Last week (or maybe it was the week before), two different essays on The Cut went viral, one by Emily Gould titled “Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce” and “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger” by Charlotte Cowles. I’ll primarily be focusing on the piece by Gould in my response here but both pieces generated a lot of engagement on social media because of how polarizing they were, and how they exposed the worst and most embarrassing aspects of humanity.
I think men being less able to do this kind of memoir is the flip side of men getting taken more seriously in general. Cute and quirky isn't and archetype available to men who fuck up and hurt people.
there’s something about the personal essays within this mold that scream “look at me! i am an interesting person! i’m a person whose voice is eccentric and comical but deeply intelligent!”, when really they’re just… annoying, stupid, and banal. It’s incredibly boring in some ways to screw up, because everyone does it. It would be one thing if these pieces were clearly from the place of ‘i was dumb, don’t ever ever act like me’, or if they were artfully subtle instead of navel-gazey & indulgent. But they’re neither of those!
I think men being less able to do this kind of memoir is the flip side of men getting taken more seriously in general. Cute and quirky isn't and archetype available to men who fuck up and hurt people.
there’s something about the personal essays within this mold that scream “look at me! i am an interesting person! i’m a person whose voice is eccentric and comical but deeply intelligent!”, when really they’re just… annoying, stupid, and banal. It’s incredibly boring in some ways to screw up, because everyone does it. It would be one thing if these pieces were clearly from the place of ‘i was dumb, don’t ever ever act like me’, or if they were artfully subtle instead of navel-gazey & indulgent. But they’re neither of those!