Worst Modern Love ever? July 15, 2011 Jill “I began to wonder if we hadn’t become scabies ourselves.”
I don’t even know how to parse this. I understand the burning desire to be NOTICED by your partner the way they noticed you at the beginning but this article reads not just like a mixed metaphor but a crazy grab-bag. There’s also some weird ableist subtext, a blame-the-victim-of-illness vibe. She never really ties it in, but there is a hint that the scabies wouldn’t have happened if they were already happy together.
In virtue of not throwing words around so often they lose any meaning, how is there an ableist subtext? In what way is “scabies” a disability? It’s a highly infectious but easily treatable parasitic infestation of bugs crawling directly beneath your skin. If disability is actually going mean anything, then I don’t think applying it to any and all illnesses or conditions is helpful. Scabies, like bedbugs or head lice, are a PITA and usually make the sufferer feel embarrassed, but it doesn’t make them “disabled” in any meaningful sense of the term. I agree there’s a weird sense of blame going on (probably an inadvertent attempt at a clumsy metaphor), but I don’t see where ableism comes into it.
I thought it was great. I related to her longings, and to the way everyday life – or not so “everyday” – gets in the way of them.
Emolee: Don’t you get it?She’s a size 4 now, so it was all worth it. Ah! So that’s what it was all about…it makes so much sense now.
I’m not a big fan of Modern Love, or the prose style its editors choose to showcase. But I thought this piece was okay by Modern Love standards. Any essay that combines scabies and philosophical bracketing is going to get at least one star from this critic.
I liked the writing a lot, actually, but seriously: DID SHE GET LAID OR NOT?? (Maybe I’m shallow, but that is my burning question!)
Am I the only one who feels vicariously resentful over the lack of labor equity described in this piece? They get scabies, she works her ass off to get rid of them while he plays with his iphone; she expresses desire by inviting him to drinks and indicating that she’s looking for a connection, he responds with sarcasm; she considers separating but decides that she’s really at fault for not paying enough attention to him? Everyones entitled to their own relationships, of course, and if she’s happy, good on her. But I would have a problem feeling attracted to someone who acted like this.
Elisabeth: In what way is “scabies” a disability? It’s a highly infectious but easily treatable parasitic infestation of bugs crawling directly beneath your skin. If disability is actually going mean anything, then I don’t think applying it to any and all illnesses or conditions is helpful. Scabies, like bedbugs or head lice, are a PITA and usually make the sufferer feel embarrassed, but it doesn’t make them “disabled” in any meaningful sense of the term. I’d be inclined to classify a medical condition that restricts your activities and carries a social stigma as a disability, if only a temporary one. And I think I’d agree with Rosemary in calling the idea that such a condition is some sort of karmic punishment for bad behavior an ableist idea. If it’s not ableism by a strict definition, it at the very least resonates powerfully with ableist ideas about similar conditions.
Angus Johnston, I can see your point…but I guess my worry with allowing for a broader definition of disabled is it allows its appropriation by enough people that the term no longer has any weight, so people can be like, “Well, I’m disabled since I have chicken pox, so I can point out that we don’t need a wheel chair ramp here.” or “Well, I’m disabled but I can still do that, so why can’t she?” Kind of like when white people say things like, “well, I’m not white since I’m 1/32nd Native American, so what I said isn’t racist.” Maybe this isn’t a problem, and people with scabies or bed bugs or pink eye should call themselves temporarily disabled, but it…I don’t know, rubs me the wrong way?
Don’t you get it? She’s a size 4 now, so it was all worth it. Is there something objectively offensive about enjoying being a size 4? Is it your job to decide who is the “right” size and who gets to enjoy being the size we are? Did she really say, “I’m a size 4 now, ha-ha all you fatties, NOW I don’t care if I had scabies”? That’s what you took from this? So…scabies brought them together again? That’s so romantic they should make a rom-com about it! I don’t even know how to parse this. I understand the burning desire to be NOTICED by your partner the way they noticed you at the beginning but this article reads not just like a mixed metaphor but a crazy grab-bag. WTF? How…why…huh? Also: I am glad there are lots of folks here who believe they will always be physically attractive to their partners, and that they will always be psychically and emotionally in tune with their partners, and that nothing will ever ever happen to make THEM have feelings of vulnerability and write such a stoopid essay!
@tinfoil hattie: I absolutely do not think there is anything wrong with being a size four or enjoying being that size, in general. What I felt was ridiculous was that she specifically said that she “thanked” her mother (who presumably gave them the scabies) for the “size 4 skirts.” So, yeah, she was saying being thinner (among other things) made the scabies worth it. I think that she was perpetuating the common trope of ‘It doesn’t matter why or how you lose weight… the weight loss is worth whatever you went through’… and that rubs me the wrong way.
@tinfoil hattie: Possibly. As someone who lost a great deal of weight due to a serious illness and was praised for the weight loss and told that the illness was for the best because of the weight loss, I may be overly sensitive here.
Yeah, I didn’t like it. I’m not saying she’s wrong for thinking the way she did, but it really didn’t speak to me.
tinfoil hattie and Emolee- It rubbed me the wrong way too. And I definitely got the thinner-is-better-no-matter-how-it-happens vibe.