You Are Charlotte Simmons

Kerry Howley | July 27, 2006

In her 8 millionth version of this column, Suzanne Fields articulates a message that I, for one, cannot get enough of: You're all sluts, and you like it. To wit:

Fashion reflects the times and modesty and femininity are anachronisms in a world in which "slut" is no longer a slur. The word was popularized by gangsta rappers, linking it with "ho" and other denigrating descriptions of women. The New York Times reports that it has become a term of endearment between women friends, a "fun word" for ladies who lunch. These are the young women who read "The Vagina Monologues" to each other, reveling in the celebration of their body parts.

This piece, while being utterly devoid of substantive content, really does have it all: a reference to "gangsta rappers," awkward use of the word ho, a sorrowful nod to the slutty poor (they "suffer most," let's please not forget), mention of a "media-saturated culture," a reference to that peerless chronicler of the cutting edge, The New York Times Style Section, and my personal favorite, a lengthy quote from the expert on the nuances of sexuality among adolescent girls, septuagenerian Tom Wolfe.

As I took some time off from a long string of rainbow parties to read this column, I could think only of the South Park episode where we learn the show King of the Hill Family Guy is written by manatees rearranging "idea balls," each of which are stamped with words to be used in the script. Is there a tank somewhere with balls labeled "Vagina Monologues," "college hook-ups," and "Girls Gone Wild"? Are these columns composed with magnetic poetry?

Comments

|7.27.06 @ 5:07PM|#

Wasn't it Family Guy that was written using idea balls. King of the Hill usually has some sort of plot.

|7.27.06 @ 5:08PM|#

it was family guy not king of the hill.

|7.27.06 @ 5:10PM|#

Nooooooooo...

It wasn't King of the Hill, it was Family Guy! King of the Hill is a much better show, and way above the manatee technique.

|7.27.06 @ 5:10PM|#

Yes it was Family Guy, because they did a fantastic, spot on parody of the show when Peter was KITT from Knight Rider.

|7.27.06 @ 5:13PM|#

Um, yeah. Guys, go call your girlfriends or even just your female friends, "slut". See what happens and report back here. No framing it in joke format, either (e.g., "Jane, you ignorant slut" doesn't cut it. . .unless her name is Jane, that is). Heck, don't even use the word. Just imply to each woman that she is a promiscuous tart. Good luck. Hope you make it back.

I'm with you, Kerry. There are manatees in a tank writing this nonsense. Somewhere. How it's a "win" for women to be reduced to mindless sex fiends is beyond me. Strange, this post-post-apocalyptic-modern world we live in.

|7.27.06 @ 5:15PM|#

Two Points:

1) It wasn't King of the Hill, it was Family Guy.
2) Julian is one lucky guy.

|7.27.06 @ 5:15PM|#

It's Family Guy, not King of the Hill, which is written by Manatees....Shame on you.

|7.27.06 @ 5:25PM|#

And next thing you know your son is playing for money in a pinch-back suit, and listening to some big out-of-town jasper, hear him tell about . . . horse-race gambling. Not a wholesome trottin' race, no, but a race where they set down right on the horse! Like to see some stuck-up jockey boy settin' on Dan Patch? Well I should say! Now, friends, let me tell you what I mean: you've got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table, pockets that mark the difference between a gentleman and bum, with a capital B and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool!

solune|7.27.06 @ 5:25PM|#

It was Family guy.

The episode was a two parter in which Cartman was going to use terrorism to get family guy taken off the air.

In fact, I believe it was blogged here when it happened.

The episode was a satire of the intoonfada, and an attempt by the writers to get an image of Mohamad on Comedy central.

In both parts ComCentral expunged the "offensive" mohamad depiction while retaining the president and other americans crapping all over the American Flag.

Naturally, a great point is made: the terrorists win when we censor to appease them.

Jennifer|7.27.06 @ 5:34PM|#

I cannot comment here because I am speechless with shock and also I can't determine if a statement like "Suzanne Fields really needs to get laid" would be denigrating to women or striking a blow for feminism.

Kerry, when you go to rainbow parties, do y'all, like, draw straws to determine who leaves their lipstick at the one-inch mark, the two-inch mark, the three-inch mark and so forth? I mean, you can't have a rainbow if the colors all run together, for God's sake!

