{"id":470,"date":"2015-02-18T20:20:47","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T01:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=470"},"modified":"2015-02-18T20:20:47","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T01:20:47","slug":"girly-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2015\/02\/18\/girly-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"Girly Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2019You don\u2019t want to be doing that,\u2019 the men in our families would say. \u2018That\u2019s a girl thing.\u2019 Baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors, watching Guiding Light<\/em> with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing\u201d (Me Talk Pretty One Day<\/em>, 10).<\/p>\n

I would like to analyze this quote from the perspective of Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies<\/em>, specifically with the idea of \u201cstrict bourgeois rules of respectability\u201d (5) that Halberstam alludes to.<\/p>\n

David Sedaris, while considered to be a \u201cconservative\u201d queer individual, certainly represents someone who lives an alternative lifestyle.\u00a0 He complements the traditional bourgeois lifestyle that Halberstam discusses where he is performing many actions traditionally associated with upper-class individuals, but he is a man, and these actions are associated with women.\u00a0 Scones and cupcakes are reminiscent of the English high tea as well as rose petals, however, these objects are traditionally made and used by women.\u00a0 Men may only discreetly enjoy these things, if they even notice them, and they are certainly not expected or encouraged to aid with their fabrication.\u00a0 The fact that David Sedaris not only does these things, but enjoys them and seeks them out, represents a twisting of bourgeois ideals.\u00a0 This twist also has an interesting effect on queer culture; David Sedaris, an openly gay man, could be considered to be playing into the stereotype that gay men are extremely feminine.<\/p>\n

David Sedaris\u2019 \u201cqueer\u201d twist on an otherwise respected, if feminine, practice puts an interesting spin on both queer and heteronormative\/bourgeois ideals.\u00a0 In terms of heteronormative\/bourgeois ideals, he is fulfilling the aristocratic desire to engage in high tea, watch television with his elders, and create aromatic house pieces. \u00a0However, he is engaging in these practices not because he is expected to, which he would be if he were a woman, but because he wants to, as he is a gay man.\u00a0 This quotation also presents a twist on queer culture; currently, on different forms of social media like Tumblr, many queer individuals use the dialogue of girl vs. boy things to symbolize oppressive gender assignment of children.\u00a0 Since children are compelled to act in accordance with society\u2019s ideals of gender-appropriate behavior, they are unable to do things they may truly love.\u00a0 This discourse is then traditionally used to propose or argue that society must be changed to eradicate these oppressive behaviors.\u00a0 David Sedaris twists this, and instead uses it to make a humorous anecdote that is just that, humorous.\u00a0 Halberstam provides an interesting lens through which Sedaris\u2019 work may be analyzed, but one could argue that Sedaris\u2019 primary concentration is humor instead of making a political point, which contrasts Halberstam\u2019s rather political piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2019You don\u2019t want to be doing that,\u2019 the men in our families would say. \u2018That\u2019s a girl thing.\u2019 Baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors, watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing\u201d (Me Talk Pretty One … Continue reading Girly Boys<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2263,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93618],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}