ten years later. 

It was needed. I needed to be alone because of the type of person I am. Other people don’t change me directly. It’s me. I was entirely on my own on this one. No one could make me happy except myself. Of course I wanted a job and I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted to be social and go out every Friday night at a cool bar. But I wasn’t ready. And I think the universe was trying to tell me that. Kind of rude for it to tell me that by having me throw up after one tequila shot, making me realize “oh maybe I should stop worrying about being social for social sake...” but still. 

I had to realize that it’s my fault. Learning that I’m the only one who can fix things. I was forcing myself to blame myself for everything. I know I shouldn’t be hard on myself but frankly it has to be done. I had to stop comparing myself to others, stop feeling sorry for myself.

Like Rey in The Last Jedi, I had to confront that it was just me. 

To continue with the theme of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, after Jo rants to her mother, her mother then asks about Laurie: “But do you love him?” Her mother went on to explain that Jo has to love back. Sure she wants to be loved, but it’s not the same as being in love. Maybe that’s why every guy kept flaking on me, because the universe was telling me that I wasn’t ready, wasn’t ready for anyone right now. I’m not going to say it, the dreaded “I have to date myself!” But I guess I did really need to learn how to love myself. 

I’m not writing this for sympathy. I’m not saying: “Oh boo hoo I’m so lonely! Someone fix it!” That’s not what I’m saying at all. The part about feeling sorry for yourself is over, because again, it’s only yourself who can forgive yourself. The universe wanted this. Wanted me to be alone so I could get back to being Grace Michaud again. It’s just a fact of the matter, not a tragedy. Maybe one day it’ll happen to you. All I’m saying is, sometimes you do need to be alone and when you are, you have to force yourself to talk to yourself. 

And figure out who the hell Grace Michaud is.