Warren|7.27.06 @ 5:35PM|#

As I took some time off from a long string of rainbow parties to read this column

Oh Baby! You know I love it when you talk like that. Who's daddy's dirty little slut?

Thank's Kerry, that post will get me through the night. Oh and there's a little sumt'n-sumt'n on the dresser for you.

|7.27.06 @ 5:51PM|#

Jennifer-Your question reminds me of the article from a few months ago (linked in the post, I think) in which the author points out that anyone who thinks oral sex would leave a series of rings on the guy's wang doesn't understand how a BJ works. Funniest line in quite a while.

|7.27.06 @ 5:52PM|#

Your money's on the dresser, Chocolate.

Jennifer|7.27.06 @ 6:02PM|#

Number 6, I've been working on the logistics here and I think it works like this: lipstick colors are assigned not according to the girls' complexions but based on the length of dick they can orally accommodate.

So if Joe Blow is six inches, then the girl who can take all six wears the spooky corpsy white lipstick. The five-and-a-half inch girl wears pale coral. Five-inch girl gets standard pink. And the colors get progressively darker and darker until we get to Clueless Virgin Girl who wears black lipstick even though chances are she is NOT a Goth.

Another question, Kerry: when rainbow partygoers are being catty to each other, do they use insults like "don't be such a dark-lipped loser?" I'll bet they do.

The Owner's Manual|7.27.06 @ 6:05PM|#

"Fashions often revert, but to be popular they modify. It could be that a re-dressed doctrine of witchcraft will be the proper acceptance. Come unto me, and maybe I'll make you stylish. It is quite possible to touch up beliefs that are now considered dowdy, and restore them to fashionableness. I conceive of nothing, in religion, science, or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while."

----Wild Talents by Charles Hoy Fort, 1932.

|7.27.06 @ 6:08PM|#

These are the young women who read "The Vagina Monologues" to each other, reveling in the celebration of their body parts.

Ugh, wannabe hipster grrrl writers trying to build careers as columnists on nothing but constant references to themselves and their own tastes. I feel embarrassed for their smug, off-target attempts to nail down the preferences of other demographics without actually doing any research.

First off, "slut" was a pretty common term well before the rise of gangsta rap.

Secondly, are the angry young women who enjoy wallowing in Eve Ensler's intolerable victim-cult stale douchewater the same ones who'd casually rip into each other for fun by lobbing "bitch" and "slut" at one another across the little wobbly tables of some trendy sushi joint? I think not. The young women irritating enough to be fans of Eve Ensler are likely to find "slut" a highly offensive term that causes actual, tangible harm.

|7.27.06 @ 6:19PM|#

1) Hey, has anybody else pointed out that it was Family Guy and not King of the Hill? Huh, have they?

Wow, what a nerdpile. :)

2) Kerry, when you go to rainbow parties, do y'all, like, draw straws to determine who leaves their lipstick at the one-inch mark, the two-inch mark, the three-inch mark and so forth? I mean, you can't have a rainbow if the colors all run together, for God's sake!

Thanks for the discussion of this. I always wondered how a rainbow party could avoid becoming just a smeary brownish doughnut party.

|7.27.06 @ 6:32PM|#

family guy not king of the hill...

Warren|7.27.06 @ 6:36PM|#

Kerry copping to copious oral coupling (practice makes perfect) and Jennifer providing the ... ahem Blow by blow.

Most porntastic H&R thread, Ever.

|7.27.06 @ 6:41PM|#

I'll be in my bunk.

|7.27.06 @ 7:00PM|#

Wow. A (1) pretty incomprehensible original article, (2) somewhat incomprehensible Reason piece, and (3) flurry of comments focusing on the not-originally-mentioned TV cartoon and rainbow blowjob references. My head hurts.

Kerry, there is no link to the article you're trashing that I can find above. I finally located it by googling Suzanne Fields. Cruising Town Hall again?

BTW, I liked I Am Charlotte Simmons. Not a perfect work-- Wolfe could have used a good editor to trim down the 700 pages-- but some very apt observations about university culture. It's being made into a movie, you know. Speculations are flying around about the casting; Scarlette Johansen is being talked about for Charlotte.

|7.27.06 @ 7:05PM|#

"Wow, what a nerdpile. :)"

God, that's hot.

|7.27.06 @ 7:12PM|#

Yeah, I think I've got to hit the restroom for a few minutes. ;)

|7.27.06 @ 7:19PM|#

How about this for the guys:

There's a hot, young lesbian that lives across the light well from me. She's always walking around in her undies. That's pretty good, but what makes it even better is that I saw her reading Atlas Shrugged the other day. Oh, the fantasies...

|7.27.06 @ 7:29PM|#

Pro Libertate - You want isolated anecdotes, I'm plenty happy to rise to the occasion. I graduated from college last year, and yes, I sometimes called my girlfriends and female friends "slut", either as a term of endearment or a mild, playful all purpose insult. I can't recall a single one batting an eye.

Kerry - can we get a link?

|7.27.06 @ 8:09PM|#

Why do sluts hate America?


Warren,

Most porntastic H&R thread, Ever.

Not by a longshot. Don't you remember Nick Gillespie's Friday Fellatio Rant of but a few weeks ago? The one that got blocked by Google FamilyFilter?

|7.27.06 @ 8:15PM|#

Shouldn't there be a link to the original article by Fields?

|7.27.06 @ 9:38PM|#

yeah i admit this stuff upsets me...but if i was woman i am pretty sure i would still not be going to rainbow parties and for some reason thoughts of my hypothetical female version not getting laid calms me.

libertarian disclaimer: Don't spend any of my money getting laid or stopping other people from getting laid.

|7.27.06 @ 9:43PM|#

yeah i admit this stuff upsets me...but if i was woman i am pretty sure i would still not be going to rainbow parties and for some reason thoughts of my hypothetical female version not getting laid calms me.

libertarian disclaimer: Don't spend any of my money getting laid or stopping other people from getting laid.

|7.27.06 @ 9:48PM|#

Real Bill:

Hotter if she was straight, and reading the Fountainhead. . . and wanted to initiate.

Rand's version was too creepy. I have no desire to possess, but to have another ATTEMPT to possess me (sans violence), now that's hot.

|7.27.06 @ 9:52PM|#

But all of my friends are sluts! The term is NOT limited to women.

Jennifer|7.27.06 @ 10:51PM|#

Stop being such a dark-lipped loser, Bago.

|7.27.06 @ 11:22PM|#

Fields reports that "[Wolfe] tells of a sad conversation he overheard in a campus lounge:
" ... a boy's voice was saying, 'What are you talking about? How could I? We've known each other since before Choate! It would be incest!' And then I heard the girl say, 'Please, come on. I can't stand the thought of having to do it with somebody I hardly know and can't trust.'""

I think Wolfe is pulling our leg here. That dialogue sounds 100% bogus to me. It's more like a bad passage he edited out of an early draft of Charlotte Simmons, than a true anecdote.

|7.27.06 @ 11:29PM|#

Permalink to actual article under discussion on Townhall.com:
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/SuzanneFields/2006/07/27/the_lamentation_of_the_slut

han meng|7.27.06 @ 11:31PM|#

And for aspiring "members" of the "rainbow" coalition: Cathy Young's The Great Fellatio Scare.

The Wine Commonsewer|7.28.06 @ 12:36AM|#

Real Bill, used to live upstairs and across from two airline stews who did the same thing. Oh sorry, flight attendants. God knows, they probably still work for United.

My friend Alice (who apparently lived across from you). She'd walk around her apartment in her altogether with the lights on and the drapes open just to make the young guys in the building go nutty.

She also set me up with Debbie Brown (almost got me kilt)

Sometimes I wonder why me and Alice never got together for a weekend. Just destiny I imagine.

|7.28.06 @ 9:36AM|#

Scenescent,

Well, that's one. Though I suppose my next question is whether they thought that you really meant it. Even back in the Before Time, when I was in college (mid 80s), I recall some girls we called "The Fat Chicks" (that's to their faces, incidentally, and they weren't all fat, and no, I don't know why--I came to the party late), with whom rude remarks flowed freely. Still, even the worst of them (and they were BAD girls), would've punched me if I'd acted like I really thought she was some sort of ho-bag.